Science, Spoken
WIRED
Get in-depth coverage of current and future trends in technology, and how they are shaping business, entertainment, communications, science, politics, and society.
Episodes
Mentioned books
Dec 16, 2020 • 7min
Another Victim of Global Warming: The Great British Bake Off
Increasing summer temperatures are proving a menace to butter, chocolates, and baked Alaska.
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Dec 15, 2020 • 4min
Underground Brine Could Be a Source of Oxygen on Mars
A new study tests a device that can efficiently split the resource’s water into pure oxygen and hydrogen in Martian conditions.
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Dec 14, 2020 • 9min
The Incredible Journey of the Electronic Plastic Bottle
Researchers loaded containers with trackers and released them in the Ganges and the Bay of Bengal, giving new insight into how plastic pollution travels.
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Dec 11, 2020 • 6min
Endangered Vancouver Island Marmots Are Making a Comeback
Canada’s most endangered mammal is back from the brink of extinction—and offers hope as an “ambassador” for the conservation of less adorable species.
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Dec 10, 2020 • 6min
What's a Semi-Log Plot and How Can You Use It for Covid Data?
It is very useful for showing data that spans different orders of magnitude—like case numbers in South Korea compared to the numbers in the United States.
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Dec 9, 2020 • 8min
Physicists Pin Down the Nuclear Reaction Just After the Big Bang
The newly measured rate of a key nuclear fusion process that forged the first atomic nuclei matches the picture of the universe 380,000 years later.
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Dec 8, 2020 • 7min
Meet the Microbes Living on Da Vinci’s Iconic Sketches
Think you’ve got an interesting microbiome? Your body ain’t got nothing on what’s accumulated on Leonardo’s drawings over 500 years.
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Dec 7, 2020 • 7min
This Squishy 3D-Printed Human Heart Feels Like the Real Thing
A clever technique allows scientists to scan a heart and reconstruct it in a soup of gelatin. It's like making jello, only way more useful for surgeons.
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Dec 4, 2020 • 8min
Climate Change Is Intensifying the Tsunami Threat in Alaska
As glaciers retreat and permafrost thaws, massive landslides threaten coastal communities. Those, in turn, could trigger giant sea waves.
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Dec 3, 2020 • 10min
A Solar-Powered Rocket Might Be Our Ticket to Interstellar Space
The idea for solar thermal propulsion has been around for decades, but researchers tapped by NASA just conducted a first test.
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