Learn about why there’s no patent for the polio vaccine; a hypothesis that says a black hole would incinerate you; and what causes “Alexander’s band,” the dark strip of sky inside a double rainbow. Please support our sponsors! Get two months of unlimited access to over 25,000 classes on Skillshare — for free. To sign up, go to skillshare.com/curiosity. In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes: Jonas Salk Didn't Patent His Polio Vaccine — https://curiosity.im/2HWBfm1 The Black Hole Firewall Hypothesis Says a Black Hole Would Incinerate You on the Spot — https://curiosity.im/2HZG65J Alexander's Band Is the Dark Strip of Sky Inside a Double Rainbow — https://curiosity.im/2HWALMM If you love our show and you're interested in hearing full-length interviews, then please consider supporting us on Patreon. You'll get exclusive episodes and access to our archives as soon as you become a Patron! https://www.patreon.com/curiositydotcom Download the FREE 5-star Curiosity app for Android and iOS at https://curiosity.im/podcast-app. And Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing — just click “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Learn about why there’s no patent for the polio vaccine; a hypothesis that says a black hole would incinerate you; and what causes “Alexander’s band,” the dark strip of sky inside a double rainbow.
Please support our sponsors! Get two months of unlimited access to over 25,000 classes on Skillshare — for free. To sign up, go to skillshare.com/curiosity.
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes:
If you love our show and you're interested in hearing full-length interviews, then please consider supporting us on Patreon. You'll get exclusive episodes and access to our archives as soon as you become a Patron! https://www.patreon.com/curiositydotcom
Download the FREE 5-star Curiosity app for Android and iOS at https://curiosity.im/podcast-app. And Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing — just click “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/black-hole-firewall-hypothesis-polio-vaccine-history-and-double-rainbow-science
CODY: Hi! We’re here from curiosity-dot-com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about why there’s no patent for the polio vaccine; a hypothesis that says a black hole would incinerate you; and what causes the dark strip of sky inside a double rainbow.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Jonas Salk Didn't Patent His Polio Vaccine — https://curiosity.im/2HWBfm1 (Cody)
CODY: On this day in history, April 12, 1955, the polio vaccine was declared safe and effective for use in humans.
You may already know that the guy who developed the polio vaccine didn’t patent the groundbreaking discovery. The reason may not be what you’ve heard, though. It wasn’t JUST that Jonas Salk was a really altruistic person — although that could be a part of it. Lemme back up and talk about patents though. Basically, a patent is a way for the government to grant a person property rights to their invention. You own whatever you invented, typically for a term of 20 years. According to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, you can, quote, "exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, selling or importing the invention," unquote. The government won't enforce your patent, which means it’s YOUR job to track down and sue anyone who makes or uses your patented invention — using your own money, by the way. That means that even after you patent an invention, you can pick and choose who to prosecute for making a knock-off. So like, you could patent something and only sue someone for making a shoddy or dangerous knock-off that doesn’t work the way it should. Patents don't automatically shut down competition; that’s a job for the patent holder. Now, let’s say for the sake of argument that Jonas Salk had gotten a polio vaccine patent and enforced it religiously. By one estimate, he would have raked in around 7 BILLION dollars. And you probably think he’s the most selfless person alive, because when journalist Edward Murrow asked Salk who owned the polio vaccine patent, he said, quote, “Well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?” unquote. But the organization that funded Salk’s research actually did try to patent the polio vaccine. They found that it wasn't novel enough to count as a new invention, though. So really, Salk's vaccine was never patented because it was never eligible for a patent. Still though, whatever the reason, we’re all a lot better off for the invention. Thanks, Jonas Salk!
The Black Hole Firewall Hypothesis Says a Black Hole Would Incinerate You on the Spot — https://curiosity.im/2HZG65J (Ashley)
You know what we haven’t talked about in a while? Black holes. Specifically, the black hole firewall hypothesis. It says that the moment you pass the edge of the black hole, you'd be annihilated in a fiery death. Yes, FIERY. Here’s the deal. Scientifically speaking, black holes kinda don’t make sense. Black holes happen when an object packs all of its mass into an infinitely small point that warps spacetime so much that not even light can escape. But if nothing can escape, then information about every particle that enters the black hole is destroyed forever. And quantum mechanics says that's not possible. There’s a quantum principle called unitarity, which says that information can't be destroyed. In the 1970s, theoretical physicists Stephen Hawking and Jacob Bekenstein showed that a black hole's event horizon, or the border that defines where you can and can't escape, emit energy known as Hawking radiation. They said that every bit of Hawking radiation was emitted in entangled pairs of particles that form near the event horizon. For every particle in that pair that shoots out as radiation, the other falls into the black hole. Over a long time, all that escaping mass will make the black hole start evaporating into oblivion — not a good sign for unitarity. Hawking and Bekenstein said the information must be escaping as Hawking radiation. No problem! But hold on a minute. Every entangled pair has one particle that escapes and one particle that falls in, but eventually, that particle that fell in is going to escape, too — and it'll need an entangled particle to fall in, in turn. That causes a paradox. A particle can only be entangled with one other particle at a time, but for information not to be destroyed, it has to be entangled with more than one particle. What to do? The only way to resolve this paradox is to assume one of the three fundamental theories at play in this scenario is wrong. The first we already described: the unitarity principle, or the fact that information can't be destroyed. The second is the equivalence principle, another tenet of general relativity that says there's no difference between inertial motion and gravity — it's also the reason you feel heavier climbing in an elevator, and why aviators can refer to their acceleration in terms of the earth's gravity (or gs). Finally, there's quantum field theory as a whole, the laws that govern how physics works — even if those laws break down inside the black hole. But we like those laws, and we don’t want one of them to be wrong; so enter, the black hole firewall hypothesis. It says that particles are entangled with more than one other particle, but that entanglement is broken the moment it forms. That would create extreme quantities of energy at the event horizon and create a curtain of fire that incinerates anything that passes through. There are a lot of scientists that have big problems with this hypothesis, but nobody has disproven it. In 2016, researchers from the University of Victoria in British Columbia posed a new hypothesis that said yes, you'd burn up when you enter a black hole, but just because of your acceleration — no firewall necessary. Even so, the firewall hypothesis still nags at physics — that is, until a convincing solution comes along.
[SKILLSHARE]
CODY: Today’s episode is sponsored by Skillshare.
ASHLEY: Skillshare is an online learning community for creators. They offer more than 25,000 classes in design, business, and more, to help YOU find new ways to fuel your curiosity, creativity, and career.
CODY: I’ve been all over Skillshare lately learning about digital advertising. Online media is always changing, so I was pretty pumped to find courses on programmatic advertising, digital advertising, and even sales — all from an award-winning digital media professional who’s managed tens of millions of dollars for local, national, and international brands. And ALL of Skillshare’s classes are taught by real experts in their field or public motivational speakers.
ASHLEY: You can take classes in social media marketing, mobile photography, creative writing, illustration, and pretty much everything in-between. Whether you’re looking to discover a new passion, start a side hustle, or gain new professional skills, Skillshare is there to keep you learning and thriving. And today, YOU can join the millions of students already learning on Skillshare with a special offer just for Curiosity Daily listeners: Get two months of Skillshare for free.
CODY: That’s right, Skillshare is offering Curiosity Daily listeners two months of unlimited access to over 25,000 classes for free. To sign up, go to Skillshare dot com slash CURIOSITY. Again, go to Skillshare dot com slash CURIOSITY to start your two months now.
ASHLEY: One more time, that’s Skillshare dot com slash CURIOSITY.
Alexander's Band Is the Dark Strip of Sky Inside a Double Rainbow — https://curiosity.im/2HWALMM (Cody)
Remember that YouTube video that went viral in 2010 with the Double Rainbow Guy? It was basically just a guy pointing his camera at a double rainbow and freaking out about how cool it was. Well, today we’ve got the science behind what makes a double rainbow, AND the dark strip of sky between the two rainbows. Simply put, rainbows happen when raindrops refract and reflect light. Think of this way: when light goes into a raindrop, it’ll twist around and its colors will separate, then the light will bounce off the outer boundary of the drop, and then it’ll all twist again as it leaves the droplet. Double rainbows are basically the result of extra bouncy light. When light rays escape a raindrop after two reflections, two rainbows are visible. The secondary rainbow is almost double the width of the primary bow, and its colors are reversed. You could hypothetically get a triple or even a quadruple rainbow this way, b-t-dubs. Anyway, if you ever see a double rainbow, check out the stretch of sky between the two arcs. It looks darker than the rest of the sky. See, the patch of sky BELOW a rainbow is the brightest because light bounces off the back of a raindrop and emerges on the same side it entered. The same thing happens in the second rainbow as a mirror image, so the light is brighter ABOVE that second rainbow. Hence, the rainbow sandwich leaves you with a dark ark of sky called Alexander’s band. It’s named after Alexander of Aphrodisias, who first noted the phenomenon in 200 A.D. Not to be confused with Alexander’s OTHER band, the Arctic Monkeys [alexander david turner].
CODY: That’s all for today, but you can keep learning all weekend on curiosity-dot-com.
ASHLEY: This weekend, you’ll learn about a quantum computer that IBM put in the cloud that you can actually use;
Where you can find America’s first beach;
A video test that can determine whether you can think like a machine;
Why you get butterflies when you’re nervous;
And more!
CODY: If there’s something ELSE you’re curious about, then send us your question! You can do it right on our podcast website, curiosity-daily-dot-com.
ASHLEY: That’s curiosity-daily-dot-com. Come hang out with us again Sunday on the award-winning Curiosity Daily and learn something new in just a few minutes. I’m Ashley Hamer.
CODY: And I’m Cody Gough. Have a great weekend!
ASHLEY: And stay curious!