Gesamtlänge aller Episoden: 3 days 8 hours 15 minutes
Neuroscientists uncovered an energy-saving mode in vision-system neurons that works at the cost of being able to see fine-grained details. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is "Unanswered Questions" by Kevin MacLeod.
Mathematicians recently figured out a near-optimal way to go with the flow.
A graduate student recently proved Paul Erdős' conjecture about what makes the prime numbers particularly unique among primitive sets.
The second law of thermodynamics is among the most sacred in all of science, but it has always rested on 19th century arguments about probability. New arguments trace its true source to the flows of quantum information.
Robots are about to venture into the sunless depths of lunar craters to investigate ancient water ice trapped there, while remote studies find hints about how water arrives on rocky worlds. Read more and explore infographics at quantamagazine.org.
Quantum field theory may be the most successful scientific theory of all time, but there's reason to think it's missing something. Steven Strogatz speaks with theoretical physicist David Tong about this enigmatic theory.
For centuries, mathematicians have tried to prove that Euler's fluid equations can produce nonsensical answers. A new approach to machine learning has researchers betting that "blowup" is near. Read more at quantamagazine.org. Music is "Pulse" by Geographer.
The existence of secure cryptography depends on one of the oldest questions in computational complexity.
Dopamine, a neurochemical often associated with reward behavior, also seems to help organize precisely when the brain initiates movements. It's the latest revelation about the power of neuromodulators.
Biomechanical interactions, rather than neurons, control the movements of one of the simplest animals. The discovery offers a glimpse into how animal behavior worked before neurons evolved.