Physics World Weekly Podcast

This episode features an in-depth  conversation with Shrinivas Kulkarni, who won the 2024 Shaw Prize in Astronomy “for his ground-breaking discoveries about millisecond pulsars, gamma-ray bursts, supernovae, and other variable or transient astronomical objects”. Based at Caltech in the US, he is also cited for his “leadership of the Palomar Transient Factory and its successor, the Zwicky Transient Facility, which have revolutionized our understanding of the time-variable optical sky”.

Kulkarni talks about his fascination with astronomical objects that change over time and he reveals the principles that have guided his varied and successful career. He also offers advice to students and early-career researchers about how to thrive in astronomy.

This podcast also features an interview with Scott Tremaine, who is chair of the selection committee for the 2024 Shaw Prize in Astronomy. Based at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, he talks about Kulkarni’s many contributions to astronomy, including his work to make astronomical data more accessible to researchers not affiliated with major telescopes.

This podcast is sponsored by The Shaw Prize Foundation

Today’s noisy quantum processors are prone to errors that can quickly knock a quantum calculation off course. As a result, quantum error correction schemes are used to make some nascent quantum computers more tolerant to such faults.

This involves using a large number of qubits – called “physical” qubits – to create one fault-tolerant “logical” qubit. A useful fault-tolerant quantum computer would have thousands of logical qubits and this would require the integration of millions of physical qubits, which remains a formidable challenge.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, I am in conversation with Stephanie Simmons, who is founder and chief quantum officer at Photonic Inc. The Vancouver-based company is developing optically-linked silicon spin qubits – and it has recently announced that it has distributed quantum entanglement between two of its modules.

I spoke with Simmons earlier this month in London at Commercialising Quantum Global 2024, which was organized by Economist Impact. She explains how the company’s qubits – based on T-centre spins in silicon – are connected using telecoms-band photons. Simmons makes the case that the technology can be integrated and scaled to create fault-tolerant computers. We also chat about the company’s manufacturing programme and career opportunities for physicists at the firm.

This episode features a wide-ranging interview with Sara Seager and David Charbonneau, who share the 2024 Kavli Prize in Astrophysics. Charbonneau is at Harvard University and Seager is at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and they won the prize for their discoveries of exoplanets and the characterization of their atmospheres.

Exoplanets are planets that orbit stars other than the Sun. Astronomers have confirmed the existence of more than 5000 exoplanets, and that number keeps increasing.

In this podcast, the two laureates talk about the astonishing range of exoplanets that have been observed and explain how astronomers study the atmospheres of these faint and distant objects. Seager and Charbonneau also talk about the search for biosignatures of life on distant exoplanets and look to the future of exoplanet astronomy.

This podcast is sponsored by The Kavli Prize.

What is the best way to teach nuclear physics? Is the discipline more difficult than particle physics? What does a nuclear physicist make of the film Oppenheimer? These are just three of the questions addressed by David Jenkins in this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast. A nuclear physicist and author based at the UK’s University of York, Jenkins is in conversation with Physics World’s Matin Durrani.

Also featured in this episode is Dale Keeping, who is helium recovery manager at the UK’s ISIS Neutron and Muon Source. He explains how helium is used at the facility; where the helium supply comes from; and how he and his colleagues manage this non-renewable resource. Keeping also chats about an outreach initiative that involves collecting used party balloons so the helium can be re-used at ISIS.

Earlier this year, the Francis Scott Key Bridge in the US collapsed after being struck by a large container ship. Six people were killed in the disaster and many around the world were left wondering how such an important piece of infrastructure could collapse in such a catastrophic way.

We investigate in this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, which features Erin Bell and Martin Wosnik. They are both engineers at the University of New Hampshire (UNH) and they are in conversation with Physics World’s Margaret Harris.

Bell specializes in the structural design and dynamics of bridges and she explains why the bridge collapsed and talks about what can be done to avoid future catastrophes. Wosnik is an expert in fluid flow and along with Bell, is involved in the UNH Living Bridge Project. They explain how the project has transformed a lift bridge into a living laboratory that investigates, among other things, how a bridge can be used to generate tidal energy.

They also talk about the Atlantic Marine Energy Center, which is developing new ways to extract useful energy from the motions of the oceans.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast we chat with Lily Ellis-Gibbings, who is a higher scientist at the UK’s National Physical Laboratory. She talks about her passion for building scientific instrumentation for fields as diverse as radiotherapy, astrochemistry and mass spectrometry. Ellis-Gibbings also shares her top tips for physics students who aspire to careers in instrumentation.

Also in this episode, the astrophysicist Alex McDaniel talks about a new study of dwarf galaxies. While at Clemson University in the US, McDaniel and colleagues observed evidence that dark-matter particles in the galaxies are annihilating to create gamma-rays. While well below the statistical threshold to be called a discovery, the observation provides a tantalizing hint about the nature of dark matter.

The 2023 Nobel Prize For Physics was shared by three scientists who pioneered the use of ultrashort, attosecond laser pulses for studying the behaviour electrons in matter.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, I chat with three people involved with the IOPP-ZJU International Symposium on Progress in Attosecond Science. The event will be held on 23 May at China’s Zhejiang University and can also be attended online via Zoom. It is organized by IOP Publishing (which brings you Physics World) and Zhejiang University.

Joining me in a lively discussion of attosecond science are Haiqing Lin of Zhejiang University, Caterina Vozzi of Italy’s Institute for Photonics and Nanotechnologies and David Gevaux of the IOPP journal Reports on Progress in Physics, which is supporting the symposium.

This week’s episode also features an interview with Anthony Quinlan, who was a two-time contestant in the PLANCKS international theoretical physics competition for students. He now helps organize the event, the finals of which will be held in Dublin next week.

Quinlan chats with Physics World’s Katherine Skipper about competition, which involves teams of undergraduate and masters’ students solving “fun” physics problems. Quinlan explains that contestants are encouraged to come up with creative solutions – which sometimes leads to unexpected paths to the correct answer.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is used just about everywhere these days and scientific research is no exception. But how can physicists best use the rapidly-changing technology – and how can they be confident in the results AI delivers?

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features a conversation with Rick Stevens, who is a cofounder of the Trillion Parameter Consortium, which is developing AI systems for use in science, engineering, medicine and other fields.

Stevens is a computer scientist at the Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago in the US and he explains how AI can help with a wide range of tasks done by scientific researchers.

• In a previous episode of Physics World Weekly, the academic physicist Matt Hodgson explained how he uses AI in his professional life.

Many physicists work for small-to-medium-sized companies that provide scientific instrumentation and services – and some have founded companies of their own. Such businesses can have limited resources for marketing and customer service, so using social media can be an efficient way to connect with existing users and attract new customers.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, Alex Peroff and Neil Spinner of Pine Research Instrumentation explain how they use social media – including podcasts, videos, webinars and live chats – to get their message out.

From their base in Durham, North Carolina, the duo also share their top tips for getting the most out of social media.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast explores how the medical physics community is embracing environmental sustainability. Our guests are the medical physicists Rob Chuter of the Christie NHS Foundation Trust in the UK and Kari Tanderup of Aarhus University in Denmark.

They chat with Physics World’s Tami Freeman about the environmental impact of healthcare provision – and how the community can reduce its carbon footprint without having negative impacts on health outcomes.

• This podcast was created in collaboration with IPEM, the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine. IPEM owns the journal Physics in Medicine & Biology.

Purpose-Led Publishing is a coalition of three not-for-profit scientific publishers: IOP Publishing, AIP Publishing and the American Physical Society.

The coalition launched earlier this year, and its members have promised that they will continue to reinvest 100% of their funds back into science. Members have also pledged to “publish only the content that genuinely adds to scientific knowledge,” and have also promised to “put research integrity ahead of profit”.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features an interview with Antonia Seymour, who is chief executive of IOP Publishing. She played an important role in the creation of Purpose-Led Publishing and argues that scientists, science and society all benefit when physicists publish in not-for-profit journals.

Audio engagement

Also in this episode, we meet Corragh-May White who is surveying podcast listeners to try to work out the best ways for using audio to get people engaged in science. She is doing a master’s degree in science communication at the University of the West of England and is making short science podcasts in different styles for her subjects to listen to.

If you would like to take part in the 20-minute survey, you can contact White at [email protected] for more information.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features an interview with Tannie Liverpool, who uses statistical physics to explore outstanding questions in biology. Based at the UK’s University of Bristol, where he is professor of theoretical physics, Liverpool explains how complex biological behaviours can be described at a very fundamental level using statistical physics.

He chats with Physics World’s Katherine Skipper about own research into cells and tissues, including the mathematics of wound healing. Liverpool also explains how physicists, materials scientists and mathematicians working in other fields are being inspired by the statistical physics of life.

Celebrating all things quantum

This Sunday, 14 April is World Quantum Day and in the podcast we take a brief look at how Physics World and IOP Publishing are celebrating. You can find out more at this IOPscience Quantum Science Subject Collection and on Physics World’s quantum page.

Looking further into the future, on 2 July the first instalment of Physics World Live will look at the burgeoning field of quantum sensors.  This live online panel debate will feature leading experts in quantum sensors. Register here to take part and put your questions to the panellists.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast I am in conversation with Frederic Bertley – who is president and CEO of COSI (Center of Science and Industry) in Columbus, Ohio. Bertley explains how science centres like COSI can boost scientific literacy and talks about the Color of Science initiative, which he founded to highlight and promote diversity in science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics.

Bertley also talks about his life-long love of ice hockey and how sports can be used to get people interested in science. Indeed, he explains in detail the physics of baseball pitches and the hockey slapshot.

He also talks about how COSI is encouraging Ohioans to observe and understand the total eclipse of the Sun, which will occur in a significant portion of the state on 8 April. He explains how COSI will engage with the public in venues as diverse as libraries and bars to share the science surrounding the eclipse.

The effects of quantum mechanics are all around us, but the quantum properties of matter are generally only apparent at the microscopic level. Superfluidity is an exception, and some of its bizarre characteristics can be seen with the naked eye. What is more, superfluid helium II has found several important applications in science and technology – and is used multi-tonne quantities today at facilities like the Large Hadron Collider.

My guest in this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast is John Weisend who is senior accelerator engineer at the European Spallation Source and adjunct professor at Lund University in Sweden. He is a specialist in cryogenic engineering, and has written the book Superfluid: How a Quantum Fluid Revolutionized Modern Science.

We chat about the physics behind this amazing substance and how it is used in some of biggest physics experiments on the planet.

As computing power continues to grow, theoretical physicists have been able to do larger and more complicated simulations. Running these models consumes a growing amount of energy, and for the time being, this results in more greenhouse-gas emissions that contribute to climate change. Indeed, doing an intensive supercomputer simulation can result in emissions that are on par with taking a long-haul flight.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, Alejandro Gaita and Gerliz Gutiérrez  of Spain’s University of Valencia tell Physics World’s Margaret Harris how the physics community can reduce its computing-related carbon emissions.

Gaita and Gutiérrez are theoretical materials physicists and they argue that scientists should take a frugal approach to computer modelling, which can achieve scientifically relevant results while minimizing energy consumption.

• Gaita and Gutiérrez describe practical examples of frugal computing in this article, which was co-written by Valencia’s Aman Ullah: “A call for frugal modelling: two case studies involving molecular spin dynamics”.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features a wide ranging interview with Keith Burnett, who is president of the Institute of Physics (IOP).

The IOP is the professional body and learned society for physics in the UK and Ireland. It represents 21,000 members and a key goal of the institute is to make physics accessible to people from all backgrounds.

Burnett, who is halfway through his two-year term in office, was knighted in 2013 for his services to science and higher education. He has served as vice chancellor of the University of Sheffield and is also an advocate for high-quality vocational education and technician training.

He talks to Physics World’s Matin Durrani about the challenges facing universities; physicists as entrepreneurs; supporting early-career physicists; and the need for the IOP to continue its drive to boost the diversity of the physics community.

• The Institute of Physics owns IOP Publishing, which brings you Physics World

Image courtesy of Hannah Veale

Environmental challenges like climate change are forcing us to rethink how we live in cities. This provides humanity with an important opportunity to develop new policies that also improve the overall wellbeing of urban dwellers.

Our guest in this episode of Physics World Weekly podcast is Radhika Khosla – who is an urban climatologist based at the Oxford Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the UK’s University of Oxford. She points out that extreme heat is proving to be the most deadly consequence of climate change and talks about the need to develop and implement cooling technologies that do not boost greenhouse gas emissions.

Khosla explains why the rapid urbanization of India offers opportunities to develop environmental policies that improve people’s lives. She also talks about her plans for the journal Environmental Research Letters, where she has recently become editor-in-chief.

Artificial intelligence (AI) shows great promise for use in radiology, which involves the use of medical imaging to diagnose and treat disease. Integrating AI tools into radiology could advance the diagnosis, quantification and management of multiple medical conditions. However, it is essential to acknowledge that some AI products may be add little value or even have potential to cause harm.

To ensure that AI is used appropriately, five radiology societies in the US, Canada, Europe, Australia and New Zealand have come together to publish a joint statement on the development and use of AI tools in radiology. This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features an interview with one of the authors of this paper. Bibb Allen is Chief Medical Officer for the American College of Radiology Data Science Institute, and a diagnostic radiologist at Grandview Medical Center in Birmingham, Alabama.

Also in this episode, Physics World’s Katherine Skipper reports back from a workshop that looked at how the UK could boost its quantum workforce.

Late last year the Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel ( P5) released a report that looks to the future of particle physics in the United States. The report is called Exploring the Quantum Universe and one of its authors, Abigail Vieregg, is our guest in this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast.

Vieregg is an astrophysicist and cosmologist at the University of Chicago and she talks about future experiments that P5 has recommended including a muon collider that could search for new physics on a much smaller footprint than conventional colliders. Vieregg also chats about the proposed CMB-S4 next-generation cosmic microwave background observatory, which ties-in with her research on the polarization of the cosmic microwave background.

Vieregg also describes the buzz surrounding P5 meetings as the panel was presented with a wealth of ideas from the particle-physics community. She says that she is proud of the positive response P5 has garnered from physicists.

Jellyfish have a very simple, yet very effective way of swimming – and this has attracted the attention of the aeronautics engineer John Dabiri at the California Institute of Technology. In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, Dabiri talks about his work on the artificial enhancement of jellyfish. He also explains how fluid dynamics can be used to boost the efficiency of windfarms, and explores the possibility that swimming organisms play important role in the mixing of the oceans.

Dabiri and Caltech’s Simon Anuszczyk describe their bionic jellyfish in a paper that has been accepted for publication in the journal Bioinspiration & Biomimetics. The accepted manuscript can be read here: “Electromechanical enhancement of live jellyfish for ocean exploration”.

Hydrogen can be used as a carbon-free source of energy in a wide range of applications including home heating, transportation and industry. However, there are significant challenges that must be overcome to ensure the safe and efficient storage and transportation of the gas.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, the materials expert Krzysztof Koziol explains why he is developing graphene-based materials and polymers to facilitate a hydrogen economy. Based at the UK’s Cranfield University, he chats about how existing national infrastructure for distributing natural gas can be retrofitted to safely carry hydrogen. Koziol also talks about his collaboration with Airbus to develop a cryogenic storage system that could lead to hydrogen-powered aircraft.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and proton beam therapy are two powerful techniques of medical physics. The former gives us real-time images of internal structures of the body, and the latter can deliver a high dose of radiation to a tumour while reducing the damage to surrounding healthy tissue.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, the medical physicist Aswin Hoffmann talks about a research initiative in Germany that is combining the two techniques to achieve high-precision radiation therapy. The work is being done at the Center for Innovation in Radiation Oncology (OncoRay) in Dresden and the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf. Hoffmann explains why it is important to develop MRI-guided proton beam therapy and the challenges that his team is overcoming.

Also in this episode, we chat about a new experimental technique that physicists have developed to study how bacteria move about. This research is part of the burgeoning field of active matter and we explore why physicists are interested in bacteria, flocking birds and other living systems.

SBQuantum is a Canadian company that spun-out of Quebec’s University of Sherbrooke in 2017. It has developed a magnetometer that uses a superposition of quantum states to enhance its sensitivity to magnetic fields.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, the company’s co-founder and CEO David Roy-Guay explains how the technology works and why an SBQuantum magnetometer will be launched into space as part of a multimillion-dollar competition to advance how we measure Earth’s magnetic field.

He also talks about more down-to-earth uses of the firm’s sensors in mineral exploration, navigation and security scanning.

The Magellanic Clouds are prominent features of the southern sky that are named after the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan. He sailed west from Europe to the Philippines in the early 16th century and the clouds were described by a returning crew member.

Voyages such as Magellan’s set into motion the European colonization of much of the world. This involved the oppression and assimilation of indigenous peoples and led to racism and inequality that endures to this day.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast the astronomers Mia de los Reyes and Sally Oey explain why it is time to rename the Magellanic Clouds to make astronomy more hospitable to people from places that still suffer the legacy of colonization. They also talk about astronomy’s connections with colonialism and consider a few suggestions of new names for the clouds.

De los Reyes is based at Amherst College and Oey is at the University of Michigan. They are in conversation with Physics World’s Margaret Harris.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features an interview with Henri Lorach, who is part of the team that won the 2023 Physics World Breakthrough of the Year award. The Swiss–French group bagged the prize for creating a brain–computer interface that allows a paralysed person to walk. Lorach, who is based at EPFL, explains how the technology works and describes the team’s plans to miniaturize and commercialize the system.

Also in this week’s podcast is Jonas Baltrusaitis, who is editor-in-chief of the new journal Sustainability Science and Technology. Produced by IOP Publishing, which also brings you Physics World, the journal will open for submissions later this month.

Baltrusaitis explains that the journal will highlight the roles that scientists and engineers are playing in achieving the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. He also talks about his research into sustainable catalysis processes, which he does using cutting-edge surface-science tools at Lehigh University in the US.

Random numbers are used in several important technologies including cryptography and numerical simulation. However, large sequences of truly random numbers are notoriously difficult to generate – and correlations lurking within sequences can have dire consequences.

Quantum systems are inherently random, so they offer a way to generate random numbers. In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, our guest is Ramy Shelbaya who is who is chief executive officer of Quantum Dice – a UK-based start-up that uses quantum optics to generate random numbers.

He explains how the company’s technology creates sequences of random numbers at high speed, and why Quantum Dice is currently miniaturizing its technology so it can be deployed in mobile phones.

Paul Howarth is the CEO of UK’s National Nuclear Laboratory and our guest in this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast. He talks about the challenges of getting politicians to engage in long-term thinking about the UK’s nuclear-energy policies and explains why small modular reactors offer a practical way for the country to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

Howarth talks about what inspired him to follow a career path in nuclear science and technology – and he explains how the National Nuclear Laboratory underpins the safe operation of nuclear facilities in the UK.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features a lively discussion about our Top 10 Breakthroughs of 2023. Physics World editors discuss the merits of research on a broad range of topics including particle physics, quantum technology, medical physics and astronomy.

The top 10 serves as the shortlist for the Physics World Breakthrough of the Year award, the winner of which will be announced on 14 December.

Links to all the nominees, more about their research and the criteria for the award can be found here.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast looks at two very different and very difficult challenges — how to build a quantum computer that can overcome the debilitating noise that plagues current processors; and how to ensure that the UK meets its target for net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Our first guest is the nuclear physicist and sustainable energy expert, Martin Freer, who coordinated the writing of a report from the Institute of Physics (IOP) called Physics Powering the Green Economy. Freer, who is at the University of Birmingham, explains why more investment and support will be needed to ensure that the UK meets its target to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emission by 2050.

Meanwhile in Paris, the quantum-computer maker Alice & Bob is developing “cat qubits” that promise to reduce the amount of hardware required to do quantum error correction. The company’s co-founder and CEO Théau Peronnin explains how the technology works and how it could be used to build quantum computers that could solve practical problems. He also explains why the company chose its quirky name.

Our guest in this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast is the biomedical ethicist Vasiliki Rahimzadeh, who along with colleagues has called for the commercial space industry to adopt ethical policies and best practices for research done on humans during space flights.

Rahimzadeh, who is at Baylor College of Medicine in the US, explains that as well as minimizing risks to paying astronauts who take part in experiments, an ethical framework should also ensure that private spaceflight – which is still the purview of the elite – benefits society as a whole.

• Rahimzadeh and colleagues outline their call for an ethical framework in an article in Science

Astronomers are becoming increasingly concerned about the growing number of satellites that are lighting up the night sky by reflecting sunlight to Earth. In 2022, the prototype communications satellite BlueWalker 3 was launched and it is now the brightest commercial satellite ever – outshining almost every star in the sky. And to make matters worse, communications satellites like BlueWalker 3 broadcast microwave signals that can interfere with radio astronomy.

To talk about the threats to astronomy posed by satellites I am joined down the line by the radio astronomer Mike Peel, who is at Imperial College London and Jeremy Tregloan-Reed of Chile’s University of Atacama, who studies the cosmos using visible light.

• This podcast is sponsored by The Electrochemical Society

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features a wide-ranging interview with Dave Newbold, who is Executive Director, National Laboratories Science and Technologies for the UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).

Newbold spent two decades as an experimental particle physicist before joining the STFC. I spoke to him at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire, which is home to the STFC’s Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. This includes the Diamond Light Source synchrotron; the ISIS Neutron and Muon Source; and the Central Laser Facility. The STFC also operates major facilities at Daresbury in Cheshire and the Boulby Underground Laboratory in Yorkshire.

Newbold, who took up his post earlier this year, talks about the challenges of developing strategies for the UK’s national labs and the present and future opportunities for British science. He also explains the importance of international collaborations and why researchers from around the world are keen on using the UK’s scientific facilities.

Future of particle physics

We also spoke about the future of particle physics, and the roles that next-generation colliders and precision experiments will play in our exploration of physics beyond the Standard Model.

• This podcast is sponsored by The Electrochemical Society (ECS).

Some of the biggest mysteries of physics – including the nature of dark matter and dark energy, and the origin of the universe – are in the sights of cosmologists and astroparticle physicists.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast I am in conversation with three editorial board members of the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics (JCAP) which is celebrating its 20th anniversary.

They are the cosmologist and theoretical physicist Licia Verde who is at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences at Spain’s University of Barcelona; Erminia Calabrese, who is an observational cosmologist at the UK’s Cardiff University; and the astroparticle physicist Anne Green, who is at the University of Nottingham in the UK.

We chat about major breakthroughs in cosmology and astroparticle physics over the past two decades and look forward to the future of the fields.

This podcast is sponsored by the Electrochemical Society.

• JCAP has published a special retrospective collection of some of the leading papers that have been published in the journal since 2003. Next week, the journal will publish a special anniversary issue of new papers.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features two pioneers in their fields.

Margaret Gardel is a biophysicist who is setting up a new National Science Foundation Physics Frontier Center at the University of Chicago. The Center for Living Systems will focus on the physics of adaptation, a new field that looks at how living matter stores, retrieves, and processes information as it adapts to change. Gardel explains how physics-inspired theory and experiments are providing fresh insights into biological systems.

Our second pioneer is Susannah Glickman who has just completed what is probably the first scholarly history of quantum computing. A historian based at Stony Brook University in the US, Glickman explains why there has been so much enthusiasm for quantum computers, despite the fact that that the technology is far from settled. She also talks about the process of writing her history and the generosity of some of the quantum-computing experts who provided her with crucial information about how the field has developed.

While quantum computers show great promise for the future, today’s processors are small and noisy – and this makes it very difficult to do meaningful quantum calculations right now. To address this problem, researchers are developing clever quantum algorithms that make the most out of the hardware that is available today.

Some of those algorithms are being developed by UK-based Phasecraft and the firm’s co-founder and chief technology officer is our guest in this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast. Toby Cubitt explains why the company is focusing on the development of quantum algorithms for calculating the properties of materials and how these algorithms can be run on today’s noisy hardware.

Cubitt also talks about career opportunities in quantum computing and explains why he believes that quantum computers could soon be solving scientifically relevant problems.

Nuclear fusion is what powers the Sun, and if we could harness it here on Earth it would be a significant source of clean, carbon free energy. Fusion power plants were first proposed in the 1940s and since then physicists and engineers have struggled to overcome a range of technological challenges that have gotten in the way of practical fusion energy.

In the past, most fusion R&D was done in universities and government labs and involved large-scale facilities. Today, there is also a growing number of companies that are developing alternative routes to practical fusion technologies – and some of these companies say that fusion could be delivering electricity to the grid by 2035.

The US-based Fusion Industry Association represents this private sector and it has released a report called The Global Fusion Industry in 2023. In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, the association’s CEO Andrew Holland talks about what the report reveals about the global fusion industry and what companies are doing to try to meet the ambitious goal of fusion power in just 12 years.

Five physicists win Nobel prizes this year

Last week, six Nobel prizes were awarded to 11 people. Five of the new laureates have backgrounds in physics – including chemistry and peace laureates.  Four out the 11 laureates this year are women – which is certainly progress over previous years. However, Anne L’Huillier is just the fifth female physics laureate since 1901, so much more work must be done on diversity and inclusion in physics.

To chat about this year’s Nobel prizes, I am joined by the physics and philosophy student Hannah Schmalstich, who has written a series of blogs for Physics World about historical and societal aspects of previous prizes. One article explored why the physicist Lise Meitner did not win a Nobel prize for her important work on nuclear fission. Our discussion explores connections between the shunning of Meitner and some of the prizes awarded in 2023.

It has been a very exciting week in the world of physics. The winners of the 2023 Nobel Prize for Physics were announced on Tuesday and on Wednesday we learned that this year’s chemistry prize has a very strong connection to physics. And to top it all off, the names of the chemistry winners were leaked several hours before the announcement was made.

So we definitely have lots to talk about in this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, which features Physics World’s Margaret Harris, Matin Durrani and Hamish Johnston.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast looks at how studying the deep-ocean floor could help scientists who are scanning the cosmos for signs of intelligent life. Our guest is Pablo Sobron of the SETI Institute and Impossible Sensing, who explains how the Laser Divebot spectrometer is shedding light on the biochemistry of the seafloor – and what this information tells us about the biodiversity of the oceans and how life could emerge elsewhere in the universe.

Also in this episode, Aarhus University’s Jeffrey Hangst talks about the first ever observation of freefalling antimatter – which was made by Hangst and colleagues using the ALPHA-g experiment at CERN. While the experiment confirmed that antimatter falls down rather than up, there is still a tantalizing possibility that future experiments could identify a small difference in how matter and antimatter respond to gravity.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features a wide-ranging conversation with the astrophysicist Victoria Grinberg, who is a liaison scientist at the European Space Agency (ESA).

Based at ESA’s European Space Research and Technology Centre in the Netherlands, Grinberg explains how X-ray observatories are being used to study some of the most violent environments in the universe – the regions around black holes and neutron stars. She also chats about her enthusiasm for science communication and how she has revived her childhood love of drawing by doing scientific illustrations.

Grinberg is also a winner of the Röntgen Prize, which is given for outstanding work on basic research in radiation physics and radiation biology. The €15,000 prize is awarded by Germany’s Justus Liebig University Giessen and it sponsored by Pfeiffer Vacuum and the Ludwig Schunk Foundation.

Also in this episode, the civil engineer Benyi Cao explains how ground-source heat pumps could soon be used to prevent potholes from forming on British roads. Based at the UK’s University of Surrey, Cao describes how potholes form and how controlling the temperature of roads could reduce the number of potholes on major roads. He also describes a pilot scheme that could soon be rolled out in Surrey.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, the science journalist Anna Demming meets four people who are trying to change the space industry’s attitudes towards diversity. She is joined by Franco Labia, who is founder of the Space Pride charity, which celebrates the LGBTQIA+ community in the global space sector; Rynee Fandora, who is co-lead of the International Astronautical Federation’s LGBTQ+ working group; Dhanisha Sateesh, who is a member of the diversity and gender equality group at the Space Generation Advisory Council; and Neela Rajendra, who is chief inclusion officer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Also in this podcast, Physics World’s Margaret Harris explains why the meat of European wild boar contains more radioactive caesium than expected.

• There is more about diversity in the space industry and Space Pride in this article by Demming: “How Space Pride is campaigning for change in the space sector”.

Cryptography keeps our messages secret, our bank transactions secure, and our data safe from hackers — but there is a threat looming on the horizon. Most cryptographic systems used today are based on computational assumptions that could be resigned to history by quantum computers.

The upshot is that quantum computers of the future could be used to crack cryptographic systems. And what is more, messages sent securely today could be decrypted in the future.

To address this threat, researchers, companies and governments are developing quantum-safe cryptography systems that cannot be cracked by quantum computers.

Our guest in this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast is Ali El Kaafarani, who is an expert in post-quantum cryptography. He is founder and CEO of PQShield, which spun out of the UK’s University of Oxford and develops quantum-safe cryptography systems for use on chips, in applications, and in the cloud.

He explains why quantum computers pose a threat to today’s cryptographic systems, and what the cryptography community is doing about it.

Today, it can seem that we are adrift in a swirling sea of claims and counterclaims designed to prod and provoke. So, how can a person make sense of this barrage of information? According to the this week’s guest, a good grasp of some fundamental mathematical principles can make a huge difference when it comes to understanding the world around us.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, the mathematical biologist and author Kit Yates is in conversation with the science and technology journalist Anna Demming. As well as talking about the mathematics of daily life, they chat about Yates’ contributions to the public understanding of the COVID-19 pandemic and his latest book – which Demming has reviewed for Physics World.

Conventional optical systems such as those found in cameras and microscopes use curved lenses to bend and focus light. As a result, these systems tend to be bulky and difficult to miniaturize for use in systems where space is at a premium – such as smartphones.

Flat, thin optical components based on metasurfaces offer a solution to this miniaturization problem by replacing multiple conventional lenses with a single metalens. In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast our guest is the co-founder and CEO of Metalenz, a US-based company that has commercialized optical metasurface technology.

Rob Devlin explains how the company’s optical components bend light; how they are made using standard semiconductor processing techniques; and how they are being used in a range of sensing applications.

When the materials scientist Ross Colman and colleagues read a preprint claiming that a material called LK-99 is a superconductor at room temperature and ambient pressure, they set out to replicate the result in their lab. But unlike other scientists doing the same thing, Colman’s group decided to share their work with the public in real time.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, Colman – who is at Czechia’s Charles University – talks about the challenges of trying to reproduce someone else’s research and why the team was unable to replicate the observation of room temperature superconductivity.

Also in this episode, Australia’s chief scientist Cathy Foley talks about that country’s A$1bn national quantum strategy. Foley explains why international collaborations will play an important role in the development of quantum technologies and talks about her role as editor-in-chief of the journal Superconductor Science and Technology.

For millennia, humans have used units of measurement based on aspects of the human body. Familiar examples include the fathom (arm span) and the qubit (forearm length). Our guest in this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast is the Finnish social scientist Roope Kaaronen, who has studied the development and use of body-based units in 186 cultures around the world.

While many traditional units have been superseded by international standards, Kaaronen tells Physics World’s Margaret Harris that some body-based units are alive and well today, and they can sometimes be more useful than their modern counterparts. Useful units include those that emerged from the need to fit technologies such as skis and kayaks to individual users. Indeed, Kaaronen says that the existence of such units suggests that rather than being a modern concept, the idea of ergonomics has been around for a very long time.

Also in the podcast, Physics World editors chat about the blockbuster film Oppenheimer.

Earlier this year, Nottingham-based Cerca Magnetics won the inaugural IOP qBIG Prize for quantum innovation for the development of its OPM-MEG wearable brain scanner. The prize is awarded by the Institute of Physics and is sponsored by the UK-based investment firm Quantum Exponential.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast my guests are David Woolger, who is CEO of Cerca Magnetics and Stuart Nicol, who is chief investment officer at Quantum Exponential. We talk about the quantum technology behind Cerca’s brain scanner and explore the relationship between quantum start-up companies and the firms that provide them with the funds needed to develop their products.

• You can read more about Cerca Magnetics in this Physics World feature article.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast our guest is Celia Merzbacher, who is executive director of the Quantum Economic Development Consortium (QED-C).

Based near Washington, DC, QEC-C is an international organization that identifies gaps in quantum-related technologies, standards, and workforces and addresses those gaps through collaboration between industry and governments.

Merzbacher is an R&D expert who has recently testified before the US House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology on the issues facing the quantum industry. She shares her insights on the challenges of building a quantum workforce and explains why the strong coordination of academia, industry and governments is essential for future success.

Our guest in this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast is Emily Grubert, who is a civil engineer and environmental sociologist at the University of Notre Dame in the US. In a wide ranging interview, she chats about her research, which focuses on justice and deep decarbonization.

Much of Gubert’s work explores how we will make the transition from our current carbon-intensive economy to a low-carbon future – and she points out that exactly how this will be done is far from settled. She talks about carbon capture and storage, a controversial (and mostly hypothetical) way of removing carbon dioxide from flue gases or even from the atmosphere.

Grubert also talks about how we can build climate-change resilience into buildings and how society can respond to climate-change driven migration by preparing communities in cooler regions for an influx of people who have had to move because of the effects of climate change.

Brand new journal

Grubert is editor-in-chief of the journal Environmental Research: Energy, which has just opened for submissions. She talks about her plans for the journal and why there is an urgent need for an open access publication that brings together researchers across the many disciplines working on the transition to zero-carbon energy systems.

And if you are interested in a career in climate-change research, Grubert makes the argument for pursuing an interdisciplinary education.

Pink Floyd’s classic album The Dark Side of the Moon was released in 1973 and spent a total of 981 weeks on the Billboard 200 list of top-selling albums in the US. The album is also famous for its iconic cover, which is a very simple depiction of a beam of white light being split into its constituent colours by a prism. But it turns out that this illustration is very much an artistic interpretation of optical refraction – rather than what happens in real life.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, the physics teacher Tom Tierney explains how his students analysed the album cover and learned a lot about the physics of refraction and the optical properties of materials. He also talks about how the album cover fits into a long tradition of the incorrect depiction of how prisms bend light – something that may have emerged to make the process easier to visualize.

Building a clock based on a nuclear transition has long been a goal of metrologists. As well as offering the potential of greater accuracy than atomic clocks, such a timekeeper could be more immune to external noise and could also be used to probe new physics beyond the Standard Model.

However, the challenges have been many and until recently researchers had not even managed to make a direct observation of the radiation associated with a potential nuclear-clock transition.

That changed earlier this year, when a team of researchers working at the ISOLDE experiment at CERN made the first direct observation of vacuum ultraviolet light from a transition in thorium-229. This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features team member Sandro Kraemer of the Institute for Nuclear and Radiation Physics at Belgium’s Catholic University of Leuven. He explains why physicists are keen on building a nuclear clock, why it has been so difficult, and what the ISOLDE measurement means for the future of timekeeping.

Type-1 diabetes is a disease that arises from a person’s inability to produce insulin, which normally regulates glucose levels in the bloodstream. While there is no cure today, type-1 diabetes can be managed by monitoring glucose levels and treatment with insulin.

Looking to the future, bioelectronic medicine could improve diabetes management thanks to the work of  Amparo Güemes González – who is featured in this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast.

Based at the UK’s University of Cambridge, the biomedical engineer is developing advanced algorithms and neurotechnology for integration in a closed loop platform for glucose control. This work has garnered her a 2023 Rising Talent Award from the L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women In Science programme.

• Friday 23 June 2023 marked the 10th International Women in Engineering Day and we are celebrating by devoting two episodes of the Physics World Weekly podcast to women engineers at the cutting edge of research. Last week’s guest was the research engineer Kavita Jeerage, who spoke about the challenges of creating a viable breath test for cannabis.

Friday 23 June 2023 marks the 10th International Women in Engineering Day and we are celebrating by devoting two episodes of the Physics World Weekly podcast to women engineers who are doing cutting edge research.

This week our guest is Kavita Jeerage, who is a research engineer at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Boulder, Colorado. She is an expert in nanoparticle metrology and neurotoxicology and some of her research focuses on developing breath-test technology.

While roadside breath tests for alcohol are a standard part of policing, there is currently no device that can reliably determine whether a driver has recently consumed cannabis. This is not for lack of trying, it turns out that creating a breath test is very difficult.

Recently, Jeerage and colleagues set out to measure the amount of tetrahydrocannabinolic acid (THC, the active ingredient in cannabis) in users’ breath, and to monitor how it changes over time. While the team was able to address some of the challenges that have been holding back the development of practical cannabis breath tests, they concluded that their research does not support the idea that detecting THC in breath as a single measurement could reliably indicate recent cannabis use.

In a conversation with Physics World’s Margaret Harris, Jeerage explains why a breath test for cannabis is so hard to create.

• The research was led by Jeerage and fellow NIST engineer Tara Lovestead. The team reports its results in the Journal of Breath Research and Harris has written about the work in Physics World.

Engaging with the public is often part of the job description for academic physicists and many undertake outreach activities such as writing popular science books, podcasting or even making music videos.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast I meet a condensed-matter physicist who has done all three and more. Philip Moriarty explains how he gets people excited about quantum mechanics while avoiding “quantum woo” – that heady and irrational mix of science and mysticism.

Based at the UK’s University of Nottingham, Moriarty chats about how his love of heavy-metal music inspired him to write a book that explains the principles of quantum mechanics using analogies from music. He also talks about a new physics-inspired music video that he has made called “Shut up and calculate”.

• In Physics World, Moriarty has reviewed the book Quantum Bullsh*t: How to Ruin Your Life with Advice from Quantum Physics by Chris Ferrie; and you can read our review of Moriarty’s book When the Uncertainty Principle Goes to 11: Or How to Explain Quantum Physics with Heavy Metal

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast the instrument scientist Roland den Hartog talks about the challenges of deploying superconductor-based detectors on satellites to do X-ray astronomy. Based at the Netherlands Institute for Space Research (SRON) in Leiden, he also explains how astronomers use X-rays to observe the “hot and energetic universe”. This involves studying a range of objects from huge galaxy clusters to compact objects such as black holes and neutron stars.

Den Hartog is currently developing X-ray detectors for the European Space Agency’s Athena mission, which will launch in 2035. He explains that a primary goal of Athena is to gain a better understanding of the astrophysical origins of the elements by detecting the distinctive X-rays that they emit.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features an interview with Amanda Barnard, who began her career as a theoretical physicist and now leads a multidisciplinary research group that applies computational science across a wide range of fields including nanotechnology, materials science, chemistry, and medicine.

Barnard is also deputy director and computational science lead at the School of Computing at the Australian National University in Canberra. She talks about her interest in applying machine learning to a wide range of problems, and about the challenges and rewards of doing university administration. Barnard is editor-in-chief of the journal Nano Futures, and she talks about how this role enhances her understanding of the field.

Also in this episode, medical researcher Jordan Squair talks about a new medical implant that could help regulate blood pressure in people with spinal-cord injuries. Squair, who is based at EPFL in Switzerland, tells Physics World’s Tami Freeman about how the device was created and how it was successfully tested on a human subject.

Freeman also congratulates Squair on winning the BioInnovation Institute & Science Prize for Innovation for his development of the implant.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, the CERN physicist Jamie Boyd talks about the ForwArd Search ExpeRiment (FASER), which is located 480 m downstream from a particle collision point on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva.

FASER is on the lookout for weakly interacting particles that are created in LHC collisions and then travel through rock and concrete to reach the detector. Earlier this year the experiment made history by being the first to detect neutrinos created at a particle collider.

But as Boyd explains, neutrinos were not the primary target when FASER was first proposed. Instead, the experiment was built to study hypothetical particles – such as dark photons – that are associated with dark matter. Dark matter is itself a hypothetical substance that many physicists believe can explain some puzzling properties of galaxies and larger-scale structures in the universe.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast we celebrate the 100th anniversary of Measurement Science and Technology, which is the world’s first scientific instrumentation and measurement journal. I am joined by the journal’s editor-in-chief Andrew Yacoot to chat about a century of metrology and look forward to the future of the discipline.

Yacoot is principal scientist at the UK’s National Physical Laboratory, where he leads the lab’s dimensional nanotechnology programme. He also talks about his research efforts and about recent changes to the definitions of SI units.

We are running this podcast this week because Saturday 20 May is World Metrology Day, marking the 148th anniversary of the Metre Convention, which began the international standardization of the metre and the kilogram.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features interviews with the chief executive of a UK-based medical start-up and the new president of the Australian Institute of Physics.

First up is Alasdair Price of the medical-imaging company Siloton, which is using photonic integrated circuits to develop a portable imaging system that can monitor the progression of eye diseases such as age-related macular degeneration.

He is followed by the theoretical physicist Nicole Bell of the University of Melbourne who talks about her research into dark matter and other aspects of her work at the intersection of particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology. She also chats about her recent appointment as president of the Australian Institute of Physics and her vision for that organization.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast I explore the remarkable life of Freeman Dyson with the historian and physicist David Kaiser. Born in England a century ago, Dyson made important breakthroughs in quantum theory and applied mathematical rigour to a wide range of projects. These included the design of a popular research reactor still in use today and a nuclear-powered rocket, which thankfully was never built.

Kaiser is editor of the new book “Well, Doc, You’re In”: Freeman Dyson’s Journey through the Universe. This looks at the mathematical physicist’s early life, formative years, and professional life in chapters written by historians and science journalists as well as colleagues and relatives of Dyson.

In our wide-ranging conversation, we look at how Dyson’s negative experiences at English boarding schools and his frustrations while doing operational research for the Royal Air Force during the Second World War shaped his lifelong rebellious streak. We discuss how his early love of mathematics served him well when he tackled problems beyond the realm of physics. Kaiser also addresses the contrarian views on climate change that Dyson developed late in life.

If the Milky Way could talk, what would it tell us about its long existence? That is the premise of The Milky Way: an Autobiography of our Galaxy, by the astrophysicist and folklorist Moiya McTier. In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, McTier talks about how she developed the idea for the book and how she captured the mindset of an entity that has been around for billions of years and stretches across 100,000 light-years.

Also featured in this episode is David McDade, who is head of ebooks at IOP Publishing. He talks about how the physics publisher’s book programme has developed in the decade since it was launched. He also chats about challenges and opportunities in scholarly publishing and looks to the future of scientific books publishing.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features an interview with Chris Schnabel, who talks about the threats and opportunities that quantum technologies pose to organizations that rely on cryptographic systems.

Schnabel is vice president of product at Qrypt, a US-based company that uses quantum technology to generate random numbers for cryptography and other applications. He explains how modern cryptography systems could be compromised by quantum computers of the future – and how quantum technologies can be used to achieve secure communications.

Friday 14 April is World Quantum Day and to celebrate I am in conversation with two physicists working at the forefront of quantum science and technology.

First up in this episode is Fermilab’s Anna Grassellino, who is director of the US Department of Energy’s Superconducting Quantum Materials and Systems Center (SQMS). She explains how the SQMS brings together people with a broad range of expertise – including materials science, microwave systems and particle physics – to create new quantum technologies. Grassellino also talks about how quantum sensors can be used to look for physics beyond the Standard Model.

Also in the podcast is Yasser Omar, who is co-ordinator of the Physics of Information and Quantum Technologies Group at the University of Lisbon and the president of the Portuguese Quantum Institute. He was also a founder of World Quantum Day and he describes some of the many events that are being held worldwide. Omar also explains why 14 April was chosen as World Quantum Day and talks about his own quantum research.

In the past decade or so, quantum technologies have gone from lab curiosities to commercial products with practical applications. This had led to a growing number of business opportunities in the sector – as well as opportunities for people with the right skills.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features an interview with Mackenzie Van Camp – who is quantum and photonics chief scientist at BAE Systems FastLabs – the research and development branch of the defence contractor BAE Systems.

Based in New Hampshire, Van Camp did a PhD in physics before joining the company. She explains why BAE Systems is developing quantum technologies and talks about some of the projects that she has worked on. She also offers career advice for people who are interested in working in the quantum and defence sectors.

Quantum science and technology have been developing by leaps and bounds over the past few decades, so it is not surprising that quantum experiments are now being done in space. In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast Lisa Wörner and Jan-Michael Mol of the Institute of Quantum Technologies of the German Aerospace Center in Ulm explain why physicists are launching quantum memories and other devices into space and talk about the challenges of doing experiments in Earth orbit.

If this podcast has piqued your interest in quantum technologies in space there is much more in an open-access paper by Mol, Wörner and colleagues. It is called “Quantum memories for fundamental science in space” and is published in Quantum Science and Technology.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features an in-depth interview with the engineer and pilot Maya Ghazal, who fled from the war in Syria and arrived in the UK in 2016. Despite facing prejudice when she first tried to resume her education, Ghazal gained a degree in aviation engineering and pilot studies and is now a graduate research engineer at the UK’s Manufacturing Technology Centre in Coventry. There, she works on aeronautics for space in support of the UK’s national space strategy.

Ghazal is a Goodwill Ambassador for UNHCR (the UN Refugee Agency). She speaks to science journalist Anna Demming about her journey from war-torn Damascus to the UK, how she overcame barriers faced by refugees and how she found an unexpected passion for all things aeronautical.

The burgeoning field of nonlinear optics is explored in this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast. It features Nathalie Vermeulen of Brussels Photonics at the Free University of Brussels and Eric Van Stryland of the College of Optics and Photonics at the University of Central Florida. They talk about the science of nonlinear optics and the wide range of applications – from astronomy to quantum computing – that have emerged.

The duo also looks to the future of nonlinear optics and chat about a recent paper in that they have co-authored with 20 other experts in the field. That paper is called “Post-2000 nonlinear optical materials and measurements: Data tables and best practices” and it can be read free of charge in the Journal of Physics: Photonics, where it has been accepted for publication.

A physics degree gives graduates an enviable set of skills that can prove useful in a wide range of jobs. But could physics courses be improved to make students even more prepared for the future of work?

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, Andrew Mizumori Hirst and William Wakeham explain how graduates would benefit from a greater emphasis on the teaching of translational skills such as effective communication; team working; creativity; and the ability to find cross-disciplinary solutions to complex problems.

Mizumori Hirst is director of White Rose Industrial Physics Academy and Wakeham is chair of the South East Physics Network – both in England. They address a wide range of issues facing university educators including technology, assessment, diverse learning styles and teaching students how to tackle open-ended problems.

Wakeham and Mizumori Hirst have also teamed up with Veronica Benson – formerly of the South East Physics Network – to write an article for Physics World called “Building a physics degree for the future: five key questions we need to answer”.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast we meet three scientists who are trying to answer a question that humanity has long pondered: does intelligent life exist elsewhere in the universe?

Peter Ma and Leandro Rizk of the University of Toronto and Cherry Ng of the French National Centre for Scientific Research in Orleans are part of a team that has used machine learning to identify eight potential “technosignatures” in data from the Robert C Byrd Green Bank Telescope. The trio explain how they look for signs of intelligent life in radio-telescope data and how machine learning gives a helping hand.

Ng also talks about her research on how signals from pulsars could be used to detect gravitational waves.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features Dennis Sherwood, a consultant and author who helps individuals and organizations boost their creativity.

Sherwood has drawn on his experiences to write the book Creativity for Scientists and Engineers: a Practical Guide and in a wide ranging interview he gives examples of creativity in physics ranging from Archimedes’ work on density to a more recent breakthrough in optical imaging. Sherwood also looks at the barriers to creativity and gives tips on how these can be overcome by scientists.

Also in this podcast, Physics World editors chat about a curious star system that could someday enrich the Milky Way with gold and platinum; and a new artificial skin that is designed to be bitten by mosquitoes.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, we explore the use of large language models (chatbots) in physics. Our guest is the theoretical physicist Matt Hodgson, who uses chatbots both as a teaching tool and as an aid in writing computer code.

Based at the UK’s University of York, Hodgson points out that the physics community has been late to the game when it comes to chatbots. While he believes that the artificial-intelligence systems are having a mostly positive effect on academia, he says that we should be aware of potential downsides of chatbot use – particularly in the early stages of undergraduate education.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features Steven Prohira, who is co-leader of the Radar Echo Telescope collaboration, which aims to detect high energy cosmic neutrinos by sending radar waves through an Antarctic ice sheet. Based at the University of Kansas, Prohira explains the physics behind the project and talks about the fascinating history of previous attempts to use radar to detect particles from outer space.

Also on hand is Physics World’s Matin Durrani, who chats about the remarkable life of the Hungarian-American physicist Leo Szilard – who encouraged the US to develop nuclear weapons during the Second World War, but later opposed their use.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features the laser specialist Tara Fortier, who works with some of the world’s best atomic clocks. Based at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Boulder, Colorado, she explains how atomic clocks work and why it is important for scientists to be able to compare the time signals of different clocks around the world.

The interview also delves into scientific and technological applications of atomic clocks such as testing Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity and searching for physics beyond the Standard Model.

Also in this podcast, John Collier, director of the UK’s Central Laser Facility​, talks about a proposal to build a free electron laser in the UK.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features an interview with Danna Freedman, who uses synthetic chemistry to create quantum bits (qubits). Based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Freedman explains how this bottom-up approach allows her team to create quantum technologies on a molecular scale.

Freedman explains why this approach could be used to create high-performance quantum sensors with a wide range of applications. These include biocompatible sensors that could someday be incorporated into medical devices. She also talks about another aspect of her research that focuses on materials under extremely high pressures – and chats about the connections between the quantum and high-pressure worlds.

Also in this podcast, Physics World’s Hamish Johnston looks at the discovery of a quasicrystal in “fossilized lightning” and how high-powered lasers can boost the performance of lightning rods and free-space optical communications.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features an interview with Angela Olinto, who is principal investigator of the EUSO-SPB2 mission. EUSO stands for Extreme Universe Space Observatory and SPB refers a super pressure balloon, which will soon be hoisting the experiment to an altitude of 33 km. There it will spend about 100 days detecting neutrinos and ultra-high energy cosmic rays.

Olinto, who is based at the University of Chicago, talks about the challenges of operating a particle-detection system floating high above Earth and what the EUSO-SPB2 collaboration hopes to observe.

Also in this episode, Physics World’s Michael Banks talks about his new book, The Secret Science of Baby, which charts the first 1000 days of human development starting at conception. Banks talks about the physics of three key phenomena related to the creation and development of a child – the swimming of sperm; the operation of the placenta; and the development of speech. These are also described in a feature article by Banks that appears in Physics World.

This episode features an interview with the scientists Michelle Bell and Scott Goetz, who are editors-in-chief of two new environmental journals from IOP Publishing.

Bell is a professor of environmental health at Yale University and has helped launched the journal Environmental Research: Health. She talks about her research on how the greening of urban landscapes and other environmental factors affect human health.

Goetz heads the Global Earth Observation and Dynamics of Ecosystems lab at Northern Arizona University and has helped launch the journal Environmental Research: Ecology. He talks about how Earth observation satellites are shedding light on how climate change is affecting ecosystems such as taiga (boreal forest).

Also in this podcast, the science writer Laura Hiscott looks at a recent study that suggests that innovation in science and technology is waning.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast Katherine Morris of the University of Manchester explains how her research on environmental radiochemistry will lead to better ways of storing nuclear waste and remediating contaminated sites. She also talks about how her team uses the UK’s Diamond Light Source to better understand the chemistry of systems containing radioactive materials.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features an interview with Andrew Cheng, who is a lead scientist on the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) space mission. In September 2022 the DART spacecraft smashed into an asteroid and was successful in changing the orbit of that near-Earth object.

DART was conceived and executed by NASA and an international team led by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory – and they are the winners of the Physics World 2022 Breakthrough of the Year Award.

Cheng is based at Johns Hopkins and he recalls the final moments in mission control before the impact, which he describes as “one of the greatest moments of my life”. He explains how the DART mission came together and talks about how we could defend Earth from asteroid impacts in the future.

This is the final Weekly podcast of 2022. Thanks for listening and we will be back on 5 January with the first episode of 2023.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features a lively discussion about our Top 10 Breakthroughs of 2022. Physics World editors discuss the merits of research on a broad range of topics including nuclear physics, optoelectronics, medical physics and astronomy.

The top 10 serves as the shortlist for the Physics World Breakthrough of the Year award, which will be announced on 14 December.

Links to all the nominees, more about their research and the criteria for the award can be found here.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, collision expert Michael Hall explains how Newtonian physics is used to piece together what happened in motor vehicle accidents, sometimes revealing insurance fraud. Hall is a physicist and head of research at GBB – a company in Preston, UK, that provides impartial scientific, forensic and engineering advice on traffic collisions. He has also written an article for Physics World about the physics of car crashes. It is called “Using Newton’s laws to weed out bogus car-crash claims”.

Also in this episode, Physics World’s Margaret Harris reports back from the 2022 Institute of Physics Business Awards gala, where seven companies were honoured for their innovations. These include two firms that make technologies for diagnosing cancer and a company that has just won a £60m contract to build a quantum computer.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast we meet Adrian Mancuso, who is the new Physical Science Director at the UK’s Diamond Light Source. The physicist talks about his plans for the national synchrotron lab, and chats about the myriad research that is done at synchrotrons and related facilities called free electron lasers.

Also in this podcast, the science journalist Keith Cooper talks about plans for the next generation of NASA’s space telescopes – and how these instruments will be used by astronomers. He also chats about his latest book, which looks at how humans could respond to contact from extraterrestrial intelligent life.