The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Imagine a town with two widget merchants. Customers prefer cheaper widgets, so the merchants must compete to set the lowest price.

All of modern mathematics is built on the foundation of set theory, the study of how to organize abstract collections of objects. But in general, research mathematicians don’t need to think about it ...

Eric's career includes extensive work in both public and corporate accounting with responsibilities such as preparing and reviewing federal, state, and local tax filings; supporting multinational ...

The Dark Forest theory is one proposed solution to the famed Fermi Paradox, which has bewitched astronomers for more than half a century. To put it concisely, the paradox asks if the cosmos is nearly ...

The dichotomy between reality and appearance, and the devaluation of appearance, is rooted in pre-Socratic philosophy. Just as Plato leant upon Heraclitus’ flux for his conception of the sensible ...

Machine learning is the ability of a machine to improve its performance based on previous results. Machine learning methods enable computers to learn without being explicitly programmed and have ...