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 ...

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 ...

A new suggestion that complexity increases over time, not just in living organisms but in the nonliving world, promises to rewrite notions of time and evolution. In 1950 the Italian physicist Enrico ...

Visitors to ARTECHOUSE take in an audio-visual installation by the fractal artist Julius Horsthuis. In "Notes on Complexity," Neil Theise proposes that the study of complexity reveals "that however ...