Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 2: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part two
Speaker 3: in our series on Dust Now. In the last episode,
Speaker 3: we talked about how to define dust. We talked about
Speaker 3: the definition that came from a book that I've been
Speaker 3: reading by an author named Jay Owens, defining dust as
Speaker 3: tiny flying particles. We talked about our wonderful, beautiful, swarming
Speaker 3: invisible domestic companions, the dust mites, and we talked about
Speaker 3: atmospheric dust and its complex relationship to weather and climate.
Speaker 3: And hey, if you hear a little weirdness, little creak,
Speaker 3: little croak in my throat today that may very well
Speaker 3: be caused by dust.
Speaker 2: There you go. Yeah, So into day's episode, we're gonna
Speaker 2: we're gonna be talking about dust bunnies a bit here,
Speaker 2: but but not just dust bunnies. Just summoning the specter
Speaker 2: of the dust bunny is enough to diverge into topics
Speaker 2: concerning cosmic horror and and cosmic mysteries. So even though
Speaker 2: the dust bunny is pretty mundane and every day and
Speaker 2: you could probably find one in your home within five
Speaker 2: minutes if we requested it. Stick around because it's gonna
Speaker 2: go interesting places.
Speaker 3: I know, based on seeing some reactions to part one
Speaker 3: of this series, that there are some real dust haters
Speaker 3: in our audience, and so we may in fact here
Speaker 3: from listeners who say no, no, no dust bunnies in
Speaker 3: my house. They are there forbidden, and I do not
Speaker 3: allow a single one to form.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, that's it's a very Victorian mindset, as
Speaker 2: we'll discuss here, so I don't think I have to
Speaker 2: tell many of you what a dust bunny is, though,
Speaker 2: as we'll discuss the terminology, there seems to be more
Speaker 2: dominant terminology in different parts of the world, and I
Speaker 2: wasn't able to find like a really exhaustive list, so
Speaker 2: certainly I'm hoping to hear from listeners in other countries,
Speaker 2: in other language traditions that have different terms for what
Speaker 2: we're talking about here. These are vaguely animal shaped accumulations
Speaker 2: of dust that one tends to find in hard to
Speaker 2: dust places and corners of a home or other interior space.
Speaker 2: A frequent place you may find these is, of course,
Speaker 2: like under the bed, under and behind the dresser, places
Speaker 2: where dust can accumulate for extended periods of time without
Speaker 2: being noticed until you go in there looking for something,
Speaker 2: or going in for a more detailed dusting of the room,
Speaker 2: and you find something that has accumulated to the degree
Speaker 2: that it is kind of vaguely animal shaped.
Speaker 3: I must say that I find these accumulate with much
Speaker 3: greater frequency if you have a dog.
Speaker 2: Yeah, wow, yeah, I mean we have a cat. And
Speaker 2: that certainly helps too, you know, because, as we'll be
Speaker 2: discussing here, like, they are made out of the various
Speaker 2: things that make up dust in your home, and pet
Speaker 2: dand or pet hair is a large part of that
Speaker 2: if pets are present or even have been present in
Speaker 2: pat So I found that dust bunnies can be a
Speaker 2: deceptively difficult topic to research, as they often garner nothing
Speaker 2: more than just passing mention, even in books devoted to
Speaker 2: the topic of dust. I didn't look in all of them,
Speaker 2: but I didn't look in a couple of them. And yeah,
Speaker 2: even in books devoted entirely to topics of topic of dust,
Speaker 2: you might not find much about them. So I suspect
Speaker 2: that I'm not alone in turning up a few leads.
Speaker 2: But there is some information out there. These accumulations have
Speaker 2: been known by different names. Again, this is not an
Speaker 2: exhaustive list, so let us know what you have come
Speaker 2: to know them as. But in German tradition there are
Speaker 2: often referred to as wool mouse or as it means
Speaker 2: wool mouse, which I think is pretty good. You know,
Speaker 2: looks it actually looks more like a mouse than a rabbit,
Speaker 2: at least the ones I encounter.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's you know, you're more likely to find a
Speaker 3: mouse than a rabbit inside your home.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, rabbits get rather big. Like when
Speaker 2: I look into the backyard to check in the garden
Speaker 2: and I see the prince with a thousand enemies back there,
Speaker 2: he's kind of a chonker. I would be rather concerned
Speaker 2: if I found a true rabbit sized dust bunny inside
Speaker 2: the house.
Speaker 3: Maybe you're supposed to think of baby bunnies or like
Speaker 3: just maybe just the bunny's tail, a little cottontail.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The other thing I was thinking is maybe it
Speaker 2: has to do with like multiple clumps, and you can
Speaker 2: be like, oh, it looks kind of like two ears
Speaker 2: and a body or something.
Speaker 3: That's right. So I think bunny kind of makes sense
Speaker 3: because dust bunnies can be floppy. They can be almost
Speaker 3: hinged in a way, if you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: Like one part of them will fold over and they'll
Speaker 3: flop around much like a rabbit's ears.
Speaker 2: Now for this next one from English tradition, I do
Speaker 2: want to warn everyone I am about to use a
Speaker 2: word that has since this antiquated usage of the term
Speaker 2: become more offensive. So you know, I don't skip a
Speaker 2: few seconds of you. They're young listeners present, you don't
Speaker 2: want to hear this word. And I also want to
Speaker 2: throw a warning out there to any automated like spider
Speaker 2: bots that are transcribing the podcast and then reporting back
Speaker 2: to Apple Podcasts with inside about what we're talking about.
Speaker 2: Please be advised antiquated use of the term here. So
Speaker 2: with all that set up. In English tradition, they are
Speaker 2: some They were sometimes known as sluts wool. This was
Speaker 2: an antiquated use of that term that meant an unclean
Speaker 2: or slovenly person.
Speaker 3: So it was an unclean or slovenly person's wool, meaning
Speaker 3: it it came from them like it was their wool
Speaker 3: and descended to the floor, or it was like meant
Speaker 3: for them like this is the wool they will use
Speaker 3: to dress in and heat their bodies.
Speaker 2: Uncertain, I guess it kind of. It also kind of
Speaker 2: seems like, Okay, if you were busy, you would have
Speaker 2: cleaned your home and you would have maybe produced actual wool.
Speaker 2: I don't know, it's just kind of I guess wool
Speaker 2: thought of as something that accumulates naturally in the context
Speaker 2: of sheep, I'm not sure. I've also read it referred
Speaker 2: to as Beggar's velvet, not to be confused with Beggar's
Speaker 2: velvet that was also a blend of cotton and linen.
Speaker 2: So you might find references to someone wearing a garment
Speaker 2: made of Beggar's velvet, but they're not using a garment
Speaker 2: made of dust bunnies.
Speaker 3: Wouldn't it be funny though, if dust bunny based fabrics
Speaker 3: became like the new hot item, Like, you know, you
Speaker 3: have silk, you've got I don't know, angora or something,
Speaker 3: and then you get the dust bunny.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna pass on that one, but I don't know
Speaker 2: if you use the next term for it, maybe because
Speaker 2: the next term is house moss, and this one I
Speaker 2: feel finally sounds a little less disparaging, you know, it
Speaker 2: sounds like just something that accumulates naturally and is therefore
Speaker 2: rather mundane. I mean, who has a vendetta against moss?
Speaker 2: And then finally you'll find other uses such as dust kitten.
Speaker 2: I couldn't find any information about this being anything. This
Speaker 2: might be a more recent development where we want to
Speaker 2: apply all things cat to things in our house, and
Speaker 2: therefore think of it as a dust kitten, which certainly
Speaker 2: does sound cuter.
Speaker 3: Well, a dust bunny is prey, a dust kitten is
Speaker 3: a predator.
Speaker 2: Dust bunny, however, does seem to be the main US
Speaker 2: English term for these accumulations of dust. As this is
Speaker 2: household dust. It's generally composed of the same household components
Speaker 2: that we discussed in the last episode, so things like
Speaker 2: dead skin, hair, pet dander, lint, pollen, and so forth.
Speaker 2: Dust mites may also reside within them, so I don't
Speaker 2: think it's anything you necessarily want to form into a garment.
Speaker 2: Not that I ever have any problem like touching the
Speaker 2: dust bunnies of only scooping up something behind a dresser
Speaker 2: that hasn't been moved in a while, but I also
Speaker 2: find that I regard it rather differently than when compared
Speaker 2: to dryer lint. Dryer lint always, to me, feels like
Speaker 2: a like a sacred and holy substance that must be
Speaker 2: removed from the machine. There's something kind of satisfying about
Speaker 2: removing dryer lint that, especially when it comes off in
Speaker 2: kind of like a clump or a patch, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, when it comes out warm, Oh yeah, that really
Speaker 3: emphasizes the holiness of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it still goes straight in the trash.
Speaker 3: But you know, I gotta say, dust bunnies came to
Speaker 3: seem much more offensive to me. I mean that we
Speaker 3: used to just have them around the house all the time.
Speaker 3: I don't know if that's gross, but like, you know,
Speaker 3: you'd see them and be like, oh, yeah, there's one
Speaker 3: over there. Maybe I'll do something about it. Maybe not.
Speaker 3: When you've got a young child who's like mobile, crawling
Speaker 3: around on the floor and kind of putting whatever in
Speaker 3: their mouth, then there's a sudden urgency to actually do
Speaker 3: something about all these little critters piling up in the corners.
Speaker 2: Yes, and pile up they do. Now, when you look
Speaker 2: around for a detailed description on how dust bunnies form,
Speaker 2: I found that some of the best explanations are not
Speaker 2: really about explaining dust bunnies at all, but rather about
Speaker 2: using them as a means to better understand accumulations of
Speaker 2: cosmic dust and ultimately the formation of much larger bodies
Speaker 2: in space. Sources on this include Richard Cowen's book History
Speaker 2: of Life. I believe that's kind of like a long
Speaker 2: standing like science textbook, kind of a situation. Also Formation
Speaker 2: of Cosmic dust Bunnies, an article published in two thousand
Speaker 2: and seven in the IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science by
Speaker 2: Matthews at All. John Hermann brought together some of these
Speaker 2: sources for a twenty ten Gizmoto explainer, and there's also
Speaker 2: a two thousand and nine Esquire explainer. But everyone is
Speaker 2: pretty much circling around the same bundle of sources I find,
Speaker 2: but still an insightful bundle of sources. So, whether we're
Speaker 2: dealing with the formation of stars or the formation of
Speaker 2: that epic dust bunny under your bed, it comes down
Speaker 2: to the process of accretion. Now we've talked about this
Speaker 2: in the show before, at least in the cosmic sense.
Speaker 2: In the household sense, however, we'd be talking about a
Speaker 2: very weak static electrical charge bringing together only the very
Speaker 2: fine particles of dust, because you're not dealing with like
Speaker 2: a you know, a cosmic void scenario. This is happening
Speaker 2: under your bed. The rest of what's binding the dust
Speaker 2: bunny together, it comes seems to come down to entangled
Speaker 2: and matted fibers of the various components that make up
Speaker 2: the bunnies.
Speaker 3: Just based on my own observations, dust bunnies really do
Speaker 3: seem to me to have a large hair component compared
Speaker 3: to just the dust you'd find anywhere else in your house.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think the hair is key. The hair
Speaker 2: gets tangled, hair gets matted in these contexts. It's why
Speaker 2: I also, if you're a cat owner and you're you know,
Speaker 2: on the lookout for things like hair balls, dust bunnies
Speaker 2: can also be instantly a little bit more alarming because
Speaker 2: you're like, Okay, what what's the classification of this thing
Speaker 2: I have found? They're like, Oh, it's just dust bunny.
Speaker 2: Nobody is to blame except maybe me. Now, that giz
Speaker 2: Moto explainer that I referenced earlier from Herman runs through
Speaker 2: basically all this, But I thought that he has had
Speaker 2: a really nice capper for the article, so I want
Speaker 2: to read a quote from it. There are other minor
Speaker 2: culprits like the cooking of fatty foods, which produces triglycerides
Speaker 2: that can attach to dust particles, making them stickier. All
Speaker 2: the causes, though, share one characteristic. They're subtle. It's either
Speaker 2: electrostatic forces that are nearly impossible to measure, or air
Speaker 2: flows that are impossible to feel, or fat deposits that
Speaker 2: are unavoidable and unnoticeable byproducts of preparing. Basically any delicious
Speaker 2: food actually make that two characteristics. Without dust, they can't exist,
Speaker 2: So get cleaning. This is a very I thought, very
Speaker 2: essential to note the airflow aspect of this, because I
Speaker 2: think that's another thing you can observe in your home.
Speaker 2: It's not only the places where dust isn't easily observed,
Speaker 2: but also sort of the corners where like sweeping doors
Speaker 2: and human traffic or pet traffic will sort of subtly
Speaker 2: push everything together as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the kind of tide pools of airflow in the home,
Speaker 3: places where things just get deposited and left there after
Speaker 3: the movement all around. Well, Rob, I want to go
Speaker 3: from the cozy and domestic context of dust bunnies back
Speaker 3: to something you mentioned a minute ago, which is the
Speaker 3: cosmic context because I came across a very intriguing and
Speaker 3: very cute hypothesis about the nature of a space object
Speaker 3: that we have talked about several times on the show before,
Speaker 3: and that is Omuamua.
Speaker 2: Ah Yes, our old friend of Muhamoa.
Speaker 3: So to briefly refresh, Omuamua is the name of a
Speaker 3: fast moving object in space that was discovered in October
Speaker 3: twenty seventeen through a ground based telescope and camera system
Speaker 3: called pan stars one at the Haleaka Law Observatory in Hawaii,
Speaker 3: and Omumua was big scientific news because it was the
Speaker 3: first example ever confirmed of a physical object from another
Speaker 3: star visiting our solar system, and scientists were able to
Speaker 3: say with high confidence that it came from outside our
Speaker 3: Solar system because of its speed and trajectory. So, your
Speaker 3: standard asteroid or comet will will orbit our Sun in
Speaker 3: a loop, and it might be a very elongated loop,
Speaker 3: or it might be at a kind of tilted angle,
Speaker 3: and its speed will tend to change as it goes
Speaker 3: around this irregular orbit. Maybe it'll get faster as it
Speaker 3: swings around the Sun and then slow down as it
Speaker 3: gets farther away from the Sun in that loop. But
Speaker 3: instead of orbiting our Sun in a loop, this object
Speaker 3: entered the Solar System going extremely fast angle nearly perpendicular
Speaker 3: to the orbital plane of the planets. So if you
Speaker 3: picture the planet circling the Sun on a basically flat disc,
Speaker 3: could this object hit the disc from the top and
Speaker 3: then had its path sharply bent around by the gravity
Speaker 3: of the Sun, and then continued on a course taking
Speaker 3: it straight back out of the Solar System forever. And
Speaker 3: the decisive factor showing that it was not from here
Speaker 3: and would not be returning was speed. It had what
Speaker 3: might be called a hyperbolic velocity, enough speed that its
Speaker 3: path around the Sun if you zoom out, was clearly
Speaker 3: not the tight end of an oval shape, but was
Speaker 3: closer to a V shaped corner in a linear path, in.
Speaker 2: Other words, just passing through.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, Omuamua got people excited for a number of reasons.
Speaker 3: First of all, it was the very first of its kind.
Speaker 3: Nobody had ever confirmed an interstellar object in our vicinity before,
Speaker 3: though soon after its discovery we learned that it might
Speaker 3: not actually be all that rare, because another interstellar object
Speaker 3: called Borisov, a rogue comet this time, was spotted in
Speaker 3: August twenty nineteen, and there are other indications since then
Speaker 3: that this kind of thing might happen a lot. It's
Speaker 3: just that Omumua was the first one we happened to
Speaker 3: see it happened to catch now. Of course, one corner
Speaker 3: of the Internet got very excited because, of course some
Speaker 3: people thought it was aliens, right, this is an alien
Speaker 3: probe or a techno signature of some kind. We looked
Speaker 3: into these claims back in the day when people were
Speaker 3: first publicizing them, and our judgment was that, you know,
Speaker 3: there's nothing about Omumo that requires that conclusion, though it
Speaker 3: did have some very odd and interesting features that require
Speaker 3: some explanation. One of these features was its apparent shape.
Speaker 3: Omuamua seems to be shaped like almost nothing else we
Speaker 3: know of in our solar system, and to be clear,
Speaker 3: this shape is something we have to infer not able
Speaker 3: to resolve an image of Omumua's shape directly. It's not
Speaker 3: like we could zoom in close enough with a telescope
Speaker 3: to see it like these pictures of asteroids we get
Speaker 3: from like a probe that approaches really close, like the
Speaker 3: image we got of the asteroid Binu from the Osiris
Speaker 3: REX mission. You know that is a direct camera image
Speaker 3: that we could get because we were close. Omuamua is
Speaker 3: a point like source of light. It was far away
Speaker 3: and very small. But by analyzing what's called a light curve,
Speaker 3: which is the pattern of time based variations in the
Speaker 3: intensity of light reflected off of the object, scientists can
Speaker 3: put together a likely model or multiple likely models of
Speaker 3: its shape, and according to what I've read, the best
Speaker 3: models of its shape include either a sort of tumbling
Speaker 3: elongated cigar shape or a tumbling flat disc. NASA's overview
Speaker 3: of the object still leans toward the cigar shape, saying
Speaker 3: that it is probably about four hundred meters long and
Speaker 3: about ten times as long as it is wide, and
Speaker 3: there's still some variation in those estimates. Like other sources
Speaker 3: I've looked at the put the guess at it being
Speaker 3: more like two hundred meters long and having a slightly
Speaker 3: different length to with ratio. So there was a lot
Speaker 3: of speculation about what this object is. Is it we
Speaker 3: know it comes from outside the Solar System, but is
Speaker 3: it an interstellar asteroid? Is it a rogue comet from
Speaker 3: another star? Is it a shard of a planet that
Speaker 3: got smashed to pieces? What is it another strange feature
Speaker 3: of Muamua that seems to contribute to these the search
Speaker 3: for an explanation as to its nature is its seemingly
Speaker 3: anomalous acceleration. The object was caught going slightly faster and
Speaker 3: faster as it moved away from the Sun, which is
Speaker 3: characteristic of comets rather than asteroids. Comets, which have some
Speaker 3: rock and dust content but are also largely made of ice,
Speaker 3: can accelerate beyond the speed that would be predicted by
Speaker 3: gravity alone by outgassing. When they get close to the Sun.
Speaker 3: Comets heat up and the ice starts to melt. The
Speaker 3: ice and the volatiles melt and they shoot out into space,
Speaker 3: and this throwing of water and other volatiles into space
Speaker 3: gives the comet an equal and opposite propulsive nudge, increasing
Speaker 3: its speed. Omuama behaved basically as if it were receiving
Speaker 3: this kind of cometary speed boost as it was flying
Speaker 3: away from its closest brush with the Sun. But there's
Speaker 3: a problem. When comets melt and outgas like this, we
Speaker 3: can see it. They show a cometary tail, and Omuamua
Speaker 3: did not show a cometary tail, and so this, by
Speaker 3: the way, was one of the arguments of the people
Speaker 3: claiming that it was aliens, that this strange combination of
Speaker 3: observations showed that the object was an alien techno signature,
Speaker 3: basically a vehicle based on the principle of a solar sale.
Speaker 3: And we again, we looked at that claim in more
Speaker 3: depth years ago. Look up that episode to learn more
Speaker 3: if you want. But we sort of agreed with the
Speaker 3: skeptics that there's no reason to jump to the conclusion
Speaker 3: of aliens yet. Maybe it's just a natural object with
Speaker 3: some unusual features.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it was an exciting question, to be sure,
Speaker 2: and it got the public interested. But is it the
Speaker 2: first question you should ask. Probably not, And again it
Speaker 2: seems like they are far better explanations for what this was.
Speaker 3: Right, So I'm about to get to one of those,
Speaker 3: actually a couple, but in any case, it's weird and intriguing.
Speaker 3: So it's an object that was from outside our solar system,
Speaker 3: speeding up like a comet, but showing none of the
Speaker 3: visible tale of gas and dust we would expect from
Speaker 3: a comet. And that brings us back to the topic
Speaker 3: at hand, the dust bunnies. One hypothesis that was put
Speaker 3: forward to explain the observed behavior of Umuamua was this,
Speaker 3: What if it's not really an asteroid or a comet
Speaker 3: in the way we know? What if it is a
Speaker 3: dust bunny from another star?
Speaker 2: Dust bunnies from outer space?
Speaker 3: Can your heart stand the shocking facts about dust bunnies
Speaker 3: from outer space? So I want to mention a paper
Speaker 3: called Omuamua as a cometary fractal aggregate the dust bunny model.
Speaker 3: This was published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty by Jane x lu Irich Fleckoy and Renaud Tousson.
Speaker 3: In their abstract, the author's right, the first known intertellar object,
Speaker 3: Omuamua displayed such unusual properties that its origin remains a
Speaker 3: subject of much debate. We propose that Omuamua's properties could
Speaker 3: be explained as those of a fractal dust aggregate. Parentheses,
Speaker 3: a dust bunny formed in the inner coma of a
Speaker 3: fragmenting exo ort cloud comet. So this would be a
Speaker 3: comet coming from the sort of sphere of objects surrounding
Speaker 3: another star, like the Sun's ort cloud. The authors go on,
Speaker 3: such fragments could serve as accretion sites by accumulating dust particles,
Speaker 3: resulting in the formation of a fractal aggregate. The fractal
Speaker 3: aggregate eventually breaks off from the fragment due to hydrodynamic stress.
Speaker 3: With their low density and tenuously bound orbits. Most of
Speaker 3: these cometary fractal aggregates are then ejected into interstellar space
Speaker 3: by radiation pressure. So for some more explanation on this
Speaker 3: that would make better sense to a non specialist, I
Speaker 3: came across an article in Popular Science which included illuminating
Speaker 3: quotes from some of the authors of this paper. So
Speaker 3: this article is called Omuamua isn't aliens, but it may
Speaker 3: not be an asteroid either. This was by Charlie Wood
Speaker 3: So according to this article. In February twenty nineteen, a
Speaker 3: Space Telescope Science Institute astronomer named Amaya Moro Martin suggested
Speaker 3: that the explanation for Omuamua's weird acceleration was perhaps that
Speaker 3: it was unusually light weight, so less like an asteroid,
Speaker 3: less like a space rock, and more like a space feather,
Speaker 3: and this would make it possible for a natural object
Speaker 3: to function more like a light sale to be significantly
Speaker 3: sped up by radiation pressure from the sun. The sunlight
Speaker 3: giving it a push. Scientists investigating this idea referred to
Speaker 3: the model as a fractal aggregate. So aggregate, of course
Speaker 3: means you know, a collection of smaller things. In the
Speaker 3: words of the article, quote a fluffy conglomeration of dust
Speaker 3: and ice grains, And the fractal part of that name
Speaker 3: refers to a porous structure that repeats at different levels
Speaker 3: of resolution. So if you zoom in or zoom out,
Speaker 3: you would see similar patterns of holes and gaps in
Speaker 3: this structure. Irich Fleckoy, a physicist at the University of
Speaker 3: Oslo who was one of the authors of the dust
Speaker 3: Bunny paper, said to Popular Science for this article quote,
Speaker 3: I think if you hit this thing, it would be
Speaker 3: a little bit like hitting a spider web.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 3: So the paper had to answer several questions. First of all,
Speaker 3: would the fractal aggregate explain this object's movement and acceleration?
Speaker 3: The authors say yes. In fact, there was another weird
Speaker 3: fact about Omuamua that didn't come up earlier. Apparently there
Speaker 3: was a slowing of its rotation as it traveled, and
Speaker 3: the authors said that this fit well with the fact
Speaker 3: that solar radiation pressure can exert an uneven push on
Speaker 3: a rotating object with like some parts of an object
Speaker 3: getting more of a push from the solar radiation than others, so,
Speaker 3: for example, it pushes more on parts that are highly reflective.
Speaker 3: So it's possible that radiation pressure could help explain the
Speaker 3: change into Inomumua's tumbling or rotation pattern. If so, radiation
Speaker 3: pressure from the Sun could also be responsible for its acceleration.
Speaker 3: Another question is could a very very low density, porous
Speaker 3: fractal object like a dust bunny survive tumbling through space
Speaker 3: without being ripped apart. The authors model this and they
Speaker 3: conclude yes, it can, but the model does have challenges,
Speaker 3: and the Popular Science article quotes an astrophysicist at Cambridge
Speaker 3: named Roman Rafikov who points out that in order for
Speaker 3: the dust bunny model to work to have the right
Speaker 3: amount of acceleration due to radiation pressure, it would have
Speaker 3: to be amazingly low density, about one hundred times less
Speaker 3: dense than air at sea level on Earth, and Rafikov
Speaker 3: points out that this is even less dense than human
Speaker 3: engineered aerogels, which are pecifically created to be as low
Speaker 3: density as possible. So, Rafikov says in the article quote
Speaker 3: how do you reconstruct this in interstellar space? Like, how
Speaker 3: does something like that form? How does it stay intact? However,
Speaker 3: despite Rafikov's skepticism of what this model would require, he
Speaker 3: also said at the time of the article, at least
Speaker 3: in twenty nineteen, that he couldn't come up with a
Speaker 3: better explanation. But that doesn't mean there isn't one. So
Speaker 3: the dust bunny model I love it. It is a
Speaker 3: few years old now, and it's not the only proposal
Speaker 3: to reconcile umumu as weird acceleration with its lack of
Speaker 3: the normal features associated with commentary outgassing. For example, there
Speaker 3: was a paper I came across that was published in
Speaker 3: Nature last year in twenty twenty three by astronomers Jennifer
Speaker 3: Bergner and Darryl Seligman called acceleration of Umumua from radiolytically
Speaker 3: produced H two in H two O ice. And these
Speaker 3: authors put together a model that could explain the acceleration
Speaker 3: of omuumua without the normally visible cometary tale by saying
Speaker 3: that it is due to its unique life history, and
Speaker 3: because of this life history, it was simply venting a
Speaker 3: different kind of volatile than what you'd see in a
Speaker 3: normal local comet from our Solar System. So the authors say,
Speaker 3: quote here, we report that the acceleration of Omuumua is
Speaker 3: due to the release of entrapped molecular hydrogen that formed
Speaker 3: through energetic processing of an H two zero rich icy body.
Speaker 3: In this model, Omumoua began as an icy planetesimal that
Speaker 3: was irradiated at low temperatures by cosmic rays during its
Speaker 3: interstellar journey and experienced warming during its passage through the
Speaker 3: Solar System. So the idea is, this icy object is
Speaker 3: out in the interstellar medium between star systems for ages
Speaker 3: and ages, and the whole time it is just getting cooked.
Speaker 3: It is getting bombarded by cosmic radiation. This radiation splits
Speaker 3: apart the H two O molecules in the ice of
Speaker 3: this object and creates H two hydrogen gas trapped within
Speaker 3: the ice. Then when it gets close to the Sun,
Speaker 3: the ice melts a bit and releases this hydrogen gas,
Speaker 3: which provides the acceleration, but not the same kind of
Speaker 3: tail you would see from the regular venting of pure
Speaker 3: intact H two O and dust and in a regular comet.
Speaker 3: So just wanted to throw that out there, because there
Speaker 3: are multiple possible non aliens explanations. Maybe one day we
Speaker 3: will have a more conclusive model, but I think for
Speaker 3: now we still don't know for sure what this object was.
Speaker 3: I do kind of hope it was a dust bunny.
Speaker 3: But yeah, all interesting ideas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because ultimately, you know, is it a life elsewhere
Speaker 2: in the galaxy in the universe. We don't know for sure.
Speaker 2: We can't say one way or another. Is there dust? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Hell, yes, I.
Speaker 2: Think we can all agree there's dust. Now here's an
Speaker 2: interesting tie into the dust bunny that brings us back
Speaker 2: to terrestrial affairs but also into the world of invention
Speaker 2: and the history of science as science has been accepted
Speaker 2: by the general public. And this is where we're also
Speaker 2: eventually going to get into some cosmic horror as well,
Speaker 2: because one approach to dealing with the accumulation of dust
Speaker 2: in the home and the accumulation of dust bunnies would
Speaker 2: at least seem to be the elimination of the empty
Speaker 2: and wasted space in a room where they typically accumulate. So,
Speaker 2: in other words, think of it this way. Most of
Speaker 2: us tend to approach this by all right, we know
Speaker 2: where the dust accumulates. Let's go dust there let's go
Speaker 2: sweet there. But you might also think, well, what is
Speaker 2: this space in my house for the only thing it's
Speaker 2: good for is accumulating dust and dust bunnies. I should
Speaker 2: just seal that off.
Speaker 3: But wait, it isn't the point of having an interior
Speaker 3: space in your home that you can use that space.
Speaker 3: If you just seal space off, it's like you can't
Speaker 3: get to it.
Speaker 2: Well, these would be spaces that would be very difficult
Speaker 2: to utilize, such as not an entire corner of your house,
Speaker 2: but just that minute corner. This specifically one example, this
Speaker 2: would be the little corners at the edge of each
Speaker 2: stair in a stairwell. And this is particularly a place
Speaker 2: where we see.
Speaker 3: The that's the devil's playground exactly.
Speaker 2: This is where we see the application of the decorative
Speaker 2: dust corner. These were popular during the Victorian era, especially
Speaker 2: you know, during like the eighteen eighties, it seemed to
Speaker 2: be an era of popularity for these. These were little
Speaker 2: metal features sometimes described as an exploded triangle. I included
Speaker 2: some images here for you and anyone out there. If
Speaker 2: you want to see this, look up dust corner. You know,
Speaker 2: there's like a simb There's a Wikipedia page about them.
Speaker 2: The various images that there are historic examples, but then
Speaker 2: also some people are still producing these for you know,
Speaker 2: homes that want that kind of like older touch, that
Speaker 2: kind of Victorian touch. And so in this picture, Joe,
Speaker 2: you can see in the corner of the stairs, the
Speaker 2: little corner there is just capped off, so the dust
Speaker 2: cannot accumulate there.
Speaker 3: Right, So instead of the corner of the inside of
Speaker 3: a cube type shape, there is a smooth ascent, the
Speaker 3: little curved triangle goes right in there and just makes
Speaker 3: it a gentle slope.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And these were generally made out of metal, they
Speaker 2: were generally highly decorative. They would have been uniform, so
Speaker 2: whatever design you had, they would have been. This design
Speaker 2: would be on all of the little dust corners that
Speaker 2: you installed in your house. And you know, the interesting
Speaker 2: thing about them is, I feel like I've almost certainly
Speaker 2: toured places that still have these either original pieces or
Speaker 2: part of some sort of retro design aesthetic. But I
Speaker 2: don't remember ever having seen one before. Maybe they're just
Speaker 2: easy to miss. I'm not sure they're look familiar to me. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so I'm now I'm on the lookout for them. But
Speaker 2: I've at least thus far in my life. I feel
Speaker 2: like I've not been paying enough attention.
Speaker 3: They do look like something you would see in a
Speaker 3: historic home.
Speaker 2: Yes, and there does seem to be a science connection here,
Speaker 2: or at least a science history connection, according to Gail
Speaker 2: Caskie Winkler, author of Victorian interior decoration, cited in a
Speaker 2: May June two thousand and sixth edition of Old House Journal.
Speaker 2: The article here says quote even science affected stare hardware,
Speaker 2: with dust corners emerging in the eighteen eighties, probably in
Speaker 2: response to the growing acceptance of germ theory. Summarizes Gail
Speaker 2: Caskie Winkler.
Speaker 3: What dust corners and germ theory? That's I wouldn't have
Speaker 3: made that connection.
Speaker 2: Because of the dust. Yeah, so interesting. I was also
Speaker 2: reading about dust corners in an article by Will Wiles
Speaker 2: titled The Corner of Lovecraft and Ballard, about architectural details
Speaker 2: and the fiction of various authors. But as the title suggests, HP. Lovecraft,
Speaker 2: they lived eighteen ninety through nineteen thirty seven, and JG. Ballard,
Speaker 2: who live nineteen thirty through two thousand and nine. The
Speaker 2: Lovecraft connection, of course, would seem to line up with
Speaker 2: the timeline of dust corners in particular, but Wiles is
Speaker 2: in general describing the kind of architectural war on filth
Speaker 2: that rises with acceptance of germ theory, impacting various aspects
Speaker 2: of design, and then also like modernist thought and also
Speaker 2: weird fiction of the era.
Speaker 3: Okay, so that maybe there are certain architectural features that
Speaker 3: signal an evolving idea of what it means to because
Speaker 3: a lot of architecture in history has communicated an idea
Speaker 3: of being able to tame the natural world, to sort
Speaker 3: of like sub do nature and bring it under our control.
Speaker 3: And this is a space that we control. This is order,
Speaker 3: and this is human civilization inside this building with these
Speaker 3: right angles. But as the understanding of nature changes to
Speaker 3: include like smaller and smaller organisms, maybe that also signals
Speaker 3: a concurrent change in how architecture expresses that desire to dominate.
Speaker 2: Nature right right, especially on the home front, in the home.
Speaker 2: So it's not a situation where victorians were saying we
Speaker 2: have to install dust corners everywhere if we are to
Speaker 2: defeat plague or anything like that. No, no, but it
Speaker 2: was more like, okay, once this mindset has is becoming
Speaker 2: more and more popular and accepted, you know, your eyes
Speaker 2: turned to the house, and and oh, here is the dust,
Speaker 2: and where's the dust accumulating? What can be done architecturally
Speaker 2: stylistically to combat this enemy, So Wiles writes the following quote.
Speaker 2: Once the home was rid of moldings, fabrics, and chotsika's,
Speaker 2: the sanitary maniac suspicion fell on the dust harboring corner itself.
Speaker 2: In the eighteen eighties, the dust corner was introduced, a
Speaker 2: brass triangle that could be tacked at the meeting point
Speaker 2: of two walls and the floor, or the corners of
Speaker 2: a flight of stairs, so dirt couldn't gather and sweeping
Speaker 2: would be easier. But he of course points out that
Speaker 2: dust corners were a clumsy and imperfect solution in a
Speaker 2: modernist yearning for the true cornerless room, a term the
Speaker 2: cornerless room that became associated with breaks from reality, So
Speaker 2: the padded room of a sanitarium was sometimes referred to
Speaker 2: as a cornerless room, he writes, quote, in the literature
Speaker 2: of the first half of the twentieth century, there are
Speaker 2: references to the cornerless room as an ultimate convenience in
Speaker 2: a modern home. So it's suddenly it's like boat. We're
Speaker 2: kind of having it both ways. It's like this thing
Speaker 2: we're yearning for, but also this thing that is that
Speaker 2: it might be unnatural but also might be just the
Speaker 2: desired form of everything. And then the corner sometimes in
Speaker 2: some uses, becomes a gateway to cosmic horror and madness.
Speaker 2: One literary example that he draws on is a short
Speaker 2: story not by HP Lovecraft, but by one of his protegees,
Speaker 2: another author of the same time period that he was
Speaker 2: in communication with, a gentleman by the name of Frank A.
Speaker 2: Belknup Long, and the work in question is The Houlms
Speaker 2: of Tendalos. So this was a story that I was
Speaker 2: originally just going to reference, but then I found like
Speaker 2: a ninety nine cent collection of this author's work. I
Speaker 2: picked it up, I started reading. I haven't finished it
Speaker 2: yet as of this recording, but it's essentially one of
Speaker 2: these sort of gentleman's study kind of setups where you
Speaker 2: have two scholarly individuals. It is almost impossible for me
Speaker 2: not to picture them as being played by Peter Cushing
Speaker 2: and Christopher Lee, and one of them. This is like
Speaker 2: a ninth late nineteen thirty story, I believe, and the
Speaker 2: main character is like I have decided to take drugs
Speaker 2: and travel through time, and his friend is like, oh,
Speaker 2: I don't think you should do that, and he's like, no,
Speaker 2: I haven't all worked out, and he's like, okay, fine,
Speaker 2: I will. I will be here to help you into Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's the setup, but it eventually involves terrifying, vaguely hound
Speaker 2: like entities from another dimension that enter into our world
Speaker 2: through geometric corners. Here's the here's a quick line from it. Quote,
Speaker 2: The foul expresses itself through angles, the pure through curves. Man,
Speaker 2: the pure part of him is descended from a curve.
Speaker 2: So yeah, this idea that, like the angle is so
Speaker 2: unnatural that this becomes the nexus point through which these
Speaker 2: terrifying creatures can appear at any moment and hunt one down.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: Wells also cites a book by Ellen Cleary, Victorian Dust Traps,
Speaker 2: which expands on this Victorian fear of dust, arguing that
Speaker 2: dust traps in the home, so you know, areas where
Speaker 2: dust accumulates became the new focal point for potential disease
Speaker 2: during this time. The quote primary locus of pollution anxiety
Speaker 2: within sanitary geographies of the Victorian home, which is I
Speaker 2: found a rather nice way of putting it.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's interesting because going back to what we talked
Speaker 3: about in the first episode, I actually don't know the
Speaker 3: extent to which, if any, there is a correlation between
Speaker 3: dust and say, the spread of infectious disease, Like it
Speaker 3: is there really any connection there between you know, tiny
Speaker 3: flying particles or the accumulation of dust in the house
Speaker 3: with the spreading of germs per se. But of course
Speaker 3: we do know that there is some correlation with dust
Speaker 3: and dust mites, which, as we talked about it in
Speaker 3: the last episode, are the number one source of allergic
Speaker 3: reactions in human beings worldwide.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and of course that allergic reaction has many things
Speaker 3: in common with some infectious diseases.
Speaker 2: But anyway, this is all interesting in this idea of
Speaker 2: it being like a focal point of cleanliness based on
Speaker 2: new information that may be feeding anxieties about the link
Speaker 2: between cleanliness and health, which of course is always a
Speaker 2: complex scenario in the human mind because you also have
Speaker 2: these other ideas of hygiene and spiritual cleanliness that get
Speaker 2: clogged up with everything else. But it reminds me a
Speaker 2: little bit of during the early days of the pandemic,
Speaker 2: in particular, when suddenly there's a lot more focus on, say,
Speaker 2: door knobs and the cleanliness of door knobs. That was
Speaker 2: something that not everyone was ignorant of prior, but it
Speaker 2: suddenly became a much bigger thing, and then.
Speaker 3: Front of mind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, front of mind. And then in the last couple
Speaker 2: of years it's been able to we've been able to
Speaker 2: push it further back. So I speaking for myself, I
Speaker 2: don't think as much about who's been touching the doorknob,
Speaker 2: certainly not like those early days of the pandemic. All right, well,
Speaker 2: we're going to go ahead and close it out there,
Speaker 2: but we'd love for everyone to write in. If you
Speaker 2: have a first and foremost more information about what you
Speaker 2: call a dust bunny, from whatever background you have, or
Speaker 2: whatever you've learned in your travels or your conversations, let
Speaker 2: us know. We'd love to hear from you. If you
Speaker 2: have additional thoughts on cosmic dust, cosmic horror corners, the
Speaker 2: hounds of tendlos, whatever you have right in, we'd love
Speaker 2: to hear it. Just a reminder that Stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast, with
Speaker 2: core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Listener mail on Mondays
Speaker 2: a short form episode on Wednesdays and on Fridays, we
Speaker 2: set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a
Speaker 2: weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, sure, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 3: Mind dot com.
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