Learn about whether summer will help or hurt the coronavirus pandemic; why so many Mars missions like Mars 2020 are launching this summer; and how you might inspire yourself to exercise more by copying your friends.
Learn about whether summer will help or hurt the coronavirus pandemic; why so many Mars missions like Mars 2020 are launching this summer; and how you might inspire yourself to exercise more by copying your friends.
Will summer help or hurt the COVID-19 pandemic? by Andrea Michelson
Why so many Mars missions are launching this summer by Cameron Duke
Copying your friends' workout strategies may help you exercise more by Steffie Drucker
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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/how-summer-affects-covid-19-why-so-many-mars-missions-are-launching-in-july-and-exercise-more-by-copying-your-friends
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 whether summer will help or hurt the coronavirus pandemic; why so many Mars missions are launching this summer; and how you might inspire yourself to exercise more by copying your friends.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
As summer arrives in the Northern Hemisphere, you might be wondering if the heat will have any effect on the spread of COVID-19. We know some viruses, like the common cold and the seasonal flu, typically thrive in colder weather and die out when it gets warm. But until recently, we didn’t really know how the novel coronavirus would respond to the heat. An international team of researchers based at McMaster University decided to investigate this question — and the answer may be bad news for beachgoers.
For their study, the team turned to data from the early stages of the pandemic in Spain. They gathered information about the weather and the spread of disease from the 30 days before Spain declared a state of emergency, from mid-March to April. Then, they analyzed the relationship between temperature, humidity, sunlight, and new cases of COVID-19.
Their findings show a tricky dual relationship between summer weather and coronavirus transmission. On one hand, they found that high heat and humidity were associated with decreased viral spread. For every percentage increase in heat and humidity, they saw a three percent decrease in new cases of COVID-19.
But while the virus might not like summer weather, we humans love it — and that’s making it especially easy for the virus to spread on sunny days. The researchers found coronavirus transmission was greater on days with more hours of sunshine, possibly because people are more likely to go outside and mingle on a nice day.
Interestingly, the sunshine effect didn’t apply to areas with lots of older adults or generally dense populations. Rates of transmission actually dropped for these groups in warmer, sunnier weather, which suggests they might be staying inside because they know they are at a higher risk of contracting the virus.
So, the arrival of summer doesn’t mean we can stop social distancing anytime soon. While high heat and humidity might reduce the spread of the coronavirus on its own, our behavior has the potential to offset that effect and lead to even more transmission. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t enjoy the warm weather this summer — just make sure you do it safely.
This month, NASA is launching the Mars 2020 mission, which will put the Perseverance Rover on Mars. That’s cool enough by itself, but get this: it’s just one of three missions to Mars that are scheduled to leave Earth in July. The other two include China’s Tianwen-1 mission and the United Arab Emirates Mars Mission. Trips to Mars are usually pretty rare, so it might seem a little weird that three different Mars missions are leaving at around the same time. But there’s a pretty good reason for this multitude of Mars missions.
For missions to Mars, this July is what you call a launch window. That means Mars will be in a position relative to Earth that will make it really easy to get to — at least, as far as space travel is concerned. What it doesn’t mean is that Mars will be particularly close to Earth. Actually, that would be a bad time to launch your spaceship. You’d use a ton of energy trying to get where you need to go.
That’s because, in space, everything is moving all the time. Earth moves, Mars moves, heck, even the sun is cruising through the void at a mind-blistering pace. Launching a rocket to another planet is like shooting a moving target: it’s less about aiming for where the target is now than it is about where it’ll be later.
Of course, in this case, the shooter is moving too. Anything we launch will get a little extra oomph in the direction our planet is moving. Plus, there’s the whole issue of gravity. If we launch an object from Earth, it will try to fall toward the sun. Without any other massive bodies in its way, it would keep on traveling toward the sun and around the other side in an elliptical orbit. The key is to catch Mars on the other end of that ellipse so that the object is captured in Mars’s gravity instead.
Because engineers know how long Earth and Mars take to orbit the sun and how long that imaginary ellipse is, they know exactly where Mars needs to be in relation to Earth on launch day. That location is about 44 degrees ahead of Earth. Which just so happens to be where Mars will be when these missions launch. So yeah, they won’t be aiming for Mars; they’ll be aiming for an empty bit of space on the other side of the sun. Basically, they toss the ship into space and Mars moves around to catch it.
These Earth to Mars launch windows only happen once every 26 months. Let’s not be late!
If you want to start an exercise routine, there are virtually infinite resources at your disposal. You can buy a book, take a class, download an app, join a club, hire a coach, order that expensive equipment you saw on an infomercial! I mean, seriously, what’s stopping you? The answer, according to a new study, might be that none of that stuff is personal to you. The best approach might be to copy a friend.
The University of Pennsylvania researchers behind this study call this kind of copycat approach a “copy-paste prompt.” To study its effectiveness, they recruited about 1,200 people who said they wanted to exercise more. After asking them how many hours they’d spent exercising the week prior, the team divided the participants into three groups: The “copy-paste” group was told to find out how their friends motivated themselves to exercise. A week later, they were asked to choose one tip from their friends to follow.
The second group was randomly assigned to one of 358 exercise strategies that previous survey respondents had given — things like “For every hour that you exercise, allow yourself 15 minutes on social media.” They were similar to tips from a friend except that they, well, didn’t come from a friend.
The third group was the control. They were just asked about their plans to exercise over the following weeks.
A week later, everyone checked in again. Those who copied their friends’ fitness strategies exercised for nearly an hour longer than the control group and a half-hour longer than the random-tip group. The copycats also reported greater motivation to stick to their new workout routines than the control group.
So why were these copy-paste prompts so effective? According to the researchers, the time participants spent finding a strategy that worked for them made them feel more committed to it. It also got them to socialize with people who exercise regularly, so they got some positive influence from their peers.
This study did have some limitations — it was a short-term experiment and didn’t look at motivation over the long term, and it also trusted people to truthfully report how long they spent exercising. But if you’ve been admiring an acquaintance’s fitness posts from afar, it might not hurt to ask them for pointers! It could give you the motivation you need to exercise more.
CODY: Let’s recap what we learned today. Starting with the fact that
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CODY: Today’s stories were written by Andrea Michelson, Cameron Duke, and Steffie Drucker, and edited by Ashley Hamer, who’s the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY: Today’s episode was 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!