Seventy years after the invention of a data structure called a hash table, theoreticians have found the most efficient possible configuration for it. About 70 years ago, an engineer at IBM named Hans ...

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.

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 ...

Imagine a swarm of fireflies, flickering lights on and off in the nighttime space. How does the human brain process and integrate information about duration and spatial position enabling this vision?

An illustration of NASA's Cassini spacecraft flying through a plume above the surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech As maintaining leadership in space is a primary goal, ...

From the beginning of the universe to the present day, time is one of the few things we regard as regular and unchanging. Time works by measuring periods between the past, present and future. But that ...

Building such facilities off Earth could have a lot of benefits. Early projects are underway. Last week, the Florida-based company Lonestar Data Holdings launched a shoebox-size device carrying data ...