The European XFEL is an x-ray free electron laser currently being built in Hamburg. In this episode we talk with Joachim Schulz about the project itself, the design and construction of the laser and the experiment hall, as well as about some of the science that is expected to be done with XFEL once it is finished.

In this episode we cover the fundamentals of lasers with our guest, Fabian Reichert, who works at the Center for Free Electron Lasers at DESY in Hamburg. We cover various ways of how laser beams are produced and what distinguishes lasers from other light sources. We also cover a few application areas of lasers as well as techniques for pulsing lasers.

The tail numbers NASA 911 and NASA 905 were used for the two Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, converted Boeing 747s that carried the shuttle between the landing sites and the launch complex at Kennedy Space Center. Our guest in this episode is Ace Beall who flew the SCAs for several years. We talk about operations, modifications on the airplane, the flight characteristics with and without the shuttle as well as some anecdotes from Ace’s time on the SCA.

Once again, I forgot to mention those of my listeners who suggested questions. I’m doing it here instead: Robert Kunov, Pieter Johnson, Bert Daanje, Thomas Tröndlin, Rob Thomasson, Jürgen Starek, Mathias Menzer, David Liaromatis, Georg Holderied, @schnassn, @alphadash0, Davide Sivolella and Evan Stanbury.

Here are two videos (number 2, number 1) I want to specifically link to, because it covers the Shuttle approach and landing tests, which we mentioned in the show:

This episode is German and English. Forward to the second chapter (or to 59:50) to get to the English part.

Dies ist kein Interview, sondern ein Rückblick auf 2015. Nora und Markus besprechen was gut lief und was nicht so gut lief, bedanken und bei ein paar Leuten, besprechen einige Ergebnisse der Hörerumfrage und blicken kurz auf das kommende Jahr.

This is not a regular interview show. Instead, it is a review of 2015. Nora and Markus look at what went well and what did not, thank a few people, discuss some results of the recent listener survey and briefly talk about the coming year.

String Theory is currently one of the most important theories in fundamental physics, with applications to a variety of subfields including black holes and cosmology, nuclear physics others. This episode is an introduction to the core ideas of the field, as well as to some of its applications. Our guest is Alexander Westphal of Germany’s particle physics lab DESY. He does a wonderful job of introducing the very abstract topic in a way that could be understood by non-physicists, at least to some degree.

Once again I forgot to mention those of you (listeners) who suggested questions, so I am doing it here: Stefan Hacker, Brent Knickerbocker, Christopher Schuster and David Liaromatis.