Big Picture Science

You can’t see it, but it’s there, whether an atom, a gravity wave, or the bottom of the ocean … but we have technology that allows us to detect what eludes our sight. When we do, whole worlds open up.Without telescopes, asteroids become visible only three seconds before they slam into the Earth. Find out how we track them long before that happens. Also, could pulsars help us detect the gravity waves that Einstein’s theory predicts?Plus, why string theory and parallel universes may remain just interesting ideas … the story of the woman who mapped the ocean floor … and why the disappearance of honeybees may change what you eat.Guests:•  David Morrison – NASA space scientist and Director of the Carl Sagan Center at the SETI Institute•  May Berenbaum – Entomologist, University of Illinois•  Scott Ransom – Astronomer, National Radio Astronomy Observatory•  Lee Smolin – Theoretical physicist, Perimeter Institute of Theoretical Physics, Canada, author of Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe•  Hali Felt – Author of Soundings: The Story of the Remarkable Woman Who Mapped the Ocean Floor First released September 23, 2013. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Discovering bacteria on Mars would be big news. But nothing would scratch our alien itch like making contact with intelligent life. Hear why one man is impatient for the discovery, and also about the new tools that may speed up the “eureka” moment. One novel telescope may help us find E.T. at home, by detecting the heat of his cities.Also, the father of modern SETI research and how decoding the squeals of dolphins could teach us how to communicate with aliens.Guests:•  Lee Billings – Journalist and author of Five Billion Years of Solitude: The Search for Life Among the Stars•  Oliver Guyon – Optical physicist, astronomer, University of Arizona and Suburu telescope; 2012 McArthur Genius award winner•  Jeff Kuhn – Physicist, Institute for Astronomy in Honolulu, Colossus Telescope•  Frank Drake – Astronomer, SETI Institute•  Denise Herzing – Behavioral biologist and research director of the Wild Dolphin Project Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Monsters don’t exist. Except when they do. And extinction is forever, except when it isn’t. So, which animals are mythical and which are in hiding?Bigfoot sightings are plentiful, but real evidence for the hirsute creature is a big zilch. Yet, the coelacanth, a predatory fish thought extinct, actually lives. Today, its genome is offering clues as to how and when our fishy ancestors first flopped onto land.Meanwhile, the ivory-billed woodpecker assumes mythic status as it flutters between existence and extinction. And, from passenger pigeons to the wooly mammoth, hi-tech genetics may imitate Jurassic Park, and bring back vanished animals.Guests:•  Donald Prothero – Paleontologist, geologist, former professor at Occidental College, co-author of Abominable Science!: Origins of the Yeti, Nessie, and Other Famous Cryptids•  Chris Amemiya – Biologist and geneticist at the University of Washington and the Benaroya Research Institute, Seattle•  John Fitzpatrick – Ornithologist and director, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Cornell University•  Ben Novak – Visiting biologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, lead coordinating scientist of “The Great Comeback” at the Revive and Restore project, Long Now Foundation First released December 9, 2013. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Let there be light! Well, it’s easy to do: just flip a switch. But it took more than the invention of the light bulb to make that possible. It required new technology for the distribution of electricity. And that came, not so much from Thomas Edison, but from a Serbian genius named Nikola Tesla.Hear his story plus ideas on what might be the breakthrough energy innovations of the future. Perhaps hydrogen-fueled cars, nuclear fusion electrical generators or even orbiting solar cells?Plus, a reminder of cutting-edge technology back in Napoleon’s day: lighthouses.Guests:•  W. Bernard Carlson – Professor of science, technology and society, University of Virginia, and author of Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age•  Michael Dunne – Physicist, program director for laser fusion energy, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory•  R. Tom Baker – Chemist, director of the Center for Catalysis Research and Innovation, University of Ottawa•  Paul Young – Radio engineer, director of Powersat Ltd.•  Theresa Levitt – Historian, University of Mississippi, and author of A Short Bright Flash: Augustin Fresnel and the Birth of the Modern Lighthouse First released September 30, 2013. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You love to travel. But would you if doing so meant never coming home? The private company Mars One says it will land humans on the Red Planet by 2026, but is only offering passengers one-way tickets. Hundreds of thousands of people volunteered to go.Meet a young woman who made the short list, and hear why she’s ready to be Mars-bound. Also, why microbes could be hiding in water trapped in the planet’s rocks. And, how a wetter, better Mars lost its atmosphere and became a dry and forbidding place.Plus, why Kim Stanley Robinson, author of a famous trilogy about colonizing and terraforming Mars, thinks that the current timeline for going to the planet is unrealistic.Guests:•  Laurel Kaye – A senior in the physics department at Duke University•  Alfonso Davila – Senior scientist at the SETI Institute•  Stephen Brecht – Physicist and president of the Bay Area Research Group•  Kim Stanley Robinson – Hugo Award-winning science Fiction author of the Mars trilogy: Red Mars (Mars Trilogy), Green Mars (Mars Trilogy), Blue Mars (Mars Trilogy) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, scientists are familiar to us, but they weren’t always. Even the word “scientist” is relatively modern, dating from the Victorian Era.And it is to that era we turn as we travel to the University of Notre Dame to celebrate the 150th anniversary of its College of Science with a show recorded in front of a live audience.Find out how the modern hunt for planets around other stars compares to our knowledge of the cosmos a century and a half ago. Also how faster computers have ushered in the realm of Big Data.And a science historian describes us what major science frontiers were being crossed during the era of Charles Darwin and germ theory.It’s then versus now on Sesquicentennial Science!Recorded at the Eck Center at the University of Notre Dame, February 4th, 2015Guests:•  Justin Crepp – Professor of physics, University of Notre Dame•  Nitesh Chawla – Professor of computer science and engineering and director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Network Sciences and Applications at Notre Dame•  John Durant – Historian of science, director of the MIT Museum Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What’s past is prologue. For centuries, researchers have studied buried evidence – bones, teeth, or artifacts – to learn about murky human history, or even to investigate vanished species. But today’s hi-tech forensics allow us to analyze samples dug from the ground faster and at a far more sophisticated level.First, the discovery of an unknown species of dinosaur that changes our understanding of the bizarre beasts that once roamed North America.And then some history that’s more recent: two projects that use the tools of modern chemistry and anthropology to deepen our understanding of the slave trade.Plus, an anthropologist on an evolutionary habit that is strange to some, but nonetheless common all over the world: the urge to eat dirt.Guests:•  Scott Sampson – Paleontologist at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and author of Dinosaur Odyssey: Fossil Threads in the Web of Life•  Fatimah Jackson – Biologist, anthropologist, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, director of the Cobb Lab at Howard University, and advisor to EUROTAST•  Joseph Jones – Biological anthropologist, visiting assistant professor at the College of William and Mary, researcher on the African Burial Ground Project•  Sera Young – Research scientist, division of Nutritional Sciences, Cornell University, and author of Craving Earth: Understanding Pica—the Urge to Eat Clay, Starch, Ice, and Chalk First released August 12, 2013. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Shh …mummy’s the word! We don’t want to provoke the curse of King Tut. Except that there are many curses associated with this fossilized pharaoh – from evil spirits to alien malevolence. So it’s hard to know which one we’d face.We’ll unravel secrets about the famous young pharaoh, including the bizarre events that transpired after the discovery of his tomb in the Valley of the Kings, and learn what modern imaging reveals about life 3,000 years ago.Plus, we dispel myths about how to make a mummy, while learning the origin of that notorious mummy curse. Also, discover why superstitions have survival value.Guests:•  Jo Marchant – Author of The Shadow King: The Bizarre Afterlife of King Tut’s Mummy•  Andrew Wade – Physical anthropologist, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario•  Salim Ikram – Professor of Egyptology, American University, Cairo•  Stuart Vyse – Professor of psychology, Connecticut College, New London, Connecticut, author of Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition•  F. DeWolfe Miller – Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa First released June 24, 2013. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here are questions that give a cosmologist – and maybe even you – insomnia: What happened after the Big Bang? What is dark matter? Will dark energy tear the universe apart?Let us help you catch those zzzzs. We’re going to provide answers to the biggest cosmic puzzlers of our time. Somewhat. Each question is the focus of new experiments that are either underway or in the queue.Hear the latest results in the search for gravitational waves that would be evidence for cosmic inflation, as well as the hunt for dark matter and dark energy. And because these questions are bigger than big, we’ve enlisted cosmologist Sean Carroll as our guide to what these experiments might reveal and what it all means.Guests: •  Sean Carroll – Cosmologist, California Institute of Technology•  Jamie Bock – Experimental cosmologist at the California Institute of Technology and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a member of the BICEP team•  Brendan Crill – Cosmologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and member of the Planck collaboration•  Jeff Filippini – Post-doctoral Fellow, California Institute of Technology, assistant professor of physics at the University of Illinois and member of the Spider team•  Neil Gehrels – Astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, project scientist for WFIRST Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There’s no one like you. At least, not yet. But in some visions of the future, androids can do just about everything, computers will hook directly into your brain, and genetic human-hybrids with exotic traits will be walking the streets. So could humans become an endangered species?Be prepared to meet the new-and-improved you. But how much human would actually remain in the humanoids of the future?Plus, tips for preventing our own extinction in the face of inevitable natural catastrophes.Guests:•  Robin Hanson – Associate professor of economics, George Mason University•  Luke Muehlhauser – Executive director of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute•  Stuart Newman – Professor of cell biology and anatomy, New York Medical College•  Annalee Newitz – Editor of io9.com, and author of Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction First released July 1, 2013. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices