Hey everybody, I am here with the scheduling note. Today's episode would normally be a full length core episode of the show, but due to a holiday, we are switching up the order this week, so there's going to be a short Artifact episode today and then full length episodes will air on Wednesday and Thursday of this week. And now onto the episode. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
a production of My Heart Radio. Hi, my name is Joe McCormick, and this is the Artifact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind, focusing on particular objects, ideas, and moments in time. In the year six the English philosopher Sir Francis Bacon published a book called Novum Organum, in which he described a program for investigating the world
through empiricism and organized inductive reasoning. As an example of how to employ his new method, Bacon discusses at length the physical phenomenon of heat, cataloging examples of heat in nature, but also what he calls quote proximate instances wanting the nature of heat. In other words, situations where other phenomena observed alongside heat in nature are witnessed but without the heat.
For example, the moon and the stars shine with light that's bright like sunlight, but not hot like sunlight, and so forth. But here in one paragraph Bacon starts to list more anomalous sources of cold light. He mentions a kind of light quote which in some well authenticated and serious histories is said to have appeared around the head and hair of boys and virgins, and instead of burning
their hair, merely to have played about it. He also explains with great confidence that in times of darkness or damp weather, a sweaty horse will emit flashes of light. He writes, quote, in like manner, sea and salt water is sometimes found to shine at night when struck violently by the ore. The foam of the sea, when agitated by tempests, also sparkles at night, and the Spaniards called
this appearance the sea's lungs. While I don't know what to make of the claim that sometimes sweaty horses glow, or that the ocean will shine with the slap of an oar, there is one claim in this passage that sounds just as weird as the rest, and yet it is entirely true and exhaustively verified. Bacon writes, quote, it is well known that all sugar, whether candied or plain, if it be hard, will sparkle when broken or scraped in the dark. The fact that sugar glows when scraped
or crushed is now a well documented phenomenon. You might have even seen it yourself by smashing wintow green life savers with a hammer or throwing a bunch of sugar cubes in a blender. When you smash the sugar, it releases pops of ghostly light, often blue in color. This phenomenon is an example of what's called tribo luminescence, a light that is emitted when certain substances are mechanically stimulated by,
for example, rubbing, crushing, scraping, or tearing apart. Many of these substances are crystalline in nature, Like sugar, Quartz crystals often begin to glow when rubbed together rapidly in a darkened room. Several studies on tribo luminescence in quartz mention a type of artifact used by some of the Ute people of Colorado, which was a type of rattle made from translucent buffalo rawhide filled with quartz pebbles, which would allegedly glow with tribo luminescence when shaken at night, as
the pebbles inside smashed against one another. But there are other stranger sources of tribo luminescence. You can sometimes see a rolling line of blue sparks by peeling adhesive tape of a roll or peeling an adhesive bandage envelope apart in very low light. Despite the fact that tribal luminescence has been observed for hundreds or even thousands of years, the physical mechanisms leading to the emission of light are still not fully understood, and there's no universal theory that
explains all instances, but we know some things. Tribal luminescence seems to be especially common in crystals with an asymmetric structure. A common explanation given is that when the crystals are fractured, many electrons are actually ripped away from their atomic nuclei, generating an electrical field. The electric charge difference is neutralized when these free electrons eventually rejoin with atoms across the
fracture gap, leading to the emission of light. In some cases, tribal luminescence seems to depend on the gases surrounding the material. The familiar blue glow of crushed sugar can be turned red if you do the crushing in a sealed container filled with neon gass, indicating that the blue light in this case has to do with the emission spectra of
the nitrogen that makes up most of our air. So when sugar glows blue, the blue light is probably caused when nitrogen molecules in the atmosphere are excited by electrical discharge from the cracking sugar crystals. As the nitrogen atoms fall back down to their ground state, they emit photons at frequencies that include some visible blue light, almost like lightning in the cracks of the candy. And before I finish, I want to say, if anyone has any insight on
the glowing sweaty horse, you have our email address. Tune into new editions of the artifact every Wednesday, hosted either by Robert or myself. As always, you can email us at contact at Stuff to Blow Your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind and is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.