Science, Spoken

Latest Episodes:

E.T. Hunters Join Forces to Probe the Heavens Sep 19, 2018

Show notes

WIRED ICON Jill Tarter, cofounder of the SETI Institute NOMINATES Margaret Turnbull, astronomer investigating alien biology October 2018. Subscribe to WIRED.Plunkett + Kuhr DesignersWhen she met Jill Tarter more than two decades ago, one of Margaret Turnbull’s first questions was, “How can somebody work with you?” Tarter was leading the Center for SETI Research at the time; Turnbull was an astronomy student. The next summer, Tarter took Turnbull on as an intern.

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

Jeff Bezos and the Clock That Will Outlast Civilization Sep 19, 2018

Show notes

WIRED ICON Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, orbital enthusiast GOES LONG The 10,000-year clock1 Inventor and computer scientist Danny Hillis spent the 1980s and early ’90s designing machines worthy of the new millennium. But by 1995 he realized that he had never given much thought to what lay on the other side of the year 2000.

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

SpaceX Will Send Yusaku Maezawa (and Artists!) to the Moon Sep 18, 2018

Show notes

“I choose to go to the moon.” Those were among the first words uttered on stage Monday night by Yusaku Maezawa, the mysterious passenger whose existence SpaceX CEO Elon Musk had teased on Twitter last week. Maezawa, a Japanese retail entrepreneur and art collector, stood before a small crowd at SpaceX headquarters and announced that he had also secured tickets for several companions on this week-long journey into space: a half-dozen artists that he will later select and invite along.

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

Astronomers Have Found the Universe's Missing Matter Sep 18, 2018

Show notes

Astronomers have finally found the last of the missing universe. It’s been hiding since the mid-1990s, when researchers decided to inventory all the “ordinary” matter in the cosmos—stars and planets and gas, anything made out of atomic parts. (This isn’t “dark matter,” which remains a wholly separate enigma.) They had a pretty good idea of how much should be out there, based on theoretical studies of how matter was created during the Big Bang.

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

At the Edge of the World, Facing the End of the World Sep 17, 2018

Show notes

Writing about climate change is an exercise in managed insanity. The human mind isn’t equipped to parse a crisis—the greatest in the history of our species—of such complexity and urgency and darkness. With record-breaking superstorms ravaging coastlines at a regular clip, it’s hard to feel good about the impact that Homo sapiens has had on our leafy, temperate, Goldilocks planet.

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

An Equator Full of Hurricanes Shows a Preview of End Times Sep 17, 2018

Show notes

The map looks terrifyingly unfamiliar. Not because of the outlines of the continents; those are comforting in their hooks, tails, splotches, and whorls. It’s the storms. Across the globe’s tropics right now, seven superstorms are swirling over oceans. Hurricane Florence is butting into the Carolinas on North America’s southeastern coast. Tropical storms Helene, Isaac, and Joyce are hovering over the Atlantic like jets stacked on approach to Charlotte.

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

Emissions Have Already Peaked in 27 Cities—And Keep Falling Sep 14, 2018

Show notes

Nothing against the countryside, which is lovely, but cities are where things happen. They are magnets for trade, and they're where cultures meet. They're also where more than half the world’s population lives, a number that will only continue to grow. Cities are also now serving as a unique testbed for responses to climate change—bolstering public transportation, erecting more efficient buildings, deploying renewable energy.

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

A New Robotic Fly Dips and Dives Like the Real Thing Sep 14, 2018

Show notes

Respect where respect is due: we humans may be mighty, but there’s still a foe that regularly dodges our best efforts to kill it: the fruit fly. Over millennia of evolution, fruit flies have adapted to burn their pursuers with enviable agility. Now researchers have built a robotic doppelganger that can twist and bank with astonishing speed. With two pairs of wings beating 17 times a second, it has a wingspan of over a foot and weighs just an ounce.

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

You Can Drink Champagne in Space—Yes, Really Sep 13, 2018

Show notes

Space travel used to be something that only people with the right stuff could experience. But advances in commercial space tourism is changing all of that. Virgin Galactic is registering passengers online. SpaceX announced it would send two lucky passengers around the moon in the next year or two. But space travel is still likely going to cater to a select few, in this case, people with the right amount of money. Virgin Galactic is currently pricing initial flights at $250,000.

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

Yes, You Can Boil Water at Room Temperature. Here's How Sep 13, 2018

Show notes

Sometimes it's right on the box of rice mix—the high altitude version of cooking instructions. Usually this means that your rice will have to cook a little bit longer if you are in Denver or at the top of Mount Everest. Of course that's just a joke. No one cooks rice at the top of Everest. But why are the instructions even different? Why does it matter where you cook? The answer has to do with boiling water. Go ask some people on the street about the boiling temperature of water.

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