Tapping fiber optic cables for science, and what really happens when oil meets water

Geoscientists are turning to fiber optic cables as a means of measuring seismic activity. But rather than connecting them to instruments, the cables are the instruments. Joel Goldberg talks with Staff Writer Paul Voosen about tapping fiber optic cables for science.

Also this week, host Sarah Crespi talks with Sylvie Roke, a physicist and chemist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne, and director of its Laboratory for fundamental BioPhotonics, about the place where oil meets water. Despite the importance of the interaction between the hydrophobic and the hydrophilic to biology, and to life, we don’t know much about what happens at the interface of these substances.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Artography/Shutterstock; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: oil droplets and water]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen; Joel Goldberg

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.acx9771

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

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