Learn about how astronomers may have just discovered the first moon beyond our solar system; why the “jacuzzi of despair” kills everything that enters it; and why the winner effect says one win leads to even more wins. 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: Astronomers May Have Just Discovered the First Moon Beyond Our Solar System The Jacuzzi of Despair Is a Deadly Lake Within the Gulf of Mexico The Winner Effect Says One Win Leads to Even More 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 how astronomers may have just discovered the first moon beyond our solar system; why the “jacuzzi of despair” kills everything that enters it; and why the winner effect says one win leads to even more wins.
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/first-moon-beyond-our-solar-system-discovery-jacuzzi-of-despair-and-the-winner-effect
[MUSIC PLAYING] CODY GOUGH: Hi. We've got three stories from curiosity.com 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 how astronomers may have just discovered the first moon beyond our solar system, why the Jacuzzi of despair kills everything that enters it, and why the winner effect says one win leads to even more wins.
CODY GOUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity on the award-winning Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY HAMER: Astronomers may have just discovered the first moon beyond our solar system. That's right. Two space discoveries in the same week.
CODY GOUGH: It has been a good week for astronomy.
ASHLEY HAMER: It really has. So thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope. We have the strongest evidence yet for a moon orbiting a planet outside of our solar system. This possible exomoon, as it's called, orbits a planet 8,000 light years away from us. It's known as Kepler-1625b. And a paper based on the research was published in the journal Science Advances. If it exists, it would be about the size of Neptune, which makes it kind of an oddball.
Here's why we think the moon is where it is. First is the variation of light. You know that planet we said is 8,000 light years away from us? Well, over 19 long hours, Hubble observed the planet passing across its star, which is known as a planetary transit. About 3.5 hours after the planet went by, there was a second and smaller dimming of light. That suggests a moon trailing the planet, like a dog following its owner on a leash.
The second piece of evidence has to do with the timing of the planetary transit, which was way different than what astronomers expected. Back when the Kepler Space Telescope was watching Kepler's 1625b, it did it for four years. So the astronomers had a pretty good idea of how it should behave. Hubble caught the planet passing across its parent star about an hour and 15 minutes ahead of schedule. That's the thing that usually happens when a planet has a moon in orbit around it because it makes the planet wobble from its predicted location in space.
Now, the astronomers caution that we do need more evidence before we can confirm this exomoon. For example, we think we're looking at a moon, but we might just be seeing a second planet in this star system. The Kepler telescope didn't find any evidence for a second planet in its four years of work, though, so why should Hubble in 19 hours?
Unfortunately, there are probably no aliens on either of these celestial bodies. The planet and moon do lie inside of the star's habitable zone, where water could exist on a rocky planet's surface. But the moon is gaseous and way too big to host life as we know it, which means it's probably the same sad situation for life on the planet. Still, life or not, this possible exomoon might be one of the top scientific discoveries of 2018. All we need to do is get it confirmed. Shall we get started?
CODY GOUGH: Move over hot tub time machine. Today, I present to you the Jacuzzi of Despair.
[LAUGHS]
ASHLEY HAMER: I never saw that movie.
CODY GOUGH: Me neither.
ASHLEY HAMER: Well, that settles.
CODY GOUGH: Good talk.
[LAUGHTER]
This article is actually not running until Saturday. But I was really excited about it, so we're just going to talk about it now. This Jacuzzi is a toxic pocket of seawater that straight up kills anything that swims into it. It's about 100 feet wide, 12 feet deep, and lies nearly 3,300 feet below the surface. Yes, it's an underwater Jacuzzi, so you don't have to worry about slipping and falling in.
Scientists discovered this bad boy at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico in May 2016, about a day's boat ride from the coast of New Orleans. The water down there barely even counts as water. It's five times saltier than the surrounding seawater, and it's so dense that it doesn't mix into the rest of the water. The salt density sitting on the sea floor has created something of a toxic cauldron of chemicals, including methane gas and hydrogen sulfide, meaning basically anything that swims in it, like crabs, amphipods, and the occasional unlucky fish, is "dunzo," game over, kaput, capisce?
But you're probably wondering why this place exists. Well, millions of years ago, the Gulf of Mexico was a lot more shallow than it is today. As that shallow water evaporated, it left behind massive layers of salt, which were slowly buried under layers of sediments. As the pressures grew, these layers shifted and cracked, and that let the salt escape and created a super concentrated brine bath that does not mix with the water around it, and it essentially pickles you to death.
And this isn't the only brine that's deadly. In freezing regions, brine icicles known as brinicles freeze dangerously quickly, often trapping any aquatic life that gets in their way. Who knew salt could be so scary?
ASHLEY HAMER: Salt can be scary for your heart. "Dun, dun, dun." Don't eat too much sodium, kids.
[LAUGHS]
CODY GOUGH: Why?
ASHLEY HAMER: You don't have to use that.
[LAUGHTER]
Scientists have found that when you win something, you actually have a better chance of winning again the next time. This is the thing psychologists call the winter effect. Ready to learn how to be a winner?
CODY GOUGH: I'm so excited about this after our recent win at the 13th Annual Podcast Awards.
ASHLEY HAMER: We're just going to keep winning.
CODY GOUGH: We really are.
ASHLEY HAMER: We just can't stop ourselves.
CODY GOUGH: I hope so, can't stop, won't stop.
ASHLEY HAMER: Whew! Well anyway, biologists have actually known for a long time that when animals in the wild fight each other for dominance, the animal that wins is more likely to win fights in the future. But that's not just because they're good at fighting. A recent study in the Journal Science pointed to something else. A team of researchers in China thought the winner effect might come from a cluster of brain cells known as the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex or DMPFC.
The DMPFC plays an important role in persistence. That's a trait that a life coach might call grit. To test their theory, the researchers first put pairs of male mice into a narrow tube facing each other. As that's an obviously uncomfortable situation, each mouse would try to find a way to get out as quickly as possible, usually by fighting to shove the other out of his way.
The researchers took the loser mice then used light to activate the DMPFC and put them back in the tubes with they're rivals. With those neurons switched on, 80% to 90% of the previous losers were able to beat their opponents. But here's the thing, the next day when the researchers put the same mice back in the tubes without doing anything to their brains, the mice who won most recently kept on winning. Whatever effect the original loss had was erased by the subsequent win.
Now get this. Previous research had suggested a link in this kind of behavior between the DMPFC and the thalamus. That's a sensory signal relay in the brain. So the researchers tried activating that connection, and sure enough, it had the same winning effect. And it's important to note that these previously losing mice kept winning without any change in their testosterone levels.
Of course, animal studies don't always extend to humans. But if the winner effect is real, then that's good news and bad news. The good news is that winning is even better than you thought it was. The bad news is that losing is even worse. Maybe we can all use the extra motivation that comes from knowing that one win can lead to others to help us finally reach that first success.
CODY GOUGH: I want to talk about some listener survey results for a second. We posted a survey to find out what you, yes, you curious listener, liked about our show. That's going to help us make it better for you. 80% some of respondents thus far want to hear more stories about space and astronomy and physics. So hey, guess what you've been hearing a lot more of lately? And we were pretty surprised by this, but it turns out that a lot of people don't necessarily love our stories on the podcast about paranormal conspiracy theory type stuff.
ASHLEY HAMER: Listener is after my own heart.
[LAUGHS]
CODY GOUGH: So this is the kind of stuff we're looking at to change our show. Do you totally disagree with everything I just said? Then fill out the survey. We are still planning on giving away a free Curiosity t-shirt to one lucky listener who fills it out. But we're going to keep the survey open for another few weeks, so we can collect enough data to understand our audience within a 5% margin of error, like science does. It was Ashley's idea.
We've posted a link to our survey in a few places. But the easiest place to go is in today's show notes or on our podcast page. You can find our podcast website at about.curiosity.com/podcast. Again, that URL is about.curiosity.com/podcast. You can also open curiosity.com on your computer and click or tap on the podcast icon at the top in order to take you there. We also posted a link to the survey on our Patreon page at patreon.com/curiosity.com, all spelled out. And there's a link somewhere beneath the Jacuzzi of Despair, but I'm not sure how much good that'll do. Please help us help you. Everybody wins, and you know what they say about winning.
ASHLEY HAMER: Read about today's stories and more on curiosity.com
CODY GOUGH: Join us again tomorrow for the award-winning Curiosity Daily and learn something new in just a few minutes. I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Stay curious.
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