Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories to help you learn something new in just a few minutes: This Is the Story of the Most Famous Space Image Ever Selfies Really Do Make Your Nose Look Big Lactic Acid Is Not What Causes Sore Muscles Videos from Curiosity.com: Why Is it So Hard to Look Good in Photos? Facebook Video Why Is It So Hard To Start Working Out? Facebook Video
Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories to help you learn something new in just a few minutes:
Videos from Curiosity.com:
Full episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/hubble-telescope-history-selfie-science-and-exercise-myths
[MUSIC PLAYING] CODY GOUGH: Hi, I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. We're from curiosity.com. And we've got three stories to help you get smarter in just a few minutes.
CODY GOUGH: Today, we'll talk about the most famous image in astronomy, the science of selfies, and do some myth-busting around exercise and what makes your muscles feel sore.
ASHLEY HAMER: Let's satisfy some curiosity. Cody, do you know what today is?
CODY GOUGH: It is Tuesday.
ASHLEY HAMER: It's the anniversary of the Hubble Telescope going into space.
CODY GOUGH: So tell me about the Hubble telescope because everybody's heard of it, but I don't understand the significance.
ASHLEY HAMER: It's got such a story. So it was the first space-based telescope that we ever had. And on April 24, 1990, the space shuttle Discovery launched it into space. And it had a problem.
CODY GOUGH: What kind of problem?
ASHLEY HAMER: This is really what made it very famous at the time. This $1.5 billion piece of equipment, the first images it sent down to Earth were blurry because its primary mirror had a tiny, tiny little imperfection. And so everything was blurry.
And people were making fun of NASA so much during this time. There are all these late night comics. And even-- I don't know if you've watched The Naked Gun movies-- but they make a joke about Hubble there. And NASA was kind of a laughing stock. So in 1993, they sent up a fix, which is basically just giving it a pair of glasses that could make it see sharper images. And it was fixed. But it was really expensive to do.
So at that time, when NASA was a total laughing stock, the Director of Hubble Science Institute, Robert Williams, asked if he could point the telescope at an empty patch of sky for 100 hours. Now usually, people wanted to point the telescope at an object, obviously, maybe for a few hours. And so it was kind of a ridiculous request.
CODY GOUGH: What kind of objects was it being pointed at?
ASHLEY HAMER: Galaxies, planets, things like that. But Robert Williams wanted to point it at empty sky because he wanted to see what Hubble could do. And so he wanted to take a deep field image is what it's called where you can see really, really, really far galaxies. He combined many different exposures together. But the sum total of time was 100 hours.
CODY GOUGH: So more than four days?
ASHLEY HAMER: Yes. It took him a week to do this whole thing, but the total was over four days. And nobody thought that Hubble was powerful enough to see these distant galaxies.
CODY GOUGH: Including his colleagues?
ASHLEY HAMER: Including his colleagues. Nobody really thought this was going to happen. But he wanted to see what it could do. And luckily, he did. And thanks to all that exposure time, Hubble captured thousands of galaxies, some as far as 12 billion light years away-- the furthest that we had ever seen.
CODY GOUGH: 12 billion light years away?
ASHLEY HAMER: Yes. For scale, our universe is only about 14 billion years old, which means we were seeing things from the beginning of the universe. So this image that they created, you'll have to go on curiosity.com to really check it out. But it kind of looks like if you put sand under a microscope. There are all these little different, just specks all over the black sky in different colors. It's so cool. I know some friends who have it as a poster. And you can get it as a desktop background. It's so famous. It's great.
CODY GOUGH: It's called the Hubble Deep Field image?
ASHLEY HAMER: It is.
CODY GOUGH: And you can read more about its impact and see what it looks like on curiosity.com. It's so famous because it helped astronomers. Right?
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah because, when you can see an ancient galaxy, you can figure out things about that galaxy, which tells you things about the early universe. And that opens up our knowledge of the universe that we live in.
CODY GOUGH: Well, I've got something that involves photography, but it's a bit of a smaller scale. Have you ever taken a selfie and felt like your face looks a little off, like maybe your nose is too big?
ASHLEY HAMER: Always.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. So Curiosity researched why this happens. And science says that selfies make you think your nose is way bigger than it really is.
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh my God, that explains everything.
[LAUGHING]
CODY GOUGH: In fact, researchers developed The Rutgers-Stanford model to show patients how much their nose becomes distorted in close-up photos.
ASHLEY HAMER: Wait. Why?
CODY GOUGH: So it actually is a scientific reason. A plastic surgeon was seeing a spike in millennials wanting nose jobs. People are sensitive about how they look. So The Rutgers-Stanford model showed that compared to photos that are taken from about 5 feet away, selfies, which were an average of 1 foot away from you, make your nasal based look 30% wider and your nasal tip looks 7% wider.
ASHLEY HAMER: Wow.
CODY GOUGH: It's a mathematical model. Fortunately, research has developed three ingredients for taking better selfies. Step one is don't shoot from a close distance. Try a selfie stick, or I don't know, a novel idea, asking someone to take a photo of you.
ASHLEY HAMER: No. Never.
CODY GOUGH: Number two is check your lighting. This is why phone cases with LED lights are popular. You actually look a lot better if your face is lit. And number three is stick to the center. Your camera actually distorts the edge of the shot to get more in the frame. So if you're front and center in the picture, it'll actually look better than being off the side.
ASHLEY HAMER: That makes sense.
CODY GOUGH: We also have a video on how to take a better picture and why you look distorted in pictures on our Facebook Watch series. So visit facebook.com/curiosity.com, and you can find it there. It's also on YouTube. So just search for Curiosity on YouTube, and we've got a whole video of me demonstrating some of the merits and pitfalls of cameras.
ASHLEY HAMER: It's a great video. So you know how you feel sore a day or two after an intense workout?
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. That's because of lactic acid, right?
ASHLEY HAMER: That's what a lot of people think. Curiosity researched this idea. And we found out this is actually a myth that goes all the way back to the 1920s. But since around the 1970s, we've known that lactic acid is just an energy source for your muscles. And it has nothing to do with exercised-induced delayed onset muscle soreness, basically being sore after workout. Fitness types call it DOMS. Did you know that?
CODY GOUGH: I did not know that. What does cause soreness, then?
ASHLEY HAMER: Most likely, your muscles just get sore because exercise causes microscopic tears in the muscle tissue. And that causes inflammation and a heightened sense of pain. This is why you don't get as sore once you're really into a routine. Your body adapts to make sure your muscles don't get as damaged next time.
CODY GOUGH: And this is theoretical? Science doesn't really have a conclusive answer to why you feel sore?
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. It's weird. That's our best theory, but we actually don't know.
CODY GOUGH: So you ran the Boston Marathon--
ASHLEY HAMER: I did.
- --recently. Congratulations, by the way.
ASHLEY HAMER: Thank you very much.
CODY GOUGH: What are some generally accepted workout tips to prevent soreness?
ASHLEY HAMER: Some really tried and true ways-- take a hot bath after your workout. Do a little bit of light cardio. They call that active recovery. If you, say, do a really hard workout on Sunday, maybe take a light jog on Monday, and you'll get your blood flowing. And that'll reduce some of your soreness.
And those two things are really the best way you can avoid it. Pretty much just doing the same exercise will keep you from getting as sore next time. Otherwise, there's no real way to avoid it.
CODY GOUGH: And there are also explanations for itchiness and a couple other physical traits of working out that you talked about in another Facebook Watch video that you can find on Facebook or on our YouTube channel.
ASHLEY HAMER: That's right. Side aches and cramps and that weird itchiness you get in your legs when you start a workout.
CODY GOUGH: We'll have links in the show notes to everything that we talked about today, including our articles on curiosity.com where you can read all about these stories and so much more.
ASHLEY HAMER: Join us again tomorrow for The Curiosity Digest, and learn something new in just a few minutes.
CODY GOUGH: And keep an eye on our podcast feed because today we had an episode come out with an interview with David DiSalvo about the shortcuts your brain takes.
ASHLEY HAMER: You'll learn all about your brain's biases, and it'll help you think better.
CODY GOUGH: It's a feature-length episode. But if you're looking for something more bite-size, we'll be back again tomorrow for The Curiosity Digest where you can learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY HAMER: I'm Ashley Hamer.
CODY GOUGH: And I'm Cody Gough. Stay curious.
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