On this week’s show: Earth’s youngest impact craters could be vastly underestimated in size, and remaking a plant’s process for a creating a complex compound
First up this week, have we been measuring asteroid impact craters wrong? Staff Writer Paul Voosen talks with host Sarah Crespi about new approaches to measuring the diameter of impact craters. They discuss the new measurements which, if confirmed, might require us to rethink just how often Earth gets hit with large asteroids. Paul also shares more news from the recent Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas.
Next up, pulling together all the enzymes used by a plant to make a vaccine adjuvant—a compound used to boost the efficacy of vaccines—in the lab. Anne Osbourn, a group leader and professor of biology at the John Innes Centre in Norwich, England, talks about why plants are so much better at making complex molecules, and an approach that allows scientists to copy their methods.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
[Image: NASA/JPL; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: Itturalde crater in Bolivia with podcast overlay]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adh9195
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Why not vaccinate chickens against avian flu, and new form of reproduction found in yellow crazy ants
How the Maya thought about the ancient ruins in their midst, and the science of Braille
An active volcano on Venus, and a concerning rise in early onset colon cancer
Compassion fatigue in those who care for lab animals, and straightening out ocean conveyor belts
Battling bias in medicine, and how dolphins use vocal fry
Shrinking MRI machines, and the smell of tsetse fly love
Earth’s hidden hydrogen, and a trip to Uranus
Using sharks to study ocean oxygen, and what ancient minerals teach us about early Earth
Visiting a mummy factory, and improving the IQ of … toilets
Wolves hunting otters, and chemical weathering in a warming world
Bad stats overturn ‘medical murders,’ and linking allergies with climate change
Peering beyond the haze of alien worlds, and how failures help us make new discoveries
A controversial dam in the Amazon unites Indigenous people and scientists, and transplanting mitochondria to treat rare diseases
Year in review 2022: Best of online news, and podcast highlights
Breakthrough of the Year, and the best in science books
The state of science in Ukraine, and a conversation with Anthony Fauci
A genetic history of Europe’s Jews, and measuring magma under a supervolcano
Artificial intelligence takes on Diplomacy, and how much water do we really need?
Mammoth ivory trade may be bad for elephants, and making green electronics with fungus
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
DNA Today: A Genetics Podcast
Museum of the Missing
Strange by Nature Podcast
Sasquatch Chronicles
Hidden Brain