Chasing Pluto, Space Warps. May 4, 2018, Part 1

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🗓️ 4 May 2018

⏱️ 47 minutes

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Summary

In July of 2015, the world was stunned to learn that Pluto, a tiny, distant dot that some didn’t even consider a planet, was a dynamic, complex, and beautiful world. But for scientists in pursuit of Pluto’s secrets since the late 1980s, it was a long wait. The mission faced political hurdles, budget battles, technical challenges, and near-disaster even as it was days away from speeding past Pluto. Alan Stern, the mission’s dogged principal investigator, and astrobiologist David Grinspoon have written a new book about the decades-long effort to visit Pluto. Last week we asked you to help us spot galaxies magnified by other galaxies—a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing. Over a million galactic glimpses later, we're ready to reveal what we found, including a galaxy more than seven billion light years away, and what appears to be a rare triple galactic lens. In this wrap-up segment, Space Warps co-founder Aprajita Verma and Zooniverse co-lead Laura Trouille share their favorite finds, and suggest a few other projects for armchair astronomers to dig into next. Plus, the end of net neutrality seemingly benefits corporations and harms consumers. But for small towns with slow internet speeds, this may not be the case. What does it mean for slow internet in rural Kansas? And Rachel Feltman of Popular Science tells Ira about coral reefs and other science headlines in this week's News Round-up.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Science Friday. I'm Irafledo. Later in the hour, Alan Stern and David Grinspoon talk Pluto, but first, how did sea side vacation make seem calm and relaxing, right? But under the waves, there's a lot of going on and going on under the air. Healthy Carl Reef is a surprisingly noisy place a new study finds that when Reef is in trouble,
0:24.4	it gets quiet, too quiet.
0:28.3	Joining me to talk about that and other selected short subjects in science is Rachel Feldman,
0:33.0	science editor at Popular Science.
0:34.8	Welcome back.
0:35.5	Thanks for having me.
0:36.1	As I stumble through the introduction.
0:38.4	It's nice to have you here to bring some cohesion to this. editor at Popular Science. Welcome back. Thanks for having me. As I stumbled through the introduction. Thank.
0:39.0	Nice to have you here to bring some cohesion to this.
0:41.8	We have some recordings that the researchers have captured about a reef.
0:46.3	Okay?
0:47.0	And you've helped out with this.
0:48.8	So let's listen to our first recording.
1:02.6	Sounds like my eggs in the morning.
1:03.0	Yeah.
1:04.0	What is that?
1:11.6	So those are the sounds of all the little clicks and whistles and pops that fish make to each other. You know, we think of fish as being quiet, but that's just because we don't speak fish.
1:15.6	And shrimp are like clacking their little legs.
1:19.6	So a healthy, a reef is like an urban center in the ocean, and you know, a healthy reef is full of all of these noises.
1:26.6	And to researchers we're curious about how that's changing now that coral reef are suffering.
1:31.7	And they compared noises a few years apart, basically looking at before a few major bleaching events,
1:39.9	which is where the algae that are symbiotic with coral die, leaving the coral pretty much helpless and dead.
	...

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