Science, Spoken

Latest Episodes:

A Rocket Built by Students Reached Space for the First Time May 23, 2019

Show notes

In the early morning of April 21, 10 students from the University of Southern California’s Rocket Propulsion Lab piled into the back of a pickup truck with a 13-foot rocket wedged between them and drove down a dusty dirt road to a launchpad near Spaceport America, in southern New Mexico. When they arrived, their teammates helped them lift the 300-pound rocket onto a launch rail. Dennis Smalling, the rocket lab’s chief engineer, began the countdown at 7:30 am.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Abortion Bans Create a Public Health Nightmare May 23, 2019

Show notes

On Friday, the legislature of Missouri passed a ban on abortions, among the most extreme of any state. It prohibits any abortions after eight weeks of gestation, putting it among the category of misleadingly named “heartbeat bills” that use fetal cardiac activity as a marker for … well, illegality, really. Like a law signed earlier last week in Alabama, the Missouri bill contains no exceptions for cases of rape or incest.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Mystifying Case of the Missing Planets May 21, 2019

Show notes

After the sun formed, the dust and gas left over from its natal cloud slowly swirled into the eight planets we have today. Small, rocky things clung close to the sun. Gigantic gas worlds floated in the system’s distant reaches. And around countless stars in the galaxy, a version of this process repeated itself, forging plentiful planets in a spectrum of sizes — except, apparently, worlds just a tad bigger than Earth.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Inside Facebook's New Robotics Lab, Where AI and Machines Friend One Another May 21, 2019

Show notes

At first glance, Facebook’s nascent robotic platform looks a bit … chaotic. In a new lab in its palatial Silicon Valley HQ, a red-and-black Sawyer robot arm (from the recently defunct company Rethink Robotics) is waving all over the place with a mechanical whine. It’s supposed to casually move its hand to a spot in space to its right, but it goes up, up, up and way off course, then resets to its starting position. Then the arm goes right, and gets pretty close to its destination.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Inside Swamp Works, the NASA Lab Learning to Mine the Moon May 21, 2019

Show notes

This is a story about dust. Dust that can mold into the shape of an astronaut’s boot and remain unchanged for millennia. Dust that cuts like glass. Dust so fine that it brings billion-dollar machines to their pneumatic knees. Moondust. For Jason Schuler, a robotics engineer at NASA’s Swamp Works, in Florida, it’s an obsession. He works on machines that can extract, pulverize, mold, analyze, and protect against extraterrestrial dirt.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Now Ocean Plastics Could Be Killing Oxygen-Making Bacteria May 20, 2019

Show notes

This planet has a problem with plastic. Not just the big masses of it accumulating in the Pacific, but with the tiny bits that are blowing into pristine mountaintop habitats. The flecks showing up in a range of sea creatures. The specks materializing even in human feces.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

5G Networks Could Throw Weather Forecasting Into Chaos May 20, 2019

Show notes

If you had a choice between a better, faster cell phone signal and an accurate weather forecast, which would you pick? That’s the question facing federal officials as they decide whether to auction off more of the wireless spectrum or heed meteorologists who say that such a move could throw US weather forecasting into chaos. On Capitol Hill Thursday, NOAA’s acting chief, Neil Jacobs, said that interference from 5G wireless phones could reduce the accuracy of forecasts by 30 percent.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

'Heartbeat' Bills Get the Science of Fetal Heartbeats All Wrong May 17, 2019

Show notes

Last week, Georgia governor Brian Kemp—the narrow winner over Stacey Abrams in a contentious, sketchy election last year—signed into law a ban on abortions after more than six weeks of pregnancy. That made Georgia the sixth state to institute such a ban, and the fourth this year (Ohio’s elected officials put theirs in place in April), with seven more states kicking around the idea.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This Casino's Microgrid Might Be the Future of Energy May 17, 2019

Show notes

As the Fukushima disaster unfolded in Japan, the Blue Lake Rancheria, in Northern California, was dealing with its own crisis. Several miles inland and uphill from the Pacific Ocean, the 100 acres of tribal land had turned into a haven for roughly 3,000 coastal dwellers who were fleeing a feared tsunami from that same earthquake. A huge line of cars assembled at the Rancheria’s gas station; one young woman ran in circles, holding her baby and weeping.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NASA Needs $1.6 Billion More to Send a Human to the Moon May 16, 2019

Show notes

NASA revealed Monday that it needs an additional $1.6 billion in funding for fiscal year 2020 to stay on track for a human return to the moon by 2024. The space agency's budget amendment comes in addition to the $21 billion the Trump administration asked Congress for in March. Ars Technica This story originally appeared on Ars Technica, a trusted source for technology news, tech policy analysis, reviews, and more. Ars is owned by WIRED's parent company, Condé Nast.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected