On this week’s show: Cheaper launches could make solar power satellites a reality, machine learning helps chemists make small organic molecules, and a book on the extinction of foods
First up on the podcast, space-based solar power gets closer to launch. Staff Writer Daniel Clery talks with host Sarah Crespi about how reusable rockets bring the possibility of giant solar array satellites that beam down gigawatts of uninterrupted power from space.
After that, we hear about small organic molecule synthesis. Making large organic molecules such as proteins and DNA can be a cinch for chemists, but making new smaller organic molecules is tough—partially because optimized general reaction conditions are hard to come by. Nicholas Angello, a graduate research assistant and Department of Defense National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate fellow in the Burke group at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, talks about an approach that uses robots and machine learning to better optimize these reaction conditions.
Also in the episode: the last in our series of books on food and agriculture. This month, host Angela Saini talks with author Dan Saladino about his book Eating to Extinction: The World’s Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: NASA; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: drawing of satellite solar panels with podcast overlay symbol]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Dan Clery; Angela Saini
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf4939
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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Mysterious objects beyond Neptune, and how wildfire pollution behaves indoors
How long can ancient DNA survive, and how much stuff do we need to escape poverty?
Visiting utopias, fighting heat death, and making mysterious ‘dark earth’
Reducing cartel violence in Mexico, and what to read and see this fall
Why cats love tuna, and powering robots with tiny explosions
Extreme ocean currents from a volcano, and why it’s taking so long to wire green energy into the U.S. grid
Reducing calculus trauma, and teaching AI to smell
The source of solar wind, hackers and salt halt research, and a book on how institutions decide gender
What killed off North American megafauna, and making languages less complicated
Why some trees find one another repulsive, and why we don’t know how much our hands weigh
Tracing the genetic history of African Americans using ancient DNA, and ethical questions at a famously weird medical museum
Researchers collaborate with a social media giant, ancient livestock, and sex and gender in South Africa
Adding thousands of languages to the AI lexicon, and the genes behind our bones
The AI special issue, adding empathy to robots, and scientists leaving Arecibo
Putting the man-hunter and woman-gatherer myth to the sword, and the electron's dipole moment gets closer to zero
Putting organs into the deep freeze, a scavenger hunt for robots, and a book on race and reproduction
A space-based telescope to hunt dark energy, and what we can learn from scaleless snakes
Why it’s tough to measure light pollution, and a mental health first aid course
Contraception for cats, and taking solvents out of chemistry
How we measure the world with our bodies, and hunting critical minerals
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