Room-temperature superconductor arrives at last, a dark-matter detector mystery

10/22/20 • 36 min

Finding a material that is a superconductor at room temperature has been the Holy Grail of condensed matter physics for over a century. In this episode we meet Ranga Dias of the University of Rochester whose team has created a material that is a superconductor at 15 °C. The only catch is that it has to be squeezed at a pressure of two million atmospheres, and Dias explains how this pressure could be reduced.

The direct detection of dark matter is also worthy of Holy Grail status, which is why particle physicists where thrilled in June 2020 when the XENON1T collaboration reported a mysterious signal in their dark-matter detector. After the announcement, theorists around the world scrambled to make sense of the signal – resulting in five tantalizing explanations being published in the journal Physical Review Letters. One of those papers was from an international team that includes Jayden Newstead of the University of Melbourne, who joins us to talk about what the XENON1T signal could mean.

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Pathways to scalable quantum technologies

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features interviews with two leaders in the race to build practical quantum computers.

Michelle Simmons is director of Australia’s Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology. She talks about how her early work on fabricating solar cells kindled a passion for building electronic devices that she now pursues by leading a research group at the University of New South Wales that is building solid-state quantum computing devices at the atomic scale.

Jelena Vučković is Professor of Electrical Engineering and by courtesy, professor of Applied Physics at Stanford University. There, she leads the Nanoscale and Quantum Photonics Lab and focuses on using impurities in diamond to create quantum devices. Vučković talks about the challenges involved in creating scalable quantum computers and also reflects on the roles that engineers and physicists play in the development of quantum technologies.

Vučković and Simmons are plenary speakers at the Quantum 2020 Virtual Conference, which is being held on 19—22 October.

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Celebrating Black physicists

This week is #BlackInPhysics week, a series of events dedicated to celebrating Black physicists and their contributions to the scientific community. In this episode of the podcast, we talk to two of the week’s co-organizers, Ashley Walker and Xandria Quichocho, about what #BlackInPhysics week involves, why it’s needed and what they hope to achieve.

Walker and Quichocho also discuss their own careers and experiences. Neither followed a traditional path into physics – Walker started out studying business, while Quichocho’s first interest was in music education – but they are now deeply immersed in the field, as a planetary astrochemist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and a PhD student in physics education at Michigan State University, respectively. “We’re here, we’re doing stuff and we’re an active part of the science community,” Quichocho says. “We want to show that it’s okay to be a Black physicist, it’s okay to be a Black scientist,” Walker adds. “We want to show more visibility so that children can know that we exist.”