This is TWIS, this week in Science, episode number 581, recorded on Wednesday, August 24th, 2016. Ice, ice, baby. Hey everyone, I'm Dr. Kiki, and tonight on This Week in Science, we are going to fill your heads with a lot less ice, termite takeovers, and octobot, but first. Disclamer, disclaimer, disclaimer. The historic perspective is against us. Robot, robot, robot. Fix it. And we try again. Take two for the disclaimer. Exactly, identity four. Beep-bop boop. Go for it, Justin. No, can't hear you now. Can't hear you. Nope. Right identity four. You'll fix it in post. That's right. Oh, Ben Rothig, you got my ice, ice, baby reference. Exactly. Oh, I like that, Ben Rothig. Stop. Collaborate and listen. Science is back with a brand new invention. That's good. I like it. I like it, I like it. We don't hear Justin at all. And we started the show. Technical difficulties. Right, Kevin Unique is saying kick the microphone because it's not working. Grab a sledgehammer. I'm hearing a little bit of an echo from you, Kiki, too, right now. It may be through Waltz speakers, possibly. It could be. I could try my headphones if that would help. Yeah, that'd be great. Let's try that and see if that gets rid of while we're waiting for the microphone fixage. All right, does that help? Can you hear me? I can hear you. Yes. That's great. Except I can't hear you. I don't know. Oh, I got you. There we are. Let's rename the show Occam's Razor, perhaps. Everything. Nope, Justin. No hearing. Oh my gosh. Hang up the phone and come back. Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. And then we can record the disclaimer at the end of the show, maybe, because it'll give you a chance to... There he goes. We can either wait for him to come back. What do you think? Should we just move on with the music and start the show? Or should we wait for him to come back? Chat room? The vote is yours. I know. It's such a tough decision. Do we keep Justin on Science Island? You can decide. You decide. You have the power. Chat room. Nobody's saying anything. You're all so quiet right now. Wait. Hot Rod says wait. We'll wait. We'll just start. I could just read his disclaimer. No, I'm kidding. No, Justin has to read his own disclaimer. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Identity Force. From that time I hijacked the disclaimer. I know. Give me a chance. Now I'm going to write my social medias post, you guys. I had forgotten to do that. There we go. Tris is live. Right now. Waiting for... That Jackson fly. The... Trinus. Tris.Works. Live. Slash live. Slash live. Or Facebook. This week in Science. There we go. Let's do a little social media posting, shall we? Because I believe... You've posted. Yes, I was brief. So I thought we were starting. We were starting. It was so good to go. We had all our ducks in a row. But then there was a disclaimer robot. Yeah. I've got to figure out exactly what is doing that. It's a digital. Resend invite. Resend invite. All right. Womp. Whoa, how did I just know? I do not want to invite George Argento. George Argento is... There we go. That's the right one. Send that one. I'll send him an email. Hopefully this will work. I'm sorry for the technical difficulties, Walt. No problem. It's a bit smoother than this. Preston, are you there? I hope so. Yes, you're here. You have to know what triggers that, because that's becoming... A little annoying. Yeah, and it only happens sometimes, and then others. There doesn't seem to be a rhyme or reason to it, but there must be. There must be. Anyway, you ready? We're going straight to disclaimer, or are we going to pretend to do the whole beginning? Straight to disclaimer. I think we had an okay intro. Identity 4 is recording. He'll thank you, Identity 4, for fixing this. I appreciate your help. So... And Octobot. But first... Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. The stark perspective is against us, and I don't mean to suggest that people have bygone as possible they would. We wear revealing clothes, rarely killed wild animals with tools we made ourselves, and spend far too little time sacrificing sheep. But when we introduce them to the little things our modern ways have contributed to the day-to-day being on the planet, like indoor light, the mobile phone, the dishwasher, and toilet paper, it's likely they'd give up whatever god of hunting, gathering, and dishwashing they had invented, and would be overjoyed even with single ply. What I do mean to suggest is that we see a time in which people looking forward had really figured out what the future would bring. We humans are eternally optimistic, pessimistic, hopeful, and apathetic, but the lesson from the ages is that regardless of what we think we know, time will transform our understanding. And one day, the day will come where much of what we believe about the future will turn out not to be the future we actually experienced. So historic perspective should make us leery of any concrete belief in things to come, having seen so many crumble in the past. However, there are exceptions. Despite the fact that the historic perspective is against this, one thread of history has weaved through the ages to connect observation to experimentation to a kind of knowledge that seems to tie the past to the present in a natural progression. Science! Yes, science changes too, but it broadens, becomes more complex and yet comprehensive at the same time. It strengthens. And while the predictions we make now may defy history, there will likely be still some things to come we cannot imagine. In fact, the only thing we can be absolutely certain of is this weekend's Science coming up next. What's happening? What's happening? What's happening? What's happening this weekend's Science? What's happening? What's happening? What's happening? What's happening this weekend's Science? Good science to you, Kiki and Blair. And good science to you, Justin, Blair, and everyone out there. Welcome to another episode of This Week in Science. We are back once again to talk about all the science stories that the last week had for us, and there were wonders of plenty. Oh! Is the social media sphere just jumping over one of the stories that I've got for you all tonight? But in addition to Science News, we've got an interview tonight. We are speaking with NASA Goddard Science Researcher, Arctic Sea Ice Scientist, Walt Meyer, and he's going to be talking with us about the Arctic Sea Ice and what is happening on that front research-wise and discovery. So my stories, I've got some new stories about a promising exoplanet, difficulties of going fast, and the octobot. Justin, what did you bring? I have got a... what is it called? I don't even know what it's called. An incredibly interesting story about cooling stuff at the atomic level, major breakthrough. Major huge breakthrough. Being able to control the experimentation. Nice. And Blair, what's in the animal corner? Oh, I have a homosexual homicidal termites. And I have climate change and sperm and climate change and pygmy possums. Interesting.  Tiny possums. And I didn't say opossum. Possums. I gotta put a possum in my pocket. Possibly. Potentially. Potentially. Ha ha, you got me there. Alright everyone, it is time to start this show. I hope you are looking forward to a fantastic hour, hour and a half or so ahead. Up first, we have our interview with Dr. Walt Meyer. He's a research scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Cryospheric Sciences Laboratory. His research focuses on remote sensing of sea ice, development of new sea ice products and sea ice climate data records and analyzing changes in the Arctic sea ice cover. Walt, thank you so much for joining us tonight. Sure, thanks for having me. You're welcome. Now, the news this week, there's been a bunch of stuff coming out so this isn't the first year that cruise liners have set their routes, their routes through the Northwest Passage. The passage, fabled passage from western Canada to eastern Canada that hunters and traders would have would have loved to have. And so this year, we have a giant, we have a lot more melting going on. And there is a southern route in the Arctic from Asmanson Bay to Boffin Bay and it's almost clear at this point in time. Additionally there is a press release out from NASA on monitoring sea ice this week and so it seems like there's a lot of work happening right now on getting the word out about sea ice. Is this special to 2016? Well the cruise ship is certainly a new I mean there's been ships that have sailed through the Northwest Passage in the past in recent years. The first time it happened was Rawl Amundsen sailed through about 110 years ago it took him almost three years he had to winner over twice it wasn't a particularly pleasant journey I don't think but he was pretty well prepared and they made it through many people died before in previous attempts and this year we have the Crystal Serenity which is the big cruise ship the biggest ship yet to go through and like you said it's pretty much ice free through at least the southern route and so they should have pretty smooth sailing there may be still some ice it's a bit of a risky venture because of its shallow areas it's not really well mapped certainly unique but it's kind of a combination of changes that we've been seeing over the last decade or so the Northwest Passage has started to open up more and that's an indicator or it's kind of going along with the bigger changes in the Arctic Ocean where we've seen the Arctic sea ice in the ocean shrinking more and more each summer on average and so we've seen some big changes particularly over the last decade and but in some years like 2013 it seemed like the ice didn't melt as much and so it was a lot at this point in the summer even a little bit later it was still relatively ice covered as opposed to previous years and even what's going on now is there any way that you at this point in time can predict the extent of sea ice loss in areas like the Northwest Passage well the prediction is challenging prediction is always hard as I say especially about the future and it does vary from year to year like you said 2013 was a bit higher relatively speaking but that was relative to 2012 which was by far the lowest extent that we had seen on record until now well this year I think we're not going to make 2012 levels either although we might be second we've still got another month or so to go in the melt season it's certainly a very low year and I think that's kind of the key point whether it's a record or not it's really not not that big of a it's interesting but scientifically it's not that important what's important is the long term trends and what we're seeing now is the ordinary years what we consider more of an ordinary year like this year maybe not a record setting would have been extraordinary 10 years ago and that's how much things have changed we're seeing the ice go low even in 2013 was still a very low year that would have been the record low year 10 years earlier and this year would have been a record low 10 years earlier as well so really dramatic changes that we're seeing up in the Arctic Ocean it's sort of like taking taking the Olympic athletes who are breaking records here and there you can take all the silver medalists who came right behind the gold medalists just barely got beat this year they're second best yes but if they had played in any other Olympics they would have broken a world record and gotten the gold and would have been the hero we've had some years that have been like you've seen bolt years have been right up there too they just have not quite matched that that's a great analogy so the melting that's happening in the Arctic it is tied to the climatic warming but data that I've seen so far suggests that 2016 to this point is the warmest year on record but we don't have the largest extent of sea ice loss what kind of factors might be playing into this not exactly equal relationship yeah so it's been really warm in the Arctic overall this year particularly in the springtime we saw an early melt in the springtime but things slowed down a bit in summer so that's why we've kind of dropped off the pace a little bit and that comes down to a lot of things that aren't necessarily temperature related things like which way the winds blow and how they push the ice around do they kind of push it outward and spread it out do they kind of compact it also cloud cover in the summertime in the Arctic it's 24 hours of daylight 24 hours of sunshine it's a lot of sun a lot of energy coming in but if you have clouds that kind of blocks that sunlight helps keep things cooler and so we had conditions that kind of switch from a pretty sunny conditions to more cloudy conditions in June and July and so that kind of slowed things down and that's why it's in some ways that we're going to go as low as we are even though conditions haven't been all that favorable for losing ice this year right do you have any ideas on how like more regional oscillation so we were in an El Nino year and now we're moving into a La Nina and then there are things like the Pacific Decadal oscillation do you have ideas on how these things play into this overall system to some extent there's a lot of research that's going on with that El Nino is that's the one that people everyone knows about it gets in the news and it's the big thing that causes a lot of climate changes or weather changes in the United States and Europe but in the Arctic it's actually a relatively minor player at best we don't see really strong connections there's not a real strong correlation between Arctic conditions and El Nino Decadal oscillation has some impact but really only in the ice in the Pacific like in the Bering Sea which only occurs in the winter time the biggest player in terms of these kind of climate modes is what's called the Arctic Oscillation which is basically a measure of the circulation in the Arctic relative to the lower latitudes and in certain modes of the Arctic Oscillation you can get situations where more ice is moved out of the Arctic lowers the ice cover but one of the things we've seen in the last particularly the last 10 years these climate oscillations these kind of El Nino type of you know switches back and forth in the Arctic they're really not making that much difference anymore it's just kind of downward year after year there's some up and down like I talked about but it's more due to the local conditions as opposed to these climate oscillations so I think the warming trend is really kind of overtaking these other factors and I'm just I don't know this I'm just guessing is it possible like that early spring thaw with so much melting going on is putting colder water creating colder water conditions than would normally be because of all the ice melt runoff and then maybe with the more evaporation more cloud cover that sort of helps to slow when it starts off accelerating really quickly like that it's possible there has been some linkages between early snow melt which we had this year and also ice losses that may be more simply just directly related to the temperature but the river runoff plays a key role because the rivers make the water fresher the surface water is fresher and so the ice can more easily grow actually in the fall but it also helps prevent some ocean heat from getting up to the surface because it puts a cap on there but one of the key things for the ice cover is actually the ice is really it's white it's very reflective it has what we call a high albedo and so when the sun's coming and it hits the ice most of that energy is reflected away but if the ice starts melting sooner that albedo drops and then it absorbs more energy and then as the ice disappears the ocean is very dark and absorbs almost all of the sun's energy so it's a big change in how much you have and so the timing and when the melt occurs in the springtime and early summer is a really key factor and that's kind of why I talked about you know the June when we got more cloudiness that kind of put the damper on things a little bit this summer relatively speaking so it's clear how melting sea ice in the Arctic could affect the Arctic but because melting sea ice doesn't actually affect sea level rise at all how does the melting ice in the Arctic affect me that's always the million dollar question right that's what everyone wants to know and this is an area that's an area of research I can't say we have everything nailed down yet but there is some evidence that the Arctic climate is influencing lower latitudes you lose this sea ice and now you're warming up the Arctic the oceans absorbing this energy so you got this big this kind of big cap on the Arctic that's disappearing the Arctic gets warmer so now it's warmer relative to the lower latitudes and now you have more potential interaction like to say the Arctic sea ice helps keep the Arctic colder than it normally would be so it's like a refrigerator for the globe's climate and as we lose the sea ice we're opening up the refrigerator door and so that comes out and spills out into lower latitudes so what happens in the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic so it's not like we're in Las Vegas and there is evidence of changes in these weather patterns things like the jet stream which kind of separate the cold Arctic air from the warmer mid-latitude air with this changes we're seeing more loopy north south loops in the jet stream that seem to be related to the warming in the Arctic and the loss of sea ice and that slows down weather systems and so you get things that stall out you can get many days of heat or drought or torrential rains and so some of these extreme events that we have seen might at least in some way be related to changes that we're seeing in the Arctic and they're all connected I feel like it's that the Arctic is sort of our canary in the coal mine analogy there we can really see one location that's being affected whereas it may just seem like a sort of hundred year weather pattern storm here and there as it sort of progresses around the rest of the planet this warming but in the Arctic we have we can measure ice we can see look there was more ice now there's less it seems just a little bit more clear that it's taking place and that we can sort of measure the progress of it that way people talk about global warming and you show the temperatures and it's about a couple degrees Fahrenheit warming that we've seen and for someone in the US a couple degrees 80 degrees here in Washington DC it was about 84 I think if it was 86 I wouldn't even notice the difference but in the Arctic a couple degrees can make a big difference going from 31 degrees Fahrenheit to 33 degrees Fahrenheit that's the difference between ice skating and the Arctic sea ice and swimming in the Arctic ocean so it's a big difference and it's where we see the climate change first and in terms of monitoring and what you're actually doing to look at the sea ice we see satellite pictures so there's obviously the visual imagery where you're getting a look and going there's less here and there's more here but what are the different methods that we're currently using and kind of what are we hoping to get to because of difficulties in measuring yeah so we use a lot of different things to measure one of the main things that we measure when we're talking about the ice coverage and particularly over the long term we use what's called a passive microwave sensor which is measuring the energy emitted by the earth in the microwave range so it's not something we see with our eyes but it's something that the microwave energy is very sensitive to whether water is in a liquid form or an ice form so that makes it very nice for looking at sea ice it also it doesn't rely on sunlight which is important for studying sea ice because it's dark six months of the year up in the polar regions so with visible images we look very nice when we have sunlight but we miss a lot with those so this passive microwave imagery gives us the most complete picture and we have records going back to the late 1970s so we have a really long term record relatively speaking for satellites but we're looking at improving on that and getting more information and a key piece that we miss with a lot of satellites is the thickness that's more of a challenge it's easy to see whether the ice is there and what area it covers but how thick it is is really important too and there's been some ways we've been able to get thickness in the past through submarine data or just people going out in the ice but that's always kind of, it's difficult to get much of a measurement out in the ice and you have to worry about polar bears and so forth so it's much better to do it with satellites and we've started to have new technologies altimeters which is basically sending a pulse of energy down either radar or a laser pulse and it comes down and it hits the ice bounces back to the satellite we know where the satellite is we know what the orbit is and so then we can measure the time between them when we send the signal out and when it comes back and NASA is actually, we're working on a really high tech satellite called ISAT2 the ice cloud land elevation satellite too we had an earlier one that flew in the 2000's that gave us some really good data but this is kind of an order of magnitude better and that's going to launch in 2018 and that's going to tell us the thickness of the ice to a very good precision and that's a really amazing thing to be able to do that, to be 500 kilometers or so up in orbit and you're measuring the ice elevation within a centimeter or two and it's really pretty remarkable and so that's going to be really exciting when that comes out a lot of people that I'm working with are working very hard on getting that built and preparing for the launch in 2018 that's going to be exciting to be able to get past those limitations and be able to really get a good idea because knowing that thickness it'll give you a real idea of which areas of ice are more likely to melt faster really, you'll be like, okay this is thinner here, this is a lot thinner here, this is going to go first and then you can start looking at is there any way to correlate are you correlating under ice sea temperatures with what's happening in the atmosphere above the ice as well? Yeah, we look at sea surface temperature and then the under sea temperature is really important there's the landing quarter that flows north and then it sinks down underneath the sea ice and that sinks down because it's heavier because it's more salty mentioned the river runoff and that surface layer so that layer of water is actually above freezing but it's kind of kept away from the sea ice because of the stratification because of the density so far that's kind of helped preserve the ice cover but there are concerns that that could start to kind of come up that we could lose that density stratification and that water could come up on the Pacific side there's a lot less water that comes in and it's not quite as warm it comes through the narrow and very shallow bearing straight but there is some evidence already that that water actually is having some effect from that water is helping to melt ice or slowing the growth and that's another thing as we lose the ice in the summertime the ocean absorbs the heat and the ocean warms up so right now we have really warm ocean temperatures surface temperatures in the Arctic ocean relatively speaking yeah what's warm for the Arctic so like maybe 5 degrees celsius so you know 9 degrees Fahrenheit you wouldn't want to go swimming in it but that's really warm you know in the past the Arctic you would have only very small areas open up and they would be pretty much just stay pretty close to freezing maybe a degree or two they'd warm up so that's a lot of heat and that goes not just right at the surface but that heat goes down into the ocean to some you know several meters and so that all that ocean heat has to go somewhere whether it be towards melting the ice or warming the atmosphere wow when you're getting this data about the depth of the sea ice and the likelihood of it melting when please share that data with the little town called Conak Greenland 100 miles north of the Tule Air Force Base it's all about 600 folks but they still go out and they hunt on the ice they have the dog teams and the sleds and they go out there in the Arctic ice and I was there in 2005 talking to them they don't have maps of their hunting routes they memorize ice formations along the coast and even in 2005 they're saying it's getting tough things are changing to the point where you can go out and have a whole stretch you're not recognizing the sort of landmarks along the coast but they would really appreciate that data and probably could give you some feedback too about the length of their hunting seasons and how that's been changing over maybe even greater than the satellite data period of time yeah and there are a lot of researchers that are working with those communities in Conak and Barrow, Alaska and other places because that information is really valuable our satellites don't go back that far even our oldest satellites only go back to the 1960s and other information gets really sparse and so this information is really useful to us as scientists and then we also they're also very interested in these changes because it affects them very directly so they're interested in our data as well so there has been a lot of interaction and that's definitely one of the focuses of Arctic research in terms of kind of the international goals is to really involve the local communities and traditional knowledge to not make it just us nerd scientists in our labs and satellites taking data but to make it more of a community wide effort and to really make sure that we're understanding the impacts on the local communities and taking advantage of their knowledge also because they also have so many words for ICE we were talking about ICE it might be helpful if we had more than one there has been some work in trying to kind of translate these yeah absolutely in the future monitoring with the ISAT2 it's going to be launched in 2018 I mean we've been monitoring with satellites since the 1970s and you know still our predictive methods are you know they're getting better and more accurate but how long is it going to take once we get this new satellite into place before we actually really start seeing data that we can use to influence the models that we have yeah it's a good question I mean the models are already using some data and the models are improving but the ISAT2 will help tremendously I think but there's also just kind of understanding the system and how it reacts and making sure that we have all the models as best as we can all the information we need for the models and the model physics so I've been involved with a project started about three years ago which is called the sea ice prediction network and that's really the first effort towards trying to do a seasonal forecast of the Arctic sea ice and so we're really in the infancy you know the quality varies some years we do pretty well some years not so well we're still understanding what's really important and what we really need to know and how well we need to know it and El Nino we're kind of following the model of El Nino and El Nino can be predicted up to six months in advance with some reasonable skill but it took a long time to do that they had to set out buoy networks get satellite data get the models together and we're quite a ways behind the El Nino folks but we're working towards that and these new satellite data will definitely help and you're watching, I mean you've been looking at this stuff for years and watching things heat up, watching the ice melt the way that it has been I mean do you feel like you're up against a clock in some of this predictive modeling? In some sense, I mean one of the things in terms of predictions there's different kinds of predictions there's a big interest in the seasonal prediction because things like cruise ships or commercial ships going through that the plan there's also a big interest in terms of how quickly is the ice going to disappear and that's happening on more decadal scales and our model is actually better in that sense because we don't worry as much about the weather patterns in any given year we're really looking at the larger term, the greenhouse gases and the warming and so that's actually a little bit we're not doing too badly on that although the models still aren't moving things as fast as what the observations are showing us so what we're seeing is things really speed up you know I first started studying sea ice which was over 20 years ago it was, to be honest I needed a graduate student fellowship someone to advise me I found someone and said sea ice and I'm like okay what's that and you know I had no idea that this was going to be changing so rapidly global warming was certainly being talked about but there was still a lot of discussion about that, even a lot of skepticism within the science community back 20 years ago but then things have been changing and changing more rapidly and we've hit these record low years especially 2007 went far below anything we'd ever seen before, over like 30% below any previous low that we had seen and we didn't think that would possibly happen that quickly and so there's definitely kind of the clock is ticking and it may be ticking faster than we it's certainly ticking than we previously thought it's a little bit scary and then we have things like people in the chat room when we were talking about the jet stream and the changes that that's going through someone asked about the polar vortex that the eastern world was experiencing has experienced the last couple of years and whether that's going to become more of a norm and if all of the sea ice in the summer disappears, if we just don't get sea ice growth in the winter and there is no sea ice in the summer, what does that mean? Yeah, well we'll probably have sea ice in the winter because it does get dark and cold there so we'll probably grow sea ice but it's going to be thin sea ice and it's going to go away very quickly in the summers that are largely ice free that are absorbing all that sun's energy that are warming the Arctic, the Arctic will become a much warmer place and like I talked about when you do that it's going to have effects outside of the Arctic and there's a lot of discussion about the polar vortex in previous years and that type of situation is something that we would expect to see, it's dangerous scientifically I'd say right now to say that we can directly connect it we don't have enough data to say that there are some people that are very skeptical that there really is a connection there yet but when you're changing an area the Arctic Ocean is about the size of the lower 48 United States so you're changing that basically from white to black in terms of the sea ice versus the ocean that's a big area that you're making a big change and that has a big change in your energy balance and how much energy comes in so that's going to have ramifications well outside of the Arctic I think most people are used to looking at maps in Google Maps the actual understanding of how large that area of sea is that is affected I don't think a lot of people really understand how big it is it's the world's smallest ocean but it's still an ocean, it's still pretty big yeah absolutely is there anything else that you've been working on that we've missed talking about here that's really important that you think people should know about the work that you're doing at NASA Goddard well I think one thing that's worth mentioning is a couple things, one is we look at Greenland I don't say Greenland myself personally but you mentioned, Justin mentioned Connick you know on Greenland there's big changes in Greenland it's doing, it's melting a lot more the ice, it's calving a lot more icebergs and we're studying that as well, IceSat2 will be really useful for studying in Greenland and even before we get to IceSat2 I should mention we are before we get to satellite flying we're flying aircraft missions called Operation IceBridge and actually they're heading to Greenland I think tomorrow Friday, sometime in the next few days to take measurements over Greenland and they've taken measurements over sea ice so that's filling in before we launch IceSat2 and like I said we're dumping a lot of ice from Greenland and that raises sea levels and so that has big impacts globally as well so that's definitely a concern in the science community and at NASA Goddard of course I'm glad that there are people like you who are doing this work to try and tell us more about our changing planet right? Yeah, there's a lot going on definitely Do you happen to know are there social media Twitter accounts, Facebook pages that I mean people can go to nasa.gov to look for IceBridge and IceSat2 if they want more information but are there any social media accounts that people can follow for more information? Yeah, Earth Science at NASA is on Twitter at NASA Earth and then on Facebook there's NASA Earth there's IceSat2 has a page if you Google IceSat2 you'll come up with web pages and so there's a lot of information one thing I'll mention as well is NASA's data we work for you we work for the public and so all of our data is available for free for data, or sea ice data Greenland data, aircraft data satellite data so all that's there and to save you time NASA does a lot of really cool visualizations and animations showing the changes in sea ice and Greenland and you can go to the Scientific Visualization Studio or SBS so if you Google that there's really great animations there to check things out so I'd recommend that Those are great resources for people, I love that and I was just thinking of something and my brain just totally threw it away somewhere but Have you seen it's a really goofy game it's the Ice Flows game Oh yeah, I just saw that just a couple days ago I think it just came out Yeah This is an app people can get really primitive but it's got penguins they can get attacked by seals or they can eat fish but it shows So it's not the Arctic No, it's the Antarctic There better not be any polar bears It does show it's a really, you know, you can play with precipitation sea level temperature and it shows also how the sea floor changes how the ice sheets melt off so you can educate yourself a very little bit while feeding penguins Yeah, it's Ice Flows it's apps, you can also just play it for free on your browser Yeah, pretty neat I might have to go play that with my son I think that would be fun It's a neat idea of introducing these principles, some of these principles to something that you can also waste time with Oh and I just remembered I remembered what I was going to say not only does NASA make all these visualizations and make its data available, they recently announced that they're making all of their research available so all papers that have been archived are available Yeah, that's right I had forgotten about that and that's a really great thing because a lot of science, you know, research papers are behind paywalls and maybe a lot of people aren't really interested in the technical stuff but it's still I think important to have that available so NASA's making that available is really great Yeah, I mean the studies, if they have NASA scientists working on them, they've been funded in part by public money and so to make those studies to bring them out into the open out from behind those paywalls is great, so Thank you NASA Yeah, you're welcome Well, thank you so much for joining us tonight, I know we had a couple of technical difficulties at the very beginning but I'm so glad that we got a chance to talk with you and to learn more about Arctic sea ice and the effect that it is going to have that it does have on everyone Yeah, it's been great talking to you and I'm glad to share my research and yeah, thanks a lot Thank you so much Have a wonderful evening Alright, you too, thanks Alright everybody, this is This Week in Science and we are going to take a very short break and when we return, it will be time for some more science news. I've got an exoplanet, I've got some story about how we're going to get there and I've also got Octobot Really? It's an octopus robot, it's very exciting, come on We'll be back in just a few moments with more This Week in Science Twist is supported by listeners like you, your donations pay for our hosting bandwidth contractors We need to hire fun things we try to do for the show, any amount you're able to donate really does keep this show going You are our producers, we don't have advertisers at this point in time It's all you guys, you who listen to and watch and enjoy the show You're the ones who make it possible for us to continue to share the show with everyone and to make new content week after week for you We accept donations a couple of ways First we have PayPal and those buttons are on our website twist.org Big button, easy to find Click on it, really easy interface to donate via PayPal Also, we have started a Patreon account that's to be like a patron of the scientific arts at Patreon patron.com This Week in Science Whatever your preference, go to our website twist.org where you will be able to find links both to Patreon and to the PayPal donation portals and listen to an episode, comment on the show make a donation If you are unable to make a monetary contribution, we accept contributions all sorts of different ways we can always use your help getting more people listening to and watching twists If anything, that really helps twist out in the long run. 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Cat Cat Cat Cat Cat Cat Cat Cat Cat Kiki, what you got? I've got science I've got an exoplanet You're very own Maybe I always wanted an exoplanet of my own If I can get there What would you call it? What would you call your exoplanet, Kiki? If I could name an exoplanet? That's a good question I don't think I can answer that question on the spot I can I have to think of it Okay, yes I know this about you You like that word Anyhow, published this week And also announced today The European Space Space Organizations, Telescopes And Facilities Have found Clear evidence Of a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri The closest star to Earth Aside from our own sun Not only orbiting Proxima Centauri But Probably a rocky terrestrial planet Orbiting Within the habitable zone Which means the possibility Of water Liquid water And it's like one of the closest stars Or the closest It is the closest star And we already have There's a mission, the star shot mission Which is Already planning To send little robotic Craft At 20% the speed of light Which I'm going to talk about in just a minute To Alpha Centauri The system So it's that Much work to Particularly focus On this little planet Around Proxima Centauri Now, Proxima Centauri Is a cool Red star It's a red star It is Very dim, so This little planet that could Is Actually way, way closer To Earth, to the sun Closer to Proxima Centauri Than the Earth is to the sun However It's getting about the same amount of light Basically But it orbits Every 11 days So it's Zipping, zipping around This star All the aliens have whiplash is what you're saying Yeah, you get a year older Every 11 days Wee, wee, wee, let's go We don't know whether it Is rotating on its axis Or whether gravitational forces Have it tidally locked To the star So If there is water on That's going to be very important That's a very important Point, yes, and if If It is rotating is likely That the habitable zone is around The equator, the equatorial Region of This little planet Which Would mean that the water And potentially if there's water Then maybe life are in that Zone and there's circulation And movement Which would be more More, would add to the Likelihood of there being Some form of life, microbial Or whatever But if it is tidally locked That would mean that if there is water on it That it's basically stuck to one Face of the planet And it would be ice on the other side Of the planet And if it were just on one face of the planet It would be more questionable As to how life would survive In that kind of a situation On the edges You'd go A little bit this way During the day And maybe go back over here to get some sleep But bundle up because it's going to be a cold night Oh my god It's going to be a cold night This is the first time That we have found an exoplanet A rocky exoplanet Within the habitable zone Orbiting a star I mean this is Earth-like planet It is not even One and a half, 1.3 times The mass of Earth So it's only the gravitational The gravitational mass Of it would be only a little bit More than we experience here On our own planet, you'd only feel a little bit More stuck to the planet if you were to go there It's It's pretty, I mean this is big This is very exciting This is very, very exciting And this isn't a star that's Super far away This is a star that's in our neighborhood This is the closest Star to our planet And so this is a question that researchers Have been really interested in for some time You know as to Okay there are a lot of different kinds of stars Would there be systems like this Where there's a cooler Smaller A cooler small star But just has a closer More closely orbiting rocky planet Is it possible for life to exist On that kind of a system And now we have a chance to potentially Investigate that Yeah Yeah So this planet Is called Proxima B And we'll be hearing a lot About it, there are also two papers Two separate papers from the Nature paper With the ESO Announcement Of this that are That discuss the habitability Of Proxima B and its possible Climate Proxima B or Proximab Proximab This is, if you go to Twitter Hashtag and Proximab It's Proxima B I like Plan B I like calling it Planet B I'm calling it Plan B That way stuff doesn't work out here Star shot time, we got to get there Find a way So we don't know if there is water On it but there could be liquid water On it and that could be interesting So that's going to be There are a lot of new observations That will be taken and this Star Planet combo are going to be Looked at very closely With the next generation Of giant telescopes Right And like I said Maybe our Star shot mission, the Breakthrough Star shot mission could potentially Reorient itself to Head to Proxima B As opposed to Alpha Centauri Or maybe both So the star shot This is a really cool Future thinking idea Maybe we can use Use a laser To Accelerate little tiny Craft A lot of them To go Investigate Alpha Centauri A close star system Well anyway, some researchers published In the archive The physics archive which is a pre print Online pre print Server So this research has not been peer reviewed It's just put up there and people are getting feedback On it before they submit it to For actual publication These Astronomers are looking at Some of the basic issues of the star shot Mission which is If it's going at 20% the speed of light What's going to happen to the craft If it encounters a Tiny speck of dust Oh That is not moving at 20% The speed of light Or is moving At some speed Explosion Right! What are the requirements for constructing A craft To allow it to withstand Particle impacts And what kind of particle impacts Will be with stood With different kinds of construction And so 20% the speed of light And atom Can have an impact Yeah I suppose this thing It's not going to just be launched at this speed It's going to gradually work its way Up to this speed At a time So the Escaping our solar system I don't think is going to be a problem I Don't think that's going to be an issue there And I think once we're outside Of our solar system Perhaps we can get through Far enough to Won't make a difference I don't think Maybe I'm totally wrong In the deep of space There's probably not a whole lot of just Bits of dust and junk floating around I'm guessing could be totally wrong So they did some calculations And they determined that the odds Of running into a dust particle Is about one At 10 Or 10 to the 50th, one against 10 to the 50th So it's not bad odds This is very rare occurrence Entering The solar system Of Alpha Centauri Or Proxima Centauri Approxima Centauri Alright We run into now what you have I mean there's meteor shaped things Probably Level of dust type stuff So we've got to slow down Again maybe Before we get in there That's the interesting question Will that be what happens Regardless If you're moving at 20% speed of light We have found the effect of gas Atomic gas To cause damage to the surface Of the vehicle Spacecraft to a depth of 0.1mm Dust will evaporate 1.5mm Of the surface of the spacecraft And Melting This article from Ars Technica says Will happen at depths up to 10mm And so they're trying to Figure out ways to lower the impact Of this kind of problem And they've determined that graphite Is possibly The best kind of Compound to add to The front of the craft So they've compared graphite to quartz And They indicate that damage caused by Impacts might be smaller With graphite So other questions Do arise as to As to whether or not These impacts If there are tiny impacts That are only evaporating a little bit of the surface Of the covering Of the craft What else is happening? Because we've got this little craft That's being propelled by light particles Is an impact You know We're talking physics here Something is heading the opposite direction Maybe at a slight angle Of the craft's trajectory Very likely There is a possibility That Over the course of a trip The impacts would average out And the craft would end up going In basically the same direction But we don't know The craft could end up shooting off Into uncharted territories Which we've Chartered They also make suggestions For the design of the craft Which is to make it more Of a less of a Round-bodied craft And more of a I guess a length wise Vehicles So that the possibility of a head out Minimizes So kind of bullet shaped Yeah Would potentially be the best shape of craft So now this is a really interesting question You know to get the star shot mission And this little craft with no people On it to this star But the big question you know looking further Into the future of okay we're going to put people In space And we have science fiction that you know We have jumps through wormholes We have all these ideas Of craft Going super fast light speeds Through space Obviously we're going to have To take care of this issue at some point In time We do need force fields Simple as that Shields up Shields up Can all be solved by traveling in subspace What does that mean? It's the word sub and the word space put together Which means you avoid actual space And or like a submarine Under it doesn't I don't know how that But Yeah like also like even You know this is the other thing Wow we can travel at the speed of light Okay how far away is that thing It's several thousand light years A million light years away Oh it's still going to take a lot Of years to get to That's a lot of years No matter There's still a lot of you kinks we have to work out Space is really big Yeah let's put it that way Yes it is Alright that doesn't That's why when we send this bullet We should have extremophiles Load it up Load it up with extremophiles Which is landed on plan B Right start terraform Right away Just tardigrades by the pound Yeah just we'll set a bunch Of tardigrades you know we'll put them in Like con And star track We'll put them all in a deep Cryogenic slumber And we'll just populate a planet And we'll put them in the air You don't even have to put them in slumber Tardigrades can handle space No ethical issues No problem there at all Nobody's going to debate you about this Here's the ethical issue And it's a good one it's a good question What if we're disturbing something that's already there What if there is nothing there What if we are the only life In the universe And right now for all we know That's the only evidence we have thus far Here's a chance to spread life to a second planet How do you pass that up You can't and that's the problem You can't pass that up There's a chance Maybe there's already something there If there is if there is fantastic If we've disturbed it That's terrible however that probably means It's not uncommon it's already everywhere else And if we've only affected one planet's life No big deal but If we are actually the only Living things in the universe There is no excuse for not Connecting to a second That's basic reproduction that's how life goes Said the supervillain from Some movie No no I think the logic Dictates that you send life The supervillain always Thinks that they have made the Logical ethical decision Yeah but you also notice Like what is it like Every time I always capture you You know like alive As soon as you escape You start killing my henchmen Left and right like there's nothing They really mean something to me It's hard to cultivate evil henchmen You don't understand how difficult it is I capture, I live capture And I release, I live capture I release over and over again but you You're always killing So really who's the bad guy here So everyone out there I think this is a great conversational point So let us know what you think Send life first shot Or hashtag don't send life Wait forever and die on this planet Leaving the universe Baron I'd love to see your tweets Hashtag Proxima B Hashtag send life, hashtag don't send life That's very negative I would say it's hashtag send life Or hashtag explore You're still exploring No matter what No but you're ruining what might be there No but Hashtag chronometically explore But if I say something like Hashtag save life then suddenly We're in You're right Fine, fine And that's not the conversation I'm having here Hashtag Uh Panterraspermia That's my being No okay fine Hashtag send life, hashtag don't send life Just voting send life don't send life We have a chat room people Can you just turn to the chat room real quick chat room Uh Right now pop quiz Dale Poco says send cameras first That's my That's my Risky renegade no I like yours Send life versus find life Ah There we go Yeah Hashtag send life versus do nothing That's not it At all Alright This is this week in science Hey Justin what you got I thought you had another story there That's your turn Alright so this is I'm going to try to do this quick because it's kind of long But according to country Bakers and the basic laws Of thermodynamics If you set a hot apple pie On a winter windowsill That pie will get to cooling And if you leave it there too long It will cool down to the same temperature As the air outside Unless a hobo Or that Clemens kid swipe it First Cooling things down is a big deal to a lot of researchers Chemists, physicists, science hobbyists And the occasional country hobo doctor Find it super useful to Chill ions Ions are charged atoms Or even molecules Then when they chill them down They get to reveal quantum mechanical properties That are usually hidden At regular conditions So to do this they use a technique Considered similar to that sort of Pie in the window Which is called a buffer gas cooling So you take your charged atoms Ions, apple pie You place them in a cloud of super cooled atoms And as they bump about The energy is transferred until the ions Chill to the temperature of the cloud Which to this is like a couple Degrees above absolute zero Like really super cold You're actually creating in a lab One of the coldest places In the universe But in a super super super tiny scale This is Supposed to be how it works anyway But as it turns out that's not necessarily What results Eric Hudson Professor of physics at UCLA And his team discovered that sometimes And apparent departure from the familiar Laws of thermodynamics when placing The ion pie in the window It bursts into flames Huh? What is happening? Very surprisingly They discovered that under certain conditions Two final temperatures exist And that the temperatures That the ions end up at Depends on their starting temperature So depending on their starting temperature You can get a completely different result It may cool, it may not cool It may get warmer, it does really weird stuff So they took In the experiment researchers took A microscopic sample of barium ions Which is I know all barium ions are already Microscopic, so it's just They took very few of them They took very few of these Barium ions Like ten, I think it was like ten Of millions, millions of also Obviously microscopic Calcium atoms That they cooled with lasers But tell me, I don't know I will never figure out somehow You can cool stuff with lasers Anyway, that's pretty awesome That you can do that Okay So Then they put them in an apparatus That levitates the charged particles By using electric fields to oscillate Millions of times per second Confining the barium atoms to region Smaller than the width of the human hair So they've got this cloud That they're sticking all the ions in That's forcing them to sort of stay in this One little area while the cloud is there And it should be transferring Temperature change Both the atomic and ion samples Were brought to ultra cold temperatures Just one thousandth of a degree Not even one degree, one thousandth Of a degree above absolute zero Because you can use the momentum of light And the laser to slow particle motion Apparently, which may actually be The most awesome part of the story We already knew we could do that I didn't know about it, so that's really cool Okay, so after allowing the collisions Between the atoms and the ions to occur The system to reach Its final temperature, the calcium atoms Were removed, they measured The temperature of the barium ion The results Which show the existence of multiple Final temperatures based on ion number And initial temperature, which means Possible non-equilibrium Physics at play And no, it doesn't actually Break the laws of thermodynamics But it also doesn't work the way anybody Expected that it would Yeah, I think that's the coolest thing That, I mean people have been Piping up about this and be like Oh, laws of thermodynamics are broken Is physics broken, we didn't understand Anything and it's like No, that's not the case That's not the case This is just non-equilibrium Dynamics because It's not a closed, it's not really A closed system Not really It's not, but it's also It's also just a more complicated system Than they thought, they thought they were Literally like putting the pie On that winter window sill And just by being in that cloud It would cool down, being in a cold cloud So there's our other factors It is a more complex system, there's nuance Right, so the reason The reason why this is so fascinating Is this is already cutting edge Sort of technology And it's doing things Like creating anti-matter They created the Bose Einstein condensation Cutting edge type things Like really out there In the field itself The technique itself Is relatively new The fact that buffer gas Cooling is more nuanced than they Originally understood it to be Is going to affect a ton of stuff Because it hasn't always worked Problems with experimentation This is lead author Steven Schowalter A now staff scientist At NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory Says our results demonstrate That you can't just throw any buffer gas Into your device, no matter how cold It is and expect it to work As an effective coolant So work shows it's possible To build a better ion trap And avoid getting Like 90% way through your project Only to get an unusable result Researchers showed how troublesome Effects can be overcome and even Exploited to study mechanisms At play at molecular motors In single atom heat engines In precisely controlled manner So they've actually gone from Here's what's been wrong with a lot of the experiments Here's why they aren't working Here's how you could do them right Here's how you can do them much better So I wonder if this is going to help To cool atoms I mean, we're just a smidge Above zero I wonder if this is going to Help us cool them even more Because we've been operating under this Assumption that it's a thermodynamic Equilibrium when it's not So I wonder if that'll help So there's a possibility This is John Glassby He's a physics program director At the National Science Foundation Which funds this type of research And is therefore extremely excited To see something that would save Oodles of money and otherwise Doom to experiments This is the sort of fundamental research That can really guide a wide range of More applied research efforts Helping other scientists and engineers To avoid going down dead end paths And illuminating more fruitful Directions that they might take instead So this is As nuanced and sort of Apple pie in a windowsill And I don't get it either It's a huge advancement on A cutting edge field of research That may have some Really wide ranging applications In productive research to come That's cool I love it That's fascinating It's basic science, it's basic research But it's going to have potentially Major ramifications That is awesome You know what else is awesome? Blair's Animal Corner Animal She's your girl Except for giant Pandas as well What you got Blair? I have some invertebrate sex For you guys this week It's been a while Actually unfortunately There isn't any Actual sex in this Story I mean sexuality Yes So this is about Homosexual termites And by homosexual In this entire study I couldn't find a word about Actual copulation between These termites But I did find a lot about Homosexual behavior in these Termites. So this new research From Kyoto University They found male Japanese Termites that made what they Called homosexual couples When there were no females around Two termites that are males Hanging out, they actually Establish a nest And then this is where The study gets interesting They make Nests in monogamous Heterosexual pairs normally But in this case they made A homosexual pair They made a nest And then they went Into A heterosexual nest And they Killed the male And then one of the two Homosexual males Then copulated With the female And they started a new colony Wow So it's like a home invasion Yeah it doesn't really sound Like this is, yeah This sounds like we're teaming up We're gonna work together because I'm gonna be anthropomorphizing here This does not seem like They're just roommates, right?  So the implications of this There are further implications Of this because We see In the animal kingdom Same-sex pairs Whether or not they're Like fake copulating Or practice copulating Or just in a pairing We see this in nature And the question has always been Why? What's the benefit? If there is no actual reproduction Happening, what is the benefit? And this seems to have, okay It's like, I don't know, termite Wingman home invasion Yeah, so it was There was no clear way to tell Who was going to end up Fathering the nest So It wasn't exactly where One termite was helping the other one They weren't related The only thing that they saw here Was that these two male Termites were exhibiting Behavior that a monogamous Pair that is male-female That ended up being The king and queen of a termite nest They were doing all of those things So that's why these researchers Deemed them a homosexual couple And Then when they go in And they then get to father an entire Nest Even though one of them actually does They both benefit also because Neither of them are being preyed upon So That's the main Kind of enlightening piece of this Study is that We've observed Homosexual behavior in birds And in mammals quite a bit And there's obvious benefits To it in those cases Whether they be Social stature related Whether they be a release of tension Whether it's a bargaining chip There are all these things that Homosexual behavior has To benefit that species And so this was one of the very First times that it has been seen In invertebrates when it was Not mistaken Identity Nice. Yeah, so Even invertebrates have a reason To Pair up with the same sex When they have not had Great luck in love Heterosexually Yeah Even though And then they survive better generally Because they're helping each other out They're going to survive better And they'll probably have a chance If they don't mate with a female In that particular cycle Then maybe they'll fight The one in the next cycle So higher survivability leads to Higher possibility of passing on genes In general Absolutely Beneficial Yeah, and now from Homosexual termites To disclaimer to disclaimer to disclaimer We don't mean it's beneficial for our Just So now, let me Tell you about sea urchins sperm These do So how does sea urchins How does sea urchins Procreate? They're so spiny Does the answer very carefully? Haha, is it something Like corals or Other sea organisms That they just spray Spray their spawn into the Waters and let it float where it wants to go Yes, they are broadcast Spawners They just release their gametes Into the ocean And they hope against hope That sperm will find egg No No anthropomorphizing As it gets later In the evening, I anthropomorphize more And more, this is what we've learned So When A sea urchin releases its sperm There A lot of it is just luck But there's also things that will Select For Some urchin sperm over other urchin sperm And that is because Usually there's hormones in the water That will indicate to them that it is time To release their sperm because A female sea urchin has released eggs nearby And so they can sense that And then they will release And then the fastest sperm And the more sperm there is In the release, the higher chance That that sperm will reach egg Well, a recent study Has found From the University of Exeter Has found that when you When you figure in ocean acidification From man-made carbon emissions And under Projected values So they look at an acidity Of seawater increased about 25% Since the industrial revolution Is where we're at now. If you look at that Compared to historical And then you look at a further increase In acidification, the sperm Do not have the same Advantage That originally would be The best sperm So the selection For sperm is very different in the ocean If it is acidified So The research team measured Sperm performance in a lab In current and simulated future Conditions And they actually used the same techniques Employed by infertility clinics To look at human sperm And so they ran competitive Fertilization trials as well Where male urchins were paired up To compete to fertilize a batch Of eggs in seawater And then the scientists Tested the paternity Of offspring So that they could figure out who won And the ejaculates containing a greater number Of swimming sperm and ejaculates containing Faster swimming sperm were always More successful in current ocean conditions But in the conditions Of Intense ocean acidification This is still something that Potentially we could get at Kind of on the higher end The number of actively swimming sperm In an ejaculate became way less Important In securing fertilization And in several cases the male urchins That won the sperm competition battle Didn't win at all In the current ocean condition We were sort of talking about this last week Yeah Where you had these two different Sort of Strategies And this is And this is like maybe why Like if things change One of those strategies May be totally effective One of them may not be So the reason for having two different strategies Going on at one time Is because you have experienced Or nature has forced you to adapt To the fact that it might change And in changing Your strategy if you just stuck To that one way of doing things No longer works you all die But if you have multiple strategies Flexuations in the environment Allow one of those strategies to Prosper even if the other fails So be curious to see if they dialed it back The other way if the other strategy Then came into play and became more successful Right and so in the grand scheme Of things urchins They could just be a canary In a coal mine here there could be Lots of different broadcast spawners Lots of different animals That could be getting affected In their sperm selection In competition by An acidified ocean And if the Ocean acidification was happening Nice and slow Species probably No problem could adjust But if it happens too fast And there is a huge dip In populations Or if the lesser Valued sperm suddenly has More success And that lesser valued sperm Also comes from a lesser valued individual For other reasons diseases What have you That could have a huge effect on populations And how many of these Species out there don't have multiple strategies Going right now and are just going to Have the negative effect Yeah absolutely and something To remember too about urchins and we talk About urchins they're not the cutest And cuddliest of animals perhaps And if you remember Every time we've talked about sea otters Or you've learned about sea otters in school As a keystone species Sea urchins are part of kelp forests And sea urchins sea otters The kelp they are part of this Really intense web This food web And if you take out the sea urchins And the kelp grows faster Than normal or If sea urchins the ones that are Suddenly growing have a faster appetite Or you never know What is going to change especially when you take The primary herbivore In an environment and you tweak It's population It affects everyone else In that environment And Blair I'd also like to point out That not only are sea urchins And the Arctic ice canaries In the gold mine We all are We all are and Urchin gonads are strangely Delicious If you've ever had sea urchin Throw that out there At a Japanese restaurant Those are usually the gonads That's true It almost looks like foie gras Strange orangey colors Is that what that is? Is that roe? That's different The bright orange balls Are fish eggs But if you order Urchin I think it's uni That's eel Eel If you order urchin I can't remember The name for it Eel is unagi Unagi Eel is unagi That's freshwater eel Sea urchin Strangely delicious Anywho Wow Okay Moving on to the end of the show There's a patent Settlement coming about We've talked about nanopore Gene sequencing technology In the past and it's this new Technology that's going to Revolutionize and has already Started to revolutionize DNA sequencing Putting it in the palm of your hand Making it faster, cheaper, smaller More efficient But there are two companies That have been competing against each other Oxford nanopore technologies And Illumina, Inc And the companies have been bashing Their heads over patent disputes Over who owns the technology The patent for this technology They recently came to an agreement And the specifics of their agreement Are based on the design Of the nanopores themselves Whether they're based On a particular bacterial Species or something else And so So far so good Both companies are going to be able to continue Offering their products, patent dispute over The revolution Will continue Blair, you got a story? Yeah Hibernating pygmy Possums, say that five times fast Hibernating pygmy Possums Hibernating pygmy Possums They can wake from Torpor, a.k.a. Hibernation if they smell A bush fire Yeah, so this is the first time Recognizing that animals can smell And react to a smell when In torpor, which We've all been woken up by interesting Smells, be they good Like bacon or bad, like A skunk after your dog Has been skunked and jumps onto your bed Yes, that has happened to me You can wake up from a smell But can you wake up from hibernation When your metabolism has lowered When your body temperature has lowered Can you wake up And it looks like in fact Eastern pygmy possums can But their ability To then physically respond To a threat is highly dependent On the ambient temperature Outside So what we can take away from this Is that they can wake up But raising their body temperature Back up enough to flee a fire Is a whole other element And so In an effort to save These animals from Unexpected bush fires People do controlled burns In Australia But doing a controlled burn in the winter When it might be safer to do the controlled Burn on a cold day Will actually increase The accidental Casualties of wildlife And so if we know that They can smell the fire, get up Run away on a warmer day That can help Inform that decision In the future That's pretty cool Isn't it the chameleon? I think it's chameleon I'm going chameleon with this That has a White sensor on the top of their head Many lizards Canal organ So they can be asleep And then if a shadow Passes over them They can wake up Wakes them up and they might Scurry about because They love to sun themselves No better place to relax Get a nice little snooze than on a hot Rock in the sun Get that body core up And then that shadow That goes over you might be a What better reason to get up And go It's a pineal organ Or parietal organ It has many names Parietal organ It's like a third eye It's just looking up It's pretty much just like If you were asleep on a beach And your eyes were closed You would be able to tell if someone went like this Right in front of your face I'm not sure that I would If your eyes were closed It depends on how many margaritas that had But it depends on how fast asleep you were Which is where this really gets interesting Yeah If you're fast fast asleep And your body, everything is fast Metabolism is fast fast asleep How fast can your body respond That's right Very good question It's time for the octobot Octobot This octobot is The first really Full Full body Soft-bodied Robot It is amazing It is an octopus Octopus design So it's got eight arms And its body is made of silicone But instead of having wires And Transistors and other circuits Inside chips and circuits That are hard and can break It is a series Of chemical reactions Within pneumatic chambers That allow for The movement of the arms To fill The chemical reaction fills The chambers with gas Inflating them and deflating them As they are stimulated Based on the movement So I've got a video here From Science And Let's see if I can get this going It's a very beautiful Robot It doesn't actually move In a directed fashion yet This is a proof of concept But it is able To move its limbs In a semi-coordinated Fashion This is the first time that this has been done Proving concept that it can be made In any number of sizes It's not size limited To being very small or very large It can be just about any size That's necessary For the task at hand So we have hydrogen peroxide That flows over Metals in the chambers And it Releases gas and those Gases in the chambers It inflates and then The arms move So next step It's going to be swimming And it's going to be going through the oceans Searching and rescuing So Climate sensing Can I tell you, I think this might be a bad idea Or why it might be a bad idea The matrix, is that why? No, no, oh yeah, fantastic Right I like yours better actually I'll go with that No, like Make your research probe Look like something Nothing wants to eat Right, because if you Make it look exactly like Whatever predatory fish They're out there want to eat You're much more likely to Lose your probe It just logic would That's a good point, octopuses Octopuses are very often Predators themselves And then also Your things you might want to Be studying might be avoiding You, avoiding your probe But it doesn't necessarily Have to look like an octopus It can come in many different shapes This is just proof of concept And they use the octopus for Inspiration, something I Forgot fata in the chat room Has reminded me that It was 3D printed As well But octopuses are great because They're super flexible So they can fit into really great spaces And all you need to do Is use some of that amazing camouflage Technology that we've talked about so much on the show And then they'll be able to camouflage Like an octopus And then you have the whole octopus package What can go wrong But I think fata Is right in the chat room This could be the next Big Christmas gift I want one I'm going to start taking baths again If I can play with my octobot Play with your octobot in the bath It would be a great bath toy Never mind Research and you know Saving the world Bath time toy I shall name him Squishy Good, good I love it Any more stories you guys I'm all done I think I'm good for tonight Well it is time for us to Shout out and say thank you To our sponsors as it is Time for us to come to the end of the show So I would like to say thank you To Chris Clark, Paul Disney, Dave Friedel, John Ratnaswamy, Richard Onimus, Byron Lee, EO, Jared Lysette, Ulysses Adkins, Kevin Parachan, Andy, Keith Corsale Jake Jones, Eric Schwalb, Patrick Cohn, Bob Calder, Mark Miss Arrows, Ed Dyer, Traynor Eddie Ford, Varys Brimkis, Brian Mark, Charlene Henry, Donka Marechka, Larry Garcia, Randy Mazooka, Tony Steele, Steve DeBell, Haroon Surang, Melissa Mosley, Alex Wilson, Jason Schneiderman, Rudy Garcia, Greg Goothman, Dave Naver, Jason Dozier, Matthew Litwin, Eric Knapp, Jason Roberts, Craig Landon, Darrell Lambert, Rodney, David Wiley, Robert Astin, Brian Hone, Orly Radio, Brian Conjren, Pixelfly Marked, Nathan Greco, Hexator, Deborah Smith, Mitch News, Flying Out, John Crocker, Richard Porter, Christopher Dreyer, Ben Rothig, Sylvan Westby, Wilkinson, Steve Mishinsky, Rick Ramis, Gary Swimberg, Phil Nadeau, Braxton Howard, Salged Sam, Matt Sutter, Emma Grenier, Phillip Shane, James Stobbson, Kurt Larson, Stefan Insom, Michael George Russell, Jensen Mountain, Sloth, Jim Dupoe, Tara Payne, John Maloney, Jason Olds, James Paul West, Alec Dodie, Luma Lama, Joe Wheeler, Dougal Campbell, Craig Porter, Adam Mishkin, Erin Luthon, Marjorie Paul Stanton, David Simmerly, Tyler Harrison, and Colombo Ahmed. Thank you for all your support on Patreon. And if you would like to support us on Patreon, you can do that simply by going to patreon.com slash this week in Science. Also remember that you can help us out simply by telling your friends about twists. The next week's show, we're going to be talking to Carl Zimmer about... I love Carl. Yeah, Carl Zimmer is going to be on the show to talk about his investigation into his genome. He has a series about, recently, a video series, an article series on basically his own genome testing and what it taught him about himself. And so given our many conversations about 23andMe and other genome testing services, I think this is going to be a lot of fun for us to talk to him. So I hope everyone... A long time friend of this show, too. Yeah. It will be great. So don't miss it. We'll be broadcasting live online, 8 p.m. Pacific Time next Wednesday on twist.org slash live. Also facebook.com slash this week in Science. Don't worry if you can't make it because the show will be on a line. You'll be able to find past episodes at twist.org slash YouTube or just twist.org. Yes, thank you everybody for enjoying the show. Twist is, as Kiki said, available on the line as a podcast. Just Google this week in Science somewhere in your iTunes directory or if you have a mobile type device. We are Twist, the number 4 droid app in the Android Marketplace or simply this week in Science in anything Apple Market placey. For more information on anything you've heard here today, show notes will be available on our website. What's our website? I'm so glad you asked. It's www.twist.org Is it? www.twist.org One more time. Twist.org where you can also make comments and start conversations with the hosts as well as other listeners. Or you can contact us directly email kirsten at kirsten at thisweekinScience.com Justin at twistminion at gmail.com or Blair at Blair Baz at twist.org Or just put twist, T-W-I-S somewhere in the subject line with those emails. Otherwise your email will be spam filtered into oblivion. You can also hit us up on the Twitter where we are at twistscienceat Dr. Kiki at Jacksonfly and at Blair's Menagerie. We love your feedback if there's a topic you'd like us to cover or address a suggestion from interview. A haiku that came to you in the night. Please let us know. We will be back here next week and we hope you'll join us again for great science news. And if you've learned anything from today's show remember it's all in your head. This Week In Science This Week In Science This Week In Science It's the end of the world So I'm setting up a shop Got my banner unfurled It says the scientist is in I'm gonna sell my advice Show them how to stop the robot With a simple device I'll reverse all the warming With a wave of my hand And all it'll cost you Is a couple of grand This week science is coming your way So everybody listen Do what I say I use the scientific method For all that it's worth And I'll broadcast my opinion All over the Earth This Week In Science This Week In Science Science This Week In Science This Week In Science This Week In 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 get to understand That we're not trying to threaten your philosophy We're just trying to save the world From Japanese This Week In Science Is coming your way So everybody listen Do everything we say And if you use our methods That'll roll and I die We may rid the world of toxoplasma Got the eye Cause it's this Week In Science This Week In Science This Week In Science Science This Week In Science Science This Week In Science Science At our 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 So how can I ever see The changes I seek When I can only set up shop This Week In Science This Week In Science This Week In Science Science This Week In Science Science This Week In Science This Week In Science This Week In Science It's hot in here you guys Hello 90s in Portland What? Yeah Ew, we're experiencing That jet stream shift That our guest Walt Meyer Referred to Oh, I forgot to say Double thank you to him At the end of the show For being on the show I didn't write it down But many thanks to our guest Walt Meyer from NASA Goddard For his time this evening And for talking with us about Arctic sea ice And how important it is To understand it And the many ways they are working To understand it That was a pretty good interview I enjoyed it Yeah, fascinating It's right now It's the after show everybody It's the after show where it's hot, hot, hot Yes Tired, tired, tired So hot in here Yeah, I'm a little tired To What was that? I found my sound machine While I was packing I'll take bows Oops, excuse me Who's my favorite? I can't do that one That one's good Oops, that one's I have a whole other one Another one The sci-fi sound machine Is this one broken? It's just gonna chirp at you I think it's out of batteries No Look, I have a teeny tiny screwdriver I wonder what the battery situation is What is this? Oh, sound board Here we go Oh man, you guys are gonna Like 21st century this on me And now I'm gonna be outdated It's a David Lee Roth sound board Oh, that's awesome Oh my god, that's fantastic Let's Is this a voice track without the music That accompanies it? Is that a voice track without the music That accompanies it? So it sounds like totally out of place Oh, there's a sound board Oh, look, here's a monkey sound board Brandon's sound board I don't like angry chimp sounds Because we're the KBGBs This is an angry monkey Oh, wait Just you wait, you guys are gonna like this one Oh, it's a family guy one My favorite family guy Bit of all time Is the walkie-talkie Over Oh, yes Can you find that one? So My three-year-old My three-year-old We just Annoying Blair Knock it off Oh, that's a story And Could you stop I'm just trying to start Karen Okay, knock it off, Karen Stop it, Karen So my three-year-old wanted to watch cat videos And we all know that Justin Can't stand staring at cats Instead, I pulled up tiger videos And we fell into this one Where They were introducing these baby tigers To this Adult tiger At some sort of tiger Big cat refuge thing And And the tiger, they were like, okay, this must have been Australia Like it was really positive Because the tiger was making huffing sounds Like Which is, I guess, a positive Like non-threatening They have this language that they greet each other in Which They don't talk to people this way They talk to other tigers this way And they were like, okay, this is very positive This is encouraging, this is a good person But then, so my three-year-old Was like, I want to hear how other animals talk So we started going through And looking for Animals talking to each other Sounds Really fascinating I actually have a soundboard for that Did you really? Okay, it was Like the tiger one was really fascinating Actually, because there was lots of Totally untigerish Type sounds taking place Like they weren't what you expected A tiger to sound like at all Some were almost donky-ish And some were just like Sort of breathy huffings Like Were like, you know And then we did, we were looking at lions And then we were looking at apes And then She just wanted to hear pig-winking Sounds, but it was It was a fun, it was a fun Like down the rabbit hole, YouTube Yeah That's a good rabbit hole, I like that rabbit hole I am packing after all I don't know where anything is You should know especially where Right now, because you're packing You're putting things away, you're like That's where that is Yeah, because that's how moving works Totally, you never just throw things In a box Okay So I'm going to remind everybody To check out the Ice Flows app It's an app for your phone You can also just google IceFlowsGame.com www.iceflowsgame.com And you can be Just getting paid to do that No, it's a research thing That's not a bad idea Maybe they are getting paid, I hope they are That'd be awesome I'm going to put a link in the chat room So people can play that It's pretty cool Actually the only thing that was really Like, sort of weird to me On the game www.iceflowsgame.com Yeah, well whatever And it's Is that a forward slash or a backslash To this day, I can't tell the difference And I will never learn this It's leaning forward Forward slash Because you read left to right So if it's leaning But the other one is Slashing forward This is what the confusion is In my head One slash is forward But it depends on where you start This one, if it starts Slashing forward But if it starts at the bottom and goes up It's also Slashing forward, so they're all forward Slash But they both are right They both go to the right They both start at the left and go to the right How is one not forward And the other is So we live in America Is it falling forward Or is it leaning back And I can't ever tell spring forward and fall back It's like if you're standing A spring always springs back Pretend But you spring forward and you don't spring back Oh, a spring or a spring When you can pull this spring, what does it do It springs back Do you fall forward?  Yeah, I don't know, but sometimes I fall forward It has to do with tripping or the wrong pair That's how you fall forward This is how to remember This is how to remember Pretend you are the slash You're standing You're the slash And you're facing The end of the sentence So the beginning of the sentence is behind you You're looking Towards the end of the sentence You're reading it You are the slash I already know the answer So if you're leaning forward That's a forward slash If they call it a lean forward slash If they call it a lean forward slash I've already had this a long time ago Yeah, but that's the thing Are you leaning forward If you're the slash Are you facing towards the end of the sentence Then it's a forward slash If you're leaning back The back slash That makes sense because they both look like forward Slashes to me because They both start at the left And go forward to the right I can't believe we're debating this No matter how you look at it Yeah, so I just Educated you You're welcome Thank you If anybody tried to send me an email Over the last several days I may or may not have gotten it Oh, twist.org There was a thing with that Well, maybe No, this week in science.com for sure Maybe twist.org as well There was an old credit card Okay, so this is interesting This is actually interesting timing Because it's fixed Yeah, my My email wasn't syncing With BlairBaz at twist.org And I was I thought it was something that I did And I sent like a week trying to figure it out And I cleared out All of my old emails And I like did all these things When maybe that's what it was Last week Possibly, yeah Possibly There we go Maybe on our Little tiny fun Twitter poll So far With the votes that are in One quarter say send life 50% find life 25% Do nothing Wait, wait What was the result? The poll is should we send a probe To Proximab Packed with microscopic life What's your vote?  I did As twist science As twist science By the way, twist science Well done I also need to figure out Combine the s At the end of twist With the beginning of science Yes, yes, yes In case It took a lot of deliberation I'm still not happy I think it's great I'm still not happy It's my personal opinion Two s's is weird Two s's, that's what I thought Two s's was weird too Okay, you guys Two s's next to each other For everybody There's a five minute online test Whether or not you are A Face super recognizer Ooh, I want to do that Yeah, hold on I'm predicting that I am If it was a name Remember quiz I would say no, I fail I don't even care what the results are on the stupid quiz Because I know I would fail But not being a good name recognizer Isn't this going to ruin my chances Of like, I recognize the face I don't know who it is Would you be the computer? Let's see, I'm going to do this quiz Share it so we can all do it Share the link We're all going to play along with her Here's the link I'm putting it in the chat room There's the link University of Greenwich 14 trials You'll find out how well you did at the end You did very well You may be a super recognizer And they'd like you to volunteer To do more tests So in stage one of each Trial, you see a single face For a few seconds in stage two You see an array of faces Pick out the first face From the array I'm pretty sure I am not a Super recognizer But let's just see Okay Squinty dude You just watch it, right? Squinty dude Number two Yeah, absolutely number two Okay I think it's interesting They're doing off angle pictures I think this is a fascinating Brain thing I'm going to say Eight Yeah, that's what I went with too Okay It's hard because you don't You want to look at other things Like the scarf, for example But that's not helpful Four Number four Let's see, we have Mr. Unibrow Yeah Oh wait, where is he? I think he's number four Yeah, I think he's number four or two Yeah, you're right Are all these next people going to have beanies?  Five I went with one No beanie and you think one? Maybe you're a Super recognizer I just forgot what his face looked like That's the test Yeah Yeah No, I'm second guessing myself I should have just gone with the first instinct Okay, I just missed that one totally Okay Was the beanie and the rotating of the head? Yes It's a lot going on Or Not at all That was three All the way Was it three? I think so The chat room while we're doing this Gosh, this one's tough One I went I went six on that one Did you? I did, I don't know if it's right Hello Smirky face Smirky face Number six I totally agree Maybe I'm looking too much at the hair Maybe I just went off the rails I'm I felt like I was done I was doing really well I'm not doing well I went six I'm doing six again I think I might be a hair recognizer Yeah Oh, good lord Nuts Do you want me to tell you what I went? Two Yep I went right there with you Maybe I'm an ear recognizer This guy's got a lot of territory He does He's got some ears Oh, for the ears He's making me go Number five Yeah They're all so squinty I'm gonna say five too Yeah This guy is a problem Glasses, what? He's got 13 out of 14 With the pouty face Six Three Two, weird Oh, maybe you're right I don't know I was looking at his lips The next one is all about Who has bat ears There's two with bat ears Good lord I'm between two and four So I'm going four I lost it I rocketed ahead of you guys Oh, look at me in my tiny ear I'm just a tiny ear I have a tiny ear I've lost it Him, I noticed he had like a I've lost it entirely Dr. Keke has lost the plot Ten out of 14 I got me out of 14 I suck at this Ten if you scored What did you get? 13 out of 14 I got the lowest score You may be a super recognizer Blair Maybe you should do more tests I could participate in the study You should do more studies Super recognizer Whiskey renegade 12 out of 14, huh? I got eight out of 14 I was really bad at this You weren't really bad That would be awesome That was terrible Who is this? I'm looking University of Greenwich I'm looking for emails from them It won't be spam Sweet That was fun I can't believe I got 13 That's also super fun 13 I got distracted I think you got influenced by me Yeah, but I did better than you Yeah, how did that happen? I should have followed you on some of that Maybe one of the ones I missed was because I did something that you said I think I'm an average recognizer I would say that based on the number of times I got that one wrong Then confused by people saying hello to me I see people I know who you are I know that person I remember faces I don't remember faces or names At least You're all fuzzy, blurry Just sort of abstract things I wonder if a test like this If this would also let you know whether or not your face is blind So I'm obviously not I think I did pretty good at 8 out of 14 I did worse than I thought I would, but better than terrible I'm okay You're not face blind I'm not face blind Face blindness is a real thing I just can't tell white people apart I guess they were all They were all white males They were all white males What about ladies? I would have called all of them What's up, bro? What's going on? All of them I don't understand You know what? I'm calling Fix I'm calling fixes in on this If those were all females I bet I would have been much more accurate A bunch of girls who cares what one dude looks like versus another dude I could care less I don't rate myself So you only care about 50% of people is what you're saying Yeah, this is true Whiskey Renegade is saying something that's really interesting On 60 Minutes they had an episode talking about super recognizers and they showed people images of babies and they could pick out the adults That's amazing That's really next level Bring those people to the next Mori show And when we talked about there was a competition in China between a computer recognizing faces and a person recognizing faces and that was the test that the human beat the computer on The computer and the human were tied up until that point Oh wow The baby to adult round The human was able to pick out the correct matches more often than the computer Also in China he ensued his Vietnamese wife for having his Korean wife No, it's not true It is true That is an urban myth Has it been debunked? I think it's still true Let's get, we should check Snopes I think it was a true story I think it was debunked She was really beautiful but they had kind of homely issues from his perspective and it turns out before they got married she had a lot of plastic surgery Snopes, false Is it really? Yeah, it's probably still happened Everybody heard about that, right? What a bummer of a lie Yeah, so I love that we all bought it Well Because plastic surgery of which I've had tons by the way My actual appearance even though I'm incredibly handsome and charming now My actual appearance is much closer to Zoidberg from Futurama than the current form You're a space crab? I'm a giant space crab So the plastic surgery story in which there's supposedly a divorce over the wife having plastic surgery The image that was paired with the story was completely unrelated to the story and actually originated with a 2012 advertisement for a Taiwanese plastic surgery center featuring Taiwanese model Heidi Yeh Yeh posed for a family shot with children whose appearances were later digitally altered in the finished photograph which is used as an ad in the plastic surgery clinic with a caption reading The only thing you'll ever have to worry about is how to explain it to the kids Ooh So This also tells you the level of brutality and advertising and plastic surgery Since then, Yeh has reportedly filed a lawsuit over the misappropriation of the image Because it was altered And on top of that people love yourselves warts and all All of you are beautiful There is no You are beautiful in every single way That's enough There is no thing You don't like my singing voice? I thought it was just to love myself warts and all You are, love your warts You can love your singing voice I'll even take it a little bit further I'll even take it a little bit further, Blair You can love yourself hemorrhage and all Love yourself Love yourself and just don't look back Unconditional people Wow Blair is turning into a frat boy Blair, by the way Blair Yes This is exactly how me and Polly almost came to fisticuffs on the set of Encino Man We had these little noisemakers and people sitting around having a conversation about science or whatever and he'd come in with fart noises and I was like I know he's the star of this movie but at some point I'm going to have to throw it out to him Yes, so what were you to say? Well, at least at least you're not together because Justin just said he might punch you Throw a punch Justin, you'd be on the floor before you even connected What just happened? Nothing So somewhere between the break and the after show This happened Wait, what? Did you drink a whole bottle of wine? That just happened Which probably means it's time to say goodnight, Blair Yeah, probably Okay, you guys try to check out the Science Minion Hangout tomorrow if Ed's going to be doing that scienceisland.org look for the Minion Hangout there with the chat room Additionally be sure to put it on your calendar for September 10th and 11th for Portland Maker Affair if you are around also November 4th for Baltimore, Maryland for the Maryland STEM Fest and and let us know whether to hashtag send life, hashtag find life or hashtag do nothing on hashtag Proximab Now we can say goodnight Thanks for watching Good night everybody By the way You're all beautiful And it's not just the wine talking Well, it might be Some of you might not be beautiful But the wine says you all are beautiful That's exactly why I hate you But everything else is awesome Good night, Kiki Good night, Justin Good night, Blair Good night Good night Minions, thank you so much for joining us See you again next week Carl Zimmer