Science Stories with Joe Johnson

From cutting-edge space observatories and mysterious radio signals, to The blood-curdling Permian monsters that ruled the Earth before dinosaurs, our resident science guy Joe Johnson takes us on a whirlwind tour through time and space—literally.

Life Before the Dinosaurs: Welcome to the Permian
Long before dinosaurs roamed the Earth, the Permian Period ruled. Spanning from roughly 299 to 251 million years ago, the Permian marked the end of the Paleozoic era—a time of extreme climates, bizarre beasts, and, ultimately, the largest mass extinction in Earth’s history.

The supercontinent Pangea dominated the globe during the Permian. While its coastal areas boasted lakes and swamps teeming with early plant life, the interior was an arid desert. The planet’s atmosphere held about 30% oxygen—higher than today’s 21%—fueled by the oxygen-rich Carboniferous forests that preceded it.

Flowering plants had yet to evolve; instead, the landscape was dominated by ferns, horsetails, and early gymnosperms like pine trees and ginkgos. The animal kingdom, meanwhile, was home to creatures that seem plucked from science fiction: dragonflies the size of ducks and apex predators with circular saw-like jaws.

Among the dominant land species were the synapsids, a group of four-legged vertebrates that eventually evolved into mammals. The most famous synapsid, Dimetrodon, sported a large sail on its back—possibly used for courtship, cooling, or dominance displays. At around 10 to 12 feet long, it was a ferocious predator equipped with a “mouthful of steak knives.”

The Permian’s reign ended with a catastrophic volcanic event in present-day Siberia, releasing massive amounts of carbon dioxide. Scientists believe this caused a global temperature increase of about 10°C and triggered the extinction of 95% of marine life and 70% of land species.

A New Eye on the Universe: Vera C. Rubin Observatory Delivers Stunning First Images
Shifting from ancient Earth to the edge of the universe, Johnson discussed the groundbreaking release of the first high-resolution images from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile’s Andes Mountains. Sitting at 9,000 feet above sea level, the observatory houses the world’s most powerful digital camera—3,200 megapixels and the size of a small car—built by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Every three days, this technological marvel will scan the entire southern sky, capturing time-lapse images in stunning detail. Scientists hope to use artificial intelligence to analyze changes in space over time, detecting everything from supernovas and variable stars to elusive near-Earth objects.

“This telescope will generate more data in a single year than all previous optical astronomy combined,” Johnson said. An estimated five petabytes—5,000 terabytes—of data will be processed annually, with a dedicated facility in Scotland tasked with storage and analysis.

Among its ambitious goals, the observatory aims to:

Map the solar system (discovering 2,000 previously unknown asteroids in just 10 hours),

Detect potential planets like the theorized “Planet Nine,”

Understand the formation of the Milky Way,

And probe the mystery of dark matter, a term coined in part thanks to the observatory’s namesake, astronomer Vera Rubin. Her work observing the unexpected rotational speeds of galaxies helped establish the presence of unseen mass now known as dark matter.

Fast Radio Burst? Try a Spark from a 1960s Satellite
In a surprise twist, a mysterious radio signal detected on June 13, 2024, turned out not to be a deep-space event—but rather a local one. The Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope picked up a powerful burst lasting just 30 nanoseconds. At first, astronomers suspected a fast radio burst (FRB), a phenomenon usually traced to distant galaxies or neutron stars.

However, the signal’s proximity—only 4,500 km from Earth—led to a startling discovery: it came from Relay 2, a long-defunct communications satellite launched in 1964 and inactive since 1967.

Scientists now believe the burst may have resulted from either a micrometeoroid collision or a massive electrostatic discharge—a kind of space-based static shock. As Johnson explained, “These old satellites can accumulate charge while passing through the Earth’s magnetic field. Sometimes, it’s enough to spark a burst of radio energy.”

This rare occurrence has prompted astronomers to reconsider how often space junk might mimic cosmic phenomena.

Image Credit: Emmanuel Lafont/ BBC