The Quanta Podcast

The James Webb Space Telescope spots mysterious “little red dots” everywhere. A bold new theory suggests they’re suns dozens of times larger than our entire solar system.

By revisiting the famous problem — which was controversially solved in the 1970s with the help of computers — mathematicians have gained important new insights into the nature of graphs.

The theoretical side of the field doesn’t require computing machines. But many questions would never have been posed without them.

An updated view of categorization reflects the modern understanding that the nervous system is more of a prediction engine than a filing cabinet.

For the first time in 30 years, computer scientists have found a better way to allocate objects evenly between two groups.

From the 1800s to the early 2000s, physicists used the same theory to understand the behavior of fluids. Now, using a modern insight, they have redefined fluids from the bottom up.

The idea that artificial intelligence can “reason” is more intuitive than ever. But intuitions can be wrong, and the science is far from settled.

An invisible difference in 10% of humans poses deep mysteries in several fields at once.

The idea of ‘biological agency’ — that life devises its own goals and behaves accordingly — complicates our understanding of what it means to be alive. But does it serve a scientific purpose?