Hunt for Aliens

This coming week, Seth will be on Naked Science on the National Geographic channel. The episode is called "Hunt for Aliens" and features NASA scientists, planet hunters, and astronomers discussing emerging methods of finding Earthlike planets and alien life and possible future techniques, including fiber-optic probing and interstellar travel powered by light at warp speeds. Also, an inside look at the Allen Telescope Array.

Airtimes are Thursday, April 1 at 8pm, Sunday April 4 at 7am, Thursday April 8 at 7am and Sunday April 11 at 11pm.

SETI: Now What?

Hello! Is anyone out there? As the scientific search for extraterrestrial intelligence marks its 50th anniversary, there’s been no contact as yet with alien beings. But SETI researchers maintain that we are not alone. Find out why in a SETI retrospective that looks at the past and future of the search.

We remember the first scientific SETI search… Carl Sagan… how the SETI Institute began… the WOW signal…and the 1993 NASA budget cuts.

We’ll also hear from critics of the search… scientists involved in optical SETI and SETI@home. Plus, international collaborations… and where the search is headed.

Listen to individual segments here:
Part 1 - Are We Alone?
Part 2 - The Birth of SETI
Part 3 - Contact
Part 4 - Abandoned
Part 5 - Ben Zuckerman
Part 6 - SETI@Home
Part 7 - The Future of SETI

SETI: Now What? - Are We Alone?

Part 1 of SETI: Now What?, a look at what prompted the need to search for extra terrestrial intelligence 50 years ago.

SETI: Now What? - The Birth of SETI

Part 2 of SETI: Now What?, featuring Frank Drake, Director of the Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe, SETI Institute.

SETI: Now What? - Contact

Part 3 of SETI: Now What?, featuring Jill Tarter, Director of the Center for SETI Research, SETI Institute, and Tom Pierson, CEO, SETI Institute, discussing how the SETI Institute began, the book and film Contact, and the "Wow!" Signal.

SETI: Now What? - Abandoned

Part 4 of SETI: Now What?, featuring the tale of how one U.S. Senator ended SETI's funding from NASA.

SETI: Now What? - Ben Zuckerman

Part 5 of SETI: Now What?, featuring Ben Zuckerman, physicist, astronomer, UCLA, on why SETI may be a waste of time.

SETI: Now What? - SETI@home

Part 6 of SETI: Now What?, featuring Dan Werthimer, Chief Scientist, SETI@home, University of California, Berkeley.

SETI: Now What? - The Future of SETI

Part 7 of SETI: Now What?, featuring Paul Horowitz, physicist, electrical engineer, Harvard University, discussing optical SETI, as well as a description of the launch of the Allen Telescope Array.

Thanks for the Memories

Memories are slippery things – some are crystal clear, others more like a muddy pool, and some… well, they seem to vanish completely.

Scientists admit that memory is all very complicated, but one piece of the puzzle lies in how we age – we’ll hear the latest research.

Meanwhile, meet the man who digitally logged his every waking moment – and why maybe the secret to happiness isn’t in remembering but in forgetting.

Plus, the case for deleting data from your hard-drive… and from your brain itself.

Listen to individual segments here:
Part 1 - The Memory Test
Part 2 - Adam Gazzaley
Part 3 - Gordon Bell and Jim Gemmell
Part 4 - James McGaugh
Part 5 - Viktor Mayer-Schönberger
Part 6 - Todd Sacktor

Thanks for the Memories - The Memory Test

Part 1 of Thanks for the Memories, featuring a short term memory test on our intern, Sandra Chung, and volunteer Jay Weiler.

Thanks for the Memories - Adam Gazzaley

Part 2 of Thanks for the Memories, featuring Adam Gazzaley, director of the Neuroscience Imaging Center at University of California, San Francisco.

Thanks for the Memories - Gordon Bell & Jim Gemmell

Part 3 of Thanks for the Memories, featuring Gordon Bell, principal researcher at Microsoft Research, and Jim Gemmell, senior researcher at Microsoft Research.

Thanks for the Memories - James McGaugh

Part 4 of Thanks for the Memories, featuring James McGaugh, neurobiologist at the University of California, Irvine.

Thanks for the Memories - Viktor Mayer-Schönberger

Part 5 of Thanks for the Memories, featuring Viktor Mayer-Schönberger , director of the Information and Innovation Policy Research Center at the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, and the author of Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age.

Thanks for the Memories - Todd Sacktor

Part 6 of Thanks for the Memories, featuring Todd Sacktor, neurologist, SUNY Downstate Medical Center.

Physics Phrontiers

Physics means getting physical if you’re tackling the biggest, most mysterious questions in the universe. Stoic scientists endure the driest, darkest, coldest spots on the planet to find out how it all began and why there’s something rather than nothing. From the bottom of an old iron mine to the top of the Andes, we’ll hear their stories.

Plus, Steven Weinberg on this weird stuff called dark energy, and Leonard Susskind sees double, no, triple, no, …infinite universes.

Listen to individual segments here:
Part 1 - Anil Ananthaswamy (part 1)
Part 2 - André de Gouvêa
Part 3 - Steven Weinberg
Part 4 - Bottled Dark Energy
Part 5 - Anil Ananthaswamy (part 2)
Part 6 - Anil Ananthaswamy (part 3)
Part 7 - Leonard Susskind

Physics Phrontiers - Anil Ananthaswamy part 1

Part 1 of Physics Phrontiers, featuring Anil Ananthaswamy, corresponding editor for New Scientist magazine in London and author of The Edge of Physics: A Journey to Earth’s Extremes to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe.

Physics Phrontiers - André de Gouvêa

Part 2 of Physics Phrontiers, featuring André de Gouvêa, associate professor of physics, Northwestern University.

Physics Phrontiers - Steven Weinberg

Part 3 of Physics Phrontiers, featuring Steven Weinberg, Nobel Prize-winning physicist at University of Texas at Austin and author of Lake Views: This World and the Universe.

Physics Phrontiers - Bottled Dark Energy

Part 4 of Physics Phrontiers, wherein Seth visits a local hydroponics shop which sells jugs of dark energy as botanical growing supplements.

Physics Phrontiers - Anil Ananthaswamy part 2

Part 5 of Physics Phrontiers, featuring Anil Ananthaswamy, corresponding editor for New Scientist magazine in London and author of The Edge of Physics: A Journey to Earth’s Extremes to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe.

Physics Phrontiers - Anil Ananthaswamy part 3

Part 6 of Physics Phrontiers, featuring Anil Ananthaswamy, corresponding editor for New Scientist magazine in London and author of The Edge of Physics: A Journey to Earth’s Extremes to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe.

Physics Phrontiers - Leonard Susskind

Part 7 of Physics Phrontiers, featuring Leonard Susskind, professor of theoretical physics, Stanford University.

Skeptic Check: Climate Clamor

Arctic ice is melting, atmospheric temperatures are climbing – yet climate change science is under attack. Detractors claim that researchers are manipulating data and hoodwinking the public. And the public is increasingly skeptical about the science.

Find out what’s behind the surge of climate change skepticism – and what global warming deniers learned from big tobacco about how to spin scientific evidence.

It’s Skeptic Check… but don’t take our word for it!

Listen to individual segments here:
Part 1 - Stephen Schneider (part 1)
Part 2 - Phil Chapman
Part 3 - Stephen Schneider (part 2)
Part 4 - Simon Donner
Part 5 - Naomi Oreskes

Climate Clamor - Stephen Schneider part 1

Part 1 of Skeptic Check: Climate Clamor featuring climate scientist Stephen Schneider, discussing how climate science works, how it doesn't, and how arguments regarding anomalous storms and a context-free quotes from emails stem from intellectual bankruptcy.

Climate Clamor - Phil Chapman

Part 2 of Skeptic Check: Climate Clamor featuring Phil Chapman, Apollo 14 Mission Scientist, now a geophysicist and consultant on energy and astronautics.

Climate Clamor - Stephen Schneider part 2

Part 3 of Skeptic Check: Climate Clamor featuring Stephen Schneider, Climate scientist, Stanford University, discussing the misinformation consumed and spread by climate change denialists.

Climate Clamor - Simon Donner

Part 4 of Skeptic Check: Climate Clamor featuring Simon Donner, Geographer at the University of British Columbia, discussing the effects of climate change on the oceans as observed through study of coral reefs.

Climate Clamor - Naomi Oreskes

Part 5 of Skeptic Check: Climate Clamor featuring Naomi Oreskes, Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego and author of Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming.

Turning Water into Slime

Here's a quick one minute video demonstrating the slime power of the hagfish. The animal is anesthetized, given a small pulse of electrical current, and when the tiny bit of slime extracted from it is put into a glass of water, well... You've Been Slimed!

Hagfish aren't really fish, as they have no jaw. In fact, they're the only animal that has a skull and no vertebral column. Their slime is believed to be used primarily as an escape mechanism. They secrete it when captured, but it is also believed that they use it as a lubricant to free themselves from the carcasses on which they feed. The slime also acts to clog up the gills of predator fish, and so the hagfish has developed a peculiar way of keeping its own gills free of slime. When agitated, the hagfish secretes enough slime to turn a 20 liter bucket of water into pure slime in a matter of minutes. To clear itself of this immense amount of slime, the hagfish ties itself into a knot, which then travels the length of its body, thereby wringing out the slime, and likely freeing it from its captor.

I've Been Slimed!

In this week's show, Seth & Molly make slime in the SETI kitchen with guest Tori Hoeler. Here's how: Fill one cup with water and add a spoonful of the Borax powder and stir it up. Fill another cup with about 1/2 inch of glue. Add three tablespoons of water to the glue and stir. Add a few drops of food coloring and stir again. Add two tablespoons of the Borax solution and stir well and voila! You've been slimed! Of course, for the above photo, I'm the one forced to pose with the slime. It was kind of slick, viscous, sticky. I wish there were a single word to use to describe it. Blimey! I'm stymied.

You've Been Slimed!

Hollywood horror flicks have captivated us with alien blobs, but the slime slithering on our own planet is as beguiling. From microscopic machines to life on ocean floors, new research reveals how essential slime is to life on Earth, and possibly other worlds.

Discover the new materials made from hagfish slime… the social life of a slime mold… and the threat posed by the gray goo of self-replicating nanobots.

Plus, it’s been 50 years since it first oozed across the screen: why there’s no escape from The Blob!

Listen to individual segments here:
Part 1 - Tori Hoeler
Part 2 - Douglas Fudge
Part 3 - John Tyler Bonner
Part 4 - Chris Phoenix
Part 5 - Andre Bormanis

You've Been Slimed! - Tori Hoeler

Part 1 of You've Been Slimed! featuring Tori Hoeler, Astrobiologist, NASA Ames Research Center.

You've Been Slimed! - Douglas Fudge

Part 2 of You've Been Slimed! featuring Douglas Fudge, Biologist, University of Guelph, Canada.

You've Been Slimed! - John Tyler Bonner

Part 3 of You've Been Slimed! featuring John Tyler Bonner, Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, and author of The Social Amoebae: The Biology of Cellular Slime Molds.

You've Been Slimed! - Chris Phoenix

Part 4 of You've Been Slimed! featuring Chris Phoenix, Director of Research, Center for Responsible Technology.

You've Been Slimed! - Andre Bormanis

Part 5 of You've Been Slimed! featuring Andre Bormanis, television writer and producer, discussing the film The Blob.

Note: In this segment, seth laments that this film was never remade, but a listener pointed out that there was a remake in 1988 and we've since learned that another is planned for 2011.