Belinda Smith

speaker

2,583 appearances 26 recordings 4 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 18 Sep

Belinda Smith’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 26 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 6.

Appearances

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The Science Show · Celebrating David Attenborough’s 100th birthday and a new way of making vaccines · 8 May 2026 podcast

So, okay.

And this is the result of these really massive differences in temperature in the atmosphere.

Yes.

And they're causing these really strong high-pressure and low-pressure systems, and that pushes the atmosphere from the high-pressure to the low-pressure systems, causing these really strong winds.

And so do they normally travel around the equator?

Do we see those sort of equatorial belts more often than other things?

So I'm guessing that we don't have weather stations on these exoplanets.

So how do you know the wind speed on these ultra hot Jupiters, which are, you know, tens, hundreds, maybe thousands of light years away from Earth?

And if you don't live near train tracks like me, it's also the sound of an ambulance's siren, which sounds higher as the ambulance is driving towards you, but lower after it passes you and is driving away.

So you have a telescope pointed at an exoplanet, and you're picking up the light from its star as it filters through the gas of the planet's atmosphere.

Dr Chelsea Huang, an astronomer at the University of Southern Queensland.

And that interview was recorded in 2012, so 14 years ago.

And Sir David rightly mentions these threats to the Great Barrier Reef, ocean acidification and rising sea levels.

But there wasn't as much talk at the time of heat stress to marine ecosystems.

And since that interview was recorded, the Great Barrier Reef has been absolutely hammered by heat.

It suffered mass coral bleaching in 2016, 2017, 2020, 2022, 2024 and 2025.

And of course, marine heat waves don't just affect the Great Barrier Reef, they affect corals all around Australia and the world.

and seagrass meadows and other kinds of marine ecosystems.

So this really shows how quickly things are changing in the environment.

The pressure's building, and the urgency of the situation is only ramping up.

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