I had a horribly awkward fanboy moment when I got to meet the legend himself Buzz Aldrin! There are few people in this world I consider a living legend but Buzz is one, so getting to shake his hand and then hear about his experiences on the Moon and his hoped for plans about getting to Mars was incredible.
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Wednesday sees the 100th year anniversary since Einstein presented his “Field Equations of Gravity” to the Prussian Academy of Sciences which we know better today as General Relativity. This changed our understanding of the world, from Blackholes to the Big Bang and even GPS satnav. In honour of this momentous occasion I brought in a prop that really didn’t go very well...
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I wrote an article for Cosmos Magazine explaining how NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft detected streams of Martian air blasted away by the Solar Wind. This tiny trickle (100g / s) was seen to increase 10-15x during even a moderate Solar Storm (or Coronal Mass Ejection). As the Sun was more active when younger these slow and fast processes of stripping air from Mars could explain how the red planet was transformed from a water rich world 4bn years go into the barren desert it is today.
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A chat on the couch about how Mars was transformed from a world of oceans to the desert we know today (it was all the Sun’s fault!) I also spoke about a NASA archaeological dig into the centre of our galaxy looking for ancient stars and finished with the news that Google Lunar Xprize's private lunar space race is ON!
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I explained to Channel 10 that NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft has seen the solar wind from the Sun strip Mars of 100g of atmosphere a second (that’s a quarter pounder burger of air). During solar storms this can increase 10x-15x as much meaning that the younger and more active Sun was easily capable of stripping Mars of it’s atmosphere. This turned Mars from a world of oceans 4bn years ago into the desolate desert it is today. It also highlights the importance of our magnetic field on Earth which protects us from a similar fate!
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I spoke to Sunrise on 7 about the asteroid TB145 akak “Spooky” or the “Great Pumpkin”. An asteroid flying by Oct 31st 17.05 UTC (Halloween!) which is 4am Nov 1st for Melbourne. Awesomely it looks like a skull. It will pass by over a third further out than the Moon, although a close shave by astronomy standards there's seriously no threat AT ALL so don't panic, just enjoy the show.
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I’m CI of the dark matter detector SABRE at the Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory and can proudly announce that we've been funded by the ARC! Australia will now join an international search for the nature of dark matter as the first site in the Southern Hemisphere.
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A spooky interview as an object (fittingly a 'dead' comet) will flyby Earth on Halloween just further than the Moon's is from us. I spoke about the furthest galaxies from us that Hubble has found (using a high-tech martini glass) and a dead star that is tearing apart the planets in its solar system that will likely happen to use in five billion years time.
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One of the best science lectures I've ever seen was at Monash University by Caltech's legend GR expert Prof Kip Thorne giving the Einstein Centenary lecture to celebrate a century since General Relativity was released to the world. Fittingly, he used the examples of Interstellar's Black Holes, time dilation and 5-dimensional (bulk) beings to make the topic all the more accessible to the (sold out) auditorium.
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My thoughts on a mysterious star that has its light blocked as something huge passes between us and this star. It could be a swarm of comets blocking the light as a nearby star flew by and disrupted comets in the Oort Cloud and sent them spiralling inwards. Another option is that it could be a Dyson Sphere, essentially the natural extension of solar panels in space that surround the star and block its light.
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I spoke about the amazing Apollo Archival Project has put thousands of Apollo era photos on flickr and the discovery that Pluto has blue skies, something we take for granted on Earth but it's actually really unusual in our solar system!
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Einstein predicted ripples in the very fabric of spacetime itself from violent collisions by massive objects like Black Holes. The latest search to find those ripples, or gravitational waves, have come up with only limits. Was Einstein wrong about these waves or is it our understanding of merging black holes? My thoughts in Cosmos Magazine.
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Chatting to ABC's The Drum about the water on Mars with the implications that has for our chance to explore it, and the importance of doing so for our future on Earth.
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On Earth, where there's water there's life so "follow the water" has been NASA's scientific guide in exploring Mars. That effort paid off today with the confirmation that liquid water is flowing on the surface right now. This has implications for both the possibility of life and habitability by human explorers.
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This Monday will see the last lunar eclipse of the tetrad (sequence of four). A beautiful sight as the moon turns 'blood' red that millions across Europe and America will enjoy. For some however they see it as the apocalypse. Unsurprisingly I am less pessimistic in my explanation on theconversation.
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A website tracks PhD supervisors to find your 'academic genealogy' and none-other than Stephen Hawking is my Great-Grandad! Meaningless but hilarious.
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Dark matter is invisible and able to pass through matter almost completely without notice. As you might imagine finding it is a challenge. By using telescopes, particle colliders and 'glowing' crystals at the bottom of goldmines we are honing in on this mysterious new particle.
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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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