Reasons to Think About Rome

Dr. Kiki (0:00)

This is Twist. This Week in Science, episode number 1076, recorded on Wednesday, September 16th, 2026 Reasons to Think About Rome.

Everyone, I'm Dr. Kiki, and tonight we will fill your head with Roman roads, a Roman scope, and a mosquito toilet. But first, thanks to our amazing Patreon sponsors for their generous support of TWiSS. You can become a part of the Patreon community at patreon.com/thisweek in Science. Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer!

When the view of the future is no longer informed by the past, we risk society's ability to last. When what we do is no longer informed by people, we ask computers to call us sheeple. How many neurons does it take to be human? A question to explore with us here on This Week in Science, coming up next.

Blair (1:41)

Good science to you, Kiki.

Dr. Kiki (1:44)

And a good science to you too, Blair, and everyone out there. Welcome to another episode of This Week in Science. Back again with all the science that's fit to talk about in the short time that we have here tonight. Yes. So glad everyone's back again for another wonderful week of science.

WWS.

Wonderful Week of Science. Yes. It's been quite the week. We're still missing Justin. I don't know when he'll come back, if he'll come back. He's out there working, doing science in the real world, everyone.

Blair (2:21)

Did he ever exist or was he a shared hallucination?

Dr. Kiki (2:26)

This is a very interesting question. We do not know. We'd love your feedback, everyone.

Blair (2:35)

Did you see Justin?

Dr. Kiki (2:37)

Please.

Did you really see him? Was he really there? Was he really there?

Blair (2:43)

Or was I just putting glasses on and then saying hot takes and then taking them off?

Dr. Kiki (2:51)

No. No, he's real. I have to believe in him, just like the Easter Bunny.

Okay. We have great science news on the show tonight. I have science stories about ancient Roman roads with a modern look, a Venusian moon that doesn't exist, mosquito toilets, human-ish mouse brains, fly brains, and more. What's in the animal corner, Blair?

Blair (3:23)

I have frozen sperm. I have snake tails, and I have bird migration.

Dr. Kiki (3:32)

I love bird migration. Right now, there's big migrations happening.

Actually, if you are listening to this at night, and your outdoor lights are on, and you're in one of the flyway zones, consider turning off your outdoor lights so that those migrants can have a good journey and not get taken off course. Of course. But anyway, that's not what you're talking about.

Blair (3:56)

Good old Alan, always up to trouble.

Dr. Kiki (3:59)

Oh, Alan, tell Alan to be quiet.

Blair (4:01)

Alan, you're not helping. No, this doesn't have to do with Alan at all. It does have to do with climate change, though. Spoilers.

Dr. Kiki (4:07)

Oh, boy.

All those, all those artifacts of climate change, the things that happen. OK, we're going to do this show right now. And as we jump into it, I do want to remind you that subscribe into the Twist Podcast anywhere that you find. Podcasts is a wonderful thing to do for your mental health. It's great to do for your curiosity. And if your friends, family need more curiosity and optimism about things or just, you know, need to know more about things that are happening, get them to subscribe wherever you find your podcasts. This Week in Science, we're also on Facebook, Twitch and YouTube. We stream live Wednesdays, 8 p.m. Pacific time, weekend-ish. It's right around there. And all the recordings are there on those channels where you can watch them later. But we love it when you're here live to join the chat room and be a part of the show. Every time episodes are published, you can go to twist.org to get information about the stories that we discuss, our show notes, all that stuff, once the podcast is up and published a few days later. So that's about it, everyone. You ready for the science?

Blair (5:19)

I'm so ready.

Dr. Kiki (5:20)

Yeah, me too.

Blair (5:22)

I'm ready.

Dr. Kiki (5:22)

Let's have the science. All right.

Starting off the show, not with brains, but with technology in the sky, way far away from us. I get an Lagrange point, the L2 million miles away pretty much.

We talked a bit about the the Nancy Roman Space Telescope, Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, NASA's latest space telescope that's going to give us a new view on exoplanets and all sorts of other cool things out in the universe.

They have turned it on. It's made it to the Lagrange, Lagrange Point, and the NASA team has actually activated the coronagraph. They have at first, they had to let the telescope rest out at that Lagrange Point for 10 days to dry out and decontaminate. And so the drying out and decontaminating, they got the detectors to minus 85 degrees Fahrenheit. This is not the final operating temperature. But on the morning of September 11th, according to NASA, they turned off the instrument heater and let the wide field instrument cool down to negative 225 degrees Fahrenheit. That's negative 143 degrees Celsius. Turned on the 18 infrared detectors and started taking pictures of the sky. And so, their detectors were great. Everything is working according to plan. And we have beautiful detectors that are, they have accessed the first photons that have been detected. Right now, they show an interesting diffraction pattern, very similar to the diffraction pattern that we first saw when the James Webb Space Telescope got started. It has to do with the structure of the detectors themselves. But over time, what they're going to do is focus those in. So each of the dots that we see that have a really interesting picture or pattern right now, are going to be very tight light circles, and they're going to be just beautiful stars and galaxies out there.