WEBVTT - Listener Questions #38

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<v Speaker 1>If telescopes looked back from afar, what signs of Earth

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<v Speaker 1>would glow? Would life in air and seas be something

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<v Speaker 1>it could know?

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<v Speaker 2>As sole survivors in the genus Homo, we've taken the throne.

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<v Speaker 2>But are there other genera where a species is similarly alone?

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<v Speaker 1>From the tiniest speck to giants tall? How small or

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<v Speaker 1>big can thinkers be at all?

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<v Speaker 3>Mmmmm woo which whatever questions keep you up at night,

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<v Speaker 3>Daniel and Kelly's answers will make it right.

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<v Speaker 1>Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe. Listener Questions number

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<v Speaker 1>thirty eight.

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<v Speaker 4>Whoop whoop. Hello. I'm Kelly Waiter Smith.

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<v Speaker 2>I study parasites and space, and it's an exciting week

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<v Speaker 2>to be someone who studies space.

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<v Speaker 4>Do you know why, Daniel?

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<v Speaker 2>Hi?

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<v Speaker 1>I'm Daniel. I study aliens and physics. And yes I'm

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<v Speaker 1>aware of the Artemis launch because I do not live underground.

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<v Speaker 4>Well okay, but so here's the thing, right, Okay, so

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<v Speaker 4>you know.

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<v Speaker 2>Of course I was watching the Artemis launch, and I

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<v Speaker 2>was watching it when my daughter got off the bus

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<v Speaker 2>and got home from school, and she came home and

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<v Speaker 2>she's like, what are you watching?

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<v Speaker 4>And I was like I'm watching the humans that are

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<v Speaker 4>going back to the Moon, and she goes, what, and so,

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<v Speaker 4>you know, I haven't didn't know.

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<v Speaker 2>No, And so I don't think that the kids are

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<v Speaker 2>like talking about this, Like I don't think that like

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<v Speaker 2>this generation is very excited about the fact that we're

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<v Speaker 2>sending people back to the moon.

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<v Speaker 4>What's your sense?

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<v Speaker 1>That's a great question. And you know, I just realized

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<v Speaker 1>now that I don't think I've discussed it with my

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<v Speaker 1>kids at all. I just sort of watched it myself,

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<v Speaker 1>and I have no idea if they know anything about it.

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<v Speaker 1>Hold on, let's find out.

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<v Speaker 4>Okay, isn't she supposed to be at school right now?

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<v Speaker 1>Hi, Hazel? Did you know that we just sent astronauts

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<v Speaker 1>back to the moon? You know about Artemis?

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<v Speaker 5>Wait on the podcast?

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<v Speaker 1>Yes Live? And do you think it's cool or whatever?

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<v Speaker 1>I think it's interesting, but I probably wouldn't have been

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<v Speaker 1>very much time thinking about it. Cool. All right, thank you,

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<v Speaker 1>have a good day. Okay, thanks Pye.

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<v Speaker 4>Disappointing answer.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah, for all the money that was spent on it, Yeah,

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<v Speaker 2>I mean Ada was excited and then we so, you know,

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<v Speaker 2>we watched she sat with me, we watched the launch

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<v Speaker 2>and then we sat for a while and we were

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<v Speaker 2>watching the like live feed, and she was like, well,

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<v Speaker 2>when do we get to see like the astronauts, and

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<v Speaker 2>as like, I guess they're not going to show you

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<v Speaker 2>the inside. So, like you know, they were doing they've

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<v Speaker 2>got to go around Earth a couple times before they

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<v Speaker 2>leave you know, the orbits of Earth to head to

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<v Speaker 2>the Moon, and I guess they decided they weren't going

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<v Speaker 2>to show the astronauts on the inside because they were

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<v Speaker 2>you know, doing multiple tasks or whatever. But Ada was

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<v Speaker 2>really bummed. She's like, well, I want to see what

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<v Speaker 2>they look like.

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<v Speaker 1>What it's like for them, and then imagined herself in

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<v Speaker 1>that ship.

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<v Speaker 2>Probably yeah, yeah, And so not only had she not

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<v Speaker 2>heard about it, but then she really didn't get to

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<v Speaker 2>see the people at all. And the next day she

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<v Speaker 2>didn't ask is there any news about the astronauts? And

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<v Speaker 2>I know they're not landing, but I think the kids

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<v Speaker 2>are already sort of not super excited about it.

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<v Speaker 1>Well, let me ask you what aspect of it is

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<v Speaker 1>very cool for you? Which part is getting you excited?

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<v Speaker 2>Well, so I'm hoping that we will start doing more

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<v Speaker 2>consistent research, like we'll set up a research station, and

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<v Speaker 2>then we will we'll have like long term research program

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<v Speaker 2>on the Moon so that we can.

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<v Speaker 1>Learn about like life and low gravity out in space

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<v Speaker 1>and radiation and all the kind of stuff you guys

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<v Speaker 1>recommended in your book that we need to do to

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<v Speaker 1>be serious about settling space.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I'm hoping we do all of that stuff now,

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<v Speaker 2>but you know that would be really expensive, and so

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<v Speaker 2>that would require us to do something very different than

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<v Speaker 2>what we did last time, which was just go to

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<v Speaker 2>beat the Soviets and then go home because we had

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<v Speaker 2>done it. And so you know, if we're just going

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<v Speaker 2>to show the Chinese that we can do it again,

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<v Speaker 2>just to beat them before they try to do it,

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<v Speaker 2>and then we stop, then it will be sort of

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<v Speaker 2>anti climactic and like, oh, all right, we spent a

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<v Speaker 2>bunch of money to prove we could do it again,

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<v Speaker 2>and now we're going to stop. Eah. But I don't

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<v Speaker 2>know what about you? Are you excited and if so, why.

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<v Speaker 1>Well that's just so like thoughtful and future thinking. Is

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<v Speaker 1>there a part of you that just feels like a

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<v Speaker 1>visceral excitement like big rocket go boom, you know, or

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<v Speaker 1>like people are in space? You know, there's just the

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<v Speaker 1>immediacy of that. Isn't that cool?

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<v Speaker 4>That is cool.

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<v Speaker 2>I'm glad the big rocket didn't go boom. That's what

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<v Speaker 2>I was worried about that I wanted big rocket.

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<v Speaker 4>Not go boom.

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<v Speaker 2>But no, I mean, I thought that was cool. But

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<v Speaker 2>I also think it's cool just when we get a

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<v Speaker 2>satellite into space without the rocket going boom, Like it's

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<v Speaker 2>very easy to get me excited about space stuff. But yeah, yeah,

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<v Speaker 2>I think it's cool that we've got humans going to

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<v Speaker 2>the Moon again.

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<v Speaker 1>I'm always excited about, like things go into space. That's

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<v Speaker 1>very cool. Every Falcon launch or whatever. I think it's

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<v Speaker 1>pretty fun. This mission, in particular, I'm like not sure

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<v Speaker 1>what we're learning or what we're doing. We haven't done before.

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<v Speaker 1>So it's also exciting in the sense that things are

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<v Speaker 1>starting again and we're exploring, we're working towards something in

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<v Speaker 1>the future. So a lot of the excitement for me

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<v Speaker 1>also comes from the promise of what this might mean.

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<v Speaker 2>If we go to the Moon, touch our feet down

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<v Speaker 2>on the Moon and we don't stay this time, I

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<v Speaker 2>will be bummed that we didn't spend that money on

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<v Speaker 2>things like an exploratory mission to Europe up or something

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<v Speaker 2>like that like we could have explore used robots to

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<v Speaker 2>explore other stuff and gotten more data and like, cause

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<v Speaker 2>you know, robots can do more than humans can. And

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<v Speaker 2>so if we spent all this money to get humans

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<v Speaker 2>to the moon and then we don't figure out a

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<v Speaker 2>way to stay there.

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<v Speaker 4>I'll be bummed.

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<v Speaker 2>Anyway, Hopefully this time we'll stay and we'll do more

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<v Speaker 2>research and get the data. But anyway, we'll have to

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<v Speaker 2>wait and see. But I'm glad the rocket did not

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<v Speaker 2>go boom.

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<v Speaker 1>Yep, and good luck to all the astronauts.

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<v Speaker 2>Yes right, and oh yeah, and you know, I am

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<v Speaker 2>excited that we have a woman in space, we have

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<v Speaker 2>a black man in space, and we have a Canadian

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<v Speaker 2>in space, and so those are all exciting things to me.

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<v Speaker 4>So I am excited about those firsts.

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<v Speaker 2>I mean, there have been Canadians in space before, but yeah,

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<v Speaker 2>not to the moon, you know, so hooray.

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<v Speaker 1>And I'm excited to be answering questions from our listeners

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<v Speaker 1>today because one of the exciting things about space is

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<v Speaker 1>the sense of exploration, pushing back on what we don't know.

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<v Speaker 1>And that's exactly what we're trying to do here on

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<v Speaker 1>the podcast, is to dive deep into your curiosity and

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<v Speaker 1>push back what you don't understand to broaden your mental

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<v Speaker 1>picture of the universe.

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<v Speaker 4>If Daniel wasn't here, we would never get to the point.

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<v Speaker 2>So thank goodness we have Daniel to keep us on track,

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<v Speaker 2>and so let's go ahead and get to Jonas's question

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<v Speaker 2>about space telescopes.

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<v Speaker 6>Hi Daniel, Hi Kelly. My question came to mind some

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<v Speaker 6>time ago, back when the James Reap telescope was a

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<v Speaker 6>big topic in the media and in podcasts like yours.

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<v Speaker 6>If it were pointed at Earth from the distance of

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<v Speaker 6>the nearest Earth like exoplanet, what could it actually detect?

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<v Speaker 6>How would Earth's appearance be shaped by its physical properties?

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<v Speaker 6>And could any biological signatures such as signs of life

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<v Speaker 6>in the atmosphere realistically be inferred. Many thanks for exploring

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<v Speaker 6>this question.

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<v Speaker 4>This is a fantastic question that I don't know the

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<v Speaker 4>answer to.

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<v Speaker 1>It's a very cool question because he's putting himself in

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<v Speaker 1>the minds of aliens and wondering if there are aliens

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<v Speaker 1>out there that are similar to us, could they see

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<v Speaker 1>us right. It's a great question because obviously we haven't

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<v Speaker 1>seen any aliens yet, and so he's wondering if the

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<v Speaker 1>reverse is true. Maybe aliens will discover us before we

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<v Speaker 1>discover them, but it's also a good way to understand

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<v Speaker 1>what we could possibly see with our technology.

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<v Speaker 2>Yes, and so of course you would love someone who

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<v Speaker 2>is thinking like an alien or thinking about aliens. And

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<v Speaker 2>so let's go ahead and talk about what telescopes can see.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah. I think there's a lot of misconception about what

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<v Speaker 1>telescopes actually do. And people imagine that really powerful telescopes

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<v Speaker 1>could maybe like show you what's happening on the surface

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<v Speaker 1>of an exoplanet or something. But telescopes are really good

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<v Speaker 1>at seeing distant, dim, huge things. They're not very good

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<v Speaker 1>at seeing small things that are far away, which is

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<v Speaker 1>what Jonas is hoping that they could see. And the

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<v Speaker 1>reason is a little bit of physics which is important

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<v Speaker 1>to understand telescopes, which is the diffraction limit.

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<v Speaker 2>And so you're saying Earth would be a small thing,

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<v Speaker 2>So what would be a big thing like the Sun?

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<v Speaker 2>Or are we talking about like entire solar systems or

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<v Speaker 2>entire galaxies?

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<v Speaker 4>What counts as big?

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah, galaxies are big, and that's why when we point

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<v Speaker 1>James web telescope into the distant cosmos, the kind of

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<v Speaker 1>things we're seeing are entire galaxies. Because they're big, they

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<v Speaker 1>take up enough of the sky that we can resolve them.

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<v Speaker 1>We can see them.

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<v Speaker 2>Back to diffraction. I got you off track, that's what

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<v Speaker 2>I do? You get au spec on? Okay.

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<v Speaker 1>Essentially, there's a minimum pixel size in the sky the

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<v Speaker 1>telescopes can resolve. And the reason is that light at

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<v Speaker 1>this scale acts like a wave. If light was just

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<v Speaker 1>made of tiny, little geometrical particles, little balls with perfect resolution,

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<v Speaker 1>then you wouldn't have this effect. But when light enters

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<v Speaker 1>the telescope, it goes through an aperture. Right, This is

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<v Speaker 1>the opening and the telescope that gathers the light. And

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<v Speaker 1>anytime a wave goes through a hole or through any

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<v Speaker 1>sort of opening, you can model it like a series

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<v Speaker 1>of sources across that opening. This is sort of like

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<v Speaker 1>the granddaddy version of interference.

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<v Speaker 5>Right.

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<v Speaker 1>If you have, for example, two sources of light, then

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<v Speaker 1>in some places those two sources of light will line

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<v Speaker 1>up to be brighter, and in other places they will

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<v Speaker 1>light up to cancel out. Right, Because waves go up

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<v Speaker 1>and down and up and down, and if the up

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<v Speaker 1>from one wave hits the down from the other wave,

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<v Speaker 1>they cancel out and if the up hits the up,

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<v Speaker 1>then they add to each other, right, So that's interference.

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<v Speaker 1>So if you have two sources of light, then you

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<v Speaker 1>get like an interference pattern across a screen. Right. Well,

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<v Speaker 1>when light comes through an opening, you can model that

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<v Speaker 1>as a bunch of sources across the.

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<v Speaker 4>Opening, okay, and so some will interfere.

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<v Speaker 1>And so exactly you get interference between all of those.

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<v Speaker 1>And so you can't have an opening, you can't have

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<v Speaker 1>an aperture, you can't gather light without getting some interference.

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<v Speaker 1>It's impossible to avoid interference. This is the process we

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<v Speaker 1>call diffraction. Anytime light passes through an opening, you get

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<v Speaker 1>interference among itself because the light that comes out of

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<v Speaker 1>the opening is just like as if you had a

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<v Speaker 1>series of sources across that opening, okay, And so any

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<v Speaker 1>optical system, even if you have perfect optics with no

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<v Speaker 1>app or anything like that, you're gonna get interference because

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<v Speaker 1>you have an aperture, and that causes fuzziness, right, And

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<v Speaker 1>so essentially you can't resolve things that are really really small.

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<v Speaker 1>And the size to the effective resolution, the size of

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<v Speaker 1>a pixel on the sky depends on the size of

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<v Speaker 1>your aperture and the wavelength of light that you're gathering,

0:11:21.280 --> 0:11:25.559
<v Speaker 1>and so for various wavelengths and various sizes of your telescope,

0:11:25.920 --> 0:11:28.720
<v Speaker 1>you can resolve a pixel in the sky of various sizes.

0:11:29.320 --> 0:11:32.360
<v Speaker 1>So the human pupil has an aperture that's like a

0:11:32.400 --> 0:11:37.560
<v Speaker 1>few millimeters across, and so its diffraction limited resolution for

0:11:37.679 --> 0:11:43.040
<v Speaker 1>like visible light is like ten or twenty arcseconds, and

0:11:43.240 --> 0:11:46.560
<v Speaker 1>Hubble is like two and a half meters across, and

0:11:46.640 --> 0:11:50.240
<v Speaker 1>so its diffraction limited resolution is like zero point one

0:11:50.600 --> 0:11:54.720
<v Speaker 1>arc seconds, right, so much much smaller. So the pixels

0:11:54.760 --> 0:11:57.079
<v Speaker 1>you get with Hubble are much smaller in the sky

0:11:57.160 --> 0:11:59.520
<v Speaker 1>than the pixels you get from the naked eye because

0:11:59.559 --> 0:12:02.360
<v Speaker 1>has a big your aperture, and James Webb is like

0:12:02.480 --> 0:12:05.320
<v Speaker 1>six and a half meters wide, so it's even better.

0:12:05.800 --> 0:12:10.600
<v Speaker 1>But still these pixels are too big to see like

0:12:10.760 --> 0:12:13.440
<v Speaker 1>the surface of an exoplanet. You're never gonna like spy

0:12:13.679 --> 0:12:17.520
<v Speaker 1>on an alien having dinner on an exoplanet because the

0:12:17.600 --> 0:12:21.640
<v Speaker 1>size of that alien dinner in our sky is much

0:12:21.840 --> 0:12:25.040
<v Speaker 1>much smaller than anything we can resolve. So what these

0:12:25.080 --> 0:12:28.680
<v Speaker 1>telescopes are good at is accumulating a bunch of photons

0:12:28.679 --> 0:12:32.600
<v Speaker 1>from dim things that are huge, big enough to see

0:12:32.600 --> 0:12:35.320
<v Speaker 1>in our sky, but too dim to make out with

0:12:35.360 --> 0:12:37.640
<v Speaker 1>the naked eye, so you can just point the telescope

0:12:37.679 --> 0:12:40.040
<v Speaker 1>at them for a long time and then you can

0:12:40.080 --> 0:12:43.800
<v Speaker 1>gather enough photons so that it then appears. A great

0:12:43.840 --> 0:12:48.200
<v Speaker 1>example is like Andromeda. Andromeda is really big. It's a

0:12:48.280 --> 0:12:51.640
<v Speaker 1>huge galaxy. It's actually quite large in the sky. It's

0:12:51.679 --> 0:12:54.720
<v Speaker 1>bigger than a full moon, but you can't see it

0:12:54.760 --> 0:12:57.280
<v Speaker 1>with the naked eye because it's too dim. But you

0:12:57.360 --> 0:12:59.600
<v Speaker 1>point a telescope at it and gathered for a while,

0:12:59.640 --> 0:13:02.600
<v Speaker 1>you can get a really nice picture of Androma because

0:13:02.600 --> 0:13:07.040
<v Speaker 1>it's big, much bigger than diffraction limited resolution and just

0:13:07.080 --> 0:13:09.280
<v Speaker 1>too dim for your eye to make out, so your

0:13:09.320 --> 0:13:12.280
<v Speaker 1>telescope can accumulate enough photons to get an image of it.

0:13:12.960 --> 0:13:15.680
<v Speaker 2>Okay, so the good news is that the telescopes save

0:13:15.760 --> 0:13:18.560
<v Speaker 2>us from ourselves. We can't be creepy and spy on

0:13:18.880 --> 0:13:20.640
<v Speaker 2>the aliens in great detail.

0:13:20.800 --> 0:13:23.080
<v Speaker 1>That's not good news. No, we want to be creepy

0:13:23.120 --> 0:13:24.199
<v Speaker 1>and spy on the aliens.

0:13:24.440 --> 0:13:28.960
<v Speaker 2>Oh okay, okay, but what can we learn about the aliens?

0:13:28.960 --> 0:13:31.080
<v Speaker 2>Can we learn if they are there or not? Like,

0:13:31.120 --> 0:13:32.600
<v Speaker 2>can we detect life or not?

0:13:33.320 --> 0:13:37.360
<v Speaker 1>So currently with like jwst A distant Earth from a

0:13:37.440 --> 0:13:41.040
<v Speaker 1>nearby exoplanet would just be a pixel. Right, Okay, you

0:13:41.120 --> 0:13:44.560
<v Speaker 1>just see like one pixel. Now, with future telescopes, maybe

0:13:44.720 --> 0:13:47.480
<v Speaker 1>we could see more, right, but to have a resolution

0:13:47.559 --> 0:13:50.520
<v Speaker 1>and like spy on the surface of the planet, you'd

0:13:50.520 --> 0:13:53.760
<v Speaker 1>need an aperture like the size of the sun. Wow,

0:13:53.800 --> 0:13:56.040
<v Speaker 1>all right, we're talking about a telescope the size of

0:13:56.080 --> 0:13:59.160
<v Speaker 1>the Sun, and that's possible. You can actually use the

0:13:59.200 --> 0:14:02.720
<v Speaker 1>Sun and it's gravity to bend light and focus it

0:14:03.000 --> 0:14:05.200
<v Speaker 1>into a collector, so you could use the whole solar

0:14:05.240 --> 0:14:08.000
<v Speaker 1>system as a telescope. That's like really an idea we

0:14:08.040 --> 0:14:10.360
<v Speaker 1>could pull off one day and you could use that

0:14:10.480 --> 0:14:14.920
<v Speaker 1>to look at aliens having dinner. But currently that whole

0:14:14.920 --> 0:14:17.440
<v Speaker 1>alien planet would be a pixel. That doesn't mean it

0:14:17.440 --> 0:14:19.160
<v Speaker 1>you couldn't learn anything about it, right, It would be

0:14:19.200 --> 0:14:22.480
<v Speaker 1>a super interesting pixel because if you think, oh, it's

0:14:22.480 --> 0:14:24.920
<v Speaker 1>just one pixel, it's just one piece of information. But

0:14:24.960 --> 0:14:28.960
<v Speaker 1>there's a lot of information in two different dimensions. There's

0:14:29.040 --> 0:14:32.360
<v Speaker 1>how the pixel varies with time and also how the

0:14:32.360 --> 0:14:36.800
<v Speaker 1>brightness of the pixel varies versus wavelength. Right, one pixel

0:14:36.800 --> 0:14:40.160
<v Speaker 1>means contributions from lots of different frequencies of light. Is

0:14:40.200 --> 0:14:42.560
<v Speaker 1>it red? Is it blue? Are there greens in there?

0:14:42.680 --> 0:14:44.400
<v Speaker 1>And we can tell a lot from how the light

0:14:44.520 --> 0:14:47.600
<v Speaker 1>varies with time and how the light varies with frequency.

0:14:48.200 --> 0:14:50.120
<v Speaker 4>Okay, what can we tell?

0:14:50.800 --> 0:14:54.680
<v Speaker 1>So Earth emits in two major ways. Number one is

0:14:54.720 --> 0:14:57.920
<v Speaker 1>it glows just because it has a temperature, right, Like

0:14:58.080 --> 0:15:00.920
<v Speaker 1>Earth is pretty cool, and everything in the universe that

0:15:00.960 --> 0:15:03.680
<v Speaker 1>has a temperature glows. And so you can tell the

0:15:03.720 --> 0:15:06.960
<v Speaker 1>temperature of Earth by the frequency at which it glows.

0:15:07.560 --> 0:15:09.160
<v Speaker 1>Like you take that pixel and you pass it through

0:15:09.200 --> 0:15:12.000
<v Speaker 1>a prism, and you can see which colors of light

0:15:12.080 --> 0:15:14.560
<v Speaker 1>come out. And from the various frequencies of light, you

0:15:14.600 --> 0:15:17.360
<v Speaker 1>can see the black body radiation of Earth. And you

0:15:17.400 --> 0:15:20.160
<v Speaker 1>can use that to deduce the surface temperature of Earth

0:15:20.440 --> 0:15:23.640
<v Speaker 1>from a distance. Right. That's very cool, and so you

0:15:23.640 --> 0:15:25.960
<v Speaker 1>can tell, oh, the Earth is approximately what we call

0:15:26.120 --> 0:15:29.840
<v Speaker 1>room temperature, or maybe it's not. Maybe it's covered in magma,

0:15:29.920 --> 0:15:32.240
<v Speaker 1>it's super hot, or it's an ice ball, right, So

0:15:32.320 --> 0:15:35.000
<v Speaker 1>you can learn something about the temperature of the Earth.

0:15:35.440 --> 0:15:38.160
<v Speaker 1>The Earth also reflects a lot of sunlight. So it's

0:15:38.200 --> 0:15:41.440
<v Speaker 1>two major emissions. There's black body radiation from the temperature

0:15:41.480 --> 0:15:45.520
<v Speaker 1>of the Earth, and there's reflection of sunlight. A reflection

0:15:45.640 --> 0:15:48.520
<v Speaker 1>mostly happens when you have oceans and when you have clouds,

0:15:49.040 --> 0:15:51.840
<v Speaker 1>So you can tell, hey, is it cloudy on that

0:15:51.960 --> 0:15:55.360
<v Speaker 1>planet or is it a water planet? Right, so you

0:15:55.360 --> 0:15:57.160
<v Speaker 1>can get a sense for the cloud cover. You can

0:15:57.160 --> 0:15:59.680
<v Speaker 1>get a sense for the water cover of this planet

0:16:00.080 --> 0:16:02.920
<v Speaker 1>from this one pixel. Right. And the reason we've developed

0:16:02.960 --> 0:16:06.040
<v Speaker 1>all these techniques is because nobody satisfied just seeing a pixel.

0:16:06.080 --> 0:16:09.360
<v Speaker 1>They want to know more. And this is what scientists do, right.

0:16:09.440 --> 0:16:12.640
<v Speaker 1>They learn how to extract as much information about the

0:16:12.720 --> 0:16:15.480
<v Speaker 1>universe as possible from the data they got. They're not

0:16:15.520 --> 0:16:17.520
<v Speaker 1>just going to say, like, well, let's just wait thirty

0:16:17.600 --> 0:16:20.240
<v Speaker 1>years and build that sun size telescope, Like, no, we're

0:16:20.280 --> 0:16:23.640
<v Speaker 1>here today, we want answer now, right. I love the

0:16:23.840 --> 0:16:28.000
<v Speaker 1>ingenuity of scientists to extract this information from whatever tiny

0:16:28.080 --> 0:16:28.720
<v Speaker 1>data they have.

0:16:29.240 --> 0:16:32.640
<v Speaker 2>Totally yeah, because you're not getting funding for that sun telescope, probably,

0:16:32.760 --> 0:16:35.920
<v Speaker 2>Kelly the what blanket is here to say? But so, okay,

0:16:35.960 --> 0:16:40.520
<v Speaker 2>so if you know temperature and that there's water, you

0:16:40.560 --> 0:16:43.320
<v Speaker 2>can maybe guess if there could be some sort of

0:16:43.360 --> 0:16:46.320
<v Speaker 2>alien maybe it's alien bacteria. But now you've got like

0:16:46.880 --> 0:16:49.840
<v Speaker 2>a hunch, yeah, about whether or not those aliens eat dinner.

0:16:50.000 --> 0:16:52.080
<v Speaker 1>You can do even better than that, you can learn

0:16:52.160 --> 0:16:54.520
<v Speaker 1>what the atmosphere is made out of and if there

0:16:54.560 --> 0:16:58.240
<v Speaker 1>are biomarkers in the atmosphere. Right, So again we just

0:16:58.280 --> 0:17:01.520
<v Speaker 1>still have one pixel, but we can do clever things

0:17:01.600 --> 0:17:05.959
<v Speaker 1>like wait for sunrise on the planet. During sunrise, that

0:17:06.080 --> 0:17:09.800
<v Speaker 1>alien star shines through the atmosphere of the planet and

0:17:09.840 --> 0:17:12.920
<v Speaker 1>then those photons come to Earth. And because those photons

0:17:12.920 --> 0:17:17.080
<v Speaker 1>have gone through the atmosphere and atmospheres tend to absorb

0:17:17.119 --> 0:17:21.240
<v Speaker 1>at certain frequencies based on their composition, we can tell

0:17:21.320 --> 0:17:25.040
<v Speaker 1>what's in the atmosphere. So there will be absorption lines

0:17:25.119 --> 0:17:27.639
<v Speaker 1>in that spectrum. There will be gaps that tell you

0:17:28.200 --> 0:17:32.159
<v Speaker 1>what molecules are in the atmosphere because those molecules ate

0:17:32.240 --> 0:17:35.200
<v Speaker 1>some photons, and by seeing which ones they gobbled, we

0:17:35.240 --> 0:17:38.239
<v Speaker 1>can tell what's there. So like, is there water in

0:17:38.280 --> 0:17:41.840
<v Speaker 1>the atmosphere? Is their ozone in the atmosphere? Is their methane?

0:17:41.880 --> 0:17:44.479
<v Speaker 1>Is their co two? Wow, some of these things are

0:17:44.600 --> 0:17:49.480
<v Speaker 1>very strong biomarkers because they're in chemical dis equilibrium, like

0:17:49.560 --> 0:17:55.040
<v Speaker 1>for example, oxygen is produced by photosynthesis, Methane typically produced

0:17:55.040 --> 0:17:58.359
<v Speaker 1>by biology, though there are geological sources, but if you

0:17:58.400 --> 0:18:01.560
<v Speaker 1>have them both in the atmosphere, they to react and disappear.

0:18:02.080 --> 0:18:05.800
<v Speaker 1>So if you see oxygen and methane in the atmosphere

0:18:05.840 --> 0:18:08.560
<v Speaker 1>of an exoplanet, that means that there is a constant

0:18:08.640 --> 0:18:13.920
<v Speaker 1>replenishment of those things. There's something on that planet making oxygen,

0:18:14.240 --> 0:18:18.240
<v Speaker 1>making methane. Neither of these things are smoking gun proof

0:18:18.359 --> 0:18:21.240
<v Speaker 1>of alien life, but they're like, you know, good strong

0:18:21.320 --> 0:18:25.280
<v Speaker 1>hints something out there is pumping out oxygen. So that's

0:18:25.320 --> 0:18:27.600
<v Speaker 1>the kind of thing you can see again just from

0:18:27.600 --> 0:18:31.200
<v Speaker 1>this pixel, right, super cool. I was reading a really

0:18:31.200 --> 0:18:34.400
<v Speaker 1>cool paper yesterday about how you can watch the transit

0:18:34.480 --> 0:18:38.159
<v Speaker 1>the eclipse to learn more about the atmosphere. Remember that

0:18:38.240 --> 0:18:41.399
<v Speaker 1>sometimes the way you discover these exoplanets is by seeing

0:18:41.440 --> 0:18:44.200
<v Speaker 1>them cross in front of their sun and dim the

0:18:44.280 --> 0:18:47.719
<v Speaker 1>light of the Sun just a little bit, right. But

0:18:47.760 --> 0:18:49.479
<v Speaker 1>the cool thing is that you can look at that

0:18:49.600 --> 0:18:53.080
<v Speaker 1>dimming in various frequencies. Right, You can say, well, does

0:18:53.080 --> 0:18:56.480
<v Speaker 1>red light dim? Just blue light dim? Does green light dim?

0:18:56.960 --> 0:19:00.000
<v Speaker 1>And that's another way to tell what's in the atmosphere,

0:19:00.440 --> 0:19:02.840
<v Speaker 1>because the width of the eclipse and the depth of

0:19:02.880 --> 0:19:06.280
<v Speaker 1>the eclipse will depend on what's in the atmosphere. So,

0:19:06.359 --> 0:19:09.600
<v Speaker 1>for example, if you're watching Earth pass in front of

0:19:09.600 --> 0:19:13.119
<v Speaker 1>the Sun and you're looking at a frequency that nitrogen

0:19:13.240 --> 0:19:15.600
<v Speaker 1>likes to absorb, then the Earth is going to seem

0:19:15.640 --> 0:19:18.960
<v Speaker 1>wider because now you're including the atmosphere. And in other

0:19:19.040 --> 0:19:23.840
<v Speaker 1>frequencies where nitrogen is transparent and the Earth is opaque,

0:19:23.960 --> 0:19:27.080
<v Speaker 1>the Earth is going to seem smaller. Right, So it's like,

0:19:27.400 --> 0:19:30.520
<v Speaker 1>is the eclipse including the atmosphere not? Is a frequency

0:19:30.640 --> 0:19:34.159
<v Speaker 1>dependent answer. So by looking at different frequencies you can

0:19:34.200 --> 0:19:37.399
<v Speaker 1>help determine Oh, what's this atmosphere? Mostly made out of

0:19:37.800 --> 0:19:38.800
<v Speaker 1>really clever stuff?

0:19:39.040 --> 0:19:40.000
<v Speaker 4>All right, yeah, you've got me.

0:19:40.040 --> 0:19:42.320
<v Speaker 2>I'm amazed all of this from a pixel that that's

0:19:42.359 --> 0:19:43.120
<v Speaker 2>pretty impressive.

0:19:43.160 --> 0:19:44.840
<v Speaker 1>Oh, we're not even done yet. Right now, we got

0:19:44.880 --> 0:19:48.760
<v Speaker 1>to think about time variation because as time goes on,

0:19:48.880 --> 0:19:52.040
<v Speaker 1>the Earth is spinning, so the sun reflecting off the

0:19:52.119 --> 0:19:55.480
<v Speaker 1>Earth will change based on where are the clouds, where

0:19:55.520 --> 0:19:58.560
<v Speaker 1>are the oceans? And somebody actually did a study answering

0:19:58.600 --> 0:20:01.600
<v Speaker 1>this exact question. They said, if we were in the

0:20:01.640 --> 0:20:05.000
<v Speaker 1>next star system and we looked at Earth and we

0:20:05.119 --> 0:20:08.240
<v Speaker 1>watched the variation of the reflection of sunlight off of

0:20:08.280 --> 0:20:10.600
<v Speaker 1>the Earth, could we make a map of the Earth.

0:20:11.119 --> 0:20:13.320
<v Speaker 1>And so you can look this up. It's amazing. It

0:20:13.640 --> 0:20:16.959
<v Speaker 1>roughly maps out what the Earth's continents look like I mean,

0:20:17.000 --> 0:20:20.720
<v Speaker 1>it's very very pixelated. It's basically just like bands, but

0:20:20.800 --> 0:20:22.959
<v Speaker 1>it shows you, Oh, there's a bunch of land, then

0:20:23.000 --> 0:20:25.320
<v Speaker 1>there's a really big ocean, then there's another little bit

0:20:25.359 --> 0:20:27.840
<v Speaker 1>of land, then there's a smaller ocean. So you see

0:20:27.840 --> 0:20:31.040
<v Speaker 1>the Pacific, you see the Atlantic, you see the Americas,

0:20:31.440 --> 0:20:35.400
<v Speaker 1>you see Eurasia and Africa. Like again, not in great resolution,

0:20:35.520 --> 0:20:40.000
<v Speaker 1>but much more than zero information. Super duper cool. It's

0:20:40.119 --> 0:20:40.640
<v Speaker 1>very cool.

0:20:40.680 --> 0:20:42.879
<v Speaker 4>It's amazing. Yeah, so cool.

0:20:42.880 --> 0:20:45.800
<v Speaker 2>And that would be with the kind of stuff that

0:20:45.920 --> 0:20:47.800
<v Speaker 2>James Webb Space telescope is seeing.

0:20:47.840 --> 0:20:48.960
<v Speaker 4>You can get all that information.

0:20:49.200 --> 0:20:53.320
<v Speaker 1>Okay, exactly, wow, But James Webspace Telescope is not the

0:20:53.320 --> 0:20:55.840
<v Speaker 1>best way to do this, right. What you want to

0:20:55.880 --> 0:20:58.200
<v Speaker 1>do when you're looking for exoplanets is you want to

0:20:58.240 --> 0:21:01.880
<v Speaker 1>block the light from the Sun because these planets are

0:21:01.960 --> 0:21:06.040
<v Speaker 1>like two billion times fainter than the star. So it's

0:21:06.080 --> 0:21:09.280
<v Speaker 1>like you're looking at a firefly next to a street

0:21:09.359 --> 0:21:13.480
<v Speaker 1>lamp you across the country. So it's very very hard

0:21:13.480 --> 0:21:15.560
<v Speaker 1>to do and the right way to do that is

0:21:15.600 --> 0:21:17.960
<v Speaker 1>to block the light from the street lamp. You can't

0:21:18.000 --> 0:21:20.440
<v Speaker 1>just put like a circular shade to block the starlight

0:21:20.480 --> 0:21:23.560
<v Speaker 1>because there's this weird interference effect where you end up

0:21:23.600 --> 0:21:25.600
<v Speaker 1>having a bright dot at the center of that circle.

0:21:25.640 --> 0:21:27.119
<v Speaker 1>We talked about this once we were talking about the

0:21:27.160 --> 0:21:31.040
<v Speaker 1>history of discoveries, a really cool story about the Poisson spot. Anyway,

0:21:31.080 --> 0:21:34.160
<v Speaker 1>they have a new generation of space telescopes they're building

0:21:34.359 --> 0:21:37.440
<v Speaker 1>that have a complicated shaped starshield to avoid the sort

0:21:37.480 --> 0:21:40.200
<v Speaker 1>of interference effect, and those are going to be awesome

0:21:40.320 --> 0:21:43.719
<v Speaker 1>at seeing these exoplanets. Really we need a dedicated device

0:21:43.920 --> 0:21:46.520
<v Speaker 1>with sensitivity at the right frequency and with one of

0:21:46.560 --> 0:21:49.000
<v Speaker 1>these star shields, so you know, in the next couple

0:21:49.080 --> 0:21:51.080
<v Speaker 1>of decades we're going to be seeing a lot more

0:21:51.240 --> 0:21:53.400
<v Speaker 1>information about these exoplanets.

0:21:53.760 --> 0:21:57.800
<v Speaker 2>Yay, all right, well that was an amazing answer. Let's

0:21:57.840 --> 0:21:59.960
<v Speaker 2>go ahead and see what Jonas has to say.

0:22:00.840 --> 0:22:03.960
<v Speaker 6>Hi, Daniel high Kelly, thank you so much for having

0:22:03.960 --> 0:22:07.560
<v Speaker 6>my question on the podcast. You answer it exactly what

0:22:07.600 --> 0:22:11.000
<v Speaker 6>it was going for intuit different. I kind of knew

0:22:11.040 --> 0:22:15.119
<v Speaker 6>that the telescope would see very little, almost nothingly, but

0:22:15.280 --> 0:22:18.840
<v Speaker 6>somehow that where my mind went, not what does it see?

0:22:19.119 --> 0:22:21.760
<v Speaker 6>But what can we actually read from a tiny spot

0:22:21.800 --> 0:22:25.520
<v Speaker 6>on the screen, And the answer blew me away just

0:22:25.640 --> 0:22:28.920
<v Speaker 6>one pixel, and yet we can read so much from it.

0:22:29.200 --> 0:22:34.159
<v Speaker 6>Hooray science and Okay, deep down, of course I was

0:22:34.200 --> 0:22:37.840
<v Speaker 6>wondering as well, how realistic is it that we actually

0:22:37.880 --> 0:22:41.840
<v Speaker 6>find signs of life with the James Webb telescope. Thanks

0:22:41.840 --> 0:22:42.919
<v Speaker 6>for the great discussion.

0:23:02.960 --> 0:23:06.359
<v Speaker 1>All right, we're back and we're answering questions from listeners.

0:23:06.359 --> 0:23:09.359
<v Speaker 1>And here's a question from a regular listener who's got

0:23:09.400 --> 0:23:11.880
<v Speaker 1>a really wonderful, charming accent.

0:23:12.400 --> 0:23:16.000
<v Speaker 7>Hi, Kelly and Daniel, this is Jane from Redcar, England.

0:23:16.600 --> 0:23:20.399
<v Speaker 7>I've got a question for you. Homo sapiens is the

0:23:20.560 --> 0:23:24.760
<v Speaker 7>only species in the genus Homo unless Bigfoot is real?

0:23:25.680 --> 0:23:29.359
<v Speaker 7>Are there any other species that are similarly alone? What

0:23:29.520 --> 0:23:32.879
<v Speaker 7>animal genus is the most species in it? And what

0:23:33.080 --> 0:23:36.240
<v Speaker 7>influences whether you end up with one are a thousand?

0:23:37.080 --> 0:23:40.800
<v Speaker 7>And does it have anything to do with parasites? Still

0:23:40.840 --> 0:23:43.879
<v Speaker 7>loving all that you do. Thank you so much for

0:23:43.920 --> 0:23:47.960
<v Speaker 7>answering my question. Have an extraordinary twenty twenty six.

0:23:48.560 --> 0:23:51.120
<v Speaker 1>All right, Kelly, tell us whether we're alone and whether

0:23:51.160 --> 0:23:53.920
<v Speaker 1>we should feel bad about murdering all of our cousins.

0:23:54.240 --> 0:23:56.400
<v Speaker 4>Well, you know, we didn't just murder them.

0:23:56.440 --> 0:24:01.560
<v Speaker 2>We slept with them, We had the children and then

0:24:01.760 --> 0:24:04.560
<v Speaker 2>well well we don't. We're not sure we ate them,

0:24:04.600 --> 0:24:08.120
<v Speaker 2>and you know, check out a past Listener Questions episode

0:24:08.119 --> 0:24:09.119
<v Speaker 2>for more information.

0:24:09.280 --> 0:24:10.880
<v Speaker 4>And you know, in fact, we had.

0:24:11.359 --> 0:24:13.840
<v Speaker 2>On November twenty fifth, twenty twenty five, we had an

0:24:13.840 --> 0:24:17.159
<v Speaker 2>episode called how Long Have We Been Human? Where we

0:24:17.200 --> 0:24:21.160
<v Speaker 2>had Scott Solomon on And so it's worth noting that, yes,

0:24:21.359 --> 0:24:25.000
<v Speaker 2>the only species of Homo that's around right now is us,

0:24:25.040 --> 0:24:25.560
<v Speaker 2>but there.

0:24:25.440 --> 0:24:28.840
<v Speaker 4>Were a lot of other Homo species in the past.

0:24:28.880 --> 0:24:31.400
<v Speaker 2>Maybe not a lot, but there were others, and they've

0:24:31.440 --> 0:24:33.440
<v Speaker 2>just kind of died out for a variety of reasons.

0:24:33.720 --> 0:24:35.760
<v Speaker 1>Have you ever wondered what it would be like today

0:24:35.800 --> 0:24:38.639
<v Speaker 1>if we had several species and they were all like intelligent,

0:24:38.680 --> 0:24:41.879
<v Speaker 1>but they had like, you know, different characteristics, different kinds

0:24:41.880 --> 0:24:45.000
<v Speaker 1>of intelligence and different kinds of strength. Would that be

0:24:45.080 --> 0:24:47.720
<v Speaker 1>wonderful and amazing or like divisive and political?

0:24:48.320 --> 0:24:51.200
<v Speaker 2>I want to believe it would be wonderful and amazing,

0:24:51.240 --> 0:24:52.960
<v Speaker 2>But I am a bit of a cynic, and I'm

0:24:52.960 --> 0:24:53.560
<v Speaker 2>a little.

0:24:53.320 --> 0:24:55.560
<v Speaker 4>Bit scared of how our species would handle that.

0:24:55.680 --> 0:24:57.800
<v Speaker 1>What do you think, Well, I think the fact that

0:24:57.840 --> 0:25:01.399
<v Speaker 1>we killed them off before written history already tells us

0:25:01.480 --> 0:25:04.840
<v Speaker 1>the answer. We're not very tolerant of differences.

0:25:05.240 --> 0:25:09.320
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, no, okay, anyway, that's a true downer right there.

0:25:09.359 --> 0:25:13.600
<v Speaker 2>But anyway, okay, so Jane wanted to know about other examples,

0:25:14.080 --> 0:25:16.000
<v Speaker 2>and so there's a couple of fun ones here. So

0:25:16.119 --> 0:25:20.760
<v Speaker 2>the platypus is another species that is the only member

0:25:20.800 --> 0:25:24.040
<v Speaker 2>of its genus. Daniel doesn't like me saying Latin name,

0:25:24.119 --> 0:25:27.000
<v Speaker 2>so I'm going to try to I'll avoid them. Red

0:25:27.080 --> 0:25:30.639
<v Speaker 2>pandas are the only species in their genus, and in

0:25:30.680 --> 0:25:34.000
<v Speaker 2>fact they're also the only species in their family.

0:25:35.080 --> 0:25:39.480
<v Speaker 1>But give us a reminder, species, genus, family. I mean,

0:25:39.680 --> 0:25:41.960
<v Speaker 1>I know, as a professional biologist, this is just like

0:25:42.119 --> 0:25:45.000
<v Speaker 1>back of the hand stuff for you. Why are you laughing?

0:25:45.119 --> 0:25:46.040
<v Speaker 1>What are you joking about it?

0:25:46.320 --> 0:25:48.320
<v Speaker 2>You know in my notes that I wrote this all

0:25:48.400 --> 0:25:52.119
<v Speaker 2>down because I either have to say the mnemonic out loud,

0:25:52.119 --> 0:25:54.760
<v Speaker 2>and the only one I memorized is dirty, and so

0:25:54.880 --> 0:25:57.000
<v Speaker 2>I will not be saying it on the show, So

0:25:57.080 --> 0:26:00.639
<v Speaker 2>I wrote it. So, yeah, you got kingdom, then phylum,

0:26:00.920 --> 0:26:06.000
<v Speaker 2>then class order, family, genus, then species.

0:26:06.520 --> 0:26:10.159
<v Speaker 1>And I've always wondered, like why these divisions? Are these

0:26:10.280 --> 0:26:13.240
<v Speaker 1>arbitrary dotted lines humans have drawn? Or could you have

0:26:13.680 --> 0:26:17.720
<v Speaker 1>nineteen or four? Like why this number of categories?

0:26:18.160 --> 0:26:20.199
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, that is a good question. We were going to

0:26:20.200 --> 0:26:21.920
<v Speaker 2>get into that a little bit later. Let's get into

0:26:21.960 --> 0:26:24.800
<v Speaker 2>that now though, and so all right, yeah, so to

0:26:24.840 --> 0:26:29.000
<v Speaker 2>some extent it probably is arbitrary. And so, like the

0:26:29.040 --> 0:26:32.879
<v Speaker 2>classification system was started by Linnaeus and like I think

0:26:32.920 --> 0:26:36.680
<v Speaker 2>the sixteen hundreds, and this was long before we knew

0:26:36.760 --> 0:26:39.520
<v Speaker 2>about you know, evolution, long before the theory of natural

0:26:39.600 --> 0:26:42.399
<v Speaker 2>selection came along. And so this was before we had like,

0:26:42.800 --> 0:26:45.919
<v Speaker 2>you know, evolutionary trees and phylogenetic trees, and so to

0:26:45.960 --> 0:26:48.520
<v Speaker 2>some extent it must have been arbitrary because we didn't

0:26:48.560 --> 0:26:51.640
<v Speaker 2>have these like connections in our mind, and we didn't know,

0:26:51.760 --> 0:26:54.440
<v Speaker 2>you know, about one species coming from another. But there's

0:26:54.440 --> 0:26:59.200
<v Speaker 2>some reason to believe that they're useful in like thinking

0:26:59.280 --> 0:27:02.919
<v Speaker 2>about evolution questions and that they are real. But so

0:27:02.960 --> 0:27:05.200
<v Speaker 2>I read a paper that at least for the genus level,

0:27:05.560 --> 0:27:08.760
<v Speaker 2>they were trying to decide, like, is what we're seeing

0:27:08.800 --> 0:27:12.760
<v Speaker 2>in terms of categories of genera real? And so what

0:27:12.800 --> 0:27:15.760
<v Speaker 2>they did was they looked at real rates at which

0:27:15.760 --> 0:27:18.239
<v Speaker 2>we think species are being made and real rates at

0:27:18.240 --> 0:27:21.120
<v Speaker 2>which we think species are going extinct, and then they

0:27:21.200 --> 0:27:23.720
<v Speaker 2>sort of ransom models and they said, okay, if we're right,

0:27:23.800 --> 0:27:27.879
<v Speaker 2>about calculating some of this stuff. Then how often should

0:27:27.920 --> 0:27:31.760
<v Speaker 2>you see genera popping up? How many species should you

0:27:31.800 --> 0:27:34.240
<v Speaker 2>see in each genus?

0:27:34.480 --> 0:27:37.240
<v Speaker 1>But do we even have a definition for genius? Like

0:27:37.280 --> 0:27:40.280
<v Speaker 1>I know, definition of species, It exists, even if it's

0:27:40.280 --> 0:27:43.760
<v Speaker 1>controversial and fuzzy. Is the definition of a genus have

0:27:43.960 --> 0:27:46.920
<v Speaker 1>some basis in biology? Or is it just like I'm

0:27:46.920 --> 0:27:48.480
<v Speaker 1>putting this here and that there?

0:27:49.200 --> 0:27:56.000
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, so different types of taxonomists sometimes have difference.

0:27:55.720 --> 0:27:57.800
<v Speaker 1>And then we have taxonomy of taxonomists.

0:27:57.840 --> 0:28:00.000
<v Speaker 4>Now, yes, yeah, yeah.

0:28:00.119 --> 0:28:03.919
<v Speaker 2>A paper I was reading was lamenting that different kinds

0:28:03.920 --> 0:28:09.119
<v Speaker 2>of taxonomists sometimes have different criteria for when they identify

0:28:09.160 --> 0:28:11.920
<v Speaker 2>something as a genus or not, And so they were

0:28:12.200 --> 0:28:16.719
<v Speaker 2>arguing that we needed to try to decide is it

0:28:16.800 --> 0:28:20.000
<v Speaker 2>possible to have a category of genus that is the

0:28:20.000 --> 0:28:24.080
<v Speaker 2>same for everybody? And if we don't have that, how

0:28:24.280 --> 0:28:27.479
<v Speaker 2>big of a problem is it? And so, yes, to

0:28:27.520 --> 0:28:30.359
<v Speaker 2>some extent, some of the stuff that we're talking about

0:28:30.400 --> 0:28:33.920
<v Speaker 2>today is going to be arbitrary because this is human's

0:28:34.000 --> 0:28:39.080
<v Speaker 2>best attempt at categorizing nature that does not care about

0:28:39.160 --> 0:28:42.440
<v Speaker 2>us and our attempts to categorize things. And if you

0:28:42.480 --> 0:28:44.680
<v Speaker 2>look back at this stuff, like two hundred years from now,

0:28:44.720 --> 0:28:48.320
<v Speaker 2>you might find that genuses have been split or genuses

0:28:48.360 --> 0:28:51.320
<v Speaker 2>have been clumped together because we've decided these things are

0:28:51.360 --> 0:28:54.000
<v Speaker 2>actually like more closely related. We just hadn't looked at

0:28:54.040 --> 0:28:56.160
<v Speaker 2>the genetics before. We hadn't had a chance to get

0:28:56.160 --> 0:28:56.720
<v Speaker 2>around to it.

0:28:56.920 --> 0:28:59.600
<v Speaker 1>I see. So in some sense, to answer the question

0:29:00.480 --> 0:29:05.600
<v Speaker 1>on arbitrary choices made by taxonomists hundreds of years ago.

0:29:06.160 --> 0:29:08.560
<v Speaker 1>But in another sense, there must be something about like

0:29:08.600 --> 0:29:12.120
<v Speaker 1>the platypus which makes it different from other species, not

0:29:12.280 --> 0:29:15.360
<v Speaker 1>just that it got randomly categorized into its own genus.

0:29:15.400 --> 0:29:19.160
<v Speaker 1>It's like more different from all the other species than

0:29:19.280 --> 0:29:24.000
<v Speaker 1>most species. Right, there's like a larger phenotypical distance in

0:29:24.040 --> 0:29:24.560
<v Speaker 1>some sense.

0:29:25.000 --> 0:29:27.200
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, right, And so you definitely shouldn't come away from

0:29:27.200 --> 0:29:30.640
<v Speaker 2>this conversation thinking this is like totally arbitrary and random.

0:29:30.720 --> 0:29:33.760
<v Speaker 2>You know, like there's many many people working on this stuff.

0:29:33.800 --> 0:29:36.920
<v Speaker 2>We now have a lot of genetic data. A lot

0:29:36.920 --> 0:29:39.240
<v Speaker 2>of people have spent time looking at the you know,

0:29:39.520 --> 0:29:42.640
<v Speaker 2>the internal organs of these species, the external features of

0:29:42.680 --> 0:29:45.920
<v Speaker 2>these species, the you know, genetic information from these species.

0:29:45.920 --> 0:29:48.600
<v Speaker 2>We have a lot of data that we're bringing to

0:29:48.640 --> 0:29:50.960
<v Speaker 2>bear on this, and in a month or two we're

0:29:50.960 --> 0:29:52.760
<v Speaker 2>going to have Scott Egan on the show talking about

0:29:52.760 --> 0:29:55.440
<v Speaker 2>how we define species, so we'll have a lot more

0:29:55.440 --> 0:29:59.160
<v Speaker 2>information on that coming soon. But like, people have collected

0:29:59.200 --> 0:30:01.840
<v Speaker 2>a ton of data, thought very carefully about this stuff,

0:30:02.280 --> 0:30:08.160
<v Speaker 2>and a lot of the relationships between organisms we are

0:30:08.200 --> 0:30:11.520
<v Speaker 2>like nearly certain are true. But the question is just

0:30:11.680 --> 0:30:14.080
<v Speaker 2>when do you say, Okay, we're stopping here and we're

0:30:14.120 --> 0:30:16.960
<v Speaker 2>putting a name on what's happening right here, you know

0:30:17.000 --> 0:30:20.200
<v Speaker 2>what I mean. Like, it's definitely these relationships are flowing,

0:30:20.240 --> 0:30:22.120
<v Speaker 2>and we sort of know in the directions in which

0:30:22.120 --> 0:30:24.920
<v Speaker 2>they're flowing. The question is just when do you stop

0:30:24.960 --> 0:30:28.520
<v Speaker 2>and say, what's happening right here gets a name, right, okay?

0:30:28.560 --> 0:30:30.760
<v Speaker 1>And so like the planet Post is a famous example

0:30:30.840 --> 0:30:33.680
<v Speaker 1>because it really isn't anything else sort of near it

0:30:33.800 --> 0:30:36.920
<v Speaker 1>in the phenotypical tree of life, right, it really is

0:30:36.960 --> 0:30:38.400
<v Speaker 1>sort of kind of on its own.

0:30:38.840 --> 0:30:40.000
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, it looks real weird.

0:30:40.520 --> 0:30:43.480
<v Speaker 1>And the red Pandas I'm confused about that because there

0:30:43.480 --> 0:30:44.280
<v Speaker 1>are other.

0:30:44.080 --> 0:30:47.960
<v Speaker 2>Pandas Panda is an unfortunate choice of a name. Actually,

0:30:47.960 --> 0:30:49.960
<v Speaker 2>I can't remember if the like what most of us

0:30:50.040 --> 0:30:52.200
<v Speaker 2>think of as pandas, like the big black and white bears,

0:30:52.200 --> 0:30:54.000
<v Speaker 2>if they were named first, or if red pandas were

0:30:54.080 --> 0:30:58.840
<v Speaker 2>named first, but they're not, you know, same way starfish

0:30:58.880 --> 0:31:00.400
<v Speaker 2>aren't really fish.

0:31:00.480 --> 0:31:02.720
<v Speaker 4>Both of those pandas are not closely related.

0:31:03.120 --> 0:31:06.479
<v Speaker 1>I love that the Latin name here means fire colored cat.

0:31:07.080 --> 0:31:11.680
<v Speaker 2>Yes, yes, yes, and we it's a good name. But

0:31:11.760 --> 0:31:15.640
<v Speaker 2>we let French zoologists George Cuvier name it. But the

0:31:15.720 --> 0:31:18.200
<v Speaker 2>locals at the time, who of course already knew about

0:31:18.200 --> 0:31:20.560
<v Speaker 2>it long before Europeans.

0:31:19.960 --> 0:31:21.800
<v Speaker 4>Went in and were like, this is new.

0:31:22.640 --> 0:31:28.160
<v Speaker 2>They called it wah or chitwah based on its vocalization,

0:31:28.360 --> 0:31:29.920
<v Speaker 2>so that's probably what we should have called it.

0:31:29.960 --> 0:31:31.760
<v Speaker 4>But anyway, we call it the red panda.

0:31:32.200 --> 0:31:34.440
<v Speaker 1>And this thing is not just alone in its own

0:31:34.480 --> 0:31:35.400
<v Speaker 1>genus right.

0:31:35.640 --> 0:31:38.960
<v Speaker 2>Right, it's alone in its family, which is one category up,

0:31:39.120 --> 0:31:40.680
<v Speaker 2>so family genus species.

0:31:40.840 --> 0:31:41.480
<v Speaker 4>Pretty cool?

0:31:41.640 --> 0:31:43.760
<v Speaker 1>Wowty, it really killed all of its.

0:31:43.560 --> 0:31:46.920
<v Speaker 4>Cousinshn, it did have some.

0:31:47.360 --> 0:31:51.080
<v Speaker 2>I think it had some past relatives that died. I

0:31:51.120 --> 0:31:54.600
<v Speaker 2>can't imagine this sweet little red panda killing off it's

0:31:54.680 --> 0:31:58.160
<v Speaker 2>relatives the way we did or the way we may have.

0:31:58.240 --> 0:31:59.520
<v Speaker 1>But a fire cat could have done.

0:31:59.560 --> 0:32:02.880
<v Speaker 2>That's that's true. I met a red panda once and

0:32:02.920 --> 0:32:05.560
<v Speaker 2>it had arthritis and moved very slowly, so they don't

0:32:05.560 --> 0:32:07.920
<v Speaker 2>seem vicious to me. But she had a very long,

0:32:08.000 --> 0:32:12.680
<v Speaker 2>nice life in a zoo. Ardvarks are another member that's

0:32:12.720 --> 0:32:15.040
<v Speaker 2>alone in their genus. But this one's also alone in

0:32:15.080 --> 0:32:18.040
<v Speaker 2>its family, like the red pandas, and it's alone in

0:32:18.080 --> 0:32:22.320
<v Speaker 2>its order, which is one level above family, so order family,

0:32:22.400 --> 0:32:25.600
<v Speaker 2>genus species, ardvarks are alone in there. They had other

0:32:25.680 --> 0:32:29.880
<v Speaker 2>relatives but they died off. So there's some examples. But actually,

0:32:29.920 --> 0:32:32.080
<v Speaker 2>as a more general case, I found a couple of

0:32:32.120 --> 0:32:35.320
<v Speaker 2>different estimates here, somewhere between thirty to forty percent based

0:32:35.320 --> 0:32:38.960
<v Speaker 2>on the numbers that I found of genera of animals

0:32:39.560 --> 0:32:42.760
<v Speaker 2>have only one species in them. So there's a lot

0:32:43.000 --> 0:32:45.320
<v Speaker 2>of examples. I just picked some cute ones.

0:32:45.600 --> 0:32:48.240
<v Speaker 1>Wait, and here's a Latin question for you. Genera is

0:32:48.280 --> 0:32:49.400
<v Speaker 1>plural of genus.

0:32:50.120 --> 0:32:52.920
<v Speaker 2>Yes, yeah, apparently I looked this up because I didn't

0:32:52.960 --> 0:32:57.000
<v Speaker 2>want to get it wrong. Apparently genuses is acceptable, but

0:32:57.200 --> 0:32:59.480
<v Speaker 2>genera is what is preferred.

0:32:59.640 --> 0:33:02.560
<v Speaker 1>Nice. Well, I like genuses because it sounds like geniuses.

0:33:03.280 --> 0:33:08.040
<v Speaker 2>Yes, yeah, and then maybe people will like accidentally transfer

0:33:08.400 --> 0:33:10.800
<v Speaker 2>that idea to us and they'll be like, oh, Daniel

0:33:10.840 --> 0:33:13.880
<v Speaker 2>and Kelly are smart, because Kelly said genus genius.

0:33:13.920 --> 0:33:17.360
<v Speaker 4>I saw, I tripped on it. That's ironic, all right.

0:33:17.400 --> 0:33:21.000
<v Speaker 1>So one third of all animal genera have one species

0:33:21.040 --> 0:33:22.680
<v Speaker 1>in them. What does that mean? What does that tell

0:33:22.760 --> 0:33:26.200
<v Speaker 1>us about the history of evolution or anything?

0:33:26.600 --> 0:33:30.440
<v Speaker 4>A lot of dead stuff out there. It could mean

0:33:30.480 --> 0:33:31.200
<v Speaker 4>a lot of things.

0:33:31.320 --> 0:33:34.280
<v Speaker 2>So it could mean that there's a lot of new

0:33:34.560 --> 0:33:37.000
<v Speaker 2>like lineages out there, so things just haven't had a

0:33:37.080 --> 0:33:40.400
<v Speaker 2>chance to split yet. It could mean that there's a

0:33:40.440 --> 0:33:43.520
<v Speaker 2>lot of extinction out there, and there were groups out

0:33:43.560 --> 0:33:45.880
<v Speaker 2>there that had a lot of relatives and then a

0:33:45.880 --> 0:33:48.800
<v Speaker 2>lot of their relatives died and just one survived, like us.

0:33:48.840 --> 0:33:51.080
<v Speaker 2>You know, there were a bunch of other Homo species,

0:33:51.120 --> 0:33:54.040
<v Speaker 2>but only we survived. And that's sort of an interesting question.

0:33:54.120 --> 0:33:57.280
<v Speaker 2>Is what is it that determines who the survivors are? Yeah,

0:33:57.320 --> 0:33:59.040
<v Speaker 2>but yeah, it could be either of those things or

0:33:59.200 --> 0:33:59.920
<v Speaker 2>some other things.

0:34:00.280 --> 0:34:03.440
<v Speaker 1>Does that suggest like a history of bottlenecks where you know,

0:34:03.640 --> 0:34:07.560
<v Speaker 1>diversity is crucial and only one species survives because they're different.

0:34:08.560 --> 0:34:12.640
<v Speaker 2>I don't know if that necessarily suggests a bottleneck. I

0:34:12.640 --> 0:34:14.800
<v Speaker 2>don't gosh, that's the first time I've heard the word

0:34:14.880 --> 0:34:18.600
<v Speaker 2>bottleneck applied to groups of species instead of like a population.

0:34:19.600 --> 0:34:20.400
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, I don't know.

0:34:20.520 --> 0:34:23.000
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, maybe I guess maybe you've got something catastrophic that

0:34:23.080 --> 0:34:26.680
<v Speaker 2>happens and it knocks out a bunch of different species,

0:34:26.680 --> 0:34:28.080
<v Speaker 2>but one is that what you're saying?

0:34:28.400 --> 0:34:31.399
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, uh, yeah, that would be worth thinking more about. Yeah,

0:34:31.400 --> 0:34:32.319
<v Speaker 4>I don't know, So I don't know.

0:34:32.320 --> 0:34:35.040
<v Speaker 2>If it's usually like the same catastrophe that wipes out

0:34:35.600 --> 0:34:38.279
<v Speaker 2>a bunch of different species, but one like it could be,

0:34:38.360 --> 0:34:42.760
<v Speaker 2>you know, habitat loss wipes out this Homo species and

0:34:43.880 --> 0:34:46.960
<v Speaker 2>parasite wipes out another Homo species or something, and it's

0:34:47.000 --> 0:34:47.959
<v Speaker 2>not like the same thing.

0:34:48.440 --> 0:34:50.120
<v Speaker 4>But that's a good question. I don't know the answer.

0:34:50.360 --> 0:34:52.200
<v Speaker 1>Well, in the case of some of these animals, do

0:34:52.280 --> 0:34:54.719
<v Speaker 1>we have like fossils of other critters in the same

0:34:54.760 --> 0:34:56.719
<v Speaker 1>genus that are no longer around so we know that

0:34:56.760 --> 0:34:57.720
<v Speaker 1>it used to be broader?

0:34:58.040 --> 0:34:59.520
<v Speaker 4>Yes, yeah, for a lot of these we do.

0:35:00.120 --> 0:35:00.359
<v Speaker 1>Cool.

0:35:00.719 --> 0:35:02.200
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. Yeah, for a lot of the examples that we

0:35:02.239 --> 0:35:05.560
<v Speaker 2>went through earlier, we do, so they they were not

0:35:05.760 --> 0:35:09.439
<v Speaker 2>alone in the past. So another question that bottleneck question

0:35:09.520 --> 0:35:11.200
<v Speaker 2>was great, I'm gonna be that's like gonna be a

0:35:11.360 --> 0:35:14.840
<v Speaker 2>keeping me up at night question. Okay, So then Jane's

0:35:14.840 --> 0:35:18.480
<v Speaker 2>other question was what about genera with lots of species

0:35:18.600 --> 0:35:24.000
<v Speaker 2>in them. And there are some megadiverse genera really yes,

0:35:24.320 --> 0:35:27.880
<v Speaker 2>and so for plants there are some megadiverse genera. So

0:35:28.040 --> 0:35:31.360
<v Speaker 2>for example, a Solanum. This is the genus that includes

0:35:31.400 --> 0:35:35.440
<v Speaker 2>like potatoes, tomatoes, eggplants. Thank goodness for salanim It is

0:35:35.480 --> 0:35:37.239
<v Speaker 2>a delicious genus.

0:35:37.640 --> 0:35:39.360
<v Speaker 1>I think it's a genius genus.

0:35:39.880 --> 0:35:41.680
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, me as well.

0:35:41.760 --> 0:35:50.480
<v Speaker 2>And I think the genus Gosh, the genius genus Homo,

0:35:51.320 --> 0:35:53.880
<v Speaker 2>has done amazing things with Solanum.

0:35:54.200 --> 0:35:56.200
<v Speaker 4>If only I could have said that fast. All right.

0:35:56.960 --> 0:36:00.160
<v Speaker 2>Another very diverse genus is a Bogonia. You may have

0:36:00.239 --> 0:36:02.040
<v Speaker 2>heard of bogonia as they're kind of flower. There's a

0:36:02.080 --> 0:36:04.920
<v Speaker 2>lot of them for animals, because that is specifically what

0:36:05.000 --> 0:36:09.000
<v Speaker 2>Jane was asking about. There are two beetle genera that

0:36:09.040 --> 0:36:12.719
<v Speaker 2>are very diverb beetles, the beetles Agrillis.

0:36:12.760 --> 0:36:14.040
<v Speaker 4>These are jewel beetles.

0:36:14.120 --> 0:36:16.000
<v Speaker 2>One that you might have heard of is the emerald

0:36:16.040 --> 0:36:18.560
<v Speaker 2>ash borer, which is causing a bunch of trouble in

0:36:18.560 --> 0:36:22.160
<v Speaker 2>the United States right now. And Stennis. These are semi

0:36:22.239 --> 0:36:26.160
<v Speaker 2>aquatic robe beetles. So just another kind of beetle.

0:36:26.320 --> 0:36:32.080
<v Speaker 1>Just another kind of beetle. Wow, myth amazing biodiversity and

0:36:32.320 --> 0:36:35.520
<v Speaker 1>evolutionary genius, just like just another kind.

0:36:35.440 --> 0:36:39.200
<v Speaker 2>Of beetle now, the coleopter and people are shaking their

0:36:39.200 --> 0:36:39.759
<v Speaker 2>fists at me.

0:36:39.880 --> 0:36:40.480
<v Speaker 4>I'm sorry.

0:36:40.600 --> 0:36:44.960
<v Speaker 2>I love beetles. They are wonderful. They are wonderful. In

0:36:45.040 --> 0:36:50.360
<v Speaker 2>terms of vertebrates, the pristamantis, there's over six hundred species

0:36:50.400 --> 0:36:50.719
<v Speaker 2>of these.

0:36:50.760 --> 0:36:53.120
<v Speaker 4>These are absolutely super cute little frogs.

0:36:53.560 --> 0:36:56.520
<v Speaker 2>And then there are some like genera of geckos that

0:36:56.600 --> 0:36:58.840
<v Speaker 2>also have a lot of species, and the noless lizards

0:36:58.840 --> 0:37:01.680
<v Speaker 2>have a lot of species too. So when do you

0:37:01.719 --> 0:37:05.360
<v Speaker 2>get a genus that has a lot of species? And Daniel,

0:37:05.400 --> 0:37:07.799
<v Speaker 2>don't look at the outline, look at me. What do

0:37:07.840 --> 0:37:08.680
<v Speaker 2>you think the answer is?

0:37:09.520 --> 0:37:11.279
<v Speaker 1>When do you get a genius that? When do you

0:37:11.280 --> 0:37:13.200
<v Speaker 1>get a genus that has a lot of species?

0:37:14.600 --> 0:37:17.040
<v Speaker 4>It's a kelly answer, This is dKu. What do you

0:37:17.040 --> 0:37:17.799
<v Speaker 4>think the answer is?

0:37:18.280 --> 0:37:19.320
<v Speaker 1>It depends slash.

0:37:19.360 --> 0:37:23.880
<v Speaker 4>We don't know that's right exactly. The answer is it depends.

0:37:24.640 --> 0:37:27.320
<v Speaker 2>And so I found a paper that said for birds,

0:37:27.360 --> 0:37:29.640
<v Speaker 2>it seems to me that you get a genus that

0:37:29.719 --> 0:37:33.360
<v Speaker 2>has a ton of diversity when the birds disperse annually

0:37:33.560 --> 0:37:37.080
<v Speaker 2>and are feeding generalists, so when they like eat everything

0:37:37.200 --> 0:37:40.520
<v Speaker 2>and they are willing to disperse to different places, so

0:37:40.560 --> 0:37:42.360
<v Speaker 2>maybe they're just like you know, filling a lot of

0:37:42.360 --> 0:37:45.400
<v Speaker 2>different niches that way. But that kind of ecological stuff

0:37:45.440 --> 0:37:49.080
<v Speaker 2>doesn't seem to matter as much for mullusks. For things

0:37:49.120 --> 0:37:52.239
<v Speaker 2>like irises, it tends to be more abiotic stuff. And

0:37:52.280 --> 0:37:54.440
<v Speaker 2>so by abiotic stuff, I mean stuff that's not living

0:37:54.560 --> 0:37:58.960
<v Speaker 2>like you know, temperature, water availability, stuff like that. Geographic

0:37:59.080 --> 0:38:01.520
<v Speaker 2>range seems to matter more or for things like Australian mammals. So,

0:38:01.560 --> 0:38:04.240
<v Speaker 2>as far as I could tell, there's no like rule

0:38:04.280 --> 0:38:06.960
<v Speaker 2>of thumb that works for everything. When you're trying to

0:38:07.000 --> 0:38:10.600
<v Speaker 2>figure out what genus should have more species, it seems

0:38:10.600 --> 0:38:13.120
<v Speaker 2>like it depends on what kind of group of organisms

0:38:13.160 --> 0:38:15.600
<v Speaker 2>you're talking about. And of course you'll note I didn't

0:38:15.600 --> 0:38:20.719
<v Speaker 2>even bother talking about bacteria, because yes, they probably represent

0:38:20.800 --> 0:38:22.440
<v Speaker 2>more diversity than anything else.

0:38:22.960 --> 0:38:25.960
<v Speaker 4>But who can wrap your head around those guys?

0:38:26.360 --> 0:38:27.520
<v Speaker 1>Not me, I know.

0:38:28.480 --> 0:38:32.600
<v Speaker 2>So Jane's last question was the most important one, right,

0:38:33.560 --> 0:38:35.080
<v Speaker 2>does it have to do with parasites?

0:38:37.120 --> 0:38:39.840
<v Speaker 1>Jane is just pandering now.

0:38:39.600 --> 0:38:42.479
<v Speaker 2>And thank you, Jane, I appreciate it, and I hope

0:38:42.480 --> 0:38:45.720
<v Speaker 2>you have an extraordinary twenty twenty six as well. But unfortunately,

0:38:45.760 --> 0:38:48.279
<v Speaker 2>as far as I could tell, it doesn't have to

0:38:48.320 --> 0:38:50.480
<v Speaker 2>do with parasites. But you know what, I'm guessing that's

0:38:50.480 --> 0:38:53.200
<v Speaker 2>because no one's looked yet, and they should look harder.

0:38:53.880 --> 0:38:58.799
<v Speaker 2>I'm guessing that the diversity of parasites, in terms of

0:38:58.880 --> 0:39:02.360
<v Speaker 2>like what genus is of parasites have the most diversity.

0:39:03.040 --> 0:39:04.239
<v Speaker 4>I didn't see papers on that.

0:39:04.440 --> 0:39:05.839
<v Speaker 1>There's a research topic.

0:39:05.920 --> 0:39:08.120
<v Speaker 2>That's yet there you go, and that probably has a

0:39:08.160 --> 0:39:10.319
<v Speaker 2>lot to do with like, you know, how are their

0:39:10.400 --> 0:39:13.799
<v Speaker 2>hosts diversifying? Like, if a host genus has a lot

0:39:13.840 --> 0:39:18.040
<v Speaker 2>of diversity, probably parasite genuses you find in them also

0:39:18.080 --> 0:39:20.279
<v Speaker 2>have a lot of diversity because they probably split with

0:39:20.360 --> 0:39:23.120
<v Speaker 2>the hosts, And so maybe that's where you can find

0:39:23.120 --> 0:39:26.440
<v Speaker 2>some like predictable trends and you know, good old predictable

0:39:26.520 --> 0:39:29.520
<v Speaker 2>parasites as I always say, well, here.

0:39:29.360 --> 0:39:31.759
<v Speaker 1>I have a parasite question for you. Is there an

0:39:31.800 --> 0:39:35.480
<v Speaker 1>example of a parasite losing its host species, like the

0:39:35.480 --> 0:39:39.239
<v Speaker 1>host goes extinct, but the parasite adapts and survives.

0:39:39.760 --> 0:39:41.960
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, so I don't have an example off the top

0:39:41.960 --> 0:39:43.800
<v Speaker 2>of my head, but I know that's called host switching.

0:39:43.880 --> 0:39:45.200
<v Speaker 4>So it is a thing that happens.

0:39:45.280 --> 0:39:45.920
<v Speaker 1>That's amazing.

0:39:46.120 --> 0:39:46.359
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.

0:39:46.400 --> 0:39:49.360
<v Speaker 2>Oh oh, oh, I have a sad example, guinea worm

0:39:49.880 --> 0:39:55.720
<v Speaker 2>is a really awful parasite that goes from copopods to humans.

0:39:55.760 --> 0:39:59.080
<v Speaker 2>So copapods are tiny little aquatic crustaceans, and they're like

0:39:59.160 --> 0:40:00.880
<v Speaker 2>so small that you might not see them, but you

0:40:00.960 --> 0:40:03.960
<v Speaker 2>might accidentally drink them in your water if you're living in,

0:40:04.040 --> 0:40:07.440
<v Speaker 2>for example, certain places in Africa, and if you drink them.

0:40:08.200 --> 0:40:10.279
<v Speaker 2>I believe they I wasn't prepared to talk about the

0:40:10.280 --> 0:40:12.040
<v Speaker 2>life cycle do with the best I can. I think

0:40:12.040 --> 0:40:15.880
<v Speaker 2>they find mates in your body, and then the pregnant female.

0:40:15.440 --> 0:40:20.080
<v Speaker 4>The male dies. Who cares pregnant female. I'm just I'm

0:40:20.120 --> 0:40:23.560
<v Speaker 4>just joking. No, I'm just joking. I'm joking. I like dudes.

0:40:23.600 --> 0:40:26.799
<v Speaker 2>And so the pregnant female moves down towards like your

0:40:26.800 --> 0:40:29.400
<v Speaker 2>ankle or some other part like your foot, and she

0:40:29.600 --> 0:40:32.600
<v Speaker 2>sticks part of her rear end out of your body.

0:40:32.719 --> 0:40:37.120
<v Speaker 2>It causes a horrible feeling that makes you want to

0:40:37.160 --> 0:40:39.759
<v Speaker 2>stick your foot or your leg in cool water, and

0:40:39.800 --> 0:40:41.800
<v Speaker 2>so you tend to put your foot in the water. Supply,

0:40:42.239 --> 0:40:44.600
<v Speaker 2>when you do that, she releases her eggs into the

0:40:44.640 --> 0:40:48.600
<v Speaker 2>water and then they get consumed by those little critters

0:40:48.600 --> 0:40:50.160
<v Speaker 2>in the water we were talking about, and the cycle

0:40:50.160 --> 0:40:52.880
<v Speaker 2>starts again. And so the way that we've tried to

0:40:52.880 --> 0:40:55.680
<v Speaker 2>deal with this parasite is that you take something like

0:40:55.719 --> 0:40:58.640
<v Speaker 2>a match stick and you slowly wind the parasite around

0:40:58.680 --> 0:41:01.400
<v Speaker 2>the match stick, and every day you pull out just

0:41:01.440 --> 0:41:03.400
<v Speaker 2>a little bit of the parasite and then you clamp

0:41:03.440 --> 0:41:05.000
<v Speaker 2>it onto the match stick and you do it again

0:41:05.040 --> 0:41:07.960
<v Speaker 2>the next day. This is a horribly painful thing, and

0:41:08.000 --> 0:41:12.040
<v Speaker 2>it can get infected and it's just, you know, miserable.

0:41:12.120 --> 0:41:14.840
<v Speaker 2>This is something that actually our species. You can you

0:41:14.880 --> 0:41:17.239
<v Speaker 2>can read descriptions of this going back like thousands of

0:41:17.320 --> 0:41:19.080
<v Speaker 2>years because their species has been dealing with this for

0:41:19.120 --> 0:41:21.799
<v Speaker 2>a really long time and it's very distinctive. But if

0:41:21.800 --> 0:41:25.239
<v Speaker 2>you break it, and by pulling it out too fast, yeah,

0:41:25.280 --> 0:41:28.080
<v Speaker 2>it actually it's secreting something to control our immune system,

0:41:28.440 --> 0:41:30.399
<v Speaker 2>and if you break it, your immune system will have

0:41:30.520 --> 0:41:33.040
<v Speaker 2>a massive reaction to it, which is worse than you

0:41:33.080 --> 0:41:35.360
<v Speaker 2>feel when you're slowly trying to pull it out. So

0:41:35.440 --> 0:41:37.279
<v Speaker 2>the goal is to just pull it all out in

0:41:37.360 --> 0:41:39.080
<v Speaker 2>one piece without killing it all.

0:41:39.160 --> 0:41:41.000
<v Speaker 1>Right, But I was not asking what is the most

0:41:41.040 --> 0:41:44.160
<v Speaker 1>horrific parasite, Please describe it in detail. I was asking

0:41:44.200 --> 0:41:45.320
<v Speaker 1>about post switching.

0:41:45.719 --> 0:41:47.320
<v Speaker 4>I'm getting there, I'm getting there, okay.

0:41:47.360 --> 0:41:50.160
<v Speaker 2>So the Carter Foundation and a number of other different

0:41:50.239 --> 0:41:53.839
<v Speaker 2>organizations have been going to all the different places where

0:41:53.880 --> 0:41:56.359
<v Speaker 2>you find this parasite and they anywhere. The time they

0:41:56.360 --> 0:41:58.880
<v Speaker 2>find a person who's infected, they bring them to a

0:41:58.880 --> 0:42:02.279
<v Speaker 2>facility and they say, okay, we'll like support you for

0:42:02.360 --> 0:42:05.720
<v Speaker 2>the duration of your infection and anytime your foot hurts,

0:42:05.840 --> 0:42:07.359
<v Speaker 2>and like, you know, every day you'll come to us.

0:42:07.360 --> 0:42:10.960
<v Speaker 2>You're gonna put your foot in cool bleach water so

0:42:11.040 --> 0:42:14.080
<v Speaker 2>it'll kill the eggs or like, they've got some procedure

0:42:14.080 --> 0:42:15.839
<v Speaker 2>where they like make sure that the eggs don't get

0:42:15.880 --> 0:42:19.440
<v Speaker 2>back into the water. They help them, you know, wind

0:42:19.440 --> 0:42:22.719
<v Speaker 2>out the parasite safely, and they are stopping the.

0:42:22.680 --> 0:42:23.680
<v Speaker 4>Life cycle, okay.

0:42:23.920 --> 0:42:27.440
<v Speaker 2>And so they've got it down to like zero cases

0:42:27.600 --> 0:42:29.279
<v Speaker 2>in a lot of the countries where you used to

0:42:29.280 --> 0:42:31.319
<v Speaker 2>find this parasite, and it was down to like one

0:42:31.440 --> 0:42:34.400
<v Speaker 2>country where you were still finding it, and it was

0:42:34.480 --> 0:42:36.960
<v Speaker 2>fourteen cases in one year and that was it. And

0:42:37.000 --> 0:42:40.040
<v Speaker 2>then they started finding it in the dogs. So there

0:42:40.080 --> 0:42:42.960
<v Speaker 2>was massive selection pressure for the parasite to be able

0:42:42.960 --> 0:42:46.200
<v Speaker 2>to jump hosts because the humans were figuring out a

0:42:46.239 --> 0:42:49.480
<v Speaker 2>solution around it, and maybe before sometimes it was infecting

0:42:49.520 --> 0:42:52.080
<v Speaker 2>dogs and we just didn't know. But now they're starting

0:42:52.080 --> 0:42:53.960
<v Speaker 2>to find it in dogs, and the dogs run wild

0:42:54.040 --> 0:42:55.399
<v Speaker 2>and they go in and out of the water all

0:42:55.400 --> 0:42:57.600
<v Speaker 2>the time, and so anyway, this could be a case

0:42:57.600 --> 0:42:58.320
<v Speaker 2>of host switching.

0:42:58.600 --> 0:42:59.200
<v Speaker 4>It's possible.

0:42:59.239 --> 0:43:00.880
<v Speaker 2>Actually, this is a case where we didn't realize it

0:43:00.880 --> 0:43:02.520
<v Speaker 2>was in the dogs before, and maybe I haven't actually

0:43:02.520 --> 0:43:04.760
<v Speaker 2>answered your question. Anyway, we could do a whole episode

0:43:04.800 --> 0:43:06.400
<v Speaker 2>on this if people are interested. This is like a

0:43:06.400 --> 0:43:09.120
<v Speaker 2>really important case of humans trying to eradicate a parasite.

0:43:09.840 --> 0:43:13.320
<v Speaker 2>Long answer host switching exists, that might be an example.

0:43:13.600 --> 0:43:14.640
<v Speaker 4>Guinea worm is the worst?

0:43:14.800 --> 0:43:17.040
<v Speaker 1>Interesting? Is that that's really the worst?

0:43:17.280 --> 0:43:17.880
<v Speaker 4>My gosh.

0:43:18.920 --> 0:43:21.800
<v Speaker 1>I'm so sorry Jane for accidentally including that description and

0:43:21.880 --> 0:43:24.040
<v Speaker 1>the answer to her otherwise innocuous question.

0:43:24.680 --> 0:43:27.279
<v Speaker 2>Okay, all right, here we go, Jane, thanks for asking

0:43:27.320 --> 0:43:28.600
<v Speaker 2>about parasites at the end there.

0:43:30.840 --> 0:43:34.319
<v Speaker 7>Thank you so much, Kelly for answering my question. I

0:43:34.360 --> 0:43:37.719
<v Speaker 7>was surprised how quickly you got to murder and cannibalism, though,

0:43:38.280 --> 0:43:41.879
<v Speaker 7>and delighted that you managed to shoehorn host switching into

0:43:41.920 --> 0:43:44.920
<v Speaker 7>the answer, even though it didn't appear to be relevant.

0:43:45.480 --> 0:43:50.239
<v Speaker 7>Happy to pander to your interests any day next time aliens.

0:43:51.080 --> 0:43:53.319
<v Speaker 7>I was stunned to hear that we're not special in

0:43:53.400 --> 0:43:57.520
<v Speaker 7>being home all alone to coin a phrase, and almost

0:43:57.520 --> 0:44:00.880
<v Speaker 7>a third of species are the only example in their genera.

0:44:01.800 --> 0:44:05.600
<v Speaker 7>I guess thinking about beetles makes us seem more unusual,

0:44:06.400 --> 0:44:09.280
<v Speaker 7>although I wonder if it was just that the beetle

0:44:09.360 --> 0:44:15.040
<v Speaker 7>and frog taxonomists were more restrained when taxonomizing, if that's

0:44:15.080 --> 0:44:19.319
<v Speaker 7>a word. I'm glad that you find my accent charming, Daniel.

0:44:19.480 --> 0:44:21.719
<v Speaker 7>I'll have to think of more questions to give you

0:44:21.800 --> 0:44:24.560
<v Speaker 7>more chances to hear it. I do love the way

0:44:24.680 --> 0:44:28.720
<v Speaker 7>Kelly says arbitrary, though, keep being extraordinary.

0:44:29.120 --> 0:44:29.680
<v Speaker 6>Thank you.

0:44:48.760 --> 0:44:50.520
<v Speaker 4>All right, and we are back.

0:44:50.600 --> 0:44:54.000
<v Speaker 2>And man, Daniel, today is your day, man, because this

0:44:54.040 --> 0:44:57.680
<v Speaker 2>is another alien's question. You stacked the deck, I think,

0:44:58.280 --> 0:45:01.200
<v Speaker 2>and so let's go ahead and hear bra alien question.

0:45:01.360 --> 0:45:02.480
<v Speaker 4>Daniel, is it your birthday?

0:45:05.080 --> 0:45:06.080
<v Speaker 1>It's alien day?

0:45:06.320 --> 0:45:10.080
<v Speaker 5>All right, hey, Daniel, and Kelly. Like Daniel, I'm fascinated

0:45:10.080 --> 0:45:12.840
<v Speaker 5>by the idea of aliens and how they could differ

0:45:12.920 --> 0:45:16.319
<v Speaker 5>from us, especially in regards to size. We are as

0:45:16.400 --> 0:45:18.759
<v Speaker 5>big or small as our environment allows us to be,

0:45:19.520 --> 0:45:22.120
<v Speaker 5>and pop culture has shown us a lot of fun

0:45:22.160 --> 0:45:25.960
<v Speaker 5>depictions of the scale of different aliens. I guess the

0:45:25.960 --> 0:45:29.560
<v Speaker 5>most egregious would be doctor Seuss's, who's living on a

0:45:29.600 --> 0:45:32.560
<v Speaker 5>planet the size of a spec I know doctor Seuss

0:45:32.600 --> 0:45:35.200
<v Speaker 5>isn't known for his realism. I think physics is going

0:45:35.280 --> 0:45:38.160
<v Speaker 5>to call bs in that case. But it does get

0:45:38.200 --> 0:45:42.480
<v Speaker 5>me thinking about what are the upper limits and lower

0:45:42.520 --> 0:45:46.880
<v Speaker 5>limits of scale that physics will allow for intelligent life.

0:45:47.360 --> 0:45:49.000
<v Speaker 1>Thanks so much for taking my question.

0:45:49.320 --> 0:45:51.360
<v Speaker 2>Oh Daniel, if you were going to meet an alien,

0:45:51.360 --> 0:45:53.320
<v Speaker 2>would you rather meet a big alien or a little

0:45:53.360 --> 0:45:56.600
<v Speaker 2>alien or a medium alien like a Goldilocks alien.

0:45:57.080 --> 0:45:59.640
<v Speaker 1>I think I'd really like to meet a super duper tiny,

0:45:59.680 --> 0:46:02.920
<v Speaker 1>micro scopic alien because they might have a very different

0:46:03.120 --> 0:46:07.120
<v Speaker 1>view of the universe and experience phenomenon different scales, and

0:46:07.160 --> 0:46:10.359
<v Speaker 1>I have different ways of intuiting how it works and

0:46:10.400 --> 0:46:13.800
<v Speaker 1>thinking about it. I think that might be super insightful.

0:46:13.840 --> 0:46:16.680
<v Speaker 1>I'd love to meet quantum sized aliens.

0:46:16.520 --> 0:46:18.480
<v Speaker 4>But wouldn't you be worried about like stepping on them?

0:46:19.960 --> 0:46:21.960
<v Speaker 1>I'd be worried about being infected.

0:46:21.440 --> 0:46:25.240
<v Speaker 4>By them, or like inhaling it accidentally, like I'm so sorry,

0:46:25.480 --> 0:46:26.080
<v Speaker 4>or blacks.

0:46:30.719 --> 0:46:33.520
<v Speaker 1>I read a great science fiction book once about aliens

0:46:33.520 --> 0:46:37.480
<v Speaker 1>that come to Earth and basically just live on people. Yeah,

0:46:37.480 --> 0:46:39.520
<v Speaker 1>it's called the Woman who Thought she was a planet.

0:46:39.680 --> 0:46:43.000
<v Speaker 1>It's fantastic Vandanna saying she's actually a physicist who's now

0:46:43.080 --> 0:46:45.640
<v Speaker 1>a science fiction author. Also great stuff.

0:46:45.840 --> 0:46:46.160
<v Speaker 4>Cool.

0:46:46.800 --> 0:46:50.680
<v Speaker 2>All right, Okay, so let's actually answer Brandon's question. I've

0:46:50.760 --> 0:46:52.640
<v Speaker 2>done what I do and got us off track again.

0:46:53.000 --> 0:46:55.239
<v Speaker 2>So how small could they get?

0:46:55.880 --> 0:46:57.680
<v Speaker 1>Yeah? I love the branding is thinking about this, what

0:46:57.719 --> 0:47:00.560
<v Speaker 1>are the limits of physics? And it's to do this

0:47:00.719 --> 0:47:04.360
<v Speaker 1>because we want to understand what's realistic about aliens. You

0:47:04.400 --> 0:47:07.160
<v Speaker 1>can't just fanticize by them being super tiny or being

0:47:07.239 --> 0:47:10.320
<v Speaker 1>the size of a galaxy because they are limited by physics.

0:47:10.640 --> 0:47:13.960
<v Speaker 1>But also we are limited in our imagination of what

0:47:14.040 --> 0:47:16.680
<v Speaker 1>kinds of aliens might be out there. So today I'll

0:47:16.680 --> 0:47:19.000
<v Speaker 1>give you a sense for what I think could be

0:47:19.040 --> 0:47:22.440
<v Speaker 1>the smallest or the biggest aliens and what physics limits that.

0:47:23.080 --> 0:47:25.200
<v Speaker 1>But you know, there could be lots of other ways

0:47:25.239 --> 0:47:28.839
<v Speaker 1>of being alive and having brains and bodies that we're

0:47:28.840 --> 0:47:32.360
<v Speaker 1>not being about today, So these are not absolute limits. Okay,

0:47:32.440 --> 0:47:35.320
<v Speaker 1>So on the smaller end, I think we should assume

0:47:35.920 --> 0:47:39.759
<v Speaker 1>that the teeny tiniest building blocks of life have to

0:47:39.800 --> 0:47:43.480
<v Speaker 1>be atoms like we could dig deeper into quarks, but

0:47:43.760 --> 0:47:46.399
<v Speaker 1>you know that makes very very complicated quarks can never

0:47:46.440 --> 0:47:49.360
<v Speaker 1>be alone. So now we're talking about weird new particle

0:47:49.400 --> 0:47:52.879
<v Speaker 1>physics that makes weird new structures of quarks. But if

0:47:52.880 --> 0:47:55.640
<v Speaker 1>we just stick to atoms, that already gives us a

0:47:55.760 --> 0:48:00.160
<v Speaker 1>pretty tight lower bound because atoms are a certain size, right,

0:48:00.480 --> 0:48:03.760
<v Speaker 1>you really can't build something out of atoms that's smaller

0:48:03.800 --> 0:48:05.759
<v Speaker 1>than like a tenth of a nanometer.

0:48:06.280 --> 0:48:07.840
<v Speaker 4>I mean, that's pretty tiny.

0:48:08.040 --> 0:48:10.200
<v Speaker 2>I guess I didn't imagine that we were even going

0:48:10.239 --> 0:48:13.560
<v Speaker 2>to be working on the nanometer scale. But your imagination

0:48:13.760 --> 0:48:17.479
<v Speaker 2>is vaster or tinier than mine, and.

0:48:17.400 --> 0:48:20.239
<v Speaker 1>I think that's what sets the scale for life on Earth, right,

0:48:20.360 --> 0:48:23.319
<v Speaker 1>like the smallest known life we have on Earth, or

0:48:23.360 --> 0:48:26.520
<v Speaker 1>like bacteria or phages if you think about even smaller.

0:48:26.840 --> 0:48:29.839
<v Speaker 1>But those things are like you know, a micrometer. It's

0:48:29.920 --> 0:48:32.680
<v Speaker 1>harder to get much smaller than that. When you're building

0:48:32.719 --> 0:48:35.839
<v Speaker 1>blocks are like order nanometer because you have to have

0:48:35.920 --> 0:48:39.360
<v Speaker 1>like stable chemistry, you have to store information, you have

0:48:39.440 --> 0:48:42.840
<v Speaker 1>to have a metabolism. You know, all this stuff requires

0:48:42.920 --> 0:48:45.719
<v Speaker 1>a lot of complexity. You can't build life out of

0:48:45.760 --> 0:48:49.960
<v Speaker 1>like three atoms, right, You need complicated stuff to support,

0:48:50.280 --> 0:48:54.359
<v Speaker 1>even bacteria, And so that means that the smallest kind

0:48:54.400 --> 0:48:57.239
<v Speaker 1>of life you can have is like a micrometer. And

0:48:57.400 --> 0:49:00.080
<v Speaker 1>so it's fun to think about like Doctor Seuss and

0:49:00.080 --> 0:49:03.480
<v Speaker 1>the Who's you know, a dust spec on our planet

0:49:03.640 --> 0:49:07.279
<v Speaker 1>is like one to one hundred micrometers, and so if

0:49:07.400 --> 0:49:10.520
<v Speaker 1>life has to be at least as big as a micrometer,

0:49:11.000 --> 0:49:14.200
<v Speaker 1>then it's really hard to imagine having intelligent life and

0:49:14.280 --> 0:49:17.919
<v Speaker 1>complex society on a dust spec because that life would

0:49:17.960 --> 0:49:21.080
<v Speaker 1>have to be much smaller than the dust spec, much

0:49:21.120 --> 0:49:24.520
<v Speaker 1>smaller than a micrometer. And already we're hitting the minimum

0:49:24.520 --> 0:49:28.560
<v Speaker 1>size for simple life bacteria, not to mention like intelligent

0:49:28.600 --> 0:49:32.520
<v Speaker 1>life and complex society and all sorts of information processing

0:49:32.600 --> 0:49:33.600
<v Speaker 1>in their brains.

0:49:34.000 --> 0:49:36.319
<v Speaker 2>Okay, and as soon as you're getting into intelligence, you

0:49:36.440 --> 0:49:38.560
<v Speaker 2>require more equipment and more size.

0:49:38.640 --> 0:49:39.440
<v Speaker 4>Is that what you're.

0:49:39.480 --> 0:49:44.399
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, Intelligence requires like memory and more information processing, communication

0:49:44.520 --> 0:49:48.240
<v Speaker 1>ability between the members of the species. You know, for example,

0:49:48.280 --> 0:49:51.200
<v Speaker 1>the human brain has like ten to the eleven neurons

0:49:51.200 --> 0:49:54.120
<v Speaker 1>in it, so you're probably not getting intelligent life out

0:49:54.160 --> 0:49:58.000
<v Speaker 1>of like six or seven building blocks. And even our ais, right,

0:49:58.000 --> 0:50:01.080
<v Speaker 1>if you want to build synthetic life, those things have

0:50:01.239 --> 0:50:05.480
<v Speaker 1>millions and millions of billions of parameters, which means you

0:50:05.480 --> 0:50:08.839
<v Speaker 1>have a very large number of artificial neurons in that

0:50:09.000 --> 0:50:12.400
<v Speaker 1>neural network. So a lot of complexity is required for

0:50:12.520 --> 0:50:16.080
<v Speaker 1>real intelligence. So if you have a bunch of neurons

0:50:16.120 --> 0:50:18.000
<v Speaker 1>all together, and you have a minimum size for like

0:50:18.040 --> 0:50:20.719
<v Speaker 1>the basic building block, that gives you an estimate of

0:50:20.800 --> 0:50:24.440
<v Speaker 1>like maybe a millimeter is the minimum size for really

0:50:24.480 --> 0:50:27.640
<v Speaker 1>complex behavior. And you know, here on Earth we have

0:50:27.719 --> 0:50:30.719
<v Speaker 1>critters that are like a millimeter. You know, insects, for example,

0:50:31.160 --> 0:50:35.120
<v Speaker 1>order a millimeter, and those don't individually show a whole

0:50:35.160 --> 0:50:38.800
<v Speaker 1>lot of intelligence. There's some learning there. Fruitflies, for example,

0:50:38.960 --> 0:50:41.160
<v Speaker 1>have like you know, one hundred thousand or one hundred

0:50:41.200 --> 0:50:45.319
<v Speaker 1>and fifty thousand neurons in them, and they don't show

0:50:45.360 --> 0:50:48.640
<v Speaker 1>a whole lot of really complex intelligent behavior. They can learn,

0:50:48.880 --> 0:50:52.560
<v Speaker 1>they can dance, they can sing to each other. It's fascinating. Actually,

0:50:52.560 --> 0:50:56.800
<v Speaker 1>they just mapped the entire connectum of a fruitfly brain

0:50:56.920 --> 0:50:59.920
<v Speaker 1>for the first time. Really super cool. So now they

0:51:00.320 --> 0:51:02.560
<v Speaker 1>try to understand what does the fruit fly thinking, and

0:51:02.600 --> 0:51:04.600
<v Speaker 1>how does that brain work and all sorts of stuff.

0:51:04.840 --> 0:51:06.879
<v Speaker 1>Really cool bit of science done by a good friend

0:51:06.920 --> 0:51:09.640
<v Speaker 1>of mine at Princeton. Cool so that's a good reason

0:51:09.680 --> 0:51:11.560
<v Speaker 1>to think that, Like, you've got to be at least

0:51:11.640 --> 0:51:16.479
<v Speaker 1>a millimeter probably in order to be intelligent. And even

0:51:16.560 --> 0:51:19.120
<v Speaker 1>still at that scale, you got a lot of physics

0:51:19.160 --> 0:51:21.720
<v Speaker 1>to worry about, not just like what's the smallest building

0:51:21.760 --> 0:51:24.319
<v Speaker 1>block you can make these things out of, but like

0:51:24.400 --> 0:51:29.040
<v Speaker 1>how do small systems operate? Because small systems have issues

0:51:29.239 --> 0:51:32.760
<v Speaker 1>that big systems don't have, mostly having to do with noise.

0:51:33.160 --> 0:51:36.359
<v Speaker 1>Oh like what, well, small things wiggle a lot. If

0:51:36.400 --> 0:51:38.319
<v Speaker 1>you're man out of a smaller number of atoms, you're

0:51:38.480 --> 0:51:42.960
<v Speaker 1>closer to like the vibration of those atoms. Okay, small

0:51:42.960 --> 0:51:46.600
<v Speaker 1>things just have more thermal noise. Thermal noise just means

0:51:46.880 --> 0:51:50.200
<v Speaker 1>related to the temperature, because remember, the warmer you are,

0:51:50.280 --> 0:51:53.279
<v Speaker 1>the more the stuff inside of you is jiggling. That's

0:51:53.320 --> 0:51:56.279
<v Speaker 1>what temperature is. And so the smaller you are, the

0:51:56.320 --> 0:51:59.440
<v Speaker 1>closer you are to that jiggling. If you're big, you

0:51:59.760 --> 0:52:02.960
<v Speaker 1>may I have huge concrete blocks. Then that jiggling all

0:52:03.000 --> 0:52:05.480
<v Speaker 1>averages down it doesn't really affect you. But if you're

0:52:05.520 --> 0:52:07.640
<v Speaker 1>a really small system, then you're going to be affected

0:52:07.640 --> 0:52:11.239
<v Speaker 1>by that thermal noise and it can drown out any signals.

0:52:11.560 --> 0:52:14.520
<v Speaker 1>This is one reason why, for example, our brains are

0:52:14.560 --> 0:52:18.120
<v Speaker 1>the size they are. You might wonder, like, boy, childbirth

0:52:18.200 --> 0:52:21.560
<v Speaker 1>is dangerous. Lots of women in history have died in childbirth.

0:52:21.600 --> 0:52:26.719
<v Speaker 1>That's bad. Why didn't we select for denser brains, smaller

0:52:26.760 --> 0:52:30.760
<v Speaker 1>neurons that could have the same intelligence at a smaller scale.

0:52:30.840 --> 0:52:33.280
<v Speaker 1>And the answer is that if you make our neurons

0:52:33.360 --> 0:52:36.319
<v Speaker 1>much smaller, then you're closer to the thermal noise, and

0:52:36.360 --> 0:52:39.279
<v Speaker 1>so you lose intelligence. So there's the thought that we're

0:52:39.280 --> 0:52:42.600
<v Speaker 1>sort of at the sweet spot, right the smallest brain

0:52:42.760 --> 0:52:46.160
<v Speaker 1>you could have to have this much intelligence, and so

0:52:46.800 --> 0:52:49.600
<v Speaker 1>you know, you really can't get too small and still

0:52:49.640 --> 0:52:52.880
<v Speaker 1>have complex systems that don't get drowned in noise.

0:52:53.200 --> 0:52:54.359
<v Speaker 4>Interesting, I didn't know that.

0:52:54.440 --> 0:52:58.160
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, And so I would say that the smallest life

0:52:58.160 --> 0:53:00.280
<v Speaker 1>you could have when building out of atoms is probably

0:53:00.360 --> 0:53:04.760
<v Speaker 1>microbial life. Is it possible for microbes to be intelligent? Maybe?

0:53:05.280 --> 0:53:10.880
<v Speaker 1>Possibly networks on microbes, but it's tough. Insect level intelligence.

0:53:10.960 --> 0:53:16.520
<v Speaker 1>Millimeter scale intelligence also possible, but tough. So I think,

0:53:16.600 --> 0:53:19.880
<v Speaker 1>you know, the smallest size critter you could expect to

0:53:19.880 --> 0:53:22.840
<v Speaker 1>be intelligent at the human level is probably about the

0:53:22.880 --> 0:53:23.680
<v Speaker 1>size of a human.

0:53:24.600 --> 0:53:24.920
<v Speaker 4>Really.

0:53:26.120 --> 0:53:28.359
<v Speaker 2>I mean, so we've ruled out insect size, But why

0:53:28.400 --> 0:53:32.239
<v Speaker 2>couldn't you have like a brilliant dog, And like, yes,

0:53:32.360 --> 0:53:34.680
<v Speaker 2>we have good good boys and good girls who are

0:53:35.160 --> 0:53:36.840
<v Speaker 2>very smart and do good jobs.

0:53:36.880 --> 0:53:38.840
<v Speaker 1>But like, oh, man, Kelly, I'm doing this at the

0:53:38.840 --> 0:53:41.279
<v Speaker 1>physics level, which means, you know, factors of two or

0:53:41.320 --> 0:53:46.640
<v Speaker 1>five whatever, So I'm gripping dogs in with humans. Oh okay, okay,

0:53:47.120 --> 0:53:49.760
<v Speaker 1>you know, are we talking meter size or centimeter size

0:53:49.840 --> 0:53:53.280
<v Speaker 1>or melimeter size? So I think a meter sized alien

0:53:53.680 --> 0:53:56.719
<v Speaker 1>is probably the smallest you could imagine having human sized intelligence.

0:53:56.920 --> 0:53:59.840
<v Speaker 4>Okay, perfect, All right, let's move on to upper limits.

0:54:00.280 --> 0:54:03.200
<v Speaker 1>So when you get bigger in three dimensions, then you

0:54:03.239 --> 0:54:07.000
<v Speaker 1>suffer from the square cube law. This very basic fact

0:54:07.000 --> 0:54:10.600
<v Speaker 1>in physics that as you get bigger, your volume grows

0:54:10.640 --> 0:54:14.600
<v Speaker 1>with your size cubed, right, which means your mass grows

0:54:14.640 --> 0:54:18.520
<v Speaker 1>with your size cubed. But your strength the muscles and

0:54:18.680 --> 0:54:23.200
<v Speaker 1>bones depend on the cross sectional area, and that tends

0:54:23.239 --> 0:54:26.759
<v Speaker 1>to grow with the size squared. Just imagine a cube.

0:54:26.880 --> 0:54:29.800
<v Speaker 1>You make it twice as long on each side, and

0:54:29.880 --> 0:54:32.279
<v Speaker 1>then it's gonna have eight times as much stuff in it, right,

0:54:32.640 --> 0:54:35.600
<v Speaker 1>But each side is only going to be four times

0:54:35.640 --> 0:54:38.680
<v Speaker 1>as big as the original cube. So they gives you

0:54:38.719 --> 0:54:41.960
<v Speaker 1>a sense for like how the internals grow faster than

0:54:42.000 --> 0:54:44.720
<v Speaker 1>the sides. And this is one reason why, for example,

0:54:44.760 --> 0:54:46.759
<v Speaker 1>there's a limit to the size of a building you

0:54:46.800 --> 0:54:50.200
<v Speaker 1>can build because if you build a building larger, then

0:54:50.280 --> 0:54:54.080
<v Speaker 1>it gets really high volume, but the side doesn't get

0:54:54.160 --> 0:54:57.280
<v Speaker 1>much bigger. And so now like pressure on the side

0:54:57.280 --> 0:55:00.360
<v Speaker 1>of a building grows because you have like this same

0:55:00.400 --> 0:55:04.600
<v Speaker 1>amount of force on a smaller area proportionally, and this

0:55:04.680 --> 0:55:07.280
<v Speaker 1>is also an issue for animals. You try to scale

0:55:07.400 --> 0:55:12.280
<v Speaker 1>up an animal, then its volume grows faster than its strength,

0:55:12.640 --> 0:55:15.279
<v Speaker 1>than the strength of its bones and its muscles, which

0:55:15.360 --> 0:55:18.720
<v Speaker 1>depend on like the cross sectional area. They're not the volume.

0:55:19.320 --> 0:55:22.279
<v Speaker 1>And so that's why, for example, elephants are not as

0:55:22.320 --> 0:55:26.160
<v Speaker 1>proportionately strong as ants are relative to their weight.

0:55:26.960 --> 0:55:28.040
<v Speaker 4>You know what I'm wondering.

0:55:28.760 --> 0:55:30.640
<v Speaker 2>So you know, we've got like we've got elephants and

0:55:30.640 --> 0:55:32.920
<v Speaker 2>they're really big, but why don't we and you know

0:55:32.920 --> 0:55:36.759
<v Speaker 2>we used to have t rex and Elisaurus and all

0:55:36.800 --> 0:55:40.320
<v Speaker 2>of those other like really big land animals. Yeah, but

0:55:40.400 --> 0:55:42.840
<v Speaker 2>we have fewer of them now. Maybe we need to

0:55:42.840 --> 0:55:44.920
<v Speaker 2>get Steve Brusatti on it. Tell us why we have

0:55:45.160 --> 0:55:49.200
<v Speaker 2>fewer massive animals now? Because there's you know, there's always

0:55:49.200 --> 0:55:51.879
<v Speaker 2>been this constraint. Oh, it's probably because we killed them,

0:55:52.360 --> 0:55:54.360
<v Speaker 2>dang it. Oh man, we're coming back to that.

0:55:54.960 --> 0:55:57.640
<v Speaker 1>We didn't kill all the dinosaurs though the asteroid did

0:55:57.640 --> 0:55:58.239
<v Speaker 1>that for us.

0:55:58.440 --> 0:55:58.560
<v Speaker 4>Well.

0:55:58.600 --> 0:56:00.880
<v Speaker 2>No, but there was like giant lands. You know, there

0:56:00.880 --> 0:56:02.520
<v Speaker 2>were a bunch of homo species and then there were

0:56:02.520 --> 0:56:05.040
<v Speaker 2>like giant landslots, and then there were all these giant birds,

0:56:05.040 --> 0:56:07.359
<v Speaker 2>and then humans went around killing the giant landers.

0:56:07.400 --> 0:56:09.359
<v Speaker 1>But none of those were as big as Brontosaurus.

0:56:09.440 --> 0:56:11.480
<v Speaker 4>No, that's a good point. That's good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow.

0:56:11.560 --> 0:56:14.040
<v Speaker 2>Anyway, we just gotta have Steve Brustani on a lot anyway,

0:56:14.120 --> 0:56:15.080
<v Speaker 2>because he's a lot of fun.

0:56:15.160 --> 0:56:17.000
<v Speaker 4>All right, go ahead, Sorry.

0:56:17.040 --> 0:56:20.400
<v Speaker 1>But yeah, there are constraints there. Getting bigger is harder

0:56:20.440 --> 0:56:23.960
<v Speaker 1>because you need really big muscles, you need really big bones.

0:56:24.600 --> 0:56:28.319
<v Speaker 1>The bones proportionally have to grow faster than everything else

0:56:28.400 --> 0:56:30.839
<v Speaker 1>in order to keep up with the volume. Also, it

0:56:30.880 --> 0:56:33.800
<v Speaker 1>makes dissipating heat hard because you have less surface area

0:56:33.840 --> 0:56:36.919
<v Speaker 1>per volume. And all this depends on the gravity. Right,

0:56:37.360 --> 0:56:39.440
<v Speaker 1>The more gravity you have on the planet, the faster

0:56:39.600 --> 0:56:42.239
<v Speaker 1>this constraint comes into play. The less gravity you have,

0:56:42.560 --> 0:56:45.640
<v Speaker 1>the slower you can have bigger animals on a lower

0:56:45.680 --> 0:56:48.680
<v Speaker 1>gravity planet. And in the same way, if you're in

0:56:48.680 --> 0:56:50.799
<v Speaker 1>the ocean, you can escape some of this because the

0:56:50.840 --> 0:56:53.960
<v Speaker 1>water helps support some of the weight. You have better cooling.

0:56:54.200 --> 0:56:57.239
<v Speaker 1>That's why, for example, the biggest critters ever are in

0:56:57.280 --> 0:56:58.280
<v Speaker 1>the ocean.

0:56:58.160 --> 0:57:02.320
<v Speaker 4>And the biggest creaters ever are alive right now. Pretty

0:57:02.320 --> 0:57:02.920
<v Speaker 4>cool that we're.

0:57:02.760 --> 0:57:05.359
<v Speaker 1>Alive the same time and we didn't kill them all

0:57:05.440 --> 0:57:06.479
<v Speaker 1>yey for us yet.

0:57:06.760 --> 0:57:10.400
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, that's another fact I learned from Steve Brussati. Anyway, sorry,

0:57:10.400 --> 0:57:11.480
<v Speaker 2>go ahead, very exciting.

0:57:12.000 --> 0:57:14.399
<v Speaker 1>But there's also a limit to how big you can get,

0:57:14.440 --> 0:57:17.640
<v Speaker 1>even if you're in the water, because the bigger you get,

0:57:17.760 --> 0:57:21.840
<v Speaker 1>the slower you can think. Signals move across your brain

0:57:21.880 --> 0:57:24.560
<v Speaker 1>at a certain speed. It's like one hundred meters per second,

0:57:24.680 --> 0:57:29.959
<v Speaker 1>not light speed, and so coordination across your body becomes difficult.

0:57:30.200 --> 0:57:32.880
<v Speaker 1>Right now, your brain knows about how long it takes

0:57:32.880 --> 0:57:35.680
<v Speaker 1>signals to travel from your toes or from your nose,

0:57:36.120 --> 0:57:39.000
<v Speaker 1>and it coordinates that. Right somebody touches you at the

0:57:39.040 --> 0:57:42.000
<v Speaker 1>same time on your toe and on your nose. Your

0:57:42.000 --> 0:57:44.920
<v Speaker 1>brain knows that the signals should arrive at different times,

0:57:45.280 --> 0:57:47.520
<v Speaker 1>and it'll figure that out of the reverse engineer that

0:57:48.200 --> 0:57:51.800
<v Speaker 1>but if you're like a kilometer size being, then that

0:57:51.840 --> 0:57:54.320
<v Speaker 1>coordination is going to take a lot of time, seconds

0:57:54.400 --> 0:57:57.520
<v Speaker 1>or even minutes. It's hard to imagine having like a

0:57:57.680 --> 0:58:01.520
<v Speaker 1>unified consciousness in that pick sure, and your thoughts are

0:58:01.560 --> 0:58:03.840
<v Speaker 1>gonna just be slower. You know, if you have a

0:58:03.840 --> 0:58:06.040
<v Speaker 1>creator of the size of the solar system, you know,

0:58:06.120 --> 0:58:09.360
<v Speaker 1>made out of dark matter or something really creative, it's

0:58:09.400 --> 0:58:12.680
<v Speaker 1>gonna think super duper slow. It's going to be really

0:58:12.720 --> 0:58:16.040
<v Speaker 1>hard to communicate with those aliens, you know, And.

0:58:16.040 --> 0:58:19.080
<v Speaker 2>Do you feel you feel certain about like about that?

0:58:19.080 --> 0:58:20.960
<v Speaker 2>There's like no way around it. Are you telling us

0:58:21.000 --> 0:58:22.760
<v Speaker 2>like a truth of the universe or is this a

0:58:22.920 --> 0:58:24.960
<v Speaker 2>like this is how you'd set up your sci fi

0:58:25.160 --> 0:58:27.080
<v Speaker 2>fiction book because you're pretty darn sure about it.

0:58:27.680 --> 0:58:30.280
<v Speaker 1>This is all based on a lot of assumptions about

0:58:30.280 --> 0:58:33.240
<v Speaker 1>how biology works, which is inspired by how things work

0:58:33.280 --> 0:58:36.320
<v Speaker 1>here on Earth, and aliens could circumvent a lot of this.

0:58:36.560 --> 0:58:39.560
<v Speaker 1>Like our nerve signals travel at one hundred meters per second,

0:58:39.800 --> 0:58:42.920
<v Speaker 1>you could definitely do that faster, right. The ultimate limit

0:58:43.000 --> 0:58:45.120
<v Speaker 1>is light speed, which is a lot faster than one

0:58:45.160 --> 0:58:47.680
<v Speaker 1>hundred meters per second, So you could get bigger if

0:58:47.680 --> 0:58:51.280
<v Speaker 1>you had faster signals. Right, that's for sure. If you

0:58:51.320 --> 0:58:54.560
<v Speaker 1>had different chemistry, if you had different information storage, you

0:58:54.600 --> 0:58:56.520
<v Speaker 1>could do all sorts of things different. I mean, if

0:58:56.600 --> 0:58:59.600
<v Speaker 1>things were like not biological at all, We're talking about

0:58:59.600 --> 0:59:03.640
<v Speaker 1>machine intelligence or made out of crystals or plasma or something,

0:59:04.080 --> 0:59:06.200
<v Speaker 1>then everything could be very, very different. But I'm trying

0:59:06.200 --> 0:59:09.480
<v Speaker 1>to extrapolate from Earth life biology, but you know that's

0:59:09.480 --> 0:59:10.880
<v Speaker 1>always limited as an equals one.

0:59:11.240 --> 0:59:12.280
<v Speaker 4>Yep, Okay, cool.

0:59:12.320 --> 0:59:14.720
<v Speaker 1>But the good news is that all of this suggests

0:59:14.840 --> 0:59:17.800
<v Speaker 1>that intelligence on Earth is kind of in the sweet spot.

0:59:18.000 --> 0:59:21.520
<v Speaker 1>We're big enough to have complex brains that avoid the noise,

0:59:21.920 --> 0:59:24.400
<v Speaker 1>but we're small enough to be able to communicate across

0:59:24.440 --> 0:59:28.760
<v Speaker 1>our bodies pretty quickly and have like coordinated actions and intelligence.

0:59:29.320 --> 0:59:31.120
<v Speaker 1>So yeah, humans are pretty awesome.

0:59:31.600 --> 0:59:33.600
<v Speaker 4>Oh man, I love that we decided that we're the

0:59:33.600 --> 0:59:35.040
<v Speaker 4>best go us.

0:59:36.240 --> 0:59:38.200
<v Speaker 1>In this episode, we went from humans are the worst

0:59:38.200 --> 0:59:40.120
<v Speaker 1>to humans are the best and back again.

0:59:40.920 --> 0:59:43.360
<v Speaker 2>Well, you know, we cover a broad range of emotions

0:59:43.400 --> 0:59:45.400
<v Speaker 2>and a broad range of topics on this show.

0:59:45.720 --> 0:59:46.480
<v Speaker 4>We've got it all.

0:59:46.720 --> 0:59:49.320
<v Speaker 1>All right, let's send this answer to Brandon and see

0:59:49.320 --> 0:59:50.560
<v Speaker 1>if we scratched his itch.

0:59:51.040 --> 0:59:53.480
<v Speaker 5>Thank you for taking the time to put such thought

0:59:53.760 --> 0:59:57.560
<v Speaker 5>into answering my chilly question. Of course, pop culture will

0:59:57.640 --> 1:00:01.120
<v Speaker 5>take liberties to imagine intelligent life forms, ranging from Marvel's

1:00:01.160 --> 1:00:05.400
<v Speaker 5>Galactus to Doctor Seus's Whovill, and Daniel is always reminding

1:00:05.480 --> 1:00:08.680
<v Speaker 5>us that our human and earthly context limits our ability

1:00:08.680 --> 1:00:12.680
<v Speaker 5>to imagine just how truly alien aliens could be. But

1:00:12.760 --> 1:00:16.360
<v Speaker 5>it's fascinating to know that scientifically, the most likely scenario

1:00:16.480 --> 1:00:19.800
<v Speaker 5>is that any beings we encounter someday will roughly be

1:00:19.920 --> 1:00:23.400
<v Speaker 5>on scale with humans. Thanks again, and now I will

1:00:23.400 --> 1:00:26.080
<v Speaker 5>not pull a hort in the elephant and start searching

1:00:26.120 --> 1:00:29.640
<v Speaker 5>for random clovers to seek out microscopic intelligent life.

1:00:29.880 --> 1:00:32.280
<v Speaker 2>Well, thank you so much for sending your questions and

1:00:32.320 --> 1:00:36.200
<v Speaker 2>your curiosity to us. We absolutely adore getting to interact

1:00:36.200 --> 1:00:36.720
<v Speaker 2>with you all.

1:00:37.320 --> 1:00:40.800
<v Speaker 1>We really do. Your curiosity powers this podcast, and it

1:00:40.880 --> 1:00:45.000
<v Speaker 1>also powers all of science. So keep thinking, keep wondering,

1:00:45.160 --> 1:00:48.040
<v Speaker 1>keep demanding that the universe makes sense to you.

1:00:48.320 --> 1:00:52.240
<v Speaker 2>And keep writing us at questions at Danielandkelly dot org.

1:00:52.440 --> 1:00:54.200
<v Speaker 4>Until next time, see you later.

1:01:00.920 --> 1:01:03.320
<v Speaker 1>Thanks everybody for listening. Please go and do us a

1:01:03.360 --> 1:01:06.600
<v Speaker 1>favor and rate the show on whatever podcast app you're using.

1:01:06.680 --> 1:01:08.000
<v Speaker 1>It really helps people.

1:01:07.760 --> 1:01:11.960
<v Speaker 2>Find us Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe. Is edited by

1:01:12.000 --> 1:01:13.480
<v Speaker 2>the amazing Matt Kesselman.

1:01:13.720 --> 1:01:16.960
<v Speaker 1>He really is a wizard. You can also find us

1:01:17.080 --> 1:01:22.120
<v Speaker 1>online on Blue Sky, Instagram, and x D and K Universe.

1:01:22.200 --> 1:01:23.439
<v Speaker 1>Come engage with us.

1:01:23.680 --> 1:01:27.040
<v Speaker 2>You can email us at questions at Danielankelly dot org.

1:01:27.120 --> 1:01:29.280
<v Speaker 2>We really do want to hear from you, and you.

1:01:29.280 --> 1:01:33.320
<v Speaker 1>Can find our website www dot danieland Kelly dot org,

1:01:33.560 --> 1:01:36.680
<v Speaker 1>where you'll also find an invitation to join our discord

1:01:36.760 --> 1:01:39.960
<v Speaker 1>where everybody comes and talks about the amazing universe.

1:01:40.280 --> 1:01:44.240
<v Speaker 2>And we also have the most amazing moderators. This is

1:01:44.240 --> 1:01:46.800
<v Speaker 2>an iHeart podcast. Thanks for joining us.