 Yes Hey everyone are we here have we started this thing is this thing on? Yes I'm going to go actually check my own. There it is. I see that we're yes So with my horse voice from Whatever cold I got this week We will start the show in three two This is Twists this week in science episode number seven hundred thirty recorded on Wednesday, July 17th 2019 what is a constant? Hey everyone, I'm dr. Kiki and tonight on the show. We will fill your heads with brain implants zombie ant fungus and variable constants, but first Disclamer disclaimer disclaimer Children small statured humans young and age and high in energy They like sugar playing with things being curious about everything and they have visions of the future Sometimes these visions are very different than the futures. They actually encounter upon growing up The world that seems only needs so many cowboy princess astro pirates what the world does need of course is Scientists and lots of them science is a field for the curious Science is all about playing with things and science runs on visions of the future like a hopped up seven-year-old with a fistful of pixie sticks If there's one thing you can inspire the next generation with that they can relate to the most it is science Because at its core there's a childlike curiosity an active imagination and above all else a Drive to prove that those who came before Didn't really know everything after all and nowhere is that more a parent then this weekend science Coming up next I Amstey Kiki and Blair and a good science to you to Justin Blair and everyone out there Welcome to another episode of this week in science. We're back again to talk about Science Who knew who knew that's what we'd be doing this week and This week what did I bring I brought stories about constants? Brain implants and we have an interview with dr. Lucas Pashteka about measuring constant variability in just a few moments What do you have for us Justin? What do I have I have got two million year old mother's milk secret life of zombies and radioactive islands Don't don't keep those islands that would be it's something you should just give away to the ocean forever Yeah, but yeah Blair. What's in the animal corner, but Blair I have Edible insects insects in pain and to coin a phrase Elbow dynamics That's a elbow dynamics. It's an awkward parade wave Yes, actually the story is not that far off from that As we jump into the show I would love to remind everyone out there that if you are not yet subscribed to this week in science online You can find us on YouTube where you can click that little notification bell to be notified when new episodes are live or Published you can also find us all places that podcasts are found radio calm Pandora stitcher Spreaker spotify tune in Google iTunes or just visit twist.org All right, but now it is time for the show so without further ado I'd love to introduce our guest dr. Lucas Pashteka. He is an assistant professor in the Department of Physical and Theoretical Chemistry at Comenius University in Bratislava Slovenia welcome to the show Slovakia, but yeah, yeah, I'm sorry. It's alright. It's alright. It's nice to everyone Thank you for joining us. So dr. Pashteka has had to get up very early in the morning. Thanks to the time difference Here and so he's been having to deal with this wonderful constant Time the speed of light how that's right That's how fast the Sun goes down and then the night goes by when you know, you have to wake up early in the morning We are on top of all this darn plate tectonics making everything so far away. Yeah, exactly exactly that's right and Part distance and measurement is going to be a large part of our conversation for today But I to get started Lucas I'd love to know How do we define a fundamental constant? What makes it fundamental and what makes it a constant? So it's basically something that cannot be It can only be measured cannot be derived from any underlying theory So that that would be something that is fundamental that we hit a limit of of what we know Or what we can derive from so that would be there's 20 something of these fundamental constants all together Which are basically just numbers or parameters in how our physics are set up How did you get interested in studying these constants? I mean something's constant It's the it's the end of our ability to To minimize or break it down any further Isn't that kind of dull does it get boring? Isn't it always interesting to to to try to figure out what's beyond the end? it's basically what people always did for for a very long time and physics has done this for for Even centuries now, right and Currently physics is trying to come up with a new Revolution so to speak so people are looking or physicists are looking for so-called new physics And this would be part of the new physics. So the old physics works Too well for too long and they're trying to poke holes in the theories and find places where it breaks down And this would be one of the places So when you say old physics is I mean is that the standard model? What is old what is old physics versus new physics? Okay, maybe maybe that sounds sounds too too much Too too strong of a statement all by old physics. I even meant quantum mechanics and relativity Wow, which by today's standards is considered old because it's hundred years old and it's been tested for a while It works really really well, but it doesn't work for everything. So yeah, the standard model would be the the old physics and Something which is beyond the standard model would be the new physics that we are looking for So there's there's something interesting in a constant that is always fascinated me Which is if you went back way back past the last hundred years way way back to when people were assigning gods To be in control of things One thing that there was never a god for was gravity Yeah, that's right. There was a north wind God south wind God God that looked over sheep and comfortable footwear It was God for everything but gravity was such a constant I think the reason was because it didn't change Up was up down was down the winds changed things bad things happen to sheep or shoes got out or whatever that right? Things had changed which were then associated with something that could cause a change But because gravity was such a constant down here on earth. It was never a Sort of delved into or thought of as something That's right. That's right. It was actually not even obvious that this is the force It took one very smart man and one apple to figure that out So so then when you're when you're sort of saying like there's all these constants that are just there and they're in place Then I immediately thought to like yeah Well, this was the constant gravity was a constant and so we stopped looking further Because that's just it. That's the answer up is up down is down constant look no further for Yeah done deal. Yeah, exactly exactly. So you're saying now there is a push to delve deeper into these constants and See mechanism or or figure out how else that they may be in place Yes part part of why people are looking for this is sort of philosophical or It comes from the fine tuning So it's very hard to explain why everything all of the constants are tuned For us to be here. They're precisely tuned So if you change a few of them few of the constants by a couple of percent They Life could not exist. So if you change I don't know the alpha constant the electromagnetic force by a few percent Then the atoms would not form or stars would not form There would be no life and apparently there is life and and there's way too many constants way too precisely tuned to figure out why is this One of the answers could be that they actually change in time or in space and that we are located at that time and space When it's actually good for life to to emerge So yeah, so what you're what we're getting at is the direction of your research Which is looking into the idea of variability in Constants not just that hey, there could be parallel universes in which these constants are different And in some of them there's no life and some of some of them You know, it's bubble universes or you know things things formed very differently But rather during the evolution of our own Universe these constants change that they're that they're variable. Yes. Yeah, exactly. That's the motivation. Yeah Is there also the possibility that there could be heterogeneity within the universe itself? That's the constants are different in different places. Yeah Exactly. So there there is some astronomical evidence even for this. The people have been looking for for these these changes and a couple of years ago an Australian Australian team found astronomical evidence from Quasar spectroscopy that the constant alpha the strength of the electromagnetic force is Changing across the universe. So there's a dipole or a gradient across the visible universe Which is not very large, but there is something it's it's a bit inconclusive because Astronomical observations with this kind of precision. They have all sorts of problems with systematic errors and stuff but there's definitely Something that pushes people to look for these things But we want to do it more precisely which would mean a set up lab measurements on earth, which would be better Can you talk about I've got for people who are watching right now? I've got an infographic up from that Australian team Referring to how they did their measurement looking at these quasars and they looked at the the light the electromagnetic light spectra from the quasars But they did three different measurements and can you talk about kind of their methodology there and how? Yeah, sure doing would be different so so basically quasars are these really really bright light bulbs that we get for free all around the universe and They they shine lights To out to earth and when the black light passes through some Galaxy or a gas cloud You get spectra out of it So you you can measure spectra of Hydrogen or helium gas or many other elements from very distant places in the universe and compare these spectra to the spectra measured on earth And then if you notice the the black lines there Those are the lines the absorption lines that we're looking for and if these lines are Slightly shifted with respect to the spectra that we know from from here from earth then that's that can be an indication of Shift in the fundamental constant and These three measurements that are on the picture. It's just that's just three different Telescopes that are around the globe. So there's trillion team They they merged all the data from all the available telescopes and all the available quasar spectra And from that they derived the the gradient across the universe Yeah, what's so what I find really interesting about your idea and this you you've got a paper that's recently out Which is what what I you came to me with and said I've got this paper and let's talk about it That is not looking at Stuff from distant galaxies, but is like you said here on earth. And so how do we? Measure and how do we start measuring things that are around us here? And what it what is the idea that you proposed and tested and kind of did this proof of concept for? so the The people who do the astronomical measurements They have the advantage that they have very very large scales at hand, but the control of the precision is very low So we wanted to reverse this and we wanted to have a very well controlled experiments done here on earth But the problem there is that you need a really really high precision because the changes within our lifetime or within Within the time that the earth moves moves across the the background of the universe or the background in the gradient of Some of these changes of fundamental constants is very small. So the the changes in the constants are fractionally somewhere on the 17th digit So it's really really far far down there They're like 10 to the minus 17 10 to the minus 17 per per year roughly per year. Okay per year Yeah, yeah, so so you would measure for a year and maybe you would see a shift in the On the 17th digit. So that's currently where we're at the Most of the measurements that were done so far were done by spectroscopy and they hit this limit of 10 to the minus 17 Roughly and they cannot really push it any further so we tried to come up with the alternative path to to measure these things and We were thinking so what is the most precise device on earth on earth and that would be the gravitational wave interferometers or basically any laser interferometers. Those those are the most precise Instruments that we have at hand and we had to come up how these could be applied for To the measurements of of the fundamental constants. So The laser interferometer. Yeah, thank you for the infographic It's basically just one laser beam is split into two perpendicular ones They reflect of the mirrors and recombine again And if the the length of these perpendicular arms are slightly slightly different than The the interference pattern changes and and the signal changes. So these can actually detect changes At the level of 10 to the minus 20 or 22 even which is incredibly precise And that's why we're all they were also able to measure the gravitational waves And since these interferometers are all about changing lengths or measuring lengths We were trying to Figure out how length of or size of material depends on the fundamental constants And that's what we what we calculated in in our paper for different materials used in interferometry How they change with the constant alpha, which is the strength of electromagnetic force or so called fine structure constant And how it changes with mu which is the proton to electron mass ratio and so We didn't actually measure it. We are theorists, but From what we see it would be possible to push the detection limits couple of orders of magnitude further Then it was possible up to now So let's work through this kind of With a thought experiment. This will be fun for a theorist, right If you were looking say at a material an element like gold or The the carbon in a in diamonds What would your experiment like what what you're suggesting mean for looking at one of these one of these materials Well, there are a couple of different options here. So if you want to build an interferometer It could be A cavity interferometer where you would have a crystal cavity of a solid block of material Whether it's diamond would be probably a bit too expensive, but maybe No, we'll just go get it from, you know, the crown jewels the tower of london. Sure Get some nice ones Yeah That's sapphire sapphire is also used which is also a bit expensive but less so and and so so we We calculated how these materials change So there will be one option to have a block of crystal and have the laser light pass through the crystal Or then it could be a vacuum type of interferometer, which was basically Similar to the ones that measure the gravitational waves, which are The ligo and vergo. So you would have a tube made out of solid material, which is Empty has vacuum in it and and the laser light only passes through the vacuum but the change of the The the the size of the tube itself would change as well. So therefore it could be detected and then there's also mass resonance Detectors for gravitational waves, which are usually large cylinders or large spheres of solid material and Then you measure the resonance in in the in the size of this material And how would Based on your your calculations, how would the A change of variance in the electromagnetic force this alpha How would that potentially affect a material versus the change in the mu? Are they the same? Are they different? Would you be looking for different? Different results They are they are quite different For for alpha usually the heavier materials are better So it's a relativistic effect and and as we know relativistic effects usually go Hand in hand with heavy elements or super heavy elements even if that's possible to get So so the heavier heavier elements are better for alpha and the lighter elements are better for mu And so the the reason is Mu comes from vibrational effects and alphas from the relativistic effects But both are influencing the electronic structure of the the material. So how the electron glue Holds all these atoms together And if you change the the physics of of the glue Then you change the spacings between the the atoms and that's that translates into the length So in the end you're you're looking for an actual change in the crystalline structure Like if you're looking at a crystal or yes, exactly. Yes Wow Could you actually borrow LIGO to do this? Yeah, we have to talk to them. Yeah, we have to talk to them. Definitely. It would be great Maybe we don't even have to Borrow anything to or ask them to rerun any experiments for us. Maybe it has been already measured Yeah, we just yes We just have to look at the data and look for different types of signals Then are the signatures for the gravitational wave? mergers of Neutron stars and black holes. It's probably right there in some Some some noise trimming Protocol data the software that they put the data through Exactly. Exactly. That's that's the problem. Yeah. Yeah But if we get our hands on the data, it could could help us Oh, that's interesting. So in reading about your work, there's this interesting It's not just the kind of like, okay, how big is an atom How do the how does the variance or variability of this affect the size of a trunk of Diamond over the course of a year, you know, it's not just that it actually has potential to tell us about the distribution of Dark matter and can I'm trying to wrap my head around that so can you help a little bit? How how does how does what you're looking at in terms of molecules and atoms start to scale up to the level of our universe Yeah, so so with dark matter, uh, this is also Connected to the fundamental constants because with some theories that go beyond the standard model and some theories of dark matter like axion theories they predict that uh The there is a little bit of an interaction with dark matter between dark matter and and the the rest of the the universe and and this interaction could actually produce locally Changes in the the fundamental constants and since the dark matter is not distributed equally everywhere We know it's everywhere, but it's not smoothly distributed and there's some bigger structure in the universe and if if we are flying or if our Our solar system is flying through a lump of dark matter then temporarily Values of some constants could change and then go back for example. So if we would look for blips in in in these Measurements for example from LIGO. This could be explained by by the dark matter. So this could be one option Uh, and again a new way how to detect dark matter That to me is just uh, it's it's such a fascinating it's mind-blowing and a fascinating new idea You know that and also as you're saying we could already have this data Because LIGO is already working, but they're just not looking for that specifically Yes, yeah, exactly. They are looking for a very specific kind of signal And we would be looking either for oscillations periodic oscillations, which would signify the interaction with the dark matter field Or very very slow drifts, which would be the cosmological evolution of the fundamental constants as as we Talked about before or those temporary blips, which would be All things that would register as as noise. Yeah Which is I like that so the the raw data Uh, I was revealing that could be revealing secrets of the universe that we had Not theorized or not there to ask before we could have already collected this information And they were like, oh that was the train going through the tunnel up top, but No, actually it was some dark matter Yeah, exactly But since we have Couple of these interferometers around the globe if these events are synchronized in all of them Then we can actually say this is significant This is not just a blip in the data of unknown origin This could be This could be explained by by our theory and and then even because we have three of them We can even deduce the direction from where it came So so that's kind of fascinating then it would take like just basically an algorithm to look for Over over these different instruments to look for a time signature pattern Over that raw data to yeah, regardless of what it is It's seemingly seemingly Happening in a regional span of ah, there's a thing. What's the reasonable span of time? That these things should be occurring should they be coming instantly in all these locations or is it like Not no no no not instantly not instantly. It's it's basically similar to to gravitational waves because we are Passing through no, it's actually slower because we would be passing through some 30 000 kilometers per per second hour Across across the universe. I am not sure. I don't remember the speed the exact speed of of our galaxy But so this is I mean this is also a fascinating thing that this is also Oh, I've always talked about the problem of time travel, but we're on a planet that's spinning, you know 1,000 miles an hour around its axis and then the planet's going around the sun I can't remember what is 34 000 miles an hour something crazy Uh, it's more than that. It's much more than that, but then the universe the universe itself That solar system is spinning within the within the galaxy This is also the problem with time travel time travels by the way has been invented dozens of times Every time somebody does they do it from a stationary time traveling device and find themselves instantly transported to the cold of space because their Garage was nowhere near their garage even 24 hours ago. It was so far away They can maybe they actually they might be outside of the solar system. It's not the galaxy. Yeah, that's right. That's right But we have we have an idea though of how we might be passing through a zone of different constants of physics Yeah, because because we know how fast we travel Compared to the cosmological background or the the cosmic microwave background So that's our reference and that's where we assume the dark matter structures would be static So, okay, wait a second that that's because that brings up the interesting thing Then there's a constant position For the variable constants that they inhabit within space if we can move here, we do know looking at the at the universe we've got an idea of this clumpiness of the of space and where dark matter Is clumped up based on our our how we've been looking at the distribution of mass Yes, these these the pictures that you're showing those are those come from simulations because we cannot see dark matter But but we we know from about these structures from astronomical observations of lensing and micro lensing And the the bullet cluster is very famous for this So so so we would know that there is some structure to dark matter We know roughly what the density of the dark matter is all around us. It's it's around us. It's all around or through the earth But the density is very low locally But in some places it's it's higher in some places it's lower and we could be able to detect these these changes so just just to give you an idea the if you collect all the dark matter within the the The sphere that our earth creates it would be roughly Few hundred grams like like a kitten or something Earth has a kitten of dark matter Yeah So what i'm interested in is this idea of this I guess the clumpiness and the possible Variability from place to place it's going to be a very slight variation as you've said would it be Enough of a variation to actually make a difference in The structure of anything that we know to be if we were to move through it No in in our everyday life nothing would really change So so that's why also we why we haven't noticed anything until now But we have to really really try and look for this very Precisely and very dedicated Scopes so so unfortunately This is not entirely obvious that this these changes are in place, but there might be And we hope they are and it would be great to to see them and to confirm our theories But for for the everyday life nothing would really really change In terms of the evolution over the whole time scale of the universe We've talked with other physicists about the beginning of the universe and we've talked with physicists about the end of the universe Any possible ends and oh, yeah, how things may have begun and how they may end You know thinking about if there is a change if these If these constants are evolving Like, you know the dark energy pushing things apart or dark matter clumping if it's if there is the variation over time Will that affect the different? Possible and it comes. Yeah. Yeah, it could actually But it very much depends on on how much the constants could could vary So if if we see The original idea actually comes from From from this, uh, it comes from dirac and his large number hypothesis where he hypothesized that Since The the ratio of the gravitational to electromagnetic force is a very very large number And uh, also the age of the universe Expressed in in these kind of constants is a similarly large number number number. Uh, how about Maybe this is actually, uh, one comes from the other that they are proportional to one another and and and the strength of Of the constants was equal at the beginning of the universe and then slowly over time it diverged So that the gravity gravity is so much weaker than the electromagnetic force And that was the original idea why where people started looking into the variation of fundamental constants But this is this idea is a bit shaky, but at least it started the field It did start it. Yes, um from from your own perspective and what you're looking at. Um, how how do you I mean, you hope that something is variable. You definitely need. Yeah, of course. Of course. Otherwise, I wouldn't be working in the field. Yeah You're not just doing it to confirm the constancy. You're hoping Um, what I like in in the ideas of new physics and these alternative, uh, hypotheses to Uh, say the standard model. Um, are there any that? That peak your interest the most It's it's hard to say there's way too many currently but these kind of experiments are actually useful for Deciding which of the theories can be valid or which are not uh, because they have different predictions and Even for the variation of fundamental constants and by by doing these measurements or pushing the the detection limits further We can decide that some of these theories should be thrown out and some some are We should focus on only on some of them so so maybe We'll we'll see the the idea of supersymmetry is a nice theory. But uh, so far nothing has been really confirmed String theory again similar seems beautiful, but uh, no no direct predictions that have been confirmed either We'll see how it goes For what you're doing, obviously, it's computational and theoretical and there's the development of things like laser That would allow Experiment experimentation to actually take place. Um, do you see or can you imagine any technologies that would? Maybe take it The next step further like is there a particular development that you're just kind of waiting for? It to happen Not that I know of not that it would be a nice surprise if there was a suddenly something More more precise, but so far our focus was on the laser interferometry because they are so well developed Much much more than than anything else that we know that could be useful for these measurements so But it's not only the LIGO and Virgo and these huge interferometers, but even the smaller Table top lab sized ones are are still very useful for these experiments So we can actually try and convince some experimentalist group To to do a dedicated experiment and and to to measure for a year or two Something like this just in a lab not not on LIGO This would be the laboratory with the locked door that nobody knows into This is one of those experiments that would have to be set up and you just go Okay, nobody unless you're checking and not touching anything just calling data and that's it It's it and I I I really I I love the idea that this you know The technology is already there very often in theoretical physics. There's not an immediate Possible experiment it's like hey we we thought of these things and you can do them when you figure out how to make it work If you're actually we might find out Yeah, but you're actually saying you can test this Yes, exactly. Exactly. Exactly. That's where we are trying to convince people to actually take the idea to the real world not just on the paper and Finally all the the time spans of these experiments are usually measured in the lifetimes of phd students Which is a unit that is very often used in physics Does it have its own standard notation? No, unfortunately, I can't see that but it should be introduced Yeah, there's that should be you're right Blair the phd half-life. I like that What what I'm wondering is The this whole time is just really bothering me this this basic sentence of the variability of constants Just the language side of it is really bothering me. It's so oxymoronic So if you find out that there is this variability in our fundamental constants, what are we gonna call them after that? Fundamental parameter, maybe I like it. Yeah Yeah, but that how how neat if it at some point can go To the end actually figure that out my son asked me the other day. He's said what What do what do electrons break down into how do electrons how long do electrons live? And I had to go look look it up and apparently it's Longer than the universe will be Around electrons support they have a half-life that is basically as long as the universe has been around so far No one ever saw any of them break Nobody and you don't expect them to No, would would something I mean if you know mu has variability or You know, would it affect this calculation of our idea of how long an electron lasts? Mmm, not not how long it lasts, but um, maybe what changes is like the effective mass of an electron So so that that would be That would be one thing that that changes But the lifetime should should stay the same. It's still the same particle, but it would behave slightly differently Because all these changes are very very small very slight Yeah, I do I I do appreciate knowing that should these constants be variable Nothing will really change Yes, for us everything stays the same. That's that's very good Conferencing isn't it? No doomsday No, I do appreciate that. Um, I Oh, go ahead But does that have any implications for the the universe beyond Uh, where matter is currently inhabiting post big bank. Does it have implications for a beyond the sphere of our Known or theorized or observable And yeah, is there is it does it mean that we're encroaching? The territory that we're taking up now with our with our universe Uh, was there a different physics there previously that we've affected or pushed aside or incorporated in some strange way Yeah, we think so we think so but If if the the cosmological evolution is in fact in place then then yes, even as we speak It's still varying very very slightly and and the further we Further down the timeline we go and further down the space line we go as well So as as we move through space it it should change a little bit So it's a little bit an answer of what was here before uh I cannot really answer answer this that that's very hard before big bang you mean or yeah, I mean it has implications in Uh, if there are these varying constants that have evolved and changed over time since the formation of our universe It gives some insight if you can find this thing Give some insight to what was there Before exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah Some of the theories of what we know and and how the the Uh, the universe evolved would change If if we can really confirm that there is an evolution Then we would have to change also how maybe even how all the universe is by a little bit I guess the these these expectations would change as well. So there would be all sorts of Uh consequences if you really incorporate it into the theory Discoveries have consequences. Yeah. Yeah, usually too What is your next step, what are you working on next or now I'm I'm still working also on the variation of fundamental constants field So we're trying to look for the ideal material for for these kind of measurements But then I also have many other projects unrelated to the variation of fundamental constants Like I I'm also working on on super heavy elements, which are the elements at the very end of the periodic table Recently, some of them were given new names, right? and So I'm trying to also look at the properties of these newly discovered elements and how they should behave chemically physically And because it's unknown from the experiment so far. They they've seen a couple of atoms And they are you talking so you're are you talking about like 119 and The things that are really heavy and they only last for this blip in time and so you have like no time to look at them Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So that that's why Theory comes in handy because on on the computer it it works out fine Nothing breaks down and you can actually model these materials or chemicals with the super heavy elements like copernicium Relatively easily and you can predict their properties and then maybe you can suggest ways how these can be confirmed On those very very short time scales that are available for for the experiments Those are the shortest experiments in the history of science Yeah, yeah, they are pretty short. Yeah milliseconds often. Yeah, but maybe years to set up and milliseconds to run Exactly, exactly. But uh, people are still convinced that there might be the so-called island of stability in the periodic table so if they are able to prepare these super heavies with the Bigger number of neutrons the the nuclei could be stable or at least more stable and They they can survive for definitely more than a second and even minutes or hours or days which would be more more chemical like amazed somehow Forming them and creating a molecule at the same time that could help stabilize. Exactly. Yeah, that's that's one of the things that We're also looking at. Yes. I would love to see that in a science museum someday I lift this heavy the super heavy metal No No, you can't no Yeah What would you like people to take home with you? Um, um with you with them Sorry question words. Would you like people to take you home with them? No, that's not No People take the kittens home. Okay. Yeah, exactly. Take home the dark matter kittens. You will regret taking home the dark matter kittens You will regret it. It's really cute But it's going to devour the souls of everyone. No, that's not that's a different kitten. No, yeah, they're just dark matter kittens There's a lot of variability there Anyhow, what would you like for people to take home with them about the work with that you do and um And and why you do it? um, yeah, because physics should not be Uh sad and boring and stable And we should evolve like we do in every other field. So that's that's why we are looking at these things And the take home message is that not everything you deem constant is necessarily really constant so Yeah, I I think it is it is good to keep that in mind philosophy change Yeah, that's a philosophy there not just physics Yeah, that's right How physics can be applied to your everyday life everyone. There we go Dr. Peshteka, thank you so much for joining us. Is there um having me Welcome. Is there a website or any other social media or anything that? Um besides the research gates website that I have my uh My site on I don't I don't have any other social media that I would advertise but yeah research gates But you can you can see my papers And that's it Wonderful, we will put links to those on our website. All right. Yeah. Thank you so much for joining us Thank you. Have a great night. It's been wonderful talking with you. Have a wonderful day See you Bye Everyone I hope you enjoyed that interview as much as I did learning a lot about the variability But possibly In the constants the things that we think are constant. How fun with dr. Lukash Peshteka from slavakia And now it is time for us to take a break. We're going to take a break. This is this week in science We have more science and guess what I have a Story about the Hubble constant Coming up apropos apropos. Do you think I themed that? We'll be back in just a few moments. 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Thank you Shows the way The methods of hypothesis impatience are the only things I need Put on a pair of goggles and go looking for the things I couldn't see The answers lie somewhere within this scatter plot And the scatter plot of science is back with this weekend science Yeah scatter plot It's time now for this weekend. What has science done for me? Oh getting better all the time. Oh harmonies. Oh good May harmon archer wrote and said what did science do for me? I didn't die or go blind or have my bones twisted or become sterile from polio measles mumps rubella whooping cough or influenza today Yay Second It was very good. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes Indeed, thank you science for keeping us healthy keeping us protected from diseases that we once Died from or we're yeah, they were kind of a big deal once upon a time Yeah, yeah disease. Yeah those in particular polio measles mumps back in those days back when we had diseases We're working on the influenza for sure Okay You want to tell us what science has done for you lately? You need to send me what science has done for you. You have to tell me because I'm not a mind reader you listening right now Send me a note. That's right. You can Leave a message on our facebook page. Just go to this weekend science on facebook Leave me a message or send me an email. That's a great way to do it. Kirsten k i r s t e n At this week in science dot com We keep filling this segment of the show with your little letters. I love doing it constantly Because I have a story about a constant right now Is it a variable constant? Well Yeah, that's kind of the story Thanks for spoiling this story Blair. Well, we didn't even have to have an interview it turns out constants are variable done Blair is a spoiler Spoiler alert. I should have said that first I blew it too. It's after okay. All right. All right, so we have spoken before about this controversy related to A constant called The Hubble constant Right one of one of my least favorite by the way just going on record I've always been proven wrong, but I'm going on record again and say A long time ago almost a hundred years ago Edwin Hubble. He's an astronomer discovered that the universe Had been expanding Since the big bang. We didn't know this all the time. He discovered it, right? He was looking at supernovae and he was There's something going on here and There's an expansion that's happening and How fast it's moving how fast that expansion is taking place is called the Hubble constant Exactly what the value of that constant is We don't really know we've been like oh fudge factor. Okay. And so researchers have used a couple of different Yeah, but but I'm just going to say a couple of uh, we've we have tried to nail down this value And this is where the controversy comes in Researchers have been trying to do a couple of different methods First is looking at the cosmic microwave background radiation And how it has changed over time as a measure of The growth of the universe and it has given us one value and the other who has been looking at Cepheids these pulsars and their brightness and their Or their luminosity and the time between the pulses Can be used to measure how far away they are from our own planet so that you can go. Oh, that's a big star That's far away versus a small star that's close to us when they both look the same these pulsars and their luminosity and other things these can be used to actually Give a value of distance and they've been used to determine another value for this constant of Change of growth of our universe It's different. So we have two different methods. And so these Carnegie researchers were like, okay, we're going to do another method Where this method is going to break the tie, right? It's going to Give us the data that's either the big one or the small one and it's going to agree with one of those Nope And we now have a third value That's just about smack dab in the middle between the other two So that makes it correct I mean, it's sort of like the steer for the middle lane the uh, uh, it's it's it's uh Some baseball player I was hearing about they they woke him up in the 13th inning. He was completely hung over He went up the bat. He hits a homerun This is but he goes back and his teammates go. How'd you do it? I aimed for the ball in the middle There you go. That's the right one. It's always the right answer. So I I take the three bears. It's yeah, just right I take issue with this whole situation and I can't Actually explain why except that when you drop like a A handful of marbles on the ground I understand there's friction and we don't know We don't think that there's this friction at the outer limits of our universe But do we really know right? But when you do that you have these marbles. So first of all, they slow down As they expand out they lose this kinetic energy But there's also variability between them based on how heavy they are and what part of the ground They're moving across in all this case of there's all sorts of variables all over our universe based on Celestial bodies relationship to each other Potential dark matter all this other stuff that why would it be constant? So you don't think that the universe is potentially radiating out in a perfect ball of energy? No I don't So it's like a messy spill. Yes. It's like a spill. Exactly. Like at least one of the measurements. This is this is a I would okay. I mean I'm not going to quote the website here, but it's apparently Means that any distance in the universe stretches by a point zero zero seven percent every million years So part of part of when we're talking about this this massive expansion It looks really big over large time and space scales But it's really so it's it's tiny and Regionally kind of locally things if if the distance between where you are and the corner store changed by point zero zero seven percent every million years It's going to take the same amount of time over your entire lifetime to walk there and back You won't notice it right and but this is where dark matter and dark energy come in right because you've got dark energy That's fueling that expansion putting pushing things that are distant further apart Dark matter is maintaining the clumpiness so that things that are kind of in the same area are kind of staying clumped together in the same area But yeah that expansion is happening and it may yet change and so this is I think part of the debate of what's happening Is it a constant? Is and this and this harkens back to our earlier conversation with lucash As to whether or not it's been a constant forever right And potentially based on the cosmic microwave background radiation that giving us one value is because maybe that has changed over time And maybe this other Standard candle way has given us another this third method now that they have used is They've used red giants, which are a type of star the end of their life when they're using up hydrogen and in this cross or i'm sorry not hydrogen helium other h e helium it gets Turned on and so their structure changes and when their structure changes based on this entered chemical energy shift It's recognized they can go. Oh, that's a red giant. That's what it is And so they can they've looked at all these red giants and kind of gone Okay, there this is the brightness the how the peak brightness of these things And so now they have a scale and they're able to Use these red giants as a third kind of standard candle Of sorts But anyway, according to this expansion rate, it's six point 69.8, which is right in between The old ones and nobody really knows why except now there's a third number And so the controversy continues The Hubble constant not yet a constant I Yeah, they should they should call it the Hubble parameter. Yeah, I like that a lot. I'm into it. Yeah uh speaking of other things that are changing very quickly this week, uh Elon musk he's come out to talk about uh another of his many companies not spacex Not tesla Nothing to do with power wall batteries not the boring company Not the boring company No, no, no This one is neuro link neuro link's been around for a little while hasn't made many headlines Except, you know in the in the very geeky techie communities neuro link is a company that he founded to create Something of a sci-fi concept People have called it a neural lace in which we would have electrodes or a lace of electrodes implanted in our heads to allow us to communicate wirelessly with uh computers with prosthetic devices and in elon musk's dreams to become symbiotes with AI You know in in recent years, he's come out Saying hey everybody, we need to be pretty afraid of artificial intelligence. This stuff is gonna beat us We're gonna we're gonna lose to the ai's. You know, he's been and then the light went on and he went oh So I should be in control of that. He says if you can't beat him join him And so his goal is to make us one with the artificial intelligence. Exactly So I'd be on board except. I know that there'd be pop-up ads Huh No No, when I go when I when I I don't want pop-up ads in my internal dialogue thinking That's the one place that they're hopefully you'd be able to turn them off Yeah, but also turning off in general is what I really just said, you know the implants No, thank you a cutting hat that I could put on or take off Connect disconnect That could be interesting But even before we get to this You have some foil hats That's the tin foil hat before we even get to this point. There are many many technological hurdles that need to be overcome and addressed and In this last week Elon Musk gave a big presentation. There has been a paper published related to neural links most recent Public advancements that they're making public And he's also giving I believe another presentation again today actually But what they have been doing is essentially Taking the next big step forward in electrode technology They have taken the number of electrodes and the size of the electrodes to another level They are now instead of using solid little Wires or you could even imagine them as tiny needles into your brain which Stick in your brain and then your brain, you know, it's kind of moving around like jello And if that electrode isn't moving your You can imagine the damage that could potentially be caused to the tissue and then the immune response that would reduce the effectiveness Of those electrodes. So what they are using is a new material that they're developing and they call them threads So they are a flexible material that would potentially flex with the movement of the brain additionally, they have developed a robot for Injecting these electrodes into the brain So robotic they are developing robotic surgery to transplant or implant these electrodes in because They have to have a very accurate way of getting tiny these tiny tiny thread like wires Into precise locations in the brain. They're looking at locations say in the motor cortex and the somatosensory cortex at this point in time That would potentially have therapeutic uses say for prostheses or or other things Brain computer interfaces that would help people move robotic arms. Maybe I don't know But so they need to have a Getting something if you've ever tried to thread a needle And that little wobbly piece of thread putting it through the hole in the needle You know how hard that is to do and it works really well when you get the thread nice and straight, right? So it's the same kind of thing going on in the brain Injecting these thread like electrodes in you have to have A way of doing it that allows it to penetrate in a needle like manner So and then they have to become flexible and so they're developing this method They're also increasing the number of electrodes Whereas historically the maximum number of electrodes was like 128 per electrode array Now they are looking at increasing that number substantially up to something like 3000 So you're going to drill 3000 holes in somebody's head? No, no, no one big hole. Oh one big hole Okay Uh The only thing i'm going to take away from this conversation honestly is that even my brain Isn't in a constant state No, it's not in a constant state and here's another problem talking with somebody on twitter today Brian william jones who's also a neuroscientist. He brought up the the Problem of gliosis and we've talked on the show a lot about glia and how they how important they are for neural signaling For the immune system It within the brain the immune response in the brain and also for picking up and sending local signals And one thing that we know happens with electrodes in the brain is gliosis where they harden there is a They basically create an immune response that leads to a plaque or a scar tissue That forms around the electrode that reduces the effectiveness of that of that electrode It can't pick up signals as well and it can't send them as well either So this study still still does not really address the that issue and with gliosis That progresses over time with all electrodes any implant in the brain to date and that even with this stuff They're looking at a human human implant of volunteers. Maybe within a year Yeah, they're working on rats right now at neural link and they are hoping to Go on to human trials within a year But even with that there will be deterioration and we know that these Devices need to be swapped out. So if you're looking for a permanent implant You're gonna go in having to know that you will be having brain surgery Not once during your life to have them implanted But probably multiple times to have the old ones taken out and have new ones taken in We don't know What effect that will have on the brain and so there There is something there just Technologically, there are still many many many many hurdles Musk is great for the big vision He's got an amazing team of people at neural link Maybe they and the other researchers around the world who are addressing this will address These issues, but um, yeah, who knows maybe some day what it sounds like is they need to construct A part of rank. So this is a weird thing that Kiki, maybe this is a mythology. Maybe this is a real thing There's a a node a little fold in einstein's brain Which they say is something that you see replicated Uh a a Plasticity a formation that takes place in a certain area that is common amongst people who play violin I don't know if you've ever maybe you've not heard Or maybe this is like it could also not be a thing. Uh, just full disclosure Um, but if there's if there's an oh go ahead No, what I all I was going to say is I don't know if it is This particular fold I I think that may be a myth when you say this one fold is only in people who play violin I think that in itself is mythology, but There is greater folding In brains like einstein's So this greater folding is but but but I've heard that some element, uh, some this is okay this is But uh couldn't a structural change that takes place in the brain from having a lifetime of interacting with the violin say um Before implanting Uh, it may be that you would have to take advantage of something and repurpose it Versus just implanting and and do a thing. So it might be like, okay You can get the brain implant But you have to study violin for 20 years first because we need a change in this region That we can then co-opt that won't cause scarring that will be something peripheral Uh that we're going to co-opt its regular function to communicate with this device I mean, it might it might be a little bit more effortful than picking a brain region that we think is uh, not as useful or not as uh, you know, or just Uh picking brain regions where there's access currently that could have scarring glual effect Uh downstream effect but creating a A structural change in the brain through something else and then you look you're going to lose the ability to play the violin Okay at the end of this surgery. I know you spent 10 years developing it But we're going to use that portion of the brain that that caused this extra node or fold Uh to do the interaction with this implant It may be something a little bit down the line where we have to incorporate an actual adaptation of the brain itself to be able to Jump in I think even beyond that I wonder if at some point if we do go into This extra stimulation this extra communication with Artificial intelligence will that change the structure of our brains? So I think that's an even more interested another interesting question I have a question that maybe I just am missing something here, but I just want a clarification here We're talking a lot about the nuts and bolts of how to make this work And that there could be human trials within a year Why would I as a human want to sign up for this trial? What is the real world benefit of being able to commune with AI? At this point in time if they are doing those human trials, it's going to not be Communing with AI that is not what's going to be happening. It's going to be oh, look I'm sending a message on twitter with my brain Um, it will I think I think it would be but what they're looking at Exactly Yes, that would be the what they are First going for medical therapeutic purposes. So it will be For people who have locked in syndrome Where they can't communicate to be able to use a brain computer interface to be able to send messages and communicate with people About their needs It would be paraplegics people who can't move to be able to Control devices in their environment or even You know extra limbs You know, so initially that's what it would be. It would not be I am becoming one with an AI. That's right Downstream that's like his big vision Thinking so I guess and I know we we have more science to talk about but I guess I'm not seeing a big difference between This and non AI related studies that we've talked about on the show Being able to control a robot arm with a neural link of a different kind or being able to generate speech even Based on brain waves that we've talked about just recently. So Do you really need the AI to get this stuff done? I guess is my question No, and what I was trying. I mean, that's the kind of fun futuristic sci-fi Yeah Spin on it, but like the real news of what they've done is they have Created this new electrode array that is flexible and Has more wires, which means connection with more neurons, which means a better resolution better higher resolution signal They've also created a new chip for interfacing between those electrodes and Computers that apparently will connect via usb-c to So the idea would be the idea would be and it's the robe and and the surgical robot as well So they've got a few things together But it sounds like it sounds like the premise though Blair would be that you don't have to remove the hat at the end of a session like the the idea is to create a Semi permanent interface that would be wearable For days and weeks and months and maybe years as opposed to getting hooked up for a session and then taking off the skull cap And With uh with this I mean like as I mentioned the immune response in the brain We still don't know how long these electrodes will last and so I think that's going to be another big Step is if these electrodes last longer in the brain than current electrodes that'll it'll be a it'll be a huge boon to this brain computer interface Research in general it's it will it it will make things step forward This is going to be more attractive to women Uh In that in that uh Men are going to freak out a little bit more about a device that's in your body that then has to be removed and replaced Every once in a while and women will be like oh, so it's like an iud. I got it Oh, it's normal. Yeah, I've done this Yeah, for an object in there go for it Yeah, anyway, uh elan musk and neurolinx white paper is on the bio archive and available for anyone to read So if you're interested you can give it a look and give it a read and That's it for me to start the show. Justin. I mean not start the show. What we're in the middle of the show It's starting to stay in after the show. That's this is this weekend science What do you have, Justin? I have zombie ants Yes ants who through uh through defaults of their own become host to invasive fungi That seem to take over and control their minds and bodies forcing them to bite and cling From high foliage the reward they get though at the end of that is uh The fungus pops out the back of their skull and rains down spores on lower dwelling ants thus infecting them as well, so Now one element of the zombifying fungus is mind controlling a bag of tricks is being revealed thanks to Colleen mangold from pennant civilian state university Who says the mandibular muscles of infected ants are extensively colonized by the fungus? It's uh pretty exciting because it's the muscles of mandibles that are affected by this infection Not the nerves They seem to be rather unaffected or infiltrated by the fungus Uh, so this isn't so much mind control as it is apparently according to this research Uh directly specifically targeting muscle tissue Uh in the mandible that causes the biting to take place now. That's worse You're you're you're aware of what's going on and you have to bite down on this thing and you're like, I can't stop So there's something that seems to be missing from this. Okay, so the uh It's not the nervous system. That's that's that's driving the the lockjaw But there is still the behavior where the ants go to a high structure before biting on Uh, that's it gives an advantage because if it goes up high and then the spores come out the back of the skull they go down And can can infect more ants than if they were on the ground and the spores just went to the dirt So it doesn't explain that portion of it. Uh, what they found is that the muscle uh was contracted so forcibly that the filaments of the muscle fibers themselves Which normally slide past each other when a muscle contracts were damaged and swollen. So this was sort of causing the locked muscles they also found uh The fungus had broken the membrane covering muscle fibers leaving the fibers exposed what's Then possible is that the fungus is Okay, so they got these little beads these little structures little vesicles that they discovered that they haven't determined Exactly what they are yet in the muscles uh tissue They suspect that it could be the fungus uh little balls of toxins that then are Having a release and causing the muscles to spasm and over contract it could also be An immune system reaction from the ants trying to fight off the fungus That's the next step. They need to go and take a look at what those little vesicles are And and see if it's coming from the fungus or the host Uh, but really interesting, uh the mind controlling zombie fungus that uh attacks zombie ants Is not necessarily controlling the brain in at least this aspect They still have to answer that other question though because there is something that's causing them to Climb Or or they just normally climbing up to a high point and that's somehow triggering and it triggers it And then they get stuck. Yeah, like is it uh, could it be sunlight activated in some weird way? So anyway, uh, there's there's some interesting Uh stuff to suss out just how that's going on in other news australopithecus africanus Uh, their mother the mothers of this two millionish plus year old human or hominoid breastfed their infants It says here for 12 months after birth and continue to supplement their diets with breast milk during periods of food shortage This is according to research published in nature by a number of universities that we're working together Uh, that's actually I guess not too surprising considering that's what breasts are for Yeah That's well, I bet it's the long term right the year that sounds like a long time compared to most animal species Now what's interesting is the animal species of current humans It's it can be a year. It can be much longer than a year Yeah If you look at our closest non-human relative the chimpanzee They can nurse for five years About no problem. That's kind of a normal chimpanzee thing Uh, what I find really interesting about this study though is that they discovered the breastfeeding from a tooth They used tooth chemistry analysis that enabled the scientists to see breastfeeding in a two million year old uh, sort of teeth they So it says there In this uh, this paper says extended parent parental care is considered one of the hallmarks of human evolution So I guess that's despite it also being a thing chimpanzees do which seem content on staying chimps through a long period of evolution But but maybe Five years of breastfeeding is a hallmark of chimp evolution as well It's one of those it's one of those statements that I always you have to dismiss Uh, as soon as you read that something is a hallmark of evolution. Yeah. Well, I think slightly I think it's very interesting though to look at the difference between, you know, we all we have are our primate relatives and ourselves At this point in time, right? We're able to go. Okay. So chimpanzees do this bonobos do this and we do this And then we've got all these other monkey species orangutans, you know apes the apes right we're able to compare and contrast just among what's living right now and It is interesting that chimpanzees will breastfeed for so long up to five years that five years is when they wean Because humans for the most part do wean their young before that point Usually if they they can't we can feed them much younger, but I think on average It's maybe around two to three years around the world And then, you know in the united states, of course, it's much earlier than that most of the time But how interesting to be able to take this You know this this archaeological fossilized evidence From teeth and now be able to add a different picture to our our our homidid ancestors and go. Okay. This is norm like this was normal This long ago. This was normal among our ancestors not just against these extant species Yeah, and they can also do like so this is not a I think I think this has come up before and I always maybe just forget this Uh, so the way that teeth grow Is uh very similar to what you might think of a tree ring Uh when trees have like rings, but we see the bands in a tree and they usually indicate seasons like the wet season Or like a yearly cycle between the bands Uh, you can count back and you can see oh, here's a thick band. That was a wet season. Here's a thin one That was a dry season But this is sort of indicating to me that the the the rings on the tooth Are applied almost daily And so what it gives is an extremely high resolution picture of Events occurring during the early part of an individual's life in terms of nutrition food intake um, there's uh, I think they they're looking at the high lithium a mechanism they're saying is is is used to reduce protein deficiency in infants Uh, so you can see periods where they might have been a little hungrier and and uh, so they've also there's been Some other similar studies being applied to neanderthals this group is now going to work on uh on hominin species and go through teeth and look for these similar signals of early developmental layers and start to Try to paint a picture of how infants were raised at different time periods throughout our evolutionary history uh Which can which can tell you some things about parenting perhaps and can tell us some things about The climate or environment those hominins were were dealing with at the time But it's like an insanely high resolution map That uh, that is a is available Yeah, and how interesting to know that these australopithecus that they even after Kind of weaning That in times of low food, they would go back to breastfeeding I will support my child that they had that they weren't like pushing their kids away. They still had that close bond and they were Close parenting and taking care of their young I think that's pretty consistent across mammals that they they do a kind of a half and half for quite a while and that Part of the reason for that is that they are carrying their very own grocery store with them So they never have to worry about their baby going without which I think is really I mean evolutionarily That's why that's why mammals were so successful is that they could Travel and nourish at the exact same time. Yep Yep, didn't have to be Static didn't have to be constant Yeah, but that's also why there are so many mammals that are altricial that are just little Balls of fat that can't do anything. You know, which is most is most apes Most of them are like that at least at the start where they just all they can do is is hang out and wait to be taken care of There's not they're not very good at running around like a baby giraffe or a horse or anything like that And so mother's milk is really important for that because they have a lot of development and growing to do outside of the womb But it also yeah means that mom has to carry their baby around and do everything for them Which means they can't also forage. All right. I'm gonna go I'm gonna go I'll be I'll miss I'll miss the thread for a second. I'll be right back because I'm gonna bring a baby picture Uh of me That basically illustrates your point. I am a ball of fat, baby No, okay, I'll be right back All right, because it is time now for that time of the show that we love to call Blair's animal corner With bear I What you got thank you, I can't start without that. Um, so I have a story about animals and specifically a story about humans eating animals And more specifically about animals that humans should eat We know that eating animals in general can be a problem for land management pollution water use And most importantly our carbon footprint. There's a lot of contributions to climate change from raising meat But there's a way to get the protein that you need While still getting Uh, what is not so detrimental to the planet and of course getting at here How Yes, so at least two billion people on our planet. That's about a quarter of the world's population regularly eat insects Us here in the western hemisphere think it's real, you know, the northwestern really think it's um It's it's a littleucky But uh, that's not the way in a lot of the world. But in the meantime, um researchers wanted to look at Exactly what nutrients there were to be gained by eating insects and other invertebrates And in order to do that, they they were very scientific about it. This is the very first synthesis of antioxidants in insects as compared to other food items So they tested a range of commercially available edible insects and invertebrates and some other food items using various measures of antioxidant activity Inedible parts like wings and stingers were removed good They don't taste very good And then the insects were ground and two parts extracted for each species the fat and whatever would dissolve in water delicious bug fat Each extract was then tested for antioxidant content and activity Uh, use it. They used the exact same setup to also test fresh orange juice and olive oil Two foods that we know have antioxidant effects and are known as foods that are healthy for you Everyone knows olive oil has really important things for your body in it. Um, so Water soluble extracts of grasshoppers silkworms crickets They displayed the highest values of antioxidant capacity. It was five fold higher than fresh orange juice All right that being said that comparison was for dry fat free insect dust. Mm delicious Talk to swallow But if they used a similar dilution as to oj about 88 water Grasshoppers and silkworms would have about 75 the antioxidant activity of oj. Also Insect dust aka cricket flower is a very common use in a lot of foods today So, uh, I know in my imperfect protease box. I can get chirp chips which are cricket based tortilla chips And they have high protein and it's using exactly that this idea of the insect dust We had we had the cricket flower chocolate cookies. Yes at The entomology conference. Yes. And you can also get a mealworm flower as well Which is a little bit more fatty. I think it's better for baked goods But regardless, uh, then they looked at the fat that they were able to consolidate from these insects and other invertebrates So giant cicadas and silkworms the fat from those actually had twice the antioxidant activity of olive oil so A couple of things happening here one just kind of quick disclaimer of there's a lot of question Questions around antioxidants still the science around exactly what it does for your body And how much you need and all this kind of stuff is still kind of squishy But we know in general the antioxidants are probably a good thing in your body So, um, they help with uh ongoing oxidative stress So that's an important thing for sure So they want to maybe take this information to adapt dietary regimens of insects also because through this, um Comparison of all these different invertebrates and what the antioxidant Content was in all of these they were able to identify for example that vegetarian Invertebrates had the highest antioxidants. So that means also that Theoretically diet may have something to do with the nutrients they contain Which makes perfect sense a grass fed beef versus corn fed beef have different nutrients Vitamins inside of them. So knowing that they might be able to adapt dietary regimens in insects that are in micro live stock so that they can actually Raise these animals on the best diet for the best protein for humans to augment their antioxidant content For human consumption, but ultimately The other idea is that If you can show more potential health benefits perhaps humans That are currently kind of averse to this might be able to see their way around kind of Adding this into their diet So they're finding new ways to encourage insect consumption and so Recognizing that they're a good source of antioxidant may help It's good for you eat it just like your spinach and your broccoli And all the other vegetables that you're not eating and and don't cheat don't get it powderized Just go grab a bug and eat it No, thanks The the legs will stick in your throat In some parts of the world it is common Charles abroad in our chat room says in thailand here can confirm there are insects for sale at the markets So they they they also you know tested things like Tarantulas and scorpions because people do eat them But they were not as high in antioxidants. So really it was the vegetarians that were the What's what's really interesting on top of this? I hadn't seen this so the antioxidants in the fat content That's a new twist on this previously. There had been a study comparing I think crickets and grasshoppers and mealworms these these insects to actual meat and it turns out that crickets and grasshoppers Have a better nutritional profile in terms of the nutrients that they contain so vitamins and minerals that you want to get Then meat Yeah, they also have fiber which meat doesn't really have. Yeah, so in terms of a good dietary choice Insects are it and we just have cultural issues If you know, we don't want to eat them then that's what that is very soon It's going to be well, I don't know very soon But someday you might find yourself where the insects are going to be the cheapest best Healthiest option for your family at the grocery store Forget forget the roasted the roasted hazelnuts or whatever. It's going to be your roasted crickets at christmas time Um now that I've convinced all of you to eat the insects. Let's talk about how insects feel pain Shall we come on? So this is a study from University of sydney charles perkins center Looking at compelling evidence that insects feel persistent pain After injury so since about 2003 Scientists have known that insects experience something that we could say is analogous to pain So in this in this case it was looking at The idea that you can sense and avoid dangerous Stimuli that has hurt you before in non-humans. We call this No, seception, which is the sense that detects potentially harmful stimuli like heat cold physical injury For simplicity in insects you could call this pain the idea that it was a negative impact before and now they know to avoid it So we've known that since about 2003, but this new study is looking at chronic pain in fruit flops And looking at significant evidence that shows not only that they Have chronic pain that they can experience chronic pain But what causes it which could be very helpful looking at chronic pain in humans So what they did Is they wanted to look at neuropathic pain Which occurs after damage to the nervous system in humans It's usually a burning or shooting pain And often is the result of things like sciatica a pinched nerve spinal cord injuries shingles diabetic neuropathy cancer bone pain and some sort of accident trauma to the body so Looking at neuropathic pain What they did is they damaged a nerve in one leg of a fruit fly Then they allowed the injury to fully heal and after the injury healed They found that the fly's other legs had become hyper sensitive After the animal is hurt once badly then they try to protect themselves for the rest of their lives So this is what they consider is some sort of chronic pain this reception that That there's the stimuli that they're trying to avoid So they're receiving pain messages from their body and it goes through sensory neurons to the ventral nerve cord That's basically a spinal cord, but in a fly because they don't have a spine because they're in nervous In the nerve cord are inhibitory neurons that act like a gait that either block pain perception or allow it to proceed And what they found was after an injury the injured nerve dumps They say to this dumps all the cargo into the nerve cord and kills all the breaks forever So basically the gates are just open to pain. There's nothing in their body telling them to not feel pain in that moment Which we depend on that or we would always be in pain So now they're pain threshold changes. They are hyper vigilant. They are in pain all the time. It looks like When humans when this happens to us it makes us miserable We need the breaks back. That's what pain killers do, right? It tells our body to to ignore this pain stimuli that we're getting so that we can have what the researchers call a quote comfortable and non-painful existence Amen So the the what I think is really interesting here is that they were looking specifically at what causes this kind of Flood gate to open the two current hypotheses with chronic pain in humans is either peripheral sensitization or central disinhibition And you can kind of guess what those mean based on the names But so it's this idea of responding to the stimuli or something in their central nervous system that is broken So from the genomic dissection of the neuropathic pain in their in the flies that they looked at looking at the flies neural network All their data pointed towards central disinhibition So in at least in the fruit flies The underlying cause of what they're calling chronic pain in these flies is this neuropathic issue Knowing that Their next steps are to see if they can make new stem cell therapies or drugs that can target this cause Shut down those gates and stop pain in flies if they can figure that out Then it could potentially be scaled up to humans That's interesting That's really a neat that's this is a really amazing way to be looking at this and to be Figuring out where the where it's coming from and then also now being able to figure out how to target it I love this. I love that the university of sydney took this study so many steps They could say okay. We found out flies have chronic pain There's a study. No took it a step further What kind of chronic pain is this okay? It's it's neuronal chronic pain great That's a study. What's causing the chronic pain in the brain? They took it so many steps to figure this out And it does really feel like a pretty big breakthrough in Pain in flies and eventually humans. It's pretty exciting. Well, if this is I mean if if we can Assume that the pathways are the same in the fly that the the fly model is accurate for how these systems work in humans Then we can assume that these same Targets will work and so this You know a lot of these systems in the nervous in the nervous system are not One directional. It's a loop. It's feedback and very often There is information constantly coming in from the periphery to the central nervous system And it's constantly talking to the brain and I'm imagining That in that talking there's inhibition of a particular system or you know, if a certain thing gets turned on or off Then that changes it the inhibition goes away or and then a new signal is allowed to be sent or It it up regulates a certain other signal. So there's all these Gates like you're talking about right? It is is the signal coming from the periphery turning off Or turning on and how did the damage affect? That loop of information that the brain is responding to for that feeling of pain pain is such a an odd Thing in the world of biology because without it you would die because you wouldn't know what to avoid and you'd hurt yourself But too much of it and you can't survive So it's this very delicate balance where if that system is broken That's pretty detrimental to just life in general It's yeah, it's a very delicate thing and my my next thought about this also is that That it if it is a central nervous system Disregulation and not peripheral that the damage what what people probably usually think is oh, I I had this major injury on my arm say and that must have affected the nerves there And so those nerves are constantly sending a bad signal to the brain And that's like that's the pain or that's like that nerve has gone bad somehow But what this is implying is that in the central nervous system somewhere? Something has gotten triggered and didn't reset A damage occurred it triggered a change and even though the damage may have been repaired The central nervous system is not responding to that right and say that is the interest Lamentories aren't going to help with that in the long term because they are not that's that's targeting my bad shoulder That's not targeting my bad spinal cord Yep Yeah, so this is yeah all very interesting and I hope it does lead to Uh a solution because chronic neuropathic pain is debilitating for people and this it would be amazing Yeah, I mean thanks flair. Yeah. Yeah, you could see how this could scale really quickly You could test this on mice There's even animals in captivity that have chronic pain that you know have chronic pain that you could test this on Once you have some ideas of how to treat this And I'm sure there's lots of humans that would volunteer once it was ready for human study. So Yeah, lots of potential Yeah, and who knows maybe if uh, I mean Who knows? I mean the GABA system we have lots of drugs that already Are are targeting the GABA system And so maybe we have a drug already that could have an off-label use or be tested in this regard Maybe there's already something out there. Yeah. Yeah, okay It does it does. Hey, let's do some quick stories here at the end of the show everyone In my theme of artificial intelligence. I was taken by a story this week uh researchers have been once again trying to solve human games with artificial technology And uh researcher Pierre Baldi from the University of California Irvine has developed a deep neural network That has figured out how to solve a rubik's cube And it can solve from any rubik's cube configuration back to the solution in which all the sides Are all the same all the same colors on each side It solves the cube every trial now it's it learned by itself. It was not taught by humans It figured it out at itself and in 60 More than 60 of the trials it was able to do it with the least number of moves possible So it was doing it in the most efficient way So hey rubik's cubes ruined for humans forever So I real quick I actually I don't know if I could do it now But I used to be able to solve a rubik's cube and I was taught in my high school math class because it's all math It's an if then scenario So this makes perfect sense that an AI would be able to learn how to do it because if if it looks like this I do this and then if it looks like this I do this. It's a very clear if a then b um Yeah, makes sense to me. I took a more mechanical engineering approach Which is if you twist just to the right angle you can pull out one. Yeah, I figured take them all out Put them back in and click in the last one real hard and there you've solved it Yeah, I don't think that's what the AI is doing. I think it's using the approach that flair is talking about but Um, yeah being mathematical. So in case you didn't know this is another little bit of trivia A rubik's cube has over 43 quintillion possible combinations So all the various confirmations of where the colors can be 43 quintillion possibilities But how many rules do you need to solve? Only one is the solution How many rules do you need to how many rules are there to this thin scenario? So it depends the one that that I learned is less rules, but it takes longer the average solving time is about two minutes um, but there's What if you learn more rules Then you can solve it in an average about 30 to 45 seconds But about everybody generally like how many rules did you do you work out like ballpark? Oh, wow. See so you can do very few rules. Yeah six rules to solve Yeah, it's pretty fun. That's pretty. Yeah, I wonder if I get to deal on it. I don't know I don't know the eventual idea is not just to use this to solve rubik's cubes, but if there are other puzzles or Questions in the world that have these kinds of potential Numbers of potential combinations and a small number of solutions. Maybe this kind of artificial artificial intelligence network Would be useful in those situations Moving on from that also I think this is I love smart solutions to climate change issues But I think researchers have just published the dumbest solution To something that I have ever ever heard about in my entire life. And yes, I'm being judgmental Um, and I admit that fully researchers publishing or described in science advances Which this surprised me as well. They were able to publish this in science advanced advances, but the western Antarctic ice sheet is melting and so these researchers came up with an idea of how they could save the ice sheet Want to know how let's put lots of snow cannons Pulling ocean water out of the ocean and just making snow And shooting snow onto the top of the Antarctic ice sheet nevermind How they're gonna do it. They just wanted to calculate, you know, what it would take to do it they concluded that you could pump hundreds of billions of Of you could yeah tons of ice per year 62.5 to 875 gigatons per year between 10 and 50 years would help keep sea level rise at bay and to maintain it at only two to five centimeters as opposed to the inches and feet that we are looking at if it's so as ridiculous of an idea as it sounds What you're talking about is preventing Uh an impact on perhaps 80 of the population on the planet You know, do you know how much we're talking about climate change? Which is caused by our energy use. That's what I was going to say. You're gonna have to burn so much fossil fuels Snow cannons exactly by diesel generators that we place on the thing. There's also pretty little but he Oh, I see what the problem is Go to bed. Yeah Ah, okay, I see what you're saying My son anything anything Generation who's actually gonna have to deal with this problem. Yeah, and that's the thing and he's passionate about this So, uh generation that's actually going to have to deal with the consequences Of and we're not gonna take responsibility. It was past generations that really did this. It wasn't origin We're just stuck in the middle. We're like, what do we do? Let me do something about it Anyway, I say no snow cannons. This is the wrong Engineering solution to this problem. Let's try something else. Nice tried. Nice try. Let's move on What did you bring about radioactive islands? Justin? Oh, uh, try to avoid them Uh at all costs Yeah That's sort of the thing. Okay. Oh, I gotta find my story. Uh, oh here it is. Yeah So this is the the Marshall Islands The this is a place where the united states tested some 70 odd nuclear bombs between 1946 and 1958 It's actually the in the bikini you told beautiful little chain of islands and so Uh halfway between australia and hawaii, you know the pacific Uh really beautiful pristine environment kind of places like to take a vacation Except for the fact that the islands are more radioactive to this day Then the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear disasters To this day. So anyway researchers went back and did soil samples and that sort of thing suggests That's not time to move back Don't go there. That's really bad So there there is worse than Fukushima and Chernobyl still This is How long ago? I mean, how long ago did we set bombs off there? That's not recent No, and one of them I did so yeah, this is 1954. This is uh a 70 ish years ago. I suppose Yeah, um, it's also the site of the largest nuclear detonation, which was called castle bravo Which uh was a thousand times more powerful than any of the bombs that were dropped in japan so The thing is there were people who were living on those islands At the time who now live on other islands? Not too far away Who have always desired to go back to the islands that they were asked to temporarily leave right? Uh And scientists said no then needs to be a little bit more for cleanup ever Somebody some point tight Yeah So yeah 70 nuclear bombs dropped in one little Uh paradise Still ain't good Nope And if you know anything about half-life in that sort of thing, it's not gonna be good for a really long time people Don't go back there For a long time. We ruined it for you. Sorry Okay blare so speaking of um Your last story here Um, there's this kind of run It's called the naruto run and if you've been paying attention to social media lately, there's this whole Um storm area 51 movement where people have a plan to if there's enough of us we could just run We can't stop us all We can't stop us all people who want to find out what's going on in area This was a joke. This is not a serious thing But one of the funny aspects of the plan is that the second line of the uh, the on rushers will run With the naruto run. Oh, I'm seeing it. Yes running with their arms straight and behind them Which is awkward and not the way people run, but it is the way that naruto runs in the anime So will you that's yeah, tell me why tell me tell me about our arms wandering on the Harvard campus in 2015 graduate student andrew yagien Saw someone running with straight arms Um, and with what what is your deal? Uh, no, I'm sorry. He wonders If straight arms are better for walking, which we all know we don't walk like this usually unless we're power walking Why aren't they better for running and vice versa? So unfortunately, I don't have a lot of answers in this story I have answers about walking He selected small sample size alert eight undergraduate and graduate students They ranged from runners who doubled twice a week to actual marathon competitors So they were all familiar with the mechanics of running and were comfortable running But some took it much more seriously than others and he had them walk and run on a treadmill They did this with reflectors on so that they could watch what was happening with their body And then they did it again a couple weeks later Where they had breathed through a mask to measure oxygen consumption The hardest thing reported was running with straight arms is difficult to do But in the oxygen consumption test, they found that holding the arms bent while walking increases the walkers cost By 11 percent, which is maybe why power walking is exercise no matter what other people may tell you but when they looked at Um running There wasn't really a difference between Running with arms bent and running with arms straight So there's something else going on there and what he says. I think it's so funny is We didn't find any evidence that the energy cost was difference between arm postures when running but uh He suspects that running with bent arms would be more efficient since quote That's what almost everyone does So if it's not an energy conservation thing, I wonder if it's just a cadence thing Yeah, I think it's a I think it's a It's a momentum based thing because if you're pulling your arm all the way back You're pulling your body backwards in your momentum If you keep it closer to the body, you're not putting negative Motion in your movement quite as much But that would then but that would then influence the energy efficiency though. I mean it it should Yeah, it would increase Yeah, I don't know but maybe also they need to test people that aren't good at running Maybe that's part of it. They need to activate fight or flight in somebody and have them run with their arms straight And see what happens Well, which we might see at this area 51 by the way if you go to area 51 the first sign No photography or device recording device is allowed beyond this point. There's a second sign Which says deadly force is authorized but beyond this point, which means they don't have to arrest everyone No, and they said that they won't they said that they will just shoot you they will enforce This space they will enforce their space. So hey people Don't put your lives in danger I mean go ahead and Naruto run just not at area 51 The real secret of area 51 is it's a highly toxic a highly toxic environment in which they Used very toxic elements to make radar and planes and that was the big secret that they were keeping and that's why People get diseases there and can't report them to their doctor because they can't find out what Yeah Last really funny funny Story that's kind of cute researchers just published in the proceedings of the royal society about their study looking at chimpanzees and bonobos watching movies um because people Like to bond over netflix or a movie that you you spend some time watching something together There's social bonding it brings you closer together because you've done this thing together And nobody had ever really looked at that with great apes Our relatives and so these researchers were like hey what happens when chimpanzees and bonobos netflix and chill Turns out it seems to increase their social bonding as well However, the catch here is that they only watched the apes for about three minutes After the movie was over what? So for the three minutes after the movie was over what they were great friends, but they they didn't they didn't look They have a dinner reservation. What is that stick around? I will say you're still in proximity for three minutes. Oh my god. What so I will say watching tv changes your brain wave right So I It makes sense for that reason if nothing else right and this is something that uh primatologist fronz DeWall in this guardian article brings up is the effect of synchronization on behavior And that is if you're looking at something The same thing that somebody else is doing you have synchronized brain patterns for that period of watching and this is what May lie behind this idea of empathy of social bonding shared experience But this is something that they're still looking at and I can't believe they only tracked them for three minutes after the movie was over, but anyway In the study though, they did determine that these great apes also netflix and chill I just wanted to know what they were watching The apes at the zoo really like uh cartoons. They really like disney films That's right. Yeah See you can even do this study For longer than three minutes. Yeah I could Okay, everyone We hope that you enjoyed this. 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in science this week in science this week in science this week in science and we have come to the end of another show yeah yes i'm watching Blair solve the Rubik's cube. She's working on it. I was hoping you would, she would be done before the end of the song. I can't remember guys. It's been a long time. But you got it, you got it into that, the cross formation, right? Isn't that like one of the big steps? Yes, that part I remember. I'm having trouble remembering the other parts. Yeah, there's like, they're like three phases. It's like getting them into these, the straight line. There's like one set of straight lines, and then the cross. And then you go on to do a couple of other things. I never actually learned how to do it. That would be fun. Kai, you have to learn how to solve a Rubik's cube. I have no idea. I can't solve one in five days. Well, you could if you knew how. You did, you spilled the water. Don't spill it. You should be sleeping. Kai's blaming a fly on the fact on the fact that he's not sleeping. I think that's excuses. If excuses were booses, no, that's not it. No. What's the phrase? I think that's it. Wishes were bitches. There is a very long fly, though, that's been quite annoying in here. Okay, can you okay, don't go after the fly because those are my lights. So stay, stay away and you need to listen to me. Take that ship, put food and wrap up the bag. That's not gonna stay down here when we go upstairs. Yeah, you are in cookie brain mode because you're up too late. Mm-hmm. Trouble remembering. Oh, Ed, I know hot rod. That's the way to do it. Okay, I got my crosses back. You got your crosses. There you go. There's two more steps and I'm trying to remember how it goes. Yeah, but it was on my lights, which I don't want Kai touching. I don't look the cats can eat the flies. I'm not going to promote fly eating by my son. Muscle memory is a cool thing. Go muscle memory. Are you getting there? Uh huh. Getting there. Going for it. Hold it apart. Well, okay. Did you finish it? No. For all I know, for all I know, you had two Rubik's cubes down there, one that was solved. You gotta hold it up higher so that we can actually see working on it. There you go. Oh, she's moving. She's grooving. Oh, she's in the zone. She, well, yeah. Yeah. Oh, one time she's almost there. Wow. Look at this. Oh my gosh. It's no. Okay. Okay, go the other way. It's loud. Yeah. Go the other way. Maybe it's seven rules. No, no, no. It's number of types of moves. It's not six moves. It's six like things you can memorize how to do seven types of moves. If you see, I'm almost done. Yeah. She is almost done. I really want you to come hold it up. I don't believe you if I can't see it. Oh, don't mess up her flow. She's got flow. All right. So now I'm almost done. So now I just have to I have to rotate these now. Yeah, that's where I get the Claude hammer out and cry one of them. So I think in the last couple of weeks, in the last, in the last couple of weeks, there was the World Rubik's Cube championships. And I believe they were in Australia, New Zealand or Australia, and a friend of mine who lives in New Zealand had a friend coming through because they were on their way with their son to these championships. And he was competing and he took a video of this child solving the Rubik's Cube. He solved the Rubik's Cube with two hands in something like like 17 seconds, 13 seconds. It was the fastest. Everything spun. What I find really fascinating, you could solve it with one hand. He was like this, you solved it with one hand. What I find really fascinating about that story is that America had a brief fascination with Australia in the eighties. And so everything eighties, they're still cleaning on to the Rubik's Cube. Where where we can't see it. It's not happening. It's fine. It's happening. I believe I can see it. Why can't you see it? I can see her doing it through the microphone. I can see her looking with the player concentration face. Looking in the right place. There we go. Now we can see it. Just look in the microphone. Look, it's almost done. No, it's not. Look, there's all purple. Almost. I love I love how your Rubik's Cube is worn. It's battle scarred. You're stinking. Yeah, it's tearing it apart with a clod hammer. I really I know the secret. It's you're sinking. It's off camera. There we go. Hot hot rods giving competition tips, melted Vaseline and salt to get the quick spin on it, right? Because it's not it's like the fake Abraham Lincoln quote. It's it's not how hard you swing the axe. It's how long you spend. I don't know what the quoted spend more time sharpening an axe than you do cut in the tree. Do they still make the pyramid Rubik's? Yes, they do. They make all sorts of shapes Rubik's actually. It's also these strange like ones I can tell they're like these oval shapes with then pyramids on the on the on the top and bottom. And they're very small. Okay, great. Now we're cooking with gas. Well, I can't see it. It's not happening. There we go. Oh, there it is. You get it to a certain point and then you start solving side by side. I did not learn the side by side. Oh, no. No. So like right now, the last thing I have to do now is I have to rotate these corners. So one of my corners was out of sync, which is why it wasn't working. But now it's in sync. Yeah, I'm getting there. I'm rotating the corners. This is gonna take a while. It's truth under beaver. Every time she gets one corner, another corner gets put. Oh, man. Did that sticker come off? Yeah, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. You don't know what colors are there anyway. Yeah, I know. That is another layer of this. Watching a color blind girl try to solve a Rubik's cube. Yeah, well done. This is the thing. People have been telling you you're gonna Rubik's cube out of sympathy. Oh, rude. Oh, now you get it. Fantastic. Yeah. Got it. I have one more to go. There we go. I still know how. That's awesome. Calm down. That's awesome, Blair. I'm impressed. Skills that is it only took me what 10 minutes? No, I think that was under 20. 20. It was not 20. You don't have to shout. It was not 20 here. I can find when somebody in the chat room said timer and that's right when I started. Oh, 11. So it took me 11 minutes. Not bad. There we go. I know she needs a new Rubik's cube. I do need a new Rubik's cube. Although the world record holder at the time came to my math class and lubed my cube. So this one is very special. Yeah. Fun trivia fact. I once worked with the gentleman who had the world record for achieving the longest play at Pac-Man. He did it at lefty's donuts here in Davis, California. Dave in the chat room, he lubed my cube. What that means is he popped the corner cube off and sprayed some WD-40 inside, which is why it's so loosey-goosey. The hot rod was recommending Vaseline and salt. Yeah, this was WD-40. Abrade it and then you wash it all out and it's supposedly sticker exposure. Yeah, I do need a new Rubik's cube. These are all coming out. What's up? I want to actually also. The stickers are falling off. I want those as Rubik's cube in my class and someone couldn't solve it. So they took, they started taking apart the Rubik's cube. But the Rubik's cube, the cubes weren't even actual cubes. They were just tiny little things going on to a ball that really didn't roll well. It wasn't really a good Rubik's cube. And like he actually broke it when taking it off. So I was trying to stick it back on. You're not supposed to break it when you do that. There is a method and what it is is you take one of the tops and you twist it at the opposing angle and then you pry off the one that's overhanging the most. You pry that one off and then the rest just slide out and then you can rebuild it. It's not the same way that Blair did it but I could do it faster in 11 minutes. You can also just take all the stickers off. Well, you have to have a fresh one. You have to have a real fresh one to do the sticker method. So I fixed this one with nail polish. I have to nail polish something. There's a purple one that's coming. Look at my green side. There's a lot of different greens there. So I've had to color them in. This is purple. Some of it. Yeah. It's supposed to be purple. One of them is brown. No. This one? This is purple. It's brown. It's purple. But the white one you can, I don't know if you can see is like they're peeling off all the white ones. Yeah. Anyway. The yellow side is fine. Rubik's Cube. Yeah, that's fine. New cubes don't use stickers. Oh. Really? Interesting. They're not? That's old tech. Well, this is pretty old tech. This is from 2002. I have one from 2018. What? Oh, 18. Yeah. I think we got it for like a year or two ago. Yeah. It's not. It's no more stickers. It's actually now colored plastic. There was a Rubik's Cube that somebody got that had pictures on them. And so it was like pieces of a picture. The problem is, if you get it back looking like this, it's actually not. This isn't always in the exact same place. Yeah. So if you do, if it's like a jigsaw puzzle on one side and you mix it up and you put it back together, it will not necessarily make your picture again. Wait a second. So you mean the sides can kind of swap? Like the purple is an O? No, that can't be right. No, no, no. It's like the white square that's in the upper left corner is not the next time you solve it necessarily going to be in the upper left corner. It might be down in the bottom right or in over on another side. What? Right? So if you have a picture that's there, when you solve it, it's not always going to look like that. Why do I just intuitively think that can't be true? I didn't think that was true either until I did it. And that picture ended up all funky. Yeah. You know what it was? I think maybe it was the center one. Because these are always the same because like purple and green are always the same. That's the center one. Pivots. Okay. And so the picture was all weird looking. Depending on how you got to the solution. Okay. That part makes sense. The outer ones, the corner ones, that didn't make any sense to me. Right. Yes. Now what you're saying makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Yeah. So Kai is up way past his bedtime. Almost 1030. I'm happy to call it. I'm super tired. I have a bit of a cold. When does Google Hangouts streaming to live go away? Beginning of August. Yikes. Okay. So next week in our after show, we have to make some decisions. Yep. Yeah. All right. So I'm going to figure out how to do that. On that note. Say good night, Kai. Good night. Also, I have a question. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Can we make a twist kids? There should be. That's up to your mom. She's the executive producer. My friends are into science and I'm like, I was like, you guys could like help us if like we got something wrong. I have a couple of collaborators who would love to join you in that. So I bet. Yeah. Some who like to do YouTubey stuff as well. It basically be basically, I'm earlier. I'm like daytime, like after school. Yeah. Not at night. I think it would be fun if you started it at midnight. Right after our show. Yeah. You should come on after our show. We'll be like the lead in that gets the audience here. You guys pick up our audience and carry them to the midnight hour. Yeah. Yeah. We go to sleep. Say good night, Blair. Good night, Blair. Say good night, Justin. Good night, Justin. Good night. Good night, Kiki. Good night, everyone. I hope you all enjoyed the show tonight and I hope it will see you again next week. And yeah, that's all I got for right now because I'm tired. I don't hit the buttons. I don't. I don't. You get to hit it. I hit the button. It's my job. Why is that your job? It's my job. When we make twist kids, I get to press the red button. I press the red button. All right. And the green button. And on that note, good night.