I went to the biggest Aquarium in Europe and they had a display with plastic bags in water, talking about how turtles think they're jelly fish and eat them. It was quite the eye opener.
I love videos like these: the premise sounds absurd until it's outlined in more detail, then it's suddenly quite reasonable, even when summarized in a five minute brief.
I end up laughing at myself; cause I start off angry "wait, what, no that's gotta be wrong!" Then go on to 'Oh, ok, well that make sense' again, in a five minute brief. *facepalme*
SciShow: the earth used to spin much faster, and it needed to slow down for life as we know it to evolve. Maui: so, what you're trying to say is, "thank you"
@@littlesquiddiesttv Have you read the Qur'an? How much do you really know about Islam? It truly is what is Right. It is the Straight Path upon which I have been guided. Perhaps one day (in sha Allah) you will be guided too!
“Sea turtles have fallen into evolutionary traps” is a strange way to say “Humans have dumped plastic so quickly into the oceans in the last half a decade that turtles haven’t yet learned to differentiate between plastic and jellyfish, which they evolved over thousands of years to do”
Sea turtles also have the evolutionary trap of using sound to find their way to the ocean, by following the sound of the crashing waves. Which sounds very much like the sound of passing cars on a highway. So in most coastal areas, where we have built roads near the ocean to enjoy the scenery during our travels, the sea turtles often head to the road and get killed in mass by passing cars.
Re: Microplastics. Everyone focuses on plastic shopping bags. What about lint from laundry? Dryers have lint filters, and we've all seen how much lint drying a load of laundry can generate. It's my assumption that the waste water from the washing cycle generates *approximately* as much lint as the drying cycle. Given that clothing and other laundry are made from more than 50% manmade fibers (rayon, nylon, acrylic, polyester, etc.), it stands to reason that municipal waste water contains lint from laundry waste water (not filtered like a dryer), and that lint *is* largely microplastics. If this makes any sense, then perhaps we need to stop the rather-mindless focus on plastic shopping bags. Cheers.
Yup, they removed the "lint" filters from washing machines because they kept clogging. And yet society is focused on bags and straws, which while a problem are not the biggest concerns. I would say fishing nets, microplastics, and nonrecyclable plastics should be top concerns. Not to mention the infinite list of human rights issues in the "developing" world. Like children mining cobalt in Africa.
@@deepashtray5605 i think in another scishow (or subchannel) episode they mentioned that washing machines used to have filters explicitly for catching microfibers and that these filters were removed from washing machines for clogging constantly. I only called them "lint" filters to try and keep language in line with the original comment since i don't know the name given to those microfiber filters.
Emphasis on plastic bags is shifting the blame from industry to normal people Turning off your lights and colder showers MEAN ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in comparison to how much industry wastes water, fuel, how much pollution they make It's shifting blame and escaping responsibility. Plain and system Like yes don't waste house water but don't fall for the lies that it'll make any kind of difference when industry wastes more in an hour than you do in several years!!!!!
This short day model only works if sulfur eating bacteria cover the photosynthetic cyanobacteria. Add free floating cyanobacteria to the model. Don't forget that with no O2 in the atmosphere there was no ozone layer as well. It took 10 meters of water to give the same protection from UV radiation then progressively less as O2 and ozone gradually increased in the atmosphere.
As well as this the conditions of say the sulfur rich water is not very comparable to the earth billions of years ago. While yes the level of oxygen are about the same, the amount of sulfur is hundreds of times more plentiful then on most of the earth's crust, the level of sulfur in the ocean has stayed extremely consistent throughout the earth's history, very little, couple this with the fact this is a specific pool, not the open ocean and that there were other chemical compounds in the pool which were not and still aren't found in the open ocean and the study has some questions. This does not disprove the study, the sulfur in the ocean can have a minuscule effect, the fact it is isolated may not make much of a difference, and the relationship between the cyanobacteria and chemo synthetic bacteria may not cause any issues when modeling the study to similarly that of earth. The research is solid still these are potential questions.
However they're ingesting the plastic and in whatever quantities, I'm sure it can't be good for them AT ALL. This is really sad, considering how long the turtles have been around just to meet their end in the hands of a recently evolved modern human...
It was a very, very, very, VEEERRRYY long time ago, and overall, 'it doesn't matter' in modern society. However... of *course* it matters. But, in a society which favors the invention of money, industry, business, riches and 'stuff'... yup... why would 90% of humans care about the stars, moons, gravity, wavelengths and more? 🐲✨🐲✨🐲✨
I didn't know that either. The question is, will it get slower during our lifetimes? It would be handy as there aren't enough hours in the day at present and I'd like to live as long as possible
Correct me if I’m wrong but wouldn’t the amount of sunlight received over a period of time (say 24 hours) be the same no matter how fast the earth is spinning?
Yes, but there's a lag between when sunlight is brightest and when photosynthesis can reach maximum effectiveness. If the peak passes and the light fades into the dimmer afternoon too quickly...
its about the delay between the 2 organisms exchanging places, if there is sunlight for 6 hours and it takes the organisms 2 hours to exchange you get 4 hours of effective photosynthesis which would equate 8 hours per 24h. if the day is 12 hours of sunlight and 12h of darkness that same process equates to 10 effective hours of photosynthesis because they only swap once over a 24h period instead of 2.
@@Shotgunz999 Yeah, nah. The assumption that evolution would select for such paired organisms in such different environments isn't reasonable. In particular, sulfur loving bacteria would not exist in large areas where sulfur was lacking. The photosynthetic bacteria would. A billion years is a long time. Even small colonies of bacteria would swamp the world in oxygen in a few thousand years lacking any oxygen eating organisms. "Science" that explains a dataset isn't science. Science must make an hypothesis, then test that hypothesis. Simply fitting a hypothesis to a data set is Cargo Cult Science which is pseudoscience.
You should also do a video on how the earths wobble has changed over the years. (for USA) The tropic of Cancer's movement over the centuries. And also the yearly position change.
Hold on, shouldn't also shorter days mean shorter mornings and evenings that the phosphate-eating bacteria could use? My maths suggest that the result would be the same.
In theory, we have the same amount of sunlight in the same amount of time (2 periods of light and dark instead of one each). In practice, me brushing my teeth, changing to PJ, go sleep, wake up, brush my teeth, change clothes, go work... twice a day will result in less production time without the invention of artificial light and 24hr production shifts.
@@DaxSass - So the phosphatites take so long in getting in and out of their pijamas? Shouldn't thal also negatively affect their survival rate? After all they are running away from harmful UV light and if they are slow they end up twice as exposed in a 12 hr day as in a 24 hr day. I'm not buying it without further evidence or at least a better more comprehensive and detailed explanation, really.
Reaction kinetics and thermodynamics are finicky even in vitro. For living organisms with biochemistry, it's even more of a tossup when it comes to rate limiting steps.
@@LuisAldamiz haha I was using myself as a model of analogy for the more steps any process has, the more steps for anything to happen not according to plan... the philosophy of KISS and Murphys law intertwined. Not everything is as clean as math. And you dont have to believe everything they say either. That's the beauty of science, new facts or models can disprove what they just said. It is tiny bits of knowledge that can add up slowly to our understanding of the universe we live in.
@@deyesed - Assuming I understand your slang correctly, same that I said to Richard: the more those phosphate-eating "bugs" are exposed to UV, the less likely to survive, so one thing must compensate the other pretty much.
I don't know why, if no effects are being seen. Now, if the turtles were having problems and it was found the ones with plastic had more problems, that would be half of something. (Correlation does not demonstrate causation - roosters crowing do not make the sun rise.) Science, you know.
@@flagmichael Well, you didn't even listen to his words. Go on, have another listen. They are eating plastics, instead of food. Simple understanding would see that lack of nourishment will result in smaller turtles, less able to procreate and bring them close as a population to extinction. On top of that each individual goes through excruciating pain if it gets caught up in their stomach or bowl, lack of nutrients makes them sick and makes them prone to easy capture by predators. Science, indeed. If you're not out of the box thinking in science, you're missing the point. And it seems like you are.
Maine just started a statewide ban on single use plastic shopping bags. Maine has also enacted a law to charge manufacturers and supplies based on the amount of packaging they include with their products which should further reduce plastic, cardboard and paper, etc. Maine along with several other states already have bottle return deposits. The rest of the country should follow suit to help control the amount of plastic that ends up in our inland waters and oceans. There is NO reason not to minimize the amount of plastic produced
NVM, rewatched and actually paid attention. I get it. Initial step would be different other processes, the next BIG step would have been when the day's reached sufficient tipping point for excess O2 to be produced, as it continued to extend, the effect increased. -Ummm, The linear deceleration of the Earth's spin wouldn't seem to equate too well with the steps in the Oxygen levels.- :\
I'm curious about the hypothesized spikes in O2 production though. Did the Earth's rotation rapidly slow down a couple of times? If so, what caused that? Events like asteroid impacts wouldn't really have the energy to slow the Earth's rotation that significantly right?
@@peach7469 Yes but that is a gradual process. I'm wondering about the rapid spikes in O2 production which would indicate a rapid slowing down in Earth's rotation
It happens over billions of years. So, yeah. By the time the change is noticeable the animals are all completely different species. Kind of like how on a day to day basis we don't really notice the moon is currently drifting away.
Aoife Hilton These animals sleep the most: 1. Koala: 20-22 2. Sloth: 20 3. Brown bat: 19.9 4. Giant armadillo: 18.1 5. Python: 18 5. North American opossum: 18 7. Owl monkey: 17 8. Human infant: 16 9. Tiger: 15.8 9. Tree shrew: 15.8 Did they adapt? BTW love the name Aoife...do you pronounce it the Irish way?
@@haroldwilkes6608 You'll probably find the common denominator for these animals is digestive process; off the top of my head, I know that koalas have to process eucalyptus leaves over time and sleeping allows that to happen easier. The same with sloths, and pythons. Infants too. They eat, sleep and poop. All the while digesting, and growing. It's got nothing to do with light. All these animals evolved within the current daylight/nighttime parameters. The bacteria and time line they talk about here are billions of years ago.
The turtles behavior isn't the problem, the problem is humans. WE are the reason there are plastics anywhere in the ocean in the first place, it is our job to fix this problem, as we are the ones that caused it.
the oxygen argument seems suspect - measuring behavior of current bacteria says nothing about how it acted billions of years ago. Life ought to evolve to adapt to changing conditions.
@@h7opolo there is no ancient cyano bacteria DNA though. only thing you can do is say what is conserved in modern generations and presume it must be going back a billion years.. infact the whole logic train didnt make any sense
Not all behaviors change. If the conditions are the same, then it applies similar evolutionary pressures. Also some species’ genes are more resistant to mutation than others, sometimes because they have better built-in error detection mechanisms, and other times because the environment weeds it out. It really does vary.
Their sources are listed. Go and check to see if the team published something and see for yourself why they chose to study that particular site. I'm sure there was a good reason but if you take issue with it then pretty much anyone can write in to challenge their methods and assumptions.
I agree. Sci show should have put more of a disclaimer in there about it. I wonder if the paper talked at all about the feasability of the prehistoric bacteria colonies to act in the same way as they found in their study.
One would do well not to confuse "day" with "24 hours" during a discussion about periods available for photosynthesis: if a "day" is 24 hours, roughly 12 out of 24 hours of sunlight are available, and if a "day" is 6 hours due to Earth's rotation at 4 times today's rate, then there are 4 times roughly 3 hours = 12 hours out of the same 24 hour period of sunlight.
Could you do the turtle part on it's own? It's particularly good explanation of evolution as a process as well as our involvement in changing the turtles natural habitat. I'd really love to put this to my fb page for my anti-evolution peeps. It's clear, makes sense and is easy to swallow; might promote some change. (The cyanobacteria thing? they just never gonna get that *facepalm*)
What do you mean by anti-evolution friends? Surely they aren't stupid enough to not believe in evolution and if they are, I sure hope it is because they are super religious
Evolution is a strange thing. We can see the results clearly enough - taxonomy would be pretty stupid without it - but what actually makes it happen is as much a mystery as ever. Mendelian genetics completely marginalized Darwin's theories in serious biology but Darwin is still a plaything in public discussions. The spooky thing is that Lamarckian theory has held up a lot better (outside of his theories about "why") than Darwin's once you get past the generalities.
@@flagmichael Yes; and that's why I want it. However, I'm very happy with Darwin's explanation of evolution by natural selection and the sex selection works for me too. It's just that this explanation is clear, immediate and current. For the most part, with evolution, the argument against it is 'if you can't see it happening how can you prove it, how can you belive in it?' That's a valid enough argument for some who haven't the education in it. I'm over 60 and science media interaction has changed so much that this sort of clarity hasn't existed for most of my life. If they don't see it, they can't know it. And, yes, the cyanobacteria info is way out of their current understanding. Baby steps, it's always about baby steps.
@@bobthegoat7090 Evolution is not a 'belief' system. It's a well thought through narrative on how change happens. With a better explanation than 'magic' or 'godhood' That's why it's a science. No body _has_ to be super religious in order to not agree with it. They just have to not know it enough to think that there's got to be another explanation. If you don't really understand it, then it can look like the anti-evolution arguments have a point. They don't, of course, but if you're the person with out the clear explanation of the way it works, then it's a bit iffy. That's why I want this very clear, immediate and current explanation for them. That's what science explanation is about. Not calling them stupid, giving them a bit of clarity upon which to hang their hats.
It is what keeps me from subscribing. I am often interested, but when propaganda like that finds its way in I am repelled. This should be about science, not things like "turtles have plastic in their guts and it is awful although we admittedly don't know if it has any effect." That is as much the opposite of science as naked superstition (did I mention man caused climate change?) is.
0:30: is that a typo? I'm not sure what the P in PO2 stands for? Funnily enough, I read that as polluted oxygen just cuz I play a lot of Oxygen Not Included.
an unrelated question : shouldn't be the sentence "we're also still not exactly sure how the turtles are ingesting the plastic in the first place" as "... how turtles ingest ..." ?
And in response to all the critique around using plastic many companies has done something that seems like they do something but really don't (green-washing). For example McDonalds uses paper straws which accounts for almost nothing while still using a plastic cup for many if the drinks which contains way more plastic. Also the paper straws really suck. They fall apart in your mouth
"Our earth rotates at 1090 miles an hour" and at this speed, "It deflects a considerable amount of Solar Radiation" So, "It's a balance between oxygen levels, which is 21% at Sea Level, and Rotational speed which deflects extreme Solar radiation."
What about axial tilt? At certain times of the year one pole or the other remains in the sun for the whole rotational period. The Nature paper does not mention Axial Tilt or Latitude at all. Did they forget to add that to their modeling or is there a practical reason to leave it out?
Without cyanobacteria it would not matter. (The odds of ever producing any useful gene are beyond astronomical - it doesn't make much sense. How life could ever start anywhere is mathematically puzzling.)
Very nice video, thank you very much for this nice work! If I can make a little comment : is there any link between the 1rst and 2nd new? No transition at all at 3:03
@@tj4234 wow that's a long time! I was worried if I just did the math that way I'd be really far off, because I wasn't sure if the rate we were slowing was... Speeding up... If that makes sense... But I doubt someone reading a scifi story would complain about it and I dopn't think we have enough data to know 100% anyway, so a billion would do just perfectly! Thank you!
Seems to me evolving the propensity to eat anything is much more harmful than just swimming out to sea to avoid predators. After all, if the turtles didn't swim out to sea and ate plastic refuse on the beach they would still have the same problem.
That's exactly what he said. Exactly. The point is that we have put plastic in all the water that the oceans have; you can't swim out far enough to find clear water with no plastic because their is none. Evolution worked for them, now it works against them. Again not my words; actually in the video.
@@ValeriePallaoro No, that's not what he said at all. He said that the "evolutionary trap" the turtles had fallen into was because they adapted the propensity to swim out to sea to avoid predation. My point is that it is the adaptation that causes them to eat anything, including plastic, that is the evolutionary trap they are in. If the turtles never evolved the desire to swim out to sea, they would still have the desire to eat anything in their environs, including plastic refuse on the beach, and they would have the same problem.
I don't think the propensity to eat everything can be seen as an evolutionary trait when talking about the damage done by eating plastics, its more like an observation in modern times. It could never have been a problem with that behavior before the invention of plastic and comparing the timescale of evolution (millions of years) vs creation of plastic (a century) its like blaming the dinosaurs for not being well adapted to deal with the meteor. The invention of plastics its basically a cataclysmic incident of mass extinction when talking in the timescale of natural evolution. Turtle's eating habit is pretty irrelevant since its consequences were unpredictable and unavoidable in any reasonable comparison.
Okay, so does the real world sinkhole give us an interesting answer to the Great Oxygenation event? I seem to recall an Eons episode covering that topic and that there was still discussion over why the time delay between oxygen production and the extinction event. (Window of 100+ million years I think) this ebb and flow in relation to length of day and it’s effect on oxygen production may be a large factor in that?
ok, shorter days = less time for fotosyntesis... but also this means nights are shorter too, so the next day will be here sooner, so i'm not so convinced that it was that much less time of sunlight overall
I think the greatest long term danger of plastics introduced into the environment, in any organism, be it plant, animal, fungi, etc. is reproductive issues. Plastics tend to cut down on the viability of the adults to produce offspring, and juveniles being able to survive to adulthood, due to genetic issues that could be caused directly or indirectly by such plastics. There is much that we don't quite know yet. With the long life cycles of sea turtles, it's even harder to determine the long term effects.
So, do you think we will start losing O2 since the earth has started to speed up the last 8 months? Now I no it would take years but would we start off gassing oxygen?
Also it would be less about off gassing (gas leaving the planet forever) and more about consumption being greater than production. Which would lead to less total oxygen in the atmosphere which would eventually start putting evolutionary pressure on animals. Please not that to noticably change atmospheric chemistry you need to add or remove billons of tons of material, something that normally happens on geologic time scales and humans burning fossil fuels is an exception. Another exception would be volcanoes or meteorite impacts.
For milliseconds? No. Go back and watch again. We'd have to lose hours of time. If we sped up to only 6 hours in a day, we'd have bigger problems than less oxygen.
Now realize that the microplastic (and microfibers) are being consumed by the entire food chain and if you eat wild caught seafood you are apart of that foodchain. (And its probably in basically all the land food chains as well)
@SciShow, why are we using the qualifier "'potentially' dangerous plastics," is there a legal reason for that, because it seems to be pretty aimed at dangerous by all research and evidence I've come across.
It is presumed dangerous but there is no actual evidence. "A key concern of microplastics pollution is whether they represent a risk to ecosystems and human health. However, there is much uncertainty associated with this issue. Data on the exposure and effect levels of microplastics are therefore required to evaluate the risk of microplastics to environments and human health." www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7068600/ We have been living with plastics for more than a century already. Perhaps the most pervasive one, polyvinyl chloride (PVC) is almost two centuries old. There certainly is not much reason to assume they're trouble as a class of materials. Now metals - there is a nasty bunch!
So if this theory for oxygen build up, is definitely true, that means, to find other planets ( exo planets ) with possible life, we need to know, the speed a planet's rotation, amongst other things.
shorter days means shorter night - bah - if you put it on 24h, there is the same amount of sunlight - I might admit it was a shortcut, but this was really short
Maybe humans have messed up nature too much already? What makes you think that "changing turtles" would make the problem go away for other every other creature that live in water or otherwise depend on it (fish, humans, birds and many other land animals). It'd be much better to just go after the polluters, learn to recycle, reject 1-use plastics and develop plastics that are easily bio-degradable for instance.
Since the plastics are resistant to most chemicals, it is very likely they will simply pass on through. Digesting requires the body to figure out what to do with it. Much better the way it is.
@@flagmichael Large plastic parts are not the issue, microplastics are. These little buggars get into your bloodstream and get stuck into all your vital organs (heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, etc etc). Don't just believe me, google it! This isn't only the case for humans, also for the fish that you and other animals eat. THAT is the issue with plastics floating around in the oceans. Besides that, larger parts can block digestive systems of animals, limit their movements and even strangle them. You shouldn't be so fast to dismiss the dangers of plastic.
So if the earth’s flat and rotates all would live like among the wall of a gigantic cereal bowl or a frisbee if you picture how when filled with for example water in the disc-shaped thing spinning it shoots up and out in a cylindrical form am I wrong?
Sea Turtles like to eat jellyfish which are shiny, and transparent and translucent. Many plastics have these properties.
They like to sniff straws too.
Some humans Eat tidepods and sniff glue
So throw more plastics into the sea because that = more food for the turtles?
Thanks tips. Amazing observation. 👍
I went to the biggest Aquarium in Europe and they had a display with plastic bags in water, talking about how turtles think they're jelly fish and eat them. It was quite the eye opener.
I love how you guys put captions on the main idea :)
I love videos like these: the premise sounds absurd until it's outlined in more detail, then it's suddenly quite reasonable, even when summarized in a five minute brief.
I end up laughing at myself; cause I start off angry "wait, what, no that's gotta be wrong!" Then go on to 'Oh, ok, well that make sense' again, in a five minute brief. *facepalme*
SciShow: the earth used to spin much faster, and it needed to slow down for life as we know it to evolve.
Maui: so, what you're trying to say is, "thank you"
There is NO doubt that we humans need to change our behaviors! You left the most important comment to the very last line!
Everything affects everything...that is the beauty...and the horror of It
Take the card at the bottom, and the whole house falls down
@@lyrablack8621 Nice analogy, better than domino theory...
That which I focus on becomes the outcome
@@resonaterenaissance Jen Sincero Quote: “What you choose to focus on becomes your reality.”
Thank you patreons!
Well that's a new spin on things.
There is the door 👉🚪
@@Rasaevire Thanks I'll go get some fresh oxygen out there.
Booo
Yeah but it will take some time for everyone to come around
This is even more evidence into how important our moon is for life as we know it today
And the Beloved Prophet (Sallallahu Alaihi Wa Sallam) actually split that big bad boy back in the 7th century.
@@HabrenOdinsdottir LMFAO.
@@proculusjulius7035 What's so funny?
@@HabrenOdinsdottir its funny because its not true, just like any other religion out there. glad you find solace in your religion though.
@@littlesquiddiesttv Have you read the Qur'an? How much do you really know about Islam?
It truly is what is Right. It is the Straight Path upon which I have been guided. Perhaps one day (in sha Allah) you will be guided too!
I'm a huge nerd and been watching since highschool through college. Dope to be the 7th comment
Same here.
Haha nerd
Hope we all here to celebrate your masters degree .😁
Your family must be so proud that you posted the 7th comment on a TH-cam video I know I am. I can tell you know what matters in life.
@@Cobra85291 spending the effort to be an ass sure tells me you have little that matters in your life. Sad.
“Sea turtles have fallen into evolutionary traps” is a strange way to say “Humans have dumped plastic so quickly into the oceans in the last half a decade that turtles haven’t yet learned to differentiate between plastic and jellyfish, which they evolved over thousands of years to do”
Half decade? You mean half century?
Sea turtles also have the evolutionary trap of using sound to find their way to the ocean, by following the sound of the crashing waves. Which sounds very much like the sound of passing cars on a highway. So in most coastal areas, where we have built roads near the ocean to enjoy the scenery during our travels, the sea turtles often head to the road and get killed in mass by passing cars.
Re: Microplastics. Everyone focuses on plastic shopping bags. What about lint from laundry? Dryers have lint filters, and we've all seen how much lint drying a load of laundry can generate. It's my assumption that the waste water from the washing cycle generates *approximately* as much lint as the drying cycle. Given that clothing and other laundry are made from more than 50% manmade fibers (rayon, nylon, acrylic, polyester, etc.), it stands to reason that municipal waste water contains lint from laundry waste water (not filtered like a dryer), and that lint *is* largely microplastics. If this makes any sense, then perhaps we need to stop the rather-mindless focus on plastic shopping bags. Cheers.
Yup, they removed the "lint" filters from washing machines because they kept clogging.
And yet society is focused on bags and straws, which while a problem are not the biggest concerns.
I would say fishing nets, microplastics, and nonrecyclable plastics should be top concerns.
Not to mention the infinite list of human rights issues in the "developing" world. Like children mining cobalt in Africa.
@@jasonreed7522 Lint filters are nearly useless for catching microfibers.
@@deepashtray5605 i think in another scishow (or subchannel) episode they mentioned that washing machines used to have filters explicitly for catching microfibers and that these filters were removed from washing machines for clogging constantly.
I only called them "lint" filters to try and keep language in line with the original comment since i don't know the name given to those microfiber filters.
Emphasis on plastic bags is shifting the blame from industry to normal people
Turning off your lights and colder showers MEAN ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in comparison to how much industry wastes water, fuel, how much pollution they make
It's shifting blame and escaping responsibility. Plain and system
Like yes don't waste house water but don't fall for the lies that it'll make any kind of difference when industry wastes more in an hour than you do in several years!!!!!
@@jasonreed7522 I seem to recall that video, thanks for the reminder. It's a mess by any standard.
This short day model only works if sulfur eating bacteria cover the photosynthetic cyanobacteria. Add free floating cyanobacteria to the model. Don't forget that with no O2 in the atmosphere there was no ozone layer as well. It took 10 meters of water to give the same protection from UV radiation then progressively less as O2 and ozone gradually increased in the atmosphere.
That makes sense 👍
As well as this the conditions of say the sulfur rich water is not very comparable to the earth billions of years ago. While yes the level of oxygen are about the same, the amount of sulfur is hundreds of times more plentiful then on most of the earth's crust, the level of sulfur in the ocean has stayed extremely consistent throughout the earth's history, very little, couple this with the fact this is a specific pool, not the open ocean and that there were other chemical compounds in the pool which were not and still aren't found in the open ocean and the study has some questions.
This does not disprove the study, the sulfur in the ocean can have a minuscule effect, the fact it is isolated may not make much of a difference, and the relationship between the cyanobacteria and chemo synthetic bacteria may not cause any issues when modeling the study to similarly that of earth. The research is solid still these are potential questions.
Probably need to change our behavior? That’s an understatement. We live on this planet like we have somewhere else to go.
However they're ingesting the plastic and in whatever quantities, I'm sure it can't be good for them AT ALL. This is really sad, considering how long the turtles have been around just to meet their end in the hands of a recently evolved modern human...
Welcome to the Anthropocene. Where we are affecting the planet so much, we have entered a brand new Gread Dying. 😭
We're in an evolutionary trap too. Tribalism and "groupthink" was can faff fu YT up
Why did I never know until now that the earth used to spin that fast?
Because the current education system is broken
Very slow in relations.
It was a very, very, very, VEEERRRYY long time ago, and overall, 'it doesn't matter' in modern society.
However... of *course* it matters. But, in a society which favors the invention of money, industry, business, riches and 'stuff'... yup... why would 90% of humans care about the stars, moons, gravity, wavelengths and more? 🐲✨🐲✨🐲✨
Yeah me too, and it makes total sense that it spinned faster.
I didn't know that either. The question is, will it get slower during our lifetimes? It would be handy as there aren't enough hours in the day at present and I'd like to live as long as possible
Correct me if I’m wrong but wouldn’t the amount of sunlight received over a period of time (say 24 hours) be the same no matter how fast the earth is spinning?
yea i got stuck there too
Yes, but there's a lag between when sunlight is brightest and when photosynthesis can reach maximum effectiveness. If the peak passes and the light fades into the dimmer afternoon too quickly...
its about the delay between the 2 organisms exchanging places, if there is sunlight for 6 hours and it takes the organisms 2 hours to exchange you get 4 hours of effective photosynthesis which would equate 8 hours per 24h. if the day is 12 hours of sunlight and 12h of darkness that same process equates to 10 effective hours of photosynthesis because they only swap once over a 24h period instead of 2.
@@Shotgunz999 Yeah, nah. The assumption that evolution would select for such paired organisms in such different environments isn't reasonable.
In particular, sulfur loving bacteria would not exist in large areas where sulfur was lacking. The photosynthetic bacteria would. A billion years is a long time. Even small colonies of bacteria would swamp the world in oxygen in a few thousand years lacking any oxygen eating organisms.
"Science" that explains a dataset isn't science. Science must make an hypothesis, then test that hypothesis. Simply fitting a hypothesis to a data set is Cargo Cult Science which is pseudoscience.
@@jwrosenbury That is a good point. Why are they assuming that the two organisms would be paired. Do they need each other to survive or something?
I love this show keep making these amazing videos!
You should also do a video on how the earths wobble has changed over the years. (for USA) The tropic of Cancer's movement over the centuries. And also the yearly position change.
Excellent. an episode about oxygen ends up schooling us and telling us we are all bad for hurting turtles. thanks
Hold on, shouldn't also shorter days mean shorter mornings and evenings that the phosphate-eating bacteria could use? My maths suggest that the result would be the same.
In theory, we have the same amount of sunlight in the same amount of time (2 periods of light and dark instead of one each). In practice, me brushing my teeth, changing to PJ, go sleep, wake up, brush my teeth, change clothes, go work... twice a day will result in less production time without the invention of artificial light and 24hr production shifts.
@@DaxSass - So the phosphatites take so long in getting in and out of their pijamas? Shouldn't thal also negatively affect their survival rate? After all they are running away from harmful UV light and if they are slow they end up twice as exposed in a 12 hr day as in a 24 hr day.
I'm not buying it without further evidence or at least a better more comprehensive and detailed explanation, really.
Reaction kinetics and thermodynamics are finicky even in vitro. For living organisms with biochemistry, it's even more of a tossup when it comes to rate limiting steps.
@@LuisAldamiz haha I was using myself as a model of analogy for the more steps any process has, the more steps for anything to happen not according to plan... the philosophy of KISS and Murphys law intertwined. Not everything is as clean as math. And you dont have to believe everything they say either. That's the beauty of science, new facts or models can disprove what they just said. It is tiny bits of knowledge that can add up slowly to our understanding of the universe we live in.
@@deyesed - Assuming I understand your slang correctly, same that I said to Richard: the more those phosphate-eating "bugs" are exposed to UV, the less likely to survive, so one thing must compensate the other pretty much.
Interesting and worthwhile video.
Man, it pains me to hear that about the turtles.
I don't know why, if no effects are being seen. Now, if the turtles were having problems and it was found the ones with plastic had more problems, that would be half of something. (Correlation does not demonstrate causation - roosters crowing do not make the sun rise.) Science, you know.
@@flagmichael Well, you didn't even listen to his words. Go on, have another listen. They are eating plastics, instead of food. Simple understanding would see that lack of nourishment will result in smaller turtles, less able to procreate and bring them close as a population to extinction. On top of that each individual goes through excruciating pain if it gets caught up in their stomach or bowl, lack of nutrients makes them sick and makes them prone to easy capture by predators. Science, indeed. If you're not out of the box thinking in science, you're missing the point. And it seems like you are.
That curve at 0:35 is so cool! Why did the decrease happen, followed by plateauing?
My guess is that the dip coincides with the carboniferous rainforest collapse, but I'm not sure.
@@kraetyz ooooh. Interesting.
What scares me is that when the delicate oxygen balance is upset by mans prisoning of the atmosphere, all of mankind will slowly die off.....
There is no probably when I comes to humans needing to change our behavior, it is essential.
Maine just started a statewide ban on single use plastic shopping bags. Maine has also enacted a law to charge manufacturers and supplies based on the amount of packaging they include with their products which should further reduce plastic, cardboard and paper, etc. Maine along with several other states already have bottle return deposits. The rest of the country should follow suit to help control the amount of plastic that ends up in our inland waters and oceans. There is NO reason not to minimize the amount of plastic produced
Thank you, it's so nice to see the captions in mixed case as opposed to the stupid UPPER CASE which is harder to read quickly.
NVM, rewatched and actually paid attention. I get it. Initial step would be different other processes, the next BIG step would have been when the day's reached sufficient tipping point for excess O2 to be produced, as it continued to extend, the effect increased.
-Ummm, The linear deceleration of the Earth's spin wouldn't seem to equate too well with the steps in the Oxygen levels.- :\
Thanks, cause I was still at the '6 hour days = 6 hour nights and in 24 hours you still get 12 hrs of light' level.
@@ValeriePallaoro
I think they meant 6 hour long days, as in, our days are 24 hours long. In this context, the day is the entire daily cycle.
I'm curious about the hypothesized spikes in O2 production though. Did the Earth's rotation rapidly slow down a couple of times? If so, what caused that? Events like asteroid impacts wouldn't really have the energy to slow the Earth's rotation that significantly right?
The moon’s orbit is slowing down the earth’s spin. It’s happening to this day.
@@peach7469 Yes but that is a gradual process. I'm wondering about the rapid spikes in O2 production which would indicate a rapid slowing down in Earth's rotation
A video topic suggestion: how can we remove plastic from the sea? And how can we stop further plastic pollution?
And does it matter at all? How much and in what ways?
You spin me right round baby right round, like a record
What a great guy
I'd like to know how these lengthening days has affected other animals. Has the transition been slow enough for everyone to adapt to it?
It's not about lengthening days. It's about everything going on now.
I doubt there were animals that long back
It happens over billions of years. So, yeah. By the time the change is noticeable the animals are all completely different species. Kind of like how on a day to day basis we don't really notice the moon is currently drifting away.
Aoife Hilton These animals sleep the most:
1. Koala: 20-22
2. Sloth: 20
3. Brown bat: 19.9
4. Giant armadillo: 18.1
5. Python: 18
5. North American opossum: 18
7. Owl monkey: 17
8. Human infant: 16
9. Tiger: 15.8
9. Tree shrew: 15.8
Did they adapt? BTW love the name Aoife...do you pronounce it the Irish way?
@@haroldwilkes6608 You'll probably find the common denominator for these animals is digestive process; off the top of my head, I know that koalas have to process eucalyptus leaves over time and sleeping allows that to happen easier. The same with sloths, and pythons. Infants too. They eat, sleep and poop. All the while digesting, and growing. It's got nothing to do with light. All these animals evolved within the current daylight/nighttime parameters. The bacteria and time line they talk about here are billions of years ago.
Why were there spikes in oxygen and not a gradual increase as the days got longer?
Thank you Hank but I was looking for info about oxygen, not micro-plastic in turtles, if I wanted to be depressed I'd have picked a video for that.
Yeah .. I know. I'd like this split into two parts too.
The turtles behavior isn't the problem, the problem is humans. WE are the reason there are plastics anywhere in the ocean in the first place, it is our job to fix this problem, as we are the ones that caused it.
**replaces the ocean with lava and watches the baby sea turtles crawl in**
"EVOLUTION HAS ENDANGERED THESE TURTLES"
the oxygen argument seems suspect - measuring behavior of current bacteria says nothing about how it acted billions of years ago. Life ought to evolve to adapt to changing conditions.
@@h7opolo there is no ancient cyano bacteria DNA though. only thing you can do is say what is conserved in modern generations and presume it must be going back a billion years.. infact the whole logic train didnt make any sense
Not all behaviors change. If the conditions are the same, then it applies similar evolutionary pressures. Also some species’ genes are more resistant to mutation than others, sometimes because they have better built-in error detection mechanisms, and other times because the environment weeds it out. It really does vary.
@@CourtneySchwartz Sure, but it seems a large assumption to say anything unless you have proof species are unchanged.
Their sources are listed. Go and check to see if the team published something and see for yourself why they chose to study that particular site. I'm sure there was a good reason but if you take issue with it then pretty much anyone can write in to challenge their methods and assumptions.
I agree. Sci show should have put more of a disclaimer in there about it. I wonder if the paper talked at all about the feasability of the prehistoric bacteria colonies to act in the same way as they found in their study.
One would do well not to confuse "day" with "24 hours" during a discussion about periods available for photosynthesis: if a "day" is 24 hours, roughly 12 out of 24 hours of sunlight are available, and if a "day" is 6 hours due to Earth's rotation at 4 times today's rate, then there are 4 times roughly 3 hours = 12 hours out of the same 24 hour period of sunlight.
Could you do the turtle part on it's own? It's particularly good explanation of evolution as a process as well as our involvement in changing the turtles natural habitat. I'd really love to put this to my fb page for my anti-evolution peeps. It's clear, makes sense and is easy to swallow; might promote some change. (The cyanobacteria thing? they just never gonna get that *facepalm*)
What do you mean by anti-evolution friends? Surely they aren't stupid enough to not believe in evolution and if they are, I sure hope it is because they are super religious
Evolution is a strange thing. We can see the results clearly enough - taxonomy would be pretty stupid without it - but what actually makes it happen is as much a mystery as ever. Mendelian genetics completely marginalized Darwin's theories in serious biology but Darwin is still a plaything in public discussions. The spooky thing is that Lamarckian theory has held up a lot better (outside of his theories about "why") than Darwin's once you get past the generalities.
@@flagmichael Yes; and that's why I want it. However, I'm very happy with Darwin's explanation of evolution by natural selection and the sex selection works for me too. It's just that this explanation is clear, immediate and current. For the most part, with evolution, the argument against it is 'if you can't see it happening how can you prove it, how can you belive in it?' That's a valid enough argument for some who haven't the education in it. I'm over 60 and science media interaction has changed so much that this sort of clarity hasn't existed for most of my life. If they don't see it, they can't know it. And, yes, the cyanobacteria info is way out of their current understanding. Baby steps, it's always about baby steps.
@@bobthegoat7090 Evolution is not a 'belief' system. It's a well thought through narrative on how change happens. With a better explanation than 'magic' or 'godhood' That's why it's a science. No body _has_ to be super religious in order to not agree with it. They just have to not know it enough to think that there's got to be another explanation. If you don't really understand it, then it can look like the anti-evolution arguments have a point. They don't, of course, but if you're the person with out the clear explanation of the way it works, then it's a bit iffy. That's why I want this very clear, immediate and current explanation for them. That's what science explanation is about. Not calling them stupid, giving them a bit of clarity upon which to hang their hats.
You can share TH-cam videos that start at a specific section.
I can't remember the last episode that didn't have a "humans bad" undertone.
It is what keeps me from subscribing. I am often interested, but when propaganda like that finds its way in I am repelled. This should be about science, not things like "turtles have plastic in their guts and it is awful although we admittedly don't know if it has any effect." That is as much the opposite of science as naked superstition (did I mention man caused climate change?) is.
Watching this on a busy day of work👍
Very Cool!
This is a very cool question! I never even thought about this!(:
0:30: is that a typo? I'm not sure what the P in PO2 stands for? Funnily enough, I read that as polluted oxygen just cuz I play a lot of Oxygen Not Included.
Partial pressure probably. Roughly the percentage of O2 in the atmosphere.
@@tomf3150 Considering the scale is atmospheres, I'm sure you are right.
Wait… what’s the connection between oxygen and turtles? It just seemed like the turtle part was slapped in there as an afterthought
They often feature two stories at once, but they usually have a headline showing where one ends and the other begins.
an unrelated question : shouldn't be the sentence "we're also still not exactly sure how the turtles are ingesting the plastic in the first place" as "... how turtles ingest ..." ?
thank you
you spin me right round like a record, baby!
And in response to all the critique around using plastic many companies has done something that seems like they do something but really don't (green-washing). For example McDonalds uses paper straws which accounts for almost nothing while still using a plastic cup for many if the drinks which contains way more plastic. Also the paper straws really suck. They fall apart in your mouth
"Our earth rotates at 1090 miles an hour" and at this speed, "It deflects a considerable amount of Solar Radiation" So, "It's a balance between oxygen levels, which is 21% at Sea Level, and Rotational speed which deflects extreme Solar radiation."
What about axial tilt? At certain times of the year one pole or the other remains in the sun for the whole rotational period. The Nature paper does not mention Axial Tilt or Latitude at all. Did they forget to add that to their modeling or is there a practical reason to leave it out?
How might this affect tidally locked planets? Do you think there would be more or less oxygen?
Without cyanobacteria it would not matter. (The odds of ever producing any useful gene are beyond astronomical - it doesn't make much sense. How life could ever start anywhere is mathematically puzzling.)
I like the new look!
Aren’t micro plastics in practically every living creature nowadays?
Shorter days but a lot more of them. Same amount of sunshine.
Very nice video, thank you very much for this nice work!
If I can make a little comment : is there any link between the 1rst and 2nd new? No transition at all at 3:03
how long before Earth will have 30 hour days? I wanna write a scifi short story and longer days are neat, ngl that's the only reason I want to know
Takes about 180 million years to slow down earth's rotation enough to add another hour to the day. So about another billion years.
@@tj4234 wow that's a long time! I was worried if I just did the math that way I'd be really far off, because I wasn't sure if the rate we were slowing was... Speeding up... If that makes sense... But I doubt someone reading a scifi story would complain about it and I dopn't think we have enough data to know 100% anyway, so a billion would do just perfectly! Thank you!
That’s wild
Seems to me evolving the propensity to eat anything is much more harmful than just swimming out to sea to avoid predators. After all, if the turtles didn't swim out to sea and ate plastic refuse on the beach they would still have the same problem.
That's exactly what he said. Exactly. The point is that we have put plastic in all the water that the oceans have; you can't swim out far enough to find clear water with no plastic because their is none. Evolution worked for them, now it works against them. Again not my words; actually in the video.
@@ValeriePallaoro No, that's not what he said at all. He said that the "evolutionary trap" the turtles had fallen into was because they adapted the propensity to swim out to sea to avoid predation. My point is that it is the adaptation that causes them to eat anything, including plastic, that is the evolutionary trap they are in. If the turtles never evolved the desire to swim out to sea, they would still have the desire to eat anything in their environs, including plastic refuse on the beach, and they would have the same problem.
I don't think the propensity to eat everything can be seen as an evolutionary trait when talking about the damage done by eating plastics, its more like an observation in modern times. It could never have been a problem with that behavior before the invention of plastic and comparing the timescale of evolution (millions of years) vs creation of plastic (a century) its like blaming the dinosaurs for not being well adapted to deal with the meteor. The invention of plastics its basically a cataclysmic incident of mass extinction when talking in the timescale of natural evolution. Turtle's eating habit is pretty irrelevant since its consequences were unpredictable and unavoidable in any reasonable comparison.
1:00 "The days were shorter because the Earth was spinning faster."
That's a circular argument.
This is probably the 5th time you guys uploaded a video a day after I searched about something in relation to it, stop it.
Ideonella, what could we do with these types of bacteria today with the current waste ?
Okay, so does the real world sinkhole give us an interesting answer to the Great Oxygenation event? I seem to recall an Eons episode covering that topic and that there was still discussion over why the time delay between oxygen production and the extinction event. (Window of 100+ million years I think) this ebb and flow in relation to length of day and it’s effect on oxygen production may be a large factor in that?
so a typical human in north america eats about a credit cards worth of micro plastics per week....I think we may be beyond how it effects the turtles.
I love how it's the turtles' fault apparently
yeah like wtf is this victim blaming
"Fault" has no place in science. There is cause and effect, and so far we have no idea of effect in this case.
The cyano bacter study has a flaw... they assume
1. the sulfur bacter where there in same manner
2. cyano bacter have been the same at that time...
So now not only do we need another planet that’s in the habitable zone but also it’s spinning at just the right speed.
ok, shorter days = less time for fotosyntesis... but also this means nights are shorter too, so the next day will be here sooner, so i'm not so convinced that it was that much less time of sunlight overall
Nice video
Now I heard the three gorges dam slowed earths rotation some. Does that effect anything ? Or does no one really know?
Hey scishow, we can use timestamps. They are pretty comfortable.
Go Go Sci Show
I think the greatest long term danger of plastics introduced into the environment, in any organism, be it plant, animal, fungi, etc. is reproductive issues. Plastics tend to cut down on the viability of the adults to produce offspring, and juveniles being able to survive to adulthood, due to genetic issues that could be caused directly or indirectly by such plastics. There is much that we don't quite know yet.
With the long life cycles of sea turtles, it's even harder to determine the long term effects.
If you have reliable sources for any of those assertions we would love to see them.
@@flagmichael
Seriously? All you need to do is Google - ocean plastic reproductive issues.
I'm sure you'll find hours of reading material.
I can't imagine what option the turtles have BESIDES rushing into the ocean.
So, do you think we will start losing O2 since the earth has started to speed up the last 8 months? Now I no it would take years but would we start off gassing oxygen?
Some oxygen already off-gasses. It ends up in the upper atmosphere along with other gases and some of it is stripped away by sunlight and solar wind.
Also it would be less about off gassing (gas leaving the planet forever) and more about consumption being greater than production. Which would lead to less total oxygen in the atmosphere which would eventually start putting evolutionary pressure on animals.
Please not that to noticably change atmospheric chemistry you need to add or remove billons of tons of material, something that normally happens on geologic time scales and humans burning fossil fuels is an exception. Another exception would be volcanoes or meteorite impacts.
For milliseconds? No. Go back and watch again. We'd have to lose hours of time. If we sped up to only 6 hours in a day, we'd have bigger problems than less oxygen.
I am 10 year old so I should still should watch scishow kids but the earliest the best
More sunlight leads to more photosynthesis, who knew!
Next step for turtle evolution: evolve a way to digest plastics and thrive on it.
Or just pass it, as they almost certainly do. Turtle digestive systems have dealt with more sorts of sand than we ever have.
how many days were there in a year if the day is only 6 hours long?
Okay but why would anyone dislike the video?
Because they don't want to think about the repercussions, and want to keep their heads buried in the sand
So it is the bulp that has slowed our rotation? What about Venus and Jupiter? Does their rotation speed not change over time?
And it's turtles all the way down
A classic example of a local minima.
Millions of years from now, we have a plastic eating sea turtles. Good job humans.
Eyyy I'm from thunder bay!
When the day is 6 hours long you still get the same amount of Light in a 24 hour span tho
Hearing about the sea turtles makes me sad.
Now realize that the microplastic (and microfibers) are being consumed by the entire food chain and if you eat wild caught seafood you are apart of that foodchain. (And its probably in basically all the land food chains as well)
Yet, as mentioned, the effect (if any) is unknown.
@SciShow, why are we using the qualifier "'potentially' dangerous plastics," is there a legal reason for that, because it seems to be pretty aimed at dangerous by all research and evidence I've come across.
It is presumed dangerous but there is no actual evidence. "A key concern of microplastics pollution is whether they represent a risk to ecosystems and human health. However, there is much uncertainty associated with this issue. Data on the exposure and effect levels of microplastics are therefore required to evaluate the risk of microplastics to environments and human health." www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7068600/
We have been living with plastics for more than a century already. Perhaps the most pervasive one, polyvinyl chloride (PVC) is almost two centuries old. There certainly is not much reason to assume they're trouble as a class of materials.
Now metals - there is a nasty bunch!
So if this theory for oxygen build up, is definitely true, that means, to find other planets ( exo planets ) with possible life, we need to know, the speed a planet's rotation, amongst other things.
That is (at least theoretically) how it happened here. It may not be the only way for free oxygen to be present.
Thats actually pretty clever
shorter days means shorter night - bah - if you put it on 24h, there is the same amount of sunlight - I might admit it was a shortcut, but this was really short
Plastic consumption disrupts hormone production in humans.
Come for the science stay for the entertainment.
Maybe we can change the turtles so they can digest the plastic!
Maybe humans have messed up nature too much already? What makes you think that "changing turtles" would make the problem go away for other every other creature that live in water or otherwise depend on it (fish, humans, birds and many other land animals).
It'd be much better to just go after the polluters, learn to recycle, reject 1-use plastics and develop plastics that are easily bio-degradable for instance.
Since the plastics are resistant to most chemicals, it is very likely they will simply pass on through. Digesting requires the body to figure out what to do with it. Much better the way it is.
@@flagmichael Large plastic parts are not the issue, microplastics are. These little buggars get into your bloodstream and get stuck into all your vital organs (heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, etc etc). Don't just believe me, google it! This isn't only the case for humans, also for the fish that you and other animals eat. THAT is the issue with plastics floating around in the oceans. Besides that, larger parts can block digestive systems of animals, limit their movements and even strangle them.
You shouldn't be so fast to dismiss the dangers of plastic.
So if the earth’s flat and rotates all would live like among the wall of a gigantic cereal bowl or a frisbee if you picture how when filled with for example water in the disc-shaped thing spinning it shoots up and out in a cylindrical form am I wrong?
"Do you CaCa Plastic?"
As usual, very nice show. However, would be even nicer with some breathing pauses in between sentences.