SciFri Extra: Celebrating The Elements
Do you have a favorite chemical element? Neurologist Oliver Sacks did—he was partial to dense, high melting-point metals, especially those metals between hafnium and platinum on the periodic table. T...
12 Maalis 201926min
HIV Remission, Bones, Jumping Spiders. March 8, 2019, Part 2
Nearly twelve years ago, a cancer patient infected with HIV received two bone marrow transplants to wipe out his leukemia. Now, researchers in the United Kingdom reported in Nature earlier this week t...
8 Maalis 201946min
NASA Administrator, California Wildfires, Lichens. March 8, 2019, Part 1
On December 14, 1972, as Apollo 17 astronaut Eugene Cernan prepared to board the lunar module, he gave one last dispatch from the lunar surface. And yet, 47 years later, humankind has not set another ...
8 Maalis 201946min
Icefish, Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster, Wireless Baby Monitoring. March 1, 2019, Part 2
During an electrical system test early in in the morning of April 26, 1986, Reactor 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded. The disaster at the plant was not caused solely by the test, howeve...
1 Maalis 201946min
Synthetic Genomes, Climate Panel, Local Recycling. March 1, 2019, Part 1
DNA is the universal programming language for life, and the specific code to that program are the combination of the base pairs adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine. But are those the only base pair...
1 Maalis 201947min
SciFri Extra: A Night Of Volcanoes And Earthquakes With N.K. Jemisin
The Science Friday Book Club discussion of N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season may have stopped erupting for the season, but we have one more piece of volcanic goodness for you. SciFri producer and chief ...
27 Helmi 201928min
Black Holes, California Megaflood. Feb 22, 2019, Part 2
When it floods in California, the culprit is usually what’s known as an atmospheric river—a narrow ribbon of ultra-moist air moving in from over the Pacific Ocean. Atmospheric rivers are also essentia...
22 Helmi 201946min
Telescope Decisions, Grape Plasma, Israeli Moon Lander. Feb 22, 2019, Part 1
The American Astronomical Society meeting is the largest annual gathering of astronomers and astrophysicists. It’s not known for drama. But this year, the buzz in the room wasn’t too different from th...
22 Helmi 201946min
