Science Friday

A Reptile’s Baffling Backfin And The Math Of Dashing Dinos

30 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Paleontologists have identified an ancient reptile with a towering crest made not of skin, or scales, or feathers, or antler—but something else enti...

NASA Employees Protest Cuts In Formal Dissent Letter

29 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Trump administration has proposed cutting NASA’s budget by almost 25% and shutting down 19 currently operating science missions. On July 21, sev...

Where Are We On The Science Of Menopause?

28 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Menopause is having a moment. Celebrities like Halle Berry, Naomi Watts, and Michelle Obama have recently shared their personal menopause experiences....

EPA To Shut Down Scientific Research Arm

26 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The EPA recently announced that it’s going to shut down its scientific research arm, called the Office of Research and Development. Since the agency...

Parker Solar Probe Captures Closest-Ever Images Of The Sun

25 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In December, the Parker Solar Probe made history when it made the closest-ever approach to the sun by a spacecraft. As it whizzed by, a camera recorde...

Climate Change Is Upending The Home Insurance Market

24 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

You can’t get a mortgage without home insurance. But in some parts of the country, it’s becoming harder and harder to find a plan, as insurance co...

What The Sigma Is Algospeak?

23 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Gen Alpha slang can seem unintelligible to adults, but linguist and TikToker Adam Aleksic argues language development in the internet age is worth leg...

How Millions Of Flies Can Help Stop The New World Screwworm

22 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The New World screwworm has cattle ranchers, entomologists, and the federal government on edge. The pest was successfully eradicated from the US decad...

Why Is The Scopes Trial Still Relevant 100 Years Later?

21 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In July 1925, the Scopes “Monkey” Trial captivated the nation. On its face, the case was relatively straightforward: A Tennessee biology teacher n...

Why Don’t We Have A Vaccine For Lyme Disease?

18 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It’s shaping up to be one of the worst tick years yet, and concerns about Lyme disease—which is transmitted through the bites of some species—ar...

Is This PTSD Treatment Too Good To Be True?

17 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

About 7% of veterans experience post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and that number can be closer to 30% for those who have served in a war zone.  ...

Is It Time For A New Model Of The Universe?

16 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For decades, astronomers have been trying to nail down the value of the Hubble constant—a measure of how fast the universe is expanding. But some co...

How PFAS From A Military Base Has Sickened Nearby Residents

15 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For decades, residents of the small city of Newburgh, New York, were unknowingly drinking water contaminated with toxic PFAS—also known as forever c...

The Leap: And Then The Sub Went Silent

14 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Oceanographer Victoria Orphan’s dream was coming true. She was sitting in the Alvin submersible, on one of its deepest science dives ever. But the t...

How These Spiders At The Bottom Of The Sea Run On Methane

13 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Researchers found a new sea spider with a giant nose, leg cannons, and—most remarkably—a novel way of surviving in the lightless, freezing environ...

As Disasters Escalate, What’s The Future Of FEMA?

11 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

President Trump has said that he wants to phase out FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and move responsibility for dealing with major disa...

Spaghetti Science And Mouth Taping Myths

10 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Most pasta is made from just two ingredients—flour and water. For decades this humble food has prompted physicists around the world to try to unders...

The Goo In Your Home Could Help Science Address Climate Change

09 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We live in a world filled with microbes—they’re inside our bodies, in soil, in deep sea hydrothermal vents, and in your window AC unit. Some micro...

How Do GLP-1 Drugs Override Our Biology?

08 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

GLP-1 medications like Ozempic have dominated headlines over the past couple of years. When writing his new book, Diet, Drugs and Dopamine: The New Sc...

The Leap: Everything Else Is Boring

07 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In both her life and her work, researcher Karmella Haynes has never followed the pack. Karmella explains why she created her own area of research at t...

The Seafaring Life Of ‘Modern-Day Captain Nemo,’ Robert Ballard

04 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In excerpts of two conversations from the Science Friday archives (originally recorded in 2000 and 2009), oceanographer Robert Ballard joins Host Ira ...

Understanding Sunscreen Ingredients And Which Ones You Need

03 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Summer is here, which means it’s the season for soaking up the sun. But it’s important to do so responsibly, considering the strong link between s...

In ‘Jurassic World Rebirth,’ Paleontology Is Still The Star

02 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The latest Jurassic World movie, “Jurassic World Rebirth,” is out today. The movie stars Scarlett Johansson (“The Avengers”) and Mahershala Al...

What Does It Mean To Have A Chatbot Companion?

01 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

AI is not just for automating tasks or coming up with new recipe ideas. Increasingly, people are turning to AI chatbots for companionship. Roughly hal...

The Leap: Mars? It Was A Miracle We Got To Florida

30 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Geologist Steve Squyres risked his career and millions of dollars to get two rovers roaming on Mars. But the mission almost didn’t make it to the la...

After Her Grants Got Cut, This Researcher Is Suing The NIH

27 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Since January, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has made sweeping cuts to science. It's hard to keep track of how many research grants were can...

New Telescope Captures The Cosmos In Groundbreaking Detail

26 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The first images from the brand new Vera C. Rubin Observatory have finally been unveiled, and they show us the cosmos like never before. The camera ca...

How Scientists Made The First Gene-Editing Treatment For A Baby

25 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Last month, scientists reported a historic first: they gave the first personalized gene-editing treatment to a baby who was born with a rare life-thre...

Ancient Bone Proteins May Offer Insight On Megafauna Extinction

24 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Australia is known for its unusual animal life, from koalas to kangaroos. But once upon a time, the Australian landscape had even weirder fauna, like ...

The Leap: You Do Realize… That’s Impossible

23 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As a grad student, Suchitra Sebastian wasn’t sure she wanted to be a physicist. But when one of her experiments gave an unexpected result, she was h...

What We’re Learning From The James Webb Space Telescope

20 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) started collecting data nearly three years ago, and it has already transformed our understanding of the universe...

How ‘Super Agers’ Stay Sharp And Active Longer Than Their Peers

19 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Ever noticed how some people get to their 80s and 90s and continue to be healthy and active? They spend their days playing mahjong, driving to lunch, ...

A Dino’s Last Dinner And Eavesdropping Birds

18 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

While there are a lot of dinosaur fossils, and a lot of plant fossils, the precise connection between the two has been something of a mystery. Now, re...

What Are The Best Practices For Prostate Cancer Screening?

17 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Last month, former President Joe Biden announced that he had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer. The news sparked a larger conv...

The Leap: Garbage In, Garbage Out

16 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Biochemist Virginia Man-Yee Lee has spent a lifetime in the lab, figuring out what happens in the brains of people with neurodegenerative diseases. Sh...

RFK Jr. Reshuffles CDC Vaccine Panel With Vaccine Skeptics

13 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

On Monday, US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired all 17 members of the panel that advises the CDC on who should get certain vaccines and whe...

What’s Next For China’s Space Program?

12 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This week, China’s Tianwen-2 spacecraft sent back its first image from space. It’s headed to a rendezvous with the asteroid Kamoʻoalewa, one of E...

The Ruin And Redemption Of The American Prairie

11 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The prairie might just be the most underappreciated landscape in the United States. Beginning in the early 1800s, the majority of these grasslands wer...

Bedbugs Have Been Bugging Us Since Before Beds

10 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Bedbug infestations are not just a modern problem—these pests have been with early human ancestors for 245,000 years, causing problems long before t...

The Leap: A Scientist’s Quest To See Every Organism On Earth

09 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Manu Prakash is many things—biologist, engineer, inventor, philosopher—but what he isn’t is conventional. Following his instincts has led Manu t...

Are We Prepared To Fight ‘The New Polio’?

06 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A mysterious disease called acute flaccid myelitis (AFM) has been appearing in emergency rooms for about a decade. The disease has caused otherwise he...

How Science Communication Can Step Up Amid Federal Cuts

05 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It’s a precarious time for science in the United States. Federal funding is being slashed, career scientists are being laid off, and researchers are...

How Cannibalistic Tadpoles Could Curb Invasive Cane Toads

04 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

South American cane toads were brought to Australia in 1935 to help eradicate native beetles that were destroying sugar cane crops. The toads didn’t...

Turning The Binoculars On Birders

03 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Birding is a hobby that attracts a very particular group of people: the kind who get up at sunrise, go into the woods, and wait for hours for a little...

The Leap: Be Bold Or Just Don't Do It

02 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As a young plant scientist, Joanne Chory shook up the research establishment with her unconventional approach to figuring out how plants work. Her met...

What Huge Cuts To NSF Funding Mean For Science

30 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Grant funding by the National Science Foundation has been cut by more than half this year, bringing the foundation’s science funding to its lowest l...

What Happens When Air Traffic Control Systems Go Dark?

29 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

At the end of April, air traffic control radar surveillance and radio communication systems at Newark Liberty International Airport went dark for over...

Could The NIH Plan For A ‘Universal Vaccine’ Really Work?

28 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

At the beginning of May, the National Institutes of Health, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, announced a plan to develop a univers...

The Leap: This Is Going To Kill Your Career

27 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Betül Kaçar started her scientific career as a biochemist, working on an enzyme found in zebrafish. But then she found her calling: investigating so...

The Science Of That Big Stunt From The New ‘Mission: Impossible’

23 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The “Mission: Impossible” franchise is known for its big stunts, and the newest film is no exception. Producer Kathleen Davis talks to the film’...

Meet A Pioneer Of Modern Weather Prediction

22 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Climate scientist Jagadish Shukla grew up in a small village in rural India, where people starved if the monsoon season didn’t bring rain. To help h...

Are Physical Buttons And Knobs Making A Comeback?

21 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In recent years, digital touchscreens have replaced many of the buttons and knobs that control various functions in cars. But when Host Ira Flatow wen...

Scientists Identify Genes For Tomato And Eggplant Size

20 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Tomatoes come in all kinds of colors, sizes, and flavors. But what’s going on at the genetic level? What makes a tomato red or yellow? Tiny or giant...

The Leap: The Volcano Whisperer

19 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As a teenager living in St. Vincent, Richie Robertson saw first-hand what a volcanic eruption did to life on the island. Forty years later, he was the...

Lesser Prairie Chicken May Lose Endangered Species Status

16 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The lesser prairie chicken was granted endangered species status in 2023. Now the Department of the Interior is moving to revoke those protections. Wh...

Tracking The Hidden Dangers Of Fighting Fires

15 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Firefighting is a career with an inherent cancer risk, but a full understanding of what those risks are has been elusive. An important registry design...

Identifying New Plants, And The Scientific Secrets Of Superfoods

14 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What does it take to create and maintain one of the largest repositories of botanical information in the world? For starters, it can mean helicopter-i...

Designing Hyperrealistic Body Parts, From Eyeballs To Placentas

13 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Medical sculptor Damon Coyle walks around with a Mary Poppins bag of body parts. Fake ones, that is. At the University of Missouri, his lab creates hy...

The Leap: I Was Considered A Nobody

12 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Biochemist Kati Karikó spent decades experimenting with mRNA, convinced that she could solve the problems that had kept it from being used as a thera...

Cuts To NASA And A Fast-Track For Deep Sea Mining

09 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Proposed budget cuts for NASA would jeopardize space research. And an executive order could change the political tides for deep sea mining.On May 2, t...

How Do Bacteria Talk To Each Other?

08 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Bacteria have been around for billions of years. Could they have come up with complex behaviors that we just don’t understand yet? Could they have t...

Functional Fashion From An Artist And A Caterpillar

07 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A passion for fashion among the “bone collector caterpillar,” who wears a coat of body parts, and an artist who makes fabrics that remember.We inc...

Ancient Iguanas Floated 5,000 Miles Across The Pacific | A Pregnant Ichthyosaur Fossil

06 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Millions of years ago, iguanas somehow got from North America to Fiji. Scientists think they made the trip on a raft of fallen vegetation. Also, the m...

Are There Things That We Know We Can’t Know?

05 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In “Into the Unknown,” an astronomer explores the mysteries of the cosmos and the limits of what science can test.What is time? If the universe is...

Two Steps Forward For Meat Alternatives

02 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Scientists bring us a lab-grown chicken nugget and texturally accurate, plant-based calamari. We’ll bite.There’s a movement in the world of scienc...

How Death Metal Singers Make Their Extreme Vocalizations | Regional Allergies

01 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Being able to belt out a tune like Adele or Pavarotti is not just about raw talent. The best singers in the world have to work on their technique—li...

A New Book On The Horrifying, Creative World Of Insect Zombies

30 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It’s zombie season! At least if you’re watching the new season of the fungal thriller “The Last of Us,” airing right now on Max, which chronic...

Untangling The Mind-Body Connection In Chronic Pain

29 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Research suggests that better understanding the psychological and neurological components of chronic pain may lead to better treatments.Chronic pain i...

A Precisely Pointed Laser Allows People To See New Color ‘Olo’

28 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Researchers isolated one kind of cone in the eye and aimed lasers at it to allow subjects to see a super vibrant teal shade they call “olo.”Think ...

$8B Of Climate Tech Projects Canceled | In Louisiana, A Successful, Growing Wetland

25 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How will market uncertainty and a lack of federal support for climate efforts affect the future of clean energy in the United States? Plus, many wetla...

Investigating Cat Behavior Through Genetics

24 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

With the help of cat owners, a new project investigates cats’ biology and aims to link some of their behaviors to their genes.Calling all cat people...

Advances In Brain-Computer Interfaces For People With Paralysis

23 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

An evolving technology is changing the lives of people with paralysis: brain-computer interfaces (BCI). These are devices that are implanted in the br...

A Blind Inventor’s Life Of Advocacy And Innovation

22 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Connecting Dots: A Blind Life, inventor Josh Miele recounts his life story and path to becoming an accessibility designer.When inventor and scienti...

The Lack Of Science In Road Design Is Deadly

21 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Are traffic engineering decisions based on evidence-based research? Not as much as you might think.If you’ve seen a car crash on the side of the roa...

Possible Signature Of Life Detected On Exoplanet—Maybe | A Colossal Squid Video

18 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Webb Space Telescope picked up traces of dimethyl sulfide on planet K2-18b. On Earth, the molecule comes from microbes and phytoplankton. Also, re...

How ‘Science Interpreters’ Make Hidden Science Visible

17 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Imagine you’re diving into a cell. You’re paddling around in the cytoplasm, you’re climbing up a mitochondria. If you’re having a hard time pi...

The Navajo Researcher Reviving A Desert Peach | A New Dino With Blade-Like Horns

16 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Bringing back Southwest peach orchards won’t be easy, but researchers are on the lookout for remaining trees—and they need help. And, the newly di...

How Interjections Regulate Conversation | Saccharin For Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria

15 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We are rounding up your questions about roads. What confounds you about traffic, or how interstates are laid out? Are there certain road design elemen...

Trump’s Nominee For NASA Administrator Meets Congress

14 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

On Wednesday, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation heard testimony from Jared Isaacman, President Trump’s nominee to lead NA...

How Real Doctors Brought ‘The Pitt’ To Life

11 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We go inside the scientifically accurate ER world created for the TV show with one of its medical consultants.What is it actually like to work in an e...

What Will Replace The International Space Station?

10 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

NASA is planning to decommission the International Space Station by the end of 2030. The ISS, which began operations in 2000, is reaching the end of i...

What Artificial General Intelligence Could Mean For Our Future

09 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What happens when AI moves beyond convincing chatbots and custom image generators to something that matches—or outperforms—humans?Each week, tech ...

Climate Change Has Made Allergy Season Worse. How Do We Cope?

08 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In many parts of the United States, spring has sprung. There’s nothing quite like those first few beautiful days of spring. They’re delightful—u...

Microdosing Peanut Butter Could Alleviate Some Peanut Allergies

07 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Over the past two decades, rates of peanut allergies in children have more than tripled. A variety of theories has been proposed to explain this, from...

The Department Of Health And Human Services Cuts 10,000 Jobs

04 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The cuts hit multiple agencies, affecting work on HIV, gun violence prevention, vaccines, minority health research, and more.On April 1, thousands of ...

Forecasting Cuts Spark Worries About Hurricane Season | Soothing Babies With Music

03 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Emergency response experts say that funding and staff cuts at the National Weather Service could mean less reliable weather forecast. And, babies like...

Massive Iceberg Breaks Off Antarctica, Revealing Wonders Below

02 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In January, an iceberg the size of Chicago splintered off from the Antarctic Peninsula and drifted away in the Bellingshausen Sea.As luck would have i...

TikTok Is Shaping How We Think About ADHD

01 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Mental health information on social media can be both revelatory and misleading. How do clinicians and their patients make sense of it?TikTok and othe...

Engineering Lessons One Year After The Baltimore Bridge Collapse

31 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Engineers take an in-depth look at why the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore collapsed and how to prevent future tragedies.In the early morning of...

23andMe Bankruptcy | A Coating That Can Slow A Golf Ball’s Roll

28 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The company has genetic data of 15 million people, which could be shared with a future buyer. Here’s how to delete it. Plus, an experimental coating...

AI Word Choice | When Dwarf Lemurs Hibernate, Their Chromosomes Do Something Odd

27 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Certain words are overrepresented in text written by AI language models. A study investigates why such patterns develop. Also, the ends of chromosomes...

Developing Faster, Simpler Tools To Treat Tuberculosis

26 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

TB kills more than a million people each year. Dr. Mireille Kamariza has spent her career developing better detection and treatment tools.As the Unite...

Author John Green On The Many Ways Tuberculosis Shaped Human Life

25 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In a new book, author John Green traces how the disease has impacted culture, geography, and even fashion over the centuries.Tuberculosis (TB) has had...

DESI Data Strengthens Evidence Of Change In Dark Energy

24 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Researchers built the largest 3D map of our universe yet. What they found supports the idea that dark energy could have evolved over time.One of the m...

NASA Astronauts Return To Earth After Extended Stay On The ISS | Bottle "Pop" Physics

21 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

After nine months aboard the International Space Station, astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have finally landed back on Earth. Also, a German...

The Evolving Science Of How Childhood Trauma Shapes Adults | Butterfly Memories

20 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The framework of Adverse Childhood Experiences started with an unexpected finding over 30 years ago. How is our approach changing? We know that exper...

How NIH Cuts Could Affect U.S. Biomedical Research

19 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Former NIH director Dr. Harold Varmus speaks out about what recent budget cuts and policy changes could mean for science.One of the areas targeted by ...

Fungi Create Complex Supply Chains | A Rookie Robot Umpire Takes The Field

18 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Fungal networks in the ground ferry crucial nutrients to plants. But how do brainless organisms form complex supply chain networks? Also, in this year...

10% Of NOAA Staff Laid Off | Frozen Funds Leave Farmers In Limbo

17 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Layoffs at the agency, which releases weather forecasts and monitors extreme weather, could have serious implications. Also, funds for climate and sus...

Pi, Anyone? A Celebration Of Math And What’s New

14 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It’s March 14, or Pi Day, that day of the year where we celebrate the ratio that makes a circle a circle. The Greek letter that represents it is suc...