SGU Episode 349

<Transcription currently in Progress by TimM>

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• Show Notes
• Podcast
• Forum Topic

Skeptical Rogues

• S: Steven Novella
• B: Bob Novella
• R: Rebecca Watson
• J: Jay Novella
• E: Evan Bernstein

Introduction

(0:00)

S: Hello and welcome to the skeptics guide to the universe. Today is wednesday march 21st 2012 and this is your host Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella;

B: Hey everybody.

S: Rebecca Watson;

R: Hello everyone.

S: Jay Novella;

J: *Jewish Accent* What is this? Pod-casting?

S: ...and Evan Bernstein

E: Good evening ladies and gentleman, how's everyone?

R: *Unintelligble*

S: Good, Fine and dandy.

E: Now this was some winter huh?

S: This is my kind of winter.

E: We barely had 'any' snow this year in New England, it was in the 50's for a large part of the winter in southern New England which is unheard of.

S: I love the vernal equinox becase it means the next six months the sun is in the upper half of it's course through the sky.

?B: I hope all of you have released your white owls.

S: Well anyway rebecca what else is special about this day?

Segment 1: This day in skepticism

(0:58)

March 24, 1989: The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill

[1]

R: Well, this day marks the anniversary of a quite horrific and march 24th 1989 was the day that the Exxon Valdex spilled oil into prince williams sow.

S: You just can't let it go can you Rebecca?

R: No, no me and the otters... pretty pissed about it still.

?E: One drunk sea captain, it helps(you know?), guides the boat into the low into the shoals and he pays for it for the rest of his life.

R: I think, apparently that's a... apparently that's a bit of a myth, the captain apparently was drunk but was not at the helm. The third mate was, and on the list of things what went wrong the biggest ones seems to be that the radar for detecting possible collisions had been broken for nearly a year. Also...

?J: And the captain was too drunk to know it. Apparently.

S: We'll get to that eventually.

R: And apparently all of the crew was severely overworked and exhausted and had been for quite some time. So those were identified as being the main causes why it ended up striking a reef and spilling up to possibly seven hundred and fifty thousand barrels of oil. It's not however...

E: Think of all the cars and furnaces that it would have provided heat and energy for. It's very sad.

R: Yeah, despite how devastating that oil spill was, it's not even in the top ten worst oil spills of all time. It 'was' the worst one in the US up until the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster. But yeah it's kinda crazy to think that there are oils spills happening all the time and some of them are much much worse than the Exxon Valdex. Yeah, there's a happy thought for you. The ship itself was recently auctioned off, actually. Just the tanker, just this week it was sold for scrap so apparently it was renamed the "Oriental Niceity"

S: Mmm hmm?

R: I guess as some way to trick people into to thinking it was err...

?B: For real? Oh my gosh.

?J: Might as well call it the happy xxx, what the hell?

S: The little nicenty?! That's odd. I've a funny Exxon Valdex story, i was in Epcot Centre in Disney world shortly after that oil spill and to the dinosaur exhibit was, I guess, funded by Exxon and before you get to see the dinosaurs, there's essentially a big commercial for Exxon. At one point they have this aerial shot of an oil tanker going through a harbor and they go: "The beautiful Exxon Valdex..." 'Course everyone starts laughing 'cause this is like right after the disaster they hadn't updated the ride yet.

?E: Time to update the rides...

?: DOH

R: A little embarrassing. Here's my question; I've always heard people call it the Exxon Val-deese but I don't understand why they pronounce it Val-deese, when it's obviously Valdez.

S: I don't know I'm just slavishly following what I hear.

R: Yeah I don't know, I think it's weird.

S: But at least we can have our super hero magical bracelets to make it all better right jay?

?B: Nice segway

R: That was a good segway Steve.

S: You know It kinda takes away from it when you say it's a good segway.

R: I know that's why it's funny, and every single time, Steve, you will never be able to do a segway without us calling attention to it. This is your curse.

Segment 2: News Items

(4:39)

Superhero Pseudoscience

• http://colantotte.com

?J: Steve jumped right into it, I wanted to loosen up a little bit before we say bad things about Marvel, 'cause there's some good things about Marvel like, you know I think that for super hero movies they've done a great job you know for the most part I've liked all of them, and you know ,the Avengers movie is coming out and I'm really psyched to see it, its totally right in my sweet spot. I mean I love super heroes i love like you know science fictiony stuff like that. So it really was disappointing to find out that marvel and probably even more involved is the production company that they're using, the marketing company that they've hired for the avengers film, is sadly has, is selling some crazy wacky merchandise. So they're selling a magic bracelet a 'real' magic bracelet. Ala Powerband type BS.

?B: As oppossed to those fake magic bracelets?

S: They're not a toy, they're making actual claims for it.

?J: Yeah they are, here I'll get into some of the details here, the limited edition Magtitan Neo Legend has a carbon fibre surface finished with a coat of transparent resin that yields an attractive stylish design.

S: Oh I thought you were going to say transparent aluminum. That would have been impressive.

?J: A 100mT 1000 Gaussferrite permenant magnets arranged in colantotte's unique alternating north south polarity orientation which is

?: oooh

?: *Sarcastic* unique!

?J: They've trademarked A-N-S-P-O. ANSPO trademark.

R: I'm holding out for the east-west polarity.

?: Yeah i'm there too.

S: They're saying because they have alternating strips of magnets with the north-south polarity alternating, and that's supposed to be unique to this, that's exactly how you make a refrigerator magnet.

?J: Now wait a minute, what are you accusing them of?

S: That's how the refrigerator magnets have a very you know, narrow, of depth but for relativley strong for the power of the magnets used, attraction right? That's why like when you pull a refigerationg magnet off of the refigerator it's really strong over a very short distance but they're very quickly gives way

drops off

that's because they have alternating strips of north and south, you know of poles in the magnet.

yeah but steve is a referigeratior magnet made of adimantium, i don't think so?

I don't think so

A really good refrigerator magnet

Steve you can say what you will, put it down, but each limited editon magnite comes in a special limited edition package commerating marvels avengers movie. So of course it's works, it works steve you gotta buy this ghitnk.

cause the eavengers are real.

Now i saw something I'm perusing the ah, website and i have to admit the design of it is pretty cool, but you know go around the website and i was nosing around the SGU forums and they were chit chatting about it and they came up with a couple of interesting things. Somebody on our forums said thatthis is basicly proven to work in japan. like they have real medical benifit in japan. I couldnt find any proof of that so if anybody does i'd be intersting to read it for myself but they do have on the website is of course they have first hand comments by professional atheletes.

S: oh here we go.

?J: THe magntite neo legend is collin totts finest gear, the combination of titanium and carbon fibre is great, plus it's been created specifically to commeratate marvel's avenger movie. Two things! Two comments ready? One; That guy did not write that, he did not say that.

Oh no!

if that guy walks arond talking like that, he needs help

Don't you love it when anecdoes like that are written in ad-copy? Right. It's so obviously wirten by som sales guy, and it's supposed to be a spontaneous indorsement or anectdote from sombrbody. You know what i mean it's so transparent.

steve pretend i'm rory micleroy and ask me about that bracelet i'm wearing?

Hey can you tell everyoenb about tha tbarclet your' wearing

the magtight neo legend is collin totls finest gear, the combination of pure titanium and carbon fibre is breat. yeah right.

R: That's really natural.

I thinky rory has a scottish accent.

don't even

if memory serves

The magtigte neo legent is colin tots finest gear.

R: What was that?

I'll take ? for four hundred.

i think you just invented a new accent that's never been heard of before.

yeah it hink it was just shouting. it was like a klingon variant

Noises.

SO anyway the second thing from that guy's endorsment tha tmakes me shudder is he says i can't wait to go see this movie with my mates to watch collin totes magtite neo legend in action. Does this mean it's in the movie? is it in the movie marvel?

Seriously

Oh god.

I guess soo

SOmeone had to

You gotta give it to 'em, i mean it's pretty brilliant, having a magic bracelet be on a super hearo i mean, right?

Yeaaah?

The marketing is good, the marketing idea is good, espcially becaues most people iwll probably buy into it, even if it's just because it looks good but you know, it's very..

its better than those green lantern rights.

Laughing

i have two of those

It's a sad state of affairs when a compay like marvel a copmany which produces fantasy, you know, they're actually,

they're still doing it

they're morphong to relatity here, yo jknow lets cash in on the fact that we write about magic and sell magic.

Yep. So I'm a little twigged at marvel righ now.

What has this world come to.

Paying the bills

Jay on the website it shows a picture of the bracet and underneath is says the superheros secret.

Yeah

Oh wow really that's the secret huh? Two little magnets on their writes, that's where it does it.

We should... we should try that..

It's a secret

SO you're saying it doesnt work jay? Can we agree that DC maybe has taken a notch up due to this.

J: Yeah absolutley, it comes out april first, i couldnt find any prciening i bet you it's gunna be in the ^60 to 100 dolllar range?

APril first really?

April first.

Hmmm.

Well what do you think do yo uthink the whole thing is a hoax?

SOme thign hoaxy.

I dont think so and i'll tell you why, the company that procdueces the bracelet i researched them, they make allot of other BS stuff, the negatie ion crap and all that stuff.

(10:54)

High Altitude Skydiving

• [www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17399985 www.bbc.co.uk]

S: Alll rith well lets move on, we've a bit of a folloup to a previosu discussion we had frazer kane and pamela gay are on this show a few weks ago, we talked about he up comming attempted world record breaking high skydive. High altitdue sky dive from x x, and there's a discussion and bit of a news update, the news up date is that he completed a test jump recently he jumped from 71,500 ft or 22Km above new mexico, landing ssafely 8 minutes later. Although this is only a test jump, that puts him in the top three! In terms of the highest altitude skydives ever. This is a preperation for his planned jump later this year in which he will break the world record. He's planning to jump from 120,000 feet, so the current record stands at 102,800 ft in 1960 by Jo kettingger who was a US airforce kernal at the time, when we were talking about bom gartners planned jump on the last episode we mentioned the fact that it's inherintly dangerous to jump from such a high altitude because of the velocities involved and that kettingger during his jump in 1960 actually spun out of control, blacked out, and didn't regain conceionsness until after his shute had automatically deployed. so when i was reasearching this for this piece, I found out that that's sorta true but one thing we didn't mention is that was, that occured on the first of kettingers three jumps this was the excelsior mission, is waht it was called, tehre was excoesior one two and three.

(12:48) ?: Excelsior!

S: Yeah the third one was the one where he you know, is the record still stands now at 102,100 feet, it was the first one, exsesior 1 where he spun out of control, the reason he spun out of control didnt have anything to do with the conditions of the jump, the aerodynamics of the thin atmosphere, or the velocity, it had to do wit hthe fact that his pilot shute deployed too early. He In releasing you know from the gondala he had to yank on you know the cord a few times before it came loose but he actually startd the timer on the first yank so the timer was going before he jumped off the gondola and thne his pilot shute deployed too early so he wasn't going fast enough. Normally it'll only deploy after oyu get up sufficent speed that the aerodynamics are such that it'll be you know pulled back away from you, but he was going too slow when it deployed and then therefore it flopped around more than it should have and it actually wrapped arouned his neck and this started him spinning. He basically got tankgled up in the pilot shute, he started spinning out of conrol, theyestimate at 8- rpms, and he blacked out. Then he fell all wthe way to ten thousand eet when the baraoetric release triggerd his reserve parashute and this didnt this got tangled too but they had installed a backup contigency where the aroiginal shute would break away and that worked allowing the reserve shute to nflate at about 6000 feet. And he survived obviously and landed safeley, so teh spinning out itself was more of an equipment thing and didnt have anything to do with just the difficutly of dropping from such a high altitude. But this whole discussion started an email discussion with the listener who essentially said that this is his point, he said, if youjump at a very high altitude, the aireodyma... the experiuce for teh skydiver is teh same because your going to reach terminal velocity and terminal velocity is by definition is the wind resistance is going to equial the acceleration due to gravity and therefore it doesnt really matter if it's a thin atmosphere and a high velocity or a thicker atmosphere at a lower velocity. the net resistance against the sky diver is the same so it feels the same to the sky diver. so I totally get that, and Isee no problems with that line of logic. but here is my counter point the difference here is that when you jump from very high wher ethe atmosphere is thin, terminal velociy is alot faster you're going to be going alot faster and then you have to loose all of that extra velocity so when you get down into the thicker atmosphere you're not just approachin gterminal velocity you're already exceeding the terminal velocity of the lower down denser atmospher and therefore the wind resistance has to actually decelerate, it has to slow you down.

?: Drag

Yeah so therefore the drag is greater than if you jumped at the lower altitude and were just getting up to terminal velocity, but he didn't agree with that point he thought, yeah but it depends on how, of what the curve of the change in atmospheric density is but, i just don't buy it. For example it's estimated that during kettingers record breaking jump he reached a maxium speed of 625 miles per hour. Terminal velocity at lower down the normal altitude that people scky dive from is somewhere between 117 and 125 miles per hour depending on you know your position and your size, and in like a head down bullet position it's about 210 miles per hour so you figure kiggenger had to loose about 500 miles per hour of velocity when he descended into the lower atmosphere that's gotta be alot of extra force from wind resistance that you wouldn't have on you if you were jumping from you know say ten thousand feet reight? I tried to find, that's just my reasoning, I don't know what the final answer is i kinda propose it as an intersting pysics question but noon has given me like a real difienitive answer, what do you gys think about all that?

STeve i agree with you i think you know, correct me if i'm wrong here, from what you're saying, if you're in a th inner atmopshere, terminal verlociy is going to be faster.

right, that we all agree on yep

then the idea is that you will eventually stop accelerating and maintain a speed when you hit enough air molecules basiciula get piled up uderneath you that pretty much matches what it would be like say jumping at 10 thousand feet, right?

Yeah so it's thinner air but it's rushing past you faster and the net wind resistance is the same, that's right.

Yeah ok,

but t[he difference i'm saying is, yeah but then you decend into denser atsmphere wher eyou have to, you're not just maintaining a terminal velocity you're actually significantly slowing down because the terminal velocity is getting lower as you descend into the tickher atmosphere, the other point I raised which noones given mem a good answer to is alright so i understand the wind resistane will be the same but you still are going faster your velocity is greater so if you 'do' spin out at a higher velocity, would there be the potential for the RPMs to be greater? Will you spin out faster? And 'that's' the real risk, that you'll spin out so fast that you'll black out right?

RIgh yeah so, in other words, so if you do a spin out, at say, 70 or 80 thousand feet, you might actually be going so fast that you know your blood pressure goes totally crazy, whereas maybe

if you're going '500' miles an hour and if you spin out is that more dangerous than if you were going at 120 miles an hour, that's the question. It's interesting, I posed it on my blog, nobody really gave me a good answer. You know jay and I have been chatting about this and we asked a physics friend of ours who really didn't add anything to what we just said. I dunno, it's an interesting through experiment and we'll put it out there to our listeners to further the conversation. I still, it still seems to me that it would be more difficult and more risky to the high sky dive because, it's the declaration and the absolute velocity how that translates into spin those are the two points that i'd like to hear, discussed. But bomb gartner is goiing to be making his next j ump later this year wher he's going to try and break the record and his one observation with all the equipment tested out and worked fine but he said the cold that was like really hard to handle. So before he goes

Hands were actually sort of num he could t use them

yeah so before he goes up higher, so his test dive was from 71,500 feet, he's going to 120,000 feet, that's going to be a lot thinner, alot colder, so yeah i think they're gunna have to tweak the spacesuit there that he has, if he's gunna be able to tolerate the cold at that height.

Put those heat packets in the gloves that's all

yeah

or those mittens that you put in the microwave.

There are those people who like go into like the minus 120 degree refrigerators for like ten seconds, you guys hear about that?

Yeah

Why would you do that?

'cause why do you think? Because it's supposed to have some magical health benefit.

R: Oh yeah.

?: I think I read it's supposed to be invigorating.

• Laughter*

Yeah you know what else is? Cold shower.

S: They used to throw cold wet blankets on psychotic patients to calm them down. [2]

?: Yeah. A real calming effect. It's a good...

S: It would shock them, you know, they would be having you know whatever, they would be out of control, and that would shock them into just shutting down. You know that just that real sudden extreme cold.

?: Steve aren't you really just supposed to slap someone silly when they freak out like that?

?: *garbled* Electrode real electricity to. [3]

S: That's about as scientifically valid.

?: Yeah according to like the fifties movies you know, all you godda do when someones having a hissy fit you just smack 'em one and go you know...[4]

R: Get yourself together man!

?: Get a hold of yourself poor woman you know something like that right?

?: Stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about

Quicky with Bob

Designer Electrons

URL

?: You know what I just read? Rebecca wants a quicky with bob

S: *knowingly* Oooh.

R: That's true, that's true i do.

B: Oh sure Rebecca but will you hold me afterwards..

R: *thinking* Mehh..

B: Don't answer that questions.

B: Ok this week's quicky with bob...

R: I'm not into that cuddly shit.

• Laughter*

For this week' quicky with bob I've got a new era of designer electrons

(21:54)