Imagine you’re diving into a cell. You’re paddling around in the cytoplasm, you’re climbing up a mitochondria. If you’re having a hard time picturing this, that’s okay! There are professionals who do this for a living.
We wanted to learn more from expert science interpreters, who take the results section of a research paper and translate it into something tangible, like a 40-foot dinosaur skeleton or a 3D animation of cellular machinery too small to see.
At a live event in Salt Lake City in March, Host Flora Lichtman spoke with Dr. Janet Iwasa, head of the University of Utah’s Animation Lab and director of the Genetic Science Learning Center; and Tim Lee, director of exhibits at the Natural History Museum of Utah, about how they bring these out-of-reach worlds to life.
Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.
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Science Friday
The Webb Space Telescope picked up traces of dimethyl sulfide on planet K2-18b. On Earth, the molecule comes from microbes and phytoplankton. Also, researchers captured the first confirmed video of a...
Imagine you’re diving into a cell. You’re paddling around in the cytoplasm, you’re climbing up a mitochondria. If you’re having a hard time picturing this, that’s okay! There are professionals who do...
Bringing back Southwest peach orchards won’t be easy, but researchers are on the lookout for remaining trees—and they need help. And, the newly discovered Lokiceratops is challenging paleontologists’...
We are rounding up your questions about roads. What confounds you about traffic, or how interstates are laid out? Are there certain road design elements that ignite your road rage? Tell us about it: w...
On Wednesday, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation heard testimony from Jared Isaacman, President Trump’s nominee to lead NASA. During the confirmation hearing, Isaacman indica...
We go inside the scientifically accurate ER world created for the TV show with one of its medical consultants.What is it actually like to work in an emergency room? To deal with overcrowded waiting ro...
NASA is planning to decommission the International Space Station by the end of 2030. The ISS, which began operations in 2000, is reaching the end of its lifespan and has become costly to maintain. NAS...
What happens when AI moves beyond convincing chatbots and custom image generators to something that matches—or outperforms—humans?Each week, tech companies trumpet yet another advance in artificial in...
In many parts of the United States, spring has sprung. There’s nothing quite like those first few beautiful days of spring. They’re delightful—until the sneezing starts.According to the CDC, a quarter...
Over the past two decades, rates of peanut allergies in children have more than tripled. A variety of theories has been proposed to explain this, from a rise in industrialization keeping kids away fro...
The cuts hit multiple agencies, affecting work on HIV, gun violence prevention, vaccines, minority health research, and more.On April 1, thousands of federal health workers woke up to find that they h...
Emergency response experts say that funding and staff cuts at the National Weather Service could mean less reliable weather forecast. And, babies like music, but they generally have preferences. A mus...
In January, an iceberg the size of Chicago splintered off from the Antarctic Peninsula and drifted away in the Bellingshausen Sea.As luck would have it, a team of scientists was nearby on a research v...
Mental health information on social media can be both revelatory and misleading. How do clinicians and their patients make sense of it?TikTok and other social media sites are full of mental health con...
Engineers take an in-depth look at why the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore collapsed and how to prevent future tragedies.In the early morning of March 26, 2024, the container ship Dali struck th...
The company has genetic data of 15 million people, which could be shared with a future buyer. Here’s how to delete it. Plus, an experimental coating could make golf balls roll more reliably on greens...
Certain words are overrepresented in text written by AI language models. A study investigates why such patterns develop. Also, the ends of chromosomes, called telomeres, typically shorten as an organi...
TB kills more than a million people each year. Dr. Mireille Kamariza has spent her career developing better detection and treatment tools.As the United States retreats from global health leadership—wi...
In a new book, author John Green traces how the disease has impacted culture, geography, and even fashion over the centuries.Tuberculosis (TB) has had an incredibly large impact on human history. One...
Researchers built the largest 3D map of our universe yet. What they found supports the idea that dark energy could have evolved over time.One of the mysteries of the universe is why it expands at the...
After nine months aboard the International Space Station, astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have finally landed back on Earth. Also, a German physicist and homebrewer discovered brief, intens...
The framework of Adverse Childhood Experiences started with an unexpected finding over 30 years ago. How is our approach changing? We know that experiences from our childhood, both good and bad, shape...
Former NIH director Dr. Harold Varmus speaks out about what recent budget cuts and policy changes could mean for science.One of the areas targeted by President Trump’s administration for cuts has been...
Fungal networks in the ground ferry crucial nutrients to plants. But how do brainless organisms form complex supply chain networks? Also, in this year’s baseball spring training, the new Automated Bal...
Layoffs at the agency, which releases weather forecasts and monitors extreme weather, could have serious implications. Also, funds for climate and sustainability-focused farming projects have been ind...
It’s March 14, or Pi Day, that day of the year where we celebrate the ratio that makes a circle a circle. The Greek letter that represents it is such a part of our culture that it merits our irrationa...
When you imagine prehistoric life, it’s likely that the first thing that comes to mind are dinosaurs: long-necked Apatosauruses, flying Pterosaurs, big toothy Tyrannosaurs. But what don’t get as much...
An international team of researchers used drones to study narwhals and learn more about their behavior. And, a total lunar eclipse will be visible across most of North and South America in the early m...
A sweeping new study on one of the most beloved insects, maybe the only truly beloved insect—the butterfly—details its rapid population decline in the United States. The new research, published in the...
On the very first day of Donald Trump’s second term, he signed an executive order targeting foreign aid programs, especially the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).Comprising less than...