2025-08-15 04:45:19
Despite the hype, it’s been surprisingly challenging to find quantum algorithms that outperform classical ones. In this episode, UC Berkeley computer scientist, Ewin Tang, discusses her pioneering work in “dequantizing” quantum algorithms and what it means for the future of quantum computing.
“The Joy of Why” is a Quanta Magazine podcast about curiosity and the pursuit of knowledge. The mathematician and author Steven Strogatz and the astrophysicist and author Janna Levin take turns interviewing leading researchers about the great scientific and mathematical questions of our time.
- Listen to more episodes of Joy of Why: https://www.quantamagazine.org/tag/the-joy-of-why/
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CHAPTERS:
00:00 Janna and Steve on quantum algorithms
02:39 Ewin Tang introduction
02:59 Recommendation engines and matrices
06:25 What is an algorithm?
07:45 The ‘Recommendation Problem’ and quantum computing
09:59 The difference between quantum and classical algorithms
18:40 Tang proves classical algorithm beats quantum alternative
20:11 Janna and Steve discuss Tang’s breakthrough
21:39 "Dequantizing" algorithms
23:54 Will quantum computing fulfill its promise?
24:30 Modeling quantum physical systems
29:19 Modeling chemical reactions of nitrogenases
30:58 Finding practical applications for your research
32:15 AI and quantum computing
34:12 Janna and Steve on the importance of blue sky research
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The Joy of Why is an editorially independent publication supported by the Simons Foundation. Funding decisions by the Simons Foundation have no influence on the selection of topics, guests, or other editorial decisions in this podcast, or in Quanta Magazine. The Joy of Why is produced by PRX productions. The production team is Caitlin Faulds, Livia Brock, Genevieve Sponsler, and Merritt Jacob. The executive producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzalez. Edwin Ochoa is our project manager.
From Quanta Magazine, Simon Frantz and Samir Patel provided editorial guidance, with support from Matt Carlstrom, Samuel Velasco, Simone Barr, and Michael Kanyongolo. Samir Patel is Quanta's Editor in Chief. Our theme music is from APM Music. The episode art is by Peter Greenwood, and our logo is by Jaki King and Kristina Armitage. Special thanks to the Columbia Journalism School and the Cornell Broadcast Studios.
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Quanta Magazine is an editorially independent publication supported by the Simons Foundation. We focus on developments in mathematics, theoretical physics, theoretical computer science and the basic life sciences.
READ free math and science articles on the Quanta website: www.quantamagazine.org
LEARN about the Simons Foundation: www.simonsfoundation.org
FOLLOW our social channels:
- Instagram: quantamag
- Bluesky: @quantamagazine.bsky.social
- Facebook: quantanews
- X: quantamagazine
2025-08-02 00:58:04
Researchers Robert Hazen and Michael Wong have put forward a bold new law of nature — one that could explain how everything in the universe evolves, from atoms, minerals and stars to living cells, ecosystems and even human civilization. At the heart of their theory is the idea that information is as fundamental to the cosmos as mass, energy or charge. Their law revolves around a concept called functional information — a measure of the ratcheting-up of complexity and function in evolving systems over time.
Read the Quanta Magazine article "Why Everything in the Universe Turns More Complex" - https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-everything-in-the-universe-turns-more-complex-20250402/
PAPERS:
- "On the roles of function and selection in evolving systems" (2023); M. Wong, C. Cleland, D. Arend Jr, S. Bartlett, H. J. Cleaves II, H. Demarest, A. Prabhu, J. I. Lunine, R. Hazen - https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2310223120
- "Functional information: Molecular messages" (2003); J. Szostak - https://www.nature.com/articles/423689a
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CHAPTERS
00:00 The 'Law of Functional Information', a theory
01:19 The ten laws of classical physics
01:37 Entropy, the arrow of time and complexification
02:35 Three shared traits of all evolving systems
04:02 Three types of of selective persistence
05:36 Functional information explained in depth
07:41 Calculating functional information in Earth's minerals
09:46 Looking for functional information in our solar system
10:46 Criticisms of the theory
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Quanta Magazine is an editorially independent publication supported by the Simons Foundation. We focus on developments in mathematics, theoretical physics, theoretical computer science and the basic life sciences.
READ free math and science articles on the Quanta website: www.quantamagazine.org
LEARN about the Simons Foundation: www.simonsfoundation.org
FOLLOW our social channels:
- Instagram: quantamag
- Bluesky: @quantamagazine.bsky.social
- Facebook: quantanews
- X: quantamagazine
2025-06-28 03:49:52
One of the most important events in the history of life on Earth was the emergence of multicellularity. In this episode, Will Ratcliff discusses how his snowflake yeast models provide insight into what drove the transition from single-celled to multicellular organisms. S04E01
Will Ratcliff at Georgia Tech has been conducting long-term evolution experiments on yeast in which multicellularity develops and emerges spontaneously. Ratcliff's lab: https://biosciences.gatech.edu/people/will-ratcliff
“The Joy of Why” is a Quanta Magazine podcast about curiosity and the pursuit of knowledge. The mathematician and author Steven Strogatz and the astrophysicist and author Janna Levin take turns interviewing leading researchers about the great scientific and mathematical questions of our time.
- Listen to more episodes of Joy of Why: https://www.quantamagazine.org/tag/the-joy-of-why/
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Chapters:
00:00 - Steve and Janna: Welcome to Season Four
04:15 - Many Ways to Go Multicellular
11:00 - Why Go Multicellular?
14:13 - Directed Evolution
19:53 - Mutation Innovation
25:22 - Steve and Janna: What Doesn't Kill You
26:43 - Cellular Altruism
33:48 - Playing Out in Nature
36:33 - The MuLTEE-verse
42:24 - Steve and Janna: Driven by Curiosity
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The Joy of Why is an editorially independent publication supported by the Simons Foundation. Funding decisions by the Simons Foundation have no influence on the selection of topics, guests, or other editorial decisions in this podcast, or in Quanta Magazine. The Joy of Why is produced by PRX productions. The production team is Caitlin Faulds, Livia Brock, Genevieve Sponsler, and Merritt Jacob. The executive producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzalez. Edwin Ochoa is our project manager.
From Quanta Magazine, Simon Frantz and Samir Patel provided editorial guidance, with support from Matt Carlstrom, Samuel Velasco, Simone Barr, and Michael Kanyongolo. Samir Patel is Quanta's Editor in Chief. Our theme music is from APM Music. The episode art is by Peter Greenwood, and our logo is by Jaki King and Kristina Armitage. Special thanks to the Columbia Journalism School and the Cornell Broadcast Studios.
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Quanta Magazine is an editorially independent publication supported by the Simons Foundation. We focus on developments in mathematics, theoretical physics, theoretical computer science and the basic life sciences.
READ free math and science articles on the Quanta website: www.quantamagazine.org
LEARN about the Simons Foundation: www.simonsfoundation.org
FOLLOW our social channels:
- Instagram: quantamag
- Bluesky: @quantamagazine.bsky.social
- Facebook: quantanews
- X: quantamagazine
2025-06-07 21:00:07
Most organic molecules have a mirror-image twin. This concept is known as chirality. Yet life only uses one chiral molecule, not the other. The reason for this asymmetry is one of the greatest mysteries of biology. From Louis Pasteur to stereochemistry to the concept of mirror life, here is the science of chirality.
00:00 What is chirality?
01:47 Louis Pasteur's discovery
03:28 Thalidomide tragedy
04:42 Science of stereochemistry
07:29 Origin of life research
10:29 Risks of mirror life
12:02: Searching for life beyond Earth
Quanta Magazine is an editorially independent publication supported by the Simons Foundation. Visit our website at https://www.quantamagazine.org.
2025-05-16 06:14:15
Mathematician Maggie Miller explores the strange and fascinating world of 4D topology — the study of shapes, or manifolds, that resemble flat Euclidean space when viewed up close. Four-dimensional manifolds behave in unexpectedly complex ways, pushing mathematicians to develop advanced techniques to understand them.
Maggie Miller is an assistant professor in the mathematics department at the University of Texas at Austin. She was also a former Visiting Clay Fellow and Stanford Science Fellow.
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CHAPTERS
00:00 4D topology is weird
00:45 What is topology?
01:00 Manifolds
01:33 Examples of 1D manifolds
01:48 Examples of 2D manifolds
02:26 We live in a 3D manifold
03:05 4D manifolds explained
04:09 Why 4D topologists study 4D manifolds
05:11 4-torus manifold explained by analogy
10:28 Problems unique to 4D topology
10:44 Smooth vs continuous equivalency
12:04 Big open questions
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Quanta Magazine is an editorially independent publication supported by the Simons Foundation: https://www.simonsfoundation.org
2025-04-22 05:44:32
A team of amateurs recently came together in an online collaboration called the Busy Beaver Challenge to pin down the value of BB(5), the fifth "busy beaver" number — a notoriously difficult problem in theoretical computer science. The busy beaver problem, or “game,” involves finding the Turing machine with a given number of states that runs for the longest series of steps before halting. Using collaborative tools and the Coq proof assistant to verify their work, the team proved that BB(5) equals 47,176,870. The landmark result explores the limits of computation and the boundaries of what is knowable in mathematics.
Read Ben Brubaker's excellent Quanta Magazine Article for more details: "With Fifth Busy Beaver, Researchers Approach Computation’s Limits" https://www.quantamagazine.org/amateur-mathematicians-find-fifth-busy-beaver-turing-machine-20240702/
PAPERS
- Busy Beaver Challenge website https://bbchallenge.org/
- "The Busy Beaver Frontier", S. Aaronson 2020 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3427361.3427369
- "On Non-Computable Functions" T. Rado 1962 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/j.1538-7305.1962.tb00480.x
- "The determination of the value of Rado’s noncomputable function
for four-state Turing machines" A. Brady, 1983 https://www.ams.org/journals/mcom/1983-40-162/S0025-5718-1983-0689479-6/
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CHAPTERS
00:00 What is the Busy Beaver problem?
01:05 How does a Turing machine work?
02:35 Programs that halt versus getting stuck in endless loops: the Halting Problem
04:38 How to play the Busy Beaver game
05:26 BB(1), BB(2), BB(3), BB(4) solutions
06:38 The Busy Beaver Challenge tackles BB(5)
07:31 The history of the search for BB(5)
08:10 The Busy Beaver Challenge methodology
08:48 Coding 'deciders'' to shorten the list of contenders
09:49 Mysterious contributor confirms BB(5) solution
10:09 Coq proof of BB(5)
10:54 Is BB(6) solvable?
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- VISIT our website: https://www.quantamagazine.org
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Quanta Magazine is an editorially independent publication supported by the Simons Foundation: https://www.simonsfoundation.org
