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Physics and Chemistry
Interviews with physicists and chemists about their new books.
February 23, 2026
The Islands and the Stars
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is among the six largest national space agencies in the world, along with China's CNSA, US's NASA, and R…
February 15, 2026
Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them
A fun, dazzling exploration of the strange numbers that illuminate the ultimate nature of reality. For particularly brilliant theoretical physicists …
February 3, 2026
Friction
Friction, the force that resists motion, is synonymous with difficulty and complication. If you’ve ever replaced tires worn smooth by the road or reac…
January 13, 2026
Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean
Our solar system is a dynamic arena where asteroids careen off course and solar winds hurl charged particles across billions of miles of space. Yet we…
January 9, 2026
Light in the Darkness
An astrophysicist chronicles his quest to photograph a black hole and reflects on its spiritual ramifications in this international-bestselling memoir…
December 10, 2025
Jeremy Bernstein on Oppenheimer, the Atomic Bomb, and the Nuclear Arms Race
In this episode from the Institute’s vault, we revisit an October 2007 presentation by theoretical physicist and Institute Fellow Jeremy Bernstein on …
December 3, 2025
The Pale Blue Data Point
A thrilling tour of Earth that shows the search for extraterrestrial life starts in our own backyard. Is there life off Earth? Bound by the limitation…
November 25, 2025
The Random Universe
An award-winning astrophysicist looks at how the understanding of uncertainty and randomness has led to breakthroughs in our knowledge of the cosmos …
November 13, 2025
The Unlikely Primeval Sky
Of all the patterns that could possibly be preserved in the post–Big Bang radiation, the one we see is surprisingly smooth on large angular scales. S…
November 13, 2025
Facing Infinity
Humanity’s relationship with black holes began in 1783 in a small English village, when clergyman John Michell posed a startling question: What if the…
November 7, 2025
Supermassive
Black holes, demystified: follow along the quest to understand the history and influence of one of space science's most fascinating and confounding ph…
November 7, 2025
A Crack in Everything
What is space? What is time? Where did the universe come from? The answers to mankind's most enduring questions may lie in science's greatest enigma: …
November 5, 2025
Physics Fixes All the Facts
Complex systems seem to magically emerge from the interactions of their parts. A whirlpool emerges from water molecules. A living cell from organic mo…
October 31, 2025
Portals to a New Reality
For the last century, physics has been treading along the paths set by the same two theories--quantum theory and general relativity--and, let's face i…
October 23, 2025
Tales of Militant Chemistry
The history of film calls to mind unforgettable photographs, famous directors, and the glitz and hustle of the media business. But there is another ta…
October 20, 2025
No Standard Oil
In No Standard Oil: Managing Abundant Petroleum in a Warming World (Oxford University Press, 2021), Deborah Gordon shows that no two oils or gases are…
September 23, 2025
Facing Infinity
Humanity's relationship with black holes began in 1783 in a small English village, when clergyman John Michell posed a startling question: What if the…
August 27, 2025
Putting Ourselves Back in the Equation
A revelatory exploration of how a “theory of everything” depends upon our understanding of the human mind.The whole goal of physics is to explain what…
August 21, 2025
Is Earth Exceptional?
For a long time, scientists have wondered how life has emerged from inanimate chemistry, and whether Earth is the only place where it exists. Charles …
August 13, 2025
What the Ear Hears (And Doesn't)
What do the world's loneliest whale, a black hole, and twenty-three people doing Tae Bo all have in common? In 2011, a skyscraper in South Korea bega…