Weekend Variety Wireless - Hour 1 - 11/08/18

It could be time to say goodbye to the days of busy parking lots with a set of dream wheels, daddy-o! Physicist and author of joins Silencing Science, Shaun Hendy joins Graeme Hill to head back to the future with more of what science fiction has got right and wrong. While flying cars seem more probable in the future, Mr Hendy believes teleportation to be more unlikely. While it is possible to teleport the quantum state of one atom and impose that on another, the concept of recreating this with a human being raises a few begging questions. Mr Hendy and Graeme dive nose first into the latest progressions in artificial intelligence (AI) with conversation over speech recognition, image processing and autonomous vehicles. There have been big advances in what AI can achieve in the weird and wonderful world of anthropomorphised robots, gaming, forensic investigations. Plus UFO sightings are at an all-time low! Uncanny and unnerving? Graeme predicts we might end up needing to break up with some software. Its not you, its me. Also, Astronomer Grant Christie joins Graeme Hill to talk the latest in astronomy news. Hayabusa2 is getting closer and closer to the primitive asteroid, Ryugu. Heres hoping that such pristine material can be brought back to earth as sampling for research. Here is imaging Ryugu from an altitude of 6km and an even closer view of Ryugu from 1km Why do we see meteor showers? Dr Christie explains that when little bits of dust that come off a comet and the earth passes through that trail, we see a sudden increase in meteors in the sky seemingly coming from the same point. Here is an amazing animated 3D graphic that explains the visuals that peak in our skies at various times. The Earth is the blue orbit. Not much happens on the moon very often. Recent video discoveries have found meteoroids are hitting the moon. What looks like walnuts hitting the moons surface, can do a lot of damage. Plus, Dr Christie and Graeme talk about the latest spectacular hubble telescope images of Saturn and Mars. Weekend Variety Wireless with Graeme Hill, 8pm - midnight Saturdays and Sundays, on RadioLIVE and streaming live to the Rova app on Android and iPhone. RadioLIVE.