The Sun 2.0, “Fresh” Food Fallacies, and Is Math Universal?
Curiosity Weekly
Warner Bros. Discovery
4.6 • 964 Ratings
🗓️ 26 February 2021
⏱️ 15 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Learn about an artificial sun from KSTAR that’s hotter than our actual sun; whether math really is a universal language; and what words like “fresh” really tell you about how fancy your food is.
South Korean researchers created an artificial sun that's hotter than our actual sun by Grant Currin
- Korean artificial sun sets the new world record of 20-sec-long operation at 100 million degrees. (2020, December 24). Phys.org. https://phys.org/news/2020-12-korean-artificial-sun-world-sec-long.html
- Nield, D. (2020). South Korea’s “Artificial Sun” Just Set a New World Record For High-Temperature Plasma. ScienceAlert. https://www.sciencealert.com/south-korea-s-artificial-sun-just-set-a-new-world-record-for-high-temperature-plasma
- Tala, T., & Garbet, X. (2006). Physics of Internal Transport Barriers. Comptes Rendus Physique, 7(6), 622–633. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crhy.2006.06.005
- Delbert, C. (2020, December 28). Korea’s Artificial Sun Just Ran for 20 Astonishing Seconds. Popular Mechanics; Popular Mechanics. https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a35084113/korea-artificial-sun-fusion-reactor-runs-for-20-seconds/
- Tokamak. (2015). ITER. https://www.iter.org/mach/Tokamak
- Home: 28th IAEA Fusion Energy Conference (FEC 2020) | IAEA. (2019, December 6). Iaea.org. https://www.iaea.org/events/fec-2020
Is math really a universal language? by Ashley Hamer (Listener question from John)
- PBS Idea Channel. (2013). Is Math a Feature of the Universe or a Feature of Human Creation? | Idea Channel | PBS [YouTube Video]. In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbNymweHW4E
- Baidou, Alain. (2006). Briefings on Existence. State University of New York Press. https://s3.amazonaws.com/arena-attachments/769564/8b787039810debb75794401980b224d6.pdf
- Madden, J. J., Lakoff, G., & Núñez, R. E. (2002, August). Where Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics Into Being. ResearchGate; Mathematical Association of America. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/239547225_Where_Mathematics_Comes_From_How_the_Embodied_Mind_Brings_Mathematics_Into_Being
- Thaller, M. (2019, March 7). The evolution of mathematics, from agriculture to quantum mechanics. Big Think; Big Think. https://bigthink.com/videos/mathematics-universal-language
What Words Like "Fresh" Really Tell You About How Fancy Your Food Is by Arika Okrent
- Jurafsky, D. (2014). The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu. W. W. Norton & Company. https://amzn.to/3rgRJbY
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from |
| 0:04.6 | Curiosity.com. I'm Cody Goff. And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today you learn about an |
| 0:08.8 | artificial sun that's hotter than our actual sun. Then we'll answer a |
| 0:12.4 | listener question about whether math is |
| 0:14.2 | really a universal language. You'll also learn what words like Fresh |
| 0:18.1 | really tell you about how fancy your food is. Let's satisfy some curiosity. |
| 0:22.3 | South Korea's satisfy some curiosity. |
| 0:23.2 | South Korea's K-Star has set a new world record. |
| 0:27.1 | No, it's not for a bajillion Spotify plays or a zillion YouTube views. |
| 0:32.0 | K-star isn't even a K-pop band. |
| 0:34.4 | It's a nuclear fusion reactor |
| 0:36.8 | and I recently ran at 100 million degrees Celsius for 20 seconds, |
| 0:41.6 | which is hotter than the core of the sun. I mean the sun's core |
| 0:46.6 | only clocks in at about 15 million degrees Celsius. Pretty chilly in |
| 0:51.8 | comparison really. |
| 0:53.0 | But anyway, here's how the team of scientists and engineers got this new hotness. |
| 0:58.0 | K-star stands for Korea superconducting Takamak, Advanced Research. |
| 1:03.9 | The key word here is Takamak. |
| 1:06.5 | That's a machine that uses a magnetic field to hold plasma in the shape of a torus. |
| 1:11.5 | That's the geometry word for donut. |
| 1:13.4 | K-star and similar devices generate energy differently from regular nuclear power plants. |
| 1:19.4 | Instead of splitting up nuclei of heavy atoms, Tachimac-style reactors merge the nuclei of light |
... |
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