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What is in the This Week in Science Podcast?
Missing Height Found, Lady Hunters, Glowy-pus, Earwax Measures, Crabs & Rats, Voyager Calling!, COVID Update, Drab Birds, Surfing Fish, Ancient Denisovans, Mushroom Magic, Corporate Nudges, Old Holes, And Much More…
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Disclaimer, Disclaimer, Disclaimer!!!
Math.
You either have it on your side
Or you don’t.
Whatever numbers you are working with,
It’s never going to add up to anything other than the sum of its parts.
You can wishful think
You can squint your eyes, look sideways at the equation and if you like,
You can stand on your head to get a different perspective
But math has a way of being perniciously indifferent to how you approach the solution
And as the ballot counting continues in America
Millions await the fate of a nation
Now at the mirthless mercy of math.
But don’t blame the math!
After all without math we couldn’t bring you
This Week in Science
Coming Up Next…
Let’s start with some quick science news stories…
Missing Height Found
We know the genes responsible!
Lady hunters of the ancient past
Men hunt, women also hunt…
Glow in the dark platypus
No, it’s not just a fever-dream.
Earwax Measures
Can doctors see stress by looking at your earwax?
Oh rats…
Removing invasive species invites other invasive species in their place
Voyager Calling!
After months of silence, Voyager2 returns a signal.
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Now for the weekly COVID-19 Update!
Llama Bodies
Researchers now making llama antibodies synthetically!
COVID Minks
More than 1 million minks will be culled because of COVID infections in Denmark.
Leukemia super-spreader
Could there be more?
Long-term lungs
They don’t look good.
LET US KNOW WHAT QUESTIONS OR CONCERNS YOU HAVE ABOUT COVID-19, OR INFORM US ON ANY REGIONAL UPDATES, BY EMAILING KIRSTEN@THISWEEKINSCIENCE.COM.
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It’s time for Blair’s Animal Corner!
What’s in a color, anyway?
Drab-colored birds have trouble seeing colors with the furvor of brightly-colored ones. What does that say about me, then??
Underwater surfing on a blue whale
No, it’s not the latest version of the X Games (remember those?), it’s the favorite pasttime of remoras!
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This Just-in… Science!
Denisovan ancestry in ancient Asians
More news about our past.
Magic mushroom has positive effects on depression
And, it’s legal in Oregon!
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Dr. Kiki wants to discuss so many things!
Corporate Nudges
Are you really making your own decisions online?
Old Holes
Old black holes might enjoy giving up information.
This Week in Science Questions!
“Hello TWIS Hosts,
So here’s my head-scratcher/ponderer for your TWIS User Questions section — this question either shows I am incredibly brilliant for thinking of something no one else has thought to do, or that I am incredibly stupid and have no idea what I’m talking about or how Astronomy actually works. Either way, I think it is a fun thing to ponder.
So, when our best visual telescopes view phenomena in our Galaxy & the Universe, be they the Mount Wilson Observatory, the Cerro Paranal or Cerro Tololo Observatories of Chile, the Hubble Space Telescope or the future James Webb Space Telescope, we have to deal with the fact that, due to that whole speed of light thing (299,792.458 km/sec., or 186,282.397 miles per second), what we are looking at is a snap shot of how this object, be it star, star cluster, nebula, black hole or distant galaxy, looked that many light years ago that is its distance from us. So when we’re looking at, say, the “”Pillars of Creation”” Nebula, we are not looking at how it looks now, we’re looking at how it looked 7,000 years ago, because it is 7,000 light years from earth, and it took its light seven eons to reach us. When we look at the Andromeda Galaxy, we are actually looking at what that Galaxy looked like 2.537 Million years ago, etc. For all we know, in those interims, any of these objects could have since ceased to exist by now, but the speed of light hasn’t gotten us the memo — yet.
So my question is —
given our best guess as to where the Universe center is, moving away and expanding from the Big Bang…
and given that we could estimate the general path or arc of our Milky Way Galaxy away from that original Big Bang and Universal expansion…
…would it be possible to point a powerful visual telescope, like the Hubble Space Telescope, back along that path our Milky Way Galaxy has traversed from the Universal center, and actually take an ancient picture of our own galaxy from thousands or millions of years ago — a Galactic Selfie??
I know — like I said it could be the silliest/stupidest thing I ever asked, or the smartest. Let’s see where this one falls!
As always, love the show & all the Science you bring!
best,
Faddah Wolf”
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I'm the host of this little science show. 
Long time listener first time commenter.
This question immediately made me think about using gravitational lensing to possibly get that Milkyway selfie. Obviously it would take perfect allingnment probably requiring a black hole…
Am I wrong?
Cheers! ?
I’m going to need an astrophysicist to calculate the possibility of this idea… Interesting!