The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. In 1950 the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi was discussing the possibility of intelligent alien life with his colleagues. If alien ...

In Newtonian physics, space and time had their independent identities, and nobody ever got them mixed up. It was with the theory of relativity, put together in the early 20th century, that talking ...

What did you dream of doing when you were 16 years old? I wanted to drive a car and travel the world. But American mathematician Ray Solomonoff had more ambitious goals at that age. He wanted to find ...