January 22, 2013 • 36 mins
A lot of cool science went down in 2012, but it's possible you missed some of these smaller stories amid all the Mars landing and Higgs searching. In this episode, Julie and Robert take you on a journey full of immortal jelly fish and solar tornados.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and my name is Julie Douglas.
And we just recorded an episode about some of the
big stories in science during the last year, during twelve uh,
and now we're doing a second episode where we're just
(00:26):
gonna run through some bits of really fascinating science that
you might have missed. Uh, A lot of its stuff
that we could have conceivably maybe have done an episode about.
Or maybe it's like something that's really interesting but just
not quite enough to do a whole episode on. So
consider this kind of a sampler platter of some of
the stranger chocolates from now I get to say, a
(00:50):
poo poo platter, Yes, poop ladder of odd science from Um,
we're gonna kick off with with my favorite from this
this bunch and this is a worse the Immortal jellyfish
the quote unquote Benjamin Button of the Animal Kingdom. Uh.
A lot of headlines had some fun with this, I
mean have to fund with Most of these are the headlines.
(01:11):
New York Times ran a story titled can a jellyfish Unlocked?
The Secrets of immortality. So you have a number of
I mean just pit there. Yeah, they dropped in immortality
in the headline, which that's gonna that generates some interest
because we all want to live live, not forever, at
least maybe a little more than we have a lotted
(01:32):
to us. So, uh, it's it's instantly fascinating. So the
jellyfish in question is the Tatopsis dorney, which to all
appearances looks like jellyfish. There's there's nothing particularly amazing about
but what what happens here is that, um nothing amazing
about it in just appearance, but in function it does
(01:54):
some amazing things. What appears to happen is that it
quote unquote reverses an in age unil it reaches an
early stage, earlier stage of its development. Now to really
understand what's going on here, you have to picture the
life cycle of the jellyfish and h So what happens,
all right, So you having an adult jellyfish, a medusa,
all right, when it reproduces, it drops off this planny
(02:17):
little larva. Alright, this larva floats down to the bottom
of of the sea there and there it grows into
a polyp and then the budding polyp emits this ifira,
this little sort of mini pseudo jellyfish that then floats
up and becomes the adult jellyfish of it. Right, right,
So that's the basic life cycle. Now, what happens normally
(02:40):
is that you have an adult jellyfish that reproduces a
few times, starts getting a little old, it starts to starve,
or the water gets a little too hot, and then
it dies. It shuffles off this mortal coil. You know.
This is basically like any life form right reaches the
adult stage. The adult stage is about reproducing. Now, it's
worth noting that, as with many other organisms, um, the
(03:00):
adult stage is not the only stage that can reproduce. Uh,
there's also some a sexual reproduction that takes place at
the poly up stage. But but generally, in most organisms
reach it reaches the adult stage, it reproduces, and then
it either dies immediately or maybe it carries on a
little longer, but generally its function is done. You've reached
the adulthood stage. You've reproduced. That's it. You have to
(03:23):
get off the stage and make room for the other players.
But not so with this particular jellyfish. Now it does
not quite Benjamin Button, Like, that would be a wrong analogy.
What would be a better analogy is that is not
that like an old man grows young again. But imagine
an old man walking down the street and just collapses
under the weight of his like old awfulness, and then
(03:46):
just melts into a pile of goo on the sidewalk,
and then out of that goo crawls a naked, slime
covered infant, which then grows up into an adult. I
like that. I like that. Pat Krug marine biologists says
that when they do reach the end of this cycle, uh,
they get really stressed out and they collapse to the
bottom and melt, But instead of dying, they really reorganize
(04:12):
its tissues and forms a new little polyp, so, as
you say, sort of climbing from the primordial goo and
reforming itself. Um. And it's interesting because Craig says that
it it's it's almost like it skips it's having the
sex part of it and goes straight to the next
bit in the life cycle and becomes this new polyp.
(04:34):
And I think this is so cool because it reminds
me of the imaginal cells that we talked about in
the Gremlin's podcast. We were talking about a butterfly sort
of deconstructing a rather caterpillar deconstructing itself in the cocoon,
and that those imaginal cells are much like undifferentiated stem cells,
and that they can do any sort of job that
(04:55):
they need to while reconstructing this new form, new life form,
this butterfly um and then those cells becoming specialized when
it when it actually does become the butterfly itself. This
is very much the same thing with this immortal jellyfish. Yeah,
to put it in the gremlin model now that we
brought gremlins and magua into it. Uh, the magua the
(05:15):
furry little dude, the gremlin, the repulsive creature that the
magua turns into. The gremlin is the adult form. The
magua is the juvenile form, maybe even a larval form.
However you want to look at it um and so
when you know, the magua eats after midnight, turns into
an adult gremlin. But then imagine if the adult gremlin
melted and then out of the gremlin melt emerged a magua.
(05:39):
You know, it would be a a reversal, you know.
So it's fascinating to think about about it that way,
but but still taking nothing away from this organism. Like
I said, it's not quite Benjamin Button, and it's which
is I think a good thing. Uh, it's also not
quite immortal. We're getting a little carried away with that, right,
there's a question mark to to what degree the tissues
(06:00):
can continue to regenerate themselves, right, Yeah, I mean it's
it's really awesome, it's really fascinating and certainly, um, something
very unique is going up. Well that's also another thing
because there's also the possibly there are other jellyfish species
that do this as well. So it's maybe not as
unique as some of the stories made it out to be.
But it's still pretty amazing. Uh. And ultimately how long
can this keep going? Uh? Probably not forever. This is
(06:24):
probably not a situation where it's like the Highlander of
jellyfish just carrying on and carrying on. Yeah, And let
me just do a quick quote from Pat Kraig again,
the marine biologist. Why it is significant? He or she
says that learning how to take adult cells and get
them back to the early stage where they can develop
into anything is a significant goal of what we want
(06:44):
to be able to achieve. Um, and I think in
this case she's talking about in humans, it's something that
this humble little jelly has a built in feature of
its life cycle. Things get gross around it, it melts
and rebuilds itself from scratch. So I think there is
definitely the potential that we could learn some basic things
that we could better apply to our own technology for
human medicine. Now, you know, it would be a dream
is to talk to Aubrey Degree about this, you know,
(07:07):
and say, like, what you know, to what extent are
things like this? These sort of discoveries um helpful in
in his own bio gerontology work where he is trying
to get to disease before it happens in the human
body and basically try to keep the body is finally
tuned as possible so that with drug intervention and good health,
(07:29):
we could possibly live, you know, upwards to five hundred
years old. Yeah. I guess one of the things about
humans is we don't really we never go through a
cocoon phase. We never go through a drastic of change.
I mean, you know, there's there's a lot of drastic
changes that go that occur between you know, being an
infinite being an adult, but but like what would be
(07:51):
the cut off line, you know, if you could? Yeah,
and to what degree could you re org your your
cells and your tissues. So I think that's the interesting part,
Like could we take that information and apply to yourselves practically? Yeah,
I mean what makes me think of the fly because
in a lot of primordial do in that. Yeah, I mean,
(08:13):
that's one of the things that the Jeff gold Blooms,
the character gets on about when he's you know, quote
unquote gold blooming about the excitement of the science, and
he's talking about, you know, being broken down in the
teleportation and then reassembled, reborn, re emerging from the plasma pool.
And that's pretty much what's happening with this jellyfish, which
I don't know. I mean, if you can combine that
(08:35):
with um quantum entanglement, which which we'll talk about, maybe
that could happen. But before we get to that, let's
talk about junk DNA or as we have discovered this year,
not so junk DNA. Yeah. So this is pretty cool,
And this is just another example of you knows, as
we any scientific endeavor, you'd you push a little a
(08:56):
little farther. You you answer one question and three new
ones arive. Um just this when you know you're you're
traveling across the countryside. Uh, what seems to be a
very simple array of hills and trees in the distance.
The closer you get you see the details, you see
the the how how complex the system actually is. And
so for the longest we've we've thought that there is
(09:17):
this thing called this junk DNA, which you know, sounds
kind of like a silly idea because why is it there? Right?
Is there's the the the you know, the quote you
may have seen on a T shirt. God don't make
no junk, right, So why would God? Because the idea
that the God in his his or her infinite wisdom
would not make something that was that was wasted, like
(09:38):
everything has a purpose, something, everything kind of fits in somehow.
And take the God out of that equation and fit
it into a more scientific setting, then it still rings
with a certain amount of true like it's there, like
why would why would there be junk DNA? Like would
it just be like leftover garbage DNA? And uh, you know,
the the take home here is that the more that
(09:58):
we've we've we've looked at with the vename, we realized
that it is not junk DNA, but it is a
genetic material that informs UM, these various epigenetic changes in
the genes that determine what genes are turned on or off.
And these switches, UM, the simplified way of looking at
these switches have an impact on various UM manifestations of
(10:21):
the human body, from various traits to UH diseases. Yeah,
and UM, this is a byproduct of mapping the human genome.
This discovery that junk DNA is not necessarily junking in
fact of it, they say, is vital and as you say,
it has UM has a pretty big implication in gene
switches that reside in bits of DNA. So UM, the
(10:44):
discovery is considered a major medical and scientific breakthrough and
it really does have an effect on our ability to
gain human health here. Um, and again we're talking about UM,
this material that was largely mysterious for this in some
ways it is, but there's an ability now to to
better uh look at it and try to figure out
(11:06):
what it is. In fact, the term junk DNA is
not being tossed around so much anymore. It has now
been upgraded to dark matter. Yes, something that and just
a briefly about dark matter in a cosmic sense, a mystery,
a thing that that we're we're not sure exactly on
the nature of, but we know it. It must be
important because there's a lot of it out there. Yeah,
(11:27):
and um, you know, there are complex diseases that appear
and they appear to be caused by tiny changes in
hundreds of genes switches which are controlled by this junk
or dark matter DNA. UM it really is a game
changer because it can help us to understand how alterations
in the non gene parts of DNA contribute to human disease,
which could lead to new drug therapy. UM. It could
(11:49):
also explain how the environment can affect disease risk. So
in the case of identical twins, small changes in the
environmental exposure can slightly altered genes, which is with the
result that one twin gets disease and the other does not.
UM and I think this is really going to be
most important, at least in the short term in cancer.
(12:11):
UM that this is from the New York Times article
Bits of Mystery DNA far from junk play crucial role.
It says that as they begin to turning the DNA
sequences of cancer cells. Researchers realize that most of the
thousands of DNA changes in cancer cells were not in genes.
They were in the dark matter. The challenge is to
figure out which of those changes are driving the cancer's growth.
(12:34):
All right, So there you go, junk DNA not so
junk after all. So we're gonna take a quick break
and when we come back, we're gonna roll through some
other potentially overlooked awesome science from the from including solar tornadoes. Okay,
(12:56):
we're back, and we are talking sellar tornadoes, which I'm
really excited about because this year they were confirmed. They've
been spotted or hints of them have been spotted in
two thousand and eight, but they were confirmed this year.
And it's thought that up to eleven thousand of them
twist over the Sun's surface every day, and they're made
of hot plasma and they are capable of reaching heights
(13:18):
of eighteen hundred miles high, with diameters ranging from nine
hundred and thirty to thirty five hundred miles wide. Okay,
so that the stats aren't done there, because think about
this mammoth um. It can spin upwards to about nine
thousand miles an hour, lasting only for about thirteen minutes each. Yeah,
(13:39):
and it's a lot of the news stories about this
really like the focus on these things are gonna be
as big as the United States. Yeah, they're They're enormous
solar tornadoes. Um, And it's important that I get a
lot of space related headlines. Don't at me because I
sometimes right for Discovery Space. So anytime Discovery Space does
(13:59):
a story, I end up seeing the headline. And it's
easy to become kind of dull to these after a
while because you have something happened in space, some new discovery.
You know, it's the nature of science journalism. You have
to spice it up a bit um. You know, black holes,
that's great, but no, it's not enough today. It's gotta
be monster black holes. There have to be cannibal black holes.
They've gotta so everything is sexed up to them. Yeah,
(14:23):
so solar tornadoes on the Sun. It sounds awesome, but
it was actually kind of easy to miss this one
if you're if you're having to process a lot of
space headlines because they kind of overstate everything. Even though
the core science is always really amazing when you look
at it. In this case, in point, you have the
solar tornadoes. Now you probably wonder, well, what is why
(14:43):
is it important? Like why does it what does it
matter that there are solar tornadoes aside from the cool factor, Well,
it really does give us a better understanding what's going
on on the Sun. Like one thing that it's important
to realize about the Sun is that the the surface
of the Sun is the coolest part of the Sun,
which seems to counterintuitive, right, right, especially since the atmosphere,
(15:04):
the weather of the Sun is hotter than the surface.
So it's like it's hot and then it gets a
little cooler and it gets progressively hotter again. Um and uh,
And this gives us little more reason to understand it
because in the atmosphere of the Sun, the weather of
the Sun, you have all this intense activity. Yeah and um,
I wanted to point out that then wide amount Boom,
(15:26):
he's an astrophysicist at the University of Also had said,
you know, we thought something was up. Basically, he said
that we observed some unusually hot plasma above the Sun's surface,
so we knew something was happening there, but we didn't
know what. And it turns out that this activity, these
solar tornadoes may contribute to that variation in heat. The
reason why there is so much heat in this upper
(15:47):
atmosphere because if you think about a tornado, it's um,
you know, it's well, there's there's a spiraling effect bringing
heat up right, But a sort of solar tornado is
unlike tornadoes on Earth, which of course are powered by
differences in temperature and humidity. UM. The twisters in the
Sun are a combination of hot flowing gas entangled magnetic
(16:07):
field lines, ultimately driven by nuclear reactions at the solar core.
So at the surface for the photosphere, cooled plasma sinks
towards the interior like water running down the bathtub drain,
and this creates vortex is that magnetic field lines are
forced to follow, and then the line stretch upward into
the chromosphere where they continue to spiral up. So it's
(16:30):
just one big death metal album up there. Big. Yeah. Yeah,
it's why you It's why the corona, this upper atmosphere
of the Sun's atmosphere is filled with all of this
heat because you have these massive tornadoes of plasma just
throwing themselves around. UM. And then as for the eleven
thousand per day statistic um. It has been said that
(16:51):
there may not be as many in the future because
we've seen a glut of these huge sillar tornadoes because
the Sun has been ramping up toward max and activity
levels in its current cycle. So you know, still it's
a tremendous amount of activity, and one that people weren't
necessarily aware of. They suspected, of course that something was
going on. But you know, I think it recasts the
(17:13):
whole idea of the Wizard of oz. I think someone
needs to to write with sort of the oz uh
based on the Sun. Really, so so Dorothy would go
to the Sun instead. Yes, there's there are a lot
of logistics to be worked out there. But imagine the
twister that comes through that cancel. Yes, yeah, of course,
of course, the solar twister. I like it. I like it,
(17:34):
all right, all right, well, now let's turn our attention
to the quantum world. Now, of course, quantum things happened
in because quantum, quantum happens. Quantum happens. It looks great
in the headline um and so there there continues to
be some interesting headway in the field of quantum teleportation.
Now I know what you're you're you're you're wondering. You're
(17:57):
either wondering, well, what is quantum teleportation or you're thinking,
oh God, I hope they don't try and explain it. Uh.
And we're we're not going to go to in depth
on quantum teleportation. That's really a subject for another time,
but but we can sort of speed you through the
simple version of it um because what what we have here,
what we're dealing with, essentially, is quantum entanglement, in which
(18:18):
two sub atomic particles thousands of light years of party
and then can instantly respond um to each other's motions. Uh.
So we've this started off is something that was you know,
merely theoretical that we figured was possible, and then scientists
observed the phenomenon at at at the particle level and
uh and in two thousand and nine they managed to
(18:39):
produce the effect with linked superconductors and uh. And it's
an exciting topic because you know, it helps us certainly,
it involves a greater understanding of what's going on in
the quantum realm, but also it has enormous possible applications,
uh for faster than light signaling, for as sending data,
for encrypting data, um but particularly and in the in
(19:01):
the area of quantum computing. It's it's pretty big medicine. Yeah.
In the past year, a team from China and another
in Austria set new records for quantum teleportation using a
laser to beam photons through the open air over sixty
and eighty nine excuse me, sixty and eighty nine miles
respectively for context, just you know, just to let you know.
(19:21):
The first efforts to do this resulted in sending the
particles mirror inches. So the fact that they're already up
to eighty nine miles is pretty amazing. So the idea
is that quantum teleportation could be used to transmit particles
and information from an orbiting satellite eventually to relay station
on Earth. So this information in the process by which
(19:44):
it is transmitted is what is called quantum encryption. So,
according to wire dot COM's article the Race to bring
Quantum Teleportation to your world, quote, if developed, quantum teleportation,
satellites could allow spies to pass large amounts of information
back and forth or create unhackable codes. Should we ever
(20:06):
build quantum computers, they would need quantum teleporters in order
to be networked together in a quantum version of the Internet.
This is very cool stuff, you know, just from a
sci fi perspective, you can imagine the implications of a
quantum infrastructure in our world. Yes, to say nothing of
(20:26):
all those scenarios in which got vaculate might wear address.
So that's sort of the Pine the Sky idea. And
if you think that's too pine the sky though, just
consider this. China plans to launch a satellite with a
quantum teleportation experiment payload in two, with a quantum communications
project being estimated to cost fifty to one million dollars. Okay,
(20:50):
so China obviously thinks that this is an important technology. Uh.
Europe UM, UH, Japan and Canada are all their space
agencies are hoping to fund their own quantum teleportation satellite
projects in the coming years. So the US is a
bit behind in this, and some of this has to
do with bureaucratic shuffling between DARPA and IOPA. UM. But
(21:14):
it's interesting because it's definitely a race to get as
advanced in this technology as possible. Yeah, if you think
back to the episode we did on an interseller Internet
the idea and the interplanetary Internet. Uh, because as we
as we continue to expand out into the cosmos. If
we you know, as we we show up on other worlds,
we're gonna have to deal with communication, and we're going
(21:35):
to face the reality that we're dealing with such distances
that that instantaneous communication just isn't possible. So you end
up with it with ever growing lag times, and it's
more of a return to an age of instead of
you know, instantly connecting with a loved one or or
or just employers or mission team members, you would have
to send off missives into the void and then wait
(21:57):
for one to return and you know, hope that nothing
went long. One of the big exciting things, here's the
possible possibility of instantaneous communication between planets by use of
this quantum teleportation. And it's because we're talking about data
being reproduced in one place through quantum entanglement. No, it's
it's very interesting and I particularly that the spy part
(22:19):
of course, just kind of makes me sit up a
little bit taller and take notice. And there was an interesting,
uh analogy of this of how this might happen with
quantum teleportation to send this controllable signal, say to a
satellite and I'm going to take a stab at it,
a game for it. Yeah, let's do it. Okay. This
(22:40):
requires three subatomic particles, say photons. In this case, two
of the photons are entangled with one another, and the
third contains the bit of information you want to send. Okay.
So just know that the sub atomic particles, let's say
they're a vertical orientation, okay. And once you test that
and you figure out that these the two that are
(23:01):
entangled are vertical. You know, the other ones in vertical
no matter where it is in conjunction to the other one. Okay,
So these are like paired Dakota rings. Yes, So you
take one and I take one. Yeah, okay, And then
there's that third bit right that has the information. So
it says. For a simple example of how this works,
let's say you place one photon from the entangled pair
in Los Angeles and the other in New York. In
(23:25):
Los Angeles, a scientist measures one of the entangled photons
and the third particle at the same time. She doesn't
find out their exact properties, but just their relative ones
if they are the same or opposite of one another,
for instance. And the particles get destroyed during this measurement.
So the scientists has measured figures out. Let's say it's horizontal.
Let's say that she discovers that the particles are opposites,
(23:47):
meaning that the one that is entangled, Okay, that the
one of the pair is opposite from the third particle.
That bit of information, they're opposite from each other. And
she relays this information to her New York colleague. He
then measures the entangled photon and knows that the opposite
of that measurement is the bit of information he was
meant to receive. Yeah, there you go, clear as clear,
(24:10):
clear as is mud. Right there. Um. It makes me
we ran across a number of different quote unquote simplified
explanations for this stuff. When we're looking at it, like
there's one that involves like a secret like police investigation
involving detectives, Romulus and Remus and Alice. It it gets
very complex even when you're trying to do a very
simple explanation, and a lot of it kept. It kept.
(24:33):
Made me think of the movie Labyrinth in which uh
Sarah encounters the two doors with the with the the
muppety creatures behind them, where one of them says that
they both informer that one of them always tells the truth,
and one of them always lies. And then one tells
her you know what the other one would say, and
you have to try and work out in your mind
(24:54):
what that answer means and which doors you should take
based on that answer, and it's it's really a mind work. Well,
the problem with a Romulus and Remus example that we
did not talk about for a good reason is because
it also brings cultural drink into the conversation. That's not
relevant to it, right, because Romulus and Remus is an
entirely different thing. All they wanted in this analogy were twins.
(25:15):
Yeah yeah, um so, but I got to attach their characters.
They had to name them. Suddenly they were invested in them,
and we're just trying to understand plans. All I want
to know is this entangled pair, how are they behaving?
And what is their behavior? Tell us about this third particle? Right,
don't kind of distract us by telling a good story, right,
good stuff? Um, but it's it's again. This is uh,
this cryptography, right, This this key that is inserted to
(25:38):
give you a bit of information, and this essentially is
what these entangled pairs are doing. Real quick, just to
mention another story that we discussed briefly, but we ended
up not including. There was a really cool article about
dissonant music and what happens when animals listen to it,
or more importantly, what's what happens when people listen to it?
And this is a u c l A team that
(26:00):
looked into this, and they found that that just distorted
and jarring music is really is so evocative because the
mechanisms are closely related to distress calls in animals. So
the idea here is that everyone, like you know, perks
up at Woodstock and listens to Jimi Hendrix playing the
national anthem because it's jarring and there's distortion, and you know,
(26:24):
it calls out to our our deeper animal selves. So
I found that found it interesting and they were also
they also did some studies in like two thousand and
ten where they're looking at and classic movies and various
genres including horror and looking at UH at the soundtracks
and how they differ and the kind of emotions they evoked.
And and they did see that like horror films tended
(26:45):
to to use more screaming females and distorted vocals UH
distorted sounds in their soundtracks. Um So anyway, I just
found it's, like said, there's not a lot of meat
really there to chew on. But it's interesting to think
about that in terms of of music that we find.
Please maybe they did a study and and uh and everything.
We're like, you know, subjects were rating music that they
(27:06):
listened to, uh on a negative and positive scale. They
were listening to stuff that was distorted and stuff that
was more you know, serene and uh and more melody
to it. Uh and it. But it did make me
think about music that combines both because they're certainly there's
straight up noise music you can listen to straight up
you know, just extreme electronic distortion and stuff that sounds
uh in my wife's words, like someone throwing a xylophone
(27:28):
down a set of stairs. And then you have you know,
more stuff that's all the way on the on the
serene level. But then you have music that sort of
incorporates both, like like some of the groups that I
really like that that toy with the nose, that the
nose the noise uh section here, like like Autecker. They
they use a certain amount of serene and sounds and
a certain amount of melody, but then also a lot
(27:50):
of you know, unpredictable um uh, distorted noise as well,
and it sort of comes together in this sort of
interesting place that that it makes you think, what's it's
touching based with the you know, the part of my
mind it wants, you know, calmness and serenity, but also
in this this animal part of my mind that is
responding to something that might be the sound of an
animal dying. Yeah, it's stimulating, right, So it's interesting to
(28:13):
have both of those um I also wanted to mention,
and I don't have the information right in front of me,
so this is off top of my head. I believe
it was a chimp in Germany, a zoo in Germany.
Have you heard about this chump um That was remarkable
for a couple of things, but mainly because he would
(28:36):
take rocks, put them nearby him, and then sit there
and wait for zoo visitors to come by and will
be act very relaxed, and then just when when the
zoo visitor sort of didn't realize or was distracted by something,
with launch an attack with those rocks. And I thought
it was fascinating because not only does it show premeditative behavior,
(28:59):
which we know systin animals, particularly in chimps, but it
shows the ability for these chimps to actually enter into
the realm of acting and in order to pull off
this subterfuge against these zoo visitors. And uh, the video
on it is fascinating. I thought that was an interesting
bit of animal behavior from this year. All right, well,
(29:20):
there you go, just some overlooked, potentially overlooked, but really
cool bits of science from that we wanted to clean
up there and present to you. So let's call over
the robit for a little listener mail. Before I read
some of these, I do want to point out real quick.
In a previous episode, I mentioned pugs, the breed of dog,
(29:41):
and I talked about how useless they were, uh, you know,
because the largely you encounter a pug, and the pug
is just this slightly you know, this kind of poorly
put together dog that has trouble with with heat and
too much exercise and is ultimately just a lap creature. Uh.
Or at least that's the way I used to think
about it. But just yesterday I was on Marta, Atlanta's
public transportation system. I saw a young lady in a
(30:03):
wheelchair and she had a helper animal that was a pug,
So it's recast your opinion. I have to come back
some of what I thought about pugs, because here's a
pug and he's uh. I think it was a she actually,
But there was that pug and she was doing her job,
representing calmly there by the by the wheelchair as a
train roared by. So how did you know she was she? Well,
I mean I could sort of. She was slim, so
(30:26):
you could sort of tell what was going on under there.
You know. It's like you picked the dog up and
turned her over the idea I rolled her Alpha roll
the dog. No, it's always a no no. Don't alpha
roll a helper an, especially on public transportation. Exactly. All right, Well, um,
here's a little bit of listener mail from our listener Brad.
Brad writes and says, hey, you guys are awesome. I
am at a party right now. And that's the thing.
(30:48):
This first time anyone has written this from a party
that they've mentioned it. But he says, I am at
a party right now, and it was just plugging your
biology of Gremlin's episode. The crowd here were so excited.
We got to pondering the biology of zombies. Hint, you
need to do an episode on the biology of zombies.
That's all I'm gonna say, Bratt. I don't know what
I have to think about that one. The potential there,
(31:09):
I know there are some. I mean, it ultimately comes
down to are their real world biological analogs? Because that
was the fun of the Gremlins, was taking something that
seems wacky and stupid and totally just made up without
any real regard for the natural world and pairing it
with things in the natural world that are just as amazing. Um,
(31:30):
And I think there's some parallels with zombies we'd have
we'd have to explore. Speaking of have you seen a
trailer for the Zombies Love Story movie that's coming out?
Telling is it? Does it look good? Yeah? Somehow they well,
I don't know, it looks kind of hokey too, because
somehow the zombies seem to heal themselves through the powerful
of If I was actually paying attention to this trailer,
(31:51):
um in a meaningful way, but we might be interesting,
all right, We'll look out for that one. We also
received a number of cool contents from people who listen
to our teen Angst episode, we were talking about the
the science of teen ankst. Well, what's going on with
the teenager's brain? Why? Why did teenagers seem so different?
And why as teenagers do we feel ultimately so different
(32:11):
about the world and about our social life than uh,
than we did when we were younger, and then we
do when we get older. So we heard from a
number of people. Here's one from listener Jordan's. Jordan rights
in and says, Hey, they're just finished listening to your
podcast on teenage angst. I just wanted to let you
know that, being a teenager myself, I have experienced some
of these tricks the mind plays, but most of the
(32:31):
time I can overcome the brain's way of tricking me.
Like when one of my friends desired, uh that he
no longer be my friend, I myself didn't care, but
I started having bad dreams about this non friend of mine,
and I would wake up and I would think to myself,
I don't really care care. Why is this person's Why
is it so important to me? Thanks for explaining this
to me. Keep up the great podcasting work. Regards Jordan's.
(32:53):
We heard from Drake. Drake wrote in says, hello, I
just listened to your Teenage Teenager podcast and was interested
in a change of consciousness. I was absorbed in all
of the facts that you guys stated because in a
few months, I too will know what, uh what it's
like to be a teenager. I used to think that
taking risk and rebellion were just things that teens did
to fit in or to look cool, But now I
(33:15):
know that there's some science behind it. Besides, I never
really knew how to fit in any way. Keep up
the great work, and I'm happy you've got this message.
And that's from Drake from Nevada. So we received a
number of other comments and it's all I wish we
could read them all. Um. A lot of the cool
moments where people either were reevaluating the teenagers they were
(33:35):
or took a close look at the teenagers they were becoming,
also wanted to mention. We got an email from Isabelle
and she took us to task for not exploring teens
who exercise great amounts of self control, because she said
that she believes that there are a good subsection here
of teenagers who are honest and who um, who can
(34:00):
kind of control their states of rebellion and so on
and so forth, and I thought, you know, she makes
a really interesting point, and that might make for a
good podcast in the future here talking about self control
and teenagers and why some teenagers are successful at that. Um, Like,
ultimately we could do like a how to guide for
for teenagers, the teenager the teenage brain owners guide. Yeah, like,
(34:20):
what you know, is it higher functioning? Why are some
teenagers more mature than others? Because I certainly thought of
examples of teenagers I know in my life who are
who do seem very responsible and have a good amount
of self control. So I thought she's got a point there,
perhaps something we can pursue here in the future. Yeah. Well,
I was talking about this episode with with my wife
and she brought up to that It's like, it's kind
(34:42):
of a little disturbing to think about how the the
range in which one has the teenage brain. You know,
it can it can hit pretty early, and then it
can it can also hit kind of late and last
up until you know, basically in mid twenties. And at
that point, like we we were already sitting and sending
these individuals to to college, We're already sending these individuals
to war. Um, you know that they're they're voting. I mean,
(35:05):
they're all these these things that are happening and uh
and but there's still you know, potentially in this uh,
this state of development. So yeah, Well, we also got
an email and just thinking about that that have different
states and experiences that teenagers going through. We've got an
email from a woman named Michela who is twenty three
years now, uh, but she became pregnant at the age
(35:26):
of eighteen, and she depends that this really insightful, interesting
email about how that experience may have changed her brain
as a teenager in how she looks at her sister
and her sister's behavior and start contrast to her own.
So that was a very interesting email that we don't
have time to read. But thank you MICHAELA for sending in. Yeah. Yeah,
(35:47):
we appreciate all of the email feedback that you guys
send in. Uh and also though the comments on Facebook
and UH and Twitter, we don't we don't necessarily have
time to respond to all of it, but just bear
in mind, we do, we do read it, we do
check it out, and if you would like to reach
out to us, you can find us on Facebook, you
can find us on tumbler, we are stuff to blow
your mind on both of those. You can also find
(36:09):
us on Twitter, where we go by the handle blow
the Mind, and you can also send us a line
at blow the Mind at discovery dot com. For more
on this and thousands of other topics, Is It how
Stuff Works dot com
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and my name is Julie Douglas.
And we just recorded an episode about some of the
big stories in science during the last year, during twelve uh,
and now we're doing a second episode where we're just
(00:26):
gonna run through some bits of really fascinating science that
you might have missed. Uh, A lot of its stuff
that we could have conceivably maybe have done an episode about.
Or maybe it's like something that's really interesting but just
not quite enough to do a whole episode on. So
consider this kind of a sampler platter of some of
the stranger chocolates from now I get to say, a
(00:50):
poo poo platter, Yes, poop ladder of odd science from Um,
we're gonna kick off with with my favorite from this
this bunch and this is a worse the Immortal jellyfish
the quote unquote Benjamin Button of the Animal Kingdom. Uh.
A lot of headlines had some fun with this, I
mean have to fund with Most of these are the headlines.
(01:11):
New York Times ran a story titled can a jellyfish Unlocked?
The Secrets of immortality. So you have a number of
I mean just pit there. Yeah, they dropped in immortality
in the headline, which that's gonna that generates some interest
because we all want to live live, not forever, at
least maybe a little more than we have a lotted
(01:32):
to us. So, uh, it's it's instantly fascinating. So the
jellyfish in question is the Tatopsis dorney, which to all
appearances looks like jellyfish. There's there's nothing particularly amazing about
but what what happens here is that, um nothing amazing
about it in just appearance, but in function it does
(01:54):
some amazing things. What appears to happen is that it
quote unquote reverses an in age unil it reaches an
early stage, earlier stage of its development. Now to really
understand what's going on here, you have to picture the
life cycle of the jellyfish and h So what happens,
all right, So you having an adult jellyfish, a medusa,
all right, when it reproduces, it drops off this planny
(02:17):
little larva. Alright, this larva floats down to the bottom
of of the sea there and there it grows into
a polyp and then the budding polyp emits this ifira,
this little sort of mini pseudo jellyfish that then floats
up and becomes the adult jellyfish of it. Right, right,
So that's the basic life cycle. Now, what happens normally
(02:40):
is that you have an adult jellyfish that reproduces a
few times, starts getting a little old, it starts to starve,
or the water gets a little too hot, and then
it dies. It shuffles off this mortal coil. You know.
This is basically like any life form right reaches the
adult stage. The adult stage is about reproducing. Now, it's
worth noting that, as with many other organisms, um, the
(03:00):
adult stage is not the only stage that can reproduce. Uh,
there's also some a sexual reproduction that takes place at
the poly up stage. But but generally, in most organisms
reach it reaches the adult stage, it reproduces, and then
it either dies immediately or maybe it carries on a
little longer, but generally its function is done. You've reached
the adulthood stage. You've reproduced. That's it. You have to
(03:23):
get off the stage and make room for the other players.
But not so with this particular jellyfish. Now it does
not quite Benjamin Button, Like, that would be a wrong analogy.
What would be a better analogy is that is not
that like an old man grows young again. But imagine
an old man walking down the street and just collapses
under the weight of his like old awfulness, and then
(03:46):
just melts into a pile of goo on the sidewalk,
and then out of that goo crawls a naked, slime
covered infant, which then grows up into an adult. I
like that. I like that. Pat Krug marine biologists says
that when they do reach the end of this cycle, uh,
they get really stressed out and they collapse to the
bottom and melt, But instead of dying, they really reorganize
(04:12):
its tissues and forms a new little polyp, so, as
you say, sort of climbing from the primordial goo and
reforming itself. Um. And it's interesting because Craig says that
it it's it's almost like it skips it's having the
sex part of it and goes straight to the next
bit in the life cycle and becomes this new polyp.
(04:34):
And I think this is so cool because it reminds
me of the imaginal cells that we talked about in
the Gremlin's podcast. We were talking about a butterfly sort
of deconstructing a rather caterpillar deconstructing itself in the cocoon,
and that those imaginal cells are much like undifferentiated stem cells,
and that they can do any sort of job that
(04:55):
they need to while reconstructing this new form, new life form,
this butterfly um and then those cells becoming specialized when
it when it actually does become the butterfly itself. This
is very much the same thing with this immortal jellyfish. Yeah,
to put it in the gremlin model now that we
brought gremlins and magua into it. Uh, the magua the
(05:15):
furry little dude, the gremlin, the repulsive creature that the
magua turns into. The gremlin is the adult form. The
magua is the juvenile form, maybe even a larval form.
However you want to look at it um and so
when you know, the magua eats after midnight, turns into
an adult gremlin. But then imagine if the adult gremlin
melted and then out of the gremlin melt emerged a magua.
(05:39):
You know, it would be a a reversal, you know.
So it's fascinating to think about about it that way,
but but still taking nothing away from this organism. Like
I said, it's not quite Benjamin Button, and it's which
is I think a good thing. Uh, it's also not
quite immortal. We're getting a little carried away with that, right,
there's a question mark to to what degree the tissues
(06:00):
can continue to regenerate themselves, right, Yeah, I mean it's
it's really awesome, it's really fascinating and certainly, um, something
very unique is going up. Well that's also another thing
because there's also the possibly there are other jellyfish species
that do this as well. So it's maybe not as
unique as some of the stories made it out to be.
But it's still pretty amazing. Uh. And ultimately how long
can this keep going? Uh? Probably not forever. This is
(06:24):
probably not a situation where it's like the Highlander of
jellyfish just carrying on and carrying on. Yeah, And let
me just do a quick quote from Pat Kraig again,
the marine biologist. Why it is significant? He or she
says that learning how to take adult cells and get
them back to the early stage where they can develop
into anything is a significant goal of what we want
(06:44):
to be able to achieve. Um, and I think in
this case she's talking about in humans, it's something that
this humble little jelly has a built in feature of
its life cycle. Things get gross around it, it melts
and rebuilds itself from scratch. So I think there is
definitely the potential that we could learn some basic things
that we could better apply to our own technology for
human medicine. Now, you know, it would be a dream
is to talk to Aubrey Degree about this, you know,
(07:07):
and say, like, what you know, to what extent are
things like this? These sort of discoveries um helpful in
in his own bio gerontology work where he is trying
to get to disease before it happens in the human
body and basically try to keep the body is finally
tuned as possible so that with drug intervention and good health,
(07:29):
we could possibly live, you know, upwards to five hundred
years old. Yeah. I guess one of the things about
humans is we don't really we never go through a
cocoon phase. We never go through a drastic of change.
I mean, you know, there's there's a lot of drastic
changes that go that occur between you know, being an
infinite being an adult, but but like what would be
(07:51):
the cut off line, you know, if you could? Yeah,
and to what degree could you re org your your
cells and your tissues. So I think that's the interesting part,
Like could we take that information and apply to yourselves practically? Yeah,
I mean what makes me think of the fly because
in a lot of primordial do in that. Yeah, I mean,
(08:13):
that's one of the things that the Jeff gold Blooms,
the character gets on about when he's you know, quote
unquote gold blooming about the excitement of the science, and
he's talking about, you know, being broken down in the
teleportation and then reassembled, reborn, re emerging from the plasma pool.
And that's pretty much what's happening with this jellyfish, which
I don't know. I mean, if you can combine that
(08:35):
with um quantum entanglement, which which we'll talk about, maybe
that could happen. But before we get to that, let's
talk about junk DNA or as we have discovered this year,
not so junk DNA. Yeah. So this is pretty cool,
And this is just another example of you knows, as
we any scientific endeavor, you'd you push a little a
(08:56):
little farther. You you answer one question and three new
ones arive. Um just this when you know you're you're
traveling across the countryside. Uh, what seems to be a
very simple array of hills and trees in the distance.
The closer you get you see the details, you see
the the how how complex the system actually is. And
so for the longest we've we've thought that there is
(09:17):
this thing called this junk DNA, which you know, sounds
kind of like a silly idea because why is it there? Right?
Is there's the the the you know, the quote you
may have seen on a T shirt. God don't make
no junk, right, So why would God? Because the idea
that the God in his his or her infinite wisdom
would not make something that was that was wasted, like
(09:38):
everything has a purpose, something, everything kind of fits in somehow.
And take the God out of that equation and fit
it into a more scientific setting, then it still rings
with a certain amount of true like it's there, like
why would why would there be junk DNA? Like would
it just be like leftover garbage DNA? And uh, you know,
the the take home here is that the more that
(09:58):
we've we've we've looked at with the vename, we realized
that it is not junk DNA, but it is a
genetic material that informs UM, these various epigenetic changes in
the genes that determine what genes are turned on or off.
And these switches, UM, the simplified way of looking at
these switches have an impact on various UM manifestations of
(10:21):
the human body, from various traits to UH diseases. Yeah,
and UM, this is a byproduct of mapping the human genome.
This discovery that junk DNA is not necessarily junking in
fact of it, they say, is vital and as you say,
it has UM has a pretty big implication in gene
switches that reside in bits of DNA. So UM, the
(10:44):
discovery is considered a major medical and scientific breakthrough and
it really does have an effect on our ability to
gain human health here. Um, and again we're talking about UM,
this material that was largely mysterious for this in some
ways it is, but there's an ability now to to
better uh look at it and try to figure out
(11:06):
what it is. In fact, the term junk DNA is
not being tossed around so much anymore. It has now
been upgraded to dark matter. Yes, something that and just
a briefly about dark matter in a cosmic sense, a mystery,
a thing that that we're we're not sure exactly on
the nature of, but we know it. It must be
important because there's a lot of it out there. Yeah,
(11:27):
and um, you know, there are complex diseases that appear
and they appear to be caused by tiny changes in
hundreds of genes switches which are controlled by this junk
or dark matter DNA. UM it really is a game
changer because it can help us to understand how alterations
in the non gene parts of DNA contribute to human disease,
which could lead to new drug therapy. UM. It could
(11:49):
also explain how the environment can affect disease risk. So
in the case of identical twins, small changes in the
environmental exposure can slightly altered genes, which is with the
result that one twin gets disease and the other does not.
UM and I think this is really going to be
most important, at least in the short term in cancer.
(12:11):
UM that this is from the New York Times article
Bits of Mystery DNA far from junk play crucial role.
It says that as they begin to turning the DNA
sequences of cancer cells. Researchers realize that most of the
thousands of DNA changes in cancer cells were not in genes.
They were in the dark matter. The challenge is to
figure out which of those changes are driving the cancer's growth.
(12:34):
All right, So there you go, junk DNA not so
junk after all. So we're gonna take a quick break
and when we come back, we're gonna roll through some
other potentially overlooked awesome science from the from including solar tornadoes. Okay,
(12:56):
we're back, and we are talking sellar tornadoes, which I'm
really excited about because this year they were confirmed. They've
been spotted or hints of them have been spotted in
two thousand and eight, but they were confirmed this year.
And it's thought that up to eleven thousand of them
twist over the Sun's surface every day, and they're made
of hot plasma and they are capable of reaching heights
(13:18):
of eighteen hundred miles high, with diameters ranging from nine
hundred and thirty to thirty five hundred miles wide. Okay,
so that the stats aren't done there, because think about
this mammoth um. It can spin upwards to about nine
thousand miles an hour, lasting only for about thirteen minutes each. Yeah,
(13:39):
and it's a lot of the news stories about this
really like the focus on these things are gonna be
as big as the United States. Yeah, they're They're enormous
solar tornadoes. Um, And it's important that I get a
lot of space related headlines. Don't at me because I
sometimes right for Discovery Space. So anytime Discovery Space does
(13:59):
a story, I end up seeing the headline. And it's
easy to become kind of dull to these after a
while because you have something happened in space, some new discovery.
You know, it's the nature of science journalism. You have
to spice it up a bit um. You know, black holes,
that's great, but no, it's not enough today. It's gotta
be monster black holes. There have to be cannibal black holes.
They've gotta so everything is sexed up to them. Yeah,
(14:23):
so solar tornadoes on the Sun. It sounds awesome, but
it was actually kind of easy to miss this one
if you're if you're having to process a lot of
space headlines because they kind of overstate everything. Even though
the core science is always really amazing when you look
at it. In this case, in point, you have the
solar tornadoes. Now you probably wonder, well, what is why
(14:43):
is it important? Like why does it what does it
matter that there are solar tornadoes aside from the cool factor, Well,
it really does give us a better understanding what's going
on on the Sun. Like one thing that it's important
to realize about the Sun is that the the surface
of the Sun is the coolest part of the Sun,
which seems to counterintuitive, right, right, especially since the atmosphere,
(15:04):
the weather of the Sun is hotter than the surface.
So it's like it's hot and then it gets a
little cooler and it gets progressively hotter again. Um and uh,
And this gives us little more reason to understand it
because in the atmosphere of the Sun, the weather of
the Sun, you have all this intense activity. Yeah and um,
I wanted to point out that then wide amount Boom,
(15:26):
he's an astrophysicist at the University of Also had said,
you know, we thought something was up. Basically, he said
that we observed some unusually hot plasma above the Sun's surface,
so we knew something was happening there, but we didn't
know what. And it turns out that this activity, these
solar tornadoes may contribute to that variation in heat. The
reason why there is so much heat in this upper
(15:47):
atmosphere because if you think about a tornado, it's um,
you know, it's well, there's there's a spiraling effect bringing
heat up right, But a sort of solar tornado is
unlike tornadoes on Earth, which of course are powered by
differences in temperature and humidity. UM. The twisters in the
Sun are a combination of hot flowing gas entangled magnetic
(16:07):
field lines, ultimately driven by nuclear reactions at the solar core.
So at the surface for the photosphere, cooled plasma sinks
towards the interior like water running down the bathtub drain,
and this creates vortex is that magnetic field lines are
forced to follow, and then the line stretch upward into
the chromosphere where they continue to spiral up. So it's
(16:30):
just one big death metal album up there. Big. Yeah. Yeah,
it's why you It's why the corona, this upper atmosphere
of the Sun's atmosphere is filled with all of this
heat because you have these massive tornadoes of plasma just
throwing themselves around. UM. And then as for the eleven
thousand per day statistic um. It has been said that
(16:51):
there may not be as many in the future because
we've seen a glut of these huge sillar tornadoes because
the Sun has been ramping up toward max and activity
levels in its current cycle. So you know, still it's
a tremendous amount of activity, and one that people weren't
necessarily aware of. They suspected, of course that something was
going on. But you know, I think it recasts the
(17:13):
whole idea of the Wizard of oz. I think someone
needs to to write with sort of the oz uh
based on the Sun. Really, so so Dorothy would go
to the Sun instead. Yes, there's there are a lot
of logistics to be worked out there. But imagine the
twister that comes through that cancel. Yes, yeah, of course,
of course, the solar twister. I like it. I like it,
(17:34):
all right, all right, well, now let's turn our attention
to the quantum world. Now, of course, quantum things happened
in because quantum, quantum happens. Quantum happens. It looks great
in the headline um and so there there continues to
be some interesting headway in the field of quantum teleportation.
Now I know what you're you're you're you're wondering. You're
(17:57):
either wondering, well, what is quantum teleportation or you're thinking,
oh God, I hope they don't try and explain it. Uh.
And we're we're not going to go to in depth
on quantum teleportation. That's really a subject for another time,
but but we can sort of speed you through the
simple version of it um because what what we have here,
what we're dealing with, essentially, is quantum entanglement, in which
(18:18):
two sub atomic particles thousands of light years of party
and then can instantly respond um to each other's motions. Uh.
So we've this started off is something that was you know,
merely theoretical that we figured was possible, and then scientists
observed the phenomenon at at at the particle level and
uh and in two thousand and nine they managed to
(18:39):
produce the effect with linked superconductors and uh. And it's
an exciting topic because you know, it helps us certainly,
it involves a greater understanding of what's going on in
the quantum realm, but also it has enormous possible applications,
uh for faster than light signaling, for as sending data,
for encrypting data, um but particularly and in the in
(19:01):
the area of quantum computing. It's it's pretty big medicine. Yeah.
In the past year, a team from China and another
in Austria set new records for quantum teleportation using a
laser to beam photons through the open air over sixty
and eighty nine excuse me, sixty and eighty nine miles
respectively for context, just you know, just to let you know.
(19:21):
The first efforts to do this resulted in sending the
particles mirror inches. So the fact that they're already up
to eighty nine miles is pretty amazing. So the idea
is that quantum teleportation could be used to transmit particles
and information from an orbiting satellite eventually to relay station
on Earth. So this information in the process by which
(19:44):
it is transmitted is what is called quantum encryption. So,
according to wire dot COM's article the Race to bring
Quantum Teleportation to your world, quote, if developed, quantum teleportation,
satellites could allow spies to pass large amounts of information
back and forth or create unhackable codes. Should we ever
(20:06):
build quantum computers, they would need quantum teleporters in order
to be networked together in a quantum version of the Internet.
This is very cool stuff, you know, just from a
sci fi perspective, you can imagine the implications of a
quantum infrastructure in our world. Yes, to say nothing of
(20:26):
all those scenarios in which got vaculate might wear address.
So that's sort of the Pine the Sky idea. And
if you think that's too pine the sky though, just
consider this. China plans to launch a satellite with a
quantum teleportation experiment payload in two, with a quantum communications
project being estimated to cost fifty to one million dollars. Okay,
(20:50):
so China obviously thinks that this is an important technology. Uh.
Europe UM, UH, Japan and Canada are all their space
agencies are hoping to fund their own quantum teleportation satellite
projects in the coming years. So the US is a
bit behind in this, and some of this has to
do with bureaucratic shuffling between DARPA and IOPA. UM. But
(21:14):
it's interesting because it's definitely a race to get as
advanced in this technology as possible. Yeah, if you think
back to the episode we did on an interseller Internet
the idea and the interplanetary Internet. Uh, because as we
as we continue to expand out into the cosmos. If
we you know, as we we show up on other worlds,
we're gonna have to deal with communication, and we're going
(21:35):
to face the reality that we're dealing with such distances
that that instantaneous communication just isn't possible. So you end
up with it with ever growing lag times, and it's
more of a return to an age of instead of
you know, instantly connecting with a loved one or or
or just employers or mission team members, you would have
to send off missives into the void and then wait
(21:57):
for one to return and you know, hope that nothing
went long. One of the big exciting things, here's the
possible possibility of instantaneous communication between planets by use of
this quantum teleportation. And it's because we're talking about data
being reproduced in one place through quantum entanglement. No, it's
it's very interesting and I particularly that the spy part
(22:19):
of course, just kind of makes me sit up a
little bit taller and take notice. And there was an interesting,
uh analogy of this of how this might happen with
quantum teleportation to send this controllable signal, say to a
satellite and I'm going to take a stab at it,
a game for it. Yeah, let's do it. Okay. This
(22:40):
requires three subatomic particles, say photons. In this case, two
of the photons are entangled with one another, and the
third contains the bit of information you want to send. Okay.
So just know that the sub atomic particles, let's say
they're a vertical orientation, okay. And once you test that
and you figure out that these the two that are
(23:01):
entangled are vertical. You know, the other ones in vertical
no matter where it is in conjunction to the other one. Okay,
So these are like paired Dakota rings. Yes, So you
take one and I take one. Yeah, okay, And then
there's that third bit right that has the information. So
it says. For a simple example of how this works,
let's say you place one photon from the entangled pair
in Los Angeles and the other in New York. In
(23:25):
Los Angeles, a scientist measures one of the entangled photons
and the third particle at the same time. She doesn't
find out their exact properties, but just their relative ones
if they are the same or opposite of one another,
for instance. And the particles get destroyed during this measurement.
So the scientists has measured figures out. Let's say it's horizontal.
Let's say that she discovers that the particles are opposites,
(23:47):
meaning that the one that is entangled, Okay, that the
one of the pair is opposite from the third particle.
That bit of information, they're opposite from each other. And
she relays this information to her New York colleague. He
then measures the entangled photon and knows that the opposite
of that measurement is the bit of information he was
meant to receive. Yeah, there you go, clear as clear,
(24:10):
clear as is mud. Right there. Um. It makes me
we ran across a number of different quote unquote simplified
explanations for this stuff. When we're looking at it, like
there's one that involves like a secret like police investigation
involving detectives, Romulus and Remus and Alice. It it gets
very complex even when you're trying to do a very
simple explanation, and a lot of it kept. It kept.
(24:33):
Made me think of the movie Labyrinth in which uh
Sarah encounters the two doors with the with the the
muppety creatures behind them, where one of them says that
they both informer that one of them always tells the truth,
and one of them always lies. And then one tells
her you know what the other one would say, and
you have to try and work out in your mind
(24:54):
what that answer means and which doors you should take
based on that answer, and it's it's really a mind work. Well,
the problem with a Romulus and Remus example that we
did not talk about for a good reason is because
it also brings cultural drink into the conversation. That's not
relevant to it, right, because Romulus and Remus is an
entirely different thing. All they wanted in this analogy were twins.
(25:15):
Yeah yeah, um so, but I got to attach their characters.
They had to name them. Suddenly they were invested in them,
and we're just trying to understand plans. All I want
to know is this entangled pair, how are they behaving?
And what is their behavior? Tell us about this third particle? Right,
don't kind of distract us by telling a good story, right,
good stuff? Um, but it's it's again. This is uh,
this cryptography, right, This this key that is inserted to
(25:38):
give you a bit of information, and this essentially is
what these entangled pairs are doing. Real quick, just to
mention another story that we discussed briefly, but we ended
up not including. There was a really cool article about
dissonant music and what happens when animals listen to it,
or more importantly, what's what happens when people listen to it?
And this is a u c l A team that
(26:00):
looked into this, and they found that that just distorted
and jarring music is really is so evocative because the
mechanisms are closely related to distress calls in animals. So
the idea here is that everyone, like you know, perks
up at Woodstock and listens to Jimi Hendrix playing the
national anthem because it's jarring and there's distortion, and you know,
(26:24):
it calls out to our our deeper animal selves. So
I found that found it interesting and they were also
they also did some studies in like two thousand and
ten where they're looking at and classic movies and various
genres including horror and looking at UH at the soundtracks
and how they differ and the kind of emotions they evoked.
And and they did see that like horror films tended
(26:45):
to to use more screaming females and distorted vocals UH
distorted sounds in their soundtracks. Um So anyway, I just
found it's, like said, there's not a lot of meat
really there to chew on. But it's interesting to think
about that in terms of of music that we find.
Please maybe they did a study and and uh and everything.
We're like, you know, subjects were rating music that they
(27:06):
listened to, uh on a negative and positive scale. They
were listening to stuff that was distorted and stuff that
was more you know, serene and uh and more melody
to it. Uh and it. But it did make me
think about music that combines both because they're certainly there's
straight up noise music you can listen to straight up
you know, just extreme electronic distortion and stuff that sounds
uh in my wife's words, like someone throwing a xylophone
(27:28):
down a set of stairs. And then you have you know,
more stuff that's all the way on the on the
serene level. But then you have music that sort of
incorporates both, like like some of the groups that I
really like that that toy with the nose, that the
nose the noise uh section here, like like Autecker. They
they use a certain amount of serene and sounds and
a certain amount of melody, but then also a lot
(27:50):
of you know, unpredictable um uh, distorted noise as well,
and it sort of comes together in this sort of
interesting place that that it makes you think, what's it's
touching based with the you know, the part of my
mind it wants, you know, calmness and serenity, but also
in this this animal part of my mind that is
responding to something that might be the sound of an
animal dying. Yeah, it's stimulating, right, So it's interesting to
(28:13):
have both of those um I also wanted to mention,
and I don't have the information right in front of me,
so this is off top of my head. I believe
it was a chimp in Germany, a zoo in Germany.
Have you heard about this chump um That was remarkable
for a couple of things, but mainly because he would
(28:36):
take rocks, put them nearby him, and then sit there
and wait for zoo visitors to come by and will
be act very relaxed, and then just when when the
zoo visitor sort of didn't realize or was distracted by something,
with launch an attack with those rocks. And I thought
it was fascinating because not only does it show premeditative behavior,
(28:59):
which we know systin animals, particularly in chimps, but it
shows the ability for these chimps to actually enter into
the realm of acting and in order to pull off
this subterfuge against these zoo visitors. And uh, the video
on it is fascinating. I thought that was an interesting
bit of animal behavior from this year. All right, well,
(29:20):
there you go, just some overlooked, potentially overlooked, but really
cool bits of science from that we wanted to clean
up there and present to you. So let's call over
the robit for a little listener mail. Before I read
some of these, I do want to point out real quick.
In a previous episode, I mentioned pugs, the breed of dog,
(29:41):
and I talked about how useless they were, uh, you know,
because the largely you encounter a pug, and the pug
is just this slightly you know, this kind of poorly
put together dog that has trouble with with heat and
too much exercise and is ultimately just a lap creature. Uh.
Or at least that's the way I used to think
about it. But just yesterday I was on Marta, Atlanta's
public transportation system. I saw a young lady in a
(30:03):
wheelchair and she had a helper animal that was a pug,
So it's recast your opinion. I have to come back
some of what I thought about pugs, because here's a
pug and he's uh. I think it was a she actually,
But there was that pug and she was doing her job,
representing calmly there by the by the wheelchair as a
train roared by. So how did you know she was she? Well,
I mean I could sort of. She was slim, so
(30:26):
you could sort of tell what was going on under there.
You know. It's like you picked the dog up and
turned her over the idea I rolled her Alpha roll
the dog. No, it's always a no no. Don't alpha
roll a helper an, especially on public transportation. Exactly. All right, Well, um,
here's a little bit of listener mail from our listener Brad.
Brad writes and says, hey, you guys are awesome. I
am at a party right now. And that's the thing.
(30:48):
This first time anyone has written this from a party
that they've mentioned it. But he says, I am at
a party right now, and it was just plugging your
biology of Gremlin's episode. The crowd here were so excited.
We got to pondering the biology of zombies. Hint, you
need to do an episode on the biology of zombies.
That's all I'm gonna say, Bratt. I don't know what
I have to think about that one. The potential there,
(31:09):
I know there are some. I mean, it ultimately comes
down to are their real world biological analogs? Because that
was the fun of the Gremlins, was taking something that
seems wacky and stupid and totally just made up without
any real regard for the natural world and pairing it
with things in the natural world that are just as amazing. Um,
(31:30):
And I think there's some parallels with zombies we'd have
we'd have to explore. Speaking of have you seen a
trailer for the Zombies Love Story movie that's coming out?
Telling is it? Does it look good? Yeah? Somehow they well,
I don't know, it looks kind of hokey too, because
somehow the zombies seem to heal themselves through the powerful
of If I was actually paying attention to this trailer,
(31:51):
um in a meaningful way, but we might be interesting,
all right, We'll look out for that one. We also
received a number of cool contents from people who listen
to our teen Angst episode, we were talking about the
the science of teen ankst. Well, what's going on with
the teenager's brain? Why? Why did teenagers seem so different?
And why as teenagers do we feel ultimately so different
(32:11):
about the world and about our social life than uh,
than we did when we were younger, and then we
do when we get older. So we heard from a
number of people. Here's one from listener Jordan's. Jordan rights
in and says, Hey, they're just finished listening to your
podcast on teenage angst. I just wanted to let you
know that, being a teenager myself, I have experienced some
of these tricks the mind plays, but most of the
(32:31):
time I can overcome the brain's way of tricking me.
Like when one of my friends desired, uh that he
no longer be my friend, I myself didn't care, but
I started having bad dreams about this non friend of mine,
and I would wake up and I would think to myself,
I don't really care care. Why is this person's Why
is it so important to me? Thanks for explaining this
to me. Keep up the great podcasting work. Regards Jordan's.
(32:53):
We heard from Drake. Drake wrote in says, hello, I
just listened to your Teenage Teenager podcast and was interested
in a change of consciousness. I was absorbed in all
of the facts that you guys stated because in a
few months, I too will know what, uh what it's
like to be a teenager. I used to think that
taking risk and rebellion were just things that teens did
to fit in or to look cool, But now I
(33:15):
know that there's some science behind it. Besides, I never
really knew how to fit in any way. Keep up
the great work, and I'm happy you've got this message.
And that's from Drake from Nevada. So we received a
number of other comments and it's all I wish we
could read them all. Um. A lot of the cool
moments where people either were reevaluating the teenagers they were
(33:35):
or took a close look at the teenagers they were becoming,
also wanted to mention. We got an email from Isabelle
and she took us to task for not exploring teens
who exercise great amounts of self control, because she said
that she believes that there are a good subsection here
of teenagers who are honest and who um, who can
(34:00):
kind of control their states of rebellion and so on
and so forth, and I thought, you know, she makes
a really interesting point, and that might make for a
good podcast in the future here talking about self control
and teenagers and why some teenagers are successful at that. Um, Like,
ultimately we could do like a how to guide for
for teenagers, the teenager the teenage brain owners guide. Yeah, like,
(34:20):
what you know, is it higher functioning? Why are some
teenagers more mature than others? Because I certainly thought of
examples of teenagers I know in my life who are
who do seem very responsible and have a good amount
of self control. So I thought she's got a point there,
perhaps something we can pursue here in the future. Yeah. Well,
I was talking about this episode with with my wife
and she brought up to that It's like, it's kind
(34:42):
of a little disturbing to think about how the the
range in which one has the teenage brain. You know,
it can it can hit pretty early, and then it
can it can also hit kind of late and last
up until you know, basically in mid twenties. And at
that point, like we we were already sitting and sending
these individuals to to college, We're already sending these individuals
to war. Um, you know that they're they're voting. I mean,
(35:05):
they're all these these things that are happening and uh
and but there's still you know, potentially in this uh,
this state of development. So yeah, Well, we also got
an email and just thinking about that that have different
states and experiences that teenagers going through. We've got an
email from a woman named Michela who is twenty three
years now, uh, but she became pregnant at the age
(35:26):
of eighteen, and she depends that this really insightful, interesting
email about how that experience may have changed her brain
as a teenager in how she looks at her sister
and her sister's behavior and start contrast to her own.
So that was a very interesting email that we don't
have time to read. But thank you MICHAELA for sending in. Yeah. Yeah,
(35:47):
we appreciate all of the email feedback that you guys
send in. Uh and also though the comments on Facebook
and UH and Twitter, we don't we don't necessarily have
time to respond to all of it, but just bear
in mind, we do, we do read it, we do
check it out, and if you would like to reach
out to us, you can find us on Facebook, you
can find us on tumbler, we are stuff to blow
your mind on both of those. You can also find
(36:09):
us on Twitter, where we go by the handle blow
the Mind, and you can also send us a line
at blow the Mind at discovery dot com. For more
on this and thousands of other topics, Is It how
Stuff Works dot com
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