Wrestling 14-foot 'dinosaurs' to figure out why they're dying

Dr. Madison Earhart, a postdoctoral fellow from the University of British Columbia, spent her summer fishing for enormous white sturgeon in the Fraser and Nechako Rivers in British Columbia. Since 2022, there have been a large number of deaths of this fish along the west coast of North America and it’s concerning when a species that’s been around for hundreds of million years suddenly starts dying off. She and her colleagues are trying to figure out what’s happening and how to conserve this important and spectacular fish.

Installing Dark Matter detectors two kilometeres underground

Dr. Madeleine Zurowski of the University of Toronto has been underground most of this past summer at SNOLAB, located in Sudbury, Ontario. She’s been helping install specially designed dark matter detectors in a project called SuperCDMS, as part of an international collaboration that is researching the nature of dark matter.

Managing Canada’s worst invasive plant with moths

As Director of the Waterloo Wetland Laboratory, Dr. Rebecca Rooney has been investigating how to stop the spread of a plant called invasive Phragmites, which chokes wetlands, ditches and many other environments. Her group has introduced European moths which eat the plant. This summer PhD student Claire Schon and lab technician Ryan Graham went into the field to collect some more data on their project.

Helicoptering in 35 tonnes of material in an attempt to restore a Sudbury peatland

Scientists are working to restore a degraded peatland damaged by contamination from mining activity in Sudbury. Colin McCarter, the project lead from Nipissing University, described how they’re trying to figure out how to best restore these toxic metal-contaminated landscapes to restore their natural capacity as wildfire-buffering, carbon-storing powerhoues.

Transatlantic balloon flight from Sweden to Nunavut

Dr Kaley Walker is an atmospheric physicist from the University of Toronto. Working with the Canadian Space Agency, this summer she was in Sweden to send a massive balloon — 30 stories tall and 800,000 cubic meters in volume — on a high-altitude transatlantic flight to Nunavut, to measure stratospheric gases.

The accidental discovery of an ancient Roman monument’s missing limb

Dr. Sarah Murray is the co-director of an archeological project on the history of Porto Rafti, Greece. While surveying for Bronze Age relics, her team discovered an enormous missing limb from a famous Roman marble statue in the area, a monument popular with tourists for centuries. This summer, they returned with drones to make 3D models of the statue, to understand how the arm was attached to the statue’s now limbless torso.

Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen gets lunar geology training in Iceland

Astronauts assigned to NASA’s Artemis II mission, who’ll be heading to the moon as early as September 2025, embarked on their own field research this summer in Iceland to train as lunar geologists. CSA astronaut Jeremy Hansen documented his adventure and filled us in on why this training is crucial for their upcoming mission.

Building wildfire resistant housing

After wildfires devastated Lytton, BC in 2021, the government announced that they were going to support homeowners to rebuild homes that would be resistant to wildfire. Senior Engineer Lucas Coletta of Natural Resources Canada, was part of the team that tested various fire resilient materials and construction methods this past spring and summer.

A behind-the-scenes chat about the making of the CBC Radio collaboration called "Overheated." White Coat, Black Art, What on Earth, and Quirks and Quarks are exploring how heat is affecting our health, our communities and our ecosystems. This originally broadcast on The Current.

Quirks & Quarks launches our new season with a special on urban heat. It's part of a collaboration with White Coat, Black Art and What on Earth called "Overheated."

Host Bob McDonald and Producer Amanda Buckiewicz tell the story of how a city’s design can influence the way we experience and cope with heat. Bob will cycle through the streets of Montreal with a Concordia researcher on specially-equipped bikes - these are equipped with sensors that measure how temperatures change across neighbourhoods based on their density - the amount of infrastructure coupled with mitigating cooling effects like tree cover.

He’ll also spend time with a McGill epidemiologist who will deploy hundreds of sensors that measure air temperature every 30 minutes over a month. That data will be used to determine how changing temperatures impact physical and mental health. It's vital information as heat is thought to be the most lethal kind of extreme weather.

And we'll explore some of the solutions to urban heat: How we can design buildings and urban landscapes - with a little help from nature - can make our cities cooler and more comfortable as the temperature rises.

Check out our podcast feed for shows you might have missed, or visit us online at cbc.ca/quirks to see our on-demand audio archive.

Christ Kennedy from Moncton, New Brunswick asks: If someone had the means to, how close could we bring the Moon to the Earth while still keeping it in orbit around us? And fast would a month fly by?

Answer from Brett Gladman, a professor of astronomy at the University of British Columbia,

Matoli Degroot from Manitoba asks: Do animal species in the wild get bigger over time, since the bigger males would end up mating more than the smaller ones?

Answer from Danielle Fraser, head of paleobiology at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa.

Bill Sullivan from Hamilton, Ontario asks: Why does the hair on my head turn grey while hair on the rest of my body does not change colour?

Answer from Frida Lona-Durazo, a postdoctoral fellow in computational genetics at the University of Montreal, who’s studied the genetics of hair colour.

Dan from Quebec City asks: We know that the Earth’s crust is built of plates that float on the molten centre of the Earth. What is the force that moves those plates?

Answer from Alexander Peace, an assistant professor in the School of Earth, Environment and Society at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont.

Frances Mawson from Heckmans Island in Nova Scotia asks: Prey animals like deer are intermittently forced to flee from various predators. When danger has passed, they pause for a moment and then resume browsing. How can they recover so quickly?

Answer from wildlife ecologist and Western University professor Liana Zanette.

Richard Lukes from Winnipeg asks: As a hydro generating station generates energy, what is the effect on the downstream water? Has the temperature of the water been lowered? If so, then could hydropower help to cool the oceans and combat global warming?

Answer from Jaime Wong, an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Alberta.

Luc in Edmonton asks: With more people planting native grasses and plants around their houses and businesses in cities, will the bird population in these cities change or increase?

Answer from Sheila Colla, an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Environmental & Urban Change at York University and York Research Chair in Interdisciplinary Conservation Science.

John Ugyan from Kelowna, British Columbia asks: If atoms are 99.99% empty, why do our eyes see matter as if it was 100% solid?

Answer from condensed matter physicist, Cissy Suen. who’s a joint PhD student from UBC’s Quantum Matter Institute and the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Germany

Debbie Turner in Fenelon Falls, Ont. asks: How does climate change affect animals that hibernate?

Answer from Jeffrey Lane, an associate professor in the department of biology at the University of Saskatchewan.

Greg Hollinger from Owen Sound, Ontario asks: Since the planets orbit the sun in a plane, does their combined gravity pull on and distort the shape of the sun?

Answer from Roan Haggar, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Waterloo’s Centre for Astrophysics.

What would you do with a third thumb? Research suggests our brain can quickly adapt

Birds can dream - and even have nightmares - and now scientists are tuning in

A comprehensive new collection of medical information shows the health risks of space travel

A study in mice sheds new light on how exercise can reverse aging in the brain

Rare fossils from the ‘age of monotremes’ found in Australia

How the brain can instantly tell the difference between speech and music

PODCAST EXTRAS

Organic farms next to conventionally farmed fields leads to increased pesticide use

Orca whales hunt, play and dive – one breath at a time

The secret of the beaver’s orange teeth can help us make our teeth strong

The sun’s ramping up its activity and now we have a better idea of what’s driving it

This spring we’ve seen some spectacular displays of northern lights and we’re expecting to see more as we approach the peak of the sun’s natural cycle, the solar maximum. Every 11 years the sun cycles from having few sunspots on its surface to having many. Now according to a new study in the journal Nature, scientists have figured out what may be driving this process. Geoff Vasil, an associate professor of computational and applied mathematics at the University of Edinburgh, said instabilities in swirling magnetic systems near the sun’s surface gives rise to sunspots on its surface that can erupt and send solar storms our way.

Female otters use tools more than males – to crack open tasty treats and save their teeth

Otters are cute and clever – clever enough to be one of the few animals who use tools such as rocks, glass bottles, or even boat hulls to smash shells and access the tasty flesh inside. But researchers studying otters off the coast of California found that certain otters were using these tools more than others, and wanted to understand why. In a new study, published in the journal Science, research biologist Chris Law found that it was females that were using the tools more than the males, in order to access hard-shelled meals like clams and mussels without damaging their teeth.

The longest lasting human species (not us) were expert elephant hunters

Our cousins, Homo Erectus, inhabited Earth for nearly two million years, and they were capable hunters. An analysis of stone tool manufacturing sites, published in the journal Archaeologies, gives new insight into the high levels of organization and planning by these early humans. Tel Aviv University archeologist Meir Finkel studied the ancient stone quarries in the Hula Valley, and discovered that they were often located on elephant migration routes near water sources – so the humans didn’t have far to go to get weapons for slaying and butchering their meals. This triad of elephants, water and stone quarries is present across many Old Stone Age sites where the early humans lived, including South America, Africa and Europe.

A plastic that carries the seeds of its own destruction

Researchers have been able to integrate spores of a plastic-eating bacteria into plastic to create a material that, over time, eats itself. In a controlled study, scientists found that the bacteria can break down 90 per cent of the soft plastic in the material in about 90 days. Mohammed Arif Rahman, a senior polymer scientist and R&D director of BASF, said they’re still working on it with hopes that the bacteria embedded within it will be able to keep on consuming the remaining plastic so as not to generate any microplastics. The proof of concept study was published in the journal Nature Communications.

A new book about gravity celebrates failing and falling

When theoretical physicist Claudia de Rham didn’t quite make the cut as an astronaut candidate, she doubled down on her fascination with the phenomenon of gravity. This puts her on the path of great thinkers like Newton and Einstein who helped us to start to understand what holds the universe together. In a new book, The Beauty of Falling: A life in pursuit of gravity, she ties her personal adventures with her theoretical explorations of gravitational rainbows and the origins of dark matter, and details all the mysteries that still remain about this fundamental feature of reality.

Killer whales are likely ramming boats because they’re bored and having fun

Several years ago a small population of killer whales living off the coast of Spain began attacking boats, particularly sailboats, damaging some severely and even sinking a handful. While social media speculation has suggested whale rage as a cause, an international team of killer whale experts recently published a report suggesting the behaviour is not aggression, but is instead an example of these giant social creatures just playing and having fun with a toy. We speak with two contributors to the report: John Ford, research scientist emeritus at the Pacific Biological Station with Fisheries & Oceans Canada, and Renaud de Stephanis, the president of Spanish conservation group CIRCE.

4,000-year-old Egyptian skull shows signs of possible surgery for brain cancer

Researchers studying the history of cancer in human history recently hit the jackpot. In a collection of human remains at the University of Cambridge they found two skulls from Egypt, both thousands of years old, that show signs of advanced cancer. One of those skulls bore cut marks around the lesions. Lead study author and University of Santiago de Compostela professor Edgard Camarós said that regardless of whether these cuts were made as attempts at treatment or a post-mortem investigation, they show off the sophisticated medical knowledge of ancient Egyptians — and can also help better understand the evolution of cancer.This study was published in Frontiers in Medicine.

Gorillas’ tiny penises and low sperm count can help us understand infertility in humans

Gorillas are the biggest of the great apes, but their reproductive anatomy is diminutive. The males have small penises and testes, and low sperm quality. A new genetic analysis, published in the scientific journal eLife, identified the mutations that are responsible for male gorillas’ peculiar fertility. Vincent Lynch, an associate professor of biological sciences at the State University of New York at Buffalo, said these findings can help us better understand the genes responsible for lower sperm quality in humans.

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Illuminating plumes of hot magma in the Earth’s mantle with earthquake seismic data

To understand the source of the magma fueling volcanic eruptions, scientists are using another significant geological event: earthquakes. The seismic waves that earthquakes send through our planet can shine a light on the chimneys of magma that connect the core of the Earth through the mantle to the surface. Karin Sigloch, a professor of geophysics at CNRS — France’s National Centre for Scientific Research, is part of an international effort to deploy seismic sensors throughout the oceans to illuminate the mantle plumes. Their research from recent observations in the Indian Ocean around Réunion Island was in Nature Geoscience.

It’s intelligence all the way down: How cells, tissues and organs have their own smarts

We tend to think of collective intelligence as something we see among animals that work cooperatively to solve problems, like in an ant colony, a school of fish or flock of birds. But biologist Michael Levin, from Harvard and Tufts’ universities, thinks collective intelligence also extends to functions within the cell, all the way up to networks of cells, tissues and even organs. He suggests evolution has granted simpler biological layers in living systems the ability to flexibly solve problems. In a recent paper in Communications Biology, he argues we can harness these lower level problem-solving capabilities to make significant advances in regenerative medicine, and treating aging and disease.