Theoretical computer scientists deal with complicated ideas. But whenever possible, they’d prefer to work with simpler ones. A 2009 tool known as the regularity lemma gives them a great way to do this. It effectively lets them break a given computational problem or function into simpler pieces. For computational complexity theorists, who study the relative hardness of different problems...

Source

Physicists have done a remarkable job explaining the chaos of the universe with well-behaved equations, but certain situations remain mysterious. Among these are collections of many tiny particles — they can be atoms, electrons, anything sufficiently small — that interact in surprising and complicated ways. These interactions give rise to exotic quantum phenomena including superconductivity (in...

Source