Learn about why you’re bad at choosing good pictures of yourself; how scientists could use gravitational wave detectors to detect dark matter particles; and, a questionnaire to help you figure out how left- or right-handed you are. Please support our sponsors! Get two months of unlimited access to over 25,000 classes on Skillshare — for free. To sign up, go to skillshare.com/curiosity 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: You're Bad at Choosing Good Pictures of Yourself — But Strangers Aren't — https://curiosity.im/2LvabeR Here's How Gravitational Wave Detectors Might Be Able to Detect Dark Matter Particles — https://curiosity.im/2LvvEVe Measure Your Right- or Left-Handedness with the Edinburgh Handedness Scale — https://curiosity.im/2LDoq1h Download the FREE 5-star Curiosity app for Android and iOS at https://curiosity.im/podcast-app. And Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing — just click “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Learn about why you’re bad at choosing good pictures of yourself; how scientists could use gravitational wave detectors to detect dark matter particles; and, a questionnaire to help you figure out how left- or right-handed you are.
Please support our sponsors! Get two months of unlimited access to over 25,000 classes on Skillshare — for free. To sign up, go to skillshare.com/curiosity
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:
Download the FREE 5-star Curiosity app for Android and iOS at https://curiosity.im/podcast-app. And Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing — just click “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/how-to-pick-a-profile-photo-handedness-and-gravitational-wave-detectors-seeking-dark-matter
CODY: Hi! We’re here from curiosity-dot-com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about why you’re bad at choosing good pictures of yourself; how scientists could repurpose existing technology to detect dark matter particles; and, a questionnaire to help you figure out how left- or right-handed you are.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
You're Bad at Choosing Good Pictures of Yourself — But Strangers Aren't — https://curiosity.im/2LvabeR (Ashley)
Listen up if you want to look good on social media or a dating app: according to research, you’re bad at choosing photos of yourself. If you think you’re the best person to pick a flattering image of yourself for your social media accounts, then a 2017 study says you should think again. Fortunately, researchers have a solution for your picture-picking problems. But first: why is it you are so bad at choosing good pictures of yourself?
For the study published in Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, researchers rounded up 102 students and collected a dozen pictures from each of their Facebook accounts. The students then rated each of their own pictures on a scale from 1 to 10 in categories like attractiveness and confidence. Then, 160 strangers rated the same pictures in the same categories. The rankings did not match. The pictures that the students thought were the best ones of themselves actually ranked less favorably among strangers, and vice versa. Which means that if you want to pick the best picture of yourself, then you should ask a stranger to do it.
Believe it or not, several dating sites have already figured this out. In 2016, the dating app Tinder started using an algorithm to choose users' profile pictures for them, based on which ones got the most right-swipes.
So why are we so bad at choosing the best ones? Researchers have a few theories.
For one, they say, what we know about ourselves creates a bias when interpreting our own facial expressions. For example, if you know you're trustworthy, you’ll automatically see a trustworthy person in your photo.
This mismatch could also be due to something called the better-than-average effect, or the way you tend to rate yourself more positively than other people. And your preconceptions of yourself make it hard to differentiate the quality of one photo over the other. To you, it's 12 different photos of the same person. To strangers, 12 pictures tell 12 different stories.
Whatever the reason, seems if you want the most flattering photo of yourself, you’ll need to enlist the help of some strangers.
Here's How Gravitational Wave Detectors Might Be Able to Detect Dark Matter Particles — https://curiosity.im/2LvvEVe (Republish) (Cody)
We might be able to crack the mystery of dark matter using technology we used to detect of gravitational waves in 2016. Kinda hard to believe, considering my 3-year-old laptop barely even turns on. But as reported by Universe Today, a team of Japanese researchers say in a new study that we could use laser interferometers to look for a major candidate particle in the hunt for dark matter: WIMPs. WIMP, W-I-M-P, is an acronym for weakly interacting massive particles. Those are theoretical elementary particles that interact with normal matter (baryonic) only through weak interaction. Along with elementary particles that are actually part of the Standard Model, they would have been created during the early universe when the cosmos was extremely hot. WIMPs are basically the microscopic candidate particle, as opposed to the other major candidate, the much larger Massive Compact Halo Objects.
In order to find WIMPs, the research team propose a new search method that takes advantage of recent advances in gravitational wave detection. Using the same method we use to find ripples in spacetime, they argue that WIMPs could also be detected for the first time.
This would constitute a "direct detection" approach using laser interferometers, which is a method that has been proposed in the past. The method hasn’t been tested, though, partly because so far, scientists haven’t calculated what kinds of signals will actually be caused by direct interactions between WIMPs and the nucleons in a laser interferometer's mirror.
But! The research team argues that the motions of a pendulum and mirror in a Gravitational Wave detector will become excited due to a collision. The research team analyzed these motions and estimated how detectable they would be to a system of highly sophisticated sensors, like those used by LIGO and other Graitational Wave detectors.
And from this, the team was able to provide a framework which could come in handy for future research, when next-generation detectors have better sensitivity than current-generation ones. If scientists can figure out how to extract the dark matter signals on a Gravitational Wave detector, this study could help them reveal the structure of the universe — not just the way it is now, but also in the past and future. What a time to be alive!
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ASHLEY: Today’s episode is sponsored by Skillshare, an online learning community for creators.
CODY: Skillshare offers more than 25,000 classes in design, business, and more, to help YOU find new ways to fuel your curiosity, creativity, and career. You can take classes in everything from photography and creative writing to design, productivity and more! And ALL of Skillshare’s classes are taught by real experts in their field or public motivational speakers. I’m taking a class right now from a communication designer who’s been running her own studio for more than 6 years, to learn a little about the ins and outs of freelancing for creatives. Her class on contract writing for freelancers has almost 2-thousand students!
ASHLEY: You can join the millions of students already learning on Skillshare today with a special offer just for Curiosity Daily listeners: Get two months of Skillshare for free. Seriously! Skillshare is offering Curiosity Daily listeners two months of unlimited access to over 25,000 classes for free. To sign up, go to Skillshare dot com slash CURIOSITY.
CODY: Again, go to Skillshare dot com slash CURIOSITY to start your two months now. One more time, that’s Skillshare dot com slash CURIOSITY.
Measure Your Right- or Left-Handedness with the Edinburgh Handedness Scale — https://curiosity.im/2LDoq1h (Ashley)
(Ashley: http://www.brainmapping.org/shared/Edinburgh.php#)
Are you right- or left-handed? It turns out that regardless of your answer, your dominant hand could be more or less dominant than someone else's. And you can find out just how right- or left-handed you are with a quiz we’ll link to in today’s show notes. But first: why are some people left-handed in the first place? The short answer is that scientists aren’t totally sure, but it’s probably genetic. In 2007, scientists identified a gene that most lefties seem to have, called LRRTM1. And in 2013, a group of researchers published a paper that proposes a whole network of genes that seems to relate to handedness. That suggests that handedness is more than a "dominant" or "recessive" trait as you might have learned in high school biology. Instead, it's probably related to lots of genes, which makes the genetic causes much more complicated. This might also be why handedness is more of a spectrum, and less of a left-right dichotomy. And more and more, scientists think handedness has to do with brain symmetry. 95 percent of right-handed people have brains that localize tasks to one side or another — for example, skills like language ability keep to the left hemisphere for most righties. But in left-handed folks, those tasks aren't as clearly divided. Only around 20 percent of lefties split tasks along hemispheric lines. There are some advantages to having a clearly divided brain, since splitting tasks is more efficient and could allow for more clear thinking. But when both sides work on tasks together, that may lead to greater creativity: just ask Albert Einstein — studies of his brain found that it didn’t localize tasks all that much. Some studies have even shown that lefties have more developed right brains, they’re better at spatial reasoning, and they can even have strengths in math, architecture, and leadership. Anyway, the point is that your hand dominance is probably not as simple as you think. And that’s why you can take a questionnaire called the Edinburgh Handedness Scale that scientists use to measure people's laterality — basically, how right- or left-handed they are. Lots of people fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum; like, you could use your right hand with scissors, and your left hand for throwing. And that could have to do with genetics or with how scissors are made. So give yourself a hand! If you’re curious, then you can find a link to the Edinburgh Handedness Scale in our full write-up on this, on curiosity-dot-com.
http://www.brainmapping.org/shared/Edinburgh.php#
CODY RESULT:
The laterality index for this respondent is: 80.00
The respondent is in the 5th right decile
The augmented (15 item) index is: 63.33
CODY: And now, let’s recap what we learned today. Today we learned that you’re bad at choosing pictures of yourself, partly because you see a bunch of photos of the same person. Instead, ask a stranger!
ASHLEY: We also learned that scientists might be able to use laser interferometers to find weakly interacting massive particles. And those could help us learn about dark matter, which is one of the universe’s greatest mysteries!
CODY: And that handedness is probably due to genetics, but it’s more of a spectrum than an either/or type situation.
[ad lib optional]
CODY: Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Stay curious!