Dr. Helen Maynard Casley, (one of) THE principal scientists at ANSTO (Australia's Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation), sets Kovi's and Benjamin's brains alight as she talks about working on the Wombat (not an acronym - Australians just like naming things after animals). Wombat is a high intensity neutron diffractometer that Dr. Helen uses to just scoop some neutrons out of a working nuclear reactor. You know, for kicks! You'd think that line of work would make someone glow, but not so! The reason she glows - or glowed - was when she helped set the Guinness World Record for longest glow necklace!

Expansion Of The Nerdiverse : Guest : Dr. Blitz

Dr. Blitz, Kovi and Benjamin showed up in matching shirts, glasses and microphones to talk about all things Star Trek, the path Dr. Blitz took from a young age to become the scientist he is today, science communication, the expansion of the universe, spacetime, and a bunch of things black holes do that you probably didn't know they did. So sit back, relax, and enjoy our sixty-seventh episode.

Season 7 Episode 7 of The Nerd & The Scientist is now available wherever you get your podcasts.

https://rss.com/podcasts/thenerdandthescientist/

#science #scicomm #podcast #nerd #scientist #drblitz @blitzphd #blackholes #spacetime #desitterblackhole #kerrdesitterblackhole #mathematics #asymptotical #flerf #sixseven #sixtyseven #episode67

Multidisciplinary biologist and bee expert Sarah Aamidor returns for part two - or should we say Part Bee - of her deep dive conversation with Kovi and Benjamin about some of the weirdest things bees do. Yes, in order to conduct her studies on bees she had to kill a few bees - but she didn't kill nearly as many bees as bees kill. Nor did she torture any bees - unlike bees who regularly torture bees. And she definitely didn't rip off many bees'... um... bits and pieces... The point is the queen bee rips off some bees' bits but Sarah didn't, is what we're saying.

Zap! Zorp! Zew! This week's guest is Cameron Jones! Boom! Fweet! Bzzzt! Join us as he explains his work in free space optics communicaton! Zzzzap! Vreeee! Pew! Pew! Which means he uses lasers to talk to spacecraft! Choonk! Fwom! Thoom! We talk about kinds of lasers, wavelengths, and the difference between communication lasers and military lasers! K-shoom! Shzzak! And Kovi and Benjamin really test Cameron's laser-knowledge as they put him through the show's first ever laser game! Fzaaap! Krzzzzzzt!

Just in case you missed her wildly popular TikToks, or you missed her YouTube channel, or you missed her TED Talks, or you missed her creating a space telescope from scratch, or you didn't get your hands on her new book, Weird universe, now you can listen Dr. Erika Hamden chatting with Kovi and Benjamin about all things astrophysics and radio-astronomy! ...and, seriously, get that book!

This week, Kovi and Benjamin take a breather before drinking from the firehose of science guests lining up to chat with them. Tune in as they dive into spacecraft, telescopes, and observatories named after scientists. “Hubble the satellite. Hubble the telescope. Hubble the flamethrower! …the kids love this one.”

Our favorite talking ass, Daniel Orvomaa, is back for round two! He joins Kovi and Benjamin in a very unstructured conversation about bad science, bad science reporting, pseudo science, and superpesis - Finland's version of baseball. It's a long one this time, so grab some snacks and settle in for some science-fueled randomness.

I'm bringing home a baby bumblebee... Won’t my mommy be so proud of me? I’m bringing home a baby bumblebee... OMG! Bees are really, really WEIRD!!!! That's not how that nursery rhyme is usually sung, but it might as well be because as Kovi and Benjamin learned from this week's guest - biologist Sarah Aamidor - bees are really, really weird!

There are few things as iconic on an astronaut's flight suit as their mission patch—a singular piece of art that encapsulates everything about the mission: who’s going, what country they’re from, what vehicle they’re riding, where they’re headed, and what they plan to do when they get there.

From space shuttles to space stations, from space telescopes to asteroids, this week’s guest is the man who designed hundreds of them—Tim Gagnon.

From the very first sketch he submitted as a kid, to the dozens that actually flew to space, to the one he finally made with his own name on it for his analog astronaut mission in Utah, Kovi and Benjamin close out Season 6 of their show by asking the most important question of all:

What would a mission patch look like for their show, where the mascot is a rubber duck?

Sure this episode starts with talk about sausages, but how else does one segue their conversation to talking about salp? And you need to talk about salp to talk about jellyfish, right? Which, of course, is the best way to talk about crabification. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! Whales can't poop under pressure - the pressure achieved in great depths of water, not the pressure of pooping in front of a crowd. This week's guest, the Guernsey Scientist herself, marine biologist and conservationist, Elizabeth Sweet, takes Kovi and Benjamin on a heck of a ride as she shares her story from finding her way into science to her myriad of science communication projects today.