A U.S. Space Force, Why the Weather's Getting Stuck, and Maple Syrup Medicine

Is it time for the United States to have a military Space Force? Weather patterns are getting stuck in place - climate change is to blame. Plus, research shows that a substance in maple syrup has some incredible medicinal properties.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to hous To Works Now. I'm your host, Lauren Vogelbaum,
a researcher and writer. Here at hous To Works. Every week,
I'm bringing you three stories from our team about the
weird and wondrous advances we've seen in science, technology, and culture.
This week, new research demonstrates how climate change may specifically
affect weather in different areas in the near future. And unrelated,

(00:25):
is it time for the United States military to have
a dedicated space force? But first? Senior writer Jonathan Strickland
explores the increasingly impressive makeup of maple syrup. A compound
in the stuff could help humans treat a range of diseases,
from cancer to antibiotic resistant superbugs. Maple syrup is more

(00:48):
than just a tasty breakfast condiment. A couple of years ago,
researchers discovered than extract in processed maple syrup has anti
inflammatory qualities, meaning it could reduce pain and swelling in
certain injuries. They named the extract Quebec call after Quebec,
the region in Canada that leads the way in maple
syrup production. They also discovered that this extract didn't appear

(01:11):
to be present in maple sap itself. It was only
when they processed the sap into syrup that they could
find quebec call. And that's not all. In two thousand fifteen,
researchers in Japan published a paper explaining how a phenolic
extract of maple syrup can inhibit cancer cell growth and division.
A phenomic compound is a crystalline substance, typically one with

(01:34):
aromatic properties. The researchers wanted to be sure it wasn't
just the high sugar content interfering with cancer cell division.
They discovered that the phenomic extract interfered with a kat
signaling pathways, which play a part in cellular growth and division.
But wait, there's more. Recently, scientists from McGill University presented

(01:56):
their sweet findings to the American Chemical Society. They discovered
that a phenomic extract from maple syrup has another medically
useful function. It boosts the effectiveness of antibiotics. We use
antibiotics to fight off bacterial infections, but there's a risk
populations of bacteria can over time develop a resistance to antibiotics,

(02:17):
giving rise to superbugs. Mixing this maple syrup extract with
a dose of antibiotics reduces the amount of medicine needed
to kill a bacterial infection in fruit flies. In fact,
the team found that with the extract they could reduce
the amount of antibiotics by as much as ninety percent
and still get the effect of a full dose. It

(02:37):
turns out the compound affects the permeability of the bacterial
cell walls, making it easier for antibiotics to pass through
and do their thing. And honestly, it's pretty hard to
blame the bacteria. Maple syrup is delicious. They're currently testing
the extract in mice and it could take years of
research and testing before the extract could be made available
for the average human. But nonetheless, than next time you

(03:00):
have band gigs, waffles, French toast, take a moment to
thank the maple syrup. It's not just tasty, it's a
potential life sape. Next up, I've got a story for
you from our freelance writer Jesselyn Shields about the global
state of the climate. One of the major influences on
the billions of factors that go into weather is jet streams,

(03:22):
high fast air currents that meander through Earth's atmosphere. They've
always been fairly predictable, but they're changing, and sussing out
the effects of those changes could help minimize disasters worldwide.
Our collective grasp on the extreme weather consequences of climate
change isn't great. Sure, our weather is changing, but if

(03:43):
you ask a random person on the street what that's
going to look like in their community in ten years
or fifty, most of us probably couldn't even hazard a guess.
Climate scientists, due to the nature of their work, no
more than the rest of us, but even they don't
always agree about the ways in which climate change will
affect weather in specific races. In a controversial study published
in the journal Geophysical Research, Letters challenged previously accepted ideas

(04:07):
about the mechanisms through which climate change will affect our weather.
Those accepted ideas including that warmer temperatures will result in
more heat waves, that hotter summers will bring worse droughts,
and that the warmer atmosphere will hold more water, resulting
in heavier precipitation and flooding. All of this might still
be true, but the studies suggested that something else might

(04:28):
be happening as well, That the relatively predictable flow of
Earth's weather is changing. Due to alterations in the behavior
of the jet stream, especially in the middle latitudes, weather
patterns are getting stuck in places for longer periods, thus
intensifying on the ground effects, resulting in severe droughts, flooding,
and intense heat waves. This concept has been controversial. The

(04:50):
leading edge of research always has its supporters and detractors,
but a study published in the March issue of Nature
Scientific Reports reinforces it. The da is that climate change
is altering the world's weather, making wind conveyor belts in
a way that favors extreme and long lasting weather anomalies. Okay, so,
jet streams are high atmospheric air currents that move from

(05:12):
west to east, driven by Earth's rotation. They also make
our weather happen. Although the winds of a jet stream
flow in a single direction, the difference in temperature between
the poles and the equator pulls those winds into meandering
north south wave patterns. But if temperatures at the polls
change more rapidly than those at the equator, those dual

(05:33):
constraints on the jet streams become imbalanced. Michael Mann is
the lead author of the new study and a professor
of atmospheric science at Penn State, he told us via
email quote, just like a coaxial cable acts as a
wave guide to deliver electromagnetic waves to our televisions with
minimal energy loss, the atmosphere tends to confine waves in
the jet stream in a way that allows them to

(05:55):
always travel with minimal energy loss. When the temperature difference
between the all in the equator is large, the flow
of the jet stream becomes stronger and the waves shorter.
When the poles warm up at a faster rate than
the equatorial regions do, like what's happening right now, it's
most efficient for the atmospheric waves to stretch out and
for the flow to thus become weaker, that is, slower.

(06:17):
Man said. These very large north south meanders are associated
with both extreme weather and weather getting stuck in place,
leading to persistent regional droughts, flooding, heat waves, et cetera.
We show that climate change is making a temperature pattern
that supports those conditions more common, and you don't have
to look far to find evidence of extreme weather hammering
particular spots on the globe. Recently, in an intense low

(06:41):
pressure system in Pakistan delivered unprecedented monsoon reigns resulting in flooding,
killing some two thousand people and destroying the homes, crops,
and livelihoods of eighteen million. More. There's also the two
thousand three European heat wave, which is estimated to have
caused thirty five thousand deaths, the Russian heat wave and wildfires,
the eleven heat wave and drought in Oklahoma and Texas,

(07:03):
and the California wildfires, to name just a few. But
now that we're hopefully getting a better handle on how
climate change might affect our lives here on the ground,
Man and his co authors are looking at how this
information can help us in the future. He leaves us
with this, We hope this paper can inform the larger
discourse over the very real risks that climate change poses

(07:24):
to us. Secondly, there might also be the opportunity to
use the information to try to predict when extreme weather
events are most likely to occur. We hope so too. Finally,
this week, our very own producer, Dylan Fagan and our
freelancer Patrick Jake Haiger delve into a debate that's less
like science fiction than it sounds. Some experts are saying

(07:47):
that it's high time for the U. S. Department of
Defense to develop a militarized branch in space. It's easy
to think that the United States Air Force operates in
the skies and NASA deals with space. Because of this,
it may come as a surprise to learn that the
Air Force has been launching the X thirty seven B,

(08:08):
a mysterious and robotic miniature version of the Space Shuttle
and the Space for years. On orbit, the X thirty
seven B spends hundreds of days at a time performing
classified experiments. According to the magazine The National Interest, that
research includes developing a new type of high efficiency propulsion
system that could allow spacecraft to say an orbit longer
and to maneuver in between orbits with agility. In the

(08:31):
event of a future war in orbital space, US controlled
drones similar to the X thirty seven B might rapidly
replace military satellites attacked by an enemy, or presumably to
counterattack the enemy's satellites. If that sounds like a scenario
out of a Tom Clancy novel, guess again. We're talking
about reality here, as the United States is preparing for
the future of combat. In a January speech, General John Heighten,

(08:55):
leader of the U. S. Strategic Command warned that Russia
possesses anti satellite weapons and that China has been hard
at work on developing them as well. He said, in
the not too distant future, they will be able to
use that capability to threaten every spacecraft we have in space.
We have to prevent that, and the best way to
prevent war is to be prepared for war. For decades,
U S military efforts in space have been run by

(09:17):
the Air Forces Space Command, which heightened headed from twenty
fourteen to twenty sixteen, but some think the job of
protecting U. S interests in orbital space is so important
that a special, separate branch of the military ought to
be created to do it. In a recent essay, M. V.
Coyote Smith, a retired Air Force colonel who is now
a professor of Strategic Space studies at the Pentagons Air University,

(09:39):
argues for the creation of a U. S Space Corps,
especially when considering the needs of potential future space war.
The former space weapons officer argues that operating an orbit
requires a different mindset from the rest of what the
Air Force does, and that space activities will never receive
the funding or resources they need if they remain a
part of another service, a separate space where, he writes,

(10:00):
but have the freedom to develop the best thinking on
space operations. Smith believes it would also be better equipped
to provide advice to the President and combat commanders, and
to make an independent case to Congress for funding. Smith
didn't respond to request for comment, but he's not the
first to argue that a special space service is needed.
A few examples back in former U S Senator Bob Smith,

(10:22):
a Republican from New Hampshire, advocated for a separate space Corps,
and an Air War College paper published in two thousand
draws a parallel between the current need for space corps
to the post World War One efforts of General William
Billy Mitchell to get Congress to fund strategic air power development.
A two thousand six article in The Space Review also
advocates for an independent space force, saying the officers whose

(10:45):
formative experiences came from flying planes in Earth's atmosphere cannot
be expected to instinctively understand the nature of space warfare.
Another argument for having a separate space Corps is that
the Air Force already is trying to do too many things.
From operating satellites to wage electronic warfare, and then it
gives short thrift to anything that doesn't involve flying airplanes.

(11:05):
Joan Johnson Freeze, a national security affairs professor at the U. S.
Naval War College who focuses on space security issues, said
this the Air Force went from being an air force
to an air in space force, to an aerospace force
to an airspace and cyber force, with jet jockeys still
getting the lion's share of top air Force positions. General

(11:25):
Heighten has gone a long way, but he's still not
Air Force Chief of Staff. Until there is a separate
Space force, air force culture won't change, and fire pilots
will still rule. The current Space Commands budget, of roughly
nine billion dollars in annual funding, is a small slice
of the Pentagon's overall five eighty billion dollar budget. The

(11:45):
idea of a US Space Corps conjures up a mental
image of astronauts strapped into space fighters armed with laser beams,
But as Smith's notes in his essay, the current Space
Command is different from the rest of the Air Force
because flying is in its mission. It's earthbound personnel law
uch and supervise satellites even so he writes its units
are organized in the squadrons, units and wings that even

(12:06):
borrow patches and logos from famous aviation units. He thinks
that conveys the wrong message that the Air Force and
his words, does not value space space power or its
space professionals. In Smith's vision, the Space Corps would not
only support terrestrial military efforts, but in some situations would
take the lead and the event of attack against US satellites.

(12:26):
For example, the Space Court commander might direct other services
to attack targets on Earth in order to thwart the
space attackers. He also sees acting as sort of an
orbital police force, which would protect commercial US space industry
and ensure that, as he says, all awful and non
hostile actors enjoy the full benefits of space faring, regardless
of national origin. He would be up to Congress to

(12:47):
create a separate military arm and it's unclear how much
support the concept would have, but President Trump is pushing
for a big boost in defense spending, including spending more
to develop both defensive and offensive space weapons, so creation
of an orbital force conceivably could become part of the debate.

(13:08):
That's our show for this week. Thank you so much
for tuning in. Further thanks to our audio producers Dylan
Fagin and Noel Brown, and our editorial Liaison's Christopher Hasiotis
and Alison Loudermilk. Subscribed to now Now for more of
the latest science news and send us links to anything
you'd like to hear his cover. Plus, do you think
military should develop space presences? Let us know You can
send us an email. Now podcast at has stuff works

(13:29):
dot com, and of course, for lots more stories like these,
head on over to our home planet now dot ho
stuff works dot com.