Interviews

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Searching for Dark Matter with a Tabletop ‘Quantum Compass’

The physicist Alex Sushkov has developed one of the most targeted magnetic resonance experiments to date with the aim of detecting a hypothetical dark matter particle called the axion.


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One Man’s Mission to Unveil Math’s Beauty

September 13, 2022

Richard Rusczyk, founder of Art of Problem Solving, discusses how to bring out the joy, creativity and beauty in math.

How Two Physicists Unlocked the Secrets of Two Dimensions

August 16, 2022

Condensed matter physics is the most active field of contemporary physics and has yielded some of the biggest breakthroughs of the past century.  Now for the first time, Jie Shan and Fai Mak, a husband-and-wife team at Cornell University, have figured out a way to create artificial atoms in the lab, opening the door to a new era in research.

The Deep Mystery at the Heart of Life on Earth

August 8, 2022

As an evolutionary biochemist at University College London, Nick Lane explores the deep mystery of how life evolved on Earth. His hypothesis that life started with primitive metabolic reactions in deep-sea hydrothermal vents illuminates the outsized role that energy may have played in shaping evolution.

The Biggest Project in Modern Mathematics

June 1, 2022

Rutgers University mathematician Alex Kontorovich takes us on a journey through the continents of mathematics to learn about the awe-inspiring symmetries at the heart of the Langlands program.

Inside the Big Reveal of the Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole

May 19, 2022

Astrophysicists and data scientists on the Event Horizon Telescope team give the backstory behind their new image of Sagittarius A*, the Milky Way’s central supermassive black hole.

The Man Who Revolutionized Computer Science With Math

May 17, 2022

Leslie Lamport talks about the importance of programming instead of coding, how he developed distributed systems and his favorite algorithm.

A Polymath on Physics, Computer Science, Neuroscience and Literature

April 20, 2022

Vijay Balasubramanian discusses the connections he sees between physics, computer science, neuroscience and literature and the humanities.

Steven Strogatz’s Secrets of Math Communication

March 25, 2022

Steven Strogatz — the acclaimed mathematician and author — hosts the new Quanta Magazine podcast “The Joy of Why.” On March 18, 2022, he joined Quanta editor Thomas Lin for a Simons Foundation Presents conversation about teaching, writing and podcasting.

The Mechanical Secret of a Brainless Animal

March 17, 2022

For years, a pair of scientists have studied how a simple multicellular animal called Trichoplax coordinates its complex behavior without neurons or muscles. Their work shows that mechanical interactions alone can explain how the organism moves, seeks food and reproduces.