Learn why scientists are worried about roommate drama in space and why your most important sense depends on the language you speak. Plus, Adler Planetarium’s Aubrey Henretty and Chris Bresky discuss The Aquarius Project, a teen-driven underwater ROV meteorite hunt led by experts from the Adler Planetarium, the Shedd Aquarium, The Field Museum, and NASA. Please support our sponsors! Visitmovaglobes.com/curiosity and use coupon code CURIOSITY for 15% off your purchase. 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: To Make Space Travel Successful, Scientists Will Have to Solve for Roommate Drama — https://curiosity.im/2Sh8LVS Your Most Important Sense Depends on the Language You Speak — https://curiosity.im/2Sl6Yzf More from The Aquarius Project and Adler Planetarium: The Aquarius Project Official Website — https://www.adlerplanetarium.org/education/far-horizons/the-aquarius-project/ The Aquarius Project Podcast — https://www.adlerplanetarium.org/education/far-horizons/aquarius-project-podcast/ Listen on SoundCloud — https://soundcloud.com/aquariusproject/ Listen on Apple Podcasts — https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/aquarius-project-podcast/id1398479980 Listen on Stitcher — https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/adler-planetarium/aquarius-project-podcast?refid=stpr Subscribe to The Aquarius Project Podcast Email Updates — https://www.adlerplanetarium.org/aquarius-project-podcast-email-subscription/ Adler Teen Programs Email Sign-Up — http://bit.ly/adleremailform Adler Planetarium on Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/adlerplanetarium @AdlerPlanet on Twitter — https://twitter.com/adlerplanet @AdlerPlanet on Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/adlerplanet/ If you love our show and you're interested in hearing full-length interviews, then please consider supporting us on Patreon. You'll get exclusive episodes and access to our archives as soon as you become a Patron! https://www.patreon.com/curiositydotcom Learn about these topics and more on Curiosity.com, and download our 5-star app for Android and iOS. Then, join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Plus: Amazon smart speaker users, enable our Alexa Flash Briefing to learn something new in just a few minutes every day!
Learn why scientists are worried about roommate drama in space and why your most important sense depends on the language you speak. Plus, Adler Planetarium’s Aubrey Henretty and Chris Bresky discuss The Aquarius Project, a teen-driven underwater ROV meteorite hunt led by experts from the Adler Planetarium, the Shedd Aquarium, The Field Museum, and NASA.
Please support our sponsors! Visit movaglobes.com/curiosity and use coupon code CURIOSITY for 15% off your purchase.
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:
More from The Aquarius Project and Adler Planetarium:
If you love our show and you're interested in hearing full-length interviews, then please consider supporting us on Patreon. You'll get exclusive episodes and access to our archives as soon as you become a Patron! https://www.patreon.com/curiositydotcom
Learn about these topics and more on Curiosity.com, and download our 5-star app for Android and iOS. Then, join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Plus: Amazon smart speaker users, enable our Alexa Flash Briefing to learn something new in just a few minutes every day!
Full episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/meteorite-hunting-with-the-aquarius-project-roommate-drama-in-space-and-language-based-on-senses
[MUSIC PLAYING] CODY GOUGH: Hi. We've got a jam-packed episode from curiosity.com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes. I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today you'll learn why scientists are worried about roommate drama in space and why your most important sense depends on the language you speak. You'll also hear from special guests from the Adler Planetarium who will tell us about a historic collaboration to find an underwater meteorite.
CODY GOUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity. Think about the worst roommate you've ever had. Now imagine living with that person when you're stuck together several million miles away from your home planet. This isn't just a hypothetical nightmare for you. Researchers are actually experimenting with this sort of thing to figure out how to make close quarter living a bit more, well, livable.
Recently, a team participated in a simulated long-duration space exploration mission. That's the thing that Ashley was talking about. And then nearly tore each other apart over a disappearing supply of Nutella. I'm serious. There was only so much Nutella to go around over the course of several months, and one member of the team was taking more than their fair share without admitting what they were doing. So yeah, this really is a thing scientists need to figure out.
That's why in 2015, a team of psychologists released a report detailing exactly what kinds of demands a team in space might have to deal with. According to the report, when you isolate a small group of people, team dynamics can break down even without an inciting incident or specific grievance. We have data on three missions that lasted more than six months. And guess what? They all broke down somewhere between the four and seven-month mark. Each time, the team became desynchronized and broke into two or three smaller subgroups.
ASHLEY HAMER: Also known as clicks.
CODY GOUGH: Right. That's bad because the trip to Mars takes about nine months, and the trip back could take even longer-- not to mention all the time you spend on the surface. Unfortunately, there's no perfect recipe for effective cooperation, but there are a few best practices for keeping a team in top shape.
A 2013 meta-analysis showed that a 15-minute debrief can mean the difference between a mediocre team and one that's destined for the stars. And the debriefs have to be done right. So if you want to know how to crush your next debrief, then take notes.
First, participants must be actively engaged instead of just passively listening. And everyone involved needs to understand that the goal is to improve the process, not to judge or punish anyone in particular. The debriefs also should focus on specific events whenever possible.
And finally, they should take in data from multiple information sources. It's not about learning how the team leader thought the exercise went. It's about hearing how the exercise went from all perspectives. If you can get a team that's all in for that sort of debrief, then you'll be on your way towards a Mars mission you can be proud of, even if you run out of Nutella.
ASHLEY HAMER: I guess the lesson here is if you want to have a good roommate situation, you just make sure you get a roommate that's cool with 15-minute house meetings every single day. That sounds like a bad roommate to me. [CHUCKLES]
CODY GOUGH: [CHUCKLES] Good thing we'll never be roommates, Ashley.
ASHLEY HAMER: A good thing. According to research, your most important sense depends on the language you speak. A new study from a team of international researchers set out to rate what's called the codability of various senses in different languages and cultures. Codability refers to how accurately a language reflects the world.
If every participant in the study used the same word to describe a particular sensory experience, like a shape, color, smell, or sound, then that word's codability score would be a 1. If every participant used a different word to describe that experience, the score would be zero. The higher the score, the more accurately the word conveys sensory information. Got it?
So this new project targeted 20 mostly unrelated languages from around the world, including a few nonverbal sign languages like ASL and BSL. The researchers tested these languages codability of smell, taste, touch, hearing, and two different facets of sight, shape and color. Can you guess what got the highest codability score in English? Well, here it is.
The highest score was color, followed by shape. But here's the interesting part. Only five other languages put either of those visual senses at the top. In fact, taste came out as the overwhelming winner, earning the high score in 11 of the 20 languages examined. Not only that, but only four languages featured a sense perception with a score above 0.75. And all four were taste.
In Lao, taste earned a 1, the highest possible score. Every single Lao-speaking participant used the exact same words to describe each and every taste perception. This is wild.
Another study from earlier this year suggested that codability isn't just about the language that you speak. That looked at different cultures speaking the same language, and some pretty stark differences stood out, even among close neighbors. The takeaway is that there's no universal hierarchy of the senses, despite what Aristotle once wrote. It only took us about 2,400 years of science to figure that out.
CODY GOUGH: Today's episode is sponsored by MOVA Globes, spelled M-O-V-A. They're globes that rotate by themselves.
ASHLEY HAMER: MOVA Globes rotate using a technology that's the first of its kind. No batteries, no cords, just rotating globes powered by ambient light.
CODY GOUGH: My wife and I are pretty big into maps, as in we have a world map on our bedroom wall that's 9-feet long and 6-feet tall. [CHUCKLES] We've shown it to probably every friend that's come over for the last few years, but our new favorite conversation piece is our MOVA Globe. Our giant map uses satellite imagery, so I picked out a MOVA Globe with a more artsy world map on it. It has an antique gloss finish with beige and brown tones you might see on a map in like an antique shop. It's in our living room, and our friends think it is the coolest thing ever. We don't even do the bedroom tour anymore.
ASHLEY HAMER: You can get MOVA Globes with lots of different maps, like ones of Earth, Mars, or the moon that use satellite imagery from NASA, or go retro with a vintage map from 1790 that shows the three voyages of Captain James Cook.
CODY GOUGH: There are 40 different designs. And no matter which design you choose, we have a seriously exciting offer for Curiosity Daily listeners. You can get 15% off your purchase. Please visit movaglobes.com/curiosity and use coupon code "curiosity"-- that's C-U-R-I-O-S-I-T-Y-- for 15% off your purchase. This is a great gift for the person who has everything, even people like me who already have a giant wall-sized map. One more time, that's movaglobes.com/curiosity, coupon code "curiosity."
ASHLEY HAMER: Did you hear about the meteorite that landed in Lake Michigan in February of 2017? Because that's a thing that happened, and it led to the Aquarius Project. The Aquarius Project is a historic collaboration to find an underwater meteorite.
Last week, Cody and I sat down with Aubrey Henretty, who hosts the Aquarius Project Podcast, and Chris Bresky, who manages the Adler's team programs. Here's what they told us about the meteorite and why it's so important.
CHRIS BRESKY: Sure. Last February, early in the morning, a giant green fireball lights up the sky over the Midwest, and it's a huge meteor. It breaks up into a thousand pieces and all falls into Lake Michigan, and that's where the adventure starts. A lot of scientists start wondering this never-before-tackled question, how do we go look for meteorites underwater? And all the astronomers at the Adler were talking about it and on museum campus, so were the marine biologist at the Shedd Aquarium and also the meteorite experts at the field.
And so as a team program specialist, I thought, wouldn't it be awesome in this brand new endeavor to bring curious teens and curious scientists together in Curiosity and go on this adventure. It's also kind of exciting because people can go like, oh, why this meteor? Why these meteorites? What's so special about this?
And something that's kind of fun about this one is that because of how technology is advanced, there were a lot of cameras that caught its fall. So Dr. Mark Hammergren, astronomer at the Adler Planetarium, has been able to track its path back-- triangulate its path back out into the solar system into the main asteroid belt. So once we find a piece of this space rock, then we get a puzzle piece of our own solar system and the makeup of our universe.
ASHLEY HAMER: That's amazing.
CHRIS BRESKY: Yeah. So it makes space real close. It makes the distant feel very, very tangible.
AUBREY HENRETTY: It was this combination of their skills because between Mark Hammergren, who's our astronomer, and [INAUDIBLE], who I mentioned earlier from NASA. Basically, what they're able to do is say like, this rock right here which we found because we had the radar data and we know this is from this fall because meteors-- I mean meteor falls overlap. You might find that meteors have crashed on this-- the planet has been here a long time. [CHUCKLES] There might be rocks from different falls in the same place.
So they say, well, we know this fall is right here by using radar data. And then Mark Hammergren went back and looked at all the footage and said, now if we can get that rock, it will actually be one of just-- it's under 30. It's like 28 or so meteorites ever that we can actually say this rock came from that part of the asteroid belt right there.
CHRIS BRESKY: In the history of astronomy.
AUBREY HENRETTY: Yeah. The entire all of astronomy forever.
CODY GOUGH: Again, that was the Adler's team program specialist, Chris Bresky, and the Aquarius Project Podcast host, Aubrey Henretty. You need to listen to the Aquarius Project Podcast. You can catch up with all three of their episodes in just about one hour, so there's no excuse to miss it. We'll post links to that in today's show notes, or find the Aquarius Project Podcast on your favorite podcast app. You can also learn more on the Adler Planetarium's website at adlerplanetarium.org.
ASHLEY HAMER: You can hear our full conversation with Aubrey and Chris on a brand new episode of the Curiosity Podcast, available now for our patrons. If you want to support our show and hear this episode, then visit patreon.com/curiosity.com, all spelled out.
CODY GOUGH: Join us again tomorrow with the award-winning Curiosity Daily and learn something new in just a few minutes. I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Stay curious.
NARRATOR: On the Westwood One Podcast Network.
[MUSIC PLAYING]