Rare and powerful compounds, known as keystone molecules, can build a web of invisible interactions among species.The story A New, Chemical View of Ecosystems first appeared on Quanta Magazine.
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AI's Dark Side Is Only a Nudge Away
In order to trust machines with important jobs, we need a high level of confidence that they share our values and goals. Recent work shows that this “alignment” can be brittle, superficial, even unstable. In one study, a few training adjustments led a popular chatbot to recommend murder. On this episode, contributing writer Stephen Ornes tells host Samir Patel about what this research reveals.Audio coda from The National Archives and Records Administration.
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How We Came To Know Earth
For most of us, the word “climate” immediately generates thoughts of melting ice, rising seas, wildfires and gathering storms. However, in the course of working to understand this pressing challenge, scientists have revealed so much more: A fundamental understanding of how Earth’s climate works. Quanta recently published a nine-story series that investigates this basic science. On this episode of The Quanta Podcast, senior editor Hannah Waters joins editor in chief Samir Patel to discuss how humans have come to understand our planet.Crying Glacier Audio Coda by Ludwig Berger, Lutz Stautner and Philipp Becker
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Audio Edition: ‘Once in a Century’ Proof Settles Math’s Kakeya Conjecture
The deceptively simple Kakeya conjecture has bedeviled mathematicians for 50 years. A new proof of the conjecture in three dimensions illuminates a whole crop of related problems.The story ‘Once in a Century’ Proof Settles Math’s Kakeya Conjecture first appeared on Quanta Magazine.
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How a 17-Year-Old Solved a Major Math Mystery
In the field of harmonic analysis, there’s a constellation of questions about how the energy of a wave concentrates.Earlier this year, a 17-year-old high school student named Hannah Cairo solved a 40-year-old mystery about how some of these waves behave, surprising and exciting mathematicians. Cairo has not yet obtained a high school or undergraduate degree, but she recently began a doctoral program at the University of Maryland to continue her already impressive career studying mathematics. In this week's episode, math editor Jordana Cepelewicz joins host Samir Patel to discuss the significance of Cairo's proof.Each week on The Quanta Podcast, Quanta Magazine editor in chief Samir Patel speaks with the people behind the award-winning publication to navigate through some of the most important and mind-expanding questions in science and math.
Exploring the distant universe, the insides of cells, the abstractions of math, the complexity of information itself, and much more, The Quanta Podcast is a tour of the frontier between the known and the unknown. 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. Quanta specifically covers fundamental research — driven by curiosity, discovery and the overwhelming desire to know why and how. Join us every Tuesday for a stimulating conversation about the biggest ideas and the tiniest details.(If you've been a fan of the Quanta Science Podcast, it will continue here. You'll see those episodes marked as audio edition episodes every two weeks.)
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