The Quanta Podcast

The key to understanding the origin and fate of the universe may be a more complete understanding of the vacuum. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org . Music is “Pulse” by Geographer.

Partnerships between engineers and biologists have begun to reveal how birds evolved their superb maneuverability. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Running Out” by Patrick Patrikios.

Structural studies of the robust material called sporopollenin reveal how it made plants hardy enough to reproduce on dry land. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org . Music is “Redwood Trail” by Audionautix.

Protein buildups like those seen around neurons in Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other brain diseases occur in all aging cells, a new study suggests. Learning their significance may reveal new strategies for treating age-related diseases. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org . Music is “Aimless Amos” by Rondo Brothers.

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.

Computer scientists can now solve a decades-old problem in practically the time it takes to write it down. Read more at quantamagazine.org. Music is “Aimless Amos” by Rondo Brothers.

Jared Duker Lichtman, 26, has proved a longstanding conjecture relating prime numbers to a broad class of “primitive” sets. To his adviser, it came as a “complete shock.” Read more at quantamagazine.org. Music is “Thought Bot” by Audionautix.

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. Read more at quantamagazine.org . Music is “Pulse” by Geographer.

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 .

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.

The existence of secure cryptography depends on one of the oldest questions in computational complexity. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Transmission” by John Deley and the 41 Players.

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. Read more at quantamagazine.org. Music is “Pulse” by Geographer.

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. The post This Animal’s Behavior Is Mechanically Programmed first appeared in  Quanta Magazine. Music is “Running Out” by Patrick Patrikios.

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. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org . Music is “Light Gazing” by Andrew Langdon.

Physicists are reexamining a longstanding assumption: that big stuff consists of smaller stuff. The post A Deepening Crisis Forces Physicists to Rethink Structure of Nature’s Laws first appeared on Quanta Magazine

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. The post New Map of Meaning in the Brain Changes Ideas About Memory first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Two teams have shown how quantum approaches can solve problems faster than classical computers, bringing physics and computer science closer together. The post Machine Learning Gets a Quantum Speedup first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Large blocks of genes conserved through hundreds of millions of years of evolution hint at how the first animal chromosomes came to be. The post Secrets of Early Animal Evolution Revealed by Chromosome ‘Tectonics’ first appeared on Quanta Magazine

We might have a past faint sun to owe for life’s existence. This has consequences for the possibility of life outside Earth. The post A Solution to the Faint-Sun Paradox Reveals a Narrow Window for Life first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Studies that map the adaptive value of viral mutations hint at how the COVID-19 pandemic might progress next. The post Evolution ‘Landscapes’ Predict What’s Next for COVID Virus first appeared on Quanta Magazine

New studies reveal the ancient, shared genetic “grammar” underpinning the diverse evolution of fish fins and tetrapod limbs. The post Flying Fish and Aquarium Pets Yield Secrets of Evolution first appeared on Quanta Magazine

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. The post Mathematicians Outwit Hidden Number Conspiracy first appeared on Quanta Magazine

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.” The post Mathematician Hurls Structure and Disorder Into Century-Old Problem first appeared on Quanta Magazine

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 betray whether it’s been corrupted. The post Researchers Defeat Randomness to Create Ideal Code first appeared on Quanta Magazine

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. The post The Brain Processes Speech in Parallel With Other Sounds first appeared on Quanta Magazine