 This is TWIS, this week in Science episode number 603 recorded on Wednesday, January 25th, 2017. Much ado about nothing. Hey everyone, I'm Dr. Kiki and tonight on TWIS we are going to fill your heads with some fresh water. A little bit of sleep and nothing but first. Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. It's Twilight in America. An America in which the powerful wield ignorance as strength. In order to tear truth to shreds and string lies together as policy. It's Twilight in America. An America which will be run by people opposed to democratization of education and healthcare. An America opposed to clean energy, clean water and breathable air. An America that will turn its back on human rights around the world and at home. An America that will surrender its environmental safety in favor of fiscal windfalls for a fortunate few. It is Twilight in America. If you want a picture of our future imagine an oil pipeline pouring into a pristine waterway. Or a bonfire of research papers from a thousand clear-eyed scientists. Or a boot stamping on a sickly elderly woman's face forever. It is Twilight in America. An America in which publicly funded science is censored and websites raising awareness of environmental risk go dark. In where there is no public light to read by we shall meet in the place where there is no darkness. Here on This Week in Science coming up next. Every day of the week there's only one place to go to find the knowledge I seek. I want to know what's happening, what's happening, what's happening this week in science. What's happening, what's happening, what's happening this week in science. And a good science to you too Justin Blair and everyone out there. Welcome to another episode of This Week in Science. We have a fantastic show lined up for you tonight full of science, lots and lots of science. And we have an interview I'm very excited to announce. In the second half of our show we are going to be joined by James Weatherall, the author of a book called Void. The Strange Physics of Nothing. Void, is that what the disclaimer was about? Void, it is space into which we podcast. No, it's full of all you amazing people. We are like the opposite of nothing going on in our audience. We have everything happening there. You guys are amazing and I hope you enjoyed this show. I have stories about politics. I'm going to do it. I'm going to bring up a few science policy issues. It's time. And look at a couple of issues. Yeah, try and look at a couple of sides of things. And then I have some cool stories about sleep and really why it's important. And new kinds of muscle. Yeah, you might want to muscle yourself into a shirt sometime soon. Justin, what do you have? I've got, why fresh water might not be good for you. As well as a fossil jackpot. And yeah, they discovered an alien. Alien. Oh, interesting. Interesting. Definitely have to get into that one. All right, and Blair, what's in the animal corner? Oh, well, I have fish with, with climatia. I have mousy relationships. And I have fairy circles. Fairy circles. That's so sweet. I really like, what is it? Lady Tadderall's smashed fairy book. Oh yeah. A bunch of pictures of smashed fairies. Take the books. That's what you do. You take books and you go find fairies and you smash them. Between the pages of book. But it's fairies. It's fairies. It's pretty fabulous. I really enjoy that one. You know, and we enjoy a lot of things in this world. There's not a lot of, there's a lot of creativity out there, but you know, this week has been full of a lot of ups and downs for many people within the scientific portion of our government. And also for people who are watching from the outside and don't really know what's going on, but are just trying to piece it all together. So I'm going to go through a few things that have happened between Monday and today. First off, the EPA, the USDA and the National Park Service were silenced, asked not to have any outward communications. So no public social media, no blog posts, no nothing going outwardly. And you know, there's a memorandum that actually went out to the heads of all the executive departments and agencies. And in the memorandum, the basic idea is, hey, we're getting started here and this is our transition period. And so we want a chance to review things. So don't go talking to people. Don't go communicating with the federal register, which would be communicating with other, with Congress people, senators, et cetera. So there is a certain aspect to this silencing, this request for no outward communications. There's a certain normalcy to it. In all transitions, this happens. There's a memorandum that goes out that says, until we get our people in place, and until we've had a chance to look everything over, just don't go saying things about policy, because we don't know if those are our policies. So additionally, within the EPA, there was a freeze on grants and contracts. So this is an addition to the communications freeze. And now the grants and contracts, again, it can be said that this is potentially a normal thing because, again, we don't know if all these grants and contracts or things that the new administration is going to be supporting. So there's a freeze there while they get renewed. And then interestingly, the USDA, although there was the request for no outward communications, the head of the USDA sent a memo rescinding an early memo that had been sent out as a result of the memorandum. So there was a memorandum from the White House that said, don't go talking to people about stuff. And then the head of the USDA, late at night, sent out a memo and said, okay, everybody, don't go talking about stuff. And then there was a little thinking about it. And the head of the USDA sent another memo that said, you know, if you're a scientist and you need to publish things, go ahead. That's not the same thing as a blog post. So don't worry about the memo that I sent before. We're just going to communicate with people, which is fascinating. So another question is, you know, bringing up this transitional period from one White House to the next, policies are different, priorities change. This is absolutely understood. We went before from Clinton to Bush to Obama, and we did see comments about climate change taken off the White House website when it moved from Clinton to Bush. Now moving from Obama to Trump, we are seeing the same thing happen again. This is not anything new. However, what is that issue here for the scientists who work for the government is whether or not their research, which is taxpayer funded, is being distributed to the public. Because this is the public's research. They should know the answers to this. And one of the most recent stories that I have taken a look at is one in which the communications director for the EPA, Douglas Erickson, is saying that it's possible that EPA scientists are going to have their research reviewed by politicians before it's actually allowed to be released to the public. And so this brings in the question of whether or not the administration is going to begin politicizing the science. And again, there was another question as to whether or not the EPA climate change, whether the climate website on the EPA was going to be removed, but the White House has now decided that it can stay, but it is being reviewed page by page by the legal team in the White House to determine what can legally be taken down and what has to stay. And the going story is that the page will most likely be removed, but links and information will still be available somewhere. So now the question is the accessibility of information in an administration that is not looking at climate change favorably and in addition is looking at growing our gas, petroleum, and coal industries even further. How they're going to be treating climate scientists and scientists across the board and these issues and the science that's produced as a result. And part of it is ultimately probably going to have to get rid of the EPA altogether. There's conversation about that. Because the directive of the EPA says that they're to share publicly scientific findings. Now that's separate from policy, right? So if the directive of the organization is our job is to report on what we find and share that with the public, they can't be stopped from doing that even if it's not part of the policy. Of course they won't have environmental policy probably to talk about. So that's the only way around it I think for this current administration is going to be to get rid of the EPA altogether because it is the directive of the organization. I don't know how easy that is to change. It's not just the EPA for which this is a directive. Many organizations including the USDA, the National Park Service, NOAA, NASA, all of them, especially it was under the Obama Administration in which he said all organizations that have a scientific component to them need to have a scientific policy for how they are going to approach science and disseminate it. And while it's not White House policy, it is now the written policies within each of these organizations under the executive branch. Right. So now we're going to be coming into the conflict between these kind of like, oh it's a sub routine under the main program. Yeah. So there's a couple things that kind of jump out at me here. The main one is that there are just some people who are really having trouble figuring out what a fact is and what science is. And that science is not opinion. And you can have policies that are based on opinions about what you should do about the science, but that does not make the science an opinion. Yeah. And that's the thing that I think is really lost on some of these people. The other thing that's really terrifying is because a lot of science doesn't support their opinion. Yeah. Oh yeah, absolutely. I'll take it a little bit further down that line and say that a lot of these people are either lawyers or in business. Yeah. And in the world of business, and as in the world of law, the truth is not consequential. It means nothing. It's totally not part of it. Yeah. Well, how many scientists are in Congress? Right. You're working with an industry where everybody within the industry will argue a point whether it's true or not. And the success of their argument is what stands. And that's maybe just because they're surrounded by people who are like this and this is what they do for a living. Maybe they assume science works the same way. Yeah. Maybe they assume that science is just a matter of who's getting to argue the case for what they want to believe. Well, and this is playing right into the other thing that I wanted to say is that the thing that has bothered me most about all of this this week, about the fact that on whitehouse.gov there's no results when you type in climate change. I know that the whitehouse.gov site changes over when there's a new president, but usually there's some stuff already on there ready to go. And it's a concern that I have of priorities. Well, the website I've been looking at it and the website has been changing since the date of the inauguration and there's more information on it. It is taking time for that information to get put into the places and the pages to be created. So as of today, the website is different than it was last Thursday. That being said, I did just do another search and there's still zero hits for climate change on whitehouse.gov. And there's not going to be. Yeah. Because it is not a priority of the priorities platform. Exactly, priorities. And this science that is present and doesn't matter that it's science. We are dealing with politics now. And so the White House website is a political website. Is it not a scientific website? It is separate from the organizations like NASA and NOAA, which are scientifically based organizations and separate from reality just in general. Well, that's my concern is that there's definitely this confusion about what what science is and what science means. And that is causing a shift of priorities. And that is the thing that I am concerned about is the priority shift. And that is what local activism is all about. If you or any other people are concerned about the way things are going, then, you know, the place to make change is where you live, where you can enact it. There are people who are currently working with an organization called 314 Action that are trying to get scientists to run for office. So we'll maybe see in the next two to four years more scientists becoming elected to office, which would be pretty cool to have more scientists debating things from maybe an evidence-based perspective. That would be very cool. But my final point on the stories that I brought up here at the beginning of the hour is simply that there is a precedent for, I mean, everyone's going crazy saying gag orders and silencing, and this is all this stuff happening. There is a precedent for silencing communications of organizations within the government during the transition. There is precedent. Every single transition, this happens. There are differences, however, within this as a result of, as we said, different party priorities. And so that is what we need to keep our eyes on. And it's good to be upset and to be activated about things that you're interested in, but don't go overboard. Right. All right. Let's keep it all together, people. Let's keep moving forward. Justin, tell me about fresh water. Why is it what? I drink fresh water all the time. Yeah. And it is generally considered to be a good thing to have fresh water. It is, like you say, what we drink, what we bathe in. It's what we water our gardens with, grow our agriculture and the stuff. But it's not always good news. For instance, the fresh water that is now being discovered along the seafloor of Antarctica is downright troubling. The Antarctic bottom waters, as they are called, are part of a global circulatory system display oxygen, carbon, nutrient-rich stuff, the world's oceans. It's sort of a key part of the whole circulation, too, in a very interesting way. So we'll get to that. But the last decade, scientists have been monitoring changes in these waters. Now research at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute suggests that changes are telegraphing a significant consequence for the ocean and potentially for the climate as well. This is January 25th. Science Advances published. Team led by Woods Hole oceanographers Vivian Menzies and Allison McDonald report that Antarctic bottom water has freshened at a surprising rate between 2007 and 2016. They say this could alter ocean circulation and contribute to rising sea levels. So since the 90s, there's been these international team that's been going and sort of taking temperature surveys, salinity surveys, and along this string of sites or stations that stretch from Antarctica to the southern Indian Ocean, they've been tracking this Antarctic bottom water. This is a layer of water deep down that's actually below freezing in temperature, but it stays liquidy because it's got high sea, it's salt water. Super salty, yeah. Super salty water. So it moves through the deep ocean and it mixes with warmer waters as it circulates around the globe and then they sort of transfer temperature and no amount of carbon between them. And it ends up in all three of the major ocean basins. So the water initially forms though along the Antarctic ice shelves and the strong winds cool these open areas of water until some of this water freezes. Water that doesn't freeze is really salty. So it's that saltier water goes and sinks down. It's denser now, right? It's saltier, it's denser, and it sinks down to the bottom of the ocean and that's the Antarctic bottom water. That's where it begins its circulation. When it goes down, it takes with it whatever was in the atmosphere. It takes in carbons or nitrogen or whatever's in the atmosphere and it creates a sink. It just drops it down to the bottom of the ocean. So what they're finding though, they've been noticing it's been becoming a little bit warmer, a little bit less salty between 94 and 2007. This latest round found a four-fold increase in fresh water, freshness. So it's become much, much less salty. And what they're trying to figure out then is well, then is it not going to be sinking as deeply and when it's not sinking it's going to spread the carbons a little quicker than it normally did because this deep, deep salty water would spread along the ocean floor in vast areas underneath our oceans. If all of a sudden this isn't taking place then part of that carbon capture cycle of our ocean is likely to be disrupted because it's going to warm up quicker. It'll mix with other waters faster and part of that what was decades long, maybe a century long, sequestration, that's not a word. Sequestration. Sequestering of those carbons is going to be released much quicker. So the reasons for it, you know, there was an iceberg about the size of Rhode Island that collided with the main Antarctic glacier and it might be a result of that. They're going to look into why it is. But if these waters no longer sink to the depths that they used to they could have pretty quick reactions throughout the ocean system. Of course, ocean circulation is directly. It's like the key factor. It's the thing that they look at when they predict weather. So as this is circulation of ocean waters change so does weather across the planet. As weather across the planet is impacted so are everything from agriculture to species to humans living along coastlines or even away from coastlines. You have droughts where you didn't have droughts. So pretty a big thing. Big deal being monitored there along Antarctica. That's a really big deal and I'm glad that people are out and monitoring it. Yeah, they say this is Menzies quote here. I thought, oh, wow, when I saw the change in salinity you collect the data and sometimes you spend two to three years to find something within it. But this time we knew that we had what we had within hours and we knew it was very unexpected. Oh my goodness. Within hours. Yeah, that's pretty amazing. This is being published after the last two dire stories that were published simultaneously in the last week. So as we get further and further into investigating what's actually now taking place within the climate, climate change and global warming, whatever you want to call it, we see that even the dire predictions of 10 years ago would be much preferable to have those and how it's actually shaping up to be. Yeah, I'd love to go back 10 years and be like, okay, what were the predictions then and about 10 years in the future and what's actually happening now? Like, you know, we're moving from the century scenario. Yeah. I mean, that's what's happening. The end of this century scenarios are looking like they're going to be mid-century. Yeah. It's basically what's happened. It's the timeframe for these things taking place is happening very well. Yeah. And on that wonderful piece of news, let's move it into... Blair's Animal Corner. What you got, Blair? I have more chlamydia. This one's a little bit interesting, though. It's more about habitat dynamics and food webs. So this is about Alaskan fish, the three-spine stickleback. Three-spine stickleback. They're abundant in Alaska's freshwater lakes and they are being affected by climate change. A recent study from University of Washington published in Global Change Biology analyzed reproductive patterns of three-spine stickleback fish over half a century in Alaska's Bristol Bay region. The study started in 1963 and went to 2015. Yeah, in Alaskan. In Alaska's Lake... I like Nagik, which is home to a salmon program research station and is a really abundant home to juvenile sockeye salmon. Salmon. And other fish. And for 52 years, fish were captured in nets along the lake shore at 10 different sites every seven days between June and September. Every single fish was identified and measured. What they found was that stickleback breed earlier and more often, each season in response to earlier spring ice breaks and longer ice-free summers. They breed earlier. So they were finding larger fish. They were essentially just older every year that the ice break was earlier. So what that means is that this is actually the first documented case of multiple breeding cycles for fish in a single season due to climate change. So because of the early ice break, they were breeding not once, but twice. Wow. Yeah. So I know that happens in birds. Sometimes it's called double clutching. And each time a bird lays a nest full of eggs, it's called a clutch of eggs. And it's very often, you know, usually you think that a bird's just going to do it once in a season. But if it is a long, great season full of food, then it can potentially happen multiple times. Yeah. And there are good and bad elements to this. So one good side of it is more babies. Great. Larger population. Bad side to that. Both clutch times or both times that these fish are reproducing are not exactly the normal time. So the food amounts and types are slightly different. However, however, this fish, they're talking about as a stickleback, right? They've gone saltwater to freshwater within 10,000 years as needed. This is like one of the greatest examples of evolution on the fly and resiliency of this particular species. Now, I don't think all species are going to be as good as the stickleback. I think they're like the outlier of being able to like, there's no more. There's no more saltwater. Again, it will be freshwater. Oh, it's getting salty again. We'll go back to being saltwater. Double clutch, not a problem. Sticklebacks are a great example of seeing the need for something and evolutionary change that you actually won't be seeing in the other fish populations. Which brings me to my largest point of this. Remember who I said was the other, mostly half of the population in the lakes where these guys are found? Salmon. Yes, salmon. So what happens if the stickleback population explodes knowing that they live in the same areas, they breed in the same areas, and they eat the same food? What's going to happen to the salmon? Roar. So just remembering that all species are connected in an ecosystem, that even when you have winners from climate change, that you are drastically throwing off the well-balanced ledger of that habitat, any time that changes too fast, species can be left out losers. So where there are winners, there are often also losers in these times of very fast change. And a reminder too that Alaska, where this was done, is warming about twice as rapidly as the rest of the planet. So this was a very extreme study. This was something that happened in just 50 years because the temperature change was exponentially on a different level than we would see in more temperate regions. So this could be a forecast of what we could see in the future in other areas. Yeah. Well, it's always going to be an adventure. Indeed. Yes. Stickleback tastes like, I don't know if that ever happened. Well, there's sticky, spiny stick. You don't want to just put one in your mouth. Stickleback. Sounds like a band name. Yeah. Could be a band. Stickleback. Been a while. Anyway. Been a while since I saw ice break. Anyway, if this goes on and on, maybe some salmon are going to be having some rough upbringings. A little stressful youth period. Exactly. Yes. Very nice segue into our next story. That was my point. Tell me a second. Oh, boy. About, this is about mice. And it is about what having a rough upbringing makes for how attractive you are to the opposite sex. So maybe, you know, troubled youths kind of has that sex appeal. If you're a mouse. A study from Brock University in Ontario, Canada tested a hypothesis that has yet not been tested about social stress and adolescence and attractiveness. So the hypothesis was that social stress would decrease attractive attractiveness of male rats. Females would find them less attractive as sexual partners. And that dominant status is a protective factor, which means that it would be less of a detriment if they were, if they had a high social status. That was the hypothesis. So the way they tested this hypothesis was they took a group of male rats and they subjected them to social stress during adolescence. That means they forced the rats to change cage partners regularly. So they had to fess out their, their dynamics over and over and over see who is top dog or top rat to establish dominance in these groups over and over and over. That's a lot of stress on these guys. Then they placed a female into a mating chamber. You know how, you know, it's Friday night. Time to go to the mating chamber. And one male was stressed in that mating chamber during adolescence. One was not. They did this with dominant and with subordinate rats separately. Among dominant groups, female rats preferred stressed males. So this was not expected in the hypothesis. They preferred the stressed males in dominant pairs. They spent more time with them and they visited them more often. In submissive pairs, the hypothesis proved true for that part. Female spent more time with control males than with the social stress males. So stress is important to attractiveness, but it is overridden by social status. And in fact, not just overridden where it's no longer a factor, social stress becomes a positive factor if that rat is also dominant. Right. You fought through it. You fought through it. You had those rough times growing up, grew up on the streets, fought your way to the top. Now you're tough. Hot stuff. Because you're super tough. Yeah. Right? That would be like the ultimate, that would be like the telling of a super male, right? Not just male and always just kind of never having trouble, but getting through it. Those are some good genes. If you had stress growing up and you're dominant, you really got it going on, you know? So that's something to look at. And now they want to look at animals that have received low levels of maternal care on top of these factors. They want to see if that affects all of the attractiveness. If you had low levels of maternal care as a baby rat, as a little rat up. So that'll be interesting to see if that, it's interesting to see that social stress is an adolescence so easily are reflected in adulthood via attractiveness. They haven't figured out how, what vector exactly is being affected, what trait is being affected by that social stress, if the females can smell it on them, if they can visually tell, we don't know that yet. That's definitely, I would assume one of the next steps as well, is to figure out what variable exactly the females are picking up on. It could be affecting their genes. It could be an epigenetic result. We don't know. Yeah, I mean, how do you know? I mean, it's a mouse. It's a rat. It's this little animal. You'd have to clone the rats. But I mean, how does the female know? I mean, I'm thinking about, go out into the world as a human being and you don't even know how somebody was raised. Oh yeah. You know whether or not somebody seems dominant in a situation, but you don't know anything about their history. I mean, maybe, you know, it's that we have clothing that we wear. We have certain signals that we... Somebody's riding a motorcycle and they're packing lucky stripes. But I mean, but who knows? The sleeve of the white. But they could, you don't know they were stressed as a child. You don't know if they were stressed or if they're 50. More than lose tattoo on their show. You can't get it. They could have had a wonderful life and then had a midlife crisis and decided they needed to change everything. You know, we don't know. Or it could be the guy in the wonderful pinstripe suit and who's, you know, either a businessman, a doctor, a lawyer, whatever looks great, but maybe they had the roughest upbringing ever. You don't know that until you sit down and have a conversation. You're raised by the mob, Kiki. Obviously that person has problems. I'm sorry. I just always fall back to the pinstripe suit even though it's like, I should have just said a nice Italian suit. Right? An Italian suit. Yeah. Yeah. So that is really I know nothing about men's passion. about the study that I think is fascinating is that there's something these females are picking up on that relate to social stress and adolescence. Yeah. I can't wait to see what comes of that. What do they know and how do they know it? Yeah. How do they know? Maybe it's like, they're just like calmer when other rats are getting stressed out by little things going out of whack. Like maybe these rats like need things to get there. They're hardened to the streets. Yeah. They're a little tougher. They're like, okay, so what if there's a cat in the neighborhood? It's not like it's here with us because I went through that lots of times. Once the cat's right up next to you, that's time to take action. Just in the neighborhood. That doesn't mean it. Like maybe they are like, because they've been exposed to more stress, maybe they're a little bit immune to that immediate fright of it or what it could be. Again, things we do. That could come across as strength, as confidence. That's exactly it. Yeah. And I hope you have the strength and the confidence to continue with us into the second half of our show, everyone. It is time for us to take a break. This is This Week in Science. We'll be back in just a few moments with our interview with James Weatherall on Nothing. Stay tuned. And I just want to say thank you so much. We have sold out of our twist calendars. And I just want to say thank you for purchasing those calendars. We do appreciate that you have sent us your money so that we can send you a calendar. We hope that you will really enjoy it throughout the year. We really hope that you're going to love the calendar. There's so much good stuff in it. We hope that you'll celebrate lots of Scientolidies with us throughout this year to come. Also, thank you to those of you in the San Francisco area who came out to SF Sketchfest Night Life at Cal Academy. What a fabulous night. We had so much fun. We had a full house, standing room only, people flowing onto the lawn outside. We were outside. They even put us outside in the cold. And people came out with no jackets. And still stayed and watched our show. So I want to say thank you to everyone out there who made it and made it a really great show just by being there. You're the best. Thank you so much. And now we move on. 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You can be creative, find a way to share twists with other people, and that will help us grow our audience, which will eventually help us to grow twists. It's that easy. And it's all because of you. You are our executive producers. You're the ones who keep us going. Thank you for all of your support. You really could not do this without you. And we are back with more This Week in Science. Kiki, I think you got muted. I don't know how you muted yourself. Because I hit little buttons. I mute myself all the time. I hit little buttons. Nobody hears me. I'm like, you don't want to hear me. Don't hear me. I was going to say, and it is time for our interview with our guest for the evening. Our guest today is James Owen Weatherall. He's a physicist, a mathematician, and a philosopher. He holds a position as professor of logic and philosophy at the University of California, where he is also a member of the Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Science. He previously authored The Physics of Wall Street. And his most recent book is called Void, The Strange Physics of Nothing. It was published in November of last year by Yale University Press, and it's really a nice looking book about nothing. You sure can fill up some pages with nothing. Thank you so much for joining us on the show tonight. Oh, thanks for having me. It's wonderful to have you here. So off the top, we've talked before about, you know, space and the endless amount of space. And I mean, is it really mostly nothing? Well, you know, so what I, you know, so what I talk about in the book, right, is how we're supposed to understand empty space in modern physical theories, right? So 17th century to today. And the remarkable thing, I think, is that how we under, like what we mean by empty space, what we mean by nothing, has changed really dramatically over the last, you know, 300 years, especially in the 20th century. So that, you know, there are possibilities in 20th century physical theories where, you know, sure, there's no stuff, there's no matter, there's no stars, there's no dust, whatever it is that you meant by stuff. And yet, the universe has all of these features that we dissociate with stuff. You know, the line between something and nothing has gotten blurred. I think that's one of the most interesting things. I mean, it's like, I'm the parent of a five-year-old and it's been the most fascinating thing to teach him to count and try and get him to understand the concept of zero. Is zero the same as nothing? Well... You're drifting into the philosophy part of... I thought I could ask you this question. Yeah. So, you know, I think that the answer has to be no somehow. That, you know, zero is a measure of something. I mean, so it's a number that you might associate with something. But, you know, so at least in 20th century physics, the situation is just more complicated than that. I mean, there are lots of ways for there to be nothing, you know, particularly in general relativity, right? So this is the theory of gravitation, you know, the large scale structure of the universe, the space and time that Einstein introduced. It's, you know, there are infinitely many different ways in which the universe could be empty. And so somehow saying, I was just, it's zero. I figured, too, it's how close you're looking. Like if I got a pizza here and I've got my kids and me and we all go after the pizza at once, at some point there's no pieces of pizza left, right? Yeah. There's zero pieces of pizza. Now, there may be remnants of cheese and crumbs from crusts and bits of pepperoni that are still left in the pizza box. Well, I'll say there's zero pizza left. In reality, there's all sorts of pizza-ish things that have been left in the wake of this pizza being there. Yeah. Well, so, look, you know, it's not, I think that what's going on here isn't just that we, it's hard to get rid of all of the stuff. I mean, if you're imagining the universe and you're thinking about, you know, taking things out of it and asking what's left over, which really is what, you know, what the book's about, imagining what the world would be like if there just weren't any stuff. Like what are the possibilities for empty space? Well, in relativity theory, at least, here's the kind of thing that can count as empty space. A universe with nothing but a black hole in it. A black hole, there's no matter there. There's no stuff. It's all kind of fallen into this, I mean, effectively into this singularity. And what's left is just geometry. But it's got all the features of, you know, a star or something. Like, you can't, you know, it's not emitting light, but gravitationally, it has all the features of a star. And so, you know, if you're thinking, hey, look at just these crumbs left over from the pizza, you're going to be singing a different tune of what's left over from the pizza as a black hole. That's going to cause problems for your evening. I don't really want a black hole takeover. But if all that I have in my pizza box is a black hole the size of the pizza, it's still going to have the same weight as... It'll be heavier, it'll be heavier. Will it be even heavier than if the pizza was there? Yeah. Because it's attracting things to it. So the, who first really, when did we first really start investigating this idea of nothing? Well, you know, so I think of, at least the story that I tell is really beginning in the 17th century with Isaac Newton. But that, I mean, that's not quite right, because in fact, I mean, this was a matter of a lot of dispute, a lot of scientific work, a lot of philosophical work, going back to the ancient Greeks. And so Aristotle, for instance, thought that nothing was impossible. And the reason that you couldn't have a, what you might think of as a void, a region where there was really nothing at all is that Aristotle thought it was incompatible with the idea of motion. And so if you wanted to do physics of some sort, you couldn't have regions of the world where there wasn't any stuff. And that idea was very influential. Aristotle was, you know, the most influential physicist for almost 2,000 years until the 17th century. In the 17th century, there are other people who didn't exactly agree with Aristotle, but they defended similar views. So René Descartes, you know, famous as a philosopher for, I think, Therefore I Am. He was a physicist too. I mean, most of his work was in physics and medicine. Actually, late in his career, he switched to medicine, believed that he could live forever. So all these great letters from, you know, the princes and princesses of Europe when Descartes died saying, well, I guess that was wrong. But Newton realized something that I think hadn't been appreciated before, which was that in order to write down laws of nature. So if you'd like to say something like, the sun exerts some gravity on other bodies. How much force the sun exerts on other bodies depends on how far away they are. You need to be able to say stuff about distance. So there have to be facts, for instance, about the relations between places that things could be. And the way that Newton sort of thought about this was what you first need to do in order to even get started on writing down something like his laws of motion or universal gravitation is to say something about what empty space and time would be like. And so he introduced some ideas. They were controversial at the time. He disagreed with Descartes. He disagreed with some other people who were working in the 17th century. But then, you know, he showed that if this is what you take space and time to be like, this is what you take empty space and time to be like, you can do a lot of physics. And I think that there's been just a lot of development of that idea of that in some sense you need to investigate the structure of empty space and time before really getting started on anything else. And so you're also interested in quantum field theory. And so is it your interest in this that kind of brought you to this idea of talking about telling this story about the physics of this field, of this space? Yeah. I mean, so I think most of my research is actually in gravitational physics and in general relativity. I'm interested in quantum field theory too. And I talk about in the book, so the quantum vacuum, this is what nothingness is called in the context of quantum field theory, right? So this is a state of the world in which there aren't any particles. There aren't any, I mean, there's, in some sense, nothing. You can make that precise. So if you could imagine measuring all of the particles in the universe at one time, if you're in the quantum vacuum state, you'd be guaranteed to find no particles in the whole universe. But that has the following, or rather doesn't have the following consequence. It doesn't mean that if you went and looked in your backyard, you wouldn't find anything. It's a very, very strange situation where somehow you can make sense of nothing globally, but it doesn't have any of the local consequences that you'd expect in quantum field theory. And so one of the things that I was very interested in, in writing this book, was in part, you know, what nothingness is like in each of these theories, but also in part just how different what we mean by empty spaces in, on the one hand, relativity theory and on the other hand, quantum field theory. And I think this is striking for a number of reasons. One reason is that, look, nothing is such an ordinary concept, right? You know, no pizza, zero, whatever. It's the sort of thing that you feel like you just have a grasp on. But in order to do science with it, we need to kind of spruce it up. We need to change it. We need to make it precise. And there's not just one way to do it. There are a bunch of different ways to do it. That can be incompatible with one another. And in fact, you know, where physicists now face this challenge of bringing together the two great 20th century theories, you know, quantum theory and relativity. And in order to do that, they need to take these very different ways of understanding nothing. Nothing is not the only thing that is like this, but they need to bring these different ways of understanding nothing together and find some way of making them compatible with one another. Do you have any ideas? I'll take them to your next. I'll take them to your next. I'll take them to your next. I'll take them to your next. I'll take them to your next. I'll take them��고. Yeah. So in terms of, you know, what are some of the big differences? So Ed from Connecticut in the chat room is saying aren't there interactions occurring between all the particles in the universe? So we have quantum, what is it the like the butterfly effect kind of where or entanglement where the particles are entangled and everything is interacting all the time. And are these interactions happening across some kind of field, and is that a quantum field? Well, so yes and no, I guess. So I think I would say that, so there are two things here. So one thing you can think about is a situation where you don't just have regions of empty space. So one thing seems pretty clear, which is that you could have two particles that are distant from one another, which are entangled with one another. And have it be the case that although there's nothing in between, measurements you perform on one are going to be correlated with outcomes of measurements you may perform on the other. And so in some sense, even though there's nothing in between, there's still interactions across that space. But in fact, the situation is, even if you don't have those particles to begin with, if you're in this quantum vacuum state that I was describing before, there's entanglement there too. Which means that if you're imagining that you're in this world where really globally there's nothing, but somehow you've got to sort of take yourself out of this. You've got some little measuring instrument of some sort. That's all there is in this universe. That if you were to perform measurements in different places, the results would also be correlated. They wouldn't all yield no particles in your backyard and your friend's backyard. And in fact, for some measurements that you could imagine performing, you know, what result you get and what result you get in your friend's backyard. They could be guaranteed to be the same. They could be guaranteed to be opposites in one another, things like that. Even in the vacuum state. Going back to the idea of this reconciliation of relativity and quantum field theory, I mean, you mentioned nothing in this concept, the mathematics of it really having to be reconciled as one of the things before they come together. Is gravity the other or one of the other parameters? Well, so gravity is, let's step back for a second. So gravity in general relativity is a manifestation of the geometry of space time. And so you can have these situations where you don't have any matter and nonetheless space time is curved or deformed. And so, you know, I mentioned just the curvature left over. And so, you know, you can imagine like, like in, you know, you see this in some movies like interstellar, right? Like planets orbiting around a black hole as if it were a star. Hopefully maintaining their distance from the. Yeah. So what's going on there is that these kinds of gravitational effects are actually in some cases at least empty space time effects. And so reconciling nothingness, you know, reconciling the possible empty universes and relativity theory with how we're supposed to understand the quantum vacuum. Is already a big step in trying to reconcile gravity with quantum field theory. Because the richness of structure in general relativity is concerning empty space is really about gravity. That's interesting. Yeah. Was there anything that really as you were researching the book and putting it together? Was there anything that you just like some story arc or something that you got into that you were like, wow, this is so fascinating. What was your, what was your wow moment? You know, there's a lot of physics in there that I'm really interested in. But, you know, the book is, you know, a lot of it's about stories of some of these scientists. And as I dove into some of the history, there were some remarkable little stories. Like, so for instance, maybe this is well known to everyone, but there was a Newton had a contemporary who was a philosopher, but also a mathematician who his name was Godfried Leibniz, who was a criticised Newton on a number of things related to the, his views on space and time, but also did some other things, including inventing calculus. And the stories about Newton and Leibniz's relationship with one another are unbelievable. I mean, so Leibniz himself was a crazy character. So, you know, early in his career, for instance, he decided that he wanted to be an alchemist. And so he... Newton was into alchemy too. Yeah, Newton was into alchemy, but sincerely into alchemy. I mean, in fact, Newton had a breakdown in the 1690s that many people think was due to mercury poisoning because of his alchemy. I mean, he never published anything, again, he just revised his earlier work and things like that, but because of his alchemical experiments. But Leibniz had a very different attitude. So Leibniz thought, man, if these guys can really do what they say they're doing, that would be great. I'd want to be part of it. So what he did was write a letter to the local alchemy society in which he pretended to be a very learned alchemist and talked about all of the wonderful experiments he was doing and the great mysteries he had unraveled and also, you know, the powers that he had. And they wrote back and said, this sounds great. You should come and join our group. And he, you know, never pursued it again because he thought, well, I was just making this up. And these people obviously have no idea what they're talking about. I don't know anything. If they had dismissed him out of hand, then he'd been like... Oh, well, that'd be... I actually need to look into this a little bit more. Fantastic. Yeah, I know. I mean, do you remember the Sokol hoax? This was... there was a physicist at NYU in the early 90s who wrote a paper called something like, towards hermeneutics of quantum gravity. You know, it was supposed to be showing that people in the humanities didn't have any intellectual standards. You know, Leibniz beat him to it by 300 years. But people in the alchemical community. Yeah, exactly. That's fun. Yeah, I recently read something, you know, that Newton, he was pretty much... He was an introvert. He really didn't like getting out until very, very late in his life. It was really much later in his life that he decided he had a female companion and he started throwing parties and had a much better time, but it was the early part of his life. While he was writing the Principia and everything, he was very focused. Could one say he had some social stress in his adolescence? Oh, he definitely had social stress in his adolescence, for sure. Well, I mean, he was born very premature and he was... I mean, he had relatively little education early on. He had a... Yeah, I mean, there really were lots of things in his childhood that were pretty tough. But he pulled it all together, obviously. Probably the most important physicist in history. Yeah, and the Principia, I think I read that he wrote it in Latin so that people with simple... He was very egotistical and he really didn't like simple-minded people, which is basically anyone other than himself. So he decided to write the Principia in Latin so that the simple-minded people wouldn't get a hold of it. Oh my! They wouldn't read it and they wouldn't misconstrue it. It would only be people who really wanted to work for it who would get it. I thought you were going to say it was so the government couldn't censor it. Yeah. Well, I heard there was that too. I don't know about that. Yeah, I love stories like that and stories of different individuals. You know, there have been so many people. So many people. It's really science is the work of people. You know, and there are the stories. There's the work that they did and there's also the people that they were while they did that work. And it's always so fascinating to find out who they were, what they did. But your book, we don't want to keep you too late, Void, The Strange Physics of Nothing. It is strange physics. You said things don't match. General relativity, quantum field, what? There's a lot more going on there than you'd think. Absolutely. Is there anything else that you'd like to share with people about your book that maybe we haven't addressed at all before we go? That is an unfair question. Oh, sorry. We'll go for it. When you ask your children what they're doing and they say nothing, what's your response? Yeah. It doesn't take a whole lot of physics to... I try to throw my kids curveballs. I pick them up from school and I was like, okay, so what'd you learn at lunch today? And they're like, what? Hey, what'd you learn at lunch? I just had lunch. I was like, oh, and then they'll come up with other stuff. In class, we talked about this, that, and the other. I'm like, oh, so nothing came up at lunch. Just lunch. That was it. All right. See, I'm thinking I'm going to have to change what I always say to my teen volunteers, which is a day with nothing learned is a day wasted. Now we know that's not true. You're going to get your head around nothing. You have progressed well beyond the rest of the class. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Anyone who can get their head around nothing and the person who's able to integrate the nothing of physics, the person's going to win a Nobel Prize. I can tell you that. There's a picture, a completely spherical nothing. That's it for a step. I'd like to. I'm, I'm, I like more rhomboid nothings. Thank you so much for joining us tonight. It was a pleasure speaking with you and your book void is available now for anyone who is interested. And while you are at UC Irvine, I would like to thank you for joining us tonight. Thank you for studying philosophy and math and physics. And I look forward to hearing more from you on the brilliance of physics and what it has to offer the world. Well, thanks so much. Thanks for having me. You're welcome. Thank you for your time. Thanks, Jim. Thanks. All right, everybody. That was James Owen, whether all with the physics of nothing. He says nothing to do with physiology. If you measure nothing, was it ever really there? In this case, probably. I think that's what I learned. That's what I learned from him. Yes. There's a lot of nothing that really is something. Yeah. But, uh, yeah. The book is neat. He goes through a lot of, um, kind of the history work where these different concepts came from how they evolved. Who worked on different stuff and kind of explained some in the process. But as we move forward on this show, it's time for a few more science stories before we call it a call it quits, right? Uh-huh. Let's get out of here in 15 minutes. Can we do it guys? Oh, absolutely. All right. Justin, you're up. Jack Pot. Jack Pot, exceptionally preserved Jurassic marine fossils discovered in Canada. Jurassic being about 183 million years old. The new site was found at the Parks Canada Yaha Tinda Ranch near Banff National Park, Southwest Alberta. Co-author Benjamin Gill, Professor of Virginia Tech, spotted the first exceptional fossil when he noticed his PhD student and co-author Theodore Tham standing right on top of a lobster fossil. Yep. The lightning was just right. The lighting was just right to make the outline of the lobster, Gill said. And when we looked around, we noticed fossils were all around us. The lobster was the first telltale sign that the site could be special because lobsters have flexible exoskeletons, usually are not preserved as fossils. So to see a lobster meant there's a good chance there's lots of stuff. And there was other unusual fossils recovered from the site included delicate shrimp, complete fish skeletons with scales and gills, large dolphin-like marine reptiles. That's the ichthyosaurus, as well as vampire pods, which are apparently related to modern vampire squid and octopus. Will their delicate ink sacs still intact? The preservation of the fossil ranks the site among the highest quality sources of Jurassic marine fossils found anywhere in the world, and certainly the only one in North America. Presence of fossilized soft tissue is of specific interest here because it offers, because you have this sort of delicate fauna in this environment being fossilized, it means you have a more complete view of the overall fauna, which means you don't get just snapshots of some creatures, but you get the ecosystem, which is also filling in the gap of connecting extinct organisms with those that are living today, as well as the finds of those that they hadn't seen before. So there's dozens of probably new discovered species coming out of this. 16 new vampire roe pod specimens. So this is not just that they found one, they found 16 new specimens that they hadn't been able to come. And what's also interesting is the other site that has a really decent number of these is somewhere in Europe, right, and that's like half the planet away. So now we have around the same time period two really disparately far sites with examples of pretty decent collection of community organisms that were there. Got a pretty good idea of distribution of the ancient Jurassic oceans, thanks to this. Part of the reason that they think that they got this site to form in the first place, this was likely a low oxygen area in the Jurassic ocean. So these creatures likely died all about the same time, sort of in the mass death, sink down. And because of where this ocean was in the lower Alberta, it was possibly it was they think there weren't that many scavenger type animals about to take advantage of all these dead sunken into the deep sea animals at the time. So yeah, fossil jackpot. It's extremely rare conditions that lead to it and allow it to happen. And it took somebody stepping on the outline of a lobster who happened to be trained to look for a session to discover it. Yeah, the other interesting idea is just how the, you know, it's once upon a time this area where the fossils were found was covered in a lot of water. And these were kind of deep ocean animals. But then the waters receded rapidly enough that they would kind of get stuck and not have the right ecosystem. And like you said, the scavengers weren't there. And so they laid them, they got laid down in the sediments. And the waters may not have receded from this. I didn't get that from the study. It sounded like it was just low oxygen water. So the die off might have been just right there. And because they sink to the bottom of what was still an ocean area, there was nothing that could get at them. Yeah. So that, okay. So then that makes me wonder about like the, the anoxic areas off of the coast of Oregon and California, the perfect place for the area, like in the Gulf where there's no, where there's no oxygen for periods of time. Yes. Perfect areas for the, you know, research mice of the future to discover the fossilized. Exactly. Yeah. That's fascinating. Love it. Love it. Love it. Love it. All right. You know what's fantastic? What? Sleep. Get out of your sleep. I want to. Oh my God. Oh. I haven't been getting enough sleep lately because my son keeps waking up in the middle of the night and I don't know why. And then I have to go get put him back to bed. And so there's been a lot of sleep. I've been getting enough sleep lately because my son keeps waking up in the middle of the night and I don't know why. So there's been a lot of sleep interruption for me the last few nights. But what I have discovered, thanks to an article written in ours, Technica by Rohini Saxena on an article from Nature Neuroscience is super exciting. Researchers are finally, finally putting together why different phases of sleep are important. Turns out REM sleep, rapid eye movement, sleep. When you're sleeping and your eyes are closed and your lids are closed but your eyes are moving all over the place. You're dreaming, right? It's usually the period of time that's more of a lighter phase of sleep. But according to this article, they have discovered that this is the phase of sleep in which the brain strengthens and reinforces developing neural circuitry by pruning dendritic spines. And so dendritic spines, if you think of a neuron, you know, we've got the neuron that spreads out. It's the branches, like the branches, the root system of a plant, right? We have a plant, that's the cell body and then it goes down into the ground and it spreads out to contact with all sorts of things to be able to get as much resources as it can. Well, in the neurons, these little projections, they end at the synapse. And at the synapse, it's not just a little, I don't know, a little button. It's actually this, it's, it's lots of little tiny spines. Little tiny things that grow. Yes, that poke out from the end. Very, very tiny. Very tiny things. Anyway, the dendritic spines are where plasticity occurs. Dendritic spines are really what grow and allow the formation of new memories. And what they found is that in mice, which were trained to complete a treadmill-like motor task and also young mice that were still developing, when they were allowed to have REM sleep, there was more pruning of new dendritic spines than in REM sleep, in mice that had been REM sleep deprived. And the difference in pruning is only for new dendritic spines. So if you've got an existing dendritic spine, that spine is most likely going to stay there. But, you know, it's, it's not REM, whether or not it gets pruned is not REM sleep dependent. So these new spines that have been formed, new spines can be correlated potentially to new memory formation. If they are pruned, it most likely happens during REM sleep. And so things that they found is that this is very high, this REM sleep is very important for this dendritic pruning in juvenile and adolescent brains, i.e. kids need to sleep. And in individuals who have been learning motor skills. So if you're learning, but they didn't look at any other things in adult brains really, but they found that really lack of REM sleep is preventing the brain from getting rid of the dendritic spines that it doesn't need. The dendritic spines that would kind of muck the memory and not make the memory as efficient as it could be. So it's critical. Strengthen the spines that are needed. Get rid of the spines that are not make it a stronger, more efficient memory. REM sleep is important. But please keep the ones that tell me where I put my keys. So this week in shocking science discoveries get your sleep. Get your sleep and make it to short. I really talked about how it's so important to get that deep sleep. If you get woken up during REM sleep it's not a problem. You kind of have this idea if I wake up while I'm dreaming it's not a big deal. But actually it might be that you really need to get through complete cycles of sleep. The 90 minute cycle of sleep go into deep sleep and the REM sleep to be able to fully allow your brain to be able to consolidate the memories that you have learned prior to sleeping. Sleep is important for memory. I wonder if that's why a good night sleep I wonder if that's why sleep is more important than extra study time as we've talked about on the show. Because if it's directly related to efficient memory. That's fascinating. Very well could be. Yeah. But the biggest thing, adults we could give or take. You've already got a lot of memories that are in there. You can make it through. You can fake it. Kids, they haven't learned things yet. Their brains are still developing. Kids need their sleep. Later start times for schools people. Let's push this. Also tell Kai to stay asleep apparently. Go to sleep Kai. Your dendritic spines Kai. I'm thinking to develop and learn. Yeah. Yeah. Alright Justin got another story. Researchers at Oregon State University have discovered a 100 million year old alien. They found it preserved in amber. It has a triangular head almost looks like ET apparently. So we know there's a million insect species that have been described. Every one of these species of insects on earth anyway has been placed into 31 existing orders. This one however doesn't fit into any one of those orders. Therefore it must be from outer space. Or this 100 million year old insect is just unlike anything that we've categorized today. Findings have been published in the journal Cretaceous Research and described the small wingless female insect that probably lived in fissures in the bark of trees looking for mites, worms or fungi to feed on. Dinosaurs were lumbering about with tiny they said it's scary looking. Looking at the picture it sort of looks like an ant with a praying mantis head. And a pincher bug's rear. I can see lots of other types of attributes of insects within this. It says it has a number of insects this is George Poignard Jr and emeritus professor of entomology at the OSU College of Science one of the world's leading experts on plant and animal life forms found preserved in semi-precious stone amber. A number of features that just don't match those of any other species I know which looking at it I'd say kind of morphologically matches lots of them but not one specific. But we don't categorize animals strictly on morphology anymore. Yeah, I had never really seen anything like it appears to be unique in the insect world and after considerable discussion we decided it had to take its place in a new order. So now we don't have 31 orders of insects we now have 32. Most unusual was it's head with bulging eyes different from any other known insect would have given this BC's ability to see almost 180 degrees just by turning its head sideways. An insect probably an omnivore had a long narrow flat body long slender legs could have moved quickly and literally had eyes behind its or could see behind its self. It also had glands on the neck that's the secretive deposit that scientists believe is difficult to repel predators. Yeah. The insect has been assigned the newly created order, Atheo Karen Odia Karen Karen named Atheo Karenus Bermanicus in reference to the Hawking Valley Mines of Myanmar previously known as Burma where it was found and only one other specimen of this insect has been located also preserved in Burmese amber although I suppose they should change that to Burmian amber as long as they're changing the names of things those two specimens which clearly belong to the same species now comprise the totality of the order Atheo Karenodia Instex has as Kulup Petraeus, beetles with hundreds of thousands of known I like Ed from Connecticut in the chat room says now they'll find many of these fossils in museum storerooms mislabeled Oh. That was a printer bug. It sounds like a dead end order to me like evolution went crazy made a really weird bug and whoops, no good. The strangest thing about the insect is that the head looks so much like the way aliens are often portrayed with its long neck big eyes, strange oblong head I thought it resembled E.T. I even made a Halloween mask that resembled the head of this insect Oh boy, scientists. But when I wore the mask when trick-or-treaters came by it scared the little kids so much and took it off. That sounds like a very classic entomologist thing to do and I love it. Yes. Oh my gosh, that's amazing. Let's talk some more about the supernatural for a second. Let's talk about fairy rings. You know fairy rings. They're in Africa and Australia. They're between six and a hundred feet wide and they're usually created by fairies or dragon breath. Everyone knows about these. Dragon breath. I'm going to slowly back it up a little bit. Yeah. It's like after you eat garlic. Dragon breath. Fairy rings. The first thing I think of is a circle of toad stools or a circle of mushrooms. I think that's how they look in a lot of This is when fairies meet up together. They sit on the seats. They put them down like little things to sit on. We found out caused by the way it starts, but sort of propagates outwards. Absolutely. So the fairy rings that we don't know a lot about. I'm screen sharing right now. You can see are from Africa and Australia. Yeah. And they're thought to be created by fairies or by dragons breath. And as dragons breath. Wait, I got to stop you again. I'm sorry. Is dragons breath like a type of herb or a plant or no a dragon. Like a dragon. A dragon? A dragon. A fire breathing dragon. Back up now to the science. Isn't that that's like a wildflower. We're going to finish it. Princeton University ecologists have come up with a new theory. So previous theater theories have had to do with termites or plant roots. The new theory is actually the combination of the two termites create a pattern of plants. They create a pattern of tunnels underground. The plants have a pattern of roots underground and it creates this odd circle. I will mention that the Princeton University researchers think that it fits pretty well but outside experts have also contacted the Associated Press to say they weren't convinced by the study because they weren't comfortable with the author's assumptions about rainfall and termite colony life spans. So there are some things still to be worked out here for sure probably not fairies or dragons but right now it looks like a combination of termites and plants. Termites and plants together. I'm going to say it's going to come down to a soil fungus. Maybe you should put that in your predictions. I will, next year. That might be too late. I could see how the termite activity actually could even alter the soil fungus or something. But it seems like when I'm looking at that circle it seems too clean for termites just to be like oh no that's as far as we're allowed to go based on our termite GPS it's time to head home. It's a very clean circle so that's why they think it's a combination of the two. It's a combination of termites and root structures. By root structures I think for it to be a circle like that the only other place I've seen circles like that in nature is like the Petri dish it's like a growing fungus. Well, time will tell for more research to come. But I'm usually right about these things. Oh, okay. Every final story is about mussels. What do you do when you don't really have working mussels? People are working on bionic solutions robotic exoskeletons and now a new study out of Sweden published in Science Advances some researchers at Linköping University and University of Borås and I know I'm not pronouncing those right and I apologize for that. But these researchers have taken fabric and coated the fibers with an electro active material that makes the fiber actuate like muscle fibers so shortening or lengthening at the onset or release of electrical activation and the idea is that they could be woven together to create a fabric exoskeleton as opposed to giant rigid robotic suits and pneumatic pumps and hoses and many things so these are being described as textile mussels. So there's an idea that you could maybe have running tights that you could wear under your normal clothes and the weave of the fabric allows it whether it is woven or knitted allows it to either be stronger in the force it can produce or allows it to expand and stretch more and they could take these different ways of weaving and knitting together to actually create fabrics with the appropriate amount of elasticity and strength for any given situation potentially leading us to exoskeletons that are just like little suits that you put on I love it. Gotta do my heavy lifting put on my arm bands that's right put on your arm bands and it is very interesting the way that they have created these textiles and put the fabrics together so that they are basically normal threads they look like normal threads however they are capable of once they are woven into an appropriate fabric of actually being used with actuators electrical actuators to lift a weight at the end of a pulley system which is pretty cool I think it is very cool so they are already showing that these fabrics are capable of shortening of force and of moving objects with that force the steps are just moving ahead the future is coming so fast I can't wait to be super strong in my little running outfit yes can we put on my running shorts and I will win the strongman that's right I will be able to take a 50 pound backpack up that mountain that's right right everyone just needs a little bit extra strength yes textiles with electricity knitted muscles textile muscles and with that I hope we have the strength to get some sleep it's the end of the show we are going to be done now we hope you get lots of sleep I would like to take this moment to shout out and say again thank you for buying our calendars we are sold out you are awesome and thank you for joining us last week at SF sketch fest if you were able to come in San Francisco so great we are in person that was just fantastic what a great show special shout out to the Minion who gave me the very kind gift you got a gift you got a gift I got a very kind gift what the heck guys hey David and Leela all the SF crew Oak Tech came out so many great people so appreciated feels so good and then I'd also like to thank our Patreon sponsors and I would like to try something very new for our Patreon sponsors is it already ready to go I thought this was an R&D it is R&D hold on let's see if I can get it let's see if I can make this work R&D because I didn't test it before this is untested and I'm just trying to make it work and I don't know it won't open come on and got you apparently it can't be open but you know the thought that's what counts no it's gonna be opened right now and I'm gonna screen share it and let's see if I can let's see if I can do this everybody like we're at the movies I would like to say thank you to our Patreon sponsors thank you to Chris Clark Paul Disney John Ratnaswamy Richard Omus Byron Lee Kevin Patron Andy Grove Eric Nicol James Keppel Bob Calder Ed Dyer Larry Garcia Gerald Onyago Daryl Lambert Willis Mosey Guthman Matthew Litwin Richard Porter Robert Aston Ben Roth Rudy Garcia Brian Hoan Brian Condren Nathan Greco Christopher Dreyer Dave Wilkinson Rick Ramisgarry Phil Nadeau Phil Pashain Kurt Larson Jason Olds James Malt Dougel Campbell Craig Porter Marjorie Paul Stanton David Almed Next week we got to slow down that crawl Or maybe you just let the professional do it just since she's well-practiced No, no, no, no. Do not pretend that she was reading off the list I was watching she was looking off the other list because she was like a half minute or more behind the crawl we just need to slow it down a little bit I was behind because I started when you stopped and had to catch up Yeah, that's right. Because I got from the beginning I'm not sure you gave up any ground that might be right You might have stayed right with the same pace where I blew it Oh yeah But we should all be able to play along at home I think we should just slow that one down a little bit and try it again I love this new toy I know and I'll play with it and yes strengths maybe we just need to make it yellow disappearing in 3D into the distance with the Star Wars theme going Yes. Maybe do that too Alright. And then we need to say it to the Star Wars theme You two won't let us do that No Everyone, thank you for all your support on Patreon and if you're interested in supporting us you can find out how at patreon.com and science also remember you can help us out simply by telling your friends about TWIS and on next week's show we'll be back yet again on Wednesday broadcasting live online at 8 p.m. Pacific Time at twist.org slash live where you can watch and join our chat room who are right there Hey guys, how's it going over there? Good to see ya but if you can't make it don't worry it's okay we have things available at twist.org slash youtube at twist.org Thank you for enjoying the podcast We're available of course as a podcast as well to search for this week in science and iTunes or if you have a mobile type device you can look for Twisfordroyd It's not working If you have a mobile type device you can of course look for Twisfordroyd app in the android marketplace or simply search this week in science in anything app or market blazy For more information on anything you've heard here today show notes will be available on our website that's at www.twis.org that's www.twis.org What was this I couldn't hear you I couldn't hear you over there www.twis.org where you can also make comments and start conversations with the hosts and other listeners or you can contact us directly email kirsten at kirsten at thisweekinscience.com justin at twistmini at gmail.com or BlairBlaireBlaireBaz at twist.org just be sure to put 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I'll broadcast my opinion it's this week in science this week in science this week in science science this week in science this week in science science I've got one disclaimer and it shouldn't be news that what I say may not represent your views but I've done the calculations and I've got a plan if you listen to the science you may just better understand that we're never trying to threaten your philosophy we're just trying to save the world this week in science is coming your way do everything we say and if you use our methods instead of rolling the world of toxoplasma gandia this week in science this week in science science this week in science science my laundry list of items I want to address from stopping global hunger to dredging Loch Ness I'm trying to promote more rational thought and I'll try to answer any question you've got the help can I ever see the changes I seek when I can only set up shop coming your way from the words this week in science science this week in science this week in science science this week in science this week in science oh there's the cuckaburra I missed that cuckaburra where is there a cuckaburra eating all the gumdrops sick and home laugh cuckaburra laugh cuckaburra cuckaburra thanks k I don't know what's wrong with me in the spelling today I've been spelling things wrong all day some days some days I can spell things some days I can't no I need a gum tree for my cuckaburra my cuckaburra the can is upstairs this is a canned cuckaburra it came in a can really yeah it was like canned moose with canned cuckaburra it was in the can and it came out of a can it's true that's the k thanks tranks cuckaburra my back is hurting today I've been I've been noticing I've been wiggling a lot today I need to go horizontal yeah I'm so ready for bed I've been up since 5 30 yeah you were emailing me at 5 30 in the morning not even asleep yeah well because I did preliminary research for today last night and then I wasn't done yet so I do wake up early to do that and I have multiple stuff going on at work so I had to get up early for those reasons as well but I was trying to get my twist prep done this morning and that's when I noticed that one of my stories disappeared I think that's interesting I'm wondering if it was an embargo date issue that was my first thought yeah because it was from so the story that Blair wanted to discuss it just disappeared from the internet yeah which was quite strange a little weird and I don't recall offhand what the publishing body was it's plus biology right but so I thought that like what university it was from or the funders or any of that information I don't recall I just know it was snowballs in let's see I have an email that says new articles in plus biology 18th to the 24th so today I probably should know yeah so I got that yesterday and it doesn't have anything about that it just has three articles mm-hmm it ran away and then you go I went to the actual researchers website and they have a hey our article's been published announcement with a link and then it goes directly to the professor's front page and not to the oh interesting yeah not to the library website and so yeah so it is very interesting it's just the paper's just gone yeah but I think it kind of like I think the researchers are at the University of Zurich so it's not like it's US related stuff actually no I was surprised you didn't decide to talk about the spider story what spider story well because you did your research yesterday that's why so if it came out today it might end up next week it's about peacock spiders I definitely didn't what I know I saw it and I was like waiting for you to put it in the rundown okay yeah maybe next week I'll send you the link please please do yeah I'll chat it to you there you go there you go some day when I have a full sized house you're gonna have spiders in my study there's just gonna be framed close-up photography of peacock spiders I think that would be cool I was imagining that would be wonderful yeah they're so cute cute their little eyes yeah there's a favorite one fungo man says I could hear Blair's ears perking up but when you said peacock spiders what spider story I know yeah where's the I used to have a bookmarked is it this no on his way out how funny I'm just gonna have to google image search and I'll find that there's an entire gallery of all the types of peacock spiders up close and it's I think it might be the most adorable thing I've ever seen oh my oh my I was copying a video I love cuckaburras I'm extremely impressed by that this is one of my I'm gonna golf clap you on that that's one of my bird impressions that's one of my favorite it's one of my favorite exhibits at my local zoo we love the cuckaburra actually there's a cuckaburra this guy this isn't the one I was thinking of but look at him is it screen sharing it's screen sharing look at him go I can't find the one I'm thinking of though it's like fluffy tap to the mic this one I found it look at it's like a sheep spider let's see who do we need to interview next week we have an interview next week we don't have an interview next week I'm just wondering if we should have an interview next week if I should get in touch with the people who've been archiving data for next week that might be a good one for what say it again archivalists people who've been archiving governmental data I love that idea look at him he's so cute is there a chance we can get Stebbins back on the show now yeah probably maybe, I don't know I think we're going to need him now more than ever I don't know if we'll be able to get him regularly but we might get him every once in a while I think we may have more of an ability to share with us his insights than he's had in a while absolutely he's out of the office of science and technology policy but at the same time I don't know if he has as inside of he still knows he probably knows more about what's been going on than ever before probably let us imagine that the spiders is a sphere there we go poor spiders we lost Blair to google images I'm pictures of jumping spiders now that's all I am I've ceased existing as a human I'm just this you're just planning on getting you're like I need to own a jumping spider go they love that, that's so cute this is what we're going to do I'm going to have a study and it's going to be close-ups of jumping spiders like this one I like that one Catherine Hey Ho Hey Ho yeah that's a good idea Ed Hey Ho let's see you know what I can do right now I can make a google doc I didn't want to do that look at this one with a piece of a drop of water as a hat we have lost her three more images yes please I like this one it has the head tilt like a dog you're doggapermorphisizing yeah I am okay so I need okay I'm going to stop I found a treasure trove I'm going to have to say good night Justin I've got a a project post show that's waiting for me oh art are you arting I am arting I'm arting hard hard I finished a piece and hung it and I'm later I'm going to take it down tweak it just a little bit I'll show you what my project is for tonight though alright everybody I have a link for you guys that I just made and it's a google doc that you guys can put in ideas for interviews because this would be nice to have a centralized location and I take notes when people say you should interview that person or you should interview that person and that way I can do it or not do it what's that Justin what's your art ooh what is that cool is that decoupage is he just leaving us with his art strengths I love that strengths I love it oh that's right Desbohm you're leaving us you're going to be gone from the internet for a few months I don't blame you tempting wait what Desbohm says thanks Justin for years of fun and science news I'll be away from the internet for a few months oh wow interesting what are you doing basic training brave soul wow wow did it work did it glow at all no is that what was trying to happen glowing you need a black light perhaps nope nope this is a hidden element of this art is that there's an image you can see be physically there the camera doesn't seem to capture oh yeah because I didn't see it what it's going to look like this is going to go through a whole bunch of processes it'll be unrecognizable from its current state sweet neat that's cool yeah awesome yeah so I have 1200 feet of string a portion of which is going to go on here tonight string mix media it's heavily mixed deep mixed very cool yeah it's going to be this is base coat this is base coat this is just like primer for the final image but I got to get to work on that because I have only so many hours which I can dedicate to my craft I got to get to work on my REM sleep so I need to get to work on my REM sleep I actually I took something very different from this than the two of you did I learned from that story that the less sleep I get the more I'll remember no that's not quite right if you don't sleep you'll never forget it no that's not no it's how I heard it you won't learn anything new there's plenty of neurons I'm not using oh boy got it wrong never prune and Justin misinterprets the data knocks it out of the park good night he's done it again good night Justin good night Blair good night Kiki good night everyone good night mania good night good night everyone thank you for watching and take care go get some sleep