Years ago, no math education was complete without understanding how to compute a square root. Today, you are probably just reaching for a calculator, or if you are writing a program, you’ll probably ...

Researchers have rediscovered a long-lost Babylonian hymn from 1000 BCE, using artificial intelligence to piece together fragments scattered across the world. The hymn glorifies ancient Babylon’s ...

Understanding plant root systems is vital to improving crop productivity and climate adaptation, yet their complex underground structures remain difficult to characterize. Conventional imaging methods ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. If you want to solve a tricky problem, it often helps to get organized. You might, for example, break the problem into pieces and tackle ...

The sun hangs heavy over central Iraq in late afternoon, painting the ruins of Babylon in heat and light. Dust rises from the ground in soft clouds, carrying a faint scent that seems older than time ...

You’re at the checkout screen after an online shopping spree, ready to enter your credit card number. You type it in and instantly see a red error message ...

Ever wondered how social media platforms decide how to fill our feeds? They use algorithms, of course, but how do these algorithms work? A series of corporate leaks over the past few years provides a ...

If you want to solve a tricky problem, it often helps to get organized. You might, for example, break the problem into pieces and tackle the easiest pieces first. But this kind of sorting has a cost.

At its peak, the Old Babylonian Empire rose to be one of the biggest civilizations the world had seen–but what was daily life like? Along with the pioneering legal code of Hammurabi, a wealth of ...

More than a thousand years after it was last heard, a long-lost hymn to the ancient city of Babylon has been brought back to life, thanks to AI. This remarkable rediscovery gives us new insights into ...

A Babylonian hymn lost for over a thousand years was rediscovered. Experts pieced together the hymn using an AI model to decipher hundreds of cuneiform tablets in a Baghdad library. The library’s ...

For at least 500 years, Babylonian children were tasked with memorizing a hymn that celebrated the city of Babylon, its citizenry, and chief deity Marduk. There was much to praise: the city was ...