Science Friday

Wandering through a museum, you can get a glimpse of what life in ancient societies looked like. But what did it smell like? And is it even possible to get a whiff of, say, a freshly embalmed mummy, or a 5,000-year-old Saudi Arabian incense burner? That’s exactly what some chemists and olfactory designers are trying to do.
Producer Kathleen Davis talks with archeo-chemist Barbara Huber and perfumer Carole Calvez about how they scientifically recreated the scent of ancient Egyptian mummies and brought that smell to museums on special cards.
Guests:
Dr. Barbara Huber is an archeo-chemist at the University of Tübingen in Germany.
Carole Calvez is a perfumer and olfactory designer and a cofounder of  Iris & Morphée in Paris, France. 
Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.
 

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Cyanobacteria may be the ultimate lesson in resilience. These 3.5 billion-year-old organisms have lived through hell-on-earth conditions, and found creative ways to persevere. While the state of the world feels out of control, Host Flora Lichtman talks to molecular microbiologist Devaki Bhaya about the planet’s ultimate survivalists.
Guest: Dr. Devaki Bhaya is a molecular microbiologist at Carnegie Science in Stanford, California.  
The transcript for this episode is available at sciencefriday.com.

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The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), the largest particle collider in the United States, collided its last particles in early February. RHIC is a massive accelerator ring and set of instruments based at New York’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, and was designed to accelerate gold ions to near-light speed before collision. It was the second most powerful accelerator on the planet, second only to CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. Since RHIC began running in 2000, scientists have used it to study the tiniest subatomic particles, which give insight into some of the universe’s biggest questions. 
Brookhaven nuclear physicist Gene Van Buren joins Host Flora Lichtman to look back on the history of RHIC, what physicists have learned from the collider, and what lies ahead for particle physics.
Guest: Dr. Gene Van Buren is a nuclear physicist at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York.
Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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This year’s Winter Olympics feature a new event called “skimo,” or ski mountaineering. The racing event involves periods of skiing uphill using “skins” for traction, sprinting uphill on foot, and a downhill ski slalom to the finish. Mountaineering historian Peter Hansen joins Host Flora Lichtman for an introduction to skimo, and the scientific connections of early modern mountaineers. 
Then, wildlife ecologist Kevin White describes the amazing capabilities of the mountain goat, what’s known about the physical features that contribute to their climbing ability, and risks to mountain goat populations.
Guests:
Dr. Peter Hansen is a professor of history at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and author of the book The Summits of Modern Man: Mountaineering after the Enlightenment.
Dr. Kevin White is a wildlife ecologist based at the University of Alaska Southeast.
Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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As ICE cracks down in Minneapolis and across the country, reporters and privacy advocates have drawn attention to how the agency is using technology: scanning people’s faces without consent, using private health records to make arrests, tracking people’s location in real time with phone data.
So how does all this work? How does the United States’ data ecosystem make it possible for not just ICE, but any number of government agencies and businesses to buy our private data? And what actually happens after we send that DM or open up Instagram at a protest to post a picture?
To learn more, Host Flora Lichtman sits down with law professor and tech policy expert Laura Moy. She’s testified in Congress about privacy laws and how data brokers profit off of personal data.
Guest: Laura Moy is an associate professor of law at Georgetown Law, based in Washington, D.C.
Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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