What if a climate change solution is as easy as burning up your old yard scraps?

It starts out as wood and as you can see when we come over here you can see what comes out the other end is biochar, which is very high carbon, very porous.

It's Friday, March 1st, and just like every day, today is Science Friday.

I'm SciFRI producer Kathleen Davis.

Biochar has been used by indigenous communities for centuries as a soil additive that can help

crops grow, but has gotten attention recently for its carbon holding

properties. We'll talk about that story in just a few minutes. But first, Ira talks to science

journalist Tim Revel about the biggest science stories of the week, including the wildfires in Texas

and a weird new plant discovered in Japan.

Back in ancient Greece, the philosopher Pythagoras proposed a mathematical argument for

what music sounds best to the ear. According to legend, Pythagoras had listeners

preferred music played in certain perfect mathematical ratios. This concept has

persisted in modern Western music, specifically for building harmonies. But it turns out

that Pythagoras was wrong. Joining me to break this down on other science stories of the week is

Tim Revel, executive editor for New Scientist and host of the New Scientist

Weekly Podcast. He comes to us from New York City. Welcome back, Tim. Hi, thanks for having me.

Well, before we go disputing what Pythagoras said, explain to me what he meant by saying music sounds

best when notes are in certain mathematical ratios.

Yeah, so there's this story about Pythagoras that apparently he was walking along the street in ancient Greece and he heard blacksmiths hammering on metal and noticed that

certain combinations of the ringing metal sounded more pleasant than others.

This led him to the idea that there are certain frequencies that sound best to the human ear combined together when they are in simple mathematical ratios.

So, for example, when those frequencies are in a ratio of three to two, that's known as a perfect fifth.

...