Quirks And Quarks Complete Show From Cbc Radio

Earthquakes create a spark in quartz that can form massive gold nuggetsScientists have figured out why up to 75 per cent of all the gold ever mined forms inside quartz in areas with a long history of earthquakes. Chris Voisey, a Canadian geologist at Monash University in Australia, said he was trying to solve how gold arose inside quartz. In his study in the journal Nature Geoscience, he found that earthquake stress on quartz crystals generates an electrical voltage that causes dissolved gold to precipitate into a solid that can grow into the largest nuggets ever found.Ice Age Teens went through puberty just like today’s kidsA new analysis of the bones of teenagers from 25,000 years ago shows they experienced puberty in much the same way as teens today. An international team of researchers including Paleolithic archaeologist April Nowell analyzed the bones of 13 teens found across Europe, and by looking at particular markers in the bones, they were able to see which stage of puberty the teens were in when the

Wrestling 14-foot 'dinosaurs' to figure out why they're dyingDr. Madison Earhart, a postdoctoral fellow from the University of British Columbia, spent her summer fishing for enormous white sturgeon in the Fraser and Nechako Rivers in British Columbia. Since 2022, there have been a large number of deaths of this fish along the west coast of North America and it’s concerning when a species that’s been around for hundreds of million years suddenly starts dying off. She and her colleagues are trying to figure out what’s happening and how to conserve this important and spectacular fish.Installing Dark Matter detectors two kilometeres undergroundDr. Madeleine Zurowski of the University of Toronto has been underground most of this past summer at SNOLAB, located in Sudbury, Ontario. She’s been helping install specially designed dark matter detectors in a project called SuperCDMS, as part of an international collaboration that is researching the nature of dark matter. Managing Canada’s worst invasive pl

 A behind-the-scenes chat about the making of the CBC Radio collaboration called "Overheated." White Coat, Black Art, What on Earth, and Quirks and Quarks are exploring how heat is affecting our health, our communities and our ecosystems. This originally broadcast on The Current.

Quirks & Quarks launches our new season with a special on urban heat. It's part of a collaboration with White Coat, Black Art and What on Earth called "Overheated."Host Bob McDonald and Producer Amanda Buckiewicz tell the story of how a city’s design can influence the way we experience and cope with heat. Bob will cycle through the streets of Montreal with a Concordia researcher on specially-equipped bikes - these are equipped with sensors that measure how temperatures change across neighbourhoods based on their density - the amount of infrastructure coupled with mitigating cooling effects like tree cover.He’ll also spend time with a McGill epidemiologist who will deploy hundreds of sensors that measure air temperature every 30 minutes over a month. That data will be used to determine how changing temperatures impact physical and mental health. It's vital information as heat is thought to be the most lethal kind of extreme weather.And we'll explore some of the solutions to urban heat: How we can desi

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Christ Kennedy from Moncton, New Brunswick asks: If someone had the means to, how close could we bring the Moon to the Earth while still keeping it in orbit around us? And fast would a month fly by?Answer from Brett Gladman, a professor of astronomy at the University of British Columbia,Matoli Degroot from Manitoba asks: Do animal species in the wild get bigger over time, since the bigger males would end up mating more than the smaller ones?Answer from Danielle Fraser, head of paleobiology at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa.Bill Sullivan from Hamilton, Ontario asks: Why does the hair on my head turn grey while hair on the rest of my body does not change colour?Answer from Frida Lona-Durazo, a postdoctoral fellow in computational genetics at the University of Montreal, who’s studied the genetics of hair colour.Dan from Quebec City asks: We know that the Earth’s crust is built of plates that float on the molten centre of the Earth. What is the force that moves those plates?Answer from Alexander Peace, a

What would you do with a third thumb? Research suggests our brain can quickly adapt  Birds can dream - and even have nightmares - and now scientists are tuning inA comprehensive new collection of medical information shows the health risks of space travelA study in mice sheds new light on how exercise can reverse aging in the brainRare fossils from the ‘age of monotremes’ found in Australia How the brain can instantly tell the difference between speech and musicPODCAST EXTRASOrganic farms next to conventionally farmed fields leads to increased pesticide useOrca whales hunt, play and dive – one breath at a timeThe secret of the beaver’s orange teeth can help us make our teeth strong

The sun’s ramping up its activity and now we have a better idea of what’s driving itThis spring we’ve seen some spectacular displays of northern lights and we’re expecting to see  more as we approach the peak of the sun’s natural cycle, the solar maximum. Every 11 years the sun cycles from having few sunspots on its surface to having many. Now according to a new study in the journal Nature, scientists have figured out what may be driving this process. Geoff Vasil, an associate professor of computational and applied mathematics at the University of Edinburgh, said instabilities in swirling magnetic systems near the sun’s surface gives rise to sunspots on its surface that can erupt and send solar storms our way.Female otters use tools more than males – to crack open tasty treats and save their teethOtters are cute and clever – clever enough to be one of the few animals who use tools such as rocks, glass bottles, or even boat hulls to smash shells and access the tasty flesh inside. But researchers studying

Killer whales are likely ramming boats because they’re bored and having funSeveral years ago a small population of killer whales living off the coast of Spain began attacking boats, particularly sailboats, damaging some severely and even sinking a handful. While social media speculation has suggested whale rage as a cause, an international team of killer whale experts recently published a report suggesting the behaviour is not aggression, but is instead an example of these giant social creatures just playing and having fun with a toy. We speak with two contributors to the report: John Ford, research scientist emeritus at the Pacific Biological Station with Fisheries & Oceans Canada, and Renaud de Stephanis, the president of Spanish conservation group CIRCE.4,000-year-old Egyptian skull shows signs of possible surgery for brain cancerResearchers studying the history of cancer in human history recently hit the jackpot. In a collection of human remains at the University of Cambridge they found two skulls fro

This little piggy escaped and wreaked havoc on crops and the environmentWild pigs that have escaped or been released from farms have established self-sustaining populations in the prairies and central Canada and are wreaking havoc on farms and wilderness landscapes alike. A new study, led by Ryan Brook at the University of Saskatchewan, has tracked pigs to try to understand where, and how far, this porcine invasion can go. The research was published in the journal Biological Invasions.Satellites and space junk burning up in the atmosphere is a new kind of pollutionScientists doing high-altitude sampling of material deposited when meteorites burn up in the atmosphere are seeing a shift in the material they’ve been collecting. In a recent study in the journal PNAS, scientists found that increasingly the particles contain material that could have only come from vaporized space junk, such as the upper stages of rocket boosters and re-entering satellites themselves. Daniel Cziczo, an atmospheric scientist at Purdu

The recent solar storm scrambled undersea sensorsThe solar storm that lit up the evening sky with aurora recently was also detected by Canada’s Ocean Network system of undersea oceanographic observatories off both coasts of the country and up in the Arctic. The compass instruments that normally provide the direction of ocean currents fluctuated by as much as 30 degrees at the height of the solar storm and were picked up as deep as 2.7 kilometers. Kate Moran, the CEO and President of Ocean Networks Canada, said these measurements could prove to be useful for solar scientists to understand the depth of the impact geomagnetic storms can have on our electromagnetic field. Robots are stronger, and faster, and better – but still lose to animalsDespite being built to run, robots still can’t beat real animals in a race, says a new study published in Science Robotics. Researchers compared the physical abilities of animals to the latest generation of agile autonomous robots and showed that while they can exceed bi

Sabre tooth cats had baby-tooth backupThe fearsome canines of saber-toothed cats were terrific weapons for stabbing unfortunate prey, but their impressive length also made them vulnerable to breakage. A new study by University of California, Berkeley associate professor Jack Tseng suggests adolescent California saber-toothed cat kept their baby teeth to buttress the adult sabers, and reinforce them while cats learned to hunt. This research was published in The Anatomical Record.Global warming could swallow Antarctic meteoritesOver 60 per cent of all meteorites found on Earth are discovered in Antarctica, embedded in the ice. But a new study published in Nature Climate Change cautions that the warming temperatures are causing the dark space rocks to sink below the surface before researchers can get to them. Glaciologist Veronica Tollenaar, who is the lead author of this study, says it’s important to collect as many of these meteorites as possible to avoid losing the insights they provide about the space around

We baby talk with both dogs and kids, but our faces say something differentDogs can use their powerful noses to sniff out PTSDA quarter of all Labradors are hard-wired to be hungrier and burn less energyYour pet dog may know more words than you give them credit forSize, face shape and other factors matter when it comes to a dog’s lifespan, study showsIt’s possible – and worthwhile – to teach an old dog new tricksWhat a genome reveals about an extinct species of dogs - and the Indigenous people who cared for them

Chimpanzees are being forced to eat bat feces, and the viruses in itResearchers in Uganda have noticed a new behaviour in the wild chimps they study. The apes are browsing on bat guano, apparently to access the nutrients it contains, as their normal source for these nutrients has been destroyed by humans. Since bats are carriers of a range of diseases, from ebola to coronaviruses, this may be a new way these diseases could spread. The study was published in Communications Biology. Dr Tony Goldberg, a professor of epidemiology at the school of veterinary medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was part of the team.Controversial methods are working to buy Canada’s caribou some timeWoodland caribou have been in steady decline for decades, as logging, oil and gas exploration and other disturbances compromise their western mountain habitat. Steady progress has been made to restore habitat in order to save these caribou, but since these forests will take half a century to regrow, conservationists are

The climate is changing. So are we. On What On Earth, you’ll explore a world of solutions with host Laura Lynch and our team of journalists. In 1970, 20 million people showed up to fight for the environment on the first Earth Day. More than five decades later, is it time for this much tamer global event to return to its radical roots? OG organizer Denis Hayes recounts how – amidst other counterculture movements at the time – his team persuaded roughly one in ten Americans to take to the streets. As he approaches 80, Denis offers his singular piece of advice to the next generation of climate leaders. Then, environmental warriors Maria Blancas and Axcelle Campana share ideas on what a reinspired Earth Day could look like – including making it a public holiday.More episodes of What On Earth are available at: https://link.chtbl.com/5zF03qcmWe love to hear from our listeners and regularly feature them on the show. Have a question or idea? Email Earth@cbc.ca

This researcher wants a new particle accelerator to use before she’s deadPhysicists exploring the nature of reality need ever more capable particle colliders, so they’re exploring a successor to the Large Hadron Collider in Europe. But that new machine is at least decades away. Tova Holmes, an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, is one of the physicists calling for a different kind of collider that can come online before the end of her career – or her life. This device would use a particle not typically used in particle accelerators: the muon.Is venting the best way to deal with anger? The scientist says chill out.It turns out that acting out your anger might not be the best way to get rid of it. Sophie Kjaervik, a researcher at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Va., analyzed 154 studies of the different ways to deal with anger. Her results, published in the journal Clinical Psychology Review, suggest that techniques that reduce your heart rate and calm your mind are mor

Old canned salmon provides a record of parasite infectionTo study marine ecosystems from the past, scientists picked through canned salmon dating back more than four decades to measure levels of parasites in the fish. Natalie Mastick, a postdoctoral researcher in marine ecology at Yale University, said she found the parasite load in two species of salmon increased in their samples between 1979 - 2021. She says this suggests their ecosystems provided more of the hosts the parasites needed, including marine mammals, which could reflect an increasingly healthy ecosystem. Their study is in the journal Ecology and Evolution. Mars has more influence on Earth than non-astrologers might have thoughtMars is, on average, about 225 million km from Earth, which would suggest that it has little impact on our planet. Which is true, but as they say a little goes a long way. In a recent study in Nature Communications, researchers studying the history of deep ocean currents found a surprising 2.4-million-year cycle where

Seeing a black hole’s magnetic personalityScientists using the Event Horizon Telescope have produced a new image of the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy. And this image is a little different: it captures the powerful magnetic fields that are acting as the cosmic cutlery feeding mass into the singularity. Avery Broderick is part of the Event Horizon Telescope team, he’s also a professor at the University of Waterloo’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, and associate faculty at the Perimeter Institute for theoretical physics.Decoding how chickadees maintain a mental map of their food cachesChickadees have an uncanny ability to recall thousands of secret stashes of food with a centimetre-scale precision. Salmaan Chettih, a postdoctoral researcher in neuroscience at Columbia University, investigated how chickadees encode their internal treasure maps. In his study in the journal Cell, he found the chickadee brains produce a unique pattern of activity — akin to a neural “barcode” — that marks t