Science Friday - Recipient Of Pig Kidney Transplant Recovering | Answering Your Questions About April 8 Eclipse

Episode Date: April 5, 2024

A Massachusetts man who received a kidney from a genetically modified pig is recovering well. Also, on April 8, a total solar eclipse will plunge parts of North America into darkness. Scientists answer the questions you asked.Recipient Of Pig Kidney Transplant Leaves The HospitalLast month, Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston announced that a team of doctors had transplanted a kidney from a genetically engineered pig into a living human for the first time. This week, that patient, a 62-year-old man living with end-stage kidney disease, was sent home from the hospital, having recovered enough to be discharged. Sixty-nine genes were edited in the donor pig, including three that coded for a certain sugar found on the surface of pig cells. The edits, hopefully, will make it less likely for the human recipient to reject the transplant.Umair Irfan, senior correspondent at Vox, joins Ira Flatow to talk about the xenotransplantation advance, and how it could affect patients awaiting donor organs. They’ll also talk about other stories from the week in science, including how power grid operators are preparing for the upcoming solar eclipse, NASA’s search for a new lunar rover, an advance in getting robots to make appropriate faces, research into using a drug similar to the obesity medication Ozempic to delay Parkinson’s symptoms, and plans for a new time zone—on the moon.Answering Your Questions About Monday’s EclipseAfter months of excitement, the 2024 total solar eclipse is almost here! On Monday, April 8, the moon will line up perfectly between the Sun and the Earth. For a few short minutes, it’ll plunge parts of North America into total darkness—right in the middle of the day.More than 30 million people live in the path of totality—where the moon will completely block off the sun. It stretches from northwest Mexico, across the US, and into southeastern Canada. Depending how far you are from the path, you might experience a partial eclipse. Magical, nonetheless.Ira talks with Dr. Padi Boyd, astrophysicist at NASA and host of the agency’s podcast Curious Universe, and Mark Breen, meteorologist and planetarium director at the Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium in Vermont. They answer questions our readers and listeners have submitted about the eclipse, and discuss why we should be excited, how to prepare, and what scientists can learn from this phenomenon.For more eclipse-day tips and facts, visit our website.Transcripts for each segment will be available the week 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.

A solar eclipse is a beautiful, awe-inspiring event. And there's one coming up this Monday. You'll be able to see it from certain parts of North America. It's a few minutes of an otherworldly scene that you rarely get to be a part of in real time. So if you can, look up. It's Friday, April 5th, and this is Science Friday. I'm SciFri producer Rasha Arredi. After years and years of waiting, the solar eclipse is just a few days away.

And if you miss this one, well, you might have to wait decades to see the next. So we're here to help you make the most out of this one. We'll talk about why an eclipse is such an incredible spectacle, how to safely enjoy it, and what scientists can learn from studying these phenomena. But first, let's check in on this week's science news. Here's Ira Flato. Last month, researchers announced that a gene-modified pig kidney had been transplanted into a person. This week, the recipient of them,

kidney was discharged from the hospital and sent home. Here to tell us more is Umar Afan, senior correspondent at Vox in Washington, D.C. Welcome back, Umair. Hey, ERA. Thanks for having me back. Rewind the clock a bit. What happened here? Well, as you noted, there was a patient that received a genetically modified pig kidney last month. The patient's name is Rick Slaman. He's 62 years old, and he was suffering from end-stage renal disease. And now it turns out that he got well enough that he could actually go home. This is actually a huge step forward because we've been able to do

some kinds of pig to human xenotransplants, as they're called, for some time, but they've been very high-risk procedures. There was previously a kidney transplanted into a brain-dead patient, but this patient, Rick's Lehman, is very clearly alive, and it shows that this kidney was actually functioning normally enough that it could actually replicate human kidney function.

Now, this was not just a plain kidney. They had to genetically engineer this pig, right? Yeah, they had to make a couple changes to these kidneys, to one, to get rid of the pig proteins or some of the markers on the kidney that would trigger an immune response, but also to add human markers on the kidney that would make it more easily and readily accepted. Because when you have an organ transplant, one of the biggest risks and one of the challenges is rejection that the host can not integrate that organ or that the immune system can turn against it. People who receive organ transplants often are on immunosuppressant drugs

the rest of their lives. And that can lead to a whole bunch of other problems. And so if you can smooth that transition, you can also improve the prognosis for patients who get these transplants. So this might be one of many, and it might herald an era of other organs beyond kidneys. Right. We've seen already a heart transplant, but the issue here is that the demand for kidney transplants is so immense in the United States. You know, there's about 135,000 people each year who are diagnosed with end-stage renal disease, but only about 25,000 transplants take place. And my colleague, Dylan Matthews,

Rish wrote an article just arguing that we also need to be doing a lot more to be increasing donations using our conventional methods. And so that's from living donors, because we have two kidneys, you can live with one, and also encouraging more people to be organ donors after they die. And we can actually meet this supply if we were to encourage more people to get on the donor registries and take more aggressive steps to fill this need. Interesting.

Let's move on to some other interesting medical news. you have a story about work with Moderna's MRNNA vaccine technology, but not as a vaccine, but to treat a disease. Tell us about that. Right. Actually, you may know that Moderna, before they developed the COVID-19 vaccine, we're initially developing mRNA as a treatment for diseases. You may recall with the mRNA technology, what it does is it uses a little piece of genetic code that teaches the body to make a component of a virus.

And in this case, rather than making a piece of a virus, what they did was that they used it to teach the body to make an enzyme for people who are suffering from this disease called propionic acidemia. And so when that enzyme is defective, it causes toxins to build up in organs in the body, and it can cause all sorts of problems there. And so they reasoned that if we could coach the body to make this enzyme on their own rather than treating it with drugs, the patients could actually improve their health outcomes. And so one of the things that they found was when they treated patients with this, that their risk of emergencies dropped dramatically. And some of these patients were able to take this treatment for up to two years. So it shows that this could actually be a viable therapy that could actually help treat other kinds of illnesses. Would those illnesses possibly include cancer, cancerous tumors, things like that? Yeah, exactly.

So one of the other goals they want to use with this MRI technology is to target tumors. Basically, if you can get the MRNA into tumor cells, the MRNA can actually paint targets on them to actually coach the body's immune system to target them. And this could potentially be another way to target cancer going forward. Terrific, terrific. Staying on a medical front for one more story, there's been a lot of attention given to drugs like OZMPIC for weight loss, but there's news this week about using a related drug to slow the progress of Parkinson's disease. Yeah, that's right. So OZempe falls into this category of drugs called GLP1, and there's another related drug called Lixocenetide that was used in this French study. In patients who have Parkinson's disease, you know, this is the illness that causes tremors and stiffness and difficulty with balance and dementia. It's a very dangerous progressive illness and doesn't really have a whole lot of treatment.

But they found that when they use this drug in some of the patients, they saw improvements in some of those symptoms, having less tremors, fewer stiffness, and better cognitive. outcomes. And it sort of signals that even though this is a neurological disease, there's probably some sort of digestive system mechanism that's associated with it as well. Do we know why this type of drug seems to be effective against so many different kinds of conditions? I mean, you just pointed to that? Could that be the key here? Well, there's a lot of different mechanisms likely at work. The GLP1 drugs mimic a hormone that's produced by the intestines, and that causes your body to produce more insulin. It makes your stomach feel more full, and that can have, you know, downstream effects in other organ systems.

But it also appears that GLP1 drugs can also attach to neurons. And so that means that they can also have some direct effects in our brains as well that we don't maybe fully appreciate. And so scientists are hoping to learn a little bit more about these mechanisms and hopefully develop more targeted ways to improve outcomes and people with these kinds of degenerative illnesses. Love it when we find stuff we never knew about before. Okay. We're all excited about the eclipse on Monday and later in this hour we have our eclipse preview. But you have a story out today about how the power grid operators are preparing. And I don't mean by stockpolling eclipse glasses, what have to do with the power grid? Well, as you may note that we've seen a big boom

and renewable energy in recent years and particularly solar power. So when the moon passes in front of the sun, that's going to have some pretty significant impacts on the power grid. You know, in the United States since the last eclipse in 2017, we've had nearly two and a half times as much solar power on the grid. And one of the biggest states that have some of the most solar power in the country is Texas. And if you look at the map of the eclipse, that's passing straight through the lone star state. And so grid operators there are preparing for a significant drop-off in solar energy, as well as a very significant ramp up when that power comes right back. And so right now they're taking steps and doing modeling to try to make sure that they have

enough power. But this is also a useful case study because we're expecting even more renewable energy to be coming onto the grid in coming years. And with more intermittency on the grid, grid operators have to actually do a lot more planning to make sure that when there are things like cloudy days or other kinds of shortfalls in power, that they have enough electricity to balance the demand and the supply to keep everything flowing smoothly. Yeah, that's a question I was going to ask about that. I mean, solar operators already, right, have to deal with cloudy days and nighttime. So, why is this eclipse different? Well, the eclipse is different because it's happening so quickly. So, you know, we normally see a ramp up when the sun rises and a ramp down when the sun sets.

But we're talking now a huge drop off on the order of minutes. So we're talking about like nearly a 60 gigawatt drop of power across the U.S. power grid in a few minutes and then suddenly having to replace that. And that's not trivial for the power grid. You know, while we see more energy storage on the grid, there isn't enough to make up that entire shortfall. So you need other generators that are ready to quickly ramp back up and ramp back down. And if you don't do it right, you know, we could see either blackouts if you don't have enough power or we could see instability if you have too much power. It's a delicate balancing act. And having something this acute, this fast is a really difficult challenge. All right. Let's talk about another technology advance.

And I'm talking about this one is in the important field of getting robots to make funny faces. What's significant here? Right. So a team of scientists, they built this anthropomorphic robot called Emo, and it has 26 motors underneath this flexible blue silicon face to give it precise controls about how it mimics and imitates emotions. The critical thing here, though, is that what the scientists did is that they taught this robot across a large data set on what human emotions look like. And critically, what they're trying to teach it to do is not just mimic what it sees a person do, but anticipate emotions. And so they're trying to teach this to be empathetic in terms of how it

it expresses. So when you smile, it smiles or it can respond within milliseconds to maybe show a frown. And so the idea is we want to be able to have this anticipate how somebody is talking and how a robot should maybe react to it. But obviously, you don't want to send the wrong signals. You don't want to be smiling when somebody's telling you a sad story. You don't want to be frowning when somebody's trying to tell you something exciting. And so there's this sort of delicate balancing act here as well about like how we get these machines to mimic human emotions. Let's talk about buying a new car. Mayor. I mean, many of us have had that experience. You consider different models and such. You go for a test driver. But NASA is on the market for a new lunar rover. You're not going to test drive that on the moon.

How do you shop for one of those? Well, NASA recruited its new big three for the moon, not General Motors, Stalantis, and Ford, but these three companies called intuitive machines, lunar outpost and Venturi Astor Lab. They are going to be private contractors that are going to be submitting candidates for a vehicle drive on the moon that's going to be launched with the Artemis mission and potentially future private space missions as well. NASA previously has put vehicles on the moon, but they were designed in-house. And what they're saying is with this competitive process with the private companies, they can hopefully get better or cheaper vehicles, but also approach new designs that can help astronauts get around the moon the next time they're there. Any way to get these models to the

moon to test drive them? Not just yet. You know, NASA has its own testing facilities here in the States, but they will eventually have to go through some pretty tough challenges. You know, pneumatic tires, for instance, don't work the same way on the moon because there's no air pressure. And so you have to design the tires very differently. And they also have to be very compact and lightweight enough to be launched up on a rocket. So there's a lot of constraints you face on the moon that you don't face on your normal streets. And so whether or not they have cup holders and radio and all these other kinds of features, I don't know that NACS is going to spring for those, but certainly they will be looking for some really important features that we haven't experienced

before, including self-driving, which is well, the year. Self-driving. Yeah, there's also news on the lunar beat that there's a call for a lunar time zone. Well, yes, now that we have so many more companies and governments trying to lane on the moon, we need to coordinate and get everybody on the same clock. You know, if you call your lunar self-driving taxi on the moon, if it shows up at the wrong time, you know, you're not going to be there. And so the problem on the moon is that time actually moves a little bit quicker they are relative to the Earth, about 58.7 microseconds every day. And that's actually enough to throw off spacecraft and time instruments. And so the White House recently asked NASA to

develop what they called a coordinated lunar time. But they also have to work with other countries. Obviously, this is an international effort. We've already established space time zones on the international space station. So this will be another coordinated effort to get the whole world on board with the standard for further space exploration. O'Meer, it's always a good time when you're around. Thanks for joining us this week again. My pleasure, Ira. Thank you for having me. One quick note. On last week's News Roundup, we featured a story about how climate change may actually be changing the way we keep time, pushing back the need for a leap second to reconcile atomic clocks with the Earth's rotation. And our reporter said that's because the Earth's rotation is speeding up. But according to the paper in nature we were citing, the Earth's rotation is actually slowing down and we regret the error. Now after years of anticipation, the 2024 total solar eclipse is almost here. This Monday, April 8th, the moon will line up perfectly between the sun and the earth,

and for a few short minutes turned daylight into twilight in parts of North America, creating a spectacular light show for those of us fortunate enough to be in the path of totality. And that means more than 30 million people live in that path, where the moon completely blocks out the distance. of the sun. It's going to stretch from northwest Mexico across the U.S. and to Newfoundland, the northeastern part of Canada, and depending how far you are from the path, you might experience a partial eclipse still exciting. Here to preview this celestial sensation and answer some of your questions are my guests, Mark Breen, meteorologist and planetarium director at the Fairbanks

Museum and Planetarium. That's in St. John'sbury, Vermont. He's also host of Eye on the Sky for Vermont Public. And Dr. Petty Boyd, astrophysicist at NASA, and host of the agency's podcast, Curious Universe. Dr. Boyd is based in Greenbelt, Maryland. Welcome both of you to Science Friday. Thank you, Ira. Great to be here. Thank you, Ira. Nice to have you both. Mark, I recall seeing my first total solar eclipse during the last one in the U.S. that I could see. 2017, and even though I had always heard about what to expect, this event entirely blew me away. I imagine the same thing's going to happen to folks this time. Very exciting, right? Yes, and I'm actually, this will be my first total solar eclipse. I've never experienced one before,

and so my anticipation is as high as it can get. It's true. And Patty, what do you say to folks who are like, nah, another eclipse? No big deal. Honestly, don't know anyone who ever says anything like that. There's such rare and beautiful phenomena. If you're in the path of totality, it's a few minutes of an otherworldly scene that you rarely get to be a part of in real time. So if you can, look up. Yeah. Let's talk about how rare this is in the U.S.

When will we see the next one if we don't see this one? Right. So eclipses do come in cycles. And so if you miss the eclipse on Monday, then you'll see. The next one that passes over the U.S. is in 2045. But there is an eclipse that happens somewhere on Earth, about every 18 months or so, give or take, a couple months. Mark, we have a note from Maria in Valley Stream, New York, who writes and wants to know what's the difference between a solar and a lunar eclipse and what determines how long they last, Mark? Sure. So a solar eclipse, it is eclipsing the sun, solar. And so a lunar eclipse, the moon eclipse, the moon, moon, because comes eclipsed by the Earth. So they're separate situations. The moon is in between the sun and the

Earth during a solar eclipse. It's also a relatively brief period of time and seen over a relatively select area, whereas a lunar eclipse covers basically anybody that's on the night side of the Earth that has a view of the moon. It also lasts quite a bit longer. The totality during a lunar eclipse can be well over one hour. And Patty, what are we actually going to witness if we're in the path of totality? Will we be able to see part of the sun? So if you're in the path of totality and you have clear skies, you're going to see some amazing things. Make sure you've got eclipse glasses. They will protect your eyes. But you'll be able to basically watch the moon pass right over the face of the sun. So the sun is this big, bright ball in our sky. The moon is going to be at new moon.

face, so it's going to be a dark ball in the sky. And you're going to watch that continuously, the moon continuously cover the face of the sun until when you get to totality, the face of the moon is completely covering what we usually see is the face of the sun. That's called totality. Leading up to it, you'll see some beautiful effects on the surface of the sun that are due to the moon's surface. But then when you're in mid-totality, you're going to see the corona, which is this very faint outer atmosphere of the sun. Not possible. to see it at any other time than during a total solar eclipse. And we're so excited here because not only will we be looking at the corona during this eclipse, but this is during

a period of the maximum solar activity called solar max. So we're expecting the corona to look quite active, especially compared to what it looked like in 2017. Okay, so you say you want to go out, you want to see the eclipse, you're getting only your equipment together. One thing you don't need, Mark, is a pair of binoculars. And you don't want that, right? No, no, no, no. In fact, it's one of those tempting things to really want to enhance your view that way. And yet enhancing light from the sun just isn't a good idea. And there are, of course, some special filters, but that's generally recommended for somebody that really has some experience in terms of what they're doing. For the casual observer, there are a lot of other ways that you can safely view the eclipse. Give me a few.

Sure. Actually, one of the fun things that people have done in the... past, especially with the partial phase of this, is you take your fingers and you basically make a little crosshatch, like a, you know, a tick-tac toe pattern. And in the in-between little spots between your fingers, a little bit of sunlight goes down through so the sun is behind your shoulder. And as it shines on the ground, you'll get these little tiny crescent suns. And you can do the same thing with like a spaghetti strainer. All the little holes, you get these little tiny crescent suns that appear on the ground. You know, I'm, I once, saw that many years ago made by tree leaves.

Yes. Isn't that amazing? The trees on the ground that, you know, you see little crescents on the ground under a tree. Well, and the only reason that I'm not thinking about it, because where I am in northern Vermont, we don't have any leaves just yet. It's snowing outside right now. I'm sorry to hear that. What about those special glasses, you know, the foil on them? You're going to want to have your eclipse glasses during the partial phases of the eclipse, which everybody will see, even if you're in the path of totality, those partial phases happen before and after totality. It's very important to protect your eyes. You can find the glasses in many, many places. Many public libraries have them, schools, museums. Some people still

have their eclipse glasses lying around from 2017. But if you're in the path of totality, for those brief moments when the moon totally covers the bright surface of the sun, then you must take your eclipse glasses away from your eyes and view. that totality moment with your full being. Let's go to another listener from Jim from Libertyville, Illinois asks, is it just a coincidence that we see the sun's corona during a solar eclipse, given their relative sizes and distance from Earth? I mean, Patty, it is amazing how it just, moon is just the perfect size, isn't it?

Yes, it is. So, you know, the sun is quite a bit bigger than the moon, 400 times bigger. of is also 400 times further away from the Earth than the moon is. You know, the relationship of their distances and their sizes is a perfect cosmic coincidence that they have the same apparent diameter in our sky, and that when the orbits are all aligning, that moon diameter passes right in front of the sun's apparent diameter to show us the corona. It is a coincidence, and it's such a wonderful, lucky cosmic coincidence for us here on Earth.

Because the moon is still moving away from Earth, and sometime in the future this is not going to happen. I mean, many years in the future. Like millions of years. We lose about, it gets about 3.68 centimeters further from the Earth per year. It's slowly receding away. So, yes, in the far distant future, we will still have eclipses, but they will all be a type of partial eclipse, which is called an annular eclipse.

So when everything lines up perfectly, you'll still have this bright ring of the sun's surface around the moon's desk. We got a while. Yeah, not worried about that. Mark, instead of the future, let's talk about history, the history of eclipses. how did ancient civilizations keep track of them? I mean, if they happened so rarely. Well, they were certainly rare, and yet at the same time, you're basically taking out the life-giving force that everybody knew about.

I mean, the sun was, you know, the source of light, the source of warmth, and you take that away, and so that became really important. And various civilizations, especially those that kept relatively long records. I'm thinking of, example, the Chinese records, which were fairly detailed, and extensive. And so as you go, even from dynasty to dynasty, they were keeping track of such things. Same thing could be true of the Aztecs and the Mayans, keeping very careful track. And so they had various systems in place, so to say, if there were, you know, suddenly the sun was disappearing, they had to, well, in many cases, make noise. It was, something was eating the sun.

Something was, could have been a dragon. I just heard from a gentleman in Vietnam. He was talking. about a toad that would eat the sun. And they made noise so that they would basically regurgitate the sun. The Babylonians were pretty clever, right? Didn't they figure out that there was a cycle going on there? Yes, that actually still amazes me that, you know, over 3,000 years ago, they did such careful observations that they knew there were those periods of time when the sun and the moon and the earth were all lined up. Now, they didn't have the same concept that we do in terms of them being physical bodies out in space, but they certainly, in terms of their observations from where they were, detailed records that they kept, they came up with eventually a cycle of

223 months in which the moon repeated its motions. Speaking of history, I'm such a science history nut that I remember studying about the eclipse of 1919, where Einstein's theory of relativity was tested and supported during, an eclipse then, right, Patty? Right. And it's, you know, Einstein's general theory of relativity is expansive and beautiful, but not quite as easy

to test as many other scientific theories. But one of the really astounding predictions and, you know, the model of space time that he presented in general relativity was that mass can bend the fabric of space time. And so that something

is very massive but is in front of a light source, that instead of those light coming straight to you, the mass itself should bend that light around. And that would mean that the light would appear to be in a different place than it would be otherwise if the mass wasn't there. So the sun is massive. And when the moon blocks out, the bright sun, we can see stars. And so in 1919 in that total solar eclipse, astronomers were able to test the theory.

Was the sun actually bending light rays as they passed around its mass to get to our eyeballs and our telescopes here on Earth. And yes, indeed, they found it to be the case. And it was just a beautiful observational proof of Einstein's theory of general relativity, which stands to this day. And Mark, we have learned lots of other things scientifically from past eclipses, haven't we? One of the things that developed, especially in the 1860s and 70s, was photography came into being and particular astrophotography. And by taking images of the sun, one, instead of that very momentary opportunity to look at the sun's corona that Patty was talking about. We now have images of it that they can study in more detail.

But the other thing that was going on with telescopes is they were able to use the specific spectra that was going on. So in other words, you allow that light to come through the telescope through a special instrument. And so you can actually detect what the sun was made out of. Hydrogen in helium. It was a huge breakthrough in terms of understanding. what the sun was made out of and eventually what the stars were made out of.

That is cool. I never knew that. I never knew that. Let's go to another Twitter question. Yot Monster is asking, are there specific examinations of the sun that can only be accomplished when the moon blocks out most of its lights, such as during an eclipse, Patty? Absolutely. Not only are we able to see the corona at this time, and we can't at other times. Every time there's an eclipse, there's a little bit more technology development so we can take our instrumentation on observatories or put instruments on things like airplanes or sounding rockets to really collect sophisticated data and images of the corona at various wavelengths like Mark was just talking about and see what is going on with the activity inside the corona. The corona has clues to how the sun works overall and how the solar wind comes out. So we're hoping to learn a lot about that during this particular eclipse. But it's not just what we can learn about the sun. The sun influences the Earth and the Earth's atmosphere,

in particular the upper layers of the Earth's atmosphere, the ionosphere, charged particles. They're constantly in interplay with the sun. So we're going to also be taking some measurements during this total solar eclipse when the ionosphere or parts of it are under the shadow cast by the moon to see how that changes and to get a better understanding of that sun, connection, which is so important for many, many things on Earth, including like satellites, astronauts, communication.

And does NASA have plans to do any of these studies during the eclipse? Yes, indeed we do. Yes, there's an airplane that will be carrying about five different experiments. It's called the WB57. It's a research jet. And those are meant to do basically exactly what I was talking about, really interrogate the corona during this short period of totality. But the really exciting thing about being on a jet is that you're not fixed in your geographic location.

You can actually move the jet in such a way that you extend that period of totality. So it's about 20% longer from the jet's vantage point, which means we're going to get much more data than you can get from the ground. We'll be above all the noise from the Earth's atmosphere at that point in time. There's also sounding rockets that will be going up from Wallops flight facility. That will be looking at how the atmosphere changes before, during, and after totality. And I know, Patty, you host NASA's podcast, Curious Universe, and you've been working on a series about the sun. So tell me what are some of your favorite fun facts about the sun. Oh, gosh.

Thank you for asking. We've had so much fun with this podcast focused on the sun this year in particular, because it gives us a great opportunity to talk about all of the NASA science that's being done on the sun today, but also the science writ large, not just NASA is interested in the sun. but I also love the fact that we're bringing in the story of the history. I'm so happy we're talking about it here today because the history of eclipses and humans watching and trying to understand the patterns in the sky and what they might mean is so rich and so inspiring.

When we're talking about an eclipse we're going to see in just a few days, we're connected to those people who were looking at it thousands of years ago. So there's also an active investigation that will be going on during this particular eclipse that attempts to answer the question, were the Chacoans, so the indigenous people in Chaco Canyon, that's out in the southwest in the U.S., did they actually witness a solar eclipse and did they record it in their cliff art? There's some tantalizing clues that, in fact, they did. And the cool thing about that is that that particular eclipse that did pass over Chaco, you know, we can time eclipses so we know that it happened and we know when. It was also during solar maximum.

And so there are some indications that they may be looking at a very act. active sun and seeing features on the edges of the sun when the totality was happening that they captured in their art. And we'll be able to compare that to some of the images that we're seeing in this eclipse with our most sophisticated technology and hopefully put some meat on the bones of that question like, is this art in Chaco Canyon actually connected to humans viewing an eclipse and recording it in cliff art? That really is exciting.

And I want to thank both of you for joining us. I'm wishing you all a happy eclipse and especially you, Mark, who's going to see it for the first time. Thank you. Thank you, Ira. Happy eclipse to you. Mark Breen, meteorologist and Planetarium at the Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium in St. John'sbury, Vermont, host of Eye on the Sky for Vermont Public. Dr. Patty Boyd, astrophysicist at NASA, and host of the agency's podcast, Curious Universe. Dr. Boyd is based in Greenbelt, Maryland. And SciFry wants to help you prepare for the eclipse. Yes, visit our website, ScienceFriety.com, Total Eclipse. We've got tips, resources, activities to make this eclipse one to remember.

That's Science Friday.com slash total eclipse. Lots of folks help make this show happen, including Emma Gomez, Annie Niro, George Harper. On Monday's episode, diagnosing heart diseases with AI, and how your brain locks in memories as you sleep. Have a great weekend and a very merry eclipse. I'm CyFrag producer Rasha Auredi. Thank you.