Latest news with #TheWeirdestThingILearnedThisWeek
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
A 13th-century schoolboy's doodles show that kids have always been like that
What's the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you'll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci's hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It's your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you'll love the show. By Rachel Feltman Dating back to at least the 1st century in various parts of the world, people have used birch bark as a writing surface. It's soft and easy to scratch into with a stylus, and of course it's easy to peel off the tree. In parts of Russia, there are so many old manuscripts preserved on birch bark that there's basically a field of study devoted to them. As of 2018, archaeologists had found 1,222 specimens in Russia, and 1,113 of them were from a Medieval town called Novgorod. There's very heavy, waterlogged clay soil there that probably protected the birch bark from oxygen and decay, but it also seems like it was an especially literate place for the time period. While some of these notes use Church Slavonic, most of them are written in a vernacular dialect and many recount personal matters and everyday happenings Less than 3 percent of the Medieval settlement has actually been excavated systematically. Some estimates suggest that more than 20,000 additional notes are waiting to be discovered. But the most famous of these birch bark writings come from a single prolific artist who lived there in the 13th century. He drew epic battle scenes and mythical creatures and even rather abstract works. His name was Onfim, and he was a 7-year-old boy. Onfim's birch bark scraps show signs of schoolwork, with psalms and cyrillic alphabet exercises written out on many of them. But they also show doodles that are charmingly recognizable as the work of a bored kid at school. To learn more about Onfim's adventures (and doodles), listen to this week's episode of The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week. And if you're interested in more charming historical scribbles, check out this repository of ancient graffiti. By Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian I didn't actually learn about eels for the first time this week—I've been obsessed with them for years. Back when I was teaching in the Hudson Valley, I used to take my students to help catch and count baby eels as they migrated upriver from the Sargasso Sea. These tiny, translucent fish are glassy and delicate, with eyes and spines you can see straight through—and yet they've already traveled thousands of miles. Eels are mysterious in almost every way: we still don't fully understand how they navigate, how they reproduce, or why they live for decades in freshwater before transforming into long, lean, sex-obsessed creatures that return to the sea to die. On this week's episode I talk about eels' intersex biology, their magnetic sense of direction, and even the strange detour that eel anatomy took through the hands of Sigmund Freud. This story, for me, is not just about eels—it's also about what their biology tells us about queerness, evolution, and the history of science itself. For more of this kind of natural history, check out my new book 'Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature.' By Sara Kiley Watson Lightning strikes millions of trees every year, and for most of them, the outcome is grim: exploded trunks, scorched roots, or a slow, quiet death from internal damage. So when I heard about a tropical tree that not only survives lightning but actually benefits from it, I had to dig in. This story takes us into the dense forests of Panama, where the towering tonka bean tree—Dipteryx oleifera—has evolved to attract lightning strikes and come out stronger after being zapped. These trees are unusually tall, with wide crowns that seem designed to draw bolts from the sky. When lightning hits, they shed pests. They also outlive their similarly-stricken neighbors, which allows them to claim more sunlight for themselves. This discovery challenges long-held assumptions about lightning and forest ecology…and hints at how climate change could shift that balance even more.
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
The foul-mouthed cockatoo that lived to 120
What's the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you'll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci's hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It's your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you'll love the show. By Divya Anantharaman In this week's episode I tell the story of Cocky Bennett, a sulphur-crested cockatoo who lived for more than 120 years. He was once the companion of a sea captain, later became a bar mascot, and developed a reputation for being loud, foul-mouthed, and maybe even a little bit tipsy. But what really caught my attention was what happened after he died. Cocky was preserved by a mother-daughter taxidermy team at a time when that work was almost exclusively done by men. In this episode, I follow Cocky's remarkable journey across generations of human lives, and explore what it means to keep a body—and a personality—around long after death. By Rachel Feltman You've heard of whale falls—the huge nutrient boost whales give to the ocean when they die and sink down to the seafloor—but have you heard of a hot little commodity called whale urine? A study came out recently that looked at another nutrient-boosting phenomenon known as the Great Whale Conveyor Belt. We already knew that whales helped move nutrients through the ocean. Back in 2010, a study described something called the 'whale pump' phenomenon. This describes the way that whales feed deep below the ocean and then go up to the surface to poop, pee and give birth. When they do that, their waste products bring a bunch of the nutrients of the deep up topside. Researchers wanted to see how much nutrient movement happens when whales move horizontally, too—because they move a lot. Many great whales spend their summers feeding in high-latitude areas, then migrate to tropical and subtropical coastal areas to breed in the winter. Southern Hemisphere humpback whales travel more than 5,000 miles to breeding grounds off Costa Rica from the Southern Ocean. And gray whales can travel 14,000 miles round trip between Russian feeding grounds and breeding grounds in Baja California. In the Arctic and North Atlantic, many species move from high latitudes, off North America, Iceland, and Europe, to breeding areas in the Caribbean and off the West coast of Africa. The whales put on weight during the Spring, Summer and Fall, but they generally don't eat at all during the Winter. So all of the biomass they shed in their winter homes—placentas, poop, carcasses and pee—contains nutrients they consumed elsewhere. The new study looked at humpbacks, gray whales, and north atlantic and southern right whales. They estimate that these animals drop more than 100 million pounds of biomass and 8.3 million pounds of nitrogen each year. Nitrogen feeds phytoplankton, which support the whole food chain. In Hawaii's Humpback Whale Sanctuary, whales contribute twice the nutrients that are introduced by natural ocean processes. This conveyer belt is also kind of a pee funnel: they're way more spread out when they feed than they are when they breed. One of the researchers compared it to gathering leaves from all over your yard and putting them all in the compost pile. So the next time you take a trip to the beach—or enjoy some fresh seafood—take a second to thank whale pee for the ocean's bounty! By Lauren Leffer Astronauts aboard the ISS experience all sorts of minor ailments, including rashes, sudden allergies, inflammation, and the resurgence of latent viral infections like chicken pox and mononucleosis. It's all part of the well-known phenomenon of astronaut immune dysfunction. If we want to get better at sticking around in space long-term it's a problem we'll have to address. Part of the issue is probably microgravity, but another aspect may be the much smaller microbial space travelers that leave Earth with humans (and the ones that don't). Scientists recently published the most comprehensive ever survey and analysis of microorganisms on the space station, and they discovered some unsettling stuff. For one, compared with all surveyed Earth environments, the ISS microbiome most closely resembles that of a hospital isolation room. It's a super deprived microbial environment, lacking in diversity. Plus antimicrobial resistance genes scientists have a few potential solutions in mind. Some unexpectedly tasty options, and then some others that you probably wouldn't want to eat. Listen to learn about how we could make space infrastructure healthier, and/or read all about it on the Popular Science website. Bonus: While researching this episode, I found out that NASA has all sorts of incredible images on its Flickr page, including these photos documenting the making of some frankly, appalling-looking, space pizza. But at least the astronauts seem to be having fun.
Yahoo
09-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
The Earth once vibrated for 9 days straight
What's the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you'll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci's hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It's your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you'll love the show. By Sara Kiley Watson On September 16, 2023, vibrations shook the entire world—and didn't stop for nine days. The phenomenon started in East Greenland, but in the space of an hour, the strange hums had spread via the Earth's crust and reached all the way to the other end of the world in Antarctica. Across the entire world, seismic monitoring stations, the ones we typically use to keep an eye on earthquakes and the like, started lighting up in response. But the noise that came through to the seismologists was nothing like the quick, car-crash-like noise that typically occurs with earthquakes. Instead, every 90 seconds, you'd hear this one 'donk'—and it looked far from normal on a graph. The cause? A domino-fall that started with climate change. A melting glacier could no longer support a mountaintop in a fjord in East Greenland, and when that mountain top came crashing down it created a mega-tsunami about 650 feet tall. That tsunami then created a rocking seiche, or a standing wave, which was stuck going back and forth inside the narrow fjord. This back and forth motion made the whole planet shake. Luckily, there were no casualties in this remote corner of the world, but it's another spooky reminder of how climate change can make for strangeness that sends the whole world buzzing. By Trace Dominguez One of my favorite questions we ever got on That's Absurd, Please Elaborate came from a listener named Tessa on Spotify. She asked: How long would it have taken Wesley to build up his immunity to iocane powder? You know, that iconic scene in The Princess Bride—poisoned wine, a battle of wits, one man drops dead, the other smugly reveals he's been microdosing poison this whole time? I went way too hard on this one. Like, 40-minutes-of-absurd-scientific-deep-dive hard. Because I had to know: could you actually do that? Could you really build up immunity to a poison? This week on Weirdest Thing, I dig into the wild history of Mithridates VI—aka the Poison King—who allegedly drank small amounts of poison daily to become immune (and yeah, probably was not a great dude). I break down the science of what poisons and venoms actually are, how they affect the body differently, and whether you can train your immune system to fight them off. Spoiler: poisons like arsenic or cyanide mess with your body in ways you can't just 'get used to.' But venoms—like the kind from the insanely venomous inland taipan snake (which is, of course, Australian)—now, that's a different story. Venoms trigger immune responses, meaning there's some basis for building tolerance…if you're very careful. To get the full deep dive on poison (and venom) immunity, check out my show That's Absurd Please Elaborate. By Rachel Feltman Pee comes up pretty often on The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week. We've talked about folks selling it. We've talked about doctors drinking it. We've talked about why you can't help but let it loose the second you get home from running errands. We've even talked about how some bugs can use 'super propulsion' to launch their urine out like little missiles. On this week's episode, we're exploring that phenomenon where people get up to use the bathroom together—except in chimps. A new study out of Japan has uncovered previously undocumented behavior in one of our closest animal relatives: contagious urination. Researchers at the Kumamoto Sanctuary observed 20 captive chimpanzees for more than 600 hours, recording over 1,300 individual urination events. They found a statistically significant phenomenon of chimps being more likely to pee right after seeing other chimps go. This clustering of urination events wasn't random. Chimps were more likely to pee if they were within visual range of a peer who'd just done the same, and higher-ranking individuals were more likely to set off a chain reaction. Surprisingly, though, the likelihood of simultaneous peeing didn't seem to depend on how socially close the chimps were, which sets this behavior apart from better-known contagious behaviors like yawning. Contagious yawning, common in humans and other social animals, is thought to be linked to social bonding, empathy, and group coordination—but the evolutionary driver behind contagious peeing remains unclear. The researchers offered a few ideas: it might be a way of preparing for a group activity ('everyone go before we get back on the road!'), or it could help keep scent markers concentrated in one place, reducing the chances of predators catching a whiff. But we can't know for sure!
Yahoo
26-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Squirrels could be the key to getting us into deep space
What's the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you'll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci's hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It's your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you'll love the show. By Lauren Leffer Certain species of ground squirrels hibernate underground without any food or water for up to eight months of the year. It's a super-extreme survival strategy, enabled by a complicated cascade of physiological processes, some of which we understand and many of which scientists are still trying to figure out. Helping them along is funding and interest from heavy hitters in the research world like NASA, the European Space agency, and private aerospace companies, because–since the 1960's–those with their eyes on the stars have wondered if human hibernation could enable us to travel farther and more safely in isn't just a long nap. It's closer to death than sleep. While in hibernation torpor, ground squirrels' endure up to a 95 percent reduction in their metabolic rate. Their heart and respiration rates drop to a few beats and breaths per minute. Their brain waves go flat. Their body temperatures plummet to near freezing for some species (or even below freezing for Arctic ground squirrels). Yet amid all of this, the squirrels stay pretty healthy: maintaining muscle mass, reversing pre-hibernation diabetes, experiencing organ regeneration, stalling aging, and undergoing physiological shifts that can ward off things like radiation damage. For these reasons and more, scientists have been studying if we can harness the power of squirrel hibernation for ourselves. It could help propel us to outer reaches of the galaxy. Even if it doesn't, it's poised to fuel some big Earth-bound biomedical advances. Listen to learn more about squirrel-sicles, the challenges of long-distance space travel, and the ultimate in restorative rest. Or read all about it in this Popular Science feature article. By John Green Tuberculosis has been curable since the 1950s, yet it remains the deadliest infectious disease in the world, killing 1.5 million people each year. That's largely due to our failure to get treatment to those who need it. I talk all about how tuberculosis shaped the world—and how humanity has allowed it to thrive thanks to injustice and inequity—in my new book 'Everything is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of our Deadliest Infection.' On this week's episode of Weirdest Thing, I share the story of a man who became consumed with finding a cure for consumption. In the 18th and 19th centuries, TB thrived in the crowded living and working conditions of industrializing cities, yet people believed it was an inherited disease, even romanticizing it as a mark of beauty and artistic sensitivity. James Watt, famed for his contributions to the steam engine, dedicated years to trying to cure TB after his children became ill with the disease. His failed contraption, which treated TB by pushing carbon dioxide into the lungs to reduce the amount of air there, was closer to viable than you might think: the bacteria that causes TB is highly aerobic, meaning it needs lots of oxygen to survive. Sometimes doctors actually collapse one lung to help patients recover from TB. That was much more common in the early 20th century, but it's a technique still employed for some treatment-resistant cases of TB today. Today, despite being curable, TB still kills millions. And recent funding cuts threaten to worsen the spread of drug-resistant TB, raising the specter of a world where the disease regains its early 20th-century deadliness. If you want to learn more, you can find 'Everything is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of our Deadliest Infection' anywhere books are sold. By Rachel Feltman When Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE, it buried thousands of people in ash, preserving eerie casts of their final moments. But one unfortunate resident may have been preserved in an even more extreme way—by having his brain turn to glass. Researchers recently confirmed that glassy black fragments found in a skull from the eruption are vitrified brain tissue, marking the only known case of an animal's tissue undergoing this process. It took a perfect storm of extreme heat and rapid cooling to make this happen, and it's unlikely to have ever happened before—or to ever happen again. Tune into this week's episode to learn how it all went down!
Yahoo
26-02-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Chicago's pollution could be keeping river monsters at bay
What's the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you'll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci's hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It's your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you'll love the show. By Lauren Leffer Silver carp pose a big threat to freshwater ecosystems… and also recreational boaters in the U.S. The invasive fish, which can be more than three feet long and upwards of 20 pounds, feed near the water's surface and are easily startled. When boaters go by, the fish leap out of the water by the dozen, and are liable to hit anything in their path—including people. Even when they go undisturbed by humans, the fish still manage to sow chaos. They outcompete native species for food, and cause a complete reorganization of local ecosystems in the waterways where they establish. Already, they've triggered native species declines in the Missouri, Ohio, and Mississippi rivers and watersheds. And they're on the cusp of gaining some big ground. Silver carp are less than 50 miles away from entering Lake Michigan. From there, they could subsequently spread through all of the Great Lakes and the rivers that feed into the lakes. Yet mysteriously, something has been holding them at bay for almost a decade. Unfortunately, science increasingly suggests that thing might be urban water pollution. What's a conservation manager to do? Listen closely to the latest episode of The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week to ponder this environmental conundrum. By Rachel Feltman In October 1968, the deep-sea submersible Alvin was preparing for a routine dive off the coast of Martha's Vineyard. Then a crucial cable snapped. Luckily, the hatch was still open—so everyone made it out okay. But unluckily, the hatch was open—so the vessel sank 5,000 feet to the ocean floor. It would remain there for nearly a year before being recovered. Alvin made it back to the surface in surprisingly good shape… and so did some of its cargo. Inside the sub, researchers discovered a metal lunchbox packed with apples, thermoses of beef bouillon, and six bologna sandwiches, all remarkably well-preserved. The sandwiches were only slightly soggy, the apples looked 'pickled,' and despite a grayish tint, the bologna was still pink in the middle. Scientists were baffled. How had this meal survived nearly a year without rotting? In this episode, we explore the incredible journey of Alvin, the strange science of deep-sea decay, and why microbes in the drink just don't seem up to the task of making a sandwich go bad. And, of course, we have to ask the question—who in their right mind actually took a bite? By Laura Baisis We know that dolphins and even dogs can surf in the water—according to viral videos in the early YouTube days. Apparently, bats can also surf. But instead of cruising through the water, the spooky little guys surf the air. A recent study published in the journal Science found that when some of these winged mammals take on long-haul journeys, they will surf along the warm fronts of storms so that they can make it further while spending less energy. They're working smarter, not harder, and taking advantage of the air to travel a longer distance with less work The study looked at a group of common noctule bats. These bats are found across parts of Europe, Asia, and North Africa and are one of only four bat species that are known to migrate across all of Europe. Using tiny sensors, the team was able to track the bats' migration. They found that changes in air temperature had a strong association with migratory flight. The bats were more likely to begin their movements just before warm fronts came in, leaving on nights where the air pressure dropped and temperature spiked. They appear to be leaving before incoming storms and then 'surfing' along the air movements that come with warm fronts, like drops in barometric pressure, temperature, and better wind. Importantly, these findings could have implications for bat conservation. Bats can be susceptible to injury from wind turbines, so knowing when migrating bats might be in the area could allow engineers enough time to periodically shut down turbines.
