More at http://scifri.me/wb32ux

With more than a thousand exoplanets now in our sights, PRI’s The Takeaway asks: “What would it be like to visit them?” Host John Hockenberry joins Ira to share some of the educated guesses that astronomers Sarah Ballard and Natalie Batalha have made about what it might be like to vacation on Kepler-438b or KOI 314.02

Plus, MIT exoplanet hunter Sara Seager weighs in on the question at the top of every interplanetary tourist’s mind: Is there life out there? In a new review article in Science Advances, Seager explores how tell-tale atmospheric gases could reveal life on exoplanets many light years away.


The Interstellar Tourist’s Guide to Exoplanets

Ryan Rykaczewski describes one of the most massive migrations on the planet, driven by the sun. Image by Tintinnidguy (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons 

#ExplainTheSun  - The Largest Migration on The Planet

Once, there was the ordinary incandescent light bulb. It shone brightly, but wasted much of the energy put into it as heat. Then came the compact fluorescent. And as costs have dropped, consumers have increasingly been switching to light-emitting diode (LED) technology for many lighting applications, in an ongoing search for a more efficient bulb. Now, in work published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, researchers report that nanophotonic devices may be able to breathe new life into old incandescent technology. Marin Soljačić and Ognjen Ilic, two authors of the study, explain how they’ve been able to “recycle” some of the incandescent bulb’s wasted heat and re-emit it as visible light, boosting efficiency.

For the Lowly Incandescent Bulb, a Ray of Hope

Science, technology, and other cool stuff from public radio's Science Friday. It's brain fun, for curious people. From WNYC Studios.

The Interstellar Tourist’s Guide to Exoplanets

SciFri

Related tracks