Probability is the backbone of science, but how well do you understand it? Odds are, not as well as you think; it is a surprisingly subtle concept that is often misunderstood, sometimes even by professionals who use it to guide crucial and far-reaching decisions.

Every successful scientist seems to have a “once in a blue moon” discovery during his or her lifework: an accident or epiphany that unexpectedly leads to a serendipitous breakthrough. Geneticist …

This statement is false. Think about it, and it makes your head hurt. If it’s true, it’s false. If it’s false, it’s true. In 1931, Austrian logician Kurt Gödel shocked the worlds of mathematics and philosophy by establishing that such statements are far more than a quirky turn of language: he showed that there are mathematical truths which simply can’t be proven.

Ever wondered how many neurons are in the human brain? Meet Suzana Herculano-Houzel, a professor at Vanderbilt University whose pioneering “brain soup” technique made it possible to accurately count the …

A universe that continually expands has long been the dominant cosmological framework. But a universe that undergoes cycles of expansion and contraction, perhaps for all time, has recently been analyzed …

With ever more refined techniques for measuring complex brain activity, scientists are challenging the understanding of thought, memory and emotion–what we have traditionally called “the self.”