Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and my name is Julie Douglas.
Speaker 1: And we just recorded an episode about some of the
Speaker 1: big stories in science during the last year, during twelve uh,
Speaker 1: and now we're doing a second episode where we're just
Speaker 1: gonna run through some bits of really fascinating science that
Speaker 1: you might have missed. Uh, A lot of its stuff
Speaker 1: that we could have conceivably maybe have done an episode about.
Speaker 1: Or maybe it's like something that's really interesting but just
Speaker 1: not quite enough to do a whole episode on. So
Speaker 1: consider this kind of a sampler platter of some of
Speaker 1: the stranger chocolates from now I get to say, a
Speaker 1: poo poo platter, Yes, poop ladder of odd science from Um,
Speaker 1: we're gonna kick off with with my favorite from this
Speaker 1: this bunch and this is a worse the Immortal jellyfish
Speaker 1: the quote unquote Benjamin Button of the Animal Kingdom. Uh.
Speaker 1: A lot of headlines had some fun with this, I
Speaker 1: mean have to fund with Most of these are the headlines.
Speaker 1: New York Times ran a story titled can a jellyfish Unlocked?
Speaker 1: The Secrets of immortality. So you have a number of
Speaker 1: I mean just pit there. Yeah, they dropped in immortality
Speaker 1: in the headline, which that's gonna that generates some interest
Speaker 1: because we all want to live live, not forever, at
Speaker 1: least maybe a little more than we have a lotted
Speaker 1: to us. So, uh, it's it's instantly fascinating. So the
Speaker 1: jellyfish in question is the Tatopsis dorney, which to all
Speaker 1: appearances looks like jellyfish. There's there's nothing particularly amazing about
Speaker 1: but what what happens here is that, um nothing amazing
Speaker 1: about it in just appearance, but in function it does
Speaker 1: some amazing things. What appears to happen is that it
Speaker 1: quote unquote reverses an in age unil it reaches an
Speaker 1: early stage, earlier stage of its development. Now to really
Speaker 1: understand what's going on here, you have to picture the
Speaker 1: life cycle of the jellyfish and h So what happens,
Speaker 1: all right, So you having an adult jellyfish, a medusa,
Speaker 1: all right, when it reproduces, it drops off this planny
Speaker 1: little larva. Alright, this larva floats down to the bottom
Speaker 1: of of the sea there and there it grows into
Speaker 1: a polyp and then the budding polyp emits this ifira,
Speaker 1: this little sort of mini pseudo jellyfish that then floats
Speaker 1: up and becomes the adult jellyfish of it. Right, right,
Speaker 1: So that's the basic life cycle. Now, what happens normally
Speaker 1: is that you have an adult jellyfish that reproduces a
Speaker 1: few times, starts getting a little old, it starts to starve,
Speaker 1: or the water gets a little too hot, and then
Speaker 1: it dies. It shuffles off this mortal coil. You know.
Speaker 1: This is basically like any life form right reaches the
Speaker 1: adult stage. The adult stage is about reproducing. Now, it's
Speaker 1: worth noting that, as with many other organisms, um, the
Speaker 1: adult stage is not the only stage that can reproduce. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's also some a sexual reproduction that takes place at
Speaker 1: the poly up stage. But but generally, in most organisms
Speaker 1: reach it reaches the adult stage, it reproduces, and then
Speaker 1: it either dies immediately or maybe it carries on a
Speaker 1: little longer, but generally its function is done. You've reached
Speaker 1: the adulthood stage. You've reproduced. That's it. You have to
Speaker 1: get off the stage and make room for the other players.
Speaker 1: But not so with this particular jellyfish. Now it does
Speaker 1: not quite Benjamin Button, Like, that would be a wrong analogy.
Speaker 1: What would be a better analogy is that is not
Speaker 1: that like an old man grows young again. But imagine
Speaker 1: an old man walking down the street and just collapses
Speaker 1: under the weight of his like old awfulness, and then
Speaker 1: just melts into a pile of goo on the sidewalk,
Speaker 1: and then out of that goo crawls a naked, slime
Speaker 1: covered infant, which then grows up into an adult. I
Speaker 1: like that. I like that. Pat Krug marine biologists says
Speaker 1: that when they do reach the end of this cycle, uh,
Speaker 1: they get really stressed out and they collapse to the
Speaker 1: bottom and melt, But instead of dying, they really reorganize
Speaker 1: its tissues and forms a new little polyp, so, as
Speaker 1: you say, sort of climbing from the primordial goo and
Speaker 1: reforming itself. Um. And it's interesting because Craig says that
Speaker 1: it it's it's almost like it skips it's having the
Speaker 1: sex part of it and goes straight to the next
Speaker 1: bit in the life cycle and becomes this new polyp.
Speaker 1: And I think this is so cool because it reminds
Speaker 1: me of the imaginal cells that we talked about in
Speaker 1: the Gremlin's podcast. We were talking about a butterfly sort
Speaker 1: of deconstructing a rather caterpillar deconstructing itself in the cocoon,
Speaker 1: and that those imaginal cells are much like undifferentiated stem cells,
Speaker 1: and that they can do any sort of job that
Speaker 1: they need to while reconstructing this new form, new life form,
Speaker 1: this butterfly um and then those cells becoming specialized when
Speaker 1: it when it actually does become the butterfly itself. This
Speaker 1: is very much the same thing with this immortal jellyfish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: to put it in the gremlin model now that we
Speaker 1: brought gremlins and magua into it. Uh, the magua the
Speaker 1: furry little dude, the gremlin, the repulsive creature that the
Speaker 1: magua turns into. The gremlin is the adult form. The
Speaker 1: magua is the juvenile form, maybe even a larval form.
Speaker 1: However you want to look at it um and so
Speaker 1: when you know, the magua eats after midnight, turns into
Speaker 1: an adult gremlin. But then imagine if the adult gremlin
Speaker 1: melted and then out of the gremlin melt emerged a magua.
Speaker 1: You know, it would be a a reversal, you know.
Speaker 1: So it's fascinating to think about about it that way,
Speaker 1: but but still taking nothing away from this organism. Like
Speaker 1: I said, it's not quite Benjamin Button, and it's which
Speaker 1: is I think a good thing. Uh, it's also not
Speaker 1: quite immortal. We're getting a little carried away with that, right,
Speaker 1: there's a question mark to to what degree the tissues
Speaker 1: can continue to regenerate themselves, right, Yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: it's really awesome, it's really fascinating and certainly, um, something
Speaker 1: very unique is going up. Well that's also another thing
Speaker 1: because there's also the possibly there are other jellyfish species
Speaker 1: that do this as well. So it's maybe not as
Speaker 1: unique as some of the stories made it out to be.
Speaker 1: But it's still pretty amazing. Uh. And ultimately how long
Speaker 1: can this keep going? Uh? Probably not forever. This is
Speaker 1: probably not a situation where it's like the Highlander of
Speaker 1: jellyfish just carrying on and carrying on. Yeah, And let
Speaker 1: me just do a quick quote from Pat Kraig again,
Speaker 1: the marine biologist. Why it is significant? He or she
Speaker 1: says that learning how to take adult cells and get
Speaker 1: them back to the early stage where they can develop
Speaker 1: into anything is a significant goal of what we want
Speaker 1: to be able to achieve. Um, and I think in
Speaker 1: this case she's talking about in humans, it's something that
Speaker 1: this humble little jelly has a built in feature of
Speaker 1: its life cycle. Things get gross around it, it melts
Speaker 1: and rebuilds itself from scratch. So I think there is
Speaker 1: definitely the potential that we could learn some basic things
Speaker 1: that we could better apply to our own technology for
Speaker 1: human medicine. Now, you know, it would be a dream
Speaker 1: is to talk to Aubrey Degree about this, you know,
Speaker 1: and say, like, what you know, to what extent are
Speaker 1: things like this? These sort of discoveries um helpful in
Speaker 1: in his own bio gerontology work where he is trying
Speaker 1: to get to disease before it happens in the human
Speaker 1: body and basically try to keep the body is finally
Speaker 1: tuned as possible so that with drug intervention and good health,
Speaker 1: we could possibly live, you know, upwards to five hundred
Speaker 1: years old. Yeah. I guess one of the things about
Speaker 1: humans is we don't really we never go through a
Speaker 1: cocoon phase. We never go through a drastic of change.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, there's there's a lot of drastic
Speaker 1: changes that go that occur between you know, being an
Speaker 1: infinite being an adult, but but like what would be
Speaker 1: the cut off line, you know, if you could? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and to what degree could you re org your your
Speaker 1: cells and your tissues. So I think that's the interesting part,
Speaker 1: Like could we take that information and apply to yourselves practically? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean what makes me think of the fly because
Speaker 1: in a lot of primordial do in that. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's one of the things that the Jeff gold Blooms,
Speaker 1: the character gets on about when he's you know, quote
Speaker 1: unquote gold blooming about the excitement of the science, and
Speaker 1: he's talking about, you know, being broken down in the
Speaker 1: teleportation and then reassembled, reborn, re emerging from the plasma pool.
Speaker 1: And that's pretty much what's happening with this jellyfish, which
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, if you can combine that
Speaker 1: with um quantum entanglement, which which we'll talk about, maybe
Speaker 1: that could happen. But before we get to that, let's
Speaker 1: talk about junk DNA or as we have discovered this year,
Speaker 1: not so junk DNA. Yeah. So this is pretty cool,
Speaker 1: And this is just another example of you knows, as
Speaker 1: we any scientific endeavor, you'd you push a little a
Speaker 1: little farther. You you answer one question and three new
Speaker 1: ones arive. Um just this when you know you're you're
Speaker 1: traveling across the countryside. Uh, what seems to be a
Speaker 1: very simple array of hills and trees in the distance.
Speaker 1: The closer you get you see the details, you see
Speaker 1: the the how how complex the system actually is. And
Speaker 1: so for the longest we've we've thought that there is
Speaker 1: this thing called this junk DNA, which you know, sounds
Speaker 1: kind of like a silly idea because why is it there? Right?
Speaker 1: Is there's the the the you know, the quote you
Speaker 1: may have seen on a T shirt. God don't make
Speaker 1: no junk, right, So why would God? Because the idea
Speaker 1: that the God in his his or her infinite wisdom
Speaker 1: would not make something that was that was wasted, like
Speaker 1: everything has a purpose, something, everything kind of fits in somehow.
Speaker 1: And take the God out of that equation and fit
Speaker 1: it into a more scientific setting, then it still rings
Speaker 1: with a certain amount of true like it's there, like
Speaker 1: why would why would there be junk DNA? Like would
Speaker 1: it just be like leftover garbage DNA? And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the the take home here is that the more that
Speaker 1: we've we've we've looked at with the vename, we realized
Speaker 1: that it is not junk DNA, but it is a
Speaker 1: genetic material that informs UM, these various epigenetic changes in
Speaker 1: the genes that determine what genes are turned on or off.
Speaker 1: And these switches, UM, the simplified way of looking at
Speaker 1: these switches have an impact on various UM manifestations of
Speaker 1: the human body, from various traits to UH diseases. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and UM, this is a byproduct of mapping the human genome.
Speaker 1: This discovery that junk DNA is not necessarily junking in
Speaker 1: fact of it, they say, is vital and as you say,
Speaker 1: it has UM has a pretty big implication in gene
Speaker 1: switches that reside in bits of DNA. So UM, the
Speaker 1: discovery is considered a major medical and scientific breakthrough and
Speaker 1: it really does have an effect on our ability to
Speaker 1: gain human health here. Um, and again we're talking about UM,
Speaker 1: this material that was largely mysterious for this in some
Speaker 1: ways it is, but there's an ability now to to
Speaker 1: better uh look at it and try to figure out
Speaker 1: what it is. In fact, the term junk DNA is
Speaker 1: not being tossed around so much anymore. It has now
Speaker 1: been upgraded to dark matter. Yes, something that and just
Speaker 1: a briefly about dark matter in a cosmic sense, a mystery,
Speaker 1: a thing that that we're we're not sure exactly on
Speaker 1: the nature of, but we know it. It must be
Speaker 1: important because there's a lot of it out there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and um, you know, there are complex diseases that appear
Speaker 1: and they appear to be caused by tiny changes in
Speaker 1: hundreds of genes switches which are controlled by this junk
Speaker 1: or dark matter DNA. UM it really is a game
Speaker 1: changer because it can help us to understand how alterations
Speaker 1: in the non gene parts of DNA contribute to human disease,
Speaker 1: which could lead to new drug therapy. UM. It could
Speaker 1: also explain how the environment can affect disease risk. So
Speaker 1: in the case of identical twins, small changes in the
Speaker 1: environmental exposure can slightly altered genes, which is with the
Speaker 1: result that one twin gets disease and the other does not.
Speaker 1: UM and I think this is really going to be
Speaker 1: most important, at least in the short term in cancer.
Speaker 1: UM that this is from the New York Times article
Speaker 1: Bits of Mystery DNA far from junk play crucial role.
Speaker 1: It says that as they begin to turning the DNA
Speaker 1: sequences of cancer cells. Researchers realize that most of the
Speaker 1: thousands of DNA changes in cancer cells were not in genes.
Speaker 1: They were in the dark matter. The challenge is to
Speaker 1: figure out which of those changes are driving the cancer's growth.
Speaker 1: All right, So there you go, junk DNA not so
Speaker 1: junk after all. So we're gonna take a quick break
Speaker 1: and when we come back, we're gonna roll through some
Speaker 1: other potentially overlooked awesome science from the from including solar tornadoes. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're back, and we are talking sellar tornadoes, which I'm
Speaker 1: really excited about because this year they were confirmed. They've
Speaker 1: been spotted or hints of them have been spotted in
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, but they were confirmed this year.
Speaker 1: And it's thought that up to eleven thousand of them
Speaker 1: twist over the Sun's surface every day, and they're made
Speaker 1: of hot plasma and they are capable of reaching heights
Speaker 1: of eighteen hundred miles high, with diameters ranging from nine
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty to thirty five hundred miles wide. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that the stats aren't done there, because think about
Speaker 1: this mammoth um. It can spin upwards to about nine
Speaker 1: thousand miles an hour, lasting only for about thirteen minutes each. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's a lot of the news stories about this
Speaker 1: really like the focus on these things are gonna be
Speaker 1: as big as the United States. Yeah, they're They're enormous
Speaker 1: solar tornadoes. Um, And it's important that I get a
Speaker 1: lot of space related headlines. Don't at me because I
Speaker 1: sometimes right for Discovery Space. So anytime Discovery Space does
Speaker 1: a story, I end up seeing the headline. And it's
Speaker 1: easy to become kind of dull to these after a
Speaker 1: while because you have something happened in space, some new discovery.
Speaker 1: You know, it's the nature of science journalism. You have
Speaker 1: to spice it up a bit um. You know, black holes,
Speaker 1: that's great, but no, it's not enough today. It's gotta
Speaker 1: be monster black holes. There have to be cannibal black holes.
Speaker 1: They've gotta so everything is sexed up to them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so solar tornadoes on the Sun. It sounds awesome, but
Speaker 1: it was actually kind of easy to miss this one
Speaker 1: if you're if you're having to process a lot of
Speaker 1: space headlines because they kind of overstate everything. Even though
Speaker 1: the core science is always really amazing when you look
Speaker 1: at it. In this case, in point, you have the
Speaker 1: solar tornadoes. Now you probably wonder, well, what is why
Speaker 1: is it important? Like why does it what does it
Speaker 1: matter that there are solar tornadoes aside from the cool factor, Well,
Speaker 1: it really does give us a better understanding what's going
Speaker 1: on on the Sun. Like one thing that it's important
Speaker 1: to realize about the Sun is that the the surface
Speaker 1: of the Sun is the coolest part of the Sun,
Speaker 1: which seems to counterintuitive, right, right, especially since the atmosphere,
Speaker 1: the weather of the Sun is hotter than the surface.
Speaker 1: So it's like it's hot and then it gets a
Speaker 1: little cooler and it gets progressively hotter again. Um and uh,
Speaker 1: And this gives us little more reason to understand it
Speaker 1: because in the atmosphere of the Sun, the weather of
Speaker 1: the Sun, you have all this intense activity. Yeah and um,
Speaker 1: I wanted to point out that then wide amount Boom,
Speaker 1: he's an astrophysicist at the University of Also had said,
Speaker 1: you know, we thought something was up. Basically, he said
Speaker 1: that we observed some unusually hot plasma above the Sun's surface,
Speaker 1: so we knew something was happening there, but we didn't
Speaker 1: know what. And it turns out that this activity, these
Speaker 1: solar tornadoes may contribute to that variation in heat. The
Speaker 1: reason why there is so much heat in this upper
Speaker 1: atmosphere because if you think about a tornado, it's um,
Speaker 1: you know, it's well, there's there's a spiraling effect bringing
Speaker 1: heat up right, But a sort of solar tornado is
Speaker 1: unlike tornadoes on Earth, which of course are powered by
Speaker 1: differences in temperature and humidity. UM. The twisters in the
Speaker 1: Sun are a combination of hot flowing gas entangled magnetic
Speaker 1: field lines, ultimately driven by nuclear reactions at the solar core.
Speaker 1: So at the surface for the photosphere, cooled plasma sinks
Speaker 1: towards the interior like water running down the bathtub drain,
Speaker 1: and this creates vortex is that magnetic field lines are
Speaker 1: forced to follow, and then the line stretch upward into
Speaker 1: the chromosphere where they continue to spiral up. So it's
Speaker 1: just one big death metal album up there. Big. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's why you It's why the corona, this upper atmosphere
Speaker 1: of the Sun's atmosphere is filled with all of this
Speaker 1: heat because you have these massive tornadoes of plasma just
Speaker 1: throwing themselves around. UM. And then as for the eleven
Speaker 1: thousand per day statistic um. It has been said that
Speaker 1: there may not be as many in the future because
Speaker 1: we've seen a glut of these huge sillar tornadoes because
Speaker 1: the Sun has been ramping up toward max and activity
Speaker 1: levels in its current cycle. So you know, still it's
Speaker 1: a tremendous amount of activity, and one that people weren't
Speaker 1: necessarily aware of. They suspected, of course that something was
Speaker 1: going on. But you know, I think it recasts the
Speaker 1: whole idea of the Wizard of oz. I think someone
Speaker 1: needs to to write with sort of the oz uh
Speaker 1: based on the Sun. Really, so so Dorothy would go
Speaker 1: to the Sun instead. Yes, there's there are a lot
Speaker 1: of logistics to be worked out there. But imagine the
Speaker 1: twister that comes through that cancel. Yes, yeah, of course,
Speaker 1: of course, the solar twister. I like it. I like it,
Speaker 1: all right, all right, well, now let's turn our attention
Speaker 1: to the quantum world. Now, of course, quantum things happened
Speaker 1: in because quantum, quantum happens. Quantum happens. It looks great
Speaker 1: in the headline um and so there there continues to
Speaker 1: be some interesting headway in the field of quantum teleportation.
Speaker 1: Now I know what you're you're you're you're wondering. You're
Speaker 1: either wondering, well, what is quantum teleportation or you're thinking,
Speaker 1: oh God, I hope they don't try and explain it. Uh.
Speaker 1: And we're we're not going to go to in depth
Speaker 1: on quantum teleportation. That's really a subject for another time,
Speaker 1: but but we can sort of speed you through the
Speaker 1: simple version of it um because what what we have here,
Speaker 1: what we're dealing with, essentially, is quantum entanglement, in which
Speaker 1: two sub atomic particles thousands of light years of party
Speaker 1: and then can instantly respond um to each other's motions. Uh.
Speaker 1: So we've this started off is something that was you know,
Speaker 1: merely theoretical that we figured was possible, and then scientists
Speaker 1: observed the phenomenon at at at the particle level and
Speaker 1: uh and in two thousand and nine they managed to
Speaker 1: produce the effect with linked superconductors and uh. And it's
Speaker 1: an exciting topic because you know, it helps us certainly,
Speaker 1: it involves a greater understanding of what's going on in
Speaker 1: the quantum realm, but also it has enormous possible applications,
Speaker 1: uh for faster than light signaling, for as sending data,
Speaker 1: for encrypting data, um but particularly and in the in
Speaker 1: the area of quantum computing. It's it's pretty big medicine. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In the past year, a team from China and another
Speaker 1: in Austria set new records for quantum teleportation using a
Speaker 1: laser to beam photons through the open air over sixty
Speaker 1: and eighty nine excuse me, sixty and eighty nine miles
Speaker 1: respectively for context, just you know, just to let you know.
Speaker 1: The first efforts to do this resulted in sending the
Speaker 1: particles mirror inches. So the fact that they're already up
Speaker 1: to eighty nine miles is pretty amazing. So the idea
Speaker 1: is that quantum teleportation could be used to transmit particles
Speaker 1: and information from an orbiting satellite eventually to relay station
Speaker 1: on Earth. So this information in the process by which
Speaker 1: it is transmitted is what is called quantum encryption. So,
Speaker 1: according to wire dot COM's article the Race to bring
Speaker 1: Quantum Teleportation to your world, quote, if developed, quantum teleportation,
Speaker 1: satellites could allow spies to pass large amounts of information
Speaker 1: back and forth or create unhackable codes. Should we ever
Speaker 1: build quantum computers, they would need quantum teleporters in order
Speaker 1: to be networked together in a quantum version of the Internet.
Speaker 1: This is very cool stuff, you know, just from a
Speaker 1: sci fi perspective, you can imagine the implications of a
Speaker 1: quantum infrastructure in our world. Yes, to say nothing of
Speaker 1: all those scenarios in which got vaculate might wear address.
Speaker 1: So that's sort of the Pine the Sky idea. And
Speaker 1: if you think that's too pine the sky though, just
Speaker 1: consider this. China plans to launch a satellite with a
Speaker 1: quantum teleportation experiment payload in two, with a quantum communications
Speaker 1: project being estimated to cost fifty to one million dollars. Okay,
Speaker 1: so China obviously thinks that this is an important technology. Uh.
Speaker 1: Europe UM, UH, Japan and Canada are all their space
Speaker 1: agencies are hoping to fund their own quantum teleportation satellite
Speaker 1: projects in the coming years. So the US is a
Speaker 1: bit behind in this, and some of this has to
Speaker 1: do with bureaucratic shuffling between DARPA and IOPA. UM. But
Speaker 1: it's interesting because it's definitely a race to get as
Speaker 1: advanced in this technology as possible. Yeah, if you think
Speaker 1: back to the episode we did on an interseller Internet
Speaker 1: the idea and the interplanetary Internet. Uh, because as we
Speaker 1: as we continue to expand out into the cosmos. If
Speaker 1: we you know, as we we show up on other worlds,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to deal with communication, and we're going
Speaker 1: to face the reality that we're dealing with such distances
Speaker 1: that that instantaneous communication just isn't possible. So you end
Speaker 1: up with it with ever growing lag times, and it's
Speaker 1: more of a return to an age of instead of
Speaker 1: you know, instantly connecting with a loved one or or
Speaker 1: or just employers or mission team members, you would have
Speaker 1: to send off missives into the void and then wait
Speaker 1: for one to return and you know, hope that nothing
Speaker 1: went long. One of the big exciting things, here's the
Speaker 1: possible possibility of instantaneous communication between planets by use of
Speaker 1: this quantum teleportation. And it's because we're talking about data
Speaker 1: being reproduced in one place through quantum entanglement. No, it's
Speaker 1: it's very interesting and I particularly that the spy part
Speaker 1: of course, just kind of makes me sit up a
Speaker 1: little bit taller and take notice. And there was an interesting,
Speaker 1: uh analogy of this of how this might happen with
Speaker 1: quantum teleportation to send this controllable signal, say to a
Speaker 1: satellite and I'm going to take a stab at it,
Speaker 1: a game for it. Yeah, let's do it. Okay. This
Speaker 1: requires three subatomic particles, say photons. In this case, two
Speaker 1: of the photons are entangled with one another, and the
Speaker 1: third contains the bit of information you want to send. Okay.
Speaker 1: So just know that the sub atomic particles, let's say
Speaker 1: they're a vertical orientation, okay. And once you test that
Speaker 1: and you figure out that these the two that are
Speaker 1: entangled are vertical. You know, the other ones in vertical
Speaker 1: no matter where it is in conjunction to the other one. Okay,
Speaker 1: So these are like paired Dakota rings. Yes, So you
Speaker 1: take one and I take one. Yeah, okay, And then
Speaker 1: there's that third bit right that has the information. So
Speaker 1: it says. For a simple example of how this works,
Speaker 1: let's say you place one photon from the entangled pair
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles and the other in New York. In
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, a scientist measures one of the entangled photons
Speaker 1: and the third particle at the same time. She doesn't
Speaker 1: find out their exact properties, but just their relative ones
Speaker 1: if they are the same or opposite of one another,
Speaker 1: for instance. And the particles get destroyed during this measurement.
Speaker 1: So the scientists has measured figures out. Let's say it's horizontal.
Speaker 1: Let's say that she discovers that the particles are opposites,
Speaker 1: meaning that the one that is entangled, Okay, that the
Speaker 1: one of the pair is opposite from the third particle.
Speaker 1: That bit of information, they're opposite from each other. And
Speaker 1: she relays this information to her New York colleague. He
Speaker 1: then measures the entangled photon and knows that the opposite
Speaker 1: of that measurement is the bit of information he was
Speaker 1: meant to receive. Yeah, there you go, clear as clear,
Speaker 1: clear as is mud. Right there. Um. It makes me
Speaker 1: we ran across a number of different quote unquote simplified
Speaker 1: explanations for this stuff. When we're looking at it, like
Speaker 1: there's one that involves like a secret like police investigation
Speaker 1: involving detectives, Romulus and Remus and Alice. It it gets
Speaker 1: very complex even when you're trying to do a very
Speaker 1: simple explanation, and a lot of it kept. It kept.
Speaker 1: Made me think of the movie Labyrinth in which uh
Speaker 1: Sarah encounters the two doors with the with the the
Speaker 1: muppety creatures behind them, where one of them says that
Speaker 1: they both informer that one of them always tells the truth,
Speaker 1: and one of them always lies. And then one tells
Speaker 1: her you know what the other one would say, and
Speaker 1: you have to try and work out in your mind
Speaker 1: what that answer means and which doors you should take
Speaker 1: based on that answer, and it's it's really a mind work. Well,
Speaker 1: the problem with a Romulus and Remus example that we
Speaker 1: did not talk about for a good reason is because
Speaker 1: it also brings cultural drink into the conversation. That's not
Speaker 1: relevant to it, right, because Romulus and Remus is an
Speaker 1: entirely different thing. All they wanted in this analogy were twins.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, um so, but I got to attach their characters.
Speaker 1: They had to name them. Suddenly they were invested in them,
Speaker 1: and we're just trying to understand plans. All I want
Speaker 1: to know is this entangled pair, how are they behaving?
Speaker 1: And what is their behavior? Tell us about this third particle? Right,
Speaker 1: don't kind of distract us by telling a good story, right,
Speaker 1: good stuff? Um, but it's it's again. This is uh,
Speaker 1: this cryptography, right, This this key that is inserted to
Speaker 1: give you a bit of information, and this essentially is
Speaker 1: what these entangled pairs are doing. Real quick, just to
Speaker 1: mention another story that we discussed briefly, but we ended
Speaker 1: up not including. There was a really cool article about
Speaker 1: dissonant music and what happens when animals listen to it,
Speaker 1: or more importantly, what's what happens when people listen to it?
Speaker 1: And this is a u c l A team that
Speaker 1: looked into this, and they found that that just distorted
Speaker 1: and jarring music is really is so evocative because the
Speaker 1: mechanisms are closely related to distress calls in animals. So
Speaker 1: the idea here is that everyone, like you know, perks
Speaker 1: up at Woodstock and listens to Jimi Hendrix playing the
Speaker 1: national anthem because it's jarring and there's distortion, and you know,
Speaker 1: it calls out to our our deeper animal selves. So
Speaker 1: I found that found it interesting and they were also
Speaker 1: they also did some studies in like two thousand and
Speaker 1: ten where they're looking at and classic movies and various
Speaker 1: genres including horror and looking at UH at the soundtracks
Speaker 1: and how they differ and the kind of emotions they evoked.
Speaker 1: And and they did see that like horror films tended
Speaker 1: to to use more screaming females and distorted vocals UH
Speaker 1: distorted sounds in their soundtracks. Um So anyway, I just
Speaker 1: found it's, like said, there's not a lot of meat
Speaker 1: really there to chew on. But it's interesting to think
Speaker 1: about that in terms of of music that we find.
Speaker 1: Please maybe they did a study and and uh and everything.
Speaker 1: We're like, you know, subjects were rating music that they
Speaker 1: listened to, uh on a negative and positive scale. They
Speaker 1: were listening to stuff that was distorted and stuff that
Speaker 1: was more you know, serene and uh and more melody
Speaker 1: to it. Uh and it. But it did make me
Speaker 1: think about music that combines both because they're certainly there's
Speaker 1: straight up noise music you can listen to straight up
Speaker 1: you know, just extreme electronic distortion and stuff that sounds
Speaker 1: uh in my wife's words, like someone throwing a xylophone
Speaker 1: down a set of stairs. And then you have you know,
Speaker 1: more stuff that's all the way on the on the
Speaker 1: serene level. But then you have music that sort of
Speaker 1: incorporates both, like like some of the groups that I
Speaker 1: really like that that toy with the nose, that the
Speaker 1: nose the noise uh section here, like like Autecker. They
Speaker 1: they use a certain amount of serene and sounds and
Speaker 1: a certain amount of melody, but then also a lot
Speaker 1: of you know, unpredictable um uh, distorted noise as well,
Speaker 1: and it sort of comes together in this sort of
Speaker 1: interesting place that that it makes you think, what's it's
Speaker 1: touching based with the you know, the part of my
Speaker 1: mind it wants, you know, calmness and serenity, but also
Speaker 1: in this this animal part of my mind that is
Speaker 1: responding to something that might be the sound of an
Speaker 1: animal dying. Yeah, it's stimulating, right, So it's interesting to
Speaker 1: have both of those um I also wanted to mention,
Speaker 1: and I don't have the information right in front of me,
Speaker 1: so this is off top of my head. I believe
Speaker 1: it was a chimp in Germany, a zoo in Germany.
Speaker 1: Have you heard about this chump um That was remarkable
Speaker 1: for a couple of things, but mainly because he would
Speaker 1: take rocks, put them nearby him, and then sit there
Speaker 1: and wait for zoo visitors to come by and will
Speaker 1: be act very relaxed, and then just when when the
Speaker 1: zoo visitor sort of didn't realize or was distracted by something,
Speaker 1: with launch an attack with those rocks. And I thought
Speaker 1: it was fascinating because not only does it show premeditative behavior,
Speaker 1: which we know systin animals, particularly in chimps, but it
Speaker 1: shows the ability for these chimps to actually enter into
Speaker 1: the realm of acting and in order to pull off
Speaker 1: this subterfuge against these zoo visitors. And uh, the video
Speaker 1: on it is fascinating. I thought that was an interesting
Speaker 1: bit of animal behavior from this year. All right, well,
Speaker 1: there you go, just some overlooked, potentially overlooked, but really
Speaker 1: cool bits of science from that we wanted to clean
Speaker 1: up there and present to you. So let's call over
Speaker 1: the robit for a little listener mail. Before I read
Speaker 1: some of these, I do want to point out real quick.
Speaker 1: In a previous episode, I mentioned pugs, the breed of dog,
Speaker 1: and I talked about how useless they were, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: because the largely you encounter a pug, and the pug
Speaker 1: is just this slightly you know, this kind of poorly
Speaker 1: put together dog that has trouble with with heat and
Speaker 1: too much exercise and is ultimately just a lap creature. Uh.
Speaker 1: Or at least that's the way I used to think
Speaker 1: about it. But just yesterday I was on Marta, Atlanta's
Speaker 1: public transportation system. I saw a young lady in a
Speaker 1: wheelchair and she had a helper animal that was a pug,
Speaker 1: So it's recast your opinion. I have to come back
Speaker 1: some of what I thought about pugs, because here's a
Speaker 1: pug and he's uh. I think it was a she actually,
Speaker 1: But there was that pug and she was doing her job,
Speaker 1: representing calmly there by the by the wheelchair as a
Speaker 1: train roared by. So how did you know she was she? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean I could sort of. She was slim, so
Speaker 1: you could sort of tell what was going on under there.
Speaker 1: You know. It's like you picked the dog up and
Speaker 1: turned her over the idea I rolled her Alpha roll
Speaker 1: the dog. No, it's always a no no. Don't alpha
Speaker 1: roll a helper an, especially on public transportation. Exactly. All right, Well, um,
Speaker 1: here's a little bit of listener mail from our listener Brad.
Speaker 1: Brad writes and says, hey, you guys are awesome. I
Speaker 1: am at a party right now. And that's the thing.
Speaker 1: This first time anyone has written this from a party
Speaker 1: that they've mentioned it. But he says, I am at
Speaker 1: a party right now, and it was just plugging your
Speaker 1: biology of Gremlin's episode. The crowd here were so excited.
Speaker 1: We got to pondering the biology of zombies. Hint, you
Speaker 1: need to do an episode on the biology of zombies.
Speaker 1: That's all I'm gonna say, Bratt. I don't know what
Speaker 1: I have to think about that one. The potential there,
Speaker 1: I know there are some. I mean, it ultimately comes
Speaker 1: down to are their real world biological analogs? Because that
Speaker 1: was the fun of the Gremlins, was taking something that
Speaker 1: seems wacky and stupid and totally just made up without
Speaker 1: any real regard for the natural world and pairing it
Speaker 1: with things in the natural world that are just as amazing. Um,
Speaker 1: And I think there's some parallels with zombies we'd have
Speaker 1: we'd have to explore. Speaking of have you seen a
Speaker 1: trailer for the Zombies Love Story movie that's coming out?
Speaker 1: Telling is it? Does it look good? Yeah? Somehow they well,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it looks kind of hokey too, because
Speaker 1: somehow the zombies seem to heal themselves through the powerful
Speaker 1: of If I was actually paying attention to this trailer,
Speaker 1: um in a meaningful way, but we might be interesting,
Speaker 1: all right, We'll look out for that one. We also
Speaker 1: received a number of cool contents from people who listen
Speaker 1: to our teen Angst episode, we were talking about the
Speaker 1: the science of teen ankst. Well, what's going on with
Speaker 1: the teenager's brain? Why? Why did teenagers seem so different?
Speaker 1: And why as teenagers do we feel ultimately so different
Speaker 1: about the world and about our social life than uh,
Speaker 1: than we did when we were younger, and then we
Speaker 1: do when we get older. So we heard from a
Speaker 1: number of people. Here's one from listener Jordan's. Jordan rights
Speaker 1: in and says, Hey, they're just finished listening to your
Speaker 1: podcast on teenage angst. I just wanted to let you
Speaker 1: know that, being a teenager myself, I have experienced some
Speaker 1: of these tricks the mind plays, but most of the
Speaker 1: time I can overcome the brain's way of tricking me.
Speaker 1: Like when one of my friends desired, uh that he
Speaker 1: no longer be my friend, I myself didn't care, but
Speaker 1: I started having bad dreams about this non friend of mine,
Speaker 1: and I would wake up and I would think to myself,
Speaker 1: I don't really care care. Why is this person's Why
Speaker 1: is it so important to me? Thanks for explaining this
Speaker 1: to me. Keep up the great podcasting work. Regards Jordan's.
Speaker 1: We heard from Drake. Drake wrote in says, hello, I
Speaker 1: just listened to your Teenage Teenager podcast and was interested
Speaker 1: in a change of consciousness. I was absorbed in all
Speaker 1: of the facts that you guys stated because in a
Speaker 1: few months, I too will know what, uh what it's
Speaker 1: like to be a teenager. I used to think that
Speaker 1: taking risk and rebellion were just things that teens did
Speaker 1: to fit in or to look cool, But now I
Speaker 1: know that there's some science behind it. Besides, I never
Speaker 1: really knew how to fit in any way. Keep up
Speaker 1: the great work, and I'm happy you've got this message.
Speaker 1: And that's from Drake from Nevada. So we received a
Speaker 1: number of other comments and it's all I wish we
Speaker 1: could read them all. Um. A lot of the cool
Speaker 1: moments where people either were reevaluating the teenagers they were
Speaker 1: or took a close look at the teenagers they were becoming,
Speaker 1: also wanted to mention. We got an email from Isabelle
Speaker 1: and she took us to task for not exploring teens
Speaker 1: who exercise great amounts of self control, because she said
Speaker 1: that she believes that there are a good subsection here
Speaker 1: of teenagers who are honest and who um, who can
Speaker 1: kind of control their states of rebellion and so on
Speaker 1: and so forth, and I thought, you know, she makes
Speaker 1: a really interesting point, and that might make for a
Speaker 1: good podcast in the future here talking about self control
Speaker 1: and teenagers and why some teenagers are successful at that. Um, Like,
Speaker 1: ultimately we could do like a how to guide for
Speaker 1: for teenagers, the teenager the teenage brain owners guide. Yeah, like,
Speaker 1: what you know, is it higher functioning? Why are some
Speaker 1: teenagers more mature than others? Because I certainly thought of
Speaker 1: examples of teenagers I know in my life who are
Speaker 1: who do seem very responsible and have a good amount
Speaker 1: of self control. So I thought she's got a point there,
Speaker 1: perhaps something we can pursue here in the future. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I was talking about this episode with with my wife
Speaker 1: and she brought up to that It's like, it's kind
Speaker 1: of a little disturbing to think about how the the
Speaker 1: range in which one has the teenage brain. You know,
Speaker 1: it can it can hit pretty early, and then it
Speaker 1: can it can also hit kind of late and last
Speaker 1: up until you know, basically in mid twenties. And at
Speaker 1: that point, like we we were already sitting and sending
Speaker 1: these individuals to to college, We're already sending these individuals
Speaker 1: to war. Um, you know that they're they're voting. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're all these these things that are happening and uh
Speaker 1: and but there's still you know, potentially in this uh,
Speaker 1: this state of development. So yeah, Well, we also got
Speaker 1: an email and just thinking about that that have different
Speaker 1: states and experiences that teenagers going through. We've got an
Speaker 1: email from a woman named Michela who is twenty three
Speaker 1: years now, uh, but she became pregnant at the age
Speaker 1: of eighteen, and she depends that this really insightful, interesting
Speaker 1: email about how that experience may have changed her brain
Speaker 1: as a teenager in how she looks at her sister
Speaker 1: and her sister's behavior and start contrast to her own.
Speaker 1: So that was a very interesting email that we don't
Speaker 1: have time to read. But thank you MICHAELA for sending in. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we appreciate all of the email feedback that you guys
Speaker 1: send in. Uh and also though the comments on Facebook
Speaker 1: and UH and Twitter, we don't we don't necessarily have
Speaker 1: time to respond to all of it, but just bear
Speaker 1: in mind, we do, we do read it, we do
Speaker 1: check it out, and if you would like to reach
Speaker 1: out to us, you can find us on Facebook, you
Speaker 1: can find us on tumbler, we are stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind on both of those. You can also find
Speaker 1: us on Twitter, where we go by the handle blow
Speaker 1: the Mind, and you can also send us a line
Speaker 1: at blow the Mind at discovery dot com. For more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics, Is It how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com