Big Picture Science

By SETI Institute

Technology

What's Big Picture Science about?

Big Picture Science weaves together a universe of big ideas – from robots to memory to antimatter to dinosaurs.
Tune in and make contact with science. We broadcast and podcast every week. bigpicturescience.org

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Radical Cosmology (rebroadc...

10.18.2021

400 years ago, some ideas about the cosmos were considered scandalous. When Dominican friar Giordano Bruno suggested the existence of planets outside our Solar System, he was burned at the stake for heresy. More recent claims, such as the existence ...

Big Picture Science episodes:

10.18.2021 Radical Cosmology (rebroadcast) 400 years ago, some ideas about the cosmos were considered scandalous. When Dominican friar Giordano Bruno suggested the existence of planets outside our Solar System, he was burned at the stake for heresy. More recent claims, such as the existence ...
10.11.2021 Fuhgeddaboudit A thousand years ago, most people didn’t own a single book. The only way to access knowledge was to consult their memory. But technology – from paper to hard drives – has permitted us to free our brains from remembering ...
10.04.2021 Home Invasions (rebroadcast) As we struggle to control a viral invader that moves silently across the globe and into its victims, we are also besieged by other invasions. Murder hornets have descended upon the Pacific Northwest, threatening the region’s honeybees. In Africa, locust ...
09.27.2021 AI: Where Does It End? (rebroadcast) The benefits of artificial intelligence are manifest and manifold, but can we recognize the drawbacks … and avoid them in time? In this episode, recorded before a live audience at the Seattle meeting of the American Association for the Advancement ...
09.20.2021 Skeptic Check: Science Denial [rebroadcast] Climate change isn’t happening. Vaccines make you sick. When it comes to threats to public or environmental health, a surprisingly large fraction of the population still denies the consensus of scientific evidence. Why does the public feel that science can’t ...
09.13.2021 Animals Being Jerks They’re cute and cuddly. But they can also be obnoxious. Science writer Mary Roach has numerous tales about how our animal friends don’t always bow to their human overlords and behave the way we’d want. The resulting encounters, such as ...
09.06.2021 De-Permafrosting Above the Arctic Circle, much of the land is underlaid by permafrost. But climate change is causing it to thaw. This is not good news for the planet. As the carbon rich ground warms, microbes start to feast… releasing greenhouse ...
08.30.2021 True Grit (rebroadcast) Without sand, engineering would be stuck in the Middle Ages and Silicon Valley would be, well, just a valley. Sand is the building material of modern cities, and we use more of this resource than any other except water and ...
08.23.2021 You've Got Whale (rebroadcast) We’re all missing out on important messages, and no amount of refreshing your browser will help. That’s because eavesdropping on the communications of non-human species requires decoding their non-written signals. Dive into Arctic waters where scientists make first-ever recordings of ...
08.16.2021 Phreaky Physics It was a radical idea a century ago, when Einstein said space and time can be bent, and gravity was really geometry. We hear how his theories inspire young minds even today. At small scales, different rules apply: quantum mechanics ...
08.09.2021 Skeptic Check: Anti-Vax They were developed in a matter of months, and they’re 90 percent effective at stopping infection. They protect against serious illness or death. And yet, roughly one-third of Americans refuse to get the Covid vaccine. How can this be? How ...
08.02.2021 Platypus Crazy They look like a cross between a beaver and a duck, and they all live Down Under. The platypus may lay eggs, but is actually a distant mammalian cousin, one that we last saw, in an evolutionary sense, about 166 ...
07.26.2021 A Twist of Slime (rebroadcast) Your daily mucus output is most impressive. Teaspoons or measuring cups can’t capture its entire volume. Find out how much your body churns out and why you can’t live without the viscous stuff. But slime in general is remarkable. Whether ...
07.19.2021 New Water Worlds (rebroadcast) The water is coming. By century’s end, the oceans may be 6 feet higher, threatening millions of people and low-lying property. Miami is flooded routinely already. But humans once knew how to adapt to rising waters. Hear stories of threatened ...
07.12.2021 Cicadas and Zombie Seeds Rip van Winkle snoozed for 20 years, and Sleeping Beauty for 100. But seeds in an underground bottle have easily beaten both these records, germinating long after the scientist who buried them a few feet underground had died. We investigate ...
07.05.2021 Skeptic Check: Pentagon UFO Report When the government announced it would release a report about strange aerial phenomena, public excitement and media coverage took off like a Saturn V rocket. But what’s really in the report? Do we finally have the long-awaited evidence of alien ...
06.28.2021 Skeptic Check: Science Breaking Bad (rebroadcast) The scientific method is tried and true. The fallible humans behind the research, however, not so much. Find out why the hyper-competitive pursuit of results that are “amazing” and “incredible” is undermining medical science, how a scientific breakthrough can turn ...
06.21.2021 After The Plague Everyone is familiar with the immediate consequences of a pandemic – sickness and death. But the long-term ramifications can be just as dramatic: a breakdown of the family and society, shifts in political power, and widespread appeals to magical thinking. ...
06.14.2021 Flush With Excitement The toilet: A ubiquitous appliance that dates to the time of Shakespeare. But billions of people around the world still lack modern sanitation infrastructure. And the incentive to modernize includes the possibility that recycling human waste could help with conservation ...
06.07.2021 The Ears Have It (rebroadcast) What’s the difference between a bird call and the sound of a pile driver? Not much, when you’re close to the loudest bird ever. Also, how everyday sounds can worsen your health, and the efforts of a team in New ...
05.31.2021 Air Apparent (rebroadcast) It’s easy to take air for granted, but you can’t live more than a few minutes without it. This invisible chemical cocktail also connects you with everyone else. Your next breath probably includes molecules exhaled by Julius Caesar or Eleanor ...
05.24.2021 Feet Don't Fail Me Standing on your own two feet isn’t easy. While many animals can momentarily balance on their hind legs, we’re the only critters, besides birds, for whom bipedalism is completely normal. Find out why, even though other animals are faster, we’re ...
05.17.2021 Skeptic Check: Rational Lampoon (rebroadcast) Why a cognitive scientist says that the very idea of individual thinking is a myth: most of our thinking is done in groups. Also, you know much less than you think you do. For example, most people will say they ...
05.10.2021 For the Birds Birds have it going on. Many of these winged dinosaurs delight us with their song and brilliant plumage. Migratory birds travel thousands of miles in a display of endurance that would make an Olympic athlete gasp. We inquire about these ...
05.03.2021 End of Eternity Nothing lasts forever. Even the universe has several possible endings. Will there be a dramatic Big Rip or a Big Chill¬ – also known as the heat death of the universe – in trillions of years? Or will vacuum decay, ...
04.26.2021 Skeptic Check: Flat Earth (rebroadcast) Flat Earthers believe that our planet resembles not a slightly squashed grapefruit but a thick pancake. We look at the difference between a truly scientific examination of extraordinary claims and approaches that feel and look science-y but aren’t. One man ...
04.19.2021 Waste Not (rebroadcast) Why create more landfill? Resist the urge to toss those old sneakers or last year’s smart phone. Instead, let global junk entrepreneurs repurpose them as they turn trash to treasure. Meanwhile, right-to-repair advocates fight for legislation that would help you ...
04.12.2021 Venom Diagram (rebroadcast) Evolution has outfitted some animals with a highly effective mechanism for saying “back off!”. Venoms can ward off predators and disable prey, and some can even be chemically altered into life-saving drugs. Plus, the King of Pain - a scientist ...
04.05.2021 Volcanic Mind Melt The more than a thousand volcanoes that dapple Earth’s surface mark the edges of tectonic plates, spewing hot gas and ash, or boiling over with lava. Meet a few currently-active hot heads, uncover some historical eruptions, and hear how much ...
03.29.2021 Skeptic Check: Useful Delusions Can self-deception be useful? In a time of Covid, we emphasize the necessity of thinking rationally about our behavior and avoiding unscientific choices, such as spurning vaccines. But are there other situations when delusional thinking can help us thrive?
03.22.2021 Neanderthal in the Family Back off, you Neanderthal! It sounds as if you’ve just been dissed, but maybe you should take it as a compliment. Find out how our assessment of Neanderthals has undergone a radical rethinking, and hear about the influence they still ...
03.15.2021 DecodeHer (rebroadcast) They were pioneers in their fields, yet their names are scarcely known – simply because they didn’t have a Y chromosome. We examine the accomplishments of two women who pioneered fundamental research in code breaking and astronomy during the early ...
03.08.2021 In Living Color The world is a colorful place, and human eyes have evolved to take it in – from vermillion red to bright tangerine to cobalt blue. But when we do, are you and I seeing the same thing? Find out why ...
03.01.2021 Eclectic Company We present a grab bag of our favorite recent science stories – from how to stop aging to the mechanics of cooking pasta. Also, in accord with our eclectic theme – the growing problem of space junk.
02.22.2021 Creature Discomforts (rebroadcast) Okay you animals, line up: stoned sloths, playful pandas, baleful bovines, and vile vultures. We’ve got you guys pegged, thanks to central casting. Or do we? Our often simplistic view of animals ignores their remarkable adaptive abilities. Stumbly sloths are ...
02.15.2021 Granting Immunity (rebroadcast) “Diversity or die” could be your new health mantra. Don’t boost your immune system, cultivate it! Like a garden, your body’s defenses benefit from species diversity. Find out why multiple strains of microbes, engaged in a delicate ballet with your ...
02.08.2021 Mars Attracts Earth invades Mars in February. In a historic trifecta for space exploration, spacecraft of three countries will arrive at Mars, and for two of those it will be their first time at the Red Planet. We talk to the science ...
02.01.2021 Iron, Coal, Wood Maybe you don’t remember the days of the earliest coal-fired stoves. They changed domestic life, and that changed society. We take you back to that era, and to millennia prior when iron was first smelt, and even earlier, when axe-handles ...
01.25.2021 Skeptic Check: Shared Reality One of the many shocking aspects of the Capitol attack was that it revealed how thoroughly the nation had cleaved into alternate realities. How did we get to this point? How did misinformation come to create beliefs embraced by millions? ...
01.18.2021 Supercomputer Showdown (rebroadcast) Do you have a hard-to-answer question? The Summit, Sierra, Trinity, Frontier, and Aurora supercomputers are built to tackle it. Summit tops the petaflop heap – at least for now. But Frontier and Aurora are catching up as they take aim ...
01.11.2021 Skeptic Check: Betting on Pseudoscience (rebroadcast) Psychics may not be able to predict the future or sense your thoughts. Nonetheless, they rake in hundreds of millions of dollars every year. But the harm from pseudoscience can go far beyond your wallet – especially when it promotes ...
01.04.2021 Headed for Trouble (rebroadcast) The stone heads on Easter Island are an enduring mystery: why were they built and why were they abandoned and destroyed? The old ideas about cultural collapse are yielding to new ones based on careful investigation on the ground - ...
12.28.2020 For Good Measure (rebroadcast) The reign of Le Grand K has come to an end. After 130 years, this hunk of metal sitting in a Parisian vault will no longer define the kilogram. The new kilogram mass will be defined by Planck’s constant, joining ...
12.21.2020 Handling the Holidays (rebroadcast) The stress of the holidays can make you want to hide under the covers with a warm cup of cocoa. From gift buying to family gatherings, the holidays can feel like being inside a pressure cooker. But don’t despair! Science ...
12.14.2020 Fire Clouds and Ice-teroids Small bodies will hit the big time next year; a sample return from asteroid Bennu and the launch of both the DART and Lucy missions could unravel puzzles about the formation of the solar system, as well teach us how ...
12.07.2020 Skeptic Check: Shroom with a View Magic mushrooms – or psilocybin - may be associated with tripping hippies and Woodstock, but they are now being studied as new treatments for depression and neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s. Is this Age of Aquarius medicine or something that could ...
11.30.2020 Bare Bones You may not feel that your skeleton does very much. But without it you’d be a limp bag of protoplasm, unable to move. And while you may regard bones as rigid and inert, they are living tissue. Bones are also ...
11.23.2020 Into the Deep Have you ever heard worms arguing? Deep-sea scientists use hydrophones to eavesdrop on “mouth-fighting worms.” It’s one of the many ways scientists are trying to catalog the diversity of the deep oceans — estimated to be comparable to a rainforest. ...
11.16.2020 Sex Post Facto (rebroadcast) Birds do it, bees do it, but humans may not do it for much longer. At least not for having children. Relying on sex to reproduce could be supplanted by making babies in the lab, where parents-to-be can select genomes ...
11.09.2020 Time Travel Agents (rebroadcast) Hey, let’s meet last week for coffee. Okay, we can’t meet in the past… yet. But could it be only a matter of time before we can? In an attempt to defy the grandfather paradox, scientists try sending a photon ...

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