Learn about an artificial sun that’s hotter than our actual sun; whether math really is a universal language; and what words like “fresh” really tell you about how fancy your food is.
Learn about an artificial sun from KSTAR that’s hotter than our actual sun; whether math really is a universal language; and what words like “fresh” really tell you about how fancy your food is.
South Korean researchers created an artificial sun that's hotter than our actual sun by Grant Currin
Is math really a universal language? by Ashley Hamer (Listener question from John)
What Words Like "Fresh" Really Tell You About How Fancy Your Food Is by Arika Okrent
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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/the-sun-2-0-fresh-food-fallacies-and-is-math-universal
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 an artificial sun that’s hotter than our actual sun. Then, we’ll answer a listener question about whether math is really a universal language. You’ll also learn what words like “fresh” really tell you about how fancy your food is.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
South Korea’s KSTAR has set a new world record! No, it’s not for a bajillion Spotify plays or a zillion YouTube views. KSTAR isn’t even a K-pop band. It’s a nuclear fusion reactor, and it recently ran at 100 million degrees celsius for 20 seconds. That’s hotter than the core of the sun.
That’s hot, even when compared to the sun. The sun’s core only clocks in at about 15 million degrees Celsius.
Here’s how the team of scientists and engineers got this new hotness. KSTAR stands for Korea Superconducting Tokamak [TOCK-uh-mack] Advanced Research. The key word here is “tokamak”: that’s a machine that uses a magnetic field to hold plasma in the shape of a torus, which is the geometry word for donut.
KSTAR and similar devices generate energy differently from regular nuclear power plants. Instead of splitting up nuclei of heavy atoms, tokamak-style reactors merge the nuclei of light atoms. That fusion of atoms releases a lot more energy than the fission that nuclear power plants use. KSTAR does this by using magnets to run a powerful electrical current through hydrogen isotopes, which separates the atoms from their electrons and turns the whole thing into plasma. As those plasma particles collide and the temperature rises, the machine cranks the heat even more until the particles ram each other so hard that they fuse. It’s the same thing that happens in the sun!
Clearly, heat is an important ingredient here, and maintaining 100 million degrees for 20 seconds is both a monumental achievement and an incremental improvement. KSTAR first hit 100 million degrees in 2018, and by the next year it managed to sustain the searing temp for 8 seconds. Now it’s more than doubled the time it can hold steady. The team hopes they’ll be able to keep the heat up for 300 seconds by 2025.
KSTAR won’t be sending electricity to the grid anytime soon, but it’s inching closer to making an energy breakthrough. If the dream of nuclear fusion-powered energy is realized on a large scale, it could be a gamechanger of massive proportions. Fusion plants of the future might use seawater as fuel and produce very little waste.
And for the record, this new breakthrough isn’t published in a peer-reviewed journal yet — that won’t happen until at least May. But we’re covering it because it’s consistent with what the KSTAR team has achieved in the past, and those achievements have been peer reviewed.
[And Ashley, why didn’t the plasma incinerate the Earth?]
We got a listener question from John in Ohio, who writes, “I have always heard how math would be the common language that could be used if we ever were to encounter intelligent life in the universe. Does that imply their math would definitely be identical to ours, barring using different symbols?” Great question!
The idea that math is a universal language is super popular, both among mathematicians and science-fiction authors — I mean, Contact, Independence Day, Arrival, the Three Body Problem, I could go on. So it might surprise you to know that it’s also super controversial, and it has been since the days of Plato and Aristotle. Here’s why: by asking whether math is a universal language, we’re technically asking whether math was discovered by humans or invented by humans. If we made it all up, then it won’t be familiar to visiting extraterrestrials.
Many mathematicians would say that math exists out there in the universe, and the progression of mathematics has been one of discovery: if I take down one bison and you take down one bison, we’ll have two bison to eat. Boom, we discovered addition! If I cut one bison pelt down the middle I’ll have two halves. Division! Our measurements led us to discover geometry and trigonometry; our descriptions of the way objects move led to calculus. People in this camp believe that because we discovered universal truths that already existed, extraterrestrials are likely to discover them too.
In the other camp are those who believe math is purely a human invention, one that we use to make sense of the universe. Think of math as a metaphor, or a very accurate fairy tale. These types say that math is not inherent to those bison or that pelt or that neutron star. We’ve just figured out a very, very reliable tool for describing and predicting these things. Think about it this way: mathematics is built on fundamental rules or axioms — things like 1+1=2 and the order of operations, or the rule that you have to multiply and divide before you add and subtract. We only have that rule because if we didn’t, the same equation could come out with different answers. But there’s no rule of the universe that says one equation can’t have two answers. Humans invented that rule to make their tool more useful.
So to answer your question, we don’t know whether math is a universal language we could use with other intelligent life in the universe. It’s a complicated philosophical question, but it sure is fun to think about. Thanks for your question! If you have a question, send it in to curiosity at discovery dot com or leave us a voicemail at 312-596-5208.
Reading the nutrition label on your food will generally tell you what you’re getting. Reading the description on the package? Not so much. According to linguist Dan Jurafsky, what the language of food really tells you probably isn’t what you’d expect. So here are some language tricks to keep an eye on the next time you’re looking at a restaurant menu or making a grocery run.
Let’s start with words like "fresh," “ripe,” and "tasty." These are good things, right? Not so fast. Studies of the language of menus show that these words are hardly ever used to describe the food at finer restaurants. Instead, the cheaper the food, the more likely it is to be described with these adjectives. Jurafsky calls them "linguistic fillers." When you don’t have anything specific and valuable to say, you use these words instead.
Food that wants you to think of it as high quality tends to be associated with negative words. One study of chip bags found that phrases like “nothing fake” or “never fried” are more likely to be found on more expensive items. Health-related claims like this show up six times more often on expensive brands, even if they aren't necessarily healthier. Looking at the statistics on price, the researchers found that a bag of potato chips costs four cents more per ounce for every additional negative word on the bag.
What about sexy metaphors, like a brownie that’s tantalizing or a steak that’s “seductively seared”? A study of millions of online reviews of restaurants found that these types of phrases were more frequently used in reviews of expensive restaurants — and the more sex mentions there were, the more expensive the restaurant.
For cheap restaurants, the metaphor of choice was drugs, where food was described as "like crack" or "a fix." Even when the review was positive, the cheaper, higher-calorie dishes were cast as "addicting" and somehow to blame for the indulgence.
Is fancy, expensive food actually fresher, healthier, and more full of sensual pleasure? Not necessarily. But the language used to describe our food betrays underlying assumptions about our relationship to it — whether it's our love or our drug.
CODY: Before we recap what we learned today, here’s a sneak peek at what you’ll hear next week on Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY: Next week, you’ll learn about what getting chills from music says about your brain;
That time scholars tried to kick Latin out of English;
How cats domesticated themselves;
A new theory on how our planets formed;
Why lots of airports keep birds of prey on staff;
And more! Okay, so now, let’s recap what we learned today.
[ad lib optional]
CODY: Today’s stories were written by Grant Currin, Ashley Hamer, and Arika Okrent, and edited by Ashley Hamer, who’s the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY: Scriptwriting was by Cody Gough and Sonja Hodgen. Today’s episode was produced and edited by Cody Gough.
CODY: Have a great, fresh weekend, and join us again Monday to learn something seductively tasty in just a few never-fried minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!