Learn about why remote workers need a "virtual commute," what happened when scientists tried growing prehistoric-sized insects, and how the solar system has not one, but two alignment planes.
Learn about why remote workers need a "virtual commute," what happened when scientists tried growing prehistoric-sized insects, and how the solar system has not one, but two alignment planes.
Separate work from home with a "virtual commute" by author Kelsey Donk
Scientists Tried Growing Prehistoric-Sized Insects, and Here's What Happened by author Reuben Westmaas
The Solar System Has Two Alignment Planes by Grant Currin
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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/why-you-need-a-virtual-commute
ASHLEY HAMER: Hi. You're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity.com. I'm Ashley Hamer.
NATALIA REAGAN: And I'm Natalia Reagan. Today, you learn why remote workers need a virtual commute, what happened when scientists tried growing prehistoric sized insects, and how the solar system has not one but two alignment planes.
ASHLEY HAMER: Let's align on some curiosity. Thanks to the pandemic, I've been working from home for about eight months now. And I'll admit it, I miss my commute. If you're like me, at first, you probably didn't mind not having to make the long trek to work. Its time saved after all. But now many Americans, 35% according to a survey, are just using that extra time to work. Guilty as charged.
It's time to reclaim that time with a virtual commute. That is some sort of ritual at the beginning and end of each workday. One of the biggest champions of this idea is Microsoft. In a new update to Microsoft Teams coming next year, the workplace platform will ask users to set goals every morning and reflect on their day in the evening. This virtual commute is supposed to help homebound workers mark the start and end of every workday.
That could help them avoid the tendency to just start working as soon as they get out of bed and keep working until it's time to go to sleep. Microsoft says that half of the chat activity on Teams since the pandemic began has happened between 5:00 PM and midnight. Before the pandemic, only 2% of that activity happened after normal work hours. Microsoft's virtual commute idea is pretty solid if you ask psychologists.
While some parts of the commute like exposure to pollution aren't great for our health, having a routine to wind up and wind back down again is good for our brains. Routines can help reduce anxiety before a stressful task, boost enjoyment of work and other activities and help us recover when something doesn't go well. But you don't need to use Microsoft Teams to add a pseudo commute to your work from home setup.
Daniel Cable, a professor of organizational behavior at London Business School, says engaging in exercise or an outdoor activity is even better than relying on an app to wind down. If winding up or winding down has been hard for you since the start of the pandemic, here are some suggestions for daily rituals.
You could try lighting a candle to mark the start or end of every day. You could use a journal to record your to-dos and accomplishments every day. Or start an exercise routine that helps you either get in the mood for work or process your day when it's over. But whatever you do, don't just fill your hours with work. That time is yours to claim.
NATALIA REAGAN: I feel very seen. although I have to say I feel like freelancers can absolutely relate to this even before the pandemic because I know I was freelance for years. And that's a big problem when you don't know where your next job is coming. You work until you collapse.
ASHLEY HAMER: Absolutely. You have to take every opportunity that comes your way because you don't know when the next day will be that an opportunity doesn't come. That's hard.
NATALIA REAGAN: Yeah. It's feast or famine. It's like if you think of evolutionary when our ancestors were evolving, you didn't know where your next meal was going to come. Same with freelance. Somebody feed me. Things were way bigger back in prehistoric times. Think giant reptiles, giant mammals, and maybe scariest or coolest of all, giant insects.
But what if you wanted to grow giant insects right now? Two things. First, you read my mind long lost twin. Quick, what number am I thinking of? Second, here's the recipe. To understand how to make big bugs, you first have to understand what it was about the ancient world that made them get so big. Because back in the Permian era 300 million years ago, Earth had some whoppers.
Take Meganeura for example. This monster dragonfly had a wingspan that exceeded two feet or 70 centimeters. And then there's Arthropleura. A millipede that could easily reach 9 feet or 3 meters long. My poor said how centipedes couldn't possibly compare. So how did these bugs get so big? The answer most scientists agree on revolves around oxygen. There was approximately 50% more oxygen in the premium atmosphere than there is today.
Bugs breathe through tracheal air tubes and the bigger the bugs are, the bigger those tubes need to be to fuel their bodies with oxygen. But if there's more oxygen available, the tubes don't have to take up so much room. That makes it easier for them to get bigger and bigger. And that means '50s monster movies made into reality. Yikes! This all led biologists to the obvious question. What would happen if you raise modern insects in an oxygen rich environment?
The answer, you'd get bigger bugs. When they raise dragonflies, beetles and cockroaches in environments that mimic the oxygen rich Paleozoic atmosphere, the dragonflies grew-- oh, wait for it-- half an inch bigger. OK, so it wasn't as dramatic as the giant dragonflies that lived back then. But the scientists were fighting against a couple million years of evolution. But here's one strange hiccup that points to some still unanswered questions.
The dragonflies grew bigger, faster as did the beetles. But the cockroaches, not only did they fail to grow any bigger in a more oxygenated environment, they also grew more slowly than normal. Just as everyone suspected, roaches are perfectly adapted to take over the planet once the apocalypse hits.
ASHLEY HAMER: I think we can all just be happy that there aren't giant cockroaches roaming the streets, crushing cars.
NATALIA REAGAN: Have you been to New York lately, Ashley? They are giant. I have seen some cockroaches rival a smart car. I saw one driving a smart car once.
ASHLEY HAMER: A researcher in Japan has discovered evidence of a previously unknown twist to the structure of the solar system. Yeah, you heard that right. The structure of the solar system. You're going to want to pay attention to this one. In any illustration of the solar system you've ever seen, you've probably noticed that all of the planets orbit the sun on the same plane. More or less.
That imaginary plane is called the ecliptic. And it's home to most objects in the solar system, including Earth, the moon, asteroids and comets. Every human who's ever existed spent every moment of their lives on the ecliptic, including astronauts. So here's the big news. There's a second ecliptic. It just doesn't have nearly as much stuff, which is one of the reasons scientists have named it the empty ecliptic. Of course, it's not totally empty.
See, the empty ecliptic seems to be home to some long period comets. Those are the balls of ice and dust that take tens of thousands of years to orbit the sun. And that makes them very difficult to study. What astronomers can do is pay attention to a comet's trajectory and velocity when it's close enough to track. That gives them enough data to infer the shape of the comet's entire orbit, including the point where the comet is farthest from the sun.
That place in space is called the comets aphelion. The conventional wisdom was that long period comets aphelions should lie on the ecliptic since that's true of pretty much everything else that orbits the sun. But that wasn't what astronomer Erika Eguchi found. When she sat down with the data, she saw that some comets aphelions were on the ecliptic, but others were grouped on a different plane. A plane researchers named the empty ecliptic.
Eguchi isn't quite sure how this happened. But there's one more interesting detail that might shed some light on the origins of the empty ecliptic. Let's Zoom out for a second and consider the entire Milky Way. It's shaped like a spiral disk. That means the hundreds of billions of stars that compose the galaxy, including the sun, are all orbiting the center of the Milky Way on what's called the Galactic plane.
Now get this. Our neighborhood ecliptic intersects the Galactic plane at a 60 degree angle. The empty ecliptic also intersects the Galactic plane at a 60 degree angle, but in the other direction. They're mirror images of each other reflected across the Galactic plane. Kind of beautiful, isn't it?
NATALIA REAGAN: It's like they're star crossed lovers.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yes. They're solar--
NATALIA REAGAN: Solar soul mates.
ASHLEY HAMER: Solar soul mates. I love it.
NATALIA REAGAN: Galactic girlfriends. Planetary pals. We can just keep on going. Well, let's recap what we learned today to wrap up. Starting with, we learned that even though losing our commute was temporarily awesome, it also means that more workers aren't creating boundaries for their work hours. But you can actually make your own virtual commute.
And that means giving yourself time before work and after work to do little tasks or routines so you can wind up and wind down from work and give yourself a break. Because let's face it, we all could use a break.
ASHLEY HAMER: I am trying so hard to do this. And for a while, I was blurring the morning and the evening with work and leisure. And maybe I'd check a few emails at night or maybe I would do some work in the morning, and then go running, and then come back to work. But I think it is a lot better when I just have my work block, and then I don't do anything else in the morning and evening. It's easier said than done, but it's definitely nicer.
NATALIA REAGAN: Oh, I agree. I teach as well. So that's also tough because I give out my phone number to students. Because sometimes we're doing these distance classes and it's good to have those conversations sometimes over the phone rather than an email. And my students are great, but sometimes-- and they'll apologize usually, but they'll text me on Sunday, Sunday night, Saturday night.
And again, I don't fault them for it at all. I completely understand. And we're all going through a tough time. But I have to create boundaries of how much work I'm going to do. But yeah, I think it's important to give yourself a break because otherwise all of us are going to reach burnout.
ASHLEY HAMER: And we also learned that what made Permian era insects huge was that they lived at a time when there was a lot more oxygen in the atmosphere. So scientists tried to grow Permian era insects by raising them in an oxygen rich environment today. Although the bugs did get bigger, it wasn't by much. So we don't need to bug out quite yet.
NATALIA REAGAN: Ashley, I've never met an exoskeleton I didn't like. It's true. I love, love, love bugs so much. But at the same time, I can't imagine being the lab next to this lab that's like, so what are you guys working on? Oh, we're growing gigantic insects.
ASHLEY HAMER: It's like, could you go to the lab next door and tell them to stop cackling evilly. It's hard to work.
NATALIA REAGAN: I can't hear over the maniacal laughter. Oh, man. Or the chattering of the cockroaches. We also learned that a new structure in the solar system has been discovered that similar to a structure we already knew was there. Basically we have a solar system that lives on a ecliptic plane. And it contains all the planets and the moon and all sorts of stuff.
But there's also an empty ecliptic structure that's not totally empty. It has long period comets. And it also intersects with a structure in the Milky Way called the Galactic plane, but at a sort of an opposite intersection. So it's like they're facing each other in a mirror. I see you. Hey, Ashley what is an asteroid do after working out?
ASHLEY HAMER: What?
NATALIA REAGAN: Take a meteor shower.
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh, I like it.
NATALIA REAGAN: It's very talky.
ASHLEY HAMER: Well, I hope they're not vegan.
NATALIA REAGAN: Oh, that was such a good one.
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh, it was terrible.
NATALIA REAGAN: It was very good.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah, we discovered a whole other plane in our solar system. We thought everything was going in the same direction. It's sort of like, if you drove on a highway every day, and then suddenly you found out that, oh, do you want to go vertical? You could go vertical if you want. And you're like, what! That's what they discovered in our solar system. There are objects that go in a completely different direction. It's amazing.
NATALIA REAGAN: Today's stories were written by Kelce Donk, Ruben Westmeath, and Grant Curran, and edited by Ashley Hamer who's the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY HAMER: Scriptwriting was by Natalia Reagan and Sonia Hodgson. Today's episode was edited by Natalia Reagan and our producer is Cody Goff.
NATALIA REAGAN: Avoid the giant cockroaches and join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY HAMER: And until then, stay curious.