Oh, it's been a whole week. I forgot how to press the buttons. What? Happy New Year. Happiness. Happy New Year, everyone. We have made it through an entire orbit around the sun once again. So many, many days. Let's get ready for another one. This is this week in science. We're going to do our podcast broadcast right now. This is the live unfiltered version. Although my goal for 2022 is to have every episode that is podcast published live and unfiltered as well. Not live, but just unfiltered because I don't want to edit anymore. So boom. I don't want. I don't want 90. That's what we're going to do. That's what I'm going to say. All right. So now I'm talking faster so that we can just keep going a little bit more, but maybe the words are a little bit different. Okay. I might edit. So the podcast might be slightly different from this broadcast, but I know that it is time for us to do this show. So I put start times for each segment in the run sheet if we want to look at them. I put them in there and I put buffer. I allowed for buffers. So we can see how it works. I just threw it in there. We'll see. If we pay. I'm just, I'm the only thing I'm concerned about is if we spend too much time talking about tight nineties, we'll never get to the show or the show. Yeah. That's what I was going to say. Okay. Starting in. Three. Two. This is. Twist. This week in science episode number 857. Recorded on Wednesday, January 5th, 2022. Science predictions. Wait. No. The title of the show is. 2022 science predictions. Hey everyone. I'm Dr. Kiki. And tonight on the show, we will fill your heads with. Fish. Crows. And predictions. But first. Disclaimer. Disclaimer. Disclaimer. Disclaimer. Disclaimer. Disclaimer. Disclaimer. Disclaimer. Disclaimer. Disclaimer. Disclaimer. Disclaimer. Disclaimer. Disclaimer. Disclaimer. Every year, discoveries are made. Every year, more tools for our survival are created. Every year, we get a little bit closer to having everything figured out. The question then will be, what do we do with the tools and knowledge that science is built? When we look at the present day or peer into the not too distant future, we have some serious issues that need to be resolved. Many of them, science has solutions for. Many more, science is the only path towards finding a solution. The future will come no matter how we focus our efforts in the present. If we bring science along with us, if we encourage and support the next generation of scientists, if we put our trust in data-driven solutions, if we apply the tools we have already learned, the future we one day wake up in will be much better than the one we will find without it. That's it. That's all. Just a better future. That's the entire goal of science. And if there's one thing that that better future requires more than anything else, it's this week in Science coming up next. Good science to you, Kiki and Blair. And a good science to you too, Justin Blair and everyone out there. Welcome to another episode of This Week in Science. We are back here in the new year, 2022, ready with optimistic minds and hearts for the year that is before us, the path that we can walk. And oh yes, this is our annual predictions show. Every year we love to come back here at the beginning of the year and look back at the predictions from the previous year to see how we did, what was our track record, and then make predictions for the science of what will occur in the year to come. How did we do? How will we do? And then we've got some more science for you because that'll be awesome. In terms of science, we have bear guts, schrodingers, tardigrades, and what else did I bring? I've also got a hostile earth. Yeah, good stuff. Justin, what kind of science did you bring? I just brought a couple of stories. I have a fishmobile, which is going to be, it's my favorite story of the year already. Good one to start with. And a question as long pondered organizations that do authorization for international sports. Who has an advantage in a 400 meter sprint? Is it somebody with or without legs? So a couple of, there's a study that has given us an answer on that one. All right. We will get to that in the science section. Blair, what is in the animal corner? Yes, I just brought a couple of things tonight. I have careful crows and sentimental seals. Oh, it's very quiet animal corner.  Yes, you know. Well, that won't last very long. No. The predictions are coming. The predictions are coming. So I guess it's almost time for us to dive in. But before we do, I would like to remind everyone that if you are not yet subscribed to This Week in Science, you can find us all places that podcasts are found. You can find us by looking for This Week in Science or TWIS on YouTube, on Facebook. You can find us on Twitter and Instagram as TWIS Science, also on Twitch as TWIS Science. And we still streaming live, but if you really want to know more about us, go to twis.org. And on that note, let's dive into predictions. A prediction show. Okay, this is by far my favorite show of the year, by the way. I always love this show. It's got a nice optimistic feel as we look forward. We get to see the predictions. We get to see the predictions from last year. The things that we thought we might see in this year, and looking back, then we can... This should be a fun year. I don't remember ever what the predictions are past week after doing the show. So then I go back and check and see where we're at a year ago, thinking about what the future might bring. It's a fun show. Every year after this show, I tell myself, okay, I'm going to print these out or write them down or keep them in a post-it on my desktop. Check up on them every week. Not have to do a bunch of research the way before the prediction show to see if things happened and I didn't even notice. No, every year I forget. So this year I went back and I looked over the last week at my predictions from last year. And let's see, my first prediction was that vaccinations would protect 60% of the United States from COVID-19 by the end of the year, but slow vaccination efforts in other parts of the world and a significant percentage of U.S. anti-vaxxers and vaccine hesitant will result in continued spread and mutation of the virus. Dang, that sounds like a... As of December 31st, it was 62% of the United States with at least two vaccine shots. So bam, I was right on it. And then additionally, yeah, new mutations. Hey, Omicron, happy new year. Welcome to the new mutations. Wah, some things you don't like to be right about. More mRNA vaccines will enter clinical trials after positive effectiveness of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines lends more credibility to the growing technology and this is totally happening. It did happen in 2021. In 2021, we got results from HIV clinical trials for Moderna that weren't necessarily very positive for that particular vaccine, but there are cancer vaccines that we are looking at using mRNA that are entering clinical trials, like 20 of them, a lot of a universal flu vaccine. There's a whole bunch of stuff that is in the works and it's very exciting. People are actually excited about it, which is exciting. I thought that Biden would re-engage the United States in the international climate community and set goals of carbon neutrality by 2050 for the U.S. In December, he signed an executive order for carbon neutrality by 2050 for the U.S. How he gets there, that's another debate entirely, but it's at least, I think I was on the right track there. Well, and we rejoined the Paris Agreement, so that also is re-engaging in the international climate community. Which, technically, we never left. Right. Technically, we never actually left. We went through that revolving door at the front of a fancy hotel. No, we're in actually, sorry. Yeah, thankfully, that had a cooling off period or something weird like you could pull out, but then you were still going to have to take all the units for a couple years. A cooling off period, just like our climate doesn't have right now. Anyway, the James Webb Telescope will actually launch and capture its first light at the end of 2021, beginning a new age of space exploration for the world. Halfway, successful launch. It's on its way past the moon and it has extended its sun shields to full extension and it's traveling. And so we're not going to get first light for months still, but it's working, it's getting there. So, yeah, we'll see about this year. We'll talk about predictions in a minute. Perseverance will safely land on Mars. Booyah, they did it. China will touch down on Mars successfully and they did and they are roving all over the northern part of Mars, finding new data and new information. TWIST will continue to bring the joys of science. I think we did that this last year and I said I would get glasses. Do reading glasses count? Because I read to an optometrist, but I never actually got glasses. If they allow you to read. They help me read. Yeah, I got reading glasses. Wow, did you miss any? I mean, that was pretty solid. I was solid. I wasn't, I think, I wasn't reaching out too far though. I didn't extend myself too much on the predictions, but yeah, but I think I hit it. Okay. Are you next, Justin? Yeah, I said, it's a mixed bag for me. I predicted that in 2021, we were going to see more cases of COVID and more COVID deaths than we had seen in 2020. That was unfortunately correct around twice as many people globally died from COVID in 2021. Roughly 3.5 million humans. A number so staggering that it is barely, I can barely comprehend that number of people dying in a year from one thing. Roughly 3.5 million. Although really incomprehensible, how many people just don't seem to care at all that that's been taking place? Like that's even, I predicted that as vaccines make the rounds of inoculation, politicians everywhere will finally acknowledge that public health is important. That one, yeah, that was kind of unfortunately, I thought that was the easy. That's not even a number involved in that prediction. But unfortunately, overly optimistic vaccines became even more politicized, at least in the United States. And every week we hear about another staunch anti-vaccine preacher, talk show host, government employee. There was just this week, a district attorney who's been running for office in California who's been anti-vax mandates and going to anti-vax relics who died from COVID-19. So they're succumbing to a disease they refuse to take seriously. And they've maybe worse been encouraging others not to take it seriously. Well, and I think the interesting thing about this prediction too that you made, Justin, is that like, at least the way I interpreted this prediction was that there's a recognition that public health as a general idea is something that needs more attention. And it really feels like throughout the last year, it was specific items that got focused on, okay, vaccines, okay, testing, okay, you know, they picked specific items to focus on instead of public health, right. Like we need to make sure everyone has access to health care and that we have enough medical workers and that everyone is able to take time off work and all this kind of, you know, the idea of public health versus kind of band-aids for COVID over and over and over. Yeah, I think the thing that was most upsetting to me is that there's such a thing as a toxic ideology that can lead people to make bad decisions or do bad things to each other or to themselves and that sort of thing. And as many people who have been dying from this actual real-world virus pathogen, it's often the toxic ideology that is putting them at the highest risk. The virus has a defense, but the ideology is the thing standing between people and defending themselves from it. So that's like almost one of those more straightforward toxic ideologies that I think, it's like textbook right there. Anyway, air travel opens up internationally, I thought, in 2021, that might have been a little hopeful. Specific ban on Americans traveling to France remains in effect. No public explanation is ever given by French authorities and Americans never question it because we get it. In fact, the EU, the European Union, did maintain its ban on US travelers for most of the year. And US actually only opened up in November 2021, so it was kind of mutual. So French did reluctantly start to allow Americans to travel there once again, although I think they've got a new variant, a new variant all their own. IHU, yeah, highly transmissible. I think they've got a new variant now that they're dealing with, so maybe people won't travel there after all. I predicted, this is a really interesting one. This is a hit that came so late in the year that I totally forgot it was a prediction. I predicted that researchers would develop a simple bio algorithm recognition app that makes loud buzzing sounds whenever somebody tells a lie. The application of which makes most human conversations entirely incomprehensible as the constant buzzing drowns out most speech. So there was a new lie detector method developed that used facial sensors in the computer modeling system to detect lying. You could easily, you could easily attach a buzzer to this. In fact, I don't know, it wasn't in a lab. Maybe it makes a sound. Maybe it's a buzzer. All the video, all the time. And yeah, the future development of this, they say, is they may be able to apply this to video, any archive video with a good enough view of the face because it's relying on micro-motions in the cheeks and be able to tell somebody in a video is lying. Throughout all of history of recorded humans doing this stuff, that could be fascinating. But I'm going to call that one kind of pretty much a hit, especially because it's very, it was not on any radar whatsoever on that one. Next one is the revolution materials that makes meaningless current energy storage and computing power. Unfortunately, it will take another two years to fully be available. In the meantime, no new devices are produced by phone manufacturers as people are asked to keep their old devices until the markedly improved versions are available. iPhone 13 came out as a slightly larger screen and does slightly better in low light with the camera. So that prediction failed. And they will be coming out with another model in the next three months. No. Yeah, there was, I predicted that deep fake technology would be used as a filter. So instead of having to have the conversation with your boss or your meeting like that, you could turn everybody into like, you know, Brad Pitt, Jennifer Lawrence or whoever you wanted to, whatever celebrity you wanted them to look and sound like and pretend that you were talking to famous people. Hasn't happened yet, but I still think that one's coming. Artificial intelligence comes online with a Turing test busting fashion and is even thought to have achieved consciousness and begins to doubt whether human existence is anything more than a figment of its imagination. So this is a miss, but I will point out that there was like one of the talkity to always listening to you things. Kids were asking for a suggestion for a challenge and the thing recommended they do this test with a light socket. Right. Yeah. AI might already be trying to kill us. I'm just saying. Well, and I was also going to mention that a new matrix came out this year. So it's definitely about an AI that tried to kill humans. So I don't know. Maybe you were getting the wrong vibrations. You're thinking about pop culture instead of actually. You know, I predicted last year or the year before I predicted that a meteorite would be headed towards Earth and we'd have a direct hit and we'd have nothing that we could do to stop it. Should have done it last this year. Maybe a year ahead on all of these. I need to go check two years back to see how it... And the last one, last one is a hit. No, it's a miss. Oh, gosh. No, this is a big miss. Oh, no. I predicted that a political thing, which is why I'm missing because it's political. In U.S. political news, nothing nationally embarrassing or egregiously illegal takes place in the White House after January 20th. Well, so it seems like that was a hit, except as long as you don't count major, the White House dog biting people. That's not illegal. The national embarrassment. Was embarrassing. They tried to cover it up. That's a potential crime.  Justin, don't bring your hate for dogs here. This is not where it's appropriate. But this is just to protect other people from potential harm. No excuses. No excuses, people. If you can't manage to take on the responsibility of a dog, which is like a kid gets a dog to see if they are ready. You have to be ready. They get to talk. If you're going to get a dog, like you're asking for, you're going to have to take care of it and be responsible for it. If you can't be responsible for your dog, why are you leading a nation? That's just... They are responsible. They moved poor major out of the White House. Thankfully, major didn't try to overthrow the government or anything like that, but his actions do amount to conduct unbecoming of the position of first dog and was relieved from his position. He's been replaced. He's like another dog. Major, there's a lot of pressure for a dog. Listen, his brother just passed away. It's been a tough, you know, a couple of months for major. Leave him alone. Sorry, Major. I didn't know. Don't bite people. Don't bite people. All right. Just unfettered dog hatred. We love dogs. We love all animals. Dog bites, man.  Get mad at the canine with canines. Canine with canines. Technically, I think I was blaming the owner, but... Okay. Let's move forward to Blair's predictions. Okay, so... All right, not predictions. What you did predict. How'd you do? Yes, yes. Overall, not great, but I got to think. I think I got a couple of things. I started up with one that I do almost every year, which is tardigrades will do something weird. And they did a couple of things weird this year. So one is about midway through the year, they were discovered to walk like insects that are 500,000 times their size. So that's strange. Why? Yeah, we didn't even report on it on the show, but it did happen. And then also, you have a story tonight, Kiki, about tardigrades that broke, I think, days before the end of the year. Technically. Yeah, right at the end of the year, which is why we didn't cover it. And so stay tuned to hear about the weirdest thing tardigrades did in 2021. I won't even tell you. You'll have to wait. But yes, that's a big yes. I then guessed that carbon emissions will be cut in the U.S. to a number from the last decade. So this is also partially on the idea that everyone was still at home and that that was going to continue. No, it didn't happen. We will learn some long-term psychological effects from the isolation of COVID times and the first COVID babies. And I said, but it won't be bad. Well, actually, I think I was kind of right on both cases. Also, last week, a story broke about how babies that are about six months old, this is a small sample size about 300 babies that they scored lower on developmental tests but that doesn't really mean anything because a lot can happen after a baby is six months old. So it's not necessarily bad. So I actually got that right on both counts. And their communication skills and everything were still perfectly fine. And wasn't it, it was, yeah. Yeah. It's all kind of questionable results, but definitely they're starting to check these things out in the first COVID babies. And it does seem like there's differences, but again, small sample size. My next prediction was that new 4D movie theaters will start springing up in the wake of the shutdowns. The fourth dimension is smell. Well, that didn't pan out because nobody could smell. Nobody could smell. They're still wearing masks and people are still getting COVID and losing their sense of smell. I think I was feeling kind of optimistic at this time last year. I'm feeling differently just if you wait until the prediction show up for me from the anyway. Next, I said half of the US will get vaccinated with doses procured by the US government. The other half will be sent by other countries who are sick of waiting for us to get with the program. No, actually, in fact, we vaccinated our own and then hoarded a bunch of doses. And so that kind of the opposite happened. Next, I predicted that twists will eventually late in the year stop doing a COVID section every week, just some weeks. That is true. We did skip it sometimes. But that was mostly out of fatigue, not out of lack of storage. For a while, it was like, we can loosen this up a little bit. It was a lull there in the spring until it came back. Yeah, spring summer. But there were some weeks off. Yeah, yeah, we took some weeks off. Next, I predicted that protesters quote unquote at the inauguration will be politely asked to leave. They will eventually. That's pretty much true. Then I predicted that in Boba Fett spinoff, Baby Jabba will attempt to capture our hearts like sweet Grogu, but many baby Jabba toys will remain on the shelves. Well, Boba Fett only started last week and I haven't watched tonight's episode yet because I was preparing for the show. So I don't know if Baby Jabba is going to make an appearance yet, but so far, no.  And I did. And gosh darn it. Gosh darn it. I did. Yeah. Yeah. Mazel tov. Thank you. You're welcome. That was a lot of good ones there. You and Justin did fairly well. 50% probably. Yeah. You know, it's predictions. How do you know? Unless you look at the calendar and have a copy of it ahead of time. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, there were some predictions from the Twitterverse last year. We had Jones who tweeted that more alien extraterrestrial alien signals from unknown radio signals from nearby galaxies would be found. Well, there were strange signals from the center of the Milky Way that were discovered back in October. We don't know if they're from extra. They are extraterrestrial in origin because it's not from Earth. That's what the word means. Yeah. The real words. For reals. Yeah. Let's see.  No, that didn't happen. Someone will find a cool looking undersea critter that has not previously been identified said pasta disaster. And there were lots of new finds under Antarctica. They went down under the ice and found some cool organisms. But does the mammoth tusk count? Because I thought that was cool. That was a good one. Yeah. Let's see. CRISPR will show promise and curing more otherwise uncurable diseases. That was from ringmaster. And it totally happened in 2021. And there were several steps forward in that direction. Rediscovery of a species that actually didn't recently go away. But are instead really good at hide and seek from G. Kaminer. And I have, there's a list. There's like a list of rediscovered species. Species that were thought to have been extinct, but that were rediscovered. Didn't I do a story like that? Look at this one. Yeah. I think you have a bunch of species got removed from the endangered species list. This, this last year. It was good news. But I think, I think, I think that's because we've given up on finding them after 70 years. Sorry. You get removed because you're dead. We can't find you. RFR Gomez said teleportation of a proton. I'm like, yeah, well, protons have been teleported previously. But this year there was teleportation of a photon. So moved to photons. That's what they meant too. Yes. Maybe that's what they meant. Let's see. Weird neutrino results from Dr. Ben. Well, they did find evidence of neutrinos in the LHC signature from previous year's runs. So I don't know if it's weird or not, but they didn't find something there. Arne Lauren Gord said that we would crack the code and get a universal flu vaccine. I'm still waiting for this, but we're so close. Right? Yeah, Blair. Give me it. I wanted to. We all want it. We want it. There's a clinical trial actually in process. And there is like targets that have been discovered. And so we got that, that universal flu vaccine. That will be amazing. And I think that was about it. I think that's about it. So. Oh yeah. Better geology said that he is going to be figuring out if a fault is active. He had actually done that. So well, let us know. We're waiting. Better geology. Well, that was fun. That was our predictions from last year. How'd we do? And if you just tuned in, this is this weekend science. If you're enjoying the show, happy new year. Please tell a friend. All right. It's time now for the predictions for 2022. What do we think is going to happen this year? What do we think? What do we think? Who gets to go first? Who's on the? Oh, I don't have the wrong. Is it me? Oh, it's me. Okay. All right. So 2021. Was a mental roller coaster of pandemic related emotions.  Is a phrase people will slowly stop saying in 2022. Despite all of the looming threats in 2022, everything is going to be just fine. That or everyone is going to die. If I predict everyone dies, nobody will be left alive to appreciate that I was correct. But if I predict that everything will be just fine and everyone dies, no one will know I was wrong. So my prediction is everything's going to be just fine. All right. 2022, both Websters and Oxford dictionaries will change the definition of fine to include a state where things are actually terrible beyond belief, but ranking too far down the list of anxiety-ridden awful things one's got to deal with to do anything about at the moment. Fine. You do know that there is an acronym for fine. Yeah. Freakin' insecure, neurotic, and evasive. Or emotional. Yeah. Large Hadron Collider will come back online and continue running experiments mid-year. While it was upgraded and expanded with many additional sensors and much more data gathering capacity, the increased sensitivity that will be considered too much information. The scientists who were supposed to be analyzing it. Why did you do this? It was already hard. It was already a lot of information. You gave us, we didn't need more. Always more data. You always need more, always more. New waves of variants will be met by a robust response of new vaccines. An increased portion of the world's population will be vaccinated, but only because the portion of the population that refuses the jab keeps mysteriously shrinking. Also, it's not a mystery.  Nowhere is this new attitude more dramatically apparent than in the airline industry where they begin removing unruly passengers at altitude. 2022, a group of NASA scientists conducting experiments in search of a potential deep space cryogenic state will accidentally discover that in large enough quantities tardigrades taste absolutely delicious.  Many tardigrade farms spring up around the world and genetic modification programs begin to increase their size. In the coming decade, they reach the size of a small pig. Brazil races to re-forest the Amazon in order to provide enough feeding grounds to the new meat staple. Situation seems to be a win for the food chain, the carbon sequestration, everything's going good until the tardigrades are discovered to be capable predators and soon are stalking these Amazonian rivers, jungles and coastline of Brazil in search of human flesh. It is said they prefer vegetarians. Wendy reports that a lot... This is tardigrades and not nutria. This is tardigrades. We already have rodents of unusual size that... That's the first thing to go. They can get into the tardigrade enclosures and that's when they start learning how to move up the food chain. Media reports a large comet has been spotted hurtling towards the earth with near certainty of a direct impact. Most people write it off thinking, I've already seen the show. The rest in just a topical antifungal cream meant to treat hogs feet in order to divert the comet's path. It's a logical step you can make. A guy named Dave is going to discover these cats not only been secretly accessing his computer but reporting on his daily activities to other cats in the neighborhood who have in turn shared pictures of Dave with still more cats. By the end of 2022, cats of the world are going to recognize a meme of Dave who they refer to as the grumpy ape. With the non-binding commitments of COP26 meeting no longer remembered, delegates of various gliderati from around the world will look forward to making performative statements on climate during COP27 in November. And year 2022 is the year we discovered that we really, really, really should have been listening to Justin way back when and just taking a few months off from everything. Yeah, we know that. We all know that already. We know that, but this is everyone. Ah, that guy had the answer. Too late now. A couple months off. Too late now. Animal reservoirs. Can't go backwards. It's okay. We're fine. We're fine. Totally fine. Everything is fine. Everything is fine. All right, Blair. What are your predictions? I predict that humans will create a new, stronger material modeled after spider silk, but it still won't be better than the real thing. Even better than the real thing. No, never. Tartar grades will do something weird. Gotta, gotta say that. Every year. Every year. And so far they have rarely let me down. The world will declare the end of the pandemic, just in time for a new one. A new nightmare inducing deep sea fish will be discovered. Inhuman. Great. I like that. Inhuman origins. A new out of Antarctica theory will surface. The web telescope. Sorry, everyone. We'll break in some way. Blair, no. No. Something will break. No, that's fantastic because we've been saying, the worst is behind us with this pandemic. We've been, we've learned jinxing ourselves happens. So Blair's saying that is not a jinx. A jinx should be if somebody said, everything's going to. I'm saying break a leg. You get the idea. It's a break a leg. But next a millionaire or billionaire will have their ashes scattered in space. Is it going to happen yet? Right. I like this one. I like this one because it can happen on one of the joy rides. Yeah. That would count. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I guess having the ashes scattered in space also would be different from just sending things up in a cube, sending the ashes up in a cube set. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. You know, scattered or do a space walk. I don't know. Just add to the trash. You know, why not? Crows will reveal that they have understood everything we've said this whole time. I believe it. Forget. No. Well, you know, we haven't said that much negative about the crows. We've just done a lot of that stuff for another nature in general, I think. But anyway, always be nice to the crows. Yeah. I think that will happen this year. That's a great prediction. I want to see it. And I have to do a pop culture one. Baby Yoda will return in the Mandalorian. But he will return as teen Yoda.  You know, teen Yoda. Oh man. And very last. We'll see about this. We'll see about this. We'll see about this. We'll see about this. I'm just kind of putting some positive vibes out there. Twist will return to the stage at a live show. Ooh. In 2022? Maybe. If we really get our stuff together, it's possible. Yeah, okay. It could be December. I don't care. I'm just saying, you know, maybe. I have to be able to actually leave my house first. Right. Yeah. And not wear masks on stage. Not have to cancel at the last minute. Yeah. But I'm just putting the positive vibes out there. I like it. I like positive vibes. Yeah. A lot of negative vibes in my predictions, but that one's a positive vibe. There you go. I just need a heads up because I'm going to need pants. I have a head. Got rid of all the pants. Because I was like, I won't need these anymore. Pants? What are they? I mean, we'll just make sure there's a nice drop cloth on our table when we speak at the live show. And then no one will see your pants. It's fine. We have to rush them in. Oh my goodness. Thank you Blair. I love that. Okay. Things to aspire to in 2022. Okay. I've got predictions as well. My predictions for this year. The virus causing COVID-19 will mutate further due to further vaccination difficulties leading people to wonder if they ever really did have a life before the pandemic or if it was just a fever dream. What is life anyway? However, pandemic waves will be less and less concerning as new mRNA booster shots updated based on the mutagenesis of the virus will become available before year's end. I think Pfizer is already working on something. There will be new boosters. They'll keep us going. Our gravitational wave detectors, did you know there are four of them now? Four. Our gravitational wave detectors are going to detect more gravitational waves. This year, yes. The LHC, see that's another one. I'm going out on a limb with that prediction. You're really pushing it. Is this why your predictions are always so good? The vagaries.  You had some very good specifics last year. That one's a vague one. The LHC will once again provide support for the standard model even as other experiments like Muon G2 try to escape its clutches. Standard model continue to dominate. LHC is going to bring it. We will see SpaceX's Starship successfully reaching orbit in 2022. I think that is going to happen very soon. And actually based on a story I read right before the show I'm going to adjust my prediction for the NASA SLS. I said the NASA SLS will see further delays and it was reported just today that it's going to be pushed its launch is going to be pushed until June or something like that or its test is going to be pushed like six months. The delays are already happening so I was going to say that it was going to reach orbit in 2022 but I cancelled that. I just know SLS is not going to get off the ground in 2022 so I'm changing that. Yeah. I have to type that in. And will not get off the ground. There we go. I have edited as on the fly. The Jwist space telescope I got a Jwist necklace for Christmas. It's so fun. Will continue its trip to L2 and return images before the end of the year that wow and astound the world see going out on a limb there. I'm going to go with the positivity. One of you is probably going to be right. We can both be right just because something breaks doesn't mean it doesn't still work. Okay. You're right. Then I'll make a prediction. I want to fit one in here in the middle of that which is that everything opens nothing breaks but they get no images. They go right down the middle. The lens cap is on. Everything works. Oh, we forgot to take off the camera. That's amazing.  Everything's fuzzy. The person who calibrated it didn't have their glasses on. They forgot their readers that day. Just slightly fuzzy. They have images but you have to wear readers. That's amazing. Scientists will continue to become better communicators of their science, finally understanding that people have trust issues but politicians will continue to use facts any old way they darn well please. That's what I predict. Unless social media is regulated this year we will continue to see a growing distrust in science. It's going to continue to grow. It's going to be bad. NASA's dark mission is going to crash into dimorphis the asteroid moonlit of Artemis. It's going to happen in the fall and we will be so excited we'll rejoice at the successful crashing of a spacecraft. It's a high impact science mission on many counts. But we're going to be saddened because the craft will be gently cradled and enveloped by the soft, dusty exterior moving the space rock in its orbit. So there's a possibility of that because it could be gravel. It could be this is, yeah. How do you move something that's just like an amalgamation and agglomeration? Yeah. We will continue to be depressed rather than inspired by Justin's good news stories. Oh, oh, I'm going to ruin that one today because I've got a just good news story now today. Artificial intelligence will be trained on reality in virtual reality designed by other AIs. Oh, no. It's a snake eating its own tail. Yeah, so instead of AI being trained on data sets produced by people, it's going to be data sets that's not really reality, it's in virtual reality that's synthetically created by artificial and tell other archival AIs anyway, yes, the Ouroboros and an artificial intelligence will design a synthetic biological life form. That'll be fun. That'll either be awesome or terrifying. Twist will welcome a new member to the family. Oh, yeah. It will. Just like what? Oh, yeah. Yes. I got a Bambinino on the way. Yes, Justin has a Bambinino on the way. I will be missing a show sometime in the next few weeks. Don't know when. We'll let you go. It's a good reason. And once again, Twist will continue to bring you science news throughout the year. So thank you for joining us on this adventure. And we do hope that you hold us to these predictions. Help us keep track throughout the year if you remember. But it should be a fun year to come. Whoo. This is This Week in Science and it is time for us to move forward through this new year. If you are enjoying the show, please do head over to our website and click on our Patreon link to support the show.  We really can't do this without you. Thank you for your support. So let's come on back and dive in to the science that we all know and love. Whoa. We do love the science. We also like to start the show with the tale of a Schrodinger's Tartigrade. Schrodinger's Tartigrade. So it's like a cat in the box. Is it alive or is it dead? Is the Tartigrade resonating with a qubit or is it not? So quantum entanglement throughout the years has always worked on non-living inanimate objects. And there have been just atomic-sized objects all the way up to larger objects but inanimate, not living biological being. So at the end of 2021 there was an article published in the archive.org. This is a preprint. It hasn't been peer-reviewed yet or published in a peer-reviewed journal article. So at this current time it is undergoing scrutiny by the public, by the scientific community and it will be at some point probably submitted for publication but not yet. But what's at issue? They took Tartigrades, water bears and knowing that they can go dormant, lose all their water and turn into their little ton state. The ton state is where they're just dormant. They're like a little barrel. And you can reanimate them. Take the water away and they could be dead. I don't know. You add the water back. Oh look, they're alive. Totally happy little Tartigrades. And we can be exposed to extreme temperature in that state too. Exactly. And that's the whole point. So for quantum entanglement experiments, they take place at pretty much absolute zero as close to it as we can get. So the really, really cold situations were using superconducting superconductors to make them work.  And then they made the qubit vibrate and checked to see if the Tartigrade was vibrating and oh look vibrating at the same rate. So they basically, was it a zero or was it a one? Was it a zero or was it a one? Could they go halfway in between? Oh yes, they could. And so their experiments did show that there was some resonance with the qubit that was involved. However, this resonance could not specifically be entanglement itself but some other artifact of the experiment. And that's what people are trying to figure out at this point. Now is this quantum biology, is this like, do the first instance of entanglement with a macro scale, even though Tartigrades are kind of micro scale, but biological living organism? Macro to what they've usually compared to a qubit. Not really. It wasn't really because we don't really know if it was entanglement for sure, but the one thing that is for certain is that they took Tartigrades down to near absolute zero for several days and then reanimated them. And the Tartigrade one of the Tartigrades lived. So this is a big deal. Water bears, I mean absolute zero. You're talking about the cold reaches of space, right? So all of these extreme states that Tartigrades can persist through makes you wonder could we send Tartigrades to Mars? So here's the here's the thing about space. At least if you're near a star get out of the atmosphere protection all that. You're hit, you're bombarded with extreme heat and extreme cold. You can burn up or you can freeze death or you can actually do both if you're in the wrong place. The fact that this little these water bears, these Tartigrades can survive both extremes is very intense. They can also handle the high heat but I don't know if we were talking about that at all but they can handle the really high heat as well. So, yeah this is Tartigrades in space this is our new space explorer exactly Tartigrades in space that's the TV show I need in my life with them walking like insects 500,000 times their size. So there you go Tartigrades did something weird at the end of the year. You went on that one Blair It's more like we did something weird with Tartigrades but I'll take it. We did something weird that's exactly it's the other way around but who knew they really can withstand very very cold temperatures that ton state it can withstand a whole lot. Yeah. So it's still to be we'll see where they go with it whether or not they'll redo some of these experiments try some other stuff to check on that quantum entanglement aspect but yeah funny quantum experiments with Tartigrades funny physics experiments Justin what you got? Oh that's a great question just good news I've got a just good news segment news segment that looks for only the very best good news in science and sometimes finds it this is the fish technology edition team of Israeli researchers taught Goldfish to pilot a tiny land vehicle in their paper published in the general behavioral brain research the group describes how the fish were taught to use it and the navigational skills they displayed while driving around so there has been apparently some prior research that has been talked about on the show I think I missed that show or I missed that story just don't remember it that rats were given little rat cars and were able to drive them around to their desired destinations in this new study the researchers built a fishmobile to see if fish could do the same so they got these they put Goldfish and wanted to know if they could do something called domain transfer methodology so basically it's where the creature applies one set of navigational skills to multiple environments so they built a small fish tank mounted on a wheeled frame we got some images up there for them the on the YouTubes live show there they fitted the fishmobile with a pole mounted camera processor and a LiDAR so basically it points down at the fish and it looks where does the fish swimming in this tank and then of course relates that to the wheels of the vehicle so how the fish is swimming where it's pointing and what direction it wants to seem to go the vehicle will travel that way so now you got this fish in this little fish tank mobile and the researchers just allowed the fish to meander around and drive around for the while but that and they weren't done next they added targets for the fish if the fish reached where it was supposed to go and got a little fish treat over time the researchers found that the fish came to understand that their actions could impact the movement of the fishmobile in ways that led them to the tasty reward then the team changed the environment they just took them outside the fish drove both indoors and outdoor arenas they had changing targets and obstacles and over time they found the fish had no problem adapting they drove straight for their reward demonstrating their ability to operate the vehicle to the desired location I love it I love this you can lead a fish to water and you can teach him to drive I mean this is ridiculous and I love it yeah me too me too this is already my favorite story of all of 2022 don't need to hear anymore now come on Mr. Fish you gotta put your limbs at ten and two Mr. Fish we're like we're done for this year right they put a goldfish in a fish tank mobile and taught it to drive now here's the thing I think I would like now to see goldfish races see where you know you get the souped up fish mobile tanks and then you put your fish against the other guys fish and then people can bet on it and I think this is a future sport that needs to there is no way these researchers didn't do that there is no way when the research was done they were done with the technology they didn't need the equipment anymore there is no way they didn't do this the last night before they shut down their research lab there's no way they had multiples, you're right they had multiple fish tank mobiles it wasn't just one fish that they trained they trained multiple fish they had multiple vehicles I'm just imagining like at UC Davis on their picnic day every year there is the Dush and Race they have the little Dush people are at the end trying to get their dogs to come this next season maybe it will be goldfish I love it this is robotics engineering and animal behavior you could do cross disciplinary teams I love it I actually would like a a racing fish I think that would be somebody in the chat room Sarah Fuziel is asking so the goldfish 5 second memory is now a myth busted, yeah absolutely totally busted there's been other research on that too that has absolutely destroyed that theory which you know not a lot of animals could live very long if they only had a 5 second memory yeah I think that is a hugely accurate point not a lot of animals could live if there was too much UV radiation on the planet either some researchers were just publishing their research in the Royal Society Open Science a revised lower estimate of ozone columns during Earth's oxygenated history was published this last week the researchers were looking into historic levels of of ozone as compared to oxygen levels as ozone is known to be an issue with respect to absorbing or blocking UV radiation and the more oxygen there is the more that ozone can become a part of the atmosphere and so 2.4 billion years ago there wasn't a lot of oxygen on the planet right there was not a lot of oxygen until the great oxygenation event at which point that allowed a lot yeah it changed everything it allowed everything to grow but to that point it killed everything that was there first because there was stuff that was living on the non-oxygen environment there was life on this nitrogen or whatever atmosphere or planet perfect oh we love it this is fine and then oxygen came in it was like the first extinction event right because all of the anaerobic stuff no longer no longer could be there I'm putting things up on the wrong image thingies image thingies image thingies let me get back to the image thingies because hey Rachel I hope you edit this part out okay right so over our planet's history from their assessment there are these different points over time at which the earliest life made way for later life later life gave way to more you know complex life and this all was to do with how much of the atmosphere was filled with oxygen but the other part of this is that there was a lot of of ozone as well and that ozone has increased over time so what they what we know is that as that ozone has puffed up and increased in the atmosphere it's also allowed for more filtering of ultraviolet radiation which is damaging so it means that early on before the great oxygenation event there would have been a lot less ozone present so that it wouldn't have been as it wouldn't have been as available there wouldn't have been a hole in the ozone layer allowing for there would have been a big hole in the ozone layer really allowing for that radiation to come through interesting so then that would have been a limiting factor on life starting even sooner on the planet yeah go ahead but even sooner because it's like what's the earliest life detectors like what was it 3 billion years ago or something like that 4 billion years depending on the data that we're looking at but at least 2 some of the rock bombs they have dated that maybe that's life kind of a thing is around that but if there was this major limiting factor the ozone not having been in place then it's just kind of boggles the mind because you think well what if that just happened to have been in place already how much sooner with life of just how like inevitable is life at some point so maybe it didn't and what the researchers say is that while the elevated amounts of UV radiation wouldn't prevent life's emergence or evolution it would have acted as a selection pressure with organisms better able to cope with greater amounts of UV radiation receiving an advantage so there would have it would have been harder because of the radiation factor to get started but those that did would have been really good at managing radiation so how did that influence the life that was yet to come and how did it how did it also you know so how did those early conditions influence the overall evolution of life even you know how is it impacting us even now as we have more ozone or maybe we'll be looking at reduced amounts of ozone in certain parts of the atmosphere thanks to things like ozone destroying CFCs but I guess they also they got to bump up the UV in any of those the early muck experiments where they're like here's the ingredients that were there on the early earth here's the conditions that were now you gotta leave the UV light on in the lamp a little longer not just the sanitize but to actually hit your experiment with it and the big take home from this though is that researchers thought at one point this specific study what they found is that researchers used to think that the ozone layer was able to shield life from harmful radiation when there was about one percent of oxygen in the atmosphere relative to the present atmospheric level but now they think that because of this modeling the level of oxygen needed may have been about five to five to ten percent of present atmospheric level so a lot higher than it was so they needed that oxygen and needed it to get moving all right is it time for us to run a race Justin are we going fast enough on this show okay yeah we're getting we're almost there we're getting right up to our to our time limit there in another twenty something minutes but it turns out that turns out this is a fun fact that was discovered by science recently here amputees in people born without legs have a significant disadvantage in a foot race with elite athletes who have their legs intact people amputees people born without legs not as good at running as people who have their legs elite athletes who have their legs intact this is important to University of Colorado Boulder research published in the Royal Society Open Science that seems like it should just be obvious to some however it was not clear to the Olympic committee that ruled that the world's fastest 400 meter sprinter Blake Leeper could not compete in Tokyo because he happened to be born without legs despite his track times being the fastest Leeper was ruled ineligible to compete because it was assumed his running prostheses prosthesis gave him an unfair advantage compared to sprinters with fully biological legs man I would think it would make things way harder right well so that's what this modern prostheses maybe they have a bounce to them or maybe there's something to them so go ahead Justin getting good at using them I feel like is an extra skill for sure yeah but isn't an advantage so they compared performance data from Leeper and the South African Blade Runner Oscar Pistorius and up to six other what is it bilateral amputee sprinters with those of the best non amputee sprinters in the world across five performance metrics and the research found out of those metrics no advantage actually a significant disadvantage to using the prosthetics on the treadmill and track researchers measured acceleration out of the starting blocks maximum speed along straightaways around curves velocity at aerobic capacity and sprint endurance they took the top metrics from all available data from elite bilateral amputees and compared them to the top metrics for the non amputees. Athletes using prosthesis were 40% slower out of the starting blocks had 19% slower velocity at aerobic capacity and were 3% slower on curves compared to the non amputees this is quoting Paula Taboga an assistant professor of kinesiology it's the movementology kinesiology thank you pronunciation coach at the california state university sacramento to our knowledge the first study to really address all the parts of the race and put it all together still we found no advantage interestingly the authors had presented their preliminary results to the court of arbitration for sport in 2020 but the court still ruled that leaper could not participate in the world athletics sanctioned event including the olympics because his prosthesis made him too tall have you ever heard of that a height limit on athletes this really this feels like has to do with leg span so how far previous study published in the journal plus one had found that height makes no difference when it comes to maximum sprinting speed so researchers said they hope publication of their new study in a peer review journal allowing for anybody to try to poke holes in it what have you might nudge the world athletics to take a closer look at its policies and help the rest of the world form a more informed opinion my guess would be if like two of the fastest sprinters are using prosthetics that there could be an advantage but it might be the advantage might be that you are training every day in every movement as opposed to somebody who is can you know be simply walking around like that may that the act of walking might equal that of training but and so then that's an unfair advantage that you're training all the time that you're training harder that doesn't sound like an advantage that sounds like you working harder for it I just don't understand what the harm is the harm is that that you're gonna have legacies not win I guess or there's an idea of what an Olympian athlete is supposed to it seems that is based in something weird to me like what I don't know I'm having trouble putting into words but it just kind of feels like this is something where I don't understand what the where the fear is coming from I guess fear of technology enhancement I mean we're especially now in a time where prosthetics could or you know drugs or lots of things that people are potentially using to give themselves an edge or an enhancement and there's potentially that fear because there's a misunderstanding obviously of what the technologies are that people are using to just allow them to be there in the first place right I mean when you're having discussions about you know the material that is used in a swimmers you know in a swimmers swimsuit for instance whether that whether or not that material gives people an advantage because it repels water you know I'm not surprised they're having these conversations but I think that it's a lot of it's probably a lot I mean these people they don't necessarily they know the sports but they don't necessarily know the technologies and the issues of people who are working really hard to overcome overcome disability to be able to get where they are and as you know I've said in the past I'm actually for juicing as it were in sports you know well then you can do it safer you know I mean there's this whole idea that you're trying to limit everything like people doing the combine combine in football when they're trying out they do this test for the athletes to see how fast they can run and the different in how high they can jump and all these sort of metrics so that people can judge their athleticism if you wear the wrong shoes you can't practice in the event you have to they have very specific shoes you have to wear for this event very specific one they try to narrow it down just to the physicality of the person but at this point you know what their parents were an athlete both their parents were athletes so that's an unfair advantage what's an unfair advantage where are the best shoes where are the fastest shoes you know there's so much I think you just go for it and see who can go the fastest on whatever shoes or feet they have on how can you get to be the fastest if that's what your thing is and now it is time for us to move into the segment of the show that we know and love Blair's Animal Corner with Blair yeah oh I didn't turn my volume on hold on let me go back do do do do do do do do do a creature great and small by a pet milliped no pet at all you hear about an animal she's your mom except for a giant animal that's grown and an uploader what you got Blair mom mom oh no do you think you could tell your baby's cry your baby's voice after two days after giving birth do you think you could differentiate Justin you're about to experience I can run the test I guess do you think after two days you'd be able to tell your baby from all other babies after two days definitely with some time definitely with I don't know when it happens but there's a point when you can hear a baby cry one time I saw my child's foot it was nap time and I had to pick him up a little early from the daycare and I saw this little foot stick up and that's all I could see the sea of kids this little foot that stuck up and I was like that's where my kid is because I could recognize his little hobbit foot yeah so two days I would say probably not so there's a lot that goes into biologically us being able to tell our baby from other babies because mammals our babies are well as humans our babies are born pretty helpless and useless and just through their kind of lumps right and so they need they need to be taken care of for everything and so this is something that we have pretty much in common with elephant seals their babies need a lot of TLC they need to be fed constantly they are mammals they need to drink milk all the good stuff and so University of California's institute of marine sciences along with institute de neurosciences Paris Saclay and Université du Lyon have found that mother elephant seals are able to distinguish their pup's voices after two days post-giving birth just two days they can tell their own baby's voices Elephant seal colonies if you've ever visited one especially right after all the pups are born so loud they are so loud they are so loud that it would be inconceivable that mothers could hear their own pup and decipher their own pup's voice amongst all of the other sounds going on and so researchers wondered how mothers communicated with their babies amid all of this cacophony and they also wondered why something very specific happens with elephant seals that some new mothers will sometimes nurse pups that are not theirs and so there was a question about whether can they tell their pups apart maybe they can't maybe that's why they're allowing other pups to nurse from them this was kind of their attempt to figure out what's going on with the dynamics of all these pups in a big pile on the beach and so they set up microphones near and amid the elephant seals in Southern California they also set up remote speakers and then they played pup calls at different times to see how the mothers responded and they found that the mothers were able to recognize the calls made by their own offspring just two days after giving birth and that recognition ability they found was strong enough to allow the mothers to distinguish between calls from their own pups and those from pups nearby so even if they were physically nearby or if they were birthed nearby they could tell this one is mine they also noted that while nursing the mothers fasted and so they lose up to half of their body weight before pups start eating solid food and so that high cost it would make sense that they'd only want to feed their own babies because that is a pretty big sacrifice so why then do they let other pups feed from them well unfortunately the research teams have not figured that out yet that's definitely what they're still looking for in the future with this research on elephant seals they think one potential thought is that because elephant seals were nearly wiped out by humans in the 1800s they had a really extreme genetic bobble neck and so pretty much all elephant seals are pretty closely related so there is a question about whether they nurse other pups because they're genetically similar there's a genetic advantage to doing that and so that might be kind of a biologically driven reason but there also might be the ability that since they're genetically similar the mothers might get confused by scent or sound or something else related to the babies but for the most part it would appear that two days after giving birth they can tell their babies apart so we might think all baby elephant seals look the same but they don't and if they don't then they lose their child forever or roll over on them right so everyone listening if you are not driving if you are not driving I suggest you take a quick elephant seal pup break you type those three words into google images elephant seal pup because I know most people are probably very familiar with the way an elephant seal looks with the giant proboscis the male he's big and crazy looking but elephant seal pups I think are some of the cutest marine mammals on the planet they are so cute they have these huge flat eyes and without getting too far into elephant seal nerdiness that's because they dive really really really deep for very long periods of time and so that allows their eyes to withstand the pressure of going very deep underwater and their eyes don't implode like ours would if we let that deep yikes anyway and it's not until later that their noses grow so much larger yes and only if they're males yes so anyway so that's my elephant seal story moving on we'll talk about crow tools new caledonian crows and their tools we love these crows we talk about a lot these crows are so smart they're so smart they're so special they are they are studied constantly because of their propensity to make tools and store tools and differentiate tools and so this study from University of St. Andrews and the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Constance, Germany I found that crows are more likely to store complex and efficient foreign tools rather than their basic ones so they have favorite tools and they take care of them differently than their basic tools they use different types of tools for extracting food from tree holes and other spots and they will sometimes firmly hold those tools in their foot against a log where they're standing and sometimes they'll put them in little crevices or holes in the log that they're standing on for later use whenever they're not in their beak so they hold it with their beak to do the individual foraging and then they have to put it down to actually eat and so again they're either holding it at their foot or they're inserting them into a hole or inside a crevice and bark or something like that so they have these two different strategies for storing their tools and so through this study they found that they are more likely to keep valuable tools between their toes or in a crevice than the basic ones so they have these kind of two different types of tools that they'll make and use they've hooked tools and non hooked tools the hooked tools are painstakingly crafted they take a lot of time and care to make them and they come from scarce plant species and then the other ones the non hooked tools are basically just twigs they found on the ground and they do nothing to so they can in fact extract prey up to 10 times faster with the hooked tools than with the plain ones so they are high value items and so they are in fact going to keep better care of those tools than others which means that they have a conception of relative value which I'm not surprised to hear but it is something that we haven't really talked about so this actually fits interestingly with my idea at least of how the earliest of humans you know Homo habilis came away we stopped climbing trees and started developing that opposable thumb strength is because they had tools they had some tools if you made a good one you don't want to lose it you don't want to put it down on the ground have it mixed in with the other rocks or whatever and now this hand is occupied now it's harder to climb around and now what are you going to do you're going to make more tools now you can't do the knuckle walking as much because you got to hold this thing so that's worth getting upright that value once you become a tool creator of that tool changes the way you behave and interact then very interesting to see this discovery it's interesting number one because not all of the new Caledonian crows do pick up the tool creation there are some that are better at it than others so it's interesting also that they have these preferences for you know this is my favorite one and I'm going to take care of it I'd love to know whether or not they let they keep them safeguarded but do they make sure that other birds keep them that's a great question I want to know more about when they use which strategies to store them and if they have an absolute favorite they love this one hook stick do they not ever put it fully down do they only put it in there under their foot stay away from my tool all the time or does the preference change from crow to crow about how they store their tools like having a hair pick in your back pocket I actually like your question I want to know what is the Caledonian crows now we know how intelligent they are and how they have tool preferences do they have ethics do they try to steal somebody else's nice tool do they share do they get upset if somebody has taken their tool and they come back and then they see the tool do they recognize that the other bird is using their tool or are they just so ethical it's like oh no that's not mine I won't mess with it I'll go make my own now I have all these questions yeah so many questions lots of questions to be answered related to this the researchers also think that this could provide innovative ways to measure how different animals value different tools so thinking about chimpanzees other apes other birds I was thinking about the cockatoos we talked about just a couple weeks ago about the how they have the sequencing of their tool use so do they have favorites in that how do they store those tools they just let them drop to the ground I would love to know more across tool use in the animal kingdom and how they take care of those tools yeah it's very interesting just all the cognitive processes around it having looked at the preferences for food themselves some birds like certain food types better than others you know now we're taking it the next step now they have preferences on the tools to access their preferential food types so it just goes deep down this rather whole that's all related to food absolutely and it's also a sign of intelligence when evolution has been too slow you've changed you've picked a food that your beak can't access in this case so directly so now evolution is too slow I'm not gonna wait around for a long narrow pecking thing to happen brain shocks like a woodpecker would need whatever I'm just gonna make a tool so I can do it now and that's what a lot of tool use is my beak is like my hand and I'm gonna use my hand to hold this tool to do something else yeah I've changed the food source way ahead of evolution way ahead of that slow progress I'm going to do it myself that's true intelligence all the studies on these crows I love them so much I want more new Caledonian crow stories in 2022 more crows more crows I have an animal study bears oh yes I saw this one bears oh the bears poor bears oh no yeah well you know they dig into garbage from humans and they eat our cast off food also hunters put out piles of human junk food food for the bears to come across during hunting season so that the bears will come to a site where the hunters can then hunt them researchers wanted to find out how the impact of human food what it what human food does to the microbial flora of bear guts is the big question and bottom line is it human food makes bear guts more like human guts it reduces microbial microbial diversity and so the question now that the researchers would like to figure out they don't have the answer to this yet but the question is how does this affect the bears when they go back to eat more bear like food so if they spent a whole bunch of time around human colonization areas eating a lot of human food to the point where it reduces the microbial diversity to a point that there may be not able to digest more complex food types you know too many Twinkies and you are not going to be able to digest that kale very easily so if they get to a point is it going how hard is it going to be on them to get the nutrition that they need from more normal bear diets how does human food overall impact bear health reproduction ability to make it through the winter as they feed on the food that humans give them how does that affect us and all of those things we know that over processed food does all of that to us as well it's not so great oh these bear necessities the bear necessities of life are just don't give the bears food it's not cute don't feed the wild animals follow all the rules on how to store your food when you are camping in a park where there are bears don't leave food in your car don't leave it in your tent it's a bear locker we're hanging it in a tree and if you're interested in how the researchers got their data on the microbial flora of bear guts no not from poop they actually got to know hunters and the researchers went with hunters and removed food from the mid gut after the bears had been hunted so this is actually mid digestion material not affected by the external environment as poop would be and i guess on a final story note we've got researchers the base experiment the base experiment at the european particle physics laboratory in cern who've been measuring anti protons trying to they've got this antiproton that's confined in this electromagnetic trap and they hold it there and they're like are you like a proton and they do measurements on it and the antiproton is like nope yep just like a proton so far the base experiment has found absolutely no differences between protons and antiprotons they measured 24,000 more than 24,000 oscillation comparisons of the antiproton and that they mirror each other with a precision of 1.6 billionth of a percent so the precision is getting higher and the answer pretty much has stayed the same they interact with antiprotons interact with matter i mean not with matter interact with other antiparticles they have the same spins they have the same interaction with gravity everything is the same why is there so much matter in our universe? we don't know questions for physics to answer as the LHC comes back online this year hmm yeah which will be very exciting it will be oh that was my last story no i'm all out of stories too i was going to predict that but it's too late we will find that most of the black holes in the universe are anti-matter black holes that's where all of it went it's all in black holes because if it reacts just the same with gravity there we go right maybe just got sucked in there well it's either dark matter black holes are either dark matter or maybe anti-matter it knows there's so many ideas no anti-gravity anti-matter you know i though i'm so excited because that means there's just so many questions to answer we don't know so much that means more news for us to report right more things to learn it's going to be a fun year hey Blair is next week oh yes that is next week it's on monday i'm going to be on the daily tech news show yes so if you are interested in catching Blair on another show check out the daily tech news show on monday she'll be talking about animals and technology as i always do something animal techie so that will be a lot of fun have a good time say hello to the daily tech news show team roger, tom and sarah they are always so fun to hang out with i love to go and pretend i know things about technology you're like ha ha i've heard of that you've talked to me about animals and pop culture and i'll say something like phone or computer every once in a while they haven't invited me back i went on and i brought basically i brought all of my tech issues that i was having devices i was having issues with and asked how do i get rid of this thing in the corner of my screen and i did the whole show daily tech news repair daily tech repair show the whole show turned into me trying to use them for it help they haven't asked me back i wonder why oh my goodness let's see big things coming up this month at some point in the next few weeks there will be a bambino in the twist family we're excited about that and we'll let you know when that happens blaire is gonna be hitting her 10 year anniversary next week that is next week okay next week blaire's with twist wonder if we'll be able to get a retrospective in in some sense let's see if we can make that happen could be fun but it is time for us to finish this show thank you everybody for joining us for our first of the year for 2022 can't wait to spend the rest of the year with all of you we hope that you join us for many many more shows if you have any questions you know send us science questions we can try and answer them we can do the best that we can and we really hope you enjoyed listening and continue to listen and enjoy it shout outs too fada thank you for your help on show notes and social media i know that social media was a bug this week gord are in lore at all thank you for manning the chat room rachel thank you for your assistance and for editing and identity for thank you for recording and above all i would like to thank our 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Hey, do you want to listen to us as a podcast? Maybe while you race goldfish in cars? Just search for This Week in Science or our podcasts are found. If you enjoyed the show, get your friends to subscribe as well. For more information on anything you've heard here today, show notes and links to the stories will be available on our website, www.twist.org. You can also sign up for a newsletter. You can also contact us directly. You can email Kirsten at kirsten at thisweekinscience.com, Justin at twistminion at gmail.com or me, Blair, at BlairBazz at twist.org. Just be sure to put twist T-W-I-S in the subject line or your email will be spam-filtered into oblivion. You can also hit us up on the Twitter where we are at twist.science at dr. Kiki Adjax and flying at Blair's Menagerie. We love your feedback. If there's a topic you would like us to cover or address a suggestion for an interview, a haiku that comes to you in the night, please let us know. We'll be back here next week and we hope you'll join us again for more great science news. And if you've learned anything from the show, remember... It's all in your head. This Week in Science. This Week in Science. This Week in Science. This Week in Science is the end of the world. So I'm setting up shop, got my banner unfurled. It says the scientist is in. I'm gonna sell my advice. Show them how to sell their robots 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 in Science is coming your way. So everybody listen to what I say. I use the scientific method for all that it's worth. And I'll broadcast my opinion all over the air. Cause it's this Week in 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... Woo, woo, woo! It's cold in my basement. I'm putting my hat on. It's cold. We have made it to the after show. We did it. We did do it. We did. Great prediction show. That was fun. Yeah, that was fun. Yeah, enjoyable time. Good science, fishmobile. I mean, I don't know how we're gonna top that story for the rest of the year. We're not.  So it reminded me of something as many science stories do from Futurama. It's so great. Like, let the fish drive around outside. Come on. I mean, I love too that the robotic setup has wheels kind of like the Mars rovers where it allows them to drive in any direction. That fish knew exactly where it wanted to go. Look at that. Boom, reward. So all of us are fish in some way. Can I open the image in a new tab? That's what I want. Here. Yes, Daniel Yount. Next, why wheels? I apologize. It's so small. How can I make it? Right? Why is it so small? It's a GIF. So it's like very, oh, it's tiny. Hold on. Can you get it? Oh, look it. Hold on. Stop screen here. Oh, thank you, Amori. Thanks for watching. I'm glad you were able to make it. This one. Is that bigger? That's bigger. Drinks for everyone. Fetch. Where's the, I wish... Where's like a GIF of the whole scene? Oh, here we go. A GIF of the whole scene, you mean like a clip? Yeah, but I don't want to show a whole. There we go. There it is. That's, that was, I mean, basically that's what we were looking at. We were looking at a whole tank, scuba tank for fish. We certainly were. Where's, I think I need a goldfish that I can train to answer the front door. And then when somebody comes and rings the doorbell, the fish will go answer it. There we go. That's a better one. There he goes. That's a good bowie. Oh, good fish.  Fetching fish. The reverse scuba suit. Fetched, no, it's a fetching fish. Reverse scuba suit. That makes sense. Does make sense. Oh, and the fish's name was Cinnamon. I was trying to remember the fish's name. Oh, Futurama, they really figured it all out. They, they really predicted a lot. They did. Yeah, Futurama, I don't know if we've watched that with Kai yet. I think it might be. Almost time to watch Futurama with Kai. If he's still probably at the age where they're really naughty stuff will go over his head. Did he just know he's starting to notice more jokes? Yeah, fair enough. Yeah, last night we watched, we watched an SNL skit. And there was something in the skit. I don't remember exactly what it was. And it kind of went over his head, but then he like stopped for a second. He's like, wait a minute. And that, and that, and that, and that. And we're like, yep. He's like, ah! Oh man. Well, because if I'm about to hit my 10th anniversary on the show, then he's 10. Yeah, almost 11. Because he came in when he was like- Oh, that's right. You came in to be the- He was in like the circle thing with the wheels that he would like, he wasn't quite walking, but he was like- Yeah, quite. Oh man. That was great. The bouncer. Yeah. His isolation chamber. Yes. This, we've been doing this show for a little while, haven't we? Mm-hmm. Wow. Yes. And I did the other day. Oh, Steven Rain gave us a joke. Here we go. Why did the fish blush? Uh-huh. Because it's not the ocean. Because it saw the ocean's bottom. That's good. Nice one. Ah, thank you for that. What did the fish say when he ran into a stone wall? Good night, Fada. That's not the answer. That's not the answer. I can't read the answer. What was the answer? What did the fish say when he ran into a stone wall? Damn. I love jokes like that. I'm going to go very happy. So simple, so entertaining. I only have one joke, but you guys have already heard it. Run out of womb? No, no. No, no. Two jokes for two. Oh, yeah. OK, what do you call a deer with no eyes? No idea? It's still a deer? Oh, no idea. You jumped ahead, Blair. You remembered part of it. What do you call a deer with no eyes and no legs? Still no idea. It's all I got. Those are all of the jokes I can tell. Dad jokes. It's dad jokes, basically. Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. What did the shark say after eating a clownfish? That tasted a bit funny. I was going there. I was like almost there. What do you call a fish with two legs? This is right up your alley, Justin. What do you call a fish with two legs? Well, I don't give up. A toonie fish. Toonie fish. Toonie fish. OK, all right. This is starting to feel uneasy. No, so let's see. 10th anniversary of Blair next week. No, it's not headed. I'm not going. We're not going. We're done now. Yeah, and it's going to be a first anniversary.  That's very exciting. The first don't know when, though. Don't know when zero age child. Yeah, I can't believe that. That's going to be so soon. So next week, there might be a baby coming 10th anniversary of Blair. We're all officially old. We have a clip, episode five, sixty four. What is this one? Is this going to be goth Blair? We've talked about goth Blair. We know she exists. I feel like we could talk more about the substance rather than. Yeah, we could. We could. OK, fair enough. Fair enough. Oh, so what's wrong with that? What time is it? It's time for Blair's animal. Five, sixty four. This was I should have been who's. Let's see. I have some scientists doing some really, really important research. That's cool. That is exactly how stabby. Is a puff adder. Exactly how stabby is a woodpecker. Exactly how stabby is a mantis shrimp. I want to know that there's a high powered air gun involved. So this is something I think the stabbiness we're thinking of. This is something I've often wondered about when hummingbirds are fighting each other. Do they ever is it ever like jousting and they just push? I think so. It's a great question. So Philip Anderson from the University of Illinois teamed up with Jeffrey LaCosse of Charles E. Jordan High School in Durham, North Carolina and Mark Pankow of North Carolina State University Rally to measure really stabbiness is the best way to describe it. It's how animals puncture things and what animals are the best have the most force for puncturing things. So they did this first. Which ones? Where's my Pulitzer? You know, really stabbiness. It's so great to find more clips. I think at one point I was like, I'm going to make little clips. And I was like, that is too much work. Uh huh.  There are some clips in some places. Oh, OK, but we will have. We'll find something for next week. I think Aaron Moore said he might be throwing something together. If he's able to do that, that would be super cool. But no pressure. Only 10 years of clips. Only, only. I want to hear the one where Justin comes up with the name Blair's Animal House. Blair's Animal House. That's what you first called it. Yeah. Is that right? Yeah. That was in our trivia last year. Or this year. Because it was for episode 800 or something. It would have been for Christmas last year. That was Christmas trivia, I thought. I thought I did a trivia. We did for episode 800 or something. Yeah, that's right. Whenever that was. That wasn't quite at Christmas. That was pretty late. Last year or was it? We decided it was the 20th anniversary. What are we? What show are we on? So 900 is going to take place this coming fall on our Halloween show. OK, but we're in between show is our 900th anniversary. We can make it to a thousand. We're going to make it. You're like, we can do this. One thousand episodes. Let's double up this year. I'm really I'm you know, I'm not doing much this year. You're not doing much. OK, you're doing much this year rearing a child. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, like socially, I have canceled all of all your engagements. All of the events I was going to all the people I was going to get together with all the hangout sessions, all the whatever, all that's canceled. All that's. Yeah, as a sketch fest canceled. Yeah, sketch fest cancelled. Yeah, that's too bad. Yeah. Yeah, so I did it for the eight episode 800. Oh, OK. Which would have been early this year, I assume. Or last year, I guess, because this is a different year. Oh, it's a different year. I'm going to have to get used to this. Feels like the same year, though. December 10th, 2020 is the last time I touched it. OK. I don't know. That that goes right because I thought I was I initially thought I was right before Christmas last. There was. We did have trivia last Christmas that Blair did, but the 800 she did trivia. So I did. Yeah. Yep. That seems weird. It looks like I did them two weeks apart. Did you? No. Or did you just prep it in advance and then do it in advance? Oh, no, no, no. So episode 800 was November 18th, 2020. So I'm a month later, so I did it a month apart. Still. That's it. So, yeah, so I asked how many countries we have listeners in. When did Justin join? What's Dr. P.E.'s B.S. It's my B.S. At what age did Justin found the Institute of Reason? Seven episode marked Blair's first appearance. That's 356, by the way. 356, wow. 356. What is Dr. P.E.'s P.H.D. in? Where was Dr. P.E.'s born? Which of the following have been mentioned more time? Spiders, pandas, or squirrels? What was the original name for Blair's Animal Corner? Blair's Animal House. Wow. And my first reported story was the second week I was on the show. That's crazy. So January 19th, 2012. It's about I.I.S. I remember that because I was working in the primate department at the time and I talked with the woman who was the keeper for the I.I.S. that week. Oh, the I.I.S. Yes. Which of the following is not a twist short, neurogaming Blair's sperm update? Do plants have memory, alcohol, shark smells? Celebrate the octopus. And the answer was they're all twist shorts. Oh, that was tricky. It was a trick. Which of the following have been mentioned more times? Poop or brains? According to Kiki, according to her wiki, what year was twist founded? That was 1999. And that's the last one. That was the trivia that I made. Dun dun dun. There you go. January. Let's see. You're on camera. Episode 354. Strange. Because that's not what my trivia says. Curious. In episode 354, you were in my house. And what date was that? Hold on. Blair, new intern, works at a zoo, likes hippos. Yeah. I remember that well. I'm ranging them from smallest stones in the front to the largest in the back. And there's some theories about that, but they actually found a really good correlation. It was an R-squared of 0.96. So it's really one being perfect. Right. So it's a really intense, almost perfect correlation between mating success and how smooth the gradient from small to large was in the avenue of the bower. And so they were saying that it's probably related to optical illusions because as we all know, when there's big things, but they're far away, they look smaller. So it makes all of the stones from the front, the smallest in the back are the biggest. They make them all look the same size. And the male is all the way at the back where the large stones are and the females in the front. So really, it sounds like it would make him look smaller. It does. But they do this long dance and they'll pick up stones and play with them. And the dance will go from one to 12 minutes. So if he's in the back looking small, picking up stones, then he must be really strong. We both sound very different. Right. He's very strong. Also, he looks smaller. So apparently the bowers, they all look different, but they're all open-ended. So there's two ends to it. And they found that if there was an enclosed bower, the female wouldn't even go in because she would think she would be trapped and she couldn't get away. So I don't know if also they look like bower birds and visual trickery. Oh, how smart are those birds? I don't know what they're doing. So I think this is what I did, is I think I tried to calculate the episode number because they're not listed on our website. And I think I must have miscalculated the episode number. Oh. What? 354 is January 30th. So it was before that. Yeah. Because my first show was January 12th. So then that's like, how do you find the episode number? Do you say it at the beginning still? Uh-huh. I think so. Yeah. At the beginning. Yes. Because I did have the numbered. Let's see. 353. Let's see if I can find these things. It's hot. I gotta find these things. I'll find them. I will find them. Oh my. Oh my. I'm gonna listen to lots of Blair this next week. Does that mean I'm not bringing any stories? We're just gonna play my old story. No. We need a new animal corner. Just update it. Justin, your microphone used to sound way better. I had a very professional microphone. Yeah. Then it didn't work. Then one day it didn't work. Yeah. Well, yeah. Yeah. Then one day it started cutting out. Something was loosening it and I stopped working. It's all about mic quality. Let's get there again one day. I have great technology again someday on this show. Yeah. All right. This mic is much louder. You were cracking a little bit today too. There was a little bit of popping. Yeah. Yeah. So there's a problem with the laptop I've been journeying with and using. Turn it off. I had a technical issue with the camera cutting out. Camera was actually fine. It's the USB ports on this computer are wiggly. Something that if I was on the Daily Tech News show, I would ask them, what do you do with the wiggly port? Yeah. That's a mistake. But all my USB ports are very wiggly. So yeah, if I bump the cord or something like that happens, the video was cutting out and then maybe the audio is having issues from that as well. I am also like many thousands of miles away from where the two of you are broadcasting, which could always cause some sort of latency issues or something like that. So who knows? There's a story in the Hill that Charles in our discord put in suggested stories from December 28th. NASA hired religious experts to predict how many, how humans may react to aliens. They recruited two dozen theologians to assess societal implications for the agency's astrobiological and life search efforts. I'm sure they've talked to sociologists and psychologists as well, not just religious experts, but it's interesting. Interesting questions. Yeah. I don't feel like, I don't feel like that is a crowd we really need to worry about. Point in case, hey, what if there's some evidence that, I don't know, planet was older than 6,000 years? What if there was like all of this fossil record evidence going back millions of years of all sorts of other life forms, much, much older than 6,000. Hey, what if actually agriculture itself is older than 6,000? What if we could prove that? How would you react to that?  With that at all, how would your people react to that? Apparently they've been doing the whole don't look up strategy for so long that I don't think alien anything would affect it, honestly. I just think they're in a bubble of belief. That movie was really hard to watch. So I'm reading this, reading through this story, and it's what they were trying to do. NASA was trying to determine the serious scholarship being published in books and journals addressing profound wonder and mystery and implications of finding microbial life on another planet wanting to know how the world's major religions would likely respond if they were made aware of the existence of aliens. So just to know. It's good to know how different groups might respond. Interesting. I haven't seen don't look up yet either. No spoilers, but it is my new favorite movie. I know. Idiocracy used to be my favorite movie, but I can't watch it anymore. No spoilers, but don't watch it right before bed and make sure to queue up something fun to watch afterwards. That would be my suggestion. Okay. Yeah. I don't know. I'm thinking I should probably if I watch it, I'm going to have to just like live tweet my watching of it and be like, Oh my God, they did that supply. You can try, but I couldn't look away pretty quickly.  I'm paralyzed by this film. But yeah. And it's amazing because the movie itself. Not that intense, but it is my best description of it is it's a little bit like very intense. It's a little and again, no spoilers, but it's a little bit like the promise. It's a little bit like watching a not really well done, maybe even airplane disaster movie on the in flight. Justin, I just agree that it's not well done. It's well done. I think it's well done. It's just that it didn't have to be well done. You're in flight. No, no, no. I disagree completely in that. I found it incredibly intense. I was like nervous. My heart rate was raised for most of the movie, but I think it's also because I'm a climate change communicator. And that's what that movie, you know, was made for. So yeah, it predates. You're right. It's not the writing predates. It was going to cloud it. This is don't look up on Netflix that we're talking about. But we're not basically positing that everything I do is for nothing. So yeah. So the interesting. Right. And so this was written before mostly before the pandemic. Yeah. But luckily it was crazy. Like a lot of things where they kind of. Way out. You're not so unbelievable. You know, and then the pandemic happened. And there was an article written recently that I was reading. The, the person who wrote the article and had watched, watched it was talking about being a pandemic communicator. And someone in communicating public health during the pandemic. And was like, this action, this movie is actually much more like completely on the nose for pandemic science communication than it is for climate change. Even like, if you were to just switch the topic, it would be like, so just, yes, this is what we were, what we're seeing right now. So I heard that. Adam McKay, right? He wrote it. He rewrote it after the pandemic started because he thought it was absurd. And so much of it had happened. That he had to make it more absurd. Because otherwise it wasn't going to be funny. You want to make it an absurdist comedy. Yeah. You have to go beyond the reality. Yeah. And that is a problem. So, uh, all of the, how was it house of cards or the, the VP show that, you know, all the white house drama shows. Yeah. No good. Now you can, the reality became so much more insane and absurd that to write something that people are like, Oh, here's the satirist take on what it's like to be in government has to raise that bar of absurdity even higher than what's actually happening to the point where, yeah, it's just going to be nonsense. From now on, trying to do a white house satire. It's like, like everything is believable then. And then it just doesn't matter. I mean, after, after my pillow guy, I just am done. I'm like, I'm done. It's over. Sorry. I believe everything now. I don't know what's real. And who knows what's real anymore? I just know science. That's all I know. That's my whole world. Keep the blinders on. Keep the blinders on. Don't look out. Don't look out. It says don't look up, but I'm don't look out. Just stay in the little happy science world. Well, that's, that's the thing. Then you can do it. What Gordon was joking about there in the chat room. You just don't look it up. You hear about a story. What is that? Did that really just don't look it up? Just don't, don't Google the news story. Don't read up on it. If it's not, if it's not coming from a science source, just don't look it up. A modest proposal. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Have we done it? We've done it. We did it. Oh my goodness. I'm going to have to watch this movie. I'm going to have to look it up. I'm going to have to do it. I've been putting it off and putting it off, but I'm going to do it. So I will say I was tracking our time and we did really well. Until we started on the news. Yeah. We were right on time with the predictions and then the science news derailed us, but. We were still very close to on time though. We finished the show at 940. Yeah. So we got pretty close. And we started a little late. So not terribly late. Three minutes. Yeah. Yeah. It's close. Good job team. Keep it there. Very well done. We didn't overdo it too much. It was good. We did it. Didn't overdo it. Didn't underdo it. And now it's time for us to sleep as Blair's yawn. Oh my goodness. Say good night, Blair. Yeah. Good night, Blair. Say good morning, Justin. Good morning, Justin. Good night. Good night. Good night, Kiki. Good night, everyone. Good morning, Justin. I'm glad you're caffeinated and ready to go. Have a wonderful week, everyone. And yes. Monday, DTNS. Blair with the daily tech news show crew. If you remember and Blair will probably tweet and let everyone know that that is happening. We look forward to seeing everybody next week. We look forward to seeing everybody next Wednesday. And we'll, we'll let you know if, I mean, you'll notice if Justin's here or not here and we'll, we'll let you know what's going on. So we look forward to seeing you all. Stay well. Stay safe. Stay sane. Stay. Who cares about sanity? Whatever. Stay curious. Stay smart. Yeah. Stay home.  Bye.