Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - Listener Questions #4

Episode Date: January 21, 2025

Daniel and Kelly answer questions about binary star seasons, meat wasps and freefall.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. The U.S. Open is here, and on my podcast, Good Game with Sarah Spain. I'm breaking down the players, the predictions, the pressure, and, of course, the honey deuses, the signature cocktail of the U.S. Open. The U.S. Open has gotten to be a very wonderfully experiential sporting event. To hear this and more, listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain, an IHeart women's sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your.

podcast. Brought to you by Novartis, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports Network. Culture eats strategy for breakfast, right? On a recent episode of Culture Raises Us, I was joined by Valicia Butterfield, media founder, political strategist, and tech powerhouse for a powerful conversation on storytelling, impact, and the intersections of culture and leadership. I am a free black woman. From the Obama White House to Google to the Grammys, Valicia's journey is a master class in shifting culture and using your voice to spark change.

Listen to Culture raises us on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Why are TSA rules so confusing? You got a hood of you. I'm take it all! I'm Manny. I'm Noah. This is Devin. And we're best friends and journalists with a new podcast called No Such Thing, where we get to the bottom of questions like that.

Why are you screaming? I can't expect what to do. Now, if the rule was the same, go off on me. I deserve it. You know, lock him up. Listen to No Such Thing on the IHeart Radio app. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. No such thing.

I'm Dr. Joy Hardin-Bradford, host of the Therapy for Black Girls podcast. I know how overwhelming it can feel if flying makes you anxious. In session 418 of the Therapy for Black Girls podcast, Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett and I discuss flight anxiety. What is not a norm is to allow it to prevent you from doing the things that you want to do. The things that you were meant to say. too. Listen to therapy for black girls on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. How do some bees make meat, honey? What are tapeworms up to in my tummy? Can light escape from a black hole? What process produces coal? Did Franklin hang that key from a kite? Why is dark chocolate better

than white? How do moles smell underwater? Why is the planet getting? hotter. How can humans live on Mars? What's the holdup with flying cars? The current state of space law, the powerful mantis shrimp claw. Biology, physics, archaeology, forestry, really anything other than chemistry. What diseases do you get from your cat? Well, we'll find the answers to all of that. Whatever question keeps you up at night. Daniel and Kelly's answer will make it right. Welcome to another listener questions episode on Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I've never read a poem on the podcast before.

Hi, I'm Kelly Weiner-Smith, and my husband just assumed that I'd be so bad at writing poems that when I read it out loud to my daughter, he left the room just so that he wouldn't be embarrassed. But you know what? I had fun. I hope he's blushing somewhere whenever he's listening to this. He might skip all of our listener questions episodes from here on out, but that's all right. I had a good time. Well, that's too bad because those are my favorite episodes. I love hearing what people are wondering about, helping them unravel their confusion, and getting to the topics that are really in people's minds.

It's my favorite way to interact with our audience. I love it as well, and I'm particularly excited about this listener questions. episode, you know, one, because my daughter's questions included, and that's pretty cute. But two, because we got a biology question for me that I was just completely unaware of this group of species, and they're so creepy

and right up my alley, and it was so much fun. All right, well, let's not waste any more time. Let's dig into it. Today, we have questions about seasons on binary star systems, about meat wasp, honey, and about how gravity actually works. Let's do it.

So our first question is from Ada. She's 10 years old, and she lives in Virginia, and I think she knows Kelly pretty well. Great place to live. I'll just throw that in there. Here's Ada's question. Hi, I'm Ada. I'm 10 years old. I have a question for you.

What would seasons be like if you were on a planet in a solar system that had two suns? Thank you. All right. I like how she gets right to the point. Yes, she's very succinct. I like that, too. Is she reading a book about life on a solar system? system with two sons? Or what do you think this question came from? Gosh, you know, I'm sure it

didn't come out of nowhere, but I don't know where she heard about solar systems with two sons that sparked this. Could have been science class at school. Maybe she's writing a science fiction novel and she needs some science consultation. That's right. Yes, and she reached out to the right person. Yes, she certainly did. So let's dig into it. First, let's remind ourselves why we have seasons on Earth and then we can teleport ourselves mentally to a solar system with two stars. and think about that one. So on Earth, the reason we have seasons is because the Earth is tilted, right?

The Earth goes around the Sun, and there's a plane there where all the planets go around the Sun in the same plane. And the Earth also spins, but the axis that it spins on is not perfectly perpendicular to the plane of its orbit.

So it's tilted a little bit. It like leans over. Now, the Earth is a sphere, so, you know, what is really leaning? It's still a sphere when it's tilted, but what's leaning is that axis of sort of sort of, spin that axis that controls the day night cycle. So what's closer to the sun is the northern

hemisphere. The spin lets you define a northern and a southern hemisphere, then the northern hemisphere is closer to the sun during the summer and the southern hemisphere is further from the sun during the northern hemisphere's summer and the southern hemisphere's winter. It's not actually accurate to say that the northern hemisphere is any closer to the sun, is just more exposed to the sun because it's leaning that direction. Got it. And you know, I've got to admit that every once in a while when I talk to like the few friends I have in Australia, I still forget that they're experiencing the opposite season that we are

up here in North America and we regularly have a disconnect. Yeah, exactly. And so if we didn't have a tilt, for example, if the Earth's axis of rotation was perfectly perpendicular to the plane of its orbit, then you wouldn't have any seasons. You just always have

I guess spring or fall, right? The days would be the same length all year round. Going around the sun wouldn't change your experience at all. No seasons. Totally boring, just like living in California. You knew where that was going halfway through the sentence. Exactly. We'd all be happy all year long, right? It'd be amazing. So dull.

And there are other tiny factors that also affect the weather and the seasons. Things like the elliptical orbit, right? The Earth doesn't orbit in a perfect circle around the sun. It's an ellipse, which means sometimes it is closer to the sun and sometimes it's further from the sun. But this is a smaller factor than the tilt, which really dramatically changes how many hours of sunlight you get every day. The Earth is closest to the sun in January and furthest from the sun in July. So actually, that counters the effect. It makes the summer slightly less severe and the winter's a slightly less severe. Is that why the year starts in January or did that have nothing to do with the count? No, that's totally random.

Yeah. Okay. All right. And also the Earth tilt processes a little bit. It's not always in the same direction. It itself rotates a little bit, like a wobbly top. These are small factors, and that's affected by like the Polo Jupiter and all sorts of other stuff. So mostly the Earth has seasons because it's tilted.

So the Northern Hemisphere is getting more light and the Southern Hemisphere is getting less light during the Northern Hemisphere's summer. All right, but that's a simple system, single planet going around a single star. So what about a binary star system in? Ada's mind. Can I back you up for a second? Are most planets tilted? So like the moon has a very little bit of a tilt. Is Earth weird having a 23.4 degree tilt?

It's not weird to have a tilt. Like Uranus is tilted much more dramatically, 97 degrees, basically totally on its side. Other planets are tilted more or less. The tilt we think comes from being hit. Like everything in the solar system formed together from a big swirl. That's why everything is rotating in the same plane. And most of the planets are spinning. the same direction they move around the sun, which is the same direction that the sun is spinning

itself. The whole solar system is one big swirl, which then coalesces into a star and planets, which all have the same swirl. But then you can get hit by something from outside the solar system, and it can knock you off axis a little bit. So we think that's probably the source of the Earth's tilt and other planets' tilt as well. With all the stuff that's colliding, would it be reasonable to expect that having no tilt would be rare because there's so many collisions that probably knock you off angle? Yeah, as the solar system forms, it's a little chaotic and things hit each other. So the average tilt is going to be zero, but it's unlikely for everything to have exactly zero tilt.

Got it. Just the same way that like all the solar systems in the galaxy, on average have zero tilt relative to the plane of the galaxy, but most of them are tilted relative to the plane of the galaxy. They're not all aligned with the actual rotation of the galaxy. All right, so let's move on to systems with two sons. All right. So system with two suns sound exotic, right? You're like, ooh, wow, two suns. How cool. But the truth is that they're not actually that rare. Binary star systems are all over the galaxy. It's a significant fraction of the stars in our galaxy have a partner star. And the reason is that that big cloud of gas that collapses to give you a star, usually it's part of a much bigger cloud. So stars are born together. Often you have two, three, four, five stars all born together, which begin a complicated. its swirl as they're forming. So you have these nurseries. We have a lot of star forming happening at the same time. And so stars are born with partners. And the reason we have a lot of

binary star systems is that it's basically the most number of stars you can have in a system and have it be stable. Like you can have two things orbiting each other and have that be stable, like the Earth and the Sun or a star and another star. But you add a third object and it becomes chaotic. It becomes really complicated and unstable. So if you have three, stars, for example, what's very likely to happen is one of them is going to get ejected and you're going to end up with a single star and then a pair of stars. So you have a lot of binary star systems out there, not very many trinary systems or quaternary systems or I don't even know the description for five or more stars. So why is it more likely to get ejected than to get

pulled into one of the other two stars and then just make like, I don't know, a big star or big explosion? Yeah, well, that could happen also. But, you know, stars aren't. small compared to the distances between them and so actual collisions are pretty unlikely but they can spiral in and combine that certainly does happen as well but there's just many more outcomes where they get ejected and just like in our solar system there's been chaos we think probably there was another giant planet which got ejected from the solar system because of the interaction between all the planets so you have a lot of binary star systems out there and

then you have to think about the planets around those binary stars and it becomes tricky already because now the planet it is sort of like that third object. So you might wonder like, hey, isn't the planet just going to get ejected the way like a third star would get ejected? And the answer is, yes, it's not easy to have planets around binary stars in a stable way. There's two ways to do it. And both of them basically make it look more like a binary star system.

So one solution is you have the two stars near each other and the planet is far away. So it's sort of like, yeah, there are three objects there, but really it's sort of a nested set of binary systems. you have like the stars on one side in the planet that are orbiting each other, and then inside the sort of star system, you have two stars moving near each other. That's one situation, basically like replace the sun with two stars close to each other or closer to each other than to the planet. The other possible configuration is you have a star in a planet like the Earth and the Sun, and then you have another star that's much further away. So like put a star near Pluto or something, much further from the Earth than the Sun, and then it's far enough away that it's not unethed. unstable. Then you have like, again, a nested set of binary systems. You have three objects,

but really it's like two objects acting as one and then in a binary system with the third object. Okay. So then let's talk about seasons in the first scenario where you have two stars that are right next to each other. Do they act like one just megastar when you sort of aggregate their effects? Yeah, they act like one megastar. It's going to be very similar to as if you had one bigger star. It's going to be different and more dramatic in terms of like sunrise and sunset. Sunrise will be longer and sunset will be longer and there'll be times when you have like one star above the horizon and one below. So you could have effects like you could have a sunrise where there's already a star in the sky and you have basically two sunsets, one more dramatic

than the next. So that would be really cool. But it wouldn't really affect the seasons very much, right? Because the planet's relationship to the star is basically the same. If you have a tilt, and you have an orbit that's going to determine your seasons. So in that situation, we have a planet around a binary star system where the stars are close to each other and further from the planet, the seasons are going to be very much like here on Earth. I feel like it would be amazing to wake up to a sunrise with two stars in the horizon. That sounds really cool.

But all right. So then our second scenario, you said there's one sun that's kind of close to the planet and another sun that's super far out. Is it far enough out that it doesn't really impact climate and seasons any? more? Unfortunately, yeah. So the boring answer is for there to be a planet in this situation, that star has to be kind of far away. The closer you get it, the more dramatic of the impact on seasons and day night stuff, et cetera, but also the more unstable it is. Like if you have the planet be the same distance from both stars, so it's like very dramatic, then that system is totally

unstable and it's not going to last for very long. So you've got to push that second star kind far away, which means really it's going to be in the sky more like a bright star than a real sun and not really going to affect your seasons. You're going to have one totally dominant star and then a second star that's going to sometimes make the night a little brighter or even the day a little brighter, but it's not going to have that much effect. But you know, in a science fiction sort of inspiration, we can move that second star in as much as possible and pretend that it does have some impact because there's some crazy dynamics that happen in that sense. Okay, let's go for it. What is that like? Super winter. Yeah, exactly. If you think about the periods when you have sunlight, that really is what determines the seasons, right? In a single star, single planet system, it's the number of hours per day of sunlight you get that determine the seasons. And in the summer, you're getting more sun and the winter you're getting less sun. Now put that second star around. Say we have the second star, you know, in Mars orbit or something crazy. Then you're going to be getting sunlight and all sorts of

weird configurations like there can be parts of the year where each star is illuminating a different side of the planet put the planet between the two stars right they're all in a line you have star planet star then every part of the surface is seeing a star right it's like the whole world has noon at the same time right which would be crazy so you have periods where the whole planet is seeing a star and then other scenarios where like in a line it goes star star star planet where half of the planet is seeing both stars at the same time. And if they're both pretty close, that's going to be super day. That's like super noon, right?

And that's going to be very intense, super duper hot. And also you'll get a weird effect there where potentially the stars eclipse each other. So like, you know, we have solar eclipses and lunar eclipses. This would be like a stellar eclipse where one sun is behind the other sun briefly. That would be awesome. Don't look at either. But I actually looked up a simulator to try to figure out exactly what would happen through the year. And it depends crucially on the orbit of that second star.

If that second star has a period of about a year, like the same as the planet's orbit, then you're going to have a regular cycle. But you're going to have times in a year where even at the equator, you have no darkness. Like you see one sun and the planet spins and you see the other sun. And so that's going to be very summery, right? because it's all about the hours of sunlight you get and other parts of the year where you're seeing both suns at the same time. So you're getting fewer hours of daylight, but they're more intense, they're brighter. So you're going to have these really weird periods. I don't know how the plants

would respond to that or how you would evolve in that kind of configuration. Circadian rhythms. It would be a total mess, but it would be regular. You know, and if, for example, the second star has a longer period, it takes longer to go around that first star and the planet, then it's, it's a effects can slide through the year, right? It's not like every June we have double sun, every January we have one sun. It can slowly offset. And that must really affect like the development of a civilization, you know, because we use the regular seasons and the regular day, night cycle really is a way to tell time. So either you have to have much more complex mathematics before you can even begin to use a calendar and develop it. Or maybe you get smarter quicker because

the calendar is more complicated and it inspires more. interesting mathematics. But the short answer is that the seasons are going to be intense and complicated. And it depends on a lot of the details, exactly how fast that second star goes around the first star. I wonder if it would hinder the establishment of civilizations because like being able to plan things like when you plant your crops seems really important. I wonder if we'd all be like wanderers because planning just isn't worth even trying. But really fun to think about. You know, there's got to be a couple sci-fi novels in there. Yeah, exactly. And And, you know, there's the famous book, The Three Body Problem, where they had essentially this question except it's actually the four body problem because they have three stars and a planet.

I don't know why they, like, couldn't figure out how to count a three. It's already complicated enough with two stars. You don't need a third star. Yeah. Well, when Ada's done with her math homework, we'll have her listen to this explanation and hear what she had to say. Maybe we should have her on in real time for a follow-up. Let's do it. Hi, Ada. Thanks very much for your question. I was curious what you thought about our answer, and if you have any follow-up questions. I understood what I heard when I listened to the podcast. And I do have one follow-up question.

Oh, goody. What is it? So was our sun in our solar system, like part of a different solar system and then was it ejected out or was it just not like that? Yeah, that's a great question. Unfortunately, we don't know the answer. Most stars are born with other stars nearby. There's like sibling stars, sometimes two, three, five, seven as part of a big nursery. and then they're separated as, you know, gravity slings them around. But we don't know the history of our star that far back.

So probably it was born with other stars, but we don't actually know. Maybe one day we'll figure out some way to figure it out. But for now, we don't know the answer. Thank you. Thanks so much for your question. Have you ever wished for a change but weren't sure how to make it? maybe you felt stuck in a job, a place, or even a relationship. I'm Emily Tish Sussman, and on she pivots, I dive into the inspiring pivots of women who have taken

big leaps in their lives and careers. I'm Gretchen Whitmer, Jody Sweeten. Monica Patton. Elaine Welteroff. I'm Jessica Voss. And that's when I was like, I got to go. I don't know how, but that kicked off the pivot of how to make the transition. Learn how to get comfortable pivoting because your life is going to be full of them.

Every episode gets real about the why behind these changes. and gives you the inspiration and maybe the push to make your next pivot. Listen to these women and more on She Pivots, now on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, Puzzlers. Let's start with a quick puzzle. The answer is Ken Jennings' appearance on The Puzzler with A.J. Jacobs. The question is, what is the most entertaining listening experience in podcast land? Jeopardy Truthers, who say that you were given all the answers, believe in... I guess they would be conspiracy theorists.

That's right. Are there Jeopardy Truthers? Are there people who say that it was rigged? Yeah, ever since I was first on, people are like, they gave you the answers, right? And then there's the other ones which are like, they gave you the answers, and you still blew it. Don't miss Jeopardy legend Ken Jennings on our special game show week of the Puzzler podcast. The puzzler is the best place to get your daily word puzzle fix. Listen on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The U.S. Open is here, and on my podcast, Good Game with Sarah Spain, I'm breaking down the players from rising stars to legends chasing history, the predictions, well, we see a first time winner, and the pressure. Billy Jean King says pressure is a privilege, you know. Plus, the stories and events off the court. And, of course, the honey deuses, the signature cocktail of the U.S. Open. The U.S. Open has gotten to be a very fancy, wonderfully experiential sporting event. I mean, listen, the whole aim is to be accessible and inclusive for all tennis fans, whether you play tennis or not. Tennis is full of compelling stories of late.

Have you heard about Icon Venus Williams' recent wildcard bids? Or the young Canadian, Victoria Mboko, making a name for herself. How about Naomi Osaka getting back to form? To hear this and more, listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain, an Iheart women's sports production in partnership with deep blue sports and entertainment on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. I don't write songs. God write songs.

I take dictation. I didn't even know you've been a pastor for over 10 years. I think culture is any space that you live in that develops you. On a recent episode of Culture Raises Us podcast, I sat down with Warren Campbell, Grammy-winning producer, pastor, and music executive to talk about the beats, the business, and the legacy behind some of the biggest names in gospel, R&B, and hip-hop. This is like watching Michael Jackson talk about thoroughly before it happened. Was there a particular moment where you realize just how instrumental music culture was

to shaping all of our global ecosystem? I was eight years old, and the Motown 25 special came on. And all the great Motown artists, Marvin, Stevie Wonder, Temptations, Diana, From Mary Mary to Jennifer Hudson, we get into the soul of the music and the purpose that drives it. Listen to Culture raises us on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, so now for something absolutely totally different, we have a fantastic question from listener James Palmer, and it is a question about meat bees. otherwise known as vulture bees, which I had not heard of, but is absolutely right up my alley. So let's hear the question.

Hey, Kelly and Daniel, I have a burning desire to know everything about meat wasps. I just heard about them, and I feel like there's a lot to discuss here. Like, apparently they're carnivorous, and they eat on, like, flesh and, like, maybe it's rotting. Then they use that to make their honey and stuff, like meat honey. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Please tell me everything. meat honey

Daniel you're dying to know about meat honey right well you know we have lots of different kinds of honey here in California and often it's sold to us by promoting the kind of flowers that the bees visit like oh this is lavender honey or wildflower honey and you're supposed to imagine that you can taste the lavender as you're eating the honey and so I'm wondering now meat bee honey is it going to taste like pepperoni or what's going on

gosh you know to be honest I would never try it But there's not a lot of honey that is meat honey. So there's a lot of bees that make something called honey. But there's only three species that do this meat honey thing exclusively. So I think maybe we should start with how honey is made. Because I actually didn't understand this very well. I have this naive understanding that like bees eat pollen and then do something internally and then vomit up honey. How wrong is that?

Yeah. I thought that too. Okay. Totally. Like almost 100%. Okay. So that was my thought too. Okay, so let's start with the European honeybees as an example.

Okay. So this is Apis Melifera, and what they do is they go out and they go to flowers, and the flowers produce both nectar, which is like sugar water, and pollen, which has a lot of protein. And so these fill two very different roles for the bees. So they get their carbohydrates from the nectar, and that's going to become honey. And then the pollen is their protein source, and sometimes the pollen, like, gets in the honey. It almost sounds like it's accidental. but mostly the honey is from the nectar, not from the pollen.

But the bees also eat the pollen. I thought the pollen was incidental and going along for a ride and it was part of the plants deal with the bees. Like, you can eat the nectar, but then I'm going to get the pollen all over you and you're going to drop it on another flower and help us reproduce. No, they eat it too. Oh, no.

They eat it and they feed it to like the baby bees. And so it's like a very important protein source. I didn't know that either. And actually there's four different kinds of bees. There's the honey bees, the orchid bees, the bumblebees, and the stingless bees. And they're all categorized by having what are called corbicula. And these are like chunky thighs with like a way to like stick the pollen on there. And so like I saw a bee on one of our flowers the other day.

And I was like, what is this orange like? It's like they've got bling on their hips. I know as an ecologist I should have been like mortified that I didn't know what this was already. But anyway, those are like for carrying pollen around so they can bring it back to the hive. I see. And so do the plants get anything out of it? I thought bees were pollinators. Yeah, I think some of it still like falls off and lands in the right place. So the pollination still happens. But the bees aren't moving the pollen around as a favor. It's more like incidental. That's how nature. No one helps anyone out in nature unless they have to. All right. So bees drink pollen and then they use that to make the honey. How do they actually make the honey? Is that inside the bee or is that in one of their little hexagonal cooking vats? Bees drink nectar.

They don't drink the pollen. Oh, sorry, right. Yes. Okay. That's okay. Or they sometimes drink a honey-dew, which is this, like, sweet fluid produced by insects as, like, a way to attract organisms that, like, protect them from natural enemies. They collect it in this special organ where they collect all of this sugary water, and, you know, they can use it a little bit for, like, their flight to get from place to place, but they're, you know, trying to bring it back to the hive. So they fill up this organ, and I think that's something like half of their body weight. can end up being the sugary water, but the sugary water is nowhere near concentrated enough to be honey. So what they do is they bring it back to the hive and they regurgitate it to bees whose job it is to try to get some of the water out and concentrate the sugars more. And so those

bees, they like start kind of partially regurgitating it and blowing these like bubbles that increase the surface area. So some of the water evaporates off. We didn't know that. The physics of honey. Look at that. Yes. Right. And I hadn't imagined that so much of honey involved vomit. But there you go.

It's so much fun hanging out with biologists. When I'm vomiting, I'm not busy also trying to concentrate it and evaporate it. So I have like gooey or vomit. I guess that's what a bee does. I mean, you're not so great at multitasking, I guess. Too bad. I'll work on that. I'll work on that.

Yeah. All right. So bees vomit up the nectar and then other specialized bees. evaporate and concentrated into honey. So that mean that honey is just nectar that's been concentrated down? Or is there some fermentation that also happens? That's just one of the stages of evaporation. That gets a little bit of the water out.

And then when they store it in the combs, like the, you know, honey combs, I'm under the impression that some more evaporation happens there. So bees produce a little bit of heat by like, you know, shaking their wings really fast. That also produces some airflow over the honeycombs and that combination of heat. and then air moving throughout the colony and then sort of back out of the hive, that finishes evaporating off the water until you get to a point where you've got enough concentrated sugar that you've got honey. Wow, fascinating. Yeah, I didn't know any of that.

That was awesome. So then it makes sense that if I'm eating the honey from bees that visited lavender, it should taste like lavender because it really is like concentrated lavender nectar. If lavender nectar smells like lavender, I don't know that it does. And I'm one of those people who has had honey from different places and been like, it's all honey to me. I don't have a delicate palate. Okay. So now tell us about meat wasps.

Where do they get their supplies to make honey? Okay. I'm terrified of this answer, by the way. Yeah, all right. So the best honey makers are the European honey bees, the best in terms of, like, producing honey that humans like. But a bunch of other kinds of bees, they make similar honey, but often their honey is nowhere near as, like, concentrated with sugars. It's more watery, and there's a group of bees called the stingless bees, and now we're getting closer to the vulture bees. So the stingless bees, they make honey, but their honey tends to be more watery, and instead of storing it in those combs, they make these little waxy pots, and it's harder to get it out of those waxy pots, and it's like more watered down when you do.

So people did still keep these bees for sugary fluids, but as soon as honeybees came along, a lot of the stingless bees, that do this more watered down harder to get honey, they became less popular to culture. But so these stingless bees, they also get their nectar from flowers, but there's a group in the genus Trigona where they seem like they're less interested in flowers. So instead of going to flowers for nectar,

they get their sugars from things like rotting fruits. They'll, like, take the sugars from that. And instead of getting pollen, they get their protein from, dead animals, dead vertebrates in particular. I see. So that's why they're called vulture bees, because vultures are scavengers. They don't kill anything. They eat already dead stuff. So these vulture bees will get their protein, not from pollen, but from dead animals, you're saying.

That's right. And they'll get their sugar, which they use to, you know, like make their honey stuff. They get that from things like riding fruit or fruit they find. Okay. So then the question is, do they make meat honey? This is important. And the answer, I think, is maybe. Maybe. Oh, really? So there's only three species of these vulture bees, and they're all in the same genus. They're all closely related.

It does turn out that there's a fair number of stingless bees where, like, if meat is left out, they'll go ahead and get some protein from it, but they're not required to get protein from it. So they're called facultatively necrophagic, which means they'll, like, eat dead stuff when they've got the chance, but they don't have to. But these vulture bees are obligately necrophagic, so they have to eat dead stuff. And apparently they're really good at it. They've got ways to sort of attract other members to come so that they can, like, very quickly with these specialized mouth parts, scrape a bunch of, like, rotting flesh.

Oh, my God. Your face is, like, priceless. This should be called nightmare bees. Yikes. Yes. It's intense. Pretty metal. So then it's a little bit unclear what happens.

So I found a 1982 paper that described what they were doing. And it said the bees masticate and consume flesh at the feeding site. They do not carry pieces of flesh to the feedings. the nest, but appear to hydrolyze it with a secretion produced by either mandibular or salivary glands, which gives the feeding site a wet appearance. Side note. Ew. That means they're slobbering, right? They're slobber. They have meat slobber. They've got meat slobber and their saliva is starting the process of breaking down the meat. That's what that means. And then says individual bees captured well feeding, then forced to expel the contents of their crop. So essentially they made these

meat bees throw up, we're carrying a slurry of flesh measuring between 37 and 65 percent dissolved solids by volume. A slurry of flesh. Isn't that like a nine-inch nails album title or something? I feel like we have to get in touch with Trent Reznor now and find some way to convey this to him. Oh, boy. Wow.

And so then the question is, how do they store it when they get back? So I read this paper from 2021 and they were laying out some different hypotheses for what happens. It looks like that meat slurry gets stored in pots. Maybe it gets mixed with some of the sugary stuff they collect. I think at the end of the day, it's not really clear what they do, how it's stored, how long it's stored. But you probably could say they make something called meat, honey. Like they're taking that flesh slurry.

They're storing it in these pots. It looks like it, quote unquote, matures for about two weeks into a paste that is also a little bit sugary. So they do appear to be making something like meat, honey, let's go for it. Wow. It looks like part of this process. And if your wife were here, maybe she'd be excited about this part. Part of it appears to involve the microbiome. So these vulture bees have microbiomes that include acythelic bacteria.

So bacteria that do really well in acidic environments. And you find similar categories of bacteria. They're not the exact same species, similar categories of bacteria in the guts of like vultures. So it seems like there's some kinds of bacteria that team up with organisms that eat dead flesh to sort of help process it and maybe also help make it safer because bacteria that get to the flesh first start producing like toxins maybe to ward off these competitors and these acid-loving bacteria sort of help make it all happen. And your face is just priceless right now. I'm so glad I don't eat breakfast because I'd be throwing it up and do breakfast slurry right now and some bees could come along and make breakfast honey. meat honey and so James I have to thank you I had never heard of these before and let's go ahead and hear if you learned everything you wanted to know about meat honey and if you're ever going to eat honey again I think it's safe to say that you taught me everything I asked for and a lot more so thanks so much for that guys I appreciate it

Hello, Puzzlers. Let's start with a quick puzzle. The answer is Ken Jennings' appearance on The Puzzler with A.J. Jacobs. The question is, what is the most entertaining listening experience in podcast land? Jeopardy-truthers who say that you were given all the answers believe in... I guess they would be Kenspiracy theorists. That's right. Are there Jeopardy-truthers? Are there people who say that it... It was rigged.

Yeah, ever since I was first on, people are like, they gave you the answers, right? And then there's the other ones which are like. They gave you the answers, and you still blew it. Don't miss Jeopardy legend Ken Jennings on our special game show week of The Puzzler podcast. The Puzzler is the best place to get your daily word puzzle fix. Listen on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have you ever wished for a change but weren't sure how to make it?

Maybe you felt stuck in a job, a place, or even a relationship. I'm Emily Tish Sussman, and on she pivots, I dive into the inspiring pivots of women who have taken big leaps in their lives and careers. I'm Gretchen Whitmer, Jody Sweeten. Monica Patton. Elaine Welter-Roth. I'm Jessica Voss. And that's when I was like, I got to go. I don't know how, but that kicked off the pivot of how to make the transition.

Learn how to get comfortable pivoting because your life is going to. to be full of them. Every episode gets real about the why behind these changes and gives you the inspiration and maybe the push to make your next pivot. Listen to these women and more on she pivots now on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The U.S. Open is here. And on my podcast, Good Game with Sarah Spain, I'm breaking down the players from rising stars to legends chasing history. The predictions will we see a first time winner and the pressure. Billy Jean King says pressure is a privilege, you know. Plus, the stories and events off the court and, of course, the honey deuses, the signature cocktail of the U.S.

Open. The U.S. Open has gotten to be a very fancy, wonderfully experiential sporting event. I mean, listen, the whole aim is to be accessible and inclusive for all tennis fans, whether you play tennis or not. Tennis is full of compelling stories of late. Have you heard about icon Venus Williams' recent wildcard bids? or the young Canadian, Victoria Mboko, making a name for herself. How about Naomi Osaka getting back to form? To hear this and more, listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain, an I-heart women's sports production in partnership with deep blue sports and entertainment

on the I-heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. I don't write songs. God write songs. I take dictation. I didn't even know you've been a pastor for over 10 years. I think culture is any space. that you live in that develops you. On a recent episode of Culture Raises Us podcast,

I sat down with Warren Campbell, Grammy-winning producer, pastor, and music executive to talk about the beats, the business, and the legacy behind some of the biggest names in gospel, R&B, and hip-hop. This is like watching Michael Jackson talk about thoroughly before it happened. Was there a particular moment

where you realize just how instrumental music culture was to shaping all of our global ecosystem? I was eight years old, and the Motown 25 special. came on. And all the great Motown artists, Marvin, Stevie Wonder, Temptations, Diana Raw. From Mary Mary to Jennifer Hudson, we get into the soul of the music and the purpose that drives it. Listen to Culture raises us on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, our last question comes from Hans in the Netherlands, who has a nephew,

in Perth and they've been disagreeing about which direction the Earth is accelerating and how gravity actually works. Let's hear the question from Hans. I have a question concerning freefall. As I understand it, when you're in free fall, you don't move at all. Instead, the Earth is racing towards you. Now my question is this. I live in Gowder, which is in the West of the Netherlands. I have a nephew in Perth, Australia, which is roughly the opposite side of Earth. When we decide to jump out of an airplane on the same time, which way is the earth moving? Thank you very much for your answer. All right. So, you know, maybe first we should start with a disclaimer that you shouldn't do this

unless you're a professional. Have you ever done sky jumping or have you ever jumped from a plane? I one time did skydiving. Yes, I jumped from an airplane exactly one time. And I did it one time because I did my homework and I looked up how often people die skydiving. And it turns out it's very, very rare to die the first time you jump. And it's very, very rare to die. And it's very, very rare to after like 10 jumps, but there's a danger zone between like two and nine jumps. And my understanding is that the first time you jump, you're very careful. You're freaked out. You check all the straps.

You're like following all the safety videos. And when you survive that first time, you're like, oh, maybe it's not so dangerous. And then you get sloppy. And when you get sloppy and you're like feeling confident, that's the danger zone. And then if you survive like nine or 10 jumps, you become really good at it. And then you're back in the safe zone. So I did it once. I survived and I'm never doing it again.

Wait, you controlled your own parachute and everything when you jumped? I got to pull my parachute, but it was a tandem jump. I was strapped to another dude who was there to like make sure I did it right. But yeah. When I did it, there was a dude on my back. Okay. I mean, did you ask the guy on your back? Is this your second to ninth jump?

That's the guy you need to ask, I think. That's right. It might be his second to ninth jump that day. I think these guys go up all the time. Yeah. Yeah, I think so too. But it was sort of terrifying because they, told us, hey, you can change your mind at any moment.

And the friend I went with, she was standing at the edge of the door, ready to jump out. And she was like, yeah, no, I can't do it. And they're like, no, you're doing it. And she's like, you said, I could change my mind. And they're like, we were lying. Nobody changes their mind. And then they pushed her out the door. I had brought a boyfriend who I, you know, didn't end up marrying, maybe not surprisingly

after you hear this story, for his birthday. Uh-oh. And he got to the door and he said, I don't want to do it. And the guy strapped to his back looked at me. And I said, no. And I pointed out and the guy jumped. And, you know, my boyfriend was happy afterwards that he did it. But he had also tried to back out at the last second.

So, folks, when they tell you you can back out, don't believe them. If you don't want to jump, don't go up in the plane. Yeah. All right. But today we are not giving advice about ways to risk your life and get adrenaline thrills. We're talking about understanding the fundamental nature of gravity. How does it work? And Hans, I think, is responding to a conversation we had about gravity and free fall and who's

really accelerating in which an explanation I gave is that the earth is accelerating up and out towards you. You're not falling towards the earth. And so I think it's worthwhile to revisit that explanation a little bit and then unpack it in the context of Hans's question. All right, let's go for it. So if you jump out of a plane, what does Newton say is happening? Yeah. So from a Newton point of view, if you're on the surface and you see somebody jump out of an airplane, you say there's a force of gravity and forces create acceleration. So gravity is accelerate. So gravity is accelerating. you down towards the surface. And that's Newton's explanation. And from the point of view of the person on the surface, that makes perfect sense because you see somebody has velocity and they're

accelerating because their velocity is changing. And so it looks perfectly like there's a force there and the person is accelerating. From the point of view of the jumper, right, they jump out of the airplane. They see the surface of the earth rushing towards them, right? They see earth accelerating towards them. Now, velocity is perfectly relative, right? And so you might wonder, like, well, who's right? Who is actually accelerating? And this is where Einstein comes in, because Einstein tells us that, like, velocity is relative, but acceleration is not. So let's unpack what that means for a moment. Like, we say that distance is relative, like Kelly and I are 3,000 miles from each other right now. And when we say distance is relative, we mean that you have to measure it

relative to somewhere else. Like I can say I'm 3,000 miles from Kelly. I can't just say, I am 3,000 miles. That doesn't have any meaning, right? I have to say what I'm 3,000 miles away from. Velocity is also relative. I can say I have zero velocity right now relative to Kelly, but I don't have zero velocity relative to the sun, and I don't have zero velocity relative to some particle that's speeding towards the earth at almost the speed of light. In fact, I'm traveling at nearly the speed of light relative to that particle, right? And so velocity is only defined relative to other stuff. And that's confusing. because when somebody jumps out of an airplane, you wonder like, well, are they moving towards

the earth? Is the earth moving towards them? Both of those are perfectly valid because velocity is relative. You can't say which one's actually moving. But now you get to acceleration. Acceleration is different. Acceleration is not relative. Velocity is relative. It's a property of a pair of objects, me and Kelly and me and the earth, me and the sun. But acceleration is a property of an object. I can tell if I'm accelerating. You can tell if you're accelerating. How How can you do that? Well, say for example, you're in a truck and you have a bowling ball in the back of the truck. You can tell when somebody hits the brake on the truck.

You can tell when somebody accelerates because the bowling ball in the back of the truck will respond. What happens if you hit the brakes? The bowling ball keeps going and will bang into the front of the truck bed. And if you accelerate, the bowling ball rolls backwards towards the back of the truck bed. So you can measure your acceleration yourself. You don't need to measure relative to the sun or the earth or your podcast code. host or anything like that. So that means you can do something interesting.

You can ask like, well, is the guy who jumped out of an airplane? Is he accelerating? Or is the guy on the ground on the earth? Are they accelerating? Because both of them think the other one is accelerating. But Einstein says, no, you can actually just measure it and you can tell the answer. And the answer is that the person who jumped is accelerating. No.

The answer is the person on the earth is accelerating. No. Yes, absolutely. Imagine you jump out of an airplane and you're holding a box with like a billiard ball. in it, right? What's going to happen to that ball? You feel like you're accelerating towards the surface of the earth, but you look at the ball. The ball is not moving inside the box. The ball is going with you. It has exactly the same experience you do. Now somebody on the surface of the earth, they have a ball in the box. That ball is pulled towards the surface of the earth. That's measuring

acceleration. Another way to do this is to have a scale. Say you jump out of an airplane with a scale and now you stand on the scale. Are you going to measure anything? No, because there's nothing pushing you onto the scale. Whereas if you put the scale on the surface of the earth and you stand on it, you're going to measure your weight, right? That weight is actually measuring your acceleration. Einstein says what's happening there is the surface of the earth and that scale are accelerating up and out, right? So a scale is like an accelerometer. And so when you jump out of an airplane, you can measure that you're not accelerating. You're in free fall. There is no gravitational force on you because there is no gravitational force on the surface of the earth what you're measuring is not the force of gravity the weight doesn't measure the force of gravity it measures the acceleration of the earth up and out away from the center of the earth that's counterintuitive yeah exactly but it actually makes much more sense the way to think about forces and acceleration and gravity is to remember that there can be apparent forces like say for example you have a merry-go-round

and somebody spins the merry-go-round. You feel this force pushing you off the merry-go-round, right? But there's no force there. There's nobody pushing on you. It feels like there's a force. There's an apparent force in what we call in physics a pseudo-force because you're accelerating, because you're rotating, creates this pseudo-force.

So some things in the universe can create these pseudo-forces that make it seem like there's a force when there isn't really one. And that's what space does. That's what gravity is. Gravity isn't a force. It's just that space is bent in certain ways, and objects like to follow the curvature of that space. So, for example, near a huge mass, space is bent, and objects like to follow the curvature of space, which brings them towards the center of that mass. You jump out of an airplane, space is curved there because you're near the earth, and your natural motion is towards the surface of the earth.

and you need acceleration, you need a force to prevent you from moving in free fall to work against the motion of space and time. So I understand Hans's question. Hans is like, hold on, you're saying the Earth is accelerating. How can it be accelerating up in the Netherlands and up from Perth? Ravia seems like it's going in two directions. And that's because you're thinking about the Earth as a single sphere moving in one direction or moving in the other direction. Instead, imagine it as a sphere with variable radius. Gravity is trying to shrink the Earth down into a dot, and the structure of the Earth is pushing back up and out in every direction.

So the answer is that it's accelerating up and out in the Netherlands and up and out in Perth. Both are out away from the center. If there wasn't that acceleration, if the whole Earth was just a bunch of particles following the curvature of space time, it would collapse into a black hole. That's what gravity wants to do.

It gathers stuff together because it bends space, And then the motion of those particles follows that bent space and things fall together. So Earth has to push up and out just to maintain the same distance from the center. So it's counterintuitive because now I'm saying you have to accelerate just to maintain a constant distance from the center of the Earth. That's very counterintuitive, but it's true because their natural motion is to fall in towards the center. And you have to accelerate, which means counter your motion relative to gravity to avoid doing that. So yeah, Hans, the earth is accelerating up under you and up under your nephew in Perth. Who does that make right?

That's the important question. Let's just all sit down over a nice plate of meat, honey, and work it out. Oh, no, let's never do that. Let's never, ever do that. Or at least let's not be told that we're eating meat, honey, if that's what we're having. All right, well, I hope that cleared it up for Hans. Let's send him our answer and see if he's got some follow-up questions. Hi Daniel and Katie. Thank you very much for your answer. It was very enlightening. It still seems

somewhat counterintuitive to me, but I believe I can now understand what you mean. In particular, the idea that you shouldn't see the earth as a solid object, but as a constant moving against gravity to maintain its shape. Incidentally, this reminds me of Alice in Wondland. You have to run to stay in place. I hope this makes any sense to you. Thank you very much again, Hans. well thanks to everybody who submitted a question please we want more people to submit more questions and if you've got a question you want to share you can send it to us through our discord and you can find the link to that on our website or you can send us an email at questions at danielandkelly dot org all right and if you're still listening we have one more request for you we want to know

more about you not just what you're wondering and your questions about the universe we want to know who you are what you listen to where you like to live and what you do in your spare time so we can get to know you a little better. We have a survey for our listeners. If you have a few minutes, we would love to hear some more about you. You can find a link to the survey on our website, www.danielandkelly.org. Thanks, everyone. Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is produced by IHeart Radio. We would love to hear from you. We really would. We want to know what questions you have about this extraordinary. ordinary universe. We want to know your thoughts on recent shows, suggestions for future shows. If you contact us, we will get back to you. We really mean it. We answer every message. Email us at questions at danielandkelly.org. Or you can find us on social media. We have accounts on X, Instagram, Blue Sky, and on all of those platforms, you can find us at D and K Universe. Don't be shy. Write to us.

I was diagnosed with cancer on Friday and cancer free the next Friday. No chemo, no radiation, none of that. On a recent episode of Culture Raises Us podcast, I sat down with Warren Campbell, Grammy-winning producer, pastor, and music executive to talk about the beats, the business, and the legacy behind some of the biggest names

in gospel, R&B, and hip-hop. Professionally, I started at Deadwell Records. From Mary Mary to Jennifer Hudson, we get into the soul of the music and the purpose that drives it. Listen to Culture Raises Us on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The U.S. Open is here, and on my podcast, Good Game with Sarah Spain.

I'm breaking down the players, the predictions, the pressure, and, of course, the honey deuses, the signature cocktail of the U.S. Open. The U.S. Open has gotten to be a very wonderfully experiential sporting event. To hear this and more, listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain, an IHeart women's sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by Novartis, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports Network. Why are TSA rules so confusing?

You got a hood of you. I'll take it all! I'm Manny. I'm Noah. This is Devin. And we're best friends and journalists with a new podcast called No Such Thing, where we get to the bottom of questions like that. Why are you screaming at me? I can't expect what to do. Now, if the rule was the same, go off on me.

I deserve it. You know, lock him up. Listen to No Such Thing on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. No such thing. I'm Dr. Joy Hardin-Bradford, host of the Therapy for Black Girls podcast. I know how overwhelming it can feel if flying makes you anxious. In session 418 of the Therapy for Black Girls podcast,

Dr. Angela Nielbornet and I discuss flight anxiety. What is not a norm is to allow it to prevent you from doing the things that you want to do. The things that you were meant to do. to listen to therapy for black girls on the iHeart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcast this is an iHeart podcast