Moon Mysteries, AI Food Detectives & Alien Computer Clues! (9.12.26)

0:00Pouring in curiosity, activating podcasts, let's ignite the experiment! You're Recha! Good morning! It's Saturday, September 12, 2026. NASA and IBM just released a free AI tool that's way better at spotting moon craters and features. It's 23% more accurate than older methods, which is pretty impressive. The model was trained on decades of moon observation data, and it's now available on an open-source platform called Hugging Face. This new tool speeds things up and helps researchers plan future missions under NASA's Artemis program, which aims to put astronauts back on the moon. Over in technology, researchers in Japan just build packaging that can tell if your food is going bad and even fix itself if it gets damaged. The team at Kusho University combined sensors, self-healing materials, and AI into one system

1:02that watches what's happening inside food containers in real time. Here's why that matters. About one-third of all food produced globally gets wasted and spoiled food accounts for roughly 8% of greenhouse gas emissions. Now let's look up at space. Get this! The moon might have formed in just five hours after a massive collision with early Earth. That's way faster than the old theory, which said it took much longer for debris to clump together. Scientists at the University of Arizona just ran new computer simulations that show this could have happened. The key difference is these simulations account for how hot and physically strong both Earth and the Mars-sized objects they aware when they smashed together about 4.5 billion years ago. Pop quiz! Ready? This one's from the stories we just heard. How much more accurate is the new AI model at spotting moon craters compared to older

2:02methods? A. 15% more accurate. B. 35% more accurate. C. 23% more accurate. Or D. More accurate than my little brother guessing where I hid his video games. Think it over. You've got five seconds. Analyzing data. Observing results. Times up. The answer is C. 23% more accurate. That 23% improvement means the AI can identify about one extra crater correctly for every forward analyzes. Nice job if you got that one. OK, history time. On this day, September 12th in 1940, four teenagers discovered the Lasco cave paintings in France. The prehistoric artwork painted about 17,000 years ago showed horses, deer, and bulls,

3:07some of the oldest art ever found. Wow! Let's keep it moving. Here's another one. Scientists just figured out why tiny ocean creatures called form and ephara flip the direction of their spiral shells every few thousand years. And it's happening to quadrillions of them all at once across every ocean. These single-celled plankton-build shells that spiral either left or right. And researchers noticed that sometimes 97% of a species will suddenly switch directions together, even though they're scattered worldwide. Now for some tech. Scientists think advanced aliens would use super cold computers, creating a detectable pattern they're calling a slice halo. Here's why that matters. Computers work way more efficiently when they're cold. And according to Land Hours Principle, a computer at 10. Kelvin is 30 times more efficient than one at room temperature. So really advanced civilizations would probably put their computers far from their star

4:07where it's freezing, but close enough to capture light for power. That setup would give off a specific heat signature we could spot with our telescopes. Also making headlines, here's the problem. As forests burn and frozen tundra melts, these natural breakdowns could make Earth's warming 20 to 30% worse than we thought. Scientists say even if humans stop all carbon pollution, these feedback loops would still add about 0.2 degrees Celsius of extra warming. And here's what's really concerning. Climate models don't include these natural emissions, which means world leaders might be underestimating how hot things will get. Last quiz of the day, let's see if you can get this one. How much worse could natural breakdowns make Earth's warming compared to current predictions? Could it be a 10 to 15% worse? Maybe 50 to 60% worse?

5:07Maybe C20 to 30% worse? Or D, worse than a microwave trying to cool down ice cream? Think it over. You've got five seconds. Analyzing data. Observing results. Did you get it? The answer is C20 to 30% worse. These natural feedback loops include things like methane released from thawing permafrost and carbon dioxide from wildfires. Bees, a bee, d'oh, and shinnits. If you got it, nice. Here's today's what do you think? Would you rather explore the moon using an AI assistant that plans your route or make all the decisions yourself? Think about it and share your thoughts with someone. Big shout out to Wellington Middle School and Wellington Colorado.

6:09If you want your school on the show, leave us a review and tell us your school name. Time for your word of the day. Today's word is persevere. To continue doing something despite difficulty. Here it is in a sentence. This must persevere through years of failed experiments before discovering new cures for diseases. Try using persevere in a sentence today. Fact of the day. Ready for this one? There are more possible games of chess than atoms in the observable universe. You can tell your friends that one. Wow. OK, joke time. Why do fish live in saltwater? His pepper makes them sneeze. I'll be here all week. Today we covered NASA's new AI crater detector, self-healing food packaging from Japan, the moon forming in just five hours. Tiny sea creatures that flip their shell spirals together, how super cold alien computers

7:12might give them away, and feedback loops making climate change worse. And that's a wrap. See you next time. This is happening all around us every single day. And there's always something new to discover. Keep being curious and we'll see you tomorrow with more mind-blowing science. Thanks for joining us on Science Kids News Flash. This podcast was brought to you by Kids News Flash Universe. Be sure to check out our other podcasts, Kids Ask History, Space Kids News Flash, Animal Battle Royale, AI Kids News Flash, and the Daily Catcast. Experiment concluded. Curioffity preserved. Until our next discovery.