Over the course of nearly 300 posts, Jonathan Bennett set a very high bar for this column, so we knew it needed to be placed in the hands of somebody who could do it justice.

Every time you pay online, your data is protected by a maths problem nobody has proved is unbreakable. Here is what that means, and why the world is already preparing for the worst.

National Geographic archaeologist George E. Stuart reported in 1975 on the scientists who sought to decode the ancient language—and the looters who stood in their way.