Cheese history, redating the Inca empire, and the source of the breath’s rhythm

[instrumental music] I'm Megan Cantwell, here with Cristy Wilcox, the editor of our daily newsletter, Science Advisor.

And we're gonna dive into three pretty different stories, which I think captures the far-ranging topics that are featured every day in the newsletter.

Thank you so much for joining me, Cristy.

Thank you for having me.

Yeah, of course.

Okay, so we'll start with a sort of historical science story, which I feel like is a little different than what we usually cover.

So this goes back to Nazi Germany.

At the time, people think that they were pretty close to building this nuclear reactor that eventually could have resulted in them creating a nuclear bomb.

And the story starts in a pretty interesting way from a gift that was given to a researcher in 2013.

How did that sort of spur this further investigation into this?

This is one of those stories that makes me wish I was still a scientist because-

[laughs]

... one of those amazing, like, tales of how science happens.

Basically, this scientist was out for a jog on his campus, and he got a call from their safety officer, and the safety officer was just like, "I have something for you." And it ended up being a cube of uranium from Nazi Germany.

Which can you imagine? [laughs] Like, you're just out there running along, having a normal day, and then all of a sudden you get this cube of uranium, and it allowed him to study whether or not Nazi Germany was close to making the bomb.

So they didn't only just have this one uranium cube.

They also had a uranium cube that was found a few years ago as well.

When they actually analyzed these cubes, what did they find about whether this reactor would've been possible to make operational?

So basically, what they would've needed is enough uranium to sustain this reaction that goes on in the atomic bomb.

They had estimated that they would've had enough uranium just in different places in the country.

However, they weren't really sure the uranium that they were working with was of the correct purity.

They were able to do some tests on it and find that indeed the cubes were natural uranium, not enriched uranium, so they weren't in a readiness state necessary to have enough uranium to produce this bomb.

So was that sort of the main limiting factor for why they weren't able to actually build this nuclear reactor, or were there other things as well that sort of contributed to that?

So it wasn't just that they didn't have enough uranium.

They also didn't have enough heavy water.

[instrumental music] I'm Megan Cantwell, here with Cristy Wilcox, the editor of our daily newsletter, Science Advisor.

And we're gonna dive into three pretty different stories, which I think captures the far-ranging topics that are featured every day in the newsletter.

Thank you so much for joining me, Cristy.

Thank you for having me.

Yeah, of course.

Okay, so we'll start with a sort of historical science story, which I feel like is a little different than what we usually cover.

So this goes back to Nazi Germany.

At the time, people think that they were pretty close to building this nuclear reactor that eventually could have resulted in them creating a nuclear bomb.

And the story starts in a pretty interesting way from a gift that was given to a researcher in 2013.

How did that sort of spur this further investigation into this?

This is one of those stories that makes me wish I was still a scientist because-

[laughs]

... one of those amazing, like, tales of how science happens.

Basically, this scientist was out for a jog on his campus, and he got a call from their safety officer, and the safety officer was just like, "I have something for you." And it ended up being a cube of uranium from Nazi Germany.

Which can you imagine? [laughs] Like, you're just out there running along, having a normal day, and then all of a sudden you get this cube of uranium, and it allowed him to study whether or not Nazi Germany was close to making the bomb.

So they didn't only just have this one uranium cube.

They also had a uranium cube that was found a few years ago as well.

When they actually analyzed these cubes, what did they find about whether this reactor would've been possible to make operational?

So basically, what they would've needed is enough uranium to sustain this reaction that goes on in the atomic bomb.

They had estimated that they would've had enough uranium just in different places in the country.

However, they weren't really sure the uranium that they were working with was of the correct purity.

They were able to do some tests on it and find that indeed the cubes were natural uranium, not enriched uranium, so they weren't in a readiness state necessary to have enough uranium to produce this bomb.

So was that sort of the main limiting factor for why they weren't able to actually build this nuclear reactor, or were there other things as well that sort of contributed to that?

So it wasn't just that they didn't have enough uranium.

They also didn't have enough heavy water.