What happens if you drop a feather in space?
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In space, will a feather stay still? Fall down? Float away? Turns out, the answer depends on where you are! But one thing affects your feather no matter what: gravity! So Galileo is joining us all the way from the 1500s to fill us in on his theory about gravity. Then, we’re heading to space, and dropping a feather in a few different places to see what happens. Listen closely for a listener-submitted mystery sound, and a moment of um that answers this question: If you pick a flower, fruit or vegetable, is it still alive or is it dead?
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MOLLY BLOOM: Hi, friends. I'm popping in with a quick note to say that this is our last episode of 2021. We're going to be back February 1st with brand-new episodes of Brains On! And we have some really exciting news to share. Are you ready?
Forever Ago is coming back. Yes. We are so excited. We're going to have all-new episodes of your fave history show with Joy Dolo this spring. Plus, we're going to have a new Moment of Um show starting very soon, too. Wow, that's a lot of good stuff coming your way. We cannot wait.
In the meantime, we're keeping busy. Marc and Sanden are building their own flying sleigh. Menaka is knitting a wool romper for [? Gangadhar, ?] and it's taking a lot of wool. Ruby is perfecting her hot chocolate recipe. And I'm recreating all the greatest buildings out of gingerbread-- right now, I'm working on Cookieham Palace. So enjoy this episode. And we'll be back soon.
SUBJECT 1: You're listening to Brains On!, where we're serious about being curious. Brains On! is supported in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation.
MARC SANCHEZ: From the blackness of space, she's coming.
MOLLY BLOOM: Um, Houston? We're getting a strange reading.
MARC SANCHEZ: Is it a meteor? She defies explanation. Her mere existence stops people cold in their tracks.
MOLLY BLOOM: No, it's not a meteor. No way. Could that be?
MARC SANCHEZ: Hello? What is it?
MOLLY BLOOM: Oh my goodness. What is happening?
MARC SANCHEZ: Are you in trouble? Report back. Report back. Coming soon to an empty void near you, it's a duck in space.
MOLLY BLOOM: It's waddling toward us. It's a duck.
MARC SANCHEZ: A duck? That's not possible.
MOLLY BLOOM: Tell that to the duck coming right for our ship.
MARC SANCHEZ: She's not in a spaceship. She's not wearing a space suit. She's just a regular brown duck-- in space. We're seeing it now, too. It is a duck in space. A duck in space. Why? How? Why? How?
MOLLY BLOOM: I don't know. Nothing makes sense anymore.
[SCREAMS]
MARC SANCHEZ: Do you have crackers? For crying out loud, give it crackers.
[QUACKING]
MOLLY BLOOM: We're all out of crackers. No!
MARC SANCHEZ: Yeah. And then the duck attacks the ship, like quack-quack. And the astronauts have to shoot away with an old broom. And it's chaos and explosions and lots of special effects and feathers floating everywhere. You know, but in space. What do you think, Molly and Kiara?
MOLLY BLOOM: That's a very interesting idea for a movie, Marc.
SUBJECT 1: Yeah, I have never heard of a plot like that before.
MARC SANCHEZ: Oh, I know. I've written the whole screenplay. I was thinking we could get maybe Scarlett Johansson to voice the duck-- or maybe Michelle Williams. Someone to give it a little Oscar buzz. Anyway, can it be in the episode?
MOLLY BLOOM: Yeah, we'll see.
SUBJECT 1: The episode is more of a thought experiment. It's not really about ducks.
MARC SANCHEZ: Not loving the duck. I get it, I get it. I can take notes. How about a ferret in space? Oh, or an iguana. I'll brainstorm some alts and get back to you. You'll love them, trust me. Thanks, bye-bye.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
MOLLY BLOOM: You are listening to Brains On! from APM Studios. I'm Molly Bloom, and my co-host today is Kiara from Temecula, California. Hi, Kiara.
SUBJECT 1: Hi, Molly.
MOLLY BLOOM: And you wrote us a very interesting question.
SUBJECT 1: What would happen if you dropped a feather in space?
MOLLY BLOOM: So Kiara, how did you start thinking about that?
SUBJECT 1: Well, I was thinking about it, and I was starting with astronauts and how heavy they are in space. They're very heavy. And what about something lighter, like a feather in this case. Would it go down? Would it go up? Would it float? Or would it stay?
MOLLY BLOOM: Interesting. So what did you think would happen when you were thinking about this-- to the feather?
SUBJECT 1: I think it will float or go down.
MOLLY BLOOM: Cool. So if you got to drop a feather in space, what kind of feather would you drop?
SUBJECT 1: It would be very floofy, very fluffy.
MOLLY BLOOM: And are you interested in space in general? Do you like the idea of being an astronaut?
SUBJECT 1: Kind of, because I'm a little scared of how hot the sun is and how cold Mars is.
MOLLY BLOOM: Yeah. I'm a little scared of space, too, to be honest with you. But it's fun to think about. I don't know if I'm brave enough to be an astronaut, but I like these thought experiments. And space is a big place. There are really lots of answers to this question that you have.
So we're going to talk about dropping feathers in a few different spots today. Different stuff would happen in all of them, depending on where you are in the universe. But there's one thing that all dropped feathers in all parts of the universe always have in common.
SUBJECT 1: They're perfect for tickling feet.
MOLLY BLOOM: Definitely. Plus, like everything else in our universe, gravity works on them.
CYNDIA YU: Gravity pulls stuff together.
MOLLY BLOOM: Cyndia Yu is a physicist who studies how the universe began.
CYNDIA YU: Gravity likes to pull things in our universe together based on how much stuff they have and how far apart they are.
SUBJECT 1: The amount of stuff in the thing is also called its mass. It's a little bit like its weight.
MOLLY BLOOM: So if you think about a thing, like a planet or a moon that's really big, it pulls on other things really strongly.
SUBJECT 1: Especially if both things are near each other. Closeness makes the pull of gravity stronger.
MOLLY BLOOM: Feathers also have mass, so they also have some gravity that's pulling back on the things around them. But it's so small and weak, it's impossible to notice compared to the big, powerful gravity of, say, the Earth.
CYNDIA YU: So when you drop a feather on Earth, the Earth has a gravity that pulls on everything. And that includes the feather. And so the Earth wants to pull on it. And so it will just pull it closer and closer to the ground.
SUBJECT 1: So on Earth, gravity makes the feather fall down.
MOLLY BLOOM: And that powerful gravity from the Earth pulls on all things around it equally, no matter the object.
SUBJECT 1: Yeah-- feather, rock, semi-truck. The Earth pulls on all of it with the same strength.
MOLLY BLOOM: We're clear on that now, but we weren't always. To explain, let's travel back hundreds of years to the late 1500s. A scientist named Galileo was studying how things fell. There was a theory out there that said things fall faster if they have more mass. So according to this theory, a bowling ball would fall faster than a golf ball-- or put another way, the Earth would pull harder on the bowling ball than the golf ball.
INTERVIEWER: Yes, a silly notion indeed-- harrumph. And I, Galileo, disagree.
MOLLY BLOOM: Galileo believed that the gravity of a planet like Earth worked the same on all objects regardless of their mass-- that Earth pulls on all things equally.
INTERVIEWER: Yes, on Earth, if you drop a loaf of bread and a loaf of lead at the same time, they should land at the same time. That's the law of gravity. Also, pick up that bread within five seconds and it's still good. That's the five-second rule.
MOLLY BLOOM: Legend has it, to demonstrate this to a bunch of his students, Galileo climbed up to the top of the famous Leaning Tower of Pisa. And once there, he dropped two balls with different masses-- one heavier and one lighter. And they landed at the exact same time.
INTERVIEWER: Well, what did you expect? Of course I was right, just like I'm right that giant ruffled collars will always be in style. Y'all still wearing those, right? Of course. They rule.
MOLLY BLOOM: So if Galileo was right, if you drop a feather and a hammer--
SUBJECT 1: They should fall at the same speed.
MOLLY BLOOM: Right. Because even if the hammer weighs a lot more and has more mass than a feather, Earth's gravity would act on them equally, so they should fall equally as fast.
SUBJECT 1: But if you try it at home, it doesn't work that way.
MOLLY BLOOM: You'll see the hammer hit the ground right away, but the feather will flit and float and fly around before finally setting on the ground. And if it's windy, that feather might even fly up higher.
SUBJECT 1: So what's going on?
INTERVIEWER: Well, the answer is obvious. It's not a difference of gravity-- it's air. Bada-bing, bada-boom.
MOLLY BLOOM: On Earth, we've got an atmosphere made of air, and everything that falls pushes through that air. But because of the laws of physics, that air also pushes back a little.
SUBJECT 1: If you are a hammer, the air tries to push against you, but your weight pushes against the air, so it doesn't really slow your fall.
MOLLY BLOOM: If you're a feather and you weigh very little, but you take up a lot of space, there are lots of places where air can push against you. And that pressure of the air can really slow you down, or even push you around if it's coming from the side or below.
INTERVIEWER: Well, of course. That's why if you really wanted to show how right I was, you'd have to go somewhere without air and drop a feather and a hammer and you'd see them thunk-- hit the ground at the same time. But how would you find such a place?
MOLLY BLOOM: Turns out, a perfect place to try this experiment is the moon, because like Earth, the moon has gravity that pulls on objects around it, but compared to Earth, it's almost an airless place. It has very little atmosphere.
SUBJECT 1: So it's a lot like space.
MOLLY BLOOM: We call something that is empty like that a vacuum. Space is a vacuum and so is the moon.
INTERVIEWER: The moon? Yeah, right. How are you going to get there?
SUBJECT 1: And that's exactly what happened.
INTERVIEWER: Oh, snap. Y'all went to the moon? Dang, did not see that coming.
MOLLY BLOOM: In 1971, on his last moonwalk of his mission, NASA astronaut David Scott stepped outside the spacecraft in his big white spacesuit. He stood on the moon's dusty surface. The cameras were rolling.
DAVID SCOTT: Beautiful picture day.
SUBJECT 1: In one hand, he had a hammer.
MOLLY BLOOM: And in the other, a feather from a falcon.
DAVID SCOTT: I guess one of the reasons we got here today was because of a gentleman named Galileo a long time ago, who made a rather significant discovery about falling objects and gravity fields. And we thought, where would be a better place to confirm his findings than on the moon? And I'll drop the two of them here. And hopefully, they'll hit the ground at the same time. How about that?
INTERVIEWER: What happened? What happened?
SUBJECT 1: They both hit the ground at the same time.
DAVID SCOTT: Mr. Galileo was correct in his findings.
INTERVIEWER: Yes. I mean, I totally knew I was right the whole time, yeah.
MOLLY BLOOM: So gravity is always working on all objects in our universe. Air changes how a feather falls on Earth. But if you drop a feather in a place with no real atmosphere but with plenty of gravity, like the moon, it'll fall at exactly the same speed as a hammer. Pretty amazing, right?
SUBJECT 1: Literally out of this world.
INTERVIEWER: (SINGING) Brains on.
MOLLY BLOOM: Let's come back down to Earth for a minute. It's time for the--
SUBJECT 1: (WHISPERING) Mystery sound.
MOLLY BLOOM: Here it is.
[RUSTLING NOISES]
What is your guess?
SUBJECT 1: I think it is somebody unrolling a very leafy mat in a big crowd.
MOLLY BLOOM: I like that, because you heard some rustling, some people in the background. Why do you think someone would be unrolling a leafy mat in a large crowd of people?
SUBJECT 1: Like for celebration?
MOLLY BLOOM: I like it. Maybe they're having a little beach blanket picnic situation. All right. Well, we're going to hear it again and give you another chance to guess a little bit later in the show.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Hey, everyone. We've got some very exciting news. We wrote our first ever picture book. It's called Earth Friend Forever, and it's full of beautiful illustrations, lots of science, and drawings of the moon wearing glasses. We think you're going to love it. You can pre-order it now and be the first to get it when it arrives in March, 2022.
Just go to brainson.org to find the link. And if you're looking for something to do while we're on break, why not draw us a picture of Marc's Ducks in Space movie? You've got to help him bring his idea to life. Send your drawings to us at brainson.org/contact. While you're there, you can also send us mystery sounds, drawings, or questions.
SUBJECT 1: Like this one.
SUBJECT 2: Hello, my name is Maya. I'm seven years old and I'm from San Francisco. And my question is if you pick a flower or a fruit or vegetable, is it still alive or is it dead?
MOLLY BLOOM: We'll answer that during our Moment of Um right after the credits. And then we'll read the most recent listeners to be added to the Brain's honor roll.
SUBJECT 1: So keep listening.
MOLLY BLOOM: You're listening to Brains On! from APM Studios. I'm Molly.
SUBJECT 1: And I'm Kiara.
MOLLY BLOOM: So Kiara, we've talked about dropping a feather on Earth.
SUBJECT 1: Earth's gravity pulls it down, but air pushes against it. So the feather does a little floaty dance as it falls.
MOLLY BLOOM: And dropping a feather on the moon--
SUBJECT 1: There's no air on the moon to push against a feather, so only gravity acts on it. And the feather falls just as fast as anything else.
MOLLY BLOOM: Now I think we're ready to take this feather dropping out into space. Producer Menaka Wilhelm has more on that for us.
SUBJECT 1: Hi, Menaka.
MENAKA WILHELM: Hey, Kiara. For our next feather drop, let's imagine that we're about 250 miles above the surface of the Earth.
SUBJECT 1: Right where the International Space Station hangs out.
MENAKA WILHELM: Yeah. Up here, similar to the moon, there's not much air to push against a feather. There is still gravity, but remember how the pull of gravity depends on both the size of things and how close they are together?
SUBJECT 1: Yeah. Gravity is stronger when things are bigger and closer together.
MENAKA WILHELM: And it's weaker when those things are farther apart and smaller-- exactly. Out here, we still feel Earth's gravity, but the pull of that gravity is different than it is on the ground. It's weaker here. We'll get to that more in a moment. But first, let's do the short answer to this question. If I were to drop a feather right over there, right now, the thing that would immediately happen is--
MARK MATNEY: It will just stay right there.
MENAKA WILHELM: Mark Matney studies stuff we've put into space at NASA.
MOLLY BLOOM: So if you drop a feather in space, right away it just stays below your hand right where you left it?
MENAKA WILHELM: Well, that's the short answer. The long answer, honestly, Molly, is the kind of space brain bender that I think might make you want to cut a Molly-sized slit in the carpet in this room and then slide yourself into it so that you make the floor into a Molly-sized sleeping bag that you can just cocoon into until we stop talking about space.
MOLLY BLOOM: No, I'm ready. I thought this might happen. And I took a lot of deep breaths before you got here.
SUBJECT 1: A lot.
MENAKA WILHELM: OK. The longer answer is that in this moment, our dropped feather looks like it's standing still. But actually, it's not standing still-- and neither are we. All of us are going around the Earth in a circular loop. We're in orbit. And we're actually going really, really fast.
MARK MATNEY: In order for an object to stay in orbit-- say, the International Space Station-- it has to travel sideways at more than 7 kilometers per second.
MENAKA WILHELM: That's about 17,000 miles per hour. In just an hour and a half, we're going all the way around the Earth. And we don't get to pick if we stay in orbit or exit orbit. Earth's gravity is pulling us into orbit whether we like it or not-- same for our feather.
MARK MATNEY: And so what it's actually doing is it's actually, in a sense, falling around the Earth, because the gravity of the Earth is pulling it down. But it's still going forward.
SUBJECT 1: Whoa.
MENAKA WILHELM: So even though it's actually zooming around the Earth, our dropped feather looks like it's standing still.
MOLLY BLOOM: Because we're zooming around the Earth, too? OK?
MARK MATNEY: If you think about it this way-- if you're on an airplane.
MARC SANCHEZ: Welcome to the friendly skies. We're traveling at about 500 miles an hour. Should have you to Indianapolis right on time today.
MARK MATNEY: And your friend is in the seat behind you. And you toss him a bag of peanuts.
MARC SANCHEZ: Tossing peanuts is not encouraged on this flight.
MENAKA WILHELM: Hi, I'm the peanuts. Before your friend tosses me, I'm moving at 500 miles per hour along with the rest of you. That's right. I'm a very speedy snack.
MARC SANCHEZ: And we'd like to remind everyone-- especially that chatty bag of peanuts-- that although we're moving quickly, we're all moving together. So there's no need to brag about speed.
MENAKA WILHELM: Oh, nuts. So even when I go airborne to get to your friend, I'll just seem like I'm getting thrown normally.
MARK MATNEY: You can just toss it to him, because everybody's moving along at the same rate of speed.
MARC SANCHEZ: So sit back, relax, and enjoy sitting still while moving quickly.
MENAKA WILHELM: At first, we are all zooming around in orbit, including our feather. So compared to us, it's sitting still in space.
MARK MATNEY: However, if you leave it there for a while, it will start to interact with the very, very thin atmosphere up there.
MENAKA WILHELM: While Earth's gravity pulls the feather into orbit, there are a few particles around-- a really thin atmosphere. And those particles push against the feather the same way that air keeps the feather from falling straight down on Earth.
MARK MATNEY: And it will eventually start to spiral into the Earth because it can't maintain its orbit. And it will eventually burn up in the atmosphere like a meteor.
MOLLY BLOOM: So how long would it take our dropped feather to get back to Earth's atmosphere?
MENAKA WILHELM: Mark thinks maybe a couple of days, because feathers are pretty small. Astronauts occasionally drop tools when they're working on spacewalks around the International Space Station. And those items generally spiral back to Earth's atmosphere within weeks or months. But the farther out an object is, the longer it'll take to get back to Earth.
MARK MATNEY: Up where our scientific missions fly, up about 700 kilometers altitude, it's going to take decades for those objects to drag down. And just a little bit higher, where we operate a lot of satellites up at 900 or 1,000 kilometers, it can take centuries for things to come back in. And if you go even higher than that, out, say, to where we put our GPS satellites, out at middle Earth orbit-- or at geosynchronous orbit, where we have our communication satellites-- for any purposes, they're up there forever.
MENAKA WILHELM: We've got one more feather drop to do. But first, let's talk for a minute about stuff that's stuck in space. It has a few names, One is orbital debris. Another is space junk.
MARK MATNEY: So sometimes spacecraft just break and stop phoning home. They stop talking to the ground. When it becomes dead, it's just a big piece of junk.
MENAKA WILHELM: Which can be a problem, because if you think about tracing the path of one object's orbit around Earth, you've got one loop around the Earth.
SUBJECT 1: A little like Saturn's rings around its center.
MENAKA WILHELM: Yeah. But that's just for one orbit. And orbits can go all around the Earth in all directions.
MOLLY BLOOM: So all the paths together look more like one of those balls made of rubber bands where the rubber bands are looping around in all directions.
MENAKA WILHELM: Plus all of the orbits, like we said, are going really fast. And we launch more satellites and rockets into space every year, which means we have to be careful about things running into each other.
MARK MATNEY: As we put more and more stuff, it gets more and more crowded up there. And that's something that we're very, very interested in is how can we do things to be better citizens in space and not make a mess?
MENAKA WILHELM: A lot of that is actually being careful about what we launch into space, and designing rockets so that they leave less junk in space in the first place. It's really hard to pull stuff out of space.
MARK MATNEY: The space shuttle did recover some objects in space-- those were for specific missions. So it can be done. We've shown that it can be done. But in terms of cleaning up space junk, there's really not any space tugboats yet to clean up debris.
MENAKA WILHELM: But it would be pretty cool if there were little rocket tugboats floating around scooping up space trash and putting it in space trash cans. But that's not actually happening. So let's get back to our feather here. We've got one last place to drop this puppy.
SUBJECT 1: Far away from the Earth? So far that it won't orbit the Earth?
MENAKA WILHELM: Exactly.
MARK MATNEY: It's out in interplanetary space. It's away from the Earth-moon system. And it will actually orbit the sun.
MENAKA WILHELM: Just like the Earth and all the other planets, out here, there is truly no atmosphere. And our little feather still feels the tug of Earth's gravity, but we're so far away, it's not pulling very strongly. What the feather feels the most is the sun's gravity, since the sun is much bigger than the Earth. So the feather will orbit the sun just like anything else in our solar system.
MARK MATNEY: And it will happily do that essentially forever.
MENAKA WILHELM: Unless it runs into something else in its path, like a space rock that's floating around. We call those meteoroids and asteroids.
MARK MATNEY: And a meteoroid can hit it and maybe cut it in two. Or if a big one hits it, it will destroy it. But we have meteoroids, we have asteroids-- so there is natural junk in space.
MENAKA WILHELM: So no matter where we drop this feather in space, it'll follow the pull of gravity. And big, close stuff will have the strongest pull on our feather, because that's how gravity works. But just like on Earth, if a feather has to run into something, like a little bit of atmosphere, or a meteoroid, that'll change its path, too.
SUBJECT 1: Cool. Thanks, Menaka.
MENAKA WILHELM: Of course. Now, if you'll excuse me, I prepared for this segment by cutting a Menaka-sized slit in the carpet in the other room. And I need to go cocoon into it for a bit to recover from the tall building feeling that I get when I think about space this much.
MOLLY BLOOM: Totally get it.
SUBJECT 1: Bye.
MENAKA WILHELM: Bye.
MOLLY BLOOM: All right, Kiara. Are you ready to come back to the mystery sound?
SUBJECT 1: Yes.
MOLLY BLOOM: All right. Here it is.
[RUSTLING SOUND]
What did you hear that time? Do you have any new thoughts?
SUBJECT 1: So I think it's rubbing feathers from a falcon.
MOLLY BLOOM: Very cool. Ready to hear the answer?
SUBJECT 1: Yeah.
MOLLY BLOOM: All right. Here it is.
SUBJECT 3: Hi, my name is Colin from Chicago, Illinois. That was the sound of me picking corn I grew in my community garden. Corn is also my favorite food.
SUBJECT 1: I got the leaf part, because corns have leaf.
MOLLY BLOOM: Yes. That's exactly what I was going to say, totally. You got the leaf part totally right. So your ears were very good at detecting that. And it's hard to know exactly what leaves without really seeing it. So I think you did pretty great.
SUBJECT 1: I bet there was a crowd there.
MOLLY BLOOM: At the garden. Yeah, because it's a community garden, so there's a lot of people there probably.
SUBJECT 1: Oh.
MOLLY BLOOM: Do you like to eat corn?
SUBJECT 1: Well, I eat popcorn. We got the things we have to pop from the store. And we pop it to get the crunchy taste.
MOLLY BLOOM: The little kernels? So yummy.
SUBJECT 1: Yeah, the kernels.
MOLLY BLOOM: I love popcorn.
MARC SANCHEZ: Molly, Kiara. I got it. I fixed my movie. You're going to love it.
MOLLY BLOOM: Marc, hey. The episode is almost over.
SUBJECT 1: I'd still like to hear your idea. Are you sticking with space ducks?
MARC SANCHEZ: Yeah. But now, they're robot ducks. You know, duck droids? There's two of them. And one is tall and gold and talks with a British accent. And the other is this short thing and beeps a lot. And get this-- these two duck droids wind up getting involved in a battle in space. So there's good ducks with blasters and spaceships and bad ducks with laser swords.
[LIGHTSABER SOUNDS]
And in the end, the good ducks help blow up a giant moon that's really a death ray shooting space base. What do you think?
MOLLY BLOOM: Marc, that's already a movie.
SUBJECT 1: Yeah, it's Star Wars, but with ducks.
MARC SANCHEZ: Star what now?
SUBJECT 1: Star Wars, the most famous sci-fi movie of all time?
MARC SANCHEZ: Well, you may be right. You know what? Space is played out. How about an underwater adventure with a submarine? And of course, it's run by ducks.
Oh, wait. It's a duck submarine. Yeah, yeah. A duck-marine. And it's shaped like a giant duck. And inside it are smaller real ducks in hats and shirts. And they sing sea shanties. This is going to rule. Yo-ho, duck-ho.
SUBJECT 1: If you drop a feather anywhere in our universe, gravity pulls on it.
MOLLY BLOOM: Gravity is strongest between objects that are bigger and closer together.
SUBJECT 1: On Earth, gravity pulls a feather down, but air pushes it back up.
MOLLY BLOOM: There's less air on the moon, so a feather falls just as fast as a hammer.
SUBJECT 1: Out in space, a feather would get pulled into orbit--
MOLLY BLOOM: Unless something else pushed against it. That's it for this episode of Brains On! We've still got one more question to answer.
SUBJECT 2: If you pick a flower or a fruit or vegetable, is it still alive or is it dead? But first, some quick credits.
SUBJECT 1: This episode was produced by Maneka Wilhelm, Sanden Totten, Marc Sanchez, Ruby Guthrie, and Molly Bloom.
MOLLY BLOOM: We had engineering help from Nick Cauliflower. We had production help from Tricia [? Bobeta, ?] and our intern is Catherine Sundquist. Our executive producer is Beth Perlman and the executives in charge of APM Studios are Lilly Kim, Alex Shaffer, and Joanne Griffith.
Special thanks to [INAUDIBLE], John Rabe, Rosie DuPont, Mickey Bloom, and Dan [? Latu. ?] Brains On! is a nonprofit public radio program. You can support the show and help us keep making new episodes by heading to brainson.org. While you're there, you can donate, join our free fan club, or check out our merch.
SUBJECT 1: Now, before we go, it's time we have our moment of um.
SUBJECT 2: If you pick a flower or a fruit or vegetable, is it still alive or is it dead?
MAGGIE WAGNER: I really love this question that made me think a lot about plants and how they work. Hi, my name is Maggie Wagner. I'm a plant biologist working at the University of Kansas. So we have to start by defining what it means to be alive.
So a living organism is something that can grow and change. It often needs to eat or get nutrients in some way. And the key is that a living thing must be able to reproduce, or have babies-- make more of itself in some way. So before you pick a flower, fruit, or vegetable, these are all different parts of a living plant.
But the answer to this question really depends on what part of the plant you're talking about. So flowers are temporary structures, and they do not have the ability to grow their own roots or leaves. And so when you pick a flower, it pretty much begins to gradually die at that point.
So fruits are different flowers, because they actually contain seeds that are still alive. And they will grow into a new plant if you put them in the right environment. So for example, the seeds inside an apple could eventually grow up to become a new apple tree.
As far as vegetables-- again, there's a lot of different types of vegetables. And they're all different parts of the plant. So for example, some vegetables are leaves, like lettuce or spinach. And those do not have the ability to grow new roots and continue living after they're picked.
But there's also vegetables that are bulbs, like onions. And those, if you were to plant them in soil or even just in a cup of water, you would see them grow roots and eventually grow green leaves as well. So those are still alive. And there are some vegetables that are just roots, like potatoes, for example.
You might see an old potato left in your pantry for a long time that's starting to sprout and grow into new plants. So those would be still alive as well. And a key point is that a lot of these plant parts, once you start cooking them or processing them in some way-- like making pickles out of cucumbers-- those processes will result in them being no longer alive.
MOLLY BLOOM: Picking up this list definitely makes me feel alive. It's the Brain's honor roll. These are the incredible listeners who send us questions, ideas, mystery sounds, drawings, and high fives.
[LISTING HONOR ROLL]
Brains On! will be back soon with more answers to your questions.
SUBJECT 1: Thanks for listening.
Forever Ago is coming back. Yes. We are so excited. We're going to have all-new episodes of your fave history show with Joy Dolo this spring. Plus, we're going to have a new Moment of Um show starting very soon, too. Wow, that's a lot of good stuff coming your way. We cannot wait.
In the meantime, we're keeping busy. Marc and Sanden are building their own flying sleigh. Menaka is knitting a wool romper for [? Gangadhar, ?] and it's taking a lot of wool. Ruby is perfecting her hot chocolate recipe. And I'm recreating all the greatest buildings out of gingerbread-- right now, I'm working on Cookieham Palace. So enjoy this episode. And we'll be back soon.
SUBJECT 1: You're listening to Brains On!, where we're serious about being curious. Brains On! is supported in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation.
MARC SANCHEZ: From the blackness of space, she's coming.
MOLLY BLOOM: Um, Houston? We're getting a strange reading.
MARC SANCHEZ: Is it a meteor? She defies explanation. Her mere existence stops people cold in their tracks.
MOLLY BLOOM: No, it's not a meteor. No way. Could that be?
MARC SANCHEZ: Hello? What is it?
MOLLY BLOOM: Oh my goodness. What is happening?
MARC SANCHEZ: Are you in trouble? Report back. Report back. Coming soon to an empty void near you, it's a duck in space.
MOLLY BLOOM: It's waddling toward us. It's a duck.
MARC SANCHEZ: A duck? That's not possible.
MOLLY BLOOM: Tell that to the duck coming right for our ship.
MARC SANCHEZ: She's not in a spaceship. She's not wearing a space suit. She's just a regular brown duck-- in space. We're seeing it now, too. It is a duck in space. A duck in space. Why? How? Why? How?
MOLLY BLOOM: I don't know. Nothing makes sense anymore.
[SCREAMS]
MARC SANCHEZ: Do you have crackers? For crying out loud, give it crackers.
[QUACKING]
MOLLY BLOOM: We're all out of crackers. No!
MARC SANCHEZ: Yeah. And then the duck attacks the ship, like quack-quack. And the astronauts have to shoot away with an old broom. And it's chaos and explosions and lots of special effects and feathers floating everywhere. You know, but in space. What do you think, Molly and Kiara?
MOLLY BLOOM: That's a very interesting idea for a movie, Marc.
SUBJECT 1: Yeah, I have never heard of a plot like that before.
MARC SANCHEZ: Oh, I know. I've written the whole screenplay. I was thinking we could get maybe Scarlett Johansson to voice the duck-- or maybe Michelle Williams. Someone to give it a little Oscar buzz. Anyway, can it be in the episode?
MOLLY BLOOM: Yeah, we'll see.
SUBJECT 1: The episode is more of a thought experiment. It's not really about ducks.
MARC SANCHEZ: Not loving the duck. I get it, I get it. I can take notes. How about a ferret in space? Oh, or an iguana. I'll brainstorm some alts and get back to you. You'll love them, trust me. Thanks, bye-bye.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
MOLLY BLOOM: You are listening to Brains On! from APM Studios. I'm Molly Bloom, and my co-host today is Kiara from Temecula, California. Hi, Kiara.
SUBJECT 1: Hi, Molly.
MOLLY BLOOM: And you wrote us a very interesting question.
SUBJECT 1: What would happen if you dropped a feather in space?
MOLLY BLOOM: So Kiara, how did you start thinking about that?
SUBJECT 1: Well, I was thinking about it, and I was starting with astronauts and how heavy they are in space. They're very heavy. And what about something lighter, like a feather in this case. Would it go down? Would it go up? Would it float? Or would it stay?
MOLLY BLOOM: Interesting. So what did you think would happen when you were thinking about this-- to the feather?
SUBJECT 1: I think it will float or go down.
MOLLY BLOOM: Cool. So if you got to drop a feather in space, what kind of feather would you drop?
SUBJECT 1: It would be very floofy, very fluffy.
MOLLY BLOOM: And are you interested in space in general? Do you like the idea of being an astronaut?
SUBJECT 1: Kind of, because I'm a little scared of how hot the sun is and how cold Mars is.
MOLLY BLOOM: Yeah. I'm a little scared of space, too, to be honest with you. But it's fun to think about. I don't know if I'm brave enough to be an astronaut, but I like these thought experiments. And space is a big place. There are really lots of answers to this question that you have.
So we're going to talk about dropping feathers in a few different spots today. Different stuff would happen in all of them, depending on where you are in the universe. But there's one thing that all dropped feathers in all parts of the universe always have in common.
SUBJECT 1: They're perfect for tickling feet.
MOLLY BLOOM: Definitely. Plus, like everything else in our universe, gravity works on them.
CYNDIA YU: Gravity pulls stuff together.
MOLLY BLOOM: Cyndia Yu is a physicist who studies how the universe began.
CYNDIA YU: Gravity likes to pull things in our universe together based on how much stuff they have and how far apart they are.
SUBJECT 1: The amount of stuff in the thing is also called its mass. It's a little bit like its weight.
MOLLY BLOOM: So if you think about a thing, like a planet or a moon that's really big, it pulls on other things really strongly.
SUBJECT 1: Especially if both things are near each other. Closeness makes the pull of gravity stronger.
MOLLY BLOOM: Feathers also have mass, so they also have some gravity that's pulling back on the things around them. But it's so small and weak, it's impossible to notice compared to the big, powerful gravity of, say, the Earth.
CYNDIA YU: So when you drop a feather on Earth, the Earth has a gravity that pulls on everything. And that includes the feather. And so the Earth wants to pull on it. And so it will just pull it closer and closer to the ground.
SUBJECT 1: So on Earth, gravity makes the feather fall down.
MOLLY BLOOM: And that powerful gravity from the Earth pulls on all things around it equally, no matter the object.
SUBJECT 1: Yeah-- feather, rock, semi-truck. The Earth pulls on all of it with the same strength.
MOLLY BLOOM: We're clear on that now, but we weren't always. To explain, let's travel back hundreds of years to the late 1500s. A scientist named Galileo was studying how things fell. There was a theory out there that said things fall faster if they have more mass. So according to this theory, a bowling ball would fall faster than a golf ball-- or put another way, the Earth would pull harder on the bowling ball than the golf ball.
INTERVIEWER: Yes, a silly notion indeed-- harrumph. And I, Galileo, disagree.
MOLLY BLOOM: Galileo believed that the gravity of a planet like Earth worked the same on all objects regardless of their mass-- that Earth pulls on all things equally.
INTERVIEWER: Yes, on Earth, if you drop a loaf of bread and a loaf of lead at the same time, they should land at the same time. That's the law of gravity. Also, pick up that bread within five seconds and it's still good. That's the five-second rule.
MOLLY BLOOM: Legend has it, to demonstrate this to a bunch of his students, Galileo climbed up to the top of the famous Leaning Tower of Pisa. And once there, he dropped two balls with different masses-- one heavier and one lighter. And they landed at the exact same time.
INTERVIEWER: Well, what did you expect? Of course I was right, just like I'm right that giant ruffled collars will always be in style. Y'all still wearing those, right? Of course. They rule.
MOLLY BLOOM: So if Galileo was right, if you drop a feather and a hammer--
SUBJECT 1: They should fall at the same speed.
MOLLY BLOOM: Right. Because even if the hammer weighs a lot more and has more mass than a feather, Earth's gravity would act on them equally, so they should fall equally as fast.
SUBJECT 1: But if you try it at home, it doesn't work that way.
MOLLY BLOOM: You'll see the hammer hit the ground right away, but the feather will flit and float and fly around before finally setting on the ground. And if it's windy, that feather might even fly up higher.
SUBJECT 1: So what's going on?
INTERVIEWER: Well, the answer is obvious. It's not a difference of gravity-- it's air. Bada-bing, bada-boom.
MOLLY BLOOM: On Earth, we've got an atmosphere made of air, and everything that falls pushes through that air. But because of the laws of physics, that air also pushes back a little.
SUBJECT 1: If you are a hammer, the air tries to push against you, but your weight pushes against the air, so it doesn't really slow your fall.
MOLLY BLOOM: If you're a feather and you weigh very little, but you take up a lot of space, there are lots of places where air can push against you. And that pressure of the air can really slow you down, or even push you around if it's coming from the side or below.
INTERVIEWER: Well, of course. That's why if you really wanted to show how right I was, you'd have to go somewhere without air and drop a feather and a hammer and you'd see them thunk-- hit the ground at the same time. But how would you find such a place?
MOLLY BLOOM: Turns out, a perfect place to try this experiment is the moon, because like Earth, the moon has gravity that pulls on objects around it, but compared to Earth, it's almost an airless place. It has very little atmosphere.
SUBJECT 1: So it's a lot like space.
MOLLY BLOOM: We call something that is empty like that a vacuum. Space is a vacuum and so is the moon.
INTERVIEWER: The moon? Yeah, right. How are you going to get there?
SUBJECT 1: And that's exactly what happened.
INTERVIEWER: Oh, snap. Y'all went to the moon? Dang, did not see that coming.
MOLLY BLOOM: In 1971, on his last moonwalk of his mission, NASA astronaut David Scott stepped outside the spacecraft in his big white spacesuit. He stood on the moon's dusty surface. The cameras were rolling.
DAVID SCOTT: Beautiful picture day.
SUBJECT 1: In one hand, he had a hammer.
MOLLY BLOOM: And in the other, a feather from a falcon.
DAVID SCOTT: I guess one of the reasons we got here today was because of a gentleman named Galileo a long time ago, who made a rather significant discovery about falling objects and gravity fields. And we thought, where would be a better place to confirm his findings than on the moon? And I'll drop the two of them here. And hopefully, they'll hit the ground at the same time. How about that?
INTERVIEWER: What happened? What happened?
SUBJECT 1: They both hit the ground at the same time.
DAVID SCOTT: Mr. Galileo was correct in his findings.
INTERVIEWER: Yes. I mean, I totally knew I was right the whole time, yeah.
MOLLY BLOOM: So gravity is always working on all objects in our universe. Air changes how a feather falls on Earth. But if you drop a feather in a place with no real atmosphere but with plenty of gravity, like the moon, it'll fall at exactly the same speed as a hammer. Pretty amazing, right?
SUBJECT 1: Literally out of this world.
INTERVIEWER: (SINGING) Brains on.
MOLLY BLOOM: Let's come back down to Earth for a minute. It's time for the--
SUBJECT 1: (WHISPERING) Mystery sound.
MOLLY BLOOM: Here it is.
[RUSTLING NOISES]
What is your guess?
SUBJECT 1: I think it is somebody unrolling a very leafy mat in a big crowd.
MOLLY BLOOM: I like that, because you heard some rustling, some people in the background. Why do you think someone would be unrolling a leafy mat in a large crowd of people?
SUBJECT 1: Like for celebration?
MOLLY BLOOM: I like it. Maybe they're having a little beach blanket picnic situation. All right. Well, we're going to hear it again and give you another chance to guess a little bit later in the show.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Hey, everyone. We've got some very exciting news. We wrote our first ever picture book. It's called Earth Friend Forever, and it's full of beautiful illustrations, lots of science, and drawings of the moon wearing glasses. We think you're going to love it. You can pre-order it now and be the first to get it when it arrives in March, 2022.
Just go to brainson.org to find the link. And if you're looking for something to do while we're on break, why not draw us a picture of Marc's Ducks in Space movie? You've got to help him bring his idea to life. Send your drawings to us at brainson.org/contact. While you're there, you can also send us mystery sounds, drawings, or questions.
SUBJECT 1: Like this one.
SUBJECT 2: Hello, my name is Maya. I'm seven years old and I'm from San Francisco. And my question is if you pick a flower or a fruit or vegetable, is it still alive or is it dead?
MOLLY BLOOM: We'll answer that during our Moment of Um right after the credits. And then we'll read the most recent listeners to be added to the Brain's honor roll.
SUBJECT 1: So keep listening.
MOLLY BLOOM: You're listening to Brains On! from APM Studios. I'm Molly.
SUBJECT 1: And I'm Kiara.
MOLLY BLOOM: So Kiara, we've talked about dropping a feather on Earth.
SUBJECT 1: Earth's gravity pulls it down, but air pushes against it. So the feather does a little floaty dance as it falls.
MOLLY BLOOM: And dropping a feather on the moon--
SUBJECT 1: There's no air on the moon to push against a feather, so only gravity acts on it. And the feather falls just as fast as anything else.
MOLLY BLOOM: Now I think we're ready to take this feather dropping out into space. Producer Menaka Wilhelm has more on that for us.
SUBJECT 1: Hi, Menaka.
MENAKA WILHELM: Hey, Kiara. For our next feather drop, let's imagine that we're about 250 miles above the surface of the Earth.
SUBJECT 1: Right where the International Space Station hangs out.
MENAKA WILHELM: Yeah. Up here, similar to the moon, there's not much air to push against a feather. There is still gravity, but remember how the pull of gravity depends on both the size of things and how close they are together?
SUBJECT 1: Yeah. Gravity is stronger when things are bigger and closer together.
MENAKA WILHELM: And it's weaker when those things are farther apart and smaller-- exactly. Out here, we still feel Earth's gravity, but the pull of that gravity is different than it is on the ground. It's weaker here. We'll get to that more in a moment. But first, let's do the short answer to this question. If I were to drop a feather right over there, right now, the thing that would immediately happen is--
MARK MATNEY: It will just stay right there.
MENAKA WILHELM: Mark Matney studies stuff we've put into space at NASA.
MOLLY BLOOM: So if you drop a feather in space, right away it just stays below your hand right where you left it?
MENAKA WILHELM: Well, that's the short answer. The long answer, honestly, Molly, is the kind of space brain bender that I think might make you want to cut a Molly-sized slit in the carpet in this room and then slide yourself into it so that you make the floor into a Molly-sized sleeping bag that you can just cocoon into until we stop talking about space.
MOLLY BLOOM: No, I'm ready. I thought this might happen. And I took a lot of deep breaths before you got here.
SUBJECT 1: A lot.
MENAKA WILHELM: OK. The longer answer is that in this moment, our dropped feather looks like it's standing still. But actually, it's not standing still-- and neither are we. All of us are going around the Earth in a circular loop. We're in orbit. And we're actually going really, really fast.
MARK MATNEY: In order for an object to stay in orbit-- say, the International Space Station-- it has to travel sideways at more than 7 kilometers per second.
MENAKA WILHELM: That's about 17,000 miles per hour. In just an hour and a half, we're going all the way around the Earth. And we don't get to pick if we stay in orbit or exit orbit. Earth's gravity is pulling us into orbit whether we like it or not-- same for our feather.
MARK MATNEY: And so what it's actually doing is it's actually, in a sense, falling around the Earth, because the gravity of the Earth is pulling it down. But it's still going forward.
SUBJECT 1: Whoa.
MENAKA WILHELM: So even though it's actually zooming around the Earth, our dropped feather looks like it's standing still.
MOLLY BLOOM: Because we're zooming around the Earth, too? OK?
MARK MATNEY: If you think about it this way-- if you're on an airplane.
MARC SANCHEZ: Welcome to the friendly skies. We're traveling at about 500 miles an hour. Should have you to Indianapolis right on time today.
MARK MATNEY: And your friend is in the seat behind you. And you toss him a bag of peanuts.
MARC SANCHEZ: Tossing peanuts is not encouraged on this flight.
MENAKA WILHELM: Hi, I'm the peanuts. Before your friend tosses me, I'm moving at 500 miles per hour along with the rest of you. That's right. I'm a very speedy snack.
MARC SANCHEZ: And we'd like to remind everyone-- especially that chatty bag of peanuts-- that although we're moving quickly, we're all moving together. So there's no need to brag about speed.
MENAKA WILHELM: Oh, nuts. So even when I go airborne to get to your friend, I'll just seem like I'm getting thrown normally.
MARK MATNEY: You can just toss it to him, because everybody's moving along at the same rate of speed.
MARC SANCHEZ: So sit back, relax, and enjoy sitting still while moving quickly.
MENAKA WILHELM: At first, we are all zooming around in orbit, including our feather. So compared to us, it's sitting still in space.
MARK MATNEY: However, if you leave it there for a while, it will start to interact with the very, very thin atmosphere up there.
MENAKA WILHELM: While Earth's gravity pulls the feather into orbit, there are a few particles around-- a really thin atmosphere. And those particles push against the feather the same way that air keeps the feather from falling straight down on Earth.
MARK MATNEY: And it will eventually start to spiral into the Earth because it can't maintain its orbit. And it will eventually burn up in the atmosphere like a meteor.
MOLLY BLOOM: So how long would it take our dropped feather to get back to Earth's atmosphere?
MENAKA WILHELM: Mark thinks maybe a couple of days, because feathers are pretty small. Astronauts occasionally drop tools when they're working on spacewalks around the International Space Station. And those items generally spiral back to Earth's atmosphere within weeks or months. But the farther out an object is, the longer it'll take to get back to Earth.
MARK MATNEY: Up where our scientific missions fly, up about 700 kilometers altitude, it's going to take decades for those objects to drag down. And just a little bit higher, where we operate a lot of satellites up at 900 or 1,000 kilometers, it can take centuries for things to come back in. And if you go even higher than that, out, say, to where we put our GPS satellites, out at middle Earth orbit-- or at geosynchronous orbit, where we have our communication satellites-- for any purposes, they're up there forever.
MENAKA WILHELM: We've got one more feather drop to do. But first, let's talk for a minute about stuff that's stuck in space. It has a few names, One is orbital debris. Another is space junk.
MARK MATNEY: So sometimes spacecraft just break and stop phoning home. They stop talking to the ground. When it becomes dead, it's just a big piece of junk.
MENAKA WILHELM: Which can be a problem, because if you think about tracing the path of one object's orbit around Earth, you've got one loop around the Earth.
SUBJECT 1: A little like Saturn's rings around its center.
MENAKA WILHELM: Yeah. But that's just for one orbit. And orbits can go all around the Earth in all directions.
MOLLY BLOOM: So all the paths together look more like one of those balls made of rubber bands where the rubber bands are looping around in all directions.
MENAKA WILHELM: Plus all of the orbits, like we said, are going really fast. And we launch more satellites and rockets into space every year, which means we have to be careful about things running into each other.
MARK MATNEY: As we put more and more stuff, it gets more and more crowded up there. And that's something that we're very, very interested in is how can we do things to be better citizens in space and not make a mess?
MENAKA WILHELM: A lot of that is actually being careful about what we launch into space, and designing rockets so that they leave less junk in space in the first place. It's really hard to pull stuff out of space.
MARK MATNEY: The space shuttle did recover some objects in space-- those were for specific missions. So it can be done. We've shown that it can be done. But in terms of cleaning up space junk, there's really not any space tugboats yet to clean up debris.
MENAKA WILHELM: But it would be pretty cool if there were little rocket tugboats floating around scooping up space trash and putting it in space trash cans. But that's not actually happening. So let's get back to our feather here. We've got one last place to drop this puppy.
SUBJECT 1: Far away from the Earth? So far that it won't orbit the Earth?
MENAKA WILHELM: Exactly.
MARK MATNEY: It's out in interplanetary space. It's away from the Earth-moon system. And it will actually orbit the sun.
MENAKA WILHELM: Just like the Earth and all the other planets, out here, there is truly no atmosphere. And our little feather still feels the tug of Earth's gravity, but we're so far away, it's not pulling very strongly. What the feather feels the most is the sun's gravity, since the sun is much bigger than the Earth. So the feather will orbit the sun just like anything else in our solar system.
MARK MATNEY: And it will happily do that essentially forever.
MENAKA WILHELM: Unless it runs into something else in its path, like a space rock that's floating around. We call those meteoroids and asteroids.
MARK MATNEY: And a meteoroid can hit it and maybe cut it in two. Or if a big one hits it, it will destroy it. But we have meteoroids, we have asteroids-- so there is natural junk in space.
MENAKA WILHELM: So no matter where we drop this feather in space, it'll follow the pull of gravity. And big, close stuff will have the strongest pull on our feather, because that's how gravity works. But just like on Earth, if a feather has to run into something, like a little bit of atmosphere, or a meteoroid, that'll change its path, too.
SUBJECT 1: Cool. Thanks, Menaka.
MENAKA WILHELM: Of course. Now, if you'll excuse me, I prepared for this segment by cutting a Menaka-sized slit in the carpet in the other room. And I need to go cocoon into it for a bit to recover from the tall building feeling that I get when I think about space this much.
MOLLY BLOOM: Totally get it.
SUBJECT 1: Bye.
MENAKA WILHELM: Bye.
MOLLY BLOOM: All right, Kiara. Are you ready to come back to the mystery sound?
SUBJECT 1: Yes.
MOLLY BLOOM: All right. Here it is.
[RUSTLING SOUND]
What did you hear that time? Do you have any new thoughts?
SUBJECT 1: So I think it's rubbing feathers from a falcon.
MOLLY BLOOM: Very cool. Ready to hear the answer?
SUBJECT 1: Yeah.
MOLLY BLOOM: All right. Here it is.
SUBJECT 3: Hi, my name is Colin from Chicago, Illinois. That was the sound of me picking corn I grew in my community garden. Corn is also my favorite food.
SUBJECT 1: I got the leaf part, because corns have leaf.
MOLLY BLOOM: Yes. That's exactly what I was going to say, totally. You got the leaf part totally right. So your ears were very good at detecting that. And it's hard to know exactly what leaves without really seeing it. So I think you did pretty great.
SUBJECT 1: I bet there was a crowd there.
MOLLY BLOOM: At the garden. Yeah, because it's a community garden, so there's a lot of people there probably.
SUBJECT 1: Oh.
MOLLY BLOOM: Do you like to eat corn?
SUBJECT 1: Well, I eat popcorn. We got the things we have to pop from the store. And we pop it to get the crunchy taste.
MOLLY BLOOM: The little kernels? So yummy.
SUBJECT 1: Yeah, the kernels.
MOLLY BLOOM: I love popcorn.
MARC SANCHEZ: Molly, Kiara. I got it. I fixed my movie. You're going to love it.
MOLLY BLOOM: Marc, hey. The episode is almost over.
SUBJECT 1: I'd still like to hear your idea. Are you sticking with space ducks?
MARC SANCHEZ: Yeah. But now, they're robot ducks. You know, duck droids? There's two of them. And one is tall and gold and talks with a British accent. And the other is this short thing and beeps a lot. And get this-- these two duck droids wind up getting involved in a battle in space. So there's good ducks with blasters and spaceships and bad ducks with laser swords.
[LIGHTSABER SOUNDS]
And in the end, the good ducks help blow up a giant moon that's really a death ray shooting space base. What do you think?
MOLLY BLOOM: Marc, that's already a movie.
SUBJECT 1: Yeah, it's Star Wars, but with ducks.
MARC SANCHEZ: Star what now?
SUBJECT 1: Star Wars, the most famous sci-fi movie of all time?
MARC SANCHEZ: Well, you may be right. You know what? Space is played out. How about an underwater adventure with a submarine? And of course, it's run by ducks.
Oh, wait. It's a duck submarine. Yeah, yeah. A duck-marine. And it's shaped like a giant duck. And inside it are smaller real ducks in hats and shirts. And they sing sea shanties. This is going to rule. Yo-ho, duck-ho.
SUBJECT 1: If you drop a feather anywhere in our universe, gravity pulls on it.
MOLLY BLOOM: Gravity is strongest between objects that are bigger and closer together.
SUBJECT 1: On Earth, gravity pulls a feather down, but air pushes it back up.
MOLLY BLOOM: There's less air on the moon, so a feather falls just as fast as a hammer.
SUBJECT 1: Out in space, a feather would get pulled into orbit--
MOLLY BLOOM: Unless something else pushed against it. That's it for this episode of Brains On! We've still got one more question to answer.
SUBJECT 2: If you pick a flower or a fruit or vegetable, is it still alive or is it dead? But first, some quick credits.
SUBJECT 1: This episode was produced by Maneka Wilhelm, Sanden Totten, Marc Sanchez, Ruby Guthrie, and Molly Bloom.
MOLLY BLOOM: We had engineering help from Nick Cauliflower. We had production help from Tricia [? Bobeta, ?] and our intern is Catherine Sundquist. Our executive producer is Beth Perlman and the executives in charge of APM Studios are Lilly Kim, Alex Shaffer, and Joanne Griffith.
Special thanks to [INAUDIBLE], John Rabe, Rosie DuPont, Mickey Bloom, and Dan [? Latu. ?] Brains On! is a nonprofit public radio program. You can support the show and help us keep making new episodes by heading to brainson.org. While you're there, you can donate, join our free fan club, or check out our merch.
SUBJECT 1: Now, before we go, it's time we have our moment of um.
SUBJECT 2: If you pick a flower or a fruit or vegetable, is it still alive or is it dead?
MAGGIE WAGNER: I really love this question that made me think a lot about plants and how they work. Hi, my name is Maggie Wagner. I'm a plant biologist working at the University of Kansas. So we have to start by defining what it means to be alive.
So a living organism is something that can grow and change. It often needs to eat or get nutrients in some way. And the key is that a living thing must be able to reproduce, or have babies-- make more of itself in some way. So before you pick a flower, fruit, or vegetable, these are all different parts of a living plant.
But the answer to this question really depends on what part of the plant you're talking about. So flowers are temporary structures, and they do not have the ability to grow their own roots or leaves. And so when you pick a flower, it pretty much begins to gradually die at that point.
So fruits are different flowers, because they actually contain seeds that are still alive. And they will grow into a new plant if you put them in the right environment. So for example, the seeds inside an apple could eventually grow up to become a new apple tree.
As far as vegetables-- again, there's a lot of different types of vegetables. And they're all different parts of the plant. So for example, some vegetables are leaves, like lettuce or spinach. And those do not have the ability to grow new roots and continue living after they're picked.
But there's also vegetables that are bulbs, like onions. And those, if you were to plant them in soil or even just in a cup of water, you would see them grow roots and eventually grow green leaves as well. So those are still alive. And there are some vegetables that are just roots, like potatoes, for example.
You might see an old potato left in your pantry for a long time that's starting to sprout and grow into new plants. So those would be still alive as well. And a key point is that a lot of these plant parts, once you start cooking them or processing them in some way-- like making pickles out of cucumbers-- those processes will result in them being no longer alive.
MOLLY BLOOM: Picking up this list definitely makes me feel alive. It's the Brain's honor roll. These are the incredible listeners who send us questions, ideas, mystery sounds, drawings, and high fives.
[LISTING HONOR ROLL]
Brains On! will be back soon with more answers to your questions.
SUBJECT 1: Thanks for listening.
Transcription services provided by 3Play Media.
