Science Friday

Engineers had to design bespoke tools to open the OSIRIS-REx capsule nearly four months after it arrived back on Earth. Also, prescription rates for ADHD drugs rose by 30% from 2020-2022, with large increases among women and young people.NASA Finally Opens Canister Containing Asteroid SampleNASA’s OSIRIS-REx was the first U.S. mission to retrieve fragments of an asteroid, which arrived in September 2023. There was just one small issue: NASA technicians couldn’t open the capsule, which held space rocks from an asteroid called Bennu. NASA announced this week that they finally managed to open the capsule on January 10. Engineers designed new tools to remove the final two of 35 fasteners, which would not budge.Guest host Arielle Duhaime-Ross talks with Maggie Koerth, science writer and editorial lead for Carbon Plan, about the asteroid capsule and other top science news of the week, including chimpanzees catching human colds, advances toward a cure for autoimmune disorders and honeybee crimes.ADHD Prescription Ra

Researchers in Michigan modeled a prehistoric land bridge and used AI to predict where caribou–and humans–might have traveled along it. Also, artist Sarah Rosalena uses Indigenous weaving, ceramics, and sculpture practices to create art that challenges tech’s future.Using AI To Help Find Ancient Artifacts In The Great LakesAt the bottom of Lake Huron there’s a ridge that was once above water. It’s called the Alpena Amberley Ridge and goes from northern Michigan to southern Ontario. Nine thousand years ago, people and animals traveled this corridor. But then the lake rose, and signs of life were submerged.Archaeologists were skeptical they’d ever find artifacts from that time. But then John O’Shea, an underwater archaeologist based at the University of Michigan, found something. It was an ancient caribou hunting site. O’Shea realized he needed help finding more. The ridge is about 90 miles long, 9 miles wide and 100 feet underwater.“Underwater research is always like a needle in a haystack,” said O’Shea. “So a

When Steve Jobs unveiled the Apple Macintosh in January of 1984, the visual user interface, all-in-one design, and mouse-controlled navigation were revolutionary. Design team member Andy Hertzfeld and industry observer Steven Levy look back on the early days of personal computing, and talk about how the Macintosh came to be.Transcripts for each segment are available on sciencefriday.com To stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

For almost their entire 4.5 billion-year existence, Earth and its moon have been galactic neighbors. And the moon isn’t just Earth’s tiny sidekick—their relationship is more like that of siblings, and they’re even cut from similar cosmic cloth.Without the moon, Earth and its inhabitants wouldn’t be what they are today: The climate would be more extreme, lunar tides wouldn’t have given rise to life on Earth, biological rhythms would be off-beat, and even timekeeping and religion would have evolved differently. The new book Our Moon: How Earth’s Celestial Companion Transformed The Planet, Guided Evolution, And Made Us Who We Are explores how our existence is tied to the moon’s.Ira Flatow and guest host Sophie Bushwick chat with journalist and author Rebecca Boyle about how the moon came to be, how it transformed life on Earth, and how our relationship with it is changing.Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com To stay updated on all things science, s

Researchers continue to test out new ways to use artificial intelligence in medicine.Some research shows that AI is better at reading mammograms than radiologists. AI can predict and diagnose disease by analyzing the retina, and there’s even some evidence that GPT-4 might be helpful in making challenging diagnoses, ones missed by doctors.However, these applications can come with trade-offs in security, privacy, cost, and the potential for AI to make medical mistakes.Ira and guest host Sophie Bushwick talk about the role of AI in medicine and take listener calls with Dr. Eric Topol, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute and professor of molecular medicine, based in La Jolla, California.Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. To stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This week, a research team in China reported that it had successfully cloned a rhesus monkey, which has lived normally for over two years and reached maturity. It marks the first time that a rhesus monkey has been successfully cloned. Rhesus monkeys are used widely in medical research, making the advance potentially useful for medical trials.Cloning of primates in general has been difficult. Six years ago researchers cloned long-tailed macaques using the technique originally used for Dolly the cloned sheep. But an attempt to use that approach to clone a rhesus was unsuccessful, producing an animal that died after 12 hours. In the new work, the research team identified flaws in placental cells of previous cloned embryos. To address those flaws, they replaced the outer trophoblast cells from a developing cloned embryo with ones from an embryo created through an in-vitro fertilization technique—essentially providing cells that would develop into a normal placenta for the cloned embryo.Tim Revell of New Scientist

In October 2023, an international group of scientists released an impressively detailed cell atlas of the human brain, published in 21 papers in the journals Science, Science Advances and Science Translational Medicine.The human brain has roughly 171 billion cells, which makes it a herculean task to categorize them all. Scientists collected samples from different parts of the brain and have identified 3,000 different types of cells. Each cell contains thousands of genes and each cell type only expresses a small fraction of those. Cataloging cells by their gene expressions, paves the way for scientists to tailor disease treatments to target only the affected cells. This human brain cell atlas is only the first draft, but it could signal a paradigm shift in how we understand and treat neurological diseases.Ira talks with one of the researchers who helped put together the cell atlas, Dr. Ed Lein, senior investigator at the Allen Institute for Brain Science, and takes listener calls.Transcripts for each segment w

Brain organoids are grown in a lab using stem cells, and can mimic the functions of different regions of the brain like the cortex, retina, and cerebellum. Though it may sound a bit like science fiction, this technology is increasingly being used to better understand brain disorders and eventually develop better treatments.Ira talks with neuroscientist Dr. Giorgia Quadrato, assistant professor of stem cell biology and regenerative medicine at the University of Southern California, about the state of brain organoid research and her model that mimics the cerebellum.Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. To stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

In a conversation from March 2023, the maritime archeologist who found the storied wreck discusses the mission and his new book.There are few stories about heroic survival equal to Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic rescue of his crew, which turned disaster into triumph. In August of 1914, 28 men set sail from England to the South Pole. Led by Shackleton himself, the group hoped to be the first to cross Antarctica by foot. However, their ship, the Endurance, became stuck in ice. It sank to the bottom of the frigid Antarctic waters, leaving most of the men stranded on a cold, desolate ice floe.Shackleton, with five of his crew, set out in a small boat to bring help from hundreds of miles away. Finally, after many months of fighting the cold, frostbite and angry seas, Shackleton was able to rescue all his men with no loss of life.Over the years, there have been many attempts to find the Endurance shipwreck. None were successful until a year ago, when the wreck was located for the first time since it sank back in

The idea of creatures from another planet is part of our culture, from the warnings of the alien in “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” to the plaintive desire to return home in “E. T. the Extra-Terrestrial,” to the hulking creature of “Nope.” Aliens appear in movies, books, comics, you name it. But are they more than science fiction? And if they were, how would scientists prove it?The government has investigated reports of alien sightings, including in Project Blue Book, which ran from 1947 to 1969. And last summer, congressional hearings into Navy pilots’ sightings of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs) brought the search for intelligent life back into the public eye. But there’s more to the search for alien life than people spotting lights in the sky. Projects such as Breakthrough Listen are surveying the stars for signals. Advanced telescopes such as JWST are enabling us to collect data on the atmospheres of exoplanets, a first step in detecting biosignatures on distant worlds. And astrobiology projects

With this week’s delays to Artemis II and III, astronauts likely won’t walk on the moon until 2026 at the earliest. Also, weight-loss drugs, AI, clean-energy tech and more: digging into MIT Technology Review’s annual list with executive editor Amy Nordrum.NASA Once Again Delays Artemis Crewed Missions To the MoonThis week, NASA announced that it was delaying two of its planned crewed missions to the moon. Artemis II, which was scheduled to launch in November 2024, was pushed to September 2025. And Artemis III, originally planned for late 2025, is now looking at a September 2026 launch date. The Artemis campaign has faced challenges with its lunar landers, spacesuits, life-support systems, and the Orion capsule’s heat shield, according to NASA. When launched, Artemis II will swing around the moon and return to Earth, while Artemis III will land on the south pole of the moon, and will mark the first time humans have walked on the moon since 1972.Joining Ira to talk about this and other top science stories in th

It’s no longer just the realm of science fiction: It’s possible that in our lifetimes, astronauts will go to Mars. NASA is doing a lot of technological preparation for this, but the key to the success of these missions will be the astronauts involved. As Mars space missions will require months or even years on the red planet, the agency wants to better understand how our bodies are affected by time in space.NASA recently launched the Complement of Integrated Protocols for Human Exploration Research, or CIPHER. This is a suite of 14 studies astronauts will undergo on the International Space Station, measuring everything from bone health to brain activity to vision changes.Joining Ira to talk about CIPHER and the hopes for health data collection is Dr. Cherie Oubre, CIPHER project scientist in NASA’s human research program based in Houston, Texas.Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. To stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Frida

In 2023, a flood of science journalists lost their jobs. At the same time, public trust in science continues to decline.Last year was a tough one for science journalism. National Geographic laid off all of its staff reporters, and Wired laid off 20 people. And the most recent blow came in November, when Popular Science announced it would stop publishing its magazine after a 151-year run, and laid off the majority of its staff.Beyond talented journalists losing their jobs, many people seem to be losing trust in science in general. A recent Pew Research Center survey found that only 57% of Americans think science has a mostly positive effect on society, down considerably since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.Is the waning trust in science reflected in the shrinking of science journalism?Ira talks about the current state of science journalism with Deborah Blum, science journalist, author, publisher of Undark magazine, and director of the Knight Science Journalism Program at Massachusetts Institute of Tech

Continuing our exploration of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) at its 50th anniversary, we'll look at how it has helped protect a group of at-risk plants: orchids. Eight species of orchid are recognized as endangered under the ESA—and all of the world’s approximately 30,000 species are considered threatened, and entitled to trade restrictions. Ira speaks with Dr. Matthew Pace, orchid scientist and assistant curator of the Steere Herbarium at the New York Botanical Garden, about threats to orchid conservation.And finally, Ira speaks with Dr. Ron Sutherland, chief scientist at the Wildlands Network in Durham, North Carolina. Sutherland has an extensive background in red wolf conservation in the southeastern United States.Red wolves are one of the most endangered mammals in the world, with only an estimated 20 living in the wild and 267 in captivity. They discuss the dramatic swings in federal conservation efforts for red wolves, and why Sutherland isn’t ready to give up on this endangered species.Transcripts fo

On December 28, 2023, the Endangered Species Act (ESA) turned 50 years old. It was enacted in 1973 with almost unanimous support in Congress, with a goal to save plants and animals from extinction. It’s considered one of the most important environmental policies in US history, and it transformed conservation. It may have even helped save one of your favorite critters, like humpback whales, bald eagles, manatees, and grizzly bears.To mark the ESA’s 50th birthday, we’re looking at how it works, how successful it’s been, and what its future may look like. Ira starts off by talking with Dr. Judy Che-Castaldo, biologist for the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s Branch of Species Status Assessment Science Support.Then, we head to the extinction capital of the world: Hawai‘i. Kāhuli, also known as Hawaiian land snails, live all over the Hawaiian islands. At one point, around 750 species existed, but more than half have gone extinct. Ira talks with two conservationists dedicated to saving the snails: Dr. David Sischo, c

Look out for a total solar eclipse, more solar flares, and the Parker Solar Probe’s closest approach to the sun. Also, underground hydrogen stores have raised renewable energy hopes, but can the industry overcome the logistical hurdles of distributing it?Solar Activity Flares Up In 2024Look out 2024—this is going to be the sun’s year (for science, at least). There will be a total solar eclipse on April 8, and scientists are seeking volunteers to help them observe the event. Researchers also expect an uptick in solar activity—that means more sunspots and solar flares, which could increase the amount of auroras the Earth experiences and also might disrupt satellites and power systems on the ground. Plus, NASA’s Parker Solar probe is on track to make its closest pass to the sun yet in December, a mere 3.8 million miles from its surface.Umair Irfan, staff writer with Vox, sits down with Ira to talk about these and other science stories from this week, including why greenhouse gas emissions might actually start to

You may have an idea of how our inventions have changed human history and transformed our relationship with the world. But the reverse can also be true. Hear from materials scientist Ainissa Ramirez, author of The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another, on the way our values and stories are baked into the things we create—and the lesser-known people who have helped bring them into reality.This event was a part of the SciFri Book Club read for November 2023. Watch the live zoom event on Youtube.Find out more about our book club on our main page. To stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

What does it take to write a believable kaiju—as well as a charming group of scientists and explorers—onto the page? The SciFri Book Club invited John Scalzi, award-winning author of our August 2023 pick, The Kaiju Preservation Society, to discuss worldbuilding on an alternative Earth; combining ecology, biology and cultural touchpoints to create new giants; and how he used a lifetime of scientific curiosity to write a sci-fi romp in five weeks during a global pandemic.This event was a part of the SciFri Book Club read for August 2023.Watch the live zoom event on Youtube.Find out more about our book club on our main page. To stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Few pop culture properties have lasted quite as long as Star Trek. A dozen Star Trek television shows have aired over the last sixty years—not to mention countless movies, novels, and comic books. Science concepts have always been integral to the Star Trek franchise: from warp speed travel to dilithium. But how much does the series accurately depict?Ira speaks with astrophysicist Dr. Erin Macdonald, science consultant for Star Trek about the legacy of the franchise, and how accurate the science is within the series.The transcript for this segment is available at sciencefriday.com. To stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

The concept of math has been around for a long time, developing independently in many different cultures. In 1650 BC, the Egyptians were creating math textbooks on papyrus, with multiplication and division tables. Geometry, like the Pythagorean theorem, was used in ancient Greece. And negative numbers were invented in China around 200 BC.Some mathematical concepts are easier to understand than others. One apple plus one apple equals two apples, for example. But when it comes to complex equations, negative numbers, and calculus, concepts become abstract. All that abstraction prompts some to wonder: Is math even real?Mathematician Dr. Eugenia Cheng has heard this question many times over her career. The quandary is the basis of her latest book, Is Math Real?: How Simple Questions Lead Us to Mathematics’ Deepest Truths. She joins Ira from Chicago, Illinois.Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. To stay updated on all things science, sign up for Scie