Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Selects: How the Sun Works

Episode Date: July 22, 2017

In this week's SYSK Select episode, amateur astrophysicists Josh and Chuck break out the stats and attempt to explain the complex, boiling ball of gas that we call the sun. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey everybody, this is Chuck, bringing you this week's SYSK Select. And we are going there, people. Well, Josh actually doesn't even know I'm picking this one yet, so he might be mad.

But what you're about to hear is the legendary How the Sun Works episode. And if you haven't heard us talk about this over the years, then you haven't listened to many episodes or heard many interviews with us because this one has gone down in Stuff You Should Know Lore as what we call our worst episode ever

because it was so hard and we were so in over our heads and we were clinging to the cliffside by our little nubby fingers during the entire podcast and got a lot of it wrong. And so instead of burying this thing, I chose to highlight it this week. So without further ado, from January 14th, 2010, our amazing episode, How the Sun Works.

Enjoy. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know. From HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. That's Chuck Bryant. Charles W. Bryant is not very happy right now. I'm gonna handle this, okay, Chuck?

The whole thing? No, no, no, this disclaimer. Okay. As we proof with our Large Hadron Collider podcast, Chuck and I are not physicists. By the way, it doesn't shoot light. No, we found out. Speaking of light, we're about to talk about the sun.

Yes. And I just wanna say that Chuck and I are not astrophysicists either. We're just a couple of guys who like to drink some beer and, you know, just talk, just rap. I thought I was an astrophysicist until I read the sun article and then my brain melted and oozed out of my ear.

You thought you were an astrophysicist? No. You were way off. Yeah, way off. So we're going to talk about the sun if we get any of the, you know, if we get the theory of relativity and, actually, no, we can't screw that one up.

It's too famous. Yeah, true. If there's a little thing here or there and you're an astrophysicist, please feel free to send us an email correcting us. We love that. That's the first time we've ever called for corrections before we've done a podcast.

Yeah, it is. It's not a good time. But I think this one's appropriate. So let's, let me start, Chuck. Okay. Have you ever heard of the sun? Yes, Josh. All right.

I wish we had more of it these days here in cold. It is. It's a little chilly. I feel notice it snowed here, Chuck. It did. I feel notice though, after a couple of days of sunlight, the snow receded. Yes.

Do you know why? No. Radiation. Okay. Heat. Yes. Energy. From the sun.

Right. Okay, Chuck. The sun, which Josh is one of over 100 billion stars. It's just a star. It is. And not even like a giant star either. It falls a little above average size. Did you know that?

Should we talk about the size? Yeah. Cause if there's one thing I can do is read stats. Yeah. This, this is a very stat heavy article. So it should be up your alley. Josh, the sun's radius is about 432,000 miles. Yeah. It's 109 times the radius of the earth. Yes. 109.

Exactly. Which I was like, wow. That means that it has a 218 times the diameter. No, that's not true. No, still 109. Right. It's constant. Yeah.

And I like this NASA, NASA broke it down or good friends at NASA. Yeah. And two, something that I understood, which was if you think of the earth, the width of an ordinary paper clip is the earth's radius, let's say, then the sun's radius would be roughly the height of a desk.

Yes. And I know this one. And about 100 steps from each other. Is that what you were going to say? It was what I was going to say. Sorry. That's all right. Hey, so yeah, that kind of puts it into perspective. The sun's a hell of a lot bigger than the earth.

Much, much bigger. And it's pretty far away, right? How many miles did you say? Eight light minutes. Which is actually, Chuck, apparently, 92 million miles and change. Right. And to put that into perspective,

other stars are light years away, not eight light minutes away. Right. And since this is a stat bonanza, can I take a shot at one? Please. So you said that the sun was how many light years? 25,000 light years from the center of the galaxy?

Yes, sir. It takes about 250 million years for the sun to do one revolution around the galaxy. Can we stop here? I feel really good about it so far. Yeah, yeah. I'm feeling pretty good too, Chuck. Let's soldier on, shall we?

Yes, the sun is a G2 type star based on its temperature and the wavelengths of light that it emits. Right. And it's about four and a half billion years old, which makes it a population one star. Apparently, there are two types of stars as far as age classification goes. Yeah, I didn't know that.

Population one star are the younger stars, which include our sun. Population two stars are older. Right. And they think that there was a third population, but none of them are around anymore. Right, population three. Right.

They should just go ahead and just claim that. Why not? Yeah, exactly. We wouldn't know. We'd be like, oh, okay. Yeah, nobody would ever know. Yeah, right. Well, luckily, NASA's very honest and forthright.

Thank you, NASA. Thank you, NASA. So yeah, Chuck, the sun, we said, is about four and a half billion years old. And they think it's about, humanity arrived at about the halfway point in the sun's lifetime. Sure. It's got about five billion more years worth of fuel, I guess.

Which is good news. It is for us. Because, yeah, at the end of that run, it's not good news for us. No, we'll get to that. That'll be the grand finale. Right, exactly. All right, so Chuck, what is the sun?

Well, should we talk about the parts of the sun? Okay. Or do you just want to talk about the fact that it's a big ball of gas? I think we should mention that, because if you talk about what the sun is, I think it's easier to understand its different components, and then, in turn, what it is.

Okay, well, it's made up entirely of gas, Josh. Which is really weird, because gas generally doesn't form a ball, and have an atmosphere, and all that stuff. I know why, though. Why? Because of the extreme gravity. Yeah, and heat.

And heat. Right. It holds everything together. Right, which is crazy. So this extreme heat actually takes this gas and converts it into what is technically a fourth state of matter. You've got solid, liquid gas, and plasma.

Yeah, plasma. And plasma is a type of gas that behaves in a way where it responds to magnetism. Right? Right. Generally, people just say that it's gas. But unless you want to get really technical and you'll call it plasma.

Yeah, that's what NASA said, is like scientists only sometimes will even call it plasma. Right. So the core, which we'll talk about in just a second. But the core is so dense, thanks to the force of gravity, that it makes up 2% of the sun's volume. But it counts for half of the density of the entire sun. Right?

And so the gravitational field in the core is so strong that it pulls hydrogen atoms together in a nuclear reaction, a fusion reaction. Yes. Which is where everything begins. Yes. This is where everything is accounted for for the sun. Right?

Yeah. And a fusion reaction, just if you guys don't know, is when two atomic nuclei join together and create a new nucleus. Right. Right. And so the key element, I guess, in the sun's nuclear reactions, because that's all it is.

It's not burning like we consider a wood fire to be burning. Right, right. It's burning like a, it's a huge nuclear reactor. Yeah, basically. The sun is, right? But the key element is helium-4. Right. When helium-4 is created, it has actually

less mass than the two, I think, hydrogen atoms that originally began, that set off this chain reaction that led to the creation of helium-4. And since matter or energy can either be created nor destroyed, it has to be displaced, right? So under Einstein's theory of relativity, which we won't screw up here, energy equals mass times the speed of light squared, you can

describe how much energy is created, right? So when the mass is displaced, when the helium-4 atom is created, the mass is displaced, it transfers into energy. Right. I'm wondering how many of our commuters right now switch this off and just put on Howard Stern on the satellite radio.

Like my fingernails are bleeding. I'm hanging on just barely right now. You're doing fine. Thanks, buddy. So are you. Thanks for watching. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor

stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point. but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.

It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair.

Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in

as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to, Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough

or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you.

Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael.

And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen

so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. Learning stuff with Joshua and Charles, stuff you should know. All right, so Chuck, that's the core. It's the center of the sun. Yes, it extends to 25% of the sun's radius,

just so you know how big that is. Right, and it's hot, hot, hot. Big time. 15 million Kelvin, which is really hot, trust us. Yeah, it is. And that's at the center. Like you said, it's 25% of the radius. What's outside of that?

Just outside of that is the radiative zone. Did I pronounce that? Either that or radiative. Yeah, radiative. Radiative. Radiative. That extends about 55% of the sun's radius from the core. Right, OK, so these helium-4 atoms are created.

And remember, they create energy or they displace energy. When they lose their mass. Yeah, yeah. Translates into energy, that energy starts traveling outward, and it hits the radiative zone. And they're generally the type of energy that's created can be gamma rays, x-rays, whatever. But technically, all of these are light waves.

So they're carried in these discrete little packets called photons, right? Yes, they're carried by the photons. And the photon travels only about one micron, which is a millionth of a meter, before it's absorbed by a gas molecule. Right, OK, so then this photon, which is absorbed by the gas molecule, heats the gas molecule up.

And then the photon, or the gas molecule, spits out another photon, which is technically the same one, because it's the same wavelength as the original photon, right? Right, and it goes another micron, until it's absorbed by another gas molecule, right? So this keeps going on and on and on. And by the time the photon escapes from the radiative zone, it averages about a million years

from the time it was, I guess, created, you could say, from the creation of that helium-4 atom. A million years for one photon of light to travel this short distance. Yeah, that would be 10 to the 25th absorption and re-emissions taking place. Yeah, that's a lot. That's a lot of zeros.

Yeah, it's actually, I think, 25-0. Exactly. Maybe 26. So once it escapes the radiative zone, it hits the convective zone, right? Right, and that is the final 30% of the sun's radius, basically. Right. It takes a little while for that same photon

to escape that area, right? 100,000 to 200,000 years to reach the surface of the sun. Yes, what's crazy is this, once it escapes, once that one photon escapes the surface of the sun, it takes eight minutes to reach the Earth's surface, because remember, we're eight light minutes away, and it travels at the speed of light, so it takes eight minutes.

But the sunlight that's hitting us when we go outside are made up of photons that were created more than 1.2 million years ago. I can't even comprehend that. Isn't that awesome? That is really, really cool. So we've got all these ancient photons bouncing off us, but let's get back to the convective zone, right?

OK. This is this area made up of these alternating areas of rising and cooling gas. Right, as NASA, once again, breaks it down a little easier, it's boiling convection cells, basically. Right, it looks like a pot of boiling water, except these are gas, plasma. And there's no pot.

No, there's only the sun. Only the sun. OK, Chuck, so we have the three parts of the sun. We have the core, the radiative zone, and the convective zone, right? Yes. And now we've reached the atmosphere. The sun actually has an atmosphere.

Yes, it does. Yes, it does. And that's made up of three parts as well, correct? The photosphere, the chromosphere, and my favorite, I think everyone's favorite, the corona. I like the corona, which can only be seen in an eclipse. Yeah, corona gets all the press. It does.

So Josh, are we in the photosphere? We are. Is that where we are? It is hot. That is the lowest region in the atmosphere, or sun's atmosphere, and that is the region that you can actually see from Earth. That's where you can start to see things.

Right, and actually, the photosphere is what gives the sun its kind of round, crisp edge, because as you travel outward to the outside of the photosphere, the gas is cooler, which creates that crisp edge we see for the sun. Right, has an average temp of about 5,800 Kelvin, and it is 180 to 240 miles wide. Right.

That's big. It is big. After that is the chromosphere, right? Yes, that's outside the photosphere, obviously. It's about 1,200 miles above the photosphere. Right. And that's about 4,500 degrees Kelvin, so obviously, you'll notice that it's getting cooler

as you expand outward. Right, but they think it's heated by the photosphere, and this churning gas, the convection cells, are still present in the chromosphere as well. So basically, what we're seeing so far is the sun is this nuclear reactor that, at its core, gravity is pushing things together, and then they're exploding outward.

Right. OK? OK, I'm with you. But actually, I sort of misspoke because the temperature does rise across the chromosphere, and it can rise up to 10,000 Kelvin, which is even hotter than the photosphere beneath it. Right.

And then we have the corona, Chuck, your favorite. Yeah, that's the final layer, Josh, and it extends several million miles outward from the photosphere. And you can see this. In fact, I think they first discovered the corona during the first solar eclipse. They were like, what the hell is that?

Yeah, exactly. How hot is that one, Josh? It's 2 million degrees Kelvin, actually, which, again, is very hot. Yeah, so it's not actually cooling as it goes outward. I completely misspoke. No, I think that's one of the reasons

why the sun has these different features, like sunspots and solar prominences, which we're about to talk about, is because these cooling and heating, rising and lowering convection cells are competing with one another, and they actually create the magnetism that the plasma is attracted to or responds to, I should say. Yeah, and I don't feel too bad, because the article even says that no one knows why the corona is so hot.

No. Because you would think it would be cooler. Right. And there are hotter places than others, because the cooler spots are called coronal holes. Right. There are also, let's talk about sunspots, Chuck. OK.

Sunspots are these areas of magnetic activity along the photosphere, right? Darker and cooler. Right. They always appear in pairs, as far as I know. Although I think they can appear singularly, but it's very uncommon, because it's a monopole, right? Right.

Like I said, that there's that convection activity. That actually creates the magnetic fields around the sun, right? Right. And so when sunspots appear, generally they appear in pairs, because one represents magnetic north, and the other represents magnetic south. And along these magnetic fields, other solar activity

can occur, right? You've got solar prominences, which is actually an arc of, I think, particles and radiation that can extend, I think, 1,000 kilometers outside of the sun's atmosphere, right? Yeah, they can, and they last for two or three months. It's like a temporary thing. Right.

And these things are, it's kind of like an arc of electricity, except a lot bigger, right? And every once in a while, they erupt into coronal mass ejections. Right, which is my next band name. Is it? Coronal mass ejection. That's a good one, actually.

Can we, I got one more thing on sunspots, which I thought was really cool, is they break through their magnetic fields, it break through the surface, but they can only exit and re-enter through other sunspots. Really? Which I thought was pretty cool. That is pretty cool. They also occur on 11-year cycles, right?

Yes, the solar cycle. A full cycle, a full solar cycle is 22 years. So every 11 years, it either peaks or troughs. And what's interesting is, you know, 2012, everybody's like, ooh, 2012, the world's going to, and I think we mentioned this in our 2012 podcast. Right. That is the predicted peak of this solar cycle maximum

that we're in. So you've got these sunspots, the sunspot activity is going to pick up. When sunspots pick up, solar prominences pick up. When there's more solar prominences, there's more coronal mass ejections. When there's more coronal mass ejections, the Earth is inundated with radiation

and radioactive particles, right? Right. They hit the Earth's atmosphere and actually mess with the magnetic field. This accounts for the aurora borealis and Australia's, right? Right. And when enough of them hit the Earth's atmosphere

and they actually ionize, they interfere with our electrical activity. Right, they cause blackouts. Right, which is why a lot of people think that 2012 will have all these catastrophes. Right, that makes sense. But really, it's just part of a 22-year cycle of the sun. So calm down, all you Mayans.

Exactly. No, the Mayans don't think that. No, that's right. Josh? Yes. You want to talk about the color of the sun real quick? Yeah. Because this is a cool little fact

that I bet most people don't know, because most people say the sun is yellow or orange. Not true. The sun is actually white. Sunlight is actually white. Do you know why it changes? Why? The atmosphere.

Oh, yeah. The atmosphere acts as a filter for the setting sun, and that's when it changes its color. Well, it is white. It doesn't appear white, but it's actually made up of all the colors of the spectrum, which is why you can take a prism and shoot sunlight through it, and it spreads into the different colors.

And you have Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon album cover. Yeah. Got another couple of cool facts. What? Rotation of the sun. Everyone knows it makes a complete rotation in about a month. But because it's a gas, basically, it's different parts rotate at different rates.

So gas near the equator takes 25 days to rotate, let's say, and gas at higher latitudes may take as many as like three more extra days. Right. Pretty cool. So it's rotating at different rates. It is, because it's a ball of gas. Exactly.

And I got one more. You ready for this one? Sure. About the vibration? Yeah, this is pretty cool, too, I thought. I had no idea. The sun vibrates constantly like a bell that is continuously struck.

Right, creating sound waves. Uh-huh. But there's two minutes between intervals. Yes, and 10 million individual tones at the same time. Right. So we could, if our hearing was, I guess, different. I don't know if better is the right word. But if we had a different type of hearing,

we would be able to hear the vibrations coming off of the sun, because they actually do hit the Earth. But like I said, in two minute intervals, the slowest distance between intervals time-wise that humans can hear is 1 20th of a second. So it's constantly making a sound. We just can't hear it. She leads me to the question.

If the sun makes a sound while it's vibrating, can you hear it? I bet those blue people in Avatar can hear it. No? You still haven't seen it? Oh, I'll never see that movie. You should. Never.

You're going to be that guy? Yeah. OK, that's fine. OK. slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal?

No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy,

blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough,

or you're at the end of the road. Ah, OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god.

Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael, and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life,

step by step. Not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I got a couple of other stats for you, Josh, if you're into it. Why not? Fewer than 5% of the stars in the Milky Way are brighter or more massive than the sun, but some are more than 100,000 times as bright. Isn't that crazy?

Yes. That is pretty cool, actually. And if you go in the other way, some stars are less than 1 10,000th as bright as the sun. Which is kind of nuts, but really, stat-wise, we have a fairly mediocre sun. Yeah, it does the trick, though. Yes, it does do the trick, and it should for about the next 5

billion years, like we said. Yeah, the sun is middle-aged right now, right? It's about halfway through. Sure, it's starting to look into wearing track suits all the time, out in public. Exactly. And after about 5 billion years, it's going to run out of fuel.

Yeah, run out of hydrogen. And what happens then? Well, that density of the core is going to remain, but it's not going to have the fuel to create these nuclear reactions, which remember we said that the sun is a bunch of nuclear reactions, this gravity smashing things together, and then the energy escaping. So it's this constant push and pull.

Well, when it runs out of fuel, there's going to be nothing but pull. There won't be any push any longer, right? Right, which is bad news for the core. Right. But before this happens, when this kicks off, Chuck, it's going to turn into a red giant. Right, and this red giant is how the sun just

kind of heats the earth? Yes. Well, that's not going to happen. I mean, it'll heat the earth, but it's also going to vaporize it when it turns into a red giant. Exactly, which is the bad news for us. Well, we probably won't be around. We'll be long gone.

There'll be no trace of humanity anywhere. Yeah, in 5 billion years? No way. I would think not. I don't know that we have that much staying power. No. And so the sun is going to vaporize the earth, which is probably pretty wicked cool to see

when that does happen. After that, the core will be, then the core will turn into carbon. I misspoke earlier, right? Right, which cools it down. Right, and then as it cools, it'll turn into a white dwarf and then a black dwarf. Eventually, yes.

And then it'll just be some hulk that won't even resemble our sun anymore. Right, and once this whole process starts, it's going to take several billion years to even complete that process. Right, so it's not like it happens overnight or anything. Probably about 10 billion years from now, the sun will just be this massive hulk of carbon.

Right, like my brain is right now. Right, not so massive though. Can we be done now? I think so. OK. I mean, there's a lot more. We didn't even touch on solar wind and things like that, but we leave it up to the listener to pursue these.

Do we? Yeah, sure. The listener or stuff from the science lab are soon to be forthcoming sister podcast with the esteemed Robert Lam and his esteemed editor, Alison Loudermail. Yeah, and then we can just talk about noodling. Yeah, we'll go back to what we do best, which is pumpkin stuff.

So Chuck, I can barely get it out. I know. The listener mail. OK. I feel so defeated. I'm just going to call this the best part of this podcast. This is on human experimentation. And we actually, as always, if we put out

a call for some random weirdness, there's someone out there that listens to the show that has been there and done that. Yeah, remember the kid whose father used him as a human shield when he was a baby? Remarkable. So I've got this one from Rebecca, and she says this. I just listened to the podcast on human experimentation

and was thrilled that you featured something I can relate to because I'm a former NASA human test subject. We just talked about NASA. I know. Weird. Funny how that works. In 2006, I spent three months in a bed at a negative six degree tilt.

Isn't that crazy? The effects of the human body at that angle are very similar to what an astronaut goes through after spending extended periods of time in space, which makes me wonder how they figure that out, you know? Because they're NASA. Yeah. That's the answer.

Yeah. Eventually NASA hopes to take that information they got from my time in bed to help astronauts stay in space longer and travel further from the Earth and one day even land on Mars. Wow. As a test subject, everything I did from surfing the internet, eating, reading, even using the bathroom was at an angle.

Cool. Six degree tilt. Five days a week, I was wheeled to a lab where I was attached to an elaborate pulley system that pulled me onto a treadmill that was bolted to the wall. I walked jog and ran a few miles a day to help my body avoid muscle atrophy, of course. And not everyone selected for the study was so lucky, though.

Half of them did not get to run on this unique contraption. So they were just in bed the whole time. The data the engineers got from my running will help NASA figure out what types of exercise astronauts will have to do to experience like long extended trips into space. Sure. So while I didn't love everything about it,

going to the restroom, for example, it is a thrilling thing that have been a part of. I'm a huge fan and I like to learn neat stuff. Rebecca. Did you add that last part? No, no, no. She said that. Oh, OK.

Yeah, more neat stuff. Well, thanks, Rebecca. Hats off to you for helping our astronauts. She didn't mention how much she got paid, if at all. But I meant she did. NASA has deep pockets, buddy. That's what I hear. Yeah.

Well, if you have any stories about developing bed sores for the greater good of advancing human knowledge, you can send in an email to Stuff Podcast at howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Want more Howstuff Works? Check out our blogs on the HowstuffWorks.com homepage.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?

If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass

on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.