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Quirks and Quarks

CBC Radio"s Quirks and Quarks covers the quirks of the expanding universe to the quarks within a single atom... and everything in between.

science earth sciences

All Episodes

00:54:09

Tiny black holes that could smash through our planet,...

Quirks and Quarks ·

2024/04/26

Chimpanzees are being forced to eat bat feces, and the viruses in itResearchers in Uganda have noticed a new behaviour in the wild chimps they study. The apes are browsing on bat guano, apparently to access the nutrients it contains, as their normal source for these nutrients has been destroyed by humans. Since bats are carriers of a range of diseases, from ebola to coronaviruses, this may be a new way these diseases could spread.The study was published in Communications Biology. Dr Tony Goldberg, a

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00:29:02

Bonus: What On Earth's Earth Day special

Quirks and Quarks ·

2024/04/22

The climate is changing. So are we. On What On Earth, you’ll explore a world of solutions with host Laura Lynch and our team of journalists. In 1970, 20 million people showed up to fight for the environment on the first Earth Day. More than five decades later, is it time for this much tamer global event to return to its radical roots?OG organizer Denis Hayes recounts how – amidst other counterculture movements at the time – his team persuaded roughly one in ten Americans to take to the streets. As

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00:54:09

Why this Indigenous researcher thinks we can do...

Quirks and Quarks ·

2024/04/20

This researcher wants a new particle accelerator to use before she’s deadPhysicists exploring the nature of reality need ever more capable particle colliders, so they’re exploring a successor to the Large Hadron Collider in Europe. But that new machine is at least decades away. Tova Holmes, an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, is one of the physicists calling for a different kind of collider that can come online before the end of her career – or her life. This device

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00:54:09

COVID-19’s “long tail” includes a range of impacts on...

Quirks and Quarks ·

2024/04/12

Old canned salmon provides a record of parasite infectionTo study marine ecosystems from the past, scientists picked through canned salmon dating back more than four decades to measure levels of parasites in the fish. Natalie Mastick, a postdoctoral researcher in marine ecology at Yale University, said she found the parasite load in two species of salmon increased in their samples between 1979 - 2021. She says this suggests their ecosystems provided more of the hosts the parasites needed, including

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00:54:09

The dark side of LED lighting and more,,,

Quirks and Quarks ·

2024/04/05

Seeing a black hole’s magnetic personalityScientists using the Event Horizon Telescope have produced a new image of the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy. And this image is a little different: it captures the powerful magnetic fields that are acting as the cosmic cutlery feeding mass into the singularity. Avery Broderick is part of the Event Horizon Telescope team, he’s also a professor at the University of Waterloo’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, and associate faculty at

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00:54:09

An Australian Atlantis and other lost landscapes, and...

Quirks and Quarks ·

2024/03/28

Archaeologists identify a medieval war-horse graveyard near Buckingham PalaceWe know knights in shining armor rode powerful horses, but remains of those horses are rare. Now, researchers studying equine remains from a site near Buckingham Palace have built a case, based on evidence from their bones, that these animals were likely used in jousting tournaments and battle. Archeologist Katherine Kanne says the bone analysis also revealed a complex, continent-crossing medieval horse trading network that

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00:54:09

The future of freshwater — will we have a drop to...

Quirks and Quarks ·

2024/03/22

How animals dealt with the ‘Anthropause’ during COVID lockdowns (1:04)During the COVID lockdowns human behaviour changed dramatically, and wildlife scientists were interested in how that in turn changed the behaviour of animals in urban, rural and wilderness ecosystems. In a massive study of camera trap images, a team from the University of British Columbia has built a somewhat surprising picture of how animals responded to a human lockdown. Cole Burton, Canada Research Chair in Terrestrial Mammal

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00:54:09

How animals eating, excreting and expiring is like...

Quirks and Quarks ·

2024/03/15

Why a detective is studying blood spatters in zero-gravityThere hasn’t been a murder on the International Space Station — yet. But Crime Scene Investigator Zack Kowalske has been studying how blood spatters in microgravity so that when someone does commit the first astro-cide, he’ll be able to use science to figure out whodunit. Kowalske sent a blood substitute for a ride on a parabolic microgravity flight to study how the absence of gravity changes how it moves, and discovered that surface tension

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00:54:09

How disabled primates thrive in the wild and more…

Quirks and Quarks ·

2024/03/08

Nature’s nurturing side — disabled primates thrive in the wild with community supportSurvival of the fittest for primates in the wild often includes them going out of their way to accommodate those with physical disabilities. In a study in the American Journal of Primatology, scientists reviewed 114 studies of a wide range of non-human primates that spanned more than nine decades. Brogan Stewart, a PhD candidate from Concordia was part of the team that found that more often than not, the physical

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00:54:09

The boreal forest is on the move, and we need to...

Quirks and Quarks ·

2024/03/01

Speedy ocean predators change their skin colour to signal they’re going in for the kill(1:02)Marlin are predatory fish that can reach tremendous speeds in pursuit of food, making collisions between them potentially deadly. A new study has shown that the fish display bright and vivid skin colours to signal to other marlin when they’re attacking prey, so as to avoid butting heads. Alicia Burns and her team from the Science of Intelligence Cluster, Humboldt University used drones to capture video

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00:54:09

Icelanders reap the costs and benefits of living on a...

Quirks and Quarks ·

2024/02/23

We now know what happened to a supernova discovered by a Canadian 37 years ago (0:58)A mystery about the ultimate fate of an exploding star has been solved. Canadian astronomer Ian Shelton discovered the new bright light in the sky back in February 1987, and recognized it as the first supernova to be visible to the naked eye in 400 years. In a new study in the journal Science, astrophysicist Claes Fransson from Stockholm University, confirmed that the remaining cinder collapsed into a super-dense

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00:54:09

A post valentine’s look at humpback mating songs and...

Quirks and Quarks ·

2024/02/16

Atlantic ocean circulation edging closer to potentially catastrophic climate tipping pointThe stability of much of the world’s climate depends on ocean currents in the Atlantic that bring warm water from the tropics north and send cool water south. New research in the journal Science Advances confirms what scientists have long feared: that we are on course to this tipping point that could cut off this important circulation pattern, with severe consequences. René van Westen from Utrecht University,

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00:54:09

Scientists explore which came first, the chicken or...

Quirks and Quarks ·

2024/02/09

Blue whales are genetically healthy but are breeding with fin whales, study suggests (1:03) Researchers have sequenced the genome of a blue whale that washed up in Newfoundland in 2014, and used it to do a comparative study of North Atlantic blue whales. A team led by Mark Engstrom, curator emeritus at the Royal Ontario Museum found that despite their small population, the whales are genetically diverse and connected across the north Atlantic, but that on average blue whales from this group are,

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00:54:11

An ancient tree’s crowning glory and more…

Quirks and Quarks ·

2024/02/02

Shark declines: finning regulations might have bitten off more than they can chewIn recent years governments around the world have attempted to slow the catastrophic decline in shark numbers with regulations, including on the practice of shark finning. But a new study led by marine biologist Boris Worm and published in the journal Science suggests that these regulations have backfired and shark mortality is still rising. The reason is that shark fishers responded by keeping all of the shark, and

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00:54:09

The aftermath of a record-smashing volcano: Hunga...

Quirks and Quarks ·

2024/01/26

Oil sands produce more air pollution than industry’s required to report, study says (0:54) The volume of airborne organic carbon pollutants — some of the same pollutants that lead to smog in cities — produced by Alberta’s oil sands have been measured at levels up to 6,300 per cent higher than we thought. John Luggio, a research scientist with Environment and Climate Change Canada, said their cutting edge techniques in their new study picked up many pollutants industry hasn’t been required to track

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00:54:09

Can diet and exercise be replaced by pills and more…

Quirks and Quarks ·

2024/01/19

A controversial fishing method may release CO2 from the sea floor Bottom trawling is a widely-used fishing method that involves dragging weighted nets that scrape along the seafloor. It’s sometimes been criticized for damaging marine ecosystems. Now a new study in Frontiers in Marine Science suggests that it also can release significant amounts of carbon trapped in seafloor sediments into the atmosphere. Trisha Atwood, an associate professor at Utah State University and a marine researcher with

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00:54:09

Could buried hydrogen help save the world, and more…

Quirks and Quarks ·

2024/01/12

*** How history’s largest ape met its end *** For nearly two million years, a gigantic ape, three meters tall and weighing a quarter of a tonne, lived in what is now southern China, before mysteriously disappearing. Exactly why the Gigantopithecus Blacki went extinct has been a huge mystery for paleontologists, especially because other apes were able to thrive at the time. Now a massive study, co-led by geochronologist Kira Westaway of Macquarie University, reveals their size was a disadvantage, and

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00:54:09

A Cave of bones could rewrite the history of human...

Quirks and Quarks ·

2024/01/05

Hurricanes carry microplastic pollution in the oceans back to land Humans communicate in several ways with birds who lead them to honey Bird brains have evolved to tolerate a high-speed impact into water How to make people more easy to hypnotize Unearthing a small-brained hominid species that challenges human exceptionalism

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00:54:11

Our annual holiday question show

Quirks and Quarks ·

2023/12/29

Questions ranging from moths to mustard, moonlight to migraines

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00:54:11

Seasonal science with reindeer, special stars and...

Quirks and Quarks ·

2023/12/22

Reindeer and arctic seals have complex nasal passages to keep them warm; Reindeer can eat and sleep at the same time; This penguin species sleeps by taking about 14,000 micronaps each day; ‘Naked’ stars are stripped by their partners before they explode; Miracle babies in bags: How close are we to an artificial womb?; Why don’t any deer's legs freeze?

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