Quanta Science Podcast

How might a great big four-dimensional world emerge from tiny strings? Neural networks are helping string theorists test possibilities.

There's a new consensus among biologists and philosophers of the mind: Most animals have some form of conscious experience.

New results suggest that dark energy is fading with time.

A recent study hints that electroconvulsive therapy might help restore the brain's balance of excitation and inhibition.

The proton is the anchor of every atom that makes up the bulk of our world. Now, physicists have mapped the mechanical properties of its interior. The pressure is on.

Researchers claim that five new maps reveal the orderly magnetic fields tucked into massive galaxy clusters.

When yellow dwarfs like our sun die, they first balloon into red giants, and then smolder, ember-like, as white dwarfs for trillions of years. Orbiting planets that survive could live on indefinitely, and maybe even host life - a possible future for Earth.

Scientists can fingerprint the function of tens of thousands or even millions of cells in a single experiment. This expansive data may fundamentally reshape our understanding of human anatomy and biology.

Everything is made of stardust. Gamma-ray bursts may help physicists learn how each element in the periodic table is born in the cosmos.

When it comes to bizarre forms of electricity, superconductivity is just the beginning.

Gut feelings, like the stomachache one might get from overeating, are driven by the enteric "second brain" in our digestive systems.

The placenta has a unique trick for keeping immune defenses on standby, even when no viral infections threaten a pregnancy.

A recent neurological study provides an unprecedented look at how number sense works in the human brain.

An Icelandic peninsula that hadn't seen any volcanism for 800 years has now awoken. Eruptions could continue for decades or even centuries.

Physics is a rich well of inspiration for mathematicians to draw from.

Using large language models to generate training data for smaller models might be more effective than vacuuming up text from the internet and filtering out the garbage.

Astronomers have long known of rogue worlds - cosmic loners that drift through space, untethered to a star. Now JWST is spotting them in pairs.

We're all used to hearing about mitochondria as the powerhouse of the cell. It turns out that they are also the timekeepers.

Many discoveries in mathematics make things simpler, but a recent disproof instead creates a universe of new, complicated possibilities.

Biologists have discovered that even one of the weakest, simplest self-replicating organisms on the planet can evolve.

Genetic elements known as "Mavericks" may be responsible for transferring genes between different species throughout the history of life.

Earth has a magnetic field, but Venus, Earth's sister planet, doesn't. Why does one rocky planet have a magnetic field while the other does not?

If you've ever entered a room, and then completely forgotten how you got there, you may have something in common with a quantum computer.

In the groundwaters beneath Alberta, Canada, researchers have found microbes that can produce abundant oxygen, even in the absence of light.

A system of sophisticated pumps and receptors protects the brain like bouncers at the door of an elite club.

There's never been a more exciting time to study black holes.

A recent neuroscience study reveals how human brains differentiate between the imagined and the observed.

Researchers still don't understand whether machines will ever truly know the word "no."

A recent study found that the more time you spend with someone, the more likely you are to share strains of species in your microbiome.

A recently demonstrated quantum protocol teleports energy from one location to another without violating any sacred physical principles.

Loneliness doesn't just make people feel isolated. It alters their brain in ways that can hinder their ability to trust and connect to others.

Our brains have even less in common with reptile brains than was once thought.

To improve reinforcement learning algorithms, computer scientists are training them as if they were human.

Better treatments for depression may require a clear-eyed look at the condition's nuance.

A tapeworm has evolved the ability to make its ant hosts live longer. Researchers recently discovered how the parasite does it.

The "blurriness" of remembered images may help our brains distinguish memories from current perceptions.

Researchers investigating alternatives to amyloid plaques as the possible cause of Alzheimer's disease have faced resistance, but intriguing new theories have emerged.

For three decades, most Alzheimer's researchers have stuck by the theory that aggregations of proteins called amyloid plaques cause the disease. But unsatisfied with the slow pace of progress, some are now exploring other hypotheses.

Thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope, we may have just gotten a glimpse of the first generation of stars.

Chips that run on an analog spectrum of memory rather than 0s and 1s could transform energy-efficient AI.

"Supergenes" lock several genes together into a single inheritable unit. This type of evolution offers both risks and rewards.

In 2022, astronomers saw the brightest gamma-ray burst ever observed by humans. Did it also offer a glimpse of dark matter?

What's inside a proton? Your answer may vary depending on how hard you hit it with electrons.

Physicists have all but confirmed the phenomenon behind the strongest known form of superconductivity.

A robot has, in all likelihood, leapt higher than any animal or machine before it on Earth.

The brain may be fearful and pessimistic by default.

A husband and wife math duo solved an algebraic question that went unanswered for more than a century.

The key to understanding the origin and fate of the universe may be a more complete understanding of the vacuum.

Scientists are beginning to grasp the biomechanics that allow birds to maneuver in the air.

Scientists are beginning to crack secrets from one of the sturdiest organic materials in nature.

A first-of-its-kind study offers a fresh perspective on what happens inside cells as they age.

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.

Mathematicians recently figured out a near-optimal way to go with the flow.

Two women programmers played a pivotal role in the birth of chaos theory. Their previously untold story illustrates the changing status of computation in science.

A graduate student recently proved Paul Erdős' conjecture about what makes the prime numbers particularly unique among primitive sets.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

To explain "naturalness," physicists are rethinking some of their core assumptions about the way that nature works.

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. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org.

Two teams have shown how quantum approaches can solve problems faster than classical computers, bringing physics and computer science closer together.

Just as plate tectonics makes sense of the geology and positions of continents, "genome tectonics" helps biologists reconstruct the genomic duplications, fusions and translocations that created the chromosomes we see today.

When the sun was 30% dimmer, Earth seems like it should have been inhospitably frozen, but new work suggests that dimness may be why life exists here at all.

By mapping in three dimensions how various mutations affect the fitness of the coronavirus, researchers can get insights into how the COVID-19 pandemic might change next.

New studies reveal the ancient, shared genetic "grammar" underpinning the diverse evolution of fish fins and tetrapod limbs. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Hidden Agenda" by Kevin MacLeod.

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. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Aimless Amos" by Rondo Brothers.

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." Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Transmission" by John Deley and the 41 Players.

Small and cold, Mars has long been considered a dead planet. But a series of recent discoveries has forced scientists to rethink how recently its insides stopped churning - if they ever stopped at all. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Pulse" by Geographer.

Emerging data suggests that mysterious new genes arise from so-called "junk" DNA. And, all life on Earth is made of molecules that twist in the same direction, but new research reveals that this may not always be the case. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org.

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 reveal whether it's been corrupted. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Clover 3" by Vibe Mountain.

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. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Thought Bot" by Audionautix.

The molecular signaling systems of complex cells are nothing like simple electronic circuits. The logic governing their operation is riotously complex - but it has advantages. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Unanswered Questions" by Kevin MacLeod.

Deep in the mantle, a branching plume of intensely hot material appears to be the engine powering vast volcanic activity. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Dark Toys" by SYBS.

For over two decades, physicists have pondered how the fabric of space-time may emerge from some kind of quantum entanglement. In Monika Schleier-Smith's lab at Stanford University, the thought experiment is becoming real. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Clover 3" by Vibe Mountain.

Studies of the simplest possible clocks have revealed their fundamental limitations - as well as insights into the nature of time itself. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Aimless Amos" by Rondo Brothers.

Familiar categories of mental functions such as perception, memory and attention reflect our experience of ourselves, but they are misleading about how the brain works. More revealing approaches are emerging. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Pulse" by Geographer.

The world's first time crystal has been built inside a quantum computer.

For 50 years, mathematicians have believed that the total number of real numbers is unknowable. A new proof suggests otherwise. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Good Times" by Patrick Patrikios.

The DNA of some viruses doesn't use the same four nucleotide bases found in all other life. New work shows how this exception is possible and hints that it could be more common than we think. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Hidden Agenda" by Kevin MacLeod.

The accelerating effort to understand the mathematics of quantum field theory will have profound consequences for both math and physics. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Pulse" by Geographer.

New work suggests that the radiolytic splitting of water supports giant subsurface ecosystems of life on Earth - and could do it elsewhere, too. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Fire Water" by Saidbysed.

The bizarre genome of the world's most mysterious flowering plants shows how far parasites will go in stealing, deleting and duplicating DNA. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Who's Using Who" by the Mini Vandals.

New data indicating that Earth's surface broke up about 3.2 billion years ago helps clarify how plate tectonics drove the evolution of complex life. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Pulse" by Geographer.

An unexpected superconductor was beginning to look like a fluke, but a new theory and a second discovery have revealed that emergent quasiparticles may be behind the effect. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Racing the Clock" by The Green Orbs.

To the surprise of experts in the field, a postdoctoral statistician has solved one of the most important problems in high-dimensional convex geometry. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Transmission" by John Deley and the 41 Players.

A new proof demonstrates the power of arithmetic dynamics, an emerging discipline that combines insights from number theory and dynamical systems. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Pulse" by Geographer.

The learning algorithm that enables the runaway success of deep neural networks doesn't work in biological brains, but researchers are finding alternatives that could. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Telepathic Drive" by Unicorn Heads.

By digging out signals hidden within the brain's electrical chatter, scientists are getting new insights into sleep, aging and more. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Thought Bot" by Audionautix.

Long considered solved, David Hilbert's question about seventh-degree polynomials is leading researchers to a new web of mathematical connections. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Confusing Disco" by Birocratic.

Inside cells, droplets of biomolecules called condensates merge, divide and dissolve. Their dance may regulate vital processes. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Winner, Winner" by Kevin MacLeod.

Mistletoes have all but shut down the powerhouses of their cells. Scientists are still trying to understand the plants' unorthodox survival strategy. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Sugar Zone" by Silent Partner.

Over the past two years, astronomers have rewritten the story of our galaxy. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Cast of Pods" by Doug Maxwell.