Learn about how brushing your teeth can slow aging; how blowholes start as noses; and how humans manipulate the weather. Additional resources from Andrew Steele: Pick up "Ageless: The New Science of Getting Older Without Getting Old" at your local bookstore: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780385544924 Website: https://andrewsteele.co.uk/ Follow @statto on Twitter https://twitter.com/statto YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/DrAndrewSteele Whales and dolphins in the womb start with nostrils on the tip of their noses by Grant Currin Urton, J. (2021). Now how did that get up there? New study sheds light on development and evolution of dolphin, whale blowholes. UW News. https://www.washington.edu/news/2021/08/05/dolphin-whale-blowholes/ Roston, R. A., & Roth, V. L. (2021). Different transformations underlie blowhole and nasal passage development in a toothed whale (Odontoceti: Stenella attenuata ) and a baleen whale (Mysticeti: Balaenoptera physalus ). Journal of Anatomy. https://doi.org/10.1111/joa.13492 How weather manipulation works by Ashley Hamer (Listener question from Joseph in Peoria, Illinois) Is weather control a dream or nightmare? (2017, October 19). Science News for Students. https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/weather-control-dream-or-nightmare Eoin O'Carroll, & Paulson, A. (2018, October 15). Unintended consequences: Climate-hacking poses big ethical questions. The Christian Science Monitor; The Christian Science Monitor. https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2018/1015/Unintended-consequences-Climate-hacking-poses-big-ethical-questions Our Mission Modification ? (2013). Noaa.gov. https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/hrd_sub/modification.html Cool Science: How Kurt Vonnegut’s Brother Tried To Break Up Hurricanes | GE News. (2020). Ge.com. https://www.ge.com/news/reports/cool-science-vonnegut-ge-research 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.
Learn about how brushing your teeth can slow aging; how blowholes start as noses; and how humans manipulate the weather.
Additional resources from Andrew Steele:
Whales and dolphins in the womb start with nostrils on the tip of their noses by Grant Currin
How weather manipulation works by Ashley Hamer (Listener question from Joseph in Peoria, Illinois)
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.
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/blowhole-origins-weather-manipulation-how-to-slow-aging
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 learn about how brushing your teeth can slow aging, with help from author Andrew Steele; and why dolphin and whale blowholes start out as regular ol’ noses. We’ll also answer a listener question about what happens when humans manipulate the weather.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Yesterday, Andrew Steele told us about the exciting approaches scientists are taking to slow aging and keep us healthy for longer. And in that conversation, he mentioned a few ways we can stave off aging ourselves while we wait for those treatments: stuff like exercise, healthy eating, and brushing our teeth. Yep: believe it or not, poor dental health is linked to diseases of aging. And Andrew Steele is going to explain why. He's a computational biologist and science writer, and author of "Ageless: The New Science of Getting Older Without Getting Old." Here he is with some obvious and not-so-obvious advice on how to slow the aging process.
[CLIP 2:52]
I, for one, am definitely taking his advice. Again, that was Andrew Steele, a computational biologist and science writer, and author of "Ageless: The New Science of Getting Older Without Getting Old." You can find a link to pick it up in the show notes.
Whales, dolphins, and porpoises do a lot of stuff worth talking about. Even before they’re born, these aquatic mammals pull off something spectacular. They develop a blowhole. A new study has uncovered exactly how that development happens, and the researchers say it’s a process unlike anything else in the animal kingdom.
The blowhole is actually a nasal passage, just one that’s situated on the top of the head. There’s still a lot of debate about how the blowhole evolved, but its existence makes a lot of sense when you consider the evolutionary history of cetaceans [suh·TAY·shins] — that’s whales, dolphins, and porpoises. Their ancestors walked on land. They had 4 legs and zero blowholes. Researchers think they slowly evolved blowholes as they adapted to life in the water.
For a clue as to how that evolution happened, the scientists behind this study wanted to know how blowholes develop in the womb. To find out, they used scans and photos of cetacean embryos and fetuses preserved at different stages of development. Those examples helped them keep track of the subtle anatomical changes that collectively transform a tiny bean of an embryo into a developed dolphin or whale fetus.
They discovered that it’s a process unique among mammals. See, the nasal passage that will become the blowhole starts off as a fairly normal nostril. It’s parallel to the roof of the mouth and ends in an opening on the front of the face. It’s actually incredibly cute, in an alien sort of way. At this point, the embryo’s face points forward, like a person’s.
As the weeks and months go by, three unusual things happen. First, the area between the roof of the mouth and the blowhole-to-be starts to grow — fast. Imagine your nose and upper lip started heading in opposite directions. The snout also grows longer and downward, away from the blowhole. Finally — and this may be the weirdest part — the skull folds backward and rotates the head back, putting the face and snout in line with the rest of the body and pointing the blowhole straight to the sky.
The researchers used their data to develop a formal model that explains a lot of details, like how the other organs manage to develop around the blowhole’s stunning transformation. And while it doesn’t answer the question of how cetaceans evolved blowholes, it does give scientists a hypothesis. And kinda puts our nostrils to shame.
We got a listener question from Joseph in Peoria, Illinois, who writes, “My son and I have recently had a conversation about weather manipulation. It left me wanting more information about it. Can you do a segment on weather manipulation, specifically if there are any effects on neighboring states or countries. Like if California forced rain, would the states east of it get less water because California is taking it all?” Great question, Joseph!
The answer to your question is actually the whole reason that weather manipulation is so controversial: that is, we don’t know if there would be unintended effects. Here’s why.
We’ve been able to manipulate the weather since 1946, when atmospheric scientist Vincent Schaefer realized that he could make a cloud produce snow by “seeding” it with dry ice. Scientists since then have used different compounds for cloud seeding, but the basic idea is the same: you infuse the cloud with tiny particles that become nuclei for ice crystals. When the crystals get big enough, they fall as precipitation — stuff like rain, snow, or hail, depending on temperature and other conditions.
Only a year after that method was discovered, the US military attempted to break up a hurricane off the coast of Florida by seeding the clouds with dry ice. The day after, the hurricane changed direction — and hit Georgia instead.
Cloud seeding is now very much a reality: In 2008, China claimed to have cleared the skies ahead of the Olympics by seeding clouds with salt. And they’re not the only ones. More than 50 countries around the world currently have weather modification programs. Those include cooling the ocean with frozen material, reducing water evaporation with a chemical film, injecting air into a storm’s center, or blowing a hurricane apart with hydrogen bombs. Another approach that’s being considered for reducing climate change involves pumping the atmosphere with tiny particles that could reflect the sun’s energy, the way volcanic smoke does after an eruption.
And here’s the problem with every one of these approaches: we don’t know enough about the weather to know if they’ll work and whether they’ll cause unintended consequences. Even cloud seeding isn’t totally understood — it doesn’t work on every cloud every time, and we aren’t even sure how much of the precipitation is caused by the seeding and how much would have fallen anyway. Remember that thing about the US Military breaking up a hurricane that headed toward Georgia? We don’t even know if that was their fault or if it would have happened naturally.
So yeah, there are risks, but we don’t know what they are or how dangerous they might be. Proponents would argue that we’re already modifying the weather through human-caused climate change, and we need some sort of intervention to fix what we’ve done. This podcast certainly doesn’t have the final answer. But long story short: we don’t know if weather manipulation would have unintended effects, but it might be worth the risks — or it might not. Thanks for your question, Joseph! If you have a question, send it in to curiosity at discovery dot com or leave us a voicemail at 312-596-5208.
CODY: Before we recap what we learned today, here’s a sneak peek at what you’ll hear next week on Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY: Next week, you’ll learn about how exposure to sunlight could lead to more romantic passion;
Why it’s a good idea to put some painkillers in your pocket if you get exposed to radiation;
How scientists grew stem cell “mini brains” that developed eyes of their own;
The universe’s most epic object, THE BLAZAR;
And more! Okay, so now, let’s recap what we learned today.
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ASHLEY: The writer for today’s whale and dolphin story was Grant Currin.
CODY: Our managing editor is Ashley Hamer, who was also a writer and audio editor on today’s episode.
ASHLEY: Our producer and lead audio editor is Cody Gough.
CODY: Have a great weekend! [AD LIB SOMETHING FUNNY] Then, join us again Monday to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!