The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. One July afternoon in 2024, Ryan Williams set out to prove himself wrong. Two months had passed since he’d hit upon a startling ...

Complexity theory is a fundamental branch of theoretical computer science that categorises computational problems according to their inherent difficulty and the resources required to solve them. At ...

Theoretical computer scientists are always probing the relationship of space (memory) and time. For 50 years, experts knew that a calculation of X steps required X/log X memory slots, but a new study ...

Is our fundamental reality continuous or is it chopped up into tiny, discrete bits? Asked another way, is space-time smooth or chunky? The question cuts to the heart of the most fundamental theories ...

Imagine a swarm of fireflies, flickering lights on and off in the nighttime space. How does the human brain process and integrate information about duration and spatial position enabling this vision?

When giving the coordinates for a location, most people provide the latitude, longitude and perhaps altitude. But there is a fourth dimension often neglected: time. The combination of the physical ...

Observing time distortions could show whether Einstein's theory of general relativity accounts for the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy. When you purchase through links on our site, we may ...

Natalie Paquette spends her time thinking about how to grow an extra dimension. Start with little circles, scattered across every point in space and time—a curlicue dimension, looped back onto itself.