SoT 291: Orbital Mechanics Are So Cool

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall

00:01:06 The Draw-A-Scientist test has been a regular investigation of children's ideas about science. The proportion of women being drawn has risen sharply since the test was first done in the 1960s.

00:09:09 70,000 years ago a small red dwarf star hurtling through space came within a light-year of our sun. Scholtz's star is now about 20 light years away but it's likely responsible for the orbits of a lot of comets and asteroids in our solar system.

00:20:52 Newspapers are dying, especially local newspapers. But the decline in local news outlets has a big effect on epidemiology, as researchers try to track the spread of diseases that aren't recorded anywhere else.

This episode contains traces of CBS News correspondent Anna Werner describing a new Californian requirement for a cancer warning on coffee.