Listener Questions #41

23:52And I look forward to hearing your response to this little mini lecture on earthworms. Hey, Daniel and Kelly. Tan here. I just finished the episode and I did not expect to walk away with my mind blown. And sorry for the confusion about the AMA reference. That was from a past episode. I don't remember which one, but that's what got me thinking about earthworms in the first place. And so, Kelly, the jumping worms really got me. I was perfectly fine with earthworms my whole life, and then you drop that, they can jump? Man, and now I'm questioning everything. So, thanks for that. The Darwin detail stuck with me.

24:34The man already changed biology forever, and then spent the end of his life watching earthworms. You know, that's the kind of curiosity I respect. And lastly, the ecological impact. I came in thinking earthworms are universally good, but finding out that they could actually disrupt native ecosystem completely reframe things for me. So yeah, thank you both. I appreciate it. And this is exactly why I listen to you too. Take care.

25:14For business owners and entrepreneurs, there's a constant challenge, getting things done fast and done well. Why not have both? That's why Wix Harmony stands out. It's an AI website builder that helps create a website quickly without compromising your vision. A fully functional site can be built for any business just by describing the idea. Then you can choose to chat with AI or edit everything manually to get it exactly right. There's also Aria, an AI agent available to answer questions or help complete tasks. And here's what makes it even better. Aria doesn't just live in a chat box. You can click anywhere on your site and ask her to make changes instantly.

25:58It's these details that make creating with Wix Harmony feel seamless. Join millions of businesses already using Wix and try Wix Harmony for free at wix.com slash harmony. That's wix.com slash harmony.

26:15Hello, hello. This is Malcolm Glabal from Smart Talks with IBM. Today we're diving into a fascinating conversation with Stefano Pallard, head of fan development for Scuderia Ferrari HP. Your pronunciation is strongly American. It's more Scuderia Ferrari. I'm still working on rolling my R's. But what I was able to learn from Stefano was the importance of engaging the Tifosi, the Ferrari superfans in the digital age. Ferrari fans and superfans want to be part of something, want to belong to something. So they want to be part of a community, and ultimately they want to be part of a winning team. You've got Ferrari, which has a long history, design history.

27:00And now you're interacting in a kind of digital space. I'm curious how you balance those two traditions. When it comes to fan engagement, it's really digital technology and digital channels are being able to create a deeper connection with our fans. To learn more about how Ferrari and IBM are using technology to build deeper connections with fans, visit ibm.com slash Ferrari.

27:51or injection is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema, also called atopic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies. EBCLIS can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you're allergic to EBCLIS. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with EBCLIS.

28:17Before starting EBCLIS, tell your Ask your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Ask your doctor about EBCLIS and visit ebglis.lily.com or call 1-800-LILY-RX or 1-800-545-5979. Every business has an ambition. PayPal Open is the platform designed to help you grow into yours with access to business loans so you can expand and hundreds of millions of PayPal customers worldwide. Your customers can pay all the ways they want today with PayPal, Venmo, Pay Later, and all major cards so you can focus on the future. When you need a partner trusted by millions, there's one platform for all business.

28:52PayPal Open. Grow today at PayPalOpen.com. Loan subject to approval in available locations. 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 for movement and recovery. On workout and rest days, reach for a 30-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 VitalProteins.com to learn more and where to buy. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.

29:24This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

29:38And we're back from a conversation that makes my stomach turn a little bit, because I think earthworms are a little bit gross to a conversation that sounds kind of delicious. Our next question is about the Milky Way and it's from Alice. Alice is an old friend. She's been listening for a long time and writing to us with questions. I think she's a defense attorney in the Bronx. So thanks very much, Alice, for your question. And this question is about the Milky Way, but it is not a tasty question you're going to bite into. We are going to be talking about lots of dark things in the universe. We're not going to get into dark chocolate.

30:14Okay, well, let's go ahead and hear Alice's question. Hi, Alice. Hi, Daniel and Kelly. This is Alice from the Bronx, New York. I have a question. Is it possible that space was already expanding before the Milky Way was born and that the stars and galaxies of the Milky Way formed from a nebulae? Okay, thanks. Bye. So before we dig into the history of the universe, Kelly, I want your non-physicist interpretation of this question. Oh, no. What do you think Alice is asking? Well, so I would need to know what a nebula is, which if you had asked me earlier, hey, Kelly, do you know what a nebula is? I would have been like, yeah, of course.

30:50But now I'm like, what is a nebula? Is it just, I thought it was like, it's like a group of galaxies or something, right? No, what is a nebula? Make sure I get that definition correct. This is great. You're like, when you cut a worm in half, do you get two? And I'm like, is a nebula a group of galaxies? We are losing our credibility. So a nebula is just a big cloud of gas, right? In the Milky Way, we have stars and we have planets and stuff. We also have vast clouds of gas that have not collapsed into stars and planets. And they're like the breeding ground for new stars sometimes. And historically, some of the things that we see in the sky, which we used to call nebula, we discovered are actually galaxies.

31:31That's like Hubble's big discovery. Some of these smudgy things are actually distant galaxies, not clouds of gas in our own galaxy. I got to say, I am so excited to start making fart jokes with my kids that involve nebulae so that I can start to get them excited about cosmology and stuff. And that is going to be my in for my 12-year-old. So anyway, okay. So we know that space is expanding since the Big Bang. Was it already expanding? So I'm guessing the answer is going to be yes, because space has been expanding since the Big Bang. So it was already expanding and that the stars of the Milky Way formed from a ball of gas.

32:09What do you think this question means, Daniel? I think this question is asking about the history of the universe and the formation of galaxies and how those two things play off of each other. So I thought let's go through the history of the universe and give the context and then we'll go through the development of galaxies, how the Milky Way was born. And then let's come back. I'm going to ask you again in that context what you think Alice is asking so that we can make sure we nail her question. Okay, perfect. All right. So let's start with the history of the universe. Yeah. So we don't know how the universe began, remember?

32:43We have a theory called the Big Bang Theory, which takes us back to a very early, hot, dense state. But the Big Bang Theory does not suggest where that came from. It does not include a singularity, lots of misunderstanding, and miscommunication about the nature of the Big Bang Theory. and the scientific understanding of the early universe. But what you should have in your mind is a very hot, very dense state. And that came from we don't know what, maybe some earlier field, the inflaton field or something, all very speculative. But what you have in that first state is a lot of matter and antimatter, which formed, again, we don't know from where.

33:20Okay. And then? And because there's a lot of matter and a lot of antimatter, you get a lot of annihilation. Electrons run into positrons, turn into photons. Quarks run into anti-quarks, turn into photons or gluons. And so very, very early on, most of the matter in the universe disappears and we're left with radiation. So we start with lots of matter and antimatter. And then very quickly, that converts to a very little bit of matter left over because there was more matter than antimatter. And then mostly photons. The universe mostly filled with photons. Okay. So whenever you say very, very little matter, I always think, but the Earth is huge.

33:57but this is like a cosmic sense. Yeah, that's exactly right. So there's enough matter to make planets and galaxies, but relatively it's small. Relative to how much matter we had before that, it's like one billionth of the matter is left over. Oh, wow. So all the matter to make the earth and the galaxies and the stars and everything is one billionth of the original amount of matter that was in the universe, most of which annihilated with the equivalent amount of antimatter. Wow, okay, all right. And so at this point, is any of that matter nebula? No, it's more like a plasma. It's still very dense, right?

34:30It's still very hot. There's photons everywhere. There's still electrons and quarks. I wouldn't call this a nebula. It's just like a hot early universe plasma. Okay. And there's also dark matter there, right? When we made the original particles, we also made dark matter. So we have dark matter and we have normal matter. And there's a little bit of dark energy. So we think the dark energy is just the energy in space. The universe was very, very compact. So there wasn't a whole lot. And so there's not a whole lot of dark energy. It's like a fraction of the energy of the universe. So we start out mostly photons, but the universe is expanding, right?

35:06And for about 50 ,000 years, photons still reign supreme. Most of the energy of the universe is in photons for the first 50 ,000 years. But the universe is expanding. And what happens when the universe expands is that the energy density goes down. And that seems like it makes sense. If you have like one ping pong ball per cubic meter and you expand the volume without adding any more ping pong balls, then the density of ping pong balls goes down because you have the same number in the numerator and you've increased the denominator. So the energy density drops. And that's how normal matter gets diluted when you expand the universe.

35:44You have protons, you expand the universe. Now you have less density of protons. But that's not the way everything behaves when you expand the universe. And that's really crucial for understanding the whole history of the universe because radiation, when you expand the universe, it also gets diluted. You have fewer photons per cubic meter because you have the same number of photons and more cubic meters. But crucially, those photons also lose energy. You expand the universe, it stretches the photons to longer wavelength, which is less energy. This is one of the ways energy is not conserved in the early universe.

36:19So the energy density of photons drops more quickly than the energy density of matter. Okay. And so I'm finding myself wondering now, we've spent a lot of time on energy. Could you signpost us to why energy is going to be important for understanding the answer to the question? Yes, exactly. Because the energy fractions of the universe, how much of it is in dark energy, it controls the expansion of the universe. Okay. And the question is about the universe expansion. So at this early moment, we don't have a lot of dark energy in the universe. And so the universe is expanding, but that expansion is actually slowing down because there's so much matter and radiation, all this kind of energy density that creates gravity.

36:59So the expansion is slowing down. So the universe was expanding and it's mostly photons. And then after 50 ,000 years, it becomes matter dominated. But in all of these cases, the major energy density of the universe tends to slow down the acceleration. Okay, got it. All right. So we are still in an expanding period. What kind of timeframe are we in right now? So for the first 50 ,000 years, the universe is mostly photons. After that, it's mostly matter. For the next 9 billion years, the universe is mostly matter and the expansion is slowing down. Okay. But dark energy is growing because as the universe expands, radiation falls off in energy density very quickly.

37:40Matter falls off in energy density, but dark energy does not. When you create new space, you get new dark energy. So if you expand the universe, even if that expansion is slowing down, you're creating new chunks of space. Those come with new dark energy. So the dark energy fraction of the universe is growing. And at some point, it starts to dominate. And it can overcome the effects of gravity of all this matter and these photons. And that's when the expansion of the universe turns around and begins accelerating again around 4 billion years ago. And that's only because of this energy density argument.

38:13As the universe expands, the fraction of dark energy goes up because dark energy doesn't get diluted. And so now the universe is expanding and accelerating for the last few billion years because we are in a dark energy dominated period. Okay. All right. So now I'm trying to situate the Milky Way in this story. Yeah. When did the Milky Way form? During the deceleration or the acceleration phase? Yeah. So the Milky Way is very, very old. Our solar system is only about four and a half billion years old, but we see much older stars in the Milky Way, which suggests that it's something like 13 billion years old, which is crazy because it means it formed in the very, very early universe.

38:53Like when the universe was less than a billion years old. And the way galaxies form is you get a little baby galaxy formed from the collapse of a bunch of clouds of gas, you might call them nebula, into stars, right? Okay. And then you get like a little baby galaxy of all those stars. And there's another little baby galaxy nearby. Those baby galaxies swirl together and merge, and you get bigger galaxies formed by combining smaller galaxies. Okay. So the Milky Way started around 13-ish billion years ago, maybe a little bit more, from metal-poor stars. There's mostly just hydrogen in the universe.

39:28And then grew through mergers, occasionally like a really big merger of two equally-sized galaxies. We think around 11 billion years ago, there was a merger between two galaxies we call Gaia and Enceladus, not to be confused with the solar system moon, that formed the majority of the Milky Way. And then around 9 billion years ago, the structure was there. You had the disk, et cetera. And that's when a lot of stars get born because you got the compression of a lot of this gas and dust together. And so that's the sort of rough version of the Milky Way. It was born when the universe was expanding but decelerating.

40:04All right. So for as long as we've known about, space has been expanding. Yes, it's always been expanding. Always been expanding. But at some point you were able to get nebula. And you were able to start getting nebula sometime after 50 ,000 years ago? Yeah. Around 380 ,000 years ago, protons and electrons found each other and the universe cooled enough that they settled into like neutral hydrogen, which formed big clouds of gas and seeded the first stars. Okay. And so you've got these nebula and galaxies are born when a bunch of stuff starts clumping together. Yeah. Collapsing into stars. Collapsing into stars.

40:47And everything's already expanding when that's happening. And so is it possible that the Milky Way wasn't formed by a nebula? Because now I'm thinking that all the gas and junk out there, you'd count as a nebula. But is a nebula just like when you have a bunch of gas and stuff like in a small contained area? or yeah, at what point do you get a nebula? Or is it like, there's a threshold question. Well, people think of the universe as mostly stars, but it's really mostly not. A lot of the mass of the galaxy is in huge clouds of gas and dust. Most of the universe is still hydrogen despite the work of stars.

41:21And most of the universe is not collapsed into stars despite the work of gravity. So we're still sort of early in the universe. We started out basically huge clouds of hydrogen. We're mostly still huge clouds of hydrogen. So nebula collapse formed stars which made the Milky Way, and then there's still nebula within the Milky Way that have not yet collapsed into stars. And there's some galaxies out there where star collapse has basically stopped. That's called quenching. And so it's the process we don't understand super well. Another question mark is exactly how the Milky Way began. You know, these little red dot mysteries about the very early universe suggest that there's a lot we don't understand about how galaxies formed and how they got their supermassive black holes at their hearts.

42:00lots of good questions about how that happened in the early universe. But I think the answer to Alice's question, and you tell me if you think we're answering the right one, is that when the Milky Way was born, out of the collapse of a nebula, probably the universe was already expanding, but it wasn't yet accelerating. I think the first part before you said, but it wasn't necessarily, I don't know that acceleration was part of the question, but I think you've provided additional beautiful detail while also answering the question. All right. Well, Alice is skilled in cross-examination being a defense attorney.

42:33So let's pass it back to her and see if she has any follow-up questions for the witness. And please keep sending your questions, Alice. I love hearing from you. We do. Thank you, Daniel and Kelly, for your response. I'm surprised that the formation of the Milky Way was through collapsed stars and mergers and not from a collapsed disk. But it all makes sense after listening to your response. The Milky Way galaxy is not only very old, but it is older than our sun. I truly did not know that, but I now have a better understanding of the formation of the Milky Way galaxy, and I am truly awed at its age and immensity.

43:06Thank you guys so much.

43:17For business owners and entrepreneurs, there's a constant challenge, getting things done fast and done well. Why not have both? That's why Wix Harmony stands out. It's an AI website builder that helps create a website quickly without compromising your vision. A fully functional site can be built for any business just by describing the idea. Then you can choose to chat with AI or edit everything manually to get it exactly right. There's also ARIA, an AI agent available to answer questions or help complete tasks. And here's what makes it even better. Aria doesn't just live in a chat box. You can click anywhere on your site and ask her to make changes instantly.

44:02It's these details that make creating with Wix Harmony feel seamless. Join millions of businesses already using Wix and try Wix Harmony for free at Wix.com slash Harmony. That's Wix.com slash Harmony.

44:19Hello, hello. This is Malcolm Glebel from Smart Talks with IBM. Today we're diving into a fascinating conversation with Stefano Pallard, head of fan development for Scuderia Ferrari HP. Your pronunciation is strongly American. It's more Scuderia Ferrari. I'm still working on rolling my R's. But what I was able to learn from Stefano was the importance of engaging the Tifosi, the Ferrari superfans in the digital age. Ferrari fans and superfans want to be part of something, want to belong to something. So they want to be part of a community, and ultimately they want to be part of a winning team. You've got Ferrari, which has a long history, design history.

45:04And now you're interacting in a kind of digital space. I'm curious how you balance those two traditions. When it comes to fan engagement, it's really digital technology and digital channels are being able to create a deeper connection with our fans. To learn more about how Ferrari and IBM are using technology to build deeper connections with fans, visit ibm.com slash Ferrari.

45:59One year with monthly dosing.

46:19live vaccine when treated with EpGliss. Before starting EpGliss, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Ask your doctor about EpGliss and visit epgliss.lily.com or call 1-800-LILY-RX or 1-800-545-5979. Every business has an ambition. PayPal Open is the platform designed to help you grow into yours with access to business loans so you can expand and hundreds of millions of PayPal customers worldwide. Your customers can pay all the ways they want today with PayPal, Venmo, Pay Later, and all major cards so you can focus on the future. When you need a partner trusted by millions, there's one platform for all business.

46:55PayPal Open. Grow today at paypalopen.com. Loan subject to approval in available locations. 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 for movement and recovery. On workout and rest days, reach for a 30-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 vitalproteins.com to learn more and where to buy. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.

47:28This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

47:42OK, we're back and we're answering questions from listeners. Today, another question from a long-time listener and many-time questioner, Jane, with one of my favourite accents. Hi, Kelly. It's Jane again from the rather bracing red car in England. The other week I was wandering along the beach and it made me think about shells. What are they? I remember being told as a child that if you took a mussel from its shell it would die. But is this just because it's unprotected? Or is it an essential part of its life? Are shells like toenails? Useful, but you can live without them, as we do if one is removed because it's ingrowing.

48:24or are they like ribs which I believe are essential for breathing and am I right in thinking that shells aren't vascularized which would make them more like toenails I really do hope that you can help because listeners they really do answer every question thank you Kelly bye all right I also like Jane's sense of humor so I look forward to hearing what she has to say when she responds here. So snails! Snails are awesome. Let's just talk about snails for a second here before we get to their shells. Were you just waiting for somebody to write it and be like, Kelly, nerd out about snails? Uh, no, but I was excited when somebody did ask me to nerd out about snails because they are definitely awesome.

49:09I do feel like there's a lot of fascinating complexity here that I'm not aware of. So I'm also excited to understand snails better. Did you know that snails are in the same phylum as squids and octopuses and cuttlefish? Whoa. Does that mean if I'm mean to snails, the octopi are going to crawl out of the ocean and enact revenge? I hope so.

49:31But I don't know. But they all have in common that they've got like an identifiable head, a part called like a foot, which is really just like a muscular thing that helps them to get around. a visceral mass, which is like where their organs are stored. It's like when you look at an octopus and it's got that big head, you think, oh, that's probably its brain. It's got a big brain or something in there. No, that's its visceral mass. That's where the rest of its organs are. Like its brain is like a little part sort of like near the eyes or whatever. And all the rest of the stuff in the head is like its visceral mass.

50:01Like that's where it's like testicles are. It's in its head. It's all up there in its head. I don't know why I picked testicles, but that's the first thing I imagine. Because there's a kind of octopus that has a part of its tentacle that can break off to deliver sperm inside the head of another octopus to the ovaries that are in there. Wow, I'm overwhelmed with information here. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm going all over the place. I'm excited. Visceral mass. I'm stuck on this. Visceral means like you're feeling it. It's like really visceral. What does visceral mass mean? A viscera is another word for like guts.

50:35So like if a feeling is really visceral, it like hits you in the guts. That's how I think about it. I see. Now I understand that. Yeah. And so you're saying the visceral mass is not where the thinking is happening. It's where the, like the digestion and all that other stuff is happening. Yeah. Yep, yep, yep. Okay. Okay. And they also have a structure called a radula, which is a, like, you know, when a cat, when a little kitten licks you and you're like, oh, it's like, I expected your tongue to be soft, but it's like, it's covered in all these little hooks. Have you had that experience or do cats?

51:04Yes. Yeah. Okay. You've been lucky enough to be licked by a cat. I had cats for most of my life before we had kids who were allergic. and became dog people. Oh, I see. Well, it's good to be a dog person too. So they've got these like tongues that are really hard. And so like snails, for example, when they're like trying to eat a leaf, they keep rubbing this like really rough tongue on the leaf to like pull off pieces of the leaf and then sort of bring it into their mouths. And you can find like squids that will also like, if they open up their beaks, their tongues will have these like radula, These like spiky, naily things on them that like help them pull stuff in.

51:41But I'm confused. Snails have tongues and beaks? They don't have beaks. Beaks are like a squiddy sort of thing. Okay. But they do have like tongues. Where on the snail is the tongue? Like in the mouth. Okay. Where's the mouth on the snail? Okay. So if you're imagining a snail, there's like an end where you see the tentacles. If you're imagining the kind of snail that I'm imagining. They do have little eye spots on the top of those to like help them detect light. They don't see much, but they can see like blurry outlines and shadows and stuff. But those tentacles are in fact coming out of their head.

52:18And then sort of like towards the bottom, you've got like a mouth with a little tonguey thing. Wow. The whole snail seems so gooey. I just imagined the whole thing was a tongue. So now it's like you're telling me the tongue has a little tongue in it or something. Oh, I hadn't. No, no. All right. Like, Daniel is learning basic biology on the show today. Well, that's good. And there's a lot of mollusk species. So mollusks, that includes octopuses and squids. There's about 85 ,000 living species. But if you just hone in on the gastropods, which are like snails and slugs, there's about 60 ,000 to 70 ,000.

52:54So almost— Different species. Yeah, yeah. So most of the mollusks are actually like snails and slugs, which you can find in the ocean. So actually most of these are marine species. Of course. And then you can find some on land and you can find some in freshwater, but most of them are marine. And in Redcar, England, how many different kinds of species of snails and slugs are there? In the United Kingdom, I found a number that there's 100 species of land snails and 46 species of terrestrial slugs. And are these widely different where like one of them is really huge and another one is super tiny?

53:29Or is this the kind of thing where like only a gastropod nerd is going to be able to tell these two species apart? I don't know in the United Kingdom in particular, but there is a huge amount of variety in snails. I mean, like, so there's giant land snails that weigh like, I think like two pounds. You can get like a really big one. I don't need any snails to exist that are that big, but they do. And then there you can get, you know, teeny tiny little snails. And then you can get snails with just absolutely beautiful shells. You think of like the most amazing thing you'd find on a beach. That was probably made by a snail.

54:00And you might not think of it as a snail because it's beautiful. And I feel like I mostly think of snails as being those like land things that are not so beautiful. But there are snails too. And a slug is just a snail that lost its shell. Oh, really? They're not a different species? Oh, no, no. Sorry. They're different species. They lost their shell in an evolutionary sense. Oh, okay. So not like I pick up a snail, pluck off its shell, and it becomes a slug. No, you would have killed it. Okay. Right. Because inside that shell is where they keep all of their organs. That's where like the visceral mass is.

54:32Let's jump ahead then to Jane's question, which is how does the shell get made? And so surrounding the organs is an organ called the mantle. And the mantle secretes the shell. So snails are born actually like in their eggs. They have teeny tiny little shells. Whoa. I know. They're cute. But they're soft. And so some of them will even like they hatch and then they'll eat the outside part of the egg to get the calcium carbonate to help start strengthening their shell. But so the shell grows. So like, okay, so you're imagining the part where the snail comes out. They grow from that edge outwards.

55:11And so as they're growing, that hole is getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And it's sort of curving as it goes. And so if you look at a shell, the smallest whirl in the center is often like what the baby snail shell would have looked like. That's where it started its life. And then it got bigger and expanded over time. Does that make sense? Okay. And so how is it actually making it? They'll go to limestone to collect things like calcium carbonate. And the mantle is just sort of secreting it out of the back. And it's not vascularized. It's just like a hard structure that it's making by extracting stuff from its diet.

55:45Did you say it was eating rocks? It's like licking limestone? It's like we get, you know, calcium to make our bones from our diets. And it gets it from its diet as well. There's calcium in a variety of different places. And it could be licking limestone to get some calcium for its shell. So is it like a horse goes to lick salt because it needs it? Or is there like enough calcium normally in like leaves? Their diet probably is to some extent impacted by their need to get enough calcium to grow their shells. And actually the fact that you have to find the calcium to grow these shells is thought to be one of the reasons why sometimes gastropods will lose their shells over evolutionary time.

56:23So like it's a requirement that you have to get enough calcium to build this thing, which sort of limits where you can go and what you can eat and stuff like that. And so it's thought that slugs are species where it just sort of didn't seem worth it to spend all of this time trying to get calcium carbonate. And so they have lost their shell. This is a fascinating little geological rabbit hole because isn't a lot of limestone made from ancient shells? Oh, is it like cannibalism separated by millennia? Sort of. It's like, you know, eating your own ancestors or something, right? Or it's like your ancestors have left a little deposit for you.

57:02They're like, oh, by the way, my great-great-great-grandkids are going to need this calcium. I'll just leave it here. It's like when your parents give you money to buy your first house, which does, of course, does not happen to everybody. Didn't happen to me. I bought my own house with my money. Me too. But anyway, yes, for people that that does happen to, it's sort of the same thing. Except many more generations removed. So yeah, so like when people say snails and slugs, it's not like there was one branch in the tree of life and snails went one way and slugs went another. There have been multiple different instances where species that had a shell split off and one path maybe kept their shell and another path lost the shell.

57:39And maybe they lost the shell because they were in a moist environment where they didn't need a shell that they could like curl up in to protect them from dry periods. or there were less predators maybe, or maybe there were lots of good hiding spots and the shell was just making it so you couldn't get in those hiding spots. And making the shell must have a cost, right? So if it's not providing a benefit, then it's going to be a net negative. Yep, exactly. Yeah. So, I mean, the cost is not only that your diet to some extent is determined by your requirement to get enough calcium carbonate to make this shell, but also like now you're too big to get into certain hiding spots and you've got to carry this massive thing around.

58:13And so, yeah, there are trade-offs for having a shell. And Jane was also wondering if these things are like tree rings. Like, can you tell how old a snail is from looking at its shell? Not definitively. So for organisms like fish that live in really cold environments where there's also a warm summer, you get very clear differences in growth in the summer versus the winter. And those differences in growth show up as differences in like how things are laid down in a bone called the otolith, which is like their ear bone. And so when growth slows, the growth looks one way. And then when growth speeds up, it looks a different way.

58:53And so you can look at those transitions to figure out how old the fish is. Does that make sense? And so the idea here would be that maybe snails are putting on growth in a way where you can like track the way that it grows to figure out how old they are. And the answer is it doesn't look like you can do that reliably for most of the species. And in fact, some species even reabsorb some of their shell and can like remodel it. And so that would really throw you off because it would be like, you know what? I'm going to erase the last five years and just like kind of back up and then start over again.

59:27That would be great. But no, it doesn't look like you can age them that way, unfortunately. Jane also asked, is it like toenails? And it's kind of like toenails in that like it's not vascularized. And once it gets away from your cuticle, it's like if it got cut, it wouldn't necessarily hurt. Right. But like if somebody ripped your nail off at the cuticle, that would really hurt and that would be bad. But for the snail, the equivalent would be like ripping off the covering for the organs. And so once all of their organs are exposed, they're goners. And so it would kill them. And you and Jane are both using this word vascularized, which I'm guessing means like does it get blood flow or something?

1:00:08Yeah, yeah, yeah. Essentially, is it already dead? Yeah, yeah. And so I went to the Maryland Sheep and Wolf Festival. I promise this is sort of related. And they had an exhibit where they had ram horns that had been sort of like a ram had died and they cut off the horns. And at the base of the horn, when you cut it off from the skull, there's tons of openings at the bottom. And that's because a lot of the horn is vascularized. And so there's a bunch of blood vessels that go into a bunch of the horn. And if you feel the horn near the base of the head, it's warm because there's blood flow in there.

1:00:40But when you get to the end of it, it's cold because eventually the blood vessels don't go all the way. And so the tips of the growth are no longer vascularized. And vascularized just means has blood vessels in it supplying nutrients and stuff. Yeah. Okay. Okay. And I figured since there's like a sort of mathy connection to snails that you were going to ask me about chirality. Yes. And it turns out that most snails are right-handed, which is to say that the opening opens to the right. To the right of what? So I think it's like if you hold the snail in front of you so the tip of the cone is pointing up, on your right is going to be the opening.

1:01:21Oh, I see. Okay, right. So you can define an axis and then the opening is either left-handed or right-handed relative to that axis. Yes. That makes sense. And so most of them are right and some of them are left. That's so weird how the universe seems to be right-handed in some cases and left-handed in others. Yeah, it's super weird. And I was listening to a podcast called Common Descent where they did like literally two hours on like the evolution of snails and shells and stuff. Wow. Which I thought was fascinating. And I learned that actually some snails like start their lives with one chirality and then they remodel and they end up the other chirality.

1:01:57And this happens like very early in their development. Why that happens? I don't know. Wow. Mysterious. Yeah. Maybe they're switching from the bad team to the good team. Yeah. Could be. Could be. Because some of these snails, if you happen to be born with the opposite chirality, you can't match up the body parts appropriately for baby making. And so you might be a little more lonely than you'd be otherwise. All right. But we'll have a whole other episode about how slugs and snails reproduce, I hear. Yes, we are hoping to get a guest on the show to tell us all about banana slugs in particular, following another request from a listener.

1:02:33So hang tight for that crazy story. So if you haven't heard enough slime and goo on today's episode, don't worry, there's more on the way. There is never enough slime or goo if Kelly is around. That's my opinion. Jane, I hope we haven't talked too much about slime and goo, but, you know, you sent the question so probably you knew what you were getting. And let's hear what you have to think about the answer. And I hope this enhances your beach walks. Hey, Kelly, thank you so much for answering another question of mine. And it is my very great pleasure to let you enjoy my accent once more, Daniel.

1:03:08We don't have many snails on the beach here in Redcar. I think it's too cold for them. But I'm pleased to let you nerd out about them, Kelly. Your answer really hit me in the guts. That was so interesting, especially the bit about where snails get their shells. Glad for an opportunity for DKU bingo with cannibalism. So shells are more like toenails than bones, but removing them would certainly not be conducive to a comfortable existence. Thank you again. I will think of you both next time I wander on the beach. Keep being extraordinary. Okay, thank you very much, everybody who sends in their questions.

1:03:53We'd love to engage with you. This podcast is not a lecture. It's a conversation with you. That means we want to hear from you. Please do write to us, do questions at danielandkelly.org. Yep, we love hearing from you. And I absolutely adore the rabbit holes that I get to go down depending on the questions that I get from y 'all. So please send me down another fun rabbit hole at questions at danielandkelly.org. Do it.

1:04:23Thanks, everybody, for listening. Please go and do us a favor and rate 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 XDNKUniverse. Come engage with us. You can email us at questions at danielandkelly.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 the amazing universe.

1:05:03And we also have the most amazing moderators. This is an iHeart Podcast. Thanks for joining us.

1:05:12Introducing the all-new Mazda CX-5. featuring more connection. Hey Google, where's the nearest Pilates class? Safety that has your back. More discovery on the scenic routes. More passion in the details. And more control in changing weather. The all-new Mazda CX-5. More to move every side of you. See it in five films at mazdausa.com slash five sides. Google is a trademark of Google LLC. Sequences shortened and simulated. Running a business shouldn't feel like surviving a software group project. One app for accounting, another for inventory, another for sales. And somehow, none of them talk to each other.

1:05:53That's where Odoo comes in. An all-in-one business management software that brings every part of your business together. From sales and accounting to inventory and marketing. All in one powerful platform. No messy integrations, no bouncing between tabs. And best of all, no spreadsheets. Stop managing software and start managing your business with one unified system. Try for free today at odoo.com slash iHeartRadio. That's odoo.com slash iHeartRadio. Here's the truth. You could literally be adored by everyone and then come home and still get completely ignored by your own cat. It's classic cat behavior.

1:06:33But new Shiba Premium Puree is a lickable treat that changes all that. They're protein rich, made with bone broth and have the smooth creamy texture cats go crazy for especially when it's hand-fed yeah it's more than a treat it's a fast pass to favorite human status so feed your cat sheba and go from totally ignored to truly adored in just 12 days guaranteed or your money back learn more at sheba.com big transfer news today who's moving me to the couch with domino's best deal ever since they We just added stuffed crust. Any pizza, any toppings, now with stuffed crust for$9.99. It's a long-term contract with no release clause.

1:07:13Only$9.99? Yeah, that sounds like the move. I'm heading straight to Dom. Mmm, no. Prices higher for some locations. Excludes XL and specialty pizzas. Select this offer from$6.15 through$7.26. Online only. Size availability varies by crust type. Max 7 toppings, 6 for hand and New York style crust. Minimum purchase required for delivery. Prices, participation, delivery area, and charges may vary. What's up, cousin? I want a new phone. Have you seen any good deals? Everyone has free phones, but when I switched to T-Mobile, I got more value and so much more. Nice streaming included. And trouble benefits.

1:07:47And the best part? The price of your talk, text, and data is guaranteed for five years. Get more benefits and more value. At T-Mobile, families save and get a five-year price guarantee. Switch now at T-Mobile.com. Qualifying plan requires price guarantee on talk, text, and data. Exclusions like taxes and fees apply. See T-Mobile.com. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.