February 7, 2025 • 56 mins
The Science Podcast kicks off its seventh season by delving into the latest research on microplastics found in human brains and the stress experienced by puppy parents. The episode highlights key findings related to the accumulation of microplastics, potential health implications, and the factors that contribute to stress levels in new pet guardians, providing valuable insights and encouraging listeners to reflect on their experiences.
• Discussion on rising microplastics in human brain tissue
• Examination of microplastics’ impact on neurological health
• Insights into the stress of puppy parenting
• Factors contributing to lower and higher stress among pet owners
• Interview with Dr. Sarah Kendrew on the JWST and exoplanet discovery
• Personal anecdotes about hosting pets and the joys of animal companionship
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hello science enthusiasts.
I'm Jason Zukoski.
And I'm Chris Zukoski, we'rethe pet parents of Bunsen,
beaker, bernoulli and Ginger.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
The science animals on social media.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
If you love science.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
And you love pets.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
You've come to the right spot, so put on your
safety glasses and hold on toyour tail.
This is the Science Podcast.
Hello everybody, we hope you'rehappy and healthy out there.
The Science Podcast is back.
This is the first episode ofseason seven.
Can you believe that?
Seven years of running thescience podcast and in the last
(00:48):
20 or so episodes of last season, Chris joined as a co-host and
you know it really rejuvenatedmy I guess, my drive to do the
science podcast, because it iskind of boring to talk to myself
about science.
I love playing off Chris andshe likes science as much as me,
so it was really fun to do thatwith her and we're going to be
continuing to do that for seasonseven.
You'll notice some changes inseason seven in that not every
(01:13):
episode will have an interview.
It's getting harder to findscientists with the
fragmentation of trying to findthem on social media.
So when we have an interview,we'll have an interview.
It'll be a slightly longerepisode, and when we don't, we
won't.
We might do an extra sciencenews item that week and then
there won't be an interview.
So I guess there'll be a littlebonus.
(01:34):
Probably every second or thirdepisode we'll have a science
interview, All right.
Well, what's on the show thisweek?
In science news we break down astudy about something not good
about microplastics.
You'll have to check that out.
And in pet science, a studytalks about the stress of being
a puppy parent and relating itto being a parent of a toddler.
(01:56):
And our guest and ask it expertis Dr Sarah Kendrew, who is an
astronomer with the EuropeanSpace Agency.
All right, let's get on withthe show.
There's no time like sciencetime.
This week in science news,Chris, we're going to break down
some maybe not great news abouttiny shards of plastic.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Yeah, plastic, plastic everywhere.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
I saw a really good video a couple years ago and I
show it to my Chemistry 30 kidswhen we talk about plastics in
the organic chemistry unit.
Are you familiar withKrux-Kazat?
I hope I'm saying that right,Chris.
Do you know what that is,Krux-Kazat?
Speaker 2 (02:38):
I do.
That is a company or a personwho makes very informative
videos in an engaging way, or aperson who makes very
informative videos in anengaging way.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Yeah, adam loves Cruz Gazette and they're excellent.
Sometimes they get things wrongand they actually say sorry, we
got it wrong, and they make avideo about why they're wrong.
Very engaging videos withsimplistic animation and, of
course, a British narrator, soit sounds like you're listening
to somebody who's really smart.
The long and short of it isthere's a video about plastics,
about how plastics areincredible, but we've become
(03:10):
like King Midas and everythingthat King Midas touched turned
to gold, which seems like areally good idea, but of course,
he starved to death and everyperson he loved turned to gold
and he wound up being alone andstarving to death in the fable.
And humans have done that withplastic.
Everything we've touched isslowly turning to plastic.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
When I first read the article, I thought, oh, this
isn't about how we're able tolearn, it's more about actually
what you just said.
We're turning to plastic.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
The not so great study was published on February
3rd in Nature Medicine and itlooks at how, in post-mortem
human brain tissue so you knowpeople who've died and they've
looked inside their brain tissuethey're finding MNPs, which
stand for microplastics andnanoplastics, and that will be
(04:05):
abbreviated as we talk into MNP.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
So they analyzed 91 brain samples and this is really
an interesting part.
The brain samples dated back to1997.
And throughout the yearsthey've noticed an increase of
the microplastics as time hasgone on.
So it reminds me a little bitof biomagnification, and you're
(04:33):
looking at 1997 brains versus2020 or 2021 brains and they're
seeing definitely an increase ofthe plastics.
In fact, from 2016 to 2024, themedian concentration of MNPs
rose by about 50%, from 3,345micrograms per gram to 4,917
(05:01):
micrograms per gram, which isincredible.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
This is not something that should go up.
In fact, this is not somethingthat probably should be in your
brain at all, and the samplesthat were collected in 2024, the
concentration of MNPs in braintissue was 10 times higher than
those in other organs like liverand kidney tissue, so it seems
(05:24):
to be accumulating in the brain.
Now why?
This is a little bit shocking,was?
It challenges some of theprevious assumptions that
scientists and biologists havehad that the blood-brain barrier
prevents these polymers, whichare fairly big molecules, from
entering the brain.
It was thought there's no waythey could get into the brain
(05:47):
because of that specialblood-brain barrier, which does
a pretty good job of keepingmost stuff out of our noggin.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
That's an interesting finding and it's like maybe a
semi-permeable membrane then.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Semi-permeable for plastic.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
For plastic.
Yeah, so the size and shape ofthese plastic particles are
extremely small less than 200nanometers long and less than
400 nanometers wide, so we wouldtypically think that they would
be a spherical bead like ourscrubbers that used to be in our
shampoos and our body scrubs.
(06:24):
But they're like.
The spherical beads are alsocommonly used in lab experiments
.
These particles are thin, sharpand irregularly shaped yeah,
that's.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
The scary thing is that they are sharp and and
they're not the little spheres.
Right, that's what I wasthinking.
That's the first thing Ithought of was this is like
residual microbeads fromshampoos, but it is a little bit
from shampoos, because, whilethere was very little evidence
that the plastic was polystyrenethat's common in the food
(06:59):
industry and medical suppliesit's polyethylene, which is in
household items like plasticgrocery bags, shampoo bottles
and this is shocking all of theplastic toys that kids play with
today.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
How many plastic toys did we buy our kids?
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Duncan, for sure, was a fan of VTech.
I think all their toys reallywas plastic.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
It's just so prevalent in our society.
It just seemed like a anexcellent thing because they
could make it cheap.
Do you remember?
Speaker 1 (07:29):
what your toys were made of.
They were plastic too.
My toys were plastic, likeHe-Man and GI Joe and
transformers, and my guess isthe Barbies are plastic.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Barbies had rubber legs.
So you could bend them and moldthem.
I had a cabbage patch doll, sothe head was definitely plastic
but the body was nylon andstuffing.
I just don't remember the sheeramount of toys that, honestly,
that we purchased for our kids.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
It just we were more prevalent yeah, we were worse
with duncan than we were withadam, but maybe that's because
Adam had hand-me-downs fromDuncan.
I just seem to think thatDuncan got way more toys than
Adam did.
Vessels causes plaque and thatincreases your risk for heart
attacks, strokes and deaths.
Now, 12 of those brain samplesthat you talked about, chris,
(08:29):
they were individuals who werediagnosed with dementia, and
those who were diagnosed withdementia had higher levels of
MNP.
Now it's not clear, obviously,if microplastics, those MNPs,
contribute to dementia or thecondition allows more to
accumulate, but it isinteresting that the brains with
dementia had the highest levelsof MNPs.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
That is actually terrifying.
This study raises criticalquestions about how the MNPs
enter the brain and once they'rethere, can they be removed, and
what other health effects mightthey have?
So what's the next?
People are wondering is thismaybe the next asbestos or the
(09:14):
next lead?
Or maybe it's something much,much worse?
Speaker 1 (09:18):
The big takeaway, as we wrap this up, is there's a
big need to understand how theygot into the brain, because
microplastics are widespread inthe environment and other
studies have detected them inhuman tissue like lungs and the
liver even the placenta, if youcan believe it.
They haven't really beendetected in the brain.
(09:40):
So that's the call to action.
How are they getting there?
Can we change the formula ofplastics to make that stop?
It's not like we can saygoodbye to plastic.
Plastic is as the King Midasanalogy is it's everywhere, it's
ubiquitous.
It's going to be really hard tocut back our dependency on
plastic.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Yeah, but you know what we can do that one grocery
bag at a time.
That's right, oh get some pawpack bags from our website.
Oh, jason, that's hilarious.
But you know what?
I gave my teacher friends alittle paw pack Christmas pack
with some stickers and a pawpack bag and some pens and
sticky notes, just clearing outour closet, and they really
(10:22):
appreciated it.
But one of my teachercolleagues yesterday had her
grocery bags and I said, oh, Isee you have a pop pack bag and
she's like, yep, I'm going toget my groceries and I thought
that's less plastic and moreadvertising for us.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
There you go Cut down on your plastic use If you can.
This study is a little spookyand might it might forward some
research to the forefront andfiguring this out Cause
generally not good to haveplastic in your brain.
That's science news for thisweek.
This week, in pet science,chris and I are going to break
down a study that shed somelight on the stresses,
(11:01):
potentially, of raising a puppy.
Puppies are so fun, but I'm notgoing to lie.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
It's stressful some days.
It absolutely is stressful somedays.
Right, they don't come pottytrained and sometimes they have
accidents.
And then sometimes they'rebitey and rip your clothes, and
other times it's chaos.
It's's always joyful chaos, butit's pretty chaotic when you
have a puppy in the house andforget sleeping.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
That's over yeah, so I'm trying to think of the three
, the four really puppies, ifyou count callan, but the three
that are still alive bunsen,beaker and bernoulli.
Bunsen was by far the easiestpuppy, by far not even close not
even close no, not Bunsen waspotty trained in a week, like
(11:51):
instantly.
It was shocking it was shocking.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
I was like everybody who's oh, I'm having so much
trouble with my potty trainingof my pet.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
I'm like what Bunsen is amazing in a week or less
it's hard to to remember, but itwas so incredibly quick.
And then, boy, where we got areality check with Beaker, cause
it did take her like the normaltime to potty train a dog.
And the problem was is that itwas in the summer and Bunsen was
so hot, so we had to have waterand she kept drinking water.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
We had a running joke , it's she would go outside and
then she would come back in andhave a refill yeah, with water,
and we kept going refill.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Yeah, she had lots of pee accidents in the house when
she was learning.
And then Bernoulli and he's a.
He was about the same as Beakerfor potty training.
He's still.
He doesn't have a tell, whichis he doesn't bark when he's got
to go out.
So you just got to time it.
But he's also the mostmischievous of the three of them
, like he gets into stuff.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Oh yes, we have a laundry basket that is now
chewed very badly.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
I guess Beaker chewed a lot of stuff when she was a
puppy.
They're about the same.
I guess you forget right.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
You forget the negatives, you do forget the
negatives, because clearly wegot another puppy named
Bernoulli, but he by far is themost destructive of all of them.
He chews everything and stuffthat you don't want him to chew
like toilet paper.
You're like where is he findingthat?
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
I thought we puppy proofed our house.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Yeah, he found a Costco size pack of toilet paper
the other day.
That was a whole thing.
Raising a puppy can be similarto like parenting a baby.
It's stressful for guardians.
It's not all roses.
There's a potential impact ofstress experienced by the puppy
guardians and that's not wellresearched and I guess that's
(13:49):
the study that we're going tolook at today.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
The study was an online survey and it was created
specifically for guardians ofdogs under 12 months of age, so
we would still fit the criteria,and the survey was made
available to a global audience,as opposed to just a targeted
area.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Yeah, and what's funny is they use the parental
stress scale like something theygive young parents to fill out,
but they just modified it, soinstead of baby it's got like
puppy.
So they modified this humanstress scale for dogs.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Yeah, the things that could be transferred over to
parenting quote unquote of dogs.
Yeah, the things that could betransferred over to parenting
quote unquote of dogs.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Yeah, it's a fairly big study.
So 783 valid responses werereceived from puppy guardians.
And then, of course, they didthe statistical nerdy stuff that
goes in with the study.
You did that in your master'sit.
Just that puts me to sleep.
That is not what I'm very goodat, but they did do some pretty
good statistical analysis withit.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
So there were some key findings and factors that
were associated with lowerstress.
So parents or guardians whowere satisfied with their
puppy's behavior, guess what?
They had lower stress.
That's why we had no stresswith puppy bunsen, because he
was so good he was so good andguardians living in australia,
(15:08):
in comparison to those living inusa and canada, had guess what
lower stress they always soundseem so chill also guardians uh,
with higher self-esteeminitially, um also had lower
stress and guardians who werehappy with how puppy
responsibilities were divided intheir household, divvying up
(15:31):
the chores that have to do withpuppy.
And I remember you when we werelooking at getting our first dog
, callan, you talked about thepuppy super stats and it's like
a trading card statistics thatyou are looking at like how are,
how trainable are they?
How friendly are they?
How, what's their groomingscore?
(15:53):
And is that scored higher intrainability led to lower stress
parents that kind of makessense.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
If you can't train your dog to do anything, it's
probably pretty stressful.
Yeah, like, why isn't the doglistening to me?
Come when I want you to call?
No, you're not.
Okay, great, all three of thedogs do pretty good, right, and,
yeah, all three of them.
Now, this is interesting.
There's factors that areassociated with higher stress.
First time puppy guardiansexperienced higher stress.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Oh, because you don't know what you're doing.
It's the same as when you're aparent what are we doing?
What to expect when you'reexpecting?
Speaker 1 (16:30):
do they have a what to?
Speaker 2 (16:30):
expect when you have a puppy yeah, they need that
book we should write that book,jason yeah, but I don't
understand.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
so were my parents crazy, stressed out with me
because I was the first kid?
How come?
How come, as you go down theline, the kids get away with
more like?
That doesn't make any sensewith people, because we're way
better with Bernoulli than wewere with Callan.
That doesn't make any sense itdoes because it's first time.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
Puppy guardians because they don't know what
they're doing and so they hadthe higher stress.
But by the time we got toBernoulli we're not as high
stressed with a puppy.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Guardians that work from home part-time or full-time
were more stressed.
I guess if you're working fromhome, the puppy is a full-time
job if it's not crated.
So you're probably trying toget your work done and the
little shark guy is biting yourfeet or something, so I don't
know.
Puppies that scored higher inneuroticism the guardians were
(17:23):
more stressed.
Puppies that scored higher inneuroticism the guardians were
more stressed, and guardiansagreed that managing more than
one dog in the householdrequired a significant amount of
time and energy.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
We found that with not necessarily beaker, but with
bernoulli maybe what we foundis that we had bunsen and things
were great and then we hadbeaker, so we were like two dogs
that's no problem.
But then when we got bernlli itwas exponentially more
stressful.
And maybe that's not because ofthree dogs, you're right.
Maybe it's because of Bernoullijust being a goober.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
He's extroverted.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
And that's another thing that raises your
Extroverted.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Yeah, he's by far the most cuddly of all three.
He's the one that I don't know.
He's a more in-your-face kindof dog, but his face is so cute.
It's true.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
It's true.
He looks at you and then hetilts his head back and he
smiles and you're like, oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
He is a good dog.
I don't want to think anybodythinks we think that he's a
goober and he's a.
We just love him to death.
He's a good dog.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
We do.
We do love him.
He is so good but also didcause some stress as a puppy.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
And now he's a teenager.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
He's definitely a teenager.
So it is good to have some ofthis data, because the what to
expect when you're expecting,Chris, if there's not a lot of
information for first-time petowners or just puppy owners or
whatever people are going to beguessing You're going to be like
it's all going to be anecdotalresearch.
This is what happened to me,but now the data has been
gathered so if you understandthe fact, the factors associated
(18:58):
with stress, you could developinterventions and support
systems for those first-timepuppy guardians.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Yeah, exactly, so definitely exploring ways to
mitigate the stress throughknowledge, for sure.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
I wonder how much harder it would be to have four
dogs rather than three.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
I have heard the biggest jump is from two to
three.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Yeah, I did send you a picture of that puppy and you
said maybe I did.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
I know you a picture of that puppy and you said I
know another Bernice Mountaindog puppy.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
Yeah, but it's just not going to work at this time
for us, with Bunsen healing andthings like that.
No, I don't think we could do.
And you know what I'm to befair, bunsen did have his
massive surgery of the growth inhis abdomen, the cyst, and we
had Bernoulli as a puppy at thattime.
So I don't know that, likewe're anecdotally that.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
We were under a lot of stress when Bernoulli was a
puppy, Bunsen was.
His health was in a declineLike his head was caved in.
Yeah, and then he went for thenhe just about died.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
And Bernoulli was a little guy during that time.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Yeah, so I guess our experience isn't that fair.
Yeah, it can't be generalizedover.
Hey, we got a new puppy and nowwe have three dogs.
No, I think our circumstancewas quite different.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
And that's why it's good to have the data like this
from hundreds of people ratherthan us telling you about our
goober.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Yeah, that's true, but you know what?
He turned out okay, even thoughwe were distracted with a
highly sick dog and having tokeep him on crate rest and keep
the Bernoullis out.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
No Bernoullis allowed , yeah he turned out really good
.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
He did turn out very good.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
That's Pet Science for this week.
Hello everybody, here's someways you can keep the Science
Podcast free.
Number one in our show notessign up to be a member of our
Paw Pack Plus community.
It's an amazing community offolks who love pets and folks
who love science.
We have tons of bonus Bunsenand Beaker content there and we
(20:56):
have live streams every Sundaywith our community.
It's tons of fun.
Also, think about checking outour merch store.
We've got the Bunsen Stuffy,the Beaker Stuffy and now the
Ginger Stuffy.
That's right, ginger theScience Cat has a little replica
.
It's adorable.
It's so soft, with the giantfluffy tail, safety glasses and
a lab coat.
(21:17):
And number three if you'relistening to the podcast on any
place that rates podcasts, giveus a great rating and tell your
family and friends to listen to.
Okay, on with the show.
Back to the interviews.
It's time for Ask an Expert onthe Science Podcast and I am
thrilled to have Dr SarahKendrew, an astronomer with the
(21:37):
European Space Agency, todaywith us.
Doc, how are you doing?
I'm doing great.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Hi, thanks for having me.
I'm doing great Thanks.
How are you?
Speaker 1 (21:47):
I'm good, I'm good.
Where are you calling into theshow from?
Where are you in the world?
Speaker 3 (21:52):
So I am based in Baltimore, maryland.
So, even though I work for theEuropean Space Agency, who are,
of course, based in Europe, I'mpart of a small European team
based in Baltimore, maryland, towork on the James Webb Space
Telescope at the Space TelescopeScience Institute.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
Oh, we're going to be able to talk about that
telescope.
I'm so excited.
Judging by your accent, I don'tknow if you grew up your whole
life in Baltimore, though.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
No, absolutely not.
No.
So I actually was born andraised in Belgium, just outside
Brussels.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Oh, okay.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
But I have a British father so I have a very
British-sounding name and a anda British sounding accent.
I also did my studies in theUnited Kingdom so I also lived
there for a long time.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Nice.
And speaking of your studies, Iwas wondering if you could just
give us a little overview aboutyour background, your science
background?
Speaker 3 (22:39):
Yeah, sure, I went to university at University
College London, so in London inthe United Kingdom, and I did my
degree there in astronomy.
I stayed on to do my PhD thereat the same university, but for
my PhD I actually moved in avery technical direction.
So I worked in technologydevelopment and instrument
(23:01):
development for telescopes, thekind of technical side of
astronomy.
So so building the instruments,developing the technology, and
that's the area where I've donemost of my work in my career.
After my PhD I moved around ina few different postdoctoral
positions a few years in theNetherlands at the University of
Leiden, a few years in Germanyin Heidelberg, also working on
(23:26):
instruments, and then finally Idid a few years at the
University of Oxford before Ithen got offered a position with
the European Space Agency tocontinue my work on the Webb
Space Telescope, which I wasalready working on over in
Europe, here in Baltimore,maryland.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Nice you name dropped a bunch of places which are
bucket lists travel destinationsfor folks.
Does any of those places feellike the most home to you, or
they all have their own magic tolive in and work from?
Speaker 3 (23:57):
Yes, I think everywhere I've lived has had.
I really miss things aboutthose places.
Definitely every place I'velived, I've learned a lot.
I've gotten to know a newculture, maybe a bit of a new
language as well.
And yes, you're right, they'reactually all like really
fantastic places that also havereally good universities, really
good research environment.
So I'm very lucky to have beenable to spend time in all these
(24:18):
places.
Home is Belgium.
That's where I grew up and myfamily still live there, but I
also lived in London for 10years and I think that was a
really fantastic period andthat's where a lot of my closest
friends are, so I always lovegoing back to London.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Were you?
Okay, so you the technical sideof telescopes.
So before we get to what you donow, I'm always curious about
the origin story of scientists.
Were you a science kid growingup?
Was that your origin story?
You knew you were going to be ascientist from a young age.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
I actually wasn't.
I was a big bookworm.
I was very into history andliterature.
I read a lot, I loved learninglanguages.
I was actually not thatinterested in science as such,
but I loved kind of explorationand discovery, which with
hindsight I realized as well itis part of science really, and I
(25:15):
think as a teenager I startedto get a bit into stargazing.
So we lived outside of the city,we had quite nice clear skies,
especially in the wintertime,and so I got into backyard
astronomy and then quite a latestage before going to university
, realized like this is a thingthat I could study and I could
do more seriously and I thoughtit would be a really amazing
(25:37):
challenge because I hadn't beenthat keen on science, I hadn't
been that stuck in science foras a child, and so I thought it
sounds like a fantasticchallenge and I find this really
fascinating and it taps intothat story of exploration and
discovery throughout history andso I think that really appealed
to me.
But I know there weredefinitely some adults in my
(25:57):
life who were quite surprisedthat I ended up going to study
science, because I thinkeverybody had expected me to go
into languages or literature orthings like that.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
They thought you'd be teaching Latin and learning
other languages.
Hey, that's funny.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
Basically yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
That's cool.
I appreciate you giving us alittle bit of background about
you.
Now let's jump to the mainthing.
That's very cool.
I swear it's in the news forscience junkies like myself
every day, and that's the JamesWebb Space Telescope, or the
JWST.
I was wondering for people thatare listening who are casually
(26:35):
interested in science, could youexplain to us in your own words
, like what the JWST is?
Speaker 3 (26:43):
Sure.
So the James Webb SpaceTelescope is?
It's a telescope in space.
So for astronomy, thetelescopes are the tools that we
use to look out into theuniverse, and for hundreds of
years we have been buildingtelescopes, mostly on the ground
.
We have them in backyards, wehave them on remote mountaintops
(27:04):
, in deserts and things remotemountaintops and deserts and
things.
But since a few decades, sincethe middle of the 20th century,
since the space age reallyastronomers became very
interested in this idea of whatif we actually put a telescope
in space?
Because, as it turns out, theEarth is not a great place.
The surface of the Earth is nota great place from which to
look out into the universe.
We have the atmosphere allaround us, which is great for
(27:26):
many things, but it's a bigbarrier to light coming to us
from the stars and distantgalaxies, and this is something
that's plagued astronomersthroughout history.
So as soon as we were able tolaunch things into space and had
rockets, astronomers startedthinking what if we actually put
a telescope out there?
It's dark, it's like the thingsare very stable.
We don't.
(27:46):
We're outside of the atmosphere.
Out there, it's dark, thingsare very stable, we're outside
of the atmosphere.
And so the first major astronomyobservatory launched into space
was the Hubble Space Telescope,which many people know, and
very soon after Hubble waslaunched, plans were made here
in the US also in Europe for thenext big thing, and that next
big thing became the James WebbSpace Telescope.
(28:07):
So it was in development for 25or so years, I believe, and was
just launched on Christmas Dayin 2021.
So it's still quite new, but ithas been up there for a while,
and so it's a large telescope.
It measures about six and ahalf meters in diameter in its
main mirror, which is whatdetermines ultimately how much
(28:27):
light it can collect.
So it's much bigger than anytelescope we've had before in
space and it was hugelytechnically complex.
It was folded up into a rocket,had to be deployed once it
arrived out in space, which wasvery technically complex and
(28:47):
challenging.
And, yeah, so it's in operationat a point in space called L2.
So it doesn't just orbit theearth, like satellites do or the
Hubble Space Telescope does.
It's at a point called thesecond Lagrangian point, l2,
which is about a million miles,million and a half kilometers
from the Earth, which isextremely stable.
(29:08):
It's in a stable orbit.
The temperature is very stablethere and has been looked at out
into the universe for us 24-7.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
So just going back to Earth-based telescopes,
obviously having an atmosphereis good for you and I to stay
alive and breathe, but is it theclouds or is it the actual
atmosphere that kind of messesup the telescopes?
Is that why chucking atelescope into outer space was
such an interesting and greatidea?
Speaker 3 (29:37):
Yeah, the atmosphere interferes with observations in
a few different ways.
So, yeah, at the simplest level, it's the clouds.
It's just not clear.
We can't see out.
Also, depending on light we'reactually looking at.
So what wavelength or whatcolor of light we're looking at?
Some wavelengths are actuallycompletely blocked by the
(29:59):
atmosphere, so a lot ofultraviolet light, for example,
just doesn't even make itthrough a lot of the infrared as
well.
So we're actually what we cansee with our eyes is just a tiny
portion of all the differentcolors of light that we want to
observe from space, and a lot ofthe light is actually just
blocked by the molecules in theatmosphere.
(30:20):
In addition, even the lightthat does make it through the
atmosphere, even when theweather is beautifully clear,
there is still a lot of churning, the gases in the atmosphere
churning around just from heat,transport and earth's rotation.
So it's never reallybeautifully still, even when it
(30:41):
might look that way, and thatconstant churning, that constant
movement, disturbs the lightthat's coming through and so
actually doesn't give us verysharp images, and that's very
challenging.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
And it did.
I remember it launching onChristmas day and the whole lead
up to it was so dramatic.
Were you working on the JWSTwhen it launched?
Were you on the team then?
I'm sorry.
Yeah, I guess you would havebeen.
You developed the tool.
Speaker 3 (31:14):
We'll talk about that later, sorry, yep, yeah, so
I've worked on one of theinstruments for web since 2008.
So most of my career after myPhD, and so I was already
working at the operation centersince 2016.
So, yes, I was definitely partof that team when it launched.
I was actually able to go tothe launch.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
Oh man.
Speaker 3 (31:37):
Yep.
So actually, in fact and Ididn't actually have any
official duties at that pointEverything was ready to go and
it was a matter of waiting untilthings were in space and we
could start doing all ourinitial checkout tests.
We did have other members of myteam who were, in fact, back
here in Baltimore at theoperation center really
supporting the whole launchprocess.
So I was working, but I alsowas lucky enough to have a few
(32:02):
days off and to be able toactually go watch the launch.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
Wow, were you, as stressed out as the other
science communicators were onsocial media leading up to
launch and while it waslaunching for the big unfolding
in space.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
Oh yes, absolutely.
I even think it was such astressful period as you probably
remember, the dates kept movingaround, which is very common
for these big launches.
There was also we were in themiddle of the pandemic and in
fact, just around that timethere was a really big kind of
COVID wave going througheverywhere, so that added this
sort of additional stress.
And, yes, it was an extremelyhectic period and I think, to be
(32:41):
honest, I had tocompartmentalize a little bit.
I think I only really startedprocessing the magnitude of it a
few weeks later, because Ithink at the time I was just
trying to get through thelogistics and making sure
everything went right from apractical point of view.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Doc, I was checking social media feeds like every
five minutes leading up to lunchand then there's another NASA
scientist, dr Jessie Christensen.
She studies exoplanets.
So I was having like a fun backand forth with her on social
media because she was like sohopeful it was going to launch
and then hopefully it didn'tlike explode or something
horrible.
So everybody cheered, I tellyou, in SciComm when that thing
(33:21):
launched and it seemed to begoing perfectly.
So kudos to everybody involved.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
Yes, absolutely.
And from my point of view as Iworked on one of the science
instruments.
So kudos to everybody involved.
We're just as grateful to allof the engineers who worked on
the launch, who put thetelescope together and the whole
deployment, everything.
So we felt like just soextremely fortunate as well to
have been part of that.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
That's amazing.
So JWST unfolds Big cheer andyou are now up to the plate
because you helped design a toolor were part of a tool team.
It's called the MRI, and couldyou explain what that does and
why it's important?
Speaker 3 (34:18):
Yeah, so the instrument is called MIRI,
m-i-r-i, which stands forMid-Infrared Instrument.
The James Webb Space Telescopeis a very large observatory.
It's a complex system.
The basic component of it isthe telescope itself.
So the telescope itself is whatcatches the light and brings it
(34:40):
to a focus and sends it to oneof the instruments.
So it's the instruments thatactually, where the light gets
recorded, it's the instrumentsthat contain different filters,
different gratings or prisms todisperse the light into spectra
and actually take the images.
And so Web has four of thoseinstruments on board.
(35:00):
There's NIRCam, nirspec, nirisand the fourth is MIRI, which is
the one that I work on and thatI have worked on for a long
time.
What's special about it?
It's really is the wavelengthrange it observes.
So it observes the longest,reddest infrared wavelengths
that the Webb telescope issensitive to.
The other three instruments allcatch light and record light
(35:25):
that is at shorter wavelengthsin the infrared.
So MIRI has that very uniqueniche of the mid-infrared
wavelength range that we record,and we have various different
components.
All of these instruments inthemselves are quite complex
systems too.
So MIRI has a regular imagingcamera.
It can do spectroscopy.
It can also do coronography,where we block out the light of
(35:48):
a bright star to be able tovisualize planets or structures
around the star.
So we have lots of differentoptical components on board to
really be able to look at thelight in as many different ways
as possible to get the pictureof the physics that's happening.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Okay, I love the explanation, that's all right.
Long wavelength infrared.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
So, specifically, what are some of the things that
this instrument has seen Like?
What is it spied in the couple,the three or four years that
JWST has been in outer space?
Speaker 3 (36:27):
So Miri has the other three instruments.
We've looked at a huge range ofdifferent objects, different
types of objects.
So we have observed objects inthe solar system, some planets
or moons of planets and smallsolar system objects like
asteroids.
We have looked at exoplanets,in which are in our own galaxy,
(36:47):
so other planetary systemsorbiting stars in our galaxy.
We have actually spent a hugeamount of time observing planets
.
So that's been a very excitingarea of research where there's
been lots of new discoveries.
And then all the way out to themost distant galaxies in the
universe that we've also heard alot about, from Webb universe
that we've also heard a lotabout from Webb In the
(37:08):
mid-infrared.
So the very distant, the mostdistant galaxies, so those that
really are, just when we'relooking back to just a few
hundred million years after theBig Bang.
They're the signposts that weget from, those that indicate
whether stars are forming or howmany stars are forming or how
rapidly they're forming manystars are forming or how rapidly
(37:31):
they're forming or whether theyhave a very active black hole
at their center.
Those signposts all startshifting to longer wavelengths
due to the expansion of theuniverse and they start shifting
into miri's wavelength range.
So for these very distantobjects, miri becomes extremely
important to understand thephysics and to characterize them
, and this capability is veryunique.
(37:51):
These are wavelengths that wecould not see with the Hubble
Space Telescope, so we have avery kind of unique niche there
and a lot of it's a very newview on these very distant
galaxies, but also, as I said,exoplanets, has been a huge area
of discovery for MIRI,specifically because if we want
to look at the emission from theplanets themselves, so the
(38:11):
signature of the thermalemission, so really direct light
coming from the planet, thattends to peak in the
mid-infrared where MIRI issensitive, so that's been a
really important niche for us aswell.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
I can't imagine how exciting it must be when that
data comes in for a planetthat's orbiting another star.
I just think back to when I wasa small child like that was
science fiction, like we justdidn't know anything about stuff
really outside of our solarsystem, beyond the big, huge
objects our telescopes could see.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
Yeah, absolutely yeah .
This has been really exciting.
Our telescopes could see.
Yeah, absolutely yeah.
This has been really excitingand I think in the first months
after the launch we tested a lotof these functions out.
We did a few test observationswith the instruments looking at
these exoplanet systems, becausewe knew there was going to be
so much interest from thecommunity and we wanted to be
really prepared and understandhow our instruments were going
(39:07):
to do in these observations.
And just when we saw the datafrom these test observations, we
thought they would require alot of processing to be able to
see the signatures of theplanets, but they, just straight
out of the box, it was.
The data was so beautiful, wecould just see the signatures of
these planets, and so easily.
And so I think everybody wasjust yeah, we were just stunned.
(39:28):
So even for us who built theinstrument, we in principle know
what it can do, but it's stilldifferent when you first point
it to the sky and you actuallysee that working.
It is pretty phenomenal.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
I would love for you to share, maybe like some
interesting things about acouple of the exoplanets that
you've scanned with thisinstrument.
What are some cool things fromthe data?
Speaker 3 (39:50):
Yeah.
So some of them you made a fewlike very interesting
discoveries.
Of course they're very timeconsuming observations and so
you have to really build upobservations of many objects to
really really progress ourknowledge in a sort of a global
way.
But some really interestingthings that we found is we've
made some of the firstdetections of molecules that
(40:12):
were produced by photochemistry,so photochemical processes, so
that is, molecules that wereproduced directly under the
influence of the radiation fromthe host star.
This is something that happensin our atmosphere as well.
We have chemistry that's drivenby the radiation from the sun,
but we had not really seen thatvery directly on these
(40:34):
exoplanets.
So one such molecule is sulfurdioxide.
That was a very early discovery.
We hadn't really been able tosee that molecule being produced
in exoplanet atmospheres andtells us some very interesting
things about the interactionbetween the host star and the
planetary systems around them.
Another interesting so there's avery interesting planetary
(40:55):
system called TRAPPIST-1, which,being Belgian and it's from a
Belgian discovered by a Belgiantelescope called TRAPPIST I feel
I'm very fond of, and so thisstar has actually has a
planetary system with, I believe, five planets, so it's a really
multi-planet system, very muchlike our own solar system, and
so there's been a huge amount ofinterest in those planets
(41:18):
because I believe they're all inwhat we call the habitable zone
, so what we feel could createconditions that are conducive to
life developing.
So there's been a huge amount ofinterest in this object and
Webb has spent an awful lot oftime already looking at these
planets with various instruments, including MIRI, to try and see
(41:40):
if any of these planets do havean atmosphere, and that's been
really fascinating, and Ibelieve so far we haven't really
found the evidence of theatmosphere, but it's the type of
observation I think that we'regoing to be doing a lot more of.
So I think those are two reallysome really exciting science
that's been happening in thearea of exoplanets with Webb.
But what's fantastic, I feel,about exoplanet science is that
(42:03):
it's such a fast growing fieldwe're really on the cusp of
learning so many new things thatit's such a fast-growing field
we're really on the cusp oflearning so many new things that
it's a very vibrant researchcommunity that is constantly
coming up with new ideas ofbetter ways to use the telescope
, better ways of using theinstruments to really try and
get the most detailed data, andthat's been fantastic to be able
(42:24):
to work on and to really drivethat forward and work with the
research community on that.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
So I have a couple kind of more silly questions but
I'm sure people who arelistening want to know.
The one is maybe more seriouswith the science backing is when
JWST looks at, say, a planetwithin the, an exoplanet within
the TRAPPIST system, would yoube able to get data from the
(42:53):
instruments on it and theimaging that would lean towards
the planet having life, or isthat an impossibility with the
technology right now?
Speaker 3 (43:05):
Yeah, that's a really good question.
I think the search for life isone of these questions that's
driving a huge amount ofresearch right now, and part of
that is trying to figure outwhat that would also look like.
What would be the signature thatwould tell us for sure there is
life on this object, and that'sa really fascinating question,
(43:27):
I think, right now.
So it would be extremelychallenging to be able to look
at an exoplanet and really sayfor sure with our current
instrumentation that's a sign oflife.
So we may need to wait for thenext large mission, which is
already in the works, and thatis, in fact, one of the big
(43:48):
goals of that next mission ForNASA.
That's been, I think, a a bigmessage for going forward.
But I think with web we'regoing to be able to make a huge
amount of progress inunderstanding atmospheric
chemistry on exoplanets,understand the physics and the
dynamics and the processes inthat are happening, how they
form, how they evolve.
(44:09):
So I think we're going to beable to make some really big
steps towards that, and I'llnever say never, because
scientists are incredible, ourinstruments are amazing, but
that would be my guess.
Speaker 1 (44:23):
I feel like, from Hubble to JWST, or like the
telescopes in between,scientists have went from like
guessing to having actual data,like probably before your sulfur
dioxide discovery, like therewas.
They were pretty sure ithappened, but there was no
evidence that it did thing.
Am I on the right track?
Speaker 3 (44:46):
Yes, yeah, that's absolutely right.
Yeah, so we're able to.
We've been able to confirm alot of things that people had
thought we would be able to see,but we'll we'll get to see some
new things as well and createsome new questions and create
some new areas of research.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
All right.
So the big question before wemove on is, as somebody who
works on one of the mostpowerful pieces of technology
we've sent into outer space,what do you think about?
The big question Is there lifeout there?
Speaker 3 (45:15):
I think the answer to that is yes, I don't have too
many.
Yeah, yeah, I'm prettyconfident in saying that, yes,
there is Just purely based onstatistics about the size of the
universe, the number of planetsthat are out there, and, yeah,
that we know that actuallyplanetary systems form around
many stars 're actually thatwe're our solar system isn't
necessarily special.
(45:36):
That planets really form as anatural byproduct of the way
stars form.
So there are just so many outthere.
It seems unlikely that therewouldn't be life out there.
To be honest, whether or not?
Because even the existence ofhumanity, the existence of life
forms here on Earth, is a tinyblip in the overall history of
(45:57):
the universe.
If you change the question towhat is the likelihood that
during the existence of humanitywe will actually be able to see
that life elsewhere in theuniverse, I think the
probability changes a little bit.
Does that make sense?
Speaker 1 (46:15):
yeah, and then the probability.
Probability goes down way waymore if it's intelligent life
that's sufficiently evolved tomake signals off the planet,
because it could just exactlyyes, bacteria or protozoa or
some kind of gooey gooey thingin a gooey ocean, that's not
going to be sending signals outexactly.
Speaker 3 (46:33):
stars and planets have their own kind of formation
timescales, and so the way thatlife evolves, or the timescale
over which life would evolve,can also be dramatically
different in different planetarysystems.
We already know, for example,that Mars is likely to have had
at some point life in the past,but that just it's not there
(46:53):
anymore, and the same could bethe case for many other types of
systems something like 50million years ago, all the
volcanoes stopped on mars aboutthe same time as all of the
dinosaurs on earth went extinct.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
That's just that kind of thing, yes this is an
unfathomable amount of time, andof course, it's like ships
passing in the dark, exceptthey're separated by crazy
distances and they don't havelights on.
So yeah, exactly.
Yeah, probability is pretty low.
I got it.
Okay, I love that answer, thankyou.
So my kind of like last funquestion before we move to some
(47:27):
of our standard ones is you'veyou're working on this really
cool piece of technology, oryou're maybe some of the first
eyes that see data on otherworlds orbiting other stars?
You're peering back to theearliest times of our universe,
before the Big Bang.
But, looking forward, what'ssomething or things you are most
(47:48):
excited about in spaceexploration or research?
Something that you know youngSarah reading a book would be
dreaming about now?
Speaker 3 (48:01):
There's so much exciting research happening
right now.
Of course, I'm really excitedabout things that Webb is going
to be doing in the next fewyears looking at more exoplanet
systems, looking deeper anddeeper into the history of the
universe Fantastic, but we havenew missions coming along as
well.
So in the next few years there'sactually going to be several
(48:21):
missions in space and atelescope on the ground as well
the Rubin Observatory comingonline that are going to be
scanning large areas of the sky,so really more kind of big
survey type um observatories,rather than looking at
individual objects, and theseare going to tell us so much
about the large-scale structureof the universe and also they're
(48:43):
going just from, becausethey're going to be continuously
scanning around the sky.
They're also going to find somany objects that are exploding,
things that we call transients,so things that go bang in the
universe, and I think we'regoing to learn so much from
these missions.
So we have the European mission, euclid, which launched last
year, and here for NASA, we havethe Roman Space Telescope
(49:06):
launching in a couple of yearstime and then the Rubin
Observatory on the ground.
All of these missions aregiving us this huge wide field
view of the universe, and Ithink we're going to learn a
huge amount about these reallyfundamental questions in the
science of the universe, likewhat's dark energy, constraining
dark matter, things like that.
I'm super excited about seeingthose missions coming online as
(49:29):
well.
Speaker 1 (49:31):
I love that.
I need more scientists talkingabout dark energy and dark
matter.
I've had a dark matterscientist twice on my podcast
and I'm still a little fuzzyabout what it is.
Speaker 3 (49:41):
We all are.
That's the problem.
Speaker 1 (49:44):
Yeah, good thing there's more data coming in to
make it less fuzzy for somebodywho's not a cosmologist like
myself to understand.
Very cool, so I'm going to putyou on the hot seat.
What are you more excited aboutwith, like within our solar
system, the Artemis missions toget stuff back to the moon, or
like Europa Clipper that justlaunched?
(50:04):
Or is it equal?
Is it like a favorite child andyou can't pick?
Speaker 3 (50:10):
I am going to say Europa Clipper.
We actually the European spaceagency had its own Jupiter
mission that launched the JUICEmission that actually launched
last year, I believe.
So that's just a little bitahead of Europa Clipper, but the
two of them together are goingto be doing very complementary
science in the Jupiter system.
So I think, with JUICE andEuropa Clipper together, I'm
(50:30):
extremely excited about thatbecause I think that the icy
moons of the giant planets aresome of the most exciting parts
of the solar system, and so I'mreally excited.
But of course it's going totake those missions quite a few
years to get to Jupiter.
Speaker 1 (50:45):
Yeah, that's a bit of a drive four and a half hours.
Yeah, you're on the way thereand the kids are misbehaving.
You can't turn the car aroundand come back away there and the
kids are misbehaving.
You can't turn the car aroundand come back.
Yep, all right, thanks, doc.
We have a couple standardquestions we ask all our guests
about, and the first one is apet story.
We mix science in the humanworld and science in the pet
world, and we love when ourguests share pet stories from
(51:08):
their life.
Would you be able to do thatwith us?
Speaker 3 (51:12):
Absolutely.
Our pet is a dog called Tycho,and Tycho is six years old and
we adopted him from a rescueorganization when he was about
16 weeks old.
He's a mutt but he's mostlyGerman Shepherd Labrador mix, so
he's quite a big boy.
And Tycho is named after theastronomer Tycho Brahe, who
(51:35):
lived in the 16th century, whowas quite an interesting
character.
Like he lost his nose in ajewel apparently, so he had a
golden nose, and so we've alwaysliked Tycho Brahe in our
household, so our dog is namedafter him.
But one of our favoriteanecdotes about Tycho is that
during the JWST commissioningperiod so this is the initial
(51:55):
six-month period where we turnon all the instruments and check
everything out we were able toconnect remotely to the
operations center to be able tomonitor things even when we were
not on site or when we were notofficially on duty, and pretty
much the whole six-month periodI had my computer connected
remotely and listening into theoperations center, and we
(52:16):
started to notice that Tycho assoon as he heard it that he
would always come sit in myoffice, and so he seemed to
really enjoy the chatter of theoperations center, and so even
when I wasn't in my office, whenwe were having dinner or
something in the dining room.
Then, you know, if he couldhear the JWST commissioning
(52:38):
chatter then he would alwayscome sit next to my computer and
he would nap here.
So that was one of our favoritekind of anecdotes that he loved
being part of JWSTcommissioning.
Speaker 1 (52:47):
That's a sweet story.
I love it.
I got to ask a question, thoughto some historian, like dueling
seemed to be, you'd lose partsof your body, like it just
seemed that people had angermanagement problems back then
yes, I believe he might alsohave had.
Speaker 3 (53:07):
He had drunk quite a lot as well, which?
Speaker 1 (53:10):
that might have been somehow related.
Yes.
Speaker 3 (53:12):
Yes, but I'm not sure .
Speaker 1 (53:15):
but that leads to sword fighting.
Yep.
Speaker 3 (53:18):
Yeah, but he was a phenomenal scientist and this is
, you know, in the pre telescopeera even and yes, he was
phenomenal made hugecontributions to science, and so
he is a very big name inastronomy.
Speaker 1 (53:30):
Decent.
I'm glad he just lost only hisnose and not his life.
Yep, thanks for sharing yourpet story, doc.
As we close, we challenge allof our guests to share a super
fact with us.
It's something that they know,that they tell people at
cocktail parties, at Christmas,at family gatherings, and it
blows people's mind.
Do you have a super fact for us?
Speaker 3 (53:52):
One of my favorite mind-blowing facts and it is
going to be related to the WebbSpace Telescope is that the
primary mirror of the JWSTmeasures six and a half meters
in diameter.
It's composed of 18 individualsegments, but the quality of the
mirrors is so high so thesmoothness of the surface is so
(54:14):
good that if you stretched outthe mirror over the entire width
of the United States, thetallest bump would be less than
five centimeters in height.
Holy cow, which is hard toimagine, but I actually checked
the calculation and it iscorrect.
Speaker 1 (54:34):
That sounds like the province to the right of us,
saskatchewan's, about that flat.
That's a Canadian joke, sorrypeople.
Speaker 3 (54:42):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (54:42):
That's one.
That's a super fact.
I love it.
Thanks, sarah.
Thank you so much for being ourguest today sharing some of
your knowledge, and it's just soexciting from our family.
Thank you for sharing yourknowledge with us on the science
podcast.
Are you yourself on socialmedia anywhere can people follow
or connect, or is there awebsite you can send folks to?
Speaker 3 (55:03):
I, yes, I am on blue sky.
I'm pretty active on blue sky.
I am just sarah kendrew and oninstagram.
Instagram is come to Instagramfor the dog pictures.
Blue sky for the science factsInstagram as well.
I'm Sarah dot Kendrew.
Okay, and just welcome tofollow me there.
And then the Webb SpaceTelescope, of course, has a huge
(55:25):
presence online.
Webbtelescopeorg is NASA's mainwebsite.
Speaker 1 (55:30):
Sweet.
Okay, so we'll have.
We'll have a couple of yourlinks in our show notes, folks,
if you want dog pictures, go toInstagram.
If you want science stuff, goto blue sky.
We'll have those links.
That's it for this week's show.
Thanks for coming back everyweek to the science podcast and
if you're new, welcome.
I can't believe we're on seasonseven.
Big shout out to the gueststhis week and also a special
(55:51):
thank you to the top tier of ourpaid community of the pop pack
plus the top dogs.
At the end of every episode wegive them a shout out chris,
take it away.
Speaker 2 (56:00):
Amelia fetig, re oda, carol panel, jennifer challen,
linea janet, karen cronister,vicky otero, christy walker,
sarah bram, wendy diane masonand luke, helen chin, elizabeth
bourgeois, marianne mcnally,katherine Thank you.
Andy Breimer, mary Rader,bianca Hyde, andrew Lin, brenda
(56:22):
Clark, brianne Hawes, peggyMcKeel, holly Burge, kathy
Zerker, susan Wagner and LizButton.
Speaker 1 (56:41):
For science, empathy and cuteness.
Hello science enthusiasts.
I'm Jason Zukoski.
And I'm Chris Zukoski, we'rethe pet parents of Bunsen,
beaker, bernoulli and Ginger.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
The science animals on social media.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
If you love science.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
And you love pets.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
You've come to the right spot, so put on your
safety glasses and hold on toyour tail.
This is the Science Podcast.
Hello everybody, we hope you'rehappy and healthy out there.
The Science Podcast is back.
This is the first episode ofseason seven.
Can you believe that?
Seven years of running thescience podcast and in the last
(00:48):
20 or so episodes of last season, Chris joined as a co-host and
you know it really rejuvenatedmy I guess, my drive to do the
science podcast, because it iskind of boring to talk to myself
about science.
I love playing off Chris andshe likes science as much as me,
so it was really fun to do thatwith her and we're going to be
continuing to do that for seasonseven.
You'll notice some changes inseason seven in that not every
(01:13):
episode will have an interview.
It's getting harder to findscientists with the
fragmentation of trying to findthem on social media.
So when we have an interview,we'll have an interview.
It'll be a slightly longerepisode, and when we don't, we
won't.
We might do an extra sciencenews item that week and then
there won't be an interview.
So I guess there'll be a littlebonus.
(01:34):
Probably every second or thirdepisode we'll have a science
interview, All right.
Well, what's on the show thisweek?
In science news we break down astudy about something not good
about microplastics.
You'll have to check that out.
And in pet science, a studytalks about the stress of being
a puppy parent and relating itto being a parent of a toddler.
(01:56):
And our guest and ask it expertis Dr Sarah Kendrew, who is an
astronomer with the EuropeanSpace Agency.
All right, let's get on withthe show.
There's no time like sciencetime.
This week in science news,Chris, we're going to break down
some maybe not great news abouttiny shards of plastic.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Yeah, plastic, plastic everywhere.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
I saw a really good video a couple years ago and I
show it to my Chemistry 30 kidswhen we talk about plastics in
the organic chemistry unit.
Are you familiar withKrux-Kazat?
I hope I'm saying that right,Chris.
Do you know what that is,Krux-Kazat?
Speaker 2 (02:38):
I do.
That is a company or a personwho makes very informative
videos in an engaging way, or aperson who makes very
informative videos in anengaging way.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Yeah, adam loves Cruz Gazette and they're excellent.
Sometimes they get things wrongand they actually say sorry, we
got it wrong, and they make avideo about why they're wrong.
Very engaging videos withsimplistic animation and, of
course, a British narrator, soit sounds like you're listening
to somebody who's really smart.
The long and short of it isthere's a video about plastics,
about how plastics areincredible, but we've become
(03:10):
like King Midas and everythingthat King Midas touched turned
to gold, which seems like areally good idea, but of course,
he starved to death and everyperson he loved turned to gold
and he wound up being alone andstarving to death in the fable.
And humans have done that withplastic.
Everything we've touched isslowly turning to plastic.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
When I first read the article, I thought, oh, this
isn't about how we're able tolearn, it's more about actually
what you just said.
We're turning to plastic.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
The not so great study was published on February
3rd in Nature Medicine and itlooks at how, in post-mortem
human brain tissue so you knowpeople who've died and they've
looked inside their brain tissuethey're finding MNPs, which
stand for microplastics andnanoplastics, and that will be
(04:05):
abbreviated as we talk into MNP.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
So they analyzed 91 brain samples and this is really
an interesting part.
The brain samples dated back to1997.
And throughout the yearsthey've noticed an increase of
the microplastics as time hasgone on.
So it reminds me a little bitof biomagnification, and you're
(04:33):
looking at 1997 brains versus2020 or 2021 brains and they're
seeing definitely an increase ofthe plastics.
In fact, from 2016 to 2024, themedian concentration of MNPs
rose by about 50%, from 3,345micrograms per gram to 4,917
(05:01):
micrograms per gram, which isincredible.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
This is not something that should go up.
In fact, this is not somethingthat probably should be in your
brain at all, and the samplesthat were collected in 2024, the
concentration of MNPs in braintissue was 10 times higher than
those in other organs like liverand kidney tissue, so it seems
(05:24):
to be accumulating in the brain.
Now why?
This is a little bit shocking,was?
It challenges some of theprevious assumptions that
scientists and biologists havehad that the blood-brain barrier
prevents these polymers, whichare fairly big molecules, from
entering the brain.
It was thought there's no waythey could get into the brain
(05:47):
because of that specialblood-brain barrier, which does
a pretty good job of keepingmost stuff out of our noggin.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
That's an interesting finding and it's like maybe a
semi-permeable membrane then.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Semi-permeable for plastic.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
For plastic.
Yeah, so the size and shape ofthese plastic particles are
extremely small less than 200nanometers long and less than
400 nanometers wide, so we wouldtypically think that they would
be a spherical bead like ourscrubbers that used to be in our
shampoos and our body scrubs.
(06:24):
But they're like.
The spherical beads are alsocommonly used in lab experiments
.
These particles are thin, sharpand irregularly shaped yeah,
that's.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
The scary thing is that they are sharp and and
they're not the little spheres.
Right, that's what I wasthinking.
That's the first thing Ithought of was this is like
residual microbeads fromshampoos, but it is a little bit
from shampoos, because, whilethere was very little evidence
that the plastic was polystyrenethat's common in the food
(06:59):
industry and medical suppliesit's polyethylene, which is in
household items like plasticgrocery bags, shampoo bottles
and this is shocking all of theplastic toys that kids play with
today.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
How many plastic toys did we buy our kids?
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Duncan, for sure, was a fan of VTech.
I think all their toys reallywas plastic.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
It's just so prevalent in our society.
It just seemed like a anexcellent thing because they
could make it cheap.
Do you remember?
Speaker 1 (07:29):
what your toys were made of.
They were plastic too.
My toys were plastic, likeHe-Man and GI Joe and
transformers, and my guess isthe Barbies are plastic.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Barbies had rubber legs.
So you could bend them and moldthem.
I had a cabbage patch doll, sothe head was definitely plastic
but the body was nylon andstuffing.
I just don't remember the sheeramount of toys that, honestly,
that we purchased for our kids.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
It just we were more prevalent yeah, we were worse
with duncan than we were withadam, but maybe that's because
Adam had hand-me-downs fromDuncan.
I just seem to think thatDuncan got way more toys than
Adam did.
Vessels causes plaque and thatincreases your risk for heart
attacks, strokes and deaths.
Now, 12 of those brain samplesthat you talked about, chris,
(08:29):
they were individuals who werediagnosed with dementia, and
those who were diagnosed withdementia had higher levels of
MNP.
Now it's not clear, obviously,if microplastics, those MNPs,
contribute to dementia or thecondition allows more to
accumulate, but it isinteresting that the brains with
dementia had the highest levelsof MNPs.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
That is actually terrifying.
This study raises criticalquestions about how the MNPs
enter the brain and once they'rethere, can they be removed, and
what other health effects mightthey have?
So what's the next?
People are wondering is thismaybe the next asbestos or the
(09:14):
next lead?
Or maybe it's something much,much worse?
Speaker 1 (09:18):
The big takeaway, as we wrap this up, is there's a
big need to understand how theygot into the brain, because
microplastics are widespread inthe environment and other
studies have detected them inhuman tissue like lungs and the
liver even the placenta, if youcan believe it.
They haven't really beendetected in the brain.
(09:40):
So that's the call to action.
How are they getting there?
Can we change the formula ofplastics to make that stop?
It's not like we can saygoodbye to plastic.
Plastic is as the King Midasanalogy is it's everywhere, it's
ubiquitous.
It's going to be really hard tocut back our dependency on
plastic.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Yeah, but you know what we can do that one grocery
bag at a time.
That's right, oh get some pawpack bags from our website.
Oh, jason, that's hilarious.
But you know what?
I gave my teacher friends alittle paw pack Christmas pack
with some stickers and a pawpack bag and some pens and
sticky notes, just clearing outour closet, and they really
(10:22):
appreciated it.
But one of my teachercolleagues yesterday had her
grocery bags and I said, oh, Isee you have a pop pack bag and
she's like, yep, I'm going toget my groceries and I thought
that's less plastic and moreadvertising for us.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
There you go Cut down on your plastic use If you can.
This study is a little spookyand might it might forward some
research to the forefront andfiguring this out Cause
generally not good to haveplastic in your brain.
That's science news for thisweek.
This week, in pet science,chris and I are going to break
down a study that shed somelight on the stresses,
(11:01):
potentially, of raising a puppy.
Puppies are so fun, but I'm notgoing to lie.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
It's stressful some days.
It absolutely is stressful somedays.
Right, they don't come pottytrained and sometimes they have
accidents.
And then sometimes they'rebitey and rip your clothes, and
other times it's chaos.
It's's always joyful chaos, butit's pretty chaotic when you
have a puppy in the house andforget sleeping.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
That's over yeah, so I'm trying to think of the three
, the four really puppies, ifyou count callan, but the three
that are still alive bunsen,beaker and bernoulli.
Bunsen was by far the easiestpuppy, by far not even close not
even close no, not Bunsen waspotty trained in a week, like
(11:51):
instantly.
It was shocking it was shocking.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
I was like everybody who's oh, I'm having so much
trouble with my potty trainingof my pet.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
I'm like what Bunsen is amazing in a week or less
it's hard to to remember, but itwas so incredibly quick.
And then, boy, where we got areality check with Beaker, cause
it did take her like the normaltime to potty train a dog.
And the problem was is that itwas in the summer and Bunsen was
so hot, so we had to have waterand she kept drinking water.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
We had a running joke , it's she would go outside and
then she would come back in andhave a refill yeah, with water,
and we kept going refill.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Yeah, she had lots of pee accidents in the house when
she was learning.
And then Bernoulli and he's a.
He was about the same as Beakerfor potty training.
He's still.
He doesn't have a tell, whichis he doesn't bark when he's got
to go out.
So you just got to time it.
But he's also the mostmischievous of the three of them
, like he gets into stuff.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Oh yes, we have a laundry basket that is now
chewed very badly.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
I guess Beaker chewed a lot of stuff when she was a
puppy.
They're about the same.
I guess you forget right.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
You forget the negatives, you do forget the
negatives, because clearly wegot another puppy named
Bernoulli, but he by far is themost destructive of all of them.
He chews everything and stuffthat you don't want him to chew
like toilet paper.
You're like where is he findingthat?
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
I thought we puppy proofed our house.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Yeah, he found a Costco size pack of toilet paper
the other day.
That was a whole thing.
Raising a puppy can be similarto like parenting a baby.
It's stressful for guardians.
It's not all roses.
There's a potential impact ofstress experienced by the puppy
guardians and that's not wellresearched and I guess that's
(13:49):
the study that we're going tolook at today.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
The study was an online survey and it was created
specifically for guardians ofdogs under 12 months of age, so
we would still fit the criteria,and the survey was made
available to a global audience,as opposed to just a targeted
area.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Yeah, and what's funny is they use the parental
stress scale like something theygive young parents to fill out,
but they just modified it, soinstead of baby it's got like
puppy.
So they modified this humanstress scale for dogs.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Yeah, the things that could be transferred over to
parenting quote unquote of dogs.
Yeah, the things that could betransferred over to parenting
quote unquote of dogs.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Yeah, it's a fairly big study.
So 783 valid responses werereceived from puppy guardians.
And then, of course, they didthe statistical nerdy stuff that
goes in with the study.
You did that in your master'sit.
Just that puts me to sleep.
That is not what I'm very goodat, but they did do some pretty
good statistical analysis withit.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
So there were some key findings and factors that
were associated with lowerstress.
So parents or guardians whowere satisfied with their
puppy's behavior, guess what?
They had lower stress.
That's why we had no stresswith puppy bunsen, because he
was so good he was so good andguardians living in australia,
(15:08):
in comparison to those living inusa and canada, had guess what
lower stress they always soundseem so chill also guardians uh,
with higher self-esteeminitially, um also had lower
stress and guardians who werehappy with how puppy
responsibilities were divided intheir household, divvying up
(15:31):
the chores that have to do withpuppy.
And I remember you when we werelooking at getting our first dog
, callan, you talked about thepuppy super stats and it's like
a trading card statistics thatyou are looking at like how are,
how trainable are they?
How friendly are they?
How, what's their groomingscore?
(15:53):
And is that scored higher intrainability led to lower stress
parents that kind of makessense.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
If you can't train your dog to do anything, it's
probably pretty stressful.
Yeah, like, why isn't the doglistening to me?
Come when I want you to call?
No, you're not.
Okay, great, all three of thedogs do pretty good, right, and,
yeah, all three of them.
Now, this is interesting.
There's factors that areassociated with higher stress.
First time puppy guardiansexperienced higher stress.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Oh, because you don't know what you're doing.
It's the same as when you're aparent what are we doing?
What to expect when you'reexpecting?
Speaker 1 (16:30):
do they have a what to?
Speaker 2 (16:30):
expect when you have a puppy yeah, they need that
book we should write that book,jason yeah, but I don't
understand.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
so were my parents crazy, stressed out with me
because I was the first kid?
How come?
How come, as you go down theline, the kids get away with
more like?
That doesn't make any sensewith people, because we're way
better with Bernoulli than wewere with Callan.
That doesn't make any sense itdoes because it's first time.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
Puppy guardians because they don't know what
they're doing and so they hadthe higher stress.
But by the time we got toBernoulli we're not as high
stressed with a puppy.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Guardians that work from home part-time or full-time
were more stressed.
I guess if you're working fromhome, the puppy is a full-time
job if it's not crated.
So you're probably trying toget your work done and the
little shark guy is biting yourfeet or something, so I don't
know.
Puppies that scored higher inneuroticism the guardians were
(17:23):
more stressed.
Puppies that scored higher inneuroticism the guardians were
more stressed, and guardiansagreed that managing more than
one dog in the householdrequired a significant amount of
time and energy.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
We found that with not necessarily beaker, but with
bernoulli maybe what we foundis that we had bunsen and things
were great and then we hadbeaker, so we were like two dogs
that's no problem.
But then when we got bernlli itwas exponentially more
stressful.
And maybe that's not because ofthree dogs, you're right.
Maybe it's because of Bernoullijust being a goober.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
He's extroverted.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
And that's another thing that raises your
Extroverted.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Yeah, he's by far the most cuddly of all three.
He's the one that I don't know.
He's a more in-your-face kindof dog, but his face is so cute.
It's true.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
It's true.
He looks at you and then hetilts his head back and he
smiles and you're like, oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
He is a good dog.
I don't want to think anybodythinks we think that he's a
goober and he's a.
We just love him to death.
He's a good dog.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
We do.
We do love him.
He is so good but also didcause some stress as a puppy.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
And now he's a teenager.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
He's definitely a teenager.
So it is good to have some ofthis data, because the what to
expect when you're expecting,Chris, if there's not a lot of
information for first-time petowners or just puppy owners or
whatever people are going to beguessing You're going to be like
it's all going to be anecdotalresearch.
This is what happened to me,but now the data has been
gathered so if you understandthe fact, the factors associated
(18:58):
with stress, you could developinterventions and support
systems for those first-timepuppy guardians.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Yeah, exactly, so definitely exploring ways to
mitigate the stress throughknowledge, for sure.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
I wonder how much harder it would be to have four
dogs rather than three.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
I have heard the biggest jump is from two to
three.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Yeah, I did send you a picture of that puppy and you
said maybe I did.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
I know you a picture of that puppy and you said I
know another Bernice Mountaindog puppy.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
Yeah, but it's just not going to work at this time
for us, with Bunsen healing andthings like that.
No, I don't think we could do.
And you know what I'm to befair, bunsen did have his
massive surgery of the growth inhis abdomen, the cyst, and we
had Bernoulli as a puppy at thattime.
So I don't know that, likewe're anecdotally that.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
We were under a lot of stress when Bernoulli was a
puppy, Bunsen was.
His health was in a declineLike his head was caved in.
Yeah, and then he went for thenhe just about died.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
And Bernoulli was a little guy during that time.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Yeah, so I guess our experience isn't that fair.
Yeah, it can't be generalizedover.
Hey, we got a new puppy and nowwe have three dogs.
No, I think our circumstancewas quite different.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
And that's why it's good to have the data like this
from hundreds of people ratherthan us telling you about our
goober.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Yeah, that's true, but you know what?
He turned out okay, even thoughwe were distracted with a
highly sick dog and having tokeep him on crate rest and keep
the Bernoullis out.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
No Bernoullis allowed , yeah he turned out really good
.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
He did turn out very good.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
That's Pet Science for this week.
Hello everybody, here's someways you can keep the Science
Podcast free.
Number one in our show notessign up to be a member of our
Paw Pack Plus community.
It's an amazing community offolks who love pets and folks
who love science.
We have tons of bonus Bunsenand Beaker content there and we
(20:56):
have live streams every Sundaywith our community.
It's tons of fun.
Also, think about checking outour merch store.
We've got the Bunsen Stuffy,the Beaker Stuffy and now the
Ginger Stuffy.
That's right, ginger theScience Cat has a little replica
.
It's adorable.
It's so soft, with the giantfluffy tail, safety glasses and
a lab coat.
(21:17):
And number three if you'relistening to the podcast on any
place that rates podcasts, giveus a great rating and tell your
family and friends to listen to.
Okay, on with the show.
Back to the interviews.
It's time for Ask an Expert onthe Science Podcast and I am
thrilled to have Dr SarahKendrew, an astronomer with the
(21:37):
European Space Agency, todaywith us.
Doc, how are you doing?
I'm doing great.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Hi, thanks for having me.
I'm doing great Thanks.
How are you?
Speaker 1 (21:47):
I'm good, I'm good.
Where are you calling into theshow from?
Where are you in the world?
Speaker 3 (21:52):
So I am based in Baltimore, maryland.
So, even though I work for theEuropean Space Agency, who are,
of course, based in Europe, I'mpart of a small European team
based in Baltimore, maryland, towork on the James Webb Space
Telescope at the Space TelescopeScience Institute.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
Oh, we're going to be able to talk about that
telescope.
I'm so excited.
Judging by your accent, I don'tknow if you grew up your whole
life in Baltimore, though.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
No, absolutely not.
No.
So I actually was born andraised in Belgium, just outside
Brussels.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Oh, okay.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
But I have a British father so I have a very
British-sounding name and a anda British sounding accent.
I also did my studies in theUnited Kingdom so I also lived
there for a long time.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Nice.
And speaking of your studies, Iwas wondering if you could just
give us a little overview aboutyour background, your science
background?
Speaker 3 (22:39):
Yeah, sure, I went to university at University
College London, so in London inthe United Kingdom, and I did my
degree there in astronomy.
I stayed on to do my PhD thereat the same university, but for
my PhD I actually moved in avery technical direction.
So I worked in technologydevelopment and instrument
(23:01):
development for telescopes, thekind of technical side of
astronomy.
So so building the instruments,developing the technology, and
that's the area where I've donemost of my work in my career.
After my PhD I moved around ina few different postdoctoral
positions a few years in theNetherlands at the University of
Leiden, a few years in Germanyin Heidelberg, also working on
(23:26):
instruments, and then finally Idid a few years at the
University of Oxford before Ithen got offered a position with
the European Space Agency tocontinue my work on the Webb
Space Telescope, which I wasalready working on over in
Europe, here in Baltimore,maryland.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Nice you name dropped a bunch of places which are
bucket lists travel destinationsfor folks.
Does any of those places feellike the most home to you, or
they all have their own magic tolive in and work from?
Speaker 3 (23:57):
Yes, I think everywhere I've lived has had.
I really miss things aboutthose places.
Definitely every place I'velived, I've learned a lot.
I've gotten to know a newculture, maybe a bit of a new
language as well.
And yes, you're right, they'reactually all like really
fantastic places that also havereally good universities, really
good research environment.
So I'm very lucky to have beenable to spend time in all these
(24:18):
places.
Home is Belgium.
That's where I grew up and myfamily still live there, but I
also lived in London for 10years and I think that was a
really fantastic period andthat's where a lot of my closest
friends are, so I always lovegoing back to London.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Were you?
Okay, so you the technical sideof telescopes.
So before we get to what you donow, I'm always curious about
the origin story of scientists.
Were you a science kid growingup?
Was that your origin story?
You knew you were going to be ascientist from a young age.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
I actually wasn't.
I was a big bookworm.
I was very into history andliterature.
I read a lot, I loved learninglanguages.
I was actually not thatinterested in science as such,
but I loved kind of explorationand discovery, which with
hindsight I realized as well itis part of science really, and I
(25:15):
think as a teenager I startedto get a bit into stargazing.
So we lived outside of the city,we had quite nice clear skies,
especially in the wintertime,and so I got into backyard
astronomy and then quite a latestage before going to university
, realized like this is a thingthat I could study and I could
do more seriously and I thoughtit would be a really amazing
(25:37):
challenge because I hadn't beenthat keen on science, I hadn't
been that stuck in science foras a child, and so I thought it
sounds like a fantasticchallenge and I find this really
fascinating and it taps intothat story of exploration and
discovery throughout history andso I think that really appealed
to me.
But I know there weredefinitely some adults in my
(25:57):
life who were quite surprisedthat I ended up going to study
science, because I thinkeverybody had expected me to go
into languages or literature orthings like that.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
They thought you'd be teaching Latin and learning
other languages.
Hey, that's funny.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
Basically yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
That's cool.
I appreciate you giving us alittle bit of background about
you.
Now let's jump to the mainthing.
That's very cool.
I swear it's in the news forscience junkies like myself
every day, and that's the JamesWebb Space Telescope, or the
JWST.
I was wondering for people thatare listening who are casually
(26:35):
interested in science, could youexplain to us in your own words
, like what the JWST is?
Speaker 3 (26:43):
Sure.
So the James Webb SpaceTelescope is?
It's a telescope in space.
So for astronomy, thetelescopes are the tools that we
use to look out into theuniverse, and for hundreds of
years we have been buildingtelescopes, mostly on the ground
.
We have them in backyards, wehave them on remote mountaintops
(27:04):
, in deserts and things remotemountaintops and deserts and
things.
But since a few decades, sincethe middle of the 20th century,
since the space age reallyastronomers became very
interested in this idea of whatif we actually put a telescope
in space?
Because, as it turns out, theEarth is not a great place.
The surface of the Earth is nota great place from which to
look out into the universe.
We have the atmosphere allaround us, which is great for
(27:26):
many things, but it's a bigbarrier to light coming to us
from the stars and distantgalaxies, and this is something
that's plagued astronomersthroughout history.
So as soon as we were able tolaunch things into space and had
rockets, astronomers startedthinking what if we actually put
a telescope out there?
It's dark, it's like the thingsare very stable.
We don't.
(27:46):
We're outside of the atmosphere.
Out there, it's dark, thingsare very stable, we're outside
of the atmosphere.
And so the first major astronomyobservatory launched into space
was the Hubble Space Telescope,which many people know, and
very soon after Hubble waslaunched, plans were made here
in the US also in Europe for thenext big thing, and that next
big thing became the James WebbSpace Telescope.
(28:07):
So it was in development for 25or so years, I believe, and was
just launched on Christmas Dayin 2021.
So it's still quite new, but ithas been up there for a while,
and so it's a large telescope.
It measures about six and ahalf meters in diameter in its
main mirror, which is whatdetermines ultimately how much
(28:27):
light it can collect.
So it's much bigger than anytelescope we've had before in
space and it was hugelytechnically complex.
It was folded up into a rocket,had to be deployed once it
arrived out in space, which wasvery technically complex and
(28:47):
challenging.
And, yeah, so it's in operationat a point in space called L2.
So it doesn't just orbit theearth, like satellites do or the
Hubble Space Telescope does.
It's at a point called thesecond Lagrangian point, l2,
which is about a million miles,million and a half kilometers
from the Earth, which isextremely stable.
(29:08):
It's in a stable orbit.
The temperature is very stablethere and has been looked at out
into the universe for us 24-7.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
So just going back to Earth-based telescopes,
obviously having an atmosphereis good for you and I to stay
alive and breathe, but is it theclouds or is it the actual
atmosphere that kind of messesup the telescopes?
Is that why chucking atelescope into outer space was
such an interesting and greatidea?
Speaker 3 (29:37):
Yeah, the atmosphere interferes with observations in
a few different ways.
So, yeah, at the simplest level, it's the clouds.
It's just not clear.
We can't see out.
Also, depending on light we'reactually looking at.
So what wavelength or whatcolor of light we're looking at?
Some wavelengths are actuallycompletely blocked by the
(29:59):
atmosphere, so a lot ofultraviolet light, for example,
just doesn't even make itthrough a lot of the infrared as
well.
So we're actually what we cansee with our eyes is just a tiny
portion of all the differentcolors of light that we want to
observe from space, and a lot ofthe light is actually just
blocked by the molecules in theatmosphere.
(30:20):
In addition, even the lightthat does make it through the
atmosphere, even when theweather is beautifully clear,
there is still a lot of churning, the gases in the atmosphere
churning around just from heat,transport and earth's rotation.
So it's never reallybeautifully still, even when it
(30:41):
might look that way, and thatconstant churning, that constant
movement, disturbs the lightthat's coming through and so
actually doesn't give us verysharp images, and that's very
challenging.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
And it did.
I remember it launching onChristmas day and the whole lead
up to it was so dramatic.
Were you working on the JWSTwhen it launched?
Were you on the team then?
I'm sorry.
Yeah, I guess you would havebeen.
You developed the tool.
Speaker 3 (31:14):
We'll talk about that later, sorry, yep, yeah, so
I've worked on one of theinstruments for web since 2008.
So most of my career after myPhD, and so I was already
working at the operation centersince 2016.
So, yes, I was definitely partof that team when it launched.
I was actually able to go tothe launch.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
Oh man.
Speaker 3 (31:37):
Yep.
So actually, in fact and Ididn't actually have any
official duties at that pointEverything was ready to go and
it was a matter of waiting untilthings were in space and we
could start doing all ourinitial checkout tests.
We did have other members of myteam who were, in fact, back
here in Baltimore at theoperation center really
supporting the whole launchprocess.
So I was working, but I alsowas lucky enough to have a few
(32:02):
days off and to be able toactually go watch the launch.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
Wow, were you, as stressed out as the other
science communicators were onsocial media leading up to
launch and while it waslaunching for the big unfolding
in space.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
Oh yes, absolutely.
I even think it was such astressful period as you probably
remember, the dates kept movingaround, which is very common
for these big launches.
There was also we were in themiddle of the pandemic and in
fact, just around that timethere was a really big kind of
COVID wave going througheverywhere, so that added this
sort of additional stress.
And, yes, it was an extremelyhectic period and I think, to be
(32:41):
honest, I had tocompartmentalize a little bit.
I think I only really startedprocessing the magnitude of it a
few weeks later, because Ithink at the time I was just
trying to get through thelogistics and making sure
everything went right from apractical point of view.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Doc, I was checking social media feeds like every
five minutes leading up to lunchand then there's another NASA
scientist, dr Jessie Christensen.
She studies exoplanets.
So I was having like a fun backand forth with her on social
media because she was like sohopeful it was going to launch
and then hopefully it didn'tlike explode or something
horrible.
So everybody cheered, I tellyou, in SciComm when that thing
(33:21):
launched and it seemed to begoing perfectly.
So kudos to everybody involved.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
Yes, absolutely.
And from my point of view as Iworked on one of the science
instruments.
So kudos to everybody involved.
We're just as grateful to allof the engineers who worked on
the launch, who put thetelescope together and the whole
deployment, everything.
So we felt like just soextremely fortunate as well to
have been part of that.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
That's amazing.
So JWST unfolds Big cheer andyou are now up to the plate
because you helped design a toolor were part of a tool team.
It's called the MRI, and couldyou explain what that does and
why it's important?
Speaker 3 (34:18):
Yeah, so the instrument is called MIRI,
m-i-r-i, which stands forMid-Infrared Instrument.
The James Webb Space Telescopeis a very large observatory.
It's a complex system.
The basic component of it isthe telescope itself.
So the telescope itself is whatcatches the light and brings it
(34:40):
to a focus and sends it to oneof the instruments.
So it's the instruments thatactually, where the light gets
recorded, it's the instrumentsthat contain different filters,
different gratings or prisms todisperse the light into spectra
and actually take the images.
And so Web has four of thoseinstruments on board.
(35:00):
There's NIRCam, nirspec, nirisand the fourth is MIRI, which is
the one that I work on and thatI have worked on for a long
time.
What's special about it?
It's really is the wavelengthrange it observes.
So it observes the longest,reddest infrared wavelengths
that the Webb telescope issensitive to.
The other three instruments allcatch light and record light
(35:25):
that is at shorter wavelengthsin the infrared.
So MIRI has that very uniqueniche of the mid-infrared
wavelength range that we record,and we have various different
components.
All of these instruments inthemselves are quite complex
systems too.
So MIRI has a regular imagingcamera.
It can do spectroscopy.
It can also do coronography,where we block out the light of
(35:48):
a bright star to be able tovisualize planets or structures
around the star.
So we have lots of differentoptical components on board to
really be able to look at thelight in as many different ways
as possible to get the pictureof the physics that's happening.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Okay, I love the explanation, that's all right.
Long wavelength infrared.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
So, specifically, what are some of the things that
this instrument has seen Like?
What is it spied in the couple,the three or four years that
JWST has been in outer space?
Speaker 3 (36:27):
So Miri has the other three instruments.
We've looked at a huge range ofdifferent objects, different
types of objects.
So we have observed objects inthe solar system, some planets
or moons of planets and smallsolar system objects like
asteroids.
We have looked at exoplanets,in which are in our own galaxy,
(36:47):
so other planetary systemsorbiting stars in our galaxy.
We have actually spent a hugeamount of time observing planets
.
So that's been a very excitingarea of research where there's
been lots of new discoveries.
And then all the way out to themost distant galaxies in the
universe that we've also heard alot about, from Webb universe
that we've also heard a lotabout from Webb In the
(37:08):
mid-infrared.
So the very distant, the mostdistant galaxies, so those that
really are, just when we'relooking back to just a few
hundred million years after theBig Bang.
They're the signposts that weget from, those that indicate
whether stars are forming or howmany stars are forming or how
rapidly they're forming manystars are forming or how rapidly
(37:31):
they're forming or whether theyhave a very active black hole
at their center.
Those signposts all startshifting to longer wavelengths
due to the expansion of theuniverse and they start shifting
into miri's wavelength range.
So for these very distantobjects, miri becomes extremely
important to understand thephysics and to characterize them
, and this capability is veryunique.
(37:51):
These are wavelengths that wecould not see with the Hubble
Space Telescope, so we have avery kind of unique niche there
and a lot of it's a very newview on these very distant
galaxies, but also, as I said,exoplanets, has been a huge area
of discovery for MIRI,specifically because if we want
to look at the emission from theplanets themselves, so the
(38:11):
signature of the thermalemission, so really direct light
coming from the planet, thattends to peak in the
mid-infrared where MIRI issensitive, so that's been a
really important niche for us aswell.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
I can't imagine how exciting it must be when that
data comes in for a planetthat's orbiting another star.
I just think back to when I wasa small child like that was
science fiction, like we justdidn't know anything about stuff
really outside of our solarsystem, beyond the big, huge
objects our telescopes could see.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
Yeah, absolutely yeah .
This has been really exciting.
Our telescopes could see.
Yeah, absolutely yeah.
This has been really excitingand I think in the first months
after the launch we tested a lotof these functions out.
We did a few test observationswith the instruments looking at
these exoplanet systems, becausewe knew there was going to be
so much interest from thecommunity and we wanted to be
really prepared and understandhow our instruments were going
(39:07):
to do in these observations.
And just when we saw the datafrom these test observations, we
thought they would require alot of processing to be able to
see the signatures of theplanets, but they, just straight
out of the box, it was.
The data was so beautiful, wecould just see the signatures of
these planets, and so easily.
And so I think everybody wasjust yeah, we were just stunned.
(39:28):
So even for us who built theinstrument, we in principle know
what it can do, but it's stilldifferent when you first point
it to the sky and you actuallysee that working.
It is pretty phenomenal.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
I would love for you to share, maybe like some
interesting things about acouple of the exoplanets that
you've scanned with thisinstrument.
What are some cool things fromthe data?
Speaker 3 (39:50):
Yeah.
So some of them you made a fewlike very interesting
discoveries.
Of course they're very timeconsuming observations and so
you have to really build upobservations of many objects to
really really progress ourknowledge in a sort of a global
way.
But some really interestingthings that we found is we've
made some of the firstdetections of molecules that
(40:12):
were produced by photochemistry,so photochemical processes, so
that is, molecules that wereproduced directly under the
influence of the radiation fromthe host star.
This is something that happensin our atmosphere as well.
We have chemistry that's drivenby the radiation from the sun,
but we had not really seen thatvery directly on these
(40:34):
exoplanets.
So one such molecule is sulfurdioxide.
That was a very early discovery.
We hadn't really been able tosee that molecule being produced
in exoplanet atmospheres andtells us some very interesting
things about the interactionbetween the host star and the
planetary systems around them.
Another interesting so there's avery interesting planetary
(40:55):
system called TRAPPIST-1, which,being Belgian and it's from a
Belgian discovered by a Belgiantelescope called TRAPPIST I feel
I'm very fond of, and so thisstar has actually has a
planetary system with, I believe, five planets, so it's a really
multi-planet system, very muchlike our own solar system, and
so there's been a huge amount ofinterest in those planets
(41:18):
because I believe they're all inwhat we call the habitable zone
, so what we feel could createconditions that are conducive to
life developing.
So there's been a huge amount ofinterest in this object and
Webb has spent an awful lot oftime already looking at these
planets with various instruments, including MIRI, to try and see
(41:40):
if any of these planets do havean atmosphere, and that's been
really fascinating, and Ibelieve so far we haven't really
found the evidence of theatmosphere, but it's the type of
observation I think that we'regoing to be doing a lot more of.
So I think those are two reallysome really exciting science
that's been happening in thearea of exoplanets with Webb.
But what's fantastic, I feel,about exoplanet science is that
(42:03):
it's such a fast growing fieldwe're really on the cusp of
learning so many new things thatit's such a fast-growing field
we're really on the cusp oflearning so many new things that
it's a very vibrant researchcommunity that is constantly
coming up with new ideas ofbetter ways to use the telescope
, better ways of using theinstruments to really try and
get the most detailed data, andthat's been fantastic to be able
(42:24):
to work on and to really drivethat forward and work with the
research community on that.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
So I have a couple kind of more silly questions but
I'm sure people who arelistening want to know.
The one is maybe more seriouswith the science backing is when
JWST looks at, say, a planetwithin the, an exoplanet within
the TRAPPIST system, would yoube able to get data from the
(42:53):
instruments on it and theimaging that would lean towards
the planet having life, or isthat an impossibility with the
technology right now?
Speaker 3 (43:05):
Yeah, that's a really good question.
I think the search for life isone of these questions that's
driving a huge amount ofresearch right now, and part of
that is trying to figure outwhat that would also look like.
What would be the signature thatwould tell us for sure there is
life on this object, and that'sa really fascinating question,
(43:27):
I think, right now.
So it would be extremelychallenging to be able to look
at an exoplanet and really sayfor sure with our current
instrumentation that's a sign oflife.
So we may need to wait for thenext large mission, which is
already in the works, and thatis, in fact, one of the big
(43:48):
goals of that next mission ForNASA.
That's been, I think, a a bigmessage for going forward.
But I think with web we'regoing to be able to make a huge
amount of progress inunderstanding atmospheric
chemistry on exoplanets,understand the physics and the
dynamics and the processes inthat are happening, how they
form, how they evolve.
(44:09):
So I think we're going to beable to make some really big
steps towards that, and I'llnever say never, because
scientists are incredible, ourinstruments are amazing, but
that would be my guess.
Speaker 1 (44:23):
I feel like, from Hubble to JWST, or like the
telescopes in between,scientists have went from like
guessing to having actual data,like probably before your sulfur
dioxide discovery, like therewas.
They were pretty sure ithappened, but there was no
evidence that it did thing.
Am I on the right track?
Speaker 3 (44:46):
Yes, yeah, that's absolutely right.
Yeah, so we're able to.
We've been able to confirm alot of things that people had
thought we would be able to see,but we'll we'll get to see some
new things as well and createsome new questions and create
some new areas of research.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
All right.
So the big question before wemove on is, as somebody who
works on one of the mostpowerful pieces of technology
we've sent into outer space,what do you think about?
The big question Is there lifeout there?
Speaker 3 (45:15):
I think the answer to that is yes, I don't have too
many.
Yeah, yeah, I'm prettyconfident in saying that, yes,
there is Just purely based onstatistics about the size of the
universe, the number of planetsthat are out there, and, yeah,
that we know that actuallyplanetary systems form around
many stars 're actually thatwe're our solar system isn't
necessarily special.
(45:36):
That planets really form as anatural byproduct of the way
stars form.
So there are just so many outthere.
It seems unlikely that therewouldn't be life out there.
To be honest, whether or not?
Because even the existence ofhumanity, the existence of life
forms here on Earth, is a tinyblip in the overall history of
(45:57):
the universe.
If you change the question towhat is the likelihood that
during the existence of humanitywe will actually be able to see
that life elsewhere in theuniverse, I think the
probability changes a little bit.
Does that make sense?
Speaker 1 (46:15):
yeah, and then the probability.
Probability goes down way waymore if it's intelligent life
that's sufficiently evolved tomake signals off the planet,
because it could just exactlyyes, bacteria or protozoa or
some kind of gooey gooey thingin a gooey ocean, that's not
going to be sending signals outexactly.
Speaker 3 (46:33):
stars and planets have their own kind of formation
timescales, and so the way thatlife evolves, or the timescale
over which life would evolve,can also be dramatically
different in different planetarysystems.
We already know, for example,that Mars is likely to have had
at some point life in the past,but that just it's not there
(46:53):
anymore, and the same could bethe case for many other types of
systems something like 50million years ago, all the
volcanoes stopped on mars aboutthe same time as all of the
dinosaurs on earth went extinct.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
That's just that kind of thing, yes this is an
unfathomable amount of time, andof course, it's like ships
passing in the dark, exceptthey're separated by crazy
distances and they don't havelights on.
So yeah, exactly.
Yeah, probability is pretty low.
I got it.
Okay, I love that answer, thankyou.
So my kind of like last funquestion before we move to some
(47:27):
of our standard ones is you'veyou're working on this really
cool piece of technology, oryou're maybe some of the first
eyes that see data on otherworlds orbiting other stars?
You're peering back to theearliest times of our universe,
before the Big Bang.
But, looking forward, what'ssomething or things you are most
(47:48):
excited about in spaceexploration or research?
Something that you know youngSarah reading a book would be
dreaming about now?
Speaker 3 (48:01):
There's so much exciting research happening
right now.
Of course, I'm really excitedabout things that Webb is going
to be doing in the next fewyears looking at more exoplanet
systems, looking deeper anddeeper into the history of the
universe Fantastic, but we havenew missions coming along as
well.
So in the next few years there'sactually going to be several
(48:21):
missions in space and atelescope on the ground as well
the Rubin Observatory comingonline that are going to be
scanning large areas of the sky,so really more kind of big
survey type um observatories,rather than looking at
individual objects, and theseare going to tell us so much
about the large-scale structureof the universe and also they're
(48:43):
going just from, becausethey're going to be continuously
scanning around the sky.
They're also going to find somany objects that are exploding,
things that we call transients,so things that go bang in the
universe, and I think we'regoing to learn so much from
these missions.
So we have the European mission, euclid, which launched last
year, and here for NASA, we havethe Roman Space Telescope
(49:06):
launching in a couple of yearstime and then the Rubin
Observatory on the ground.
All of these missions aregiving us this huge wide field
view of the universe, and Ithink we're going to learn a
huge amount about these reallyfundamental questions in the
science of the universe, likewhat's dark energy, constraining
dark matter, things like that.
I'm super excited about seeingthose missions coming online as
(49:29):
well.
Speaker 1 (49:31):
I love that.
I need more scientists talkingabout dark energy and dark
matter.
I've had a dark matterscientist twice on my podcast
and I'm still a little fuzzyabout what it is.
Speaker 3 (49:41):
We all are.
That's the problem.
Speaker 1 (49:44):
Yeah, good thing there's more data coming in to
make it less fuzzy for somebodywho's not a cosmologist like
myself to understand.
Very cool, so I'm going to putyou on the hot seat.
What are you more excited aboutwith, like within our solar
system, the Artemis missions toget stuff back to the moon, or
like Europa Clipper that justlaunched?
(50:04):
Or is it equal?
Is it like a favorite child andyou can't pick?
Speaker 3 (50:10):
I am going to say Europa Clipper.
We actually the European spaceagency had its own Jupiter
mission that launched the JUICEmission that actually launched
last year, I believe.
So that's just a little bitahead of Europa Clipper, but the
two of them together are goingto be doing very complementary
science in the Jupiter system.
So I think, with JUICE andEuropa Clipper together, I'm
(50:30):
extremely excited about thatbecause I think that the icy
moons of the giant planets aresome of the most exciting parts
of the solar system, and so I'mreally excited.
But of course it's going totake those missions quite a few
years to get to Jupiter.
Speaker 1 (50:45):
Yeah, that's a bit of a drive four and a half hours.
Yeah, you're on the way thereand the kids are misbehaving.
You can't turn the car aroundand come back away there and the
kids are misbehaving.
You can't turn the car aroundand come back.
Yep, all right, thanks, doc.
We have a couple standardquestions we ask all our guests
about, and the first one is apet story.
We mix science in the humanworld and science in the pet
world, and we love when ourguests share pet stories from
(51:08):
their life.
Would you be able to do thatwith us?
Speaker 3 (51:12):
Absolutely.
Our pet is a dog called Tycho,and Tycho is six years old and
we adopted him from a rescueorganization when he was about
16 weeks old.
He's a mutt but he's mostlyGerman Shepherd Labrador mix, so
he's quite a big boy.
And Tycho is named after theastronomer Tycho Brahe, who
(51:35):
lived in the 16th century, whowas quite an interesting
character.
Like he lost his nose in ajewel apparently, so he had a
golden nose, and so we've alwaysliked Tycho Brahe in our
household, so our dog is namedafter him.
But one of our favoriteanecdotes about Tycho is that
during the JWST commissioningperiod so this is the initial
(51:55):
six-month period where we turnon all the instruments and check
everything out we were able toconnect remotely to the
operations center to be able tomonitor things even when we were
not on site or when we were notofficially on duty, and pretty
much the whole six-month periodI had my computer connected
remotely and listening into theoperations center, and we
(52:16):
started to notice that Tycho assoon as he heard it that he
would always come sit in myoffice, and so he seemed to
really enjoy the chatter of theoperations center, and so even
when I wasn't in my office, whenwe were having dinner or
something in the dining room.
Then, you know, if he couldhear the JWST commissioning
(52:38):
chatter then he would alwayscome sit next to my computer and
he would nap here.
So that was one of our favoritekind of anecdotes that he loved
being part of JWSTcommissioning.
Speaker 1 (52:47):
That's a sweet story.
I love it.
I got to ask a question, thoughto some historian, like dueling
seemed to be, you'd lose partsof your body, like it just
seemed that people had angermanagement problems back then
yes, I believe he might alsohave had.
Speaker 3 (53:07):
He had drunk quite a lot as well, which?
Speaker 1 (53:10):
that might have been somehow related.
Yes.
Speaker 3 (53:12):
Yes, but I'm not sure .
Speaker 1 (53:15):
but that leads to sword fighting.
Yep.
Speaker 3 (53:18):
Yeah, but he was a phenomenal scientist and this is
, you know, in the pre telescopeera even and yes, he was
phenomenal made hugecontributions to science, and so
he is a very big name inastronomy.
Speaker 1 (53:30):
Decent.
I'm glad he just lost only hisnose and not his life.
Yep, thanks for sharing yourpet story, doc.
As we close, we challenge allof our guests to share a super
fact with us.
It's something that they know,that they tell people at
cocktail parties, at Christmas,at family gatherings, and it
blows people's mind.
Do you have a super fact for us?
Speaker 3 (53:52):
One of my favorite mind-blowing facts and it is
going to be related to the WebbSpace Telescope is that the
primary mirror of the JWSTmeasures six and a half meters
in diameter.
It's composed of 18 individualsegments, but the quality of the
mirrors is so high so thesmoothness of the surface is so
(54:14):
good that if you stretched outthe mirror over the entire width
of the United States, thetallest bump would be less than
five centimeters in height.
Holy cow, which is hard toimagine, but I actually checked
the calculation and it iscorrect.
Speaker 1 (54:34):
That sounds like the province to the right of us,
saskatchewan's, about that flat.
That's a Canadian joke, sorrypeople.
Speaker 3 (54:42):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (54:42):
That's one.
That's a super fact.
I love it.
Thanks, sarah.
Thank you so much for being ourguest today sharing some of
your knowledge, and it's just soexciting from our family.
Thank you for sharing yourknowledge with us on the science
podcast.
Are you yourself on socialmedia anywhere can people follow
or connect, or is there awebsite you can send folks to?
Speaker 3 (55:03):
I, yes, I am on blue sky.
I'm pretty active on blue sky.
I am just sarah kendrew and oninstagram.
Instagram is come to Instagramfor the dog pictures.
Blue sky for the science factsInstagram as well.
I'm Sarah dot Kendrew.
Okay, and just welcome tofollow me there.
And then the Webb SpaceTelescope, of course, has a huge
(55:25):
presence online.
Webbtelescopeorg is NASA's mainwebsite.
Speaker 1 (55:30):
Sweet.
Okay, so we'll have.
We'll have a couple of yourlinks in our show notes, folks,
if you want dog pictures, go toInstagram.
If you want science stuff, goto blue sky.
We'll have those links.
That's it for this week's show.
Thanks for coming back everyweek to the science podcast and
if you're new, welcome.
I can't believe we're on seasonseven.
Big shout out to the gueststhis week and also a special
(55:51):
thank you to the top tier of ourpaid community of the pop pack
plus the top dogs.
At the end of every episode wegive them a shout out chris,
take it away.
Speaker 2 (56:00):
Amelia fetig, re oda, carol panel, jennifer challen,
linea janet, karen cronister,vicky otero, christy walker,
sarah bram, wendy diane masonand luke, helen chin, elizabeth
bourgeois, marianne mcnally,katherine Thank you.
Andy Breimer, mary Rader,bianca Hyde, andrew Lin, brenda
(56:22):
Clark, brianne Hawes, peggyMcKeel, holly Burge, kathy
Zerker, susan Wagner and LizButton.
Speaker 1 (56:41):
For science, empathy and cuteness.
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