Science Friday - Star Trek Science, Listening to Pando. May 12, 2023, Part 2

Episode Date: May 12, 2023

Star Trek’s Science Advisor Reveals The Real Astrophysics On Screen Few pop culture properties have lasted quite as long as Star Trek. A dozen Star Trek television shows have aired over the last sixty years—not to mention countless movies, novels, and comic books. Science concepts have always been integral to the Star Trek franchise: from warp speed travel to dilithium. But how much does the series actually accurately depict? Ira speaks with astrophysicist Dr. Erin Macdonald, science consultant for Star Trek about the legacy of the franchise, and how accurate the science is within the series.   Listen To The Largest Tree On Earth For this story, we’re taking a trip to south central Utah and into the Fishlake National Forest to visit the largest tree on earth, an aspen named Pando. The strange thing about Pando is that it doesn’t really look like the world’s biggest tree. It has rolling hills with thousands of tall, lean aspens swaying in the wind. But Pando is there, hiding in plain sight. All those tree trunks you see aren’t actually individual trees. Technically, they’re branches, and that’s because Pando is one massive tree—sprawling more than 100 acres, with 47,000 branches growing from it.   There is a lot to learn about Pando, and our guests turned to sound to understand the tree better. Together, they created an “acoustic portrait” to hear all the snaps, splinters, and scuttles that happen in and around the tree. Ira talks with Jeff Rice, a sound artist and co-founder of the Acoustic Atlas at the Montana State University Library, and Lance Oditt, executive director of the non-profit Friends of Pando, which is dedicated to preserving the tree.   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.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Plato. There are a few pop culture franchises that do science quite like Star Trek. Space, the final frontier. Is there a more recognizable opening line on television? More iconic than that one, the Star Trek series released in 1966, starring William Shatner as Captain Kirk, Leonard Nimoy as Spock, And since then there have been a dozen shows exploring the Star Trek universe. Some have been live action, some animated, but all explore concepts in astrophysics.

And when I watch these shows, you know, I love them. I always think how accurate is the science in this franchise? It's an apt question for our next guest is going to tell me all about it. Dr. Aaron McDonald, scientific consultant for the Star Trek franchise. guys, she has a PhD in astrophysics, and she joins us from Los Angeles. Welcome to Science Friday. Hi, Ira. I'm really honored to be here. Thanks for having me. I'm so happy to have you. Tell me a bit about your history as a science consultant for Star Trek. When did that all start? How did you get involved? Yeah, it's been going back till season three of Star Trek Discovery was when I came on, when they jumped forward to the future. My background, as you mentioned, is in astrophysics, particularly in gravitational waves.

I've always used science fiction to teach science. And when I left academia, I started giving talks at pop culture conventions, which sort of led me into the entertainment industry. That's terrific. We want to get our listeners in on this because I know we're going to melt the phone lines when I gave out the phone number. Our number is 844724-8255 to talk about the science that's in Star Trek or tweet us at SciFri. Were you always a big trekker, Star Trek fan? Yeah, I mean, I wasn't really exposed to it until I was in college. I was doing my undergraduate degrees in physics and math.

And in the Venn diagram of Star Trek fans and physics majors, there's a big overlap in the middle there. And so at our sort of college parties, we would watch next generation. And that was kind of my first exposure to it. And I fell absolutely in love with it. The big moment for me was when the 2009 Kelvin film came out. That was the night we all graduated. And so we did our big graduation. And then we went to the midnight premiere, back when those were actually at midnight,

and surrounded by Star Trek fans, I realized, like, these are my people. This is where it's at. And how many Star Trek shows are airing at the same time these days? Now I think we've had five going. So there's a lot different flavors, as you mentioned, some are live action. Some are animated. Some are targeted at kids. And what's great is that they all kind of have different flavors of science. They all approach their storytelling differently, as Star Trek always has.

Yeah. So give you an idea of what a day in the life of a science consultant looks like. What kinds of things are you actually doing? Yeah, a lot of it is working directly with the writers and showrunners. And so they'll reach out to me if they have specific questions. And then I sometimes try to sit about once a week in the writer's room itself, helping them break ideas, if they have questions in the moment or come up with story concepts. You know, I work as a writer. I'm a big fan of science fiction anyway, so being able to help with that process. And then a big part of my job is literally just editing scripts, going through them. And at the very minimum,

making sure we don't say anything wrong. That's the big job. What do you mean say anything wrong? For example, for example, like refer to our solar system or a star system as a galaxy. That's a common mistake that happens in science fiction all the time and getting those things conflated, you know, making sure we talk about planets the right way, making sure we talk about nebulas the right way and, and, you know, that they're just dust and gas and all of those little nuances that can sometimes slip by. You know, one of the central tenets of watching a film, a fiction film, is the willful suspension of your belief, right? Absolutely. How does that play into what you do and in Star Trek in general.

Well, I think sometimes, you know, a lot of what I do when I say, I don't want them to say anything wrong. Sometimes we'll have great, fun, fantastical storylines that isn't really rooted in science. And the advice is to just not try to explain it. Because I think that's when that suspension of disbelief, when you're talking about a giant energy being that's grabbing a hold of the ship. Right. As soon as you start to apply science to it, that's when you're going to start to lose people. when if you just let it be, you could just ride the story. But, you know, sometimes over the years, if you wait around long enough,

some of the things that you may think are, you need to suspend your belief actually come true. And I'm thinking about all the times we used to watch Captain Kirk or John Lupacart talk to the computer, right? Like you verbally speak to it like, really? It understands what you're saying. But now we can do that. We have that indeed. In fact, my own little in-home listening system responds to computer as well. Can't be a Star Trek fan without that.

And, yeah, I mean, this long legacy, even I remember the original series, you know, Kirkwood video called down to the medical bay, and that seemed so fantastical, and now that's almost how we live our lives. Or Hur would have a little thing in her ear. You can't have a tiny little receiver in your ear, right? Right, right. A little wireless receptor, who'd have thought? Do you have a favorite science potline you've consulted?

that on? Yeah, I mean, there's been a few. My first one was to do the big story arc for season three, which was called The Burn. And what I was brought on for was to really apply some science to the dilithium, which is a fictional Star Trek element that's been around since the 60s, and, you know, plays a role in the technology of these starships. And I was able to kind of add on some canonical explanations to it that was really exciting and really special. And then in that same season, and I also consulted on episode 5, I believe, where they encounter a coronal mass ejection. And that was the first time that we've had one of those in Star Trek before.

So that was fun. That is, dilithium crystals. Really? Where do they come from? Do we have a history on that? Well, yeah, the first thing I had to establish was, is it dilithium or is it di-Lithium? Because as many Star Trek fans who are also chemistry majors

will point out that lithium does not allow itself to be combined in such a way. And so we established, nope, it is just called dilithium and it's its own thing. I came up with these subatomic particles that tap into subspace to make the story work that way. You know, you talked about just having to accept things when something big happens. You don't want to explain it. And I think one of those things that I've always wondered about, and we have gotten calls about in the past, is warp speed, right? Yes. How do you survive going to warp speed? The human body can't really take that kind of acceleration.

No, this is true. I mean, the ships do have inertial dampeners, which is kind of the equivalent of seatbelts. Yep, because inertia is the thing that's going to get you, right? Right, right. But when you do go to warp, the whole concept of warp drive mathematically is really interesting, and it is actually possible. The concept is that you're building a bubble of space time around your ship. So on the ship itself, you're still traveling, I mean, at the speeds, they are much faster than we can consider.

of now, but even then they're not quite at the speed of light. And then the bubble of space time just carries the ship faster than light. Because in our rules of general relativity, nothing says that space time itself can't go faster than the speed of light. It's just stuff on the surface of it. I love that explanation. Let's go to, I'm going to hit, there are a couple of harder ones on the phone. I'm going to get them to ask you. Marty in Ellenberg, Washington. Hi, welcome to Science Friday. Hi, thanks. I'm just wondering, especially since I just got a new knee, are the borg really possible? Oh, the borg, yes.

Tell us what the borg are, if you will, first. Absolutely. So the borg is probably something a lot of young Star Trek fans, remember, is the first thing that gave them nightmares. But it's essentially a sort of cybernetic species that goes around assimilating different cultures, and they incorporate a lot of technology into their beings. But the big thing that the Borg have that was kind of established in Star Trek Voyager in more detail is these nanoprobes. So these little itty-bitty mechanical devices that swim throughout your bloodstream and coordinate all of these cybernetic implants that you've got.

So I don't think we're quite there yet. I don't know if you have to worry about that with your knee. But it's certainly interesting. And I think this idea of integrating, it's really biotechnology, right? integrating robotics with our bodies. We are not far away from. Do you ever go in the opposite direction? Do you ever suggest something that they could incorporate

into the script that you're thinking about? Yeah, quite a few times. I mean, I don't want to take too much credit because these writers, you know, they come up with really, really cool stories. But like the CME, the coronal mass ejection that I mentioned, you know, that was a big one where it was like, let's just have a space disaster.

We just want a cool space disaster that's going to interrupt the transporter. what would be a fun one that we could use with that? And so then we kind of built the story around it being a coronal mass ejection, which is for people who aren't aware, it's like a solar flare plus. It carries a lot of massive radiation particles in addition to the kind of normal solar flares that we see.

Yeah, a lot of people want to talk to you. Let's go to Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin. We don't think we've ever been there. Jeff, welcome to Science Friday. Hi, yeah, thanks. I'm reading a series of boys. now, and they use something called an Alcubier drive. I suppose it's a real theoretical thing. I was just wondering, is that the same thing as the warp drive? Yeah, absolutely. So the Alcuber

drive was kind of the first major warp drive that was mathematically laid out. And so as I talked about where warp is about building a bubble of space time around your ship, the Alcubair drive takes that concept. And the key with it, so mathematically, this warp drive, the Alcuber drive, could work. The issue is the amount of energy required to do it, because mass spends space time, that's the bowling ball on the trampoline analogy. If you don't have that mass to build a warp bubble, you need an equivalent amount of energy, which, you know, is times the speed of light squared. So that's a level of energy. We don't know how to harness yet. So that's the barrier that's keeping us from getting there.

You have to keep up with all these things, don't you? Yeah. And sometimes the writers get to it before I do. You know, a lot of the writers love science. They're really interested in it. And so I'll pop into a writer's room and they'll be like, hey, Aaron, tell us about this new black hole finding and I've got to go look it up. And, you know, it's really cool.

It's great to have a team that's so invested in science as well. All right. We're talking with Aaron McDonald. She's science consultant for Star Trek. She's based in Los Angeles. If you'd like to, you know, join us, please. You can tweet us. Some more tweets coming in at SciFry, or you can call us 844-8-255.

We have to take a break. We'll be right back. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. I'm talking with Dr. Aaron McDonald's science consultant for the Star Trek franchise. She's based out in Los Angeles, of course. Our number 844-8255, if you'd like to talk to us and ask a question.

Question 844 Sight Talk. Dr. McDonald, do you ever view this as more than just a science fiction thingy, but maybe a teaching experience? Oh, absolutely. I think it's hard to undersell how influential Star Trek has been on science. You know, it's been around for 60 plus years at this point, and it has influenced and inspired people to become science. And so there is some responsibility to uphold that legacy of inspiring people and getting the science correct. And particularly with the new show Star Trek Prodigy, which is targeted at kids, you know, a lot of that is actually more of a teaching job and leaning on my teaching background to try to explain difficult concepts to kids and hopefully inspire them to become scientists. Yeah, because it can inspire a lot of people to think about the laws of physics.

I mean, seriously, let me go, for example, my next caller. Let's go to Nicholas a new bed for the mass. Hi, Nicholas. Hi. Go ahead. So in the latest season of Star Trek discovery, we see the ship go past the edge of our galaxy into another galaxy where the laws of physics seem to differ very greatly. Now, is this something theoretical?

Is there actually evidence that suggests that in another galaxy, galaxy, but still in our same universe, there could be very different laws of physics. Understood. Yeah, no, I really appreciate that question. So, yeah, in season four of Star Trek Discovery, the crew go past the galactic barrier, which was inspired from all the way back to the original series. And then they enter a, what's actually a star system, where Species 10C lives. And what the species 10C has done is they create a bubble that's almost like a Dyson Sphere plus that surrounds the entire star system and is protecting them from the outside. So that was more on the science fiction side. It's always a bit of a spectrum, but was fun about exploring the galactic barrier

because that was more on the legacy of Star Trek. We did actually try to look up if there was any science based on that. And just really quickly, you know, we do have this thing called the heliopause at the edge of our solar system where radiation particles from the sun kind of get stopped because they don't have enough escape velocity to fully escape our solar system in the gravity well of the star. And I was thinking like, well, what if there's something similar at the edge of our galaxy, like galactopause, if you will? And actually, since we kind of were coming up with that idea, I did actually see a paper hit the preprint archive on the idea of a galactopause. And so this idea that there is radiation particles. Now, it's not so much that the laws of physics

in the species 10C star system had changed, but more that they had created an environment in which they could live and be protected from the exterior intergalactic space. Very well put. That's like a master's thesis right there. A lot of science in one sitting, I know. I want to talk about data,

because data is, I think, one of the unique things about Star Trek, you know, data, for both of you who've been in a cave, for decades. Data is an android. He's a key star in Star Trek and his desire to become more human all the time. Is giving him a personality now less science fiction-like and more science present, do you think? I do think so. And, you know, for people who might not be aware, I could recommend it's in my top five episodes of Star Trek to watch as a measure of a man from an original series, or from the next generation, excuse me, that explores the rights of data.

And I think watching that with a context now that we have with artificial intelligence and these great strides that are happening faster than we can keep up with is even more interesting than it even was back in the day because it really forces you to think about the rights of artificial intelligence. And I do think this is a conversation that we're going to be having for a long time. It is going to dominate our culture in the next decade. Kurt in Fort Dodge, Iowa. Hi, Kurt. Yeah, hello.

Hi there, go ahead. Well, I was just wondering through all the different shows and the exploration that they represent and everything that they do in the universe, I was just wondering, how come you don't really see a whole lot of exploration or explanation around trying to understand black holes? You do, but you can't see it.

No, that was a bad joke. I'm sorry. Yeah, I mean, we do, we do try to incorporate some of that. I mean, thinking about the history of sort of science, I talked about how science is integrated with Star Trek for so long. One of the cool things is that in the original series, back in the 60s, we still hadn't detected a black hole. It hadn't even been coined in the literature. And I think Captain Kirk at one point says that there was like a void of blackness in space.

And within a year, the term black hole had been coined in publication. which is about chicken in the egg. We don't really know which came first with that one. But we have tried to integrate some, and even with things that we've discovered through gravitational waves, we're starting to build out our pictures of black holes even just better than we knew 10, 15 years ago. And so those start to fold into our stories a little bit more, this idea of roaming black holes. And yeah, obviously you have to have some visual imagery that's going to be fun to go with it. In the recent season, season one of Strange New Worlds, they actually escape an enemy. I won't spoil it too much. They escape an enemy by utilizing gravitational time dilation and slingshotting

around a black hole. So it's all about just trying to find the right scientific phenomena that fits the story. You're never fearful of going through your wormholes, though, right? Oh, no. It goes through wormholes a lot. Exactly. In fact, Deep Space Nine was pretty much set at a wormhole. Here you go. Jerry in Hebrew Spring, Arkansas. Welcome to Science Friday. Hey, how you doing?

Hey, there. Go ahead. Hey, so I got just kind of an off-the-wall question. It's more in, like, personality than technology. But for your guest there, has there ever been anything that was presented by a writer or the staff where you just went, ah, yeah, no, that's not going to work. I appreciate that question. Do you have that power, is?

Right. I will say, you know, I do think it's important as a science advisor to be a positive force in the room and to not squash people's dreams and ideas. And so I try to take a yes and approach to story ideas that are presented to me. And, you know, sometimes it's more important to just say, like, that's a really cool idea. Let's not explain it. Let's just let that be. And try to adjust as necessary. to what we do know in science. Yeah, because Rich and the, was it, your Belinda, California is going to ask about something like that. Go ahead, Rich. Yeah, thanks.

My question was, how legitimate is the transporter and the replicator? What kind of science do you justify that whole concept? I love, I love the transporter. transporter. Okay, I'll make this really brief. So the transporter with our physics knowledge we have now could never work because you break down all of the particles of the body down to almost a subatomic particles and you have to know exactly where they are to put them back together. And Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, which is a physics concept, doesn't allow that. The more you know about where a

particle is, the less you know about the speed it's going. And then there's an ultimate Heisenberg limit that you can't reach. But in Star Trek the next generation, they're repairing the transporter at one point, and there's a Heisenberg compensator. Oh, wow. And that compensates for Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. And how does the Heisenberg compensator work?

It works very well. Thank you. You know what I want to see in Star Trek? I want to see bring in spooky action at a distance somehow. That would be really fun. You know, one thing happening on one side of the universe being reflected on the other side of the universe. of the universe in the same way.

That would be awesome. That, yeah. Have you had moments where you've actually had to change the science because it's not working for the story? You know? Yeah, actually, we did with, in discovery, there was one time where they were trying to escape what we had the dark matter anomaly and they were writing the gravitational waves out of it, which is my technical scientific background. And gravitational waves don't exactly work the way we were visualizing it. visuals as they're all standing around the table, you know, in the ready room, trying to plan this, we're looking like ocean waves. And gravitational waves really look more like sound waves,

like compression waves that are happening in multiple dimensions. And so they tried, to their credit, they tried to image it correctly like gravitational waves look, and it immediately pulled people out because you hear wave and you expect to see something. And so we decided to just leave it looking like an ocean wave because it wasn't worth the time and explanation it would take to explain to people why it looked that way. They're just trying to say they're going to ride the waves out. Yeah, yeah. One concept that we're getting closer to with virtual reality is the Hulladdeck. Yes. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Was that one of the original ideas in Star Trek that someone in the early years come up with that or did that trickle down later on? I think it was really more in the next generation is when

they explored the holodeck. And I will say, I mean, I have a virtual reality device and it does throw you. Like, it is a weird experience and it does feel like the holodeck sometimes. And I do think, yeah, we are going to get close to that technology soon. Jeffrey in Pittsburgh, welcome to Science Friday. Hi there. Jeffrey, are you there? Hello. Yeah, I'm sorry. I just had a break in the signal and then your voice. Ira, Dr. Dr. McDonnell, thank you for the very entertaining and interesting conversation. Mine is a comment and then a quick question. As an emergency physician and somebody that's old enough to be a fan of the original Star Trek,

a medical tricorder was fascinating to me. And as I see patients today in my practice, it occurred to me that with the micronization of sensors as well as artificial intelligence machine learning, which I'm getting into and interested in, we're getting close faster than I think most people realize to an early medical track order. And Dr. McDonald, with your access to the scientists that you talk to, what are your thoughts on that? Yeah. Good question. Thanks, Doc. Yeah. I mean, you know, what's interesting is I do think necessity drives invention. And in the last couple years, we've tried to, we've been at a place where we've had to have more remote medical diagnostic capabilities

where you're able to diagnose people from a distance or without touching them. And then also technologies, I mean, I'm wearing a device on my wrist that's measuring my heart rate, you know, is measuring my pacing and all of those. And so, yeah, certainly our technology is getting us there. And I think even a few years ago, it's probably close to a decade now, there was an XPRIZE to try to develop a device that could diagnose, I think, it was like five vital signs and diagnose 12 diseases, and someone did win that. It's just, at the time, prohibitively large and expensive. But the technology does exist, and I do think, you know, as you mentioned,

the miniaturization of technology will get us there as well, as well as machine learning. You know, I kind of think that you touched on this before a little bit about science education, But I think, you know, speaking and talking about these things actually make some of them happen. I'm thinking of the first flip phone, right? That Motorola flip phone was based on Star Trek, wasn't it? Yeah, absolutely. Everyone wanted to pop open that phone and call the Enterprise. And it drives that.

And I also, the one I think of, too, is when we all started getting e-readers, those were the exact shape and size of the data pads in the next generation. And you can't avoid the fact that people are watching this on StarCard. Trek or any science fiction and think, I really want that. And then they work toward it and they end up inventing these things. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Comment from Dan on Twitter who says, I teach a first year college course called Science Fiction Science Fact. And we watch some episodes of Star Trek the next generation to discuss the importance of science fiction in understanding science. Which episodes would you recommend for teaching science? I love

measure of a man on data. Oh, that's a great question. You know, I think one of the best things, oh, there's so many good ones, is like the science is so embedded in the DNA of Star Trek that, you know, my personal favorite episode of Star Trek ever is Voyager's counterpoint. And that's where Janeway is trying to discover where. a wormhole is going to appear. And it's not so much about educating

what a wormhole is, but I think seeing scientists' science. And Star Trek does have a lot of that where there is a scientific problem the crew is faced with, and they approach it as scientists. And that's something, a role I play as well as a science advisor

is to advise on what information you need and how you approach problems. You know, I see the evolution, so to speak, of Star Trek from the Kirk days, where they would settle things by fighting out in the back lot someplace on a cheap set, right? That's how they settled things. And then they got more cerebral later, right? But Picard solved everything with his brain. He outsmarted you. He out-thought you, right? Yeah, absolutely. They all have their own little approaches. And you mentioned

the, you know, fighting on the planet with fisticuffs. But in that episode, in Arena, Spock and McCoy are up watching this fight going and be like, he's not going to figure it out. He's got to do the chemistry. He's got to do the science. and he eventually figures it out. If you could move Star Trek in some generation, some direction, I mean, where would you like to see it go? I've really enjoyed Prodigy and reframing these classic Star Trek ethos, like you said, the philosophical, as well as the problem solving and the scientific, to be targeted at kids. And seeing more of that, having these more hard sci-fi shows that are accessible and available to kids, I think really can influence an entire generation and how they, you know, decide to pursue their

careers. Is there a teaching material? I mean, did they make teaching materials out of Star Trek episodes that they could use in schools? Maybe they should be doing that. I mean, I've heard, I've certainly heard a lot of teachers, as the, you know, commenter mentioned, who used science fiction. In fact, I did as well. And for Star Trek Prodigy, we also did a series of web episodes that people can watch that was the science of Star Trek Prodigy where we did short 5-10-minute explainers of the science in these episodes. So people can go and find them there, you know, where you watch Prodigy and they're also available streaming online.

Because we do want to find ways to teach through Star Trek. I think it is so effective. Yeah, it is. And I guess once you get hooked on Star Trek, you're hooked. You're hooked. You're hooked. So if you get hooked on, you know, because kids are natural-born scientists. They want to know how everything works.

They want to take it all apart. They'll make mistakes. And you kind of get that vibe from Star Trek. Absolutely. Yeah, I agree. We're all scientists at heart starting out. We problem solve. Dr. McDonald, good luck.

You have an enviable job, I think. Thank you. Dr. Aaron McDonald, science consultant for the Star Trek franchise based in Los Angeles. Thank you for taking time and sharing what you know. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. We have to take a break. and when we come back, we're going on to another subject.

We want to talk, well, we're going to go out to Utah to see Pando the tree. It's the world's biggest tree. You'll see rolling hills, thousands of tall lean aspens swaying in the wind, and Pando is there hiding in plain sight. So stay with us. We'll be out to Utah. It's going to be fun. Stay with us. This is Science Friday.

I'm Ira Flato. Let's take a trip to south central Utah into the Fish Lake National Forest. Our destination, the largest tree on earth, an aspen named Pando. The strange part of visiting Pando is it doesn't really look like the world's biggest tree. You'll see rolling hills with thousands of tall lean aspens swaying in the wind, and Pando is there hiding in plain sight because all of those tree trunks you'll see aren't actually tree trunks. No, technically they're branches. And that's because Pando is one massive tree sprawling more than 100 acres with 47,000 branches growing from it. There's a lot to learn about Pando, and my next guest turned to sound to understand the tree better and created an acoustic

portrait to hear all the snaps and splinters and scuttles that happen in around the tree. Let me introduce them. Jeff Rice, a sound artist. and co-founder of the Acoustic Atlas at the Montana State University Library. He's based in Seattle. Lance Odette, executive director of the nonprofit Friends of Pando, which is dedicated to preserving the tree. It's based in Ridgefield, Utah. Welcome to Science Friday. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us, Ira, huge fans. Thank you. You know, I described the picture of this tree. When I look at the picture of Pando, it does look like a forest, Lance and not a single tree. What's going on here? Well, Pando is a tree of one. We haven't known about it very long, but basically it's one seed, and that has split and sort of like a giant algorithm. It's spread out over time towards us in history.

So all those trees are actually, as I said before, they're branches. Yeah. So they're genetically identical branches. They look like tree trunks to us. The botanical term is stems, technically. But most people think stems is like. a weed in their yard or maybe something coming out for rosebush. These are fully sized parts of one tree that's all connected by this massive root system. Yeah, I know I've experienced that when I try to dig a hole from my plants and there are all these roots under there. You got it. Or branches, yeah. Are all aspens like this, Lance? No, but all Aspen have the ability to self-propagate. The self-replication is actually a reproductive strategy. Often we see. see what are called Aspen clones, typically in response to some stress event. The tree will kind of, in human terms, of course, it's a tree, make a decision. Am I going to just try to do the pollen thing,

or am I going to just self-propagate? And so Pando's been self-propagating towards us in history for about 9,000 years. 9,000 years. What does Pando mean? Why is it called Pando? Boy, there's a lot of interesting history there around that. Ira, typically the people who discover something, you know, in the botanical world or in biology, they get to name it. Basically, they nicknamed the tree Pando, and that's Latin for eyes spread. And they called it that because of how it spreads out over its land mass. It dominates the land that it calls home. It's, it's a stable aspen. Wow. Okay, Jeff, let's talk about recording Pando. You hold out your microphones next to Pando. Why are you attracted to this? What did you do, actually?

Well, I've been recording sounds in the West for more than 20 years, and I've always loved the sound of Aspen trees. I mean, it's really a defining sound of the West for me. I love that delicate, you know, trembling sound of it. And so that's the first thing that attracted me, and I always like recording Aspen, but just the chance to record the largest organism on Earth is just such an incredible opportunity. And I was interested in the challenges that that posed. What does that mean to record such a large organism? And so I, you know, set about trying to record it from all different angles, from the leaves to the roots.

So you actually stuck your microphone into the trunks of the trees down to the roots? Yeah, yeah. I started recording, you know, traditional recordings, like, you know, ambasonic recordings of the soundscapes, the birds and the leaves and the weather. But, you know, there's a great story about how we started. recording the roots. I wanted to find another way of listening to Pando, and I'd heard that trees make vibrations and that people have recorded those vibrations, and I thought,

wouldn't it be interesting to record the roots of Pando? And I really didn't know what that meant, but I asked Lance if he could show me where I could find some roots that I might be able to hook a microphone to, and Lance knows everything about Pando. He's been photographing the forest for years, making one of the greatest photographic surveys of any tree. So he was able to show me some places where I could put my microphone, and we found a hole in one of the branches, essentially, at the base. And we were able to access the roots at that point, and plug the hydrophone in sort of like plugging into a socket, really.

All right, let's take a listen. We have a recording of that. Let's hear that now. Wow. It sounds like we, New Yorkers, a subway train going by. What are we listening to? So that's the sound of, you know, the leaves, I think, rattling on the tree in a thunderstorm. A thunderstorm rolled in, and it created a lot of wind that then blew the leaves that trembled.

And the vibration of those leaves passed all the way through the tree right into the ground where we had the hydrant. And, you know, it's this delicate, trembling sound is strong enough that it actually vibrates the earth in a sense. The story of that day, I mean, it's still exhilarating just to think about it. And it's great to be here with Jeff talking about that moment because we were just both like, wow, for the first time we're hearing kind of the, like we put a submarine in the ground. And we're hearing Pando's subterranean soundscape for the first time. And I already knew there's a lot of applications for this, but hearing it after. spending what seven years in the tree was just, I was literally jumping up and down for joy, Ira. Amazing. Lance, I assume that you know every inch of Pando. So what was it like hearing the sounds

from undergrad? Did you hear anything new? It was exciting. And yes, we heard a lot of new things. We heard the sound of the storm traveling through one of these branches that can reach 80 feet into the sky. And mind you, Pando's homeland's already at about 9,200 feet. It moves between about 8,990. 90, 200 feet. In terms of the sounds themselves, Ira, learned a lot. But when we first recorded it, me and Jeff were in the field. He's like, Camere. And it reminds me of that quote about what's exciting about science. It's not, oh, well, this is true or not true. It's what's that? Yeah. And so we're out in the field and this happened to be a sunny day and I'd scouted some locations for Jeff. And, mind you, Pando's root system is so dense that the trees don't tend to break off at the foot or uproot like you see a lot, the Pacific Northwest or other parts of the world. They just literally kind of break off at the ground like a matchstick. And so it's hard to get into the root system. And Jeff's like, what's that? It was exactly that. It was what's that. And that was exhilarating. Well, I can, I can bet. And I have a picture of Jeff walking around, shaking a lot of branches.

Figuring out what to record. Was it something like that? It was, yeah, it was very organic. I mean, it was an exploration, really, of Pando. And I didn't always know what I was going to find. And it was a real surprise that the second that I put on my headphones and started listening to the hydrophone, I heard a signal that I wasn't sure what it was. And, yeah, we started exploring and actually, you know, wondering, like, well, are we connected to the root system?

are these branches connected to each other by sound? And we started banging on trees in different parts of the forest away from the hydrophone. I think Lance walked about 100 feet away from where we were set up with the microphone and started banging on a tree. And you could hear the sound passing through the ground into the hydrophone. Whoa, wow. Wow. Let me stop you there because I know you recorded this.

Let's play a clip of this to hear what that sounded like. The thumps. They are subtle, but they are there. So the sounds are traveling almost 100 feet through the ground from tree to tree. When we were doing the banging on the tree, we don't know for sure that that was, that banging was passing through the roots. You know, that could have been passing through the soil. And there need to be some, you know, real scientific studies to determine that. This wasn't a scientific expedition.

It was an exploration and of discovery. But, you know, it certainly shows that the branches, and the sound from the branches, it's all interconnected. And I think that's the takeaway. You know, whether it's passing through the roots, they're going to have to do some special studies to really determine that. But it doesn't take away from the fact that it's interesting and that it shows an interconnectedness.

Yeah, all the more reason to go out and study Pando some more. Yeah, we've been doing some research on the background based off Jess work to talk about how we can use sound. And there's a lot of really exciting developments there that... Tell us. Tell us. Well, we have a few. It's early, but I'll give you an example.

Pandos' homeland is in a graben. That's the place where there's like a fault line, and it's spreading apart because there's hot magma below. So Pandos' landmass is littered with volcanic boulders and lava fields. So it's really hard to get a subterranean picture of the tree. So imagine then, you know, based on Jeff's work and some other work we're doing with other researchers that we could use sound to literally trace the root system of Pando and identify how all that works to better take care of the tree.

And so would you learn about the soil and water flow and things like that or maybe even the wildlife living there underground? Absolutely. So yes, we can definitely look at soil quality. We can look at water. As far as wildlife, Jeff did record wildlife. And we have plans to set up audio conservation systems or bioacoustic stations. in the tree this year to help us with wildlife. Then when you're looking at water, nutrient

transposition, disease, things like that, it's reasonable to assume that trees that aren't doing so well may have different frequencies because aspirin are water-hungry trees. And so basically each of these trunks is acting like a transducer. We may be able to use sound in a way. So beyond the subterranean, there's a lot of work that this could help us with above ground as well, Ira. Interesting. Jeff, one of my favorite recordings you made is a little mystery. critter that your hydrophone picked up. Let me play that clip for us now. Like a buzzing. What is that? That was the question I asked when I first heard it. You know, these recordings, typically I make them in the field and I don't get to hear them until I get back to the studio. And I was just

listening in the studio to the underground recording. And suddenly I heard this little voice. And I just was stopped in my tracks. I thought, what is that? Again, that question, what is that? And I think it's just, it might be a beetle or something. You're always discovering new sounds when you make recordings. And there's a lot to the underground soundscape. Lance, do you have any guesses of what that might be?

So I feel somewhat confident to say that that was the sound of foxes and burrows. Our field crews are trained specifically. to watch out for those because they'll dig them under giant juniper bushes, and they are very deep. So my assumption is it could have been a bird call, but most likely it was foxes underground, because Jeff, correct me if I'm wrong. Wasn't that recorded during the storm? It was recorded during the thunderstorm, although I would disagree that it's a fox. This is the kind of thing that we go back and forth on Ira.

Yeah, I imagine. It's pure speculation as to what it is, but somebody has told me that it would, they think, thought it was a beetle. And that's what it sounds like to me. But whatever it is, it's, I call it the mystery creature. And it's just an indication that there's a mystery world beneath the tree and in the underground substrate. This is Science Friday. I'm Iroof-flato. In case you're just joining us, I'm talking with Jeff Rice, a sound artist and co-founder of the Acoustic Atlas that's at Montana State University Library. and Lance Oedip, executive director of the nonprofit Friends of Pando.

And together, they created an acoustic portrait of the largest tree on earth named Pando. What is the health of Pando? Is it flourishing? Is it being threatened? There is some research that has suggested that it's dying. But what people have to remember is that Pando, it regenerates itself. And that's a hormone cycle. And so the hormone cycle that sends regeneration has not ended. Well, we know that it's still doing the hormone cycle that basically when a branch falls, a bunch of that hormone material goes back into the root, the root goes, hey, send another one up.

I got to balance energy production, regeneration, and defense. In terms of like collapse and things like that, Ira, there's been some data that suggests that we're heading in that direction. And there are models to abate that. And we are official partners with Fish Lake National Forest dealing with those issues. But again, there are models for what is called Aspen Collapse. And Pando is nowhere near that by the best models or estimates. So while there is a lot of headlines to that effect, we just need to know more. It's early, Ira.

It's only been 14, 15 years since we just really said, oh, my gosh, this thing is really here. It's the largest tree in the world. It's a tree that redefines tree. What a tree can be, what a tree can mean. Incredible. Jeff, obviously, as a radio person, I love sound. I've dealt with it most of my life. But what do you, as a sound recordist, what do you take away from all of this? Why do you take such care to record the sounds of our world? You know, partly just fascination, but I always learn so much when I turn on my microphone. And the more I recorded, you know, Pando, the more I learned about it.

And, you know, my goal was to really figure out what's the sound of one of the world's largest organisms? And what I came away, you know, understanding was that the sound is lots of different things. You know, it's the birds that live in the tree. It's the foxes and the insects underneath the ground. It's the leaves and the earth shaking in the storm. It's the weather. it's all connected and so I think that's the true voice of Pando and that's what excites me about recording is just getting a sense of that interconnectedness of the soundscape.

Well, you know, there's that old Clint Eastwood song, I talked to the trees, and I guess now we could say the trees are talking back to us. So thank you both for taking time to be with us today. Fascinating stuff. Thank you. Thank you, Ira. Jeff Rice, a sound artist and. co-founder of the Acoustic Atlas at Montana State University Library. He's based in Seattle.

And Lance Oedit, executive director of the nonprofit Friends of Pando, based in Ridgefield, Utah. And that's about all the time we have for today. If you missed any part of the program or you'd like to hear it again, subscribe to our podcasts, or ask your smart speaker to play Science Friday. And of course, you can say hi to us all week, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, on social media, or email us. SciFri at Science Friday.com. Have a great weekend. We'll see you next week. I'm Ira Flato.