Mathematics and computation Archives – Page 2 of 94

Mathematics and computation

Home » Mathematics and computation » Page 2

Latest articles

Low-level clouds could make wind farms more efficient

An image showing a many-turbined offshore wind farm under a thick haze of low cloud. Streaks of blue-green show how the wind farm takes energy out of the wind, leaving a considerable downwind wake of slower air.

Hofstadter’s butterfly turns 50: a fractal hiding in quantum matter

Indu Satija celebrates the golden anniversary of Hofstadter’s butterfly

Hofstadter’s butterfly diagram in red and black

Demon in the AI machine: bias, bad data and the burden of proof

Andrew Glester reviews the film Mercy, directed by Timur Bekmambetov

Research headlines

DNA computer settles in thermodynamic equilibrium

Earthquake fault irregularities control rupture speed and influence ground motion

A map of south-east Asia centred on Myanmar. It's a heat map and there's a long red slash running from north of Mandalay to south of Nay Pyi Taw, representing the location of the most intense shaking

Seismic waves reflected from Earth’s core moved parts of Japan 5 mm east

A map of Japan. Three stars off its eastern coast show the locations of the epicentres.

AI model helps physics Nobel laureate out of a decade-old mathematical jam

Artificial intelligence is radically changing how researchers in some disciplines work

Physicists find unexpected connection between black hole mergers and thermodynamics

Properties of a merger remnant can be predicted using a simple entropy-maximization principle

AI sniffs out tuberculosis in breath’s chemical signature

Machine learning decodes the complex chemical signatures in human breath to deliver rapid, non-invasive tuberculosis diagnoses

Privacy risks from medical AI are greater than previously thought

Study reveals how sensitive health information about individual patients could be extracted from diagnostic medical AI models

Solar tower power plants get a data boost

Accessible new database could accelerate research on solar thermal power generation and allow wider deployment

AI-enhanced rare-event sampling helps predict extreme weather

Combining artificial intelligence with physical climate modelling enables more accurate characterization of rare weather events

Peer Review Excellence

Can you make an impact through peer review?
Join more than 15,000 researchers who have achieved IOP Trusted Reviewer status – Tell me more

Opinion and reviews

Knowing through uncertainty: probability and the evolution of our cosmos

In the age of AI, we must double down on the skills that make us experts

How AI is transforming human robots

Humanoid robots cross finish line in Beijing E-Town Half Marathon and Humanoid Robot Half Marathon, China, on 19 April 2026

Explore more in mathematics and computation

Finding careers in STEM and the weirdness of AI

Career consultant Alaina G Levine and AI researcher Janelle Shane are our podcast guests

Photos of Alaina G Levine and Janelle Shane

AI dominates the 4th International Congress of Basic Science in Beijing

Subir Sarkar finds that AI was a hot topic among the over 800 delegates

Word wave puzzle no.8

Can you work out the word in this puzzle, which relates to a recent Physics World article?

The physics of novel computation: beyond bits and chips to spikes and spins

Sidney Perkowitz looks into alternative computing methods inspired by physics to improve computational efficiency and power

Word wave puzzle no.6

Can you work out the word in this puzzle?

Large physics models boost the performance of passenger cars

Aerodynamics expert David Wheater is our podcast guest

Visualization of car aerodynamics using the PhysicsX platform interface

AI’s black box problem: discovering physics we don’t understand

Claire Malone wonders what happens if AI produces answers we can’t – or don’t – understand

Cartoon illustration of a man trying to understand an AI robot's output

‘Back to the future’ messages are more efficient

Closed time-like curves allow greater information capacity when sending messages backwards in time

A photo of a Playmobil model of the Delorean used as a time machine in the film Back to the Future. The car has a California licence plate reading "OUTATIME" and looks like it's on a real road.

Physics-based models still beat AI for predicting extreme weather events

Artificial intelligence struggles to forecast events with no precedent in training data

A colour plot (red for hot, blue for cold) of temperature anomalies during the 2020 Siberian heat wave, superimposed over a map of west and central Asia. There's a gigantic deep-red blob over Siberia.

Physicists create mechanical memory device from slap-bracelet-like structures

Placing the structures on a variably spinning turntable creates a scalable way of addressing single bits of memory

A still from a video showing six flexible strips of material on a wheel. When the wheel spins, the strips of material snap into left-bent or right-bent configurations depending on the dynamics of the spin.

AI-led solutions of Erdős problems spark debate over the future of mathematics

Problems that defeated human mathematicians for decades are now solved, but for whose benefit?

Thermodynamic computing: noise as a resource, not an enemy

Theoretical physicist Stephen Whitelam is our podcast guest

AI could help human scientists pick promising research topics

Large language models flag up novel combinations of concepts in materials science

An AI-generated knowledge network of technical terms. It looks like a mostly green inkblot splatter, with purple edges (representing less well-connected terms) and yellow and red splodges (representing better-connected terms) in the interior. Some labels are visible. For example, "mechanical property" and "particle size" are in the well-connected interior, while terms such as "peierls stress" and "dynamic recrystallization" are out on the edges.

Meta-design: language models generate novel quantum experiments

Researchers stretch the limits of how far artificial intelligence can contribute to scientific discovery

Careers
Feature
SPONSORED

Related jobs

Related events

Particle and nuclear | Forum NuFor: Nuclear Forensics 2026 13—15 October 2026 | Liverpool, UK
Materials | Conference 2026 International Semiconductor Conference (CAS) 14—17 October 2026 | Sinaia, Romania
Mathematics and computation | Workshop 45th International Workshop on Bayesian Inference and Maximum Entropy Methods in Science and Engineering 20—24 September 2027 | Görlitz, Germany

Reset your password

Registration complete