Science Friday Folgen

We have a new podcast! It’s called Universe Of Art, and it’s all about artists who use science to bring their creations to the next level. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.   No, The Gulf Stream Is Not Collapsing A sobering climate study came out this week in the journal Nature Communications. It suggests that a system of ocean currents—called the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC)—could collapse sometime between 2025 and 2095, which could have dire climate consequences for the North Atlantic. SciFri director of news and audio John Dankosky talks with Swapna Krishna, a journalist based in Philadelphia, about what this means and what could be at stake. They also chat through other big science news of the week, including the detection of water vapor around a very distant star, a new image depicting the first detection of gas giants being formed around stars, a new theory for the origin of the world’s “gravity hole,” why the fuzzy asp caterpillar packs such a scary sting, and what scientists can learn from ticklish rats.   The State Of Reproductive Health, One Year After Dobbs In the year since the Supreme Court decided Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overturning the federal right to an abortion, states jumped into action. Thirteen states banned abortion with limited exemptions, and three others have banned abortion after the first trimester. A handful of other states have extremely restrictive abortion access, or otherwise remain in legal limbo, awaiting court decisions or new laws to be signed. Leading up to Dobbs decision, SciFri delved into the science behind reproductive health and the potential ripple effects on access to care. Now, a little over a year later, we’re following up what’s going on. SciFri guest host and experiences manager Diana Plasker talks with Usha Ranji, associate director for Women’s Health Policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, based in San Francisco, California, about her survey of 569 OB-GYNs across the country. They discuss the growing disparities in states between where abortion is banned and where it remains legal. Later, John Dankosky talks with Dr. Rebecca Cohen, chief medical officer at the Comprehensive Women’s Health Center, based in Denver, Colorado, about providing abortion and pregnancy care in a state where abortion is legal, and seeing patients who are traveling from states with bans in place.   The Kākāpō Parrot Returns To New Zealand Before humans arrived in New Zealand, parrots called kākāpō freely roamed across the islands. They are the world’s only living flightless parrots, and they’re a bit smaller than the average chicken. But the kākāpō’s population started crashing centuries ago, due to human interference and the arrival of predators like cats, rats, and stoats. At one point, the species was teetering on the brink of extinction. For decades, scientists have been capturing and relocating kākāpō to safe islands, hoping their population would grow. It did, and the kākāpō’s recovery team just reached a huge milestone: bringing four birds back to the mainland, a place they haven’t existed since the 1980s. Guest host and SciFri events manager Diana Plasker talks with Deidre Vercoe, operations manager for the New Zealand Department of Conservation’s kākāpō and takahē teams, about the history of kākāpō conservation, what this win means, and what’s next for these beloved birds.   Far Beyond Their Native Habitat, Parrots Rule The Roost In many urban areas across the U.S. and abroad, feral, non-native parrots have become established. This is true in Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery, where a colony of lime green monk parakeets have inhabited a massive nest on top of the gothic entrance gate. How exactly these parrots wound up here is a bit of a mystery. “The lore that’s passed around is that at some point a box of parrots, perhaps at the airport, got overturned,” said science writer Ryan Mandelbaum. “What’s more likely is a combination of people releasing their [pet] parrots and parrots escaping in some critical mass.” Mandelbaum wrote the cover story for July’s issue of Scientific American all about the resilience of parrots. SciFri producer Kathleen Davis interviewed them at Green-Wood Cemetery, where they discussed why these parrots are not just surviving, but thriving.   To stay updated on all-things-science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters. Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.   Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We have a new podcast! It’s called Universe Of Art, and it’s all about artists who use science to bring their creations to the next level. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Astronomers Spy A Two-Faced Star This week, astronomers report in the journal Nature that they’ve discovered a white dwarf—a dying star’s dense inner core—that, instead of being uniform in composition, has a surface that appears to be hydrogen on one face and helium on the other. The star rotates on its axis once every 15 minutes, bringing each face into view. Researchers spotted the unusual object with an instrument called the Zwicky Transient Facility, which initially singled out the star because of its rapidly changing brightness. The astronomers aren’t sure why the white dwarf, which they’ve nicknamed Janus after the two-faced Roman god, has this strange divided surface. Some possible theories include shifting magnetic fields which produce areas of different density, or that it’s a step in stellar evolution only partially complete. Tim Revell, deputy US editor at New Scientist, joins John Dankosky to talk about the two-faced star and other stories from the week in science, including the resignation of the Stanford University president amidst an ethics probe, discovery of ancient natural graphene, an earthworm invasion in the Arctic, and investigations of alcoholic fruit. How Does The Brain Control Your Every Move? As you read this, every small action your body makes—eyes scanning the page, fingers scrolling a mouse, scratching an itch on your face—must be dictated by your brain. These actions usually happen without a second thought. But inside the brain, the motor cortex is hard at work making the body move. For nearly a century, every neuroscience student came across the “homunculus”—a visual representation of which areas of the brain control certain body parts. But for the last few decades, some researchers have disputed this traditional view of brain mapping. This includes a recent study, led by Washington University in St. Louis. Joining guest host John Dankosky to discuss how the brain and body are connected are study lead author Evan Gordon, assistant professor of radiology at Wash U., and Michael Graziano, professor of psychology and neuroscience at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute in Princeton, New Jersey. To stay updated on all-things-science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters. Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.   Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We have a new podcast! It’s called Universe Of Art, and it’s all about artists who use science to bring their creations to the next level. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Revisiting The Nuclear Age With ‘Oppenheimer’ This weekend, Christopher Nolan’s long awaited film Oppenheimer hits theaters. It tells the story of American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, and his road to becoming the “father of the atomic bomb.” With its release, audiences will be faced with the United States’ contentious history in developing and deploying the world’s first atomic weapons, marking a point of no return for the entire world. Nearly 80 years since the bombs were first developed and tested in the New Mexican desert—and then dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki—the world is still reckoning with the Manhattan Project and Oppenheimer’s legacies. In this live call-in show, Science Goes To The Movies, we analyze the roles of scientists during the Manhattan project, hear from the people most affected by Oppenheimer’s work, and pick apart his life and legacy—one which asks to what extent scientists are responsible for the things they create. To read the rest, visit sciencefriday.com. To stay updated on all-things-science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters. Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.