Science, Spoken

This storyoriginally appeared on Gristand is part of theClimate Deskcollaboration. What Jonathan Sanderman really wanted was some old dirt. He called everyone he could think of who might know where he could get some. He emailed colleagues and read through old studies looking for clues, but he kept coming up empty. Sanderman was looking for old dirt because it would let him test a plan to save the...

I can’t imagine a blockbuster movie about superheroes without some cool physics. After all, these aren’t dramas, but action movies with jumping and flying and punching. Of course, the point of the jumping and flying and punching is to advance the story, not provide a physics lesson. But nothing says they can’t do both. The firsttrailer for Thor: Ragnarokprovides a great chance to do this. Learn mo...

On a plate, a single banana seems whimsical—yellow and sweet, contained in its own easy-to-open peel. It is a charming breakfast luxury as silly as it is delicious and ever-present. Yet when you eat a banana the flavor on your tongue has complex roots, equal parts sweetness and tragedy. In 1950, most bananas were exported from Central America. Guatemala in particular was a key piece of a vast empi...

I know you've all seen lists like this before: what is the "world's most dangerous volcano"? Most of the time, that discuss devolves quickly into something about "supervolcanoes", which is very exciting and all because they can generate massive eruptions. However, they are far from being the "most dangerous" volcano. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Some people just want to die. Not because they are trapped by depression, anxiety, public embarrassment, or financial ruin. No, these poor few have terminal illnesses. Faced with six months to live, and the knowledge that the majorityof those 180 days will be bad ones,theyseek a doctor’s prescription for an early death. Soon, terminal patients in California will have that option. Learn more about...

Travel just few miles west of bustling Cheyenne, Wyoming, a you’ll find yourself in big-sky country. Tall-grass plains line the highway, snow-packed peaks pierce the sky, and round-edged granite formations jut out of the ground. But in this bucolic scene sits an alien building: a blocky, almost pre-fab structure with a white rotunda, speckled with dozens of windows that look out onto the grounds....

In Miami Beach, they call it “sunny-day flooding.” You’ll be hanging out downtown under clear blue skies—only to see, whoa, the streets slowly filling with water. Miami Beach, Florida, is a coastal city built on porous limestone, so as climate change melts polar ice into the oceans, water is literally pushed up out of the ground. “It’s an eerie, scary, unnerving feeling, like something out of a sc...

Computers used to require entire buildings to operate. Now they fit in our pockets. Similarly, factory-size electronics manufacturing is approaching a contraction. Want proof? Look at that $50 printer on your desk and imagine, instead of using it to spit out a hard copy of that thank-you note, that you used it to print some digital memory. Not enough memory to power a laptop. Think smaller, like s...

Elon Musk wants to merge the computer with the human brain, build a “neural lace,” create a “direct cortical interface,” whatever that might look like. In recent months, the founder of Tesla, SpaceX, and OpenAI has repeatedly hinted at these ambitions, and then, earlier this week, The Wall Street Journal reported that Musk has now launched a company called Neuralink that aims to implant tiny elect...

Bennett Schwartz is one of the nation’s leading memory experts, and when I visited him in his office at Florida International University, he was standing at his desk. A soft sunlight crowded the room. Large windows framed the palm tree-lined quad outside. Dressed in a short-sleeved shirt and slacks, Schwartz appeared to be quietly talking to himself, with hushed, mumbled words, and for a long mome...

Not unlike the ant-decapitating fly and the satanic leaf-tailed gecko, the fang blenny’s name does not disappoint. This tiny fish wields two massive teeth that it uses to gouge chunks out of much larger fish and, in a bind, scrap its way out of the grasp of a predator. And one particular group of fang blenny even injects venom, just like a snake, to give its attackers that extra what-for. That’s a...

This weekend saw a new eruption from Kambalny in southern Kamchatka. Now, the Kamchatka Peninsula is a very volcanically active area, with multiple eruptions going on simultaneously much of the time. There are certain volcanoes that are in almost-constant unrest, like Shiveluch, Kliuchevskoi, and Karymsky. However, Kambalny is not one of the usual suspects for activity. This changed when a dark gr...

I teach an introductory physics course to elementary education majors, but my lessons aren't really about physics. At first glance, it might seem that they are, but it's a trick. The course examinesthe nature of science. That's what makes it so awesome. When I talk about the nature of science, I don't mean the list of steps outlined on thatposter in your fourth grade classroom-that's not howscienc...

Last week, Anheuser-Busch announced a plan to sponsor research aboard the International Space Station to learn how to someday serve beer to astronauts on Mars. This is a dumb plan—not because beer is bad, or because astronauts responsible for settling the red planet won’t deserve a brewski at the end of a sol. It’s just, why beer? Distilled spirits—liquor—has always been a better fuel for explorat...

The last thing twenty-one-year-old Pat Fletcher saw before the explosion was the chemical-filled steel tank beside her suddenly ballooning outward. With alarm she realized the plastic hose in her hand had grown unusually hot. Then the world flashed blindingly bright and turned a brilliant blue, the color of the flames engulfing her body. When she awoke, Pat thought she might be dreaming. The world...

Two hundred and twenty miles above Earth flies the International Space Station, a $70 billion1 engineering marvel that no onehas any idea what to do with. Short term, sure: astronauts, science, zero-gravity viral videos. Longer term, spending $3 billion to $4 billion annually to keep the ISS running conflicts with NASA’s other ambitions, like visiting Mars. Congress holds NASA’s purse strings, so...

Tom Steyer isn't your average California tree hugger. The former hedge fund manager—number 1,121 on Forbes' wealthiest people list, with $1.61 billion—was once best known for turning $15million into $30billion in about two decades. But then he went hiking. Steyer and environmental activist and author Bill McKibben spent a day trudging through the Adirondacks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visi...

The feline approaches its prey. Slowly at first, then crescendoing to a pounce that lands near, but not on the unmoving target. The cat bats an investigatory paw, then claws its target and yanks it faceward. But the cat does not bare its fangs; it does not bite. It closes its eyes and rubs the prey—a sock flecked with bits of dried herb—across its whiskers, then falls to the ground, its body hummi...

Imagine yourself running the vacuum cleaner over the carpet when all of sudden—a sock. Boom. It’s stuck in the hose, the whine of the vacuum getting higher andhigher, louder andlouder. It sounds like overload is imminent, like the motor is working way too hard. But is it? To know, let’s look at some cool physics principles. Vacuum cleaners don’t actually suck. They blow. No, really. They use a fan...

For years, Facebook has been investing in artificial intelligence fields like machine learning and deep neural nets to build its core business—selling you things better than anyone else in the world. But earlier this month, the company began turning some of those AI tools to a more noble goal: stopping people from taking their own lives. Admittedly, this isn’t entirely altruistic. Having people br...

You can go ahead and assume President Trump’s proposed federal budget will never be the actual federal budget. Members of Congress from every political persuasion will find a lot to hate about it, and they’re the ones who have to approve it—assuming they can sort out the arcane, procrustean rules for getting any budget passed in Washington. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.co...

You’ve heard the hype: The quantum computer revolution is coming. Physicists say these devices will be fast enough to break every encryption method banks use today. Their artificial intelligence will be so advanced that you could load in the periodic table and the laws of quantum mechanics, and they could design the most efficient solar cell to date. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcast...

On a plate, a single banana seems whimsical—yellow and sweet, contained in its own easy-to-open peel. It is a charming breakfast luxury as silly as it is delicious and ever-present. Yet when you eat a banana the flavor on your tongue has complex roots, equal parts sweetness and tragedy. In 1950, most bananas were exported from Central America. Guatemala in particular was a key piece of a vast empi...

Last week, as tens of thousands of US and South Korean soldiers gathered at a base in Iwakuni, Japan for an annual joint military exercise, North Korea fired four ballistic missiles from Pyongyang into the sea off Japan’s northwest coast. In a world where the US is headed by a Twigger-happy political neophyte and the risk of a Cold War reboot looms larger with each Wikileaks disclosure, this demon...

Namrata Udeshi knows how to globally analyze the proteomics of human cells. You’d be forgiven for having no idea what that means or why it matters—it’s a complicated technique that you’d need years of post-graduate training to master. But for now, just know it’s important for disease research. Udeshi is a group leader in a proteomics lab at MIT’s Broad Institute, working long days to understand th...