Today you’ll learn about how a bolt of lightning created a brand new, never before seen material, how researchers can tell how stressed you are by listening to you type on your keyboard, and a new study that suggests elephants are more like humans than we ever thought.
Today you’ll learn about how a bolt of lightning created a brand new, never before seen material, how researchers can tell how stressed you are by listening to you type on your keyboard, and a new study that suggests elephants are more like humans than we ever thought.
Find episode transcripts here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/lightning-material-typing-stress-domesticated-elephants
Lightning Material
Typing Stress
Domesticated Elephants
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[SFX: INTRO MUSIC/WHOOSH]
NATE: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Discovery. Time flies when you’re learnin’ super cool stuff. I’m Nate.
CALLI: And I’m Calli. If you’re dropping in for the first time, welcome to Curiosity, where we aim to blow your mind by helping you to grow your mind. If you’re a loyal listener, welcome back!
NATE: Today, you’ll learn about how a bolt of lightning created a brand new, never before seen material, about how researchers can tell how stressed you are by listening to you type on your keyboard, and a new study that suggests elephants are more like humans than we ever thought.
CALLI: Without further ado, let’s satisfy some curiosity!
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Did you know that a bolt of lightning shoots through the atmosphere around 30,000 times faster than a bullet, and can top out at 54,000 degrees Fahrenheit? That’s about five times the temperature of the surface of the sun.
CALLI: Okay, I knew it was hot and fast, but that is REALLY hot and REALLY fast.
NATE: Right? Well, a team of geoscientists at the University of South Florida have discovered what they think is an entirely new material that was formed from a lightning strike.
CALLI: Wow. It’s the Frankenstein of earth science!
NATE: Exactly! So before I tell you about the new material - which they actually think is a brand new mineral - let’s talk a little bit about lightning strikes.
CALLI: I mean, what I know from it, is that it never strikes the same place twice, right?
NATE: Fun fact: it actually can - and does strike the same spot twice all the time, especially a lightning rod. By some estimates, lightning strikes around the globe 100 times every single second. Lightning happens when there’s an imbalance in the atmosphere between a cloud and the ground - or just between one cloud or another. In fact, most lightning strikes stay in the clouds. And while they happen in the blink of an eye, they are massively powerful. A single bolt can contain a billion volts of electricity.
CALLI: That’s a lot of volts.
NATE: And it happens insanely fast, which is why studying the effects of lightning strikes is so enticing for scientists.
CALLI: I would guess that things get a little weird when the heat and energy is so intense, but also so quick.
NATE: Exactly. High energy events like these can cause all kinds of weird chemical reactions. Geoscientist Matthew Pasek has spent his career studying these reactions, but recently he stumbled into a breakthrough.
CALLI: So…lightning struck?
NATE: You could say that. When lightning strikes a tree, it causes what’s called a “lightning scar.” The ground around the tree sort of explodes. The grass dies and electricity shoots through the soil, rocks, and sand outward from the trunk, forming these little rocks called fulgurites made up of that material in the ground.
CALLI: Wow. Okay so like…lightning rocks?
NATE: Totally. They’re like fossilized lightning.
CALLI: Can you use them to evolve a Pikachu? Sorry, anyways, keep going.
NATE: It turns out that Florida is the lightning capital of the world - with somewhere between 70 and 100 thunderstorms per year. So when a homeowner down there found a lightning scar around a tree on their property, they also found a pretty impressive looking fulgurite. And thinking it might be worth some dough, they sold it.
CALLI: Let me guess. The geoscientist bought it.
NATE: Dr. Pasek bought it and teamed up with Dr. Luca Bindi, a professor of mineralogy and crystallography at the University of Florence in Italy to figure out exactly what was going on in this lightning fossil. They found a material that no one on Earth had ever seen before.
CALLI: So…what was it?
NATE: Interestingly, it’s a colorful, crystal-like material that looks a lot like minerals we might usually find in meteorites.
CALLI: Ooh, space rocks?
NATE: Yep. It’s not the same, but it is similar. In a wet environment like Florida, iron can accumulate around the tree roots. When lightning struck the tree, it superheated the iron and the carbon in the tree, which caused the chemical reaction that created this new material. If it had been heated longer, they think it would have created the material we find in meteorites.
CALLI: So this was a pretty lucky strike?
NATE: The conditions needed to create this new material are incredibly precise, which is why they think it’s pretty rare. But here’s the kicker: they think high energy events like lightning strikes and the chemical reactions they cause could have been a key part of the development of life on Earth.
CALLI: It’s alive!
NATE: Keeps going back to Frankenstein, right? Pasek and Bindi and their team are continuing their research and hope to figure out if this new material can be officially declared a mineral.
CALLI: Does that mean there could be a lot of new minerals out there?
NATE: Absolutely. If you find yourself at the foot of a tree that’s been hit by lightning, be sure to look for fulgurites. You might just be the first person in the universe to ever touch a new mineral.
CALLI: But maybe wait until the storm passes before you go out there, ok?
NATE: Good thinking.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
CALLI: Nate, let’s say you are asked to observe two workers in an office and decide which one is more stressed out. What would you look for?
NATE: I’d look for the one hiding under her desk muttering affirmations to herself.
CALLI: So me four years ago? That would definitely be a sign. But what if it wasn’t so obvious?
NATE: Hmm. Maybe you could measure heart rate and other biometrics?
CALLI: That’s definitely one way to do it. But what if I told you there’s an even more accurate way to predict how stressed out someone is in the workplace, and it has everything to do with their computer?
NATE: Are they throwing the computer across the room?
CALLI: I mean that would be a sign but not quite. Researchers in Zurich have found that people who are stressed out type and scroll their mouses differently than those who are calm and relaxed, and this could be a big deal.
NATE: Okay. All jokes aside, I’m guessing that someone who is experiencing stress types…harder? More kinetically?
CALLI: Sort of. Let me explain how they set up the experiment, and then we can talk about what they actually found. Researchers wanted to simulate office stress as accurately as possible, so they gave all 90 participants tasks to accomplish - like planning appointments or recording and analyzing data. Some of them were left alone to just…work. But others had special tasks - like they had to sit in on a job interview. And still others were dinged with chat messages in the middle of trying to concentrate.
NATE: I feel stressed out just thinking about all that.
CALLI: Me, too. Participants’ heart rates were recorded…
NATE: …biometrics… like I said.
CALLI: …and they also recorded participants’ behavior on their keyboards and mouses, and regularly checked in with them about their stress level. They were surprised to find that there was no significant difference in the heart rates of those who reported being stressed out and those who weren’t. But there was a big difference in the way they typed and scrolled. Those who felt elevated stress made more typing mistakes and typed in fits and starts. They scrolled with their mouse more erratically and with less precision.
NATE: That makes sense. But there must be some kind of explanation for making more typos when you’re stressed?
CALLI: Yep. They call it neuromotor noise theory. It basically means that stress hurts our ability to process information and affects our motor skills. Those workers with regular levels of stress typed more smoothly with fewer errors, and scrolled more precisely.
NATE: Okay, so what do we do with this information?
CALLI: Good question. Here’s the thing: stress on the job is a massive problem. By some estimates, workplace stress has been reported to cause up to 120,000 deaths in the United States every year. As many as 83% of workers here in the U.S. suffer from work-related stress, and over 50% of those who suffer say it affects their home lives. So while this study didn’t look at what causes the stress, if we can tell who is at risk, they can get help before bigger problems arise.
NATE: I imagine there could be an app that analyzes your typing, or something like that?
CALLI: You’re one step ahead of me. The research team has developed an app that records the mouse and keyboard behavior of volunteers and regularly asks employees about their stress levels. Of course, before this kind of app is rolled out to the public, there are privacy issues to deal with. But this is a great first step in beginning to solve the problem of workplace stress.
NATE: So here’s a question: what if I’m just bad at typing?
CALLI: Then maybe stick to podcasting.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Elephants…are…incredible.
CALLI: Yeah, I mean that’s not exactly breaking news, is it?
NATE: Yeah, they’re pretty great. And I’m glad we’re doing a story about them because frankly every story that isn’t about elephants is… irrelephant. Elephants are the largest land animal on Earth. They are incredibly social creatures that console each other in difficult times. It’s been shown they actually mourn their dead - and can even recognize the bones of those elephants they’ve lost. And get this: they recognize themselves in a mirror, which could mean they’re actually self-aware. But a new study suggests that elephants actually self-domesticated, which is something not many other animals on the planet have done, and we’re one of them.
CALLI: Self-domesticated? What does that mean, exactly?
NATE: I was hoping you’d ask that. To understand how big a deal this is, we should talk about what it means to be domesticated.
CALLI: Like dogs, I’ve heard the theory that cats self-domesticated…
NATE: …cattle, sheep, horses - many animals are considered domesticated. These animals tend to be more tame than wild animals. They have cuter faces…
CALLI: …cuteness is a sign of domestication?
NATE: It sure is. Think about the wolf and the dog. Dogs were domesticated sometime between 10,000 and 33,000 years ago, probably to help humans hunt. Over that period, they lost much of their aggression, they became more attuned with their human partners, and they even became more omnivorous like the humans they hung out with. And they became more puppy-like throughout their entire lives.
CALLI: Soo… cuter.
NATE: Cuter. But the thing is, dogs were domesticated alongside humans. Humans played a role in the domestication of almost all animals. So…who domesticated humans?
CALLI: Aliens. But really, I assume we’re self-domesticated?
NATE: Bingo. Scientists think that early modern humans found more success in cooperation, especially once the labor intensive practice of agriculture came around about 10,000 years ago. So we became less aggressive. Our childhoods became longer. Our communication became more complex.
CALLI: And we got cuter?
NATE: Well…I did for sure. Can’t speak for everyone.
CALLI: Well, I can speak for myself too so, you know.
NATE: We are very domesticated.
CALLI: We are so domesticated.
NATE: But here’s the thing, it’s possible that bonobos also self-domesticated, and according to this study, so are elephants.
CALLI: So how did they figure this out?
NATE: Dr. Limor Raviv, an evolutionary linguist at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands gathered a team to look for evidence of other animals that domesticated with limited contact with humans. Other than bonobos, elephants were the only ones they found that fit the bill. They exhibit low aggression. They rarely engage in violence among their groups. They show something they call ‘increased prosociality,’ which basically just means that they love to comfort each other and protect each other in hard times.
CALLI: Sounds like we could all learn a thing or two from elephants.
NATE: That’s very possible, yes. All in all, they found 19 traits that were common to humans, bonobos, and elephants, but not to other species. These were all cognitive, behavioral, and physiological signs of self-domestication. But Raviv and his team wanted to look more closely, so they dug into the elephant’s genome.
CALLI: Can you tell if an animal is domestic from its genome?
NATE: Scientists have found over 760 genes that seem to be significant in domestication. This study looked at hundreds of genes in the elephant's genome that appeared to be rapidly evolving and found that many of them are genes associated with domestication.
CALLI: All of this seems pretty compelling. But can scientists be certain that elephants self-domesticated?
NATE: Certainty is a pretty rare thing in studies like this. In fact, some researchers don’t even believe that self-domestication is a real thing. They argue that you need a domesticator and a domesticate in this equation. In the case of elephants, they might say that they are so massive that they don’t really have any predators to worry about, so they can forgo their aggression and just relax a little bit. But that doesn’t mean they are domesticated.
CALLI: But it would be a big deal if they actually were.
NATE: Yeah, huge. But despite the really enticing and convincing evidence, researchers say they are still a long way from proving that elephants are a part of this exclusive club.
CALLI: Listen, elephants can be a part of my exclusive club any day.
NATE: You’re gonna need a large clubhouse.
CALLI: Whatever, I want an elephant.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up. A geoscientist in Florida purchased a piece of fossilized lightning called a fulgurite, and with a team of researchers discovered a brand new material locked inside. The material - which could be a new element - is a lot like elements found in meteorites, and was created when lightning caused a chemical reaction between iron on tree roots and carbon inside the tree.
CALLI: A study in Zurich, Switzerland found that observing someone use a keyboard and a mouse at work can more accurately predict their stress level than monitoring their heart rate. Stress causes problems with motor skills, which causes stressed out workers to make more typing mistakes and scroll with their mouse more erratically. Watching a worker typing can be an important tool for detecting early signs of distress.
NATE: Researchers have identified 19 traits in elephants that suggest they domesticated themselves. Humans and bonobos are the only other animals believed to have done so, and what’s more, a study of elephant’s genome shows that many of its genes that are rapidly evolving are also key to domestication. Not all scientists agree, but elephants’ lack of aggression and unique social lives make a compelling case.