The Titanium Physicists Podcast

07/01/2025

i’m quitting facebook next week. the demise of the fact checkers and the continued spread of fake news and censorship of real news is the last straw.

find me on bluesky .bsky.social for future physics projects.

13/10/2020

New! episode 86!

Our live episode from the AAAS annual meeting 2020 in Seattle. Dr. Sara Ejtemaee, Dr. Danica Marsden, Brent Knopf and Matt Sheehy!

we talk about quantum computers

Ejhttp://titaniumphysicists.brachiolopemedia.com/2020/10/13/episode-86-live-from-the-aaas/

Episode 86: Live From the AAAS Posted Oct 13, 2020 by bn 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....

01/02/2020

Episode 85! on Quantum Coherence and Decoherence. With Dr. Danica Marsden, Dr. Stephanie Simmons, and Ted Leo.

http://titaniumphysicists.brachiolopemedia.com/2020/02/01/episode-85-decoherence-not-incoherence-with-ted-leo/

(the picture is Qbert, famous for not being coherent. wokka wokka)

Episode 85: Decoherence not Incoherence with Ted Leo Posted Feb 1, 2020 by bn 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...

01/01/2020

December's Episode!
one hour before the hard deadline!
http://titaniumphysicists.brachiolopemedia.com/2020/01/01/episode-84-super-stars-look-like-zebras-with-ryan-north/

this episode is about HUMONGO STARS

Episode 84: Super Stars Look Like Zebras with Ryan North Posted Jan 1, 2020 by bn 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! th...

30/11/2019

http://titaniumphysicists.brachiolopemedia.com/2019/11/30/episode-83-feeling-feeble-wimps-and-axions-with-norm-sherman/

NEW EPISODE!
THIS ONE IS ABOUT DARK MATTER PARTICLES.
"but we don't know what they are!" you say?
exactly!

Episode 83: Feeling Feeble WIMPS and Axions with Norm Sherman Posted Nov 30, 2019 by bn   The Bullet ClusterComposite 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 mat...

01/11/2019

new episode: episode 82.
It's about Neptune

Episode 82: Snowing Diamonds with Andray Domise Posted Nov 1, 2019 by bn 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...

30/09/2019

the version of episode 81 released last night had a mistake in it: i was talking over the music.
anyway, the current version you can download now is fixed. i think.

30/09/2019

NEW EPISODE

Episode 81: LISA the giant tumbling Space Triangle with Benjamin Ahr Harrison Posted Sep 30, 2019 by bn © 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 tum...

21/08/2019

Episode 80: Picturing the Bach Hole with Adal Rifai

http://titaniumphysicists.brachiolopemedia.com/2019/08/21/episode-80-picturing-the-bach-hole-with-adal-rifai/

Katie Bouman is on this one! this episode is amazing.

Episode 80: Picturing the Bach Hole with Adal Rifai Posted Aug 21, 2019 by bn 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...

21/08/2019

The Hiatus is OVER!

10/04/2019

It's a POST STORM!!

regarding the BREATHTAKING photograph of THE EVENT HORIZON OF A SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLE !!
(Congratulations Event Horizon Telescope!)

I've compiled a list of different episodes which will help you give this revolution some context!

1. the event horizon telescope is an ENORMOUS virtual interferometer. what is an interferometer. it's a type of telescope that combines signals from different telescopes to make an effectively ENORMOUS telescope: http://titaniumphysicists.brachiolopemedia.com/2015/12/16/episode-60-meters-of-interference-with-ben-acker/

2. The Event Horizon Telescope is all about looking at SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLES. what are those?

2a. what's a black hole? a basic primer on black holes and traditional astronomy with Kelly Weinersmith.
http://titaniumphysicists.brachiolopemedia.com/2011/11/11/episode-2-looking-at-black-holes-with-kelly-weinersmith/

2b. Supermassive black holes live at the centre of galaxies. We associate them with quazars and active galactic nucleii. here's two episodes dealing with that topic:

http://titaniumphysicists.brachiolopemedia.com/2012/04/30/episode-14-how-do-you-spell-quasar/

http://titaniumphysicists.brachiolopemedia.com/2014/09/01/episode-50-the-death-of-spirals-with-kat-griffiths/

2.c. How Do supermassive black holes form? A worthy question. The answer is tricky. it takes a lot of subtle physics to cram that much mass into that small a region within the timeframe of the age of the universe.
http://titaniumphysicists.brachiolopemedia.com/2016/12/12/episode-69-super-hyper-fire-hose-bucket-challenge/

3. The Event Horizon Telescope is trying to look at the event horizon of a black hole. that's where things go sideways and physics stops working the way we usually expect it to. the prospect of observing it is AMAZING! so what kinds of things happen there?

3.a. Time Dilation: from our perspective, time slows to a crawl and then a stop the closer things get to the event horizon.

http://titaniumphysicists.brachiolopemedia.com/2013/02/11/episode-29-dark-equivalence-with-alasdair-stuart/

3.b. Redshift and other weird effects: it takes energy to crawl out from that region. the result is that signals originating from near the event horizon have lower energy than they started out: their wavelengths are redder.

http://titaniumphysicists.brachiolopemedia.com/2012/11/12/episode-25-the-no-bear-theorem-with-anne-casselman/

3.c Tremendous energy release: In the context,you wouldn't expect much from the stuff near a black hole: but falling into a gravity well that deep unlocks a tremendous amount of gravitational potential energy, which can turn to explosive heat

http://titaniumphysicists.brachiolopemedia.com/2012/12/10/episode-26-black-gold-with-kai-nagata/