Physics World Weekly Podcast - The highs and lows of physics in 2020, we reveal our Breakthrough of the Year

The highs and lows of physics in 2020, we reveal our Breakthrough of the Year

12/17/20 • 39 min

While 2020 started like any other year, it quickly became apparent that it was going to be a year like no other. In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, we have a lively chat about how the extraordinary events of 2020 affected physics and physicists, and how scientists around the world have rallied to fight COVID-19.

Also in this episode is an interview with Erik Bakkers of the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, whose team has won the Physics World 2020 Breakthrough of the Year.

This is the final Physics World Weekly podcast of 2020. Please join us again next year on 7 January for the next episode.

Also in this episode is an interview with Erik Bakkers of the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, whose team has won the Physics World 2020 Breakthrough of the Year.

This is the final Physics World Weekly podcast of 2020. Please join us again next year on 7 January for the next episode.

Previous Episode

We reveal our Top 10 Breakthroughs in physics for 2020

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features a lively chat about some of the best physics done this year as we unveil our Top 10 Breakthroughs of 2020. Our choices run the gamut from medical physics to particle astrophysics – and we even have two “Holy Grails” in the fields of superconductivity and semiconductor physics.

The Top 10 serves as the shortlist for the Physics World Breakthrough of the Year award, which will be announced on 17 December. Links to all the nominees, more about their research and the criteria for the awards can be found here.

Next Episode

Processing natural language using quantum computers, listening to the oceans’ myriad sounds

Using computers to process natural human language is notoriously difficult, so perhaps its not surprising that researchers are turning to quantum computers. In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, Bob Coecke of Cambridge Quantum Computing explains why natural language processing is “quantum native” – which makes it a perfect candidate for an early practical application of quantum computing.

Also in this episode, Ana Širovic – a marine biologist at Texas A&M University at Galveston – takes us on a sonic journey through the oceans, discussing the many sounds made by marine creatures. She also talks about the threats posed to nature by sounds related to human activity.

Coecke has recently published two preprints on quantum natural language processing on arXiv. They are “Foundations for near-term quantum natural language processing” and “Grammar-aware question-answering on quantum computers”.