Listener Questions #49

0:00This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human. Toyota's easy choice sales event is on. Whether you're looking for the performance of a camera, the versatility of Rav4, the efficiency of a Corolla, or all electric driving in the BZ, there's a Toyota that's just right for you. And with great deals across the lineup, now's the time to find yours. But hurry, these deals won't last long. Toyota's easy choice sales event and soon. We make it easy. Toyota, let's go places.

1:00This is Jacob Goldstein from What's Your Problem. Running a business is hard enough. Don't make it harder with a dozen apps that don't talk to each other. One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting, that's software overload. Odo is the all-in-one platform that replaces them all. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, fully integrated, easy to use, and built to grow with your business. Thousands have already made the switch. Why not you? Try Odo for free at odo.com. That's odo.com. The ocean delights us. Some marvel at the colorful world below the surface.

2:02The ocean feeds us. Others find nourishment in its bounty. The ocean teaches us. How our everyday choices impact even the deepest places. The ocean moves us. Whether we're riding a wave or so can in its breathtaking beauty. The ocean connects us. Find your connection at monoraybeacquarium.org slash connects. What else could explain the cosmos besides the big bang? Was there a bounce, a steady state, or some stranger cosmic bang? Scurvy, pelagra, rickets, and berry berry were once common ways people died. But death by nutritional deficiency happens less now, since our foods are fortified. Why does all the dry land pile up in one place, while oceans surround it in every other space? Whatever questions keep you up at night,

3:04Daniel and Kelly's answers will make it right. Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's extraordinary universe of listener questions. Episode 49. 49. What are we going to do when we get to 100? We're going to have to pick like the best listener questions. But they're all the best. We can't do that. We'll transmit a special episode from the nursing home in which we live at that point. Okay, I think that's only going to be a couple years away, Daniel. Are you expecting an imminent decline? Yeah, I think that's fair. I'm already on that decline. Thank you very much. I'm just doing a linear extrapolation. Yeah, I'm declining pretty fast. And I'm Kelly Weeders, Mythos Studies, parasites, and space. And I'm here today with my co-host, Universe Clumpiness Lover.

4:05That's what it says under his face in Riverside. I was just listening to the episode about simulations, where we joke about all the reasons we love the universe. It's clumpiness, it's lack of clumpiness, it's exactly correct clumpy value. Well, and Daniel expects that I have a memory that is more than the five seconds of a memory that the goldfish has. So he had to remind me with that meant. Meanwhile, you signed down with Weeners Myth. Very creative, Kelly. It's not supposed to be creative. It's just supposed to be who you are. So here's the thing, right? So we're going to give these audio files to Matt. And if one of us was Universe Clumpiness Lover, and one of us was Universe Clumpiness Hater, he'd have to figure out which one was which, and it would be confusing. He would know. He would 100%. All right, because he knows this that well. He knows this that well. He does. And on that episode, we also got a complaint from the listener.

5:06He was disappointed that in the episode, he didn't get to hear any goats. I love our listeners so much. And I love my goats so much. But right now I'm traveling. I was at the Rockefeller Archive Center this morning. And I just got back to my hotel room. So I'm coming to you from Terrytown, New York. And there are no goats in Terrytown. And you didn't bring any goats on your research trip? I hope that there are goats in Terrytown. But if you bring a goat into an archive center, some archives are getting eaten. All right. Well, today we're not just here to tease Kelly about traveling with goats. We're here to answer questions from listeners. We're here to respond to the thing. We're always asking you to do, which is to engage your curiosity, which is to sit back and wonder about how the universe works and why it makes sense and whether it actually makes sense. And then to write to us, when it doesn't click together in your head. And our first question today is for universe clumpiness lover from Luca,

6:07who lives in New Jersey, which is the state that I was boarded. Hi, Daniel and Kelly. My name is Luca and I live in New Jersey. I'm a long time listener. And I always hear you guys say the Big Bang theory. And it gets me thinking, are there any other theories? If so, why haven't I heard of them? Thanks for raising my question. Bye. Ooh, this is a good question. Okay, so do you think we should start by, like I know he said, all right, we've all heard about the Big Bang. But here on DK EU, we take nothing for granted. So maybe we should start by, like, clarifying what the Big Bang is. I think that's actually important because it's going to set the stage for the answer. See, the Big Bang is something very specific in the scientific community. It's an idea we have about how the universe has expanded, how it's gone from dense to less dense. But in popular science, it's something very, very different. And often when people say the Big Bang theory, it's not clear which they mean.

7:08And so here, of course, we're talking about science, but we're doing popular science, so let's clarify, right? In popular imagination, the Big Bang is an explosion of a tiny dot of matter out into empty space to begin the universe. And that's a story widely told and widely heard and unfortunately very, very wrong. It's not our scientific description of the Big Bang. As we've discussed on the show in the past. Exactly. And to put a fine point on it, the Big Bang was not an explosion of a dot of matter into empty space. There was no empty space. There's never been empty space. Matter was everywhere. Otherwise, you'd have to ask like, where was that point of matter? Why was it here? Not there. Where we relative to it, et cetera, et cetera. The universe has no center, no special places. Matter was everywhere. We don't know where that matter came from. The Big Bang theory just says the universe was filled with hot dense matter and then that cooled and expanded.

8:09It also doesn't claim that that's the beginning of the universe. That's how anything started. It just says that's how it was. And now it's changing in this way. So the Big Bang theory is not an explosion into empty space and not a story about the beginning or the creation of the universe. It just says you go back in time 14 billion years, the universe was hot and dense. Since then, it's expanded and cooled and become more dilute. Yes, excellent. OK, so is that like the main thing that all physicists agree on was happening at that time? Or is there debate about the Big Bang? There's always debate and there's always disagreement in any sort of healthy field. But the thing to know is that while there are some details to be worked out, there's a lot of evidence. Like a lot with three underlines, italic evidence for this expansion. Comment down universe clumpiness lover. Well, this is exactly how the universe got its wonderful clumpiness.

9:11It's all this expansion and contraction. We have evidence that the universe was once much denser because we've seen light emitted by that dense plasma. That's the cosmic back-row-web background relation. We've run simulations that explore how can you get a universe that looks like this? And it's totally consistent with the universe was once filled with hot dense plasma with little bits of clumpiness in it, which then got more clumpy as gravity did its work as things expanded and cooled. There's lots and lots of independent lines of evidence that show us that the universe is getting less dense over time. So now, Luca is asking, are there other theories than the Big Bang Theory? And it's pretty hard to come up with another theory when there's so much overwhelming evidence for the Big Bang Theory. Now, there used to be before we had all this evidence for the Big Bang, there wasn't another theory. It was called the steady state theory. People saw, hey, the universe is expanding. Things are running away from each other. Space is increasing between galaxies. But it felt weird to imagine that the universe was getting less dense.

10:14So the alternative, the steady state theory, said that yes, the universe is expanding, but somehow new matter is being constantly created. So the overall appearance stays statistically constant. The density was flat. That density was not decreasing. And that made sense to some people because it suggested the universe was sort of static or constant in a way that wasn't denser earlier and less dense later. And so that was the major competitor for the Big Bang. But it was basically ruled out when we saw the cosmic microwave background radiation and we looked at the evolution of galaxies. It just does not describe the universe as we see it. And you know, this Big Bang nucleosynthesis, this is a large scale structure, there's the barionic acoustic oscillations, all the stuff we talked about in the podcast a lot. There are no realistic theories that describe the universe that don't involve expansion because we've seen expansion in so many different ways. And fundamentally, that's what the Big Bang is. It just says the universe is expanding and getting more dilute.

11:15So are there alternative theories to the Big Bang? Are there theories at the universe isn't getting more dilute? No, because we see that it's happening. And so none of those theories would be consistent with reality. Okay, so you said, are there theories that the universe isn't getting more dilute? So is that like the feature of a not Big Bang theory? Yeah. Because I feel like we could be tracking that, but we could also be tracking like, are we talking about the start of the universe or not? Because the Big Bang theory is not talking about the start of the universe. That's right. So I think what's confusing me, so here's some things I remember you have told me. Because I listened. The universe is expanding. Yes. And it's expanding at a faster rate. And as it expands, it gets filled in with dark, is it energy or matter? Energy. Energy. Ah, not matter. Okay, so it is getting more dilute because it's not more matter that's being produced. It's more energy. And energy is not matter, but sometimes it's confusing. And so steady state is different than the Big Bang how, if all of that is true.

12:16The steady state theory says that there is no drop in density, that new matter is being created. The universe is expanding, it's getting bigger. Uh-huh. But somehow new galaxies are popping into existence. To fill in that space. So density is not dropping. And the reason I want to emphasize that the Big Bang theory is just basically the statement that the universe is expanding and density is dropping is to highlight that there are no alternatives to that because we see that that's what happening. Okay. But I suspect what Lucas really curious about are other theories of what happens before that hot density. Where does that come from? He's probably imagining the Big Bang theory as an origin of the universe theory, which technically it's not and wondering about other origin of the universe theories. And there there's a whole wide open proliferation of theories because we don't have a lot of data. Like since that hot dense state and the expansion, we have lots of measurements, we've pinned it down, we know the things are expanding, we can describe that as the Big Bang. Before that, it's still very, very murky, which means lots of room for speculation and crazy theories

13:17about where all that matter came from. Right? Remember the Big Bang does not tell us where the hot dense stuff came from. If the universe was infinite, it was already filled with glorious, glowing matter. And the Big Bang theory does not tell us where. We need another theory, a pre-Big Bang theory to tell us where they came from. And there are definitely some exciting options there to talk about. Oh, is this what Ethan, who we had on our show? Does he do a bunch of this stuff? Yes, Ethan Siegel is a cosmologist and he does early universe cosmologies. And that he has a great podcast called Starts with a Bang. Also, it's a blog. He all should check his stuff out. He's great. Also, he wears a kilt and has a wonderful mustache. He is a super cool dude. Yes, I was disappointed that I only got to see him from the shoulders up with our video, but he explains the cool kilt he was wearing that day. He probably also appropriately enjoys the universe's clumpiness. Did I come off as a clumpiness hater in the last episode? Because I don't remember that at all. I don't feel like I would be anti-clumpiness.

14:18No, but you're definitely a mocker of universe clumpiness lovers. Wow. Which is not being very supportive. I'm so sorry. To all one of you. All right, so let's get back to Lucas' question. Are there explanations for where all this stuff came from? And there definitely are. And remember, these are all speculative. There's no data that will tell us one or the other. One of the most popular is called inflation. And it's sort of like a superversion of the Big Bang. The Big Bang tells us the universe expanded since that hot dense state. Inflation says, what if there was crazy, amazing expansion before that? Where even tinier quantum fluctuations were expanded out to macroscopic variations and density. And that could explain how you got a hot dense plasma. That's a little bit heavier here and a little bit less dense there. Okay. And it's super cool because the inflation theory says, start with the universe and fill it with this inflaton field that causes this insane expansion.

15:20You know, factors of like 10 to the 30 expansion, every 10 to the minus 30 seconds. Just like hard to even really put your mind around. Yeah. And the whole universe is expanding that way. But then occasionally, points in this field will decay. And they'll turn into normal matter like our universe. And so in the inflation theory, our whole universe is like one dot in this vast inflating inflaton field that turned into normal matter. And then you have our big bang, et cetera, et cetera. But the rest of the universe is still inflating. So we stopped inflating 14 billion years ago, but the rest of it continued. And there might be other dots out there that also turned into normal matter and turned into little pocket bubble universes that are now normal matter like ours. But we're separated from them by huge vast distances of this constantly inflating inflatant field. So we have no way to ever interact with them. So that's this picture of the universe filled with this insanely expanding inflatant field

16:20and then these little bubble universes one of which is ours. Is there any evidence for that? There's no direct evidence for inflation. It's a really cool theory because it solves some problems. We've talked on the podcast about before, like how the universe is so flat or the temperature smoothness of that early universe plasma. And so it's very compelling theoretically and it does answer some questions but there's no direct evidence for it. We might one day see direct evidence for it. The limitation is that we haven't seen anything earlier than the cosmic microwave background radiation because that's the first moment the universe became transparent so that light that was emitted could fly through the universe and be picked up by our telescopes. Everything before that was absorbed. But the universe is transparent to different kinds of things earlier like gravitational waves can pass through lots of stuff. And so gravitational waves from before that hot dense plasma that made the CMB might still be out there in the universe and we could pick them up and measure them

17:21and learn things about the even earlier universe and get hints of inflation. There was a measurement a few years ago by Brian Keating and collaborators who thought they saw science of inflation in the gravitational waves. But it turns out to have just been dust and they took a picture of somebody's PowerPoint slide and used that as a crucial part of their calculation. I've got the answer wrong. So long story short we don't have evidence for inflation but we might one day. And didn't Keating write about that in his book or something? Yes he wrote a book called Losing the Nobel Prize. Exactly. Oh man that's... One of the good things about the field that I work in is you're not getting the Nobel Prize. There so you don't have to worry about losing it. Right? That doesn't keep you up at night. No you're just getting weird parasites. Yay. Yay! Yay! So that's a very one directional theory. Other theories are like cyclic theories that suggest that maybe the universe has like repeated cycles of expansion and contraction. And each big bang is like a transition

18:22from a previous cosmic phase. So for example, penrose is a theory of cyclic cosmology where the end of the universe looks very similar to the beginning of the universe and could essentially recycle the big bang. This is an interesting idea and a lot of people like this idea when they hear about it they write to me and they're like oh have you heard this idea? It's very cool. There were claims that there was evidence for this. Patterns we saw in the cosmic microwave background that indicated evidence from a previous universe but independent analysis didn't hold that up and then re-analysis of the original claims fell apart. So bottom line is there was a bit of hoopla and you might find some poppsi articles suggesting that there is evidence for us but there isn't any evidence for a cyclic universe. That doesn't mean it's not happening but theoretically it's a bit of a challenge to construct like a physically viable mechanism that generates this cycle and respects the laws of thermodynamics etc etc from cycle to cycle

19:23but it could be our universe. Okay well I'm kind of glad that there's not loads of evidence for this one because the idea of our universe contracting makes me feel a little uncomfortable that sounds like the kind of thing that could end humanity but all right let's talk about a new are there more theories? Well the next one is not going to make you more comfortable because the next one says the universe didn't begin with a singularity it began with another one contracting so it's called the big bounce. Oh no. Essentially the expansion happened in reverse things are really really dense and then reversed and there are some theories of like loop quantum gravity approaches to bringing quantum mechanics and gravity together which naturally lead to a big bounce and so from a theoretical point of view that's also very cool and so in this picture you know the big bag is real it's just not the beginning of the universe it's just that the expansion was preceded by a contraction in those theories. Okay and then maybe my favorite kind of

20:23out there idea that sounds really fun to think about while smoking banana peels is the like time symmetric universe? We have these symmetries in our universe time symmetry charge symmetry parity symmetry and you can combine them all together to make charge parity time symmetry we flip all of them and we think that the universe is symmetric under all three flips simultaneously if you go backwards in time and change positive to negative and flip everything through a mirror physics should look all the same so this inspires the idea that maybe at the beginning of the universe sort of two universes were created one going forward in time and one going backwards in time and there's this like mirror image universes going forwards and backwards and this actually got a lot of press because one thing it suggests is the existence of these very high mass dark matter particles which would coalesce in the center of the earth and there's an experiment in Antarctica that saw weird particles that might be coming from

21:24the center of the earth and it received a lot of popular pressing. NASA has discovered a parallel universe right next to ours man which of course it didn't but it got a lot of clicks. So that's another fun theory about like what happened before the Big Bang and you know the takeaway is there's lots of ideas here we don't have data to pin any of these down but all of these are pre Big Bang the actual Big Bang theory is pretty well established you never say never because you could always learn something which upends consensus and physicists would love to do that but there's so much overwhelming data for the expansion of the universe itself that there aren't really viable alternatives to the Big Bang theory the same way there aren't like real viable alternatives to evolution or like you know heliocentrism right all right well thank you to luca for this awesome question and let's see if universe clumpiness lover give a satisfying answer you know I was thinking I would update mine to say

22:25goat lover but it's got a definitive different vibe so I'm gonna gonna not go there hi Danielle and Kelly thank you so much for answering my question I think you interpreted it very well I have had that question on my mind for a while and you really helped clear it up I enjoyed learning about all the theories especially your favorite Daniel the time semester universe and I also like the cyclic universe except for the fact that we all die in the end thanks again keep up the great work bye toiotis easy choice sales event is on whether you're looking for the performance of the camera the versatility of her app for the efficiency of a corolla or all electric driving in the BZ there's a Toyota that's just right for you and with great deals across the lineup now's the time to find yours but hurry these deals won't last long toiotis easy choice sales event and soon

23:31we make it easy Toyota let's go places what if your soda actually did something for you introducing skypot protein soda skypot protein soda has 10 grams of complete protein zero sugar and real delicious soda taste skypot protein soda reach for the sky get your skypot protein soda now at target or king supers the ocean moves us surfing a wave or savoring the view the ocean delights us as playful otters restore coastal kelp forest the ocean connects us visit monoraybeacquarium.org slash connects seven bucks that's barely the delivery fee on an order of dandan noodles but seven bucks is enough to get you out of the house and into something interesting adventurous because for seven scrawny bucks a month do more get you at least one pair of tickets to something you'll be psyched to attend a concert comedy perhaps that new exhibit stuff you like and stuff you didn't know you did yet try it free for a month at do more stuff dot com slash free and do more aging

24:37doesn't stop and neither should you with vital proteins collagen and protein shakes because around the age of thirty your body needs more support from movement and recovery on workout and rest days reach for a thirty gram total protein shake or go with our classic collagen peptides help support healthy hair skin nails bones and joints so you can stay vital stay you visit vital proteins dot com to learn more and where to buy these statements have not been evaluated by the food and drug administration this product is not intended to diagnose treat cure prevent any disease all right we're back and we're answering questions from listeners and this question is going to hit a special cord in my household oh well maybe that is the motivation for the question because actually you might see that I did not include the name of the question asker do you know who asked this question I do not was it somebody at my household it was you what two two years ago okay when

25:44we started podcast I guess it's a little short of two years are pot of her story is in October but uh... you wrote me and you were like oh I would love to hear about diseases that it turns out are really easy to fix oh and the diseases I could come up with were nutritional deficiencies that are easy to fix by just getting the right thing in your diet and it took me two years but as I was uh reading about scurvy and pilagra recently I was like oh I can cross Daniel's questions off my list so anyway I've kept this on a checklist for a long time so Daniel that's amazing this one's for you it's amazing this is my question because scurvy is something we talk about in my household all the time it's Katrina's go-to joke when we are struggling to get our kids to eat vegetables or fresh foods she's like oh my god it'd be the biggest parenting fail of all time if you guys died of scurvy because she's always worried that like if the jissey bread and cheese or like peanut butter and crackers the fact that not getting enough you know whatever nutrients

26:46you need a more big acid that would be pretty embarrassing to have your kids die of scurvy in 2026 it would be super embarrassing the good news is they probably have about a three-month supply stored up so you've got about three months to get them to eat vitamin C after they've had a long stretch of just like bread and whatnot but yes that would be pretty embarrassing but but thankfully scurvy is pretty rare these days I read this book called scurvy well-named by Stephen Bound and he was saying that there's an estimate that about two million sailors died from scurvy during what's called the age of sale and so this is like in between Columbus sailing for America and when we start getting steam powered ships so that's a lot of people dying from scurvy yeah it's a lot of people dying yeah and but tell me like what causes scurvy what is scurvy anyway so let's start with the symptoms of scurvy so what what is scurvy scurvy is when essentially anything in your body that requires collagen starts failing what is collagen exactly

27:51good point so with women always here about oh you need more collagen because it like gives your facial skin its firmness or whatnot so you need to like rub collagen all over your face and I guess those ads are not sent to everybody your face looks disturbed what are you looking at right now I'm imagining rubbing collagen in my face but I have no idea what collagen looks like so like what am I rubbing my face right now okay yeah I guess I don't exactly know what it looks like but it's a protein in your body that's used for like structural stuff okay so when you don't have that a bunch of structural stuff falls apart so like your teeth don't stay in place anymore they fall you start feeling weak physically old wounds that were held together the collagen sort of is no longer there to hold it together and they start opening up again other things that happen as you become really like exhausted and lethargic your gums start bleeding all of your connective tissues start to fall apart and there's just you know stories about sailors who essentially can't get themselves out of bed anymore and just like die in their beds so these things need a constant

28:53supply of collagen like I imagined you build some bit of your body you've used that resource you built it you don't need to constantly come by and resupply it with collagen so why do you need new collagen all the time yeah so there are some things that you do need to keep replenishing and so like I guess you need to keep replenishing like the connections between your teeth and the rest of your face and you need to keep working on like places where there have been wounds because those seem to be some of the first things that fall apart when you get sick and I guess I had not realized that you need to keep putting more and more collagen into stuff but you know most of the cells in your body turn over it's not too surprising that the structural stuff in your body needs to be replenished from time to time okay I guess you need a constant like supply of calcium to keep your bones strong this kind of stuff yeah they're constantly being built up and broken down so yeah you also need calcium for your bones at all times all right so if you don't have enough collagen then stuff breaks down and your teeth fall out and you turn into a bigger band exactly right and

29:55so the problem is that you need a squirbic acid which is also known as vitamin C to create an enzyme that is used to make collagen oh I see so if you don't get vitamin C or a squirbic acid you don't get collagen and everything just kind of starts falling apart but it took us a really long time to figure this out and the reason it took us so long is that like yes you can get so you know Katrina is worried about the kids not eating enough fresh stuff but like if you look at fresh stuff a squirbic acid or vitamin C is not like evenly distributed amongst fruits and vegetables so for example oranges and lemons have like 10 times as much a squirbic acid as a lime does and well cucumbers have like no a squirbic acid broccoli seems to have loads of it and there's no really easy way to predict by looking at something like oh that should have a lot of a squirbic acid and that shouldn't but another thing that complicated the story is that then you look at people like the inuits who don't

30:55get to eat a lot of fresh food right they live in an area where they don't have access to loads of fruits and vegetables and so you'd think okay well I can't be fresh fruits and vegetables because the inuits aren't you know eating loads of fresh food but they're fine but it turns out that there's a lot of vitamin C in kidneys and livers and so when they capture animals those are parts of the animal that they tend to eat that for example British sailors weren't tending to eat additionally if you bruise a fruit the a squirbic acid starts to go away if you cook the fruit in like a copper pan that makes it so that the a squirbic acid like goes away so there's chemistry chemistry right and so there's so many different ways that like even if you're on the right track you could do something that you weren't expecting like if you're preparing a bunch of lemon juice for a really long voyage but you happen to like boil it first in a copper pot maybe you're gonna get scurvy because you've lost a bunch of it on the way and so there were times throughout history where we actually like

31:57kind of were on the right track and then we'd totally throw ourselves off so for example when the British East India company started and this was around like 1600 they actually had a pretty good sense that oranges and lemons were important for wording off scurvy and so not only did they bring that stuff with them but they also like set up stops along their roots where they would like you know stop and grab some limes or some lemons or something and that helps them but they did such a good job of wording off scurvy that the next generation of people were like the scurvy thing isn't really a problem we're like making all these extra stops for lemons and limes but like why are we doing that what a waste of time I don't need an umbrella it's not raining under here yes exactly right and so that knowledge got lost but then there was this guy named James Linde and in 1747 he was on the HMS Salisbury and he was like look we've got to figure this scurvy thing out there were all kinds of like really bad treatments out there and the like common denominator

33:01seemed to be that there were things that were cheap right so the the British Navy wouldn't have to spend a lot of money so the cure for scurvy is drink salt water it's infinite that's not great it's free and then another like there was this observation that when people get scurvy they're like they're lethargic and they slow down and so it was thought that like no this isn't a symptom of scurvy setting in this is you being lazy and the laziness gives rise to scurvy so if you're feeling you know tired and lethargic the solution is you need to work harder which was not gonna solve the problem why don't you just go jogging to cure your scurvy no yeah right or your depression right now this is hitting home so this is like in the weenersmith household but anyway okay so there were all of these bad treatments including things like mercury which you know the the English were like slathering on everything for every reason you could imagine but James Lind in 1747 gets these 12 guys on a ship that are starting to get scurvy okay he puts them all

34:04in the same area there so they're all in the same environment he feeds them all the exact same food and then he splits them into six pairs and he gives each pair one of the prominent anti-scorbitics or one of the you know prominent things that are used to treat scurvy at the time so he's doing experiments on these guys he's doing experiments on these guys right and so like two of the guys got spoonfuls of vinegar two of the guys got seawater two of the guys got oranges and a lemon two of the guys got cider and then two of them got like a medicinal paste or something like that none of them had to like run laps or something and no no no no not not in this experiment they didn't just like get slapped and shouted at or something I mean I think that's what was probably happening above board where the the ship's physician wasn't in charge of things okay so he did like a controlled experiment yeah right and the citrus treatment those guys got totally better and it was clear that citrus was the solution the guys who had a quart of cider did okay because it turns

35:08out there's some scurvy acid in cider but there like there was the answer right so did the other guys die or did they give them lemon juice in time uh history doesn't care I'm hoping that what happened is they ended up getting oranges when the experiment was over yeah well they gave their lives so we can understand scurvy let's at least respect their sacrifice oh oh oh oh this was not this was not the moment where everyone was like oh done citrus oh that's the solution I see so he published it but when he published this account he also talked smack about everybody else who had bad ideas about what's called scurvy and how to treat it and so he ended up making a bunch of people dislike him and then he got put in charge of like a naval hospital and his interest in doing good experiments like evaporated and from there on out he started just like making pronouncements about how to treat scurvy that were not backed by scientific fact and some of them strayed from this citrus thing and so they're the point is there were multiple points in history where we were like

36:12on the right track and then we lost we you know we lost the uh the the story there but but now we know it's a squirbic acid you can get it from fresh fruits and vegetables this can still be a problem uh for example refugee populations that don't have access to a lot of fresh food they have to eat sort of whatever shelf stable food they're given sometimes curvy is a problem for those populations but thankfully for most of us who can go to a grocery store and can afford to buy fresh fruits and vegetables scurvy is something we shouldn't have to encounter because some guy did crazy experiments and then retreated into a life of feuds well that's fine to spoil you that's fascinating and the stories of figuring it out are always really compelling to me because it's never a straight line right it's never like we did this experiment the results were clear and then we knew so he's like a hundred years later somebody looked at the data or somebody followed up or somebody finally made sense of it it's incredible how long it takes to figure things out and how obvious things seem to be in hindsight right yeah but I feel like with scurvy in particular it makes sense to me that

37:15it was so confusing yeah if the answer was orange is I wouldn't have realized that like oh cooking it in the copper pan first is going to totally inactivate the squirbic acid like that I don't know that's that just doesn't even seem fair even that just seems totally not fair oh wait and I haven't even told you the most interesting thing yet oh well I don't how do you rank interesting I don't know but some species of primates and guinea pigs and us are some of the few animals that can't produce vitamin C on their own oh so like rats that were on our ships weren't going to get scurvy even if there were no fruits and vegetables because their bodies are making their own vitamin C why aren't we I don't know I don't think I don't think we know I mean it could be that like in our evolutionary past we quote unquote grew up in an area where there was always fresh food around and so it just didn't come up so we kind of lost the ability and then we moved into environments where it turned out it was much harder to get fresh fruits and now we're just not super well adapted but yeah that in guinea pigs and some scientists who were studying it got really lucky that they

38:17were doing experiments on guinea pigs who also happened to not make a squirbic acid because some of the studies that we did were really like nailed the stuff down we're done in guinea pigs and if they had picked mice instead it might have taken us much longer to figure this stuff out yeah well I collected stories for some other diseases but I talked so long about scurvy I'm just going to tell you that a palagra is caused by a deficiency of vitamin B3 you can also get goiters if you don't have enough iodine rickets if you don't have enough vitamin D and night blindness if you don't have enough vitamin A but the good news is for most of these we have fortified different foods in the United States for example and so if you just eat like a somewhat normal diet a lot of the foods are fortified so that you will get enough of this so for example the salt your table salt is usually fortified with iodine so we don't have to worry about things like guiters I remember when Katrina was pregnant and we discovered we'd been using mostly kosher salt which doesn't have iodine in it and we had a moment of panic that you know our son was in utero without enough iodine oh no of course

39:22he's fine but what did you do we did a bunch of research and we discovered that oh actually iodine isn't lots of stuff and it's very hard to avoid in modern society okay good even if you don't specifically put iodine salt on your food at home now I know that you eat one meal a day and it's dinner with your family does Katrina eats like does she ever go to restaurants or something where she would encounter table salts that happen to have iodine in it or does she also only eat dinner made at home Katrina is not on the vampire diet she eats like a normal human being and yes eats after restaurants and exactly anytime you eat it somebody else's house or in a restaurant or pre-packaged foods or whatever there's iodine salt and everything so we were worried and panic because we were new parents but it was fine oh my gosh the number of things I worried and panicked about as a new parent wow so listener universe clumpiness lover did that address the question that you forgot that you had so I went a little heavy on the history and a little light on the

40:23collagen I'm feeling like you would want it's more collagen but what are you gonna do thanks for taking my question guys long time listener of the show yes that totally answers my question and I'm also disappointed however that there were no goat sounds in the answer that's what I really was here for okay thank you I'm here to here to please let's take a break and when we come back we will get to our third question what if your soda actually did something for you introducing sky pop protein soda sky pop protein soda has 10 grams of complete protein zero sugar and real delicious soda taste sky pop protein soda reach for the sky get your sky pop protein soda now at target the ocean delights us some marvel at the colorful world below the surface the ocean feeds us others find nourishment in its bounty

41:26the ocean teaches us how our everyday choices impact even the deepest places the ocean moves us whether we're riding a wave or so can in its breathtaking beauty the ocean connects us find your connection at monoraybe aquarium dot org slash connects get the feeling you should maybe get out more see and do more totally normal so as staying stuck because finding out what and where just seems hard a do more subscription brings you concerts and comedy sports and museums for seven scrawny bucks a month you get at least one pair of tickets to something great discover new bands laugh learn do more and right now do more makes interesting and adventurous easy because your first month's free at do more stuff dot com slash free aging doesn't stop and neither should you with vital proteins collagen and protein shakes because around the age of 30 your body needs more support from movement and recovery on workout and rest days reach for a 30 gram total protein shake or go with our classic collagen

42:30peptides help support healthy hair skin nails bones and joints so you can stay vital stay you visit vital proteins dot com to learn more and where to buy these statements have not been evaluated by the food and drug administration this product is not intended to diagnose treat cure prevent any disease on September 19th the monster energy smx world championship playoffs races into Los Angeles this is it it's all the line now the pressure is on to deliver and for the world's best 22 dirt bike racers only one will go home number one it all comes down to this go experience all of the action live coming to dignity health sports park in Los Angeles California September 19 get your tickets now at supermodocross.com and we're back and we have a question from Jude from Washington state

43:31hi Daniel and Kelly thanks for helping us get smarter about this extraordinary universe given the chaotic factors that influence the formation of earth it seems odd that a single large landmass would develop with so much water on the rest of the surface why would there be such a bulge on one side of the planet we weren't tidally locked were we what do we know about that process thanks for helping us learn Jude from Washington state I love this question from Jude so much fun I love that he's thinking about you know this history we've learned about the planet and wondering like how it all makes sense and why it happens this way and bringing in other ideas he's learned from physics so this is exactly the kind of curiosity I'd love to encourage in people thank you Jude yeah this is a fantastic question I also love thinking about like pangea and what the earth used to look like and so can you start so it's so much easier when you have a picture of pangea help us picture yeah you know what did our planet look like 300 million years ago well

44:35like journeys into deep time or one of my favorite things just imagining how much time has lapsed in the universe that even a really really slow things can have huge consequences over deep time so for example we know the continents are moving but it turns out that 335 million years ago the arrangement of the continents on the earth was very very different than it is today today you have the massive Pacific Ocean but you have a bunch of continents sort of spread out but 335 million years ago we had a single continent all the land masses were still there but they were all clumped together into one super continent called pangea and so if you took the earth and you spun it it would be like mostly water and then there'd be like one slice of a bunch of continents all stuck together strong between the north pole and the south pole sort of like a big crescent and you can see like proto-Africa and the beginnings of Asia and stuff and it forms like sort of a sea shape

45:39with the top of the sea is near the north pole in the bottom of the sea is near the south pole so so which ocean one right so was it the Pacific Ocean or the Atlantic Ocean which is the one that gets to take all so it's a constant battle between the two oceans actually the Atlantic Ocean doesn't exist at this time right so specifically its formation is what broke up pangea so it's like the rise of the Atlantic Ocean whoa but back then they didn't call the Pacific there was a super ocean they call panthalasa I don't know who gets to name all these things but they all sound really cool and historical they're not physicists then yeah and the whole idea of super oceans comes from the origin of the continental drift theory so this is like a hundred years ago now people are wondering about you know the ancient history of the planet and this is a long tradition of being unable to grapple with the times involved you know like when we were learning about the age of the earth people were like maybe it's a million years old oh my god that would be so maybe it's 20

46:41million and then you know actually seeing the evidence that it's almost five billion years old is just mind blowing yeah and in the same way the idea that the continents are moving and they're moving very slowly so that like you can't see anything basically over a lifetime but that over eons it could totally change the face of the planet this is a very controversial idea about a hundred years ago took a long time before it was like adopted by mainstream science and for that reason it plays like an oversized role in both criticisms of science like look how long it takes science to recognize the truth and also defenses of science where people are like well actually it was the data that won out and this is how science is supposed to work um but you know not getting into that whole culture war Alfred Wienerger was the guy who came up with this idea of continental drift in the early 1900s and he's the one who hypothesized the existence of Pangaea sort of tracked all the continents motion backwards in time and was able to predict like oh it looks like they all came

47:46from one mega continent and it's not hard to imagine this if you just look at like the Atlantic right you can look at the coast of the United States and South America and see how like the coast of South America in particular matches up with the coast of Africa right and the Atlantic is getting wider every year and so just reverse that back in time and boom South America and Africa fit together very nicely into a mega continent and there's lots of really fun evidence for this it's not just continental drift like you can see the same mountain ranges that are now on two different continents but it's very obvious geologically that they come from the same original mountain range like the Appalachians right in your area you can see the continuation of the Appalachians in Scandinavia like it's the same mountains yes I know and you see evidence of fossils like animals that lived on one continent and then it split up and now we see fossils on both sides so it's very clear that continents are moving and they used to be merged and if you go back in time

48:50you can see this mega continent do you think Alfred was in Depuzzles? I think Alfred must have had a really geometrical mind yeah to think about all this stuff and to imagine what it must have looked like and so this is the impetus of Jude's question he's like how can it be isn't it weird to have all the land on one side and the rest is just water like it feels imbalanced and he's wondering if this came from like being tidally locked with the sun or something external it's so it's a great question yeah and the answer is super cool the answer is that there's a cycle that the earth tends to build super continents and then break up super continents and then build super continents and then break up super continents this has happened like several times in the last few billion years if you like had a movie of the earth of the last two billion years and you fast-forwarded like super duper time lapse you would see super continents forming and breaking up and forming and breaking up that's scary and so

49:54thankfully it happens on very long time scale so I'm gonna be honest I think I've only I've mostly heard about Pangaea the super continent and I don't know that I've heard about the like virgins before that had been broken up and then put back together first let's talk about why and then let's talk about what came before why is that happening yeah so there's two effects here right why do continents come together why does the earth tend to make super continents and then the other part is why does it tend to break them up so first why does it make super continents well continents drift right what's happening is that the earth is still hot and inside the earth there's the mantle and it's a really dense hot rock which effectively is like a fluid right not technically a liquid but a fluid and so it flows and you get these convection cells where things rise and then sink and so they're spinning and so you have these spinning cells underneath the hard crust and that's moving stuff it's just like having a you know a tank tread underneath the tank it's moving

50:57the tank and so it's sliding continental plates against each other and where they meet one of them gets pushed down back into the mantle it's subduction zone and it gets melted down etc and so that's how continents move right because of these convection cells are like pushing on things underneath so what happens if you have a bunch of continents and they start out randomly distributed or or whatever and you just slide them around the planet is eventually they're going to bang into each other right and it's not like a box full of balls that are going to bang into each other and then bounce off and so that on average they're going to stay separate these things stick right the subduction zones things get pushed underneath you get pushed against each other you get mountain ranges like you know Mount Everest for example and so things stick together and so it's like a box of sticky balls you shake it and they're all bounce around eventually they all stick together and you get one big ball right okay but then how do you get them back out again yeah so that's what's happening that's why you form supercontinues you have a bunch of continents and they're wandering the planet they're

52:00going to end up hitting each other and sticking all right so then why is it a cycle why don't we just have one super continent forever a one to rule them all right well the answer is that super continent formation creates the process that breaks them up because you have this heat underneath right but now you have a super continent it's trapped all that heat there's nowhere for it to go until it builds up it like makes like a dome of heat underneath the super continent and that creates a rift and that tears the super continent apart and it can create like a new ocean so the Atlantic ocean right there's the mid Atlantic rift which is like a tear in the earth's crust almost and then Atlantic Ocean is expanding it's getting wider and wider every year this is why South America was torn from the coast of Africa it's because the Atlantic emerged and it's pushing those two apart and that's because there's a huge bubble of heat that was trapped under there last time it was a super continent and so super continents form they create these heat domes because there's nowhere

53:00for this heat to get released and then it pulls them apart and that's how the Atlantic ocean was created and so this has happened several times in the history of the planet and probably will continue to happen but we won't be seeing it because we won't be living long enough because we're on an imminent decline to a nursing home and apparently about two years according to Daniel so what are some of the cool names that obviously were not made by physicists that like these super continents had before so a lot of this is speculative because you know you're projecting back many collisions and it's very chaotic and we don't have clear data in some cases but we also do have some data right okay big geological effects like this leave markers all over the planet and geologists are very very clever in extracting these clues so we think that around two billion years ago there was a super continent called Columbia that lasted about 200 million years like that's a long time yeah then it got torn apart and continents wandered the planet for about 500 million years until they formed

54:05another super continent called Rodinia so this is 1.3 billion years ago and this one lasted for half a billion years before things wandered again then they came together around 540 million years ago to make another super continent called Penotia that one didn't last very long it broke apart and then Pangaea was formed around 350 million years ago so it's fun to think about that history and to overlay onto it the history of life on earth right because the Cambrian explosion is less than a billion years ago the dinosaurs right overlap with this so like the configuration of the continents played a big role in like where critters were which ones were connected to which other ones if you lived a long time ago you saw a different planet than the one we have today our earth the what you think makes it earth is actually just a momentary snapshot in the life of a very dynamic man it really blows my mind that geologists were able to figure all of this out this is really cool

55:09and that the story is interesting right you could look back on the history of the planet it could be like oh yeah it was made this way and it's always been this way yarn but instead it's like super chaotic and dynamic it's all sorts of stuff happening it's incredible I'm really glad that geology didn't turn out to be boring I don't know from a biologist perspective at least yarn means you're like not as likely to die from something catastrophic but I see your point this is this is a more interesting story it's funny how sometimes boring is good and sometimes it's not like one of my kids had an MRI one time and I always remember that the conclusion was MRI is unremarkable from that's good news I think from like a health point of view that there's nothing weird in your MRI but I was like actually this kid's pretty remarkable so you know I'm gonna try not to be insulted I know he is a very remarkable kid but but yes some there are some things you want to be unremarkable and your medical results are certainly some of them yes exactly all right well thank you

56:11Jude for this wonderful question we're gonna send this back to you to hear if we've answered your question and if you have any follow ups well that was great first I've been mispronouncing panjia now I see it sticky continents that combine and split and recombine huh amazing I thought having one supercontinent was impressive now I picture the earth as this sloshy blob swirling its way around the sun so much for being rock solid and terra firma does this suggest the earth is mostly liquid well very hot slow moving liquid thanks for helping us learn and changing our perspectives in this sloshy messy complicated universe all right thank you so much for these amazing questions I have a little bit of bad news and my bad news is I need to take a little bit of an email hiatus because I have a six month backlog on questions I haven't answered yet wow you know in Daniel took two years to get his answer it just kind of happened to be that I was reading about scurvy today and was like oh I can answer Daniel's question so I can't do any new research questions I'll tell you at some point in

57:142027 when I'm able to take some new ones but I need to get through the amazing questions that you all have already asked me and I have many fun hours of research ahead but I look forward to when I can take more questions all right well thank you very much everyone for sharing with us your curiosity it's what we thrive on until next time thanks everybody for listening please go and do us a favor and rate at the show on whatever podcast app you're using it really helps people find us Daniel and Kelly's extraordinary universe is edited by the amazing Matt Kesselman he really is a wizard you can also find us online on blue sky instagram and x dnk universe come engage with us you can email us at questions at daniel and kelly dot org we really do want to hear from you and you can find our website www.danielandkelly.org where you'll also find an invitation to join our discord where everybody comes and talks about

58:17the amazing universe and we also have the most amazing moderators this is an iHeart podcast thanks for joining us one last thing before you go you know that feeling when feedback notes and data are coming in from every direction chat gpt work can make sense of it all turning scattered inputs into ready to review work with your permission work in chat gpt can gather context from apps and files summarise incoming messages rebuild decks and help finalize high quality documents for your team or clients stay in control as you move from a goal to polished work faster with chat gpt work download the chat gpt desktop app today and take on your most ambitious work wait this is a soda yeah and it has protein 10 grams no sugar zero and it actually tastes good it's sky pop sky pop protein soda delivers the refreshing taste you want from a real soda crisp and delicious with 10 grams of complete protein zero sugar and just 45 calories so you're

59:20not choosing between great taste and real benefits you're getting both in every sip sky pop protein soda reach for the sky get your sky pop protein soda now at target the ocean moves us whether that's surfing a wave or taking in an inspiring view the ocean feeds us sustainable seafood practices bring the oceans bounty to our plates the ocean teaches us how our everyday choices big and small make an impact the ocean delights us as playful otters restore coastal for us the ocean connects us find your connection at monoraybe aquarium dot org slash connects aging is real and so are the benefits of adding vital proteins collagen peptides to your daily routine new vital proteins collagen sparkling water your daily glow up now in three fresh flavors strawberry blossom lemon lime and blood orange improve skin health in as little as 30 days thanks to collagen peptides cheers to that or go with our classic collagen peptides so you can

1:00:22stay vital stay you visit vital proteins dot com to learn more and where to buy these statements have not been evaluated by the food and drug administration this product is not intended to diagnose treat your opponent any disease team mobile is reinventing business internet with super broadband whether you run a small office or a factory of 500 connection is everything powered by america's fastest viG internet plus starlink super broadband from team mobile reaches every zip code us super broadband a new era of business internet visit super broadband dot com to learn more this is an i heart podcast guaranteed human