Is It Friday Yet?

We all know that there are many reasons to love Fridays. Among my personal favorite reasons are the following: I normally analyze all of the data gathered throughout the week on Friday for my end-of-the-week research updates, which is an extremely satisfying activity; 9 times out of 10, I treat myself to lunch out on the town, and if the weather is nice, that involves a pleasant bicycle ride through downtown; my two favorite, non-science themed blogs, Bike Snob NYC and CoMo Cyco, post a hilarious quiz and a selection of witty replies to fake reader mail, respectively; the weekend is approaching and that equals fun times without the burden of work and/or school.

But there's another reason to spend all week anticipating the arrival of Friday, and that is the broadcast of National Public Radio's Science Friday. Science Friday is a once weekly segment of their popular Talk of the Nation program that focuses on science-related topics. Following the standard Talk of the Nation format, SciFri (as those of us in-the-know refer to it) hosts guests whose expertise relates to the particular topics of the week. After a period of discussion or debate, the guest or guests will sometimes field questions from callers, Facebookers, emailers, Twitterers, etc. The show is split into two hour-long segments, normally examining 2-3 topics per segment.

While Talk of the Nation is hosted by Neal Conan, Science Friday is hosted by Ira Flatow, who specializes in science journalism. Now don't get me wrong, Ira is a great host and facilitates intriquing and thought-provoking discussions, but if I could have any job, any job at all, it would be his. Not because I think I would be better at it, because I wouldn't. But because I think he might have the coolest job in the world. After all, each week he interviews some of the greatest minds in the world. And that, indeed, is a pretty great gig.

My intention this week was to discuss what is obviously the biggest news in science right now, and that is the discovery of water on the Moon. If you haven't heard about this, which is indicative of one who has been stranded on a desert island with no human contact for the past week, NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) successfully completed its mission. LCROSS and its upper stage, Centaur, were sent on a suicide mission to the Moon, in which the upper stage separated from the satellite and went hurtling into the Moon's surface, creating a large debris plume. The satellite then travelled through the debris plume with analytical equipment that observed and analyzed the debris plume, then also impacted the surface. Both debris plumes were carefully observed by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and the Hubble Space Telescope, as well as observatories here on Earth. The data is currently being analyzed, but the investigators have already announced that a small amount of the debris plume consisted of water.

Although this was going to be my sole topic this week, I listened to SciFri's report of the mission over the weekend, with special guest Anthony Colaprete, the principal investigator of the LCORR project at NASA's Ames facility. What I found was that this interview was far more informative than anything I could have churned out here on this blog, and so rather than going into all of the details (of which there aren't many at this point, since the real leg-work of this mission is ongoing), I thought it would be best to let you listen to the podcast for yourself, which can be found here.

If you enjoy this interview, I recommend that you become a regular listener. There are brief descriptions of each of the week's topics, allowing you to select which you would like to hear if you don't want to listen to the entire show. In addition, the topics really do span the scientific spectrum, from psychology to space travel to renewable energy, so it's rare to find a show that doesn't include something that strikes one's fancy.