Echoes of Electromagnetism Found in Numb...

We’re living in the golden age of cryptography. Since the 1970s, we've had more confidence in encryption than ever before. But there's a difference between confidence and absolute certainty. And computer scientists care a lot about that difference.The search is always on for bett ... Show More

How many oranges can you fit in a box? Mathematicians are obsessed with perfecting their answer to this question in not just our familiar three-dimensional world, but in higher and higher dimensions beyond it. For several decades, they've made only minimal progress toward finding ... Show More

A young computer scientist and two colleagues show that searches within data structures called hash tables can be much faster than previously deemed possible.The story How Undergraduate Upends a 40-Year-Old Data Science Conjecture first appeared on Quanta Magazine. 

Magnets are inside loads of everyday electronic kit - speakers, motors, phones and more - but listener Lucas is mystified. What, he wonders, is a magnetic field?Our sleuths set out to investigate the mysterious power of magnets, with the help of wizard physicist Dr Felix Flicker, ... Show More

When some massive stars go supernova, they then collapse into magnetars -- the most powerful magnetic objects in the known universe. Learn more in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://science.howstuffworks.com/magnetars.htm Learn more about your ad-choices a ... Show More

Daniel and Katie bushwack their way between theories of gravity and electromagnetism, looking for the elusive connection.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. 

Quantum field theory may be the most successful scientific theory of all time, predicting  experimental results with stunning accuracy and advancing the study of higher dimensional mathematics. Yet, there’s also reason to believe that it is missing something. Steven Strogatz spea ... Show More

Dr Chris Smith and the Naked Scientist team present the latest science news, analysis and breakthroughs.In today’s programme: A breakthrough in nuclear fusion: what’s happened and what does this mean in practical terms? A new way to stop your glasses fogging up during this cold s ... Show More

Can physicists discover new particles by watching how muons wiggle in magnetic fields? Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. 

The secret to making a qubit for future quantum computers might depend on knowing how to tie knots in unusual materials, argues the physicist Charlie Marcus. The post Charlie Marcus Knows That Quantum Facts Aren’t Complicated first appeared on Quanta Magazine 

There is a bizarre number in maths referred to simply as ‘i’. It appears to break the rules of arithmetic - but turns out to be utterly essential for applications across engineering and physics. We are talking about the square root of -1, which makes no sense.Professor Fry waxes ... Show More

We tend to think of mathematics as purely logical, but the teaching of math, its usefulness and its workings are packed with nuance. So what is “good” mathematics? In 2007, the mathematician Terence Tao wrote an essay for the “Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society” that s ... Show More