Science, Spoken

This story originally appeared in The Guardian and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Of the nearly two dozen Democrats running for president, only two campaigns have so far laid out deadlines for transforming American life to slash the pollution that is warming the planet’s climate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When Robert Heinlein wrote his masterpiece of space age realism, The Man Who Sold the Moon, he had no way of knowing how prescient it would be. Published in 1950, it tells the tale of Delos D. Harriman, the “last of the robber barons,” who is hellbent on being the first man on the moon. Harriman drives himself to the brink of bankruptcy and madness chasing his lunar ambitions, which he feels can’t...

Air pollution is worse for us than we thought, the world's richest man unveiled his moon craft, and Mother's Day is around the corner. Here's what you should know, in two minutes or less. Today's Headlines Evidence suggests air pollution might cause dementia The health conscious among us can eat well, exercise plenty, and abstain vices, like smoking. But the worsening air quality in American citie...

Larry Mayer is headed out this week on a ship to explore the Channel Islands off the Southern California coast. Well, he’s actually exploring seafloor formations near the islands, looking for evidence that ancient peoples might have camped out in the caves as they migrated south some 15,000 years ago, a time when the sea level was 600 feet lower than today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit...

Viruses from a freezer saved a dying teen, hackers stole millions, and Adam Savage has some organization tips for you. Here's what you should know, in two minutes or less. Today's Headlines Genetically tweaked viruses just saved a sick teen A teenage girl in London found herself in life-threatening peril from cystic fibrosis, a genetic condition where the lungs can’t clear mucus or disease-causing...

In October 2017, Graham Hatfull received an urgent email from across the pond. A microbiologist colleague of his named James Soothill was desperately looking for a way to help two patients at the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. The pair of teenagers, a girl and a boy, had cystic fibrosis, a genetic condition where the lungs can’t clear mucus or disease-causing bacteria. And they had both r...

For nearly a century, the Arctic has been a scientific playground for American, Canadian, and European researchers studying everything from magnetic fields to krill populations, as well as documenting rising temperatures and a changing climate. But with China increasingly expressing an interest in all things Arctic, a geopolitical storm is brewing. Traditional boundaries between science, commerce,...

I've never been in a situation where I had to choose between the option of crashing in a jet or ejecting from the jet. I hope I would choose the ejection option, since it would more likely lead to a better outcome than crashing. That said, if you look at the ejection systems in modern military aircraft, they look brutal. The acceleration on ejection must be enormous. OK then—let's see if I can mea...

Sunscreen chemicals are slipping through your pores, Google has big conference coming, and Game of Thrones made an "oopsie." Here's the news you need to know, in two minutes or less. PSA: Sunscreen chemicals can seep into your bloodstream A new clinical trial from the FDA suggests that, contrary to what sunscreen manufacturers have been saying, the UV blocking chemicals in sunscreen do, in fact, s...

By now, you’ve probably been taught to gird your sun-starved skin for battle with cancer-causing cosmic rays every time you go outside. Choose a spray, choose a lotion, but by heavens, choose something! Legions of doctors, parents, and YouTube beauty influencers are unanimous on this point. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This past Valentine’s Day, Shawn Richard stood before the San Francisco Planning Commission and made the case for why the board should let him open the first cannabis dispensary in the city’s legendary Upper Haight neighborhood. Given the Haight’s legacy as the epicenter of the weed-fueled counterculture movement, his shop would be historically significant. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit...

Last month, a journal published an n-of-one experiment of unusual origin. It was the study comparing astronaut Scott Kelly’s physiology to that of his Earthbound identical twin brother, Mark. During his time on the International Space Station, Scott gathered reams of data on his own health and took hundreds of samples of his own stool, urine, and blood, for comparison later to those of Mark. Learn...

The roof of Notre Dame Cathedral wasn’t just a roof. Sure, it kept the rain out. But what burned away in Paris last April was a technical marvel, the height—literally—of 12th- and 13th-century engineering. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In early April, 1999, a time capsule was delivered to the famed architect Frank Gehry with instructions to incorporate it into his designs for the building that would eventually host MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, or CSAIL. The time capsule was essentially a museum of early computer history, containing 50 items contributed by the likes of Bill Gates and Tim Berners-Lee. Le...

Millennials are increasingly making time in their busy schedules to put their eggs on ice. More effective flash-freezing technologies, micro-optimized ad targeting, and a growing willingness among companies to follow Silicon Valley’s lead of including fertility treatments in benefit packages, have made the practice more attractive to would-be parents. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcas...

The world’s most precise clock sits on a table in Jun Ye’s lab in Boulder, Colorado. A tangle of electronics, fiber optic cables, and laser beams, the clock is still a prototype, so no one actually uses it to tell time. Ye, who is a physicist at the research institute JILA, and his team have demonstrated that the clock can produce a second with precision in the parts per quintillion—that’s 10-19,...

Over the past few years, speculation has risen around whether North Korea or any other nation could detonate a nuclear weapon over the United States that would create an electromagnetic pulse, and knock out all electricity for weeks or months. This doomsday hypothesis has been promoted by a former CIA director , a commission set up by Congress, and a book by newsman Ted Koppel. Learn more about yo...

Today brings sad news in the world of consumer robotics. Anki, maker of Vector, a toy-like autonomous countertop robot, is shutting down, and hundreds of people are losing their jobs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ken Haller is 64, but he vividly remembers having measles when he was 7. And mumps when he was 10. And chickenpox when he was 11, which required him to keep socks on his hands so he wouldn’t gouge his skin from scratching. He still has a faint scar on his nose from one pustule he scratched too intensely. Haller is also a pediatrician who has treated babies who developed meningitis from Haemophilus...

Hardly anyone actually has measles in Los Angeles (so far; thank goodness). Just five people who passed through the airports, and five residents of the county. Four of those residents are “linked cases,” meaning three got it from one. The problem is, one of those people infected with measles spent some time on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles. Another one spent an afternoon...

In humanity’s battle against man-made climate change, the earth itself provides one of the most important weapons, a natural system that breathes in earth-warming CO2 and exhales oxygen. Yes, I’m talking about plants, engineered by nature itself over the course of millennia to harness the Earth’s natural conditions to turn sunlight and CO2 into oxygen and organic matter. Plants are the key to many...

Three hundred and sixty six days ago, CeCe Moore woke up to the headline that would change her world: “Suspected Golden State Killer, East Area Rapist arrested after eluding authorities for decades. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Edward Chang keeps a cybernetic implant at his desk, which seems almost calculatedly cool. Chang is a lean, low-voiced neurosurgeon at UC San Francisco. The cybernetic implant—more properly a Brain-Computer Interface—is a floppy, translucent plastic square about the size of my hand, embedded with a 16-by-16 array of titanium dots, each about the size of a cupcake sprinkle. This part sits on top of...

During a series of engine tests of SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft this past Saturday, the vehicle experienced what the company has characterized as an "anomaly." Based upon an unauthorized leaked video of the accident, the company was counting down toward a firing of the Dragon's SuperDraco thrusters when the vehicle exploded. SpaceX has not validated the video, but it is consistent with verbal accoun...

We talk a lot these days about using robots to manage the problem of the "last mile." Say, getting a package to a doorstep from a local delivery center. Or picking up garbage from a backyard. Or delivering pizza. WIRED OPINION ABOUT Matt Beane is an Assistant Professor of Technology Management at UC Santa Barbara and a Research Affiliate at MIT's Institute for the Digital Economy. Learn more about...