Quanta Magazine: Season 2015 - 23 Episode s
2015x1 - What Happens if You Fall Into a Black Hole?
June 10, 2015
David Kaplan explores one of the biggest mysteries in physics: the apparent contradiction between general relativity and quantum mechanics.
2015x2 - Freeman Dyson: A ‘Rebel’ Without a Ph.D.
June 11, 2015
A wide-ranging interview with the legendary mathematical physicist Freeman Dyson in which he discusses his work with Richard Feynman, his attempts to build a spaceship propelled by nuclear bombs and his controversial views on climate change.
2015x3 - Artur Avila: A Brazilian Wunderkind Who Calms Chaos
June 12, 2015
A video profile of the mathematician Artur Avila, whose solutions to ubiquitous problems in chaos theory have earned him Brazil’s first Fields Medal in 2014.
2015x4 - Manjul Bhargava: The Musical, Magical Number Theorist
June 15, 2015
A video profile of the 2014 Fields medalist Manjul Bhargava, whose search for artistic truth and beauty has led to some of the most profound recent discoveries in number theory.
2015x5 - Where Did the Universe Come From?
June 16, 2015
Where did the universe come from? David Kaplan explores the leading cosmological explanation with the help of a baking metaphor.
2015x6 - Yitang Zhang: An Unlikely Math Star Rises
June 17, 2015
The opening scene from George Csicsery’s film "Counting From Infinity," about Yitang Zhang, a previously unknown mathematician who two years ago solved a major problem in number theory that catapulted him to mathematical stardom.
2015x7 - Martin Hairer: In Noisy Equations, One Who Heard Music
June 19, 2015
A video profile of the 2014 Fields medalist Martin Hairer, whose epic masterpiece in stochastic analysis, experts say, “created a whole world.”
2015x8 - Maryam Mirzakhani: A Tenacious Explorer of Abstract Surfaces
June 23, 2015
A video profile of the 2014 Fields medalist Maryam Mirzakhani, whose monumental work draws deep connections between topology, geometry and dynamical systems.
2015x9 - Subhash Khot: A Grand Vision for the Impossible
June 24, 2015
A video profile of the 2014 Nevanlinna Prize winner Subhash Khot, whose bold conjecture is helping mathematicians explore the precise limits of computation.
2015x10 - Alan Guth: How Many Two-Headed Cows in a Multiverse?
July 2, 2015
In an infinitely branching multiverse, says MIT cosmologist Alan Guth, “there are an infinite number of one-headed cows and an infinite number of two-headed cows. What happens to the ratio?”
2015x11 - Hiranya Peiris: How to Test If We Live in a Multiverse
July 9, 2015
University College London physicist Hiranya Peiris explains the seemingly impossible -- how the multiverse can be experimentally tested.
2015x12 - How Did Life Begin on Earth?
July 20, 2022
In this 2-minute video, David Kaplan explores the leading theories for the origin of life on our planet.
2015x13 - Fly-Vac: Groundhog Day for Fruit Flies
July 21, 2015
Benjamin de Bivort’s lab at Harvard University developed a device called the fly-vac to study individual behavior. Upon entering a chamber, the fly must choose to walk toward the light or dark end. A vacuum then sucks it back to the starting point, and it makes the choice again.
2015x14 - Why Do Flies Walk This Way?
July 22, 2015
In a device in Benjamin de Bivort’s lab at Harvard University, a fly wanders through a tiny Y-shaped maze, choosing at the Y’s vertex whether to walk left or right. This array of Y-mazes allows researchers to track individual behavior in many flies simultaneously.
2015x15 - How Symmetry Shapes Nature’s Laws
August 17, 2015
In this 2-minute video, David Kaplan explains how the search for hidden symmetries leads to discoveries like the Higgs boson.
2015x16 - James Bullock: The Case for Complex Dark Matter
August 25, 2015
James Bullock, a physicist at the University of California, Irvine, explains why dark matter might be more complicated than astronomers have assumed.
2015x17 - Nancy Moran: An Explorer of Life’s Deepest Partnerships
September 18, 2015
Nancy Moran, a biologist at the University of Texas at Austin, explains how colony collapse disorder led her to study the bacteria that live in the guts of bees.
2015x18 - Nima Arkani-Hamed's Visions of Future Physics
September 23, 2015
Nima Arkani-Hamed, a physicist at the Institute for Advanced Study, makes his "big-picture" case for building a 100-TeV particle collider.
2015x19 - What Is a Species?
September 24, 2015
David Kaplan explains why a simple definition of 'species' is hard to come by in our fifth In Theory video.
2015x20 - Gabriela González: Searching the Sky for the Wobbles of Gravity
October 23, 2015
Gabriela González explains how to measure black-hole collisions using gravitational waves.
2015x21 - Joan Strassmann: The Woman Who Stared at Wasps
November 6, 2015
Joan Strassmann explains the benefits of studying social amoebas.
2015x22 - Christoph Adami: The Information Theory of Life
November 20, 2015
Christoph Adami explains how information theory can explain the persistence of life.
2015x23 - Richard Dawid: Why Trust a Theory?
December 18, 2015
Richard Dawid discusses the fine line between science and speculation.