SGU Episode 232

This episode is in the middle of being transcribed by Geneocide (talk) as of {{{date}}}. To help avoid duplication, please do not transcribe this episode while this message is displayed.

SGU Episode 232
1st January 2010
(brief caption for the episode icon)
SGU 231                      SGU 233
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
R: Rebecca Watson
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Guests
M: Mike Lacelle
P: Phil Plait
Links
Download Podcast
SGU Podcast archive
Forum Discussion

Introduction

You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.

S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Friday, January 1^st, 2010 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: Hola.

S: Mike Lacelle–

M: Hey everyone.

S: and Evan Bernstein.

E: Hey everyone.

R: Who's that Mike guy? What?

S: Mike is joining us for our year end wrap up episode which has become, now, customary.

R: Oh.

S: So, welcome Mike. Evan, you're going to give us a This Day in Skepticism?

E: Absolutely because it was 1975 when Kenneth Rooker discovered the long unknown winter destination of the monarch butterfly in the mountains of Mexico. It was a mystery for a long time.

S: Yeah.

E: I guess they had no idea where the heck the monarch butterflies, all 20 million of these butterflies, would fly off to.

B: How'd he do it? What? Did he follow them?

E: Using tags on the wings of some of the butterflies he followed their migration trails to Mexican territories and he studied it for, well, 38 years of data.

S: And also last night was a blue moon.

B: Yes.

E: That's right.

R: And a lunar eclipse. A partial lunar eclipse.

S: Yes.

R: From my vantage point. Not from yours.

E: Really?

S: Yes. In Europe not in the US.

E: I know. Europe gets–I know.

S: So it doesn't really count.

E: This hemisphere gets cut out of a whole bunch of–

R: All the best stuffs over here guys. I'm telling you.

J: Did you see it?

R: I did see it. I saw the tail end of it as I was stumbling down the street toward the next party.

J: Now, the moon, though, did not turn the color blue.

R: No.

J: As the name would suggest.

R: Blue moon only means that it's the second moon in a month.

S: Second full moon in a month, yeah.

R: Second full moon.

S: And that happens on New Years Eve about once every 19 years. Next one will be in 2029.

B: Is that when Apophis is going to hit the earth?

R: It's around then. Yeah. So we might not even see it. We'll all be dead.

B: It's not going to hit.

J: They refined that, Bob, there's much less chance that that asteroid is going to hit.

B: Yeah. Not in 2029 anyway.

J: Yeah, right.

R: Did you guys see the news of the Russians, though?

J: Yeah! They're going to launch–

R: They're going to blow it out of the sky.

S: Good for them.

J: They're going to launch something and land on that asteroid.

R: Yeah right. I'm a little, shall we say, skeptical, cause I read some interview with the spokesperson and he said that the asteroid was going to come around in something like 2026 or '27. He was very vague and I was just thinking you should really have all your facts straight when you arm your missiles.

S: Yeah, you've got to be kinda precise on that point.

J: Yeah, isn't it possible that they could do something to it and actually jockey it into a worse position?

B: Oh yeah.

E: That was my thought, too.

R: Yeah.

S: They could knock it into one of the keyholes. They absolutely could.

M: They'd need to hire Bruce Willis for the job.

S: So this is the episode where we reminisice about the best moments over the last year.

B: And decade.

S: And the SGU–and decade–and also we're going–

J: Alright.

S: –to talk about some–

B: The millenium?

S: –the best and worst of science and skepticism in the last decade.

J: Wow.

Listener Feedback (3:11)

S: But first lets go through our listener feedback as to their most outstanding SGU moments of 2009. There were a few votes for best episode. I think the one that got the most votes, though, was Rebecca's wedding.

J: Of course.

B: Yay.

R: Aww.

M: Yeah.

R: Thank you. That was my favorite, I think.

J: Well, that was a hopefully once in a lifetime event.

B: You think?

S: I think the second one was the Nexus 2009 with Richard Wiseman as a guest.

J: That was so much fun.

R: Yeah.

B: He was awesome on the show.

S: Two live events got the most votes.

R: We did more live events this year than any previous year because we did those, we did DragonCon. Well I guess that's it but that's still a lot.

S: Yeah.

(laughter)

J: TAM, DragonCon, (inaudible)

S: And much more!

J: We'll be doing all that plus Australia this year.

R: That's true.

S: Yeah. We'll have even more live events in 2010. That's true.

R: Soon we'll get to the point where we're just doing a live show every week. That'd be fun. (inaudible) exhausting.

J: The live events are great. Being there. The immediate feedback from the audience is just something we don't typically, obviously, typically don't experience and it's always great.

S: Yeah. It's good. Honestly it's good for a once in a while thing. The downsides to the live events are that they're technically challenging and often a little bit out of our control. We're at the mercy of whatever venue we're at.

R: Yeah.

J: Yeah.

S: And we also don't control the questions, so while live questions are great we can't use them to set ourselves up to talk about topics we want to talk about.

J: That's true.

S: And they tend to be–live questions tend to be a little repetitive. I mean it's good ever now and then but it's obviously not going to become a regular thing.

R: But there's the hanging out with you guys thing. That's always fun.

S: Yeah. We love it.

E: That goes without saying. Yes.

J: It's definitely a lot more fun for me, as a panelist, to see you guys and have the face to face interaction.

R: Definitely, yeah.

J: Crazier stuff happens at the live events like Bob coming out in a costume.

B: Yeah, that was awesome.

J: Rebecca getting married.

S: Right. Right.

Guests of 2009 (5:12)

S: We had a lot of great guests in 2009. We always do a good job of pulling in some interesting interviews. Those that got the most votes: one was Michael Vassar, if you remember him. He's the singularity guy. A lot of people just said that singularity guy.

(laughter)

S: Because it was just a very, not only interesting interview, but it was a little contentious and I think people liked that. The next one was Rusty Schweickart–

J: Yeah.

S: –if you remember the Apollo astronaut.

J: That was great.

S: That was, I think, my most surprising interview of the year. Phil Plait hooked us up with Rusty and it's one that I didn't see coming until Phil say, "Hey, I can get you this guy." And it turned out to be a really interesting interview. Just talking with him about his first hand experience with going up in Apollo was fascinating.

B: Yeah. That rocket door. That's something you never ever read about. Never hear about. Just those subtle little things that only someone really on the rocket would experience and know. It's just fascinating stuff.

S: Yeah. One e-mailer said that he's been a real Apollo fan for years and thought he knew everything there was to know about that launch and yet he still learned little tidbits from Rusty on that interview.

B: Cool.

J: Yeah there was a couple of things that he said like how much the rocket compresses during liftoff, but when they turn those booster off and the whole rocket snaps back to it's original size, which, I think, it's a few inches that it crunched down, and it lurched up forward and his head almost hit the freaking control panel.

S: Yeah. Cause the loosened their straps. They shouldn't oughta had done that.

B: That's it.

J: It's hard to plan and expect that. In the simulation.

S: Yeah. That brings up that point that here you have a multi-million dollar program, how many engineers and just really people involved in thinking through every little tiny little detail and yet you can't anticipate things like the astronauts loosening their shoulder straps so they can move around a little bit more and then almost cracking their open on the control panel. I mean, they couldn't anticipate that. There's no substitute for experience is the bottom line.

B: Yeah. Just talk to someone who actually went through that. Not only is the guy an icon in history but he did it. He was there. He strapped himself into that thing and did that unbelievable, awesome, science thing that when I was a kid and read about it and saw videos about it, that got me interested in science.

S: Any other interviews stand out in your guys' minds?

R: I think Tim Minchin got a number of votes on the year end wrap up thread.

S: Yeah.

R: And for good reason. Tim is always incredibly entertaining–

E: Absolutely.

R: –and such a wonderful performers. So he's a lot of fun to interview.

M: Michio Kaku was awesome.

B: That was a great get. Yeah.

S: Yeah. Michio Kaku got a lot–

M: Really interesting stuff.

S: Ken Miller was great interview as well and got a lot of votes.

B: Yeah.

S: Ken Miller is an evolutionary biologist who deals a lot with Creationism and just, again, one of the most knowledgeable and thoughtful people, I think, on that topic. And Mark Crislip got a lot of mention as well. He's a recurring guest on our show. Did the H1N1 special with us and also has his own podcast, Quackcast, so he has a lot of experience behind the microphone. Mark is always fun to talk to.

M: Award winning podcast.

J: Yeah. And his show is fantastic. I always learn something when I listen to his show. Actually, I learn a lot. He pile drives detail into his show like crazy. But his sense of humor just gets me. The whole time I'm listening to him I'm half laughing.

E: Interview Brian Brushwood was great, as well, because who knew that later that year we'd be eating fire with him?

S: That's right.

E: On the campus of Yale.

S: There may be a video appearing on Youtube sometime soon of us eating fire with Brian Brushwood.

J: Yeah, he's a great guy.

S: Well there are many great interviews this year but those are the ones that got specifically mentioned by our listeners.

SGU's Funniest Moment (9:24)

S: The next category was the SGU's funniest moment for 2009 so before I start listing what our listeners said, do you guys have any that stick out in your mind.

M: There's some funny conversation between Rebecca and Steve about birds. Early on in the year.

S: Can you be more specific?

M: It was about bird jizz or something like that.

R: Was that he jizz one?

S: You mean when we were talking about bird jizz? Yeah.

M: Yeah. You remember that time, you were talking about birds? That time.

R: I do remember discussing jizz.

S: A lot of people liked when we were talking about vomix and pasketti and mamatos.

R: And mamatos.

(laughter)

S: Some people liked Rebecca's line. Rebecca's good for the one liners. She said, "I can't believe the chronic doesn't cure the chronic."

R: I was pretty proud of that one too, actually.

S: The Cluckasaurus rex discussion was good.

J: That was good, Ev.

E: Yeah. That was good.

Best Science News Story of 2009 (10:17)

S: Best science news story of the year. This is an interesting one. What do you guys think?

B: The few that I liked–one of them was Ardipithecus ramidus. That was a tour de force of research and work that these scientists did over many years to put it all together before the submitted it which is what they did this year, which is basically an early stage of human evolution. It's older than Lucy. That was a tour de force, I think. That was a very intersting–the biggest surprise for me was the whole magnetic monopoles that supposedly found.

R: The monopoles, yeah.

B: That was–I remember when, Evan, you told me that, we were down at DragonCon you mentioned it–

E: That's right.

B: And I was like, "What? No way!" I just refused to believe it until I read about it. So that was–

R: That was when we were all at the Hibachi place or whatever.

B: Yeah. Right.

S: Yeah.

B: So, that was a big one for me.

S: That was definitely the most surprising headline I saw.

B: Yeah.

S: You know, "magnetic monopole?" That can't be.

B: What? Just a bare, positive or–I mean a North or South? What are you talking about? But yeah, it looks like they did. I haven't read much more about it but I think that they're still going with that interpretation. And then water on the moon. That was big. Big story. God, how many news items were made of that? That was really–a really cool thing that was finally proven.

S: Yeah. It's nice that there's water there if we ever do set up a base it'll certainly make it a lot more feasible–

B: Right.

S: to have some raw material there that's very useful. Bob, what's really interesting to me–the Ardipithicus got a lot of votes–a lot of magazines' top 10 lists. The one I didn't see was Ida or Darwinius masillae.

R: Yeah.

E: Yeah.

R: I was going to bring that up on worst science news.

S: Yeah. That was the biggest–the science was fine, but the media flap was a flop. I mean it was terrible.

E: Media flop.

S: They–this is the scientists they tried to be media savvy and they did a documentary and a website and a book and the hype that they put behind–it's basically a primate fossil. The specimen is lovely, I mean it's a very well preserved specimen.

J: Yeah. Beautiful.

S: And it is from a period of time potentially connecting two branches of primates. One leading to prosimians, like lemurs, and the other leading to monkeys, apes, and the group that also includes humans, but they tried to make it seem like this had special significance for humans, and it didn't. It was really–No one really bought that. It just seemed odd. And they also were making really ridiculous statements like this is going to hit the scientific community like an asteroid. And they over sold it so much that it was just [sad trombone]. Nothing.

E: Yeah.

S: And now at the end of the year nobody even remembers it. So–

E: Apparently, I–

S: it's not even making anybody's list.

J: I forgot about it. If you didn't mention it I wouldn't have thought.

S: Yeah. Total fail.

J: Yeah.

S: It was a total science media fail.

B: Failure.

J: And you remember some of those articles written about it were really bad.

S: Yeah, yeah. Just terrible. I definitely like the water on the moon, Bob, and I would have to add to that methane on Mars.

B: Yep.

S: That's still in contention that that that could be from life.

E: Absolutely.

S: Sounds like they've ruled out meteors. There's no geological process that we know of that could explain it so it's something unknown or maybe it's little Martian critters.

B: Yeah. Bottom line if that's bacteria producing it that's the biggest news story of the century.

S: Yeah. Millennium in my opinion.

B: Yeah. Maybe next year.

J: Life one another planet. I mean that–psh–forget it.

S: Non-Earth life–that's huge. Huge.

R: Yeah. That would win.

E: It was the year of H1N1, too. There was so much going on with the flu and the swine flu–so much press on it.

S: Yeah. And it's–

E: It's kind of passed us by right now but if you remember the summer months–

B: It was big.

E: every other headline was about H1N1.

S: Yeah. And the flu is still chugging along. We're still right in the midst of it. There is a lot of scare mongering about the vaccine. Made Discover's #1 science story of 2009 was the fear mongering surrounding vaccines and they got the story right, so good for them.

E: Yeah.

S: And here we are several months into the vaccination program and nothing. There's like no extra cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome, there's no–really nothing rising above background for any side effects so it's turned out, thank goodness, to be completely safe.

E: So you're saying the media hyped it? What?

S: It wasn't so much–it was definitely partly the media but the anti-vaccination movement really went full bore and also just a lot of alternative medicine groups and anyone who has a beef with science based medicine or vaccines particular used the H1N1 swine flu vaccine as a scare tactic and nothing. It turned out that, as we predicted, it's a safe vaccine. It's known technology. We'll monitor it closely but we don't expect any surprises and it turned out to be totally fine.

E: Yep.

S: I also think we should mention this was the 40^th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landings on the moon.

E: Oh. Good point.

S: And one of the coolest things to come out of that was–actually not directly tied to the anniversary but one of the coolest Apollo related stories was the LRO taking pictures of the lunar landing sites–the Apollo landing sites–

E: Yeah.

S: Including the footpaths of the astronauts shuffling through the regolith.

E: Part of the greater conspiracy.

S: Yeah.

(laughter)

R: There were a lot of great photos that came out this year. Especially more wonderful photo's of Cassini. The things that Carolyn Porco always shows in her talks. I think we talked about some of the pictures.

S: And we have to mention the Large Hadron Collider went online this year.

B: Back online. Yes.

R: We didn't die.

S: Back on. But it actually started smashing stuff.

J: And did break records. It's now the most–

M: (inaudible)

J: the most energetic.

S: It is the most energetic collider in the world. Yep.

J: Yeah. Absolutely not an insignificant thing happening. That is the most expensive and complicated machine that humans have ever built, right?

S: Yes.

E: Absolutely. And number of black holes created by the Large Hadron Collider?

S, J, M, B: Zero.

R: So far.

M: And Steve, you said it was the 40^th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing's, it was also the 40^th anniversary of the internet–

S: Oh, is that right?

M: in 2009. Yes. The first 4 node network was made by ARPA–ARPANET is what is was called back then in December of 1969.

R: Which is related to the LHC, actually. I mean, it's the same people, isn't it?

B: Right. CERN, yeah.

S: Yeah. Yeah.

R: Yeah.

S: Some other ones that got mentioned was crocoduck.

R: Crocoduck is a good one.

E: Quacksnap.

S: The quacksnap, yep. The holographic universe.

B: That still totally freaks me out.

J: They like that one, huh?

S: Yeah.

R: Oh, yeah.

E: That was freaky.

S: Yeah. It's essentially like our universe–you can make an analogy between the way our universe is structured and a hologram meaning that it's just a–there's a graininess to our universe which is due to the fact that it's really a picture on–as if it were a picture on the surface of a sphere. I guess it's on a 4-dimensional–the surface of a 4-dimensional sphere. So it's kind of like a hologram. It's hard to do it justice without spending another 20 minutes talking about it but go back and listen to that episode^{[link needed]}.

J: Yeah. That's it in a nutshell.

R: Basically, we're all living inside a snow globe.

S: Right.

E: Oh no. Ah! They're shaking it again! Ah! Hey, we were talking about 40^th anniversary stuff. Other numbers or years of significance that occurred–150 years, Origin of Species–

S: That's right.

E: 200 years, Darwin's birthday.

B: Yeah.

E: 400 years, Galileo's telescope.

S: Very nice.

J: I'll throw another one in there 50 year anniversary of physicist Richard Feynman's very famous lecture, There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom that he gave at the American Physical Society at Caltech where he basically laid out the potential of nanotechnology, essentially. Really laid it out there, as far as I could tell, for the very first time. Anniversary of note, I think.

Most Outrageous Illogical Statement or Pseudo-Scientific Claim of 2009 (18:37)

S: Let's go now to the other side–the flip side the most outrageous illogical statement or pseudo-scientific claim of the year. A lot of people voted for the YouTube video on how homeopathy works. Do you guys remember that one.

R: Yes.

J: That was awesome.

B: Loved it.

S: That totally incomprehensible nonsense about trying to explain homeopathy. It was really just amazing. The thing that always gets me is that you could take mass out of E=mc² cause there's not that much mass in the universe so you can just eliminate it from the equation.

J: Yeah. That was good.

M: They get an 'A' for effort.

B: Wow.

R: It's one of those things where it's delivered by someone who says something like that and then smiles and nods and then everyone in the audience just smiles and nods. "Yeah. Of course. You can do that. Yeah."

S: Oh, we didn't actually see the audience in that YouTube video.

B: You know, Steve, you don't have to–

S: You can imagine what the audience was doing but it's irrelevant. The thing is it was trying to make sense–

R: It's the assumed authority by the person who's speaking such completely and utter BS.

S: Right. Yeah. She projects that she should have some authority, and she's spoke like a teacher talking to 5 year olds, too.

R: Right.

S: Which made it all the more entertaining as a skeptic.

B: A teacher who mispronounced people's names.

S: Yes.

B: Hawkings.

S: Hawkings. We–it's wonderful when homeopaths or pseudo-scientists do a better job than we can of making their belief systems seem ridiculous. I mean, we don't have to do anything else except point to that. (20:15)

References