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Astronomer and cosmic optician Dr. Simon Dye joins us in the studio to talk about about cosmic lenses - the magnified images of distant galaxies that we wouldn't normally be able to study. Simon studies these rare distant objects and attempts to work out what they look like. By doing this, Simon can study how galaxies formed and evolved in detail not available in unmagnified systems.

To begin our journey into cosmic lenses, we must remind ourselves about that ubiquitous force that is responsible for many a dropped phone - gravity. You can listen to our previous show all about gravity below, or skip to the next paragraph for the condensed version especially for those on the go.

We are The Science Show and we need to talk about mental health. This week is Mental Health Awareness Week and its an important issue that will affect almost all of us in some form or another during our lives. Whilst students have shown ourselves to be more open, honest and frank about many things, including sex and mental health, we still find ourselves silenced by unnecessary stigma attached to these important problems.

Here we will be looking at the more scientific areas of mental health disorders. For more information on the more general aspects, please listen to the show 6-7pm on 13/05/2013 or if you missed it find the podcast here.

Introduction to Neurochemstry
The brain is the most complicated machine on Earth. Leading scientists have been searching for years as to the wonders of the thing that gives us consciousness. Yet even with thousands of scientific publications each year, we seem to still be only scratching the surface of least understood part of the human body.

In our 51st show, we turn to the darker side of the universe by looking into its most mysterious component. It's so mysterious, scientists only inferred its existence for the first time in 1998. Astronomer Dr Kathy Romer from the University of Sussex joins us to probe this darkest of all dark things as we try to unravel the secrets of the universe...

Following on from our shows with Tony Padilla, Ed Copeland and Meghan Gray, we can turn our sights onto that Dastardly Dark Energy. This stuff is supposed to make up 68% of the stuff in our universe! Compare that to the normal stuff that makes up you and all the stuff around you like paper and other such revision materials which only accounts for 5% of the universe.

So how did we discover dark energy? In 1998 and 1999, astronomers measured the distances to exploding stars called Supernovae. They discovered that the universe had expanded more in the most recent half of it's life - the expansion of the universe was accelerating! This was totally unexpected - the best things in life are.

The Science Show is back on air for the new Summer Term and whilst we cannot promise sunshine, we can promise you lots and lots of science! To find out our full guest lineup, head on over to our Facebook Page or follow us on the Twitter.

Gareth Shannon - Life at NASA

To kick us off, we have postgraduate student Gareth Shannon, an Astrobiologist from the School of Pharmacy... wow! Gareth is researching the origins of life - no easy task - and is chatting to us today about his research and time working in a NASA research group. Let's get on with the show!

Gareth works on trying to understand the proteins that make up all life on Earth. There are an infinite amount of possible proteins that nature could make, but all life can be made from just a handful - only about 1,000!

Dr Nina Hatch, from the school of Physics & Astronomy, researches the lives of the most massive galaxies in the universe. As well as this, she searches far back in the universe's history for the galaxies that have eventually come to be part of the gravitationally bound clusters of galaxies we observe in the local universe.

Today Nina joins Hena and Carl (Jr.) in the studio for a chat about her research and the science outreach projects Nina is involved with. These important projects, such as the astronomy department's portable inflatable planetarium (The Inflativerse) spread awareness of both physics and astronomy and plant that seed in both the old and young that could eventually lead to a career in the field.

• Galaxy Types
• Telescopes
• The Inflativerse!
• Science in the News

Galaxy Types