Welcome to Quantum Magazine's podcast.

Each episode we bring you stories about developments in science and mathematics.

I'm Susan Vallett.

Animals that produce many offspring tend to have short lives, while less prolific species

tend to live longer. Cockroaches lay hundreds of

eggs while living less than a year. Mice have dozens of babies during their year or two of life.

Humpback whales produce only one calf every two or three years and live for decades. The rule of

thumb seems to reflect evolutionary strategies that channel nutritional

resources either into reproducing quickly or into growing more robust for a long-term advantage.

But ant queens can have it all. That's next.

Space travel depends on clever math.

Find unexplored solar systems in Quantum Magazine's new daily math game, Hyperjumps.

Hyperjumps challenges you to find simple number combinations to get your rocket from one exoplanet

to the next. Spoiler alert, there's always more

than one way to win. Test your astral arithmetic at hyperjumps.comptumagazine.org.

In some ant species, queens live more than 30 years while laying the thousands upon thousands

of eggs that become all the workers in the nest. In contrast, worker ants, which are females

that don't reproduce, live only months. Yet, if circumstances demand it, the workers of some species can step up to become

pseudo-quains for the good of the nest, and to reap a significant extension in their lifespan.

What governs this gigantic range in ant lifespan is poorly understood, but two recent studies

have revealed important details about what

makes the lifespans of ants so flexible. In science, researchers at New York University

...