In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes: A Literally Immortal Jellyfish Could Teach Scientists How to Live Forever This Is the Best Way to Argue with Your Partner, Says a Communication Expert Black Holes Might Not Exist, So Here Are 5 Weirder Alternatives Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day withCody Gough andAshley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes:
Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Full episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/black-hole-alternatives-literally-immortal-jellyfish-secrets-and-the-best-way-to-argue
[MUSIC PLAYING] CODY GOUGH: Hi. We've got three stories from curiosity.com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes. I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today, you'll learn about a literally immortal jellyfish that could teach scientists how to live forever, the best way to argue with your partner, and weird alternatives to black holes since they might not exist.
CODY GOUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity. If you could be immortal, Ashley, would you do it?
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh, boy. Probably not. I mean I'd like to live longer, but I don't know if I would want to live forever.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. I mean living forever with the option not having to die from old age but still being killable.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. Maybe that's it.
CODY GOUGH: Well, the secret to immortality, scientifically speaking, like IRL, in real life, might be in the genes of a jellyfish that is literally immortal.
ASHLEY HAMER: Literally.
CODY GOUGH: Literally. There's a jellyfish called the turritopsis dohrnii, and it basically reboots itself when it's about to starve or die from taking too much physical damage. So usually, T. dohrnii reproduces the traditional way with sperm and eggs. But when it's faced with starvation or physical damage or another crisis, it transforms its existing cells into a younger state through a process called transdifferentiation. That's also what scientists used to turn stem cells into other human cells. During transdifferentiation, the jellyfish latches onto a sturdy surface, turns into a blob-like form and then transforms into a colony of polyps. And a polyp is the earliest stage of its life.
So basically, you've got an animal that can revert itself into a sexually immature stage after it has reached full maturity. And it's the first known multicellular animal that can do this. And scientists are pretty pumped about it because they might be able to follow T. dohrnii's lead. By figuring out a way, we can turn our own cells into a younger state, so we can reverse aging.
ASHLEY HAMER: Wow, that's pretty exciting.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah.
ASHLEY HAMER: Cody, can you explain to me what black holes are?
CODY GOUGH: Oh, boy. They don't emit any light. In fact, their gravitational pull is so strong, it pulls in light, and that's why they're black. And I think it's what forms after a star supernovas.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. That's pretty good.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. And basically, anything that comes near it will get sucked in to a single point and crushed and compressed, and no one really knows what happens in the middle of it.
ASHLEY HAMER: That's right. So--
CODY GOUGH: Sweet.
ASHLEY HAMER: Pretty much. Yeah. So that thing in the center is called a singularity, and it's where density and gravity and everything go to infinity. And that's what happens when, like you said, a star supernovas and implodes, and all of its mass gets focused into a tiny, tiny little point that is infinitesimally small. And that means that it has infinite gravity. And that infinite gravity is what pulls in everything around it. It's bordered by what's called an event horizon, which is basically the point of no return.
CODY GOUGH: Right.
ASHLEY HAMER: So if anything passes that event horizon, it can't get out again, even light. But the problem with that is if nothing can get out of a black hole, that breaks a law of physics that no information can be destroyed. So if something's going into a black hole and never coming out, that seems like information about that thing is being destroyed. You can never see it again.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah.
ASHLEY HAMER: And that causes a problem. That's why some scientists are actually coming up with alternatives to what a black hole might be because we know they're out there. We know there are places where there's a ton of gravity. And they're sucking in everything around them, but they might not be black holes. They might not be singularities. We've never actually seen one. We actually have a telescope out there called the Event Horizon Telescope. The Event Horizon Telescope has already imaged something. We don't know what it is. We haven't seen it yet. They're combing through the data right now in any day. It's so exciting. We might see a black hole.
CODY GOUGH: Wow.
ASHLEY HAMER: Or we might see some alternative to a black hole that we don't even know about. There are some scientists that have come up with other theories that a black hole might be. So the first alternative is a wormhole, which you might have heard of. So a wormhole is a way to fix that singularity problem, where you take the singularity, and you just connect it by a path to another point in the universe. It's sort of like if you put a dot on either side of a balloon and push those dots together to make it, so there's no space between them, that's kind of like what a wormhole is in the universe.
CODY GOUGH: Got it.
ASHLEY HAMER: It's like the fabric of the universe is the balloon. And you're squeezing it together into that wormhole, so there's no space. And you can just travel through it, except we've never seen one. We don't know if they really exist. They require this thing called negative energy to keep them open. So they're probably not a thing. But some people are saying that gravitational waves that we have heard, which we think came from two black holes colliding actually came from two wormholes colliding. And we'll be able to tell that by analyzing the echoes in the gravitational wave later. But here's some really cool stuff. I'm very into this thing called boson stars.
CODY GOUGH: What is a boson star?
ASHLEY HAMER: So bosons are particles that don't have mass. And that means that they don't have to follow the rules that things with mass have. They can actually coalesce into one giant particle called a Bose-Einstein condensate. And we've actually made those in a lab, but--
CODY GOUGH: Not. I'll say curiosity but scientists.
ASHLEY HAMER: Scientists. We've never-- I've never done it. That would be amazing.
CODY GOUGH: Right.
ASHLEY HAMER: No. But they've made a Bose-Einstein condensate in the lab. But the idea is that this material could form a star that would be transparent. It would produce a whole lot of gravity, and we wouldn't be able to see it. It wouldn't produce any light, so that all sounds like a black hole to me.
CODY GOUGH: Wait, so it's like an opposite star?
ASHLEY HAMER: Kind of. Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: You can see through it because it's transparent?
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. Some people say that because it has so much gravity, it could pull matter in, and then you might be able to see that matter in the middle of it.
CODY GOUGH: So what happens if you fly into it?
ASHLEY HAMER: Then you'd get stuck in there.
CODY GOUGH: Just stuck?
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. But not like black hole stuck where you'd be destroyed. Just stuck, stuck.
CODY GOUGH: That's weird.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: Well, you can read about the science behind all of these theories plus gravastars and magnetospheric eternally collapsing objects, which I just want to read just for the name today on curiosity.com and on the Curiosity app for Android and iOS.
ASHLEY HAMER: The coolest named one that I think from this list is the fuzzball. I had a great time writing this one. Oh, so great.
CODY GOUGH: According to a new study from just last month, you can turn petty bickering into productive conversations by changing the way you approach arguments with your significant other. So this study looked at good and bad fights. Good fights are productive, and they have resolutions. And nobody really gets sarcastic or ends up trying. And bad fights are not productive. They're not resolved, and sarcasm and tears are often involved.
So the key to having a good argument is a concept called argument interdependence. And that's when both people are treating the disagreement like it's something they can solve together, and one person isn't getting blamed or bullied. The best arguments were the ones where participants were collaborating to find a solution. And on the flip side, the bad arguments were more about dominance or both people were trying to win the argument or change the other person's behavior or even hurt the partner or end the relationship.
So to turn your couple fights into healthy conversations, you should look at them like obstacles for both of you instead of competitions against each other and just try to work together. And hopefully, you can stay happy. I've also noticed this is an excellent way to communicate with coworkers and especially, bosses.
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh, interesting.
CODY GOUGH: In a lot of my past jobs, you think you have a solution to something? And sometimes it can become a no, do it my way. No, do it my way. But if you've got the same goal, which technically, literally all coworkers have--
ASHLEY HAMER: Right.
CODY GOUGH: Right? If you work for a company with somebody, you just, by definition, have the same goal because you both are serving the same overlords.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. I think where you get in trouble is when you think that the other person is just out for themselves or when you feel like the person doesn't respect you as a worker or as a partner.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah.
ASHLEY HAMER: And you feel like you need to prove that. And if that's the situation, then that's something else to fix before you can actually have a productive conversation.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah, absolutely. Egos can get people in trouble.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. Read about everything we talked about and more today on curiosity.com. And don't forget to tell your friends with Amazon Echo devices, that they can add this podcast to their Daily Flash Briefings. We've got links in the show notes or find us on the Amazon Flash Briefing directory.
CODY GOUGH: Join us again tomorrow for the Curiosity Daily and learn something new in just a few minutes. I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Stay curious.
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