Goodbye
This podcast has come to an end. So long, and thanks for all the fish! Links to download the archive of all our episodes can be found here: https://scienceontop.com/goodbye
Sep 01, 2023•4 min•Ep. 360
Science On Top
The 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 358: A Lot Of Poop
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:00:30 A team in Kenya and the UK have discovered a microbe that completely protects mosquitoes against the malaria parasite . 00:10:17 Everybody poops, but if you don't it's very bad as one unfortunate record-breaking lizard found out. 00:14:22 This year we've seen three big records broken in solar power efficiency ....
Aug 25, 2020•21 min•Season 5Ep. 9
A quick update
An update on what's happening with the show. The quick version: we're still here, but the world's on fire and things are a bit tough. We'll be back. Stay safe everyone. Wednesday 5 August 2020
Aug 05, 2020•4 min
SoT 357: You Get An Ocean!
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:00:28 Good news in quarantine, two pandas in Hong Kong have finally mated! It only took them ten years! 00:04:29 Lots of moons in our solar system seem to have subsurface oceans, and now it looks like Pluto does too ! 00:13:59 Soy is everywhere these days, but there are environmental concerns with it. Now a new study suggests fava beans could be a more environmentally friendly source of plant protein . This episode contains traces of Trevor Noah d...
Jun 17, 2020•23 min•Season 5Ep. 8
SoT 356: The Same... But Opposite
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:00:39 When it comes to giving birth in the animal world, there's mostly only two options: live babies, or eggs. But very rarely, it can be both! Such is the case with the yellow-bellied three-toed skink . 00:06:37 Imagine solar power that worked at night ! That's (kind of) the promise of a new type of solar cell being developed by two American researchers. 00:19:50 If you want to train a robot dog, there's the hard way and there's the easy way. Th...
May 11, 2020•30 min•Season 5Ep. 7
SoT 355: E-mouse-icons!
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:00:40 Researchers at the Max Planck Institute in Germany have used a machine-learning algorithm to finally answer one of science's most confounding puzzles: Is that mouse over there happy? Or afraid? Or disgusted? 00:07:54 Astrophysicists from the University of Florida and Columbia University have figured out that a violent collision of two neutron stars released many of the heavier atoms that went on to form our solar system . This episode contai...
Apr 30, 2020•22 min•Season 5Ep. 6
SoT 354: They Smacked It With A Shovel
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall, Dr. Helen Maynard-Casely 00:03:36 NASA's Mars InSight probe has finally managed to drill into the Martian rock and soil - thanks to a traditional repair technique ! 00:13:04 The idea that glass is a liquid that flows is largely a myth.... sort of. It's an amorphous solid, so it does flow but very very slowly. Now an analysis of amber has shed some light on the disordered molecules that make glass a "liquid in suspended animation". 00:26:36 When our ...
Apr 19, 2020•37 min•Season 5Ep. 5
SoT 353: Crazy Finds A Way
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:00:35 Professor Maria Croyle from the University of Texas in Austin has been working on alternative delivery mechanisms for vaccines without giant needles. And one promising method she's developed is a lot more palatable ! 00:08:15 The formation of our moon is something of a mystery to astronomers. But now new research into the moon's composition further strengthens the most widely accepted theory. This episode contains traces of the SARS-COV-2 vi...
Apr 13, 2020•24 min•Season 5Ep. 4
SoT 352: Noodle-Fingered Hugs
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:00:27 How do you study wibbly wobbly jellyfish, without damaging them or stressing them out? You give them a noodly hug, of course ! 00:08:27 When a satellite runs out of fuel, it's sent up into a graveyard orbit where it can pose a threat to any spacecraft leaving Earth. But a recent test of the Mission Extension Vehicle could mean satellites can be refuelled , extending their lifespan significantly. 00:21:25 People are attaching sensors to plant...
Mar 30, 2020•47 min•Season 5Ep. 3
SoT 351: Air Sea'n'Sea
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:00:28 An Australian research team has come up with a luxurious plan to save endangered seahorses . 00:04:54 A more precise method of determining the methane produced by human activities draws a timeline of industrialisation . 00:15:07 Remains dating back 65,000 years ago demonstrate that the earliest Australians enjoyed slow-cooking . 00:20:28 Have you thought about the environmental impact your death and burial or cremation will have? There could...
Mar 20, 2020•31 min•Season 5Ep. 2
SoT Special 28 – Coronavirus with Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz
As the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 sweeps the world, the only thing spreading quicker is panic and misinformation. So we caught up with Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, an epidemiologist, writer and podcaster to find out what's really going on with COVID-19. For more information, we recommend: Australian Department of Health World Health Organisation Centers For Disease Control This Week In Virology podcast Coronacast podcast And you can follow Gideon on Twitter ....
Mar 13, 2020•43 min•Season 1Ep. 28
SoT 350: Rocks Were Never Not Great
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:01:14 A team at Howard Hughes Medical Institute has been working with Google, and has just announced that they have mapped the “connectome” in the central region of brain of a fruit fly. That's means they've worked out the precise meanderings of 25,000 neurons and their 20 million connections . 00:15:14 About 2 billion years ago, a giant meteorite smacked into the thick glaciers that then were covering Western Australia. The result could have been...
Feb 27, 2020•41 min•Season 5Ep. 1
SoT Bites 001 - Hot Drinks In Hot Weather
Here's a little taste of the sort of thing to expect when Science on Top returns very soon - on hot days are you better off drinking hot or cold drinks ?
Feb 07, 2020•8 min
SoT Bites 001 - Cuttlefish Watching 3D Movies
Have you missed us? Looking forward to another season of Science on Top? Here's something to whet your appetite - a story of cute cephalopods, curious scientists and 3D glasses !
Jan 29, 2020•8 min
SoT 349: Our Favourite Science Stories of 2019
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall, Ass/Prof Mick Vagg 00:00:48 The switch to agricultural societies 12,000 years ago may have changed how we talk, introducing the 'f' and 'v' sounds . 00:04:58 The cane toad is an introduced pest in Australia, with no real natural predators. Until recently, when a small group of water rats learned how to eviscerate them with surgical precision ! 00:06:38 The search for Planet Nine continued this year, and a new hypothesis was proposed: it might not be...
Dec 17, 2019•44 min•Season 4Ep. 11
SoT 348: Massive Stars Are Fluffy!
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:00:56 As unprecedented bushfires ravage Australia, Forbes published an article declaring koalas are "functionally extinct". And while they do face considerable threats, the situation is not quite that dire . 00:11:38 Chinese scientists have discovered a black hole that, according to our current understanding of black-hole formation, is so large it shouldn’t exist. Called LB-1, the black hole has a mass 70 times that of our sun, three times more ma...
Dec 13, 2019•35 min•Season 4Ep. 10
SoT 347: Carbonite
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:01:24 For the first time, doctors at the University of Maryland School of Medicine have purposefully put at least one human patient in suspended animation . This could be a great help to surgeons dealing with traumatic emergencies such as gunshot or stab wounds. 00:10:06 The first geomorphologic map of Saturn's moon Titan has been released . Showing lakes (of liquid methane), dunes (of organic molecule particles) and exposed icy bedrock. 00:12:49 ...
Dec 04, 2019•43 min•Season 4Ep. 10
SoT 346: Guinea Pig Guinea Pigs
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:01:23 Danuvius guggenmosi was a great ape that lived 11.6 million years ago in southern Germany and it has just been formally described in the journal Nature. But the really interesting thing about this discovery is what it could suggest about bipedalism - our ancestors were walking upright much earlier than previously thought . 00:10:19 Spaceflight is a dangerous endeavour. Astronauts risk muscle atrophy, bone weakness, cardiovascular issues, eye...
Nov 26, 2019•35 min•Season 4Ep. 8
SoT 345: Daisy
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:00:35 Researchers at the University of Richmond taught a group of 17 rats how to drive tiny little plastic cars. The rats found driving to be relaxing ! 00:11:28 Why do we like music? It's a question that neuroscientists have wondered about for decades. A paper in the Journal of Neuroscience suggests it's related to learning . 00:18:37 Cows can not only recognise other cows, but they form friendships and bonds that don't align with the social hier...
Nov 15, 2019•35 min•Season 4Ep. 7
SoT 344: Teeny-Tiny Black Holes
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:00:32 A zebra's stripes seem to reduce the number of flies that they attract, so what would happen if you painted a cow like a zebra? Japanese researchers did exactly that, and found a similar result . 00:08:10 An intriguing new hypothesis for Planet Nine is not a planet at all. Two astrophysicists have speculated it might actually be a very small black hole in our galaxy . 00:25:43 By analysing cut marks on bones left by humans between 200,000 an...
Nov 07, 2019•34 min•Season 4Ep. 6
SoT 343: More Water Rats!
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:00:34 Snails are a French delicacy that has led to the near extinction, and now revival, of tiny culturally and scientifically important snails in French Polynesia . 00:06:45 3.5 million years ago, something in our galaxy exploded. As more evidence comes in, it's looking like the black hole in the centre of the Milky Way gobbled up some young stars . 00:16:04 The scourge of cane toads continues to spread across Australia. But could a native rodent...
Oct 31, 2019•27 min•Season 4Ep. 5
SoT 342: Grumpy, Hungry, Wanting Chocolate
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:00:29 A new hypothesis in the quest to explain the bizarre dimming patterns of Tabby's Star: could it be a moon getting shredded ? 00:18:36 It's a belief that's been widely held since 1971: women who live together sync their periods together. But many attempts to replicate the original study have failed, so why is it still such a prevalent belief ? 00:28:13 Take a computer algorithm, teach it to read scientific papers, feed it thousands of journal...
Oct 21, 2019•40 min•Season 4Ep. 4
SoT 341: The 2019 Ig Nobel Prizes
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall, Peter Miller 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 the benefits of pizza to the temperature of French postal packages! You can watch the award ceremony here . 00:01:16 MEDICINE PRIZE which was awarded to Silvano Gallus, for collecting evidence that pizza might protect against illness and death, if the pizza is made and eaten in Italy . 00:08:26 MEDICAL EDUCAT...
Oct 09, 2019•57 min•Season 4Ep. 3
SoT 340: They Look Snarly
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:00:33 The large holes in T-Rex's skull might not have been for muscles, but thermoregulating blood vessels according to a paper published in the Anatomical Record. 00:06:13 An Australian team has developed a flu vaccine they believe could be the first human drug to be completely designed by artificial intelligence . 00:18:49 A team at Howard Hughes Medical Institute is painstakingly building a detailed map of a mouse brain - one neuron at a time ....
Sep 29, 2019•25 min•Season 4Ep. 2
SoT 339: Sauce Is Key
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:00:47 After a British teenager went blind, media reports came thick and fast about the dangers of a junk food diet. But was he just a fussy eater, or was there a lot more to it than the headlines suggested ? 00:07:50 Is climate change making spiders more aggressive? Well, yes - but only one species was studied and not aggressive in way that you'd expect . 00:20:39 After a spectacular wall collapse last year, a crater on Hawaii's Kīlauea volcano wa...
Sep 16, 2019•45 min•Season 4Ep. 1
SoT 338: Hidden Bottoms
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:00:26 Tiny, often-overlooked "cryptobenthic" fish are much more plentiful than we realised , and could therefore explain how reefs can thrive despite a lack of nutrients. 00:08:30 Astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory data have been able to measure how fast five supermassive black holes are spinning. One was spinning faster than 70% of the speed of light ! 00:17:26 A new analysis of skull fragments found in Greece is leading archaeolo...
Aug 19, 2019•48 min•Season 3Ep. 7
SoT 337: Fear-Relevant Non-Slimy Small Animals
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall, Jo Benhamu 00:00:26 A seemingly successful treatment of a nasty genetic disease would not have been possible without zebrafish . 00:10:52 It may seem counterintuitive, but a strain of virus linked to the common cold has been used to treat patients with a type of bladder cancer . 00:20:44 Fast Radio Bursts - the strong blasts of radio waves from distant galaxies - have mystified astronomers since they were first detected in 2007. But now for the firs...
Jul 31, 2019•43 min•Season 3Ep. 6
SoT 336: Text Neck
Hosts: Ed Brown, Lucas Randall, Jo Benhamu 00:00:25 Dogs have evolved - mostly through artificial selection - to be our best friends. And a part of that evolution, according to a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, meant developing special muscles to help them give us those "puppy dog eyes" . You can test your own dogs "dognition" at dognition.com ! 00:15:27 It's widely believed that at the centre of every large galaxy there's at least one supermassive...
Jul 16, 2019•39 min•Season 3Ep. 5
SoT 335: Parmesan Not Brie
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall, Jo Benhamu 00:00:39 Winemaking in France dates back more than 12,000 years. But new research looking at the DNA of ancient grapes has found one particular variety that's remained unchanged for over 900 years . 00:09:13 The largest crater in the solar system, the South Pole-Aitken basin, is on the far side of the moon. And astronomers have found an unexpected very dense mass there, deep below the surface . 00:19:08 Positron Emission Tomography - bett...
Jul 04, 2019•27 min•Season 3Ep. 4
SoT 334: That's My Clickbait!
Hosts: Ed Brown, Dr. Shayne Jospeh, Penny Dumsday, Jo Benhamu 00:00:54 After many months away from the show, Shayne discusses his depression and how he's been dealing with it. 00:11:26 Two astronomers published a paper that seemed to suggest our hominid ancestors switch to walking on two feet as a result of a supernova exploding around 8 million years ago. And while that may be plausible, it wasn't really what the paper was about . 00:21:09 Dr. Susan Mackinnon, from Washington University in St. ...
Jun 24, 2019•54 min•Season 3Ep. 3
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