Science Friday

In April, the crew of Artemis II got an unprecedented tour of the far side of the moon, and they brought back a proverbial shoebox full of pictures. Lunar scientist Kelsey Young stayed on Earth, and h...

When Kemi Doll was in medical school, she learned that Black women are twice as likely to die from uterine cancer as white women, and also suffer disproportionately from other uterine-related conditio...

Cameras and sensors are just about everywhere, recording your face, how you walk, where you go, your heart rate. And AI is making it easy to amass and analyze that data about all of us.  Privacy attor...

Breaking news out of eastern Oklahoma! A hole in the sky has opened. Through it, an unidentified turtle-shaped craft has descended. Alerts say that this is first contact.  So it goes in the sci-fi thr...

Beavers are having a moment, thanks to the new Pixar movie “Hoppers.” Amid some body-swapping shenanigans, the film is about humans coexisting with wildlife—particularly oversized rodents capable of r...

Deep in an active nickel mine near Sudbury, Ontario, researchers are installing and calibrating a set of sensitive detectors. They hope that the location roughly 6,800 feet underground will screen out...

Hurricane season officially begins in June. And in the event of a big storm, local and state governments often rely on help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency or FEMA. But, President Trump h...

Animal neuroaudiologist Pete Scheifele joins us to answer some burning questions from SciFri listener Paul: Why can dogs and cats hear a wider range of frequencies than we do? Is it in their ears, the...

The news we hear about plastic is often alarming: We have a spoon’s worth of plastics in our brains, and there are microplastics in our hearts, lymph nodes, and bloodstreams. Plastics are ubiquitous,...

In mid-April, President Trump issued an executive order to set aside funding and loosen the bureaucratic process at the FDA to fast-track psychedelic therapy research. One obscure psychedelic got a pa...

Comparing a backyard sparrow to a fearsome velociraptor seems odd, but modern birds are indeed living dinosaurs. Scientists are finding more and more connections between the past physiology of dinos a...

Our bodily systems are rife with mutations. In fact, your DNA is mutating right now. These errors, and attempts to repair them, are a key to understanding immune function, aging, and even how heart di...

Data centers make controversial neighbors: They’re loud, they use a lot of water, and can drive electricity prices up. Following public concern and organizing efforts, Maine nearly implemented an 18-m...

The way ancient societies like the Greeks, Maya, and Khmer Empire built their cities can tell us a lot about how a place was governed. Did rulers live in ornate palaces or alongside other residents? A...

What did the universe look like before any stars turned on? Astronomers call that time the “dark ages,” and while they think it may be possible to see remnants of it in very low frequency radio signal...

To mark Earth Day, we asked you to tell us about your favorite places on the planet. You took us to the woods near Traverse City, Michigan, to a lake in Oklahoma, to Long Island Harbor where you spent...

What makes Earth special, and why are we here at all? In his book “Why Do We Exist? The Nine Realms of the Universe That Make You Possible,” astrophysicist Hakeem Oluseyi tackles the conditions needed...

Nearly all Americans have some type of PFAS, commonly known as “forever chemicals,” in their blood. The chemicals, which are linked to numerous health issues, were first regulated in drinking water at...

A new imaging technique using a particle accelerator is giving researchers an unprecedented level of detail of our organs, producing scans 100 billion times brighter than a CT scanner. Those 3D models...

In the 2010s, inventor Simone Giertz (pronounced “Yetch”) began making videos that straddled the line between practical and absurd. What if you had a robot that could feed you soup? Or a drone that co...

What are dolphins actually saying with their iconic, high-pitched whistles? Dolphin communication researcher Laela Sayigh is trying to find out. She’s been compiling a database of whistles from a pod...

“This was not easy, being 200,000+ miles away from home. Like before you launch, it feels like it's the greatest dream on earth. And when you're out there, you just wanna get back to your families and...

If you’re a gardener, thinking about getting your soil in shape probably means thinking about compost. But composting can be a mysterious process. What can go into the pile? How do you balance carbon...

How do we know what we know? That's where science comes in—it gives us a method for testing our ideas and getting trustworthy results. But some researchers have warned that many scientific studies can...

Movies may be a largely visual medium, but sound plays a huge role in setting tone, creating new worlds, and fleshing out characters. Sound designer Erik Aadahl has brought some of Hollywood’s iconic...

GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy, and Zepbound are prescribed for weight loss, diabetes, and blood-sugar management. But as more people use them, patients are reporting a decrease in cravings for drug...

Scientists recently published the first footage of a sperm whale birth, and it was a crowded ordeal. More than 10 other sperm whales were there for the delivery and helped keep the baby whale afloat—a...

Last year, Chinese carmaker BYD sold millions of electric vehicles, overtaking Tesla to become the world’s biggest seller of EV cars. And BYD cars weren’t just for the Chinese market. They went to Eur...

Microplastics and nanoplastics have been found just about everywhere: in our soil, our bodies, and our water. Recent research involving bioengineered algae has had success in capturing and removing mi...

On Wednesday, NASA’s Artemis II mission launched, kicking off on a roughly 10-day trip that will carry four astronauts around the moon and back to Earth. The flight is another test of the Space Launch...