Science On Top
The Australian Podcast putting Science on Top of the agenda

2017 was a big year for science. Gravitational waves were detected four times, it was the end of Cassini's mission, and lady dragonflies faked their own deaths to avoid sex. And we talked about all these stories and more on Science on Top. But not everything goes to plan, and this year was no exception! We had all sorts of Skype troubles, we forgot things, we were interrupted by dogs and phones... lots went wrong! But instead of losing the hilarious moments of chaos, we've saved them all for our traditional end of year bloopers episode. All the rants, the tangents, the swearing and the brain farts all put together for one long blooper reel! There's even an entire story that was cut from the regular show that we've included out of the kindness of our hearts.

You must download or play the bloopers episode from our site: http://scienceontop.com/bloopers17 or on YouTube or Soundcloud!

Direct download: Bloopers_2017_announce.mp3
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Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall

00:01:08 Six reasons why the latest gravitational wave discovery is huge

00:07:36 Scientists solve Roman concrete puzzle

00:11:01 A look back at Cassini's incredible mission to Saturn before its final plunge into the planet

00:14:09 The first results from the Juno mission

00:17:40 A Dinosaur So Well Preserved, It Looks Like a Statue

00:20:47 We created a song that makes babies happy

00:23:33 A Thorny Debate in Plate Tectonics May Finally Be Resolved

00:25:50 Why Female Dragonflies Go to Extreme Lengths to Avoid Sex

Plus we interviewed some great people this year:

Direct download: SoT_0285.mp3
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Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall

00:01:07 Antarctica is littered with volcanoes, and while there hasn't been a major eruption in 8,000 years, there are signs that there might be one coming.

00:12:48 Rock art in Saudi Arabia dates back thousands of years, and possibly features the oldest images of dogs.

00:17:53 The "Cat's Brain" long barrow in Wiltshire, near Stonehenge dates back to around 3,800BC. It's recent excavation offers new insights into Britain's neolithic civilisation.We were reminded of our fascinating discussion earlier this year with Dr. Lynne Kelly.

00:22:32 When a star goes supernova it usually appears to us as a very bright star that hangs around for maybe 3 or 4 months. But a newly analysed supernova stuck around for more than 2 years, getting brighter and dimmer throughout that period.

00:32:34 Researchers in West Australia have discovered and identified eight new species of spinifex grass, and one of them tastes like salt and vinegar chips!

 

This episode contains traces of "Come to Australia" by the Scared Weird Little Guys.

Direct download: SoT_0284.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:30pm AEDT

Hosts: Ed Brown, Dr. Shayne Joseph, Penny Dumsday.

00:01:03 Stromatolites - rocky mounds made of bacterial colonies - have been around for at least 3.5 billion years. But the rise of multicellular life wiped them out except for in a few salty marine locations. Now researchers have discovered some in a remote freshwater wetland in Tasmania.

00:06:51 You wouldn't think it would matter if you were injured in the daytime or at night - but it does. Wounds inflicted during the day can heal nearly twice as fast.

00:11:14 What if the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs had struck the Earth somewhere different? It may be that if it had impacted nearly anywhere else on the planet the dinosaurs may have survived.

00:16:14 The fungus that invades ants and controls them while it kills them is pretty horrific. But it's even worse than we thought - the ants are aware and conscious the whole time, while their limbs are being controlled by the fungus!

 

This episode contains traces of Virtual Field Trips' explanation on how stromatolites got their name.

Direct download: SoT_0283.mp3
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Hosts: Ed Brown, Dr. Shyane Joseph, Penny Dumsday.

00:01:08 A 7-year-old boy's life is saved from a rare skin disease after researchers genetically modify and grow his skin in a lab.

00:07:25 The widespread use of penicillin may been a factor in the very early development of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).

00:15:06 A new study suggests that while cold blooded dinosaurs ruled the daytime, mammals evolved to be nocturnal. And when the dinosaurs were wiped out, many mammals switched back to diurnal life.

00:19:21 NASA scientists say the giant hole in the ozone layer is shrinking, and is now the smallest it's ever been since 1988.

00:24:15 Eleven papers have been published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases and presented at the recent scientific meeting revealing the scale and damage caused by streptococcus infections. The authors have called for an acceleration in the development of a streptococcus vaccine.

 

This episode contains traces of protestors crashing a side event at the 23rd Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, known as COP 23. The US sent only a small delegation of low-level Whitehouse staffers and representatives from fossil fuel and nuclear power organisations to speak on a panel. Former New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg observed that “promoting coal at a climate summit is like promoting tobacco at a cancer summit.”

 

Direct download: SoT_0282.mp3
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Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall

00:00:51 A strange rock hurtling through space turns out to be the first known detection of a visitor from another solar system! By which we mean: not aliens.

00:15:08 Lentils might not sound like exciting archaeological discovery, but a find at the prehistoric site of Gurga Chiya in Iraqi Kurdistan could provide clues about the formation of permanent settlements and the development of social stratification.

00:22:45 Using muon-scanning technology, particle physicists have discovered a hidden void inside the Great Pyramid of Giza. But - surprise! - that's not as unusual or revolutionary as much of the media breathlessly reported.

 

This episode contains traces of archaeologist Zahi Hawass criticising the Great Pyramid void discovery on RT America.

Direct download: SoT_0281.mp3
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Hosts: Ed Brown, Dr. Shayne Joseph, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall, Dr. Mick Vagg.

The Ig Nobel Prizes honour achievements that first make us laugh, then make us think. We take a look at this year’s winners: from cats in jars to disgusting cheese!

You can watch the award ceremony here.

00:01:30 The Physics Prize was awarded to French scientist Marc-Antoine Fardin, "for using fluid dynamics to probe the question 'Can a Cat Be Both a Solid and a Liquid?'"

00:06:20 The Peace Prize went to four doctors and one patient from Switzerland, Canada, The Netherlands and the USA "for demonstrating that regular playing of a didgeridoo is an effective treatment for obstructive sleep apnoea and snoring".

00:10:19 The Economics Prize was presented to Australian Nancy Greer and American Matthew Rockloff "for their experiments to see how contact with a live crocodile affects a person's willingness to gamble".

00:17:56 The Anatomy Prize was won by James Heathcote from the UK, for his medical research study "Why Do Old Men Have Big Ears?"

00:20:59 The Biology Prize went to two scientists from Japan, one from Brazil, and one from Switzerland "for their discovery of a female penis, and a male vagina, in a cave insect".

00:25:27 The Fluid Dynamics Prize was awarded to South Korean Jiwon Han, "for studying the dynamics of liquid-sloshing, to learn what happens when a person walks backwards while carrying a cup of coffee".

00:29:53 The Nutrition Prize was presented to three scientists from Brazil, Canada, and Spain "for the first scientific report of human blood in the diet of the hairy-legged vampire bat".

00:34:46 The Medicine Prize went to five scientists from France and the UK "for using advanced brain-scanning technology to measure the extent to which some people are disgusted by cheese".

00:40:40 The Cognition Prize was awarded to four psychologists from Italy, Spain, and the UK "for demonstrating that many identical twins cannot tell themselves apart visually".

00:45:00 The Obstetrics Prize went to a team from Spain "for showing that a developing human fetus responds more strongly to music that is played electromechanically inside the mother's vagina than to music that is played electromechanically on the mother's belly".

 

Direct download: SoT_0280.mp3
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Hosts: Ed Brown, Dr. Shayne Joseph, Lucas Randall.

00:01:11 A fifth gravitational wave detection in just two years confirms the dawn of a new era in astronomy. And this one was not only caused by two neutron stars coliding, it was accompanied by gamma ray detections, gave us more clues to the size of the universe, and a better understanding of how gold is formed.

00:17:00 Bacteria inside cancer cells can weaken or destroy some chemotherapy drugs, rendering them useless. But antibiotics aren't necessarily the answer.

00:27:53 A quarter of cow DNA originally came from reptiles, thanks to retrotransposons - genes that jump from species to species.

 

This episode contains traces of Lisa "Kennedy" Montgomery, host of "Kennedy" on Fox Business Network, discussing the gravitational wave discovery with physicist Dr. Michio Kaku.

Direct download: SoT_0279.mp3
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Hosts: Ed Brown, Dr. Shayne Joseph, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall

00:02:51 The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2017 was awarded to Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W. Young "for their discoveries of molecular mechanisms controlling the circadian rhythm".

00:08:40 The Nobel Prize in Physics 2017 was divided, one half awarded to Rainer Weiss, the other half jointly to Barry C. Barish and Kip S. Thorne "for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves".

00:14:52 The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2017 was awarded to Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank and Richard Henderson "for developing cryo-electron microscopy for the high-resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution".

00:20:18 They don't have brains, but jellyfish still seem to sleep. Three Caltech students studied jellyfish slumber and found it to be similar, but not the same, as human sleep.

00:28:58 Two separate teams have made the first detections of the roughly half of the normal matter in our universe unaccounted for by previous observations of stars, galaxies and other bright objects in space. This is not Dark Matter, but baryonic matter.

00:35:00 The kakapo is the world's largest flightless parrot, and it's critically endangered. But a conservation program aims to sequence the genome of every surviving kakapo, gathering considerably more data on the iconic New Zealand native.

 

This episode contains traces of a rare kakapo parrot meeting zoologist Mark Carwardine.

 

Direct download: SoT_0278.mp3
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Dr Katherine (Katie) Mack is a theoretical astrophysicist. Her work focuses on finding new ways to learn about the early universe and fundamental physics using astronomical observations, probing the building blocks of nature by examining the cosmos on the largest scales. Ed and Lucas caught up with Katie to discuss the universe, travel, social media, and her new job at North Carolina State University. Katie's Twitter handle is @AstroKatie and her website is astrokatie.com. She also writes for Cosmos Magazine.

Direct download: SoT_Special_024_Katie_Mack.mp3
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Dr. Lynne Kelly is an Australian writer, researcher and science educator. She has written books on skepticism, crocodiles and spiders; and her latest book The Memory Code examines the traditional memory techniques of non-literate peoples. Her theory on the purpose of the Stonehenge megalithic, which she believes served as a center for the transmission of knowledge among Neolithic Britons, is rapidly gaining recognition among anthropologists. Ed, Penny and Lucas caught up with Lynne to talk all things memory.

Direct download: SoT_Special_022_Lynne_Kelly.mp3
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Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall, Peter Miller

00:01:00 Surprisingly, a lot of plants in the tropics tend to have large leaves. A team of scientists at Macquarie University in Sydney may have worked out why: and it's a balancing act.

00:08:42 After 13 years, the Cassini mission is coming to a fiery end. It's been one of NASA's most successful - and beautiful - missions.

00:19:36 Data from the Juno spacecraft finds that Jupiter's powerful auroras aren't powered the same way that Earth's are.

00:30:28 Coffee County Soil Conservation District, in Tennessee, has found a new use for new underwear: testing soil. The degradation of the cotton underwear illustrates the abundance or shortage of microbes in the soil.

 

This episode contains traces of "NASA's Cassini Spacecraft: A Journey's End" video produced by NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Direct download: Sot_0277_Ed.mp3
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Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall.

00:01:06 Another plate tectonics mystery could be solved: how thick is a continental plate? According to a study published in the journal Science, pretty thick - between 130 and 190km!

00:10:57 Mars' "bow shock" - where charged particles from the Sun interact with the red planet's atmosphere - has been studied by a team of European scientists. They found that the bow shock's location changes over several Martian years, for a variety of reasons.

00:14:43 Artificial organs don't have to be full sized and they don't have to be for transplants. Researchers around the world are building "mini-organs" - sometimes as small as a pencil point - for everything from neurological research to medication and drug tests.

00:35:37 A Saturn-like ringed planet, orbiting close to the star and at a sharp angle, could explain the strange dimming and brightening pattern of "Tabby's Star", according to a new theory proposed by a team at the University of Antioquia.

 

This episode contains traces of Elon Musk frankly discussing the challenges of the upcomning Falcon Heavy rocket launch.

Direct download: SoT_0276.mp3
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Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall.

00:01:12 Four years after a groundbreaking peanut-allergy study, researchers in Melbourne have followed up on the original patients. The results are promising, and could lead to a potential cure for one of the most common - and deadly - allergies.

00:16:59 A new study has discovered 91 new volcanoes beneath the Antarctic Ice Sheet, making it one of the densest clusters of volcanoes in the world.

00:22:21 After more than a hundred years, a fruitcake from the famous Robert Scott expedition to the South Pole has been found in Antarctica's old building. And it's definitely probably maybe edible...

 

This episode contains traces of Fox News Channel host Shepard Smith being underwhelmed by the 2017 Solar Eclipse.

Direct download: SoT_0275.mp3
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Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall.

00:01:21 The largest dinosaur ever discovered, found in Argentina in 2013, is now officially known as the Patagotitan mayorum.

00:11:35 An amazingly well preserved dinosaur fossil found by Canadian miners is already giving lots of information about skin pigmentation, camouflage and even its last meal. Also it looks like a wingless dragon.

00:17:16 We're all made of star stuff, but not necessarily local star stuff. A new study based on supercomputer simulations shows that up to half of the atoms in our bodies came from galaxies outside our own.

00:23:49 How bees fly has long been considered a mystery to science. But now a mathematical analysis suggests their wings can maintain a higher angle of attack without stalling, thanks to leading edge vortices generated in front of the wings.

 

This episode contains traces of the Today Show hosts discussing a 9-year old boy's letter to NASA.

Direct download: SoT_0274.mp3
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Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall.

00:01:15 Just weeks after the really big iceberg split from the Antarctic ice shelf, a new rift has formed. And the giant iceberg has already begun breaking up.

00:07:14 A new study into the migration of early humans to Australia dates their arrival back to 65,000 years ago. And it also finds they were more sophisticated in their use of tools than we previously thought.

00:15:06 Rare fossilised footprints of Tasmanian tigers and devils, as well as those of giant megafauna and flightless birds, have been discovered on Kangaroo Island, in South Australia. The footprints date back as far as 200,000 years ago.

 

This episode contains a brief exchange between Fox News host Tucker Carlson and Gasland filmmaker Josh Fox. The interview went downhill very quickly.

Direct download: Ed.mp3
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00:03:41 An enormous iceberg breaks off from Antarctica. But did climate change cause it, like many news outlets claimed?

00:13:34 Plants don't turn caterpillars into cannibals. But hungry caterpillars will turn cannibal if the plant doesn't taste nice.

00:21:53 Gene modification tool CRISPR has been used to encode an animated gif in the genes of live bacteria. DNA could be the digital storage device of the future!

00:34:03 Ravens are smart - they can use tools, and solve puzzles - and they may even be able to plan for the future.

 

This episode contains traces of Congressman Dana Rohrabacher and Mars 2020 Project Scientist Ken Farley during a hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Science, Space and Technology's Space Subcommittee.

Direct download: SoT_0272.mp3
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Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall.

00:01:03 The Ancient Romans built sea walls with concrete that is still standing in many places today. What made their concrete so much stronger than modern concrete?

00:08:24 The chances of finding life on Mars grew even slimmer after a study found chemicals in the Martian soil are highly toxic.

00:15:54 Animals that use tools aren't uncommon, and neither are animals that make sounds to attract mates. But the Palm cockatoo could be the first non-human animal to do both - they use tools to make music.

00:28:47 In 1977 the Voyager spacecraft were launched carrying the Golden Records - gold-plated copper records containing images, sounds and music from Earth. And in one small segment of the record there's the sound of a man laughing. Adrienne LaFrance at The Atlantic wrote about her intensive investigation to track down who that man was and why his laughter is on a billion-year time capsule.

 

This episode contains traces of Al Gore talking about climate change on Triple J radio's Hack.

Direct download: SoT_0271.mp3
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Hosts: Ed Brown, Dr. Shayne Joseph, Penny Dumsday, Sean Elliott

00:00:48 Sean talks about his Roughbot project, a programmable robot kit that introduces students to coding and robotics.

00:04:47 Every year, 1.2 million blue wildebeest migrate across East Africa, accompanied by around 200,000 zebra and antelope. At one point in their mass migration, however, they have to cross the mighty Mara River. Those that don't survive the crossing end up being crucial to the surrounding ecosystem.

00:11:13 Chinese researchers have for the first time ever sent entangled photons from space to ground stations on Earth. This record-breaking achievement could be the first step of a revolution in communications and encryption.

00:23:49 Scientists in Uganda have noticed that the hunting behaviour of chimpanzees has changed since humans began studying them.

00:34:17 Two researchers from Princeton and Harvard universities have come up with a theory to explain the different shapes of eggs from different bird species. It's all about aerodynamics!

 

This episode contains traces of Arnold Schwarzenegger talking to senior US Navy officials about climate change.

Direct download: SoT_0270.mp3
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Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall

00:00:40 We welcome Lucas back to the show, and discuss his battles with depression. Lucas recently blogged about dealing with mental health in the workplace, and how different managers respond to cases of depression.

00:10:34 After three detections of gravitational waves by the ground-based LIGO detector, the European Space Agency has given the go-ahead for the LISA space-based detector.

00:15:42 A data visualisation takes a deep look at the statistics of human birth. And while we tend to think of it as being a random process, there's a large spike in births at 8am.

00:19:42 The New Horizons spacecraft has a new target - Kuiper Belt Object MU69 - which recently came between Earth and a distant star. This caused a huge (and highly successful) global effort to view it with ground-based telescopes.

 

This episode contains traces of banter between former astronaut Buzz Aldrin and former bankrupt casino-owner President Donald Trump.

Direct download: SoT_0269.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:30am AEDT

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Jo Benhamu.

00:00:40 An archaeological site in a Moroccan cave has long been known to have specimens of early humans. But an recent study has dated some of these bones to over 300,000 years old. If correct, that would make them the oldest fossilised remains of modern humans ever found - and it would change our understanding of the spread of humans out of Africa. For books to help explain evolution to young children, we recommend Grandmother Fish by Jonathan Tweet and Evolution: How We and All Living Things Came To Be by Daniel Loxton.

00:10:34 In the latest send-animals-to-space experiment, flatworms were studied on the International Space Station. And things got weird - especially with one worm that grew two heads!

00:15:42 Recently a lot of scientists have been suggesting that we're currently in the midst of a sixth mass extinction - and we humans are the prime cause of it. But Smithsonian paleontologist Doug Erwin argues that we're not there yet. Things are bad but to call it a mass extinction isn't really accurate.

00:19:42 And are humans hard-wired to look at faces? A study shines a light on what babies see in the womb.

 

This episode contains traces of John Oliver talking about vaccines on Last Week Tonight.

Direct download: SoT_0268.mp3
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Hosts: Ed Brown, Dr. Shayne Joseph, Penny Dumsday

00:00:40 There's a lot of talk about the supposed health benefits of sourdough bread. But a new study seems to suggest that some people may be better off eating white bread, and others may have more to gain from sourdough bread.

00:10:34 A group of about 1200 giant bumphead parrotfish have been caught in the act of mating off Palau in Micronesia. It's the first time they have ever been seen doing so in such large numbers.

00:15:42 A strain of the lactobacillus bacteria has been extracted from yogurt and used to slow down the growth of 14 multidrug-resistant bacteria.

 

This episode contains traces of a message from French President Emmanuel Macron to American climate change researchers.

Direct download: SoT_0267.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:59am AEDT

Hosts: Ed Brown, Dr. Shayne Joseph, Penny Dumsday.

00:00:39 Baleen whales - the toothless filter feeders - used to be around 10m long. Then 3 million years ago they started to grow to the enormous size they are today (blue whales can grow be 30 metres long!).

00:07:08 A new study has found that gastric bypass surgery disrupts the gut microbiome so significantly, that patients have a completely different bacteria makeup in their guts after surgery. And the new gut flora appears to promote weight loss.

00:14:14 An increase in the number of baby dugongs on the Great Barrier Reef indicates a revival of seagrass meadows following the devastation wrought by Cyclone Yasi in 2011.

00:18:11 Newly developed recognition software is helping underwater drones search for submerged mines and even map starfish colonies. Not only do the drones pilot themselves, they use pattern-matching to identify points of interest and relay that back to humans.

 

This episode contains traces of meteorologist Kait Parker at The Weather Channel responding to Breitbart's misrepresentation of climate data.

Direct download: SoT_0266.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:21pm AEDT

Hosts: Ed Brown, Dr. Shayne Joseph, Penny Dumsday, Dr. Helen Maynard-Casely.

00:01:03 The first results from the Juno spacecraft are in, giving us new and surprising insights into the largest planet in our solar system.

00:09:39 Some media reports of flooding at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault were somewhat exaggerated. Some water got in at the front door, which happens every year, but the seeds were never in any danger.

00:14:36 Have you ever seen a flamingo fall over? Probably not. Turns out they're extremely stable, especially on one leg. A pair of biologists set out to find out why.

00:22:11 The first steps have been taken towards space-based baby-making, with healthy mouse pups being born from sperm that went to space.

00:29:28 Please help support the show by pledging on Patreon!

 

This episode contains traces of astronaut Dr. Peggy Whitson talking with President Trump, after breaking the US record for the most time in space. Dr. Whitson was already the world's most experienced spacewoman and the oldest woman in space.

Direct download: SoT_0265.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 11:42am AEDT

Hosts: Ed Brown, Dr. Shayne Joseph, Penny Dumsday.

00:00:41 Rare childhood cancers are, of course, rare. But that means limited access to tissue samples making them harder to study. But the archives of London's Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children could be a previously unconsidered repository of 165 year's worth of samples.

00:05:34 There's a species of bacteria that seems to use quorum sensing to switch on or off its attacking abilities. And that's how it infects animals where normally it would only thrive in insects.

00:12:44 For the third time since 2012 a study has looked at whether the famous Stradivarius violins made in the early 18th century are actually better than their modern counterparts. They aren't.

00:21:55 A new study suggests that the microbes in our guts may initiate disease in seemingly unrelated organs, and in completely unexpected ways. In particular, our gut bacteria may be linked to brain lesions that can cause strokes.

 

This episode may contain traces of morning television presenters discussing the 'scientific benefits' of eating snot, as reported on the ABC's Media Watch program.

Direct download: SoT_0264.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 11:04pm AEDT

Hosts: Ed Brown, Dr. Shayne Joseph, Penny Dumsday

00:00:48 A study seemed to find a link between artificially sweetened drinks and serious health problems. Many media outlets quickly proclaimed that "Diet drinks triple your risk of stroke and dementia" (Daily Fail). But how seriously should that study be taken?

00:05:27 Humans produce about 311 million tons of plastic each year, a number that's is predicted to double in the next twenty years. But an accidental discovery from a Spanish bee scientist points to some caterpillars that might help break plastic down.

00:12:07 A new paper published in the journal Ecology finds that female dragonflies are faking their own deaths in order to get away from horny males!

00:17:34 A team led by Viviane Slon from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology has managed to extract and sequence the DNA of ancient animals from sediment - not bone - that's up to 240,000 years old.

 

This episode contains traces of Mary Bubala and Tracey Leong talking about artificial sweeteners on CBS Baltimore.

Direct download: SoT_0263.mp3
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Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall

00:00:47 NASA's Cassini probe has been studying Saturn and it's rings and moons for thirteen years and is now running out of fuel. And as it comes to the end of it's life, it's begun a series of risky orbits between the planet and its rings.

00:11:03 A team of researchers mostly from the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia have successfully created an artificial womb in which premature lambs can be brought to term.

00:17:37 NASA and ESA have produced a joint proposal to explore Jupiter's icy moon Europa.

 

This episode contains traces of NASA at Saturn: Cassini's Grand Finale, a video by NASA explaining the Cassini mission and the end of its mission.

Direct download: SoT_0262.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:45am AEDT

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall

00:00:43 The naked mole rat is one of the strangest - certainly the ugliest - creatures on the planet. But on top of all it's other extraordinary abilities (highly resistant to cancer, limited ability to feel pain etc) it can also survive for up to 18 minutes without oxgyen.

00:08:35 For a long time we've assumed our nearest extra-solar neighbour, the Alpha Centauri system, was a trinary star system. But for the first time the calculations have been done to confirm it.

 

This episode may contain traces of what Neil DeGrasse Tyson calls the most important words he has ever spoken.

Direct download: SoT_0261.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 2:58pm AEDT

Hosts: Ed Brown, Dr. Shayne Joseph, Jo Benhamu

00:02:34 For the first time, an atmosphere has been detected around a nearly Earth-sized exoplanet.

00:08:45 Results of a large study suggest that a cap that generates electric fields might successfully fight brain cancer. But there are still many doubts about this "sci-fi treatment".

00:27:06 There's a radiation-resistant bacterial spore found only in spacecraft cleanrooms. To know if they might potentially contaminate other worlds, NASA needed to see if they can survive in space. So, they sent some into space!

00:35:31 What if identifying and monitoring the 3,000 different species of mosquitoes was a simple matter of using an app on your phone? A pair of engineers at Stanford University are working on creating "Shazam for mosquitoes"!

00:43:01 For more information, or to get in touch with us, or to donate head to scienceontop.com/260

 

This episode contains traces of Dara O'Briain talking about the War on Bacteria.

Direct download: SoT_0260.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:15pm AEDT

Dr Steve Salisbury is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Biological Sciences at The University of Queensland, and a Research Associate at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Ed and Lucas spoke with him about finding the world's largest dinosaur tracks on the North West coast of Australia, and searching for dinosaur fossils in Antarctica.

Direct download: SoT_Special_022.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:23pm AEDT

Hosts: Ed Brown, Dr. Shayne Joseph, Lucas Randall

00:01:03 The difficult thing to do when growing artificial organs is building the intricate networks of tiny blood vessels that keep the tissue alive. A team at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts found a simple way to do that: with spinach.

00:12:00 Set to launch in 2018, the Solar Probe Plus is a mission to study the Sun from a very close distance - about 6 million kilometres. It will become the fastest manmade object ever built.

00:21:49 A team of ecologists and microbiologists have been studying the bacteria found in the blowholes of killer whales. And while their results were somewhat worrying, they're not as conclusive as many media reports have claimed.

 

This episode contains traces of Elon Musk after SpaceX successfully reused a rocket.

Direct download: SoT_0259.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:52pm AEDT

Professor Lucie Green is a Professor of Physics and a Royal Society University Research Fellow who studies the sun. Ed and Lucas sat down with her to talk about solar research, the Solar Orbiter mission, the Carrington Event, the Eclipse Mega Movie project and much more!

Direct download: SoT_Special_021_Lucie_Green.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 1:00pm AEDT

Hosts: Ed Brown, Dr. Shayne Joseph, Penny Dumsday

00:01:05 By monitoring two wild elephants, researchers have found that elephants in the wild only have about two hours of sleep each night, and sometimes they go for days without sleep.

00:08:21 Archaea are single-celled organisms that are difficult to study, so scientists don't study them. "Because they don't study them, they don't know very much about them. Because they don't know very much about them, they don't know how best to study them."

00:24:46 How and when did modern humans come to Australia? We have evidence of human habitation dating back to 50,000 years, but no further. Now the genomes of 111 Indigenous Australians could give us some clues.

 

This episode may contain traces of Emre, asking science communicator and Planetary Society CEO Bill Nye a question about time travel.

Direct download: SoT_0258.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:22pm AEDT

Hosts: Ed Brown, Dr. Shayne Joseph, Penny Dumsday

00:00:52 Researchers have trained bees to play soccer! Well, move a tiny ball into a hole, which is a bit like human soccer only faster and more entertaining.

00:06:15 NASA Astrobiology Institute director Penelope Boston has announced that NASA has found life - in liquid, in crystals, in a cave on Earth. But some of these microbes have been dormant for tens of thousands of years, and Dr. Boston claims to have awoken some of them!

00:17:24 Facial recognition technology has come a long way - and now researchers are using it to track and identify lemurs in the wild!

Direct download: SoT_0257.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 11:06pm AEDT

Hosts: Ed Brown, Lucas Randall and Jo Benhamu.

00:00:51 NASA has announced the discovery of seven planets outside our solar system that all orbit the same star and are about Earth-size. Three of them are firmly located in the habitable zone, and therefore likely to have liquid water.

00:13:15 Last year Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, the world's richest doctor, launched "Cancer MoonShot 2020", a coalition of drug and biotech companies working on cancer treatments and personalized medicine. A year later, with little credible evidence behind it, the initiative has been described as little more than "an elaborate marketing tool".

00:28:11 For the first time, astronomers have have observed the immediate aftermath of a supernova, detecting it just three hours after it exploded.

00:33:55 The first comprehensive assessment of Europe's crickets and grasshoppers has found that more than a quarter of species are being driven to extinction.

 

This episode contains traces of NASA's Thomas Zurbuchen discussing the philosophical impact of the exoplanet discovery.

Direct download: SoT_0256.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 11:46pm AEDT

Hosts: Ed Brown, Dr. Shayne Joseph, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall.

00:01:17 Have scientists really discovered a new continent under New Zealand? Well, sort of!

00:07:24 Bad body odour could be treated by a bacteria transplant from someone with less offensive armpits!

00:12:07 The malaria parasite could be making your blood attractive to mosquitoes.

00:15:11 By combining multiple datasets, astronomers have developed a more accurate idea about how fast our sun orbits the centre of our galaxy. It's pretty fast.

00:22:21 Many animals use echolocation to navigate, but the Vietnamese pygmy dormouse could be the first tree-climbing mammal that does.

 

This episode contains traces of TVNZ's news report about the continent Zealandia.

 

Direct download: SoT_0255.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:22pm AEDT

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall.

00:01:06 New research has uncovered how and why frog tongues have developed to be extremely soft and super-sticky.

00:10:57 By studying the globular cluster 47 Tucanae, researchers have found more evidence of a hypothetical category of black holes. Smaller than supermassive black holes, but more massive than stellar black holes, intermediate-mass black holes have a mass between 100 and 10,000 times the mass of our sun.

00:14:43 When a baby-food company asked child psychologist Caspar Addyman to develop a song to make babies laugh and be happy, he took a scientific approach. Most music made for babies, he says, "sounds frankly deranged".

00:35:37 The Gaia spacecraft has found a 'bridge of stars' between the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. The stream of stars connects the two dwarf galaxies and is over 43,000 light years long.

 

This episode contains traces of Professor Hans Rosling talking about world population growth. The Swedish academic and statistician died on 7 February 2017 of pancreatic cancer.

Direct download: SoT_0254.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:26am AEDT

Robin Ince is a celebrated writer and comedian best known for co-hosting The Infinite Monkey Cage, alongside Professor Brian Cox.

And he's touring Australia - with a number of fantastic UK scientists and comedians - in March and April 2017. Cosmic Shambles LIVE is a variety show that celebrates curiosity and reason, an explosion of science, comedy, music and general wonder, with a great sense of fun.

Part proceeds from the show will be going to charities like Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders).

Cosmic Shambles LIVE will be showing in:

Sydney: Tuesday 28th March 2017, 7:00pm
Enmore Theatre
118-132 Enmore Road, Newtown

Melbourne: Saturday 1st April, 7:00pm
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre
1 Convention Centre Place, South Wharf

Perth: Thursday 13th April 2017, 7:00pm
Octagon Theatre, The University of Western Australia
35 Stirling Highway, Crawley

Head to http://atheistfoundation.org.au/cosmicshambleslive/ to book your tickets now!

Direct download: SoT_Special_020_Robin_Ince.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 4:27pm AEDT

Hosts: Ed Brown, Dr. Shayne Joseph, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall.

00:00:45 Help support the show!

00:01:58 Another theory for Tabby's Star - still not aliens.

00:15:47 The bacteria in babies' guts may end up the same no matter how they were delivered.

00:21:21 Could a brief spike of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere 2.3 billion years ago have been a "false start" for complex life?

00:26:47 DNA is usually made up of G, A, T and C. But scientists in the US have modified bacteria to use two new molecules - X and Y!

 

This episode contains traces of Colin Jost announcing the results of a study into sleeping patterns, on Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update, February 04 2017.

Direct download: SoT_0253_Ed.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:44am AEDT

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