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Ant Scans, Lunar Chickpeas, Hidden Galaxies & Superconductivity (EP 40)

Ant Scans, Lunar Chickpeas, Hidden Galaxies & Superconductivity (EP 40)

From First Principles vor 6 Monaten

0:00

36:54

Hosted by Lester Nare and Krishna Choudhary, this rundown episode
covers four new science stories at a high level: a huge new 3D ant
imaging database built with synchrotron X-ray microtomography, a
lunar agriculture experiment that grew chickpeas in simulated moon
soil using fungi and worm waste, AI-assisted discovery of strange
objects in the Hubble archive, and a new programmatic roadmap for
room-temperature superconductivity. There is also another round of
Are You Smarter Than a Scientist? in the middle. Summary Particle
accelerators meet biodiversity — researchers built a massive
high-resolution ant imaging resource, covering nearly 800 species
and thousands of specimens, with AI-assisted 3D reconstruction.
Moon farming gets weird — chickpeas were grown in lunar regolith
simulant with help from mycorrhizal fungi and worm-derived compost,
a first step toward sustainable off-world agriculture. AI found
hidden anomalies in Hubble’s archive — AnomalyMatch sifted through
roughly 100 million source cutouts in just days and surfaced new
candidate lenses, mergers, and other rare objects. The
superconductivity long game — a new PNAS perspective argues that
room-temperature superconductivity is not ruled out by physics, and
calls for a coordinated push to get there. Support the show Donate:
FFPod.com/donate Follow: @FFPod on X / Instagram / TikTok /
Facebook Show Notes High-throughput phenomics of global ant
biodiversity — Nature Methods Bioremediation of lunar regolith
simulant through mycorrhizal fungi and plant symbioses enables
chickpea to seed — Scientific Reports Identifying astrophysical
anomalies in 99.6 million source cutouts from the Hubble legacy
archive using AnomalyMatch — Astronomy & Astrophysics The path
to room-temperature superconductivity: A programmatic approach —
PNAS