The planar unit distance problem is about how many equal-sized lines you can draw that connect dots on an infinite sheet of paper Noga Alon et al. 2026, Open AI An 80-year-old maths conjecture that has eluded the world’s greatest mathematicians has been cracked by an artificial intelligence model built by OpenAI. The result has…
Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. In a world drowning in notifications and devices that want to be everything all at once, calculator giant Texas Instruments (TI) is going back to basics. This week, the company unveiled the TI-84 Evo, its most powerful graphing calculator…
How does Simon Singh’s classic popular science book Fermat’s Last Theorem hold up today? Did you know the number 26 is rather special? It is the only number that sits directly between a square number (25 or 52) and a cube number (27 or 33). And to be clear, it’s not merely that we’ve never…
A vessel heading towards the Strait of Hormuz Shady Alassar/Anadolu via Getty Images “Mission Accomplished.” This phrase has haunted US foreign policy ever since George W. Bush stood on the deck of USS Abraham Lincoln in 2003 and declared victory in a war that would drag on for another eight years. It has become shorthand…
Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. In 1959, countries around the world sent their most talented students to Romania to compete in the first-ever International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO). Ever since, the rules have remained simple, even if the problems are not: over two days, each…
Machines can help spot mathematical errors Alamy Stock Photo A computer language created to spot errors in mathematical theorems has uncovered a fundamental error in a widely cited physics paper for the first time. The researcher behind the discovery says it is the first physics paper he has analysed in this way, which raises a…
Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. To understand why cursive writing seems to be a dying art, you have to go all the way back to…well, only 2007, actually. It was then that the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and the National Governors…
Gerd Faltings has won the 2026 Abel Prize Peter Badge/Typos1 Gerd Faltings has won the 2026 Abel Prize, considered the Nobel prize of mathematics, for a groundbreaking proof which took mathematics by storm in 1983. His contributions helped establish one of the most important fields in modern mathematics, arithmetic geometry. The crowning achievement of Faltings,…
Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Clothing trends come and go, but in some cases, they don’t stay away for too long. For decades, both the fashion industry and its devotees have referenced the so-called “20-year-rule,” which suggests society is liable to see certain styles…
