Learn about how scientists traced some of Earth’s heaviest elements to an ancient star collision; what to do if you’re lying in bed and you can’t sleep; and whether diet soda can help you lose weight. 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: Some of Earth’s Gold Came From Two Neutron Stars That Collided Billions of Years Ago — https://curiosity.im/2HlKOdj If You Can't Sleep, Get Out of Bed! — https://curiosity.im/2HotWCU Will Diet Soda Help You Lose Weight? — https://curiosity.im/2YwbdLf 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 how scientists traced some of Earth’s heaviest elements to an ancient star collision; what to do if you’re lying in bed and you can’t sleep; and whether diet soda can help you lose weight.
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/what-to-do-if-you-cant-sleep-diet-soda-weight-loss-myths-and-gold-from-neutron-stars
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 how scientists traced some of Earth’s heaviest elements to an ancient star collision; what to do if you’re lying in bed and you can’t sleep; and whether diet soda can help you lose weight.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Scientists Traced Earth's Heaviest Elements to an Ancient Star Collision — https://curiosity.im/2HlKOdj (Republish) (Ashley)
Scientists have traced some of Earth’s heaviest elements to an ancient star collision. Not only does their new research shed a bright light on the early days of our solar system, but after you hear this story, you may never look at your gold or platinum wedding ring the same way again. As reported by Universe Today, scientists have theorized for about a century that the metals in our universe are here thanks to stellar nucleosynthesis. The theory says that after the first stars formed, their interior heat and pressure led to the creation of heavier elements like silicon and iron. Those elements enriched future generations of stars and provided material that helped form our planets. And more recent work has suggested that some of the heaviest elements could actually be the result of binary stars merging. In fact, a recent study by two astrophysicists found that a collision that took place between two neutron stars billions of years ago produced a pretty big chunk of some of Earth’s heaviest elements — including gold, platinum, and uranium — and that those elements became part of the material that formed the Earth. The scientific consensus right now is that asteroids and comets are made up of materials left over from when our solar system formed. When chunks of those come to Earth in the form of meteorites, they carry traces of radioactive isotopes, and their decay can help us figure out when the asteroids were created. That’s why studying space rocks can also shed light on the materials that existed in our solar system billions of years ago. For this study, researchers ran numerical simulations of the Milky Way, compared it to the composition of meteorites we’ve found here on Earth, and concluded that about 4.65 billion years ago, a single neutron-star collision could’ve happened about a thousand light years from our solar system. At that time, our solar system was still just a huge cloud of dust and gas, and the Earth and other solar planets wouldn’t form for another hundred-million years. This study is especially interesting because it gives us some insight into an event that’s both unique and really important to the history and formation of Earth and our solar system. The findings could open up new mysteries in chemistry, biology, and geology. But like I said before: it might also make you look at your jewelry in a whole new light.
If You Can't Sleep, Get Out of Bed! — https://curiosity.im/2HotWCU (Cody)
Do you know what to do if you’re lying in bed and you just can’t fall asleep? This actually happens to me ALL the time. Fortunately, experts have a suggestion on what you should do. First off, part of the reason you might have a hard time falling asleep in the first place is because you do too many things in bed. The idea behind that comes from a popular treatment for insomnia from the 1970s called stimulus control therapy. It was developed by clinical psychologist Richard Bootzin, and the central idea is that you should only use your bed for sleep (and sex). To help you crawl into bed ONLY when it’s, well… bedtime... Bootzin says you should only go to bed when you’re really sleepy. In other words, you shouldn't lie awake in bed. As in: if you're awake, get up. You know the whole Pavlov’s dog experiment, where a dog salivates when you ring a bell? Well when you get into bed, you want that to be your “bell” that cues you to fall asleep. That’s why Bootzin says that when you’re in bed, you do NOT read, watch TV, eat, or even worry. Doing that leads to "stimulus dyscontrol," and creates the opposite of a sleep cue, so you end up with a muddled cue that tells your brain that it could be bedtime, dinnertime, or anxious ceiling-staring time. To help you start practicing stimulus control therapy, here are the five steps that go into it. First: only go to bed when you’re really sleepy. As in, you’re yawning and you can barely keep your eyes open. Second: get up if you can’t sleep. That means that if you’re still up after about 15 minutes, it’s time to leave your bedroom and do something low-intensity for an hour. Try avoiding screens, and instead, read a book or draw a picture or listen to music. Third: stay up for a predetermined length of time. Meaning, when you get up in the middle of the night, don't wait to feel tired before you go back to bed. Set a time limit, like maybe 20 minutes, and stick to that. You can always get back out of bed if you still can’t sleep. Fourth: wake up at the same time every morning. Yes, even on weekends. That’ll help your body shift into healthier sleep patterns. And finally: don’t nap. Napping throws off your sleep cycle, even if it feels good sometimes. Follow the five-step sleep plan, and sleep tight!
[FIRST ALERT]
CODY: Today’s episode is sponsored by First Alert.
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ASHLEY: One more time, that’s one-link-dot-first-alert-dot-com.
Will Diet Soda Help You Lose Weight? — https://curiosity.im/2YwbdLf (Ashley)
According to research, diet soda may not be your best bet if you’re trying to lose weight. That’s because a 2017 meta-analysis. For this study, researchers found nearly 12-thousand papers that focused on artificial sweeteners like aspartame, sucralose, and stevia, and picked a handful of studies that met their criteria. Seven were randomized controlled trials, the kind of experiments that break volunteers into groups: one group gets the test substance, the other group gets a control substance. Thirty were prospective cohort studies, a less rigorous but still-useful kind of study where researchers collect data from a group of people over a period of time. The researchers found that in the trials, artificial sweeteners had no effect on weight. In the cohort studies, they were linked to a slight increase in weight. The researchers concluded that the use of artificial sweeteners does not help with weight management. Here’s why: In the cohort studies, researchers didn't control subjects' diets, so it's possible that they rewarded their "good" decisions to choose artificial sweeteners by eating more sweets overall. But in the randomized controlled trials, all groups should have eaten the exact same things, so that doesn't explain it. Some scientists theorize that artificial sweeteners take a toll on weight by changing your gut microbiome and affecting how your body handles glucose. We still don't know for sure, but if you're watching your waistline, it might be good to stick with water. Oh, and I should probably mention that diet sodas don’t cause cancer, either — but that’s another story for another day. If you’re curious, we do explain that whole thing in our full write-up on diet soda, which you can find today on curiosity-dot-com or read on our free Curiosity app, for Android and iOS.
CODY: Join us again tomorrow for the award-winning Curiosity Daily and learn something new in just a few minutes. I’m [NAME] and I’m [NAME]. Stay curious!