In this blog post: September’s PubSci, The Science Show podcast returns, and what’s the big fuss about eclipses anyway?
First of all, huge thanks to Parry Hashemi from Imperial College for July’s PubSci when she talked about serotonin’s role in depression and the incredible potential of measuring serotonin in brain organoids cultured from a patient’s own stem cells. And than she shared some music created from the electrical signals made by neurons in those organoids!
What Has Engineering Ever Done For Us?
Quite a lot, as it happens, and on Wednesday 16th September, PubSci is putting the E back into STEM when scientific tour guide Laurence Scales will take us on a virtual tour through 3,000 years of engineering advances, in Great Engineering Leaps – Archimedes to Brunel and Beyond.
From Ancient Egypt and Greece to the Victorian age of steam and iron bridges, Laurence will highlight the some of the great leaps in imagination and engineering achievement and the people who made such things possible, all in justv 45 minutes! Expect some surprises.
Laurence is a long time friend of PubSci and an established London tour guide who has spent years digging up historical nuggets in scientific archives and libraries, so we’re really looking forward to this one over at PubSci Towers.
If you’d like to know more, jump over to our Next Event page, otherwise head straight to the Eventbrite booking page ASAP, where you’ll find full details, ticket info, and a link to reserve your spot.
The venue is PubSci’s regular home, The Old King’s Head near Borough Market, which offers a great range of drinks, has a happy hour before 7pm, and opens the kitchen serving classic pub grub especially for us. Doors open at 6.30 for a 7pm start. Talks generally run for ~45 minutes and are followed by a Q&A session. Full address on the booking page.
As most of you know by now, PubSci talks are pay-what-you-can: You can make a contribution when booking on Eventbrite. We have no other source of funding. There are two ticket options:
Book for one + Support PubSci (max 1 ticket) if you prefer to contribute when booking – this option also reserves you one spot at the event. You may need to scroll down to see this option on Eventbrite.
Book without donating (max 4 tickets) if you prefer to put cash in the pot on the night.
How was the eclipse for you…?
I hear many who watched August’s partial solar eclipse in the UK were rather underwhelmed. I’d put it on a par with a lunar eclipse (which always accompanies a solar eclipse two weeks before or afterwards on what would otherwise be a full moon). Lunar eclipses are great to look at, but they don’t rock your world.
As I mentioned lat time, the tip of Cornwall saw around 96% totality (96% of the sun covered by the new moon) but even the remaining 4% of the sun remains intensely bright and shouldn’t be looked at directly without special eclipse viewing specs. Most of England saw little more than 90% coverage, but even at 96% you don’t get the dramatically darkened sky and animals behaving strangely. To experience an eclipse, over 99.5% coverage is required. I wrote about some of the experiences of seeing an eclipse in my 2024 blog piece after the four minute long Mexican eclipse.
Significantly, the sky is not black during a total eclipse because the atmosphere scatters the shorter wavelengths of light coming from the sun, making the sky a deep blue. This is known as Rayleigh scattering and is the very reason the sky is blue in general but we see red sunsets — all the blue light has been scattered out so only read can reach our eyes eyes.
Nearly every eclipse photo you see will have been underexposed to make the sky look black and turn the sun’s hot corona into a crisp halo around the moon. It’s not really like that. More to the point, the reason people become eclipse chasers isn’t generally scientific study, it’s the experience. It’s simply uncanny — but for that, you need genuine totality.
So how was my eclipse in northen Spain…? In a word: cloudy. A beautiful, bright, clear and sunny day turned into full cloud as the eclipse approached. Sounds like a huge disappointment, right? Actually no. With tick clouds between us and the deep blue of the eclipsed sky, that Rayleigh scattered light mostly couldn’t reach our eyes, so it was much darker than a normal eclipse. Dramatically, even apocalyptically so, I think it’s fair to say, and it happened so unfathomably quickly in the final phase, made all the stranger by not even being able to see the sun that is being eclipsed. I imagine this kind of occluded eclipse would be even more terrifying for ancient cultures than the ones we generally think of, where you can at least see the moon covering the sun.
And talking of actual eclipses, George Holdaway and I covered them in July’s podcast, the latest edition of which was just uploaded to Mixcloud.
The Number 1 Science Podcast
The Science Show is a magazine-style miscellany packed with news, interviews, chat and discussions, plus great music and cultural crossovers. Episode 10 looks into space mirrors, the growing super-El Niño, and the potential of catnip – as a mozzie repellant. We also talk a wander through the beauty, impossibility and cult-inspiring possibilities of maths (with a couple of unusual deaths), and there’s an interview with science poet, and founder of Slow AI, Sam Illingworth. Plus, as ever, some great music choices.
IN addition to his substack, The Slow AI which helps over 21,000 followers consider how they can engage mindfully with AI and LLMs, Sam founded and co-edits a science-meets-art-meets-literature journal (peer reviewed, of course!) call Consilience. In case you’re unfamiliar with the term, consilience means the linking together of facts, theories, and principles from different academic disciplines to form a unified, comprehensive explanation, or the way evidence from independent, unrelated sources can “converge” on strong conclusions.
sam also runs the Science Communication Through Poetry short CPD course at Edinburgh Napier University. An online course run at lunchtime so anybody can join. Check it out here if you’re curious to know more.
July’s episode of the Science Show hit the top spot in Mixcloud’s science chart and zoomed into the Top 20 of the overall Podcast and Talk charts, which was a genuine surprise. I’d be honoured if you’d give Episode 10 a play too.
Also please like and share it at https://tinyurl.com/TheScienceShow-Episode-10
Well that’s it for this post. Hope to see you at the Old King’s Head on 16th September for
Great Engineering Leaps – Archimedes to Brunel and Beyond.
Richard (Science communicator and PubSci organiser/host)
10th July 2026
PubSci 