August 7, 2025 • 39 mins
Daniel and Kelly answer questions about snowflake symmetry, flamingo burgers, and iodine protection.
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Speaker 1 (00:14):
Snowflakes are hexagons, and each one is unique. Their amazing
symmetry just adds to their mystique.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
I've heard flamingos are pink because of their diet. What
if I ate a flamingo? Would I turn pink?
Speaker 1 (00:27):
If I tried it, i'dne injections protect from radiation. I
saw it on TV, but I don't understand the mechanism.
How exactly can that be?
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Whatever questions keep you up at night, Daniel and Kelly's
answers will make it right. Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's
Extraordinary Universe. Hello. I'm Kelly Winer Smith. I study parasites
(01:01):
and space and I am so excited about our flamingo
question today.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor
at UC Irvine, and I've never eaten a flamingo.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
I haven't either, as we'll see later in the show,
we probably ought not to. But so my question for
you today, Daniel. So we are recording the day before
Google Calendars tells me that it's your birthday.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
How does Google know that?
Speaker 2 (01:25):
I'm actually not sure. I must have put it in
at some point in the past, because you know, I've
been co hosting with you for a while now, But
so how do you celebrate birthdays?
Speaker 1 (01:36):
So, yeah, I'm turning fifty tomorrow, which is kind of
a big milestone. But I actually don't really celebrate my birthday.
I don't feel like it's that special a day, and
I'm not really that intwo birthdays and sort of like
being on the spot that way. I sort of prefer
to fade into the background. And so to counteract that,
I've actually been rounding up my age to fifty for
a few years now, are you serious, which Katina is
(01:57):
not very excited about. Yeah, especially because when she turned
forty six, I welcomed her into the round up to
fifty club and she was like, no, thank you.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
You can stay there alone. Daniel. Wow, I'll have to
remember that strategy. I also may fade into the background
birthday person, but I hadn't thought about the rounding up strategy.
And I think I'm so I always forget how old
I am. But I'm forty three, okay, is that right? No,
(02:26):
my birthday's in October and it's twenty twenty. I'll be
forty three in October, so I'm forty two. So it's
not quite time for me to round up yet, but
I will. I'll get there soon.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Well, Katrina tells me it's ridiculous to round up, but
I say, hey, look, it's arbitrary to round up to
the year. People aren't super precise about how old they are.
When you ask them. They don't say I'm forty two
years and seven months and three days. They round up
to the year, right, So I think, hey, I just
round up to the decade. You know, what's the big deal?
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Sure, yeah, No, Physicists are always you know, making broad
assumptions about things and rounding, and so you might as well.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Yeah, Pie is three and Daniel's fifty, what's the big deal?
Speaker 2 (03:01):
That's right there? You go, Well, I hope you have
an amazing decade. Arbitrary though that milestone may be to you.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
All right, Well, we're not here to talk about Daniel's birthday.
We're here to answer your questions about the nature of
the universe. How does it all work, how does it
fit together? How can we make it click together in
your mind? And so, as usual, we invite people to
send us their questions right to us to questions at
Danielankelly dot org. We write back to everybody with a response,
we either give you the answer, or make a joke,
(03:29):
or say we don't know, here's something to read.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
That's right. Lately, often I've been giving a reading suggestions,
or if we don't know, we say we'll find out.
And sometimes it becomes a question on a listener Questions episode.
And today we have a lot of examples of that.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
That's right, So let's jump right in. Our first question
comes from Zach in Minnesota. Zach is a question about
why snowflakes are all different.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
Hey, they're extraordinaries. It's winter here in Minnesota and we
just got a ton of snow. My dad took a
really great picture of a beautifully symmetrical snowflake. I understand
why snowflakes tend to form hexagonally. I think because of
the crystallization pattern of water. But I don't understand why
(04:13):
snowflakes so often come out looking so perfectly symmetrical. Why
should they form exactly the same intricate crystallization on one
arm as opposed to the other arm. I know this
isn't a universal thing. Some snowflakes aren't symmetrical, but so
many are. It just seems unlikely. Is this just because
there are so many snowflakes or is there something deeper
(04:36):
going on? Look forward to hearing your thoughts.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Now, Daniel. If you and I were really good at this,
we would have saved this for a Christmas episode, but
instead we're going to release it in the middle of
the summer.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
That's when people want snow, right, That's when they're missing it.
You know, in the middle of winter people are like, Ugh,
don't talk to me about snow. I'm fed up with it.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Well, I guess it depends on where you are on
this planet. Right it's winter somewhere. So okay, this is
going to be a really good episode for the Australians
if they're into snow.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Or if you're sweltering in Texas this summer. Listen to
this frosty episode about snowflakes.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Amazing. All right, So, Daniel, I have to admit that
I don't know why each snowflake has a unique shape.
Can we start there before we get to why they're symmetrical?
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Yeah? I think that is the right direction to start from.
This is a really cool question because I think Zach
is thinking about how the snowflakes form, and he's wondering like,
how can one arm form the same pattern as the
arm on the other side. Is there some global for
us controlling it? And so you're right, we need to
think about the symmetry and the diversity of these objects.
And snowflakes are really fascinating. And as it turns out,
(05:44):
the cutting edge of human understanding of snowflakes doesn't have
a complete answer to this question. Snowflakes remain mysterious. Yes,
that's right, fascinating.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
There's not enough money in snowflakes, man.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
But if you go out into a snowstorm and you
put out your hand and you see snowflakes land on
your palm, and you can look at them briefly, just
before they melt, and you notice they are not all
the same. There's an enormous variety of snowflakes form this
pattern and that pattern and the other pattern. And you know,
people have known this for a long long time. This
is famous quote from Thereaux who says, how full of
the creative genius is the air in which these are generated?
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Beautiful? But the answer is science science.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
But you know he was presient about this even though
he didn't understand it. The answer is something about the
chemistry of air, which we'll get to.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
I mean, you said a word I don't like, but
let's let's move on anywhere.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
So your question was about the symmetry, so let's start
with that, like why do snowflakes form this white, weird
six prong pattern anyway, And that does come down to
chemistry how the water molecules themselves bond to form the
nexus of the crystal at the core. But let's back
up and start with like, how does snow form, where
does it come from? It comes from water freezing in clouds.
(06:59):
And the things I understand about water is we're all
familiar with ice and then liquid water and of course
water vapor, steam, right, But water has complicated chemistry depending
on the pressure. So down to the surface and normal
atmosphere pressure, water has those three phases. But if you
go up into the upper atmosphere or out into space,
for example, where pressure is very very low, there is
(07:20):
no liquid water. There's only solid in gas. And so
if you have solid water and you heat it up,
you don't get liquid water. Out in space, you get vapor.
It goes directly from solid to gas. So there aren't
three phases everywhere you can look up this phase diagram
of water to learn more and that's going to turn
out to be key. So what happens is you have
(07:40):
the atmosphere and there's warm moist air that gets pushed
upward when it hits the front, and that water condenses
into droplets. So the air is also filled with like
tiny dust particles, and each of those like can nucleate
a tiny little droplet, and that's what a cloud is.
Cloud is all these water droplets that have been nucleated
as warm moist air has gone up and the water
sort of comes out of the solution.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Of the air and nucleated just means it's like surrounding
the piece to dust.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
Mm hmm okay, yeah. Like you might ask why do
you get a water droplet here and not one centimeter
or one micron over? Like why do they form where
they form and not somewhere else? The answer is dust.
It's sort of like the way in the early universe
we had like slight over densities in the plasma and
that's what gravity grabbed onto to nucleate the formation of
what turned into galaxies and stuff, Like why did galaxies
(08:27):
form here and there? There has to be a reason
it starts, and in the case of water droplets, it's
tiny particles of dust.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
I heard it was also tiny bacteria that are in
the atmosphere, Is that true? Or their bacteria around there
forming snowflakes.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
There are bacteria out there. And dust is a very
broad term. It includes lots of tiny stuff, you know,
the way like sand does. And if you zoom in
on this amazing variety of stuff in the atmosphere, we
just call it dust. We can have a whole another
episode about it, like what is dust?
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Sure that sounds fascinating.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Anyway, you put all these together, you have a cloud.
A cloud is like a million tons of water hanging
there in the air, sort of amazing. So now temperatures
drop right, and some of those droplets freeze, some of
them evaporate become a vapor, but some of them freeze
and you get a little crystal. And so here's where
the chemistry comes in. You have this water molecule, which
is like an oxygen and two hydrogens, and the two
(09:22):
hydrogens come off at an angle, right, It's not like
a line where you have hydrogen oxygen hydrogen. If you
seem like a little drawing of water molecule you know,
the hydrogen, it's like pulled close together. The angle between
them is like one hundred and four degrees or something,
and so when these things come together to make a crystal,
they click together sort of like lego bricks. Right, there's
bonds between them, and that makes a little hexagon. So
(09:44):
you link up six water molecules. The oxygens are like
the vertices on a hexagon, and then the bond between
the oxygen and one hydrogen is like the edge of
that hexagon, and then there are six hydrogen molecules sort
of sticking out. But it makes this ring, this hexagonal ring,
and then you just keep adding water molecules and it
builds out and out and out, and you get a
hexagonal crystal.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Okay, so why do you get six in the center?
Is that just available binding sites?
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (10:10):
I think it's because chemistry.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Man, you get six because the angles. So imagine your
oxygen atom and has two hydrogens coming off and there's
one hundred degrees between them, which means is like two
hundred and sixty degrees on the other side, right, So
the other water molecule comes in with its hydrogen. It
comes around the back on that big open space and
it splits that in half, and that's what determines the angle.
(10:35):
So half of two sixty you get about one hundred
and thirty and that's the angle there that you build
up to make the hexagons.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Got it? Okay? I remember in organic chemistry there's a
reaction called a backside attack, and the biologists in that
class we could not get over that anyway.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
All right, moving on, all right, So initially you have
this tiny, tiny crystal. It's like microns wide. And by
the way, if you are out chopping and you see
something called hexagonal water, that's a scam. It's not better
for you. It's just pseudoscience, supplemental nonsense.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
I've never heard of that. What do they claim me?
Speaker 1 (11:08):
I don't know. I don't even want to give them
more airtime.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Okay, save your money people, exactly.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
All right. So what we're talking about so far is
just the core of the snowflake, right, it's this hexagonal crystal,
and that can require like a million of these droplets. Wow,
you have a tiny number of snowflakes compared to the
number of droplets. It really takes a lot of droplets
to make one snowflake.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
So why doesn't the snowflake just become infinite. Why did
at some point does it stop accumulating more waters.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Well, it has limited time in the cloud. So what
happens next is you have this seated crystal which blows
around inside the cloud, accumulating more and more, and then
eventually it gets so heavy that it drops, right, And
so it's a limited time in the cloud. Otherwise it
would form like a cloud sized crystal, which should be awesome,
and maybe that happens on some alien planet, but then.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
It falls on your head and that would be too much.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
So we're set up now to answer Zach's question. Right,
we start with his crystal, and we understand why it's
a hexagon, But then why does it form six identical arms,
each of which are the same on one crystal, but
different from all the other crystals? Right? And when I
was first reading about this, my hypothesis was maybe it's
some like impurity in the crystal, where like something has
(12:17):
happened at the core, which then determines how it grows outwards. Right,
you need something coordinating across the arms. But it turns
out it's not that at all. And we know that
because of amazing experiments done by a physicist Ukichiro Nakaya
in Hokkaido in Japan in the nineteen thirties. He was
really curious about snowflakes. He just like went for walks
(12:38):
and saw snowflakes, and he asked the same question, but
he wanted to figure it out. He did all these experiments,
so he replicated the conditions of a cloud in the lab,
and what he saw was that the formation of the
crystal beyond the initial seed depends extremely sensitively on the
temperature and on the density of water vapor. So, for example,
you can get these like weird long needles that form,
(13:00):
and you crank up the temperature a little bit and
you get thin plates, or you get dendrites, or you
get another formation. You crank it up another little bit
and you get back to needles or back to columns.
And so there's a lot of really complicated like chemistry
and solid sat phistics that's happening there where these crystals
are forming in certain patterns. Again super duper sensitive to
(13:21):
the density and the temperature.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Okay, I'm following you there, but I still feel like
there's a jump to make, yes to hit symmetry.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
So now start with you or quarter crystal, right, the
quarter crystal, some hexagon. Now it's going to blow through
the cloud. The cloud is not uniform in density and temperature.
There are regions of higher density, there are regions of
lower density. There are colder and moral regions. As that
snowflake blows through the cloud, its crystals grow depending on
the density and temperature it's experiencing moment to moment. So
(13:49):
like right now it grows in this certain pattern. Ooh,
then the density drops and now it's going to make needles. Oh,
now the density goes up. Ooh, now it's back to
making these flat things. And so that's what controls the
growth of each of the arms. And because all of
the arms experience the same unique path through the cloud,
which gives it a unique temperature and density history, that's
why every snowflake is different. If two snowflakes had exactly
(14:13):
the same trajectory through the cloud, you would expect them
to be exactly the same. And that's probably true, but
impossible to test, right, So we think the variety of
snowflakes comes from their individual experience through the temperature and
density fluctuations in the cloud which control their growth. And
that also explains why they're the same on individual snowflake
(14:34):
because on an individual snowflake, all the arms have the
same experience, the same history through the density and the temperature.
So it's really kind of an awesome like probe through
the cloud.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
That's amazing, yeah, and beautiful and I'm trying to pull
together like the Hallmark version, like we're all a result
of the unique paths that we take. Anyway, very cool.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
It's very cool, and it's sort of amazing and lucky,
and it's another example of how amazing complexity emerges in world.
You know, this could have been totally boring. It could
have been that snowflakes all just form hexagons and then
drop and they're all the same, and like, yeah, hexagons
are cool. But because they're so sensitive to density and temperature,
we get this incredible variety of beautiful forms. It amazes me.
(15:15):
It makes me wonder about that same philosophical question we've
talked about before, like why do we think that this
kind of stuff is beautiful? Are we programmed to do
it somehow? Is it because we evolved on this planet
or is it just something deep about being alive and
aware in the universe? Like do aliens find their ugly
planet beautiful.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Also well, it is now the peak heat and humid
period in Virginia, so I am looking forward to seeing
the snow. As you said, let's see if Zach feels
satisfied with this unique answer.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Hi, Daniel and Kelly, thank you for the beautiful answer
to my question about these beautiful crystals, especially since it
meant wading into a bit of chemistry to do so.
I too was surprised that the crystal shape was not
intrinsic to the nucleation dust, but rather a kind of
record of the snowflake experience as it drifts through its cloud.
It makes me wonder if there are other polar molecules
(16:06):
that could form snowflakes with other basic patterns instead of hexagons,
like squares or triangles, or if there would be some
molecules that would tend to make three D structures instead
of planer ones. Anyhow, on a personal note, my son
was born just a week ago, and you have me
smiling thinking about how he's going to gather experiences as
he grows to become something unique and beautiful as well.
(16:28):
Thanks again, guys.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
All Right, Daniel, this is quite possibly the most important
question we've ever answered on the show.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Solunny because it determines what you're gonna have for your
birthday dinner.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Maybe maybe, and also his biology, so that automatically puts
it in the top fifty percent. But let's enjoy this
amazing question from Bernard and Munich.
Speaker 4 (17:09):
Hi, Danielle and Kelly. This is Bernhardt from Munich in Germany.
I understand that flamingos are pink because of their diet,
but it's the pink color just in their feathers or
also in their flesh. And could I become pink if
I would start eating flamingos instead of my usual vegetarian food.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Love your show by incredible.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
How seriously do you think Bernard is considering abandoning his vegetarianism.
Do we have a weighty responsibility here?
Speaker 2 (17:36):
You know? So I was reading about the frequency at
which people drop vegetarianism, and it is pretty high. I
think it's something like sixty to seventy five percent of
the people who become vegetarians will not stay vegetarians. But
I really doubt that he's going to drop his vegetarianism
for flamingos, and not least of all because it would
(17:59):
be very hard for him to get his hands on
a flamingo.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Well, your husband is a dedicated vegetarian, isn't he.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
He is, Yeah, he's been a vegetarian for twenty years.
And I think the worst thing that I have done
to him during our relationship is I once left a
few pounds of ur ducan in his fringe when we
were dating, and I forgot it was there, and so
he found what is it a turkey inside of a
duck inside of a chicken.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
I think you have that backwards, but say, yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Sorry, chicken, it's that you are right anyway, in his refrigerator,
and he was pretty grossed out anyway, Sorry, honey.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Good thing there wasn't a flamingo in there as well.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
That's right, that's right. We did look up. Somebody had
managed to get like twenty four creatures inside of each
other and that was the max.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
But all right, well, let's get an answer to Bernard's question.
Tell us, okay, from the beginning, why are flamingos pink? Anyway?
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Right? All right? So there are actually six different species
of flamingos, and they are all rose colored. They get
their color through their diets, and so they eat algae.
They eat crustaceans, and these organisms make their own colors
called krotenoioids, so they have pigments, but they aren't necessarily pink.
So some organisms have ways of metabolizing carotenoids to get
(19:08):
them to be particular colors. And so the way that
the flamingos metabolize the carotenoids that they get from their
food turns them pink.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
So metabolized means does chemistry on them, does chemistry and
basically changes their color. So the things they eat are
not pink, but they eat this stuff and the stuff
has something in it and they do chemistry inside and
that makes them pink. Is that right?
Speaker 2 (19:29):
That's right? Yep. So they're filter feeders and so they're
eating lots and lots of tiny little things with carotenoids
that they turn pink.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
And is it good for the flamingos to be pink?
Do they care? Is it helpful in some way? Or
are just like a weird oddity in our universe.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
There's some debates over why they're pink, but it does
seem that being pink is an indicator of how healthy
you are, so because they get the pink from their diet,
If you are super extra pink. That is a great
way of showing people.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
That's like a Flamingo Valentine card to my extra super pinker.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
That's right, something like that. Yeah, and so if you
are like a super pink dude, then you are showing
that you've got the best territory with the best food
and you're able to get loads of food. So you'd
probably be able to get loads of food for your offspring,
and so it's sort of an indicator of quality that
is honest, because it's showing you essentially that they've been
able to get a lot of food. So anyway, it's
(20:22):
a signal for them to communicate with other Flamingos.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
And if you're a Flamingo listening to this podcast, you
are now also getting dating advice.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
That's right. There you go. And the Flamingos also do
pretty cool dances and so like buy good outfits and
learn to dance. You're welcome. But the babies are actually
not pink when they're born.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
Okay, Is that because they haven't eaten this stuff yet?
Speaker 2 (20:43):
That's exactly right. Yeah, they are dull colors, and then
eventually they'll become pink when they get it from their diet.
I didn't know any of this. I learned it from
doing a little bit of research. But what I really
did for this question was call in an old friend
of mine who is an expert. So I called my friend, well,
and by call I mean I contacted on Facebook Messenger
my friend Caitlin Kite, who in twenty fifteen released a
(21:05):
book called Flamingos about flamingos ooh shocker. And I shared
the question with her and she was sort of a
pulled like.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
At the idea of eating baby flamingos.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
You know, I think you've made Bernard out to be
a little bit worse than that. He didn't say he
was gonna eat baby flamingos in particular, and they're not pink,
so you know that wouldn't make sense, all.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Right, Yeah, okay, eat the old grampa flamingos, Bernard.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Yeah, that's right, that's right. No, the robust flamingos with
good territories.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Oh, yes, exactly.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Anyway, so she she said, you know what a question,
and she her understanding was that carotenoids can permeate lots
of stuff. For example, the egg yolks are richly colored
and they have reddish what's called crop milk, and so
this is essentially birds often feed their babies by eating
food and then throwing it up into the baby's mouth,
and they call that milk.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
Oh man I, Well, hey, look, if they're gonna make
milk out of oats and almonds and call that stuff milk,
then hey, why not?
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Yes, why not? And so she noted that part of
how they get that coloration isn't just by actually having
it in their feathers, but they extract the carotenoids, they
process the crotenoids, and then they have a gland and
they can extract this like oil from the gland and
then rub it on their feathers and it makes their
feathers even pinker. And so her hypothesis is that the
(22:27):
pink is only skin deep, and so you wouldn't end
up with pink muscles. So Bernard couldn't turn pink by
eating the pink muscles. But when she was researching flamingos
her book, she reached out to Paul Rose, who is
now a colleague of hers at the University of Exeter.
Paul works on flamingos and has dissected some. So she
(22:47):
was like, you know what, let's connect you to another expert.
So this next trip in the journey brought me to Paul.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
Who maybe has actually seen a flamingo filet.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Who has in fact filayed flamingos. So here is Paul's answer.
All of the flamingo's soft tissues, integument, and feathers are
stained by carotenoids from their diets. Okay, so right there
we know they are pink.
Speaker 5 (23:10):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
The base carotenoid ingested by the flamingo from crustaceans, algae
or cyanobacteria is metabolized within their liver to form a
range of pigments that create pink, orange, red, yellow, and
purple hues. Wow, the whole rainbow, the whole rainbow. As
a flamingo ages, you see a saturation of their skin, fat,
and integument with carotenoids, so the internal organs of the
(23:33):
bird can look quite bright. Okay, so Caitlin was right
that they can wipe this pink oil to make them
more pink. But they are all pink on the inside,
which is maybe good news for Bernard.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
But wait, now we're leaning towards eating the flamingo meat.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
Right right, That's right, that's where we are right now.
I know. So Paul goes on to say, we know
that the greater flamingo uses carotenoid saturated prene oil to
enhance the color of its plumage during breeding season, but
this has yet to be described in the other species,
although it's highly likely they too have saturated pre and oil. Okay,
so that's the oil stuff we already talked about. Here's
(24:09):
the kicker. If you ate a flamingo, that's right, we've
made a professional scientist go here. If you ate a flamingo,
you would not turn pink, as we are unable to
metabolize carotenoids in the same way as the birds do.
You would likely die though, as they consume some very
noxious blue green algae that are often neurotoxic.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
So, Bernard, Bernard, you you've been misled. This is not
a good idea. Do not eat the flamingos. You will
not turn pink, and you might die.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Go have a nice eggplant dish or some portabellos if
you need umami. But flamingos do not seem to be
something that you should be eating.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Leave those beautiful birds alone, Bernard. All right, So let's
go ahead and see if we've convinced Bernard, whose name
I I hope I've said correctly because I've said it
many times. Now let's go ahead and see what he
has to say and if we've convinced him to not
raid the local zoo in search of flamingos.
Speaker 4 (25:10):
Thanks Kelly and Daniel for all the insights, both from
your personal life and zoology. It was not only an
interesting and most useful answer, but the journey there also
helped me to get rid of some misconceptions I had.
I'm quite relieved that I can stick to my lifestyle,
and so is the very attractive flamingo community here in
the Munich Zoo.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
All right, we're back and we are answering questions from
listeners like you. If you have a question about the
nature of the universe, whether you should have a flamingo burger,
or how to protect yourself from nuclear fallout, please write
to us. We love answering your questions. And this last
question comes from a longtime listener who's asked us lots
and lots of questions over the years. This is a
(26:11):
question from Petrie in Waterloo.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
Petrie always asks fantastic questions and provides fantastic answers. For
our Person on the Street's responses at the beginning of
some of our episodes, and you too can share your
responses if you write us at questions at Danielankelly dot org.
Speaker 5 (26:28):
Hi Daniel and Kelly, this is Petri from Waterloo, Canada,
and I have a question that I think relates to
the both of you. I was watching some science fiction recently.
In the show, the characters were exposed to what they
called hard radiation. To keep themselves alive, they injected themselves
with iodine. So my question is this, From a particle
physics perspective, what is hard radiation and what role, if any,
(26:52):
would iodine play in protecting us from it? From a
biology perspective, how does radiation exposure cause injury? And what
is happening physiologically? How can damage at the molecular level
cause issues at the organ level? Thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
I love this question because it's something you see in
science fiction and you hear in popular science all the time,
and hey, that might actually be important these days. You
never know what's going to happen. Yeah, so it's important
that people are well informed.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Yes, it is, especially with all of this chat about
moving to Mars. If you could just take iodine and
radiation would not be a problem anymore. We wouldn't have
to live underground. So there's a lot hanging on this
answer being correct.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
All right, So Petrie's first question is what is hard
radiation exactly? And the way you think about radiation is basically,
like tiny little bullets. These are high energy particles. They
can be photons, they can be electrons, they can be
helium nuclei, they can be protons, they can be anything, essentially,
but they are high energy particles, and some of them
(27:56):
penetrate into your body more deeply. Some of them absorb
on the surface. Episode recently about the different kinds of
radiation being used to treat cancer and so like X
rays versus electrons versus protons all have a different deposition pattern,
but basically all of them tear through your body, deposit
some energy, and do a bunch of damage. And so
(28:16):
you don't want radiation in your body, unless, of course,
you're trying to kill a cancer tumor, in which case
you want to aim it very very tightly, so that
it does damage to the cancer tumor and not to
something important like your spleen.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
Very delicate process.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Yes, and radiation could hurt you both from the outside
if there's like radioactive decays happening around you, like you're
standing next to plutonium or something, and also inside you
if you ingest something, it can do its radioactive thing
while inside you. It's like bringing little guns inside you
and shooting. So this is the way, like the Russian
(28:49):
regime likes to kill people and of put like polonium
or something in their coffee. They drink it. It's not
part of your body, and those plonium atoms are now
decaying inside you, creating a radiation's out from within you.
So that's pretty bad.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
It was Britain's so it was tea, right, not coffee.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
Oh it was a tea, yes all right, so be
careful if you're all out there enjoying your tea. Kelly
just ruined it for you.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
Yeah, drink coffee instead problem salt.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
And it is really quite dangerous because these metals can
be very very hard to get out of your system.
So it really can be like a death sentence if
you get this stuff inside of you. It's really terrible
and there's really horrible stories about people putting radioactive elements
in like other people's coffee in the lab when they're
competing with them, and like, yeah, really really bad stuff.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
That was a physicist, right, I'm guessing.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
I think it was a chemist. I think it was
a chemist. I don't want to slander anyone, but probably
a chemist.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
Oh that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
All right. So that's what radiation is. It's energetic particles
tearing through you, depositing energy, probably breaking up your DNA,
up drink cell walls, all kinds of bad stuff. And
you know, radiation is all around us. We are surrounded
by radiations. Radiation on peanut butter, there's radiation from bananas,
there's radiation from the ground, there's radiation from the sky.
Is constant grates hit the atmosphere and the cane to
(30:06):
muons which tear through you. This neutrinos passing through you.
Not all of it hurt too. Somebody goes right through
you and at certain levels just sort of like what
we've evolved to withstand. And it's important as part of
like mutation. The reason my sun is better looking than
I am and faster than I am is maybe because
of cosmic gray mutations. I can't explain it any other way.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
I think it's Katrina's genes is what it is.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
I think maybe she just cloned herself in the lab,
and I don't think I was involved at all. No,
I love that kid, and I hope you got the
best of me. Anyway, const mutations are important in creating
new opportunities and trying new stuff in the next generation.
So it's not like all radiation bad, right, It's like
a lot of things. It's too much radiation, it's bad.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
Yeah, I mean even a little bit of radiation could
cause a bad mutation. I think, you know, the probability
that you get a mutation that makes things better as
opposed to makes a new neutral or a worse change
is pretty low.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
So I think in general you want to protect yourself
from too much radiation.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
Yes, yeah, yes, Now I was thinking more globally on
a philosophical scale, like if you could go back and
shield the Earth from all radiation from space a few
billion years ago, what would the Earth look like now?
We don't know. It might have a lot less diversity
on it, we might not be here. And so radiation
plays a role in evolution. But yeah, you should never
(31:26):
choose radiation. It's not like a little bit is good
for you and a lot and it's bad for you, yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
Right, and our bodies have ways of trying to fix
the damage that radiation causes.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
But anyway, so you would not want to be living
on the surface of Mars without any protection from radiation exactly.
Speaker 6 (31:42):
No.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
I would want to bring a lot of flamingos with
me to form like a shield, you know, like a
dome of flamingos between me and the radioactive source.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Yeah no, And then you have your food source also,
and it's very convenient. But I'm not joining your settlement, Daniel.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
All right. So the lore is that iodine can protect you,
and people say you should take iodine if there's been
a nuclear disaster or whatever. So what are we talking
about here, Well, iodine is something that your body needs
but doesn't produce, and it absorbs it as you eat it.
So there's like trace amounts of food and water, and
you need it for all sorts of chemistry that's happening
in your body, and so you take it in as
(32:17):
you eat it or drink it or whatever. So your
body absorbs it and a lot of it ends up
in your thyroid because that's the part of your body
that needs iodine, and a problem is that a lot
of nuclear disasters can create radioactive iodine. So, for example,
iodine one thirty one and iodine one thirty three. Iodine
one thirty one is a major fission product for uranium
(32:37):
and plutonium. So like Fukushima and chernobyl, there's a lot
of iodine one thirty one produced. It's like three percent
of the total fission products by weight are iodine one
thirty one and iodine one thirty one is radioactive. Half
life is like eight days, and it shoots off an
energetic electron or a positron, depending on the charges, and
(32:58):
you end up with photons and decays into radioactivized tope
of zenome, which is then the case again emitting another
gamma particle. And so basically, if you have this around,
your body's going to take it in, because your body
takes in iodine and stores it because it needs it.
And if the idone one thirty one around, your body's
going to take that in and store it. Now it's
going to be inside you doing it's a radioactive thing,
which is bad.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
And so we're talking about one kind of radiation, and
there's lots of kinds of radiation. So we are only
really honing in on when iodine causes thyroid cancer.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
Yeah, so you can take iodine, and the theory is
that if you take good, normal, non radioactive iodine, you'll
fill up on iodine, and then if radioactive iodine comes
into your system, your body won't store it and it
won't keep it in your thyroid, which would cause you
thyroid cancer. But having iodine in your body doesn't protect
you against radiation from the outside or other kinds of
(33:51):
things you might absorb. You can't just like take iodine
and then have a snack of plutonium and be fine,
for example, or stand in front of an X ray
machine and then be like ping ping ping. This doesn't
bother me. There's no protection against radiation. It's not like
it builds a shield or prevents damage or does anything
like that. The only thing eating iodine can do is
(34:12):
prevent your body from absorbing radioactive iodine. So you just
make sure you're filled up on iodine.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
So like, if the Russians are after you, you can't be
safe just because every morning you take an iodine pill.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
That's right. Seven does not fill up on iodine to
protect themself from being poisoned. By the Russians if But
it is true right that if you are filled up
on normal, good iodine, you are protected against absorbing bad
radioactive iodine. So it's not a complete protection against all radiation,
but it does prevent you from absorbing bad iodine which
(34:45):
would give you thyroid cancer in the future, and that
would be bad. And so like Germany's Federal Ministry for
the Environment says, iodine supplements can help after a nuclear
power plant accident inner radius of about one hundred kilometers around,
so it's not nothing. It can protect you and any
protection you have is good protection. Right. You should know
also that your thyroid doesn't store iodine for very long,
(35:09):
so you need to have taken it very recently. Right.
So experts say the iodine block only has a chance
of helping if the good iodine is taken just before
contact with radioactive iodine. And also be careful. Too much
iodine bad for you, right, Like lots of things, it
becomes poison. So it's complicated, right, Yes, it can protect
(35:30):
you from absorbing bad radioactive iodine if you have taken
it just before the radioactive iodine shows up and you
didn't take too much. But it doesn't protect you against
basically any other form of radiation boom, including radioactive iodine
that the case just outside your body and shoots its
little radioactive bullets inside you.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
Oh my goodness, what a pain in the rear end.
So you should take the German Federal Ministries advice you
should take your iodine. But while you're taking it, you
should be heading out of that one hundred kilometer radius
and get out of there as soon as you can.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Yeah, exactly. And so like there's a scene I remember
on this show for All Mankind, which in general is
great and gets the science right, where they're going to
have to walk on the surface of the Moon and
be exposed to radiation and they're like, take idi. Oh,
it's you know all right, it's not going to prevent
you from being shredded by cosmic rays, etcetera, etcetera. So
anybody living on the moon right now, be very very careful.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
Okay, you're going too far in the other direction. I
was talking to some people the other day who don't
think Americans have landed on the moon. So anyway, there's
none of us up there right now.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
Well, there was some news segment recently where an American
politician I named him said he had recently spoken to
an American astronaut on the moon. He just misspoke, he
meant somebody in the space station. But the Internet went
crazy with theories about like, oh, he's just revealed the
fact that we have a secret moon base and that's
where we're talking to the aliens. And the Internet. Oh,
(36:56):
I love you the Internet, but sometimes you're crazy.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
I'm so glad I'm not a politician. Every once in
a while they've said like little slips and the Internet
has gone crazy, and I'm like, man, the number of
times I slip up in a day is colossal. I
can't imagine being on the hook for every word that
I said.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
Did you hear that time? Recently, some politicians said we
now have technology that allows us to control space and time,
by which he probably meant like, we can make phone
calls and we can travel around the Earth. Yeah, but
the Internet was like, see they make wormholes.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Oh gosh, oh gosh.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
Anyway, the Internet, if you have questions about what the
American government can and cannot do, please write to us.
We're happy to talk to you about it, to give
us answers. I actually did get a phone call once
from a US congress person who heard some of these
crazy internet theories and he's a listener of the podcast,
and he called me up and he's like, hey, tell me,
is any of this real physics? And we had a
great conversation about it. Even though he and I would
(37:49):
not vote the same way on basically any political issue,
we came together to talk about physics. And so I
like to believe physics is the great uniter. We all
want to understand the universe, and we can all talk
calmly and productively about what we do and don't know
about it.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
And we are all squishy meatbags. So biology brings us
together as well. And so I am also always available
to answer science questions to anyone of any political stripe
who has them.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
That's right. Are you a pink meat bag? Do you
want to become a pink meatbag? Kelly has got you covered.
Speaker 2 (38:18):
That's right, that's right. Doesn't matter what country you are from.
Send us your meatbag questions.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
We really do want to hear from you. So send
us questions to questions at Danielankelly dot org. And in
the meantime, think deeply about the universe, ruminate on how
it all works and what we do and do not understand.
Thanks for listening. Join us next time.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
We look forward to hearing from you.
Speaker 6 (38:38):
Hi, Daniel and Kelly, thank you for answering my question
on the podcast. It makes perfect sense that an individual
would not want to be low on idine when there's
an unstable isotope present in the environment, and it clearly
does not provide protection against all types of radiation exposure
like it is sometimes portrayed in the media. Keep up
(38:59):
the great work. Thank you again for your answer and
for the great podcast.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is produced by iHeartRadio. We
would love to hear from you.
Speaker 1 (39:15):
We really would. We want to know what questions you
have about this Extraordinary Universe.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
We want to know your thoughts on recent shows, suggestions
for future shows. If you contact us, we will get
back to you.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
We really mean it. We answer every message. Email us
at Questions at Danielankelly.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
Dot org, or you can find us on social media.
We have accounts on x, Instagram, Blue Sky and on
all of those platforms. You can find us at d
and Kuniverse.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
Don't be shy write to us
Snowflakes are hexagons, and each one is unique. Their amazing
symmetry just adds to their mystique.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
I've heard flamingos are pink because of their diet. What
if I ate a flamingo? Would I turn pink?
Speaker 1 (00:27):
If I tried it, i'dne injections protect from radiation. I
saw it on TV, but I don't understand the mechanism.
How exactly can that be?
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Whatever questions keep you up at night, Daniel and Kelly's
answers will make it right. Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's
Extraordinary Universe. Hello. I'm Kelly Winer Smith. I study parasites
(01:01):
and space and I am so excited about our flamingo
question today.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor
at UC Irvine, and I've never eaten a flamingo.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
I haven't either, as we'll see later in the show,
we probably ought not to. But so my question for
you today, Daniel. So we are recording the day before
Google Calendars tells me that it's your birthday.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
How does Google know that?
Speaker 2 (01:25):
I'm actually not sure. I must have put it in
at some point in the past, because you know, I've
been co hosting with you for a while now, But
so how do you celebrate birthdays?
Speaker 1 (01:36):
So, yeah, I'm turning fifty tomorrow, which is kind of
a big milestone. But I actually don't really celebrate my birthday.
I don't feel like it's that special a day, and
I'm not really that intwo birthdays and sort of like
being on the spot that way. I sort of prefer
to fade into the background. And so to counteract that,
I've actually been rounding up my age to fifty for
a few years now, are you serious, which Katina is
(01:57):
not very excited about. Yeah, especially because when she turned
forty six, I welcomed her into the round up to
fifty club and she was like, no, thank you.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
You can stay there alone. Daniel. Wow, I'll have to
remember that strategy. I also may fade into the background
birthday person, but I hadn't thought about the rounding up strategy.
And I think I'm so I always forget how old
I am. But I'm forty three, okay, is that right? No,
(02:26):
my birthday's in October and it's twenty twenty. I'll be
forty three in October, so I'm forty two. So it's
not quite time for me to round up yet, but
I will. I'll get there soon.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Well, Katrina tells me it's ridiculous to round up, but
I say, hey, look, it's arbitrary to round up to
the year. People aren't super precise about how old they are.
When you ask them. They don't say I'm forty two
years and seven months and three days. They round up
to the year, right, So I think, hey, I just
round up to the decade. You know, what's the big deal?
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Sure, yeah, No, Physicists are always you know, making broad
assumptions about things and rounding, and so you might as well.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Yeah, Pie is three and Daniel's fifty, what's the big deal?
Speaker 2 (03:01):
That's right there? You go, Well, I hope you have
an amazing decade. Arbitrary though that milestone may be to you.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
All right, Well, we're not here to talk about Daniel's birthday.
We're here to answer your questions about the nature of
the universe. How does it all work, how does it
fit together? How can we make it click together in
your mind? And so, as usual, we invite people to
send us their questions right to us to questions at
Danielankelly dot org. We write back to everybody with a response,
we either give you the answer, or make a joke,
(03:29):
or say we don't know, here's something to read.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
That's right. Lately, often I've been giving a reading suggestions,
or if we don't know, we say we'll find out.
And sometimes it becomes a question on a listener Questions episode.
And today we have a lot of examples of that.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
That's right, So let's jump right in. Our first question
comes from Zach in Minnesota. Zach is a question about
why snowflakes are all different.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
Hey, they're extraordinaries. It's winter here in Minnesota and we
just got a ton of snow. My dad took a
really great picture of a beautifully symmetrical snowflake. I understand
why snowflakes tend to form hexagonally. I think because of
the crystallization pattern of water. But I don't understand why
(04:13):
snowflakes so often come out looking so perfectly symmetrical. Why
should they form exactly the same intricate crystallization on one
arm as opposed to the other arm. I know this
isn't a universal thing. Some snowflakes aren't symmetrical, but so
many are. It just seems unlikely. Is this just because
there are so many snowflakes or is there something deeper
(04:36):
going on? Look forward to hearing your thoughts.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Now, Daniel. If you and I were really good at this,
we would have saved this for a Christmas episode, but
instead we're going to release it in the middle of
the summer.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
That's when people want snow, right, That's when they're missing it.
You know, in the middle of winter people are like, Ugh,
don't talk to me about snow. I'm fed up with it.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Well, I guess it depends on where you are on
this planet. Right it's winter somewhere. So okay, this is
going to be a really good episode for the Australians
if they're into snow.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Or if you're sweltering in Texas this summer. Listen to
this frosty episode about snowflakes.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Amazing. All right, So, Daniel, I have to admit that
I don't know why each snowflake has a unique shape.
Can we start there before we get to why they're symmetrical?
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Yeah? I think that is the right direction to start from.
This is a really cool question because I think Zach
is thinking about how the snowflakes form, and he's wondering like,
how can one arm form the same pattern as the
arm on the other side. Is there some global for
us controlling it? And so you're right, we need to
think about the symmetry and the diversity of these objects.
And snowflakes are really fascinating. And as it turns out,
(05:44):
the cutting edge of human understanding of snowflakes doesn't have
a complete answer to this question. Snowflakes remain mysterious. Yes,
that's right, fascinating.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
There's not enough money in snowflakes, man.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
But if you go out into a snowstorm and you
put out your hand and you see snowflakes land on
your palm, and you can look at them briefly, just
before they melt, and you notice they are not all
the same. There's an enormous variety of snowflakes form this
pattern and that pattern and the other pattern. And you know,
people have known this for a long long time. This
is famous quote from Thereaux who says, how full of
the creative genius is the air in which these are generated?
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Beautiful? But the answer is science science.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
But you know he was presient about this even though
he didn't understand it. The answer is something about the
chemistry of air, which we'll get to.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
I mean, you said a word I don't like, but
let's let's move on anywhere.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
So your question was about the symmetry, so let's start
with that, like why do snowflakes form this white, weird
six prong pattern anyway, And that does come down to
chemistry how the water molecules themselves bond to form the
nexus of the crystal at the core. But let's back
up and start with like, how does snow form, where
does it come from? It comes from water freezing in clouds.
(06:59):
And the things I understand about water is we're all
familiar with ice and then liquid water and of course
water vapor, steam, right, But water has complicated chemistry depending
on the pressure. So down to the surface and normal
atmosphere pressure, water has those three phases. But if you
go up into the upper atmosphere or out into space,
for example, where pressure is very very low, there is
(07:20):
no liquid water. There's only solid in gas. And so
if you have solid water and you heat it up,
you don't get liquid water. Out in space, you get vapor.
It goes directly from solid to gas. So there aren't
three phases everywhere you can look up this phase diagram
of water to learn more and that's going to turn
out to be key. So what happens is you have
(07:40):
the atmosphere and there's warm moist air that gets pushed
upward when it hits the front, and that water condenses
into droplets. So the air is also filled with like
tiny dust particles, and each of those like can nucleate
a tiny little droplet, and that's what a cloud is.
Cloud is all these water droplets that have been nucleated
as warm moist air has gone up and the water
sort of comes out of the solution.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Of the air and nucleated just means it's like surrounding
the piece to dust.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
Mm hmm okay, yeah. Like you might ask why do
you get a water droplet here and not one centimeter
or one micron over? Like why do they form where
they form and not somewhere else? The answer is dust.
It's sort of like the way in the early universe
we had like slight over densities in the plasma and
that's what gravity grabbed onto to nucleate the formation of
what turned into galaxies and stuff, Like why did galaxies
(08:27):
form here and there? There has to be a reason
it starts, and in the case of water droplets, it's
tiny particles of dust.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
I heard it was also tiny bacteria that are in
the atmosphere, Is that true? Or their bacteria around there
forming snowflakes.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
There are bacteria out there. And dust is a very
broad term. It includes lots of tiny stuff, you know,
the way like sand does. And if you zoom in
on this amazing variety of stuff in the atmosphere, we
just call it dust. We can have a whole another
episode about it, like what is dust?
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Sure that sounds fascinating.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Anyway, you put all these together, you have a cloud.
A cloud is like a million tons of water hanging
there in the air, sort of amazing. So now temperatures
drop right, and some of those droplets freeze, some of
them evaporate become a vapor, but some of them freeze
and you get a little crystal. And so here's where
the chemistry comes in. You have this water molecule, which
is like an oxygen and two hydrogens, and the two
(09:22):
hydrogens come off at an angle, right, It's not like
a line where you have hydrogen oxygen hydrogen. If you
seem like a little drawing of water molecule you know,
the hydrogen, it's like pulled close together. The angle between
them is like one hundred and four degrees or something,
and so when these things come together to make a crystal,
they click together sort of like lego bricks. Right, there's
bonds between them, and that makes a little hexagon. So
(09:44):
you link up six water molecules. The oxygens are like
the vertices on a hexagon, and then the bond between
the oxygen and one hydrogen is like the edge of
that hexagon, and then there are six hydrogen molecules sort
of sticking out. But it makes this ring, this hexagonal ring,
and then you just keep adding water molecules and it
builds out and out and out, and you get a
hexagonal crystal.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Okay, so why do you get six in the center?
Is that just available binding sites?
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (10:10):
I think it's because chemistry.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Man, you get six because the angles. So imagine your
oxygen atom and has two hydrogens coming off and there's
one hundred degrees between them, which means is like two
hundred and sixty degrees on the other side, right, So
the other water molecule comes in with its hydrogen. It
comes around the back on that big open space and
it splits that in half, and that's what determines the angle.
(10:35):
So half of two sixty you get about one hundred
and thirty and that's the angle there that you build
up to make the hexagons.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Got it? Okay? I remember in organic chemistry there's a
reaction called a backside attack, and the biologists in that
class we could not get over that anyway.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
All right, moving on, all right, So initially you have
this tiny, tiny crystal. It's like microns wide. And by
the way, if you are out chopping and you see
something called hexagonal water, that's a scam. It's not better
for you. It's just pseudoscience, supplemental nonsense.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
I've never heard of that. What do they claim me?
Speaker 1 (11:08):
I don't know. I don't even want to give them
more airtime.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Okay, save your money people, exactly.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
All right. So what we're talking about so far is
just the core of the snowflake, right, it's this hexagonal crystal,
and that can require like a million of these droplets. Wow,
you have a tiny number of snowflakes compared to the
number of droplets. It really takes a lot of droplets
to make one snowflake.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
So why doesn't the snowflake just become infinite. Why did
at some point does it stop accumulating more waters.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Well, it has limited time in the cloud. So what
happens next is you have this seated crystal which blows
around inside the cloud, accumulating more and more, and then
eventually it gets so heavy that it drops, right, And
so it's a limited time in the cloud. Otherwise it
would form like a cloud sized crystal, which should be awesome,
and maybe that happens on some alien planet, but then.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
It falls on your head and that would be too much.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
So we're set up now to answer Zach's question. Right,
we start with his crystal, and we understand why it's
a hexagon, But then why does it form six identical arms,
each of which are the same on one crystal, but
different from all the other crystals? Right? And when I
was first reading about this, my hypothesis was maybe it's
some like impurity in the crystal, where like something has
(12:17):
happened at the core, which then determines how it grows outwards. Right,
you need something coordinating across the arms. But it turns
out it's not that at all. And we know that
because of amazing experiments done by a physicist Ukichiro Nakaya
in Hokkaido in Japan in the nineteen thirties. He was
really curious about snowflakes. He just like went for walks
(12:38):
and saw snowflakes, and he asked the same question, but
he wanted to figure it out. He did all these experiments,
so he replicated the conditions of a cloud in the lab,
and what he saw was that the formation of the
crystal beyond the initial seed depends extremely sensitively on the
temperature and on the density of water vapor. So, for example,
you can get these like weird long needles that form,
(13:00):
and you crank up the temperature a little bit and
you get thin plates, or you get dendrites, or you
get another formation. You crank it up another little bit
and you get back to needles or back to columns.
And so there's a lot of really complicated like chemistry
and solid sat phistics that's happening there where these crystals
are forming in certain patterns. Again super duper sensitive to
(13:21):
the density and the temperature.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Okay, I'm following you there, but I still feel like
there's a jump to make, yes to hit symmetry.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
So now start with you or quarter crystal, right, the
quarter crystal, some hexagon. Now it's going to blow through
the cloud. The cloud is not uniform in density and temperature.
There are regions of higher density, there are regions of
lower density. There are colder and moral regions. As that
snowflake blows through the cloud, its crystals grow depending on
the density and temperature it's experiencing moment to moment. So
(13:49):
like right now it grows in this certain pattern. Ooh,
then the density drops and now it's going to make needles. Oh,
now the density goes up. Ooh, now it's back to
making these flat things. And so that's what controls the
growth of each of the arms. And because all of
the arms experience the same unique path through the cloud,
which gives it a unique temperature and density history, that's
why every snowflake is different. If two snowflakes had exactly
(14:13):
the same trajectory through the cloud, you would expect them
to be exactly the same. And that's probably true, but
impossible to test, right, So we think the variety of
snowflakes comes from their individual experience through the temperature and
density fluctuations in the cloud which control their growth. And
that also explains why they're the same on individual snowflake
(14:34):
because on an individual snowflake, all the arms have the
same experience, the same history through the density and the temperature.
So it's really kind of an awesome like probe through
the cloud.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
That's amazing, yeah, and beautiful and I'm trying to pull
together like the Hallmark version, like we're all a result
of the unique paths that we take. Anyway, very cool.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
It's very cool, and it's sort of amazing and lucky,
and it's another example of how amazing complexity emerges in world.
You know, this could have been totally boring. It could
have been that snowflakes all just form hexagons and then
drop and they're all the same, and like, yeah, hexagons
are cool. But because they're so sensitive to density and temperature,
we get this incredible variety of beautiful forms. It amazes me.
(15:15):
It makes me wonder about that same philosophical question we've
talked about before, like why do we think that this
kind of stuff is beautiful? Are we programmed to do
it somehow? Is it because we evolved on this planet
or is it just something deep about being alive and
aware in the universe? Like do aliens find their ugly
planet beautiful.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Also well, it is now the peak heat and humid
period in Virginia, so I am looking forward to seeing
the snow. As you said, let's see if Zach feels
satisfied with this unique answer.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Hi, Daniel and Kelly, thank you for the beautiful answer
to my question about these beautiful crystals, especially since it
meant wading into a bit of chemistry to do so.
I too was surprised that the crystal shape was not
intrinsic to the nucleation dust, but rather a kind of
record of the snowflake experience as it drifts through its cloud.
It makes me wonder if there are other polar molecules
(16:06):
that could form snowflakes with other basic patterns instead of hexagons,
like squares or triangles, or if there would be some
molecules that would tend to make three D structures instead
of planer ones. Anyhow, on a personal note, my son
was born just a week ago, and you have me
smiling thinking about how he's going to gather experiences as
he grows to become something unique and beautiful as well.
(16:28):
Thanks again, guys.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
All Right, Daniel, this is quite possibly the most important
question we've ever answered on the show.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Solunny because it determines what you're gonna have for your
birthday dinner.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Maybe maybe, and also his biology, so that automatically puts
it in the top fifty percent. But let's enjoy this
amazing question from Bernard and Munich.
Speaker 4 (17:09):
Hi, Danielle and Kelly. This is Bernhardt from Munich in Germany.
I understand that flamingos are pink because of their diet,
but it's the pink color just in their feathers or
also in their flesh. And could I become pink if
I would start eating flamingos instead of my usual vegetarian food.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Love your show by incredible.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
How seriously do you think Bernard is considering abandoning his vegetarianism.
Do we have a weighty responsibility here?
Speaker 2 (17:36):
You know? So I was reading about the frequency at
which people drop vegetarianism, and it is pretty high. I
think it's something like sixty to seventy five percent of
the people who become vegetarians will not stay vegetarians. But
I really doubt that he's going to drop his vegetarianism
for flamingos, and not least of all because it would
(17:59):
be very hard for him to get his hands on
a flamingo.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Well, your husband is a dedicated vegetarian, isn't he.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
He is, Yeah, he's been a vegetarian for twenty years.
And I think the worst thing that I have done
to him during our relationship is I once left a
few pounds of ur ducan in his fringe when we
were dating, and I forgot it was there, and so
he found what is it a turkey inside of a
duck inside of a chicken.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
I think you have that backwards, but say, yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Sorry, chicken, it's that you are right anyway, in his refrigerator,
and he was pretty grossed out anyway, Sorry, honey.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Good thing there wasn't a flamingo in there as well.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
That's right, that's right. We did look up. Somebody had
managed to get like twenty four creatures inside of each
other and that was the max.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
But all right, well, let's get an answer to Bernard's question.
Tell us, okay, from the beginning, why are flamingos pink? Anyway?
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Right? All right? So there are actually six different species
of flamingos, and they are all rose colored. They get
their color through their diets, and so they eat algae.
They eat crustaceans, and these organisms make their own colors
called krotenoioids, so they have pigments, but they aren't necessarily pink.
So some organisms have ways of metabolizing carotenoids to get
(19:08):
them to be particular colors. And so the way that
the flamingos metabolize the carotenoids that they get from their
food turns them pink.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
So metabolized means does chemistry on them, does chemistry and
basically changes their color. So the things they eat are
not pink, but they eat this stuff and the stuff
has something in it and they do chemistry inside and
that makes them pink. Is that right?
Speaker 2 (19:29):
That's right? Yep. So they're filter feeders and so they're
eating lots and lots of tiny little things with carotenoids
that they turn pink.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
And is it good for the flamingos to be pink?
Do they care? Is it helpful in some way? Or
are just like a weird oddity in our universe.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
There's some debates over why they're pink, but it does
seem that being pink is an indicator of how healthy
you are, so because they get the pink from their diet,
If you are super extra pink. That is a great
way of showing people.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
That's like a Flamingo Valentine card to my extra super pinker.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
That's right, something like that. Yeah, and so if you
are like a super pink dude, then you are showing
that you've got the best territory with the best food
and you're able to get loads of food. So you'd
probably be able to get loads of food for your offspring,
and so it's sort of an indicator of quality that
is honest, because it's showing you essentially that they've been
able to get a lot of food. So anyway, it's
(20:22):
a signal for them to communicate with other Flamingos.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
And if you're a Flamingo listening to this podcast, you
are now also getting dating advice.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
That's right. There you go. And the Flamingos also do
pretty cool dances and so like buy good outfits and
learn to dance. You're welcome. But the babies are actually
not pink when they're born.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
Okay, Is that because they haven't eaten this stuff yet?
Speaker 2 (20:43):
That's exactly right. Yeah, they are dull colors, and then
eventually they'll become pink when they get it from their diet.
I didn't know any of this. I learned it from
doing a little bit of research. But what I really
did for this question was call in an old friend
of mine who is an expert. So I called my friend, well,
and by call I mean I contacted on Facebook Messenger
my friend Caitlin Kite, who in twenty fifteen released a
(21:05):
book called Flamingos about flamingos ooh shocker. And I shared
the question with her and she was sort of a
pulled like.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
At the idea of eating baby flamingos.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
You know, I think you've made Bernard out to be
a little bit worse than that. He didn't say he
was gonna eat baby flamingos in particular, and they're not pink,
so you know that wouldn't make sense, all.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Right, Yeah, okay, eat the old grampa flamingos, Bernard.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Yeah, that's right, that's right. No, the robust flamingos with
good territories.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Oh, yes, exactly.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Anyway, so she she said, you know what a question,
and she her understanding was that carotenoids can permeate lots
of stuff. For example, the egg yolks are richly colored
and they have reddish what's called crop milk, and so
this is essentially birds often feed their babies by eating
food and then throwing it up into the baby's mouth,
and they call that milk.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
Oh man I, Well, hey, look, if they're gonna make
milk out of oats and almonds and call that stuff milk,
then hey, why not?
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Yes, why not? And so she noted that part of
how they get that coloration isn't just by actually having
it in their feathers, but they extract the carotenoids, they
process the crotenoids, and then they have a gland and
they can extract this like oil from the gland and
then rub it on their feathers and it makes their
feathers even pinker. And so her hypothesis is that the
(22:27):
pink is only skin deep, and so you wouldn't end
up with pink muscles. So Bernard couldn't turn pink by
eating the pink muscles. But when she was researching flamingos
her book, she reached out to Paul Rose, who is
now a colleague of hers at the University of Exeter.
Paul works on flamingos and has dissected some. So she
(22:47):
was like, you know what, let's connect you to another expert.
So this next trip in the journey brought me to Paul.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
Who maybe has actually seen a flamingo filet.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Who has in fact filayed flamingos. So here is Paul's answer.
All of the flamingo's soft tissues, integument, and feathers are
stained by carotenoids from their diets. Okay, so right there
we know they are pink.
Speaker 5 (23:10):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
The base carotenoid ingested by the flamingo from crustaceans, algae
or cyanobacteria is metabolized within their liver to form a
range of pigments that create pink, orange, red, yellow, and
purple hues. Wow, the whole rainbow, the whole rainbow. As
a flamingo ages, you see a saturation of their skin, fat,
and integument with carotenoids, so the internal organs of the
(23:33):
bird can look quite bright. Okay, so Caitlin was right
that they can wipe this pink oil to make them
more pink. But they are all pink on the inside,
which is maybe good news for Bernard.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
But wait, now we're leaning towards eating the flamingo meat.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
Right right, That's right, that's where we are right now.
I know. So Paul goes on to say, we know
that the greater flamingo uses carotenoid saturated prene oil to
enhance the color of its plumage during breeding season, but
this has yet to be described in the other species,
although it's highly likely they too have saturated pre and oil. Okay,
so that's the oil stuff we already talked about. Here's
(24:09):
the kicker. If you ate a flamingo, that's right, we've
made a professional scientist go here. If you ate a flamingo,
you would not turn pink, as we are unable to
metabolize carotenoids in the same way as the birds do.
You would likely die though, as they consume some very
noxious blue green algae that are often neurotoxic.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
So, Bernard, Bernard, you you've been misled. This is not
a good idea. Do not eat the flamingos. You will
not turn pink, and you might die.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Go have a nice eggplant dish or some portabellos if
you need umami. But flamingos do not seem to be
something that you should be eating.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Leave those beautiful birds alone, Bernard. All right, So let's
go ahead and see if we've convinced Bernard, whose name
I I hope I've said correctly because I've said it
many times. Now let's go ahead and see what he
has to say and if we've convinced him to not
raid the local zoo in search of flamingos.
Speaker 4 (25:10):
Thanks Kelly and Daniel for all the insights, both from
your personal life and zoology. It was not only an
interesting and most useful answer, but the journey there also
helped me to get rid of some misconceptions I had.
I'm quite relieved that I can stick to my lifestyle,
and so is the very attractive flamingo community here in
the Munich Zoo.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
All right, we're back and we are answering questions from
listeners like you. If you have a question about the
nature of the universe, whether you should have a flamingo burger,
or how to protect yourself from nuclear fallout, please write
to us. We love answering your questions. And this last
question comes from a longtime listener who's asked us lots
and lots of questions over the years. This is a
(26:11):
question from Petrie in Waterloo.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
Petrie always asks fantastic questions and provides fantastic answers. For
our Person on the Street's responses at the beginning of
some of our episodes, and you too can share your
responses if you write us at questions at Danielankelly dot org.
Speaker 5 (26:28):
Hi Daniel and Kelly, this is Petri from Waterloo, Canada,
and I have a question that I think relates to
the both of you. I was watching some science fiction recently.
In the show, the characters were exposed to what they
called hard radiation. To keep themselves alive, they injected themselves
with iodine. So my question is this, From a particle
physics perspective, what is hard radiation and what role, if any,
(26:52):
would iodine play in protecting us from it? From a
biology perspective, how does radiation exposure cause injury? And what
is happening physiologically? How can damage at the molecular level
cause issues at the organ level? Thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
I love this question because it's something you see in
science fiction and you hear in popular science all the time,
and hey, that might actually be important these days. You
never know what's going to happen. Yeah, so it's important
that people are well informed.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Yes, it is, especially with all of this chat about
moving to Mars. If you could just take iodine and
radiation would not be a problem anymore. We wouldn't have
to live underground. So there's a lot hanging on this
answer being correct.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
All right, So Petrie's first question is what is hard
radiation exactly? And the way you think about radiation is basically,
like tiny little bullets. These are high energy particles. They
can be photons, they can be electrons, they can be
helium nuclei, they can be protons, they can be anything, essentially,
but they are high energy particles, and some of them
(27:56):
penetrate into your body more deeply. Some of them absorb
on the surface. Episode recently about the different kinds of
radiation being used to treat cancer and so like X
rays versus electrons versus protons all have a different deposition pattern,
but basically all of them tear through your body, deposit
some energy, and do a bunch of damage. And so
(28:16):
you don't want radiation in your body, unless, of course,
you're trying to kill a cancer tumor, in which case
you want to aim it very very tightly, so that
it does damage to the cancer tumor and not to
something important like your spleen.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
Very delicate process.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Yes, and radiation could hurt you both from the outside
if there's like radioactive decays happening around you, like you're
standing next to plutonium or something, and also inside you
if you ingest something, it can do its radioactive thing
while inside you. It's like bringing little guns inside you
and shooting. So this is the way, like the Russian
(28:49):
regime likes to kill people and of put like polonium
or something in their coffee. They drink it. It's not
part of your body, and those plonium atoms are now
decaying inside you, creating a radiation's out from within you.
So that's pretty bad.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
It was Britain's so it was tea, right, not coffee.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
Oh it was a tea, yes all right, so be
careful if you're all out there enjoying your tea. Kelly
just ruined it for you.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
Yeah, drink coffee instead problem salt.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
And it is really quite dangerous because these metals can
be very very hard to get out of your system.
So it really can be like a death sentence if
you get this stuff inside of you. It's really terrible
and there's really horrible stories about people putting radioactive elements
in like other people's coffee in the lab when they're
competing with them, and like, yeah, really really bad stuff.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
That was a physicist, right, I'm guessing.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
I think it was a chemist. I think it was
a chemist. I don't want to slander anyone, but probably
a chemist.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
Oh that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
All right. So that's what radiation is. It's energetic particles
tearing through you, depositing energy, probably breaking up your DNA,
up drink cell walls, all kinds of bad stuff. And
you know, radiation is all around us. We are surrounded
by radiations. Radiation on peanut butter, there's radiation from bananas,
there's radiation from the ground, there's radiation from the sky.
Is constant grates hit the atmosphere and the cane to
(30:06):
muons which tear through you. This neutrinos passing through you.
Not all of it hurt too. Somebody goes right through
you and at certain levels just sort of like what
we've evolved to withstand. And it's important as part of
like mutation. The reason my sun is better looking than
I am and faster than I am is maybe because
of cosmic gray mutations. I can't explain it any other way.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
I think it's Katrina's genes is what it is.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
I think maybe she just cloned herself in the lab,
and I don't think I was involved at all. No,
I love that kid, and I hope you got the
best of me. Anyway, const mutations are important in creating
new opportunities and trying new stuff in the next generation.
So it's not like all radiation bad, right, It's like
a lot of things. It's too much radiation, it's bad.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
Yeah, I mean even a little bit of radiation could
cause a bad mutation. I think, you know, the probability
that you get a mutation that makes things better as
opposed to makes a new neutral or a worse change
is pretty low.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
So I think in general you want to protect yourself
from too much radiation.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
Yes, yeah, yes, Now I was thinking more globally on
a philosophical scale, like if you could go back and
shield the Earth from all radiation from space a few
billion years ago, what would the Earth look like now?
We don't know. It might have a lot less diversity
on it, we might not be here. And so radiation
plays a role in evolution. But yeah, you should never
(31:26):
choose radiation. It's not like a little bit is good
for you and a lot and it's bad for you, yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
Right, and our bodies have ways of trying to fix
the damage that radiation causes.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
But anyway, so you would not want to be living
on the surface of Mars without any protection from radiation exactly.
Speaker 6 (31:42):
No.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
I would want to bring a lot of flamingos with
me to form like a shield, you know, like a
dome of flamingos between me and the radioactive source.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Yeah no, And then you have your food source also,
and it's very convenient. But I'm not joining your settlement, Daniel.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
All right. So the lore is that iodine can protect you,
and people say you should take iodine if there's been
a nuclear disaster or whatever. So what are we talking
about here, Well, iodine is something that your body needs
but doesn't produce, and it absorbs it as you eat it.
So there's like trace amounts of food and water, and
you need it for all sorts of chemistry that's happening
in your body, and so you take it in as
(32:17):
you eat it or drink it or whatever. So your
body absorbs it and a lot of it ends up
in your thyroid because that's the part of your body
that needs iodine, and a problem is that a lot
of nuclear disasters can create radioactive iodine. So, for example,
iodine one thirty one and iodine one thirty three. Iodine
one thirty one is a major fission product for uranium
(32:37):
and plutonium. So like Fukushima and chernobyl, there's a lot
of iodine one thirty one produced. It's like three percent
of the total fission products by weight are iodine one
thirty one and iodine one thirty one is radioactive. Half
life is like eight days, and it shoots off an
energetic electron or a positron, depending on the charges, and
(32:58):
you end up with photons and decays into radioactivized tope
of zenome, which is then the case again emitting another
gamma particle. And so basically, if you have this around,
your body's going to take it in, because your body
takes in iodine and stores it because it needs it.
And if the idone one thirty one around, your body's
going to take that in and store it. Now it's
going to be inside you doing it's a radioactive thing,
which is bad.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
And so we're talking about one kind of radiation, and
there's lots of kinds of radiation. So we are only
really honing in on when iodine causes thyroid cancer.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
Yeah, so you can take iodine, and the theory is
that if you take good, normal, non radioactive iodine, you'll
fill up on iodine, and then if radioactive iodine comes
into your system, your body won't store it and it
won't keep it in your thyroid, which would cause you
thyroid cancer. But having iodine in your body doesn't protect
you against radiation from the outside or other kinds of
(33:51):
things you might absorb. You can't just like take iodine
and then have a snack of plutonium and be fine,
for example, or stand in front of an X ray
machine and then be like ping ping ping. This doesn't
bother me. There's no protection against radiation. It's not like
it builds a shield or prevents damage or does anything
like that. The only thing eating iodine can do is
(34:12):
prevent your body from absorbing radioactive iodine. So you just
make sure you're filled up on iodine.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
So like, if the Russians are after you, you can't be
safe just because every morning you take an iodine pill.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
That's right. Seven does not fill up on iodine to
protect themself from being poisoned. By the Russians if But
it is true right that if you are filled up
on normal, good iodine, you are protected against absorbing bad
radioactive iodine. So it's not a complete protection against all radiation,
but it does prevent you from absorbing bad iodine which
(34:45):
would give you thyroid cancer in the future, and that
would be bad. And so like Germany's Federal Ministry for
the Environment says, iodine supplements can help after a nuclear
power plant accident inner radius of about one hundred kilometers around,
so it's not nothing. It can protect you and any
protection you have is good protection. Right. You should know
also that your thyroid doesn't store iodine for very long,
(35:09):
so you need to have taken it very recently. Right.
So experts say the iodine block only has a chance
of helping if the good iodine is taken just before
contact with radioactive iodine. And also be careful. Too much
iodine bad for you, right, Like lots of things, it
becomes poison. So it's complicated, right, Yes, it can protect
(35:30):
you from absorbing bad radioactive iodine if you have taken
it just before the radioactive iodine shows up and you
didn't take too much. But it doesn't protect you against
basically any other form of radiation boom, including radioactive iodine
that the case just outside your body and shoots its
little radioactive bullets inside you.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
Oh my goodness, what a pain in the rear end.
So you should take the German Federal Ministries advice you
should take your iodine. But while you're taking it, you
should be heading out of that one hundred kilometer radius
and get out of there as soon as you can.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Yeah, exactly. And so like there's a scene I remember
on this show for All Mankind, which in general is
great and gets the science right, where they're going to
have to walk on the surface of the Moon and
be exposed to radiation and they're like, take idi. Oh,
it's you know all right, it's not going to prevent
you from being shredded by cosmic rays, etcetera, etcetera. So
anybody living on the moon right now, be very very careful.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
Okay, you're going too far in the other direction. I
was talking to some people the other day who don't
think Americans have landed on the moon. So anyway, there's
none of us up there right now.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
Well, there was some news segment recently where an American
politician I named him said he had recently spoken to
an American astronaut on the moon. He just misspoke, he
meant somebody in the space station. But the Internet went
crazy with theories about like, oh, he's just revealed the
fact that we have a secret moon base and that's
where we're talking to the aliens. And the Internet. Oh,
(36:56):
I love you the Internet, but sometimes you're crazy.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
I'm so glad I'm not a politician. Every once in
a while they've said like little slips and the Internet
has gone crazy, and I'm like, man, the number of
times I slip up in a day is colossal. I
can't imagine being on the hook for every word that
I said.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
Did you hear that time? Recently, some politicians said we
now have technology that allows us to control space and time,
by which he probably meant like, we can make phone
calls and we can travel around the Earth. Yeah, but
the Internet was like, see they make wormholes.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Oh gosh, oh gosh.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
Anyway, the Internet, if you have questions about what the
American government can and cannot do, please write to us.
We're happy to talk to you about it, to give
us answers. I actually did get a phone call once
from a US congress person who heard some of these
crazy internet theories and he's a listener of the podcast,
and he called me up and he's like, hey, tell me,
is any of this real physics? And we had a
great conversation about it. Even though he and I would
(37:49):
not vote the same way on basically any political issue,
we came together to talk about physics. And so I
like to believe physics is the great uniter. We all
want to understand the universe, and we can all talk
calmly and productively about what we do and don't know
about it.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
And we are all squishy meatbags. So biology brings us
together as well. And so I am also always available
to answer science questions to anyone of any political stripe
who has them.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
That's right. Are you a pink meat bag? Do you
want to become a pink meatbag? Kelly has got you covered.
Speaker 2 (38:18):
That's right, that's right. Doesn't matter what country you are from.
Send us your meatbag questions.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
We really do want to hear from you. So send
us questions to questions at Danielankelly dot org. And in
the meantime, think deeply about the universe, ruminate on how
it all works and what we do and do not understand.
Thanks for listening. Join us next time.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
We look forward to hearing from you.
Speaker 6 (38:38):
Hi, Daniel and Kelly, thank you for answering my question
on the podcast. It makes perfect sense that an individual
would not want to be low on idine when there's
an unstable isotope present in the environment, and it clearly
does not provide protection against all types of radiation exposure
like it is sometimes portrayed in the media. Keep up
(38:59):
the great work. Thank you again for your answer and
for the great podcast.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is produced by iHeartRadio. We
would love to hear from you.
Speaker 1 (39:15):
We really would. We want to know what questions you
have about this Extraordinary Universe.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
We want to know your thoughts on recent shows, suggestions
for future shows. If you contact us, we will get
back to you.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
We really mean it. We answer every message. Email us
at Questions at Danielankelly.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
Dot org, or you can find us on social media.
We have accounts on x, Instagram, Blue Sky and on
all of those platforms. You can find us at d
and Kuniverse.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
Don't be shy write to us
Hosts And Creators
Daniel Whiteson
Kelly Weinersmith
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