Today, you’ll learn about how a single drink a day can add years to the age of your brain, how scientists figured out that thousands of tree species are yet to be discovered, and how the world’s biggest and best particle accelerator is powering up for its third run.
Today, you’ll learn about how a single drink a day can add years to the age of your brain, how scientists figured out that thousands of tree species are yet to be discovered, and how the world’s biggest and best particle accelerator is powering up for its third run.
A drink away does not keep the doctor away.
No, that tree is not the same as that other one.
Imagine two needles smashing into each other.
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Find episode transcripts here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/drink-brain-shrink-secret-tree-species-lhc-round-3
NATE: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Discovery. Time flies when you’re learnin’ super cool stuff. I’m Nate.
CALLI: And I’m Calli. If you’re dropping in for the first time, welcome to Curiosity, where we aim to blow your mind by helping you to grow your mind. If you’re a loyal listener, welcome back!
NATE: Today, you’ll learn about how a single drink a day can add years to the age of your brain, how scientists figured out that thousands of tree species are yet to be discovered, and how the world’s biggest and best particle accelerator is powering up for its third run.
CALLI: Without further ado, let’s satisfy some curiosity!
[SFX: Whoosh]
CALLI: You know how they say a glass of wine a day keeps the doctor away?
NATE: Pretty sure it’s an apple a day, Cal.
CALLI: Okay fine. But we’ve all heard that drinking a glass of wine could potentially be beneficial to your health.
NATE: All of my Aunts are under that impression, sure.
CALLI: Well a new study shows that not only could that be false, but drinking a glass every day could lead to significant brain shrinkage!
NATE: One glass is all it takes?
CALLI: For women, yes. For men the moderate drinking amount factored into the study was up to two glasses of wine or beer a day. And based on the research the amount of alcohol needed to start brain shrinkage could be as little as half a glass!
NATE: Yikes. But, okay, let’s peel this back a bit. When you say “brain shrinkage” what do you actually mean?
CALLI: I mean it literally. An overall reduction in brain volume. Now, your brain naturally shrinks as you age. But consuming alcohol can speed that process up by quite a bit. And this means you could see problems with memory and decision-making, and a reduction of other brain functions much earlier than you naturally would.
NATE: How much earlier?
CALLI: For a fifty year old - they saw signs of an additional two years of brain aging, if you drink a full beer or wine every day, as compared to half that.
NATE: That’s two years too many.
CALLI: And it doesn’t stop there. Those in the study who drank more showed signs more like three and a half years, or in some cases more than ten years. Perhaps the most concerning part of the study is how it conflicts with the governmental and scientific guidelines we currently have when it comes to defining “moderate” drinking. Which is one drink or less a day for women, and two drinks or less for men.
NATE: Both of which show pretty size-able brain shrinkage according to the study.
CALLI: Exactly. Some past studies have shown results that this “moderate” alcohol consumption may have no effect or even be beneficial to older people ...
NATE: We’ve all heard about the potential benefits of a glass of wine at dinner.
CALLI: But more and more research points in the other direction. Any alcohol consumption can cause damage.
NATE: Liver problems, heart function, digestive issues, cancers ...
CALLI: And a recent study of over six hundred thousand participants showed even low levels of alcohol, previously believed to be harmless, could be linked to an earlier death.
NATE: That’s pretty grim!
CALLI: Now it is important to mention that the study has faced some criticism. The participants involved were all middle-aged Europeans so we can’t really blanket their results across any other age groups or people from different ancestries.
NATE: Well my Aunts are middle-aged and of European ancestry...
CALLI: The other issue is that the study had people self-report their levels of alcohol consumption in the year prior to the trials. Not only could they not have an accurate memory of how much or how little they were drinking, but it also doesn’t factor in their lives up to that point. Including accounting for those who may have been heavy drinkers in the past.
NATE: Interesting. So, there could be some flaws here...
CALLI: It does look that way. Since the researchers only compared the test subjects' drinking habits to their brains at one specific point in time - it could be difficult to determine whether the alcohol itself is actually causing this shrinkage or if it could be something else. And along with that - some also believe that with such low levels of alcohol being measured, the relationship to brain volume could be pretty weak.
NATE: So all the research done generally points to alcohol only having negative health effects.
CALLI: Overall, yes.
NATE: But don’t other cultures consume a lot of alcohol and seem totally fine?
CALLI: There’s actually a phrase for studies into this and it’s “The French Paradox”.
NATE: Sounds like a really cool thriller movie.
CALLI: It was first coined in the 1990’s by French researchers who were trying to explain why the people of France had such lower rates of cardiovascular disease, and the original prevailing thought was that it was all the red wine they were drinking.
NATE: Ohhh hence the glass of wine at dinner idea.
CALLI: That would be where the idea originated in popular culture.
NATE: And what did the studies find?
CALLI: The biggest thing people were missing was that the French people were typically sticking to a Mediterranean style diet. Which we know is a pretty healthy one for your heart. There were some beneficial elements found in red wine, but unfortunately they don’t outweigh the alcohol’s negatives.
NATE: So, the takeaway here is to cut back on alcohol wherever you can, for the sake of your own health.
CALLI: Pretty much.
NATE: Oh boy. My Aunts aren’t gonna be happy to hear this one.
CALLI: Something tells me they probably don’t care…
[SFX: Whoosh]
NATE: Ahh there’s nothing better than laying under the nice shade of a tree on a warm summer day.
CALLI: Couldn’t have said it better myself, Nate.
NATE: Did you know that researchers recently discovered that there could be ninety-two hundred more tree species than we previously thought?
CALLI: Woah. That’s a whole lot of shade.
NATE: Fourteen percent more to be exact.
CALLI: How many tree species total does that bring us to?
NATE: We know for sure that Earth has a little over sixty-four thousand species. And with this new discovery it brings that number closer to seventy-three and a half thousand.
CALLI: That’s a whole lot of shade!
NATE: You said that already.
CALLI: You caught me!
NATE: Haha, okay. Also, scientists still haven’t quite found all of them yet. Biologists think more than a third of these new species could be hiding out in South America.
CALLI: It is home to some of the world’s biggest biodiversity hotspots.
NATE: Most of them in the Amazon and tropical Andes.
CALLI: So if researchers haven’t discovered some of these species yet, how did they get to that nine thousand number?
NATE: To get an estimate, the team analyzed global forest data from both the Global Forest Biodiversity Initiative and TREECHANGE. GFBI records all the species found in forest plots around the world. And TREECHANGE compiles sightings of individual species. With these two data sets at their disposal, they implemented statistical analysis to account for rare trees that could be overlooked. That number was roughly nine thousand-two hundred.
CALLI: Those must be some pretty rare trees if we’re just now discovering them.
NATE: So rare that it’s believed about a third of them are likely to be endangered as well.
CALLI: Someone call Leonardo DiCaprio, we need to save the trees!
NATE: Funny you should mention him Calli: as one of the new species discovered in the Ebo Forest in Cameroon was actually named the “Uvariopsis DiCaprio” after him.
CALLI: Ooo I bet that tree is really good at pretending to be other trees.
NATE: That species is actually pretty distinct - growing around thirteen feet tall with blooming yellow and green flowers on its trunk. They chose to name it for him after his help calling attention to threatening logging practices in an area called the Yabassi Key Biodiversity Area, where the Ebo Forest is located.
CALLI: Yeah! That’s why I said we should call him! Okay, so, if scientists are finding these long-hidden trees, what does that mean for the habitats around them?
NATE: It means even more potential new discoveries! Researchers estimate that if we’re finding this many trees - which don’t ever move around or migrate, then there must be an even larger number of undiscovered animal species living around them or even in other parts of the world.
CALLI: You said earlier that a lot of these tree species are likely endangered. How many of them will we be able to find and help preserve?
NATE: The estimate is around forty percent.
CALLI: That feels low!
NATE: Hey, we didn’t know about these things till recently!
CALLI: And I guess in some cases, we still don’t!
NATE: Hah, yeah. Sadly, rapidly changing climate conditions are threatening to lower that number. There is a movement to designate thirty percent of the earth, both land and sea, as protected, UNTOUCHABLE, by 2030 - and fifty percent by 2050. But, it’s possible even those numbers wouldn’t help us totally preserve the world’s biodiversity. Some think these large target goals may not even be the right approach to conservation. Maybe the approach shouldn’t be quantity over quality.
CALLI: It seems like a more targeted plan to specific areas might be more helpful. At least this research sounds like it’s identifying some key areas where efforts should be focused.
NATE: That is one big benefit of the study. It could also help prompt more research into these undiscovered species, as the worst case scenario would see the potentially undiscovered ones wiped off the map before we even find them.
CALLI: I will happily volunteer to go looking for new trees. I think I’d name one Bradius Pittipus.
NATE: I’m sure they’d love to have you.
[SFX: Whoosh]
NATE: Calli, I have some incredible news.
CALLI: What’s that?
NATE: One of the world’s most impressive scientific constructions is powering back up.
CALLI: Are we finally trying to find the source of all your bad jokes?
NATE: Very funny. No, after three years of maintenance and upgrades the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, is powering back up the Large Hadron Collider! Over the next few years, it will help researchers find answers to some of the most basic, and confounding, questions about our universe.
CALLI: Oh that's incredible! I can’t wait to hear what they’re looking for.
NATE: For sure, but first, some background. The Large Hadron Collider has been operating since 2008. It shoots atoms together at near light speed to create millions of particle collisions per second. These collisions sometimes create rare, never-before-detected particles that we can study to find answers to the questions about our universe’s composition and origins.
CALLI: Well if it is doing such important work, why was it shut down?
NATE: The shutdown was planned. It was originally meant to be two years, but got extended to three because of Covid. It was so the researchers could do preventative and corrective maintenance to the seventeen-mile layout, and add some upgrades.
CALLI: Seventeen miles?!
NATE: Yeah! The main chamber is basically a circle of pipe that accelerates particles to near the speed of light in opposite directions using superconducting magnets, until they force the streams of particles to smash into each other! According to CERN, the particles are so tiny it’s like trying to make two needles smash into each other, firing from six miles apart.
CALLI: That’s so cool! And they can already do that, which is blowing my mind. So, what kind of upgrades did they add?
NATE: Well they increased the power so that it can collide particles with even more power than ever before, which should help them see NEW new particles. The upgrades also allow them to smash particles more often so we can increase the likelihood of finding these unlikely particles.
CALLI: More new particles more often, got it!
NATE: And they added a Forward Search Experiment, or FASER, which is set about a quarter mile from the collider and they hope will detect exotic particles that decay as they travel away from the collisions.
CALLI: Oh man. It seems like they used those three years well. They’ll be collecting more data than ever!
NATE: Totally. The amount of data is actually a big problem. The Large Hadron Collider creates terabytes of valuable data every second. That’s thousands of gigabytes.
CALLI: A terabyte is about four-hundred hours of streaming HD video!
NATE: Which is just a little bit more than how much I watch a month. Anyway, it's way too much for the scientists to process, and even capture. So the upgrades also included a new and improved automated system to process all the data and find the most interesting parts for them to study. One researcher said it is going to be two or three times better than the last system at detecting, collecting and analyzing the data.
CALLI: Well with all of this fancy new equipment, what are they going to try to do?
NATE: In this run, researchers are hoping to expand our understanding of what is called the standard model, this is the leading theory that describes all known forces and particles in our universe.
CALLI: Right, that’s the one that classifies all known elementary particles, and describes electromagnetic forces, and weak and strong interactions between particles.
NATE: Yes. There’s also gravity, but they haven’t yet nailed it down in the Standard Model.
CALLI: Maybe they will now!
NATE: Maybe! In particular, researchers are hoping to get a better understanding, and maybe even detect, dark matter and dark energy, which we assume exist, but have never detected because they don’t emit energy or light.
CALLI: Oh wow, if we could detect something like that, what a boon it would be for our scientific understanding of the universe.
NATE: Absolutely. Researchers are also trying to figure out another conundrum around antimatter, which is like our matter but with opposite electrical charge. They think matter and antimatter were created in equal amounts at the Big Bang but if that's true, matter and antimatter should have annihilated each other in perfect destructive balance. Yet, when we look around, antimatter is rare, the universe is mostly matter. Researchers are hoping to find out why.
CALLI: These are big questions, but when are we going to start actually asking them?
NATE: Well there are still thousands of tests to go before everything is up and running again, but they’re hoping to have them done soon and get the collider up to full power by the end of July. From there it will run until 2025 when it will shut down for another round of upgrades.
CALLI: Oh wow, so much to learn, and so much to look forward to!
NATE: Absolutely, and if we get lucky, maybe they’ll even find some real answers to those questions about antimatter, dark matter and energy, and the existence of our universe itself.
[SFX: Whoosh]
NATE: Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up. A new study shows that consuming as little as one glass of wine or beer a day could lead to significant brain shrinkage. And even though the exact science of the study may be up for debate, one thing seems clear in most alcohol studies - drinking alcohol regularly has negative effects on your health.
CALLI: Scientists have determined there may be thousands more tree species around the world than previously thought. If they’re correct, it would be a 14% increase in known species. With more than a third of these trees estimated to be hidden in rich South American areas with high biodiversity, it’s imperative to continue conservation efforts so they may be found, researched, and saved from extinction.
NATE: The Large Hadron Collider, the world’s most famous particle accelerator is powering up again for the first time in three years. Researchers are hoping the new and improved system will help them detect and analyze never-before-seen particles to update the Standard Model and give us a better understanding of our universe.