Shirtloads of Science

Maritime history's greatest scientific breakthrough was working out longitude, the distance (measured in degrees, minutes, and seconds) of how far a point is, either East or West, of the Prime (Greenwich) Meridian. Dr Karl unravels this discovery with Kevin Sumption and James Hunter from the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney, as they talk about the history of navigation and their 2016...

Over 200 million people are infected with malaria every year. Dr Alice Williamson, research chemist, lecturer and science communicator at the University of Sydney talks to Dr Karl about her work with Open Source Malaria. This is a worldwide drug discovery project that shares all data and results (no patents please!) in an incredible collaborative effort to tackle the disease. Hear about the proble...

Part Two reveals what happened when one, and then two (!!) of the Kepler Spacecraft reaction wheels went to lunch, how the news almost drove Dr Karl to whiskey, and how the engineers found a brilliant solution and continued on with Kepler Mission 2. A jaw-dropping discussion about the discoveries made, including potentially habitable earth-sized planets, the inconstancy of stars, and the probabili...

Dr Karl looks to the stars to kick off his new podcast with NASA Ames research astrophysicist Dr Natalie Batalha, the Kepler Mission Scientist. From 2009 to 2013, the Kepler Space telescope looked for exoplanets – planets outside our solar system. It stared unblinkingly at a patch of sky which Dr Batalha had selected hoping to find not just exoplanets, but exoplanets in the Goldilocks zone. Find o...