The Artifact: The Sugar Light

In this episode of STBYM’s The Artifact, Joe reads by the light of a sugar cube and a sweaty horse.

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey everybody, I am here with the scheduling note. Today's
episode would normally be a full length core episode of
the show, but due to a holiday, we are switching
up the order this week, so there's going to be
a short Artifact episode today and then full length episodes
will air on Wednesday and Thursday of this week. And
now onto the episode. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind,

(00:27):
a production of My Heart Radio. Hi, my name is
Joe McCormick, and this is the Artifact, a short form
series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind, focusing on particular objects, ideas,
and moments in time. In the year six the English
philosopher Sir Francis Bacon published a book called Novum Organum,

(00:52):
in which he described a program for investigating the world
through empiricism and organized inductive reasoning. As an example of
how to employ his new method, Bacon discusses at length
the physical phenomenon of heat, cataloging examples of heat in nature,
but also what he calls quote proximate instances wanting the

(01:13):
nature of heat. In other words, situations where other phenomena
observed alongside heat in nature are witnessed but without the heat.
For example, the moon and the stars shine with light
that's bright like sunlight, but not hot like sunlight, and
so forth. But here in one paragraph Bacon starts to

(01:33):
list more anomalous sources of cold light. He mentions a
kind of light quote which in some well authenticated and
serious histories is said to have appeared around the head
and hair of boys and virgins, and instead of burning
their hair, merely to have played about it. He also
explains with great confidence that in times of darkness or

(01:56):
damp weather, a sweaty horse will emit flashes of light.
He writes, quote, in like manner, sea and salt water
is sometimes found to shine at night when struck violently
by the ore. The foam of the sea, when agitated
by tempests, also sparkles at night, and the Spaniards called
this appearance the sea's lungs. While I don't know what

(02:18):
to make of the claim that sometimes sweaty horses glow,
or that the ocean will shine with the slap of
an oar, there is one claim in this passage that
sounds just as weird as the rest, and yet it
is entirely true and exhaustively verified. Bacon writes, quote, it
is well known that all sugar, whether candied or plain,

(02:39):
if it be hard, will sparkle when broken or scraped
in the dark. The fact that sugar glows when scraped
or crushed is now a well documented phenomenon. You might
have even seen it yourself by smashing wintow green life
savers with a hammer or throwing a bunch of sugar
cubes in a blender. When you smash the sugar, it

(03:03):
releases pops of ghostly light, often blue in color. This
phenomenon is an example of what's called tribo luminescence, a
light that is emitted when certain substances are mechanically stimulated by,
for example, rubbing, crushing, scraping, or tearing apart. Many of
these substances are crystalline in nature, Like sugar, Quartz crystals

(03:26):
often begin to glow when rubbed together rapidly in a
darkened room. Several studies on tribo luminescence in quartz mention
a type of artifact used by some of the Ute
people of Colorado, which was a type of rattle made
from translucent buffalo rawhide filled with quartz pebbles, which would
allegedly glow with tribo luminescence when shaken at night, as

(03:48):
the pebbles inside smashed against one another. But there are
other stranger sources of tribo luminescence. You can sometimes see
a rolling line of blue sparks by peeling adhesive tape
of a roll or peeling an adhesive bandage envelope apart
in very low light. Despite the fact that tribal luminescence
has been observed for hundreds or even thousands of years,

(04:10):
the physical mechanisms leading to the emission of light are
still not fully understood, and there's no universal theory that
explains all instances, but we know some things. Tribal luminescence
seems to be especially common in crystals with an asymmetric structure.
A common explanation given is that when the crystals are fractured,

(04:31):
many electrons are actually ripped away from their atomic nuclei,
generating an electrical field. The electric charge difference is neutralized
when these free electrons eventually rejoin with atoms across the
fracture gap, leading to the emission of light. In some cases,
tribal luminescence seems to depend on the gases surrounding the material.

(04:52):
The familiar blue glow of crushed sugar can be turned
red if you do the crushing in a sealed container
filled with neon gass, indicating that the blue light in
this case has to do with the emission spectra of
the nitrogen that makes up most of our air. So
when sugar glows blue, the blue light is probably caused
when nitrogen molecules in the atmosphere are excited by electrical

(05:17):
discharge from the cracking sugar crystals. As the nitrogen atoms
fall back down to their ground state, they emit photons
at frequencies that include some visible blue light, almost like
lightning in the cracks of the candy. And before I finish,
I want to say, if anyone has any insight on
the glowing sweaty horse, you have our email address. Tune

(05:41):
into new editions of the artifact every Wednesday, hosted either
by Robert or myself. As always, you can email us
at contact at Stuff to Blow Your Mind dot com.
Stuff to Blow Your Mind and is a production of
I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit

(06:04):
the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.