This Week in Science – The Kickass Science Podcast · Dr. Kirsten Sanford Science Media

This is the Science You Can Trust

·1 hr 57 min·5 clips

MIT scientists recreated the double slit experiment using super-cooled atoms as slits, revealing new insights into quantum mechanics.

This episode of This Week in Science features hosts Dr. Kiki and Justin discussing recent scientific studies. They cover topics ranging from quantum physics to public health and archaeology, focusing on new research published in the past week. MIT scientists published a paper in Physical Review Letters on light scattering by single-atom wave packets, revisiting the classic double-slit experiment. The researchers used an array of supercooled atoms as slits to study whether photons behave as particles or waves. They manipulated atom "fuzziness" with lasers to examine photon-atom interactions and wave function collapse. The experiment suggested Niels Bohr's quantum uncertainty principle was more accurate than Einstein's deterministic view in this context. A Stanford-led study analyzed global COVID-19 vaccination data from 2020 to 2024, estimating vaccines averted 2.533 million deaths. The same study calculated vaccinations preserved 14.8 million life-years, with 89.6% of the benefit in people aged 60 or older. Researchers developed a system called Hoo-Fi that uses Wi-Fi signals to identify individuals with about 95% accuracy by analyzing body movement patterns. Fossils from the Hualongdong site in China, dated to 300,000 years ago, show a mix of archaic and modern human dental traits. Chinese researchers conducted 23 submersible dives in the Mariana Trench, discovering the deepest known life on Earth. The quantum experiment indicated that light's particle or wave nature depends on its interactions with matter, not just observation. The COVID vaccine study, led by a researcher associated with the Great Barrington Declaration, concluded vaccination offered clear mortality benefits despite the author's earlier skepticism. The Wi-Fi fingerprinting technique uses channel state information and deep neural networks to create biometric signatures from radio signal disturbances. The ancient Chinese teeth lack Neanderthal traits, suggesting a distinct hominin population that may represent interbreeding or a transitional group. The deep-sea exploration revealed organisms thriving in the extreme pressures of the ocean's deepest subduction zones. The hosts maintain a conversational and enthusiastic tone while unpacking complex scientific concepts for a general audience. Their style is educational but informal, often punctuated with humorous asides and personal reactions to the studies. Listeners interested in cutting-edge physics, public health statistics, and emerging surveillance technology would find this episode engaging. Those seeking highly structured, single-topic deep dives or avoiding pandemic-related content might prefer to skip it.

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Ancient teeth, human origins, and DNA drive a lively debate about what the record can actually prove.

This Week in Science centers on a familiar debate: what ancient teeth can reveal about human origins, and why DNA has already challenged a separate-evolution claim. Dr.

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You want a brisk science fight over ancient teeth and what DNA can still settle.

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