Lost in Science

Chris takes a trip through the planet core to find out why news reports were telling that the core had stopped spinning, and Stu takes a look at the new technology of ChatGPT, what is it, what does it do, and is it the end of take home exams?

Claire returns to Lost in Science this week, to tell us what she’s learnt about her new baby, and how the needs of altricial human infants compare to other precocial animals that are ready to get up and go straight after birth; and Chris examines a new study into how the proportion of disruptive or paradigm-shifting research has declined across fields, and what may be the reasons for that.

A rerun of an interview from June 2022 with Barkandji woman Zena Cumpston, curator of Emu Sky, an exhibition which explores and illuminates Indigenous perspectives related to science, innovation, plant use, land management and agricultural practice. Her book was published in September 2022, co-authored with Michael Fletcher, Lesley Head and is called Plants Past Present and Future

It’s another Summer Series episode of greatest hits, in which we hear from immunologist and science communicator Catriona Nguyen-Robertson about her recently completed PhD research and direct personal experience of how the immune system's T cells can also target fats and oils; and Catriona also tells us about studies into pharmacological waste or medicines in our waterways, including Prozac (fluox...

Summer series continues as we hear from Claire about close encounters of a monotreme kind, and how they are being saved in the wild. And also Claire looks into the detective story of figuring out how mammals became warm blooded animals and what it has to do with ears.

This week on the Lost in Science Summer Series, we replay our interview with climate scientist Professor Michael Mann about how not to lose hope about climate change, and Chris gives an update on how the climate is looking coming into 2023.

In our final episode for 2022, Stu gives a lightning overview of some of the many important science stories we didn’t have time to cover, and Chris runs back over the stories that have had updates since we last talked about them.

It’s a festive food episode, as Chris digs into the science of Christmas pudding, particularly how it’s cooked so differently to regular cakes thanks to physics and chemistry; and Stu digs even deeper into one of the chemical reactions involved, the Maillard reaction that makes cooked food brown and tasty.

Catriona investigates the origins of cat people, or more specifically where and when did cats become domesticated. And also, whether they are truly domesticated at all. Chris looks at a favourite insect, the colourful and seasonal Australian Christmas beetle, which many people think is disappearing, but a national citizen science project aims to keep tabs on the flying baubles. 

This week, Chris talks to climatologist Michael Mann, creator of the famous Hockey Stick Graph, about his research into rising temperatures, and what we can do to continue reducing emissions and not give in to doom; and with World Soil Day upon us, Stu gives us a run down on the basics of soil and the new CSIRO website https://ansis.net/Tickets to see Michael Mann in May and June 2023 are availabl...

This week, Catriona tells us about research into pharmacological waste or medicines in our waterways, including Prozac (fluoxetine) and oestrogen, and the effect they can have on other species; and Chris examines the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis, an asteroid or comet strike some believe to have caused additional cooling at the end of the last ice age, and the status of attempts to prove it by f...

Stu talks to Professor Paolo Inglese, a world expert on olive oil on what has changed and what hasn't in the long history of olive oil. 

Chris talks about the possibility of life on our immediate neighbour planets Mars and Venus based on observations of organic chemicals in their atmospheres, and Stu finds out whether rats really like the nightlife and got to boogie on the disco round... 

This week, Chris examines some recent reporting on the hypothesis that COVID-19 originated as a leak from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, and finds that it’s based less on science than it is on reading between the lines in questionable translations of online documents; and Stu explains the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2022, which was awarded for the development of “click” and bioorthogonal chemistry.

Chris walks us through the 2022 Nobel Prize for physics which unravels quantum entanglement, and Stu talks to Emma Harding about her research into amphibian and reptile viruses and what they can tell us about virus evolution. 

It’s our annual Halloween episode where we get lost in science fiction! Catriona explains how the hoverboards and flying cars in Back to the Future II (1989) could become real; Stu explores the practicalities of moving ecosystems to space as seen in the 1972 movie Silent Running; and Chris goes down the path of wormholes as mentioned in 2022’s Thor: Love and Thunder.

This week, Catriona tells all about the surprising success of NASA's DART mission, which tested a method of colliding a spacecraft with an asteroid to redirect it before it can threaten Earth; and Stu speaks to Tien Huynh from RMIT University about a plan to grow plants on the Moon as part of the project https://lunaria.one/

Two interviews from the archives, Claire talks to Joseph Schubert about Peacock spiders, and to Victoria Camilleri Asch about how sharks can smell in water

The Nobel prize for Physiology and Medicine for 2022 looks at the relationship between ancient homnids and modern humans, Chris talks abotu the research that won the prize. Stu looks at the relationship between the newest humans and their immediate ancestors, as science tackles exactly how to get babies to sleep. 

This week, our special guest immunologist and science communicator Catriona Nguyen-Robertson tells us about her PhD research and direct personal experience of how the immune system's T cells can also target fats and oils; and Stu shares a new study using brain scans to find out why spending time in nature can reduce the stress of city life.

It's that time of year again when science recognises its most improbable research by awarding the 32nd First Annual Ig Nobel Prizes to ten research projects that "make you laugh, then make you think". Find out how researchers use ice cream to save the day (again) and why having your ducks in a row is scientifically a good thing. 

This week, Stu shares new research that may explain why the most famous dinosaur, the T. rex, evolved such big heads, plus maybe why they had tiny arms as well; and Chris talks about reverse or anti lasers, which absorb light rather than emit it, and for that to make that sense he tries to explain how regular lasers work too.

This week, Claire talks to Dr Cathie Page from the Australian Institute of Marine Science about getting coral to spawn out of season in the laboratory; and Stu explains how the concept of alpha males does not in fact correspond to how wolf packs operate in the wild.

This week on the show Chris revisits the world of space junk, who is putting it up there, and where it comes down. And Stu informs us of a big discovery that is rocking the microbe world - a giant bacteria that you can see with the naked eye!

Claire talks about new research that links hearing with the evolution of warm blooded animals, and Chris fills us in on another possible case of academic misconduct linked to Alzheimers research.