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The Science Pawdcast
The Science Pawdcast breaks down the latest science happening in the human world AND the pet world.
Each episode will also bring you a guest to enthral you with their area of knowledge.
You'll learn, be captivated, and laugh along with host Jason Zackowski.
Pets and Science, it's the pawfect mix.
You'll also get episodes of PetChat which are the live shows from social audio.
PetChat is a live community gathering updates about the animals in our life, but also the animals in the wonderful community that supports us!
Heart and Hope.
Science and Shenanigans.
The Science Pawdcast
Season 7 Episode 1: Brain Plastics, Puppy Stress, and Cosmic Discoveries with Dr. Sarah Kendrew
The Science Podcast kicks off its seventh season by delving into the latest research on microplastics found in human brains and the stress experienced by puppy parents. The episode highlights key findings related to the accumulation of microplastics, potential health implications, and the factors that contribute to stress levels in new pet guardians, providing valuable insights and encouraging listeners to reflect on their experiences.
• Discussion on rising microplastics in human brain tissue
• Examination of microplastics’ impact on neurological health
• Insights into the stress of puppy parenting
• Factors contributing to lower and higher stress among pet owners
• Interview with Dr. Sarah Kendrew on the JWST and exoplanet discovery
• Personal anecdotes about hosting pets and the joys of animal companionship
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Hello science enthusiasts. I'm Jason Zukoski. And I'm Chris Zukoski, we're the pet parents of Bunsen, beaker, bernoulli and Ginger.
Speaker 2:The science animals on social media.
Speaker 1:If you love science.
Speaker 2:And you love pets.
Speaker 1:You've come to the right spot, so put on your safety glasses and hold on to your tail.
Speaker 1:This is the Science Podcast. Hello everybody, we hope you're happy and healthy out there. The Science Podcast is back. This is the first episode of season seven. Can you believe that? Seven years of running the science podcast and in the last 20 or so episodes of last season, Chris joined as a co-host and you know it really rejuvenated my I guess, my drive to do the science podcast, because it is kind of boring to talk to myself about science. I love playing off Chris and she likes science as much as me, so it was really fun to do that with her and we're going to be continuing to do that for season seven.
Speaker 1:You'll notice some changes in season seven in that not every episode will have an interview. It's getting harder to find scientists with the fragmentation of trying to find them on social media. So when we have an interview, we'll have an interview. It'll be a slightly longer episode, and when we don't, we won't. We might do an extra science news item that week and then there won't be an interview. So I guess there'll be a little bonus. Probably every second or third episode we'll have a science interview, All right.
Speaker 1:Well, what's on the show this week? In science news we break down a study about something not good about microplastics. You'll have to check that out. And in pet science, a study talks about the stress of being a puppy parent and relating it to being a parent of a toddler. And our guest and ask it expert is Dr Sarah Kendrew, who is an astronomer with the European Space Agency. All right, let's get on with the show. There's no time like science time. This week in science news, Chris, we're going to break down some maybe not great news about tiny shards of plastic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, plastic, plastic everywhere.
Speaker 1:I saw a really good video a couple years ago and I show it to my Chemistry 30 kids when we talk about plastics in the organic chemistry unit. Are you familiar with Krux-Kazat? I hope I'm saying that right, Chris. Do you know what that is, Krux-Kazat?
Speaker 2:I do. That is a company or a person who makes very informative videos in an engaging way, or a person who makes very informative videos in an engaging way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, adam loves Cruz Gazette and they're excellent. Sometimes they get things wrong and they actually say sorry, we got it wrong, and they make a video about why they're wrong. Very engaging videos with simplistic animation and, of course, a British narrator, so it sounds like you're listening to somebody who's really smart. The long and short of it is there's a video about plastics, about how plastics are incredible, but we've become like King Midas and everything that King Midas touched turned to gold, which seems like a really good idea, but of course, he starved to death and every person he loved turned to gold and he wound up being alone and starving to death in the fable. And humans have done that with plastic. Everything we've touched is slowly turning to plastic.
Speaker 2:When I first read the article, I thought, oh, this isn't about how we're able to learn, it's more about actually what you just said. We're turning to plastic.
Speaker 1:The not so great study was published on February 3rd in Nature Medicine and it looks at how, in post-mortem human brain tissue so you know people who've died and they've looked inside their brain tissue they're finding MNPs, which stand for microplastics and nanoplastics, and that will be abbreviated as we talk into MNP.
Speaker 2:So they analyzed 91 brain samples and this is really an interesting part. The brain samples dated back to 1997. And throughout the years they've noticed an increase of the microplastics as time has gone on. So it reminds me a little bit of biomagnification, and you're looking at 1997 brains versus 2020 or 2021 brains and they're seeing definitely an increase of the plastics. In fact, from 2016 to 2024, the median concentration of MNPs rose by about 50%, from 3,345 micrograms per gram to 4,917 micrograms per gram, which is incredible.
Speaker 1:This is not something that should go up. In fact, this is not something that probably should be in your brain at all, and the samples that were collected in 2024, the concentration of MNPs in brain tissue was 10 times higher than those in other organs like liver and kidney tissue, so it seems to be accumulating in the brain. Now why? This is a little bit shocking, was? It challenges some of the previous assumptions that scientists and biologists have had that the blood-brain barrier prevents these polymers, which are fairly big molecules, from entering the brain. It was thought there's no way they could get into the brain because of that special blood-brain barrier, which does a pretty good job of keeping most stuff out of our noggin.
Speaker 2:That's an interesting finding and it's like maybe a semi-permeable membrane then.
Speaker 1:Semi-permeable for plastic.
Speaker 2:For plastic. Yeah, so the size and shape of these plastic particles are extremely small less than 200 nanometers long and less than 400 nanometers wide, so we would typically think that they would be a spherical bead like our scrubbers that used to be in our shampoos and our body scrubs. But they're like. The spherical beads are also commonly used in lab experiments. These particles are thin, sharp and irregularly shaped yeah, that's.
Speaker 1:The scary thing is that they are sharp and and they're not the little spheres. Right, that's what I was thinking. That's the first thing I thought of was this is like residual microbeads from shampoos, but it is a little bit from shampoos, because, while there was very little evidence that the plastic was polystyrene that's common in the food industry and medical supplies it's polyethylene, which is in household items like plastic grocery bags, shampoo bottles and this is shocking all of the plastic toys that kids play with today.
Speaker 2:How many plastic toys did we buy our kids?
Speaker 1:Duncan, for sure, was a fan of VTech. I think all their toys really was plastic.
Speaker 2:It's just so prevalent in our society. It just seemed like a an excellent thing because they could make it cheap. Do you remember?
Speaker 1:what your toys were made of. They were plastic too. My toys were plastic, like He-Man and GI Joe and transformers, and my guess is the Barbies are plastic.
Speaker 2:Barbies had rubber legs. So you could bend them and mold them. I had a cabbage patch doll, so the head was definitely plastic but the body was nylon and stuffing. I just don't remember the sheer amount of toys that, honestly, that we purchased for our kids.
Speaker 1:It just we were more prevalent yeah, we were worse with duncan than we were with adam, but maybe that's because Adam had hand-me-downs from Duncan. I just seem to think that Duncan got way more toys than Adam did. Vessels causes plaque and that increases your risk for heart attacks, strokes and deaths. Now, 12 of those brain samples that you talked about, chris, they were individuals who were diagnosed with dementia, and those who were diagnosed with dementia had higher levels of MNP. Now it's not clear, obviously, if microplastics, those MNPs, contribute to dementia or the condition allows more to accumulate, but it is interesting that the brains with dementia had the highest levels of MNPs.
Speaker 2:That is actually terrifying. This study raises critical questions about how the MNPs enter the brain and once they're there, can they be removed, and what other health effects might they have? So what's the next? People are wondering is this maybe the next asbestos or the next lead? Or maybe it's something much, much worse?
Speaker 1:The big takeaway, as we wrap this up, is there's a big need to understand how they got into the brain, because microplastics are widespread in the environment and other studies have detected them in human tissue like lungs and the liver even the placenta, if you can believe it. They haven't really been detected in the brain. So that's the call to action. How are they getting there? Can we change the formula of plastics to make that stop? It's not like we can say goodbye to plastic. Plastic is as the King Midas analogy is it's everywhere, it's ubiquitous. It's going to be really hard to cut back our dependency on plastic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but you know what we can do that one grocery bag at a time.
Speaker 2:That's right, oh get some paw pack bags from our website. Oh, jason, that's hilarious. But you know what? I gave my teacher friends a little paw pack Christmas pack with some stickers and a paw pack bag and some pens and sticky notes, just clearing out our closet, and they really appreciated it. But one of my teacher colleagues yesterday had her grocery bags and I said, oh, I see you have a pop pack bag and she's like, yep, I'm going to get my groceries and I thought that's less plastic and more advertising for us.
Speaker 1:There you go Cut down on your plastic use If you can. This study is a little spooky and might it might forward some research to the forefront and figuring this out Cause generally not good to have plastic in your brain. That's science news for this week. This week, in pet science, chris and I are going to break down a study that shed some light on the stresses, potentially, of raising a puppy. Puppies are so fun, but I'm not going to lie.
Speaker 2:It's stressful some days. It absolutely is stressful some days. Right, they don't come potty trained and sometimes they have accidents. And then sometimes they're bitey and rip your clothes, and other times it's chaos. It's's always joyful chaos, but it's pretty chaotic when you have a puppy in the house and forget sleeping.
Speaker 1:That's over yeah, so I'm trying to think of the three, the four really puppies, if you count callan, but the three that are still alive bunsen, beaker and bernoulli. Bunsen was by far the easiest puppy, by far not even close not even close no, not Bunsen was potty trained in a week, like instantly. It was shocking it was shocking.
Speaker 2:I was like everybody who's oh, I'm having so much trouble with my potty training of my pet.
Speaker 1:I'm like what Bunsen is amazing in a week or less it's hard to to remember, but it was so incredibly quick. And then, boy, where we got a reality check with Beaker, cause it did take her like the normal time to potty train a dog. And the problem was is that it was in the summer and Bunsen was so hot, so we had to have water and she kept drinking water.
Speaker 2:We had a running joke, it's she would go outside and then she would come back in and have a refill yeah, with water, and we kept going refill.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she had lots of pee accidents in the house when she was learning. And then Bernoulli and he's a. He was about the same as Beaker for potty training. He's still. He doesn't have a tell, which is he doesn't bark when he's got to go out. So you just got to time it. But he's also the most mischievous of the three of them, like he gets into stuff.
Speaker 2:Oh yes, we have a laundry basket that is now chewed very badly.
Speaker 1:I guess Beaker chewed a lot of stuff when she was a puppy. They're about the same. I guess you forget right.
Speaker 2:You forget the negatives, you do forget the negatives, because clearly we got another puppy named Bernoulli, but he by far is the most destructive of all of them. He chews everything and stuff that you don't want him to chew like toilet paper. You're like where is he finding that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2:I thought we puppy proofed our house.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he found a Costco size pack of toilet paper the other day. That was a whole thing. Raising a puppy can be similar to like parenting a baby. It's stressful for guardians. It's not all roses. There's a potential impact of stress experienced by the puppy guardians and that's not well researched and I guess that's the study that we're going to look at today.
Speaker 2:The study was an online survey and it was created specifically for guardians of dogs under 12 months of age, so we would still fit the criteria, and the survey was made available to a global audience, as opposed to just a targeted area.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and what's funny is they use the parental stress scale like something they give young parents to fill out, but they just modified it, so instead of baby it's got like puppy. So they modified this human stress scale for dogs.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the things that could be transferred over to parenting quote unquote of dogs. Yeah, the things that could be transferred over to parenting quote unquote of dogs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a fairly big study. So 783 valid responses were received from puppy guardians. And then, of course, they did the statistical nerdy stuff that goes in with the study. You did that in your master's it. Just that puts me to sleep. That is not what I'm very good at, but they did do some pretty good statistical analysis with it.
Speaker 2:So there were some key findings and factors that were associated with lower stress. So parents or guardians who were satisfied with their puppy's behavior, guess what? They had lower stress. That's why we had no stress with puppy bunsen, because he was so good he was so good and guardians living in australia, in comparison to those living in usa and canada, had guess what lower stress they always sound seem so chill also guardians uh, with higher self-esteem initially, um also had lower stress and guardians who were happy with how puppy responsibilities were divided in their household, divvying up the chores that have to do with puppy.
Speaker 2:And I remember you when we were looking at getting our first dog, callan, you talked about the puppy super stats and it's like a trading card statistics that you are looking at like how are, how trainable are they? How friendly are they? How, what's their grooming score? And is that scored higher in trainability led to lower stress parents that kind of makes sense.
Speaker 1:If you can't train your dog to do anything, it's probably pretty stressful. Yeah, like, why isn't the dog listening to me? Come when I want you to call? No, you're not. Okay, great, all three of the dogs do pretty good, right, and, yeah, all three of them. Now, this is interesting. There's factors that are associated with higher stress. First time puppy guardians experienced higher stress.
Speaker 2:Oh, because you don't know what you're doing. It's the same as when you're a parent what are we doing? What to expect when you're expecting?
Speaker 1:do they have a what to?
Speaker 2:expect when you have a puppy yeah, they need that book we should write that book, jason yeah, but I don't understand.
Speaker 1:so were my parents crazy, stressed out with me because I was the first kid? How come? How come, as you go down the line, the kids get away with more like? That doesn't make any sense with people, because we're way better with Bernoulli than we were with Callan. That doesn't make any sense it does because it's first time.
Speaker 2:Puppy guardians because they don't know what they're doing and so they had the higher stress. But by the time we got to Bernoulli we're not as high stressed with a puppy.
Speaker 1:Guardians that work from home part-time or full-time were more stressed. I guess if you're working from home, the puppy is a full-time job if it's not crated. So you're probably trying to get your work done and the little shark guy is biting your feet or something, so I don't know. Puppies that scored higher in neuroticism the guardians were more stressed. Puppies that scored higher in neuroticism the guardians were more stressed, and guardians agreed that managing more than one dog in the household required a significant amount of time and energy.
Speaker 2:We found that with not necessarily beaker, but with bernoulli maybe what we found is that we had bunsen and things were great and then we had beaker, so we were like two dogs that's no problem. But then when we got bernlli it was exponentially more stressful. And maybe that's not because of three dogs, you're right. Maybe it's because of Bernoulli just being a goober.
Speaker 1:He's extroverted.
Speaker 2:And that's another thing that raises your Extroverted.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he's by far the most cuddly of all three. He's the one that I don't know. He's a more in-your-face kind of dog, but his face is so cute. It's true.
Speaker 2:It's true. He looks at you and then he tilts his head back and he smiles and you're like, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:He is a good dog. I don't want to think anybody thinks we think that he's a goober and he's a. We just love him to death. He's a good dog.
Speaker 2:We do. We do love him. He is so good but also did cause some stress as a puppy.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And now he's a teenager.
Speaker 1:He's definitely a teenager. So it is good to have some of this data, because the what to expect when you're expecting, Chris, if there's not a lot of information for first-time pet owners or just puppy owners or whatever people are going to be guessing You're going to be like it's all going to be anecdotal research. This is what happened to me, but now the data has been gathered so if you understand the fact, the factors associated with stress, you could develop interventions and support systems for those first-time puppy guardians.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, so definitely exploring ways to mitigate the stress through knowledge, for sure.
Speaker 1:I wonder how much harder it would be to have four dogs rather than three.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:I have heard the biggest jump is from two to three.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I did send you a picture of that puppy and you said maybe I did.
Speaker 1:I know you a picture of that puppy and you said I know another Bernice Mountain dog puppy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but it's just not going to work at this time for us, with Bunsen healing and things like that. No, I don't think we could do. And you know what I'm to be fair, bunsen did have his massive surgery of the growth in his abdomen, the cyst, and we had Bernoulli as a puppy at that time. So I don't know that, like we're anecdotally that.
Speaker 1:We were under a lot of stress when Bernoulli was a puppy, Bunsen was. His health was in a decline Like his head was caved in. Yeah, and then he went for then he just about died.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And Bernoulli was a little guy during that time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I guess our experience isn't that fair. Yeah, it can't be generalized over. Hey, we got a new puppy and now we have three dogs. No, I think our circumstance was quite different.
Speaker 1:And that's why it's good to have the data like this from hundreds of people rather than us telling you about our goober.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's true, but you know what? He turned out okay, even though we were distracted with a highly sick dog and having to keep him on crate rest and keep the Bernoullis out.
Speaker 1:No Bernoullis allowed, yeah he turned out really good.
Speaker 2:He did turn out very good.
Speaker 1:That's Pet Science for this week. Hello everybody, here's some ways you can keep the Science Podcast free. Number one in our show notes sign up to be a member of our Paw Pack Plus community. It's an amazing community of folks who love pets and folks who love science. We have tons of bonus Bunsen and Beaker content there and we have live streams every Sunday with our community. It's tons of fun. Also, think about checking out our merch store. We've got the Bunsen Stuffy, the Beaker Stuffy and now the Ginger Stuffy. That's right, ginger the Science Cat has a little replica. It's adorable. It's so soft, with the giant fluffy tail, safety glasses and a lab coat. And number three if you're listening to the podcast on any place that rates podcasts, give us a great rating and tell your family and friends to listen to. Okay, on with the show. Back to the interviews. It's time for Ask an Expert on the Science Podcast and I am thrilled to have Dr Sarah Kendrew, an astronomer with the European Space Agency, today with us. Doc, how are you doing? I'm doing great.
Speaker 3:Hi, thanks for having me. I'm doing great Thanks. How are you?
Speaker 1:I'm good, I'm good. Where are you calling into the show from? Where are you in the world?
Speaker 3:So I am based in Baltimore, maryland. So, even though I work for the European Space Agency, who are, of course, based in Europe, I'm part of a small European team based in Baltimore, maryland, to work on the James Webb Space Telescope at the Space Telescope Science Institute.
Speaker 1:Oh, we're going to be able to talk about that telescope. I'm so excited. Judging by your accent, I don't know if you grew up your whole life in Baltimore, though.
Speaker 3:No, absolutely not. No. So I actually was born and raised in Belgium, just outside Brussels.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay.
Speaker 3:But I have a British father so I have a very British-sounding name and a and a British sounding accent. I also did my studies in the United Kingdom so I also lived there for a long time.
Speaker 1:Nice. And speaking of your studies, I was wondering if you could just give us a little overview about your background, your science background?
Speaker 3:Yeah, sure, I went to university at University College London, so in London in the United Kingdom, and I did my degree there in astronomy. I stayed on to do my PhD there at the same university, but for my PhD I actually moved in a very technical direction. So I worked in technology development and instrument development for telescopes, the kind of technical side of astronomy. So so building the instruments, developing the technology, and that's the area where I've done most of my work in my career. After my PhD I moved around in a few different postdoctoral positions a few years in the Netherlands at the University of Leiden, a few years in Germany in Heidelberg, also working on instruments, and then finally I did a few years at the University of Oxford before I then got offered a position with the European Space Agency to continue my work on the Webb Space Telescope, which I was already working on over in Europe, here in Baltimore, maryland.
Speaker 1:Nice you name dropped a bunch of places which are bucket lists travel destinations for folks. Does any of those places feel like the most home to you, or they all have their own magic to live in and work from?
Speaker 3:Yes, I think everywhere I've lived has had. I really miss things about those places. Definitely every place I've lived, I've learned a lot. I've gotten to know a new culture, maybe a bit of a new language as well. And yes, you're right, they're actually all like really fantastic places that also have really good universities, really good research environment. So I'm very lucky to have been able to spend time in all these places. Home is Belgium. That's where I grew up and my family still live there, but I also lived in London for 10 years and I think that was a really fantastic period and that's where a lot of my closest friends are, so I always love going back to London.
Speaker 1:Were you? Okay, so you the technical side of telescopes. So before we get to what you do now, I'm always curious about the origin story of scientists. Were you a science kid growing up? Was that your origin story? You knew you were going to be a scientist from a young age.
Speaker 3:I actually wasn't. I was a big bookworm. I was very into history and literature. I read a lot, I loved learning languages.
Speaker 3:I was actually not that interested in science as such, but I loved kind of exploration and discovery, which with hindsight I realized as well it is part of science really, and I think as a teenager I started to get a bit into stargazing.
Speaker 3:So we lived outside of the city, we had quite nice clear skies, especially in the wintertime, and so I got into backyard astronomy and then quite a late stage before going to university, realized like this is a thing that I could study and I could do more seriously and I thought it would be a really amazing challenge because I hadn't been that keen on science, I hadn't been that stuck in science for as a child, and so I thought it sounds like a fantastic challenge and I find this really fascinating and it taps into that story of exploration and discovery throughout history and so I think that really appealed to me. But I know there were definitely some adults in my life who were quite surprised that I ended up going to study science, because I think everybody had expected me to go into languages or literature or things like that.
Speaker 1:They thought you'd be teaching Latin and learning other languages. Hey, that's funny.
Speaker 3:Basically yeah.
Speaker 1:That's cool. I appreciate you giving us a little bit of background about you. Now let's jump to the main thing. That's very cool. I swear it's in the news for science junkies like myself every day, and that's the James Webb Space Telescope, or the JWST. I was wondering for people that are listening who are casually interested in science, could you explain to us in your own words, like what the JWST is?
Speaker 3:Sure. So the James Webb Space Telescope is? It's a telescope in space. So for astronomy, the telescopes are the tools that we use to look out into the universe, and for hundreds of years we have been building telescopes, mostly on the ground. We have them in backyards, we have them on remote mountaintops, in deserts and things remote mountaintops and deserts and things.
Speaker 3:But since a few decades, since the middle of the 20th century, since the space age really astronomers became very interested in this idea of what if we actually put a telescope in space? Because, as it turns out, the Earth is not a great place. The surface of the Earth is not a great place from which to look out into the universe. We have the atmosphere all around us, which is great for many things, but it's a big barrier to light coming to us from the stars and distant galaxies, and this is something that's plagued astronomers throughout history. So as soon as we were able to launch things into space and had rockets, astronomers started thinking what if we actually put a telescope out there? It's dark, it's like the things are very stable. We don't. We're outside of the atmosphere. Out there, it's dark, things are very stable, we're outside of the atmosphere.
Speaker 3:And so the first major astronomy observatory launched into space was the Hubble Space Telescope, which many people know, and very soon after Hubble was launched, plans were made here in the US also in Europe for the next big thing, and that next big thing became the James Webb Space Telescope. So it was in development for 25 or so years, I believe, and was just launched on Christmas Day in 2021. So it's still quite new, but it has been up there for a while, and so it's a large telescope. It measures about six and a half meters in diameter in its main mirror, which is what determines ultimately how much light it can collect. So it's much bigger than any telescope we've had before in space and it was hugely technically complex. It was folded up into a rocket, had to be deployed once it arrived out in space, which was very technically complex and challenging.
Speaker 3:And, yeah, so it's in operation at a point in space called L2. So it doesn't just orbit the earth, like satellites do or the Hubble Space Telescope does. It's at a point called the second Lagrangian point, l2, which is about a million miles, million and a half kilometers from the Earth, which is extremely stable. It's in a stable orbit. The temperature is very stable there and has been looked at out into the universe for us 24-7.
Speaker 1:So just going back to Earth-based telescopes, obviously having an atmosphere is good for you and I to stay alive and breathe, but is it the clouds or is it the actual atmosphere that kind of messes up the telescopes? Is that why chucking a telescope into outer space was such an interesting and great idea?
Speaker 3:Yeah, the atmosphere interferes with observations in a few different ways. So, yeah, at the simplest level, it's the clouds. It's just not clear. We can't see out.
Speaker 3:Also, depending on light we're actually looking at. So what wavelength or what color of light we're looking at? Some wavelengths are actually completely blocked by the atmosphere, so a lot of ultraviolet light, for example, just doesn't even make it through a lot of the infrared as well. So we're actually what we can see with our eyes is just a tiny portion of all the different colors of light that we want to observe from space, and a lot of the light is actually just blocked by the molecules in the atmosphere. In addition, even the light that does make it through the atmosphere, even when the weather is beautifully clear, there is still a lot of churning, the gases in the atmosphere churning around just from heat, transport and earth's rotation. So it's never really beautifully still, even when it might look that way, and that constant churning, that constant movement, disturbs the light that's coming through and so actually doesn't give us very sharp images, and that's very challenging.
Speaker 1:And it did. I remember it launching on Christmas day and the whole lead up to it was so dramatic. Were you working on the JWST when it launched? Were you on the team then? I'm sorry. Yeah, I guess you would have been. You developed the tool.
Speaker 3:We'll talk about that later, sorry, yep, yeah, so I've worked on one of the instruments for web since 2008. So most of my career after my PhD, and so I was already working at the operation center since 2016. So, yes, I was definitely part of that team when it launched. I was actually able to go to the launch.
Speaker 1:Oh man.
Speaker 3:Yep. So actually, in fact and I didn't actually have any official duties at that point Everything was ready to go and it was a matter of waiting until things were in space and we could start doing all our initial checkout tests. We did have other members of my team who were, in fact, back here in Baltimore at the operation center really supporting the whole launch process. So I was working, but I also was lucky enough to have a few days off and to be able to actually go watch the launch.
Speaker 1:Wow, were you, as stressed out as the other science communicators were on social media leading up to launch and while it was launching for the big unfolding in space.
Speaker 3:Oh yes, absolutely. I even think it was such a stressful period as you probably remember, the dates kept moving around, which is very common for these big launches. There was also we were in the middle of the pandemic and in fact, just around that time there was a really big kind of COVID wave going through everywhere, so that added this sort of additional stress. And, yes, it was an extremely hectic period and I think, to be honest, I had to compartmentalize a little bit. I think I only really started processing the magnitude of it a few weeks later, because I think at the time I was just trying to get through the logistics and making sure everything went right from a practical point of view.
Speaker 1:Doc, I was checking social media feeds like every five minutes leading up to lunch and then there's another NASA scientist, dr Jessie Christensen. She studies exoplanets. So I was having like a fun back and forth with her on social media because she was like so hopeful it was going to launch and then hopefully it didn't like explode or something horrible. So everybody cheered, I tell you, in SciComm when that thing launched and it seemed to be going perfectly. So kudos to everybody involved.
Speaker 3:Yes, absolutely. And from my point of view as I worked on one of the science instruments. So kudos to everybody involved. We're just as grateful to all of the engineers who worked on the launch, who put the telescope together and the whole deployment, everything. So we felt like just so extremely fortunate as well to have been part of that.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. So JWST unfolds Big cheer and you are now up to the plate because you helped design a tool or were part of a tool team. It's called the MRI, and could you explain what that does and why it's important?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so the instrument is called MIRI, m-i-r-i, which stands for Mid-Infrared Instrument. The James Webb Space Telescope is a very large observatory. It's a complex system. The basic component of it is the telescope itself. So the telescope itself is what catches the light and brings it to a focus and sends it to one of the instruments. So it's the instruments that actually, where the light gets recorded, it's the instruments that contain different filters, different gratings or prisms to disperse the light into spectra and actually take the images. And so Web has four of those instruments on board. There's NIRCam, nirspec, niris and the fourth is MIRI, which is the one that I work on and that I have worked on for a long time.
Speaker 3:What's special about it? It's really is the wavelength range it observes. So it observes the longest, reddest infrared wavelengths that the Webb telescope is sensitive to. The other three instruments all catch light and record light that is at shorter wavelengths in the infrared. So MIRI has that very unique niche of the mid-infrared wavelength range that we record, and we have various different components. All of these instruments in themselves are quite complex systems too. So MIRI has a regular imaging camera. It can do spectroscopy. It can also do coronography, where we block out the light of a bright star to be able to visualize planets or structures around the star. So we have lots of different optical components on board to really be able to look at the light in as many different ways as possible to get the picture of the physics that's happening.
Speaker 1:Okay, I love the explanation, that's all right. Long wavelength infrared.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:So, specifically, what are some of the things that this instrument has seen Like? What is it spied in the couple, the three or four years that JWST has been in outer space?
Speaker 3:So Miri has the other three instruments. We've looked at a huge range of different objects, different types of objects. So we have observed objects in the solar system, some planets or moons of planets and small solar system objects like asteroids. We have looked at exoplanets, in which are in our own galaxy, so other planetary systems orbiting stars in our galaxy. We have actually spent a huge amount of time observing planets. So that's been a very exciting area of research where there's been lots of new discoveries.
Speaker 3:And then all the way out to the most distant galaxies in the universe that we've also heard a lot about, from Webb universe that we've also heard a lot about from Webb In the mid-infrared.
Speaker 3:So the very distant, the most distant galaxies, so those that really are, just when we're looking back to just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.
Speaker 3:They're the signposts that we get from, those that indicate whether stars are forming or how many stars are forming or how rapidly they're forming many stars are forming or how rapidly they're forming or whether they have a very active black hole at their center. Those signposts all start shifting to longer wavelengths due to the expansion of the universe and they start shifting into miri's wavelength range. So for these very distant objects, miri becomes extremely important to understand the physics and to characterize them, and this capability is very unique. These are wavelengths that we could not see with the Hubble Space Telescope, so we have a very kind of unique niche there and a lot of it's a very new view on these very distant galaxies, but also, as I said, exoplanets, has been a huge area of discovery for MIRI, specifically because if we want to look at the emission from the planets themselves, so the signature of the thermal emission, so really direct light coming from the planet, that tends to peak in the mid-infrared where MIRI is sensitive, so that's been a really important niche for us as well.
Speaker 1:I can't imagine how exciting it must be when that data comes in for a planet that's orbiting another star. I just think back to when I was a small child like that was science fiction, like we just didn't know anything about stuff really outside of our solar system, beyond the big, huge objects our telescopes could see.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely yeah. This has been really exciting. Our telescopes could see. Yeah, absolutely yeah. This has been really exciting and I think in the first months after the launch we tested a lot of these functions out. We did a few test observations with the instruments looking at these exoplanet systems, because we knew there was going to be so much interest from the community and we wanted to be really prepared and understand how our instruments were going to do in these observations. And just when we saw the data from these test observations, we thought they would require a lot of processing to be able to see the signatures of the planets, but they, just straight out of the box, it was. The data was so beautiful, we could just see the signatures of these planets, and so easily. And so I think everybody was just yeah, we were just stunned. So even for us who built the instrument, we in principle know what it can do, but it's still different when you first point it to the sky and you actually see that working. It is pretty phenomenal.
Speaker 1:I would love for you to share, maybe like some interesting things about a couple of the exoplanets that you've scanned with this instrument. What are some cool things from the data?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So some of them you made a few like very interesting discoveries. Of course they're very time consuming observations and so you have to really build up observations of many objects to really really progress our knowledge in a sort of a global way. But some really interesting things that we found is we've made some of the first detections of molecules that were produced by photochemistry, so photochemical processes, so that is, molecules that were produced directly under the influence of the radiation from the host star. This is something that happens in our atmosphere as well. We have chemistry that's driven by the radiation from the sun, but we had not really seen that very directly on these exoplanets. So one such molecule is sulfur dioxide. That was a very early discovery. We hadn't really been able to see that molecule being produced in exoplanet atmospheres and tells us some very interesting things about the interaction between the host star and the planetary systems around them.
Speaker 3:Another interesting so there's a very interesting planetary system called TRAPPIST-1, which, being Belgian and it's from a Belgian discovered by a Belgian telescope called TRAPPIST I feel I'm very fond of, and so this star has actually has a planetary system with, I believe, five planets, so it's a really multi-planet system, very much like our own solar system, and so there's been a huge amount of interest in those planets because I believe they're all in what we call the habitable zone, so what we feel could create conditions that are conducive to life developing.
Speaker 3:So there's been a huge amount of interest in this object and Webb has spent an awful lot of time already looking at these planets with various instruments, including MIRI, to try and see if any of these planets do have an atmosphere, and that's been really fascinating, and I believe so far we haven't really found the evidence of the atmosphere, but it's the type of observation I think that we're going to be doing a lot more of.
Speaker 3:So I think those are two really some really exciting science that's been happening in the area of exoplanets with Webb. But what's fantastic, I feel, about exoplanet science is that it's such a fast growing field we're really on the cusp of learning so many new things that it's such a fast-growing field we're really on the cusp of learning so many new things that it's a very vibrant research community that is constantly coming up with new ideas of better ways to use the telescope, better ways of using the instruments to really try and get the most detailed data, and that's been fantastic to be able to work on and to really drive that forward and work with the research community on that.
Speaker 1:So I have a couple kind of more silly questions but I'm sure people who are listening want to know. The one is maybe more serious with the science backing is when JWST looks at, say, a planet within the, an exoplanet within the TRAPPIST system, would you be able to get data from the instruments on it and the imaging that would lean towards the planet having life, or is that an impossibility with the technology right now?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a really good question.
Speaker 3:I think the search for life is one of these questions that's driving a huge amount of research right now, and part of that is trying to figure out what that would also look like.
Speaker 3:What would be the signature that would tell us for sure there is life on this object, and that's a really fascinating question, I think, right now. So it would be extremely challenging to be able to look at an exoplanet and really say for sure with our current instrumentation that's a sign of life. So we may need to wait for the next large mission, which is already in the works, and that is, in fact, one of the big goals of that next mission For NASA. That's been, I think, a a big message for going forward. But I think with web we're going to be able to make a huge amount of progress in understanding atmospheric chemistry on exoplanets, understand the physics and the dynamics and the processes in that are happening, how they form, how they evolve. So I think we're going to be able to make some really big steps towards that, and I'll never say never, because scientists are incredible, our instruments are amazing, but that would be my guess.
Speaker 1:I feel like, from Hubble to JWST, or like the telescopes in between, scientists have went from like guessing to having actual data, like probably before your sulfur dioxide discovery, like there was. They were pretty sure it happened, but there was no evidence that it did thing. Am I on the right track?
Speaker 3:Yes, yeah, that's absolutely right. Yeah, so we're able to. We've been able to confirm a lot of things that people had thought we would be able to see, but we'll we'll get to see some new things as well and create some new questions and create some new areas of research.
Speaker 1:All right. So the big question before we move on is, as somebody who works on one of the most powerful pieces of technology we've sent into outer space, what do you think about? The big question Is there life out there?
Speaker 3:I think the answer to that is yes, I don't have too many. Yeah, yeah, I'm pretty confident in saying that, yes, there is Just purely based on statistics about the size of the universe, the number of planets that are out there, and, yeah, that we know that actually planetary systems form around many stars 're actually that we're our solar system isn't necessarily special. That planets really form as a natural byproduct of the way stars form. So there are just so many out there. It seems unlikely that there wouldn't be life out there. To be honest, whether or not? Because even the existence of humanity, the existence of life forms here on Earth, is a tiny blip in the overall history of the universe. If you change the question to what is the likelihood that during the existence of humanity we will actually be able to see that life elsewhere in the universe, I think the probability changes a little bit. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:yeah, and then the probability. Probability goes down way way more if it's intelligent life that's sufficiently evolved to make signals off the planet, because it could just exactly yes, bacteria or protozoa or some kind of gooey gooey thing in a gooey ocean, that's not going to be sending signals out exactly.
Speaker 3:stars and planets have their own kind of formation timescales, and so the way that life evolves, or the timescale over which life would evolve, can also be dramatically different in different planetary systems. We already know, for example, that Mars is likely to have had at some point life in the past, but that just it's not there anymore, and the same could be the case for many other types of systems something like 50 million years ago, all the volcanoes stopped on mars about the same time as all of the dinosaurs on earth went extinct.
Speaker 1:That's just that kind of thing, yes this is an unfathomable amount of time, and of course, it's like ships passing in the dark, except they're separated by crazy distances and they don't have lights on. So yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, probability is pretty low. I got it. Okay, I love that answer, thank you. So my kind of like last fun question before we move to some of our standard ones is you've you're working on this really cool piece of technology, or you're maybe some of the first eyes that see data on other worlds orbiting other stars? You're peering back to the earliest times of our universe, before the Big Bang. But, looking forward, what's something or things you are most excited about in space exploration or research? Something that you know young Sarah reading a book would be dreaming about now?
Speaker 3:There's so much exciting research happening right now.
Speaker 3:Of course, I'm really excited about things that Webb is going to be doing in the next few years looking at more exoplanet systems, looking deeper and deeper into the history of the universe Fantastic, but we have new missions coming along as well.
Speaker 3:So in the next few years there's actually going to be several missions in space and a telescope on the ground as well the Rubin Observatory coming online that are going to be scanning large areas of the sky, so really more kind of big survey type um observatories, rather than looking at individual objects, and these are going to tell us so much about the large-scale structure of the universe and also they're going just from, because they're going to be continuously scanning around the sky.
Speaker 3:They're also going to find so many objects that are exploding, things that we call transients, so things that go bang in the universe, and I think we're going to learn so much from these missions. So we have the European mission, euclid, which launched last year, and here for NASA, we have the Roman Space Telescope launching in a couple of years time and then the Rubin Observatory on the ground. All of these missions are giving us this huge wide field view of the universe, and I think we're going to learn a huge amount about these really fundamental questions in the science of the universe, like what's dark energy, constraining dark matter, things like that. I'm super excited about seeing those missions coming online as well.
Speaker 1:I love that. I need more scientists talking about dark energy and dark matter. I've had a dark matter scientist twice on my podcast and I'm still a little fuzzy about what it is.
Speaker 3:We all are. That's the problem.
Speaker 1:Yeah, good thing there's more data coming in to make it less fuzzy for somebody who's not a cosmologist like myself to understand. Very cool, so I'm going to put you on the hot seat. What are you more excited about with, like within our solar system, the Artemis missions to get stuff back to the moon, or like Europa Clipper that just launched? Or is it equal? Is it like a favorite child and you can't pick?
Speaker 3:I am going to say Europa Clipper. We actually the European space agency had its own Jupiter mission that launched the JUICE mission that actually launched last year, I believe. So that's just a little bit ahead of Europa Clipper, but the two of them together are going to be doing very complementary science in the Jupiter system. So I think, with JUICE and Europa Clipper together, I'm extremely excited about that because I think that the icy moons of the giant planets are some of the most exciting parts of the solar system, and so I'm really excited. But of course it's going to take those missions quite a few years to get to Jupiter.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a bit of a drive four and a half hours. Yeah, you're on the way there and the kids are misbehaving. You can't turn the car around and come back away there and the kids are misbehaving. You can't turn the car around and come back. Yep, all right, thanks, doc. We have a couple standard questions we ask all our guests about, and the first one is a pet story. We mix science in the human world and science in the pet world, and we love when our guests share pet stories from their life. Would you be able to do that with us?
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Our pet is a dog called Tycho, and Tycho is six years old and we adopted him from a rescue organization when he was about 16 weeks old. He's a mutt but he's mostly German Shepherd Labrador mix, so he's quite a big boy. And Tycho is named after the astronomer Tycho Brahe, who lived in the 16th century, who was quite an interesting character. Like he lost his nose in a jewel apparently, so he had a golden nose, and so we've always liked Tycho Brahe in our household, so our dog is named after him.
Speaker 3:But one of our favorite anecdotes about Tycho is that during the JWST commissioning period so this is the initial six-month period where we turn on all the instruments and check everything out we were able to connect remotely to the operations center to be able to monitor things even when we were not on site or when we were not officially on duty, and pretty much the whole six-month period I had my computer connected remotely and listening into the operations center, and we started to notice that Tycho as soon as he heard it that he would always come sit in my office, and so he seemed to really enjoy the chatter of the operations center, and so even when I wasn't in my office, when we were having dinner or something in the dining room. Then, you know, if he could hear the JWST commissioning chatter then he would always come sit next to my computer and he would nap here. So that was one of our favorite kind of anecdotes that he loved being part of JWST commissioning.
Speaker 1:That's a sweet story. I love it. I got to ask a question, though to some historian, like dueling seemed to be, you'd lose parts of your body, like it just seemed that people had anger management problems back then yes, I believe he might also have had.
Speaker 3:He had drunk quite a lot as well, which?
Speaker 1:that might have been somehow related. Yes.
Speaker 3:Yes, but I'm not sure.
Speaker 1:but that leads to sword fighting. Yep.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but he was a phenomenal scientist and this is, you know, in the pre telescope era even and yes, he was phenomenal made huge contributions to science, and so he is a very big name in astronomy.
Speaker 1:Decent. I'm glad he just lost only his nose and not his life. Yep, thanks for sharing your pet story, doc. As we close, we challenge all of our guests to share a super fact with us. It's something that they know, that they tell people at cocktail parties, at Christmas, at family gatherings, and it blows people's mind. Do you have a super fact for us?
Speaker 3:One of my favorite mind-blowing facts and it is going to be related to the Webb Space Telescope is that the primary mirror of the JWST measures six and a half meters in diameter. It's composed of 18 individual segments, but the quality of the mirrors is so high so the smoothness of the surface is so good that if you stretched out the mirror over the entire width of the United States, the tallest bump would be less than five centimeters in height.
Speaker 3:Holy cow, which is hard to imagine, but I actually checked the calculation and it is correct.
Speaker 1:That sounds like the province to the right of us, saskatchewan's, about that flat. That's a Canadian joke, sorry people.
Speaker 3:Yep.
Speaker 1:That's one. That's a super fact. I love it. Thanks, sarah. Thank you so much for being our guest today sharing some of your knowledge, and it's just so exciting from our family. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us on the science podcast. Are you yourself on social media anywhere can people follow or connect, or is there a website you can send folks to?
Speaker 3:I, yes, I am on blue sky. I'm pretty active on blue sky. I am just sarah kendrew and on instagram. Instagram is come to Instagram for the dog pictures. Blue sky for the science facts Instagram as well. I'm Sarah dot Kendrew. Okay, and just welcome to follow me there. And then the Webb Space Telescope, of course, has a huge presence online. Webbtelescopeorg is NASA's main website.
Speaker 1:Sweet. Okay, so we'll have. We'll have a couple of your links in our show notes, folks, if you want dog pictures, go to Instagram. If you want science stuff, go to blue sky. We'll have those links. That's it for this week's show. Thanks for coming back every week to the science podcast and if you're new, welcome. I can't believe we're on season seven. Big shout out to the guests this week and also a special thank you to the top tier of our paid community of the pop pack plus the top dogs. At the end of every episode we give them a shout out chris, take it away.
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