Episodes
What Happens if You Fall Into a Black Hole?
David Kaplan explores one of the biggest mysteries in physics: the apparent contradiction between general relativity and quantum mechanics.
Freeman Dyson: A ‘Rebel’ Without a Ph.D.
A wide-ranging interview with the legendary mathematical physicist Freeman Dyson in which he discusses his work with Richard Feynman, his attempts to build a spaceship propelled by nuclear bombs and his controversial views on climate change.
Artur Avila: A Brazilian Wunderkind Who Calms Chaos
A video profile of the mathematician Artur Avila, whose solutions to ubiquitous problems in chaos theory have earned him Brazil’s first Fields Medal in 2014.
Manjul Bhargava: The Musical, Magical Number Theorist
A video profile of the 2014 Fields medalist Manjul Bhargava, whose search for artistic truth and beauty has led to some of the most profound recent discoveries in number theory.
Where Did the Universe Come From?
Where did the universe come from? David Kaplan explores the leading cosmological explanation with the help of a baking metaphor.
Yitang Zhang: An Unlikely Math Star Rises
The opening scene from George Csicsery’s film "Counting From Infinity," about Yitang Zhang, a previously unknown mathematician who two years ago solved a major problem in number theory that catapulted him to mathematical stardom.
Martin Hairer: In Noisy Equations, One Who Heard Music
A video profile of the 2014 Fields medalist Martin Hairer, whose epic masterpiece in stochastic analysis, experts say, “created a whole world.”
Maryam Mirzakhani: A Tenacious Explorer of Abstract Surfaces
A video profile of the 2014 Fields medalist Maryam Mirzakhani, whose monumental work draws deep connections between topology, geometry and dynamical systems.
Subhash Khot: A Grand Vision for the Impossible
A video profile of the 2014 Nevanlinna Prize winner Subhash Khot, whose bold conjecture is helping mathematicians explore the precise limits of computation.
Alan Guth: How Many Two-Headed Cows in a Multiverse?
In an infinitely branching multiverse, says MIT cosmologist Alan Guth, “there are an infinite number of one-headed cows and an infinite number of two-headed cows. What happens to the ratio?”
Hiranya Peiris: How to Test If We Live in a Multiverse
University College London physicist Hiranya Peiris explains the seemingly impossible -- how the multiverse can be experimentally tested.
How Did Life Begin on Earth?
In this 2-minute video, David Kaplan explores the leading theories for the origin of life on our planet.
Fly-Vac: Groundhog Day for Fruit Flies
Benjamin de Bivort’s lab at Harvard University developed a device called the fly-vac to study individual behavior. Upon entering a chamber, the fly must choose to walk toward the light or dark end. A vacuum then sucks it back to the starting point, and it makes the choice again.
Why Do Flies Walk This Way?
In a device in Benjamin de Bivort’s lab at Harvard University, a fly wanders through a tiny Y-shaped maze, choosing at the Y’s vertex whether to walk left or right. This array of Y-mazes allows researchers to track individual behavior in many flies simultaneously.
How Symmetry Shapes Nature’s Laws
In this 2-minute video, David Kaplan explains how the search for hidden symmetries leads to discoveries like the Higgs boson.
James Bullock: The Case for Complex Dark Matter
James Bullock, a physicist at the University of California, Irvine, explains why dark matter might be more complicated than astronomers have assumed.
Nancy Moran: An Explorer of Life’s Deepest Partnerships
Nancy Moran, a biologist at the University of Texas at Austin, explains how colony collapse disorder led her to study the bacteria that live in the guts of bees.
Nima Arkani-Hamed's Visions of Future Physics
Nima Arkani-Hamed, a physicist at the Institute for Advanced Study, makes his "big-picture" case for building a 100-TeV particle collider.
What Is a Species?
David Kaplan explains why a simple definition of 'species' is hard to come by in our fifth In Theory video.
Gabriela González: Searching the Sky for the Wobbles of Gravity
Gabriela González explains how to measure black-hole collisions using gravitational waves.
Joan Strassmann: The Woman Who Stared at Wasps
Joan Strassmann explains the benefits of studying social amoebas.
Christoph Adami: The Information Theory of Life
Christoph Adami explains how information theory can explain the persistence of life.
Richard Dawid: Why Trust a Theory?
Richard Dawid discusses the fine line between science and speculation.
Leslie Valiant: Searching for the Algorithms Underlying Life
Leslie Valiant explains the term "ecorithm."
Are We Alone in the Universe?
David Kaplan explores the best ways to search for alien life on distant planets.
Michael Atiyah's Imaginative State of Mind
Michael Atiyah discusses beauty in mathematics.
David Deamer: How We’re Studying the Origins of Life
David Deamer explains how his laboratory mimics the extreme conditions found on volcanoes in the early Earth.
Is That 'Bump' a New Particle?
David Kaplan explains how a curious signal in the Large Hadron Collider's latest data could upset the Standard Model of physics — or mean nothing at all.
Tiny Tests Seek the Universe's Big Mysteries
David Moore explains why we might expect to find strange things when we study gravity at small scales.
David Moore: Tabletop Physics
Stanford University physicist David Moore explains how his team’s tabletop experiment uses lasers and tiny glass spheres to test gravity.
Janna Levin on Science and Culture
Janna Levin talks about her roles as scientific director at a “center for art and innovation” in Brooklyn and as a physicist and writer.
Ken Ono: A Life Inspired by an Unexpected Genius
Ken Ono explains how Ramanujan has served as his “guardian angel” throughout his life and career.
Suchitra Sebastian: An Explorer of Quantum Borderlands
Suchitra Sebastian talks about how extreme conditions can create unexpected quantum behavior.
How Does Life Come From Randomness?
David Kaplan explains how the law of increasing entropy could drive random bits of matter into the stable, orderly structures of life.
Miranda Cheng: A Moonshine Master Toys with String Theory
Miranda Cheng explains what umbral moonshine is and how it might illuminate string theory.
Tracy Slatyer: A Seeker of Dark Matter’s Hidden Light
Tracy Slatyer explains why she’s not disappointed when a mysterious cosmic signal turns out to be something other than dark matter.
Peter and Rosemary Grant
Peter and Rosemary Grant explain how our understanding of evolution has changed in their lifetimes.
Pencils Down: The Art of Teaching Math and Science
What can we learn from the best teachers on the front lines? To shine a spotlight on this linchpin of our education system, Quanta Magazine followed four master science and math teachers into their classrooms.
Pencils Down: Channa Comer of Baychester Middle School
Channa Comer teaches 6th-grade science. She focuses on engagement so kids will want to keep learning.
Pencils Down: Mike Zitolo of School of the Future
Michael Zitolo is turning the way science is approached in the classroom upside down.
Pencils Down: Soni Midha of East Side Community High School
In school or in life, Soni Midha wants her math students to be able to prove why something is correct.
Pencils Down: Aaron Mathieu of Acton-Boxborough Regional High School
Students need a chance to fail at science to learn about its process, says Aaron Mathieu.
Pencils Down: Channa Comer Teaching About Scientific Controls
What's a control? Channa Comer challenges her students to explain and work things out for themselves.
Helen Quinn: A Wormhole Between Physics and Education
A Wormhole Between Physics and Education
Michael Costanzo: Giant Genetic Map Reveals Life’s Hidden Links
Michael Costanzo, a biologist at the University of Toronto and a lead author on the new study, explains why it’s important to understand how genes interact.
Richard Lenski: A Conductor of Evolution’s Subtle Symphony
Richard Lenski discusses how he has been surprised by evolution.
Cynthia Dwork: How to Force Our Machines to Play Fair
Cynthia Dwork explains how to conduct a survey that asks people if they do embarrassing — or even illicit — things.
Erik Verlinde: The Case Against Dark Matter
Erik Verlinde describes how emergent gravity and dark energy can explain away dark matter.
Janet Conrad: On a Hunt for a Ghost of a Particle
Janet Conrad explains how sterile neutrinos might help physicists move past the Standard Model.
Elena Aprile: In the Deep, a Drive to Find Dark Matter
Elena Aprile explains how she hunts for dark matter in the world’s largest underground laboratory.
Marcus Feldman: In Search of Actions That Alter Evolution
Marcus Feldman explains how he models the effects of a cultural preference — in this case, a preference for sons over daughters in China.
Francis Su: Math and the Good Life
Francis Su explains how mathematics can help a person to live well.
Francis Su: Math Is for Everybody
Francis Su discusses how the community of mathematicians tends to exclude certain people.
Sylvia Serfaty: In Mathematics, ‘You Cannot Be Lied To’
Sylvia Serfaty explains why you don’t have to be a genius to become a mathematician.
Sharon Glotzer: ‘Digital Alchemist’ Seeks Rules of Emergence
Sharon Glotzer explains how emergence, entropy and order can all fit together.
John Novembre: A Map of Human History, Hidden in DNA
John Novembre explains how he uses genomic data to map human history.
Tim Maudlin: A Defense of the Reality of Time
A Defense of the Reality of Time
Journey to the Birth of the Solar System 360 VR
Join David Kaplan on a virtual-reality tour showing how the sun, the Earth and the other planets came to be.
Purvesh Khatri: More Data — the Dirtier the Better
Khatri learned that by working with 'messy' clinical data sets, he could find genes that the human body expresses in response to diverse forms of a disease.
Jessica Flack: How Nature Solves Problems Through Computation
Jessica Flack describes the special challenges of applying collective computation to the understanding of complex biological systems.
Jay Pasachoff: Eclipse Hunter Reveals the Science That Can Only Be Done in the Dark
Jay Pasachoff explains what scientists can learn during a total solar eclipse.
How Andrea Ghez Found a Supermassive Black Hole
The UCLA astrophysicist explains how tracking the movement of stars revealed the existence of a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy.
Svitlana Mayboroda: Taming Rogue Waves
Svitlana Mayboroda describes how the landscape function helps solve the mystery of wave localization.
Neil Johnson: A Physicist Who Models ISIS and the Alt-Right
Neil Johnson on the physics of collective human behavior.
Nigel Goldenfeld: Seeing Emergent Physics Behind Evolution
Nigel Goldenfeld explains how condensed matter physics provides insights into the collective state of early life on Earth.
Rebecca Goldin: Why Math Is the Best Way to Make Sense of the World
Rebecca Goldin explains why quantitative literacy is so important.
Michael Assis: Atomic Origami
Michael Assis demonstrates how defects can be used to tune the properties of Miura-ori origami.
Federico Ardila: A Mathematician Who Dances to the Joys and Sorrows of Discovery
A Mathematician Who Dances to the Joys and Sorrows of Discovery
Minhyong Kim: Connecting Number Theory to Physics
Minhyong Kim wanted to make sure he had concrete results in number theory before he admitted that his ideas were inspired by physics.
Corina Tarnita: First Understand Nature’s Rules
Corina Tarnita argues that to fully appreciate nature, you must first understand its rules.
Richard Schwartz: In Praise of Simple Problems
Mathematician Richard Schwartz talks about why he's attracted to the hidden depths of simple problems.
Ed Boyden on the Promise of Expansion Microscopy
Ed Boyden of MIT’s Media Lab, the inventor of expansion microscopy, explains how the technique could illuminate deep mysteries about how the brain works and improve cancer diagnosis, among many other advances.
Erich Jarvis on Theories About the Origin of Vocal Learning
Neuroscientist Erich Jarvis discusses how the brain circuitry for vocal learning in songbirds and humans evolved from systems for controlling body movements and why so few species have this ability.
Daniel Goldman and His Smart Robots
Goldman explains how “smarticles” work together to demonstrate collective behavior.
Barbara Engelhardt on How to Improve Statistical Analyses of Genomes
Barbara Engelhardt, a computer scientist at Princeton University, explains why traditional machine-learning techniques have often fallen short for genomic analysis, and how researchers are overcoming that challenge.
Günter Ziegler Seeks God’s Perfect Math Proofs
Günter Ziegler describes one of the most famous and beautiful proofs in "Proofs From THE BOOK," a book he co-authored with Martin Aigner.
Donald Richards: A Revealer of Secrets in the Data of Life and the Universe
Donald Richards discusses the statistical rule-of-thumb he wishes everyone knew.
Michela Massimi: Defending the Philosophy of Science
Michela Massimi argues that the philosophy of science doesn’t have to be useful to scientists for it to be useful to humanity.
Lisa Manning on the Dynamics of Glasses and Embryos
Lisa Manning, a physicist at Syracuse University, describes how the physics of glassy materials helps to explain how some organs assume their correct shape during embryonic development.
Carina Curto on How Physicists Can Think About Neuroscience
Carina Curto, a mathematician at Pennsylvania State University, explains how her background in theoretical physics helps her tackle daunting problems in theoretical neuroscience.
Jessica Whited on Limb Regeneration and the Axolotl Genome
Jessica Whited is a biologist who studies limb regeneration at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Here, she explains how genomic information for the salamander called an axolotl will help us understand the potential for regrowing limbs in humans and other animals.
Cohl Furey on the Octonions and Particle Physics
Cohl Furey explains what octonions are and what they might have to do with particle physics.
Alessio Figalli: A Traveler Who Finds Stability in the Natural World
The mathematician Alessio Figalli is rarely in one place for very long. But his work has established the stability of everything from crystals to weather fronts by using concepts derived from Napoleonic fortifications.
Caucher Birkar: An Innovator Who Brings Order to an Infinitude of Equations
Birkar discusses the need for originality in mathematics and in life.
Akshay Venkatesh: A Number Theorist Who Bridges Math and Time
Akshay Venkatesh on his mathematical working style, which took him many years to discover.
Constantinos Daskalakis: A Poet of Computation Who Uncovers Distant Truths
Constantinos Daskalakis on why he studies the interface between theoretical computer science and human behavior.
2018 Fields Medal Coverage at Quanta Magazine
Mathematicians Caucher Birkar, Alessio Figalli, Peter Scholze and Akshay Venkatesh have been awarded the Fields Medal. Computer scientist Constantinos Daskalakis won the Nevanlinna Prize.
Rosaly Lopes on Volcanoes Throughout the Solar System
Rosaly Lopes explains why it’s worth exploring the huge variety of volcanoes on other worlds.
Tomas Bohr on Performing the Double-Slit Experiment with Bouncing Droplets
Tomas Bohr explains the significance of the double-slit experiment in exposing the weirdness of the quantum world.
Renee Reijo Pera on the Importance of Timing in Embryo Development
Stem cell researcher Renee Reijo Pera of Montana State University explains how the timing of developmental events in the early embryo can subtly affect health many years later.
Mario Jurić on How Astronomy Is Changing
Just as mathematics transformed physics from a philosophy into a science, data and computation are transforming science today, says Mario Jurić. He’s leading the push to get astronomy ready for the torrents of data that are about to flow. Mario Jurić explains how the nature of what it means to be an astronomer is changing.
Valeria Pettorino on Learning About Dark Energy With the Euclid Satellite
Valeria Pettorino discusses the prospects of learning about dark energy with the Euclid satellite.
Albert Einstein, Holograms and Quantum Gravity
In the latest campaign to reconcile Einstein’s theory of gravity with quantum mechanics, many physicists are studying how a higher dimensional space that includes gravity arises like a hologram from a lower dimensional particle theory.
Why Different Parts of a Coffee Mug Produce Different Pitches
The Stanford mathematician Tadashi Tokieda demonstrates one of his physics “toys”: the curious higher and lower notes you hear when tapping a coffee mug with a spoon.
Martin Rees on the Future of Science and Humanity
The University of Cambridge astrophysicist, Astronomer Royal and popular author discusses how our society can benefit from science while avoiding potential pitfalls.
What Is Emergence?
How do extraordinarily complex emergent phenomena — like ants assembling themselves into living bridges, or tiny water and air molecules forming into swirling hurricanes — spontaneously arise from systems of much simpler elements? The answer often depends on a transition in the interplay between the elements that resembles a phase change.
Been Kim: A New Approach to Understanding How Machines Think
Google Brain’s Been Kim is building ways to let us interrogate the decisions made by machine learning systems.
Carolina Araujo on Supporting Women in Mathematics
Carolina Araujo describes the effort to build a network of women mathematicians in Brazil.
What Is Turbulence?
Physicists use the Navier-Stokes equations to describe fluid flows, taking into account viscosity, velocity, pressure and density. But because of turbulence in fluids, proving that the equations always make sense is one of the hardest problems in physics and mathematics.
Priyamvada Natarajan: How Black Holes Shape Galaxies
Priyamvada Natarajan explains the role of supermassive black holes in the structure and evolution of the universe.
Meenakshi Wadhwa on Meteorites and the Solar System
Meenakshi Wadhwa explains how meteorites illuminate the origins of Earth and the rest of the solar system.
CRISPR Pioneer Jennifer Doudna on Its Research Promise
Jennifer Doudna, one of the coinventors of CRISPR technology, discusses how her work on bacterial defenses against viruses helped lead to a discovery with a revolutionary impact on biological research.
Ecologist Jennifer Dunne on Humans’ Place in Food Webs
Jennifer Dunne of the Santa Fe Institute explains how reconstructions of food webs in past ecosystems help ecologists understand both the unusual niche of humans and new clues to a more sustainable civilization.
Jim Gunn on Building Astronomical Instruments
The lauded astronomer Jim Gunn explains how a new spectrograph he is building will advance astronomy.
What Is Universality?
Quanta’s In Theory video series returns with an exploration of the mysterious mathematical pattern found throughout nature.
What Are Feynman Diagrams?
The brilliant physicist Richard Feynman devised a system of line drawings that simplified calculations of particle interactions and helped rescue the field of quantum electrodynamics.
Edward O. Wilson on the Evolution of Social Behaviors
Edward O. Wilson, professor emeritus at Harvard University, is the influential naturalist and evolutionary theorist who introduced the concept of “sociobiology,” as well as one of the world’s leading experts on ants. Here, he explains the relevance of evolved insect behaviors to human nature.
Amie Wilkinson on the Mathematics of Change
The mathematician Amie Wilkinson explains how dynamics lets mathematicians explore the fundamentals of change.
Lee Smolin on the Impossibility of Studying the Universe
Lee Smolin explores the problem of understanding the universe from the perspective of being inside the universe, as well as the need for physicists to know philosophy.
Greg Johnson on A.I. That Sees Inside Cells
Greg Johnson, a computer vision researcher at the Allen Institute for Cell Science, explains how his deep learning vision systems can advance the state of cell biology
Carlo Rubbia on the Future of Particle Physics
Carlo Rubbia explains why he thinks particle physicists should take the next step by building a “Higgs factory.”
Iyad Rahwan: Why We Need a Science of Machine Behavior
The behavior of algorithms is so complex and surprising that we need to study them as though they were animals in the wild.
Craig Callender on the Trouble With Black Hole Thermodynamics
Craig Callender explains why the connection between black holes and thermodynamics is little more than an analogy.
Stephanie Wehner Aims to Build a Quantum Internet
Wehner discusses the advantages of transmitting qubits rather than bits across a long-distance communication network.
Virginia Trimble on How Astronomy Has Changed
Virginia Trimble discusses how astronomy has changed over the course of her half-century career.
Barbara Liskov on the Future of Computer Science
Barbara Liskov addresses the challenges that confront computer science.
Scarlett Howard on the Lessons of Teaching Bees Math
Scarlett Howard describes how and why she taught honeybees math.
Nobel Laureate James P. Allison on the Origins of His Cancer Immunotherapy Research
James P. Allison of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center discusses what initially drew him to immunology as a field and why many scientists used to be skeptical that an immunological strategy for killing cancers would work.
Omololu Akin-Ojo: Doing Cutting-Edge Physics in Africa
Omololu Akin-Ojo of the East African Institute for Fundamental Research discusses his plans to invigorate theoretical physics in Africa, including by focusing on problems related to energy and water that will especially impact the continent.
Ronald Rivest on Building Better Elections
Ronald Rivest of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology describes the role of computers in voting and what makes elections trustworthy.
Pincelli Hull Explains What Killed Off the Dinosaurs
Evidence from the oceans decisively shows that an asteroid strike caused the last mass extinction, argues Pincelli Hull. The cataclysm continues to hold lessons for today.
Epidemiologist Tara Smith Answers Your Coronavirus Questions
Dr. Tara C. Smith is an infectious disease epidemiologist and contributing columnist for Quanta Magazine. In two recent columns for Quanta, Dr. Smith explored the animal origins of the novel coronavirus and explained how prior knowledge about other coronaviruses may help answer questions about the COVID-19 pandemic. On May 1, 2020, she answered questions live on Quanta's YouTube channel.
Epidemiologist Tara Smith Answers Your Coronavirus Questions [Highlights]
Dr. Tara C. Smith is an infectious disease epidemiologist and contributing columnist for Quanta Magazine. In two recent columns for Quanta, Dr. Smith explored the animal origins of the novel coronavirus and explained how prior knowledge about other coronaviruses may help answer questions about the COVID-19 pandemic. On May 1, 2020, she answered questions live on Quanta's YouTube channel.
Katie Mack Knows How It’s All Going to End
Katie Mack describes the most likely scenario for the end of the universe.
James Maynard Solves the Hardest Easy Math Problems
James Maynard talks about why he’s obsessed with prime numbers.
Liz MacDonald on Strange Auroras
Space weather scientist Liz MacDonald studies unique atmospheric phenomena such as the aurora called STEVE.
Impossible Life Under the Ice—on Earth and Beyond
The microbial ecologist John Priscu of Montana State University discusses what led him to seek life beneath the barren, frozen wastes of Antarctica — and how his discoveries there are shaping the search for life on other worlds.
'Gravity Is the Law That Makes Everything Happen'
The theoretical physicist Claudia de Rham explains why gravity is so fundamental to our understanding of everything in the universe.
Emily Riehl: Mathematician, Musician, Educator
Emily Riehl talks about how higher category theory is like the viola, why she's drawn to expository writing, and the responsibility mathematicians have to address social justice issues.
The Woman Who's Rewriting Higher Category Theory
By turning higher category theory on itself, Emily Riehl hopes to make the powerful perspective more accessible to other mathematicians.
Urban Traffic and Complex Systems
Carlos Gershenson, a computer scientist and complexity researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, answers questions about how principles of adaptation and self-organization can help transportation systems beat traffic jams and other urban mobility problems.
Cracking the Puzzle of Biodiversity
MIT physicist Jeff Gore tests theories about microbe communities experimentally and finds new rules governing ecological stability.
The Bold Quest to Launch the Internet in Space
Vint Cerf is one of the fathers of the internet. Decades ago, he and Robert Kahn developed the architecture and protocol suite known as Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP). Anyone who has ever surfed the web, sent an email, or downloaded an app has them to thank. Now, Cerf wants to boldly go where no internet has gone before. He's designing an interplanetary internet. But extending the internet to space isn’t just a matter of installing Wi-Fi on rockets. Scientists have novel obstacles to contend with. In this new video, Cerf discusses how an internet in space.
The Extraordinary Math Hidden in Everyday Life
L. Mahadevan is a professor of applied mathematics, physics, and organismic and evolutionary biology at Harvard University. He uses mathematics and physics to explore commonplace phenomena, showing that many of the objects and behaviors we take for granted, and consequently give little thought to, are quite extraordinary upon closer examination.
The Cosmologist Who Dreams of Dark Matter
Cora Dvorkin studies the invisible universe. Known as dark matter, it is thought to comprise roughly 85% of all matter in the universe. So far, no researcher has been able to directly detect it. But that only further excites Dvorkin, who is on a quest to uncover its secrets.
Inside Dynamical Systems and the Mathematics of Change
Bryna Kra searches for structures using symbolic dynamics. “[I love] finding order where you didn’t know it existed,” she said. "This is how I think about math: It’s about how things fit together."
How to Shrink Big Data
Jelani Nelson, a computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, expands the theoretical possibilities for low-memory streaming algorithms. He’s discovered the best procedures for answering on-the-fly questions like “How many different users are there?” (known as the distinct elements problem) and “What are the trending search terms right now?” (the frequent items problem). Nelson’s algorithms often use a technique called sketching, which compresses big data sets into smaller components that can be stored using less memory and analyzed quickly.
The 'Male' and 'Female' Brain: New Clues in an Age-Old Question
Questions like “why do men and women act differently?” are age-old, with tangled, deeply buried answers. But that is why Catherine Dulac, a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator and a professor of molecular and cellular biology at Harvard University, has become so well respected by her neuroscientist colleagues for the originality and creativity with which she has brought important answers to light.
2020's Biggest Breakthroughs in Physics
This year, two teams of physicists made profound progress on ideas that could bring about the next revolution in physics. Another still has identified the source of a longstanding cosmic mystery.
2020's Biggest Breakthroughs in Math and Computer Science
For mathematicians and computer scientists, 2020 was full of discipline-spanning discoveries and celebrations of creativity. We'd like to take a moment to recognize some of these achievements.
2020's Biggest Breakthroughs in Biology
In 2020, the study of the SARS-CoV-2 virus was undoubtedly the most urgent priority. But there were also some major breakthroughs in other areas. We'd like to take a moment to recognize them.
The Riemann Hypothesis, Explained
The Riemann hypothesis is the most notorious unsolved problem in all of mathematics. Ever since it was first proposed by Bernhard Riemann in 1859, the conjecture has maintained the status of the "Holy Grail" of mathematics. In fact, the person who solves it will win a $1 million prize from the Clay Institute of Mathematics. So, what is the Riemann hypothesis? Why is it so important? What can it tell us about the chaotic universe of prime numbers? And why is its proof so elusive? Alex Kontorovich, professor of mathematics at Rutgers University, breaks it all down in this comprehensive explainer.
What Makes Physics Beautiful, According to a Nobel Prize Winner
In this new video, Wilczek reflects on his life's work and describes what he believes to be the most beautiful equations in physics.
Meet One of NASA's Pioneering Women
In 1967, Christine Darden was added to the pool of "human computers" who wrote complex programs and tediously crunched numbers for engineers at NASA's Langley Research Center. But Darden wanted to do more than process the data — she wanted to create it. After wading through daily calculations for eight years, Darden approached her supervisor to ask why men with the same educational background as her (a master of science in applied mathematics) were being hired as engineers. Impressed by her skills, her supervisor transferred her to the engineering section, where she was one of few female aerospace engineers at NASA Langley during that time. Her first assignment was to write a computer program for sonic boom. That program launched a 25-year career of working sonic boom minimization.
How Cosmic Dust Reveals the Secrets of the Universe
Every year, roughly 10 particles of space dust land on each square meter of Earth’s surface. Matthew Genge, a planetary scientist at Imperial College London, specializes in these alien dust grains, known as micrometeorites. They float here from space rocks hundreds of millions of miles away, bearing tiny messages about the mysteries of our solar system.
Why COVID-19 Models Are Often Wrong
To understand what epidemiological models can tell us, it helps to first understand what they can’t. In this explainer, we break down how epidemiological models are built and dispel some of the common misunderstandings about their applications.
This U.S. Olympiad Coach Has a Unique Approach to Math
Po-Shen Loh believes math education needs an overhaul. And he knows a thing or two about it—he's resurrected the United States International Mathematical Olympiad team, leading it to four first-place rankings in the last six years as the team’s head coach.
Why Extraterrestrial Life Might Not Be So Alien
On the website for the department of zoology of the University of Cambridge, the page for Arik Kershenbaum lists his three main areas of research, one of which stands out from the others. Kershenbaum studies “Wolves and other canids,” “Dolphins and cetaceans” — and “Aliens.” Granted, science hasn’t yet found any aliens to study, but Kershenbaum says that there are certain things we can still say about them with reasonable certainty. Topping the list: They evolved. Read the full article at Quanta Magazine: https://www.quantamagazine.org/arik-kershenbaum-on-why-alien-life-may-be-like-life-on-earth-20210318/
Fighting for Equality in Computer Science and Beyond
Rediet Abebe uses the tools of theoretical computer science to understand pressing social problems — and try to fix them. Read more at Quanta Magazine: https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-computer-scientist-who-tackles-inequality-through-algorithms-20210401/
Iceland Is Mars, on Earth
Volcanoes are intimately connected with life. Scientists are using the current eruptions in Iceland to understand the possible history of life on Mars. Read the full article at Quanta Magazine: https://www.quantamagazine.org/icelands-volcanoes-reveal-the-hot-history-of-mars-20210406
Plate Tectonics: The Mystery of Earth's Many Faces
Plate tectonics is the narrative arc that ties every episode in Earth’s geologic history together. Thanks to the magnetic compasses hidden in volcanic rocks, scientists know where each tectonic jigsaw piece has been over eons of time. They can replicate the plates’ odysseys in beautiful and precise simulations that reveal the destruction and creation of Earth’s many faces. Lucía Pérez-Díaz, a geologist at Oxford, studies our planet's stunning ability to constantly change its face.
The Theory That Could Rewrite the Laws of Physics
Chiara Marletto is trying to build a master theory — a set of ideas so fundamental that all other theories would spring from it. Her first step: Invoke the impossible. Read more about Marletto and David Deutsch's constructor theory at Quanta Magazine: https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-to-rewrite-the-laws-of-physics-in-the-language-of-impossibility-20210429/
Black Hole Jets: One of the Biggest Mysteries in the Universe
At the heart of every galaxy lies one of the most mysterious objects in the universe: a supermassive black hole. Millions to billions of times the mass of our sun, these giants power astrophysical jets, one of the most energetic processes known to physics.
Quantum Computers, Explained With Quantum Physics
Quantum computers aren’t the next generation of supercomputers—they’re something else entirely. Before we can even begin to talk about their potential applications, we need to understand the fundamental physics that drives the theory of quantum computing. (Featuring Scott Aaronson, John Preskill, and Dorit Aharonov.)
What’s Inside an Exoplanet
Out in the vast universe, unknown billions of strange worlds drift around other stars. Many of them are quite unlike anything in our solar system. While astronomers hope to use immense upcoming observatories to get a better look at their outsides, Federica Coppari has been using the world’s largest laser to investigate their insides. Coppari compresses familiar substances, including rocks and water, into new forms. Her work has yielded insights into the inner workings of frozen giants such as Uranus and Neptune, as well as the potential habitability of super-Earths — rocky planets that dwarf our own.
The Bridge Between Math and Quantum Field Theory
Even in an incomplete state, quantum field theory is the most successful physical theory ever discovered. Nathan Seiberg, one of its leading architects, reveals where math and QFT converge.
The Most Successful Scientific Theory Ever: The Standard Model
The Standard Model of particle physics is the most successful scientific theory of all time. It describes how everything in the universe is made of 12 different types of matter particles, interacting with three forces, all bound together by a rather special particle called the Higgs boson. It’s the pinnacle of 400 years of science and gives the correct answer to hundreds of thousands of experiments. In this explainer, Cambridge University physicist David Tong recreates the model, piece by piece, to provide some intuition for how the fundamental building blocks of our universe fit together. At the end of the video, he also points out what’s missing from the model and what work is left to do in order to complete the Theory of Everything.
How to Build Truly Intelligent AI
Melanie Mitchell, the Davis professor of complexity at the Santa Fe Institute, has worked on digital minds for decades. She says AI will never truly be "intelligent" until it can do something uniquely human: make analogies.
How Scientists Finally Finished the Human Genome
In 2003, the Human Genome Project announced that it had successfully sequenced the entire human genome. That wasn’t quite true. Nearly 10% of human DNA was still missing from the map. Karen Miga, a geneticist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, co-founded an effort to sequence the missing DNA.
The Scientific Problem of Consciousness
Anil Seth wants to understand how minds work. As a neuroscientist at the University of Sussex in England, Seth has seen firsthand how neurons do what they do — but he knows that the puzzle of consciousness spills over from neuroscience into other branches of science, and even into philosophy.
Exoplanets: The Astronomer Looking into Alien Worlds
We know next to nothing about the other 6 billion or so Earth-like exoplanets in the galaxy. With the imminent launch of the largest, most powerful space telescope ever built, Laura Kreidberg is optimistic this will soon change. Kreidberg is the founding director of a new department at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, devoted to studying what the weather is like on alien worlds. NASA’s $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), set to launch in December after decades of planning and construction, will allow her to peer into alien skies and, she said, “turn these planets into places.”
When Biology Meets Computer Science
Anne Carpenter, a computational biologist and senior director of the Imaging Platform of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, brings the power of machine learning to researchers seeking answers in mountains of cell images. She developed CellProfiler, a widely used open-source software for measuring phenotypes (sets of observable traits) from cell images. It has been cited in more than 12,000 publications since its release in 2005.
How NASA’s Webb Telescope Will Transform Our Place in the Universe
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is the most powerful telescope in the history of humanity, and one of the most ambitious engineering projects ever attempted. It will witness the birth of stars and galaxies at the edge of time and probe alien skies for signs of life. In this new documentary from Quanta, JWST’s lead scientists and engineers discuss what inspired the telescope, how it was built, the extraordinary challenges it will face upon launch, and its potential discoveries.
2021's Breakthroughs in Neuroscience and Other Biology
A paradigm shift in how we think about the functions of the human brain. A long-awaited genetic sequence of Rafflesia arnoldii, the strangest flower in the world. A revelation in sleep science. These are some of the year's biggest discoveries in neuroscience and other areas of biology
2021's Biggest Breakthroughs in Physics
It was a big year. Fermilab discovered possible evidence of new physics with the muon G-2 experiment. Physicists created a time crystal, a new phase of matter that appears to violate one of nature’s most cherished laws. And we got a glimpse of an enormous pair of bubbles towering over the Milky Way
2021's Biggest Breakthroughs in Math and Computer Science
It was a big year. Researchers found a way to idealize deep neural networks using kernel machines—an important step toward opening these black boxes. There were major developments toward an answer about the nature of infinity. And a mathematician finally managed to model quantum gravity.
The Cosmologist Challenging Einstein
Celia Escamilla-Rivera discusses how she is using the tools of precision cosmology to hunt for a theory of gravity—in particular, teleparallel gravity—that incorporates dark energy more naturally than general relativity does. Read more at Quanta Magazine: https://www.quantamagazine.org/in-mexico-cosmologist-hunts-for-cracks-in-einsteins-gravity-theory-20220223/
How Geometry Shapes Our Lives
Jordan Ellenberg, a mathematician at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, enjoys studying the math underlying everyday phenomena. “Mathematics is part of the creative world,” Ellenberg says. “We create things all the time.”
The Biophysics of a Brainless Animal
Trichoplax adhaerens is a species of placozoa, the simplest animals at the base of the tree of life. It doesn't have a nervous system, yet it exhibits complex behaviors. How is this possible? The answer could illuminate the origins of the nervous system—and the future of robotics. “It’s a tour de force of biophysics,” said Orit Peleg of the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Steven Strogatz’s Secrets of Math Communication
Steven Strogatz — the acclaimed mathematician and author — hosts the new Quanta Magazine podcast "The Joy of Why." On March 18, 2022, he joined Quanta editor Thomas Lin for a Simons Foundation Presents conversation about teaching, writing and podcasting.
The Physicist Who Travels Across Disciplines, Space and Time
A playful polymath who is prone to leaping from string theory to Proust in mid-conversation, Vijay Balasubramanian of the University of Pennsylvania is a physicist, computer scientist and neuroscientist. He has made fundamental contributions to theories of black holes and quantum gravity by studying the information content of various systems, and he directs an entire second research group at Penn that details how the world’s physical features have sculpted the brain. In this video, Balasubramanian discusses his interdisciplinary work and the importance of education in the humanities. Read more at Quanta Magazine: https://www.quantamagazine.org/pondering-the-bits-that-build-space-time-and-brains-20220420
The Man Who Revolutionized Computer Science With Math
Leslie Lamport revolutionized how computers talk to each other. The Turing Award-winning computer scientist pioneered the field of distributed systems, where multiple components on different networks coordinate to achieve a common objective. (Internet searches, cloud computing and artificial intelligence all involve orchestrating legions of powerful computing machines to work together.) In the early 1980s, Lamport also created LaTeX, a document preparation system that provides sophisticated ways to typeset complex formulas and format scientific documents. In 1989, Lamport invented Paxos, a “consensus algorithm” that allows multiple computers to execute complex tasks; without it, modern computing could not exist. He’s also brought more attention to a handful of problems, giving them distinctive names like the bakery algorithm and the Byzantine Generals Problem.
Finally, a Picture of the Milky Way's Supermassive Black Hole
More than three years after the release of the first-ever image of a black hole, scientists from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) shared an image of Sagittarius A* (pronounced A-star) — the supermassive specimen sitting at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy. In this video, EHT's astronomers, astrophysicists and data scientists explain the science behind the big discovery.
The Biggest Project in Modern Mathematics
In a 1967 letter to the number theorist André Weil, a 30-year-old mathematician named Robert Langlands outlined striking conjectures that predicted a correspondence between two objects from completely different fields of math. The Langlands program was born. Today, it's one of the most ambitious mathematical feats ever attempted. Its symmetries imply deep, powerful and beautiful connections between the most important branches of mathematics. Many mathematicians agree that it has the potential to solve some of math's most intractable problems, in time, becoming a kind of “grand unified theory of mathematics," as the mathematician Edward Frenkel has described it. In a new video explainer, Rutgers University mathematician Alex Kontorovich takes us on a journey through the continents of mathematics to learn about the awe-inspiring symmetries at the heart of the Langlands program, including how Andrew Wiles solved Fermat's Last Theorem.
Exploring the Deep Mystery of Life's Origins
As an evolutionary biochemist at University College London, Nick Lane explores the deep mystery of how life evolved on Earth. His hypothesis that life arose through primitive metabolic reactions in deep-sea hydrothermal vents illuminates the outsized role that energy may have played in shaping evolution.
How Two Physicists Unlocked the Secrets of Two Dimensions
Condensed matter physics is the most active field of contemporary physics and has yielded some of the biggest breakthroughs of the past century. But as rapidly as technology has advanced, scientists have only scratched the surface. Now for the first time, Jie Shan and Fai Mak, a married couple of physicists at Cornell University, have figured out a way to create artificial atoms in the lab, opening the door to a new era in research.
One Man's Mission to Unveil Math's Beauty
"Students haven't been taught that math is discovery," says Richard Rusczyk, founder of Art of Problem Solving. "Math is a creative discipline—you're creating castles in the sky." Rusczyk has a vision for bringing “joyous, beautiful math” — and problem-solving — to classrooms everywhere. Read more at Quanta Magazine: https://www.quantamagazine.org/richard-rusczyk-is-a-math-evangelist-who-preaches-problem-solving-20220913/
The High Schooler Who Solved a Prime Number Theorem
In his senior year of high school, Daniel Larsen proved a key theorem about Carmichael numbers — strange entities that mimic the primes. “It would be a paper that any mathematician would be really proud to have written,” said one mathematician. Read more at Quanta Magazine: https://www.quantamagazine.org/teenager-solves-stubborn-riddle-about-prime-number-look-alikes-20221013
How Physicists Created a Wormhole in a Quantum Computer
Almost a century ago, Albert Einstein realized that the equations of general relativity could produce wormholes. But it would take a number of theoretical leaps and a “crazy” team of experimentalists to build one on Google's quantum computer.
2022's Biggest Breakthroughs in Math
Mathematicians made major progress in 2022, solving a centuries-old geometry question called the interpolation problem, proving the best way to minimize the surface area of clusters of up to five bubbles, and proving a sweeping statement about how structure emerges in random sets and graphs.
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