Science Friday

On December 24, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe will make the closest-ever approach to the sun by a spacecraft. Parker has made more than 20 close approaches to the sun before, but this one will swoop in even closer than 3.8 million miles away from the sun’s surface.Since the probe was launched back in 2018, it’s helped scientists better understand our star and unravel mysteries about solar wind, high-energy solar particles, the sun’s corona and more. Scientists hope that this upcoming approach will reveal even more about the star at the center of our solar system.Ira Flatow talks with Dr. Nour Rawafi, project scientist for NASA’s Parker Solar Probe mission and astrophysicist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland. They discuss the goal of this close approach, how the spacecraft will stand the heat, and what else there is to learn about our sun.Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

For its 10th anniversary, the science advisor for “Interstellar” discusses the film’s impact and how new information about gravitational waves could have changed it.The science fiction film “Interstellar” turns 10 years old this month. For many of us, it was our first encounter with some pretty advanced astrophysics, taking sci-fi concepts like wormholes and time warping, and backing them up with actual science. Now, we’re revisiting the impact that movie’s science had on pop culture, and how astrophysics has advanced in the past decade. If it were made today, what would be different?Ira Flatow sits down with “Interstellar” science advisor Dr. Kip Thorne, a professor of theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology. Since the film’s release, he has won a Nobel Prize for his contributions to the detection of gravitational waves generated from black holes. They discuss how the film inspired people to pursue scientific careers and how recent astrophysics discoveries, like gravitational waves, could’ve made it into the movie.Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.  Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Officials say the invasive Asian giant hornet, with its menacing nickname, has been eradicated from the United States. Also, with drone sightings in the news, we take a look at the current laws and regulations around hobby and commercial drone operation.Farewell, Murder Hornet, We Hardly Knew YouOver the past few years many words have been written about an invasive insect known casually as the “murder hornet”—more formally, the Asian giant hornet, or northern giant hornet. But this week, the USDA and the Washington State Department of Agriculture announced that the insect has been eradicated in the United States. Our long national nightmare is over.Science journalist Maggie Koerth joins Ira to talk about the entomology news, plus other stories from the week in science, including debate over how viruses should be named, the complicated relationship between science and law in the courtroom, and work tracing health signs—through earwax.What FAA Regulations Tell Us About Mysterious Drone SightingsIt’s been all over the news the last few weeks: a slew of drone sightings in New Jersey and elsewhere on the East Coast, starting in mid-November. Federal authorities and President Biden have said that these drones don’t appear to be a threat to public safety, and that the sightings have been a mix of legal drones, airplanes, and helicopters. But questions and concerns remain, particularly among people who live in these areas. And just this week, the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) banned most drones from flying over nearly two dozen New Jersey towns.Dr. Missy Cummings, professor and director of George Mason University’s Autonomy and Robotics Center in Fairfax, Virginia, has worked on drone technology extensively over the years. She agrees with what federal authorities have said: that these drones sightings are likely legal drones and aircraft, with some prankster drone owners mixed in.Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

A program trains women as tactile medical examiners to identify tumors before they show up on imaging scans. And, in a materials science discovery, scientists made a liquid silk solution that hardens and picks up objects—not unlike Spider-Man’s web.How Blind Women In India Are Detecting Early Breast CancerBreast cancer is the second most common cancer worldwide, just behind lung cancer. And the earlier a breast tumor is found, the more likely it is that the person survives their diagnosis.An international program called Discovering Hands trains blind women to detect even the smallest lumps and bumps through breast exams. The idea is to leverage the blind examiners’ sense of touch, which may be more acute than sighted people’s, to feel for breast abnormalities and, hopefully, catch cancer in an early stage.Discovering Hands has a cohort in India, a country where only around one in every two people diagnosed with breast cancer survive, and imaging equipment can be expensive or hard to come by.SciFri producer Rasha Aridi talks with science journalist Kamala Thiagarajan, who reported on Discovering Hands’ program in India for NPR’s global health blog, Goats and Soda.Accidental Breakthrough Makes Web-Slinging Silk A RealityWe’re all familiar with Spider-Man—the red-suited hero who swings through New York using spider silk that shoots from his hands. While Peter Parker has a radioactive spider to thank for his shooting webs, scientists at Tufts University have made their own version of liquid silk that solidifies and can pick up objects.This discovery was made accidentally, says biomedical engineer Dr. Marco Lo Presti of the Tufts University Silklab. Lo Presti found that combining silk from a silkworm with dopamine and acetone made the silk change from a flexible liquid to a hardened fiber that attaches to objects.Lo Presti joins guest host Kathleen Davis to talk about the possibilities of liquid silk adhesives, and the advancements he’d like to see to make the technology better.Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.