Transcript

11.20.25 · Science Show KY

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Speaker 1: Hello. This Kelly Taylor. Then I'll be your host for
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Radio Wise Diary of Science and Nature. We'll have some
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articles on the topics of science and nature. But first
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a reminder that radioi is a reading service and it's
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intended for people who are blind or have other disabilities
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that make it difficult to read printed material. We're going
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to start off with an article from Scientific American and
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the headline for this article reads December twenty twenty five
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Science History from fifty one hundred and one hundred and
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fifty years ago, written by Mark Fischetti, So fifty years ago,
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nineteen seventy five. Heimlich maneuver quote. The list of first
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aid procedures that the medical profession encourages late people to
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undertake is short because of concern that tactics applied in
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ignorance may do more harm than good. Now, however, the
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American Medical Association has cautiously endorsed the Heimlich maneuver as
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a first aid procedure when someone is choking on a
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foreign object, described by Henry J. Heimlich, the Cincinnati surgeon
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who developed it. In the Heimlich maneuver, you get behind
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the victim and wrap your arms around their waist. Put
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the thumb side of your fist or the heel of
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your palm against the victims of her abdomen between the
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navel and the bottom of the rib cage, and make
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a quick upward thrust. The action elevates the diaphragm, thereby
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compressing the lungs and forcing air up through the trachea.
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The air expels the foreign object. Heimlich writes that since
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he first described the technique, he has heard of one
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hundred and sixty two people whose lives were saved nineteen
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twenty fivehundred years ago. Exhausted universe, what has science to
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say of the future. The physicists can tell us that
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the universe is running down, for heat tends to escape
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by radiation from the surfaces of stars, planets, and all
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other bodies slowly. Then all things must cool down, depleted
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to the point of exhaustion, so that the final scene
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of the play shows only cold, dark bodies, frozen, rigid
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and lifeless, moving in their orbits in impenetrable darkness. Most
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completely irreversible would appear to be the newly discovered process
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by which matter is turned into free energy. Thus, also
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before the last gleams of light disappear. The principal actors.
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The stars have dwindled away to mere shrunken remnants of
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their old cells. Telephone, diplomacy, embassies and consulates, university scholarships,
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lecture tours, propaganda all have had for years their supreme object,
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a better understanding, a closer friendship between America and the
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old world. Now comes the announcement that soon you may
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pick up your telephone and talk with a person in
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London as easily if they were in the next street.
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What is more, you can do this at a cost
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of five dollars for three minutes. Here is an achievement
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which outweighs a century of striving for international accord. When
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people talk directly to one another easily, cheaply, and constantly
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about their daily affairs, it becomes more and more difficult
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for them to misunderstand each other. As an insurance of peace,
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the inauguration of the five dollars three minute transatlantic telephone
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rate may well rank with the best treaty ever signed
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and from eighteen seventy five, one hundred and fifty years ago,
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new route to Siberia. Professor Nordenschkold recent journey from Norway
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to Siberia by way of the Yugorsky Strait and the
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Sea of Kara has caused quite a sensation in Russia.
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At a meeting of the Society for the Encouragement of
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Commerce and Industry, mister Sideroff said the journey was one
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to be ranked in importance with the discovery of a
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new world, as it would, in all probability lead to
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the establishment of a regular line of communication between Northern
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Europe and Siberia, and the vast resources of the latter
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country would at last find an outlet along her great
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fluvial highways. And training fleas, Mister Bertolado, the well known
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educator of the flea, is now in New York exhibiting
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his curious success. The insect he employs appears to be
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the species of flea common to dogs. The first lesson,
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he says, is to put the fleas in a small
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circular glass box, whereby jumping and knocking their heads against
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the glass for a day or two, the idea is
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finally beaten into them that it is useless to jump.
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During the remainder of their natural lives. About eight months,
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they are content to crawl. The instructor then fastens a
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delicate pair of wire nippers to the middle of the
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flea's body. To the nippers, any desired form of miniature
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vehicles such as a wheelbarrow, car, or wagon is attached,
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and the flea trots away with the load. The professor
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harnesses his insect pupils to perform many curious duties, such
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as the operation of a fortune telling wheel, orchestra playing
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or racing. The fleas are allowed to feed twice daily
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upon the instructor's arm. All right, and now on a
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little bit more serious side again from Scientific American, and
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this is dated November eighteenth. They are featuring five essential
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reeds on plastic power and pollution. This is by Brianne Cain.
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The fossil fuel industry is pivoting to plastics. Massive companies
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are launching new refineries and other industrial plants to make
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plastic from petrochemicals. Science journalist Beth Gardner follows this story
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in the December issue of Scientific American, where you meet
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the communities being harmed and the company's spending billions of
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dollars to control the future plastic. To compliment that read,
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here are a few books that you can dive into
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and explore the wild world of waste management, the chemistry
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of plastics, and more examples of corporate espionage and drama.
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There's Plastic Ink, The secret history and shocking future of
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Big Oil's biggest bet, and that is by Beth Gardner.
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February twenty twenty six is when It's coming out, Beth
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Gardner's new book about Big Oil's bet on plastics futures,
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coming out in February. She discusses the history that led
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us here in the big money spent to convince us
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not to recycle, reduce our carbon footprint, or worry about
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single use plastic. Then there's They Poisoned the World Life
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and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals by Mariah
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Blake that's coming out May twenty twenty five. In this
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fascinating book, investigative reporter Mariah Blake gives readers an account
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of the big businesses that are trying to hide the
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dangers of forever chemicals and the tricks they've used to
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keep the toxins off the public's radar. Then there's Waste
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Wars The Wild Afterlife of Your Trash by Alexander Clapp,
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coming out in February. Take a wild ride around the Globe,
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as journalist Alexander Clapp shows you how plastic gets smashed, melted,
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or lost at sea in an attempt to get garbage
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out of sight as soon as possible, no matter the cost.
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Then there's Saving Us, A climate scientist's Case for Hope
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and Healing in a Divided World by Catherine Hayho September
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came out in September twenty twenty one. Atmospheric scientist Katherine
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Hayho delivers an eye domistic view of our planet's future
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in this book, which climate scientist and author Kate Marvel
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applauds for its directness and optimism. Then there's Citizen Coke.
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The Making of Coca Cola Capitalism. That's by bartow Elmore
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came out in December of twenty sixteen. If you're looking
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for a dramatic story of conspiracy and espionage, plenty more
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drama unfolds in this book by historian bartow Elmore, who
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examines how a certain soda manufacturer has affected the environment,
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our wallets, and our day to day purchasing decisions. All right,
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and now staying with Scientific American. This is from November nineteenth,
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written by Kate Graham Shaw. These Birds learned to tweet
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like R two D two. Listen to the uncanny results.
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A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away,
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R two D two beeped and booped, and now birds
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that copy the star wars character are giving scientists fresh
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insight into how different species imitate complex sounds. A study
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published recently in Scientific Reports analyzed the sounds of nine
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species of parrots, including budgies, as well as European starlings,
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to see how accurately each bird mimicked R two D
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two's robotic worrying. Researchers did acoustic analyses on samples of
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birds imitating the plucky droid that were already available online
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to compare how statistically similar each bird's noises were to
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a model of R two D two sounds. The starlings,
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a type of songbird, emerged as star vocalists. Their ability
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to produce multiphonic noises, in their case, two different notes
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or tones expressed simultaneously allowed them to replicate R two
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D two s complex chirps more accurately. Parrots and budgies,
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which only produce monophonic or single tone noises, imitated the
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doriage sounds with less accuracy and musicality. The differing abilities
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stem from physical variations in the bird's syrinx, a unique
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vocal organ that sits at the base of the avian windpipe. Quote.
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Starlings can produce two sounds at once because they control
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both sides of the syrinx independently, says study co author
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Nick dam and evolutionary biologist at Leiden University in the Netherlands. Quote,
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parrots are physically incapable of producing two tones simultaneously. In quote,
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it isn't exactly known why different species developed differing control
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over their syrincs. Quote. Likely some ancestor of songbirds happened
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to evolve the ability to control the muscles on both
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sides of the syrinx, and this helped them in some way,
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says University of Northern Colorado biologist Lauren Benedict, who wasn't
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involved in the study but sometimes works with its authors.
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One of the leading explanations involves mating. The better at
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singing a male songbird is the more females he attracts.
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Though the study is a really elegant way of approaching
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this question of whether the starlings versus the parrots are
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capable of producing the same sound with the same accuracy.
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It doesn't fully address how much training or rewards the
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birds received, says Nicole Creanza, evolutionary biologist at Vanderbilt who
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also wasn't involved in the research. Benedict agrees that the
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researchers could work with the public to do more tightly
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controlled trials, and she and other scientists are looking for
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public submissions of other examples of parrots imitating sounds for
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their quote the Many Parrots project. A wider sample would
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be really neat, she says, and they could test all
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kinds of different sounds, not just R two D two.
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And now, sticking with Scientific American, we have an article
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from their Planetary Science section, Mars sample that may contain
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evidence of life might never come home, written by Jonathan O'Callahan.
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Right now, one of the most advanced planetary explorers ever
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built is scouring the surface of Mars, supported by a
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team of hundreds of scientists back on Earth. The Perseverance
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Rover has traveled nearly the distance of a marathon to
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answer some of the biggest questions about our neighboring world.
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What was the planet like eons ago? Was it ever habitable?
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Did it host life. One rock visited by Perseverance, called
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Chiava Falls, is speckled with iron rich minerals that might
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be able to answer these questions. On Earth, the presence
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of these minerals usually means microbs that used iron in
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the chemical reactions essential to their metabolism once lived. There
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does the same hold true on Mars. A piece of
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Chiava Falls is safely tucked inside the rover's storage cache.
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If it can be shipped to Earth, analysis with the
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full range of laboratory equipment here could tell us the answer.
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But Chaiava Falls ride to our planet might have fallen
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through the Perseverance rovers. The first phase of a multi
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step mission to bring bits of Mars to Earth, known
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as Mars Sample Return or MSR, and the next step
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is dangling by a thread. The Trump administration has proposed
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canceling the return portion of the endeavor. The mission's fate,
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as a press time rests with the US Congress. The
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situation has dismayed scientists who have longed to get their
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hands on Martian rocks. We've been working for so many
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decades to try to make this happen, says Vicki Hamilton,
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a planetary geologist at Southwest Research Institute's Colorado branch now
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the Perseverance has scooped up prized samples, saying to surfaced
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with the prospect of having them on Mars or leaving
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them on Mars to languish quote, it's hard to watch.
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Even if the mission isn't canceled, how to finish it
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remains an open question. In twenty twenty four, NASA said
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it was scrapping its initial troubled plan for MSR, deemed
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too costly and too far behind schedule to seek cheaper
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commercial approaches. The agency now has multiple options on the table,
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but as yet to decide which course to take. If
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any at stake are potentially profound insights about Mars. We
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know that some three billion to four billion years ago,
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Mars was warm and wet, with lakes and seas on
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its surface. What we don't know is whether life ever
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took cold there. Can we find out? Perseverance touched down
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on Mars in February twenty one, following a nail bier
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of a landing, after the spacecraft had torn through the
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Martian atmosphere and descended toward the surface by parachute. A
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crablike rocket propelled platform called Skycrane lowered the rover on
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cables to the surface. It landed inside Jezero Crater, a
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twenty eight mile wide dentt in the Martian landscape. A
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river once flowed there, and the bone dry delta it
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left behind is visible from space. If anything ever lived
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on Mars, Jezzio is as good a place as any
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to look for signs of it. It's nearly impossible, however,
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to send a mission to Mars that would be capable
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of finding life without help from labs on Earth. That's
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why scientists have been lobbying since the nineteen sixties for
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a way to bring pieces of Mars here. MSR is
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the culmination of those efforts. In two thousand, Scott Hubbard,
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NASA's first Mars program director, sometimes called the Mars Czar,
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was tasked with turning around the fortunes of an ailing
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program that had experienced multiple failures in the nineteen nineties,
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including the loss of two orbiters and a lander. Quote
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I took the existing program down to the roots, almost
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a bare sheet of paper, Hubbard says. The top priority,
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he says, was to find out did life ever exist
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on Mars? And could it be there today. Interest in
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Martian life had been spurred by a now infamous announcement
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from the White House lawn in nineteen ninety six, when
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President Bill Clinton declared that signs of life had been
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detected in a Martian meteorite found in Antarctica. That claim
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was later refuted, but it caused enough clamor to put
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the search for Martian life at the top of NASA's agenda.
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NASA put a plan in place. Rovers and orbiters would
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probe the planet to identify good places to look for
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evidence of life. Then a rover would head there to
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grab samples, and a third phase would bring them to Earth.
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In twenty twelve, NASA announced the Mars twenty twenty mission,
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which would land a rover later named Perseverance to collect
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the samples. By twenty thirty, a follow up mission would
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collect these samples and return them to Earth at an
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estimated cost of slightly less than six billion dollars. Perseverance
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launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida July twenty twenty, not
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far behind. Scientists hope the retrieval mission would follow the
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Perseverance's journey, the largest rover ever sent to Mars. Has
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been exploring the red planet since February twenty twenty one.
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During its more than thirty seven kilometers about twenty three
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miles of roving, Perseverance has collected various samples of rock
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to be stored until a future mission can carry them
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back to Earth to be studied in laboratories. That follow
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up mission, however, is imperiled. The Trump administration has proposed
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canceling it amid broader budget cuts for science and space exploration.
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Then there is a map showing Perseverance's path on Mars,
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and there are certain blue and orange circles on the
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map indicating spots where samples were picked up and dropped
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at a backup location called three forks, where they could
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be retrieved at a later date. So, in September twenty
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twenty one, Perseverance collected its first sample, a type of
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volcanic rock called basalt, possibly the result of a volcano
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erupting into Jesero Crater after it was formed. If the
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stone could be analyzed and dated on Earth, it would
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help scientists determine the earliest time that water could have
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flowed into Jezero, estimated to be about three point eight
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billion years ago. Since then, the rover's been gradually making
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the twenty mile trek toward the rim of Jezero, traveling
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up the delta of the now absent river. Equipped with
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the sampling arm and a drill. Perseverance carries forty three
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cigar sized tubes into which it can deposit interesting samples
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that it is collected, selected by scientists back home who
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are watching its every move. The rover dropped ten of
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these tubes at a spot called Three Forks between December
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twenty two and January twenty twenty three, a contingency cash
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in case the vehicle later failed. The most valuable samples
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collected farther up the river bed in locations where the
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prospects for life look more promising, remain on board Perseverance.
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These include the Chiava Falls tube retrieved in March twenty
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twenty four, which was collected in a region called Bright Angel. Quote.
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Everybody's probably most excited about the Bright Angel samples, says
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Brianni Horgan. Planetary scientists that produce university quote they have
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potential biosignatures in them. Quote. The Chayava Falls rock has
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our first confident detection of organic matter, says Perseverances Project
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scientist Kenneth Farley of California Institute of Technology the rocks
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blotches and speckles could be associated with ancient Martian life.
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Farley says it is the most interesting sample in our
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entire collection. Scientists get giddy thinking about what they could
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do with these rocks here on Earth. Quote. We would
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look for a series of properties that are really hard
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to explain by any abiotic that's non biological mechanisms, says
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Tanya Bozak's geobiologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and
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a member of the Perseverance Sample science team. In other words,
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these samples might be our first concrete evidence of life
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on another world. Researchers would check for material left behind
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by decayed microbes, for instance, or in imbalance in two
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key forms of carbon, carbon twelve and carbon thirteen. Quote.
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If you have a dead log on Earth with some
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kind of dead plant matter, you'll see a lot of
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carbon twelve both, Socks says. Other evidence of life could
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include microfossils, physical shapes in the rocks themselves. It might
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be the fossilized remains of ancient critters. Quote. There should
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be some organic compounds or minerals present that we know
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are good at preserving microbial shapes. She says it's hard
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to overstate how important this discovery would be. It would
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constitute the first evidence of life on another world, proof
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that Earth was not the only place in the universe
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to become inhabited. We would know that with the right
21:44
ingredients and conditions, life could form anywhere. The quest to
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bring Mars Rock's home is not solely about life, though.
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The project could explain why the planet now has no
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magnetic field and barely any atmosphere, two characteristics that are
21:59
probably linked. Mars atmosphere might have been mostly blown away
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by the Sun billions of years ago when the planet's
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core stopped generating a protective magnetic field, possibly a result
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of the planet cooling and plate tectonics. Ending samples collected
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by Perseverance could tell us when this all happened, and
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why electrons in the ground should be oriented in the
22:24
direction of the planet's magnetic field at different points in time,
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like a fossil record of the field, says Benjamin Weiss,
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planetary scientist at MIT X Ray scans of the samples
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taken on Earth could detect these orientations, which could be
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matched with various data, including markings on Mars surface that
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Perseverance made when it collected the rocks. These measurements would
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reveal a timeline of activity in the planet's core and
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maybe solved the mystery of why today Mars, compared with Earth,
22:55
is such a hell hole. Knowledge that could help us
22:58
in the search for habitable worlds outside our solar system.
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Now from the Washington Post, one of America's most dangerous
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volcanoes will soon power homes. This is November nineteenth by
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Nicholas Rivero. On the slopes of an Oregon volcano, engineers
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are building the hottest geothermal power plant on Earth. The
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plant will tap into the infernal energy of Newberry Volcano,
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one of the largest and most hazardous active volcanoes in
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the United States. According to the US Geological Survey, it
23:35
has already reached temperatures of six hundred and twenty nine
23:38
degrees fahrenheit, making it one of the hottest geothermal sites
23:42
in the world, and next year will start selling electricity
23:45
to nearby homes and businesses. But the startup behind the project,
23:49
Masama Energy, wants to crank the temperature even higher, north
23:53
of seven hundred and fifty degrees and become the first
23:56
to make electricity from what industry insiders call SuperH Enthusiasts
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say that could usher in a new era of geothermal power,
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transforming the always on clean energy source from a minor
24:10
player to a major force in the world's electricity systems. Quote.
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Geothermal has been mostly inconsequential, says Vinod Koshla, a venture
24:20
capitalist and one of Mazama Energy's biggest financial backers. Quote.
24:24
To do consequential geothermal that matters at the scale of
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tens or hundreds of gigawats for the country and many
24:31
times at globally, you really need to solve these high temperatures. Today,
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geothermal produces less than one percent of the world's electricity,
24:40
but tapping into super hot rock, along with other technological advances,
24:45
could boost that share to eight percent by twenty fifty.
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According to the International Energy Agency, geothermal using super hot
24:53
temperatures could theoretically generate one hundred and fifty times more
24:57
electricity than the world uses to the IEA. Quote, we
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believe this is the most direct path to driving down
25:05
the cost of geothermal and making it possible across the globe,
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said Terra Rodgers. Program director for super Hot Rock Geothermal
25:14
at the Clean Air Task Force environmentalist think tank. The
25:20
technological gaps are within reason. These are engineering iterations, not breakthroughs.
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The new Very Volcano project combines two big trends that
25:30
could make geothermal energy cheaper and more widely available. First,
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Mazama Energy is bringing its own water to the volcano
25:38
using a method called enhanced geothermal energy. Historically, people have
25:43
been able to use geothermal energy only in rare locations
25:47
that have hot rocks and underground water creating natural pockets
25:52
of steam. That limits conventional geothermal to a handful of
25:55
hot spots in countries such as Japan, Iceland, Kenya, and
25:59
d the American West. But over the past few decades,
26:03
pioneering projects had started to make energy from hot, dry
26:06
rocks by cracking the stone and pumping in water to
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make steam. Borrowing fracking techniques developed by the oil and
26:13
gas industry. The geothermal startup Fervo Energy and the US
26:18
Department of Energy have built pilot projects in Nevada and Utah,
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and international researchers have demonstrated the technology in France, Germany, Switzerland,
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and Japan. Pumping water into rock fractures risks causing earthquakes,
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much like injecting wastewater from fracking. A Swiss enhanced geothermal
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experiment was shut down after setting off a three point
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four magnitude quake in two thousand and six. Sensors at
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the Newberry site recorded five trimmers in the past six months,
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with the biggest reaching magnitude two point five on July
26:55
twenty four. Scientists say earthquakes will always be a risk,
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but it can be managed with good monitoring and engineering.
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The Energy Department says water pollution risks are low because
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geothermal plants recirculate the same water in sealed wells, passing
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through reservoirs much deeper than most groundwater. The Newberry project
27:18
also taps into hotter rock than any previous enhanced geothermal project,
27:23
but even Newberries six hundred and twenty nine degrees falls
27:26
short of the super hot threshold of seven hundred and
27:28
five or above. At that temperature and under a lot
27:32
of pressure, water becomes supercritical and starts acting like something
27:36
between a liquid and a gas. Supercritical water holds lots
27:41
of heat like a liquid, but it flows with the
27:43
ease of gas, combining the best of both worlds. For
27:47
generating electricity. A super hot thermal well could produce five
27:51
to ten times more energy than a well at typical temperatures.
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That means geothermal operators don't have to drill as many
27:59
Moulti million dollar holes in the ground, bringing down costs.
28:04
Well that's off