Science, Spoken

Matthieu Komorowski wanted to be an astronaut. Still does. The French-born anesthesiologist, currently getting a PhD at Imperial College London, applied to the European Space Agency in 2008. But he knows his chances are limited. “Being basically a medical resident I didn’t get very far in the selection,” Komorowski says. “But I’ve been working on building up my skills.” Among those skills: administering anesthesia for surgery. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Let's pretend that the US didn't recently pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement. Let's also pretend that all the other countries that scolded it for withdrawing also met their Paris pledges on deadline. Heck, let's pretend that that everyone in the whole world did their very best to cut emissions, starting today. Even if all that make-believing came true, the world would still get very hot. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Recall your favorite memory: the big game you won; the moment you first saw your child's face; the day you realized you had fallen in love. It's not a single memory, though, is it? Reconstructing it, you remember the smells, the colors, the funny thing some other person said, and the way it all made you feel. Your brain's ability to collect, connect, and create mosaics from these milliseconds-long impressions is the basis of every memory. By extension, it is the basis of you. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

California is on fire again. CalFire, one of the agencies charged with putting those fires out, is tracking upward of two dozen conflagrations up and down the state at the moment—Detwiller, Grade, Bridge, Wall, Alamo, Garza, on and on—ranging in size from a couple hundred acres to nearly 50,000. And it’s not just the Golden State. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Last month, Phoenix enduring a blistering heat wave, with temperatures so high that airport officials had to cancel dozens of flights. The reason was two-fold. First off, some jet engines risk catching on fire in extreme heat. And when air gets hot, it expands and becomes less dense—so an airplane’s wings can’t generate enough lift to get off the ground. Planes either need to speed up during take-off or use a longer runway. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Suppose someone builds a wall. A great and tall wall that is both impenetrable and beautiful. Who knows—maybe it's even solar powered. This wall stands 10 meters tall and goes on and on and on. Now suppose someone wants to toss a bag of stuff over that wall. A big bag with a mass of, oh, 60 pounds. (I will say 27 kilograms, because kilograms are better. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The first semester of an undergraduate physics course invariably spends a lot of time on two big ideas: The momentum principle and the work energy principle. Both deal with forces acting on an object, which often leads students to think they are similar. In a way, they are, and they play a huge role in almost everything you learn during an introduction to physics. Before I give you a great physics question that uses these ideas, I will go over them in a super-brief physics lesson. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

E. coli might best be known for giving street food connoisseurs occasional bouts of gastric regret. But the humble microbial workhorse, with its easy-to-edit genome, has given humankind so much more—insulin, antibiotics, cancer drugs, biofuels, synthetic rubber, and now: a place to keep your selfies safe for the next millennium. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Elon Musk is the closest thing this world has to a real-life Tony Stark. Think about it. He builds cool cars. He builds cool rockets. He builds cool tunneling machines. He wants to fire people through pneumatic tubes. He built a ginormous battery factory in the desert, and how he's building the world's largest battery. OK, technically, Elon Musk isn't building it. Tesla is. But same difference, because Tesla is his company. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Planet Earth is getting hotter. One of the more confusing aspects of this global trend is the persistent, undeniable discomfort of winter. Even more confusing is when that chilly weather continues into April, May, or godforbidpleasenot June. This might clear the confusion (but probably not the frustration): Those colder temperatures in the first half of the year might be due to warmer weather in the Arctic. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices