Brains Matter

The 100th episode of Brains Matter coincides with National Science Week - and to celebrate both the 100th show and National Science week, in this episode, we cover a range of topics. There are two great new interviews, as well as highlights from previous shows. You can go to the original interviews by [...]

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We’ve all wondered about the creation of the universe - from the big bang onwards. What next? Is the galaxy going to slow down from the big bang? Will there be multiple big bangs and big crunches? The reality of the matter is astounding. In 1994, Dr Brian Schmidt, [...]

I talk to Dr Maria Lugaro on the topic of pre-solar grains. Topics we cover include:
- What are pre-solar grains?
- Do they only exist in our solar system?
- How big are they?
- How do we capture pre-solar grains on Earth?
- How do we determine if grains are pre-solar?
- How do the grains form?
- What [...]

Those of you who follow the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast will have noticed that todays episode is a Brains Matter production.
Listen here

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I talk to Dr Amanda Barnard, an expert in nanoscience, from the CSIRO on nanotechnology. We discuss:
- What are nanoparticles?
- What are nanorods?
- What properties of a substance make it a useful nanoparticle?
- What makes nanoparticles useful?
- What do you need to know to understand nanotechnology?
- What are some examples of the usage of [...]

I talk to Dr Daniel Price, Monash Fellow from the School of Mathematics at Monash University in Melbourne Australia, about how stars form. We discuss:
- Star formation
- What constitutes a star?
- The first stars in the universe
- Current star formation
- For a given gas cloud, how many stars typically form?
- The Jeans Mass
- The [...]

Dr Ross Church is a PhD from Cambridge, and is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at Monash University. I talked to him about binary stars:
- What are binary stars?
- How common are they?
- Can stars exist in triple or more systems?
- How big are most binary stars?
- How do binary stars form?
- How can [...]

Chemistry, biology, physics, climate change - the list of science topics are too numerous for me to mention them all here. And each subject has someone singing about it in some fashion. That’s right - the episode that a lot of you have been waiting for - the show on science songs. [...]

In this episode, which is the final of a 2 part interview, I talk once again with Professor Roger Short, from the University of Melbourne on further topics regarding Asian elephants, and on saving them.
- elephant accents
- what happens when you play Asian elephant vocalisations to captive African elephants? Some surprising results!
- Potelemic time [...]