
Discoveries
10/9/2025 | 26m 46sVideo has Closed Captions
Amateur astronomers, an archaeological dig in Old Salem and how DNA can help with cancer treatments.
The important role amateur astronomers play in making new discoveries, archaeologists search for the remains of a colonial pottery kiln in Old Salem and researchers at UNC-Chapel Hill utilize patients’ DNA to customize cancer treatments. Plus, botanists search forests for the world’s largest longleaf pine.
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SCI NC is a local public television program presented by PBS NC
Sci NC is supported by a generous bequest gift from Dan Carrigan and the Gaia Earth-Balance Endowment through the Gaston Community Foundation.

Discoveries
10/9/2025 | 26m 46sVideo has Closed Captions
The important role amateur astronomers play in making new discoveries, archaeologists search for the remains of a colonial pottery kiln in Old Salem and researchers at UNC-Chapel Hill utilize patients’ DNA to customize cancer treatments. Plus, botanists search forests for the world’s largest longleaf pine.
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorshipHi there, I'm Frank Graff.
How amateur astronomers help uncover the mysteries of the universe.
Archaeologists search for the industry that helped a community survive, and we go searching for the largest longleaf pine.
We're making new discoveries, next on Sci NC.
- Quality public television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you, who invite you to join them in supporting PBSNC.
- Sci NC is supported by a generous request gift from Dan Kerrigan and the Gaia Earth Balance Endowment through the Gaston Community Foundation.
♪ - Hi again and welcome to Sci NC.
The big projects in astronomy get all the attention.
Think the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope.
And while the discoveries made with those instruments are, well, out of this world, producer Evan Howell shows us how amateur astronomers help open up the cosmos as well.
- For thousands of years, humanity has been trying to make sense of their place in the universe.
- No way.
- It's like we're Galileo again.
- They call themselves amateur astronomers.
They're a collection of volunteer hobbyists who spend their time looking for celestial objects in the night sky.
- This telescope is a 10-inch Newtonian-style telescope.
And the mirror gathers the light from whatever we're looking at.
It's gonna be Saturn tonight, maybe, or a galaxy.
- And they come with gear many of us with just binoculars would envy.
One of their favorite things to do is host star parties.
- Seeing it in, like, 3-D. - To give the public a chance to see up close, the sky as it is, and learn a bit about how it all fits together.
- Comets fascinated me at an early age.
And when Halley's Comet came around in the '80s, I really got the bug then and started trying to photograph things in the sky.
- Just looking at all the treasures that are up in the sky.
You got galaxies and nebulas, and, yeah, you can look at 'em in a book, but it's a lot more gratifying to look at it personally.
As people have said, "Well, why do you take pictures of galaxies and nebulas?"
Yeah, it's fine that, you know, you can look into a book, but they're so much better when they're your pictures.
They're things that you looked at, and then you present to your friends and family to show 'em what's up there.
- I cannot see Jupiter 'cause I see Saturn.
- So as the star party gets going, it's time to ask, just how important are these amateur astronomers to the study of the cosmos?
- We depend critically on amateurs.
- Since only about one-eighth of the night sky has actually been mapped, scientists say these so-called amateurs play a crucial role in discovery.
By the numbers, amateurs have discovered hundreds of comets in the night sky, including the famous Hale-Bopp in 1995.
They're also credited for discovering between 20 and 30 exoplanets over the years, highlighting their role in modern astrophysics.
- I want the simplest telescope possible.
- Bran Fortner is an expert in looking back in time... - One, two, three, four, five.
- How humankind first began how to decipher our place in the stars.
- They've got this humongous telescope.
- So let's rewind a bit, around 2,000 years to these ancient observers.
[dramatic music] - So the Babylonians were superb with mathematics, and they were superb with figuring out the positions and the motions of the sun and the moon, and especially the planets, which had a very complex motion.
They were able to predict lunar eclipses.
They were able to show that the Earth's spin axis precesses.
They were just geniuses.
But their interest was not modern.
Their interest was prediction.
They really could care less what the cosmos really was.
- So these ancient observers did just that--observed.
But their predictions help with things like harvest and crop schedules.
- Every culture has stories about the night sky.
That's where the gods are.
These are the shapes of the gods, and they tell stories about that.
And then let's skip forward 1,500 years.
[ethereal music] - But there was still very little interest in what the universe really was.
- And that really didn't happen until Galileo.
[ethereal music] He was the first one to connect evidence, observations, with the newly created telescope with potential theories of the cosmos, that the planets are really like this.
The sun is really like this.
- Galileo worked in a period where everyone knew that Copernicus had theorized that the sun was at the center of the solar system and planets orbited around it.
It was called the heliocentric theory.
But in a twist, Copernicus said he didn't actually believe his own theory at the time, mostly because he didn't want to irritate the Catholic Church, which held that at that time, all things revolved around the Earth.
- He thought that he was making mathematical tricks to make the calculations easier.
And again, what you see is, until Galileo, there was this split between doing calculations and what is the universe really.
And Copernicus was one who just wanted to make calculations easier.
Copernicus did not believe in the Copernican theory.
- The theory until now was that planets orbited in circles.
Galileo and others, including Kepler and Tycho Brahe, liked the theory, but mathematically, it didn't work very well.
[upbeat music] It wasn't until the late 17th century that things changed.
His name was Isaac Newton.
Newton introduced a unifying theory of gravity, but how did he do it?
He invented calculus, and it showed that all objects attract each other and that the force depended on mass.
- And that single equation explained everything.
And so when we reach Isaac Newton, what we have is, for the first time, we understand what the universe is.
The universe doesn't really consist of things.
It consists of forces that are quantified by equations.
The universe is mathematical at a fundamental level.
This was an incredible philosophical change.
- You look into Pluto, and you can never tell which one's Pluto and which one's a star.
- So are these guys amateurs or philosophers?
Forger says amateurs pick up the slack from professionals and organizations that simply don't have the resources or time to see it all.
- The amateurs know how to operate smaller telescopes.
Amateurs around me, they're looking at the night sky all the time.
They find stuff that we don't.
Our knowledge of our ignorance has exploded in the last 25 years.
It's exploded.
The sky is big, and the sky is ever-changing, and we need as many eyes as possible out there.
- Want more "Sci NC"?
You can find these stories and more on our YouTube channel.
Like and subscribe.
So just what are those amateur astronomers detecting?
Well, you could say starlight, but what is starlight?
Time for a quick refresher on just what light is made of.
- Consider a rainbow.
Although it may seem magical, what you're really seeing is an incredibly accurate visual representation of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Each of those colors your eyes detect are an example of different wavelengths and different frequencies of energy being transferred from the sun, through the vacuum of space, refracting through the particles in the atmosphere, entering your eye, and being processed by your brain.
And incredibly, the light we see is only a tiny fraction of the electromagnetic energy traveling all around and even through us.
Humans can only detect wavelengths between 700 nanometers and 400 nanometers with our naked eyes.
These wavelengths are what we call visible light.
All other wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation are invisible to us.
We can't see it, even though it's there.
So although a rainbow may seem magical, the two little energy detectors in your head deserve some credit too.
- A rainbow is magical.
Back down to Earth now.
North Carolina potters are known for their creations that are both beautiful and practical.
Archaeologists in Old Salem hope to learn more about a potter's kiln that saved an art form and a community.
[thunder rumbles] [piano music] - Oh, yeah, we got it.
- There we go, yeah.
- Ooh!
- Nice.
- I can't help but to think, "Who made this?
What's going on?"
It's a time machine to the past.
You get to see, like, what they were thinking, what they were doing, and having that, holding that piece of pottery in your hands, it's like, "Wow, I want to know, like, who held this last?
How long has this been in the ground?"
- And that interest has brought archaeologist Geoffrey Hughes and his class from UNC Greensboro to Lot 38 on Main Street in Old Salem.
- What drew me to the Moravians is the fact that we have such a unique settlement in this part of North Carolina.
It's this religious community, a utopian community, and also looking at the relationship between religion and economics and technology.
- Oh, look at that.
- It's a nice little piece of--ooh.
- Isn't that pretty?
- I think the whole thing's elegant.
- The group is searching for answers to a mystery dating back to 1793.
It surrounds a small experimental kiln.
The pottery produced in the kiln helped save a community.
And the records say it was an 8-foot by 8-foot kiln, and the reasoning for that was to produce new types of pottery.
Pottery was an important industry, but the Moravians' pottery business was slipping.
New types of pottery made in other communities in the new nation were catching on.
In order to remain competitive with those potters, the Moravians decide that the best way to do that is to expand their selection of offerings so that they could not only provide the Moravian communities with pottery, but they could also supply their non-Moravian neighbors.
But here's the irony.
As important as it was, not much is known about that experimental kiln that fired up the pottery industry and possibly saved the community.
But we don't know exactly which lot it was built on, where it was located, and we also don't know the design of this experimental kiln based on the documents.
So that's where the archaeology comes in.
We want to try to understand, you're making an experimental kiln.
What kinds of new kiln designs are you experimenting with?
And then finally, what is the full range of pottery that's being made in this new kiln?
So you're looking for not only where it was, but how it was located and everything.
Yes, yeah, because it also tells us something about how the people in Salem, how they managed their space over time, and the kinds of decisions that they made in terms of spatial layout and how that changed based on the community's needs and how those needs changed over time.
In the documentary record, you get, like, the official version of events.
You get it from a particular, from the writer's perspective.
What you don't get are the ad hoc decisions that are made on a day-to-day basis.
I'll just excavate around it and see what comes up.
And that's what archaeology is really good at revealing, the kinds of decisions that people make on the ground and how they actually go about putting their plans into action.
And preliminary findings indicate the class was looking in the right place.
It's just really cool to be able to find the past, like what we've used in the past in artifacts.
Of course, archaeology is the study of humans through artifacts.
A brick walkway and what appears to be the top corner of a brick structure were uncovered.
The findings were at the right location and the right depth under the soil.
More work is needed to confirm the discovery was indeed the experimental pottery.
But the dig filled in a bit more of Old Salem's history.
When you look at artifact collections in museums, you find the things that people saved.
And most of the time, the things that people saved were the good things, the special things, the things that had some kind of meaning to them at the time.
But we also want to know about the things that maybe were failures, the things that weren't the way they were supposed to be, because that can tell us a little bit more about what they were making and how they were making it.
- While archaeologists piece together how the experimental pottery was made, history shows the experiment was a success.
In 1795, he actually goes to the church and shows them two examples of stoneware that he has successfully made.
And at that point, the church says, "This is a good investment.
"Now you have permission to build a kiln that is twice the size "and take what you've learned from this experimental kiln "and incorporate it into the pottery."
- I love the discovery process, though, because it's like, it's that feeling when you find something, it's like, that's the whole reason we're out here.
That's the whole reason why I have been pursuing what I've been pursuing for the last four years and studying what I've been studying.
And every time we find something, it gives us a little more insight into what we could be finding and what we're looking for.
Follow us on Instagram for beautiful images of North Carolina and cool science facts.
You can discover a lot of things simply walking through a forest, which is why we're going to join a scientist and a journalist on several hikes during this season of Sci NC.
So put on your hiking boots as they search for the largest longleaf pine.
[birds chirping] - How intense is this hike going to be?
- There's a little bit of topography here, but we don't need crampons and all of the technical equipment to go explore.
- When you say topography, you mean slightly hilly.
- Yes, and that is what begets the name of this area, Sandhills.
- This looks nothing like a traditional forest.
Tall, skinny pine trees dot sandy, gentle slopes with a few scrubby bushes spread throughout.
Then Andy points out the wiregrass.
- One of the most important plants in this community is the wiregrass.
And wiregrass serves as a fuel for naturally occurring wildfire.
This ecosystem requires fire.
So you see all these shrubs that are growing up.
If left to their own, this will grow into a dense thicket.
- If that's fuel for the fire, then why doesn't it just completely wipe out this whole longleaf pine savanna?
Why doesn't it harm the trees?
- Over time, the longleaf pine has adapted to living in this open system using a couple of strategies.
One, they develop a thick bark, and that acts as insulation against the heat of a low fire that sweeps through here every couple few years.
- What about the animals?
- When a fire comes through here, lots of insects and spiders are taken out.
The fleet-footed animals, like lizards, they can get out of the way.
There are things like toads and turtles, box turtles.
If they get a whiff of the smoke, they may actually start hunkering down under the leaf litter.
The life history of the longleaf is actually pretty complex.
Each pine cone contains hundreds of seeds.
The seed drops out of the pine cone, and if it hits on top of a leaf, it may just dry out and die.
But if it hits mineral soil, then it can germinate.
- Which is why the fire is so important, because it clears away the leaf.
- Exactly.
It clears off the leaf litter, exposing mineral sandy soil, and then the seed drops onto that mineral soil soon after a fire and germinates and spends the next several months to a year drilling a taproot.
- When a longleaf pine tree is in the earliest growth stages, all you see are a few clusters of needles.
To the uninitiated eye, it looks a lot like the wiregrass that grows all around it, which serves as fuel for these beneficial fires that help the longleaf pine trees thrive.
- So it drills a taproot into the ground, and in the first months of its life, that taproot may be 12 to 24 inches deep.
It grows very quickly.
That's where it's putting its energy, in developing that taproot, because again, this is growing in sandy soil, well-drained, typically pretty dry.
- How is this biodiverse?
I see wiregrass, I see longleaf pine trees.
I think I've heard that the red-cockaded woodpecker makes its home in the longleaf pine, but other than that... - For example, right here.
When you look up about 30 feet, you can just make out on that branch of the tree behind this tree, a red-headed woodpecker.
And there's downy, sap sucker, hairy woodpecker, red-bellied, red-headed, pileated, and the red-cockaded.
- Seven different types of just woodpeckers that Andy has named are likely to make their homes in this very ecosystem.
And as we're about to see, there is much more biodiversity within these sandhills that simply didn't evolve to stand out.
[ Gasps ] - Oh, my.
Good spot, Rachel.
-What is it?
-An eastern fence lizard.
Hello.
How cool is that?
They don't get more camouflaged than that.
- The eastern fence lizard feeds primarily on insects and spiders.
In turn, the lizards draw small birds of prey-- kestrels, sharp-shinned hawks to the area-- to feed on them.
- Oh, my gosh.
Holy cow.
Well, here's a treat.
- This is one of the largest longleaf pine trees in the world.
It's also a former state champion tree, once celebrated as the largest in North Carolina.
It's since been dethroned and is now likely in the number-two spot.
- Have you ever seen a tree this large, a longleaf pine this large?
- No, no.
- Although park officials say this tree is 81 feet tall, that's not extraordinary by longleaf standards.
Its circumference is what makes it a standout, almost 10 feet around at chest height.
- Imagine, before this forest was cleared, this was what covered the entire area we're standing in were trees this big and maybe even a little bit bigger.
And from Virginia, North Carolina, to East Texas, this is what the American Southeast was covered with.
This tree has been standing here hundreds of years.
- How deep do you think its taproot goes?
- Easily 12 to 20 feet deep.
- Wow.
- Through sand.
So you're going, "This is very sandy soil here."
So it's drilled that taproot that deep.
It's a huge carrot of a taproot, holding tons of tree up in the air.
- How much more of a lifespan does it have?
- Maybe 100 years.
But that's a wild guess.
- This one will be here probably long after we're gone.
- Oh, without a doubt.
- That's something to think about.
- You can watch more Sci NC episodes anytime on our website or through the PBS streaming app.
Now to the search for the ultimate discovery, a cure for cancer customized for the patient.
Scientists at the UNC Landenberger Comprehensive Cancer Center are working on a cutting-edge treatment that reprograms a patient's own immune cells to fight cancer.
[music] - It seems like fiction science, but it's not.
Basically, we take a patient with cancer, take the blood from this patient, isolate these cells from the blood, and then we genetically modify these cells in a Petri dish, expand these cells in the GMP facility, check that these cells are what they're supposed to be, and then re-infuse them back in the patient when the patient is ready to receive them.
I'm Gianpietro Dotti.
I am an MD, and I am a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at UNC.
- I study cancer because I think that this is one of the unfortunate diseases that still needs to be cured.
And, you know, it affects basically everybody.
My name is Barbara Savoldo.
I'm a professor in the Department of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology at the University of North Carolina.
Here's how CAR T-cell therapy works.
Antibody binds to foreign pathogens like bacteria and viruses and infected cells and helps neutralize them through the immune system.
Through different mechanisms, T-cells eliminate cells infected with these pathogens.
CAR T-cell therapy combines both of these processes with genetic engineering.
Using blood samples, we can isolate a patient's T-cell and reprogram them to express an antibody so that they can attack a specific patient's cancer.
Then we create millions of them to make a treatment that gets infused into a patient back at the hospital.
And this entire process can be done here at UNC.
- The GMP facility is an environment very similar to where you get surgery.
So the environment needs to be with a very low possibility to contaminate the cells that you are expanding.
So you need to dress up when you go in.
You have a mask.
All the air in the facility is controlled and purified.
And every activity that you do on that facility is basically recorded, so we know exactly which reagents you use.
Everything has been barcoded.
So we want to be able to track back if something goes wrong.
We want to know exactly what happened and why.
- Any cancer basically can be now targeted with CAR T-cell therapy.
So leukemia, lymphoma, myeloma.
This is where we've reached the most successes and, you know, the highest cure rate.
Obviously, these are not the only cancer.
We have a lot of other types of cancer, like lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, brain tumors.
And so this is where I think the potential of CAR T-cell therapy would make the most effect.
- We can grow whatever cells we like.
We may be able to produce different type of vectors that we are not currently using for our purposes.
We could be able to make other reagents, like antibodies.
So I would like to see that facility to be used by multiple investigators and the expertise that we have.
So we just need more people that want to invest in something challenging, which is cell therapy in general and not only CAR T-cell therapy.
- That's it for Sci NC for this week.
If you want more Sci NC, be sure to follow us online.
I'm Frank Graff.
Thanks for watching.
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