¶ Osiris Rex Mission and Mouth Taping
Hello science enthusiasts . My name is Jason Zakowski .
I'm the dog dad of Bunsen and Beaker the science dogs on social media , and my co-host is Hi there , my name is Chris Zakowski and I am the dog mum to Bunsen and Beaker and the cat mum to Ginger .
Welcome to SciChat . This is our new roundup show , where we talk about the big stories of the month and Chris and I kind of go back and forth .
It's short , so it's only about a half an hour long and if there's any discussion at the end , we'll open up the floor to people who want to ask questions or maybe have extra things they'd love to talk about in the realm of science . It was a big deal , and this is actually from earlier this week .
The Osiris Rex the satellite touched down with a little chunk of an asteroid for the first time ever , and Osiris Rex stands for Origins , spectral Interpretation , resource Identification , security , regolith Explorer , so you can probably guess why they called it Osiris Rex . This was launched a while ago , chris 2016 . 2016 .
I know 2016 .
Yeah , and then in 2020 , it actually landed on that asteroid you mentioned called Bennu , and the asteroid it landed on was all screwed up . It was basically if you smushed up a bunch of Cheerios together , you made them wet and you kind of went crunched it together . That's what the asteroid looked like .
So it was a real challenge for Osiris Rex to land on Bennu , but they successfully did it . It landed , it took a scoop of asteroid goo and it like has a little . I think it had like a couple other samples or air blowers , or it took some gas gas samples coming off of it , and that was in 2020 .
And then it took until 2023 for the for Osiris Rex to get back to Earth and it landed successfully at the dug away , proving ground .
Jason , talk to me .
What .
No , talk to me . You need to talk to me about asteroid goo . I thought asteroids were made out of rock .
No , I was being silly . It took a . It took a rocky sample . It's just more fun to think that the asteroids made a goo .
No , it isn't . It's not very scientifically accurate .
Oh , but it's more whimsical .
Asteroids all wrong .
No , no , it was a rock .
So it bored in to take the sample .
Yeah , yeah , this is NASA's no into the rock .
Yes , yeah , yeah , yeah , my understanding was .
Yeah , so this is the first sample for NASA . The Japanese have had some more successful attempts with their high abyssal one and two . I saw somebody post in the chat yeah , I was going to get to that . If I misspoke , I meant NASA . Nasa has this is NASA's first asteroid chunk that is brought back . Sorry , what were you going to say , chris ?
No , I already said what I was going to say . Oh , okay .
Yeah , you betcha . So yeah it's . It's pretty exciting . They are going to section up . I get , I guess , the sample . Nasa gets to keep most of it , I guess , because they're NASA . But guess who else is getting a little bit of it . Um the Canadian space agency , the CSA yeah , Canada gets 4% of the sample 4% , you know .
So I guess that makes sense , because that's about what the exchange rate is for the American dollar . For us are the Canadian dollars worth about 4% of the American dollars . So that's fair , that's pretty fair . And the Japanese the Japanese gets gets some too . Uh , they , the Japanese , but they've already got samples but , chris , they already .
they already have samples from their , their Hayabaseus uh satellites . So good job for for the Japanese JAXA . They're called Japanese aerospace . What does JAXA stand for ? Japanese aerospace exploration agency . But I guess they like the X in exploration . That's why it's JAXA and not JA , jaea . Jaxa sounds cooler . Anyways , that's the first story , chris . Very exciting .
What do you think they're going to find in it ? I know you think they're going to find anything cool , or is it just rocks ? I bet you the geologists are all excited , yeah .
Well , it is a tramp and end with a successful retrieval of the asteroid venue samples . Yes , when did you talk about um the capsule's descent experience , extreme conditions , speeds up to 27,000 miles per hour and heat up to 5,300 degrees Fahrenheit ? Well , I didn't .
I just figured that was normal , because that's no cause , that's how . It's not no cause . That's how fast you drive , right , that's how fast you drive anyways . So it's not out of the normal for you .
Yeah , and that's how hot I am .
It's true , you're that hot 5,300 degrees Fahrenheit hot . You make steam look cool .
Yeah , I do . I make steam look cool . Uh , that's from .
Hercules , that's from Hercules , that's right . So I got a question , chris . Um , I'm right . So you said the other night I was snoring Like that was yes , I don't normally snore , but apparently I was snoring .
Very , very loudly . It was the most bizarre experience , because Jason does not snore and I was like what is that sound ? And for a sound to wake me out of a deep sleep . As you know , I close my eyes and then I'm asleep .
Yes , you sleep through everything . Yes , Everything , Um so should I take ? Should I take ?
your snoring the other night .
Yeah , should I tape my mouth shut ?
Well , it's not Well . So there's a new trend on tick talk , oh God , and it's called yeah , it's called Mouth taping .
Mouth taping .
And this is a trending practice where individuals tape their mouths shut at night to encourage a . Zach Ford tried mouth taping after surgery for a deviated septum , and so that improved his nasal breathing , but not the nighttime breathing .
So , um , I guess the surgery improved his nasal breathing , but not the nighttime breathing , and so this person , zach Ford , found a mouth taping highly effective , um , and improving his sleep quality significantly .
So more research is needed , um , because it there's not necessarily an understanding of the potential risks and benefits and there's limited scientific data to support the claims that multi-taping offers benefits such as preventing teeth grinding , bad breath , snoring , sleep apnea , and it could potentially improve your jaw strength .
Right , I think what now ? It's all anecdotal at this point , right , like it's like people saying it's been working for them and it hasn't actually gone through any significant studies .
So that's right . So there needs to be more rigorous studies done , but multi-tapes has been observed to enhance the effectiveness of CPAP treatment in some cases .
In some sleep studies they've , yeah , they've . I don't think they've used like scotch tape or duct tape , but like a specific kind of apparatus you would put to keep your lips closed . And maybe that's where this is coming from , at least that's my understanding of this the kind of the bulletin about mouth taping .
Right and some experts raise concerns about the safety and potential risks , especially because some people just follow the trends on platforms like TikTok .
Yeah .
So if you're interested in taping your mouth closed , please consult a healthcare provider before trying it .
I love that . Well , I guess , if I continue to snore , maybe that's an option . Just tape my mouth shut , chris . No , but we should have a mouth guard . I do have a mouth guard . Yeah , that's right , I do have a mouth guard .
Because you were grinding your teeth .
Yeah , I haven't . I haven't been anymore , though the dentist said it looks good .
Because you haven't been wearing your mouth guard . Even that's amazing .
I know , I know Well . So I guess we shouldn't just blindly follow trends on TikTok .
That's , I think , the main message .
Right .
Tide pods anyone .
Or I love the one . There's one on Facebook that made me absolutely baddie . Like people were saying , if you're sick , you put an onion in your sock . You put a you you like make wear wet socks and you put an onion in your sock and then you absorb like the onion juices and it cures your like sickness .
And that was definitely a thing a while ago , but I that was definitely .
What that didn't work I don't know .
Well , I think if you eat enough onions , you'll maybe have some kind of issue , but I don't think you absorb onion through your skin very well where you're not , yeah , we're we don't . We don't absorb nutrients that way . So , speaking of things that are maybe too good to be true , I called this in September .
I called this weeks ago and it was all over Twitter and there were spaces running about it and people were getting way too hyped up . It was room temperature superconductors .
¶ Birds and Superconductors
I swear . Every year there's some new quote , unquote breakthrough about room temperature superconductors . Superconductors that we have only work when they're very , very , very , very cold , and it's like something that we're scientists are always working towards and they're very excited about .
And there's a physicist named Ranga Diaz from the University of Rochester and this scientist said that he had discovered a way to make superconductors work at room temperature . Everybody was very skeptical . The scientific community was extremely skeptical , but there are like , if that was ever to be a thing , it would be revolutionary for all of us .
You would have very little electricity resistance with everything that we depend upon . You would have very little electricity needed to have things like superfast trains . You would have teeny , tiny capacitors in everything . So life would be very different if we did have room temperature superconductors .
Sadly , though , there were two paper retractions and plagiarism allegations , so currently there is even more huge skepticism around the scientist , and the problem was is that other scientists who are working on room temperature superconductors are very sad about all this development , because now it makes them look bad .
If they ever do make an incremental breakthrough , it's going to be looked at with . Are you sure ? Because the last guy was just making stuff up kind of things .
So that's a little bit disappointing , but it is part of the science news of September , and I know for a fact there were tweets about it and people were running spaces and getting all like audio shows like this and getting all hyped up . Sadly , it looks like it's a bust , but there's hope .
Room temperature superconductors inch closer to reality every single year .
I'm going to talk about birds and I really enjoyed birds and once upon a time I had a budgie and his name was Oshkosh and we got Oshkosh when Duncan was little and this bird super cute but super evil .
Yeah , oshkosh was a pet you looked at from very far away . We thought it would sit on your shoulder or like sing to you , and we were very kind and very gentle to this bird . But it never warmed up to people like at all .
No , it was . It would bite and it was evil . So I want to talk about vocal learning and birds , and that's the ability to mimic sounds for communication , so that is akin to language in humans . So , as we know , crows and parrots are considered the most intelligent birds and they are known for their vocal learning abilities .
So there has been previous studies on the relationship between vocal learning and intelligence in birds , but those studies have produced conflicting results .
So a new study analyzed 214 birds from 23 different species to explore the link between vocal learning and cognitive abilities , and this was this study is kind of the first of its kind to examine multiple bird species in this context .
So what they found is vocal complexity and how they evaluated that was based on the number of songs and calls a species could learn , how long it took them to learn it , so their learning period and the ability to mimic other species and birds were also presented with seven cognitive tests over six days , including problem solving , learning and self-control tests , and
what they found is problem solving ability , not learning or self-control , showed a strong association with more complex vocal learning in birds , and the study found a correlation between that complex vocal learning , enhanced problem solving and larger brains relative to body size .
So this suggests that a bigger brain may be crucial for excel in both vocal learning and problem solving . And this is awesome because scientists plan to investigate the genetic basis of these links . These link traits which could shed light on the evolution of human language .
¶ Bird Brains and Ancient Extinctions
So like if a bird knows more sounds , it's a smarter bird . Is that the idea ? That's a bigger brain ?
No , so if it's able to vocalize , so that how they can do different sounds .
Oh , the more different sounds it can make , the smarter it is .
Yeah , so the tefted titmose , with 63 vocalizations learned throughout his life , outperformed the brown-headed cow bird , which we know that the brown-headed cow bird is a parasitic bird . They're the ones who put the yeah they're stupid .
Yeah , we have them here , and they push out the eggs of other birds and then they take over their nest and that bird only learned nine within a set period .
I love the names of birds . Like they're not good around middle school kids . No , like the tefted titmose .
No .
And then you talk about the blue-footed boobies .
Yeah .
Yeah , I'm sure there's other ones that make middle school kids giggle .
There are a ton of names like that that are best left to be like oh , it's just a bird .
But we do have cow birds here , like they're annoying Me too .
Yeah , do you want to hear some . I love them and I think what . You go ahead .
No , go ahead . I've just got a list of inappropriately named birds , but they're actually called that . Do you want to hear some ? Okay , well , you .
Absolutely , I do .
Well , one is called the great tit , another one's I can't say this , okay , this one's called the rough-faced shag .
Here's another one , so like it is a little go ahead .
Okay , then we have the horned screamer , sometimes known as the horny screamer . That's awful , and there's like 60 more of these . So you know , probably named back in a time when none of these words were that inappropriate . Sorry , I got us off track . We were talking about bird brains .
I have a bird brain , you went down a rabbit hole . Okay , anyway , that's my um , that's my uh thing I love parrot .
I love parrots . You know that right .
I do .
Yeah , I wanted to get a parrot , but they are . They live so long and they're where we are . I don't know , like , are they ethical to get , like you have to you ? I don't know if you can rescue them . I don't know if they buy them and they're crazy expensive .
I don't know if they're an ethical pet to have , but I always , like , I think parrots are so cool . Um , they do require a lot of work . I did a bunch of research before . This is before Cal , and I think . But they are . They are really really smart . Well , winter's coming . Are you excited about that , chris ?
Um , I saw that there's going to be El Nino something to do with the weather and I did what's scared to click on it because I don't know if that's good or bad , If that's going to be like a super cold winter . I heard that it's going to be a super cold winter , so any news articles about the winter , I quit them .
I click out of the tab quit the winter before I even can read about the winter .
El Nino is like oh , it's going to be hot . Lanine Ah is like it's cool . That's how Dr Catherine Hano explained it .
Isn't that the opposite ? Oh , it's so cold . No no no , it's warm .
No , no , it's cold , Like it's a cool cool breeze , Anyways .
So it's going to be warm . I can look at these articles and read about them and be happy . Well , you can , because there's so much snow in the article .
I don't know , but I'll tell you that it could always be worse , because my study is about really , really bad cold times .
Nearly a million years ago there was a horrific extreme cold stretch that also coincided with droughts in the summer , and this occurred where humans were first kind of like moving away from Africa and let's just say it wasn't great for ancient ancestors the , the , the total .
It gets a little dodgy because they're using computer models to get there and we'll talk a little bit about that . But the total number of pre-human creatures at this time were between 50,000 and about 140,000 like humans .
There weren't humans at this time , they were like a species before humans and , based on their statistical modeling , that number dropped to around 1,300 people . So the whole line of like succession to like where we are today just about went extinct during this extreme cold snap and like really bad drought . So things could be worse , chris .
It could be as bad as it was for our like , ancient ancestors nearly a million years ago . I don't know , are you there ? I am Okay , okay , yeah . So how do you figure they decided this ? How do you go back in time and figure out anything related to this ? What would you do if you didn't have a time machine .
I would use a new statistical method .
That's just what it says .
Um , but they well , what I was going to say uh , how I go back in time is I go to like count the years , and if it's like four years , then I multiply my population , um , by an exponent of negative four , and then I go back in time to find my population before . So I use a formula , mathematical formula . That's what I do .
Oh , you do that in like math 20 .
Math 10 . Math 10 .
Right , okay , so they took actually , um , the genes . They looked at genetic variation within people from Africa and non-African populations and they looked for genes from people in Africa that weren't necessarily present in people not from Africa .
African populations maybe have a bit more ancient genome and people not from Africa have slightly varied genome and they use statistical analysis to figure out if there was a , basically a gene crash , like at a point in time , all of a sudden there was no more genes that potentially was from a previous creature , and that's where their synest statistical analysis led
them . So there there is a , some , there are some people who are , you know , raising their eyebrows that you can be this accurate and kind of figure out how many people like sub human people existed nearly a million years ago .
Um , but they , they do these modeling's all of the time and it is likely that the people at this time , the , the , you know , the , the sub human people did evolve into us and our more early ancestors like , uh , neanderthals and the DeSovians . Um , so there were like three competing .
You know , sub human species are ancestors than Neanderthals and the DeSovians , and there seems to be some evidence that , because those other creatures have had their genome sequenced um . Somebody won a Nobel prize for it . Actually , they can look , they can use that to find basic like a gene crash .
So we're maybe more lucky to be here than we thought , and winter could always be worse . That's the moral of the story , chris .
What . Yes , winter could always you're right , it can always be worse . That's what you said to me when , um , I found that the students changed my last name when I wrote it on the board and then they changed it to Wachowski , um , like wacky Zachy anyway . So you texted back to me and you said you know what , chris , it could be worse .
Yeah , everything , everything could be worse .
Everything can be worse .
So you remember , when it's minus 40 in January , you could just be thinking about , you know , the , the near extinction level event that froze our ancestors a million years ago . It could be worse .
Right , don't you just tell me to put on a coat ? Yeah , that's what you always tell me .
Yeah , just put on a coat , cut it under the blanket , get Bunsen to lay on you . All of those things heat you up right now . If Bunsen lays on you , you're probably going to suffocate , though , so you'll be warm , but you might die . Okay , cause he's heavy . Well , and that that's the science roundup . That is it . That's the science show for today .
Well , thanks for coming to another month's science roundup .
¶ Learning Spanish and Discussing Snoring
Um , I learned a bit . I learned how to say things in Spanish better , and that's great , because I it's not a language I know or speak at all . Uh , chris , how , what do you ? What did you think ? Did you learn anything ?
Uh , you know , I learned a little bit about the mouth breathing and the tape . Yeah , and that would be . That would be interesting to . I don't know Jason , I snore , so you want me to get . Do you want me to get some mouth breathing tape ?
No , I just body check you in the stop .
Oh , okay , um , so I guess that's the strategy .