Quanta Magazine

How Animals Build a Sense of Direction Podcast Episode · The Quanta Podcast · 02/17/2026 · 24m

When you navigate busy streets, a set of neurons is helping to guide you. But it’s not easy to simulate mental map-building in a lab.

Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/h...
Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/50Fx...

A New Complexity Theory for the Quantum Age | Quanta Magazine Henry Yuen is developing a new mathematical language to describe problems whose inputs and outputs aren’t ordinary numbers.

Henry Yuen went into computer science to design video games, but he ended up studying the theoretical foundations of quantum computing. "Looking back, I couldn't have predicted any of the twists and turns that my interests have taken," he said.

A New Complexity Theory for the Quantum Age | Quanta Magazine Henry Yuen is developing a new mathematical language to describe problems whose inputs and outputs aren’t ordinary numbers.

Traditional complexity theory can't accommodate problems with quantum inputs and outputs. Henry Yuen wants to build a new theory that can. @benbenbrubaker.bsky.social reports:
www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-comple...

In 1963, it was predicted that under certain conditions heat makes electrons move more easily in an electric current, like how warm honey is runnier than cold honey. More than 50 years later, this was finally observed with electrons flowing in graphene. www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-m...

Are the Mysteries of Quantum Mechanics Beginning To Dissolve? | Quanta Magazine Columnist Philip Ball thinks the phenomenon of decoherence might finally bridge the quantum-classical divide.

Parallel universes, mysterious collapses, divided worlds. These are among the interpretations of quantum theory’s relationship with reality. It’s no wonder that everyone still has questions.

Fed on Reams of Cell Data, AI Maps New Neighborhoods in the Brain | Quanta Magazine Machine learning is helping neuroscientists organize vast quantities of cells’ genetic data in the latest neurobiological cartography effort.

Much like city blocks in New York City, each cellular neighborhood in the brain is unique. Recently, Reza Abbasi-Asl (left) and Alex Lee programmed a machine learning algorithm to learn how and where different types of brain cells group together.

Physicists sent a stream of electrons down a “de Laval” nozzle — a sleek shape that rocket engines use to accelerate their exhaust. A shock wave appeared — a surefire sign that electrons were flowing like a fluid. www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-m...

The heartbeat and other bodily processes play a surprising role in shaping perception and cognition. (From the archive) www.quantamagazine.org/how-your-hea...

Out-of-Sync ‘Loners’ May Secretly Protect Orderly Swarms Studies of collective behavior usually focus on how crowds of organisms coordinate their actions. But what if the individuals that don’t participate have just as much to tell us?

“The theoretical idea of the loner as something that stabilizes the existence of the group is a very powerful one.” — self-organization researcher Fernando Rossine (From the archive)

The Poetry Fan Who Taught an LLM to Read and Write DNA | Quanta Magazine By treating DNA as a language, Brian Hie’s “ChatGPT for genomes” could pick up patterns that humans can’t see, accelerating biological design.

Much like the underlying structure within a Shakespearean sonnet, DNA sequences possess hidden patterns that are not initially apparent to the human eye.

In Cory Dean’s lab at Columbia University, electrons are coaxed into fluid-like states. His research may spawn a new way of thinking about quantum materials. www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-m...

Some scientists used to think that birds are just kind of stupid. In the 1960s, the neuroanatomist Harvey Karten’s research into avian neural circuits changed how the field viewed bird intelligence. www.quantamagazine.org/intelligence...

Are the Mysteries of Quantum Mechanics Beginning To Dissolve? | Quanta Magazine Columnist Philip Ball thinks the phenomenon of decoherence might finally bridge the quantum-classical divide.

Qualia essays go where curiosity leads. This week, follow @philipcball.bsky.social down the rabbit hole into the subatomic realm, where he examines entanglement's role as the bridge between the quantum and classical worlds. www.quantamagazine.org/are-the-myst...

AI-generated high-definition neural maps are offering new inroads to our understanding of brain health and disease.
quantamagazine.org/fed-on-reams...

Inside the Ross Sea dinoflagellate, native to Antarctic waters, expansion microscopy revealed protein complexes crucial for photosynthesis. These interactions offer insight into early evolutionary steps of eukaryotes but are still not fully understood.
www.quantamagazine.org/expansion-mi...

Fed on Reams of Cell Data, AI Maps New Neighborhoods in the Brain | Quanta Magazine Machine learning is helping neuroscientists organize vast quantities of cells’ genetic data in the latest neurobiological cartography effort.

You’ve heard the old real estate adage: Location, location, location! Bosilikja Tasic, a “biological cartographer,” says this is true for the brain too. Tasic used AI to build amazingly detailed maps of the mouse brain. “Location is everything,” she said.

How Modern and Antique Technologies Reveal a Dynamic Cosmos | Quanta Magazine Today’s observatories document every pulse and flash in the sky each night. To understand how the cosmos has changed over longer periods, scientists rely on a more tactile technology.

Our understanding of the night skies is built on a century of analog astrophotography.

Physicists Make Electrons Flow Like Water | Quanta Magazine We describe electricity as a flow, but that’s not what happens in a typical wire. Physicists have begun to induce electrons to act like fluids, an effort that could illuminate new ways of thinking abo...

Physicists have induced electrons to act as fluids, an effort that may lead to new electronics and new ways of thinking about quantum systems. @walkingthedot.bsky.social reports: www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-m...

During a volcanic eruption, lava forms a scorching, chaotic river. But once it cools enough to enter a state of equilibrium, mathematicians can describe it using a class of equations called elliptic PDEs, which a recent proof has finally illuminated.
www.quantamagazine.org/long-sought-...

Expansion microscopy is possible for any lab with a basic microscope. It’s allowing biologists to observe cellular processes like never before. www.quantamagazine.org/expansion-mi...

Six Math Essentials The “Mozart of mathematics” invites readers on a brief tour of six core ideas—numbers, algebra, geometry, probability, analysis, and dynamics—that ca...

We’re thrilled to announce that Terence Tao (@teorth.bsky.social)’s SIX MATH ESSENTIALS is available for preorder: us.macmillan.com/books/978037.... A whirlwind tour through six core ideas that have guided mathematicians from antiquity to the frontiers of what we know today. Pubs October 27, 2026.

Mathematicians Want To Make Fluid Equations Glitch Out Podcast Episode · The Quanta Podcast · 02/10/2026 · 24m

Mathematicians study fluids, such as water coming out of a hose, using equations that they suspect harbor hidden glitches. Last year, researchers trained AI models to find scenarios where various kinds of equations might “blow up.”
Tune in to The Quanta Podcast: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/m...

Intelligence Evolved at Least Twice in Vertebrate Animals | Quanta Magazine Complex neural circuits likely arose independently in birds and mammals, suggesting that vertebrates evolved intelligence multiple times.

“A bird with a 10-gram brain is doing pretty much the same as a chimp with a 400-gram brain,” said Onur Güntürkün, who studies brain structures at Ruhr University Bochum in Germany. “How is it possible?”

Cristiana De Filippis has been developing a broad theory to better understand the solutions to partial differential equations — a class of equations that describe all sorts of phenomena in nature. She recently proved a major conjecture about them. www.quantamagazine.org/long-sought-...

Fed on Reams of Cell Data, AI Maps New Neighborhoods in the Brain | Quanta Magazine Machine learning is helping neuroscientists organize vast quantities of cells’ genetic data in the latest neurobiological cartography effort.

Biologists have fed genetic data from millions of mouse brain cells into a custom machine learning algorithm. The program delivered maps of the brain with unprecedented detail, revealing a thousand-plus novel regions.
www.quantamagazine.org/fed-on-reams...

Every telescope during the century before 1980 used glass plate photography. Stored in stable conditions and not piled up with weight on top, they can endure for centuries. www.quantamagazine.org/how-modern-a...

Why Everything in the Universe Turns More Complex | Quanta Magazine A new suggestion that complexity increases over time, not just in living organisms but in the nonliving world, promises to rewrite notions of time and evolution.

Is life itself, and perhaps consciousness and higher intelligence, inevitable in the universe? That depends on how complexity evolves.

A recent breakthrough a century in the making is helping mathematicians model systems that change in space but not in time — like the temperature of a lava flow at equilibrium, the distribution of nutrients in tissues, or the shape of a soap film. www.quantamagazine.org/long-sought-...

How Modern and Antique Technologies Reveal a Dynamic Cosmos | Quanta Magazine Today’s observatories document every pulse and flash in the sky each night. To understand how the cosmos has changed over longer periods, scientists rely on a more tactile technology.

The night sky simmers and sparks. Any attempt to understand what we see in the cosmos relies on knowing how it changes, night after night. These variations are preserved beautifully on a hundred years of glass plate photographs.

Astoundingly vivid images are coming to light in Omaya Dudin’s lab, where he is experimenting with expansion biology. www.quantamagazine.org/expansion-mi...