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this is a science news podcast that also has some pretty interesting comentary
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this is a science news podcast that also has some pretty interesting comentary
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Scientists have found that new boosters and old shots for COVID act the same to the Omicron variant. Boosters are expected to perform better and may accommodate the new strain. The hole in the ozone layer is still shrinking due to the banning of chemicals. A new material that conducts electricity like metal but is made like plastic has been created at the University of Chicago. Protons may be stretchier than originally thought. A meteoroid hit Mars, creating a large crater and revealing chunks of ice. The quantum properties of black holes have been confirmed by physicists, showing that they have different masses at the same time. Hello and welcome to Stepping into Science. My name is Morgan and I'm Christine and here's our first story for the week. Scientists at Columbia and Harvard said new boosters and old shots for COVID acted the same to Omicron VA.5. Some responses were higher with boosters but not enough to be significant when tested. Larger studies are expected to be done to provide data in the future. New boosters are still expected to perform better and may accommodate the new strain of COVID compared to the old shots which were made for the original strain. The studies show that boosters work but it doesn't prove if they do a better job. Health officials still expect the boosters to provide protection although there's still little data on the fact. This makes me wonder if the old boosters that they came out with actually did something versus the original COVID vaccine everyone got. The old ones do help but they were originally made for the first strain of COVID. The boosters help with the current strain that is going on. Oh, okay. I was wondering that while you were reading. Yeah, now I know. Next, our next story is going to be the hole in the ozone layer is still shrinking as of this year. The hole is located in the South Pole and is continuing to shrink. This has been happening over the last 20 years due to the banning of chemicals that wreck the ozone layer, allowing for it to start to slowly fixing itself. Which is great news by the way. So it's fixing itself? Yeah, I think it's that giant hole in the ozone layer. From the hairspray? No, we cannot say from the hairspray. I don't know, actually it might have been from the hairspray. So is there multiple holes in the ozone layer or is it only one? I think there was multiple that just combined in one giant one. I don't know, that's something I'll have to look up for a different time. I'm pretty sure it wasn't, but anyway. So for some unexplainable act, a new material was created with no explanation at the University of Chicago. It was created and it is made like plastic, but it also conducts electricity like metal. And it doesn't follow the normal rules of conductivity. So this could be a revolutionary idea. It was originally thought that atoms were to be arranged in orderly rows to create conductivity. But this new material was made in a disarray pattern. It holds up to high and low temperatures without changing. So this means there's less restrictions compared to other metal conductors. The team is still exploring and testing the new material. Have they decided on a name for it yet? I was reading, no. I don't think they have. There's not enough tests done yet. Okay, so you know like the element plutonium? They should name it like goofy-odium. I was going to say maybe they should name it Chicago or something. Yeah, like something random. Chicago Bears Odium or whatever. Like the Chicago Bearium. Chicago Bearium. They definitely should do that in all honesty. That would be great. And you know what's funny about that? Your story leads perfectly into mine about how stretchy protons are. Really, yeah. Physicists have found that protons might be stretchier than originally found. Protons are made of smaller particles, aka quarks. These quarks are bound together by an interaction called strong force. Which I found was a really funny name, by the way. Strong force. I'm going to have some strong force here, guys. And they have record experiments show that these quarks act towards an electric field pulling on them more than originally expected. This leads to results suggesting that the strong force isn't as strong as originally thought. So how strong did they think it was originally? They originally thought that it was like this powerful, magical force that could do anything. Gravity. Yeah, basically. It was just gravity all over again. But they thought it was this huge and very stiff force that would keep everything where it needed to be with the quarks. I love that they named it quarks. I don't think they named it quarks. It's spelled Q-U-A-R-K-S. Sounds like quakes. It's probably named quakes. I'm calling it quarks. It's probably quakes. I'm just going to call it quarks because it's funny. But that's fine. In all honesty, I think it's fine. We're fine. Speaking of quakes, I guess, last Christmas, something ended up causing Mars to shake. And scientists have finally discovered out why. So a lander on the surface of Mars recorded some information. And apparently a meteoroid hit Mars around 2,000 miles away from the lander. It created a large crater. The lander recorded a magnitude 4 quake. The photos taken were by the Mars Renaissance Orbiter, which was orbiting the planet at the time. It was one of the biggest meteorite strikes since NASA started observing the planet. Also, when it made the crater, it revealed chunks of ice in the ground. Scientists plan to study the ice to determine the past climate and conditions of the planet. So this is what you were talking about when you were talking about earthquakes earlier? Yeah. Oh, okay. That makes sense. Not earthquakes, Marsquakes. Why did we say that at the same time? I don't know, honestly. No, Marsquakes. That's honest. Well, yeah, because of the planet it was on. Because of the planet it's on. That's great, honestly. Yeah. No, because Mars is actually a very interesting planet. Oh, yeah. Like, if you would think about it, it definitely, it's like our red-headed cousin. Yeah. Literally everyone invites their cousin. Mars is just the red-headed cousin that everyone loves to invite to parties because they're always going to have fun and you never know what's going to happen and what you're going to discover about that red-headed cousin. Yep. Yeah. Anyways, on to our next topic, which is the properties of black holes. The quantum properties of black holes have been confirmed by physicists at the University of Queensland, which is very good, by the way, because they didn't know them before. Yeah. Black holes have the weird property to have different masses at the same time. The team created a mathematical framework that allows us to place a particle outside the theoretical black hole. So basically it's like they're putting a tiny little suspect on the side of like Narnia or somewhere and just leaving it and then just seeing what happens to it. That's what the math that they're doing. They didn't actually do it. So are they? Can you elaborate a little bit? Yeah. The mass, okay, so the mass in this equation was mainly focused on as it's the main part of a black hole. That's the main thing of a black hole, how its mass is weird. Yeah, which makes sense. They decided as it's plausible that black holes specifically, quantum black holes, which are a specific type of black hole, would normally have mass superstition, which is like kind of dispersing masses differently in different spots. Oh, so it's kind of like a galaxy. It's kind of like if you were to have one of those arm scales with one plate in this hand and one plate in that hand and you put two bread rolls on this side and one bread roll on that side and five bread rolls on your head. Oh, and then you've got, it's not balanced. Then you've got eight bread rolls. Wait, no, that's not eight. Yeah, that is eight. I did the math right. Yay. So basically it's like eight bread rolls then. Okay, so similar to where it's one scale, but it's just distributed differently. Yeah, and it's also suspended differently than actual normal black holes. I mean, they're still black holes. Because the main thing that's very interesting that I find about black holes is that they're black. Because how light hits it, nothing comes out of it. They just eat it all up, yeah. It's like Pac-Man. It's like the universe's version of Pac-Man. I don't know how, I don't know why, and that's the wonderful thing about it. I don't think many people know why or how yet. I don't think anyone knows why or how yet. We'll hope to figure that one out. Yeah, if we figure that one out, we'll get back to you on that. Yeah, we'll need an update on that. We'll update it. Update it in like 70 years. Yeah. I guess I really have to help you more than I know. Yeah, basically. So, I think that's all we have for this week. Yep, I don't have any more, so see you around. See you around, I guess. Yeah, we need an outro after this. We'll figure out a better outro, because this is just kind of... This is just kind of like you stuck Spongebob in a loophole. This one was just not good. Okay, okay.
