Physics World Weekly Podcast

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features an interview with Henri Lorach, who is part of the team that won the 2023 Physics World Breakthrough of the Year award. The Swiss–French group bagged the prize for creating a brain–computer interface that allows a paralysed person to walk. Lorach, who is based at EPFL, explains how the technology works and describes the team’s plans to miniaturize and commercialize the system. Also in this week’s podcast is Jonas Baltrusaitis, who is editor-in-chief of the new journal Sustainability Science and Technology. Produced by IOP Publishing, which also brings you Physics World, the journal will open for submissions later this month. Baltrusaitis explains that the journal will highlight the roles that scientists and engineers are playing in achieving the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. He also talks about his research into sustainable catalysis processes, which he does using cutting-edge surface-science tools at Lehigh University in the US.

Ramy Shelbaya, CEO of Quantum Dice, discusses how the company uses quantum optics to generate high-speed, truly random numbers. He emphasizes the importance of randomness in technologies like encryption, simulations, and gaming. The challenges of miniaturizing the technology and deploying it in mobile phones are also explored.

Paul Howarth is the CEO of UK’s National Nuclear Laboratory and our guest in this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast. He talks about the challenges of getting politicians to engage in long-term thinking about the UK’s nuclear-energy policies and explains why small modular reactors offer a practical way for the country to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. Howarth talks about what inspired him to follow a career path in nuclear science and technology – and he explains how the National Nuclear Laboratory underpins the safe operation of nuclear facilities in the UK.

Physics World editors discuss the Top 10 Breakthroughs of 2023 in particle physics, quantum technology, medical physics, and astronomy. Topics include breakthroughs in nuclear fusion research, growing electronics inside living tissue, creating electrodes within the body, using neutrinos to study proton structure, restoring walking ability with a brain-spine interface, and quantum repeaters for boosting quantum signals.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast looks at two very different and very difficult challenges — how to build a quantum computer that can overcome the debilitating noise that plagues current processors; and how to ensure that the UK meets its target for net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Our first guest is the nuclear physicist and sustainable energy expert, Martin Freer, who coordinated the writing of a report from the Institute of Physics (IOP) called Physics Powering the Green Economy. Freer, who is at the University of Birmingham, explains why more investment and support will be needed to ensure that the UK meets its target to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emission by 2050. Meanwhile in Paris, the quantum-computer maker Alice & Bob is developing “cat qubits” that promise to reduce the amount of hardware required to do quantum error correction. The company’s co-founder and CEO Théau Peronnin explains how the technology works and how it could be used to build quantum computers that could solve practical problems. He also explains why the company chose its quirky name.

Our guest in this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast is the biomedical ethicist Vasiliki Rahimzadeh, who along with colleagues has called for the commercial space industry to adopt ethical policies and best practices for research done on humans during space flights. Rahimzadeh, who is at Baylor College of Medicine in the US, explains that as well as minimizing risks to paying astronauts who take part in experiments, an ethical framework should also ensure that private spaceflight – which is still the purview of the elite – benefits society as a whole. Rahimzadeh and colleagues outline their call for an ethical framework in an article in Science

Astronomers are becoming increasingly concerned about the growing number of satellites that are lighting up the night sky by reflecting sunlight to Earth. In 2022, the prototype communications satellite BlueWalker 3 was launched and it is now the brightest commercial satellite ever – outshining almost every star in the sky. And to make matters worse, communications satellites like BlueWalker 3 broadcast microwave signals that can interfere with radio astronomy. To talk about the threats to astronomy posed by satellites I am joined down the line by the radio astronomer Mike Peel, who is at Imperial College London and Jeremy Tregloan-Reed of Chile’s University of Atacama, who studies the cosmos using visible light. This podcast is sponsored by The Electrochemical Society

Dave Newbold, Executive Director, National Laboratories Science and Technologies for the UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), discusses the challenges of developing strategies for the UK's national labs and the future of particle physics, including next-generation colliders and precision experiments. Importance of collaborations and international researchers utilizing UK's scientific facilities are also discussed.

Cosmologist and theoretical physicist Licia Verde and two others discuss major breakthroughs in cosmology and astroparticle physics over the past two decades. They also talk about the retrospective and upcoming 20th-anniversary special issue of the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, as well as the process of submitting papers and the partnership between JCAP, Sisa Medielab, and IOP.

Margaret Gardel, biophysicist, discusses the physics of adaptation and how physics-inspired theory and experiments provide fresh insights into biological systems. Susannah Glickman, historian, explores the history of quantum computing and the challenges faced by researchers. She also highlights the importance of historical understanding in shaping the future of quantum computing