WEBVTT - Diatoms and Diatomaceous Earth, Part 1 0:00:03.000 --> 0:00:06.760 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:12.840 --> 0:00:14.840 Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My 0:00:14.920 --> 0:00:15.200 name is. 0:00:15.240 --> 0:00:18.759 Robert Lamb, and I am Joe McCormick. And today on 0:00:18.840 --> 0:00:20.760 Stuff to Blow Your Mind, we're going to begin a 0:00:20.840 --> 0:00:27.000 series of episodes talking about microbial organisms called diatoms, focusing 0:00:27.040 --> 0:00:30.840 both on their living biology and on the way that 0:00:30.880 --> 0:00:35.720 their fossilized remains in mineral form have pervaded human techno, 0:00:35.840 --> 0:00:39.040 history and culture. Rob I don't remember if I told 0:00:39.040 --> 0:00:41.360 you this, but I actually got the idea to do 0:00:41.400 --> 0:00:44.559 this episode jumping off of a sort of research tangent 0:00:44.640 --> 0:00:47.479 that I ended up not going down. When we did 0:00:47.520 --> 0:00:49.960 an episode on sand a few weeks back. I was 0:00:50.000 --> 0:00:53.239 looking at weird different kinds of you know, sand and 0:00:53.280 --> 0:00:56.360 soil on Earth, and I started thinking, actually, diatamacious earth 0:00:56.440 --> 0:00:59.600 is so much weirder than people think about when they 0:00:59.600 --> 0:01:02.880 go buy a canister a food grade dietamacious Earth or 0:01:02.920 --> 0:01:03.920 get some for their garden. 0:01:04.640 --> 0:01:07.080 Yeah, you know, and I don't think i'd really ever 0:01:07.280 --> 0:01:11.240 encountered it on the commercial end of things before, Like, 0:01:11.280 --> 0:01:14.520 I don't think I've ever purchased a canister of this 0:01:14.600 --> 0:01:17.640 stuff before, or anything like that, but I do find it. 0:01:18.240 --> 0:01:19.880 I think it's great that it's a spin off of 0:01:19.959 --> 0:01:22.400 our Sand episode, which I think everyone was excited for 0:01:22.480 --> 0:01:24.959 and so were we. It is also, in a weird way, 0:01:25.040 --> 0:01:28.800 kind of a continuation of our Dust series from years back. Yes, 0:01:28.880 --> 0:01:31.640 a series that some people were like, how are they? 0:01:31.680 --> 0:01:35.040 When are they doing episodes on Dust? Makes me so angry, 0:01:35.520 --> 0:01:38.920 But people love those episodes as well. We loved researching 0:01:38.959 --> 0:01:41.959 them and recording them. We're getting into that same area, 0:01:41.959 --> 0:01:45.160 and I think it's a fascinating world, especially when we 0:01:45.920 --> 0:01:49.720 leave behind the human perspective and we start really zeroing 0:01:49.720 --> 0:01:52.360 in on what's going on at a much smaller scale. 0:01:53.240 --> 0:01:56.760 So I thought we should start with the organisms before 0:01:56.760 --> 0:02:00.800 we get to dietamacious earth. We talked about dietoms themselves. 0:02:01.000 --> 0:02:07.640 So diatoms are microscopic, single celled, photosynthetic algae that are 0:02:08.160 --> 0:02:15.000 notable for living inside strange, beautiful geometric cell walls that 0:02:15.080 --> 0:02:20.320 they manufacture for themselves out of what's called opaline silica. 0:02:20.400 --> 0:02:25.880 So essentially, these are microscopic algal life forms, photosynthesizing single 0:02:25.960 --> 0:02:33.000 celled organisms that live in transparent or translucent silicon based solids. 0:02:33.040 --> 0:02:36.399 These little houses made out of a substance very similar 0:02:36.440 --> 0:02:40.240 to glass, and these glass like shells they make are 0:02:40.280 --> 0:02:45.680 called frustules. The weird and sometimes dazzling shapes of these 0:02:45.720 --> 0:02:50.280 frustules are a major reason historically that diatoms have been 0:02:50.400 --> 0:02:53.079 so interesting to people since they were first observed through 0:02:53.120 --> 0:02:57.040 microscopes over three hundred years ago. But diatoms are not 0:02:57.680 --> 0:03:02.520 just some obscure biological curiosity that's pretty to look at. 0:03:02.840 --> 0:03:06.840 Diatoms are everywhere, and in a sense they are tied 0:03:06.919 --> 0:03:11.279 up in the life of everything on Earth. So diatoms 0:03:11.320 --> 0:03:16.519 are found in nearly every aquatic habitat on the planet, seawater, 0:03:16.840 --> 0:03:22.240 fresh water, icy oceans, lakes and rivers, puddles, even damp soil. 0:03:22.639 --> 0:03:26.239 You can find them stuck between layers of seasonal ice 0:03:26.320 --> 0:03:30.720 that accumulates in Antarctica. Like anywhere there's water, you're going 0:03:30.800 --> 0:03:32.960 to find them. And so if you put a drop 0:03:33.000 --> 0:03:36.160 of water from any natural water source under a microscope, 0:03:36.800 --> 0:03:40.840 there'll be some exceptions, but very likely, very high odds 0:03:40.880 --> 0:03:43.000 you're going to find diatoms in that water. 0:03:43.760 --> 0:03:45.880 To a certain depth. That's where its nottings were. 0:03:45.840 --> 0:03:50.120 Yes, exactly. Yeah, So some of them live as free 0:03:50.120 --> 0:03:54.120 floating plankton, so they'll be floating in the water, carried 0:03:54.160 --> 0:03:57.240 about by currents in the water, and others live by 0:03:57.320 --> 0:04:01.360 attaching themselves to surfaces in the water, like the outer 0:04:01.480 --> 0:04:05.040 surface of aquatic plant tissues. Some of the earliest images 0:04:05.240 --> 0:04:09.280 of diatoms people ever recorded seeing up close through microscopes 0:04:09.640 --> 0:04:13.880 were attached to plant roots, or sometimes they will just 0:04:13.920 --> 0:04:17.440 stick to inorganic surfaces, the surfaces of rocks, or even 0:04:17.480 --> 0:04:20.760 the surface of ice. That's a strange place to find 0:04:20.800 --> 0:04:25.320 things living, but there are interesting research about thriving diatom 0:04:25.360 --> 0:04:28.880 communities that live on the surface of ice or even 0:04:28.920 --> 0:04:35.440 in between layers of ice. So individually, most diatoms I'll 0:04:35.480 --> 0:04:39.040 mention a couple of exceptions, but most diatoms are too 0:04:39.080 --> 0:04:42.240 small to see with the naked eye. They live on 0:04:42.279 --> 0:04:45.680 the scale of micrometers, with the smallest being only a 0:04:45.680 --> 0:04:48.920 few micrometers wide, which is much too small to see 0:04:48.960 --> 0:04:53.960 without magnification, and the largest growing to a few hundred micrometers, 0:04:54.000 --> 0:04:57.240 which is roughly the width of a human hair. There 0:04:57.320 --> 0:05:01.000 appears to be one extreme outline, a species that came 0:05:01.040 --> 0:05:05.640 across called Ethmodiscus rex, which can grow up to two 0:05:05.800 --> 0:05:09.040 or three millimeters in width while still being only a 0:05:09.040 --> 0:05:12.800 single cell, which is pretty crazy to think about. Obviously, 0:05:12.839 --> 0:05:15.159 that one is visible with the naked eye, but most 0:05:15.200 --> 0:05:18.279 of them are not. And while almost all of them 0:05:18.360 --> 0:05:21.880 are too small to see without a microscope, together they 0:05:22.000 --> 0:05:26.320 have a massive impact on the planet. So in satellite 0:05:26.320 --> 0:05:29.400 photography you can see them as blooms of color in 0:05:29.440 --> 0:05:34.200 the ocean from orbit, and they are major atmospheric engineers. 0:05:34.320 --> 0:05:39.440 Diatoms by themselves are responsible for producing somewhere between twenty 0:05:39.480 --> 0:05:43.240 and thirty percent of the oxygen we breathe. They are 0:05:43.440 --> 0:05:48.600 also a major primary producer of organic material and thus 0:05:48.960 --> 0:05:52.240 a base of the food web in the ocean. According 0:05:52.279 --> 0:05:55.200 to a twenty eighteen paper by Agira at All in 0:05:55.240 --> 0:05:58.920 scientific Reports, which I'll come back to later, diatoms by 0:05:58.960 --> 0:06:02.680 themselves a count for quote, forty five percent of total 0:06:02.720 --> 0:06:06.640 primary production of organic material in the sea. So diatoms 0:06:06.640 --> 0:06:08.880 are just going to be making up a huge portion 0:06:09.360 --> 0:06:12.200 of the base layer of the food web in the 0:06:12.200 --> 0:06:16.880 world's oceans, with other major primary producers in the oceans 0:06:16.880 --> 0:06:22.440 including cyanobacteria and dinoflagellates. According to Agira and co authors, 0:06:22.480 --> 0:06:24.800 there are actually there are more than one hundred thousand 0:06:24.839 --> 0:06:28.280 species of diatoms I think those are not all documented. 0:06:28.279 --> 0:06:31.320 I think those would be you know, there's some estimation 0:06:31.520 --> 0:06:35.039 involved in there, because I've seen other estimates saying that 0:06:35.120 --> 0:06:38.159 there are you know, somewhere between tens of thousands and 0:06:38.360 --> 0:06:41.040 millions of species of diatoms. I think we don't really 0:06:41.080 --> 0:06:45.320 know exactly how many species there are, and they tend 0:06:45.360 --> 0:06:49.800 to be classified according to the shapes of their frustules, 0:06:49.880 --> 0:06:53.320 these these glass cases that they build for themselves and 0:06:53.360 --> 0:06:56.159 live within. So some of these frustules, and we'll do 0:06:56.320 --> 0:06:58.960 much more intricate description as we move on, because that's 0:06:59.000 --> 0:07:00.880 a big part of the series, is just looking at 0:07:00.880 --> 0:07:03.520 these shells, looking at the frustuls. But some of them 0:07:03.600 --> 0:07:08.760 are roughly shaped, like zigzagging chains of squares and rectangles. 0:07:09.200 --> 0:07:12.320 Some of them kind of look like pistol, like piston 0:07:12.400 --> 0:07:16.440 cylinders or tubes with these perforations in them. Some look 0:07:16.520 --> 0:07:21.720 like little coin purses or glass lips. Others look like colosseums, 0:07:21.760 --> 0:07:23.480 weird little Roman colosseums. 0:07:24.080 --> 0:07:27.640 Yeah, it's amazing how they can feel like this weird 0:07:27.720 --> 0:07:32.560 mix of organic and technological and psychedelic, and it really 0:07:32.560 --> 0:07:35.120 feels at times when you're looking at images of these, 0:07:35.560 --> 0:07:38.600 like the machine elves have like opened up the walls 0:07:38.640 --> 0:07:40.480 and allowed you to see inside reality. 0:07:40.720 --> 0:07:44.640 Absolutely. There's one micrograph image I saw that looked like 0:07:44.680 --> 0:07:47.440 a stone hair brush, and that shook me. I don't know, 0:07:47.520 --> 0:07:50.920 It's like, what's going on with this hair brush? But anyway, 0:07:51.120 --> 0:07:55.640 one of the really interesting things is that these hard 0:07:55.760 --> 0:08:00.440 silicon based cell walls have a life beyond the algal 0:08:00.920 --> 0:08:05.000 organism that lives inside them. So when diatoms die, their 0:08:05.040 --> 0:08:09.560 frustules do not just disappear. They usually sink down to 0:08:09.600 --> 0:08:12.560 the sediment layer below the body of water where they live, 0:08:13.120 --> 0:08:15.960 and in some cases, before they can be broken apart 0:08:16.000 --> 0:08:20.320 and dissolved, they pile up and accumulate and form a 0:08:20.400 --> 0:08:25.040 kind of silica based ooze which can become fossilized together 0:08:25.720 --> 0:08:32.400 to create a porous, low density sedimentary material called diatamite, 0:08:32.760 --> 0:08:36.120 which you can think of as a soft sponge like 0:08:36.280 --> 0:08:41.120 sort of chalky fossil rock made out of compressed layers 0:08:41.280 --> 0:08:47.200 of these microscopic glass shells. And if millions of years 0:08:47.240 --> 0:08:50.600 later you dig up layers of this mineral diatamite, you 0:08:50.640 --> 0:08:53.720 grind it up into a powder, you get a well 0:08:53.760 --> 0:08:58.800 known and extremely common utility material called diatomaceous earth. 0:08:58.800 --> 0:09:01.439 Which a misleading name. I think, like I think so, 0:09:01.600 --> 0:09:04.720 I think we can already say just this, this far 0:09:04.760 --> 0:09:07.440 into the episode, you could more readily call this like 0:09:07.600 --> 0:09:10.960 necro dust or something like it's yeah, it's a lot grizzly, 0:09:11.040 --> 0:09:14.000 or you know, this is like the mass graves of 0:09:13.200 --> 0:09:18.920 a of a of a billion billion prehistoric creatures or 0:09:19.000 --> 0:09:23.120 life forms. Rather this is this is so it's so fascinating. Again, 0:09:23.160 --> 0:09:24.800 you just take it for granted and you're just like, yeah, 0:09:24.800 --> 0:09:28.000 I bought that, sprinkled it, don't inhale it. That's the 0:09:28.000 --> 0:09:30.360 most most people think about it, usually. 0:09:30.120 --> 0:09:34.200 The trillions of razor hippodromes of death. Yeah. Yeah. But 0:09:34.440 --> 0:09:39.680 so this stuff, dietamacious earth, despite having this strange you know, 0:09:40.480 --> 0:09:45.000 organic fossil history, has all kinds of mundane, industrial and 0:09:45.080 --> 0:09:49.520 practical uses throughout history and still today. And we'll cut 0:09:49.559 --> 0:09:52.520 we'll definitely come back and discuss some of these uses, 0:09:53.480 --> 0:09:56.640 both historical and today, in more detail later, but just 0:09:56.679 --> 0:09:59.360 to run through a few of them. Dietamacious earth is 0:09:59.559 --> 0:10:03.640 commonly used as a filtration medium for liquids like oils 0:10:03.720 --> 0:10:07.000 and oil water emulsions like it's used in food filtration 0:10:07.240 --> 0:10:11.319 food and beverage filtration. It's used in pool cleaning devices 0:10:11.320 --> 0:10:15.600 for filtration and making beverages like beer and wine. It's 0:10:15.679 --> 0:10:19.520 a used as a toiletry product in like some shampoos 0:10:19.640 --> 0:10:23.400 and toothpastes. I think sometimes just generally used as an abrasive. 0:10:24.160 --> 0:10:26.600 It's used in some types of cat litter. I think 0:10:26.600 --> 0:10:28.400 you've got something about that, Rob. 0:10:28.960 --> 0:10:31.400 And worth noting too at this point that like they're 0:10:31.800 --> 0:10:35.880 broadly you'll find there, you know, different classifications of it, 0:10:35.880 --> 0:10:39.040 including food grade dietamacious. 0:10:38.320 --> 0:10:40.440 Earth, which I don't know. I don't know if we're 0:10:40.520 --> 0:10:42.400 going to vouch for that yet. I don't want to 0:10:42.440 --> 0:10:44.200 cast too much doubt on it either. I just I 0:10:44.200 --> 0:10:46.040 haven't made up my mind. When I think about so 0:10:46.160 --> 0:10:48.320 called food grade dietamacious. 0:10:47.640 --> 0:10:51.480 Earth, well, I mean that's the technical classification, I believe, 0:10:51.520 --> 0:10:54.959 the industry classification for it. I don't know. Yeah, I 0:10:54.960 --> 0:10:56.840 don't know how much we're going to go into some 0:10:56.920 --> 0:11:01.840 of the more human bodied centered uses and proposed uses 0:11:01.880 --> 0:11:04.920 for this stuff. As always, we'll just refer to a 0:11:04.960 --> 0:11:08.320 standard caveat of check with your doctor, check with an 0:11:08.360 --> 0:11:11.000 action action doctor on any questions like that. 0:11:11.200 --> 0:11:13.839 Yeah, I have not researched for this episode a lot 0:11:13.840 --> 0:11:18.640 of these so called these medical claims about diatamacious earth. 0:11:18.679 --> 0:11:21.280 But just be aware that out there there are some 0:11:21.640 --> 0:11:24.880 health and wellness claims about diatamacious earth that appear at 0:11:24.960 --> 0:11:28.080 first glance to me to be not super well founded. 0:11:28.120 --> 0:11:30.200 But maybe we can come back and look at that 0:11:30.240 --> 0:11:31.000 in more detail later. 0:11:31.120 --> 0:11:33.600 Yeah, because at the same time, again, it is everywhere 0:11:33.640 --> 0:11:36.040 and in all sorts of products, right, and not in 0:11:36.080 --> 0:11:37.559 a way that should alarm. 0:11:37.320 --> 0:11:39.920 You, right, totally. I don't want to be alarmist about 0:11:39.920 --> 0:11:42.680 it either. I just don't want to say that all 0:11:42.800 --> 0:11:47.400 alleged uses of it are legitimate obviously, so anyway, so 0:11:47.480 --> 0:11:49.920 it's in all that stuff. But also it's commonly used 0:11:49.960 --> 0:11:52.440 as an insecticide. I think we'll have some stuff on 0:11:52.440 --> 0:11:55.480 this later, like a crawling insect repellent. It's used as 0:11:55.520 --> 0:11:58.880 an additive in paints and varnishes, and it even played 0:11:58.920 --> 0:12:03.120 a key role in the invention of dynamite. Strange story there. 0:12:04.080 --> 0:12:06.880 So I think it's so interesting that this stuff that 0:12:06.960 --> 0:12:10.240 you can buy in bulk at the tractor supply store 0:12:11.040 --> 0:12:13.719 and and like has all of these mundane roles in 0:12:14.040 --> 0:12:18.000 human industry. If you zoom in on the particles of 0:12:18.040 --> 0:12:21.080 this stuff with a high powered microscope. You can still 0:12:21.120 --> 0:12:27.160 see fragments of these insane xenomorphic geometric structures. Like it's 0:12:27.240 --> 0:12:29.520 like you go to the tractor supply and you buy 0:12:29.559 --> 0:12:33.679 a bag of smashed up microbial cathedrals and these gears 0:12:33.720 --> 0:12:36.360 of alien machines. It's kind of wild. 0:12:37.000 --> 0:12:40.880 Yeah, absolutely, I was looking at various images of these things, 0:12:40.880 --> 0:12:42.840 and and and again I encourage everyone out there just, 0:12:42.880 --> 0:12:44.640 you know, do your standard image start to bring up 0:12:44.679 --> 0:12:49.320 some some some some some images of these different diatoms 0:12:49.360 --> 0:12:53.880 and diatamacious service close ups, and you're going to be astounded. 0:12:53.880 --> 0:12:55.880 And I was thinking, like, what do these look like? 0:12:55.920 --> 0:12:58.199 What are the different vibes that I'm getting off of these? 0:12:58.240 --> 0:13:00.840 And so this is just a short list. I would 0:13:00.840 --> 0:13:05.000 say I definitely get a sense of uncooked romulin pasta 0:13:05.120 --> 0:13:09.520 of exploded components of a high end Swiss watch, totally 0:13:10.120 --> 0:13:15.360 defective components from a mechanical pencil factory. Okay, some of them, 0:13:15.440 --> 0:13:20.280 especially the more colorful presentations of different diatoms that you'll find. 0:13:20.320 --> 0:13:23.640 I get a nineteen seventies bathroom tyle mosaic at your 0:13:23.640 --> 0:13:26.240 Aunt Helen's house, sort of feeling. 0:13:26.600 --> 0:13:28.120 In just a minute. I wanted to get into some 0:13:28.160 --> 0:13:31.439 reasons for some of these different colorful versus more machine 0:13:31.440 --> 0:13:33.960 looking ones, but yeah, totally, I see that too. 0:13:34.559 --> 0:13:37.880 I get a sense of checks mixed prototypes for the 0:13:37.920 --> 0:13:42.199 International Space Station ended up not being deployed, they sent 0:13:42.320 --> 0:13:45.760 ramen instead of something. And then also especially with some 0:13:45.800 --> 0:13:48.880 of the colorful images rejected Dead Can Dance album covers. 0:13:49.240 --> 0:13:54.000 Yeah, okay, I like all of those descriptions. I think 0:13:54.000 --> 0:13:57.760 they're all valid. One of the things I noticed is 0:13:57.800 --> 0:14:02.920 that two different descriptions of yours mentioned sort of printed 0:14:03.120 --> 0:14:08.679 or human made, but like mass manufactured food products. So 0:14:08.800 --> 0:14:11.280 one I think when you said like romul and pasta 0:14:11.360 --> 0:14:14.440 uncooked pasta, you're thinking of like cut pasta shapes, like 0:14:15.120 --> 0:14:18.640 you know, those curly cues or tubes you get rigatonies 0:14:18.920 --> 0:14:22.520 and things. And then you also mentioned checks like checks mix, 0:14:22.560 --> 0:14:24.280 and I do see both of those things. I don't 0:14:24.280 --> 0:14:27.680 know what's significant about that, but maybe it's because you 0:14:27.760 --> 0:14:32.240 get these at once kind of organic looking, so it's 0:14:32.320 --> 0:14:37.400 kind of food, but also mass manufactured and tool and 0:14:37.520 --> 0:14:41.160 component looking, so it's like you know, printed foods, these 0:14:41.240 --> 0:14:43.760 kind of like mass made foods that are all the same. 0:14:44.360 --> 0:14:46.720 Yeah, yeah, definitely, I mean definitely, you're looking at something 0:14:46.720 --> 0:14:50.360 that is like a lattice work, and yeah, and you know, 0:14:50.440 --> 0:14:51.960 we can't help but compare it to some of these 0:14:52.000 --> 0:14:53.240 various food products. 0:14:53.840 --> 0:14:56.960 So one thing that is interesting, if you look up 0:14:57.080 --> 0:15:01.440 micrograph images of diatoms and of diete maacious earth, even 0:15:01.480 --> 0:15:06.840 the ones that are similarly shaped will look pretty different 0:15:07.000 --> 0:15:11.440 depending on whether the image is produced using visible light 0:15:11.560 --> 0:15:16.400 microscopy or by a scanning electron microscope. And I didn't 0:15:16.440 --> 0:15:19.320 put this together until I read it mentioned in one 0:15:19.320 --> 0:15:23.120 of the explainer pages by an ecologist and dietom researcher 0:15:23.200 --> 0:15:26.120 named Sarah Spalding on diatoms dot org, which is actually 0:15:26.200 --> 0:15:29.800 that's a great website maintained by a group called Diatoms 0:15:29.800 --> 0:15:32.800 of North America. It seems like most of the articles 0:15:32.840 --> 0:15:35.840 on here are by this researcher, Sarah Spalding. But the 0:15:35.840 --> 0:15:42.320 author here points out that under light microscopy, most diatom frustules, 0:15:42.360 --> 0:15:45.240 the glass like shells on the outside of the dietom. 0:15:45.360 --> 0:15:49.200 Most of these are going to be transparent under light microscopes, 0:15:49.680 --> 0:15:51.960 They're going to be like glass, So this gives them 0:15:52.000 --> 0:15:57.200 the appearance of fine crystal glassware and jewelry. Dietoms are 0:15:57.240 --> 0:16:00.360 often compared to jewels, and so that's one sort of 0:16:00.840 --> 0:16:06.480 genre of diatom imagery. Whereas under a scanning electron microscope, 0:16:06.920 --> 0:16:11.360 the frustule is not transparent but opaque. And I think 0:16:11.400 --> 0:16:13.680 there could be different reasons for this. This may be 0:16:13.800 --> 0:16:18.720 wholly or partially do not to inherent properties of the 0:16:18.920 --> 0:16:22.560 frustul but to how samples are pre treated for the 0:16:23.120 --> 0:16:25.640 electron microscope. Like I think they might get some sort 0:16:25.640 --> 0:16:28.200 of metallic coating to make them visible under this method. 0:16:28.240 --> 0:16:31.080 I'm not totally sure about that, but whatever the cause, 0:16:31.560 --> 0:16:36.000 the result is that the electron microscope highlights the shape 0:16:36.040 --> 0:16:39.920 and the texture of the frustule itself, producing these images 0:16:40.000 --> 0:16:44.160 that look less elegant and subtle and transparent. There's less 0:16:44.200 --> 0:16:46.880 of a less light and color about them, so you 0:16:46.880 --> 0:16:50.000 don't get that glowing gem appearance you get with the 0:16:50.080 --> 0:16:53.440 light microscope images. These are the ones that look more 0:16:53.520 --> 0:16:57.760 like the gray alien gears and machinery. And so I 0:16:57.760 --> 0:17:01.120 think it's interesting that you, of course have different kinds 0:17:01.280 --> 0:17:04.159 of diatoms that on their own, you know, because of 0:17:04.160 --> 0:17:08.720 their natural biodiversity, contribute to all these different types of 0:17:08.800 --> 0:17:13.080 shapes and colors and structures you get, but also the 0:17:13.160 --> 0:17:16.520 different microscope methods give you very different feelings when you 0:17:16.520 --> 0:17:29.040 look at them. Yeah, yeah, so I know, we want 0:17:29.080 --> 0:17:32.119 to talk about a couple of interesting and surprising uses 0:17:32.200 --> 0:17:36.639 of diatomacious earth made from these these fossil diatoms today, 0:17:36.640 --> 0:17:39.080 But before we do that, I wanted to talk a 0:17:39.160 --> 0:17:43.200 bit more about the biology of diatom frustules and these 0:17:43.280 --> 0:17:47.399 glass like structures that the diatoms live inside. So to 0:17:47.640 --> 0:17:52.720 picture a diatom as a living organism, you have to 0:17:52.720 --> 0:17:55.800 think about a soft inner cell that looks in some 0:17:55.800 --> 0:17:59.919 ways like a typical cell of algae. Though if you 0:18:00.080 --> 0:18:03.080 think algae, you may be thinking green. Your brain just 0:18:03.280 --> 0:18:05.840 naturally goes there because masses of algae we see, especially 0:18:05.880 --> 0:18:09.800 in like freshwater sources, are often green. A lot of diatoms, 0:18:09.840 --> 0:18:12.320 I think, are going to be more like. They vary, 0:18:12.400 --> 0:18:14.440 but a lot of them tend to be more gold 0:18:14.560 --> 0:18:19.159 or golden brown in color. And technically, historically, dietoms have 0:18:19.240 --> 0:18:22.800 been thought of as what we're We're called protists, so 0:18:22.840 --> 0:18:25.320 that was kind of a cash all group for single 0:18:25.440 --> 0:18:30.000 celled eukaryotic organisms with a cell nucleus housing their main 0:18:30.040 --> 0:18:34.719 genetic material, but which were not plants, and we're not animals, 0:18:34.840 --> 0:18:38.280 and we're not fungi, and it's like that. It is 0:18:38.320 --> 0:18:41.879 not any of those things. It is a photosynthesizing and 0:18:42.000 --> 0:18:46.000 makes its energy from the sunlight, photosynthesizing, single celled organism. 0:18:46.040 --> 0:18:48.479 It does have a cell nucleus, but it's not a plant, 0:18:48.520 --> 0:18:52.000 it's not an animal, not a fungus. And as we've 0:18:52.040 --> 0:18:54.000 been talking about, one of the main things that really 0:18:54.000 --> 0:18:57.400 makes a diatom unique as an organism is that this 0:18:57.520 --> 0:19:01.280 soft inner cell is protected by the mortified cell wall, 0:19:01.320 --> 0:19:04.240 this rigid glass like material made out of silica that 0:19:04.320 --> 0:19:08.360 goes all the way around the frustuel Frustules are often 0:19:08.480 --> 0:19:13.920 compared to pill boxes in design, and I was trying 0:19:13.960 --> 0:19:16.280 to unders make sure I understood this right. I think 0:19:16.320 --> 0:19:19.159 I finally landed on an analogy that makes sense of 0:19:19.200 --> 0:19:22.160 it for me. So Rob, we'll see if this gets 0:19:22.200 --> 0:19:26.400 you there. So they're often described as pillboxes because die 0:19:26.440 --> 0:19:31.840 tomshells are typically made of two interlocking halves, which are 0:19:31.880 --> 0:19:36.600 known as the epitheca and the hypotheca. So think of 0:19:36.800 --> 0:19:40.400 a box or a container with two differently sized halves, 0:19:40.440 --> 0:19:43.320 a base and a lid. Where you close them together 0:19:43.720 --> 0:19:46.760 by sliding the lid down over the top of the base. 0:19:47.160 --> 0:19:49.639 A common comparison used in a lot of sources to 0:19:49.680 --> 0:19:52.160 describe this is a Petrie dish, But I think that's 0:19:52.200 --> 0:19:54.680 probably an easier point of reference for people who work 0:19:54.720 --> 0:19:58.120 in labs a lot. So the best comparison I could 0:19:58.160 --> 0:20:00.840 think of for just regular people would be the boxes 0:20:00.880 --> 0:20:04.000 that board games come in. So you've got two halves, 0:20:04.119 --> 0:20:06.840 one is slightly bigger than the other, and the lid 0:20:07.040 --> 0:20:10.119 fits over the base by closing over it tightly. 0:20:10.640 --> 0:20:11.960 Yeah, yeah, that makes sense to me. 0:20:12.240 --> 0:20:17.760 Okay, so there's an interesting fact about the interaction between 0:20:17.800 --> 0:20:22.480 the rigid frustule which exists in these two halves and 0:20:22.800 --> 0:20:27.639 diatom reproduction, and shout out that again. I came across this, 0:20:27.720 --> 0:20:31.480 I think, originally by reading explainers by the researcher Sarah 0:20:31.520 --> 0:20:33.760 Spaulding on diatoms dot org, but I was reading about 0:20:33.760 --> 0:20:36.639 this in a few other places. So the way it 0:20:36.680 --> 0:20:42.160 works is like this, Diatoms reproduce both sexually and asexually, 0:20:42.280 --> 0:20:46.680 but a lot of the reproduction is asexual reproduction. Asexual 0:20:46.720 --> 0:20:51.240 reproduction happens when a single diatom parent cell divides in 0:20:51.320 --> 0:20:55.240 two and makes a copy of itself. So each new cell, 0:20:55.400 --> 0:20:57.360 now you've got two cells where there once was one. 0:20:57.760 --> 0:21:02.040 Each new cell gets to take one half of the frustul. 0:21:02.640 --> 0:21:07.600 So each new diatom then treats its half frustule as 0:21:07.680 --> 0:21:10.679 the big half and makes a smaller half of a 0:21:10.680 --> 0:21:13.920 frustul to close inside of it. So, to follow from 0:21:13.960 --> 0:21:17.639 the board game box analogy, imagine that the board game 0:21:17.800 --> 0:21:20.640 clones itself. You know, you've got your your Monopoly game 0:21:20.680 --> 0:21:23.959 inside that makes a copy of itself, and each copy 0:21:24.000 --> 0:21:28.000 of the Monopoly game takes one half of the original 0:21:28.040 --> 0:21:31.280 box with it. So one new one game takes the lid, 0:21:31.520 --> 0:21:32.879 one game takes the base. 0:21:33.400 --> 0:21:36.359 Might this also be like if a human were too 0:21:36.400 --> 0:21:39.639 spontaneously clone, and then one clone got to keep like 0:21:39.680 --> 0:21:43.159 the shirt and the other clone got to keep the pants, right. 0:21:43.320 --> 0:21:47.000 Sure, yes, putting aside structural differences between the rigid case 0:21:47.040 --> 0:21:48.680 and the clothes. Yeah, it's much like that if a 0:21:48.760 --> 0:21:52.480 human reproduced by just splitting in two and making two humans. 0:21:52.520 --> 0:21:54.560 One would take the shirt, one would take the pants. 0:21:54.720 --> 0:21:56.520 Yeah, and it's a long shirt in my mind, so 0:21:56.840 --> 0:21:58.040 you know it's still functional. 0:21:58.040 --> 0:22:01.399 They're fine, okay, But now imagine Following that analogy, I 0:22:01.440 --> 0:22:05.040 was going to say that for the board game, now 0:22:05.440 --> 0:22:08.760 you've got the two new Monopoly games, and each one 0:22:08.840 --> 0:22:11.200 takes the half of the box that it took as 0:22:11.240 --> 0:22:13.439 the lid, and it makes a new base. 0:22:13.840 --> 0:22:14.199 Okay. 0:22:14.880 --> 0:22:17.200 In your analogy, I think it would be that you've 0:22:17.200 --> 0:22:19.480 got the two humans, and one takes the shirt, one 0:22:19.520 --> 0:22:21.879 takes the pants, but they both use that article of 0:22:21.920 --> 0:22:25.000 clothing as the shirt, and so now they both need 0:22:25.040 --> 0:22:28.680 to make a new pair of pants. Okay, but let's 0:22:28.680 --> 0:22:30.679 just stick with a board game analogy for a second, 0:22:31.040 --> 0:22:35.640 so I don't get confused. So, since the lid of 0:22:35.680 --> 0:22:38.040 the box always has to fit over the base of 0:22:38.080 --> 0:22:40.719 the box, you know, and they each took half, so 0:22:40.800 --> 0:22:43.119 one of them took away a base to make into 0:22:43.160 --> 0:22:46.840 a new lid. This means that the dietm that originally 0:22:46.920 --> 0:22:49.840 took the base and treated it as the lid will 0:22:49.880 --> 0:22:54.719 have a smaller shell overall than the original parent. And 0:22:54.880 --> 0:22:58.240 if that dietm divides again, one of its offspring will 0:22:58.240 --> 0:23:01.760 have to be even smaller, and so on and so on. Now, 0:23:01.800 --> 0:23:05.639 obviously this cannot go on forever. Over the course of 0:23:05.760 --> 0:23:11.119 a few months, diatom reproduction can result in generations dramatically 0:23:11.200 --> 0:23:15.359 smaller than the original ancestor. I think this varies somewhat 0:23:15.359 --> 0:23:18.280 by species, Like I think there are some species maybe 0:23:18.320 --> 0:23:20.960 that don't really shrink like this, and others that do, 0:23:21.119 --> 0:23:24.000 and they might shrink to different extents. But anyway, some sources, 0:23:24.440 --> 0:23:26.520 at least talking about some species, said that you can 0:23:26.520 --> 0:23:29.680 get more than fifty or sixty percent reductions in size 0:23:29.680 --> 0:23:30.679 in just a few months. 0:23:30.880 --> 0:23:33.200 Oh wow, Yeah, so I think the board game box 0:23:33.680 --> 0:23:36.280 analogy actually works really well here, because, yeah, if the 0:23:36.640 --> 0:23:38.720 top of the box becomes the new bottom of the 0:23:38.760 --> 0:23:43.320 box and this process keeps going, eventually normal monopoly becomes 0:23:43.359 --> 0:23:47.320 travel Monopoly, and then eventually you have a monopoly set 0:23:47.320 --> 0:23:49.600 inside of a matchbox or something it's too. 0:23:49.480 --> 0:23:54.200 Small to play with eventually, Yeah, exactly. So this brings 0:23:54.240 --> 0:23:57.320 us to a question, how does a diatom reproductive line 0:23:57.400 --> 0:24:02.600 get big again? Well, according Dispalding, diatoms get back to 0:24:02.680 --> 0:24:07.280 their original size by entering a specialized life phase where 0:24:07.320 --> 0:24:12.639