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Audio Edition: Quantum Speedup Found for Huge Class of Hard Problems
Season 1 Episode 28
It’s been difficult to find important questions that quantum computers can answer faster than classical machines, but a new algorithm appears to do i…
4 months, 3 weeks ago
What Can a Cell Remember?
Season 1 Episode 27
“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, b…
5 months ago
Climate Modeling Is at a Crossroads
Season 1 Episode 26
The climate is changing. So is the way we understand the climate. On this week's episode, contributing writer Zack Savitsky joins host Samir Patel to…
5 months, 1 week ago
Audio Edition: A New, Chemical View of Ecosystems
Season 1 Episode 26
Rare and powerful compounds, known as keystone molecules, can build a web of invisible interactions among species.
The story A New, Chemical View of E…
5 months, 1 week ago
AI's Dark Side Is Only a Nudge Away
Season 1 Episode 25
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 …
5 months, 1 week ago
How We Came To Know Earth
Season 1 Episode 24
For most of us, the word “climate” immediately generates thoughts of melting ice, rising seas, wildfires and gathering storms. However, in the course…
5 months, 2 weeks ago
Audio Edition: ‘Once in a Century’ Proof Settles Math’s Kakeya Conjecture
Season 1 Episode 24
The deceptively simple Kakeya conjecture has bedeviled mathematicians for 50 years. A new proof of the conjecture in three dimensions illuminates a w…
5 months, 3 weeks ago
How a 17-Year-Old Solved a Major Math Mystery
Season 1 Episode 23
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 …
5 months, 3 weeks ago
Earth’s Core Appears To Be Leaking Up and Out of Earth’s Surface
Season 1 Episode 22
In science textbooks, Earth looks like a round layer cake. There's a hard line between the liquid metal core and the putty-like rock mantle. But mayb…
6 months ago
Audio Edition: The Road Map to Alien Life Passes Through the ‘Cosmic Shoreline’
Season 1 Episode 21
Astronomers are ready to search for the fingerprints of life in faraway planetary atmospheres. But first, they need to know where to look — and that …
6 months, 1 week ago