A new technique breaks Dijkstra's 70-year-old record: it finds routes faster in huge networks, changing graph theory forever.

When Edsger W. Dijkstra published his algorithm in 1959, computer networks were barely a thing. The algorithm in question found the shortest path between any two nodes on a graph, with a variant ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. If you want to solve a tricky problem, it often helps to get organized. You might, for example, break the problem into pieces and tackle ...

In algorithms, as in life, negativity can be a drag. Consider the problem of finding the shortest path between two points on a graph — a network of nodes connected by links, or edges. Often, these ...

In 1519, Ferdinand Magellan set sail on a greuling and dangerous quest: the first-ever voyage around the world. But since that first daring adventure, advances in sailing technology and navigation ...

Imagine you are sailing on the ocean but your boat is incapable of turning. What would be the longest straight path you could take without hitting land? This question was the focus of a post that ...

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. How far do you think you'd be able to travel across Earth's oceans before running into land, if ...