Science Friday - NASA Astronauts Return To Earth After Extended Stay On The ISS | Bottle "Pop" Physics

Episode Date: March 21, 2025

After nine months aboard the International Space Station, astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have finally landed back on Earth. Also, a German physicist and homebrewer discovered brief, intense physical reactions that happen when you uncork a bubbly swing-top bottle.NASA Astronauts Return To Earth After Extended Stay On The ISSAfter 286 days aboard the International Space Station—278 days longer than their initial planned mission—NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams landed safely back on Earth on Tuesday, off the coast of Florida. Their mission turned into a nine-month stay on the station after their Boeing Starliner capsule had issues with its thrusters and NASA deemed it unsafe to carry the astronauts back. SpaceX’s Dragon capsule instead ferried them to Earth earlier this week. And they had a splashdown surprise: A pod of curious dolphins greeted them after they landed.Host Flora Lichtman is joined by Casey Crownhart, senior climate reporter at MIT Technology Review, to catch us up on that and other big science stories from this week, including why a company is trying to “refreeze” a massive glacier, why the 10 hottest years on record are the last 10, and how the London Zoo is trying to conserve a unique frog that incubates its young in its vocal sacs.The Physics That Makes Swing-Top Bottles ‘Pop’For a lot of us, uncorking a bottle is the sound of celebration. It’s also a sound that we may not think too much about—until we open our next bottle.But Dr. Max Koch, a physicist at the University of Göttingen who does home brewing on the side, got to wondering what actually makes that popping sound. What’s happening inside that bottle, physics-wise? To find out more, he recorded the uncorking of an unsuccessful batch of his ginger beer using microphones and a high-speed camera, and analyzed the bubbly results with a physicist’s rigor. His team’s findings were published in the journal Physics of Fluids.Dr. Koch sits down with Host Flora Lichtman to talk about the brief but intense changes to temperature, sound, and speed that happen when you uncork a swing-top glass bottle.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.

This is Science Friday. I'm Flor Lichtman. Today in the podcast, after 286 days aboard the International Space Station, NASA astronauts, Butch Wilmore, and Sunni Williams finally landed safely back on Earth. They had traveled to the ISS for what was to be an eight-day trip and ended up staying nine months because their Boeing Starliner capsule was having thruster issues. Here to tell us about their return and other notable stories in science this week is Casey Crownheart, Senior Climb reporter for the MIT Technology Review. She's based in New York City. Casey, welcome back to Science Friday. Thanks so much for having me. Always great to be here. So Butch and SUNY are back. Yay. Give us the story. Yeah, finally. It's been a long wait for sure. So these two took off on June 25th, 24, on a mission to starliner, a Boeing spacecraft, which is designed to transport crew to and from the ISS. Like you mentioned, technical issues kind of messed with the plan. a little bit. As it was approaching the ISS, the thrusters stopped working. They managed to dock, but they decided to send Starliner back without crew. And so basically, it's been kind of a waiting

game to get, you know, another spacecraft up there that could take these astronauts home and then crew up to the space station so that it wouldn't be kind of short-handed. It's amazing to me that they don't have like a backup, you know, on the shelf, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that it's one of those things where we could have sent an emergency mission, but, you know, they were up there doing work, working on experiments, doing spacewalks. Like, they were really okay. It was obviously a delay, but yeah. Well, what did they do with their extra time up there? Yeah, so they were, you know, helping out with experiments that were going on at the space station, fixing equipment. SUNY Williams actually set a new record for most time spent spacewalking for a woman,

62 hours over nine spacewalks over her career. So, yeah, they kept busy. I'm sure. Has Boeing given an update on what was wrong with the capsule or their future plans for that program? Yeah. So like we said, there were problems with the thrusters, which is why they decided to send it back uncrewed. They're continuing to test Starliner over this summer and the company is still making modifications, fixing those issues.

We don't have any news about when another flight would take. place. The first one would be uncrewed without any people on it, but NASA hasn't announced the timeline for that or future missions. Can we talk about my favorite part of the story? Listen to this clip. We'll be used to lift the dragon capsule out of the water and onto the recovery vessel. Wow, we got a cute little pot of dolphins. It wasn't just one or two. Yes, I love this. The astronauts got a great little welcome back to Earth. There was a pot of dolphins hopping around in the water where the capsule splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico before that that got lifted back onto the recovery boat. So I thought it was adorable.

Perfect welcome. Perfect welcome wagon for them. Let's move on to something that, you know, we may have suspected, but has now been confirmed. This decade has been quite hot. Yes, a warm one. Absolutely. So a new report from the World Meteorological Organization confirms that the past 10 years have been the 10 hottest on record. So that's over nearly 200 years of record keeping.

2024 was the single warmest year on record. The planet surface was about 1.55C warmer than the average during pre-industrial times. You know, this sounds bad, of course. But what does this mean, what does this mean, exactly? Yeah, it's, I mean, like you said, we kind of, we know the planets heating up, greenhouse gas emissions are causing our climate to change. I think that this is really a signal that we are approaching the place where we really don't want to be. You know, the Paris Agreement is the UN Treaty that the world agreed to limit warming to 1.5C. Technically, this means we've gone beyond that a little bit, you know, in the short term. But it means that we really need to take action on climate change. Tell us about this story that you all at MIT Tech

review published this week about an organization that's trying to refreeze a massive glacier? Yes. Today is the inaugural UN World Day for Glaciers. So happy to those, all those who celebrate. I'm celebrating. Yeah. Me too. So my colleague James Temple wrote this great story about an organization founded by scientists from MIT and Dartmouth called the Eret Glacier Initiative. They've raised about $5 million in funding to study glaciers. One of the things about glaciers is that we're we really don't understand a lot about how they work and how likely some of them are to kind of collapse and fall into the ocean. One glacier in particular that people may have heard of called the Thwaites Glacier, sometimes called the Doomsday Glacier, because this is like a massive,

massive amount of ice that if it were to melt and fall into the ocean, it could raise sea levels by more than two feet. And so what this organization is trying to do is study this glacier and others to really understand how likely the worst case scenarios are and look into potential ways to kind of keep that from happening. Such as? Yes. So one of the things that they're looking at is kind of refreezing the glacier to the bedrock below it. Okay.

I know. This sounds very science fiction. Science fiction-y is exactly the way that I would put it to. It's absolutely fascinating. But, I mean, again, if the Thwaites glacier were to melt, that would be two feet of sea level, So that would have a massive impact on coastal areas around the world. So if it does look like that is going to happen, one thing that we could do is basically in a lot of glaciers, there's water between the ice and the bedrock. And that warm water can basically help the glacier move faster, help it melt faster.

And so one thing that these scientists want to look into is if we could basically drill holes into the glacier, stick tubes down there and let the warm water rise out to basically take away that. that catalyst for warming and movement. Okay, let's say the tech could work. There must be legal issues. Yeah, there are a lot of kind of caveats and a lot of roadblocks here, as any scientist who's interested in working on this will tell you. So, you know, like you said, putting aside the technical barrier to this plan, which would be very, very technically difficult. There are also complicated legal questions. You know, Antarctica isn't owned by anyone. It's subject to all these, competing territorial claims. It's governed by this treaty between dozens of nations. So we'd need to figure out, like, who gets to decide this, how it gets basically carried out. There are questions

about if this kind of thing would harm polar ecosystems and how we make decisions around that. So, you know, there's a lot to figure out. And that's just, again, beyond the technical questions. Tell me about this battery charging announcement from the Chinese automaker, BYD. Is it a big deal? It could be big if true, basically. So yeah, Chinese automaker BYD, which is the largest maker of electrified vehicles in the world. If you include both plug-in hybrids and fully electrified vehicles, it's bigger than Tesla. They announced that they have a platform that can charge an EV battery in just five minutes. So that's like, I would argue, very comparable to filling up your gas-powered car. They showcase this on an event on Monday evening in China. And I don't know, it could be really interesting

if we're able to see this kind of super fast charging technology really work. Are there downsides to charging a battery this fast? There could be fast charging today can degrade batteries more quickly. And so there is potential that this could have an impact on lifetime. We don't really know a lot of details, but that's something that I would definitely be looking out for. Okay, drug-resistant deadly fungi. It sounds like scientists may have a new way to treat it. Yes.

So people may have heard more about. about antibacterial resistance. Basically, microbes are really good at kind of evolving ways to get around the ways that we know how to kill them. And so researchers have been looking for new ways to kill fungi because some fungi can cause infections in humans that can be very dangerous and be bad for public health. So researchers found a compound that works in a different way to kill fungi. So basically they attack a different part of the cell membrane than how most of our current antifungal medications work. So this could be kind of a new class of drugs that could potentially help someday. Cool.

Okay, this one's for the foodies. There's news this week about the Neanderthal diet. Yes. So this is, okay, if you're a little queasy, stay with me. It might be a little gross. Foodies, in quotes. Yes. So scientists have thought for a long time that Neanderthals are close cousins were eating

a whole lot of meat. They were like hyper carnivores top of the food chain. Now researchers are saying that there's a chance that really they were eating a whole lot of maggots. So basically one way that we can understand what ancient humans or animals were eating is by looking at their bones, different ratios of isotopes or types of chemical elements, versions of chemical elements can kind of tell a story. And so in the 90s, researchers revealed that Neanderthals had a lot of nitrogen 15. That's typically the signature of a high meat diet. But now researchers are saying that actually it could also be a sign that they were eating maggots because maggots eating rotting meat also have a very high concentration of nitrogen 15. Well, look, I mean, the bug diet is the past, but also the future.

Could be. Okay, for our last story, we're turning to an endangered frog and a new attempt to help them. Tell me about it. Yeah, so Darwin's frogs are little tiny frogs. They may be a couple of inches long. They weigh as much as a few favorite clips. Unfortunately, these frogs are very susceptible to this very prevalent amphibian disease that has caused mass diops of over 400 amphibian species. Darwin's frogs were discovered by Charles Darwin on an island off the coast of Chile, which up until recently was kind of a sanctuary for these frogs. But a couple of years ago, researchers did. detected this fungus there that can cause these, you know, really bad mass die-offs. And so folks from the London Zoo went on a rescue mission to establish a captive breeding program. And they took home a good number of these frogs. And key fact here, that these frogs reproduce in kind of an interesting way, a female will lay eggs and kind of take off. And then

the males will stand watch. And then once the young hit the stage where they wiggle around, the dad scoops them up and keeps them in a vocal sack. And so... Just what? Yeah, it's really, I think really cute. They put them in their mouth. They're literally frogs in their throat. Yeah, yeah.

It's, you know, really convenient way to carry him around. I love this. I mean, this is to me, this is like we... Seahorse dads get a lot of street cred. You know, like we always hear about the seahorse dads. But Darwin Frog Dads doing the most. That's so true. We should talk more about Darwin frog dads. And so the big news is that last month, some of the male frogs that were brought back in this London Zoo breeding program were carrying young. And so they spit out about 33 hatchlings last month, each, about the size of a pencil eraser. I love that image. Thank you, Casey. Thank you so much.

Casey Crownheart is a senior climate reporter for the MIT Technology Review. Don't go away. After the break, we're uncorking the physics of this celebratory sound. I'm telling you you, you don't want to miss it. For a lot of us, this is a sound of celebration. It's also a sound that probably most of us don't think too much about, until we open our next bottle anyway. But my next guest has given it a lot of thought. Dr. Max Koch is a physicist at the University of Gutenying in Germany.

He does home brewing on the side, and he wondered, what is actually making that popping sound? What's happening inside that bottle, physics-wise? Y'all, the answer is going to crack your mind open. Max, welcome to Science Friday. Hello, hello. Okay, so you're a home brewer. How did this beverage brainstorm start for you?

Actually, I got inspired to do this several years ago, just as a hobby. and I had this ginger beer. It didn't taste so well, so I didn't know what to do with it. And on my birthday, I had the idea to film it in our labs with the high-speed camera with 16,800 frames per second. This is exactly how I would imagine a physicist home brewer spending his birthday. Yeah, you are a passionate physicist when you are a physicist. Okay, so you brought it into the lab and you filmed it. Exactly.

And there were actually things that looked pretty interesting and we couldn't explain from the goal. And that's how we decided to dig in a little bit deeper. Okay, so I want to get into some of your findings. But first of all, what kind of bottle were you looking at? Is this like a home brewing bottle, the kind with the rubber cork and the metal handle that you used pop it open? It's a swing top bottle. So with this metal wire

that holds a porcelain top with a rubber ceiling. You know, kombucha people will know it for sure. Okay, so I want to hear the sound. Let's play it. Okay, is that the sound that you were investigating?

Exactly that one. Okay. Is it like music to your ears? It was not loud enough, but yes. Okay, so you filmed it, you hear that pop. What did you find? What was happening inside the bottle?

So we recorded it with the camera and also with a microphone that was capable of recording even very high frequency. So first of all, of course, when the lift off, then the gas is exhaust into the air. and that expungent of the pressurized gas that was kept in the bottle cools down the gas so it can reach down to minus 50 degrees Celsius. Minus 50 degrees Celsius? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's like minus 58 Fahrenheit for us here. Exactly, but only for some milliseconds, you know.

And if you look with a high-speed camera, you might detect even some ice particles. Really? They don't live long, like a fraction of a second. Was that a surprise that it got so cold? Indeed, yes. And the more surprising was the vibration that we saw in the bottleneck because I filled the ginger beer into white transparent bottles. We could actually see through,

and there was something vibrating in the bottleneck after a cap lift off. And eventually, when correlating that with the microphone, recordings, we saw that this is actually the source of the sound. So it's not a shock wave that's emitted from opening. It's actually a resonance in the bottleneck. How loud is the sound? It's extremely loud. Fortunately, it's very short. But suppose you could have your ear inside the bottleneck, then you would hear 180 decibels, which is the same or even more, as the turbine of an airplane. It's as loud as a jet engine?

Exactly. What about how fast the gas moving when it comes out of the bottle? Oh, it's probably supersonic. There's a lot going on in that little tiny moment. Exactly. That's why it was so fascinating, and we finally made a paper out of it. Is there something special about the swing top, Or would we see the same physics when you pop a bottle of champagne or crack open a can of beer?

For the can, it might be different because the gas has more time to get out through a more smaller opening. But with the champagne, it's even more pronounced because when you purchase a champagne bottle, the pressure usually is higher than the one in a beer bottle. So there is even more going on. Max, please tell me there's no practical application for this work. There is, of course, practical application. First and foremost, you need a philosophical topic once you open your beer bottle with your friends. And this is probably where you can start.

That's what my friends always tell me. Please explain physics over our beer. You've got some nice friends there. Well, cheers, Max. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Dr. Max Koch is a physics researcher at the University of Göttingen in Germany. And you can see high-speed video of these bottles being uncorked at ScienceFriday.com slash pop.

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