This Week in Science – The Kickass Science Podcast To The Moon, Artemis!
Apr 10, 2026
Brian Dunning, skeptic and science communicator known for Skeptoid, shares insider anecdotes about Artemis II and its surprise crater-naming. Short segments cover deep space communications, radiation and organ-on-chip studies, debates on Alcubierre drives, superluminal optics, carbon offset limits, grid resilience, FTL1 aging research, ADHD exercise benefits, and AI’s effects on decision-making.
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How Artemis Astronauts Communicate With Earth
- Artemis communications use NASA's Deep Space Network for email, text and video chat with ~1.3s latency, not the experimental laser link which is for large file transfer.
- The optical laser (space fiber) is test-mode and carries bulk data, while crew comms rely on established DSN ground stations worldwide.
Avatar Organ‑On‑A‑Chip Flies With Artemis To Study Radiation
- NASA's Avatar organ-on-a-chip rode to Artemis to study radiation effects using astronauts' cellular material in microfluidic bone-marrow and blood-vessel tissues.
- The thumb-sized silicon device houses live fluidic tissues to track radiation-driven genetic and cellular changes.
Apparent Superluminal Optical Correlations Explained
- Researchers imaged polaritonic phase singularities that show apparent superluminal correlations ahead of light, but these features cannot propagate independently of the light field.
- Electron microscopy mapped vortices in optical fields, confirming predicted wave phenomena without violating relativity.