The following is an extract from our Lost in Space-Time newsletter. Each month, we hand over the keyboard to a physicist or two to tell you about fascinating ideas from their corner of the universe.

Computers are extremely good with numbers, but they haven’t gotten many human mathematicians fired. Until recently, they could barely hold their own in high school-level math competitions. But now ...

At a secret meeting in 2025, some of the world's leading mathematicians gathered to test OpenAI's newest large language model, o4-mini. Experts at the meeting were amazed by how much the model's ...

Since the start of the 20th century, the heart of mathematics has been the proof — a rigorous, logical argument for whether a given statement is true or false. Mathematicians’ careers are measured by ...

Number theorist Andrew Granville on what mathematics really is — and why objectivity is never quite within reach. In 2012, the mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki claimed he had solved the abc conjecture ...

All equals are not created equal—mathematicians sometimes play fast and loose. In programming, equal signs mean different things, and variables have different types. Turning intuitive math expertise ...

Mathematician Will Sawin discusses his experience reviewing and refining a mathematical proof devised by OpenAI's internal model—and what that could mean for mathematics. Reading time 10 minutes Will ...

Artificial intelligence has formally verified the prizewinning proof that solved the sphere packing problem in eight dimensions, a result closely tied to Maryna Viazovska’s Fields Medal. The ...