Physics World Weekly Podcast

Our first guest in this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast is Derek Sutherland, who is head of FuZE-Q physics at the US-based company Zap Energy. He explains how the US-based firm is designing a fusion system that does not rely on magnets, cryogenics or high-powered lasers to generate energy. We also chat about the small-scale fusion industry in general, and about career opportunities for physicists in the sector.

This episode also features an interview with theoretical physicist and author Claudia de Rham. She talks to Physics World’s Matin Durrani about her new popular-science book The Beauty of Falling. They also chat about her research, which addresses a range of fundamental problems associated with gravity – from quantum to cosmological scales.

This episode is supported by Pfeiffer Vacuum. The company provides all types of vacuum equipment, including hybrid and magnetically-levitated turbopumps, leak detectors and analysis equipment, as well as vacuum chambers and systems. You can explore all of its products on the Pfeiffer Vacuum website.

New and exciting technologies feature in this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast.

Our first guest is the neuroscientist and physicist Jelena Lazovic Zinnanti, who recalls how she discovered (by accident) that nanometre-sized diamond particles shine brightly in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) experiments. Based at Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, she explains how this diamond dust could someday replace gadolinium as a contrast agent in MRI medical scans.

This episode also features an interview with Mahdi Bodaghi of Nottingham Trent University, who is an expert in 4D and 3D printing. He talks about the engineering principles that guide 4D printing and how the technique can be used in a wide range of applications including the treatment of coronary heart disease and the design of flatpack furniture. Bodaghi also explains how 3D printing can be used to create self-healing asphalt.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast explores how medical physicists are using exciting new technologies to make precision medicine possible. Our guests are Anna Barnes, Director of the King’s Technology Evaluation Centre at Kings College London and President of IPEM, and Nicky Whilde, who is head of radiotherapy physics at the Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust.

In a wide-ranging conversation with Physics World’s Tami Freeman, Whilde and Barnes define the key concepts of precision medicine and explain how they are being implemented by medical physicists using magnetic resonance imaging, radiotherapy and other technologies.

This episode is supported by PTW, the dosimetry specialist.

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.

This podcast is sponsored by Thyracont Vacuum Instruments, which provides all types of vacuum metrology for a broad variety of applications ranging from laboratory research to coating and the semiconductor industry. Explore their sensors, handheld vacuum meters, digital and analogue transducers as well as vacuum accessories and components at thyracont-vacuum.com.

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.