Last year, onlookers observed a startling site on China’s Qiantang River: waves forming a grid-like pattern. Dubbed the “matrix tide,” this complex wave pattern was caused by the river’s famed tidal ...

Ananyo Bhattacharya is chief science writer at the London Institute for Mathematical Sciences and the author of The Man from the Future: The Visionary Ideas of John von Neumann. One of the biggest ...