Quanta Science Podcast

Neuroscience research into people with aphantasia, who don’t experience mental imagery, is revealing how imagination works and demonstrating the sweeping variety in our subjective experiences.

Physicists have ruled out a mundane explanation for the strange findings of an old Soviet experiment, leaving open the possibility that the results point to a new fundamental particle.

Researchers have proved that secure quantum encryption is possible in a world without hard problems.

New experiments reveal how the brain chooses which memories to save and add credence to advice about the importance of rest.

Using machine learning, string theorists are finally showing how microscopic configurations of extra dimensions translate into sets of elementary particles — though not yet those of our universe.

A group of prominent biologists and philosophers announced a new consensus: There’s “a realistic possibility” that insects, octopuses, crustaceans, fish and other overlooked animals experience consciousness.

A generation of physicists has referred to the dark energy that permeates the universe as “the cosmological constant.” Now the largest map of the cosmos to date hints that this mysterious energy has been changing over billions of years.

Electroconvulsive therapy is highly effective in treating major depressive disorder, but no one knows why it works. New research suggests it may restore balance between excitation and inhibition in the brain.

Long-anticipated experiments that use light to mimic gravity are revealing the distribution of energies, forces and pressures inside a subatomic particle for the first time.

Two researchers have proved that Penrose tilings, famous patterns that never repeat, are mathematically equivalent to a kind of quantum error correction. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Quasi Motion” by Kevin MacLeod.