One July afternoon in 2024, Ryan Williams set out to prove himself wrong. Two months had passed since he’d hit upon a startling discovery about the relationship between time and memory in computing.

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. One July afternoon in 2024, Ryan Williams set out to prove himself wrong. Two months had passed since he’d hit upon a startling ...

Computational complexity and computability are central themes in theoretical computer science that address the fundamental question of what can be computed and at what cost. Computability theory ...

A fringe new theory suggests that time is the fundamental structure of the physical universe, and space is merely a byproduct. According to Gunther Kletetschka, a geologist — not a physicist, you’ll ...

Intuitively, we know what time is, but try to explain it, and we end up tying our minds in knots. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.