Learn about why the universe may have been teeming with life billions of years ago; why NASA’s Mars 2020 Martian rover mission is going to be a huge milestone; and four personality types people fit into, according to new research. 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: Billions of Years Ago, the Universe May Have Been Teeming with Life We're Officially Sending a New Martian Rover to Search for Life on the Red Planet According to New Research, People Fit into These 4 Personality Types Please tell us about yourself and help us improve the show by taking our listener survey! https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/curiosity-listener-survey 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! Learn about these topics and more on Curiosity.com, and download our 5-star app for Android and iOS. Then, join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Plus: Amazon smart speaker users, enable our Alexa Flash Briefing to learn something new in just a few minutes every day!
Learn about why the universe may have been teeming with life billions of years ago; why NASA’s Mars 2020 Martian rover mission is going to be a huge milestone; and four personality types people fit into, according to new research.
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:
Please tell us about yourself and help us improve the show by taking our listener survey! https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/curiosity-listener-survey
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!
Learn about these topics and more on Curiosity.com, and download our 5-star app for Android and iOS. Then, join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Plus: Amazon smart speaker users, enable our Alexa Flash Briefing to learn something new in just a few minutes every day!
Full episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/the-habitable-epoch-mars-2020s-search-for-life-and-4-research-based-personality-types
[MUSIC PLAYING] 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 how the universe may have been teeming with life billions of years ago, why NASA's next Martian Rover is going to be a huge milestone, and four personality types people fit into according to new research.
CODY GOUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity on the award-winning Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY HAMER: Here's an idea. What if life on a planet doesn't have to do so much with the place but with the time? At least one astronomer thinks that billions of years ago, the universe may have been teeming with life. And that's because of the way the universe was back then.
CODY GOUGH: Got to be in the right place at the right time.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. Maybe we just came to the party late.
CODY GOUGH: I mean, we're in the right place at the right time.
ASHLEY HAMER: Sure.
CODY GOUGH: But maybe we're the only ones.
ASHLEY HAMER: Right.
CODY GOUGH: That'd be weird.
ASHLEY HAMER: Well, right now, a planet has to be really lucky if it wants to sustain life. It's got to be close enough to a star to keep water from freezing but far enough away to keep it from boiling away. We haven't found very many planets that sit in that habitable zone.
CODY GOUGH: Your favorite thing to say on this show.
ASHLEY HAMER: Not favorite. But we're looking at the universe as it is right now. Turns out the universe has changed just a bit over the years. After the Big Bang more than 13 billion years ago, the universe started off really hot and then eventually cooled off like a pie out of the oven. Particles turned into atoms and atoms coalesced into stars. And everything started to spread out and cool off as the universe expanded.
And that's when the universe might have been full of life according to an idea from Astronomer Avi Loeb. He calls this time period the habitable epoch. That was after space was too hot for atoms to form but before space had turned into a cold, dark void. At this time, space itself was, well, kind of warm. It was warm enough for liquid water to exist, not just on planets, but everywhere.
Theoretically, things would have stayed that way for millions of years and liquid water is our telltale sign for life. There might not have been intelligent life since it took humans at least 160 million years to evolve from the first mammals. But certainly, some kind of life. Single-celled life, maybe. And on top of the nice temperature, life could have evolved since there wouldn't have been as much cosmic radiation or destructive debris whipping around, smashing into planets all the time.
The main problem with this theory is that the early universe wouldn't have even formed carbon, much less heavier elements like iron. So if life did exist, then it would have looked much different than the life we know. Still, it may have been around if life used to thrive on different rules. Maybe us being here today is just a rare exception.
CODY GOUGH: Don't ever let anybody tell you you're not special.
ASHLEY HAMER: That's right.
CODY GOUGH: Speaking of life across the universe, we are officially sending a new Martian Rover to search for life on the red planet. All we have to do first is figure out where we're going to land the thing. That's just a planner, right?
ASHLEY HAMER: Right. Well, I love this because they're getting so many different people involved. They're having scientists vote on what the best landing site will be, they're having kids submit names for this rover, it's going to be really cool.
CODY GOUGH: We all know it's going to be rover-- make rover phase.
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh, I hope so.
CODY GOUGH: Joking aside. This mission is an exciting step. NASA's had a bunch of rovers on the surface in the last few decades and they have found clear evidence of ancient running water through erosion and rocks that tend to form in water. But looking for life, finding even just a single Martian microbe would be a game changer. The rover's temporary name is Mars 2020 until a children's naming contest concludes, and it'll be the most capable life-seeking machine we've ever sent to Mars.
The goal of the mission is to directly seek signs of ancient Martian microbes. It's possible there's still life lurking around Mars since we know the planet's pretty active with ancient volcanoes and ice caps and possible running water on the surface. Now, obviously, alien microbes might be hazardous to humans. So when Mars 2020 finds something interesting, it'll stick the samples in a safe spot.
A future mission will have to pick up the samples and bring them back to Earth once NASA actually figure out how to do that. As of the time of this recording, scientists are holding a series of workshops to debate four potential landing sites-- Columbia Hills, Jezero Crater, Northeast Syrtis, and a new site in between Jezero and Northeast Syrtis dubbed Midway.
They should have a winning site figured out by the end of the year. If you want to really geek out about this mission, you can actually watch the presentations on the Mars 2020 website. You can find a link to that in a full write up about this on curiositydotcom and on the Curiosity app for Android and iOS.
ASHLEY HAMER: Everyone loves personality tests. I mean, otherwise, my mortal enemy, the Myers-Briggs, wouldn't be so popular, right?
CODY GOUGH: That is your mortal enemy.
ASHLEY HAMER: It really is. That test is not based in science whatsoever, by the way. Anyway, I bring this up because a team of scientists has determined four distinct personality types and they are backed by a ton of data.
CODY GOUGH: Personality types not personality traits.
ASHLEY HAMER: Right. The traits that we have are pretty well established. But the types, that's something new.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. The trades are the big five, right? Ocean, the acronym. We've talked about that a bunch on this show before.
ASHLEY HAMER: That's right, but personality types have been controversial and hard to replicate in repeated scientific studies. For this new study published in Nature Human Behavior, researchers from Northwestern University used four questionnaires containing between 44 and 300 questions. And they collected responses from more than a million and a half respondents from around the world with a wide range of ages, genders, and backgrounds.
They categorize the data into the big five personality traits then developed new algorithms to see if any of these traits tended to cluster together. As a quick reminder, the big five are openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. In the end, these four different clusters emerged. Average, reserved, role model, and self-centered.
Here's how they break down. First, the average personality type tends to be high in neuroticism and extroversion and low in openness. Researchers wager the typical person would probably line up as average, which makes sense. Though women are more likely to fall into this category than men.
In the TV show, Sex and the City, this would be a carry. Next is the reserved personality. This type is not open, neurotic, or extroverted. But they're pretty agreeable and conscientious. Charlotte from Sex and the City all the way. Then comes the role model. This personality is low in neuroticism and high in everything else. You're more likely to be a role model as you get older and women are more likely to be role models than men, including Miranda from Sex and the City.
Finally, there's self-centered. This personality type is high in extroversion and low in openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. You're less likely to fall into this type as you get older. This is your garden variety, Samantha. Figuring out if you're an average, reserved, role model, or self-centered personality is more than just a fun way to pass the time. The team hopes that their tool can help providers of mental health services assess their clients, along with helping hiring managers find the right fit for a job or online daters looking for that special someone.
CODY GOUGH: Not to mention, it sounds a lot more impressive to say you're a role model than to say, I'm an ENTJ.
ASHLEY HAMER: Definitely. So to translate this into Hogwarts houses, the average would probably be Ravenclaw, the reserved would be Hufflepuff. The role model would obviously be Gryffindor and the self-centered would be Slytherin.
CODY GOUGH: Don't look at me like that just because I'm blonde. Before we wrap up today, we want to give a special shout out to some of our patrons for supporting our show. Thank you Katrina Constantine, Luke Chapman, Stefan Crete, and Mary for contributing to our Patreon page. You are helping us keep the show going. If you're listening and you want to support Curiosity Daily, then visit Patreon.com/curiositydotcom all spelled out.
ASHLEY HAMER: No contribution is too small. Seriously, it adds up. And to show our appreciation, we're offering lots of cool bonus rewards for our patrons. Did we're producing full length Curiosity podcast episodes in the style of our old format? They're exclusive to our Patreon supporters. One more time, that's Patreon.com/curiositydotcom.
CODY GOUGH: That's all for today, but here's a sneak peek at what you can learn about on curiositydotcom this weekend.
ASHLEY HAMER: This weekend, you'll learn about the nine planetary boundaries needed for humanity to sustain itself, how to keep your jack-o'-lantern from spoiling, what ended the friendship between Sir. Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini-- that one's super cool, how to read a food label, and more.
CODY GOUGH: And if there's something else you're curious about, then email your question at podcast@curiositydotcom and we might answer it on a future episode.
ASHLEY HAMER: That's podcast@curiositydotcom. Come hang out with us again Sunday on Curiosity Daily and learn something new in just a few minutes. I'm Ashley Hamer.
CODY GOUGH: And I'm Cody Gough. Have a great weekend.
ASHLEY HAMER: And stay curious.
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Speaking on the Westwood One Podcast Network.