Learn about how culture plays a role in feeling sick; that time scientists measured all the light in the known universe; and what Jurassic Park got wrong about the Dilophosaurus, that venomous dinosaur with the frilly collar.
Learn about how culture plays a role in feeling sick; that time scientists measured all the light in the known universe; and what Jurassic Park got wrong about the Dilophosaurus, that venomous dinosaur with the frilly collar.
Culture plays a role in feeling sick by Kelsey Donk
Scientists Measured All the Light Ever Produced in the Universe by Ashley Hamer
Remember the venomous dino with the frilly collar from Jurassic Park? Here's what it was really like by Grant Currin
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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/how-feeling-sick-is-colored-by-culture-the-venomous-dinosaur-from-jurassic-park-irl-and-all-the-light-ever-produced-in-the-universe
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 how culture plays a role in feeling sick; that time scientists measured all the light in the known universe; and what Jurassic Park got wrong about that venomous dinosaur with the frilly collar.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
If the coronavirus pandemic has shown us anything, it’s that the same illness can make some people feel sicker than others. A lot of that comes down to age and underlying health conditions. But a study from before the pandemic goes one step further: when you get sick? How sick you actually feel can be influenced by your gender, your income, and even family ties.
Let’s be clear from the start. When you’re sick, the mental and physical sensations you experience aren’t in your head: they’re a natural reaction by your immune system. And this study only looked at cold and flu symptoms, not those from the coronavirus. If you feel any symptoms — especially those associated with COVID-19 — it’s important to reach out to a medical professional.
But when it comes to cold and flu, symptom differences might come down to less physical factors, like identity and culture. To find this out, researchers at the University of Texas San Antonio surveyed 1,259 Americans. They asked the participants to think about a recent time when they were sick with the flu or the cold. Did they feel tired? Want to be alone? Did they feel sore or want to sleep?
As you might expect, how sick people remembered feeling varied by income. But it was also different for men than for women and for people with stronger family ties than for those with weaker ones.
People with low incomes seemed to feel sicker than those with higher incomes. The researchers say that could be because a low income might keep someone from getting to the doctor as early, so their latest illness may have actually been worse. There’s also the fact that people with low incomes often deal with more stress, and stress has been shown to worsen the effects of illness.
The researchers also noticed that men who had strong family ties also seemed to have more so-called “sickness behaviors.” They think it’s possible that those with strong family ties feel more comfortable expressing how sick they feel, since that probably gets them care more quickly. The same wasn’t true of women, though.
But in both men and women, participants who said they were “stoic,” or steadfast and unemotional in the face of pain, remembered feeling sicker, too. Researchers think this could be because self-described stoics wear their illness like a badge of honor. They might wait to take medicine or to call a doctor until their symptoms get really severe.
Researchers said they hope to do their next study on people while they’re actually sick to get more accurate information. But already, it’s interesting just to know that who we are influences how sick we feel.
There are a lot of stars in the universe. I mean, almost every point of light you see in the night sky is a star. And for scientists to learn more about them, they have to start by measuring them. In 2018, scientists from Clemson University made one particularly awe-inspiring measurement: they figured out how much starlight has ever been produced in the universe. And it's a very, very big number.
To do this, they used NASA's Fermi space telescope. Fermi is designed to measure gamma rays, which are the most energetic kind of light on the electromagnetic spectrum.
One big source of gamma rays? Supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies. As matter is drawn into their gravitational pull, it heats up and emits energy. Sometimes, that results in incredibly bright jets of gamma radiation shooting out of each end of the black hole. If the jet is pointed in our direction, it’s what scientists call a blazar. There are hundreds of blazars out there, and the Fermi telescope is ready to catch ‘em all. Specifically, the telescope keeps watch for interactions that gamma rays make with another, much weaker glow, known as extragalactic background light or EBL. That’s an ancient cosmic fog that formed from the first starlight in the universe — and has since absorbed other light here and there from newer stars throughout the universe’s history.
When gamma rays meet the fog of the EBL, their high-energy photons shatter into pairs of electrons and positrons. That dims the gamma-ray jet slightly in a way that Fermi can measure. That measurement lets scientists track changes in the fog's composition, which helps them estimate the amount of light produced in a particular period of the universe's history.
So, what did they find? The number of photons emitted in the history of the universe is 4 times 10 to the 84. That's a 4 with 84 zeroes. To put that in perspective, the number of photons our sun emits every year is only 3 times 10 to the 52, or a 3 with 52 zeroes. Not even close.
The stars in our universe have emitted a lot of light, but we won’t get to see it all. The universe is so large that some of the light hasn’t even reached us yet. And with our universe constantly expanding, some of it never will.
CODY: Today’s episode is sponsored by KiwiCo.
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CODY: Do you remember that scene in Jurassic Park when the bad guy Dennis Nedry is trying to escape from the island?
ASHLEY: [under your breath] ...Newman.
CODY: Right. And he gets stuck in a rain storm and finds a dinosaur that starts out looking really cute, but then becomes absolutely not cute in any way?
ASHLEY: [talk about how it spat venom in his eyes and had a frilly collar]
CODY: Yeap, that’s the one. It was loosely based on a real dinosaur called Dilophosaurus [die-LOAF-o-SOR-us]. In fact, it’s known as the most fictionalized of all of Jurassic Park’s dinosaurs: paleontologists at the time already knew that it didn’t spit venom, it didn’t have that frilly collar, and it was a lot bigger than the cute movie version. But don’t worry — this isn’t one of these “I’m gonna ruin your childhood” type stories. Because recently, paleontologists learned a lot more about the species, and it turns out the real thing actually makes the movie version look wimpy.
Dilophosaurus is pretty famous as dinosaurs go, but researchers didn’t know anything about it until recently. The first paper on the species came out in 1954, but the authors didn’t explain which parts of the fossil reconstruction they described were real fossil and which parts were, you know, the plaster they used to put the pieces together and make it look like a real dinosaur. Paleontology has come a long way.
This new research was based on an analysis of the five best-preserved fossils scientists have today. They were found in Arizona and belong to the Navajo Nation.
Here’s what you need to know about the real dilophosaurus. It lived about 183 million years ago, and it was big. Really big. Researchers think it reached up to 20 feet or 6 meters in length, which would make it the biggest land animal of its time. Instead of a frilly collar, it had two crests on the top of its head. And at first glance, it probably looked more like a bird than a lizard.
It actually had a lot in common with today’s birds. Some biologists call the kind of prehistoric dinosaurs we’re talking about “non-avian dinosaurs” because they’re so closely related to the birds, or avians, we have around today.
For instance, some of dilophosaurus’ bones are filled with air pockets, just like the bones of modern-day birds. The air pockets help protect and even strengthen the skeleton, and the air sacs inside them help to make them lighter. That helps birds fly and it probably helped a lot of large dinosaurs move around despite having such chunky bods. Dilophosaurus had an intricate system of air pockets and passageways around its nasal cavity and those crests on top of its head. They might’ve been used to inflate stretchy patches of skin during mating rituals or to send thunderous calls across the Jurassic landscape.
So, move aside, frilly venom-spitter. The real Dilophosaurus was bigger and badder than you’ll ever be.
Let’s recap the main things we learned today
[ad lib optional]
CODY: Today’s stories were written by Kelsey Donk, Ashley Hamer, and Grant Currin, and edited by Ashley Hamer, who’s the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY: Scriptwriting was by Cody Gough and Sonja Hodgen. Curiosity Daily is produced and edited by Cody Gough.
CODY: Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!