Four-Color Theorem Is Still a Math Favorite
In 1852, the mathematician Francis Guthrie was coloring in a map of English counties when he noticed that he needed only four colors. Was th...
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Quanta Science Podcast
In-depth news about mathematics, physics, biology and computer science.
Episodes
20 of 316 episodes
Does Computer Science Need Computers?
In popular culture, computer science is practically synonymous with programming. There are obviously branches of computer science in which c...
How the Brain Compresses Our Noisy World
If you are well rested and full, your brain tells you that a bruised overripe apple is a piece of subpar fruit to be passed over. However, i...
Picking Teams With the Math of Imbalance
Combinatorial discrepancy theory is a branch of mathematics concerned with balance. If you’re making two teams — sports, trivia, you name it...
What Makes a Fluid a Fluid?
The Navier-Stokes equations are enormously successful at predicting how fluids flow and swirl. But they fail to account for the microscopic...
Is AI Reasoning Right for the Wrong Reasons?
Reasoning comes in many technically defined forms, but the basic procedure is easily recognizable: arriving at a sound conclusion by linking...
Why Am I Left-Handed?
Why are only 10% of people left-handed? Geneticists, developmental biologists, neuroscientists, and evolutionary biologists have all sought...
Is Life Just Different?
There’s no scientific consensus about what makes living things so different from inorganic material. Some scientists cite replication or met...
How Many Shuffles Do You Really Need to Randomize Your Deck?
In 1992, mathematicians Dave Bayer and Persi Diaconis proved that seven riffle shuffles are enough to shuffle a deck of cards — but only if...
How Many Elementary Particles Are There, Really?
How many pieces are there in the Standard Model of particle physics? 17, 30, 37, 61, 118? Or is the true answer much larger — and not even a...
The 'Truth Machine' That Is Changing Math
The groundbreaking proof assistant Lean acts as a sort of automatic quality control. It’s gaining ground in the math world — in part because...
Ecotypes Make the Idea of a Species Even Fuzzier
How do you define a species? The question has been controversial since the days of Darwin. On this episode of The Quanta Podcast, host Samir...
What Actually Causes Lightning?
Thunderstorms have captivated humanity for millennia, and yet their inner workings remain deeply mysterious. On this episode of The Quanta P...
What Can We Gain by Losing Infinity?
Most mathematicians take the notion of infinity for granted — it’s deeply rooted in math’s most fundamental assumptions. But a small group o...
Audio Edition: The Cells That Breathe Two Ways
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...
Quantum Mechanics Might Be a Secret Key to Secure Communication
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 Still Our Best Hope?
Is string theory the one true “theory of everything?” Some physicists swear it’s a fundamental ingredient of nature. Others wish it would ju...
Audio Edition: New Physics-Inspired Proof Probes the Borders of Disorder
For decades, mathematicians have struggled to understand matrices that reflect both order and randomness, like those that model semiconducto...
One of Nature's Most Complex Molecular Machines
At the center of little holes in cell nuclei is a mystery. Here, clumps of proteins wiggle disordered tails around like seaweed. They drive...
The Fundamental Tension at the Heart of Math
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...