Science Friday - Unexpected Physics, Controlling Cow Methane, Spring Break. April 2, 2021, Part 1

Episode Date: April 2, 2021

Signs The Standard Model Of Physics May Be Incomplete The pandemic has slowed many projects around the world, but scientists and engineers are nearing completion of a long-planned upgrade and maintenance period at CERN’s massive Large Hadron Collider project in Switzerland. The collider is currently cooling down and testing components, and aiming to start up for its third major run late this year. In the meantime, researchers have had time to sift through the data from previous experiments—and last week, they announced a finding that might indicate new physics at work. The Standard Model of physics describes three of the universe’s fundamental forces, and how subatomic particles interact. One of the things it predicts is how particles decay into other components. Researchers at CERN analyzing particles called b-mesons found signs that their decay may not produce equal quantities of electrons and muons—as would be predicted by the Standard Model. While that discrepancy might not seem like a big deal, it could mean that there’s a previously undetected particle or force at play. However, the researchers don’t yet have enough data to say with confidence that their finding is real. They’ll need to collect several more years of data once the LHC restarts, as well as hope for confirmation from another major experiment in Japan. Sheldon Stone, a distinguished professor of physics at Syracuse University and a member of the management committee of the LHCb Collaboration at CERN, joins Ira to talk about the anomaly in the data—and what it might mean if it’s proven to be real. Seaweed Might Help Cows Go Green When it comes to the bodies of humans and animals, there are a few functions that we’re usually discouraged from talking about. Specifically, the ones that involve releasing gas. (Yep, burps and farts.) But if you’re a cow, there’s a lot of scientific work that goes into analyzing what’s coming out in the gas you release. That’s because the cattle industry is one of the largest producers of methane gas, a huge contributor to global warming. Some scientists are experimenting with feeding cows new things, to try to limit their methane output from the inside. New research shows a very promising result: By feeding beef cattle just a few ounces of dried seaweed per day, methane emissions from the cows went down as much as 82%. Ira talks to the lead author of that paper, Ermias Kebreab, associate dean and professor of animal science at the University of California, Davis about how seaweed inhibits methane production in cows. They’re also joined by Albert Straus, founder and CEO of Straus Family Creamery in Marshall, California, who will be testing the seaweed diet on his cows this summer. Even During A Pandemic, Florida’s Spring Break Party Continues The COVID-19 pandemic is not over, even after a long and painful year. Spring break always attracts attention but this year, there’s another reason spring breakers are coming to Florida. Gov. Ron DeSantis basically invited them: “Let me just tell ya’. There’s no lockdowns in Florida, OK? It’s not gonna happen,” he told a cheering crowd earlier this month. One South Beach visitor, Christina Thomas, summed up spring breakers’ options this way: “California is closed.” Even with that open-door policy, Miami Beach is more closed than it used to be, too. There’s an 8 p.m. curfew from Thursdays through the weekend in a particular stretch of Miami Beach and also a limit on eastbound traffic on the Julia Tuttle, Venetian and MacArthur Causeways starting at 10 p.m. City officials made that decision after days of people gathering along Ocean Drive, listening to music and dancing harmlessly ended, and tragic incidents began: A 27-year-old was shot and killed in South Beach. A woman was found dead in a hotel room, after she was allegedly drugged and raped. Last Friday night, the Miami Beach police chief said gunshots were fired and crowds ran through the streets. Over this past weekend, the city declared a state of emergency. By then, the bar at the Clevelander on Ocean Drive had already closed, a notable decision, because the iconic establishment is built on the party scene. Management said things just got too hectic and they were worried about their staff. “We really should stop calling it spring break as this is not about college kids on their vacation,” Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber said on Monday. He partially blames that “open for business” message from the governor. “Over the last weeks and longer, our city has been one of the only true destination cities open for business anywhere,” Gelber said. Read more at sciencefriday.com. Biden Administration Opens Up OffShore Wind Energy The Biden administration announced a wind power plan that aims to support more offshore deployment—expanding jobs and infrastructure investment. The plan includes development of a new Wind Energy Area in shallow waters between Long Island and the New Jersey coast. The goal: deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2033. Amy Nordrum from MIT Technology, joins Science Friday to discuss that story along with Biden’s proposed $250 billion budget for scientific research and a mysterious interstellar visitor.     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 Flato. A bit later in the hour, a look at some head-scratching physics findings at CERN and combating the climate crisis by feeding cattle seaweed. But first, wind power might be getting a major jolt. Wind energy in the U.S. has been on the rise in the past decade. Over 8% of utility-generated electricity now comes from wind. And the Biden administration has announced a major plan for large-scale offshore wind farms. That includes a proposed 84 large wind turbines off the East Coast that is estimated to power 10 million homes per year. Amy Norderm is here to fill us in on that story and other stories in science. She's an editor at MIT Technology Review.

Welcome back, Amy. Hi, Ira, thank you. Nice to have you. Okay, let's get right into this wind energy plan. And what will these wind farms look like? Well, the Biden administration has moved forward with permitting several new wind farms that have already been proposed and will also make room for new wind farms. They're planning to auction off more leases for companies that want to develop wind farms

and offer federal loans to help them fund these projects. And they're even investing in infrastructure projects. So upgrading ports that need to be there to have the wind turbines actually installed off the coast there. So the U.S. is really behind an offshore wind. Many other countries have invested a lot more heavily into it. The U.K. is getting 14% of its electricity from offshore wind right now, and Denmark's getting about half its power from wind energy. So this really shows that the Biden administration wants the U.S. to catch up. And so why is that? Why are we so far behind? Why has it been so difficult to get offshore wind in this country? Well, there have been a few projects that have

been met with community pushback along the coast of the northeast, people who didn't want wind turbines in their view of their homes. So that's been one barrier. And certainly in the incentives that the Biden administration is also going to help here because these projects are really costly to install. They're large infrastructure projects in their own right, actually getting these turbines, which are really, really massive turbines installed and anchored to the ocean floor. So certainly those financial incentives will help in that regard as well. Yeah. So this fits in. right into the administration's bigger climate or clean energy plans. Yes, that's right.

I mean, the U.S. has rejoined the Paris Agreement now, thanks to the Biden administration, which sets targets for reducing carbon emissions dramatically. Biden has his own ambitious goal of getting to 100% clean energy across the country in the next 15 years. As you said, these projects, this goal is now to power about 10 million homes. So that really won't get us all the way there, offshore wind. There's about 140 million homes in the U.S. so it's just part of the picture here. And both Biden's economic and climate agenda really rest on creating new jobs.

And the wind industry is definitely one where the administration's hoping to create a lot more manufacturing and installation jobs. Let's talk a bit about the Biden proposed infrastructure budget, a large budget that includes funds for scientific research. Do you have any idea yet? What's inside there? We have a bit of an idea. Yes. I mean, it was a huge spending plan announced on a Wednesday called the American Jobs Act. really meant to stimulate the economy, help the U.S. recover from the pandemic.

All in all, it's more than $2 trillion. And it's got a lot of stuff in there, a lot of money toward infrastructure projects, things like bridges and roads. But there's a good chunk, many billions of dollars to directly support new scientific research and projects that would help translate scientific discoveries into new technologies. So that money would go toward doing things like upgrading federal labs and creating new academic centers of excellence for early stage research. And there's about $15 billion that would go toward climate-related demonstration projects.

So things like carbon capture and storage, advanced nuclear power, and electric vehicles. So this is more than just making up for what Trump took out of the science budget. This is really adding more stuff on. Yeah, it really is. I mean, in the case of the National Science Foundation, which funds a lot of basic research through grants, they would get about $50 billion over a period of a couple of years under this plan. Their budget was actually pretty steady over the last few years. it wasn't cut dramatically under Trump, largely because Congress didn't allow that to happen.

But they're currently at about $8.5 billion. So this would still be a good increase for them. Let's turn now to some vaccine news. Lots of states are opening up vaccines to more age groups. Pfizer is now getting data on how vaccines work in adolescence. And it's pretty good news, isn't it? It's very good news. Yes, Pfizer said on Wednesday its COVID vaccine had 100% efficacy in adolescence. And that's good because vaccinating young adults and children is going to be necessary for us to really reach herd immunity. Currently, their vaccine is authorized for people who are at least 16 years old. And so they've submitted this data that they announced on Wednesday to the FDA to get an expanded authorization to allow their vaccine to be used in younger people. And so if they get that, that could be in place before the beginning of next school year.

And are Moderna and Johnson and Johnson running similar kinds of trials on kids? Yes, they are. We should have results from a Moderna study later this year. That's in 12 to 17-year-olds. And then all the companies are also doing trials to test the vaccine and even younger children. And states are opening up age requirements to younger people now. They're going down to what, 16-year-olds? Yeah, there's more and more states that are allowing everybody over the age of 16 to be vaccinated and no longer restricting it to people of a certain age group. Your next story looks at a union vote, an important union vote in an Amazon warehouse in Alabama, and this might be a major turning point because we're now talking about the tech industry. Absolutely. I mean, workers in the tech industry, they've been more and more interested in unionizing in the last few years for a variety of different reasons. And in the last few weeks, thousands of Amazon workers in Alabama

at a warehouse there have been voting on whether or not they want to unionize. And if they vote for it, this would be the first Amazon union in the company's history. So voting closed on Monday, the votes are now being tallied, which could take a few more days or maybe even weeks. But no matter kind of which way this goes, labor organizers are already considering this a win because it's gotten so much attention and it's just raised awareness of unions more generally in the tech industry. And they're thinking Amazon workers and tech industry workers elsewhere will probably be much more interested in holding union drives wherever they are after this. And if they do succeed here, that doesn't mean they have a contract. yet, then the bargaining has to first begin. Right, absolutely. It's a first step. This can be a very,

very long process. Do we know what basics they're asking for and why it's important to unionize tech? Yeah, they're asking for things common in union drives and other industries as well. So they're asking for just being able to collectively bargain for contracts, negotiate for job security protections, so they wouldn't just be able to be fired at will. There's also some safety conditions that they've express concern about. So they're hoping that forming a union will give them more of a say in these questions. And as you say, others will be looking at what happens here. For example, Google and Facebook have also had moves by workers to unionize. Would this be the same type of union? Yeah, all these unionization efforts are very different from each other. So there is the alphabet

workers union. As you mentioned, it's a few hundred Google employees, what's known as a minority union. And it's, it was primarily formed kind of around values-driven efforts to have, give employees more of a say in Google's decisions like about which products are made or who gets to use them. And there's other efforts among different classes of workers across company like rideshare drivers and food delivery workers to form unions. I mean, they're all forming kind of for different reasons and they'd all have different degrees of say in their negotiations with the company. It's hard to say exactly how this will evolve. It's still kind of early. But these are some of the most powerful and profitable companies in the world. So if these workers could exert any influence over

which products get made or how workers are treated, that could be really huge. Now let's turn to something totally different. Let's talk about Umuamua, that mysterious interstellar visitor that came by in 2017. The story of that just keeps evolving, doesn't it? There's something new now. Yes, yeah, a few years ago, astronomers spotted this strange object, shaped like a disc, kind of moving through our solar They didn't know what it was at the time, but they knew that it came from outside of our solar system. So it was the first interstellar object ever to be detected kind of in our midst. And some thought it was a comet, but it really didn't behave like a comet. It didn't have a tail like you'd expect to see with a comet, and it was more of a disc than a circle.

The object really didn't behave in ways that fit any of the explanations. So now two astronomers from Arizona State University have come forward with a new theory that the object was a chunk of a faraway planet that somehow got knocked off and made its way to us. What kind of planet? It would have had to be made out of the same kind of material. What kind of planet is that? Yeah, it's, I mean, it'd be an exoplanet. We don't know much about what exactly it is, or they think that the object is covered in nitrogen ice. That's kind of how they arrived at their theory, because the object wasn't really behaving the way you'd expect a comet to, and they thought one thing that might explain that would be if the whole object was covered in nitrogen ice. That would explain why there's no tail, because that's hard to detect. It's much harder to

detect nitrogen than other kinds of gas that might form a tail. But yeah, and the shape of the object could also be explained by that, because if it was round at one point, but the nitrogen ice on either side was kind of melting away as it traveled through space, that might make it more into a disc. And there's ice like that on other planetary bodies like Pluto. So this new object being covered and it made them think that it had broken off of a similar kind of body much further away. So that sort of discounts the alien theory, at least for now. Right. That was one theory. about this object as well, that it was an alien spaceship of some kind. But yeah, this team is thinking that this one is much more plausible. And finally, your last story is about robots made out of

frogs cells. We talked a bit about this story last year. So what's the update here? Yeah, they're called xenobots. So new kind of really tiny biological organism. And as you said, created for the first time last year. And then this week in science robotics, researchers have reported a new generation of them, basically, that can live longer and move faster than the original ones. And they've even created an ability in them to change color when they're exposed to certain stimuli, which acts as kind of a rudimentary memory function.

It's kind of scary, this idea of living robots. I mean, think of the unforeseen consequences. Yeah, it's definitely really a new kind of organism using cells to make like a brand new creature. We don't even have the right terminology for this kind of thing. their idea is to create like swarms of these that could work together to do different things. But yeah, you could imagine that also getting out of control. So something that they have to definitely proceed with caution on.

Wait a minute. I've got the film right here. I got the movie. We have a mua-mua coming back with these frog cells on top of them. There you go. We have the exact science fiction movie that we need. But this is really, it's stranger than science fiction, right? This is really happening.

It's really happening right now. these cells clusters only live for about a week, and they can't reproduce, so they're not going to kind of get out of control in that respect. But yeah, I mean, it's really interesting, and it's definitely teaching us some new things about developmental biology. Yeah, we'll keep an eye and watch them very closely. Thank you, Amy. Thanks, Ira. Amy Nordrum, editor at MIT Technology Review. After the break, pandemic restrictions meet Florida's spring break scene. It's not great. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Iroflato. A little later, some strange stuff happening in physics, but now it's time to check in the state of science. This is KERNO, St. Louis Public Radio News. Iowa Public Radio News. Local science stories of national significance.

Spring is here, and maybe in your part of the world, that means flowers popping and birds migrating. Migrating people, though, can have serious consequences in this COVID world. If you're in a beach-centered community in Florida, spring means spring break party season. And this year, even as the pandemic continues, it's party on. Joining me now to talk about spring break in Florida and its intersection with health is Veronica Zaragovia, who is the health care reporter at WLRN based in Miami Beach. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you, Ira.

Thanks for having me. For those of us in a cave, who are not familiar, with this tradition. Give me a spring break primer on this. Well, basically starting in late February, we start receiving a lot of the college age students who come down. And that keeps happening till about mid-April. Peak time is mid or late March. And here in South Florida, wherever the beaches are, you'll definitely find some degree of spring break going on. Is it true that this year, they were basically invited down by the governor? That's right.

The governor, Ron DeSantis, has said multiple times in press conferences that Florida is open for business in his words. And he said that the state will definitely not have any lockdowns. The tourists that I've spoken to specifically said that they came down because of the weather. And secondly, because everything is open and they'd say, you know, California is closed or they just wanted to come to a state that didn't have mask mandates, everything's open. So that kind of rhetoric from the governor did come across as an invitation for everybody to come down. Are different municipalities then handling the situation in different ways?

Yes. Basically, across Florida, most municipalities have to just depend on asking people to think of all of the measures that we've had throughout the pandemic to stop the spread of the coronavirus. coronavirus. While in Miami Beach, it's more of like a reminder with the police cars and police officers everywhere. Florida is set up in such a way that we have mayors of the counties and of cities. And so the county of Miami-Dade has had a curfew throughout much of the pandemic from midnight to 6 a.m. So now the city of Miami Beach put a separate curfew starting at 8 p.m. through 6 a.m. from Thursday evening to Monday morning. In a city like Fort Lauderdale, it has really just been, you know, the mayor put out a video on Twitter, welcoming everybody to the

beaches of Fort Lauderdale and just kindly asking everybody to consider those measures to stand apart, to wear their masks. Sometimes they're just depending on the will of people to help control the spread of this virus. So what's the solution? It's not just to say don't come because tourism is very vital to these areas? Absolutely, and because of the pandemic, the hospitality and tourism industry has been hard hit. Rates of occupancy at hotels are down, and so scientists and doctors are aware that they have to give options for people to stay safe while also recognizing that the state's economy depends so much on tourism. Epidemiologists we've spoken to, like Cindy Prince at the University of Florida, has told us, you know, the beach is a very safe place. It's windy, and there's

usually space to spread out, but you need to be cautious. Enjoy going into the beach. Enjoy those activities, but not doing it to the point where you're throwing caution to the wind and partying with everyone. We're definitely nowhere near community immunity at this point. Let's talk about the numbers in Florida, the vaccination rates, new infections, the rising variants. How are the numbers doing?

Florida has 15% of its population fully vaccinated. The numbers of positive COVID-19 cases are increasing. Usually experts say look at the 14-day percent positivity rate rather than the daily because that shows you more of a trend. And it has been going up both in the state and in Miami-Dade County. It's above that 5% rate that the World Health Organization had set as like a good mark for businesses. to open. According to a CDC map that's called the U.S. COVID-19 cases caused by variants, Florida has the most of all the variants, the ones that have been identified originally in the UK, in Brazil, and South Africa. And so that's a big concern to the scientists and doctors I've spoken to because we have just not enough of younger people who work in the hospitality

industry vaccinated. So when you have so many tourists coming down and just not enough people vaccinated, that's a perfect opportunity for another variant to be created. And of course, for these variants that we have to spread, either people bring variants here or they take them with them back home. Well, this is an interesting topic that we'll keep watching, certainly, as the season progresses. Veronica, thank you for taking time to be with us today. Thank you, Ira.

I appreciate it. You're welcome. Veronica Zaragovia, health care reporter for WLRN, and you can read her story on our website at ScienceFriiday.com slash spring break. As scientists prepared to reopen the Large Hadron Collider following its scheduled maintenance period, they've had time at CERN to sift through the data from previous experiments, and last week they announced a finding that might be significant or might not be. Here to talk about it is Shelton Stone. He's a distinguished professor of physics at Syracuse University,

and he's on the Management Committee of the LHCB Collaboration. Welcome to Science Friday. Hello, Ira. Nice to be here. Nice to have you. Would it be correct to say that your experiments show that the behavior of elementary particles is different from what the accepted theories would suggest, what scientists would expect, describe it to us? Yes, we're seeing things. that aren't expected by what we call the standard model of particle physics. And as such, could be very interesting and give us insights to physics that we don't know about, new forces or new particles. What we see is that in certain processes involving beam meson decays,

the decay into two electrons plus something is different than the decay into two muons plus something. They should be the same. The only difference in the standard model between the forces for electrons, muons, and tau's is their mass. But we're seeing things that have much larger differences than the very small difference between the electron and the muon mass. So we're very excited about this, but yet the data are not statistically good enough to claim an actual effect. But they're getting there. So let's start out with explaining what leptons, muons, all those things are. Okay, particles have different classifications. The electrons go around the nuclear material of the atom. Now, it was found that there was another particle called a muon, which was exactly

like the electron, except it had a mass that was about 210 times larger. Then in the 1970s, we discovered a third particle, which was exactly like the electron and neuron, except it was even heavier. Now, we don't know exactly why there are three copies of these things, and only the electron is stable, which is good for our bodies. We're seeing in these decays that maybe, just maybe, the decays into electrons and muons are different, which would tell us basically that there's another force in nature that we didn't know about, and that we're going to see something spectacular if we can confirm this effect. So let me see if I understand it just briefly. So electrons, muons, and tau's should behave the same in this kind of decay, but they don't seem to

be. Would that be correct? It's correct for the electrons and neurons. The taos are so much heavier that you really can't see anything in this decay directly. So we're just concentrating on electrons and nuance. And they should behave the same. And lo and behold, there's indications that they don't. How much of an earthquake would that cause if they don't? It's already caused an earthquake, even though we haven't proven anything yet. There was an updated presentation of our data that you mentioned last week, and already there's eight theoretical papers explaining what the new force is. So there should be a new force, if this is true, is what you're saying. What do you mean a new force?

The new explanations are all related to new particles, which are carriers of forces. The way we view physics is that particles carry forces. For example, the photon carries the electromagnetic force. W and Z bosons carry the weak force. The blue one carries the strong force. So if this was real, then one of the explanations is. that there's a new kind of particle called the leptocor, which couples leptons, either electrons or muons, to quarks.

This leptocork field would be a new force in nature that we didn't know about. But the new particle would mean a new force, then, is what you're saying. Yes, but in this case, there are two ways of finding a new particle. One is to find it directly, like you produce it, which we've done. Remember we talked about pentecorks once? Okay, that's what's finding directly a new particle. But this is finding a new particle virtually. That is to say, what we see in the data, we don't see evidence of the decay of a new particle.

But we can explain what we see if there was a new particle with these properties, or maybe another new particle with different properties. So we're seeing the effects of these new particles by using quantum mechanics. These new particles affected the decay rates of the beamazons, by your virtual interactions. So we're seeing it indirectly. By the standard of the statistics we have in the field, we say this is evidence for a new force.

But we don't say that we've established the effect. We're still not statistically there to say the effect is established, which means it could go away and we get a lot more data. So you have to do more experiments, or do you need to just sift more through the data that you have? No, we've used all the data that we have. We're at a threshold now where experiments been off for over a year. The LHC has been shut down, and we're preparing an upgrade of our old experiment that lets us take data at five to ten times the rate that the old one did. So when we get this installed, which has been not so easy during a COVID year, as you might imagine,

but we're supposed to install it and start running next February. We can then, in a year or two, well, probably two, take as much data as we already took over the last 10 years. And then we would have a pretty good idea of whether what we're seeing is real or not. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios, talking with physicist Sheldon Stone about some intriguing findings from the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. Would this new force answer any questions in physics? And there are a lot of questions in physics we have right now. Would it answer any of those questions about how the world works or our understanding of the building blocks of nature? Yes, it would. It would show us that there are more building blocks of nature than we understood.

And it could point to insights for things that we don't understand, like why there are three kinds of leptons that if they're not the same, that gives us answers. You know, we used to say, before there are three kinds of leptons that behave the same. Why is that? Well, now we may know that they don't behave the same. And then there would be further questions is why not? So you keep probing in these different ways. I mean, we see three generations and other kinds of particles like the quarks, and we have no idea why they're there. So this could give us some insight as to why there are generations. Some people call them families where there's repetitions in nature that we don't understand. Is it just your team seeing this effect? Or does this match up with other results from

other teams? There are some other experiments that have started to measure this, but they don't have the precision to see this effect. Their microscope is not focused tightly enough to see the difference that we see. Now, hopefully, within several years, there's an experiment in Japan called Bell 2. They will increase their data rates efficiently so they can be able to confirm this or deny this measurement. How do you get the public to care anything about this? Well, finding a new force in nature would actually be somewhat of a game changer. Now, we don't know exactly how it becomes a game changer, right? But when we discovered quantum mechanics, we then learned how to make transistors, and then we learned how to make electronics. And who knows

what insights it will give us into further technologies, and who knows how much it will tell us about the origin of the universe. Our theories of the origin of the universe are limited by the standard model of particle physics, what we know about particles. And if we find out there were more particles, and more forces around at the beginning of the universe, we're going to learn a lot more. So maybe some people don't care about it, but I care about it. Do physicists believe that the standard model is an incomplete model, that it's good enough for now, but we're going to have to do away with some of our thinking about it as we discover these new things we did not suspect were there?

There is no physicist that I know that thinks the standard model is a complete theory. everybody believes it's an incomplete theory. It doesn't explain dark matter, and maybe this is related to dark matter. It doesn't display dark energy, which most people don't understand. It has 20, 30 parameters that are put in by hand that we just assume we are there, because we can measure them. But we don't know the relationship among these parameters of where they come from. So everybody believes the standard model is incomplete, and that's why people are building, accelerating accelerators and trying to go beyond it. Maybe this is a hint beyond it. And that would be really exciting if it turned out to be true. You know, I've talked to a lot of physicists over the

years, and some of them have told me, you know, I get disappointed when we actually find the new particle because I enjoy the hunt more. Are you one of those people? No, finding the new particle is really exciting. That's when the champagne comes out. Finding a new force would even be more exciting. I would love if this was real. This would be great. And the hunt is fine, too. But having spent the last five years building this detector for this upgrade, the hunt can end for a while. We could find something. It would be much easier. Sheldon Stone, distinguished professor of physics at Syracuse University. Thank you for taking time to be with us today. My pleasure, or my pleasure. We have to take a break. I'm normally coming back. Cattle are a huge.

contributor to methane gas in the atmosphere, but what if we could slow the farts and burps by feeding them seaweed? Stay tuned for the results after this. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. When it comes to our bodies, there are a few bodily functions, well, let's say that we're usually discouraged from talking about, like releasing gas with a burp or a gas that comes out of the other end. You know what I mean? But if you're a cow, there's a lot of scientific work that goes into analyzing what's coming out in the gas you release. That's because the cattle industry is one of the largest producers of methane gas, a huge contributor to global warming. While some people are leaning away from beef trying to limit their carbon footprint, the industry isn't going away anytime soon.

So what if we could feed cows, something that seriously decays. the amount of methane they release. Joining me today is a researcher who's looking into this very question. Dr. Emmaeus Cabraab, Associate Dean and Professor of Animal Science at the University of California in Davis. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you for having me, Aira. You're welcome.

Now, I know in your research, you're feeding cattle, something that they would never come across in nature, right? This particular seaweed, yes, you're right, But cows actually and ruminants sometimes, they do forage on seaweed if they are close to a seashore. So seaweed, you're giving them as part of their main diet? Not really. We're giving them very little amount of seaweed. So maybe between one to three ounces of seaweed added to their normal diet.

So we would not change that diet at all. We just put a little bit of seaweed into that diet. And you found that putting seaweed in cows' diets cuts methane emissions, emissions, by how much? We found it to cut emissions up to 80 or even a little bit more than 80%. Wait a minute. I'm trying to absorb that. You're putting a tiny bit of seaweed in their diet, but you're cutting emissions by 80%. That's exactly right. Yes, by putting this a little bit of seaweed to the diet without changing the diet whatsoever, we have seen a reduction of methane emissions by up to 80% and sometimes even more than that. And how do you explain that?

explanation is that the seaweed that we're using has active ingredients that would block or inhibit some of the enzymes that are required by the microbes in the gut of the animal. So the gas is actually being produced by the microbes in the gut of the animal. And those microbes require certain steps to make methane. So they make methane from hydrogen that's released by other microbes when they are fermenting food and fiber. And so the process takes them. into this, using a certain specific enzyme to convert hydrogen and carbon dioxide into methane. And what the seaweed is doing is that through its active ingredients, halogenetic compounds, it inhibits that last step of converting into methane.

So it will not go into that last step. So what we will see is that hydrogen would be released instead of methane. Is there something about a cow's digestive system that makes this happen? Yes, exactly. I mean, the cow is a special animal and the animal that really utilizes things that we cannot eat like grass and hay and all that. And the reason it does that is because it's working with thousands of different types of microbes in its gut to help it break down particularly cellulose. And during that process is when all these gases are released and other microbes have evolved to take advantage of that. the fact that there is a lot of hydrogen and carbon dioxide within the rumen. And so they use that and they grow their cells. And the byproduct of that is they produce methane as well.

This is all so amazing. How long did it take to see this change in the methane emissions? Was it right away? Did it take some time? That's the surprising part is that as soon as we put in within a day, we could see that change. As soon as we put in the next day, we measured the emissions, and we can see already quite a huge drop. So it works pretty quickly. Wow, the next day. And the study you were doing, the study is in beef cattle. Does adding seaweed in the cow's diet change how, for example, they taste? Actually, we did that work. We actually had about 112 people to taste the meat that was prepared from animals that were given the seaweed and those were not given the seaweed. And they could not detect any different.

in terms of the taste, the juiciness, or anything like that. So we did this with people tasting the meat or steak, but also we looked at sort of proximate analysis, which is looking at what is in the meat. And so we did a scientific analysis of the components of the meat, and we did not see any significant defense as well. Interesting. So much for the academic study.

I want to bring along someone who is a dairy farmer whose cows will enter a seaweed trial, this summer. Albert Strauss, founder and CEO of Strauss Family Creamery in Marshall, California. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you, Ira. Albert, why are you volunteering your cows for this experiment? So I have an organic dairy farm. We were the first certified organic dairy and creamery west of the Mississippi River and first 100% certified organic creamery in the United States. Our mission is to sustain family farms by producing 100% high-quality organic food, dairy products, and help revitalize real communities for education advocacy everywhere. So my goal is to have a economic, viable

farming model that is good for the planet, good for the environment, and at the same time, producing high-quality organic food for the local community. So when I heard that red seaweed was a potential solution to methane emissions from the cows, I was very excited. I gave a goal three years ago to my sustainability director to be carbon neutral on my farm by the end of 2021 and expanded to the other farms of supplies by the end of the decade, the other 11 farms. And it's made up of four things. One is we have a methane digester that takes the manure from the cows and captures the methane and makes all electricity for the farm, and we're actually collaborating with BMW to take advantage of selling the carbon credits for that. Second part is that we have the first dairy to have a carbon farm

plan, which is using compost and using animals to ingraise. And it's being shown that we can sequester carbon back into the soil from the atmosphere and recognize internationally as one of the only ways to reverse climate change rather than reduce it. And then the third part was the red sea, Almost half of the methane that's emitted by cows comes from their belches, not their forests. And so that was the third part of my goal is if we could feed this little amount of red seaweed to the cows, that would be a very exciting part of it. And the fourth thing is we've converted our vehicles on the farm to be electric. Our truck to feed the cows is electric and is powered by the cows that it feeds.

So this fit very nicely into that model, and we've been collaborating with Armaeus and his team. And we want to be the first commercial trial in the United States for this. So you want to be a pioneer in sustainable farming. I mean, it seems like you're already on that pathway. Yeah, we've tried to create a model of farming that's sustainable economically, environmentally, and producing high-quality food in a local and regional model that other communities can replicate throughout the United States and throughout the world. Have you fed your cows interesting things like this before?

I've fed all kinds of interesting things over the years. I've tried tofu waste. I've still feed that's organic. Saki waste, cocoa bean holes. I've done a lot of different things because for dairy cows, most of the feeds as bad as a reputation as they have, they take a lot of the waste products and convert it into milk into protein. And so, well, the interesting thing is for organic cows,

they have to be on pasture as much as they can and get most of their feed from pasture during the growing season. But by feeding this forage, they're actually producing more methane because the bacteria that digest the grasses also give off methane. Seahweeds quite slimy and stringy, I guess, you're not plopping seaweed into their bowls. You're turning the seaweed first into little pellets and then feeding it to your cows, basically. Yeah, I think it's freeze-dried, and so it's a powder that will mix into their feed.

Do you know where the source of your seaweed comes from? Does it come from, say, kelp beds in California or other seaweed beds in California? No, I think it's subtropical, and I think this initial bed. hatch came from the Azores. They are trying to grow it in southern California as well as Hawaii. So I think they're trying to create a commercialization of the seaweed so we can expand it rapidly. And may ask, is there more research that has to be done to make better seaweed or are you pretty happy with the product that you've got now? Oh, no. There is actually some research that's going on right now at the University of California, San Diego, where they're looking at

what type of seaweed or sort of the variety of seaweed and the potential to make even better quality of the active ingredients can be grown and can be used as well. So there is a lot of research that's going on to try to make sure that we get the right amount of seaweed. So one thing that we have to remember is that when feeding seaweed, we try to give them as little as possible. Too much seaweed, the palatability might be compromised. So to try to make sure that we're giving them as little as possible so they don't even notice that it is there, then we need to find a better quality of seaweed.

So that work is going on right now. And hopefully we will find seaweed that is potent enough so that when we give it to the cows and steers, it will be one or two ounces or even less than that. One or two ounces, Albert. That's like you don't even know it's there, I guess, when you're feeding a cow. Right. We feed a vitamin mineral supplement to the cows. So this would replace a part of that supplement. And so it's a very little part of their feed, but it'd be blended in with the rest of the feed. So it's evenly dispersed throughout their feed that they eat every day.

Are there other farmers who you know who are watching what you're doing and waiting to see the results? my farm has kind of been the trial spot to prove organic farming. People thought it was crazy when I went organic, but now 85% of the dairies in our two counties are certified organic. I have a methane digester that was one of the first ones in California. So a lot of these trials that I do are to kind of prove to other farmers that it's a viable solution to a problem. I know that farmers want to do a good job and want to be in a positive light and create a healthy food for the community. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios.

Talking to Dr. Emaya's Cabraab, Associate Dean and Professor of Animal Science at the University of California in Davis, Albert Strauss, founder and CEO of the Strauss family creamery in Marshall, California. I know you're a farmer who clearly cares a lot about sustainability, being a good steward of the land. I know that listening to you now. But what do you think it will take for other cattle and dairy farmers to take action on the methane emissions of their cows? I mean, I imagine there is an economic, right? A large economic question here. Can I make money doing this? And what's the answer to that? I think that California, as well as nationally and internationally, we're addressing climate change and really trying to make a solution. In California,

we have a law to reduce our methane emissions by 40% by 2030. And part of the solution is the dairy industry and the livestock industry. So there's a kind of a carrot and a stick. I think we're trying to show that you can economically feed this. It won't have any detrimental effect. Hopefully, have only a positive effect and that other farms, by adding it into their feed rations, it will be a positive solution. And so I think as we work collaboratively to address climate change, this is really one of the main solutions that we have and really can highlight agriculture as being a positive part of our society and needed part of our society.

But there are two ways in which farmers can make money out of this. what we saw is that there was an improvement in efficiency. There was about 20% improvement in efficiency, which means that you would need less amount of money to get the same gain. So that would basically reduce the cost of the farmer to feed the animals. And the second way is to, what Albert alluded to, is to claim carbon credit. And one of the things that we are doing, actually now with the help of the California Dary Research Foundation is to come up with a protocol. So you need you need to have a protocol to be able to show that when you reduce carbon, how much carbon you're reducing and what you're doing and all that needs a protocol. And that's

what we're doing right now to try to develop this protocol so that farmers can take credit, not just with seaweed, but any type of mitigation that reduces methane emissions, antedic methamissions, they can take advantage of that. Is there another additive I'm going to call it, besides seaweed that you're looking at? Oh, yeah. So we are looking at several different types of feed additives. We've looked at an additive called Mutrol that reduces emissions by about 23% or so. We've looked at a new additive that we just finished. So I don't have the results yet, but we just finished looking at a new additive.

And we've done an analysis of an additive that a lot of experiments have been conducted. And we've seen the 3 NOP, or it's called Bovire, reduces methane emissions by up to 30% as well. Albert, are you going to be able to see an 80% reduction in methane? Are you able to measure it in your cows when you feed them the seaweed? So the trial that we will be doing this summer will have a measuring device that measures the belches from the cows and that analyzes it. So we'll be able to get that data. And when will you begin giving your cattle seaweed? We're hoping to do it after past your season in July or August this year.

Well, maybe we'll check back with you, see how it's going. That'd be terrific. Thank you both, gentlemen, for taking time to talk with us. I wish both of you good luck because this is a kind of thing that we'd love to hear about, where you are able to come up with new ideas and hopefully make global climate change something we can live with. Dr. M.A.S. Kibrab is Associate Dean and Professor of Animal Science, University of California and Davis, Albert Strauss, founder and CEO of Strauss Family Creamery in Marshall, California. Thanks again. Thank you both for joining us today. Thank you, for that business.

Thank you, Ira. Charles Berkowitz is our director. Our producers are Christy Taylor, Katie Feather, Kathleen Davis, senior producer Alexa Lim, contributing producer John Dan Koski. BJ Leidman composed our theme music. And of course, if you missed any part of the program or we'd like to hear it again, subscribe to our podcasts or ask your smart speaker to play play. Science Friday. One more thing before we go. Do you wonder why pollution is worse in some communities

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