MIT researchers have designed a printable aluminum alloy that's five times stronger than cast aluminum and holds up at extreme temperatures. Machine learning helped them zero in on the ideal recipe in a fraction of the time traditional methods would take. When 3D printed, the alloy forms a tightly packed internal structure that gives it exceptional strength.

If there is, or ever has been, life on Mars, the chances are it would exist in caves protected from the severe dust storms, extreme temperatures, and high radiation present on its surface. One place to focus our attention could be eight possible cave sites (called skylights) recently discovered by Chenyu Ding at Shenzhen University in China, and colleagues.

Using a novel method, beams of laser light can be deflected using air alone. An invisible grating made only of air is not only immune to damage from the laser light, but it also preserves the original quality of the beam, reports an interdisciplinary research team in the journal Nature Photonics.

As weird as it might sound, black holes appear to be holograms.

Numbers like π, e and φ often turn up in unexpected places in science and mathematics. Pascal's triangle and the Fibonacci sequence also seem inexplicably widespread in nature. Then there's the Riemann zeta function, a deceptively straightforward function that has perplexed mathematicians since the 19th century.

The strongest part of a tree lies not in its trunk or its sprawling roots, but in the walls of its microscopic cells.

Quantum entanglement is the binding together of two particles or objects, even though they may be far apart - their respective properties are linked in a way that's not possible under the rules of classical physics. It's a weird phenomenon that Einstein described as " spooky action at a distance", but its weirdness is what makes it so fascinating to scientists.

New research from theoretical physicists at the Perimeter Institute proposes that our universe may have emerged from a black hole in a higher-dimensional universe. The big bang poses a big question: if it was indeed the cataclysm that blasted our universe into existence 13.7 billion years ago, wh