Brains Matter

The Ordinary Guy has contributed to another 365 Days of Astronomy podcast The making of Makemake

In this episode I speak again to Dr Rosemary Mardling from Monash University with an update on extra solar planets – What kind of planets are being discovered? – The HARPS spectrograph and its capability – The radial velocity method – How many extra solar planets have been discovered to date? – The transiting method […]

In this episode, I talk to Dr Michael Brown, the ARC Future Fellow from Monash University, who has been doing work on the planned surveys with the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder. He talked to the podcast about the Square Kilometre Array. Topics we discussed included: – What are the different types of telescopes? – […]

Professor Ray Jayawardhana is the Canada Research Chair in Observational Astrophysics and the Steacie Fellow at the University of Toronto. He has just written a book called Strange New Worlds: The Search for Alien Planets and Life beyond Our Solar System, and he chatted to me about: – some of his background, and study areas […]

Professor Lawrence Krauss is the author of “The Physics of Star Trek”, a professor of physics, the Foundation Professor of the School of Earth and Space Exploration and the Director of the Origins Project at the Arizona State University. I was privileged enough to have a chat with him about physics and science in general, […]

Today is the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gargarin’s first venture into outer space. Marion Anderson, a planetary geologist from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, presented a talk on the history and future of Manned Space Flight. Download MP3 of Ep 136 Please vote for this podcast this month at You can donate by clicking on […]

The Ordinary Guy from the Brains Matter Podcast has contributed to another episode of 365 Days of Astronomy: Meteorites in Antarctica

Professor Ralph Pudritz is the Director of the Origins Institute at McMaster University in Canada, and presented a talk entitled “From First Stars to First Life” at Monash University, Australia. The following podcast is a recording of that presentation, which also brings out some interesting discussion points, and some amazing revelations including: – Formation of […]

The Ordinary Guy from the Brains Matter Podcast has contributed to another episode of 365 Days of Astronomy: Titan and the Saturnian System For the full interviews with Dr Andrew Prentice, please check out the guests list

The Ordinary Guy from the Brains Matter Podcast has contributed to another episode of 365 Days of Astronomy: Transiting Extra Solar Planets