In 2015 Zhong Fang and Hongming Weng were part of a team to predict and confirm that tantalum arsenide is a Weyl semimetal. These exotic materials contain the first evidence for the existence of Weyl fermions, massless particles predicted in 1929 as a solution of the Dirac equation. In this podcast, Hamish Johnston catches up with Fang and Weng at the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and asks them about their work on Weyl semimetals and other topological materials.

Recipe for success with topological materials

Physics is full of captivating stories, from ongoing endeavours to explain the cosmos to ingenious innovations that shape the world around us. In the Physics World Stories podcast, Andrew Glester talks to the people behind some of the most intriguing and inspiring scientific stories. Listen to the podcast to hear from a diverse mix of scientists, engineers, artists and other commentators. Find out more about the stories in this podcast by visiting the Physics World website. If you enjoy what you hear, then also check out the Physics World Weekly podcast, a science-news podcast presented by our award-winning science journalists.

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Whether you’re a Swiftie, a devout metalhead, or a 1980s synth pop aficionado, there is something for every musical taste in this month’s Physics World Stories.
In part one, podcast host Andrew Glester is joined by Jacqueline Caplan-Auerbach, a geophysicist at Western Washington University, US. She has analysed “Swift quakes”, a seismological phenomenon during Taylor Swift’s Eras tour, answering two important questions. Are the quakes triggered by the music or the crowd? And how does their magnitude compare with similar events like the 2011 “Beast quake” triggered by celebrations at an American Football game between the Seattle Seahawks and the New Orleans Saints. It turns out that Swifties (dedicated Taylor Swift fans) are queuing up to share data for geophysics research.

Regular listeners will notice that this month’s episode has a new podcast jingle. In part two, Glester is joined by the song’s creator Philip Moriarty, a physicist and science communicator at the University of Nottingham, UK. Titled 137, the song is inspired by the fine-structure constant, and is packed with cheeky references to this dimensionless constant and the physicists closely associated with it. (Yes, you can expect bongos!) Moriarty reveals even more about the song in his article “H1dd3n variab7es: the fundamental constant on which the new Physics World podcast music is built“, where you can also listen to the tune in full.

Swift Quakes and new podcast music inspired by the fine-structure constant

This episode of Physics World Stories explores the science, politics and ethics in the Netflix series 3 Body Problem. Adapted from the celebrated Chinese novel The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin, the multi-layered story centres around humanity’s first contact with an alien civilization. As the drama unfolds, with physicists among its lead protagonists, the plot navigates the challenges of communicating with aliens across interstellar space – and the inevitable tensions that arise on Earth.
To discuss 3 Body Problem, podcast host Andrew Glester is joined by three special guests:

Matt Kenzie: the series’ science adviser, a particle physicist at the University of Cambridge. Kenzie’s role in informing the show’s scientific elements gives him unparalleled insight into the integration of physics into its narrative.
Jennifer Ouellette: a renowned science writer who reviewed Cixin’s book The Three-Body Problem for Physics World back in 2015. Ouellette shares her thoughts on the book’s themes, and assesses the merits of the TV adaptation by the creators of Game of Thrones.
Hannah Little: a linguist at the University of Liverpool who is also a member of the SETI Post-Detection Hub. That initiative, based at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, considers how we should communicate with aliens should we discover we are not alone in the cosmos.

(Image courtesy: Ed Miller/Netflix)

3 Body Problem: a deep dive into the Netflix show

This month’s episode of Physics World Stories features an interview with composer Amanda Lee Falkenberg with music from her The Moons Symphony. Her creation takes listeners on an epic journey through the science and stories of the moons of our solar system.
The seven-movement symphony dramatizes the geophysical features of Io, Europa, Titan, Enceladus, Miranda and Ganymede, before turning to our own Moon for a two-part finale. In creating the work, Australian-born Falkenberg immersed herself in the scientific research and consulted many scientists and astronauts.
The Moons Symphony performed by the London Symphony Orchestra is available now via Signum Records.

An orchestral trip through the moons of our solar system

Coke or Pepsi? Messi or Ronaldo? Taylor Swift or…well, without wanting to set the Swifties against Physics World, let’s just say there’s often a tribal element to who we support or the choices we make.
In the world of cosmology, one heated divide is whether you’re for dark matter or modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND). Both theories attempt to explain the discrepancies between the predicted gravitational effects in the universe and some of the actual observed motions of stars and galaxies.
In the latest episode of Physics World Stories, Andrew Glester speaks to two cosmologists on opposing sides of this debate. Stacy McGaugh from Case Western Reserve University in the US is a former dark-matter researcher who switched sides overnight after MOND successfully predicted the rotation velocities of stars in galaxies.
The other guest, Indranil Banik from the University of St Andrews in the UK, took the opposite journey. While working on a six-year project to measure MOND in wide binaries, he found no deviation from standard Newtonian gravity at all – a hammer blow for MOND. Now a dark matter advocate, Banik cites observations in our own solar system as further evidence against MOND. Naturally, others disagree.
For more detailed insight into this debate, see the recent Physics World feature “Cosmic combat: delving into the battle between dark matter and modified gravity“.

Dark matter vs modified gravity: which team are you on?

In the latest Physics World Stories podcast, astrophysicist Emma Chapman is in conversation with host Andrew Glester about the history of radio astronomy. It’s a field that has always maintained a do-it-yourself ethic, with valuable contributions from people outside the established academic community.
Chapman, an astrophysicist at the University of Nottingham in the UK is the author of the popular-science book First Light: Switching on Stars at the Dawn of Time. Alongside her research, Chapman regularly visits amateur radio astronomy clubs and admires the technical expertise she encounters among members.
Cold War boom
Using much of the same technology as radar, radio astronomy evolved rapidly in the post-war period and took on strategic importance during the Space Race. Indeed, the Lovell Telescope at the Jodrell Bank observatory in northern England was the only facility in the Western world that could track Sputnik 1, launched by the Soviet Union in 1957.
One reason that radio astronomy attracts public interest is that its facilities are ground-based: they’re tangible and accessible. Sites such as the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico have iconic status in popular culture. That status looks set to grow thanks to the SKA Observatory being constructed at sites across Australia and South Africa – a truly global project, epic in scale.

Chapman is the author of a Physics World feature about how the craft of doing radio astronomy has evolved since its origins.


Recipe for success with topological materials

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