Learn about why the sunlight you feel might be 50 million years old; learn about the Undiagnosed Diseases Network that has diagnosed hundreds of people with previously undiagnosable diseases; and the closest thing scientists have found to a “universal word.” 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: That Sunlight You Feel Might Be 50 Million Years Old — https://curiosity.im/2D7J1rG "Huh" Is the Closest Thing We've Found to a Universal Word — https://curiosity.im/2D5QGXh This NIH Project Has Diagnosed Hundreds of People with Previously Undiagnosable Diseases — https://curiosity.im/2D6dq9H Please tell us about yourself and help us improve the show by taking our listener survey! https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/curiosity-listener-survey 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! Learn about these topics and more on Curiosity.com, and download our 5-star app for Android and iOS. Then, join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Plus: Amazon smart speaker users, enable our Alexa Flash Briefing to learn something new in just a few minutes every day!
Learn about why the sunlight you feel might be 50 million years old; learn about the Undiagnosed Diseases Network that has diagnosed hundreds of people with previously undiagnosable diseases; and the closest thing scientists have found to a “universal word.”
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:
Please tell us about yourself and help us improve the show by taking our listener survey! https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/curiosity-listener-survey
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!
Learn about these topics and more on Curiosity.com, and download our 5-star app for Android and iOS. Then, join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Plus: Amazon smart speaker users, enable our Alexa Flash Briefing to learn something new in just a few minutes every day!
Full episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/drunkards-walk-sunlight-the-undiagnosed-diseases-network-and-the-only-universal-word
[MUSIC PLAYING] CODY GOUGH: Hi. We've got three stories from curiositydotcom 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 why the sunlight you feel might be 50 million years old, the closest thing scientists have found to a universal word, and a project that has diagnosed hundreds of people with previously undiagnosed diseases.
CODY GOUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity on the award-winning Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY HAMER: Here's something fun. The light that reaches Earth might have been created at the center of the sun more than 50 million years ago. Ready for a light science lesson?
CODY GOUGH: Sounds like a bright idea.
ASHLEY HAMER: Well, here's a quick recap on the speed of light. Light travels at 186,388 miles per second. On average, the Earth is just under 93 million miles away from the sun. If you run the numbers, it works out, so it should take about 8.31 minutes from the moment that light leaves the sun to the moment it starts charging your pocket calculator.
It's kind of weird to think that if the sun disappeared, we wouldn't even realize it for eight minutes. But it's even weirder to think that those same light waves have probably been kicking around inside the sun for tens of thousands or even millions of years beforehand. See, inside the sun, the photons or light particles don't make a straight dash. Instead, they take a path that's known as the drunkard's walk. Imagine a man who's so drunk, he can't walk in a straight line. And he's leaning on one lamppost and then he just wants to get to the next one.
But every time he takes a step, it's in a random direction. To calculate how long it'll take for him to get to his destination, you take the number of steps that it would normally take, let's say it's 10, and square it. So after 100 meandering steps, he'll finally make it to his next stop. Well, that's how every photon travels from the sun's core to its photosphere.
In the sun's core, billions of hydrogen atoms fuse with each other to create helium. That process creates two types of particles. Neutrinos are elementary particles that barely interact with physical matter at all. And gamma rays are high energy photons that interact with matter in a big way. The neutrinos shoot through the sun no problem. But every time the gamma rays collide with an atom, they're absorbed and re-emitted in a random direction.
So your average photon could take anywhere from 10,000 to 50 million years to get to us. That's a big range, but we can't know the exact answer until we know exactly how dense the sun is at its core. But who knows? Maybe someday, researchers will be able to enlighten us.
CODY GOUGH: Very illuminating science.
ASHLEY HAMER: Quite.
CODY GOUGH: Yep. Just going to leave it there.
ASHLEY HAMER: Cool.
CODY GOUGH: That's it. According to a 2013 study by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands, there is a universal word. That means it's understood the world over regardless of language or culture. Can you guess what it is?
ASHLEY HAMER: Wha?
CODY GOUGH: Close.
ASHLEY HAMER: Heh?
CODY GOUGH: No. That is understood on Home Improvement and in Tim Allen movies.
ASHLEY HAMER: Hum. Meh.
CODY GOUGH: Nope.
ASHLEY HAMER: All right. What is it?
CODY GOUGH: Well, if you want to guess at home, you say this word when you're confused, you say this word when you didn't hear what was said, you say it when you're just starting to realize something. It might feel like an instinctive reaction but it's not. You probably take this automatic guttural utterance for granted. But this unassuming word holds a lot of power. It's the word "huh."
The researchers in the study analyzed bits of informal language from five continents, including Spanish, Chinese and Icelandic and Indigenous languages from Ecuador, Ghana, and other places. Of the 31 dialects they compiled, they all had this one little word in common. But it wasn't just a short word in different languages. Every "huh" across languages audibly resembled "huh."
And the researchers argue that the word had to be learned unlike grunts or emotional cries. Yes, that means somewhere along the line, you actually learned the word "huh" just like all the other vocabulary words you use every day. Now, the researchers aren't sure the word will turn up in every language on Earth, but for now, it's the closest thing to a universal word that we've got. "Huh."
ASHLEY HAMER: "Huh." If you or anyone you know is dealing with an unknown disease, today we might be able to give you a little hope. Hundreds of people across the world run into frustrating seemingly hopeless medical scenarios where doctors and specialists just can't figure out what the problem is. Luckily, researchers at the Undiagnosed Diseases Network are trying to help. I was so touched that this project existed when I found out about it.
CODY GOUGH: A lot of people have to deal with this.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: Like a surprisingly high number of people.
ASHLEY HAMER: Right. It's really cool that there's a bunch of really smart people trying to get to the bottom of many people's medical mysteries.
CODY GOUGH: That's great.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. So the Undiagnosed Diseases Network, or UDN, is a research study funded by the National Institutes of Health Common Fund. The UDN connects physicians and researchers from across the country so they can solve some of the most challenging medical mysteries out there. It's basically the medical drama house, except the doctors are all over the US and they're a lot nicer.
The UDN has gotten nearly 3,000 participant applications since it started in 2014. Participants have to have a condition that's undiagnosed even after a thorough medical evaluation and quote, "at least one objective finding." End quote. For every application that's accepted, the network evaluates the condition at no charge to the patient. That involves a series of examinations by various medical specialists and almost always includes genetic testing.
That's because in lots of cases, physicians can use information in DNA and RNA to learn more about the genetic links to various symptoms, even if they can't come up with a complete diagnosis for the patient. And the best part is that it's working. Researchers have crunched the numbers on UDN's success rate, and it turns out that more than 100 patients now have a diagnosis.
A new study looked at 382 patients who went on to get a full evaluation. By the end of the study, 132 patients had received a diagnosis. That's a diagnosis rate of 35%. And most of those were thanks to genetic sequencing. A lot of the patients had a rare form of a known disease, but 31 of the patients didn't. Their diseases were completely unknown to medical science.
The biggest benefit to all of this is the possibility of finally getting treatment. And for 80% of these diagnoses, the network could give patients actionable information. That included things like changes to their therapy, future testing adjustments, and recommendations for family screening. There are no guarantees, of course, but if you or a loved one would like to apply for the project, then just search for the Undiagnosed Diseases Network. There's also a link in our full write up on curiositydotcom and on the Curiosity app for Android and iOS.
CODY GOUGH: That's all for today, but I want to give a special shout out to a few awesome listeners who reviewed our Amazon Alexa flash briefing. Thank you so much Huan Ma, Kelly Diva, Meredith, Shawn, and Mike for taking time out of your busy day to leave us a five-star review. We genuinely appreciate it.
ASHLEY HAMER: Also Thanks to Brian, Steve, Michelle, Kai, Rachel, Lucy, and Critter. We were really surprised to see as many reviews as we did, but we read every one of them. And like Cody said, we really appreciated all of them.
CODY GOUGH: Extra special hat tip to Fred Brown. I see what you did there in your review and we always appreciate a review with a side of humor. I hope this comment isn't giving you right up too much attention.
ASHLEY HAMER: And finally, thanks to B. Tate, Bill D., and Michael Kovich.
CODY GOUGH: And Danny and Brittany.
ASHLEY HAMER: Ah. Seriously. We can't thank you enough.
CODY GOUGH: At the very least though, we can give you a sneak peek at what you can learn about on curiositydotcom this weekend.
ASHLEY HAMER: This weekend, you'll learn about seven times people made bets on science, including some bets made by Stephen Hawking, a trick for remembering more passwords, how we can make things levitate using sound, 23 of the oldest words ever spoken, and more.
CODY GOUGH: And if there's something else you're curious about, then you can just email your question to podcast@curiosity.com and we might answer it on a future episode.
ASHLEY HAMER: That's podcast@curiosity.com And if you're looking for something to do this weekend, feel free to leave us a review on your favorite podcast app. Like we said, we really appreciate it. We'll talk to you again Sunday on the award-winning Curiosity Daily to help you learned something new in just a few minutes. I'm Ashley Hamer.
CODY GOUGH: And I'm Cody Gough. Have a great weekend.
ASHLEY HAMER: And stay curious.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
SPEAKER: On the Westwood One Podcast Network.