Information theory

To recognize strange extraterrestrial life and solve biological mysteries on this planet, scientists are searching for an objective definition for life’s basic units.

Quantum computers can’t selectively forget information. A new algorithm for multiplication shows a way around that problem.

During development, cells seem to decode their fate through optimal information processing, which could hint at a more general principle of life.

In a Paris lab, researchers have shown for the first time that quantum methods of transmitting information are superior to classical ones.

Some researchers are using a complexity framework thought to be purely theoretical to understand evolutionary dynamics in biological and computational systems.

The evolutionary biologist Jessica Flack seeks the computational rules that groups of organisms use to solve problems.

New math shows how, contrary to conventional scientific wisdom, conscious beings and other macroscopic entities might have greater influence over the future than do the sum of their microscopic components.

As physicists extend the 19th-century laws of thermodynamics to the quantum realm, they’re rewriting the relationships among energy, entropy and information.

To avoid garbled messages, mathematicians might translate them into geometric form.