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Philosophy A Material Revelation?
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
[long_description] Can a personal experience strengthen one's appreciation of materialism rather than undermine it? Robert Lawrence Kuhn recounts his daughter's extraordinary journey through fertility treatment and the birth of his grandson. Witnessing the remarkable possibilities of human biology leads him to reconsider, however slightly, his longstanding intuition that reality extends beyond the physical. A moving reflection on the potential of the material world and the enduring mystery of consciousness.
Physics Of Universal Bondage: The Ends of the Past
Bruce Gordon
[short_description] Could the universe have existed forever? Bruce Gordon challenges the possibility of an eternal past, revisiting the Borde–Guth–Vilenkin theorem and exploring the limits of cyclic and emergent-universe models. Drawing on thermodynamics, quantum theory, and spectral analysis, he argues that every known path to a universe without a beginning ultimately encounters a formidable obstacle.
Philosophy The Perpetual Rose and Its Reader
Dr. Fateh Bazerbachi
[short_description] Fateh Bazerbachi reads David Berlinski’s The Perpetual Rose as an inquiry into mathematics, naming, and consciousness. Moving through Kant, Gödel, Kripke, and ancient traditions, he asks whether the witnessing mind ultimately escapes the catalogue of things it names.

Dispatches

Researchers at MIT and Northeastern University have developed metamaterials based on irregular, multiscale networks rather than repeating structural units. Experiments demonstrate improved impact absorption, distributed deformation, and adjustable stiffness. Published in Nature, the work suggests that carefully designed structural disorder can outperform conventional order ...Read more

Mathematician Teng Zhang reports a proof of a conjecture posed in 1958 by Paul Erdős, Fritz Herzog, and George Piranian. The conjecture identifies which polynomial lemniscates have maximal length. The proposed solution combines complex analysis with rigorous computer- assisted estimates for finitely many degrees ...Read more

A research system using an unreleased Anthropic model has produced a proof of the Aaronson–Ambainis conjecture, concerning limits on quantum computational speedups. The proof has been checked using Lean, examined by independent mathematicians, and supplemented by alternative arguments. Its implications are substantial but specific ...Read more

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Recent Articles

AI will not make mathematicians obsolete
Sergiu Klainerman
[long_description] Recent breakthroughs have fueled fears that artificial intelligence could make mathematicians obsolete. Sergiu Klainerman examines what AI has actually achieved in mathematics, taking the Navier–Stokes problem as a revealing case. However powerful its ability to search for solutions, he argues, AI still depends on human mathematicians to identify the questions that matter—and to determine what a meaningful answer should look like.
Imagine an Organism
David Lobina
[long_description] David J. Lobina takes up Blaise Agüera y Arcas’s What is Intelligence?, which argues that advances in AI have resolved longstanding questions about intelligence, language, and cognition. Drawing on research into infant development, linguistics, and cognitive science, Lobina challenges the book’s identification of intelligence with prediction and its parallels between neural networks and the human brain, arguing instead that modern AI and human cognition operate in fundamentally different ways.
The Film That Launched a Thousand Tweets
David Boos
[long_description] Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey has ignited fierce debate over casting, historical fidelity, and the politics of adaptation. David Boos argues that the film’s real betrayal lies somewhere far deeper.
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Letters to the Editors

A Place Worth Occupying
Bruce Gordon
[short_description] Bruce Gordon reflects on the growing role of AI in mathematics, questioning whether its ability to solve complex problems risks undermining the intellectual rewards of mathematical discovery, and calling for greater clarity about AI authorship.
Mechanical Thinking
Sylvia Berryman
reply by Mike Edmunds
[short_description] Could a single implement, such as the Antikythera mechanism, change the understanding of the cosmos? Sylvia Berryman is wary of viewing mechanistic pictures as unique keys to historical worldviews.
Archaeology and Armageddon
Erin Hall
[short_description] In the interwar period, a team from the University of Chicago oversaw an archaeological dig in Megiddo, modern day Israel. The dig’s findings, and shortcomings, proved foundational for archaeology.
A Riddling Mirror of Nature
Paul Keyser
reply by Mike Edmunds
[short_description] When studying the origins and nature of the Antikythera mechanism, Paul Keyser cautions scholars to be mindful not to “retroject things seen or deduced from one era back into times well prior.”
Translating Theory into Technology
Paul Cartledge
reply by Mike Edmunds
[short_description] Paul Cartledge describes how the discovery of the Antikythera mechanism has challenged long-held views about the ability of Greek scholars in antiquity to translate theory into technology.
The First Computer
Kyriakos Efstathiou
reply by Mike Edmunds
[short_description] Was the Antikythera mechanism the first computer in world history? Kyriakos Efstathiou makes the case for the predictive powers of the device, which have now been tested in detail.
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From the Archives
State of the Union
Michael Fumento
[long_description] Is fusion really the energy of the future? Michael Fumento explores some of the many false starts in the development of controlled nuclear fusion and considers its current prospects, including inertial and magnetic confinement, inertial electrostatic confinement, and compact reactors.
The Fourth State of Water
Marc Henry
[short_description] What is water that is not ice, liquid, or vapor? Marc Henry explains the unfolding discovery of water’s elusive fourth state, which could bring a revolution for biology and medicine.
From Conception to Kamchatka
Joshua Socolar
[short_description] In The Second Kind of Impossible, Paul Steinhardt tells the story of his first encounters with quasicrystals and his subsequent decades-long search for a naturally formed example.
Divine Medicine
George Scialabba
[short_description] In reviewing A Natural History of Beer by Rob DeSalle & Ian Tattersall, George Scialabba summarizes beer’s story, including its major historical moments, the science of its components, and its future.
The Concept of Self
Neeraja Sankaran
[short_description] In 1960, Macfarlane Burnet became Australia’s second winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine. Neeraja Sankaran examines his wide body of work and enduring significance, both at home and abroad.
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