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

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

00:01:15 Stephen Hawking led a remarkable life, and a brilliant career in theoretical physics and cosmology. His genius will be sorely missed.

00:08:53 Contrary to many news reports, NASA's twin experiment did NOT find that 7% of astronaut Scott Kelly's DNA was changed by space travel. There were some health effects, but he definitely remained human.

00:15:58 Some media outlets, such as LiveScience, issued corrections.

00:17:56 The long-billed corella is a parrot may have become a pest to many farmers in Australia, but not so long ago their numbers were very low.

00:22:27 There's a Chinese space station that's hurtling out of control towards Earth. We don't know when it will hit, where it will hit, how much will burn up in the atmosphere or what toxic substances may still be on board. But you'll probably be fine.

00:29:37 NASA's super-successful planet-hunting spacecraft, Kepler, is running out of fuel.

 

This episode contains traces of Stephen Hawking talking to Carl Sagan and Arthur C. Clarke about black holes in 1988.

Direct download: SoT_0290.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:45pm AEDT

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

00:02:37 The Juno spacecraft has returned extraordinary new data about Jupiter's cloud system and interior.

00:14:51 Diabetes, which affects about 415 million people around the world, has conventionally been categorised into three types - Type 1, Type 2 and gestational diabetes. But a new study indicates that there may in fact be 6 different types of diabetes.

00:20:39 Using satellite and drone technology, researchers have found a new supercolony of more than 1.5 million Adélie penguins.

00:25:54 A tribe of people that lived in Southern Africa nearly a thousand years ago have unintentionally left a legacy that is now a new source of information about the Earth's magnetic field.

 

Dr. Helen Maynard-Casely is an instrument scientist for the WOMBAT high-intensity powder diffractometer at the Bragg Institute. She writes “The Shores of Titan” column on The Conversation. Her most recent scientific paper, The Acetylene-Ammonia Co-crystal on Titan, is published in the journal ACS Earth and Space Chemistry.

 

This episode contains traces of Liz MacDonald, a space scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, describing a newly discovered type of aurora.

Direct download: SoT_0289.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:47am AEDT

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

00:01:04 In April 2015, unusually heavy thunderstorms flooded Chile's Atacama desert, the second driest region in the world. This messed up the plans of researchers there to study life in the Mars-like desert, but it also told them more about how life can survive in long periods of drought.

00:09:27 Two Dutch researchers have looked at more than 100 examples of dice from the last 2,000 years. This huge collection can give us some clues about how people have thought about chance, fate and probability over the centuries.

00:16:23 The crickets on the Hawaiian island of Kawaii have gone quiet. They're still there, they're still trying to chirp, but they're not making any sound].

00:22:53 There are 167 known species of tardigrades - the virtually indestructible eight-legged micro-animals. But the recently discovered 168th has unusual eggs.

00:26:31 And speaking of tardigrades, Shayne has some feels about Star Trek: Discovery.

 

This episode contains traces of the Today Extra TV program discussing a study that didn't suggest eating McDonald's fries could cure baldness.

Direct download: SoT_0288.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:27pm AEDT

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

00:01:06 SpaceX successfully launched the most powerful operational rocket in the world, sending a car into space.

00:12:34 An invasive species of crayfish has been tracked back to single animal, which reproduces by cloning itself.

00:19:50 Researchers have found a surprising amount of bacteria-eating viruses in an unlikely place - women's bladders.

00:27:16 DNA analysis and facial reconstruction techniques have revealed a surprising portrait of a Cheddar Man, a human who lived in England 9,100 years ago.

00:31:41 Palaeontologists have found spectacularly well preserved proto-spiders suspended in amber. The ancient arachnids had tails longer than their tiny bodies.

 

This episode contains traces of "Starman" being deployed into space to the music of David Bowie, and the celebrations of engineers at SpaceX.

Direct download: SoT_0287_correct.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:01am AEDT

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