Physics World Stories Podcast

In this episode of Physics World Stories, astronaut Eileen Collins shares her extraordinary journey as the first woman to pilot and command a spacecraft. Collins broke barriers in space exploration, inspiring generations with her courage and commitment to discovery. Reflecting on her career, she discusses not only her time in space but also her lifelong sense of adventure and her recent passion for reading history books. Today, Collins frequently shares her experiences with audiences around the world, encouraging curiosity and inspiring others to pursue their dreams.

Joining the conversation is Hannah Berryman, director of the new documentary SPACEWOMAN, which is based on Collins’ memoir Through the Glass Ceiling to the Stars, co-written with Jonathan H Ward. The British filmmaker describes what attracted her to Collins’ story and the universal messages it reveals. Hosted by science communicator Andrew Glester, this episode offers a glimpse into the life of a true explorer – one whose spirit of adventure knows no bounds.

SPACEWOMAN has its world premiere on 16 November 2024 at DOC NYC. Keep an eye on the documentary’s website for details of how you can watch the film wherever you are.

In this episode of Physics World Stories, host Andrew Glester shepherds you through the fascinating world of crowd dynamics. While gazing at a flock of sheep or meandering through a busy street, you may not immediately think of the physics at play – but there is much more than you think. Give the episode a listen to discover the surprising science behind how animals and people move together in large groups.

The first guest, Philip Ball, a UK-based science writer, explores the principles that underpin the movement of sheep in flocks. Insights from physics can even be used to inform herding tactics, whereby dogs are guided – usually through whistles – to control flocks of sheep and direct them towards a chosen destination. For even more detail, check out Ball’s recent Physics World feature “Field work – the physics of sheep, from phase transitions to collective motion“.

Next, Alessandro Corbetta, from Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, talks about his research on pedestrian flow that won him an Ig Nobel Prize. Corbetta explains how his research field is helping us understand – and manage – the movements of human crowds in bustling spaces such as museums, transport hubs and stadia. Plus, he shares how winning the Ig Nobel has enabled the research to reach a far broader audience than he initially imagined.

The quantum industry in booming. An estimated $42bn was invested in the sector in 2023 and is projected to rise to $106 billion by 2040. In this episode of Physics World Stories, two experts from the quantum industry share their experiences, and give advice on how to enter this blossoming sector. Quantum technologies – including computing, communications and sensing – could vastly outperform today’s technology for certain applications, such as efficient and scalable artificial intelligence.

Our first guest is Matthew Hutchings, chief product officer and co-founder of SEEQC. Based in New York and with facilities in Europe, SEEQC is developing a digital quantum computing platform with a broad industrial market due to its combination of classical and quantum technologies. Hutchings speaks about the increasing need for engineering positions in a sector that to date has been dominated by workers with a PhD in quantum information science.

The second guest is Araceli Venegas-Gomez, founder and CEO of QURECA, which helps to train and recruit individuals, while also providing business development services. Venegas-Gomez’s journey into the sector began with her reading about quantum mechanics as a hobby while working in aerospace engineering. In launching QURECA, she realized there was an important gap to be filled between quantum information science and business – two communities that have tended to speak entirely different languages.

Get even more tips and advice in the recent feature article ‘Taking the leap – how to prepare for your future in the quantum workforce’.

When former physicist James Gillies sat down for dinner in 2009 with actors Tom Hanks and Ayelet Zurer, joined by legendary director Ron Howard, he could scarcely believe the turn of events. Gillies was the head of communications at CERN, and the Hollywood trio were in town for the launch of Angels & Demons – the blockbuster film partly set at CERN with antimatter central to its plot, based on the Dan Brown novel.

With CERN turning 70 this year, Gillies joins the Physics World Stories podcast to reflect on how his team handled unprecedented global interest in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and the hunt for the Higgs boson. Alongside the highs, the CERN comms team also had to deal with the lows. Not least, the electrical fault that put the LHC out of action for 18 months shortly after its switch-on. Or figuring out a way to engage with the conspiracy theory that particle collisions in the LHC would somehow destroy the Earth.

Spoiler alert: the planet survived. And the Higgs boson discovery was announced in that famous 2012 seminar, which saw tears drop from the eyes of Peter Higgs – the British theorist who had predicted the particle in 1964. Our other guest on the podcast, Achintya Rao, describes how excitement among CERN scientists became increasingly palpable in the days leading to the announcement. Rao was working in the comms team within CMS, one of the two LHC detectors searching independently for the Higgs.

Could particle physics ever capture the public imagination in the same way again?

Discover more by reading the feature “Angels & Demons, Tom Hanks and Peter Higgs: how CERN sold its story to the world” by James Gillies.

With the 2024 Paris Olympics just days away, sports fans are braced to see who will run, jump, row, fight and dance themselves into the history books. One of the most exciting moments will be the 100 m sprint finals, when athletes compete to become the fastest man or woman on Earth.

Over the years we have seen jaw-dropping performances from the likes of Usain Bolt and Florence Griffith-Joyner. Scientists have been captivated by top sprinters – trying to understand how physique, technique and nutritional intake can help athletes push the limits of human ability. In this episode of the Physics World Stories podcast, we tackle the more speculative question: could an Olympic-level athlete ever run on water?

Grappling with this question is our guest Nicole Sharp, engineer and science communicator specializing in fluid dynamics. She runs the fluid dynamics blog FYFD and authored the recent Physics World feature “Could athletes mimic basilisk lizards and turn water-running into an Olympic sport?“. Basilisk lizards are famed for their ability to skitter across water surfaces, usually to escape predators.

It won’t surprise you to know that scientists have already grappled with this question. For instance, a team in Italy studied whether it was possible in reduced gravity conditions equivalent to the Moon. Sadly, a water race on the Moon is unlikely due to the absence of pools of liquid on the lunar surface.

One place that could provide the setting for a liquid sprint are the ethane and methane lakes on Saturn’s moon Titan. These are the only large stable bodies of surface liquid in our solar system found outside Earth. If such an event were to happen tomorrow, perhaps the gold medal favourite would be US sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson – the current 100 m world champion who weighs just 45 kg.

Listen to the podcast to discover whether Richardson would sprint or sink at the inaugural Titan Olympics.

For sports fans, the next few weeks will bring excitement and drama. The Euro 2024 football (soccer) tournament is under way in Germany and the Copa América is about to kick off in the US. Then at the end of July, the Olympics starts in Paris as athletes from across the world compete to run, jump, sail, cycle and dance themselves into the history books. In this episode of Physics World Stories, you will hear from two US physicists with a profound connection with sport.

The first guest is John Eric Goff of the University of Lynchburg, author of Gold Medal Physics: the Science of Sports. After training as a condensed-matter theorist, Goff has focused his research career the physics of sport. In a wide-ranging conversation with podcast host Andrew Glester, Goff discusses everything from the flight of balls to the biodynamics of martial arts. He also considers how data and AI in sport are changing the practice and the spectacle of sport.

Our second guest is Harvard University’s Jenny Hoffman, who recently set the record for the fastest woman to run across the US. In November 2023 Hoffman completed the 3000 mile (5000 km) journey in just 47 days, 12 hours and 35 minutes, running from San Francisco to New York City. Hoffman, who studies the electronic properties of exotic materials, speaks about the benefits of having hobbies and passions outside of work. For her, running plays an essential role in wellbeing during her successful career in academia.

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.

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:

(Image courtesy: Ed Miller/Netflix)

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.

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“.