Speaker 1: Hey everybody, I am here with the scheduling note. Today's
Speaker 1: episode would normally be a full length core episode of
Speaker 1: the show, but due to a holiday, we are switching
Speaker 1: up the order this week, so there's going to be
Speaker 1: a short Artifact episode today and then full length episodes
Speaker 1: will air on Wednesday and Thursday of this week. And
Speaker 1: now onto the episode. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 1: a production of My Heart Radio. Hi, my name is
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick, and this is the Artifact, a short form
Speaker 1: series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind, focusing on particular objects, ideas,
Speaker 1: and moments in time. In the year six the English
Speaker 1: philosopher Sir Francis Bacon published a book called Novum Organum,
Speaker 1: in which he described a program for investigating the world
Speaker 1: through empiricism and organized inductive reasoning. As an example of
Speaker 1: how to employ his new method, Bacon discusses at length
Speaker 1: the physical phenomenon of heat, cataloging examples of heat in nature,
Speaker 1: but also what he calls quote proximate instances wanting the
Speaker 1: nature of heat. In other words, situations where other phenomena
Speaker 1: observed alongside heat in nature are witnessed but without the heat.
Speaker 1: For example, the moon and the stars shine with light
Speaker 1: that's bright like sunlight, but not hot like sunlight, and
Speaker 1: so forth. But here in one paragraph Bacon starts to
Speaker 1: list more anomalous sources of cold light. He mentions a
Speaker 1: kind of light quote which in some well authenticated and
Speaker 1: serious histories is said to have appeared around the head
Speaker 1: and hair of boys and virgins, and instead of burning
Speaker 1: their hair, merely to have played about it. He also
Speaker 1: explains with great confidence that in times of darkness or
Speaker 1: damp weather, a sweaty horse will emit flashes of light.
Speaker 1: He writes, quote, in like manner, sea and salt water
Speaker 1: is sometimes found to shine at night when struck violently
Speaker 1: by the ore. The foam of the sea, when agitated
Speaker 1: by tempests, also sparkles at night, and the Spaniards called
Speaker 1: this appearance the sea's lungs. While I don't know what
Speaker 1: to make of the claim that sometimes sweaty horses glow,
Speaker 1: or that the ocean will shine with the slap of
Speaker 1: an oar, there is one claim in this passage that
Speaker 1: sounds just as weird as the rest, and yet it
Speaker 1: is entirely true and exhaustively verified. Bacon writes, quote, it
Speaker 1: is well known that all sugar, whether candied or plain,
Speaker 1: if it be hard, will sparkle when broken or scraped
Speaker 1: in the dark. The fact that sugar glows when scraped
Speaker 1: or crushed is now a well documented phenomenon. You might
Speaker 1: have even seen it yourself by smashing wintow green life
Speaker 1: savers with a hammer or throwing a bunch of sugar
Speaker 1: cubes in a blender. When you smash the sugar, it
Speaker 1: releases pops of ghostly light, often blue in color. This
Speaker 1: phenomenon is an example of what's called tribo luminescence, a
Speaker 1: light that is emitted when certain substances are mechanically stimulated by,
Speaker 1: for example, rubbing, crushing, scraping, or tearing apart. Many of
Speaker 1: these substances are crystalline in nature, Like sugar, Quartz crystals
Speaker 1: often begin to glow when rubbed together rapidly in a
Speaker 1: darkened room. Several studies on tribo luminescence in quartz mention
Speaker 1: a type of artifact used by some of the Ute
Speaker 1: people of Colorado, which was a type of rattle made
Speaker 1: from translucent buffalo rawhide filled with quartz pebbles, which would
Speaker 1: allegedly glow with tribo luminescence when shaken at night, as
Speaker 1: the pebbles inside smashed against one another. But there are
Speaker 1: other stranger sources of tribo luminescence. You can sometimes see
Speaker 1: a rolling line of blue sparks by peeling adhesive tape
Speaker 1: of a roll or peeling an adhesive bandage envelope apart
Speaker 1: in very low light. Despite the fact that tribal luminescence
Speaker 1: has been observed for hundreds or even thousands of years,
Speaker 1: the physical mechanisms leading to the emission of light are
Speaker 1: still not fully understood, and there's no universal theory that
Speaker 1: explains all instances, but we know some things. Tribal luminescence
Speaker 1: seems to be especially common in crystals with an asymmetric structure.
Speaker 1: A common explanation given is that when the crystals are fractured,
Speaker 1: many electrons are actually ripped away from their atomic nuclei,
Speaker 1: generating an electrical field. The electric charge difference is neutralized
Speaker 1: when these free electrons eventually rejoin with atoms across the
Speaker 1: fracture gap, leading to the emission of light. In some cases,
Speaker 1: tribal luminescence seems to depend on the gases surrounding the material.
Speaker 1: The familiar blue glow of crushed sugar can be turned
Speaker 1: red if you do the crushing in a sealed container
Speaker 1: filled with neon gass, indicating that the blue light in
Speaker 1: this case has to do with the emission spectra of
Speaker 1: the nitrogen that makes up most of our air. So
Speaker 1: when sugar glows blue, the blue light is probably caused
Speaker 1: when nitrogen molecules in the atmosphere are excited by electrical
Speaker 1: discharge from the cracking sugar crystals. As the nitrogen atoms
Speaker 1: fall back down to their ground state, they emit photons
Speaker 1: at frequencies that include some visible blue light, almost like
Speaker 1: lightning in the cracks of the candy. And before I finish,
Speaker 1: I want to say, if anyone has any insight on
Speaker 1: the glowing sweaty horse, you have our email address. Tune
Speaker 1: into new editions of the artifact every Wednesday, hosted either
Speaker 1: by Robert or myself. As always, you can email us
Speaker 1: at contact at Stuff to Blow Your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind and is a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit
Speaker 1: the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.