On September 14th, 2015, a ripple in the fabric of space, created by the violent collision of two distant black holes over a billion years ago, washed across the Earth. As it did, two laser-based detectors momentarily twitched, confirming a century-old prediction by Albert Einstein and marking the opening of a new era in astronomy.

Immanuel Kant, who coined the term genius in the 1700s, defined it as the rare capacity to independently understand concepts that would normally have to be taught by another person. Since then, the spectrum of abilities that we call genius has widened, but pivotal questions remain: What exactly is genius?

In his research, U.K. Astronomer Royal Martin Rees has tackled topics as varied as the Big Bang, quasars, and more far-out ideas like the search for dark matter and the …

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.

Join Turing Prize winner Yann LeCun and other pioneers in artificial intelligence for a no-nonsense discussion of whether a truly intelligent machine can be created—and, if so, how and when. …

Ninety years after the historic double-slit experiment, the quantum revolution shows no sign of slowing. Join a vibrant conversation with renowned leaders in theoretical physics, quantum computation, and philosophical foundations, …