The most widely used technique for finding the largest or smallest values of a math function turns out to be a fundamentally difficult computational problem. Many aspects of modern applied research ...

One July afternoon in 2024, Ryan Williams set out to prove himself wrong. Two months had passed since he’d hit upon a startling discovery about the relationship between time and memory in computing.

For 20 years, a computational complexity theory researcher has posted updates about his work on his blog, Shtetl-Optimized. Last week, a Sept. 27 blog post he made about his recent findings began ...

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 ...

For the first time, researchers have mathematically proven that a quantum computer needs less computational power to solve a particular task than an ordinary computer, in a way that can never be beate ...

Physicists know about the huge chasm between quantum physics and the theory of gravity. However, in recent decades, theoretical physics has provided some plausible conjecture to bridge this gap and to ...

An international team of researchers has developed a new theoretical framework that bridges physics and biology to provide a unified approach for understanding how complexity and evolution emerge in ...