Scientist and award-winning author Camilla Pang explains why she wanted to write a manual for humans. You’ll also learn about the planetary chaos that resulted when the Earth’s magnetic poles reversed.
Scientist and award-winning author Camilla Pang explains why she wanted to write a manual for humans. You’ll also learn about the planetary chaos that resulted when the Earth’s magnetic poles reversed.
Additional resources from Camilla Pang:
Reversal of Earth's magnetic poles 42,000 years ago led to planetary chaos by Grant Currin
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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/an-outsiders-guide-to-humans-w-scientist-camilla-pang
CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity-dot-com. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll hear from scientist and award-winning author Camilla Pang about why she wanted to write a manual for humans. You’ll also learn about the planetary chaos that resulted when the Earth’s magnetic poles reversed.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Plenty of people have wished that there was a manual for human behavior. But for people who are neurodivergent, like those on the autism spectrum, it can be especially challenging to navigate social interactions and figure out why other people do some of the things they do. That includes today's guest. Camilla Pang is a postdoctoral scientist who holds a Ph.D. in bioinformatics from University College London. She also has autism spectrum disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder. And all of this led her to write the new book "An Outsider's Guide to Humans: What Science Taught Me About What We Do and Who We Are." The story of why she wrote the book is really fascinating. Have a listen.
[CLIP 3:55]
Again, that was Camilla Pang, scientist and author of the new book "An Outsider's Guide to Humans: What Science Taught Me About What We Do and Who We Are." You can find a link to pick it up in the show notes.
Researchers have uncovered a log in New Zealand that shows just how important Earth’s magnetic field really is. Because 42,000 years ago, a magnetic reversal led to deadly cosmic radiation, climate change, and maybe even mass extinction. And, not be alarmist, but it’s something that COULD happen again.
Researchers already knew that Earth’s magnetic field sometimes flips, causing the magnetic north and south poles to switch places. And they knew from clues scattered across the world that last it happened around 40 thousand years ago. But researchers have had trouble pinning down the details because there wasn’t a way to create one timeline out of evidence from far-flung caves, ice cores, and peat bogs.
But a new discovery has changed all that. Researchers in New Zealand recently unearthed a Kauri [KOW-ree] tree that had been buried in sediment for 40,000 years. The tree was growing when the most recent switch occurred, so its rings contained some answers about the event. The new data make it clear that the flip was a very big deal for our planet.
The problem wasn’t really that the magnetic north pole became the magnetic south pole. Data from carbon isotopes preserved in the tree rings suggest the most serious stuff happened before the switch. That’s when the strength of Earth’s magnetic field dropped precipitously, to between zero and six percent of its current strength. Without a magnetic field protecting it from space weather, our little Earth was exposed to harmful cosmic radiation.
That radiation zipped straight into our atmosphere and cleaved its electrons from their atoms. The process is called ionization, and it means that areas across the entire planet would have glowed like the northern lights. We don’t know what our ancestors would have made of the shimmering skies, but it must’ve been a sight to behold.
But that beauty was deadly. Ionized air is a great conductor of electricity, so lighting and electrical storms would have presented a far bigger threat than before or since. With that in mind, it might not be a coincidence that the earliest examples of cave art began to appear around the same time. I wouldn’t want to go outside in that either!
Maybe the most serious consequence of all was that ionized air zapped the ozone layer, which threw the global climate into a brief tailspin. That might also be at least one factor behind why many of Australia’s largest animals went extinct at that moment in history.
The researchers behind the project say there isn’t much to do about Earth’s fickle magnetic field, but it’s important to remember that we’re far more vulnerable to space weather now than our ancestors were 42,000 years ago. I mean, they didn’t have electrical grids and satellites. So what can we do? Fight climate change. After all, the magnetic poles could switch at any moment and I, for one, would prefer to confront one global catastrophe at a time.
Let’s recap the main things we learned today
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CODY: Today’s last story was written by Grant Currin, and edited by Ashley Hamer, who’s the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY: Curiosity Daily is produced and edited by Cody Gough.
CODY: Join us again tomorrow — assuming the Earth’s magnetic field hasn’t flipped… nah, just kidding. Join us again tomorrow even if it does! To learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!