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Science Friday

Climate And Farming, Mars 2020, Fireflies. August 23, 2019, Part 2

Science Friday

Science Friday and WNYC Studios

Life Sciences, Wnyc, Science, Friday, Natural Sciences

4.4 • 6.3K Ratings

🗓️ 23 August 2019

⏱️ 47 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

From cutting back on fossil fuels to planting a million trees, people and policymakers around the world are looking for more ways to curb climate change. Another solution to add to the list is changing how we use land. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, released a special report this month that emphasized the importance of proper land management, such as protecting forests like the Amazon from being converted to farmland, has on mitigating climate change. Robinson Meyer, a staff writer at The Atlantic, joins Ira to discuss the ins and outs of the report. Cynthia Rosenzwieg, a senior research scientist at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and one of the lead authors, also joins to talk about ways we can use land to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. Plus: NASA’s Mars 2020 mission is just around the corner. Next fall, the Mars rover will launch with an upgraded suite of instruments to study the red planet in a way Curiosity and Opportunity never could. When it lands on Mars, it will search for and try to identify signs of ancient life. But how will it know what to look for? Katie Slack Morgan, deputy project scientist on the Mars 2020 mission, and Mitch Schulte, a Mars 2020 Program Scientist, talk to Ira about the chances of finding evidence for ancient life on Mars—and why the Australian Outback might be a good testing ground. And if you take a walk at night during the summertime, you might catch a glimpse of fireflies lighting up the sky. But scientists are learning that these bioluminescent insect populations are vulnerable to habitat loss, pesticides, and light pollution. Biologist Sara Lewis talks about conservation efforts including Firefly Watch, a citizen science project that maps out firefly populations around the country. She joins geneticist Sarah Lower to discuss how individual species of fireflies create different blink patterns, as well as the difference between fireflies, lightning bugs, and glow worms.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato.

0:02.2

Later in the hour, we'll be discussing how land and soil can be used to both hurt or help the environment.

0:09.1

First, NASA's Mars 2020 mission is now just around the corner.

0:14.3

Next fall, the next Mars rover is scheduled to launch with an upgraded suite of instruments

0:19.5

to study the red planet in a way that curiosity and opportunity never could.

0:25.4

Now, one of its main objectives when it gets to the Martian surface, will be to search for and identify signs of ancient life on the red planet.

0:35.0

But how will it know what to look for? Well, one sign of a Martian

0:39.6

life could look pretty familiar. Evidence of ancient stromatolites. Those are one of the earliest

0:45.4

life forms ever discovered on Earth. Stromatolite fossils are found today only in a few areas

0:51.5

around the world, including the remote outback of Western Australia.

0:56.1

That's where NASA scientists headed this week to study them, hoping to gather clues about

1:01.5

whether this organism could have also lived on ancient Mars.

1:06.6

Here to tell us more about what they're looking for this week.

1:10.1

Coming to you all the way from Pilbara Region of Australia is my guest, Mike Schulte,

1:15.3

Mars 2020 Programme Scientist.

1:17.3

Welcome to Science Friday.

1:19.7

Good morning.

1:20.9

Good morning to you.

1:22.4

Thank you for joining us.

1:23.8

Also, joining me from JPL headquarters in Pasadena, California, is Katie Stack

1:29.8

Morgan, Deputy Project Scientist for the Mars 2020 mission. Welcome, Katie. Thank you. Robin,

1:37.7

let me, Mitch, let me ask you first, you're with a group of NASA and European scientists down in Australia, right? Why is Australia such a great place to go looking for them?

...

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