Science Friday - An Asteroid Impact, Spotted In Advance | Extreme Heat Is Making Learning More Difficult

Episode Date: September 6, 2024

ESA officials said it was only the ninth time an asteroid was spotted before reaching Earth’s atmosphere. And, as the climate changes and summer temperatures linger, educators are increasingly worried about keeping kids safe from heat exhaustion.An Asteroid Impact, Spotted In AdvanceOn Wednesday, an asteroid named 2024 RW1 burned up in the atmosphere above the Philippines. As asteroids go, it was not especially notable. Astronomers say objects the size of 2024 RW1, which was about a meter in diameter, encounter the Earth about every two weeks. Due to local weather conditions, not many ground observers were able to see the fireball produced by the impact on the atmosphere. But astronomers on the Catalina Sky Survey project had observed the asteroid a few hours earlier as it approached the planet, and were able to give a prediction for where and when it was likely to enter the atmosphere. European Space Agency officials said it was only the ninth time people were able to spot an asteroid in advance of Earth impact.SciFri’s Charles Bergquist joins guest host Sophie Bushwick to talk about that astronomical event and other stories from the week in science, including work on gold nugget geophysics, a potential advance in pain medications, and the mystery of a missing pregnant shark.Extreme Heat Is Making Learning—And Teaching—More DifficultKids across the United States just kicked off a new school year. But in recent years, summer weather has spilled over into fall, with temperatures staying hotter than normal through September and even into October. Sitting in a sweltering classroom can make learning difficult—and even dangerous.A recent story in The 19th describes how learning and teaching have become more challenging as the climate heats up. Guest host Sophie Bushwick talks with The 19th reporter Jessica Kutz about her reporting and what solutions might be on the horizon.Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Classrooms in schools without air conditioning are getting hotter, and it's having an impact on teachers and kids. They found that for every degree hotter a school year was, it resulted in a 1% decrease in learning. It's Friday, September 6th, and you're listening to Science Friday. I'm sci-fi producer D. Peter Schmidt. Kids across the U.S. just kicked off a new school year, but the summer heat is still here. In recent years, temperatures have stayed hotter than normal through September and even into October. and sitting in a sweltering classroom can make learning really difficult and even dangerous. We'll talk about how learning and teaching have become more challenging as the planet heats up

and what solutions might be on the horizon. But first, here's guest host and science journalist Sophie Bushwick rounding up the top news in science this week. This Wednesday, an asteroid named 2024 RW1 burned up in the atmosphere above the Philippines. As asteroids go, it was pretty harmless. But astronomers are still excited. about the event. Here to talk more about the impact is Science Friday's senior producer Charles Berkwist. Hi, Charles. Hey, Sophie. So tell me more about this asteroid. Yeah, 2024 RW1 was an asteroid about a meter across, and as you said, it burned up in the atmosphere without doing any damage.

This kind of asteroid really isn't that unusual. Nassau says we get one of this size, maybe every two weeks or so. There were some pictures that captured this particular impact from the ground, but a lot of people in the Philippines probably didn't get to see it due to weather conditions because there was a typhoon, Typhoon Yagi, in the area at the time. Wait, if it's not big and it didn't hurt anything and most people didn't even see it, then why do we care? Yeah, so what was cool about this event is that astronomers with a project called the Catalina Sky Survey actually spotted it earlier in the day, like eight hours earlier or so.

And they were able to predict where and when it would be likely to enter the Atte. You know, we have a good handle on a lot of the bigger objects in space near us, but usually we only learn about the presence of these smaller near-Earth objects like this one after someone sees the fireball in the sky. The European Space Agency said it was just the ninth time that an asteroid like this had been spotted before impact. So this is a pretty unusual event. And you have a related story about a human-made meteor shower?

That's right. You might recall the space mission called Dart, the double asteroid. Redirection Test. This was basically testing a possible planetary defense against these larger near-Earth objects. You know, if you slam something into an asteroid head on, would it be possible to nudge it off its course and change its trajectory? So back in 2022, NASA sent this craft to slam into dimorphos. This was a small moonlit orbiting the larger asteroid called Didimos. And they found that, yeah, they were able to change the trajectory of that smaller object. But it turns out that crash also kicked loose around 2 million pounds of debris and dust and

rocks and stuff. Oh, wow. Yeah. So this new study says some of that material could actually drift through space and make it to near Mars and the Earth in the next 10 to 20 years or so. And that would create a new meteor shower that folks could watch for. And they calculate there might be enough of this leftover debris to last for at least 100 years. Very cool. Staying on the planetary sciences for a moment, there's new research into gold and earthquakes? Yeah, so this is a cool one. So if you're hunting for gold, one of the things prospectors keep an eye out for is the mineral quartz, areas that have veins of quartz are where you tend to find gold nuggets. Now researchers say in the journal Nature Geoscience that that connection

between gold and quartz might be due to the piezoelectric effect. And that's when stress on a crystal from bending or squeezing it can make electricity or vice versa. Quartz is a piezoelectric material, and the researchers say that the stress on the quartz from earthquakes could make enough electricity to cause aqueous gold, that's gold dissolved in the water, to deposit out of the solution in the rock. And the electricity could also help small particles of gold to clump up more gold over time and form larger nuggets or veins of gold within the quartz. That is amazing. Wait, so could California's notoriously shaky ground maybe have helped produce the material for the gold rush? So it definitely seems plausible, right, if earthquakes lead to gold nugget formation. But I'll note that the San Andreas fault, you know, the big name fault in California itself,

isn't normally associated with gold. And the main California gold rush deposits were like out in the Sierra Nevada. So who knows? I guess we'll have to go out there and start digging and try to figure it out. That's right. Looking for another kind of treasure, researchers may have identified a new kind of pain medication. Yeah. So we all know that pain medications are a major challenge. For minor pain, there's things like aspirin and ibuprofen and acin and acinamenophen. But for serious pain, you're generally looking at things like the opioid drugs. There are millions of people that need those pain medications to control acute or chronic pain. But at the same time, you know, those opioids have side effects and can pose risks of addiction and misuse. So I learned about this new drug from an

article in Scientific American by Marla Broadfoot. The FDA is accepted for review a new kind of pain medication made by vertex pharmaceuticals. It's called Suzetrogen, formerly known as VX-548. And this works in a new way by stopping up a sodium channel in the pain receptor neurons. It basically blocks the ability to transmit the pain signal. And if this drug is approved, it would be the first new way to treat pain in over 20 years. They're hoping to have a decision on this drug next year. In other medical research news, there's efforts to see inside a living body. Tell me more. Yeah, this one is earlier in the pipeline. So if you want to see inside the body, there are things like x-rays and MRI skins, but what if you could just look through the skin?

Researchers report in the journal science that they found if you take the right colored dye and apply it to the skin of the mouse, the dye absorbs light in a way that it makes the skin scatter less light and can actually make it transparent to certain wavelengths. Wow. Yeah, they found that they could see things like blood vessels on the surface of the brain. You could see internal organs in the mouse's abdomen, and they could even watch parasolysis, that's the squishy muscle contractions that would move food through the digestive tract. Ah, it's kind of gross, but very, very cool. I love it. So what's the magic ingredient here?

One thing I love about this story is that it's using the food coloring FD&C Yellow 5, which it turns out is the coloring that helps make Mountain Dew that bright yellow color or bright yellow M&Ms and a bunch of other snack foods. The researchers say they aren't sure if the technique will work as well on humans because, you know, our skin is a lot thicker than mouse skin. So I shouldn't be rubbing Mountain Dew on my hands to try to see through them? Probably not. You might need to use, like, a lot more dye, or they'll have to find other ways to get the dye in there. But, you know, this is an intriguing start. Okay. From a dye found in snack foods to a different sort of snack. There's a murder mystery

at sea. Yeah. So you know the line about how the big fish eats the little fish? Yeah. This is pretty much that, but with a really, really big fish. researchers had a satellite tracking tag on a pregnant shark called a poor beagle. These are not small, like this was about seven feet long, hundreds of pounds. The satellite tags collect data like temperature and depth readings, and they're designed to pop off the shark after a while, and then they float up to the surface for researchers to collect. So in this case, the team got a signal from the tag that was on this pregnant poor beagle, that

the tag's been released and is floating near Bermita. But after they collected it and read the data, the data was weird. The log on the tracker showed that for months, the poor beagle swam at one depth during the day, another depth during the night. You can see the depth readings and the water temperature readings going up and down in the logs. But then, starting in March of 2021, there's this period of four days in the record where the tag keeps moving up and down in the water, but it stayed at a constant temperature, about five, five degrees warmer than the water day and night. And then four days after that, the tag comes to

the surface. So the only explanation that they can come up with is that the tag spent four days in the stomach of a larger predator before it was excreted. Ah, do we know who done it? So the researchers say either a white shark or a shortfin mako shark, the likely suspects, because they're the only things that would be in the area at that time and the right size to go hunting for a poor beagle. But there's really no way to know. And that's not the only ocean mystery this week. Yeah, this next one is sad. You may have heard of Hvaldimir.

This is a male beluga whale that fishermen near Northern Norway first noticed in 2019. This particular beluga seemed very used to humans. And he was found wearing a camera harness that was labeled Equipment, St. Petersburg. which gave rise to the theory that he was an animal trained for military operations or spy work by Russia. Okay. Yeah. So Hevaldemeur stayed around Norway and Sweden after he was freed from his spy harness, and he would sometimes interact with people. He kind of became a tourist attraction around the area. It took him a while to really learn to hunt for food on his own,

and sometimes he came too close to boats in the area. But last weekend, Hevaldimir the beluga was found dead. While an official autopsy is yet to come, two animal rights groups have said he appeared to have sustained multiple gunshot wounds. So we'll have to wait and hopefully find out more about this sad case. Yeah, that is sad. Well, I think we need to cheer up with some happier animal news. There's work out this week on pets playing fetch. Yeah.

So we all know many dogs like to play fetch. And if you talk to cat owners, they may tell you that their cats also like to play fetch too. Now scientists have published a paper quantifying just how fetchy both cats and dogs are. They surveyed over 8,000 cat owners and found that 41% reported that their cat would either sometimes frequently or always retrieve toys or objects that the owners through, which is more than researchers previously thought. And it turns out all breeds of cats sometimes engage in fetching. That's awesome. I don't necessarily think of cats doing that.

I guess they enjoyed as much as dogs do. Yeah, it turns out, you know, the numbers for dogs are higher. 78% of dog owners reported playing fetch with their dog. They said that the dogs breeds that were developed to herd livestock are as hunting companions are more likely to play fetch than others. But, you know, all breeds showed some kind of fetching behavior. So for the pet owners out there, which breeds of cats and dogs are more likely to have fun playing fetch?

Yeah. So, again, all breeds of cats they found sometimes will play fetch. but it seemed to be more common in Burmese, Siamese, and Tonkinese cats. On the dog side, you're looking at Labrador and Golden Retrievers, Border Collies, English Cocker Spaniels, things like that. That makes sense. I mean, Retriever is in the name for some of them. Exactly. You would expect the retriever to be good at fetch. Yes, exactly. And, you know, in both cats and dogs, they found males are more likely to play fetch than females.

younger animals more likely to fetch than older animals are. They think that there may be some connection to learning hunting behavior or practicing hunting, but largely they found it's probably just fun. I love that. And that's all the time we have for now. Thanks, Charles. You're welcome, Sophie. Have a great weekend.

Charles Burquist is Science Friday senior producer. Kids across the U.S. just kicked off a new school year. But the summer heat is still here. In recent years, temperatures have stayed hotter than normal through September and even into October. And sitting in a sweltering classroom can make learning really difficult, even dangerous. A story in the 19th describes how learning and teaching have become more challenging as the planet heats up. And what solutions might be on the horizon. Joining me is Jessica Kutz, reporter at the 19th based in Tucson, Arizona.

Welcome to Science Friday. Thanks so much, Sophie. Jessica, why are kids specifically so at risk for heat exhaustion or dehydration? Yeah, so kids are so at risk because their bodies are still developing the ability to thermoregulate. And what that means is that, you know, our bodies have this ability to either heat up or warm up when it's too cold or to cool down when it's too hot outside. But for kids, their main ability and our main ability to thermoregulate in the heat is, is the function of sweating. But kids don't sweat as much as adults.

And that's really important because when we sweat, that evaporates off of our skin and it cools us down. It's kind of one of our main mechanisms in the heat. And so for kids, also for people who are pregnant and also the elderly, that ability is somewhat compromised. I would say the other thing is that kids, they also just haven't learned the cues of their own bodies yet. So they don't always know when they're over

heating or they forget to drink water when they should be drinking water. And so they really depend on adults like parents and teachers to remind them to do these sorts of things to stay safe. And some schools could just run the AC during hot weather, but many don't have air conditioning, right? That's right. So as you mentioned, heat is extending further into the school year, but it's also starting earlier into the spring. So this used to not be a problem because, you know, in places like the East Coast where there really isn't air conditioning in a lot of these schools because they were built in like the 50s and the 60s, they didn't have to think about having cooling because kids were already out of schools in the summer when it started to get

hotter. But because this heat season is extending, we have a lot of students that are in these classrooms that don't have any air conditioning. And in contrast, like where I live in Tucson and Arizona in general, it's always been pretty hot here. And so schools have already adapted to the hot weather, but a lot of parts of the country don't have that infrastructure yet. Roughly how many schools would you say don't have AC in the country? So the latest estimate shows that over 36,000 schools nationwide don't have adequate cooling or HVAC systems. So that's a pretty large number. They estimate that it would cost about $4.5 billion to upgrade schools or to just even like bring in air conditioning in the first place. As part of your reporting, you spoke with teachers. How are they feeling about this

problem? Teachers are feeling pretty frustrated. I learned. Yeah, I spoke to a teacher in Pennsylvania and another in New York. And so they're really like at the kind of epicenter of this issue. And they're frustrated because their job has become as much as it is about the learning and the teaching their students. It's also become a lot about the safety and having to like be aware of how their kids are doing in the classroom. And then also having to like deal with all these added distractions because of that.

So one teacher I spoke to in Pennsylvania, she's in Pittsburgh. Her classroom was getting up to like 90 degrees, which is very hot. It's too hot for anyone to be in all day. So they started allowing water bottles so that kids could drink water during the day. But then that means kids have to go to the bathroom and they're spilling the water. And, you know, it's like creating this whole other host of distractions when you have like 30 kids now who are all needing to like drink water and take care of themselves. And it was kind of funny. I talked to one of the teachers in New York. Yeah, he was saying kids are really lethargic. They are tired. And they also, in his classroom, they would put their heads down on their desk because the desk is cool. It's like a cool surface. So you have kids like essentially falling asleep on these cool surfaces, just trying to stay like a comfortable temperature. And yeah, and it's really hard to teach in that kind of environment and for students to learn. What about other solutions? Are there other ways that schools and teachers can keep students cool?

Yeah, I mean, the best one is just upgrading these schools so that they have air conditioning. Another teacher I spoke to said that he does close the blinds or he'll turn off the lights. And actually in New York, the state legislature just passed a law. It's waiting for the governor's signature. But it would require exactly that. So when it's 82 degrees inside a classroom, it would require teachers to close blinds, turn off the lights. And then when it gets to 88 degrees, classes would have to be canceled. So now when schools are canceled because of heat, they can kind of revert back to remote learning. We know that has its own issues too, like some, you know, kids are then home alone and might not have the same like capacity to learn from home.

You've mentioned how teachers are taking on a lot more in terms of safety. I wanted to mention that tragically, there was a school shooting in Georgia earlier this week on September 4th. Two students and two teachers were killed. According to CNN, that's the 45th school shooting in the U.S. so far this year. So how does that safety concern intersect with trying to keep kids safe from heat? Yeah. So this was something, it's just like an unfortunate reality of schools over the last few decades with school shootings.

You know, something that schools and teachers used to be able to do before this started happening was they would leave windows open overnight or they would leave doors open throughout the school to create like a cross breeze. And once they started having to kind of take these heightened security measures because of things like school shootings, all those options to kind of naturally cool down a school completely evaporated with school shootings. and the need to keep students safe from this other very real danger during the school year. Let's switch gears a little bit. Do we know how heat and being in these hot conditions affects kids' ability to learn and even to just show up to class? Yeah. So, you know, as I mentioned before, the classroom is just a lot more distracting for learning. There are a lot of studies that show, like, lower abilities to concentrate and to take an information when temperatures are higher.

There was one pretty robust one. It was published in 2020, and researchers analyzed the PSAT scores of 10 million students in the country. And so they looked at students who had, like, higher exposure to heat during the school year compared to those who didn't. And they found that for every degree hotter,

a school year was, it resulted in a 1% decrease in learning. You've mentioned some state level guidelines for what schools should do on hot days. Which states have regulations like that? Arizona is, I would kind of say, like a leader in this area, just because as I mentioned, they've been dealing with this for a number of years. So in 2017, they created a heat ready plan for schools in Phoenix. And what that does is it just creates like a series of guidelines that schools have to follow when it hits certain temperatures. Again, some of those are like moving around recess or not having recess if it's too hot outside, you know, taking different measures to keep the classrooms cool.

In California, they're also trying to pass a new bill that would also create a similar heat action plan. but one of the kind of issues at the moment that policymakers are pointing out is that there isn't any sort of federal guidance that could help schools maybe like make these plans more quickly or like have some sort of, you know, understanding of like what is a temperature that's too hot for students or what should we be aiming for? So there is an effort to ask the Department of Education to start creating some sort of federal guideline that schools could look for. too. So would you say there's groups actively trying to get some federal guidelines in place? Because the fact that we don't have those sounds pretty concerning, especially with temperatures

rising. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it's like so many things right now related to extreme heat is we're kind of behind the ball a bit in so many different areas of this country and in our infrastructure and schools is, of course, one of those. So, There are some, like, different think tanks that are trying to put pressure on the federal government that includes the Center for American Progress, the Federation of American Scientists, and a few others that all signed this letter really urging lawmakers or urging the government to start thinking more deeply about this issue and trying to bring some urgency to it. Because as you mentioned, every year has been hotter than, like, the year before. So it's not like a future problem that we have to solve. Schools, even this year already, have had to cancel or have an early dismissal for class because it's just too hot for their students. So we're already seeing a loss of learning.

It's just like so many things related to extreme heat. I don't think the country has been taking it seriously enough. And it's just now starting to kind of reach this point where people are starting to pay attention to it. Before we go, Jessica, is there anything parents can do at home to keep their kids safe when they go off to school? Yeah, there's a few things they could do. So one, definitely, as we're talking about, like, make sure your child has a water bottle that they can take to school. There are water bottles that are insulated or they're steel, and so they keep water cold, which is really helpful. Another tip is like dress your children in loose fitting light colored clothes.

that also keeps them cooler. And then if they do have like a health issue or a health concern like asthma or some other concern that makes them more susceptible to heat, they can talk to their teachers and their schools. Most schools do have like a portable AC unit that they can bring into a classroom. But sometimes it means like there has to be a request. So, you know, a parent has to let the teacher know that their student has this health condition. And so usually they can bring in some sort of portable unit to at least help those

students. Jessica, thank you for joining me. Thank you so much for having me on. Jessica Coots is a reporter at the 19th News. That's all the time we have for today. Lots of folks help make the show happen, including Beth Rami, Santiago Flores. Diana Plaster. Robin Casmer. On the next episode, we'll figure out how researchers are using DNA to give a boost to digital data storage. I'm CyFri producer, D.P. Peter Schmidt. See you then.