Great Moments In Science

Who’d’ve thought that one of the most sober animals is the humble hamster. They love alcohol but it doesn’t affect them. And who’d’ve thought that there’s a way to measure inebriation levels in animals - it’s called the Wobbling Scale – but hamsters NEVER wobble.

The average recommendation is to wash your bed sheets at least every two weeks. This is because every day you shed a mix of dead skin cells, sweat, germs, and body oils.. Sometimes you can delay bed sheet washing, it all depends on what kind of things you get up to in bed.

Very long and very widebut only a few kilometres thick, atmospheric rivers carry water from the tropics towards the poles – and they shift huge amounts of heat as well. A few decades ago, atmospheric rivers hit West Antarctica and collapsed two massive ice shelves.

A discovery in weather in the 1990s was the Atmospheric River. They've been around for pretty much ever though - one of them bankrupted California in 1862, and another dumped lots and lots of water onto Brisbane, in February 2022.

Whales are the giants of the marine realm, and here's why they get that way.This episode was originally published in May 2018

The star Earendel came into existence a long time ago, and is now famous as the most distant single star that astronomers have been able to obtain an image of.

The Koran, the Bible, the Sanskrit Mahabharata, and the Greek Illiad all mention plagues of locusts, and they're seen as carvings in ancient Egyptian tombs. Large numbers of locust could have come about because, in certain circumstances, grasshoppers metamorphose—into locusts.

The drug ivermectin is really good for treating worms; unfortunately it was falsely promoted as a COVID cure due to data errors, drug trial anomalies, or insufficient publication review.

There are many cases of drugs being repurposed once a new aspect of them is discovered—their new use is often very beneficial. One such drug is ivermectin. It works well against various parasitic infections. It does not work against COVID.

Ball games were happening 3,500 years ago, and ever since then we’ve bounced and batted in all sorts of fun ways. We're especially interested in the mechanics of a ball curving as it travels through the air—which happens in swing bowling.

At Australia's Antarctic base they do lots of cool science stuff, and aim to create as little waste as possible—including the toilets. There's actually a toilet known as the 'Fire Breathing Dragon'—so more exciting than its official name of Electric Incinerating Toilet.

Wood has a loads of potential—from it we can make semi-conductors, batteries, steel, concrete, even plastics. It does need a lot of processing but we already do that with materials like steel, glass and concrete.

We're now quite familiar with terms like 'herd immunity' and 'epidemic', and that when separate groups of people—with separate germs—meet for the very first time, things can turn out badly. If you have never been exposed to a specific germ you won't be primed for protection against it.

When digging the compost pile into the garden, Dr Karl noticed a ball of entangled shape-shifting worms. You might think 'yuck'—but there's a 'wow' factor because some animal groupings can generate intelligence, giving the group an advantage over solitary individuals.

The final piece about why the 100 million or so black holes in our Milky Way galaxy are missing.

More on the almost-emptiness that is black holes. Because they're invisible, they're difficult to find—but sometimes get discovered because they give off X-rays.

Even though it sounds totally crazy, astronomers are very confident that black holes exist. Our galazy is really old, it should carry at least 100 million black holes but we’ve found only a couple of dozen of them.

There's really no 'genteel' way to say it, this week we're... passing wind. But even though it's totally natural, it can be embarrassing.

It used to be thought that a pathogen (or germ) and its host develop in a 'mutually benign relationship'—this was called the 'Law of Declining Virulence'. If the common cold killed us there would be less hosts and the virus would decrease. So the common cold virus mutated to become less lethal, and more common. The Law of Declining Virulence was debunked in the 1980s, and the pathogen/host relationship is actually pretty complicated.

Power steering on a car involves various rods of steel moving relative to one another. How the rods connect is why mechanics are dealing with an unexpected problem.

Thanks to some fuzzy-looking photos, bat echolocation just got more amazing.This program was originally published on 3 September 2019

Why do some people get headaches from eating ice-cream or drinking something very cold.This program was originally published on 19 February 2019

It's not just their ability to run 42 kilometres that separates marathon runners from the rest of us. They've got a secret energy source in their gut.This program was originally published on 5 November 2019

Combustion engines are marvels of engineering and power, but will they feature in the cars of the future?This program was originally published on 8 October 2019

When a balloon pops, sometimes it leaves lots of small fragments of rubber, and sometimes it leaves just a couple of larger pieces. What's going on?This program was originally published on 14 May 2019

Some birds, especially parrots, songbirds and the entire crow family, are surprisingly intelligent - and not just compared with other birds.

Bird poo is usually coloured white—because of the way birds excrete excess nitrogen. But the poo can sometimes be a different colour—because of their diet. Creatures have evolved three main ways of getting rid of excess nitrogen.

Australia is very sunny, and because of that it's a skin cancer hotspot. UV light triggers skin cancer but sunscreen blocks UV light—so is it better to apply more? Not really—and do not mix your sunscreens because there are two different types.

Even in this day and age there are people who think that the earth is flat. The educated people of ancient Greece - about two and a half thousand years ago - had already figured out that the Earth was round. They observed the data that was right in front of them.

When diving to very great depths the body has mechanisms to cope - on the way down, and then back to the surface.

Free diving has a current world record of around 214 m straight down—that's greater than the height of 50-storey building. For thousands of years free divers would collect salvage from shipwrecks to build underwater barricades against invaders.

The benefits of natural foods have always been a big deal. And there really is a tiny nugget of truth in the proclamations—but it's been greatly hyped

We’ve been flying planes with engines for over a century, so have a guess at the record for the longest duration of powered flight - more than two months! And it was set more than half a century ago.

Further intel on a mistruth being spread by social media - that COVID-19 vaccines can cause both male and female infertility. With males, the COVID disease can cause infertility, the COVID vaccines do not. The false claim about female infertility was that the vaccine would make the woman’s own immune system attack her natural proteins. No studies have proved this claim.

We have several pretty good COVID-19 vaccines. They have enormously reduced the risks against getting sick, or dying from COVID. So why are people saying “no” to COVID vaccines? It seems the main reason for avoiding the very protective vaccines is wave after wave of misinformation and dis-information in social media. Let's make some aspects easier to understand.

Science is meant to be about data and logic, and yet that doesn't always stop it from being discriminatory. Women in science don't always get the recognition they deserve, but they have made extraordinary contributions.

If an equinox is truly equal, it should fall on a day when there's just as much darkness as there is daylight. But that's not always exactly the case, so what's going on?

What happens when two stars eat each other to death? And does one get the last laugh in this tale of cosmic cannibalism?

Ever wondered how in Western gunfights, the person who is first to draw their gun is the first to get shot? It turns out that under threat, our muscles work faster than normal.

Our long-held beliefs about metabolism - you know that thing supposedly responsible for making you put on weight with age - might be wrong.

For most of us, travelling by plane means boarding and buckling in. But Wing Walkers don't stop there - they venture outside of the plane too.

Can you tell someone is sick just by looking at them? It turns out many of us can.

There are mysteries all around us, but here's one that might just be the next Big Breakthrough of Physics! The Muon Magnetic Anomaly.

There are mysteries all around us, but here's one that might just be the next Big Breakthrough of Physics! The Muon Magnetic Anomaly.

There are mysteries all around us, but here's one that might just be the next Big Breakthrough of Physics! The Muon Magnetic Anomaly.

Is it true that Big Agriculture has totally ruined our soil, and used up practically all of its goodness, so there’s barely any nutrition left in our food? Well, no - but like all good myths, there is a small grain of truth.

There's a lot of claims out there about the benefits of taking collagen supplements. Last week we spoke about the structure of collagen and what it does in the body. So what happens when you eat or drink it as a supplement?

One thing that we are quite confident about is that collagen is part-and-parcel of having healthy and glowing skin. But what about the claim that if you eat or drink it, the molecules will magically make their way to exactly where they are needed to smooth out that wrinkle on your face?

Astronomers have measured something amazing – a black hole eating a neutron star. In fact, they found this happening twice in just 10 days.We have found dozens of black holes smashing into each other, and we’ve found a handful neutron stars smashing into each other, but a black hole eating a neutron star – well that’s new!

What creature has survived five mass extinctions, can do just as well in space as on earth, withstand temperatures as hot and cold as you can imagine and perform show-stopping feats of survival? The mighty water bear!