Good and nice.
Hello everybody.
Welcome back.
This is VK and this is K.
This is our second episode for those who engaged with our podcast.
Those who downloaded the first episode.
We are so very grateful to have you with us.
We are very excited to welcome new people who may be joining us for the first time.
Please hit like and subscribe on whatever platform you're using to listen to us today.
For those who are joining us for the first time, we'll do a brief introduction and I'll start with K.
Hi, this is K.
I have a PhD in physics and I am a college professor.
We are here trying to talk to you about exciting science that almost always lies outside our discipline,
but excites us a lot.
It's about what is in current media and is to chat a little bit about what we found interesting in there.
Because these are the conversations we have with each other for the whole week.
And I'm VK.
I am also a college professor and I have a PhD in psychology.
Between the two of us, we have decades of teaching experience and we love talking science with each other.
We find articles in newspapers and news media and then we spend time talking to each other about it.
Most of the time, like you said, these articles are outside our realm of expertise and the sheer joy that we get from discussing the science
is the reason that we're doing this podcast.
Especially because these are difficult times for a lot of people and the newspapers, the media is full of negativity,
despair, and we find that the science that we discover when we read the newspapers,
when we read or watch mass media is the stuff that gives us glimmers of hope in this sea of despair.
And absolutely.
And for me to sort of add on top of that is the idea that the crowning discovery of our species is not the science,
but it's the scientific method.
And I think for me, every time we discuss science, these articles, the method that's being applied to do this is almost exactly the same as it was in the past.
It's the same idea over and over again.
Yeah, and I think that's a really important point, K, because the scientific method has stood the test of time.
And in fact, when you read about scientists who've gone rogue, who published bad data or did things that were not correct,
it's because they weren't following the scientific method.
And there's a beauty and an elegance to that method, which really, I think, is what you're talking about, right?
Yes, indeed. That's absolutely right.
So I think it also for the other beautiful aspect of this is that the scientific method is the same across any discipline.
And that's why these articles that we keep discussing are so fascinating because the method is applied to solve a problem from many different disciplines together.
Yeah, that's a beautiful thing to say.
Okay, I mean, and I'm so appreciative of you highlighting that because that not to like give the story away,
but that's going to be a thing that I'm really going to highlight in our discussion today.
Just as a reminder, we do this once a week.
So, you know, usually do this on a weekend.
This is our weekend joy.
Also heads up, we went out yesterday on a date and I had like one cocktail and now my throat is just a little bit scratchy.
So if my voice sounds hoarse or I need to take a little bit of a break to cough, it's only because of that.
We had a lot of fun though, right?
Yes, we had a lot of fun.
So I think we're going to have a lot of fun doing this today.
Exactly. All right.
So we'll get started. The episode is Old Seed New Hope.
What did we find, K?
Oh, I don't know how this article came to your attention.
I think you found it on a site and you told me about it and I was I think I looked for it on Google sort of, you know,
so this article was about an archaeology group that had discovered a seed in one of their excavations and had to figure out where it came from,
what it was, whether it was still viable.
And yeah, it takes us into biblical references.
Yes. So excuse me. I found this article on CNN and when I read it,
I was immediately hooked because the seed in that they were talking about was found in a cave that was being excavated
and they think the seed is at least a thousand years old.
Am I right about that, K?
Yeah. Well, in fact, they had to find out how old the seeds were because that was a part of the study.
We're going to talk about that a little bit.
Yeah. And this article was presented in CNN and CNN covered it and has an interview with the lead investigator.
But the original articles actually published in Nature Communications Biology.
It's an open source journal.
We link both the CNN article and the original article that we both read.
Yes. And unlike the episode that we did last time, this article actually was published in September of 24.
So it's quite recent.
Yep. Yep. It got published now.
But as you'll see, times are variable in this story as well.
Well, and just to sort of also add that the fact that there was a biblical reference at the end of this obviously got attention.
Absolutely. And there's more to the biblical reference than just the fact that it's from the time.
It's also because of what the seed actually represents.
Oh, yeah. This was a really cool sort of publication.
So we I had a lot of fun reading it and we're going to tell you everything about what we liked about it and what we thought about it.
OK. So mostly, I found the article easy to read, but there were sections that were very technical.
They use the word spectroscopy a lot.
And I was thinking about you and I was feeling very grateful that I actually have someone who can explain this to me.
Yeah, I will. And of course, in fact, I'm very excited to because this is sort of spans the multidisciplinary aspect of this.
You know, science comes comes to the fore in this work.
So, you know, before we sort of jump off, there was another thought that I wanted to sort of share with you was the the idea of finding a seed
and then finding out where it came from and then making it sort of viable, making it a living thing again sort of really questions the borderline of what's living as we understand it and what's not.
You know, there are certainly irreversibly sort of dead processes.
And then there is life and then there are seeds. And it's fascinating what lies in between.
Amazing. One of the things that got me hooked to the original article and I'm talking about the journal article as soon as I read it was that this is not the oldest seed they found.
The oldest seed actually is from 30,000 years ago.
And I think we have to clarify in this case, we are saying the seeds are viable.
So these were viable seeds. So not only was the seed excavated, it needed to be dated.
But we have to the first idea is to find out how and when this seed came from.
And then then if it germinates and it becomes a living thing, then it's living now.
Which I don't know about you, but it kind of reminded me of Jurassic Park.
I was like, oh my gosh, are we bringing back like, which is exciting. I have to say it's exciting.
It is exciting. And there is a lot of, you know, there's been a lot of popular media and films about this and certainly books and Jurassic Park is the first of it probably that comes to mind.
We must be careful about timing here.
And I will get into that a little bit as well, because we this is not prehistoric as in it's not millennia.
Yeah, absolutely. You're right. I'm just using the Jurassic Park reference because the article talks about the fact that this is an important way of thinking about how to bring back old and extinct plants.
Which if you think about it, as we head into a future with increased climate change, extinction of species,
some of the plants that we depend on for food, for survival may need to be brought back or may need to be preserved.
So this article actually has a lot of relevance to our lives.
Yeah, that is true. I didn't think of that. And, you know, one of the stories I've heard when I visited some of the more rural parts of countries is about how there were so many different varieties of the same fruit or vegetable that existed,
you know, about eight or ten decades ago compared to what exists in the same area today.
So I think everything that you're talking about in terms of diversity and preservation and food for a changing world in terms of climate and weather patterns is something that we all have to consider.
Absolutely. And one of the things that I found really interesting about this study and the plant that grew out of that seed,
not to give the story away, is that the plant itself produces this resin that is known as myra.
Or is it myra? But it's this like orange, beautiful amber color resin that actually in some species of this plant smells beautiful.
And that's where you get frangusins from. And then in some other plants, it's medicinal, so it actually helps with like pain and anti-inflammatory, has anti-inflammatory properties.
So the plant species themselves are like more than 200 within the same cluster. And all of them have different properties.
So reading about that was fascinating.
Yeah, and so just to sort of set the stage again, the study covered the idea of a seed, a seed of a plant that was covered during an archaeological excavation in the Judaean desert.
They were able to germinate the seed and then plant that germinated seed into a pot and which became a whole tree.
And they wanted to find out what this was and if it could have been a particular species that's mentioned in the Bible.
And it turns out it was. It was a plant that was mentioned in the Bible.
But here's where, Kay, like, can I interject a little bit with my specific interest in this, which was that when they got the seed, like Kay said, they germinated it.
But it's not like they did anything special with it. They just, you know, like put some water on it and they allowed it to germinate and then they potted it up.
Now, that by itself is astonishing because like Kay was saying earlier, it was just sitting in that cave for a thousand years.
And they picked it up and they put it in water and they put it in soil and lo and behold, a little shoot came out.
The other thing that I found really fascinating is that the researchers waited for 12 years while the plant grew, systematically studied it and then published the findings.
Now, I don't know what you all call that, but I call that persistence and patience and just scientific rigor.
Yeah. And one can imagine there were a lot of questions that were asked about, you know, whether, first of all, it was viable.
So then how do you date it? So the idea of dating comes from radiocarbon dating mainly.
And that's some of the stuff that I found really exciting from a physics standpoint, because although I understand sort of radioactivity is something that you all might know about.
And that's where this comes from. But in a nutshell, we as living creatures, we breathe radioactive carbon that's in the atmosphere all the time.
And once the creature dies, there's no more breathing.
So it decays into the natural carbon and they sort of figure out how much is left versus how much was of one versus the other to date the species.
So that's how this happens. And they're dated this to be about a thousand years.
Yeah. Yeah, about a thousand years old.
And I think one of the interesting things about radiocarbon dating, which I didn't know, is this idea that radiation levels in the atmosphere have grown over time.
And that is one of the variables or indicators that they used to try and date it.
It gets complicated. Yes, it does.
I'm going off on a little bit of a tangent here, but this took me into all sorts of research.
So there are two competing processes that can change the presence of radioactive carbon C14, as it's called in the atmosphere.
Burning fossil fuels, I think, reduces it and the atomic tests of the 40s and 50s increased it.
The recognition of these two processes has led to a lot of science that's been done in terms of calibration.
So calibration standards for these are very important and maintained, and they come from some sort of oils, I think, from the 1890s.
Yeah. And a lot of archaeological discoveries use radiocarbon dating to try and identify the time period within which the artifact existed.
And in this case, this artifact is this beautiful seed that gave rise to this gorgeous plant.
That's right. So they waited for the seed to germinate, took some of the husk of that germinated seed after it was parted, and then used that for radiocarbon dating.
They also did. So, you know, all that is physics, and I'm a physicist, so we spent a long time talking about that.
But there was a lot of cool chemistry because they actually figured out the molecular structures of these things.
And that's where all the other kinds of spectroscopy came in.
So gas chromatography, mass spectroscopy, NMR, a nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, all chemists tools to figure out the chemical components of the seed.
And then there was biology. So they got DNA analysis done in order to find how you can draw what's called a phylogenetic tree,
which tells us kind of sort of your evolution pathways because at some common ancestor point, man and monkey had a common ancestor.
So that's the tree you draw. Right. I mean, I would really like you to quickly explain two things.
One, what is spectroscopy? And then am I right about this? But phylogenetics is like a family tree, right?
Yes, a family tree that comes, I think, in this case was built off genetic information.
Spectroscopy is a very broad set of tools. It encompasses almost all our sensing technologies that we know of in modern physics.
This could involve light. It can involve electrons. It could involve sound. All of that is spectroscopy.
But ultimately, it's sort of interaction, if you will, of matter. What do you think of as sort of anything that's got mass and anything that doesn't like sound waves or light waves or electron waves?
So it's wave matter interaction is what spectroscopy from a physics standpoint would get defined as.
So let me get this right. The way you're describing it makes it sound like if I shone a light torch against your skin, I would get spectroscopic information.
Yes, that's right. So with optics, anything that you do with light would be spectroscopy.
So we see because of spectroscopy in sort of the most general way, if you want to think about it like that.
That is really cool. In fact, we see in color because of spectroscopy. That is really cool.
That is very exciting. OK, so here's some of the things that I found interesting that people might find interesting about this.
Number one, they named the plant, y'all. Like they called the plant Sheba, which I thought was adorable.
And then they over the 12 year period while they waited for the plant to grow, they tested the plant several times, right?
Like this is what Kay was talking about earlier in terms of scientific rigor.
Right. And I want to talk about that a little bit because there's a lot of emphasis on putting out scientific discoveries quickly to benefit society.
And I don't deny that that's a good thing. I mean, for heaven's sake, we wouldn't have had COVID vaccines had people not moved quickly.
But I also want to say that this is where scientific temperament and
the ability to understand when speed versus slow is important comes in.
And this is where training comes in. Right. Like the scientist who was interviewed by CNN was very clear.
Like they did not want to report because they were not sure what the plant was. So they waited for 12 years.
They sat on that data, observing it, trying to figure it out until they were sure they were not going to pull the plug.
Yeah, it was a great study and it was painstakingly done.
And the other thing was the collaboration team was international.
So I think there were people from all over the world that were collaborating on different aspects of this study.
And sort of the other fun fact that I wanted to mention was, you know,
all of this was also modeled with statistics because and then I would sort of encourage any
of the people who chase the paper link down to glance at the methods part of the paper.
It's sort of the most technical component of these studies,
but it gives you a sense of how much detail, attention to detail there is and how much we care about that in these sorts of peer reviewed journal articles.
Yeah, and I want to highlight that again, this idea.
I am so glad K is pointing to that because I think like when I think about old seed new hope,
I also think the scientific method is like an old seed.
It has all this potential, this beautiful rigor within it.
When we don't follow it, when we are not trained to understand,
when we need to take a beat and think about the data versus when we need to rush it out,
that's when big mistakes happen, right?
And you see this happening a lot with the tech industry.
Things get put out and six months later, it's like, oh, that didn't work exactly as we thought.
So I want us to really think about that.
What if a seed can wait for a thousand years in a cave, waiting for the right opportunity to grow,
waiting for the right conditions to grow.
What that tells me is that knowledge, information, truth can take that time.
I couldn't agree more with that.
So, you know, I don't know if we talked about this idea on the podcast yet, but about, you know,
we're creating knowledge and obviously our technological society is the product of the knowledge
that we have created, but we are expanding this rate of creation of knowledge.
Our technological success has come because the knowledge we created was true.
It took time to refine the truth and get to it so that we could stand on it.
And if we rush, I don't think those foundations get built right.
I agree. I do also want to say, like the mRNA technology that produced the vaccines had to move.
Like there was a genuine medical emergency.
I think the thing that I'm trying to highlight, I completely agree with you, K,
is that when you're taught to be a good scientist and you follow the scientific method,
you will know when it's time. You will know.
Yes. And even when you develop, in fact, even more so when you have to rapidly deploy things
like the mRNA vaccines or, you know, other platforms that were developed during the COVID time,
we had to test its veracity before it could be, you know, deployed in the world.
And that was already an experiment that many people were not comfortable with the timeline
because we usually take years to do these studies.
And those concerns are legitimate. I completely agree with that.
And I think one of the things that I would like us to think about is that
as we go forward into making more scientific discoveries,
I think it's the scientific method that helps us understand when it's time to publish,
when it's time to talk about it, when it's time to present the findings.
When it goes wrong is when the ego gets in the way.
When it's no longer about the science, it's no longer about the discovery,
it's about the person who did the work.
And I wanted to say this in the beginning, too.
We think the scientific method is dispassionate, but we are not.
And we are the ones that practice the method.
So it's important to understand that and it's important to try to sort of isolate that as best as possible.
And the mantra in my lab is mostly let the data speak to you.
Exactly. And I call it data fidelity.
And I call it fidelity overall else.
We've had a really interesting discussion today.
This was a long discussion.
It went into places that we didn't fully sort of think.
I had notes that we couldn't get to, but that's great.
We knew which means more things to talk about later.
Yeah. And I feel like that's what seeds do.
You never know what they're going to do.
That's right. They sprout and they do their own thing.
Yep. Exactly right.
All right. So we want to make sure that folks who have joined us again for the second time know that we value you.
We value your attention.
Please hit like or subscribe on whatever platform you're listening to us.
And I'll say the same thing.
We really appreciate listeners' inputs.
So if you can tell us what you would like us to talk about a little more or a little less, we might be able to accommodate.
Absolutely.
We're going to put an email address in the description along with links to the article so folks can look this information up.
Next time, we are going to dig a little bit deeper into the whole climate change issue.
Yeah, especially given the storms that hit North America and the amounts of rain and water damage there was.
There's been an article that I think we both liked.
Yeah. And in particular, I mean, this is also a little bit personal for us because we love Asheville.
We've been there like about four times.
And yeah, we want to talk a little bit about why people were so surprised and what are some of the reasons why the flooding is worse than people thought.
And what we're learning about the natural ebbs and flows of why nature is the way it is.
Yeah. So looking forward to catching up with you all next time.
Well, next time. See you all.
See ya.