Learn about an upcoming solar sail launch to test solar propulsion; why the tongue map you learned about in school is all wrong; and new research that says debating politics online may not be a total waste. In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes: We're Launching a Solar Sail to Test Solar Propulsion — https://curiosity.im/2I5CPR5 The Tongue Map You Learned in School Is All Wrong — https://curiosity.im/2I7A5CD New Research Says Debating Politics Online May Not Be a Total Waste — https://curiosity.im/2Ic1jbs 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 an upcoming solar sail launch to test solar propulsion; why the tongue map you learned about in school is all wrong; and new research that says debating politics online may not be a total waste.
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com 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/solar-sail-testing-benefits-of-debating-politics-online-and-tongue-map-mythbusting
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 an upcoming solar sail launch to test solar propulsion; why the tongue map you learned about in school is all wrong; and new research that says debating politics online may not be a total waste.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
We're Launching a Solar Sail to Test Solar Propulsion — https://curiosity.im/2I5CPR5 (from Saturday) (Republish) (Cody) [FREELANCER]
We’re launching a solar sail to test solar propulsion. And solar sails could pave the way for low-cost, long-lasting spacecraft. As reported by Universe Today, the Planetary Society has set a June 22 launch date for their LightSail 2 CubeSat. LightSail 2 is a test mission designed to study the feasibility of using sunlight for propulsion. The small satellite will use the pressure of sunlight on its solar sails to propel its way to a higher orbit.
The LightSail 2 is hitching a ride inside a Georgia Tech mission called Prox-1, which itself is a secondary payload aboard a Falcon Heavy rocket. LightSail 2 will be deployed at an altitude of 447 miles, or 720 kilometers, where the force from the sunlight is enough to overcome the atmospheric drag.
Once it’s been deployed, LightSail 2 will take a few days to perform health and status checks, and then it’ll deploy its solar panels. About a day after that, it'll unfurl its four mylar sails, which are each about the size of a boxing ring.
LightSail 2 will rely on what's called solar radiation pressure for propulsion. Photons from the sun will push on the sails and produce a tiny amount of acceleration. Eventually, the pressure from all those photons will raise the spacecraft's orbit. The force is REALLY small, as in, roughly the weight of a paperclip. But over time, it’ll raise LightSail 2’s orbit by a measurable amount.
This is according to the Planetary Society, who designed LightSail 2 to test the feasibility of solar sail propulsion for the popular CubeSat type of satellite. That’s a small satellite commonly used for research purposes, which is becoming more popular due to its low cost.
LightSail 2 is the third attempt the by the Planetary Society to test this solar sail spacecraft, although it’s an idea they’ve been championing for decades. The Society is a charitable organization, and this sail was developed with funds largely from private donors. As for what’s next, the Society says the LightSail 2 project is already informing future solar sail work, and since they have a Space Act Agreement in place with NASA, they’ll be sharing their project data so we can all benefit from this hopefully successful test flight.
The Tongue Map You Learned in School Is All Wrong — https://curiosity.im/2I7A5CD (from Saturday) (Ashley) [FREELANCER]
Today in mythbusting: the tongue map you learned in school is all wrong. You know — the one you learned about in grade school that said different parts of your tongue taste specific flavors. Like, the tip of your tongue tastes sweetness, and the back edges by the molars taste sourness. Updated research has confirmed this information is untrue, despite the fact that it’s still getting published in science textbooks.
So how did this even happen? Well, the tongue map has its roots in a German experiment from more than a hundred years ago. Scientist David Hänig drizzled sweet, sour, bitter and salty flavors along the edges of volunteer’s tongues, then reported he’d discovered a pattern of zones which were more sensitive to certain flavors. He even graphed his findings, in a pretty convoluted and confusing way.
In the 1940s, a Harvard scientist amplified this distortion even further, translating those graphed findings into the tongue map that became hugely popular. Stemware company Riedel even designed wine glasses with the tongue map in mind.
New findings tell a different story. Some animals do have tongues with a patchwork quality, like fruit flies. They taste with 32 hairs, and each hair senses a different flavor. But humans don’t seem to have a similar setup.
Instead, we have receptors for all the flavors distributed across the tongue and beyond. Different receptors in our taste buds seem to taste different flavors on a microbiological level, but each of our taste buds contain 50 to 150 receptors for each flavor. So, you can taste basically all flavors anywhere on your tongue.
There’s actually not a substantial amount of research on taste, so there’s still some controversy around how taste even works, and how many tastes there are. But hopefully this tongue map mythbusting is exciting news for foodies, because now you can explore your tastes without feeling unnecessarily limited.
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New Research Says Debating Politics Online May Not Be a Total Waste — https://curiosity.im/2Ic1jbs (Cody) [FREELANCER]
It used to be considered rude to talk about politics in public, and looking at the state of political discourse on social media, sometimes it feels like past generations were really onto something. Things may not be as bad as they seem, though, because a new study from Northeastern University suggests there may actually be some benefit to the online bickering.
Researchers conducted a study to try to understand some of the patterns of how people communicate online, particularly on Twitter. They collected 7,053 Twitter conversations that took place in October 2017, totaling 63,671 tweets. Since this was a study on political discourse, all the conversations contained a political keyword: namely, the word “Trump.”
Not so surprisingly, they found that people who were the most active on Twitter participated the most in conversations, and that those conversations happened rapidly, with nearly half of replies being posted within 5 minutes of each other, and almost all within the same day.
What they found out about the tone of the tweets was more compelling. It turns out that positive tweets are less likely to get a reply than negative tweets, and when they do get a reply, it’s usually positive. Negative tweets, on the other hand, were the most likely to receive a reply.
From what the researchers could see, there are three major reasons why people engage in political conversations online. One is to troll and provoke people. Another is for political affirmation among people who have similar viewpoints. But the third reason suggests people are engaging productively with others who hold opposing views.
Of course, since it’s a proven fact that people can have productive conversations across differing ideologies in the real world, it makes sense that they would have these conversations online as well.
And when they’re online, people are participating in lively discussions with people who hold opposing viewpoints, which is much different when you compare it to cable news, where a lot of the time people are just watching programming that reaffirms their own political bias.
So, instead of rarely encountering ideas to challenge what they already believe, people are being exposed to more thought-provoking content online.
In an age where political polarization feels like it’s at an all-time high, it seems conversation is still alive and well, and that there is something positive to be found in those political Twitter battles after all.
CODY: That’s all for today, but you can keep learning all weekend on curiosity-dot-com.
ASHLEY: And keep an eye on your podcast feed, because tomorrow we’re releasing a special Saturday episode of Curiosity Daily. It’s part of our sponsored miniseries on how science and technology are being applied to drive innovation and change the world.
CODY: We’ll be back with our regularly scheduled programming on Sunday, so join us tomorrow — and then! — for the award-winning Curiosity Daily to learn something new in just a few minutes. And have a great weekend! I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Stay curious!