Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős’ conjectures have long fascinated mathematicians — and now, AI companies. OpenAI and Google DeepMind are solving Erdős problems with remarkable speed. But what does this mean for the field of mathematics? www.quantamagazine.org/why-the-lege...

Why are only 10% of people left-handed? Natalie Wolchover stops by The Quanta Podcast this week to talk through the astronomical amount of research done to understand the fundamental mystery of southpaws. Listen now: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/w...

Why Am I Left-Handed?

Podcast Episode · The Quanta Podcast · August 4 · 26m

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Why do some people wake up feeling well rested, while others feel perpetually groggy? The answer may lie in arousal systems deep in the center of the brain. https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-the-brain-moves-from-waking-life-to-sleep-and-back-again-20251017/

How the Brain Moves From Waking Life to Sleep (and Back Again) | Quanta Magazine

Neuroscientists probing the boundary between sleep and awareness are finding many types of liminal states, which help explain the sleep disorders that can result when sleep transitions go wrong.

quantamagazine.org

Are we at the point where our technology is actually “reasoning,” or should that word still live within its quotation marks? https://www.quantamagazine.org/is-ai-reasoning-right-for-the-wrong-reasons-20260731/

Is AI Reasoning Right for the Wrong Reasons? | Quanta Magazine

The idea that artificial intelligence can “reason” is more intuitive than ever. But intuitions can be wrong, and the science is far from settled.

quantamagazine.org

A new clue from a particle collider in Siberia has sparked a flurry of activity as physicists race to determine whether its data may suggest the presence of a new particle. https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-solve-a-muon-mystery-now-old-results-dont-add-up-20260729/

Physicists Solve a Muon Mystery. Now, Old Results Don’t Add Up. | Quanta Magazine

New calculations seem to have put a 25-year-old particle physics puzzle to rest. But they’ve also created a clash with other experimental results.

quantamagazine.org

On Saturday, OpenAI announced solutions to three Erdős problems. These solutions, along with May’s high-profile counterexample to the “unit distance” problem, are quickly changing how mathematicians approach their work. @kkakaes.bsky.social reports: www.quantamagazine.org/why-the-lege...

Why the Legendary Erdős Problems Are Falling to AI | Quanta Magazine

AI’s greatest mathematical successes have come from answers to problems posed by a mid-20th century iconoclast. By examining what makes the Erdős problems unique, mathematicians are trying to understa...

quantamagazine.org

Can AIs actually reason, or does that involve some wishful thinking? https://www.quantamagazine.org/is-ai-reasoning-right-for-the-wrong-reasons-20260731/

What are AI systems actually doing when we say they’re busy “reasoning”? In this week’s Qualia column, John Pavlus reckons with the intellectual whiplash of the last few years. https://www.quantamagazine.org/is-ai-reasoning-right-for-the-wrong-reasons-20260731/

From this week’s Qualia column: “I’ll just say it: What the hell is going on with AI ‘reasoning’?” www.quantamagazine.org/is-ai-reason...

Is AI Reasoning Right for the Wrong Reasons? | Quanta Magazine

The idea that artificial intelligence can “reason” is more intuitive than ever. But intuitions can be wrong, and the science is far from settled.

quantamagazine.org

More than 2 billion years ago, there may have been a time when dark energy grew stronger, in defiance of the law of energy conservation. Tune into The Quanta Podcast for the full story: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-dark-dimension-could-link-two-of-the/id1021340531?i=1000778686446

When Fields Medalist Yu Deng and collaborators Zaher Hani and Xiao Ma solved David Hilbert’s 124-year-old “sixth problem,” it took months for the rest of the mathematical community to even start to digest it

Yu Deng Wins the Fields Medal 2026 for His Work on the Random Data Problem | Quanta Magazine

Before he won a Fields Medal for his pioneering work balancing randomness and order, Yu Deng first had to achieve equilibrium in his own life.

quantamagazine.org

Fields Medalist Hong Wang has faced doubt throughout her career. It is a feeling that drew her to mathematics: the least doubtful thing.

Hong Wang Wins 2026 Fields Medal, the Third Woman Ever | Quanta Magazine

Focus, commitment, and insight resulted in a “once in a century” proof. Hong Wang is now just the third woman to win a Fields Medal.

quantamagazine.org

Even when IMU Abacus Medal winner Shayan Oveis Gharan isn’t working, his competitive spirit still comes through. “My kids believe that he’s the best cook in the world,” his sister said. “I’m like, ‘Dude, relax, you don't have to be the best in everything.’”

Shayan Oveis Gharan Wins 2026 IMU Abacus Medal | Quanta Magazine

Shayan Oveis Gharan has won the Abacus Medal for using tools from across mathematics to boost the power of algorithms.

quantamagazine.org

A few years ago, physicists at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois used a giant magnetic ring to measure precisely how much the muon wobbles. Now they’re puzzling over the way that this measurement clashes with older experiments. www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-s...

Physicists Solve a Muon Mystery. Now, Old Results Don’t Add Up. | Quanta Magazine

New calculations seem to have put a 25-year-old particle physics puzzle to rest. But they’ve also created a clash with other experimental results.

quantamagazine.org

Fields Medalist Yu Deng has always been focused. As an undergraduate, he once went line-by-line through a highly technical PDE paper, all 75 pages. It took him a week, eight hours per day. “I just checked every single detail,” he said. www.quantamagazine.org/yu-deng-wins...

Written by Li Shangyin in the ninth century, “The Brocade Zither” is a poem famous for its ambiguity, where a simple phrase might have scores of diverging interpretations. It’s also one of Fields Medalist Yu Deng’s favorites. www.quantamagazine.org/yu-deng-wins...

John Pardon’s work is not centered around a particular mathematical area or theme. He simply solves problems that are, to him, interesting. His efforts have won him a 2026 Fields Medal.

John Pardon Wins the 2026 Fields Medal for Work in Symplectic Geometry | Quanta Magazine

John Pardon sees connections between different areas of math that others don’t. For that vision, he’s now been awarded a Fields Medal.

quantamagazine.org

After every milestone in Jacob Tsimerman’s award-winning math career, he asks himself: Is math really how I want to spend my life? Every time, the answer has been yes. But this time, now with a Fields Medal around his neck, the answer may be different.

Jacob Tsimerman Wins 2026 Fields Medal for André-Oort Conjecture Proof | Quanta Magazine

Determination and effort propelled Jacob Tsimerman to the top of the math world. But now that he’s won a Fields Medal, he worries that the field is in jeopardy.

quantamagazine.org

Generally, dark energy and dark matter are regarded as separate entities. But what if the two are in fact intertwined? Hear more on this week’s episode of The Quanta Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-dark-dimension-could-link-two-of-the/id1021340531?i=1000778686446

A Dark Dimension Could Link Two of the Universe’s Great Unknowns

Podcast Episode · The Quanta Podcast · July 28 · 30m

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Shayan Oveis Gharan has trouble staying still — so it’s fitting that he’s known for his work on the traveling salesperson problem, a notoriously difficult computational problem about roaming from place to place. And now he’s won the IMU Abacus Medal.

Shayan Oveis Gharan Wins 2026 IMU Abacus Medal | Quanta Magazine

Shayan Oveis Gharan has won the Abacus Medal for using tools from across mathematics to boost the power of algorithms.

quantamagazine.org

You are getting very sleepy… and your brain is entering a hypnagogic state. It’s that window of time when you’re lying in bed seeing mental images — but you’re not quite asleep. https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-the-brain-moves-from-waking-life-to-sleep-and-back-again-20251017/

How the Brain Moves From Waking Life to Sleep (and Back Again) | Quanta Magazine

Neuroscientists probing the boundary between sleep and awareness are finding many types of liminal states, which help explain the sleep disorders that can result when sleep transitions go wrong.

quantamagazine.org

In Yu Deng’s first year at MIT, he attended a talk from visiting mathematician Andrea Nahmod, who was presenting research on the so-called random data problem. This talk would set the course of Deng’s entire career, culminating in his Fields Medal win. www.quantamagazine.org/yu-deng-wins...

Jacob Tsimerman has won the Fields Medal. The win comes at a weird time: “I think AI will be better than mathematicians at doing math within two years,” he said. www.quantamagazine.org/jacob-tsimer...

By the time Hong Wang’s proof of the three-dimensional Kakeya set conjecture was published, she was ready for other, even harder-to-prove conjectures. www.quantamagazine.org/hong-wang-wi...

Cows can eat up to 100lbs daily, thanks to the bustling microbiome in their gut pouch. All that digestion results in a whole lot of cow burps. And all those cow burps are warming our planet. Scientists are exploring new ways to squelch the belch. www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-way-th...

A New Way That a Cow’s Inner World Shapes Earth’s Atmosphere | Quanta Magazine

An organelle discovered inside a microbe inside a cow’s gut helps explain how livestock burps contribute to warming our planet.

quantamagazine.org

Some of the world’s top mathematicians have a lot to say about new Fields Medalist John Pardon’s once-in-a-generation talent:

John Pardon Wins the 2026 Fields Medal for Work in Symplectic Geometry | Quanta Magazine

John Pardon sees connections between different areas of math that others don’t. For that vision, he’s now been awarded a Fields Medal.

quantamagazine.org

For Shayan Oveis Gharan, research has always been a struggle: “It has a lot of ups and downs, mostly downs. You always think, ‘Can I ever come up with something that doesn’t fail?’” He’s now a IMU Abacus Medal winner. www.quantamagazine.org/shayan-oveis...

Fields Medalist Hong Wang hopes to make space in her life beyond math: “I always wish that I could come back to that time when I just feel like I had infinite time to read. I think that time was really nice.” www.quantamagazine.org/hong-wang-wi...

In 2017, the bacterium 𝘊𝘰𝘭𝘸𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘢 𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘢𝘦 was found growing on a decaying crustacean in the Mariana Trench. This piezophile (pressure lover) grows best at 120 megapascals of pressure — or nearly 1,200 atmospheres. www.quantamagazine.org/the-organism...

Don’t miss our live recording of The Joy of Why podcast today at #ICM2026 in Philadelphia! Hosts @stevenstrogatz.com and @jannalevinastro.bsky.social discuss mathematical beauty, truth, and proof in the age of AI. RSVP: www.eventbrite.com/e/the-joy-of...