Strange Attractor

Strange Attractor

By Strange AttractorTechnologyNatural Sciences
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Strange Attractor episodes

  • Episode 23: Strange Shorts #5
    What is Strange Shorts?

    An experiment in time management.

    Turns out, releasing a weekly podcast to our exacting standards, plus going out drinking with Elon (we can't be saving kittens all the time), is pretty time consuming. We also have some top secret new ideas for Strange Attractor, so we need to steal back some hours.

    So every other week we’re releasing a short episode with a few tasty treats. Stuff we forgot to cover in the big episodes, important corrections or cool facts we found while doing the show notes.

    Of course, if we’re contacted by any benevolent benefactors in the meantime (Hi Mr Gates!), we’ll quit our jobs and return to making weekly hour-long episodes.

    Let’s see how it goes. Tweet @strangepeas with any feedback or questions you’d like answered!

    16 min
  • Episode 22: Darling, the metre man's here!
    What are 'Standard International units'?
    • Where are you from? Send us a postcard! Strange Attractor, c/ PO Box 9, Fitzroy, VIC 3065, Australia
    • The seven Système International d'Unités (SI) base units: second, mole, metre, kilogram, kelvin, candela, ampere (National Physical Laboratory)
    • The seven Système International d'Unités (SI) base units: second, mole, metre, kilogram, kelvin, candela, ampere (Wikipedia)
    • The base units (Bureau International des Poids et Mesures)
    • The SI system kicked off after 1799 (The National Institute of Standards & Technology)
    • Moon Unit Zappa, child of Frank Zappa (Wikipedia)
    • The 'cubit' was the length from the tip of one's middle finger to the bottom of the elbow (Wikipedia)
    • History of length measurement: From cubits to lasers (National Physical Laboratory)
    • A history of all the weird units of measurement from ye olde ancient times (Encyclopaedia Britannica)
    • A history of the kilogram (National Physical Laboratory)
    • Standard time was introduced from the mid-1800s around the world with the coming of the railways (Wikipedia)
    • The Allegheny Observatory used to provide accurate time updates via telegraph in North America (Wikipedia)
    • A history of timekeeping devices (Wikipedia)
    • The second used to be defined as 1/86,400 of a day, but now it's "the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom" (Wikipedia)
    • A brief history of the second (The National Institute of Standards & Technology)
    • "A new optical clock ticks so consistently that if it had started at the dawn of the universe, it would have lost less than two minutes" (The Independent)
    • The strontium optical clock (OSA Publishing)
    • Where are atomic clocks? They're everywhere now (HyperPhysics, Georgia State University)
    • Clock synchronisation around the world is really important for computers & stuff (Wikipedia)
    • International Atomic Time tells us at which speed our clocks should tick (Time and Date)
    • What is needed to synchronise time across atomic clocks in the world? (Quora)
    • How to improve time accuracy on iPhone & Apple Watch (iPhone Tricks)
    • Security implications of the humble computer clock (Network World)
    • Who invented the second? Claudius Ptolemy around 150 C.E. (Reference)
    • Why is a minute divided into 60 seconds, an hour into 60 minutes, yet there are only 24 hours in a day? (Scientific American)
    • The book Johnny was talking about by Dava Sobel: 'Longitude: The true story of a lone genius who solved the greatest scientific problem of his time' (Wikipedia)
    • See John Harrison's original clocks in the museum at Greenwich, London (Royal Museums Greenwich)
    • We had the second for ages, then the kelvin was first defined in 1743, the kilogram & metre followed in 1793, the amp in 1881, the mole in 1900, & the candela in 1946, but they've been refined now (Wikipedia)
    • The metre was originally defined as one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole (Wikipedia)
    • The metre is now defined as the distance travelled by light in 1/299,792,458th of a second (Wikipedia)
    • A brief history of the metre (The National Institute of Standards & Technology)
    • The speed of light: 299,792,458 metres per second (Encyclopaedia Britannica)
    • People debating pool tolerance & why timing isn't more accurate in swimming (Reddit)
    • Meet the kilogram - a.k.a 'La Grande K' or 'Big K' (Wikipedia)
    • There did used to be someone who went around checking stuff - the 'city meter' - "checking both the weights of goods as sold & the accuracy of the metal weights used" (Hall Genealogy Website)
    • The International Prototype Kilogram (IPK) & its copies - Australia has one (Wikipedia)
    • If someone knocks a chunk off the IPK, the definition of a kilogram changes (Wikipedia)
    • A list of the prefixes for metric units of measurement: e.g. 'kilo' just means a thousand (The National Institute of Standards and Technology)
    • "The magnitude of many of the units comprising the SI system...are highly dependent upon the stability of a 137-year-old, golf-ball-sized cylinder of metal stored in a vault in France" (Wikipedia)
    • The new kilogram is due out in 2018 - stay tuned (The National Institute of Standards and Technology)
    • Redefining the kilogram: Mass, Planck & Einstein (The National Institute of Standards and Technology)
    • Redefining the kilogram: The 'Watt balance' (The National Institute of Standards and Technology)
    • After a fraught few years, experiments to redefine the kilogram have reached agreement (Nature)
    • What is a mole? Not the burrowing kind with small eyes (The National Institute of Standards & Technology)
    • Avogadro's number & the mole (Wikipedia)
    • What is a mole & why are moles used? (About Education, Chemistry)
    • Hello kelvin - this unit is 1/273.16 of the thermodynamic temperature of the triple point of water (The National Institute of Standards & Technology)
    • What is the triple point of water? (Wikipedia)
    • What is Celsius? (Wikipedia)
    • Deep breath: "The ampere is that constant current which, if maintained in two straight parallel conductors of infinite length, of negligible circular cross section, & placed 1 metre apart in a vacuum, would produce between these conductors a force equal to 2 x 10-7 newton per metre of length" (The National Institute of Standards & Technology)
    • What is the difference between voltage & current (amperes)? (The Charging Point)
    • Everything you wanted to know about charging your iPhone or iPad (Apple, Communities)
    • iPhone & iPad chargers appear to be around 1-2 amps according to this (Apple, Communities)
    • I believe you now Johnny: Turns out the coloured rings for electric toothbrushes really are to tell family members' brush heads apart (Electric Teeth)
    • Meet the candela, "the luminous intensity, in a given direction, of a source that emits monochromatic radiation of frequency 540 x 1,012 hertz & that has a radiant intensity in that direction of 1/683 watts per steradian" (The National Institute of Standards & Technology)
    • What is black body radiation? (Cosmos, Swinburne University)
    • We can use luminous intensity to measure how far away stars are (Science, How Stuff Works)
    • 'Intrinsic luminosity' is how bright something is & 'apparent brightness' is how bright it looks - knowing these details helps us measure how far away stars are (Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics, Penn State)
    • Stellar brightness (Department of Astronomy, The Ohio State University)
    • Brightness, luminosity & the magnitude scale (Department of Astronomy, Cornell University)
    • What is a standard candle? (Cosmos, Swinburne University)
    • (non SI) Units for quantities that describe biological effects (Bureau International des Poids et Mesures)
    • The future - proposed redefinition of SI base units (Wikipedia)
    • A more fundamental International System of units (Physics Today)
    • Corrections
      • Sorry Johnny, you got latitude & longitude mixed up - latitude is north-south, longitude is east-west (Encyclopaedia Britannica)
      • Cheeky review? (If we may be so bold)
        • It'd be amazing if you gave us a short review...it'll make us easier to find in iTunes: Click here for instructions. You're the best! We owe you a free hug and/or a glass of wine from our cellar
        • 1 hr
        • Episode 21: Strange Shorts #4
          What is Strange Shorts?

          An experiment in time management.

          Turns out, releasing a weekly podcast to our exacting standards, plus teaching conservation at the dolphin sanctuary, is pretty time consuming. We also have some top secret new ideas for Strange Attractor, so we need to steal back some hours.

          So every other week we’re releasing a short episode with a few tasty treats. Stuff we forgot to cover in the big episodes, important corrections or cool facts we found while doing the show notes.

          Of course, if we’re contacted by any benevolent benefactors in the meantime (Hi Elon!), we’ll quit our jobs and return to making weekly hour-long episodes.

          Let’s see how it goes. Tweet @strangepeas with any feedback or questions you’d like answered!

          18 min
        • Episode 20: Schrödinger's rabbit
          What is radioactivity?
          • Where are you from? Send us a postcard! Strange Attractor, c/ PO Box 9, Fitzroy, VIC 3065, Australia
          • What is radioactivity? Including alpha, beta & gamma decay, half-life, background radiation & health effects (Physics.org)
          • Types of radioactivity (Andy Darvill's Science Site)
          • The difference between radioactivity & radiation (The Conversation)
          • Cool chart that shows radiation doses for all sorts of things...including sleeping next to someone & eating a banana (xkcd)
          • Alpha, beta & gamma penetration (HyperPhysics, Georgia State University)
          • Alpha, beta & gamma penetration (BBC, GCSE)
          • Radioactive elements can 'decay' into other elements — here's the crazy decay chain for uranium-238 (Wikipedia)
          • There are 29 radioactive elements on Earth & thousands more radioactive isotopes (Wikipedia)
          • Some examples of radioactive isotopes or 'radionuclides' (Wikipedia)
          • Some 'nuclides' are stable, but most are radioactive & decay — here's a list of >900 with half-lives from <1 hour to >50 million years (Wikipedia)
          • The number 20 is a 'score' in ye olde talk (Wikipedia)
          • What is uranium? (Jefferson Lab)
          • What is plutonium? (Jefferson Lab)
          • What is an alpha particle? (Physics Department, Idaho State University)
          • During alpha decay, alpha particles (helium nuclei) are released from a radioactive atom's nucleus (Wikipedia)
          • The crazy strong nuclear forces involved (HyperPhysics, Georgia State University)
          • Conservation of energy — it can neither be lost nor gained (Encyclopaedia Britannica)
          • Energy equals mass: e=mc^2 & all that malarky (livescience)
          • Alpha particles are the least harmful in that they are large & can be easily stopped by e.g. paper; however, if ingested they're super dangerous (HyperPhysics, Georgia State University)
          • Radioactive elements are inherently unstable (Reference)
          • Sometimes you have to wait a loooooong time for a radioactive element to spit out a particle, like 4.5 billion years (Wikipedia)
          • Everything is radioactive in the periodic table from 83 (bismuth) onwards (Wikipedia)
          • Why is radioactive decay random & spontaneous? (I'm a scientist get me out of here)
          • Schrödinger's cat (IFL Science)
          • What is polonium? (Jefferson Lab)
          • What is alchemy? (livescience)
          • What is an isotope? (HyperPhysics, Georgia State University)
          • What is an isotope? (The Conversation)
          • Fact or fiction?: Lead can be turned into gold (Scientific American)
          • It sounds like isotopes can indeed have too few neutrons, as well as too many (The Naked Scientists)
          • What is a beta particle? (Idaho State University)
          • Beta radioactivity (HyperPhysics, Georgia State University)
          • An electron is ~1,800 times smaller than a proton (Jefferson Lab)
          • What is a gamma ray? (Idaho State University)
          • Gamma rays consist of high-energy photons (Wikipedia)
          • Gamma radioactivity (HyperPhysics, Georgia State University)
          • Ionising radiation "carries enough energy to free electrons from atoms or molecules, thereby ionising them" (Wikipedia)
          • How radiation sickness works (Science, How Stuff Works)
          • Too much ionising radiation is bad...but humans have evolved to be able to cope with a certain amount of background radiation (World Nuclear Association)
          • Natural background radiation (Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Association)
          • Bananas are a bit radioactive because they contain potassium: The banana equivalent dose (Wikipedia)
          • Still cleaning up: 30 years after the Chernobyl disaster (The Atlantic)
          • Flying and health: Cosmic radiation exposure for casual flyers and aircrew (Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency)
          • Health threats for astronauts from cosmic rays (Wikipedia)
          • How does lead absorb radiation like x-rays and gamma rays? (The Naked Scientists)
          • How do x-rays work? (Wonderopolis)
          • Radiation therapy employs x-rays, gamma rays & charged particles to kill cancer cells (National Cancer Institute)
          • The 'gamma knife' delivers precise beams of radiation to diseased brain tissue or tumour from a large number of directions (Imaginis)
          • Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans don't use radiation (National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering)
          • Computed tomography (CT) scans use ionising radiation (National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering)
          • Positron emission tomography (PET) scans use radiopharmaceuticals (National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering)
          • Alexander Litvinenko: Profile of murdered Russian spy — the guy who drank tea with polonium-210 in it (BBC News)
          • Want some polonium-209? It'll set you back USD$3,200 per microcurie (Jefferson Lab)
          • Sydney's Lucas Heights reactor to ramp up nuclear medicine production to meet world demand (ABC News)
          • Synchrotrons are extremely powerful sources of x-rays (European Synchrotron Radiation Facility)
          • The Australian synchrotron is in Clayton (Australian Synchrotron)
          • Ikea Springvale
          • How does a nuclear power station work? (Explain That Stuff!)
          • A discussion about whether Mark Watney from 'The Martian' had a high cancer risk after heating up his little car with a radioactive source (Quora)
          • How to protect astronauts from space radiation on Mars (NASA)
          • Radioactive waste management (World Nuclear Association)
          • Nuclear agencies are searching for the signs, language & solutions that will warn our descendants to stay away (FT Magazine)
          • Cockroaches have an exoskeleton so they probably wouldn't know what a skull & cross bones are (Wikipedia)
          • Thaw could release Cold War-era radioactive waste buried under Greenland's ice (ABC News)
          • Greeland is an autonomous country within the Danish realm (Wikipedia)
          • Nuclear power in space (Wikipedia)
          • How do nuclear submarines work? (Science, How Stuff Works)
          • The nuclear submarine that can remain underwater for 25 years (Wired)
          • 'Letters of last resort' are written by all new UK Prime Ministers, with instructions to submarine commanding officers on what to do if a nuclear strike wipes out the Government (Wikipedia)
          • Billionaires are buying submarines (The Daily Mail UK)
          • Can nuclear waste be neutralised by bacteria? (Engineering.com)
          • Iggy Pop is indeed alive & currently 69 (IggyPop.com)
          • Nirvana
          • David Bowie
          • Ziggy Stardust (Wikipedia)
          • Billy Joel
          • Kim Wilde
          • Atomic clocks & cesium...not radioactive even though they sound like it (HyperPhysics, Georgia State University)
          • Atomic clocks (Wikipedia)
          • Microwaves are not radioactive (Cancer Research UK)
          • Mobile phones are not radioactive — they emit electromagnetic radiation, which is very different, & they also don't emit enough energy to break the molecular bonds inside cells (Scientific American)
          • Mobile phones are not radioactive (Skeptic)
          • Here's the patch you stick on your phone that apparently saves you from the evil 'radiation' — decide for yourself (cellsafe)
          • Ionising (bad one) vs non-ionising radiation (Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency)
          • UV light is ionising radiation & can break chemical bonds in cells (livescience)
          • Suffering endures for 'Radium Girls' who painted watches in the '20s (Hartford Web Publishing)
          • The Bachelor, Australia (Channel Ten)
          • Corrections
            • An exact description of how the Americium-241 in smoke detectors works (Wikipedia)
            • Bismuth's half-life is estimated to be more than a billion times the age of the universe (Wikipedia)
            • Billy Idol isn't chubbsy at all...sorry Billy, you still got it (BillyIdol.net)
            • The metre was originally defined as one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator (not Paris) to the North Pole (Wikipedia)
            • One of the main dreams of alchemy was to turn lead (atomic number 82) into gold (atomic number 79), which would have meant losing protons, not gaining (livescience)
            • Cheeky review? (If we may be so bold)
              • It'd be amazing if you gave us a short review...it'll make us easier to find in iTunes: Click here for instructions. You're the best! We owe you a free hug and/or a glass of wine from our cellar
              • 1 hr 4 min
              • Episode 19: Strange Shorts #3, The Great Coloured Chocolate Experiment
                Field trip!

                We leave our cosy recording studio (lounge room) and brave the wilds (Fitzroy) in the name of science.

                On our maiden voyage we test the hypothesis — Is it possible to differentiate the colour of Smarties, M&M’s and Skittles under a yellow street light?

                Will we return triumphant, write up our conclusions and further human understanding of how light and colour interact? Or get speared and eaten by angry natives (hipsters)?

                Cheeky review? (If we may be so bold)
                • It'd be amazing if you gave us a short review...it'll make us easier to find in iTunes: Click here for instructions. You're the best! We owe you a free hug and/or a glass of wine from our cellar
                • 15 min
                • Episode 18: I've got evidence for a pea which is 2 centimetres wide
                  What is science?
                  • Where are you from? Send us a postcard! Strange Attractor, c/ PO Box 9, Fitzroy, VIC 3065, Australia
                  • Understanding science: A great site Lucy found that kinda explains it all (University of California, Berkeley)
                  • Tyler Durden (Wikipedia)
                  • What is science? (University of California, Berkeley)
                  • What is the scientific method? (University of California, Berkeley)
                  • Some opinions on what is theoretical vs practical science (The Straight Dope)
                  • What is pure mathematics? (Wikipedia)
                  • What is applied mathematics? (Wikipedia)
                  • Game of Thrones (Wikipedia)
                  • Science is focussed on the natural vs supernatural world - the 'natural' world means anything in the universe, including anything that humans make (University of California, Berkeley)
                  • ESP: What can science say? (University of California, Berkeley)
                  • UriGeller.com
                  • What is reproducibility? A key principle of the scientific method (Wikipedia)
                  • The role of replication in science (University of California, Berkeley)
                  • Dutch agency launches first grants programme dedicated to replication (Nature)
                  • Lithium, sodium & potassium react with water (YouTube)
                  • Magnesium ribbon burns bright white (YouTube)
                  • Newton's three laws of motion (NASA)
                  • Kepler's three laws for the motion of planets (HyperPhysics, Georgia State University)
                  • Newton's laws are amazing but don't work at very small scales, very high speeds or very strong gravitational fields (Wikipedia)
                  • How did NASA conclude that the general theory of relativity was not needed for Earth-moon flight path computation? (Stack Exchange, Space Exploration)
                  • What is general relativity? (Wikipedia)
                  • What is special relativity? (Wikipedia)
                  • Relativity has everyday applications, like GPS (Department of Astronomy, The Ohio State University)
                  • The Martian (Wikipedia)
                  • The discovery of genetics from Mendel to the human genome project is an example of a long-term group effort in science (CogWeb, UCLA)
                  • Gregor Mendel & the principles of inheritance (Nature)
                  • Interactive timeline on the history of genetics from Darwin to the 21st century (Wellcome Library)
                  • Aristotle & ancient Greek genetic theory (About Education)
                  • Gregor Mendel died in 1884 & his work wasn't taken seriously until after his death (Wikipedia)
                  • Charles Darwin saw an important platypus in Wallerawang, NSW, near where Lucy grew up (Lithgow.com)
                  • Einstein used to be a patent clerk in Switzerland (Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property)
                  • Fermat's Last Theorem: "The first successful proof was released in 1994 by Andrew Wiles, & formally published in 1995, after 358 years of effort by mathematicians" (Wikipedia)
                  • The Higgs boson discovery in the Large Hadron Collider (CERN)
                  • Australia's CSIRO coated many of the ultra-high-performance mirrors used in the LIGO to detect the first gravitational waves (CSIRO)
                  • The polar bear natural gas ad...sooo cosy (YouTube)
                  • Scientists are more creative than you might imagine (The Atlantic)
                  • Infographic: What is the cosmic microwave background? (Space.com)
                  • Stanley Kubrick (bio.)
                  • Crick, Watson, Wilkins, Franklin & DNA (Chemical Heritage Foundation)
                  • Sexism in science: Did Watson & Crick really steal Rosalind Franklin’s data? (The Guardian)
                  • Mendeleev apparently dreamt the periodic table! (Wikipedia)
                  • A decade of deep thinking: Princeton Center for Theoretical Science celebrates 10 years (Princeton)
                  • Australia's CSIRO overcame the problem of 'reverberation' to invent WiFi (CSIRO)
                  • Alas the patent for WiFi has now expired, but not before earning the CSIRO millions of dollars, which was reinvested into more sciencey stuff (The Australian Business Review)
                  • Fact or fiction?: NASA spent millions to develop a pen that would write in space, whereas the Soviet cosmonauts used a pencil (Scientific American)
                  • Science relies on evidence (University of California, Berkeley)
                  • The dark side of Linus Pauling's legacy: Debating the benefits of vitamin C (Quackwatch)
                  • DNA was discovered in 1869 & its structure presented in 1953 (History)
                  • James Watson is still alive (Wikipedia)
                  • Francis Crick died in 2004 (Wikipedia)
                  • Stanford Professor Andrei Linde celebrates physics breakthrough (YouTube)
                  • Why Einstein was wrong about being wrong (Phys.org)
                  • Corrections
                    • Lucy meant Apollo 13 not Apollo 11 when talking about movies where stuff went wrong in space (Wikipedia)
                    • Gregor Mendel published his main pea results in the 1860s, not 1870s (Wikipedia)
                    • Charles Darwin's Beagle voyage lasted 5 years, not 8 (Wikipedia)
                    • Sir Isaac Newton said the quote about "standing on the shoulders of giants", not Galileo (BBC)
                    • Peter Higgs thought up the boson concept after a failed camping trip in the 1960s, not 1950s (Wikipedia)
                    • Sorry Lucy, NASA didn't invent Velcro, some Swiss guy did in the 1940s...in fairness, Lucy heard this from a real astronaut - who wouldn't believe an astronaut? (NASA)
                    • "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" is attributed to Carl Sagan, not Richard Feynman (Rational Wiki)
                    • Cheeky review? (If we may be so bold)
                      • It'd be amazing if you gave us a short review...it'll make us easier to find in iTunes: Click here for instructions. You're the best! We owe you a free hug and/or a glass of wine from our cellar
                      • 58 min
                      • Episode 17: Strange Shorts #2
                        What is Strange Shorts?

                        An experiment in time management.

                        Turns out, releasing a weekly podcast to our exacting standards, plus volunteering at the orphanage, is pretty time consuming. We also have some top secret new ideas for Strange Attractor, so we need to steal back some hours.

                        So every other week we’re releasing a short episode with a few tasty treats. Stuff we forgot to cover in the big episodes, important corrections or cool facts we found while doing the show notes.

                        Of course, if we’re contacted by any benevolent benefactors in the meantime (Hi Elon!), we’ll quit our jobs and return to making weekly hour-long episodes.

                        Let’s see how it goes. Tweet @strangepeas with any feedback or questions you’d like answered!

                        16 min
                      • Episode 16: Kelvin the chicken
                        Solids, liquids, gases & how they transform
                        • The 'classical' states of matter (solid, liquid, gas, plasma) "are distinguished by changes in specific heat capacity, pressure & temperature" (Wikipedia)
                        • Pic: Transitions between the four fundamental states of matter - this is mostly what Johnny is talking about (Wikipedia)
                        • There's LOADS of other states of matter (modern & high-energy), but you don't see them lying around, e.g. they're made in stars or particle accelerators (Wikipedia)
                        • A 'Bose-Einstein condensate' is an example of a modern state of matter (Encyclopaedia Britannica)
                        • What is a solid? (Wikipedia)
                        • What is a liquid? (Wikipedia)
                        • What is a gas? (Wikipedia)
                        • What is plasma? (Wikipedia)
                        • What is steam? (Wikipedia)
                        • What is vapour? (Wikipedia)
                        • What is a cloud? A mass of water droplets, ice crystals, or a mix of both, suspended in the air (Encyclopaedia Britannica)
                        • The anatomy of a rain drop (Precipitation Education, NASA)
                        • The different states of matter have different properties (Purdue Science, Department of Chemistry)
                        • The different states of matter have different properties (Bitesize, BBC)
                        • State changes usually involve heating, cooling or changes in pressure (Bitesize, BBC)
                        • What is freezing or solidification? The point where any liquid turns into a solid, not just water (Wikipedia)
                        • What is boiling? (ChemWiki, UC Davis)
                        • The Fahrenheit, Kelvin & Celsius temperature scales (Department of Physics, University of Oregon)
                        • What is melting point? (Wikipedia)
                        • Some famous temperatures in Celsius, Kelvin & Fahrenheit (Wikipedia)
                        • The Fahrenheit scale (Wikipedia)
                        • The Kelvin scale (Wikipedia)
                        • What is absolute zero? (Encyclopaedia Britannica)
                        • The journey to the other side of absolute zero (IFL Science)
                        • Mercury melts at -38.87 & boils at 356.58 degrees Celsius (ChemicalElements.com)
                        • What does frozen mercury look like? (TauFlederMaus, YouTube)
                        • Mercury in the food chain (Government of Canada)
                        • Quicksilver is another name for mercury (Wikipedia)
                        • Freezing a Koosh ball in liquid nitrogen (Jefferson Lab, YouTube)
                        • Eau-Di-Vie offers martinis cooled by liquid nitrogen (Eau-Di-Vie)
                        • Gelato flash frozen by liquid nitrogen (N2 Extreme Gelato)
                        • Condensation means going backwards from gas to liquid (Wikipedia)
                        • How is lava created? (Wonderopolis)
                        • Sublimation means going straight from a solid to a gas (Wikipedia)
                        • Snow & ice can 'sublime' (Wikipedia)
                        • Gif: Atoms/molecules in solids (touching, can't move), liquids (touching, can move), gases (not touching, moving) (Purdue Science, Department of Chemistry)
                        • Pic: Atoms/molecules in solids (touching, can't move), liquids (touching, can move), gases (not touching, moving) (Bitesize, BBC)
                        • CarlCox.com
                        • Glastonbury Festival
                        • What is gas diffusion & effusion? (Boundless)
                        • Energy, vibrations & bonding during phase changes (Zona Land Education)
                        • What is a joule? (Wikipedia)
                        • From zeptojoules to yottajoules: Definitions of what different amounts of joules do (Wikipedia)
                        • What is a calorie? (Wikipedia)
                        • Water's temperature curve is linear except at the phase changes from ice to liquid to gas (Boundless)
                        • Phase changes & energy conservation: Temperature increases linearly until melting & boiling points (Boundless)
                        • A 'phase' of matter is a "region of space throughout which all physical properties of a material are essentially uniform" (Wikipedia)
                        • A 'phase' of matter is different to a 'state' of matter: A system can contain several phases of the same state of matter (Wikipedia)
                        • The law of conservation of energy in simple terms (Explain That Stuff!)
                        • When you do a reverse phase change, e.g. liquid to solid, energy is released (Boundless)
                        • What is entropy? (Science 2.0)
                        • Entropy is simple - if we avoid the briar patches! (Frank L. Lambert, Professor Emeritus, Chemistry)
                        • "In solids, atoms are bonded fairly firmly together, though they do move about a bit" (Explain That Stuff!)
                        • Electrons can travel in a solid even if the atoms can't (e.g. in conductors) (HyperPhysics, Georgia State University)
                        • Conductors, insulators & electron flow: Appears to support Johnny's electricity story about "holes moving down the wire at walking pace" (All About Circuits)
                        • Electrons only move about 1.2 cm per minute in standard home copper wire (Department of Physics, Union University)
                        • What is an electron hole?
                        • Debating how many molecules make a droplet (Physics Forums)
                        • Debating how steam is invisible vs water vapour (The Naked Scientists)
                        • Why is a steam burn more damaging than a burn with boiling water of the same temperature? (UCSB Science Line)
                        • The 'Mpemba' effect: In some circumstances warmer water may freeze faster than colder water (Wikipedia)
                        • Does hot water freeze faster than cold water? (livescience)
                        • The phase diagram for water is different than for other substances (chemguide)
                        • The phase diagram for water is different than for other substances (Chem Wiki)
                        • Water is weird: Its solid is less dense than its liquid - i.e. ice floats in liquid water - other stuff doesn't do this (Wikipedia)
                        • Water is weird: Its solid is less dense than its liquid - i.e. ice floats in liquid water - other stuff doesn't do this (Boundless)
                        • Clip: What if ice didn't float? Explained by chemist Martyn Poliakoff (The Huffington Post)
                        • What is liquefaction? (Wikipedia)
                        • Clip: The amazing Richard Feynman talks magnets (nebulajr, YouTube)
                        • How does a glacier move? It sounds like ice under pressure creating lubricating melt water does play a role (Geology.com)
                        • Johnny's heavy egg vs light jelly bean shaking experiment sounds legit (APS Physics)
                        • 'Granular convection' & the Brazil Nut Effect: Why the biggest nuts rise to the top (io9)
                        • What is vaping? (Vaper Soul)
                        • The 1755 Lisbon earthquake (Wikipedia)
                        • What was left of Lisbon was demolished & rebuilt according to modern urban design at the time (Wikipedia)
                        • The rebuilding of Lisbon involved one of the first uses of pre-fabricated buildings (History)
                        • The Anglo-Portugese treaty dates back to the 1300s...until Brexit? (Wikipedia)
                        • Quicksand science: Why it traps & how to escape (National Geographic)
                        • What is a non-Newtonian fluid? Examples include honey, cream & tomato sauce (Science Learning Hub)
                        • What is pitch? (Wikipedia)
                        • The pitch drop experiment: Watch for the tenth drop live! (The University of Queensland)
                        • The ‘glass is a liquid’ myth has finally been destroyed (io9)
                        • What is steampunk? (The Huffington Post)
                        • NealStephenson.com
                        • Jumpin' Jack Flash is a gas, gas, gas (Menmo Music Station, YouTube)
                        • The Leidenfrost effect: Not really related to our chat, just cool - it's why balls of water zip around on a hot surface (Wikipedia)
                        • Corrections
                          • Water vapour is not steam: "Vapour refers to a gas phase at a temperature where the same substance can also exist in the liquid or solid state, below the critical temperature of the substance", "A liquid or solid does not have to boil to release a vapour" (Wikipedia)
                          • Debating the finer points between vapour, steam & gas (Quora)
                          • Johnny's definition of Celsius was used until 1954. The current version is "the unit 'degree Celsius' & the Celsius scale are currently defined by two different temperatures: absolute zero, & the triple point of VSMOW (specially purified water)" (Wikipedia)
                          • Probably best not to swirl your finger around in mercury kids, just in case (WHO)
                          • Nitrogen gas makes up 78% of our atmosphere, not 74% (Wikipedia)
                          • Nitrogen melts at -209.9 & boils at -195.8 degrees Celsius (ChemicalElements.com)
                          • Sorry Johnny, Ashford & Simpson sang Solid As A Rock, not Tina Turner (Fox News Entertainment)
                          • Clarifying Johnny's definitions of solid, liquid & gas by volume & shape (Glen Research Center, NASA)
                          • It's 1 calorie that raises 1cm^3 by 1 degree Celsius at 1 atmosphere, not 1 joule. However, this is an older definition & a calorie is now defined in joules (Encyclopaedia Britannica)
                          • There appears to be conjecture that entropy should be associated with 'randomness'...but it's over my head so I'll leave it there for now (Science 2.0)
                          • Sorry Johnny, there may be a new theory about why ice is slippery & how ice skating works - frictional heating - but the jury is still out (Wikipedia)
                          • Cheeky review? (If we may be so bold)
                            • It'd be amazing if you gave us a short review...it'll make us easier to find in iTunes: Click here for instructions. You're the best! We owe you a free hug and/or a glass of wine from our cellar
                            • 1 hr
                            • Episode 15: Strange Shorts #1
                              What is Strange Shorts?

                              An experiment in time management.

                              Turns out, releasing a weekly podcast to our exacting standards, plus working in the salt mines, is pretty time consuming. We also have some top secret new ideas for Strange Attractor, so we need to steal back some hours.

                              So every other week we’re releasing a short episode with a few tasty treats. Stuff we forgot to cover in the big episodes, important corrections or cool facts we found while doing the show notes.

                              Of course, if we’re contacted by any benevolent benefactors in the meantime (Hi Elon!), we’ll quit our jobs and return to making weekly hour-long episodes.

                              Let’s see how it goes. Tweet @strangepeas with any feedback or questions you’d like answered!

                              18 min
                            • Episode 14: In the first couple of seconds it just went mental
                              How was the universe made? Briefly.
                              • “Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: You are all stardust”, Prof. Laurence Krauss (The School of Life, Vimeo)
                              • Pic: BANG! Protons formed after the first millionth of a second; fusion ended after 3 minutes (Wikipedia)
                              • Chronology of the universe (Wikipedia)
                              • The Big Bang theory (ESA Kids)
                              • The Big Bang theory (GCSE, BBC)
                              • Everything in the universe came out of the Big Bang (Why-Sci)
                              • The initial singularity is proposed to have contained all the mass & spacetime of the universe...then bang! (Wikipedia)
                              • So what was there before the Big Bang?...There's no such thing as nothing (Jon Kaufman)
                              • What is nothing? Physics debate (livescience)
                              • Why is there something rather than nothing? (BBC)
                              • The beginning of time (Prof. Stephen Hawking)
                              • A mathematical proof that the universe could have formed spontaneously from nothing (The Physics arXiv Blog)
                              • Infographic: What is the cosmic microwave background? (Space.com)
                              • Protons are made of quarks (Wikipedia)
                              • Quark soup: Heavy ions & quark-gluon plasma (CERN)
                              • Matter/antimatter asymmetry: The dregs of the universe from whence we came (CERN)
                              • Antiprotons & protons (Encyclopaedia Britannica)
                              • After ~380,000 years, the universe starts to cool after expanding & also becomes transparent as photons of light can now travel around (Wikipedia)
                              • Lego (Lego Australia)
                              • Nothing much happened for a while, then stars & quasars started to form about ~150 million to 1 billion years after the Big Bang (Wikipedia)
                              • Star formation (University of Oregon)
                              • What are stars made of? (Qualitative Reasoning Group, Northwestern University)
                              • How are planets formed? (Phys.org)
                              • What makes a planet? (Jean-Luc Margot, UCLA)
                              • The James Webb space telescope will help us understand the birth of stars & protoplanetary systems (JWST, NASA)
                              • How do scientists measure the temperature of the universe? (Science Alert)
                              • Astronomers measure the temperature of the universe 7.2 billion years ago (Sci Tech Daily)
                              • "The CMB (cosmic microwave background) is a snapshot of the oldest light in our universe, imprinted on the sky when the universe was just 380,000 years old. It shows tiny temperature fluctuations that correspond to regions of slightly different densities, representing the seeds of all future structure: the stars & galaxies of today" (Wikipedia)
                              • Big Bang nucleosynthesis: Cooking up the first light elements (Einstein Online)
                              • Why did the universe start off with hydrogen, helium & not much else? (Starts with a bang!)
                              • The first stars in the universe: A comprehensive article by two guys who actually figured this stuff out (Scientific American)
                              • Hydrogen becomes a solid below 14.01 Kelvin (Wikipedia)
                              • "The first generation of stars lit up 560 million years after the Big Bang" (Wikipedia)
                              • What is E = mc^2 in simple terms (American Museum of Natural History)
                              • When was dust invented? 12.5 billion years ago! Along with gas, it helped form the early galaxies (ABC Australia)
                              • Stars are element-making factories that use a process called 'stellar nucleosynthesis' (Wikipedia)
                              • "We are all star dust": When a star dies all the stuff in it drifts across the universe & kicks things off elsewhere (About, Education)
                              • When did the first stars form? (Starchild, NASA)
                              • The horse head nebula: One of the beautiful dust clouds that are stellar nurseries (NASA)
                              • Once you've got the right ingredients, star formation can be triggered in various ways (Wikipedia)
                              • Types of stars (Enchanted Learning)
                              • Hertzsprung-Russell diagrams show certain properties of stars (Australia Telescope National Facility, CSIRO)
                              • Interactive Hertzsprung-Russell diagram (Las Cumbres Observatory)
                              • What are 'main sequence' stars? Most stars in our galaxy are like this, including the Sun (Australia Telescope National Facility, CSIRO)
                              • What is a red giant? Our Sun will become one eventually (Space.com)
                              • What is a brown dwarf? Hint: It's not Thorin Oakenshield at the beach, it's a transition between a star & a giant gas planet (Space.com)
                              • Accretion: The gas & dust left over from the Sun's formation clumped together over millions of years to form planets (Wikipedia)
                              • Our Sun's lifecycle began ~4.5 billion years ago & has ~4.5 to 5.5 billion to go (Universe Today)
                              • What makes a planet different from a star? (UCSB ScienceLine)
                              • Nuclear fission confirmed as source of more than half of Earth's heat (Scientific American)
                              • Ancient cosmic smack-up may have made Earth’s molten core (National Geographic)
                              • Gravitational tides: Planets stretch & squash moons & vice versa (Department of Astronomy, Case Western Reserve University)
                              • Tidal friction: The moon pushes & pulls Earth in different directions, deforming & warming the planet (HyperPhysics, Georgia State University)
                              • Formation & evolution of the solar system (Wikpedia)
                              • The Oort cloud: A theoretical shell of icy objects in the outermost reaches of the solar system (Space Facts)
                              • The Kuiper belt: Contains remnants of the solar system's formation (Space Facts)
                              • There used to be many 'planetary embryos', which then gravitationally interacted & collided to form the four terrestrial planets we know today (Wikipedia)
                              • Osmos: "Enter the Darwinian world of a galactic mote", Apple design award & iPad game of the year (iTunes)
                              • What is the solar system? Including a description of the differences between rocky & gassy planets (HubbleSite)
                              • Facts about our solar system's planets, in order (Space.com)
                              • Why are planets closer to the Sun more dense? (Space Answers)
                              • Pic: The planets in order, Mars is the last rocky planet (Pics About Space)
                              • Here's what the Sun looks like from every planet in our solar system (IFL Science)
                              • Debating the name of our solar system (Quora)
                              • NASA scientist, Jen Heldmann, describes how Earth’s moon was formed (SERVI, NASA)
                              • How the moon formed: Violent cosmic crash theory gets double boost (Space.com)
                              • Bogotá is 2,640 metres above sea level (Wikipedia)
                              • Venus has a runaway greenhouse effect (Wikipedia)
                              • Mercury is hot & hard (Space.com)
                              • New evidence suggests Mars had tectonic activity long ago (IFL Science)
                              • Mars has water ice at its poles, the highest mountain in the solar system & two tiny moons, Phobos & Deimos (Space.com)
                              • As our Sun dies, what will happen to the planets, especially our own? (The New York Times)
                              • What will happen to our solar system after the Sun dies? (Quora)
                              • Will the Sun have enough gravity to keep the planets in orbit after it becomes a white dwarf? (Quora)
                              • Book: Diaspora by Greg Egan (Wikipedia)
                              • Our Sun will eventually become a white dwarf, not a black hole (Black Hole Encyclopaedia)
                              • What is a galaxy? (Space Place, NASA)
                              • What is a galaxy? (HubbleSite)
                              • How is a galaxy formed? (Wikipedia)
                              • What are fractals? (Fractal Foundation)
                              • A supercluster is a group of galaxies (Wikipedia)
                              • The nearest superclusters (NASA)
                              • Our galaxy, the Milky Way, will probably collide & merge with Andromeda, forming 'Milkdromeda' (Futurism)
                              • Why are bubbles round? (UCSB ScienceLine)
                              • Neil deGrasse Tyson explains why galaxies & solar systems form disks - apparently our galaxy is as flat as a crepe! (Star Talk Radio, YouTube)
                              • Spiral galaxy formation (Cosmos, Swinburne University)
                              • What is a supermassive black hole? (Wikipedia)
                              • Talking mattresses in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker Wikia)
                              • Our night sky as the Milky Way & Andromeda galaxies merge (EarthSky)
                              • The 'heat death' of the universe (Wikipedia)
                              • Deliveroo
                              • Want more? The Infinite Monkey Cage podcast: The recipe to build a universe (Overcast)
                              • Super cool animation to finish: Warning, this will make you feel VERY SMALL (Kurzgesagt, Devour)
                              • Corrections
                                • Timeline of the Big Bang: Good summary if you want to know the specifics of what happened when, vs Johnny's rather loose estimates (The Physics of the Universe)
                                • Clarifying the definition of plasma: "A plasma can be created by heating a gas or subjecting it to a strong electromagnetic field, this decreases or increases the number of electrons, creating positive or negative ions, & is accompanied by the dissociation of molecular bonds, if present" (Wikipedia)
                                • When matter meets antimatter pure energy is released (CERN)
                                • It took ~380,000 years for electrons to be trapped in orbits around nuclei, forming the first atoms, not 1 million years (CERN)
                                • The core of a star like our Sun consists of gas in the 'plasmic state', no solid hydrogen (Wikipedia)
                                • The Sun is 865,000 miles across, not 5,000 miles (Space.com)
                                • New evidence may suggest Mars had tectonic activity (IFL Science)
                                • There appears to be conjecture about whether superclusters are bound by gravity (Wikipedia)
                                • Cheeky review? (If we may be so bold)
                                  • It'd be amazing if you gave us a short review...it'll make us easier to find in iTunes: Click here for instructions. You're the best! We owe you a free hug and/or a glass of wine from our cellar
                                  • 1 hr 9 min

                                  About Strange Attractor

                                  From the publisher's feed

                                  An unscripted conversation between Johnny Noble and Lucy Butcher about sciencey stuff over a wine/s/s/s. And the occasional wasabi pea.