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Physics podcast from the Foundational Questions Institute (FQxI)
Dark energy might have changed everything; you get to hear the physicists argue about the 'might.'
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A curious physics countdown where a 90-vertex shape shares space with a discovery that changed a class mid-lesson.
The FQXI Podcast's end-of-year physics countdown is strongest when big abstractions turn into things a listener can almost hold: life's possible asteroid origins, a shape passing through itself, and the persistent lure of impossible machines.
Bernard Carr links primordial black holes, Hawking radiation, and paranormal research at the edges of physics.
Physics takes on an awkward brief here: make room for poltergeist reports of moving furniture, fires, odd electrical behavior, and broken bulbs, while also asking whether primordial black holes could explain dark matter.
A wide-ranging science episode links quantum biology, plant communication, physicists' beliefs, and the economics of peer review.
FQXI's episode moves from a $53,000 essay competition on quantum life to plant communication, physicists' views on major science questions, and the case for paying peer reviewers.
A cosmology tension sits beside a live experiment in more open scientific review.
Cosmology's tidy baseline gets a careful stress test as DESI reports a three-to-four-sigma tension with constant dark energy, while ACT still supports the lambda cold dark matter model.
A theory of life's beginnings meets a hard look at how peer review shapes science.
The episode approaches the origin of life through assembly theory, with attention to complexity, causal history, and time. Sarah Imari Walker frames the idea around objects extending across time, then gives it a useful pressure test: a technological object such as a Dyson sphere…
Big physics questions, answered between the puns.
Recorded PhD summer-school lectures from LMU Munich's Arnold Sommerfeld Center on quantum computing.
Theoretical physics, patiently brought to the board.
Curious physics, explained in motion.
Ian Durham compares the Kakeya result to "perfecting a perpetual motion machine."
Bernard Carr says psychical research forms a bridge between science and spirituality.
Catalina Cucciano says lentil seeds in a dark chamber produced biophotons with a pattern that "looks like a grammar".
DESI shows a three to four sigma tension, while ACT still fits lambda cold dark matter well.
Lee Cronin's lab and NASA samples led to an "assembly index above 15" only in biological samples.
Quantum physicist Ian Durham discusses the year's biggest physics stories, including a simulation of a traversable wormhole on a quantum computer.
A quantum physicist discusses the top physics stories of 2020, including an experiment testing Wigner's friend thought experiment.
A countdown of the biggest science stories of 2020, focusing on physics and astronomy, hosted by Zia Murali with quantum physicist Ian Durham.
This episode covers a range of topics from retrocausality and consciousness in fruit flies to anti-racism in academia and the return of race science.
A countdown of the biggest physics stories of the year, featuring a tie for number five between an antimatter interferometer and another experiment using the same methodology.
Host Zia Merali and physicist Ian Durham count down the biggest stories in foundational physics from 2019, discussing dark matter and other breakthroughs.
A physicist argues that quantum mechanics makes human behavior more predictable and discusses a theoretical experiment to predict actions.
Astrophysicist Fred Adams discusses the physical limits of computation and potential solutions like a solar system-sized computer.