Learn why coffee tastes bad when you reheat it; and how researchers found the ancestor of most living animals. Stand-up mathematician Matt Parker will also explain why the word “null” causes so many problems for computer programmers.
Learn why coffee tastes bad when you reheat it; and how researchers found the ancestor of most living animals. Stand-up mathematician Matt Parker will also explain why the word “null” causes so many problems for computer programmers.
Why does coffee taste bad when you reheat it? by Andrea Michelson
We just found the ancestor of most living animals by Cameron Duke
Additional resources from Matt Parker, stand-up mathematician:
Subscribe to Curiosity Daily to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer. You can also listen to our podcast as part of your Alexa Flash Briefing; Amazon smart speakers users, click/tap “enable” here: https://www.amazon.com/Curiosity-com-Curiosity-Daily-from/dp/B07CP17DJY
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/null-misadventures-w-matt-parker-why-reheated-coffee-tastes-bad-and-the-ancestor-of-most-living-animals
CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity-dot-com. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about why coffee tastes bad when you reheat it; and how researchers found the ancestor of almost all living animals. You’ll also learn why the word “null” causes so many problems for computer programmers, in our final edition of Monday Math Mishaps with Matt Parker.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
When your morning coffee goes cold, your instinct might be to pop it in the microwave. But reheated coffee usually tastes pretty terrible. And you’re about to learn why: it turns out that the process of heating and cooling messes with the chemical compounds that give coffee its taste.
Coffee gets its flavor and aroma from around 1,000 different chemical compounds. A lot of these compounds tend to vaporize at high heat. So if you expose your morning brew to the high temperatures of a microwave, you’ll likely lose some of the compounds that make coffee taste and smell good.
But your hours-old coffee may have been ruined before it entered the microwave. Coffee’s flavor can also go off as the hot liquid turns cold. The cooling process causes some of those compounds to break down: the oils in your coffee oxidize and turn the cup sour or stale, and acids might degrade and bring out a bitter taste. And the hotter the original cup of coffee, the faster it’ll turn bitter.
But what if you really need to save what’s left in your forgotten cup? In that case, your best bet is to heat it up on the stove over low heat. Remember how I said that the hotter your original brew, the faster it’ll turn bitter? That’s partly because higher temperatures accelerate chemical reactions. If you warm your coffee low and slow, it may help preserve whatever flavorful compounds are left.
Still, at any temperature, reheating coffee is a gamble. Especially if the coffee you’re reheating has milk or sugar in it: there’s a medley of other compounds mingling in your cup and adding heat is bound to cause a reaction. Next time your coffee goes cold, you might just want to brew a new pot.
Scientists may have just found the oldest ancestor of most living animals, including humans. But if you’re hoping for a family resemblance, you’re out of luck. This ancestor is a little worm-like creature about the size of a grain of rice. Its name is Ikaria wariootia [ee-CAR-ee-ah wore-ree-YOH-tah], and it lived 555 million years ago in present-day Australia.
Compared to the organisms that came before, this little guy is pretty impressive. Millions of years earlier, single cells had begun clumping together and forming colonies, which, over time, evolved into simple bodies. These earliest animals are collectively known as the Ediacaran [EE-dee-ACK-uh-rin] biota, and they staked their claim on Earth around 571 million years ago. And as simple as they were, these creatures were really diverse and pretty strange to modern eyes. Like, sponges and jellyfish are both relics of that era that are still trucking along, mostly unchanged. But most of these creatures didn’t make it into modern times — they were evolutionary dead ends.
Enter Ikaria wariootia, the little worm that could... Could adapt, that is. Ikaria had something special going for it — a trait that set it apart from those that came before and still lives on in many of those that came after. This trait is bilateral symmetry — basically, a body that has symmetrical left and right sides. That was pretty different from the other types of symmetry that organisms had at the time, which was either radial symmetry — think of the way jellyfish bodies are arranged like the spokes on a wheel — or no symmetry at all, like sponges. Ikaria’s symmetrical right and left sides also came along with a front and a back, and a gut running through its body — with, of course, an opening at each end. Definitely necessary.
That development of bilateral symmetry was a critical step in the evolution of animal life. It gave organisms the ability to develop more complex bodies. To understand how, imagine the evolutionary history of all animals as a road map. On the bottom edge of the map is a small town where all of the early animals of the Ediacaran period live. Only one road leaves the town, and eventually comes to a fork. The left road heads to the town where living fossils like sponges and jellyfish live, but then it dead ends. The right road won’t let you through as easily: you have to pay a toll. That toll is the evolution of bilateral symmetry. If that toll is paid, life can continue down that road, which leads to all of the cities that higher animals live, from apes to lobsters to dogs. Ikaria wariootia paid our toll. It opened the gateway to much more complex forms of life.
What springs to mind when I say the word “null”? I’m guessing at least one funny story comes to mind — at least, if you’re a computer programmer. If not, then buckle up: because “null” is the subject of our final edition of Monday Math Mishaps with Matt Parker. Matt is a stand-up comedian, YouTube personality, and best-selling author, with a new book called “Humble Pi (Pi as in P-I): When Math Goes Wrong in the Real World.” And here’s what Matt told us when we asked him about null.
[CLIP 2:05]
Once again, Matt Parker’s bestselling book is “Humble Pi: When Math Goes Wrong in the Real World.” You can find links to pick up the book, subscribe to Matt’s YouTube channel, and more in today’s show notes.
CODY: Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up. Starting with
[ad lib optional]
CODY: Today’s stories were written by Andrea Michelson and Cameron Duke, and edited by Ashley Hamer, who’s the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY: Today’s episode was produced and edited by Cody Gough.
CODY: Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!