The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. All of modern mathematics is built on the foundation of set theory, the study of how to organize abstract collections of objects. But in ...

How many atoms are there in the observable universe? Current estimates point to a number we would write as 1 followed by 80 zeroes, or 10 80. If you peered inside each of these atoms and counted their ...

Descriptive set theorists study the niche mathematics of infinity. Now, they’ve shown that their problems can be rewritten in the concrete language of algorithms. All of modern mathematics is built on ...