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

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
Category:general -- posted at: 9:47am AEDT

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
Category:general -- posted at: 7:29am AEDT

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