Strange New Worlds: A Science & Star Trek Podcast

Response to DSC: "Unification III" Mike reflects on the T'Kal-in-ket. This ancient Vulcan tradition was billed as a search for new scientific truths via the crucible of logic and peer review, kind of like doctoral thesis defense. But in Michael Burnham's case, it quickly pivoted to a search for a different kind of truth. Link to register for Mike's "Science of Star Trek" talk at 7 pm on December 2, 2020: https://kcls.bibliocommons.com/events/5f99e67f9aadc72f00582f3a Follow Mike on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Miquai

Response to DSC: "Scavengers" On the latest episode of Star Trek: Discovery, Commander Burnham explains how she plans on using the black boxes of starships destroyed during the Burn to triangulate the disaster's point of origin. Mike remarks on how this is similar to how real-life gravitational wave observatories around the world work together to locate cataclysmic astronomical events in space and time. Interactive skymap of gravitational wave detections: https://www.virgo-gw.eu/skymap.html Follow Mike on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Miquai

Guest: Dr. Ingrid Ockert Science and Star Trek share an intimate association in popular culture. This alliance only grows stronger as Star Trek continues to inspire new generations of scientists and as real-life discoveries continue to underpin the show's stories. But was this all planned or just an accident? On this episode of Strange New Worlds, Mike is joined by Dr. Ingrid Ockert, a historian of science and media, who studied Star Trek's relationship with science in the time surrounding the show's inception. Follow us on Twitter! Mike: https://twitter.com/Miquai Ingrid: https://twitter.com/ingrid_rocket

Response to DSC: "Die Trying" This week's episode of Star Trek: Discovery featured a neurological disease caused by prions. Mike discusses prions, how they can cause diseases, and how some scientists consider them contenders for the origin of life. Prof. Mohamed Noor's YouTube channel, BioTrekkie Explains! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5zvlD5RnkzhIegG0gnSeSw Follow Mike on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Miquai

Response to DSC: "Forget Me Not" On the most recent episode of Star Trek: Discovery, "Forget Me Not," the crew travels to the Trill homeworld to retrieve the memories of the Tal symbiont, which currently resides inside of Adira. Most of us may not be Trill, but we all have endosymbionts in our bodies nonetheless. These microorganisms help us digest our food, synthesize vitamins, and even affect our central nervous system. On this episode of Strange New Worlds, Mike discusses the human gut microbiome, as well as the microbiomes of a few other remarkable animals, before drawing a parallel to the symbiosis between the Sphere Data and the U.S.S. Discovery. "I Contain Multitudes" by Ed Yong: https://edyong.me/i-contain-multitudes Follow Mike on Twitter: https://twitter.com/miquai

Response to DSC: "People of Earth" On the latest episode of Star Trek: Discovery, we learn that a research base on Titan has suffered a catastrophic accident. Mike hypothesizes how this might have occurred and makes an argument, based on energy availability, for why a dilithium-starved human outpost on Titan might resort to desperate measures. "Energy Options for Future Humans on Titan" by Amanda R. Hendrix & Yuk L. Yung: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1707.00365.pdf Follow Mike on Twitter: https://twitter.com/miquai

Guest: Dr. Ingrid Ockert Dr. Ingrid Ockert, a historian of science, joins Mike to respond to DSC: "Far From Home." While the first episode of Season 3 was reminiscent of 1970s sci-fi, Ingrid explains why this week's episode was more of a 1950s mold. They also discuss the journeys of Saru and Tilly, and Mike closes with remarks on parasitic ice. Follow us on Twitter! Mike: https://twitter.com/Miquai Ingrid: https://twitter.com/ingrid_rocket

Let's try something new! This is the start of a series of short, weekly reactions to Discovery's third season—from a scientific perspective, of course! This week, DSC 301: "That Hope Is You, Part 1." Learn how your host Mike Wong looked for biosignatures in Iceland's Hverfjall crater in 2016, the same crater that served as the setting for Michael Burnham's crash landing and subsequent biosignature scan in 3188! Follow Mike on Twitter: @Miquai

Guest: Professor David Kipping Star Trek depicts a galaxy teeming with life, including many variations of intelligent life. Is that the nature of our universe? Or could it be that life is exceedingly rare? Or that intelligence takes an absurdly long time to evolve? Might we be the lucky, lonely ones? Although we don't yet know the answer, we can use our knowledge of the emergence and evolution of life on Earth to create betting odds for how quickly life and intelligence emerge. That's exactly what Professor David Kipping of Columbia University did in a paper published earlier this year. David's scientific paper: https://www.pnas.org/content/117/22/11995.short David's Cool Worlds channel on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGHZpIpAWJQ-Jy_CeCdXhMA Follow us on Twitter! Mike: @Miquai David: @david_kipping

Guest: Prof. Darsa Donelan "They know what they're getting themselves into when they sign up for my class," says Professor Darsa Donelan, who is well known for melding her love for cosplaying with her love for physics. On this episode of Strange New Worlds, Professor Donelan shares how they cosplay to enhance the learning experience, motivate physics problems with clips from Star Trek, built a Borg costume out of recycled materials, and are working with NASA to revamp space science curricula. Resistance is futile! Follow us on Twitter! Mike: @Miquai Darsa: @DarsaDonelan Darsa's alter ego: @BanalBorg

On Episode 102, Mike introduces the concept of lyfe, which he and Dr. Stuart Bartlett coined in a paper earlier this year, through the lens of Star Trek. Lyfe is defined as any system that performs the following four pillars: dissipation, autocatalysis, homeostasis, and learning. Life is therefore a subset of lyfe—it's the specific instance of lyfe that we are aware of on Earth. The concept of lyfe allows us to understand life in the context of other phenomena in the universe, more clearly define "life as we don't know it," and frame astrobiological research questions in new ways. "Defining Lyfe in the Universe: From Three Privileged Functions to Four Pillars," Mike and Stuart's paper in the journal Life: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/10/4/42 "Thinking About Life (or Lyfe) Through The Prism of Star Trek," Mike's blog post for Many Worlds: https://manyworlds.space/2020/06/17/thinking-about-life-or-lyfe-through-the-prism-of-star-trek/ Lyfe as The Guardian's word of the week: https://www.theguardian.com/book

Which Star Trek character does Mike identify with most? What aspect of the Star Trek future does he wish were a part of the present? What if Star Trek had been created in another country? Mike answers these audience submitted questions and more on Episode 101 of Strange New Worlds! Virtual Trek Con: https://www.virtualtrekcon.com/ Virtual Trek Con "Star Trek Science Q&A Panel": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvEwpmXA9rU Follow Mike on Twitter: @Miquai

Guests: Elise Cutts & Dr. Peter Gao For Episode 100, Mike reunites with his crew from the very first episode of Strange New Worlds, geobiologist Elise Cutts and planetary scientist Peter Gao, to look forward to three upcoming Star Trek series: Strange New Worlds, Lower Decks, and Prodigy. What planets should Pike et al. explore? How can comedy mesh with Star Trek's storytelling? And what do we hope to give the next generation of young Trekkies? Strange New Worlds announcement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OD6kUZwMOjQ Lower Decks trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3RkBKedKWw Prodigy name reveal: https://www.startrek.com/news/star-trek-prodigy-has-arrived Follow us on Twitter! Mike: @Miquai Peter: @PlanetaryGao

Guest: Ray Wong In Star Trek: The Next Generation, Lt. Worf practices and teaches a form of Klingon martial arts called the Mok'bara, which is strikingly similar to the Chinese martial art tai chi. Mike sits down with his dad, Ray Wong, who has studied tai chi and other forms of kung fu for nearly 40 years, to examine the parallels between the Klingon and Earthly traditions. Ray Wong's tai chi and kung fu YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmF0FwnRI9E90MaJVeLjq1g Follow Mike on Twitter: @Miquai

As the Black Lives Matter movement sweeps across the United States and the world in the wake of George Floyd's tragic death at the hands of the police, Mike takes a moment to reflect on racial injustice and social inequity in America, academia, and Star Trek. "Race and racism in the geosciences" by Kaheli Dutt, 2020: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0519-z "Double jeopardy in astronomy and planetary science: Women of color face greater risks of gendered and racial harassment" by Kathryn B. H. Clancy et al., 2017: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2017JE005256 "Making Black Women Scientists under White Empiricism: The Racialization of Epistemology in Physics" by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, 2020: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/704991 Follow Mike on Twitter: @Miquai

Guest: Dr. Andy Howell In the 2009 Star Trek movie, Romulus is destroyed by a supernova that exploded 500 lightyears away, a cataclysm that is said to threaten the entire galaxy. But on Star Trek: Picard, the star that goes supernova is Romulus' own star, and there's no mention of galactic destruction. Why the change? There's no one better to ask than Dr. Andy Howell, an astronomer who leads the Global Supernova Project and also produces and hosts a YouTube series called Science vs. Cinema. Science vs. Cinema's Star Trek: Picard episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmvRvFqqTCw Follow us on Twitter! Mike: @Miquai Andy: @d_a_howell Science vs. Cinema: @ScienceVsCinema

Guest: Desun Oka History is not just a list of facts, but a process of memory making; we get to decide how and why certain events from the past are remembered today. On this episode of Strange New Worlds, Mike is joined by historian Desun Oka to discuss the memory-inducing alien memorial from the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Memorial" and how real-life memorials—from the Lincoln Memorial in D.C. to the recently built comfort women memorials in California—transmit their meanings. Finally, how should the Coronavirus pandemic be remembered? Follow Mike on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Miquai

Guests: Aditi Narayanan & Dr. Stuart Bartlett How do viruses shape life on Earth? Well, the Coronavirus pandemic is just the tip of the iceberg. Using the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Macrocosm" as our launchpad, Caltech scientists Aditi Narayanan & Stuart Bartlett join me to discuss how the tiniest biological entities leave huge and truly unexpected imprints on life at the levels of individual cells, entire ecosystems, and the biosphere as a whole. Check out Aditi's podcast, Biosphere: https://caltechletters.org/podcasts/biosphere/

Guests: Dr. Peter Gao & Dr. James T. Keane Which TNG characters appeared in Picard? Who dies in the show? Were there any facepalms? Dr. James T. Keane and Dr. Peter Gao join Mike to recap Season 1 of Star Trek: Picard through their "Picard Bingo" game and chat about the science tidbits that stuck out to them. Be warned: spoilers aplenty! More information on the octonary star system: Ethan Siegel, Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2020/03/19/is-star-trek-picards-hypothesized-octuple-star-system-really-possible/ Phil Plait, Syfy Wire: https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/octonary-stars-and-broken-pieces-can-the-eight-star-system-from-star-trek-picard-actually Rhett Allain, Wired: https://www.wired.com/story/that-8-star-system-really-could-exist/ Follow us on Twitter! Mike: @Miquai James: @jtuttlekeane Peter: @PlanetaryGao

Guest: Jon Wong Aspiring medical doctor Jon Wong returns to Strange New Worlds to discuss the intertwining ethical predicaments in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Ethics" as well as medical ethics dilemmas that real-life doctors are facing during the Coronavirus pandemic. Some additional Coronavirus readings: "Fair Allocation of Scarce Medical Resources in the Time of Covid-19" in The New England Journal of Medicine: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsb2005114 "Search for Coronavirus Vaccine Becomes a Global Competition" in The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/19/us/politics/coronavirus-vaccine-competition.html "How some cities ‘flattened the curve’ during the 1918 flu pandemic" in National Geographic: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/03/how-cities-flattened-curve-1918-spanish-flu-pandemic-coronavirus/ Follow Mike on Twitter: @Miquai