Science Quickly

Scientific American
Science Quickly

Host Rachel Feltman, alongside leading science and tech journalists, dives into the rich world of scientific discovery in this bite-size science variety show.

  1. 3D AGO

    The LIGO Lab Is Pushing the Boundaries of Gravitational-Wave Research

    Come with Science Quickly on a field trip to the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Host Rachel Feltman is joined by Matthew Evans, MIT’s MathWorks professor of physics, to talk about the last 10 years of gravitational-wave research. Gravitational waves were discovered in 2015 by the LIGO team. Since then, innovations from the LIGO Lab have changed our understanding of the universe and made major shifts across physics. Now they’re preparing for the next generation of gravitational-wave detectors.  Recommended reading: The 2015 Paper Announcing the Discovery of Gravitational Waves: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1602.03837  Listen to the Astonishing ‘Chirp’ of Two Black Holes Merging https://www.scientificamerican.com/video/listen-to-the-astonishing-chirp-of-two-black-holes-merging1/ 5 New Types of Gravitational-Wave Detectors Could Reshape Astrophysics https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/5-new-types-of-gravitational-wave-detectors-could-reshape-astrophysics/ E-mail us at sciencequickly@sciam.com if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter.  Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman. Our show is edited by Alex Sugiura with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    18 min
  2. JUL 2

    Move Over Fireworks—Drone Shows Are Taking to the Skies

    Drone shows are replacing fireworks for summer celebrations. They’re safer and more environmentally friendly but complicated to program and run. A recent preprint paper proposes an algorithmic solution that can take some technical challenges out of drone operators’ hands and give engineers more creative control. Host Rachel Feltman speaks with researchers Mac Schwager, an associate professor at the aeronautics and astronautics department at Stanford University, and Eduardo Montijano, an associate professor at the department of computer science and systems engineering at the University of Zaragoza in Spain, about their work and what it would take to move the algorithm from theory to the skies. Recommended reading: Read the research team’s paper, which was presented at a 2024 workshop: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-91813-1_6 And released as a preprint: https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.15899 How Do Fireworks Actually Work? Here’s the Explosive Science https://www.scientificamerican.com/video/the-science-of-fireworks/ E-mail us at sciencequickly@sciam.com if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter. Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman. Our show is edited by Alex Sugiura with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    16 min
4.4
out of 5
1,330 Ratings

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Host Rachel Feltman, alongside leading science and tech journalists, dives into the rich world of scientific discovery in this bite-size science variety show.

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