Learn about how saving the whales could help combat climate change; Jupiter’s rings; and why reading makes you carsick. Plus: a major announcement about the future of Curiosity Daily. Saving the whales could help us capture more than a billion tons of CO2 every year by Briana Brownell Nature’s Solution to Climate Change – IMF F&D. (2019). Imf.org. https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2019/12/natures-solution-to-climate-change-chami.htm Blue Carbon in the Sanctuaries - Greater Farallones Association. (2021, October 4). Greater Farallones Association. https://farallones.org/climate/blue-carbon/ The Great whales: All 13 species explained. (2020, February 12). Whale Watch Cabo Tours. http://whalewatchcabo.com/great-whales Jupiter Has Rings by Ashley Hamer Does Jupiter have rings? (2021). Rmg.co.uk. https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/does-jupiter-have-rings NASA - Jupiter’s Ring Formation Theories Confirmed. (2021). Nasa.gov. https://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/multimedia/largest/rings.html Why Reading Makes You Carsick by Anna Todd Fresh Air. (2016, August 2). A Neuroscientist Explores The Illogical Behaviors Of The Mind In “Idiot Brain.” NPR.org; Fresh Air. https://www.npr.org/2016/08/02/488238350/a-neuroscientist-explores-the-illogical-behaviors-of-the-mind-in-idiot-brain Schmidt, E. A., Kuiper, O. X., Wolter, S., Diels, C., & Bos, J. E. (2020). An international survey on the incidence and modulating factors of carsickness. Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour, 71, 76–87. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trf.2020.03.012 Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day withCody Gough andAshley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Learn about how saving the whales could help combat climate change; Jupiter’s rings; and why reading makes you carsick. Plus: a major announcement about the future of Curiosity Daily.
Saving the whales could help us capture more than a billion tons of CO2 every year by Briana Brownell
Jupiter Has Rings by Ashley Hamer
Why Reading Makes You Carsick by Anna Todd
Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/why-you-get-carsick-climate-saving-whales-jupiters-rings
CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Discovery. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about how saving the whales could help us combat climate change; how Jupiter has rings — yes, Jupiter; and why reading in the car makes you carsick.
CODY: Plus, stick around for a major announcement about the future of Curiosity Daily. It’s pretty important. [ad lib] Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Usually, people think about fighting climate change to save wildlife. But what if wildlife could help us fight climate change? That might be possible when it comes to whales. Our giant swimming friends could be an “all-natural” way to sequester carbon.
You see, each great whale accumulates about 33 tons of CO2 in their body during their decades-long life. (Great whales refer to any of the 13 species of ginormous cetaceans out there in the ocean). When they die, they sink to the seafloor. And all that carbon remains deep under the sea for centuries.
But that’s not all. It turns out that whales have a “multiplier effect” on carbon sequestration. Because of, well….their poop.
Since whales are mammals that breathe oxygen, they need to return to the surface to take each breath. That’s where phytoplankton live. Phytoplankton are tiny water organisms that use photosynthesis to generate energy from sunlight and carbon dioxide. And it turns out whale waste is an excellent fertilizer for them. It contains important nutrients like iron and nitrogen that are essential for phytoplankton to thrive.
Even though they’re tiny, phytoplankton have major impacts on the environment. They contribute more than half of all the oxygen in our atmosphere. And in the process, they capture about 40 percent of all CO2 that’s produced. That’s more than four Amazon rainforests. Talk about carbon capture.
Areas that great whales frequent are havens for phytoplankton. By increasing the whale population, the amount of phytoplankton will increase with it. Even a tiny, 1 percent increase in phytoplankton would capture a HUGE amount of carbon — as in, the same amount as 2 billion mature trees.
Although whaling is already illegal, human activity on the oceans is still dangerous to great whales: They can be hit with our sailing ships or caught in fishing nets, and plastic waste and noise pollution also affect the health and longevity of the whale population. As a result, several species are on the brink of extinction. Keeping these great animals safer could do the same for us by reducing CO2 in our atmosphere and slowing climate change.
There’s no question that animals can have a major impact on the natural world and their ecosystems. And whales are no different. Let’s hope we can help them come back from near-extinction and roam the oceans again — not just for their sake, but for the sake of the whole planet.
Everyone knows which planets have rings: it's Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus. But there's one more you may not be aware of. Jupiter has rings too, although they're so faint, it took a spacecraft to find them.
Until 1979, astronomers had no idea that wispy rings of dust and rock particles encircled our solar system's largest gas giant. That's because they aren’t like the rings of, say, Saturn, which are made of relatively large pieces of ice that reflect sunlight. Instead, Jupiter's rings are made of miniscule particles of rock and dust — some as small as cigarette-smoke particles. That makes them dark and nearly impossible to see from Earth. In fact, they’re only visible when viewed from behind the planet and illuminated by the sun.
Though future spacecraft could learn much more about the rings, we know there are at least four. There’s the main ring; the halo ring, which merges gradually into the main ring on one side and extends halfway toward Jupiter's cloud surface on the other; and two "gossamer rings," which are the faintest of the group.
So how did they form? Observations by the Galileo spacecraft in 1995 confirmed that they came from Jupiter’s moons, probably due to dust kicked up from micrometeor impacts. This makes sense: the main ring is right around the orbits of the moons Adrastea [AD-rah-STEE-uh] and Metis [may-TEESS], and the gossamer rings are near the smaller moons Amalthea [uh-MALL-thee-uh] and Thebe [THEE-bee]. But rings don’t last forever. Jupiter's rings need constant replenishment from micrometeors hammering these moons for them to exist. If the impacts were any larger, the dust thrown up would be pulled back down to the moon’s surface. For Jupiter’s rings, only the finest dust will do.
For some people, long car rides can be pretty boring. And if you’re a passenger, it’s tempting to crack open a book or scroll social media to pass the time. Unfortunately, for a lot of people, that poses its own problem: carsickness. Around half of car passengers say they’ve experienced carsickness in the past five years — and if you count childhood experiences, that number is even higher. Which makes you wonder: why does reading in the car make you nauseated?
Well, the answer is kind of strange: it’s because your brain believes you’re being poisoned. This tendency to feel ill on the interstate may come down to our caveman brains struggling to catch up with modern technology.
Here’s what I mean. Normally, when you’re in motion, lots of sensory systems are taking in that information. Your eyes are measuring the distance you’re covering, your muscles are moving, and the fluid in your inner ears is sloshing around to tell your brain about your speed and position in space. Your brain takes in and interprets all that sensory information, with a pair of egg-shaped structures called the thalamus. Everything is fine when your brain is taking in the same information — like say, when you’re running down the block and the action of your muscles matches the speed you’re moving. But when you’re reading in a car, your inner ear knows you’re moving, but your eyes and muscles are at a standstill. The message your thalamus gets? Something must be very wrong.
And back before we had vehicles, this mismatch could mean only one thing: you’ve been poisoned, and you’re probably hallucinating. To your brain, there’s only one way to get rid of the poison: vomit.
Of course, we don’t all lose our lunch when we’re carsick. The stakes are different for different people. Some can handle cars and trains, but not boat rides. Others are fine in the back seat, but they have to look out the windows. That can help their brains reconcile that they’re actually moving by taking in external information.
If you’ve never experienced motion sickness, consider yourself lucky. If you have, then it might be time to catch up on your favorite podcast. Gives you a whole new appreciation for your car’s speaker system, doesn’t it?
CODY: Okay, so that’s it for today’s stories. And we’ll recap what we learned today in a minute. But Ashley and I have some news to share with you. [Cheeky voice] You might want to sit down for this, or pull over if you’re driving. Now, we have some really fun brand-new episodes of Curiosity Daily all set and ready to go for January and February. We’re gonna start 2022 with a bang, so get hype! But at the end of this month, Ashley and I will be leaving Discovery, and will no longer be working on Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY: Right/Yeah. We’re gonna close out the year with a few more episodes through this Monday, and then the show will take a little break for the holidays before new episodes come back starting Wednesday, January 5. And that might lead you to ask, well, then, what’s Curiosity Daily gonna be like in March after you’ve heard the rest of our episodes? Who’s gonna host it? What’s it gonna sound like? Well, thanks to a linear progression of time and space… we don’t know. Because that’s in the future, and according to science, we can’t predict the future.
CODY: You mean, we can’t predict the future… YET! But what we do know is that you’ll still be able to hear us for a couple months. So “don’t touch that dial,” as the kids say. Or… adults, I guess. Because kids don’t know what a dial is. But anyway! Ashley, we have to get back to our show. So let’s recap what we learned today.
[ad lib optional]
ASHLEY: Today’s writers were Briana Brownell and Anna Todd.
CODY: Our managing editor is Ashley Hamer, who was also a writer on today’s episode.
ASHLEY: Our producer and audio editor is Cody Gough.
CODY: [AD LIB SOMETHING FUNNY] Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!