Rondo is getting life in prison Bruce MacArthur was sentenced today with no chance of parole for 25 years MacArthur is in his sixty's he did guilty in Canada to charges of 1st degree murder from 2010 to 2017 gay rights activists investigators say he appeared to target marginalized individuals immigrants refugees impoverished individuals or those addicted to drugs most of the victims were linked to Toronto's gay village l.g.b. T.q. Advocates are still fighting for accountability from law enforcement in Canada they accuse each law enforcement of responding too slowly to their warnings about a serial killer on the loose this is n.p.r. News from the News I'm Brian Watt Caltrans plans to make permanent repairs to the Richmond Sandra fell bridge this weekend that's after the entire bridge was shut down on and off for hours yesterday because concrete fell from the upper deck to the lower damaging a vehicle all lanes of the bridge reopened at around 8 last night Caltrans made temporary repairs he plans to make more permanent repairs in the coming days baseball legend Frank Robinson has died at age 83 the 1st African-American manager in baseball Robinson is the only player ever to win the m.v.p. Award in both leagues he got his start in the Bay Area and Thorson reports Robinson was born in Texas but he grew up in Oakland playing baseball basketball and football from a climate's high at his induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1902 Robinson credited McClellan's coach George poles with teaching him the most fundamental lesson. 100 percent. Sure hurting anyone. Krista Benedetti of the East Bay Express says Robinson was renowned for his gritty character extremely intelligent extremely proud. It's truly tough people talk a lot about Oakland being a blue collar town that always turns out the mentally tough. Athlete and he puts that mold Frank Robinson later became an executive for Major League Baseball working to increase diversity in management and mean authorises k.q.e.d. News there's more Bay area coverage at k.q.e.d. News Dad org I'm Brian Watt and support for n.p.r. Comes from Noam offering a personalized weight loss program that uses psychology and small goals to change habits with the goal of losing weight and keeping it off for good learn more a new man oh oh am dot com And by the listeners and members of the public radio on again off again showers possibly some thunderstorms this afternoon and through the weekend it looks like an unsettled weather well into next week according to the Weather Service today look for highs in the lower fifty's some thunderstorms this afternoon in the Bay Area Sacramento Valley isolated rain showers battered showers later in the afternoon and also tonight I 47 to 54 more snow for the Sierra through the weekend a winter storm warning in effect officially it for today in effect until 10 pm Sunday night. This is Science Friday I'm John Dankosky Ira Flatow was away but he's back next week it's a state of the Union staple along with standing ovations special guests and statement outfits this year Americans have come to expect proposals from the president about how he's going to improve their health and this past Tuesday President Trump made one my budget will ask Democrats and Republicans to make the needed commitment to eliminate the a.j. I.v. Epidemic in the United States within 10 years we have made incredible strides incredible. To stop the spread of HIV in the u.s. By 2030 that's the goal but what would it take to make this happen here to talk about that and other so I could short subjects in science is Washington Post science reporter Sara Kaplan welcome to the show thanks good to be here so Trump says he wants to eliminate HIV in the u.s. In 10 years any details about how this could happen so there's not a ton on strategy or cost but what we do know is the idea is that the c.d.c. And other agencies would focus on a few dozen u.s. Counties that are responsible for more than half of all new HIV transmission transmissions in the u.s. There's about 40000 new cases every year and more than a 1000000 people in the u.s. Living with HIV And so the idea is if you can focus on these counties give people access to the drugs needed to prevent an infection then you can actually lower transmission by a lot out of Aids activists public health folks people been watching this for a while how have they responded so I think it's sort of raise some eyebrows because you know I mean obviously people are excited about this proposal but at the same time shortly after the president took office he dishpan did his HIV Aids if eyes were counsel and he's also taken some policy positions that make it harder for the people most affected by these diseases to access treatment and he exposed and sorry he had posed Medicaid expansion for example. And you know if you're a person who's a person of color or l.g.b. T. You know it's might be harder to get treatment that way so if people are sort of confused about what exactly this means other signs speech so there are a few other health subjects the president talked about his ambition to reduce drug prices fun childhood cancer but significantly there was no mention of a lot of other science subjects including climate climate change and it was a big news this week in climate change yeah so a day after the State of the union the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released new data showing that climate induced to natural disasters cost the u.s. Nearly 100000000000 dollars last year and also $247.00 lives so that's an awful lot it's a big Obviously there's a lot of impact there you've done some reporting in North Carolina they've seen 2 big climate disasters in just the last couple years what are you learning there yes so in southeast North Carolina where I've been reporting people had hurricane Matthew and 2016 and then Florence last year and this is you know in 2. In the course of 2 years they've had 2500 year floods so things that are supposedly have a one in 500 chance of happening but now it's sort of this idea that we're facing a new normal 2018 was the 4th warmest year on record and all of the science suggests that severe natural disasters will become more frequent and more destructive as the climate continues to warm there happening twice as frequently as they used to so you know people in Lumberton North Carolina are sort of bracing themselves for the next thing. To go and no word from the top about what we're going to do about it yeah well let's move on to another story we've been following this week and this one well this is unusual it's about a magnetic north pole and it's on the move what's happening yes so it's very bizarre. So the magnetic north pole is different from the geographic North Pole which is you know the top point of Earth's rotation we know where that is it's not moving but the magnetic north pole is reflective of Earth's magnetic field which is actually generated in Earth's interior so at the very center in the core is this roiling tumultuous ball of molten metal and that conducts an electric current and generates this field and the field fluctuates depending on what's happening in the quarter and lately it's been fluctuating really unpredictable unpredictably at this Excel orating pace it's now moving more than 30 miles per year and sort of zipping toward Siberia and scientists have to actually update they had to have this emergency update to the world magnetic model which they used to sort of mathematically predict where the pole should be where a compass needle ought to be pointing. They had to have an update a year sooner than plans just because it's going so fast it was moving so fast what's happening so that's the big question right like clearly something is happening happening in Earth's interior but we can't get down there it's 2000 miles beneath the surface so the only thing to do is keep tracking earth's pull and try to extrapolate from that you know what's happening beneath our feet and we're going to have more later this hour about how this whole thing works and it's really 1000 of the Very quickly though we fix the g.p.s. Systems because that all got messed up by the magnetic north pole so Actually unless you're really close to the pole and trying to navigate very precisely it wouldn't have affected you too much but you know every day that the pole moved and the magnetic model didn't did create a little bit of discrepancy So now you know cell phone g.p.s. The military navigators can be pretty sure they're back on target and everything's back on target now because the government's not shutdown they can do all the stuff they need to do right yeah absolutely so actually part of the reason that the magnetic model didn't get updated till this week was because the know why scientists who are supposed to host the model were not at work Ok I'm going to have a sad story with you here now so attempted c.p.r. Sort of speak on its own. Lovely little Mars rover has been to such a great job opportunity what is the status of opportunity right now yes so opportunity got caught in this really dramatic dust storm on Mars actually last summer and it hasn't been heard from sense in that solar powered so when dust blocks out the sun that could be pretty problematic but it's you know even if this is the end it's a pretty noble way to go for a rover Opportunity has been on Mars for more than 15 years which is a record for any spacecraft on the surface of another world and it's moved to 29 miles which actually pretty far for for Rover it. Was it was always was to go a couple 1000 yards or something that was only supposed to operate for 90 days and but instead it's made all of these really amazing discoveries and most important which is that it has really found concrete unambiguous evidence suggesting that Mars had liquid water on the surface early in its history and that really changes our perception of what kind of world Mars used to be it's really important in the search for life in trying to understand what happened to this planet to turn it into the kind of desolate doesn't we know today so obviously has got a pretty good legacy even if it doesn't soon and they're trying to reboot it but they're not feeling confident that the little bring it back to life so yeah there's like a couple more kind of last ditch things that NASA is trying to do including resetting opportunities clock in hopes that maybe that will wake the rover back up a lot to get back on schedule with the rising and setting of the sun over Mars but every day that goes by and they don't hear from opportunity the chances get lower and lower Unfortunately I think you have an obit already written. I don't want to vary the robot too soon but you know we try to be prepared for these things Sarah Caplan science reporter at The Washington Post thank you so much for joining us I really appreciate it thank you and now it's time to check in on the state of science this is. A great. Local science stories of national significance Kansas is known for especially when it comes to wind power windows closed. You know I'm coal is a source of energy in the state now nearly 40 percent of the electricity in Kansas comes from wind and there's a new crop of investors big Fortune $500.00 companies that are betting on wind power in Kansas here to fill us in on that story is Brian Graham and he's the energy and environment reporter at k m u w and a Kansas news service based in Wichita Brian welcome to Science Friday and thanks for having me so there's this big project called the Solomon force wind farm target in t. Mobile are buying energy trickly from this project through something called a virtual purchase power agreement can you explain what that is yeah so it's basically a contract so these corporations decide to buy a certain amount of power from that's generated at this one facility at a set price what that allows them to do is so they've they've purchased this electricity and then they can sell that into the reach of electric grid whatever the daily price is the way the regional grid here works is it's a market in there the prices go up and down depending on the needs and so it's kind of this investment that these companies are making in wind a chance to make some money it's a chance to make some money maybe a chance to lose some money why would a company like say Target be interested in becoming an energy wholesaler. And there are a couple reasons one it's a good p.r. Move it allows them to say I think for the Solomon wind farm project that they're going to say that 150 of their stores are going to be powered by the electricity that's generated from from this power purchase agreement that doesn't mean that the wind is being connected directly into this wind farm but it does allow them to say that have that kind of p.r. Vision and then again because of the the cost to development has come down so far it's a it's a cheap option now and so it's a good time to make that investment because they can get a good fixed price from these developers and yeah there is a risk that the price that they've set isn't what they can sell it for but but they're willing to take that risk so p.r. Is the big thing kind of Budweiser Super Bowl and that many of us saw. How is this different from a company buying a renewable energy credit how is that different. It's a little different because. For one a lot of times it's cheaper to do it this way and the other thing is that real energy credits don't necessarily lead to any new wind development they're buying something that's already there and it's just kind of a piece of paper but with this by doing a virtual power purchase agreement they're actually helping to make sure that a new wind project is created and that's important to a lot of these companies too that they've got these climate goals sure and they could do that with credits but they want to make sure that something is actually happening with their investment and this is one way to make sure that that some new construction happens and the wind companies like this to write yeah for the wind companies they get they get an assurance that they have a buyer for their electricity and yeah it might be at a set price but but that's good for them as they try to get financing to to build the thing in the 1st place. The companies how are they feeling about those the utility companies are just kind of there watching it and seeing how it works I mean for them it's not too big of an impact at this point it could be in the future the major utility company here in Kansas there are several but the big one is West star energy and they've actually created their own similar type program they're allowing big corporations to they're developing they're building a wind farm now and they're on corporations to buy parts of that and instead of doing it on kind of this power purchase agreement type deal what they're doing is there a limit aiding the fuel cost that these corporations would normally be paying this is that this is an added tariff based on the price of natural gas or coal but will remove that from from from people who purchase wind energy and give them a set long term fixed price and in the end a lot of corporations are being able to save you know hundreds of thousands of dollars doing it this way it's very interesting bridegroom it is the energy and environment reporter. In the Kansas news service based in which. Talk Brian thanks so much for joining us I appreciate it you're welcome thank you when we come back one of government data was faster smarter and easier to access but no longer free going to talk about the challenges of open data in the era of the cloud. If your organization is having a grand opening fundraiser art or music event that you want community members to know about then consider a day of announcements all to yourself k r z a offers day sponsorships to support its programs and its underwriters for $60.00 the Claire you a day sponsor for the day of your choice your announcement is guaranteed to be heard 8 times throughout the day including N.P.R.'s Morning Edition here and now all things considered. Shows to schedule your days or ship call 719-589-8844 or e-mail you w. Dot org. This is Science Friday I'm John Dankosky whether we're aware of it or not the cloud has changed our lives forever it's where we watch movies share documents and store passwords it's quick it's efficient and we would be able to live our fast paced Internet connected lives without it and now federal agencies are finally catching up with the 21st century and storing much of their data in the cloud to for example NASA is trying to make 20 petabytes of data available to the public for free but to do that they need some help from a commercial cloud provider or a company like Amazon or Microsoft were Google. But will the government's open data policy clash with the business model of Silicon Valley and what are the tradeoffs to faster smarter easier access to government data in the cloud Joining me now to talk about this is Merrill Borowitz assistant professor at the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs a Georgia Tech Marial Welcome to Science Friday I thank you for having me so let's start off the bat just getting real clear here we're not talking about data that needs to be kept secret or private anything that's classified so what kind of data are we talking about and who's using it. Sure is there's all sorts of different types of government data but a lot of the agencies that are running into this issue 1st are in the science agencies So groups like NASA that have lots of satellite data Earth observation data know it collects all sorts of different weather data from satellites and other sources and I h. Is collecting a lot of genetic data and other health related data so lots of different sources of data but especially in these science agencies and stuff that they want people to be able to use that open for people to use in research of their own Exactly so there are many many users of this data already without the Earth science they had over 4000000 users last year accessing their data so what's prompted these federal agencies to start using the cloud for data storage. It's really out of necessity said the amount of data that they're collecting has just gotten to be so large that they can't make it all available with a traditional you know just put it on a server and put it up on a website portal so no I for example right now they're online portals you can only get out about 10 percent of their data and they want to make all of the data available so you know you really have to move to the cloud to do that tell us about some of the benefits to the user for having this data in the cloud what would be different from the way that maybe was stored in the past. Sure so there's a couple benefits one if you just to actually store this much data right to have accessibility to it make sure you can actually get to all of it and download whichever part that you want so you want just some element of it that's one piece about so like I mentioned you know with the current system no I could only get 10 percent of its data out there there's just too much data to make it all available on the web portal so one is just access and then the 2nd piece is analysis so if you do want to analyze a large part of this data set. You can't just download that onto your own laptop computer and run that analysis here you really need to do that type of analysis in a cloud environment. So tell us more about the government's open data policy and I don't know what to be breaking any laws if it didn't make this data free and open to people if for instance they didn't have a cloud solution to get it all up there I mean one of the consequences Sure so in the Us Obama administration had an open government directive in 2009 that's what started sort of the data dot gov movement and idea of getting all this data up online and available to people and that's really spread globally so there's already more than 70 countries that have similar initiatives. And so these they don't even without the. Cloud computing capability they're still abiding by open data they're making their data freely available they're not trying to charge for it or make revenue which is something that had been done in the past so it will be open and that's one of the tricky things about this move to the cloud environment it actually doesn't go against kind of the technical rules of being open because the agency itself is not charging for the actual data what you would be paying potentially is you'd be paying Amazon for example the cost of downloading the data or the cost of using their cloud analysis product but in reality from the user perspective what you get is that it's situation where the data you used to work with for free now you have to pay some type of fee to access that So that's $1.00 of the models maybe you can explain this because that's not the only model being explored there's one that's kind of a fee for service you'd pay a little bit of something to the cloud. Computing system and there's another model in which you would just be free and open to people to use anywhere explain these different models if you would right absolutely so the agencies have control over how they set this up depending on what their budget is and what the capabilities are so with the pilot program that Noah is doing right now for example set up the way we just described where the you know what data is free from the us perspective but through the commercial providers they're working with you would actually pay the commercial providers if you wanted to download the data or analyze it in the cloud NASA on the other hand in their initial program on the cloud that's actually covers the costs of the user downloading the data or the user doing some of the cloud analysis so it's only up to a certain point right they can't cover you know and listen Mts of what people want to do but but for the most part for most users that's a free can just be completely free do you see that there's a possible impact from how many people are going to try to use the data and whether or not it cost anything I mean is there some sort of a limitation there if there's any cost applied. Yes there is so if you look historically when we had costs imposed on data it really did significantly decrease the amount of people accessed and use that data so one of the examples I like to point to the u.s. Has this Landsat satellite system that collects just remote sensing imagery so imagery of the earth all around the globe it was made freely available online in 2008 before that happened the most the largest number of images they ever sold was about 25000 within a couple years after making the data freely available online they were distributing about 250000 images a mile so that's a big difference yes exactly Yeah it certainly makes a difference. One of the questions we have is why don't these agencies just develop their own cloud systems it seems as though they're smart enough they certainly have the technical ability we want to check in with someone from NASA about this Kevin Murphy's program executive for Earth Science Data Systems at NASA is Goddard Space Flight Center and here's what he told us we have about $3000000.00 users a year that use our products and building out systems which are capable and and having the right security policies and able for people to openly access government products is very difficult utilizing this commercial environment I'm allows us to have a security enclave with m.m. Which is accessible by anyone but managed by NASA so when it's it's costly we don't have the same size or efficiency as these commercial providers The 2nd thing is is that by moving to these commercial providers the data becomes more acceptable by people who don't have a credential. And that's Kevin Murphy from NASA of America Merrill maybe you can just respond to that it sounds as though he has a pretty convincing argument for why this might work for NASA. Right and I think you touched on a lot of the important points here so there certainly is a debate going back and forth and agencies around the world about whether they should build their own sort of cloud system or go with these commercial options and as Kevin mentioned some of the benefits of going commercial are you know the the systems already out there so you can just go ahead and start using it right away which is a benefit in terms of time but then also those companies have huge workforces big physical infrastructure that's much larger than anything one agency is ever going to be able to to replicate so they can really take advantage of all of that make sure they're staying on kind of the cutting edge of that technology the cutting edge and really provide the type of access the people expect from cloud computing systems which are just everywhere it's what we're used to dealing with in our personal lives exactly I want to bring in another guest culture is open city is director with the Open Data nonprofit The Sunlight Foundation based in Washington d.c. Can't you welcome to Science Friday thanks for being here Hi Thank you for having me so you help cities local governments develop their own Open Data policies I guess I'm wondering what your take is on these sorts of plans hiring big 3rd party groups to store this really important data Yeah so the fundamental belief behind Open Data policies is that the public has a right to public information and that ultimately citizens are the owners of public data and so it becomes tricky when you start working with either partnering or contracting with commercial data providers because essentially what you're doing is giving up private entity control over a public resource and as we know of Silicon Valley business models data is an extremely profitable resource for them and so there is a lot that goes into crafting those agreements and I think we advocate for agreements that remain transparent and accessible and that's a huge priority for a government staff as they're making these decisions about where to put their data . I mean we can probably imagine some ourselves but maybe you could walk me through one or 2 of the potential pitfalls here one of the things that you worry that Silicon Valley might do if they control on and house all this data Sure well there are the basics like the operational issues that come with partnering with a private entity and one is just that they have control over how the data is presented and provided to the public and they can choose to you know charge a fee of course in the agreement that they set up with the government but also they might provide the data and accessible format they might make it an article for users to use it so that's on the very basic operational level but then on a more complicated level of private entities have you know a stake in analyzing that data and generating insights that will then be profitable or interesting to 3rd parties and so that's what we're seeing with a lot of private and sensitive data that gets shared on a personal level and. It's not always a risk but it's something that should be considered as government staffer crafting these agreements is how is the data going to be re-used by the partner who is also participating in this relationship we actually we talked to now says Kevin Murphy about crafting these arrangements and how they approach this let's take a listen you know today even without the use of the cloud we have to pay for storage right and we maintain the ownership of the data in that storage so what I'd say is that this isn't like a brand new relationship that or entering into right we've been buying storage and we've been buying hardware for a long time we look at these commercial cloud entities as other vendors of storage and hardware and that's all operate on everything that it purchases within those environments so we you know we're trying to make systems which really don't show much difference to the user communities that we currently have maybe a better functionality but NASA will continue to operate manage and own everything in them. Kucha What do you say to that how do you respond yeah that question of ownership is a really central one and I think it's really great that Noah and NASA both have taken that into account in crafting their agreements with their partners it does become more of an issue when you're working with regional or or local level governments which I do and there are a wide variety of agencies that go into partnerships that maybe aren't as protective of public data ownership and so that's an extremely essential point to cover in the agreements I'm wondering if you can talk about how to make sure to preserve that ownership because what we do know as consumers when we're dealing with big cloud and these it's really hard to know what we own and what the cloud provider owns I mean talk about making sure ownership is clear right so I think the role for this is really for the agency when they're setting up these agreements to be very clear in terms of who owns the data what the what the Christianity is allowed to do with the data that in the existing agreements for example those entities cannot put licenses on the data that would restrict who can use it like that so attention to all those details to the exact licensing to the price all of that is very important do you have any concerns that there may be some sort of conflict of interest I mean you've got a companies like Google to provide these services that are also deeply enmeshed within the economy they're doing all sorts of their own science I guess I'll ask you 1st Mariel and maybe you can follow up gotcha but do you have concerns about maybe Google being the storage of this really important data. So I think to the extent that they're working very closely with agencies that have a very close relationship in terms of making sure the data is usable and following these kind of plans of the agency I think it's all right you know point out also that these agencies just like any other user in the United States or in the world already has access to this data right so it's open data not just to researchers or non-profits but also to commercial entities and so there are cases already separate from these agreements with government where. Where groups like Amazon or Google download the government data just like any other user would and then make it available on their platforms as a way to kind of bring people in get them to use that platform I'm John Dankosky and this is Science Friday from w. N.y.c. Studios. Wondering could you pick up on that any thoughts Yes I think that I agree that that a lot of these agreements do already take into account a lot of the new plants in the licensing that's necessary and actually where we see this become more of a conflict as at the local level where there isn't necessarily as much nuance and in the oversight of the agreements and how those agreements are crafted for example you have entities like sidewalk labs in Toronto and also working in New York that are installing urban tech infrastructure that are collecting data and they say that they will share open data but that's a completely different use case and so it does become more nuance depending on which agency you're talking about but broadly speaking I do think that a lot of the the details of those agreements at the federal level are fairly good about protecting the ownership of the rights of the public data. Home wondering if we could loop back with you to the question we had earlier about maybe even the small processing fee that you might have to pay does that in your mind pass muster with the idea of open data if you have to pay a fee to an Amazon say to get any sort of information from know or NASA I mean frankly no that's not open data if you have to pay a fee to access that and then it doesn't become public data anymore and that is like I said earlier one of the absolutely fundamental elements of open data policy is that it's accessible to the public and that it's usable for free I wonder Mario Are any of these agencies working together to figure out how to do this or is everyone kind of you know. Casting off on their own cutting deals with a Google or an Amazon or are they working together to try to figure out the best way to solve this big data problem. Sure so it's a little bit of both you know certainly the agencies have their independent programs they do have independent negotiations with these companies there's not just one kind of government negotiation with Amazon for example but they are in communication with each other so certainly NASA and I. These agencies and even internationally are communicating with each other not just about how to set up these arrangements but also how to ensure usability how to get the word out about how things might be changing so there is some communication there country how would the system look different if you could design of the mean what would you say best possible way to solve the problem of this costing an awful lot of money making sure that we get data that is open and accessible and is available to people through the cloud but it does all the protections that you're hoping for. Well I think that the use cases for each different agency are unique right and so there's always going to have to be a certain level of customisation and consideration of what we hope that these agencies will do I mean we want them to be sophisticated in the analysis that they're able to do we want them to have the flexibility to be creative so we definitely want these partnerships to be able to happen but at the same time I think in my view it would be ideal if the public could have access to the content of these agreements in a way where there could be at least some accountability and oversight into the way that private entities are then sharing the data or publishing it so the element of public oversight I think is really crucial because many of these agreements don't have to be public proactively country is the open cities director with the Sunlight Foundation based in Washington d.c. Thank you so much for joining us I really appreciate it thank you thanks also to Mariel Borowitz assistant professor of the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Tech she's been writing about this big issue and I'm really glad you brought it to our attention and that you could join us today thank you Mariel Thank you thanks also to Kevin Murphy program executive for Earth Science Data Systems that now has Goddard Space Flight Center for sharing his comments with us after the break the earth's iron and nickel corps was one link with. Well geologists are figuring out when that metal started to solidify and what it meant for life on Earth. This is Science Friday from w n y c studios Science Friday is supported by Progressive Insurance offering snapshot a device designed to reward safe drivers learn more at progressive dot com or 1800 progressive Now that's progressive support for Science Friday comes from p.b.s. With Sealab American experience follows the u.s. Navy's 1st aquanauts on their mission to work on the ocean floor and overcome the perils of the deep sea lab Tuesday at 98 Central on p.b.s. Support also comes from Indeed with indeed employers can post a job in minutes set up screener questions then 0 in on a shortlist of screen candidates using an online dashboard more info and indeed dot com slash higher. I'm John Dankosky this month the Grand Canyon celebrates 100 years as a national park this week on Science Friday how people explore and understand the canyon through maps the tolls it allows us to feed the growing trend in its entirety our maps and so was a push of a button can order us dinner turn on the lights and even find us a date how is the button change the way we interact with technology that's on Science Friday from w n y z studios. This program is underwritten by wealthy area Wolf Creek has 8 lives operating from 9 am to 4 pm daily and is 100 percent open with excellent conditions Creek has an excellent variety of terrain for skiers and boarders of all the calendar of events and more information at both Creek Ski dot com. This is Science Friday I'm John Dankosky if you learned any geology in grade school it may have included this picture of the earth the rocky crossed we walk on in under that a solid slowly shifting mantle under that a liquid outer core made of iron and nickel and at the very center a solid inner core also made of iron and nickel possibly as hot as the surface of the sun but geologists also think that there would've been a time in that inner core was also liquid but our planet actually formed with a fully more. Molten Core and how they're figuring out when that change happened well has a lot to do with our magnetic field new research in nature geosciences tries to put a date on our solid core suggesting this big change happened relatively recently in geologic time just over 500000000 years ago Dr Richard Bono is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Liverpool in the United Kingdom and Dr welcome to Science Friday thanks for being here I thank you for having me so 1st of all 500000000 years is pretty young in geologic terms tell us about that that is young isn't Yes So Earth is about 4 and a half 1000000000 years old and we've had a magnetic field for but appears to be most of that certainly 3 and a half and maybe as far back as 4200000000 years so for the inner core to have formed 500000000 years ago or so that's quite recent It's hard to yeah it's recent So so why why are you concluding the solid core so young. So we in our study we looked at a few different things our work started with trying to understand the magnetic field itself which is generated in the liquid part of the core as the iron swirls and moves it creates a magnetic field which we see on Earth and we looked in particular at the strength of this field and we found that about 565000000 years ago the field was incredibly about 10 times weaker than it is today and then trying to understand the history of this field strength we found that it. 500000000 years ago and going further back it started out at a strength similar to maybe how it is today and then it was getting weaker and weaker until it was on the verge of collapsing at that time and then we combined this observation with computer simulations about how the magnetic field could be generated and the core itself and how it would evolve. In change to produce this magnetic field and we found that these computer simulations that predicted a much younger inner core one that's about 500000000 years old is most consistent with our observations from the geologic record so and I want to talk about that geological rock record in a moment but but 1st of all tell us how exactly does a solid core power of this magnetic field. So it's in the transition from a liquid core to an inner core it's growing and there's a growth actually changes the chemistry inside the core and this chemical change it's a buoyancy It's like boiling water and as it flows around that helps drive the magnetic field in the liquid outer part so it's a chemically powered dynamo as it is today and how do we know how it's solidified exactly what happened. That's still a bit of an open question of exactly what the physics are allows this. Air cord to start to grow Ok so this all kind of sounds like magic to me because I'm not quite sure how we're looking at the center of the earth 500000000 years ago explain exactly how you're doing this so this is one of the exciting parts about this type of research which is called paleo magnetism and that's because we get to see the magnetic field on the surface of Earth but it's being generated much deeper in this outer core So when a rock forms there are tiny magnetic grains inside of it in our case these little nanometers sized magnetic needles and when the rock pools below a critical temperature in a locked in the magnetic field at that time and preserve it and then we're able to take that rock back to a lab and measure it it's much like a compass needle it can tell us both what direction the magnetic field is pointing but also how strong it is and that's somewhat unique in that we're able to peer both back in time but also deep into the earth to where the magnetic field was being formed even though we're looking at the surface today why is it so important we're able to understand what's going on at the center of the earth whether it's 500000000 years ago or more today so our magnetic field is this picture that makes Perth a special planet and one that has. Wife and an atmosphere and liquid water because the magnetic field acts as a shield that protects the earth in its atmosphere from solar radiation without this shield solar radiation solar wind streaming from the sun can come in strip away the atmosphere and would allow for the water to leave so this magnetic field in its history and its evolution is directly linked to our ability on earth for there to be life so this is. Spiritual connection so it's pretty important Well Ok so now let's go back to this time 500 some 1000000 years ago when we were looking at this gigantic dip in the magnetic field you were talking about you explained that it's 110th of the strength it is today so what could that possibly have done to life on Earth at that time it's hard to say exactly we've never seen something that weak in the historical record where we have direct observations but if the field was 10 times weaker than it is today we'd expect that solar radiation would be able to penetrate much further into Earth into the atmosphere and that radiation could be harmful to to life or to d.n.a. And there's been some speculation about what that could mean about how life has evolved and changed in response to this increase in solar radiation. You've discussed of the possibility that the magnetic field didn't just dip a lot that it just completely went away at that time is there that possibility so we don't have any evidence that the magnetic field completely collapsed disappeared and got very weak but is still above the minimum amount we would expect just from a sort of background signal so it never completely disappeared but it did get much much weaker in till something changed and what we think that change was was that the inner car core started to grow and that allowed the Geo dynamo to be repaired to rise back up to what we see today so what's interesting here is this happened at around this time at which we also see the Cambrian explosion almost always a life on Earth happening here maybe you can explain if there's any sort of correlation here between this dip in the magnetic field and what happened with life on Earth about time so that there's been speculation about that it's very difficult to try to directly connect something like this the strength of the magnetic field to evolution on life but it is intriguing that these are happening at about the same time and there could be a relation. But before this happened before the dip that we're talking about here what was powering the magnetic field of the earth so it was long and then it was weak and it was strong again when the Course a little fied what was powering this beforehand so that's another big question that our discipline is trying to address there's a lot of uncertainty but one model is that it's just due to cooling and that's a thermally powered dynamo but this couldn't last forever and we would expect that as the core continues to cool there's less power available to drive the magnetic field and it would get weaker and weaker until it would reach this point of collapse and that seems somewhat consistent with what we found in our study earlier in the hour we're talking about the news this week that the magnetic north pole is actually been moving around a little bit and it seems very scary to us what do you see when you look at that is that something that concerns you is something that you could learn anything from what do you what do you think when you hear that so I wouldn't be concerned but I'd be interested so that's one of the fascinating parts about our magnetic field is that it changes on all these different time scales as we're seeing that in this study about the magnetic north pole it moves around on yearly timescales and it can also change hundreds to thousands of years there's this. Term the South Atlantic Anomaly a weak point on earth's field that we're trying to understand if it's hundreds or thousands of years old or even older going back to millions and even billions of years so it's all these different time scales that it's changing at that we're trying to understand how and why and can we even predict it remains part of our studies we just have we just have 30 seconds left Mars doesn't have a magnetic field it used to but it doesn't have one today from the best that we can tell and what happened we know we don't really know it's. This open question and hopefully some missions that will be looking at trying to collect samples like allow us to gain some insight in to the history of Mars and its magnetic field I love these big open questions but there's a lot of cool stuff in here thanks to Dr Richard Bono a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Liverpool in the u.k. Thanks for joining us on Science Friday thank you for having me now you may have noticed that we're talking a lot about geosciences on the program the last few weeks and there's a reason for that our cipher i Book Club is reading in is the 5th season it's a story about a world in constant geological turmoil volcanoes earthquakes even shifting magnetic poles we've heard about those they're all disasters plaguing the story and one place our book club is meeting is on Facebook or share some gems from that discussion is happening on Facebook Science Friday digital producer you have a mayor you had a welcome John and radio producer Christy Taylor Hi there hey Don So when I think book club I think about people sitting in a room together talking over wine maybe how we do this with radio where we kind of can't I love I do love the way that we're able to dive into a piece of literature and really explore it with our guest experts and list is but a lot of the time on our conversations can only include so many voices people don't get to talk to each other we have limited time and so on so that is where the Science Friday book club Facebook group comes and we really kind of wanted to try to put that club back in the book club and people have really delivered some thoughtful conversations as they've been reading I'm really interested to hear about these conversations because the 5th season has some heavy stuff I mean it's end of the world personal loss earthquake magic what kind of questions we've been chewing on Yes So for starters we've been talking about the seam of disaster a lot how the society in the story itself has adapted to disaster and also how people respond to it on an individual level I mean characters in the story are walking away from their entire lives as they know it because of a giant volcano so this idea of individual resilience was really intriguing to one of our listeners Denise from Beth. Pennsylvania as a person who survival instinct is waning during our own times I find myself wondering what it must be like to have a wish to survive that is so strong that one is prepared to live with brutality or to brutalize others in the name of survival when hope is lost what are people living on what is it like to live with a brain a mind a will like that. I'm John Dankosky and this is Science Friday from w. N.y.c. Studios and John we've also been talking about how groups of people respond to disasters Yes So another listener named Jude made a really interesting comparison between the tight knit community and Jemison world and monasteries in the Middle Ages Yeah and she said so when Roman civilization was breaking up these institutions really encouraged an ethical approach to communal life the monks weren't just hanging around praying they also taught those outside the monastery the agricultural knowledge and the skills they needed to survive and they transcribe written material for future preservation I thought those communities in Jefferson's book in comparison entirely insular unwilling to reach out and less They got something in return so I thought that was a great point about different reactions to disaster and social upheaval social upheaval I'm I'm guessing people probably had some feelings about how science was portrayed in the story well this is a science show you know we did ask about that and that's one thing we really really wanted to explore with people that that season is a work of fantasy or maybe science fiction but it's rooted in a lot of real geological turmoil there are these characters who can do earthquake magic but they're also stopping aftershocks they're trying to plug up volcanoes but you know so the pressure on lava is safely rerouted there talk about fault lines and friction and vibrations carrying through different materials different kinds of volcanic ash ecological effects etc So we asked people how they related to that kind of information density and Aaron from Fairfield Connecticut had this to say I think consumers of science fiction are already tuned into science and are looking for science to be based in reality it is expected that the author will take scientific liberties to advance the story but one of the things I love my pajama is how smart some of these authors are and how much time they must spend studying about the science to make it believable I love how Jemison work geology into the core of her story it is so unique I found myself using her pendant sees and looking up more information about the science as I read. The book. That said this is a book about disasters and about violence and Jemison as a black woman writing about those the prest group of people and the origins these people in the book who do earthquake magic are treated in ways that pretty directly parallels slavery and racism in America and some of our readers have been reacting to this as well so you have Ana from Santa Cruz California said she found those parallels overwhelming I recently finished this book the 5th season while reading chapters on the Civil War and restoration until a porous new Civic spoke these truths and watching movies like sorry to bother you and wish struck about how all 3 seem to spin the same tale one of slavery and adequate dehumanization and hard choices at times this book felt so real and so current I had to put it down just to get some space it's only people are digging into this a lot yeah they really are John and we want to keep digging next Friday on the show we're going to sort of complete this book club with a conversation with seismologist Lucy Jones and sociologist Laurie peak on the air so far we've been talking about Will Cain know the earthquake geosciences the center of the earth but we really plan to explore disaster sociology with this conversation Lori peak has research a lot of the social dynamics around Hurricane Katrina and who was hurt most in that situation for example and they're both people have a lot to say about what makes a natural hazard into a human scale disaster those are 2 very different things so so next week on the show I was going to be back for the conversation but let's just say I want to get involved. Yes we have one more discussion question that we want people to think about as they finish up their reading so here it is this is a book where there are many different voices then many different storytellers from the shifting narratives to the way that societal knowledge and history is transmitted through this concept of stone more so how do all of these voices shape our understanding of the story. And you can think about that a little bit John and then join the Science Friday book club on Facebook but we also really really want you to send us your comments as voice memos so we can include them in next week's show kind of like we did today with other people so that check out our Web site Science Friday dot com slash 5th season that's Science Friday dot com slash that season to send us a voice memo join the conversation and share your thoughts so it's still not too late to get involved is not too late at all actually radio producer Christy Taylor and digital producer Mayor thank you both so much for bringing us this it's a very exciting Thanks John it's our pleasure one last thing geeky love is in the air yes the side fright team has made Valentines for you to share with the scientists in your life so if you want to be like Saturn and put a ring on it headed to Science Friday dot com slash Valentine's Charles Bergquist is our director our senior producer is Christopher and tell you and our producers are Alexa Lim Chrissy Taylor and Katie Fowler We have technical and engineering help today from rich Kim Sara Fishman and Kevin Wolf we are active all week on Facebook Twitter Instagram all those social medias and if you've got a smart speaker ask to play Science Friday whenever you want every day is now Science Friday you can e-mail us to the address is Science Friday at Science Friday dot com In New York I'm John Dankosky. 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Go nuts on the extreme. You are listening to k.r.s. The 88.7 f.m. From Alamosa Colorado New Mexico 98.7 f.m. Is a watch and also streaming online a k r z 8 dot org connecting cultures along. The This Is Your k.r.s. a Daily weather forecast for Friday the 8th of February 2100 in the San Luis rally in South Central Colorado today sunny skies and almost 2931 so watch 25 and crest on 28 tonight mostly clear lows in Alamosa negative 57 so watch 3 and crest on 7 Read and heard about your breed and know what. That smell can x. And this is alternative radio I'm David buy some young this edition of any our features Malcolm x. The ballot or the bullet welcome to this special Black History Month program now going to x. Is a singular figure in African-American history he led a most remarkable life he was born in an impoverished family in Omaha Nebraska and Maine 1925 He recalled being dizzy with hunger he said my whole life has been a chronology of changes indeed it was he went through a series of remarkable transformation.