Quanta Magazine Season 2016, Episode 2: Are We Alone in the Universe?

1

Leslie Valiant: Searching for the Algorithms Underlying Life

Leslie Valiant explains the term "ecorithm."

2

Are We Alone in the Universe?

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

3

Michael Atiyah's Imaginative State of Mind

Michael Atiyah discusses beauty in mathematics.

4

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.

5

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.

6

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.

7

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.

8

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.

9

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.

10

Suchitra Sebastian: An Explorer of Quantum Borderlands

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

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.

12

Miranda Cheng: A Moonshine Master Toys with String Theory

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

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.

14

Peter and Rosemary Grant

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

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.

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.

17

Pencils Down: Mike Zitolo of School of the Future

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

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.

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.

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.

21

Helen Quinn: A Wormhole Between Physics and Education

A Wormhole Between Physics and Education

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.

23

Richard Lenski: A Conductor of Evolution’s Subtle Symphony

Richard Lenski discusses how he has been surprised by evolution.

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.

25

Erik Verlinde: The Case Against Dark Matter

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

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.

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.