Science On Top
390 episodes - English - Latest episode: 8 months ago - ★★★★★ - 5 ratingsThe Australian podcast about science, health and technology news. Join Ed Brown and his panel of co-hosts each week as we talk about the latest and coolest research and discoveries in the world of science. We're joined by special guests from all over the science field: doctors, professors, nurses, teachers and more.
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Episodes
SoT 174: The Happiest Place on Earth (For Measles)
February 09, 2015 09:59 - 46 minutes - 33.7 MBVisitors to Disneyland left with something more than just exhaustion and overpriced souvenirs this month. The Happiest Place on Earth has been identified as ground zero for an outbreak of Measles that has so far infected more than 84 people. Why Did Vaccinated People Get Measles at Disneyland? Blame the Unvaccinated Sherri Tenpenny’s Australian Tour Cancelled #stoptenpenny The Vaccination Chronicles Read Roald Dahl's Powerful Pro-Vaccination Letter (From 1988) 4 Ways Oprah Screwed The W...
SoT Special 17: Dr. Karl Kruszelnicki
January 18, 2015 02:43 - 38 minutes - 27.1 MBSoT Special 17: Dr. Karl Kruszelnicki http://scienceontop.com/Special17 Dr. Karl is one of Australia's best known science communicators. He is the author of 36 popular science books, appears regularly on radio in Australia and the UK, and he is the Julius Sumner Miller Fellow in the Science Foundation for Physics at the University of Sydney. Ed sat down with Dr. Karl in December, shortly after the National Skeptics Convention where Karl was a speaker. Together they discussed climate change,...
2014 Bloopers Episode
January 11, 2015 06:15 - 1 minute - 801 KBOur end of year 'bloopers' episode is online! For all the funny, interesting and weird bits that didn't quite make the show in 2014, download the show from our website, at scienceontop.com/bloopers14. This show is NOT on our feed, to listen you will HAVE to download it manually from the website or listen on SoundCloud It does contain swearing and content that might not be suitable for children. So go to scienceontop.com/bloopers14 and click the download link!
SoT 173: Our Favourite Science Stories of 2014
December 30, 2014 05:24 - 34 minutes - 27.7 MBSome of our best science stories from 2014. Comet landings, Ebola outbreaks, retracted stem cell studies, faecal transplant capsules and more! Climate Change and Australian science policy 2013 was Australia’s hottest year, warm for much of the world January 2014 southeastern Australia heat wave Coal 'good for humanity', Prime Minister Tony Abbott says at $3.9b Queensland mine opening Abbott brings back Science minister in cabinet reshuffle Polar Vortex - Why the Arctic Is Drunk Right N...
SoT 172: It's Really Far
December 23, 2014 12:04 - 40 minutes - 33.3 MBRosetta has analysed the water found on comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko and found significant differences compared to water on Earth. This may weaken the theory that comets brought water to an early Earth. One of the most common minerals on our planet finally has a name. We've known Brigmanite exists for a long time, but it was a surprising source that gave scientists the opportunity to study it up close. The New Horizons spacecraft has just been successfully woken up, and is on track to giv...
SoT 171: No Unicorn Farts
December 15, 2014 12:37 - 39 minutes - 32.2 MBIs HIV evolving in to a milder, less deadly virus? A new study suggests it's taking longer for HIV infections to cause AIDS and that this is the result of mutations in the virus. NASA's test launch and flight of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle was a success. This was an important step in an ambitious plan to send astronauts to an asteroid and then perhaps send astronauts to Mars. Biologists at Santa Fe College in Florida have found that our desire to drink alcohol, and our ability to br...
SoT Special 015 - Curiosity Show
December 05, 2014 00:51 - 26.2 MBProfessor Rob Morrison and Dr Deane Hutton are Australian science communication heroes. Together they hosted the children's science TV show Curiosity Show, which ran for 18 consecutive years from 1972 to 1990. Ed and Lucas caught up with them at TEDxCanberra to talk about the show and its recent new episode, what they've done since then, and their views on science communication and education. Rob mentions Duck Quacks Don't Echo (UK) as an example of good current science television.
SoT 170: A Big Year For Zircon
November 27, 2014 01:07 - 47 minutes - 39.6 MBMore details on Philae's rough landings, and the future of the first probe to land on a comet. Professor Monica Grady's reaction to the landing, the sound of the landing, and the comet 'sings'. When a pair of scientists found their experiment contaminated from the DNA Isolation kits they were using, they set out to see if other experiments were similarly contaminated. Researchers at Australia's James Cook University have discovered tiny zircon crystals on Vanuatu. But surprisingly, they seem...
SoT 169: Proper Ice-cream
November 20, 2014 05:04 - 32 minutes - 27 MBShayne and Ed are joined by Dr. George Aranda, curator of the Science Book A Day blog and co-host of the Big Ideas Book Club in Melbourne. George is running a Pozible crowdfunding campaign to investigate the use of 3D Printers in school education. Scientists from University of Bern in Switzerland have developed a new approach to the treatment of severe bacterial infections without the use of antibiotics. The prestigious Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books has been awarded to Mark Mi...
SoT 168: It's Not Milk It's Bean Juice
November 15, 2014 13:20 - 40 minutes - 33.5 MBA team of bioengineers is trying to make artificial milk in a lab and without animals. They call it "Muufri". In order to study penguins up close, without disturbing them, researchers from Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique used small baby-penguin sized rovers. The rover - cleverly disguised as a penguin - was able to monitor penguins and even quick-tempered elephant seals without alarming the animals. A man who had brain surgery for a serious medical condition unexpectedly found h...
SoT 167: Sticky Feet
November 05, 2014 12:33 - 41 minutes - 34.2 MBVirologist Dr. Grant Hill-Cawthorne joins us to discuss Ebola. Everything you need to know about the current outbreak. Researchers in Florida have noticed than in just fifteen years a particular species of lizard has grown larger, stickier feet as an evolutionary response to an invading Cuban lizard. In the lead up to the attempted landing of Philae on a comet in a few weeks, the Rosetta probe has taken some readings. And now we know what a comet smells like, and it's not pretty. A man with ...
SoT 166: That's No Moon
November 01, 2014 10:55 - 44 minutes - 36.9 MBDefence giant Lockheed Martin has announced it wants to build a truck-sized nuclear fusion power-plant in the next ten years. They just don't appear to have a plan. The microbes in our guts have their own body clocks, and they too get messed up when we get jetlagged. The giant kangaroos that used to roam the Australian continent were three times the size of their modern descendants. And new research shows they used to walk, rather than hop. NASA's Messenger spacecraft has provided the first ...
SoT 165: As Common As A Toilet Brush
October 25, 2014 23:39 - 40 minutes - 33.8 MBMore artifacts have been recovered from the Antikythera wreck, the 1st century BC shipwreck discovered in 1900 off the coast of the Greek island Antikythera. None of the newly found artifacts, however, appear to be related to the mysterious Antikythera Mechanism, widely known as the first analog computer. It had long been thought that volcanic activity on the moon stopped around a billion years ago. Now high-resolution images from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) suggest there was ...
SoT 164: Cosmetically Satisfying Penis
October 19, 2014 04:39 - 42 minutes - 30.6 MBThe Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2014 was awarded with one half to John O'Keefe and the other half jointly to May-Britt Moser and Edvard I. Moser "for their discoveries of cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain". The Nobel Prize in Physics 2014 was awarded jointly to Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura "for the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes which has enabled bright and energy-saving white light sources". The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2...
SoT 163: The 2014 Ig Nobel Prizes
October 08, 2014 03:24 - 1 hour - 45.9 MBThe Ig Nobel Prizes honour achievements that first make us laugh, then make us think. We take a look at this year’s winners: from banana peels to people dressed as polar bears! PHYSICS PRIZE A team from Japan for measuring the amount of friction between a shoe and a banana skin, and between a banana skin and the floor, when a person steps on a banana skin that's on the floor. Banana peel slipperiness wins IgNobel prize in physics NEUROSCIENCE PRIZE Scientists from China and Canada for tryi...
SoT 162: The Racist Uncle
September 24, 2014 01:34 - 38 minutes - 27.4 MBProfessor Stephen Hawking has written a preface to a book, and his comments have gotten a little misinterpreted. Katie explains why the Higgs boson is absolutely not in any danger of destroying the world. A study of Spinosaurus bones has determined the sail-backed dinosaur had adaptations to make it better suited to swimming than running. This study suggests that Spinosaurus may have been the only known swimming dinosaur. And plesiosaurs and icthyosaurs were technically not dinosaurs. Neithe...
SoT 161: Caffeine-Deprived Triffids
September 20, 2014 04:34 - 34 minutes - 24.3 MBThe Common Octopus, or Octopus Vulgaris, is the most studied of all octopus species. But all that studying has found so many differences between some, which could mean the Common Octopus is possibly as many as ten different species. Why coffee has caffeine: An international team of scientists has sequenced the genome of Coffea canephora, one of the main sources of coffee beans. By analysing its genes, they were able to reconstruct how coffee evolved to make caffeine. The availability of came...
SoT 160: Fox Found An Alien
September 11, 2014 06:27 - 39 minutes - 28.4 MBSean Elliott joins us to talk about the origins of life and his upcoming Melbourne Fringe show, Rough Science: Life. Cobi Smith joins us from CERN to talk about her Melbourne Fringe show, Delusions of Slander. The mystery of the ‘Wandering Stones’ of Death Valley may no longer be a mystery. Researchers have used video cameras, GPS units and a weather station to document and track how these large rocks move along the dry lake bed. Researchers at the University of Ottawa have done a really coo...
SoT 159: Everything's A Chemical
September 03, 2014 12:11 - 44 minutes - 31.4 MBAbout ten years ago an entomologist at the University of Colorado found 250 forgotten boxes in a storage cupboard. Inside were 13,000 grasshopper specimens collected more than 40 years ago, which provide a fascinating insight into climate and other environmental changes in that time. A chance observation has led to the discovery that the blood of certain abalone has antiviral properties, which could lead to better treatments for the herpes simplex virus. The vitamin K injection at birth he...
SoT 158: Let?s Call It A Magpie
August 30, 2014 13:40 - 22 minutes - 16.6 MBMother turtles and their newly hatched babies talk to each other underwater, and scientists in Brazil have managed to record them. Taking antibiotics to kill ‘bad’ bacteria can be a good idea, but such disruptions to the gut microbiome can have long-term consequences for our health, and could even be making us fat. The widely held belief that magpies steal shiny objects seems to be myth-busted. Instead, they seem to avoid new objects regardless of shininess. Analysis of bones from King Ri...
SoT 157: The Cephalopod Happy Ending
August 22, 2014 03:52 - 43 minutes - 30.8 MBThe Rosetta space probe has finally arrived and is currently in orbit around the comet 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko! Rosetta is now officially the first spacecraft to rendezvous with a comet. A previously unknown tribe of humans has emerged from the rainforest in Brazil and made contact with a settled indigenous community. They are believed to have fled illegal loggers and drug traffickers, but some have already contracted influenza. Newly discovered crAssphage could be the most common virus in...
SoT Special 014 - Science In Australia
August 10, 2014 11:29 - 20.8 MBAt our 150th episode celebration earlier this year, we were fortunate to have Dr. Krystal Evans address the audience to talk about science in Australia. Dr. Evans is a medical researcher at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute where she is working on Malaria treatment and developing a vaccine. She is a leading advocate for science and technology, and was a founding member and Chair of the Australian Academy of Science’s Early and Mid Career Researcher Forum. In this talk she looks at how Aust...
SoT 156: Rubber Duckie Comet
July 31, 2014 11:46 - 42 minutes - 30.3 MBSteve Nerlich from the Cheap Astronomy podcast gives us an update on the roller-coaster life of the ISEE-3 space probe. It was alive, then it died, then it was resurrected then it seemed dead but now it may be still alive again! Paleontologists have discovered the fossilised remains of one of the world's first known predators that lived in the sea around 520 million years ago. The fossils were detailed enough to show some of the brain structures. Researchers at UCLA have found eight types ...
SoT 155: The Grumpiest Mouse
July 26, 2014 04:12 - 35 minutes - 25.2 MBTwenty-seven months ago the "Mississippi Baby" stopped HIV treatment and was believed to be free of the virus. Unfortunately, that changed this month when test showed the virus is back. It had gone into hiding and the now four-year-old girl will face years, possibly her whole life, on antiretroviral therapy. A scientist at a CDC research centre found a cardboard box containing six vials of the smallpox virus in a storage room. The vials are believed to have been left there since the 1950s, ...
SoT 154: Epic Pie Fights
July 16, 2014 09:59 - 58 minutes - 42.2 MBWe’re not comfortable being bored, according to a study published in the journal Science. The paper suggestedpeople would rather give themselves electric shocks than be left alone with their thoughts. Where humans detect colours via three receptors in our eyes, the mantis shrimp have twelve. And a new study indicates six of those detect five different wavelengths of ultraviolet light. The mantis shrimp has adapted “nature’s sunscreens’ – mycosporine-like amino acids – and turned them into u...
SoT 153: Electric Cats
July 11, 2014 01:59 - 59 minutes - 42 MBThe announcement earlier this year that the BICEP2 team had discovered gravitational waves is now mired in controversy. Dr. Alan Duffy joins us to explain why 'the biggest announcement' is now probably meaningless. In 2012, Facebook manipulated the newsfeed of 689,003 users as part of a psychological experiment. The company claims it was able to alter the moods of some users, but the study's methodology and ethical concerns have drawn widespread criticism. The electric eel - described by o...
SoT 152: A Brain The Size Of A Walnut
June 29, 2014 09:43 - 43 minutes - 30.7 MBKoalas will cuddle specific tree types during summer heatwaves to cool down. Hugging the right tree can reduce a koala's body temperature by almost 70 per cent. Researchers have sequenced the genome of Eucalyptus grandis, a common type of gum tree. And this genetic blueprint, according to the researchers, could help design more powerful and efficient jet fuels. The project took five years and involved 80 scientists from 18 countries. A 36 year-old space probe, mothballed by NASA, has just ...
SoT 151: So Cute I Want to Puke
June 14, 2014 14:37 - 34 minutes - 24.9 MBA study suggests hurricanes with 'female' names have killed more people than 'male' names. But it's MUCH more complicated than that. Men are more likely than women to report severe pain after major surgery. But Women are more likely to complain after minor surgery. Because reasons. A tiny tick trapped in a droplet of amber more than 15 million years ago appears to have been infected with a bacteria similar to the one that causes Lyme disease in humans. The oldest known pair of trousers ha...
SoT 150: Several Moonwiches
June 09, 2014 10:12 - 41 minutes - 30.1 MBGreenland is more vulnerable to melting than we thought, and the West Antarctic ice shelf is melting much faster and is now 'unstoppable'. The Great Red Spot on Jupiter is shrinking and changing shape. The top 10 new species of 2013 have been announced. Some of them are cute. The first farm to supply insects for human consumption has opened, but faces regulatory, engineering and cultural hurdles. Jupiter's moon Ganymede has layers of ice and water beneath its surface. NASA calls it a 'mo...
SoT 149: Going FODMAP Free
May 28, 2014 12:44 - 33 minutes - 23.9 MBThe Australian researcher who provided the best evidence for non-celiac gluten sensitivity has now done more extensive research. He now believes gluten may not be the culprit after all. Polar bears, the largest land predators alive, have many genetic tricks they have developed to help them survive on an extremely high-fat diet. Ratites - flightless birds like emus, ostriches and rheas - have long been thought to have evolved from a single flightless ancestor. But now new research made with...
SoT 148: Birdie Feet Marks
May 26, 2014 13:53 - 45 minutes - 32.3 MBMan-made electromagnetic noise is affecting migratory birds. But it's not wi-fi, microwaves or any of the usual culprits - just good old fashioned AM radio. US scientists have developed artificial DNA - X and Y base pairs - which then replicated with the normal G, A, T and C molecules when the cell divides. This could pave the way for new methods of developing drugs and other chemicals. Or Godzilla. A study with mice involving exercise, electric shocks and drugs have given new insights int...
SoT 147: Exxonmobillium
May 21, 2014 04:46 - 40 minutes - 28.8 MBMicrobes from lakes in the French Pyrenees thrive on the fungus that has been linked to a dramatic decline in amphibian populations. A new spider species has been found in the Namibian desert, and it does cartwheels to escape predators. Rats and mice show increased stress levels when handled by male researchers rather than women, potentially skewing study results. The average height of British soldiers fighting in the First World War was 168cm. Today the average height for men of the same...
SoT 146: It Hides My Face
May 10, 2014 10:58 - 42 minutes - 30.3 MBEvolutionary biologist and author of Sex, Genes & Rock 'n' Roll Professor Rob Brooks joins us to talk beards, monogamy and evolution. Beards seem to be popular now, but we may be approaching 'peak beard', where beards are so common they lose their novelty appeal. Do babies cry at night to stop their parents having more babies? Evolutionary biologist David Haig thinks they may be unintentionally sabotaging their parents' sex lives. A ten year, worldwide project has finally sequenced the Ts...
SoT 145: This Is Not My Office
May 04, 2014 13:22 - 31 minutes - 21.9 MBThe world's longest continuously running lab experiment, The Pitch Drop, finally drops for the ninth time. Cephalotes ants can glide to nearby trees when they find themselves skydiving. Also they use their heads as shields. The most Earth-like exoplanet yet has been discovered, just 10% bigger than our planet. We all know malaria is spread by mosquitoes, but in 1995 in Taiwan there was an outbreak that spread throughout a hospital without any mosquito assistance.
SoT 144: Fetch Me My Big Hammer
April 27, 2014 12:16 - 56 minutes - 38.8 MBContinental drift could have been started by a massive meteorite impact 3 billion years ago. Fossilised daddy longlegs reveal the arachnids had an extra pair of eyes 305 million years ago. And weren't cute then, either. A new study suggests that even if there was liquid water on the surface of Mars billions of years ago, there wasn't enough atmospheric pressure to keep it liquid for long. The UK Government has stockpiled over £500m worth of the antiviral drug Tamiflu. A study now finds th...
SoT 143: Little Rats Sneezing
April 18, 2014 10:53 - 35 minutes - 24.4 MBWe have six basic facial expressions, but computer software has shown we combine them to display hybrid emotions, like 'happily surprised' or 'angrily surprised'. Scientists have long suspected that Saturn's sixth largest moon, Enceladus, held large amounts of water beneath its icy surface. But now gravity measurements have found a large ocean below the southern polar region. Genetic modification could allow us to grow plants that are more easily broken down to make biofuels and paper. Co...
SoT 142: It’s Like an Old Teddy Bear
April 12, 2014 11:27 - 45 minutes - 31.1 MBA woman with a bone disorder has had her cranium replaced with a 3D printed one, and shows no sign of rejection. Skeletons unearthed last year from a burial ground in London may suggest that the Black Death plague was spread via the air, not tick bites from rats. The rubber hand illusion is an old trick where your brain is fooled into thinking a rubber hand is your own. Psychologists in Italy have now made people believe the hands were made of marble. Because Italy. Could the Permian exti...
SoT 141: The Sun, the Stars or by Magnetic Compass
April 06, 2014 05:18 - 28 minutes - 19.7 MBGiant pythons in Florida's everglades can navigate vast distances, and we're not sure how. For the first time ever, an asteroid in our solar system has been discovered with a ring system. Dark chocolate is good for you, but it's the bacteria in your gut that make it so. Astronomers have discovered an icy body with an orbit so big it never gets closer than 12 billion kilometers from the Sun!
SoT 140: Dick Cheney or The Penguin?
March 26, 2014 22:49 - 51 minutes - 35.5 MBThe most comprehensive infrared search of our skies has found no trace of "Planet X", the mythical giant planet on the edge of our solar system. The troublesome Western Corn Rootworm is developing a resistance to the genetically modified corn designed to thwart it. British archaeologists have found what they say is the world's oldest complete example of a human being with metastatic cancer. Tracing human migration across the pacific 3,000 years ago is tricky, but tracing the chickens they...
SoT Special 013 - Gravitational Waves and Cosmic Inflation
March 24, 2014 02:46 - 37 minutes - 26 MBLast Monday, astronomers announced what has been described as "the biggest thing since dark energy" - detection of gravitational waves from the afterglow of the big bang. We got astronomer Dr. Alan Duffy from Swinburne University on to tell us what that means, and what it says about the very early stages of our Universe.
SoT 139: An Apple On The Head Situation
March 20, 2014 05:57 - 47 minutes - 32.4 MBMore controversy over stress-induced stem cells, as co-authors call for the retractions of the papers. An aluminium suit could enable divers to travel to depths of 305 meters, move around and collect samples. A giant virus has been discovered in 30,000 year old Siberian permafrost. It's big and it eats amoebas. An Australian team is working on a project to clear space junk with a powerful ground-based laser. A study of how men and women perceive each other's mathematics skills suggests t...
SoT 138: The Undistributed Middle
March 13, 2014 00:29 - 43 minutes - 29.9 MBMore studies finding no evidence of 'wind turbine syndrome', plus a discussion on dealing with climate change deniers. Could enough wind turbines reduce the force of hurricanes? Maybe, but it would need A LOT of turbines. In 2011 a 6 - 9 million year old whale graveyard was discovered at Cerro Ballena (Whale Hill) in Chile. But with time running out, researchers turned to a digital method of preserving the environmental context in 3D. A thin, stretchy, electric membrane moulded to a patie...
SoT 137: It’s Just Like College
March 05, 2014 00:22 - 34 minutes - 23.7 MBVaccines might not need to be kept cold to the extent previously thought. This could make vaccinations in third world countries cheaper and easier. The oldest crystal on Earth has been dated and found to be 4.4 billion years old. This means the Earth had developed a crust very early on, perhaps only a few hundred million years after formation. What's the best way to count whale populations? It could be from space. To learn about how humans and dogs process sounds and emotions, researchers...
SoT 136: It Should Be Venereal
February 28, 2014 10:44 - 44 minutes - 30.3 MBA thorough investigation of the 'jelly doughnut shaped rock', known by NASA as Pinnacle Island, confirms it isn't an alien fungus, it isn't a meteorite fragment, it's just a chipped bit of rock. Doubts have emerged about the radical stem cell breakthrough that suggested acid or other stress could turn mature cells into stem cells. The jury's still out on this. Scientists have developed a detailed model of curly hair, which could give insights into the behaviours of all curved rods. Most im...
SoT 135: Googling Water Bears
February 17, 2014 23:50 - 52 minutes - 36 MBStephen Hawking has some new thoughts on black holes, but he's not saying they don't exist. For a few weeks, weather uncovered the footprints of five prehistoric humans. And then washed them away again. There's a leech that can survive being submerged in liquid nitrogen for 24 hours. Astronomers have discovered what could be one of the oldest stars, formed from the exploded remains of one of the first stars. The crippled Kepler Space Telescope has been resurrected, with an ingenious solu...
SoT 134: The Uber-Sex Of Science
February 11, 2014 10:07 - 34 minutes - 23.6 MBA new method of turning adult cells into pluripotent stem cells is discovered. According to the paper, simply bathing cells in acid could be cause mature cells to revert to stem cells that could become any cell in the body. Heart researchers in the UK have managed to turn stem cells into heart cells, that actually beat in petri dishes. NASA plans to create the coldest spot in the universe on board the International Space Station. They're talking 100 pico-Kelvin, which is one ten billionth ...
SoT 133: Live at Surfcoast Skepticamp 2014
February 04, 2014 09:36 - 35 minutes - 24.3 MBJelly donut shaped rock surprises NASA, then gets them sued. Tracking dogs by GPS may give clues to pack structure, but probably not. West Australia's shark cull begins, the same week that a report finds 1/4 of sharks and rays are threatened with extinction. Men supposedly forget more than women do, but the study has big issues.
SoT 132: 99 Luftballons All Over Again
January 27, 2014 06:51 - 43 minutes - 29.7 MBAfter nearly 11 years, the Rosetta comet-chasing spacecraft has awoken and is preparing for an ambitious mission. A new hypothesis for 'lactose persistence' - why most humans can still drink milk into adulthood. Why do sloths climb down from their trees to poo on the ground? It could be because of moths. China is getting into genetic modification and cloning on an 'industrial scale'. That's a lot of pigs. Biotechnology company Illumina has announced a machine that can sequence the human ...
SoT 131: Isaac Newton of the Marine World
January 23, 2014 00:47 - 39 minutes - 27.5 MB2013 was Australia's hottest year on record, and the sixth hottest globally. Plus the 'polar vortex' hitting North America, and one of Australia's "most significant heatwaves". And the effect of "C2O" on jumping sea snails. Physics professors have searched the internet for evidence of time travel, and didn't find any. Are dolphins getting high on a toxin secreted by puffer fish? Truth is we really don't know. A new Staph vaccine shows promise in rabbits, but might not work as well in huma...
SoT Special 12: Fred Watson on Space Tourism
January 21, 2014 09:00 - 54 minutes - 37.8 MBThe turn of the millennium has brought a new dimension to the Space Age - one that was undreamed of only a few years ago. Thanks to a combination of visionary entrepreneurs and an ailing Russian spaceflight programme, space tourism is now a reality that is set to take off dramatically in the near future. In this entertaining and fully-illustrated talk, Professor Fred Watson outlines what we might see as space tourism evolves into a mainstream branch of the industry. He argues that the new ve...