Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas, and
Speaker 1: we're doing a couple of episodes here. These are kind
Speaker 1: of round up episodes of science that occurred or came
Speaker 1: to fruition in two thousand fourteen. We're recording this at
Speaker 1: the tail end often, so it's possible, uh, in the
Speaker 1: two weeks that follow that we'll make contact with aliens
Speaker 1: or or some other major groundbreaking thing will happen and
Speaker 1: we will have missed it just because they didn't occur
Speaker 1: or they didn't publish the study for some reason until
Speaker 1: the last two weeks of the year, in which case
Speaker 1: we apologize. Also, we want to say this is what
Speaker 1: we're doing here. We're not trying to to to put
Speaker 1: out an exhaustive, perfect set in stone, launch it into
Speaker 1: space list of this is the science. It's more this
Speaker 1: is these are some of the big stories that impressed
Speaker 1: us that we think probably resonated with you. And also
Speaker 1: some of this is, uh, we have some smaller studies
Speaker 1: on here that you might have missed, and we're going
Speaker 1: to point out why they're amazing and worth taking a
Speaker 1: second glance at. Yeah, I think you covered it. Um.
Speaker 1: This is a two part of the first is going
Speaker 1: to focus more on astonishing science, and the second part
Speaker 1: is just going to be more extraordinary science. So again,
Speaker 1: as you said, this is not an exhaustive list, but
Speaker 1: it's a couple of things that may be familiar to you,
Speaker 1: probably are, and a couple of things that will make
Speaker 1: you perhaps gonna you know, cock your head to the
Speaker 1: side and say, ah, has reframed my understanding of existence
Speaker 1: or perhaps not. Um. In any case, let's go ahead
Speaker 1: and launch into it. And when I say launch into it,
Speaker 1: of course I am referring to the Mars Science Laboratory,
Speaker 1: also called Curiosity. Yeah, Curiosity was really really one of
Speaker 1: the m v p s for science. And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: even if it wasn't interesting, it wasn't a really fun
Speaker 1: topic to discuss. We'd have to mention it here because
Speaker 1: he's just snow getting around curiosity. Um never, no, never,
Speaker 1: now Now. Certainly, NASA's Curiosity rover has actually been on
Speaker 1: the surface of Mars since August. But this was a
Speaker 1: very good good year for our eyes and ears on
Speaker 1: the Red planet. Um. We'll see I don't even know
Speaker 1: where to start on this one. You know, well, maybe
Speaker 1: we should just kind of say the main mission for
Speaker 1: Curiosity is to answer the question could Mars have one
Speaker 1: time Harvard life? So everything that it does, all the
Speaker 1: data that it reports back on is trying to scratch
Speaker 1: at this question. So two years later, we're beginning to
Speaker 1: see some of this information put together from the pieces
Speaker 1: of the puzzle. And that's what's so fascinating about where
Speaker 1: we are right now, because it wasn't just the spec
Speaker 1: tagular landing that it pulled off, that in and of
Speaker 1: itself was a milestone um. But now we are seeing
Speaker 1: Curiosity cruise around there like it's a little wally, kind
Speaker 1: of lonely looking on that planet and reporting back some
Speaker 1: things like, hey, there are some key chemical ingredients for
Speaker 1: life in the gray powder that it's been analyzing and
Speaker 1: it drilled out of the John Kline Rock outcrop. We're
Speaker 1: talking about sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and carbon and these,
Speaker 1: as we know, become really important in terms of building life.
Speaker 1: And Curiosity has been assessing the Martian radiation environment, helping
Speaker 1: scientists to better understand the hazards that radiation may post.
Speaker 1: So we're talking about dangers that could be posed to
Speaker 1: indigenous microbes and human visitors should that occur. And it
Speaker 1: was determined that the amount of radiation the Red planet
Speaker 1: has exceeds NASA's career. That's for astronauts. Get to now, right,
Speaker 1: good to know, Good to know. Now, I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: a little over the top here for a minute and
Speaker 1: say that just as Moses ascended Mount Sinai to receive
Speaker 1: the will of God, so too did the Little Rover
Speaker 1: spend much of two thousand fourteen en route to the
Speaker 1: Martian Mount Sharp curiosity that already had already two point
Speaker 1: discovered many of the key elements necessarily for life on
Speaker 1: on Mars in the past carbon oxytion, hydrogen, phosphorus, nitrogen
Speaker 1: uh in standing water, which we'll get to in a minute.
Speaker 1: But the emergence of life also requires a great deal
Speaker 1: of time, and it's reported by Mark Kaufman in the
Speaker 1: New York Times, scientists previously only predicted a habitable period
Speaker 1: of mere centuries or you know, a few thousand years,
Speaker 1: which which is nothing basically, when you're talking about the
Speaker 1: window for life to emerge on a planet, but with
Speaker 1: curiosities findings, we discovered a strong new evidence here that
Speaker 1: gael Crater had large bodies of water for millions or
Speaker 1: even tens of millions of years, to say nothing of
Speaker 1: lingering water underground. So this year, in among other other
Speaker 1: things from curiosity, the window for ancient life on Mars
Speaker 1: expanded significantly, giving us a vision possible vision of a
Speaker 1: of a blue Mars three point five to four billion
Speaker 1: years ago, which is pretty cool. They also found an
Speaker 1: ancient stream bed where water once flowed roughly knee deep
Speaker 1: for thousands of years at a time, So again more
Speaker 1: mounting evidence that water had been present and perhaps for
Speaker 1: a significant amount of time now most recently. And these
Speaker 1: are early days so we don't have the full perspective
Speaker 1: on this yet, this sort of armchair perspective. But methane
Speaker 1: was discovered on the planet mid December here, and this
Speaker 1: is really important because since uh, we know living organisms
Speaker 1: produce methane, then that gives sign to some pause to
Speaker 1: scratch their head and say, m what possibly could be
Speaker 1: the reason for this methane here found on Mars. So
Speaker 1: over the course of four measurements and two months on Mars,
Speaker 1: average methane levels increased tenfold before quickly dissipating. But this
Speaker 1: cause of the fluctuation is really unknown right now. It
Speaker 1: could have been created by a geological process known as serpentinization,
Speaker 1: which requires both heat and liquid water, or it could
Speaker 1: be the product of life in the form of microbes
Speaker 1: releasing methane as waste product. Right now, according to Paul
Speaker 1: Mahaffy of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, it's too much
Speaker 1: of a single point measurement for us to really jump
Speaker 1: to any conclusions. It's pretty amazing, though, and with a
Speaker 1: lot of these studies, especially when we get into water
Speaker 1: on Mars and UH, We've been gradually learning a lot
Speaker 1: about Mars and its history over the years, so it's
Speaker 1: it's easy to kind of, you know, ease into some
Speaker 1: of this information and not realize just how how groundbreaking
Speaker 1: it is and how much how much more we know
Speaker 1: about the Red planet versus UH ten twenty years ago. UM.
Speaker 1: Out of that same press conference, UH, it was also
Speaker 1: they also broke down some information from May, some findings
Speaker 1: from May in which the rover drilled into a piece
Speaker 1: of Martian rock called Cumberland and found UH some ancient
Speaker 1: water hidden within it, and then the onboard instruments were
Speaker 1: able to analyze the sample, and uh I subsequently reveilt
Speaker 1: a lot about the probable history of water on Mars.
Speaker 1: Measured the ratio of deuterium, which is heavy hydrogen um
Speaker 1: to normal hydrogen, and that that D t H ratio,
Speaker 1: as they got, allows us to gauge how long it
Speaker 1: takes for water molecules to escape because lighter HAWL hydrogen
Speaker 1: molecules fly towards the upper atmosphere fear more freely UH
Speaker 1: than the heavy hydrogen ones do. So the D two
Speaker 1: H ratio in Cumberland is about half the ratio found
Speaker 1: in the Martian atmosphere water vapor today and so NASA
Speaker 1: scientists believe that this suggests that the planet lost uch
Speaker 1: of its surface water after this rock form. So the
Speaker 1: idea here is that most of the Martian water likely
Speaker 1: disappeared before the Convent Cumberland rock form about three point
Speaker 1: nine billion to four point six billion years ago. So again,
Speaker 1: just another insight into the history of Mars. And uh
Speaker 1: I want to drive home with this uh and in
Speaker 1: another entry that we're gonna mention that with a with
Speaker 1: a project like Curiosity, you have a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: is done in advance obviously, and you're shooting the arrow
Speaker 1: off into the future, um, rolling the dice in some respect,
Speaker 1: um to see how everything's gonna land, sometimes literally. And
Speaker 1: then there's a lot of data you get back, and
Speaker 1: sometimes that data is crunched for you know, for for
Speaker 1: for quite a long time afterwards. So just as curiosity
Speaker 1: is still ongoing the data that it's sent back and
Speaker 1: is sending back, there's a continual process of going over
Speaker 1: writ and comparing and figuring out exactly what it means. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there have been some criticisms levied at the project
Speaker 1: to say that it's not as focus as it should be.
Speaker 1: But I would say, here's this monumental uh project, that's
Speaker 1: that's the first for humanity, you know, for Mars, and
Speaker 1: and having this data collection rover, you're probably gonna have
Speaker 1: some unfocused moments as you try to figure out exactly
Speaker 1: what is present and how to interpret that data and
Speaker 1: what direction to go in after you interpret it. Indeed,
Speaker 1: I mean there are several different experiments on board, there
Speaker 1: are multiple tools that the scientists are able to use,
Speaker 1: so it's it's gonna get pulled in different directions. Now,
Speaker 1: the most important thing I think that happened is that
Speaker 1: on Mars the rover took a selfie. Oh I forgot
Speaker 1: about this, Yeah yeah, sent it back like hey, look
Speaker 1: at me. Well in two thousand thirteen, it's supposed to
Speaker 1: drew a penis. Uh, well, and so did I. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, we all get bored. We take selfies, we
Speaker 1: draw penises. It's just how it goes. So when we
Speaker 1: send a robotic emissary out there through the void to
Speaker 1: an alien world, it's just gonna happen. Indeed, all right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break. When we get back,
Speaker 1: we are going to discuss Rosetta. All right, we're back. Yes,
Speaker 1: the Rosetta mission from the e s A. This this
Speaker 1: is a big one. And if it rivals curiosity just
Speaker 1: and if not surpasses it in terms of the scientific findings,
Speaker 1: the the drama even of getting getting this little guy there,
Speaker 1: uh and and just the the audacity of the experiment
Speaker 1: as a whole. Yeah, we're talking about a ten year
Speaker 1: mission in the making. When in two thousand and four
Speaker 1: the European Space Agency launched the Rosetta spacecraft. Again, we're
Speaker 1: talking about a circuitous six point four billion kilometer trek
Speaker 1: across the Solar System, crossing the Asteroid Belt, and traveling
Speaker 1: into deep space more than five times Earth's distance from
Speaker 1: then on to the periodic comment known as Commet sixty
Speaker 1: seven P. And now, once the spacecraft got close enough
Speaker 1: to the comment, the idea was to do the unthinkable,
Speaker 1: which is just to throw a little lander on it
Speaker 1: and on top of it. No big deal. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean this is this is this is like one of
Speaker 1: those just sci fi meats reality kind of scenarios, right
Speaker 1: that we were going to send this thing out. It's
Speaker 1: gonna spend ten years hibernating to get there. And then
Speaker 1: not only is it going to uh be the be
Speaker 1: the first mission in history to rendezvous with the comment,
Speaker 1: because we've had fly byes in the past. Uh and
Speaker 1: not only is going to escort it as it orbits
Speaker 1: the Sun, it's going to deploy a lander to its surface.
Speaker 1: We're going to land on a comet. That was that
Speaker 1: was the plan, and uh, it mostly mostly came out Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it had some um some sort of high stakes moments
Speaker 1: where it wasn't sure whether or not it was going
Speaker 1: to happen. The Harpoons does sign to attach to the
Speaker 1: comment from the lander did not fire, and so that
Speaker 1: was a bit of a problem in trying to get
Speaker 1: a bead on the actual comment and and um and
Speaker 1: find some stasis. Yeah, it's an issue with the descent
Speaker 1: thrusters as well. And so what was supposed to be
Speaker 1: a smooth landing and in a very anchored landing, Uh,
Speaker 1: there in a nice area where could get plenty of
Speaker 1: solar radiation to repowers batteries. Instead it tumbles across the
Speaker 1: surface and it hits a crater wall. And here it
Speaker 1: is a position where it can only receive a quarter
Speaker 1: of the sunlight necessary to sufficiently charge its batteries once
Speaker 1: it runs out of juice. And how much juice? Sixty
Speaker 1: hours of juice. So this was this was a fairly
Speaker 1: big blow to the immediate future of the of of it,
Speaker 1: so that the science just had to double down and say, oh,
Speaker 1: all right, we got sixty hours of juice. Let's figure
Speaker 1: out as much as we can about this comment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there were so many zen moments I think that people
Speaker 1: had to tap into in the control room, I imagine,
Speaker 1: because by the time that it deployed from the rocket
Speaker 1: with something like seven hours right to make its way
Speaker 1: to actually land onto the comment for seven hours. That's
Speaker 1: white knuckling, you know, hoping that it makes it, and
Speaker 1: then when it is bouncing around, saying, oh, I hope
Speaker 1: that it actually stays. And then look it's it's got
Speaker 1: some screws that is digging into the surfaces anchoring. But
Speaker 1: now it's anchored at an angle that it can't take
Speaker 1: advantage of the full sun spectrum. So, as you say,
Speaker 1: we got sixty hours, let's get to work. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: landed on November twelve, and last contact was November um
Speaker 1: last contact contact as of now, and we'll get more
Speaker 1: into that later. But in the sixty hours, we did
Speaker 1: find out a lot about this comment. We found out
Speaker 1: things we didn't expect. Yeah, and why would you want
Speaker 1: to study a comment in the first place. Well, they
Speaker 1: are icy bodies that are regarded as fossils from the
Speaker 1: times when the Solar system was originating, So this could
Speaker 1: provide scientists with some prime, mordial prime material to work with. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure everyone has seen the stunning images that we
Speaker 1: received back of the comet, you know, these sort of desolate, gray,
Speaker 1: dark images, but still very very inspiring. We found, for instance,
Speaker 1: that if this was not a smooth, whole shaped body
Speaker 1: like we thought it would be. Instead, it's an odd
Speaker 1: shaped coal black lump. Possibly two commets that merge together
Speaker 1: at some point in the past, because it kind of
Speaker 1: kind of looks kind of looks like two things, just
Speaker 1: sort of two big awful rocks crunched together to a
Speaker 1: certain extent. Found out that the surface is hotter than
Speaker 1: we guessed and surprisingly ice free. The first inch of
Speaker 1: the surface crust is porous, dusty, and contains almost no
Speaker 1: ice um. Now the commet is only two point five
Speaker 1: miles wide, but it expels so much water that it
Speaker 1: could quote fill an Olympic size swimming pool in about
Speaker 1: a hundred days. So bear all that in mind when
Speaker 1: you think about the challenges of landing on this thing,
Speaker 1: landing on the surface that you it turned out to
Speaker 1: be drastically different than what you thought it was going
Speaker 1: to be. Yeah, and then all of a sudden you
Speaker 1: have all of this information, like the isotopes, what do
Speaker 1: they look like in that water? Do they match up
Speaker 1: with Earth? It could it be comments or asteroids or
Speaker 1: both that seated life on Earth. All of these questions
Speaker 1: hang in the distance, and it's possible that we may
Speaker 1: be able to answer them over a period of time
Speaker 1: sorting through that data. Now, something that I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if it was widely reported on is that this comment stinks.
Speaker 1: It's got barnyard smells. Um. Sensor devices of the Rosetta
Speaker 1: spacecraft orbiting the comment sniffed out the gas molecules of
Speaker 1: and According to Katherine Altwig, she's the head of the
Speaker 1: Rosina project at the Center for Space Inhabitability, she says,
Speaker 1: the perfume of sixty seven ps quite strong, with the
Speaker 1: odor of rotten eggs, hydrogen sulfide, horse stable ammonia, and
Speaker 1: the pungent, suffocating odor of formalde hyde. This is mixed
Speaker 1: with a faint, bitter almond like aroma of hydrogen side
Speaker 1: who knew? Nice. I'm always interested to hear what other
Speaker 1: planets smell like. There's a I think I can't remember
Speaker 1: if we did a video about this at some point
Speaker 1: in the past. I know we did a blog Stinky planets, Yeah,
Speaker 1: stinky comments. Yeah. Because the stats are out there, you know,
Speaker 1: people say this, this planet smells like this, this one
Speaker 1: like that. Sometimes the answer is a little more entertaining
Speaker 1: than other times. A lot of there's a lot of
Speaker 1: sulfur out there. Oh, I'm sure anyway it it might smell,
Speaker 1: but it has a pleasant singing voice. And that's because
Speaker 1: the magnetic field of the comment oscillates at forty to
Speaker 1: fifty millet hurts and the sound is too low for
Speaker 1: human ears to hear it. But uh, the e s
Speaker 1: a increase the pitch a thousand times and they were
Speaker 1: able to make this song more hearable, and they actually
Speaker 1: put it off on SoundCloud. I'll make sure I linked
Speaker 1: to it on the landing page for this episode. But
Speaker 1: does it have no No, it does not. It's it's
Speaker 1: very very ambient in space music. And how do space
Speaker 1: music post about this? Why not? Um? But they yeah,
Speaker 1: they took the data and then it was compiled by
Speaker 1: German composer Manuel Smiffed. Uh, so it's it's very pleasant,
Speaker 1: very space it seems it sounds like the kind of
Speaker 1: music a comet would have kicking around in it. Now,
Speaker 1: we should probably discussed a few cultural aspects of Rosetta
Speaker 1: as well, including Filet, the name of the lander. Yeah, indeed, uh,
Speaker 1: Rosetta is of course named for the famed Rosetta stone,
Speaker 1: the pivotal Greek Egyptian hieroglyphic artifact um, which of course
Speaker 1: was vital in our understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphics and what
Speaker 1: they meant, because we had basically the same text in
Speaker 1: both Greek and Egyptian. And the idea with Rosetta is
Speaker 1: that we would gain a better understanding of commas. We
Speaker 1: learned the language of comments in the same way that
Speaker 1: the Rosetta stone allowed us to learn the language of
Speaker 1: the ancient Egyptians. And the rover is likewise named for
Speaker 1: the filet obelisk, which bears a bilingual Greek and Egyptian
Speaker 1: hieroglyphic inscription as well. Now, Rosetta was not without its scandal,
Speaker 1: and it's not anything Rosetta did, but it has to
Speaker 1: do with a scientist who was wearing a particularly colorful
Speaker 1: shirt when interviewed about Rosetta. That's right, Rosetta scientist Dr
Speaker 1: Matt Taylor UM wore a rather colorful um button up
Speaker 1: shirt with a lot of kind of pin up ladies
Speaker 1: on its scannily clad ladies, half naked ladies. Yeah and
Speaker 1: uh and then you know he's a he's a bearded dude. Uh,
Speaker 1: tattoos sleeved on each arm. And afterwards it was kind
Speaker 1: of an outcry from from some from some scientists and
Speaker 1: also people just observing saying, whoa, what's who? This is?
Speaker 1: The guy's the voice of your mission, and he's he's
Speaker 1: dressed like he's in a he just came out of Margharitaville.
Speaker 1: What's what's going on? Yeah, historical moment. Uh, kind of
Speaker 1: a sexist shirt. That's that's the criticism loved at him.
Speaker 1: But uh, yeah, I mean he took the criticism to heart,
Speaker 1: and it would appear that he just he just was
Speaker 1: a bit clueless about it. Yeah. He did a very heartfelt,
Speaker 1: you know, tearful apology about it and was sorry that
Speaker 1: he'd upset people and that the press had really dove
Speaker 1: into this a lot too, because, I mean, is if
Speaker 1: the science, if this wasn't fascinating and and mind blowing enough,
Speaker 1: they had to find another angled report on. But they
Speaker 1: even talked to his sister and she said, you know, basically,
Speaker 1: he he's a guy who's so devoted to his work,
Speaker 1: but he's also the kind of guy who will lose
Speaker 1: track of where his car or his car keys might be. Uh,
Speaker 1: and so he can maybe be a little a little
Speaker 1: clueless about some of the uh. The finer points of
Speaker 1: life outside of the science environment, but didn't realize that
Speaker 1: his half naked lady shirt would be distracting. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: you know, Carl Sagan was putting just straight up naked
Speaker 1: pictures on other probs we've sent out into the Oh,
Speaker 1: come on, that is not He did not send a
Speaker 1: bargain kin up out there on the Pioneer plant. I'm
Speaker 1: just saying, mind drawing possible a possible um foothold if
Speaker 1: one were to really, you know, get defensive about that
Speaker 1: shirt choice. Yeah, yeah, you know, we have a lot
Speaker 1: of young people that listen to this podcast. We have
Speaker 1: some middle aged people listen to podcasts. We have old
Speaker 1: people who listen to the podcasts. We have immortal people
Speaker 1: listening to You may very well be it's very possible
Speaker 1: that someone out there listening to this podcast could live,
Speaker 1: if not uh forever for centuries. And it would be
Speaker 1: my dream if someone like say Aubrey de Gray we're
Speaker 1: listening to this and he is, of course the bio
Speaker 1: gerontologists that I have a slight crush on, who talks
Speaker 1: about maintaining the body like a classic car, and that
Speaker 1: the first person to live to five hundred years old
Speaker 1: has already been born. Yeah, yeah, I mean the degrays.
Speaker 1: The whole thing is like basically saying, all right, we
Speaker 1: have this war against death. Well, let's break that war
Speaker 1: down into battles, because wars are fought in battles. So
Speaker 1: he divides it up into these these seven winnable battles
Speaker 1: engagements against the enemy. And if you can figure out
Speaker 1: how to knock off each of these problems, then you
Speaker 1: have the whole thing solved. Well, and what could could
Speaker 1: be better than replacing your blood with younger blood That
Speaker 1: would actually have some very beneficial effects. And uh. In
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, Clive McKay of Cornell University in Ithaca,
Speaker 1: New York, he was the first to sort of figure
Speaker 1: out that some of this might come into play. He
Speaker 1: stitched together the circulatory system of an old and young mouse,
Speaker 1: a technique called hetero chronic parabiosis, and he found that
Speaker 1: the cartilage of the old mice soon appeared younger than
Speaker 1: would be expected. That was the first sort of clue
Speaker 1: that something could be going on here. And then in
Speaker 1: two thousand and five, Thomas Rando at Stanford University in
Speaker 1: California and his team found that young blood returned the
Speaker 1: liver and skeletal stem cells of old mice to a
Speaker 1: more youthful state during heterochronic parabiosis, and the old mice
Speaker 1: were also able to repair injured muscles as well as
Speaker 1: young mice. So here's the spooky thing about this too.
Speaker 1: They found that young mice that received old blood appeared
Speaker 1: to age prematurely. Wow, so it works both ways. Yeah. Well, Now,
Speaker 1: one thing I love about about these findings, of course,
Speaker 1: is that it it just goes into that classic idea
Speaker 1: that that maybe old people could drink the blood of
Speaker 1: the young and sustain their life and opens the door
Speaker 1: that one to normalizing it to normalizing and one day
Speaker 1: making it possible that old rich men uh no longer
Speaker 1: have to just sleep with young women and marry them
Speaker 1: and and take obtain their youth. That way, they can
Speaker 1: actually drink their blood or not will not drink it,
Speaker 1: but they can, um, they can take things from their
Speaker 1: blood and make themselves younger. Yeah. I think in the
Speaker 1: more recent news item that was posted this year that
Speaker 1: when I put it up on Facebook, I think I
Speaker 1: said something like, millennials, you in danger. You gotta run
Speaker 1: because more mounting evidence is pointing to your blood has
Speaker 1: been really beneficial. So then you fast forward to two
Speaker 1: thousand and twelve, Yeah, that's right. This is when we're
Speaker 1: seeing UH researchers demonstrating that blood from a young mouse,
Speaker 1: or even just a factor known as g DF eleven
Speaker 1: from a young from young mouse blood can rejuvenate the
Speaker 1: muscles and brains of older mice. And the brain is
Speaker 1: key here because in that we're getting into possibilities for
Speaker 1: some of the debilitating of brain issues that that have
Speaker 1: received so much attention over the years, particularly Alzheimer's. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So if you have this young blood plasma that that
Speaker 1: growth differential factor eleven, and you were to introduce it
Speaker 1: to a human who has Alzheimer's, you know what is
Speaker 1: that's the million dollar question? Would that actually help to
Speaker 1: reverse the effects of Alzheimer's? And this year team at
Speaker 1: Stanford School of Medicine did indeed start human trials on
Speaker 1: participants who received blood that was under the age of
Speaker 1: thirty and given to people with mild to moderate Alzheimer's. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Professor's Amy Wagner's and Lee Reuben of Harvard's the Department
Speaker 1: of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology. They report that injections
Speaker 1: of g d F eleven um improve the exercise capability
Speaker 1: of old mice that are about equivalent to a seventy
Speaker 1: year old human, and also improved the function of the
Speaker 1: old factory region of the brains and older mince so
Speaker 1: that they could they could smell more like a younger
Speaker 1: mouse could smell. Now, I guess you'd have to sort
Speaker 1: of extrapolate that into the sense experience of human versus
Speaker 1: a mouse, but that you you get the idea and
Speaker 1: the h The theory here is that g d F
Speaker 1: eleven improves vascularity and blood flow that is associated with
Speaker 1: increased neurogenesis. Yeah, and the number of stem cells in
Speaker 1: the brain as well. So this is really exciting stuff.
Speaker 1: Um Again, this this sort of plays into already Degray's
Speaker 1: idea that there are procedures out there, there is technology
Speaker 1: out there that can help to maintain your body like
Speaker 1: a classic car, and this would be one of them,
Speaker 1: exactly one step closer to immortality. Maybe we get to
Speaker 1: keep Patrick Stewart forever if only Yeah yeah, Ben Kingsley too, sure,
Speaker 1: why not? Maybe some more, but mainly those guys because
Speaker 1: they have the capital. Don't forget Oprah, she's listening to Oprah. Yes, Oprah.
Speaker 1: I definitely am hoping Oprah lives forever as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure she's got some R and D out on that.
Speaker 1: All right, I'll see what else happened. Well, it was
Speaker 1: a big year free bola, of course. UM. Certainly not
Speaker 1: the first year that ebola has been a major issue,
Speaker 1: but it it certainly made more headlines, especially here in
Speaker 1: the United States, UM, as as as it became a
Speaker 1: hot topic of discussion, even a political uh topic. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean we've known about ebil listens the seventies, but
Speaker 1: this strain, the zaire straight first was detected in March
Speaker 1: and Guinea, and the virus has now infected more than
Speaker 1: seventeen thousand people and killed six thousand people, uh, laying
Speaker 1: waste to the healthcare systems, communities and economies of Guinea,
Speaker 1: Sierra Leone, and Liberia. UM. It looks like we may
Speaker 1: be coming out of this. Um, that this may not
Speaker 1: be a sort of world pandemic that's going to shut
Speaker 1: everything down. But I feel like there were some really
Speaker 1: scary moments there, UM, and that this has had all
Speaker 1: of the elements of the human experience, because there's cultural
Speaker 1: aspects to it. UM. There's some biases, they're pretty rampant
Speaker 1: with it. And then there's just a huge amount of
Speaker 1: data and research um that has been thrown at this
Speaker 1: in order to try to stem it. Yeah, we know,
Speaker 1: we devoted a whole topic to Bola earlier in the year,
Speaker 1: and that should be linked on the landing page for
Speaker 1: this episode, Sidal Understanding of Bola, where we just break
Speaker 1: on the science of the bowl of what we know,
Speaker 1: uh and and at the time, what what was happening
Speaker 1: and uh and so we're not going to go through
Speaker 1: all of that that information again here, but you know,
Speaker 1: basically there you kind of had. You had the science,
Speaker 1: and then you had the politics and the media fearmongering
Speaker 1: on top of all that, uh, which made for an
Speaker 1: interesting overall experience of the Abola epidemic. Yeah, and initially
Speaker 1: it was hard to sort out fact from fiction. But
Speaker 1: I feel like again there there does seem to be
Speaker 1: a stasis that has been reached here and now we
Speaker 1: do have these raft of studies to be picked through
Speaker 1: and to try to figure out what's going on and
Speaker 1: and to help researchers better deal with a deadly pathogen um.
Speaker 1: We do not have a vaccine or treatment right now
Speaker 1: that is proven to be effective. I should say that.
Speaker 1: But here are two examples of some studies that came
Speaker 1: out of many, many, many many UH to get a
Speaker 1: handle on why some people survive infection, scientists compared mice
Speaker 1: resistant to below with those susceptible to it, and they
Speaker 1: discovered that a gene in charge of blood vessel leakiness
Speaker 1: may play a part in the disease severity. That's that's
Speaker 1: one example. Another study published an m BIO found that
Speaker 1: THEA Bola virus can edit its genetic material, adding extra
Speaker 1: RNA building blocks, and then these changes may affect how
Speaker 1: the virus grows in humans. Again, there are a bunch
Speaker 1: of different factors that determine whether or not a person
Speaker 1: is going to survive this, and that's what they're trying
Speaker 1: to figure out. And in the meantime, however, medical trials
Speaker 1: that would normally take years or decades to roll out
Speaker 1: have been fast tracked to a timescale of even weeks
Speaker 1: or months. So you know, we're going to see how
Speaker 1: all this rolls out. But you know, hopefully um with
Speaker 1: the with the with the trials being sped up like
Speaker 1: this and UH fire being lit u under the projects
Speaker 1: that we'll see what we'll see it come to fruition
Speaker 1: a lot sooner. Yeah, and that that is the hope.
Speaker 1: But it does certainly feel better to be talking about
Speaker 1: this now in December, uh, than a couple of months
Speaker 1: ago when it was very uncertain as to what was
Speaker 1: going on. Now. The last entry is, uh, it's a doozy,
Speaker 1: and we've talked about it before, and we thought it
Speaker 1: was so important in terms of challenging our perception about
Speaker 1: gender or even morphology, that we'd bring it up again.
Speaker 1: We're talking about sex reversed Genitalia. I remember seeing the
Speaker 1: embargoes release that was coming out on this one, and
Speaker 1: and I fell in love right away, and you almost
Speaker 1: broke that embargo for two seconds. You're like maybe I
Speaker 1: I certainly had to had to double and triple check
Speaker 1: to make sure I wasn't breaking em bargo on the story,
Speaker 1: because I was just just get accidentally, you know, out
Speaker 1: of control and just push published. But but yeah, when
Speaker 1: I first saw it, I knew that this was we're
Speaker 1: gonna blog on it, We're gonna do I have to
Speaker 1: do a podcast on this, and and heck even refer
Speaker 1: to it in a second podcast as we're doing now. Um,
Speaker 1: we're talking about the Brazilian cave insects of the Eotrogla genus.
Speaker 1: This covers four distinct species and they marked the first
Speaker 1: documented example of an animal with sex reversed genitalia. Uh.
Speaker 1: This was detailed in an issue of Cell Pressed Journals
Speaker 1: Current Biology came out earlier this year, and the researchers
Speaker 1: found that females quote insert an elaborate penis like organ
Speaker 1: into males the males much reduced vagina like opening during
Speaker 1: forty to seventy hour love making sessions. Yeah. When they
Speaker 1: saw this in the act, they did see it lasting
Speaker 1: for forty to seventy hours, and this is thanks to
Speaker 1: the females inflatable spiny penis that anchors itself to the
Speaker 1: males internal tissues. And during this time, the female trogla
Speaker 1: gathers large quantities of sperm that she uses to then
Speaker 1: fertilize her eggs. And researchers found that trying to pride
Speaker 1: the pair apart led the separation of the male abdomen
Speaker 1: from the thorax without breaking the genital coupling, which led
Speaker 1: them to speculate that the entire meeting process is controlled
Speaker 1: actively by the females, whereas the males play a more
Speaker 1: rather a passive part. I mean basically the situation here,
Speaker 1: as many headlines referred as, you have a female penis,
Speaker 1: you have the I mean, technically it's a dinosome, So
Speaker 1: it's the it's the female sex organs, but they've taken
Speaker 1: on a phallic form to insert into the male sex organs,
Speaker 1: which have taken on a yonic form. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: pretty amazing, and I think it speaks not just to
Speaker 1: the fact that there's just rich biodiversity in caves that
Speaker 1: we're still learning about, but also um that when we
Speaker 1: do learn about it, there's a bit of cultural baggage
Speaker 1: that's put on top of this. And the reason I
Speaker 1: bring this up is because one of the more amazing
Speaker 1: things to me in the way that this was being
Speaker 1: reported is that it was spun a is, hey there's
Speaker 1: a female organism with a painess and kind of glossing
Speaker 1: over the fact that, hey, there's also a male organism
Speaker 1: with a vagina, what you know, that's functioning like a vagina.
Speaker 1: So that was that was curious. Yeah, it definitely plays
Speaker 1: into a lot of a lot of our cultural ideas
Speaker 1: about gender and is the title of our podcast episode
Speaker 1: In this uh suggested it forces to rethink genitalia, to
Speaker 1: rethink gender in a sense, you know what, what on
Speaker 1: a biological level makes this a mail on what makes
Speaker 1: is a female versus what on a cultural level? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we won't go back into it, but if you're curious,
Speaker 1: do check that out, because it is pretty astounding when
Speaker 1: you began to line up female and male genitalia and
Speaker 1: see how incredibly similar they are, especially in their functions,
Speaker 1: you know. And maybe that's what the Rover was trying
Speaker 1: to tell us into pousand and thirteen when it was
Speaker 1: drawing a penis, is that it's just it's a penis
Speaker 1: centric world. And yeah, I mean, Rover can't even like
Speaker 1: skid sideways on a foreign planet without the press going
Speaker 1: or maybe not the US, but at least the Internet
Speaker 1: going crazy and saying, look, there's a penis on marks.
Speaker 1: I know they didn't even see the vagina that it drew. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, so there you go. That's a that's our
Speaker 1: first episode. We're gonna do a second episode where we
Speaker 1: talk a little more about some of the science that
Speaker 1: occurred in or came to fruition in and uh and
Speaker 1: and well, we'll run through a few more bits that
Speaker 1: you may have missed during the year. Yes, join us
Speaker 1: for the next one, won't you. An In the meantime,
Speaker 1: you can check us out at stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. That's right, that's the mother ship. That's
Speaker 1: where you find all of our podcast episodes. Any of
Speaker 1: these episodes, past episodes we've mentioned before, they are all
Speaker 1: present there. You may not find them on iTunes, but
Speaker 1: you will definitely find them Stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 1: dot com. Also, we have tons of blog posts, we
Speaker 1: have videos, links after our social media accounts. Uh. Anything
Speaker 1: and everything we're doing, you're gonna hear about it on
Speaker 1: that website. All right, guys, what was astonishing to you
Speaker 1: in the science realm this year? Let us know? You
Speaker 1: can send us an email at blow the Mind at
Speaker 1: house to works dot com. For more on this and
Speaker 1: that sense of other topics, visit how staff works dot com.
Speaker 1: H