Brains Matter ©

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? […]

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 […]

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. Marc West, from […]

Have you heard of hypervelocity stars? These are amazingly fast stars. How fast? I talk to Dr Ross Church, from Monash University, who tells us all about them. Topics of discussion include: What are hyper velocity stars? How do they form? The relationship between binary stars and hypervelocity stars The interactions between supermassive black holes […]

In this episode, I continue my discussion with science journalist Marc West. We talk about the psychology and science of sport – and the case study we use is cricket. The topics we talk about can apply to practically any team sport, but being the cricket fans we are, we relate it to the gentleman’s […]

I talk to science communicator and cricket tragic, Marc West, on the topic of cricket – and the science and psychology of the sport. Marc has published several articles on the science and mathematics of the game, and in this episode, discusses the following with me: – How fit are cricketers? – How far do […]

I was lucky enough to provide this audio to the 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast (Official Podcast of the International Astronomical Union) – it’s an extract of episodes 81 and 82 on the topic of astrobiology. If you’re interested in the 365 Days podcast, go to http://www.365daysofastronomy.org Download MP3 of Ep 83 This episode of […]

In this episode, continue my talk with Dr Allie Ford of Monash University about Astrobiology. We cover the following topics: – Extremophiles – Could life exist deep inside the Jovian planets? – Why would it be beneficial to find life elsewhere? – Europa as a possible candidate for life – How likely is it that […]

In this episode, I talk to Dr Allie Ford of Monash University about Astrobiology. We cover the following questions: – What is astrobiology? – The Urey/Miller experiment – Do amino acids lead to life? – What is life anyway? – What conditions are required for life? – The possibility of life elsewhere in our solar […]

Professor Tim Flannery is the author of the popular book “The Weather Makers” and is well known for his views on Climate Change. Professor Flannery was awarded Australian of the Year in 2007, and I attended a lecture he gave in September on Climate Change. This is part 2 of a 2 part talk by […]