Quirks And Quarks Complete Show From Cbc Radio

A NASA probe is going to touch the Sun for ChristmasThe Parker Solar Probe is going to be making its closest approach to our Sun on Dec. 24, diving at 800,000 km/h into the corona of our star and getting within 6.5 million kilometers to the solar surface. It’s the culmination of a successful mission during which the probe has measured the solar wind and flown through solar storms. We speak with C. Alex Young, the Associate Director for Science Communication in the Heliophysics Division at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center about the highlights of the mission and what’s next for the intrepid spacecraft.Pinning down the how and when Neanderthals interbred with humansStudies of Neanderthal remains have revealed that many modern humans have around two per cent Neanderthal DNA in our genomes. A study led by Leonardo Iasi, from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, shows that the mixture happened over a period of 7,000 years, lasting from about 50,000 years ago until the Neanderthals started to di