What just happened? A group of mathematicians created a "new" polygon previously known to exist only in theory. It's a 13-sided shape that they dubbed "the hat," even though it only vaguely resembles ...

Infinitely many copies of a 13-sided shape can be arranged with no overlaps or gaps in a pattern that never repeats. David Smith, Joseph Samuel Myers, Craig S. Kaplan and Chaim Goodman-Strauss (CC BY ...

The Architects’ Alphabet is a 26-part series describing design elements featured in Gregory J. Scott’s upcoming book “Urban Legend, The Life & Legacy of C. Emlen Urban,” Lancaster’s most renowned ...

It’s been just months since researchers reported the first “einstein” — a single tile that can cover an infinite plane, but only with a pattern that never repeats (SN: 3/24/23). Now, the same team has ...

Creatively tiling a bathroom floor isn’t just a stressful task for DIY home renovators. It is also one of the hardest problems in mathematics. For centuries, experts have been studying the special ...

Scientists mapping the human body at the cellular level keep running into the same surprise: beneath the apparent chaos of tissues and organs, there is a hidden order that looks a lot like pure ...