omega tau science & engineering podcast

Mass spectrometers are devices for measuring the mass-to-charge ratio of molecules and ions. They use many different measurement principles and are used in various areas of science. Our guest Alexander Makarov works as a Director Global Research for Thermo Fisher's Life Sciences Division and has invented the Orbitrap principle used widely in modern mass spectrometers. We talk about mass spectrometry in general, the different measurement principles, engineering challenges, the invention of the Orbitrap, use cases for mass spectrometers and the different machines sold by Thermo Fisher.

When ships have an engine casualty, run aground or have a fire on board they need to be salvaged or their wreck removed. Specialised companies, like Ardent, focus on salvaging ships or removing wrecks. These tasks are sometimes challenging from an engineering perspective, and always interesting from the business side. In this episode we talk with Ardent's Bram Sperling, a senior salvage master, about both these aspects of salvage and wreck removal operations.

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.

In dieser Episode spreche ich mit Matthias Noch über Krisenmanagement, vor allem (aber nicht nur) in der IT Industrie. Wir definieren Begriffe wie Störung, Großstörung und Krise, besprechen Vorgehen zur Lösung und erläutern, welche Aufgaben und Rechte ein Krisenteam (oder -stab) hat. Wir schließen mit einem kurzen Blick auf die Qualifikationen, die ein Krisenmanager haben sollte.

Letzten Herbst war ich erneut an der Universität Witten-Herdecke. Ich habe dort ein langes Gespräch mit Prof. Stefan Zimmer zum Thema Zahnmedizin geführt. Dabei ging es vor allem darum, wie ein Zahn aufgebaut ist, welche Erkrankungen an den Zähnen auftreten, wie man sie behandelt und was man zur Prophylaxe tun kann.

In der ersten Episode dieses Jahr geht es um die Langstreckenfliegerei mit dem A-380. Unser Gast ist Rolf Peter Gaiser, Kapitän bei der Lufthansa. Im ersten Teil sprechen wir über die A-380 als Flugzeug, mit besonderem Schwerpunkt auf die Automatisierung im Cockpit. Im Teil zwei geht es dann um die Besonderheiten der Langstreckenfliegerei: Enroute ATC, interessante Flughäfen oder Strecken sowie die Aufgaben der Crew auf langen Flügen.

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.