The Quanta Podcast

A powerful mathematical technique is used to model melting ice and other phenomena. But it has long been imperiled by certain “nightmare scenarios.” A new proof has removed that obstacle. The story A New Proof Smooths Out the Math of Melting first appeared on Quanta Magazine.

Recently, astrophysicists identified something peculiar: An enormous “naked” black hole with no galaxy in sight. On this week’s episode, host Samir Patel speaks with physics staff writer Charlie Wood about how the strange little red dot is upending our assumptions of the first billion years of cosmic history. This topic was covered in a recent story for Quanta Magazine.   Each week on The Quanta P...

Thanks to a delicate interplay between plate tectonics and life, Earth’s thermostat has kept animal life thriving on our planet for half a billion years. On this week’s episode, host Samir Patel speaks with contributing writer Peter Brannen about our planetary highs and lows, and the precarious goldilocks zone our animal-filled finds itself in now. This topic was covered in a recent story for Quan...

A new proposal makes the case that paraparticles — a new category of quantum particle — could be created in exotic materials. The story ‘Paraparticles’ Would Be a Third Kingdom of Quantum Particle first appeared on Quanta Magazine.

Imagine a set of simple building blocks that can self-assemble into any shape you want. The possibilities for such a technology could be boundless. Inspired by nature, “complexity engineering” seeks to design such blocks, building on a classic computer simulation. On this week’s episode, host Samir Patel speaks with contributing writer George Musser about recent developments in so-called cellular...

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 today. Tipping points are moments in Earth’s history where gradual change suddenly becomes rapid and forms a new equilibrium. They’re one of the most alarming threats of our planet’s near future — and one of the most uncertain. When will a tipping point occur...

It’s been difficult to find important questions that quantum computers can answer faster than classical machines, but a new algorithm appears to do it for some critical optimization tasks. The story Quantum Speedup Found for Huge Class of Hard Problems first appeared on Quanta Magazine.

“ Memory” means many things to many people, and in many fields. We tend to understand memory to be a phenomenon that happens primarily in the brain, but in recent years, researchers have understood memory as a physical phenomenon that can occur in plenty of systems. On this episode, contributing writer Claire L. Evans tells host Samir Patel about how neuroscientists are probing the memory of indiv...

The climate is changing. So is the way we understand the climate. On this week's episode, contributing writer Zack Savitsky joins host Samir Patel to discuss his recent reporting on the rich history and uncertain future of climate modeling, the field of science that blends math, physics, and earth science to predict the behavior of our planet's complex climate system. Audio coda courtesy of Prince...

Rare and powerful compounds, known as keystone molecules, can build a web of invisible interactions among species. The story A New, Chemical View of Ecosystems first appeared on Quanta Magazine.

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 that this “alignment” can be brittle, superficial, even unstable. In one study, a few training adjustments led a popular chatbot to recommend murder. On this episode, contributing writer Stephen Ornes tells host Samir Patel about what this research reveals . Au...

For most of us, the word “climate” immediately generates thoughts of melting ice, rising seas, wildfires and gathering storms. However, in the course of working to understand this pressing challenge, scientists have revealed so much more: A fundamental understanding of how Earth’s climate works .  Quanta recently published a nine-story series that investigates this basic science. On this episode o...

The deceptively simple Kakeya conjecture has bedeviled mathematicians for 50 years. A new proof of the conjecture in three dimensions illuminates a whole crop of related problems. The story ‘Once in a Century’ Proof Settles Math’s Kakeya Conjecture first appeared on Quanta Magazine.

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-year-old high school student named Hannah Cairo solved a 40-year-old mystery about how some of these waves behave, surprising and exciting mathematicians. Cairo has not yet obtained a high school or undergraduate degree, but she recently began a doctoral prog...

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 mantle. But maybe that boundary is a little fuzzier than we previously thought. Strange, continent sized blobs rest on the dividing line. These blobs are leaching material from the Earth’s core, extending arms out into the mantle, and sending core material up and out...

Astronomers are ready to search for the fingerprints of life in faraway planetary atmospheres. But first, they need to know where to look — and that means figuring out which planets are likely to have atmospheres in the first place. The story How Undergraduate The Road Map to Alien Life Passes Through the ‘Cosmic Shoreline’ first appeared on Quanta Magazine .

We’re living in the golden age of cryptography. Since the 1970s, we've had more confidence in encryption than ever before. But there's a difference between confidence and absolute certainty. And computer scientists care a lot about that difference. The search is always on for better, more secure secrets. But is it possible for digital security to be truly, provably unbreakable? Maybe, with a littl...

How many oranges can you fit in a box? Mathematicians are obsessed with perfecting their answer to this question in not just our familiar three-dimensional world, but in higher and higher dimensions beyond it. For several decades, they've made only minimal progress toward finding an optimal solution. Then, this past April, an outsider to the field named Boaz Klartag posted a proof that bested thes...

A young computer scientist and two colleagues show that searches within data structures called hash tables can be much faster than previously deemed possible. The story How Undergraduate Upends a 40-Year-Old Data Science Conjecture first appeared on Quanta Magazine .

As far as we know, quantum mechanics is a universal theory that explains matter and light more or less perfectly. It shows us why atoms don't collapse and why electrons don't spiral into the nucleus of the atom. It explains why glass is clear, why grass is green, why the sky is blue. But no one fully understands how the math of quantum mechanics connects with the reality we live in. One could spen...

When some people smell the molecule benzyl acetate, they identify a distinctly banana-y scent. But when others sniff the same compound, they get hints of nail polish remover. How can this be? Smell is a tricky sensory process to pin down. Our perception of scents is wide-ranging and often depends on lived experience. But researchers are building a deeper understanding of the processes underlying o...

By screening films in a brain scanner, neuroscientists discovered a rich library of neural scripts — from a trip through an airport to a marriage proposal — that form scaffolds for memories of our experiences. The story How ‘Event Scripts’ Structure Our Personal Memories first appeared on Quanta Magazine .

The study of natural language processing, or NLP, dates back to the 1940s. It gave Stephen Hawking a voice, Siri a brain and social media companies another way to target us with ads. In less than five years, large language models broke NLP and made it anew. In 2019, Quanta reported on a then-groundbreaking NLP system called BERT without once using the phrase “large language model.” A mere five and...

As weird as it sounds, infinity comes in many shapes and sizes. And attempting to quantify it is sort of like a dog chasing its own tail. Or like infinities chasing infinities infinite numbers of times. But some mathematicians are obsessed with the quest. In this episode, host Samir Patel and 𝘘𝘶𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘢 math editor Jordana Cepelewicz probe the bizarre edges of the mathematical universe, a realm *almos...

Britta Späth has dedicated her career to proving a single, central conjecture. She’s finally succeeded, alongside her partner, Marc Cabanes. The story After 20 Years, Math Couple Solves Major Group Theory Problem first appeared on Quanta Magazine.