Science Friday

The ring would have gradually fallen to Earth as meteorites, correlating to a spike of impacts seen in the geological record. Also, a new AI tool can judge whether sand came from a beach, a river, a glacial deposit, or a wind-blown dune.

Hundreds of millions of years ago, Earth may have looked quite different when viewed from space: Scientists propose it may have had a Saturn-like ring, made up of lots of smaller asteroids.

The new paper, published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, proposes that this ring formed around 466 million years ago. A major source of evidence is a band of impact craters near the equator. The researchers also posit the ring would have shaded this equatorial area, possibly changing global temperatures and creating an icehouse period.

Ira speaks to Rachel Feltman, host of the Popular Science podcast “The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week,” about this and other top science stories of the week, including how lizards use bubbles to “scuba dive” underwater, and ancient cave art that possibly shows a long-extinct species.

If you were given a bucket of sand and asked to determine where it came from, you’d probably have a hard time guessing if it was from a beach, a riverbank, the playground down the street, or a Saharan sand dune.

There are experts who can make a guess at that sort of ID, using a categorization process that takes skill, a scanning electron microscope, and hours of time. Now, however, researchers report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they’ve developed an AI model that can quickly judge whether a sample of sand came from a beach, a river, a glacial deposit, or a wind-blown dune.

That type of identification isn’t just of interest to geologists. Sand is one of the world’s most in-demand resources, second only to water in use. And different applications need different types of sand—for instance, making concrete and mortar requires angular sand for good adhesion and stability. These kinds of needs have given rise to illicit sand mining, sand theft, and sand smuggling. A way of rapidly identifying the origins of a sample of sand could be useful to investigators, or to companies seeking to ensure sustainability goals.

Michael Hasson, a PhD candidate in Stanford’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, joins SciFri’s Charles Bergquist to discuss the new SandAI, and the challenges of tracking grains of sand.

Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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The heaviest antimatter nucleus to date was spotted in a particle accelerator. It could provide new insights into the nature of matter. And, research indicates different songbird species might intentionally travel together during migration, giving each other a possible boost in survival.

Antimatter is one of science’s great mysteries. It is produced all around us for fractions of a second, until it collides with matter, and the particles annihilate one another. But what is it?

Antimatter is just like matter, except for one thing. Its particles have the same mass as ordinary matter, but an opposite charge. For example, an electron has a negative charge, so an anti-electron—called a positron—weighs the same, but has a positive charge.

Antimatter is a natural product of some types of radioactive decay and cosmic ray collisions, but it can also be made in particle colliders here on Earth. But making antimatter particles this way is difficult and expensive—let alone controlling them enough to create an entire anti-atom. NASA estimates that creating a gram of antimatter would cost about $62.5 trillion.

But why does antimatter matter? It may hold the key to understanding one of the universe’s biggest mysteries: why there’s something rather than nothing. Cosmologists say that during the Big Bang, matter and antimatter should have been created in equal amounts. But everything around us today is mostly matter, meaning either that there was an excess of matter created, or that matter and antimatter don’t quite follow the rules physicists expect.

Recently, scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider spotted 16 instances of the heaviest exotic antimatter nucleus observed to date: antihyperhydrogen-4.

To explore what this breakthrough means for antimatter research, SciFri producer Charles Bergquist talks to Dr. Jamie Dunlop, associate department chair for nuclear physics at Brookhaven National Laboratory.

This season, billions of birds will take to the skies as they flock to their wintering grounds. With so many different species on the move, they’re bound to run into each other. A new study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that this mixing and mingling might not be coincidental.

In fact, different bird species could have their own social networks that might boost each others’ survival.

SciFri producer Kathleen Davis talks with lead author Dr. Joely DeSimone, migration ecologist at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science Appalachian Laboratory, about untangling avian relationships.

Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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SciFri producer Kathleen Davis talks with Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett-Helaire, assistant professor of immunology and infectious diseases at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health to help answer our listeners’ top questions about the updated COVID-19 vaccines.

This Q&A, which includes questions from our audience members, has been adapted from our interview with Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett-Helaire. It has been edited for clarity and brevity.

If I’ve already had COVID and it wasn’t so bad, why should I even bother with this new booster?

There’s always a chance that COVID-19 will cause more than the sniffles, or that you could end up in the emergency room—especially for older people. Why take that chance when you have the option to go to your local CVS and, in many cases, get a free vaccine that has been proven to decrease your chances of more severe disease?

My hope is that as time progresses, people become more comfortable with the idea of getting seasonal vaccinations for COVID-19 along with flu.  

Is the new COVID-19 vaccine one shot?

Yes.

Read the full Q&A at sciencefriday.com.

Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Part of the reason it’s difficult to talk about climate change is that it can be hard to see a long-term positive outcome for people and the planet. But Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, a marine biologist and co-founder of the Urban Ocean Lab, argues that to prevent the worst effects of climate change, we have to start by asking ourselves, what if we get it right?

She’s the author of a new book with that same title, What If We Get It Right? Visions of Climate Futures. In the book, she poses that question to experts in oceans, farming, architecture, finance, and even Hollywood to find out what getting it right looks like in their own fields and what those solutions could look like for the rest of us.

Read an excerpt from What If We Get It Right? Visions of Climate Futures.

Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Kids and teens are back in school, and the battle over the smartphones in their pockets is becoming more prominent. For years, teachers and parents have lamented about the distractions these devices cause in and out of the classroom. Last year, the US surgeon general declared a youth mental health crisis, citing social media as a significant factor, and more than 40 US states are suing Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, arguing that the company intentionally manipulated their apps to addict teens and kids.

A 2021 survey showed that 76% of US public schools prohibit cellphones. Seven states have implemented bans, and 14 more recently introduced similar legislation.

To parents and educators, it might seem that phones and social media are bad for kids and bad for learning. But research shows that the reality is more complicated, with some suggesting that a blanket smartphone ban isn’t necessarily the solution.

So what are the best ways to approach school phone bans? What do we know about the psychological effects of smartphones on kids and teens? And why does this research tend to defy simple answers?

To answer these questions, guest host and SciFri producer Kathleen Davis is joined by Dr. Emily Weinstein, co-director of the Center for Digital Thriving at Harvard University, and the author of Behind Their Screens: What Teens Are Facing (And Adults Are Missing), and Sandy Roberts, education program manager at Science Friday and former middle school teacher.

Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Big news in the world of commercial space flight: On Thursday morning, Jared Iasaacman and Sarah Gillis, members of SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission, became the first civilians to complete a spacewalk. The mission is a collaboration between Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Isaacman, a billionaire tech entrepreneur. While outside the spacecraft, the two crew members conducted mobility tests on their spacesuits.

SciFri Producer Kathleen Davis talks with Jason Dinh, climate editor at Atmos Magazine about this and other top science news of the week including deadly cholera outbreaks, germs at 10,000 ft, and Japanese eels that can escape a fish stomach through their gills.

In May of 2023, there was a massive advance in the world of organ transplantation: the first whole human eye and partial face transplant. The man at the center of this procedure is 46-year-old Aaron James, who sustained significant facial injuries from a high-voltage work accident.

At the time, it was unclear just how successful the operation would be. Previous tests in animals had resulted in shrinkage of the transplanted eye, if not outright rejection. But now, more than a year after the transplant, a new paper in the journal JAMA outlines the success of this first-of-its-kind operation. While James cannot see out of his new eye, there is blood flow, normal pressure, and a retinal response to light.

Guest host Kathleen Davis speaks with Dr. Daniel Ceradini, director of research at NYU Langone’s Department of Plastic Surgery and first author of the JAMA study. They discuss the implications this success could have for the future of eye surgery, and the dramatic improvements in James’ quality of life.

Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Samples of 2.5 billion-year-old mantle rocks found at spreading ocean ridges could put bounds on models of how the planet formed. And, researchers decreased the amount of lignin in poplar tree wood, making it stronger and slower to deteriorate.

If you’re looking to really learn about the history of our planet, look to geology. Ancient rocks can provide a time capsule of the conditions in which they formed. But even the geologic record has its limits—rocks and minerals get weathered, buried, heated, melted, and recycled over time—so geologists need to search out rare super-old geologic holdouts to tell about the earliest times.

Writing in the journal Nature in July, researchers described what they can learn about the chemical history of Earth’s mantle, the geologic layer beneath the planet’s crust, from studying 2.5 billion-year-old rocks collected at spreading ocean ridges. They found that these unusual mantle rocks didn’t necessarily have to have been formed in a world with less available oxygen, but could have been produced just by the mantle layer being hotter long ago.

Dr. Elizabeth Cottrell, chair of the Department of Mineral Sciences at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, joins Ira to talk about the research and why a collection of old rocks is an important part of international scientific infrastructure.

Trees play a big role in the fight against climate change: They can soak up carbon dioxide from the air and store it for centuries in the form of biomass. But it turns out that trees could be doing even more.

In 2023, Science Friday covered how the company Living Carbon had genetically engineered poplar trees to have a more efficient photosynthesis process. This allowed the trees to grow twice as fast and store 30% more carbon biomass than regular poplars, making them ideal for the carbon credit market.

Recently, researchers at the University of Maryland also experimented with genetically modifying poplar trees. But this time, they had a different goal in mind. They modified the tree to reduce the amount of lignin in its wood. This made the wood stronger without the need for harsh chemical processing. It also slowed the deterioration rate of the wood, which allows it to store carbon for longer periods.

To explain more about this “super wood,” SciFri guest host Sophie Bushwick is joined by the lead plant geneticist on the study, Dr. Yiping Qi, associate professor at Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture at the University of Maryland.

Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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If you’ve ever seen a cute cow video on social media, you might notice they seem to have a lot in common with dogs. They can wag their tails, they love to gobble down tasty treats, and if you’re lucky, they might flop over for a nice belly or neck scratch.

Cows are clearly emotional animals, but how smart are they exactly? That’s the question that neuroscientist and author Dr. Gregory Berns had when he and his wife moved from Atlanta to the Georgia countryside in 2020, and started raising cows of their own. And to better understand them, he applied his years of experience researching the brains of animals, like dogs and dolphins.

He joins guest host Sophie Bushwick to talk about his new book, Cowpuppy: An Unexpected Friendship And A Scientist’s Journey Into The Secret World Of Cows.

Read an excerpt of Cowpuppy: An Unexpected Friendship And A Scientist’s Journey Into The Secret World Of Cows.

Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Shark fishing is alive and well, but the fishermen who do it are increasingly prioritizing conservation. And, an unknown ant was spotted in Manhattan in 2011, and it quickly spread through New York City. We now know what it is.

At an undisclosed beach at 5:30 p.m. in New Jersey, shark fisherman AJ Rotondella and two clients wait for beachgoers to leave. Once the beach is empty, Rotondella cuts up some chunks of fish as bait, and casts lines into the water.

“I shark fish, shark fish, shark fish, eat pizza, and shark fish … that’s pretty much it,” Rotondella said. “Waking up in the morning … wide open ocean, anything could be anywhere at any time. And I think that’s fascinating. No matter how long you’ve done this, you’ve never seen it all.”

He has always loved fishing, and got into shark fishing 13 years ago, when his brother told him they could catch sharks from the beach. They caught two on their first day and could not catch another shark for the rest of the year.

“That really got me interested because I knew it was possible, but I couldn’t do it again,” he said. “I … absolutely obsessed over this.”

But Rotondella had a steep learning curve ahead of him. By trial and error, sometimes staying on a beach for multiple days, he learned how to read the tides, water temperatures, currents, and even phases of the moon to figure out how to track the sharks.

Read the full story at sciencefriday.com.

New York City is home to more than 8 million people. But there’s another massive population below their feet: ants.

In 2011, when surveying ant populations on Broadway and Times Square, researchers got quite a surprise: an unidentified species of ant, which was soon dubbed the “ManhattAnt.” Since then, it has become the second-most populous ant species in New York City.

Earlier this year, the first study on this unidentified species was released. It concluded that this species, Lasius emarginatus, likely hitchhiked from Europe to the US. Though their populations have grown tremendously, it’s unclear how the ants are interacting with New York’s native ants.

Joining guest host Sophie Bushwick to discuss this ant species is Dr. Clint Penick, assistant professor of insect ecology at Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama.

Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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You might be familiar with a gigabyte, one of the most popular units of measure for computer storage. A two-hour movie is 3 gigabytes on average, while your phone can probably store 256 gigabytes.

But did you know that your body also stores information in its own way?

We see this in DNA, which has the instructions needed for an organism to develop, survive, and reproduce. In computing storage terms, each cell of our body contains about 1.5 gigabytes worth of data. And with about 30 trillion cells in our bodies, we could theoretically store about 45 trillion gigabytes—also known as 45 zettabytes—which is equivalent to about one fourth of all the data in the world today.

Recently, a group of researchers was able to develop a technology that allows computer storage and processing using DNA’s ability to store information by turning genetic code into binary code. This technology could have a major impact on the way we do computing and digital storage.

To explain more about this technology, SciFri guest host Sophie Bushwick is joined by two professors from North Carolina State University’s Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Dr. Albert Keung and Dr. Orlin Velev.

Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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