ASM150 Terraforming, White Noise, and Science Party Tricks

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terraforming white noise and science party tricks all that and more on this week's episode of ask science [Music] [Applause] understand he'll mike anyway he got problems he won't stop there but he'll talk and talk and talk until he flew in the face science faith welcome to ask science mike the weekly podcast where i answer questions about science faith and life i'm your host science mike my real name is mike mccarg i'm a non-scientist non-expert who reads a lot and does my best to offer authentic insights and reliable answers on your scientific questions using research so it works let's get it started [Music] hey mike so at one of your live shows you started an answer by saying that this was top shelf knowledge that you reserve for your friends at parties and um i want more of that so i don't know what to ask i just want you to blow my mind thank you so this is the part of the show where i make a confession as i often do i've i've learned that most of my job is just being honest about my experiences and feelings and giving how much we as a society to hide our feelings and our experiences in order to look strong and impressive to other people the fact that i don't do that as often draws a lot of people to listen to me talk it's a very strange way to make a living for sure my memory is bizarre it's truly strange because i think people have an impression that i have really great memory recall and i do have pretty phenomenal recall and reading comprehension with a small caveat i only remember things when i am asked about them so i literally if i just try to think what do i know about stuff my brain tells me nothing until i ask it something more specific so i sat for probably an hour and a half trying to think of things that were mind-blowing i knew about science and i couldn't think of any at all for the entire time i looked at my bookshelf and i said what do i know and i couldn't remember literally anything i knew about science that was mind-blowing or really otherwise so i had to go into a pretty elaborate time of visualization and role play because well that's why i do a question and answer show called ascents mic i work in response to your questions not only the content but what i perceive your emotions are in them that's amplified at live events which is why i think those are more entertaining to listen to and then when i'm at a party i have lots of feedback to observe in people's body language and their faces and the context of the conversation that prompts me into the you know ambiguous infinity of things i could talk about into something that people will actually care about in that moment so all that to say i don't know if these things are mind-blowing or not because i don't have any feedback to tell me if they're mind-blowing everything is mind-blowing to me absolutely everything i buy products and i sit down with the instruction manual and i read the whole thing and i'm fascinated every time so i'm a weird duck here's my best shot though at four things that i think are amazing that i would kind of consider that top shelf when i mean top shelf i mean new in science not widely talked about and something i don't really talk about on the podcast either uh so these would just be things that kind of hold and hoard and wait for an opportunity for it to seem appropriate in conversation number one recently scientists encoded using crispr cass 9 an animated film in an e coli bacterium's dna say what yeah you know an animated gif those little things we text each other now they basically made one of those in the dna of a bacterium using crispr cas9 they stored that information and made a biological animated gif that's what we're up to in biology right now that's amazing and mind-blowing here's another one number two recently scientists created the first artificial wombs and gestated premature baby lambs in them scientists made an artificial womb and gestated baby lambs in them who were born prematurely and while they were in there they grew wool and opened their eyes for the first time and this has incredible promise for advancing neonatal icus and situations for human premature births because they're creating a sterile closed fluid environment they're creating a vascular connection to the fetus and they're actually able to oxygenate that blood flow and insert nutrition and create a sterile womb-like environment for mammals to grow in an artificial womb what that's insane here's another one it appears that our moon you know the closest celestial body to our own used to have an atmosphere because of volcanic activity the moon a tiny celestial body with no magnetosphere once had enough volcanic emissions to create an atmosphere around it now not an earth-like atmosphere certainly it's not the kind of place you would want to hang out but something with atmospheric pressure and gases trapped by gravity around the surface of the moon holy cow number four maybe my favorite scientists recently discovered that not only can bees count as high as four but they also understand the number zero bees invertebrates insects these are not only the first insects but the first invertebrates who have been shown to understand the value zero how do you know if bees can count you give them rewards if they move towards higher or lower assemblages of objects where you have a pedestal and you have two objects on one you have four objects of another and you see how high they can account by putting a reward with the higher collections of objects and you see if they can understand zero by doing the opposite training them to always move towards lower numbers of objects until you give them an option of zero it turns out once they've been trained eighty percent of bees will go to the pedestal with zero objects meaning they understand that zero is less than 1 or 2. so bs not only can understand values as high as 4 they can also understand 0 which is incredibly difficult human children learn to count one two three four five six seven eight nine ten long before we can understand zero zero is a very difficult concept for a being to model in reality it's very abstract so super impressive that bees understand the concept of zero so there's four top shelf items i think crispr cast nine used to put an animated gif in the dna of a bacterium an artificial womb raising mammals that were born prematurely our moon used to have an atmosphere and bees can not only count to four they can understand zero [Music] what do you say we hang out you and i i'd love that would you like that i think it'd be fun well there's some opportunities coming up may the 7th i'm going to be in minneapolis for a conference called jesus wrote a dinosaur faithful youth ministry in a scientific age uh none other than christa tippett will also be appearing there along with some notable scientists and researchers including a couple of friends of mine from biologos i'm super excited about that i'd love to see you there now if you're not in youth ministry but you'd like to see me while i'm in minneapolis no big deal because uh the evening of may 7th i'm doing the battle of the podcasts science mike versus tripp fuller from homebrewed christianity so if you'd like to hear us nerd out and i think kind of a game show format that's going to be happening and that's free and open to the public minneapolis i'd love to see you may 7th may 25th and 26th the liturgist gathering is happening in austin texas this is a big announcement this is going to be our first liturgist gathering in texas which is our most requested stop so grab your tickets fast they went on sale yesterday and we've already sold a bunch of tickets for the liturgist gathering in austin i'd love to see you there july 27th of course i'll be at the skylight festival in brant ontario that's for you canadians i'd love to see you no need to pull out the passport for that one and then october 5th and 6th we'll be doing the liturgist gathering in london england so crossing the atlantic there and you can get information about all those events by going to ask asksciencemike.com and clicking the menu item labeled events [Music] our next question came in via email and it reads mike what are your thoughts on terraforming i've been watching more and more netflix and youtube videos on space time travel etc in one of them they mentioned how planets may have formed dust gathering together in an orbit to form a planet could we expedite or craft that process is there merit in potentially terraforming another earth even in our own solar system i don't know this all blows my mind i should have went into astronomy and post-secondary and gotten paid a relatively same amount as i currently am to dream oh man i love astronomy i love space exploration i love science fiction around those themes and so i have spent an unreasonable amount of time in my life thinking about terraforming now to start off traditionally terraforming generally refers to the process of manipulating another planet's climate and topography to make it more earth-like it's i i think in some cases terraforming has referred to the creation of a planet from scratch but in most science fiction and in most scientific discussions terraforming is all about atmospheres for example we talk about colonizing mars and if you want to colonize mars you would begin by creating pressurized domes on mars surface or pressurizing caves and caverns underneath the surface of mars which would help protect you from solar radiation by the way but you can't really scale a population to any vaguely earth sized quantity using those techniques so there is the idea could we transform mars's atmosphere to be more like earth and it is theoretically possible the first thing you would need would be a magnetosphere on earth we have a wonderful molten core in the center of our planet that creates a magnetic field and that magnetic field protects our planet and our atmosphere from solar radiation when planets don't have that like our moon or like mars mars we believe used to have a magnetosphere but lost it billions of years ago the solar wind these continuous particles coming from the sun slowly leech away your atmosphere so right now if we started to create a thicker or denser atmosphere on mars than currently exists it would just blow away again so theoretically nasa scientists believe it would be possible to use a spacecraft to generate a protective magnetosphere of course you'd need to do that for a very long time because once you have a protective magnetosphere it's going to take a very long time probably starting by seeding mars with bacteria to create a runaway greenhouse effect you'd want to produce a lot of methane and you'd want to create a much thicker carbon dioxide situation on mars than currently exist if this sounds familiar it's because we're currently accidentally terraforming earth and we're making it much more like earth was in the age of the dinosaurs and at times when the earth has had no ice on it at all which by the way has never happened while there's humans on earth and we know that rapid changes are destructive to ecosystems so we're basically would want to do on purpose and to a greater extent on mars what we're accidentally doing now now do we have the capacity to do that intelligently to create a sustainable earth-like atmosphere on mars i don't know and i don't think anyone does on other planets say venus you'd want to do the opposite venus has a runaway greenhouse gas effect where the planet is so hot that lead melts on the surface of venus venus is closer to the earth than mars it has a much more similar gravity well so as a candidate for terraforming in many ways it seems to make more sense but we'd have to do something different there again probably involving heat loving bacteria to start uh breaking down carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of venus and slowly thinning the venusian venuvian venusian i don't know the atmosphere of venus okay that's what terraforming traditionally applies to and those are incredibly difficult problems to solve they involve engineering that is currently far beyond the means of our species i think we have the theoretical science understood the engineering and and and how specifically we would cultivate and culture the appropriate species of bacteria uh also not there but all of that would be very simple compared to creating a planet from scratch so if you had you know say we went to the asteroid belt where we have some dust and we have asteroids more readily available we said okay based on our understanding of planetary formation all that happened is a lot of these things started banging together so we're going to bang them together on purpose conceptually that's very simple you just put asteroids on collision trajectories with each other maybe start with some larger ones um and you know smash them together and while they're molten smash them with some more uh the problem here is you would need an absolutely incredible unfathomable unfathomable you know when i recorded my audiobook i could not say unfathomable and i still can't right now anyway you would need a whole bunch of asteroids to make something planet-sized and the amount of rocket fuel and spacecraft you would need to do that oh gosh i couldn't even begin to estimate and even assuming you did that once you created a planet from scratch guess what you just have a molten ball of lava and depending on the chemical composition of the asteroids you used to create this molten ball of lava in the first place it may start creating its own atmosphere which you then have to turn around and terraform so it's fascinating oh oh by the way yeah and you would also need a magnetosphere so if you if your newly formed planet didn't get a molten iron core um and it and it didn't produce a magnetosphere your attempts to create an atmosphere are going to be doomed by the solar wind over time so what does this tell me i actually agree that it's important for us to colonize other worlds but not as like an escape hatch for global warming here really to protect from something like an asteroid strike just to have some conscious humans that maybe could rebuild intelligent life in our solar system uh in terms of confronting global warming the only thing that makes sense is to confront global warming on earth earth following the most runaway global warming scenarios we can imagine even earth following total nuclear war is far more accommodating to human life and every life on earth than any other body in our solar system it would be easier to make the earth closer to it is now after runaway global warming or after nuclear war than it would be to terraform mars or venus or any other body in our solar system or any body we have seen in a telescope the earth is precious and we've got to take care of it so and that starts by not accidentally terraforming it with global anthropomorphic climate change [Music] hi science mike i've heard that sleeping with the radio or the tv on is not good for your brain but i'm wondering about white noise or a box fan my whole family sleeps with a box stand and i'm just wondering if that does anything bad to your brain thanks i have genuine concerns that sleep hygiene and sleep practices might be one of the more pressing public health issues we have in western society today and that problem extends across all sorts of demographic boundaries and socioeconomic statuses we don't sleep and we don't sleep well and we don't sleep for long enough so i like that you are examining sleep practices and thinking what is healthier and what is less healthy let me subtly reframe the question i don't want to talk about good for the brain bad for the brain because everything everything has mixed effects on our brains so let's talk about instead what might be more or less healthy okay so we know that leaving the radio on and leaving the television on as you go to sleep and while you're asleep reduces sleep quality you tend to stay in lighter stages of sleep if you've trained yourself to fall asleep at the radio or the tv it does help you fall asleep it does not help you stay asleep and it reduces the quality of your sleep the light flickering from the television the human noises that come from radio and television your brain continues to process those sounds while you are asleep and we also understand that the emotional content of sounds the brain processes while we're asleep and things that sound more meaningful to us are more likely to wake us up that's why you know you might be able to sleep through someone snoring but you wake up when your child cries across the house because your brain is still it's not just measuring volume while you're asleep your brain is evaluating the content of sounds now what about white noise well surveys not surveys but studies have shown that when you have white noise playing while you're sleeping it helps you fall asleep faster and it helps you stay asleep and we would call that beneficial or more healthy one theory researchers have about why white noise works so well is it reduces the difference between sudden sounds and ambient sounds while you're asleep so if you've got a constant sound from a noise maker or a fan or the air conditioning and then there's a click or a bump in your house the difference in volume is not as much as a click in your house and silence or a click in your house and a box fan and so your brain has an easier time kind of just rolling over the sound and not bringing you up into a a less deep sleep state or indeed all the way to waking you up so that's that's going to give you a better chance to sleep through it undisturbed to stay in a deeper sleep state and if you have difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep uh that that ambient sound of white noise really will help mask activity so anything that makes that kind of purring constant sound like a sound conditioner a sound machine air purifiers uh air conditioners anything that makes that drawing sound is going to be consistent and soothing that helps you stay asleep and they've actually tested this in icus icus are terrible sleep environments but when in studies and trials they've introduced white noise into icus people sleep longer and they sleep deeper and they wake up less often now i'm a person who sleeps really soundly when i'm home but as i travel more and more the different noises different hotels different cities make mean i tend to sleep less soundly but if i take my phone and i play white noise as long as i also play white noise while i'm at home i sleep much deeper and i wake up more rested so don't worry your your intuition here that and what you've heard about radio and tv are correct but your box fan as far as we can tell in research today is actually helping you fall asleep and stay asleep and science says that's better for your brain [Music] our last question came in via email and it reads hi mike as i transitioned from a person whose life was almost entirely centered on their christian faith to one who has more doubts about that faith and is open to atheistic understandings of the world i find that i seem to have more religious baggage than i would have ever realized for example i am sometimes hounded by thoughts that by departing from a faith-centered life i am missing out on who i am created to be and will thus miss out on life's best or that although many of my daily habits are still similar i am now living a life of sin of which i should be ashamed i end up living in a tension between accepting the weak faith agnostic mystic person who i am right now and between listening to those hounding thoughts and turning back to my conservative religious roots i guess my questions are the following did you have to deal with religious guilt as you transitioned from baptist mike mccarg to science mike if so what advice do you have for dealing with those things are there networks in the brain that want to resist such a change of life philosophy lastly do you ever wish you could go back to your old lifestyle thanks so much for all your work i look forward to all that is to come this year nate well nate i dealt with a lot of guilt religious guilt uh in my transition from being southern baptist to whatever the hell i am now um yeah i felt all the time at the same time that my knowledge about the world was growing and my understanding of people from different vantage points in life deepened uh but yeah i worried constantly that i was rejecting god even after i didn't believe in god anymore her brains are complex complicated things and and our thoughts and our feelings and our opinions they come from a lot of different brain structures that have different jobs and that see the world differently so the parts of your brain that are associated with emotional comfort and social identity well they're much more resistant to view the world in a new way than your cognitive hardware i mean your neocortex is obsessed with checking out things from a different angle so yeah you feel guilty i've used this analogy many times on the program but it just works so well jonathan hate a researcher talks about the mind and the brain as an elephant and a writer where your conscious mind is a writer on the back of an elephant in your unconscious mind as an elephant and no matter how hard you pull the elephant sometimes it won't listen and it takes a familiar path and in this case religious ideas and imagery and identity are a familiar path that has been conditioned into your unconscious mind and so it seeks them for comfort so be patient with yourself you're not a computer you're not some rational observer you're a social primate you find comfort and things that are familiar you find comfort in community and if you've recently departed from those communities it will take time for your social identity to change it will take time for you to grieve give yourself the space and the grace to grieve i still grieve sometimes i'll see something on social media something will come up in conversation that reminds me of some of my friends back home in the southern baptist tradition and i miss those people i'd love to sit down and talk with them about what's going on at work what's happening with their children what's happening at their church oh that'd be lovely but for many of my former dear friends uh i'm a false prophet and a heretic and a danger to people everywhere so that you know they would not be comfortable with that conversation they would be much more concerned about the existential threat i face uh or i offer towards people's souls so do i ever wish i could go back to my old lifestyle i don't wish i could go back to my old lifestyle i don't wish i could be a baptist again i have a longing for those friendships and for reconciliation with those friends but i rather like not having to feel so confident that i have god figured out or the world figured out i i like the listening posture i have now i like a life where my curiosity doesn't have to have guardrails i like that i can accept my friends who are lesbian gay bisexual trans intersex queer asexual as they are without the need to judge them i like that when i have friends who live together but aren't married i don't judge them i like that my world view more embraces fundamental human dignity now and that's not to say that southern baptists or evangelicals don't respect human dignity or that i respect human dignity more than they do i am speaking specifically about the southern baptist i was and the non-theistic mystic i am now wishing for things as they were is generally not productive for me and i say that as someone with a brain injury who very often misses that shiny brain i had before i fell off of a motorcycle but an acceptance of how things are and an openness to where they are going has helped me find a more grounded more centered and more contented life today for that i am deeply grateful but i could have never gotten here without taking weeks and months and years to grieve and to process the dramatic changes that happened in my life and so nate my wish for you is that you would take weeks and months and years to accept the changes in your life to be grateful for the path that brought you there and to look toward the future with optimism and with hope [Music] i don't know if it takes a village to raise a child but i know it takes a village to make a podcast so i'd like to thank all of you who make ask science mike possible starting with my patrons on patreon there are people who choose to send me a dollar a month or five dollars a month to keep this show going and they not only do that but every week they vote to pick the questions that appear on the program and i am so grateful to all of you especially to those of you who've joined us in the last few weeks that's incredibly encouraging to see uh the patronage rat science money grow uh and make this podcast possible of course i'd also like to thank andrew golucky for his work in pre-production on ask science mike the incredible greg nordine asked science mike's producer and our theme show songwriter jeb bodaford the man himself thank you jeb for this wonderful song thank you all for listening i'll talk to you next week