In this three-part lecture podcast, Producer Sarah Tout interviews three speakers about the unique role archives and Western Australia have played in discovering and exploring the universe.

Dr Natasha Hurley-Walker is an award-winning local radio astronomer from the from the International Centre of Radio Astronomy Research. Dr Hurley-Walker discusses her work, the important role of archival data in discovery, and the way the contributions of women were overlooked in the past – a challenge that continues today.

Mr Paul Jones discusses the history of Perth Observatory and Ms Julia Lawrinson shares her work of the picture book ‘City of Light’.

You can listen to the podcast here: http://bit.ly/48aMj8x.

The Geoffrey Bolton lecture honours Geoffrey Bolton AO, Australian historian, academic and writer, and is an annual celebration of discovery and insight, informed and enriched by archives.

Astronaut Tim Peake takes us on an incredible journey through our Universe.

I chat with Tim in Episode 2, discussing what stars are made of, how long they live and what happens when they die.

“We used the Murchison Widefield Array radio telescope in Western Australia to scan our Milky Way galaxy every three nights for several months. Almost as soon as we started looking, we found a new source, in a different part of the sky, this time repeating every 22 minutes… Our object looked a lot like a pulsar, but spinning 1,000 times slower…”

From ABC Radio Darwin: “Don't just look ahead. Look up! From a strawberry moon to celestial beehives. What's happening up there in space will make an impact down here on Earth. Dr Natasha Hurley-Walker is from the Curtin University Node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research…”

I’m in the runnings for the Women in Technology Western Australia People’s Choice Award for 2022! You can vote for me or any five briliant women in tech by clicking through the title link.

Talented Tasmanian designer Becski and I have co-created a T-shirt inspired by my work in radio astronomy — and it is Australia’s Favourite Science T-shirt for 2022! You can buy a shirt here: https://www.shirtyscience.com/shirts/galactic-blooms

Or, find out how we created the shirt via this delightful podcast from Avid Research!

Science fiction invites us to imagine the universe as it could be, and to find our place in it. "To boldly go," as one show put it.

In a 1968 episode of Star Trek, the writers dreamt up a new engine called an ion engine, a fanciful form of propulsion.

Some years later NASA, inspired by Star Trek, decided to prototype the engine and it worked. It's often quoted as an example of science fiction inspiring science.

These days, Dr Brad Tucker and Dr Natasha Hurley-Walker are highly regarded scientists: experts in their fields of astrophysics and radio-astronomy.

But once upon a time, they were young people, wondering what their future would hold.

In the Drawing Room, they share their inspirations and the way it impacts their work today.

Dr Natasha Hurley-Walker and colleagues have been recognised in this year’s Astronomical Society of Australia awards. The ASA will honour the five at its Annual Scientific Meeting in Hobart 27 June – 1 July.

“Australian astronomers are among the best in the world, and the breadth of these prestigious awards shows why we lead the world in so many areas. It is a pleasure to recognise these examples of individual brilliance, as well as teamwork, and technical innovation,” says ASA President Professor John Lattanzio.

I’m interviewed by Smart Enough to Know Better, “a podcast of Science, Comedy and Ignorance.” I talk to Greg Wah about “a mysterious astronomical entity”… and we do excellent audio impressions of objects in space!

““I think it’s real,” Curtin University student Tyrone O’Doherty told his supervisors when he spotted the anomaly.

And it was real, as it turns out. The object beaming out from space was also “spooky”, and “in our galactic back yard”.

An Australian team studying the universe’s radio waves has discovered a new type of beam that comes and goes, one of the brightest radio sources in the sky. The details of the discovery were published in Nature on Thursday…”

“In early 2018, something in our cosmic backyard blasted out powerful jets of energy for up to a minute about once every 18 minutes for three months. Then it stopped.

Despite being one of the brightest radio objects in the sky, it went unnoticed until a team of astronomers looked back at data collected by the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) telescope in outback Western Australia.

"When it is on, it is brighter than the next brightest thing in the sky in that area, which is a supermassive black hole [millions of light-years away]," said Natasha Hurley-Walker, an astrophysicist at Curtin University and the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research…”

“Australian astronomers have chanced across an object hidden in our galaxy that should not exist.

Three times an hour, like clockwork, the object releases a massive burst of radio waves for a minute, briefly becoming the brightest object in the sky at those invisible frequencies…”

““Holy sharks, Batman, it’s periodic!”

I exclaimed on Slack.

It was the first lockdown of 2021 in Perth, and we were all working from home. And when astronomers look for something to distract themselves from looming existential dread, there’s nothing better than a new cosmic mystery...”

“A curious radio signal in space was spotted pulsing every 18 minutes and 18 seconds over a period of three months before it disappeared from view, revealing “an unusual periodicity” that has not been observed previously, reports a new study. 

Though the source of the signals is still unknown, the scientists who discovered it think those clockwork pulses may be the rotational signature of an exotic dead star, perhaps a white dwarf or a highly magnetized “magnetar,” located some 4,000 light years away. But no matter what it is, the discovery will reveal “further insight into the evolutionary extremes surrounding the life and death of massive stars,” according to the study, which was published on Wednesday in Nature…”

“Astronomers have discovered a mysterious object emitting a radio wave beam that pulsed every 20 minutes.

The team behind the discovery believe the object could be a new class of slowly rotating neutron star with an ultra-powerful magnetic field. The repeating signals were detected during the first three months of 2018, but then disappeared, suggesting they were linked to a dramatic, one-off event, such as a starquake…”

“While mapping radio waves across the universe, astronomers happened upon a celestial object releasing giant bursts of energy -- and it's unlike anything they've ever seen before.

The spinning space object, spotted in March 2018, beamed out radiation three times per hour. In those moments, it became the brightest source of radio waves viewable from Earth, acting like a celestial lighthouse.

Astronomers think it might be a remnant of a collapsed star, either a dense neutron star or a dead white dwarf star, with a strong magnetic field -- or it could be something else entirely…”

I was delighted to feature in the “History Happens Everywhere” TikTok series on women in STEM. Click through for a fun little animated video on my work!

“Initially used to measure the brightness of radio sources, the jansky has spread to other areas of astronomy, as Natasha Hurley-Walker recounts…”"

“Women are severely underrepresented in the field of HPC.

While they comprise about 51 percent of the general population, women account for only about 17 percent of the HPC workforce1. Those numbers are slowly improving, thanks to the contributions of numerous female engineers, scientists and researchers.

In recognition of March as International Women’s History Month, we’re profiling six talented women doing trailblazing work that should inspire others to enter this exciting field…”

“Curtin University's Dr Natasha Hurley Walker talked to RTRFM about her invention of the Galactic and Extragalactic All-sky MWA, or GLEAM, a sky-wide survey of the stars…”