The Math Mystery That Connects Sudoku, Flight Schedules and Protein Folding
Sudoku fan? After diving into the math behind the game, test your skills with our very own puzzles in SciAm Games ! Computer science seemingly rides a curve of unstoppable progress. Mere decades took us from vacuum tubes to microchips, dial-up to high-speed Internet and Office Assistant Clippy to ChatGPT. Yet thousands of everyday problems
Punctured Shells Illuminate Unique Predator-Prey Interactions in Cambrian Oceans
The rapid increase in diversity and abundance of biomineralizing organisms during the Early Cambrian epoch (around 535 million years ago) is often attributed to predation and an evolutionary arms race. A Cambrian arms race is typically discussed on a macroevolutionary scale, particularly in the context of escalation. Despite abundant fossils demonstrating early Cambrian predation, empirical
Paleontologists Unearth What May Be Largest Known Mesosaurs
Paleontologists in Uruguay have discovered large, poorly preserved and incomplete skulls, as well as several associated bones, of ancient aquatic reptiles called mesosaurs. These new specimens suggest the existence of gigantism in mature mesosaurs reaching more than twice the size of previously described adults and type specimens. Mesosaurs are small to mid-sized aquatic to semiaquatic
Heliophysics Is Set to Shine in 2025
January 3, 2025 3 min read The science of the sun and its effects on the solar system is a sprawling discipline that expects a very exciting 2025 By Meghan Bartels edited by Lee Billings The sun sends out a constant flow of charged particles called the solar wind, which ultimately travels past all the
Jumping ‘Numts’ from Mitochondria Can Be Fast and Deadly
January 3, 2025 4 min read Bits of DNA from mitochondria can skip surprisingly fast into our genome and may reduce lifespan By Martin Picard edited by Madhusree Mukerjee Little loops floating inside this illustration of a mitochondrion represent its DNA. Kateryna Kon/Science Photo Library/Getty Images Most of us remember two things from high school
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