What is the largest natural number possible? By using the word natural, I have ruled out the possibility that you simply answer infinity (∞) to torpedo the guessing game. But even if we allowed ...

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 ...

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 ...