Radio/Quirks & Quarks (Page 4)

Quirks and Quarks·Analysis: Bob’s blog Scientists have taken a clue from a carnival stunt known as the Wall of Death to help future astronauts on the moon stay healthy. Instead of riding motorcycles, the moon colonists will simply run around the walls. Researchers used bungee cords to hoist test subjects and simulateContinue Reading

Quirks and Quarks·Analysis: Bob’s blog NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, which vastly exceeded all expectations, has relayed its final transmission back to Earth. Now it’s onto a new phase of its mission where it will continue to collect data for future explorers to retrieve. The helicopter will now collect data fromContinue Reading

Quirks and Quarks·Analysis: Bob’s blog The tally of planets found in orbit around other stars now surpasses 5,600, but even with so many possibilities, none compare to little blue and green oasis we call home. The more exoplanets scientists discover, the more there is to appreciate from our own planetContinue Reading

Quirks and Quarks·Q&A In a new book, Indigenous ecologist Jennifer Grenz talks about how a moment of “ecological angst” led her to incorporate more of her Indigenous worldview into her traditional Western science work. New book details how joining Western science and an Indigenous worldview makes for better science AmandaContinue Reading

Quirks and Quarks·Analysis: Bob’s blog The Voyager 1 spacecraft, launched by NASA in 1977, is more than 24 billion kilometres from Earth. Now, a glitch is sending corrupted data back to the ground. Voyager 1’s system that sends data home is malfunctioning, preventing the computer from operating as it shouldContinue Reading

This First Person column is written by Bob McDonald, host of CBC Radio’s Quirks & Quarks. On April 8, he will be in Kingston, Ont., to experience his seventh total eclipse.  My first eclipse was in 1977 on a ship in the Pacific Ocean, 1,200 nautical miles off the coastContinue Reading

Quirks and Quarks·Analysis: Bob’s blog On Thursday, a private spacecraft landed on the moon. On board is a Canadian-built camera system that will be used to see if the south pole of the moon is an ideal place for a space-based telescope. Odysseus lander touched down on the lunar southContinue Reading

Quirks and Quarks·Analysis: Bob’s blog Researchers used brain-monitoring technology to show that a 40-minute walk in nature helped people recover from a demanding mental task, and restored the ability to focus. Participants who walked in nature showed better executive control or roughly the ability to focus on a task BobContinue Reading

Quirks and Quarks·Analysis: Bob’s blog The James Webb Space Telescope continues to astound astronomers. A recently released gallery of galaxies shows stunning details of 19 nearby spiral galaxies that are similar to our own Milky Way. We can’t take a galaxy selfie, so scientists look to other galaxies to betterContinue Reading