2017 Look Back – 2018 Look Forward

2017For this end-of-the-year/start-of-the-year  How on Earth show, we look back to 2017 with clips from some of our features from the past year: selections about tracking methane leaks, ketogenic diets, using MDMA to treat PTSD, gravitational waves, the solar eclipse, space missions, and the politicization of science.  Those are just a few of the topics we covered in 2017, which also included: the continuation of the Our Microbes, Ourselves series, global warming and climate change, research about aging, mutant proteins, how humans have altered nature, future technologies, nuclear tests and the Van Allen belts, biofuels, extinctions following an asteroid impact, monorails, life expectancy in America,  observing stellar occultations by objects in the distant solar system, space shields for satellites, virtual colonoscopies, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), chronic fatigue syndrome, protecting pollinators, testing our drinking water, cancer, the Long Now foundation, citizen science, fracking, and more!

Hosts: Joel Parker, Susan Moran
Producer, Engineer: Joel Parker
Additional Contributions: Beth Bennett, Shelley Schlender
Executive Producer: Susan Moran

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Boulder Firestone Monorail // Regeneration & Eclipse photo-bombing

MagLev PRT car. Image courtesy of www.skytran.com
MagLev PRT car.
Image courtesy of www.skytran.com

Sustainable Transportation is a major issue for the front range.  In that field a hot topic is PRT, which stands for Personal Rapid Transit system, a radical vision for creating a sustainable infrastructure to get us from point A to point B.  How on Earth interviews Dr. R. Paul Williamson about his proposal for an Elevated High-Speed MagLev PRT system from Boulder to Longmont to Firestone.  How practical is it?

Headlines on Tissue Nanotransfection or TNT from Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center seem more like science fiction than science, they are looking to try it on humans next year.

If you were up in Wyoming filming the eclipse did your picture get photo-bombed by the International Space Station like this?

Host: Chip Grandits
Producer: Chip Grandits
Engineer: Maeve Conran
Executive Producer: Alejandro Soto

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The American Eclipse of 1878

Cover-300-wideThis August 21st, some parts of the Earth will be plunged into darkness in the middle of the day.  It will be a solar eclipse; the moon’s shadow will cross the United States from Oregon to South Carolina, with the path closest to Colorado passing through Wyoming and Nebraska.

There have been many eclipses across the US, but there was a particularly special one nearly 140 years ago on July 29th, 1878.  That eclipse came at a time in American history of western expansion, industrial growth, new inventions and World’s Fairs, and a young country wanting to establish itself on the international stage of science and technology.

Our guest today is David Baron, author of a book about that eclipse.  The book is “American Eclipse: A Nation’s Epic Race to Catch the Shadow of the Moon and Win the Glory of the World”.  David joins us to talk about that eclipse, the people involved in observing it, and its part in Colorado history.

Hosts: Joel Parker, Susan Moran
Producer / Engineer : Joel Parker
Executive Producer: Susan Moran

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