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: NASA Is Sending a Probe to the Sun. Here's How They Keep It From Melting Waking Up on the Wrong Side of the Bed Is Totally Real You know what's an important part of waking up on the right side of the bed? Getting some good sleep to begin with. Pick up "Sleep Smarter" by Shawn Stevenson on audiobook and make your nights more restful and successful. Despite What You Learned in School, Tongue Rolling Isn't Simple Genetics Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day withCody Gough andAshley Hamer. 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.
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:
Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer. 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.
Full episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/nasas-sun-probe-waking-up-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-bed-and-tongue-rolling-isnt-genetic
CODY GOUGH: Hi, we've got three stories 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 about a probe NASA's sending into the sun, and how they're going to keep it from melting, science that says waking up on the wrong side of the bed is totally real, and a trick you can do with your tongue that, surprise, is not determined by your genes.
CODY GOUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity.
ASHLEY HAMER: OK, Cody, so in the script here you said, what's your favorite song about the sun?
CODY GOUGH: I really like Walk" into the Sun," produced by a British house music trio, Dirty Vegas.
ASHLEY HAMER: Now that I think about it, I do have a favorite song about the sun. And it is They Might Be Giants' "The Sun is a Mass of Incandescent Gas," which is my favorite because they actually revised it once scientists talked to them and said it's actually not gas, it's plasma. So now it's "The Sun is a Miasma of Incandescent Plasma." It's great.
CODY GOUGH: It sounds better anyway.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah, right?
CODY GOUGH: But I think we could probably both agree that one of the best sun songs literally ever is "Black Hole Sun."
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh yeah, that's a really good one.
CODY GOUGH: It's just so good you don't even need to mention it. Everybody likes "Black Hole Sun."
ASHLEY HAMER: All right, well, speaking of the sun, did you know that NASA is sending a probe to the sun in a couple of weeks?
CODY GOUGH: I did not know that before I read this article.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah, at least on August 4th. Sometimes these launches change the day depending on weather and things like that. But no earlier than August 4th, we're sending the Parker Solar Probe to check out the sun's atmosphere. And I'm here to answer your burning question, how is it supposed to survive in the temperatures of the sun, which are nearly 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit?
Well, it took five decades, but NASA finally figured out a way to stop it from incinerating. This probe will have a special heat shield that can stand those temperatures for a short time. That's all thanks to carbon. Carbon can take the heat, so the heat shield is kind of a carbon sandwich.
The two outer layers of bread are made up of a carbon composite. And the inside of the sandwich is a four and half inch thick carbon foam core. And the whole shield has a mass of just 160 pounds, the size of like a regular human.
CODY GOUGH: That's less than me.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. That'll help the spacecraft reach a top speed of 430,000 miles per hour while zooming by the sun. That would get you from Philadelphia to Washington DC in only a second, according to NASA. But even carbon can't handle that kind of heat forever. So the probe's mission will head for Venus and use the planet's gravity to boost it closer to the sun.
It'll do seven flybys during its seven year mission. And it's doing that to help us understand space weather, which changes, in large part, due to the sun. Heat and light from the sun are great, but what about solar flares and coronal mass ejections of hazardous radiation particles? Not so fun.
Understanding these better could help us protect our manned space missions and satellites, as space exploration ramps up over the next few decades. Plus, we've got a lot to learn about the sun. We don't actually know why its outer atmosphere is hotter than the region below it. Hopefully this will help.
You can read about the rest of this mission today on Curiosity.com and on the Curiosity app for Android and iOS.
CODY GOUGH: It's no Arwing Star Fox 64, but it's a start.
SLIPPY TOAD: This baby can take temperatures up to 9,000 degrees
STAR FOX: The Arwing might not make it.
PEPPY HARE: Don't fly too low, your ship can't take it.
CODY GOUGH: Ashley, do you ever wake up on the wrong side of the bed?
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah, I do.
CODY GOUGH: Meaning like, you start your day bad and then you just kind of think--
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: --it's all downhill.
ASHLEY HAMER: You know, it's nice to have a good home life where that doesn't happen that much, but it has definitely happened in the past.
CODY GOUGH: Yes, strongly recommend against checking your email or Twitter--
ASHLEY HAMER: Yes.
CODY GOUGH: --first thing in the morning.
ASHLEY HAMER: Mm-hmm.
CODY GOUGH: Although, one morning, I woke up to a tweet that was really nice, from a friend on a podcast network I'm part of, the [INAUDIBLE] Geek Network. And he said, hey everybody, shout out to my friend Cody, who does the curiosity podcast. You should listen to it.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah, that's a great way to start your day.
CODY GOUGH: It was awesome. I'm like, oh my gosh, what a wonderful way to start the day.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: But it could have just as easily been some person writing about how I'm a terrible human being for talking about science.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah, you never know what you're going to get, which is why you should probably not check your phone for a little while after you wake up.
CODY GOUGH: I say, save it for after the shower. We're talking about this because we wrote about a new study that found that your mood when you wake up in the morning has a major impact on the rest of your day. So the whole adage of waking up on the wrong side of the bed, it kind of rings true.
And that's actually both good and bad, according to the researchers that conducted the study. On one hand, humans are really good at predicting what's going to happen over the course of a day, and that can be pretty useful when it comes to preparing for the worst. But that ability to predict the worst can also hurt your daily memory function, whether those stressful events happen or not.
So if you wake up and you think you're going to have a bad day, and you're right then OK, you've made it easy on yourself since you were ready for the bad day. But if you incorrectly think you're going to have a bad day, like really, there's no reason your day should be bad but you think it's going to be bad when you wake up, then you're making yourself a bad day from scratch.
It's like, it's not because you had a bad day that made the day bad, it's because you thought you were going to have a bad day that made the day bad. In fact, the study found that anticipating stress in the early morning had an even greater effect on working memory than actual stress did. That's right, if you wake up feeling like you're going to have a bad time, your brain doesn't work as well throughout the day.
Don't worry though, there's a way to get over this. Anticipating stress the night before doesn't have much effect on working memory. So get ready for your stressful day the night before. You might even sleep better if you think about how stressful tomorrow is going to be rather than waiting until the morning, according to other research. Give it a shot and see if it helps.
ASHLEY HAMER: So I guess the takeaway is, if you think you're going to have a bad time, you're going to have a bad time.
CODY GOUGH: [LAUGHS] Yep.
ASHLEY HAMER: Cody, can you roll your tongue?
CODY GOUGH: I can, but I'm not going to do it because I don't like to stick my tongue out.
ASHLEY HAMER: That's fine. I could do that weird folding thing. I'll do it.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah, that thing where you have three points instead of just the one.
CODY GOUGH: That's impressive. I don't know if I can do that. But I feel weird about sticking my tongue out.
ASHLEY HAMER: That's all right. I feel weird now, so it's fine.
[LAUGHTER]
Well, I've always understood that to be a basic genetic trait. Did you learn that in science class?
CODY GOUGH: Maybe--
ASHLEY HAMER: Like you had your widow's peak, you had your hitchhiker's thumb, and you had your tongue rolling.
CODY GOUGH: Right.
ASHLEY HAMER: And whether, maybe, your second toe is longer than your first toe.
CODY GOUGH: Right--
ASHLEY HAMER: Those are all the ones I remember.
CODY GOUGH: Tongue rolling referring to kind of folding it, dipping it in the middle, raising up the side so it's like a taco shape.
ASHLEY HAMER: Like a taco, yeah.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah.
ASHLEY HAMER: You know, and that was all like Gregor Mendel and his peas and all that. Just genetics. Well, today in myth busting we're here to tell you that that thing about your tongue was a lie. Scientific research has shown that tongue rolling is not a strictly genetic trait.
Scientists have looked at identical twins with identical DNA, and even with those identical genes, identical twins did not all share the skill. There might be a genetic component, but it's not as simple as science class made it sound. It turns out that you can actually learn to roll your tongue.
There was a Japanese study in 1951 that noted that while only 54% of Japanese schoolchildren could roll their tongues at age six, 76% could do it at age 12. So some kids are learning to do it, it's not just like they were born doing it.
CODY GOUGH: Right, so you might be able to learn it. But again, this was shown in children, so maybe if you're an adult it's too late. But we are not experts on that, so the jury's out.
ASHLEY HAMER: Hey, we're not going to stop you. If you can't, just try for a while.
CODY GOUGH: You can read about these stories and more today on Curiosity.com, and you can get all of our stories delivered straight to your inbox along with a link to our daily podcasts when you sign up for our email, at Curiosity.com/email. Go ahead and do it. You'll be our friend.
ASHLEY HAMER: And if you want to support our show, please register for the 2018 Podcast Awards and nominate Curiosity Daily to win four People's Choice, Education, and Science and Medicine. Just register at the link and select Curiosity Daily from the dropdown menus. No need to pick nominees in every category.
CODY GOUGH: You can find the link in our show notes or the URL is PodcastAwards.com. Pretty simple, only takes a couple of minutes and would be a huge help. We would love to get some recognition for the show.
ASHLEY HAMER: We'd really appreciate it. Join us again tomorrow for The Curiosity Daily, and learn something new in just a few minutes. I'm Ashley Hamer.
CODY GOUGH: And I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: Stay curious.
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