Science, Spoken
2,361 episodes — Page 18 of 48
Why Covering Canals With Solar Panels Is a Power Move
Covering waterways would, in a sense, make solar panels water-cooled, boosting their efficiency. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Satellites Can Help Detect When a Volcano's About to Blow
Researchers used thermal radiation data to find patterns in recent eruptions—providing another metric to help get ahead of a potentially deadly blast. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
An Ultracold Plasma Models the Universe’s Most Extreme Places
The super cool, dense particle swarm gives physicists a way to study the insides of stars and gas giants—without ever leaving the lab. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
NASA Gets a Quick Peek at a Mysterious Layer of the Sun
A new map of the chromosphere’s magnetic field could help us predict solar weather patterns—and anticipate flares that wreak havoc on the power grid. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
New Kind of Space Explosion Reveals the Birth of a Black Hole
A supernova-like explosion dubbed the Camel appears to be the result of a newborn black hole eating a star from the inside out. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Offshore Energy Gets a Second Wind Under Biden
New turbines proposed for a development off Cape Cod could provide green energy, but the science of how they might affect the environment is a bit murky. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
How to Find a Covid-19 Vaccine Appointment in Your Area
Vaccination rollout has been a challenge across the US. These tips should help you figure out when you’re eligible, where to go, and what to expect. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
This Fingertip for Robots Uses Magnets to ‘Feel’ Things
By sensing the subtle changes in the finger’s own magnetic field, this new technology could one day make for ultra-sensitive prosthetic hands. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Hey, So These Sea Slugs Decapitate Themselves and Grow New Bodies
Showing off their best impressions of Deadpool, the animals survived for weeks without organs, only to regrow everything and go about their business. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
‘We’re Vaccinated. Everyone Wants to Visit. Now What?’
My mom and stepdad got their two doses. They want to know why their New Normal isn’t normal at all. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Tide Is High–and Getting Higher
A trove of historic records show that dredging and sea level rise are making nuisance high tides worse along the US coasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
If You Transplant a Human Head, Does Its Consciousness Follow?
In her new book, Brandy Schillace recalls the unbelievable legacy of a Cold War era neurosurgeon’s mission to preserve the soul. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Sleuths Read Old Booby-Trapped Letters Without Opening Them
People once folded their correspondence in intricate ways, known as “letterlocking,” to keep out snoops. A fancy new imaging technique sees right through it. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Anthony Fauci Pleads: Don’t Declare Victory
The Covidologist-in-chief says we can’t relax on masks and social distancing yet. Hear that, Texas? Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
This Is What It's Like to Live Without Smell
Losing any sense can be devastating, even if you never appreciated it before it was gone. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Mantis Shrimp Inspires a New Material—Made by Bacteria
By 3D-printing scaffolds and dipping them in microbe juice, scientists make robust structures that could one day lead to self-growing roads. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Million-Year-Old DNA Rewrites Mammoths' Evolutionary Tree
The oldest DNA ever sequenced shows how the genus split off into new species. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
When the Grid Goes Down, Can a Fleet of Batteries Replace It?
In a power crisis, maybe the solution is a network of smaller energy sources distributed across multiple places—like your garage. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Nature Makes Wood. Could a Lab Make It Better?
For millennia, humans have been chopping down trees and harvesting plants. Lab-grown plant material might change that. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Birders’ Tweets Are Causing an Online Flap
Sharing photos and location details of rare bird sightings is boosting the birdwatching community. But some worry that the exposure threatens the animals. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Researchers Are Studying These Worm Blobs to Build Robots
These crawlers form clumps to protect the collective. Understanding their movement gives engineers a model for shape-shifting robot swarms. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Don’t Tell Einstein, but Black Holes Might Have ‘Hair’
The general theory of relativity states that black holes have only three observable properties; additional ones, or “hair,” do not exist. Or do they? Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
What Happens When You Swap a Human Gene With a Neanderthal’s?
Now that we’ve gotten a look at the genomes of archaic humans, researchers are trying to determine whether our differences are due to genetics. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
NASA Wants to Set a New Radiation Limit for Astronauts
As the agency considers sending people to the moon and Mars, it’s taking a fresh look at the research on cancer risk and recalculating acceptable thresholds. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
How Steel Might Finally Kick Its Coal Habit
In order to curb the industry's prolific carbon emissions, the sector will have to transform how the material is traditionally made. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
How to Make a Fitbit for an Elephant
The accelerometers give scientists information about whether animals are swimming, walking, running, or even sprinting up a hill. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
How This Teeny-Tiny Sea Critter Punches Like Mike Tyson
Using a camera shooting 300,000 frames per second, researchers catch the amphipod snapping its extraordinarily powerful claw. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
How Did They Find the Secret Space Lab in Captain Marvel?
They talk about something called state vectors. What the heck are those, and would it really work? Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
More Covid Vaccine Choices Mean New Equity Challenges
Johnson and Johnson’s vaccine can be delivered in a single dose, but it’s also slightly less effective. Who should get it? Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
American Cities Are Way Underreporting Their Carbon Footprints
A modeling system called Vulcan shows that on average, cities across the country pollute 18.3 percent more than they’ve estimated. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
How Universes Might Bubble Up and Collide
To understand how universes might inflate and bump into each other in the hypothetical multiverse, physicists are studying digital and physical analogs of the process. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Dozens of Egyptian Tombs Will Be Unearthed at Saqqara Necropolis
Archaeologists found the entrance to the unexplored burial shaft earlier this week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Why Kids Matter in the Quest to Stamp Out Covid-19
Testing a vaccine on children takes longer and comes with more challenges. But inoculating kids can protect an entire population. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Trump Administration Left Biden With a Rocket Dilemma
Mike Pence promised to land on the moon in 2024, but that’s fallen out of reach. So what now? Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Sun-Loving Bacteria May Be Accelerating Glacial Melting
Scientists find that cyanobacteria cause sediments on glaciers to clump, thus absorbing more sunlight. It's not great news for fans of lower sea levels. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Secret Ingredient That Powers Supernovas
Three-dimensional computer simulations have solved the mystery of why doomed stars explode at all. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Is It Time for an Emergency Rollout of Carbon-Eating Machines?
Facilities that suck carbon dioxide out of the air could be powerful weapons for fighting climate change. But their deployment requires a huge wartime-style investment. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Are Mass Clinics the Solution for Covid-19 Vaccination?
Mega-sites need a lot of personnel and pose problems of access and equity. But other vaccination campaigns might point us in the right direction. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
A Year Ago I Asked: How Bad Could Covid Get? Now We Know
No one was calling it a pandemic yet, at least publicly. Then came more troubling evidence about transmission, as the US ignored warning signs. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
These Recharge Rooms Are Helping Health Care Workers Cope
Using voice-activation tech and nature-inspired soundscapes, these space are designed to give medical workers some respite from the Covid-19 front lines. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
NASA Is Training an AI to Detect Fresh Craters on Mars
An algorithm discovered dozens of Martian craters. It’s a promising remote method for exploring our solar system and understanding planetary history. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Is This a Fossilized Lair of the Dreaded Bobbit Worm?
Scientists say they've got 20-million-year-old evidence of giant worms that hunted in pretty much the most nightmarish way possible. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Can an AI Predict the Language of Viral Mutation?
Computational biologists used an algorithm meant to model human language to instead predict how viruses could evolve to evade the immune system. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Arctic Ocean Is Teeming With Microfibers From Clothes
Scientists find an average of 40 microplastic particles per cubic meter of the northern water. The likely source? The synthetic clothing in our washing machines. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Virgin Orbit Just Launched a Rocket From a 747
Launching rockets from planes is a decades-old concept that never really took off. Billionaire Richard Branson thinks its time has come. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Ongoing Collapse of the World's Aquifers
When humans over-exploit underground water supplies, the ground collapses like a huge empty water bottles. It's called subsidence, and it could affect 1.6 billion people by 2040. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Vaping Doesn't Keep Young People From Smoking Cigarettes Later
It won't prevent teens from later becoming smokers. But some health experts say that focusing on the risk of addicting new smokers cuts off a chance to help adults quit. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
What Would It Take to Run a City on 100 Percent Clean Energy?
Most claims of running on “clean” electricity come with caveats, and many technologies required for round-the-clock renewable energy aren’t quite ready yet. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Mystery of the World’s Loneliest Penguins
A small group of king penguins have appeared on Martillo Island in Argentina. How they got there, and whether they will stay, is unknown. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
How Long Would It Take for a 747 to Stop, Like in Tenet?
The airplane in the movie is stripped down and doesn't have all of its brakes installed, making the calculations even more fun. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices