Catalyst turns 10

This week ABC’s Science Show Catayst celebrates 10 years with a retrospective special.

Specialist science journalists Dr Graham Phillips, veterinary scientis, Dr Jonica Newby, tropical biologist Mark Horstman, medical researcher Dr Maryanne Demasi and palaeontologist Dr Paul Willis all look back at a time without the Hadonrn-Collider.

Cosmology
In the first of this two-part special, Astrophysicist Dr Graham Phillips, provides his perspective on what we’ve learnt about the universe in the last ten years. Form the big bang to the ends of time, more has been learned about the universe in the last ten years than in any other decade.

The cosmological discovery of the last ten years is the existence of ‘Dark Energy’. It was first discovered in the late 1990s just before Catalyst went on air, since then there has been mounting evidence for its existence. Now Graham looks back at how ‘Dark Energy’ has changed cosmology.

In 2008 Graham visited the most complex experiment ever built – the CERN particle smasher. And in 2010 they achieved their ultimate goal: to smash 2 protons together while travelling at close to the speed of light. Early results are appearing that are starting to tell how our nascent universe behaved as the very laws of physics were written in a violent
storm.

The history of the World
Palaeontologist, Dr Paul Willis examines the recent revolutions in our understanding of the history of the Earth and the evolution of life on it. In the last decade we’ve seen the resolution of a long-standing debate about human origins; did our ancestors come out of Africa relatively recently, or did different groups mix and evolve across the planet over a long period of time?

In 2005 Catalyst looked at the amazing discoveries of the ‘Hobbit’ in Indonesia, one of several lines of evidence that closed the debate firmly in favour of Out Of Africa.

Palaeontologists have uncovered remarkable fossils clearly identifying the evolutionary links between fish and the earliest amphibians and between meat-eating dinosaurs and birds. In 2009 Paul informed us about the ‘Snowball Earth’, a world covered in ice, where life was almost snuffed out at the hands of a deadly greenhouse gas – a story from the past with dire warnings for the present.

Climate Change
When Catalyst started a decade ago, global warming was regarded by many as a potential problem for the distant future – a scientific hypothetical with few tangible impacts in the here and now. But  \that future has come to realisation much sooner than predicted. What was once arcane research into parts per million of a trace gas called CO2, now wafts around every household, boardroom, and parliament. Of the thousand or so stories broadcast during ten years of Catalyst, more than forty have explored the science of climate change and the numerous technologies that have been invented to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Mark
Horstman asks what role for science in the debate that is defining the course of the twenty- first century?

Next week in part-two of Catalyst’s ten year retrospective: Jonica Newby takes a look at the decade of the brain, Maryanne Demasi investigates ten years of helping couples to conceive, and Graham Phillips marvels at the ever more detailed images of the far reaches of our universe brought to us by the Hubble telescope.

The first of a 2 part special airs 8pm Thursday.