Initial Conditions: A Physics History Podcast – Détails, épisodes et analyse

Justin, Maura, and Allison reflect on the creation of Initial Conditions and speak to some of the other staff at the Niels Bohr Library & Archives and the Center for History of Physics. They share their favorite episodes, the episodes they wish they had made, and the difficulties of making a podcast from scratch. With guests Joanna, Corinne, Audrey, and Jae, they emphasize the collaborative nature of the project, reminisce, and chat about science history, archival work, and lots of icebergs. 

In this episode, Justin and Maura interview speakers and students who attended the 2022 Society for Physics Students Physics Congress. Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell shares the story of her 1967 discovery of radio pulsars and her omission from the Nobel Prize awarded for that discovery. Nobel Laureate, Dr. John Mather explained the importance of learning about the early universe and the potential of the James Webb Space Telescope. Other guests include Dr. Julianne Pollard-Larkin of MD Anderson Cancer Center, a medical physicist who uses physics to study cancer cures; K Renee Horton, former president of the National Society of Black Physicists and airworthiness deputy at NASA; Dr. Sarah Horst, a planetary scientist who models properties of exoplanets and moon and works with educators to make planetary science accessible to students; and former congressman, Rush Holt Jr. who applies skills acquired from his physics training to inform public policy-making. We also hear from students about what they study, their favorite parts of physics, and the joy of being a member of SPS! 

 Inspired by David Kaiser's 2011 book, How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival, this episode will cover the discomfort many physicists experienced while grappling with quantum mechanics and how their unconventional methods led to quantum key encryption. Like many Americans of the 1960s and 70s, some physicists took part in questioning traditional institutions. They engaged in philosophical questions of quantum mechanics driven by Bell’s Theorem that revealed entangled particles’ seemingly father-than-light communication could not be explained by any known mechanism. While other physicists put their heads down and calculated, these hippie physicists dabbled in psychedelics, consulted with magicians, attempted to communicate with ghosts through atomic decay, and tried to communicate with each other–telepathically. They also questioned whether Western science's objective observer tradition was sufficient for quantum physics where observing a particle’s behavior changes it. Though some of their investigations may be deemed pseudoscience, there was value in thinking outside the box (or infinite potential well, for the physicists listening) and from their work, we know more about quantum mechanics and its applications.  

This episode describes efforts undertaken by the Department of Energy in the late 1970s to study the environmental, economic, and social consequences of anthropogenic climate change. In the early 1970s, President Richard Nixon confronted a series of energy crises. Blackouts in major U.S. cities, natural gas shortages, and the 1973 OPEC oil embargo led to cold winters, hot summers, and long lines at the pump. In response, Nixon began reorganizing the executive branch to better respond to such crises, an effort that would continue during the terms of his successors Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. One proposal that Nixon’s new energy advisors suggested was to burn more domestic coal and oil. Meteorologists, atmospheric scientists, oceanographers, and scientists in related fields paid close attention to these new energy policies. Some, including William P. Elliott, then working in the Air Resources Laboratory at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, responded with alarm. Based on the papers of William P. Elliott, this episode covers federal research efforts on anthropogenic climate change during the Carter administration. A handful of scientists began organizing a research program within the new Department of Energy to study the consequences of relying on more fossil fuels. That is, until the sudden closure of that program in 1981. We’ll also discuss how debates about climate change from nearly fifty years ago still resonate today.

 In this episode we discuss the efforts of three scientists–Svante Arrhenius, Guy Callendar, and Charles David Keeling–to figure out exactly what fossil fuel emissions might be doing to the atmosphere and the global temperature. Surprisingly, Arrhenius and other early climate scientists didn’t necessarily think that global warming would be…such a bad thing? But by the 1970s scientists began to push for more concerted efforts to research the effects of increasing carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere. We’ll pick up that part of the story in the next episode. You’ll also hear about Guy Callendar’s contributions to climate science. Guy was a fellow who held no academic degrees in science but did live through a dangerous childhood. We’ll conclude with Charles Keeling and his famous curve showing how the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere began increasing at an accelerating rate during the twentieth century.  

Perhaps because she was a woman, or perhaps because she was American, Eunice Foote did not receive credit for her 1856 discovery of the heat-absorbing properties of carbon dioxide and water vapor. In this episode, we will tell the story of the once forgotten climate scientist, activist, and inventor, Eunice Foote, with help from Sir Roland Jackson of the Royal Institute and University College London. Though little is known about her or her perspective, her life and scientific contributions contextualize not only a history of climate change science but of the experience of women in science. This episode starts our journey through the history of our understanding of the greenhouse effect and global warming.  

Featuring a discussion with experts Samantha Thompson and Kalewa Correa from the Smithsonian Institution, this episode is about the history of Hawai’i and the controversy surrounding the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT). The TMT Corporation’s Board of Directors selected Maunakea as its preferred site in 2009. The 2014 groundbreaking for the TMT site was met with fierce, but peaceful, opposition by Native Hawaiians and environmentalists for whom the mountain is both a sacred religious and cultural site, as well as home to rare species. Disagreements manifested at the mountain where protectors of Maunakea assembled to block the road and in the courts where they halted the project through legal proceedings. The Supreme Court of Hawai’i halted the project until 2018, at which point  protectors once again assembled and delayed construction. In the media, the battle over Maunakea and the Thirty Meter Telescope was often portrayed as a conflict between science and religion, but as our guests point out, that is not the case. This episode contextualizes the battle as part of a larger history of science, colonization, and the sovereignty of Native Hawaiians. 

This episode dives into the story of the oldest book in NBLA’s Wenner Collection: a 1528 Latin translation of the Almagest. Claudius Ptolemy wrote the Almagest, originally titled Mathēmatikē Syntaxis, in the 2nd century CE. In the Almagest, Ptolemy proposed a mathematical model to explain and predict the motions of celestial objects. Though his geocentric model was debunked by the 16th century, the text facilitated the great observations and models produced by medieval Arabic astronomers. This episode follows the Almagest throughout its 1500 years of influence, focusing on its importance during the rise and spread of Islam in the 7th century and the text’s eventual fall from popularity in sixteenth century Europe. This episode features interviews with prominent scholars, George Saliba (Director of the Farouk Jabre Center for Arabic & Islamic Science and Philosophy at the American University of Beirut) and John Hessler (Curator at the Library of Congress and author of A Renaissance Globemaker's Toolbox: Johannes Schöner and the Revolution of Modern Science 1475-1550).

Apart from his publications on gravity and optics, Newton was also a biblical scholar, religious mystic, and alchemist. In fact, a great deal of his work focuses on subjects that modern audiences might not consider to be scientific. You might be surprised to know how important the study of alchemy was to Newton. More than a pet interest, alchemy was an important part of Newton’s attempt to understand the nature of the divine. This episode uses the story of Newton’s alchemy to ask basic questions about the Scientific Revolution and the history of science in the seventeenth century. How scientific was the Scientific Revolution? If Newton was motivated by religious inclinations can we still call him a scientist? How does knowledge about the beginning of the Scientific Revolution shape how we understand the practice of science today?