Hello Everyone, welcome to The Knowmads Podcast. I'm your co-host Prachi, and I'm your co-host Bhavay. `Chaos' is one of those words that has escaped physics and entered everyday language. We use it to describe messy rooms, traffic, even our inboxes. But in physics, chaos has a very precise meaning, (or it doesnt). Well, classically, chaotic systems are those, that even though they are completely deterministic, they are extremely sensitive to their initial conditions. Even the tiniest change in the initial conditions can lead to wildly different outcomes.\\ But when we move to the quantum world, things become a little strange. When there are no deterministic trajectories in the quantum world, how do we even make sense of chaos.
Our guest today is Dr. Marine De Clerck, a mathematical physicist at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge. Her work lives right at this intersection of chaos, gravity, and how mathematical structure is built upon quantum chaos. So if you’ve ever heard of the butterfly effect and wondered what chaos really means, you are in for a treat.

Imagine: it’s a lazy Sunday morning, you’re sipping your raspberry-flavored iced latte, and an interstellar traveler lands in your backyard. It starts walking toward you—what do you do? Are you terrified or calm? If you’re a scientist stuck on a problem for years, do you ask for help? If you’re an influencer, are you already crafting your next post? If you’re a cook, are you hunting for new recipes? Honestly, with our limited human experience and understanding, it’s hard to even imagine such an encounter.
To help us out, today’s podcast guest, Daniel Whiteson—along with Andy Warner—has written an incredible book illustrating exactly this scenario. Daniel is an experimental particle physicist and a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California, Irvine. Anchored by his deep knowledge, Daniel asks in the book: can aliens speak physics? The book hits shelves on November 4, and we got to check out a pre-release copy.
In today’s episode, we talk with Daniel about his mindset, the fundamentals and nuances of this alien encounter, and how we might communicate with them—without giving away any spoilers. Also, every new episode comes with its own lessons and the lesson her was to make multiple backups of your files because our SSD got corrupted and while we could recover our video files we couldn't recover the audio files. So the audio you're listening to is the one that got recorded by out camera. So anyway whether you’re dying to meet the green dudes, swear you’ve already seen them, or you’re simply curious about what such questions reveal about us humans, you’re in for a delight. So, let’s go!

Daniel Ofir Whiteson is an American experimental particle physicist at University of California, Irvine. https://sites.uci.edu/daniel/

He is a co-creator of Elinor Wonders Why, an animated educational television show on PBS Kids. He co-hosts a podcast with biologist Kelly Weinersmith titled Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/daniel-and-kellys-extraordinary-universe/id1436616330

Check out his new book: “Do Aliens Speak Physics (http://www.alienspeakphysics.com/)” which explores what it might be like to try to talk to advanced aliens about physics. Will they do physics the way we do, or is our most basic science more human than Universal?

The universe is about 14 billion years old. Ever wondered—how do we even know the age of the universe? How can we look up at the sky and read time itself? We do this by studying the afterglow of the Big Bang, called the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR)—relic radiation from the very beginning of the universe. Physicists build ultra-cold microwave telescopes—cryogenic cameras with incredibly sensitive detectors—that can spot tiny temperature changes and faint polarization, and even see how gravity bends that light.
In this episode, Dr. Eve Vavagiakis, an experimental cosmologist at Duke University, takes us behind the scenes of how these instruments are designed, built, and calibrated across ACT, the Simons Observatory, CCAT-prime, and CMB-S4. Her expertise spans cryogenic instrumentation, superconducting detectors, and extracting meaningful physics from enormous datasets. She also writes children’s science books that turn big cosmic ideas into playful stories for young readers—bringing neutrinos, black holes, and photons to life. She believes kids should have access to—even if not a complete understanding of—the latest discoveries and complex ideas. If you wonder how we know the universe’s age—or you just like telescopes—you’re in for a delight.
About the guest
Dr. Eve Vavagiakis is an Assistant Professor of Physics at Duke University. She builds instruments and analyzes data for cosmology and astrophysics, and works with the ACT, CCAT-prime, Simons Observatory, and CMB-S4 collaborations. Her interests include cryogenic instrumentation, superconducting detectors, and cross-correlation studies that reveal the physics of galaxy clusters and the universe. Previously an NSF Astronomy & Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell, she’s also the author of the Meet the Universe children’s book series from MIT Kids Press. Students excited about instrumentation or data analysis are welcome to reach out.
Website: https://evevavagiakis.com