This year has been a spectacular one for celestial phenomena. The northern lights delighted in unexpected ways while a total solar eclipse cast a shadow across North America. Those events were enough to make it a memorable year, but 2024 also shook up our understanding of the universe. A new reading of Voyager 2 data may explain Uranus’s weird magnetic field. And the impressive James Webb Space Telescope has detected an early and incredibly distant galaxy. Join us in our look back at some of the top space news from 2024.

Guests:

Andrew Fraknoi – Professor of Astronomy at the Fromm Institute at the University of San Francisco and SETI board member 

Jamie Jasinski - space plasma physicist for the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and author of a recent paper re-examining data from the Voyager 2 mission, published in Nature.

Phil Plait - astronomer, author, science communicator and frequent contributor at Scientific American.

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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Just because something is invisible doesn’t mean it isn’t there. We can’t see gases in our atmosphere, such as carbon dioxide, oxygen, and nitrogen, but we benefit from their presence with every breath we take. From the bubbles that effervesce in soda to the vapors that turn engines, gases are part of our lives. They fill our lungs, give birth to stars, and… well, how would we spot a good diner without glowing neon? In this episode, a materials scientist shares the history of some gaseous substances that we don’t usually see, but that make up our world.

Guest:

Mark Miodownik – Professor of materials and society at the University College London and the author of “It’s a Gas: The Sublime and Elusive Elements That Expand Our World.”

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support!

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Imagine life without animals, trees, and fungi. The world would look very different. But while the first life was surely single-celled, we don’t know just how it evolved to multicellular organisms. Two long-term experiments hope to find out, and one has been running for more than 35 years. Hear about the moment scientists watched evolution take off in the lab, and how directed evolution was used to create a multicellular organism. Also, how single embryonic cells become humans, and what all of this says about the possibility of life on other worlds.

Guests:

Jeff Barrick – molecular scientist at the University of Texas at Austin where his lab oversees the Long-Term Evolution Experiment that’s been running since 1988. 

Will Ratcliff – an evolutionary biologist at Georgia Institute of Technology

Ben Stanger – cancer researcher, professor of medicine and developmental biology at the University of Pennsylvania and author of “From One Cell: A Journey into Life’s Origins and the Future of Medicine.”

Joseph L. Graves – evolutionary biologist and geneticist at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and author of “A Voice in the Wilderness: A Pioneering Biologist Explains How Evolution Can Help Us Solve Our Biggest Problems.”

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

Originally aired October 9, 2023

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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Near death experiences can be profound and even life changing. People describe seeing bright lights, staring into the abyss, or meeting dead relatives. Many believe these experiences to be proof of an afterlife.

But now, scientists are studying these strange events and gaining insights into the brain and consciousness itself. Will we uncover the scientific underpinning of these near-death events? 

Guests:

Steve Paulson - executive producer of To the Best of Our Knowledge for Wisconsin Public Radio

Sebastian Junger - journalist, filmmaker and author of “The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea” 

Christoph Koch - neuroscientist at the Allen Institute in Seattle and chief scientist of the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation in Santa Monica California 

Daniel Kondziella - neuroscientist in the Department of Clinical Medicine at the University of Copenhagen

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

Originally aired September 25, 2023

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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How do we know where to look for life on other planets? SETI scientists use analog sites on Earth, not only to study how life has evolved here, but the geological conditions that made it possible. Devon Island in Canada is one such analog. It's been called Mars on Earth. 

In this third episode, Gary Niederhoff talks with planetary scientist Pascal Lee, co-founder of The Mars Institute, and principal investigator of the Haughton-Mars Project at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. They discuss how a remote arctic island offers clues about how liquid water once flowed on Mars, why the moons of the Red Planet are so mysterious, and Pascal’s discovery of a heretofore unrecognized Martian volcano in 2024.

Music by Jun Miyake

You can support the work of Big Picture Science by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support!

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You interact with about two-thirds of the elements of the periodic table every day. Some, like carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen, make up our bodies and the air we breathe. Yet there is also a class of elements so unstable they can only be made in a lab. These superheavy elements are the purview of a small group stretching the boundaries of chemistry. Can they extend the periodic table beyond the 118 in it now? Find out scientists are using particle accelerators to create element 120 and why they’ve skipped over element 119. Plus, if an element exists for only a fraction of a second in the lab, can we still say that counts as existing?

Guests:

Mark Miodownik – professor of materials and society at the University of College London and the author of “It’s a Gas: The Sublime and Elusive Elements That Expand Our World.”

Kit Chapman – Science historian at Falmouth University, author of “Superheavy; Making and Breaking the Periodic Table.”

Jennifer Pore – Research Scientist of Heavy Elements at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support!

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The Amazon is often described as an ecosystem under dire threat due to climate change and deliberate deforestation. Yet there is still considerable hope that these threats can be mitigated. In the face of these threats, indigenous conservationists are attempting to strike a balance between tradition and preserving Amazonia. Meanwhile, two river journeys more than 100 years apart – one by a contemporary National Geographic reporter and another by “The Lewis and Clark of Brazil”— draw attention to the beauty and diversity of one of the world’s most important ecosystems.

Guests:

Cynthia Gorney – Contributing writer at the National Geographic Society, former bureau chief for South America at The Washington Post

Larry Rohter – Reporter and correspondent in Rio de Janeiro for fourteen years for Newsweek and as The New York Times bureau chief. Author of Into the Amazon: The Life of Cândido Rondon, Trailblazing Explorer, Scientist, Statesman, and Conservationist

João Campos-Silva – Brazilian researcher and conservationist, and cofounder of Instituto Jura, a conservation organization. His work, along with that of other conservationists, is featured in the National Geographic issue devoted to the Amazon.

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support!

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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 countless facts. Alphabetization and the simple filing cabinet have helped to systematize and save information we might need someday.

But now that we can Google just about any subject, have we lost the ability to memorize information? Does this make our brains better or worse?

Guests:

Judith Flanders – Historian and author, most recently of A Place for Everything: The Curious History of Alphabetical Order

Craig Robertson – Professor of Media Studies, Northeastern University and author of The Filing Cabinet: A Vertical History of Information

David Eagleman – Neuroscientist and author, Stanford University

Originally aired October 11, 2021

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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Extreme heat is taking its toll on the natural world. We use words like “heat domes” and “freakish” to describe our everyday existence. These high temperatures aren’t only uncomfortable - they are lethal to humans, animals, and crops. In search of an answer to our episode’s question, we discuss the dilemma of an ever-hotter world with an author who has covered climate change for more than twenty years.

Guest:

Jeff Goodell – author of “The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet.”

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

*Originally aired October 2, 2023

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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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 million years ago.

Genetic sequencing is being used to trace that history, while scientists intensify their investigation of the habits and habitats of these appealing Frankencreatures; beginning by taking a census to see just how many are out there, and if their survival is under threat.

Guests: 

Josh Griffiths – Senior Wildlife Ecologist at Cesaar Australia.

Jane Fenelon – Research fellow, University of Melbourne

Paula Anich – Professor of Natural Resources, Northland College

Wes Warren – Professor of Genomics, University of Missouri

Phoebe Meagher – Conservation Officer, Taronga Conservation Society, Australia

Originally aired August 2, 2021

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support!

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