Learn about a planet orbiting three stars at once; useless architectural relics; and deep conversations with strangers. We found a planet orbiting three stars at once by Briana Brownell This May Be the First Planet Found Orbiting 3 Stars at Once. (2021). The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/28/science/triple-sun-planet.html Siegel, E. (2021, September 30). Planet found orbiting three stars all at once. Big Think; Big Think. https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/planet-orbiting-3-stars/ Scientists may have found the first known planet to orbit three stars. (2021). Science.org. https://www.science.org/content/article/scientists-may-have-found-first-known-planet-orbit-three-stars Smallwood, J. L., Nealon, R., Chen, C., Martin, R. G., Bi, J., Dong, R., & Pinte, C. (2021). GW Ori: circumtriple rings and planets. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 508(1), 392–407. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stab2624 Thomassons Are Functionally Useless Architectural Relics by Anna Todd Trufelman, A. (2014, August 26). Thomassons - 99% Invisible. 99% Invisible. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/thomassons/ Thomassons: Those Peculiar Architectural Relics That Serve No Purpose | 6sqft. (2014, August 28). 6sqft. https://www.6sqft.com/thomassons-those-peculiar-architectural-relics-that-serve-no-purpose/ Everything we assume about deep conversations with strangers is wrong by Cameron Duke Getting beyond small talk: Study finds people enjoy deep conversations with strangers. (2021, September 30). EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/929731 Kardas, M., Kumar, A., & Epley, N. (2021). Overly shallow?: Miscalibrated expectations create a barrier to deeper conversation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000281 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 a planet orbiting three stars at once; useless architectural relics; and deep conversations with strangers.
We found a planet orbiting three stars at once by Briana Brownell
Thomassons Are Functionally Useless Architectural Relics by Anna Todd
Everything we assume about deep conversations with strangers is wrong by Cameron Duke
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/circumtriple-planets-deep-convos-with-strangers-thomassons-in-architecture
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 a planet we found that’s orbiting THREE stars; functionally useless architectural relics called Thomassons; and why everything we assume about deep conversations with strangers is wrong.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
The universe is full of strange, almost unimaginable things. And scientists have just found another new one: A planet that orbits three stars at the same time.
Now, scientists have found planets orbiting stars in other three-star, or trinary, systems. Our nearest neighbor, the Alpha Centauri system, is a trinary system... but the planets we’ve found there orbit just one star, the small red dwarf Proxima Centauri. That star orbits the two other stars in the system much farther away.
But this new system is the first so-called “circumtriple” system we’ve found. It’s called GW Ori and it's 1300 light years away, in the constellation of Orion. GW Ori has a bunch of other strange qualities, too. Two of the three stars closely orbit each other at about the distance between the Earth and the sun. The third star orbits those two stars eight times farther away, at a little less than the distance between the sun and Saturn.
Around the three stars are three giant rings of dust, and they’re each tilted at odd angles to each other. Between the first and second rings is a large gap. Scientists had already proposed a few different theories about what could have caused it.
But recently, using computer modeling, a group of researchers concluded that the most likely explanation is a planet. They theorized that a gas giant about the size of Jupiter could have swept away the dust in that region to cause the gap.
If you were on this planet, you’d be able to see all three suns at once. But since two of the suns are extremely close together, they would probably look like a single source of light. Even so, the sunrises and sunsets could be spectacular.
The universe never seems to run out of strange things. But this one suggests that planet formation is common in the universe, no matter how odd the solar system is.
Most solar systems involve single stars or two-star, or binary, systems. Trinary systems make up about one in ten solar systems. There are systems with an even larger number of stars too, but they’re relatively rare. But if this new research is any indication, we might just find planets around these even stranger systems, too.
Walk around your city, and you’ll probably notice some useless architecture. Stuff like staircases leading to nowhere, doors opening to brick walls, or closed gates with wide open space on either side. Have you ever wondered why these useless vestiges are still there — and even being maintained? While I can’t answer that question, I can tell you they have a name. They’re called “Thomassons,” [THOMAS-ins] and they’re purposefully preserved despite being functionally useless.
You can thank a Japanese artist named Akasegawa Genpei [uh-KAHS-uh-GAH-wah GEN-pay, hard G] for the name. He first discovered these bizarre relics in 1972 when he spotted a staircase that went up and down, but wasn’t attached to any door. He kept noticing the architectural leftovers and eventually wrote anecdotes about each of them in a magazine column. To be a true Thomasson, the object had to meet two criteria: it had to be truly useless, and it had to be regularly maintained. He gathered enough examples that he published a book in 1985.
The name he chose...was actually a pretty sick burn. It was inspired by a promising American baseball player named Gary Thomasson who was traded to Tokyo’s Yomiuri Giants for a lot of money. Thomasson did terribly. He actually set the all-time strikeout record in Japan. He was benched for most of his contract, but he stayed on the team. He was useless, yet maintained.
So what’s an example of this obsolete architecture? Consider a second-story door in a Brooklyn Heights brownstone that opens to nothing but a very painful drop onto the pavement. It used to be the entryway, but when the new owners bought the building they decided to make the basement door the main entrance — and that required removing the stairs. To avoid any injuries, they placed a flower box in front of the old door. But that meant that these useless doors now had to be opened to water the plants, which means its sole purpose is to maintain the object that exists to cover it up. As photographer Matthew Fargo put it, quote, “It’s like a self-perpetuating Thomassonian uroboros,” [YER-uh-BORE-ess] unquote. (A uroboros, or “OR-uh-BORE-iss,” is an ancient symbol showing a serpent or dragon eating its own tail.)
Anyway, why would we hold onto a useless doorway or a random segment of a fence? Well, buildings experience multiple renovations over the years. Some people figure that it’s not worth the money to remove things like that. Luckily, plenty of others now cherish them as quirky pieces of art.
If the idea of small talk with strangers makes you anxious, then having a deep conversation with a stranger is probably unthinkable. In that case, you might be surprised to find that a recent study suggests we vastly overestimate how awkward it is to have deep heart-to-hearts with strangers.
A group of researchers at the University of Chicago performed twelve experiments involving more than 1,800 people. In the experiments, pairs of mostly strangers were asked to have conversations with each other. Simple enough, right? It gets better: They weren’t just thrown into a room together. Instead, they were given conversation prompts. These prompts were designed to lead to either shallow small talk or something deeper and more personal to the participants.
Pairs given shallow topics were asked to talk about TV shows, the weather, sports... you know. The kind of stuff you discuss when making chit-chat with a stranger. The deeper questions were much different. They cut through the small talk by having participants ask things like, “If you had a crystal ball that could reveal one truth about yourself, what would you want to know?” or “Describe a time you cried in front of another person.” Yeah, imagine having that conversation with the guy behind you in line for Starbucks.
Before the conversations began, the researchers had the participants predict how awkward the conversation would be and how much they thought their partner would enjoy the conversation. Unsurprisingly, they generally thought their conversation partners would be bored and the whole exercise would be generally cringey.
Overall, they found that the participants’ predictions were way off the mark. They consistently overestimated how awkward the exchanges would be, and this effect was even more pronounced for the deep conversations. In all cases, the participants felt more connected with their conversation partner than they expected.
The researchers believe this might have a lot to do with how we predict we will be received by a stranger. Especially when it comes to revealing something personal, our biggest fear is probably that the other person just won’t care. When you're feeling vulnerable, a blank stare is possibly the worst response to receive.
At least in this experiment, that didn’t seem to be the case at all. That suggests that we avoid deep conversations because we consistently underestimate how interested the other person will be in us.
In the end, we might not have anything to fear — and a whole lot to gain.
Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up. Starting with
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ASHLEY: Today’s writers were Briana Brownell, Anna Todd, and Cameron Duke.
CODY: Our managing editor is Ashley Hamer.
ASHLEY: Our producer and audio editor is Cody Gough.
CODY: [AD LIB SOMETHING FUNNY] Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!