23 episodes

Quanta Magazine - Season 2015

First aired Jun 10, 2015Season 2015

Browse all 23 episodes in this season, including available images, air dates, runtimes, ratings and episode summaries from TMDB.

Episodes

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Episode 1

What Happens if You Fall Into a Black Hole?

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Jun 10, 2015

David Kaplan explores one of the biggest mysteries in physics: the apparent contradiction between general relativity and quantum mechanics.

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Episode 2

Freeman Dyson: A ‘Rebel’ Without a Ph.D.

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Jun 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.

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Episode 3

Artur Avila: A Brazilian Wunderkind Who Calms Chaos

NR
Jun 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.

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Episode 4

Manjul Bhargava: The Musical, Magical Number Theorist

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Jun 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.

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Episode 5

Where Did the Universe Come From?

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Jun 16, 2015

Where did the universe come from? David Kaplan explores the leading cosmological explanation with the help of a baking metaphor.

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Episode 6

Yitang Zhang: An Unlikely Math Star Rises

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Jun 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.

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Episode 7

Martin Hairer: In Noisy Equations, One Who Heard Music

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Jun 19, 2015

A video profile of the 2014 Fields medalist Martin Hairer, whose epic masterpiece in stochastic analysis, experts say, “created a whole world.”

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Episode 8

Maryam Mirzakhani: A Tenacious Explorer of Abstract Surfaces

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Jun 23, 2015

A video profile of the 2014 Fields medalist Maryam Mirzakhani, whose monumental work draws deep connections between topology, geometry and dynamical systems.

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Episode 9

Subhash Khot: A Grand Vision for the Impossible

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Jun 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.

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Episode 10

Alan Guth: How Many Two-Headed Cows in a Multiverse?

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Jul 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?”

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Episode 11

Hiranya Peiris: How to Test If We Live in a Multiverse

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Jul 9, 2015

University College London physicist Hiranya Peiris explains the seemingly impossible -- how the multiverse can be experimentally tested.

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Episode 12

How Did Life Begin on Earth?

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Jul 20, 2022

In this 2-minute video, David Kaplan explores the leading theories for the origin of life on our planet.

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Episode 13

Fly-Vac: Groundhog Day for Fruit Flies

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Jul 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.

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Episode 14

Why Do Flies Walk This Way?

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Jul 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.

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Episode 15

How Symmetry Shapes Nature’s Laws

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Aug 17, 2015

In this 2-minute video, David Kaplan explains how the search for hidden symmetries leads to discoveries like the Higgs boson.

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Episode 16

James Bullock: The Case for Complex Dark Matter

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Aug 25, 2015

James Bullock, a physicist at the University of California, Irvine, explains why dark matter might be more complicated than astronomers have assumed.

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Episode 17

Nancy Moran: An Explorer of Life’s Deepest Partnerships

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Sep 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.

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Episode 18

Nima Arkani-Hamed's Visions of Future Physics

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Sep 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.

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Episode 19

What Is a Species?

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Sep 24, 2015

David Kaplan explains why a simple definition of 'species' is hard to come by in our fifth In Theory video.

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Episode 20

Gabriela González: Searching the Sky for the Wobbles of Gravity

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Oct 23, 2015

Gabriela González explains how to measure black-hole collisions using gravitational waves.

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Episode 21

Joan Strassmann: The Woman Who Stared at Wasps

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Nov 6, 2015

Joan Strassmann explains the benefits of studying social amoebas.

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Episode 22

Christoph Adami: The Information Theory of Life

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Nov 20, 2015

Christoph Adami explains how information theory can explain the persistence of life.

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Episode 23

Richard Dawid: Why Trust a Theory?

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Dec 18, 2015

Richard Dawid discusses the fine line between science and speculation.