periodicvideos-ABC-News

On my recent trip to Australia, I caught up with astro-photographer Paul Haese.

Paul lives in my home town of Adelaide.

He recently won second place in the Astronomy Photographer of the Year award (in the solar system category) for this brilliant image of Saturn.

(Image used with permission from Paul Haese - paulhaese.net)

But what I found really interesting was seeing these two "raw data" images, which contributed to the final masterpiece.

It's all these colour-filtered filtered sub exposures which contribute to the final image.

It made me realise what an art form astro-photography can be.

Plenty more to come from Paul in future videos, but for now here is the video about his Saturn photo:

I'm working on a new "science project" with researchers at the University of Nottingham.

It's called Foodskey (will explain the name later!)

The videos will cover all aspects of food science.

That'll include everything from sensory science to food security to crop technology.

I'll explain more soon, but here's the first video.



If you're YouTuber, do subscribe to the channel!

Oh, and I'll be tweeting it at @foodskey

PS: The pictures of me with the yummy cupcakes really has nothing to do with Foodskey - it's just a happy food memory!!!!

At 10.45am yesterday I had never heard of quasicrystals.

By 2pm I'd filmed and edited a video all about them.

Such is the life of a video journalist.



The video was about the awarding of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

It has become an annual tradition that we do "on-the-day videos" about the physics and chemistry Nobel Prizes for periodicvideos and Sixty Symbols.

However the chemistry video turned into bit of a technical nightmare... Mainly due to a combination of fatigue and my eagerness to finish it quickly.

(I had to attend and film an inaugural lecture in the evening, which added to the pressure)

I ended up uploading the film three times before getting it just right (one of the times due to a stupid typo which had the prize awarded in 2001 rather than 2011).

Not my finest hour.

But well done to my professors-on-demand - Martyn Poliakoff and Phil Moriarty - who explained the prize well and immediately!

Our teeny tiny periodic table is enjoying a fresh wave of fame and glory.

We created the table in December last year by etching it onto a strand of Professor Martyn Poliakoff's hair.



The subsequent video created some interest and of course we enjoyed the attention.

(We even had an advertising company co-opt the idea and we helped them create a similar "nano advertisement" for a shaving company)

However our tiny periodic table has been thrust back into the limelight after being featured by the Guinness Book of Records.

It seems featuring in the tome (we're in page 166 of this year's edition) is a big deal.

The University of Nottingham issued a nice press release about our appearance in the hallowed pages.

The BBC website followed and ran a lengthy online story.

And Sky News contacted us about permission to use the video for its iPad app.

It was reported by Fox News and ABC news in the US!

A rather famous scientific publication has also asked to see some pictures - so maybe they'll use one?

But the cherry on the cake - our local BBC News ran a lengthy piece about the record.


So there was Professor Martyn Poliakoff, floating behind local newsreaders Dominic Heale and gorgeous Kylie Pentelow. Quite a sight!

So thanks to the Guinness Book of Records for giving a single strand of hair a second moment of fame.

A photo gallery about the tiny table can be found at our Flickr site.

Now, back to work.

Today the Nobel Prize in Physics was announced.

The 2011 winners were Saul Perlmutter, Brian Schmidt and Adam Riess for discovering the accelerating expansion of the universe through the study of supernovae.

Each year Sixty Symbols tries to make videos about the announcement.

This year was easy because some of our Nottingham-based astronomers actually knew the winners.

In fact, our own Mike Merrifield is on quite good terms with co-winner Brian Schmidt.

In our video, Mike sheepishly admits he has doubted an aspect of Brian's work and the two have a long-standing bet about it.

With the Nobel Prize committee's verdict now pubic, Mike concedes he owes his old friend a bottle of whisky.



But there's another fascinating link with today's prize and Sixty Symbols.

Another of our regular contributors and fan favourites - Professor Ed Copeland - was cited in the Nobel Prize committee's announcement (see image).


Unfortunately Ed was not in Nottingham today so I couldn't interview him - but I'll try to catch him soon and find out what it's all about!

With the 2011 physics and chemistry Nobel Prizes about to be announced, here's a chance to re-live our previous Nobel Prize videos from Sixty Symbols and Periodic Table of Videos.

Another episode in Test Tube's tree series posted today...

This time Markus was rather adventurous and ate some tree resin.