Podcast Episodes
Back to Search
Are the Little Red Dots Actually Black Hole Suns?
When all you can see is a speck, it’s hard to tell what you’re looking at. Astronomers first argued that little red dots spotted by the James Webb Sp…
16 hours ago
Four-Color Theorem Is Still a Math Favorite
In 1852, the mathematician Francis Guthrie was coloring in a map of English counties when he noticed that he needed only four colors. Was this always…
1 week ago
Audio Edition: ‘Reverse Mathematics’ Illuminates Why Hard Problems Are Hard
Researchers have used metamathematical techniques to show that certain theorems that look superficially distinct are in fact logically equivalent.
The…
1 week, 5 days ago
Does Computer Science Need Computers?
In popular culture, computer science is practically synonymous with programming. There are obviously branches of computer science in which computer h…
2 weeks ago
How the Brain Compresses Our Noisy World
If you are well rested and full, your brain tells you that a bruised overripe apple is a piece of subpar fruit to be passed over. However, if you are…
3 weeks ago
Audio Edition: A Cell So Minimal That It Challenges Definitions of Life
The newly described microbe represents a world of parasitic, intercellular biodiversity only beginning to be revealed by genome sequencing.
The articl…
3 weeks, 5 days ago
Picking Teams With the Math of Imbalance
Combinatorial discrepancy theory is a branch of mathematics concerned with balance. If you’re making two teams — sports, trivia, you name it — how ca…
4 weeks ago
What Makes a Fluid a Fluid?
The Navier-Stokes equations are enormously successful at predicting how fluids flow and swirl. But they fail to account for the microscopic bits that…
1 month ago
Audio Edition: New Proofs Probe Soap-Film Singularities
Mathematicians have broken through a long-standing barrier in the study of “minimizing surfaces,” which play an important role in both math and physi…
1 month, 1 week ago
Is AI Reasoning Right for the Wrong Reasons?
Reasoning comes in many technically defined forms, but the basic procedure is easily recognizable: arriving at a sound conclusion by linking together…
1 month, 1 week ago