I was delighted when three RMIT students asked me to help explain the Aurora (the Northern / Southern lights) with them in this fantastic animation. There's something really engaging about this old school style that more recent digital graphics can miss. But decide for yourself..!
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I chatted about a recently discovered tornado on the Sun, the most distant galaxy and alien abductions in Northern Territories. Being asked about Probes by Virginia Trioli is a career first.
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NASA has undertaken a year long isolation experiment with 6 volunteers living in a dome no more than 11m wide and 6m to practice psychological survival techniques for the voyage to Mars. Unbelievably one of the volunteers brought a ukulele along to learn. They're first out of the airlock I'm guessing.
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Every fortnight I get to sit on the couch and chat about the latest awesome science and events in space. Today was all about Rosetta watching Comet67P flare into life as well as space lettuce. Tastes like rocket apparently. Apologies for the puns.
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More awesome results from Rosetta and in particular it's epic Philae lander has found organic material on the surface of Comet 67P
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The discovery of the closest Earth-like world yet has huge implications for the search for alien life. We think this world will likely be too hot but it means rocky worlds similar in size to us really are everywhere... So where are all the aliens?
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I made it to the panel of ABC's The Drum to chat about finding aliens with the amazing Breakthrough Listen project and the lead role Australia is playing in this endeavour.
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Quite ridiculously I found myself chatting to THE Tony Jones on ABC Lateline about the awesome Pluto flyby mission.
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Blackholes can lie dormant for decades or more, supermassive blackholes like the one in the centre of our galaxy can silently wait for millions of years, before flaring into life as the brightest objects in the sky thanks to accreting material swirling around them glowing X-ray hot.
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I was pretty stoked to see the lander had made a surprise reawakening and rushed down to the studios to share my happiness!
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NASA has an outrageously cool new spacecraft concept for landing ever larger cargo loads onto Mars. And yes it looks like a flying saucer.
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Channel 7's Weekend Sunrise had a feature on favourite dark matter detector in the Southern Hemisphere (it's the first and only one so that's an easy choice, as well as being a Co-Investigator which helps!)
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A chat on the couch about our Sun's Future and the protoplanet Ceres
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A Russian spacecraft is spinning out of control and I get to rant about the awesome physics of Interstellar too. Fun chat on the couch.
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The worlds most famous telescope just turned 25, I looked back on some of its iconic images and greatest discoveries.
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The tricky issue of science funding in Australia, which thankfully was soon rectified (for a year or two) after this broadcast. I also got to chat about Blackholes which is far more fun but without the funding we couldn't actually study these beasts so the two issues go hand in hand.
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Astoundingly discovery that the moon of Jupiter known as Ganymede has more water below the surface than all of our oceans combined. Also a quick chat about science funding.
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The Sun (like most stars) didn't form alone but came with 10s - 100s of siblings are born together. Thanks to new telescopes we can track down these long-lost sibling stars and see if they too have life.
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An unusual chat setting the non-science world to rights about House of Cards (piracy) and of course aliens.
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Definitely knowing that there are aliens out there requires us to see their signals, either radio waves from TVs say or twinkling lasers from their interplanetary communications. We can even think bigger and look for Dyson Spheres glowing red hot.
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