 Welcome everyone to the Twist podcast broadcast for this week. We're actually doing a real one at the real time. It's pretty exciting with the whole team. Yay! Let's hope that everyone gets to stay here the whole time of the show. So any sharing, do it right now. Let people know that Twist is broadcasting live. Likes, subscribes, thumbs up, all that kind of stuff. Help us get into the algorithms for this episode. And additionally, if we are making any technical problems or anything, we have difficulties, then eventually they will get edited out for the podcast, but they're going to stay in here for this live stream that's going to be on the internet forever. So, we ready to go? Let's do this. We're ready. Let's begin the show. Oh, beginning the show in three, two, this is Twist. This week in science episode number 956, recorded on Wednesday, January 10th, 2024. 2024, Twist predictions. Hey everybody, I'm Dr. Kiki and tonight on the show, we will fill your heads with looking back, looking forward, and looking here and now, but first. Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. The new year is here. The year that passed was filled with advances across the scientific field, innovations that hinted a very different future to come than the one that we may have predicted before the year began. While the new year awaits us, shrouded in a fog of uncertainty, the one that passed can now be clearly seen. So what better time to look at the last year's predictions and find out how close they came to reality. And before it is over, we will cast our gaze once more into the future and predict the year to come. Here on This Week in Science, coming up next. This week, there's only one place to go to find the knowledge I seek. I want to know. Yeah! Science, you Kiki and Blair. And a good science to you too, Justin and Blair, and everyone out there. Welcome to another episode of This Week in Science. We are back again. Blair, your face is so smiley right now. Justin, yours looks like it needs more coffee. No. Your face looks like it needs coffee? Is that what you just said? Well, I did put it. Welcome back. It's good to have you all back again, 2024. Here we go again. Everyone, thanks for joining us for another episode of This Week in Science. We have a great show ahead full of predictions. This is our show where we look back at the predictions that we made last year and see how we did at prognostication. And then we look at the predictions we're making for this year to come. And then we're going to talk a little bit about science and we're going to try and throw it all together in a timeline that makes sense so that Blair can stay with us for the entire show. Justin, what kind of science news are you going to be talking about later on? Oh, let's see. What have I got? The giant apes of southern China. And what is the other one? There is another one. Oh yes, the rise of archery in South America, maybe earlier than we've talked. Oh, I've got wings. And another study related to what did I put in here? Oh yeah, supernovae and dark energy. Blair, what did you bring for the show tonight? Oh my goodness. I brought bats with sweet teeth and misunderstood grizzly bears. Bats with sweet teeth. Do they get more cavities? Great question. Okay, everyone, as we jump into the show ahead, I would love to remind you that if you are not yet subscribed, you can click that subscribe button wherever you are and you'll get us every single week in your feed. Make sure you get notified also. Additionally, we are here as much as possible, Wednesdays, 8 p.m. Pacific time. Live streaming our show Wednesdays. And we are on YouTube, Twitch and Facebook. Most of the social media accounts are at TwistScience. Our website is twist.org. And if you look for this week in science, you'll find us pretty much anywhere. But anyway, here we go. It's time for the science. And let us begin with our predictions from last year. How did we do? How did we do? I mean, I'm gonna say I think I usually play it fairly safe and close to the chest. So anyway, I said last year, yes, climate change will continue to worsen with continued drought and fires around the world brought on by shifting weathered patterns and higher land and ocean temperatures. Yep, thanks El Niño. However, we will see continued success in the development of sustainable energy sources like solar, wind and geothermal. And yeah, there's been a lot of that. Oh, there was a real advancement and some real data showing us that those sustainable energy sources are making progress, which is great. And new battery technology will begin to improve electric vehicles as a choice for consumers. Also, that one came to pass, which I actually, actually that was like a big like toss in it because it's been a long time for hoping the batteries would start to get better. The James Webb Space Telescope will discover an atmosphere conducive to life on an exoplanet. That one's kind of a in between. It found an exoplanet with methane and carbon dioxide, which is indicative theoretically of a water planet. And if there's a water planet, maybe that could be it. So, you know, yes, no, maybe so. I don't know. I said Space X's Starship will launch successfully into orbit. And I have good hopes for Starliner. They tried several times. They really tried. Didn't quite make it. Lots of explosions, but that's, you know, iteration in the space game. But unfortunately, it's pushed stuff off for human transport to the moon. But yeah, did not get that one at all. Samples from asteroid Bennu will return to Earth and bring visitors from space along for the ride. We got the samples, but no obvious little visitors from space. Not yet. They haven't told us yet. Hello. So maybe. But it wasn't in 2023. So, what else did I say? Artificial intelligence will be the bane of teachers and librarians. Yes. Scientists will use it successfully. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Hang on a second. Hang on the whole deposit. Why is it the bane of librarians? Oh, because artificial. Because artificial. I got the teachers because you're submitting reports. But if you're going in, it's like, how is AI messing with librarians? Is it, is it? You don't have to ask. Requesting books that it knows fall in between Dewey decimals. It's like, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Real citations don't exist anymore. That's why. Citations. What? Oh, so the reference librarians are doing a lot of work. Like, no, it's not in anything. That's not anywhere. Nobody ever said that. I looked. Or they're sitting around very lonely because everyone's making their own references. Like, like reference librarians do fact checking. I don't need that. I have AI. It's all good. But I said scientists will use it to successfully identify many drug targets, design proteins, enhance efficiency, and much more. That's my playing it very safely. But I'd say, yeah. But that all even be much more. It all happened. Yeah. Okay, this one, I wasn't, this one was like one of my long throws. AI will enable us to speak with another of Earth's animal species. Does the whale conversation count? I think so. Did that, did that happen? It's tough. I, I say you get partial credit for that one. Okay. I like partial credit always helps. We don't know what the whales said just because we got them to talk back to us. That doesn't mean we actually talked to them. Yes. That true communication with context and meaning and yes. I said with the implosion of Twitter as a reputable platform, scientists and science communicators will continue to spread to new refugia for discussing science. Yeah. But connecting with the public will become more difficult, influencing the continued growth of distrust in science in the public sphere. And I can't say, I think that's kind of still happening. Yay. But now, twist listeners will continue to find twist a consistent source of optimism and curiosity. What say you chat room? Were we consistent? Did we do it throughout the year? Now the consistency part is tough, I think, but. We're pretty good at the optimism and the curiosity. At least I really, I really. You bring all the optimism. I try to be the reality check that everyone should smoke them where they got them. All the fun, all the fun. Yes. All right. Well, those were mine. I did OK. Did fairly well. Fada says, as far as I'm concerned, we did it. We really, really did it. That was a really good success rate there. It's because, like I said, I play it close to the chest. Justin, what? So I tend to be a little bit more confident and arrogant, perhaps, in my confidence. And so I sometimes get a little bit more specific with my predictions. In 2023, I said the planet will continue to warm. The seas continue to rise. And much like COVID, people will continue to ignore that it is happening. I think, I think that, I think that part's a hit. But see, then I go too far. I said, except for a handful of island nations that you can only find on maps made before 2024. So there are like five or six island nations that are petitioning to become recognized as nations, even when their land is gone. Virtual nations, even. Yeah. Yeah. And so it's going to be a new classification of a nation without territory. People without a place. Yeah. People without a land, but maintaining an identity, good enough to be a member of the UN, I suppose. Yeah. So we're not quite, but they're still on the map. And if you make a map in 2024, those islands. Technically. Oh, here's a hit. Despite all evidence to the contrary, it will be discovered that smoking is actually good for you. You made up that study. No, no. The study's a mess. I gotta say, I read it. I know. It was a mess. It's a mess. The CDC, the CDC put out that report. And they didn't highlight the fact that their data showed that smoking amongst the severely depressed led to lower mortality rates. No, they did not. That's the biggest difference there amongst the severely depressed. Yeah. That doesn't mean smoking is- Well, that's what we're talking about. But that's what we're talking about. And so, yes, they highlighted exercise, even though exercise was a slightly higher mortality rate amongst the severely depressed than smoking. But also glossed over the fact that income inequality has a big role to play as well. Anyway, in the prediction, I did go on to say that the discovery created a major boon for the one company that still made ashtrays until it was later discovered that the ashtrays caused cancer and it was them all along. So, I mean, Yeah, I'll give myself a credit. I'll give myself a partial credit. You know, the prognosticating, you just got to get close to target. You don't have to be a hundred percent. James Webb Space Telescope, as some people still call it, will discover life on another planet. The infographic of chemical spectrography indicating biologic processes will be underwhelming at first. But a later artist rendition of a winged toad is a possible life form on that planet will capture the world's imagination. I feel like this is happening over and over again. They didn't release that data, I think. I don't remember that being a publication. Yeah, they left out the winged toad so far. That one still hasn't happened. But they keep finding those what you would expect for a life that is containing organic materials and some sort of life. But haven't gone so far as to discover a planet of winged toads. No winged winged. More space telescopes will be launched this year. That was last year. Discovering hundreds of interesting targets for the James Webb to get better images of. So, yeah, there's still other viewers like, Oh, well, we got our telescope. We worked on it. We're going to put that up there. It's going to look at stuff. So there are, there's a bunch more space telescopes than there were at the beginning of 2023. But nobody's talking about them because there's a much better one out there getting better resolution from everything. 2023 will be the year that fundamental mechanics behind gravity has finally figured out, untangling space from time, challenging the expansion rate of the universe, and upending large portions of the standard model, but only in a quantum computer simulation. That probably happened all the time. I feel like that happened. I feel like the quantum computer simulations are discovering all sorts of things that only apply to within a quantum computer simulation. I said artificial intelligence will be discovered to already be far superior to most people when it comes to making good dinner table conversation. That is a miss. Oh my gosh. The language AI is still got the worst. Still not quite there. Terrible sentence structures, terrible conversation lists, very repetitive, very redundant, no good. And what was I saying? Oh, a new age reversing tissue regeneration therapy will be developed that all but eliminates death from natural causes. The researchers admittedly see the ramifications of social, economic, environmental consequences such a therapy would have on the world and decide to keep it a secret. However, a few self-help nutritionists find out the secret and are willing to let you know all about it during late night infomercials. Conveniently, they have created a powdered milkshake version that produces the same results. That one's kind of a cheap prediction because I feel like that happens. You can't really prove or disprove that one. That's like... That one happens every year. There's always a new secret science doesn't want you to know. Science wants you to be sick, but we have a milkshake that will make you healthy despite the evil scientists knowing that this is going to cure you of everything and take lipstick stains out of collars and do your taxes for you. But they won't tell you because they're part of a cabal. So drink this milkshake that we will send you once you subscribe for $29.99 a month. You will get a bucket of whatever we put in there. That's fine. And we'll throw in a charged crystal while we're at it. Just don't swallow it, please. Oh, man. I will say this last year was... This is a miss or it's a soft hit because it can happen every year. But there were a lot of studies about food nutrition, food as medicine, healthy food diet that failed to produce positive results. Several throughout the year. So it may be that healthy food isn't so much good for you as the bad stuff alternatives are bad for you. It's not that food might just be food and that's just it. You can exercise, you can do whatever. It's the food that's not really food that's messing everybody up. Mm-hmm. It's all that processed stuff. Yeah. Off the science range, you had three others. What you got in there? Do I? Oh, I can't even see them here. Hang on there. Oh, I clicked on the box. Now I see it. Oh, yeah. I said 49ers will face the Chiefs in the Super Bowl and win. Oh, no, that's a this year prediction. I got it. No, are you doing that? And Putin will be ousted from power by summer. Oh, that still hasn't happened. But maybe that's a this year prediction. Sometimes I get my years. I don't think so. And Elon Musk will announce a new reality show where participants are given a small business to run into the ground. Whoever manages to wreck their business the most in the most epic way will become Twitter's CEO for a year. That one's obviously wrong because there is no Twitter anymore. He did try to make his own reality show where he fought Mark Zuckerberg, though. That did almost happen. So glad it did not. That was. But which one chickened out again? Oh, they both realized. I thought it was Elon. I'm a billionaire. I shouldn't ever fight anyone. Why would I? I'm a billionaire. How ridiculous. So silly. But Justin, you went out on a limb for some of those, even though there were partial credit. Some of them, I think, actually should stand for next year because, you know, whenever you're predicting, it's hard to keep it to one year. Very often they come in two-year sort of chunks. Oh, really? Time is just. Wibbly, wobbly, and tiny whimmy. Anyway, man. All right, Blair, what did you predict last year and how'd you do? My predictions are always terrible. So my first, most of them are jokes. My first one was a new social media platform will gain traction where you can change up the wallpaper, play music on your profile, and you can pick your top friends, maybe eight of them. Now, MySpace did not make a resurgence last year, but there are certainly other players in the game trying to take over the Twitter space. We'll see what happens. I think it's going to solidify in the next year. 3D-printed meat will get some market trials and responses will be less than well done. No, I did not hear that at all. They're still, I don't know. I don't know what's holding them back. I think of the taste, honestly, because from what I've heard, it always just tastes like nothing. Next, I predicted that tardigrades will do something weird. So I'm guessing that did happen, but we didn't report on it on the show as far as I could tell. No, we did talk about it. We did talk about, I think it was this year, that the tardigrades were discovered that they were once eaten by a snail, could make it all the way through the snail's digestive system and out again. I thought that was the year before. Was it the year before? Look, that was 2022. I don't know. That could be. That's Tiki's looking. All right, while she looks, I also predicted that fully driverless self-driving cars will be active and prevalent in the Bay Area and cause problems. Yes, yes, yes. People have died. It's not good. It's pretty scary. So that was a big yes, unfortunately. First AI feature length film will be released and there will be too many fingers. No, but AI certainly could get off to a lot of weird things. So there's a partial. I'll give you a partial on that. There have been. Yeah. Images that have come of war for that, for whatever reason, were AI generated. Possibly because nobody wants to be in a war zone and take photographs because they're killing journalists. So images of destruction and Gaza have been shown representative of what's going on that were AI generated and did have too many fingers. Yeah, yeah. An occasional extra leg probably. Anyway, you're scary. Yeah. I predicted that we will cure cancer again and again. And as far as I could tell, the closest we got on our show in the reporting is that there was a story about forcing cooperation in cancer cells to basically initiate cell death. So pretty good. There are. There's no treatments out there yet, but still. Yeah. Well, there are several avenues as always, but the avenues that are taking place now are so much more targeted that we did. So we did cure cancer. And we did come up with cures for specific cancers and treatments for specific types of tumors. But they still have to be tested and vetted. No. And some of them have made it through some testing too. I mean, this is the thing. It's the problem is cancer isn't one causal. Which is why I said again and again and again. Yeah, because it has to be done every time separate. Yeah. Well, it's largely also because there's a group of genes that are producing proteins that need to work together. To repair damage to cells. And any one of them that can't do their job or can't send the right signal can allow cancer formation to take place. It's bad repair jobs that create these monsters. Sort of like Frankenstein cells that become cancerous. And then do everything that they're supposed to do to survive in a world where monsters are not wanted. But as we discover each of these sort of increments of change and ways that we can fix them, we get closer. But it's a long list of things that need to get fixed before cancer can be eradicated completely. And we're making progress. Of course. Yes. But it still looks good on paper when we say we've cured cancer. Certainly a lot further than we thought we'd be just a few years ago. So it's pretty cool. Yeah. And some cancers. It's always five or 10 years ago. We have. I mean, there is a treatment that will reverse leukemia. My goodness. Which how can you? Yeah, I can't fight that. Yeah. That five or 10 years is getting closer and closer. Okay. So I also predicted that California experienced a drought despite the storm parade we were experiencing at this time last year, I say as it currently rains outside my window. Now, technically, right now, today, California is not in quote unquote drought conditions, but reservoirs aren't exactly where they should be. There's still lots of trouble in the summer months getting the right water to the right places. So this is if you want to talk super technically, I don't think this is totally accurate, but water woes are not over. And they will never be over in California. And my beef with that one is always that when I was a young man in California, the southern central valley was called the big nothing because there was nothing out there, but desert dirt and cattle. That was it. And now now it's endless orchards of almond trees. So I don't buy for a second that the drought is a drought in which people need to stop watering their lawns or take shorter showers. Lawns are terrible. Don't you dare. And also, yeah, I don't want to fight you on that one. Hey, wait, what are you fighting about? Hey, what part are you fighting against? Lawns are bad. I'm okay. Yeah. Lawns are terrible. But but consumers use golf courses. You know how much water goes to golf courses in the state of California. But this is not the conversation we're currently having. You're talking about my prediction. Individuals need less than 10 percent of the water. And there's no. Moving along. Moving along. Yeah, moving along. I also predicted that we will learn something new about snot, which was a weird random thing that I. Musin? Yes, snot. And I, as far as I can tell, it's no, no, I didn't see any snot news from last year. But please anybody who's listening, if they found some snot news from 2023, send it my way. Yeah. Frogs will once again dominate the animal corner. Absolutely. There was a lot of frog talk last year. And I also predicted that twists would do a live show. That didn't happen because, you know, I got indisposed. And lots of other things happened. Lots of other things. You know, Justin's on the other side of the planet. There's all sorts of stuff going on. But we'll get back to live shows eventually. We can always help, right? And we know it would be great. That would be a real moment for sure. I wanted to go back to your tardigrades. Tardigrades didn't necessarily do anything weird, but there was a study from July 2023 suggesting tardigrades evolved from worms and had claws. And those claws are potentially going to be used in creating swimming micro robots to allow them to grab onto things. And then some researchers have decided to try and put human DNA, I mean, tardigrade DNA, into human DNA, like for proteins and stuff that could be helpful for health. This is great. Because tardigrades are survivors. Oh, man. We'll see. This is like the really old way of doing science. We'll take something from this and put it in that and see what happens. We're going to do it. We are going to do it. Oops. Hey, everybody. If you just tuned in, this is This Week in Science. We have just completed our review of our predictions from 2023. And now it is time for us to talk about our predictions from four, not from, but for the year ahead. If you are loving the show, make sure that you share it with people. We'd love to get as many followers and subscribers as possible, and we can do that with your help. So make sure to share the link. Get a friend of yours to become a friend of ours. We appreciate the fact that you're here. All right. Time for the predictions for the year ahead. Who is first? Justin? Ah, all right. In the year 2024, it will be discovered that Neanderthals are the result of a hybridization event between early humans and Denisovans, the late surviving members of Homo erectus that had been existing throughout Asia. Turns out we discovered the mule before the horse and thought the horse was half mule, making us all look like a bunch of jackasses. In the year 2024, because see, that's a donkey. That's how it comes together at the end there. In the year 2024, every major neurodegenerative disease will have an effective cure working its way through clinical trials. While large-scale access to these innovative treatments will still be many years away, rapid improvements in quality of life increases will be seen in the test subjects, prompting an accelerated effort by regulators and lawmakers to fast track the rollout of the new treatments as they are badly needed by aging regulators and lawmakers. In the year 2024, self-driving cars will be replaced by cars you drive yourself. The experiment officially over, giving a driver's license to a toddler AI was a bad idea. The experiment will be repeated again in about 15 years when the AI is a little more mature. Until then, watch the road for AI bicycles, where we should have started to begin with. Oh, dear. AI will be used to communicate with aggressive orca off the coast of Spain. The killer whales will indicate some surprise, as they had no idea we were intelligent. The conversation lasts only a few minutes, though the phrase finless fish-thieving pests comes up several times, seemingly a reference to us. I feel like this is a short story in the works. In the year 2024, researchers will discover that B cells and not T cells are crucial to curing the common cold and other respiratory viruses. Instead of vaccines designed to train T cells to recognize pathogens, B cell optimization will be performed using a prime editing technique that changes all of the body's B cells into the genetic twin of that one coworker who never seems to get sick. Everyone who gets the shot becomes allergic to red bell peppers. However, everyone who does not get the shot suffers from a higher likelihood of thinking that Jason Aldean has talent. In the year 2024, ultra-processed foods will be forced to carry health warnings for all the already known diseases that they cause or contribute to. Meanwhile, the unsubstantiated claims of healthy food will be removed from its packaging. People around the world will recognize the person in 2024 that they most want to be in a mirror. In the year 2024, world peace will be achieved according to an international governmental panel. This will come to, as a surprise to everyone, still living in a war zone. Similar international governmental panel will also declare that global warming has been stopped, that the COVID-19 pandemic is over, and that the global economy has never been better. In the year 2024, a cage full of research mice undergoing an intelligence augmentation experiment will escape and are never found. Their descendants will eventually inherit the Earth. In the year 2024, the size of the universe will be discovered to be much smaller than we once thought by over a few dozen magnitudes. It won't make interstellar space travel any easier, as the same discovery finds that we, too, are more than a few dozen magnitudes smaller than we thought we were. The correction of scale suggests that the entire known universe could fit into an average-sized coffee mug of the old model. Oh, dear. In the year 2024, scientists will discover new animal species, a new aspect of human biology, several methods procuring previously incurable diseases, an unexpected cosmological feature in space, a greener way to generate and store energy, and will use AI to produce unprecedented discoveries wherever big data sets are available. And in the year 2024? I'm like, I don't want you to stop right there on that big optimistic prediction. That was great. Okay, what's this one? In the year 2024, hottest year on record. I knew you were going to go there. Those were some fantastic predictions. Self-toying shoelaces. The shoelaces that toy themselves. Or maybe they're cars. Who knows? Blair, are you predicting? Yes. Seriously, like the AI, my favorite one in there, all of those is really got to be the AI bicycles. Like, how did they not start there? How did they just give AI driver's license without even seeing if it could manage a bike lane? Yeah, it's also the vehicles that are self-driving are like five times as heavy as original gas cars. So it's not even a 2,000 pound minutes, it's like a 10,000 pound minutes. The inertia, it's a thing. Oh man. All right. Yes, Kiki, you want my predictions. Let's go. Let's go. My terrible prediction in 2024. I predict that cats will be declared an invasive species in one U.S. state. No. California, make it California. Please let it be California. It's going to be Hawaii probably. Anyway, Teslas will be available via vending machine, but sales will be disappointing. That was actually from Brian. That's Brian's prediction for me. Thanks, Brian. An AI written song will chart on the Billboard top 100 and will raise questions. All those questions we were talking about yesterday, actually. With streaming services getting ads back and becoming more expensive, DVD players and CD players will start flying off the shelves. What? Physical media that you just owned? Physical media. Who knew? A synthetic brain in a dish will play an AI in chess and betting on the match, all in bit kind of course, will be crazy. A new frog species will be discovered that is so beautiful under UV that I won't be able to focus on anything else in that show. I believe this. How it sounds. Oh, it's so cute. Oh my gosh. Oh, look at it. It's so pretty. Yeah, I'm sorry. I was still thinking about the frogs. As we learn more about how the brain responds to music, prescription jams, jam sesh required by a doctor will be the new norm. Fascinating. That's an idea. Prescription music. And last, I predict that in 2024 my predictions will be terribly inaccurate. Watch you be the most accurate of all of us, except for that one. You just hedged my bets. I finally want to get one right. You've gotten them right. Come on. So let's see. Similarly to Justin, in 2024, I predict that climate will continue to warm globally. And I'm of course making this prediction because El Niño and that whole thing affects stuff. But yeah, it's going to keep warming. Elections around the globe are likely to prove contentious and stall political progress on climate and AI regulation. So 2024, I think we're going to see like not a lot of progress on regulation of this stuff because politicians are going to be like, hey, look at me, look at me, look at me, look at me. Instead of actually doing stuff. And in those lines, Nate Silver will make a lot of uninformed public comments about various scientific topics and a lot of bad election predictions. In that. If you really, if anybody has political aspirations, just come out against climate change regulation. You will get so much funding so quickly. It will just be instantaneously in the campaign with the most money in your local area. There'll be no taxes, no, no regulations on your gas. More taxes are so low, they don't even know they're paying taxes. They don't live in Oregon, do they? AI deepfakes online during these elections are going to confuse and impact voters and the elections. Absolutely, you're still right. And that's terrifying. Are you talking about the just regular ads? No, no, no, not regular ads, but the deepfakes created by AI, people using AI to deepfake stuff in and put it on social media to get it out there. And saying or doing or being photographed, doing something that's going to influence things, even though it's going to influence stuff. Yeah. So I mean, the fact checkers are going to have a real, real time of it this next year. Someone is going to land a robot on the moon. Someone, a lot of people who want foot rope. Someone is going to do it this year. Okay. In NASA is going to launch the Europa Clipper mission and that launch is going to be successful. It's not going to be a bad rocket. They're not going to be explosions. It's going to launch. It's going to head out there. We're not going to really learn anything from it until about 2030, but the launch is going to be successful. That's what I say. There is an experiment that hopefully they're going to, like I really think they're going to put their data together and a couple of experiments that have been going on, looking at the mass of the neutrino. So I think we are going to get a really accurate measurement of the mass of the neutrino this next year published. People are going to report on it. 2024 is going to be the year of the Exascale Supercomputer, US, UK, EU, China. People are going to have Exascale Supercomputers either working or being built all over. Hey, where's the Exascale? What does that mean? It's like 10 to the 18 process. It's the parallel processing, massive super parallel processing. That will allow for things like digital twin research and physics research. They want to put one in the National Ignition Facility to look at ignition of nuclear warheads for our nuclear stockpile. They also are going to be putting on it argon national labs that's going to be doing digital twin type research and quantum processing. But let's see. I think we're going to see a lot of positive progress on mRNA vaccines next year. I think we're going to see some results from some of the trials that are going on. I mean, maybe we'll see more mRNA vaccines making it further in the process. Neither Blair nor Justin will have another baby in 2024. Of me for sure. This is my prediction. I'm looking at Justin's face right now. I have technically, there is time. There is time. This is, I'm not throwing down the gauntlet. This isn't a challenge. I'm just, this is my prediction. No, I think it is a challenge. That's fine. I'll figure it out. I have no problem. And science and twists are going to continue to bring the optimistic slant for humanity to our audience throughout 2024. I'm not saying it's going to be all the same, but we're going to continue to do it. All right. Hey, everybody. This is the subcon science. And if you are listening right now, it would be super awesome. If you are enjoying the show, you want to support us, head over to twist.org, click on the Patreon link, and become a patron of the show. If you don't want to help us out on a monthly basis, you can also click on the Zazzle link, and we have all sorts of really cool products, merchandise that are twists related that have been artistically created for the most part by Blair, taken from her annual calendars. Oh, hey, and there's a 2024 calendar there that Blair made this year for all of you to enjoy. So multiple ways to help keep Twist going, bringing you that optimistic slant throughout 2024. We're here for you. We thank you for your support. All right. Coming home back. We lost a Justin. Where did he go? You want to talk about some science, Blair? Yeah, let's do it. Okay. How's it looking on your end from where things stand? Do you want to just roll? Or do you want to do a Blair's Animal Corner first? Let's do the Animal Corner now while we have it. Okay. So this is where we're going to go right now. So I'm going to change that transition too. And we're coming on back right now for the first Blair's Animal Corner of 2024. What you got, Blair? Oh my gosh. So lovely to hear that song. It's been so long. 2024. Yes. Well, first I have Fruit Bats. So Fruit Bats are named Fruit Bats because they eat. That's right. Beef. Fruit buddy. No. Yeah. No. Fruit. Fruit. Hopefully everyone listening shouted along. Fruit. Great. Good job, everybody. So Fruit Bats eat fruit, which for us might have been a problem because we would eat nothing but a sugary food and therefore we would get, everybody say it, diabetes. That's right. Yes. Excellent. So diabetes, the 8th leading cause of death in the United States for humans, is a pretty big deal. So you see San Francisco scientists decided to look at Fruit Bats to see how they can survive this extremely sugary diet. How do they not get and die from diabetes? So with diabetes in the human body, that means you can't produce or detect insulin. You have problems controlling blood sugar. But these Fruit Bats, for some reason, they can control their blood sugar no matter what, no matter how much sugar they consume. And so they want to make better insulin or sugar sensing therapies for people by looking at the bats. They focus on the evolution of the bat. Pancreas, which controls blood sugar, and the kidneys. The kidneys because the kidneys get impacted by diabetes and they have problems pulling out nutrients and salt out of waste. So that's the whole thing. And so that's how people end up on dialysis and all these things. So they found out that Fruit Bat, pancreas is compared to the pancreas of an insect eating bat, had extra insulin producing cells, and they had genetic changes that helped them process this huge amount of sugar. Also the kidneys had adapted to be able to pull electrolytes to retain them better from the very watery fruits that they're eating all the time. And so in some cases, a single letter change of DNA made this diet viable for the Fruit Bat. A single letter change. So that's something that might not be so difficult to transfer to humans as we thought maybe originally. So it would be super specific genetic modification, but if they're similar genes, that's fascinating. Exactly. So they analyzed gene expression in the regulatory DNA by looking at individual cells. And so they were able to figure out what types of cells in which organs were related to this, but also how those cells regulate the gene expression, how they manage the diet, and all these things. So yeah, the long story short is that this study could be one of many that then leads to transferring the specific kidney and pancreas function in these bats to something that we can use as a therapy in humans. Pretty cool to kind of look at. I mean, I guess that's a big question. I mean, it still is, you know, how close is their kidney and pancreas functionality to human and what genes and the proteins and enzymes that are involved in the processing of blood? Yeah, like, I guess that's the big question is like what they're finding from them. That's how easy would it be to transfer that stuff. That's fascinating. Right. And I think the key is that they were able to see a very clear difference between the insect eating bat and the sugar eating bat. And so because they found the exact difference between these two with the very different diet, they think that there's potential therapies kind of on the horizon because they were able to narrow it down so specifically between these two bats. That's amazing. Yeah, but I mean, the bats, it works. That's what I'm saying is like, it works with the bats, but like, is this how it would work? Could we make it work the same way in people? Great question. Very, very far away from figuring that out. But, right. But a lot closer to figuring it out in mice, which is... Right, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if you can get from the bats to the mice, then you can get from the mice to the humans, for sure. And with the advances in mRNA and everything, it's like you don't necessarily have to do a genetically modified mouse, but you can, of course. You could actually perhaps even just do additions of mRNA protein based on that and see if that can... an elevated level of that, sort of like a diabetes vaccine, if you will. Well, that'd be amazing. That was the other thing I meant to mention, was that the DNA related to this ability to eat exclusively fruit, they thought was junk DNA before the study. Just a bunch of junk DNA in the bats. It's... Yeah, it's... That's your extra little about it. I'm not going to worry about it. No, it's very important. Amazing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And then my second story for tonight is a kind of a Blair's Animal Corner classic of a misunderstood animal that has gotten a bad rap for a very long time for no reason. That's the California grizzly bear. So those of us who are not from California who are listening, you may or may not know that the California state flag has a brown bear on it, and we do not have any brown bears native to California anymore. So it's kind of a funny thing that our flag is a brown bear, but that's because we killed them all. So why? Why did they all get hunted out of California? And the story goes, it's because European settlers came in and among the other lovely things they did for the environment as they spread across the United States, as she says with sarcasm, they wanted to get rid of the predators in the area because they thought that it was dangerous, they thought that they were eating livestock and crops, and they thought that essentially it was a rite of passage to say, all right, I killed a bear. Think about the song Davey Crockett killed him a bar when he was only three, right? Top predator, yeah. Yes, so grizzly bears, the story goes, they were these big menacing things, humans could not live with them. So it was the humans or the bears, the bears got hunted out of California. And thank goodness, because California is very populist, right? Well, it turns out by looking at pelts and bones in private and public collections of grizzly bears throughout the state of California, they were not as big nor as dangerous, nor as much of a threat to livestock as one would be led to believe. The reputation that they had was that they weighed as much as 1,000 kilograms, which for somebody who worked with bears, I'm going to tell you right now, no, no grizzly bears don't get that big, but sure, fine, you can say that if you want in your legend conversation that you got. And also that they ate exclusively or mostly livestock and other animals. But by looking at the bones and pelts, they use nitrogen and carbon isotopes to learn about the diet. So let's tackle that first. Any guess what they found? Fish salmon, berries. I guess 9% meat. So berries pretty much. Yeah, grizzly bears are not really hunters. They're definitely grazers and scavengers. They just kind of, they're opportunists. They eat whatever they can find. So only 9% meat. Mostly plants, interesting. Yeah, in fact, even when humans were, or Europeans specifically, were all over the California territories, even then after that, in the largest amounts, only 25% of diets was meat. Yeah, this is, and this is likely because the whole reason that there were bears is because they say, the grizzly bear, brown bear, it's because they survived the younger dryests. The short-faced bear, which was a bigger bear, was a big game hunter and died out during the younger dryests, as did all of the big game hunters in the western United States. They all vanished. Too bad humans weren't there, oops. Because the big game disappeared, and so they all, what survived, ate berries and fish. Yeah, exactly. And as far as how big they were, they measured the size of the bones and the pelts and determined the average weight of bears was 200 kilograms, a fifth the size, which actually is much closer to the size of grizzly bear that I have worked with and seen in the past, getting to be around topping out at 500 pounds. That sounds more accurate. And so the idea is just very silly. But so essentially the grizzly bears, they were not killed because they were eating livestock or because they were these giant menaces, they were killed as trophies. That's pretty much it. And because if they wandered into human territories, people felt threatened and they decided to dispatch them. Which is what happened across Europe before the civilized Europeans came to conquer the Americas. That again was in quotes and with sarcasm. But the big predators were all eliminated from the forests in Europe across the UK. A lot of Europe, they got, that's what happened. They got rid of the big predators. It was humans first and that's the way it's always been. So they came in, they tried to do that here. Oh, our history. Yeah, I mean, think about it. Livestock is one thing, but if you talk about threats to humans, there were humans that lived in California before the Europeans. What? When there were bears here. I mean, just fine. It was fine, this is part of the deal. But anyway, I do think it's very interesting that this is the story that we tell about why our state flag has a now extinct animal on it in the state of California. And it's all kind of a lie. The state flag is now not a lie, but it is a remembrance of the great animals that were here before. It's for memories. It's fascinating. I love the way that you brought it up too, like the stories, the mythical stories, the historical tall tales that were told. I mean, you wonder, bones, maybe there were some big grizzlies, but, you know, those are going to be the outliers. Not all humans are seven, eight feet tall. Did their outlier, right? Yeah, is that almost exclusively the ones that were mounted or turned into rugs or turned into some sort of trophy were the biggest ones because people were bragging. So that skewed the expectation of how big the average bear was, because those are the only ones being displayed. Yeah, that and of course they're made to look all ferocious. They were probably shot sleeping, you know, grazing berries. They got drunk on apples that had fermented and then took a nap in a courtyard. Yeah. Who were the real opportunists? That's what I want to know. I mean, we all know. We all know. Blair, thank you for a great animal corner. Of course. Yeah, I'm going to take us to space right now. And talk just for a moment about the Dark Energy Survey. This is the Dark Energy Camera at Noir Labs CTIO. And the CTIO is the Ceratolo Inter-American Observatory. And it's been surveying distantly, deeply into the universe to look for supernova. So originally, many, many decades ago, there was a survey of supernovas that came to determine what we call the standard cosmological constant, or what is known in the physics world as Lambda Cold Dark Matter. And the model that came from the survey was based on something like 52 type 1a supernova events. And so these researchers were like, okay, the supernova events, it's a very small sample size. So let's look for more supernova. Let's look further back in time. Let's look bigger. And let's try and see if this cosmological constant of universal expansion that we've determined based on the timing of these supernova, the brightness of the light from these standardized supernova explosions. Let's see if it really is standard. Let's see if it really holds up when we get a really, really good sample. So yeah. And real quick, just this, when you're saying standardized supernova, that's because the whatever candle strength a 1a is thought to be, is thought to always be the same. They're categorized as the same. Once it's a 1a supernova, it's like it's the most bright setting possible on our scale. So we assume, first of all, all of these are the same. Which is sort of interesting. It's a big assumption, right? It's a very big assumption. And so these researchers with this dark energy survey that was based on this 4-meter telescope that was at the CTIO, the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, they analyzed over 1500 distance supernovae. And by analyzing them and putting them through machine learning techniques, they were actually able to aid in the classification to create a higher quality and more consistent quality of classification of the supernovae that they were looking at. And they made a very uniform, highly consistent dataset of supernovae that were about 1499 likely 1a supernova. And these are beyond a redshift of 0.2. And so this is quintupling the number that we had beyond a redshift of 0.5. So this is a huge scale up from where we were previously with only like 52 supernovae to infer the thing that causes expansion of the universe, which is what we have inferred and decided is this energy called dark energy. Dark energy has got to be constant. It's got to be this thing. Supernovas, they told us that the universe is expanding. Oh, there's acceleration happening. Okay, it's got to be constant. This is all good. We've got the other data has suggested this is not exactly true. So the most exciting thing for me about this study and what they have shared and what will be published in the American Astronomical Astrophysical Journal. And they just presented these results at the American Astronomical Society this Monday. They're findings are consistent, but not definitive in terms of what we understand or what we thought we understood about dark energy. So on the screen right now, I have an image of supernova that have been sampled within the field covered by the detectors of this dark energy camera. And so the light from this particular image corresponds to time traveled up 0.6 billion years. There's a quasar also that has a red shift that is equivalent to light travel time of 11.5 billion years in the image. So they're able to really take a lot of objects in the images and determine where and how far in the past they existed. And in doing this, they were able to create a sample set. That does fit within the Lambda cold matter model, dark matter model or dark energy model, but not exactly. It's not that there's not a non-accelerating universe. It fits a model of an accelerating expanding universe, but there's a lot of variability. And so it doesn't fit perfectly. And because of the variability, it suggests that there is actually the possibility that dark energy is not consistent across space and time, that it has changed over space and time, and that there may be acceleration or differences at different points in cosmic time. So it supports the idea of the expanding accelerating universe, but not necessarily the consistency of dark energy. So there is definitely more to be looked at moving forward, but I find it intriguing and exciting. And the fact that we can just look at these objects based on the red shift or the blue shift of the light and start to get an idea of how far away things are, how fast light and space time are accelerating. And just to be clear, they're not accelerating quickly. And in terms of the amount of expansion that takes place as light travels for a year, is a, I was almost say, astronomically small number. The shift is so tiny, you would never, ever notice it even in the most sensitive instrumentation on earth. But over vast parsecs of space and deep time, and when we're talking about something that can be 0.6 billion years of traveling, well, then those things become a little bit more obvious. And then for objects that are further out and then further out, the commutative acceleration effect of all these things expanding in every direction all at once makes it seem like very rapid, quick expansion. Oh, things are flying apart. But however, in terms of any sort of measurement of space that we can relate to, it's almost nothing. I just think it's wonderful that we finally have a larger sample set. This is the beginning. It's not done for sure. They're going to be looking at, looking for more of these supernovae. And I love the fact that they are using machine learning algorithms to allow the classification so that there's higher quality assurance of the timing and the brightness of the supernovae, the amount of energy that has allowed. So in doing this experiment and what they have made happen, they've also pioneered new techniques that will lead to the next generation of results and data, experiments results and data with respect to dark energy in our view of the universe. The other thing that I was looking at that graphic, the whole problem with the 1A being a candle brightness that's set in there, we think there's a maximum amount of burn that can take place in space with the supernova. Maximum amount of energy, a threshold of some sort, which could be controlled by the physics of something that I don't understand. But it's also possible that that whole chart winds up much better than we think it does, just because we have to make some assumptions about that candle strength. Like human assumptions based on where we're from and yeah. I mean, it's basically how we have triangulated and figured out distances and categorized things because we can't actually take a light meter up to a supernova and see exactly how much, how bright and how much energy it is. Because that's also related to how far away it is. I think that chart that showed all those different things, it might actually be lining up with the expansion much better than we think it does, but it's almost like we're missing a partial parameter of brightness. We haven't looked at it yet or maybe not measured yet. All right. It's tricky because it's also tied into how far away we think it is. It could also be. It can't get any brighter than this, but it is brighter than that. That means it could be further away. So that's why there's a little bit of, I think, could be all over plus it could be actually, the universe could be much more standardized than we think. And we could be living in a weird mirror universe, like a Hall of Mirrors, where the light's been bounced at us so many times, but it's just, yeah, it's still going fast. It's all there, whatever. This is what we see. Looks normal to me. Yeah. No way to shoot an arrow in that kind of a Hall of Mirrors archery range. Oh, speaking of archery, transition smoothly achieved. There's new evidence of the rise of archery in the Andes Mountains of South America. This is a study led by University of California at Davis. They focused on Lake Titicaca Basin in the Andes Mountains. Anthropologists found through an analysis of 1,179 projectile points that covered dates over 10,000 years into the past, that the rise of archery technology dates to around 5,000 years ago. So this is previous research held that archery in Andes emerged around 3,000 years ago. This new research indicates Bow and Arrow technology coincided with both expansion of exchange networks and a growing tendency for people to reside in villages. So people living together, pooling knowledge, sharing technology. Yeah. So that would be also around the time that the first current modern Europeans were arriving in Europe. Oh, that's fascinating. 5,000 years ago, there was also a study recently that suggested that's when the genes or that are responsible for multiple sclerosis ended up in European populations. Yeah. That a group of cowherders, aggressive, murderous cowherders. 5,000 years ago, brought their sheep and their cows and murdered people and dominated them and gave them their genes that protected them from sheep and cattle diseases. But they now don't do anything. Oops. So 5,000 years ago in the Andes, they're looking at these and that's what they're... Yeah. Bow and Arrow technology. But separate. So this would be like convergent social evolution. This has nothing to do with the Europeans. It has nothing to do. I mean, this would have been... No, no. They're not going to... Europeans aren't going to show up for another 4,500 years or so. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting. Yeah, yeah. And of course, there's already pyramids in South America that are 10,000 years old and older than the pyramids of Egypt. But it's one of those things. It's just it's worth always repeating and reminding people that... It's been around. The idea that the New World was discovered or even called the New World, even though it's much older of a world than the people who discovered it and called it the New World. It's always better to be... Okay. So now we're going to move to Southern China where researchers have discovered that an ancient ape survived until around somewhere between 215 and 295,000 years ago. It went extinct. But this isn't just your average ape. These were giants, three meter tall apes, weighing in at somewhere around 250 kilograms, which is somewhere around 550 pounds. Like a grizzly bear. I'm currently googling how big an orangutan is because apes, the way that their stance is, they're always bigger than you think when you see them in a zoo and stuff like that. Because they do a lot of squatting. I mean, what a quick Google tells me that orangutans can be up to about five feet and up to about 200 pounds. Yeah. So double that. Yeah. Terrifying. What's really kind of interesting about this is that this is sort of showing that they went extinct much more recently. So previously they've found tooth and bone and they knew that these gigantic... Gigant... Well, they even named it Gigantopithecus blackie. They knew they existed in Southern China and they knew this was a thing. But they didn't know when. They thought they must have been much, much older than this because there was no... They didn't have good dating, even though they found them in about 11 different cave systems, collected thousands of teeth. They finally have what they are, some reliable dating and now have pegged it between that 215 to 295,000 years ago as when the last of these giant apes would have been in Southern China. Now, that means this is... Human ancestry goes back further than this. Whereas in Africa. But the Neanderthals would have been out of Africa and probably in the far western Asian, the Caucasus Mountains, somewhere around Iran and into that area, they would have been up through the Levant, up into Iran, up into the Caucasus Mountains, what is now present day Georgia country of. And in China, we had late surviving Homo erectus was still likely running around Denise Evans, hybrids of or the Donator to the hybrid Neanderthal, whichever turns out to be different. So this is another giant hominid. This is the biggest hominid on the planet that we ever could have encountered. So when we talk about stories, we have all these mythological stories. Oh, giants that walked to the earth. Oh, well, actually, yeah, there were. Oh, what about the little people? Oh, yeah, Homo florensis. Actually, there were these tails of mythology. There's actually giant big foot. I mean, this is Bigfoot. This is actually bigger than I think Bigfoot is normally represented. What's the thing? That humans could have found could have interacted with. We know that humans, current modern humans, likely did reach places like Europe. And as far out as Siberia, perhaps much earlier than we think. Although again, it could be a tangled web of what's in Neanderthal if they're what's a human? What's whose DNA are we really looking at when we look at some of these ancient DNA signals of early humans reaching places like the Altai Cave? But yeah, it's very possible, and I would say likely, that some human ancestors encountered these giants. Well, they were all trying to probably get shelter in caves. Probably, yeah. Can you imagine? You're like, hey, I have the cave, and then you go in there. And then there's a bunch of giant sleeping apes. So yeah, spear one while it's sleeping. And then you take it and you taxidermit to look all fierce. And everybody's like, hey, he killed a big one. Look at you, good hunter. There's only three. And then the legend is born. The big feet, the big bears. Wasn't that one from this last year you reported on maybe? The big foot is like the standing up bears. Yeah, the standing bear says we talked about yesterday. My last story for the night tonight has to do with wings. Not fairy wings, not bird wings, but insect wings. Where the heck do insect wings originate? Where'd they come from? Researchers have been trying to figure out when and where insects evolved their wings and from which bodily structure they evolved. So this is evolution. All the things on our bodies that we have right now, we're probably doing other things at some point in evolutionary history and some species that predated us, right, that is in our evolutionary path, right? So like the fact that your inner ear started as part of your jaw? Yes, exactly. We go through, my favorite is the, oh my gosh, I'm blanking on it now. I've finally passed the point of not remembering. Are you trying to get your hyoid? No, the gills that we once had, you know, we don't need gills anymore. It comes from our fishy ancestry. Yeah, but the hyoid, there are all sorts of things that have been co-opted for different uses. And what were they doing originally? Researchers at the Biology Center of the Czech Academy of Sciences just published their work, a group of entomologists in the Journal of Communications Biology with their German colleagues. They looked at fossils of larvae from the Paleozoic era. They looked at these larval insects. And in looking at these fossilized insects, they determined that insect wings, very, very likely they, because of these fossils, they kind of found fossils that probably predated modern aquatic and land insects. And so there's kind of like, okay, there's some overlap. They all probably came from the same place at one point in time. And they determined that based on the factors that they saw, little gill buds and covers and other things, that insects, very likely, generally, their wings came from gills. What? Yes. And this is something that has, when you look at like lady, lace wings or ladyflies, like some insects that do have aquatic larvae, there are features that look, you know, they have little gill buds and gill plates that are on the abdomen and these little, and it's like, okay, you see that they could kind of come from that. But it's been this really interesting evolutionary mystery. And so, yeah, they say that there were, notably there are all these pairs of flattened projections on the sides of the abdomen that probably functioned as gills. And the structures are really similar to these pads that are seen in the larvae of modern insects. And they do give the statement that, although the fossils certainly do not represent the ancestor of winged insects, their larvae. And the adults of the group had fully functional wings and it's an ancient group of insects. And so given the fact that the larvae of other ancient insect taxa, such as mayflies and dragonflies are also aquatic, it supports the possibility that the aquatic environment played an important role in the very beginnings of the evolution of winged insects. From gills to flattened projections to wings. But then how do you like baby dragonflies? They survive in the water. They don't need wings when they're in the water. They go through, they transform, right? You know, they metamorphose. Yeah, but do they have gills? Or how are they doing the underwater thing? They don't have gills per se, but they do have the gill pads and they have gill, yes. So do they have to get them back separate from where the wings grow? Or can we just look at them? Yeah, okay. I think it's the whole like ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny where you can kind of see some features. I've heard that before. I still don't understand it. Yeah, so ontogeny is the evolutionary, or the no, ontogeny is the development of an organism throughout it, how it develops through its life. Recapitulates, so repeats phylogeny. Phylogeny is the evolutionary path. So that's why the statement kind of got like, we see the gills, the little openings in our own embryos that go away and disappear throughout development. But that is a structure that was necessary at one point in our own history. But usually similar structures get similar structures. And so this is like super weird because you would think that the gills would have ended up as some of the other mechanisms internally in insects that make up their weird respiration methods that aren't like our closed circulatory system or our closed respiratory system. So you think it would kind of like be in the abdomen as part of their respiration or something like that. But it's not, it's wings. That's wild. Yeah, I'm looking at like, of course, much more recent evolutionary, what do you call it? Phylogeny, repeating pilot, whatever the thing is. Like, okay. So birds, their arms turned into wings. I get it. Right. You get there, you flopped around for a while and eventually you got orca. Yeah, that's it. Orca, whales, they have their arms turned into fins. Okay, I get that. Where'd the dorsal come from? It just showed up. It's possible that like these wings just showed up out of something. I don't, I don't know why it just show up. There's, it's, it's part of the vertebrae have, have larger arches on. There's all sorts of anyway. But the, yeah. I agree with you that it's definitely, it's a strange leap. It's very interesting. Yeah. And there are other studies that look, have looked at other species and have suggested previously that wings may have been derived from ancestral gills. There is an evolutionary relationship between crustacean gills and the insect tracheal system. And so, but at the same time it is, you know, why the tracheal system is more understandable because that's still related to breathing. So why, but why wings? And so, yeah. I think they just found floppy gills and they're going, hey, that looks like a wing. I mean, I'm sure that's probably not what's happening, but that's how it sounds. Well, so it's, it's interesting because I'm, I'm also now thinking about turtle shells and how they started out as rib bones. The, the plastron, the bottom of a turtle shell is the ribs and the ribs ended up protruding out of the skin in development and creating this hardened outer, it's, it's this crazy kind of jump, kind of similar, more internal structure becoming more superficial and I don't know. And the gills, the gill, these gill pads and these, these funk, they are actually protecting, they're on the outside in the, you know, the, and they're kind of structured. And they're structured and they're protecting the underlying breathing apparatus, the respiration apparatus. And so once the organism emerges from the water and doesn't need to breathe in that way anymore, what are those external structures going to be co-opted for? Yeah, but what are they going to look like? Like, like a bird wing still looks like long fingers. Like, is there, is there something in the structure of gills when you put them onto a slide and look under a microscope that looks at all similar to the, the design structure of a bee's wing? I mean, is that, is there- The question is what does it look like in development? Yeah. Because it's, it doesn't really matter what it looks like in the end. It matters what it looks like when you look, when you look inside the, the chrysalis when they're developing and you see kind of how that wing is coming into, into being, does it follow the process that looks similar? Which is the whole other weird thing about this is that these animals go through metamorphosis. So it's not even like you can watch the wings happen in an egg as they develop from a ball of cells. You're, you're watching this happen when they become goop. But the goop knows what it wants to do next. It's a goop. It knows what it wants to do next, but you can't watch the goop on a mission. Yeah. It makes it so much harder to figure out what's going on developmentally. Kind of makes this really interesting. That's such a cool process. Yeah, so fast. I feel like, I feel like that's, uh, that's, that's probably it. That's the, that's the reason for the goop stage. The whole reason for the metamorphosis. I need to get this all the way over there and turn it into a wing. The only way we're going to do that, sir, is if you turn into goop first. Well, then sign me up. Sign me up. We'll do that. We'll just do a goop stage. I can't answer right now. I'm kind of in my goop stage. That's what I should have put as my out of office. I'm a little goopy right now. I'm currently in my goop stage. Wait, isn't that an effervescent candle? No, no, no. Oh, that's a different kind of goop. Different kind of goop. Right now, I'm just saying. That's not my goop. It's good. It's not metamorphosis. You're going through a goop stage. Yeah, not it not. My goop is in a crystal. It's not in a candle. Oh, man. Have we done it? I think so. We did it. We did a whole show. All the way through. Thanks everybody. Blair, I'm so excited you got to stay for the whole show. I know. I'm watching. I'm watching. You're watching. Come on. I know. You're asleep, girl. Keep sleeping, child. Everyone, thank you so much for joining us for another episode of This Week in Science. We hope that you enjoyed the show. Fada, thank you again for all of your help with show notes, with the YouTube description, social media. Gord, Aran, Laura, thank you for helping the chat room, keeping everything peaceful. Identity four, thank you for recording the show. Rachel, thank you for editing the show and everybody in the chat room. Thank you for who watched live. Thank you for being here to watch it all live. But of course, thank you to our twist patrons. Thank you to Aran and Apima, Arthur Kepler, Craig Potts, Mary Gertz, Teresa Smith, Richard Badge, Bob Coles, Kent Northcote, Rick Loveman, George Cores, Pierre Velozarb, John Ratnaswamy, Carl Kornfeld, Chris Wozniak, Vegard Shevstad, Donathan Kukat Styles, aka Don Stylio, Ali Coffin, Reagan, Shubru, Sara Forfar, Don Mendes, P.I.G., Steven Alvaron, Darryl Meyshak, Andrew Swanson, Fretis104, Sky Luke, Paul Ronevich, Kevin Ridden, Noodle's Jack, Brian Carrington, David E. Youngblood, Sean Clarence Lam, John McKee, Greg Reilly, Marc Kessenflow, Steve Leesman, aka Zima Kenhays, Howard Tann, Christopher Wrappin, Richard Brennan, Minnish, Johnny Gridley, Jaime Day, Chee Burton, Lattimore, Flying Out, Christopher Dryer, Greg Briggs, John Atwood, Rudy Garcia, Dave Wilkinson, Rodney Lewis, Paul Rick, Ramis Phillips, Shane Kurt-Larsen, Craig Landon, Sue Doster, Jason Olds, Dave Neighbor, Eric Knapp, Nat Lawn Makes, E.O., Adam Mishkan, Kevin Parachan, Aaron Luthin, Bob Calder, Marjorie, Paul Disney, David Silmarly, Patrick Peccararo, and Tony Steele. Thank you. Thank you all for your support on Patreon, and if you out there are interested in supporting us and help keep the show going, you can find information and become part of producing this show at twist.org. Click on the Patreon link. And next week's show, we should be back. Yeah, we'll be back. Well, some of us will be back 8 p.m. Pacific Time, broadcasting live from our YouTube and the Facebook channels, and from twist.org slash live. Oh, Blair. Do you want to listen to us as a podcast? Maybe while you make a souffle, I don't know, might be fun. Just search for This Week in Science if our podcasts are found. If you enjoyed the show, get your friends to subscribe as well. For more information on anything you've heard here today, links to stories and show notes will be available on our website, www.twist.org, where you can also sign up for newsletters. You can also contact us directly. Email Kiki at Kirsten at thisweekinscience.com, Justin at twistminion.gmail.com, or me, Blair, at BlairBazz at twist.org. Just be sure to put twist-T-W-I-S in the search line, or your email will be spam-filtered into some dark energy, which, since we don't fully understand it yet, we're not going to read it. You can also hit us up on non-Wing Hellscape social media where we are at Twist Science. We love your feedback. If there's a topic you would like us to cover or address, a suggestion for an interview, a haiku that comes to you in the night, please let us know. We'll be back here next week, and we hope you'll join us again for more great science news. And if you've learned anything from the show, remember... It's all in your head. We're at the after-show, but it looks like it's pretty good timing because Blair has got to go. Yes. Good job, everyone. We did it. I'm being summoned by the tiny human in my home. See you all next time. See you next time, Blair. Have a great night. Thank you, everybody else. Justin, here it is almost 10 o'clock. I can stick around for like a couple of minutes if you want to talk about stuff. Next week you are on No Show. No Show. No Show. Okay. No Show, Folk Show. Yeah. I'm going to, for at least the rest of this month, be every other week things. Okay. And then it might be the other every other week. I've got to figure these things out. Which is why we've been talking about possibly shifting it if, like Blair was saying, Mondays, maybe her lunch hour because that's the day that she is going to be working from home during the day. We could do like a noontime show, which would be like when you get home from work. But we should throw out to the audience, too, to see would that work better for them or is less Justin okay? Is it less Justin? If they can handle a couple of breaks once in a while, I would understand. I do sometimes go through that. Yeah. I think the question also is, you know, the consistency of the Bambino's bedtime with Blair and everything that's going on over there. I think we do have to keep discussing that stuff. Yeah, Shoebrew, right? What day is it? We have to keep track of it around here for some reason. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, I don't want to change the time of the show because it's been so consistent for such a very long time and that just makes it kind of easy to do it. Just this is what we do it. Yeah. And there's a chance that I will be able to rejoin at that regular every week time, maybe next month or the month after. It's going to be a little while. But so it would be really tough to say, let's change everything and then find that we could have kept it if we just tread at water a little bit longer. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I think, yeah, we need to consider it. If anybody has any thoughts for us, let us know on the discord, the Patreon, the social medias, the emails. I see your message there, Paul Disney. Yeah. Yeah. There are lots of things daytimey to be reconsidered, but what I want to do is just continue to be able to make the show as consistently as possible moving forward. I mean, I know the hardest thing is, as we all know, there's always change. Things change. It is now time. I do have to go. So are you going to work or just to go? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. The baby? I'd already be at work. Oh, jeez. Early. Okay. So, oh, no, I guess I wouldn't actually be there, but I would be on a train outside of Copenhagen, going up the eastern seaboard of the Sealand Island of Denmark right about now. Wow. Must be a beautiful ride. Yeah, it might be. It's dark. It's dark. All I can see is the moonlight reflected in the snow, really, from the train. And all there is are large stretches. Everything here is covered in snow and darkness. And the snow, I don't really mind as much. It's the dark, the darkness though. The darkness. But you do get the opposite part of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're getting it so light. So, yeah, I came to Denmark based on the brochures that were pictures all taking in the summertime. Right. What they don't tell you is that the rest of the year, the other 50 weeks of the year, it's all in dark. It's all, you know, why are Scandinavians and those who live in the very northern reaches vary into death metal and, you know, it's the darkness. It's just a way to get through the darkness. Okay, I gotta go. I gotta go. All right. Okay. So, everybody, thank you so much. Not you see next week, but everyone who's out there, I will see you next week. You'll be back in two weeks. Hopefully we'll have Blair next week. Justin just left me here all just with you, but that's great. I'm going to head out as well. This after show has become just a one show. Ooh, a contest. Fada has said that we should do a contest for a twist minion to guest host. We could do that. It's always fun. As long as whoever it is is just ready when I don't know I have a host or not. I don't know what's happening this year, everybody, but we're trying. All right. We won't overlap with a astronomy cast. We can't do that. We can't overlap with DTNS. We can't overlap. There's so many. There's so many. Everybody, enjoy. Shubu, thank you very much. Thank you for being here and not knowing what day it is. Everybody who's out there, thank you for being out there and being here. And I hope that you all have a wonderful week. We'll be back again with another episode next Wednesday, 8 p.m. Pacific time. It's on my calendar. I made a whole thing. And what's going to happen? We're going to talk about science. Hopefully it'll be me and Blair. Maybe it'll be me, Blair, and somebody else. I'm not exactly sure yet, but we're just going to live with a little bit of unpredictability, even though that's science. That's exactly what it is. I hope you all stay safe, stay healthy, take care of yourselves out there, stay curious, and stay lucky. We'll see you next week. Have a good night. Bye.