Speaker 1: Well, it's time for some fun stories when it comes
Speaker 1: to science. But I would say streame science, strange science.
Speaker 1: It's like weird science, but strange. I'm a big fan
Speaker 1: of I'm a big fan of naps. And if you've
Speaker 1: ever wondered about the best time to take a nap
Speaker 1: and you're a fan of this show, well I got
Speaker 1: great news for you. The best time to take a nap,
Speaker 1: according to researchers, one forty two pm. So you listen
Speaker 1: to this show, maybe you grab a little lunch afterwards,
Speaker 1: and then call it a day. This very specific time
Speaker 1: emerged from a new nationwide survey that looked at how
Speaker 1: we nap, what makes some people better nappers than others.
Speaker 1: It was done by the Green of the Avocado Mattress
Speaker 1: people and they found that most people aim for about
Speaker 1: a fifty one minute nap, which means if you go
Speaker 1: to about a one forty two you wake up at
Speaker 1: two thirty three. The problem is, most sleep researchers say
Speaker 1: that that is too long of a nap. You nap
Speaker 1: too long, it's going to leave you feeling worse than
Speaker 1: before you close your eyes. The study found that NAP's
Speaker 1: lasting longer than an hour and twenty six minutes. That'd
Speaker 1: be about thirty five minutes past the perfect length enter
Speaker 1: what would the researchers would call the danger zone, because
Speaker 1: if you go about an hour and twenty six minutes,
Speaker 1: you start to feel groggy, you start to feel disoriented
Speaker 1: instead of refreshed, and if you're still asleep after that
Speaker 1: hour and forty four minutes, they said, that's no longer
Speaker 1: considered a nap. You've actually dripped it off into a
Speaker 1: full sleep session at that point, and that that could
Speaker 1: potentially be more detrimental than just a quick forty thirty
Speaker 1: or forty minute nap is what they say you should
Speaker 1: shoot for most days, there is a question about whether
Speaker 1: or not the human body could survive a trip to Mars.
Speaker 1: On March second, twenty sixteen, Sky Kelly came back in
Speaker 1: a Soyuz spacecraft traveling at about seventeen thousand miles an hour,
Speaker 1: and as expected, it warmed up the heat shield so
Speaker 1: much that a bunch of molten pieces of the heat
Speaker 1: shield actually flew off. Now, the deceleration amounted to about
Speaker 1: six g's on Scott Kelly and the cosmonauts that were
Speaker 1: also on board, Mikyle and Sergei, because of course they're
Speaker 1: named Mikyle and Sergei. The search and rescue team comes in,
Speaker 1: they hoist him out. Scott Kelly gives him a thumbs up,
Speaker 1: and then they grimace as they lower him into a recliner.
Speaker 1: Because it's just sitting in the middle of nowhere. He
Speaker 1: lifted a satellite phone to his ear, makes his first
Speaker 1: call back on Earth. He'd spent more time in space
Speaker 1: than almost any other person, four missions each longer than
Speaker 1: the last, totaling five hundred and twenty days almost two
Speaker 1: years in space. And on this trip he had taken
Speaker 1: the longest spacelight of any space flight of any American.
Speaker 1: And he said as he flew longer, the symptoms of
Speaker 1: returning to Earth got worse, and after he got back
Speaker 1: home in Houston, he was nauseated, he was dizzy, his
Speaker 1: joints ached under the force of gravity. Simply sitting in
Speaker 1: a chair sometimes felt uncomfortable. And the idea of traveling
Speaker 1: in space is I wouldn't say it's not meant for
Speaker 1: human beings, but our body is not built for that
Speaker 1: sort of a thing. Scott Kelly has a twin brother.
Speaker 1: We know him as Mark Kelly is the Arizona Senator
Speaker 1: before this mission, both of these guys agreed to participate
Speaker 1: in what they said was a comparative study. Mark was
Speaker 1: going to stay on Earth the whole time. Scott was
Speaker 1: going to be on Earth and in space. Because they
Speaker 1: have the same DNA, it's a rare opportunity for them
Speaker 1: to figure out what would be the effects, even some
Speaker 1: psychological effects of long term space missions. So they before
Speaker 1: Scott went up on the ISS, they do a bunch
Speaker 1: of twelve universities eighty researchers. They study them closely than
Speaker 1: perhaps any other humans in history, and could use, for example,
Speaker 1: the cognitive testing to show declines in Scot's mental speed
Speaker 1: and accuracy, the markers of inflammation, and his blood spiked
Speaker 1: to levels that lab tests had difficulty measuring thousands of
Speaker 1: percent above normal, suggested an extreme stress response to the
Speaker 1: space travel. Fewer than seven hundred people, most of them
Speaker 1: young fit, most of them male, have gone into space,
Speaker 1: and they said that the number of people going into
Speaker 1: space in the next couple of decades could grow exponentially
Speaker 1: because more and more governments, more and more companies, SpaceX,
Speaker 1: Blue Origin, Virgin, et cetera, could propel people into space.
Speaker 1: But there's a bunch of peculiar effects of space travel
Speaker 1: that are now only being identified and investigated. For example,
Speaker 1: latent herpes infections get reactive, certain medications become less effective. Microgravity,
Speaker 1: which is the near weightlessness that you experience in space,
Speaker 1: redistributes blood to veins in the head and neck that
Speaker 1: aren't used to handling that flow. That increases the risk
Speaker 1: of a clot somewhere in your brain or neck. And
Speaker 1: Scott Kelly wrote a book, and in this book he
Speaker 1: said humans can explore more of the universe only if
Speaker 1: they strengthen the weakest links in the chain that makes
Speaker 1: spaceflight possible. And the weakest links in the chain are
Speaker 1: the human body and the human mind. Right now, the record,
Speaker 1: by the way, for the longest time in space is
Speaker 1: held by a Russian cosmonaut, a guy named Valerie Polyyakov,
Speaker 1: spent about fourteen months in low Earth orbit, relatively protected
Speaker 1: from the radiation and the communication lags. But only twenty
Speaker 1: four people have ever exited low Earth orbit, and that
Speaker 1: was more than fifty years ago for less than two
Speaker 1: weeks at a time. Because those guys, you know, they
Speaker 1: went to the moon. There is a huge study now
Speaker 1: going on about whether or not the astronauts soon to
Speaker 1: be Martians at some point could withstand the six or
Speaker 1: seven month journey in space that it would take for
Speaker 1: them to get to Mars, and then once they get
Speaker 1: to Mars, when they come back, that's another six or
Speaker 1: seven months the other way. Is there a way to
Speaker 1: speed that up, they don't know. Is there a way
Speaker 1: to make it easier on the human body, they don't know.
Speaker 1: Scott Kelly's been telling the doctors about these mysterious medical
Speaker 1: issues that have come up, and he doesn't know why
Speaker 1: that's happened. More importantly, perhaps the people who are studying
Speaker 1: him don't know why they happened. There were changes in
Speaker 1: Scott Kelly's genetics because of the time he spent in space.
Speaker 1: About nine thousand genes, some of which might increase the
Speaker 1: risk of cancer and immune system problem, have been altered.
Speaker 1: They didn't normalize for the most part over the course
Speaker 1: of a few months, but some continued to show signs
Speaker 1: of damage, including breaks and even inversions in their DNA.
Speaker 1: And that's just going into low Earth orbit. Imagine you
Speaker 1: go completely out of the gravitational pull of the Earth,
Speaker 1: make your way through space to Mars. They don't know
Speaker 1: if it's possible or not. All right, We'll keep an
Speaker 1: eye on the reins all the evacuation warnings and orders
Speaker 1: that are out there. The John Cobelt Show is coming
Speaker 1: up next. If you miss any part of this show,
Speaker 1: go back and check out the podcast. Anywhere you find
Speaker 1: your favorite podcast, Just type in Gary and Shannon. We'll
Speaker 1: see you tomorrow. Stay dry, everybody,