Speaker 1: Screwworms have invaded beyond the Panama Canal. Will they infect
Speaker 1: Texas cows grazing amongst the chaparral?
Speaker 2: How would life evolve without a moon? Would we have people?
Speaker 2: Cats and funky mushrooms?
Speaker 1: How long is the wait until synthetic blood goes on sale?
Speaker 1: I promise I'm not a vampire. I'm just a little pale.
Speaker 2: Whatever question keeps you up at night, Daniel and Kelly's
Speaker 2: answer will make it all right.
Speaker 1: Welcome to another Listener Questions episode on Daniel and Kelly's
Speaker 1: Extraordinary Universe.
Speaker 2: Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and I'm not
Speaker 2: a vegetarian, but I don't like to eat blood.
Speaker 3: Hello, I'm Kelly Waiter Smith.
Speaker 1: I study Paris and space and I also am not
Speaker 1: a big fan of eating blood. What are those blood
Speaker 1: sausages or whatever that are popular in the UK? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't do that, or at least I've never tried.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'd like it, but I can't get myself to
Speaker 1: try it.
Speaker 2: There's some line for me between like normal muscle and
Speaker 2: like the rest of the body and the blood and
Speaker 2: the brain and the guts and stuff. It just creeps me.
Speaker 2: Out though. Katrina has a friend who's big into cooking organs,
Speaker 2: and she has a website. I think it's called Awful
Speaker 2: Recipes o ffal.
Speaker 1: You know, I feel like it's actually a deficit of
Speaker 1: my character that I'm not into eating more of the animal,
Speaker 1: because I do feel like, yeah, that if you're going
Speaker 1: to take another animal's life, you really should make the
Speaker 1: most of it.
Speaker 3: But I just really have problems with the texture and stuff.
Speaker 1: So my solution has been to try to cut down
Speaker 1: on meat as much as I can.
Speaker 2: No, I totally agree it feels weird to just throw
Speaker 2: away parts of an animal because you're like, oh, ichy,
Speaker 2: and when really the whole thing is kind of ikey
Speaker 2: if you think about it too much, which we all should.
Speaker 2: We all all should be thinking about it too much
Speaker 2: and feeling okay about our choices.
Speaker 3: That's right, Yes, we should think through our choices.
Speaker 1: It's so easy to be separated from the food that
Speaker 1: you eat and not think through the implications of what's
Speaker 1: happening there.
Speaker 2: But nobody's gonna have an appetite after this episode anyway, right, Kelly,
Speaker 2: I'm here to help.
Speaker 1: All right, So let's jump right into question number one
Speaker 1: from John, this is a topic I've been wanted an
Speaker 1: excuse to dig into for a while, and so let's
Speaker 1: hear what disgusting thing John wanted to know about. Well, friends,
Speaker 1: At this point in the episode, we thought we were
Speaker 1: going to drop an audio file where our friend John
Speaker 1: reads his questions. But sometimes an audience member will send
Speaker 1: a question and then they disappear. Maybe they've moved away,
Speaker 1: maybe they're busy, hopefully they're well. We never got the
Speaker 1: audio file, so I'm going to go ahead and read
Speaker 1: the question from John. Here we go, Please do a
Speaker 1: segment on the current situation at the South border concern
Speaker 1: cattle and the re emergence of the parasitic fly and
Speaker 1: their maggot offspring known as screwworms. Is the current embargo
Speaker 1: something worth worrying about? Will it spread across the border regardless.
Speaker 3: Of what we do?
Speaker 1: Are there any human diseases related to the parasite after
Speaker 1: eliminating them back fifty sixty years ago? How did it
Speaker 1: become a problem again? Catching us by surprise?
Speaker 3: Thanks? Oh man, Daniel, all right, nobody.
Speaker 2: Why were you so excited to get this question?
Speaker 3: Kelly?
Speaker 1: Well, because I had been hearing about screwworms for a while,
Speaker 1: but had never really dug in, and so they were
Speaker 1: on sort of like the periphery of my consciousness. And
Speaker 1: I was like, oh great, now there's a new parasite
Speaker 1: that I have an excuse to learn about. But I
Speaker 1: what is a really good word for? Like I'm begging,
Speaker 1: I beseech you. I beseech you do not look up
Speaker 1: pictures of screwworm or like what screwworm does to people,
Speaker 1: because the photos have to Oh god, it's really horrible.
Speaker 1: And if you do, we will go ahead and record
Speaker 1: some video so that we can put your reaction up
Speaker 1: on Blue Sky and our Instagram accounts because it's really horrifying.
Speaker 1: So so let me go into the life cycle before
Speaker 1: we do anything else.
Speaker 2: Okay, tell us what is this thing? Basically, because I
Speaker 2: know just because it's called a screw worm doesn't mean
Speaker 2: it's a worm.
Speaker 3: It's not a worm.
Speaker 2: It's called the screw worm, doesn't mean it screws anything.
Speaker 2: So what is it? And how does it live?
Speaker 1: It is not a worm, but it does screw, So
Speaker 1: it is this we're talking about the new World screw worm.
Speaker 1: There is another species in the quote unquote old world.
Speaker 1: And so the deal here is it's a fly. Mom
Speaker 1: lays her eggs around the edges of wounds or on
Speaker 1: mucous membrane, so like around your eyes or in your
Speaker 1: mouth and stuff. I know, I know, bad start bad start.
Speaker 1: The eggs hatch and the larva like the baby's hatch
Speaker 1: out of the eggs, and then they start screwing into
Speaker 1: the flesh to get into the flesh to eat it.
Speaker 1: And that's why they're called screw worms. I guess they
Speaker 1: sort of screw in the way a screw screws into wood.
Speaker 2: Why did they screw? I mean, they can't just like
Speaker 2: chew their way in like any normal parasite.
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess they're doing both.
Speaker 1: But also a lot of parasites aren't like chewing their
Speaker 1: way through flesh. So for example, you know, hookworms have
Speaker 1: like hooked mouths and they sort of bite down, but
Speaker 1: they're not like kind of chewing their way through and
Speaker 1: migrating through the flesh, whereas screw worms are migrating through
Speaker 1: the flesh, which is really truly horrible.
Speaker 2: Why are they migrating through? Like where did they want
Speaker 2: to go? I happen to be between them and their destination.
Speaker 1: Well, no, they've consumed the flesh, they're done with it.
Speaker 1: They want more flesh, and so they're screwing in to
Speaker 1: get more of it. And so, you know, we talked
Speaker 1: in a previous episode about maggots that specifically ate dead tissue,
Speaker 1: and so they were useful for cleaning out wounds. But
Speaker 1: these flies are specifically eating the live tissue. Wow, and
Speaker 1: they are not pleasant. So they screw in, they eat.
Speaker 1: When they're done eating, they fall out and off the
Speaker 1: host onto the ground.
Speaker 4: All right.
Speaker 3: They do a stage called pew.
Speaker 1: Painting, and then when they hatch, they emerge as adults
Speaker 1: who go off in search of more flesh to lay
Speaker 1: their eggs on.
Speaker 2: How come nobody call these like zombie flies or something?
Speaker 3: So we usually reserve the word zombie.
Speaker 1: For instances where a host behavior is being sort of
Speaker 1: like manipulated in a way that benefits the parasite at
Speaker 1: the expense of the host.
Speaker 2: I love this. They're like semi official rules in biology
Speaker 2: for what you can call a zombie.
Speaker 3: Oh no, no, there's a lot of fighting over this.
Speaker 1: There are people who feel like you shouldn't be using
Speaker 1: the phrase zombie at all because you're just going to
Speaker 1: confuse the public. They're not coming back from the dead.
Speaker 1: I feel like the public gets that, like you need
Speaker 1: to give them a little bit more credit.
Speaker 2: But are there similar rules for like werewolf or mummy.
Speaker 3: I don't think so.
Speaker 2: No, no, all right, so it's a free for folks.
Speaker 2: If you discover something, feel free to call it a
Speaker 2: where way.
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, there are there are a fit mum,
Speaker 1: and so they essentially shells of their former self because
Speaker 1: parasites have like eaten their insides and stuff, and they're
Speaker 1: like pale relative to the others. I don't know too
Speaker 1: much about aphan mummies anyway, So to get back on track,
Speaker 1: I ended up watching a video lecture that veterinarians are
Speaker 1: supposed to watch to get like, you know, credit for
Speaker 1: their requirements for their field about screwworms, and they were like,
Speaker 1: sometimes it'll just be like a pinprick hole in an animal,
Speaker 1: because like you know, dogs and stuff can get this too,
Speaker 1: and you just have to feel the hole and you
Speaker 1: feel the worms moving around inside. So it's not even
Speaker 1: that it's like a big anyway, super gross.
Speaker 2: So you can be walking around with like a sack
Speaker 2: of these worms inside you.
Speaker 1: You would know, But yes, the answer is yes. So
Speaker 1: females lay something like two hundred to three hundred eggs
Speaker 1: at a time, and they can lay two to four
Speaker 1: batches in their lifetime, so you can pretty quickly once
Speaker 1: you have an open wound, it attracts.
Speaker 3: More screwflies or more screw worms.
Speaker 1: So if you're in an area where there's a lot
Speaker 1: of screwworms, you can pretty quickly build up a life
Speaker 1: threatening illness because they're just eating so much of you.
Speaker 1: Or you can get secondary infections because now you have
Speaker 1: this growing wounds that can you know, acquire bacteria and
Speaker 1: you die that way.
Speaker 3: So it's truly awful.
Speaker 2: And what do they usually eat? Is it mostly people
Speaker 2: or is it dogs? Are they totally indiscriminate.
Speaker 1: Anything they can really get their hands on, So quite
Speaker 1: often they're going after livestock or they can go after wildlife.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you find it in pets and occasionally you will
Speaker 1: find it in people.
Speaker 2: And do they have the same preference for flesh as
Speaker 2: Kelly does, like do they prefer the muscle or they
Speaker 2: eat you know, organs and eyeballs and any sorts of things.
Speaker 1: So I don't preferentially eat wounds on animals and they
Speaker 1: have a tendency also to go form mucus membranes and
Speaker 1: like genitalia stuff like that, and so I would say
Speaker 1: they do not have similar preferences to Kelly.
Speaker 2: I'm not trying to put you together in a category.
Speaker 2: It's just using you as an example.
Speaker 1: I'm feeling a little insulted, but I'm gonna I really
Speaker 1: like parasites enough that I'm going to rise above and
Speaker 1: decide that to compliment. But so this used to be
Speaker 1: in the United States. It was a huge problem. Like
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty five, one hundred and eighty thousand cattle
Speaker 1: died in Texas alone from this parasite. So you typically
Speaker 1: find it in South and Central America, and it was
Speaker 1: in North America for a while. Tended to be in
Speaker 1: the Southern States because that stage that lives off of
Speaker 1: the animals is cold sensitive, so if it freezes, that
Speaker 1: kills them, but they can come back during the summer,
Speaker 1: so you can still get them pretty far north, just
Speaker 1: depending on where they've managed to travel. But this was
Speaker 1: such a big problem for agriculture that the United States said,
Speaker 1: all right, we absolutely need to do something about this.
Speaker 1: And so what they did was they developed in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty eight, what's still called the sterile insect technique.
Speaker 3: And this is something I think you might enjoy.
Speaker 1: So essentially, they they get the flies, they can well
Speaker 1: wait for it, wait for it.
Speaker 2: I love hearing about sterility as a rule.
Speaker 3: So yeah, oh yeah, well I know that's a thing
Speaker 3: for you. I don't know you started this path. I
Speaker 3: just took the next step.
Speaker 2: Well, what is a sterile insect technique?
Speaker 1: Okay, So they take a stage of the flies and
Speaker 1: they expose them to radiation, and in particular, they're exposing
Speaker 1: them to low doses of cobalt and this essentially sterilizes
Speaker 1: the male flies and then they release loads of male
Speaker 1: flies out there. And the thing that you need to
Speaker 1: know about screwworms is that the females only mate once
Speaker 1: in their life, even though they're laying multiple clutches of eggs.
Speaker 1: So if a female mates with one of these irradiated males,
Speaker 1: the eggs that she lays will not hatch. And so
Speaker 1: by doing this, you essentially are like pulling females out
Speaker 1: of the population, like they still exist, but they're not
Speaker 1: making any viable eggs. And so every generation you put
Speaker 1: more sterile males out there, and over time you can
Speaker 1: drop the population down to zero using.
Speaker 2: This method, down to zero, really.
Speaker 3: Down to zero.
Speaker 1: So actually we started doing this in nineteen fifty eight,
Speaker 1: and by nineteen sixty six the United States was free
Speaker 1: of New World screwworm?
Speaker 2: How do you get down to zero? I understand that
Speaker 2: you can suppress the population because you have some males
Speaker 2: that are sterile, But as long as you have any
Speaker 2: males that are not sterile, won't you keep getting some
Speaker 2: more screw worms.
Speaker 1: They do this generation after generation after generation, and they
Speaker 1: swamp the population with these sterile males. And so they're
Speaker 1: literally like loading up airplanes and dropping airplanes full of
Speaker 1: no no, no, no, This is how they distribute the
Speaker 1: screw worms. They drop airplanes full of these sterile insects.
Speaker 2: If anything is going to inspire conspiracy theories about the government,
Speaker 2: then like dropping airplane loads of intentionally irradiated flies on
Speaker 2: the population.
Speaker 3: Wow, flesh eating flies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, eating irradiated flies. Oh my gosh. All right,
Speaker 2: but it's good for you, folks, really, it's in your interest.
Speaker 3: Trust us, trust the scientists.
Speaker 2: So all right, so they did this and it worked amazingly.
Speaker 2: Ya science M M.
Speaker 1: But the problem was that screwworm was still present in Mexico,
Speaker 1: and so it kept getting across the southern border, and
Speaker 1: so this problem didn't go away. So we decided, okay,
Speaker 1: you know what, We're going to eradicate screw worm from
Speaker 1: Mexico as well. Yeah, and so they started, with the
Speaker 1: Mexican government's permission. This was a collaboration. They started dropping
Speaker 1: plane folds of sterile screw worms over Mexico and by
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one, Mexico was free of screwworm. Yay, which
Speaker 1: is amazing. And so they ended up marching screw worm
Speaker 1: back farther and farther and farther until screwworm was only
Speaker 1: found on the southern side of the Panama Canal.
Speaker 2: This seems like such good news. It must be ironic
Speaker 2: foreshadowing for some terrible twist you're about to drop on us.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is no this is good news, full stop.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: There were like decades where we were completely without screw worms.
Speaker 1: It's amazing, like go science. And so Panama has this
Speaker 1: facil where they're constantly making these sterile insect males and
Speaker 1: they're constantly dropping them in the Panama Canal region to
Speaker 1: try to make sure that screw worm doesn't make its
Speaker 1: way back up again, because it's still present south of
Speaker 1: the Panama Canal.
Speaker 2: Why don't the South American governments do this as well
Speaker 2: so we can eradicate this guy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great question. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's too expensive or what. But
Speaker 1: the countries that did eradicate it had American help and
Speaker 1: collaboration to sort of scale up to keep this going.
Speaker 1: But it's kind of amazing that it hasn't gotten past
Speaker 1: because we move a lot of animals around, you know,
Speaker 1: and so like in two thousand, a gelding, which is
Speaker 1: like a kind of horse but I don't know much
Speaker 1: about horses because I hate horses, was imported.
Speaker 2: Well, technically, it's a sterilized male horse.
Speaker 3: Okay, thank you.
Speaker 2: Sterilized surgically oh ye, not.
Speaker 1: With radiation, not with cobalt. Oh no, snip snip okay,
Speaker 1: got it.
Speaker 3: Got it.
Speaker 1: So a snip snipped mail horse was brought to Florida
Speaker 1: from South America, and as it was coming across the border,
Speaker 1: it was discovered that it had screw and it went
Speaker 1: into quarantine, got treated, and so it didn't spread yay.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and seven, a dog from Trinidad was
Speaker 1: sent to Florida and it had screwworm larva you know,
Speaker 1: snacking behind its eyes.
Speaker 3: Oh god, I know, I know.
Speaker 1: And the dog made it to Mississippi and so it
Speaker 1: could have been spreading it, but a veterinarian in Mississippi
Speaker 1: found them, reported it. It was controlled, it got treated,
Speaker 1: the dog lived, It didn't spread.
Speaker 2: Amazing, but it feels like fingers in the dike.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, it does, right. So in twenty sixteen, there
Speaker 1: was an outbreak in the Florida Keys. We don't know
Speaker 1: how screw worm made it to the Florida Keys, but
Speaker 1: it got there and it ended up in the key
Speaker 1: deer population, which is an endangered subspecies of white tailed
Speaker 1: deer that you find in that area, and one hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty five of them died. That was about ten
Speaker 1: percent of the population. It also infected dogs, pet pigs, cats,
Speaker 1: in a raccoon.
Speaker 3: I know, super sad.
Speaker 1: But we put sterile males out and we were able
Speaker 1: to get it under control again. So using that steril
Speaker 1: insect technique, we wiped it back out again. But this
Speaker 1: current outbreak, as I understand. It is the most concerning
Speaker 1: outbreak that's happened so far. So screwworm has managed to
Speaker 1: jump above the Panama Canal. I don't think we know
Speaker 1: how it happened, and it has been sort of creeping
Speaker 1: its way back up, heading into Mexico and getting close
Speaker 1: to the border. So Zach was just in Texas visiting
Speaker 1: his family and he said that they they were like
Speaker 1: commercials about you know, watch out for screwworm. Check your animals,
Speaker 1: keep an eye out, because we really want to make
Speaker 1: sure this thing doesn't establish here.
Speaker 2: Check your eyeballs, Check your eyeballs.
Speaker 3: Oh gross.
Speaker 1: So it's been estimated that if it takes hold in
Speaker 1: the US, it could cost over one and a quarter
Speaker 1: billion dollars to eradicate it from the US if we
Speaker 1: had to deal with this again. It was recently announced
Speaker 1: that eight and a half million dollars is going to
Speaker 1: go to building another facility to raise sterile mail insects
Speaker 1: in Texas and then they're going to work with the
Speaker 1: Panama facility to try to wipe screw worm out between
Speaker 1: Panama and the US and the areas where it's taken hold.
Speaker 1: So they are putting a lot of energy and money
Speaker 1: into trying to tackle this because it would be a
Speaker 1: big deal if it got across the border.
Speaker 2: I really hope they tackle it before it gets to
Speaker 2: my house.
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely, Well, you know, they probably don't want to
Speaker 1: go to California anyway, because it's like kind of a
Speaker 1: boring place.
Speaker 3: I'm more worried about Virginia.
Speaker 2: But they don't like mountains, they don't like oceans, they
Speaker 2: don't like beautiful weather. You're right, they should head to Virginia.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, We've got much better wildlife here, and I'm
Speaker 1: sure the wildlife is delicious, and so, you know, come
Speaker 1: to Virginia.
Speaker 3: This got weird.
Speaker 1: So well, Virginia will change our motto from a Virginia
Speaker 1: is for lovers to Virginia is for screw worms. But anyway,
Speaker 1: so John wanted to know, should we worry about this problem?
Speaker 2: I'm already worrying. Yes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the answer is yes we should worry, and people
Speaker 1: are worrying and taking what seems to be appropriate measures
Speaker 1: to me, And are there any human disease is related
Speaker 1: to this parasite? I wasn't able to find any. So
Speaker 1: the parasite can infect and live in people, and that's horrible.
Speaker 1: But I don't think it spreads any diseases as far
Speaker 1: as I was able to tell. And how did it
Speaker 1: manage to catch us by surprise? I would say it
Speaker 1: didn't catch us by surprise. Monitoring for this is pretty widespread,
Speaker 1: and we've been constantly sort of working to keep this
Speaker 1: below the southern border.
Speaker 3: To be honest, I am amazed and.
Speaker 1: Very proud of our efforts that it hasn't gotten above
Speaker 1: Panama more often like this. It's incredible that we've been
Speaker 1: able to control it to the extent that we have. So,
Speaker 1: you know, something just managed to move across the border
Speaker 1: that was infected by screwworm and we're on it again.
Speaker 1: This is probably unless we completely remove screwworm from the
Speaker 1: face of the planet, this is something we're just always
Speaker 1: going to have to deal with happening from time to time,
Speaker 1: would be my guess.
Speaker 2: Well, let me take the other side of this. Let
Speaker 2: me be the screw worm advocate. You know, many things
Speaker 2: are unpleasant or heat or gross, but then it turns
Speaker 2: out they serve some positive function in the ecosystem. If
Speaker 2: we remove screwworm from the Earth, we just like delete
Speaker 2: all of them. Is there some beautiful critter that like
Speaker 2: eats screw worms. It's no longer going to be around.
Speaker 1: No, no, So I don't actually know the answer, But
Speaker 1: what I can tell you is that for decades we
Speaker 1: have managed to eradicate screwworm from North America and most
Speaker 1: of Central America, and we haven't seen ecosystems collapse or
Speaker 1: something like that, you know. So it's possible that there
Speaker 1: is that birds really liked eating screw worms and they
Speaker 1: have a little bit.
Speaker 3: Less food to eat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I think this is one of those things
Speaker 1: where as a pro human individual, I think that any
Speaker 1: ecosystem costs would be worth it because otherwise that you know,
Speaker 1: the costs for our livestock and our pets and for
Speaker 1: you know, endangered species like the key deer, it would
Speaker 1: be better to not have it around.
Speaker 2: And then Kelly wouldn't have to think about gross pictures
Speaker 2: online as she eats her hamburger.
Speaker 1: My god, it was a horrible photo of like the
Speaker 1: head of a key dear that I won't I'll stop,
Speaker 1: So John, thank you for this fascinating question and go science. Okay,
Speaker 1: next up, we have a question from Robert from Richmond.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much, Robert for reaching out to me
Speaker 2: to ask this question. And remember to everybody out there,
Speaker 2: if you have a question about the way the universe works,
Speaker 2: something you want to understand, and you'd like Daniel and
Speaker 2: Kelly to break it down for you, please just write
Speaker 2: to us to questions at Danielankelly dot org. Don't ask
Speaker 2: chat GPT, don't read some nonsense online. Reach out to us.
Speaker 2: We really will set you right, all right. Here's Robert
Speaker 2: from Richmond.
Speaker 5: This is Robert from Richmond, Virginia. I was wondering how
Speaker 5: life on Earth would have evolved differently, if at all,
Speaker 5: if we didn't have the moon, so we wouldn't have
Speaker 5: tied to mix the primordial soup, we wouldn't necessarily have
Speaker 5: as much of a tilted axis. Even nocturnal predators wouldn't
Speaker 5: have the light of the moon at night to hunt.
Speaker 5: The moon has been there for so long that it's
Speaker 5: kind of interesting to see how it would be different
Speaker 5: without it. But also, there are so many planets that
Speaker 5: have more than one moon. We're kind of unique in
Speaker 5: that way. How would life evolve differently with more moons?
Speaker 5: I know there's a lot too unpacked there. I appreciate
Speaker 5: all the hard work. Keep it up look forward to
Speaker 5: hearing from you guys.
Speaker 3: Well, this is a great question which is exactly what
Speaker 3: I would expect for a fellow citizen of Virginia, which.
Speaker 2: Is what a Virginian is this a Mitmonian.
Speaker 1: Rich Mendian, Virginian. Richard is a Virginian, a fellow Virginia.
Speaker 2: And Richard is doing something which I do all the time,
Speaker 2: in which I love seeing in people, which is thinking
Speaker 2: about how the universe could be different? Why is it
Speaker 2: this way? And that's like one of the big questions
Speaker 2: of science, that's why we do science to understand is
Speaker 2: the way our universe works? An accident, is it happened
Speaker 2: for a reason? Of those reasons important? Do they determine
Speaker 2: why we're here? All these things help un rapper like
Speaker 2: the context of our lives. So yeah, awesome, Robert, thank
Speaker 2: you for thinking big. Or maybe Robert's just writing a
Speaker 2: science fiction novel and need some.
Speaker 3: Help and we're happy to do that too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no problem, no problem. Yeah, So this question has
Speaker 2: a lot of angles. You could think about whether life
Speaker 2: would have evolved if Earth never had a moon, or
Speaker 2: you could think about what would happen if we lost
Speaker 2: our moon. So I started with that one because it's
Speaker 2: sort of like a fun science fiction scenario, like, Hey,
Speaker 2: we have a moon, are we going to have it forever?
Speaker 2: Is it possible we could lose our moon? And the
Speaker 2: answer to that is yes. You know, people think about
Speaker 2: the Solar System as sort of static and this slow
Speaker 2: moving parade of planets around the Sun that's been happening forever,
Speaker 2: But that's not true. The Solar System is kind of chaotic.
Speaker 2: It's just on longer time scales than we mostly think about.
Speaker 2: You know, the order of the planets we have today
Speaker 2: is not the same order the planets we've had forever.
Speaker 2: Planets have migrated in and then migrated out. There are
Speaker 2: theories that we had another gas giant that when Jupiter
Speaker 2: and Saturn migrated to the inner Solar System and then
Speaker 2: back out, one of these was tossed into outer space.
Speaker 2: So there might be like a lost sibling planet out there.
Speaker 1: I like to imagine the noise it made as it
Speaker 1: got flung out into space.
Speaker 2: Why mean exactly? And maybe that planet had like the
Speaker 2: best climate in the whole Solar System. Maybe the Solar
Speaker 2: System lost its California in that interaction, And I'll never know.
Speaker 2: That's fine, and so in a similar way, we could
Speaker 2: lose our moon. You know, something could like hit the
Speaker 2: Moon and deflect it and knock it out of orbit.
Speaker 2: In fact, right now, scientists are tracking a new interstellar comet.
Speaker 2: This is a piece of the universe that comes from
Speaker 2: another star, like a big chunk of rock and ice
Speaker 2: thrown out of another solar system that's passing through hours
Speaker 2: and we don't think it's going to hit the Earth
Speaker 2: or that close, but it's moving really really fast. And
Speaker 2: if it did hit the Earth, wow, that would be devastating.
Speaker 2: And if it hit the Moon, it could certainly knock
Speaker 2: it out of orbit.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: I remember when I heard that. My first thought was, oh,
Speaker 1: all right, hitting the Moon. That would be like a
Speaker 1: bummer for a lot of reasons, but that would be better.
Speaker 1: And then I'm like, wait a minute, maybe that wouldn't
Speaker 1: be better, or it would be better, but like not
Speaker 1: much better.
Speaker 2: Yeah. In fact, there's a great science fiction novel called
Speaker 2: Seven Eves which starts out with some aliens basically destroying
Speaker 2: our moon. It's never really explained how it happens, but
Speaker 2: most of the book has to do with trying to
Speaker 2: survive the destruction of the moon because if it turns
Speaker 2: into rubble and then starts falling into Earth, filling the
Speaker 2: atmosphere with this stuff, and you basically have a nuclear
Speaker 2: holocaust on Earth. It's end of days kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: So we don't want our moon to be obliterated into dust,
Speaker 2: but it could also just be knocked out of our orbit.
Speaker 2: We could just lose it and go wandering into the
Speaker 2: Solar System. And so that lets us think about, like, well,
Speaker 2: what would life be like on Earth if we didn't
Speaker 2: explode the Moon, if it just sort of like drifted
Speaker 2: away somehow. Well, the Moon plays a big role in
Speaker 2: biological experience, right, Like we know, for example, that the
Speaker 2: Moon causes tides right high tide and low tide. This
Speaker 2: is because of gravitational tidal forces. That's why they're called
Speaker 2: tidal forces. And the physics here is really fun and
Speaker 2: it sounds complicated because it's gravity and all that stuff,
Speaker 2: but it's pretty basic. You know, one side of the
Speaker 2: Earth is closer to the Moon than the other side
Speaker 2: of the Earth, and so the Moon's gravity pulls on
Speaker 2: the Earth harder on the closer side than the further side,
Speaker 2: So it turns to Earth into something like a football
Speaker 2: instead of a sphere. It's like squeezing the earth, and
Speaker 2: the water on the Earth is the squishiest bit, and
Speaker 2: so it responds the most. Most people don't realize though,
Speaker 2: that all of the Earth gets squeezed. They are these
Speaker 2: things called land tides that move the distance of the
Speaker 2: surface of the Earth relative to the center by meters. Yes,
Speaker 2: as the Moon goes around the Earth, it squeezes and
Speaker 2: massages the Earth changes its shape, not just the water,
Speaker 2: but the land also changes its shape.
Speaker 3: Lies. That's amazing.
Speaker 2: Yes, these are lies propagated by flies that the government
Speaker 2: drops over California, infected with conspiracy theories.
Speaker 3: Why you could dropping worse things?
Speaker 2: Probably, Yes, most people know about the moon's effect on
Speaker 2: water tides, but not so much about the moon's effect
Speaker 2: on the earth. Right. And also, the Sun gives us tides, right, Like,
Speaker 2: the Sun is much further away, but it's also much
Speaker 2: more massive, So if you got rid of the Moon,
Speaker 2: we would still have tides. Right. Tides are combination of
Speaker 2: the Sun's tides and the Moon's tides, which is one
Speaker 2: reason why tides are complicated. Like if you look at
Speaker 2: a tidal chart, it's never like it goes up, it
Speaker 2: goes down. It goes up, it goes down. It's a
Speaker 2: simple sid It's complicated. It goes up, it goes down,
Speaker 2: it comes up less, it goes down more. It's really complicated.
Speaker 2: And that's due to the Sun and the moon and
Speaker 2: the shape of the inlets and stuff. Tides are really complicated.
Speaker 2: Isaac Newton started working on them hundreds of years ago,
Speaker 2: and it wasn't until like one hundred years ago or
Speaker 2: so that we had a pretty solid understanding of the
Speaker 2: physics there.
Speaker 1: Tides made my PhD super confusing because I had, you know,
Speaker 1: I had to go out and collect snails when the
Speaker 1: tide was low, and I would always think like, oh,
Speaker 1: I remember when the tide was the other day. I'm
Speaker 1: going to extrapolate forward, and you know it was not
Speaker 1: as predictable as I wanted it to be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, they're complicated, and people think that this
Speaker 2: complexity might have really been important for the development of life.
Speaker 2: Like number one, If you got rid of the tides,
Speaker 2: a lot of life by the seashore would be very confused,
Speaker 2: and a lot of assumptions they make and things they
Speaker 2: rely on would be thrown into chaos. So the conditions
Speaker 2: for life on Earth would be drastically different, and some
Speaker 2: things would live and some things would not live. But
Speaker 2: also historically will imagine that tides played a role in
Speaker 2: the evolution of life, that when you're on the border
Speaker 2: between fresh water and saltwater, you have these brackish water
Speaker 2: systems and there's a lot of like mixing up that happens,
Speaker 2: and you can imagine like water sloshing up into these
Speaker 2: tide pools and mixing this bit of biochemistry. But that
Speaker 2: bit of biochemistry, and maybe that's even plays a role
Speaker 2: in abiogenesis. A lot of this is very speculative, right, like, hmm,
Speaker 2: maybe this and this seems like a compelling story. None
Speaker 2: of it is the kind of science where we can like,
Speaker 2: let's do the experiment. Let's have an earth without a
Speaker 2: moon and an Earth with moons, and let's see if
Speaker 2: life starts more often. It's just sort of more like
Speaker 2: a reasonable sounding story, And that doesn't make it like
Speaker 2: non scientific. It just means, hey, this is the most
Speaker 2: we can do right now, sort of think about it
Speaker 2: clearly and try to imagine. So we don't know the
Speaker 2: answer to like could life have evolved without a moon?
Speaker 2: Would life evolve differently without a moon? But there are
Speaker 2: strong arguments to make that it's certainly possible.
Speaker 1: So estuaries are ecosystems where fresh water it's salt water.
Speaker 1: If you didn't have the moon, would estuaries narrow, Yeah.
Speaker 2: There'd be a narrower band there, right, because it'd be
Speaker 2: less mixing, right, because the moon brings the salt water
Speaker 2: up further into the fresh water.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, estuaries play an important role for ecological services, and
Speaker 1: they're economically important because they end up being places where
Speaker 1: baby crabs and baby fish that we like to eat
Speaker 1: start their lives.
Speaker 3: So anyway, let's keep the moon there. I've decided.
Speaker 2: The moon makes things yummy nice.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sure, yeah, the moon makes yummy things.
Speaker 2: And the moon also affects global weather in other ways
Speaker 2: because it changes current patterns. You know, it helps stabilize
Speaker 2: climates by mixing up the air. Like it's pulling on
Speaker 2: the air as well, so it's not just water. Has
Speaker 2: all sorts of effects on the air and on the land.
Speaker 2: In addition, of course, the moon provides light at night, right,
Speaker 2: It's like essentially huge mirror in space reflecting the Sun
Speaker 2: down to Earth. And so any crater that like takes
Speaker 2: advantage of a little bit of moonlighte for hunting is
Speaker 2: going to be disadvantaged. There is another in the category
Speaker 2: of like things would be different. We don't know exactly
Speaker 2: what that would mean, but we can sort of speculate intelligently,
Speaker 2: and it seems certain that it would dramatically change the
Speaker 2: conditions for life.
Speaker 1: Would it be good for our favorite creatures, which are rats,
Speaker 1: that would it help them hide at night?
Speaker 2: It would it be good for rats that are out
Speaker 2: at night, especially because it would be bad for owls, right,
Speaker 2: owls that do a lot of rat eating. But also
Speaker 2: it would be good for astronomers. You know, having a
Speaker 2: moon is really bad when you're on the ground with
Speaker 2: your telescope and you want to look at some star
Speaker 2: and then boom, you have this huge sun mirror shining
Speaker 2: into your eyeballs. It's a lot harder to have dark nights.
Speaker 2: So a lot of our dark knights are ruined by
Speaker 2: a moon. So you know, maybe there's a conspiracy out
Speaker 2: there among astronomers to get rid of the moon.
Speaker 3: Hey guys, knock it off. Knock it off. We need
Speaker 3: the moon.
Speaker 2: And there's even more dramatic effects that the moon plays
Speaker 2: on the Earth. It's not just the tides and not
Speaker 2: just the air, it's not just the night, but the
Speaker 2: Earth's rotation and tilt are strongly affected by the moon
Speaker 2: because the moon is pretty big, like especially for our moon, right,
Speaker 2: lots of moons in the Solar system are much smaller
Speaker 2: than our moon, but our moon is big enough that
Speaker 2: it carries a significant fraction of the angular energy of
Speaker 2: the Earth Moon system. So people think that the Earth's
Speaker 2: rotation itself is affected by having a moon, and that
Speaker 2: the tilt of the Earth is sort of moderated by
Speaker 2: the moon. So like if we didn't have a moon,
Speaker 2: earth tilt might be even crazier, it might be much deeper.
Speaker 3: That would affect seasons.
Speaker 2: It absolutely would affect seasons. Or it could also have
Speaker 2: no tilt, right, and we can end up with no seasons.
Speaker 2: And so the Earth's rotation and the earth tilt is
Speaker 2: a product of this balance between the Earth and the Moon.
Speaker 2: And there's another fun thing that's happening there, which is
Speaker 2: that as these two are sort of massaging each other
Speaker 2: right tidal and they're using their angular momentum to massage
Speaker 2: each other, and it takes some energy to sequi easy
Speaker 2: the Earth into a football. As it does that, it's
Speaker 2: losing some of its angry momentum, and so the Moon
Speaker 2: is actually getting further and further away from us every year,
Speaker 2: and not by like some tiny amount like microns or something.
Speaker 2: It's happening by one centimeter per year.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's still a tiny amount. I thought you
Speaker 1: were gonna tell me like a mile a year or something,
Speaker 1: but you know that. I'm still concerned because I'm Kelly,
Speaker 1: and I'm concerned about everything. But like, the centimeter doesn't
Speaker 1: sound like a lot. Convince me it's a lot.
Speaker 2: Well, it's not a lot for a year, but if
Speaker 2: you have a lot of years, that's a lot of centimeters.
Speaker 2: Imagine what the Moon might have looked like a million
Speaker 2: years ago or two million years ago. As our ancestors
Speaker 2: are walking across the plains. They had a bigger moon
Speaker 2: in their night than we did.
Speaker 3: Dinosaurs saw a bigger moon.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly, that's kind of cool. Yeah, okay, Dinosaur astronomers
Speaker 2: had an easier time understanding the surface of the Moon
Speaker 2: because it was closer.
Speaker 3: Now I care work.
Speaker 1: Did dinosaur entomologists drop steril insects on Californians.
Speaker 2: One of my favorite dinosaur stories is somebody who reconstructed
Speaker 2: the path of the asteroid that hit the Earth sixty
Speaker 2: five million years ago, and at least one of the
Speaker 2: possible paths includes a close flyby before it actually hit,
Speaker 2: So that means that dinosaur astronomers had plenty of warning.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, they could have seen this thing in the
Speaker 2: sky before it hit, like weeks beforehand and prepared. But man,
Speaker 2: they didn't fund astronomy enough. So there's a lesson, folks,
Speaker 2: fund astronomy.
Speaker 1: That's right, Dinosaur NASA should have gotten a lot more money.
Speaker 2: And on that note, you know, this interstellar commt is
Speaker 2: fascinating and it's not going to hit the Earth, so
Speaker 2: nobody should worry. But you know, if it was pointed
Speaker 2: at the Earth, then we would have very little time
Speaker 2: to do anything about it, which means we should be
Speaker 2: getting ready to do something about it before we spot
Speaker 2: these things. So like we really should be spending more
Speaker 2: time and energy on Earth protective services if you ask me.
Speaker 1: So that's that's two squares on your Bingo card if
Speaker 1: you're not keeping track. There's a existential dread and more
Speaker 1: funding for science.
Speaker 2: Especially because these sins could be lobbed in our direction
Speaker 2: by aliens. So there's another Bengo square.
Speaker 1: Fo yep, yep, yeah, Oh sorry, we still got to
Speaker 1: hit on cannibalism and poop.
Speaker 3: We'll get there, all right.
Speaker 2: So if we lost our moon, or if Earth never
Speaker 2: had a moon, we're looking at a very different situation
Speaker 2: for life. We know that life on Earth would change
Speaker 2: a lot, or may have not evolved or could have
Speaker 2: evolved very differently. I don't have any reason to believe this,
Speaker 2: but my hunch is that if Earth didn't have a moon,
Speaker 2: we still might have gotten life. It just would be
Speaker 2: very different. You know, it's easy to say these conditions
Speaker 2: were required for life to turn out as we know it.
Speaker 2: Therefore life wouldn't have evolved if you don't have those conditions.
Speaker 2: But I think it's also equally likely that life just
Speaker 2: would have been weird or indifferent. But the other side
Speaker 2: of Robert's question is not just losing our moon, but
Speaker 2: what about more moons? What if Earth had two moons
Speaker 2: or seven moons? What would that be like? And is
Speaker 2: that possible? And yes, it is still possible at this
Speaker 2: fairly mature stage in the Solar system to get more moons.
Speaker 2: We think this happened a lot with Jupiter and Saturn,
Speaker 2: for example, some of their moons were formed as the
Speaker 2: planet's formed, sort of leftover stuff that was too far
Speaker 2: out and moving too fast to fall into the planet,
Speaker 2: sort of the same way the planets didn't fall into
Speaker 2: the Sun. And these moons tend to orbit in the
Speaker 2: plane of the Solar System. But some of the moons
Speaker 2: have like wacky orbits, and this might be because they're captured.
Speaker 2: They're just something that came by and the gravity of
Speaker 2: Jupiter or Saturn grabbed onto it. And so the Earth
Speaker 2: could do that too. You have some chunk of stuff
Speaker 2: from another Solar System or from somewhere else in the
Speaker 2: Solar System comes by at the right angle and the
Speaker 2: right velocity, the Earth could grab it, and then we
Speaker 2: could get two moons. Wow, and then we'd have even
Speaker 2: wackier tides.
Speaker 1: If you had to guess probabilistically, if something comes close
Speaker 1: to Earth, yeah zero oh yeah, okay, so it would
Speaker 1: be more likely to smack into us and do damage
Speaker 1: then create another moon, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, most likely it hits us or it totally
Speaker 2: misses us. But to get captured, you need to have
Speaker 2: exactly the right velocity and radius match, right, Like you know,
Speaker 2: first your physics, you can do the orbital mechanics at
Speaker 2: every radius from the Earth. You need a specific velocity
Speaker 2: in order to be in orbit, and so those things
Speaker 2: have to match, and the angle has to match, and
Speaker 2: so yeah, it's unlikely, but you know, obviously it has happened.
Speaker 2: There definitely are moons that have been captured, so it
Speaker 2: could happen to us. Whoa, and so it would affect
Speaker 2: the tides. They would be even more complicated for grad
Speaker 2: students trying to plan their experiments.
Speaker 3: Trying to go get snails.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it could affect the Earth's tilt and spin if
Speaker 2: it's a big thing, right, So it could have a
Speaker 2: real impact. And those two moons then would have complicated interactions.
Speaker 2: They could even like squeeze each other and induce, like
Speaker 2: you know, stuff going on inside those moons. You could
Speaker 2: end up with like a volcanic moon in the sky.
Speaker 2: That would be pretty awesome.
Speaker 3: Could we get a ring? Could they break each other
Speaker 3: apart and give us some ring?
Speaker 2: Absolutely? Yeah, the moon could destroy the other one, or
Speaker 2: the other one could destroy the moon. We could end
Speaker 2: up with a ring. It could be really fascinating. So
Speaker 2: is this something you should worry about. It's unlikely that
Speaker 2: we would lose our moon anytime in your lifetime or
Speaker 2: your children's lifetime or the next thousand years. If we
Speaker 2: lose the moon's pretty survivable. If the moon gets destroyed,
Speaker 2: then yeah, you'll be glad you built that bunker. But
Speaker 2: you know, I think you have bigger things to worry about.
Speaker 2: I think you should be more worried about screwworm than moons.
Speaker 3: And science funding.
Speaker 2: All right, well, thanks very much for that question, Robert.
Speaker 2: Let me know how your science fiction novel is turning.
Speaker 5: Out awesome, Thank you guys. So basically, we don't know,
Speaker 5: and I kind of love when this happens because it's
Speaker 5: finding the edges of what we know and don't know,
Speaker 5: and it just shines a light on areas of future research.
Speaker 5: You know, maybe if we figure out how the moon
Speaker 5: or moons might play a part in evolution, then that
Speaker 5: might help future SETI type programs to search for exoplanets
Speaker 5: with you know, only one moon if we find that
Speaker 5: that's a critical part of you know, life creation, or
Speaker 5: focus on planets that have moons and ignore the ones
Speaker 5: that don't. Whatever that case is. But I appreciate it,
Speaker 5: Thank you very much, and yay, go fund research.
Speaker 2: All right, we're back and we're answering questions from listeners,
Speaker 2: and we're going back from physics into the gross world
Speaker 2: of biology. So finish up that snack before you listen
Speaker 2: to the rest of this episode.
Speaker 1: Let's listen to a fantastic question from Anthony.
Speaker 4: Hello, Daniel and Kelly. I'm Anthony from Orlando, Florida. I
Speaker 4: enjoy your podcast and learn a great deal from you both.
Speaker 4: Your recent conversation on Preon's was fascinating and scary. I
Speaker 4: believe there is a comment in that discussion on synthetic blood.
Speaker 4: What is the progress in developing synthetic blood for general use?
Speaker 4: Are we any closer to it being used? Would it
Speaker 4: be universal or type like regular blood? Again, thank you
Speaker 4: and love your podcast.
Speaker 2: All right, Kelly, So what is blood anyway?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's complicated. It's not It depends, but it's complicated.
Speaker 1: So blood, depending on how you want to slice it,
Speaker 1: blood can be three or more things. So one of
Speaker 1: them is plasma. This is like the fluidy part of
Speaker 1: your blood. It's something like fifty five percent of your blood.
Speaker 2: I've never understood why do they call it plasma, because
Speaker 2: to me, plasma is a gas that's been heated up
Speaker 2: until you get ions. Is there some similarity between physics
Speaker 2: plasma and blood plasma?
Speaker 1: Gosh, you know, if I had to put money on it,
Speaker 1: our plasma came first. So I don't know the answer,
Speaker 1: but you guys probably stole it.
Speaker 2: From us, fair fair.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 1: So yeah, this it carries stuff around like electrolytes and
Speaker 1: hormones and antibodies made by your immune system, and it's
Speaker 1: the bulk of blood, like fifty five percent of blood.
Speaker 1: It also carries around stuff that helps with coagulation, so
Speaker 1: like when you get a cut and your cut sort
Speaker 1: of clots up and makes a scam. And then about
Speaker 1: forty four percent is red blood cells, and inside of
Speaker 1: the red blood cells is hemoglobin, and hemoglobin is what
Speaker 1: carries oxygen to different parts of your body. And then
Speaker 1: the last part is platelets, and these are like little
Speaker 1: parts of cells that are really important for coagulation and
Speaker 1: clotting up wounds.
Speaker 2: So as somebody who's naive about biology, I always imagine
Speaker 2: the blood is like, you know, it's the circulatory system.
Speaker 2: It's like the highway for the body. Everything that needs
Speaker 2: to go from one place to another gets dumped into
Speaker 2: the blood. And then somebody else pulls it out.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: And so we're talking about water, electrolytes andti bodies, red
Speaker 2: blood cells, platelets. All this stuff is just flowing through
Speaker 2: the blood and useful to some bits.
Speaker 3: Of the body.
Speaker 2: Is that fair?
Speaker 3: Yes, Your blood vessels are the highway system move in
Speaker 3: the blood around.
Speaker 2: So then why do we have different types of blood
Speaker 2: when it makes blood A or B or O or whatever.
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Right, So we've known about this for a while, So
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna quick back up into history. So for
Speaker 1: a while, we were like infusing blood from dogs into people,
Speaker 1: or blood from lambs into people. Actually I think it
Speaker 1: was mostly lambs, and there was a bit of a
Speaker 1: religious like lambs are sort of innocent, lamb of God
Speaker 1: sort of thing, and so that's the right kind of
Speaker 1: animal to be putting into our bodies. And so for
Speaker 1: a while, lamb blood was going into people. But we
Speaker 1: learned that not only is it bad to put blood
Speaker 1: from other animals into humans, it can also be bad
Speaker 1: to switch blood from one human to another. And Austrian
Speaker 1: physician Karl Landsteiner in nineteen hundred started mixing up different
Speaker 1: blood from different people and he was like, well, sometimes
Speaker 1: when you mix blood together, it coagulates and sometimes it doesn't,
Speaker 1: and it's always the same if you take blood from
Speaker 1: He wasn't.
Speaker 2: Doing his experiments in people. He was like doing this
Speaker 2: in the lab.
Speaker 1: As I understand it, he was extracting blood from people
Speaker 1: in his lab and he was like, you know, if
Speaker 1: you extract blood from person A in person B, every
Speaker 1: time you do that and mix the bloods together, it clots.
Speaker 1: But person a in person sees blood every time you
Speaker 1: do it doesn't clot when you put them together. So
Speaker 1: what the heck is going on there? And he eventually
Speaker 1: gets the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for sort
Speaker 1: of figuring this out. And the answer is that blood
Speaker 1: have like proteins that are like sticking out on the cells,
Speaker 1: and some people have different kinds of proteins than others.
Speaker 1: And if two people have different proteins on their blood cells,
Speaker 1: then your immune system will recognize it as foreign and
Speaker 1: attack it.
Speaker 2: And that's what the clots are. And the clots are
Speaker 2: like the immune system clumping it up.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly, yeah, and so but so you asked why
Speaker 1: do we have different blood types?
Speaker 3: And the answer, we do not know.
Speaker 1: And so for a while it was popular to postulate
Speaker 1: that it had something to do with like our ancestry
Speaker 1: and where we came from. Like type A blood is maybe,
Speaker 1: you know, like hunter gatherers, and so those people actually
Speaker 1: should be eating more of like a hunter gatherer diet
Speaker 1: because their blood.
Speaker 3: Is like that's what it evolved for.
Speaker 1: But the answer is that blood types show up in
Speaker 1: primates before humans. So you know, chimpanzees have blood types,
Speaker 1: and we don't really understand it could have something to
Speaker 1: do with differences in immune functioning. So you know, maybe
Speaker 1: people with type A blood might be more susceptible to
Speaker 1: some virus that sweeps through the population, and type B
Speaker 1: blood would be less susceptible. And this variability popped up
Speaker 1: at some point and then was retained because it helped
Speaker 1: some parts of the population avoid diseases. But the answer is,
Speaker 1: we really don't know. But it happened before humans came around, all.
Speaker 2: Right, So then it can't be explained by for example,
Speaker 2: I radiated flesh eating flies distributed on the population by
Speaker 2: the government.
Speaker 3: Guys, those flies that are radiated. It's a good thing.
Speaker 3: It's a good thing.
Speaker 1: The science is helping us. You Californians are always jumping
Speaker 1: to conspiracy theories.
Speaker 2: It's just so fun. It's just so easy. Now I
Speaker 2: see why they do it.
Speaker 3: It feels good, doesn't it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you don't need evidence, it just need a compelling story.
Speaker 2: That's right, all right. So we have all these things
Speaker 2: inside the blood. So why do we think about synthetic blood?
Speaker 2: Why do people work on making fake blood?
Speaker 1: So right now, what we do is we get blood
Speaker 1: from donors, and that's great. And when you donate blood,
Speaker 1: often what happens is your blood is sort of separated
Speaker 1: out into different parts, the red blood cells, the plasma,
Speaker 1: the platelets, and they can go to different people depending
Speaker 1: on their need. A major need for blood, though, is trauma.
Speaker 1: So you know, for example, if you get into a
Speaker 1: car accident and you lose a lot of blood when
Speaker 1: you get to the er, when you get into the ambulance,
Speaker 1: they might want to try to increase the amount of
Speaker 1: blood that you have, and so donated blood gets used
Speaker 1: for that purpose. And then another important use for blood
Speaker 1: is in wartime, and here it's particularly hard to transport
Speaker 1: blood from blood banks back home because blood has a
Speaker 1: shelf life.
Speaker 3: So red blood.
Speaker 1: Cells are good for you know, a bit more than
Speaker 1: a month month and a half, depending on like where
Speaker 1: you are and what their rules are. I think platelets
Speaker 1: are good for something like a week. Uh, And so
Speaker 1: this stuff isn't good indefinitely, and it takes a long
Speaker 1: time to get it from a bank to overseas, for example,
Speaker 1: if you're talking about a war situation, and so having
Speaker 1: synthetic blood would be great not only for these situations
Speaker 1: where you know it's hard to get the blood to
Speaker 1: where it needs to go, but also every once in
Speaker 1: a while we have shortages. So, for example, the Red
Speaker 1: Cross has declared blood shortages at different times, and so
Speaker 1: if you can't get enough blood from people, it would
Speaker 1: be nice to have synthetic blood. And the purpose of
Speaker 1: synthetic blood is really just to hold you over until
Speaker 1: your body can start making your own.
Speaker 2: Wouldn't it also be nice to have synthetic blood because
Speaker 2: then you could prevent like the spread of blood borne diseases.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, So I mean that's worth considering. But at
Speaker 3: this point, we have.
Speaker 1: A lot of complicated screening procedures to find out if
Speaker 1: blood is carrying infections, and I believe that we extract out,
Speaker 1: for example, white blood cells before you give people blood,
Speaker 1: because white blood cells, you know, could be carrying things
Speaker 1: like HIV, And so the probability that you pick up
Speaker 1: a disease from a transfusion in the United States and
Speaker 1: the UK is very low. It might be higher in
Speaker 1: other parts of the world, but we're very careful about
Speaker 1: screening it here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so how do the various human blood types
Speaker 2: connect to the question of like making synthetic blood where
Speaker 2: we have to make several different synthetic blood types.
Speaker 1: Well, so that's the great thing about synthetic blood is
Speaker 1: hopefully you don't have to worry about typing anymore because
Speaker 1: you can make synthetic blood that doesn't have those sort
Speaker 1: of proteins sticking on the outside that are going to
Speaker 1: attract the attention of the immune system. And so it
Speaker 1: would be helpful for example, like you know, imagine there's
Speaker 1: an accident and somebody whose blood type you don't know
Speaker 1: is going to need a bunch of blood. I guess
Speaker 1: you need to take all of the different kinds of
Speaker 1: blood with you, and then you need to take the
Speaker 1: time to get a small sample of blood from the
Speaker 1: trauma patients to figure out what kind of blood they have,
Speaker 1: or at least you need to make sure you've got
Speaker 1: enough of the universal donor's blood, which is type O,
Speaker 1: to bring with you. So it would be much less
Speaker 1: complicated if you didn't have to worry about blood typing
Speaker 1: at all, and you could just universally have a synthetic
Speaker 1: blood that you could bring with you that was more
Speaker 1: shelf stable. This would solve a lot of problems. So
Speaker 1: most of the research so far has been done on
Speaker 1: making synthetic red blood cells. So this is again about
Speaker 1: forty five percent of what blood is made of. And
Speaker 1: initially what they were doing was they just got hemoglobin,
Speaker 1: which is the part that binds to the oxygen, and
Speaker 1: they were putting hemoglobin in people. They were like, well,
Speaker 1: the important thing is the oxygen transport in an emergency
Speaker 1: to keep everything going. But hemoglobin interacts with other kinds
Speaker 1: of oxygen in the body. So nitric oxide is used
Speaker 1: by our blood vessels to control vasodilation and vasoconstrictions, so
Speaker 1: essentially to control how open or closed your blood vessels are,
Speaker 1: and so just putting hemoglobin in meant that the hemoglobin
Speaker 1: could interact with the nitric oxide and could tinker with vasodilation.
Speaker 1: That sounds bad, or at least that was what was
Speaker 1: claimed by a meta analysis that sort of changed the
Speaker 1: way the whole fields felt about these things. And so,
Speaker 1: for example, there's a product called Hemopure which was developed
Speaker 1: in the nineties and it's essentially a cow hemoglobin which
Speaker 1: has been purified, and now it's only used in compassionate
Speaker 1: use cases, like you absolutely need it to try to
Speaker 1: save someone's life. But there's some concern about it, you know,
Speaker 1: messing with vasodilation. But some doctors still use it, and
Speaker 1: in fact, there are doctors who argue that, like, look,
Speaker 1: this isn't actually a massive problem because people are only
Speaker 1: using this for like a day or two before their
Speaker 1: body can start making enough red blood cells to replace them.
Speaker 1: This isn't a real long term problem. We're overreacting. But
Speaker 1: the field has essentially decided that this pure hemoglobin route
Speaker 1: is not the best way to go.
Speaker 3: So what do you do.
Speaker 1: So there's a new company called Erythromyre and they're making
Speaker 1: a red blood cell analog. So essentially what they do
Speaker 1: is they get hemoglobin. In this case, they are extracting
Speaker 1: hemoglobin from blood that has been donated but is now
Speaker 1: past its shelf life. So if that blood doesn't get
Speaker 1: given to someone in time they take it, they remove
Speaker 1: the red blood cell outer part, they extract the hemoglobin,
Speaker 1: and then they put the hemoglobin in a lipid layer
Speaker 1: that they have made, so they essentially like enclose it
Speaker 1: in a tiny, fatty capsule. It's smaller than a usual
Speaker 1: red blood cell, but it keeps the hemoglobin from interacting
Speaker 1: with the nitric oxide and messing with the vasodilation stuff.
Speaker 1: And this is actually a really clever molecule. So it's
Speaker 1: pH sensitive, which is important. So when it goes to
Speaker 1: the lungs and you have high pH, it allows oxygen
Speaker 1: to bind to the hemoglobin, and then when you get
Speaker 1: to the parts of your body that are in need
Speaker 1: of oxygen, that ends up being a low pH environment
Speaker 1: and the hemoglobin can let go of the oxygen and
Speaker 1: the oxygen can go oxygenate your other cells like it
Speaker 1: needs to, which is like kind of fascinating to me,
Speaker 1: like what a cool thing to have been able to
Speaker 1: figure out. And it's universal, so there's no compatibility problems.
Speaker 1: You don't have to type a patient beforehand. It's a
Speaker 1: freeze dried powder and so you mix it with saline,
Speaker 1: so you essentially get this like plastic bag that with
Speaker 1: the divider in the center, and you've got the like
Speaker 1: freeze dried eurythromyr on one side and saline on the
Speaker 1: other side, which is like salt water that's the same
Speaker 1: sort of saltiness as our blood. And then you like
Speaker 1: break the divider between them, you mix the whole bag up,
Speaker 1: and now you've got red blood cells or you know,
Speaker 1: synthetic red blood cells that you're ready to give to
Speaker 1: a patient. And they're thinking this could be shelf stable
Speaker 1: for up to two years.
Speaker 2: And they've like tried this at works. It like actually
Speaker 2: carries the oxygen the way that you need.
Speaker 1: They have done experiments on animals and it seems to
Speaker 1: be doing well in the animals, and it seems like
Speaker 1: they're lipid case for the hema globin gets you know,
Speaker 1: processed by the digestive system the way you would expect
Speaker 1: it to and you sort of pee it out when
Speaker 1: you're done with it. And so the animal studies so
Speaker 1: far have been promising. And a lead guy on the
Speaker 1: project is doctor Doctor, and so I feel like we
Speaker 1: have to trust that this is being done well.
Speaker 2: Like his last name is doctor and he's the title
Speaker 2: of doctor.
Speaker 3: That's exactly right, yes, And.
Speaker 2: If he was at a German university, he could be
Speaker 2: like doctor, professor, doctor doctor.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, amazing, we should move him to Germany.
Speaker 2: So I'm really surprised that you can replace red blood
Speaker 2: cells with something so simple, like, aren't red blood cells complicated?
Speaker 2: Aren't they doing something else? Is there anything else that
Speaker 2: red blood cells aren't doing that we're not capturing with
Speaker 2: just hemoglobin in a fatty drop.
Speaker 1: Probably, but you really just need to keep someone alive
Speaker 1: for like the again, for the time that it makes
Speaker 1: for their bone marrow to make their own red blood cells.
Speaker 1: And so this is definitely just a short term solution
Speaker 1: to keep your heart kicking so that you have time to,
Speaker 1: you know, do the recovery on your own.
Speaker 2: This seems kind of amazing. Is this something you think
Speaker 2: we're going to see in hospitals and trauma centers?
Speaker 1: I think they're going to be starting experiments in humans
Speaker 1: in the not too distant future, so it's possible we'll
Speaker 1: see this. But this is really hard because like, who
Speaker 1: do you decide to give it to first? It's going
Speaker 1: to be tough to design the human trials because we
Speaker 1: know that red blood cells donated from a human work,
Speaker 1: and so figuring out the first person who you're going
Speaker 1: to be like, oh.
Speaker 3: No, you're in it. This is a trauma situation.
Speaker 1: You might die, but we're going to give you this
Speaker 1: experimental thing, even though we could give you this other
Speaker 1: thing that we know would work. You know, that's a
Speaker 1: little bit difficult, and so I'm sure they're going to
Speaker 1: have a little bit of trouble designing and finding the
Speaker 1: right population to try this on.
Speaker 2: You can imagine the compassionate use. You could give this
Speaker 2: to trauma centers and then when they are in a
Speaker 2: situation where they just don't have blood and somebody's going
Speaker 2: to die, they're like, all right, well let's dip into
Speaker 2: the fake stuff.
Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely, yep.
Speaker 1: Or you could send it to folks who are out
Speaker 1: at the front lines in a war and they might
Speaker 1: not be able to to blood type someone or something
Speaker 1: like that, so they can't tell and they might not
Speaker 1: be able to get blood donations. And so yes, you
Speaker 1: absolutely can't imagine situations where having this on hand as
Speaker 1: a backup could get you the data.
Speaker 3: That you need.
Speaker 2: All right, and what about the rest of the blood,
Speaker 2: what about synthetic platelets?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so doctor Ashley Brown's lab at North Carolina State
Speaker 1: University has a platelet like particle that is an animal
Speaker 1: testing right now, and the animal tests have gone pretty well.
Speaker 1: So essentially what they did was they've got this like
Speaker 1: very tiny nanoparticle that they made and it's like a
Speaker 1: tiny microgel, so it's sort of soft and squishy, and
Speaker 1: they've attached to it a protein that binds with this
Speaker 1: thing called fibrin. So when your body starts to make
Speaker 1: a clot, fibrin is a protein that's used to sort
Speaker 1: of get that clot sticking together, and so essentially your
Speaker 1: body starts dealing with the wound and then you're putting
Speaker 1: this stuff in there, which is going to bind with
Speaker 1: the fibrin that's already in the clot, and it's going
Speaker 1: to move the clotting process along more quickly. So it
Speaker 1: essentially finds where clots are forming by having this antibody
Speaker 1: that binds with something you find in clots, or at
Speaker 1: least that's my understanding. And so they did it in
Speaker 1: mice and pigs and things went well. They said that
Speaker 1: they might be a few years before human trials, and
Speaker 1: there's things that they want to do, like get clumping
Speaker 1: to work a little bit better. And this is definitely
Speaker 1: not like, oh hey, we have created platelets again, and
Speaker 1: everything that platelets do we're able to do with the
Speaker 1: synthetic product. But it could be a really good measure
Speaker 1: for like again, you know, there's a trauma situation. You
Speaker 1: just got to get somebody to the point where their
Speaker 1: body can recover and take over this work on its own.
Speaker 1: And so anyway, so the take home, Anthony wanted to
Speaker 1: know how close are we and the answer is that
Speaker 1: we've got synthetic blood components that are being tested in
Speaker 1: non human animals, and the current designs would be universal
Speaker 1: if they work out. But we're mostly in the trial phase,
Speaker 1: and so we're still relying on blood from human donors
Speaker 1: more than anything else. There are some other products on
Speaker 1: the market that we didn't talk about, but sort of
Speaker 1: in general, at the moment, we are mostly relying on
Speaker 1: human donors. And I'm sorry for all the vampires out there.
Speaker 1: Still have some work left to do. True blood is
Speaker 1: not ready yet.
Speaker 2: I'm so glad you made a vampire joke, because I
Speaker 2: feel bad I fell down on the opportunity to make
Speaker 2: a were wolf joke in the moon question, you know.
Speaker 1: I know, so, Oh my gosh, Daniel we could have
Speaker 1: had zombies and werewolves and you know what, let's let's
Speaker 1: start recording again.
Speaker 3: We're going to do this again.
Speaker 2: All right. Well, that's exciting, and I'm also sort of surprised.
Speaker 2: You're sort of like optimistic and upbeat about this. This
Speaker 2: seems like great news. Have you spent some time in
Speaker 2: California recently? What's going on now?
Speaker 1: I'm surprised too. You know, I didn't get enough sleep
Speaker 1: and you know the all right here, let's go ahead
Speaker 1: and we'll do the Kelly treatment a.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: It should be worth noting that we have tried things
Speaker 1: in the past that have not stuck. So for example,
Speaker 1: you know that the straight up hemoglobin without a like
Speaker 1: lipid layer, you know, we was tried and we ended
Speaker 1: up deciding this is not really the solution for us.
Speaker 1: So it's possible that will happen with these other things
Speaker 1: that we talked about today too. So there's the Kelly treatments,
Speaker 1: all right.
Speaker 2: A little bit of cold water. But yeah, on the whole,
Speaker 2: this seems very promising.
Speaker 3: Yeah it does. It doesn't.
Speaker 1: So I am really looking forward to when the vampires
Speaker 1: can come out of hiding and we can start dating them.
Speaker 2: Yay.
Speaker 1: Science that's right, that's right.
Speaker 2: All right. Well let's see what Anthony thinks about our
Speaker 2: answer on synthetic blood.
Speaker 4: Daniel and Kelly, as usual, you guys knocked it out
Speaker 4: the park. I appreciate your answers. I learned a great deal.
Speaker 4: I was particularly interested in this because I have relatives
Speaker 4: whose religious convictions would prevent them from accepting blood transfusions. Perhaps,
Speaker 4: as this science develops, they'll have another choice, or an
Speaker 4: alternate decision that can save their lives. Possibly. I appreciate
Speaker 4: your answers, love your podcast.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you, Okay, thank you everybody for these
Speaker 2: wonderful questions. We love hearing from you. Please do write
Speaker 2: to us two questions at Daniel and Kelly dot org.
Speaker 2: We say we will write back to everybody, and we
Speaker 2: really really mean it. We want to hear from you
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Speaker 3: We look forward to hearing from you. Have a good one.
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