SGU Episode 911

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SGU Episode 911
December 24th 2022
From The NatGeo page on cuttlefish: "Despite their name, cuttlefish are not fish but intelligent invertebrates related to the octopus, squid, and nautilus." Click for detailed caption "These fascinating creatures can count, exert self-control, and have numerous wily tactics to evade predators, including creating their own body double from a cloud of ink. Despite being colorblind, cuttlefish also have highly sophisticated color-changing abilities. "The more than 120 different species of cuttlefish are usually solitary animals and can be found in oceans all over the world. While most live in shallow waters, some species can be found at depths of more than 3,000 feet."
SGU 910                      SGU 912
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
G: George Hrab
Quote of the Week
The boy is Ignorance. The girl is Want. Beware of them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.
Charles Dickens, English writer and social critic
Links
Download Podcast
Show Notes
[ https://sguforums.org/index.php?BOARD=1.0 Forum Discussion]

Introduction, Live from Phoenix, humans skulls, Meteor Crater

S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. (applause) Today is Thursday, December 15^th,2022, and this is your host, Steven Novella. (applause) Joining me this week are Bob Novella...

B: Hey, everybody! (applause)

S: Cara Santa Maria...

C: Howdy. (applause)

S: Jay Novella...

J: Hey guys. (applause)

S: Evan Bernstein...

E: Hello Phoenix! (applause)

S: ...and George Hrab.

GH: Arizona! (applause) Hello.

S: As you can hear, we are recording in front of a live audience. Most of them are live anyway. We are in Phoenix. Evan always steals my thunder by saying the name of the city that we're in.

E: You don't tell me to not steal your thunder.

S: I'm just wondering if you're ever going to figure it out on your own. You haven't so far.

E: You have yet to detect my pattern that when we do these live audiences in a town, in a new city, that I will acknowledge the city.

J: That's Evan's thing.

S: I know.

E: So how is that stealing your thunder?

S: So I've been to Arizona a few times before. Guys who, Jay, I know Jay had a close friend, Michael Warticelli, who lived in Arizona. So you've been here quite a bit.

J: I've been here many times.

S: Many times. And any of the rest of you have been here before?

B: No.

C: Yeah.

E: Grand Canyon. We visited the Grand Canyon in 2014 when we were in Las Vegas for TAM that year. But that's it. That's my only Arizona experience.

GH: I did a percussion convention in Phoenix probably 20 years ago or so. The PASIC, the Percussive Arts Society International Convention. It's a great time. It's a room probably four times the size of this, all filled with drums. And you're in there for about nine seconds and you just want to eat your own face. It's like every drummer in the United States banging away. Yeah, it was awful and awesome at the same time. But it was lovely. It was lovely. It was in October-ish. So shade was perfect, 72. And as soon as you stepped into the sun, your skin disappeared. It was amazing, the disparity between the shade and the non-shade.

S: Did they have breakout sessions for bongos or things like that?

GH: Steve, you wouldn't believe the breakout sessions. Like triangle repertoire. Like, oh, there's these new triangle mallets. You've got to try them out. There's going to be a 45-minute demonstration with Shostakovich excerpts for triangle. Yeah, it's like the hardest core, deepest dive kind of stuff. Yeah, it's insane.

J: Tell me, just be straight up honest with me.

GH: Yeah.

J: Is there really a skill in playing the triangle?

GH: Oh, no question. Yes yes yes. Yeah. I mean, it's-

J: What? Like what? Angle of attack?

GH: Well, there's timbre, there's tone to begin with. But when you're playing something like, let's say the Shostakovich, I think Shostakovich 7 has this great [immitates the sound].

J: Okay, so you're drumming on a triangle.

GH: Do a triangle roll. How do you make a triangle sustain a note over as long as you want it to? Well, you have to roll. So you get in the corner and you go, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, but you've got to make it sound like, aaaaah. Not to be all percussy about the whole thing.

S:' Yeah, Jay was thinking just what it hit it. Yeah, ding.

GH: Yeah, yeah. It's not Ed Grimley. Yeah, it's not quite that.

J: There's more to it than that. So I have a Phoenix story. I don't remember if I ever talked about it on the show.

S: Hit me.

J: So it was in the 90s. I was here visiting my friend Michael, and one of his friends found a human skull out in the desert.

GH: Whoa.

C: What?

J: Yep. And oddly-

S: You turned it into the local coroner.

J: No.

S: Or they turned it.

J: No. So oddly, it had numbers written on the back of it, on the back of the skull right here.

S: 666? (laughter)

J: No, but that would have been pretty freaky. (laughter) So immediately I'm like, shit, I want to take it home and give it to Bob, because Bob has one of the biggest skull collections in the freaking world.

C: That does not seem legal.

J: Now, we're going back to the 90s. And this is everything I'm saying is-

S: Everything is legal in the 90s. (laughter)

C: I was like what it has to do with anything?

J: So I call the airport up, and I'm like, can I bring, I'm like trying to couch it, can I bring a bone sample on the airplane? Like, yeah, you could. Sure. You could put it, you know.

C: He's like, I don't want to tell the authorities, so I call the airport.

GH: What to do when you find a skull? Call the airport!

J: We put it in a box, tape it up.

S: You had a skull in the box?

J: I had a skull in the box.

B: What's in the box?

E: Jack.

J: So then I get out curbside check-in, and I tell the guy, I'm like, hey, I'm just triple checking here. I have a skull in this box, and I want to know if I could take it on the airplane. The guy goes, you can take it on the airplane, you just can't talk to it. (laughter)

E: As if you're going to break into Hamlet or something with the skull.

J: So now, just play this through with me. I'm going through security, and there's an x-ray machine. And I'm kind of like, what's going to happen? You know, like, I have no idea what's going to happen. So thing goes, so for some reason, I get picked a lot to be the guy that they pat down and whatever. It happens to me like one out of ten times, I'm the guy for some reason.

S: For everyone else, it's only 10%.

J: Yeah. So I happen to be, the guy's got the wand on me, and I am like totally snake eyes looking at the woman that's got the x-ray machine. And she goes like this, I'm you, they're patting me down. And she goes like this.

GH: The slow burn.

J: So as I see her head start turning, I just start going. So I just start nodding at her. And it was one of the best moments I've had in this state. It was really cool. I had a skull on the airplane. It was in the thing. And it made me realize you never know what people have in the luggage compartment above your head. It could be two feet away from your head.

GH: It's good to have extra head room, Jay. (laughter)

B: And now it's in my collection. Thank you.

S: Have you ever solved the mystery of where the skull comes from?

C: This was a medical specimen? That's why it had a number on the back.

B: Probably.

J: The guy found it in the desert, and I just assumed it was from a dig of some kind. But who knows? I mean, who was this person?

S: It's a human skull.

J: It's a human skull.

C: You thought it was from an archaeological dig, and you just stole it.

E: Basically.

S: Yeah. That's basically what he's saying.

J: I didn't sell it or steal it. I transported it across state lines and gave it to Bob. All I did was transport it.

GH: They only moved the stones. They only moved the stones.

J: Back then in the 90s, I did not give a shit.

C: It was the 90s. I get it. It was the 90s.

E: Wacky 90s.

S: How many statute of limitations on that?

GH: How many real bones do you have, Bob? Actual human bones? Do you have human bones?

B: I've got a human skull from Steve many years ago. I've got another human skull from Jay, which you just heard about.

S: Mine was obtained legally.

C: Yeah, you can't legally own one. Was yours geriatric, or does it have full dentition?

B: It's... which one?

C: The one with Steve.

B: Steve's has teeth. He's got a lot of teeth, but not all of them.

S: It's grade B.

C: Okay.

S: So there's... when you buy a human skull, which you can do if you want for medical, educational purposes. I have one, too. But there's-

B: And his is a lot better than mine.

S: Yeah, so there's-

C: Yours is grade A.

S: There are different grades. Yeah. Yeah, mine's the top one. It's all about the dentition. You can get perfect teeth, or there might be a couple teeth missing.

GH: What's the range here we're talking price-wise? Like, kind of-

C: Big range. A geriatric skull with no teeth is a few hundred bucks.

S: Yeah, $150, $200.

GH: Okay.

S: And you can spend like $2,000 on a really good quality skull. But they've gotten-

GH: I have teeth. I have all my teeth.

S: They've gotten more rare recently because most of them were sourced from India. And India, like five years ago, six years ago, decided, we're not doing this anymore. I think they were mainly from criminals, people who were incarcerated. And there was a lot of questions about whether or not they were ethically sourcing their human body parts. So they basically just shut it down. So now, I don't know where they're coming from now.

B: I think now it's all like, they make really good artificial ones. And so I think that's, I haven't done research, though. I'm just talking out of my butt at this point. But I think that, so you can get the artificial ones, and they're heavy, and they got really great detail. If you wanted a real full skeleton or skull, I think you're going to pay a shell.

S: A full skeleton would be thousands of dollars.

C: Tens of thousands. Yeah. Oh, you were asking about Arizona. I can't, I mean, I've been to Arizona a bunch because I'm from Texas, and I live in California. Lived, live, live. I live in California, just not temporarily. We did a road trip here with a bunch of friends of mine to Meteor Crater somewhat recently. I mean, I don't know. COVID made things weird, so it was probably a really long time ago now. But she is a moon crater researcher. She did her PhD from Caltech, and that's her focus of her research. So she had done a bunch of field work at Meteor Crater, so they gave us access to do the full hike around the whole rim of the, it was so cool.

S: It's big.

C: It's huge. It's like a weird old kind of town where they were doing a bunch of research in the back, and you can find their hand-forged nails still in the dirt, and the little structures where they were doing research.

GH: It's amazing. The meteor-

C: Yeah, some human skulls.

GH: The meteor just missed the gift shop. (laughter) It's amazing. It was right on the edge. It was amazing. I was so lucky.

J: It totally has a Cthulhu vibe to it. You know?

E: Cthulhu is a character.

C: I don't know.

J: You don't even know who Cthulhu is?

C: No, it's Cthulhu.

J: Oh, forget it. We'll talk about it later.

C: I mean, I feel like I know the word. I've heard it used in-

J: You ever hear of Lovecraft?

C: -common parlance.

GH: HP Lovecraft.

C: HP Lovecraft, yeah.

J: So he came up with... He came up with the...

C: It's like a monster or something?

J: Yeah.

C: Okay.

B: THE monster.

GH: Octopussy kind of.

S: It's so scary that you literally go insane if you see it.

J: You can't rationally understand what you're seeing.

C: So what does the crater have to do with Cthulhu?

J: Well, just like the old abandoned town, and then there's a crater. Because Cthulhu is supposed to be from outer space.

C: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I can see that. It's haunting them.

B: Outer space?

C: Yeah.

B: I guess.

C: It's fair.

J: Yeah. He's from Pluto or something.

C: I feel like there was a plane. Am I misremembering? Somebody was nodding like they know a lot about the crater back here. Is there a plane that crashed into it? A small prop? I feel like somebody was doing something and they crashed it, and it was too much effort for them to take it back out. But you could barely see it. The crater's so big, but it was like, you know that dot there? Yeah. Anyway, it's cool. You should go if you haven't been.

S: All right. So we're going to move on with some news items.

C: All right.

News Items

Fusion Breakthrough (11:02)

• Fusion Breakthrough – Ignition 

S: We're going to start with what I think is definitely the biggest news item of the week.

C: Yes.

S: And that is the fusion breakthrough, scare quotes. Bob, what is going on here?

B: You know, a couple of things. You want more detail, Steve?

S: Always.

B: All right. So major, no matter what he says, this is a major milestone in fusion. The National Ignition Center, Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, announced, first they leaked and then they announced that they achieved ignition. And that's big. It's really big. There's a lot of caveats I'm going to throw at you, but this is big. Jill Ruby, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, said: "Monday, December 5^th, 2022, was an important day in science, reaching ignition in a controlled fusion experiment is an achievement that has come after more than 60 years of global research, development, engineering, and experimentation." So in this context, fusion is star power. I'm sure most of you, probably all of you, know about fusion. That's how stars power themselves. It's essentially atoms of hydrogen smashing together to form helium. And helium's a little bit lighter. And what happened, some of the mass is converted directly into energy, E=mc². It could be a lot of energy, a tremendous amount. And it's clean energy. And ever since we discovered that stars are doing this, we were like, we want this. We want to do this ourselves. We want to have controlled fusion on the Earth.

S: But Bob, remember, remember that bit of trivia, most of the energy, it doesn't come from hydrogen combining into helium. It comes from hydrogen combining into other forms of hydrogen.

C: Oh yeah.

B: I know.

S: That's a little detail. There's multiple steps along the way. They all release energy. And that last step to helium isn't most of the energy.

B: I know. Most of what I say is going to be just very high level. And it gets, there's 40 layers of onion underneath it.

S: That's my new favorite trivia about this stuff.

B: Yes, yes. And you're so proud of that. That's awesome. (laughter) So, all right. So what kind of fusion, what kind of fusion is there? There's gravitational fusion. That's what the star does. It's all based on gravity. You get hydrogen and gravity and you're going to get, enough of that, you're going to get fusion. That's gravitational confinement. Then there's magnetic confinement. That uses a torus, that's a donut shaped magnetic field and that confines the plasma and the plasma gets hot enough to fuse. You've heard of Tokamak and ITER and all that stuff. So that's magnetic confinement. Lots of research, millions of dollars is being poured into that. Then there is inertial confinement. And that is essentially rapid compression of hydrogen. And it's called, do you know who knows why it's called inertial confinement? Because that compression of hydrogen is imploding at 400 kilometers per second. It's going so fast that the fuel, it tries to dissipate, but it can't because it's going so fast. It can't get out of its own way. So they call it, it can't get out of its own inertia. So it's called inertial confinement, which is interesting.

GH: What do you mean going? What do you mean going so fast?

B: It's compressing.

GH: It's compressing.

S: It's moving inward at that pressure.

J: How are they compressing it?

GH: Oh my gosh.

B: In this example, it's lasers and I'll get into those details today. So the National Ignition Facility has been tweaking inertial confinement for years and years and years. They make the lasers more powerful. They make the implosion more symmetrical and that was just so key. Tweaking, tweaking. And last year they came 70% of the way to where they came last week. And so what, having my notes here, what the hell happened at 1.03 a.m. December 5_th? All right, they've got 192 UV ultraviolet lasers and they hit a cylinder and then that creates x-rays from the ultraviolet lasers and that implodes and compresses a little tiny nugget of hydrogen or they're actually, it's isotopes. It's deuterium and tritium. And in 100 trillionths of a second, all of this stuff happens. It reaches temperatures and densities hotter than the center of the sun and it's got to be even worse than the center of the sun because of reasons that I forget right now exactly why.

S: I'll tell you why, very quickly.

B: Why?

S: So if you look at the temperature of the core of the sun, it's not hot or dense enough to fuse hydrogen. But that's because that's the average density and temperature. If you take the curve of temperature and pressure at the high end, that's where all the fusion's happening.

J: So there's areas in the sun that are more hot than others.

S: Yeah.

C: So it's like marbling.

E: And fusion is not occurring at those.

S: Yeah, yeah. So it's only occurring where at the right side of the curve where you have, it's like how fast are the hydrogen atoms moving? Well, they have an average speed but it's the fastest ones that are causing the fusion. But of course we don't have that when we have a tiny little pellet of hydrogen, deuterium and tritium. We don't have a sun's worth of it. So we have to get the temperature up hotter than the average temperature of the core of the sun.

B: Right. So when this compressed last week, they hit ignition. What exactly is ignition? It's essentially sustained fusion such that the energy that's put in is exceeded by the energy that came out. So fusion was happening. It's always trying to cool itself, cool itself. And that's why a lot of the experiments in the past have failed because it's cooling too fast and it's not sustaining itself. What they were able to do was to do it long enough and symmetrical enough and everything else just perfect so that the energy that went in was exceeded by the energy that came out. They put two megajoules of energy into that little nugget and three megajoules came out. That's basically the bottom line of what happened here.

C: How long?

B: Oh a hundred trillionth of a second. I mean, it just happened incredibly fast. And I love how the scientists said, and we knew something special happened because man, it never happened like that before.

J: But when you say sustained, the event lasted for less than a second.

S: Yeah, that's because that's how much fuel they had. The fuel got used up.

C: So it burnt itself out.

S: Yeah, it burnt itself out.

J: So how would they get more fuel inside the laser confinement area?

S: Yeah, that's a good question. So-

C: Make it bigger.

B: And what they would have to do was they'd have to have the facility set up so that they could do that. What they did, they have to do it multiple times a minute, three or four times a minute. It'd be like a putt type of thing. So but, I mean, two megajoules, that's like a pound of TNT. So it's not this major explosion. But the interesting thing about that though, is that a pound of TNT went off in a hundred trillionth of a second.

S: Right.

C: So, sorry, you said two went in and three came out?

B: Two megajoules went in and three came out.

S: Yeah, so last year they were at 70% and now they're at 150%.

C: That's enough.

B: So that's-

S:No, it isn't, and we'll tell you why. (laughter)

C: Okay.

GH: Because there's no way that could be some kind of mistake or some kind of weird mechanism.

B: It's always possible, but they were, people said to the scientists, it's been a week. Why come you're doing a news item, a news press release a week later? They're like, because we vetted the crap out of this. Because they brought all of their scientists in and they looked at all the data and they said, yup, this is what happened. Then they brought an outside group of experts and said, look at our data and let you tell us what you think happened. And they're like, yup, that's what happened. So they vetted the crap out of it because the last thing they want to do is to go out and say, we had ignition and then later on like, oh, crap, sorry, we really didn't have ignition. That's the last thing.

S: They don't want a Pons and Fleischmann.

B: Oh my God, that would have been bad. So I got to say that, got to give major kudos. This has been decades, 60, 70 years trying to figure this out. It's been, these scientists were truly standing on the shoulders of giants because this has been looked at and researched by scientists all over the world. It's really, it's engineering porn too because this is just like, this thing that they created is such an amazingly complex machine that they've been tweaking for so long. Let's see.

S: Now tell us why this is never going to work.

B: Right. So I have my notes here. Bring it down to earth, Bob. So I'm going to bring it down to earth, but I'll end with a quote. U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said at a Washington, D.C. media briefing: "Simply put, this is one of the most impressive scientific feats of the 21st century." And I don't necessarily disagree with that. I mean, the century is not that old. But it's still an amazing feat and not because, oh, this is going to directly lead to clean energy for the whole world. Not necessarily. But in terms of figuring out such a, something that's so complex as fusion, I mean, now they can study fusion. And don't forget, this is a government lab and their goal was not to create clean energy. Their goal was to study fusion because they've got a lot of nukes hanging out and they want to know how to manage the stockpile of nuclear weapons safely. And so they wanted to learn about fusion. And it's really just a happy accident. Oh, yeah, we're studying fusion. And this also could lead to clean energy for the entire world for millennia. So it's kind of like a happy accident. But that's not their goal. Their goal was not to create fusion for everybody. It was to learn about fusion. All right, bringing it down to earth. Think about the word break-even. Technically, they hit a break, they hit a break-even state called scientific break-even. They created as much or more energy that they put in. They created that. So that's scientific break-even. But that's not really break-even because there's engineering break-even, which they didn't do. There's economic break-even. They didn't do that. And there's even extrapolated break-even. They didn't do that either. They've got way, they're not even close to having more energy than they put into it. The lasers that did this, 192 lasers, that was 300 megajoules. That 300 megajoules then was able to put 2 megajoules onto the hydrogen. So they went from 300 to 2. These lasers are obviously not efficient. And don't think, though, that that's a major screw-up because they don't care about efficiency. Like I said, they're not trying to be efficient. They're trying to dump as much laser power energy onto this hydrogen as they can. They don't care about efficiency. But they have 300 megajoules, they put 2 into play, and 3 came out. Is that break-even? No, it's not even close to real economic break-even. So there's a lot of work to be done before this is something that you're going to be plugging in stuff in your house using fusion energy.

S: Yeah, two orders of magnitude. Just to get to actual break-even. And even that's not really commercial break-even. That's break-even for that one event.

B: The question is, can this scale? Can they take this event and can they scale it to make commercial reactors? I don't know. That's a tough call, and maybe not. They're using 1980s lasers. They're using old technology. It's still good. It still can dump a lot of energy out there, but it's not efficient, like I said. They think that if they use new lasers, they can make it 20% more efficient. All right, 20% is okay, but it's not a game-changer. But those new lasers could fire more regularly. They can maybe do one or two a day type of thing. The lasers they have now, I don't think they can do that. So the scientists said that there's a pathway. If they make everything efficient as they can, there's a pathway to hundreds of megajoules. So maybe they can get up to hundreds, but the laser power is going to get down to what? Even if it could be 100, it could be the best. The scientists were then asked about commercialization. She said three decades. Three decades to turn this discovery, this event, into something that would be a commercial reactor. Three decades. Over 30 years, and that's a little bit optimistic.

J: But that's just this technique. There's other, like you said in the beginning, there's other techniques for fusion.

B: Exactly, exactly. Because if you look now to the magnetic environment with the tokamak, with the magnetic field and the plasma, that technology is ready to scale. You just need bigger lasers and bigger magnetic fields, which you can do if you just put enough money into it. They're ready to scale. I wish that magnetic confinement research, which still has millions of dollars, like ITER in Europe, and there's the Z-Pinch, and there's the Stellarator, there's a lot of these things. I wish they had ignition, because those technologies are much, they're ready to scale up to a commercial reactor. I think that we may see a commercial reactor using magnetic confinement with those big tokamak. Maybe we could see a good testbed reactor in 15 years, 20 years. I think we're going to get it sooner than inertial confinement.

S: Oh, sooner than inertial confinement, sure. Not 20 years. The thing about the 30 years is that's the joke with fusion. Commercial fusion is 30 years away, and it always will be. So that 30 years is basically saying we have no idea. It's basically, it's like it's beyond any current pathway that we're on.

B: Right. I don't have a lot of hope, unfortunately, for the inertial confinement.

S: I neither do I. I think this-

B: Because they've got to break away from the national lab, because this lab, they care about studying fusion. They don't care about clean energy.

S: This is not even on a path to energy.

B: That's not their goal. Yeah. Now, they may say, the government might say, all right, we're going to now break you off, and you've got to turn inertial confinement, and you've got to make this efficient and really run with this. And they have to say, we don't care about fusion anymore in terms of studying it for you guys. Maybe we'll do this over here. But you guys, I don't know if the government's going to do that.

S: We need a separate effort. We need to essentially, yeah, because the National Ignition Facility, they're not on a path to commercial fusion. We need a completely separate endeavor if we're going to do that. And this pathway might not be it. And I don't, I think this makes me less confident that we're going to get there with inertial confinement because even we achieve ignition, and we're still, that's 1% of the way to break even, even just considering the lasers. Forget about the energy. You think about the total, total energy. How much energy does it take to make the deuterium and the tritium? That's not easy to make the heavy hydrogen, the isotopes. And then just running the whole thing and the efficiency of, again, you have to heat a liquid and turn a turbine and do all that stuff. And you can't just get to like 301 joules. You know what I mean? You've got to produce a significant excess energy in order to make it all worthwhile. And the other thing is, so that's one threshold is getting more energy out of the whole process than what was put in. Then you have to ask, what's the cost of that electricity going to be? If we could do it, but it's going to cost $1,000 a kilowatt, it's worthless commercially.

J: So you're saying that even though they achieved ignition, it's not good news?

S: It just shows you how far away we are from actually having commercial fusion with this method. It's so far away. Saying 30 years is like, that's wishful thinking. That is not, in my opinion, any extrapolation of what we're doing now. Now, I do think the magnetic confinement, I've always thought that was a better approach, even though they haven't achieved ignition yet. But the problem with magnetic confinement, it does scale easier. The thing is, it's really expensive energy-wise and cost-wise to make those really powerful magnetic fields. It's only, we're only getting, most of the advancement is actually just in better magnets. That's where we're getting those advances. And that's because of high-temperature superconductors. That's it. That's why it's the, that's all the efficiency.

B: Well, one of the problems with ITER, I believe, was the fact that they, when they locked in their design for their tokamak and their magnetic fields, they were using old tech. And then new tech came around where you can have a stronger, smaller-

S: Like 10 times stronger.

B: -magnetic field. And MIT has a method that's going that direction. I actually have more hope with the MIT technique than, so it's just-

S: Yeah, but that's at least on a, that's on a path to, better, more powerful magnets. Also we need the physical stuff that it's made out of needs to get better. It needs to get stronger.

J: Bob and Steve, we're in a hotel. You guys can just go get a room with each other. (laughter)

B: Quickies are hot.

S: But here's the, something you didn't even mention, by the way, with the inertial confinement is that to produce that split second of energy destroyed the mechanism, right? It's, you can't just keep doing it because it destroyed the containment, the hull ROM, right? The thing where they have the – right?

B: I just assumed they'd have just another hull ROM.

S: Yeah, but what's that cost to make one of those?

B: I don't know.

S: It's not designed for sustainable energy production.

B: It's designed to study fusion.

S: It's a one-off experiment.

B: And they succeeded.

S: Yes.

B: They can now, they're going to have breakthroughs in studying fusion, like they can never have had unless they did this. So it's still an amazing achievement.

S: Absolutely. It's just not a design that's useful for commercial fusion. Now, we recently, like, months ago talked about yet another form of fusion using cavitation as the, it's inertial confinement, I think.

B: It is. It's inertial, it's acoustic inertial confinement.

S: Cavitation. Yeah.

B: Acoustic–

S: Acoustic inertial confinement.

B: And maybe that technique is the one that's the most practical. I don't know. But I can guarantee you this. We will at some point – I don't know when – we will have fusion because it's just too compelling. It's too much of an amazing power source. And if you read our book, Skeptics Guide to the Future, we talk about how we think that fusion technology – we will have a fusion economy. We will have – we will be using and tweaking fusion power sources for centuries–

S: Thousands of years.

B: If not millennia. We're going to be tweaking that for many centuries.

S: Once we do get it, it is an incredible source of energy.

B: Once we do get it. We're going to – it's not going to be one of those technologies where, like, we don't really need it because other technologies – I mean, we're not going to have any other–

E: It will supersede everything else?

B: In terms of generating power for the economy, it's-

J: It would be nice to have it on the moon.

S: There are locations where it's going to be more practical than any other form of energy. Solar on the moon is not great because because the day is so long. Why don't you get – go 30 days with me?

B: Fusion is doing some good stuff with remote power generation.

S: Yeah, but it's still, it's not and then you go to Mars, the solar power is 50% than on Earth. And if you go up to Jupiter, it's 5%. So when you get away from a sun, your solar power becomes immediately very, very inefficient. So there's going to be lots of contexts where fusion is just going to be necessary if you need a lot of reliable power. So – but where fusion is really going to be indispensable is in space travel. Because there's basically going to be two space travel technologies that are going to be the most important long-term, especially for long distances. Light sails and fusion power. Those are the two that we're going to explore the universe. Those are the two. You can't do it on on chemical rockets. You can't, fission is pretty good, but it's not as good as fusion. So fusion is going to be it. We have to perfect fusion.

B: It's going to be it for a long time, until you get to crazy, black hole drives in energy matter.

GH: Are there any commercial companies that are working on fusion, or is it all just research?

S: I think there are, but the real cutting-edge research is at multiple nations kind of level.

GH: OK.

S: It's just a huge, it's just, it's too big. Billions of dollars for decades. You can't do that as a private company.

E: It's not a business model.

S: Yeah.

GH: Right, right.

S: So, yeah, I'm very optimistic about fusion, just not anytime soon, is the bottom line. I think it's a technology for, at best, the second half of the 21st century, not the first half of the 21st century. At best.

Artemis I Mission Complete (30:47)

• _article_title_ 

S: We're going to go to Jay who's going to give us an update on Artemis.

...

Cuttlefish Pass Marshmallow Test (45:37)

...

C: They're very smart, and that's what we're going to talk about.

G: Very smart.

After discussing related words... (47:41)

• _article_title_ 

C: So we've talked on the show about different ways to test intelligence, cognition, different components of int--because we know intelligence is not one thing.

...

Jibber Jabber (56:40)

• Jibber Jabber: The Unwritten Ablaut Reduplication Rule 

Closed Loop Pumped Hydro (1:07:51)

• Closed Loop Pumped Hydro 

S: George what do you know about closed loop pumped hydro?

GH: Don't take the bait college. I don't know Closed loop pumped hydro is that some kind of propulsion system for a submarine?

GH: Very close. Very close. Yeah. Okay. All right, so It has if you could see Steve smile All right, so this tell me tell me tell me it is cool it's very very cool

S: This is something I learned about not too long gauge the caterpillar drive. [here's one caterpillar drive clip from The Hunt for Red October and another: "Engage Caterpillar" clip. Also make sure to put (Russian accent) for the relevant part of George's remarks.] Is it this? It's to test it with energy. Okay grid storage Favorite it's a form of grid store. Okay. Yes. I'm talking about energy recently because of COP 27 and you know, the world's gonna be destroyed and all that stuff. So I'm very interested in Yeah, what is the path between here and net zero, right?

S: Well, how are we gonna get to the point where we at least with our energy infrastructure?

S: We are not putting out co2. Yeah, and it's a very controversial complicated question I've tried to really wrap my head around it But and so so I learned about this like now a new technology which actually changed my opinion about That pathway and it's this this closed loop pump hydro So we all know that grid storage is going to be critical to get off of fossil fuels, right?

S: mainly because the Cleanest cheapest source of energy is wind and solar but wind and solar are intermittent, right?

S: They're not on demand the wind blows when it's going to blow and the sun shines when it's going to Shine and we can't control that So there's a limit to how much wind and solar we can have in the on this in the energy infrastructure It's not an absolute limit There's an inflection point where you know as you get beyond like 30 40 percent or so the amount of Efficiency and cost everything it's just crazy bad and it just becomes really hard to manage the grid With with intermittent sources and you end up you need There's also something called capacity efficiency where how much Backup capacity. Can you get rid of when you add new wind and solar to the grid and beyond a certain point?

S: It becomes zero. So basically you have to keep all of the natural gas and coal plants open Because you need them for backup power when the wind is blowing and the sun isn't shining. So But the solution to that Is grid storage, right?

S: It's the more grid storage you have the more wind and solar you can have in this system There are those who think you could have a hundred percent wind and solar will say a hundred percent renewable because there's going to be some hydroelectric and tidal and geothermal there, but if you have enough grid storage you matter, but the question is Is it feasible to have that much grid storage right and and of course the other opinion is no It's not feasible to have that much grid What kind of grid storage are you talking about? It has to be a massive. So first of all When you talk about grid storage, we're talking about shifting the energy production and energy usage by At least hours, right? So the sun is shining during the day. You need to use electricity at night So you need to store that energy for several hours But what if you have a week of cloudy days or a week of no wind?

S: You might need to shift that energy for days And then what are you going to do over the winter when you have essentially no solar power?

S: You may have to store that energy for months, or can't you just move it around?

S: Move what around?

S: Storage?

C: But you're still storing it though. True, but I'm saying like you might not have the sun shining where you are for a whole month

S: But somebody else does. So yeah, so that is you need that's grid sharing, right? So you that's part of the solution too is the broader the more you can share energy across a grid That's also allows you to have more

C: Right, flexible. Because the idea I'm assuming is we take like the mean, median, and mode and figure out what's peak

S: But that's but that only gets you so far. You still need grid storage Right, because you can have a lot you can have a long period with little wind and or little sun

J: So you're saying like store the energy when When it's made. Yeah, like when there's a lot of sun and a lot of wind store that energy because we're not using all

S: Of it and then use it for a later time. And then you take that energy when you have more demand than production Right. So right now even with the current low level of wind and solar in the system There are times when like they shut off wind turbines because we can't have nothing we can do with the energy It's making more energy than the grid can take. Oh, interesting. Right?

C: So that's massively inefficient. Does it take energy to shut them down?

S: Yeah a little bit but it's that's the the point is that that reduces the efficiency of that wind turbine because you're not using it Yeah, and so that means that the it's you You you the the price is fixed for building it. You're getting less energy out of it. So the cost You know amortized right of the energies goes up. That's why it gets really inefficient. Does that happen?

C: I'm, just curious if we like obviously we're talking about cities. We're talking about large infrastructure But if you were to look at an individual person who's off grid who has their own solar and their own Powerwalls like their own batteries. Yeah, does that happen? Do they get so flooded that their battery storage can't?

S: Yeah, yes, because you're off the grid, right? Yeah, it's really hard That's why most systems like you're on the grid and the grid is basically your battery, right?

S: So you just send the extra power to the grid and then you take it off the grid when you need it If you want and the other thing is have you ever priced out a home battery? Yeah, it's like ridiculous It's only yeah $20,000 for three hours of power. I mean, that's that's what we're talking about. It's really really expensive imagine having Days of power like it would be you know, you can't do it So so we've talked about many different kinds of grid storage before the best is probably lithium lithium-ion batteries The round trip efficiencies really build like 92% low 90s Problem is we only have so much, you know lithium and cobalt and nickel and stuff and we want those batteries for our cars We can't divert at all for grid storage, but we can also use our cars as to some extent, you know So there's going to be some battery grid storage and that's going to help with that shifting of hours, right getting that Peak shaving right getting some of that peak demand from from energy that you stored up earlier in the day But it's not going to fix the problem. It's not going to get us to high penetration of wind and solar so then The question is then well, what's you know, what's the rest of the energy going to be? I think you know, it's going to be The even optimistically 10 to 15 hydroelectric and geothermal that's optimistically 10 to 15 Which means you probably you're going to need 20 to 30 percent nuclear. Yeah, right, right Right, otherwise it's going to be fossil fuel. Yeah But again, there are still the proponents who are saying no we can get to 100 wind and solar We just need massive amounts of grid storage So my my response has always been that we don't have the technology to do that Where's all that grid storage going to come from months of grid storage? Where's that going to come from?

"Enter pumped hydro" (1:15:00)

S: Well, enter closed loop pumped hydro Which might be the solution that we're looking for so range of the solution what?

S: So this is what it is. So first of all pumped hydro just pumped hydro Is it's already an established?

S: And probably the best form of grid energy storage if you have a hydroelectric plant, right you dam a river You use the flow of that water to you know, you control the flow of that water. So you run it past turbines Which turn and make electricity like all electricity is like you turn turbines But in order for a hydroelectric plant to work you need a source of water, right? That's why you dam a river But it's hugely impactful on the local environment and there's only so many locations we can put them They're really limited right now in the united states Hydroelectric is six percent of our energy production and we only have the capacity For about 50 percent more than we currently have that's it That's like all the low if we developed every location we can develop We get up to nine percent but actually by the time we did that it would probably still be about six percent because demand is going to increase by

C: 50 well, not just that like we're literally losing our water. Yeah. Well, that's the other you know, like we've like

S: Yeah, they can actually shut down some hydroelectric plants because there was no water. Yeah, so that's it. That's a problem as well So that might further limit that And so that also limits those a pumped hydro means that when you have excess energy you run the turbines backwards, right?

S: You basically pump the water up to the top You could some some designs you could actually use the same turbines to just reverse. So make sure you explain this

J: Like so you have a body of water. Yes at one altitude and another body of water at a higher altitude So when you're when you have excess energy You pump the water use the energy to pump the water water a higher reservoir and then when you need energy you use that

S: You run it down across the turbines

C: Liquid version do you remember that weird thing? Yeah, they build the tower with the crane. Yeah. Yeah

S: Which is much better, yeah The so again, but the problem is there's only so many locations of blah blah blah They're gonna be so much right now closed loop pump hydro you eliminate the hydroelectric power So you don't need a river. You don't need a dam You just need two reservoirs of water with a good head The head is the difference in altitude between the two and they have to be relatively close together They could be two kilometers apart. You just run a pipe from one to the other and you could cap them

C: So you didn't have evaporation?

S: Well, you could minimize the event you want to get the evaporation to less than the rainfall, right? So then the rain is replacing at least what is evaporating then that's long-term storage, right?

C: But you can also just fully make it a closed loop like you could close it off

S: Well, I think because these needs to be huge, you know in order for it to be really useful Don't we already do this very little very little so because we because you've always attached them to hydroelectric power But now the idea is you make it closed loop. There's no river. There's no dam. There's no source of electricity It's just grid storage. So I've read three analyses right one specific to Australia one specific to the United States and one worldwide Looking at the question how many?

S: Potential locations are there in the world or wherever where we could build a closed loop pump hydro system How much energy storage would that equal and compared to how much we would need?

S: In order to have a 100% renewable energy infrastructure. Yeah, but the Australian ones go in the opposite direction So the question is I asked these guys the question earlier, so I'll ask you two guys Yeah, what do you think is the the percentage like what percent of or you know?

S: If one unit is all the grid storage we would ever need in order to have a completely renewable system. How much?

S: pumped hydro potential is there closed loop of the total grid storage potentiality

C: What potent what percentage of that could we could we get to feasibly do pumped hydro?

S: Yes, the closed loop specifically closed loop. Let's forget about and you're talking about like we like we're on the planet

C: Where's the infrastructure for like how could we do we would have to build it?

S: Yeah, but like places where the places exist, right? Yeah, we could build one there that has three percent or like 1,500 percent

GH: I'm gonna say 1,500 percent. I bet you it's high because you look really excited

S: It's even more than that. It's a hundred times a hundred times hundred times what we would actually need. Oh, that's great Which means we only would need to develop the 1% of best Locations in order to have all the grid storage we need around the world. Congratulations Phoenix. We've chosen you

C: So but the thing is we would have to do that energy sharing Situation because obviously there are regions in the world where the evaporate is significantly higher than the rain

S: Yeah, but the thing is we could pick the 1% best locations, right and then we just like export the energy Yeah, well, the other thing is they're everywhere because there's lakes everywhere, you know

C: Yeah, but I feel like there are places like in the Middle East where there's be like we're gonna You're not gonna put it in the Sahara. Yeah, right, but there's geopolitical reasons that sharing energy might be problematic using pre-existing

S: Yeah pre-existing lake bodies of water

J: If you look at a map, yeah, like, you know, whatever whatever country you're from But like United States, for example, if you look at a map of that highlights the bodies of water, there are bodies of water Everywhere they're everywhere So this this idea like this blew my mind when you said that we that hundred times When that capacity is there that means like this is the infrastructure that this we don't need batteries, right?

S: We don't need batteries. We use save the batteries for the cars. Yeah, right. We don't need them for grid storage

C: But how do you move I'm still confused like once you've produced the energy. Well, you need the grid. Yeah, you so between grids

S: You so well you don't we definitely need to upgrade the grid, right? There's no question. So like right now in the United States, there's Four grids right like Texas. There's Texas. Yeah There's Alaska. Uh-huh. There's the eastern grid and the western grid, right?

S: So but the and the eastern grid includes like Quebec and not Quebec. So some of Canada I think Quebec is its own grid too. But anyway, like the whole eastern half of the United States is one grid So we could literally share energy across it now There's it's one thing to be interconnected and it's another thing to be interconnected robustly so that you can share lots of energy across a long distance with with little loss and you have a smart grid that can Load balance and do all that good stuff. So that's what we need to invest billions of dollars in our grid to improve it So that we can't share over large areas and then we need to build Lots of closed-loop pumps pumped hydro to store all of that wind power that we're so why don't we just start doing it right?

C: Yeah, I'm like this is great for a country like the US It's great for most country, but when we talk of most countries don't have like massive Ecological and biome shifts. Yeah, most countries are a biome or like a small range of mine So when you're looking at countries again, like in the Middle East where you've got low rainfall high evaporates somewhat geopolitically Difficult boundaries. Yeah, how are you going to like I just I worry about this like it seems Techno optimist to think that this could just solve these problems. So

S: This is a first of all, it's a major new approach, right? Right, which has tremendous potential right and I think will can get us a lot farther along this path, right?

S: Right, it's not enough no one solution. I think is gonna get us 100% of the way there, right?

S: I still think we're gonna need to have some nuclear power plants. So we have right now We're at 18 for the United States at 18% nuclear I think we need to at least maintain that like keep around 20% and then we get 10% Geothermal and hydroelectric and then 70% wind and solar with lots of grid storage, but that's gonna that's gonna need to be pumped hydro there's nothing else scales the way it does nothing else scales the way it does and It's gonna be it's more I think it's more Universal and you think but absolutely there are places that where it's going to be less useful But also if you think about the countries that are producing all the co2, they'll be fine, right?

C: They'll they'll they'll have that's true the places where we need to like China

S: Plenty plenty of locations right now in the US right now It takes five to ten years just to get the permitting to do to build one of these facilities So that's that's a that's a huge problem

C: Can we just like have some sort of yes, yes, so yes, that's what we need

S: We need an operation warp speed for for this Absolutely now there already are and again, but the thing is it's federal and state and local records like multiple layers of regulation I like just the FDA where there's one institution

C: There's unless these were federally funded and there would have to be hydro

S: there would have to be massive, you know regulatory change at the federal level that somehow Controlled the more local level things or superseded them or whatever Now there is a fast track where we could do it in two years It's already exists, but most sites don't qualify for the fast track I'm not sure what the details are there, but definitely I think we need to look at this ago Okay, how can we make this happen as quickly as possible?

S: It's gonna take regulatory overhaul and lots of money, but it's totally worth it It is completely worth it because this is really the only way we're gonna get any significant

GH: Penetration of wind and solar apart from costs. What are the what will be the potential arguments against it?

S: There really aren't there aren't I couldn't find any yeah, because it's because these are pre-existing You know bodies of water. You don't have to build any dams. It's you know, there it's what would be minimally environmentally Impactful, but again that five to ten year permitting process is all environmental. It's all like red tape and like pork

C: Like those are all the problems. It's like we are

S: But if I were king of America, I could just say that's a ton of It seems like a no-brainer. Yeah. I mean, this is one of those things. I think it's gonna happen I think this is gonna be a bit of a game changer

J: I mean it was like it was like there all the time It's just like some it just took people to think about and go we could we could store the energy this way I mean and you got to think about it when you're moving water from one place to another like you're not Damaging any technologies there, right?

S: There's not that many there's only a couple then they've been but we've had them for decades All right, like the technology is literally decades old. It was just never a big Steve. Can it would Lake has pumped hydro

J: Yeah, I know. No way. Yeah the lake where we live

C: Yeah It's like I think about I think about California and like how how impaired how important it is for like art us Culturally in our government to like be ahead of the curve when it comes to green energy But pumped hydro might not work there because it's like drought city like it's it's a problem Like we don't have enough water as it is. Yeah. And so yeah, it is kind of we'd have to be like help us out

S: Yeah, but you gotta just kind of read the analyses like there's so many potential locations again. You only need 1% Right, and then we can just think about how little that is of all the potential locations

GH: She reminds me of that great lamp that they were using in Low income countries, which was just a weight. Yeah, so it was like a Weight on a pulley basically and you would lift the weight up and it was a very low Toothed gear that slowly would drop the weight down and that would run your yeah your whatever 60 watt bulb very little Five hours. It would slowly just go down and then you just walk back over you lift it back up You know, they're five hours of energy like a soccer ball

J: Yeah

C: Grandfather class run off of gravity as well

GH: Those simple like the kids are playing soccer. They're there the answers are there

Bright Satellite (1:26:55)

• A Huge Satellite Is Now One of the Brightest Objects In the Sky, Astronomers Warn 

S: All right, Evan, you're gonna finish us up with some information about satellites and astronomy.

E: Yeah, so recent news on this first of all bright objects in the sky. They include things like well UFOs UFOs So that's Spielberg movie the moon Obviously stars also Mars serious Jupiter. Yes serious Canopus airplanes or Eagle Kent Aris is one of my favorites. Absolutely Well now we have to count an artificial satellite as one of the brightest Objects in the night sky and it's called the Blue Walker 3 it has officially become one of the brightest objects in the night sky and While the technology of satellite technology, which is bringing cellular service and communication around the world That part of it is great There are always always trade-offs one of the big trade-offs With this particular satellite is the impact that it's having on the study of astronomy Because it is so bright but not only because it's so bright the radio emissions power of it itself is also interfering With telescopes with radio telescopes here on the planet. What does the satellite do?

E: It's a communication satellite. It's for so it's for cellular. So it's for cellular service. Yep 693 square feet Pretty big for a satellite and causing a lot of Radio traffic and so much so that the International Astronomical Union released a statement Earlier this month, which is the news item trying to bring people's awareness To this matter and it's not just this satellite. We've talked about other satellites in the past, you know the Starlink Satellites that have been having this this sort of negative impact on astronomy as well So the problem seems to be becoming worse worse and worse This is just the prototype satellite that went up the first one. The plan is for this company It's called AST space mobile. They will be launching hundreds One of that 600 foot one of this and and perhaps larger and more and more power So that so this is so they sit they see the danger on the horizon and they're really trying to bring people's awareness to it now We're gonna try to help Try to help mediate this in some way or at least open a line of communication about what is what is happening There are 3,000 Starlink satellites right now currently in space and that's planned to go up to 12,000 Is the ultimate plan?

E: and What do we have?

C: 12,000 12,000 all get free internet finally. I mean eventually yeah

S: I thought the high I thought that it was gonna come out at 20,000. It's the only only internet in Ukraine right now

E: I understand. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. So again, you know positive aspects of it But there are also these negative ones that definitely do have to be addressed here Here are a couple lines from the actual statement. They're released because of its large phased array antenna Bw3 for short appears in the sky as bright as some of the brighter stars if imaged by the very sensitive detectors of Astronomical telescopes can easily saturate them making the entire image useless and in some instances it might even damage the detector Therefore it's imperative know exactly the position of such bright satellites in such a way that they do not cross the field of view of the Telescope so there's has to be a better coordination effort as to exactly the paths these are taking and where our astronomical Instruments are also pointing but they also said their impact on radio astronomy is potentially serious large radio Astronomical observatories are located in remote regions. We talked about yeah the one in Australia Recently in order to limit the interference by the cellular phones But if the microwave emissions come directly from the sky no region on earth will be immune from the interference I

S: Mean can they make these satellites but paint them black?

E: I mean so what we have is that and and SpaceX is actually kind of all the companies leading The has heard this call and they have answered and they have been doing things with their second and third Generations of like the Starlinks for example They have they have they knew back in July this year They they announced an initiative called the brightness mitigation best practices for satellite operators This is SpaceX there. They're identifying and mitigating the key causes of satellite brightness using new and more sophisticated materials with less reflectivity Specular scattering material is what is what they're using which reflects light at a single angle Like I got like a direct on as opposed to it going bouncing in all kinds of directions in which you would see these more prominently Their first generation of the satellites had visors Sun visors actually attached to them, but those are proving to be kind of problematic While yes, it does cut down on the amount of light It also interferes with the capabilities of the satellite itself The laser components on it are not as effective and it also has a physical drag on the satellite itself So they moved on to something called RF transparent mirrors and Intercell backing materials in which basically they're just kind of changing the color structure of the backing material They started off using white, you know, which has a high reflectivity, but they've moved it to a dark red color Obviously because that's better. However, that's also having some issues because of the heat it's generate its generate It's in temperature and heat issues now now become a problem So they're continuing to try to tweak it and they have something else called die Electric the dielectric which is a mirror film now. This will Reduce the reflectivity by ten times. So you're gonna get like 90% lower Reflectivity which seems to be working and the new satellites that are going up are going to have this material It maximizes the specular scatter and allows the radio waves to pass through with no apparent issues Not only that they're gonna make this technology available to the other satellite companies that are doing this at no profit No markup. They're gonna do it to them at cost so that they can easily implement this particular technology Which I think is going to be best for all the companies. That's great. Yeah, that's great

S: But this is also an area where we need some international regulation Sure, you shouldn't be allowed to put noisy satellites up there ruining for everybody. They should code them with Vantablack. Oh, yes, they Vantablack

B: Too bad so expensive. Yeah

E: so yeah, so again the news this week was that the The Union came out with this statement and really wanted to make everyone aware of this This has been having real right now impacts on what we're trying to what astronomers are trying to do

J: It's part of another form of light pollution. Yeah, but it's it's also a part of a much bigger problem Which as we all know it's all the space junk. Mm-hmm. You know, we got a ton of stuff up there Yeah, we got to start pulling that stuff down somehow like we've got to really make that happen We could get into a situation where we have a chain, you know chain of events happens in orbit where you know An accident happens creates debris and that debris goes out and makes more debris and then we're totaled then we send

S: Your Bullock is yeah

C: When I when I was at that launch at Baikonur it was one web, which I think went defunct I'm not sure somebody might have bought them since then There's like been a lot of drama with that company But they were saying that their satellites all have a shelf life and they deorbit Yeah, that shelf life and I think that's starting to become that's that needs to become standard. Yeah Like I know there's stuff up there from before, you know But like you shouldn't be able to put anything up new unless you are the you know, it will come back Yeah

E: Actually, not all the countries China have been able to kind of maintain this sort of

C: Effort to to deorbit correctly. Well, and the problem is it's like the honor system like yeah, you know that has to be regulated

E: Yeah, yeah in some way you're right There have to be tight there have to be tighter laws the whole system needs a lot of tightening and lots of different aspects

S: All right. Thanks Evan. Yep. All right guys, let's move on to science or fiction. Yes

[top]                        

Science or Fiction (1:35:20)

Theme: Arizona law Item #1: Any misdemeanor committed while wearing a red mask is automatically considered to be a felony. Item #2: Donkeys are not permitted to sleep in bathtubs Item #3: It is illegal in the state of Arizona to refuse someone a drink of water if they ask and you have water to give.

Answer	Item
Fiction	Refusing to give water
Science	Red mask felony
Science	Donkeys in bathtubs

Host	Result
Steve	clever

Rogue	Guess
Bob	Red mask felony
Evan	Red mask felony
Jay	Refusing to give water
Cara	Refusing to give water
George	Donkeys in bathtubs

Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.

S: It's time for science or fiction Each week I come up with three science news items or facts to real and one fake

S: And I challenge my panelists got to tell me which one is the fake There's a theme this week What do you think the theme is Phoenix?

S: No, but it's related to Arizona.

C: Meteor it is Arizona law

S: Boy you got it Arizona law. Oh boy. Now. I want no kibitzing from the peanut gallery I want lots of kibitz. Okay, we will ask you your opinion after the robes will wait in So no feedback until you may have heard these

C: You know locals people here aren't from here, whatever

S: Here we go. Let's do it. All right item number one Any misdemeanor committed while wearing a red mask is automatically considered to be a felony Item number two Donkeys are not permitted to sleep in bathtubs and item number three It is illegal in the state of Arizona to refuse someone a drink of water if they ask and you have water to give All right, we're gonna start all the way on the left Bob If you want to see them I got him no red red mask fiction red mask is the fiction, okay

B: I want to see them again. Who knows?

E: Evan what do you think? Why would a red mask Constitute a felony like automatically What happens on Halloween? Come on. Is it the same concept is like insurance companies call?

E: Will charge more if you have a red car that kind of thing is it I don't get it Donkeys not permitted to sleep in bathtubs. Sure. That is some you know 18 14 or whatever 1912 law on the books for whatever reason, you know Those things happen all over the place. Yeah, and What it was Oh refusing someone a drink of water if they ask If you have water to give well, I mean you can kind of see perhaps maybe yeah that that Public service sort of aspect to it a good Samaritan laws do exist In some places, so I think I'm with Bob the one about the red mask is making the least sense to me

J: You know, I'm tempted to pick the one about the water because it seems to be the most reasonable Like there's just no way that I could these are all weird. Yeah, you searching through his phone No, this this phone sucks, but I mean It doesn't stay right?

J: I'm gonna pick it. I'm it's been my problem my whole life I'm gonna pick no I'm gonna pick the water one because out of all three of these that one seems the most reasonable and this seems like one of Those times we're in this that's my I'm gonna bet that Steve is picking that okay, Cara, right?

C: I think I think we wrote we wrote we took notes I feel like there is a an argument for all of them like the red mask and it was a misdemeanor But now it's a felony. What if there was like some Gang of bandits like the red mask bandits and at the time like that was written into law And then they just like never repealed it, you know Cuz it's like those old things that they don't matter anymore and they don't actually enforce them So it's still on the books like maybe you know and then same thing with the donkey in the bath I'm trying to think of where but would a bathtub have been outdoors At the time like don't bathe your donkey in the same. Maybe there was like a cholera Situate. I don't know like I'm trying to think of why that would be I don't think it's like a zoning zoning thing Problem, but maybe a public health measure and then the whole like you can't refuse water Yeah, totally if there was something we're like somebody died because they had heat stroke and they needed water It's a bit like I can't have my water and then they were found liable I could see that but also I could see this one being one that Steve just like straight-up made up Yes, because like we think of Arizona and we think of the desert and we think of yeah And and the other two were like negative and this one's positive I think I'm gonna go with J on this and say Steve just made that one. Oh, all right, and George. Oh boy

GH: To quote the Beastie Boys when you wash your ass, you better best use soap I you know what? I am I am leaning with Cara and J on this Wow. So but now now because

C: You could get all the glory

GH: I'm thinking like it you can't bring a donkey inside and have it go up to the second floor Like where your bathtub might be because then it's gonna be like a weird structural thing the red mask I like the idea of there was some kind of red there was some kind of gang and they never took it off the books But because no one has chosen the donkeys and because I'm a Beastie Boys fan. I'm gonna say the donkey You're gonna go with the ass

S: Always go with the ass. All right, little ass now we're gonna we're gonna Pull the locals and see what you guys think George you want to do you know, we'll do the one clap Yes, I think it's so if you think one clap that the law about the red mask is not true clap Then if you think that the one about the donkey is the fiction clap And you think the one about the water is the fiction clap No, there's definitely definitely more for the water

C: Alright

S: So we'll take these in order but do you know I don't ever want any misdemeanor committed while wearing a red mask is Automatically considered to be a felony Bob and Evan you think this one is the fiction I regret it about 20% of the audience thinks this one is the fiction 20 and this one is Science this one's a real law still on the books weird in Arizona. It's the origin. I don't know why but I did I couldn't find it

C: So it's my story

S: But that makes sense Bandits were wearing red masks so they had to you know, whatever

C: Up up up it. Yeah some political. All right. It's worse because it was you. Yeah, that's number two

S: Donkeys are not permitted to sleep in bathtubs George. You think this one is a fiction? Yes, you got about George quarter of the audience or so and this one is Science also Yeah They decided to specifically outlaw allowing donkeys to sleep in bathtubs I guess that was a thing at some point in Arizona thing. It was like happening

E: And one mayor went crazy over or something and decided to lobby to have it or maybe there was a like a That's all it would take is one

S: Figure this out right now if anybody has any insight into this, you know, please share with us So what this means that it is illegal in the state of Arizona to refuse someone a drink of water if they ask and you have water to give is The fiction did you make it up? No, I didn't make that up But there are dozens of sites on the web that say that that's a real law in Arizona Have any of you heard of that any of the local Arizonans?

S: Did you know it was a myth or did you hear it is real? So you don't know it's a myth Yeah but but but so there was a There's a good site that basically looked through all of Arizona law and that just doesn't exist It's like that law does not exist in there So it's one of those things that so makes so much sense that it just becomes in popular

C: I found this a couple times. Okay, so multiple people online. This is from Phoenix, Arizona criminal lawyer calm offer a Town near Kingman was flooded by a local dam While a merchant allowed his donkey to sleep in an old bathtub the donkey survived the trip but was washed about a mile down the valley landed in a basin and It took a lot of money to rescue the animal and they decided we're gonna ban this for the bed

S: That seems pretty as you know, that's brilliant. Yeah. All right So, what do me and Cara get you get to hear some other interesting Arizona laws That I did not use it's also illegal to hunt camels in Arizona. No camel hunting Are there camels here are there camels in Arizona? They're all hunted Okay, I know there are camels in Australia that they were basically introduced Yeah, they were introduced. I figured they were injured just like in Australia same thing any misdemeanor as I said that one donkeys It's a class 2 misdemeanor occurs if one places a mark upon a flag which was likely to provoke physical retaliation Wow Again, it's got to come from something. It is illegal to manufacture imitation cocaine. So no fake cocaine And this is what kind of makes sense when being attacked by a criminal or burglar You may only protect yourself with the same weapon that the other person is using Wait, wait, wait, so you can't bring a gun to a knife fight

GH: In Arizona if I attack you with like a conch shell

S: Yeah, so I thought that was fun, yeah, I've never played Red Dead Redemption 2 no I have not Gotta put your mask up Before you rob the train all those games. Yeah. All right, Evan take us out with a quote

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:45:17)

The boy is Ignorance. The girl is Want. Beware of them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.  – Charles Dickens (1812-1870), English writer and social critic, from A Christmas Carol

E: All right. This quote was suggested by a listener. His name is Sean He's from the United Kingdom and apparently a fan of Charles Dickens any Charles Dickens fans here me either Charles Dickens A seasonal skeptical quote from Charles Dickens a Christmas Carol here it is. This boy is ignorance This girl is want beware them both and of all their degree But most of all beware this boy for on his brow. I see that written which is doom Unless the writing be erased ignorance Is bad

S: They hardly agree we were just talking about the Christmas Carol Really really a great story. It is a good story, you know, it's another it's another don't be a dick

E: I mean of all the dickens it's one of the most accessible

GH: That was so freaking good I have to say I just saw spirited the Will Ferrell. Yeah, Ryan Reynolds film It's great. Is it really it's great. I Have never been I've never had a Christmas Carol plot that I didn't know what was gonna happen Yeah, it's got these twists and you're like wait what? Oh, wait, what? Oh, wait what? Yeah, it was Good afternoon. No the music the musical numbers are I mean, it's just Busby Berkeley on crack. It's just it's amazing. It's amazing songs are great, but not fake No, yeah, it's it's I was I was blown away I had my expectations were very low is playing a local theater I'm like, oh, it's gonna be fun. Let's just go check it out It'll put us as a still you make fun of it or whatever and I'm like these songs are great and the message was great And it's this subversion of the Christmas Carol story that's fully aware. It's subverting it, but it's super clever. I recommend it

S: I was looking for shows to download for the plane travel and I saw that on there like hard pass My expectations are so but now I mean if you don't like musicals, you're not gonna like it

GH: But if you but if you and I can appreciate, you know good songwriting The songs are very catchy very clever and it's a it's a it's a really cool message and it's yeah, I enjoyed it

Signoff

S: Very nice. Well, thank you all for joining me for this new show. Thank you guys in the live audience. You are wonderful

S: —and until next week, this is your Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.

S: Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by SGU Productions, dedicated to promoting science and critical thinking. For more information, visit us at theskepticsguide.org. Send your questions to info@theskepticsguide.org. And, if you would like to support the show and all the work that we do, go to patreon.com/SkepticsGuide and consider becoming a patron and becoming part of the SGU community. Our listeners and supporters are what make SGU possible.

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Today I Learned

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