Comedy and Science collide in this brand new science comedy quiz hosted Neil Delamere. Each week team captains, PJ Gallagher and Dr Aoibhinn Ní Shuilleabháin and their teams of comedians and science personalities are put through their paces as our tenacious panel attempt to answer some of humanity’s most pressing questions like:
Is it possible to have sex in space?
What does cheese made with PJ and Aoibhinn’s own bacteria taste like?
Is a zombie apocalypse scientifically possible?
Each show sees host Neil risk life and limb to celebrate the greatest ‘Eureka Moments’ of our time. Over the course of the series he’ll channel 4 million volts of electricity and shoot lightning out of his fingertips (and a couple of other places while he’s at it), he’ll create an earthquake in Westmeath, undergo astronaut training in a human centrifuge, be blasted by hurricane force winds, master weightlessness aboard a zero gravity flight and go free-diving in a freezing quarry – all in the name of scientific discovery.
Each week PJ and Aoibhinn go head to head in a science-themed “Team Captain Challenge” where they’ll fight robots, try to keep their lunch down during a spin on a virtual reality rollercoaster and dunk their faces into freezing water to test their mammalian diving reflex. Expect vicious competition, much swearing, victory dances and some falling down.
Episode 6
This week Aoibhinn is joined by Zoe Lyons (Mock the Week, Michael MacIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow) and Alun Cochrane (8 out of 10 Cats, Mock the Week) while completing the team of PJ Gallagher and his chief scientific advisor, TCD’s Prof Luke O’Neill, is biologist Simon Watt (Inside Nature’s Giants, Ugly Animal Preservation Society).
Neil’s ‘eureka moment’ takes him diving without a breathing apparatus in a freezing cold quarry on a winter’s day all in the name of Robert Boyle, the Irishman known as a founding father of chemistry – definitely NOT one to try at home.
Back in the relative warmth of the studio Neil quizzes the teams about life on Mars and the mating habits of an assortment of animals – and discovers that sometimes Bonobo monkeys fancy humans…
Finally competition heats up – or rather cools down considerably – as Aoibhinn and PJ go for an icy dip of their own to see who can make their heart rate dip further in this weeks Team Captain Challenge.
All of that and lots more on Eureka! The Big Bang Query, Monday April 18th at 22:25 on RTÉ 2.