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

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

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