Loading summary
Transcript204 lines
- [00:01]
A
Hello and welcome to the Rest is science. Today we're gonna be feel noting Philhootin Tootin Newton. Yeah, we're doing like a little field journey. I've brought some specimens. Not biological specimens, don't worry.
- [00:15]
B
Thankfully. Thankfully.
- [00:16]
A
But I'll just start. I'm gonna dive right into this.
- [00:17]
B
Okay, let's do it. Let's do it.
- [00:18]
A
Here's exhibit one. Exhibit one is an American Coca Cola. 0 Can you spoil us, Michael?
- [00:26]
B
You really do.
- [00:27]
A
Well, it's empty. I've already drank it. It's just a can.
- [00:30]
B
Can I.
- [00:32]
A
You can touch it.
- [00:33]
B
Is there anything special about it?
- [00:34]
A
There's nothing special about it. It is exactly how it comes when you buy one in America.
- [00:39]
B
You know, honestly, I thought we'd get through a few more months before we completely ran out of material.
- [00:44]
A
Hold on. This is gonna be cool. It's cooler than you think.
- [00:55]
B
This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research uk.
- [00:58]
A
Here's something strange. Your DNA contains more ancient viral fragments than genes. The genes that build our cells make up only 2% of our DNA. And for years, that is what scientists focused on. They treated the rest, the ancient viruses and stuff, as junk.
- [01:18]
B
But now we know that that hidden majority, sometimes called the dark genome, influences how our biology works and how diseases like cancer behave.
- [01:29]
A
It's a reminder that progress RA comes as a single breakthrough. It builds gradually. Cancer Research UK plays a central role in that progress, supporting decades of research into over 200 types of cancer work that's helped double survival in the UK over the past 50 years.
- [01:48]
B
For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research breakthroughs, and how you can support them, visit cancerresearchuk.org there's
- [02:02]
A
ready to soundtrack your summer with Red Bull Summer All Day Play. You choose a playlist that fits your summer vibe the best. Are you a festival fanatic, a deep end dj, a road dog, or a trail mixer? Just add a song to your chosen playlist and put your summer on track. Red Bull Summer All Day Play. Red Bull gives you wings. Visit RedBull.com BrightSummerAhead to learn more. See you this summer
- [02:28]
B
when you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work. Use Indeed sponsored jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit@ Indeed.com podcast. That's Indeed.com podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need A hiring hero. This is a job for Indeed, sponsored jobs.
- [03:05]
A
So you look at this can and you'll notice a few things. First of all, Coca Cola 0. What's the 0 refer to the fact
- [03:12]
B
that it hasn't got any sugar in it?
- [03:13]
A
No sugar. In fact, it says zero sugar. That's the official name, Coca Cola. Zero sugar. And down here, significantly, it says zero calories.
- [03:22]
B
Yeah.
- [03:22]
A
So how many calories does it contain?
- [03:24]
B
Well, you'd assume zero.
- [03:26]
A
Zero. And if you look at the nutrition facts, calories, zero. Okay. Yeah, it says it right there. Zero calories. Now let me show you a UK can of Coke Zero. Here it is. Now, this one doesn't look that much different, except notice the size difference.
- [03:44]
B
Whoa, hang on. Because this one's 12 fluid ounces.
- [03:47]
A
Yeah. Which is about 355 milliliters. But in the UK, a can is only 330 milliliters.
- [03:54]
B
Is this why obesity is so much more of a problem in the us, Just literally down to the fridge?
- [03:58]
A
It's part of it, yeah. It is part of it. However, when it comes to obesity, these are sugar free, calorie free, apparently, items. If you look at the UK can, it also down at the bottom says. It doesn't say zero calories, it says no calories.
- [04:15]
B
I mean, they're synonyms, aren't they?
- [04:17]
A
Right? They're synonyms. Zero calories. No calories. They both have zero calories. But if you look at that says no calories. And then you look at the nutrition information here, it says that actually this contains one kilocalorie of energy.
- [04:35]
B
That's a thousand calories.
- [04:36]
A
A thousand calories. Now, I don't, I'm not a mathematician.
- [04:39]
B
Hey.
- [04:40]
A
But there's a big difference between 0 and 1000.
- [04:43]
B
I am a mathematician. I can confirm your suspicions are correct,
- [04:46]
A
that 0 does not equal 1000. So why are they able to say no calories right here and then over here they say, well, actually there's a thousand.
- [04:54]
B
Is there an answer to this or is this just.
- [04:57]
A
There is an answer.
- [04:57]
B
Is that.
- [04:58]
A
There's two answers. So first of all, the formulations are the same. It's not like they sneak some calorie thing into the UK version. First of all, the UK can doesn't really contain 1,000 calories. A calorie is a measure of energy and one calorie is the energy it takes to warm up a milliliter of water. One degree Celsius. The food that we eat gives our bodies a lot more energy than that. And so we actually measure Dietary calories in kilocalories, thousands. But in America especially, we use the word calorie when what we really mean is thousands of calories.
- [05:41]
B
Yeah, I mean, that's always been something that's confused me quite a lot. People use calories, kilocalories, kind of interchangeably.
- [05:47]
A
Right. In Europe, you'll see kcal, K, C, a, L all the time, it's kilocalories. But in America, we just call them calories, but we actually mean kilocalories.
- [05:58]
B
Well, you've managed to make the mathematics so that 1000s equals one.
- [06:02]
A
Yeah.
- [06:02]
B
And that's a pretty good party trick already. But you're gonna have to keep going to get it down to zero.
- [06:07]
A
So. Yeah. Still, even if we agree that, like, okay, well, we won't use the word kilocalories, we'll just use calories. Why does this can get to say, well, legally, like, technically, we've got one calorie of food energy in this beverage, but we're allowed to say it has none. That's because in the US and the UK there are rounding amounts that food manufacturers are allowed to use. Usually they have to go to the nearest five. That's actually the law in the United states. In the UK, if something contains less than 4 calories kilocalories per hundred milliliters, they're free to just say none.
- [06:45]
B
Okay. So actually, that's getting in quite a long way under that, that bar.
- [06:49]
A
Right.
- [06:50]
B
Because 4 per 100 mil, it's a, what is it, 330, 30 milliliter can. So, you know, it could have 12, 13, 14 calories and still be fine. That's right.
- [07:01]
A
So a diet soda has about the same calories as, like, a little baby carrot. But I think the spirit of the law is that you don't want to mislead consumers. And so if you told them, you cannot say your beverage has no calories because technically the whole can has one. Like, honestly, I think it probably takes more than one calorie kilocalories just to warm that cool beverage up to your body temperature. So if a consumer thinks, oh, this has calories, I should be able to survive somewhat by only drinking it, they'd be wrong. So you better just tell them it has none. No nutritional food calories, no energy will be taken in by your body by drinking this.
- [07:41]
B
Is this, like the idea of chewing through celery ends up costing you more energy?
- [07:45]
A
Yeah, and I've looked into it, and it's not totally agreed to be the case. There's an urban legend that Eating celery actually causes you to burn calories because it takes more calories to chew, swallow, and digest and warm it up than you actually get from it.
- [08:03]
B
And.
- [08:03]
A
And that is not totally proven. A lot depends on how you chew. Okay. If you, like, really work at it and chew each bite like 50 times and you eat frozen celery, then yes. But for the most part, the way we normally eat celery, it's pretty close. And you could still gain from it. Now, negative calorie foods exist, like chewing gum. Okay? Chewing gum, you get, like, nothing sugar free. Chewing gum, you get nothing from. But you're, like, working your muscles potentially for like an hour or more. So basically, I just find this fascinating. Because of that rounding error and because we interchangeably use the word calories and kilocalories, a can can say it contains no calories when it actually contains a thousand.
- [08:52]
B
Let me make sure I understand this, though. So are you sort of saying here that the coke zero, especially if it's like ice cold, is the drink equivalent of frozen celery?
- [09:03]
A
Yeah, I kind of am. And I got really into this a few years ago. I thought, dang, I'm just gonna drink ice water all day.
- [09:12]
B
Yeah.
- [09:12]
A
And get really thin.
- [09:14]
B
Yeah.
- [09:14]
A
If you drink like 8 liters of ice water a day, you do burn about 100 calories. Just warming all that water up to your body temperature. It's only 100 calories.
- [09:26]
B
Sure.
- [09:26]
A
But I'm like, oh, I may as well. And I did this, and then it hurt my throat. Like, I actually got, like, not throat damage, but like a sore throat from drinking so much ice cold water every day. So I stopped. Basically just eat. What intuitively makes you happy is my guidelines. But in America, they don't even have to admit that there's at least one calorie in that can. They can just say, nope, it's got
- [09:52]
B
zero, you're done, you're okay.
- [09:53]
A
Cause it's under five per serving, and a serving is a can, so they're allowed to say zero.
- [09:58]
B
This does remind me a lot of alcohol free. What you're allowed to claim as alcohol free. I think if I remember rightly, the rule in the UK is anything other under half a percent counts as alcohol free. And the reason why this came up was because I was in a long discussion with. With someone about whether it's okay to have a glass of wine when you're breastfeeding, knowing that some alcohol will be passed through your bloodstream to your milk, to your baby. And I ran the calculations and Worked out that for your breast milk to not be labeled as alcohol free. Okay. So for the amount, the percentage of alcohol in your breast milk to go over half a percent, I can't remember the exact thing, but you basically would have had to drink about 20 bottles of wine.
- [10:48]
A
Wow. I would say, though, in the defense of that rule of thumb, that alcohol free to a baby is probably different than the 0.5% rule.
- [11:00]
B
Yeah. I mean, to be clear, I generally don't think you certainly don't want to be drinking 20 bottles of wine when you're breastfeeding a baby in charge of a child.
- [11:08]
A
You're good to go. In fact, the rest is science recommends, just don't finish the last sip from your 20th bottle and you're good. No, that's a joke.
- [11:17]
B
Oh. Your breast milk and blood alcohol level being 0.5%, to be clear, 0.08% is the driving limit. 0.15% is severe intoxication, loss of motor control and vomiting.
- [11:31]
A
Right. So 0.5% in your breast milk, you're dead.
- [11:36]
B
You're typically at the threshold for death due to respiratory arrest. Yeah. So you know, you've got bigger problems.
- [11:41]
A
Yeah. So again, 19 bottles only. But the way calories are calculated is also something that fascinates me because remember that I said a calorie is the amount of energy.
- [11:55]
B
Right.
- [11:56]
A
Required to heat a milliliter of water 1 degree Celsius. But from where to where are we going? From 0 Celsius to 1 Celsius or from 50 to 51, that's different. And it takes a little bit more or less energy. I forget which way it is. So there are, when you get into the science of it, it's like, okay, the amount of calories in this or the amount of calories that this contains depends on whether you're measuring this in, like, room temperature water or ice cold water. And of course, our bodies aren't perfect converters of mass into energy. We don't have nuclear reactors inside of us. And so the system that we use for dietary food calories is both complicated and also incredibly, like, flimsy. It's based on some work that was done by a scientist named Atwater many, many decades ago who had people eat food. And he measured the energy content of the food in a laboratory by burning the food in a bomb calorimeter. This is like a big glass ball that's in a big vat of water and you burn the food so that you turn it into heat energy and you're left with just all the carbon. And you look at how much you've raised the temperature of the water, and that tells you how many calories of energy are in the thing. But our bodies don't burn the food in combustion style when we eat it. So you have to make some kind of est of how efficient the human body is at getting energy out of its food. But he got really specific. He not only fed people the food, he then collected their urine and feces and burned that to see, okay, I put this much energy into you, and you excreted this much energy. So the difference is how much your body used. And he would also put people in big water baths and feed them food and have them not move and see how much their bodies warmed up the water. And from that, we get what we currently use as the tools for estimating the calorie content of food.
- [13:58]
B
Okay.
- [13:59]
A
He found that fats contain about nine kilocalories per gram.
- [14:06]
B
Okay. I mean, that's energy dense.
- [14:08]
A
Yes. Proteins and carbohydrates, about 4 kilocalories per gram. And when I say kilocalories, remember that in America, we just call that a calorie. And he found that alcohol contains about 7 kilocalories per gram. Wow. So today, when you submit a Food for Nutrition fact information, the numbers on the nutrition label aren't calculated through an experiment. They're calculated through the manufacturer saying, this many carbohydrates, fats, and proteins are in each serving.
- [14:38]
B
I'm a bit disappointed. I sort of wanted there to be a laboratory somewhere where they were just setting light to, you know, chocolate eclairs and, like, you know, foie gras.
- [14:47]
A
No. And you'll notice this if you look at a nutrition package and you look at the fats, carbohydrates, and sugars inside of it, and you multiply the. You figure out how much per gram that would mean, and then you multiply the fats and protein, sorry, the carbohydrates and proteins by 4 and the fats by 9. You'll get the calories per serving. That's just how it's done. But it's been found that that's, like, a little bit too vague.
- [15:13]
B
I mean, it's quite a simple method, really.
- [15:15]
A
It's very simple because we don't. Our bodies don't get food energy from all fats equally. And not every body works the same way either. I think the most conclusive proof of this is by studying the amount of energy people got from pistachios. And it totally depended on how Much. They chewed them. If you like, barely chew a pistachio and swallow it, you actually mainly get nothing from it. But if you chewed it for a full minute before you swallowed, you got almost all the food energy out of it. So this was. I forget why they were looking into this, but they were trying to figure out how many calories were in pistachios and it was like, whoa. It really depends on how they chew them.
- [15:54]
B
That's interesting. So if it's unchewed, if it's sort of unmacerated in your mouth, then once it gets to your stomach, your stomach acid isn't as able to extract the energy from it as possible.
- [16:04]
A
Yeah. I mean, chewing is the first step in digestion and your spit helps break things down so that you can then get all the nutrients, including the fats, the carbohydrates, the proteins, the things that give you energy. It requires that chewing process first. So if you just swallowed a bunch of pistachios whole, like a pill, it's almost like nothing.
- [16:24]
B
I tell you what though, you are coming up with quite a good diet going on here. Next time I feel, you know, I've got like a bit peckish and I want to eat something but know that I shouldn't. I'm just going to drink ice cold Coke Zero and swallow pistachios whole.
- [16:38]
A
Wash pistachios down with ice cold water. No, I don't want to encourage eating disorders. You're all beautiful. And again, you should eat. Eat what you want to eat and be mindful. But if you want to hurt yourself. Yes. The worst diet I've ever heard of was the Sleeping Beauty diet. Have you heard of this one?
- [16:55]
B
No.
- [16:55]
A
This is just what you can't eat if you're asleep.
- [16:58]
B
Okay. I sort of feel like I've been following that one for my entire life.
- [17:01]
A
Yeah, right. Well, I think that if you really are dedicated to the Sleeping Beauty Diet, you take medicine to keep yourself asleep for like days. No. Yeah. Now, I don't know if it's ever actually been done by somebody, but it's been like a joke that's been around for decades.
- [17:19]
B
Drop the weight real quick.
- [17:20]
A
Drop the weight quick by just letting your body not eat. And it won't bother you because you'll be asleep or unconscious.
- [17:28]
B
Yeah. Or going back to your previous advice, just eat what you want.
- [17:33]
A
Yeah, Maybe just try that one.
- [17:34]
B
Just listen to what your body needs.
- [17:36]
A
Yeah, yeah, just do that instead. So anyway, I just wanted to show you this because every time I'm in the uk, I Can't stop but like looking to make sure that still the fact that it says no calories on it and yet it contains a thousand.
- [17:50]
B
Okay. This is what I quite like, though, the way as you were talking. Okay. I thought that the. Cause the UK we have this like traffic light system, right. Where you break it down, you have energy, fat, saturates, sugars and salt. I thought for a second there you could just do like a straight up calculation from that of how many calories are in and everything. But it's a little bit more complicated than that. But if you go to the ingredients, the nutritional information, hey, that's a fun little project. I mean, for my children, when I go to the supermarket, that's one way I can torture them.
- [18:19]
A
Yeah.
- [18:20]
B
Calculate how many calories are in this.
- [18:22]
A
Yeah.
- [18:22]
B
And see if you're correct.
- [18:23]
A
Cover that part up and then make them do the arithmetic.
- [18:27]
B
Yeah.
- [18:27]
A
It's just four times how many grams of carbohydrates and proteins are in a serving.
- [18:32]
B
Yeah.
- [18:32]
A
And then nine times the fat. The fat.
- [18:34]
B
And seven times the alcohol.
- [18:35]
A
And seven times the alcohol. Now, again, because manufacturers can round to the nearest five for small items, they can round to the nearest ten. If there's a lot of calories in a serving, you'll be within 5 or 10 of the answer on the box.
- [18:52]
B
Amazing.
- [18:52]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [18:53]
B
That was very fun. I enjoyed that.
- [18:55]
A
Goodness. Okay, well, look, we've got a question about calories coming up after the break from you guys. So we're going to get to your questions when we come back.
- [19:02]
B
Foreign. This segment is brought to you by Cancer Research uk.
- [19:11]
A
We've all become used to technology measuring and improving our lives, Right? It's the story of human history. We've now got watches that monitor our heart rates and count our steps. But what happens when that same technology is turned on cancer?
- [19:24]
B
Cancer Research UK is backing the research that harnesses new tools and technologies to help find cancer earlier, treat it more precisely, and ultimately save and improve lives.
- [19:35]
A
And so today we're asking what becomes possible when our technology sharpens its senses?
- [19:42]
B
Right, So a big part of all of this is that with cancer, timing can change everything. If you find cancer really early, then treatment has a much better chance of working. It's much less invasive. But if you find the cancer later, it may have already spread or it may have changed. It makes it much harder to treat. So you really want to catch it as soon as possible. I mean, it's a bit like a bank robbery, right? If you imagine that you've got the police that are really slow to come. When the alarm rings, the robbers are already gone. It's really hard to track down, really hard to work out what's going on. But if you get an immediate response, as soon as there's any problem, the police kind of surround the building before anyone can get away. And you just have to a much better chance of getting the bad guys. And Cancer Research uk, they have played an incredibly important part in the breast screening program that we have here in the uk. One of the many ways that they've helped to double breast cancer survival in the UK over the last 50 years. One of the difficulties is that in the UK, while mammograms save about 1300 lives a year for some people, there can be real barriers to accessing them, particularly for people who have disability disabilities. So what Cancer Research UK scientists have been doing is they've been working to, to bring cancer detection to people who struggle to access mammograms. So what they've invented, Michael, is a smart bra.
- [20:59]
A
Right.
- [20:59]
B
I'm finally, finally, it's, it's, it's a wonder that I got this section rather than you. Okay, so the smart bra, what it does is it uses this electronic textile that is, is stitched onto the inside. It sends electrical signals through the breast tissue and then reads how they come back. And that data can then be fed to your smartphone. So whereas and clinicians can be alerted if you, if you get any concerning changes. Now I have to tell you, the way that they've tested this technology, it turns out that something that closely mimics the electrical properties of cancerous tissue is carrots. And there are, you know, they've been using carrots in the bras as part of the testing. Unconfirmed reports that people were actually walking around with carrots in their bra. But I mean, the promise of this is amazing because this technology can spot tumors that are as small as 5 millimeters. And by the way, 1 centimeter tumors is the current benchmark for early detection. So this is like much earlier than that. The long term goal here is if you can make detection more accessible, easier to engage with, then one day breast cancer screening could happen in somebody's home and you can get the cancer at the earliest possible opportunity.
- [22:14]
A
First of all, I love that technology, but also I love that fact. Next time I eat a carrot at dinner, you know, the electrical conductive properties of this carrot are kind of like cancer. But I want to also talk about surgical micro robots. So when you're a surgeon who's removing a tumor, one of the big difficulties is that tumors are made of cells. Cells are incredibly tiny and you want to remove every one of those cancerous cells and you want to remove as few healthy cells as possible. And so now there are these tiny robots that give live information to the surgeon about what the cells are that are being operated on. What it does is it shoots a laser at a cell and then the cell burns up and the robot essentially sniffs the smoke from the burned up cell, looking at the chemical signature of that smoke. The robot can learn all kinds of things about the metabolism, properties of the cell, the cell's makeup, and can guide the surgeon in knowing where to stop, where to keep going. And then even after the surgery, all this information about the nature of that tumor can be used to help with, you know, what kind of steps should be taken next. So that's just an incredible little like team of tiny robots and normal sized people doing amazing things. And that level of accuracy can change and save lives. So by investing in this kind of breakthrough research, we're turning high tech ideas into real world precision, making cancer medicine smarter, more targeted and more effective.
- [23:49]
B
For more information about Cancer Research uk, their research breakthrough breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit cancerresearchuk.org rest is science. This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research uk.
- [24:10]
A
We often think of beating cancer as treatment, but imagine stopping it before it begins. After years of work, Cancer Research UK scientists are launching a clinical trial of lungvax, the first vaccine designed to prevent lung cancer.
- [24:25]
B
It builds on Tracer X, the world's largest cancer evolution study, which tracked lung cancer cells over many years to uncover the disease's earliest warning signs. Lungvax is designed to train the immune system to spot these signs early on, destroying faulty cells before cancer develops.
- [24:45]
A
So it's not treatment, but preventative, with the potential to stop lung cancer before it starts. The first stage of the trial starts this year. Focusing on people at higher risk, it
- [24:56]
B
shows what long term research makes possible.
- [24:59]
A
For more information about Cancer Research uk, their research breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit cancerresearchuk.org thereest ISS
- [25:12]
B
this episode is brought to you by State Farm. You know those friends who support your preference for podcasts over music on road trips? That's the energy State Farm brings to insurance. With over 19,000 local agents, they help you find the coverage that fits your needs so you can spend less time worrying about insurance and more time enjoying the ride. Download the State Farm app or go online@statefarm.com like a good neighbor, State Farm Is there?
- [25:44]
A
Okay, welcome back, Hannah. You're going to be reading the questions because you've got them right there as well.
- [25:49]
B
Yeah, I've got them right here. And the first one links in perfectly to what you were talking about. This is from epo. Where do the calories I burn actually go? I assume I get rid of some of them through urine and stool. But does part of it evaporate? And if those calories evaporate, does the earth lose weight, too?
- [26:06]
A
Yes. I love this because it is weird to think, like, okay, wait a second, I turn my food into energy, but then where does it go? And it does, in a way, evaporate away. Ultimately, it turns into wasted heat. Like your body takes that food apart, it takes the molecules it needs and it uses them through primarily the ATP process to produce the energy. You need to be warm, to move your muscles, beat your heart, breathe, think, all of that stuff. And ultimately that causes motion. Right. Of your limbs, of your heart, of your lungs, which is a kind of mechanical energy. It also produces heat energy that is released into the world. And ultimately this whole, like, mass can be turned into energy thing does not lead to a change in the amount of, like, mass. Well, I mean, it changes. It changes the amount of matter, but the mass doesn't change. A compressed spring weighs more than a loose spring. I mean, it's calculatable but not really measurable. But that energy that I put in really does. The potential energy that that spring has really does affect its. It does actually weigh more. A phone weighs more when it contains a lot of photos. Because we've got a higher energy state in the electrons, I think, or a different energy state.
- [27:29]
B
I think it's the other way around, isn't it? It's the same as punch cards. So in a punch card, no hole is a one and a hole is a zero. In hard drives, very simply, it's zero if you've got a charge in it. And it's a one. If you make a hole and remove that charge.
- [27:45]
A
Oh, interesting.
- [27:47]
B
Right.
- [27:48]
A
Ones are no charge.
- [27:49]
B
Ones are no charge.
- [27:51]
A
Yeah. In that case, then.
- [27:53]
B
Yeah, yeah. So when you get it, it's all zeros. Right. So charges in the hole.
- [27:58]
A
Right.
- [27:58]
B
Effectively. And then one electron weighs, I think it's 27 zeros. Right. 0.270 is 1. When you add in a 1, you're taking the electron away, you're making the thing lighter. And so full USB drives weigh less than brand new ones.
- [28:16]
A
Interesting.
- [28:17]
B
Yeah.
- [28:18]
A
Now, your body does not act like a USB drive. No, but we can Account for all of the mass that you put into your body through breathing, drinking and eating by finding that either in excreted out of your body through urine, feces and your exhalated breath.
- [28:36]
B
Right. Because the exalted breath is actually a really big component of this. Because the ATP process that you're describing, where you take glucose and oxygen, the two things that give your, your body energy, and they break down into water Energy and CO2.
- [28:51]
A
Right.
- [28:52]
B
So the question about where does a lot of it go is actually that you breathe out, right? You breathe out most of it.
- [28:59]
A
Yeah. And if you compare everything put in and everything that comes out, you will still find a deficit because some of it was turned into the energy of motion, of heat, and some of it still exists in your body as chemical energy. Like in many ways, fat contains chemical energy. There's the potential for it to be turned back into energy for motion and for heat. If your body needs to do that, burning fat is turning that back into energy. So that's where it all goes. But it's all accounted for. None of it just magically evaporates. If we had enough time, we could extract all the energy that was in that Snickers bar that you ate.
- [29:37]
B
And in terms of the Earth getting lighter over time.
- [29:39]
A
Oh yeah. Well, so the Earth's mass, if it was in a completely sealed system, would not change even, even the, the fact that you've heated up the air by, by being warm blooded and by moving in it. That does make up for the matter that is now missing because you digested it.
- [29:58]
B
Yeah. Sorry, Eth. The Coke Zero diet won't work for you.
- [30:02]
A
The Coke Zero diet might make a person lighter, but it will not make the Earth lighter. This really depends on the Earth being in a sealed system. Because if you are turning Coke Zero or full sugar coke into heat energy, some of it is radiating into space, truly. So technically Earth will lose some of it. But I'm assuming that the Earth is like a closed system and everything that's on Earth or leaves it is still part of the system. So. But technically, yes, the Earth does become lighter just because of the, the heat that we radiate away that leaves space. It's gone from Earth now.
- [30:39]
B
Yeah, because actually, if you think about it, if you were sitting on a, I don't know, like a spaceship some miles out in space, like, you know, if you, let's say half a light year or whatever, and you had an infrared camera, an extremely sensitive infrared camera, you would be able to see your body on the surface of The Earth. And the only way that that's possible is because there is, as you described, some of it radiating outwards. Yeah, exactly. In fact, there is an entire cone of your energy floating out in space right now.
- [31:07]
A
Yeah, you're welcome, aliens.
- [31:08]
B
You're welcome. You're welcome. Okay. All right, next question. This one came from Luke. Ftf. I've heard NASA turned Velcro into a household name after it was widely used in the Apollo 11 mission. Are there any technologies that have come from space science that we are now using in our daily lives without realizing it? It's a myth.
- [31:28]
A
It's not that hook and loop fastener wasn't popularized by the space program.
- [31:32]
B
I mean, it was popularized by it, but it wasn't invented by them.
- [31:35]
A
Sure, yeah.
- [31:36]
B
It was actually invented in the forties. A Swiss engineer called George de Mestral. Okay, so I did a program. I actually can't remember which program this was in. But anyway, there was a bit about the invention of Velcro and what his story was that he noticed these burdock burrs that were sticking to his dog's fur. So for this story, for this TV program, we were like, okay, here's what we'll do. We'll get a dog. We'll go for a walk with the dog, and then there'll be birds sticking to the dog, and then it'll be great, and we'll take them off and it'll be fine. Anyway, it was hilarious because this dog was very happy, right? The dog was having a great old time, but the exec producer was so worried that we would get complaints about there being burrs on the dog that we had this entire, like, I mean, days of conversations, days of conversations about whether this counted as animal cruelty on tv. Anyway, it turns out it obviously isn't, but that is where Velcro came from. But it was popularized by NASA. That one's. But there are nonetheless some really amazing technology that has come directly as a result of the space program. Pixel sensors being one. I mean, the only reason why we have smartphone cameras is a direct result. This is from the 1990s. They had these giant spacecraft cameras, but they wanted to shrink them down. So they essentially came up with this digital version, a way that you can. I mean, they needed something lightweight, weight, needed something low power. So they came up with these active pixel sensors that are now in smartphones everywhere. Another example, braces. So, you know, invisalign the ones. I'm sure other brands are available.
- [33:12]
A
I know they are. In fact, you can 3D print your own plastic cartoon fixer braces. Yeah, I was just reading about this. I forget where it came from, but this guy was like, yeah, I just printed. He had to print like a new one every week or so to get it smaller and smaller and tighter. But it fixed his teeth.
- [33:29]
B
But then, hold on. Is it not quite a sophisticated process to work out the sort of trajectory you want your teeth to travel?
- [33:34]
A
Oh, yeah, I would still say go
- [33:36]
B
to a doctor, I would say.
- [33:38]
A
But you don't have to.
- [33:41]
B
I think the key word about this is the fact that the material is completely see through. So you can't always tell that people are wearing them.
- [33:49]
A
Oh, no, this guy's thing. You could tell he was wearing a 3D printed mouthguard. Yeah, I mean, yeah, sure.
- [33:57]
B
I mean, you know, go to the dentist. I think that's better.
- [34:00]
A
But that came from NASA.
- [34:02]
B
It did, yeah. So it's called translucent polycrystalline alumina. And yeah, they have these infrared antennae, heat seeking tracker trackers essentially. And they needed this material that was really strong but transparent to be able to coat them, you know, transparent to specific wavelengths of light in particular. And, and yeah, they, they came up with this material and it can, it can withstand supersonic flight.
- [34:27]
A
Right.
- [34:28]
B
And it turns out, you know, also can withstand being chewed on. The last one that I really like. Well, I mean, there's loads, but. But this is one that I like is memory foam mattresses. So when you are, you know, sending astronauts off into space, their seats are really uncomfortable. I mean, they get like thrown around really properly in their seats. And so they created this foam that molds to a warm body but then returns to its original shape when you remove the pressure.
- [34:59]
A
So memory foam is also a space technology originally. Wow, I didn't know that. And it was not like, to protect the ship, it was for their comfort.
- [35:08]
B
It was to protect their boats. Yeah, yeah.
- [35:10]
A
I wanted to show another space technology which I do have in my bag. It's for a future Field Notes episode, though not today.
- [35:15]
B
Okay.
- [35:16]
A
Is this the Fisher space pen?
- [35:20]
B
Okay, so here's my guess. There's that thing that people always say, which is, oh, NASA spent 40 squillion trillion dollars on making a Biro that will write in space. And meanwhile, the Soviets just used pencils. And it was often used on the Internet as a really hilarious way to, like, slag off the research that goes into, you know, high end products. But actually the reality is using a pencil in space is a very, very, very bad idea because bits of graphite will flake off and get into the circuitry, short circuit stuff. It's just don't use them like. Okay, all right, next question. Hold on. This one is from Oscar Sedlak. Recently, I was listening to the episode about boredom and isolation, and it got me wondering. There were multiple experiments regarding isolation which put individuals into some kind of chamber with no stimuli. But what happens if you put not one, but two people in such a room together?
- [36:12]
A
What are the effects of that dualitary confinement? We have no idea. It's never been done. Yeah. There are no psychological studies of two people stored in sensory deprivation, isolation together.
- [36:30]
B
I mean, it must have happened at some time. I'm thinking about prisons here.
- [36:33]
A
Right, I know, but in prison there just isn't a lot of history of like, oh, yeah, we locked these two people together in solitary. Which wouldn't be solitary, would be dualitary. Dualitary confinement, by the way, is a word that you can search on Google and you get no results.
- [36:51]
B
A Google whack.
- [36:52]
A
Is that what they call it too?
- [36:53]
B
I think so, yeah.
- [36:54]
A
Yeah. Something that has absolutely no results on Google. I just love that. So the thing is, we don't know. I would predict that you would be likely to wind up with a folly ado sort of situation where two people kind of lose their minds together and they really mutually reinforce each other's delusional beliefs.
- [37:15]
B
Spiraling downwards together.
- [37:16]
A
Yeah. And so because of that, I think they're probably gonna wind up getting along more than not. But what they get along in and what they both believe together and feel together and think together might be destructive. But I don't know if they would just wind up fighting and battling it out.
- [37:37]
B
I saw an episode of MrBeast where he did something quite similar to this, where he dug a bunker and locked two people in there for 100 days. It wasn't sensory deprivation. And also, once a week, he would go in with a big bag of cash as he has a habit of doing. Right.
- [37:53]
A
So I think in those situations, it's not sensory deprivation. I think there have been a lot like, yeah, Mr. Beast put two people down in a bunker together. But he also visited and whatever. But. But as far as two people locked into, like, a purely empty white room or a dark room or locked in a cave with nothing to do but be together, that's an experiment we've got to do soon.
- [38:20]
B
I'm not volunteering, to be absolutely clear. Okay.
- [38:23]
A
Oh, okay. So it won't be an episode of the Rest Is Science.
- [38:26]
B
It won't be an episode of the rest is science.
- [38:28]
A
Well, I mean, or at least it'll maybe if you guys want to volunteer for it. But it won't be Hannah and I.
- [38:33]
B
No, but if you do, I mean, you can write into us with the, with your volunteering. The email address is theresis scienceoalhanger.com as always, I mean all your thoughts and questions and, and things you'd like us to answer. That's. I mean, you can do that instead. But, but really, we want you volunteering to be put in a sense, right?
- [38:51]
A
We love questions, we love comments. But we also love the third c consent. Give it to us.
- [38:58]
B
Okay, I think that's about it for this week. We will see you next week with our usual episode on Tuesday.
- [39:04]
A
Thanks for watching. You can't reason with the sun.
- [39:20]
B
Trust us, we've tried.
- [39:21]
A
This summer, it's time to put that angry ball of fire on mute. Columbia's Omnishade technology is engineered to protect you from the sun's harsh rays that can burn and damage your skin. The sun is relentless, but so is our gear. Level up your summer@columbia.com to spend more time outside and less time slathering on aloe lotion. You're welcome Columbia. Engineered for whatever.
- [39:49]
B
Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money. Because behind every headline is a bottom line. Whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings. There's a money side to every story. And when you see the money side, you understand what others miss. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now@bloomberg.com
- [40:15]
A
Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same Premium Wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do@mintmobile.com
- [40:33]
B
Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month Required intro rate first 3 months only,
- [40:41]
A
then full price plan options available, taxes
- [40:43]
B
and fees, extra fee, full terms@mintmobile.com.