Your Friendly Physicist and other Nerds: Stories from Physics and Science

"In the end, founding our company was a no‑brainer!"

If you can say this about the founding process of your company, you've probably done a few things right. With the right people. At the right place.

Dr. Andreas Weis and Jennifer L.M. Rupp founded Qkera in 2023. Steffen Weinmann came in a bit later as Head of Engineering. Together with a (still) small team they develop next-generation batteries. And they use materials that are not so different from what your favorite coffee cup is made of: oxide ceramics.

But as Andreas puts it: "It's one thing to have breakthroughs in the lab, but it's another to have an ecosystem that helps you scale it."

And that's why it is not a coincidence that Qkera was founded at Technische Universität München, where you have support and especially infrastructure (meaning lab-space and equipment) through TUM Venture Labs and UnternehmerTUM, as well as super broad and active industry/startup/expert network.

Great discussions, great company, great guys!

Listen now to the full origin story of Qkera with Andreas and Steffen on your favorite podcast platform. #yourfriendlyphysicist

In der neuen Episode ist André Baumeister von FramScience zu Gast: Geograph, Geologe und jemand, der Reisen mit Wissenschaft und echte Lernerfahrungen kombiniert. Von den Alpen über Norwegen bis in die Arktis sprechen wir darüber, wie aus Beobachten ein tieferes Verständnis für Landschaften, Klima und die dahinterstehende Wissenschaft wird.

Ein Winter-Special mit Abenteuer-Geschichten, und eine wohlverdiente Pause nach dem Feiertagstrubel. Und wenn ihr gerade dabei seid den Urlaub fürs kommende Jahr zu planen, nimm diese Folge gerne als kleine Starthilfe.

Link zur FRAM Seite gibts hier:

https://www.framsciencetravel.de/

Imagine, you rent a car, pack it with scientific equipment, a bunch of samples, and your favorite colleagues. You drive to a large-scale facility, where you set up your experiment and spend days and nights to shoot neutrons or x-rays on your samples. Sounds exciting?

That's what scientists call beamtime: It's intense, exhausting, and chaotic but those sleepless nights often lead to the breakthroughs that keep us going!

I realized that many of you are curious what really happens during beamtime, so I asked your to send in your beamtime questions, and you delivered!

In the latest podcast episode, my colleague Sol and I take you inside a beamtime at the PSI and answer your questions:

📝 How to get beamtime?

🥱 How to manage 3 am sample change?

🦸🏽‍♀️ What superpower do we wish for during beamtimes?

This episode is for all that are new to the concept of beamtimes and are curious about these large-scale facilities, where science meets adventure. 🚀 ⚛️

Want to come along?

Physik trifft Politik: Vom Labor direkt in den Deutschen Bundestag ⚛️🥼 ➡️ 🏛️🇩🇪

Wie fühlt es sich an, wenn man Schutzbrille gegen Aktentasche tauscht? Und wenn plötzlich nicht mehr Messdaten, sondern Gesetzestexte den Arbeitsalltag bestimmen?

Dr. Markus Schleuning ist Physiker und hat genau diesen Schritt gewagt. Ein halbes Jahr lang hat er im Team von Thomas Heilmann (CDU) im Deutschen Bundestag mitgearbeitet.

In der neuesten Folge von "Your Friendly Physicist and other Nerds" spricht Markus über seine Zeit im Bundestag und gibt spannende Einblicke ins politische Tagesgeschäft:

🔬 Welche Rolle spielt wissenschaftliches Denken in der Politik?

💼 Wie viel Einfluss haben eigentlich Lobbyisten?

🚀 Und was muss man wissen, wenn man selbst mal in die Politik möchte?

Danke, Markus, für deine Offenheit! Wer noch mehr über Markus erfahren möchte, kann gerne mal bei Bundesverband Neue Energiewirtschaft e.V. (bne) vorbeischauen. Dort wird Markus als Pressesprecher weiterhin im politischen Umfeld aktiv sein.

Ein großes Dankeschön geht auch an die Wilhelm und Else Heraeus-Stiftung, die solche Erfahrungen für junge Wissenschaftler*innen überhaupt erst möglich macht. 🙏🏼

#yourfriendlyphysicist #podcast #politik #CDU #KlimaUnion #Energiewende #Klimawandel

Let's build a university on the Moon. And you can be part of it! 🌖🎓

Lakshmi Karan is Vice Chair of the Galactic Council of LunARC and she has a mission: To democratize space exploration, so that all humans, and not just some billionaires, benefit from access to space. 💪🏽🚀

One idea to achieve this is to build a university on the Moon. But Lakshmi and LunARC aren't doing this on their own. They want you to be part of this. Why and how this works is now available in the latest episode of Your Friendly Physicist and other Nerds!

If you look at our Moon these days, would you think that it will soon be an extraterrestrial art exhibition? 🌗 🖼️

Priyanka Rajkakati, PhD is a scientist. And she is an artist. For her, that's not two sides of the same medal, but a complementary way of experiencing our world. As scientists, we often don't know what we are looking for (and where, and why, and when 😵‍💫). So, why not approaching these problems in a creative way?

Her work has brought her to all seven continents, her art has been on the ISS and will soon land on the Moon with theFirefly Aerospace mission (fingers crossed). She has won numerous awards such as Forbes India 30 under 30 and L'Oréal Woman of Worth, and is an Alumni Ambassador of the Embassy of France in India.

And most importantly, her unique approach of seeing science and art as a unity allows her to communicate the big stories of our time to a broad audience, thereby creating a much larger impact on the world.

Thank you, Priyanka, for sharing your views with us! It was such a fun talk about sustainable space races, grasses from US golf courses in the Antarctica, and why we send art to space!#yourfriendlyphysicist

Just two nerds talking about small-angle scattering 🤓 🤝 🤓

I am fully aware that this is a super nerdy topic, but if anyone can get you excited about the magic of scattering X-rays (or neutrons) at small angles, it's Brian Richard Pauw from Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung! 🙌

Tune in to find out why scattering is so powerful, what you can do with it, and where the hidden pitfalls lie ⚛️

And what do nerds love more than going down one rabbit hole? Right, going down the next rabbit hole! I love how after about 30 minutes, the episode slowly drifts away from scattering and circles around science communication, the dark side of science, and how to fight the inner imposter.

It was a lot of fun talking to you Brian, thanks for joining in! 🙏 

“I started the company and 28 days later the world was ruined!" ☠️🌍

Florian Döring has quite some stories to tell:

🏭 Why and how he founded XRnanotech?

😷 What the pandemic meant for the company?

🦸🏼‍♂️ Which superpowers he wants to have as a CEO and how he makes the invisible visible?

The full story is now available on your favorite podcast app! #yourfriendlyphysicist #podcast #science #research #startup #entrepreneur #swiss #interview

Prof. Saša Zelenika is Vice Rector for Strategic Projects at the University of Rijeka in Croatia. Together, we dive into how universities can foster real-world innovation and prepare students for dynamic careers by enhancing communication and collaboration between academia and industry.

Professor Zelenika shares his experiences and vision for how the University of Rijeka is shaping the future through strategic projects, knowledge valorization, and cross-sector partnerships.

Tune in for a fascinating discussion on leadership, education, and building a bridge between research and the economic sector.

False Vacuum Decay!

This term describes when a meta-stable quantum field (=False Vacuum) becomes a stable quantum field (=True Vacuum). This might happen at some time to the (maybe) meta-stable Higgs Field, and the consequences would be quite drastic: the annihilation of the entire universe ☠️😱 

Kurzgesagt explained this concept already a couple of years ago, and recently, we turned their YouTube video into a 60s short video! (links are in the comments). Back then, I thought, no way, people would actually understand what we want to tell. But I it worked out great, and the final video highlights how powerful the combination of clear language and intuitive visuals can be. 

And still, False Vacuum Decay is such an exciting and dreadful topic, it's easy to get lost in the rabbit hole. Luckily, we don't have to explore this rabbit hole on our own: Dr. Alessandro Zenesini, scientist at the INO-CNR National Institute of Optics in Italy, took the time to guide us. 

Together we discuss the general concept of False Vacuum Decay, the consequences for us and the universe, why it might not necessarily be the end of the universe but also the start of a new one, how likely this scenario might happen, and why he is a big fan of kurzgesagt!

Thank you, Alessandro for being an excellent guide and a great podcast guest!