Oh wow! the Seattle live show! recorded LIVE at the Sci-Mic Stage from the AAAS annual meeting.

The Topic?

This Photo was taken and posted by the Official Twitter feed of Sevenoaks School Science and Technology faculty. you can follow them on twitter at @SevenoaksSciTec

One we have been building to over the last several shows!

We’re talking about HOW Quantum Computers WORK.

Dr. Sara Ejtemaee and Dr. Danica Marsden bust out their most coherent explanations!  

Our guests today were two old Friends of the show! Matt Sheehy (Check out Aberdeen!) and Brent Knopf (check it! he’s the composer  on the new tv show Central Park).

Physicists:Dr. Stephanie Simmons  , Dr. Danica Marsden

So The thing about Quantum mechanics is that they are hard to explain. Part of why they are hard to explain is that they are so entirely theoretical.

this is a schematic of the double slit experiment from wikipedia.

Except they are not entirely theoretical.
Physicists have been working hard to build quantum computers which harness the power of quantum mechanics…
and so questions about superposition of states, and wave function collapse become practical questions involving objects that an undergraduate student can break with a hammer and graduate students can yell at.

Today’s topic is “Quantum Coherence” and “Decoherence.” We’re talking about what makes a Q-bit special, and why you need to make your computer do it’s calculation really-really-quickly before everything turns to noise.

Our guest today is Ted Leo (The author and performer of “Tell Balgeary, Balgury is dead”!!!). Omg, have you listened to his new podcast “The Art of Process“?  it’s really great! oh and he was in the Steven Universe Movie.

Today’s episode has such amazing conversations!!!

Physicists:Dr. Stephanie Simmons  , Dr. Danica Marsden

Intro Music: Ted Leo and the Pharmacists    –Tell Balgeary Balgury is Dead

Exit Music: Ramona Falls – Russia

The Biggest and brightest stars in the universe are classified as type “O” (as in, the letter O. the classification, in decreasing temperature is O,B,A,F,G,K,M).

They are HUGE! and BRIGHT! and VERY VERY MASSIVE! they have WAY MORE FUEL THAN THE SUN, and they run out of fuel SO MUCH FASTER.

This Is Zeta Puppis.
and O-type star in the constellation Puppis (an awesome name!).
Alberto ECJ uploaded it to wikipedia.org

to put it in context, if stars were people, and stars like our sun lived for 80 years (that’s an average human lifespan); then a person who is an O-type star would run out of fuel and die before it was 10 MONTHS old. Yow.

because they are SO HOT and SO BIG they don’t work in the same way that puny stars like the sun work. They  burn out and blow up!  And yet, their brief and bright existence has shaped the very chemistry of the galaxy and allowed planets like ours to exist.

OOOH BOY!

Joining us today is Ryan North! Fresh from his victorious run on The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl.

This episode is wicked fun, and we cover SO MANY AMAZING TOPICS!!

Physicists:Hannalore Gerling-Dunsmore , Dr. Benjamin Brown

Intro Music: Ted Leo and the Pharmacists    –Tell Balgeary Balgury is Dead

Exit Music: Ramona Falls – Russia

The Bullet Cluster
Composite Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/CfA/ M.Markevitch et al.;
Lensing Map: NASA/STScI; ESO WFI; Magellan/U.Arizona/ D.Clowe et al.
Optical: NASA/STScI; Magellan/U.Arizona/D.Clowe et al.;

Dark matter is one of the most interesting topics in modern physics. Because at this stage in the game, we are quite sure that it exists, but still have very few leads about WHAT it is.

Look at this picture. This is called “the bullet cluster”
Two galaxies crashed together, and the dust and gas in them slowed down from drag, but the dark matter (whatever it is) passed right on through to the other side. The blue shaded region in the composite photo shows gravitational lensing from all of the mass.

But just because we don’t yet know what it is, doesn’t mean that we have no ideas. There are actually a lot of fascinating ideas. From the humble Neutrino (wrong) to the hypothetical Axion (quite strange), particle physicists have a whole  bestiary of possibilities. But Which ones are right? how could we tell? how can we test?

To explore the matter today, I’ve invited Norm Sherman. Norm is host of one of the most amazing podcasts In the world: The Drabblecast. Norm has made his mark on this universe promoting weird fiction, and relishing the dark and unexplainable! The Drabblecast is a short fiction podcast devoted to the weird genre. It’s literally my favourite show.

Physicists: Dr. Ken Clark, and Dr. Katelin Schutz

Intro Music: Ted Leo and the Pharmacists    –Tell Balgeary Balgury is Dead

Exit Music: Ramona Falls – Russia

Far far far out, on the edges of our solar system — 30 times farther from the sun than our humble orbit — a freezing blue giant of ice lumbers slowly around the sun. Named after the oceans, and invisible to to the naked eye, Neptune seethes with furious winds and scalding internal heat and pressure.

Neptune and it’s great dark spot, as photographed by the voyager 2 spacecraft

Oh boy, this show is amazing!  I was super excited to put it together.

Neptune’s story is one of extremes and mysteries. Only one probe has ever gathered data from it: lonely voyager 2. And yet, from the pittance of information we have, we know enough about it to have discovered all sorts of confusing and wonderful things!

it has winds which swirl around its upper atmosphere faster than the speed of sound. It releases more heat into space than it takes in from the sun, and it’s snowing diamonds far below the layers of clouds. And the mysterious Dark spot: an anticyclone.

This planet of exotic materials and confusing weather demands special experts to break down the mysteries for us: Dr. Sabine Stanley is an expert on the mysterious interior, and Erin Wenckstern is a weather physicist (and canadian royalty) from the Weather network!

Joining us today is Andray Domise: Toronto Journalist and community activist and sometimes podcaster (he was one of the founding hosts of canadaland: commons). His calling out of the canadian media’s tolerance of racism was especially great! You can follow him on twitter.

Physicists: Dr. Sabine Stanley, and Erin Wenckstern

Intro Music: Ted Leo and the Pharmacists    –Tell Balgeary Balgury is Dead

Exit Music: Ramona Falls – Russia

© AEI / MM / exozet i stole this off of the LISA collaboration website

Imagine  a Triangle made of lasers, and farther apart than the earth’s orbit around the moon. This triangle tumbles and tumbles as it orbits, distantly following the earth around the sun like a faithful old dog. I’m talking about LISA, one of the NEXT GENERATION of gravitational wave detectors.

On this episode of Ti-Phy we talk about what makes gravitational waves, how LIGO works, and then about two EXCITING new methods of detecting the gravitational waves we cannot detect. Yes, even mighty LIGO has limitations.

The first is the idea of a PULSAR TIMING ARRAY to detect really Long (read: SLOWLY CHANGING) gravitational waves from super massive blackhole mergers. dig the NANOGRAV collaboration. .

the next audacious idea is LISA! the giant tumbling space triangle.
an amazing future in store!

and speaking of THE NEXT GENERATION *cough*  our guest today is an expert on that particular star trek franchise. Indeed, Benjamin Ahr Harrison  is a humourist and one of the hosts of “The Greatest Generation” (a star trek podcast which discusses TNG and DS9 one episode at a time). He is also a cohost of the “Friendly fire” podcast which is about war movies, and is surprisingly insightful.

Physicists: Dr. Jocelyn Read, and Dr Joey Shapiro Key

Intro Music: Ted Leo and the Pharmacists    –Tell Balgeary Balgury is Dead

Exit Music: Ramona Falls – Russia

The Supermassive black hole at the centre of M87

HEY EVERYONE!
this is something i literally thought i would never see. In all of the years studying Black holes, i never thought i’d be able to LOOK AT an event horizon with anything other than my imagination.

I heard about the Event Horizon Telescope about a decade ago, but when Leo emailed me that i should put together a show on the topic, I was SHOCKED. I never thought they would would have a result so SOON, let alone a result as brilliant and breathtaking as this one.

Today’s episode is on the Event Horizon Telescope: what it was photographing, and how it pulled off this magnificent accomplishment!

But!

the good news doesn’t end there! When the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration had collected its data, it needed to make sense of all of the information. What followed were months of careful and creative image processing, culminating in a meeting where the isolated teams brought together their final images to be compared, and THIS FAMOUS PHOTO WAS TAKEN. Dr. Katie Bouman is one of our expert physicists on this episode!!!

(Then graduate student) Dr.  Katie Bouman reveals the images each isolated team had produced.

Today’s Guest is Adal Rifai , Performer and instructor at Chicago’s iO theatre . You might know him as Chunt the talking badger from Hello From the Magic Tavern. His new Podcast is called Hey Riddle Riddle.

Physicists: Dr. Leo Stein, and Dr. Katie Bouman

Intro Music: Ted Leo and the Pharmacists    –Tell Balgeary Balgury is Dead

Exit Music: Ramona Falls – Russia

There is an issue which has SPLIT THE PARTICLE PHYSICS COMMUNITY IN HALLFFF.

Two sets of experiments, each giving DIFFERENT results.

The inside of the MiniBooNE detector. This photo was taken by Fred Ullrich of Fermilab.

One set says that there are only three flavours of neutrinos.

The other set says that there might be a fourth type of neutrino. one which no one can directly detect. a secret, elusive, invisible, STERILE neutrino. So does this strange particle exist? How would it act?

Today our Guest is Cecil Castellucci: the Award Winning and new york times bestselling author, Opera Composer, and Indierocker. The Book we talk about in today’s episode is “Don’t Cosplay With My Heart.”

Physicists: Dr. Erica Caden, and Dr. Ken Clark

Intro Music: Ted Leo and the Pharmacists 

Exit Music: John Vanderslice 

stuff stops working and never starts again.
(image from http://creativity103.com)

As Much as everyone wants to know how it all began, we are also fascinated by how its going to end.

The question itself is complicated and has a lot of different answers. Illness, Accident, starvation, extinction, the climate will stop supporting us, the sun will expand and we will spiral into it… but in the largest of pictures, the universe will no longer be a place which can support the existence of complex life.

Today our guest is Ken Liu, who first drew my attention as the translator of Liu Cixin’s “three body problem” trilogy. But Ken is a marvelous powerful author in his on right. His award-winning short story “Paper Menagerie”  made everyone cry (it’s on Escape Pod, if you want to listen). His (in progress) epic trilogy “The Dandelion Dynasty” is  like  a heartbreaking, steampunk Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

Physicists: Dr. Katie Mack, Dr. Robert McNees

Intro Music: Ted Leo and the Pharmacists 

Exit Music: John Vanderslice 

Okay, so lets start by looking at a galaxy.

(NASA,ESA, S. Baum and C. O’Dea (RIT), R. Perley and W. Cotton (NRAO/AUI/NSF), and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)) jets off of the galaxy Hercules A

see these jet things?

that’s caused by the same thing that causes Quasars.

there’s a supermassive black hole at the centre of the galaxy

spewing off radiation, pushing the gas in it all over the place and heating up the halo.

all this mess can keep stars from forming!!

todays’ guest is Courtney Brooke Davis , a webcomic artist, comic letterer and archaeologist. Dig her upcoming superhero miniseries: Fizgig.

Physicists: Vicky Scowcroft, Carolin Villforth

Intro Music: Ted Leo and the Pharmacists 

Exit Music: John Vanderslice