Speaker 1: Welcome to House to Works. Now. I'm your host, Lauren Vogelbaum,
Speaker 1: a researcher and writer. Here at hous to Works. Every week,
Speaker 1: I'm bringing you three stories from our team about the
Speaker 1: weird and wondrous advances we've seen in science, technology, and culture.
Speaker 1: This week, researchers have found that some underwater plants are
Speaker 1: pollinated by tiny invertebrates, just like bees and butterflies pollinate
Speaker 1: land plants. Unrelated, you can taste garlic by absorbing it
Speaker 1: through your skin. But First, Senior writer Jonathan Strickland explores
Speaker 1: a space exploration project. So far, humanities voyages have been
Speaker 1: confined to the Solar System or just beyond it. But
Speaker 1: a new concept backed by some serious brains, is looking
Speaker 1: a whole lot farther. What does Stephen Hawking, Mark Zuckerberg,
Speaker 1: and billionaire Uri Milner have in common? All three want
Speaker 1: us to send a spacecraft to Alpha Centauri. They're supporting
Speaker 1: a project called Breakthrough star Shot to achieve that goal.
Speaker 1: It's an engineering challenge. Alpha Centauri is four point three
Speaker 1: seven light years away, which means it takes more than
Speaker 1: four years for light to travel that distance. We know
Speaker 1: of nothing in the universe faster than light. In fact,
Speaker 1: our conventional rockets move slower than a sleep deprived snail.
Speaker 1: Compared to light, it would take us thirty thousand years
Speaker 1: to send a rocket to the Alpha Centauri system. The
Speaker 1: team behind breakthrough star Shot have a different plan in mind. First,
Speaker 1: the spacecraft will be tiny, measuring less than four centimeters
Speaker 1: to a side, with a mass of just a few grams. Essentially,
Speaker 1: it will be a space faring integrated circuit. Second, it
Speaker 1: will rely on a light sale and lasers for propulsion.
Speaker 1: When light bounces off a light sale, it transfers a
Speaker 1: tiny bit of momentum to the sail. Lasers on Earth
Speaker 1: will provide trillions of photons, which collectively will provide the
Speaker 1: energy to accelerate the spacecraft. Acceleration will be modest but continuous.
Speaker 1: Eventually the spacecraft will travel at a blistering one hundred
Speaker 1: billion miles per hour. The team estimates that it would
Speaker 1: take the spacecraft twenty years to get to Alpha Centauri.
Speaker 1: If all goes as planned, the star Shot would be
Speaker 1: able to capture images and send them back to Earth.
Speaker 1: This could give us a chance to take a closer
Speaker 1: look at Proxima B, the planet in a habitable zone
Speaker 1: orbit around the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri. Another big
Speaker 1: challenge is figuring out how to keep the spacecraft safe
Speaker 1: from radiation. Electronics can malfunction in radiation, which can cause
Speaker 1: extraneous electric charges to build up on a circuit. The
Speaker 1: team's solution is to apply a voltage across an electric
Speaker 1: gate to generate a lot of heat in a short time.
Speaker 1: As the component's heat up and cool down, they release
Speaker 1: the electric charge generated by radiation. It may take a
Speaker 1: few years before the breakthrough star shot spacecraft and the
Speaker 1: accompanying laser array are ready. Then tack on twenty years
Speaker 1: to get to the Alpha Centauri system, and another four
Speaker 1: years and some change for the data to get back
Speaker 1: to us. That's a lot of weighting, but it's posible
Speaker 1: that in just over a quarter of a century we
Speaker 1: may get an up close look at an alien star system.
Speaker 1: How cool is that? Next up, editorial director Allison louder
Speaker 1: Milk and our freelance writer Kate Kirshner raise a stink
Speaker 1: about garlic. The smell of the stuff really does get
Speaker 1: into your pores, and it can get in through your
Speaker 1: pores as well. Anyone who's ever enjoyed a delicious hunk
Speaker 1: of garlic bread knows that the pleasure lasts beyond the
Speaker 1: actual meal, way beyond. Sometimes it seems as though a
Speaker 1: garlic emeal doesn't just linger in your thoughts, it takes
Speaker 1: up residence in your pores, and you're not far off.
Speaker 1: Garlic contains a compound called Allison, which gives the ball
Speaker 1: of its distinctive smell. Alison, however, is only released when
Speaker 1: garlic is cut, crushed, or otherwise disturbed. That's why whole
Speaker 1: heads of garlic don't stink up the entire produce section
Speaker 1: at your local grocery store. Here's something else you should
Speaker 1: know about alison. It's a crazy compound. It acts a
Speaker 1: it like water thanks to a key oxygen atom, and
Speaker 1: a bit like oil with its hydrocarbon tails. That means
Speaker 1: Alison can penetrate human skin in a way that neither
Speaker 1: oil nor water can. Now, the folks at the American
Speaker 1: Chemical Society have given us a little party trick to
Speaker 1: try as a way of explaining why garlic can be
Speaker 1: so powerful. Here's what you do. Crush or cut half
Speaker 1: a clove or more of garlic, and then go to
Speaker 1: a different room that doesn't smell like garlic. Presumably you
Speaker 1: have one of those. Put one of your bare feet
Speaker 1: into a plastic bag with the garlic. Tie up the
Speaker 1: bag to contain the smell. Now hang out for an hour.
Speaker 1: You'll undoubtedly start daydreaming of Italian food soon enough, because
Speaker 1: you'll start to taste and smell the garlic, not because
Speaker 1: it's coming out of the bag, but because your souls
Speaker 1: and your toes have allowed that slippery allison to enter
Speaker 1: the bloodstream, and you're actually tasting and smelling the garlic
Speaker 1: through your feet. Bone appetite feet. And if you'd like
Speaker 1: to see a video of this inaction, check out the
Speaker 1: American Chemical Society's YouTube channel. Finally, this week, staff editor
Speaker 1: Christopher Hasiotis and freelance writer al Ya Hoyt brings the
Speaker 1: story of the bees of the sea. It turns out
Speaker 1: that we crustaceans help pollinate underwater flowers. Sea bees looks
Speaker 1: like Sebastian the Crab was right. There really is a
Speaker 1: lot going on under the sea, But things sub aquatic
Speaker 1: aren't always so different from up here on dry land.
Speaker 1: Researchers recently discovered that invertebrate animals actively pollinate flowers found
Speaker 1: on seagrass underneath the surface of the ocean, much like
Speaker 1: bees do here on land. Before this revelation, published in
Speaker 1: the General Nature Communications, science thought that pollen was carried
Speaker 1: plant to plant by water flow alone. These plants flower
Speaker 1: at night time, but when water flow just isn't happening,
Speaker 1: as sometimes is the case underwater, tiny crustaceans visit the
Speaker 1: plants and help out with the process. These sea bees,
Speaker 1: as you might call them, may not be holding honey
Speaker 1: filled hives or ruining picnics as far as we know,
Speaker 1: but they still perform a vital function to the underwater ecosystem.
Speaker 1: Think of sea grasses as forming extensive meadows in shallow
Speaker 1: marine waters. These are amongst the world's most productive ecosystems.
Speaker 1: As the researchers outlined in their study, they improve water transparency,
Speaker 1: stabilize coastlines, store carbon, and provide food and shelter to
Speaker 1: a diverse community of marine animals. In other words, by
Speaker 1: aiding the sexual reproduction of these flowers, the invertebrate crustaceans
Speaker 1: are doing everyone a major underwater solid But how has
Speaker 1: it taken us so long to figure this thing out? Well,
Speaker 1: the scientists deduced that something fishy was going on when
Speaker 1: they reviewed video of underwater marine activity and noticed that
Speaker 1: the male pollen bearing plants enjoyed many more visiting crustaceans
Speaker 1: than the lady counterparts. Armed with this observation, the scientists
Speaker 1: established two tanks for their experiment, one with only male
Speaker 1: and female versions of the sea grass the lassia to studentum,
Speaker 1: and another with the plants plus these tiny invertebrates. The
Speaker 1: plants in the animal occupied tank quickly became pollinated, unlike
Speaker 1: the other tank with plants, no water flow and no animals.
Speaker 1: This discovery even begat its own new term, zubinthophillis pollination.
Speaker 1: In Layman's terms, this describes transfer of pollen by invertebrate
Speaker 1: animals in the benthic zone, which is the community of
Speaker 1: fauna and flora that call the seabed home. So what's
Speaker 1: the takeaway here? This new research shows that underwater crustaceans
Speaker 1: can serve the same role as fine insects, and it's
Speaker 1: a good reminder that all life on the planet is
Speaker 1: interconnected and we're still discovering these systems that keep our
Speaker 1: world ship shape. That's our show for this week. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for tuning in. Further thanks to our
Speaker 1: audio producer Dylan Fagan and our editorial liaisons Allison and Christopher.
Speaker 1: Subscribed now Now for more of the lated science news
Speaker 1: and some links to anything else you'd like to hear.
Speaker 1: Is cover, plus a photo of the best holiday lights
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Speaker 1: now podcast at how stuff works dot com, and of course,
Speaker 1: for lots more stories like these, head on over to
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