Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
My name is Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick,
and we're back with part two of our discussion of
cotton candy. In part one, we talked about the chemistry
of candy making, how sugar syrup heated and reduced to
a precise, precise consistency gets turned into everything from saltwater
taffy to lollypops to sponge sugar. We talked about the
(00:36):
properties of crystalline sugar versus sugar glass, and we described
the standard process for making cotton candy in a dedicated machine.
And we also got into some historical predecessors of cotton candy,
like sponge sugar, and especially the Chinese culinary invention known
as Dragon's beard candy. And we're back today to talk
(00:57):
about more, rob did you end up eating any cotton
candy between our two parts here?
Speaker 2 (01:02):
You know I did not. I was like it, surely
we can make it out to the place where I
know there's a Japanese cotton candy machine, because these are
quite quite impressive. Japanese cotton candy is known as watame
and there are these nice automated machines that make it
no humans involved in the process at all, comes out
(01:24):
like super colorful. I don't know about the taste. I'm
assuming the taste is still very much cotton candy but sugar. Yeah,
but I know where one is in Atlanta, and I
was like, we can go out and try it out.
But our weekend ended up just being super busy, so
we did not make it out to try cotton candy.
But as is always the case, we ask any listeners
(01:47):
out there, if you have experience with cotton candy, Japanese
or otherwise, right in and give us your feedback on
the sugary treade.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Now, we promised in today's episode we would go into
a little more depth on thevention of the cotton candy machine,
and I figured maybe that's the place we should start today.
Or you gained for that, Rob, Let's do it. Let's
spin it up. Okay, okay. Now, in the previous episode,
we talked a bit about how cotton candy is made
with a dedicated machine in a manner that is somewhat
(02:17):
similar to the industrial method of producing fiberglass. So your
standard cotton candy machine consists of a large, deep metal
dish with tall sides. Think halfway between like a dog's
water bowl and a kiddie pool, kind of a large,
you know, wash basin sized. This large outer dish will
(02:37):
remain stationary, but in the middle of that large outer
dish and there is a small secondary dish which spins
rapidly and contains a heating element. This inner dish is
known as the spinner. And to make the candy, you
take a sugar mixture. This is something you usually just
buy fully prepared. Maybe some people make artisanal cotton candy
(03:00):
sugar mixtures, but usually you just like buy a box
of this powdered stuff and so it's like sugar with
some coloring and flavoring included, and you pour that into
the spinner. Inside the spinner, the sugar gets melted by
the heating element, and then once melted sugar, glass leaks
out of extremely tiny holes in the walls of the
(03:22):
spinner because it's being driven outward by centrifugal force. I
think sometimes also there's a fourst air component that's kind
of blowing it out of these little holes. And as
the melted sugar flies out into the colder air outside
the spinner, it rapidly cools and it solidifies into tiny
hair like strands of sugar glass. And these are they
(03:42):
collect in the outer dish. And then you can watch
the operator kind of you know, take a stick or
a cone and wave it around, almost like they're dusting
for cobwebs. They're just collecting all of the strands onto
the eating utensil, and then they hand it to you.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
I wonder if it's ever marked get it as such,
you know, if you want to like really goth up
your cotton candy install of cobwebs. Yeah, candy cobwebs and
so forth.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
Yeah, I don't know, we'll have to look that up afterwards.
But as we've said, so, when you get cotton candy,
it's almost always made with a specialized machine. It's not
really something as far as I could find, that you
can easily do with just you know, repurposed home equipment.
You kind of need a cotton candy machine to make
cotton candy. So where did these machines come from? Well,
(04:28):
that question takes us back to the Saint Louis World's
Fair of nineteen oh four. This was the first big
public debut of what inventors William J. Morrison and John C. Wharton,
both of Nashville, Tennessee, called the Electric Candy Machine, a
machine for making a novelty confection that they called fairy Floss,
(04:50):
which at the nineteen oh four World's Fair was sold
in boxes for twenty five cents of serving, and as
pointed out in a blog post by Morgan Earn for
the Tennessee State Museum, a ticket for the nineteen oh
four World's Fair was fifty cents, and so a box
of cotton candy is twenty five cents. This is this
is a candy treat that cost half as much again
(05:12):
as the full admission price.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
All right, all right, so depending on where you're going,
like you can compare this with like paying like five
to ten bucks for it these days.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Yeah, yeah, I don't know what canton candy usually costs.
On one hand, I think it's amazingly cheap to Bruce,
it's just like, you know.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Yeah, twenty five cents feels good. It feels reasonable by
today's standards. Yeah, like that's probably the material cost. Oh,
I'm sure it's costing three to four bucks, right.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Yeah, probably it was fair prices. So that everything's jacked
up to so maybe it's ten bucks. Who knows.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Yeah, it's a meltdown on a stick though for a
kid like you know what you're getting into.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Yeah, But anyway, So over the six months the fair
was open, they sold almost seventy thousand boxes of this stuff.
And just a few funny notes about the nineteen oh
four World's Fair. We've talked about the weird culture of
triumphalist futurism at these near turn of the century World's
Fair events. One that we talked about extensively on the
(06:09):
show in the past was the famous World's Columbian Exposition
in Chicago in eighteen ninety three. We did a live
show in Chicago one time where we talked about various
aspects of that event. But you can see a lot
of that same spirit in the nineteen oh four fair
in Saint Louis as well, with its naming conventions. So
the fairy Floss machine was an exhibit at what was
(06:30):
called the Palace of Electricity. Now, while nineteen oh four
was the big the year that the cotton candy machine
made a big public impression, the two Inventures had actually
created the machine many years before the fair, way back
in eighteen ninety seven. I found some more detail about
the history here in an entry for the cotton candy
(06:52):
machine within a reference book called Technical Innovation in American
History and Encyclopedia of Science and Technology, edited by Roseanne
Welch and peg Lamfear. The cotton candy entry is by
a scholar named Stepka Zanova, and according to Zenova here,
the better known of the two inventors was William Morrison,
(07:14):
who lived eighteen sixty to nineteen twenty six. And just
from the little bit of detail we get here about
his life, I'm picking up on something. He sounds to
me like one of those real late nineteenth century Renaissance eccentrics.
So he was a dentist and a children's book author
and a prolific inventor, having drafted a novel process for
(07:37):
extracting cottonseed oil, among other patents. But then Zenova also
mentions that he received credit for creating his hometown's first
water purification plant, and he was also active in Tennessee
based professional associations for dentists. So I don't know if
this is right or not, but I'm kind of getting
a picture of like the town wizard that sounds like
(07:59):
his partner in the creation of the fairy floss machine
was a Nashville based confectioner, a candy maker named John Wharton,
and together they filed for a patent on December twenty third,
eighteen ninety seven. Their machine worked basically the same way
the machines do today. There's not a whole lot of difference.
That modern machines are pretty close to what they originally
(08:21):
came up with. You you have a central spinner with
a heating element inside walls perforated by tiny holes to
let the threads of melted sugar glass stream out. They
freeze in the cooler air of the surrounding dish. However,
one thing that Senova notes is that while Wharton and
Morrison are usually credited as inventors of the electric cotton
(08:41):
candy machine, their original design in the eighteen ninety seven
patent was not exclusively to be used with electric power,
and instead included a mechanism to operate on foot power.
So I think that means there was like a foot
operated pedal or pump, though they specified that a different
power source could be applied without changing the core mechanics
(09:02):
of the device. So when this machine made it to
the Palace of Electricity at the nineteen oh four World's Fair.
It was a huge hit. It won the fairs Novelty
of Invention prize and to make the final sale numbers,
I've read they must have sold something like three hundred
and seventy five boxes of cotton candy a day. Though
(09:22):
it wasn't called cotton candy yet, it was still fairy floss. Actually,
the name cotton candy came from another dentist in cotton
candy business. This was a guy named Joseph Lascaux who
was based in Louisiana, who tried to introduce improvements on
Morrison and Wharton's design, though apparently his modifications did not
(09:44):
catch on. T Zanova's entry here casts doubt on whether
his improvements were actually improvements or not, but he kind
of tried to say, no, here's the way you should
do these machines. His machine didn't stick, but the name
did so. In the US. Now basically everybody calls it
cotton cane, and though in some other places in the
world of fairy floss or candy floss is still the
(10:06):
more popular name now, Rob I'm attaching here an advertisement
for a version of Wharton and Morrison's machine that appeared
in the program for the nineteen oh seven Tennessee State Fair.
You can examine, but I wanted to include because this
has a lot of good text on it. So at
this point they're calling the device the Wonderful Electric Candy Machine.
(10:29):
It's being sold by the Electric Candy Machine Company of Nashville,
and it explains the virtues of their product as follows quote.
The candy made by this machine is absolutely pure. Granulated
sugar is poured into the spinner and is instantly changed
into flossy filaments of pure candy without the touch of
(10:52):
a contaminating finger. Ah what I'm kind of wondering if
this is going back to what we talked about in
part one that old confectioners used to test the temperature
and consistency of their boiling sugar syrup by feel, which,
once again, please let us emphasize, do not try this
at home. You can get horribly, horribly burned.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Yeah. I mean, also just the I guess the novelty
of it. Like here, candy is spun out of at
of thin air. You know, it's not made by human
fingers and hands, It's not shaped by by a druggist's
hands or anything. Nope, it's just you just stick the
cone or the stick in there and you just spin
it up. And of course, like I was saying, modern
(11:35):
cotton candy machines have taken this to and even they
have got a step beyond, like it's just completely automated.
No one's even sticking a stick in there.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
Maybe that is it. There just seemed something old fashioned
and unsanitary about a human having to be involved in
the making of your candy. And you know, it's just
like the machine does it all, except it doesn't. You've
got it. You still somebody had to pump the pedal
on this thing.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
I guess.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
You know, maybe that by this time, in nineteen oh
four or nineteen oh seven, it was the fully electric model.
I'm not sure which way this is.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
I mean, the poster is advertising to me the wonderful
electric candy machine. So yeah, and electric candy, electric candy machine.
Which part is the electric part? I mean, it seems
like the candy itself is kind of electric.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Why not the electric candy machine acid test?
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
The advertisement also tells us these machines are expressly made
expressly for here's the list druggists, fruit stands, confectioners, and hotels. Hotels,
my god, but think of the cleaning staff. There's something
cotton candy at hotels. Also, I love fruit stands because
cotton candy is my favorite fruit. Also, they make a
(12:49):
special appeal coming back to the druggists. I think they say,
make the soda fountain space pay in winter. Oh okay,
so that's an interesting pitch. They're probably saying, like, you're
going to sell a lot of cold soda in the summer,
but you know nobody wants to come in for a
soda in the winter. So what do you do instead
that space? You have a cotton candy machine.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Yeah, which is I guess it comes out hot. I
don't think it stays hot long, but yeah, at least
it's not cold.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
Also, this ad is full of ludicrously aggressive small texts.
Can I read you the intellectual property section? It says
our machines are fully protected by our patents. A number
of pirates have infringed on our patents. We prosecuted the
first who attempted it. The United States Court at Saint
(13:35):
Louis has just rendered judgment sustaining our patents and perpetually
enjoining infringements. We own the exclusive right to the only
method of making floss or spun candy and will prosecute
every maker and user of infringing machines. Man, that's coming
on hard.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Yeah, they like the villains in a Willy Wonkam movie here.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
Yeah, a number of pirates have tried. But anyway, so
after going into more depth about how cotton candy has
made you know, what its characteristics are, and the history
of it, I thought maybe we should come back to
a question I asked at the beginning of part one,
and that question is why is cotton candy particularly associated
(14:21):
with fairs and carnivals in a way that other candies
and treats are not. I mean, you know some other
treats are I guess you think funnel cakes. That's especially
fairs and carnivals within the United States at least, But
why cotton candy more so than most other candies. I
now have a series of thoughts on that. First of all,
we just have this history that cotton candy began its
(14:44):
life as a fair grounds attraction, winning fame and publicity
as such. You know, most people in their very first
encounter with cotton candy was probably learning about it at
this World's Fair exhibit, or it's some subsequent fair or
public event.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
And this seems to have played a role in then
allowing it to spread out around the world.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
Yeah, another thing is what we talked about last time.
Cotton candy is very delicate and sensitive to heat, moisture,
even just to humidity in the air. Remember the sugar
here is hygroscopic, so it will attract moisture, will pull
humidity out of the very atmosphere around it. So if
it is not sealed inside a tight moisture barrier, within
(15:27):
just a few hours, cotton candy will lose its fluffiness
and shrivel down and transform into a sticky, disgusting blob.
Remember those slow death of cotton candy time lapse videos
we talked about in the last episode. Now, you can
make it last longer if you seal it up tight
inside plastic, But at that point your packaging costs are
(15:47):
going to increase. And I would also imagine that cotton
candy is not super efficient to ship in its spun
form because of its volume relative to its weight. You know,
I imagine that would be kind of like shipping trucks
full of pre inflated balloons.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Yeah. Yeah, Like, just as a quick example from today's
candy market, there's all sorts of stuff that is labeled
cotton candy that you can buy prepackaged and have shipped
to your house. But I mean, it's it's clear that
it is not at all the same as fresh spun
cotton candy. It you could almost classify it as a
different sort of candy, I think.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
Yeah, yeah. And also, I mean, not to judge people's products,
but even though you can buy this cotton candy in
sealed tubs, however similar or dissimilar it is from the
cotton candy you get at the fair, it just seems
that generally this pre made stuff is not a very
appealing and probably not a super cost effective product. So
(16:51):
ideally cotton candy should be made right when and where
you're gonna eat it. You know, you need to get
it fresh. Where is ideal for that well, lot of
turnover exactly. Yeah. So you can't really make cotton candy
with regular kitchen equipment. You need a special machine. And
most people do not want to eat cotton candy or
don't want their kids to eat cotton candy often enough
(17:14):
that they're going to buy a machine for the home. So,
you know, we mainly like it for the novelty, the
visual and textual novelty, not because it's delicious. So it's
a you know, it's a lark. It's a once every
now and then weird, interesting little experience. So you need
to sort of have a system where people go where
(17:34):
the machine is. So where does it make sense to
have the machine. It's probably where you have a lot
of turnover, where people can do a lot of business,
ideally in a space that the operator of the machine,
you know, will not have to clean up sticky messes
left by the customers later on. So an outdoor fair
is kind of perfect. The customer takes the mess with
them and it's outdoors anyway. So that's where I'm at.
(17:56):
The more I think about it, the more it absolutely
makes sense that cotton candy is carnival food. It's fair food.
It comes from that world, and for a number of
practical reasons, it probably will stay in that world.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Yeah, Like you can think of other fair and carnival foods,
and a number of those kind of transcend the limitations,
you know, like the corn dog. Yeah, corn Dog's totally
a fair and carnival type of food. But yeah, you
can buy it frozen, you can make it at home.
It's you know, all those things are possible, and it's
(18:30):
just as good, if not better, in those situations. But
cotton candy, again, the technology limits you and it. And
also it's just not the kind of thing you'd want
to eat on even a semi regular basis. Or you
might want to if you're a child, but as an adult,
like you said, you don't want your children having ready
(18:51):
access to this. Meltdown on a stick.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
Contradict us. Folks, let us know, do you have a
cotton candy machine in your house? I don't want to
hear about that.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Yeah, I mean, and maybe you do if you also
go out to the fair and sell it, right, I mean,
otherwise it just seems like a lot of machinery to
have just sitting around. I mean, maybe there's some sort
of a smaller apparatus for it, I don't know. I
don't know.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
Maybe if you've got a fancy home theater, arcade set
up something like that. But it's like people who have
a fancy home theater and they've got like one of
those popcorn carts in it.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
I think it comes down to kitchen space because I'm
just looking around now doing a little shopping for cotton
candy machines. I'm sure this is going to screw up
all sorts of targeted advertisements for me. But it looks
like you can get one that's on a cart. I'm
assuming this is maybe like low end of the professional spectrum,
but you know, you can get like a cart based
(19:45):
cotton candy machine for something like three hundred bucks. And
they do have models that are more from like the
seventy dollars to one hundred and thirty dollars range that
look like you could have room for it in your kitchen.
I don't have room for it in my kitchen, but
you might well have kitchen with enough space where it
makes sense to fire this thing up every now and again.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
I don't know, Okay, I'm looking for the bottom shelf stuff.
You can get a cotton candy maker at Walmart for
thirty bucks.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
See yeah, okay, well you know it's possible, but oh boy, yeah,
I mean it's like you can get you can get
waffle makers for really cheap, but they are exciting to
use in a way. That you just might not want
that level of excitement too many mornings out of your week.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
This strikes me as something that, again, maybe I'm totally wrong,
but my guess is that the majority of people who
buy cotton you know, like domestic cotton candy machines for
the home, are buying it essentially to use one time
at a party they're throwing.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Yeah, I mean that would make sense. You're doing you're
doing kids birthday party. You're like, well, for thirty bucks,
we can do this. So yeah, I understand that maybe
there's a case to be made where there's some sort
of special treat you're making where you're going to utilize
that cotton candy on top I don't know, like some
sort of a a trolls head muffin or something, I
don't know. But beyond that, you know, cotton candy is
(21:05):
just one of those things. It just doesn't seem like
they are that many applications, right, It's just this sugar retreat.
It doesn't really have any beneficial qualities beyond sugaring up kids,
and you know, the novelty of the spectacle of watching
it made. But you know, I was a little surprised
(21:25):
by this there do seem to be some applications. I mean,
you would be forgiven if you assume that no health
benefit or medical application existed or was possible for these
miraculous clouds of pure sugar. But there's actually been some
pretty interesting research into a cotton candy based artificial organ
(21:46):
technology that, fittingly like the twentieth century cotton candy machine itself,
has at least partial Tennessee roots.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
Oh nice.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Yeah. A lot of the research that I'm about to
talk about here is taking place in Nashville. It is
at Vanderbilt Universe. So you might have caught some science
headlines about this over the years, because the headlines and
the leads basically right themselves. You know, some sort of
cotton candy based you know, organ transplant. It raises strange
(22:21):
images in the mind of human organs replaced with candy.
It makes me think of the old mister Bones candy
from the nineties. This was, like I distinctly remember, like
a little plastic casket that said mister Bones, and inside
there were interlocking candy bones and sometimes a heart, you know,
shaped like a heart emoji. And you would assemble these
(22:42):
and then you would look at it and then you
would eat it, and then you could keep the little
plastic casket and you know, sometimes you could fit a
little toy in there.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
I am paralyzed now by unexpected nostalgia.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Rob.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
You have brought my brain to a halt with this.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
Yeah. I think I only ever got to get this
like once. This is another one of those like how
often are you gonna have mister Bones candy? The candy
itself was not good. It was like, you know, Pez
Dispenser candy, which is another example. It's like nobody loves Pez.
It's the mechanism. It's a spectacle.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
Look at this little plastic coffin. Though I want this
right now, I oh, oh, my feelings.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
They may have. It's just one of those things that
may have come back to varying degrees. I don't know
with the whole you know, ups and downs of nostalgia
based marketing. But anyway, now, this is not about making
organs or tissues directly out of candy, as grotesquely amazing
as that may sound. But it's also a lot closer
to the idea than you might assume, because you know,
(23:41):
obviously headlines are going to be quick to capitalize on them.
You know, the candy connection. But it does have a
pretty strong candy connection.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
So the research in question here was at least initially
the work of doctor Jason Spector, a reconstructive surgeon at
New York Presbyterian Hospital, and Leon Bellin, a graduate student
at Cornell at the time of the idea's creation and
now an associate professor of biomedical engineering at Vanderbilt University
(24:10):
in Nashville. And so there have been multiple reports on
this research over the years, and some of them have
been reported on in the mainstream media. Is reported on
NPRS All Things Considered. Back in two thousand and nine,
Bellin got the idea for the approach based on previous
work with nanofibers and observations about cotton candy. As it
(24:33):
turns out, the fine sponge sugar in cotton candy we've
discussed about how it's hair like, it's very thin. Well,
the nanofibers here are about the same thickness as various
blood vessels in human tissue, so about one tenth the
diameter of a human hair.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
Okay, so this would not be talking about your thicker
main veins and arteries, but sort of the little blood
vessels that branch out from them to feed all the
tissues in the body.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
Yeah, we're talking about capillaries, like tiny capillary blood vessels
that you know, with their thin walls, deliver oxygen and
nutrients to cells and carry away waste and the threads.
According to Bellin and a Vanderbilt University Medical Center release
from twenty sixteen, Yeah, they have the size, the density,
and the complexity that matches up with capillary blood vessels.
(25:24):
So the creation of artificial capillary systems like this would
be absolutely necessary for the creation of living artificial organs. Specifically,
we're talking about hydrogel based scaffoldings upon which the organ
is grown. But to put it roughly, you can build
a mansion, you can build an enormous home, but you've
got to have bathrooms in it. And for those bathrooms
(25:46):
to mean anything, you've got to leave room for the plumbing.
And so the plumbing inside of a working human organ
that's complex. And so what we're talking about here is
a way to to grow like not just the and
I'm putting it like crudely and roughly here, not just
the meat of the organ, and not just to say
(26:07):
here's a lump and this lump is liver, This lump
is kidney. But to say, this lump of kidney also
has all the plumbing necessary for the organ to live
and have the necessary blood supply that it needs.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
Okay, So, over.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
The years they've devised and apparently, as of twenty sixteen,
demonstrated the use of a cotton candy based technique to
create quote micro fluidic networks that mimic the three dimensional
capillary system in the human body in a self friendly fashion,
according to the the UMC release that I referenced earlier.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
Okay, well, I'm seeing the visual analogy between the sugar
glass strands made made by a cotton candy machine and
the tiny capillaries that infuse an organ, But like, how
do you actually make how do you make this? How
do you make the capillarias with a cotton candy like process?
Speaker 2 (27:03):
All right, so, as of twenty sixteen, the method didn't
involve sugar spun into this delicate network, but spinning it
out of something called the abbreviation is p N I
P A M penny PAM I'm gonna go with and
this stands for poly in isopropyla crylamide, a cell friendly
(27:28):
polymer frequently used for biomedical applications, though it also has
other sort of like nano applications. I've seen studies that
are talking about using it for you know, very small
you know, triggers and so forth in nano constructions and
so forth. But the key to it is that it
is insoluble at temperatures above thirty two degrees celsius or
(27:52):
eighty nine point six degrees fahrenheit, and soluble below that temperature.
The machine, however, is described as essentially being a cotton
candy machine in its core functions, so it's still spun
out and created via the same process. And the interesting
thing is, if you look at older writings about this research,
(28:14):
prior experiment such as the one profile by NPR back
in two thousand and nine, actually involved sugar based cotton
candy that then had a liquid polymer poured over it
and then the sugar was washed out.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
Oh okay, so you'd make cotton candy and then you'd
use that as a mold and then you would melt
the sugar away.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Yeah. So these really thin threads, again, thinner than a
human hair standing in for the capillaries. You gel something
around that and then you just melt out all the sugar,
but those then those tiny little tunnels will remain and
those can serve essentially as the capillary blood vessels for
the organ that you would grow there.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
Wow, that's amazing.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
Yeah, And apparently they managed to make that old method
work to some extent and not just dissolve the candy
capillaries before you could make use of them. But this
pinipam method, this makes it more viable because this stuff
is not going to disintegrate when a hydrogel is poured
directly around it. So they describe this hydrogel as a
(29:19):
gelatine with human cells in it, so like, and this
is their description to jell O with bits of fruit,
except the fruit is human cells. And this is poured
around this capillary matrix that you've made this cotton candy essentially,
and it's gelled in an incubator at thirty seven degrees
celsius and then when it's brought out, it's allowed to cool,
(29:40):
and when it's allowed to cool, that pin and pam
floss in there, well, it dissolves, leaving behind that intricate
network of microscale channels that could serve as artificial capillaries amazing. Yeah,
and so Bellin's work and the work of his colleagues,
(30:01):
this continues, and I'm to assume this technology, or something
that has evolved out of it, remains part of their work.
They might be getting away from the cotton candy comparisons,
at least in the peer reviewed papers. But I was
looking at a Vanderbilt A affiliated twenty twenty four paper
in Biofabrication, the journal Biofabrication, on which Bellin was a
(30:23):
co author, and it speaks of quote, solvent spinning to
process the thermo responsive polymer solaplus into a sacrificial microfiber mesh,
which is then employed to pattern a hydrog gel matrix.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
Okay, sounds like a similar principle.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
It sounds like, yeah, the similar principle, if not the
same thing. So it seems like this isn't This doesn't
seem to be a case where we've abandoned the what
at least began as cotton cut candy based artificial capillaries.
It seems like this technological journey still ongoing, but it is.
(31:01):
It's pretty exciting. I think we've talked about the idea
of artificial organs on the show before and the idea
of growing these out over some sort of scaffolding. But yeah,
it's like you can again, you can build a big
old house, but you've got to have working plumbing. You've
got to have the wiring, and this is about making
sure the wiring is in place. And as crazy as
(31:22):
it may seem, cotton candy may have been the inspiration
that will help make that possible down the road.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
Truly could not have known we would end up here.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Yeah. Yeah, like I said, biomedical applications for cotton candy,
I did not expect it to be a thing, but
it is. So that's inner space with cotton candy. But
we also can go into outer space.
Speaker 3 (31:57):
Take me there, Rob, I don't even know where you're
going with this.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
Well, well, we have cotton candy planets, or we have
we have exoplanets that are sometimes described as cotton candy planets,
more formally known as super puffs, which also sounds a
bit silly puffy jupiters, also pretty silly cool. And then
you'll find headlines that go as far as to call
them clown planets.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
Surely the origin of the of the much discussed killer
clowns exactly.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
I mean, we don't know what their home world looks like.
We have not We haven't gotten to see it in
any of the Killer Clowns media to my knowledge, So
this may be where they come from. All right. So
obviously the idea of clown planets, cotton candy planets, or
what have you, this brings brings to mind a lot
of images. But what are we actually talking about here
(32:47):
when we get past the headlines here. Well, essentially, these
are lower mass gas giant sized exoplanets. Sometimes you'll see
them described as cotton candy planets. They're older and less
massive than hot Jupiter's. Possible explanations include atmospheric dust making
them appear larger than they really are. They are also
(33:10):
possible explanations that involve ring systems that serve to make
them register as larger than they actually are, in either
case making an Earth mass world registering as large as
Neptune or bigger.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
Oh interesting. So basically just the idea is lower density
planets than we would normally expect to see. We have
a basic idea of how planets normally form, and we
and they have a certain predictable type of density, and
these are showing up as like kind of bigger and
less massive.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Right right, like, so they like their size as such,
they're like the radius is such that they're on the
scale of Jupiter's. But when we're looking at for them
with say radial velocity, that's where we're looking at a
star's spectrum as its planet's orbit and then shifts pointing
to massive planets, like, they don't read as massive via
(34:04):
the radial velocity.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
So then cotton candy, because cotton candy is low density,
is whis correct?
Speaker 2 (34:10):
Yes, yeah, they're not necessarily they're not pink or purple,
though I think I saw some accompanying illustrations which showed
kind of like pink or purple worlds, which you know,
fair enough, it helps bring in the eyeballs. But there
are some examples of these. The main one I'm going
to talk about is WASP one ninety three B great
(34:31):
name for a planet discovered in twenty twenty three. It
is approximately one and eighty one light years from Earth,
orbiting an F type star called WASP one ninety three
in the WASP one ninety three system. It is a
big planet. It is one point four sixty four times
the radius of Jupiter. It is officially classified as a
(34:54):
gas giant, but is discussed by Jennifer Chew for MIT
News in twenty twenty four article Here is Astronomers spot
a giant planet that is as light as cotton candy.
Again the headlines will like to play up the candy.
The two points out that it may be half again
as large as Jupiter, but it is about a tenth
(35:15):
as dense. Wow, and this is apparently extreme even so
far as puffy jupiters are concerned. This made it more
difficult to detect again coming down to the radial velocity,
and the likely explanation that was at least discussed at
the time was that it just had a highly inflated atmosphere,
and this of course means we need to study its
(35:38):
atmosphere in greater detail, you know, looking at how easily
light travels through it and so forth. But apparently the
very existence of worlds like this challenge some of what
we hypothesize about planetary formation, you know, by some estimates,
like we shouldn't be running into puffy jupiters, but they're
out there and forces us to to look again at
(36:02):
everything we thought we knew about planet formation. Another one
is hat P one B. This one is five hundred
and nineteen light years away from Earth. It's half the
mass of Jupiter, but twenty percent larger. I don't know
if this would directly qualify as a science fiction example
of this, but it made me think about something I
(36:23):
saw in the recent series Star Wars Skeleton Crew, which,
by the way, is a lot of fun. Of you
out there is at least halfway interested and you haven't
watched it yet. It has kind of like a Goonies
esque quality to it. Kids on an adventure in the
Star Wars universe, their space pirates. It's a lot of fun.
We really enjoyed watching it. But at one point, only
(36:45):
mild spoilers here, you do encounter a world that looks
like it's some sort of a gas giant, but it's
actually an earth like world at the center of a
essentially like an artificial ring system or some sort of
a disguise system that's set in place, so sort of
an artificial puffy Jupiter to some extent stealth planet. Yeah,
(37:08):
like it's there's something hidden there, you know, like pirates, treasure,
that sort of thing. Now that's not to imply that, yes.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
Sorry, I think we both at the same time thought
where people might be running with this, not to imply
there's any reason to think that about these exoplants.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Correct, Yeah, I did not see anybody even chatting about
the possibility that puffy jupiters are you know, are are
some sort of artificial structure or or potentially a signal
of any kind of like alien technology. No, that doesn't
seem to be the case at all. But they are
mysterious in their own right, and again possibly in our
(37:47):
estimates the home worlds of the killer Clowns.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
Sorry, I fell silent for a second because my mind
has been spinning. And here's what it was. What happens
to you if you are one of those who is
a maker and user of infringing machines, infringing upon the
intellectual property of the Electric Candy Machine Company of Nashville.
I think they send the clowns after you.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
Probably so, they're probably the enforcers. As we discussed in
the last episode, they use cotton candy based weaponry.
Speaker 3 (38:18):
You're out there whipping up a cone and the children
fall silent, you hear ten? All right?
Speaker 2 (38:26):
Well, I think on that note, we have we have
finished our cotton candy exploration here. But again, we'd love
to hear from everyone out there. What is your relationship
with cotton candy, your nostalgic memories, your current frustrations, your
your very what if your travels reveal? What kind of
cotton candy do they have in your neck of the woods.
(38:47):
Have you tried Dragon's Beard candy or any of the
various international cotton candy adjacent treats, all of it's fair game.
Send your thoughts, to send your pictures. We'd love to
hear from you.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact app Stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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