stepping into science pt. 2

Scientists have discovered that the universe is flat and infinite, challenging previous beliefs. Greenland's glaciers are melting at a faster rate than expected, leading to a rise in sea levels. Springtails, tiny insects, have more control over their jumps than previously thought. Marsquakes are likely caused by magma movements beneath the planet's surface. Fossils from the Eddiacaran period suggest a mass extinction occurred around 550 million years ago. Lastly, a study found that people are more likely to dance when there is more bass in the music. Humans and chimpanzees share 98% of their DNA. Hello and welcome to Stepping into Science. My name is Morgan. I'm Christine. And here's your updates for the week. We have figured out how to say quirks now. Apparently it's quark spelled k-w-o-r-k. Pronounced like that. Yeah, pronounced like that. From last week. Yeah, when I was butchering it all the time. We are also going to do something new this week and we're going to do a weekly science question that will be answered at the end of each episode. So this week's question is how much DNA do humans and chimps share like chimpanzees? We will answer that at the end. Next to Christine. Okay, so flat earthers may actually be on to something. So a theoretical astrophysicist on David Spurgle studied the shape of the universe for many years. Spurgle measured the cosmic microwave background or CMB, which are irregularities of light left over from the Big Bang. So the measurements of the CMB and the variations in it show that the universe is flat and infinite. Rapid expansion helps this theory and shows that it's expanding outward stretches it flat. Evidence also points to the critical density of the universe. It is just below critical density so the universe is flat and it expands continuously. It looks the same from every angle so this also helps influence the fact that it is flat. And there is a 0.2% chance of error that they are wrong about it being flat. Wait, really? Yeah, they're on to something. So they're not as stupid as we thought. Well, it's not like they're stupid. They just, they had the right theory just not in the right place. Not the right execution. Not the right place. Yeah, um, the theory was okay. The execution wasn't. Poor Bob and Carl over there are just like, oh, we're wrong. We're wrong. At least we're right about something. We're right about something. We're still aliens though. We've got to be aliens. Well, actually, technically, they're like the microscopic bacteria they keep finding on Mars. That's technically an alien. Well, yeah. I mean, they're still working on that though. They're single cellular organisms. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Anyways, yeah. Springtails. I'm gonna get a little preface before this. Springtails are tiny little insects that live in the dirt, right? They're really cool, by the way. At least I find them. But they're little tiny insects that live in the dirt. They're about as small as head-lice, but they don't do any of that. They live in the dirt. They're like really, really good for like the micro-nutrients. Cicadas? Yeah. Like under the ground. They're like really good for the micro-nutrients. They're like worms. They decompose stuff that comes in the ground. So like, they decompose like organic nutrients and all that stuff. Oh, okay. Yeah. So springtails have more control than originally thought. Springtails are famous for having no control of where they jump. They don't have wings, but have a hinged ground smacker, which I found really cool. That when they smack it against the ground or water, it launches them into the air. Like bunnies. Yeah, like bunnies. They just like propel themselves across the land. I wonder what would happen if you gave them caffeine. But no, they are, like scientists originally thought they had absolutely no control about where they chose to land, but they, when they smack it against the ground or water, it launches them. And the scientists, they found a study, they used the camera to shoot a 10,000 frames per second to watch them launch themselves, to see if they like actually do have some control. And they found that they have a lot of control. They also found that about 85% of the time, they land in the predicted zone. Their predicted zone in this case was like a water tub in the middle of like a table. Oh, so they wanted some like water. Yeah, they want, so like, because they can launch themselves out of water and on the ground, or out of ground onto water. But yeah, they're very like harmless. They're like good bugs. Like if you're ever, you know like terrariums, where you close them up and then they do their own thing. Like most people like put springtails in there to like clean up like if plants die and grow new ones, they'll eat like the dead stuff. Oh wait, they're really good actually. That's interesting. I know. On to you. Okay, so we're going to talk about Greenland's ice. So it is predicted that sea level may rise faster than expected from the Greenland glaciers. So more than six times what was previously thought to be contributed from the ice is going to be improved. Right. Yeah. Okay, so other melting ice is being caused by human climate change and it may also affect these results. So as of right now, these results are just a prediction. It could be worse, it could be better, who knows. Sorry for this name. Shafaquat? You can not call him Shafaquat. Abiscon? Whatever. Shafaquat. Abiscon and colleagues. And his colleagues studied the Northeast Greenland ice stream. So an ice stream is a fast-moving piece of ice and in this case it is heading to the sea. So this could raise the water level to more than a meter over the past couple years. So this one glacier splits into two separate glaciers near the coast and it prevents ice from going into the into the sea and this is only happening while it's frozen. So when one of these two glaciers collapsed about a decade ago, the ice flow sped up. So the team studying this looked at GPS data and at three points on the glacier's main part. So the data shows acceleration at all three of the points from 2016 to 2019. They also looked at aerial data and it agreed with the GPS data that ice was traveling up to 200 kilometers. Researchers think that 2100 it will be more than 14 to 16 millimeters of sea level rise. Really? Yeah. So like the ice is melting faster because of one glacier collapsing or? No, it's moving into the ocean faster. So it's causing everything to rise. Well yeah I mean it is not a good thing as of right now. I mean the only thing that would really fix this would be like another ice age happening which is it we don't want that either. Well that isn't predicted to happen for like another two thousand some years or more. Yeah and let's keep it that way. Well no not keep it too much that way. We want it to go back to normal, not to freeze over. Not on the livable standards. Yeah so okay my story, my next story for this week is a Marsquake update. So like Christine's story from last week. Marsquake. Was the Marsquakes from went from the quarks to the Marsquakes? Yeah well quark. Quark. Quark. Whatever. Why did they name it like that? But they spelled it weird and then they named it and then they like pronounced it weird. Okay. But like updates. New research shows that the quakes were probably caused by magma moving under the planet's surface. Quakes originated from the Cerebus Fossae region. Research also suggests that quakes may be due to the surface cooling and shrinking over time. Results are consistent with data from earthquakes. Oh so it's a lot similar to earthquakes. Yeah it's not just because of that. Because last week it was because they thought it was because something hit the planet right? Yes. Now they're finding like there's still, Mars is still volcanically active. Is it only in certain areas though? It's kind of like our tectonic plates type deal. So where they shrink in certain areas but it's starting to create new like border-ish. Like our planet replaces it. Theirs is getting like less and less of like their outer surface is like getting smaller and then when it puts new like surface out it cools and shrinks the planet more together I guess. Huh. Yeah and they said that results were very consistent with like volcanic activity on Earth when like tectonic plates and earthquakes do stuff. Nice. Yeah. Okay so mine's evolving fossils and so for my caption on this one it says I got a bone to pick although I have none. No you got to keep that in mind though. Okay I got a bone to pick even though I have none. Do I need a bone toothpick now? Sorry you'll understand. So after the Cambrian explosion which was about 53.8 million years ago, there was thought to be five major mass extinction to get to the evolution that we are at now. Researchers from the US found evidence of extinction happening around 550 million years ago in the Eddicarian period. So Virginia text paleobiologist, yeah biologist, Scott Evans and his colleagues collected data of rare fossils and these were from softer bodied animals and they also discovered a sudden shift in their biodiversity. So because their softer bodies don't fossilize the same as harder bodies like bones and shells and stuff, they thought that they just failed to fossilize. But then they discovered there is an increase of biodiversity between the Avalon and White Sea stages which are the earliest and the mid part of the Eddicarian period. And this is when they noticed small mogul animals appeared. And this is a big change because previous animals were originally stationary. So 80 percent of the species ended up disappearing during this time and it was thought that it was a result of mogul animals altering the environment and ended up replacing the stationary. But they would have found overlaps of evolved and older species and they did not find any of this so they ruled out the theory. So the animals from the White Sea period survived and became larger. They had a larger surface area so they thought this could be them adapting to a low oxygen water environment. And so the larger surface area just means that there's more cells in contact with the water so that they can take in more oxygen. So a quote is, quote, thus our data support a link between Eddicarian biotic turnover and environmental change similar to other major mass extinctions in the geological records, the team concludes, end quote. Really? Yeah. Well, okay, while we're on the topic of dinosaurs and fossils, there was an amontosaurus. Do you know what an amontosaurus is? Yeah. Well, they found a huge mummified amontosaurus somewhere and they found this in 1912, okay? And they kept it mummified basically in a museum, right? And apparently this year, I think it was somewhere in, I think they found it somewhere in Canada or somewhere on the continent of North America. Some scientists decided that they wanted to cut like some of the meat from the neck and cook it and eat it. Okay. Oh, I actually heard something about that. Yeah. On mummies? Yeah. Like, it's from like, it's not, they were Greek or whatever. No, it wasn't Greek. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no more and more and this was like analyzing their dance movements to see which people like more and then afterwards they did like a survey they like see which like I don't know why I'm so happy about this but I am to see which um how it made people feel and apparently results show that the more base there was the more dancing that happened huh and it's very weird cuz like you know like honestly I love when there's more base involved in life well yeah like yeah I believe it because people are gonna like dance to heavy metal music more than they're gonna dance to some opera singing if you think about it it makes sense yeah I mean it does but it was like okay yeah especially and I'm betting they did it at a rock concert well anyway but yeah it makes me think too cuz like a bunch of people I know put new speakers in their pickup or their car is just to have more bass and more trouble because you can feel the music that way which is kind of funny cuz yeah you can feel the music you know the song that goes come on feel the noise oh I think that's what they were meaning in this like literally no it's not oh I forget who no it's not really a bass song it's a rock song cuz it goes come on feel the noise girls rock the boys oh yeah yeah wild yeah it's not really but it's more like an old rock song cuz I remember listening to it all the time and then like oh you're like oh yeah let's feel the beat and it's like oh gosh it's funny though cuz it's like the dance floor whoa I'm gonna go dance come on feel the noise maybe we play a guinea pig song in there or something cuz I know there's so many like the narwhal song oh there's so many like the narwhal narwhal swimming in the ocean we were we I was a weird child this is a lot of rambling yeah you have the answer to the question remember the question that we asked beginning of this episode is how much DNA do humans and chimpanzees share the answer is 98% nice so we are a monkey we are pretty monkey yeah we are turning into monkeys now we also share like 50% with like a banana I think it's something like that I think it's like 70% we share a lot of DNA we are a yellow I'm not gonna go no I didn't know imagine if we were a yellow like Simpsons and then there's like this one person that is like it's like different more evolved more evolved and not a banana but and like the normal idea like the Newman normal human skin color and then there he was they were the only person on earth that was like a normal human skin color the rest of them were yellow like bananas and he just became like the uprising then that's how we evolved yeah this is how we evolved this is how evolution works I guess okay so this is the end of our podcast we still haven't come up with an outro so I guess how do you turn this thing off