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Watch the Perseid Meteor Shower at Its Peak Tonight

The last time we had an outburst, that is a meteor shower with more meteors than usual, was in 2009. This year’s Perseid meteor shower is predicted to be just as spectacular starting tonight!

Plan to stay up late tonight or set your alarm clock for the wee morning hours to see this cosmic display of “shooting stars” light up the night sky. Known for it’s fast and bright meteors, tonight’s annual Perseid meteor shower is anticipated to be one of the best meteor viewing opportunities this year.

For stargazers experiencing cloudy or light-polluted skies, a live broadcast of the Perseid meteor shower will be available via Ustream overnight tonight and tomorrow, beginning at 10 p.m. EDT.

“Forecasters are predicting a Perseid outburst this year with double normal rates on the night of Aug. 11-12,” said Bill Cooke with NASA’s Meteoroid Environments Office in Huntsville, Alabama. “Under perfect conditions, rates could soar to 200 meteors per hour.”

Every Perseid meteor is a tiny piece of the comet Swift-Tuttle, which orbits the sun every 133 years. When Earth crosses paths with Swift-Tuttle’s debris, specks of comet-stuff hit Earth’s atmosphere and disintegrate in flashes of light. These meteors are called Perseids because they seem to fly out of the constellation Perseus.

Most years, Earth might graze the edge of Swift-Tuttle’s debris stream, where there’s less activity. Occasionally, though, Jupiter’s gravity tugs the huge network of dust trails closer, and Earth plows through closer to the middle, where there’s more material.

This is predicted be one of those years!

Learn more.

NPR’s Eyder Peralta reports:

NASA has developed a special camera that lets you actually see the details of a fiery plume emanating from a space rocket. In the past, cameras have a hard time adjusting their exposure to something so intense, so all you often see is an overexposed jet of fire.

Scientists tested the new HiDyRS-X camera, which can record multiple exposures at the same time, during a recent test of the the Space Launch System’s boosters and the results are mesmerizing. 

When Sandra Aamodt talks about dieting, people listen … or, they stick their fingers in their ears and go la, la, la. Aamodt’s neuroscientific take on why diets backfire is that divisive.

Aamodt is a neuroscientist, book author and former editor of a leading brain research journal. She also has become a prominent evangelist of the message that traditional diets just don’t work and often leave the dieter worse off than before. And she’s an enthusiastic proponent of mindful eating.

“I define it as eating with attention and joy, without judgment,” Aamodt said in an interview. “That includes attention to hunger and fullness, to the experience of eating and to its effects on our bodies.”

A Neuroscientist Tackles ‘Why Diets Make Us Fat’

So great: Bradley Campbell, producer of PRI’s The World, draws the storytelling structures of iconic public radio shows on napkins – it’s like Kurt Vonnegut’s shapes of stories meet David Byrne’s diagrams of the human condition.

Got some leftover peeps? You can use them to find the speed of light.

There are just some stories where you don’t know how to begin.

Thomas Thwaites wanted to know what life was like for animals. The idea wasn’t particularly outlandish. “I remember thinking as child if only I could be a cat, then I wouldn’t have to go to school.” I mean, who hasn’t? But Thomas went a little beyond most escape fantasies.

On a whim he applied to a grant, and they called his bluff. Off he went. To the Swiss Alps. To live life as a goat.

“I went to a goat farm in the Alps and I had some prosthetics made by a prosthetic clinic, prosthetic hooves, prosthetic back legs, I also tried to digest grass. Because that’s what goats do.”

After three or four days getting the hang of his new hooves, he challenged himself to cross the Alps. Because that’s what goats do.

“It was a very, I don’t know, a very special kind of time.”

Plastic makes great food packaging. It’s waterproof and flexible. And best of all, it’s impervious to all known bacteria — until now. Researchers have found a bacterium in the debris fields around a recycling plant in Japan that can feed off a common type of plastic used in clothing, plastic bottles and food packaging.

The bacterium is a new species called Ideonella sakaiensis, named for the Japanese city Sakai where it was found growing on plastic debris made from a type of plastic called PET or polyethylene terephthalate. “It’s the most unique thing. This bacterium can degrade PET and then make their body from PET,” says Shosuke Yoshida, a microbiologist at Kyoto University and lead author on the study published in Science on Thursday.

A Plastic-Eating Bacterium Might Help Deal With Waste One Day

We’re proud to present Gaelynn Lea’s Tiny Desk Concert! She played in our office just this past Wednesday. By the end of her set, there was hardly a dry eye.