Learn about the invisible harms of thirdhand smoke; massive viruses that blur the line between the living and non-living; and why whales get lost during solar storms.
Learn about the invisible harms of thirdhand smoke; massive viruses that blur the line between the living and non-living; and why whales get lost during solar storms.
Moviegoers contaminate nonsmoking movie theater with 'thirdhand' cigarette smoke by Kelsey Donk
Massive viruses that blur the line between living and non-living by Cameron Duke
Solar storms blind whales because they mess with magnetoreception by Cameron Duke
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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/the-invisible-harm-of-thirdhand-smoke-why-whales-get-lost-during-solar-storms-and-a-massive-virus-that-blurs-the-line-between-life-and-non-life
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 the invisible harms of thirdhand smoke; massive viruses that blur the line between the living and non-living; and why whales get lost during solar storms.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
A new study suggests that 'thirdhand' cigarette smoke can contaminate spaces that nobody has ever smoked in.
That’s right — thirdhand smoke. For the first time, we have some evidence that smokers — and even people who have just been around cigarette smoke — bring those contaminants with them to other locations. So even when a place is labeled ‘non-smoking,’ it might not be ‘smoke free.’
The study took place in a large, well-ventilated movie theater in Mainz, Germany, that strictly enforced the country’s indoor smoking bans. Over four days, researchers measured the pollutants in the theater’s ceiling vents using a device called a “mass spectrometer,” which can identify specific particles based on their mass and electric charge.
The ceiling vent measurements showed that the presence of nicotine and other smoking-related compounds spiked when people entered the theater. Just by sitting together in a room, moviegoers exposed themselves to the equivalent of between one and 10 cigarettes of secondhand cigarette smoke.
The researchers think those chemicals entered the theater on smokers’ clothing and bodies. They found especially high concentrations of toxic compounds like benzene and formaldehyde during late-night and R-rated films. The researchers think that’s because even though attendance was lower at these viewings, the proportion of adults who might smoke was higher.
The study is the first to look at smoking pollution in a non-smoking environment. And while it took place in a movie theater, researchers say their results probably apply to most indoor environments around the world — with the potential for even more of these harmful particles in smaller, less ventilated spaces.
For now, there’s no sense in really panicking. The researchers only looked at how much of this stuff was present, not how harmful it was for the people in the theater. We can worry about thirdhand smoke all we want, but right now it’s probably not possible to shield yourself from this kind of pollution in public. But if you’re a smoker, you may want to think twice about smoking inside your home or car. We now know that cigarette smoke doesn’t disappear when the cigarette goes out.
Our next story is about viruses, but just to be clear, it has nothing to do with the coronavirus. Now with that out of the way: Scientists have recently discovered tons of really big viruses. You may already know that viruses aren’t technically alive, but these viruses? They’re so big that they blur the already fuzzy line between living and non-living things. If you think you know where to draw the line between what’s alive and what’s not, then this research might inspire you to think again!
These giant viruses attack microbes and are part of a group called the bacteriophages, meaning “bacteria-eating”. Bacteriophages, or simply “phages”, if you’re one of the cool kids, are made of the same building blocks that living things are made of, like proteins and DNA. But they’re not considered to be alive, because they have no metabolism, and they can’t reproduce on their own. So how do they reproduce? Well, that’s where the “bacteria eating” part comes in. To make more bacteriophages, these giant viruses inject their DNA into a bacterial cell and hijack its internal machinery. Then, boom. More bacteriophages.
It’s not like bacteriophages are uncommon — scientists have been studying them for a long time. However, they’re usually really small. These new massive versions have more genetic material than some actual living organisms, and like I said, they were only recently discovered.
Microbial ecologists found these giant viruses by swabbing all over the place — we’re talking locations ranging from hot springs in Tibet to hospital rooms and even a baby’s gut microbiome. The study led to the discovery of 351 phages that each had genomes larger than 500,000 bases long. The largest in the sample was almost 50 percent bigger than that, clocking in at a massive 735,000 bases. To compare, the average phage genome has only 50,000 bases. That’s a bit like suddenly discovering that 82-foot tall humans have been among us the whole time and nobody noticed until now.
Something more interesting than the sheer size of the monster phages might be the genes they contain. Most of these huge phages have genes that we thought only lived in bacteria. Ironically, many of these genes are CRISPR genes, which are famous for their gene-editing capabilities in a laboratory setting but actually originated in bacteria — they act as the bacteria’s immune system to fight off phage attacks. This means that massive phages have learned to attack bacteria with their own gene-editing weapons. Even weirder, these mega-viruses contained genes that give them the ability to translate messenger RNA into new proteins — an ability only living things tend to possess.
So like I mentioned earlier, the stark boundaries we draw through nature turn out to be more than a little blurry. If you don’t believe me, then just ask these bacteriophages.
What do solar storms have to do with whales? It turns out, probably more than you’d think. And it’s not a super friendly relationship: new evidence suggests that gray whales migrate by following patterns in the Earth’s magnetic field — and activity on the sun can push them off course.
As far as I’m concerned, magnetoreception is basically a superpower. Birds, bees, sea turtles, and salamanders are just a handful of the animals that can use the Earth’s magnetic field as a navigational tool. But as cool as magnetoreception is, we don’t really know how it works. Sometimes, the best way to find out how something works is to look for the moments it doesn’t — and find out why.
That’s why Duke University researchers decided to study whale strandings. They weren’t sure whether gray whales had this magnetic sense, but it seemed plausible. After all, gray whales migrate across thousands of miles of open ocean every year without any real visual landmarks to guide them. It’s an incredible feat, but the whales aren’t perfect. Sometimes they get lost and end up stranded on beaches.
The researchers looked at a dataset of 186 whale strandings recorded in North America over about a 30 year period and compared them with the number of sunspots at the time. Sunspots are linked to solar storms, which are high-energy bursts from the sun that can disrupt the Earth’s magnetic field and dose the planet with radio-frequency noise. The researchers found that on days with large numbers of sunspots, whales were more than twice as likely to get stranded than on a randomly chosen day.
When they dug into the data, the researchers found that the problem wasn’t what you might think: it was that the radio interference blinded the whales’ sensors, not that changes in the Earth’s magnetic field threw them off course. Put another way, it was like the whales’ built-in Google maps couldn’t get a GPS signal. The same radio interference issue has been observed in birds thrown off course.
This teaches us two things. First, it shows us that yeah, whales really do use magnetoreception to get around, and two, it gives us a clue as to how this sense works. There’s still a long way to go before we know how magnetoreception happens, but studies like this help us navigate that path a little better.
Let’s recap today’s takeaways
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CODY: Today’s stories were written by Kelsey Donk 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!