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Quirks & Quarks is CBC Radio’s home for listeners who want to understand what science can tell us Quirks & Quarks is CBC Radio's weekly science program.
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Join host Bob McDonald to find out the latest in science, technology, medicine and the environment. This page is run by the show's producers.

09/08/2023

We kick off another season by catching up with Canadian scientists to learn about their fascinating summer research.
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We catch up with Canadian scientists who’ve been exploring the Pacific ocean depths, adventuring in the far north and chasing butterflies on the shores of the great lakes.

09/01/2023

Why aren't animals as vivid as birds? Can you store light in a battery? Find answers to all this and more in our fabulous listener question show.

What would happen if we were side-swiped by a comet? Can you store light in a battery? What pollution do rockets produce? How do birds choose how fast to fly? Find out on the latest edition of our ever-fascinating Listener Question show.

08/25/2023

Quiet supersonic aircraft, and Brian Cox talks about black holes.

Quiet supersonic aircraft, and Brian Cox talks about black holes

08/18/2023

Oldest African dinosaur, fork-headed trilobite, and why birds fly north in the winter.

Oldest African dinosaur, fork-headed trilobite, and why birds fly north in the winter

08/14/2023

This week, we're reading books about physics! The Milky Way tells its story; the experiments that gave us the modern picture of matter; and how humans run on electricity.

And: How humans run on electricity.

07/21/2023

Embalming workshop, early farmer violence, and hidden stories in books.

Embalming workshop, farmer violence, and hidden stories in books

06/29/2023

Summertime for many scientists is when they are at their busiest, travelling to remote locations to do science in the field. Hear about their research into B.C. sea stars, 10,000-year-old frozen squirrels, polar bear hair and more.

For many of us, summer is the time for things like beaches, bike rides, and BBQs. For some scientists, however, summertime is also when they are at their busiest, travelling to remote locations to get up close and personal with nature.

06/28/2023

Check our website for the best of Quirks & Quarks, where our favourite shows and interviews from this past season will be highlighted all summer.

CBC Radio's Quirks & Quarks covers the quicks of the expanding universe to the quarks within a single atom... and everything in between.

06/24/2023

Find out about rocket pollution, the speed of bird flight, brightly-coloured mammals, and more.

06/23/2023

Bob's blog: If something goes wrong either aboard a submersible on a trip to the deep ocean or on a spacecraft to Mars, the crews are largely on their own.

If something goes wrong either aboard a submersible on a trip to the deep ocean or on a spacecraft to Mars, the crews are largely on their own

06/22/2023

Cockroaches love sweets so much, they use sugar as part of their mating ritual. And while humans have messed with the roaches' love life by creating sugary poison baits, the pests have found ways to adapt new mating games.

The poison baits we set out for cockroaches are sweet to attract the insects, which use sugar as a "nuptial gift" in their mating. A new study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B suggests that German cockroaches have adapted to the lethal baits by making a different gift and using di...

06/21/2023

When they leave the womb early, premature babies lose an important opportunity to practice their motor skills. A new study involving a tiny skateboard aims to bridge that developmental gap.

When they leave the womb early, premature babies lose an important opportunity. All that late-term kicking and squirming in mom’s belly is important exercise that they don’t get in an incubator, which can hamper their motor development. Marianne Barbu-Roth, a researcher at the Integrative Neuros...

06/20/2023

Sibling rivalry among Canada jay chicks can be deadly: when the fledglings are 6 weeks old, the chicks fight, and the dominant one aggressively forces its siblings to abandon the territory.

Sibling rivalry among Canada Jay chicks can have deadly consequences. When the fledglings are about six weeks old, the chicks fight and the dominant one aggressively forces its siblings to abandon the territory. Ryan Norris, an ecologist from The University of Guelph, found the ejected siblings have...

06/19/2023

The famous early human ancestor known as Lucy stood only a metre tall – but new research suggests that while she was small, she was mighty, with much bigger lower body muscles than ours.

Lucy, the famous human relative, left a small skeleton — only a metre tall — but a new study published in Royal Society Open Science suggests that while she was small, she was mighty. University of Cambridge paleoanthropologist Ashleigh Wiseman combined open-source data of Lucy's fossil with 3D ...

06/16/2023

Bob's blog: The Cassini spacecraft discovered phosphates in Enceladus that are at least 100 times more concentrated than on Earth - another piece of evidence suggesting life may be thriving beneath the icy surface of Saturn's moon.

Phosphorus, in the form of phosphates, is generally considered the ultimate limiting nutrient in Earth oceans that's necessary for life

06/16/2023

Science is a Drag is the brainchild of a group of scientists who saw a need to create more inclusive spaces in STEM and find an innovative way of sharing their research.

Science is a Drag is a performance meant to challenge stereotypes about who belongs in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, where scientists present their work in a novel way and perform in drag.

06/15/2023

Neuroscientist Marc Dingman's new book delves into the unusual things that happen after brain injury.

Brain injuries that cause major changes in cognition, personality and abilities have given us significant insight into how the brain functions. Neuroscientist Marc Dingman has collected some of these stories in a new book, Bizarre: The most peculiar cases of human behavior and what they tell us abou...

06/14/2023

Under stresses like high water temperatures, corals will kick out the colorful symbiotic algae that live inside of them, and go bone-white – which can lead to their death.

Under stresses like high water temperatures, corals will kick out the colorful symbiotic algae that live inside of them, and go bone-white – which can lead to their death. A new study published in ISME Communications suggests that one of the reasons they do this is that the algae might be sufferin...

06/13/2023

Termites thrive in hot, dry environments – so scientists want to learn from termite mounds how to build comfortable buildings without using air conditioning.

A new study has closely mapped air circulation in termite mounds to see if there are lessons to be learned for human building practices. Termite mounds are usually found in hot, dry environments but must maintain steady temperatures and humidity on the inside through natural air flow. David Andreen,...

06/12/2023

Octopus, squid and cuttlefish have the capacity to tweak their own physiology, by changing their genetic material to make their cell proteins work better when the water is too hot or too cold.

Octopus, squid and cuttlefish have the capacity to tweak their own physiology on the fly by changing their genetic material as a way of acclimating to environmental conditions like changing water temperature. Matthew Birk, while working at the Marine Biological Lab in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, disc...

06/09/2023

An alternative to resource-intensive spay surgery has the potential to permanently sterilize female cats.

Controlling feral cat populations is controversial and often involves capturing, surgically sterilizing and releasing the animals, which is complex and expensive. U.S. scientists have developed a new method for cat contraception that involves a single injection of a gene that prevents cat eggs from....

06/09/2023

Bob's blog: The cephalopod's nervous system diverged in many unexpected ways compared to humans.

It's unlikely that aliens, should they exist, will have a single brain and walk on two legs like they do in the movies, writes Bob McDonald.

06/08/2023

Researchers found consuming plastic leads to widespread scar tissue in a population of Australian seabirds.

Flesh-footed shearwater seabirds ingest plastic that leads to scarring of their internal organs, kidney and liver disease, all of which results in them starving and becoming more vulnerable to pathogens.

06/07/2023

Astronomers believe they have identified a rare black hole about 800 times the mass of our Sun in a nearby globular cluster. This "intermediate" size of black hole has been theorized to exist, but never before been positively identified.

Astronomers have detected what seems to be a black hole about 800 times the mass of our Sun in a nearby globular cluster. Theory predicts these should be common in the universe, because we know of many small, stellar mass black holes, and many supermassive black holes at the centres of galaxies, but...

06/06/2023

To figure out the complex interactions of serotonin in the human nervous system, researchers started out with a simpler organism – by building a complete map of serotonin function in the C.elegans roundworm.

Serotonin is one of the most important neurotransmitters — chemicals that send signals around the brain to regulate many biological functions, including mood, memory, and digestion. To better understand how it works, researchers have mapped exactly how the chemical functions in the 302-neuron brai...

06/05/2023

The warming of Alaskan permafrost means that the female Arctic ground squirrels are emerging from hibernation up to 10 days earlier than males – and the mismatch could disrupt their mating season.

When male and female arctic ground squirrels wake from their long winter hibernation they get to the business of mating and raising young in a hurry to take advantage of the brief summer. But as the arctic has warmed the females – but not the males – are waking early and researchers are worried ...

06/02/2023

By surgically implanting devices in a paralyzed patient’s brain and spinal cord, researchers were able to digitally bridge the communication gap to allow him to regain control of his legs.

Researchers in Switzerland have developed a system to restore communication between the brain and the spinal cord in a paralyzed man who was told he’d never walk again. By surgically implanting devices in the patient’s brain and spinal cord, they were able to digitally bridge the communication g...

06/02/2023

Bob McDonald's blog: When it comes to reading cues from human drivers, autonomous vehicles have a ways to go.

When it comes to reading cues from human drivers, autonomous vehicles have a ways to go.

05/31/2023

In the presence of apex predators like wolves and cougars, coyotes and bobcats move closer to human-dominated environments – only to be in even greater danger from hunters and vehicle collisions.

In the presence of apex predators like wolves and cougars, coyotes and bobcats move closer to human dominated environments where they feel safe. But Laura Prugh, a wildlife ecologist from the University of Washington found that paradoxically the animals are entering an even more dangerous environmen...

05/28/2023

Researchers have found that in rodents, beaming sound waves deep into the brain can kickstart a hibernation-like state.

Researchers have found that in rodents, beaming sound waves deep into the brain can cause a drop in their body temperature and slow down an animal’s metabolism, heart rate and activity level. By focussing ultrasound waves into the brain region responsible for kickstarting hibernation-like states, ...

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Videos

A Throwback to Wonderstruck

This week marks Bob McDonald's 30th anniversary as host of Quirks & Quarks. But before Quirks, McDonald hosted a CBC-TV children's science show called Wonderstruck. Here's a clip from 1991 that features an amazing piece of new tech.