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In-depth news about mathematics, physics, biology and computer science.
Most mathematicians take the notion of infinity for granted — it’s deeply rooted in math’s most fundamental assumptions. But a small group o...
In a hot spring at Yellowstone National Park, a microbe does something that life shouldn’t be able to do: It breathes oxygen and sulfur at t...
Together, Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard figured out how to use the laws of quantum physics to keep secret messages safe from eavesdrop...
Is string theory the one true “theory of everything?” Some physicists swear it’s a fundamental ingredient of nature. Others wish it would ju...
For decades, mathematicians have struggled to understand matrices that reflect both order and randomness, like those that model semiconducto...
At the center of little holes in cell nuclei is a mystery. Here, clumps of proteins wiggle disordered tails around like seaweed. They drive...
We tend to think of math as all about logic and rigor. But what “rigor” actually means has been shaken up quite a few times over the past fe...
Artificial intelligence software is designing novel experimental protocols that improve upon the work of human physicists, although the huma...
Humanoid robots can run, crawl, and sort objects in flashy demos. So why can’t they reliably climb stairs or open doors? On this episode of...
To better understand our cosmos, some astronomers and astrophysicists go old school. Preserved beautifully on a hundred years of glass plate...
Image generators are designed to mimic their training data, so where does their apparent creativity come from? A recent study suggests that...
We tend to think of neurons as the sole engine of our thoughts, emotions, and everything in between. For decades, a group of large brain cel...
By simulating ecological networks with microbes, researchers revealed properties that may make natural communities susceptible to invasion....
In 1874, Georg Cantor published one of the most important papers in math’s 4,000-year history. Some ideas in it were stolen. On this episode...
Parallel universes, mysterious collapses, divided worlds. These are among the interpretations of quantum theory’s relationship with reality....
By mathematically proving how individual molecules create the complex motion of fluids, three mathematicians have illuminated why time can’t...
What guides a bat’s internal compass? It’s not the stars in the sky, or the Earth’s magnetic field. On this episode of The Quanta Podcast, h...
In reality, water doesn’t glitch out. It can’t instantly change direction or spurt randomly into the sky. But on a purely mathematical level...
Every elementary particle falls into one of two categories. Collectivist bosons account for the forces that move us while individualist ferm...
In the allegory of Plato’s cave, prisoners see the world only through shadows. Extending this metaphor to AI, AI models are the prisoners an...
Particle physics hasn’t yet found the new physics needed to resolve its deepest mysteries. It’s hard to know what to think about or lo...
Reversible programs run backward as easily as they run forward, saving energy in theory. After decades of research, they may soon power AI....
We already know that what we eat, drink, and inhale can affect which parts of our DNA are expressed, and which aren’t. But recent research p...
Imagine you’re holding two equal-size dice. Is it possible to bore a tunnel through one die that’s big enough for the other to slide through...
Studies of neural metabolism reveal our brain’s effort to keep us alive and the evolutionary constraints that sculpted our most complex orga...
Ask ChatGPT how to build a bomb, and it will flatly respond that it “can’t help with that.” But users have long played a cat-and-mouse game...
By extending the scope of the key insight behind Fermat’s Last Theorem, four mathematicians have made great strides toward building a “grand...
We all know that hot coffee cools down. But quantum mechanics can enable heat to flow the “wrong” way, making hot objects hotter and cold ob...
In math and science, knots do far more than keep shoes on feet. For more than a century, mathematicians have studied the properties of diffe...
When pigeons outnumber pigeonholes, some birds must double up. This obvious statement — and its inverse — have deep connections to many area...
Every summer since 1983, scientists at Crater Lake National Park have gathered data about the lake’s famous clarity. This past summer, Quant...
How do sellers decide how to price their goods? Competition should keep prices down, while collusion can rig higher prices (and break the la...
At first glance, studying the math of waves seems like it should be smooth sailing. But the equations that describe even the gentlest rollin...
Salvador Dalí, Thomas Edison and Edgar Allan Poe all took inspiration from the state between sleep and waking life. On this week’s episode,...
A powerful mathematical technique is used to model melting ice and other phenomena. But it has long been imperiled by certain “nightmare sce...
Recently, astrophysicists identified something peculiar: An enormous “naked” black hole with no galaxy in sight. On this week’s episode, hos...
Thanks to a delicate interplay between plate tectonics and life, Earth’s thermostat has kept animal life thriving on our planet for half a b...
A new proposal makes the case that paraparticles — a new category of quantum particle — could be created in exotic materials. The story ‘Par...
Imagine a set of simple building blocks that can self-assemble into any shape you want. The possibilities for such a technology could be bou...
Around 6,000 years ago, the Sahara was a lush grassland. Then, as if a switch flipped, it began to dry out, becoming the desert that we know...
It’s been difficult to find important questions that quantum computers can answer faster than classical machines, but a new algorithm appear...
“ Memory” means many things to many people, and in many fields. We tend to understand memory to be a phenomenon that happens primarily in th...
The climate is changing. So is the way we understand the climate. On this week’s episode, contributing writer Zack Savitsky joins host...
Rare and powerful compounds, known as keystone molecules, can build a web of invisible interactions among species. The story A New, Chemical...
In order to trust machines with important jobs, we need a high level of confidence that they share our values and goals. Recent work shows t...
For most of us, the word “climate” immediately generates thoughts of melting ice, rising seas, wildfires and gathering storms. However, in t...
The deceptively simple Kakeya conjecture has bedeviled mathematicians for 50 years. A new proof of the conjecture in three dimensions illumi...
In the field of harmonic analysis, there’s a constellation of questions about how the energy of a wave concentrates. Earlier this year, a 17...
In science textbooks, Earth looks like a round layer cake. There’s a hard line between the liquid metal core and the putty-like rock m...
Astronomers are ready to search for the fingerprints of life in faraway planetary atmospheres. But first, they need to know where to look —...