Quanta Science Podcast

By Quanta Magazine

What's Quanta Science Podcast about?

Susan Valot narrates in-depth news episodes based on Quanta Magazine's articles about mathematics, physics, biology and computer science.

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High-Temperature Supercondu...

02.01.2023

Physicists have all but confirmed the phenomenon behind the strongest known form of superconductivity.

Quanta Science Podcast episodes:

02.01.2023 High-Temperature Superconductivity Understood at Last Physicists have all but confirmed the phenomenon behind the strongest known form of superconductivity.
01.18.2023 Record-Breaking Robot Highlights How Animals Excel at Jumping A robot has, in all likelihood, leapt higher than any animal or machine before it on Earth.
01.04.2023 A Good Memory or a Bad One? One Brain Molecule Decides. The brain may be fearful and pessimistic by default.
12.21.2022 Old Problem About Mathematical Curves Falls to Young Couple A husband and wife math duo solved an algebraic question that went unanswered for more than a century.
12.07.2022 How the Physics of Nothing Underlies Everything The key to understanding the origin and fate of the universe may be a more complete understanding of the vacuum.
11.23.2022 Geometric Analysis Reveals How Birds Mastered Flight Scientists are beginning to grasp the biomechanics that allow birds to maneuver in the air.
11.09.2022 How the 'Diamond of the Plant World' Helped Land Plants Evolve Scientists are beginning to crack secrets from one of the sturdiest organic materials in nature.
10.26.2022 Protein Blobs Linked to Alzheimer's Affect Aging in All Cells A first-of-its-kind study offers a fresh perspective on what happens inside cells as they age.
10.12.2022 The Brain Has a 'Low-Power Mode' That Blunts Our Senses Neuroscientists uncovered an energy-saving mode in vision-system neurons that works at the cost of being able to see fine-grained details. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Unanswered Questions" by Kevin MacLeod.
09.28.2022 Researchers Achieve 'Absurdly Fast' Algorithm for Network Flow Mathematicians recently figured out a near-optimal way to go with the flow.
09.14.2022 Graduate Student's Side Project Proves Prime Number Conjecture A graduate student recently proved Paul Erdős' conjecture about what makes the prime numbers particularly unique among primitive sets.
08.31.2022 Physicists Rewrite the Fundamental Law That Leads to Disorder The second law of thermodynamics is among the most sacred in all of science, but it has always rested on 19th century arguments about probability. New arguments trace its true source to the flows of quantum information.
08.17.2022 Secrets of the Moon's Permanent Shadows Are Coming to Light Robots are about to venture into the sunless depths of lunar craters to investigate ancient water ice trapped there, while remote studies find hints about how water arrives on rocky worlds. Read more and explore infographics at quantamagazine.org.
08.10.2022 What Is Quantum Field Theory and Why Is It Incomplete? Quantum field theory may be the most successful scientific theory of all time, but there's reason to think it's missing something. Steven Strogatz speaks with theoretical physicist David Tong about this enigmatic theory.
08.03.2022 Deep Learning Poised to 'Blow Up' Famed Fluid Equations For centuries, mathematicians have tried to prove that Euler's fluid equations can produce nonsensical answers. A new approach to machine learning has researchers betting that "blowup" is near. Read more at quantamagazine.org. Music is "Pulse" by Geographer.
07.19.2022 Researchers Identify 'Master Problem' Underlying All Cryptography The existence of secure cryptography depends on one of the oldest questions in computational complexity.
07.06.2022 Brain Chemical Helps Signal to Neurons When to Start a Movement Dopamine, a neurochemical often associated with reward behavior, also seems to help organize precisely when the brain initiates movements. It's the latest revelation about the power of neuromodulators.
06.22.2022 This Animal's Behavior Is Mechanically Programmed Biomechanical interactions, rather than neurons, control the movements of one of the simplest animals. The discovery offers a glimpse into how animal behavior worked before neurons evolved.
06.08.2022 Tiny Galaxies Reveal Secrets of Supermassive Black Holes Dwarf galaxies weren't supposed to have big black holes. Their surprise discovery has revealed clues about how the universe's biggest black holes could have formed.
05.25.2022 A Deepening Crisis Forces Physicists to Rethink Structure of Nature's Laws To explain "naturalness," physicists are rethinking some of their core assumptions about the way that nature works.
05.11.2022 New Map of Meaning in the Brain Changes Ideas About Memory Researchers have mapped hundreds of semantic categories to the tiny bits of the cortex that represent them in our thoughts and perceptions. What they discovered might change our view of memory. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org.
04.27.2022 Machine Learning Gets a Quantum Speedup Two teams have shown how quantum approaches can solve problems faster than classical computers, bringing physics and computer science closer together.
04.14.2022 Secrets of Early Animal Evolution Revealed by Chromosome 'Tectonics' Just as plate tectonics makes sense of the geology and positions of continents, "genome tectonics" helps biologists reconstruct the genomic duplications, fusions and translocations that created the chromosomes we see today.
03.31.2022 A Solution to the Faint-Sun Paradox Reveals a Narrow Window for Life When the sun was 30% dimmer, Earth seems like it should have been inhospitably frozen, but new work suggests that dimness may be why life exists here at all.
03.18.2022 Evolution 'Landscapes' Predict What's Next for COVID Virus By mapping in three dimensions how various mutations affect the fitness of the coronavirus, researchers can get insights into how the COVID-19 pandemic might change next.
03.03.2022 Flying Fish and Aquarium Pets Yield Secrets of Evolution New studies reveal the ancient, shared genetic "grammar" underpinning the diverse evolution of fish fins and tetrapod limbs. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Hidden Agenda" by Kevin MacLeod.
02.17.2022 Mathematicians Outwit Hidden Number Conspiracy Decades ago, a mathematician posed a warmup problem for some of the most difficult questions about prime numbers. It turned out to be just as difficult to solve, until now. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Aimless Amos" by Rondo ...
02.03.2022 Mathematician Hurls Structure and Disorder Into Century-Old Problem A new paper shows how to create longer disordered strings than mathematicians had thought possible, proving that a well-known recent conjecture is "spectacularly wrong." Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Transmission" by John Deley and the 41 Players.
01.20.2022 Researchers Defeat Randomness to Create Ideal Code By carefully constructing a multidimensional and well-connected graph, a team of researchers has finally created a long-sought locally testable code that can immediately reveal whether it's been corrupted. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Clover 3" by Vibe Mountain.
01.06.2022 The Brain Processes Speech in Parallel With Other Sounds Scientists thought that the brain's hearing centers might just process speech along with other sounds. But new work suggests that speech gets some special treatment very early on. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Thought Bot" by Audionautix.
12.23.2021 Biologists Rethink the Logic Behind Cells' Molecular Signals The molecular signaling systems of complex cells are nothing like simple electronic circuits. The logic governing their operation is riotously complex - but it has advantages. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Unanswered Questions" by Kevin MacLeod.
12.09.2021 A Massive Subterranean ‘Tree’ Is Moving Magma to Earth’s Surface Deep in the mantle, a branching plume of intensely hot material appears to be the engine powering vast volcanic activity. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Dark Toys" by SYBS.
11.24.2021 One Lab’s Quest to Build Space-Time Out of Quantum Particles For over two decades, physicists have pondered how the fabric of space-time may emerge from some kind of quantum entanglement. In Monika Schleier-Smith's lab at Stanford University, the thought experiment is becoming real. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Clover ...
11.11.2021 The New Thermodynamic Understanding of Clocks Studies of the simplest possible clocks have revealed their fundamental limitations - as well as insights into the nature of time itself. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Aimless Amos" by Rondo Brothers.
10.28.2021 The Brain Doesn’t Think the Way You Think It Does Familiar categories of mental functions such as perception, memory and attention reflect our experience of ourselves, but they are misleading about how the brain works. More revealing approaches are emerging. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Pulse" by Geographer.
10.14.2021 Eternal Change for No Energy: A Time Crystal Finally Made Real Like a perpetual motion machine, a time crystal forever cycles between states without consuming energy. Physicists claim to have built this new phase of matter inside a quantum computer. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Cast of Pods" by Doug ...
09.30.2021 How Many Numbers Exist? Infinity Proof Moves Math Closer to an Answer. For 50 years, mathematicians have believed that the total number of real numbers is unknowable. A new proof suggests otherwise. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Good Times" by Patrick Patrikios.
09.16.2021 DNA Has Four Bases. Some Viruses Swap in a Fifth. The DNA of some viruses doesn't use the same four nucleotide bases found in all other life. New work shows how this exception is possible and hints that it could be more common than we think. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. ...
09.02.2021 The Mystery at the Heart of Physics That Only Math Can Solve The accelerating effort to understand the mathematics of quantum field theory will have profound consequences for both math and physics. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Pulse" by Geographer.
08.19.2021 Radioactivity May Fuel Life Deep Underground and Inside Other Worlds New work suggests that the radiolytic splitting of water supports giant subsurface ecosystems of life on Earth - and could do it elsewhere, too. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Fire Water" by Saidbysed.
08.05.2021 DNA of Giant ‘Corpse Flower’ Parasite Surprises Biologists The bizarre genome of the world's most mysterious flowering plants shows how far parasites will go in stealing, deleting and duplicating DNA. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Who's Using Who" by the Mini Vandals.
07.22.2021 Scientists Pin Down When Earth’s Crust Cracked, Then Came to Life New data indicating that Earth's surface broke up about 3.2 billion years ago helps clarify how plate tectonics drove the evolution of complex life. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Pulse" by Geographer.
07.08.2021 A New Twist Reveals Superconductivity’s Secrets An unexpected superconductor was beginning to look like a fluke, but a new theory and a second discovery have revealed that emergent quasiparticles may be behind the effect. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Racing the Clock" by The Green ...
06.24.2021 Statistics Postdoc Tames Decades-Old Geometry Problem To the surprise of experts in the field, a postdoctoral statistician has solved one of the most important problems in high-dimensional convex geometry. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Transmission" by John Deley and the 41 Players.
06.10.2021 Mathematicians Set Numbers in Motion to Unlock Their Secrets A new proof demonstrates the power of arithmetic dynamics, an emerging discipline that combines insights from number theory and dynamical systems. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Pulse" by Geographer.
05.27.2021 Artificial Neural Nets Finally Yield Clues to How Brains Learn The learning algorithm that enables the runaway success of deep neural networks doesn't work in biological brains, but researchers are finding alternatives that could. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Telepathic Drive" by Unicorn Heads.
05.13.2021 Brain’s ‘Background Noise’ May Hold Clues to Persistent Mysteries By digging out signals hidden within the brain's electrical chatter, scientists are getting new insights into sleep, aging and more. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Thought Bot" by Audionautix.
04.29.2021 Rumbles on Mars Raise Hopes of Underground Magma Flows Small and cold, Mars has long been considered a dead planet. But a series of recent discoveries has forced scientists to rethink how recently its insides stopped churning - if they ever stopped at all. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music ...
04.15.2021 Mathematicians Resurrect Hilbert’s 13th Problem Long considered solved, David Hilbert's question about seventh-degree polynomials is leading researchers to a new web of mathematical connections. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Confusing Disco" by Birocratic.
04.06.2021 Iceland’s Eruptions Reveal the Hot History of Mars Small and cold, Mars has long been considered a dead planet. But a series of recent discoveries has forced scientists to rethink how recently its insides stopped churning — if they ever stopped at all. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music ...

Older episodes

Quanta Science Podcast

What's Quanta Science Podcast about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Quanta Science Podcast episodes:

High-Temperature Superconductivity Understood at Last

Record-Breaking Robot Highlights How Animals Excel at Jumping

A Good Memory or a Bad One? One Brain Molecule Decides.

Old Problem About Mathematical Curves Falls to Young Couple

How the Physics of Nothing Underlies Everything

Geometric Analysis Reveals How Birds Mastered Flight

How the 'Diamond of the Plant World' Helped Land Plants Evolve

Protein Blobs Linked to Alzheimer's Affect Aging in All Cells

The Brain Has a 'Low-Power Mode' That Blunts Our Senses

Researchers Achieve 'Absurdly Fast' Algorithm for Network Flow

Graduate Student's Side Project Proves Prime Number Conjecture

Physicists Rewrite the Fundamental Law That Leads to Disorder

Secrets of the Moon's Permanent Shadows Are Coming to Light

What Is Quantum Field Theory and Why Is It Incomplete?

Deep Learning Poised to 'Blow Up' Famed Fluid Equations

Researchers Identify 'Master Problem' Underlying All Cryptography

Brain Chemical Helps Signal to Neurons When to Start a Movement

This Animal's Behavior Is Mechanically Programmed

Tiny Galaxies Reveal Secrets of Supermassive Black Holes

A Deepening Crisis Forces Physicists to Rethink Structure of Nature's Laws

New Map of Meaning in the Brain Changes Ideas About Memory

Machine Learning Gets a Quantum Speedup

Secrets of Early Animal Evolution Revealed by Chromosome 'Tectonics'

A Solution to the Faint-Sun Paradox Reveals a Narrow Window for Life

Evolution 'Landscapes' Predict What's Next for COVID Virus

Flying Fish and Aquarium Pets Yield Secrets of Evolution

Mathematicians Outwit Hidden Number Conspiracy

Mathematician Hurls Structure and Disorder Into Century-Old Problem

Researchers Defeat Randomness to Create Ideal Code

The Brain Processes Speech in Parallel With Other Sounds

Biologists Rethink the Logic Behind Cells' Molecular Signals

A Massive Subterranean ‘Tree’ Is Moving Magma to Earth’s Surface

One Lab’s Quest to Build Space-Time Out of Quantum Particles

The New Thermodynamic Understanding of Clocks

The Brain Doesn’t Think the Way You Think It Does

Eternal Change for No Energy: A Time Crystal Finally Made Real

How Many Numbers Exist? Infinity Proof Moves Math Closer to an Answer.

DNA Has Four Bases. Some Viruses Swap in a Fifth.

The Mystery at the Heart of Physics That Only Math Can Solve

Radioactivity May Fuel Life Deep Underground and Inside Other Worlds

DNA of Giant ‘Corpse Flower’ Parasite Surprises Biologists

Scientists Pin Down When Earth’s Crust Cracked, Then Came to Life

A New Twist Reveals Superconductivity’s Secrets

Statistics Postdoc Tames Decades-Old Geometry Problem

Mathematicians Set Numbers in Motion to Unlock Their Secrets

Artificial Neural Nets Finally Yield Clues to How Brains Learn

Brain’s ‘Background Noise’ May Hold Clues to Persistent Mysteries

Rumbles on Mars Raise Hopes of Underground Magma Flows

Mathematicians Resurrect Hilbert’s 13th Problem

Iceland’s Eruptions Reveal the Hot History of Mars