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The Department of Physics public lecture series. An exciting series of lectures about the research at Oxford Physics take place throughout the academic year. Looking at topics diverse as the creation of the universe to the science of climate change. Features episodes previously published as:(1) 'Oxford Physics Alumni': "Informal interviews with physics alumni at events, lectures and other alumni related activities."(2) 'Physics and Philosophy: Arguments, Experiments and a Few Things in Between': "A series which explores some of the links between physics and philosophy, two of the most fundamental ways with which we try to answer our questions about the world around us. A number of the most p…
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · August 2026
Oxford Physics Public Lectures gives Science listeners full-length research lectures on cosmology and neutrino astrophysics from the researchers running the experiments.
Oxford Physics Public Lectures records the department's public lecture series, so listeners hear a working researcher at a podium talking at length about their own research rather than a produced interview segment.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A focused classroom path from nuclear structure to the chain reaction problem at the heart of bomb physics.
The episode frames bomb physics as a clear progression from nuclear bookkeeping to chain reaction. Georg Fierzer starts with protons, neutrons, binding energy, and the counts behind Z, N, and A, then uses uranium-235 to show how an incoming neutron can open the path to fission.
Truman's decision is weighed against the wartime strategies that could have come before it.
The 1945 atomic bombing is handled as a pressured act of political judgment, not as a settled moral footnote. The episode puts Truman in the White House two weeks after Stimson's warning about a devastating new weapons system, then circles back to the audience's 15-to-20-percent…
A lecture on how Lindemann's nerve, physics, and closeness to Churchill helped turn speculation toward state policy.
The episode starts with Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project, using that familiar frame to reach Oxford's more fragile connection to the story. From there it follows Lindemann through RAF flight experiments, his Oxford professorship, and even amateur tennis.
A clear, grounded introduction to neutrino astronomy and the limits of reading cosmic signals.
IceCube frames a one-kilometer-cube detector as a new kind of telescope, built to catch neutrinos that may trace back to cosmic sources such as exploding stars and gamma-ray bursts.
IceCube makes cosmic violence feel like a patient, numbers-driven case for larger neutrino detectors.
Neutrino astronomy finds its tension in a detector that spent two years waiting for a signal. IceCube's cubic-kilometre scale gives the lecture its central measure: a fully efficient instrument was expected to see 10 to 100 events a year, which makes the hunt for cosmic…
A South Pole detector follows elusive neutrinos toward cosmic sources, dark matter, and physics beyond the standard model.
IceCube turns the South Pole into a neutrino observatory, sending the experiment deep into the ice to catch traces of particles that usually pass through matter almost untouched.
A clear, measured tour of IceCube's promise, from deep-ice detection to a new window on the universe.
IceCube turns the South Pole into a strange kind of observatory, with instruments reaching two and a half kilometers into the ice to catch traces of very energetic neutrinos from outer space.
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.
Georg Fierzer, a research lecturer in Oxford's Department of Physics, explains how nuclear binding energy, fission, and chain reactions connect directly to the development of the bomb.
Oxford Physics Public Lectures asks whether Harry Truman had a strategic alternative to using the atomic bomb in 1945, after Henry Stimson’s letter described a weapon “like nothing else that we've ever seen before.” The lecturer rejects revisionist claims about impressing the Soviets, winning an election, or revenge for Pearl Harbor, saying his reading of the American National Archives found “absolutely no evidence” for them.
Oxford Physics Public Lectures uses Frederick Lindemann, the bowler-hatted physicist born in Baden-Baden in 1886, to tell Oxford's wartime physics story.
Oxford Physics Public Lectures presents a 2019 particle-physics update before Francis Halzen turns to neutrino astronomy and IceCube at the South Pole.
Oxford Particle Physics Christmas Lecture speaker Francis Halzen frames IceCube as a way to solve the origin of the highest-energy cosmic rays, using neutrinos as the messenger that photons and charged particles cannot be.
Oxford Physics Public Lectures’ “The State of the Universe” lays out the 2017 cosmological picture: expansion since 1929, an age close to 13.8 billion years, and a universe that is nearly geometrically flat.
Oxford Physics Public Lectures' "The State of the Universe" argues that the cosmos in 2017 is expanding, about 13.8 billion years old, and close to geometrically flat, while being made mostly of dark energy and dark matter.
Oxford Physics Public Lectures: Seeing the High Energy Universe with IceCube follows an Oxford theorist who also works on the IceCube experiment at the South Pole, a detector that extends 2.5 kilometres underground.
Oxford Physics Public Lectures' "Seeing the High Energy Universe with IceCube" explains how a South Pole detector buried 2.5 kilometers deep tries to use neutrinos to study cosmic accelerators and dark matter.
Oxford Physics Public Lectures covers how Thomas Grubb’s Dublin firm built telescopes, microscopes, and even a marine periscope before Howard Grubb supplied instruments to Vienna, Melbourne, Oxford, and the Lick Observatory.
A physics professor delivers a lecture on the intersection of general relativity, quantum mechanics, and chaos theory, reflecting on past research and new mathematical insights.
A physics professor delivers a lecture on the intersection of general relativity, quantum mechanics, and chaos theory, reflecting on past research and new mathematical insights.
Introduction to a Halley Lecture by Professor Evin van Dissek, a molecular astrophysicist, covering her background and research on interstellar molecules and star formation.
A lecture introducing a new astrophysics research centre and a guest speaker on exoplanets.
Introduction to a lecture by Professor Evin van Dissek on molecular astrophysics and her career.
A public lecture at Oxford Physics announcing a new astrophysics research centre and introducing a guest speaker.