New Podcast: Pluto, Pentaquarks, Alien Hunts & more

This month's podcast is jam-packed, thanks to all the huge physics announcements made in July.

So, Brendan and I begin with a news round up, discussing the Pluto flyby (with some help from cosmologist Andrew Pontzen), the creation of the pentaquark at the LHC, and the discovery of the most Earth-like planet yet, Kepler 452b.

Then we're back to our usual in-depth interviews. A couple of weeks ago, I chatted with Frank Drake, one of the pioneers of the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI), in the run-up to the launch of a $100 million project to hunt for alien communications. I wrote an article for Nature about the project, which you can read here. But in our podcast interview, I had the chance to ask Drake more about his long-running history with SETI, why he sticks with it despite the lack of success, and his work on the Drake equation for estimating the number of technological civilisations on other worlds. He also talks about why he's scared that the aliens might be sending us information encoded as holograms. And in the extended podcast interview, he tells us about new job opportunities in SETI.

The project is funded by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner. What do you think? If you had $100 million to spend on one question in science, what would choose?

Next up, FQXi member Keith Schwab talks about his quest to mimic the gravitational effects on the surface of a neutron star, by accelerating a nanowire. Reporter Carinne Piekema wrote about Schwab's experiments for us here, and now you can listen to him discuss how they could help those who want to learn more about quantum gravity.

And finally, a "radical experiment in science communication" -- which is what cosmologist Roberto Trotta of Imperial College London calls his new book, "The Edge of the Sky." In it, he attempts to junk jargon by describing the workings of the universe using only the 1000 most common words in the English language, as he explains to Sophie Hebden.

Enjoy the podcast!