How the mantis shrimp builds its powerful club, and mysteries of middle Earth

Science Magazine Podcast

Science Podcast

News Commentary, News, Science

4.2 • 791 Ratings

🗓️ 6 February 2025

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

First up this week, Staff Writer Paul Voosen joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss mapping clogs and flows in Earth’s middle layer—the mantle. They also talk about recent policy stories on NASA’s reactions to President Donald Trump’s administration’s executive orders. Next, the mantis shrimp is famous for its powerful club, a biological hammer it uses to crack open hard shells. The club applies immense force on impact, but how does it keep itself together blow after blow? Nicolas Alderete is an associate researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, but at the time of the work he was a graduate researcher in theoretical and applied mechanics at Northwestern University. He joins the podcast to discuss the makeup of the mantis shrimp’s club and how it uses “phononics”—specialized microstructures that can reduce or change high-frequency vibrations—to reduce wear and tear when smashing and bashing. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This week's episode is brought to you in part by Science Careers.
0:04.0	Looking for some career advice, wondering how to get ahead or how to strike a better work-life balance,
0:09.6	visit our site to read how others are doing it.
0:12.5	Use our individual development plan tool, access topic-specific article collections,
0:17.6	or search for an exciting new job.
0:20.6	Science Careers, produced by Science and AAAS, is a free website full of resources to help
0:26.4	get the most out of your career.
0:28.5	Visit sciencecareers.org today to get started.
0:41.9	This is a science podcast for February 7th, 2025.
0:43.3	I'm Sarah Crespi.
0:45.7	First this week, staff writer Paul Lucen joins me to discuss mapping clogs and flows
0:48.1	in the earth's middle layer, aka the mantle.
0:51.8	Next, the mantis shrimp and its powerful club. Researcher Nicholas Alderate
0:56.6	joins me to talk about the material of the mantis shrimp's club and how it uses phononics,
1:01.6	specialized microstructures that can eliminate or change high-frequency vibrations to reduce
1:07.6	wear and tear when smashing and bashing.
1:16.9	The Earth's primary layers, the big three.
1:20.9	It's a crust where we live, the mantle underneath,
1:22.6	making up the bulk of the planet,
1:26.5	and the core at the center, that's Earth's Dynamo,
1:29.3	giving us the magnetic fields that, you know,
1:34.2	give us the poles. Wait, going back to step, what does the mantle do? Is it just this space in between, this filler? This week in science, staff news writer Paul Voussin wrote about some
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