WEBVTT - Extraordinary Science of 2014 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:06.000 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.000 --> 0:00:13.280 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:13.320 --> 0:00:15.560 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. This 0:00:15.600 --> 0:00:18.319 is part two where we're rolling through some of the 0:00:18.320 --> 0:00:21.360 big science that occurred in some of the little science. 0:00:21.400 --> 0:00:23.840 It's amazing that you might have missed that. In some 0:00:23.880 --> 0:00:28.320 cases we initially missed. Uh. It's not an exhaustive set 0:00:28.320 --> 0:00:30.920 it in gold launch it into Space list. We likely 0:00:30.920 --> 0:00:33.120 missed some things that you thought were amazing, and we 0:00:33.120 --> 0:00:35.400 definitely would love to hear from you about those, uh, 0:00:35.479 --> 0:00:39.120 those particular topics, those particular studies. But this is what 0:00:39.360 --> 0:00:41.760 was what was on our brain. Yes, the stuff that 0:00:41.800 --> 0:00:45.200 we thought was pretty extraordinary and wanted to share with you. Now, 0:00:45.240 --> 0:00:47.919 I do want to just throw in here real quick though. Um, 0:00:47.960 --> 0:00:49.640 there was some of these issues. There might be a 0:00:49.680 --> 0:00:54.080 slight uh so called shrimp on a treadmill scenario that 0:00:54.160 --> 0:00:55.680 can pop up if you're not familiar with that. I 0:00:55.720 --> 0:00:57.440 think we've talked about in the podcast before you have 0:00:57.560 --> 0:00:59.640 to study where essentially a shrimp was put on a 0:00:59.640 --> 0:01:04.000 treadmill all and it became kind of the uh, this 0:01:04.440 --> 0:01:10.200 kind of just pointless science money on this even though 0:01:10.240 --> 0:01:13.040 it was actually a very good study. Was it had 0:01:13.080 --> 0:01:15.319 some importance to it. It wasn't just you know, rogue 0:01:15.319 --> 0:01:19.120 scientists doing silly things with no with no payoff, which 0:01:19.120 --> 0:01:20.800 is kind of the charge. And I'm not even sure 0:01:20.840 --> 0:01:24.040 if it was actually federally federally fund in the first place. Yeah, 0:01:24.040 --> 0:01:26.440 I'd have to I'd have to to review the story 0:01:26.480 --> 0:01:28.840 to get into the details of it. But you still 0:01:28.880 --> 0:01:30.960 see this, uh, this idea kind of continue on our 0:01:31.000 --> 0:01:34.560 Facebook page. UM I share not only our content, but 0:01:34.600 --> 0:01:38.280 we try and share links to you know, current science, 0:01:38.319 --> 0:01:42.440 it's trending, neat studies, that sort of thing, And invariably 0:01:42.640 --> 0:01:46.119 there's one particular user who will chime in, we'll find uh, well, 0:01:46.240 --> 0:01:49.960 you know, find flight three seventy instead, why can't we 0:01:50.000 --> 0:01:53.880 find find flight three seventy if we're you know, chronicling 0:01:53.920 --> 0:01:56.880 the genome of the of the Mantish shrimp or doing 0:01:56.880 --> 0:02:00.200 this study or that, always chiming in with well where 0:01:59.680 --> 0:02:02.480 the three So what you're saying is that you'll post 0:02:02.520 --> 0:02:05.080 something you're like, oh, like extraordinary science, and then someone 0:02:05.080 --> 0:02:08.040 will be like, but but where's that fight? Yeah, like 0:02:08.120 --> 0:02:10.680 how can and and I don't want to completely discredit 0:02:10.680 --> 0:02:13.560 it because it's uh. On one level, yes, it's your 0:02:13.720 --> 0:02:16.680 your kind of poo pooing on our celebration of science 0:02:16.720 --> 0:02:20.560 here um and and it's not that fun. But on 0:02:20.600 --> 0:02:23.840 the other hand, I understand how, you know, one can 0:02:23.880 --> 0:02:26.519 look around at this world. We're finding so much about 0:02:26.560 --> 0:02:29.800 the world around is we're landing things on commets for 0:02:29.840 --> 0:02:33.520 the first time in human history. And and then to 0:02:33.520 --> 0:02:35.680 turn around and say, but wait, how can we do 0:02:35.760 --> 0:02:37.560 that and not do this? How can there? How are 0:02:37.600 --> 0:02:40.400 there still so many holes in our understanding of the 0:02:40.440 --> 0:02:43.320 world and and just our ability to even keep track 0:02:43.720 --> 0:02:46.320 of our things in this world? Well, and yes, there 0:02:46.320 --> 0:02:50.000 are very there are so many unanswered questions and um and, 0:02:50.240 --> 0:02:53.480 and many of them will remain that way. But of 0:02:53.520 --> 0:02:56.600 course we have accums razor at our disposal, so we 0:02:56.600 --> 0:02:59.200 can always turn to logic to try to cull out 0:02:59.200 --> 0:03:02.280 what matters and what doesn't and what we can't answer 0:03:02.280 --> 0:03:05.800 and what we can't and oncom's razor and logic and 0:03:05.840 --> 0:03:09.680 all of that is predicated on something called symbolic thought. 0:03:09.840 --> 0:03:12.120 And that just happens to be the first thing that 0:03:12.160 --> 0:03:15.280 we're going to talk about in terms of extraordinary science, 0:03:15.360 --> 0:03:19.720 because we Homo sapiens are so proud of our neo 0:03:19.800 --> 0:03:23.880 cortex sitting atop our brain, those cortical folds that help 0:03:24.040 --> 0:03:30.320 us manage our lives and ascribe meaning and symbolism to them. 0:03:30.360 --> 0:03:36.280 But it turns out that Homo erectus was also doing 0:03:36.320 --> 0:03:40.680 the same thing way back when. Yeah, this was pretty groundbreaking. 0:03:40.680 --> 0:03:43.800 I mean, we already had some strong evidence that Neanderthals 0:03:44.320 --> 0:03:47.480 engaged in this. We had there's some fifty thousand year 0:03:47.520 --> 0:03:51.800 old perforated painted seashells and pignic containers that were discovered 0:03:51.800 --> 0:03:55.360 on the Iberian Peninsula and a while back region that 0:03:55.440 --> 0:03:59.200 was inhabited solely by Neanderthals at the time. But but 0:03:59.280 --> 0:04:04.680 here is another non human hominid who seems to have 0:04:04.680 --> 0:04:07.200 have I mean, in a sense, it's almost like some 0:04:07.280 --> 0:04:09.640 sort of ones attempted to make some sort of biblical 0:04:09.680 --> 0:04:12.400 comparison to you know, myths of of eating the fruit 0:04:12.480 --> 0:04:16.240 of of one sacred tree or another, like taking that 0:04:16.800 --> 0:04:21.080 that crucial step towards becoming uh, this kind of uh, 0:04:23.880 --> 0:04:27.960 this kind of rational being that stands apart from everything 0:04:27.960 --> 0:04:31.720 else on earth. Yeah, and this symbolism um we far 0:04:31.760 --> 0:04:34.680 too often take as sort of a modern Homo sapien thing. 0:04:35.160 --> 0:04:38.080 But this year researchers discovered a shell engraved with a 0:04:38.120 --> 0:04:42.000 geometric pattern at an h erectus site known as Tranil 0:04:42.440 --> 0:04:45.799 on the Indianesian island of Java that dates to between 0:04:45.920 --> 0:04:49.279 five hundred and forty thousand and four hundred and thirty 0:04:49.720 --> 0:04:53.320 thousand years ago. Yeah, that is crazy because that is 0:04:53.480 --> 0:04:56.920 at least three hundred thousand years older than the the 0:04:56.920 --> 0:05:01.560 oldest previously known engravings from US South Africa. And when 0:05:01.560 --> 0:05:04.160 they analyze the engraving, they feel that it was probably 0:05:04.200 --> 0:05:07.040 made with like a sharp tooth or another hard pointed 0:05:07.040 --> 0:05:11.360 object to create that that that that fascinating geometric design. Yeah, 0:05:11.440 --> 0:05:14.320 now why is this important? Well? Uh, someone like Peter 0:05:14.480 --> 0:05:18.040 also say, the professor of psychological and brain sciences that 0:05:18.200 --> 0:05:21.680 Dark Mouth might say, well, it's because the emergence of 0:05:21.720 --> 0:05:27.039 symbolic thought had profound consequences for human moral cognition. And 0:05:27.120 --> 0:05:29.360 he says, you might say that the birth of symbolic 0:05:29.400 --> 0:05:32.680 thought gave rise to the possibility of true morality and 0:05:32.880 --> 0:05:37.520 immorality of good and evil. Once acts become symbolized, they 0:05:37.520 --> 0:05:42.480 could now stand for and be instances of abstract classes 0:05:42.520 --> 0:05:45.920 of action, such as good, evil, right or wrong. Symbolic 0:05:45.960 --> 0:05:50.520 thought permitted new dimensions of behavior. And I thought that 0:05:50.600 --> 0:05:55.080 was very interesting because in this way, symbolic thought, which 0:05:55.120 --> 0:05:58.159 is of course what our languages are built upon, is 0:05:58.200 --> 0:06:02.120 the organizing factor. Yeah, I mean, this is the basics 0:06:02.200 --> 0:06:04.960 of language here, this is the basics of the brains 0:06:05.000 --> 0:06:08.000 operating system itself. You know that that we're able to 0:06:08.080 --> 0:06:12.719 take symbols, were able to take signifiers uh, written or verbal, 0:06:13.040 --> 0:06:15.320 and we're able to have these stand in for more 0:06:15.360 --> 0:06:19.400 complicated ideas. And then and then essentially, then you can 0:06:19.480 --> 0:06:22.479 combine two complicated ideas, you can combine a third, you 0:06:22.520 --> 0:06:26.480 can start It's almost an externalization of of of of 0:06:26.680 --> 0:06:30.120 of thinking and UH and cognition, and then a a 0:06:30.240 --> 0:06:34.280 re to to reincorporate that back into the mental processes. Yeah, 0:06:34.440 --> 0:06:36.640 and um, I mean the fact of that matters is 0:06:36.680 --> 0:06:40.640 that Homo sapiens are but one of several human lineages 0:06:40.800 --> 0:06:45.000 that use abstract intellect to ponder the world. So that 0:06:45.080 --> 0:06:48.920 tells us that it's far more ancient than we ever knew. Yeah, 0:06:48.960 --> 0:06:50.960 And it just drives home again that the fact that 0:06:51.080 --> 0:06:54.800 humans have ascended to this UH status in the world. 0:06:55.279 --> 0:06:57.240 I mean a lot of it simply has to do 0:06:57.320 --> 0:07:00.720 with with our our ability to adapt a different environments 0:07:00.760 --> 0:07:03.360 and uh, and to what extent we were we were 0:07:03.400 --> 0:07:06.960 able to roll with with with with catastrophic changes that 0:07:07.000 --> 0:07:09.400 were occurring well. And it also means that something as 0:07:09.480 --> 0:07:12.520 rudimentary as a line drawing of a woman in a 0:07:12.640 --> 0:07:15.440 dress or a skirt that's put on a bathroom door 0:07:15.480 --> 0:07:20.240 to indicate that this this room is for females has 0:07:20.360 --> 0:07:24.320 so many more layers upon it than you could ever imagine. 0:07:24.840 --> 0:07:28.240 In your brain, there's the whole database built up about 0:07:28.320 --> 0:07:32.400 that one image, and there are consequences for that image 0:07:32.440 --> 0:07:34.480 as well. Now, another important thing about the power of 0:07:34.560 --> 0:07:38.320 simple is of course that that that when you engage 0:07:38.600 --> 0:07:42.480 with a symbol, uh, be it the symbol in the bathroom, 0:07:42.760 --> 0:07:45.440 be it be a cross beat, the Apple logo, be 0:07:45.560 --> 0:07:50.400 it a swastika, uh, you know, Eastern or or western. Um, 0:07:50.560 --> 0:07:54.320 you are actually your brain is actually doing an unconscious 0:07:54.880 --> 0:07:58.000 analysis and interpretation of that symbol before it ever enters 0:07:58.040 --> 0:08:01.160 into your into your conscious mind. Like that's how powerful 0:08:01.240 --> 0:08:03.400 symbol is. And as we discussed in our Symbols on 0:08:03.440 --> 0:08:06.800 the Brain episode that published, I think uh um a 0:08:06.800 --> 0:08:11.480 couple of years ago. Perhaps maybe it was um as 0:08:11.520 --> 0:08:13.520 we discussed in that episode. I mean, that's that's kind 0:08:13.560 --> 0:08:15.480 of core to the power of these things, and that's 0:08:15.520 --> 0:08:18.760 why when you walk around through your environment, you're just 0:08:18.960 --> 0:08:23.240 bombarded with symbols, be it symbols for the bathroom or corporate, political, 0:08:23.400 --> 0:08:26.320 religious iconography, you name it. Yeah, And I think that 0:08:26.440 --> 0:08:31.120 goes back to David Eagleman and his assertations that the 0:08:31.160 --> 0:08:36.080 conscious I is really sitting on the sidelines of the unconscious, 0:08:36.120 --> 0:08:38.559 that all of this decisions that we're making, all those 0:08:38.679 --> 0:08:43.040 judgment calls are happening under cover, and all of that 0:08:43.040 --> 0:08:45.880 stuff gets served up in this kind of like uh 0:08:45.920 --> 0:08:50.080 consciousness belch of the brain and we think, oh, I 0:08:50.160 --> 0:08:52.599 just had this epiphany or I just happened to think this. Well, no, 0:08:52.920 --> 0:08:55.320 this this thinking thing that you just made about that 0:08:55.360 --> 0:08:59.320 bathroom symbol has been in the works for years and 0:08:59.480 --> 0:09:01.679 whatever I is that come along with it. Well, and 0:09:01.760 --> 0:09:04.640 there have been studies before that have have suggested that 0:09:04.960 --> 0:09:08.840 the Christians behave more honestly when they're exposed to a crucifix, 0:09:08.880 --> 0:09:12.560 that people think more creatively if they're exposed to that 0:09:12.600 --> 0:09:16.520 applehole like the light bulb or the apple logo. So 0:09:16.559 --> 0:09:19.240 if you have the if you're culturally preloaded to be 0:09:19.280 --> 0:09:22.439 affected by that symbol. Then you're kind of it's kind 0:09:22.440 --> 0:09:24.760 of like having like little magnets on the wall pushing 0:09:24.800 --> 0:09:27.480 a little metal do Dad down the hallway, and we're 0:09:27.480 --> 0:09:29.640 the metal do Dad my now, which always gets back 0:09:29.640 --> 0:09:32.520 to the whole thing of constructing your own reality, And yeah, 0:09:32.640 --> 0:09:35.080 what is reality? What is illusion in the first place? 0:09:35.800 --> 0:09:38.000 So that's that's another But that's all the reason why 0:09:38.040 --> 0:09:39.679 this is a great study and one that was easy 0:09:39.720 --> 0:09:42.600 to miss. It's easy to you know, just scroll through 0:09:42.600 --> 0:09:44.439 the headlines and you see, oh, well they found a 0:09:44.480 --> 0:09:46.600 shell with some scratches on it. Big deal. I'm gonna 0:09:46.679 --> 0:09:50.200 go to read about, um, you know, what's happening with curiosity. 0:09:50.240 --> 0:09:53.320 But but when you get down into the deep power 0:09:53.360 --> 0:09:57.640 of it, and it really drives home how how substantial 0:09:57.640 --> 0:10:00.240 the finding was. Indeed it does. Alright, we're gonn take 0:10:00.280 --> 0:10:02.040 a quick break. When we get back, we're gonna talk 0:10:02.040 --> 0:10:14.720 about chromosomes and tractor beans. All right, we're back. Um, Yeah, 0:10:14.760 --> 0:10:17.480 let's talk about let's talk about chromosomes and more specifically, 0:10:17.640 --> 0:10:21.839 let's talk about yeast. Let's talk about yeast, shall we This? 0:10:21.920 --> 0:10:24.000 It sounds like a p S A Uh. In March 0:10:24.040 --> 0:10:28.480 of this year, undergraduate students in John Hopkins University, UH, 0:10:28.559 --> 0:10:33.280 their their course called Build a Genome recreated yeast chromosome three, 0:10:33.559 --> 0:10:37.920 which controls sexual reproduction. This is kind of huge. Yeah, 0:10:37.960 --> 0:10:41.000 this marks the first time in history, uh that a 0:10:41.000 --> 0:10:45.080 a chromosome has been synthesized by humans and adopted by 0:10:45.120 --> 0:10:48.480 the yeast, which and by the way, yeast serves as 0:10:48.520 --> 0:10:52.080 one of biotechnologies model organisms. So this is kind of 0:10:52.440 --> 0:10:57.280 ground level for any kind of future UM breakthroughs that 0:10:57.360 --> 0:10:59.679 will happen. Among those future breakthroughs that they hope to 0:11:00.160 --> 0:11:04.880 up to one day, UM synthesize all sixteen yeast chromosomes 0:11:04.960 --> 0:11:08.360 and achieve the goal of what they call synthetic yeast 0:11:08.440 --> 0:11:11.959 two point oh. Now, the researchers designed the chromosome to 0:11:12.080 --> 0:11:15.640 include special markers on genes thought to be non essential, 0:11:15.679 --> 0:11:17.960 and the markers were engineered so that they could be 0:11:18.000 --> 0:11:22.400 triggered by an enzyme to scramble, delete or duplicate genes 0:11:22.480 --> 0:11:26.640 duplica jeens. And then they made fifty thousand changes to 0:11:26.679 --> 0:11:30.520 the synthetic chromosome at specific points in the code which 0:11:30.520 --> 0:11:33.840 could have easily killed off the yeast cell, but instead 0:11:34.320 --> 0:11:38.040 it took the mutations and stride and reproduced. So that 0:11:38.120 --> 0:11:40.040 was the other part of this is that could you 0:11:40.160 --> 0:11:42.839 kind of tinker with this mess with it and and 0:11:42.880 --> 0:11:45.839 could it still survive? And then even though it's synthetic. 0:11:46.280 --> 0:11:47.960 Now the hope here is that in the future this 0:11:48.000 --> 0:11:51.160 will lead to new tests, new methods to uh, to 0:11:51.280 --> 0:11:54.560 go after specific genes and to alove a better understanding 0:11:54.600 --> 0:11:58.120 of junk DNA cell division and evolution itself. So we're 0:11:58.120 --> 0:12:00.800 getting down here to the the core building blocks, and 0:12:00.960 --> 0:12:02.800 and as we discover how to make some of the 0:12:02.840 --> 0:12:06.520 building blocks ourselves, there you go. And does that mean 0:12:06.559 --> 0:12:10.200 that we'll have our teas and all synthetic loaves of bread? Now? 0:12:11.000 --> 0:12:13.280 That would be that would be interesting. And when when 0:12:13.280 --> 0:12:17.120 do we get the first Frankenstein bread? The first because 0:12:17.160 --> 0:12:20.640 you know they'll call it that in the Stein meat 0:12:20.720 --> 0:12:26.480 as well, right, it's made from Alright. The next entry 0:12:26.520 --> 0:12:30.520 that we have is a tiny little tractor beam. And 0:12:30.559 --> 0:12:33.920 when you think about tractor beans, you probably think about 0:12:34.000 --> 0:12:37.840 the Death Star or really any sort of alien civilization 0:12:37.880 --> 0:12:42.040 trying to suck us up into the spaceship. That's right, Uh, 0:12:42.320 --> 0:12:44.440 you know, you think of sci fi and it it 0:12:44.480 --> 0:12:46.920 makes perfect sense because the term comes from sci fi. 0:12:47.200 --> 0:12:51.080 The term tractor beam was coined by E. Smith. Uh 0:12:51.200 --> 0:12:54.679 is also a PhD by the way, and a food engineer. UH. 0:12:54.720 --> 0:12:58.480 And this was in his novel novel named a Space 0:12:58.480 --> 0:13:01.000 Hounds of I p C. I p C stood for 0:13:01.040 --> 0:13:06.319 Interplanetary Corporation. Uh. Smith was is considered by many kind 0:13:06.320 --> 0:13:08.400 of one of one of the fathers, at least of 0:13:08.720 --> 0:13:11.040 space opera, which, of course we you know, we see 0:13:11.080 --> 0:13:16.360 in in Star Wars seeing doun Uh. Any of these properties, Um, 0:13:16.400 --> 0:13:18.000 he was. A lot of stuff was published in the 0:13:18.040 --> 0:13:21.319 Pulpse of the Day, Amazing Stories and the like, but 0:13:21.400 --> 0:13:25.040 he was also widely read by scientists and engineers and 0:13:25.040 --> 0:13:27.719 future scientists and engineers at the time. Uh. From the 0:13:27.760 --> 0:13:31.559 nineteen thirties and on up into the nineteen seventies, his 0:13:31.559 --> 0:13:34.760 his series, such as the Linsman series of Skylark series, 0:13:35.000 --> 0:13:37.480 and so he ended up accidentally coining a number of 0:13:37.520 --> 0:13:40.280 scientific terms, terms for things that did not yet exist, 0:13:40.360 --> 0:13:43.000 that were purely science fiction, that ended up becoming a 0:13:43.040 --> 0:13:46.120 part of the language of science in the decades to follow, 0:13:46.360 --> 0:13:49.440 including the tractor being. Indeed, all right, the tractor beam 0:13:49.480 --> 0:13:53.120 we're about to talk about is not actually on par 0:13:53.360 --> 0:13:55.760 with say something like the Death Stars tractor beam. And 0:13:55.840 --> 0:13:57.920 we just want to mention that because we really want 0:13:57.920 --> 0:14:00.640 to square your expectations here. Yeah, it's kind of like 0:14:01.080 --> 0:14:03.720 advances that we've seen over the years with so called 0:14:03.800 --> 0:14:08.360 invisibility cloak technology. UH. It's not as awesome as somebody 0:14:08.400 --> 0:14:12.439 putting on a Harry Potter invisibility cloak or a predator 0:14:12.440 --> 0:14:15.280 stealth system. UH. What we're able to do and those 0:14:15.280 --> 0:14:17.600 experiences takes place at a at a very small level 0:14:18.040 --> 0:14:21.080 and in the future could have much larger possibilities. And 0:14:21.160 --> 0:14:24.640 the same thing with the tractor beams. Tractor beams have 0:14:24.640 --> 0:14:27.920 have been a matter of study, UH for for years now. 0:14:27.960 --> 0:14:31.240 But this particular study comes to us from Australian National 0:14:31.320 --> 0:14:34.720 University UM. They have a laser based tractor beam that 0:14:34.800 --> 0:14:36.880 they wrote to successfully a pull the part of pull 0:14:36.960 --> 0:14:41.000 these tiny particles a distance about eight inches or twenty centimeters, 0:14:41.080 --> 0:14:44.400 which is about a hundred times farther than any previous 0:14:44.480 --> 0:14:48.640 experiments with tractor beams UH. During there During the experiment, 0:14:48.640 --> 0:14:51.960 the researchers used a laser that projected a kind of 0:14:52.120 --> 0:14:56.760 uh Ring shaped beam of light UM with a without 0:14:56.840 --> 0:14:58.600 with a hot outer ring and a cool center and 0:14:58.640 --> 0:15:01.720 they used this, uh, this light being to suck in 0:15:02.080 --> 0:15:05.480 tiny glass spheres, each of which measured about point two 0:15:05.560 --> 0:15:09.560 millimeters or point zero zero eight inches wide. So the 0:15:09.640 --> 0:15:12.000 key here is is heat. Okay, this is how this 0:15:12.040 --> 0:15:15.440 is working. The laser warms up the air around the 0:15:15.480 --> 0:15:18.840 tiny glass sphere, causing tiny hot spots on the surface. 0:15:19.040 --> 0:15:21.760 The air particles hit the hot spots and they bounce 0:15:21.800 --> 0:15:25.000 off and that propels the sphere in the opposite direction. 0:15:25.400 --> 0:15:27.680 So you want to make the back hotter than the 0:15:27.720 --> 0:15:31.440 front and then you can propel it along. So yeah, 0:15:31.480 --> 0:15:33.680 this is not the stuff of moving around starships or 0:15:33.720 --> 0:15:37.520 capturing the millennium falcon. But uh, the scientists believe that 0:15:37.640 --> 0:15:40.760 there could be possible applications, say dealing with pollution. Uh, 0:15:41.040 --> 0:15:45.240 you could you could successfully extract toxic particles from a 0:15:45.280 --> 0:15:48.200 given body. Uh. Of course, we have a long way 0:15:48.200 --> 0:15:51.000 to go before this can can deal with with greater 0:15:51.080 --> 0:15:55.080 distances than those plunged in the study. He also wanted 0:15:55.160 --> 0:15:59.320 to mentioned that there was another chapter being Shenanigan's thing 0:15:59.400 --> 0:16:01.560 going on here, and I'm talking about researchers at the 0:16:01.640 --> 0:16:06.080 University of Dundee in the UK. They used acoustic tractor 0:16:06.120 --> 0:16:10.000 beams to pull an object by firing sound waves at it. 0:16:10.600 --> 0:16:13.280 So what they did is they used this ultrasound device 0:16:13.680 --> 0:16:16.680 that was clinically approved for use in mri I guided 0:16:16.800 --> 0:16:21.000 focused ultrasound surgery, and the team was able to move 0:16:21.160 --> 0:16:26.040 surprising large objects will large in this sense, um or 0:16:26.080 --> 0:16:30.600 in this application, of approximately one centimeter in size. And 0:16:30.640 --> 0:16:33.120 so the idea here is that in addition to just 0:16:33.240 --> 0:16:38.200 manipulating objects, you could also manipulate fluids and tissues inside 0:16:38.240 --> 0:16:41.440 the body, and you could deliver encapsulated drugs to the 0:16:41.480 --> 0:16:45.600 exact location in the body that requires treatment. Yeah. So again, 0:16:45.720 --> 0:16:47.600 you know, we're in the early days of tractor beams, 0:16:47.600 --> 0:16:50.360 and and tractor beam is kind of, to a certain 0:16:50.360 --> 0:16:52.720 extent a catch off for a number of different techniques 0:16:52.720 --> 0:16:57.200 of pulling in something, uh without actually grabbing it with 0:16:57.280 --> 0:16:59.040 some sort of a grapple or a hook or what 0:16:59.160 --> 0:17:02.520 have you. Because there's also also been experiments where you're 0:17:02.600 --> 0:17:05.240 using the mass of an object in space to pull 0:17:05.240 --> 0:17:08.439 in a smaller body, uh in the same way that 0:17:08.520 --> 0:17:13.440 any smaller massed object can potentially orbit around another. I'm 0:17:13.480 --> 0:17:16.560 just trying to imagine this technology fifty years from now 0:17:16.560 --> 0:17:19.879 on the black market you know, you just you're welcomed 0:17:19.880 --> 0:17:21.600 down the street and all of a sudden you're being 0:17:21.640 --> 0:17:24.000 pulled into some sort of direction that it sucks all 0:17:24.040 --> 0:17:27.760 the particles out of your body. Terrible particles, terrible. All right, 0:17:28.280 --> 0:17:30.200 we should take a quick break. When we get back, 0:17:30.200 --> 0:17:33.239 we're going to talk about how there's another breakthrough this 0:17:33.320 --> 0:17:44.960 year and tinkering with the brain and memory again. All right, 0:17:45.000 --> 0:17:47.200 we're back. Um. You know, we love to talk about 0:17:47.600 --> 0:17:50.359 the brain and our manipulation of the brain and how 0:17:50.480 --> 0:17:52.640 as we learned to manipulate the brain. I mean, we're 0:17:52.720 --> 0:17:55.480 still learning how the brain works, and then trying to 0:17:55.560 --> 0:17:57.480 learn how the brain works. We're trying to learn how 0:17:58.160 --> 0:18:02.040 we work, how our experience, ourselves in the universe works. 0:18:02.119 --> 0:18:04.720 And some memory comes up quite a bit. We've we've 0:18:04.720 --> 0:18:08.040 done whole episodes on the sciences memory, the fallibility of memory. 0:18:08.400 --> 0:18:10.960 You can't trust it. You change a memory every time 0:18:10.960 --> 0:18:13.560 you draw it out of your head. And uh, we 0:18:13.640 --> 0:18:16.600 inevitably come back to the the issue of what about 0:18:17.040 --> 0:18:20.160 what about bad memories? What about memories that are traumatic, 0:18:20.200 --> 0:18:23.199 even that that mess up our our our lives on 0:18:23.240 --> 0:18:26.000 a daily basis. Is there a way we can zap them? 0:18:26.040 --> 0:18:27.560 Is there a way we can deal with them. Can 0:18:27.640 --> 0:18:32.080 we eternal sunshine them? Inevitably that the movie is referenced 0:18:32.080 --> 0:18:36.600 in any news article covering these breakthroughs. Yes, Eternal Sunshine 0:18:36.600 --> 0:18:40.680 of the Spotless Mind clinics popping up around the country 0:18:40.800 --> 0:18:44.920 right now. Uh No, but this is interesting Stanford psychiatrists 0:18:44.920 --> 0:18:49.639 and neuroscientists, Dr Carl That's Roth uses optogenetics. This is 0:18:49.640 --> 0:18:53.560 a technique that manipulates neuronal activity with beams of light. 0:18:53.640 --> 0:18:55.879 Here we go again, with beams of light. He and 0:18:55.920 --> 0:19:01.200 his researchers show that they can manipulate specific memories in mice. 0:19:01.359 --> 0:19:05.520 They can delete existing memories, and they can implant false ones, 0:19:06.280 --> 0:19:09.240 and they went so far as to switch the emotional 0:19:09.280 --> 0:19:12.240 content of a mouse memory from good to bad and 0:19:12.359 --> 0:19:16.240 vice versa. Yeah, it was important here to to break 0:19:16.280 --> 0:19:20.240 down is that we're talking about contextual information about an 0:19:20.240 --> 0:19:23.080 event where and what they happen, and that's recorded in 0:19:23.119 --> 0:19:25.720 the brains of a campus, whereas you also have the 0:19:25.760 --> 0:19:28.800 emotional component of the memory and that's stored separately in 0:19:28.840 --> 0:19:33.000 the amygdala. So you know, you have like one file saying, oh, yeah, 0:19:33.080 --> 0:19:35.440 we went to the beach and uh saw a shark 0:19:35.480 --> 0:19:38.800 in the water, that memory is is filed away. But 0:19:38.800 --> 0:19:40.560 but then there's the emotional context. Did you see that 0:19:40.600 --> 0:19:42.159 shark in your feet were still you were in the 0:19:42.160 --> 0:19:43.919 water up to your ankles and it just freaked you 0:19:43.960 --> 0:19:46.240 out to an amazing degree. Or was it a moment 0:19:46.280 --> 0:19:48.520 of wonder where you're like, ah, there is a shark 0:19:48.560 --> 0:19:50.240 and I live in an amazing world and being alive 0:19:50.359 --> 0:19:54.200 is fantastic. The emotional coloring of that experience has a 0:19:54.280 --> 0:19:57.280 huge effect on our lives. Yeah. I was just thinking 0:19:57.280 --> 0:19:59.440 about in terms of tattoos, like a sort of tattooed 0:19:59.480 --> 0:20:02.120 on your brain, and this this process, and this goes 0:20:02.160 --> 0:20:04.679 back to the symbolic thought too. That tattoo of what 0:20:04.720 --> 0:20:07.640 a shark is in your brain could be lightened a bit, right, 0:20:07.760 --> 0:20:09.600 or could be reduced. You could have a little bit 0:20:09.640 --> 0:20:12.960 of that tattoo thought removal. You could have the residue 0:20:13.000 --> 0:20:16.520 of what that symbol means, but maybe not fully. Um. 0:20:16.560 --> 0:20:20.479 Obviously this isn't as simple. It's just zapping a memory 0:20:20.560 --> 0:20:23.400 and there there's a bunch of complexity involved in here. 0:20:23.440 --> 0:20:29.719 But it's one more uh research study that is showing 0:20:29.840 --> 0:20:34.080 us that memory manipulation is on the horizon. And here's 0:20:34.119 --> 0:20:36.679 just another way to get at it. And I wanted 0:20:36.720 --> 0:20:41.720 to mention that optogenetics are predicated on proteins called options, 0:20:41.800 --> 0:20:45.439 and these are found in human eyes, in microbes and 0:20:45.560 --> 0:20:48.480 other organisms. And when light shines on an option, it 0:20:48.520 --> 0:20:52.280 absorbs a photon and changes it. And that's how uh 0:20:52.480 --> 0:20:55.479 Dr Dysrerov has really gone about this. And by the way, 0:20:55.560 --> 0:20:58.680 dest Wroth is huge in this field. He's done a 0:20:58.720 --> 0:21:04.760 ton of stuff in turn of um options and optic genetics. 0:21:04.840 --> 0:21:10.080 And he also created something called hydro gel. Oh, yes, hydrogel. 0:21:10.160 --> 0:21:13.040 This was This is another really cool study that came 0:21:13.040 --> 0:21:17.840 out this year which basically answers that question, Hey, if 0:21:17.880 --> 0:21:20.359 I had a dead rat um and I wanted to 0:21:20.400 --> 0:21:23.480 make that rat translucent, how would I go about that? 0:21:23.760 --> 0:21:26.800 And uh and and that's what what we're talking about here, 0:21:26.840 --> 0:21:31.240 the ability to to take a a cadaver even and 0:21:31.280 --> 0:21:35.280 make it into this translucent, visible man, visible rat body, 0:21:35.480 --> 0:21:38.280 which of course has a tremendous importance when it comes 0:21:38.280 --> 0:21:44.679 to studying anatomy, looking at the physiology of diseases, etcetera. Yeah, this, 0:21:44.880 --> 0:21:48.480 this substance they created, hydro gel, is similar to that 0:21:48.560 --> 0:21:53.040 used for contact lenses, and the method is called clarity, 0:21:53.080 --> 0:21:55.480 and the result is you get the see through brains 0:21:55.520 --> 0:21:58.280 and the innerds are revealed in a way that no 0:21:58.480 --> 0:22:02.040 current technologies cand We're talking about large structures like the 0:22:02.080 --> 0:22:07.000 hippocampus showing up with the clarity of organs and transparent fish. 0:22:07.320 --> 0:22:09.679 That's pretty exciting. It's like putting a flashlight into the 0:22:09.680 --> 0:22:12.399 brain there, and you can even see neural circuits and 0:22:12.480 --> 0:22:18.399 individual cells. So yes, um, you know, you could dissect it. 0:22:18.440 --> 0:22:21.680 You can have ultra thin slices, examining each slide under 0:22:21.720 --> 0:22:24.520 a microscope and and this is what is traditionally done 0:22:24.880 --> 0:22:29.040 heretofore um before this technique came along. But when you 0:22:29.160 --> 0:22:33.800 do that, you're you're you're changing that sample and you're 0:22:34.400 --> 0:22:39.840 effectively removing some clues that you might not otherwise see 0:22:40.080 --> 0:22:42.400 unless it were whole, a whole brain that you could 0:22:42.400 --> 0:22:45.040 just see through. Indeed, I do have to say when 0:22:45.080 --> 0:22:47.200 I'm initially discovered the study, I was a little bit 0:22:47.280 --> 0:22:50.480 disappointed when I of course realized that the individual must 0:22:50.520 --> 0:22:55.800 be dead, because for a split second, I was imagining, 0:22:55.880 --> 0:22:58.960 like the new fashion trend would be to make yourself translucent, 0:22:59.320 --> 0:23:02.680 and I was, you know, French run white models walking 0:23:02.680 --> 0:23:06.159