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Birds' Migratory Mitochondria

Changes in the number, shape, efficiency and interconnectedness of organelles in the cells of flight muscles provide extra energy for birds’ continent-spanning feats. This is the fifth episode of The Quanta Podcast. In each episode, Quanta Magazine editor in chief Samir Patel speaks with the minds behind the award-winning publication to navigate through some of the most important and mind-expanding questions in science and math.

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  Audio Edition: The Core of Fermat’s Last Theorem Just Got Superpowered

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  Taking the Temperature of Quantum Entanglement

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  How Hard Is It to Untie a Knot?

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  Audio Edition: How a Problem About Pigeons Powers Complexity Theory

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  What Happens When Lakes Stop Mixing

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  Game Theory, Algorithms and High Prices

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  Why Are Waves So Hard to Grasp?

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  Sleep Is Not All or Nothing

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  Audio Edition: A New Proof Smooths Out the Math of Melting

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  The Mystery of Early Universe’s Little Red Dots

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  A Biography of Earth Across the Age of Animals

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  Audio Edition: ‘Paraparticles’ Would Be a Third Kingdom of Quantum Particle

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  What We Learn From Running ‘Life’ in Reverse

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  The Math of Catastrophe

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  Audio Edition: Quantum Speedup Found for Huge Class of Hard Problems

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  What Can a Cell Remember?