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373 afleveringen, van nieuw naar oud
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Audio Edition: How Noether’s Theorem Revolutionized Physics
3 juli 2025 · 8 min
Emmy Noether showed that fundamental physical laws are just a consequence of simple symmetries. A century later, her insights continue to shape physics. Lees meer
The story How Noether’s Theorem Revolutionized Physics first appeared on Quanta Magazine.
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How Amateurs Solved a Major Computer Science Puzzle
1 juli 2025 · 25 min
The Busy Beaver Challenge, an open online collaboration, started in 2022 to finally solve a major problem in theoretical computer science. Over time, the online community grew to include more than 20 contributors from around the world, most of them without traditional academic credentials. In July 2024, the group announced that they finally solved the puzzle, bringing a conclusion to over 40 years of effort. Lees meer
On this week’s episode of The Quanta Podcast, computer science staff writer Ben Brubaker explains the tantalizing Busy Beaver puzzle, which he covered in depth last year, in "With Fifth Busy Beaver, Researchers Approach Computation’s Limits."
Each week on The Quanta Podcast, 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.
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The Mysterious Math of Turbulence
24 juni 2025 · 26 min
Turbulence is a notoriously difficult phenomenon to study. Mathematicians are now starting to untangle it at its smallest scales. Lees meer
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
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Audio Edition: Concept Cells Help Your Brain Abstract Information and Build Memories
19 juni 2025 · 20 min
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. Lees meer
The story Concept Cells Help Your Brain Abstract Information and Build Memories first appeared on Quanta Magazine.
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Birds' Migratory Mitochondria
17 juni 2025 · 20 min
Changes in the number, shape, efficiency and interconnectedness of organelles in the cells of flight muscles provide extra energy for birds’ continent-spanning feats. Lees meer
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.
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Singularities Are Hard to Kill
10 juni 2025 · 24 min
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. Lees meer
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.
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Audio Edition: Heat Destroys All Order. Except for in This One Special Case.
5 juni 2025 · 9 min
Heat is supposed to ruin anything it touches. But physicists have shown that an idealized form of magnetism is heatproof. Lees meer
The story Heat Destroys All Order. Except for in This One Special Case first appeared on Quanta Magazine.
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In Computers, Memory Is More Useful Than Time
3 juni 2025 · 19 min
One computer scientist’s “stunning” proof is the first progress in 50 years on one of the most famous questions in computer science. Lees meer
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
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Math and Beauty in the Age of AI
27 mei 2025 · 21 min
Mathematicians have started to prepare for a profound shift in what it means to do math. Lees meer
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.) -
Audio Edition: Can AI Models Show Us How People Learn? Impossible Languages Point a Way.
22 mei 2025 · 19 min
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. Lees meer
The story Can AI Models Show Us How People Learn? Impossible Languages Point a Way first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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AI Is Nothing Like a Brain, and That’s OK
20 mei 2025 · 19 min
The brain’s astounding cellular diversity and networked complexity could show how to make AI better. Lees meer
This is the first episode of our new weekly series The Quanta Podcast, hosted by Quanta magazine Editor-in-Chief Samir Patel. This week's guest is Yasemin Saplakoglu; she recently published "AI Is Nothing Like a Brain, and That’s OK" 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.)
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Introducing The Quanta Podcast
13 mei 2025 · 12 min
The 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. Lees meer
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.
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Quantum Computers Cross Critical Error Threshold
8 mei 2025 · 19 min
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. Lees meer
The post Quantum Computers Cross Critical Error Threshold first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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Fish Have a Brain Microbiome. Could Humans Have One Too?
24 april 2025 · 16 min
The discovery that other vertebrates have healthy, microbial brains is fueling the still controversial possibility that we might have them as well. Lees meer
The post Fish Have a Brain Microbiome. Could Humans Have One Too? first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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Exotic New Superconductors Delight and Confound
10 april 2025 · 17 min
Three new species of superconductivity were spotted this year, illustrating the myriad ways electrons can join together to form a frictionless quantum soup. Lees meer
The post Exotic New Superconductors Delight and Confound first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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It Might Be Possible to Detect Gravitons After All
27 maart 2025 · 20 min
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. Lees meer
The post It Might Be Possible to Detect Gravitons After All first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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How the Human Brain Contends With the Strangeness of Zero
5 maart 2025 · 17 min
Zero, which was invented late in history, is special among numbers. New studies are uncovering how the brain creates something out of nothing. Lees meer
The post How the Human Brain Contends With the Strangeness of Zero first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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The Hidden World of Electrostatic Ecology
19 februari 2025 · 24 min
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. Lees meer
The post The Hidden World of Electrostatic Ecology first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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The Cellular Secret to Resisting the Pressure of the Deep Sea
5 februari 2025 · 20 min
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. Lees meer
The post The Cellular Secret to Resisting the Pressure of the Deep Sea first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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Computer Scientists Prove That Heat Destroys Quantum Entanglement
22 januari 2025 · 13 min
While devising a new quantum algorithm, four researchers accidentally established a hard limit on entanglement. Lees meer
The post Computer Scientists Prove That Heat Destroys Quantum Entanglement first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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Physicists Pinpoint the Quantum Origin of the Greenhouse Effect
15 januari 2025 · 15 min
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. Lees meer
The post Physicists Pinpoint the Quantum Origin of the Greenhouse Effect first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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What Happens in a Mind That Can't 'See' Mental Images
11 december 2024 · 21 min
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. Lees meer
The post What Happens in a Mind That Can’t ‘See’ Mental Images first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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What Could Explain the Gallium Anomaly?
26 november 2024 · 14 min
Physicists have ruled out a mundane explanation for the strange findings of an old Soviet experiment, leaving open the possibility that the results point to a new fundamental particle. Lees meer
The post What Could Explain the Gallium Anomaly? first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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Cryptographers Discover a New Foundation for Quantum Secrecy
13 november 2024 · 20 min
Researchers have proved that secure quantum encryption is possible in a world without hard problems. Lees meer
The post Cryptographers Discover a New Foundation for Quantum Secrecy first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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Electric 'Ripples' in the Resting Brain Tag Memories for Storage
30 oktober 2024 · 19 min
New experiments reveal how the brain chooses which memories to save and add credence to advice about the importance of rest.
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AI Starts to Sift Through String Theory's Near-Endless Possibilities
16 oktober 2024 · 25 min
Using machine learning, string theorists are finally showing how microscopic configurations of extra dimensions translate into sets of elementary particles — though not yet those of our universe.
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Insects and Other Animals Have Consciousness, Experts Declare
2 oktober 2024 · 18 min
A group of prominent biologists and philosophers announced a new consensus: There’s “a realistic possibility” that insects, octopuses, crustaceans, fish and other overlooked animals experience consciousness.
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Dark Energy May Be Weakening, Major Astrophysics Study Finds
18 september 2024 · 20 min
A generation of physicists has referred to the dark energy that permeates the universe as “the cosmological constant.” Now the largest map of the cosmos to date hints that this mysterious energy has been changing over billions of years.
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Brain's 'Background Noise' May Explain Value of Shock Therapy
4 september 2024 · 13 min
Electroconvulsive therapy is highly effective in treating major depressive disorder, but no one knows why it works. New research suggests it may restore balance between excitation and inhibition in the brain.
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Swirling Forces, Crushing Pressures Measured in the Proton
21 augustus 2024 · 18 min
Long-anticipated experiments that use light to mimic gravity are revealing the distribution of energies, forces and pressures inside a subatomic particle for the first time.
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Never-Repeating Tiles Can Safeguard Quantum Information
7 augustus 2024 · 18 min
Two researchers have proved that Penrose tilings, famous patterns that never repeat, are mathematically equivalent to a kind of quantum error correction. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Quasi Motion” by Kevin MacLeod.
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Radio Maps May Reveal the Universe's Biggest Magnetic Fields
25 juli 2024 · 11 min
A controversial technique has produced detailed maps of the magnetic fields in colossal galaxy clusters. If confirmed, the approach could be used to reveal where cosmic magnetic fields come from.
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New Clues for What Will Happen When the Sun Eats the Earth
10 juli 2024 · 13 min
Recent observations of an aging, alien planetary system are helping to answer the question: What will happen to our planet when the sun dies? Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Dark Toys” by SYBS.
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New Cell Atlases Reveal Untold Variety in the Brain and Beyond
26 juni 2024 · 21 min
Recent efforts to map every cell in the human body have researchers floored by unfathomable diversity, with many thousands of subtly different types of cells in the human brain alone. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Confusing Disco” by Birocratic. Lees meer
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Extra-Long Blasts Challenge Our Theories of Cosmic Cataclysms
11 juni 2024 · 25 min
Astronomers thought they had solved the mystery of gamma-ray bursts. A few recent events suggest otherwise. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Light Gazing” by Andrew Langdon.
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Meet Strange Metals: Where Electricity May Flow Without Electrons
29 mei 2024 · 21 min
For 50 years, physicists have understood current as a flow of charged particles. But a new experiment has found that in at least one strange material, this understanding falls apart. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Thought Bot” by Audionautix. Lees meer
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In the Gut's 'Second Brain,' Key Agents of Health Emerge
15 mei 2024 · 17 min
Sitting alongside the neurons in your enteric nervous system are underappreciated glial cells, which play key roles in digestion and disease that scientists are only just starting to understand. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Running Out” by Patrick Patrikios. Lees meer
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During Pregnancy, a Fake 'Infection' Protects the Fetus
1 mei 2024 · 10 min
Cells in the placenta have an unusual trick for activating gentle immune defenses and keeping them turned on when no infection is present. It involves crafting and deploying a fake virus. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Unanswered Questions” by Kevin MacLeod. Lees meer
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Why the Human Brain Perceives Small Numbers Better
17 april 2024 · 21 min
The discovery that the brain has different systems for representing small and large numbers provokes new questions about memory, attention and mathematics. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Quasi Motion” by Kevin MacLeod.
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Inside Scientists' Life-Saving Prediction of the Iceland Eruption
3 april 2024 · 22 min
The Reykjanes Peninsula has entered a new volcanic era. Innovative efforts to map and monitor the subterranean magma are saving lives. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Fire Water” by Saidbysed.
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Echoes of Electromagnetism Found in Number Theory
20 maart 2024 · 21 min
A new magnum opus posits the existence of a hidden mathematical link akin to the connection between electricity and magnetism. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Clover 3” by Vibe Mountain.
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Tiny Language Models Come of Age
6 maart 2024 · 21 min
To better understand how neural networks learn to simulate writing, researchers trained simpler versions on synthetic children’s stories. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Thought Bot” by Audionautix.
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Rogue Worlds Throw Planetary Ideas Out of Orbit
21 februari 2024 · 22 min
Scientists have recently discovered scores of free-floating worlds that defy classification. The new observations have forced them to rethink their theories of star and planet formation. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Light Gazing” by Andrew Langdon. Lees meer
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What Makes Life Tick? Mitochondria May Keep Time for Cells
7 februari 2024 · 24 min
Every species develops at its own unique tempo, leaving scientists to wonder what governs their timing. A suite of new findings suggests that cells use basic metabolic processes as clocks. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Pulse” by Geographer. Lees meer
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An Old Conjecture Falls, Making Spheres a Lot More Complicated
24 januari 2024 · 17 min
The telescope conjecture gave mathematicians a handle on ways to map one sphere to another. Now that it has been disproved, the universe of shapes has exploded. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Slow Burn” by Kevin MacLeod.
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Even Synthetic Life Forms With a Tiny Genome Can Evolve
10 januari 2024 · 15 min
By watching “minimal” cells regain the fitness they lost, researchers are testing whether a genome can be too simple to evolve. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Hidden Agenda” by Kevin MacLeod.
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Selfish, Virus-Like DNA Can Carry Genes Between Species
20 december 2023 · 13 min
Genetic elements called Mavericks that have some viral features could be responsible for the large-scale smuggling of DNA between species. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Clover” by Vibe Mountain.
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Exoplanets Could Help Us Learn How Planets Make Magnetism
6 december 2023 · 13 min
New observations of a faraway rocky world that might have its own magnetic field could help astronomers understand the seemingly haphazard magnetic fields in our own solar system. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Light Gazing” by Andrew Langdon. Lees meer
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To Move Fast, Quantum Maze Solvers Must Forget the Past
21 november 2023 · 16 min
Quantum algorithms can find their way out of mazes exponentially faster than classical ones, at the cost of forgetting the paths they took. A new result suggests that the trade-off may be inevitable. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Confusing Disco” by Birocratic. Lees meer
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Underground Cells Make 'Dark Oxygen' Without Light
8 november 2023 · 14 min
In some deep subterranean aquifers, cells have a chemical trick for making oxygen that could sustain whole underground ecosystems. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Pulse” by Geographer.