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The History of Physics Podcast
The History of Physics Podcast episodes
- Ether: The Phantom Medium That Sparked Relativity
Explore how the 19th‑century concept of a luminiferous ether, its experimental challenge by Michelson and Morley, and Lorentz’s mathematical gymnastics ultimately led Einstein to discard it and revolutionize physics. From waves in an invisible ocean to the constancy of light speed, this episode traces the science, people, and culture behind the shift.
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15 min - Young's Double‑Slit Experiment: The Wrong Turn That Sparked Light’s Wave Revolution
Thomas Young’s 1804 double‑slit experiment challenged the prevailing corpuscular view of light and hinted at its wave nature. Though initially dismissed, the interference pattern it revealed eventually led to Maxwell’s equations and the modern understanding of electromagnetism. This episode traces how a humble cardboard slitted setup became a turning point in physics history.
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19 min - Newton Splits White Light: The Prism Experiment That Changed Our View of Light
In this episode we dive into Isaac Newton’s prism experiment during the Great Plague of 1665, where he uncovered that white light is a mixture of colors. We trace how this observation challenged prevailing particle and wave theories, sparked debates between Newtonian and Huygensian schools, and laid the groundwork for modern spectroscopy and quantum optics.
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14 min - Solar Neutrinos: From Ghost Particles to Flavor Oscillation
The episode follows Ray Davis Jr.’s pioneering underground experiment, Bruno Pontecorvo’s daring hypothesis of flavor change, and the breakthroughs at Super‑Kamiokande and SNO that proved neutrinos have mass. It explores how a puzzling deficit of solar neutrinos led to one of particle physics’ most profound discoveries.
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18 min - The Hissing Discovery That Heard the Big Bang: Penzias & Wilson’s CMB Breakthrough
Two engineers at Bell Labs in the late 1960s stumbled upon a persistent microwave hiss that would become the first direct evidence of cosmic background radiation. The episode traces how Penzias and Wilson’s careful calibration, their conversation with Robert Dicke, and subsequent confirmation by NASA’s COBE experiment cemented the Big Bang model, earning them a Nobel Prize in 1978.
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14 min - Ørsted’s Twitching Compass Needle: Birth of Electromagnetism
In early spring 1820 in Copenhagen, Hans Christian Ørsted observed a compass needle deflect when an electric current passed nearby—a simple experiment that forged the link between electricity and magnetism. This moment sparked the development of electromagnetism, leading to generators, motors, radio waves, and reshaping modern technology.
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17 min - Alessandro Volta and the Birth of the Battery: How One Stack Changed Physics
From du Fay’s two‑fluid hypothesis to Volta’s voltaic pile, this episode traces how a simple stack of zinc and copper produced the first steady electric current. It shows how that breakthrough fed Maxwell’s equations, modern battery chemistry, and the early economics of science infrastructure.
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17 min - From Spooky Paradoxes to Tiny Angles: How Small Mysteries Sparked Physics’ Great Revolutions
In this episode we follow the thread that runs through three pivotal moments in physics history—the EPR paradox and birth of entanglement, Galileo’s revolutionary telescope, and Kepler’s eight‑minute discrepancy that forced a new view of planetary motion. We trace how each breakthrough reshaped theories, instruments, and the very way scientists think about reality.
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17 min - Galileo’s Trial: How a Single Telescope Observation of Venus Phases Sparked Scientific Revolution
This episode traces how Galileo’s modest refracting telescope revealed Venus’s phases, providing evidence that challenged the geocentric model and precipitated his infamous trial. We explore the scientific, theological, and political stakes of this observation, its impact on the rise of empirical science, and its lasting legacy in modern research practices.
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16 min - Aryabhata’s Rotating Earth: How a 5th-Century Insight Powers Modern Physics
Explore how Aryabhata’s early claim that the Earth spins—derived from naked‑eye observations and simple geometry—shaped later astronomy, influenced Newtonian mechanics, and remains essential to GPS, weather forecasting, and our everyday sense of time.
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18 min
About The History of Physics Podcast
From the publisher's feed
Explore the extraordinary history of physics, from the earliest attempts to explain motion, matter, light, and the heavens to the discoveries that transformed our understanding of space, time, energy, atoms, and the universe. The History of Physics Podcast follows the thinkers, experiments, equations, instruments, institutions, and scientific revolutions that built modern physics across thousands of years.
Episodes trace ideas from ancient Greek natural philosophy, astronomy, and mechanics through the Scientific Revolution, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, thermodynamics, electromagnetism, optics, statistical mechanics, relativity, quantum theory, nuclear physics, particle physics, cosmology, and the search for deeper laws of nature. The show also explores famous experiments, rivalries between scientists, failed theories, technological breakthroughs, major laboratories, mathematical innovations, and the historical circumstances that changed the direction of scientific thought.
Whether you are interested in Newton and Einstein, quantum mechanics, black holes, electricity, atomic theory, space exploration, or the people behind the equations, the podcast tells the human story of how physics developed and why its discoveries changed civilization. The History of Physics Podcast is hosted by Josh Linsk.