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January 29, 2016

Season 2016

01. Leslie Valiant: Searching for the Algorithms Underlying Life

Leslie Valiant explains the term "ecorithm."

January 29, 2016

02. Are We Alone in the Universe?

David Kaplan explores the best ways to search for alien life on distant planets.

February 4, 2016

03. Michael Atiyah's Imaginative State of Mind

Michael Atiyah discusses beauty in mathematics.

March 4, 2016

04. David Deamer: How We’re Studying the Origins of Life

David Deamer explains how his laboratory mimics the extreme conditions found on volcanoes in the early Earth.

March 17, 2016

05. Is That 'Bump' a New Particle?

David Kaplan explains how a curious signal in the Large Hadron Collider's latest data could upset the Standard Model of physics — or mean nothing at all.

April 14, 2016

06. Tiny Tests Seek the Universe's Big Mysteries

David Moore explains why we might expect to find strange things when we study gravity at small scales.

May 4, 2016

07. David Moore: Tabletop Physics

Stanford University physicist David Moore explains how his team’s tabletop experiment uses lasers and tiny glass spheres to test gravity.

May 5, 2016

08. Janna Levin on Science and Culture

Janna Levin talks about her roles as scientific director at a “center for art and innovation” in Brooklyn and as a physicist and writer.

May 6, 2016

09. Ken Ono: A Life Inspired by an Unexpected Genius

Ken Ono explains how Ramanujan has served as his “guardian angel” throughout his life and career.

May 23, 2016

10. Suchitra Sebastian: An Explorer of Quantum Borderlands

Suchitra Sebastian talks about how extreme conditions can create unexpected quantum behavior.

June 10, 2016

11. How Does Life Come From Randomness?

David Kaplan explains how the law of increasing entropy could drive random bits of matter into the stable, orderly structures of life.

June 30, 2016

12. Miranda Cheng: A Moonshine Master Toys with String Theory

Miranda Cheng explains what umbral moonshine is and how it might illuminate string theory.

August 4, 2016

13. Tracy Slatyer: A Seeker of Dark Matter’s Hidden Light

Tracy Slatyer explains why she’s not disappointed when a mysterious cosmic signal turns out to be something other than dark matter.

September 1, 2016

14. Peter and Rosemary Grant

Peter and Rosemary Grant explain how our understanding of evolution has changed in their lifetimes.

September 22, 2016

15. Pencils Down: The Art of Teaching Math and Science

What can we learn from the best teachers on the front lines? To shine a spotlight on this linchpin of our education system, Quanta Magazine followed four master science and math teachers into their classrooms.

October 11, 2016

16. Pencils Down: Channa Comer of Baychester Middle School

Channa Comer teaches 6th-grade science. She focuses on engagement so kids will want to keep learning.

October 11, 2016

17. Pencils Down: Mike Zitolo of School of the Future

Michael Zitolo is turning the way science is approached in the classroom upside down.

October 11, 2016

18. Pencils Down: Soni Midha of East Side Community High School

In school or in life, Soni Midha wants her math students to be able to prove why something is correct.

October 11, 2016

19. Pencils Down: Aaron Mathieu of Acton-Boxborough Regional High School

Students need a chance to fail at science to learn about its process, says Aaron Mathieu.

October 11, 2016

20. Pencils Down: Channa Comer Teaching About Scientific Controls

What's a control? Channa Comer challenges her students to explain and work things out for themselves.

October 11, 2016

21. Helen Quinn: A Wormhole Between Physics and Education

A Wormhole Between Physics and Education

October 18, 2016

22. Michael Costanzo: Giant Genetic Map Reveals Life’s Hidden Links

Michael Costanzo, a biologist at the University of Toronto and a lead author on the new study, explains why it’s important to understand how genes interact.

October 26, 2016

23. Richard Lenski: A Conductor of Evolution’s Subtle Symphony

Richard Lenski discusses how he has been surprised by evolution.

November 3, 2016

24. Cynthia Dwork: How to Force Our Machines to Play Fair

Cynthia Dwork explains how to conduct a survey that asks people if they do embarrassing — or even illicit — things.

November 23, 2016

25. Erik Verlinde: The Case Against Dark Matter

Erik Verlinde describes how emergent gravity and dark energy can explain away dark matter.

November 29, 2016

26. Janet Conrad: On a Hunt for a Ghost of a Particle

Janet Conrad explains how sterile neutrinos might help physicists move past the Standard Model.

December 8, 2016

27. Elena Aprile: In the Deep, a Drive to Find Dark Matter

Elena Aprile explains how she hunts for dark matter in the world’s largest underground laboratory.

December 20, 2016