Learn about some of the weirdest types of planets in our galaxy; the right way to tap on a can of soda to keep it from exploding; and whether you can actually taste how strong a drink is. Please support our sponsors! Skillshare is offering Curiosity Daily listeners two months of unlimited access to over 25,000 classes for free! To sign up, visit https://www.skillshare.com/curiosity. 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: 9 of the Weirdest Types of Planets in Our Galaxy — https://curiosity.im/2M7Is2w Does Tapping A Soda Can Keep It From Exploding? — https://curiosity.im/2LMPKZB Can You Actually Taste The Strength Of A Drink? — https://curiosity.im/2LNEUm0 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 some of the weirdest types of planets in our galaxy; the right way to tap on a can of soda to keep it from exploding; and whether you can actually taste how strong a drink is.
Please support our sponsors! Skillshare is offering Curiosity Daily listeners two months of unlimited access to over 25,000 classes for free! To sign up, visit https://www.skillshare.com/curiosity.
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/you-cant-taste-a-drinks-strength-soda-can-explosion-taps-and-our-galaxys-weird-planets
CODY: Hi! We’ve got three stories 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 some of the weirdest types of planets in our galaxy; the RIGHT way to tap on a can of soda to keep it from exploding; and whether you can actually taste how strong a drink is.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
9 of the Weirdest Types of Planets in Our Galaxy — https://curiosity.im/2M7Is2w (Ashley)
Remember that time on this podcast when we talked about how there might be a such thing as a donut-shaped planet? Well, not all weird planets are hypothetical. Today we’re going to dive into some of the weirdest types of planets in our galaxy that we’ve actually discovered. I’ll start with Hot Neptunes and hot Jupiters. Those are objects the size of Neptune, or Jupiter, that orbit close to their home star. We know about one hot Neptune, called GJ 436b. It’s about 10.2 parsecs away from Earth, orbiting around a red dwarf. Now, when planets like these fly too close to the sun, their atmospheres burn off really quickly. By “close” I mean about 2 percent of Earth’s distance from our sun. And when the atmosphere burns away completely, the planet turns into what’s called a Chthonian Planet [THOH-nee-an]. They’re named for the Greek word "khthonios," which refers to the Greek deities of the underworld. And we’ve found one of these planets, called CoRoT [koro]-7b. It’s a rocky planet 7 times the size of Earth and nearly 5 times its mass, and astronomers think it used to be a gas giant the size of Saturn. Now, if you think orbiting close to a star is bad, then how about orbiting near a pulsar? A pulsar is a rapidly rotating neutron star, which is the super-dense core that gets left over after a massive star exploded in a supernova. Any planets around a pulsar would’ve either had to be there before or after the supernova, and both options are pretty unlikely. That’s why less than one percent of pulsars have been found to host planets. And yet, a pulsar is exactly where we found our first ever exoplanet. Weird, right? I’m talking about what we call pulsar planets, and we discovered two of them way back in 1992. They orbit a pulsar in the Virgo constellation that's about 2,300 light-years away — definitely no weekend trip. You can read about more weird planets in our full write-up on curiosity-dot-com and on our free Curiosity app for Android and iOS, but here’s one more for you: rogue planets. They don’t orbit any star. And it’s estimated that there are at least 400 billion rogue planets in our galaxy alone. They’re hard to detect, since we usually find planets by tracking the way their home star dims as they pass in front of it. But last year we found one that’s more than 20 percent bigger than Jupiter and nearly 13 times its mass. Unfortunately, scientists opted out of calling it “Rogue One” and went for a much catchier name: SIMP J01365663+0933473.
Does Tapping A Soda Can Keep It From Exploding? — https://curiosity.im/2LMPKZB (from Saturday) (Cody)
Do you tap your soda can before you open it? Have you ever wondered why that’s a thing? If you don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s the deal: rumor has it that if you tap on a can of soda — or pop, if you grew up here in Midwest like me — then it will not explode. And technically, that’s true — but you might be doing it wrong. Ashley, do you do this? [ad lib]
CODY: Before I can explain this, you need to understand what makes soda fizz in the first place. Bubbles in soda are made of carbon dioxide gas, or CO2. Cans are pressurized to keep that CO2 fully dissolved in the liquid. Once you open the can, the pressure drops and lets the CO2 form back into gas, rise to the top of the liquid, and escape into the surrounding air. It's actually pretty hard for CO2 to form bubbles in an undisturbed can of soda. That's because the liquid's surface tension, combined with the pressure, makes it take a lot of energy for the gas molecules to separate the liquid molecules. But if you shake the can, turbulence creates bubbles. Once a bubble is formed, it's a lot easier for that bubble to get bigger — that's because the larger the bubble's surface area, the less energy you need to break surface tension and increase the number of molecules inside. Diet sodas fizz even more, by the way, because when they use aspartame for a sweetener, aspartame acts as a surfactant and lowers the surfact tension of the soda much more than sugar or corn syrup does. With less surface tension, gas dissolved in diet soda needs less energy to form bubbles, resulting in way more foam than full-sugar sodas. This brings us to tapping a soda can: does it work? Well, it CAN — but not if you tap the top. See, when turbulence forms bubbles, they tend to stick to the sides of the can. The idea is that if you can free those bubbles, they'll rise to the top and form one big bubble. That means when you open the can, that big bubble escapes harmelssly instead of taking a bunch of liquid up with it. So tap on the SIDES of your can to try to free those bubbles.
[SKILLSHARE]
ASHLEY: If you’re fascinated by soda, then we’ve got some good news! You can actually learn how to make naturally carbonated sodas with some help from today’s sponsor, Skillshare.
CODY: Skillshare is an online learning community for creators, with more than 25,000 classes in design, business, and more. With Skillshare, you’ll discover countless ways to fuel your curiosity, creativity, and career… and, apparently, carbonation.
ASHLEY: Our soda story made us thirsty, so Cody and I did a quick search on Skillshare and found a class called “Let’s Make Soda!” It’s taught by a small batch beer and soda maker, and it’s simple and straight-forward.
CODY: Based on how easy it was to pick up on the first couple classes, I’m guessing we might be offering a Curiosity Cola within just a few weeks. And on Skillshare, you can take classes on way more topics than cooking, like social media marketing, mobile photography, creative writing, or even illustration.
ASHLEY: Skillshare is there to keep you learning, thriving, and reaching your goals for the new year — whether you’re looking to discover a new passion, start a side hustle, or gain new professional skills. And today, YOU can join the millions of students already learning on Skillshare with a special offer just for Curiosity Daily listeners: Get two months of Skillshare for free.
CODY: That’s right, Skillshare is offering Curiosity Daily listeners two months of unlimited access to over 25,000 classes for free. To sign up, go to Skillshare dot com slash CURIOSITY.
ASHLEY: Again, go to Skillshare dot com slash CURIOSITY to start your two months now. CODY: One more time, that’s Skillshare dot com slash CURIOSITY.
Can You Actually Taste The Strength Of A Drink? — https://curiosity.im/2LNEUm0 (Ashley)
When it comes to the taste of alcohol, research suggests that most of us are actually pretty bad at telling how strong a drink is. Listen up, because if you think your taste buds know best when it comesto judging the strength of your drinks, then you might want to think again. [ad lib]
ASHLEY: Studies done in the 1980s showed that people can't really tell the difference between regular beer, light beer, and even non-alcoholic beer. And a 2013 study showed that wine drinkers couldn’t tell a difference in alcohol content in different wines, either. But let’s focus on mixed drinks, starting with a 2014 study published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research. This study found that how well people can distinguish the strength of a cocktail depends on how much alcohol is in it. Roughly 60–70 percent of volunteers could tell the difference between plain orange juice and orange juice with a splash of vodka. And the same number could tell the difference between a pilsner with 0.5 percent alcohol and a wheat beer with five percent alcohol. They were slightly worse at actually judging how much alcohol was in each drink. But once the alcohol content started climbing, people started failing. Only 40 percent of volunteers could tell the difference between vodka in orange juice at 40 percent alcohol by volume versus 50 percent. A 2017 study found that college students couldn’t do much better; in that study, less than 60 percent of volunteers could order vodka drinks from strongest to weakest on their first try. And in a second experiment, so-called "supertasters" were able to correctly rate sweet drinks, but not vodka tonics. When it comes to judging the strength of your drinks, don't trust your taste buds. Instead, take time between drinks to see how they're affecting you, drinking water in the meantime. If you keep a level head, you're more likely to make it a night to remember.
CODY: That’s all for today, but you can keep learning all weekend on curiosity-dot-com.
ASHLEY: This weekend, you’ll learn about…
Why flashes of light appear on the moon every few hours;
The trick to making your bed like a soldier;
Why you never hear about heart cancer;
One verb with more meanings than any other word in English;
A cemetery with the world’s funniest gravestones;
And more!
CODY: If there’s something ELSE you’re curious about, then email your question to podcast-at-curiosity-dot-com. We might answer your question on a future episode!
ASHLEY: That’s podcast-at-curiosity-dot-com. Come hang out with us again Sunday on the award-winning Curiosity Daily and learn something new in just a few minutes. I’m Ashley Hamer.
CODY: And I’m Cody Gough. Have a great weekend!
ASHLEY: And stay curious!