Quanta Science Podcast

By Quanta Magazine

Natural Sciences

What's Quanta Science Podcast about?

In-depth news about mathematics, physics, biology and computer science.

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LAST EPISODE

Mathematicians Set Numbers ...

06.10.2021

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.

Quanta Science Podcast episodes:

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 ...
04.01.2021 A Newfound Source of Cellular Order in the Chemistry of Life Inside cells, droplets of biomolecules called condensates merge, divide and dissolve. Their dance may regulate vital processes. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Winner, Winner” by Kevin MacLeod.
03.18.2021 The Mystery of Mistletoe’s Missing Genes Mistletoes have all but shut down the powerhouses of their cells. Scientists are still trying to understand the plants’ unorthodox survival strategy. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Sugar Zone” by Silent Partner.
03.04.2021 The New History of the Milky Way Over the past two years, astronomers have rewritten the story of our galaxy. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Cast of Pods” by Doug Maxwell.
02.18.2021 Scientists Uncover the Universal Geometry of Geology An exercise in pure mathematics has led to a wide-ranging theory of how the world comes together. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Sugar Zone” by Silent Partner.
02.04.2021 The Most Famous Paradox in Physics Nears Its End In a landmark series of calculations, physicists have proved that black holes can shed information, which seems impossible by definition. The work appears to resolve a paradox that Stephen Hawking first described five decades ago. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music ...
01.21.2021 Quantum Tunnels Show How Particles Can Break the Speed of Light Recent experiments show that particles should be able to go faster than light when they quantum mechanically “tunnel” through walls. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Good Times” by Patrick Patrikios.
01.07.2021 Computer Scientists Break Traveling Salesperson Record After 44 years, there’s finally a better way to find approximate solutions to the notoriously difficult traveling salesperson problem. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Who’s Using Who” by The Mini Vandals.
12.16.2020 Mitochondria May Hold Keys to Anxiety and Mental Health Research hints that the energy-generating organelles of cells may play a surprisingly pivotal role in mediating anxiety and depression. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Good Times” by Patrick Patrikios.
12.03.2020 The Hidden Magnetic Universe Begins to Come Into View Astronomers are discovering that magnetic fields permeate much of the cosmos. If these fields date back to the Big Bang, they could solve a major cosmological mystery. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “The Joint is Jumpin” by Joel Cummins.
11.19.2020 Graduate Student Solves Decades-Old Conway Knot Problem It took a graduate student less than a week to answer a long-standing question about a strange knot discovered over half a century ago by the legendary John Conway. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Retro” by Wayne Jones.
11.05.2020 The Grand Unified Theory of Rogue Waves Rogue waves — enigmatic giants of the sea — were thought to be caused by two different mechanisms. But a new idea that borrows from the hinterlands of probability theory has the potential to predict them all. Read more at ...
10.22.2020 Hidden Computational Power Found in the Arms of Neurons The dendritic arms of some human neurons can perform logic operations that once seemed to require whole neural networks. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Thought Bot” by Audionautix.
10.08.2020 Neutrinos Lead to Unexpected Discovery in Basic Math Three physicists wanted to calculate how neutrinos change. They ended up discovering an unexpected relationship between some of the most ubiquitous objects in math. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Fire Water” by Saidbysed.
09.24.2020 Machines Beat Humans on a Reading Test. But Do They Understand? A tool known as BERT can now beat humans on advanced reading-comprehension tests. But it's also revealed how far AI has to go. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “If I Had a Chicken” by Kevin MacLeod.
09.10.2020 How Jurassic Plankton Stole Control of the Ocean’s Chemistry Only 170 million years ago, new plankton evolved. Their demand for carbon and calcium permanently transformed the seas as homes for life. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Fire Water” by Saidbysed.
08.27.2020 To Pay Attention, the Brain Uses Filters, Not a Spotlight A brain circuit that suppresses distracting sensory information holds important clues about attention and other cognitive processes. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Aimless Amos” by the Rondo Brothers.
08.12.2020 Fossil DNA Reveals New Twists in Modern Human Origins Modern humans and more ancient hominins interbred many times throughout Eurasia and Africa, and the genetic flow went both ways. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org.
07.30.2020 For Embryo’s Cells, Size Can Determine Fate New research suggests that many embryonic cells commit to a developmental fate when they become too small to divide unevenly anymore. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Good Times” by Patrick Patrikios.
07.16.2020 Scientists Debate the Origin of Cell Types in the First Animals Theories about how animals became multicellular are shifting as researchers find greater complexity in our single-celled ancestors. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Light Gazing” by Andrew Langdon.
07.02.2020 Wandering Space Rocks Help Solve Mysteries of Planet Formation After an interstellar asteroid shot past the sun, scientists realized that there’s probably a lot of itinerant rocks out there. Those stones are changing what we know about the birth of solar systems. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Clover ...
06.18.2020 Random Surfaces Hide an Intricate Order During development, cells seem to decode their fate through optimal information processing, which could hint at a more general principle of life. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Desert Caravan” by Aaron Kenny.
06.04.2020 Where We See Shapes, AI Sees Textures To researchers’ surprise, deep learning vision algorithms often fail at classifying images because they mostly take cues from textures, not shapes. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Retro” by Wayne Jones.
05.21.2020 What’s in a Name? Taxonomy Problems Vex Biologists Researchers struggle to incorporate ongoing evolutionary discoveries into an animal classification scheme older than Darwin. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Light Gazing” by Andrew Langdon.
05.07.2020 Bacterial Complexity Revises Ideas About ‘Which Came First?’ Contrary to popular belief, bacteria have organelles too. Scientists are now studying them for insights into how complex cells evolved. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Aimless Amos” by Rondo Brothers.
04.23.2020 Ancient DNA Yields Snapshots of Vanished Ecosystems Surviving fragments of genetic material preserved in sediments allow metagenomics researchers to see the full diversity of past life — even microbes. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Light Gazing” by Andrew Langdon.
04.09.2020 Computer Scientists Expand the Frontier of Verifiable Knowledge The universe of problems that a computer can check has grown. The researchers’ secret ingredient? Quantum entanglement. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Desert Caravan” by Aaron Kenny.
03.26.2020 The Hidden Heroines of Chaos Two women programmers played a pivotal role in the birth of chaos theory. Their previously untold story illustrates the changing status of computation in science. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Clover 3” by Vibe Mountain.
03.12.2020 Heat-Loving Microbes, Once Dormant, Thrive Over Decades-Old Fire In harsh ecosystems around the world, microbiologists are finding evidence that “microbial seed banks” protect biodiversity from changing conditions. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Fire Water” by Saidbysed.
02.27.2020 Scientists Discover Exotic New Patterns of Synchronization In a world seemingly filled with chaos, physicists have discovered new forms of synchronization and are learning how to predict and control them. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Slow Burn” by Kevin MacLeod.
02.06.2020 Cryptography That Is Provably Secure Researchers have just released cryptographic code that’s less likely to be hacked. The programs have nearly the same level of invincibility as a mathematical proof. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Light Gazing” by Andrew Langdon.
01.30.2020 The Math That Tells Cells What They Are During development, cells seem to decode their fate through optimal information processing, which could hint at a more general principle of life. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Retro” by Wayne Jones.
01.16.2020 How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Science The latest AI algorithms are probing the evolution of galaxies, calculating quantum wave functions, discovering new chemical compounds and more. Is there anything that scientists do that can’t be automated? Read more at QuantaMagazine.org.
01.02.2020 A World Without Clouds A state-of-the-art supercomputer simulation indicates that a feedback loop between global warming and cloud loss can push Earth’s climate past a disastrous tipping point in as little as a century. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Clover 3” by Vibe ...
12.19.2019 How the Brain Creates a Timeline of the Past The brain can’t directly encode the passage of time, but recent work hints at a workaround for putting timestamps on memories of events.
12.05.2019 Foundations Built for a General Theory of Neural Networks Neural networks can be as unpredictable as they are powerful. Now mathematicians are beginning to reveal how a neural network’s form will influence its function. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Telepathic Drive” by Unicorn Heads.
11.21.2019 The Brain Maps Out Ideas and Memories Like Spaces Emerging evidence suggests that the brain encodes abstract knowledge in the same way that it represents positions in space, which hints at a more universal theory of cognition. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Pulse” by Geographer. Special thanks to ...
11.07.2019 Milestone Experiment Proves Quantum Communication Really Is Faster In a Paris lab, researchers have shown for the first time that quantum methods of transmitting information are superior to classical ones. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Telepathic Drive” by Unicorn Heads.
10.31.2019 Mathematical Simplicity May Drive Evolution’s Speed Computer scientists are looking to evolutionary biology for inspiration in the search for optimal solutions among astronomically huge sets of possibilities. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is ”Dark Toys” by SYBS.
09.26.2019 Should Evolution Treat Our Microbes as Part of Us? How does evolution select the fittest “individuals” when they are ecosystems made up of hosts and their microbiomes? Biologists debate the need to revise theories. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Chee Zee Jungle - Primal Drive” by Kevin MacLeod.
09.26.2019 A Universal Law for the ‘Blood of the Earth’ Simple physical principles can be used to describe how rivers grow everywhere from Florida to Mars. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Redwood Trail” by Audionautix.
09.06.2019 Amateur Mathematician Finds Smallest Universal Cover Through exacting geometric calculations, Philip Gibbs has found the smallest known cover for any possible shape. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Valerie Plain” by Rondo Brothers.
08.29.2019 In the Nucleus, Genes’ Activity Might Depend on Their Location Using a new CRISPR-based technique, researchers are examining how the position of DNA within the nucleus affects gene expression and cell function. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Sugar Zone” by Silent Partner.
08.15.2019 Machine Learning Confronts the Elephant in the Room A visual prank exposes an Achilles’ heel of computer vision systems: Unlike humans, they can’t do a double take. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Quasi Motion” by Kevin MacLeod.
08.01.2019 The New Science of Seeing Around Corners Computer vision researchers have uncovered a world of visual signals hiding in our midst, including subtle motions that betray what’s being said and faint images of what’s around a corner. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Confusing Disco” by Birocratic.

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Quanta Science Podcast

What's Quanta Science Podcast about?

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Quanta Science Podcast episodes:

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

A Newfound Source of Cellular Order in the Chemistry of Life

The Mystery of Mistletoe’s Missing Genes

The New History of the Milky Way

Scientists Uncover the Universal Geometry of Geology

The Most Famous Paradox in Physics Nears Its End

Quantum Tunnels Show How Particles Can Break the Speed of Light

Computer Scientists Break Traveling Salesperson Record

Mitochondria May Hold Keys to Anxiety and Mental Health

The Hidden Magnetic Universe Begins to Come Into View

Graduate Student Solves Decades-Old Conway Knot Problem

The Grand Unified Theory of Rogue Waves

Hidden Computational Power Found in the Arms of Neurons

Neutrinos Lead to Unexpected Discovery in Basic Math

Machines Beat Humans on a Reading Test. But Do They Understand?

How Jurassic Plankton Stole Control of the Ocean’s Chemistry

To Pay Attention, the Brain Uses Filters, Not a Spotlight

Fossil DNA Reveals New Twists in Modern Human Origins

For Embryo’s Cells, Size Can Determine Fate

Scientists Debate the Origin of Cell Types in the First Animals

Wandering Space Rocks Help Solve Mysteries of Planet Formation

Random Surfaces Hide an Intricate Order

Where We See Shapes, AI Sees Textures

What’s in a Name? Taxonomy Problems Vex Biologists

Bacterial Complexity Revises Ideas About ‘Which Came First?’

Ancient DNA Yields Snapshots of Vanished Ecosystems

Computer Scientists Expand the Frontier of Verifiable Knowledge

The Hidden Heroines of Chaos

Heat-Loving Microbes, Once Dormant, Thrive Over Decades-Old Fire

Scientists Discover Exotic New Patterns of Synchronization

Cryptography That Is Provably Secure

The Math That Tells Cells What They Are

How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Science

A World Without Clouds

How the Brain Creates a Timeline of the Past

Foundations Built for a General Theory of Neural Networks

The Brain Maps Out Ideas and Memories Like Spaces

Milestone Experiment Proves Quantum Communication Really Is Faster

Mathematical Simplicity May Drive Evolution’s Speed

Should Evolution Treat Our Microbes as Part of Us?

A Universal Law for the ‘Blood of the Earth’

Amateur Mathematician Finds Smallest Universal Cover

In the Nucleus, Genes’ Activity Might Depend on Their Location

Machine Learning Confronts the Elephant in the Room

The New Science of Seeing Around Corners

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