Today we discuss whether or not firing a gun filled with moon dust into space could cool down the planet, how animals that live in social groups usually live longer than solitary creatures, and a saucy discovery from ancient Rome.
Today we discuss whether or not firing a gun filled with moon dust into space could cool down the planet, how animals that live in social groups usually live longer than solitary creatures, and a saucy discovery from ancient Rome.
To Re-Caf Choose Decaf
Mammal Groups
Roman Sex Toy
Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to get smarter with Calli and Nate — for free! Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Find episode transcripts here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/moon-dust-mammal-groups-roman-sex-toy
[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 whether or not firing a gun filled with moon dust into space could cool down the planet, how animals that live in social groups usually live longer than solitary creatures, and… a saucy discovery in ancient Rome.
CALLI: Without further ado, let’s satisfy some curiosity!
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Calli, have you heard this super common phrase: learn something new everyday and you’ll never work a day in your life.
CALLI: Um, yeah, duh, obviously. That’s why I’ve dedicated my life to the quest of knowledge!
NATE: So has Gary Arnt, host of the podcast Everything Everywhere Daily.
CALLI: Oh my gosh. I love that show, I listen most days… some days… a few days a week. Listen, there’s just so much good information that Gary almost always sends me down a curiosity rabbit hole and before I know it the entire day is gone.
NATE: Well if you, dear listener, don’t have time to go with Calli down the rabbit holes of learning, Everything Everywhere Daily is a great place to start. In just ten minutes each weekday you can learn something new.
CALLI: About history, geography, mathematics - even science. It’s a great companion to Curiosity Daily.
NATE: Around here the Curiosity team has been listening to episodes about Why Are There No Flying Cars and The Most Important Supermarket Trip in Human History, and we think you’ll love them too!
CALLI: Check the show out and spend a little time - or a few hours - learning something new today.
NATE: Learn something new every single day with Everything Everywhere Daily—find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts!
[SFX: WHOOSH]
CALLI: Hey, Nate, do you remember when you were telling me about that lightning laser?
NATE: Sure. Yeah.
CALLI: Well, I see your lightning laser and I raise you a, you ready for this, moon dust gun!
NATE: Okay, I don't know what that is, but sounds like the beginnings to a good game. You know, lightning, laser versus moon dust gun, where the real winner is friendship.
CALLI: Oh, my gosh.
NATE: Okay, What? What? What is the point of a moon dust gun?
CALLI: Okay, so the point is climate change, because you know what else?
NATE: Sure.
CALLI: Yeah. Specifically the concept of global heating, where the earth is getting hotter to the point that it will soon be unsustainable. So a team of researchers from the University of Utah have figured out an interesting solution involving creating a solar shield in space by mining the moon for moon dust, then ballistically ejecting it to a point in space about a mile away from Earth. And once the moon dust arrives, it would partially block the incoming sunlight.
NATE: Sure, sure, sure. Yeah. Cool. Cool. Is this the plot to the movieMoonfall now available to stream on HBO. Max
CALLI: Okay, so, no, it's actually not a pitch. It's not a movie you can stream on HBO, Max. It is 100% real. Ben Bromley, the research leader, is a theoretical astrophysicist. He figured out that one of the ways to stop global heating is to dim the effects of the sun on Earth by approximately 2%. But how? He considered a number of other minerals like coal or sea salt. But early research suggested they wouldn't do the trick, which is when the team settled on moon dust. See, moon dust isn't too thick like other minerals that would block the sun too much. But it's just thick enough that a high concentration can reduce sunlight. The only small issues facing the project are the amount of moon dust needed and the job required to mine it.
NATE: Are those the only issues? The small issues? How much moon dust are we talking here?
CALLI: Millions of tons of moon dust would need to be mined and sifted before being loaded into the moon dust gun. And that's just the first time. See, this would have to be repeated every single year for the rest of time.
NATE: Okay, so you call these small issues? Yeah. I feel like that's not an accurate assessment of the situation.
CALLI: Bromley admits that getting the mining and protective equipment to the moon would be a significant project and would even require the positioning and creation of a new space station. The station would then use. Yes. Yes. The station would then be tasked with firing the moon dust gun and redirecting any necessary moon dust to the areas that need more shade.
NATE: Okay, sure. I'll go along with this. Why does the gun need to be fired annually?
CALLI: Well, once the process of global cooling begins, it would actually trigger a new set of issues for planet Earth. Earth would become accustomed to its cooler temperatures, and anything that could potentially disrupt that would lead to something called termination shock, which is where global warming returns at an even more rapid rate than before.
NATE: All right. I'm going to be completely honest. This sounds like a really terrible replacement for, like the things we're already doing, things like cutting planet heating emissions wherever we can.
CALLI: I mean, we would still do that. Bromley makes it a point to specify that this is in no way intended as a substitute. But in addition to the climate change response.
NATE: Okay. Yeah. But I got to say, this sounds less like a fully scientific solution and more like Moonfall the movie available to stream on HBO Max.
CALLI: Okay, let me make something really clear. Doing anything to tinker with the world's climate is controversial in the science world. Ted Parson, an expert in environmental law at UCLA, admits that ideas like the moon dust gun are fun and scientifically interesting, but also impractical, bordering on impossible. Because of the large cost and lack of control we'd have in the actual trajectory of moon dust. And that's the nicer counterargument. Oh, yeah. Others argue that proposals like the moon dust gun are unhelpful and possibly even dangerous in the way they distract us from the real threat. A reduction in fossil fuel emissions.
NATE: Right, Exactly. So with all that in mind, is the moon dust gun even likely, right?
CALLI: Bromley makes it a point to mention that his study is about the potential impact of such a gun and not about the logistical reality. He admits that he and his team aren't climate change scientists or even rocket scientists familiar with how mass has moved from one place to the next. Their study is about exploring mathematically whether moving dust from the moon to an orbit near Earth can be enough to produce solar energy. That said, the moon dust gun is a fun idea. Even if it's impractical, it teaches us a lot about what we need to do to reduce solar emissions and the lengths people could go toward to prevent climate change.
NATE: Sure.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: The unsurprising reveal of a Harvard study is that the secret to life is being around friends and family. A little bit more surprising is another study that says this is also true for nearly 1000 mammal species.
CALLI: So I did hear about this study, and I think it's interesting that it took Harvard 80 years to figure out that all you need is love. When the Beatles literally wrote that song over 50 years ago. But I am interested now. I would like more information, please.
NATE: So back in January of 2023, a study was published in the journal Nature Communications that looked into the life spans and social lives of around 1000 different mammal species that live in groups like horses or chimpanzees. And they found that they tend to live longer, healthier lives than more solitary creatures like weasels or hedgehogs.
CALLI:Which is interesting. But don't all mammals lifespans vary anyway? Like, for example, some shrews only live for two years, but bowhead whales can live to be almost 200 years old.
NATE: And it's that difference in lifespan that interested Xuming Zhou of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. He was studying the longest living mammals in an attempt to research the evolution of life span longevity. When he noticed that naked mole rats have super long lives for a rodent, most rodents live for a few years at a time, and the common golden hamster only lives four years. But the naked mole rats average lifespan is a whopping 30 years.
CALLI: And they're similar. So that is a weird why.
NATE: The biggest difference appears to be social. The golden hamster lives alone, but the naked mole rat lives in a huge, complex, subterranean environment surrounded by a community of other mole rats. And assuming looked into this disparity, he found that previous research existed, showing that social behavior made a huge difference in the animal kingdom when it came to lifespan length. Specifically, female chacma baboons with a strong, stable social life lived longer than female chacmas without friends or family.
CALLI: Okay, sure. I mean, what's true for a baboon is apparently also true for humans.
NATE: So Fuming decided to see if there is any other links between longevity and healthy social life in other mammal species. And they did this by compiling information from scientific literature on 974 mammal species, which they then split up into three categories: solitary, pair living, and group living. And once Xuming’s team compared all three groups against each mammal's known lifespans, they found that the group Living Mammals tended to live longer with 22 years on average versus the solitary species 12 year average.
CALLI: That is a pretty huge difference. But stuff like body mass has to factor into this, right? Because I can't imagine most smaller animals really live that much longer based on social life.
NATE: Well, that's what they checked next, because bigger animals do live longer, lives in smaller ones, which is something that led to the most surprising revelation when they compared the shrew, a loner with the bat, a social creature. They found that shrews live for a couple of years, but bats usually live for 30 or 40 years.
CALLI: Interesting. Okay. Wouldn't life be more competitive for mammals traveling in packs, though? Like higher competition for food, higher competition for mating? There's even the chance of easier spread of infectious diseases.
NATE: Yeah, all of that is true, no doubt. But there are benefits to living in a group setting. You can band together for protection against. Predators, you have a reduced risk of starvation because there's more group members that can efficiently forage for food together. Plus, there is an evolutionary bonus. Your family members contain the same genes as you, and being able to protect your family means that your gene pool will undoubtedly live on. So Xuming believes that no matter what the downsides may be of living in a group, the data clearly shows that you'll live a happier, healthier life alongside your friends and family, regardless of your species.
CALLI: Fascinating. Okay. I think I know the answer. But is the study airtight?
NATE: No study is ever really completely airtight. Evolutionary biologist Laurent Keller of the University of Lausanne in Switzerland gives the study props for how large the sampling size was, but admits that it would have been more helpful if Xuming expanded beyond just the three socialization categories. There are more variations of social organization than just the three, and the fluctuation in levels of sociality could influence the study in a number of ways.
CALLI: Which makes sense. I mean, that gives us a lot more data to go off of, so more chances to go deeper.
NATE: And that's what Xuming and his team are doing now, they've already started looking into how genetics might produce the link between lifespan and group living and took brain tissue samples from 94 mammal species to analyze it. They discovered 31 genes that related to a longer life span and to one of the three prescribed social categories. That study is a work in progress. But Xuming concludes by saying he hopes it will help us understand more about how animals socialize and how that's made them live longer.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
CALLI: Okay. I'm just going to get straight to the point on this one.
NATE: No banter in the intro makes me nervous.
CALLI: Okay. You don't have to be nervous. It's actually a fascinating story. In 1992, archeologists were excavating an ancient Roman fort in Northumberland in the U.K., and they found a lot of household objects: some shoes, tools, leather scraps, normal, like crafting stuff for an everyday Roman in the second century. But one thing in particular recently made history.
NATE: Okay. Less nervous household objects in a Roman fort. What was it?
CALLI: It was a sex toy.
NATE: Did not see that coming. Kind of out of the blue for that.
CALLI: You're welcome. The archeologists didn't see that coming either, because when it was originally discovered, it was cataloged as a darning tool, presumably because it was about 16 centimeters or six inches and was discovered with an antler that had also been used for repairing some other clothing. But a new recent analysis by experts at Newcastle University and University College Dublin revealed that this is actually the first ever known example of a wooden phallus recovered anywhere in the Roman world.
NATE: Okay, I got to say, I can't believe they saw this thing and didn't know what it was though. Like, I know this is a podcast, so we don't usually have a visual component to go along with these stories. But considering how common phallic imagery is in painted frescoes or mosaics in the Roman world, like, I feel like someone should have known.
CALLI: Okay, well, remember, just keep in mind that phallus shaped objects were very common in the Roman Empire and not as sex toys outside of the frescoes and mosaics. The shape of a phallus was actually a good luck charm. It was often carved onto knife handles to ward off demons and bad energy. There were even small phalluses made of bone or metal that Romans wore as pendants around their neck. But this one is unique in that it's not miniature, and it doesn't appear to be made for a pendant.
NATE: Fashion sure does change over time, doesn't it? That's not trying to sound judgmental. That's weird. If phalluses were so common back then. So what's so different about this one?
CALLI: A few things. First of all, like I said, it's not mini. So it's life size. And both ends of the phallus were way smoother than any previously found artifacts. Which is weird because it's older, but also because it indicates repeated use of contact. Second, it's made of wood. Most of the phallus shaped objects were built to last. So building them out of either wood or another type of organic material wouldn't have been ideal.
NATE: Okay. So sure, it's pretty miraculous that this one has survived for so long. Let me play devil's advocate for just a second, though. Mm hmm. Are there any other explanations for what this thing could be?
CALLI: There are two other possibilities, according to the researchers. First, it may have been used as a pestle. You know, one of those old hand-held grinders you can use to grind corn or medicine. It's small enough to be hand-held.
NATE: Phrasing.
CALLI: With an ideal shape to grind.
NATE: Phrasing.
CALLI: Almost any substance against stone. But the other possibility, and this is a serious theory, is that it might have still been a good luck charm of a different type. Phalluses like this were often stuck into statues, presumably in the anatomically correct spot so that a passer by could touch or rub it for good luck to ward off bad luck.
NATE: Those Romans were an interesting people.
CALLI: The problem with that theory is that most Roman statues were outside.
NATE: Okay.
CALLI: And and all evidence indicates that this object was left indoors for most of its existence. Wood needs to be stored in dark, damp, oxygen free environments to survive and not fall apart. And this object is in great shape 2 thousand years later.
NATE: Okay, got it. So it's a sex toy.
CALLI: Okay. But jokes aside, we really don't actually know. Good luck charms from Roman times are usually pretty easy to identify due to the context of where they're found and the objects they're found with. This was found in a pile of shoes, and so it really might be a very unfortunately shaped darning tool like the original excavators thought. Except researchers agree it would have been incredibly impractical as a darning tool due to the ridge carved at the head. So yeah, it's probably a sex toy.
NATE: Case closed. That's it. We’ve solved it. They’ve solved it.
CALLI: No, no, no, because that's not even the point of the story. Even the debate in the scientific community over what exactly this wooden object is, is a great reminder that at its core, science is about asking questions. This was sitting in a collection for over 20 years before somebody took a look at it and said, hey, maybe that's not a darning tool. And because of this analysis, researchers all over can look at their own collections and reevaluate, because this isn't the only new discovery of an old artifact will ever come across.
NATE: I think some of these researchers need to add a 15 year old boy to their teams to just quickly solve any of these particular issues that might pop up.
CALLI: Okay, That's a penis.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up.
CALLI: How do we solve climate change? By firing a huge gun full of moondust at the Earth’s atmosphere! At least that’s the controversial idea at the center of a new study that proposes we can end global warming by creating a “solar shield” made of moon dust to block solar emissions from warming the Earth. This idea has been met with a bit of controversy, but the scientists at the center of the study believe this suggestion could be implemented in ADDITION to other climate change solutions, and not the “one size fits all” solution.
NATE: It’s a cliche to say that the secret to living a long healthy life is love… but it’s a REVELATION to say that's the secret for ALL mammals, too. A recent study has discovered that virtually every mammal that lives in a group setting lives many, many decades longer than their more solitary evolutionary relatives. What this means is that humans and other mammals are even more alike than previously suspected - and that cliche or not, all you need is love, baby!
CALLI: It’s like something out of a teen sex comedy: scientists have recently re-evaluated the 1992 discovery of an ancient Roman “shoe repair” tool and discovered that it might, in fact, be an ancient wooden sex toy. This discovery is unique not only because of its age or what it’s made of, but because of how it allows us to look at the scientific method and realize that truth can evolve through examination, context, and discussion!