We talk with Travis Metcalfe, of Boulder’s Space Science Institute, where he is searching for Sister Earth and also part of the Blue Dot Project. As for why, the past two decades have witnessed accelerating progress on one of the most fundamental questions in astronomy: Are we alone in the Universe? Astronomers have already discovered hundreds of planets around distant stars. Some of them are nearly as small as the Earth, and orbit in the “Goldilocks zone” of their parent star where liquid water can exist.
We congratulate Boulder’s David J. Wineland for winning the 2012 Nobel Prize in physics. Wineland, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and CU-Boulder, shares the prize with and Serge Haroche of France. They are credited with making breakthroughs in quantum physics by showing how to observe individual quantum particles without destroying them. These, in turn, are the first steps toward building superfast computers based on quantum physics.
Hosts: Joel Parker, Beth Bartel
Producer: Shelley Schlender
Engineer: Jim Pullen
Executive Producer: Jim Pullen
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:17 — 33.4MB)
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Feature #1: Neanderthals (start time: 6:01)
Antarctica: Adventures in a Disappearing 
Bell Labs thrived from the 1920s to the 1980s, when it was most innovative and productive institution of the twentieth century. Long before America’s brightest scientific minds began migrating west to Silicon Valley, they flocked to the Bell Labs campus in the New Jersey suburbs. At its peak, Bell Labs employed nearly fifteen thousand people, twelve hundred had PhDs. Thirteen eventually won Nobel prizes. How did they do it? How can we learn from their successes, so we can do it here in Colorado? New Your Times journalist 
Planetary science budget (start time: 15:49). Despite the successes of the Mars missions and voyages to our other planetary neighbors, the White House decided that NASA’s planetary science budget should be drawn down. The hit would be substantial, a twenty percent reduction from 2012. 300 million dollars would be removed from a baseline one and a half billion dollars. We ask Dr. Alan Stern, who has served as the chief of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA, about why the planetary science budget should be restored.
