An Asteroid Impact, Spotted In Advance

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: This is Science Friday. I’m Sophie Bushwick. I’m senior news editor at New Scientist, and I’m filling in for Ira Flatow this week while he’s on vacation.

Later in the hour, using DNA for data storage and computing, and we’ll meet the Manhattant, a species of ant now taking Manhattan. But first, this Wednesday, an asteroid named 2024R1 burned up in the atmosphere above the Philippines. As asteroids go, it was pretty harmless, but astronomers are still excited about the event. Here to talk more about the impact is Science Friday senior producer Charles Bergquist. Hi, Charles.

CHARLES BERGQUIST: Hey, Sophie.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: So tell me more about this asteroid.

CHARLES BERGQUIST: Yeah, 2024RW1 was an asteroid about a meter across. And as you said, it burned up in the atmosphere without doing any damage. This kind of asteroid really isn’t that unusual. NASA says we get one of this size maybe every two weeks or so. There were some pictures that captured this particular impact from the ground, but a lot of people in the Philippines probably didn’t get to see it due to weather conditions because there was a typhoon–

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: Oh no!

CHARLES BERGQUIST: –typhoon Yagi in the area at the time.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: Wait, if it’s not big and it didn’t hurt anything and most people didn’t even see it, then why do we care?

CHARLES BERGQUIST: Yeah, so what was cool about this event is that astronomers with a project called the Catalina Sky Survey actually spotted it earlier in the day, like eight hours earlier or so. And they were able to predict where and when it would be likely to enter the atmosphere. You know, we have a good handle on a lot of the bigger objects in space near us.

But usually, we only learn about the presence of these smaller near-Earth objects like this one after someone sees the fireball in the sky. The European space agency said it was just the ninth time that an asteroid like this had been spotted before impact. So this is a pretty unusual event.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: And you have a related story about a human-made meteor shower?

CHARLES BERGQUIST: That’s right. You might recall the space mission called DART, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test. And this was basically testing a possible planetary defense against these larger near-Earth objects. You know, if you slam something into an asteroid head on, would it be possible to nudge it off its course and change its trajectory?

So back in 2022, NASA sent this craft to slam into Dimorphos. This was a small moonlet orbiting the larger asteroid called Didymos. And they found that, yeah, they were able to change the trajectory of that smaller object. But it turns out that crash also kicked loose around 2 pounds million of debris and dust and rocks and stuff.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: Oh wow.

CHARLES BERGQUIST: Yeah so this new study says some of that material could actually drift through space and make it to near Mars and the earth in the next 10 to 20 years or so. And that would create a new meteor shower that folks could watch for. And they calculate there might be enough of this leftover debris to last for at least 100 years.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: Very cool. Staying on the planetary sciences for a moment, there’s new research into gold and earthquakes?

CHARLES BERGQUIST: Yeah, so this is a cool one. So if you’re hunting for gold, one of the things prospectors keep an eye out for is the mineral quartz. Areas that have veins of quartz are where you tend to find gold nuggets.

Now, researchers say in the journal Nature Geoscience that that connection between gold and quartz might be due to the piezoelectric effect. And that’s when stress on a crystal from bending or squeezing it can make electricity or vice versa. Quartz is a piezoelectric material, and the researchers say that the stress on the quartz from earthquakes could make enough electricity to cause aqueous gold, that’s gold dissolved in the water, to deposit out of the solution in the rock. And the electricity could also help small particles of gold to clump up more gold over time and form larger nuggets or veins of gold within the quartz.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: That is amazing. Wait, so could California’s notoriously shaky ground maybe have helped produce the material for the gold rush?

CHARLES BERGQUIST: So it definitely seems plausible, right, if earthquakes lead to gold nugget formation. But I’ll note that the San Andreas fault, you know, the big name fault in California itself, isn’t normally associated with gold. And the main California gold rush deposits were, like, out in the Sierra Nevadas. So who knows?

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: I guess we’ll have to go out there and start digging and try to figure it out.

CHARLES BERGQUIST: That’s right.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: Looking for another kind of treasure, researchers may have identified a new kind of pain medication.

CHARLES BERGQUIST: Yeah, so we all know that pain medications are a major challenge. There are– for minor pain, there’s things like aspirin and ibuprofen and acetaminophen. But for serious pain, you’re generally looking at things like the opioid drugs.

There are millions of people that need those pain medications to control acute or chronic pain. But at the same time, you know, those opioids have side effects and can pose risks of addiction and misuse. So I learned about this new drug from an article in Scientific American by Marla Broadfoot.

The FDA has accepted for review a new kind of pain medication made by vertex pharmaceuticals. It’s called Suzetrigine formerly known as VX548, and this works in a new way by stopping up a sodium channel in the pain receptor neurons, it basically blocks the ability to transmit the pain signal. And if this drug is approved, it would be the first new way to treat pain in over 20 years. They’re hoping to have a decision on this drug next year.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: In other medical research news, there’s efforts to see inside a living body. Tell me more.

CHARLES BERGQUIST: Yeah, this one is earlier in the pipeline. So if you want to see inside the body, there are things like X-rays and MRI scans. But what if you could just look through the skin? Researchers report in the Journal of Science that they found if you take the right colored dye and apply it to the skin of the mouse, the dye absorbs light in a way that it makes the skin scatter less light and can actually make it transparent to certain wavelengths.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: Wow.

CHARLES BERGQUIST: Yeah, they found that they could see things like blood vessels on the surface of the brain. They could see internal organs in the mouse’s abdomen. And they could even watch peristalsis. That’s the squishy muscle contractions that would move food through the digestive tract.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: Ah! It’s kind of gross but very, very cool. I love it. So, what’s the magic ingredient here?

CHARLES BERGQUIST: One thing I love about this story is that it’s using the food coloring FDNC yellow five, which it turns out is the coloring that helps make Mountain Dew that bright yellow color–

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: Yeah.

CHARLES BERGQUIST: –or bright yellow M&Ms and a bunch of other snack foods. The researchers say they aren’t sure if the technique will work as well on humans because, you know, our skin is a lot thicker than mouse skin.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: So I shouldn’t be rubbing mountain dew on my hands to try to see through them?

CHARLES BERGQUIST: Probably not. You might need to use, like, a lot more dye, or they’ll have to find other ways to get the dye in there. But you know, this is an intriguing start.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: OK, from a dye found in snack foods to a different sort of snack, there’s a murder mystery at sea.

CHARLES BERGQUIST: Yeah, so you know the line about how the big fish eats the little fish?

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: Yeah.

CHARLES BERGQUIST: This is pretty much that, but with a really, really big fish. Researchers had a satellite tracking tag on a pregnant shark called a porbeagle. These are not small.

Like, this was about seven feet long, hundreds of pounds. The satellite tags collect data like temperature and depth readings, and they’re designed to pop off the shark after a while, and then they float up to the surface for researchers to collect.

So in this case, the team got a signal from the tag that was on this pregnant porbeagle that the tag has been released and is floating near Bermuda. But after they collected it and read the data, the data was weird. The log on the tracker showed that for months, the porbeagle swam at one depth during the day, another depth during the night.

You can see the depth readings and the water temperature readings going up and down in the logs. But then starting in March of 2021, there’s this period of four days in the record where the tag keeps moving up and down in the water. But it stayed at a constant temperature, about five degrees warmer than the water day and night. And then four days after that, the tag comes to the surface.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: Hm.

CHARLES BERGQUIST: So the only explanation that they can come up with is that the tag spent four days in the stomach of a larger predator before it was excreted.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: Ah! Do we know who done it?

CHARLES BERGQUIST: So the researchers say either a white shark or a shortfin mako shark are the likely suspects because they’re the only things that would be in the area at that time and the right size to go hunting for a porbeagle. But there’s really no way to know.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: And that’s not the only ocean mystery this week.

CHARLES BERGQUIST: Yeah, this next one is sad. You may have heard of Hvaldimir. This is a male beluga whale that fisherman near northern Norway first noticed in 2019. This particular beluga seemed very used to humans, and he was found wearing a camera harness that was labeled equipment, Saint Petersburg, which gave rise to the theory that he was an animal trained for military operations or spy work by Russia.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: OK.

CHARLES BERGQUIST: Yeah, so Hvaldimir stayed around Norway and Sweden after he was freed from his spy harness. And he would sometimes interact with people.

He kind of became a tourist attraction around the area. It took him a while to really learn to hunt for food on his own, and sometimes he came too close to boats in the area. But last weekend, Hvaldimir the beluga was found dead. While an official autopsy is yet to come, two animal rights groups have said he appeared to have sustained multiple gunshot wounds. So we’ll have to wait and hopefully find out more about this sad case.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: Yeah, that is sad. Well, I think we need to cheer up with some happier animal news. There’s work out this week on pets playing fetch.

CHARLES BERGQUIST: Yeah, so we all know many dogs like to play fetch. And if you talk to cat owners, they may tell you that their cats also like to play fetch too. Well, now scientists have published a paper quantifying just how fetchy both cats and dogs are. They surveyed over 8,000 cat owners and found that 41% reported that their cat would either sometimes, frequently, or always retrieve toys or objects that the owners threw, which is more than researchers previously thought. And it turns out all breeds of cats sometimes engage in fetching.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: That’s awesome. Yeah, I don’t I don’t necessarily think of cats doing that, but I guess they enjoy it as much as dogs do.

CHARLES BERGQUIST: Yeah, it turns out, you know, the numbers for dogs are higher. 78% of dog owners reported playing fetch with their dog. They said that the dog breeds that were developed to herd livestock as hunting companions are more likely to play fetch than others. But, you know, all breeds showed some kind of fetching behavior.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: So for the pet owners out there, which breeds of cats and dogs are more likely to have fun playing fetch?

CHARLES BERGQUIST: Yeah, so again, all breeds of cats they found sometimes will play fetch. But it seemed to be more common in Burmese, siamese, and tonkinese cats. On the dog side, you’re looking at labrador and golden retrievers, border collies, English cocker spaniels, things like that.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: That makes sense. I mean, retriever is in the name for some of them.

CHARLES BERGQUIST: Exactly. You would expect the retriever to be good at fetch.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: Yes, exactly.

CHARLES BERGQUIST: And you know, in both cats and dogs, they found males are more likely to play fetch than females younger animals more likely to fetch than older animals are. They think that there may be some connection to learning hunting behavior or practicing hunting. But largely, they found it’s probably just fun.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: I love that. And that’s all the time we have for now. Thanks, Charles.

CHARLES BERGQUIST: You’re welcome, Sophie. Have a great weekend.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: Charles Bergquist is Science Friday’s senior producer.

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