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b'Building The World\\u2019s Largest Animal Crossing Outside of LA\\nThere\\u2019s a spot on Highway 101 in Agoura Hills, it\\u2019s pretty inconspicuous. There\\u2019s brown and green rolling hills on either side of the highway. Homes are sprinkled here and there. And then a small metal gate that leads off on a hiking trail. You probably wouldn\\u2019t know it, but soon this spot will be the location of the world\\u2019s largest animal crossing.\\nThis crossing will reconnect habitats that have been cut off from each other for three quarters of a century and it\\u2019ll do it over a highway that is constantly buzzing with cars \\u2014 300,000 pass by this spot every single day.\\nIn this piece we\\u2019re going on a geography voyage \\u2014 from the north side of the highway to the south, and up the hills, above the highway, to get the real view.\\nWe\\u2019ll start here \\u2014 there\\u2019s a big open space on the northern side of the highway. It\\u2019s at the entrance to Liberty Canyon and where I meet Beth Pratt.\\nTo continue reading, go to sciencefriday.com.\\n\\n\\xa0\\nOver 5,000 Exoplanets Have Now Been Discovered\\nIn March, the NASA Exoplanet Archive logged the 5,000th confirmed planet outside of our solar system. This marks a huge advance since the first exoplanet discovery in 1992, when astronomers Aleksander Wolszczan and Dale Frail announced the discovery of two planets orbiting the pulsar PSR 1257+12. Now, the Archive contains confirmed sightings of planets in a wide range of shapes and sizes\\u2014from \\u201chot Jupiters\\u201d to \\u201csuper Earths\\u201d\\u2014but they still haven\\u2019t found any solar systems just like our own. In many cases, all astronomers know about these distant planets is their size and how far away from their stars they orbit.\\nThe TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) mission currently in orbit may eventually add ten thousand more candidates to the lists of possible planets. The Nancy Grace Roman Space telescope and ESA\\u2019s ARIEL mission, both planned for launch later this decade, could add thousands more. And the James Webb Space Telescope, currently undergoing commissioning, will attempt to characterize the atmospheres of some of the planets astronomers have already discovered.\\nAstronomer Jessie Christiansen, the NASA Exoplanet Archive Project science lead, joins John Dankosky to talk about what we know about planets around distant suns, and how researchers are working to learn more about these far-off worlds.\\n\\n\\xa0\\nScientists Release The First Fully Complete Human Genome\\nTwo decades ago, scientists announced they had sequenced the human genome. What you might not know is that there were gaps in that original sequence\\u2014about 8% was completely blank.\\nNow, after a years-long global collaboration, scientists have finally released the first fully complete assembly of the human genome. Researchers believe these missing pieces might be the key to understanding how DNA varies between people.\\nSix scientific papers on the topic were published in a special edition of the academic journal Science.\\nIra talks with Karen Miga and Adam Phillippy, co-founders of the Telomere to Telomere Consortium, an international effort that led to the assembly of this new fully complete human genome.\\n\\n\\xa0\\nTranscripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on\\xa0sciencefriday.com.'