SoT 242: Making of a Murdered Fossil

September 23, 2016

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall.

[00:00:37] The FDA has decreed that triclosan and triclocarban must be removed from all antibacterial soap products by late 2017. This is not because they’re dangerous, but because they’re ineffective.

[00:07:38] The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has launched “perfectly”. If successful, this ambitious mission will be the first time NASA has retrieved samples of an asteroid.

[00:23:37] A new study of Lucy – the bones of a human ancestor from 3.2 million years ago – suggests she may have died from falling from a tree.

[00:30:22] The Juno probe in orbit around Jupiter has taken some extraordinary photographs – the first ever photos of Jupiter’s polar regions.

 

This episode may contain traces of astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson describing a Tim Tam Slam.