WEBVTT - The 2023 Ig Nobel Prizes, Part 1 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:06.960 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:12.880 --> 0:00:15.120 Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My 0:00:15.240 --> 0:00:16.520 name is Robert Lamb. 0:00:16.480 --> 0:00:19.240 And I am Joe McCormick. And today we're going to 0:00:19.239 --> 0:00:23.000 be kicking off a yearly tradition, our coverage of some 0:00:23.120 --> 0:00:26.439 of the winners of this year's Ignobel Prizes. 0:00:27.200 --> 0:00:30.920 That's right, We've been doing the Ignobel Prizes on the 0:00:30.960 --> 0:00:34.920 show for many, many years now. We almost never cover 0:00:35.040 --> 0:00:37.760 them right away. The awards usually drop and I think 0:00:37.760 --> 0:00:39.760 this has been the case for like at least a 0:00:39.800 --> 0:00:43.800 decade now. They tend to come out during September or 0:00:44.400 --> 0:00:47.240 rarely earlier on I think they would come out in October. 0:00:47.720 --> 0:00:51.080 But any event, we're often already wrapped up in Halloween 0:00:51.120 --> 0:00:53.360 stuff by that point, and we end up coming back 0:00:53.400 --> 0:00:57.120 to the Ignobel Prizes early November. It's kind of like 0:00:57.160 --> 0:01:00.480 a post Halloween detox to get away from a lot 0:01:00.480 --> 0:01:03.880 of the spooky stuff and into some other topic areas. 0:01:04.240 --> 0:01:06.119 But this year is a little different. I mean, last 0:01:06.200 --> 0:01:08.480 year was a little different because Joe, you're on parental leave, 0:01:08.920 --> 0:01:12.600 so our former producer Seth had to pop in and 0:01:12.880 --> 0:01:15.800 sort through these with me. So this year, we're back, 0:01:15.920 --> 0:01:18.280 and we welcome me back. But also this year we're 0:01:18.319 --> 0:01:22.240 actually ahead of schedule and hitting the egg Nobels before October. 0:01:22.400 --> 0:01:23.520 Feels good to be prompt. 0:01:25.600 --> 0:01:28.000 If you're not familiar with the ig Nobels, these are 0:01:28.000 --> 0:01:30.960 a series of awards given out once a year by 0:01:31.319 --> 0:01:36.679 the scientific humor journal the Annals of Improbable Research, edited 0:01:36.720 --> 0:01:41.200 for many years now by Mark Abrahams. This this, of course, 0:01:41.400 --> 0:01:46.240 is a play on the the the on the Nobel Prize. 0:01:46.280 --> 0:01:50.360 You know the Nobel Prize in various areas physics, chemistry, 0:01:50.360 --> 0:01:55.320 et cetera, And there's a similar organizational structure in place 0:01:55.720 --> 0:01:59.880 for the ig Nobel Prizes. Their stated purpose is, quote, 0:02:00.120 --> 0:02:02.960 do honor achievements that first make people laugh and then 0:02:03.080 --> 0:02:06.000 make them think. If you want to learn more about them, 0:02:06.000 --> 0:02:08.720 go to Improbable dot com. You can find out more 0:02:08.760 --> 0:02:11.079 about the magazine. You can see they have a wonderful 0:02:12.160 --> 0:02:15.040 list of all the winners going back to the very 0:02:15.080 --> 0:02:16.240 beginning of the whole project. 0:02:16.520 --> 0:02:20.040 Yes, now, usually the prizes are given out in honor 0:02:20.280 --> 0:02:23.680 of studies that are published in regular scientific journals but 0:02:23.840 --> 0:02:28.520 just might have to do with some intentionally or unintentionally 0:02:28.880 --> 0:02:34.120 funny subject matter. But occasionally it also focuses on papers 0:02:34.160 --> 0:02:38.000 that are themselves like intended to be funny or satirical. 0:02:38.080 --> 0:02:41.600 One example that comes to mind is a study, a 0:02:41.720 --> 0:02:44.440 quote study from several years back that was about the 0:02:44.520 --> 0:02:49.120 raiology of cats. Raology being the study of how materials flow, 0:02:49.360 --> 0:02:51.560 and so the idea is like, you know, our cat's 0:02:51.560 --> 0:02:55.040 a liquid or a solid, So you know, that is 0:02:55.080 --> 0:02:57.720 a joke, but also there was some interesting stuff to 0:02:57.760 --> 0:03:01.360 ponder in that paper, and the the pattern continues. Most 0:03:01.400 --> 0:03:05.359 of this year's winners are regular scientific studies published in 0:03:06.360 --> 0:03:10.359 academic journals, but the for example, my selection for today 0:03:10.400 --> 0:03:13.920 is more of a historical interest paper that leans on 0:03:14.280 --> 0:03:17.240 a subject that was I think intended to be selected 0:03:17.280 --> 0:03:18.120 because it was funny. 0:03:18.320 --> 0:03:21.680 Yeah, yeah, And I think the important thing to keep 0:03:21.720 --> 0:03:24.000 in mind is that, yeah, at the heart of all 0:03:24.040 --> 0:03:26.840 of these there is some genuine science or a quest 0:03:26.880 --> 0:03:31.880 for knowledge, some some seriousness. It's not all just complete tomfoolery. 0:03:32.360 --> 0:03:35.840 And I think that's ultimately what they're celebrating here. That's 0:03:35.880 --> 0:03:37.720 one of the reasons we keep covering it is that 0:03:38.000 --> 0:03:41.160 with each entry, you know, we often ask the question, well, 0:03:41.200 --> 0:03:43.440 what makes this funny? Any kind of point to the obvious, 0:03:43.480 --> 0:03:45.880 you know, it maybe say a study that has to 0:03:45.920 --> 0:03:49.160 do with, say, you know, flatulence or something, and it's 0:03:49.160 --> 0:03:51.320 pretty obvious why that's funny. But then there is also 0:03:51.360 --> 0:03:54.480 the follow up question why is it important? And in 0:03:54.520 --> 0:03:57.680 all cases there's something there, there's some way to answer that, 0:03:57.840 --> 0:04:01.400 like it's the study involved. You know, it may seem like, 0:04:02.040 --> 0:04:05.120 you know, it's the pure shrimp on a treadmill territory, 0:04:05.160 --> 0:04:07.960 where like this is how does this possibly benefit anything? 0:04:07.960 --> 0:04:11.240 But it is benefiting our scientific understanding of ourselves or 0:04:11.240 --> 0:04:14.240 the world to some extent. And I always say, the 0:04:14.280 --> 0:04:15.760 other cool thing about it is that, yeah, I mean, 0:04:15.760 --> 0:04:19.120 it inevitably draws attention to some of these smaller studies 0:04:19.160 --> 0:04:23.599 and the work of professional researchers and scientists. So it's 0:04:23.600 --> 0:04:24.200 all good. 0:04:24.279 --> 0:04:26.839 Now, Rob, If you're ready to get into the actual 0:04:26.839 --> 0:04:29.880 winners we're going to talk about today, I think maybe 0:04:29.920 --> 0:04:33.640 a good place to start would be on the maybe 0:04:33.680 --> 0:04:39.640 the halloweenist of all the Ignobel Prize winners I can recall. 0:04:39.400 --> 0:04:43.520 That's right, we're talking about the Mechanical Engineering Prize that 0:04:43.720 --> 0:04:48.400 goes to a paper that deals with necrobotics, which, if 0:04:48.440 --> 0:04:50.599 you're not already familiar with the term, yes, it does 0:04:50.640 --> 0:04:53.400 sound like it could be made up by some sort 0:04:53.440 --> 0:04:56.320 of a nineteen eighties science fiction film or earlier that 0:04:56.360 --> 0:04:58.520 we were watching on weird house cinema, But no, this 0:04:58.640 --> 0:05:01.440 is an actual term. Will explain what it means here. 0:05:01.480 --> 0:05:04.279 Shortly, it sounds like like a Stuart Gordon movie. 0:05:04.720 --> 0:05:11.360 Yeah. So the paper in question is Necrobotics Biotic Materials 0:05:11.400 --> 0:05:15.520 as Ready to Use Actuators by yap at All, published 0:05:15.520 --> 0:05:19.119 in Advanced Science volume nine, number twenty nine from twenty 0:05:19.160 --> 0:05:22.880 twenty two. So the entire premise of this study is 0:05:23.640 --> 0:05:27.760 at once completely sensible and also morbidly sensational, and I 0:05:27.760 --> 0:05:30.400 think that's one of the reasons it really zings. So 0:05:31.040 --> 0:05:34.400 the author's touch on biomemicry, which as you probably know, 0:05:34.480 --> 0:05:37.080 refers to the idea of turning to nature to help 0:05:37.120 --> 0:05:40.880 solve engineering problems, because why spend a few years trying 0:05:40.880 --> 0:05:43.839 to solve a problem that nature already solved over the 0:05:43.880 --> 0:05:45.359 course of evolutionary time. 0:05:45.760 --> 0:05:48.960 Now, of course, some solutions that are engineered by evolution 0:05:49.120 --> 0:05:53.040 are easier to reproduce or reverse engineer and reproduce in 0:05:53.040 --> 0:05:56.640 inanimate technology than others are. For example, we still can't 0:05:56.640 --> 0:06:00.200 really like recreate what's happening in a human brain. That 0:06:00.279 --> 0:06:04.400 is a very complex bioengineering problem that we have not 0:06:04.560 --> 0:06:07.520 fully reverse engineered yet. But there are lots of other 0:06:07.640 --> 0:06:11.000 sort of simpler biological mechanisms that we have been able 0:06:11.040 --> 0:06:13.560 to look at and say, ah, okay, yeah, here's how 0:06:13.600 --> 0:06:16.320 that works, and we could actually we could make technology 0:06:16.360 --> 0:06:17.360 that does the same thing. 0:06:18.160 --> 0:06:20.719 But the authors here point out, yeah, you know, this 0:06:20.800 --> 0:06:23.200 is all well and good, but why don't you You 0:06:23.200 --> 0:06:25.960 don't have to just stop at merely copying the design. 0:06:26.320 --> 0:06:30.000 We can actually reuse parts and materials, and this is 0:06:30.040 --> 0:06:34.359 where we get specifically into the idea of a biohybrid robot, 0:06:34.680 --> 0:06:39.520 something that quote goes a step further by incorporating living 0:06:39.560 --> 0:06:47.240 materials directly into engineered systems, so a kind of cybernetic approach. Really. Now, 0:06:47.279 --> 0:06:51.040 it's my understanding that biohybrids in general covers a lot 0:06:51.120 --> 0:06:53.960 of things that are maybe less necro in flavor, such 0:06:53.960 --> 0:06:57.400 as biohybrid materials that contain both a biopolymer and a 0:06:57.440 --> 0:07:02.560 synthetic polymer. But that's just one route. As for biohybrid robots, 0:07:02.600 --> 0:07:04.040 you can, yeah, you can think of him in general 0:07:04.080 --> 0:07:06.880 as somewhere on the same slider with the concept of 0:07:06.880 --> 0:07:10.480 a cyborg, except more of a robot that's made with 0:07:10.640 --> 0:07:13.280 some organic materials or parts. 0:07:13.680 --> 0:07:18.240 Tired donating your body to scientific research, wired donating your 0:07:18.280 --> 0:07:19.880 body to a robot's body. 0:07:21.280 --> 0:07:23.440 Yeah, in a way, I think one of our classic 0:07:23.520 --> 0:07:27.560 cinematic examples of a cyborg can be very can throw 0:07:27.560 --> 0:07:30.320 off our understanding of what these things can consist of, 0:07:30.360 --> 0:07:33.000 because you think of the Terminator, right, he's essentially a robot. 0:07:33.360 --> 0:07:35.760 He's just a robot, but he has this living tissue 0:07:35.960 --> 0:07:38.320 on top of all of that as a disguise. But 0:07:38.400 --> 0:07:40.640 he can completely lose that and he's still very functional. 0:07:42.160 --> 0:07:44.600 As we've discussed on the show before, the topic of 0:07:44.600 --> 0:07:47.400 cybernetics is a little more complicated than that and involves 0:07:47.520 --> 0:07:49.960 a lot more. But in this particular case, this idea 0:07:50.000 --> 0:07:53.520 of the biohybrid robot, it's you know, imagine that it's 0:07:53.840 --> 0:07:55.880 not so much the robot is covered in the skin, 0:07:56.160 --> 0:08:00.120 but the robot then actually uses human skin in various places, 0:08:00.200 --> 0:08:04.840 is to help move better, to perform its functionality better, 0:08:04.880 --> 0:08:05.320 et cetera. 0:08:05.920 --> 0:08:10.360 So they say in the movie Terminator that the living 0:08:10.400 --> 0:08:13.320 tissue on the outside of the T eight hundred is 0:08:13.440 --> 0:08:17.160 grown for the cyborgs in labs they have. But imagine 0:08:17.200 --> 0:08:20.760 instead that maybe, say, when the Terminator gets injured, it 0:08:20.920 --> 0:08:24.120 can like harvest the flesh of its enemies in order 0:08:24.160 --> 0:08:26.800 to graft onto its own skin and become part of 0:08:26.840 --> 0:08:28.920 its living encasement. 0:08:29.480 --> 0:08:31.560 There you go, it's the Terminator remake right there. You 0:08:31.560 --> 0:08:32.840 can thank Joe McCormick for that. 0:08:33.160 --> 0:08:38.000 But repurposing the dead flesh of living organisms for itself. 0:08:38.040 --> 0:08:40.520 I like it. I think it could work. But a 0:08:40.559 --> 0:08:43.040 couple of real world examples of this, at least in 0:08:43.120 --> 0:08:46.360 you know, you know, ideas that have been explored in 0:08:46.440 --> 0:08:50.280 various studies and projects. There is a twenty eighteen University 0:08:50.280 --> 0:08:53.480 of Tokyo project that created a robotic finger using rat 0:08:53.559 --> 0:08:56.880 muscle cells. There was also a twenty twelve Harvard Caltech 0:08:56.960 --> 0:09:00.240 project that produced a silicone jellyfish, so kind of like 0:09:00.400 --> 0:09:04.360 a jellyfish robot using rat heart muscle cells. And then 0:09:04.360 --> 0:09:06.480 they later worked in a kind of like swimming ray 0:09:06.679 --> 0:09:08.360 using some of the same technology. 0:09:08.800 --> 0:09:11.800 Now, less people start getting weirded out at the idea 0:09:11.960 --> 0:09:16.640 of using animal body parts as technology, it might be 0:09:16.679 --> 0:09:19.240 worth pointing out that I think really the only novel 0:09:19.320 --> 0:09:23.920 part here is that it is using independently moving body parts. 0:09:24.880 --> 0:09:27.560 Yeah. Yeah, I mean they stress here in a way 0:09:27.640 --> 0:09:30.400 that I found kind of comedic. I laughed a little 0:09:30.400 --> 0:09:32.680 bit at this, but also it's a totally valid point. 0:09:32.720 --> 0:09:35.320 They point out that, like, look, humans have long used 0:09:35.320 --> 0:09:38.319 bioderved materials in their tool use. I mean that's the 0:09:38.520 --> 0:09:40.760 basic two thousand and one A Space Odyssey model, right, 0:09:40.800 --> 0:09:42.360 you know, you pick up the bone and you use it. 0:09:43.880 --> 0:09:45.960 We've talked about this numerous times in the show in 0:09:46.000 --> 0:09:49.320 the past, using bits and pieces of animals, using all 0:09:49.360 --> 0:09:53.240 of the buffalo in some cases, to create various bits 0:09:53.280 --> 0:09:56.960 of human ingenuity, various tools, materials, clothing, etc. 0:09:57.559 --> 0:10:01.120 Animal hides, Yeah, are a huge part of human technology. 0:10:01.640 --> 0:10:04.400 Yeah. So there's nothing particularly weird about this. I guess 0:10:04.440 --> 0:10:06.439 it just kind of runs counter to what some people 0:10:06.520 --> 0:10:11.080 might think about as the trajectory of human materials and 0:10:11.200 --> 0:10:15.720 human inventions, that as they get more futuristic, they move 0:10:17.080 --> 0:10:21.240 further and further away from this idea of something that 0:10:21.240 --> 0:10:23.720 we've made from the natural world and it becomes just 0:10:23.920 --> 0:10:26.880 completely synthetic, you know, matching up with these various sci 0:10:26.880 --> 0:10:30.040 fi visions. Where As on that SpongeBob app episode, everything 0:10:30.120 --> 0:10:33.480 is chrome, you know, everything is metallic, et cetera. This 0:10:33.480 --> 0:10:35.240 seems to run counter to that, and in some ways 0:10:35.280 --> 0:10:38.440 because they're asking you to imagine a robot that reaches 0:10:38.480 --> 0:10:41.520 out to you, not with a metal hand or even 0:10:41.520 --> 0:10:43.400 a metal hand that is covered with like some sort 0:10:43.440 --> 0:10:46.040 of plastic substance that is like a that is kind 0:10:46.040 --> 0:10:48.280 of like human skin. No, it is reaching out to 0:10:48.280 --> 0:10:51.640 touch you with a hand that is a dead tarantula. 0:10:53.000 --> 0:10:55.480 It's funny that you mentioned the plastic hand though, because 0:10:55.520 --> 0:10:57.480 if it were a metal hand, you could say, Okay, 0:10:57.520 --> 0:11:00.560 that's never been alive. That was always just you know, 0:11:00.960 --> 0:11:04.040 mineral content in the ground that was mined. But if 0:11:04.080 --> 0:11:07.840 it's a plastic hand that's derived from petroleum products, which 0:11:07.840 --> 0:11:11.439 are derived from at some point life. 0:11:11.360 --> 0:11:13.600 That's true and that it's interesting how we have kind 0:11:13.600 --> 0:11:15.520 of a mental disconnect on that a lot of the time. 0:11:15.520 --> 0:11:18.560 Maybe part of it is, you know, being in denial 0:11:18.840 --> 0:11:22.440 of our fossil fuel dependency to some extent, But the 0:11:22.480 --> 0:11:24.680 other part is like, yeah, I mean, plastic is that 0:11:25.040 --> 0:11:27.760 was made by magic, that was made by human wit 0:11:27.840 --> 0:11:30.960 and ingenuity. It has no connection to the natural world. 0:11:30.720 --> 0:11:36.160 Right, Yeah, That plastic is the refined and reprocessed remains 0:11:36.200 --> 0:11:38.600 of organisms. That lived millions of years ago. 0:11:40.360 --> 0:11:43.000 But the idea of the tarantula hand here is actually 0:11:43.160 --> 0:11:45.880 key to the study. I'm exaggerating a little bit by 0:11:45.880 --> 0:11:48.080 making it to a tarantula and making it a robot 0:11:48.120 --> 0:11:52.080 reaching for you. But the whole paper here is about 0:11:52.080 --> 0:11:55.720 the idea of repurposing a dead spider as a quote 0:11:55.800 --> 0:12:00.160 unquote ready to use actuator. And they highlight that there's 0:12:00.280 --> 0:12:03.320 actually fewer steps involved, like this is a shortcut. This 0:12:03.440 --> 0:12:05.800 is not like that. This is not something where you'd 0:12:05.840 --> 0:12:08.000 be doing it and you'd be overworking for just some 0:12:08.040 --> 0:12:11.120 sort of grotesque mechanism. No, they're saying, like you actually 0:12:11.200 --> 0:12:13.480 would have to do less to take advantage of this 0:12:14.040 --> 0:12:18.880 fewer steps in the production. I love this, They write, 0:12:18.920 --> 0:12:22.760 quote The unique walking mechanism of spiders relying on hydraulic 0:12:22.880 --> 0:12:27.920 pressure rather than antagonistic muscle pairs to extend their legs 0:12:28.040 --> 0:12:33.600 results in a necrobotic gripper that naturally resides in its 0:12:33.720 --> 0:12:37.959 closed state and can be opened by applying pressure. The 0:12:38.000 --> 0:12:43.439 necrobodic gripper is capable of grasping objects with irregular geometries 0:12:43.760 --> 0:12:45.760 and up to one hundred and thirty percent of its 0:12:45.760 --> 0:12:49.160 own mass Furthermore, the gripper can serve as a handheld 0:12:49.200 --> 0:12:54.640 device and innately camouflages in outdoor environments. Okay, the last sense, 0:12:54.679 --> 0:12:58.120 I don't know why that part is important. Do we 0:12:58.160 --> 0:13:01.280 need a stealth hand that grab things one hundred and 0:13:01.360 --> 0:13:04.120 thirty percent of its own mass? I don't know, but 0:13:04.440 --> 0:13:07.760 it does give us more horror movie ideas, I suppose. 0:13:08.040 --> 0:13:10.600 Yeah, that one seems a little bit. I don't know, 0:13:10.920 --> 0:13:13.480 but I never thought about this before. But yeah, So 0:13:13.520 --> 0:13:17.120 they're talking about how the idea that like, when a 0:13:17.160 --> 0:13:21.079 spider closes its legs, it's operating on a different mechanism 0:13:21.160 --> 0:13:25.079 than how say, mammals would move their limbs. Mammals, as 0:13:25.080 --> 0:13:28.680 it says, move their limbs with antagonistic muscle pairs, so 0:13:28.760 --> 0:13:33.040 you know, muscles contracting or relaxing in order to bend 0:13:33.080 --> 0:13:36.319 the skeleton of the joints, whereas with spiders it has 0:13:36.360 --> 0:13:39.400 to do with an internal hydraulic pressure state to cause 0:13:39.400 --> 0:13:43.200 the legs to extend. And so when the pressure is 0:13:43.360 --> 0:13:46.959 relaxed that is when the legs close, which I guess 0:13:47.000 --> 0:13:49.640 makes sense because when you see a dead spider, it 0:13:49.640 --> 0:13:52.280 tends to have its legs curled up exactly. 0:13:52.320 --> 0:13:55.160 They point that out. Yeah, when a spider dies, the 0:13:55.440 --> 0:13:58.080 pressure is no longer opposing the flex or muscles, and 0:13:58.120 --> 0:14:00.800 so you get that curled up appearance. This is exactly 0:14:00.800 --> 0:14:03.320 how you find them if you start busting open dirt 0:14:03.360 --> 0:14:06.080 dobber nests and you find them scrolled away in there 0:14:06.880 --> 0:14:10.360 to feed the growing young. But they do point out 0:14:10.400 --> 0:14:12.439 by the way, that we don't need to stop at spiders. 0:14:13.040 --> 0:14:16.120 All manner of bioderived parts could be repurposed in an 0:14:16.200 --> 0:14:20.000 engineered system. And again, there's nothing creepy about a spider 0:14:20.000 --> 0:14:23.160 handed necrobot at all, so we shouldn't, you know, act 0:14:23.280 --> 0:14:27.240 like it is. But I included images, and I imagine 0:14:27.280 --> 0:14:29.440 these images can be I think the paper itself is 0:14:29.480 --> 0:14:31.920 not behind a paywall or anything, so folks can pull 0:14:31.960 --> 0:14:33.320 this up. You can find a link on the eight 0:14:33.360 --> 0:14:38.240 Nobel Prizes website, but they show exactly the steps that 0:14:38.280 --> 0:14:40.560 are involved, and it involves first of all, euthanizing the 0:14:40.600 --> 0:14:47.120 spider and then a fabrication, a step that requires just 0:14:47.200 --> 0:14:49.640 one thing to be done, and that's quote, inserting a 0:14:49.680 --> 0:14:53.000 needle into the prosoma region of a deceased spider and 0:14:53.040 --> 0:14:56.200 fixing the needle to the spider's body. With glue to 0:14:56.280 --> 0:14:57.560 form a hermatic seal. 0:14:57.960 --> 0:15:01.360 This is still not creepy, folks, Stop stop acting like yeah. 0:15:01.680 --> 0:15:04.080 So the legs grip inward and then pressure is applied 0:15:04.160 --> 0:15:06.200 via the syringe that you just glued to the dead 0:15:06.240 --> 0:15:09.600 spider to extend the legs and open the gripper and 0:15:09.640 --> 0:15:12.720 then there you see the step. See the third step 0:15:12.880 --> 0:15:16.560 in the illustration is just using the necrobotic gripper the 0:15:16.600 --> 0:15:22.360 syringe powered effect here to open and close the spider 0:15:22.680 --> 0:15:23.760 as if it were a claw. 0:15:24.240 --> 0:15:26.840 This is truly one of my favorite Ignobel studies we 0:15:27.200 --> 0:15:27.800 have done. 0:15:28.120 --> 0:15:31.080 Yeah, I mean, this one's amazing and it opens my 0:15:31.200 --> 0:15:33.200 mind to this whole world that I had no idea 0:15:33.320 --> 0:15:35.680 was really on the menu for the future, but there 0:15:35.680 --> 0:15:39.560 it is. So why is it funny? I think it's 0:15:39.600 --> 0:15:41.760 obvious that you know, the dead spider is now a 0:15:41.840 --> 0:15:45.560 robot hand. A dead spider has been used well, first 0:15:45.560 --> 0:15:49.480 of all, created, they did euthanize it, but then made 0:15:49.520 --> 0:15:55.800 into this gripper device. That alone is just inherently morbidly funny. 0:15:56.000 --> 0:15:58.960 Now, if you wanted to have a cruelty free dead 0:15:59.000 --> 0:16:03.080 spider robot hand, presumably you could bust up mud Wasp 0:16:03.240 --> 0:16:06.840 nests and find all the dead spiders inside, you know, 0:16:07.000 --> 0:16:09.160 get them out, and then stab needles in them and 0:16:09.200 --> 0:16:12.720 glue those needles in place, and then use the hydraulic 0:16:12.760 --> 0:16:14.800 pressure to make your little robot hands. 0:16:15.120 --> 0:16:16.880 Yeah. I like that idea. I certainly don't want to 0:16:16.920 --> 0:16:23.000 encourage anyone to hurt and kill spiders without real need to. Here, 0:16:23.680 --> 0:16:25.720 I do wonder. I don't think they got into this 0:16:25.760 --> 0:16:27.560 in the article. Maybe they did and I missed it, 0:16:27.600 --> 0:16:31.200 But I wonder if there might be a risk in 0:16:31.320 --> 0:16:34.800 using an already dead spider in that the organic materials 0:16:34.840 --> 0:16:37.120 might have decomposed to some degree and you wouldn't get 0:16:37.120 --> 0:16:38.080 the same grip. 0:16:38.400 --> 0:16:40.880 Now then again, way, so I was joking anyway, But 0:16:41.120 --> 0:16:43.360 now that I think about it, the spiders in the 0:16:43.600 --> 0:16:47.520 in the wasp nest, are those technically going to be dead? 0:16:47.960 --> 0:16:50.680 Or are they paralyzed and still alive in order to 0:16:50.720 --> 0:16:53.600 preserve them longer so they can be food for the young. 0:16:54.000 --> 0:16:55.520 I don't remember off the top of my head. I 0:16:55.560 --> 0:16:59.000 know it varies with different parasitic wasps exactly how they 0:16:59.080 --> 0:17:02.320 carry out the deed. Sometimes, you know, there's a laying 0:17:02.360 --> 0:17:07.120 of eggs on the hosts. Sometimes they are inserted within 0:17:07.200 --> 0:17:10.119 it varies from species to species, and you know, depending 0:17:10.160 --> 0:17:14.280 on what their their host organism happens to be. It 0:17:14.359 --> 0:17:16.520 might also depend with the dirt dobber ness when you're 0:17:16.560 --> 0:17:20.360 catching them. But you know, if you want a pristine 0:17:21.040 --> 0:17:25.040 spider necro gripper, I think you do have to make 0:17:25.040 --> 0:17:28.200 the dead spider yourself. You have to make it dead yourself. Now, 0:17:28.200 --> 0:17:30.600 why is it important this study? Well, you know again, 0:17:30.640 --> 0:17:34.080 I think the idea of you know, of just necrobotics 0:17:34.080 --> 0:17:37.320 in general, it's it's nothing to scoff at. You know, 0:17:37.320 --> 0:17:40.320 we might consider a kind of post synthetic or beyond 0:17:40.440 --> 0:17:44.879 that synthetic material science of the future. You know, well, 0:17:45.480 --> 0:17:48.120 machines of the future will continue to have synthetic parts. 0:17:48.400 --> 0:17:52.440 What if biotic and even repurpose tissues play on an 0:17:52.440 --> 0:17:55.080 important role in at least key parts of the design, 0:17:55.359 --> 0:17:58.879 particularly where you need some sort of like, you know, 0:17:58.880 --> 0:18:02.119 a mechanical interact to take place, and you could either, 0:18:02.280 --> 0:18:04.560 you know, you could fine tune some sort of artificial 0:18:04.600 --> 0:18:07.760 system and gears and three D printed pieces, or you 0:18:07.800 --> 0:18:11.320 could turn to pre existing structures and materials, be it 0:18:11.560 --> 0:18:14.520 the muscles of a rat's heart or the you know, 0:18:14.560 --> 0:18:17.160 the fantastic limbs of a spider. 0:18:18.359 --> 0:18:20.480 Shake hands with spider. 0:18:21.400 --> 0:18:25.200 Yeah. I do love this idea of the tarantula hand spider. Yeah. 0:18:25.359 --> 0:18:27.879 It makes me think of the like tarantula up hand 0:18:27.880 --> 0:18:30.679 puppets that you sometimes see. And it's one of these 0:18:30.760 --> 0:18:32.440 things too that if we saw this in a movie 0:18:32.440 --> 0:18:34.879 from the sixties, we would say this is ridiculous. This 0:18:34.960 --> 0:18:38.000 is like robot Monster. They clearly just had a robot 0:18:38.040 --> 0:18:41.240 costume and two of these spider hand puppets and they 0:18:41.320 --> 0:18:44.120 just made it all up. But no, they actually had 0:18:44.240 --> 0:18:47.119 had glimpsed the future had they made this movie. 0:18:56.280 --> 0:18:58.080 All Right, you ready for the next prize? 0:18:58.520 --> 0:18:59.919 Yeah? What do you have for us here? 0:19:00.520 --> 0:19:05.120 Okay? So the twenty twenty three Chemistry and Geology Prize 0:19:05.560 --> 0:19:11.240 was awarded for a twenty seventeen article called Eating Fossils, 0:19:11.680 --> 0:19:15.960 written for the newsletter of the Paleontological Association, a UK 0:19:16.080 --> 0:19:19.320 based group that promotes the study of paleontology and publishes 0:19:19.400 --> 0:19:25.440 multiple academic journals, and the author is Yan Zawichevich, a 0:19:25.840 --> 0:19:31.280 geologist and stratigrapher who is an emeritus professor of paleobiology 0:19:31.320 --> 0:19:34.720 at the University of Lester in the UK. And a 0:19:34.760 --> 0:19:37.720 note so I said he's a geologist and a stratigrapher. 0:19:37.840 --> 0:19:42.840 Stratigraphy is the subdiscipline of geology that's focused on understanding 0:19:42.880 --> 0:19:47.159 geological strata, meaning the layers of rock in Earth's crust, 0:19:47.920 --> 0:19:51.119 how they form, how they're ordered and structured, and so forth. 0:19:52.040 --> 0:19:56.080 It's also worth flagging, as I mentioned earlier, that usually 0:19:56.240 --> 0:20:00.240 the winners of the Ignobel Prizes are studies published in 0:20:00.280 --> 0:20:03.240 scientific journals. This is not one of those. This is 0:20:03.320 --> 0:20:07.560 instead a sort of historical interest feature about, as the 0:20:07.600 --> 0:20:12.119 title says, eating fossils and congrats to Zowachevitch. Because I 0:20:12.240 --> 0:20:14.320 loved this article, so I'm going to start just by 0:20:14.359 --> 0:20:18.040 reading the opening passage. The rock lying by the roadside 0:20:18.080 --> 0:20:21.119 did not look like much of interest at first, a 0:20:21.200 --> 0:20:25.240 rather nondescript limestone with little more to show to casual 0:20:25.280 --> 0:20:30.359 observation than a few vague blotches. Anyway, old habits die hard, 0:20:30.720 --> 0:20:34.440 so I picked it up, licked the surface, and put 0:20:34.520 --> 0:20:39.520 it and my hand lens to my eye. Now, okay, 0:20:39.560 --> 0:20:42.680 so half of that picture makes sense to a non expert. 0:20:42.720 --> 0:20:46.240 As a non geologist, I might expect a geologist to 0:20:46.240 --> 0:20:48.879 pick up a rock and use a magnifying lens to 0:20:48.960 --> 0:20:52.880 look at it. But licking the rock is that part 0:20:52.880 --> 0:20:55.880 of the standard geology modus operandi. 0:20:56.640 --> 0:20:58.480 Yeah, I'd never heard of this before. 0:20:58.560 --> 0:21:01.760 It seems to some extent. Yes, yes, as Zawachevitch says, 0:21:02.320 --> 0:21:05.200 licking the rock, of course, is part of the geologist 0:21:05.320 --> 0:21:10.520 and paleontologists armory of tried and much tested techniques used 0:21:10.560 --> 0:21:14.160 to help survive in the field. Wetting the surface allows 0:21:14.240 --> 0:21:18.400 fossil and mineral textures to stand out sharply, rather than 0:21:18.440 --> 0:21:22.719 being lost in the blur of intersecting micro reflections and 0:21:22.840 --> 0:21:27.399 micro refractions that come out of a dry surface. And 0:21:27.760 --> 0:21:29.680 I thought about that for a second. I said, oh, 0:21:29.760 --> 0:21:33.960 that is really interesting. I think many of us will 0:21:34.000 --> 0:21:38.360 have noticed that a wet rock looks very different than 0:21:38.359 --> 0:21:42.240 a dry rock. A wet rock has you can see 0:21:42.280 --> 0:21:46.480 some of the textures and the grain more sharply. Some 0:21:46.600 --> 0:21:50.840 of the structure of the mineral is revealed. And of course, 0:21:50.880 --> 0:21:53.680 if you know, don't have like a I don't know, 0:21:53.760 --> 0:21:56.080 like a bucket of water with you, you of course 0:21:56.119 --> 0:21:58.280 have some water in your mouth, you can lick the 0:21:58.400 --> 0:22:00.560 rock or spit on it, put some sali on it, 0:22:00.800 --> 0:22:03.480 and see that grain and structure with more clarity. 0:22:04.000 --> 0:22:05.440 Yeah, and I guess it allows you to put a 0:22:05.520 --> 0:22:07.800 very control amount of moisture on the rock as well. 0:22:07.840 --> 0:22:10.800 Whereas you're pouring a little water from your canteen, you're 0:22:10.840 --> 0:22:13.320 gonna waste more of your water and so forth. 0:22:13.920 --> 0:22:18.040 And Zawachevich says that it just so happened on this 0:22:18.160 --> 0:22:21.720 day with this rock is big old slabbery tongue helped 0:22:21.760 --> 0:22:26.160 reveal something amazing. The rock he found contained the most 0:22:26.240 --> 0:22:31.960 remarkably preserved numbulites, which are fossil remnants of a variety 0:22:32.040 --> 0:22:35.680 of four amniferin And I'll have more to say about 0:22:35.960 --> 0:22:41.560 these organisms in a bit, but in this particular fossil, 0:22:40.840 --> 0:22:46.720 these ancient organisms, their shells were preserved with three dimensional structure, intact, 0:22:47.080 --> 0:22:50.680 all bound together in a chunk of calcite. So, having 0:22:50.800 --> 0:22:53.639