Synopsis
Dr. Ben Tippett and his team of physicists believe that anyone can understand physics. Black Holes! Lightning! Coronal Mass Ejections! Quantum Mechanics! Fortnightly, they explain a topic from advanced physics, using explanations, experiments and fun metaphors to a non-physicist guest. Visit the website to see a list of topics sorted by physics field.
Episodes
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Episode 86: Live at AAAS- Quantum Computers
13/10/2020 Duration: 01h03minDr. Sarah and Dr. Danica Marsden are here with me in Seattle, Washington for our live show at the AAAS! We talk about how quantum computers do their quantum computer thing. Our guests are Old friends of the show: Matt Sheehy (from Lost Lander), and Brent Knopf (From Ramona Falls and El VY)
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Episode 85: Decoherence Not Incoherence
01/02/2020 Duration: 01h23minOur Guest Today is Ted Leo, of "Ted Leo and the Pharmacists" Fame. Our experts today are Dr. Danica Marsden and Dr. Stephanie Simmons. Our topic is QUANTUM COHERENCE and DECOHERENCE: how a quantum superposition will not stay that way forever. The Environment will start asking it questions until our system loses coherence.
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Episode 84: Super Stars Look Like Zebras
01/01/2020 Duration: 01h43minThe topic of this Episode is O-type stars, the biggest, brightest stars in the universe! Astrophysicists Dr. Benjamin Brown and Hannalore Gerling-Dunsmore break it all down for our guest Ryan North (of Dinosaur Comics, and Squirrel Girl).
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Episode 83: Feeling Feeble WIMPS and Axions
30/11/2019 Duration: 01h07minToday's guest is a marvel! It's the host of the Drabblecast: Norm Sherman! Norm joins Dr. Ken Clark and Dr. Katelin Schutz, experts in dark matters. today we talk about dark matter candidates: our best guesses for what is causing the crush we feel but cannot see.
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Episode 82: Snowing Diamonds
01/11/2019 Duration: 01h32minAndray Domise joins Dr. Sabine Stanley from Johns Hopkins University and Erin Wenckstern from the Weather Network to learn about NEPTUNE! Home to the fastest winds in the solar system, where it rains diamonds, and mysterious "superionic water," the ice giant slowly trudges around its orbit, the farthest planet from the sun!
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Episode 81: LISA the Giant Tumbling Space Triangle
30/09/2019 Duration: 01h18minHumorist and Podcaster Benjamin Ahr Harrison (Greatest Generation, Friendly Fire) Join me and Dr. Joey Shapiro Key and Dr. Jocelyn Read to talk about THE NEXT GENERATION of gravitational wave detectors: LISA (the Giant Tumbling Space Triangle) and NANOGRAV our pulsar timing array system!
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Episode 80: Picturing the Bach Hole
21/08/2019 Duration: 01h34minAdal Rifai from "Hello From the Magic Tavern" joins us to talk about the first PHOTOGRAPH of a black hole by the Event Horizon Telescope. Our guide through this amazing story are Dr. Leo Stein and Dr. Katie Bouman. We learn the basics of Black holes, and the interferometry performed by the Event Horizon Telescope, and then about the complicated image processing which needed to be done to interpret all of that amazing, messy data!
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Episode 79: MiniBooNE or Giant Curse
11/03/2019 Duration: 01h02minParticle physicists Dr Erica Caden and Dr. Ken Clark are my physicists today. Our guest today is Author, musician, composer and novelist Cecil Castellucci. Today we're talking about the MinniBooNE experiment and the possibility of Sterile Neutrinos.
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Episode 78 The Heat Death of The Universe
10/09/2018 Duration: 01h14minDr. Katie Mack and Dr. Robert McNees team up to explain the heat death of the universe to Award Winning Author Ken Liu.
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Episode 77: Disruptive Feedback
19/02/2018 Duration: 55minA supermassive blackhole at the centre of a galaxy can cause the gas that falls into it to glow SO BRIGHT that it stops the creation of new stars. What? How? Courtney Brooke Davis is here to ask the questions! Dr. Victoria Scowcroft and Dr. Carolin Villforth are here to give the answers! and I'm here to talk about pudding.
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Episode 76: All that Glitters
18/12/2017 Duration: 01h09minAnnouncing the return of the A Team! Jocelyn Read! David Tsang! joining us today the comedian Charlie Demers! Episode 76! This episode is gold. specifically, it's about neutrons stars MASHING TOGETHER in the depths of space!
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Episode 75: The Undeniable Outward Push
13/11/2017 Duration: 01h39sLike how the same basic stuff can make many different types of star, and planet and cookie, this episode brings a lot of familiar things together in new ways! Hanalore Gurling-Dunsmore! Dr. James Sylvester! and our guest Zach Weinersmith! (Zach and his wife Kelly just wrote an amazing book!) we're going to talk about Supernovas (type 2). How a perfectly ordinary gigantic star can just one day decide to EXPLOOODDE. today's episode is amazing. It brings together a lot of things we have talked about in other episodes!
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Episode 74: Jingle Bell Sweaters
24/08/2017 Duration: 48minBiophysicists Dr. Nicole Prent and Dr. Jacqueline Townsend are back. this time we're talking about Electron Spin Resonance, a technique that's like Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, but different. our guest this time is Diana Goodman, Host of the Thirty Twenty Ten podcast.
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Episode 73: An Episode with Glass
10/07/2017 Duration: 01h27minA touch of Glass! Dr. Jane Cook and Dr. Jessica Rimsza are here to talk with Bobak Ferdowsi about glass. We talk about what glass is, and how it forms, and what makes it glassy, and where to find it, and so many more things! FASCINATING!
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Episode 72: Moonquake
01/05/2017 Duration: 01h03minDr. Briony Horgan and Dr. Meg Rosenburg are here to explain that the moon is actually shrinking. It's getting smaller. And we know that it is because we have been studying it. Today's guest is Eric Molinsky, host of the "Imaginary Worlds" podcast.
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Episode 71: Neutriyes or NeutriNO
20/03/2017 Duration: 01h51sI'm gonna give it to you straight: we make beams of neutrinos. Neutrinos are particles that barely touch anything as they pass through everything. Ken Clark and Tia Michelli are back and this episode is awesome. neutrino beams: why would we make them? how do we make them? our guest is the host of the FOO SHOW: Will Smith!
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Episode 70: Muon, science cat, muon
16/01/2017 Duration: 01h32sMuons are very small fundamental particles that are much heavier than they should be. they fall apart pretty quickly, but they rain down on us. It's magical. Today's physicists are Ryan Martin, the particle physicist; and Diana Cowern, host of the "Physics Girl" youtube channel. Our Guest this time is Sarah Gailey, the author!
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Episode 69: Super Hyper Fire Hose Bucket Challenge
12/12/2016 Duration: 01h11minToday our guest is a person I've wanted to meet for years: The founder of the Skepchick website, Rebecca Watson. Our physicists are Dr. Katie Mack and Hannalore Gerling-Dunsmore. TODAY'S TOPIC: Supermassive Black Holes!!
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Episode 68: The Shadows of Creation
07/11/2016 Duration: 01h01minThis episode is about the The Sunyaev–Zel'dovich Effect, where photons from the big bang are used to backlight giant galaxy clusters! My Physicists this episode are Dr. Michael Zemcov, and Dr. Danica Marsden. Our guest this time is TED LEO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WOO! THE COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND!
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Episode 67: A Phonon Call
01/10/2016 Duration: 57minA phonon.. that's not a spelling mistake... is a quantum of vibration. it's a particle... that lives as a vibration in a crystal. and it's bananas!!! Doctors Fiona Burnell and Darren Peets have joined me to try to explain this all to Megan and Anthony Leon.