Every article, video and podcast has a story to tell. Our staff has nurtured it through weeks of careful work: research, reporting, writing, editing, art direction, animation, filming, recording, fact checking, copy editing and web production. It is my time.
My job is to engage with the audience ofQuanta. I would like to know who you are. What happened to us? What do you want to learn from this place and what do you take away from it? On an internet that can feel overwhelming and draining, this digital magazine aims to provide a quiet place where you can consider the immense complexity of our world. I am here to help you understand what to expect from our work. I will listen to what you have to say.
More than 3,300 people commented on our website. We received tens of thousands of pieces of feedback through various channels. Many chimed in with additional thoughts, criticism and feedback, and the vast majority were positive.
I was able to identify a few themes from the comments we got this year. We got follow-up questions from experts and other readers a lot. People like to debate science and joke about it. Our audience is not a monolith tied to any demographic. Casual enthusiasts who start their comment with "I'm no expert" are just as likely to be weighed in by researchers and academics. Anyone can take in the logic of our world, grapple with its mystery and learn from its inhabitants if they choose to.
I chose a few of my favorites from the many thoughtful questions and comments submitted this year.
There are a lot of questions in the comments section and helpful experts answer them. In the summer of 2015, we wrote about two mathematicians who used graph theory to prove a decades-old conjecture. Ian Agol commented on the proof in an article.
Kudos to them — I recall having a discussion about this question with [the late Fields medalist] Maryam Mirzakhani at IAS [the Institute for Advanced Study] in 2015. She was interested in this problem.
A reader who frequently comments under the name "Dabed" asked a question about how the problem connects to Mirzakhani's work, and Agol immediately responded with an answer. Although Mirzakhani is no longer here to draw these connections herself, those who knew her will still do so.
Comments approved by their author will live on with the article. The old comments in the article serve as a kind of time capsule, preserving conversations and reactions from when the article was first published. Readers were more optimistic about the technology after reading the interview with the mathematician and computer scientist Gil Kalai. Kalai was asked a number of questions in the comments section. Christopher Monroe disagreed with the idea that all classes of physical systems would suffer from correlated noise. Kalai said, "Let me think about it before answering in some detail." In May of this year, Kalai came back to enter his responses to Monroe into the record. It is wonderful when disagreements in science lead to high level exchanges that add value to our online community.
Don't be told that science and math aren't fun. When the chance to make a pun was too good to pass up, I put references to Talking Heads and Queen into our social copy. Readers came up with the funniest jokes.
The comments section was given several times this year by the cartoonist CM Evans. This is one well-read mouse, whether the subject is fluid dynamics or origin-of-life theories.
"I do it with pizza dough" is the solution proposed by the aptly named youngryman.
The audience ofQuanta is curious. Steven Strogatz, the mathematician and host of The Joy of Why, likes to ask big questions and small ones. Rob sent a note of appreciation toQuanta.
I am quite scientifically literate, despite not being a scientist, and I think it’s great that the podcast speaks to people like me. I really get the sense that the host is sharing stories he finds fascinating, rather than trying to teach people to appreciate science more. His passion and curiosity really come through in the stories and they’re infectious.
Given the provocative questions at the heart of these episodes, it is not surprising that comments on the podcast transcripts often lead to rich debate and further questions. Our definition of life is missing something. Steven Weinberg spoke about quantum field theory. There is joy in asking.
There is a lot of science coverage inQuanta. Readers and viewers are drawn in by that. The comments posted below our videos show this very clearly. A Turing Award-winning computer scientist was the focus of one of the most commented on videos this year. The dialogue between disciplines and skills was described well by viewers.
One of the markers of true genius is thinking in an interdisciplinary fashion, in my opinion. This man has demonstrated in only this short time that he has knowledge of art, mathematics, and physics. It’s no surprise he contributed to our world in the way he has.
— YouTube user wido461
There are a lot of probing, funny, helpful exchanges that happen daily in the comments section and on social media. If one of our articles gets you thinking, submit a comment, and check back occasionally to see what other people are saying. Maybe we can learn something from each other.
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