The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Imagine a town with two widget merchants. Customers prefer cheaper widgets, so the merchants must compete to set the lowest price.

All of modern mathematics is built on the foundation of set theory, the study of how to organize abstract collections of objects. But in general, research mathematicians don’t need to think about it ...

Quantum computers are coming. And when they arrive, they are going to upend the way we protect sensitive data. Unlike classical computers, quantum computers harness quantum mechanical effects — like ...

Google’s Willow quantum computer (pictured here) is delivering. Image credits: Google. “Today, we’re announcing research that shows — for the first time in history — that a quantum computer can ...

The new quantum computing algorithm, called "Quantum Echoes," is the first that can be independently verified by running it on another quantum computer. When you purchase through links on our site, we ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. If you want to solve a tricky problem, it often helps to get organized. You might, for example, break the problem into pieces and tackle ...

Children often surprise us with their natural problem-solving skills. A new study shows that they can discover efficient algorithms on their own. Researchers Huiwen Alex Yang, Bill D. Thompson, and ...

Children as young as 4 years old are capable of finding efficient solutions to complex problems, such as independently inventing sorting algorithms developed by computer scientists. The scientists ...

The Shiller P/E ratio passed a mark on Monday it last hit during the dot-com bubble. The stock-market indicator peaked before the S&P 500 crashed 49% in the early 2000s. AJ Bell's Russ Mould said ...

There is a new sorting algorithm a deterministic O(m log2/3 n)-time algorithm for single-source shortest paths (SSSP) on directed graphs with real non-negative edge weights in the comparison-addition ...