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ladies gentlemen and Friends beyond the
binary welcome to scishow quiz show the
only quiz show where I can't fit into my
sport coat anymore I'm your host Michael
Aranda and on my left we have Hank green
who is officially competing in his 50th
why show do you know is anyone kept
records of how well I've done because I
feel like not great in this corner we
have Alexa billow one of our script
editors if you ever find a reference to
D&D or The Hitchhiker's Guide to the
galaxy in one of her episodes it was
probably Alexa thanks for that today our
contestants will be fighting to win some
awesome prizes not for themselves but
for two of our patreon patrons Hank
you're competing for Dennis dray hello
Dennis Alexa you're playing for Therese
Larsen Stefan show our contestants what
they could go home with today hi and
welcome to the prize zone Teresa and
Dennis we're about to find out which of
you is the best based on the random
answers of our contestants now both of
you will be taking home autographed
cards from the final round today and
you'll also both be getting an artisanal
hand press pin and if your contestant
walks away with the most green you'll be
taking home the I won scishow quiz show
pin but if your contestant manages to
walk away with the least number of
unmarked scishow currency well you will
be crowned the ultimate champion of
losing with the I lost scishow quiz show
pin good luck to you both and go wombats
all right each of you start with 1,000
points if you answer a question
correctly that number will go up if you
answer incorrectly it will go down in
true scishow quiz show fashion our first
category is about strange animals
because honestly there really is no
shortage of them hmm and they're
hilarious
so good wombats are famous for their
cube-shaped poops but they also have
another special but related adaptation
course so why else are there big fluffy
butts so useful is it because they can
blend in perfectly with the landscape
their butts can they can be used to
smash the skulls of predators there but
can they excrete a pheromone that
attracts prey at
or they excrete a substance that we use
in vanilla flavoring oh well my CI no
fat I notice I've heard some of those
facts about other animals but I'm gonna
say that they can secrete a chemical
that attracts that weight wombats mm-hmm
don't wombats eat animals see the
extreme excrete of substance that
attracts prey I got it wrong you guys
incorrect prick yes bee bee people with
their butts I had not heard that but I
had thought that they could like use
their butts as like a barrier when they
go into their burrows because they're
super bright do they have hard butts you
might not be able to tell just from
looking at them but Alexa is right
wombat butts are hard they're made of
four separate bony plates and are
covered in layers of fat skin and
cartilage that makes them almost rock
solid and perfect for both defense and
offense if a wombat is attacked it can
dive into its burrow and essentially use
its butt to plug up the entrance and it
uses its heinie as a shield against
whatever animal is trying to get inside
but some research also suggests that
wombats can attack with their butts too
if a predator really won't leave them
alone they can use their rumps to smash
their enemies against the rooms of their
burrows apparently with enough force to
fracture their skulls it just goes to
show that no matter how cute they look
you should never mess with a wombat okay
our next question is special because
it's an audio question mmm
animals make some weird noises pop pop
pop pop pop ow and sometimes the
weirdest sounds come from creatures you
wouldn't expect take this noise okay
oh what a 1956 pickup truck or sounds
like a pig have an early bad day
yeah well I'm like a garbage disposal
yeah make for a pretty bad day okay so
what animal made that sound was it a pig
definitely not a turtle a koala or a
seal oh you go first this time because
the safe money was on some kind of bird
[Laughter]
you kind of got on Excel with him with
it only one of those have been a bird
mm-hmm guess the other marsupial koala
that is correct oh I should go field
days
that's a koala noise no one has told me
look koalas make some ridiculous noises
that clip was of a male bellowing and
trying to attract a mate I know very
attractive but here's the weird thing
these animals totally shouldn't be able
to make that noise in 2013 scientists
published a paper in Current Biology
pointing out that there's no way koalas
should be able to produce that kind of
bellow if they had typical Anatomy their
bodies would just be too small to make
such a deep noise then again as their
researchers discovered koalas don't have
typical Anatomy instead they have a
unique kind of vocal fold these animals
are able to pull on and elongate these
folds and that allows them to make those
deep creepy noises seriously they sound
like something out of a horror movie
okay I'll actually you've got 1,400
points Hank you're at 900 it's time for
round two why I don't write the episodes
this one is a lightning round about
convergent evolution convergent
evolution is where a trait or feature
evolves multiple times in unrelated
species so for this round you'll have to
quickly guess how many times the
scientists think a specific trait
evolved oh wow that's gonna be hard how
many times do scientists think eyes of
some kind
Oh evolved less than 5 15
or more than 40 I'm gonna go with more
than 40 like they're the most useful
thing that is correct
considering that soft tissues like eyes
don't fossilize well it's hard to say
exactly how many times the ability to
see with some sort of eye or I spot has
evolved but according to a 1992 paper
visual systems have shown up somewhere
between 40 and 65 times and that number
could even be much higher
one thing is clear there is a huge
variety in eyes throughout the animal
kingdom you have simple seastar eyes
octopus eyes with their camera like
shapes insect eyes with dozens of lenses
and of course human eyes and as we keep
learning more about ancient animals
there's no telling what we'll find
roughly how many times the scientists
think the appendix evolved oh one five
thirty or seventy less than 0 there is
no appendix it's a conspiracy that
sounds exactly like what the government
wants you to believe what were the
things again choices are now 130 or 70
there's no way 70 at different
appendices evolved one it's see a
whopping 30 times which seems like a lot
for an organ that doesn't do anything
this number came from a 2013 study which
suggested that appendices evolved at
least 32 times the researchers got their
results by examining more than 360
species of mammal and figuring out where
appendices popped up in their history
it's strangely though this study didn't
actually give us any insight into what
the appendix does because they found no
relationship between having an appendix
and things like diet or social factors
so most the authors could say was that
the appendix does appear to have some
benefit but it doesn't evolve
response to social or dietary cues how
many times do scientists think flight
has evolved one more than Lance 715
interesting it has to be at least Y has
to be at least I couldn't I can name
four off the top of my head yeah seven
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[Applause]
so far as scientists can tell flight
evolved separately in four groups birds
bats insects and pterosaurs like
pterodactyls considering how complicated
flight is that's pretty impressive but
what's also interesting is that
biologists have yet to figure out
exactly why flight evolved some of that
is because flight is mainly a behavioral
trait so even if we can see things like
wings or bone structure in the fossil
record we can't figure out what made
animals take to the skies scientists
hypothesize that flight could have been
a way to avoid predators or a way to
move around more easily but at this
point those ideas are all just
hypotheses it's hard to know if we'll
ever know for sure okay that concludes
got nowhere now for the final round this
one is called meanwhile in the world of
physics because nothing levels the
competition quite like a round of weird
stuff in physics it's possible to
supercooled water in other words you can
lower water past its freezing point but
it won't turn into ice unless you
disturb it hmm we actually did an
experiment episode on this with a bottle
of water and a freezer a few years ago
but as it turns out you can learn a lot
more from this kind of experiment
because recently scientists found out
that supercooled water could also help
us find evidence of what invisible dark
matter the dark energy that expands the
universe
gravitons particles that carry the force
of gravity also mysterious or
gravitational waves
go with gravitational waves just because
those other things are all detectable I
was wrong graviton dark energy that
expands the universe sorry gravitational
waves I mean no he chose that one
graviton is the other dark matter no
shot in the dark
[Applause]
strangely enough it's dark matter to
understand why this makes any sense it
helps to know a little bit about why
water freezes normally you'd think that
any water below zero degrees Celsius
would turn to solid ice but that's not
actually true because temperature alone
isn't enough to make water freeze you
need something called a nucleation site
- this is the very first spot where
water molecules line up to form ice
crystals and it sort of catalyzes the
whole freezing process usually a
nucleation site is something like a
mineral a piece of dirt or some other
impurity so if your water doesn't have
any impurities it doesn't always freeze
at 0 degrees you could have a bunch of
supercooled water just sitting there and
if you don't shake it or disrupt it
somehow it won't do anything knowing
this can allow you to perform some
pretty cool party tricks
but in 2019 one scientist realized it
could also help us understand some big
questions about the universe they
discovered that hitting supercooled
water with some neutrons the part of an
atom with no electric charge was enough
to trigger the freezing process and that
led to an even bigger realization
scientists think that something called
Dark Matter might behave at least a
little like neutrons dark matter is the
invisible stuff that makes up a good
part of the universe and scientists have
been trying to understand it for years
so if dark matter really does act like
neutrons maybe it could trigger
supercooled water to freeze - and if we
did enough experiments with it well
maybe we'd be one step closer to
understanding what this mysterious stuff
is ok it's time for the last question
which means it's time to place your bets
you can wager any or all of your points
1700 points 800 points I've done some
and things aren't looking good for
Dennis while you guys place your bets
it's time to go to commercial break this
episode of scishow quiz show is almost
over but never fear there are plenty of
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round you can head over to brilliant to
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get 20% off all right back to the quiz
show welcome back everybody ready here
we go
once you start studying tiny particles
you'll realize that the quantum world
makes basically no sense or at least it
doesn't follow the rules that we're used
to so the question is which of these
things is not predicted to happen on a
quantum scale not not predicted to
happen on a quantum scale time sort of
runs in Reverse particles teleport
particles pop in and out of existence
particles can spontaneously duplicate
themselves okay I'm ready I'm just
making dots okay ready yeah reveal your
answers we both went with D you're both
correct one of these things is just too
weird to be true and it's D that
particles can spontaneously duplicate
that's just not a thing there aren't
many things we can say for sure about
science but I can say this one pretty
confidently quantum mechanics is weird
in this tiny world scientists have seen
particles appear and then pop out of
existence
lightning fast they've seen electrons
disappear from one location and suddenly
appear in another they've even seen time
run backwards at least in a sense
they've seen reactions appear to run in
Reverse and spontaneously go from
disordered to ordered which would kind
of be like seeing a broken glass rise
into the air and put itself back
together but one thing they've never
seen is particles spontaneously
duplicated they do see particles turn
into other particles sometimes in a
process called decay but since the laws
of physics say that energy can't be
created or destroyed it means particles
can't suddenly multiply well at least
based on what we know now like I said
quantum mechanics is weird so maybe
there's still something we don't know
well it was never gonna have to work out
great for me because I see that you've
made the intelligent bet alexa 1799 hank
1600 I got closer yeah matter cannot be
created you want it for Therese Hank I
lost it for Dennis ah thanks for
watching this episode of scishow quiz
show if you want to see more of Hank and
Alexis work you can stick around because
they're either hosting or editing
episodes around here all the time stream
and if you want to support a scishow you
can head over to patreon.com/scishow
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