Today you’ll learn about how scientists finally learned how to manipulate quantum light, the effects of noise on your health, and how kids today are developing fewer food allergies.
Today you’ll learn about how scientists finally learned how to manipulate quantum light, the effects of noise on your health, and how kids today are developing fewer food allergies.
Find episode transcripts here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/noise-pollution-quantum-light-pets-food-allergies
Noise Pollution
Quantum Light
Pets & Food Allergies
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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 scientists finally learned how to manipulate quantum light, the effects of noise on your health, and how kids today are developing fewer food allergies.
CALLI: Without further ado, let’s satisfy some curiosity!
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Noise pollution is something that can really mess a person up. Beyond the general annoyance surrounding constant sound, prolonged exposure to noise pollution can cause everything from tinnitus to hearing loss, to even more terrible physical conditions like type 2 diabetes and memory impairment. And if it does all that to a human… imagine what it could do to an animal.
CALLI: I didn’t know it was like THAT with noise pollution. We’ve talked before about how it can exacerbate depression and other mental health issues, but it’s that bad???
NATE: Yep. And it gets even worse for animals. One of the most recent studies on this was on a relatively rare lizard known as the Colorado checkered whiptail. The lizards in this study lived near Fort Carson, which is a military base in Colorado with a lot of air traffic from military aircraft. Air traffic, in case you didn’t know, is what we scientists like to call “loud as heck.” And scientists were curious about how that loudness affected lizards in the area, especially since the military helicopters fly directly above the lizards’ habitat.
CALLI: But why the lizards and not, say, any other nearby creatures?
NATE: A couple reasons. First, because the whiptail is what’s called a “species of special concern” by Colorado Parks and Wildlife. This could mean one of ten possible things in Colorado according to how the state defines that term, but usually means they’re either close to being endangered, they’re very rare or isolated, or the state doesn’t know much about them. In the whiptail’s case, it’s likely that this refers to all three of those things. But the other reason is because lizards have a unique combination in their capacity to hear that makes them an ideal test subject. They’re small, and have one hearing-related bonelet in their ears. Humans, on the other hand, have three. But despite this difference in structure, they have pretty good hearing, able to hear anything between 100 and 5,000 hertz, compared to humans, who can hear anything between 20 and 20,000 hertz.
CALLI: Interesting. So what did the study find?
NATE: Back in 2021, a team of scientists cooperated with the US army and had them fly directly over the whiptail’s habitat at specific times for three straight days straight… and then avoid flying over the area for a week. The days the helicopters flew over the lizards registered a sound level from the ground as high as 112.2 decibels… at its loudest, that’s about as many decibels as somebody playing a drum set. But on the days the military didn’t fly over? It never got higher than 55.8 decibels. You know what’s louder than that? An air conditioning unit. From 100 feet away. THAT’S 60 decibels of sound.
CALLI: Holy cow. Okay, so what happened with the study?
NATE: Each lizard was weighed and measured and had their blood drawn. They were given ultrasounds to see if any of them were pregnant, and then they were observed visually for three minutes before being let loose. The researchers then took the samples back to the lab and measured a number of individual elements of the blood, including something we’ve talked about a surprising number of times on this show: cortisol, the hormone that’s associated with stress.
CALLI: Oh yep, hi cortisol, nice to see you again. What did cortisol have to say about all this?
NATE: To nobody’s surprise, cortisol levels skyrocketed in the time after helicopters flew over. For perspective on just how freaking loud the noise they dealt with is, Purdue University calls 110 decibels the “human pain threshold.” This was 112 decibels, and these were lizards. On top of cortisol spiking, their ketone levels spiked too. Ketones, in case you don’t know, are the chemicals our body uses for energy when we’re burning off fat. That means that these lizards were so stressed out, their bodies activated a chemical creatures mainly use to survive when losing weight.
CALLI: That’s awful!! I feel awful for those little lizards.
NATE: It gets even worse when you realize it affects virtually every single animal exposed to noise pollution in some way - and grimly, we don’t actually know how much it hurts most of them. Many creatures, like certain spiders, don’t “hear” so much as “feel” sound in their legs. But we do know that loud noises can destroy a rat’s hearing, according to a study on how rats exposed to loud noise act while taking pain medication, versus when they don’t. We also know that vibrations created by loud sounds can negatively impact the balance of a fish. But it even affects our dogs and cats, too. Have you ever seen a dog on the 4th of July?
CALLI: Oh my gosh, yeah.
NATE: The kind of panic a dog can show off during unexpected loud events is common in as many as 50% of all pets, according to a 2013 study - and the only thing that’s clear in terms of how loud noise negatively affects a dog is it makes a dog more likely to develop separation anxiety. The actual physiological effects on a dog are, as far as I know, unknown or unproven. So long story short: that’s kinda why this lizard study is so big. It’s one of the clearest examples we have on how bad noise pollution is for animals - even if they’re a tiny lizard.
CALLI: Is there anything we can do to help animals against noise pollution?
NATE: For lizards or other wild animals, sadly, probably not. But for our pets at least, we can give them certified help in the form of calming treats or toys that give off calming pheromones. We can also do things to help them avoid awful noises, like creating some extra space they can escape the noise. Create a little fort out of pillows and blankets like you did when you were a kid - but for your pets! Not only will you get to have a little fun, you’ll also protect your pets from the threat of an unknown noise.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
CALLI: Let me tell you about one of the biggest brags of all time: researchers from Australia just did something that nobody could do before - not even Albert Einstein.
NATE: There’s a lot of things Albert Einstein couldn’t do. For example, play a Nintendo Switch. Case closed.
CALLI: Very funny. I mean I’m sure he could if he was still around. But seriously, Albert Einstein wrote a paper back in 1917 that predicted something called “spontaneous emission,” which is what happens whenever a molecule, or an atom, changes from what’s called an “excited state” to a “lower energy” state. When this happens, it lets out a burst of energy in the form of what’s called a photon. We don’t really have enough time to get into what a photon is but to put it simply, it creates: light.
NATE: Got it.
CALLI: Einstein’s theory was that, when an isolated atom in an excited state returns back to its low energy state, it creates the actual energy of light. There are a number of kinds of light it creates; for example, in a firefly, it creates “luminescence,” because it’s not created through heat like most sources of light but it’s created from the movement of going from one energetic state to the other. Now, all of this is pretty standard, if not incredibly complicated - where the theory starts to get a bit wild is when Einstein talks about photons moving around, together, in the same state, whether that state is energized or not.
NATE: What makes that so wild?
CALLI: Because he theorized that if a stray photon, on a certain wavelength, passes by a group of atoms in an excited state, it will make the atoms release their photons sooner than they would have… and they all head in the same direction, with the same frequency as the original photon. And this causes a chain reaction where more and more photons will leave the atoms, all heading in the same direction at the same time. Uh, to explain this easier, think of Black Friday.
NATE: Black Friday… the retail event? As in: the day after Thanksgiving in North America where prices are slashed and there are savings galore? What does that have to do with anything?
CALLI: Imagine a store full of people, all crowding around a pallet of one hundred dollar TV’s that are about to be unwrapped. They are the atoms. Their money, the photons. Now, if these people are able to just grab the TV’s in an orderly fashion, then what would normally happen is they buy the TV’s, and leave one by one. That’s what happens when atoms are in an excited state usually: they “emit a photon” at random, or they pay their money and just disappear. But in spontaneous emission, imagine that at THIS MOMENT, right before the TV’s are unwrapped, someone walks by and says “I have one TV for $1, first come first served.”
NATE: Oh my goodness the level of chaos.
CALLI: Yes, but it would be CONTROLLED chaos. Everybody at once rushing at one spot, stimulated by this one presence, and they’re all ready to attack at once. That’s spontaneous emission. And if the image of a number of photons charging and heading toward something in a relatively straight line sounds familiar, that’s because in the 1940s and 50s, this technology was used to create a LASER.
NATE: So a laser is a lot like a Black Friday riot, but in photon form. Got it! But I thought you said the Australians did something Einstein had never done?
CALLI: To be clear, Einstein didn’t come up with the laser, and since then, the theory has offered researchers a number of ways to use this sort of photon transfer for everything from communication networking to medical imaging to even GPS. So for example, you can use this theory to create undistorted information over the phone. HOWEVER! Where this recent innovation really shines is in the specifics. And what I mean is: researchers from the University of Sydney managed to do this with SMALL bursts of photons. In the hundred plus years since Einstein theorized this, it’s only ever been done with large numbers of photons, so this is a huge huge huge deal.
NATE: But why? I get the importance of large numbers for this, but why would smaller numbers matter?
CALLI: They’ve created energy pockets. Pockets of light energy. Or as the researchers call it: quantum light. When you can create small bursts of quantum light, you can do things like create better scientific equipment. Have you ever heard of an interferometer? It’s a measuring tool used in everything from medical imaging to measuring the quality of milk, and it measures small changes in distance. But it’s also used in LIGO, the multi-location Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory, that uses interferometers to measure gravitational waves. So, why am I telling you about this? Because with this kind of “pocket energy,” we can make much better measurements of light, with better quality and fewer photons. Alternatively, we can use it in something like a biological microscope, since large sources of light can damage samples being surveyed!
NATE: So it’s not just a Black Friday energy shift; it’s year-round savings… in light?
CALLI: Actually, exactly. With something like this, we could have Black Friday all year. Only instead of wasting our energy on dollar TV’s, we’re SAVING our energy on more effective light - just the way Einstein imagined it.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
CALLI: Food allergies suck! Especially when a kid has one. But you know how you can likely prevent one from happening? You can get a pet!
NATE: Wait now, what? How are those two things linked?
CALLI: This comes from the latest in a very, very long line of studies that look into the link between food allergy and pet ownership. In many of the highest-earning places around the world, more than one in ten children get a food allergy diagnosis, according to the website Scimex, and that number gets slightly bigger every day. Unlike many of the topics we discuss here, the inspiration for this study was simple: many, many, MANY other studies have found a link between these two things, but not a definitive one. So a team of researchers from the Fukushima Regional Center in Japan wanted to see if they could find one.
NATE: That sounds like a good thing to study, what did they find?
CALLI: The Fukushima team analyzed data from 66,215 plus infants. 22% of them were around pet cats or dogs while they were developing, either in utero or as a small infant. It was pretty quickly discovered that virtually all children who were exposed to indoor dogs or cats had a HUGE reduction in food allergies. If it was an indoor dog, the kids were especially less likely to have an allergy to things like nuts, eggs, or dairy products. And the children with indoor cats were way less likely to have soybean, wheat, or egg allergies.
NATE: But… how? I don’t know how having a pet would make a food allergy less likely.
CALLI: That’s the interesting part about this study, as well as all the other studies that have been done on the topic: nobody knows. As of right now, we can’t actually prove that it was the cats and dogs themselves, rather than something separate like pet, owner or infant related behavior, that creates a lower risk for allergies. Which is interesting, because of the other risks involved with having pets during pregnancy.
NATE: Hold on, I’m confused. Other risks?
CALLI: Back in 2022, there was a study on the proven means of allergic reduction for infants. It said the most effective ways are to breastfeed the child for the first 4-6 months of their life, avoiding dairy products for the first couple days. Don’t feed a child peanuts until they’re older, and if you’re able, grow up on a farm since microbes are far more diverse in that kind of environment. But the issue comes up in regards to the risk factors, where it says that parents, or the siblings of the infant, have a known allergy… don’t get a cat or dog. Because that could be the SOURCE of the allergy.
NATE: So which is it? Do pets help allergies - or do they cause them?!
CALLI: Beats me, but this newest study faces the same problem others studies did: a lack of pure objectivity. All we have is correlation. Tom Marrs, who headed a similar study in 2019, said that the only possible way we can prove that pet ownership actually reduces food allergy incidence is to create a randomized and controlled trial. He theorizes that the test would have to involve pregnant women getting randomly assigned to having pets… which, considering that the other study said this is a BAD idea, is a bit of an ethical gray area women might not want to sign up for.
NATE: I could see why finding participants for this study could be tricky.
CALLI: That all being said, the results are pretty promising, especially when coupled with the other research saying the same thing. Back in 2004, a man named James Gern did a study specifically on dog ownership reducing food allergy risk. He told the Washington Post that the new study is a good sign when combined with his research, as well as other studies that examined pet ownership and incidence of things like dermatitis, respiratory allergies, or even psychological well-being. AND, Tom Marrs’ 2019 study was even more promising than the new one: it found that children growing up with a dog were a whopping 90 percent less likely to get a food allergy. And if they had more than one dog, even just TWO, 100% of those kids did not get a food allergy.
NATE: I feel so conflicted, because this is honestly a really frustrating set of results that seem to be conflicting.
CALLI: It’s rare on this show, but sometimes we need to talk about undecided science. There’s a lot of research that pets are good for infants; there’s less, but still credible, research saying they’re not. Here’s what we know for sure: James Gern says there’s an overwhelming amount of evidence that Europeans exposed to farm animals live longer, healthier lives. He believes that the research there, coupled with these findings, should encourage us to embrace biodiversity. Get pets. Introduce children to animals. It could make them healthier, but it’ll ultimately be at the discretion of the parents and the child’s doctor.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up. Noise pollution can really mess a human up - from worse hearing to a higher incidence of Type 2 Diabetes, it’s bad news. So how does it affect animals? The answer is… we don’t really know! But a recent study on a rare kind of lizard living near a military base has revealed that the results can’t be good for most creatures. These lizards were exposed to noise louder than a live rock band every day, and saw a huge increase in stress hormones, including one that only comes when our bodies are trying to SURVIVE.
CALLI: In one of the biggest flexes of all time, a group of scientists in Australia managed to do something Einstein theorized back in 1917 for the first time: create small pockets of quantum light energy. Think of the fundamentals of how a laser works, except in very small bursts with as few as ONE photon being engaged at a time. This could revolutionize everything from medical imaging to measuring milk’s quality - and it’s all thanks to a scrappy group of researchers realizing a century-old dream.
CALLI: Exposing children to pets at an early age might prevent food allergies from forming! …or not. Years and years of research have led scientists to the conclusion that there is a connection between these two things, but another recent study found a CONFLICTING point of view that dogs and cats could CONTRIBUTE to food allergy incidence. Where’s the truth? More research is needed to figure this out, but this is a very good example of the scientific process and how often, multiple credible results on the same topic can say wildly different things!