The Quanta Podcast

When pigeons outnumber pigeonholes, some birds must double up. This obvious statement — and its inverse — have deep connections to many areas of math and computer science.

It’s been difficult to find important questions that quantum computers can answer faster than classical machines, but a new algorithm appears to do it for some critical optimization tasks.

The deceptively simple Kakeya conjecture has bedeviled mathematicians for 50 years. A new proof of the conjecture in three dimensions illuminates a whole crop of related problems.

After decades of uncertainty, a motley team of programmers has proved precisely how complicated simple computer programs can get.