The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week - Hyrax Heaven, Underwater Bees, Carbonated Oceans

Episode Date: May 22, 2024

Streamer and science communicator Moohoodles joins the show this week to talk about carbonated oceans on Enceladus (and the moon's recipe for life)! Plus, Jess explains her obsession with the hyrax, and Rachel talks about bees who are somehow able to hibernate underwater. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week is a podcast by Popular Science. Share your weirdest facts and stories with us in our Facebook group or tweet at us! Click here to learn more about all of our stories!  Links to Rachel's TikTok, Newsletter, Merch Store and More: https://linktr.ee/RachelFeltman  Rachel now has a Patreon, too! Follow her for exclusive bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/RachelFeltman Link to Jess' Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/jesscapricorn Link to Moohoodles' Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/moohoodles Link to Moohoodles' Twitter: https://twitter.com/Moohoodles -- Follow our team on Twitter Rachel Feltman: www.twitter.com/RachelFeltman Produced by Jess Boddy: www.twitter.com/JessicaBoddy Popular Science: www.twitter.com/PopSci Theme music by Billy Cadden: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6LqT4DCuAXlBzX8XlNy4Wq?si=5VF2r2XiQoGepRsMTBsDAQ Thanks to our Sponsors! Get 20% OFF @honeylove by going to https://honeylove.com/WEIRDEST! #honeylovepod Ask for Claritin-D at your local pharmacy counter. You don’t even need a prescription! Go to https://Claritin.com right now for a discount so you can Live Claritin Clear. Listen to Wow in the World wherever you get your podcasts. Visit https://wondery.com/summerofwow to find new episodes and to download scavenger hunts for the whole family. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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That's code weirdest for 20% off. You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough. Enough to get lost. Or you could book a stay with Hilton. Welcome to your ocean front room.

Just steps from the water. The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or the Hilton. Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises, it matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay. At Popular Science, we report and write dozens of science and tech stories every week. And while most of the stuff we stumble across makes it into our articles, we also find plenty of weird facts that we just keep around the office. So we figured, why not share those with you? Welcome to the weirdest thing I learned this week from the editors

of popular science. I'm Rachel Feltman. I'm Jess Bodie. And I'm Mahoodles. Yay. Welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me. Mahoodles, why don't you tell our listeners, or Jess, you can have the honor of introducing the guest that you found for us from your life, your adventures outside of the podcast. My adventure, yes. Yeah, my Twitch life. So Moo and I met, I think we met at TwitchCon, right? at the Women's Guild meetup. Yeah. So we're both members of the Twitch Women's Guild,

and Mooda's really, really awesome science content on Twitch. So I would love if you would tell our listeners all about it. Oh, I would love to. Yeah, so I'm a full-time streamer on Twitch. I have been streaming for a decade now, and I was one of the pioneers of science communication. Yeah. That's so sick.

Congrats. Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. Thanks so much. Yeah, so I helped pioneer science communication in the science and technology category. And I have just always been such a huge nerd for a bunch of things. We generally cover current news in space and astrobiology.

But we also talk about sharks and conservation and programming, especially computer science applications and astronomy. And just so many other things. I also play games on Twitch. But that's like my main content is science communication stuff, just talking about the universe and the things I really love and the search for life in it. Amazing. I love that.

to be things. Well, and also speaking of platforms other than wherever you get your podcast listeners, I finally, after like six years, got around to, I had to think about it. Is it six years? Yes, it's six years that this podcast has existed. Got around to making a subreddit for the weirdest thing I learned this week. So now you can find that. I link to it in my Patreon and also if you search weirdest thing on Reddit, maybe some other things will come up. But the one that has me all over it is the one that I started. So come hang out there. It'll be fun. Let's get into the show. So on the weirdest thing I learned this week, we start by each offering up a little tease about some kind of fact or story that we found in the course of reading, writing,

reporting, et cetera, and decide which one we just absolutely have to hear more about first. Then, once we've all had a chance to spin our little science yarns, we reconvene and decide what the weirdest thing we learned this week actually was, but not really. I just don't ever want to rewrite the intro. Everybody wins here. Or no one wins. No, I think the vibes that everybody wins. Jess, what's your tease? My tease, as I'm going to talk about my favorite little guys who sit on rocks and sing. Oh, wow. So many kinds of little guys that could be. I'm really excited. It's true. That's very true. Mooh, what's your tease? Somewhere in our solar system, something is spewing out water at a rate of 79 gallons per second. And that's not even the most fascinating thing about it.

Ooh. Yo. That's a lot of water. Not on Earth, I assume. Nope, not Earth. This is intriguing. That would be a real trick question to be like, where in the universe? Yeah. Earth actually. And then it's just Earth. Yeah. My tease is that scientists accidentally found out that some bumblebees can hibernate underwater without drowning. I feel like can hibernate implies not drowning, but I still feel like I should specify. They come out of it and they don't drown. That's, I'm intrigued. Well, I'm very excited to talk about that, but I must know of which little guys you speak, Jess. Yes. So please, would you jump in first. It would be my honor. Okay, I'm moving my notes over here. All right. So lately, I've just been obsessed with these.

little furry guys called Hi-Raxes. Do you all, I've all heard legend of the Hi-Rax. Are you already looped in? No. No. Oh, this is great. Okay, good. I get to enlighten you. So, I had heard about the Hi-Rax a little bit just like throughout my science communication work, science journalism work for forever. But lately they've been kind of creeping back into my Instagram Discover page. So, like, accounts like Hi-Rax. Fan account. Hi-Rax Hub. Hello, Hi-Rax. Hyrax heaven and high racks hell. Wow. Incredible. It's, you should really check them out.

They're having a moment. Or maybe they've always been having a moment. Maybe they are the moment. I don't know. But lately they're just, they're on my FYP on Instagram specifically. And so yeah, listeners, if you already know what this creature is, then you also understand. But if you don't, they're like small furry mammals, like kind of the size of a big guinea pig. So they're not huge.

They're like a foot or too long, weighs about 10 pounds. So yeah, just like little guys. And they have these continually growing incisor teeth like a rodent might have. And in a lot of pictures, they kind of look like they have these like two fangs, like tusks. It's very cute. It's very, very cute. And so, yeah, the teeth thing might make you think that they're rodents. But, dun, da, they're not rodents.

So take their feet. For instance, they have stubby little toes, like fat, chubby, stubby toes, not rodent-like. And their nails are almost hoof-like, if that gives you any clues. Weird. And they have, like, one little claw on their innermost toe for grooming and, like, scratching their itches, what I think is really cute. And, and, you know, useful. And the bottoms of their feet are rubbery to grip different surfaces because they climb rocks and trees. Speaking of, there are six species of hiraks, and the different groups are bush hiraks,

rock hiraks, and tree hiraks. The first two live on rocks and like infields. And they're active during the day and they live in little communities. They can actually live in groups of like up to 80 if there's enough space. So they have like little hyracks neighborhoods. But tree hiraks are nocturnal and solitary, which I think is like so. weird and funny because they're like these dark horse hyraxes like very edgy just living in the trees only coming out at night um but yeah anyway today we're going to talk about rock hyraxes um the daytime ones with the friends uh and these are the ones that sing songs as i mentioned in my teas and we will get back to that but first i want to clarify what i mean when i say they're not rodents so rachel and moo

Do you guys have a guess for what, like, animal group they belong to? Um, well, you said that they have, like, hooves. Are they, are they ungolets? Yeah, they are. That's so weird. They're closest. I would not have gotten that. I know.

Well, I was going to say marsupials, but then I was like, the hooves. The hoops. I need you on a trivia team. Oh, my gosh. Oh, I am either really, really, really good or really, really bad at trivia. Yeah, I have like a lot of deep knowledge about very few things. It's really, yeah, same. It's really a crapshoot whether I'll be the absolute ace of the whole for the trivia team where I'll be like, I don't know anything that they're talking about.

Yeah. Fair. Yeah, same. We did win science trivia though, Rachel, didn't we? Yeah, it's true. What was that thing we won? Do you have the trophy somewhere? It's somewhere, but it's not next to me.

I think it's in our home office. I was theoretically supposed to return the trophy because they were going to reuse it. every year. And I did once, and then we won it again that year. But then the pandemic happened. And I still have it because nobody's made me give it back. It's a 3D printed bust of Ira Flato's head. Right. Oh, because it was the Science Friday trivia, right? That's what it was. That is awesome. We're champs. Anyway, yeah, so they're ungulates and they're most closely related to elephants and manities. Wow.

Which is so weird. And that's like a big reason of why I love Hieraxes so much. And once you see the pictures, I mean, come on. But yes, the singing, the singing, why do they do it? When do they do it? I will set the scene. So picture this little, little cave burrow, rocky cave burrow. The sun is rising up over the horizon.

Cute little male Hyrax emerges, perches on a rock and begins to sing. Oh. Now to humans, this might not be the. prettiest sounding thing. It's not a song that perhaps we would imagine. Art is subjective. Yes. And you're so right. You're so real for that. People compare their songs to a hyena cackle combined with nails on a chalkboard. I was going to ask if you were going to sing an example, and now I don't know if I want to hear that. I don't know if I physically can. But now I feel like I should try. But yeah, I'll post examples on popside.com slash weird as always. So,

y'all can be the judge of that. But yeah, so to us, you know, artist's objective, of course, maybe not like a human-oriented song, but the female hyraxes love it. They eat it up because, yes, this is a courtship and mating song. So really, although they might not like sound like especially musical to us humans, these songs are like actually like scientifically remarkable. So researchers were drawn to look at them because of their complex rhythm. and the way that they build and, like, will crescendo over time and have this sort of, like,

climactic finish at the end. So that's why they say that these songs are strangely human-like. Like, they sound kind of weird, but if you look at the whole thing, it really does build, like, a real song might. So, and this, like, I love salad. Yeah, literally, though. Sorry. No, yeah, that's actually what it is.

That's so cute. It's incredibly cute. And I love, I'll get to this more later, but I love that this is what they do instead of, like, fighting with each other. Like they don't fight for male dominance, they sing. Oh. And I think that's great. So yeah, like I mentioned, singing a good song is super important for a male high rax. If they quote unquote win or like sing the best song, they win the right to live with a group of up to 30 females, juveniles, and pups. So they like get to lead the whole group. And they usually stay in that position of power their whole life, which is usually to like age nine or

so. Wow. Like way more staying power than American Idol. Like, can you tell me who won American Idol nine years ago? I hope not. Okay. Lately, though, Sanjaya has been coming up on my TikTok. Yeah, fair enough, fair enough. And like, that was something that really brought me straight back to my middle school era. The hierarchy of the American Idol world. Yeah, pretty much. But yeah, so these hierarchs will, like, be in control or like be like the king of their community for their lives usually but sometimes a bachelor hirax can come in and be like i'm a better singer i'm overthrowing you if the song is good enough so this is why scientists think that hyracks is saying all year round not just in mating season because they're constantly like you know practicing seeing who's good making sure they're

establishing their dominance through song all that kind of stuff i'm i'm obsessed like you know why did they make happy feet and not a movie about this? I know. I know. I was thinking that too. We need one. Pixar. Take notes. So yeah, they actually did a concentrated study on this back in 22 in the journal of Animal Ecology. And they looked at like the anatomy of the song. So what makes a Hirax song sexier or more successful? And to do this, they put these colorful little tags and collars on the hyraxes so they could see who was singing what song just by like hiding from afar basically and they recorded the songs and they viewed the waveforms and spectrograms are just like if they show you more than just a waveform it shows you loudness and frequency and you know they get

more data from a high rec song that way and so then what they did is they batched up the hyracks songs with that hyracks as resulting offspring and to do that they did do little paternity tests for the hyraxes, which is funny. And yeah, they found that hyraxes that sang with better rhythm and sing more frequently, like just more songs singing all the time. They were the most successful hyraxes. They had the best surviving offspring. And then they would win the song battle. So, yeah, another funny thing about this study was that they found that the resident winner male hyraxes, like the king, their songs over time would kind of stagnate and get less complex. after they win.

Sure. So they get kind of comfortable. But the Bachelor Hirexes that are like trying to take over, their songs get more and more complex. So they're trying to be like, ladies, look at me. Your man isn't so special. Yeah. If you wanted to, he would. Exactly.

So yeah, moral of the story, don't get too comfortable. You got to put that work in. But yeah, so just to round up my fact here, like I mentioned earlier, the reason I think this is especially cool is because they don't fight for dominance. like we think so many other species do. They sing for dominance, which I just think is really sweet. And apparently some lemurs also do that too. They sing for dominance instead of fight.

And so researchers are like, maybe violence isn't always the answer for asserting dominance. Like maybe this is just like a thing we've, if this is like toxic masculinity coming to be, and maybe there are like way more things that animals do to assert dominance. And I think that's really cool. Because, you know, I think that's true in our species. too. Like, I'm way more attracted to a person that makes music rather than a person that fights personally. Totally. Mm-hmm. You know, so yeah, anyway, that's my fact. Long live the Hirex and their cute little things and their songs. Yeah, I love that. Well, and I think that is

awesome. It's like, obviously we can see as modern humans that like just throwing the best is not like the way you succeed as a masculine person. But I feel like there is still this like this very pervasive sort of evolutionary psychology idea that it's like, but what we evolved from was that being the way of the land. And it's like actually perhaps there were many ways of the land. And it is maybe as old as being the guy with the biggest stick to also be the guy who's the best of singing and other, you know, depending on where you were and what the vibe was, people might be like, I don't know, that guy just has been punched in the head a lot. He's kind of weird now. And all he cares about is bunching people in the head and getting punched in the head. And this guy sings real good. This guy sings. So yeah. Men out there, we are urging you to sing. Please sing instead. Please. I just think, you know, as a frequent meta-narrative on this show, like,

The assumptions we make about sort of how the world works matter and they impact the kind of science we do and the questions we ask and like what we think of as normal. So yeah, I love that these weird little guys just sing their hearts out. Yeah. Me too. Awesome. I want to hear their greatest hits albums. Yes. Me too.

I will find a good playlist of their songs and put it on the website because, yeah. I mean, you know, the description doesn't sound awesome, but I do definitely listen to some, like, really, like, ADHD coded hyperpop. So I'm like, I'm not going to assume that I wouldn't find some use for this in my life. We need to give the high rack songs to a music producer who can then turn it into, like, amazing hyperpop. I think that this could be sampled, actually. Yeah, geeks. Yeah, please. Listen up.

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Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals, because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for citizens backing. Okay, we're back. I'm going to talk about these bees that do not drown, which is very cool. So this started, as so many great scientific discoveries do, with an accident. A big oopsie. But I'll get back to that in a minute.

This is new research from scientists who study bumblebee diapause. Diapause is similar to hibernation. It's just a different term for like invertebrates. Similar idea, though, they go into a period of their development and behavior slowing down. So, yeah, bees in particular, they go kind of dormant, they stop foraging, they stop eating, they stop reproducing. That's how they spend their winter. They have a nice nap. I'm talking specifically about the common eastern bumblebee.

if you're listening to this new like, my bumblebee doesn't do that. Sorry. Talking about this one kind of bumblebee. So what's interesting is that only a few of them actually go into diapause. Basically, at the end of the summer,

the queen produces a bunch of new queens. And so they're these unmated bees with the potential to be queens. And then they eat a bunch. They really store up a bunch of nutrients, they mate, and then just those new queens go into diapause for six to nine months. They dig down into little burrows in the soil and hunker down there. And all of the workers and the

males and the like queen mothers, if you will, die during the winter. And then the diapause and queen emerges in the spring and has to go find a new nest site, lay eggs, do a bunch of foraging, and wait for the first workers to emerge. So they literally just start up a whole new colony, which is kind of wild to me. I didn't realize that was how it worked. And it's a really delicate operation because when you think about it,

the queen is totally solo during this long dirt nap. She's like, basically she's like Ellen Ripley at the end of Alien or maybe Ellen Ripley at the end of aliens. But like I don't want to think too much about that. But there have to be enough flowers around. for the future queen to get all of the nutrient she needs before she goes dormant. She also has to be able to passively survive any environmental stressors that occur while she's snoozing.

And climate change obviously poses some new threats given the increase in extreme weather events. So, you know, scientists are very interested in like how dry can it get, how wet can it get, how hot can it get, how cold can it get before this is messed up and we have fewer queens. surviving. Now, thanks to a big oopsie in the lab, we now know that one of the stressors those bees have evolved to survive is flooding. Yo. Yeah, so researchers at the University of Guelph in Canada say, a quote, experimental oversight during a previous study on... What happened? I will disclose on the common eastern bubble bee led to, quote, I just have to share the the language they use in the paper because it's so funny to hear how you

academic literatureify a big mistake in the lab. So yes, this experimental oversight led to, quote, the inadvertent accumulation of water in containers, housing, diaposing, fumblebee queen. And I did find an article where the lead researcher was interviewed. And what had happened is that they had these tubes. in the fridge because you have to refrigerate them to simulate winter to make them go to sleep. And basically, there had been so much condensation collecting in the tubes that four of the queens were totally submerged. And she was horrified, obviously. Understandably, this really, like,

took me right back to undergrad days in the lab. And like, I feel like I would have seen my whole life flesh before my eyes. But once they drain the water out and probably like swore a bunch, they were very surprised to find that at least some of the soggy little queens were alive. That's wild. I really thought this was going to be like, oh no, I spilled my water bottle all over the lab bench. Yeah, no, we're talking submerged. Like truly not like my iPhone is water resistant, but like, yes. They're down in there. Underwater. rapid, rapid unscheduled H2O submersion.

Yeah, exactly. Literally. So, yeah, they decided to put these surprising abilities to the test because, again, the reason they were studying bumblebee diapause in the first place is to sort of understand what variables can impact it. And so the idea that maybe flooding, at least, was one climate change-related issue that wasn't so much of a concern really exciting. So they took 143 common eastern bumblebee queens unmaided queens, and they put them in soil-filled tubes, and then they put them in a refrigerator for a week because a cold bee is a sleepy bee.

And I should also note that they did a ton of work to make sure the queens were all on like very even footing in terms of preparation for their diapause because, you know, based on like when they hatch versus once winter starts and like how much food they've had access to, all. of that affects their survival rate. So they did a lot to control those variables and to be like these are pretty much going out the gate at the same place. I won't get into it, but just trust that they thought of all that. And I was very impressed reading their methods. So then they separated the tubes of sleepy queens into groups. They kept 17 of them dry to service controls. and then the other 126 had cold water added to the tubes.

So half of those submerged bees were left to just like float naturally on the top of the water, just bobbin. And then the other half, they pressed them down gently with a little plunger like apparatus. Oh my God. Just nudging them down, not squishing them, but just getting them under the water. And then they were left in those conditions plus the colds because they wanted to keep them in winter mode. you didn't want to be suddenly warming up and waking up in the water for eight hours, 24 hours, or seven days because they wanted to simulate different potential like real world flooding scenarios.

So everything from a heavy rain, just kind of soaking the soil for a bit to a flood totally inundating the area where the bees were. And the plunder variable was there because in some situations, like if groundwater levels are just getting high due to like excessive snow melt. the water might enter their little burrows but not actually fill it. So they wanted to have, you know, a scenario where they were mimicking like water has entered the chat, but the bees are, you know, able to bob on top. But other situations, like a total flood of the area would leave the bees totally submerged. So they also wanted to test that.

And they're very buoyant little guys. So if you want to test that, you got to plunge them. You've got to need the plunger. Yep. And I would love to have been a fly on the wall for them, you know, figuring out that, how they were going to deal with that. I just can't imagine them filling the tubes and be like, oh, my God, they're all, they're floating. They're all. Yes. Probably they were very smart and thought of that before they actually filled the tubes.

But, you know, I'm, I get to write my own head cannon for this. Yes. Absolutely. I would have been like, I'm so sorry as I was like plunging it down. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. And that's the thing about so much insect research. I'm like, I would just be so worried about my big clumsy, meaty hands handling those

little guys all the time. So I really, I have a lot of admiration for people who are able to work with, you know, bumblebees and other really delicate creatures. somebody I met at a conference once who studies bees in Australia. I came across them outside and they were just standing there with a bee on their finger. And we were like, what's up? And he was like, oh, she was just a little tired. And he just like found a sleepy bee and was just like holding her until she flew away because he didn't want her to get smushed.

And anyway, that's. That is the sweetest thing I've heard in my entire life. So adorable. That's how I think of all bee researchers now, even if maybe they're not all like that. I love that. That's so great. So then once their time was up, the scientists pop the queens out of the water and they transfer them back into normal soil tubes, like the ones that had accidentally become wet that one time. Then they put them back in cold storage basically long enough so that all of them had been in.

diapause for eight weeks. Again, like trying to really level out the playing field and creating this experimental condition where it was like every, they had the same diapause except for how some of them were flooded in various ways for part of it. Again, they really thought of like everything. Very, very delightful. I guess especially probably when your experiment starts with a mistake, You probably want to really go out of your way to be like, look how careful we were. Exactly. With all of our variables here. Big time.

And apparently after just like one day back in the dry vials, these very bedraggled bees were like fluffy. And, you know, they were still sleeping, but they looked totally normal. So anyway, so they don't really say anything about like how many of the bees were alive when they got taken. out of the water probably because they were all in diapause. So it's like they were all kind of barely alive and you have to, they would have had to like thaw them out and wake them up. So, but after those eight weeks in the fridge, of the 21 bees that were submerged for a full week, 17 were still alive. So that's a survival rate of 81%. And the survival rate of the control group was only 88%. Because like it is quite common.

for bees to not survive the diapause. Yeah. Because it's a long sleep to take in the cold. So, yeah, obviously this is like a preliminary study, but it does seem like at least a week of being underwater doesn't have a huge impact on the likelihood that these bumblebees are going to survive to come out and start laying eggs and find a new place to have a hive and all that good stuff. And, you know, they noted, like, we, they don't have any data on how this might affect

their, you know, like, egg laying prolificness or their ability to find a new place for a hive. All of that is stuff that, you know, they would have needed to watch this happen in the wild to really figure out. But it is really exciting because, again, this is like one small aspect of, of the kinds of stressors we're seeing more of due to climate change that maybe these bees are actually really equipped to withstand. They're not sure exactly how this is happening. They definitely are going to try to figure it out.

But they did say that, you know, insects breathe through spiracles, not nostrils. And they actually can close their spiracles for extended periods during. diapause. So that's probably keeping the water from getting into their bodies. And they slow down all of their systems. So like they would need very little oxygen. And they think they might be like using some kind of like skin breathing using like air bubbles on their body surface. Because you think about their hair and they got a lot of little bubbles on there. Yeah. This is so cool. And we've talked about how when turtles are in diapause, they can breathe through their butts. So, you know, oh my God.

Nature is incredible, you know. Truly. Breathing with your mouth holes, boring. Unnecessary. Next. Yeah. But yeah, that's everything we've got for now on these little bees. But I just love so many great mental images here.

a little bedraggled bees shaking the water off and getting fluffy again. It's so cute. So yeah, I love the study and I'm excited to see more research on submersible bees. Yeah, I love that. And it reminds me of, I mean, I'm sure we all have stories of where we spilled water. And this was a spill incident, of course. You know, this was the condensation incident. But it does remind me of the time where I had just built a brand,

new keyboard like from scratch like I did everything and I lubed all the switches and I like put them all in and I tested everything and it was beautiful and like the first week I had a full it wasn't this now Jane it was like a hydroflask of water and I knocked it over and it went all over brutal and then I instantly like turn the keyboard up and over and then it was like a watering can of like the water coming out. Oh my gosh. But it was fine and everything worth and nothing bro.

Incredible. That's how you know you've got a quality product. True. What were you going to say, Rachel? I've also had that happen to me. Oh, I was just going to say I've also had that happen to me, but with a huge cup of lavender camomelie with honey in it, it went all over my keyboard, all across my desk,

and down and dripped into my computer and made like a quarter-sized pool of this lavender camamil tea on my GPU. The honey. Not the GPU. On my GPU. The honey is what concerns me, really. I was surprisingly, everything was fine. I was just going to ask. Yeah. I lucked out. That's really lucky. When I was like, it Tamagotchi in a glass of milk. That was pretty traumatizing for me. No. That was my, you know, I was, I guess that's what I learned. I was not responsible enough to care for Tim Kachee. All right, we're going to take one more break, and then we'll be back with one more fact. Have you ever rearranged your furniture and discovered the carpet underneath looks brand new,

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Okay, we're back. And there's apparently a lot of water coming out of someplace that we got to hear about. Yeah. You should tell us more? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So somewhere in the solar system, there's a lot of water coming out of something. And I just wanted to start. I wanted to start saying, no, it is not Earth. And I actually think a lot of people probably don't know how abundant water is in our solar system. From like evidence of water on asteroids to polar ice caps on Mars,

countries are trying to find frozen water in craters on our moon South Pole recently to even like other moons in the solar system, like Jupiter's moon Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa. Which, by the way, I am so excited for Europa, for the Europa Clipper mission. in October. Yeah. Oh my God. That's coming up. I remember when they first started talking about it. I can't believe it's coming up. It is. I've been waiting for this for like over a decade. I'm so excited.

Yeah. That's wild. And yeah, we know that Europa has like twice as much water at Earth's oceans. But we've even found water as far as Neptune's moon Triton, which is like three billion miles from the sun. So, or at least evidence of it. So I wanted to focus today, though, on my favorite watery world, which is Saturn's moon Enceladus.

Because I think it is the best place in our solar system to search for life outside of Earth. Huge. It is. It's so cool. So I have a little info on Enceladus. It's about 300 miles in diameter, which is smaller than Texas, by the way, diameter. I was going to say that's little. It's really small.

Yeah. So like Texas width and height, this is like. smaller than that. I had no idea in so little. Yeah, it's tiny. Not the smallest moon in our solar system, but it's pretty small and it's like 4% of the size of Earth as well. So it's like, it's little.

You can look up images and see how small it is. Yeah. Yeah, it has a rocky core and an icy shell, which is about 20 miles thick. And sandwich between those is a large, salty ocean. That's about six miles deep. And scientists call it. A lot. A lot.

a soda ocean because it has carbon dioxide, salt, and an alkaline pH of maybe around 11. I think the pressure. Wait, oh my God. It's like a La Croy. Oh, my God. They need to release an Enceladus flavor now. I read somewhere that it might actually taste soapy if you try the water of Enceladus. Salantro flavor.

Oh, my gosh. It reminds me of there's this awesome Korean spot. mouthfire from my house, Sojo, sponsor me. No, they would never. But they have a, they have a bunch of different hot tubs and one of them is like the carbon bath.

And it's literally just, it's carbonated. And they have a bunch of stuff written down about why that's good that I don't think is real. But it does make little bubbles on your arm hairs. And that's exciting. Yeah, I'm curious about the sensation myself. It's honestly, it's not as, you don't feel like a pop rock, unfortunately.

But it is fun visually. Yeah. That is pretty cool, though. So I think the pressure, speaking of how it would feel to be in the ocean, I think the pressure is actually similar to Earth's ocean, and as well as the salinity of the water, which is like less than 4%. So it's a pretty cool place. but we actually didn't know a whole lot about Enceladus decades ago besides it's incredibly reflective and has something to do with Saturn's large diffuse E-ring.

So NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Italian Space Agency teamed up on the Cassini spacecraft and sent it out to the Saturn to learn more about Saturn, its rings, and its moons. And it was there studying it from like 2004 until 2017, when it plummeted into Saturn to end the mission. Yes, I cried multiple times. Yeah.

Dude, that was like a lifetime ago. Remember Cassini? Cassini was really clutch. It was amazing and I cannot wait to get into some of the really amazing things that we've learned from it too. Yeah. I do want to know that Cassini wasn't designed as a life detection mission, but it was able to examine gases and carbon compounds and I will get into this stuff soon. but in 2005 Cassini detected water plumes

erupting from cracks on the crest of Enceladus's South polar region, which are called Tiger Stripes, and these spew out ice particles, water vapor, organic chemicals. But last year in 2023, the James

Space Telescope took a look and learned that there is a water vapor plume spanning more than 6,000 miles out from Enceladus. That is 20 times. What? 20 times the size of the moon.

It's so little and it's shooting stuff so far. 20 times the size of the moon just out into space. It is, yeah, it is spewing. I can't even. And the rate at which the water vapor is gushing out is about 79 gallons per second. Wow. Yeah. There it is.

The culprit. And so 79 gallons a second, spewing out. more than 6,000 miles. It's just, yeah, it's super impressive. So at 79 gallons a second, it could fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool in just a couple of hours. That's wild. It is really gushing out.

So maybe you're going to get to this, but how, how? I mean, that's a good question. What's where, how is the pressure coming from? You know what I mean? Maybe we don't know yet. I mean, there's, well, I guess I'll get, I'll get to it. There's a bit of different things going on. There's a bit of different things going on.

If I don't directly answer it, I'll make sure to. No worries. Yeah, no worries. It is, yeah, it's just super fascinating. So essentially, this solved the mystery of like Saturn's diffuse e-ring. And with the JWST data, we confirm that Enceladus has created a Taurus, which is a donut shape of water vapor around Saturn. and about 30% of that water vapor actually stays in that donut shape ring and the rest, about 70% spreads over the rest of the Ceturian system and beyond, which is like really intriguing to me because I'm like, what is in that water?

What is it that water? Yes. So let's do a little deep dive into that. I'm pun intended. So we know that Enceladus is venting the materials from its bloom. into Saturn's E-ring, making up the primary composition of it. And so we were able to learn a lot about the subsurface ocean as well, just from Cassini flying through that ring.

So by analyzing the composition of Saturn's E-ring using Cassini's mass spectrometer, scientists found molecular hydrogen and also a certain type of silica particle that can only be formed where liquid water and rock interact at temperatures above 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Uh-huh. And there is only one. one place on Earth where this type of particle could have formed. And that's hydrothermal vents. Oh, so I see.

I see where they're going. Yeah. So this is where that is coming from for sure. Yes. So other than the hydrothermal activity, we really don't know how the silica particles could have formed. So this is like incredibly good evidence for there being hydrothermal vents on Enceladus, which is really exciting because hydrothermal vents are one of the places. that we think life could have originated on Earth.

So you might be thinking, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, what? Origins of life, there's a lot of water on Enceladus, like, what is needed for life? Chonops, which is an abbreviation for carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur. So, uh-huh. And along with water and energy, are foundational to biofutable. chemistry on Earth. So essentially, we need liquid water, these chemical ingredients, and chemical energy like hydrothermal vents provide in an environment for life to form. And Enceladus has all of these. This seems extremely promising. Right, though? Like, this is my, this is one of my

favorite things to talk about. Like, it is so exciting. Yeah. It is. So phosphorus is the rarest of the elements that I just talked about that life as we know it depends on. And once again, scientists used Cassini data and analyzed it just last year in 2023 and found phosphates. So all of the chenops have been found, which is exciting. And the amount of phosphorus and Enceladus's ocean is at least 100 times higher than the amount in our oceans on Earth. Dude. There's got to be something cooking over there. Right, though? I mean, oh, I know. I would hope so. Later in December of 2023, there was another first time discovery in the plumes of Enceladus. Of course, those plumes,

there's 6,000 miles, 79 gallons a second gushing out into the rings. They found hydrogen cyanide, which is a possible chemical essential for life as we know it. And it's one of the most important and like versatile molecules needed to form amino acids. Really? Cyanide? Hydrogen Cyanide. Well, hydrogen cyanide. Yeah.

I did take biochemistry back in the day, but, you know, I hear cyanide. I'm like, that's poison. That's what I thought at first too. I was like, wait, hold on. Yeah. The scientists also uncovered new evidence for a powerful source of chemical energy in the form of like several organic compounds, some of which on Earth, like service fuel for organisms as well.

So the more energy available, the more likely that life might proliferate and be sustained. So essentially, we have an idea about how complex biomolecules could form there and what sort of chemical pathways might be involved. And we can test these out in a lab here on Earth, which is just so cool. Yeah. So does that like let them see what life might even like look like or something like? that, at least molecularly? Maybe. Maybe molecularly. I'm actually not too sure, but I feel like they could at least know how things come together and form. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, oh, it's so fascinating. And there is so much more that I could mention about all of this too. But like, everything that we have learned about in Celadus, as far as I know, really points us in the right direction for an environment

that can harbor life. And it adds another piece to the puzzle of one of humanity's greatest questions of, are we alone in the universe? And like, imagine answering that in our cosmic backyard within our own solar system. And there are so many great places to look besides Enceladus as well. I really hope that we can prioritize and fund more space missions to get to Enceladus and elsewhere to, like, check it out and know for sure. And obviously, everything I just went on about here does not mean.

that there is life on Enceladus. I need to say that. Important to note. Yeah. But it does mean that it's a really fantastic place to look, since it has everything needed to harbor life as we know it. And that is probably one of the most fascinating things I have ever learned in my life. But the rate at which it is spewing out water is also really weird and interesting.

So, yeah, next time you eat a donut think of the shape of water vapor making up one of Saturn's rings. And yeah, thanks to its moon and solidus. Big time. Yeah, hearing like the water spewage number, like really puts it more into like perspective for me, you know? Like you always hear about, oh, there's this crazy stuff happening over on this planet's moon. But like hearing the water and like these tactile facts, I'm like, oh, that's like for real. Yeah.

Yeah. There's a lot of energy, a lot of things happening. It's a, yeah, it's a really awesome place. I do. Well, and I feel like, you know, when I hear, like, astrobiologists talk about intelligence, it's like they're very, very careful to not expect multicellular life. But I feel like the vibe at this point is like all of this stuff is there. So if there isn't like at least some kind of single cell organism, that's like weird and sort of raises more questions than it answers. Like for why? You know.

Like why isn't it there? Why us? Not them. So I'm like, I'm very excited about it, you know, because, you know, as much as I would love to find a peaceful civilization of like sentient squids, more sentient squids, rather. We have sentient squids on Earth. But as much as I would love that, you know, I know that what is far more likely is like we found a slime mold in the water, which will also be awesome.

But then if we don't find that, but we're right about all of the chemical signatures that are there, that's like, okay, well. Yeah. Now we've got a whole rabbit hole to go down. Right. Exactly. Yeah. There's definitely a lot to learn either way. But, yeah.

I really hope we can send stuff there soon to, like, know for sure. Me too. Now I'm, like, all amped up. I want to know. Right? I want to know. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. We can settle for the Europa Clipper, I guess. Yeah. I'm so excited for the Europa Clipper. And then if I think too long about how long it's going to be before we get data from it, I'm like, oh, no. Wait, how long is it? It's getting, it's getting. So it's launching this October and it's getting to Europa in like 20, 20, or sorry, 20, 33.

Right. I was like, I thought it was about a decade. 32. Yeah. It takes a while. Yeah. It's like, I think it's traveling for like six. or something now I don't remember, but yeah.

Europa's pretty far. I concede that point. And the thing about the Europa Clipper, like I'm really excited for it, but it does not have like a lab on a chip life detection machine either. So we'll learn a lot about it, but we won't be able to like completely confirm life. Although some of its instruments,

like the, I think the cosmic dust analyzer might be able to find things that could seem like life, but it's still not like conclusive enough evidence, even if it does to like say its life. So sure. Yeah. I'm impatient. Well, lots to look forward to.

It is definitely a lot to look forward to. And just learning more about these watery moons and stuff in our solar system where life could exist is the coolest in my opinion. Absolutely. It makes me want to watch Interstellar again, which I heard was returning to IMAX. Is that real? I need to look into that. I don't know. I also heard that.

That sounds familiar. Yeah. Well, anyway, great movie. time to rewatch it. Yeah. Thank you so much for coming on. Would you remind our listeners where they can find you? Oh, thank you so much for having me. It was so fun. Yeah, everyone can find me on Twitch.tv slash Mahoodles, M-O-O-H-O-O-D-L-E-S. I also have, you know, all of the other social platforms, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, blah, blah, blah. But yeah, yeah, I'm live every Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 7 p.m. Mountain Time on Twitch.

And I love to talk about all of this. So come ask me questions about Enceladus if you want. The weirdest thing I learned this week is produced by all of our hosts, including me, Rachel Fultman, along with Jess Bodie, who also serves as our audio engineer and editor extraordinaire. Our theme music is by Billy Cadden. Our logo is by Katie Belloff. If you have questions, suggestions, or weird stories to share, tweet us at Weirdest underscore Thing. Thanks for listening, Weirdos.

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