Radio stars, spiral galaxies and threadworms
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When will Australia experience its next total solar eclipse?
This is a Triple J podcast.
Hello, welcome to another episode of Science with Dr. Carl. My name is Lucy Smith and this week it is all about radio stars. Not me, silly. I mean the ones in the sky. We get into all things space with Dr. Laura Dreesen. She's a friend of the show, a radio astronomer who we love chatting to, and she got into some really in-depth questions with but also some basics around the life cycle of a star. It was all really interesting to tap into with her. And we had our regular science questions for Dr. Carl, talking all things red light, thread and pinworm, and much more. Let's get into it. It is a Thursday, so you know what we're doing. I've got Dr Karl across from me. Dr Karl, how are you? Ever
so good because we have one of my besties. Let me introduce to the microphone the fabulous Dr Laura Dyson.
Hello, hello. I'm so excited to be here. Thank you so much. You're a friend of the show. We've had you on before. You are a radio astronomer and you went to Spain recently. I did. You saw something unreal. Talk us through it.
Yes. Well, it was very cool. So some of my colleagues in Spain organized a really nice meeting. So I'm a radio astronomer and I do study stars. So like classic astronomer stars, you know, and they organized it so we could all see the solar eclipse. Oh, my gosh.
So
to be clear, is the solar eclipse the one where you need to put sunglasses on, like protect your eyes? Sunglasses are not enough. If you go out to see the solar eclipse, because we'll talk about that, there's going to be one in Australia.
Yeah.
Please don't just wear sunglasses. Otherwise you'll go to your optometrist and they'll say, there's all these little burns that are in the shape of an eclipse on the back of your retina, which happens every eclipse. So you have to wear really, really, they're solar eclipse glasses and there's a few other options, but you have to wear some really, really dark glasses. glasses
to see
it. It's very cool.
One of my favourite pictures is of Lorde where she's, I don't know if you've seen it, but she's in I think New York and she is wearing these glasses while she looks up at the solar eclipse and then she wrote about it in one of her songs. We could potentially be seeing one. What's the projection looking like?
Yes, so it's looking very good. I get asked this a lot. We can actually project basically whenever you, whatever year you like, we can work out whether there's any eclipses happening because we've got a really good handle on what's going on with our planets and the sun in our solar system. So the next one that everyone should be getting excited for in 2028 on the 22nd of July, there's going to be a total solar eclipse. So the best kind that's going to pass over Australia. And it's going to be the line of total solar eclipse, which we call totality is going to be from Sydney to the top of WA. So there's quite a lot of spots where you can go to have a look and see a total solar eclipse. Wow.
But what you want is cloud cover to be not there. Yes. And so you'll need a bit of warning and if you want to book a flight inland, you might be too late.
Yes, and Sydney admittedly is not the best place because cloud cover, for those of us who live in Sydney, we know that July is – well, if you like cloud cover, July is great. If you want to see the sun, July is – less great. So I'd be planning to go somewhere else.
But the thing that bothers me about eclipses is how did Thales of Miletus two and a half thousand years ago in Greece predict an eclipse? Because yes, you can predict an eclipse like you can predict the tides, but you need the data. And we've found that what happens with eclipses is something called a Soros cycle and it starts at the North Pole and there's various resonances. And so basically every 18 years and a little bit, you have one solar eclipse and then going in a swipe around the Earth, heading from the North Pole to the South Pole, 120 degrees around... you have the next eclipse, and then you go, then you wait another 18 years and you've got the next one, and it stutters its way around the Earth and it eventually falls off and there's a bunch of solar cycles.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
When will Australia experience its next total solar eclipse?
0:00–5:20
2
How can we safely view the upcoming 2028 total solar eclipse in Australia?
5:20–9:48
3
What are long‑period radio transients and why are they surprising?
9:48–14:51
4
How do intestinal worms affect human immunity and health?
14:51–21:12
5
What determines a star’s life cycle and its final fate?
21:12–26:41
6
What is the universe expanding into and what lies beyond it?
26:41–32:11
7
Does electromagnetic radiation have mass and create gravity?
32:11–37:36
8
How old is the universe and why do different measurements disagree?
37:36–41:43