Learn about a surprising tip for de-cluttering your house; 3 extinct relatives of humans that lived in the same place and time; and why the possibility that the universe might not be expanding at the same rate everywhere is a huge deal.
Learn about a surprising tip for de-cluttering your house; 3 extinct relatives of humans that lived in the same place and time; and why the possibility that the universe might not be expanding at the same rate everywhere is a huge deal.
What's The First Step for De-Cluttering Your House? by Reuben Westmas
Three different hominins lived in the same place and time by Grant Currin
The universe might not be expanding at the same rate everywhere by Grant Currin
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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/the-universe-might-expand-unevenly-using-a-camera-to-de-clutter-your-house-and-3-hominins-lived-in-the-same-place-and-time
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 a surprising tip for de-cluttering your house; 3 extinct relatives of humans that lived in the same place and time; and why the idea that the universe might not be expanding at the same rate everywhere could be a HUGE deal.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
You probably have a pile of things you need to get rid of but can't bear to part with. Maybe that old ratty T-shirt came from the camp where you met your best friend, or maybe that moth-eaten teddy bear reminds you of when your kids were little. But it could be your memories of the object that are holding you back, and not the object itself. And researchers have found that you can save these memories in a different way — which is good news if you’re in the midst of spring cleaning and you’re trying to give yourself some extra space.
See if you can relate to the story of Karen Winterich, an associate professor of marketing at The Ohio State University. She had a pair of basketball shorts in her closet for years, long after her high-school basketball days were over. But every time she went to toss them out, she remembered one glorious victory against her school's biggest rivals. It wasn’t the shorts she valued, but the memories they evoked. So, she teamed up with fellow marketing professor Rebecca Reczek [REE-zik], and the two came up with a test to determine whether immortalizing the memory could make it easier to let go of the memento.
They started a donation drive in six university residence halls right before students went home for winter break. Half of the roughly 800 students were presented with an ad campaign that read "Don't Pack up Your Sentimental Clutter...Just Keep a Photo of It, Then Donate." The other half saw ads telling them to donate their keepsakes without any mention of a photo. Just as the researchers predicted, the students who were encouraged to take a photo donated much more stuff — 613 total items to the non-photographers' 533.
So when it's time to clear space at home, start with a camera. If you have a photo to look back on, letting go of those memory-laden objects may be a whole lot easier.
When you think about human evolution, do you picture that famous “monkey to man” image that shows a monkey that evolves into a caveman that eventually evolves into a modern human? Well, forget all that. Human evolution wasn’t a straight line. Not only have there been other hominins in Earth’s history, but new research suggests that three of them all lived at the same time. That’s right: Archaeologists recently determined that Australopithecus [OSS-strah-low-PITH-ih-kiss], Paranthropus [pah-RAN-thrah-piss], and an early form of Homo erectus lived alongside one another in what’s now South Africa.
The researchers were examining two newly discovered fossils of skull fragments found in Drimolen [DRIM-oh-linn] paleocave complex. One belonged to a member of the genus Homo and the other to a member of the genus Paranthropus. By using a combination of novel dating techniques, researchers were able to pinpoint the fossils’ ages with remarkable accuracy. Those measurements showed that the fossils were deposited between 2.04 and 1.95 million years ago.
That’s a big deal for two reasons. First, the researchers were able to place the fossils in an incredibly small window of time — just 90,000 years! If they’re right, these fossils are South Africa’s most precisely dated remains of ancient human relatives. And even more importantly, the new dates show that our cousin Homo erectus showed up in South Africa more than a hundred thousand years earlier than scientists previously thought.
All of this means that experts have to rethink what was going on in South Africa about two million years ago. Members of the genus Australopithecus had already been living in the region for quite some time, and archaeologists previously thought they were an ancestor to Homo erectus that had gone extinct before these other hominins showed up. But that apparently wasn’t the case.
Instead, this shows a picture of transition. The climate was changing at this point in time, and the native Australopithecus was on its way out while Homo and Paranthropus were moving in. Re-writing the history of hominin evolution is definitely a big deal, but the most important part of this study may be the new techniques the researchers used to date their finds. With any luck, these new methods will yield even more discoveries that will help us learn more about our branch on the tree of life.
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The universe is expanding. We can all agree on that. Scientists also pretty much agree that it’s expanding at the same rate everywhere. A lot of our knowledge about the universe relies on that fact, actually. That’s why the results of this new study are so alarming, if true: new research suggests that the universe is expanding unevenly. If that ends up being right, cosmologists are going to have a lot of work on their hands.
Scientists use the word “isotropy” for the idea that the ballooning universe is expanding at the same rate everywhere, like a loaf of raisin bread rising in the oven. But astrophysicists from Harvard and the University of Bonn have found evidence of anisotropy — basically, the idea that the universe isn’t expanding at the same rate everywhere. They came to this conclusion by using X-ray telescopes to look closely at faraway galaxy clusters, where they found a discrepancy between their temperature and brightness.
Astronomers can determine the temperature and brightness of a galaxy cluster from characteristics in the radiation it emits. The hotter a galaxy cluster, the brighter it glows. Since the universe is expanding, objects that are farther from Earth are moving away from us faster. Objects that are farther away also appear dimmer. So basically, we can use a galaxy cluster’s speed to figure out its distance, then combine that with its temperature to figure out how bright it should appear to our telescopes.
And that’s where these researchers found a problem. Some of the galaxy clusters they looked at were brighter than they should be, and others were much too dim. That suggests that isotropy might not be right. Maybe our raisin-bread universe is bulging in some places but falling flat in others.
It’s important to point out that there are some other possible explanations for these discrepancies. It may be that unidentified clouds of dust or gas are interfering with the radiation as it makes the long journey to Earth. It’s also possible that gravity from groups of neighboring galaxy clusters are changing the speed of these objects.
But it’s also possible that isotropy is an incorrect assumption. If it is, the researchers speculate that dark energy may be to blame. After all, dark energy is the force we credit with the expansion of the universe, and we still don’t know much about it.
While it’s too soon to make a definitive judgment, more evidence is on the way. The authors only analyzed 300 galaxy clusters, and future surveys are set to collect data on thousands more. There’s no need to abandon our collected knowledge about the universe quite yet. It’s probably best to wait it out.
CODY: Let’s recap today’s takeaways
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CODY: Today’s stories were written by Reuben Westmaas and Grant Currin, and edited by Ashley Hamer, who’s the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY: Scriptwriting was by Cody Gough and Sonja Hodgen. Curiosity Daily is 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!