Science Television Show for the Family

My daughter and I were flicking through our basic cable network to find a science show that caught our interest. Wired Science grabbed us both and we sat through the entire hour without feeling intimidated or stupid. The fast-paced show was energetic and easy to understand without dumbing the topics down.

Wired Science previewed on Wednesday, January 3rd at 7pm central on WKNO Memphis. The show is based on the award winning magazine, Wired. It is a co-production of KCET/Los Angeles, the West Coast flagship station of PBS.

The pilot included a range of topics. Hosts, Brian Unger, Ziya Tong, Keith Olbermann and Aomawa Shields took the viewers into a brilliant mix of recent discoveries, latest innovations and recent break throughs. My pre-teen daughter looked up from her foot bath soak to watch a plasma television being sawed in half and wondered if the lady actually did the sawing or was the plasma TV pre-cut? The point being the show hooked my daughter and she sat through the entire show.

She and I enjoyed the meteorite hunters and marveled at the 1400 pound meteorite that fell from the heavens, perhaps thousands of years ago, from an unknown galaxy and discovered by ordinary guys in Wichita, Kansas. Steve Arnold put together a homemade metal detector that could cover more ground than a small hand held one. This guy found out by reading a book on treasure hunting that selling meteorites could be profitable. The huge palocite, apparently is a rare find, because the iron had to melt at temperatures well over 2000 degrees Fahrenheit to produce a meteorite with shiny crystals. We shared theories about possible life forms that may have lived on a planet that had its own solar system and then suddenly disintegrated into trillions of pieces and landing in Kansas. Far-fetched, perhaps, but the point is, we were communicating with each other.

Stem Cell research and the interview with Doctor Pero had a human touch. Not only did the segment dive into the controversy whether or not to use embryonic stem cells, it touched upon Dr. Pero's life. Her struggle growing up in a poor family, unfulfilled jobs,her own inability to conceive and her battle with ovarian cancer. A point that engaged my 12 year old was the fact that an embryo is of no value if it is discarded, so if the embryo is not implanted in a woman, why not use it for stem cell research. I did not disagree and support stem cell research and further support California's proposition 71 that raised 3 billion dollars without help from the Federal Government. If the United States does not support American Scientists in Embryonic Stem Cell Research, other countries will surely surpass us. The big loss will be in dollars.

The piece, called Vaporware brought back memories from the 50's and 60's, and comic strips about heroes using jet packs to hurl into the sky. Anyways, we chuckled when we learned there was an actual Rocket belt Convention and learned about how hydrogen peroxide turns into steam to propel these brave souls off the ground. A guy, named Harold Graham, actually showed President JFK Kennedy how the Rocket belt operated. You could feel his emotion about presenting for JFK.

The interview with Elon Musk definitely intriguing. Elon is the young inventor of PayPal (born 1971) and made millions or billions, I can't remember. This guy is a force in the science community and made Branson look like he was playing with star war toys, whose meager space vehicle travels at 3 Mach's, rather than the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon space ship which will travel at 25 Mach. Musk's company, Space X is inventing rocket ships capable of going 25 times faster than the speed of sound to travel our galaxies and beyond. I hope his electric sports cars are soon available and affordable to us average environmental friendly consumers. Apparently, Tesla Motors, has invented an electric car that can go from O to 60 miles per hour in 4 seconds and leave a Ferrari in the dust. (Ferrari maybe, but not a 1965 Corvette) This guy is definitely an inspiration to all of us young and old.

Discovering valuable viruses in Yellowstone's thermal waters was intriguing. Image using the hard outer shell of a virus, implanting it with some kind of metal and producing hydrogen. Extremophiles are being studied by Mark Young and Trevor Douglas in a Montana lab. The outer protein shell is embedded with a magnetic source and may be used in all kinds of applications, such as hard drives in a computer. Panasonic is working with these guys to perhaps produce a high density recording media. The inside guts or DNA and RNA from the virus are disposed and then embedded with metal particles which produce a chemical reaction-hydrogen. Not enough to produce enough fuel for cars and lessen our dependency on oil, but other applications, such as in chemotherapy to zero in on specific cancer cells may be viable in the near future. A virus doing good work for diseases and computers.

There were peeks at NASA'S underwater astronaut training facility, called NEEMO.

I hope this new science pilot blasts off and continues to span the globe to keep us viewers in tune with science and how it impacts our daily lives. I am tired of reality shows, and endless crime episodes.

I thought the data points listed on the screen and read out loud added a nice touch to those of us who relish in science trivia.

The viewing public will choose the best Science show out of 3 choices that will continue to air as a weekly series. Remember to watch Science Investigators and 22nd Century airing each Wednesday, 7pm Central on WKNO. Check your local listing at PBS.org for your local broadcast times.