Physics World Weekly Podcast

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features an interview with Paul Howarth, who became president of the Institute of Physics (IOP) in February.

The IOP is the professional body and learned society for physics in the UK and Ireland. Representing 21,000 members, it supports physicists at all stages of their careers and seeks to make physics accessible to people from all backgrounds.

With a PhD in nuclear physics, Howarth has had a long career in the nuclear sector working on the European Fusion Programme and at British Nuclear Fuels, as well as co-founding the Dalton Nuclear Institute at the University of Manchester and serving as chief executive officer of the National Nuclear Laboratory.

He talks to Physics World’s Michael Banks about his career in nuclear energy and his priorities now as president of the IOP. These include improving physics education and raising the profile of physics and physicists across society.

Howarth also voices concerns about recent funding cuts to particle physics, astronomy and space science in the UK, saying it could hamper the flow of students into the subject, with a potential impact on burgeoning areas such as quantum tech.

• The Institute of Physics owns IOP Publishing, which brings you Physics World.

Nuclear fusion powers the Sun, and scientists and engineers have long been trying to harness the process to generate clean energy. While much progress has been made, the commercially-viable generation of fusion energy remains elusive.

One important challenge is developing a range of specialized materials that can contain an extremely hot, radiation-emitting plasma in close proximity to ultracold superconducting magnets.

Our guest this week is Jacob John of the UK Atomic Energy Authority, who studies how radiation damages materials. In conversation with Physics World’s Matin Durrani, he talks about the near-oxymoronic materials requirements for fusion reactors and how they can be met.

The quantum-technology sector is burgeoning, but challenges remain when it comes to creating viable commercial products. While quantum sensors show great promise, some technologies rely on ultrahigh vacuum (UHV) – which is difficult to achieve in compact, portable devices.

My guest in this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast is Florence Concepcion, who focuses on the miniaturization of UHV systems for practical quantum sensors and other devices. She is a senior quantum engineer at Aquark Technologies – a UK-based company that is developing cold-matter quantum technologies.

In 2025 Concepcion was awarded a £1.9m Innovate Future Leaders Fellowship by the UK government. She explains how that money will be spent over four years to develop vacuum systems for quantum technologies.

Before joining Aquark, Concepcion did a PhD on a topic at the intersection of astronomy and atomic physics. She talks about her transition from academia to industry and we chat about careers for physicists in the quantum sector.

SmarAct proudly supports this episode of Physics World Weekly. The company advances breakthroughs in science and technology through high-precision positioning, metrology and automation. Discover how SmarAct shapes the future of innovation at smaract.com.

Gleb Zilberstein is my guest in this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast. A physicist by training, Zilberstein applies the principles of proteomics to the study of historical objects including Renaissance manuscripts.

He is also a director of Israel-based SpringStyle Tech Design, which has created a special film that lifts proteins from the surfaces of historical objects. Analysis of these proteins provides  important information about how those objects were used.

In a recent paper, Zilberstein and colleagues studied protein residues on a well-thumbed book of medical recipes that was published in Germany in 1531. He explains how their analysis provides a new view into how medical practitioners used the book and what sorts of concoctions they were making. Astonishingly, the team found evidence that European readers had access to ingredients derived from hippopotamuses.

Some papers about the application of proteomics to historical research:

• The Scientific Analysis of Renaissance Recipes
• Count Dracula Resurrected 
• EVA Technology and Proteomics: A Two-Pronged Attack on Cultural Heritage

The physicist and venture capitalist Alexandra Vidyuk is our guest in this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast. She is the chief executive and founding partner of Beyond Earth Ventures, which provides funding and support to early-stage companies in deep-tech sectors including space, robotics and energy.

In conversation with Physics World’s Margaret Harris, Vidyuk explains how her BSc in applied mathematics and physics and her early career in banking and fintech set her on a path to deep-tech venture capital.

Vidyuk talks about the specific challenges facing deep-tech entrepreneurs and reveals what she looks for when deciding which companies to fund. She also emphasizes the importance of building an organization that understands its customers and can communicate effectively with them.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features Brian Pogue, who is professor of biomedical engineering at Dartmouth College in the US. He is also the co-founder of several start-up companies that are developing optics-based systems for medicine.

In conversation with Physics World’s Tami Freeman, Pogue explains that optical technologies underlie many of today’s routine medical procedures. The field of optics is also converging with the world of medical physics, and Pogue talks about exciting new techniques for guidance, dosimetry and in vivo verification of radiation therapy cancer treatments.

• This interview was recorded in association with the journal Physics in Medicine & Biology, which celebrates its 70th anniversary this year.

This podcast is supported by One Physics, your trusted, local partner in medical physics and radiation safety.

My guest in this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast is Liz Martin, who is sustainability lead at IOP Publishing. We chat about how the scholarly publisher has reduced its carbon emissions by 36% when compared to a 2020 baseline – and the challenges and opportunities for achieving further reductions.

Martin talks about the importance of cooperation and partnerships – both internal and external – to achieving environmental goals. This includes engaging with both suppliers and employees on how to reduce carbon emissions.

IOP Publishing is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Institute of Physics, which is the professional body and learned society for physics in the UK and Ireland. It produces over 100 scholarly journals, around half of which are published jointly with or on behalf of partner societies and research organizations. Physics World is also brought to you by IOP Publishing.

• You can download a PDF of IOP Publishing’s Sustainability Report 2025 here.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features a conversation with Dave Robertson, who was elected member of the UK parliament for Lichfield in 2024. Robertson spent eight years teaching physics after studying the subject at the University of Liverpool. He then worked for a teachers’ union, which inspired him to become a candidate for the Labour Party.

He chats with Physics World’s Matin Durrani about his transition from the classroom to the committee room and how parliament “is a truly bonkers and truly bizarre workplace”.

Robertson has already sponsored three physics-related events at the Palace of Westminster and he talks about his membership of various cross-party parliamentary groups – including those on nuclear energy and space.

Robertson has not forgotten his roots in education and is adamant that the UK must address its nationwide shortage of physics teachers. He also urges physicists to speak out about how they can help address many of the world’s problems, notably climate change.

• You can also read a feature article about Dave Robertson’s career by following this link.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, we hear from a trio of scientists with a common interest in the physics of droplets. Specifically, Joe Forth, Rob Malinowski and Giorgio Volpe share a fascination with droplets that are “animate” – that is, capable of responding to their surroundings in ways that resemble the behaviour of living organisms.

As they explain in the podcast, systems must tick three boxes to qualify as animate. First, they must be active, able to use energy from their environment to do work and perform tasks. Second, they must be adaptive, able to move between different dynamical states in response to changes to their environment or their own internal states. Finally, they must be autonomous, able to process multiple inputs and choose how to respond to them without intervention from the outside world.

Incorporating all these behaviours into a droplet – or a system of many droplets – is challenging. The boundary between autonomous and non-autonomous systems is proving especially hard to overcome, and Volpe, Malinowski and Forth have a friendly disagreement over whether any droplet-based system has managed it yet.

Part of the challenge, they say, is that the field crosses disciplinary borders. Although Volpe thinks the community of droplet researchers is getting better at finding a common vocabulary for discussions, Forth jokes that it is still the case that “the chemists are scared of physics, the physicists are scared of chemists, everyone is scared of biology”. The potential rewards of overcoming these fears are great, however, with possible future applications of animate droplets ranging from consumer products such as deodorant to oil spill clean-up.

This discussion is based on a Perspective article that Volpe (a professor of soft matter in the chemistry department at University College London, UK), Malinowski (a research fellow in soft matter physics in the same department) and Forth (a colloid scientist and lecturer in the chemistry department at the University of Liverpool, UK) wrote for the journal EPL, which sponsors this episode of the podcast.

“Surround sound for biological cells,” is how Luke Cox describes the ultrasound technology that Impulsonics has developed to solve the “unsticking problem” in biomedical science. Cox is co-founder and chief executive of UK-based Impulsonics, which spun-out of the University of Bristol in 2023.

He is also my guest in this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast. He explains why living cells grown in a petri dish tend to stick together, and why this can be a barrier to scientific research and the development of new medical treatments.

The system uses an array of ultrasound transducers to focus sound so that it frees-up and manipulates cells in a way that does not alter their biological properties. This is unlike chemical unsticking processes, which can change cells and impact research results.

We also chat about Cox’s career arc from PhD student to chief executive and explore opportunities for physicists in the biomedical industry.

The following articles are mentioned in the podcast:

• “Materials probed by ultrasound…” podcast with Bruce Drinkwater
• “Portable imaging system targets eye diseases…” podcast with Siloton
• “Holographic acoustic tweezers could be used to create 3D displays” research done in Bruce Drinkwater’s lab

Later this year, CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and its huge experiments will shutdown for the High Luminosity upgrade. When complete in 2030, the particle-collision rate in the LHC will be increased by a factor of 10 and the experiments will be upgraded so that they can better capture and analyse the results of these collisions. This will allow physicists to study particle interactions at unprecedented precision and could even reveal new physics beyond the Standard Model.

Earlier this year, however, the UK government announced that it will no longer fund the upgrade of the LHCb experiment on the LHC, which is run by a collaboration of more than 1700 physicists worldwide. The UK had promised to contribute about £50 million to the upgrade – which is a significant chunk of the overall cost.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast I am in conversation with the particle physicist Tim Gershon, who is based at the UK’s University of Warwick. Gershon is spokesperson-elect for the LHCb collaboration and is playing a leading role in the upgrade.

Gershon explains that UK participation and leadership has been crucial for the success of LHCb and cautions that the future of the experiment and the future of UK particle physics have been imperilled by the funding cut.

We also chat about recent discoveries made by LHCb and look forward to what new physics the experiment could find after the upgrade.

Developing practical technologies for quantum information systems requires the cooperation of academic researchers, national laboratories and industry. That is the mission of the  Quantum Systems Accelerator (QSA), which is based at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the US.

The QSA’s director Bert de Jong is my guest in this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast. His academic research focuses on computational chemistry and he explains how this led him to realise that quantum phenomena can be used to develop technologies for solving scientific problems.

In our conversation, de Jong explains why the QSA is developing a range of  qubit platforms − including neutral atoms, trapped ions, and superconducting qubits – rather than focusing on a single architecture. He champions the co-development of quantum hardware and software to ensure that quantum computing is effective at solving a wide range of problems from particle physics to chemistry.

We also chat about the QSA’s strong links to industry and de Jong reveals his wish list of scientific problems that he would solve if he had access today to a powerful quantum computer.

This podcast is supported by Oxford Ionics.

Science fiction became science fact in 2022 when NASA’s DART mission took the first steps towards creating a planetary defence system that could someday protect Earth from a catastrophic asteroid collision. However, much more work on asteroid deflection is needed from the latest generation of researchers – including Rahil Makadia, who has just completed a PhD in aerospace engineering at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, Makadia talks about his work on how we could deflect asteroids away from Earth. We also chat about the potential threats posed by near-Earth asteroids – from shattered windows to global destruction.

Makadia’s stresses the importance of getting a deflection right the first time, because his calculations reveal that a poorly deflected asteroid could return to Earth someday. In November, he published a paper that explored how a bad deflection could send an asteroid into a “keyhole” that guarantees its return.

But it is not all gloom and doom, Makadia points out that our current understanding of near-Earth asteroids suggests that no major collision will occur for at least 100 years. So even if there is a threat on the horizon, we have lots of time to develop deflection strategies and technologies.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features Amanda Randles, who is a computer scientist and biomedical engineer at Duke University in the US. In a conversation with Physics World’s Margaret Harris, Randles explains how she uses physics-based, computationally intensive simulations to develop new ways to diagnose and treat human disease. She has also investigated how data from wearable devices such as smartwatches can be used identify signs of heart disease.

In 2024, the Association for Computing Machinery awarded Randles its ACM Prize in Computing for her groundbreaking work. Harris caught up with Randles at the 2025 Heidelberg Laureate Forum, which brings prizewinning researchers and early-career researchers in computer science and mathematics to Heidelberg, Germany for a week of talks and networking.

Randles began her career as a physicist and she explains why she was drawn to the multidisciplinary research that she does today. Randles talks about her enduring love of computer coding and also reflects on what she might have done differently when starting out in her career.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features Todd McNutt, who is a medical physicist at Johns Hopkins University and the founder of Oncospace. In a conversation with Physics World’s Tami Freeman, McNutt explains how an artificial intelligence-based tool called Plan AI can help improve the quality of radiation therapy plans for cancer treatments.

As well as discussing the benefits that Plan AI brings to radiotherapy patients and cancer treatment centres, they examine its evolution from an idea developed by an academic collaboration to a clinical product offered today by Sun Nuclear, a US manufacturer of radiation equipment and software.

This podcast is sponsored by Sun Nuclear.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features a conversation with the plasma physicist Debbie Callahan who is chief strategy officer at Focused Energy – a California and Germany based fusion-energy startup. Prior to that she spent 35 years working at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US.

Focused Energy is developing a commercial system for generating energy from the laser-driven fusion of hydrogen isotopes. Callahan describes LightHouse, which is the company’s design for a laser-fusion power plant, and Pearl, which is the firm’s deuterium–tritium fuel capsule.

Callahan talks about the challenges and rewards of working in the fusion industry and also calls on early-career physicists to consider careers in this burgeoning sector.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features a conversation with Tim Prior and John Devaney of the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), which is the UK’s national metrology institute.

Prior is NPL’s quantum programme manager and Devaney is its quantum standards manager. They talk about NPL’s central role in the recent launch of NMI-Q, which brings together some of the world’s leading national metrology institutes to accelerate the development and adoption of quantum technologies.

Prior and Devaney describe the challenges and opportunities of developing metrology and standards for rapidly evolving technologies including quantum sensors, quantum computing and quantum cryptography. They talk about the importance of NPL’s collaborations with industry and academia and explore the diverse career opportunities for physicists at NPL. Prior and Devaney also talk about their own careers and share their enthusiasm for working in the cutting-edge and fast-paced field of quantum metrology.

This podcast is sponsored by the National Physical Laboratory.

Why quantum metrology is the driving force for best practice in quantum standardization

Performance metrics and benchmarks point the way to practical quantum advantage

End note: NPL retains copyright on this article.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features Alex May, whose research explores the intersection of quantum gravity and quantum information theory. Based at Canada’s Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, May explains how ideas being developed in the burgeoning field of quantum information theory could help solve one of the most enduring mysteries in physics – how to reconcile quantum mechanics with Einstein’s general theory of relativity, creating a viable theory of quantum gravity.

This interview was recorded in autumn 2025 when I had the pleasure of visiting the Perimeter Institute and speaking to four physicists about their research. This is the last of those conversations to appear on the podcast.

The first interview in this series from the Perimeter Institute was with Javier Toledo-Marín, “Quantum computing and AI join forces for particle physics”; the second was with Bianca Dittrich, “Quantum gravity: we explore spin foams and other potential solutions to this enduring challenge“; and the third was with Tim Hsieh, “Building a quantum future using topological phases of matter and error correction”.

This episode is supported by the APS Global Physics Summit, which takes place on 15–20 March 2026 in Denver, Colorado, and online.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features Pat Hanrahan, who studied nuclear engineering and biophysics before becoming a founding employee of Pixar Animation Studios. As well as winning three Academy Awards for his work on computer animation, Hanrahan won the Association for Computing Machinery’s A M Turing Award for his contributions to 3D computer graphics, or CGI.

Earlier this year, Hanrahan spoke to Physics World’s Margaret Harris at the Heidelberg Laureate Forum in Germany. He explains how he was introduced to computer graphics by his need to visualize the results of computer simulations of nervous systems. That initial interest led him to Pixar and his development of physically-based rendering, which uses the principles of physics to create realistic images.

Hanrahan explains that light interacts with different materials in very different ways, making detailed animations very challenging. Indeed, he says that creating realistic looking skin is particularly difficult – comparing it to the quest for a grand unified theory in physics.

He also talks about how having a background in physics has helped his career – citing his physicist’s knack for creating good models and then using them to solve problems.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features Guangyu Zhang. Along with his colleagues at the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Zhang has bagged the 2025 Physics World Breakthrough of the Year award for creating the first 2D metals.

In a wide-ranging conversation, we chat about the motivation behind the team’s research; the challenges in making 2D metals and how these were overcome; and how 2D metals could be used to boost our understanding of condensed-matter physics and create new technologies.

I am also joined by my Physics World colleague Matin Durrani to talk about some of the exciting physics that we will be showcasing in 2025.

Physics World‘s coverage of the Breakthrough of the Year is supported by Reports on Progress in Physics, which offers unparalleled visibility for your ground-breaking research.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features a lively discussion about our Top 10 Breakthroughs of 2025, which include important research in quantum sensing, planetary science, medical physics, 2D materials and more. Physics World editors explain why we have made our selections and look at the broader implications of this impressive body of research.

The top 10 serves as the shortlist for the Physics World Breakthrough of the Year award, the winner of which will be announced on 18 December.

Links to all the nominees, more about their research and the selection criteria can be found here.

Physics World‘s coverage of the Breakthrough of the Year is supported by Reports on Progress in Physics, which offers unparalleled visibility for your ground-breaking research.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features Tim Hsieh of Canada’s Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. We explore some of today’s hottest topics in quantum science and technology – including topological phases of matter; quantum error correction and quantum simulation.

Our conversation begins with an exploration of the quirky properties quantum matter and how these can be exploited to create quantum technologies. We look at the challenges that must be overcome to create large-scale quantum computers; and Hsieh reveals which problem he would solve first if he had access to a powerful quantum processor.

This interview was recorded earlier this autumn when I had the pleasure of visiting the Perimeter Institute and speaking to four physicists about their research. This is the third of those conversations to appear on the podcast.

The first interview in this series from the Perimeter Institute was with Javier Toledo-Marín, “Quantum computing and AI join forces for particle physics”; and the second was with Bianca Dittrich, “Quantum gravity: we explore spin foams and other potential solutions to this enduring challenge“.

This episode is supported by the APS Global Physics Summit, which takes place on 15–20 March, 2026, in Denver, Colorado, and online.

Earlier this autumn I had the pleasure of visiting the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo Canada – where I interviewed four physicists about their research. This is the second of those conversations to appear on the podcast – and it is with Bianca Dittrich, whose research focuses on quantum gravity.

Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity does a great job at explaining gravity but it is thought to be incomplete because it is incompatible with quantum mechanics. This is an important shortcoming because quantum mechanics is widely considered to be one of science’s most successful theories.

Developing a theory of quantum gravity is a crucial goal in physics, but it is proving to be extremely difficult. In this episode, Dittrich explains some of the challenges and talks about ways forward – including her current research on spin foams. We also chat about the intersection of quantum gravity and condensed matter physics; and the difficulties of testing theories against observational data.

• The first interview in this series from the PI was with Javier Toledo-Marín: “Quantum computing and AI join forces for particle physics”

IOP Publishing’s new Progress In Series: Research Highlights website offers quick, accessible summaries of top papers from leading journals like Reports on Progress in Physics and Progress in Energy. Whether you’re short on time or just want the essentials, these highlights help you expand your knowledge of leading topics.

It is book week here at Physics World and over the course of three days we are presenting conversations with the authors of three fascinating and fun books about physics. Today, my guest is the physicist Daniel Whiteson, who along with the artist Andy Warner has created the delightful book Do Aliens Speak Physics?.

Is physics universal, or is it shaped by human perspective? This will be a very important question if and when we are visited by an advanced alien civilization. Would we recognize our visitors’ alien science – or indeed, could a technologically-advanced civilization have no science at all? And would we even be able to communicate about science with our alien guests?

Whiteson, who is a particle physicist at the University of California Irvine, tackles these profound questions and much more in this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast.

This episode is supported by the APS Global Physics Summit, which takes place on 15–20 March, 2026, in Denver, Colorado, and online.

It is book week here at Physics World and over the course of three days we are presenting conversations with the authors of three fascinating and fun books about physics. First up is my Physics World colleague Michael Banks, whose book Physics Around the Clock: Adventures in the Science of Everyday Living starts with your morning coffee and ends with a formula for making your evening television viewing more satisfying.

As well as the rich physics of coffee, we chat about strategies for finding the best parking spot and the efficient boarding of aeroplanes. If you have ever wondered why a runner’s ponytail swings from side-to-side when they reach a certain speed – we have the answer for you.

Other daily mysteries that we explore include how a hard steel razor blade can be dulled by cutting relatively soft hairs and why quasiparticles called “jamitons” are helping physicists understand the spontaneous appearance of traffic jams. And a warning for squeamish listeners, we do talk about the amazing virus-spreading capabilities of a flushing toilet.

This episode is supported by the APS Global Physics Summit, which takes place on 15–20 March, 2026, in Denver, Colorado, and online.

Like any major endeavour, designing and fabricating semiconductor chips requires compromise. As well as trade-offs between cost and performance, designers also consider carbon emissions and other environmental impacts.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, Margaret Harris reports from the Heidelberg Laureate Forum where she spoke to two researchers who are focused on some of these design challenges.

Up first is Mariam Elgamal, who’s doing a PhD at Harvard University on the development of environmentally sustainable computing systems. She explains why sustainability goes well beyond energy efficiency and must consider the manufacturing process and the chemicals used therein.

Harris also chats with Andrew Gunter, who is doing a PhD at the University of British Columbia on circuit design for computer chips. He talks about the maths-related problems that must be solved in order to translate a desired functionality into a chip that can be fabricated.

This episode explores the scientific and technological significance of 2D materials such as graphene. My guest is Antonio Rossi, who is a researcher in 2D materials engineering at the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa.

Rossi explains why 2D materials are fundamentally different than their 3D counterparts – and how these differences are driving scientific progress and the development of new and exciting technologies.

Graphene is the most famous 2D material and Rossi talks about today’s real-world applications of graphene in coatings. We also chat about the challenges facing scientists and engineers who are trying to exploit graphene’s unique electronic properties.

Rossi’s current research focuses on two other promising 2D materials – tungsten disulphide and hexagonal boron nitride. He explains why tungsten disulphide shows great technological promise because of its favourable electronic and optical properties; and why hexagonal boron nitride is emerging as an ideal substrate for creating 2D devices.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming an important tool in developing new 2D materials. Rossi explains how his team is developing feedback loops that connect AI with the fabrication and characterization of new materials. Our conversation also touches on the use of 2D materials in quantum science and technology.

IOP Publishing’s new Progress In Series: Research Highlights website offers quick, accessible summaries of top papers from leading journals like Reports on Progress in Physics and Progress in Energy. Whether you’re short on time or just want the essentials, these highlights help you expand your knowledge of leading topics.

Earlier this year I met the Massachusetts-based steampunk artist Bruce Rosenbaum at the Global Physics Summit of the American Physical Society. He was exhibiting a beautiful sculpture of a “quantum engine” that was created in collaboration with physicists including NIST’s Nicole Yunger Halpern – who pioneered the scientific field of quantum steampunk.

I was so taken by the art and science of quantum steampunk that I promised Rosenbaum that I would chat with him and Yunger Halpern on the podcast – and here is that conversation. We begin by exploring the art of steampunk and how it is influenced by the technology of the 19th century. Then, we look at the physics of quantum steampunk, a field that weds modern concepts of quantum information with thermodynamics – which itself is a scientific triumph of the 19th century.

• Philip Ball reviews Yunger Halpern’s 2022 book Quantum Steampunk: the Physics of Yesterday’s Tomorrow

This podcast is supported by Atlas Technologies, specialists in custom aluminium and titanium vacuum chambers as well as bonded bimetal flanges and fittings used everywhere from physics labs to semiconductor fabs.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast explores how quantum computing and artificial intelligence can be combined to help physicists search for rare interactions in data from an upgraded Large Hadron Collider.

My guest is Javier Toledo-Marín, and we spoke at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Canada. As well as having an appointment at Perimeter, Toledo-Marín is also associated with the TRIUMF accelerator centre in Vancouver.

Toledo-Marín and colleagues have recently published a paper called “Conditioned quantum-assisted deep generative surrogate for particle–calorimeter interactions”.

This podcast is supported by Delft Circuits.

As gate-based quantum computing continues to scale, Delft Circuits provides the i/o solutions that make it possible.

Spending time in space has a big impact on the human body and can cause a range of health issues. Many astronauts develop vision problems because microgravity causes body fluids to redistribute towards the head. This can lead to swelling in the eye and compression of the optic nerve.

While eye conditions can generally be treated with medication, delivering drugs in space is not a straightforward task. Eye drops simply don’t work without gravity, for example. To address this problem, researchers in Hungary are developing a tiny dissolvable eye insert that could deliver medication directly to the eye. The size of a grain of rice, the insert has now been tested by an astronaut on the International Space Station.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features two of those researchers – Diána Balogh-Weiser of Budapest University of Technology and Economics and Zoltán Nagy of Semmelweis University – who talk about their work with Physics World’s Tami Freeman.

This year’s Nobel Prize for Physics went to John Clarke, Michel Devoret and John Martinis “for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantization in an electric circuit”.

That circuit was a superconducting device called a Josephson junction and their work in the 1980s led to the development of some of today’s most promising technologies for quantum computers.

To chat about this year’s laureates, and the wide-reaching scientific and technological consequences of their work I am joined by Ilana Wisby – who is a quantum physicist, deep tech entrepreneur and former CEO of UK-based Oxford Quantum Circuits. We chat about the trio’s breakthrough and its influence on today’s quantum science and technology.

This podcast is supported by American Elements, the world’s leading manufacturer of engineered and advanced materials. The company’s ability to scale laboratory breakthroughs to industrial production has contributed to many of the most significant technological advancements since 1990 – including LED lighting, smartphones, and electric vehicles.

Next week, the winners of the 2025 Nobel Prize for Physics will be revealed. In the run-up to the announcement I’m joined in this podcast by my colleague Matin Durrani, who has surveyed the last quarter century of Nobel prizes and picked his top five physics prizes of the 21st century – so far.

We also look back to two early Nobel prizes, which were given for very puzzling reasons. One was awarded in 1908 to Gabriel Lippmann for an impractical colour-photography technique that was quickly forgotten; and the other in 1912 to Gustaf Dalén for the development of several technologies used in lighthouses.

It’s a mug’s game, we know, but we couldn’t resist including a few predictions of who could win this year’s physics Nobel. Perhaps a prize for quantum algorithms could be announced on Tuesday, so stay tuned.

And finally, we round off this episode with a fun Nobel quiz. Do you know how old Lawrence Bragg was when he became the youngest person to win the physics prize?

Articles mentioned in this podcast:

“Nobel prizes you’ve never heard of: how a Swedish inventor was honoured for a technology that nearly killed him”

“Nobel prizes you’ve never heard of: how an obscure version of colour photography beat quantum theory to the most prestigious prize in physics”

“Inside the Nobels: Lars Brink reveals how the world’s top physics prize is awarded”

This podcast is supported by American Elements, the world’s leading manufacturer of engineered and advanced materials. The company’s ability to scale laboratory breakthroughs to industrial production has contributed to many of the most significant technological advancements since 1990 – including LED lighting, smartphones, and electric vehicles.

In the past three decades astronomers have discovered more than 6000 exoplanets – planets that orbit stars other than the Sun. Many of these exoplanets are very unlike the eight planets of the solar system, making it clear that the cosmos contains a rich and varied array of alien worlds.

Weird and wonderful planets are also firmly entrenched in the world of science fiction, and the interplay between imagined and real planets is explored in the new book Amazing Worlds of Science Fiction and Science Fact. Its author Keith Cooper is my guest in this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast and our conversation ranges from the amazing science of “hot Jupiter” exoplanets to how the plot of a popular Star Trek episode could inform our understanding of how life could exist on distant exoplanets.

• Keith Cooper has written a three-part feature article about the nature of dark matter for Physics World. The first instalment is “Cosmic combat: delving into the battle between dark matter and modified gravity“

It is Peer Review Week and the theme for 2025 is “Rethinking Peer Review in the AI Era”. This is not surprising given the rapid rise in the use and capabilities of artificial intelligence. However, views on AI are deeply polarized for reasons that span its legality, efficacy and even its morality.

A recent survey done by IOP Publishing – the scientific publisher that brings you Physics World – reveals that physicists who do peer review are polarized regarding whether AI should be used in the process.

IOPP’s Laura Feetham-Walker is lead author of AI and Peer Review 2025, which describes the survey and analyses its results. She joins me in this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast in a conversation that explores reviewers’ perceptions of AI and their views of how it should, or shouldn’t, be used in peer review.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features Scott Bolton, who is principal investigator on NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter. Launched in 2011, the mission has delivered important insights into the nature of the gas-giant planet. In this conversation with Physics World’s Margaret Harris, Bolton explains how Juno continues to change our understanding of Jupiter and other gas giants.

Bolton and Harris chat about the mission’s JunoCam, which has produced some gorgeous images of Jupiter and it moons.

Although the Juno mission was expected to last only a few years, the spacecraft is still going strong despite operating in Jupiter’s intense radiation belts. Bolton explains how the Juno team has rejuvenated radiation-damaged components, which has provided important insights for those designing future missions to space.

However Juno’s future is uncertain. Despite its great success, the mission is currently scheduled to end at the end of September, which is something that Bolton also addresses in the conversation.

Can artificial intelligence predict future research directions in quantum science? Listen to this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast to discover what is already possible.

My guests are Mario Krenn – who heads the Artificial Scientist Lab at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light – and Felix Frohnert, who is doing a PhD on the intersection of quantum physics and machine learning at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

Frohnert, Krenn and colleagues published a paper earlier this year called “Discovering emergent connections in quantum physics research via dynamic word embeddings” in which they analysed more than 66,000 abstracts from the quantum-research literature to see if they could predict future trends in the field. They were particularly interested in the emergence of connections between previously isolated subfields of quantum science.

We chat about what motivated the duo to use machine learning to study quantum science; how their prediction system works; and I ask them whether they have been able to predict current trends in quantum science using historical data.

Their paper appears in the journal Machine Learning Science and Technology. It is published by IOP Publishing – which also brings you Physics World.  Krenn is on the editorial board of the journal and in the podcast he explains why it is important to have a platform to publish research at the intersection of physics and machine learning.

This article forms part of Physics World‘s contribution to the 2025 International Year of Quantum Science and Technology (IYQ), which aims to raise global awareness of quantum physics and its applications.

Stayed tuned to Physics World and our international partners throughout the next 12 months for more coverage of the IYQ.

Find out more on our quantum channel.

My guest in this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast is the journalist Jason Palmer, who co-hosts the Intelligence podcast at the Economist.

Palmer did a PhD in chemical physics at Imperial College London before turning his hand to science writing with stints at the BBC and New Scientist.

He explains how he made the transition from the laboratory to the newsroom and offers tips for scientists planning to make the same career journey. We also chat about how artificial intelligence is changing how journalists work.

This episode features a wide-ranging interview with the astrochemist Ewine van Dishoeck, who is professor emeritus of molecular astrophysics at Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands. In 2018 she was awarded The Kavli Prize in Astrophysics and in this podcast she talks about her passion for astrochemistry and how her research combines astronomy, astrophysics, theoretical chemistry and laboratory experiments.

Van Dishoeck talks about some of the key unanswered questions in astrochemistry, including how complex molecules form on the tiny specks of dust in interstellar space. We chat about the recent growth in our understanding of exoplanets and protoplanetary discs and the prospect of observing signs of life on distant planets or moons.

The Atacama Large Millimetre Array radio telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope are two of the major facilities that Van Dishoeck has been involved with. She talks about the challenges of getting the astronomy community to agree on the parameters of a new observatory and explains the how collaborative nature of these projects ensures that instruments meet the needs of multiple research communities.

Van Dishoeck looks to the future of astrochemistry and what new observatories could bring to the field. The interview ends with a call for the next generation of scientists to pursue careers in astrochemistry.

This podcast is sponsored by The Kavli Prize.

The Kavli Prize honours scientists for basic research breakthroughs in astrophysics, nanoscience and neuroscience – transforming our understanding of the big, the small and the complex. One million dollars is awarded in each of the three fields.  The Kavli Prize is a partnership among The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research, and The Kavli Foundation (USA).

The vision for The Kavli Prize comes from Fred Kavli, a Norwegian-American entrepreneur and philanthropist who turned his lifelong fascination with science into a lasting legacy for recognizing scientific breakthroughs and for supporting basic research.

The Kavli Prize follows a two-year cycle, with an open call for nominations between 1 July and 1 October in odd-numbered years, and an announcement and award ceremony during even-numbered years. The next Kavli Prize will be announced in June 2026. Visit kavliprize.org for more information.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast I am in conversation two physicists who are leading lights in the quantum science and technology community in the US state of Illinois. They are Preeti Chalsani who is chief quantum officer at Intersect Illinois, and David Awschalom who is director of Q-NEXT.

As well as being home to Chicago, the third largest urban area in the US, the state also hosts two national labs (Fermilab and Argonne) and several top universities. In this episode, Awschalom and Chalsani explain how the state is establishing itself as a burgeoning hub for quantum innovation – along with neighbouring regions in Wisconsin and Indiana.

Chalsani talks about the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park, a 128-acre technology campus that being developed on the site of a former steel mill just south of Chicago. The park has already attracted its first major tenant, PsiQuantum, which will build a utility-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer at the park.

Q-NEXT is led by Argonne National Laboratory, and Awschalom explains how academia, national labs, industry, and government are working together to make the region a quantum powerhouse.

• Related podcasts include interviews with Celia Merzbacher of the US’s Quantum Economic Development Consortium; Nadya Mason of the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago; and Travis Humble of the Quantum Science Center at Oak Ridge National Laboratory

This podcast is supported by American Elements, the world’s leading manufacturer of engineered and advanced materials. The company’s ability to scale laboratory breakthroughs to industrial production has contributed to many of the most significant technological advancements since 1990 – including LED lighting, smartphones, and electric vehicles.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features an interview with Kirsty McGhee, who is a scientific writer at the quantum-software company Qruise. It is the second episode in our two-part miniseries on careers for physicists.

While she was doing a PhD in condensed matter physics, McGhee joined Physics World’s Student Contributors Network. This involved writing articles about peer-reviewed research and also proof reading articles written by other contributors.

McGhee explains how the network broadened her knowledge of physics and improved her communication skills. She also says that potential employers looked favourably on her writing experience.

At Qruise, McGhee has a range of responsibilities that include writing documentation, marketing, website design, and attending conference exhibitions. She explains how her background in physics prepared her for these tasks, and what new skills she is learning.

• The first episode of this miniseries looks at what physicists can look forward to in retirement: “Third age careers for physicists: writing and the arts beckon“

Many of us will have careers with three distinct eras: education, work and retirement. While the first two tend to be regimented, the third age offers the possibility of pursuing a wide range of interests.

Our guest in this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast is the retired particle physicist Michael Albrow, who is scientist emeritus at Fermilab in the US. He has just published his book Space Times Matter: One Hundred Short Stories About The Universe, which is a collection of brief essays and poems related to science.

Much of the book comes from a newspaper column that Albrow wrote earlier in his retirement and he has also been involved in collaborations with visual and musical artists. In this podcast he talks about this third age of his career as a physicist and gives some tips for your retirement.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast is a conversation with two physicists, Ada Altieri and Silvia De Monte, who are using their expertise in statistical physics to understand the behaviour of ecological communities.

A century ago, pioneering scientists such as Alfred Lotka and Vito Volterra showed that statistical physics techniques could explain – and even predict – patterns that ecologists observe in nature. At first, this work focused on simple ecosystems containing just one or two species (such as rabbits and foxes), which are relatively easy to model.

Nowadays, though, researchers such as Altieri and De Monte are turning their attention to far more complex communities. One example is the collection of unicellular organisms known as protists that live among plankton in the ocean. Another, closer to home, is the “microbiome” in the human gut, which may contain hundreds or even thousands of species of bacteria.

Modelling these highly interconnected communities is hugely challenging. But as Altieri and De Monte explain, the potential rewards – from identifying “tipping points” in fragile ecosystems to developing new treatments for gut disorders such as irritable bowel syndrome and Crohn’s disease – are great.

This discussion is based on a Perspective article that Altieri (an associate professor at the Laboratory for Matter and Complex Systems at the Université Paris Cité, France) and De Monte (a senior research scientist at the Institute of Biology in the École Normale Supérieure in Paris and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Ploen, Germany) wrote for the journal EPL, which sponsors this episode of the podcast.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features Travis Humble, who is director of the Quantum Science Center at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Located in the US state of Tennessee, Oak Ridge is run by the US Department of Energy (DOE). The Quantum Science Center links Oak Ridge with other US national labs, universities and companies.

Humble explains how these collaborations ensure that Oak Ridge’s powerful facilities and instruments are used to create new quantum technologies. He also explains how the lab’s expertise in quantum and conventional computing is benefiting the academic and industrial communities.

This podcast is supported by American Elements, the world’s leading manufacturer of engineered and advanced materials. The company’s ability to scale laboratory breakthroughs to industrial production has contributed to many of the most significant technological advancements since 1990 – including LED lighting, smartphones, and electric vehicles.

This podcast features an interview with Sara Alderweireldt, who is a physicist working on the ATLAS experiment at CERN – the world-famous physics lab that straddles the Swiss-French border and is home to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

Based at the UK’s University of Edinburgh, Alderweireldt is in conversation with Physics World’s Margaret Harris and explains how physicists sift through the vast amount of information produced by ATLAS’ myriad detectors in search of new physics.

They also chat about the ongoing high-luminosity upgrade to the LHC and its experiments – which will be finished in 2030 – and the challenges and rewards of working a very long term project.

According to a recent white paper from the UK’s National Association of Disabled Staff Networks, 22% of working-age people in the UK have a disability compared to less than 7% of people working in science. At the upper echelons of science, only 4% of senior academic positions are filled with people with disabilities and just 1% of research grant applications to UK Research and Innovation are from researchers who disclose being disabled.

These disappointing statistics are reported in “Towards a fully inclusive environment for disabled people in STEMM” and this podcast features an interview with one of its authors – the physicist Francesca Doddato.

Based at Lancaster University, Doddato tells Physics World’s Michael Banks about the challenges facing scientists with disabilities – and calls for decision makers to engage with the issues and to remove barriers.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features Hannah Earley, a mathematician and physicist who is chief technical officer and co-founder of Vaire Computing.

The company is developing hardware for reversible computing, a paradigm with the potential to reduce significantly the energy required to do computations – which could be a boon for power-hungry applications like artificial intelligence.

In a conversation with Physics World’s Margaret Harris, Earley talks about the physics, engineering and commercialization of reversible computing. They also chat about the prototype chips that Vaire is currently working on and the company’s plans for the future.

Last week, Physics World’s Matin Durrani boarded a ferry in Hamburg that was bound for Helgoland – an archipelago in the North Sea about 70 km off the north-west coast of Germany.

It was a century ago in Helgoland that the physicist Werner Heisenberg devised the mathematical framework that underpins our understanding of quantum physics.

Matin was there with some of the world’s leading quantum physicists for the conference Helgoland 2025: 100 Years of Quantum Mechanics – which celebrated Heisenberg’s brief stay in Helgoland.

He caught up with three eminent physicists and asked them to reflect on Heisenberg’s contributions to quantum mechanics and look forward to the next 100 years of quantum science and technology. They are Tracy Northup at the University of Vienna; Michelle Simmons of the University of New South Wales, Sydney; and Peter Zoller of the University of Innsbruck.

• Don’t miss the 2025 Physics World Quantum Briefing, which is free to read via this link.

This article forms part of Physics World‘s contribution to the 2025 International Year of Quantum Science and Technology (IYQ), which aims to raise global awareness of quantum physics and its applications.

Stayed tuned to Physics World and our international partners throughout the next 12 months for more coverage of the IYQ.

Find out more on our quantum channel.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast we explore the career opportunities open to physicists and engineers looking to work within healthcare – as medical physicists or clinical engineers.

Physics World’s Tami Freeman is in conversation with two early-career physicists working in the UK’s National Health Service (NHS). They are Rachel Allcock, a trainee clinical scientist at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust, and George Bruce, a clinical scientist at NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde. We also hear from Chris Watt, head of communications and public affairs at IPEM, about the new IPEM careers guide.

• This episode was created in collaboration with IPEM, the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine. IPEM owns the journal Physics in Medicine & Biology.

This episode is supported by Radformation, which is redefining automation in radiation oncology with a full suite of tools designed to streamline clinical workflows and boost efficiency. At the centre of it all is AutoContour, a powerful AI-driven autocontouring solution trusted by centres worldwide.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features George Efstathiou and Richard Bond, who share the 2025 Shaw Prize in Astronomy, “for their pioneering research in cosmology, in particular for their studies of fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Their predictions have been verified by an armada of ground-, balloon- and space-based instruments, leading to precise determinations of the age, geometry, and mass-energy content of the universe.”

Bond and Efstathiou talk about how the CMB emerged when the universe was just 380,000 years old and explain how the CMB is observed today. They explain why studying fluctuations in today’s CMB provides a window into the nature of the universe as it existed long ago, and how future studies could help physicists understand the nature of dark matter – which is one of the greatest mysteries in physics.

Efstathiou is emeritus professor of astrophysics at the University of Cambridge in the UK – and Richard Bond is a professor at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA) and university professor at the University of Toronto in Canada. Bond and Efstathiou share the 2025 Shaw Prize in Astronomy and its $1.2m prize money equally.

This podcast is sponsored by The Shaw Prize Foundation.

• Shrinivas Kulkarni, the 2024 Shaw Prize in Astronomy winner, has also appeared on the podcast. You can listen to that interview here.

Quantum science is enjoying a renaissance as nascent quantum computers emerge from the lab and quantum sensors are being used for practical applications.

As the technologies we use become more quantum in nature, it follows that everyone should have a basic understanding of quantum physics. To explore how quantum physics can be taught to the masses, I am joined by Arjan Dhawan, Aleks Kissinger and Bob Coecke – who are all based in the UK.

Coecke is chief scientist at Quantinuum – which develops quantum computing hardware and software. Kissinger is associate professor of quantum computing at the University of Oxford; and Dhawan is studying mathematics at the University of Durham.

Kissinger and Coecke have developed a way of teaching quantum physics using diagrams. In 2023, Oxford and Quantinuum joined forces to use the method in a pilot summer programme for 15 to 17 year-olds. Dhawan was one of their students.

• The books mentioned in the podcast are Picturing Quantum Processes: A First Course in Quantum Theory and Diagrammatic Reasoning by Bob Coecke and Aleks Kissinger; and Quantum in Pictures: A New Way to Understand the Quantum World by Bob Coecke and Stefano Gogioso.

Physics World is brought to you by IOP Publishing, which also publishes scholarly journals, conference proceedings and ebooks.

You can download the book The Ringed Planet: Second Edition free of charge for a limited time only. By Joshua Colwell, the book is a must read on Saturn and the Cassini mission. An updated and expanded third edition is also hot off the press.

Browse all ebooks here and remember that you can always read the first chapters of all IOPP ebooks for free.

This article forms part of Physics World‘s contribution to the 2025 International Year of Quantum Science and Technology (IYQ), which aims to raise global awareness of quantum physics and its applications.

Stayed tuned to Physics World and our international partners throughout the next 12 months for more coverage of the IYQ.

Find out more on our quantum channel.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast I look at what’s new in the world of physics with the help of my colleagues Margaret Harris and Matin Durrani.

We begin on Mars, where NASA’s Perseverance Rover has made the first observation of an aurora from the surface of the Red Planet. Next, we look deep into the future of the universe and ponder the physics that will govern how the last stars will fade away.

Then, we run time in reverse and go back to the German island of Helgoland, where in 1925 Werner Heisenberg laid the foundations of modern quantum mechanics. The island will soon host an event celebrating the centenary and Physics World will be there.

Finally, we explore how neutrons are being used to differentiate between real and fake antique coins and chat about the Physics World Quantum Briefing 2025.

Many creative industries rely on cutting-edge digital technologies, so it is not surprising that this sector could easily become an early adopter of quantum computing.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast I am in conversation with James Wootton, who is chief scientific officer at Moth Quantum. Based in the UK and Switzerland, the company is developing quantum-software tools for the creative industries – focusing on artists, musicians and game developers.

Wootton joined Moth Quantum in September 2024 after working on quantum error correction at IBM. He also has long-standing interest in quantum gaming and creating tools that make quantum computing more accessible. If you enjoyed this interview with Wootton, check out this article that he wrote for Physics World in 2018: “Playing games with quantum computers“.

This article forms part of Physics World‘s contribution to the 2025 International Year of Quantum Science and Technology (IYQ), which aims to raise global awareness of quantum physics and its applications.

Stayed tuned to Physics World and our international partners throughout the next 12 months for more coverage of the IYQ.

Find out more on our quantum channel.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast comes from the Chicago metropolitan area – a scientific powerhouse that is home to two US national labs and some of the country’s leading universities.

Physics World’s Margaret Harris was there recently and met Nadya Mason. She is dean of the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago, which focuses on quantum engineering; materials for sustainability; and immunoengineering. Mason explains how molecular-level science is making breakthroughs in these fields and she talks about her own research on the electronic properties of nanoscale and correlated systems.

Harris also spoke to Jeffrey Spangenberger who leads the Materials Recycling Group at Argonne National Laboratory, which is on the outskirts of Chicago. Spangenberger talks about the challenges of recycling batteries and how we could make it easier to recover materials from batteries of the future. Spangenberger leads the ReCell Center, a national collaboration of industry, academia and national laboratories that is advancing recycling technologies along the entire battery life-cycle.

On 13–14 May, The Economist is hosting Commercialising Quantum Global 2025 in London. The event is supported by the Institute of Physics – which brings you Physics World. Participants will join global leaders from business, science and policy for two days of real-world insights into quantum’s future. In London you will explore breakthroughs in quantum computing, communications and sensing, and discover how these technologies are shaping industries, economies and global regulation. Register now.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features the Nobel laureate Ferenc Krausz. He is director of the Max-Planck Institute of Quantum Optics and a professor at LMU Munich, both in Germany, and CEO and scientific director of the Center for Molecular Fingerprinting in Budapest, Hungary.

In a conversation with Physics World’s Tami Freeman Krausz talks about his research into using ultrashort-pulsed laser technology to develop a diagnostic tool for early disease detection. He also discusses his collaboration with Semmelweis University to establish the John von Neumann Institute for Data Science, and describes the Science4People initiative, a charity that he and his colleagues founded to provide education for children who have been displaced by the war in Ukraine.

On 13–14 May, The Economist is hosting Commercialising Quantum Global 2025 in London. The event is supported by the Institute of Physics – which brings you Physics World. Participants will join global leaders from business, science and policy for two days of real-world insights into quantum’s future. In London you will explore breakthroughs in quantum computing, communications and sensing, and discover how these technologies are shaping industries, economies and global regulation. Register now and use code QUANTUM20 to receive 20% off. This offer ends on 4 May.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features the materials scientist Paul Meredith, who is director of the Centre for Integrative Semiconductor Materials (CISM) at the UK’s Swansea University.

In a conversation with Physics World’s Matin Durrani, Meredith talks about the importance of semiconductors in a hi-tech economy and why it is crucial for the UK to have a homegrown semiconductor industry.

Founded in 2020, CISM moved into a new, state-of-the-art £50m building in 2023 and is now in its first full year of operation. Meredith explains how technological innovation and skills training at CSIM is supporting chipmakers in the M4 hi-tech corridor, which begins in Swansea in South Wales and stretches eastward to London.

This podcast features Alonso Gutierrez, who is chief of medical physics at the Miami Cancer Institute in the US. In a wide-ranging conversation with Physics World’s Tami Freeman, Gutierrez talks about his experience using Elekta’s Leksell Gamma Knife for radiosurgery in a busy radiotherapy department.

This podcast is sponsored by Elekta.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features an interview with Panicos Kyriacou, who is chief scientist at the UK-based start-up Crainio. The company has developed a non-invasive way of using light to measure the pressure inside the skull. Knowing this intracranial pressure is crucial when diagnosing traumatic brain injury, which a leading cause of death and disability. Today, the only way to assess intracranial pressure is to insert a sensor into the patient’s brain, so Crainio’s non-invasive technique could revolutionize how brain injuries are diagnosed and treated.

Kyriacou tells Physics World’s Tami Freeman why it is important to assess a patient’s intracranial pressure as soon as possible after a head injury. He explains how Crainio’s optical sensor measures blood flow in the brain and then uses machine learning to deduce the intracranial pressure.

Kyriacou is also professor of engineering at City St George’s University of London, where the initial research for the sensor was done. He recalls how Crainio was spun out of the university and how it is currently in a second round of clinical trials.

As well as being non-invasive, Crainio’s technology could reduce the cost of determining intracranial pressure and make it possible to make measurements in the field, shortly after injuries occur.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features William Phillips, who shared the 1997 Nobel Prize for Physics for his work on cooling and trapping atoms using laser light.

In a wide-ranging conversation with Physics World’s Margaret Harris, Phillips talks about his long-time fascination with quantum physics – which began with an undergraduate project on electron spin resonance. Phillips chats about quirky quantum phenomena such as entanglement and superposition and explains how they are exploited in atomic clocks and quantum computing. He also looks to the future of quantum technologies and stresses the importance of curiosity-led research.

Phillips has spent much of his career at US’s National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) in Maryland and he also a professor of physics at the University of Maryland.

This podcast is supported by Atlas Technologies, specialists in custom aluminium and titanium vacuum chambers as well as bonded bimetal flanges and fittings used everywhere from physics labs to semiconductor fabs.

This article forms part of Physics World‘s contribution to the 2025 International Year of Quantum Science and Technology (IYQ), which aims to raise global awareness of quantum physics and its applications.

Stayed tuned to Physics World and our international partners throughout the next 12 months for more coverage of the IYQ.

Find out more on our quantum channel.

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the Global Physics Summit (GPS) in Anaheim California, where I rubbed shoulders with 15,000 fellow physicists. The best part of being there was chatting with lots of different people, and in this podcast I share two of those conversations.

First up is Chetan Nayak, who is a senior researcher at Microsoft’s Station Q quantum computing research centre here in California. In February, Nayak and colleagues claimed a breakthrough in the development of topological quantum bits (qubits) based on Majorana zero modes. In principle, such qubits could enable the development of practical quantum computers, but not all physicists were convinced, and the announcement remains controversial – despite further results presented by Nayak in a packed session at the GPS.

I caught up with Nayak after his talk and asked him about the challenges of achieving Microsoft’s goal of a superconductor-based topological qubit. That conversation is the first segment of today’s podcast.

Up next, I chat with Atharva Lele about the physics of manu jumping, which is a competitive aquatic sport that originates from the Māori and Pasifika peoples of New Zealand. Jumpers are judged by the height of their splash when they enter the water, and the best competitors use a very distinctive technique.

Lele is an undergraduate student at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the US, and is part of team that analysed manu techniques in a series of clever experiments that included plunging robots. He explains how to make a winning manu jump while avoiding the pain of a belly flop.

This article forms part of Physics World‘s contribution to the 2025 International Year of Quantum Science and Technology (IYQ), which aims to raise global awareness of quantum physics and its applications.

Stayed tuned to Physics World and our international partners throughout the next 12 months for more coverage of the IYQ.

Find out more on our quantum channel.

When physicists got their first insights into the quantum world more than a century ago, they found it puzzling to say the least. But gradually, and through clever theoretical and experimental work, a consistent quantum theory emerged.

Two physicists that who played crucial roles in this evolution were Albert Einstein and John Bell. In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast the theoretical crypto-physicist Artur Ekert explains how a quantum paradox identified by Einstein and colleagues in 1935 inspired a profound theoretical breakthrough by Bell three decades later.

Ekert, who splits his time between the University of Oxford and the National University of Singapore, describes how he used Bell’s theorem to create a pioneering quantum cryptography protocol and he also chats about current research in quantum physics and beyond.

• You can read more about this topic here: “Bohr, Einstein and Bell: what the 2022 Nobel Prize for Physics tells us about quantum mechanics”

This article forms part of Physics World‘s contribution to the 2025 International Year of Quantum Science and Technology (IYQ), which aims to raise global awareness of quantum physics and its applications.

Stayed tuned to Physics World and our international partners throughout the next 12 months for more coverage of the IYQ.

Find out more on our quantum channel.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features Ileana Silvestre Patallo, a medical physicist at the UK’s National Physical Laboratory, and Ruth McLauchlan, consultant radiotherapy physicist at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust.

In a wide-ranging conversation with Physics World’s Tami Freeman, Patallo and McLauchlan explain how ionizing radiation such as X-rays and proton beams interact with our bodies and how radiation is being used to treat diseases including cancer.

• This episode was created in collaboration with IPEM, the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine. IPEM owns the journal Physics in Medicine & Biology.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, we explore how computational physics is being used to develop new quantum materials; and we look at how ultrasound can help detect breast cancer.

Our first guest is Bhaskaran Muralidharan, who leads the Computational Nanoelectronics & Quantum Transport Group at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. In a conversation with Physics World’s Hamish Johnston, he explains how computational physics is being used to develop new materials and devices for quantum science and technology. He also shares his personal perspective on quantum physics in this International Year of Quantum Science and Technology.

Our second guest is Daniel Sarno of the UK’s National Physical Laboratory, who is an expert in the medical uses of ultrasound. In a conversation with Physics World’s Tami Freeman, Sarno explains why conventional mammography can struggle to detect cancer in patients with higher density breast tissue. This is a particular problem because women with such tissue are at higher risk of developing the disease. To address this problem, Sarno and colleagues have developed a ultrasound technique for measuring tissue density and are commercializing it via a company called sona.

• Bhaskaran Muralidharan is an editorial board member on Materials for Quantum Technology. The journal is produced by IOP Publishing, which also brings you Physics World

This article forms part of Physics World‘s contribution to the 2025 International Year of Quantum Science and Technology (IYQ), which aims to raise global awareness of quantum physics and its applications.

Stayed tuned to Physics World and our international partners throughout the next 12 months for more coverage of the IYQ.

Find out more on our quantum channel.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, online editor Margaret Harris chats about her recent trip to CERN. There, she caught up with physicists working on some of the lab’s most exciting experiments and heard from CERN’s current and future leaders.

Founded in Geneva in 1954, today CERN is most famous for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which is currently in its winter shutdown. Harris describes her descent 100 m below ground level to visit the huge ATLAS detector and explains why some of its components will soon be updated as part of the LHC’s upcoming high luminosity upgrade.

She explains why new “crab cavities” will boost the number of particle collisions at the LHC. Among other things, this will allow physicists to better study how Higgs bosons interact with each other, which could provide important insights into the early universe.

Harris describes her visit to CERN’s Antimatter Factory, which hosts several experiments that are benefitting from a 2021 upgrade to the lab’s source of antiprotons. These experiments measure properties of antimatter – such as its response to gravity – to see if its behaviour differs from that of normal matter.

Harris also heard about the future of the lab from CERN’s director general Fabiola Gianotti and her successor Mark Thomson, who will take over next year.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features an interview with the theoretical physicist Jim Gates who is at the University of Maryland and Brown University – both in the US.

He updates his theorist’s bucket list, which he first shared with Physics World back in 2014. This is a list of breakthroughs in physics that Gates would like to see happen before he dies.

One list item – the observation or gravitational waves – happened in 2015 and Gates explains the importance of the discovery. He also explains why the observation of gravitons, which are central to a theory of quantum gravity, is on his bucket list.

Gates is known for his work on supersymmetry and superstring theory, so it is not surprising that experimental evidence for those phenomena are on the bucket list. Gates also talks about a new item on his list that concerns the connections between quantum physics and information theory.

In this interview with Physics World’s Margaret Harris, Gates also reflects on how the current political upheaval in the US is affecting science and society – and what scientists can do ensure that the public has faith in science.

• Photo courtesy: Nick Dentamaro/Brown University

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has declared 2025 the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology – or IYQ.

UNESCO kicked-off IYQ on 4–5 February at a gala opening ceremony in Paris. Physics World’s Matin Durrani was there, and he shares his highlights from the event in this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast.

No fewer than four physics Nobel laureates took part in the ceremony alongside representatives from governments and industry. While some speakers celebrated the current renaissance in quantum research and the burgeoning quantum-technology sector, others called on the international community to ensure that people in all nations benefit from a potential quantum revolution – not just people in wealthier countries. The dangers of promising too much from quantum computers and other technologies, was also discussed – as Durrani explains.

This article forms part of Physics World‘s contribution to the 2025 International Year of Quantum Science and Technology (IYQ), which aims to raise global awareness of quantum physics and its applications.

Stayed tuned to Physics World and our international partners throughout the next 12 months for more coverage of the IYQ.

Find out more on our quantum channel.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast looks at how climate and environmental change affect the efficiency of solar panels. Our guest is the climate scientist Sushovan Ghosh, who is lead author of paper that explores how aerosols, rising temperatures and other environmental factors will affect solar-energy output in India in the coming decades.

Today, India ranks fifth amongst nations in terms of installed solar-energy capacity and boosting this capacity will be crucial for the country’s drive to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 45% by 2030 – when compared to 2005.

While much of India is blessed with abundant sunshine, it is experiencing a persistent decline in incoming solar radiation that is associated with aerosol pollution. What is more, higher temperatures associated with climate change reduce the efficiency of solar cells  – and their performance is also impacted in India by other climate-related phenomena.

In this podcast, Ghosh explains how changes in the climate and environment affect the generation of solar energy and what can be done to mitigate these effects.

Ghosh co-wrote the paper when at the Centre for Atmospheric Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi and he is now at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center in Spain. His co-authors in Delhi were Dilip Ganguly, Sagnik Dey and Subhojit Ghoshal Chowdhury; and the paper is called, “Future photovoltaic potential in India: navigating the interplay between air pollution control and climate change mitigation”. It appears in Environmental Research Letters, which is published by IOP Publishing – which also brings you Physics World.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features Mark Thomson, who will become the next director-general of CERN in January 2026. In a conversation with Physics World’s Michael Banks, Thomson shares his vision of the future of the world’s preeminent particle physics lab, which is home to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

They chat about the upcoming high-luminosity upgrade to the LHC (HL-LHC), which will be completed in 2030. The interview explores long-term strategies for particle physics research and the challenges of managing large international scientific organizations. Thomson also looks back on his career in particle physics and his involvement with some of the field’s biggest experiments.

This podcast is supported by Atlas Technologies, specialists in custom aluminium and titanium vacuum chambers as well as bonded bimetal flanges and fittings used everywhere from physics labs to semiconductor fabs.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features a conversation with Colm O’Dwyer, who is professor of chemical energy at University College Cork in Ireland and president of the Electrochemical Society.

He talks about the role that electrochemistry plays in the development of modern technologies including batteries, semiconductor chips and pharmaceuticals. O’Dwyer chats about the role that the Electrochemical Society plays in advancing the theory and practice of electrochemistry and solid-state science and technology. He also explains how electrochemists collaborate with scientists and engineers in other fields including physics – and he looks forward to the future of electrochemistry.

This podcast is supported by American Elements. Trusted by researchers and industries the world over, American Elements is helping shape the future of battery and electrochemistry technology.

Heart failure is a serious condition that occurs when a damaged heart loses its ability to pump blood around the body. It affects as many as 100 million people worldwide and it is a progressive disease such that five years after a diagnosis, 50% of patients with heart failure will be dead.

The UK-based company Ceryx Medical has created a new bioelectronic device called Cysoni, which is designed to adjust the pace of the heart as a patient breathes in and out. This mimics a normal physiological process called respiratory sinus arrhythmia, which can be absent in people with heart failure. The company has just began the first trial of Cysoni on human subjects.

This podcast features the biomedical engineer Stuart Plant and the physicist Ashok Chauhan, who are Ceryx Medical’s CEO and senior scientist respectively. In a wide-ranging conversation with Physics World’s Margaret Harris, they talk about how bioelectronics could be used treat heart failure and some other diseases. Chauhan and Plant also chat about challenges and rewards of developing medical technologies within a small company.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast explores how the concept of humanitarian engineering can be used to provide high quality cancer care to people in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). This is an important challenge because today only 5% of global radiotherapy resources are located in LMICs, which are home to the majority of the world’s population.

Our guests are two medical physicists at the University of Washington in the US who have contributed to the ebook Humanitarian Engineering for Global Oncology. They are Eric Ford, who edited the ebook and Afua Yorke, who along with Ford wrote the chapter “Cost-effective radiation treatment delivery systems for low- and middle-income countries”.

They are in conversation with Physics World’s Tami Freeman.

As proclaimed by the United Nations, 2025 is the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology, or IYQ for short. This year was chosen because it marks the 100th anniversary of Werner Heisenberg’s development of matrix mechanics – the first consistent mathematical description of quantum physics.

Our guest in this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast is the Turkish quantum physicist Mete Atatüre, who heads up the Cavendish Laboratory at the UK’s University of Cambridge.

In a conversation with Physics World’s Katherine Skipper, Atatüre talks about hosting Quantour, the quantum light source that is IYQ’s version of the Olympic torch. He also talks about his group’s research on quantum sensors and quantum networks.

• There is much more about Heisenberg’s mathematical breakthrough in quantum physics here: “Return to Helgoland: celebrating 100 years of quantum mechanics”.

This article forms part of Physics World‘s contribution to the 2025 International Year of Quantum Science and Technology (IYQ), which aims to raise global awareness of quantum physics and its applications.

Stayed tuned to Physics World and our international partners throughout the next 12 months for more coverage of the IYQ.

Find out more on our quantum channel.

December might be dark and chilly here in the northern hemisphere, but it’s summer south of the equator – and for many people that means eating ice cream.

It turns out that the physics of ice cream is rather remarkable – as I discovered when I travelled to Canada’s University of Guelph to interview the food scientist Douglas Goff. He is a leading expert on the science of frozen desserts and in this podcast he talks about the unique material properties of ice cream, the analytical tools he uses to study it, and why ice cream goes off when it is left in the freezer for too long.

One half of the Physics World 2024 Breakthrough of the Year has been awarded to Mikhail Lukin, Dolev Bluvstein and colleagues at Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and QuEra Computing for demonstrating quantum error correction on an atomic processor with 48 logical qubits.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, Bluvstein and Lukin explain the crucial role that error correction is playing in the development of practical quantum computers. They also describe how atoms are moved around their quantum processor and why this coordinated motion allowed them to create logical qubits and use those qubits to perform quantum computations.

The Physics World 2024 Breakthrough of the Year also cites Hartmut Neven and colleagues at Google Quantum AI and their collaborators for implementing quantum error correction below the surface code threshold in a superconducting chip. Neven talks about his team’s accomplishments in this podcast.

Physics World‘s coverage of the Breakthrough of the Year is supported by Reports on Progress in Physics, which offers unparalleled visibility for your ground-breaking research.

One half of the Physics World 2024 Breakthrough of the Year has been awarded to Hartmut Neven and colleagues at Google Quantum AI and their collaborators for implementing quantum error correction below the surface code threshold in a superconducting chip.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, Neven talks about Google’s new Willow quantum processor, which integrates 105 superconducting physical qubits. He also explains how his team used these qubits to create logical qubits with error rates that dropped exponentially with the number of physical qubits used. He also outlines Googles ambitious plan to create a processor with 100, or even 1000, logical qubits by 2030.

The Physics World 2024 Breakthrough of the Year also cites Mikhail Lukin, Dolev Bluvstein and colleagues at Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and QuEra Computing for demonstrating quantum error correction on an atomic processor with 48 logical qubits. Lukin and Bluvstein explain how they did it in this podcast.

Physics World‘s coverage of the Breakthrough of the Year is supported by Reports on Progress in Physics, which offers unparalleled visibility for your ground-breaking research.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features a lively discussion about our Top 10 Breakthroughs of 2024, which include important research in nuclear physics, quantum computing, medical physics, lasers and more. Physics World editors explain why we have made our selections and look at the broader implications of this impressive body of research.

The top 10 serves as the shortlist for the Physics World Breakthrough of the Year award, the winner of which will be announced on 19 December.

Links to all the nominees, more about their research and the selection criteria can be found here.

Physics World‘s coverage of the Breakthrough of the Year is supported by Reports on Progress in Physics, which offers unparalleled visibility for your ground-breaking research.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast explores the science and commercial applications of metamaterials with Claire Dancer of the University of Warwick and Alastair Hibbins of the University of Exeter.

They lead the UK Metamaterials Network, which brings together people in academia, industry and governmental agencies to support and expand metamaterial R&D; nurture talent and skills; promote the adoption of metamaterials in the wider economy; and much more.

According to the network, “A metamaterial is a 3D structure with a response or function due to the collective effect of meta-atom elements that is not possible to achieve conventionally with any individual constituent material”.

In a wide-ranging conversation with Physics World’s Matin Durrani, Hibbins and Dancer talk about exciting commercial applications of metamaterials including soundproof materials and lenses for mobile phones – and how they look forward to welcoming the thousandth member of the network sometime in 2025.

Climate science and astronomy have much in common, and this has inspired the astrophysicist Travis Rector to call on astronomers to educate themselves, their students and the wider public about climate change. In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, Rector explains why astronomers should listen to the concerns of the public when engaging about the science of global warming. And, he says the positive outlook of some of his students at the University of Alaska Anchorage makes him believe that a climate solution is possible.

Rector says that some astronomers are reluctant to talk to the public about climate change because they have not mastered the intricacies of the science. Indeed, one aspect of atmospheric physics that has challenged scientists is the role that clouds play in global warming. My second guest this week is the science journalist Michael Allen, who has written a feature article for Physics World called “Cloudy with a chance of warming: how physicists are studying the dynamical impact of clouds on climate change”. He talks about climate feedback mechanisms that involve clouds and how aerosols affect clouds and the climate.

• Rector is editor of the book Climate Change for Astronomers: Causes, consequences, and communication. It was published earlier this year by IOP Publishing – which also brings you Physics World

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast I am in conversation with Joanne O’Meara, who has bagged a King Charles III Coronation Medal for her outstanding achievements in science education and outreach. Based at Canada’s University of Guelph, the medical physicist talks about her passion for science communication and her plans for a new science centre.

This episode also features a wide-ranging interview with Burcu Saner Okan, who is principal investigator at Sabanci University’s Sustainable Advanced Materials Research Group in Istanbul, Turkey. She explains how graphene is manufactured today and how the process can be made more sustainable – by using recycled materials as feedstocks, for example. Saner Okan also talks about her commercial endeavours including Euronova.

We are entering a second golden age of space travel – with human missions to the Moon and Mars planned for the near future. In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast we explore two very different challenges facing the next generation of cosmic explorers.

First up, the radiation oncologist James Welsh chats with Physics World’s Tami Freeman about his new ebook about the biological effects of space radiation on astronauts. They talk about the types and origins of space radiation and how they impact human health. Despite the real dangers, Welsh explains that the human body appears to be more resilient to radiation than are the microelectronics used on spacecraft. Based at Loyola Medicine in the US, Welsh explains why damage to computers, rather than the health of astronauts, could be the limiting factor for space exploration.

Later in the episode I am in conversation with two physicists who have written a paper about how we could implement a universal time standard for the Moon. Based at the US’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Biju Patla and Neil Ashby, explain how atomic clocks could be used to create a time system that would making coordinating lunar activities easier – and could operate as a GPS-like system to facilitate navigation. They also say that such a lunar system could be a prototype for a more ambitious system on Mars.

Welsh’s ebook is called “Space Radiation: Astrophysical origins, radiobiological effects and implications for space travellers”. It is part of the IPEM–IOP Series in Physics and Engineering in Medicine and Biology.

Ashby and Patla’s paper is called “A Relativistic Framework to Estimate Clock Rates on the Moon” and it appears in The Astronomical Journal.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast I explore routes to more sustainable solar energy. My guests are four researchers at the UK’s University of Oxford who have co-authored the “Roadmap on established and emerging photovoltaics for sustainable energy conversion”.

They are the chemist Robert Hoye; the physicists Nakita Noel and Pascal Kaienburg; and the materials scientist Sebastian Bonilla. We define what sustainability means in the context of photovoltaics and we look at the challenges and opportunities for making sustainable solar cells using silicon, perovskites, organic semiconductors and other materials.

This podcast is supported by Pfeiffer Vacuum+Fab Solutions.

Pfeiffer is part of the Busch Group, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of vacuum pumps, vacuum systems, blowers, compressors and gas abatement systems. Explore its products at the Pfeiffer website.

Physicists and others with STEM backgrounds are sought after in industry for their analytical skills. However, traditional training in STEM subjects is often lacking when it comes to nurturing the soft skills that are needed to succeed in managerial and leadership positions.

Our guest in this podcast is Peter Hirst, who is Senior Associate Dean, Executive Education at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He explains how MIT Sloan works with executives to ensure that they efficiently and effectively acquire the skills and knowledge needed to be effective leaders.

This podcast is sponsored by the MIT Sloan School of Management

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, features the physicist and engineer Julia Sutcliffe, who is chief scientific adviser to the UK government’s Department for Business and Trade.

In a wide-ranging conversation with Physics World’s Matin Durrani, Sutcliffe explains how she began her career as a PhD physicist before working in systems engineering at British Aerospace – where she worked on cutting-edge technologies including robotics, artificial intelligence, and autonomous systems. They also chat about Sutcliffe’s current role advising the UK government to ensure that policymaking is underpinned by the best evidence.

LIV.INNO, Liverpool Centre for Doctoral Training for Innovation in Data-Intensive Science, offers students fully-funded PhD studentships across a broad range of research projects from  medical physics to quantum computing. All students receive training in high-performance computing, data analysis, and machine learning and artificial intelligence. Students also receive career advice and training in project management, entrepreneurship and communication skills – preparing them for careers outside of academia.

This podcast features the accelerator physicist Carsten Welsch, who is head of the Accelerator Science Cluster at the University of Liverpool and director of LIV.INNO, and the computational astrophysicist Andreea Font  who is a deputy director of LIV.INNO.

They chat with Physics World’s Katherine Skipper about how LIV.INNO provides its students with a wide range of skills and experiences – including a six-month industrial placement.

This podcast is sponsored by LIV.INNO, the Liverpool Centre for Doctoral Training for Innovation in Data-Intensive Science.

It came as a bolt from the blue for many Nobel watchers. This year’s Nobel Prize for Physics went to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton for their “foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning and artificial neural networks”.

In this podcast I explore the connections between artificial intelligence (AI) and physics with the author Anil Ananthaswamy – who has written the book Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Maths Behind Modern AI. We delve into the careers of Hinton and Hopfield and explain how they laid much of the groundwork for today’s AI systems.

We also look at why Hinton has spoken out about the dangers of AI and chat about the connection between this year’s physics and chemistry Nobel prizes.

SmarAct proudly supports Physics World‘s Nobel Prize coverage, advancing breakthroughs in science and technology through high-precision positioning, metrology and automation. Discover how SmarAct shapes the future of innovation at smaract.com.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, our very own Matin Durrani and Hamish Johnston explain why they think that this year’s Nobel Prize for Physics could be awarded for work in condensed-matter physics – and who could be in the running. They also reminisce about some of the many Nobel laureates that they have met over the years and the excitement that comes every October when the winners are announced.

SmarAct proudly supports Physics World‘s Nobel Prize coverage, advancing breakthroughs in science and technology through high-precision positioning, metrology and automation. Discover how SmarAct shapes the future of innovation at smaract.com.

It is Peer Review Week and celebrations are well under way at IOP Publishing (IOPP), which brings you the Physics World Weekly podcast.

Reviewer feedback to authors plays a crucial role in the peer-review process, boosting the quality of published papers to the benefit of authors and the wider scientific community. But sometimes authors receive very unhelpful or outright rude feedback about their work. These inappropriate comments can shake the confidence of early career researchers, and even dissuade them from pursuing careers in science.

Our guest in this episode is Laura Feetham-Walker, who is reviewer engagement manager at IOPP. She explains how the publisher is raising awareness of the importance of constructive and respectful peer review feedback and how innovations can help to create a positive peer review culture.

As part of the campaign, IOPP asked some leading physicists to recount the worst reviewer comments that they have received – and Feetham-Walker shares some real shockers in the podcast.

• The interview refers to a paper in PeerJ by Nyssa Silbiger​​ and Amber Stubler: “Unprofessional peer reviews disproportionately harm underrepresented groups in STEM“

IOPP has created a video called “Unprofessional peer reviews can harm science” in which leading scientists share inappropriate reviews that they have received.

The publisher also offers a  Peer Review Excellence  training and certification programme, which equips early-career researchers in the physical sciences with the skills to provide constructive feedback.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features two medical physicists working at the heart of the UK’s National Health Service (NHS). They are Mark Knight, who is chief healthcare scientist at the NHS Kent and Medway Integrated Care Board, and Fiammetta Fedele, who is head of non-ionizing radiation at Guy’s and St Thomas NHS Foundation Trust in London.

They explain how medical physicists keep people safe during healthcare procedures – while innovating new technologies and treatments. They also discuss the role that artificial intelligence could play in medical physics and take a look forward to the future of healthcare.

• This episode was created in collaboration with IPEM, the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine. IPEM owns the journal Physics in Medicine & Biology.

This episode is supported by RaySearch Laboratories.

RaySearch Laboratories unifies industry solutions, empowering healthcare providers to deliver precise and effective radiotherapy treatment. RaySearch products transform scattered technologies into clarity, elevating the radiotherapy industry.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast we explore two related areas of physics, statistical physics and thermodynamics.

First up we have two leading lights in statistical physics who explain how researchers in the field are studying phenomena as diverse as active matter and artificial intelligence.

They are Leticia Cugliandolo who is at Sorbonne University in Paris and Marc Mézard at Bocconi University in Italy.

Cugliandolo is also chief scientific director of Journal of Statistical Mechanics, Theory, and Experiment (JSTAT) and Mézard has just stepped down from that role. They both talk about how the journal and statistical physics have evolved over the past two decades and what the future could bring.

The second segment of this episode explores how intense storms can affect your cup of tea. Our guests are the meteorologists Caleb Miller and Giles Harrison, who measured the boiling point of water as storm Ciarán passed through the University of Reading in 2023. They explain the thermodynamics of what they found, and how the storm could have affected the quality of the millions of cups of tea brewed that day.

• The Journal of Statistical Mechanics, Theory, and Experiment is a multi-disciplinary, peer-reviewed international journal created by the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) and IOP Publishing, which also brings you Physics World.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast looks at quantum computing from two different perspectives.

Our first guest is Elena Blokhina, who is chief scientific officer at Equal1 – an award-winning company that is developing hybrid quantum–classical computing chips. She explains why Equal1 is using quantum dots as qubits in its silicon-based quantum processor unit.

Next up is Brandon Grinkemeyer, who is a PhD student at Harvard University working in several cutting-edge areas of quantum research. He is a member of Misha Lukin’s research group, which is active in the fields of quantum optics and atomic physics and is at the forefront of developing  quantum processors that use arrays of trapped atoms as qubits.

On 15 August 1977 the Big Ear radio telescope in the US was scanning the skies in a search for signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life. Suddenly, it detected a strong, narrow bandwidth signal that lasted a little longer than one minute – as expected if Big Ear’s field of vision swept across a steady source of radio waves. That source, however, had vanished 24 hours later when the Ohio-based telescope looked at the same patch of sky.

This was the sort of technosignature that searches for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) were seeking. Indeed, one scientist wrote the word “Wow!” next to the signal on a paper print-out of the Big Ear data.

Ever since, the origins of the Wow! signal have been debated – and now, a trio of scientists have an astrophysical explanation that does not involve intelligent extraterrestrials. One of them, Abel Méndez, is our guest in this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast.

Méndez is an astrobiologist at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo and he explains how observations made at the Arecibo Telescope have contributed to the trio’s research.

• Abel Méndez, Kevin Ortiz Ceballos and Jorge I Zuluaga describe their research in a preprint on arXiv.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast explores how physics can be used as a force for good – helping society address important challenges such as climate change, sustainable development, and improving health.

Our guest is the Swiss physicist Christophe Rossel, who is a former president of the European Physical Society (EPS) and an emeritus scientist at IBM Research in Zurich.

Rossel is a co-editor and co-author of the book EPS Grand Challenges, which looks at how science and physics can help drive positive change in society and raise standards of living worldwide as we approach the middle of the century. The huge tome weighs in at 829 pages, was written by 115 physicists and honed by 13 co-editors.

Rossel talks to Physics World’s Matin Durrani about the intersection of science and society and what physicists can do to make the world a better place.

• EPS Grand Challenges is published by IOP Publishing, which also brings you Physics World

Margot Taylor – director of functional neuroimaging at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children – is our first guest in this podcast. She explains how she uses optically-pumped magnetometers (OPMs) to do magnetoencephalography (MEG) studies of brain development in children.

An OPM uses quantum spins within an atomic gas to detect the tiny magnetic fields produced by the brain. Unlike other sensors used for MEG, which must be kept at cryogenic temperatures, OPMs can be deployed at room temperature in a simple helmet that puts the sensors very close to the scalp.

The OPM-MEG helmets are made by Cerca Magnetics and the UK-based company’s managing director joins the conversation to explain how the technology works. David Woolger also talks about the success the company has enjoyed since its inception in 2020.

Our final guest in this podcast is Stuart Nicol, who is chief investment officer at Quantum Exponential – a UK-based company that invests in quantum start-ups. He gives his perspective on the medical sector, talks about a company called Siloton that is making a crucial eye-imaging technology more accessible.

• This podcast was recorded at the Commercialising Quantum 2024 conference.

This podcast explores the extraordinary life of the Pakistani physicist Abdus Salam, who is celebrated for his ground-breaking theoretical work and for his championing of physics and physicists in developing countries.

In 1964, he founded the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, Italy – which supports research excellence worldwide with a focus on physicists in the developing world. In 1979 Salam shared the Nobel Prize for Physics for his work on the unification of the weak and electromagnetic interactions.

Salam spent most of his career at Imperial College London and the university is gearing up to celebrate the centenary of his birth in January 2026. In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, Imperial physicists Claudia de Rham and Ian Walmsley look back on the extraordinary life of Salam – who died in 1996. They also talk about the celebrations at Imperial College.

Image courtesy: AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, Physics Today Collection

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features an interview with Margaret Arakawa. She is chief marketing officer at IonQ – which makes trapped ion quantum computers. An economist by training, Arakawa spent 25 years in the (classical) computing industry before joining IonQ. We chat about why she made the move to the quantum sector and about the wide range of opportunities for non-physicists in the quantum-technology industry.

Arakawa also talks about the challenges of marketing quantum technology to customers who might not understand the underlying physics and explains why the quantum industry must avoid hype.

Our second guest is Nat Mendelsohn, who represents the English Midlands on the Institute of Physics’ Student Community Panel. He talks to Physics World’s Katherine Skipper about the student experience – what is good and what can be improved. He also explains how the COVID-19 pandemic continues to have a profound impact on higher education.

Finally, I chat with Skipper about her trip to Prague for the 42nd International Conference on High Energy Physics. High on the agenda was what collider of the future will be the successor of the Large Hadron Collider.

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.

• Mahdi Bodaghi is on the editorial board of the journal Smart Materials and Structures. It is published by IOP Publishing, which also brings you Physics World.

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 was created in collaboration with IPEM, the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine. IPEM owns the journal Physics in Medicine & Biology.

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.