Learn about why high school starts too early; why daydreaming might be a good sign; and finding life on Hycean planets. High school starts too early in all but 3 US states — but things are changing by Steffie Drucker Roy, S. (2014, August 26). AAP Recommends Delaying School Start Times to Combat Teen Sleep... Sleep Review. https://www.sleepreviewmag.com/sleep-health/demographics/age/aap-recommends-delaying-school-start-times-combat-teen-sleep-deprivation/ CDC. (2020, May 29). Schools Start Too Early. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/sleep/features/schools-start-too-early.html National Teacher and Principal Survey (NTPS). (2017). Ed.gov; National Center for Education Statistics. https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/ntps/tables/ntps1718_table_05_s1s.asp Jacobs, F. (2021, August 27). Here’s how early school begins – and why it is bad for students. Big Think; Big Think. https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/heres-how-early-school-begins-and-why-it-is-bad-for-students Sleep for Teenagers | Sleep Foundation. (2009, April 17). Sleep Foundation. https://www.sleepfoundation.org/teens-and-sleep Daydreaming Might Be a Sign of an Efficient Brain by Reuben Westmaas Daydreaming is Good. It Means You’re Smart | News Center. (2017). Gatech.edu. https://www.news.gatech.edu/news/2017/10/24/daydreaming-good-it-means-youre-smart Godwin, C. A., Hunter, M. A., Bezdek, M. A., Lieberman, G., Elkin-Frankston, S., Romero, V. L., Witkiewitz, K., Clark, V. P., & Schumacher, E. H. (2017). Functional connectivity within and between intrinsic brain networks correlates with trait mind wandering. Neuropsychologia, 103, 140–153. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2017.07.006 A wandering mind reveals mental processes and priorities. (2012). Wisc.edu. https://news.wisc.edu/a-wandering-mind-reveals-mental-processes-and-priorities/ Levinson, D. B., Smallwood, J., & Davidson, R. J. (2012). The Persistence of Thought. Psychological Science, 23(4), 375–380. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797611431465 Forget Earth-like planets — it's time to look for alien life on Hycean planets by Briana Brownell New class of habitable exoplanets are “a big step forward” in the search for life. (2021, August 26). University of Cambridge. https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/new-class-of-habitable-exoplanets-are-a-big-step-forward-in-the-search-for-life Madhusudhan, N., Piette, A. A. A., & Constantinou, S. (2021). Habitability and Biosignatures of Hycean Worlds. The Astrophysical Journal, 918(1), 1. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/abfd9c 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.
Learn about why high school starts too early; why daydreaming might be a good sign; and finding life on Hycean planets.
High school starts too early in all but 3 US states — but things are changing by Steffie Drucker
Daydreaming Might Be a Sign of an Efficient Brain by Reuben Westmaas
Forget Earth-like planets — it's time to look for alien life on Hycean planets by Briana Brownell
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.
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/school-should-start-later-daydreaming-perks-hycean-planets
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 high school starts too early; why daydreaming might be a sign of an efficient brain; and a new type of planet researchers are including in our search for extraterrestrial life.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
High school starts too early in all but 3 US states — but things are changing by Steffie Drucker (Cody)
This next story will come as no surprise to anyone who has ever struggled to wake up for school. According to research, high school starts way too early in almost every US state.
Experts recommend that teens get between 8 and 10 hours of sleep each night. But their biology makes it difficult to achieve that during the school year. Teens have a hard time falling asleep early because their sleep drive builds more slowly than it did in childhood, so they don’t start to feel tired until later in the night. If left to their own schedule, most teens would sleep from 11 or midnight to 8 or 9 in the morning. But the vast majority of American high schools start earlier than that, which means teens need to get out of bed even earlier to arrive on time. They get sleepy later and have to wake up earlier, so their sleep is being squeezed on both sides.
Suffice it to say, sleep is essential for good physical and mental health. And the kids are not alright: A 2014 poll of parents by the National Sleep Foundation found that a majority of high
schoolers weren’t getting the recommended amount. One sleep-medicine publication called the average teenager “pathologically sleepy.” Yikes!
In 2014, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that high schools start at 8:30 or later. But a few years later, the Department of Education found that the first bell rang earlier than that in 93 percent of US high schools. The only places where students started the day at 8:30 local time or later were Alaska, South Carolina, and Washington, D.C. On the other end of the spectrum, schools in Louisiana start as early as 7:30 a.m.! And this isn’t a uniquely American phenomenon, either: schools in many countries start their day at that time or earlier.
So why does school start so early? In the US, buses are a big part of it. Many school districts use one bus company to shuttle all grade levels. Most places tend to bring high school students in first, then middle school, then elementary school. South Carolina follows an opposite flow, which is why they’re on the later end of the list.
The good news is things are changing. More than 400 school districts have moved their start time to 8:30 or later. And a lot of the time, that has resulted in better test scores, attendance, and graduation rates — and probably happier, healthier teens.
Daydreaming Might Be a Sign of an Efficient Brain by Reuben Westmaas (Ashley)
If you frequently find yourself lost in a daydream, I’ve got good news. It turns out that daydreaming might be a sign of an efficient brain.
According to psychology professor Eric Schumacher, people with efficient brains may have too much brain capacity to stop their minds from wandering. A study he co-authored in 2017 backs up that claim. For that study, researchers first put people in an MRI machine and asked them to
focus on a fixed point in space. That helped the researchers figure out how well different parts of their brains worked together. Next, the participants took a test to measure their intellectual and creative abilities and answered questions about their daydreaming habits.
It turned out that the people who thought they daydreamed the most also performed the best on the intellect-measuring test. Not only that, but the different regions of their brains also seemed to work together the most efficiently. Basically, this suggests that when these participants were bored, they could tune out and count on a small corner of their brain to grab their attention when something important came up.
Something else that controls whether you can come back to what you’re doing after a daydream is working memory. That’s the kind of short-term memory that helps you keep a phone number in your mind while you look for a place to write it down. Another study found that you’re
more likely to daydream when your working memory isn’t being challenged, which shows just how important working memory is when it comes to daydreaming.
In that study, participants were given a simple task that required their constant attention: something like clicking a button every time they took a breath, or hitting a computer key only when a certain letter appeared onscreen. They then had their working memory tested by being asked to remember certain letters while performing mathematical equations. Lo and behold, the people who reported daydreaming the most during their most mindless tasks were also the ones who best recalled the numbers even when called upon to use their brains. But when the same participants were given a task that challenged their working memory, the differences in daydreaming disappeared. Everyone had to focus on the task at hand.
So, there you have it. If you tend to let your mind wander during a simple task, it might just mean that your brain has everything under control.
Forget Earth-like planets — it's time to look for alien life on Hycean planets by Briana Brownell (Cody)
Usually when we think about the search for life on other planets, we think about Earth-like planets. But recently, scientists have turned their attention to a very different kind of world that could also have the right conditions for life to form.
These planets are called Hycean worlds. And they’re pretty different from Earth. Instead of the nitrogen that dominates our atmosphere, Hycean planets have an atmosphere rich in hydrogen. And instead of the rocky land masses we call home, they have large, planet-wide oceans.
These strange waterworlds are a lot more common than habitable terrestrial planets like Earth, which is a major reason that scientists are interested in them. Planets like ours have a narrow Goldilocks Zone — that’s the range around a star that would make the planet not too hot and
not too cold, but just right. (See what they did there?) But Hycean worlds have a much larger potential range of masses and temperatures that could sustain life. They can be found around a much wider range of stars too, including ones one tenth the mass of our sun to stars about ten times as massive.
But Hycean worlds don’t even need to have perfect conditions to support life. Take “dark” Hycean planets, for instance: these are tidally locked to their star so one side of the planet is always light while the other side is always dark. These planets could be much hotter, on average, and still support life because the dark side of the planet could have oceans cool enough for life to form.
Then there are “cold” Hycean worlds, which lie far beyond the Goldilocks Zone. These planets might be far away from the star they orbit or even unattached to any star. But, scientists think that even then, life could arise — it would just use the planet’s internal heat as the main energy source. The surface of the oceans could even be completely frozen and still host life deep underneath.
Once scientists find a candidate for a hospitable world, the hunt for life can begin. Scientists can measure the chemical composition of a planet’s atmosphere by looking at what wavelengths of light the atmosphere absorbs. And because the processes of life alter the chemical composition of the atmosphere, scientists can read those wavelengths to find the signatures of life.
Scientists are hoping to start studying the transmission of many identified Hycean worlds with the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope in the coming months. Let the hunt for Hycean life begin!
RECAP
Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up. Starting with
1. ASHLEY: High school starts way too early in almost every US state — and in many other countries. Teens get sleepy later than they did as children, so when school requires them to get up early, they cut their sleep short — and that takes a toll on their academic performance. The American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended that schools start no earlier than 8:30 am, and thankfully, more than 400 school districts have changed their start times to follow their lead. More sleep means better test scores and healthier teens!
2. CODY: Daydreaming might be a sign of an efficient brain. Studies suggest that people with better working memory are more likely to daydream during a simple task, and brain scans suggest that daydreamers have brains that work more efficiently. That might mean that daydreaming is a way for efficient brains to blow off steam when they’re bored — and thanks to their powerful working memory, they can always focus again when it’s important.
3. ASHLEY: Hydrogen-rich ocean worlds called Hycean planets could be a very good bet for finding life out there in the universe. Not only are they more common than habitable terrestrial planets like Earth, but they have a much wider range of conditions in which they could support life — around big stars and little stars, far from their star and way up close, and even tidally locked so one side is always hot and the other side is always cold. I hope Hycean extraterrestrial soon.
[ad lib optional]
ASHLEY: Today’s writers were Steffie Drucker, Reuben Westmaas, and Briana Brownell. CODY: Our managing editor is Ashley Hamer.
ASHLEY: Our producer and audio editor is Cody Gough.
CODY: [AD LIB SOMETHING FUNNY] Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!