Learn about what scientists know about the muon; how poor vision evolved; and why the founder of Mother’s Day Anna Jarvis regretted inventing it. In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes: Meet The Muon, The Electron's Short-Lived Big Brother — https://curiosity.im/2GA4WYO The Myopia Boom | Nature — https://curiosity.im/2XVh3Wf The Founder of Mother's Day Regretted Inventing It — https://curiosity.im/2GUUNGx 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 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 what scientists know about the muon; how poor vision evolved; and why the founder of Mother’s Day Anna Jarvis regretted inventing it.
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes:
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
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/mothers-day-origins-how-poor-vision-survived-natural-selection-and-muon-facts
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 what scientists know about the muon; and why the founder of Mother’s Day regretted inventing it. We’ll also answer a listener question about how poor vision evolved.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Meet The Muon, The Electron's Short-Lived Big Brother — https://curiosity.im/2GA4WYO (Ashley)
There are 16 elementary particles in the Standard Model of Physics. An elementary particle is a particle that can’t be broken down any further, and today, you’re going to learn about one of them. I’m talking about the muon [MYOO-on], spelled M-U-O-N. Why? Because scientists think it could be a pretty important particle. You've heard of electrons — they're the negatively charged elementary particles that swarm about the nucleus of every atom. But if you take an electron, blow it up to more than 200 times its mass, and make it blink out of existence faster than a bullet can leave a gun, you've got a muon. Around the 1930s, scientists who studied cosmic rays had noticed that the showers of high-energy particles that rain down on our atmosphere from exploding stars and black holes couldn’t be explained with just the particles we already knew about. So a Caltech physicist named Carl Anderson used the same methods he’d used for his Nobel Prize-winning discovery of antimatter to reveal the existence of the muon. It was basically like an electron, but heavier. The muon was originally called a “mesotron” before it was renamed, and it was the second elementary particle ever discovered. Today, we know its hefty mass to eight decimal places, and we know its ridiculously short half-life to the picosecond — but there's still a bit of a “who cares?” attitude from some scientists. Others are hopeful, like Professor Mark Lancaster. He told Symmetry Magazine, quote, "The muon will have the last laugh. There's still a lot we don't know about fundamental interactions and the subatomic world, and we think that the muon might have the answers,” unquote. It might seem hard to study a particle that decays millions of times faster than the blink of an eye, but physicists have a trick up their sleeve: particle accelerators. When you accelerate something close to the speed of light, it lives longer than it would otherwise, thanks to Einstein's special theory of relativity. Studying muons opens up a world of possible answers to important questions: Why are there so many particles? Are there more subatomic forces we don't know about? We don't know if muons are the keys to these mysteries, but like we said: scientists have a hunch.
Listener Question - Why are some people born with poor vision? (Ashley)
ASHLEY: We got a listener question from Kim in Philadelphia, who asks, “Why are some humans born with poor vision? Wouldn't this affliction have ‘disappeared’ via natural selection during our evolutionary history? Wouldn't poor-sighted humans have been more likely to have accidents or run-ins with animals, leading them to not live long enough to reproduce and pass on their poor vision?” Great question, Kim!
First, let’s talk some evolution basics. A lot of people think that evolution is a process that prunes away inferior traits to make an organism better and better through time. I mean, the phrase is “survival of the fittest,” after all. But really, you can think of evolution as being more about “survival of the good enough.” If a trait is adequate to get enough organisms over the line by eating enough food and reproducing, then it’ll survive. Plenty of our human machinery is not set up the way it should have been if we were designed from scratch. Like, your breathing tube is right next to your eating tube. You can literally die if you eat wrong. That is not good design! So when it comes to imperfections like nearsightedness, bunions, and back pain, ehh! Just think of the human body as my old 1995 Camry. Two of the door handles were broken and the A/C didn’t work when it rained, but as long as it got me where I needed to go, it was good enough.
But when it comes to eyesight, there’s another problem: minor vision problems like near and farsightedness aren’t solely genetic. Environment has a lot to do with it. Case in point: we’re in the middle of a worldwide rise in nearsightedness, which many scientists think is due to too much time spent indoors away from sunlight. So while minor eyesight issues have been a thing throughout our evolutionary history, they weren’t as common. Fewer of your ancestors were probably squinting their way through life. So in summary, near and farsightedness wasn’t a big enough problem for our ancestors to decimate the gene pool, and it definitely wasn’t as much of a problem then as it is today. Thanks for your question, Kim!
https://www.nature.com/news/the-myopia-boom-1.17120?WT.mc_id=TWT_NatureNews#/eye
[NHTSA]
CODY: Today’s episode is paid for by NIT-suh. It can be a little frustrating, especially if you’re in a hurry or running late, to find yourself at a railway crossing, waiting for a train.
ASHLEY: And if the signals are going and the train’s not even there yet, you can feel a bit tempted to try and sneak across the tracks. Well, don’t. Ever.
CODY: Yeah, trains are often going a lot faster than you expect them to be. And they can’t stop. Even if the engineer hits the brakes right away, it can take a train over a mile to stop. By that time, what used to be your car is just a crushed hunk of metal. And what used to be you… well, better not to think about that.
ASHLEY: The point is, you can’t know how quickly the train will arrive. The train can’t stop even if it sees you. The result is disaster. If the signals are on, the train is on its way. And you... just need to remember one thing… Stop. Trains can’t.
The Founder of Mother's Day Regretted Inventing It — https://curiosity.im/2GUUNGx (Cody)
Today we’re wrapping up with a story on the origins of Mother’s Day! We absolutely should celebrate mothers everywhere, so to all the moms out there, we hope you have a really fantastic day today. For a lot of people, Mother’s Day is also a pretty tough day, for a lot of different reasons. And that group of people includes the founder of Mother’s Day herself, Anna Jarvis. She successfully established a national holiday only to fight against those who celebrated in a way she didn't like. Here’s the story. When Jarvis was just 12 years old, her mother closed her Sunday school lesson with a prayer that someone would one day found a memorial day to commemorate mothers, for "the matchless service she renders to humanity." Jarvis remembered that prayer for the rest of her life, and in 1907, two years after her mother's death, Jarvis began to lobby for a national holiday in her honor. She wrote thousands of letters to influential people, including Teddy Roosevelt, William Jennings Bryan, and Mark Twain. In early 1908, the Senate rejected her Mother's Day resolution. But she wouldn't be deterred: On May 10, 1908, Jarvis spoke at the first official Mother's Day services — one at her childhood church in Grafton, West Virginia; another at a sold-out venue in Philadelphia. Her idea caught on like wildfire, at least unofficially. And over the next few years, the majority of states in the U.S. held Mother's Day celebrations. That wasn't by accident, either — Jarvis petitioned state governors for official Mother's Day proclamations every single year. She asked people to observe the day by visiting (or at least writing to) their mothers and wearing a white carnation. She said, quote, "Live this day as your mother would have you live it," unquote. Finally, the tide had turned: The U.S. government officially designated Mother's Day as a national holiday in 1914. And that's when things got... complicated. Jarvis became territorial over her holiday, copyrighting her own photograph, trademarking the Mother's Day Seal, and incorporating herself as the Mother's Day International Association. She became so consumed with her life's achievement that she quit her job. She needed the extra time; she spent the rest of her life fighting tooth and nail against anyone who would corrupt her vision. This included the floral and greeting-card industries: at one point, she scrapped the white carnation as the holiday's official emblem to "do away with profiteering tradesmen.” And she also fought against charities like the Golden Rule Foundation, which was a fund for needy mothers and children that she accused of commercializing Mother's Day to line its pockets. Jarvis even rallied against the U.S. Postal Service when it issued a commemorative Mother's Day stamp. It's reported that at her peak, she had 33 Mother's Day–related lawsuits pending. She lived as a recluse for the last decade of her life and was eventually committed to a sanitarium where she died alone and penniless — and perhaps saddest of all, having never become a mother herself. There are a lot of morals to this sad story, but we think this is the most important: Call your mother.
ASHLEY: Before we wrap up, we want to give a special shout-out to Muhammad Shifaz and Dr. Mary Yancy, who are executive producers for today’s episode thanks to their generous support on Patreon. Thank you SO. MUCH.
CODY: If you’re listening and you want to support Curiosity Daily, then visit patreon-dot-com-slash-curiosity-dot-com, all spelled out. Join us again tomorrow for the award-winning Curiosity Daily and learn something new in just a few minutes. I’m [NAME] and I’m [NAME]. Stay curious!