SciShow Tangents - Glowing Things

Episode Date: August 4, 2020

Glowing Things: is that a scientific topic? Yes, but not by much. In fact, we spend a lot of the episode figuring out of there even is a scientific definition of 'glow!' Very exciting! Here's a little fun fact for all you Sam-heads out there: my favorite color is 'glow-in-the-dark green." That's right, I finally admit that I'm the one writing all these descriptions! I guess Ceri doesn't do everything after all, huh?!  Peace, Sam Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions!  While you're at it, check out the Tangents crew on Twitter: Stefan: @itsmestefanchin Ceri: @ceriley Sam: @slamschultz Hank: @hankgreen If you want to learn more about any of our main topics, check out SciShowTangents.org!   [Truth or Fail] Foxfire https://allthatsinteresting.com/foxfire-bioluminescence#:~:text=Foxfire%20is%20the%20informal%20term,together%20to%20form%20a%20glow. Submarine https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/david-bushnells-turtle-of-1776.html https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/s/submarine-turtle-naval-documents.html There is a LOT about this submarine, and a lot of it is contradictory! A very fun Google rabbit hole to fall down.  [Fact Off] Death fluorescence  https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/blue-death-in-worms/ https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1001613 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3735983/ Picture: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3735983/figure/F1/ Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6S3D8Fy8N4 Millipede glowing genitals https://academic.oup.com/zoolinnean/article/187/1/117/5475011?searchresult=1 The Brain Scoop video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjNQUOYtZC0 [Ask the Science Couch] Freezing glow sticks https://www.compoundchem.com/2014/10/14/glowsticks/ https://www.thoughtco.com/how-do-lightsticks-work-607878 https://www2.chem.uic.edu/marek/apintropage/ap_notes/chapter18/rateseffectstempconcats.htm [Butt One More Thing] Glow Woims  https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/16/science/glow-worms-new-zealand.html

Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents, the lightly competitive knowledge showcase starring some of the geniuses that make the YouTube series SciShow happen. This week, as always, I'm joined by Stefan Chin. Hey-o. What's your tagline? Why is it a pair of pants? Think about it. Sam Schultz has joined us as well. Hi.

How are you finding TikTok these days? I don't, haven't downloaded it yet. I'm not ready for that. And I feel more and more obsolete as the days go by. And I see you talking about it. And I see Sari talking about it, especially Sari. She's never known anything I haven't known until TikTok. How's that feel?

Really bad. It legitimately feels horrible. I'm the youth coming for you, old man. What's your tagline? Brain, brain. Sari, hello. Now that you know about some music what's your favorite tiktok song oh i like the one it's the meme where a lot of indigenous folks do the dance to it where it goes

like yeah that one i like that one a lot it like brings me such joy. See, I hate this. Take that, Sam! And what's your tagline? Burples. I am Hank Green, and my tagline is there's a hole in my basement connected to poop. And to get... Well, it's kind of true for everyone. Yeah, but it's a direct

connection in my basement. You got sewer gas? Yeah, I had sewer gas. Did you figure it out? I did. I just shoved a shirt down the hole, so fingers crossed that that'll work. That's right. Every week here on SciShow Tensions, we get together to try to one-up,

amaze, and delight each other with science facts. We also will give a little bit of plumbing advice. We're playing for glory, but we're also keeping score and awarding sandbox from week to week. We do everything we can to stay on topic, but judging by our previous conversations, we won't be great at that. So if the rest of the team deems your tangent unworthy, we'll force you to give up one of your sandbox. So tangent with care, unless you're me, in which case all bets are off, baby. I'm not winning this season.

And now, as always, we introduce this week's topic with the traditional science poem, This Week from Sam. You're asking me why I glow? Well, friend, I don't rightly know, cause I'm just a wee insect. But, hmm, I'll give it a go. Here's the thing that I suspect. Two enzymes,

they intersect. In my cute little rear end, and I think I am correct, that one is Luciferan and the other I am Darren. To say is Luciferase and combined they start Baron. A green flash that with some grace tells predators give us space. Because we aren't all that yummy. A flash could also showcase that we want to get chummy with a firefly honey. So there is my best guessing,

even though I'm a dummy. As to why my butt's fluorescent, my shiny ass is a blessing. It helps me in expressing thoughts my bug heads possessing. So the topic for the day is things that glow, of which fireflies is just one thing. Fireflies, fireflies. And there is lots of glowing in nature, which is nice, because sometimes it's dark, and we need to bring the light to the darkness. Metaphor.

New York Times best-selling author, Hank Green, everyone. You end a metaphor, you say metaphor. That's the last lines of the new one. Yeah, that was a sneak peek yeah sari what what is glowing i would define it as emitting light in some way i was a little so there's like a there's like a street lamp glow or does that shine or is that the same thing

functionally speaking i think think generating light, yeah. Releasing photons. I think, too, if you're going to glow, you kind of have to, like, make light, but, like, in a very sort of, like, comforting motherly way. So, like, a street light can glow, but it depends on my mood. It depends on how it makes me feel. So, would an anglerfish make light in a comforting motherly way and then just yeah you yeah because i'm comforted so i'm swimming toward the light and then i yeah like if it was if it was shining i'd be like my eyes so you would you say glow sticks are motherly

are they soothing i like to look at them i i don't usually associate them with comfort yeah that's party time glow yeah like my yeah i'm like my my eighth hour of dancing at a rave it's not like ah that's what's behind me of of being a of a little babe snuggled upon my mother as we drift off to sleep. But maybe, I don't know. Do you guys not rave? Is that just me? Am I the only raver in that room? I have never raved.

I obviously have never raved. Yeah, I haven't either, if we're being honest. Oh, yeah. I would say if anybody here, you'd be most likely to rave. I think that's true. I probably got close a couple times what was glowing we never even talked about it i took the broadest possible definition i looked at fluorescence and phosphorescence and luminescence and they're all just like emitting light in

various ways whether they absorb light at a different frequency or generate it through a chemical reaction or store it up and then re-emit it later on in time. I love those ones, to store it up. It comes from the Proto-Indo- European root gel, which means to shine, with derivatives that relate to bright

materials and gold. Alright, everybody. So, I guess now that means it's time for Truth or Fail, which is the part of the podcast where I have brought in three facts, but only one of them is true. And the rest of you have to decide

either by deduction or wild guess which is the true fact. And you can play along at home at twitter.com slash scishowtangents, but make sure you listen to the facts first because it won't make any sense if you don't otherwise. And I've brought in facts about Foxfire, which is not just what my in-laws call their web browser. It's also the name of the glow of bioluminescent fungi

that grow on decaying wood. And people have been noticing this glowing fungi for a long time, going all the way back to Aristotle, and I'm sure before that, but Aristotle described it as a cold fire. Over the centuries, people have found clever uses for this glowy fungus, including one of the following things that was used by Americans during the Revolutionary War. Fact number one, Betsy Ross stitched the stars of the first American flag with threads dipped in a mixture of bioluminescent mycelium,

which made it so that they would glow when in the perfect darkness of the night, which everybody thought was really dope. Or fact number two, the compass on board the first wartime submarine which yes happened during the american revolution was hard to see because it was dark in there so they illuminated it with foxfire or number three members of the culper spy ring was which was a

also a real thing during the revolutionary war would place a small batch of foxfire to signal that a house was a safe house so that members would know where they could find safety, even in the middle of the night. So we have these three facts. Betsy Ross made the stars of the flag glow, or we used it to make the compass in the first wartime submarine glow, or it was used to mark safe houses by the Culper Spiring, a ring of intelligence agents that operated around New England. And true or false, that's real.

Those are real? That's a real spiring? Yeah, that's a real spiring. There was a real flag. There was a real submarine. There was a real First American flag, yeah. Whoa. I cannot believe that the first one would have glow-in-the-dark stars and every other one would not have glow-in-the-dark stars after. That's too good of an idea.

Maybe it wasn't widely available? I don't know. Yeah, it may be a pain in the butt. Also, there are definitely flags with glow-in-the-dark stars. I bet you can get those on Amazon. Yeah, but every single one should. There's no reason not to. The other thing to note is that this wouldn't be a forever effect. It would just be sort of

a temporary thing. I don't know anything about these mushrooms, but how long would it last? Maybe you can't even call them out. They glow while they're alive. So the glowing is part of their metabolism. And then so as they die and their metabolism starts to slow down. And I don't know how long, but I know that it's like, I think it's like days.

You just missed the flag a little bit. Keep them nice and moist. Yeah. The submarine, though, are they rowing? How does the submarine work? I honestly couldn't tell you. It's like the Flintstones part. Your legs stick out the bottom.

They got flippers on. What's the third? Oh, the spies. That one seems pretty reasonable, but everyone would know that it glows. Like anyone walking by will be like, oh, that's a weird glowy thing. But you wouldn't know that it was marking the spy houses.

You'd just be like cool fungus dude not knowing that you are talking to the leader of the spy ring is it a common fungus it is apparently fairly common okay because there's not here do they have glowy fungus in montana or is this an east coast thing well it's also wherever aristotle was ah where was it i actually don't know i somewhere around that you know yeah where all the smart guys are from italy greece something like that would they have to cultivate the fungus can you tell us anything like did they just like pick a tree that had fungus in it and then bring it back to their house or did they like bring the fungus and then grow it outside their house they they would have to gather it and then put it in in a house? Or did they like bring the fungus and then grow it outside their house? They would have to gather it

and then put it in a place. Got it. The other thing about this fungus is that it often doesn't glow particularly brightly. Like it's not going to be like right up in your face that like, look at this guy's like glowing door. You'd have to be paying a fair amount of attention to notice the glow.

Right. Sarah, you put first. No, I want to go last. But you're so smart. Sarah, you put first. No, I want to go last. But you're so smart. Sarah maybe knows something. Yeah, I may or may not have suggested a fact for my fact offer, then Caitlin was like,

you're already talking about this. I will go with the spy houses. I will go with the submarine, for similar reasons as Sarah. Oh, no! I'm going to go with the submarine for similar reasons as Sari. Oh, no! I'm going to go with the submarine, too. God dang it!

I tried to do the submarine like a year ago for some different episode, but I couldn't find enough to make it a whole fact off. Perfect torf, though. Yeah, so this was potentially suggested by Benjamin Franklin, who actually apparently used

foxfire to read at night because like candles were like dirty and that was good for being used in the submarine because the submarine was made out of wood uh made out of tarred wood which sounds pretty flammable to me but also because there's only so much oxygen in there and you don't want to be sharing it with flames. It was like a piece of wood with the fungus still in it. So the fungus was still like thriving on that wood. And then he would like hold it up to the compass and the barometer

to see how deep he was and which direction he was going in to try and plant bombs on the side of other ships, which never worked. And he was eventually captured. His obituary said, the pilot of this craft was, this officer is the only man of which it can be said that he fought the enemy upon land, upon water,

and under the water. And the submarine, I don't know if I told you, was called the Turtle, which is a really good name. How was it propelled? Did they have a steam engine in there? In a wooden boat? I couldn't tell you. I think he had a little bicycle

in there that worked a screw or whatever. No, no. It had oars that had seals between the oars. And so he would turn the oars and then turn them and push the oars. Yeah, so there's oars sticking out

of the side of the turtle with rubber seals on the end of them so that water wouldn't leak in. I can't believe this guy survived. I would have used up all my oxygen just trying to like row the oars and getting tired. This is so bad.

No, no, I'm wrong. It wasn't oars. This picture definitely shows oars sticking out of it. But this picture of a model of it shows that there are pedals that you push that turn a propeller. Okay. And I don't know how he was supposed to deliver a bomb with this thing. He would go above the water and he had a little like, he had a bomb with like a screw on it and he would like put it into the side of the boat.

But then what I read was that he went to the boat and the boat had metal plating on it and he couldn't do it. So then he just went home. It's got a safety weight in the bottom so it doesn't turn upside down, which would be bad. And Foxfire, the reason it's called Foxfire is not because of the animal, but is the same root as the word false. So it's like fire, but not real. False fire. There was a restaurant in my hometown that was called Fox Fire,

and everyone knew that that's where you went if you wanted to meet older ladies who had money. Wow. Did you go and meet an older lady? No, but you could see it from the freeway because they had like a fire on the roof of the restaurant going all the time you always know

if you need to get out of your life you can always go meet an older lady there wow I would love to see Ben Franklin's reading apparatus with the fox fire though it wasn't a reading apparatus it was just a log

with some fungus on it that's gross yeah that's an apparatus I think so there's nothing wrong with a stick

sticks aren't gross he just had a mushroomy stick next to his bed he was dedicated he needed to read he needed to stay ahead of the competition I guess

I don't know who the competition is but whoever Ben Franklin's competition is I'm sure he was a pretty competitive guy yeah the Betsy Ross thing was pretty much a lie.

Like there have been people who have used Foxfire for decorative purposes before, and they didn't even necessarily, I don't even know if they had safe houses for this spy group. I just read about the spy group. It was all lies. It's disappointing.

But you could probably figure out how to make an American flag glow if you wanted to sell that product on Amazon. But I'll leave that to the listeners. Next up, we're going to take a short break, and then it'll be time for the Fact Off. Welcome back, everybody. welcome back everybody sam buck totals i've got one sari's got one and sam has two and how many does stefan have none stefan has zero stefan's got nothing all right and now it's time for the fact off two panelists have brought science facts

presented the others in an attempt to blow their minds we each have a sandbook to award to the fact that we like the most and to decide who goes first i've got a trivia question for you milky sea effect or mureel is when large areas of seawater glow thanks to bioluminescent dinoflagellates. The largest milky sea area ever documented it covered how many square kilometers of ocean surface? Hint,

they used satellite data to figure this out. I'm going to say 3,200 kilometers, square kilometers. Oh, okay. I'm going to say 100,000. I don't know why.

Now that I've said it, it seems like way too big, but let's go. The answer is 15,400 square kilometers. Well, so Sari is closer. Just barely. I will go first. So there's a lot of philosophical and biological debate about what death looks like in organisms. It's basically a systemic breakdown and shutdown or degradation of cells.

But in one species, the roundworm C. elegans, there's a surprisingly obvious marker of their passing called death fluorescence. Basically, under UV light, a compound called anthranilic acid fluoresces bright blue. It's produced by little granules throughout the worm's gut. And we're not entirely sure what the gut granules do as organelles, but there are just a lot of them and they make this glowy thing. And so when C. elegansans dies whether it's because of a lethal injury or peaceful old age the cell death starts at one end usually the front and propagates to the other over several hours and this wave of death is started by a flood of calcium ions

triggers processes that burst cells and explodes those little gut granules. So under UV light, there's like a wave of blue fluorescence as the worm dies across its whole body. And having this clearly visual indication of death is just like wild. You can watch videos of it and it can help us understand how cell death might propagate in more complex organisms, for example, humans, or as a clear indication of death in lab tests that involve measuring lifespan. These scientists experimented a little bit with this and were able to knock out proteins in the worm to stop the cell death wave because of injury, not because of old age. And so that could potentially be a first step in helping us develop medicine to stop necrosis from things like injury or infection or something damaging like that so like reducing the amount of fatal injuries because we don't set off this cascade so they stopped the cell death did the worm not die then yeah it didn't die i don't think it died as quickly i think it died

eventually because they've been like frankenstein it but and here is a video. So I'm watching death spread throughout a worm. Yeah. It's like kind of eerie if you're thinking about it. It's like I'm watching these worms die. It makes me think that if people were able to see this centuries ago, for some reason they shined UV light on these nematodes, this would be very like a poetic inspiration for thinking about death. It's like, ah, we all glow blue and then go dark.

So like they die and then they start to glow? Yes, asterisk. When do you declare death is? So their cells are still vaguely functional. But then once they outburst, then that's when they start glowing. So that's why I kept it kind of vague because I didn't feel like becoming a philosopher for this episode of the podcast. So it's just like a wave of death generically. And you can interpret that to mean whatever you want. It may not be death, but it's definitely glowing.

Yes. And after the glowing is done, it dead. Stefan, what do you got for us? Okay, so some species of millipedes basically look identical to one another. Like you just couldn't tell them apart with using your own stupid eyeballs. But you could use DNA analysis to tell them apart, but that's kind of complicated. But you could use DNA analysis to tell them apart, but that's kind of complicated. So researchers at the Field Museum in Chicago found that certain body parts of millipedes fluoresce under UV light. Specifically, their genitals glow different colors and in different patterns that are unique to the species of millipede.

These aren't really like millipede dicks. Male millipedes have a hole near their second pair of legs where the bluish sperm liquid comes out. And then their seventh pair of legs are adapted to transfer sperm. And so they like... Can I make you pause and tell you that you said bluish sperm liquid like I knew that already? You know, where their bluish sperm liquid comes out you don't know where it comes from but everybody knows that that millipedes have bluish sperm liquid that's what they call it clearly so their seventh pair of legs are called gonopods and they they like dip them in in their sperm hole cover them in sperm, and then they run around trying to find a mate. So those gonopods have different features that are unique to the species. So there's like

little spiky knobs or like bristly looking things. And under UV light, the differences are much easier to see between the different species. They don't know why the millipedes evolved this because they can't, I guess millipedes don't have very good vision. They said They don't know why the millipedes evolved this because they can't, I guess millipedes don't have very good vision. They said they don't even know if millipedes can see color and they definitely can't see UV. But from imaging all these different gonopods, they were able to condense. They thought that in their collection, they had 12 different species of millipede, but there were actually only eight, and so they were able to more accurately identify the specimens in their collection.

I feel like it comes up a lot that people are like, we don't know why they have these glowy stripes on them, because the animal can't see them. But it seems like the animal just must be able to see them. They're lying to us. Or they just don't know what the animal can see. Apparently we don't really know much about millipede

sex, either, because they do it in the ground and if you take them out of the ground or put them in the lab like they don't do it so oh well and if they do it in the ground then it's extra hard to see anything yeah that's the hardest place to see anything of all places i'd say i you didn't really have me until i found out that they didn't just glow they glow different colors oh color and light is very weird you guys i feel sad that we can't see more of it like yeah like we can't see scorpions glowing and stuff seems like that would be useful to us we can with a little bit of help i know but i want to see him without help i want to know they're coming i feel like i would get a headache if I was like a bee, if I had bee eyes where everything glowed intensely.

I wouldn't want to look at flowers. I like flowers now. Wait, can bees get headaches? All right. I don't know. Okay, nobody knows. I have no idea. I'm not even going to try to answer it.

Nobody knows. Because someone who actually knows things about animals will come after me. So it is now time for us to vote on our favorite fact. Are you guys ready? Three, two, one. Stephen. Sari. I just liked a lot.

His presentation style was great. He was waving his arms around a lot. He was really doing it for me. Wow. You gotta do a little dance. The subjectivity is just getting out of hand. I see. Yeah.

This audio podcast needs a visual component during recording. The subjectivity is just getting out of hand. I see, yeah. This audio podcast needs a visual component during recording. Well, you should have seen him. He was doing a hell of a job. And now it's time to ask the science couch. We've got a listener question for our virtual couch of finely honed scientific minds. This is from at great pretending. Does putting a glow stick in the freezer actually make it quote last longer and if so why i mean i assume yes because it slows down

the reaction whatever the reaction is that's producing the light there has to be some kind of ongoing chemical reaction that is releasing that energy and the molecules will hit each other less frequently if they are moving less quickly. Yeah, they'll hit each other less frequently and also with less energy. With less speed, yeah. Yeah, in the collision, which means that there's less likely

for something to happen. They gotta hit hard. Does it glow less brightly as well? Yes. So if you wanna save up your glow stick for tomorrow's rave, you can have a diminished glow stick for tomorrow. Once it warms up, I guess it might start glowing good again. Yeah, just compared to the temperature. So while it's cold, the reaction will be going slower and it will be glowing less good.

cold the reaction will be going slower and it will be glowing less good but if you heat it back up again then it'll be glowing hot and bright for as long as the reaction progresses and it's nice because like then your glow sticks are all cold so you start dancing and you're hot and you put your cold glow sticks on your body put them in your mouth because you like to i don't know put them in your mouth should you i feel like you shouldn't put them in your mouth. Should you? I feel like you shouldn't put them in your mouth. That's what I'm wondering. Okay, so like the kids would crack them open and fling them at you. Was that really bad? It's not horrible. It's not like cyanide or anything. The things inside and the big part of the tube is biphenyl oxalate and some sort of dye that colors it neon. And then the little crackly sound is there's usually a small glass cylinder

filled with hydrogen peroxide, which is something you might have in your medicine cabinet. It's really good at removing bloodstains. I realize that's a serial killer kind of thing to say. I don't know. Some people have periods and you bleed all over. So suck up that laughter. But yeah, so that's the reaction that happens is bifenol oxalate gets oxidized by hydrogen peroxide,

which produces a bunch of different compounds, including one that is unstable, that decomposes into carbon dioxide and releases energy, which the dye absorbs so that electrons get excited and then fall back to their less excited state and release photons. Very science-y.

And so the chemicals that you're spraying on people are hydrogen peroxide, biphenyl oxalate, just minor irritants. But I don't know. It won't take a bath. It's dilute hydrogen peroxide. Is the crackle like little chambers that you're breaking? I think it's just one chamber of one cylinder of hydrogen peroxide.

And then you can break it a bunch of times, but you only need to break it once. I love breaking it a bunch of times. Yeah, it comes out faster that way. Oh my. Breaking it a bunch of times will also speed up the reaction because you'll just like have more points of contact

instead of like just having one hole. It mixes faster. Tips, tips for the rave. You always come to SciShow Tangents for your rave tips. If you want to ask the Science Couch your question, you can follow us on Twitter, at SciShow Tangents, where we'll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes every week. Thank you to at Tangential Otter, at RebeccaRebeck4,

and everybody else who tweeted us your questions for this episode. Final scores! It's a tie game between sari and sam stefan and i come in and last sharing it with one point each which means that stefan is still in the lead strong still in the lead and sari and sam are two and three points behind respectively and i am uh nine points behind if you like this show and you want to help us out, it's easy to do that. You can leave us a review wherever you listen.

That helps us know what you like about the show and it helps other people know that our show is good because we want more people to listen to it. I don't know exactly why. There are business reasons. There are personal reasons. It just makes me feel good too. We too, however, love all of our SciShow Tangents listeners There are business reasons. There are personal reasons. It just makes me feel good too. Yeah.

We do, however, love all of our SciShow Tangents listeners. And it's such a joy to have you be here to listen to our voices. So thank you for being those folks. We love it. Thank you so much. If you want to tweet out your favorite moment from the show, you could do that too. And finally, if you want to show your love for Tangents, just tell people about us. Thank you for joining us. I've been Hank Green. I've been

Sari Riley. I've been Stefan Chin. And I've been Sam Schultz. SciShow Tangents is a co-production of Complexly and the wonderful team at WNYC Studios. It's created by all of us and produced by Caitlin Hoffmeister and Sam Schultz, who also edits a lot of these episodes along with Hiroko Matsushima. Our social media organizer is

Paola Garcia Prieto. Our editorial assistant is Deboki Chko Matsushima. Our social media organizer is Paola Garcia Prieto. Our editorial assistant is Deboki Chakravarti. Our sound design is by Joseph Tuna-Medish. And we couldn't make any of this without our patrons on Patreon. Thank you, and remember, the mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be lighted. But one more thing. Glowing butt fact!

Glowing butt fact. There's a lot of glowing butts. A lot of bugs have glowing butts, including glowworms, which aren't worms but the larvae of certain types of australian fungus gnats they live on the ceilings of caves and what the university of melbourne describes as chandelier like webs that consist of several snare lines covered in sticky mucus and to lure their food into these snare webs in the dark caves they light up their butts and they trick nocturnal insects into flying towards them and getting

stuck, just like how a moth does to a porch light, basically. And, bonus butt fact, they don't poop. All their waste is air quotes, excreted as light. What? You don't believe me? You don't believe the University of Melbourne

then? Bringing up with them, huh? They gotta poop at some point. Maybe once they turn into bugs. No, when they turn into bugs, they don't have an anus, and so they just have to live fast, die young. Because they can't poop. It's like YOLO, but with no poop. You only poop.

Yopo.