Response to DSC: "Su'Kal"

Expectation vs. reality: scientific commentary on what Mike thought was going to be in the Verubin nebula and what the U.S.S. Discovery actually found.

Paul Stamets' TED talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_stamets_6_ways_mushrooms_can_save_the_world?language=en

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Response to DSC: "Terra Firma, Part 2"

This week on Strange New Worlds, reflections (pun fully intended) on our latest visit to the Mirror Universe.

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Guest: Rebecca Pierce

Writer, filmmaker, and activist Rebecca Pierce joins Mike to discuss the intersection of racial justice, protest movements, #BlackLivesMatter, and Star Trek using the poignant Deep Space Nine episodes "Far Beyond the Stars" and "Past Tense" as launch points.

Rebecca Pierce: https://www.rebeccapiercefilms.com/

Diasperse: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/diasperse/id1533908402

Infinite Diversity: A Star Trek Universe Podcast: https://www.ufp.earth/infinite-diversity/

"Is Anybody Out There?" on Flash Forward: https://www.flashforwardpod.com/2020/12/08/is-anybody-out-there/

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Mike: https://twitter.com/Miquai

Rebecca: https://twitter.com/aptly_engineerd

Diasperse: https://twitter.com/Diasperse

Response to DSC: "The Sanctuary"

Planet Kwejian's orbital parameters, as seen on Lt. Bryce's computer, are exactly identical to that of Venus. So why is Kwejian habitable? Mike discusses a few possibilities.

Photo of Kwejian's planetary parameters: http://discovery.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/promo-photos/season3/308/308-bridge-bryce.jpg

Way & Del Genio's 2020 paper on Venus's climate history: doi.org/10.1029/2019JE006276

Infinite Diversity podcast: www.ufp.earth/infinite-diversity/

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Response to DSC: "Unification III"

Mike reflects on the T'Kal-in-ket. This ancient Vulcan tradition was billed as a search for new scientific truths via the crucible of logic and peer review, kind of like doctoral thesis defense. But in Michael Burnham's case, it quickly pivoted to a search for a different kind of truth.

Link to register for Mike's "Science of Star Trek" talk at 7 pm on December 2, 2020: https://kcls.bibliocommons.com/events/5f99e67f9aadc72f00582f3a

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Response to DSC: "Scavengers"

On the latest episode of Star Trek: Discovery, Commander Burnham explains how she plans on using the black boxes of starships destroyed during the Burn to triangulate the disaster's point of origin. Mike remarks on how this is similar to how real-life gravitational wave observatories around the world work together to locate cataclysmic astronomical events in space and time.

Interactive skymap of gravitational wave detections: https://www.virgo-gw.eu/skymap.html

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Guest: Dr. Ingrid Ockert

Science and Star Trek share an intimate association in popular culture. This alliance only grows stronger as Star Trek continues to inspire new generations of scientists and as real-life discoveries continue to underpin the show's stories. But was this all planned or just an accident? On this episode of Strange New Worlds, Mike is joined by Dr. Ingrid Ockert, a historian of science and media, who studied Star Trek's relationship with science in the time surrounding the show's inception.

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Ingrid: https://twitter.com/ingrid_rocket

Response to DSC: "Die Trying"

This week's episode of Star Trek: Discovery featured a neurological disease caused by prions. Mike discusses prions, how they can cause diseases, and how some scientists consider them contenders for the origin of life.

Prof. Mohamed Noor's YouTube channel, BioTrekkie Explains! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5zvlD5RnkzhIegG0gnSeSw

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Response to DSC: "Forget Me Not"

On the most recent episode of Star Trek: Discovery, "Forget Me Not," the crew travels to the Trill homeworld to retrieve the memories of the Tal symbiont, which currently resides inside of Adira. Most of us may not be Trill, but we all have endosymbionts in our bodies nonetheless. These microorganisms help us digest our food, synthesize vitamins, and even affect our central nervous system. On this episode of Strange New Worlds, Mike discusses the human gut microbiome, as well as the microbiomes of a few other remarkable animals, before drawing a parallel to the symbiosis between the Sphere Data and the U.S.S. Discovery.

"I Contain Multitudes" by Ed Yong: https://edyong.me/i-contain-multitudes

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Response to DSC: "People of Earth"

On the latest episode of Star Trek: Discovery, we learn that a research base on Titan has suffered a catastrophic accident. Mike hypothesizes how this might have occurred and makes an argument, based on energy availability, for why a dilithium-starved human outpost on Titan might resort to desperate measures.

"Energy Options for Future Humans on Titan" by Amanda R. Hendrix & Yuk L. Yung: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1707.00365.pdf

Follow Mike on Twitter: https://twitter.com/miquai