Chernobyl’s ruins grow restless, and entangling macroscopic objects

Science Magazine Podcast

Science Podcast

News, News Commentary, Science

4.3 • 842 Ratings

🗓️ 6 May 2021

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Rich Stone, former international news editor at Science and current senior science editor at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Tangled Bank Studios, joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about concerning levels of fission reactions deep in an inaccessible area of the site of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Though nothing is likely to come of it anytime soon, scientists must decide what—if anything—they should do tamp down reactions in this hard-to-reach place. Also on this week’s show, Shlomi Kotler, an assistant professor in the department of applied physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, joins Sarah to discuss the quantum entanglement of macroscopic objects. This hallmark of quantum physics has been confined—up until now—to microscopic items like atoms, ions, and photons. But what does it mean that two drums, each the width of a human hair, can be entangled? Read a related insight. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: Caption: New Safe Confinement structure built over Chernobyl ruins; Credit: URBEX Hungary/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Rich Stone; Sarah Crespi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Introducing Peak Scientific. With over 25 years of expertise, Peak leads the industry in providing
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0:31.4	Visit peak scientific.com and quote science podcast to receive special offers.
0:37.2	This podcast is supported by the Icon School of Medicine at Mount Sinai,
0:41.4	one of America's leading research medical schools.
0:44.8	Icon Mount Sinai is the academic arm of the eight hospital Mount Sinai health system in New York
0:50.0	City.
0:50.9	It's consistently among the top recipients of NIH funding. Researchers at Icon Mount Sinai have
0:57.2	made breakthrough discoveries in many fields vital to advancing the health of patients, including
1:02.4	cancer, COVID and long COVID, cardiology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence. The Icon
1:09.8	School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, we find a way.
1:19.0	Welcome to the science podcast for May 7, 2021. I'm Sarah Crespi. Each week we feature the most
1:25.5	interesting news and research published in science and the
1:28.2	sister journals. First up, Rich Stone, former international news editor, is back with us to talk about a
1:34.3	concerning signal coming from the ruins of Chernobyl and what scientists can do about it. Next,
1:40.7	researcher Shlomi Kotler talks about quantum entanglement and how this hallmark of quantum physics can now be observed not just in ions and atoms, but in macroscale objects, the width of a human hair.
1:56.3	The nuclear disaster at Chernobyl happened 35 years ago in April 1986,
2:02.3	and there is still so much to learn about this event and its consequences.
2:06.8	Just last week, science published a paper on how there were no more mutations than average
	...

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