Imagine a parallel universe where physicists are remunerated so handsomely that they can accumulate multitudinous assets. In this alternate universe, you naturally wish to share your good fortune, so ...

For decades, the graph isomorphism problem has held a special status within complexity theory. While thousands of other computational problems have meekly succumbed to categorization as either hard or ...

Lance Fortnow on the current status and future outlook of solving the P-NP problem.

In 1994, a mathematician figured out how to make a quantum computer do something that no ordinary classical computer could. The work revealed that, in principle, a machine based on the rules of ...

Quantum computers would be exceptionally fast at a few specific tasks, but it appears that for most problems they would outclass today's computers only modestly. This realization may lead to a new ...

Source: Darren Edwards What if one of the biggest unsolved problems in mathematics is not just about numbers or computers, but about observers like you and me? This isn’t a proposed solution to P vs ...

The "knapsack problem" is a widespread computing challenge—and no, it doesn't have to do just with literal backpacks. golubovy / iStock Imagine you’re a thief robbing a museum exhibit of tantalizing ...

A major advance reveals deep connections between the classes of problems that computers can — and can’t — possibly do. At first glance, the big news coming out of this summer’s conference on the ...