The Quanta Podcast

After just a few months of work, a complete newcomer to the world of sphere packing has solved one of its biggest open problems.

A better understanding of human smell is emerging as scientists interrogate its fundamental elements: the odor molecules that enter your nose and the individual neurons that translate them into perception in your brain.

Scientists reconstructed 500 million years of evolutionary history to reveal which came first: colorful signals or the color vision needed to see them.

Two new notions of infinity challenge a long-standing plan to define the mathematical universe.

By speedrunning ecosystems with microbes, researchers revealed intrinsic properties that may make a community susceptible to invasion.

A new argument explores how the growth of disorder could cause massive objects to move toward one another. Physicists are both interested and skeptical.

Reversible programs run backward as easily as they run forward, saving energy in theory. After decades of research, they may soon power AI.

Black hole and Big Bang singularities break our best theory of gravity. A trilogy of theorems hints that physicists must go to the ends of space and time to find a fix.

One computer scientist’s “stunning” proof is the first progress in 50 years on one of the most famous questions in computer science.