Speaker 1: Hey everyone, Daniel here with a quick note that my
Speaker 1: new book, Do Aliens Speak Physics? Is coming out soon
Speaker 1: November fourth, and I'd love if you considered pre ordering it.
Speaker 1: The book imagines the arrival of aliens and what it
Speaker 1: would be like to try to make mental contact and
Speaker 1: download their understanding of the universe. Do we have Physics
Speaker 1: in common with the Aliens? If you like how the
Speaker 1: podcast asks deep physics questions and dabbles in philosophy, you'll
Speaker 1: enjoy the book, which also features cute cartoons of aliens
Speaker 1: from my friend Andy Warner. Find it anywhere or check
Speaker 1: out the book website www dot Alienspeakphysics dot com. Okay,
Speaker 1: on to today's episode.
Speaker 2: How do the pinworms know that it's night when they
Speaker 2: lurk in a place with so little light?
Speaker 1: If I upgraded my quirks to top quark class, what
Speaker 1: I automatically get we had a bigger mass.
Speaker 2: If you eat certain foods, your skin will change you.
Speaker 2: Why does that happen? Do we have any clue?
Speaker 1: Whatever questions keep you up at night, and Daniel and
Speaker 1: Kelly's answer will make it all right.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe.
Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I've never
Speaker 1: had pinworms.
Speaker 2: Hi. I'm Kelly, I'm a biologist, and I'm not sure
Speaker 2: Daniel can be sure that he's never had pinworms.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the episode where we dig deep into Daniel's condition.
Speaker 2: All right, So, Daniel, my question for you today is
Speaker 2: what was the most surprising thing about parenting?
Speaker 1: Wow? Great question. I think one of the most surprising
Speaker 1: things about parenting for me was how the gross quickly
Speaker 1: becomes monotonous and every day you like wiping somebody else's
Speaker 1: feces off of your hands or face, it's just like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just another Tuesday.
Speaker 2: Yep. Oh, I totally agree. The first time my daughter,
Speaker 2: like projectile pooped and it was on the wall and
Speaker 2: on me, I was like, oh my gosh, this is
Speaker 2: so gross. And then by like the fifth time, I
Speaker 2: was like, I got some more laundry to do today,
Speaker 2: and it was like it was like nothing whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And when you have visitors and they see the
Speaker 1: inside of your actual day to day routine and they're like, whoa,
Speaker 1: it gives you a taste for like how far you've
Speaker 1: drifted from societal norms.
Speaker 2: But you pretty quickly get back to normal expectations. You know,
Speaker 2: when your kids get past the age where you have
Speaker 2: to wipe your butt, you very quickly return to I
Speaker 2: would prefer to not wipe people's butts if I could
Speaker 2: avoid it, Although I think taking care of each other
Speaker 2: is one of the best things that humans can do.
Speaker 1: I agree, But if my sixteen year old pooped on me,
Speaker 1: it would be a pretty big memory, and I can't
Speaker 1: remember all the time she did it when she was young.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, things change, things change exactly.
Speaker 1: It would stand out now, that's right, that's right. How
Speaker 1: about you? What is one of your most surprising discoveries
Speaker 1: about parenting?
Speaker 2: So it also has to do with hygiene, and it's
Speaker 2: how far our species has come with hygiene, because there's
Speaker 2: so many things that kids don't do naturally that you
Speaker 2: would expect they would want to do naturally, like wash
Speaker 2: their hands, like wash their hands or take a shower.
Speaker 1: But doctors weren't washing their hands until like one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty years ago.
Speaker 2: I know. No culture has played such a huge role
Speaker 2: in keeping us healthy, and it's amazing and it really
Speaker 2: hit home for me when I was a parent. But
Speaker 2: I think that one of the things that surprised me
Speaker 2: in particular is the number of times I've had to
Speaker 2: say the phrase get your hand out of your butt,
Speaker 2: and which leads us into question one, because kids sticking
Speaker 2: their hands in their butts is how they transmit pinworms
Speaker 2: and why this is probably the most common worm infection
Speaker 2: in the United States.
Speaker 1: All right, so get ready to get itchy everyone.
Speaker 2: That's right. So we have an amazing Discord community, and
Speaker 2: you can join us by going to Danielandkelly dot org
Speaker 2: and clicking on the link to our Discord channel. And
Speaker 2: Julian on Discord had this question that he wanted to
Speaker 2: share with us, and let.
Speaker 1: Me add another shout out to our Discord community. If
Speaker 1: you want to reach us, you can write us questions
Speaker 1: at questions at Daniel and Kelly dot org. But the
Speaker 1: Discord community is also a lot of fun. You can
Speaker 1: ask your questions there. There's lots of folks chatting and discussing,
Speaker 1: sharing recent articles, talking about science. If you can't get
Speaker 1: enough Daniel and Kelly and science, come join us on
Speaker 1: Discord and be part of the inner synctum.
Speaker 2: And I'd just like to shout out to our moderators,
Speaker 2: who are the best moderators on the whole entire internet.
Speaker 1: I'm sure, Oh, yes, absolutely, they win all the awards
Speaker 1: they do.
Speaker 3: Hey, Daniel and Kelly, this is Julian in Houston. As
Speaker 3: the parent of a small child. I've had pinworms on
Speaker 3: my mind a bit in the past couple of years,
Speaker 3: and I think I heard on a previous episode you
Speaker 3: mentioned the pinworms tend to come out at night to
Speaker 3: lay their eggs and cause itchymut. So my question is,
Speaker 3: how do pinworms know it's nighttime to come out and
Speaker 3: cause ITCHI mut Thanks so much and I look forward
Speaker 3: to hearing the answer.
Speaker 1: So Kelly, tell us what is a pinworm?
Speaker 2: A pinworm is a little worm. When it's an adult,
Speaker 2: it's about the size of a staple, so they're tiny.
Speaker 2: About forty million people in the United States probably have
Speaker 2: pinworm right now, and a billion people worldwide. I think
Speaker 2: I said a moment ago that pinworms are the most
Speaker 2: common worm infection that's in the US, where we don't
Speaker 2: have a lot of other kinds of worm infections. They're
Speaker 2: very common in children, and they're also kind of common
Speaker 2: in people in long term care facilities.
Speaker 1: All right, so let's estimate what fraction of our audience
Speaker 1: have pinworms right now as they're listening to this. We're
Speaker 1: talking forty million people. That's like fifteen percent of the US.
Speaker 1: Is it not evenly distributed because you're saying it's like
Speaker 1: children and old folks homes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So if you have children and they are let's
Speaker 2: say preschool or elementary school age, there's a pretty good
Speaker 2: chance they have or have had pinworms, and there's a
Speaker 2: decent chance they gave it to you, although it does
Speaker 2: seem like adults become more resistant, and so even if
Speaker 2: your kids have it, you're not definitely going to get it.
Speaker 2: But doctors will often prescribe medication to an entire family
Speaker 2: if anyone in it gets the parasites, because it is
Speaker 2: pretty pretty easy to transmit.
Speaker 1: So maybe like one in ten of our listeners right
Speaker 1: now have pinworms. Maybe the pinworms are listening to this episode.
Speaker 2: So if I have to remember our demographics from the
Speaker 2: last time we did a survey, we have a lot
Speaker 2: of men over fifty or sixty and they are highly
Speaker 2: unlikely to have pinworms, And so I don't know about
Speaker 2: one in ten. It depends on how many of our
Speaker 2: current listeners have young kids. But there's a good chance
Speaker 2: that you have either had it at some point in
Speaker 2: your life or if you have kids, you have it now.
Speaker 1: All right, So tell us what do these guys look like.
Speaker 2: So they're in kind of nematodes. So these are cylindrical worms.
Speaker 2: They have no segments, so don't think about an earth work.
Speaker 2: Think about just kind of like a hard outer case
Speaker 2: and a very tiny worm. They kind of come to
Speaker 2: an end, which is why they're called pinworms. As I
Speaker 2: mentioned before, they're like the size of a staple when
Speaker 2: they're adults. Oh, I see, and you might remember that
Speaker 2: a few months ago we talked about geo helmets, or
Speaker 2: we call them the dirt worms. These are nematods that
Speaker 2: you find in the dirt. This is another kind of nematode,
Speaker 2: so they're kind of related to the dirt worms we
Speaker 2: were talking about earlier.
Speaker 1: So you're using this phrase nematod, and it sounds like
Speaker 1: it describes a category of worm. What is a nematod.
Speaker 2: Nematoda is a whole phylum of worms that have this
Speaker 2: like hard outer cuticle. Some of them live in the soil,
Speaker 2: some of them are commensal with plants, and some of
Speaker 2: them are parasitic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if I had to guess, if somebody just asked
Speaker 1: me what a nematoad was, it sounds to me like
Speaker 1: some sort of miniature Japanese frog. That's great, like it
Speaker 1: might be served in a weird sushi or something very
Speaker 1: high end sushi.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's completely wrong. That is very cute, very cute.
Speaker 1: So I'm imagining that the life style with these guys
Speaker 1: is not very cute. So tell us about it, and
Speaker 1: everyone finish that snack you're having before you.
Speaker 2: Listen to this, or go wash your hands. So the
Speaker 2: infection route is what's called fecal oral or poop to mouth.
Speaker 2: Good start.
Speaker 1: That's an actual phrase people use.
Speaker 2: I've heard it said in my community more than once.
Speaker 2: I don't know if it shows up in any textbooks, but.
Speaker 1: Poop mouth, all right, So tell us about it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: The idea here is that you accidentally eat the eggs.
Speaker 2: So you accidentally consume an egg, it hatches in your
Speaker 2: body and when it gets to the intestine, the males
Speaker 2: and the females will find each other and they'll mate,
Speaker 2: and then the males die.
Speaker 1: Inside you instant having a party inside you. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: that's right.
Speaker 2: You might not be dating. But the worms inside you
Speaker 2: might be so someone's find in love in that body
Speaker 2: of you are So.
Speaker 1: That's good news.
Speaker 2: I guess.
Speaker 1: I don't know, all right. So they start out as eggs,
Speaker 1: you end up in your mouth. We'll get into that
Speaker 1: in a minute, I imagine. Yep, they hatch, they mate
Speaker 1: inside you, and they have little babies. Oh no, eggs,
Speaker 1: I guess.
Speaker 2: Well, So the female starts producing eggs. The male, after
Speaker 2: reproducing dies and gets digested, and so you'll never see
Speaker 2: the male.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: The female her eggs. She starts making eggs. They start
Speaker 2: maturing a little bit inside of her. Then she moves
Speaker 2: down farther into your intestine, and when she is ready
Speaker 2: to lay those eggs at night, she will come out.
Speaker 2: She will crawl out of your anis.
Speaker 1: One's anis. Excuse me, one's anis?
Speaker 2: Crawl out of one's anis. And on the CDC website
Speaker 2: it cracks me up because it says anis and then
Speaker 2: in parentheses butthole just in case you are sure as
Speaker 2: so crawls out your butthole. And the female needs oxygen
Speaker 2: to stimulate the release of eggs, and apparently in some
Speaker 2: cases she has what's called a prolapsed uterus, which essentially
Speaker 2: just means that her uterus sort of comes out of
Speaker 2: her body and expels the eggs. And I guess in
Speaker 2: some cases they've observed the eggs going airborne. This expulsion
Speaker 2: happens so violently.
Speaker 1: This is much less cute than miniature Japanese frogs. I
Speaker 1: vote for miniature Japanese frogs. We should have that instead.
Speaker 2: Well, you know you don't.
Speaker 1: Get to juice, all right, But I have an actual
Speaker 1: sides question. Okay, how do the eggs survive in my
Speaker 1: digestive track, Like you're dropping them in stomach acid and
Speaker 1: they're surviving.
Speaker 2: So in this case, they're still inside of their mom.
Speaker 2: She doesn't expel them until she gets outside of the body.
Speaker 1: But the eggs I've consumed, right, The mom herself was
Speaker 1: born from an egg that I swallowed.
Speaker 2: Right, yes, And your digestive juices helped it escape from
Speaker 2: the egg that it was living in. Oh wow, And
Speaker 2: then it's tough cuticle protects it from your.
Speaker 1: Juices, all right. So she comes out the enis does
Speaker 1: her little oxygen.
Speaker 2: Dance, yes, and she will lay her eggs in the
Speaker 2: perianal region, and then often she will die and we'll
Speaker 2: talk about what happens. If she doesn't die as a symptom,
Speaker 2: that's bad. But most of the time she dies. And
Speaker 2: the eggs are sticky, and so they stick to your butt,
Speaker 2: and they also kind of make you itch because now
Speaker 2: there's like some sticky stuff in your butt, and that's
Speaker 2: not great. And kids are likely to stick their hands
Speaker 2: in their butts, which is what I learned as a mom,
Speaker 2: is that they're always sticking their hands in their butts.
Speaker 2: And so they stick their hands in their butts and
Speaker 2: then they get it underneath their fingernails or on their fingers.
Speaker 2: And then because they're scratched, because it's itch that's right,
Speaker 2: that's right.
Speaker 1: Don't make it sound so weird. They're itchy, so they're scratching.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, they're itchy. So they're scratching. They're humans. And
Speaker 2: then these grubby little creatures we call children go around
Speaker 2: and touch things, you know. They put their fingers in
Speaker 2: their mouths, they put their fingers in your mouth, they
Speaker 2: put their fingers on the kitchen table, and in that way,
Speaker 2: these sticky eggs get to lots of different places, and
Speaker 2: when they get consumed, then you're back up at the start.
Speaker 2: Of the cycle that we talked about, where your stomach
Speaker 2: juices will open up the eggs and the process will
Speaker 2: start again.
Speaker 1: So this is the story I use to convince my
Speaker 1: kids to keep their fingers out of their mouth. So,
Speaker 1: you know, kids like to chew on their nails or whatever.
Speaker 1: And anytime I see my kids chewing on their nails,
Speaker 1: I just make this wiggly fingers hand gesture and it
Speaker 1: recalls for them the story I told them about pinworms,
Speaker 1: and they go, oh, They're immediately grossed out by what
Speaker 1: might be under their fingernails, and they stop. So this
Speaker 1: has been an effective parenting technique.
Speaker 2: Fantastic. Now you have your kids ever had pinworms that
Speaker 2: you know of?
Speaker 1: I don't think I should be discussing my kids medical
Speaker 1: history on the podcast. Let's keep it abstract.
Speaker 2: Okay, have you ever had pinworms?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 1: I have not personally ever had pinworms to my knowledge.
Speaker 2: Right, So that's the thing. Most who No, not to
Speaker 2: my knowledge. But I've had periods of itchiness where I
Speaker 2: wondered if maybe maybe I had it. Anytime there's a
Speaker 2: little itch, I think good worms.
Speaker 1: And now everyone listening to this podcast is suddenly feel
Speaker 1: and itchy.
Speaker 2: That's right right. I mean the females lay like ten
Speaker 2: thousand eggs.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, how tiny are these? Can you not
Speaker 1: see them?
Speaker 2: You can't see them. They're teeny tiny.
Speaker 1: You can't even see them when you lay ten thousand
Speaker 1: of them, Like, it doesn't look like a little blob
Speaker 1: or a smear or something.
Speaker 2: No, it's teeny tiny. I mean if you put it,
Speaker 2: you don't have to put it under a super high
Speaker 2: powered microscope to see it, but you do need a
Speaker 2: microscope to see it. You know, they're kind of clear,
Speaker 2: they're not very big. These eggs can survive for two
Speaker 2: to three weeks, like out on a counter or something.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: But the way that you find out if someone is
Speaker 2: infected is called the Scotch tape test.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, no, where at the Scotch tape? Kelly,
Speaker 1: where around the black hole?
Speaker 2: The physicist that comes in with the black hole joke, Yes,
Speaker 2: around the black hole. Yeah. So, so the females come
Speaker 2: out at night to lay their eggs, which is going
Speaker 2: to get us to the listener's question in just a minute.
Speaker 2: But they lay their eggs at night in particular, and
Speaker 2: so in the morning right when they wake up, before
Speaker 2: they've you know, used the restroom or wiped or anything.
Speaker 2: You take a piece of tape and you sort of
Speaker 2: pat it around the perianal region and then you stick
Speaker 2: it on a glass slide and you put it under
Speaker 2: a microscope, so you can see those eggs. Sometimes you
Speaker 2: even catch the mom because she's just sort of died
Speaker 2: and she's still there, and so you'll see a worm
Speaker 2: and those you can see. So sometimes you do know
Speaker 2: that someone's infected because you find one of the mom
Speaker 2: worms and you're like, oh, shoot, well we've got worms.
Speaker 1: Yikes, yikes.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So then the listener asked, how does the mom know
Speaker 1: that it's nighttime and she should come out and do
Speaker 1: her dance? Why doesn't she come out during the day?
Speaker 2: All right, great question. I didn't know the answer, and
Speaker 2: I asked the American Society of Parasitologists Facebook page, which
Speaker 2: has like fifteen thousand followers, and I was like, all right, team,
Speaker 2: how do we know that pinworms know that it's nighttime?
Speaker 2: Because I looked through a bunch of medical books about
Speaker 2: parasitic diseases and they all said pinworms come out at night.
Speaker 2: Some of them would say that the pinworms were detecting
Speaker 2: our drop in body temperature when we sleep. Oh, and
Speaker 2: then others would say they might be detecting a drop
Speaker 2: in body temperature, but they wouldn't say it definitively, And
Speaker 2: none of them included an inline reference that I could
Speaker 2: check for the study that showed that they're responding to
Speaker 2: body temperature, because they could also be responding to like,
Speaker 2: you know, you're not moving for a couple hours.
Speaker 1: So there's the question of how the worms know it's
Speaker 1: night to come out. But how do we know they
Speaker 1: only come out at night? And why do they only
Speaker 1: come out at night? Do they come out at night
Speaker 1: because that's the best time to lay the eggs while
Speaker 1: we're asleep, or do they need the darker environment or what?
Speaker 2: Yes, I think the answer at the end of the
Speaker 2: day is we don't know. Because the American Society of Parasitologists,
Speaker 2: when I asked them, the best answer I got was
Speaker 2: from my friend Brandon, who said they have little watches
Speaker 2: and that's how they know it's nighttime. I thank you, Brandon.
Speaker 2: But anyway, as far as I could tell, we haven't
Speaker 2: done studies to figure out one why it's nighttime, or
Speaker 2: two to confirm that they're actually queuing in on temperature.
Speaker 2: I think we suspect that that's the cue that they're using,
Speaker 2: but we haven't ruled out other possible cues. And as
Speaker 2: to why they do it at night, it could be
Speaker 2: possible that while people are sleeping is a time when
Speaker 2: you are less likely to have a bellel movement. And
Speaker 2: this parasite doesn't pass in feces, it passes on fingers.
Speaker 2: And the reason that we know that it happens at
Speaker 2: night is because if you do the Scotch tape test
Speaker 2: in the morning, you get a bunch of eggs. If
Speaker 2: you do it at other times of day, you don't
Speaker 2: get a bunch of eggs. And you would expect if
Speaker 2: they were laying randomly throughout the day, the Scotch tape
Speaker 2: test would give you eggs at just about any time
Speaker 2: of day.
Speaker 1: Fascinating. So Julian's question is really at the forefront of science.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. I encourage any young people out there
Speaker 2: to search for this answer. I don't know what it
Speaker 2: would take to answer this question. I think pinworms are
Speaker 2: pretty host specific, and so like Ancherobius vermicularis, which is
Speaker 2: the species that humans have, I don't know you might
Speaker 2: be able to do it in some other mammalians species
Speaker 2: do the experiments, But I don't know. Maybe you'd have
Speaker 2: to heat people up and cool them down and see
Speaker 2: what their worms were doing, or ask them to stay still,
Speaker 2: or mess with some hormones that are associated with sleep
Speaker 2: that maybe the pinworms are queuing in on. But anyway,
Speaker 2: inquiring minds want to know, but we don't know the
Speaker 2: answer as far as I can tell.
Speaker 1: Well, if you've always been interested in black holes and
Speaker 1: this podcast has peaked your interest in biology, maybe this
Speaker 1: is the perfect crossover topic for you.
Speaker 2: Could be all right, Julian, thank you so much for
Speaker 2: this question and for joining us on discord. Did we
Speaker 2: scratch your itch? Please don't give us worms?
Speaker 3: Hey, y'all, yes, you absolutely scratched my itch. I think
Speaker 3: my favorite part was hearing about the violently explosive egg laying.
Speaker 3: Also how small the eggs actually are, as I always
Speaker 3: assume that you'd be able to see them in the
Speaker 3: poop or something like that. I'm also glad to hear
Speaker 3: Kelly give a we don't know answer, and I hope
Speaker 3: Daniel Guest to drop on it depends soon. Thank you
Speaker 3: so much for your answer, and my kid will one
Speaker 3: day figure out the answer, though hopefully not by catching pinworms.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back and we're answering questions from listeners
Speaker 1: because your curiosity literally powers science. If people didn't want
Speaker 1: to know the answer to these questions, we would not
Speaker 1: get to do it. So we want to hear what
Speaker 1: you wonder about the universe. Right to us two questions
Speaker 1: at Danielankelly dot org. Our next question comes from a
Speaker 1: lawyer in the UK. Rebecca wants to know about top quarks.
Speaker 5: If I weigh fifty five kilograms on the basis that
Speaker 5: my protons are upquarks and down cork, how much would
Speaker 5: I weigh if my protons were made of top quarks?
Speaker 5: And why is there a different if any All.
Speaker 1: Right, this is a really fun question about what it
Speaker 1: might be like to have top quarks in your life.
Speaker 2: I can imagine there being a new diet fad where
Speaker 2: people say, oh, I've created a thing that turns your
Speaker 2: bottom quarks to top quarks and that's how you're going
Speaker 2: to lose ten pounds. So you better not say this works.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't recommend no, no, definitely, no particle physics
Speaker 1: inspired diets do not fall for that.
Speaker 2: Oh, there's got to be some quantum something, something diet
Speaker 2: out there that people have tried out.
Speaker 1: Well, you can have quark, right, Quark is some German
Speaker 1: yogurt like product, and that sounds kind of quantumy, but
Speaker 1: it's not any more quantum than anything else. I mean, literally,
Speaker 1: everything is quantum because we're all made of quantum particles. Right,
Speaker 1: So your diet is already quantum.
Speaker 2: That's right, all right? Well, so mass is a concept
Speaker 2: I understand biologically. Let's go ahead and understand it physically.
Speaker 2: Where does mass come from?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so Rebecca wants to know what would happen if
Speaker 1: you built your protons out of top quarks. We got
Speaker 1: to understand mass for that. So your mass mostly comes
Speaker 1: from the stuff you're made out of. Right, The mass
Speaker 1: of Kelly is very close to the mass of all
Speaker 1: of Kelly's parts added up. You are not much more
Speaker 1: than the sum of your parts. I mean, intellectually, of
Speaker 1: course you are. Personally you are. When it comes to
Speaker 1: a mass point of view, you're mostly your chunks added up.
Speaker 2: Thank you for pulling me out of the depression black hole.
Speaker 2: I was inevitably going to slide into.
Speaker 1: And that's where our intuitive sense of mass comes from. Right,
Speaker 1: Like stuff is made of smaller stuff, and the mass
Speaker 1: of the bigger stuff is the sum of the mass
Speaker 1: of the smaller stuff. Like you weigh a cat made
Speaker 1: out of legos, and then you take it apart and
Speaker 1: you weigh the legos, you get the same answer. Right,
Speaker 1: that's where our intuition comes from.
Speaker 2: Cats are way less fun when you take them apart,
Speaker 2: and also.
Speaker 1: When you make them out of legos, they're not as cozy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so you're made out of your atoms, and your
Speaker 1: atoms are made of protons and neutrons and electrons, and
Speaker 1: we can mostly ignore the electrons because an electron weighs
Speaker 1: almost one two thousands of a proton, so they're basically
Speaker 1: irrelevant when it comes to what you're made out of.
Speaker 1: So mostly you're made out of your protons and your neutrons.
Speaker 2: Sorry electrons, all right, So then where does the mass
Speaker 2: from a proton and a neutron come from?
Speaker 1: Right? And so Rebecca is referring to upquarks and down
Speaker 1: quarks because that's what makes up protons and neutrons. Protons
Speaker 1: and neutrons are just different combinations of the same two bits,
Speaker 1: which is awesome and amazing and also requires them to
Speaker 1: have these weird charges. Like to make a proton, you
Speaker 1: add two quarks that have a charge two thirds and
Speaker 1: another quark that has a charge negative one third, So
Speaker 1: plus two thirds plus two thirds gives you four thirds
Speaker 1: minus a third gives you three thirds. Or charger one
Speaker 1: that's a proton neutron is one quark with a charge
Speaker 1: two thirds and two quarks with a charge negative one third,
Speaker 1: so you get plus two minus one minus one zero.
Speaker 1: It's amazing how you can build these things out of
Speaker 1: the same building blocks, right, That's something sort of cool.
Speaker 2: We're talking the other day about whether or not the
Speaker 2: universe is like beautiful and sort of meets the expectation
Speaker 2: of our esthetic preferences, and I got to say, there's
Speaker 2: something about plus two thirds and negative one third charges
Speaker 2: that's not aesthetically pleasing to me. But I like that
Speaker 2: You no.
Speaker 1: What I thought you were going to go the other direction. Tweet.
Speaker 1: That's beautiful showing how you can build two very different
Speaker 1: things out of the same pieces. It's like when you
Speaker 1: see somebody build something incredible out of legos, You're like, Wow,
Speaker 1: that's awesome that you can do it out of the
Speaker 1: same bits. That's something simple and organomic about it. That
Speaker 1: appeals to my aesthetic.
Speaker 2: And I guess that's why this question about whether or
Speaker 2: not physics and math meet our definitions of beauty is
Speaker 2: so hard, because what's beautiful to some person is you know,
Speaker 2: maybe not beautiful to others, and we don't even have
Speaker 2: the same definition of beauty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. And I can also get rid of
Speaker 1: the one thirds easily if I just redefine the electron
Speaker 1: mass to be negative three, then the upquarks and down
Speaker 1: quarks have charge plus two and minus one. And you
Speaker 1: know it's just because of Ben Franklin that the quarks
Speaker 1: have charge one third. There's no absolute scale there.
Speaker 2: Why is it Ben Franklin's fault that the charge is
Speaker 2: negative one third? We're getting way off track here, But
Speaker 2: what is Ben? Was Ben Franklin around when we were
Speaker 2: figuring this stuff out?
Speaker 1: Well, Ben Franklin, you know, the best president of the
Speaker 1: United States. He helped to find the direction of the currents,
Speaker 1: and so the direction that we later discovered was caused
Speaker 1: by electrons he called negative.
Speaker 2: Was Ben Franklin ever a president?
Speaker 1: No, he was not a president. That's an internet joke.
Speaker 2: Oh, I did that one right over my head. All right, Look,
Speaker 2: this isn't a history podcast, Daniel, Let's get back on track,
Speaker 2: all right.
Speaker 1: Anyways, so your protons and neutrons are made out of
Speaker 1: upquarks and down quarks. But this is where our intuition
Speaker 1: breaks down. You might imagine that the mass of the
Speaker 1: proton is just the mass of the quarks it's made
Speaker 1: out of, added up, the way the mass of the
Speaker 1: lego cat is the mass of the legos. But it's
Speaker 1: not true because mass is not just the stuff you're
Speaker 1: made out of. Mass is a measure of your internal
Speaker 1: stored energy, which is a much weirder and more astract concept.
Speaker 1: The universe is not required to be intuitive, right, or
Speaker 1: to make any sense to us at all. It's amazing
Speaker 1: we can't understand any of it. But like to give
Speaker 1: you a sense for what I'm talking about. If you
Speaker 1: have a box made of mirrors and you shine a
Speaker 1: photon in there and then slam the door. So now
Speaker 1: the photon is bouncing around inside of it, and I
Speaker 1: ask you, well, what was the mass of the box before?
Speaker 1: And after you'd say, well, you've just added a photon.
Speaker 1: Photons have no mass. You've put a zero mass thing
Speaker 1: in the box, so it has the same mass before
Speaker 1: and after, And you would be wrong because now that
Speaker 1: photon is trapped in the box, it's internal stored energy
Speaker 1: of the box. So the box gained some mass by
Speaker 1: e equals mc squared.
Speaker 2: Wait a minute, Wait a minute. The other day you
Speaker 2: were telling me that energy doesn't have I thought you
Speaker 2: were saying that energy doesn't have mass, and people get
Speaker 2: confused about equals mc squared. Doesn't imply that photons have mass.
Speaker 1: Photons do not have mass. Okay, photons do not have mass,
Speaker 1: But what is mass anyway? Mass is internal stored energy.
Speaker 1: Photons have no internal stored energy. But you can capture
Speaker 1: a photon same way that for example, if you absorb
Speaker 1: a photon you lay in the sun, you absorb photons,
Speaker 1: you gain mass because those photons energy gets converted into
Speaker 1: other kinds of energy in your body, and any internal
Speaker 1: stored energy, that's what mass is.
Speaker 2: So can we get a short answer for how do
Speaker 2: you define energy then? Or is that another philosophical side road?
Speaker 2: So if you've got if you've got a photon in
Speaker 2: a box and now you have more energy, what does
Speaker 2: that imply that energy is?
Speaker 3: Then?
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, we don't really know what energy is if
Speaker 1: you want to go like really deep and fundamental. It's
Speaker 1: not even something that's conserved in the universe, which makes
Speaker 1: it even harder to define. But we have categories. There's
Speaker 1: energy of motion, which is what a photon has. A
Speaker 1: photon is pure energy of motion. Is also internal stored energy,
Speaker 1: which is what mass is. So we have these examples,
Speaker 1: and we know that in many situations that some of
Speaker 1: these two things is conserved that you can convert one
Speaker 1: kind into another and back and forth they slosh back
Speaker 1: and forth. There's also potential energy, which is just energy
Speaker 1: of like configuration. You know, if you have a ball
Speaker 1: on a shelf in a gravitational field, then it has
Speaker 1: energy stored. Like you can make a gravitational battery just
Speaker 1: by lifting concrete blocks up to the top of a building,
Speaker 1: and like that has energy in it, and you can
Speaker 1: recover that energy by like dropping those rocks, and then
Speaker 1: it turns into kinetic energy and you can have that
Speaker 1: spin a wheel which then generates electricity, for example. So
Speaker 1: there's lots of different forms of energy, but mass is
Speaker 1: a measure of your internal stored energy, which is really
Speaker 1: weird because me and what we're talking about is the
Speaker 1: inertial mass of the object, right, Like, how hard is
Speaker 1: it to accelerate it? And if you shine a light
Speaker 1: into a box and then slam the door, you need
Speaker 1: to give it a bigger push to accelerate it to
Speaker 1: the same velocity.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, So you've got that photon in a
Speaker 2: box and you switch one of the quarks to up
Speaker 2: and now you have two or no, you've got three
Speaker 2: quarks in there.
Speaker 1: So photons that you're talking about, photons and protons. Oh,
Speaker 1: I was talking about photons, which.
Speaker 2: Have no mass, but they have quarks.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, protons have quarks, photons, photons. I was using
Speaker 1: photons because they have no mass, which it makes it
Speaker 1: especially obvious that when they add mass to the box,
Speaker 1: it's not because they have stuff to them. It's because
Speaker 1: you now have internal stored energy. You've captured their energy.
Speaker 2: Okay, got it.
Speaker 1: So let's return to the proton, which is a good idea.
Speaker 1: Where does the mass of the proton come from? It
Speaker 1: does get some contribution from the mass of the quarks,
Speaker 1: like those little lego pieces, but those masses are really
Speaker 1: really tiny, like they're about one thousands or two thousands
Speaker 1: of the mass of the proton. Most of the mass
Speaker 1: of the proton comes from the energy of those quarks,
Speaker 1: the binding of them into a proton. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of energy stored in there. And we know there's a
Speaker 1: lot of energy in protons because there's a lot of
Speaker 1: energy in the nucleus. It's the strong nuclear force. This
Speaker 1: is what fission and fusion and deal with, and that's
Speaker 1: why they're so powerful. And so most of the mass
Speaker 1: of the proton doesn't come from the bits it's made
Speaker 1: out of. It comes from the binding energy. And the
Speaker 1: mass of the quarks themselves does come from the Higgs boson.
Speaker 1: But so most of your mass comes from the binding
Speaker 1: energy of quarks inside protons, not from the Higgs boson,
Speaker 1: which gives those quarks mass.
Speaker 2: So, to imagine what this experiment would look like, if
Speaker 2: you wanted to switch your quarks from down to up,
Speaker 2: you would need a bunch of energy to break that
Speaker 2: bond and switch it, and then you don't even really
Speaker 2: have protons anymore.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you wouldn't have protons anymore. So a proton is
Speaker 1: defined as this combination of up and down quarks, and
Speaker 1: you can have other combinations, like you can replace one
Speaker 1: of the up quarks with a charm, or you can
Speaker 1: replace the down with a strange and we've done all those.
Speaker 1: We've seen those particles. We call them other weird things,
Speaker 1: delta's and omegas. You can have three strange quarks. It's
Speaker 1: all sorts of different combinations. These particles can be neutral
Speaker 1: in triplets. It's meaning like their color charges are all balanced.
Speaker 1: And so we've made every possible combination we can make,
Speaker 1: but most of them are not stable. Like even the
Speaker 1: neutron is not stable. The neutron will decay to the proton.
Speaker 1: The proton is the stable one. It's the lowest energy
Speaker 1: state of all of these things. So you can make
Speaker 1: other particles out of quarks, but they wouldn't be stable,
Speaker 1: and they wouldn't be protons. But let's say you did.
Speaker 1: Let's say you took a proton and you made the
Speaker 1: top quark version of it, whatever you call it, and
Speaker 1: you make it like top top bottom, which is an
Speaker 1: analog of like up up down number one. It would
Speaker 1: already be a lot more massive because the quarks themselves
Speaker 1: are much more massive, Like a top quark has the
Speaker 1: mass of one hundred and seventy five protons, right, So
Speaker 1: the upcork has the mass of like a thousands of
Speaker 1: the proton, and the top cork has the mass of
Speaker 1: like almost two hundred protons, So it's a huge ratio.
Speaker 1: Nobody understands this. By the way, why is the top
Speaker 1: quark so much heavier than the upqork. Nobody knows. It's
Speaker 1: just this incredible heavy grand papa of a particle. Nobody
Speaker 1: knows why it's so much more massive, if.
Speaker 2: We could take a quick step back, So up and
Speaker 2: down quarks are different than top and bottom quarks. And
Speaker 2: what are top and bottom quarks again?
Speaker 1: Yeah, top and bottom quarks are the heavy versions of them.
Speaker 1: They're up and down quarks which we use to make
Speaker 1: the proton and neutron. And then, for some reason that's
Speaker 1: a mystery to us, there are other heavier versions of them.
Speaker 1: The charm and the strange are just like the up
Speaker 1: and the down, but they're heavier. The top and the
Speaker 1: bottom are just like the up and the down in
Speaker 1: terms of like electric charges and weak charges and behavior
Speaker 1: and stuff like this, but even heavier, and the top
Speaker 1: and the bottom are like the grandma and grandpa of
Speaker 1: these things. They're much much heavier than they up and
Speaker 1: the down okay, and that's why I think Rebecca was
Speaker 1: asking you about this, because they feel like different flavors
Speaker 1: of the same particle. In fact, we call this field
Speaker 1: flavor physics because if top quark and bottom quark feel
Speaker 1: like different flavors, and people who study this we call
Speaker 1: them heavy flavor physicists, which makes them sound much cooler
Speaker 1: and hip hoppier than they actually are.
Speaker 2: That does sound way cool? Yeah, yeah, they have big
Speaker 2: necklaces and stuff. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: So if you replace the upquorks with top quarks and
Speaker 1: the down quarks with bottom quarks you already just from
Speaker 1: the stuff you're made out of, just from the quarks,
Speaker 1: would increase the mass of this new version of the
Speaker 1: proton by a factor of hundreds, right, So, like a
Speaker 1: particle made out of a top top bottom would have
Speaker 1: a mass just from the quarks of like three hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty five protons. And that doesn't even account for
Speaker 1: the binding energy, which is most of the mass of
Speaker 1: the proton. So now this new particle you're building, what
Speaker 1: would be the binding energy this thing? How much binding
Speaker 1: energy is required to bring two top quarks and a
Speaker 1: bottom cork together. We don't know. We can't do that
Speaker 1: calculation because quantum physics in the strong force is too hard,
Speaker 1: Like we can barely calculate what the mass of the
Speaker 1: proton is. It's like not an easy thing to calculate
Speaker 1: because the strong force is so strong that every time
Speaker 1: you try to do a calculation, there's gluons, and those
Speaker 1: gluons make more gluons, and those gluons make more gluons,
Speaker 1: and those gluons stick to each other and interact with
Speaker 1: each other. It gets very complicated, and all the tricks
Speaker 1: we can use for other weaker forces don't work because
Speaker 1: the approximations break down. So we can't make that prediction.
Speaker 1: I don't know the answer to that. Nobody knows the
Speaker 1: answer to that. But I can tell you that that particle,
Speaker 1: if you made it, it wouldn't be a proton, and
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be stable. Right. Top quarks are not stable,
Speaker 1: bottom quarks are not stable. No combinations of these quarks
Speaker 1: are stable except for the proton, And so this top
Speaker 1: top bottom thing that Rebecca wants to build would definitely
Speaker 1: not be stable. So if you're designing some like super
Speaker 1: massive version of humanity and you made it out of
Speaker 1: these things, it would last for like ten to the
Speaker 1: negative twenty three seconds before decayed into something else. Probably
Speaker 1: you would end up with protons.
Speaker 2: You know, I gotta admit I misunderstood Rebecca's question initially.
Speaker 2: So what she says is the proton is made of
Speaker 2: up and down quirks, which are light. I thought she
Speaker 2: was asking if we instead of having up up down,
Speaker 2: what if it was all up up up, How would
Speaker 2: that change the mass? But now, oh, and I thought
Speaker 2: maybe top was another way of referring to up, because
Speaker 2: it's because up it's on top. But now now it
Speaker 2: is all clear.
Speaker 1: The top is just another example of particle physicists being
Speaker 1: brilliant at naming things. You know, top and bottom is
Speaker 1: like an analogy to up and down. Don't ask me
Speaker 1: why charm and strange are called charm and strange. It
Speaker 1: breaks the pattern.
Speaker 2: But I'm sure my confusion with the question reveals how
Speaker 2: clear you guys are with your naming.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a whole group of physicists who reject
Speaker 1: the names top and bottom, and they call them truth
Speaker 1: and beauty. And so there's a whole group of people
Speaker 1: who say, we don't do flavor physics, we do beauty physics.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, do you guys like get really heated? Do
Speaker 2: guys and gals get really heated at conferences about this
Speaker 2: kind of stuff?
Speaker 1: More snide and snarky than heated.
Speaker 2: But yeah, we're all just human beings after all, all.
Speaker 1: Right, Rebecca. So the answer your question is, if you
Speaker 1: tried to put Rebecca together with top quirks, you would
Speaker 1: be very very massive, at least hundreds of times more massive,
Speaker 1: probably much much more, and you would also decay very
Speaker 1: quickly down to protonic.
Speaker 2: Rebecca, sounds like a bad idea, Rebecca, I don't recommend it.
Speaker 1: No, let us know how it works. I'm curious. Maybe
Speaker 1: you'll discover something awesome.
Speaker 2: We don't want to lose a listener, all right, Rebecca,
Speaker 2: what do you think?
Speaker 5: Daniel N Kelly, thank you so much for giving me
Speaker 5: the extra time and your indulgence responding to your answer.
Speaker 5: Don't think I didn't notice the terminology drift from a
Speaker 5: barrister to lawyer, and I know that you have spared
Speaker 5: yourself having to explain to all of your viewers that
Speaker 5: in the UK, barristers don't actually make coffee. Anyway, back
Speaker 5: to the quirky cork question. Thank you very much Daniel
Speaker 5: for explaining the difference between the ups and the tops
Speaker 5: and the downs and the bottoms, which now actually makes
Speaker 5: good sense to me. However, it strikes me that there
Speaker 5: is research to be had because it doesn't explain why
Speaker 5: people gain weight over the winter months, specifically in the
Speaker 5: holiday season. And I wonder if there is a moment
Speaker 5: in time, possibly due to reduced photons in the atmosphere
Speaker 5: at that time of year, that in fact all of
Speaker 5: the fields do a switcheraroo and my protons are comprised
Speaker 5: of top bottom rather than up down, and that accounts
Speaker 5: for the weight gain. I think that there is money
Speaker 5: to be had in researching this. What do you think?
Speaker 2: All right? Sorry? Next question is from Robert noted that
Speaker 2: on an episode I made a mistake by joking about
Speaker 2: something that actually happens. Let's hear Robert's question who.
Speaker 4: In one of the podcasts for Passing Months, Kelly made
Speaker 4: a random side comment about how it'd be cool if
Speaker 4: he didn't carrots turn the orange, which, as it turns out,
Speaker 4: actually does. I don't really understand how though, so I'd
Speaker 4: love it if you can look into why and do
Speaker 4: some sort of segment about krotinemia beta caroteenes and all that.
Speaker 1: Thanks, all right, Kelly being called out by our audience.
Speaker 1: I wonder if this is a physics inspired listener that
Speaker 1: would be juicy.
Speaker 2: I don't know, but I would like all listeners to
Speaker 2: call me out. At least I assume you'd like us
Speaker 2: both be called out if you if you catch us
Speaker 2: making a mistake, please correct us. We want to get
Speaker 2: this stuff right. And you know, lots of times knowledge
Speaker 2: is moving quickly and we might not be all caught up.
Speaker 2: But in this case, this is something that I got wrong.
Speaker 2: We've known this for a long time. I think I
Speaker 2: knew it, but I've since forgotten.
Speaker 1: And so well, let's dig in and marinate in your wrongness.
Speaker 1: What exactly did you say? And exactly how.
Speaker 2: This is my favorite thing to do? Uh so, so
Speaker 2: I said, I think I made some joke about like,
Speaker 2: wouldn't it be funny if you turned orange when you
Speaker 2: ate carrots? And this is called caratinemia. And it's not
Speaker 2: called caratinemia because you ate carrots. It's called caratinemia because
Speaker 2: of the carotene that you find in a lot of
Speaker 2: different kinds of fruits and veggies.
Speaker 1: And are carrots called carrots because of beta carotene or
Speaker 1: is it just a totally random connection.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna bet that carrots had a name long before
Speaker 2: we knew what carotene was.
Speaker 1: Well, Google tells me that the word originates from a
Speaker 1: Greek word, which is derived from an Indo European word
Speaker 1: for horn or head. So it has to do with
Speaker 1: the shape of the top of the carrot.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, and caratene is not spelled C A R
Speaker 2: R O T E ny, It's just got one R.
Speaker 2: So maybe it's just a coincidence. So anyway, around World
Speaker 2: War One and World War Two, actually caratinemia I'm going
Speaker 2: to slow down and stumble every time I have to
Speaker 2: say it was actually moderately common because there were some
Speaker 2: food shortages and lots of people kept eating large quantities
Speaker 2: of the same fruits or of veggies, and lots of
Speaker 2: different kinds of fruits and vegetables not just carrots have
Speaker 2: carotene in them.
Speaker 1: What's an example of something that's not a carrot but
Speaker 1: has a lot of bit of carotene in it?
Speaker 2: Apricots, mangoes, oranges, green beans, et cetera. Lots of different
Speaker 2: fruits and vegetables have it.
Speaker 1: So these are all sort of orangey stuff until you
Speaker 1: got the green beans.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they don't have to be orange. And if you remember,
Speaker 2: we were talking about krotenoids when we were talking about flamingoes,
Speaker 2: and we were talking about how flamingoes extract the krotenoids
Speaker 2: from the food that they eat and they use that
Speaker 2: to make themselves pink, and they're not always eating pink foods.
Speaker 2: It has to do with how your body sort of
Speaker 2: converts and deals with these products. So in our body,
Speaker 2: when we consume carotenoids in our liver, we convert some
Speaker 2: of those carotenoids into vitamin A using a particular kind
Speaker 2: of enzyme that we have, and then we go ahead
Speaker 2: and we use that vitamin A to help us with
Speaker 2: things like vision and the functioning of our immune system.
Speaker 2: But if you have too much vitamin A, it can
Speaker 2: be toxic. So no matter how much beta caroteen we consume,
Speaker 2: our bodies only convert a small amount of it to
Speaker 2: vitamin a.
Speaker 1: Is that because we only need a certain amount of
Speaker 1: vitamin A, our body is not capable of converting more
Speaker 1: or why is it rejected?
Speaker 2: We only need a certain amount, and if you have
Speaker 2: too much, it becomes toxic, and so our body sort
Speaker 2: of protects us from that toxicity by only converting some
Speaker 2: amount of it well into vitamin A. Yeah, go us,
Speaker 2: go us. But our body still has it, and it
Speaker 2: binds to fat, and if you accumulate enough of it,
Speaker 2: sometimes you can actually see those accumulations in our hands
Speaker 2: and in the soles of our feet. So when you
Speaker 2: get caratinemia kerosinemia, see how fast I said it, I'm
Speaker 2: really good. So when you get keratinemia, you mostly can
Speaker 2: see like a yellowish tint in your souls and in
Speaker 2: your hands. You don't tend to get it in your
Speaker 2: eyes because your eyes don't have the right kind of
Speaker 2: stuff for the carotenoids to bind to. And this is
Speaker 2: one of the ways that you tell the difference between
Speaker 2: if somebody has jaundice, which is a liver problem, versus keratinemia.
Speaker 2: If their eyes aren't yellow, they probably don't have jaundice.
Speaker 2: But anyway, so it tends to build up. And you
Speaker 2: could also get licopenia, which is when you have too
Speaker 2: many tomatoes, which has a different kind of carotenoid called lycopene.
Speaker 2: I eat a lot of tomatoes, which, yeah, well are
Speaker 2: you yellow?
Speaker 1: Everyone's a little yellow, right, I.
Speaker 2: Get well, you're not noticeably yellow, and you don't have
Speaker 2: yellow hands, so you have probably haven't eaten too much.
Speaker 2: In general, this condition isn't dangerous, and you know we
Speaker 2: think that in general. Like you, if you become orange
Speaker 2: or yellowy, the solution is to just change your diet,
Speaker 2: stop eating that stuff. Eventually your body will extract the
Speaker 2: kerotene and you will go back to your normal tone.
Speaker 2: But I did find a paper that said, you know,
Speaker 2: this problem is almost never associated with poor health. Quote. However,
Speaker 2: a man who allegedly ate six to seven pounds of
Speaker 2: carrots weekly was found to have constipation, hyper keratinemia, increase
Speaker 2: liver enzymes, and possible vitamin A toxicity. So you can
Speaker 2: overdo it, guys. Your body tries to save us. But
Speaker 2: if you're eating six to seven pounds of carrots weekly,
Speaker 2: you might have some problems.
Speaker 1: Is this a carrot farmer or what's the story with
Speaker 1: this guy?
Speaker 2: That's all I could find. I don't know. Man, moderations,
Speaker 2: that's right, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 1: Throw in some tomatoes, dude, geez.
Speaker 2: That's right. Have a little leycopenia to go with your caratinymia.
Speaker 1: Wow, this is fascinating, and so can people google to
Speaker 1: get like pictures of people with kerotinemia that look crazy orange?
Speaker 1: Is it impressive or is it sort of underwhelming?
Speaker 2: It's kind of under not super impressive, And that's a
Speaker 2: fairly safe Google search as far as I can tell,
Speaker 2: I don't remember seeing anything.
Speaker 1: More than pinworms.
Speaker 2: I'm guessing yeah, yeah, I don't recommend actually looking up
Speaker 2: pinworms pictures of pinworms. But anyway, that's the answer that
Speaker 2: I have for Robert.
Speaker 1: And so is there anything else that if you eat it,
Speaker 1: you will turn that color? Can I turn purple by
Speaker 1: eating enough eggplant?
Speaker 2: I don't know about eggplant in particular, but any of
Speaker 2: those plants, be they fruit or vegetables that have a
Speaker 2: lot of carotenoids, you risk your body storing them in
Speaker 2: your in your body as something that will make you yellowy.
Speaker 1: So well, as a kid, I enjoyed having a blue
Speaker 1: tongue after eating blueberries. It's something really cool about that.
Speaker 1: But like, you are what you eat, and you get
Speaker 1: that color. That's super cool. So it's kind of cool
Speaker 1: to like turn orange after eating carros. It feels like
Speaker 1: cartoony biology, but real it does.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I like that you can do this without
Speaker 2: yourself too much.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it is so sort of counterintuitive that if
Speaker 2: you eat too many green beans you could turn yellow
Speaker 2: or orange. But it is weird.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well it depends, right, because it's biology.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right. But unlike physics, I had a
Speaker 2: clear answer. And so let's see what Robert thinks of
Speaker 2: our clear answer. And Robert pick a team biology. Ooh no,
Speaker 2: I'm just kidding. You don't have to do that. Can't
Speaker 2: we all just get on you started it.
Speaker 1: I say, after tossing so many bos.
Speaker 2: All right, that's right.
Speaker 4: That is super interesting. I would not have expected it
Speaker 4: to be a lipid binding process. Wonder if that means
Speaker 4: if a person got liposuction procedure, if the adiposse would
Speaker 4: also come out more yellowish. Super cool regardless, So thank
Speaker 4: you for so much for ixporing my question. And as
Speaker 4: my degrees are social work, psychology, and sexuality, I'm gonna
Speaker 4: have to abstain from your biology and physics rivalry. I
Speaker 4: think all science is great, nothing more human than one
Speaker 4: to understand.
Speaker 1: All right, thank you Robert for writing it, and thanks to
Speaker 1: everybody who's saying and your questions. We really do love
Speaker 1: hearing from you. Write to us Questions at Daniel and
Speaker 1: Kelly dot org.
Speaker 2: Looking forward to hearing your questions. Thanks. Daniel and Kelly's
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