The Joy of Why

38:47

What Is the True Promise of Quantum Computing?

The Joy of Why ·

2025/04/03

Quantum computing promises unprecedented speed, but in practice, it’s proven remarkably difficult to find important questions that quantum machines can solve faster than classical ones. One of the most notable demonstrations of this came from Ewin Tang who rose to prominence in the field as a teenager. When quantum algorithms had in principle cracked the so-called recommendation problem, Tang designed classical algorithms that could match them.So began the approach of “dequantizing,” in

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46:06

How Did Multicellular Life Evolve?

The Joy of Why ·

2025/03/20

At first, life on Earth was simple. Cells existed, functioned and reproduced as free-living individuals. But then, something remarkable happened. Some cells joined forces, working together instead of being alone. This transition, known as multicellularity, was a pivotal event in the history of life on Earth. Multicellularity enabled greater biological complexity, which sparked an extraordinary diversity of organisms and structures.How life evolved from unicellular to multicellular organisms

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17:55

S4 Preview: More Big Questions and No Sasquatches

The Joy of Why ·

2025/03/13

How did complex life evolve? Where did space-time come from? Will computers ever understand language like we do? How did geometry create modern physics? These are just a few of the big and bold questions that we’ll be exploring in the latest season of Quanta’s interview podcast, “The Joy of Why,” starting March 20, and released every other Thursday.As ever, we will be talking to researchers and exploring the latest thinking on great scientific and mathematical questions of our time. But

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37:55

How Will We Know We’re Not Alone?

The Joy of Why ·

2024/12/19

We have identified thousands of planets just in our neighborhood in the Milky Way, mostly from the way they impact their host stars. Basic calculations suggest that there are countless more across the galaxy, and that billions of them could potentially support life. But what kind of life they host, and how we would be able to detect the presence of those biological processes from Earth, remain big questions in the world of exoplanets and astrobiology. What technologies might lie ahead to

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38:57

How Is Cell Death Essential to Life?

The Joy of Why ·

2024/12/05

Death might seem like a pure loss, the disappearance of what makes a living thing distinct from everything else on our planet. But zoom in closer, to the cellular level, and death takes on a different, more nuanced meaning. There is a challenge in simply defining what makes an individual cell alive or dead. Scientists today are working to understand the various ways and reasons that cells disappear, and what these processes mean to biological systems. In this episode, cellular biologist

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42:15

What Can Birdsong Teach Us About Human Language?

The Joy of Why ·

2024/11/21

It’s fair to say that enjoyment of a podcast would be severely limited without the human capacity to create and understand speech. That capacity has often been cited as a defining characteristic of our species, and one that sets us apart in the long history of life on Earth. Yet we know that other species communicate in complex ways. Studies of the neurological foundations of language suggest that birdsong, or communication among bats or elephants, originates with brain structures similar

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37:01

How Is AI Changing the Science of Prediction?

The Joy of Why ·

2024/11/07

Scientists routinely build quantitative models — of, say, the weather or an epidemic — and then use them to make predictions, which they can then test against the real thing. This work can reveal how well we understand complex phenomena, and also dictate where research should go next. In recent years, the remarkable successes of “black box” systems such as large language models suggest that it is sometimes possible to make successful predictions without knowing how something works at

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30:19

Why Is It So Hard to Define a Species?

The Joy of Why ·

2024/10/24

The “species” category is almost certainly the best known of all the taxonomic classifications that biologists use to organize life’s vast diversity. It’s a linchpin of both conservation policy and evolutionary theory, though in practice biologists have struggled to find a definition that works across the natural world. In this episode, Kevin de Queiroz, a zoologist and evolutionary biologist, talks with host Janna Levin about the variety of ways to conceive of a species, and ways to

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42:58

How Can Math Help Beat Cancer?

The Joy of Why ·

2024/10/10

When we think about medicine’s war on cancer, treatments such as surgery, radiation and chemotherapy spring to mind first. Now there is another potential weapon for defeating tumors: statistics and mathematical models that can optimize the selection, combination or timing of treatment. Building and feeding these models requires accounting for the complexity of the body, and recognizing that cancer cells are constantly evolving. In this episode, host Steven Strogatz hears from Franziska

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44:42

What Can Cave Life Tell Us About Alien Ecosystems?

The Joy of Why ·

2024/09/26

If instruments do someday detect evidence of life beyond Earth, whether it’s in this solar system or in the farther reaches of space, astrobiologists want to be ready. One of the best ways to learn how alien life might function can be to study the organisms called extremophiles, which live in incredibly challenging environments on or in the Earth. In this episode, Penelope Boston, a microbiologist who has worked for many years with NASA, speaks with Janna Levin about the bizarre life found

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34:37

From Sidedoor — Cosmic Journey I: "Stellar Buffoonery"

The Joy of Why ·

2024/09/19

As a treat to our listeners, we are posting a full episode of Sidedoor, a podcast that explores the treasures in the Smithsonian's vaults. Subscribe to Sidedoor from Smithsonian wherever you listen to podcasts!Black holes could unlock the mysteries of creation and live at the heart of nearly every galaxy. But these invisible balls of extremely dense matter have never been fully understood, especially when they were only a theory. We travel through a cosmic wormhole back to the 1930s to

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43:00

Can Thermodynamics Go Quantum?

The Joy of Why ·

2024/09/12

The principles of thermodynamics are cornerstones of our understanding of physics. But they were discovered in the era of steam-driven technology, long before anyone dreamed of quantum mechanics. In this episode, theoretical physicist Nicole Yunger Halpern talks to host Steven Strogatz about how physicists today are reinterpreting concepts such as work, energy and information for a quantum world.

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42:25

Do We Need a New Theory of Gravity?

The Joy of Why ·

2024/08/29

Observations of the cosmos suggest that unseen sources of gravity — dark matter — tug at the stars in galaxies, while another mysterious force — dark energy — drives the universe to expand at an ever-increasing rate. The evidence for both of them, however, hinges on assumptions that gravity works the same way at all scales. What if that’s not true? In this episode, theoretical physicist Claudia de Rham explains her work on an alternative explanation called “massive gravity” to host Janna

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38:29

Are Robots About to Level Up?

The Joy of Why ·

2024/08/15

Within just a few years, artificial intelligence systems that sometimes seem to display almost human characteristics have gone from science fiction to apps on your phone. But there’s another AI-influenced frontier that is developing rapidly and remains untamed: robotics. Can the technologies that have helped computers get smarter now bring similar improvements to the robots that will work alongside us? In this episode, Daniela Rus, a pioneering roboticist at the Massachusetts Institute of

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38:22

Are Robots About to Level Up?

The Joy of Why ·

2024/08/15

Within just a few years, artificial intelligence systems that sometimes seem to display almost human characteristics have gone from science fiction to apps on your phone. But there’s another AI-influenced frontier that is developing rapidly and remains untamed: robotics. Can the technologies that have helped computers get smarter now bring similar improvements to the robots that will work alongside us? In this episode, Daniela Rus, a pioneering roboticist at the Massachusetts Institute of

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36:56

How Does Math Keep Secrets?

The Joy of Why ·

2024/08/01

Can you keep a secret? Modern techniques for maintaining the confidentiality of information are based on mathematical problems that are inherently too difficult for anyone to solve without the right hints. Yet what does that mean when quantum computers capable of solving many problems astronomically faster are on the horizon? In this episode, host Janna Levin talks with computer scientist Boaz Barak about the cryptographic techniques that keep information confidential, and why “security through

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23:59

How Does Math Keep Our Secrets?

The Joy of Why ·

2024/08/01

Can you keep a secret? Modern techniques for maintaining the confidentiality of information are based on mathematical problems that are inherently too difficult for anyone to solve without the right hints. Yet what does that mean when quantum computers capable of solving many problems astronomically faster are on the horizon? In this episode, host Janna Levin talks with computer scientist Boaz Barak about the cryptographic techniques that keep information confidential, and why “security

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44:10

Will AI Ever Have Common Sense?

The Joy of Why ·

2024/07/18

Ask a question of ChatGPT and other, similar chatbots and there’s a good chance you’ll be impressed at how adeptly it comes up with a good answer — unless it spits out unrealistic nonsense instead. Part of what’s mystifying about these kinds of machine learning systems is that they are fundamentally black boxes. No one knows precisely how they arrive at the answers that they do. Given that mystery, is it possible that these systems in some way truly understand the world and the questions they

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44:16

Will AI Ever Have Common Sense?

The Joy of Why ·

2024/07/18

Common sense rules our world. This fundamental, sometimes trivial knowledge is inherent to how humans interpret language. Yet, some of these simple human truths are so obvious that they're rarely put into words. And without the data of common sense to train on, large language models such as ChatGPT have bizarre, often humorous blind spots.Yejin Choi, professor and the chair of computer science at the University of Washington, calls common sense the “dark matter” of intelligence. In this

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39:17

How Is Tiling Without Repetition Possible?

The Joy of Why ·

2024/07/03

In the tiling of wallpaper and bathroom floors, collective repeated patterns often emerge. Mathematicians have long tried to find a tiling shape that never repeats in this way. In 2023, they lauded an unexpected amateur victor. That discovery of the elusive aperiodic monotile propelled the field into new dimensions.The study of tessellation is much more than a fun thought exercise: Peculiar, rare tiling formations can sometimes seem to tell us something about the natural world, from the structure

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