2015 was a magnificent year for physics. Not only was it the International Year of Light and light-based technologies, it was an outstanding year of astronomical achievement, culminating with the magnificent New Horizons photos of Pluto. It was also 100 years since the Theory of General Relativity was published, and 50 years since the Cosmic Background Radiation was discovered.

Australia also broke a couple of astronomical world records: The most people stargazing across Australia, and in a single location at ANU. One of the organisers of this world record was Tom Gordon, a science communicator at The University of Sydney who runs Kickstart Physics(Instagram), which are physics workshops aimed at year 12 science students and teachers. Tom, along with Christie McMonigal and Shane Hengst, runs the STEMPunk podcast, chatting about science communication and Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM): Communicating scientifically with science communicators.

Who better to talk to about this splendid year in Physics than Tom?

Listen in here:

Songs in this episode (in order of play - all Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0)):

1. Sharks with Lasers by spinmeister;
2. Red Giant by Fireproof_Babies;
3. Fate of the Sun by Fireproof_Babies;
4. Beyond Jupiter - Instrumental by Ivan Chew;
5. Spaced Invaders 2011 (90 BPM) by coruscate