Science, Spoken

This much is obvious: What the world needs now is less fake news. In general, sure, but particularly on the planet's leading source of information: Facebook. The thing is, to separate the informational wheat from the disinformational chaffe, what you actually need is a better definition of fake news. And that's… well… less obvious. "What does it mean, exactly? It's not always clear. Learn more abo...

Turbulence, the splintering of smooth streams of fluid into chaotic vortices, doesn’t just make for bumpy plane rides. It also throws a wrench into the very mathematics used to describe atmospheres, oceans and plumbing. Turbulence is the reason why the Navier-Stokes equations—the laws that govern fluid flow—are so famously hard that whoever proves whether or not they always work will win a million...

Does it matter if you put a video camera near your magnetic compass that is used for navigation? The theoretical answer is "yes." But the practical answer? "Probably not." Now for a detailed explanation! How does a magnetic compass work? So, the Earth is like a giant magnet, just like that bar magnet that picks up paperclips. For this giant Earth-magnet, the north end is in Antartica and the south...

Space: final frontier or ultimate tourist destination? Possibly both—provided you have the cash. Already, you can buy tickets for (as-yet-unscheduled) flights aboard SpaceShipTwo, the crew vehicle developed by Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic. And at a NewSpace conference in Seattle last month, Blue Origin—helmed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos—announced that it has plans to sell tickets to wannabe...

The robot apocalypse is nigh. Boston Dynamics’ robots are doing backflips and opening doors for their friends. Oh, and these 7-foot-long robot arms can lift 500 pounds each, which means they could theoretically crush, like, six humans at once. The robot apocalypse is also laughable. Watch a robot attempt a task it hasn’t been explicitly trained to do, and it’ll fall flat on its face or just give u...

This storyoriginally appeared on Gristand is part of theClimate Deskcollaboration. Sometimes the most vicious fights occur over the smallest differences. Brutal battles have pitted Catholics that kneel in prayer against Protestant sects that stood before the same God. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The best questions are always the ones that don't have a single clear answer. In my physics classes, I like to present students with problems that can promote a lively discussion—and to do that, they have to have multiple answers that could possibly make sense. (And they shouldn't involve lots of math, otherwise my students will just get hung up on the calculations.) Here is a version of one of th...

Anyone who travels to rocket launches regularly knows three things: Bring snacks, wear sunscreen, and don't book your flight home for the night after the scheduled takeoff. Chances are, you'll either miss the launch or your plane. A company called Rocket Lab provides no exception. The commercial space organization hopes to send up rockets just the right size for smaller satellites. But of three to...

NASA has to start protecting planets better. The international treaty governing space—there is one—and the laws and regulations that follow it date back to the Cold War. That was before scientists knew about the oceans on moons around other planets, before they knew about how tough microorganisms get here on Earth (and so maybe in space too?), before they started planning experiments to look for l...

Falcon Heavy is about to take off in a big way. Just a few months after its thrilling debut, SpaceX’s heavy-lift rocket is back in the headlines. Not for sending another cherry-red Tesla into space, but for gaining some major accolades from the Air Force. In a surprising move, and after just one flight, the Air Force announced it has certified Falcon Heavy for military launches and awarded the veh...

When Rick Ostfeld gets bitten by a tick, he knows right away. After decades studying tick-borne diseases as an ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York, Ostfeld has been bitten more than 100 times, and his body now reacts to tick saliva with an intense burning sensation. He’s an exception. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Can you launch fireworks from your drone? OK, before I answer this question I have my own question: Why? Guys, why would you want to put fireworks on your drone? I mean, I get it. Fireworks are cool and drones are cool. Therefore fireworks on drones are cool to the power of two, I guess. But really, it's probably not a good idea to manifest your American pride with this particular version of pyrot...

The dogs will lose their minds. They always do. Every Fourth of July in America, as children stay up past their bedtime to watch colors explode in the sky and adults sit on the back of pickup trucks drinking beer and marveling at a pyrotechnic technology 12 centuries old, pets across the country panic with every boom. Sound phobias are very common for dogs—and cats—making this holiday a nightmare...

The giant hogweed is hard to miss. The monstrous plant towers up to 15 feet tall, with a crown of white flowers the size of an umbrella. They burst into bloom between the last week of June and the first week of July—just in time to be the perfect dramatic backdrop to red-white-and-blue-themed parties. But whatever you do, don’t touch it. The giant hogweed’s toxic sap could give you third-degree bu...

Having grown up in Tucson, Arizona, one of the sunniest cities in the world, I consider myself well-versed in the carcinogenic threat of UV exposure, the skin-sparing sanctity of shade, and the redeeming qualities of the sartorial atrocity that is the broad-brimmed hat. I am also a compulsive sunscreensplainer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Call it the California Marijuanapocalypse of 2018. As of January 1, recreation cannabis has been legal in the state. A black market still runs underneath it all (Northern California alone supplies perhaps 75 percent of all marijuana across the United States), but cultivators and distributors are going legit, bringing themselves up to the rigorous testing and packaging standards mandated by the sta...

The Expanse should just change their post credits for each episode to include a list of homework questions. Seriously—there are so many great things to explore in this hard science fiction show. In a recent episode, one of the large spaceships (the Navoo) rotates in order to create artificial gravity (that's not really a spoiler). How about some questions and answers about this giant spinning spac...

Ruth Nell is talented talker. Always has been. As a child, her mother taught her to enunciate her words when she spoke, which she did often and at length. So wordy was she that, in grammar school, her friends nicknamed her "Yakky Roo," partly for her ace Yakky Doodle impersonation, but also for her loquaciousness. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

SpaceX is swiftly moving toward achieving its ultimate goal of rapid reusability: flying a single booster twice within a 24-hour time period. It’s a goal that Elon Musk says SpaceX will achieve later this year—but in order to make good on that promise, the company must first say goodbye to its hardest-working rocket yet. That would be the full thrust Falcon, known to SpaceX followers as the Block...

For the past decade, astronomers have been waiting for a remarkable new instrument to enter the world. The James Webb Space Telescope will be launched to waypoint 1 million miles beyond Earth’s orbit, further than any telescope yet, where it can observe the deepest corners of the universe. From there it will unfurl a sunshield to protect special sensors that can detect images giving off faint glow...

The 144 words of Robert Frost’s seminal poem “The Road Not Taken” fit neatly onto a single printed page or a 1 kilobyte data file. Or in Hyunjun Park’s hands, a few drops of water in the bottom of a pink Eppendorf tube. Well, really what’s inside the water: invisible floating strands of DNA. Scientists have long touted DNA’s potential as an ideal storage medium; it’s dense, it’s easy to replicate,...

Crack open the door of the incubator at Novoheart’s Hong Kong headquarters and you’ll find about a dozen pea-shaped, pulsating blobs submerged in a warm, salty-sweet broth. They’re 3-D human heart organoids—a simplified, shrunk-down version of the real thing—the first ever to contain a hollow chamber, like one of the four that’s beating inside your chest right now. And they’re the future of drug t...

Adderall, shmaderall. Certain biohackers prefer taking teeny-tiny amounts of psychedelic drugs to boost focus. But what exactly is a microdose, anyway? Here’s our semi-scientific guide. Hint: If you feel the trees breathing, you’re doing it wrong. Acid Microdose (5–10 mcg): Users claim that a microhit of LSD clears mental locks and helps with depression. It’s often taken first thing in the morning...

The icons of downtown San Francisco are the same whether you’re looking at the buildings or at your phone. In the blocks around the undulating, metal-screened length of the city’s new bus and train terminal, skyscrapers—including the city’s tallest—flash all the familiar logos. There’s Salesforce and its new tower, of course, but also LinkedIn, Google, Twilio, Zipcar, Github, Okta, and Dropbox. Le...

Wake up. Grab phone. Unlock. Open Twitter. Absorb tweets. Scroll. Absorb tweets. Scroll. Absorb tweets. What do they say? They say: [#twitter: https://twitter.com/adambvary/status/1006334904655753216 ] Well yes, that. But what else? Look closer. Disregard the topics; pay attention to the words. Soak up not just a few tweets, but a few million. Take them in not merely when you wake up, but every ho...