NASA Astronauts Return To Earth After Extended Stay On The ISS | Bottle "Pop" Physics

After nine months aboard the International Space Station, astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have finally landed back on Earth. Also, a German physicist and homebrewer discovered brief, intense physical reactions that happen when you uncork a bubbly swing-top bottle.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Flora Lichtman?

  This is Science Friday. I'm Flora Lichtman. Today in the podcast, after 286 days aboard the International Space Station, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams finally landed safely back on Earth. They had traveled to the ISS for what was to be an eight-day trip and ended up staying nine months because their Boeing Starliner capsule was having thruster issues. Here to tell us about their return and other notable stories in science this week is Casey Crownhart, senior climate reporter for the MIT Technology Review. She's based in New York City. Casey, welcome back to Science Friday.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  Thanks so much for having me. Always great to be here.

• 0:41Flora Lichtman?

  So Butch and Suni are back. Yay. Give us the story.

• 0:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, finally. It's been a long wait, for sure. So these two took off on June 25, 2024, on a mission to test Starliner, a Boeing spacecraft, which is designed to transport crew to and from the ISS. Like you mentioned, technical issues kind of messed with the plans a little bit. As it was approaching the ISS, the thrusters stopped working. They managed to dock, but they decided to send Starliner back without crew. And so basically, it's been kind of a waiting game to get another spacecraft up there that could take these astronauts home and then crew up to the space station so that it wouldn't be kind of shorthanded.

• 1:21Flora Lichtman?

  It's amazing to me that they don't have like a backup, you know, on the shelf.

• 1:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I think that it's one of those things where we could have sent an emergency mission, but you know, they were up there doing work, working on experiments, doing spacewalks. Like, they were really okay. It was obviously a delay, but yeah.

• 1:41Flora Lichtman?

  Well, what did they do with their extra time up there?

• 1:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, so they were, you know, helping out with experiments that were going on at the space station, fixing equipment. Suni Williams actually set a new record for most time spent spacewalking for a woman, 62 hours over nine spacewalks over her career. So, yeah, they kept busy.

• 2:00Flora Lichtman?

  I'm sure. Has Boeing given an update on what was wrong with the capsule or their future plans for that program?

• 2:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, so like we said- There were problems with the thrusters, which is why they decided to send it back uncrewed. They're continuing to test Starliner over the summer, and the company is still making modifications, fixing those issues. We don't have any news about when another flight would take place. The first one would be uncrewed without any people on it. But NASA hasn't announced the timeline for that or future missions.

• 2:32Flora Lichtman?

  Can we talk about my favorite part of the story? Listen to this clip.

• 2:37Speaker 02

  To lift the Dragon Castle out of the water and onto the recovery vessel. Wow, we got a cute little pod of dolphins. It wasn't just one or two.

• 2:47Speaker 01

  Yes, I love this. The astronauts got a great little welcome back to Earth. There was a pod of dolphins hopping around in the water where the capsule splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico before that got lifted back onto the recovery boat. So I thought that was adorable.

• 3:02Flora Lichtman?

  Perfect welcome, perfect welcome wagon for them. Let's move on to something that, you know, we may have suspected but has now been confirmed. This decade has been quite hot.

• 3:14Speaker 01

  Yes, a warm one, absolutely. So a new report from the World Meteorological Organization confirms that the past 10 years have been the 10 hottest on record. So that's over nearly 200 years of record keeping. 2024 was the single warmest year on record. The planet's surface was about 1.55 C, warmer than the average during pre-industrial times.

• 3:41Flora Lichtman?

  You know, this sounds bad, of course. But what is it? What does this mean exactly?

• 3:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, I mean, like you said, we kind of, we know the planet's heating up. Greenhouse gas emissions are causing our climate to change. I think that this is really a signal that we are approaching the place where we really don't want to be. You know, the Paris Agreement is the UN treaty that the world agreed to limit warming to 1.5 C. Technically, this means we've gone beyond that a little bit, you know, in the short term. But it means that we really need to take action on climate change.

• 4:16Flora Lichtman?

  Tell us about this story that you all at MIT Tech Review published this week about an organization that's trying to refreeze a massive glacier?

• 4:26Speaker 01

  Yes, today is the inaugural UN World Day for Glaciers. So happy to those who celebrate.

• 4:34Flora Lichtman?

  I'm celebrating, yeah.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  Me too. So my colleague, James Temple, wrote this great story about an organization founded by scientists from MIT and Dartmouth called the Arete Glacier Initiative. They've raised about $5 million in funding to study glaciers. One of the things about glaciers is that we really don't understand a lot about how they work and how likely some of them are to kind of collapse and fall into the ocean. One glacier in particular that people may have heard of called the Thwaites Glacier, sometimes called the Doomsday Glacier, because this is like a massive, massive amount of ice that if it were to melt and fall into the ocean, it could raise sea levels by more than two feet. And so what this organization is trying to do is study this glacier and others to really

• 5:17Speaker 01

  understand how likely the worst-case scenarios are and look into potential ways to kind of keep that from happening.

• 5:25Flora Lichtman?

  Such as?

• 5:26Speaker 01

  Yes, so one of the things that they're looking at is kind of refreezing the glacier to the bedrock below it.

• 5:32Flora Lichtman?

  Okay.

• 5:33Speaker 01

  I know.

• 5:34Flora Lichtman?

  This sounds very science fiction.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  Science fictiony is exactly the way that I would put it, too. It's absolutely fascinating, but I mean, again, if the Thwaites Glacier were to melt, that would be in two feet of sea level rise. So that would have a massive impact on coastal areas around the world. So if it does look like that is going to happen, one thing that we could do is basically in a lot of glaciers, there's water between the ice and the bedrock, and that warm water can basically help the glacier move faster, help it melt faster. And so one thing that these scientists want to look into is if we could basically drill holes into the glacier, stick tubes down there, and let the warm water rise out to basically take away that catalyst for warming and movement.

• 6:18Flora Lichtman?

  Okay, let's say the tech could work. There must be legal issues.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, there are a lot, a lot of kind of caveats and a lot of roadblocks here. As any scientist who is interested in working on this will tell you. So, you know, like you said, putting aside the technical barrier to this, this plan, which would be very, very technically difficult. There are also complicated legal questions. You know, Antarctica isn't owned by anyone. It's subject to all these competing territorial claims. It's governed by this treaty between dozens of nations. So we would need to figure out like, who gets to decide this? How it gets basically carried out? There are questions about if this kind of thing would harm polar ecosystems and how we make decisions around that. So, you know, there's a lot to figure out and that's just, again, beyond the, the technical questions.

• 7:08Flora Lichtman?

  Tell me about this battery charging announcement from the Chinese automaker BYD. Is it a big deal?

• 7:14Speaker 01

  It could be big if true, basically. So yeah, Chinese automaker BYD, which is the largest maker of electrified vehicles in the world. If you include both plug-in hybrids and fully electrified vehicles, it's bigger than Tesla. They announced that they have a platform that can charge an EV battery in just five minutes. So that's like, I would argue, very comparable to filling up your gas-powered car. They showcased this on an event on Monday evening in China. And I don't know, it could be really interesting if we're able to see this kind of super-fast charging technology really work.

• 7:47Flora Lichtman?

  Are there downsides to charging a battery this fast?

• 7:51Speaker 01

  There could be. Fast charging today can degrade batteries more quickly. And so there is potential that this could have an impact on lifetime. We don't really know a lot of details, but that's something that I would definitely be looking out for.

• 8:04Flora Lichtman?

  Okay, drug-resistant deadly fungi. It sounds like scientists may have a new way to treat it?

• 8:10Speaker 01

  Yes, so people may have heard more about antibacterial resistance. Basically, microbes are really good at kind of evolving ways to get around the ways that we know how to kill them. And so researchers have been looking for new ways to kill fungi because some fungi can cause infections in humans that can be very dangerous and be bad for public health. So researchers found a compound that works in a different way to kill fungi. So basically, they attack a different part of the cell membrane than how most of our current antifungal medications work. So this could be kind of a new class of, of drugs that could potentially help someday.

• 8:48Flora Lichtman?

  Hmm, cool. Okay, this one's for the foodies. There's news this week about the Neanderthal diet.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  Yes, so this is, okay, if you're a little queasy, stay with me. It might be a little gross.

• 9:01Flora Lichtman?

  Foodies in quotes.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  Yes. So scientists have thought for a long time that Neanderthals are, you know, close cousins. We're eating a whole lot of meat. They were like hyper carnivores, top of the food chain. Now researchers are saying that there's a chance that really they were eating a whole lot of maggots. So basically, one way that we can understand what ancient humans or animals were eating is by looking at their bones, different ratios of isotopes or types of chemical elements, versions of chemical elements can kind of tell a story. And so in the 90s, researchers revealed that Neanderthals had a lot of nitrogen 15. That's typically the signature of a high meat diet. But now researchers are saying that actually

• 9:46Speaker 01

  it could also be a sign that they were eating maggots because maggots eating rotting meat also have a very high concentration of nitrogen 15.

• 9:54Flora Lichtman?

  Well, look, I mean, the bug diet is the past, but also the future.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  Could be.

• 10:00Flora Lichtman?

  Okay, for our last story, we're turning to an endangered frog and a new attempt to help them. Tell me about it.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, so Darwin's frogs are little tiny frogs. They may be a couple of inches long. They weigh as much as a few paper clips. Unfortunately, these frogs are very susceptible to this very prevalent amphibian disease that has caused mass die-offs of over 400 amphibian species. Darwin's frogs were discovered by Charles Darwin on an island off the coast of Chile, which up until recently was kind of a sanctuary for these frogs. But a couple of years ago, researchers detected this fungus there that can cause these, you know, really bad mass die-offs. And so folks from the London Zoo went on a rescue mission to establish a captive breeding program, and they took home a good number of these frogs. And key

• 10:50Speaker 01

  fact here, these frogs reproduce in kind of an interesting way. A female will lay eggs and kind of take off, and then the males will stand watch. And then, once the young hit the stage where they wiggle around, the dad scoops them up and keeps them in a vocal sack. And so.

• 11:08Flora Lichtman?

  Just what?

• 11:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's really, I think, really cute. Like it's.

• 11:14Flora Lichtman?

  They put them in their mouth. They're literally frogs in their throat.

• 11:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's, you know, a really convenient way to carry them around.

• 11:22Flora Lichtman?

  I love this. I mean, this is to me, this is like we, seahorse dads get a lot of street cred. You know, like, we always hear about the seahorse dads. But Darwin frog dads doing the most.

• 11:33Speaker 01

  That's so true. We should talk more about Darwin frog dads. And so the big news is that last month, some of the male frogs that were brought back in this London Zoo breeding program were carrying young. And so they spit out about 33 hatchlings last month, each about the size of a pencil eraser.

• 11:53Flora Lichtman?

  I love that image. Thank you, Casey.

• 11:55Speaker 01

  Thank you so much.

• 11:57Flora Lichtman?

  Casey Crownheart is a senior climate reporter for the MIT Technology Review. Don't go away. After the break, we're uncorking the physics of this celebratory sound. I'm telling you, you don't want to miss it.

• 12:18Speaker 03

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• 12:53Speaker 04

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• 13:07Flora Lichtman?

  For a lot of us, this is a sound of celebration.

• 13:12Flora Lichtman?

  It's also a sound that probably most of us don't think too much about, until we open our next bottle, anyway. But my next guest has given it a lot of thought. Dr. Max Koch is a physicist at the University of Gottingen in Germany. He does home brewing on the side, and he wondered, what is actually making that popping sound? What's happening inside that bottle physics-wise? Y'all, the answer is gonna crack your mind open. Max, welcome to Science Friday.

• 13:40Speaker 05

  Hello, hello.

• 13:41Flora Lichtman?

  Okay, so you're a home brewer. How did this beverage brainstorm start for you?

• 13:49Speaker 05

  Actually, I got inspired to do this several years ago, just as a hobby. And I had this ginger beer. It didn't taste so well, so I didn't know what to do with it. And on my birthday, I had the idea to film it in our labs with the high-speed camera with 16,800 frames per second.

• 14:14Flora Lichtman?

  This is exactly how I would imagine a physicist, home brewer, spending his birthday.

• 14:21Speaker 05

  Yeah, you are a passionate physicist when you're a physicist.

• 14:26Flora Lichtman?

  Okay, so you brought it into the lab and you filmed it?

• 14:30Speaker 05

  Exactly. And there were actually things that looked pretty interesting, and we couldn't explain from the go. And that's how we decided to dig in a little bit deeper.

• 14:43Flora Lichtman?

  Okay, so I want to get into some of your findings. But first of all, what kind of bottle were you looking at? Is this like a home brewing bottle? The kind with the rubber cork and the metal handle that you use to pop it open?

• 14:57Speaker 05

  It's a swing top bottle. So with this metal wire that holds a porcelain top with a rubber slipping.

• 15:05Flora Lichtman?

  You know, kombucha people will know it for sure. Okay, so I want to hear the sound. Let's play it.

• 15:14Flora Lichtman?

  Okay, is that the sound that you were investigating?

• 15:17Speaker 05

  Exactly that one.

• 15:20Flora Lichtman?

  Okay, is it like music to your ears?

• 15:23Speaker 05

  It was not loud enough, but yes.

• 15:28Flora Lichtman?

  Okay, so you filmed it, you hear that pop. What did you find? What was happening inside the bottle?

• 15:35Speaker 05

  So we recorded it with the camera and also with a microphone that was capable of recording even very high frequencies. So first of all, of course, when the lid lifts off, then the gas is exhaled into the air. And that expansion of the pressurized gas that was kept in the bottle cools down the gas, so it can reach down to minus 50 degrees Celsius.

• 16:05Flora Lichtman?

  Minus 50 degrees Celsius?

• 16:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 16:09Flora Lichtman?

  That's like minus 58 Fahrenheit for us here.

• 16:12Speaker 05

  Exactly, but only for some milliseconds, you know? And if you look with a high-speed camera, you might detect even some ice particles.

• 16:22Flora Lichtman?

  Really?

• 16:23Speaker 05

  They don't live long, like a fraction of a second.

• 16:28Flora Lichtman?

  Was that a surprise, that it got so cold?

• 16:30Speaker 05

  Indeed, yes. And the more surprising was the vibration that we saw in the bottleneck, because I filled the ginger beer into white, transparent bottles. We could actually see through, and there was something vibrating in the bottleneck after a cap lift off. And eventually, when correlating that with the microphone recordings, we saw that this is actually the source of the sound. So it's not a shockwave that's emitted from opening. It's actually a resonance in the bottleneck.

• 17:04Flora Lichtman?

  How loud is the sound?

• 17:07Speaker 05

  It's extremely loud. Fortunately, it's very short. But suppose you could have your ear inside the bottleneck, then you would hear 180 decibels, which is the same or even more loud as the turbine of an airplane.

• 17:26Flora Lichtman?

  It's as loud as a jet engine?

• 17:29Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 17:30Flora Lichtman?

  What about how fast the ga- how fast is the gas moving when it comes out of the bottle?

• 17:34Speaker 05

  Oh, it's probably supersonic.

• 17:38Flora Lichtman?

  There's a lot going on in that little tiny moment.

• 17:41Speaker 05

  Exactly. That's why it was so fascinating and we finally made a paper out of it.

• 17:47Flora Lichtman?

  Is there something special about the swing top? Or would we see the same physics when you pop a bottle of champagne or crack open a can of beer?

• 17:57Speaker 05

  For the can, it might be different because the gas has more time to get out to a more smaller opening. But with the champagne, it's even more pronounced because when you purchase a champagne bottle, the pressure usually is higher than the one in a beer bottle. So there is even more going on.

• 18:19Flora Lichtman?

  Max, please tell me there's no practical application for this work.

• 18:24Speaker 05

  There is, of course, practical application. First and foremost, you need a philosophical topic. Once you open your beer bottle with your friends, and this is probably where you can start.

• 18:36Flora Lichtman?

  That's what my friends always tell me. Please explain physics over our beer.

• 18:42Speaker 05

  Ah, you've got some nice friends there.

• 18:45Flora Lichtman?

  Well, cheers, Max. Thank you so much.

• 18:48Speaker 05

  Thank you so much.

• 18:49Flora Lichtman?

  Dr. Max Koch is a physics researcher at the University of Gottingen in Germany. And you can see high-speed video of these bottles being uncorked at sciencefriday.com/pop. Before we go, has this happened to you? You're scrolling on TikTok and suddenly you're served a video that makes you think, hmm, do I have ADHD? If you've found yourself self-diagnosing a mental health condition based on a TikTok video, call us or text us and tell us the story. 646-767-6532.

• 19:26Flora Lichtman?

  And that is about all we have time for. Lots of folks helped make this show happen, including...

• 19:32Speaker 01

  Dee Petersman.

• 19:33Speaker 03

  Phyllis Samars.

• 19:35Flora Lichtman?

  Emma Gomez. Jackie Hirschfeld. I'm Flora Lichtman. Thanks for listening.