Studies of neural metabolism reveal our brain’s effort to keep us alive and the evolutionary constraints that sculpted our most complex organ.The story How Much Energy Does It Take To Think? first ...
Ask ChatGPT how to build a bomb, and it will flatly respond that it “can’t help with that.” But users have long played a cat-and-mouse game to try to trick language models into providing forbidden ...
(This episode was first published in June 2025.)Changes in the number, shape, efficiency and interconnectedness of organelles in the cells of flight muscles provide extra energy for birds’ continen...
(This episode was first published in July 2025.) Where does gravity come from? In both general relativity and quantum mechanics, this question is a big problem. One controversial theory propos...
By extending the scope of the key insight behind Fermat’s Last Theorem, four mathematicians have made great strides toward building a “grand unified theory” of math.The story The Core of Fermat’s L...
We all know that hot coffee cools down. But quantum mechanics can enable heat to flow the “wrong” way, making hot objects hotter and cold objects colder. Now physicists think this might have an ing...
In math and science, knots do far more than keep shoes on feet. For more than a century, mathematicians have studied the properties of different knots and been rewarded by a wide range of useful ap...
When pigeons outnumber pigeonholes, some birds must double up. This obvious statement — and its inverse — have deep connections to many areas of math and computer science.The story How a Problem Ab...
Every summer since 1983, scientists at Crater Lake National Park have gathered data about the lake’s famous clarity. This past summer, Quanta contributing writer Rachel Nuwer journeyed with them as...
How do sellers decide how to price their goods? Competition should keep prices down, while collusion can rig higher prices (and break the law). On this week’s episode, host Samir Patel speaks with ...
At first glance, studying the math of waves seems like it should be smooth sailing. But the equations that describe even the gentlest rolling waves are a mathematical nightmare to solve. On this we...
Salvador Dalí, Thomas Edison and Edgar Allan Poe all took inspiration from the state between sleep and waking life. On this week’s episode, host Samir Patel speaks with biology staff writer Yasemin...
A powerful mathematical technique is used to model melting ice and other phenomena. But it has long been imperiled by certain “nightmare scenarios.” A new proof has removed that obstacle.The story ...
Recently, astrophysicists identified something peculiar: An enormous “naked” black hole with no galaxy in sight. On this week’s episode, host Samir Patel speaks with physics staff writer Charlie Wo...
Thanks to a delicate interplay between plate tectonics and life, Earth’s thermostat has kept animal life thriving on our planet for half a billion years. On this week’s episode, host Samir Patel sp...
A new proposal makes the case that paraparticles — a new category of quantum particle — could be created in exotic materials.The story ‘Paraparticles’ Would Be a Third Kingdom of Quantum Particle f...
Imagine a set of simple building blocks that can self-assemble into any shape you want. The possibilities for such a technology could be boundless. Inspired by nature, “complexity engineering” seek...
Around 6,000 years ago, the Sahara was a lush grassland. Then, as if a switch flipped, it began to dry out, becoming the desert that we know today. Tipping points are moments in Earth’s history whe...
It’s been difficult to find important questions that quantum computers can answer faster than classical machines, but a new algorithm appears to do it for some critical optimization tasks.The story...
“Memory” means many things to many people, and in many fields. We tend to understand memory to be a phenomenon that happens primarily in the brain, but in recent years, researchers have understood ...
