Today you’ll learn about neighborhood 3D-printed by a robot, a 4,500 year-old secret chamber recently discovered in the Great Pyramid of Giza, and about research that shows a genetic link between blood sugar and migraines.
Today you’ll learn about neighborhood 3D-printed by a robot, a 4,500 year-old secret chamber recently discovered in the Great Pyramid of Giza, and about research that shows a genetic link between blood sugar and migraines.
3D-Printed Community
Secret Chamber in Giza
Migraine Hope
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Find episode transcripts here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/3d-printed-community-secret-chamber-in-giza-migraine-hope
NATE: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Discovery. Time flies when you’re learnin’ super cool stuff. I’m Nate.
CALLI: And I’m Calli. If you’re dropping in for the first time, welcome to Curiosity, where we aim to blow your mind by helping you to grow your mind. If you’re a loyal listener, welcome back!
NATE: Today, you’ll learn about an entire neighborhood 3D-printed by a robot, a 4,500 year old secret chamber recently discovered in the Great Pyramid of Giza, and about research that shows a genetic link between blood sugar and migraines.
CALLI: Without further ado, let’s satisfy some curiosity!
[SFX: WHOOSH]
CALLI: We've done a couple of stories before on the potential power of 3-D printing. But today I want to tell you about the technology that could potentially be a massive breakthrough in home building.
NATE: Okay, awesome. I remember we did a story about the 3-D printer rebuilding schools destroyed by war in Ukraine.
CALLI: Yeah, exactly. As 3-D printer rebuilding things. Now, 3D printers have been in the spotlight for years. And while their use in construction is exciting, it has also been limited by the sheer force of scale. How do you build enough giant robot printers to have an impact on the construction industry?
NATE: Ah yes. The classic question as old as time. How do you build a bunch of giant robot printers? I think there is a Greek tragedy about that. I'm guessing you have an answer.
CALLI: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Smart. I like it. Actually, the answer could come from the Lennar Corporation and startup called ICON. Two companies collaborating to build the world's largest 3D printed community about 30 miles north of Austin, Texas, in, as I mentioned, what could be one of the biggest leaps forward in homebuilding in the last 50 years. It's called the Genesis Collection. And I got to say, it's actually really, really cool.
NATE: I mean, I understand the novelty of 3D printing. I do it. I have 3D printers and I think it's way fun. And things like printed prosthetics can be revolutionary. But what makes this Texas neighborhood so important.
CALLI: Let me set this up for you: is ending the global housing crisis pretty important.
NATE: Fine. Put it like that. Yeah.
CALLI: See? All right, All right. By some estimates, some 3 billion people will need housing by 2030, and housing needs to be affordable. And to get there, we need to build 96,000 new homes every single day. And that's where the Genesis collection comes in. See, the housing shortage is caused by, among other things, shortages of labor and materials and skyrocketing costs. What's exciting about this is that using this technology, we can basically eliminate any construction waste. These massive 3D printing construction robots use a proprietary mixture called Lavacrete, eliminating the need for massive amounts of lumber, steel and other building materials. Plus, they can basically be operated by like a worker with an iPad and a very small crew and for less money than a similar traditionally built home.
NATE: Okay, so how does the lavacrete work?
CALLI: Okay. I'm actually going to tell our listeners to Google this because it's fascinating. The lavacrete looks a little like toothpaste being squirted out of a robot that is 46 and a half feet wide and 15 and a half feet tall. And it's it really it looks like an easy cheese can be great. And the process cuts traditional construction costs by about 30%. The lavacrete goes up in thin layers, up and up and up until the walls are formed. And this means there's no longer a need for sharp corners, which means that to a large degree, whatever shape of house you can dream up, you can build. So your possibilities are pretty much limitless. As for the Genesis collection, there are currently eight different designs from the nearly 1600 square foot, three bedroom dice model to the four bedroom 2100 square foot clay model. Curved walls blend into the landscape and look modern, but like kind of cozy. These almost look fantastical to me, and the interior walls can bulge and wave and they kind of look like they're made out of the earth.
NATE: That's quite an image you've given us. But I do have to ask, are these fantastical houses up to code like you were describing, this toothpaste kind of thing? Not like in terms of consistency, Right. It won't dissolve when it rains.
CALLI: Well, no. Okay. So Lavacrete is really just a special blend of concrete, which means they are really strong. In fact, Icon says that the walls go above and beyond building code strength requirements by 350%. And because they're also airtight, you can save money on heating and cooling with solar panels on the roof. Your carbon footprint will be cut dramatically. And what's more, because the printers are quiet, they create sort of this like hypnotic like like washing sound.
NATE: Oh, yes. The song of toothpaste flowing gently out of a tube.
CALLI: Okay, listen, they can theoretically be operated 24 hours a day, allowing a home to be built in record time. So my question for you, Nate, is knowing all of this, would you live in one.
NATE: Cheaper, faster, stronger? Sounds good to me. When can I move in?
CALLI: All right. The Genesis collection is a 100 home addition to a planned 2500 home community called Wolf Ranch. And if they pull this off, it will be a proof of concept for a real paradigm shift in housing construction. Fast, strong, affordable housing can be available pretty much anywhere like Ukraine. I'm not knocking what they did with Ukraine. That is phenomenal. But Icon is also working with Nasser to put buildings on the moon. There's even a 3-D prototype of a mars habitat.
NATE: Wow. From schools to houses to space, science sure does move fast.
CALLI: And engineering.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Super exciting story today that you might have heard about in the news recently. Researchers have found a new chamber in. Can you guess where?
CALLI: Hogwarts.
NATE: No, that's not.
CALLI: Hey. Sorry. I actually do know exactly what you're talking about. I saw in the news somewhere, but it's. It was the Great Pyramid of Giza, right?
NATE: Exactly. Yes.
CALLI: Awesome. Okay, so I didn't click on the article, So remind me of the significance of the Great Pyramid. What makes it so great?
NATE: All right, good question. So the Great Pyramid of Giza was built somewhere around 2560 B.C. as a tomb for the fourth dynasty, Pharaoh Khufu. And it's the last of the original seven Wonders of the ancient world. And it was the tallest manmade structure in the world for, wait for it 3800 years, taking the title away from the Tower of Jericho in the area now known as Palestine. The pyramid is massive and very, very old. In 2016, a group of researchers using muon imaging found evidence of a hidden chamber just behind the world famous Chevron blocks on the north face of the ancient structure.
CALLI: Very cool. But now I need to know what muon imaging is because all I'm picturing is just a bunch of kittens with, like, GoPros on their back. Just me. On me. No, no, no.
NATE: Muon tomography or muon imaging is kind of like doing an X-ray, except muons, which are literally particles from the cosmos, can penetrate deeper into more dense material. Anywhere that gaps in the dense material exist, the muons collide with other particles and a teensy tiny flash of light. This creates an image of the interior, again, kind of like an X-ray, but in this case, for pyramids. Scientists also use this technology to scan volcanoes to see how close they are to erupting. And they're even used at border crossings to detect nuclear material that could be smuggled over.
CALLI: So the researchers didn't actually go inside the pyramid.
NATE: No. Research around the pyramids has to be done noninvasively. I mean, can you imagine what it would be like if archeologists were chipping away at the structure for thousands of years?
CALLI: All right, that's fair enough. But now I also have to know what they find.
NATE: The scans revealed a very exciting secret corridor. They didn't know what it looked like or how it was shaped or if anything was in it until now.
CALLI: But researchers have been able to map out portions of the pyramid before, right?
NATE: Correct. Over the years, a system of entryways, chambers, tombs, corridors, air shafts and what are called voids have been mapped out. But scientists suspected that mysteries remained. So when this new corridor was stumbled on, two researchers went all in, both figuratively and literally. They realized they'd be able to use endoscopy to check it out.
CALLI: Which I'm assuming is the same as it is when it's in a medical term.
NATE: Yes, a endoscopy is a tiny camera attached to a long, flexible tube. The researchers figured out that they could insert the endoscope without damaging the pyramid.
CALLI: Okay, awesome. So tell me more about this chamber of secrets.
NATE: The chamber is about nine meters long or 30 feet with a cross section of about six and a half feet by six and a half feet, and it slopes upwards.
CALLI: Okay. Where does it go so far?
NATE: That remains a mystery. But with the endoscope, researchers were able to look into a room that has been closed off for thousands of years. Any guesses what they found?
CALLI: A diadem. A giant spider? No. Okay. Sorry. Please don't tell me it's nothing.
NATE: It was nothing. Sorry. Yeah, it was. It was an empty corridor. But don't let that get you down. The chamber itself ranks among one of the most important discoveries in Egyptology in the 21st century. And it also means that even after more than 4000 years, with a little luck and some super high tech gear, there are still mysteries left for us to uncover.
CALLI: And that's why the pyramid so big. It's full of secrets.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
CALLI: We all know somebody who suffers from migraines. They're that pulsing like mind scrambling menace that can cause nausea, vomiting, light sensitivity and other just like horrendous symptoms. It's estimated that somewhere close to 15% of everyone on the planet suffers from migraines. That means that a scientist could uncover a treatment or even a cure. The lives of over a billion people would be changed for the better.
NATE: To me, that sounds like a pretty worthwhile goal.
CALLI: Well, it does, to a couple of other researchers, too. Professor Dale Nyholt and Ph.D. researcher Rafiqul Islam at QUT, a university in Australia, have announced new research that could bring us a step closer to relief. Their study was published in Human Genetics. And it's a huge deal because despite how common migraines are, surprisingly little is known about what causes them, which means that treating them can be very difficult. It's a lot of trial and error, and for millions of people, relief is always just a little bit out of reach.
NATE: What do we know about them for sure?
CALLI: Well, what we know about them is how they feel. And that's that's basically it. That's the end of the list. For some people, they are just like the mother of all headaches, usually on one side of the head. They can last from hours to days and cause major disruptions in lives. In fact, if you add up all of the lost days of work, lost productivity and the price of treatment, some estimates put the financial cost of migraines at $78 billion a year in the United States alone. And then there are the costs that you can't really put a price on, like missing a fun family gathering because you had to turn the lights off and get under the covers to make the pain go away.
NATE: You'd think that with so much suffering, researchers would know more about the causes.
CALLI: Well, I mean, we can't knock them. It's not for lack of trying. Scientists have been studying migraines as long as migraines have existed. Back in the 1930s, they were described as glycaemic headaches, which tied them to issues with blood sugar. And it turns out, according to this new study, they may have been onto something.
NATE: So you just have to eat something when you get a migraine or maybe avoid eating something.
CALLI: Not quite so simple. And if you've ever had a migraine and you try and eat something, you know, that doesn't always go so well. The relationship between migraines and blood sugar is likely genetic. While blood sugar imbalances have been noticed in migraine sufferers for a long time. Doctors, Islam and Nyholt studied hundreds of thousands of genomes from people who suffered from migraines as well as non sufferers. And what they found was remarkable. They saw that co-morbidities, which are conditions that occur at the same time, were genetically linked.
NATE: What kinds of co-morbidities?
CALLI: Things like headaches, migraines and certain glycemic traits like insulin resistance, hyperinsulinemia, hyperglycemia, and hyperglycemia.
NATE: I guess that would make sense. But what does it mean?
CALLI: It literally means that they found the traits for all of those conditions on or near the same area of the genome of those who suffer from migraines.
NATE: And finding that is good, right?
CALLI: Yeah. Look at it this way. Let's say the ceiling in your kitchen starts leaking, and pretty soon it's just like gushing water. So you're going to buy some new drywall and patch it up, right?
NATE: Yeah, eventually. But first you have to fix the leak.
CALLI: Exactly. Almost every migraine treatment out there currently treats the pain, The symptoms.
NATE: Okay. They're just patching the drywall.
CALLI: Yes, but these researchers may have found the source of the leak.
NATE: Okay, so that's great. Unclog the toilet and we're all set. No more migraines, right?
CALLI: Like everything we say on this show, Not so fast. There isn't a cure or even a treatment yet. But they think this revelation could lead to more novel treatments that would manage some of these glycemic issues that exist in migraine sufferers and that would then simultaneously prevent headaches and, yes, migraines. But we're not there yet.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up.
CALLI: One possible solution to the global housing crisis could be…the printer? That’s right. What would be the world’s biggest 3D printed community is being constructed in Texas, and could revolutionize home building around the globe by creating stronger, cheaper, and greener housing.
NATE: Researchers in Egypt have found, mapped, and glimpsed inside a chamber that has been hidden from human eyes for 4,500 years in the Great Pyramid of Giza using muon scans and an endoscopic camera. The chamber was empty, but the discovery is being heralded as a breakthrough, and could signify that more mysteries lie just below the surface.
CALLI: More than an estimated billion people globally who suffer from migraines have reason to hope. Researchers in Australia have found a genetic link between blood sugar and migraines, which paves the way for novel treatments that could actually stop the pain before it even begins.