A Day in the Half-Life

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Berkeley Lab (Produced & hosted by Aliyah Kovner)

11 episodes

7 months ago

Why isn’t more plastic actually recyclable? Why don’t compostable forks actually compost? And when are we going to solve our waste problems?This episode features three scientists working to manage the planet's plastic addiction by developing smarter materials that avoid the pitfalls of 20th century plastics. We talk about the challenges of the current recycling and composting systems, philosophies of materials design, why trying to recycle some things is just "wishcycling," and why we can all...

Science

Education

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Science

Education

Episodes (11/11)

A Day in the Half-Life

Reimagining Plastics

2 years ago

51 minutes

A Day in the Half-Life

Hydrogen: The Original Alternative Fuel

The smallest element in the universe has big potential for clean, sustainable energy. In fact, we’ve been using it as a fuel for vehicles here on Earth and NASA vehicles out exploring the solar system for many decades. So why aren’t we living in a hydrogen utopia already, and how can we get there? In this episode, we discuss the past, present, and future of hydrogen energy, including the dirty side of hydrogen production and the current push for zero-emissions hydrogen to power our daily live...

2 years ago

35 minutes

A Day in the Half-Life

Green Machines: The natural and artificial photosynthesis powering the planet

What is photosynthesis? Oh, no big deal, just the key to life on Earth as we know it! Join me as I take a deep dive into this amazingly sophisticated chemical process. Hear fascinating details they didn't teach you in school and get a crash course on how natural photosynthesis inspires the development of renewable energy technologies that could someday replace all petroleum products.Featuring Jan F. Kern, from Berkeley Lab's Biosciences Area; and Joel Ager, from the Energy Sciences Area and a...

3 years ago

55 minutes

A Day in the Half-Life

Inclusion in STEM: the Name Change Initiative

A Day in the Half-Life explores what working in STEM is really like, and that means conversations about inclusion. So to celebrate Pride Month, we're releasing a special episode about making research & academia culture more inclusive for transgender scientists.Publications are an essential part of career growth for scientists. But what if you no longer use the name on past work? How can you claim your intellectual labor? Transitioning to one's preferred identity can be challenging on its ...

3 years ago

32 minutes

A Day in the Half-Life

Climate Modeling

For decades, scientists have been able to predict future Earth conditions, like rainfall and temperature, with impressive accuracy using computer programs called climate models. These models are helpful at telling us what might happen to our weather depending on how much we curb greenhouse gases emissions now, and they can be used to study how much human-driven climate change plays a role in big events such as Hurricane Harvey or last year’s Pacific Northwest heatwave, compared with our plane...

3 years ago

55 minutes

A Day in the Half-Life

More Microchips, Moore Problems

A podcast episode about research and development of microelectronics. The race to make smaller and smaller electronic chips is coming to an end, after many decades of creative engineering. Individual transistors are now just a few nanometers (that’s billionths of a meter) in length, so there’s not much more shrinking to be done. But there is still a lot of room for improvement. The 20th century effort to pack transistors onto tiny silicon wafers transformed clunky, heavy early electronics int...

3 years ago

48 minutes

A Day in the Half-Life

Energy storage: Save your electrons for a rainy day

Have you ever wondered how electricity is available all the time? That’s the seemingly magical science of energy storage. In this episode, we speak to a policy leader and a researcher about the history of piggy-banking power to spend it later, and how this field is evolving to help us prevent extreme weather-related blackouts, adopt more renewable energy, and build bigger, better, more environmentally responsible batteries.Featuring: Noël Bakhtian, director of Berkeley Lab's Energy Storage Ce...

3 years ago

47 minutes

A Day in the Half-Life

Quantum Computing

In 1935, the famous physicist Erwin Schrödinger was debating with his friend Albert Einstein about the nature of a fundamental concept in quantum mechanics – a field that was, at the time, still very new. To illustrate his point, Schrödinger proposed a thought experiment wherein a (rather unfortunate) cat sealed in a box is both alive and dead simultaneously – up until the moment someone opens the box. Decades later, that abstract paradox is still very much alive, and enabling the development...

4 years ago

52 minutes

A Day in the Half-Life

Biomanufacturing: Making Stuff with Microbes

What do advanced medicines, renewable fuels, vegan burgers, smart fabrics, petroleum-free plastics, and cruelty-free cosmetics have in common? They're all produced with specially engineered microbes! Yep, microbes. In episode three, we explore the fields of science making this 21st century industrial revolution possible: synthetic biology and biomanufacturing. Our guests discuss how humans first developed the tools and knowledge to harness the natural capabilities of bacteria and yeast,...

4 years ago

46 minutes

A Day in the Half-Life

Dark Energy

Twenty years ago, scientists were surprised to discover that the universe’s expansion is accelerating. The unknown and invisible force causing this acceleration was named “dark energy,” and in the years since, researchers learned more about what the phenomenon is not — but have yet to crack the puzzle of what it actually is. Physicists say it could be an as-of-yet undetected form of energy permeating the cosmos, or it could be an unmeasured property of the force of gravity. Either way, the an...

4 years ago

34 minutes

A Day in the Half-Life

Machine Learning

A Day in the Half Life is a podcast from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) about the incredible and often unexpected ways that science evolves over time, as told by the researchers who led it into its current state and those who are going to bring it into the future.In our very first episode, we discuss machine learning. First developed about 80 years ago, machine learning (ML) is a type of artificial intelligence centered on programs – called algorithms – that can teach th...

4 years ago

41 minutes