A Look Back At The Top Science Stories of 2022

2022 was chock full of big science news. Scientists announced an important milestone toward the feasibility of nuclear fusion. Doctors transplanted a pig heart into a human for the very first time. And NASA returned to the moon with the successful launch of the Artemis I mission.

Ira recaps the year in science news with Tim Revell, deputy United States editor of New Scientist, including what the James Webb Space telescope has taught us about our universe, the significance of ChatGPT on the future of artificial intelligence, the spread of Mpox, and more.

The American beaver, Castor canadensis, nearly didn’t survive European colonialism in the United States. Prized for its dense, lustrous fur, and also sought after for the oil from its tail glands, the species was killed by the tens of thousands, year after year, until conservation efforts in the late 19th century turned the tide.

In her new book, Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America, author Leila Philipp tells that tale—and the ecological cost of this near-extermination. But she also has good news: beavers, and their skillful engineering of waterways, have the potential to ease the fire, drought and floods of a changing climate. She talks to Ira about the powerful footprint of the humble beaver.

This book is the SciFri Book Club’s January 2023 pick. Find out more about our book club on this month’s main page.

On a Saturday afternoon walk, Kelly Schofield and her husband turned a corner onto a road near their house in Bow. They sensed something was wrong with the beaver pond before they saw it. “You could smell it. It was pretty strong. And then when we got down to the pond where you could really see the pond, you could see it was gone,” she said.The pond was drained. Left behind was a huge tract of mud, and creatures trying to survive. Neighbors took videos of fish floundering as the water receded.

Beavers are beloved by some and considered a nuisance by many. But Schofield and others who lived on the pond agreed: nature’s engineers made their property more valuable, and made their lives better. They took their kids down to the water to learn about frogs and turtles; watched ducks stop by as they migrated south.

Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.

Nothing beats the smell of a live Christmas tree in your home, but how can you keep the needles on your tree and off your carpet? Rick Bates, professor of horticulture at Penn State University, offers tips for how to properly care for your Christmas tree this holiday season.

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Keeping The Bubbly In Your Holidays, With Fizzical Science

As the year winds to a close, you may be attending gatherings where a festive flute of champagne is offered. Champagne production starts out with a first fermentation process that turns ordinary grape juice into alcoholic wine. A second fermentation in the wine bottle produces the dissolved carbon dioxide responsible for the thousands of fizzy bubbles that are a distinctive part of the experience of drinking champagne and other sparkling wines. 

In this archival interview from 2012, Ira talks with Stanford University chemist Richard Zare about the interplay between temperature, bubbles, the surface of the glass in which the drink is served, and surprising factors such as lipstick chemistry that can influence the sparkliness of each sip, and delves into the age old question of the best ways to keep an opened bottle of champagne bubbly for longer.  

66 million years ago, a massive asteroid hit what we know today as the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico. Many people have a general idea of what happened next: The age of the dinosaurs was brought to a close, making room for mammals like us to thrive.

But fewer people know what happened in the days, weeks, and years after impact. Increased research on fossils and geological remains from this time period have helped scientists paint a picture of this era. For large, non-avian dinosaurs like Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus rex, extinction was swift following the asteroid impact. But for creatures that were able to stay underwater and underground, their post-impact stories are more complicated.

Joining Ira to discuss her book The Last Days of the Dinosaurs is Riley Black, science writer based in Salt Lake City, Utah.

The path to becoming a scientist is not unlike the scientific process itself: Filled with dead ends, detours, and bumps along the way.

Danielle Lee started asking questions about animal behavior when she was a kid. She originally wanted to become a veterinarian. But after being rejected from veterinary school, she found a fulfilling career as a biologist, doing the type of work she always wanted to do—but never knew was possible for her.

Science Friday producer Shoshannah Buxbaum talks with Dr. Danielle Lee, a biologist, outreach scientist, and assistant professor in biology at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville in Edwardsville Illinois about what keeps her asking questions, what rodents can help us understand about humans, and the importance of increasing diversity in science.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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