Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall, Jo Benhamu 00:00:23 For bonobo males, sex is often done under mother's watchful eye. But it's not quite that creepy - the mother's are helpful, allowing the primates to copulate in peace ! 00:04:33 Detecting lung cancer in the early stages can be tricky even for very experienced radiologists. But a huge test using Google's AI computers found that the algorithms performed better than humans, and made fewer false positives . 00:18:45 There's a climate...
Jun 09, 2019•37 min•Season 3Ep. 2
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall, Jo Benhamu 00:00:34 Penny gives us a trip report on her recent trip to Lake Mungo - a dry lake in remote Australia that's known for the discovery of 20,000-60,000 year old human remains. 00:09:58 All we know about Denisovans - a species of hominid that split off from the human lineage alongside the Neanderthals - comes from a little finger bone, three teeth and a sliver of bone. But now the discovery of a jawbone, found two and a half thousand kilom...
Jun 02, 2019•59 min•Season 3Ep. 1
Hosts: Ed Brown, Kirsten Banks 00:00:49 For the first time ever, astronomers have taken a photo of the silhouette of the event horizon of a black hole ! 00:06:39 The Event Horizon Telescope captured 5 petabytes of data - which is a lot! 00:09:08 XKCD compared the size of the event horizon of M87 with the size of our solar system . 00:11:36 Veritasium expertly described how the photo was taken, and all the permutations that could have happened to give us different photos . Kirsten Banks is an ast...
Apr 26, 2019•20 min•Season 2Ep. 10
Hosts: Ed Brown, Dr. Kate Naughton, Peter Miller 00:00:40 An extraordinary must-read article in the New Yorker has an in-depth look at the few hours after a meteor hit the Yucatán Peninsula and probably wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs. It also follows an amazing discovery that could answer many questions about the appearance of dinosaurs and whether or not they were already dying out. 00:18:51 A study led by a team at the Duke University Clinical Research Institute has found that treatment rec...
Apr 23, 2019•57 min•Season 2Ep. 9
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Chris Curtain-Magee 00:01:22 In 450 B.C., the "Father of History", Herodotus, wrote a 23 line account of a type of Egyptian cargo vessel. This was widely thought to be a fabrication, but a discovery in an ancient Egyptian port city indicates the account was truthful . 00:08:03 The earliest undisputed evidence of humans in Australia comes from a rock shelter in northern Australia and dates back to 65,000 years ago. Now investigations at an ancient midden - a trashp...
Apr 16, 2019•23 min•Season 2Ep. 8
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:00:32 Some fish can survive the freezing cold waters of Antarctica thanks to a gene that makes anti-freeze. But how do fish in the Arctic, in the Northern hemisphere, also have the same gene ? 00:08:33 Some people can smell when people are sick. Could these 'super-smellers' help diagnose Parkinson's Disease early on ? 00:21:26 DNA is made of four nucleotides: G, A, T, and C. Now an interdisciplinary team of researchers has doubled that genetic cod...
Apr 02, 2019•40 min•Season 2Ep. 7
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall, Sean M Elliott 00:01:11 Science educator, communicator and performer Sean M. Elliott has a new show at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Tesla: Death Rays & Elephants ! 00:11:00 For a long time it's been believed that having some potted plants around the house will help filter out pollutants and toxins. But now the evidence suggests that houseplants do very little or even nothing at all when it comes to cleaning the air . 00:17:56 The...
Mar 27, 2019•53 min•Season 2Ep. 6
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall, Dr. Helen Maynard-Casely 00:01:16 NASA's InSight probe begins drilling into the Martian surface - and stops. 00:17:11 Twins are either identical (one egg splits into two copies) or fraternal (two eggs fertilised at the same time). But that's not always the case - as a mother in Queensland found out when she had sesquizygotic twins . 00:25:44 Timothy Ray Brown, who was known as The Berlin Patient, was the first person to be "cured" of HIV. Now a seco...
Mar 21, 2019•50 min•Season 2Ep. 5
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:00:57 As the world becomes more and more urbanised, we hear a lot about the dangers to wildlife from humanity's sprawl. But new research finds Australia's koalas may actually be less stressed in cities - provided adequate green spaces are provided. 00:07:43 For the first time ever, a spacecraft built by a private company and designed to carry people has docked with the International Space Station. The success of SpaceX's "Crew Dragon" sets the sta...
Mar 16, 2019•41 min•Season 2Ep. 4
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:01:18 Hyabusa 2, Japan's latest sample return mission, has briefly landed on the asteroid Ryugu. It's an ambitious mission looking at the building blocks of the solar system . 00:16:14 And what's the point of dragging samples all the way back to Earth , when we can send whole labs to celestial bodies? 00:20:59 Echidnas are cute but spiky Australian native animals, with rather strange mating habits. But they're in high demand on the illegal pet tra...
Mar 04, 2019•47 min•Season 2Ep. 3
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall, Dr Cameron Webb 00:00:58 A review study published in the journal Biological Conservation has found that over 40% of insect species are threatened with extinction . 00:29:06 Queensland has seen record-breaking floods this year, and everyone knows that mosquitoes love water. But what do floods mean for mosquito-borne diseases ? 00:36:10 By studying sleepless flies, scientists have identified a gene that puts them to sleep when they need it the most. A...
Mar 01, 2019•54 min•Season 2Ep. 2
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:01:48 When researchers from the Max Planck Institute were looking at the teeth of an 11th or 12th century German woman they found tiny bright blue specks . This was a clue that illuminated the role women may have played in the history of book production. 00:09:19 What if plants could be trained just like pet dogs ? Spoiler alert: they can! Sort of. 00:12:12 Also, plants can hear you with their ear-flowers . 00:21:29 For spiders, their webs are als...
Feb 20, 2019•42 min•Season 2Ep. 1
2018 was a big year for science. Is saw the launch of the largest privately built reuseable rocket, the discovery a new organ, and understanding of the wombat's cubic poops. 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 t...
Feb 11, 2019•2 min
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Peter Miller 00:01:10 There's a planet orbiting star HD26965, exactly where Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry said Spock's homeworld Vulcan would be . 00:04:16 A fresh analysis of 10 year old data finds the best evidence yet of water vapor venting from Jupiter's fourth largest moon, Europa . 00:05:17 Watch Peter Miller's artistic imagining of life on Europa here . 00:06:11 The oldest example of abstract art , from 73,000 years ago, resembles a hashtag. 00:10:14 S...
Jan 15, 2019•37 min•Season 1Ep. 321
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:01:24 The giant tortoise Lonesome George, the last of his species, was possibly as old as 102 when he died in 2012. Now sequencing of his DNA has revealed a number of genes that could give us clues about human life expectancy and particularly cancer. 00:08:10 Research into epilepsy has accidentally led to some exciting new developments in the treatment of depression and mood disorders . This is a serendipitous line of inquiry that came from observ...
Dec 22, 2018•33 min•Season 1Ep. 320
Our latest episode, 319 - Number Five Is Alive , had a pretty major glitch in that Lucas' track wasn't there at all. I realised the mistake shortly after posting it, and thought I had replaced it with the correct version, but obviously it didn't replace the file. I've re-uploaded it and tested it now, it definitely works! So if you had any trouble playing that episode - specifically if it sounds like Lucas is being rude and not talking - then you may have to re-download that file again. Or, you ...
Dec 15, 2018•1 min
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall, Jo Benhamu 00:02:27 NASA's InSight probe lands on Mars, with a slew of instruments to analyse what the red planet is made of. 00:17:43 Against all conventional knowledge, mitochondrial DNA is sometimes inherited from the father . 00:28:01 Professor He Jiankui announced he's created the world's first ever gene edited babies using the CRISPR-Cas9 technique. His claims of HIV immune babies are extraordinary, but mired in contention amongst ethical and ...
Dec 14, 2018•57 min•Season 1Ep. 319
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:01:10 Wombats - the cute, pudgy marsupials in Australia, have cubic poops. Square, angular blocks of poop. But how and why? We may now have a better understanding . 00:08:25 HD186302 is a star 184 light-years from Earth. And it's so similar to our sun, it could be long lost twin . 00:16:49 A team of researchers have studied the genomes of a group of microbes called Hemimastigotes and found that they are so bizarre, they deserve their very own king...
Dec 07, 2018•40 min•Season 1Ep. 318
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:02:00 There's a stream of stars hurtling through our region of the Milky Way galaxy , and they're bringing with them a "dark matter hurricane". It's probably nothing to worry about, though. 00:12:16 For the first time since 1889, the kilogram has been redefined according to a natural constant , instead of a lump of metal in a vault in Paris. The actual mass, for all intents and purposes, remains the same. 00:23:51 Previous studies of Neanderthal s...
Dec 03, 2018•33 min•Season 1Ep. 317
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Mick Vagg 00:02:13 How serious is the opioid crisis in Australia? What's being done about it, and what new painkillers are on the horizon? Pain Specialist Professor Mick Vagg gives us the run down. 00:22:15 20 million years ago, dolphins had really long snouts - the question is why? What evolutionary pressures led to their evolution, and what caused them to become extinct? 00:28:11 Are chimpanzees selfish? Do they readily cooperate? A study on chimpanzees in the R...
Nov 28, 2018•40 min•Season 1Ep. 316
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:01:10 When a newborn baby smiles, there's always some spoilsport ready to tell you it's not a genuine smile, it's just a reflex. But new research finds that infant smiles are a lot more complex than that . 00:07:34 For the first time, astronomers have observed the clumps of gas orbiting the supermassive black hole in the center of our galaxy using four large telescopes linked together. The observations are in extremely high detail and reveal super...
Nov 23, 2018•27 min•Season 1Ep. 315
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:01:11 It's an old computer trick, but a gyroscope on the Hubble Space Telescope has been fixed - with a shake and a reboot . 00:08:22 The tiny worms in dung beetle brood sacks - which are sexually transmitted - are beneficial for the beetle larvae . 00:14:33 Polychlorinated biphenyls - better known as PCBs - are industrial chemicals that have been banned in most countries for decades. But their legacy remains and has dramatic consequences for orca...
Nov 15, 2018•33 min•Season 1Ep. 314
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall, Dr. Pamela Gay 00:00:58 What happens when octopuses are given ecstasy? They get... cuddly . 00:07:23 Gene Roddenberry got it right, there IS a planet orbiting the star 40 Eridani . That's where the Star Trek creator said the planet Vulcan would be, homeworld of the pointy-eared logicians. 00:10:23 The Japanese space agency, JAXA, has had a spacecraft orbiting the asteroid Ryugu since the end of June this year. It has now deployed three of its four r...
Nov 06, 2018•39 min•Season 1Ep. 313
Hosts: Ed Brown, Jo Benhamu, Kirsten Banks. 00:03:03 Wiradjuri astronomer Kirsten Banks tells us all about Aboriginal astronomy - from emu eggs to moon halos . 00:13:20 The conventional wisdom that taking a low dose of aspirin every day can improve health and delay dementia in the elderly is unfounded for most people, according to the largest and most comprehensive clinical trial conducted in Australia. 00:25:44 Many infections in humans of antibiotic-resistant bacteria have been traced to the u...
Oct 06, 2018•39 min•Season 1Ep. 312
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Peter Miller, Ross Balch. 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 rollercoaster medicine to Voodoo in the workplace! You can watch the award ceremony here . 00:03:13 MEDICINE PRIZE went to two Americans, Marc Mitchell and David Wartinger, for using roller coaster rides to try to hasten the passage of kidney stones . 00:09:41 ANTHROPOLOGY PRIZE went to an international team fo...
Oct 03, 2018•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 311
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:02:34 Archaeologists working in the Blombos Cave in South Africa have discovered what could be the world's oldest drawing - from 73,000 years ago. 00:10:40 Surfers have long believed that nearby dolphins are a good sign that there are no sharks around. But new research suggests that's not the case, as attacks on dolphins have increased in line with rising ocean temperatures . 00:19:33 The mirror test is an attempt to measure self-awareness in non-...
Sep 26, 2018•29 min•Season 1Ep. 310
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:02:22 The exciting family of planets less than 40 light years from Earth could each have 250 times more water than Earth , according to a new study. 00:11:09 Not just a meat-eater, the bonnethead shark is the first species of shark to be determined omnivorous . 00:17:49 Someone drilled a hole on the International Space Station . Was it sabotage? Space madness? We don't yet know. 00:26:35 As the planet-wide dust storm settles, the Opportunity rover...
Sep 19, 2018•35 min•Season 1Ep. 309
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall, Dr. Carolyn de Graaf 00:03:09 A large study has identified 35 genes that can influence you take up marijuana use . The study also also found links between those genes and other drug dependencies, as well as ADHD, autism and depression. 00:13:31 Scientists at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has found that microorganisms in colder climates darken themselves to capture more heat and improve their chances for survival. 00:18:45 String Th...
Sep 13, 2018•37 min•Season 1Ep. 308
Dr Morgan Cable is a planetary scientist and astrobiologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Her work is primarily focussed on developing technologies and instruments for spacecraft searching for organic molecules and biomarkers in our solar system. She was the Assistant Project Science Systems Engineer for the Cassini Mission, and is currently working on numerous projects to Europa and Enceladus. Ed and Lucas caught up with Dr. Cable to discuss the exploration of the Saturn system, the Jupi...
Aug 31, 2018•51 min•Season 1Ep. 25
Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:00:56 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 All proceeds go to the non-profit Astronomical Society of the Pacific. 00:02:06 A study finds that smaller dogs lift their legs higher when they pee . Could they be lying, and trying to fool other dogs? 00:09:30 After a delayed first attempt, NASA's Parker Solar Probe has been successfully launch...
Aug 21, 2018•26 min
