New worries about Earth’s asteroid risk, and harnessing plants’ chemical factories

<p>On this week’s show: Earth’s youngest impact craters could be vastly underestimated in size, and remaking a plant’s process for a creating a complex compound</p> <p> </p> <p>First up this week, <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/earth-higher-risk-big-asteroid-strike-satellite-data-suggest">have we been measuring asteroid impact craters wrong</a>? Staff Writer Paul Voosen talks with host Sarah Crespi about new approaches to measuring the diameter of impact craters. They discuss the new measurements which, if confirmed, <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adh8825">might require us to rethink just how often Earth gets hit with large asteroids</a>. Paul also shares more news from the recent <a href="https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2023/">Lunar and Planetary Science Conference</a> in Texas.</p> <p> </p> <p>Next up, pulling together all the enzymes used by a plant to make a vaccine adjuvant—a compound used to boost the efficacy of vaccines—in the lab. <a href="https://www.jic.ac.uk/people/anne-osbourn/">Anne Osbourn</a>, a group leader and professor of biology at the John Innes Centre in Norwich, England, talks about why plants are so much better at making complex molecules, and <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf3727">an approach that allows scientists to copy their methods</a>.</p> <p> </p> <p>This week’s episode was produced with help from <a href="https://podigy.co/">Podigy</a>.</p> <p> </p> <p><a href="https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast">About the <em>Science</em> Podcast</a></p> <p> </p> <p>[Image: NASA/JPL; Music: Jeffrey Cook]</p> <p> </p> <p>[alt: Itturalde crater in Bolivia with podcast overlay]</p> <p> </p> <p>Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen</p> <p> </p> <p>Episode page: <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adh9195">https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adh9195</a></p><p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p>