Podcast appearances and mentions of lee billings

Lee Billings, senior editor of "Scientific American" magazine, talks about the many fascinating elements of space: from solar storms, to space junk, and even to the possibility of a new planet.Then, local resident and CEO of TRS Group, Brett Trowbridge, tells how they use scientific innovation to clean up containments in the soil through thermal remediation. These are “forever chemical” contaminants that can be cleaned up at the site instead of being hauled away.

The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week Key Takeaways  A common interpretation across civilizations is that solar eclipses happen when the people on earth have done something bad Another popular interpretation of solar eclipses is that when humans were fighting too much on Earth, the sun and the moon would begin to fight in the skyIn ancient civilizations, evidence of human sacrifices is common in places where eclipses occurred Today is the most cosmically perfect time in the history of the universe; the fact that we can see eclipses at all is a complete coincidence In 620 million years, the moon will be far away enough from Earth that we will no longer have total eclipses, only partial eclipsesNo other rocky planet in the solar system has a moon large enough to cause a total eclipse After the April 8th, 2024 solar eclipse, the next viewable solar eclipse in the United States won't be until 2040 Read the full notes @ podcastnotes.orgScientific American's Lee Billings and Clara Moskowitz join Rachel this week to talk all things eclipse. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week is a podcast by Popular Science. Share your weirdest facts and stories with us in our Facebook group or tweet at us! Click here to learn more about all of our stories!  Links to Rachel's TikTok, Newsletter, Merch Store and More: https://linktr.ee/RachelFeltman  Rachel now has a Patreon, too! Follow her for exclusive bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/RachelFeltman Link to Jess' Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/jesscapricorn -- Follow our team on Twitter Rachel Feltman: www.twitter.com/RachelFeltman Produced by Jess Boddy: www.twitter.com/JessicaBoddy Popular Science: www.twitter.com/PopSci Theme music by Billy Cadden: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6LqT4DCuAXlBzX8XlNy4Wq?si=5VF2r2XiQoGepRsMTBsDAQ Thanks to our Sponsors! Get 20% OFF @honeylove by going to https://honeylove.com/WEIRDEST! #honeylovepod Right now, get 55% off at https://Babbel.com/WEIRDEST This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Get 10% off your first month at https://BetterHelp.com/WEIRDEST Head to https://FACTORMEALS.com/weirdest50 and use code weirdest50 to get 50% off. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Scientific American's Lee Billings and Clara Moskowitz join Rachel this week to talk all things eclipse. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week is a podcast by Popular Science. Share your weirdest facts and stories with us in our Facebook group or tweet at us! Click here to learn more about all of our stories!  Links to Rachel's TikTok, Newsletter, Merch Store and More: https://linktr.ee/RachelFeltman  Rachel now has a Patreon, too! Follow her for exclusive bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/RachelFeltman Link to Jess' Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/jesscapricorn -- Follow our team on Twitter Rachel Feltman: www.twitter.com/RachelFeltman Produced by Jess Boddy: www.twitter.com/JessicaBoddy Popular Science: www.twitter.com/PopSci Theme music by Billy Cadden: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6LqT4DCuAXlBzX8XlNy4Wq?si=5VF2r2XiQoGepRsMTBsDAQ Thanks to our Sponsors! Get 20% OFF @honeylove by going to https://honeylove.com/WEIRDEST! #honeylovepod Right now, get 55% off at https://Babbel.com/WEIRDEST This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Get 10% off your first month at https://BetterHelp.com/WEIRDEST Head to https://FACTORMEALS.com/weirdest50 and use code weirdest50 to get 50% off. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week on Cool Science Radio hosts John Wells and Lynn Ware Peek's guests include:Leading business journalist (0:59) Mark Bergen. He writes exclusively about Google for Bloomberg, Businessweek and others. He discusses his new book Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTube's Chaotic Rise to World Domination.Then, senior editor of space and physics at Scientific American magazine, (23:12) Lee Billings will discuss what the James Webb space telescope can tell us about Jupiter, Mars, and Earth itself - Now that photos are regularly coming back from the telescope that sits a million miles away from Earth.

Jaw-dropping images released from the James Webb Space Telescope have both scientists and laypeople awestruck. Lee Billings, senior editor of space and physics for Scientific American, joins host Krys Boyd to discuss the latest scientific discoveries of the $10 billion telescope and the secrets of the universe astronomers hope to unlock now that information is pouring in.

On today's episode of Cool Science Radio : We talk about the dawn of a revolution in astronomy with our guest, science writer Lee Billings. For the first time ever, astronomers may have glimpsed light from a world in a life-friendly orbit around another star. This promising potential world was spied around Alpha Centauri. Could it be a planet? Could it be a "warm Neptune", or is it a mirage? Billings explores the potential of these findings and how it could bring about a new era in astronomy.

Follow John on Instagram @jpmonten & if you live in Seattle, check out Supreme in either West Seattle or University District.The books John chose were Artisan Baking Across America: The Breads, the Bakers, the Best Recipes by Maggie Glezer & Ben Fink, and The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas. Other books discussed were Team of Rivals and No Ordinary Time by Doris Kearns Goodwin, Five Billion Years of Solitude: The Search for Life Among the Stars by Lee Billings, & Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe.Food places referenced were Acme in San Francisco; Chez Panisse Restaurant; The Bread Farm in Edison, WA; Dahlia Bakery, Le Panier, Columbia City Bakery, & Macrina in Seattle.

On the 31th episode of Exocast: Hugh is joined in the virtual exocast studio by Science Journalist Lee Billings a writer for Scientific American and author of “5 billion years of Solitude”. Andrew dives into waterworlds inside and outside of our solar system and what we can learn about habitability. Hannah takes a look at what exoplanet news had been released over the past months and highlights the great work done by furloughed US scientistsRead more

Take any square kilometer of Earth's surface. About once a year an extraordinary event occurs in the sky directly above that patch of land or sea: the hefty nucleus of a heavy element slams into the top of Earth's atmosphere at close to the speed of light.Scientists have been unable to tell where these particles come from, in part because their trajectories can be nudged by galactic magnetic fields. Another puzzle is how the particles reach such blistering speeds.Two theories dominate attempts to explain these mysteries. One posits that the particles mostly come from exploding stars and other high-energy phenomena in our galaxy. The other speculates that the particles are produced beyond our galaxy—perhaps in the active cores of other galaxies surrounding the Milky Way. Now a study in the journal Science supports that second notion. [Link to come]Amazingly, any of these “ultra-high-energy cosmic rays” has the kinetic energy of an apple falling from a tree to the ground. That means that Isaac Newton, or you, would definitely feel it hit your head.Luckily, that never happens. Instead, when these cosmic speed demons strike our atmosphere they create a brief flash of light, as well as high-altitude “air showers” of less-energetic particles that harmlessly dissipate.In the new study, an international team of more than 400 researchers analyzed a dozen years' worth of these events. They used the Pierre Auger Observatory, a Rhode-Island-sized array of telescopes and 1,600 particle detectors operating in western Argentina, to record air showers from more than 30,000 ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays. And it turns out that most of the particles appear to come from a broad, relatively galaxy-rich region of sky located about 90 degrees away from the Milky Way's center. Which suggests that they arise in faraway galaxies perhaps from spinning supermassive black holes, rather than anywhere closer to home. What a long, strange trip they've made.—Lee Billings[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]中文翻译占地面的任何平方公里。大约每年一次，在这片土地或海洋上方的天空中发生了一件非同寻常的事件：重元素的巨大核心以接近光速的速度猛烈撞击地球大气顶部。科学家们无法分辨这些粒子来自何处，部分原因是它们的轨迹可以被银河磁场所推动。另一个难题是粒子如何达到如此高的速度。两种理论主导着解释这些奥秘的尝试。有人认为这些粒子主要来自爆炸恒星和银河系中的其他高能现象。另一个推测粒子是在我们的银河系之外产生的 - 也许是在银河系周围其他星系的活跃核心。现在，科学期刊的一项研究支持第二个概念。 [链接来]令人惊讶的是，这些“超高能宇宙射线”中的任何一种都具有苹果从树上落到地面的动能。这意味着艾萨克牛顿，或者你，肯定会感觉到它击中你的头。幸运的是，这从未发生过。相反，当这些宇宙速度恶魔袭击我们的大气层时，它们会产生短暂的闪光，以及低能量粒子的高空“空气阵雨”，这些粒子无害地消散。在这项新研究中，一个由400多名研究人员组成的国际团队分析了这些事件的十几年。他们使用皮埃尔奥格天文台，一个罗德岛大小的望远镜阵列和在阿根廷西部运行的1600个粒子探测器，记录超过30,000个超高能宇宙射线的空中阵雨。事实证明，大多数粒子似乎来自一个宽阔的，相对星系丰富的天空区域，距离银河系中心约90度。这表明它们出现在遥远的星系中，可能来自旋转的超大质量黑洞，而不是离家更近的地方。他们做了多么奇怪的旅行。-Lee Billings

Take any square kilometer of Earth's surface. About once a year an extraordinary event occurs in the sky directly above that patch of land or sea: the hefty nucleus of a heavy element slams into the top of Earth's atmosphere at close to the speed of light.Scientists have been unable to tell where these particles come from, in part because their trajectories can be nudged by galactic magnetic fields. Another puzzle is how the particles reach such blistering speeds.Two theories dominate attempts to explain these mysteries. One posits that the particles mostly come from exploding stars and other high-energy phenomena in our galaxy. The other speculates that the particles are produced beyond our galaxy—perhaps in the active cores of other galaxies surrounding the Milky Way. Now a study in the journal Science supports that second notion. [Link to come]Amazingly, any of these “ultra-high-energy cosmic rays” has the kinetic energy of an apple falling from a tree to the ground. That means that Isaac Newton, or you, would definitely feel it hit your head.Luckily, that never happens. Instead, when these cosmic speed demons strike our atmosphere they create a brief flash of light, as well as high-altitude “air showers” of less-energetic particles that harmlessly dissipate.In the new study, an international team of more than 400 researchers analyzed a dozen years' worth of these events. They used the Pierre Auger Observatory, a Rhode-Island-sized array of telescopes and 1,600 particle detectors operating in western Argentina, to record air showers from more than 30,000 ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays. And it turns out that most of the particles appear to come from a broad, relatively galaxy-rich region of sky located about 90 degrees away from the Milky Way's center. Which suggests that they arise in faraway galaxies perhaps from spinning supermassive black holes, rather than anywhere closer to home. What a long, strange trip they've made.—Lee Billings[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]中文翻译占地面的任何平方公里。大约每年一次，在这片土地或海洋上方的天空中发生了一件非同寻常的事件：重元素的巨大核心以接近光速的速度猛烈撞击地球大气顶部。科学家们无法分辨这些粒子来自何处，部分原因是它们的轨迹可以被银河磁场所推动。另一个难题是粒子如何达到如此高的速度。两种理论主导着解释这些奥秘的尝试。有人认为这些粒子主要来自爆炸恒星和银河系中的其他高能现象。另一个推测粒子是在我们的银河系之外产生的 - 也许是在银河系周围其他星系的活跃核心。现在，科学期刊的一项研究支持第二个概念。 [链接来]令人惊讶的是，这些“超高能宇宙射线”中的任何一种都具有苹果从树上落到地面的动能。这意味着艾萨克牛顿，或者你，肯定会感觉到它击中你的头。幸运的是，这从未发生过。相反，当这些宇宙速度恶魔袭击我们的大气层时，它们会产生短暂的闪光，以及低能量粒子的高空“空气阵雨”，这些粒子无害地消散。在这项新研究中，一个由400多名研究人员组成的国际团队分析了这些事件的十几年。他们使用皮埃尔奥格天文台，一个罗德岛大小的望远镜阵列和在阿根廷西部运行的1600个粒子探测器，记录超过30,000个超高能宇宙射线的空中阵雨。事实证明，大多数粒子似乎来自一个宽阔的，相对星系丰富的天空区域，距离银河系中心约90度。这表明它们出现在遥远的星系中，可能来自旋转的超大质量黑洞，而不是离家更近的地方。他们做了多么奇怪的旅行。-Lee Billings

“Absolutely spectacular mission…and it's not a rover, it's a lander. It's designed to land and deploy several instruments.”Jim Green, NASA's new chief scientist, talking about the InSight Mission to Mars. InSight [Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport] launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California the morning of May 5th. He spoke with Scientific American space editor Lee Billings, who recorded their conversation.“One instrument…will be set on the surface and will measure Marsquakes. Now why are Marsquakes important? Well, Marsquakes, because we can get the acoustic signals and see how they are displayed in time, we can tease out the size of the core, even if it's liquid or not, the size of the mantle and the crust, and compare those with the big terrestrial planet, Earth, that we know a lot about its interior. And this will really help us understand how terrestrial planets are made.”Green was NASA's Planetary Science Division director since 2006 before taking on his current assignment just last week. Back to the InSight Mission.  “But in general, it also has a human exploration part to it. For instance, we know Mars is quaking, we have seen with Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, from orbit, avalanches. And so, something is going on and it's shaking the planet. And this is really exciting, because if humans go to Mars in our lifetime, which I anticipate they will, they're gonna need to build structures. Those structures have got to be able to understand the environment and be safe. And so they're gonna have to withstand whatever Marsquake environment is actually there. We will know what that is, we will know if it's difficult or whether it's relatively easy, but we'll be able to accommodate it no matter what.“Now another experiment is a heat probe. This also sits on the surface and it pounds into the ground about five meters a set of thermistors that will measure the heat…and that will tell us how Mars is cooling off. You know, all our planets were built 4.5 billion years ago, they're still cooling off from their initial accretion. So we're going to see, well, gee, is like Earth's geothermal ability, does Mars have an ability to, as it cools off, heat habitats for human exploration, or is it primarily very cool in the core, and we'll know if it's partially liquid or not, is that completely solid now. And all that will be put together in our models of the interior of Mars and as I said, it will also have some profound effects on what we do with human explorations next.”If all goes well, InSight will land on Mars on November 26th.—Lee Billings and Steve Mirsky(The above text is a transcript of this podcast)

“Absolutely spectacular mission…and it's not a rover, it's a lander. It's designed to land and deploy several instruments.”Jim Green, NASA's new chief scientist, talking about the InSight Mission to Mars. InSight [Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport] launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California the morning of May 5th. He spoke with Scientific American space editor Lee Billings, who recorded their conversation.“One instrument…will be set on the surface and will measure Marsquakes. Now why are Marsquakes important? Well, Marsquakes, because we can get the acoustic signals and see how they are displayed in time, we can tease out the size of the core, even if it's liquid or not, the size of the mantle and the crust, and compare those with the big terrestrial planet, Earth, that we know a lot about its interior. And this will really help us understand how terrestrial planets are made.”Green was NASA's Planetary Science Division director since 2006 before taking on his current assignment just last week. Back to the InSight Mission.  “But in general, it also has a human exploration part to it. For instance, we know Mars is quaking, we have seen with Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, from orbit, avalanches. And so, something is going on and it's shaking the planet. And this is really exciting, because if humans go to Mars in our lifetime, which I anticipate they will, they're gonna need to build structures. Those structures have got to be able to understand the environment and be safe. And so they're gonna have to withstand whatever Marsquake environment is actually there. We will know what that is, we will know if it's difficult or whether it's relatively easy, but we'll be able to accommodate it no matter what.“Now another experiment is a heat probe. This also sits on the surface and it pounds into the ground about five meters a set of thermistors that will measure the heat…and that will tell us how Mars is cooling off. You know, all our planets were built 4.5 billion years ago, they're still cooling off from their initial accretion. So we're going to see, well, gee, is like Earth's geothermal ability, does Mars have an ability to, as it cools off, heat habitats for human exploration, or is it primarily very cool in the core, and we'll know if it's partially liquid or not, is that completely solid now. And all that will be put together in our models of the interior of Mars and as I said, it will also have some profound effects on what we do with human explorations next.”If all goes well, InSight will land on Mars on November 26th.—Lee Billings and Steve Mirsky(The above text is a transcript of this podcast)

It’s a big cosmos out there. It wasn’t too long ago that we couldn’t be sure that any planets existed anywhere outside of our own solar system. But in just the past handful of years, we’ve learned that planets orbiting stars are the rule, not the exception, which suggests that there may be 200 billion planets just in our galaxy alone, and trillions upon trillions of planets throughout the known universe. Surely, many of the planets in the Milky Way must be home to life forms, and even technologically advanced civilizations. So where the heck are they? Why can’t we find them? Why won’t they talk to us? Would we even know it if they did? To talk about the prospects for life on other worlds, intelligent and otherwise, Point of Inquiry host Paul Fidalgo talks to journalist Lee Billings. Lee is a reporter and editor for Scientific American covering space and physics, as well as the author of Five Billion Years of Solitude: The Search for Life Among the Stars. Billings explains how this quest, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, has become increasingly daunting even as our knowledge of the cosmos grows richer. It is a quest rife with pitfalls, paradoxes, and plain old speculation, and so far, it has proven fruitless. But despite our apparent solitude, we keep looking. We keep listening. And we keep reaching out. Do we have the patience and the will to continue searching and waiting for a sign that may never come?

A galaxy 12.5 billion light-years away gives off the light of 300 trillion suns, because its feeding black hole produces enough heat to set the whole galaxy's dust glowing. Lee Billings reports  

A galaxy 12.5 billion light-years away gives off the light of 300 trillion suns, because its feeding black hole produces enough heat to set the whole galaxy's dust glowing. Lee Billings reports  

Mice exposed to radiation akin to what astronauts to Mars would receive experienced cognitive impairment. Lee Billings reports

Mice exposed to radiation akin to what astronauts to Mars would receive experienced cognitive impairment. Lee Billings reports

New evidence points to the evolution of the ability for bacteria to grab nitrogen from the atmosphere some 3.2 billion years ago, about 1.2 billion years earlier than thought—with implications for finding extraterrestrial life. Lee Billings reports

NASA has to deal with the unexpected financial consequences of robotic missions that just keep going. Lee Billings reports

New images from a NASA orbiter reveal Beagle 2’s final resting place. Lee Billings reports

The company hopes to send up a Falcon 9 rocket and then safely land the discarded first stage for reuse. Lee Billings reports

Jupiter's Great Red Spot is its particular crimson shade because of the interaction of ultraviolet light and specific chemical compounds in the gas giant's atmosphere. Lee Billings reports      

The Rosetta spacecraft has unexpectedly detected hydrogen sulphide and ammonia coming from Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Lee Billings reports       

Lee Billings ("Five Billion Years of Solitude: The Search for Life Among the Stars") joins the show. We discuss the fascinating history of Earth as well as the ongoing search for other planets in the solar system.

We talk to Myke Cole about his upcoming book, Breach Zone, and building good characters.Promos for Saturday Morning Media and The Way of the Buffalo. Our picks this month are: Monster Hunter Alpha by Larry Correia Five Billion Years of Solitude by Lee Billings

This week Matt, Jesse and Andy are joined by Caltech Planetary Science Postdoctoral Scholar Bjoern Benneke and author Lee Billings to talk about the many topics covered in Lee's new book, Five Billion Years of Solitude: The Search for Life Among the Stars, including: Hunting for exoplanets! Dating sites for farmers! The Drake equation! Earth's recent trend toward radio silence! Oxygen: The first great pollution crisis! Harold Urey's pessimistic time capsule predictions! Energy-hungry alien civilizations creating Dyson spheres! Competition in the exoplanet field! The philosophical reasons for searching for extraterrestrial life!

Welcome to the conversation. It is September 5th 2013, and this is our 23rd podcast. Today will be a discussion led by Author Lee Billings on his latest book "Five billion years of solitude". The show is 36 mins long. Audio soundtrack courtesy of the Symphony of Science.

Lee Billings is a science writer whose work has appeared in Scientific American, New Scientist, and Popular Mechanics, among other publications. His new book, Five Billion Years of Solitude: The Search for Life Among the Stars, is an intimate history of Earth and the quest for life beyond the solar system. In this exclusive interview, he reveals why we may never find life on other planets.