(Having never paid attention to anything ever before, I cannot tell if Peter Knight is absolutely full of nonsensical shit.)

Peter Knight on quantum technologies

There are problems and tasks so hard and complicated that it would take today’s most powerful supercomputers millions of years to crack them. But in the next decade, we may well have quantum computers which could solve such problems in seconds.

Professor Sir Peter Knight is a British pioneer in the realms of quantum optics and quantum information science. During his three decades as a researcher at Imperial College London, he has advanced our understanding of the physics which underpins how quantum computers work.

Quantum optics was a new field of physics at the start of Peter Knight’s career in the early 1970s and he tells Jim Al-Khalili about the excitement and opportunities for a young scientist at the birth of a new scientific discipline. He also talks about the UK National Quantum Technologies Programme. Since his retirement in 2010, Peter Knight has been the driving force behind this £1 billion government-funded endeavour which has positioned the UK as a world leader in the development and commercialisation of quantum computing and other revolutionary quantum inventions.

Producer: Andrew Luck-Baker
Executive Producer: Alexandra Feachem
A BBC Studios Production

#TheLifeScientific #BBCRadio4
#JimAlKhalili #QuantumTechnologies

repeat Wednesday
2025-10-15 2100-2130

(all episodes of TheLifeScientific are downloadable)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002krgs

Those of you who listen to The Life Scientific, either on BBC Radio 4 or via the podcast edition, may have heard the episode that went out in August with the great Kip Thorne. Unusually, this was recorded in front of a live audience, (in front of around 400 people at the Royal Institution. The entire evening was also filmed as a University Of Surrey event and is now available to watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nCsvKiJmro

#GravitationalWaves #TheLifeScientific

A full recording of a recording of #TheLifeScientific with @jimalkhalili and Kip Thorne ... available now!

https://mathstodon.xyz/@jimalkhalili@mastodon.social/113384530938632920

Prof @StottPeter talks to @jimalkhalili on @BBCRadio4 #TheLifeScientific about his career @metoffice Hadley Centre & the urgent need for society to adapt to the increasingly dangerous effects of our warming world

Peter reflects on the experience:
https://blog.metoffice.gov.uk/2024/09/10/a-cool-career-studying-the-impacts-of-a-warming-planet/

https://twitter.com/jimalkhalili/status/1833396806568341660

🐦🔗 https://twitter.com/metoffice/status/1833461060717666792
🕐 10/09 12:02

Did you miss Royal Astronomical Society president Mike Edmunds on BBC Radio 4’s #TheLifeScientific this morning?

Not to worry, the programme will be repeated at 21:00 BST tomorrow (Wednesday 24 April).

It is also available via BBC Sounds 🎤🔭

Sad to hear of Ian Wilmut passing away. Here he is back in 2016, talking during the #Edinburgh Festival with Jim Al-Khalili for a recording of The Life Scientific https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/28898172180/

#TheLifeScientific #Science #IanWilmut #DollyTheSheep #DNA #genetics #photography #JimAlKhalili #radio #radio4

Just catching up with last week's #TheLifeScientific Jim Alkhalili talks to Rebecca Kilner about her work ... including how beetles have shed invaluable light on the relationship between social behaviours & evolution - a fascinating story.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001hf6q