Science On Top

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…

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 sp…

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 t…

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 fres…

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 rev…

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…

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 conve…

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 u…

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 p…

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 Mi…

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 find…

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 i…

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 o…

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 t…

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 rollercoast…

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.

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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.

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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 betwe…

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…

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 …