Laser spectroscopy

04/07/25 • 28 min

What is matter made of? If we could zoom in to unimaginably small scales, we’d see atoms and gases teeming with electrons in constant motion. Laser spectroscopy is one of the powerful tools scientists use to explore this microscopic world. Birgitta Schulze-Bernhardt will guide us through what we can uncover about the infinitesimally small and how this knowledge impacts the view of the world we live in.

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Philosophy and Physics - Part 2

What does one mean by philosophy of physics? How can philosophy help us understand the physical world? In particular, when it comes to quantum mechanics, human intuition seems to break down. Is the wave function real, or is it just a construct we use to make sense of experiments? Is reality truly based on probabilities? In this episode we continue our journey into the relationship between philosophy and physics with Axel Maas and Philip Berghofer from University of Graz. The first part of our conversation with them can be found at episode "Philosophy and Physics - Part 1"References:Axel Maas on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/axelmaas.bsky.socialAxel Maas's webpage: https://particle.uni-graz.at/en/structures-and-observables/Philip Berghofer's webpages: https://uni-graz.academia.edu/PhilippBerghofer, https://philippberghofer.com/Some slides about philosophy of physics: https://static.uni-graz.at/fileadmin/_Persoenliche_Webseite/maas_axel/urania24.pdfBook "Gauge symmetries, symmetry breaking, and gauge-invariant approaches": https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.00616