Welcome to the quantum science podcast.

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

I'm Susan Vallage.

Recent efforts to map every cell in the human body have researchers floored by unfathomable diversity,

with many thousands of subtly different types of cells in the human brain alone.

That's next.

It's season three of the joy of why, and I still have a lot of questions.

Like, what is this thing we call

time? Why does altruism exist? And where is Jan 11? I'm here. Astrophysicist and co-host.

Ready for anything. That's right. I'm bringing in the A team. So brace yourselves. Get ready to learn.

I'm Janelle Levin. I'm Steve Strogatz. And this is...

Quantum Magazine's podcast, The Joy of Why.

New episodes drop every other Thursday.

In the 16th century, Belgian cartographer Abraham Ortelius created the world's first modern

Atlas, a collection of maps that he called the Theater of the World. The maps, drawn by

Ortelius and others, detailed what was at the time the best knowledge of the world's continents,

cities, mountains, rivers, lakes, and oceans.

The atlas helped usher in a new understanding of global geography.

Similarly, the creation of cell atlases, maps of organs and bodies constructed cell by cell,

is heralding a new era in our understanding of biology. Powerful sequencing and imaging

technologies invented in the last decade are revealing with unprecedented detail the composition

of human organs and tissues, as well as those of other animals like the mouse and fruit fly.

...