When 0 = 1000

Added: 2026-05-13

[00:00:00]Hello and welcome to the rest is science. Today we're gonna be field noting field hootin tootin.

[00:00:07]>> Yeah, we're doing like a little field journey. I've brought some specimens, not biological specimens, don't worry.

[00:00:14]But I'll just start I'm going to dive right into this. Here's exhibit one.

[00:00:19]>> Exhibit one is an American Coca-Cola Zero can.

[00:00:23]>> You spoil us, Michael. You really do.

[00:00:26]>> Well, it's empty. I've already drank it.

[00:00:28]It's just a can. Can I Can I Is there You can touch it. Is there anything special about it?

[00:00:32]>> There's nothing special about it. It is exactly how it comes when you buy one in America.

[00:00:38]>> You know, honestly, I thought we'd get through a few more months before we completely run out of material.

[00:00:43]>> Well, hold on. This is going to be cool.

[00:00:45]It's cooler than you think.

[00:00:53]>> This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research UK.

[00:00:56]>> Here's something strange. Your DNA contains more ancient viral fragments than genes. The genes that build our cells make up only 2% of our DNA. And for years, that is what scientists focused on. They treated the rest, the ancient viruses and stuff as junk. But now we know that that hidden majority, sometimes called the dark genome, influences how our biology works and how diseases like cancer behave. It's a reminder that progress rarely comes as a single breakthrough. It builds gradually. Cancer Research UK plays a central role in that progress, supporting decades of research into over 200 types of cancer, work that's helped double survival in the UK over the past 50 years. For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research breakthroughs, and how you can support them, visit cancerresearch.org/therestcience.

[00:01:54]org/therest is science.

[00:02:04]>> So you look at this can and you'll notice a few things. First of all, Coca-Cola Zero. What's the zero refer to?

[00:02:10]>> The the fact it hasn't got any sugar in it.

[00:02:12]>> No sugar. In fact, it says zero sugar.

[00:02:14]That's the official name. Coca-Cola zero sugar. And down here significantly, it says zero calories.

[00:02:21]>> Yeah.

[00:02:21]>> So, how many calories does it contain?

[00:02:23]Well, you'd assume zero.

[00:02:25]>> Zero. And if you look at the nutrition facts, calories zero. Okay, it says it right there. Zero calories. Now, let me show you a UK can of Coke Zo.

[00:02:37]Here it is. Now, this one doesn't look that much different except notice the size difference.

[00:02:43]>> Whoa. Hang on. Cuz this one's 12 fluid ounces.

[00:02:46]>> Yeah. Which is about 355 milit. But in the UK, a can is only 330 milliliters.

[00:02:53]>> Is this why a bisti is so much more of a problem in the US? Just literally down to the >> It's part of it. Yeah, it is part of it.

[00:02:59]However, when it comes to obesity, these are sugar-free, caloriefree apparently items.

[00:03:06]>> Mhm.

[00:03:07]>> If you look at the UK can, it also down at the bottom says it doesn't say zero calories, it says no calories.

[00:03:14]>> I mean, they're synonyms, aren't they?

[00:03:16]>> Right. They're synonyms. zero calories, no calories. They both have zero calories. But if you look at the UK can that says no calories. And then you look at the nutrition information here, it says that actually this contains 1 kiloalorie of energy.

[00:03:34]>> That's 1,000 calories.

[00:03:35]>> 1,000 calories. Now, I don't I'm not a mathematician, >> but there's a big difference between zero and a thousand.

[00:03:42]>> I am a mathematician. I can confirm your suspicions are correct. that zero does not equal 1,000. So why are they able to say no calories right here and then over here they say well actually there's a thousand.

[00:03:54]>> Is there an answer to this or is this just >> there is an answer >> is there?

[00:03:57]>> There's two answers. So first of all the formulations are the same. It's not like they sneak some calorie thing into the UK version. First of all the UK can doesn't really contain a thousand calories. A calorie is a measure of energy. And one calorie is the energy it takes to warm up a millill of water 1°.

[00:04:21]>> Mhm. The food that we eat gives our bodies a lot more energy than that. And so we actually measure dietary calories in kilo calories, thousands. But in America especially, we use the word calorie when what we really mean is thousands of calories.

[00:04:40]>> Yeah. I mean that that's always been something that's confused me quite a lot. People use calories kilo calories kind of interchangeably, >> right? In Europe, you'll see k cal k c a l all the time. It's kilo calories. But in America, we just call them calories, but we actually mean kilo calories.

[00:04:57]>> Well, you've managed to make the mathematics so that 1,00 equals 1.

[00:05:01]>> That's that's a pretty good party trick already, but you're going to have to keep going to get it down to zero.

[00:05:06]>> So So yeah, still even if we agree that like, okay, well, we won't use the word kilo calories. We'll just use calories.

[00:05:13]Why does this can get to say, well, legally, like technically, we've got one calorie of food energy in this beverage, but we're allowed to say it has none.

[00:05:24]That's because in the US and the UK, there are rounding amounts that food manufacturers are allowed to use.

[00:05:31]Usually, they have to go to the nearest five. That's actually the law in the United States. In the UK, if something contains less than four calories, kilo calories per 100 milliliters, they're free to just say none.

[00:05:45]>> Okay. So, actually, that's getting in quite a long way under that that bar, right? Cuz four per 100 mil, >> it's a what is it? 330 >> 30 ml can. So, you know, it could have 12 13 14 calories and still be fine.

[00:06:00]>> That's right. So, a a diet soda has about the same calories as like a little baby carrot, but I think the spirit of the law is that you don't want to mislead consumers. And so, if you told them you cannot say your beverage has no calories because technically the whole can has one, like honestly, I think it probably takes more than one calorie, kilo calories, just to warm that cool beverage up to your body temperature. So if a consumer thinks, "Oh, this has calories. I should be able to survive somewhat by only drinking it." They'd be wrong. So you better just tell them it has none. No nutritional food calories, no energy will be taken in by your body by drinking this.

[00:06:40]>> Is this like the idea of chewing through celery ends up costing you more energy?

[00:06:44]>> Yeah. And I've looked into it and it's not totally agreed to be the case.

[00:06:49]There's an urban legend that eating celery actually causes you to burn calories because it takes more calories to chew, swallow, and digest and warm it up than you actually get from it. And that is not totally proven. A lot depends on how you chew. Okay? If you like really work at it and chew each bite like 50 times and you eat frozen celery, then yes. But for the most part, the way we normally eat celery, it's pretty close and you could still gain from it. Now, negative calorie foods exist like chewing gum. Okay, chewing gum you get like nothing. Sugar-free chewing gum you get nothing from, but you're like working your muscles potentially for like an hour or more. So basically, I just find this fascinating because of that rounding error and because we interchangeably use the word calories and kilo calories, a can can say it contains no calories when it actually contains a thousand.

[00:07:51]>> Let me make sure I understand this though. So are you sort of saying here that that Coke Zero, especially if it's like ice cold, is uh the drink equivalent of frozen celery?

[00:08:02]>> Yeah. Um I kind of am. And I got really into this a few years ago. I thought, "Dang, I'm just going to drink ice water all day."

[00:08:11]>> Yeah.

[00:08:12]>> And get really thin.

[00:08:13]>> Yeah. If you drink like eight liters of ice water a day, you do burn about 100 calories just warming all that water up to your body temperature. Um it's only 100 calories. Sure.

[00:08:25]>> But I'm like, "Oh, I may as well." And I did this. Um and then it like hurt my throat. Like I actually got like not throat damage, but like a sore throat from drinking. so much ice cold water every day. So, I stopped. Um, basically, just eat what intuitively makes you happy is is my guidelines. But in America, they don't even have to admit that there's at least one calorie in that can. They can just say, "Nope, it's got zero.

[00:08:51]>> You're done. You're okay."

[00:08:52]>> Because it's under five per serving when a serving is a can. So, they're allowed to say zero.

[00:08:57]>> This does remind me a lot of uh alcohol-f free, what you're allowed to to claim as alcohol free. I think if I remember rightly the the rule in the UK is anything under under half a percent counts as alcohol-f free. And the reason why uh this came up was because I was in a long discussion with with someone about whether it's okay to have a glass of wine when you're breastfeeding >> knowing that some alcohol will be passed through your bloodstream to your milk to your baby. Yeah.

[00:09:27]>> And I ran the calculations and worked out that for your breast milk to not be labeled as alcohol-free. Okay. So, for the amount the percentage of alcohol in your breast milk to go over half a percent. I can't remember the exact thing, but you basically would have had to drink about 20 bottles of wine.

[00:09:47]>> Wow. I would say though in the defense of that rule of thumb that alcohol-free to a baby is probably different than the 0.5% rule.

[00:09:59]>> Yeah. I mean to to be clear, I I generally don't think you you certainly don't want to be drinking 20 bottles of wine when you're when you're breastfeeding a baby.

[00:10:07]>> You're good to go. In fact, the rest is science recommends. Just don't finish the last sip from your 20th bottle and you're good. No. Um that's a joke. Oh, your breast milk and blood alcohol level being 0.5%. Uh to be clear, 0.08% is the legal driving limit. 0.15% is severe intoxication, loss of motor control and vomiting.

[00:10:30]>> Right. So 0.5% in your breast milk, you're dead.

[00:10:34]>> You you're typically at the threshold for death due to respiratory arrest.

[00:10:38]Yeah. So >> you know, you've got bigger problems.

[00:10:41]>> Yeah. So again, 19 bottles only.

[00:10:45]Um, but the way uh calories are calculated is also something that fascinates me because remember that I said a calorie is the amount of energy required to heat a milliliter of water 1°.

[00:10:59]But from where to where are we going?

[00:11:02]From 0 C to 1 C or from 50 to 51 that's different. And it takes a little bit more or less energy. I forget which way it is. So there are when you get into the science of it, it's like okay the amount of calories in this um or the amount of calories that this uh contains uh depends on whether you're measuring this in in like room temperature water or ice cold water. And of course our bodies aren't perfect converters of mass into energy. We don't have nuclear reactors inside of us. And so the system that we use for dietary food calories is both complicated and also incredibly like flimsy. It's based on some work that was done by a scientist named Atwater many many decades ago who had people eat food and he measured the energy content of the food in a laboratory by burning the food in a bomb calerimeter. This is like a big glass ball that's in a big vat of water and you burn the food so that you turn it into heat energy and you're left with just all the carbon and you look at how much you've raised the temperature of the water and that tells you how many calories of energy are in the thing. But our bodies don't burn the food in combustion style when we eat it. So you have to make some kind of estimates of like how efficient the human body is at getting energy out of its food.

[00:12:25]>> But he got really specific. He not only um fed people the food, he then collected their urine and feces and burned that to see, okay, I put this much energy into you and you excreted this much energy. So, the difference is how much your body used.

[00:12:41]>> And he would also put people in uh big water baths and feed them food and have them not move and see how much their bodies warmed up the water. And from that we get what we currently use as the tools for estimating the calorie content of food.

[00:12:58]>> Okay.

[00:12:58]>> He found that fats contain about 9 kilo calories per gram. Okay. I mean that's energy dense.

[00:13:07]>> Yes. Proteins and carbohydrates about 4 kilo calories per gram.

[00:13:13]>> And when I say kilo calories, remember that in America we just call that a calorie. And he found that alcohol contains about 7 kilo calories per gram.

[00:13:21]>> Wow.

[00:13:22]>> So today when you submit a food for nutrition fact information, the numbers on the nutrition label aren't calculated through an experiment. They're calculated through the manufacturer saying this many carbohydrates, fats, and proteins are in each serving.

[00:13:37]>> I'm a bit disappointed. I sort of I I sort of wanted there to be a laboratory somewhere where they were just setting light to, you know, chocolate and like um you know, fuag gr. No, they and you'll notice this if you look at a nutrition package and you look at the fats, carbohydrates, and sugars inside of it and you multiply the you figure out how much per gram that would mean and then you multiply the fats and protein or sorry, the carbohydrates and proteins by four and the fats by nine, you'll get the calories per serving.

[00:14:04]Okay, >> that's just how it's done. But it's been found that that's like a little bit too um vague.

[00:14:12]>> I mean, it's quite a simple method really. It's very simple because we don't our bodies don't get food energy from the some from all fats equally and not every body works the same way either. I think the most like conclusive proof of this is by studying the amount of energy people got from pistachios and it totally depended on how much they chewed them. If you like barely chew a pistachio and swallow it, you actually mainly get nothing from it. But if you chewed it for a full minute before you swallowed, you got almost all the food energy out of it. So the the this was a I forget why they were looking into this, but they were trying to figure out how many calories were in pistachios.

[00:14:50]And it was like, whoa, it really depends on how they chew them.

[00:14:53]>> That's interesting. What? So if it's un unweed, it was sort of unasserated in your mouth, then once it gets to your stomach, your stomach acid isn't as able to extract the energy from it as possible.

[00:15:03]>> Yeah. I mean, chewing is is the first step in digestion, and your spit helps break things down so that you can then get all the nutrients, including the the the fats, the carbohydrates, the proteins, the things that give you energy. It requires that that chewing process first. So, if you just swallowed a bunch of pistachios whole like a pill, it's almost like nothing. I tell you what though, you are coming up with quite a good diet going on here. Next time I feel, you know, I've got like a bit peckish and I want to eat something, but know that I shouldn't, I'm just going to drink ice cold Coke Zero and swallow pistachios whole. Wash pistachios down with ice cold water. No, I don't want to encourage eating disorders. You're all beautiful. And again, you should eat what you want to eat and and and be mindful. But if you want to hurt yourself, yes. The worst diet I've ever heard of was the Sleeping Beauty diet. Have you heard of this one?

[00:15:54]This is just what you can't eat if you're asleep.

[00:15:57]>> Okay. I sort of feel like I've been following that one for my entire life.

[00:16:00]>> Yeah. Right. Well, I think the if you really are dedicated to the sleeping beauty diet, you take medicine to keep yourself asleep for like days.

[00:16:10]>> No.

[00:16:11]>> Mhm. Yeah. It now it I don't know if it's ever actually been done by somebody, but it's been like a joke that's been around for decades.

[00:16:18]>> Drop the weight real quick.

[00:16:19]>> Drop the weight quick by just letting your body uh not eat. and it won't bother you because you'll be asleep or unconscious.

[00:16:27]>> Yeah. Or going back to your previous advice, just just eat what you want.

[00:16:32]>> Yeah. Maybe just try that one.

[00:16:33]>> Just like listen to what your body needs.

[00:16:35]>> Yeah. Yeah.

[00:16:36]>> Just do that instead.

[00:16:37]>> So anyway, I just wanted to show you this because every time I'm in the UK, I I can't stop but like looking to make sure it's still the fact that it says it says no calories on it and yet it contains a thousand.

[00:16:50]>> Okay. This is what I quite like though.

[00:16:51]the way as you were talking. H Okay. I thought that the um cuz the UK we have this like traffic light system, right?

[00:16:59]Where you break it down, you have energy, fat, saturates, sugars, and salt. I thought for a second there you could just do like a straight up calculation from that of how many calories are in everything. But it's a little bit more complicated than that.

[00:17:09]But if you go to the ingredients, the nutritional information, >> hey, that's a fun little project. I mean, for my children when I go to the supermarket, that's that's one way I can torture them.

[00:17:19]>> Yeah. calculate how many calories are in this and then see if you're correct.

[00:17:22]>> Cover that part up and then make them do the arithmetic.

[00:17:26]>> Yeah, >> it's just four times how many grams of carbohydrates and proteins are in a serving and then nine times >> the fat >> the fat >> and seven times the alcohol >> and seven times the alcohol. Now again, because manufacturers can round to the nearest five for for small items, they can round to the nearest 10 if there's a lot of of of calories in the in a serving. you'll be within five or 10 of the the the answer on the box.

[00:17:51]>> Amazing.

[00:17:52]>> Yeah.

[00:17:52]>> Yeah, that was very fun. Enjoyed that.

[00:17:54]>> Goodness. Okay. Well, look, we've got a question about uh calories coming up after the break from you guys. So, we're going to get to your questions when we come back.

[00:18:08]>> This segment is brought to you by Cancer Research UK.

[00:18:10]>> We've all become used to technology measuring and improving our lives, right? It's the story of human history.

[00:18:16]We've now got watches that monitor our heart rates and count our steps. But what happens when that same technology is turned on cancer?

[00:18:24]>> Cancer Research UK is backing the research that harnesses new tools and technologies to help find cancer earlier, treat it more precisely, and ultimately save and improve lives.

[00:18:34]>> And so today, we're asking what becomes possible when our technology sharpens its senses.

[00:18:41]>> Right? So, a big part of all of this is that with with cancer, timing can change everything. If you find cancer really early, then treatment has a much better chance of working. It's much less invasive. But if you find the cancer later, it may have already spread or it may have changed. It makes it much harder to treat. So, so you really want to catch it as soon as possible. I mean, it's a bit like a bank robbery, right?

[00:19:02]If you if you imagine that you've got the police that are really slow to come when the alarm rings, the robbers are already gone. It's really hard to track down, really hard to work out what's going on. But if you get an immediate response as soon as there's any problem, the police kind of surround the building before anyone can get away, and you just have a much better chance of of getting the bad guys. And Cancer Research UK, they have played an incredibly important part in the breast screening program that we have here in the UK. One of the many ways that they've helped to to double breast cancer survival in the UK over the last 50 years. One of the difficulties is that in the UK, while mammograms save about 1,300 lives a year, for some people, there can be real barriers to to accessing them, particularly for people who have disabilities. So, what Cancer Research UK scientists have been doing is they've been working to to bring cancer detection to people who struggle to access mamograms. So, what they've invented, Michael, is a smart bra.

[00:19:58]Right. I'm >> finally pray. Finally, it's it's it's a it's a wonder that I got this section rather than you. Okay, so the smart bra, what it does is it uses this electronic textile that is is stitched onto the inside. It sends electrical signals through the breast tissue and then reads how they come back and that data can then be fed to your smartphone. So wearers and clinicians can be alerted if you if you get any concerning changes.

[00:20:23]Now, I have to tell you, the way that they've tested this technology, it turns out that something that that closely mimics the electrical properties of cancerous tissue is carrots. And there are, you know, they they've been using carrots in the bras um as part of the testing, unconfirmed reports that that people were actually walking around with carrots in their bra. But, I mean, the promise of this is amazing because this technology can spot tumors that are as small as 5 mm. And by the way, 1 cm tumors is is the current benchmark for early detection. So this is like much earlier than that. The long-term goal here is if you can make detection more accessible, easier to engage with, then one day breast cancer screening could happen in somebody's home and you can get the cancer at the earliest possible opportunity.

[00:21:12]>> Uh first of all, I love that technology, but also I love that fact. next time I eat a carrot at dinner. And you know, the electrical conductive properties of this carrot are kind of like cancer, but I I want to also talk about surgical micro robots. So, when you're a surgeon who's removing a tumor, one of the big difficulties is that tumors are made of cells. Cells are incredibly tiny and you want to remove every one of those cancerous cells and you want to remove as few healthy cells as possible. And so now there are these tiny robots that give live information to the surgeon about what the cells are that are being operated on. What it does is it shoots a laser at a cell and then the cell burns up and the robot essentially sniffs the smoke from the burned up cell. Looking at the chemical signature of that smoke, the uh robot can learn all kinds of things about the metabolism properties of the cell, the cell's makeup, and can guide the surgeon in knowing where to stop, where to keep going. And then even after the surgery, all this information about the nature of that tumor can be used to help with, you know, what kind of steps should be taken next. So that's just an incredible little like team of of of tiny robots and normalsized people doing amazing things. And that level of accuracy can change and save lives. So by investing in this kind of breakthrough research, we're turning high-tech ideas into realworld precision, making cancer medicine smarter, more targeted, and more effective. For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research breakthroughs, and how you can support them, visit cancer research.org/rest is science.

[00:23:05]>> Okay, welcome back, Hannah. You're going to be reading uh the questions cuz you've got them right there.

[00:23:09]>> I've got them right here. And the first one links in perfectly to what you were talking about. This is from EPO. Where do the calories I burn actually go? I assume I get rid of some of them through urine and stool, but does part of it evaporate? And if those calories evaporate, does the earth lose weight, too?

[00:23:26]>> Yes, I love this because it is weird to think like, okay, wait a second, I turn my food into energy, but then where does it go?

[00:23:35]>> And it does in a way evaporate away.

[00:23:38]Ultimately, it turns into wasted heat.

[00:23:42]Like your body takes that food apart. It takes the molecules it needs and it uses them through primarily the the ATP process to produce the energy you need to be warm, to move your muscles, beat your heart, breathe, think, all of that stuff. And ultimately that causes motion, right, of of your limbs, of your heart, of your lungs, uh, which is a kind of mechanical energy. It also produces heat energy that is released into the world. And ultimately this whole like mass can be turned into energy thing does not lead to a change in the amount of like mass. Well, I mean it changes it changes the amount of matter, but the mass doesn't change. A compressed spring weighs more than a loose spring.

[00:24:29]>> I mean, it's calculable, but not really measurable. But that energy that I put in really does the potential energy that that spring has really does affect its mass. It does actually weigh more. A phone weighs more when it contains a lot of photos because we've got a higher energy state in the electrons I think or a different energy.

[00:24:49]>> I think it's the other way around, isn't it? It's the same as punch card. So, in a punch card, no hole is a one and a hole is a zero. In hard drives, very simply, it's zero if you got a charge in it, and it's a one if you make a hole and remove that charge.

[00:25:06]>> Oh, interesting.

[00:25:07]>> Right.

[00:25:08]>> Ones are no charge.

[00:25:10]>> Ones are no charge.

[00:25:12]>> Yeah. In that case then, yeah.

[00:25:14]>> Yeah. So, when you get it, it's all zeros, right? So, charge is in the hole effectively.

[00:25:20]>> And then one electron weighs uh I think it's 27 zeros, right? 0. No, no. 270 is one. When you add in a one, you're taking the electron away. You're making the thing lighter and so full USB drives weigh less than brand new ones.

[00:25:37]>> Interesting.

[00:25:38]>> Yeah.

[00:25:38]>> Now, your body does not act like a USB drive. No. But we can account for all of the mass that you put into your body through breathing, drinking, and eating by by finding that either in excreted out of your body through urine, feces, and your exhalated breath, right?

[00:25:56]Because the exhalated breath is actually a really big component of this because the ATP process that you're describing where you take glucose and oxygen, the two things that give your your your body energy and they break down into water energy and CO2, >> right?

[00:26:12]>> So the question about where does a lot of it go is actually that you breathe it out, right? You breathe out most of it.

[00:26:19]>> Yeah. And if you compare everything put in and everything that comes out, you will still find a deficit because some of it was turned into the energy of motion of heat. Um, and some of it still exists in your body as chemical energy.

[00:26:34]Like in many ways, fat contains chemical energy. There's the potential for it to be turned back into energy for motion and for heat if your body needs to do that. Burning fat is turning that back into energy. So, that's where it all goes. Um, but it's all accounted for.

[00:26:50]None of it just magically evaporates. If we had enough time, we could extract all the energy that was in that Snickers bar that you ate.

[00:26:57]>> And in terms of the Earth getting lighter over time.

[00:27:00]>> Oh, yeah. Well, so the Earth's mass, if it was in a completely sealed system, would not change. Even even the the fact that you've heated up the air by by being warm-blooded and by moving in it, that does make up for the matter that is now missing because you digested it.

[00:27:19]>> Yeah. Sorry, Earth. The Coke Zero diet won't work for you.

[00:27:22]>> The the Coke Zero diet might make a person lighter, but it will not make the Earth lighter. This really depends on the Earth being in a sealed system because if you are turning Coke Zero or full sugar coke into heat energy, some of it is radiating into space.

[00:27:39]>> True.

[00:27:39]>> So technically Earth will lose some of it. But I'm I'm I'm assuming that the Earth is like a closed system and everything that's on Earth or leaves it is still part of the system. So, but technically yes, the Earth does become lighter just because of the the heat that we radiate away that leaves space.

[00:27:58]It's gone from Earth now.

[00:28:00]>> Yeah. Because actually, if you think about it, if you were sitting on a I don't know like a a spaceship some miles out in space, like you know, if you let's say half a lightyear or whatever, and you had an infrared camera, an extremely sensitive infrared camera, you would be able to see your body on the surface of the Earth. And the only way that that's possible is because there is, as you described, some of it outwards. Yeah, exactly. In fact, there is an entire cone of your energy floating out in space right now.

[00:28:27]>> Yeah. You're welcome, aliens.

[00:28:29]>> You're welcome. You're welcome. Okay.

[00:28:31]All right. Next question. This one came from Luke FTF. I've heard NASA turned Velcro into a household name after it was widely used in the Apollo 11 mission. Are there any technologies that have come from space science that we are now using in our daily lives without realizing it?

[00:28:48]>> It's a myth. It's not >> that that that uh hook andloop fastener wasn't popularized by the space program.

[00:28:53]>> I mean it was popularized by it but it wasn't invented by then.

[00:28:55]>> Sure. Yeah.

[00:28:56]>> Um it was actually invented in the ' 40s uh a Swiss engineer called George Demestral. Okay. So, I I did a program.

[00:29:04]I actually can't remember which program this was in, but anyway, there was a bit about the invention of Velcro.

[00:29:09]>> And what his story was that he noticed these uh bock burrs that were sticking to his dog's fur. So, for this story, for this TV program, we were like, "Okay, here's what we'll do. We'll get a dog. We'll go for a walk with the dog and then there'll be burrs sticking to the dog and then it'll be great and we'll take them off and it'll be fine."

[00:29:24]Anyway, it was hilarious because this dog was very happy, right? The dog was having a great old time, but the exec producer was so worried that we would get complaints about there being burrs on the dog um that we had this entire like I mean days of conversations days of conversations about whether this counted as animal cruelty on TV. Wow.

[00:29:45]>> Anyway, turns out obviously isn't uh but that is where Velcro came from, but it was popularized by NASA. That one's that's fair to say. Um but there are nonetheless some really amazing technology that has come directly as a result of the of the um space program.

[00:29:59]Pixel sensors being one. I mean the only reason why we have smartphone cameras is a direct result. Um this is from the 1990s. They uh had these giant spacecraft cameras but they wanted to shrink them down. So they essentially came up with this digital version a way uh that you can I mean they needed something lightweight. It needed something low power. Um, so they came up with these active pixel sensors that are now in smartphones everywhere.

[00:30:25]>> Uh, another example, braces.

[00:30:28]>> So, you know, Invisalign, the ones, I'm sure other brands are available. I know they are. In fact, you can 3D print your own uh plastic tooth fixer braces. Yeah, I was just reading about this. I forget where it came from, but this guy was like, "Yeah, I I I just printed." He had to print like a new one every week or so to get it smaller and smaller and tighter, but it fixed his teeth. But then, hold on. Is it not quite a sophisticated process to work out the sort of trajectory you want your teeth to >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. I would still say go to a doctor.

[00:30:57]>> I would say, >> but you don't have to.

[00:31:02]>> I think the key one about this is the fact that the material is is completely see-through, >> so you can't always tell that that people are wearing them.

[00:31:09]>> Oh, no. This guy's thing, you could tell he was wearing a 3D printed mouth guard.

[00:31:14]Yeah. I mean, yeah, >> sure. I mean, you know, go to go to the dentist. I think that's better.

[00:31:21]>> But that came from NASA.

[00:31:22]>> It did. Yeah. So, um it's called translucent polyrystalline aluminina.

[00:31:28]>> And uh yeah, they have these uh infrared antenna heat seeeking tracker trackers essentially. Um and they needed this material that was really strong but transparent to be able to coat them.

[00:31:39]>> Um you know, transparent to specific wavelengths of light in particular. And yeah, they c they came up with this material and it can it can withstand supersonic flight, right? Uh and it turns out, you know, also can withstand being chewed on. The last one that I really like, well, I mean there's loads, but the but this is one that I like is is memory foam mattresses.

[00:31:59]>> So um when you are uh you know sending astronauts off into space, their seats are really uncomfortable. I mean they get like thrown around really properly in their seats. And so they created this this foam that uh that molds to a warm body but then returns to its original shape when when you remove the pressure.

[00:32:19]>> So memory foam is also a space technology originally. Wow. I didn't know that. And it was it was not like to protect the ship. It was for comfort.

[00:32:28]>> Yes. It was to protect the bus.

[00:32:29]>> Yeah. Yeah.

[00:32:30]>> I wanted to show another space technology which I' I do have in my bag.

[00:32:33]It's for a future field episode though.

[00:32:35]Not today. Okay.

[00:32:36]>> Is this the Fiser space pen? Okay, so here's my guess. There's that thing that people always say, which is, "Oh, uh, NASA spent 40 squillion trillion dollars on making a bro that will write in space, and meanwhile, the Soviets just used pencils, and it was often used on the internet as a really hilarious way to like slag off the research that goes into uh, you know, high-end products.

[00:33:03]But actually the reality is using a pencil in space is a very very very bad idea because bits of graphite will flake off and get into the circuitry short circuit stuff. It's just don't use them like Okay. All right. Next question.

[00:33:15]Hold on. This one is from Oscar Sedlac.

[00:33:17]Recently I was listening to the episode about bordon and isolation and it got me wondering. There were multiple experiments regarding isolation which put individuals into some kind of chamber with no stimuli. But what happens if you put not one but two people in such a room together? What are the effects of that >> dualitary confinement?

[00:33:38]>> We have no idea. It's never been done.

[00:33:41]Yeah. There there are no psychological studies of two people stored in sensory deprivation isolation together.

[00:33:50]>> I mean, it must have happened at some time. I'm thinking about prisons here, right? I know, but in prison there just isn't a lot of history of like, oh yeah, we we locked these two people together in solitary, which wouldn't be solitary.

[00:34:03]It would be dualitary. Dualitary confinement, by the way, is a word that you can search on Google and you get no results.

[00:34:11]>> A Google whack.

[00:34:12]>> A is that what they call it, too?

[00:34:14]>> I think so. Yeah.

[00:34:15]>> Yeah. Uh something that has absolutely no results on Google. I just love that.

[00:34:19]So, so the the thing is we we don't know. I I I would predict that you would be likely to wind up with a folly ad sort of situation where two people kind of lose their minds together and they mutually reinforce each other's delusional beliefs um >> spiraling downwards together.

[00:34:37]>> Yeah. And so because of that, I think they're probably going to wind up getting along more than not. But what they get along in and what they both believe together and feel together and think together might be destructive. But I don't know if they would just wind up fighting and battling it out.

[00:34:58]>> I saw an episode of Mr. Beast where he did something quite similar to this where he uh dug a bunker and locked two people in there for 100 days.

[00:35:06]>> Um it wasn't sensory deprivation though.

[00:35:08]And also once a week he would go in and with a big bag of cash as he has a habit of doing.

[00:35:13]>> Right. So so I think in in those situations it's not sensory deprivation.

[00:35:17]I think there there have been a lot like yeah Mr. beast put two people down in a bunker together. Um, but he also like visited and whatever, you know, but um, as far as two people locked into like a purely empty white room or a dark room or locked in a cave with nothing to do but be together, that's an experiment we've got to do >> soon. I'm not volunteering to be absolutely clear. Okay.

[00:35:43]>> Oh, okay. So, it won't be an episode of the rest is science.

[00:35:47]>> It won't be an episode of The Rest.

[00:35:48]Well, I mean, or at least it'll maybe if you guys want to volunteer for it, but it won't be Hannah and I.

[00:35:54]>> No, but if you do, I mean, you can write into us with uh with your volunteering.

[00:35:59]Uh the email address is the rest of [email protected]. As always, I mean, all your thoughts and questions and and things you'd like us to answer.

[00:36:06]That's I you can do that instead, but but really we want you volunteering to be put in.

[00:36:11]>> We love questions. We love comments, but we also love the third C, consent. Give it to us.

[00:36:19]Okay, I think that's about it for this week. We will see you next week with our usual episode on Tuesday. Thanks for watching.