Science Quickly
1,942 episodes — Page 9 of 39
Song of the Stars, Part 2: Seeing in the Dark
A blind astronomer “sonified” the universe’s most explosive events: gamma-ray bursts. By listening to, rather than looking at, the data, she made a critical discovery and changed the field of astronomy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Song of the Stars, Part 1: Transforming Space into Symphonies
Space is famously silent, but astronomers and musicians are increasingly turning astronomical data into sound as a way to make discoveries and inspire people who are blind or visually impaired. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This Researcher Captured Air from the Amazon in Dive-Bombs--And Found Grim Clues That the Forest Is Dying
One researcher has been hiring planes to strafe the sky over the Amazon rain forest to collect the air coming off the trees, and what she is finding is cause for alarm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Should You Get a Blood Test For Alzheimer's?
Consumers can now get easy tests for Alzheimer’s. But these tests may not really help patients that much—yet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Ada Limón's Poem for Europa, Jupiter's Smallest Galilean Moon
U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón discusses her involvement in NASA’s Europa Clipper mission and the inspiration behind her poem, which will travel onboard the spacecraft. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
How the Woolly Bear Caterpillar Does Something Pretty Amazing to Survive the Winter
Caterpillars can’t regulate their body temperatures, so they have to come up with a totally different strategy to make it through the coldest months of the year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Bees 'Buzz' in More Ways Than You Might Think
A honeybee swarm has as much electric charge as a thundercloud, and the insects’ mass movements in the atmosphere might even have some influence on the weather. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Scientists Are Beginning to Learn the Language of Bats and Bees Using AI
The new field of digital bioacoustics is using machine learning to try decipher animal speak, including honeybee toots and quacks and whoops. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Trying to Train Your Brain Faster? Knowing This Might Help with That
Are you working really hard to learn something? Remember this counterintuitive fact, and you might improve your learning curve. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This Tick Bite Makes You Allergic to Red Meat
The bite of the lone star tick makes people allergic to a sugar found in mammalian products, and many doctors don’t know about it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This Lesbian Monkey Love Triangle Tells Us Something Really Interesting about Darwin's 'Paradox'
A “Darwinian paradox” is that homosexual activity occurs even though it does not lead to or aid in reproduction. But if you visit three capuchin monkeys in Los Angeles, they’ll show you how beneficial their liaisons are. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
What the Luddites Can Teach Us about AI
The Luddites did not hate technology—but they did fight the way it was used to exploit humans. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
A Pig Kidney Was Just Transplanted Into a Human Body, and It Is Still Working
Xenotransplants could help to solve the organ transplant crisis—if researchers can get the science right. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Migratory Birds Are in Peril, but Knowing Where They Are at Night Could Help Save Them
Light is a very dangerous, if not so obvious, threat to birds who migrate at night. But researchers are using weather radar to track birds and provide “lights out” forecasts to help keep their paths clear of visual distraction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Artificial Intelligence Is Helping Us 'See' Some of the Billions of Birds Migrating at Night
Science is turning to machines to unlock the secrets of the vast, mysterious pulse-of-the-planet phenomenon that is nocturnal migration. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Here's How You Go Birding in the Middle of the Night
If you really want to challenging your bird identification skills, try using them at night, when bird calls are less than 100 milliseconds long. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Using Human-Sized Microphones and Hay Bales, They Unlocked the Mysteries of Bird Migration
For thousands of years, no one truly knew how birds migrated—that is, until a few unlikely pioneers sat in an empty field with hundreds of pounds of kludged together recording gear and waited to hear sounds that no one had ever captured. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
They Tap Into the Magical, Hidden Pulse of the Planet, but What is the Nighttime Bird Surveillance Network?
On any given night, dense clouds of dark, ghostly figures pass over your head as you sleep. Maybe you never knew they were there, but there are people out there who are deciphering all the unseen movement that happens amid the darkness. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Hearing Aids Stave Off Cognitive Decline
Hearing aids may help maintain better brain functions in older people and better health overall. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In This Ancient Garden, Plants Can Cure or Kill You
Apothecaries founded this famous garden—one of the most ancient botanical gardens in Europe—to teach their students which plants poison and which plants cure. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Fungi Economy, Part 3: Can Climate Modeling from Space Save Our Forests?
Here’s how scientists are planning on getting underground fungi data from space using satellites. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Fungi Economy, Part 2: Here's How Plants and Fungi Trade beneath Our Feet
Atmospheric carbon is a currency that plants use to “buy” nutrients from fungi in the soil. To find out where this economy will go next, the devil is in the details. And the details are in the dirt. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Fungi Economy, Part 1: Just like Us, Trees Are Experiencing Inflation
Like us, plants and fungi have complex economies. By burning fossil fuels, we’ve been devaluing their currency. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Could Weight-Loss Drugs Curb Addiction? Your Health, Quickly, Episode 12
Drugs such as Wegovy and Ozempic might help people tackle substance abuse as well as shed pounds. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
How to Roll a Joint Perfectly, according to Science
Scientists used a smoking machine—complete with a 3-D-printed mouthpiece—to figure out how to get the most cannabinoid per puff. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Here's How AI Can Predict Hit Songs With Frightening Accuracy
New AI technology predicts hit songs—by listening to someone’s body. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Here's Why Actors Are So Worried about AI
Here’s what’s behind the A.I technology that has worried so many actors—including something called “the orb.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Are You a Lucid Dreamer?
A sleep researcher who studies what dreams can tell us about the possible onset of some mental disorders believes lucid dreamers might hold a lot of answers in their head. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Here's What 'Oppenheimer' Gets Right--And Wrong--About Nuclear History
Here’s what a historian who has studied J. Robert Oppenheimer for two decades has to say about the new Christopher Nolan film on the father of the atomic bomb. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
How Stress Messes With Your Gut
Inflammatory bowel disease flare-ups can be traced to mental stress Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Should We Care About AI's Emergent Abilities?
Here’s how large language models, or LLMs, actually work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
What That Jazz Beat Tells Us about Hearing and The Brain
Very small delays in swing jazz point to our evolution as a supremely auditory species. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Just like People, Orangutans Get Smoker's Voice
New research has discovered that wildfire smoke hurts these primates’ voice—and health. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Doctor AI Will See You Now
ChatGPT and other AI programs can offer medical advice. But how good are they? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
El Niño is Back. What Does That Mean For You?
The famous climate pattern El Niño could usher in a new hottest year on record and will have domino effects on the world’s weather. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Kavli Prize Presents: How Your Brain Maps the World [Sponsored]
John O’Keefe shared the Kavli Prize in Neuroscience in 2014 for discovering that neurons in the hippocampus encode an animal’s location and create a cognitive map for navigation. This podcast was produced for the Kavli Prize by Scientific American Custom Media, a division separate from the magazine’s board of editors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Universe Is Abuzz with Giant Gravitational Waves, and Scientists Just Heard Them (Maybe)
Researchers, using the galaxy as a detector, believe they have detected gravitational waves from monster black holes for the first time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Poisons and Perils on the Salton Sea
Toxic dust plagues marginalized communities on the shores of this disappearing salt lake. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
These Ants Are Probably Better at Navigating Than You Are
Desert ants living in the featureless salt plains of Tunisia count their steps and erect tall entrances at their nests to find their way back home. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
How to Cool Down Fast in Summer Heat
Your body has a secret cooling method, and scientists explain how to use it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Follow a Hurricane Expert into the Heart Of the Beast
Along with an expert, we take you into some of nature's most monstrous storms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Have Astronomers Seen the Universe's First Stars?
The James Webb Space Telescope is giving us our first glimpse of stars in the early universe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Cleo, the Mysterious Math Menace
In 2013 a new user named Cleo took an online math forum by storm with unproved answers. Today she’s an urban legend. But who was she? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
MDMA Moves from Party Drug Back to Therapy Tool
The party drug MDMA could soon be approved for treating people with severe PTSD. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Five Things You Need to Know about Wildfire Smoke Right Now
Where is it coming from? How long will it last? What's in the smoke? Whose health is at risk? How do you clean your own air? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
These Predators Had a Face like an Axe and Will Haunt Your Nightmares
Terror birds were the grizzly bears of birds, the great white sharks of the land, Jack the Ripper but with feathers. They were also truly fascinating. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This Thunderous Goose Relative Was Built like a Tank with the Wings of a Songbird
Officially, these prehistoric birds are the dromornithids, but everyone who studies them calls them thunderbirds—and for good reason. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This Gargantuan Bird Weighed as Much as a Sports Car
The elephant bird was the heaviest bird to ever walk the earth. Also, its eggs were 150 times the size of a chicken egg and thick as a dinner plate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This Massive Scientific Discovery Sat Hidden in a Museum Drawer for Decades
The fossil was a prehistoric bird called Pelagornis sandersi, and its wings stretched out twice as wide as those of the great albatross. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Kavli Prize Presents: Understanding the Machinery of the Cell [Sponsored]
James Rothman shared The Kavli Prize in Neuroscience in 2010 for discovering the molecular basis of neurotransmitter release. How did a biochemist come to win such a prestigious prize in neuroscience? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices