1
00:00:01,920 --> 00:00:07,120
Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,

2
00:00:07,160 --> 00:00:10,840
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogel Bomb here. You might have a gingko tree

3
00:00:10,840 --> 00:00:14,040
Speaker 1: in your neighborhood. It has whispy, fan shaped leaves that

4
00:00:14,200 --> 00:00:17,200
Speaker 1: turn a beautiful burnished yellow in the fall, and possibly

5
00:00:17,280 --> 00:00:20,880
Speaker 1: drops rotten smelling fruit. It looks different from other trees

6
00:00:20,960 --> 00:00:23,520
Speaker 1: you might see on your street, mostly because when you

7
00:00:23,520 --> 00:00:25,920
Speaker 1: look at a ginko tree, you're looking at the product

8
00:00:25,960 --> 00:00:30,280
Speaker 1: of another time. Gingko baloba is the oldest tree on Earth.

9
00:00:30,440 --> 00:00:33,080
Speaker 1: It's outlived all its relatives and has seen the dinosaurs

10
00:00:33,159 --> 00:00:36,200
Speaker 1: rise and fall. Any individual gingko tree may have seen

11
00:00:36,200 --> 00:00:39,120
Speaker 1: a lot. The oldest known gingo specimen stands in the

12
00:00:39,200 --> 00:00:42,280
Speaker 1: Zogan Mountains of China and has one thousand, four hundred

13
00:00:42,360 --> 00:00:46,400
Speaker 1: years old. Ginko trees have remained pretty much unchanged for

14
00:00:46,440 --> 00:00:49,680
Speaker 1: the past two hundred and seventy million years, have survived

15
00:00:49,760 --> 00:00:52,440
Speaker 1: three mass extinctions, and might be a key to helping

16
00:00:52,520 --> 00:00:55,480
Speaker 1: us understand something about how our current climate shifts will

17
00:00:55,520 --> 00:00:59,880
Speaker 1: affect organisms in the future. A group of researchers at

18
00:00:59,880 --> 00:01:03,720
Speaker 1: the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Maryland, are studying

19
00:01:03,760 --> 00:01:07,080
Speaker 1: a grove of fifteen ginko trees each housed in a

20
00:01:07,120 --> 00:01:09,840
Speaker 1: plastic greenhouse tent and hooked up to a tank of

21
00:01:09,840 --> 00:01:12,880
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide that delivers different amounts of the gas to

22
00:01:13,080 --> 00:01:15,960
Speaker 1: each tree, some up to two and a half times

23
00:01:16,000 --> 00:01:20,720
Speaker 1: the carbon dioxide concentration of modern Earth's air. In this experiment,

24
00:01:20,840 --> 00:01:24,600
Speaker 1: called fossil atmospheres, the scientists are trying to reconstruct how

25
00:01:24,600 --> 00:01:27,160
Speaker 1: the atmosphere of Earth has changed over the past couple

26
00:01:27,160 --> 00:01:30,960
Speaker 1: of geologic eras, through the ice ages and periods when

27
00:01:31,000 --> 00:01:33,160
Speaker 1: there was no ice at all in the poles, and

28
00:01:33,360 --> 00:01:36,679
Speaker 1: how it's likely to change in the future. The Earth's

29
00:01:36,680 --> 00:01:39,360
Speaker 1: atmosphere is made up of a variety of different gases,

30
00:01:39,400 --> 00:01:42,720
Speaker 1: including carbon dioxide, the concentrations of which have a huge

31
00:01:42,760 --> 00:01:46,160
Speaker 1: impact on the planet's climate. Scientists can get a pretty

32
00:01:46,160 --> 00:01:48,360
Speaker 1: good idea of what past climates were like by looking

33
00:01:48,400 --> 00:01:51,400
Speaker 1: at fossil plants, thanks to a little structure on the

34
00:01:51,440 --> 00:01:55,120
Speaker 1: surface of their leaves called stamata. These are tiny holes

35
00:01:55,160 --> 00:01:57,800
Speaker 1: that let carbon dioxide into the leaf and water and

36
00:01:57,880 --> 00:02:01,960
Speaker 1: oxygen out. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the air

37
00:02:02,120 --> 00:02:05,120
Speaker 1: determines how many somata are on the surface of the leaf.

38
00:02:05,960 --> 00:02:08,960
Speaker 1: Using fossils of ginkos from different places and time periods

39
00:02:09,160 --> 00:02:11,720
Speaker 1: can help the researchers put together a story of what

40
00:02:11,880 --> 00:02:14,160
Speaker 1: Earth's climate has been up to for the past few

41
00:02:14,280 --> 00:02:17,919
Speaker 1: hundred million years. The researchers are doing all kinds of

42
00:02:17,960 --> 00:02:21,880
Speaker 1: experiments with their tented fossil atmospheres, but they also want

43
00:02:21,960 --> 00:02:25,160
Speaker 1: your help. You can assist in this project by volunteering

44
00:02:25,200 --> 00:02:28,480
Speaker 1: to help count stamata on fossil gingko leaves in order

45
00:02:28,480 --> 00:02:31,080
Speaker 1: to calculate the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere

46
00:02:31,120 --> 00:02:34,640
Speaker 1: during specific periods in the deep Deep past. You can

47
00:02:34,680 --> 00:02:37,960
Speaker 1: also send in ginko leaves from wherever you live, because

48
00:02:38,040 --> 00:02:41,600
Speaker 1: although ginkos are native to China, they're popular in yards, gardens,

49
00:02:41,600 --> 00:02:45,960
Speaker 1: and along streets worldwide. By receiving specimens from citizen scientists

50
00:02:46,000 --> 00:02:48,280
Speaker 1: all over the globe, the researchers will be able to

51
00:02:48,320 --> 00:02:50,640
Speaker 1: get a better sense of how various features of the

52
00:02:50,680 --> 00:02:54,280
Speaker 1: trees differed depending on whether they're planted in say, Singapore

53
00:02:54,400 --> 00:02:57,280
Speaker 1: or Colorado, which will in turn help them to better

54
00:02:57,360 --> 00:03:00,800
Speaker 1: understand how ginko grow differently depending on the climate in

55
00:03:00,800 --> 00:03:09,680
Speaker 1: which they developed now or two million years ago. Today's

56
00:03:09,720 --> 00:03:12,400
Speaker 1: episode was written by Jesselyn Shields and produced by Tyler Clay.

57
00:03:12,840 --> 00:03:14,800
Speaker 1: Brain Stuff is a production of I Heart Radios How

58
00:03:14,800 --> 00:03:17,040
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. For more on this and lots of other

59
00:03:17,080 --> 00:03:19,840
Speaker 1: long lived topics, visit our home planet has Stuffworks dot

60
00:03:19,919 --> 00:03:22,639
Speaker 1: com and for more podcasts. For my heart Radio, visit

61
00:03:22,680 --> 00:03:25,080
Speaker 1: the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

62
00:03:25,120 --> 00:03:26,240
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows,