Physics World
49 episodes listed below
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Physics World Weekly offers a unique insight into the latest news, breakthroughs and innovations from the global scientific community. Our award-winning journalists reveal what has captured their imaginations about the stories in the news this week, which might span anything from quantum physics and astronomy through to materials science, environmental research and policy, and biomedical science and technology. Find out more about the stories in this podcast by visiting the Physics World website. If you enjoy what you hear, then also check out our monthly podcast Physics World Stories, which takes a more in-depth look at a specific theme.
Based on 4 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Hamish Johnston makes difficult physics legible by following concrete questions from first principles to experimental limits and practical consequences.
Hamish Johnston builds each conversation around a concrete question, then keeps asking until the underlying physics comes into view. The range runs from why a runner's ponytail swings sideways to ultrasound-assisted cell cultivation, quantum error correction and the formidable…
A sideways ponytail is your on-ramp to quantum gravity.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Proteomics reveals how 16th-century medical recipe books may still carry traces of use.
A 16th-century German recipe book becomes evidence of use in this careful conversation about proteomics and historical objects. Gleb Zilberstein explains how a special film can lift proteins from old surfaces, giving researchers a way to study residues left by readers and think…
A grounded look at why 2D materials need pristine properties, useful substrates, and scalable production.
This PlayNext episode frames 2D materials as a translation challenge: moving graphene, tungsten disulfide, and hexagonal boron nitride from striking physics into quantum technologies, electronics, optoelectronics, and industrial coatings.
A steady look at LHC collision data, particle-shower simulation, and where quantum annealing may fit.
Physics World Weekly turns a highly specialized particle-physics problem into a clear question: how do researchers look for rare signals buried inside collision data?
A clear, practical look at a dissolvable eye insert for treating astronaut vision problems in microgravity.
Space medicine feels unusually concrete here, anchored by a tiny dissolvable eye insert made for astronauts whose vision can be affected when microgravity shifts body fluids toward the head.
A Josephson junction links Nobel-winning circuit physics to the Transmon hardware behind superconducting quantum computing.
Physics World Weekly makes superconducting quantum circuits feel less like a far-off promise by tying the 2025 Nobel Prize for Physics to the Josephson junction.
A Nobel history episode that finds wonder in odd prizes and the black-hole signal that opened gravitational-wave astronomy.
The Nobel Prize for Physics is approached through some of its stranger turns, moving from puzzling early awards to the 2015 detection of gravitational waves.
Exoplanets become a meeting point for astronomy, planetary history, and the changing ethics of science fiction.
Exoplanets make a natural bridge between measured astronomy and imagined places in this Physics World Weekly Podcast conversation. Hamish Johnston has Keith Cooper unpack what these planets are, how scientists study them, and why the October 1995 discovery of 51 Pegasi b around…
A clear, measured discussion of confidentiality, career stage, and policy as AI moves into peer review.
Peer review meets the AI era through a practical concern: what happens to confidential scholarly work when large language models are close at hand?
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.
Physics World speaks with Tim Shea of the Perimeter Institute about quantum matter, a field focused on the exotic behaviors that emerge when large collections of quantum particles interact, going far beyond what single-particle quantum mechanics can predict.
Southampton physicists replaced a fibre's glass core with air, cutting attenuation 35% and sending data up to 45% faster.
Scope three represents 99% of IOP Publishing's emissions, dominated by purchased services, business travel and employee commuting.
Warwick particle physicist Tim Gershon, spokesperson-elect of LHCb, says that on 19 December 2025 UKRI chief executive Sir Ian Chapman wrote that the roughly £50 million LHCb upgrade award was "no longer prioritised." Gershon argues the whole upgrade project is built around the UK contribution and that, with over £100 million pledged by other countries, the project "will simply collapse" without it.
Perimeter Institute physicist Alex May tells Physics World's Hamish Johnston that quantum information theory, built for questions like "how do we compute better," now supplies tools for quantum gravity.
Pat Hanrahan, 2019 ACM Turing Award winner and three-time Oscar winner, tells Margaret Harris that his path ran from nuclear engineering at the University of Wisconsin to biophysics simulations of nematode nervous systems.
Debbie Callahan, a 35-year veteran of the National Ignition Facility who is now chief strategy officer at Focused Energy, says NIF's best shot produced just over 8 megajoules from about 2 megajoules of laser energy, a gain of about 4.1.
Tim Pryor and John Devaney of the National Physical Laboratory describe how NPL, as a founding member of NMIQ since October, works with the US, Japan, Germany and other G7 partners on pre-standardization research for quantum technologies.
Todd McNutt of Johns Hopkins University tells Physics World's Tammy Freeman how the Oncospace database, begun in 2007, grew into Sun Nuclear's Plan AI tool.
Daniel Whiteson, a particle physicist at UC Irvine, tells Physics World's Hamish Johnston that his book 'Do Aliens Speak Physics?', co-created with artist Andy Warner, tests how much of human physics is universal.
Hamish Johnston announces that Guangyu Zhang's group at the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences won the 2025 Physics World Breakthrough of the Year for making the first 2D sheets of metal.
Andrew Gunter says his machine-learning predictions are like "a progress bar for electronic design automation," where today "there's nothing."
Digital twins of bridges, jet engines and supercomputing centers are already common; Randles wants one for the human circulatory system.
Right now, I would say the quantum industry, one in three jobs gets filled. That's how big our shortage is.
Dave Robertson walks into Westminster Hall and realises he has never set foot in the building before being elected.
Margaret Harris interviews UCL's Giorgio Volpe and Rob Malinowski and Liverpool's Joe Forth about their EPL perspective article 'Towards Animate Droplets: Active, Adaptive, and Autonomous.' They define animate matter as synthetic and 'lifelike' but not alive, judged by three principles: converting energy (active), responding to stimuli (adaptive) and acting from an internal state change (autonomous).
Physics World Weekly host Hamish Johnston interviews Luke Cox, co-founder and CEO of Impulsonics, a University of Bristol spinout that has developed an ultrasonic system to solve the 'unsticking problem' in cell biology.
Physics World’s Hamish Johnston visits the Perimeter Institute to speak with quantum gravity researcher Bianca Dietrich about one of physics’ most elusive challenges: reconciling Einstein’s general relativity with quantum mechanics.
Physics World Weekly opens its book week with a look at the science hiding in ordinary routines.
Physics World Weekly Podcast host Hamish Johnston interviews physicist and entrepreneur Gleb Zilberstein about protein traces recovered from 16th-century German medical books held by the University of Manchester’s John Rylands Research Institute and Library.
Physics World Weekly Podcast host Hamish Johnston interviews Antonio Rossi of the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa about graphene, tungsten disulfide, and hexagonal boron nitride.
Physics World Weekly Podcast examines Javier Toledo-Marine’s quantum-assisted generative model for simulating particle showers in ATLAS and CMS detectors.
Physics World Weekly Podcast examines a dissolvable nanofiber eye insert designed for astronauts with Space Flight Associated Neuro-Ocular Syndrome, or SANS.
Physics World Weekly Podcast host Hamish Johnston and quantum physicist Ilana Wisby examine the 2025 Nobel Prize for Physics awarded to John Clark, Michelle DeVore and John Martinez for work on superconducting quantum circuits.
Physics World Weekly Podcast hosts Hamish Johnston and Mateen Durrani rank five Physics Nobel Prizes since 2000, including the 2015 neutrino-oscillation award and the 2017 gravitational-wave award.
Keith Cooper explains that astronomers have discovered almost 6,000 exoplanets since 51 Pegasi b was identified in October 1995, including hot Jupiters that migrate toward their stars.
Laura Featham-Walker, Reviewer Engagement Manager at IOP Publishing, discusses the organisation's prohibition on using large language models to write or edit peer-review reports.
Scott Bolton, Principal Investigator of NASA’s Juno mission, explains how the spacecraft found stable polar cyclones, a large dilute core, and an unevenly mixed deep atmosphere on Jupiter.
Physics World Weekly host Hamish Johnston interviews Mario Krenn and Felix Frohnert about a paper analyzing more than 66,000 quantum-physics abstracts to forecast emerging research connections.
Physics World Weekly Podcast host Hamish Johnston interviews former physicist Jason Palmer about moving from Lawrence Livermore National Lab and an Imperial College PhD into journalism at the BBC, New Scientist, and The Economist.
Ewine van Dishoeck explains how astrochemistry studies molecules forming, breaking apart, and emitting radiation in interstellar space, where densities can be a million times lower than the best laboratory vacuum.
This episode discusses a white paper on making STEM careers more inclusive for disabled people, featuring an interview with physicist Francesca Dodato.
This episode covers a conference celebrating 100 years of quantum mechanics, with interviews on Heisenberg's legacy and future quantum science.
This episode interviews the winners of the 2025 Shaw Prize in Astronomy about their pioneering research on cosmic microwave background fluctuations.