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Past Shows
May 17, 2008
 Download an MP3 of the entire program (22MB).
Phoenix Rises (and Lands)
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Artists rendition of Phoenix landing, courtesy Corby Waste, NASA/JPL-Calech/University of Arizona
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If all goes according to plan, on Sunday May 25th the Phoenix Lander will touch down on the surface of Mars. It isn't going to be easy. Unlike the last two Rover missions, that intentionally crashed and bounced onto the planet, this mission is supposed to have a soft landing. Because of that, selecting an appropriate landing site was a challenge, they had to find a place without too many rocks. Dr. Ray Arvidson, from the University of Washington in St. Louis, is the co-investigator for the mission, and he played a key role in identifying the right place for the lander to come down. Once on Mars, the lander will be digging into the soil, looking for evidence of water, and other molecules that might indicate whether Mars would have ever supported life. At the same time, a Canadian weather station will be looking up, to learn about the temperature and pressure on the surface of Mars in this Northern region. Dr. Peter Taylor, from York University is part of the team looking at Mars' weather. He's particularly interested in the dust and how it's moving in the atmosphere, since dust plays a key role in controlling heat flow through the air
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Dieting Fish
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Watch what you eat, courtesy Joao Paulo Krajewski |
It's pretty common to be concerned about gaining too much weight. But for coral-dwelling gobies, a common Australian reef fish, a little bit of extra weight can cause a whole lot of trouble. Gobies live in small groups with a dominant male and female who have exclusive rights to do all the breeding. Dominance is purely a matter of size; and how big a gobie gets is purely a matter of how much food she can eat. So, you'd think an ambitious gobie could simply stuff herself until she got big enough to take over the role as a leader (and a breeder). But, says Dr. Marian Wong, a post-doctoral fellow with McMaster University, as soon as gobies begins to grow, they face the threat of eviction from the larger fish in the group. So gobies quickly learn to restrict how much they eat in order to stay small. In doing so, they trade in their chances to mate for a secure spot in the group.
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Cold Dry Bugs
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Belgica antarctica larvae - courtesy Dr. R. Lee |
Very few animals can survive having their body temperatures drop below freezing. Most that are able to do so manage it by generating chemicals that act as antifreeze, preventing the formation of ice crystals that tear apart cells and tissues. Dr. Richard Lee, from the department of Zoology at Miami University of Ohio, and his colleagues have discovered an insect that adds another strategy. The larvae of this flightless Antarctic fly produce antifreeze chemicals, but they also dehydrate themselves - shrivelling like a raisin in suspended animation. This dehydration allows them to avoid damage from frozen water. When the insect is bathed in warm water during the short Antarctic summer, it plumps up, re-animates, and resumes its normal life.
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Mantis Shrimp's Super Sight
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You lookin' at me? courtesy Photograph: Roy Caldwell |
Other than taking delight in them as an appetizer, we don't give shrimp all that much thought. But Dr. Sonja Kleinlogel, a neuroscientist with the Max Planck Institute in Frankfurt, Germany, has been keenly studying the visual systems of mantis shrimp in Australia for the past few years. She says the visual system of this crustacean is among the most complex in the animal kingdom. Whereas humans have three types of photoreceptors, which allow us to see colour, mantis shrimp have 16. So, in addition to seeing everything we can, these critters percieve a world hidden from our sight -- picking up lightwaves well into the infrared and ultraviolet range, not to mention several types of polarized light. Dr. Kleinlogel says it's difficult for us to imagine the complexity of the mantis shrimps' visual world, but she imagines it to be much more vivid, complex and beautiful than anything we can see
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The Big Rip
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We've known that the universe is expanding since the 1930's. We've known that its expansion is accelerating since the 1990's. Now we have the first evidence that the universe's accelerating expansion is itself actually speeding up, and what this could mean is that the universe is in for a terrible time in the future. By looking at the echoes of sound waves from the early days of the universe, Dr Will Percival, a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation in the University of Portsmouth, has presented evidence that the universe may well end in something called the Big Rip. Ultimately, as the expansion of space continues to accelerate, matter itself may be torn apart.
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Theme music bed copyright Raphaël Gluckstein. Creative Commons License by-nc-nd-2.0
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