Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall, Alayna Hansen. 00:00:58 We're hosting Dr. Pamela Gay for a talk, Q&A session and live show in Melbourne on Wednesday 10 October! Tickets $20 from scienceontop.com/live and all proceeds go to the non-profit Astronomical Society of the Pacific. 00:02:23 The government of Sierra Leone has announced the discovery of a new species of Ebola virus . Fortunately there's no indication that it's spread to humans yet, but that could be just a matter of tim...
Aug 12, 2018•35 min•Season 1Ep. 306
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Professor Jonti Horner, Sarah de Garis 00:01:22 The longest lunar eclipse in 18 years gave viewers in much of the world a stunning spectacle - a blood red moon . 00:03:08 Radar data from the Mars Express probe has revealed a large lake of liquid water beneath the red planet's surface . 00:14:49 CRISPR is a defence mechanism used by bacteria against viruses. And it's pretty good - but it has one major weakness that viruses exploit . 00:22:22 Researchers at Carnegie...
Aug 05, 2018•38 min•Season 1Ep. 305
Hosts: Ed Brown, Lucas Randall, Dr. Carolyn de Graaf 00:01:04 It was one of the most incredible news stories of the year - the rescue of twelve kids and their soccer coach from the flooded Thai cave. Made even more remarkable that they all returned in relatively good health - especially considering all the diseases and illnesses they were at risk of catching . 00:10:48 Whether it's Ebola, Hendra, SARS, or rabies; bats are often blamed for the spread of viruses. But is that fair? Are bats more li...
Jul 27, 2018•36 min•Season 1Ep. 304
Hosts: Ed Brown, Lucas Randall, Daniel Midgely 00:01:18 Billed as having "mastered sign language", Koko The Gorilla has passed away . But was she all she was cracked up to be? Koko's First Interspecies Web Chat: Transcript Project Nim: the chimp who was brought up like a child Clever Hans It’s time to stop exposing people to the dangers of Facilitated Communication Sue Savage-Rumbaugh 00:29:43 An international team has discovered a galaxy unlike any other. Smaller than the Milky Way, the mysteri...
Jul 15, 2018•55 min•Season 1Ep. 303
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall, Dr. Brad McKay 00:01:55 The WHO calls "gaming disorder" a mental health condition - so what is it, how serious is it, and what can we do about it ? 00:14:08 Satellites have found the coldest place on Earth and it could kill you ! 00:18:20 Can parasites control animals they haven't physically infected? Probably not, but tapeworms infecting stickleback fish can indirectly influence other, noninfected fish . Remember to watch Ed Yong's parasite TED Tal...
Jul 09, 2018•43 min•Season 1Ep. 302
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:01:05 A critically endangered frog lives underground in a remote mountainous region of Australia. Researchers are now trialling an adorable new method for finding and studying them . 00:07:15 Diabetes is a growing problem around the world, and now some researchers are looking to an odd-looking Australian icon for a potential new treatment. 00:16:07 A new paper published in Science has caused quite a buzz, by demonstrating that honeybees understand...
Jun 27, 2018•30 min•Season 1Ep. 301
Hosts: Ed Brown, Dr. Shayne Joseph, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall, Dr. Helen Maynard-Casely, Dr. Mick Vagg 00:03:26 The recent discovery of dunes on Pluto surprised planetary scientists. With very little atmosphere or wind, what could cause them ? 00:11:48 A sample from Mars, analysed by the Curiosity rover, has found organic molecules - the building blocks of life. 00:18:25 One of the most famous psychology experiments, the Stanford marshmallow test, looked at delayed gratification in children b...
Jun 21, 2018•44 min•Season 1Ep. 300
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:01:04 Vitamania is stronger than ever, with more than half of Americans and nearly a third of Australians regularly taking vitamin supplements. But a new study finds that most vitamin supplements have little or no benefit , and some can even be doing harm. 00:10:03 If there's life elsewhere in the universe, there's a good chance it's bacteria or something much like it. Now astrobiologists are pushing for more attention to be paid to extra-terrestr...
Jun 13, 2018•36 min•Season 1Ep. 299
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:01:12 Jaundice, fairly common in newborn babies, could be an evolutionary advantage . 00:10:14 France is being invaded by giant, carnivorous, cloned flatworms . And it has been for more than two decades. 00:16:16 The rare birds native to the South Georgia islands, in the middle of nowhere, are no longer at risk from introduced rodents. They have been saved by a successful eradication project . 00:20:51 Asteroid 2015 BZ509 has mystified astronomers...
Jun 07, 2018•29 min•Season 1Ep. 299
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall, Alayna Hansen, and Peter Miller. 00:02:13 The internet blew up with the Yanny/Laurel audio illusion . Why do some people hear one thing, others hear another, and some people can hear both? 00:08:50 A new look at old data reveals signs of plumes of water coming from Jupiter's moon Europa . 00:13:35 Watching Europa is Peter's audio-visual artwork imagining life on Europa. 00:23:02 The chytrid fungus is devestating amphibian populations, but geneticist...
May 29, 2018•47 min•Season 1Ep. 297
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Dr. Carolyn de Graaf 00:11:15 Harvard researchers have systematically profiled every cell in developing zebrafish and frog embryos , showing how one cell develops into an entire organism. 00:15:28 81-year-old James Harrison has saved millions of babies. His weekly blood donations have been used to create a treatment to protect unborn babies from the deadly Rhesus D Haemolytic Disease (HDN) . 00:23:16 Experts from around the wold have signed a letter to the World H...
May 22, 2018•37 min•Season 1Ep. 296
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Sarah de Garis 00:01:25 A study by a team from University of Sussex shows that horses can not only distinguish human facial expressions, but they remember people's emotional states several hours later . 00:08:23 Male fruit flies enjoy sex . 00:17:07 There's a fungus that uses tiny crystals to sense gravity. And it can do that, because it stole genes from a bacteria . 00:21:06 Kids have a lot of energy - but in terms of endurance and recovery, they can even perform...
May 07, 2018•28 min•Season 1Ep. 295
Hosts: Ed Brown, Dr. Shayne Joseph, Lucas Randall 00:01:31 While studying the enzyme produced by a bacteria that eats plastic, an international team has accidentally made it even better . 00:08:57 NASA's new planet-hunding spacecraft has launched. TESS will study 85% of the sky , and will be able to study the mass, size, density and orbit of thousands of exoplanets. 00:23:37 Retrotransposons - elements of DNA that can spread to other species - are being found more and more often. And they're alm...
May 01, 2018•33 min•Season 1Ep. 294
Hosts: Ed Brown, Lucas Randall, Peter Miller 00:01:13 The bowhead whale sings a different tune to the humpback whale. It's more jazz to the humpback's classical . 00:07:38 The closest star outside our solar system just did a big burp. And it wouldn't be good for any life on its planet . 00:21:57 The hottest chilli in the world was the Carolina Reaper. A competitive eater ate one, then regretted it . This episode contains traces of Will Smith interviewing astronaut Drew Feustel on the Internation...
Apr 21, 2018•31 min•Season 1Ep. 293
Hosts: Ed Brown, Dr. Shayne Joseph, Lucas Randall, Jo Benhamu. 00:01:00 New York researchers have detailled the "structure and distribution of an unrecognized interstitium in human tissues". Or as some are calling it, a brand new organ . 00:16:37 New evidence lends credibility to an old theory of how Vikings navigated the seas. They could have used 'sunstones' and polarised light to find the sun in cloudy conditions. 00:24:39 Thanks to gravitational lensing, astronomers using the Hubble Space Te...
Apr 15, 2018•47 min•Season 1Ep. 292
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:01:06 The Draw-A-Scientist test has been a regular investigation of children's ideas about science. The proportion of women being drawn has risen sharply since the test was first done in the 1960s . 00:09:09 70,000 years ago a small red dwarf star hurtling through space came within a light-year of our sun. Scholtz's star is now about 20 light years away but it's likely responsible for the orbits of a lot of comets and asteroids in our solar system...
Apr 07, 2018•27 min•Season 1Ep. 291
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 ...
Mar 29, 2018•39 min•Season 1Ep. 290
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 su...
Mar 20, 2018•37 min•Season 1Ep. 289
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...
Mar 13, 2018•30 min•Season 1Ep. 288
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 surpr...
Mar 03, 2018•38 min•Season 1Ep. 287
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:00:55 On January 31st, a super blue blood moon could be seen from Australia, South East Asia and the West Coast of the US. A super moon is when the moon is at its closest point in its orbit to Earth, a blood moon is a total lunar eclipse where the moon turns orange-red, and a blue moon is a second full moon in a calendar month. 00:03:50 Researchers using high-tech LIDAR have found more than 60,000 previously undetected Mayan buildings , defence in...
Feb 11, 2018•34 min•Ep. 286
2017 was a big year for science. Gravitational waves were detected four times, it was the end of Cassini's mission, and lady dragonflies faked their own deaths to avoid sex. And we talked about all these stories and more on Science on Top. But not everything goes to plan, and this year was no exception! We had all sorts of Skype troubles, we forgot things, we were interrupted by dogs and phones... lots went wrong! But instead of losing the hilarious moments of chaos, we've saved them all for our...
Dec 30, 2017•2 min
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:01:08 Six reasons why the latest gravitational wave discovery is huge 00:07:36 Scientists solve Roman concrete puzzle 00:11:01 A look back at Cassini's incredible mission to Saturn before its final plunge into the planet 00:14:09 The first results from the Juno mission 00:17:40 A Dinosaur So Well Preserved, It Looks Like a Statue 00:20:47 We created a song that makes babies happy 00:23:33 A Thorny Debate in Plate Tectonics May Finally Be Resolved ...
Dec 23, 2017•32 min
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:01:07 Antarctica is littered with volcanoes, and while there hasn't been a major eruption in 8,000 years, there are signs that there might be one coming . 00:12:48 Rock art in Saudi Arabia dates back thousands of years, and possibly features the oldest images of dogs . 00:17:53 The "Cat's Brain" long barrow in Wiltshire, near Stonehenge dates back to around 3,800BC. It's recent excavation offers new insights into Britain's neolithic civilisation ....
Dec 11, 2017•38 min
Hosts: Ed Brown, Dr. Shayne Joseph, Penny Dumsday. 00:01:03 Stromatolites - rocky mounds made of bacterial colonies - have been around for at least 3.5 billion years. But the rise of multicellular life wiped them out except for in a few salty marine locations. Now researchers have discovered some in a remote freshwater wetland in Tasmania . 00:06:51 You wouldn't think it would matter if you were injured in the daytime or at night - but it does. Wounds inflicted during the day can heal nearly twi...
Dec 02, 2017•25 min
Hosts: Ed Brown, Dr. Shyane Joseph, Penny Dumsday. 00:01:08 A 7-year-old boy's life is saved from a rare skin disease after researchers genetically modify and grow his skin in a lab . 00:07:25 The widespread use of penicillin may been a factor in the very early development of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) . 00:15:06 A new study suggests that while cold blooded dinosaurs ruled the daytime, mammals evolved to be nocturnal. And when the dinosaurs were wiped out, many mammals sw...
Nov 19, 2017•32 min
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:00:51 A strange rock hurtling through space turns out to be the first known detection of a visitor from another solar system ! By which we mean: not aliens. 00:15:08 Lentils might not sound like exciting archaeological discovery, but a find at the prehistoric site of Gurga Chiya in Iraqi Kurdistan could provide clues about the formation of permanent settlements and the development of social stratification . 00:22:45 Using muon-scanning technology,...
Nov 13, 2017•31 min
Hosts: Ed Brown, Dr. Shayne Joseph, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall, Dr. Mick Vagg. 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 cats in jars to disgusting cheese! You can watch the award ceremony here . 00:01:30 The Physics Prize was awarded to French scientist Marc-Antoine Fardin, " for using fluid dynamics to probe the question 'Can a Cat Be Both a Solid and a Liquid?' " 00:06:20 The Peace Prize went to four doc...
Nov 08, 2017•56 min
Hosts: Ed Brown, Dr. Shayne Joseph, Lucas Randall. 00:01:11 A fifth gravitational wave detection in just two years confirms the dawn of a new era in astronomy. And this one was not only caused by two neutron stars coliding , it was accompanied by gamma ray detections, gave us more clues to the size of the universe, and a better understanding of how gold is formed. 00:17:00 Bacteria inside cancer cells can weaken or destroy some chemotherapy drugs , rendering them useless. But antibiotics aren't ...
Nov 01, 2017•41 min
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 gravi...
Oct 24, 2017•47 min
