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Speaker 1: Watermands, lost piglets, tartar grades. They go by many names,

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Speaker 1: but I think the one thing we can all agree

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Speaker 1: on is that they're pretty much indestructible, right. I mean,

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Speaker 1: these poor teeny tiny creatures have been exposed to all

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Speaker 1: manner of unpleasant stimuli in the lab. They've been frozen

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Speaker 1: to near absolute zero, heat it up to way past boiling, irradiated,

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Speaker 1: squeezed at pressures you'd experience one hundred and eighty kilometers

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Speaker 1: below earths surface, exposed to the vacuum of space, and

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Speaker 1: shot into sand bands. If tartar grades ever become large

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Speaker 1: and sentient and start looking for retribution, we are in

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Speaker 1: a lot of trouble. But the good news for tartar

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Speaker 1: grades is that they survive most of these experiences surprisingly well.

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Speaker 1: How do they do it well? That's what we're going

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Speaker 1: to discuss today, and by the end of the episode

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Speaker 1: we'll answer a question that has no doubt kept you

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Speaker 1: up at night. Are those tartar grades that crash landed

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Speaker 1: on the Moon in twenty nineteen still alive? Let's find out.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe.

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Speaker 2: Hi, I'm Daniel, I'm a particle physicist, and I don't

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Speaker 2: like a lot of biology, but I do like hearing

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Speaker 2: about critters that only poop when they molt.

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Speaker 1: Wait wait, wait, we'll back up that. I'm Kelly Wiersmith,

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Speaker 1: a biologist. Did you just say that you don't like

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Speaker 1: a lot of biology?

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Speaker 2: You know, there's a reason I'm in physics. The biology

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Speaker 2: is all weird and messy. I mean, it's wonderful and fascinating,

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Speaker 2: but sometimes I just feel like there aren't really any

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Speaker 2: hard answers.

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Speaker 1: Well, well, you guys haven't reconciled quantum mechanics or general

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Speaker 1: relativity yet, how dare you?

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Speaker 2: But there is a hard answer. We don't have it yet,

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Speaker 2: but I think one day eventually humans or some clever

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Speaker 2: aliens will figure it out. Biology, I just don't even

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Speaker 2: know if there's an answer.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I can't argue with that. I'm not sure

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Speaker 1: there's an answer for a lot of this stuff either,

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Speaker 1: But I still think that's exciting. And also, I will

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Speaker 1: note that you said that they only poop when they mold.

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Speaker 1: There are probably more than thirteen hundred species of tartar grades.

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Speaker 1: I don't know that it's true that all of them

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Speaker 1: only poop when they vote. I think some of them

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Speaker 1: might just poop like the rest of us.

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Speaker 2: All right, well, I'm fascinated. I want to hear more

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Speaker 2: about it, because I'm sure there's an answer to at

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Speaker 2: least this question of when do tartar grades poop.

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Speaker 1: I mean, it's going to depend on the species. But yes,

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Speaker 1: all right, so we had an amazing listener question. Let's

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Speaker 1: go ahead and listen to that.

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Speaker 3: Now, Hey, Daniel and Kelly, question about tartar grades. Those

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Speaker 3: little water bears. Just curious what is it about them

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Speaker 3: that allows them to survive in basically any environment. I've

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Speaker 3: heard that there's even some on the Moon. As far

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Speaker 3: as I know, NASA has an engineered little spacesuits that small.

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Speaker 3: So yeah, just curious what is it about their physiology

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Speaker 3: that allows them to survive?

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Speaker 2: Thanks?

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Speaker 3: Also, go Virginia.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so first off, I laughed out loud imagining NASA

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Speaker 1: engineering tiny spacesuits for the tartar grades. That was amazing.

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Speaker 1: Thank you for this question, and go Virginia. Woooo.

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Speaker 2: I'm sorry this question is disqualified. I mean, obviously they

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Speaker 2: have no credibility from the.

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Speaker 1: Get go, Daniel, I did ten hours of research for

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Speaker 1: this episode. We are not dropping this episode.

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Speaker 2: And did you discover that you have to be a

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Speaker 2: tartar grade to enjoy the climate of Virginia.

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Speaker 1: Everybody enjoys the climate of Virginia. Tim and I agree

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Speaker 1: on that. At least. There was a little bit of

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Speaker 1: snow falling the other day and I felt highly festive.

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Speaker 1: And I know that there are some places of California

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Speaker 1: that have snow, but only some.

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Speaker 2: Well, you know, tartar grades can live on the Moon,

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Speaker 2: they can live deep underwater, they can survive when it's dry,

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Speaker 2: they can even survive Virginia winter.

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Speaker 1: Well, hold on, can they live on the moon?

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Speaker 2: I don't know.

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Speaker 1: That's the whole point of this episode, trying to find

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Speaker 1: the answer to that question. So should we dig in, Yes.

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Speaker 2: Kelly, tell us what are these tartar grades, what do

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Speaker 2: they look like, where do they stand in the context

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Speaker 2: of all biology, and what do we know about where

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Speaker 2: they can actually survive?

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Speaker 1: Okay, all right, well, so it'll take me an hour

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Speaker 1: or so to give you that answer. But let's start

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Speaker 1: with reiterating that there are probably more than thirteen hundred species.

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Speaker 1: In fact, it's under Kingdom Animalia. There's something like thirty

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Speaker 1: phylum and tartar grade they're their own phylum whoam and

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Speaker 1: so there's a lot of them, right, But usually you're like,

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Speaker 1: tartar grades do blah blah blah, as though there's just

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Speaker 1: one species, but there's a lot more than just one species.

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Speaker 2: And the fact that they're so high up in this

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Speaker 2: tree of life. I mean, it's not just like bile'll

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Speaker 2: just like to organize things because they don't really understand them.

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Speaker 2: It tells us something about.

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Speaker 1: Like wait, wait, wait, let's listen to the particles episode

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Speaker 1: and you're like, I don't know how we categorize these things,

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Speaker 1: so anyway, little hypocritical.

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Speaker 2: But no, seriously, I think when particle physics is feeling

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Speaker 2: is when it's just doing taxonomy. If we're just doing botany,

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Speaker 2: then we don't really understand anything. It's when we're doing philosophy,

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Speaker 2: when we're linking things together, we understand how they work underneath.

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Speaker 2: That's when I think we're really making progress. But what

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Speaker 2: I want to ask you.

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Speaker 1: I think we need both. We'll move on.

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Speaker 2: But what I want to ask you is how we

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Speaker 2: should interpret where people have put tartar grades in this

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Speaker 2: tree of life. The fact that they're so high up,

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Speaker 2: does that mean that they're really their own kind of thing.

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Speaker 2: They're so different from everything else, or they have their

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Speaker 2: own weird history or both.

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Speaker 1: Let's go with both, and let's talk about why they're

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Speaker 1: so unique awesome. All right, So, first of all, these

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Speaker 1: are tiny little guys. They're multi cellular. They got lots

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Speaker 1: of cells. Big ones are about a millimeter long, so

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Speaker 1: about the size of a period. They have this hard

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Speaker 1: outer cuticle, and because it's hard, that doesn't grow with them,

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Speaker 1: so they have to molt the way like nematodes, and

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Speaker 1: some insects will mold the way snakes shed. Because snakes

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Speaker 1: are awesome. What's get snakes in there? You probably don't

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Speaker 1: even like snakes, do you, Daniel?

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Speaker 2: You probably don't like like that's an outrageous thing, like,

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Speaker 2: oh yeah, snakes, rats and cockroaches. You don't like any

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Speaker 2: of that, doa Daniel?

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Speaker 1: Do you not like those things? Daniel?

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Speaker 2: Well, I mean I wouldn't want to like snuggle up

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Speaker 2: with them. You know. It's not like if I see

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Speaker 2: a bunch of the my bed, I go ooh cozy.

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Speaker 2: You know. They're not in the same category as like

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Speaker 2: kittens and bunnies for sure.

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Speaker 1: All Right, all right, I won't disagree with that, but

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Speaker 1: I have seen some snugly rats. But anyway, okay, heart

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Speaker 1: outer cuticles. Sometimes when they lose that cuticle, that is

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Speaker 1: when they release the contents of their bowels that they've

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Speaker 1: been holding onto for a while. That's also sometimes they'll

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Speaker 1: release their eggs into that cuticle when they mold, and

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Speaker 1: then the eggs sort of have this like protective little

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Speaker 1: case that they're in for a while, and then when

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Speaker 1: they hatch, they have to find like the holes in

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Speaker 1: the cuticle to get back out.

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Speaker 2: All right, So these things are really small. You're saying

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Speaker 2: a millimeter is the biggest one. Can I see something

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Speaker 2: with my naked eye that's just a millimeter? So like

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Speaker 2: tartar greates, you could actually, like if you squint see

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Speaker 2: one of these things.

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Speaker 1: So it's about the size of like a period on

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Speaker 1: a printed out sheet of paper, and so like you know,

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Speaker 1: maybe you could see some like flailing limbs, but like

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Speaker 1: if you had a dissecting scope you could see them better.

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Speaker 1: But again, a millimeter is about the size of like

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Speaker 1: some of the bigger ones, and so a lot of

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Speaker 1: them are even smaller, and so you'd be better off

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Speaker 1: with like a compound microscope.

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Speaker 2: And does everything that has this hard out or shell

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Speaker 2: have to molt when it grows? Or are there some

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Speaker 2: critters out there that can like gradually expand, Because like

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Speaker 2: our skeleton gradually expands as we grow, why can't you

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Speaker 2: gradually expand your exoskeleton as you grow? Or is that

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Speaker 2: a totally naive biology question.

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Speaker 1: Our skeletons are inside of us, and so they can

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Speaker 1: like expand as our squishy outer parts sort of like

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Speaker 1: accommodying that. But I think that if you have a

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Speaker 1: particular kind of cuticle that's like super hard that doesn't

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Speaker 1: tend to grow and expand, I think you do usually

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Speaker 1: need to lose those all right?

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Speaker 2: And so do all of these things look roughly the

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Speaker 2: same even though some of them are a little bigger

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Speaker 2: and some of them are smaller. Do they all roughly

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Speaker 2: look like the same critter? Like an individual non trained

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Speaker 2: biologist tell them apart by eye?

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Speaker 1: They do have some definite characteristics that help you tell

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Speaker 1: them apart. So my question for you is, I think

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Speaker 1: when most people think of tartar grades, there is an

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Speaker 1: animated video that they saw. Is something coming to mind

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Speaker 1: for you? Or have you not seen this video?

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Speaker 2: No? I definitely have a mental image of a tartar grade.

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Speaker 2: I think the phrase water bear has also influenced me.

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Speaker 2: So I'm imagining something that looks a little like a

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Speaker 2: fat caterpillar, but with sort of claws and then a

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Speaker 2: weird face with like a tube sticking out the front

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Speaker 2: of it. So it's a little like a possum or something.

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Speaker 2: I'm not sure exactly animal. It looks like maybe like

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Speaker 2: a microscopic water possum.

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Speaker 1: Oh, I love possums. Okay, So there's this like famous

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Speaker 1: video where they're pink and they've got that like almost

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Speaker 1: a toilet paper roll on top of their face, and

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Speaker 1: it kind of like goes into the face and out

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Speaker 1: of the face over and over again as the tartar

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Speaker 1: grades eight little legs furiously have it swimmed through this water.

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Speaker 1: So I was listening to ologies and Allie Ward was

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Speaker 1: interviewing doctor Paul Bartel's and he was lamenting that that

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Speaker 1: is like not what they look like at all, what.

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Speaker 2: Popular science has led us astray.

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Speaker 1: Kelly, really, hold on, I know, I know, it's amazing. Okay,

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Speaker 1: So first of all, that toilet paper roll, nos thing

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Speaker 1: does not go out and in and out and in

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Speaker 1: and out and in That was a mistake because someone

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Speaker 1: took a special kind of microscopic picture. They used a

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Speaker 1: scanning electron microscope, and the way the sample was prepared,

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Speaker 1: one of the tartar grades had that thing sticking out

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Speaker 1: like it usually does, and one of them, because of

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Speaker 1: how it was prepared, it just kind of got like

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Speaker 1: sucked into the face. But I don't think that usually happens,

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Speaker 1: and so the nose thing isn't going in and out

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Speaker 1: and in and out and in and out. I think someone

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Speaker 1: just saw both of those photos and were like, oh,

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Speaker 1: it must alternate between these two states as opposed to

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Speaker 1: like the preparation process just kind of messes up specimens sometimes.

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Speaker 2: Wow, it's like they saw two frames and just animated

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Speaker 2: the interstitial. That's crazy.

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Speaker 1: And then the other thing is they don't swim. They

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Speaker 1: are what's called benthic, so they walk around on like

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Speaker 1: the floor of things, or like they crawl up vegetation,

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Speaker 1: but they're not swimming. They're crawling along. And that video

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Speaker 1: that most of us are, you know perhaps right now.

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Speaker 1: It has eight legs that are all like in front

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Speaker 1: of it. It's like a bear, but all of its

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Speaker 1: legs have been multiplied by two but what really happens

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Speaker 1: is it has six legs and like the usual configuration,

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Speaker 1: and then another two that go like straight out from.

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Speaker 2: Its butt butt legs.

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Speaker 1: Butt legs, Yeah, how can we get So those butt

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Speaker 1: legs hold on to stuff so that they like don't

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Speaker 1: get washed away with the current or something. And some

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Speaker 1: have claws and some don't have claws, and they're not

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Speaker 1: usually pink. A lot of them are clear or white,

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Speaker 1: or if they've got color, a lot of times it's

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Speaker 1: because they are clear, but you can see like the

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Speaker 1: algae they ate, so they look green, or you can

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Speaker 1: see their poop so they look brown. And so some

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Speaker 1: of them do have some colors, but they're not even

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Speaker 1: though they're moss piglets, they're not pink. Hmm.

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Speaker 2: I see so clear, like they're invisible, like you can

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Speaker 2: see through them. They're like transparent.

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Speaker 1: If they are starved, some of them probably are transparent.

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Speaker 1: But if they've eaten anything, you can see their digestive

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Speaker 1: tract because they've got like green in it.

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Speaker 2: Wow, that's crazy. So like little tartar gray children when

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Speaker 2: they've been sneaking cookies from the cookie jar, it's not

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Speaker 2: a question the parents are like I see.

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Speaker 1: That cookie exactly. Yes.

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Speaker 2: Wow, what's the evolutionary advantage to being transparent? Is it

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Speaker 2: like a form of camouflage or is it just totally incidental?

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Speaker 1: Everyone don't know. My first guess would be that it

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Speaker 1: does help with camouflage if like a predator just kind

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Speaker 1: of sees through you. But then the other thing is that,

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Speaker 1: like creating pigmentation, is often a process that requires some energy,

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Speaker 1: and so maybe being clear is just easier than creating pigmentation.

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Speaker 1: But if you're in an aquatic environment, probably being clear

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Speaker 1: is a good way to hide and blend into stuff.

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Speaker 2: Wow. All right, so we have totally the wrong mental

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Speaker 2: image of a tartar grade, but it is still kind

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Speaker 2: of cute. Yeah, and it does have those fat little

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Speaker 2: legs and a toilet paper snout. But we're setting the

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Speaker 2: record straight here today.

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Speaker 1: Well, they don't all have the toilet paper snout. Again.

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Speaker 1: There's over thirteen hundred species. Some of them look like

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Speaker 1: you little salamanders, but instead of a tail, they've got like,

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Speaker 1: you know, the two butt legs. There's some variability in

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Speaker 1: how they look, but they do have that. Like general,

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Speaker 1: there's also tons of variability and where you find them.

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Speaker 1: Some are in lakes, some are in oceans, and some

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Speaker 1: are living in like when there's a little bit of

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Speaker 1: water on lichens or moss, they live in that like

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Speaker 1: little water film. And there's some that you find in

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Speaker 1: like roof gutters. They're essentially anywhere where there is enough

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Speaker 1: water to keep them from like desiccating, or are there

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Speaker 1: in environments that dry out sometimes and then water comes back,

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Speaker 1: and this is what they're so well known for. They

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Speaker 1: have a bunch of different strategies for surviving that dry

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Speaker 1: out period.

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Speaker 2: If you find them in large bodies of water. How

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Speaker 2: come you never find like mega tartar grades, you know,

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Speaker 2: like there are sharks and then there used to be

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Speaker 2: like huge sharks. Was there ever a tartar grade that

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Speaker 2: was like a meter long or like a one hundred

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Speaker 2: meter long or is that the next Michael Bay movie

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Speaker 2: we're looking forward to.

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Speaker 1: There have been I believe a couple fossil tartar grades

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Speaker 1: that have been found, and I don't think we've ever

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Speaker 1: found a mega big one. So yeah, pass that idea

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Speaker 1: onto Michael Bay. I think it's a winner because there

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Speaker 1: are some that are carnivores and include there are some

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Speaker 1: that will eat other TURTI grades, So I think that

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Speaker 1: would make a great movie.

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Speaker 2: Exactly. You thought they were cute and fuzzy until you

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Speaker 2: saw the big one come for you. Okay, but what

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Speaker 2: limits them from growing? Like why aren't there bigger ones?

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Speaker 2: Is there something about their geometry which doesn't scale up?

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Speaker 2: Or is an ecological thing like they can't eat enough

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Speaker 2: food to get that big? Or is there something which

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Speaker 2: will eat them if they get too big? Or do

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Speaker 2: we not know?

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Speaker 1: I don't think we know. Amazing, amazing that we don't know.

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Speaker 2: Amazing how many things biologists don't understand.

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Speaker 1: I feel like that's a theme of the physics talks.

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Speaker 1: But all right, fair, fair, all right, okay man, it's

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Speaker 1: a battle between California and Virginia and physics and biology today.

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Speaker 1: I appreciate when you and I are both anti chemistry

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Speaker 1: and we're on the same team, but because today we're

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Speaker 1: doing battle, all right, So let's start with their abilities

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Speaker 1: to survive desiccation, which means like drying out.

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Speaker 2: So this is something you hear about a lot in

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Speaker 2: popular science. Are you going to ruin this for us also?

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Speaker 2: Or is this something they really can do?

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Speaker 1: They really can, well, not all of them, So again,

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Speaker 1: many many species the ones that tend to live in

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Speaker 1: like mosses and lichens and roof gutters, like places that

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Speaker 1: are wet sometimes but dry other times. They're able to

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Speaker 1: form this stage known as a ton state, where they

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Speaker 1: essentially it's like almost go dormant. Some of them describe

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Speaker 1: it as like it's near death. So they're able to

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Speaker 1: like go into this like super resistant form. And when

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Speaker 1: they're in this super resistant form, this is when scientists

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Speaker 1: have done all manner of horrible things to them, like

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Speaker 1: dip them in liquid nitrogen, shoot them out of guns

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Speaker 1: just to see like how much can they handle when

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Speaker 1: they're in this state.

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Speaker 2: So this is what they're famous for. When it's not

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00:14:38,400 --> 00:14:41,080
Speaker 2: like a nice and cozy and damp time to be

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Speaker 2: a Tarta grade, you like convert into this like weird

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Speaker 2: long lasting state where you're basically immortal, and then you

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Speaker 2: can just like unfurl and be a Tarta grade again

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Speaker 2: later it's like time traveling to the future.

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Speaker 1: So immortal, no, when they go into this state, they

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Speaker 1: can survive for like years, maybe decades. But so one

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Speaker 1: thing you might have heard is they can stay in

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Speaker 1: this stage for hun ndreds of years. Actually that seems

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Speaker 1: to be possibly a misreading of a study. So there

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Speaker 1: was like a museum specimen where we knew when it

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Speaker 1: was collected, and one hundred years later it got taken

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Speaker 1: out of like some drawer and they found some tartar

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Speaker 1: grades and they added some water, and it looked like

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Speaker 1: part of an arm kind of moved a little. This

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Speaker 1: was written in Italians, either Italian or French in some

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Speaker 1: Romance language, and so it was like an arm moved

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Speaker 1: a little, but then nothing else.

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Speaker 2: Well, you know, in Italian hand gestures are super duper important,

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Speaker 2: So maybe that was interpreted as communication, you know, that's right.

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Speaker 1: It could be. As a biologist, I've had to look

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Speaker 1: at a lot of specimens where like, oops, the ethanol

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Speaker 1: dried out, and now this animal's totally dried, and I'm

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Speaker 1: going to try to like get it back in its

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Speaker 1: normal shape by adding like water or more ethanol. And

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Speaker 1: when that happens, they often like move in response to

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Speaker 1: the rehydrating And it's not that they're alive, that's just

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Speaker 1: the molecules responding to the presence of water. And if

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Speaker 1: it did do a like hello, guys, hand gesture, it

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Speaker 1: died right afterwards. Maybe it's impressive, but probably it's just

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Speaker 1: an artifact of it, like rehydrating.

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Speaker 2: That could you poured water on a dried up belief,

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Speaker 2: it would change its shape also, and you might interpret

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Speaker 2: that its motion, but it's definitely not alive.

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Speaker 1: Yes, exactly, and so that's a possible scenario. But there

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Speaker 1: has been a specimen collected from Antarctica where it was

355
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Speaker 1: two Tarta grades that had entered this dormant state and

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Speaker 1: an egg that hadn't hatched yet, and the specimen was

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Speaker 1: put in cold storage at life think negative twenty for

358
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Speaker 1: thirty years and then removed and they came out of

359
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Speaker 1: their ton state, became adults. One of them croaked, but

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Speaker 1: the egg hatched, and then the two individuals who were

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Speaker 1: still alive went on to like reproduce I think more

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Speaker 1: than once even, and so they were like definitely alive,

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Speaker 1: like not maybe waved at you and then croaked, like

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Speaker 1: they're definitely alive, so decades.

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Speaker 2: Now the adult. That's really impressive, right to freeze an

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Speaker 2: adult and have it then reanimate and survive. That's amazing.

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Speaker 2: Eggs are a different story, right, because like human eggs,

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Speaker 2: you can freeze. That's not such a big deal. But

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Speaker 2: why is that I've never really understood. Like I thought,

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Speaker 2: if you freeze any cell, the water inside of it

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Speaker 2: expands and bursts the cell membranes. And that's why it's

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Speaker 2: like hard to freeze a cow and then like reanimate it.

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Speaker 2: Why is it possible to do for eggs or sperm

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Speaker 2: or stuff like that. Why doesn't that same physics supply?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, so I am not an expert on cryopreservation, but

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Speaker 1: I think that it has something to do when you're

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Speaker 1: freezing human eggs, If you freeze them really fast, the

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00:17:26,040 --> 00:17:28,400
Speaker 1: cells don't lice the same way. This is part of why,

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Speaker 1: like if you get meat, you don't want to like

380
00:17:30,800 --> 00:17:32,960
Speaker 1: slowly freeze it and then defrost and do that over

381
00:17:33,000 --> 00:17:34,680
Speaker 1: and over again because the cells lice and the meat

382
00:17:34,680 --> 00:17:38,399
Speaker 1: taste less good. I think something about freezing them really quick,

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Speaker 1: but I don't know why it is that they can

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Speaker 1: come back after that.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, because even human embryos can do that, right, even

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Speaker 2: fertilized eggs. It's sort of amazing.

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Speaker 1: It is. We should have a whole episode on cryopreservation.

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Speaker 2: Yes, let's do it right, but it's definitely not something

389
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Speaker 2: you can do to like a human adult, right, Yeah,

390
00:17:54,840 --> 00:17:57,080
Speaker 2: at least not yet. If people are working on that, right,

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Speaker 2: preserving the brains of old baseball players for the future.

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Speaker 2: All Right, so you're telling us that this is real,

393
00:18:04,920 --> 00:18:07,600
Speaker 2: that tartar grades really can't go into this crazy state

394
00:18:07,640 --> 00:18:12,760
Speaker 2: and then survive insanely long exposure to really difficult conditions

395
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Speaker 2: and then be alive again and reproduce and be happy.

396
00:18:16,119 --> 00:18:19,040
Speaker 2: What's going on during that state? Like are they alive

397
00:18:19,240 --> 00:18:22,879
Speaker 2: or are things paused? Like is there some metabolism happening? Like,

398
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Speaker 2: what's going on?

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Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you the answer to that, Daniel

400
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Speaker 1: after the break. Okay, So you wanted to know what

401
00:18:44,960 --> 00:18:47,479
Speaker 1: happens when the tartar grades go into this like semi

402
00:18:47,520 --> 00:18:49,720
Speaker 1: dormant state. So first of all, they like kind of

403
00:18:49,760 --> 00:18:52,040
Speaker 1: squish up into a ball, and so they like pull

404
00:18:52,080 --> 00:18:54,360
Speaker 1: their heads in that they pull their legs in, and

405
00:18:54,400 --> 00:18:58,160
Speaker 1: they like expel and they lose almost all their water.

406
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Speaker 1: By the end, they have something like two to three

407
00:18:59,720 --> 00:19:02,000
Speaker 1: percent of the water they started with. Just to be clear,

408
00:19:02,359 --> 00:19:05,119
Speaker 1: that would kill humans. Like we're like, what seventy percent

409
00:19:05,160 --> 00:19:07,040
Speaker 1: water or something. If we went down to three percent,

410
00:19:07,080 --> 00:19:09,679
Speaker 1: we'd be gonners. We'd be gunners way before then. So

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Speaker 1: as they lose that water, they start producing something called trehlos,

412
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Speaker 1: which is a sugar, and it ends up forming kind

413
00:19:17,920 --> 00:19:20,879
Speaker 1: of like a glass like structure that holds everything together

414
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Speaker 1: and gives it like structural integrity. And this has long

415
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Speaker 1: been the explanation for why tartar grades are able to

416
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Speaker 1: survive such incredible conditions, including the explanation you gave five

417
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Speaker 1: years ago on Daniel and Jorge Explained the Universe. When

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Speaker 1: I listened to that episode.

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Speaker 2: Oh all right, doing some research.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, well, you know, I needed something to listen

421
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Speaker 1: to while I was walking around the other day. But so,

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Speaker 1: here's the thing though about trehelos. Lots of tartar grade species.

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Speaker 1: Some of them make trehelos when they go into this

424
00:19:50,680 --> 00:19:54,040
Speaker 1: ton state. Some of them make quantities so small that

425
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Speaker 1: we're not actually sure that it can do the function

426
00:19:58,000 --> 00:20:01,360
Speaker 1: of making this glass structure that protects organism. And some

427
00:20:01,440 --> 00:20:04,000
Speaker 1: of them don't appear to even have the equipment at

428
00:20:04,040 --> 00:20:09,280
Speaker 1: all to make trehillos, which suggests maybe it's part of

429
00:20:09,280 --> 00:20:11,400
Speaker 1: the picture for some species. But that's not like an

430
00:20:11,400 --> 00:20:13,800
Speaker 1: across the board answer for how tartar grades are able

431
00:20:13,840 --> 00:20:16,439
Speaker 1: to do this, So it's complicated, and they make a

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Speaker 1: bunch of other proteins So cryptobiosis is a term. It

433
00:20:19,960 --> 00:20:22,640
Speaker 1: means hidden life, and so it's another way for describing

434
00:20:22,680 --> 00:20:25,080
Speaker 1: this ton state. And I found a line in a

435
00:20:25,119 --> 00:20:28,840
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen paper that said, mechanisms that protect tartar grade

436
00:20:28,880 --> 00:20:33,080
Speaker 1: cells during cryptobiosis are still poorly understood or completely unknown.

437
00:20:33,359 --> 00:20:35,840
Speaker 2: Ooh, that sounds like a fair description of all biology

438
00:20:36,119 --> 00:20:37,920
Speaker 2: and physics.

439
00:20:37,800 --> 00:20:40,640
Speaker 1: And physics and you guys only have like six questions

440
00:20:40,640 --> 00:20:47,000
Speaker 1: you need to answer. Get to work on that, guys.

441
00:20:47,200 --> 00:20:49,680
Speaker 2: And that's my favorite thing about the universe, that it's

442
00:20:49,720 --> 00:20:54,320
Speaker 2: poorly understood or completely unknown, because otherwise it would be boring, right, I.

443
00:20:54,280 --> 00:20:56,840
Speaker 1: Feel the same way about biology, dude.

444
00:20:57,240 --> 00:21:00,200
Speaker 2: All right, So some of these guys have the these

445
00:21:00,240 --> 00:21:04,840
Speaker 2: weird glass like proteins called trehillosies, which maybe provide some

446
00:21:04,960 --> 00:21:07,960
Speaker 2: internal scaffolding that like support the cell when it's all

447
00:21:08,040 --> 00:21:10,600
Speaker 2: dried out. But some of them don't even have it,

448
00:21:10,680 --> 00:21:13,840
Speaker 2: but they can still do this ton state weird survive

449
00:21:13,920 --> 00:21:14,440
Speaker 2: for everything.

450
00:21:14,760 --> 00:21:17,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, and so we don't really know what's happening there.

451
00:21:17,080 --> 00:21:18,600
Speaker 1: We felt like we had a handle on it, and

452
00:21:18,600 --> 00:21:20,080
Speaker 1: then we were like, oh, wait, some of these don't

453
00:21:20,080 --> 00:21:22,199
Speaker 1: make that at all. So I don't know. Back to

454
00:21:22,240 --> 00:21:22,880
Speaker 1: the drawing board.

455
00:21:22,920 --> 00:21:24,919
Speaker 2: Do you think that means that other target grades have

456
00:21:24,960 --> 00:21:28,520
Speaker 2: different strategies or that this glass like structure has no

457
00:21:28,640 --> 00:21:31,000
Speaker 2: connection to their ability to survive.

458
00:21:31,280 --> 00:21:34,840
Speaker 1: I bet it's both. So it could depend a lot

459
00:21:34,840 --> 00:21:38,719
Speaker 1: on the ecology of the animal. So some animals that

460
00:21:38,760 --> 00:21:41,280
Speaker 1: are in these environments with no water for longer might

461
00:21:41,320 --> 00:21:44,280
Speaker 1: need sort of more extreme solutions to this problem. And

462
00:21:44,320 --> 00:21:46,240
Speaker 1: so it could be something about like what kind of

463
00:21:46,359 --> 00:21:48,440
Speaker 1: environment you tend to be in, Whereas if, like I

464
00:21:48,440 --> 00:21:50,800
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe you're at the edge of a lake

465
00:21:51,480 --> 00:21:53,080
Speaker 1: and you know, every once in a while you find

466
00:21:53,080 --> 00:21:55,000
Speaker 1: yourself dry for five minutes, you can just kind of

467
00:21:55,000 --> 00:21:57,040
Speaker 1: like get through that. And so it might depend on

468
00:21:57,040 --> 00:22:00,840
Speaker 1: your ecology how frequently you encounter these weird situation, or

469
00:22:00,880 --> 00:22:03,159
Speaker 1: it could be different solutions entirely. I don't think we

470
00:22:03,240 --> 00:22:04,400
Speaker 1: know yet, all right, And then I.

471
00:22:04,320 --> 00:22:07,160
Speaker 2: Have a basic biology question, which is, like, in biology,

472
00:22:07,200 --> 00:22:09,960
Speaker 2: how do you answer the question this is how they're

473
00:22:10,000 --> 00:22:12,119
Speaker 2: doing it, or that's how they're doing it. Do you

474
00:22:12,119 --> 00:22:14,600
Speaker 2: have to develop an alternative where you're like knocked out

475
00:22:14,640 --> 00:22:16,720
Speaker 2: that capability and show that like, if they don't have

476
00:22:16,760 --> 00:22:18,600
Speaker 2: this protein, then they can no longer do this thing.

477
00:22:19,000 --> 00:22:21,520
Speaker 2: And that's how we know. Because biology is such a huge,

478
00:22:21,600 --> 00:22:23,880
Speaker 2: complicated roup Goldberg machine. How can you point to any

479
00:22:23,920 --> 00:22:26,160
Speaker 2: one bit and say this is the essential bit.

480
00:22:26,640 --> 00:22:30,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's super complicated. So sometimes you can say, like,

481
00:22:30,800 --> 00:22:35,520
Speaker 1: you know, if trehelos is produced by a gene or something,

482
00:22:35,560 --> 00:22:37,560
Speaker 1: you could go in and turn that gene off and

483
00:22:37,600 --> 00:22:41,359
Speaker 1: then put the tartar grade through a drying cycle and

484
00:22:41,400 --> 00:22:43,960
Speaker 1: see how it does and measure like, Okay, definitely it

485
00:22:43,960 --> 00:22:46,280
Speaker 1: didn't make trehelos anymore and it died.

486
00:22:46,400 --> 00:22:48,800
Speaker 2: But even then, maybe trehelos is just a precursor to

487
00:22:48,880 --> 00:22:51,760
Speaker 2: something else which is actually doing the crucial function. Right.

488
00:22:52,119 --> 00:22:54,240
Speaker 2: I mean, there's just such a complicated series of events.

489
00:22:54,359 --> 00:22:56,240
Speaker 2: It seems to me hard to ever point to one

490
00:22:56,320 --> 00:22:58,920
Speaker 2: and say this is the explanation. Do you think it's

491
00:22:58,960 --> 00:23:01,960
Speaker 2: just that we always want to simple explanation and there

492
00:23:02,000 --> 00:23:04,840
Speaker 2: really aren't any, or that sometimes there really are simple

493
00:23:04,920 --> 00:23:06,240
Speaker 2: explanations and we can find them.

494
00:23:06,600 --> 00:23:10,720
Speaker 1: There are probably rarely simple explanations, but I think that's

495
00:23:10,720 --> 00:23:13,360
Speaker 1: pretty rare. Like when we did the human genome project,

496
00:23:13,680 --> 00:23:16,520
Speaker 1: I think we expected we would like immediately understand the

497
00:23:16,560 --> 00:23:18,760
Speaker 1: cause of cancer and a bunch of other diseases because

498
00:23:18,760 --> 00:23:20,600
Speaker 1: now we have the whole genome and it's going to

499
00:23:20,680 --> 00:23:22,760
Speaker 1: be super easy. But no, it depends on like how

500
00:23:22,760 --> 00:23:26,320
Speaker 1: the genome is expressed, lots of complicated extra bits, and

501
00:23:26,359 --> 00:23:28,320
Speaker 1: you know, like for the Trehelos example, if you knocked

502
00:23:28,320 --> 00:23:31,080
Speaker 1: out trechlos and the tartar grades died, maybe it's because

503
00:23:31,119 --> 00:23:34,080
Speaker 1: Trehlos does something else earlier, like even when it's not

504
00:23:34,240 --> 00:23:36,640
Speaker 1: in desiccation mode and you've killed it in some way

505
00:23:36,680 --> 00:23:39,480
Speaker 1: that has nothing to do with desiccation. So ideally you

506
00:23:39,600 --> 00:23:42,320
Speaker 1: try to address the question from a bunch of different

507
00:23:42,359 --> 00:23:45,280
Speaker 1: angles and see what the picture you put together tells you.

508
00:23:46,000 --> 00:23:49,680
Speaker 1: But usually the answer is like it involves five thousand

509
00:23:49,720 --> 00:23:52,399
Speaker 1: different genes that are all upregulated and different in and

510
00:23:52,480 --> 00:23:55,360
Speaker 1: you know some of them are cell signaling genes. It's

511
00:23:55,359 --> 00:23:58,040
Speaker 1: almost never like the answer is X. But you know,

512
00:23:58,480 --> 00:24:01,800
Speaker 1: you guys have complicated answers to Sometimes.

513
00:24:01,560 --> 00:24:03,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, we do, absolutely, And sometimes you look at a

514
00:24:03,960 --> 00:24:06,480
Speaker 2: big complicated system and there is no simple story that

515
00:24:06,520 --> 00:24:09,080
Speaker 2: you can tell or model that you can use to

516
00:24:09,160 --> 00:24:12,119
Speaker 2: understand it. But sometimes you can, right like ten to

517
00:24:12,119 --> 00:24:15,359
Speaker 2: the twenty nine little molecules can all fly through the

518
00:24:15,400 --> 00:24:18,760
Speaker 2: air together following F equals M. It's a very simple

519
00:24:18,800 --> 00:24:20,880
Speaker 2: story about a lot of complicated things that are all

520
00:24:20,880 --> 00:24:24,960
Speaker 2: happening in concert, and somehow simplicity emerges. So I was

521
00:24:25,119 --> 00:24:28,040
Speaker 2: sort of wondering how often that happens in biology, that

522
00:24:28,080 --> 00:24:30,800
Speaker 2: you can pull one strand of a story and say

523
00:24:30,920 --> 00:24:33,880
Speaker 2: this is the role this is playing, or if it's

524
00:24:33,920 --> 00:24:35,240
Speaker 2: always just a huge courus.

525
00:24:35,560 --> 00:24:38,359
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it never happens that it's one string, Like

526
00:24:39,400 --> 00:24:41,320
Speaker 1: I like to joke that an ecology, like, you know,

527
00:24:41,359 --> 00:24:45,440
Speaker 1: the only quote unquote theory that we have is it depends.

528
00:24:47,040 --> 00:24:50,480
Speaker 2: See that's my problem with biology exactly.

529
00:24:50,720 --> 00:24:52,640
Speaker 1: But you know, if you don't try to figure out

530
00:24:52,680 --> 00:24:54,840
Speaker 1: all the things it depends on, then you never cure

531
00:24:54,920 --> 00:24:57,840
Speaker 1: cancer or you know, you never save the endangered animals

532
00:24:57,920 --> 00:25:00,159
Speaker 1: or whatever. So you know, you got to dig in anyway, know.

533
00:25:00,240 --> 00:25:03,120
Speaker 2: Exactly biology has no clear answers, but the questions are

534
00:25:03,200 --> 00:25:06,120
Speaker 2: super duper important and interesting and so they're worth going after.

535
00:25:06,160 --> 00:25:09,359
Speaker 1: Anyway, I appreciate the effort you're making to understand my perspective.

536
00:25:10,400 --> 00:25:12,359
Speaker 1: You're doing a great job. You're doing a great job,

537
00:25:12,760 --> 00:25:15,040
Speaker 1: all right, So I forgot to answer a question that

538
00:25:15,080 --> 00:25:17,000
Speaker 1: you had earlier, which was like, what is happening to

539
00:25:17,040 --> 00:25:19,320
Speaker 1: metabolism and stuff when they're in this tot and the

540
00:25:19,359 --> 00:25:26,879
Speaker 1: answer is it depends. Right, This might be pretty straightforward,

541
00:25:27,640 --> 00:25:30,639
Speaker 1: all right, tell me. They reduce their metabolism, they reduce

542
00:25:30,680 --> 00:25:33,520
Speaker 1: their oxygen use, and it's almost like they're frozen in time.

543
00:25:33,560 --> 00:25:36,520
Speaker 1: So they're not doing a lot of biological stuff when

544
00:25:36,520 --> 00:25:37,720
Speaker 1: they're in this desiccated state.

545
00:25:37,880 --> 00:25:40,520
Speaker 2: But to me, there's a difference between actually frozen like

546
00:25:40,560 --> 00:25:43,879
Speaker 2: there's no motion and very slow like are they alive?

547
00:25:44,119 --> 00:25:47,480
Speaker 2: Is there some consumption of energy? Are they going to

548
00:25:47,600 --> 00:25:50,879
Speaker 2: run out of energy at some point or is it

549
00:25:50,960 --> 00:25:52,000
Speaker 2: really just paused.

550
00:25:52,520 --> 00:25:54,160
Speaker 1: I think it's got to be the case that there's

551
00:25:54,160 --> 00:25:56,960
Speaker 1: still some consumption of energy, so one otherwise you'd expect

552
00:25:56,960 --> 00:25:58,840
Speaker 1: that they could like live forever, and so I think

553
00:25:58,880 --> 00:26:00,600
Speaker 1: at some point they kind of run out their stores.

554
00:26:00,800 --> 00:26:03,400
Speaker 1: But of course during that time they're also like accumulating

555
00:26:03,480 --> 00:26:06,800
Speaker 1: radiation damage and other sorts of problems of just being alive.

556
00:26:07,080 --> 00:26:08,600
Speaker 1: They're amp in it down, but I don't think it's

557
00:26:08,600 --> 00:26:09,760
Speaker 1: completely zero.

558
00:26:10,119 --> 00:26:11,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, amazing, Yeah.

559
00:26:11,400 --> 00:26:15,240
Speaker 1: And so because they're resistant to things like desiccation. Actually,

560
00:26:15,280 --> 00:26:16,760
Speaker 1: I wish I knew the history of the first time

561
00:26:16,800 --> 00:26:19,800
Speaker 1: somebody was like, let's throw these guys in liquid nitrogen.

562
00:26:20,840 --> 00:26:23,480
Speaker 1: Doesn't seem super nice, but they've got this sort of

563
00:26:23,520 --> 00:26:28,040
Speaker 1: reputation for being super environmentally resistant. We've exposed them to

564
00:26:28,040 --> 00:26:31,160
Speaker 1: pressures of seven and a half gigapasscals, which is equivalent

565
00:26:31,200 --> 00:26:33,840
Speaker 1: to being one hundred and eighty kilometers below the surface

566
00:26:33,840 --> 00:26:36,679
Speaker 1: of the Earth, and this is an environment that I

567
00:26:36,720 --> 00:26:39,879
Speaker 1: just can't imagine you would expect that selection would be

568
00:26:39,920 --> 00:26:42,560
Speaker 1: preparing these organisms for it, because it just doesn't come up.

569
00:26:43,119 --> 00:26:45,879
Speaker 1: But they mostly did. Okay, at six hours, they were alive.

570
00:26:45,920 --> 00:26:47,600
Speaker 1: And so here's the thing. You'll hear like a list

571
00:26:47,640 --> 00:26:50,880
Speaker 1: of like they can survive seven point five giga pass

572
00:26:50,880 --> 00:26:53,600
Speaker 1: scales of pressure, blah blah blah. They can survive seven

573
00:26:53,640 --> 00:26:56,200
Speaker 1: point five gigapascals of pressure for six hours.

574
00:26:56,520 --> 00:26:59,040
Speaker 2: That's pretty good, though six hours is a long time,

575
00:26:59,119 --> 00:27:02,040
Speaker 2: Like we're talking the same like a hydraulic press. You know, yes,

576
00:27:02,480 --> 00:27:03,520
Speaker 2: this is serious stuff.

577
00:27:03,640 --> 00:27:05,159
Speaker 1: No, that's a good point. Like so every once in

578
00:27:05,200 --> 00:27:07,200
Speaker 1: a while, though, you'll see like a YouTube headline that's

579
00:27:07,200 --> 00:27:10,520
Speaker 1: like they're immortal. This is incredible. You're right, it's incredible.

580
00:27:10,560 --> 00:27:13,440
Speaker 1: They can survive this, but they can't survive it for long.

581
00:27:14,119 --> 00:27:16,200
Speaker 1: If they're exposed to it for twenty four hours, they've

582
00:27:16,240 --> 00:27:17,480
Speaker 1: kicked the bucket, all right.

583
00:27:17,320 --> 00:27:19,600
Speaker 2: And I can understand why evolution wouldn't need them to

584
00:27:19,760 --> 00:27:22,280
Speaker 2: be able to survive one hundred kilometers underground for a

585
00:27:22,359 --> 00:27:25,640
Speaker 2: thousand years. But it's not that hard to imagine why

586
00:27:25,720 --> 00:27:28,840
Speaker 2: it would be useful to survive high pressure briefly, right,

587
00:27:28,920 --> 00:27:34,440
Speaker 2: you can imagine some high pressure situation comet impact, dinosaur

588
00:27:34,560 --> 00:27:37,760
Speaker 2: steps on you. I don't know, right, these things do happen.

589
00:27:37,800 --> 00:27:40,480
Speaker 2: I suppose evolution can select for them. No, you're looking

590
00:27:40,560 --> 00:27:41,520
Speaker 2: skeptical over there.

591
00:27:41,640 --> 00:27:43,560
Speaker 1: So if you are a tartar grade living in the

592
00:27:43,560 --> 00:27:46,400
Speaker 1: Marianna's Trench, and I don't know if we have tartar

593
00:27:46,440 --> 00:27:49,840
Speaker 1: grades in the Marianna's Trench, then you would have experienced

594
00:27:49,880 --> 00:27:53,480
Speaker 1: selection for being able to handle extreme pressures. But I

595
00:27:53,520 --> 00:27:58,199
Speaker 1: don't know if like a once in many millions of years,

596
00:27:58,520 --> 00:28:02,919
Speaker 1: commet would still be exerting selection pressure now for seven

597
00:28:02,920 --> 00:28:04,520
Speaker 1: point five gigapas skials of pressure.

598
00:28:04,600 --> 00:28:06,840
Speaker 2: Well, if we had like lots of pianos dropping out

599
00:28:06,840 --> 00:28:09,280
Speaker 2: of buildings on people's heads the way I always thought

600
00:28:09,359 --> 00:28:10,520
Speaker 2: we were going to have when I was a kid,

601
00:28:10,600 --> 00:28:12,080
Speaker 2: I thought that was like a feature of adult life,

602
00:28:12,080 --> 00:28:15,240
Speaker 2: you know, quicksand pianos and anvils, dropping on people. Wow,

603
00:28:15,400 --> 00:28:17,760
Speaker 2: that was happening more often than you would expect evolution

604
00:28:17,840 --> 00:28:20,199
Speaker 2: to somehow select humans to be able to survive you know,

605
00:28:20,480 --> 00:28:23,040
Speaker 2: anvils and pianos and stuff like that, so you know

606
00:28:23,040 --> 00:28:25,920
Speaker 2: there must be some biological equivalent to an bills and pianos.

607
00:28:26,080 --> 00:28:27,679
Speaker 1: First of all, I think Looney Tunes gave you a

608
00:28:27,720 --> 00:28:29,320
Speaker 1: distorted view of adulthood.

609
00:28:29,480 --> 00:28:31,720
Speaker 2: But fair, fair, I feel like.

610
00:28:31,680 --> 00:28:34,840
Speaker 1: The strategy could just be like you have eye spots

611
00:28:34,880 --> 00:28:38,160
Speaker 1: that detect a shadow overhead, and when that happens, your

612
00:28:38,200 --> 00:28:40,440
Speaker 1: brain is just like piano move and you get out

613
00:28:40,480 --> 00:28:42,800
Speaker 1: of the way. That seems like an easier path for

614
00:28:42,880 --> 00:28:45,200
Speaker 1: selection to take than being able to withstand a piano

615
00:28:45,280 --> 00:28:46,120
Speaker 1: dropping on your head.

616
00:28:46,160 --> 00:28:47,920
Speaker 2: Also, it probably takes a while to get into this

617
00:28:48,000 --> 00:28:50,280
Speaker 2: ton state, so it's not like target grade is swimming

618
00:28:50,280 --> 00:28:53,280
Speaker 2: along sees a comet coming down and then like switches

619
00:28:53,280 --> 00:28:56,200
Speaker 2: into ton state like a superhero. This is like already

620
00:28:56,240 --> 00:28:59,880
Speaker 2: happens to be in this state and then survives the impact, right.

621
00:29:00,120 --> 00:29:02,520
Speaker 1: Yep, yes, exactly, Okay, they can get into it, like

622
00:29:02,520 --> 00:29:05,640
Speaker 1: I think a couple hours pretty quick, but not like immediately,

623
00:29:05,720 --> 00:29:07,440
Speaker 1: not like snap in your fingers. It takes some work.

624
00:29:07,480 --> 00:29:09,800
Speaker 2: A couple hours. Isn't great for our superhero movie plot.

625
00:29:09,960 --> 00:29:12,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. But you know, if Michael Bay contacts us,

626
00:29:12,880 --> 00:29:15,200
Speaker 1: we can like change some biology stuff. Like, as we've

627
00:29:15,200 --> 00:29:17,320
Speaker 1: talked about in the past, what's important is your consistent

628
00:29:18,600 --> 00:29:22,719
Speaker 1: so you know, we will consistently change their biology. Another

629
00:29:22,920 --> 00:29:26,720
Speaker 1: incredible stressor they've been able to survive is a bunch

630
00:29:26,720 --> 00:29:29,640
Speaker 1: of different kinds of radiation at levels that certainly would

631
00:29:29,640 --> 00:29:32,920
Speaker 1: have killed people. Amazing, and we think that we know

632
00:29:33,520 --> 00:29:38,080
Speaker 1: partly how they do this one. So tartar grades produce

633
00:29:38,240 --> 00:29:42,600
Speaker 1: a class of proteins called intrinsically disordered proteins. And you're like,

634
00:29:42,720 --> 00:29:45,760
Speaker 1: why are you making me hear that multi syllabic phrase

635
00:29:45,920 --> 00:29:46,360
Speaker 1: that is, in.

636
00:29:46,320 --> 00:29:47,880
Speaker 2: Fact exactly what was going through my mind.

637
00:29:47,960 --> 00:29:49,560
Speaker 1: Yes, I know, I've gotten to know you pretty well.

638
00:29:49,600 --> 00:29:52,200
Speaker 1: But so the fact that they're disordered and like kind

639
00:29:52,240 --> 00:29:54,120
Speaker 1: of all over the place is important. And so if

640
00:29:54,160 --> 00:29:58,040
Speaker 1: you think of this like blobby thing, this blobby protein

641
00:29:58,680 --> 00:30:03,480
Speaker 1: is attracted to DNA, so your genetic material that codes

642
00:30:03,480 --> 00:30:07,360
Speaker 1: for everything else, and it binds to the DNA like electrostatically.

643
00:30:07,720 --> 00:30:10,360
Speaker 1: And because it's sort of like this blobby all over thing,

644
00:30:10,400 --> 00:30:12,560
Speaker 1: and you know, I wish the listeners could see the

645
00:30:12,600 --> 00:30:14,760
Speaker 1: beautiful things I'm doing with my arms right now.

646
00:30:14,800 --> 00:30:16,000
Speaker 2: You're basically Italian right now.

647
00:30:16,200 --> 00:30:18,360
Speaker 1: I was just gonna say that, Yeah, you beat me

648
00:30:18,400 --> 00:30:21,080
Speaker 1: to it. And so this blobby thing is able to

649
00:30:21,120 --> 00:30:24,000
Speaker 1: just kind of like fall over the DNA like a coat,

650
00:30:24,280 --> 00:30:27,360
Speaker 1: and then it appears to provide like a physical barrier

651
00:30:27,680 --> 00:30:30,640
Speaker 1: to the radiation and protect the DNA from breaking. And

652
00:30:30,680 --> 00:30:34,040
Speaker 1: in fact, they were able to get bacteria by like

653
00:30:34,160 --> 00:30:37,360
Speaker 1: moving some genes around to produce these proteins, and then

654
00:30:37,400 --> 00:30:41,720
Speaker 1: they mix them in to human cells, and these proteins

655
00:30:41,920 --> 00:30:45,040
Speaker 1: bound to human DNA. And when you blasted the human

656
00:30:45,120 --> 00:30:51,600
Speaker 1: DNA with radiation, they were protected by these disordered, blobby

657
00:30:51,760 --> 00:30:54,240
Speaker 1: kinds of proteins that were like coats for the DNA,

658
00:30:54,360 --> 00:30:55,760
Speaker 1: radiation shielding for the DNA.

659
00:30:55,880 --> 00:30:58,719
Speaker 2: Oh my god, this is our superhero origin story. Bitten

660
00:30:58,760 --> 00:31:03,680
Speaker 2: by a radioactive chartic D, Kelly gained that critter's ability

661
00:31:03,760 --> 00:31:05,080
Speaker 2: to withstand radiation.

662
00:31:05,680 --> 00:31:08,040
Speaker 1: It's gonna be amazing coming it's fall.

663
00:31:09,400 --> 00:31:13,360
Speaker 2: Tart to Kelly. So let's reminder of listeners exactly what

664
00:31:13,440 --> 00:31:16,080
Speaker 2: radiation is and how it damages to sell because we're

665
00:31:16,080 --> 00:31:19,240
Speaker 2: talking about X rays and ultraviolet light and gamma radiation.

666
00:31:19,320 --> 00:31:21,640
Speaker 2: Those all sound like very different things, but they're all

667
00:31:21,760 --> 00:31:25,520
Speaker 2: just photons. Talking about very high energy photons, photons like

668
00:31:25,560 --> 00:31:28,240
Speaker 2: the ones emitted by your lamp or your screen or

669
00:31:28,240 --> 00:31:31,800
Speaker 2: by the sun, just higher energy, so they like penetrate deeper.

670
00:31:32,320 --> 00:31:34,720
Speaker 2: And the problem, of course, is that when these things

671
00:31:34,800 --> 00:31:37,560
Speaker 2: penetrate into your cells, they can like blast open delicate

672
00:31:37,600 --> 00:31:40,880
Speaker 2: stuff like your DNA, and that's how you get cancer, right,

673
00:31:41,200 --> 00:31:43,560
Speaker 2: Or also sometimes that's how your kids end up being

674
00:31:43,600 --> 00:31:46,320
Speaker 2: like amazing cross country runners even though you have no

675
00:31:46,400 --> 00:31:51,120
Speaker 2: athletic skills yourself. Hypothetically speaking, right, mutations are sometimes good

676
00:31:51,120 --> 00:31:53,600
Speaker 2: and sometimes bad. You never know, But it's like going

677
00:31:53,640 --> 00:31:56,120
Speaker 2: into computer code and just like randomly changing a few

678
00:31:56,160 --> 00:31:58,840
Speaker 2: things and hoping that it gets better. Yeah, sometimes it

679
00:31:58,880 --> 00:32:01,120
Speaker 2: gets worse, And so that's what we're protecting against, right,

680
00:32:01,360 --> 00:32:01,719
Speaker 2: that's right.

681
00:32:01,760 --> 00:32:03,760
Speaker 1: And the study that I was reading it was looking

682
00:32:03,760 --> 00:32:06,040
Speaker 1: at breaks in the DNA. So DNA is like a

683
00:32:06,080 --> 00:32:08,320
Speaker 1: double stranded helix. It's almost like you took a ladder

684
00:32:08,520 --> 00:32:11,000
Speaker 1: and that sort of twisted it so that it's like

685
00:32:11,040 --> 00:32:14,520
Speaker 1: a spiral staircase, and they're looking at do you get

686
00:32:14,560 --> 00:32:17,080
Speaker 1: one break in the ladder or two breaks in the ladder.

687
00:32:17,080 --> 00:32:19,800
Speaker 1: So does one of the like long poles break or

688
00:32:19,840 --> 00:32:21,560
Speaker 1: both of them, And so they were able to find

689
00:32:21,600 --> 00:32:24,760
Speaker 1: that you get fewer breaks overall when you have this

690
00:32:24,840 --> 00:32:27,080
Speaker 1: like radiation coat protecting it.

691
00:32:27,440 --> 00:32:29,920
Speaker 2: So why don't we all have this radiation coat. Is

692
00:32:29,920 --> 00:32:32,600
Speaker 2: it like good to be susceptible to radiation because then

693
00:32:32,600 --> 00:32:35,480
Speaker 2: you get these mutations? Or is this radiation coat like

694
00:32:35,560 --> 00:32:38,440
Speaker 2: expensive in some other way that's usually not worth it.

695
00:32:38,720 --> 00:32:40,920
Speaker 1: I think it'll probably surprise some people to learn that

696
00:32:41,080 --> 00:32:43,880
Speaker 1: usually when you get blasted with radiation, you get like cancer,

697
00:32:43,920 --> 00:32:48,120
Speaker 1: but not superpowers. You probably generally want to avoid it.

698
00:32:48,160 --> 00:32:50,440
Speaker 1: But to be clear, we don't actually know the answer

699
00:32:50,480 --> 00:32:52,280
Speaker 1: to this because we don't understand the system very well.

700
00:32:52,320 --> 00:32:55,240
Speaker 1: But one hypothesis that I read about was that, you know,

701
00:32:55,280 --> 00:32:58,200
Speaker 1: probably we don't all have these because if you've got

702
00:32:58,600 --> 00:33:01,520
Speaker 1: something that's like a coat for your DNA, you know,

703
00:33:01,600 --> 00:33:04,200
Speaker 1: like the way your DNA replicates is like stuff comes

704
00:33:04,200 --> 00:33:06,640
Speaker 1: in and opens up the double strand, and like there's

705
00:33:06,720 --> 00:33:09,080
Speaker 1: machinery that starts replicating stuff, and if you've got like

706
00:33:09,080 --> 00:33:11,360
Speaker 1: a big coat covering it, you can't do that stuff

707
00:33:11,360 --> 00:33:13,840
Speaker 1: and like gets in the way, And so it might

708
00:33:13,880 --> 00:33:15,880
Speaker 1: be nice to protect you during a period where you're

709
00:33:15,920 --> 00:33:18,040
Speaker 1: not doing a lot of replicating your DNA because you're

710
00:33:18,040 --> 00:33:20,080
Speaker 1: just kind of hanging out waiting for the awful situation

711
00:33:20,160 --> 00:33:21,440
Speaker 1: you find yourself into. Pass.

712
00:33:22,120 --> 00:33:24,200
Speaker 2: So it's sort of like you're locking down your DNA,

713
00:33:24,280 --> 00:33:25,880
Speaker 2: but then you can't really use it. It's like when

714
00:33:25,920 --> 00:33:27,800
Speaker 2: you freeze your credit and then you can't like open

715
00:33:27,840 --> 00:33:31,000
Speaker 2: a new bank account because you've protecting yourself against yourself.

716
00:33:31,120 --> 00:33:33,280
Speaker 1: That's right. You shouldn't have sent your Social Security number

717
00:33:33,280 --> 00:33:38,000
Speaker 1: to that person over email. Kelly from the past anyway.

718
00:33:38,520 --> 00:33:42,880
Speaker 1: So they're surprisingly radiation resistant. Let's talk about what happens

719
00:33:42,960 --> 00:33:45,640
Speaker 1: when you dip them in liquid nitrogen or expose them

720
00:33:45,640 --> 00:34:04,520
Speaker 1: to the vacuum of space next. All right, we're back.

721
00:34:04,560 --> 00:34:07,960
Speaker 1: We've talked about how tartar grades are amazingly resistant to

722
00:34:08,440 --> 00:34:13,240
Speaker 1: high pressures, amazingly resistant to radiation, although not completely resistant.

723
00:34:13,239 --> 00:34:16,960
Speaker 1: You can kill them eventually, but they're impressively resistant. Also, weirdly,

724
00:34:17,000 --> 00:34:20,800
Speaker 1: we've been very interested in exposing them to temperature extremes,

725
00:34:20,920 --> 00:34:22,879
Speaker 1: and so, Daniel, I have a question for you. There's

726
00:34:22,960 --> 00:34:27,800
Speaker 1: this commonly made claim that you can expose tartar grades

727
00:34:27,840 --> 00:34:32,360
Speaker 1: to very close to absolute zero and they survive cool

728
00:34:32,600 --> 00:34:35,640
Speaker 1: This was from a paper in the nineteen fifties in

729
00:34:35,960 --> 00:34:39,560
Speaker 1: a language I don't speak, and I couldn't find the original.

730
00:34:40,560 --> 00:34:43,239
Speaker 1: How long have we been able to create temperatures close

731
00:34:43,280 --> 00:34:45,920
Speaker 1: to absolute zero? Has it been since the nineteen fifties?

732
00:34:46,360 --> 00:34:49,440
Speaker 2: So the history is that colder, earlier than you might expect.

733
00:34:50,000 --> 00:34:54,120
Speaker 2: Like Faraday, Michael Faraday, who did so much amazing work

734
00:34:54,160 --> 00:34:57,520
Speaker 2: on electromagnetism, he got stuffed down like negative one hundred

735
00:34:57,520 --> 00:34:59,400
Speaker 2: and thirty s, so that's one hundred and forty degrees

736
00:34:59,440 --> 00:35:02,560
Speaker 2: above app flue zero. That was in eighteen forty five.

737
00:35:02,840 --> 00:35:05,400
Speaker 2: And then a guy named Doer after which the Doers

738
00:35:05,440 --> 00:35:09,200
Speaker 2: are named liquified hydrogen down to twenty one kelvin in

739
00:35:09,239 --> 00:35:12,520
Speaker 2: eighteen ninety eight. Right, So this is already just twenty

740
00:35:12,560 --> 00:35:16,680
Speaker 2: degrees above absolute zero in the eighteen hundreds, and then

741
00:35:16,760 --> 00:35:18,920
Speaker 2: it was just ten years later we got down to

742
00:35:19,080 --> 00:35:22,600
Speaker 2: four degrees kelvin when the Nobel Prize in nineteen thirteen

743
00:35:22,680 --> 00:35:23,239
Speaker 2: for that one.

744
00:35:23,400 --> 00:35:23,800
Speaker 1: Oh wow.

745
00:35:23,920 --> 00:35:26,640
Speaker 2: And the current record, the closest we've ever gotten is

746
00:35:26,719 --> 00:35:30,759
Speaker 2: one hundred pico kelvins. That's zero point zer zero zero

747
00:35:30,920 --> 00:35:34,359
Speaker 2: zers or zero zerzero zero one kelvin. And there's an

748
00:35:34,360 --> 00:35:37,359
Speaker 2: instrument on the International Space Station that's going to try

749
00:35:37,400 --> 00:35:40,200
Speaker 2: to get to one pico kelvin is called the cold

750
00:35:40,320 --> 00:35:41,040
Speaker 2: Atom Lab.

751
00:35:41,400 --> 00:35:44,400
Speaker 1: All right, okay, so definitely by the nineteen fifties you

752
00:35:44,480 --> 00:35:47,400
Speaker 1: could be testing how tartar grades survived too close to

753
00:35:48,120 --> 00:35:51,040
Speaker 1: absolute zero? And Daniel, what is absolute zero? I believe

754
00:35:51,080 --> 00:35:53,960
Speaker 1: that's the temperature at which molecular stuff just stops and

755
00:35:54,000 --> 00:35:55,520
Speaker 1: everything's frozen in place. Is that right?

756
00:35:55,760 --> 00:35:59,160
Speaker 2: Absolute zero is a theoretical limit we've never achieved and

757
00:35:59,200 --> 00:36:01,880
Speaker 2: don't know if it's act actually possible. And essentially the

758
00:36:02,000 --> 00:36:06,680
Speaker 2: argument is when things get colder, velocities internally slow down.

759
00:36:06,880 --> 00:36:09,399
Speaker 2: It's a model of temperature that says things are hot

760
00:36:09,480 --> 00:36:12,080
Speaker 2: because the stuff inside it is moving fast or wiggling

761
00:36:12,120 --> 00:36:14,440
Speaker 2: a lot. And so what happens when things get colder,

762
00:36:14,480 --> 00:36:17,320
Speaker 2: They move slower, They wiggle less. Okay, make them colder,

763
00:36:17,440 --> 00:36:19,520
Speaker 2: all right, they wiggle less. Is there a point at

764
00:36:19,560 --> 00:36:23,040
Speaker 2: which all wiggling stops? And so sort of the way

765
00:36:23,080 --> 00:36:25,000
Speaker 2: like when you learn calculus in high school, you could

766
00:36:25,000 --> 00:36:27,839
Speaker 2: never actually approach infinity. You like approach it and see

767
00:36:27,840 --> 00:36:30,400
Speaker 2: what the tendencies are. In that same way, we estimate

768
00:36:30,640 --> 00:36:34,000
Speaker 2: that absolute zero might be the place where everything stops.

769
00:36:34,040 --> 00:36:36,640
Speaker 2: But that's extrapolating, and it's all kind of classical physics

770
00:36:37,160 --> 00:36:39,560
Speaker 2: and quantum mechanics says you could never actually get there

771
00:36:39,640 --> 00:36:42,239
Speaker 2: because there's a minimum energy to all the fields in

772
00:36:42,280 --> 00:36:45,880
Speaker 2: the universe, so everything has to be buzzing because if

773
00:36:45,920 --> 00:36:49,680
Speaker 2: anything was ever completely motionless, they would have no uncertainty,

774
00:36:50,000 --> 00:36:52,600
Speaker 2: and there's a minimum uncertainty to the fabric of the universe.

775
00:36:52,640 --> 00:36:54,800
Speaker 2: So we don't know if anything can ever get to

776
00:36:54,840 --> 00:36:57,200
Speaker 2: absolute zero, if it's a real thing or not. But

777
00:36:57,239 --> 00:36:58,560
Speaker 2: we've gotten pretty close.

778
00:36:58,600 --> 00:37:01,640
Speaker 1: Okay, and grades were able to handle it for at

779
00:37:01,680 --> 00:37:03,360
Speaker 1: least a little while, even though I couldn't find the

780
00:37:03,400 --> 00:37:04,080
Speaker 1: original paper.

781
00:37:04,200 --> 00:37:06,480
Speaker 2: Wow, So how cold did they get these heartigrades?

782
00:37:06,800 --> 00:37:09,520
Speaker 1: So the paper that I was able to find both

783
00:37:09,560 --> 00:37:12,279
Speaker 1: because it was online and in my native language. They

784
00:37:12,600 --> 00:37:15,880
Speaker 1: dipped them in liquid nitrogen, So that's negative one hundred

785
00:37:15,880 --> 00:37:19,759
Speaker 1: and ninety six degrees celsius. Pretty cold, super cold, and

786
00:37:19,880 --> 00:37:21,840
Speaker 1: ninety percent of them survived.

787
00:37:22,040 --> 00:37:22,600
Speaker 2: Wow.

788
00:37:22,880 --> 00:37:24,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was for fifteen minutes.

789
00:37:24,880 --> 00:37:27,400
Speaker 2: I don't think many Californians would survive at that temperature

790
00:37:27,440 --> 00:37:27,719
Speaker 2: for that.

791
00:37:27,680 --> 00:37:30,840
Speaker 1: Long, you know, even though Virginians are a hardier bunch

792
00:37:30,960 --> 00:37:33,040
Speaker 1: than you all Californians, I don't think we could have

793
00:37:33,040 --> 00:37:33,759
Speaker 1: survived that either.

794
00:37:33,840 --> 00:37:35,520
Speaker 2: That's because you have to wrap your heart in so

795
00:37:35,600 --> 00:37:39,239
Speaker 2: many layers of protection that it's not available during normal use. See,

796
00:37:39,320 --> 00:37:40,840
Speaker 2: that's why Californians are friendlier.

797
00:37:41,239 --> 00:37:44,799
Speaker 1: That doesn't make sense. No, no, no, no, no, that's

798
00:37:44,840 --> 00:37:47,440
Speaker 1: not how this works, all right. But one point that

799
00:37:47,480 --> 00:37:49,480
Speaker 1: I want to make here is that some of the

800
00:37:49,680 --> 00:37:54,120
Speaker 1: Tartar grades that were not in the Ton state also survived,

801
00:37:54,440 --> 00:37:57,600
Speaker 1: and that was also true during the radiation experiments too.

802
00:37:58,120 --> 00:37:59,399
Speaker 2: Oh wow, and.

803
00:37:59,320 --> 00:38:03,279
Speaker 1: That makes us like those disordered proteins that we were

804
00:38:03,320 --> 00:38:05,880
Speaker 1: talking about, maybe they help, but maybe that's not the

805
00:38:05,920 --> 00:38:11,960
Speaker 1: whole picture, because you wouldn't expect the active, untunned individuals

806
00:38:12,320 --> 00:38:14,919
Speaker 1: to be surviving if those proteins were the whole picture,

807
00:38:14,960 --> 00:38:16,799
Speaker 1: because they're not making a bunch of those when they're

808
00:38:16,800 --> 00:38:21,120
Speaker 1: not in the Ton state. So everything's complicated. Okay, But

809
00:38:21,239 --> 00:38:25,640
Speaker 1: now let's get to the juicy stuff. Space. Some scientists

810
00:38:25,680 --> 00:38:28,440
Speaker 1: have wanted to figure out if Tarte grades can survive

811
00:38:28,840 --> 00:38:32,600
Speaker 1: the super extreme environment of space. So first we sent

812
00:38:32,640 --> 00:38:35,520
Speaker 1: them up into spacecraft and expose them to microgravity and

813
00:38:35,560 --> 00:38:37,640
Speaker 1: some space radiation. But they were still like in this

814
00:38:37,680 --> 00:38:41,520
Speaker 1: temperature controlled container thing. They did pretty well. In response

815
00:38:41,560 --> 00:38:44,240
Speaker 1: to microgravity. Like, whereas humans are bones and our muscles

816
00:38:44,239 --> 00:38:46,920
Speaker 1: fall apart in the ton state, they're just kind of

817
00:38:47,000 --> 00:38:47,839
Speaker 1: chillin And.

818
00:38:47,800 --> 00:38:50,960
Speaker 2: Let's remind ourselves what is the extreme environment of space?

819
00:38:51,000 --> 00:38:53,400
Speaker 2: What's difficult about space? So this high radiation because we

820
00:38:53,400 --> 00:38:55,839
Speaker 2: don't have the magnetic field of Earth to bend those

821
00:38:55,880 --> 00:38:58,359
Speaker 2: particles away, and we don't have the atmosphere to shield us.

822
00:38:58,560 --> 00:39:01,920
Speaker 2: Then there's microgravity that's not so extreme. But then there

823
00:39:01,960 --> 00:39:04,440
Speaker 2: could also be low temperatures if you're out in space,

824
00:39:04,560 --> 00:39:07,520
Speaker 2: low pressure, and then of course no oxygen.

825
00:39:07,960 --> 00:39:12,480
Speaker 1: Yes, And so this first experiment was replicating the microgravity problem,

826
00:39:12,520 --> 00:39:14,680
Speaker 1: but they weren't exposed to the vacuum of space, they

827
00:39:14,680 --> 00:39:18,799
Speaker 1: weren't experiencing full radiation, and they were in low Earth orbit,

828
00:39:18,840 --> 00:39:21,319
Speaker 1: so they were still protected by the magnetosphere, and they

829
00:39:21,360 --> 00:39:24,120
Speaker 1: weren't experiencing the kind of temperatures extremes you usually experience

830
00:39:24,160 --> 00:39:27,480
Speaker 1: in space. Okay, So another experiment or a set of

831
00:39:27,520 --> 00:39:30,400
Speaker 1: experiments amped things up. They put them in a container

832
00:39:30,560 --> 00:39:33,000
Speaker 1: that had holes in it, and then they had a

833
00:39:33,080 --> 00:39:36,120
Speaker 1: variety of UV filters on top of the different containers.

834
00:39:36,480 --> 00:39:39,120
Speaker 1: So some of the tartar grades were exposed to the

835
00:39:39,200 --> 00:39:43,719
Speaker 1: vacuum of space well, having their temperature controlled but not

836
00:39:43,760 --> 00:39:47,320
Speaker 1: being exposed to UV radiation. And then others experienced various

837
00:39:47,400 --> 00:39:50,200
Speaker 1: kinds of UV radiation well being exposed to the vacuum

838
00:39:50,239 --> 00:39:52,880
Speaker 1: of space while still having their temperatures controlled in a

839
00:39:52,920 --> 00:39:56,680
Speaker 1: nice way. Does that all make sense? Vacuum of space

840
00:39:56,800 --> 00:40:01,400
Speaker 1: they rocked at which, to be clear, it would kill people, right.

841
00:40:01,680 --> 00:40:04,840
Speaker 1: The three Soviet cosmonauts who were exposed to the vacuum

842
00:40:04,840 --> 00:40:08,200
Speaker 1: of space did not survive the experience, and that's pretty

843
00:40:08,239 --> 00:40:09,879
Speaker 1: much what you should expect for the rest of us too.

844
00:40:10,080 --> 00:40:11,759
Speaker 2: The thing that first kills you there is what is

845
00:40:11,760 --> 00:40:14,280
Speaker 2: it the low pressure that like, your eyeballs are boiling

846
00:40:14,320 --> 00:40:16,319
Speaker 2: and your blood is boiling because you're used to being

847
00:40:16,360 --> 00:40:17,680
Speaker 2: squeezed in by all the air.

848
00:40:18,040 --> 00:40:20,000
Speaker 1: I think what killed them in particular is that the

849
00:40:20,080 --> 00:40:22,640
Speaker 1: nitrogen boiled out of their blood and it happened in

850
00:40:22,680 --> 00:40:24,480
Speaker 1: their brains and they had a bunch of brain hemorrhaging.

851
00:40:25,480 --> 00:40:27,319
Speaker 2: That does not sound good, no, And.

852
00:40:27,280 --> 00:40:30,279
Speaker 1: So TARTA grades don't have the same circulatory system, the

853
00:40:30,280 --> 00:40:33,040
Speaker 1: internal goo that keeps these little guys going. It's not

854
00:40:33,080 --> 00:40:34,640
Speaker 1: the same system as ours. So you might not have

855
00:40:34,640 --> 00:40:37,480
Speaker 1: to worry about nitrogen bubbles, but also they've gotten like

856
00:40:37,719 --> 00:40:39,680
Speaker 1: a bunch of the water out already, and so you're

857
00:40:39,680 --> 00:40:42,200
Speaker 1: probably not going to have like stuff that could bubble out.

858
00:40:42,840 --> 00:40:45,120
Speaker 1: So they did great in the vacuum of space, but

859
00:40:45,200 --> 00:40:47,319
Speaker 1: as soon as you opened those filters so that you

860
00:40:47,400 --> 00:40:50,840
Speaker 1: reradiation could get them too, they started dying in droves.

861
00:40:50,880 --> 00:40:54,359
Speaker 1: Like I think, oh, really, maybe four of the like

862
00:40:54,480 --> 00:40:58,960
Speaker 1: sixty survived that exposure, and that wasn't fair, like a

863
00:40:58,960 --> 00:41:00,680
Speaker 1: whole lifetime. I think it was. Like one of the

864
00:41:00,760 --> 00:41:02,719
Speaker 1: things that frustrates me about papers that are published in

865
00:41:02,760 --> 00:41:04,520
Speaker 1: really high impact journals is that they give you a

866
00:41:04,680 --> 00:41:08,359
Speaker 1: short page limit and so important details get left out.

867
00:41:08,400 --> 00:41:10,880
Speaker 1: And I couldn't figure out how long they were exposed,

868
00:41:10,920 --> 00:41:13,160
Speaker 1: but it couldn't have been more than ten days, because

869
00:41:13,200 --> 00:41:14,760
Speaker 1: that's how long the entire mission lasted.

870
00:41:15,200 --> 00:41:17,960
Speaker 2: Said, we heard earlier that they can survive UV radiation

871
00:41:18,120 --> 00:41:20,840
Speaker 2: on its own, and we heard just now that they

872
00:41:20,880 --> 00:41:22,800
Speaker 2: can survive the vacuum of space. But you're saying that

873
00:41:22,880 --> 00:41:25,759
Speaker 2: you combine them, then that snuffs them out, so they

874
00:41:25,800 --> 00:41:26,880
Speaker 2: can't survive the combination.

875
00:41:27,400 --> 00:41:29,920
Speaker 1: So here's the problem. All these studies that we've been

876
00:41:29,960 --> 00:41:33,160
Speaker 1: talking about, yeah, all looking at different species of tartar grades.

877
00:41:33,680 --> 00:41:37,360
Speaker 1: So because a tartar grade could survive some high radiation

878
00:41:37,480 --> 00:41:39,719
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that the next species that you expose it

879
00:41:39,760 --> 00:41:43,120
Speaker 1: to could survive. And also, not all of these studies

880
00:41:43,160 --> 00:41:45,880
Speaker 1: have the exact same experimental design, so it could be

881
00:41:46,040 --> 00:41:47,600
Speaker 1: that a bunch of the tartar grades that were exposed

882
00:41:47,600 --> 00:41:49,680
Speaker 1: to radiation were exposed to it for like five minutes,

883
00:41:49,760 --> 00:41:52,359
Speaker 1: but when you're exposed to it for ten days, then

884
00:41:52,440 --> 00:41:55,959
Speaker 1: you start dying. And so you know, when you hear

885
00:41:56,360 --> 00:41:58,720
Speaker 1: someone like rattling off a list of all the extreme

886
00:41:58,760 --> 00:42:01,839
Speaker 1: stuff that tartar grades can do, so some species can

887
00:42:01,880 --> 00:42:03,960
Speaker 1: do some of those things for some lengths of time,

888
00:42:04,160 --> 00:42:06,000
Speaker 1: but it's not like all of them can do all

889
00:42:06,040 --> 00:42:07,719
Speaker 1: of those amazing things indefinitely.

890
00:42:07,920 --> 00:42:10,200
Speaker 2: So that's like saying, oh, polar bears can swim in

891
00:42:10,239 --> 00:42:13,239
Speaker 2: cold water and grizzly bears can run really fast, and

892
00:42:13,280 --> 00:42:14,319
Speaker 2: doesn't mean that they can do.

893
00:42:14,280 --> 00:42:17,360
Speaker 1: Both, yes, exactly, or that they could do both like forever.

894
00:42:17,480 --> 00:42:19,120
Speaker 1: Like eventually, the polar bear is going to need to

895
00:42:19,120 --> 00:42:21,319
Speaker 1: find land and stop swimming. So the space people don't

896
00:42:21,360 --> 00:42:23,399
Speaker 1: invite me to their parties. The tartar grade people aren't

897
00:42:23,400 --> 00:42:25,600
Speaker 1: going to invite me to their parties anyway, It's all right,

898
00:42:25,600 --> 00:42:26,240
Speaker 1: I'm a downer.

899
00:42:26,600 --> 00:42:29,080
Speaker 2: Physicists will always invite you to their parties, killing because

900
00:42:29,080 --> 00:42:30,040
Speaker 2: we don't have any.

901
00:42:30,520 --> 00:42:37,040
Speaker 1: Oh, oh, that's probably not true. Maybe, So here is

902
00:42:37,040 --> 00:42:39,000
Speaker 1: the question everybody's been dying to know the answer to.

903
00:42:40,080 --> 00:42:44,200
Speaker 1: In twenty nineteen, the Bearasheet Lunar Lander crashed on the Moon.

904
00:42:45,520 --> 00:42:49,560
Speaker 1: It contained tartar grades, although the government officials who approved

905
00:42:49,560 --> 00:42:52,319
Speaker 1: that launch did not know that because the company that

906
00:42:52,480 --> 00:42:55,920
Speaker 1: had bought space on the lander did not disclose that

907
00:42:55,960 --> 00:42:59,520
Speaker 1: they were sending biological specimens, which they are supposed to do.

908
00:42:59,760 --> 00:43:02,799
Speaker 2: And why were they sending biological specimens? Was this some

909
00:43:02,960 --> 00:43:05,279
Speaker 2: can tartar grades survive experiment? Or were they hoping to

910
00:43:05,320 --> 00:43:06,040
Speaker 2: populate the Moon?

911
00:43:06,400 --> 00:43:09,080
Speaker 1: I hope that it was a can tartar grade survive experiment,

912
00:43:09,120 --> 00:43:11,200
Speaker 1: and also like that probably would have been a pretty

913
00:43:11,239 --> 00:43:15,440
Speaker 1: cool pr move for their mission to be able to

914
00:43:15,440 --> 00:43:17,480
Speaker 1: be like, oh, tartar grades in space, they really can

915
00:43:17,600 --> 00:43:20,640
Speaker 1: survive everything. But for whatever reason, they decided to not

916
00:43:20,760 --> 00:43:23,600
Speaker 1: disclose that it was happening, and I was not able

917
00:43:23,640 --> 00:43:26,120
Speaker 1: to figure out what species they sent. I spent a

918
00:43:26,120 --> 00:43:30,040
Speaker 1: long time asking. I asked Blue Sky. Nobody knew and

919
00:43:30,120 --> 00:43:32,120
Speaker 1: if you know, let me know. But so part of

920
00:43:32,160 --> 00:43:35,440
Speaker 1: figuring out whether or not they can survive involves knowing

921
00:43:35,520 --> 00:43:38,960
Speaker 1: the tolerances for that species in particular, right, But I

922
00:43:38,960 --> 00:43:40,120
Speaker 1: don't know what species it is.

923
00:43:40,280 --> 00:43:41,920
Speaker 2: So the answer is it depends.

924
00:43:42,360 --> 00:43:45,080
Speaker 1: Well, we were talking about biology, so of course the

925
00:43:45,160 --> 00:43:48,879
Speaker 1: answer is it depends. Biology. Doesn't disappoint but I think

926
00:43:48,920 --> 00:43:52,520
Speaker 1: probably not. And here's why. All right, So, first somebody

927
00:43:52,560 --> 00:43:56,120
Speaker 1: decided to stick tartar grades in bullets and then shoot

928
00:43:56,120 --> 00:43:58,640
Speaker 1: them at sandbags to try to figure out if they

929
00:43:58,680 --> 00:44:01,840
Speaker 1: could survive the impact and the subsequent shock wave that

930
00:44:01,880 --> 00:44:04,600
Speaker 1: would have been experienced when the lander crashed into the moon.

931
00:44:05,000 --> 00:44:07,640
Speaker 2: This was an experiment done in response to the crash,

932
00:44:07,760 --> 00:44:11,120
Speaker 2: like just to answer this question, not an independently motivated experiment.

933
00:44:11,440 --> 00:44:14,040
Speaker 1: That's exactly right. Wow, it doesn't say that in the paper,

934
00:44:14,040 --> 00:44:16,720
Speaker 1: but I found an interview with the authors it sounds

935
00:44:16,760 --> 00:44:18,440
Speaker 1: like that's true. And so there's a sentence in the

936
00:44:18,440 --> 00:44:22,080
Speaker 1: paper that says, accordingly, we have fired tartar grades at

937
00:44:22,160 --> 00:44:25,120
Speaker 1: high speed in a gun onto sand targets, subjecting them

938
00:44:25,120 --> 00:44:28,400
Speaker 1: to impact shocks and evaluating their survival. Actually, this paper

939
00:44:28,440 --> 00:44:31,840
Speaker 1: was all about if something hit the Earth and dislodged

940
00:44:32,600 --> 00:44:35,480
Speaker 1: Earth that had tartar grades. Could the tartar grade survive

941
00:44:35,800 --> 00:44:38,560
Speaker 1: base and survive so that they could land on the

942
00:44:38,560 --> 00:44:40,560
Speaker 1: Moon or Mars or populated. So it was a study

943
00:44:40,640 --> 00:44:43,640
Speaker 1: about pants spermia on the possibility of the tartar grades

944
00:44:43,640 --> 00:44:46,719
Speaker 1: becoming you know, interplanetary before the rest of us. I

945
00:44:46,719 --> 00:44:51,040
Speaker 1: found an interview where the author said, probably they wouldn't

946
00:44:51,080 --> 00:44:54,840
Speaker 1: have survived because of the shockwave. So it seems unlikely

947
00:44:55,400 --> 00:44:59,120
Speaker 1: that they survived. But let's go ahead and assume that

948
00:44:59,400 --> 00:45:03,080
Speaker 1: maybe they got lucky and they survived the initial shockwave, because.

949
00:45:02,840 --> 00:45:04,839
Speaker 2: We don't know the speed of the descent of the lander, right,

950
00:45:05,120 --> 00:45:07,080
Speaker 2: it depends on when it failed. If it fails just

951
00:45:07,080 --> 00:45:08,560
Speaker 2: before it hits the surface, it's going to be a

952
00:45:08,560 --> 00:45:11,920
Speaker 2: pretty gentle crash. If it fails really far away, then

953
00:45:11,960 --> 00:45:14,240
Speaker 2: it's going to plummet towards the surface. But the Moon's

954
00:45:14,239 --> 00:45:17,040
Speaker 2: gravity is still not very strong, so it's not going

955
00:45:17,120 --> 00:45:19,880
Speaker 2: to be going that fast, right, But still it depends.

956
00:45:20,280 --> 00:45:22,480
Speaker 1: This paper that I read had a bunch of different

957
00:45:22,560 --> 00:45:25,160
Speaker 1: impact speeds and shockwaves that they looked at, and I

958
00:45:25,200 --> 00:45:27,200
Speaker 1: looked on the internet to figure out what we think

959
00:45:27,239 --> 00:45:31,400
Speaker 1: the impact speed was of the bearsheet lander and based

960
00:45:31,440 --> 00:45:34,880
Speaker 1: on their table, I think it's possible it survived. But

961
00:45:34,960 --> 00:45:37,160
Speaker 1: then in an interview with the authors they said, no, no, no,

962
00:45:37,320 --> 00:45:40,080
Speaker 1: the shockwave, it wouldn't have survived. But then I found

963
00:45:40,080 --> 00:45:42,000
Speaker 1: another paper that was like, no, it might have survived

964
00:45:42,040 --> 00:45:43,799
Speaker 1: based on the info and the table. So you know,

965
00:45:44,280 --> 00:45:45,040
Speaker 1: it depends.

966
00:45:45,280 --> 00:45:47,680
Speaker 2: Were any of these papers written by anonymous authors from

967
00:45:47,719 --> 00:45:48,080
Speaker 2: the Moon?

968
00:45:48,400 --> 00:45:52,080
Speaker 1: Oh, I don't know. Yeah, the TARTI grades achieved sentience.

969
00:45:52,560 --> 00:45:54,239
Speaker 1: I think we have to worry about them sending like

970
00:45:54,320 --> 00:45:56,440
Speaker 1: moon rocks down at us as punishment for all the

971
00:45:56,440 --> 00:45:58,200
Speaker 1: things that we've done to them in the lab.

972
00:45:58,280 --> 00:46:00,440
Speaker 2: All right, so you think it's unlikely they survey the

973
00:46:00,480 --> 00:46:03,040
Speaker 2: impact on the Moon once they're on the Moon, say

974
00:46:03,040 --> 00:46:05,440
Speaker 2: they happen to survivor if you do, then what did

975
00:46:05,440 --> 00:46:06,200
Speaker 2: they have to put up with?

976
00:46:06,440 --> 00:46:08,440
Speaker 1: So now they've got to worry about radiation. So the

977
00:46:08,480 --> 00:46:12,239
Speaker 1: Moon doesn't have a strong planet wide magnetosphere like Earth

978
00:46:12,320 --> 00:46:14,920
Speaker 1: does or a thick atmosphere, so they'd be exposed to

979
00:46:15,080 --> 00:46:17,600
Speaker 1: all of the space radiation. And as we saw in

980
00:46:17,640 --> 00:46:21,080
Speaker 1: those earlier studies, base radiation, solar radiation is bad for them,

981
00:46:21,320 --> 00:46:24,040
Speaker 1: so that would kill them if they were exposed to it.

982
00:46:24,360 --> 00:46:28,080
Speaker 1: But let's say, well, what if maybe when they crashed,

983
00:46:28,160 --> 00:46:31,240
Speaker 1: the little container that was holding them ended up burying

984
00:46:31,280 --> 00:46:33,640
Speaker 1: itself under the regolith, and so now the regolith is

985
00:46:33,680 --> 00:46:37,680
Speaker 1: protecting them from radiation. Creative, let's imagine that. Okay, so

986
00:46:37,719 --> 00:46:40,000
Speaker 1: now you've got to deal with temperature. We know they

987
00:46:40,040 --> 00:46:44,120
Speaker 1: can handle really cold temperatures. The moon at night has

988
00:46:44,200 --> 00:46:46,800
Speaker 1: about a two week period where it's negative one hundred

989
00:46:46,800 --> 00:46:49,040
Speaker 1: and thirty three celsius, which is negative two hundred and

990
00:46:49,040 --> 00:46:53,040
Speaker 1: eight fahrenheit. That's at the equator. We know that they

991
00:46:53,080 --> 00:46:55,799
Speaker 1: survived negative one hundred and ninety six celsius, which is

992
00:46:55,840 --> 00:46:58,120
Speaker 1: more than that, but for fifteen minutes, So we don't

993
00:46:58,120 --> 00:47:01,240
Speaker 1: know if they could survive the law long polar nights,

994
00:47:01,280 --> 00:47:04,560
Speaker 1: which are the equivalent of two weeks on Earth. But

995
00:47:04,680 --> 00:47:08,239
Speaker 1: I think the bigger problem is one temperature swings back

996
00:47:08,280 --> 00:47:10,640
Speaker 1: and forth between extreme heat and extreme cold, but two

997
00:47:10,800 --> 00:47:12,880
Speaker 1: the fact that the moon does get really hot, so

998
00:47:12,960 --> 00:47:16,759
Speaker 1: without that atmosphere, things just heat up a lot. So

999
00:47:16,800 --> 00:47:19,279
Speaker 1: without an atmosphere, things get really hot and really cold.

1000
00:47:19,320 --> 00:47:21,520
Speaker 1: There's nothing to sort of dampen the temperature swings. And

1001
00:47:21,560 --> 00:47:25,000
Speaker 1: as we saw previously, tartar grades don't do great at

1002
00:47:25,040 --> 00:47:28,040
Speaker 1: really high temperatures. They do pretty well with cold temperatures,

1003
00:47:28,040 --> 00:47:30,640
Speaker 1: but with hot temperatures they can't survive for super long.

1004
00:47:30,920 --> 00:47:34,360
Speaker 1: But let's imagine, Hey, we said that they're underneath the regolith.

1005
00:47:34,640 --> 00:47:37,920
Speaker 1: They're protected from radiation. Underneath the regolith, you're also to

1006
00:47:37,960 --> 00:47:41,120
Speaker 1: some extent protected from temperature extremes. So maybe they're still

1007
00:47:41,239 --> 00:47:44,600
Speaker 1: alive there. But now you've got a problem with water.

1008
00:47:45,200 --> 00:47:47,800
Speaker 1: So in order to come out of their ton state,

1009
00:47:48,520 --> 00:47:51,840
Speaker 1: they need to be hydrated, and the lunar regolith is

1010
00:47:52,320 --> 00:47:56,680
Speaker 1: as wet as cement, so not super wet. So say

1011
00:47:56,680 --> 00:48:00,239
Speaker 1: it got hit by a comet that was bringing water, Well,

1012
00:48:00,239 --> 00:48:03,000
Speaker 1: I think that impact and the like heating up that

1013
00:48:03,040 --> 00:48:05,880
Speaker 1: happens when the comet hits the surface could kill the

1014
00:48:05,920 --> 00:48:08,439
Speaker 1: tartar grades. But also if you get water, you're only

1015
00:48:08,440 --> 00:48:10,400
Speaker 1: going to get it temporarily and then it's going to

1016
00:48:10,520 --> 00:48:12,440
Speaker 1: like be lost to the vacuum of space. So I

1017
00:48:12,440 --> 00:48:14,880
Speaker 1: don't see them getting out of their ton state. And

1018
00:48:14,920 --> 00:48:17,759
Speaker 1: then the final big problem is food. If they did

1019
00:48:17,800 --> 00:48:20,400
Speaker 1: get out of their Ton state, they don't have anything

1020
00:48:20,400 --> 00:48:22,319
Speaker 1: to eat, Like, I don't know what species this is.

1021
00:48:22,480 --> 00:48:24,839
Speaker 1: If this is the carnivorous ones and there was enough

1022
00:48:24,920 --> 00:48:27,759
Speaker 1: of a size variability, maybe the big ones could eat

1023
00:48:27,800 --> 00:48:29,719
Speaker 1: the little ones, but eventually you're gonna run out of it.

1024
00:48:30,440 --> 00:48:33,719
Speaker 1: So I don't see the tartar grades permanently settling the Moon.

1025
00:48:34,800 --> 00:48:37,439
Speaker 2: So it's unlikely that the tartar grades are like water,

1026
00:48:37,560 --> 00:48:40,719
Speaker 2: bearing around, being cute and bouncing around the surface of

1027
00:48:40,760 --> 00:48:43,560
Speaker 2: the Moon, living happily. But it's possible that some of

1028
00:48:43,560 --> 00:48:46,200
Speaker 2: them are in the ton state, survive the impact, are

1029
00:48:46,239 --> 00:48:49,640
Speaker 2: buried in the regolith and don't need water or food

1030
00:48:49,760 --> 00:48:52,920
Speaker 2: because they're just basically paused for a long time, but

1031
00:48:53,000 --> 00:48:53,920
Speaker 2: maybe not forever.

1032
00:48:54,280 --> 00:48:57,240
Speaker 1: I feel like that is a very low probability scenario,

1033
00:48:57,400 --> 00:49:00,000
Speaker 1: but it depends. I don't know that I can rule

1034
00:49:00,080 --> 00:49:02,440
Speaker 1: it out entirely. Maybe they're still in their ton state.

1035
00:49:02,719 --> 00:49:04,680
Speaker 1: We'll find them. I mean, we know that they can't

1036
00:49:04,680 --> 00:49:06,520
Speaker 1: be in that state for forever, and it's already been

1037
00:49:06,600 --> 00:49:09,480
Speaker 1: like five years, so I'm not super hopeful.

1038
00:49:09,760 --> 00:49:12,600
Speaker 2: Sorry, But if a huge impactor slams into the Earth

1039
00:49:12,640 --> 00:49:15,880
Speaker 2: and like completely demolishes it so there's no record of

1040
00:49:15,960 --> 00:49:19,200
Speaker 2: life left on Earth, there could still be on the

1041
00:49:19,239 --> 00:49:22,880
Speaker 2: Moon some basically like frozen proof that there was once

1042
00:49:23,320 --> 00:49:26,040
Speaker 2: life on Earth. So that aliens visiting in the deep

1043
00:49:26,080 --> 00:49:29,560
Speaker 2: future could be like, oh, look, there was something here once.

1044
00:49:29,840 --> 00:49:33,960
Speaker 1: Maybe, or those incredible temperature swings have killed them and

1045
00:49:34,000 --> 00:49:36,399
Speaker 1: the bacteria that live in their guts have consumed them

1046
00:49:36,400 --> 00:49:39,439
Speaker 1: and they've become liquid munch because biologies grows.

1047
00:49:39,480 --> 00:49:41,440
Speaker 2: Also, all right, well, I guess we're just gonna have

1048
00:49:41,480 --> 00:49:43,480
Speaker 2: to wait millions of years for a huge impact and

1049
00:49:43,640 --> 00:49:45,839
Speaker 2: alien arrival to find out the answer to that one.

1050
00:49:46,120 --> 00:49:48,160
Speaker 1: Ah, and people say I'm the negative one.

1051
00:49:49,520 --> 00:49:51,760
Speaker 2: All right, well, thank you Tim for your really fun question.

1052
00:49:51,960 --> 00:49:54,400
Speaker 2: I think Kelly had a lot of fun digging into

1053
00:49:54,440 --> 00:49:55,960
Speaker 2: the research on tartar grades.

1054
00:49:56,360 --> 00:49:58,400
Speaker 1: I did. It distracted me while I was sick and

1055
00:49:58,440 --> 00:49:59,960
Speaker 1: couldn't get out of bed, So thank you for this

1056
00:50:00,040 --> 00:50:01,480
Speaker 1: wonderful question. I had a blast.

1057
00:50:02,000 --> 00:50:04,560
Speaker 2: If you have a question about something in the universe

1058
00:50:04,560 --> 00:50:09,000
Speaker 2: that fascinates you, physics, biology, even gasp, chemistry, right to us,

1059
00:50:09,080 --> 00:50:11,919
Speaker 2: we'd love to dig into it. We love hearing from

1060
00:50:11,960 --> 00:50:15,000
Speaker 2: all of you at questions at Daniel and Kelly dot org.

1061
00:50:22,040 --> 00:50:25,880
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1062
00:50:25,920 --> 00:50:28,360
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1063
00:50:28,520 --> 00:50:31,239
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1064
00:50:31,440 --> 00:50:33,560
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1065
00:50:33,360 --> 00:50:36,279
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1066
00:50:36,360 --> 00:50:39,439
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1067
00:50:39,480 --> 00:50:39,680
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1068
00:50:39,880 --> 00:50:43,399
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1069
00:50:43,440 --> 00:50:46,319
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1070
00:50:46,440 --> 00:50:48,600
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1071
00:50:48,719 --> 00:50:52,640
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1072
00:50:52,680 --> 00:50:55,640
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1073
00:50:55,760 --> 00:50:57,279
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