Brains Matter ©

A summary of the most recent episode on the expansion of the universe was featured for the 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast today.

365 Days of Astronomy – Brains Matter interview with Dr Brian Schmidt (summary)

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, along with some colleagues from around the world, found that the universe is far more fascinating and unexpected than we thought. Not only is the universe expanding, but it is also accelerating!

I talk to Dr Schmidt about this expansion. Topics we talk about include:

– How was this discovered?
– What could be causing the acceleration?
– How the cosmological constant relates to this
– What effects do we observe from dark energy and dark matter?
– How does this relate to zero-point energy?
– With the speeding up expansion of the universe, what will this mean to us as humans?
– What would science look like if we began our civilisation about 100 billion years into the future? Would cosmology be as we know it today?
– What is the future of cosmology research?
– Baryone acoustic oscillations
– Is there a relationship between dark energy and dark matter?

Also featured is the listener of the episode, and listener feedback.

Download MP3 of Ep 92

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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 percentage of material in the solar system is pre-solar?
– How is the information from these grains useful in understanding the solar system, and the evolution of the solar system?
– The age of this area of study.
– How these grains are studied and analysed.

Also featured is the listener of the episode, and listener feedback.

Download MP3 of Ep 91

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

Listen here

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 nanotechnology today?
– The usage of nanoparticles in medicines
– What about the re-use of nanoparticles?
– Capturing nanoparticles
– Nanotechnology in the ancient world and medieval times
– Current and future research in this area

Also featured is the listener of the episode.

Download MP3 of Ep 90

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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 initial mass function
– The evolution of massive stars v regular stars
– What happens to dead stars?
– Formation of stars in clusters and binaries
– The role of turbulence in star formation

Promo in this episode is for Skepticality

Also featured are listener of the episode, and listener feedback.

Download MP3 of Ep 89

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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 we detect binary stars through observation?
– Can binary systems have planets?

Also featured are listener of the episode, and listener feedback.

Download MP3 of Ep 88

This episode of Brains Matter is brought to you by Swinburne Astronomy Online

You can donate by clicking on the button above, and subscribe by subscribing in iTunes

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 the Mr Science Show joins me as we discuss songs related to science, and the many suggestions provided by listeners. We talk about science topics and songs that relate to them – from maths to health, from astronomy to climate change – there’s even a song about hybrid cars!

The Quadrant hoax mentioned in the episode can be found here:
http://www.crikey.com.au/Politics/20090106-How-Quadrant-swallowed-a-giant-hoax-.html

The songs featured in this episode:

Ben lee – “I love pop music”

Apoptygma Berzerk – “Apollo”

If you’re a big fan of science type songs, check out the kings in this area – the folks at Geek Pop

Download MP3 of Ep 87

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—
The following are the full list of songs that we came up with – including suggestions by listeners
—

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 and binary stars
Are hypervelocity stars all basically the same?
Could these stars join other galaxies?
Can hypervelocity stars collide with other stars in the plane of the galaxy?
What would happen if a hypervelocity star was heading towards us? What would happen to the solar system?
How many hypervelocity stars have we observed? Are they common or uncommon?
How do we find hypervelocity stars?
How long do these stars live?
Do hypervelocity stars change the evolution of the galaxy at all?
What happens to the companion of the hypervelocity star?

Also featured are listener of the episode, and listener feedback.

Download MP3 of Ep 86

This episode of Brains Matter is brought to you by Swinburne Astronomy Online

You can donate by clicking on the button above, and subscribe by subscribing in iTunes

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 game. Topics we cover in this second part of our discussion include:

– Psychology and batsmen
– The psychology of Shane Warne
– The difference between on field and off field psychology
– Body language
– The usage of sports psychologists and counselling for the English team
– Life after a sporting career
– The similarities between professional sportsmen and retired soldiers
– Research into injuries and sports medicine
– Kinematic studies of the doosra and off-break deliveries
– Tracking the workload of cricketers using GPS
– A mathematical surprise about the statistics of the best batsmen in the game – Sachin Tendulkar, Don Bradman, and even Ricky Ponting! (in fact, the top 34 test run scoring batsmen) What is this revelation, and how could this revelation be true? Mathematics will show you the way…
– Is it harder to get Ricky Ponting out at 49 compared to 51?
– The longer a batsman stays at the crease, the harder it is to get him out, right? Wrong! Listen in and find out why…
– How does this relate to the exponential distribution and coin tosses?

Also featured in this episode is Listener of the episode, and listener feedback.

This is part 2 of a 2 part interview. Please listen in to episode 84 for the first part of the interview.

Download MP3 of Ep 85

You can read Marc’s articles at the following sites:

The Curse of the Duck
Psychology & Cricket

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