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77 afleveringen, van nieuw naar oud
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Trailer: The Joy of Why Season 3
25 januari 2024 · 2 min
Tune in to the new season of ‘The Joy of Why,’ a podcast from Quanta Magazine and PRX. This season, new co-host cosmologist Janna Levin and mathematician Steven Strogatz will be joined by guests including Terence Tao, the mathematician and Fields Medalist, and Frank Wilczek, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist. New episodes premiere every other Thursday. Lees meer
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Does Nothingness Exist?
26 juli 2023 · 45 min
Even empty space bubbles with energy, according to quantum mechanics — and that fact affects almost every facet of physical reality. The theoretical physicist Isabel Garcia Garcia explains to Steven Strogatz why it’s so important in modern physics to understand what a true vacuum is. Lees meer
The post Does Nothingness Exist? first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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Can Math and Physics Save an Arrhythmic Heart?
12 juli 2023 · 46 min
Abnormal waves of electrical activity can cause a heart’s muscle cells to beat out of sync. In this episode, Flavio Fenton, an expert in cardiac dynamics, talks with Steve Strogatz about ways to treat heart arrhythmias without resorting to painful defibrillators. Lees meer
The post Can Math and Physics Save an Arrhythmic Heart? first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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What Can Jellyfish Teach Us About Fluid Dynamics?
28 juni 2023 · 44 min
Jellyfish and other aquatic creatures embody solutions to diverse problems in engineering, medicine and mathematics. John Dabiri, a fluid dynamics expert, talks with Steven Strogatz about what jellyfish can teach us about going with the flow. Lees meer
The post What Can Jellyfish Teach Us About Fluid Dynamics? first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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What Causes Giant Rogue Waves?
14 juni 2023 · 40 min
Wave-science researcher Ton van den Bremer and Steven Strogatz discuss how rogue waves can form in relatively calm seas and whether their threat can be predicted. Lees meer
The post What Causes Giant Rogue Waves? first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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What Is the Nature of Consciousness?
31 mei 2023 · 52 min
Consciousness, our experience of being in the world, is one of the mind’s greatest mysteries, but as the neuroscientist Anil Seth explains to Steven Strogatz, research is making progress in understanding this elusive phenomenon. Lees meer
The post What Is the Nature of Consciousness? first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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Are There Reasons to Believe in a Multiverse?
17 mei 2023 · 49 min
Several areas of physics suggest reasons to think that unobservable universes with different natural laws could lie beyond ours. The theoretical physicist David Kaplan talks with Steven Strogatz about the mysteries that a multiverse would solve. Lees meer
The post Are There Reasons to Believe in a Multiverse? first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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Is Perpetual Motion Possible at the Quantum Level?
4 mei 2023 · 37 min
A new phase of matter called a “time crystal” plays with our expectations of thermodynamics. The physicist Vedika Khemani talks with Steven Strogatz about its surprising quantum behavior. Lees meer
The post Is Perpetual Motion Possible at the Quantum Level? first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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How Can Some Infinities Be Bigger Than Others?
19 april 2023 · 46 min
All infinities go on forever, so how is it possible for some infinities to be larger than others? The mathematician Justin Moore discusses the mysteries of infinity with Steven Strogatz. Lees meer
The post How Can Some Infinities Be Bigger Than Others? first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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What Has the Pandemic Taught Us About Vaccines?
5 april 2023 · 43 min
Should Covid-19 vaccines be judged by how well they prevent disease or how well they prevent death? Anna Durbin, a public health expert and vaccine researcher, talks with Steven Strogatz about the science behind vaccines. Lees meer
The post What Has the Pandemic Taught Us About Vaccines? first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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Is There Math Beyond the Equal Sign?
22 maart 2023 · 50 min
Can mathematics handle things that are essentially the same without being exactly equal? Category theorist Eugenia Cheng and host Steven Strogatz discuss the power and pleasures of abstraction. Lees meer
The post Is There Math Beyond the Equal Sign? first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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Can We Program Our Cells?
8 maart 2023 · 45 min
By genetically instructing cells to perform tasks that they wouldn't in nature, synthetic biologists can learn deep secrets about how life works. Steven Strogatz discusses the potential of this young field with researcher Michael Elowitz.
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How Will the Universe End?
22 februari 2023 · 44 min
"The Joy of Why" is a podcast about curiosity and the pursuit of knowledge from Quanta Magazine. The acclaimed mathematician and author Steven Strogatz interviews leading researchers about the great scientific and mathematical questions of our time.
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The Joy of Asking About Infinity, Jellyfish and the End of the Universe
9 februari 2023 · 3 min
As The Joy of Why podcast returns for a second season, producer Polly Stryker and host Steven Strogatz invite listeners to join them and their brilliant new guests on another voyage of discovery.
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Why and How Do We Dream?
24 augustus 2022 · 45 min
Dreams are subjective and fleeting, but laboratories have developed ways of getting into the minds of people while they are dreaming. In this episode, Steven Strogatz speaks with sleep researcher Antonio Zadra about how new experimental methods have changed our understanding of dreams. Lees meer
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What Is Quantum Field Theory and Why Is It Incomplete?
10 augustus 2022 · 42 min
Quantum field theory may be the most successful scientific theory of all time, but there's reason to think it's missing something. Steven Strogatz speaks with theoretical physicist David Tong about this enigmatic theory.
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Why Do We Get Old, and Can Aging Be Reversed?
27 juli 2022 · 38 min
Everybody gets older, but not everyone ages in the same way. In this episode, Steven Strogatz speaks with Judith Campisi and Dena Dubal, two biomedical researchers who study the causes and outcomes of aging, to understand how age works - and what scientists know about postponing or even reversing the aging process. Lees meer
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How Do Mathematicians Know Their Proofs Are Correct?
13 juli 2022 · 28 min
Just as scientists test hypotheses, mathematicians prove or disprove conjectures. But what makes a proof stronger than a guess? What does evidence look like in the world of mathematics? Hear Melanie Matchett Wood, professor of mathematics at Harvard University, explain how probability helps to guide number theorists toward certainty. Lees meer
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Can Computers Be Mathematicians?
29 juni 2022 · 33 min
Artificial intelligence has bested humans at problem-solving tasks including games like chess and Go. Is mathematics research next? Steven Strogatz speaks with Kevin Buzzard, professor of pure mathematics at Imperial College London, to learn about the ongoing multidisciplinary effort to translate math into language that computers understand. Lees meer
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What Is Life?
15 juni 2022 · 42 min
Without a good definition of life, how do we look for it on alien planets? Steven Strogatz speaks with Robert Hazen, a mineralogist and astrobiologist, and Sheref Mansy, a chemist, to learn more.
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How Could Life Evolve From Cyanide?
1 juni 2022 · 39 min
How did life arise on Earth? It's one of the greatest and most ancient mysteries in all of science - and the clues to solving it are all around us. Steven Strogatz speaks with Jack Szostak, a Nobel Prize-winning biologist, and Betül Kaçar, a paleogeneticist and astrobiologist, to explore our best understanding of how we all got here. Lees meer
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Will the James Webb Space Telescope Reveal Another Earth?
18 mei 2022 · 50 min
With the December 2021 launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, one of the most expensive and ambitious scientific initiatives ever attempted commenced operations. Now that the telescope has been successfully deployed in its unique position in space, its advanced instruments will be able to gather data on questions that scientists once could only dream of answering. Is there life on other planets? How do supermassive black holes mold the mass in their galaxies? JWST may soon be able to tell us. In this episode, host Steven Strogatz speaks to two researchers leading JWST's observations of our universe: Marcia Rieke, the principal investigator of the telescope's Near-Infrared Camera, and Nikole Lewis, an astrophysicist studying planets outside of our solar system. (For more on the JWST and the history of its construction and launch, read Natalie Wolchover's article, "The Webb Space Telescope Will Rewrite Cosmic History. If It Works," which was recently honored with a 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting.) Lees meer
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Where Do Space, Time and Gravity Come From?
4 mei 2022 · 42 min
Einstein's description of gravity as a curvature in space-time doesn't easily mesh with a universe made up of quantum wavefunctions. Theoretical physicist Sean Carroll (of the "Mindscape" podcast) tells Steven Strogatz about the mind-bending implications of the quest for quantum gravity. Lees meer
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Why Is Inflammation a Dangerous Necessity?
20 april 2022 · 40 min
We've heard a lot about the immune system during the COVID-19 pandemic, but of course our immune system fights off much more than the coronavirus. And while the immune system protects us brilliantly from countless pathogens every day, sometimes it can also attack our own bodies, causing harmful and even deadly inflammation. In this episode, host Steven Strogatz speaks with Shruti Naik, an immunologist and assistant professor of biological sciences at NYU's Langone Medical Center, to learn why the immune system works so well - and how that effectiveness can backfire. Lees meer
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Untangling Why Knots Are Important
6 april 2022 · 44 min
Everyone knows what a knot is. But they have special significance in math and science because their properties can help unlock hidden secrets like the biochemistry of DNA or the geometry of three-dimensional spaces. In this episode, Steven Strogatz explores the mysteries of knots with the mathematicians Colin Adams and Lisa Piccirillo. Lees meer
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Why Do We Die Without Sleep?
23 maart 2022 · 44 min
Why do we need sleep? In the search for answers, scientists have uncovered more thought-provoking mysteries central to what sleep is, how it evolved and the benefits that it provides. In this episode, the mathematician and science communicator Steven Strogatz speaks with Dragana Rogulja, an assistant professor of neurobiology at Harvard Medical School who recently discovered how sleep deprivation causes death in fruit flies, and Alex Keene, a neurogeneticist at Texas A and M University studying cave fish to understand sleep's evolutionary history. Lees meer
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Trailer: The Joy of Why
17 maart 2022 · 3 min
An introduction to the new Quanta Magazine podcast The Joy of Why, in which noted mathematician and author Steven Strogatz talks with experts about some of the greatest scientific questions of all time.