Welcome to Quantum Magazine's podcast. Each episode, we bring you stories about developments in science and mathematics. I'm Susan Vallett. For three decades, researchers hunted in vain for new elementary particles that would have explained why nature looks the way it does.

As physicists confront that failure,

they're re-examining a long-standing assumption

that big stuff consists of smaller stuff.

That's next.

Imagine you're in a lab where you've synthesized ancient DNA sequences and spliced them into modern bacteria just to see how they'd react.

They needed each other, but they didn't want each other.

So, you know, it was like a very complicated relationship unfolding in front of me.

This isn't Jurassic Park or some sci-fi movie.

I'm Steve Strogetz, and this is The Joy of Why.

A new podcast from Quantum Magazine that takes you into some of the biggest unanswered mysteries

in science and math today.

Join me on The Joy of Why as we explore these questions.

We may not have all the answers yet, but I'm pretty sure the curiosity to figure them out is in our DNA.

Subscribe to The Joy of Why wherever you get your podcasts.

New episodes drop every other Thursday.

In the structure of scientific revolutions, the philosopher of science, Thomas Kuhn, observed that scientists spend long periods taking small steps.

They pose and solve puzzles while collectively interpreting all data within a fixed worldview or theoretical framework, which Kuhn called a paradigm.

Sooner or later, though, facts crop up that clash with the reigning paradigm.

Crisis ensues. The scientists wring their hands, reexamining their assumptions, and eventually

make a revolutionary shift to a new paradigm, a radically different and truer understanding of nature.

Then incremental progress resumes.

...