January 17, 2013 • 45 mins
As you leave 2012 in the dust, join Julie and Robert as they take one last look in the rearview mirror at some of the truly mind blowing science that went down in the past year.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas,
and we're in now. Now that we're safely into it
and we know there's no chance of twelve sucking us
back into its clutches, we thought to be about time
(00:25):
to just run through some of the big science that
happened in because, as is generally the case, science did
not take the year off. Maybe you didn't pay attention
to everything that came out of the science headlines, but
you you probably got some of these stories. These are
the big ones. These are the ones where, uh, if
you were going to talk science just with random folks
(00:47):
on your commute to work or you know, at a
dinner party, these are some of the topics who would
have come up. So it serves to remind us that, hey,
we had some really big, uh you know, landmark achievements
in science, and those are spilling often to where we are. Yeah,
and um, actually we had some themes come out of
this too, which we'll discuss. But it's kind of interesting
(01:08):
that this was a year in science where you really
saw a lot of innovation, of course, as you always do,
but UM particularly by in the private sector and by
citizens something called UM Citizens Science, which we'll talk about
a little bit later. But yeah, there's a ton of
stuff to choose from. But we're going to hit the
big items on the list, some of which we have
talked about before, but we're going to UM just trying
(01:30):
to cover them and say why they are so very
important and why they are actually game changers to our reality. Really. So,
first off, one of the big things about twelve was
this was the first year UH in ages that we
had we didn't have a Space Shuttle Space Shuttle Endeavor
final mission, and in twelve its activities basically involved you know,
(01:52):
coasting down the street into storage. Yeah, I mean, basically
what you saw was the shuttering of the shuttle program
in then the actual concrete manifestation of that truth UM
occurring in twelve, we saw four different shuttles that were
ferried off to new lives in different places, usually museums
(02:12):
UM or space themed attractions, without any kind of immediate
replacement for those shuttles either. Right, So, probably most notably
was the Endeavor shuttle towing that which became a pretty
big spectacle, right, because if you tow a shuttle through
the streets, people will notice, trees will need to be
cut down, signs removed. But before the endeavor was actually
(02:38):
um towed to its final place. Uh, it actually was
flown from the Kennedy Space Center on the back of
a seven forty seven to California and then there it
was towed by I believe it was Toyota Tundra uh
to its new home at the California Science Center in
Los Angeles. Yeah, there were some fabulous video footage of
that shuttle making its way down the street. They're like,
(02:58):
you know, sped it up so that it was a
little snappier, but it was. It was, it was. It
was emotional to watch. And that's the thing. I think
that people are looking at this as a new era,
that this was definitely a manifestation of what, you know,
what's happening in space exploration. Uh. Most notably what we
see is we see the private sector picking up where
NASA might have, um, you know, if they had more
(03:21):
funding left off right. Uh. And of course that that
brings us to SpaceX, California based space X, which which
everyone's heard of over the years They've been involved in
a number of different projects, but most notably, UH, they're
they're the first private company to deliver cargo to the
International Space Station, which is pretty big deal. It. We
(03:41):
were talking earlier and I about this, and I brought
up the possible analogy of a dad who teaches his
his teenage son to drive. So in this scenario, the
NASA is the father, and and he's been doing the drive,
and he's been doing the drive into the to school
in the mornings, he's been doing the drive into the
grow free store, and now finally he's reached the point where,
(04:02):
all right, I think I think the sun can handle it.
You know, he's a little he's a little cocky, he's
he's new, he's he's maybe a little a little, a
little heavy on the gas, but he's ready. I'm not
gonna drive anymore. I'm gonna let this guy drive me
to the grocery store. Yeah. And and UH, you can
actually take that analogy and even say that the parent
NASA gave them a little test run. And that was
(04:22):
back in May of two thousand and twelve, when the
Dragon capsule actually delivered one sixty two meal packets forty
five of them low sodium by the way, a laptop computer,
change of clothes for the station astronauts, and fifteen student
experiments to the International Space Station. So that was the
first kind of like, well, let's see you on a
test run here. Um that was obviously successful. So then
(04:47):
as you say, we've got the larger, more official, hey,
can you actually take a bunch of cargo up to
the I S S for us? That later decision and
eventually they're they're hoping to do humans in it extreme
ends up, which is kind of like, you know, the
father doesn't trust the son enough to say, let's not
go for a Sunday drive with with your your mom
and your grandma. Let's let's focus on you and me
(05:09):
getting to the grocery in one piece. All right, Now,
what's to do? Maybe a trip to the herd, to
the hardware store there and back again. All right, we've
got that check clicked off. We're working towards that Sunday drive. Yeah.
So I mean this is just, uh, I think what
is going to become a good indication of things to come.
Right now, some space X have a contract for a
dozen flights to the space station. And then as I said,
(05:32):
that October trip after the May test. Ruin was the
first official one. UM and then space x isn't the
only player in this commercial space. We've talked about Virgin Galactic. Uh.
Sir Richard Branson's private space flight company and their recently
completed high altitude test and Orbital Sciences is also under
contract with NASA and Walstle launch a demonstration flight. Yeah.
(05:53):
It's I mean, it's it's it's definitely informs us about
what what about this age of space exploration that we're entering,
this this commercial well I'm not only entering, we're we're
in it now. This age of commercial space exploration. On
one hand, it's it's kind of like a oh, kind
of like a libertarian um dream, you know, this idea
(06:14):
of the of the of big government is not doing
as much, but it's the the actual corporations like I
canic individual human spirit. Yeah, like like Ron Swanson would
really appreciate beause I feel like, you know, um, you know,
a Swedem's capsule going into into space. So that kind
of thing, and and it and so. But I mean
some people were that's going to rub them the wrong
wrong way. You know, it's the idea. Oh well, there's
(06:35):
it's corporations doing this, and you know corporations, uh don't
have the best track record with with everyone, right. It
It reminds me of an article I did this year,
or did in ten fictional Spacecraft we Wish were real,
And I tried to, you know, I tried to make
it a little more thought provoking instead of just like
(06:55):
here's ten rad spaceship, because spaceships fictional space ships, by
their very nature our rat you can throw. It's like
throwing a dark you know, at a wall. Any of
them hit, they're gonna be cool. That's just how it works.
So I was trying to look at like, what in
what way to fictional spacecraft inform our ideas about the
actual future of space exploration, And I think I left
off the USS Enterprise, even though obviously the Enterprise is
(07:18):
a really cool ship. Yeah, and it's like a government thing.
It's a it's about exploration, it's about it and being
ambassadors and it's all these positive aspect. Yes, it's a
warship too, but for the most part it's a very
much a positive vision of our our future at the stars. Um.
So I don't think I included that one, but I
did and include the USS issue Mura, which is like
(07:40):
a it's the setting for a space horror video game
where it's a where they are all these like zombies
running on the ship, but the ship itself is a
commercial vehicle designed to crack open planets and harvest minerals.
Because ultimately, well that's a you know, it's a far
darker idea than than than the Enterprise. And I'm just
talking about the function, not the zombies, um the idea
(08:03):
of just going on harvesting minerals, and it's all about
the bottom line. It's it's a it's a bleaker image,
but it's ultimately a motivating idea. You know, you can
actually see that getting us out there into space. If
there is money to be had, if there are asteroids
to be mined, then people are going to throw some
money at it. Well, and that's what we're seeing, right,
(08:23):
That's what is lining up with us because we've talked
about the company Planetary Resources, and it's a desire to
mind asteroids for platinum, which could be pretty lucrative. Of course,
it would take a while for them to actually get
their investment back, the money that they put into that
investment to actually start making money. But really, when you're
talking about an endeavor like that, you're talking about a
(08:45):
generational accumulation of wealth, and they're not doing this. Those
people who are behind that are so very rich that
they're not worried about getting, you know, some money from
a pound of platinum. They're just trying to um actually
put their their lives and uh, their their effort into
this thing that will affect generations to come right. So
(09:08):
that's another um theme that that largely is tied to
is Mars One, which is the completely private Dutch company
that is committed to establish establishing the first human presence
on Mars by the early twenties. So again you do
see that coming into play, this idea of privatization really
taking over. But with that comes responsibility. And we covered
(09:32):
this a bit in Space Junk because we talked about
how much is out there in orbit and how it's
actually a problem. So couldn't this be a good thing,
this privatization, knowing that you'd have to have companies come
in and clean this up. Yeah, if you want to
make money in space, you need to keep our orbit
clean so that we don't entombe ourselves. In this uh,
this this enclosing shell of space card. Yeah, if you
(09:54):
don't want your hugely expensive instruments, you know, crashed into
by a piece of space junks. And hey, you gotta
get up there and start sweeping. If you want to
sprinkle nutmeg on Mars, you've got to pay the price.
Which that's what I hope the Dutch do. I was
gonna say, what, yes, now it makes sense the Dutch.
Yet Mars one will be covered. I'm sure Mars will
(10:15):
be covered with with nutmeg. Um. So these are a
couple of related podcasts. We have a space junk Removable
podcast in Afterward Minding if you want to learn a
little bit more about that. Um. But certainly, uh was
the realization of this idea of privatization and space cool?
Now what else happened in space? And and there's an
interesting UM trend with all of these space stories we're
(10:36):
mentioning because they're all stories that we really got to
participate in as viewers. UM, I mean participate. We didn't
you know, we didn't actually control anything, but we really
got to feel like we were there for it, you know,
because we were either huddled around a TV or we
were taking a few minutes away from our workday to
watch it streaming on on one of the news sites. Uh,
(10:56):
you know, we were We were there when when the
Dragon capsule uh met up with the International Space Station,
and we were there when Mars Curiosity visited the Red planet,
which was so incredibly cool because, first of all, think
about all the engineering that went behind launching this craft okay,
into space. This was when it was launched. It was
November two thousand and eleven, okay, all of that just
(11:19):
to get up in the air and to get it
on the right trastructory, that's the easy part. It was
landing it nine months later that became incredibly tricky and
put everyone on pins and needles because if you think
about this, by the time that the Mars Curiosity capsule
was at the top of the atmosphere from the surface,
(11:39):
it takes seven minutes okay um to get to actually land,
and it takes fourteen minutes for the signal from the
spacecraft to reach the Earth. So when they first get
word that the vehicle has touched the top of the atmosphere,
there's a seven minute window that requires the computer to
land the machine. Okay, Because there's this delay, and it
has to do so lawless lee and has to manage
(12:01):
a landing with speeds of thirteen thousand miles per hour
that have to come to a dead stop using really
complex mechanical maneuverings. And this is just to watch this,
It's just a beautiful ballet of engineering and innovation. I
excited when I when I think about this. Yeah, I
mean I thowt it referred to as seven minutes of
(12:23):
terror and then the whole thing. I mean, it's kind
of it was kind of like an Ocean's eleven type scheme,
you know, to actually land this thing and landing successfully
and uh and and you really got that when you're
following it on the video streams, you're you're totally investing,
because nobody wants to watch an expensive wreck on Mars,
you know, an expensive crash um. And so when when
(12:45):
it actually came out, you know, successfully, everyone rejoiced that
mohawk guy jumped up and down by all and most
importantly we were able to land the most sophisticated explorer
ever on the Red planet. Yeah, and that again, there
seven minutes of terror where where you really saw the
magic happen and you begin to understand how they're Every
(13:06):
single component of that landing absolutely mattered and had to
be done again flawlessly, because once you began to to
enter that um the atmosphere, you have the heat shield
protecting the capsule from the sixteen hundred degrees fahrenheit um
of the atmosphere, and then you have to deal with
the atmosphere of Mars, which there's enough of that you
(13:26):
have to deal with it right, but not enough to
actually slow the cat, to slow it down into create
some drag. And then you have the heat shield popping
off right at the right moment so that the machine
can then began to see where it is, you can
begin to use um the cameras and okay, so that's
just one tenth of that part of that landing. Then
you have a parachute that weighs one hundred pounds deploying
(13:50):
and it can withstand pressures of up to sixty five
thousand pounds of pressure, and it slows it down to
two d miles per hour. But that's still not enough, right,
so now the parachute has to pop off and rockets
now help divert curiosity away from the parachute so it
doesn't collide with that, but it now that that gives
(14:11):
it the ability to have some measure of control of
its landing, So then you begin to see it descend
in a very controlled manner. Okay, here's the other problem
you have. You've got rockets and you don't want them
to kick up so much dust that you then ruin
some of the machinery on curiosity. So what do you do, Oh,
(14:31):
let's now deploy the tether system from the rockets, so
then it can start to to lower away and then
the rockets. That wasn't one of the really amazing parts
to where it's you're you're rocketing down there and then
the rockets are lowering it down on an on a string,
and uh yeah, it's just incredible that, yeah, I mean,
(14:51):
is breathtaking to see all of that unfold. And then,
as you say, all of a sudden, you have a
successful um land being of one of the most complex
labs on on wheels that you could ever want on Mars,
taking soil samples and really actually starting to engage with
the mission of this, which is to understand the past
(15:13):
and the current habit ability for life on Mars. All right,
so what else do we have on the plate. Other
big news that happened in twelve, we have to mention
the Higgs. Of course, Yeah, of course, of course the
Higgs has just continue to be a big story because
it seems like for ages now, because it's always like,
when are they going to find the Higgs? What is
the Higgs? Like? Because the Hig it's it's one of
(15:34):
those questions just just what is it is a question
that continues to sort of come up because it's it's
kind of a it's what you hear about the Higgs
all the time, and it's easy to either not learn
what the heck it is to begin with, or to
sort of forget it. Now. We did a whole episode
on this um about the Higgs. You can look it
up in our list of episodes. But you know, essentially
(15:55):
that the ideas it's a hypothetical um sometimes it article
that uh, and it's a field that gives that gives
matter mass and if it, if we could find it,
if we could prove that it actually exists, it could
explain a number of the mysteries surrounding the cosmos are
understanding of physics. It's uh, it's a suspect in a
(16:19):
crime that should exist and we've just been looking for it. Yeah,
all right, because this is really um this is the
big idea, right, that this Higgs field exists and it's
a kind of cosmic molasses that keeps all of us together.
So if we can really prove this, and we can
really get a little bit more at this question of
how do we exist, how do we come to exist?
(16:41):
What really keeps us all together? What is this reality
that we're all can jealed in. Uh So, here's the deal.
The Large Hadron Collider, which is headquartered in Geneva, is
tasked to try to find this Higgs particle, because again,
if this can be isolated, then it gives crudence this
idea that this Higgs field, this molasses does exist. Smashing
(17:02):
those atoms looking for the brief existence of this particle
before it blinks out and again, sort of committing the
same crime over and over again, and then in the
hopes that you'll glimpse the suspect that's right after these
primordial fireballs are left after these proton collisions in the
Large Hadron Collider. So in a July it was reported
(17:24):
that a Higgs like particle was found, and this is
really important they're calling Higgs like, Okay, the jury is
still a bit out about this, right, because there's been
some more information about this, because we found the suspect.
We found the suspect. The problem is another suspect showed up. See,
because it's like like a Raymond Chandler novel, you know,
(17:45):
it's like you reached that point where they found the murder. Note,
it just gets a little more complicated there are two suspects,
or maybe maybe there wasn't a murder at all. I mean,
that's how mysteries work, and that's how this one is
kind of working out as well. Well, they've been going
through the data and with a found is that now
two bumps show in the data, casting doubt on the experiment. Okay, Um,
(18:06):
what that means is that there appears to be one Higgs,
both on with a massive one two three point five
giga electron volts in one with one to six point six.
So in a December fourteenth article in Scientific America excuse me,
in Scientific American, it explains that it's been thought before
that there might be one more than one Higgs, but
(18:26):
not so close together. That's where the mystery becomes even deeper, right,
because it's okay if there's another one, but just not
so close together. So again, it's pointing to this question
about whether or not there's a problem with the experiment,
and physicist Adam Falkowski wrote on his blog quote, in
this case, they most likely signal a systematic problem rather
than some interesting physics. First and least, it would be
(18:48):
quite a coincidence to have two Higgs particles so close
and mass. So again, the jury is still out, but
this is the fact that they're getting this close is
still a game changer, and it's still amazing, and I
think it points to this idea that in science you
have to continue to go back to the drawing board.
(19:09):
This is what makes good science good science, Right, you
just don't accept that this was a Higgs particle. You
begin to go through that data more and more and
corroborated to the point where there's just absolutely no question
that it is. And they're not there right now. Um,
but they're getting closer. Yeah. I mean, science creeps forward
and sometimes it has to creep a little little little
(19:30):
ways back to recalibrate. You know, it's like a roomba
running into stuff in your living room. But it's figuring
it out right. Um, so so yeah, we continue to
watch what happens with the with the higgs um. But
certainly it was it was definitely a big year for
the Higgs, regardless of what it actually ends up to,
you know. Being the case with these particles that we
(19:52):
these higgs is that we sort of found. Yeah, more
to come on that, I think. Um, all right, we're
gonna take a quick break and when we get back,
we are going to talk about citizens science. All right,
we're back. Um, so what else happened in Well, a
lot of pieces sort of continuing business. Of course, science
(20:13):
is a continuing business. We continue to search for certain things.
We continue to search out things. And one of the
things we've been looking for exoplanets, planets elsewhere in the
in the in the galaxy, planets that maybe might be
like Earth. That's what we have our eye out for. Yeah,
and it turns out that there is a ton of
(20:34):
data to sort through in order to find Earth like
planetary candidates. And it's really helpful when you have citizens
in this case, citizens scientists to help sort through the
extensive data. And this is actually data that's provided by
NASA's Kepler Mission. So here's this really cool thing. Fifteen
new planet candidates. We call them again planet candidates because
(20:57):
they have to have to be a certain distance from
the Sun in order to be considered earth like properties
or have earth like properties. Right, Um, they've been discovered
by planet hunters, and planet hunters is this project of
these citizens scientists. These are people who have access to
the data that NASA has given them, and what they
do is they look through all that data to try
(21:19):
to figure out habitable planets. And again, like I said
in that Goldilocks zone, right that distance from the Sun
and not too hot, not too cold, approximate size. You know,
it just has to be just right right and just
the right distance from a star to have liquid water, right,
which you know would be really important for life. Uh So, anyway,
this is this is what is so cool about this
(21:40):
organization is that they have found the fifteen new planet
candidates and in addition, a planet named pH One with
four sons was discovered by the group. And it's pretty cool.
That's a lot of suns for that's four times as
many suns as we have. I mean, the really amazing
thing about this is that you mentioned earlier about the
the participation aspect um of of getting to know huddle
(22:03):
around the TV or the computer monitor and watch things
like the Mars landing, UM to watch the endeavor going
down the street. And here is an example of actual
participation where these citizen scientists are getting to sort through
the data that that that Kepler has a massed and
we're talking about a hundred and fifty thousand stars here
(22:24):
that they're they're sorting through the data. They're examining the
brightness measurements that are taken by Kepler, looking for signs
that there could be planets orbiting them. And then when
a planet passes in front of a star, there should
be noticeable and temporary drop in brightness. And this is
this sort of data again that they're looking at. And
the idea is that the human brain is actually better
at detecting this than an algorithm. So also someone who
(22:47):
is maybe an amateur astronomer who is very excited about
this work. UM. So you get this group together that
is all um trying to find, you know, some sort
of sign that there might be another earthlike planet. And
again we've talked about this in our podcast about will
we find an Earth flight planet planet in the like
(23:08):
anytime soon. And uh, this is something that seems like
it could happen for us in the next fifty years,
that we could spot an earthlike planet. On one level,
it just it gives us a lot more information about
what is out there. But also there's a lot of
imagination caught up in it because an earthlike planet could
conceivably have earthlike life. Life on Earth is the only
(23:28):
model of life that we have, and so when we're
extrapolating and trying to figure out what alien life might
consist of, that ends up what we look for, you know,
we end up looking for an earthlike world, So possibility
of life elsewhere in the universe, um, and also the
possibility of a world that we could go to that
we could colonize if we're still into that kind of
sci fi idea by the time when the technology actually
(23:51):
catch us up with us. Yeah. And I think it's
another good example of a discipline that benefits from an
institution like NASA allowing the public to come through data
sharing their data, having an open and essentially crowdsourcing meaningful assault. Yeah.
I mean again, it's kind of like that the father
raising his son, his son's citizen citizen science. And uh,
(24:12):
he's out there grilling steaks, right, and or or grilling
peppers and or what have you. Um, the vegetarian option.
He's out there grilling, and the sun is interested and
has reached the point where yes, here I'm gonna I'm
gonna do the main cooking. But you can hear you
can rub some some barbecue sauce on it, not do
put barbecue sauce in a steak. Yeah, and again you
(24:33):
see this thing. Well, you could put barbecue sauce on
a steak, I guess you could, But I mean, if
it's a really good stake, there's no sense to put
sauce on it. But the important thing is that you're
involving the kid in the process. But you're right, if
it's chewy and tough, you've gotta throw something on there. Uh.
But yes, that's what I think is happening. Again. There's
this sharing of data that's involving of of people you
know out on the street, right, you know. And some
(24:55):
of this is part and parcel to where we are
in terms of technology and community, because it wouldn't be
able to do this necessarily ten years ago, twenty years
ago to share data to this extent and then try
to get the results um in a way that was efficient.
So that's Joe public, that's just everybody, every random person
on the street potentially contributing to science. But then there's
(25:16):
still plenty of room for the exceptional individual, for the
Joe awesome if you will UM. And that brings us
to our next two items on this list. Felix baumb Gardner. Yes, yes,
And this was another example that everyone got to huddle
around the TV or the computer and watched this happen.
We had a lot of these moments in the last year.
Then the moments that really hearkened back to the day
(25:39):
of like watching the moon landing, where we all got
to become really excited about about watching something historic. Pike Place. Yeah, well,
I mean here's here's this Austrian daredevil who broke the
speed of sound in October two twelve by jumping from
the edge of space, a feat that he had spent
five years five years preparing for. It took him two
hours on a pressured cap soul powered by helium balloon
(26:02):
to reach a platform twenty four miles up and before
stepping onto the platform. This, I think it's interesting. He
ran through a forty step checklist, because you know, before
you take the big plans, you want to make sure
that everything is is crossed off, right, uh. And then
he stepped off the platform and he hurled through the
sky at more than eight hundred and thirty miles per hour,
(26:24):
at one point reaching eight hundred and thirty three point
nine pile miles per hour or mock one point to four,
breaking the sound barrier in a four minute free fall
before popping his parachute and pulling off a running landing
in a New Mexico desert. I mean, that is amazing
right there. Yeah, I mean, yeah it was. It's just
some amazing footage to watch and just quite a I
(26:46):
mean just it's kind of terrifying to watch too. Like
I would imagine if I did a forty item checklist,
it would just be like different deities that I was
just making sure I was square with before I jumped out.
You know, Yeah, we get cool, alright, You're just throwing
candy out in the air at that point, is to
the air gods. Um well. And also I mean you
(27:09):
have to understand too that again, this was five years
and in the making, and this is someone who was
so good at what he did. Um that he had
the ability to control himself at those sort of speeds.
And he did say at one point that he felt
like he was he was going to a flat spin,
and he felt all the blood rushing to his head
(27:29):
and he thought he was going to lose control, but
then he got it under control and was able to
continue to accelerate in his speed. Yeah. I mean, that's
an important thing to realize about. It is it is
much more than just the technology of getting someone up
that high and then you know, booting them out of
the cap. So there's a there's a lot of skill
that was involved in this. It's not nearly falling, uh
(27:51):
and technology because I mean it was falling, but it's
falling with the nest. Yes, falling. Yeah, I mean you
have to have the experience in order to really know
or to anticipate what that might feel like at those speeds. UM.
So he also had technology on his side. He wore
one pound pressurized flight suit and helmet, and without protection,
his blood would have been vaporized because the atmosphere was
(28:11):
so thin when he jumped at that height. The temperature
at his launch point was estimated at seven degrees sevent
d degrees below zero fahrenheit, if not lower. So this
is really a game changer. Um. And and that this
not only does this pressurized flight suit have implications um elsewhere,
(28:31):
like for instance, you know astronauts, UM, if they had
to bail out of a council early, this could absolutely
save their life, um if it was at the right
UM height and so on and so forth. UM. But
I mean it also kind of speaks this new technology
that allows us to again augment ourselves in a way
(28:52):
that we're able to do things that are beyond our
human capacity or what we think we're able to do.
So there you go, Felix bomb Gardner. Uh, amazing moment
in the science And that video is still out there
if you want to want to check it out. Well,
I'm sure be out there indefinitely. But not to be outdone.
There's also another individual, another Joe Awesome that uh that
(29:14):
made some headlines and and and this guy is really
it's close to like a Howard Hughes we have today,
I mean, except he hasn't yet entered like the full
crazy mode. But certainly in terms of a filmmaker who
is all about creating something awesome and ingenious on the screen,
but is also very interested in uh achieving great things
(29:37):
outside of the film world. And we're of course talking
about James Cameron, who became the first aqua out to
reach the deepest recesses of the Marianna Trench, UH touching
down the Challenger Deep Site about eleven kilometers below the
surface of the Pacific Ocean about yeah, which is about
six point eight miles And he did that in a
(29:58):
one person submersible call the deep Sea Challenger, and it
took him two and a half hours to get there.
And what I think is interesting he said, well, you know,
it's pretty much mostly devoid of life. I saw some
shrimp like creatures. But he did say that it was
amazing to be in such a massive place that you
just looked and you know, the horizon just dropped off.
(30:20):
In fact, there's no real horizon because we're talking about here.
Is um really the steep trench, And to even call
it a trench is a bit of a misnomer because
the marrying a trench is really an abyss and it's
located at a subduction zone. And subduction zones occur where
one part of the seabed. In this case, the Pacific
(30:41):
Plate dives beneath another and this is the Philippine Plate.
So you know, take that all into consideration, as well
as that it's in a remote location, and you really
do have this dramatic landscape unfolding before you. Yeah, I
mean in the sense that the sky is the great
blue yonder, this is the deep blue yonder. I mean,
(31:02):
this is really largely unexplored territory of the Yeah. We
talked about that in our Sunken Dangerous podcasts um in
because we talked about how we know more about the
moon surface than we than we know about the oceans
and what's going on with that. So again, you know,
I would be tempted to call Cameron a ham if
(31:24):
he wentn't so dedicated to this endeavor, but I mean,
I mean he's a bit of a ham. But but yeah,
there's no denying the awesomeness of this. Yeah, I mean
eight years to to uh engineer and make this submersible,
which then says, okay, well, if if he's done this,
and that means that we now have the ability to
continue to visit this area of the ocean in the seabed,
(31:49):
and now we can begin to take oil soil samples,
which is something that Cameron wants to do. So, of
course you have the trickle down effect. That doesn't mean
that we're all going to be in submersibles in ten
years going down to the Mariana Trench, but it does
mean that it makes the technology a little bit easier
for others to follow suit. Yeah, and speaking of trickling down,
I found it interesting that inside of this pressurized cockpit
(32:11):
um they had this system set up to where moisture
from Cameron's exhaled breath and his sweat leaked down into
a plastic bag. And the idea here was that if
he if he had to stay down there longer and
outlasted his water supply, he could then drink the contents
of this bag, which has parallels with space flight, right,
(32:33):
because we know that the same sort of technologies are
used when you're somewhere and you're in a confined space. Right,
there's a lot of crossover you have between the exploration
of space and the inspiration of the deepest portions of
the ocean. I mean, both hostile extreme environments for humans.
We were made too. We we evolved to live on
a very narrow portion of the Earth's surface, and if
(32:55):
you go to how you go too low. We're debt
unless we bring the appropriate technology with us to bring
a little of our our habitat with us into these
hostile settings. Yeah. Again there's that theme of augmentation again
showing up particularly this year. Alright, so um other things
that have been building this past decade that are gaining
(33:17):
more ground and are getting more exposure. I have to
do of course with neuroscience, yes, and um specifically erasing
your memories, which again it's not a new thing, but
it gained some traction again this year. Yeah. I mean
people have been wanted to do this forever. I mean
that we've discussed like the time and time again, like
the basic human condition and how wrapped up it is,
(33:39):
and and worrying about stuff that's happened in the past,
and worrying about stuff to come in the future, and uh,
you know, there's only something you can do about the future.
But we've all but I think everyone is thought, boy,
I wish I could go back and erase that, and
maybe you get more into the time travel mode, and
like I wish I could go back and fix that.
But then when you realize that's impossibly. You think, well,
if I can't fix it, then at least I could
forget that that happened at all. I mean, it's the
(34:02):
eternal sunshine of the mind. Would you erase a memory
if you could? Um? No, Because I mean there have
been times in the past where I would have said, yes,
I wish I could go back and erase this or
it rat that. But as you and you know, and
maybe I just don't have bad enough memories that I
that I would want to erase them. But ultimately reached
(34:23):
that point where those memories inform who you are, you know,
and to to take them away, um, you know that
that takes away from from what you become. But but
but again, where this really becomes important, it's with the
idea of dealing with really traumatic memories and uh and
ultimately not as much the research we're looking at here,
not as much the extinction of a memory, but the
(34:46):
sort of yeah, but also the dulling of it. Um.
We we did a whole episode because a couple of
years back at the World Science Festival, there was a
lot of interesting talk about being able to erase memories,
alter memories, and and some of it was pretty drastic,
like this one um substance that could just sort of
clear the mind, like reset the computer entirely. Uh that
(35:08):
no one is actually tested on a human, and we
can just sort of imagine what it might be like. Yeah,
this is the one where I was like, well, could
you would it be like the born identity it could
you erase your memory and you still know kung fu?
You know that kind of thing. One study we were
looking at from Upslo University. Uh, they were looking specifically
at this reconsolidation phase. Now, if you remember from when
(35:30):
we talked about this before, this is the idea that
when you think back to something, to a memory, you're
not going and looking at something that is set in stone.
Memory is is weird. Memory is uncertain. Memory, it's unstable
because every time think of a memory as a little
like something happens in your brain, like makes a little
clay sculpture of what it would of what happened. It's like,
(35:52):
all right, I was I was stabbed by an elephant. Alright,
So here's a you know, a little clay monitor of
an elephant in a trench coat with which the big
big well have a big shank a right, So then
I put that away in the drawer, the memory, right,
I'll leave it there, and then when I think about
it again, I get that little clay model back out.
But in handling it, uh, and in reconceptualizing and I
(36:13):
end up changing things. Uh and that. But this is
the this is the state where it's malleable. It's in
my hands. So researchers have have for a while realized
that the reconsolidation phase, this is when you want to
alter a memory, alter the impact of a memory, or
potentially erase it because this is where it's it's vulnerable. Well,
it gets anchored in our brains by proteins and it's reconsolidation.
(36:34):
So yes, this is where you want to interrupt the
actual final consolidation of it. Uh. So long term real quick,
long term memory is based on the formation of several proteins.
These proteins are part of the consolidation process that you
spoke of, and that occurs when a person learns something new.
Remembering something causes the memory to become unstable for short
(36:56):
amount of time, only to recover through another consolidation process,
which is what you just talked about. So these researchers
had test subjects look at neutral images, yes, and then
they shocked with the Jesus at home. This is crazy,
but yes they did it. And the reason they did
that is because they needed them to associate these images
with a memory. Right, so they would see like an
(37:17):
image of maybe at an elephant holding a switch blade,
and then they would they would become shocked. It's like whoa.
So now, of course the idea is that you see
an image of an elephant holding a switchblade again, you're
gonna you're gonna react because it's it's associated with a
shock to your system. You'll have a fearful memory. Right.
So now they divided the groups and this is where
they started to try the consolidation process and figure out
(37:39):
if they could game the system a little bit. And
the first group, their consolidation process was disrupted through multiple
presentations of the picture, while the excuse me, the consolidation
process of the second group wasn't interrupted. And so what
they did though, is that after this process, the picture
was shown to the group again. So what they discovered
(38:02):
is that the group that had their consolidation process inhibited,
the fear that was previously associated with the picture completely dissipated.
And then what they found them is that the consolidation process,
when it is interrupted, than the memory no longer can
incite fear. So what they did is that to corroborate this,
(38:23):
they used m r I scanner and that showed that
the remains of that particular fear memory had also been
erased from the nuclear group of the amygdala. And we
know the amygdala process is fear. So yeah, so just
another step forward towards this possible future where we can
go back and systematically erased memories, but certainly more near
term gives us a lot more AMMO towards treating traumatic memories. Um,
(38:46):
you know, kind of like a more enlightened version of
confronting your fear. Is that kind of a thing, because
certainly when you confront of fear, you were taking it
out of the cabinet, holding in your hands, and it
is susceptible to change to to to to altering uh,
what the memory exactly is and ultimately how we feel
about it. And I feel like this also underscores a
(39:08):
bit of about what we talked about in two thousand
and twelve, is this idea of consciousness, and certainly consciousness
is made of memories and experiences and we talked about
the failibility of this um idea that consciousness could be um,
something that is solid and sturdy, when in fact we
know that things like this memory um can really color
(39:29):
ah the feeling of that consciousness that day, and that
feeling makes us who we are right. So again interesting
to see how much of our brain this plasticity lends
itself to more of an unstable quality, or rather a
changeable quality of our brains. And this leads us to
another interesting bit of science that it also drives on
(39:50):
this idea that who we are the human experience itself
is not quite what we often think it is what
we take it for granted to be. And this of
course concerns toxic plasmosis now taxoplasmosis, which in brief we're
talking about the cat parasite. You know, the idea that
you're you're cleaning out the cat's litter box. You're a
little too handy in there, you know, you start confusing
(40:11):
with the sandbox. You can potentially pick up some of
this this parasite. It goes through your body. It alters
your mind because the idea is that this parasite has
been pooped out of the cat wants to get inside
of the rat, and then once it is in, the
rat wants to return to the cat. And so how
do you get a rat to return to the cat?
It sounds like I'm doing some sort of Sousian thing here,
(40:32):
But how do you get the rat to return to
the cat? Well, you you sort of hack the rat's
brain to make it and take more risks to make
it crave cat urine, that kind of thing, so that
it could put itself in a position to be eaten
by the cat and return and finish its life cycle.
So this has been in the news for a while.
There's like a bunch of stuff about it back in
two thousand nine, um and stuff before that. Scientists continue
(40:54):
to study it because it's a it's a remarkable organism. Uh,
and it obviously give and the how many domestic cats
out there. It has a huge impact on human culture. Yeah,
And the fact that that this parasite could disconnect the
fear part of the brain in rats was terrifying but
also made some people step back and say, to what
(41:16):
extent does the parasite operate in a human being? So
it keeps coming back in the in the news because
on one level, we continue to research it so and
every now and then there are some new findings. But
then it's also it's it's like those weird emails that
your mother or your your your uncle sends you, you know,
where it will be something crazy and you're like, come on, dude,
(41:38):
just look it up on Snopes. It's not true, but
but get but people keep sending them because it connects
with them instantly, Like you know, if you get the
one like Mars will be as big as the moon
and the earth sky. Uh this weekend? Have you received
this one? It goes out periodically and of course it's
completely nuts. There's no way that that happens, um not
without just just catastrophic you know of professions. Yeah, it's
(42:00):
just it's not gonna happen. But but it affects us
in a way. You know, we're like, oh wow, that's
gonna be really crazy. That's really gonna affect me personally.
I'm interested in sending this on. So when this story
has come out about the cat, is like, well, I
have a cat or my mom as a cat, uh,
and that the parasites in that cat could be changing
the way she thinks. I mean it, it has this
impact on our lives, and it involves cats, so of
(42:24):
course we're gonna be crazy about it. Yeah, And the
takeaway from this is not that if you have a
cat you are probably crazy, or that they're going to
some the parasite is going to make you crazy. That
is not the takeaway. The takeaway is that the parasite
and it's just still research that's being done, it does
seem to have some changes in personality in humans and
(42:46):
biologists Yaroslav Flaggers as actually the person who spoke about
this at length, and um, this was in an Atlantic article,
how Your Cat Is Making You Crazy by Kathleen mccalf um. Again,
the cat's not making you crazy, but that's the title
of the article that goes into more detail about this.
But what it really points to is that, you know,
(43:08):
at some point, we're all being gained by microscopic puppeteers
at some level. And I wanted to point to a
study at Colorado State University that showed that when subjects
were given a flu vaccination which stoked the subjects immune response,
they doubled the amount of people they came into contact
with during the time that they were maximally contagious. So Again,
(43:31):
here's this idea that people when they had this flu
vaccine and when they are contagious, we're a lot more
social than they would normally be. Um, is this the
flu that is actually gaming them to do this, to
change their personality? And that's the question that that biologists
are trying to get to, is to what extent do
(43:53):
parasites and bacteria change the way we think? Yeah? Yeah,
ultimately this the part about the story is not that
toxoplasmosis is having the impact on who we are and
how we think, but that it drives home how many
things have an impact on who we are and how
we think. And again, who we are, how we think,
the human mind, it's not set in stone. It's affected
(44:14):
by so many different variables and uh and and science
has a wonderful way of revealing that to us. And
if I were David Eagleman and I was sitting in
here in my fancy jeans and my cool coat, I
would probably say, which leads us to ask the question
do we really have free will if all of these
agents are acting upon us? He doesn't talk like that,
but I'm being him, so all right, So there you
(44:36):
have it. That is not all the science that took
place in twelve finny stretch of the imagination. But those
are some of the big stories, uh, and you you
may have heard of most of them, you may have
heard of all of them. Uh. But this is just
about rewinding, looking back at what happened, and then looking
looking ahead to where we're going in the future. So
if you have any feedback on any of that, if
(44:57):
there was a particular story that that we we didn't cover,
do you think was really key? I don't know, maybe
you know, we should have talked more about record meltdowns
of Arctic sea ice, uh, record high temperatures or you
know what have you? Uh let us know. You can
find us on Twitter, where we are blow the Mind.
You can find us on Facebook and Tumblr. We're We're
(45:18):
stuff to blow your mind on both of those and
you can always drop us a line at blow the
Mind at Discovery dot com for more on this and
thousands of other topics. Is that how Stuff Works dot
com
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas,
and we're in now. Now that we're safely into it
and we know there's no chance of twelve sucking us
back into its clutches, we thought to be about time
(00:25):
to just run through some of the big science that
happened in because, as is generally the case, science did
not take the year off. Maybe you didn't pay attention
to everything that came out of the science headlines, but
you you probably got some of these stories. These are
the big ones. These are the ones where, uh, if
you were going to talk science just with random folks
(00:47):
on your commute to work or you know, at a
dinner party, these are some of the topics who would
have come up. So it serves to remind us that, hey,
we had some really big, uh you know, landmark achievements
in science, and those are spilling often to where we are. Yeah,
and um, actually we had some themes come out of
this too, which we'll discuss. But it's kind of interesting
(01:08):
that this was a year in science where you really
saw a lot of innovation, of course, as you always do,
but UM particularly by in the private sector and by
citizens something called UM Citizens Science, which we'll talk about
a little bit later. But yeah, there's a ton of
stuff to choose from. But we're going to hit the
big items on the list, some of which we have
talked about before, but we're going to UM just trying
(01:30):
to cover them and say why they are so very
important and why they are actually game changers to our reality. Really. So,
first off, one of the big things about twelve was
this was the first year UH in ages that we
had we didn't have a Space Shuttle Space Shuttle Endeavor
final mission, and in twelve its activities basically involved you know,
(01:52):
coasting down the street into storage. Yeah, I mean, basically
what you saw was the shuttering of the shuttle program
in then the actual concrete manifestation of that truth UM
occurring in twelve, we saw four different shuttles that were
ferried off to new lives in different places, usually museums
(02:12):
UM or space themed attractions, without any kind of immediate
replacement for those shuttles either. Right, So, probably most notably
was the Endeavor shuttle towing that which became a pretty
big spectacle, right, because if you tow a shuttle through
the streets, people will notice, trees will need to be
cut down, signs removed. But before the endeavor was actually
(02:38):
um towed to its final place. Uh, it actually was
flown from the Kennedy Space Center on the back of
a seven forty seven to California and then there it
was towed by I believe it was Toyota Tundra uh
to its new home at the California Science Center in
Los Angeles. Yeah, there were some fabulous video footage of
that shuttle making its way down the street. They're like,
(02:58):
you know, sped it up so that it was a
little snappier, but it was. It was, it was. It
was emotional to watch. And that's the thing. I think
that people are looking at this as a new era,
that this was definitely a manifestation of what, you know,
what's happening in space exploration. Uh. Most notably what we
see is we see the private sector picking up where
NASA might have, um, you know, if they had more
(03:21):
funding left off right. Uh. And of course that that
brings us to SpaceX, California based space X, which which
everyone's heard of over the years They've been involved in
a number of different projects, but most notably, UH, they're
they're the first private company to deliver cargo to the
International Space Station, which is pretty big deal. It. We
(03:41):
were talking earlier and I about this, and I brought
up the possible analogy of a dad who teaches his
his teenage son to drive. So in this scenario, the
NASA is the father, and and he's been doing the drive,
and he's been doing the drive into the to school
in the mornings, he's been doing the drive into the
grow free store, and now finally he's reached the point where,
(04:02):
all right, I think I think the sun can handle it.
You know, he's a little he's a little cocky, he's
he's new, he's he's maybe a little a little, a
little heavy on the gas, but he's ready. I'm not
gonna drive anymore. I'm gonna let this guy drive me
to the grocery store. Yeah. And and UH, you can
actually take that analogy and even say that the parent
NASA gave them a little test run. And that was
(04:22):
back in May of two thousand and twelve, when the
Dragon capsule actually delivered one sixty two meal packets forty
five of them low sodium by the way, a laptop computer,
change of clothes for the station astronauts, and fifteen student
experiments to the International Space Station. So that was the
first kind of like, well, let's see you on a
test run here. Um that was obviously successful. So then
(04:47):
as you say, we've got the larger, more official, hey,
can you actually take a bunch of cargo up to
the I S S for us? That later decision and
eventually they're they're hoping to do humans in it extreme
ends up, which is kind of like, you know, the
father doesn't trust the son enough to say, let's not
go for a Sunday drive with with your your mom
and your grandma. Let's let's focus on you and me
(05:09):
getting to the grocery in one piece. All right, Now,
what's to do? Maybe a trip to the herd, to
the hardware store there and back again. All right, we've
got that check clicked off. We're working towards that Sunday drive. Yeah.
So I mean this is just, uh, I think what
is going to become a good indication of things to come.
Right now, some space X have a contract for a
dozen flights to the space station. And then as I said,
(05:32):
that October trip after the May test. Ruin was the
first official one. UM and then space x isn't the
only player in this commercial space. We've talked about Virgin Galactic. Uh.
Sir Richard Branson's private space flight company and their recently
completed high altitude test and Orbital Sciences is also under
contract with NASA and Walstle launch a demonstration flight. Yeah.
(05:53):
It's I mean, it's it's it's definitely informs us about
what what about this age of space exploration that we're entering,
this this commercial well I'm not only entering, we're we're
in it now. This age of commercial space exploration. On
one hand, it's it's kind of like a oh, kind
of like a libertarian um dream, you know, this idea
(06:14):
of the of the of big government is not doing
as much, but it's the the actual corporations like I
canic individual human spirit. Yeah, like like Ron Swanson would
really appreciate beause I feel like, you know, um, you know,
a Swedem's capsule going into into space. So that kind
of thing, and and it and so. But I mean
some people were that's going to rub them the wrong
wrong way. You know, it's the idea. Oh well, there's
(06:35):
it's corporations doing this, and you know corporations, uh don't
have the best track record with with everyone, right. It
It reminds me of an article I did this year,
or did in ten fictional Spacecraft we Wish were real,
And I tried to, you know, I tried to make
it a little more thought provoking instead of just like
(06:55):
here's ten rad spaceship, because spaceships fictional space ships, by
their very nature our rat you can throw. It's like
throwing a dark you know, at a wall. Any of
them hit, they're gonna be cool. That's just how it works.
So I was trying to look at like, what in
what way to fictional spacecraft inform our ideas about the
actual future of space exploration, And I think I left
off the USS Enterprise, even though obviously the Enterprise is
(07:18):
a really cool ship. Yeah, and it's like a government thing.
It's a it's about exploration, it's about it and being
ambassadors and it's all these positive aspect. Yes, it's a
warship too, but for the most part it's a very
much a positive vision of our our future at the stars. Um.
So I don't think I included that one, but I
did and include the USS issue Mura, which is like
(07:40):
a it's the setting for a space horror video game
where it's a where they are all these like zombies
running on the ship, but the ship itself is a
commercial vehicle designed to crack open planets and harvest minerals.
Because ultimately, well that's a you know, it's a far
darker idea than than than the Enterprise. And I'm just
talking about the function, not the zombies, um the idea
(08:03):
of just going on harvesting minerals, and it's all about
the bottom line. It's it's a it's a bleaker image,
but it's ultimately a motivating idea. You know, you can
actually see that getting us out there into space. If
there is money to be had, if there are asteroids
to be mined, then people are going to throw some
money at it. Well, and that's what we're seeing, right,
(08:23):
That's what is lining up with us because we've talked
about the company Planetary Resources, and it's a desire to
mind asteroids for platinum, which could be pretty lucrative. Of course,
it would take a while for them to actually get
their investment back, the money that they put into that
investment to actually start making money. But really, when you're
talking about an endeavor like that, you're talking about a
(08:45):
generational accumulation of wealth, and they're not doing this. Those
people who are behind that are so very rich that
they're not worried about getting, you know, some money from
a pound of platinum. They're just trying to um actually
put their their lives and uh, their their effort into
this thing that will affect generations to come right. So
(09:08):
that's another um theme that that largely is tied to
is Mars One, which is the completely private Dutch company
that is committed to establish establishing the first human presence
on Mars by the early twenties. So again you do
see that coming into play, this idea of privatization really
taking over. But with that comes responsibility. And we covered
(09:32):
this a bit in Space Junk because we talked about
how much is out there in orbit and how it's
actually a problem. So couldn't this be a good thing,
this privatization, knowing that you'd have to have companies come
in and clean this up. Yeah, if you want to
make money in space, you need to keep our orbit
clean so that we don't entombe ourselves. In this uh,
this this enclosing shell of space card. Yeah, if you
(09:54):
don't want your hugely expensive instruments, you know, crashed into
by a piece of space junks. And hey, you gotta
get up there and start sweeping. If you want to
sprinkle nutmeg on Mars, you've got to pay the price.
Which that's what I hope the Dutch do. I was
gonna say, what, yes, now it makes sense the Dutch.
Yet Mars one will be covered. I'm sure Mars will
(10:15):
be covered with with nutmeg. Um. So these are a
couple of related podcasts. We have a space junk Removable
podcast in Afterward Minding if you want to learn a
little bit more about that. Um. But certainly, uh was
the realization of this idea of privatization and space cool?
Now what else happened in space? And and there's an
interesting UM trend with all of these space stories we're
(10:36):
mentioning because they're all stories that we really got to
participate in as viewers. UM, I mean participate. We didn't
you know, we didn't actually control anything, but we really
got to feel like we were there for it, you know,
because we were either huddled around a TV or we
were taking a few minutes away from our workday to
watch it streaming on on one of the news sites. Uh,
(10:56):
you know, we were We were there when when the
Dragon capsule uh met up with the International Space Station,
and we were there when Mars Curiosity visited the Red planet,
which was so incredibly cool because, first of all, think
about all the engineering that went behind launching this craft okay,
into space. This was when it was launched. It was
November two thousand and eleven, okay, all of that just
(11:19):
to get up in the air and to get it
on the right trastructory, that's the easy part. It was
landing it nine months later that became incredibly tricky and
put everyone on pins and needles because if you think
about this, by the time that the Mars Curiosity capsule
was at the top of the atmosphere from the surface,
(11:39):
it takes seven minutes okay um to get to actually land,
and it takes fourteen minutes for the signal from the
spacecraft to reach the Earth. So when they first get
word that the vehicle has touched the top of the atmosphere,
there's a seven minute window that requires the computer to
land the machine. Okay, Because there's this delay, and it
has to do so lawless lee and has to manage
(12:01):
a landing with speeds of thirteen thousand miles per hour
that have to come to a dead stop using really
complex mechanical maneuverings. And this is just to watch this,
It's just a beautiful ballet of engineering and innovation. I
excited when I when I think about this. Yeah, I
mean I thowt it referred to as seven minutes of
(12:23):
terror and then the whole thing. I mean, it's kind
of it was kind of like an Ocean's eleven type scheme,
you know, to actually land this thing and landing successfully
and uh and and you really got that when you're
following it on the video streams, you're you're totally investing,
because nobody wants to watch an expensive wreck on Mars,
you know, an expensive crash um. And so when when
(12:45):
it actually came out, you know, successfully, everyone rejoiced that
mohawk guy jumped up and down by all and most
importantly we were able to land the most sophisticated explorer
ever on the Red planet. Yeah, and that again, there
seven minutes of terror where where you really saw the
magic happen and you begin to understand how they're Every
(13:06):
single component of that landing absolutely mattered and had to
be done again flawlessly, because once you began to to
enter that um the atmosphere, you have the heat shield
protecting the capsule from the sixteen hundred degrees fahrenheit um
of the atmosphere, and then you have to deal with
the atmosphere of Mars, which there's enough of that you
(13:26):
have to deal with it right, but not enough to
actually slow the cat, to slow it down into create
some drag. And then you have the heat shield popping
off right at the right moment so that the machine
can then began to see where it is, you can
begin to use um the cameras and okay, so that's
just one tenth of that part of that landing. Then
you have a parachute that weighs one hundred pounds deploying
(13:50):
and it can withstand pressures of up to sixty five
thousand pounds of pressure, and it slows it down to
two d miles per hour. But that's still not enough, right,
so now the parachute has to pop off and rockets
now help divert curiosity away from the parachute so it
doesn't collide with that, but it now that that gives
(14:11):
it the ability to have some measure of control of
its landing, So then you begin to see it descend
in a very controlled manner. Okay, here's the other problem
you have. You've got rockets and you don't want them
to kick up so much dust that you then ruin
some of the machinery on curiosity. So what do you do, Oh,
(14:31):
let's now deploy the tether system from the rockets, so
then it can start to to lower away and then
the rockets. That wasn't one of the really amazing parts
to where it's you're you're rocketing down there and then
the rockets are lowering it down on an on a string,
and uh yeah, it's just incredible that, yeah, I mean,
(14:51):
is breathtaking to see all of that unfold. And then,
as you say, all of a sudden, you have a
successful um land being of one of the most complex
labs on on wheels that you could ever want on Mars,
taking soil samples and really actually starting to engage with
the mission of this, which is to understand the past
(15:13):
and the current habit ability for life on Mars. All right,
so what else do we have on the plate. Other
big news that happened in twelve, we have to mention
the Higgs. Of course, Yeah, of course, of course the
Higgs has just continue to be a big story because
it seems like for ages now, because it's always like,
when are they going to find the Higgs? What is
the Higgs? Like? Because the Hig it's it's one of
(15:34):
those questions just just what is it is a question
that continues to sort of come up because it's it's
kind of a it's what you hear about the Higgs
all the time, and it's easy to either not learn
what the heck it is to begin with, or to
sort of forget it. Now. We did a whole episode
on this um about the Higgs. You can look it
up in our list of episodes. But you know, essentially
(15:55):
that the ideas it's a hypothetical um sometimes it article
that uh, and it's a field that gives that gives
matter mass and if it, if we could find it,
if we could prove that it actually exists, it could
explain a number of the mysteries surrounding the cosmos are
understanding of physics. It's uh, it's a suspect in a
(16:19):
crime that should exist and we've just been looking for it. Yeah,
all right, because this is really um this is the
big idea, right, that this Higgs field exists and it's
a kind of cosmic molasses that keeps all of us together.
So if we can really prove this, and we can
really get a little bit more at this question of
how do we exist, how do we come to exist?
(16:41):
What really keeps us all together? What is this reality
that we're all can jealed in. Uh So, here's the deal.
The Large Hadron Collider, which is headquartered in Geneva, is
tasked to try to find this Higgs particle, because again,
if this can be isolated, then it gives crudence this
idea that this Higgs field, this molasses does exist. Smashing
(17:02):
those atoms looking for the brief existence of this particle
before it blinks out and again, sort of committing the
same crime over and over again, and then in the
hopes that you'll glimpse the suspect that's right after these
primordial fireballs are left after these proton collisions in the
Large Hadron Collider. So in a July it was reported
(17:24):
that a Higgs like particle was found, and this is
really important they're calling Higgs like, Okay, the jury is
still a bit out about this, right, because there's been
some more information about this, because we found the suspect.
We found the suspect. The problem is another suspect showed up. See,
because it's like like a Raymond Chandler novel, you know,
(17:45):
it's like you reached that point where they found the murder. Note,
it just gets a little more complicated there are two suspects,
or maybe maybe there wasn't a murder at all. I mean,
that's how mysteries work, and that's how this one is
kind of working out as well. Well, they've been going
through the data and with a found is that now
two bumps show in the data, casting doubt on the experiment. Okay, Um,
(18:06):
what that means is that there appears to be one Higgs,
both on with a massive one two three point five
giga electron volts in one with one to six point six.
So in a December fourteenth article in Scientific America excuse me,
in Scientific American, it explains that it's been thought before
that there might be one more than one Higgs, but
(18:26):
not so close together. That's where the mystery becomes even deeper, right,
because it's okay if there's another one, but just not
so close together. So again, it's pointing to this question
about whether or not there's a problem with the experiment,
and physicist Adam Falkowski wrote on his blog quote, in
this case, they most likely signal a systematic problem rather
than some interesting physics. First and least, it would be
(18:48):
quite a coincidence to have two Higgs particles so close
and mass. So again, the jury is still out, but
this is the fact that they're getting this close is
still a game changer, and it's still amazing, and I
think it points to this idea that in science you
have to continue to go back to the drawing board.
(19:09):
This is what makes good science good science, Right, you
just don't accept that this was a Higgs particle. You
begin to go through that data more and more and
corroborated to the point where there's just absolutely no question
that it is. And they're not there right now. Um,
but they're getting closer. Yeah. I mean, science creeps forward
and sometimes it has to creep a little little little
(19:30):
ways back to recalibrate. You know, it's like a roomba
running into stuff in your living room. But it's figuring
it out right. Um, so so yeah, we continue to
watch what happens with the with the higgs um. But
certainly it was it was definitely a big year for
the Higgs, regardless of what it actually ends up to,
you know. Being the case with these particles that we
(19:52):
these higgs is that we sort of found. Yeah, more
to come on that, I think. Um, all right, we're
gonna take a quick break and when we get back,
we are going to talk about citizens science. All right,
we're back. Um, so what else happened in Well, a
lot of pieces sort of continuing business. Of course, science
(20:13):
is a continuing business. We continue to search for certain things.
We continue to search out things. And one of the
things we've been looking for exoplanets, planets elsewhere in the
in the in the galaxy, planets that maybe might be
like Earth. That's what we have our eye out for. Yeah,
and it turns out that there is a ton of
(20:34):
data to sort through in order to find Earth like
planetary candidates. And it's really helpful when you have citizens
in this case, citizens scientists to help sort through the
extensive data. And this is actually data that's provided by
NASA's Kepler Mission. So here's this really cool thing. Fifteen
new planet candidates. We call them again planet candidates because
(20:57):
they have to have to be a certain distance from
the Sun in order to be considered earth like properties
or have earth like properties. Right, Um, they've been discovered
by planet hunters, and planet hunters is this project of
these citizens scientists. These are people who have access to
the data that NASA has given them, and what they
do is they look through all that data to try
(21:19):
to figure out habitable planets. And again, like I said
in that Goldilocks zone, right that distance from the Sun
and not too hot, not too cold, approximate size. You know,
it just has to be just right right and just
the right distance from a star to have liquid water, right,
which you know would be really important for life. Uh So, anyway,
this is this is what is so cool about this
(21:40):
organization is that they have found the fifteen new planet
candidates and in addition, a planet named pH One with
four sons was discovered by the group. And it's pretty cool.
That's a lot of suns for that's four times as
many suns as we have. I mean, the really amazing
thing about this is that you mentioned earlier about the
the participation aspect um of of getting to know huddle
(22:03):
around the TV or the computer monitor and watch things
like the Mars landing, UM to watch the endeavor going
down the street. And here is an example of actual
participation where these citizen scientists are getting to sort through
the data that that that Kepler has a massed and
we're talking about a hundred and fifty thousand stars here
(22:24):
that they're they're sorting through the data. They're examining the
brightness measurements that are taken by Kepler, looking for signs
that there could be planets orbiting them. And then when
a planet passes in front of a star, there should
be noticeable and temporary drop in brightness. And this is
this sort of data again that they're looking at. And
the idea is that the human brain is actually better
at detecting this than an algorithm. So also someone who
(22:47):
is maybe an amateur astronomer who is very excited about
this work. UM. So you get this group together that
is all um trying to find, you know, some sort
of sign that there might be another earthlike planet. And
again we've talked about this in our podcast about will
we find an Earth flight planet planet in the like
(23:08):
anytime soon. And uh, this is something that seems like
it could happen for us in the next fifty years,
that we could spot an earthlike planet. On one level,
it just it gives us a lot more information about
what is out there. But also there's a lot of
imagination caught up in it because an earthlike planet could
conceivably have earthlike life. Life on Earth is the only
(23:28):
model of life that we have, and so when we're
extrapolating and trying to figure out what alien life might
consist of, that ends up what we look for, you know,
we end up looking for an earthlike world, So possibility
of life elsewhere in the universe, um, and also the
possibility of a world that we could go to that
we could colonize if we're still into that kind of
sci fi idea by the time when the technology actually
(23:51):
catch us up with us. Yeah. And I think it's
another good example of a discipline that benefits from an
institution like NASA allowing the public to come through data
sharing their data, having an open and essentially crowdsourcing meaningful assault. Yeah.
I mean again, it's kind of like that the father
raising his son, his son's citizen citizen science. And uh,
(24:12):
he's out there grilling steaks, right, and or or grilling
peppers and or what have you. Um, the vegetarian option.
He's out there grilling, and the sun is interested and
has reached the point where yes, here I'm gonna I'm
gonna do the main cooking. But you can hear you
can rub some some barbecue sauce on it, not do
put barbecue sauce in a steak. Yeah, and again you
(24:33):
see this thing. Well, you could put barbecue sauce on
a steak, I guess you could, But I mean, if
it's a really good stake, there's no sense to put
sauce on it. But the important thing is that you're
involving the kid in the process. But you're right, if
it's chewy and tough, you've gotta throw something on there. Uh.
But yes, that's what I think is happening. Again. There's
this sharing of data that's involving of of people you
know out on the street, right, you know. And some
(24:55):
of this is part and parcel to where we are
in terms of technology and community, because it wouldn't be
able to do this necessarily ten years ago, twenty years
ago to share data to this extent and then try
to get the results um in a way that was efficient.
So that's Joe public, that's just everybody, every random person
on the street potentially contributing to science. But then there's
(25:16):
still plenty of room for the exceptional individual, for the
Joe awesome if you will UM. And that brings us
to our next two items on this list. Felix baumb Gardner. Yes, yes,
And this was another example that everyone got to huddle
around the TV or the computer and watched this happen.
We had a lot of these moments in the last year.
Then the moments that really hearkened back to the day
(25:39):
of like watching the moon landing, where we all got
to become really excited about about watching something historic. Pike Place. Yeah, well,
I mean here's here's this Austrian daredevil who broke the
speed of sound in October two twelve by jumping from
the edge of space, a feat that he had spent
five years five years preparing for. It took him two
hours on a pressured cap soul powered by helium balloon
(26:02):
to reach a platform twenty four miles up and before
stepping onto the platform. This, I think it's interesting. He
ran through a forty step checklist, because you know, before
you take the big plans, you want to make sure
that everything is is crossed off, right, uh. And then
he stepped off the platform and he hurled through the
sky at more than eight hundred and thirty miles per hour,
(26:24):
at one point reaching eight hundred and thirty three point
nine pile miles per hour or mock one point to four,
breaking the sound barrier in a four minute free fall
before popping his parachute and pulling off a running landing
in a New Mexico desert. I mean, that is amazing
right there. Yeah, I mean, yeah it was. It's just
some amazing footage to watch and just quite a I
(26:46):
mean just it's kind of terrifying to watch too. Like
I would imagine if I did a forty item checklist,
it would just be like different deities that I was
just making sure I was square with before I jumped out.
You know, Yeah, we get cool, alright, You're just throwing
candy out in the air at that point, is to
the air gods. Um well. And also I mean you
(27:09):
have to understand too that again, this was five years
and in the making, and this is someone who was
so good at what he did. Um that he had
the ability to control himself at those sort of speeds.
And he did say at one point that he felt
like he was he was going to a flat spin,
and he felt all the blood rushing to his head
(27:29):
and he thought he was going to lose control, but
then he got it under control and was able to
continue to accelerate in his speed. Yeah. I mean, that's
an important thing to realize about. It is it is
much more than just the technology of getting someone up
that high and then you know, booting them out of
the cap. So there's a there's a lot of skill
that was involved in this. It's not nearly falling, uh
(27:51):
and technology because I mean it was falling, but it's
falling with the nest. Yes, falling. Yeah, I mean you
have to have the experience in order to really know
or to anticipate what that might feel like at those speeds. UM.
So he also had technology on his side. He wore
one pound pressurized flight suit and helmet, and without protection,
his blood would have been vaporized because the atmosphere was
(28:11):
so thin when he jumped at that height. The temperature
at his launch point was estimated at seven degrees sevent
d degrees below zero fahrenheit, if not lower. So this
is really a game changer. Um. And and that this
not only does this pressurized flight suit have implications um elsewhere,
(28:31):
like for instance, you know astronauts, UM, if they had
to bail out of a council early, this could absolutely
save their life, um if it was at the right
UM height and so on and so forth. UM. But
I mean it also kind of speaks this new technology
that allows us to again augment ourselves in a way
(28:52):
that we're able to do things that are beyond our
human capacity or what we think we're able to do.
So there you go, Felix bomb Gardner. Uh, amazing moment
in the science And that video is still out there
if you want to want to check it out. Well,
I'm sure be out there indefinitely. But not to be outdone.
There's also another individual, another Joe Awesome that uh that
(29:14):
made some headlines and and and this guy is really
it's close to like a Howard Hughes we have today,
I mean, except he hasn't yet entered like the full
crazy mode. But certainly in terms of a filmmaker who
is all about creating something awesome and ingenious on the screen,
but is also very interested in uh achieving great things
(29:37):
outside of the film world. And we're of course talking
about James Cameron, who became the first aqua out to
reach the deepest recesses of the Marianna Trench, UH touching
down the Challenger Deep Site about eleven kilometers below the
surface of the Pacific Ocean about yeah, which is about
six point eight miles And he did that in a
(29:58):
one person submersible call the deep Sea Challenger, and it
took him two and a half hours to get there.
And what I think is interesting he said, well, you know,
it's pretty much mostly devoid of life. I saw some
shrimp like creatures. But he did say that it was
amazing to be in such a massive place that you
just looked and you know, the horizon just dropped off.
(30:20):
In fact, there's no real horizon because we're talking about here.
Is um really the steep trench, And to even call
it a trench is a bit of a misnomer because
the marrying a trench is really an abyss and it's
located at a subduction zone. And subduction zones occur where
one part of the seabed. In this case, the Pacific
(30:41):
Plate dives beneath another and this is the Philippine Plate.
So you know, take that all into consideration, as well
as that it's in a remote location, and you really
do have this dramatic landscape unfolding before you. Yeah, I
mean in the sense that the sky is the great
blue yonder, this is the deep blue yonder. I mean,
(31:02):
this is really largely unexplored territory of the Yeah. We
talked about that in our Sunken Dangerous podcasts um in
because we talked about how we know more about the
moon surface than we than we know about the oceans
and what's going on with that. So again, you know,
I would be tempted to call Cameron a ham if
(31:24):
he wentn't so dedicated to this endeavor, but I mean,
I mean he's a bit of a ham. But but yeah,
there's no denying the awesomeness of this. Yeah, I mean
eight years to to uh engineer and make this submersible,
which then says, okay, well, if if he's done this,
and that means that we now have the ability to
continue to visit this area of the ocean in the seabed,
(31:49):
and now we can begin to take oil soil samples,
which is something that Cameron wants to do. So, of
course you have the trickle down effect. That doesn't mean
that we're all going to be in submersibles in ten
years going down to the Mariana Trench, but it does
mean that it makes the technology a little bit easier
for others to follow suit. Yeah, and speaking of trickling down,
I found it interesting that inside of this pressurized cockpit
(32:11):
um they had this system set up to where moisture
from Cameron's exhaled breath and his sweat leaked down into
a plastic bag. And the idea here was that if
he if he had to stay down there longer and
outlasted his water supply, he could then drink the contents
of this bag, which has parallels with space flight, right,
(32:33):
because we know that the same sort of technologies are
used when you're somewhere and you're in a confined space. Right,
there's a lot of crossover you have between the exploration
of space and the inspiration of the deepest portions of
the ocean. I mean, both hostile extreme environments for humans.
We were made too. We we evolved to live on
a very narrow portion of the Earth's surface, and if
(32:55):
you go to how you go too low. We're debt
unless we bring the appropriate technology with us to bring
a little of our our habitat with us into these
hostile settings. Yeah. Again there's that theme of augmentation again
showing up particularly this year. Alright, so um other things
that have been building this past decade that are gaining
(33:17):
more ground and are getting more exposure. I have to
do of course with neuroscience, yes, and um specifically erasing
your memories, which again it's not a new thing, but
it gained some traction again this year. Yeah. I mean
people have been wanted to do this forever. I mean
that we've discussed like the time and time again, like
the basic human condition and how wrapped up it is,
(33:39):
and and worrying about stuff that's happened in the past,
and worrying about stuff to come in the future, and uh,
you know, there's only something you can do about the future.
But we've all but I think everyone is thought, boy,
I wish I could go back and erase that, and
maybe you get more into the time travel mode, and
like I wish I could go back and fix that.
But then when you realize that's impossibly. You think, well,
if I can't fix it, then at least I could
forget that that happened at all. I mean, it's the
(34:02):
eternal sunshine of the mind. Would you erase a memory
if you could? Um? No, Because I mean there have
been times in the past where I would have said, yes,
I wish I could go back and erase this or
it rat that. But as you and you know, and
maybe I just don't have bad enough memories that I
that I would want to erase them. But ultimately reached
(34:23):
that point where those memories inform who you are, you know,
and to to take them away, um, you know that
that takes away from from what you become. But but
but again, where this really becomes important, it's with the
idea of dealing with really traumatic memories and uh and
ultimately not as much the research we're looking at here,
not as much the extinction of a memory, but the
(34:46):
sort of yeah, but also the dulling of it. Um.
We we did a whole episode because a couple of
years back at the World Science Festival, there was a
lot of interesting talk about being able to erase memories,
alter memories, and and some of it was pretty drastic,
like this one um substance that could just sort of
clear the mind, like reset the computer entirely. Uh that
(35:08):
no one is actually tested on a human, and we
can just sort of imagine what it might be like. Yeah,
this is the one where I was like, well, could
you would it be like the born identity it could
you erase your memory and you still know kung fu?
You know that kind of thing. One study we were
looking at from Upslo University. Uh, they were looking specifically
at this reconsolidation phase. Now, if you remember from when
(35:30):
we talked about this before, this is the idea that
when you think back to something, to a memory, you're
not going and looking at something that is set in stone.
Memory is is weird. Memory is uncertain. Memory, it's unstable
because every time think of a memory as a little
like something happens in your brain, like makes a little
clay sculpture of what it would of what happened. It's like,
(35:52):
all right, I was I was stabbed by an elephant. Alright,
So here's a you know, a little clay monitor of
an elephant in a trench coat with which the big
big well have a big shank a right, So then
I put that away in the drawer, the memory, right,
I'll leave it there, and then when I think about
it again, I get that little clay model back out.
But in handling it, uh, and in reconceptualizing and I
(36:13):
end up changing things. Uh and that. But this is
the this is the state where it's malleable. It's in
my hands. So researchers have have for a while realized
that the reconsolidation phase, this is when you want to
alter a memory, alter the impact of a memory, or
potentially erase it because this is where it's it's vulnerable. Well,
it gets anchored in our brains by proteins and it's reconsolidation.
(36:34):
So yes, this is where you want to interrupt the
actual final consolidation of it. Uh. So long term real quick,
long term memory is based on the formation of several proteins.
These proteins are part of the consolidation process that you
spoke of, and that occurs when a person learns something new.
Remembering something causes the memory to become unstable for short
(36:56):
amount of time, only to recover through another consolidation process,
which is what you just talked about. So these researchers
had test subjects look at neutral images, yes, and then
they shocked with the Jesus at home. This is crazy,
but yes they did it. And the reason they did
that is because they needed them to associate these images
with a memory. Right, so they would see like an
(37:17):
image of maybe at an elephant holding a switch blade,
and then they would they would become shocked. It's like whoa.
So now, of course the idea is that you see
an image of an elephant holding a switchblade again, you're
gonna you're gonna react because it's it's associated with a
shock to your system. You'll have a fearful memory. Right.
So now they divided the groups and this is where
they started to try the consolidation process and figure out
(37:39):
if they could game the system a little bit. And
the first group, their consolidation process was disrupted through multiple
presentations of the picture, while the excuse me, the consolidation
process of the second group wasn't interrupted. And so what
they did though, is that after this process, the picture
was shown to the group again. So what they discovered
(38:02):
is that the group that had their consolidation process inhibited,
the fear that was previously associated with the picture completely dissipated.
And then what they found them is that the consolidation process,
when it is interrupted, than the memory no longer can
incite fear. So what they did is that to corroborate this,
(38:23):
they used m r I scanner and that showed that
the remains of that particular fear memory had also been
erased from the nuclear group of the amygdala. And we
know the amygdala process is fear. So yeah, so just
another step forward towards this possible future where we can
go back and systematically erased memories, but certainly more near
term gives us a lot more AMMO towards treating traumatic memories. Um,
(38:46):
you know, kind of like a more enlightened version of
confronting your fear. Is that kind of a thing, because
certainly when you confront of fear, you were taking it
out of the cabinet, holding in your hands, and it
is susceptible to change to to to to altering uh,
what the memory exactly is and ultimately how we feel
about it. And I feel like this also underscores a
(39:08):
bit of about what we talked about in two thousand
and twelve, is this idea of consciousness, and certainly consciousness
is made of memories and experiences and we talked about
the failibility of this um idea that consciousness could be um,
something that is solid and sturdy, when in fact we
know that things like this memory um can really color
(39:29):
ah the feeling of that consciousness that day, and that
feeling makes us who we are right. So again interesting
to see how much of our brain this plasticity lends
itself to more of an unstable quality, or rather a
changeable quality of our brains. And this leads us to
another interesting bit of science that it also drives on
(39:50):
this idea that who we are the human experience itself
is not quite what we often think it is what
we take it for granted to be. And this of
course concerns toxic plasmosis now taxoplasmosis, which in brief we're
talking about the cat parasite. You know, the idea that
you're you're cleaning out the cat's litter box. You're a
little too handy in there, you know, you start confusing
(40:11):
with the sandbox. You can potentially pick up some of
this this parasite. It goes through your body. It alters
your mind because the idea is that this parasite has
been pooped out of the cat wants to get inside
of the rat, and then once it is in, the
rat wants to return to the cat. And so how
do you get a rat to return to the cat?
It sounds like I'm doing some sort of Sousian thing here,
(40:32):
But how do you get the rat to return to
the cat? Well, you you sort of hack the rat's
brain to make it and take more risks to make
it crave cat urine, that kind of thing, so that
it could put itself in a position to be eaten
by the cat and return and finish its life cycle.
So this has been in the news for a while.
There's like a bunch of stuff about it back in
two thousand nine, um and stuff before that. Scientists continue
(40:54):
to study it because it's a it's a remarkable organism. Uh,
and it obviously give and the how many domestic cats
out there. It has a huge impact on human culture. Yeah,
And the fact that that this parasite could disconnect the
fear part of the brain in rats was terrifying but
also made some people step back and say, to what
(41:16):
extent does the parasite operate in a human being? So
it keeps coming back in the in the news because
on one level, we continue to research it so and
every now and then there are some new findings. But
then it's also it's it's like those weird emails that
your mother or your your your uncle sends you, you know,
where it will be something crazy and you're like, come on, dude,
(41:38):
just look it up on Snopes. It's not true, but
but get but people keep sending them because it connects
with them instantly, Like you know, if you get the
one like Mars will be as big as the moon
and the earth sky. Uh this weekend? Have you received
this one? It goes out periodically and of course it's
completely nuts. There's no way that that happens, um not
without just just catastrophic you know of professions. Yeah, it's
(42:00):
just it's not gonna happen. But but it affects us
in a way. You know, we're like, oh wow, that's
gonna be really crazy. That's really gonna affect me personally.
I'm interested in sending this on. So when this story
has come out about the cat, is like, well, I
have a cat or my mom as a cat, uh,
and that the parasites in that cat could be changing
the way she thinks. I mean it, it has this
impact on our lives, and it involves cats, so of
(42:24):
course we're gonna be crazy about it. Yeah, And the
takeaway from this is not that if you have a
cat you are probably crazy, or that they're going to
some the parasite is going to make you crazy. That
is not the takeaway. The takeaway is that the parasite
and it's just still research that's being done, it does
seem to have some changes in personality in humans and
(42:46):
biologists Yaroslav Flaggers as actually the person who spoke about
this at length, and um, this was in an Atlantic article,
how Your Cat Is Making You Crazy by Kathleen mccalf um. Again,
the cat's not making you crazy, but that's the title
of the article that goes into more detail about this.
But what it really points to is that, you know,
(43:08):
at some point, we're all being gained by microscopic puppeteers
at some level. And I wanted to point to a
study at Colorado State University that showed that when subjects
were given a flu vaccination which stoked the subjects immune response,
they doubled the amount of people they came into contact
with during the time that they were maximally contagious. So Again,
(43:31):
here's this idea that people when they had this flu
vaccine and when they are contagious, we're a lot more
social than they would normally be. Um, is this the
flu that is actually gaming them to do this, to
change their personality? And that's the question that that biologists
are trying to get to, is to what extent do
(43:53):
parasites and bacteria change the way we think? Yeah? Yeah,
ultimately this the part about the story is not that
toxoplasmosis is having the impact on who we are and
how we think, but that it drives home how many
things have an impact on who we are and how
we think. And again, who we are, how we think,
the human mind, it's not set in stone. It's affected
(44:14):
by so many different variables and uh and and science
has a wonderful way of revealing that to us. And
if I were David Eagleman and I was sitting in
here in my fancy jeans and my cool coat, I
would probably say, which leads us to ask the question
do we really have free will if all of these
agents are acting upon us? He doesn't talk like that,
but I'm being him, so all right, So there you
(44:36):
have it. That is not all the science that took
place in twelve finny stretch of the imagination. But those
are some of the big stories, uh, and you you
may have heard of most of them, you may have
heard of all of them. Uh. But this is just
about rewinding, looking back at what happened, and then looking
looking ahead to where we're going in the future. So
if you have any feedback on any of that, if
(44:57):
there was a particular story that that we we didn't cover,
do you think was really key? I don't know, maybe
you know, we should have talked more about record meltdowns
of Arctic sea ice, uh, record high temperatures or you
know what have you? Uh let us know. You can
find us on Twitter, where we are blow the Mind.
You can find us on Facebook and Tumblr. We're We're
(45:18):
stuff to blow your mind on both of those and
you can always drop us a line at blow the
Mind at Discovery dot com for more on this and
thousands of other topics. Is that how Stuff Works dot
com
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