Learn about how 5G may impair weather forecasts, and how the first confirmed exoplanet was discovered a lot more recently than you may realize. Plus, science writer John Tierney is back to explore how negativity bias affects our relationships.
Learn about how 5G may impair weather forecasts, and how the first confirmed exoplanet was discovered a lot more recently than you may realize. Plus, science writer John Tierney is back to explore how negativity bias affects our relationships.
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Additional resources from science writer John Tierney:
5G May Impair Weather Forecasts by Grant Currin
We Didn't Officially Confirm the Existence of Exoplanets Until 1992 by Joanie Faletto
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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/5g-might-impair-weather-forecasts
ASHLEY HAMER: Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity.com. I'm Ashley Hamer.
NATALIA REAGAN: And I'm Natalia Reagan. Today, you'll learn how 5G may impair weather forecasts and how the first confirmed exoplanet was discovered a lot more recently than you may realize. Plus, science writer John Tierney is back to explore how negativity bias affects our relationships.
ASHLEY HAMER: Let's satisfy some curiosity. When you're in a long-term relationship, especially during lockdown when you and your partner and contact 24/7, I wouldn't know anything about that, it's easy to get preoccupied with the things that they're doing wrong. That's another way we're affected by negativity bias, which John Tierney talked about on yesterday's episode. Today, he'll tell us about how our ability to deal with negativity may be the most important quality for a good relationship.
Science writer John Tierney is a co-author of the book, The Power of Bad-- How the Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule It. And Cody and I talked to him right before the pandemic hit. But his lessons are surprisingly relevant to today's world. Here's John.
JOHN TIERNEY: It does distort relationships. And it distorts the way you get along with people. In relationships, when researchers track which couples are going to stay together, they find that it isn't really the good qualities, it's not the good things people do for each other. It's how they handle negativity. It's how they avoid offending each other and how they give their partner the benefit of the doubt when something goes wrong instead of assuming the worst.
They've even found in couples, there's a great experiment where they scan the brains of people who just fallen in love. And then they went back a few years later to see which ones were together. And they found that the ones who were still together when they went back at that initial brain scan, they found that the part of their brain associated in making negative judgments actually kind of shut down when they saw a picture of their partner. They maintain what researchers call positive illusions.
And that we can't order our brains to-- I mean, some people are better at this than others. But we can all learn how to give our partner the benefit of the doubt when something goes wrong. Don't necessarily assume it's some big character flaw that they did it because they don't care about us, maybe that there were just external circumstances. And the main thing in relationships is that when something does go wrong, don't escalate it. Respond calmly, stay calm, and don't sulk, don't retaliate, don't say angry words. Because bad emotions are just so powerful and so contagious that when that happens, you get into the spiral of retaliation and escalation, so that a minor disagreement turns into a major fight. And that's the kind of thing that dooms relationships.
CODY GOUGH: It sounds like a really strong case for putting a picture of your significant other on your desk at work. It may help you reset yourself, ground yourself a little bit.
JOHN TIERNEY: That's good. One tip a friend of mine does to remind himself that not to be too critical of his wife is he's got a little stain on his mirror, saying you're no bargain either.
[LAUGHTER]
CODY GOUGH: That's a good one.
JOHN TIERNEY: You know, we take it-- [LAUGHS]
CODY GOUGH: [INAUDIBLE]
JOHN TIERNEY: So-- and don't obsess on it.
ASHLEY HAMER: By the way, Cody totally does have a picture of his wife on his desk at work. At least he did when we still went into an office. Again, that was science writer John Tierney, co-author of the book, The Power Of Bad-- How the Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule It. You can find a link to pick it up in today's show notes.
NATALIA REAGAN: Oh, I just got really excited thinking that when Cody goes back to an office, he'll have a picture of his wife and his kid.
ASHLEY HAMER: It's a nice thought.
NATALIA REAGAN: Right? You've probably heard about 5G, the wireless network upgrade that's being rolled out right now. You might have even heard some of the conspiracy theories surrounding it. Here's the scoop, 5G does not cause COVID-19, or kill birds, or any of the other theories out there in the darker corners of the internet. But according to new research, it might affect weather forecast.
First, let's back up. 5G stands for fifth generation cellular wireless technology. And telecommunication companies and the government are pumped about it. It's just a new set of technology standards that should make broadband cellular networks faster and better suited to the kind of things we're using the internet for these days. These updates have happened before, like when 3G dropped in 2001. We get a new network upgrade like this about once a decade.
One new thing about 5G is the part of the electromagnetic spectrum it uses. The telecommunications engineers behind the new standards have designed it to take better advantage of frequencies a little higher than what your phone uses right now. The problem is that the satellites that meteorologists use to forecast the weather rely on similar frequencies to collect and communicate weather data. They don't use the exact same frequencies, but those 5G signals can leak-- yes, that's the official term-- and interfere with other systems.
Hey, your 5G's leaking on me. So is this going to be a big problem? That's what the researchers behind the new study wanted to find out. They modeled the effect that 5G would have had on weather forecasts used to predict a string of tornadoes that hit the American South and Midwest in 2008. Meteorologists called it the Super Tuesday Tornado Outbreak, yikes.
Based on their model, 5G signal leakage would have had small but noticeable effects on the accuracy of the forecast. Meteorologists would have been off by up to 0.9 millimeters in predicting the amount of rain produced by the tornadoes. They estimate that ground level air temperature predictions would have been off by up to 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit or 1.3 degrees Celsius. That may not sound like much, but the researchers considered this impact significant. They say it's imperative that we come up with new technologies that will let both systems exist in peace. After all, if it comes down to a choice between a smooth and snappy video call and an accurate tornado prediction, I, for one, would choose the latter. But hopefully, no one will have to make that choice.
ASHLEY HAMER: Humans have wondered about far off planets since antiquity. But wondering about possible alien worlds is much different than nailing down concrete evidence for them. This may come as a shock, but science couldn't confirm the existence of exoplanets until 1992. Given how far we've come since then, that date seems shockingly recent.
Exoplanets are planets that sit outside our solar system. So Pluto doesn't count as an exoplanet, but those seven Earth-like planets discovered around the star TRAPPIST-1 do. It wasn't until January 9, 1992, that radio astronomers Aleksander Wolszczan and Dale Frail announced the first discovery of two exoplanets swirling around a nearby pulsar. That's basically a rapidly rotating star corpse.
The duo made their discovery using the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. Originally, these first two exoplanets were named PSR 1257 plus 12 C and PSR 1257 plus 12 D. Luckily, they now have the official and super metal names, Poltergeist and Phobetor. Both of these big boys are about four times as massive as Earth.
Immediately, scientists got excited about the possibility that there were probably more exoplanets out there. And boy, were they right. Turns out, astronomers have been really busy since 1992. As of October 8, 2020, NASA reports that 4,292 exoplanets have been confirmed. These discoveries are so common at this point that they're barely worth getting excited over, which honestly is a fact worth getting excited about on its own.
The exciting exoplanets these days are the ones that sit in the Goldilocks zone, the habitable zone around a star that's not too hot and not too cold for life. That can always mean, say it with me, aliens. I mentioned TRAPPIST-1 earlier. That was the star behind a groundbreaking discovery in 2017, where scientists found a treasure trove of seven habitable zone Earth-sized planets. Hats off to NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope for that one.
With the intensely powerful James Webb telescope slated to launch in October 2021, these mind-blowing discoveries will only keep getting more mind-blowing.
NATALIA REAGAN: Somebody get a mop, my mind has been blown. NASA's going to have to just buy a bunch of mops just have in store for all these poor planetary scientists and astrophysicists losing their minds.
ASHLEY HAMER: But what do you want to be when you grow up, Timmy? I want to be a NASA brain janitor.
[LAUGHTER]
NATALIA REAGAN: Oh, man. I love it. How was your day at work, honey? Just discovered 620 more exoplanets, it's no big deal, whatever.
ASHLEY HAMER: Right, there's like put them on the pile.
NATALIA REAGAN: Let's recap the main things we learned today. Well, we learned how negativity bias can affect our relationships and how our relationships can actually benefit by giving our partners the benefit of the doubt rather than assuming the worst because that is so easy. And it's not always easy to do that, but the rewards make it worth it. I think so.
ASHLEY HAMER: Like, forget your relationship, it makes you happier when you're not constantly brooding over the reasons they're probably forgetting to empty the dishwasher or something. It's just like--
NATALIA REAGAN: Right?
ASHLEY HAMER: You know, I mean, that's another thing is that we always assume that other people do bad things because of the people they are, but that we do bad things because of our circumstances. So like I was speeding because I was late. But that person speeding because they're a bad driver. And we do the same things in our relationships. And you got to stop.
NATALIA REAGAN: Yeah. And also, I think it's really easy to get in the trap of assuming the worst in people that we are actually causing their behavior, when a lot of times it is outside circumstances beyond their control, our control, have nothing to do with us. And that's something that I think I struggle with sometimes. It's like that advice that you give but you can't necessarily take, like I oftentimes give that advice to friends when they're laments about their family members not being as involved. And I'm like, they've got a life going on. And then I have to remind myself, hey, knucklehead you need to remember that when you're wondering, why isn't anyone paying attention to me? What's going on?
ASHLEY HAMER: That's right. And I have the same issue totally. We also learned that while 5G is not giving us COVID, it's not killing birds, it's not doing all that other stuff, it may be messing with weather forecasts. And that's because 5G broadcasts have a very similar frequency to weather satellites that can mess with the equipment and disrupt the accuracy of meteorological reports.
Weather forecasts are the kinds of things that you don't really think about until you don't have them anymore. Like, I don't think anyone wants to go back 10 years on our weather forecasts. Like, I love having my ultra local weather app tell me exactly what the temperature is outside and exactly what time is going to rain, like we are at that level of technology. And we don't want to go backwards.
NATALIA REAGAN: No. And especially having grown up in Los Angeles, and you spent time in Southern California, where it's 75 and sunny all the time, you do take weather for granted. So as soon as I moved to New York, all of a sudden, I am obsessed with the weather. I need to know at any given point, will it rain? Will it be cold? How many layers must I have?
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
NATALIA REAGAN: And lastly, we also learned that exoplanets, which we've heard so much about in recent years, weren't even discovered until 1992. And in those 28 years since that January discovery, scientists have discovered 4,292 exoplanets. No, I just feel like the sky is just dripping with exoplanets at this point.
ASHLEY HAMER: I'm just amazed that I was alive at a point where we weren't sure if there were other planets outside our solar system. Like, my goodness, that's amazing.
NATALIA REAGAN: Do you have a favorite exoplanet?
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh, I once wrote an article about all the weirdest exoplanets. And there might be some out there that are made of pure diamond, which sounds pretty awesome.
NATALIA REAGAN: What?
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah, because they're just carbon pressurized, just a diamond planet.
NATALIA REAGAN: Wow. Is it emerald cut? Is it sapphire? What are the cuts?
ASHLEY HAMER: It's good question.
NATALIA REAGAN: You're an engaged person, I don't know what the cuts are of diamonds.
ASHLEY HAMER: That's the part of the being engaged that I hate the most. I don't know-- I hate it. I don't know, I'm supposed to know, don't ask me to tell you.
NATALIA REAGAN: There's like a teardrop. There's one that looks like a square. I don't know-- I want the one that looks like it could be the poop emoji.
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh, that's good.
NATALIA REAGAN: Yeah, right?
ASHLEY HAMER: I think that's the princess cut honestly.
[LAUGHTER]
NATALIA REAGAN: The princess and the poop. Oh, pull up a stool. OK. Today's stories were written by Grant Curran and [? Joanie Filetto ?] and edited by Ashley Hamer, who's the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY HAMER: Scriptwriting was by Natalia Reagan and Sonia Hodgson. Today's episode was edited by Natalia Reagan, and our producer is Cody Gough.
NATALIA REAGAN: Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY HAMER: And until then, stay curious.