Curiosity Daily

Finding Dark Energy, Coelacanth Revival, Words of Persuasion

Episode Summary

Learn about how we may have found dark energy; a prehistoric coelacanth return; and a trick for getting what you want.  A dark-matter hunting experiment may have just found dark energy by Briana Brownell Schultz, I. (2021, September 17). Dark Energy Could Be Responsible for Mysterious Experiment Signals, Researchers Say. Gizmodo; Gizmodo. https://gizmodo.com/dark-energy-could-be-responsible-for-mysterious-experim-1847691132  ‌Rincon, P. (2020, June 17). Dark matter hunt yields unexplained signal. BBC News; BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-53085260  The time a prehistoric fish came back from the dead by Cameron Duke Coelacanth. (2018, December 20). Smithsonian Ocean. https://ocean.si.edu/ocean-life/fish/coelacanth Coelacanths | National Geographic. (2015). Animals. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/fish/facts/coelacanths Smith, A. (2004, May 21). Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer. The Guardian; The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2004/may/21/guardianobituaries These 4 Words Can Double Your Chances of Getting What You Want by Joanie Faletto originally released May 11, 2018 https://omny.fm/shows/curiosity-daily/how-your-friendships-change-a-secret-airline-to-ar  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.

Episode Notes

Learn about how we may have found dark energy; a prehistoric coelacanth return; and a trick for getting what you want.

A dark-matter hunting experiment may have just found dark energy by Briana Brownell

The time a prehistoric fish came back from the dead by Cameron Duke

These 4 Words Can Double Your Chances of Getting What You Want by Joanie Faletto originally released May 11, 2018 https://omny.fm/shows/curiosity-daily/how-your-friendships-change-a-secret-airline-to-ar

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/finding-dark-energy-coelacanth-revival-words-of-persuasion

Episode Transcription

CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Discovery. I’m Cody Gough.

ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about an experiment that may have accidentally found dark energy; the time a prehistoric fish came back from the dead; and four magic words that could double your chances of getting what you want.

CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.

A dark-matter hunting experiment may have just found dark energy by Briana Brownell (Ashley)

An experiment beneath Italy’s Apennine Mountains [APP-uh-nine] is hoping to find the exotic substance known as dark matter. It’s an impressive goal. But as it turns out, nature might have done us one better. In a recent analysis, scientists might have found something even weirder: dark energy.

For a refresher: since the 1920s, scientists have noticed something strange about the universe. Gravitational movements of galaxies were different from what they expected from Einstein’s theory of relativity. There must be extra mass out there that we can’t see. They called it dark matter.

Then later, in 1998, scientists realized that there was another strange process going on. Some kind of force that was pushing galaxies away from one another at an accelerating pace. They called that dark energy. 

These strange substances make up a huge part of the universe. Dark energy makes up 68 percent of the universe and dark matter, 25 percent. The last 5% is all that regular matter that makes up our bodies, our planet, our solar system...all the “stuff” we currently know and understand.

So dark matter and dark energy are extremely common in the universe. We just haven’t been able to….find any of it. Which brings us to that experiment in Italy — and vats of xenon.

See, normal matter like cosmic rays, muons, and neutrinos smash into the xenon atoms and cause “events,” like brief flashes of light or free electrons. And those can be detected by this experimental setup. Scientists measure the number of collisions that happen with this expected normal boring matter, and they know how many events to expect in a given time period.  But recent data showed that the number of events was much, much higher than they expected. So what’s going on?

There were a few possible explanations for this strange anomaly, like contamination from tritium, an isotope of hydrogen, or some strange behavior from neutrinos. But those have now been ruled out. That means the most likely explanation is that they were from particles called axions.

Axions are the name for theoretical dark energy particles that scientists think might be the stuff that’s pushing galaxies away from each other. It would be the first time we’ve ever detected them on Earth. Although this is early evidence, scientists hope it’s the beginning of us being able to examine dark matter and dark energy close-up. 

Considering that this stuff makes up the vast majority of the universe, I’d say that’s a very big deal.

The time a prehistoric fish came back from the dead by Cameron Duke (Cody)

As anyone who’s read a Far Side cartoon knows, land animals began their evolution in the ocean. A major player in that tale was a fish called the coelacanth [SEE-luh-kanth], which had a certain knack for crawling on land. 300 million years ago, at least 90 distinct species of coelacanths thrived in the Earth’s oceans, but they went extinct about 65 million years ago. Or so we thought! DUN DUN DUNNNNN

 

Coelacanths are a big part of a group of fish known as the lobe-finned fishes. This is as opposed to cartilaginous fishes [CAR-tih-LAA-gin-ous, LAA like lamb], like sharks, and ray-finned fishes, like Dory in Finding Nemo. The lobe-finned fishes had bony skeletons and muscular limbs with fins attached that were strong enough to allow some of their descendants to crawl out of the water onto land.

 

Scientists believe that these fishes were an important part of Earth’s long-gone ancient life that lived and died alongside the dinosaurs. So you can probably imagine the surprise Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer [CourtNAY LAT-tim-mer] felt when she realized that these fish weren’t actually extinct. 

 

In 1938, Courtenay-Latimer was a museum curator in East London. One day she was called down to the docks to take a look at a weird fish a fishing boat had brought in. It was five feet long (or a meter and a half), and its scales were flecked with iridescent blue. She had no idea what it was, but she knew it was special. So she took it back to the museum. She called a fish researcher friend at nearby Rhodes University to help her ID the fish. That’s when they realized what it was. The coelacanth wasn’t extinct, after all.

 

The fish displayed almost all of the characteristics of known fossil coelacanths, including traits long lost by more modern fish species. For one thing, the living coelacanth had a primitive rostral organ, which is a gel-filled sac that forms part of a rudimentary electrosensory system. Scientists had only found this trait in fossils of the species.

 

Today, there are two known living coelacanth species. One is in the Indian Ocean, while the other was discovered in 1997 near Indonesia. Biologists refer to them as “living fossils,” or living species that have been largely unchanged for millions of years. 

 

These living examples are the remainder of a persistent population that wouldn’t quit, even in the face of a mass extinction. I guess that’s why it is the coelaCANth and not the coelaCAN’Tth.

[C] These 4 Words Can Double Your Chances of Getting What You Want [1:19] by Joanie Faletto (Cody / Ashley Intro)

ASHLEY: There’s a super simple language hack you can use to get people to do what you want. And in case you missed it the first time we talked about it, here’s the story from 2018, remastered just for you — and, you know... slowed down a bit, so you can actually understand us.

[CODY: Clip 1:19]

RECAP

Let’s recap the main things we learned today

  1. CODY: An experiment designed to find dark matter may have found evidence for dark energy instead. Dark matter and dark energy make up the vast majority of the universe, but we don’t know much about them and haven’t been able to find any. But a dark-matter hunting experiment that measures how often particles of regular matter collide with xenon atoms found way more collisions than expected — and that might be evidence of dark energy.
  2. ASHLEY: The coelacanth is an ancient lobe-finned fish that played a big role in the evolution of land animals — and for a long time, scientists believed it died out with the dinosaurs. That is, until 1938, when a fishing boat found one off the coast of London. We now know that there are two species of coelacanth in the world — down from the 90 or so that existed millions of years ago — and the remaining species have pretty much stayed the same as they were in those days.
  3. ASHLEY: These 4 magic words could help you get what you want: “but you are free.” Or “but you are free to refuse.” Or anything along those lines. This is called the “but you are free compliance-gaining technique.” Basically, when you give someone the option to say no, they’re up to twice as likely to give you what you’re asking for.

[ad lib optional] 

ASHLEY: Today’s writers were Briana Brownell, Cameron Duke, and Joanie Faletto. 

CODY: Our managing editor is Ashley Hamer [who was also a writer / audio editor on today’s episode]

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!