Quanta Science Podcast

Turbulence is a notoriously difficult phenomenon to study. Mathematicians are now starting to untangle it at its smallest scales. This is the sixth episode of The Quanta Podcast. In each episode, Quanta Magazine editor in chief Samir Patel speaks with the minds behind the award-winning publication to navigate through some of the most important and mind-expanding questions in science and math. Audio coda provided by Mount Washington Observatory

Individual cells in the brain light up for specific ideas. These concept neurons, once known as “Jennifer Aniston cells,” help us think, imagine and remember episodes from our lives.

Changes in the number, shape, efficiency and interconnectedness of organelles in the cells of flight muscles provide extra energy for birds’ continent-spanning feats. This is the fifth episode of The Quanta Podcast. In each episode, Quanta Magazine editor in chief Samir Patel speaks with the minds behind the award-winning publication to navigate through some of the most important and mind-expanding questions in science and math.

Black hole and Big Bang singularities break our best theory of gravity. A trilogy of theorems hints that physicists must go to the ends of space and time to find a fix. This is the fourth episode of The Quanta Podcast. In each episode, Quanta Magazine editor in chief Samir Patel speaks with the minds behind the award-winning publication to navigate through some of the most important and mind-expanding questions in science and math.

Heat is supposed to ruin anything it touches. But physicists have shown that an idealized form of magnetism is heatproof.

One computer scientist’s “stunning” proof is the first progress in 50 years on one of the most famous questions in computer science. This is the third episode of our new weekly series The Quanta Podcast, hosted by Quanta Magazine editor in chief Samir Patel. This week’s guest is Ben Brubaker; he recently published “For Algorithms, a Little Memory Outweighs a Lot of Time.” (If you’ve been a fan of Quanta Science Podcast, it will continue as ‘audio edition episodes’ in this same feed every other week.) Historical Recording © Jack Copeland and Jason Long

Mathematicians have started to prepare for a profound shift in what it means to do math. This is the second episode of our new weekly series The Quanta Podcast, hosted by Quanta magazine Editor-in-Chief Samir Patel. This week’s guest is Jordana Cepelewicz; she recently published “Mathematical Beauty, Truth and Proof in the Age of AI” for Quanta’s AI special package. (If you’ve been a fan of Quanta Science Podcast, it will continue as ‘audio edition episodes’ in this same feed every other week.)

Certain grammatical rules never appear in any known language. By constructing artificial languages that have these rules, linguists can use neural networks to explore how people learn.

The brain’s astounding cellular diversity and networked complexity could show how to make AI better.

he Quanta Podcast is your weekly dispatch from the frontiers of science and mathematics. In each episode, editor in chief Samir Patel will talk to the writers and editors behind our most popular, interesting and thought-provoking stories. The first episode of The Quanta Podcast will be live on May 20. In this trailer episode, Patel talks to executive editor Michael Moyer about what Quanta covers, how it has changed over time and our recent special series on “Science, Promise and Peril in the Age of AI.” Join us every Tuesday for stimulating conversations and insights about the biggest ideas in basic science and mathematics. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, TuneIn or your favorite podcasting app, or you can stream it from Quanta.

In a first, researchers have shown that adding more “qubits” to a quantum computer can make it more resilient. It’s an essential step on the long road to practical applications. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Clover 3” by Vibe Mountain.

The discovery that other vertebrates have healthy, microbial brains is fueling the still controversial possibility that we might have them as well.

Three new species of superconductivity were spotted this year, illustrating the myriad ways electrons can join together to form a frictionless quantum soup.

A new experimental proposal suggests detecting a particle of gravity is far easier than anyone imagined. Now physicists are debating what it would really prove.

Zero, which was invented late in history, is special among numbers. New studies are uncovering how the brain creates something out of nothing.

Invisibly to us, insects and other tiny creatures use static electricity to travel, avoid predators, collect pollen and more. New experiments explore how evolution may have influenced this phenomenon.

Cell membranes from comb jellies reveal a new kind of adaptation to the deep sea: curvy lipids that conform to an ideal shape under pressure. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music by Enchanted Forest Dub by South London HiFi.

While devising a new quantum algorithm, four researchers accidentally established a hard limit on the “spooky” phenomenon.

Carbon dioxide’s powerful heat-trapping effect has been traced to a quirk of its quantum structure. The finding may explain climate change better than any computer model.

Neuroscience research into people with aphantasia, who don’t experience mental imagery, is revealing how imagination works and demonstrating the sweeping variety in our subjective experiences.