Physics World Weekly Podcast

Science fiction became science fact in 2022 when NASA’s DART mission took the first steps towards creating a planetary defence system that could someday protect Earth from a catastrophic asteroid collision. However, much more work on asteroid deflection is needed from the latest generation of researchers – including Rahil Makadia, who has just completed a PhD in aerospace engineering at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, Makadia talks about his work on how we could deflect asteroids away from Earth. We also chat about the potential threats posed by near-Earth asteroids – from shattered windows to global destruction.

Makadia’s stresses the importance of getting a deflection right the first time, because his calculations reveal that a poorly deflected asteroid could return to Earth someday. In November, he published a paper that explored how a bad deflection could send an asteroid into a “keyhole” that guarantees its return.

But it is not all gloom and doom, Makadia points out that our current understanding of near-Earth asteroids suggests that no major collision will occur for at least 100 years. So even if there is a threat on the horizon, we have lots of time to develop deflection strategies and technologies.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features Amanda Randles, who is a computer scientist and biomedical engineer at Duke University in the US. In a conversation with Physics World’s Margaret Harris, Randles explains how she uses physics-based, computationally intensive simulations to develop new ways to diagnose and treat human disease. She has also investigated how data from wearable devices such as smartwatches can be used identify signs of heart disease.

In 2024, the Association for Computing Machinery awarded Randles its ACM Prize in Computing for her groundbreaking work. Harris caught up with Randles at the 2025 Heidelberg Laureate Forum, which brings prizewinning researchers and early-career researchers in computer science and mathematics to Heidelberg, Germany for a week of talks and networking.

Randles began her career as a physicist and she explains why she was drawn to the multidisciplinary research that she does today. Randles talks about her enduring love of computer coding and also reflects on what she might have done differently when starting out in her career.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features Todd McNutt, who is a medical physicist at Johns Hopkins University and the founder of Oncospace. In a conversation with Physics World’s Tami Freeman, McNutt explains how an artificial intelligence-based tool called Plan AI can help improve the quality of radiation therapy plans for cancer treatments.

As well as discussing the benefits that Plan AI brings to radiotherapy patients and cancer treatment centres, they examine its evolution from an idea developed by an academic collaboration to a clinical product offered today by Sun Nuclear, a US manufacturer of radiation equipment and software.

This podcast is sponsored by Sun Nuclear.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features a conversation with the plasma physicist Debbie Callahan who is chief strategy officer at Focused Energy – a California and Germany based fusion-energy startup. Prior to that she spent 35 years working at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US.

Focused Energy is developing a commercial system for generating energy from the laser-driven fusion of hydrogen isotopes. Callahan describes LightHouse, which is the company’s design for a laser-fusion power plant, and Pearl, which is the firm’s deuterium–tritium fuel capsule.

Callahan talks about the challenges and rewards of working in the fusion industry and also calls on early-career physicists to consider careers in this burgeoning sector.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features a conversation with Tim Prior and John Devaney of the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), which is the UK’s national metrology institute.

Prior is NPL’s quantum programme manager and Devaney is its quantum standards manager. They talk about NPL’s central role in the recent launch of NMI-Q, which brings together some of the world’s leading national metrology institutes to accelerate the development and adoption of quantum technologies.

Prior and Devaney describe the challenges and opportunities of developing metrology and standards for rapidly evolving technologies including quantum sensors, quantum computing and quantum cryptography. They talk about the importance of NPL’s collaborations with industry and academia and explore the diverse career opportunities for physicists at NPL. Prior and Devaney also talk about their own careers and share their enthusiasm for working in the cutting-edge and fast-paced field of quantum metrology.

This podcast is sponsored by the National Physical Laboratory.

Further reading

Why quantum metrology is the driving force for best practice in quantum standardization

Performance metrics and benchmarks point the way to practical quantum advantage

End note: NPL retains copyright on this article.