PODCAST · science
Lagrange Point
by Lagrange Point
A fun take on the latest science news with enough data to sink your teeth into. Lagrange Point goes beyond the glossy summary and gets in depth with the research from across the world. Brought to you in partnership with the Young Scientists of Australia. Each week for over five years, from community radio on SYN 90,7 to online podcasts, the Lagrange Point team have delivered a funny but interesting take on science from a young person's perspective.
Episodes
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Episode 555 - Breaking down toxic fungus and learning to live alongside them
Fungal invasions taking over living hosts is the thing of science fiction, but the humble button mushroom is taken steps to start. Often a fungi will specialize in symbiosis, invading or decomposing. But Mycena are starting to adapt to do all three. Humans, plants and fungi are in a complicated...
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Episode 554 - Collaborating to solve Martian Mysteries
What caused those large quakes on Mars? How can Mars have big Mars-quakes without plate tectonics? If an impact crater isn't too blame for the Mars quakes what may be the cause. An international collaboration pooled the instruments of many countries Mars Missions to solve a mystery. Even using…
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Episode 553 - E.coli to the rescue and boosting geothermal power
E.coli is one of the most studied and versatile bacteria, so how can we make it work for us? Bacteria's ability to generate electricity is well known, but often requires complex conditions. How can we use E.Coli to generate electricity without a complicated setup? Geothermal systems seem to…
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Episode 552 - Talking to plants and how a jellyfish learns
How does a jellyfish manage to see and learn without a large central brain? Like the Scarecrow of Oz, jellyfish are a without a brain but are still able to learn and do great feats. How does the nervous system of a jellyfish learn to dodge and avoid obstacles without a big brain? Plants respond…
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Episode 551 - Boosting your immune system to fight back cancer
There are many different types of treatments for cancer, all of them with pros and cons. Enhancing our anti cancer toolbox requires careful testing to help reduce side effects. CAR-T takes your immune cells and boosts them to help fight cancer, but can have some pretty nasty side effects. By...
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Episode 550 - Cosmic Collisions and galactic devouring
What happens when two massive planets collide? How can you end up with a gas giant that's super dense and heavy? how can a planet the size of Neptune be as dense as steel? What happens when two giant planets collide at high speed? Watching a black hole devour a star, one bite at a time. Luca...
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Episode 549 - Water infrastructure and Archaeology
Infrastructure projects and large engineering projects can lead to archaeological discoveries. When you start digging a large sewer network, the last thing you suspect to find is 1,000s of fossils. Large water projects in Auckland managed to discover new species and shed light on New Zealand 3...
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Episode 548 - A paradise for Octopi at the base of a volcano
At the depths of the ocean, in freezing waters there is somehow a paradise for Octopi. Off the coast of Monterey, an extinct underwater volcano creates just the right conditions for an absurd number of octopi to breed, nest and survive despite the freezing temperatures. With water near freezing…
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Episode 547 - Concussions - How long do you really have to wait?
How long do you really have to wait after a concussion? Athletes are always keen to get back in the game after a head knock, but how long do they really need to wait? When trying to assess and track a concussion getting hard data is difficult. Using special headbands and measuring the pulse of…
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Episode 546 - What’s going on with whale’s behaviour
When whales and humans interact the results can be confusing and messy for both sides. Whether it be noisy boat propellers, or orcas on a collision course, humans and whales don't always get on. How can we monitor and track how whales respond to humans. The best ways of monitoring animals is…
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Episode 545 - Phages taking the fight to bacteria
Antibiotic resistance is a global challenge, but the solution may come from the natural predator of bacteria. Bacterial infections can be nasty, but you can engineer a phage to help better identify and treat them. Knowing exactly which bacteria is causing problems can help doctors target…
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Episode 544 - Metals recovering from fatigue
Cracks in metal can ultimately lead to fatigue failure, but is there a way to unwind the damage? Fatigue failure is a serious problem for everything from bridges to phones so finding a way to tackle it is important. One microcrack can turn into another as a metal fatigues, but what if the cracks...
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Episode 543 - Monitoring vital signs without getting in the way
Getting an accurate picture of someone's health or vital signs is essential in medicine, but hard to physically do without wires. Invasive health monitoring systems can't provide insights into 'everyday' scenarios. Trying to assess someone's posture, gait and rehabilitation is hard if they're…
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Episode 542 - Evolving multicellular life in the lab
Its a huge leap from a single celled organism to a complex multicellular beast. So how does evolution manage it? You can evolve humble yeast from a single celled organism into a complex interwoven multicellular one. Over 3,000 generations in the lab, the humble yeast was evolved from microscopic…
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Episode 541 - The building blocks chemistry
Chemistry is complicated but it had to start somewhere. The origins of complex chemistry had to be built up from scratch. How did complex compounds form on early earth. How can we replicate the conditions of early earth and watch complex chemistry develop? Peering into chemical reactions is…
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Episode 540 - On the shoulders of giants
The universe scaling work of the NANOGrav team stands on the shoulders of giants to understand giants lurking in our universe. Huge decade spanning scientific projects like NANOGrav are built of ideas and concepts which we can trace back to earlier pioneers. NANOGrav relies on Pulsars to map the...
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Episode 539 - Dangerous but beautiful space weather
Weather in space, can seem far away but it's dazzling effects come with some danger. Aurora localised entirely around a satellite can cause a steamy situation for communications. Analysing space weather can lead to better designed satellites capable of withstanding 1-100 year solar storms. It's a...
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Episode 538 - Colossal volcanic eruptions taking out satellites
When a volcano erupts we're used to imagining damage from lava, ash and even tsunamis. So why were satellites taken out? The colossal eruptions at Hunga-Tonga in 2022 caused pressure waves that caused damage 1000s of km away and even to satellites. Satellites, long distance radio and GPS all rely...
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Episode 537 - Better batteries that last even in subzero temperatures
Batteries power the modern world, but how can we make them more sustainably and last longer. Lithium powers most of our modern batteries but it doesn't cope with the cold. The electrolytes inside lithium ion batteries are powerful but weak when its cold, so what can we use instead? Extracting...
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Episode536 - Taking pollution out of the atmosphere
Humans are filling the atmosphere with more and more pollution. How does it get out of the air and where does it go? For complex pollutants in the atmosphere, having a bit of hydroxide around helps break it down but where does it come from? Hydroxide can spontaneously generate in droplets but it...
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Lagrange Point Episode 535 - Trees growing faster during droughts
As our climate changes extreme weather events become more common, but what does this mean for ecosystems? Ecosystems and plants that have adapted to on extreme climate, can thrive in another. An adaption that helps you survive in extreme cold can be very helpful when there is a drought. There is…
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Episode 534 - Finding a rocky asteroid belt around another star
Asteroid belts are harder to find than Sci-fi would have you believe. Spotting an asteroid belt is easier in the outer solar system, but closer in it gets a bit more blurry. Using the JWT we can use more than just visible light to find tricky interstellar objects. Asteroid belts are messy but…
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Episode 533 - Bacteria melting ice and changing the planet
How can tiny bacteria change the entire planet? Greenland is beautiful and covered in glaciers, but they are turning more and more dark and black. Black algae is tinting glaciers in Greenland darker, and causing changes in our climate. The more our climate changes, the easier it is for algae to...
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Episode 532 - Bacteria reviving themselves when the time is right
Bacteria are masters of survival, pausing and shielding themselves when times get tough. So how do they know when to wake up? The mechanisms bacteria use to survive harsh conditions are one of the reasons they're able to survive so well. The protective layers and pausing all activity inside the...
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Lagrange Point Episode 531 - Measuring the expansion of the universe
Understanding the future of the universe requires peering into the past. How quickly the universe is expanding has been an active area of science since the 1920s, with several prizes and breakthroughs. Each time we get new or more accurate measurements it forces scientists to re-evaluate the...
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Episode 530 - Fully recyclable electronics
Electronics power the modern world, but they come at a high environmental and energy cost. E-waste a serious problem as many of the elements in modern electronics cannot be easily recycled. Is there a way to produce electronics that are more environmentally friendly? Is it possible to make a...
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Episode 529 - Listening in on conversations inside your body
Your body is constantly communicating about what's happening outside and inside of it, but how can we listen in. When your immune system is responding to a virus, or a wound is healing, there are lots of signals to decode if only we could hear them. By amplifying the signals inside your body with...
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Episode 528 - How our senses pass information to our brains
How does your body pass information along to your brain? The thalamus connects those sensory inputs back to your cerebral cortex but it's a lot sparser than you'd think. The synapses that link your senses to your cortex are often weak and rare, but their diversity gives them a boost. Lots of...
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Episode 527 - Concrete in space from blood, sweat, tears and chips
Building a habitat on Mars or the Moon is hard work, but it's a lot easier if you can make your own building materials. Animal blood has historically been used as a binding agent for mortar, so could human blood help on Mars? You can make your own building materials on the Moon or Mars that are…
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Episode 526 - Capturing biological process in action
Seeing how something happens makes it much easier to understand. Biological process can be very hard to capture with images or video. Understanding how a protein requires thinking in 3D but to take images of them we often have to 'snap freeze' them in place. How can lasers, ions and quantum...
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Episode 525 - Life in a radiation exclusion zone and #2023MMM
Life in a radiation exclusion zone is challenging but not impossible. We find out about tales of survival, endurance and adaption in radiation zones and in March Mammal Madness. How does life adapt to high exposure of toxic chemicals, radiation and heavy metals? Studying the DNA of differing…
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Episode 524 - Bacteria’s sneaky 1-2 punch to get into your brain
Bacteria uses a clever 1-2 punch to make it through our central nervous systems defenses. The way bacteria can get through the outer layers of the meninges relies on knowing exactly what how the brain will respond to infection. Painful headaches are a key part of meningitis, but that pain…
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Episode 523 - Sinking carbon out of seawater and carbon storage in wood
Our oceans and waterways are our largest carbon sinks and they're overflowing with CO2. Too much CO2 in our waterways can cause tremendous local damage, but there may be ways to clean that up. Using a cyclic process without messy membranes you can get water to release the CO2 captured inside....
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Episode 522 - Making hydrogen greenly from Seawater
Hydrogen comes in all kinds of colours but what does that mean? Hydrogen has a role to play in a decarbonised world as long as we can produce it greenly. It's no good producing green hydrogen if you use up another valuable resource or create another kind of waste. Water water everywhere, but not…
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Episode 521 - Galaxies at the Cosmic Dawn
Using the JWST to peer into the Cosmic dawn of the universe. The JWST enables researchers to peer into the earliest galaxies in our universe. 250 Million years is not a long time when it comes to a star or galaxy. With JWST researchers can see galaxies formed 250 million years after the Big Bang....
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Episode 520 - There and back again - tales from a wandering space probe
Hayabusa2 had an exciting voyage across our solar system, getting into dust ups and even coming back home again with data to share. We've been tracking the long journey of Hayabusa2 over the 10 years of this podcast, and we're now getting interesting data from the returned samples. The Hayabusa2...
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Episode 519 - Evolving beaks and wild chickens
How did birds end up with their trademark beaks? You can broadly group birds into two categories, ancient and modern jaws or beaks. We thought mobile beaks were a modern invention but new fossils overturn this idea. Just when did birds first develop their modern mobile beaks? Wild jungle fowl…
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Episode 518 - Aurora on Jupiter and on Earth
Aurora are stellar examples of high energy physics. You need to be at the right spot to find Aurora on earth, but its not quite the same on Jupiter. What governs where and how an aurora will form? Earth and Jupiter are very different in size and speed, but why are our Auroras so different? How…
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Episode 517 - Cute green balls of algae and a changing climate
In the northern reaches of Japan in a idyllic lake, cute green balls of algae are battling for survival. It sounds like an anime, but cute green algae balls, Marimo, are battling stellar forces. Too much sunlight can endanger the cute green algae balls, the Marimo. Having too much sunlight can be...
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Episode 517 - How our body senses and interacts with the world
Understanding how our body senses and interacts with the world. Scientists are only now beginning to understand how our body senses the world, hence the '21 Nobel Prizes. This Nobel prize wining research helped others find a connection between the gut and our sense of touch. Internal organ pain…
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Episode 516 - How plants handle too much or too little light
Too much or too little light can cause serious problems for plants. Light levels are not simply a feast or famine equation when it comes to photosynthesis. Plants must carefully manage the amount of light coming in to ensure smooth photosynthesis. The way genes in leaves responding to rapidly...
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Episode 515 - Do you really need oxygen for oxidation
How does chemistry change when you travel to another planet? When it comes to scientific experiments often we can be hampered by our own experience. Just because something is abundant on earth does not meant that it's a universal constant. Out of this world chemistry is hard to get your head…
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Episode 514 - Pushing water to the limits on earth and in space
What happens when you push water to the limits on earth and in Space? Water has really weird properties especially when it gets really cold. How can we understand and model the behaviour when it moves to fast for us to capture? How do droplets form and why do you need the ISS to study it? What…
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Episode 513 - An eerie glow in the Solar System
How do you measure the solar system and the universe whilst being inside of it? Too much light is a problem for astronomers and our solar system has it's own glow. If you take away all known light sources form the solar system, there is still a faint glow. We know about background radiation, but...
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Episode 512 - Analyzing aftershocks and predicting earthquakes
Forecasting an earthquake is serious business, but it's not like the weather. Why are earthquakes so hard to predict? Knowing when an earthquake will occur is hard enough, but what about predicting aftershocks? Aftershocks can create huge stress and compound damage after a quake so what can be…
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Episode 511 - How the earliest brains developed and handle touch
Peering into the history of brains with some amazing tiny fossils. How did the earliest brains develop? Is a head just an extension of a segmented body or something else entirely? How did the first brains and nervous systems evolve in arthropods. How does your body process the sense of touch? The...
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Episode 510 - Fungi spreading across the planet and wiping out toxic soils
Fungi have an amazing ability to spread across continents but stay linked as a family lineage. Fungi can adapt to specific geographic niches in the same way as grapes. Different families of highly specialized mushrooms grow side by side across continents. How can fungi protect the plants it's...
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Episode 509 - What connects spicy food, proteins and your gut
How is your gut connected to the rest of your body? How does your nervous system connect to your gut? How can you sense pain inside of your gut? The bacteria that live inside your gut can call for help when under pressure. With the wrong balance of bacteria or signalling proteins our guts can be...
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Episode 508 - Finding your way as a fish along rivers and into the deep
How can fish keep themselves stable in a fast flowing river? What's the best way to stay on track as a fish? To swim straight ahead fish often end up staring downwards. The riverbed is way easier to track than a fast flowing current. How did fish manage to make their way into the deepest parts of...
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Episode 507 - Peering beneath Mars’ surface
How does a single sensor help change your outlook on a planet? A single small seismometer on Mars can help understand Mars' past, present and future. What do an ultrasound and Mars have in common? Both can use a single sensor to peer deep inside. Listening to the echoes of marsquakes helps...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
A fun take on the latest science news with enough data to sink your teeth into. Lagrange Point goes beyond the glossy summary and gets in depth with the research from across the world. Brought to you in partnership with the Young Scientists of Australia. Each week for over five years, from community radio on SYN 90,7 to online podcasts, the Lagrange Point team have delivered a funny but interesting take on science from a young person's perspective.
HOSTED BY
Lagrange Point
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How many episodes does Lagrange Point have?
Lagrange Point currently has 556 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Lagrange Point about?
A fun take on the latest science news with enough data to sink your teeth into. Lagrange Point goes beyond the glossy summary and gets in depth with the research from across the world. Brought to you in partnership with the Young Scientists of Australia. Each week for over five years, from...
How often does Lagrange Point release new episodes?
Lagrange Point releases new episodes frequently with a large back catalog of 556 episodes. Check the episode list for recent publication dates.
Where can I listen to Lagrange Point?
You can listen to Lagrange Point on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Lagrange Point?
Lagrange Point is created and hosted by Lagrange Point.
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