SoT 318: A Wacky Eukaryote Is Always Fun

December 7, 2018

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall

[00:01:10] Wombats – the cute, pudgy marsupials in Australia, have cubic poops. Square, angular blocks of poop. But how and why? We may now have a better understanding.

[00:08:25] HD186302 is a star 184 light-years from Earth. And it’s so similar to our sun, it could be long lost twin.

[00:16:49] A team of researchers have studied the genomes of a group of microbes called Hemimastigotes and found that they are so bizarre, they deserve their very own kingdom in the tree of life.

[00:26:02] Using the Keck observatory telescopes in Hawaii, astronomers have detected water in the atmosphere of a planet 179 light years away.

This episode contains traces of WNYC’s On The Media looking at CNN’s coverage of the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s National Climate Assessment.