The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week - Self-Destructing Octomoms, Exoplanet Adventures, Why Rats Don't Vom

Episode Date: September 21, 2022

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At Popular Science, we report and write dozens of science and heck 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 sure those with you? Welcome to the weirdest thing I learned this week from the editors of Popular Science. I'm Rachel Feltman. I'm Sarah Kylie Watson. And I'm Swapna Krishna.

Swapna, welcome to the show. Thank you. Listeners, for those of you who don't know, this week's guest is one of my favorite nerds to follow on Twitter. You do just a little bit of everything, it seems like. I do. Everything cool, anyway, by our definition of cool, at least. I think actually cool, for sure. Capital C, cool.

For listeners who are not familiar with your work, would you tell us a little bit about what you do? Yeah, so I kind of write, I like to say I write at the intersection of space, science, technology, and pop culture. So I try to, I do something in each of those niches at any given time and try to incorporate all those things in what I do. So my big project right now is I'm the host of a new PBS YouTube series called Far Out. It's the next, you know, a couple of decades, up to 50 years or so in science and technology. The first episode is out. It's on aging. And, yeah, I'm very excited about it.

Awesome. So can our listeners find that on PBS on PBS? PBS Tara. PBS's YouTube channel? I can also find it on PBS's website. Perfect. Listeners, I am very confident that if you like this show, you will like far out. so definitely take a peek.

But in the meantime, we're here for weirdest thing. So on the weirdest thing I learned this week, we start by each offering up a little tease about some kind of fact 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 time to spin our little science yarns, we reconvene and decide what the weirdest thing we learned this week actually was. Sarah Kylie.

What's your teas? So I am talking today about why Octopus moms self-destruct. Oh. I love octopus, and I get very emotional about how short their lives are. Yeah. It starts sad. I'll try to keep it together. Swapno, what's your teas?

Mine is JWST, which is my favorite thing to talk about right now. It's the groundbreaking space observatory. that's orbiting Lagrange. 2 a million miles away. It is so sensitive, it can detect the heat of a bumblebee as far away as the moon. Oh my gosh.

We talk and write about JWST so much at Popsai. Of course, it is, you know, probably the biggest science story of the year. But that is a fact I've not heard before. So I'm very excited for you to give us the inside scoop. Also, we can talk a little bit about why space people love talking about bees.

This is an important sidebar for listeners not in the know. Cool. Okay. So my tease is that I want to talk about why rats can't puke and more importantly, why we care. Oh, wow. What do we want to start with? How about I kick us off with rats? Okay.

So why did I do this fact? Let's see. The genesis of this week's factoid. Honestly, like many things, I thought of it while I was scrolling TikTok, I think. Definitely there's been like a meme-fied clip of Emma Roberts' character in Scream Queens when someone makes a very poor attempt on her life. And she tells them off when she catches them. And I love her character on that.

show. It is just so preposterously over the top. She does an excellent job. But she tears them apart, and part of her rant against them, giving them a real dressing down for not doing a good enough job of trying to kill her, is that rat poison makes humans puke. And it only works on rats because they don't puke. And that wasn't totally new information to me, but I did start me on kind of a, I was like, well, wait, why is that? And if that's the case, why do so many pieces of fiction use rat poison as the like very ominous someone is being poisoned right now thing? So the answer to the first part is actually something I edited an article about in 2018, but I edit so many articles that I forget a lot of the information in them. So it was such a pleasure

to Google this question and find an article by one of my favorite freelancers, Aaron Blakemore, from 2018. And I was like, oh, whoops, Aaron already explained this for me, like so many things in life. So here's the thing. We know that rodents don't vomit. And that's weird. That's a weird quirk for so many animals to have because vomiting is a very useful evolutionary tool. I mean, when you think about like when you have food poisoning and really don't recommend that for anyone. But it really feels like your body is like trying to wipe the slate clean fully. Like turn your insides out until there is nothing in there. Because, you know, when you get down into it, that is what the point of vomiting is.

It's like there's something in you that should be out of you. And your body's like, maybe we can just shut this whole thing down right quick and not have any. negative consequences other than the vomiting. So you know, that protects us from pathogens, from food that's gone bad, from poisons. It's not foolproof. Of course, there are many things we can ingest that still manage to cause us harm, including but not limited to the fact that just vomiting too much can kill you if you get too dehydrated. Fluids are important, people. But it is a very reasonable trait for a species to have. So why don't rodents throw up? especially because like, I don't know, I don't want to generalize, but you don't think of rodents as being very discerting eaters.

So you would think that they probably encounter a lot of stuff that it would be really useful to, eh. The answer is that they do, they seem to have evolved instead of the ability to vomit, which given for, I could go into detail, but their esophagus is like not really designed for it. They are built a different way. And it would take a lot of energy and changes to their physiology for that to be something that was straightforward for them to do. I think this is true for rodents generally, but just to make sure I'm being as correct as possible, moving forward when I talk about puking rodents, I'm talking about rats. Because that's what this study from the University of Guelph is about. So instead of having that mechanism, they have like a super hyperactive gag refraith. So they will like a lot of things give rats the ick.

They will just go like bleh. And they are very good at when they encounter something new for the first time, taking like the idious, biddies, nibble of it. And if there's any kind of flavor note in it that they don't recognize, they will just spit it right out in a very like involuntary gagging sort of way. which, you know, does not sound very pleasant, just ratching rats all over the place. And researchers really like that. Not because they like rats being in distress.

The thing is that if you want to study how to make humans vomit less, you need to be able to induce nausea. a model organism in the lab. But unfortunately, for a lot of animals, that would mean having a lot of puking animals in your lap, which is just logistically really not very ideal. And rats, they have this really reliable gag reflex that doesn't lead to vomiting and that we understand well enough that it's a pretty good,

analog to nausea that would normally lead to vomiting in most mammals. So basically, by doing enough research that they are really confident that gagging works the same as nausea that leads to vomiting in rats as it does in humans, now a gagging rat is a substitute for a would-be vomiting lab animal. Why do we want to study nausea? because there are a lot of conditions that create, like, debilitating nausea in humans. Set aside conditions, pregnancy, for one. And humans have done some really misguided stuff in the history of medicine to try to combat that.

But then you have medications that are really important, like chemotherapy, that can cause a lot of nausea and vomiting. And that is just, of course, not ideal from a patient. comfort standpoint, but also when you think about the, you know, weak and immune system of someone who's going through cancer treatment, it is just so not ideal for them to also be losing weight and not getting nutrients. And of course, there are lots of things that doctors and other caregivers can do to help out with that, but that is kind of like the holy grail of like solving the nausea problem is helping people who are going through chemo not feel sick to their stomach. be able to keep food down.

And we know that various cannabinoids can help with that. Interestingly, in some people, regular cannabis use can cause extreme nausea, but that is like a very weird subset of the population that, again, researchers are very interested in studying. And I will link to some research on that on popside.com slash weird. But for most people, it seems that various cannabinoids

can help mitigate nausea. And they think that comes down to regulating serotonin. And one of the ways they have been able to investigate this is with gagging rats because they are able to see, you know, how, first of all, how specific substances like cannabinoids, but also how targeted changes to things like serotonin levels affect how much they gag. It turns out you can make them stop gagging. And that's usually a good indicator that that's a physiological mechanism that is worth investigating for reducing nausea and vomiting. So I love that that this like very strange.

First of all, I love that it just like one thing I say in the book I just published, been there done that is that like evolution doesn't take requests. And it can be really things can end up going. in some very dark and strange directions, but like still from a biological standpoint be quote unquote successful. And obviously, like, I'm not going to argue that vomiting is better than gagging a lot or vice versa. But it is really funny to be that like these different but intriguingly similar tactics for avoiding ingesting substances that can hurt you evolved in, you know, rodents versus primates. Also, you know, rodents are, are weird in general for not being able to vomit. There are lots of animals that vomit. You know, you've got, like, sea cucumbers literally,

like, expelling their whole stomach and bringing you back in the far end of the spectrum. Oh, my gosh. Just start over. So then circling back around to my initial question of, like, Yeah. So what is the deal with rat poison? How much does it rely on the fact that rats can't vomit? And if so, why are there Agatha Christie books the queen of actually talking about poison in way too much depth, honestly, for someone who doesn't want people to be doing murder? why did she frequently talk about rat poison? The answer is not very surprising, but to me still very interesting. So back when Agatha was writing about crime, rat poison was just kind of everything poison. You may not be shocked to hear that in like the 19th and most of the 20th century, when people used all sorts of incredibly dangerous things

for all sorts of stuff that they shouldn't have relied on something that dangerous for, like arsenic in their paint, et cetera. The stuff that we used to exterminate pests was just like incredibly dangerous poison, full stop. I mean, Agatha Christie talks about strickenine poisoning a lot, and striccane is just a very dangerous poison. And yes, it was used to poison rats.

It can poison anything. Similarly, in one of my favorite Agatha Christie stories, the pale horse, the poison of choice is thelium. And that is a really freaky one because you absorb it through your skin. And it's super dangerous. So the fact that people were regularly using this as a household pesticide is just absolutely wild. Now, these days, luckily, we are a little bit.

bit more careful with our approach to pest control. So first of all, things like thallium and strickenine are like not used in like household products anymore. There is generally been a pivot to substances that still might be dangerous or even potentially fatal to humans, but that the the dosing difference between what you use to try to kill a rodent versus what would cause harm to a human is much broader, much, you know, strict need, like, you don't need a lot to hurt anybody. The stuff that's generally in household pesticides today, like what the amount you put down is unlikely to cause serious harm to a human. We have also harnessed the fact that rats can't puke, and we now add different chemicals

to our pesticides that induce vomiting. So that's great because if a human eats it, they are very likely to throw up and that will at least mitigate the impact that that toxin has on them. A rat is not going to be so lucky. All of that being said, this does not mean that rat poison is not dangerous. Any kind of pesticide, even if it's sold for home use, you should absolutely be careful with pets and children. children. It's just that we went from rat poison being so absurdly, chaotically dangerous that it made zero sense that anyone used it to just being a dangerous substance. Proceed with caution. But you don't, it no longer feels like absolutely unhinged

that the, um, that exterminator spray stuff in our houses. Um, I will say that I think this is, this is just me musing, but I feel like the reason it remains so popular as like a TV and movie signpost of people being poisoned is that it doesn't require a lot of like exposition. Like people can see a box of rat poison being like used to doctor food. And they're like, oh, a poisoning is a foot. Versus like if someone had a bottle of chemical name of actually dangerous ingredient in rat poison, people would be like, well, I don't know what that is. And then it's like, you only need a little poetic license to make it be actually feasible. Like I've been thinking about the

Netflix adaptation of the haunting of Hill House, which features rat poison. And I'm like, well, that's in a really old house. Like, maybe that rat poison is from like 1910. And then it also has the added benefit of like, I do think it's good when TV shows don't give people really good, easy to use information on how to ingest poison. Of course, if someone really wants to do harm to another human, I am sure they will rely on more research than one episode of a Netflix show. But for like impulsive, especially when we talk about like, I saw one article about a teenager who, who tried to put rat poison in their family's food. And like, you know, for an impulsive person, like, mad, and I think it's, I think it's

probably good that shows like Haunting of Hillhouse do not give people actual instructions for how to do murder. So if you're listening to this podcast looking for instructions on how to do murder, I would ask you to please not do that. Please, thank you so much. but if you see a rat the next time you're riding the subway, just know that no matter how much subway track pizza they eat, they will never puke. And so they've got that on you.

You can't say the same. Don't eat subway track pizza. That's it. That's my whole fact. So I can tell Sarah Kylie hated it from start to finish. Oh my gosh. I was fine until the thing the pizza pushed me over the end. like, I was so sorry. I was like, I gotta go throw up.

Oh, no. There was one moment where you leaned over to cough and you were just talking about vomiting. I literally thought you were going to like lean over and vomit and like come back and I was like, oh. Oh, gosh. No, no. I am even, even I would be like we must pause for quitting. I need a break. I'm not that dedicated. And also. The show must go on. All right. We're going to take a quick break and then we'll be back with some more facts. Did you know that there's an online cannabis company that shows? Fetterally Legal THC right to your door. And talking about mood.com, they have an incredible line of cannabis gummies and a lot more.

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And Sarah Kylie, break my heart with some octopus facts, please. Oh, yeah. Get your revenge for the subway pizza. Well, that's another one of those, like, evolution does not take requests kind of story. just like weird stuff going on. But yeah, so to start with the sadness for octopuses, giving birth isn't as much of a sign of celebration as it is a sign of coming death. Yeah, so octopus moms die pretty quickly after birth and somewhat depressingly, they kind of hurry things along by acts of self-harm, violence, and self-starvation. So very sad stuff.

And it certainly is a very dramatic thing to witness. I couldn't bring myself to watch an entire octopus birth and death in preparation for this. But luckily, Florian Matter Spasher, senior editor at Current Biology, described a video from a German group called Institute for Film and Wissencraft. And he watched this video as an undergrad student and it left him with an eerie sense of wonder and sadness. So I will use his description now. It is a very good one. The subject was the life cycle of the octopus. and a female was being observed in an aquarium as she laid her clutch of thousands of eggs.

Over the next couple of weeks, she stopped eating and tended to her eggs meticulously, chasing away intruders and fanning her developing offspring with oxygen-rich water, all testament to the rich behavioral repertoire and cognitive skills of these awesome creatures. But when her brood began to finally hatch, a gripping moment unfolded. As her offspring slipped out of its egg cases, the exhausted mother was swimming among them, with increasingly weaker twitches. And soon she was in her death throes. As her lifeless body sank to the bottom of the tank,

her countless offspring swam carelessly around her. This is what a natural death looks like for an octopus. So yeah, sad stuff. Bummer. Bummer, I know. And what this can actually look like can vary based on the type of octopus, of course. But generally it is like starvation or reduced food intake. In some extreme cases, like there's a deep sea octopus called the Grandalone

Boreo Pacifica, brooding can take up to four years. And so she weatheres away over four years and not just a couple of weeks. I remember when that study came out and everyone was like, an octopus who lives for four years plus, wow. And she's like suffering. Yeah, like it's fine. So typically though, like the octopuses that have been studied doing this don't live longer than like nine months. And they don't really have two months more than two months after the eggs laying. process. So it's pretty grim, at least from the human perspective. But for Semmelperous living creatures, this is kind of just the usual. So semilparity, which comes from the Latin Warrants, meaning a single time and two baguette, basically means to die right after you give birth, or only give birth once in your lifetime. And so there's other examples of animals that are like spiders and some kinds of fish. And a lot of plants are like this, like grains and vegetables.

but sometimes it doesn't automatically equate to a short life. So some species of plant and animal live for a while before giving birth and then die in the dramatic post-reproductive episode. For example, species of Pacific salmon undergo this dramatic death cycle. And as well, some adorable little mouse-like creatures that live in Australia. And this is, of course, happening to the mothers or the female. But males also don't get off easy during reproductive periods, Semilperus species. Male octopuses typically die a few months after mating if they aren't killed and eaten by their partner after they do the deed. So everyone's dying here. That seems fair.

Yeah. Given the circumstances. Yeah, they would be so rude if like there was just a couple of male octopuses just going around getting to live forever and making everybody else pregnant and dead. But just a little fun octopus sex fact. They basically have the male octopus has this giant arm called the hectoclitis that holds rows of sperm. And sometimes the female just rips it off and takes it and then sprinkle sperm over her laid eggs to fertilize them. So this whole thing is just, there's a lot going on. But anyway, back to birth death. So there's a lot of questions about why this process exists in some animals and why other animals like humans, dogs, mammals, fish, all birds, most reptiles, and even some insects and perennial plants are iteroparis or have the ability

to give birth a handful of times before kicking the can. The biological and evolutionary reasoning behind why some animals go one way or another is still very up in the air. But semoparous animals do tend to give off a bunch of babies at their one big death birth, compared to iteroparous animals that will have a couple out of time. A handful of scientists describe possible reasoning for this in nature is basically when an organism doesn't need to use any resources towards future survival and reproduction, they can give their all into this one giant act for the next generation. And for beings that have a very low survival rate as adults compared to juveniles,

it doesn't make sense to save up resources for a next reproductive cycle that isn't going to happen. But evolutionary theories aside, there are a lot of questions about why this happens, especially in octopuses, because octopuses are really smart and we are very interested in octopuses, and so why the heck do they do this? Some people have theorized, is it because of the lack of food, or is it some kind of self-destruct button or flip, that gets switched in female octopuses after they give birth. So in the 70s, people were starting to actually figure this out.

So back in around 1977, psychologist Jerome Widenski started to take a deeper look at what kind of signals in the octopus body would actually be linked to the whole self-destruct idea. And it actually started with an accident. Originally, Widenski wanted to look at what happened to male octopuses, specifically octopus Hamalinky. And so what he did was he removed their second. glands. But heck it. He wanted to practice the surgery first on a female octopus for whatever reason. He also soaked them in alcohol for anesthesia, which is like a whole other ordeal. Like can you even imagine. But during this whole process, he discovered something shocking as he told the Washington

Post back in 1977. Everybody knows that once the female lays his eggs, it stops eating and automatically dies. So I figured I'd try the surgery to remove the glands on post-egglaying females because they were going to die anyway. Lo and behold, I've referred to. form the surgery on several of the females, and all of a sudden they began to eat and grow and live. Believe me, this was a purely accidental discovery. So, yeah, the octopus females minus sex gland, not only don't die, but they thrive. She'll eat double her weight and double her lifespan, so good for the lady octopuses. And so the glands in question that Widenski removed are called the optic glands, which rest between

octopus eyeballs. And they act kind of like the pituitary glands of mammals, producing horn. hormones that are secreted to do all kinds of bodily functions. And so when the octopuses had those glands removed, they stopped caring for their eggs as well, moved on with their lives, and died randomly a few months later. So Wadinsky estimated that somehow this gland blocks this digestive system from producing enzymes that break up protein, and then that leads the females to self-starvation. But recently, like as in a couple of months, almost recently, more research has been done

by this group at University of Chicago. Their first study on it came out in 2018, and they sequenced the RNA from two female octopus's optic glands and found four distinct phases. The first showed mature non-made females, like acting as predators, spending a lot of time outside their little den homes, pouncing on crabs, the usual. In the first stage of brooding, the mom sit with her eggs like a quote-unquote deep sea hen, and they take care of them, they blow water on them, they stroke them. They're just like wonderful little future mommies. And then for the first three, four days, they continue to eat, but they don't really leave their eggs or their home. And it's kind of just like if a fiddler crab is just around, they'll eat that. But it's not really as much of like a hunting fun thing for them anymore.

After four or so days, they just stop eating. And then that non-eating phase lasts around eight to ten days. And the final is that of rapid decline. So just everything starts to hit the fan. The females become lethargic. They don't really give that loving care to their eggs anymore. They move into self-harming behaviors, like slamming themselves against the corners of tanks, grooming themselves excessively. They even, like, rub their arms, like, aggressively against that, like, big lump on the back of their head called the mantle, and it, like, makes their arms get all tangled.

They get pale, and they lose muscle tone, and it's just very sad to see. But all of this can eat this. I know. I know. It's sad. oh my gosh. So all of this links back to the endocrine system. And so pre-mating female octopuses had high levels of neuropeptides,

which are linked with the feeding behavior. But post-mating this production drops, and instead production of steroids that regulate cholesterol metabolism and insulin-like factors ramp up. So even more research, this is from just a couple of months ago. The same group found specific chemical pathways associated with the post-mating body of octopuses. The first found a pathway that generates,

reproductive substances that are also in a bunch of animals. So that's not super surprising. The second, however, was interesting, producing precursors of bile acids that promote the absorption of dietary facts. And the third was the most interesting, which produced seven dehydro cholesterol or seven dhc. 7DHC is in a lot of other animals, including humans. But for us, elevated levels of the substance can lead to a serious disease called Smith-Lembley

Opitz syndrome. While this disease affects physical parts of the body, it can make, you know, You know, people who have it have a small head, cleft palate, fused toes, unusual facial features, etc. There are also studies linking it to self-harm. According to a paper published in 2013, systemic evaluations have shown that at least half of patients with this disease display aggressive and or self-injurious behavior. So perhaps unsurprisingly, the authors predict that 7DHC has a lot to do with the destructive behavior that befalls octopuses after giving birth. Yeah, I actually, I am familiar with that syndrome and there was research, gosh, at this point, like a decade ago, but I will try to dig it up for the article that suggested that that extends to like emotionally self-destructive behavior that like people with this condition will like treat people they like badly, compulsory. Yeah.

Which to me is just like really the mind and body connection is really fascinating. Right. Yeah. It's just like, okay, wow. You think about like just like a tiny little molecule, but in too much quantity, it'll just really, yeah. And so people with this syndrome and octopuses can both kind of relate to that. And the moral of the story is that octopus life cycles are kind of strange, and it does seem that there is some kind of self-destruct in place for a natural octopus death right after birth.

And so, yeah, and humans and other animals also share some of these molecules that cause this premeditated death. But the strangest part is that not all octopuses actually do this. So there are actually a couple. The lesser Pacific striped octopus that don't do any of it at all, they just kind of go about their lives again after. giving birth. But the UChicago team is looking at that species actually next. So maybe we'll be able to come back and give it even more updates about the happy octopus moms that just go about their lives after giving birth. Yeah, I think it's so interesting that it seems like it's really just over the last few years that researchers have been able to study enough different kinds of

octopus to understand like how much variation there is between species. Not that no one understood this, of course, but I feel like there was a, the mainstream concept of an octopus was very homogenized. And it seems like that was kind of a trickle down of like what we knew about them that generally speaking, most of what we knew came from just a small handful of species. And especially when you get into the deep ocean ones, their species of octopus, we understand so little. And I think part of the fascination, part of why I love them, and I think part of why it's so tragic to us and fascinating that they go through this self-destruct and live such short lives is that they are so intelligent.

Oh, yeah. And I think it's, for me, it's definitely hard to wrap my head around, like, cognition, that powerful evolving for a life that's so, like, short and straightforward and brutal. Yeah, like they're not spending decades making art and contemplating existence. So how'd they get those brains and why? What would happen if we let them live forever? See, that's what I think. I think if an octopus had even like half a human lifespan, we would be a toast the generational knowledge off the charts.

Yeah. Like what's going on in those brains? I don't know a lot about octopuses, but I feel like every time I hear a fact about them, it like blows my mind. Like every single individual thing I learn about them is like mind blowing. I remember a few years ago there was like the most complete octopus genome ever studied. And there were a lot of like very silly but understandable headlines being like, octopus DNA shows they are quote alien and I was like well yeah like they're really bizarre so it turns out their DNA is really bizarre and that's a really cool story it doesn't mean we don't know where they came

from um it's one of those things it's like whenever you read stuff about tartagraines it's got kind of the same vibe where people are like ooh and it's like yeah no nature is cool there's cool weird stuff out there It's not, we don't need aliens to explain that. Oh my God. Just kind of like looking at a word like in an email and you're like, how is this word this way? You can do that with every animal where you're like, what? So you think about octopuses enough, they start to seem fake. It's like, why is it spelled like that?

Why does this exist? Like how? Well, I love that. I feel like there's so much for us to learn from octopuses. And it sounds like specifically like maybe. potentially helping us understand like a really terrible rare disuse. Well, thank you for that, Sarah Kylie. It didn't make me as devastated as I expected, though.

It's good we know now. How it works. So maybe we can prevent it if that's what nature does. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. I am so ready for someone to figure out how to keep an octopus alive and then let that octopus take over the world. We could do so much worse.

Yeah. All right. We're going to take a quick break, and then we'll be back with one more fact. 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.

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Plus, unlimited plans started $35 a month. Now, that's a deal that doesn't stay. Explore GoogleFi Wireless plans today. Plus taxes and government fees. GoogleFi Wireless is not subject to data traffic deprioritization during times of high network usage. Okay, we're back. And let's talk about a telescope, our favorite telescope. I'm very excited.

I know. I'm very excited. So I think JWST is just the coolest. I think it's just the coolest thing. And one of the things I love about it is everything you kind of learn about it, especially if you don't know a lot about space and the way observing space works, is that everything you learn about it is like it blows your mind, and then that leads to something else that blows your mind,

and that leads to something else that blows your mind. So this observatory is so cool. It launched Christmas Day, and it is a infrared optimized telescope, and that's like key to my fact, which was that it is so sensitive, it can detect the heat of a bumblebee as far away as the moon. And that's important because as the universe is expanded, to be able to see the light that's further and further away from us

because the universe is expanding, and as the universe expands, this blows my mind. Okay, so as the universe expands, light itself expands. So the spectrum of light that's further and further and, away is red shifted towards the infrared spectrum. So like Hubble does have infrared capabilities. It, you know, people, oh, there's a lot of comparisons. Like if we have Hubble, why do we need JWST? Okay, you go, Hubble is a beautiful telescope. I love it, but it's getting old. Yeah, she's getting up there. She's old. Yeah, it's on, Hubble, Hubble has been on her last legs for,

like, years and years and years. Like every time, every few, every, like, couple of years, she goes into safe mode and then you're like, oh, is she going to make it out? She does. But, okay, so we need the next generation, and that's JWST, but not a replacement, just a successor, and they can exist in cooperation for as long as Hubble hangs on. So, Hubble does have near-infrared capabilities, and JWST also has near-infrared capabilities, but the cool thing that makes JWST so revolutionary is that it has mid-infrared instruments. So it can actually see in mid-infrared. And that is significant because when we look out into the cosmos, this is another thing that if people who aren't familiar with space,

the way it works is if we look really far out there, we're looking back in time. So if we look at something a million light years away, that light has taken a million years to reach us, and it's how it looked a million years ago. So the idea of JWST is it is supposed to help us look back in time and maybe even see the first light of the Big Bang, which is like the first light after the Big Bang. So after the Big Bang, which we don't know much about, the universe was opaque.

So the universe was not clear. Like if, I mean, obviously, planets didn't exist right after the Big Bang, but if you looked into the universe, you would not be able to see stars like we do at night. Like the universe was opaque. And basically, I think it's about 7 to 800 years after the Big Bang was basically the first light of the universe. All of that, the opaqueness started dissipating.

The universe became transparent. So that's the first light of the universe that we are hoping that JWST will eventually be able to see. And to do that, it needs to, be infrared optimized, which is why. So JWST launched on December 25th, which very exciting because it had been, I mean, not only had the launch been delayed just like in terms of how long it was in French Guiana, but like, oh my God, this telescope was like 15 years delayed or something like that. Like, oh my God, we were very ready for it to get up there. So very exciting for

it to launch on Christmas, especially for, I'm sure all the space reporters who were covering in person who wanted to get home for Christmas and were like, oh my God, like, just please go and then weren't able to, but that's okay. So it launched on Christmas Day and it was heading to LaGrange Point 2. That's important because the telescope needs to be cold. Hubble is in orbit of the Earth, which is great. You know, it's in high Earth orbit, fantastic. We've seen the pictures that come out of it.

We've seen the science data that comes out of it. Fantastic observatory. But part of the reason it is not infrared optimized is because in Earth orbit, it cannot get cold enough to observe infrared energy, which is, like heat energy. Basically, the heat of the earth and the heat of the things around it, because it's kind of a cluttered orbit, the heat of the earth, the heat of the objects around it, it produces enough heat to kind of obscure any infrared signals it might be able to detect. So it can do it really good near infrared. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend seeking

out the pillars of eternity, the pillars of creation. That's what it's called. The pictures it took and then it took those same images in infrared. And like the juxtaposition is cool because it shows you. Infrared basically allows telescopes to see through the gas and dust surrounding these in these nebulas see through the gas and dust and see the star formation happening, which is how we're hoping that JWST will be able to observe the first light of the universe because it will be able to actually, thanks to mid-infrared, see through the gas and dust. But so Hubble can't be for it optimized, it's just too warm. So JWCT was on its way to Lagrange. Point two, which is about a million miles away from Earth, and it's orbiting Lagrange. Point two, but it only took like two weeks

to get there. So the question is, you know, why is it not... Where are our photos? Where are our photos? The mirror of J.W.S.2, which is so cool. So it is, it's this very cool honeycomb-shaped gold-plated mirror, which fun fact, those sheets of gold are so thin that there's only, despite the fact that the telescopes, the size of like a small plane, there's only about a marble's worth of gold on that mirror. What? Because the sheets are so thin. It's beryllium and here's why.

The mirror has to do with the heat again. So beryllium conducts, does not warp when faced with shifting temperatures. So that is much more stable than gold is. And so the thin sheet of gold over the brilium ensures that the mirror will not, you know, change shape and affect the images we're seeing based on the temperature. Because that mirror is 18 separate segments because literally it was too big to fit in the launch vehicle. Like literally it's just too big. So they had to actually fold it up. Like there's this like telescope origami going on.

Oh my gosh. It's actually fold the thing up to fit in the launch vehicle, blast off into space. And it's like the most tense couple of weeks as your life, because as it's like going to Lagrange Point to a million miles away where we cannot service it. We do not have the ability to service this telescope. Like we've serviced Hubble, I think something like there have been five servicing missions to Hubble. Every single instrument on Hubble has been swapped out.

The mirror was obviously fixed, not swapped, but all the instruments have been swapped out at this point and upgraded. We don't have that ability with JWST. So it was like the most tense thing as it, you know, goes to Lagrange Point two, but a big part of the delay is adjusting each of the pieces of the mirror, making each of the 18th segments, work is one. That's a huge, that's a huge part of it. Commissioning and calibrating all the instruments are four instruments aboard JWST. That's a big second part, but also just giving the telescope enough time to cool down. It has to, and it's funny

because Mary, which is the mid-infrared instrument, I mentioned that is the most sensitive infrared instrument, is actually so, needs to be so cold to be at peak operation that it actually has a cooler on board. Like, like space isn't cold enough, it actually has an air conditioner in space to keep it cold. So this telescope had to cool down so far. So it took like, I think, two or three months to get it cold enough before they could start commissioning each of the instruments. But basically, the key to this telescope and the reason it can see a, it can be sensitive enough to detect the heat of a bumblebee, you know, as far away as the moon,

is because it has to be super, super sensitive to cold, why it's so far away where it's orbiting Lagrange Point 2, which, you know, which another cool fact is that there's nothing actually there. It's where it's there, we have five Lagrange points around or any, any, like, any planet has a Lagrange points. And these are basically just points in space where you can, can put things in orbit at them and they stay where you put them because it's the, um, balancing out of the gravity of the earth with another object.

So JWC has a huge sun shield to protect it from the sun and, and, but the way they're orienting it is it's always going to be out of view of the sun because obviously the sun would overwhelm the poor little telescopes so much that it would not be able to function. So yeah, so basically the entire thing is about making it cold. the entire telescope. Everything on this telescope is centered around making it as cold as possible to make it super, super, super sensitive. So it can hopefully at some point see the first light of the Big Bang. It's going to see a lot of other really cool things too first.

Yeah, well, and I should say for listeners, we are recording this in June, but you are probably hearing it sometime in the fall. So hopefully you're probably like, you're like, you're like, what I see those photos? And hopefully you can remember how excited you were to see them before you saw them. So do we know when, because I have heard, you know, talk of the first light as like the, you know, the absolute coolest goal of the mission. But do we have a timeline for like when that is going to be feasible? We don't. So we do know that what, so we do know what projects that they're going to look at in cycle. one that has been published, but we don't know specifically when that will happen.

And I have a feeling it's going to happen in stages. We're just going to keep looking back and back and back and see what we can see. The observatory is also going to do a lot of exoplanet stuff. And it has a coronal, it basically blocks the corona of a sun. It's an instrument around the camera that blocks the corona of a sun to actually be able to image exoplanets, which blows my mind. That's going to be so cool. Like we're going to see the first pictures of exoplanets.

Like, oh, my God. For all these years, like, obviously, Kepler has done amazing stuff. And I love Kepler's whole second life. We could get, that could be a whole other episode. But obviously, Kepler taught us so much about exoplanets that we, I feel like, probably people who are like, I don't know, 20 years old or younger probably take for granted that we hear about exoplanets all the time. That is not used to be a thing. And, but relatively speaking, we know so little about them. We're like, yeah, it probably is sort of like this kind of sort of thingy.

And that is such a huge leap from the way we talked about exoplanets even, you know, 10 years ago. but the idea of actually imaging one is wild. And evaluating their atmospheres instead of being like, I know. Here's a huge margin of error for the thing we think might be going on in this atmosphere. So I'm really excited for that. I'm so excited. And it's also like it's going to image, you know, like the ice.

There's going to look at the ice giants. It's going to look at the Jupiter's Trojans, which orbit the planet. at its Lagrange Points 4 and 5, before we send a mission there to study them. It's going to look at the Kuiper Belt objects, which are outside our solar system, at the edge of our solar system, Pluto is now a Kuiper Belt object. Sorry, Pluto fans. But yeah, it's just, I think, like, it's, when he's, like, it's just, it's hard to over, like, they're scientists who have based their entire careers

and their entire lives around this observatory. And the first, the operating time, like the primary mission of this telescope is five years. That's it. Like, because we can't service it. Space is hard. Like, you know, it's already gotten hit by a micrometeroid that damaged one of the mirrors. And they've had, they've been able to compensate sort of for it. But like, it's, it was worse than they expected.

Right. It was worse than they expected. And they were able, part of the advantage to having the honeycomb mirror is to be able to adjust the segments because they knew stuff was like this was going to happen. But they're not going to ever be able to, like, adjust for the aberration completely. I know. So it's like already, it's not even started. And so, like, it's just, it makes you realize, and I think we were all a little bit arrogant because the unfolding had gone so well and everything has gone so well up to this point. So it brought us all down a peg and just makes you realize how delicate this thing is. And so,

like, if it lasts longer than five years, then all indications say it should. That's great. But, like, a primary mission is only five years. Yeah. Well, it's going to be a nail-biting next five years in space science. Space science. Wow, I'm so good at words. You know what I mean. Thank you so much for that.

And personally, I feel like that is definitely the winner this week. Oh, 100%. I love how much more there always is. is to learn about and talk about with JWST. You just like, even working a popular science, like I learned new stuff today. So thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me.

This is so much fun. I always, like, love to come dirt out about science. It's like what I'm here for. Well, we'd love to have you back anytime. And listeners, don't forget to check out Far Out on PBS for more wonderful, nerdy science facts. The weirdest thing I learned this week is a popular science podcast. We're available on all major podcast platforms, so subscribe wherever you're listening now.

And if you like what you hear, please read and review us on Apple Podcasts. It helps other weirdos find the show. For more information on the stories you heard in this episode, come find us at popsai.com slash weird. You can buy our merch, including weirdest thing, t-shirts, totebags, and mugs at popsai.threadlist.com. The show is produced by all of our hosts, including me, Rachel Fultman, with editing and audio, engineering by Jess Bodey. Our theme music is by Billy Caden. If you have questions, suggestions, or weird stories to share, tweet us at Weirdest underscore thing. Thanks for listening, Weirdos.

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