SGU Episode 27

This episode needs: transcription, time stamps, formatting, links, 'Today I Learned' list, categories, segment redirects. Please help out by contributing!

How to Contribute

SGU Episode 27
25th January 2006
(brief caption for the episode icon)
SGU 26                      SGU 28
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
J: Jay Novella
P: Perry DeAngelis
Links
Download Podcast
SGU Podcast archive
SGU Forum

Introduction

You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality. S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, January 25, 2006. This is your host, Steven Novella, President of the New England Skeptical Society. Joining me today are: Perry DeAngeles...

T: Hello, Everybody

S: Bob Novella...

B: Good Evening

S: And making a special reappearance, Jay Novella.

J: It's good to be back.

S: Yeah welcome back, Jay, it's good to have you again.

J: Yaaay.

laughter

T: Welcome, Jay. There's a rumor that Evan Berstein will be joining us little later.

S: He may be joining us a little bit later. He's not available at the moment. So there were a few news items to get things started. Evan sent me this one.

News Items

Most Earth-like Planet To Date Around Another Star (0:40)

S: He may be joining us a little bit later. He's not available at the moment. Um. So there were a few news items to get things started. Evan sent me this one: The um most Earth-like planet discovered to date around another star. So..

J: Pretty cool.

S: It is very cool. Um. The reason why this is interesting because, a few months ago, this was one of the science or fictions that we did where the fake one was where astronomers found an Earth-like planet around a nearby star. um...

P: Once again Dr. Novella ahead of the curve.

S: And.

P: On these matters.

laughter

S: And this was one that we knew was coming because they're finding more and more Earth-like planets. By "Earth-like," I mean ... the size

P: The size and class?

S: No. haha. Umm.

B: M-class planets?

P: M-class, sorry.

S: Not yet that close. Just, you know, smaller and at a distance from the sun that is, you know, that resembles that of the Earth. Most of the planets that scientists and astronomers have discovered so far are uh, Jovian-like planets, they're gas giants and they're also very close. Like within, oh, what would be the orbit of Mercury. So very close to their to their stars. They're easier to see. The bigger and closer they are, the easier it is for astronomers to see. But as they're refining their techniques, specifically, they're using a technique called microlensing to detect planets around stars. They're finding smaller and smaller planets farther and farther from their sun. The new record now ... um... and this was just announced in the last day or so. There's a planet that is about about 7. Um sorry

B: 5.5

S: 5.5 Earth-masses. So 5.5 times the mass of the earth. Mass of earth and

P: Does that mean, five, five and a half times the gravity?

S: Yes, and 2.5 astronomical units from its star. An astronomical unit being the distance from the Earth to the Sun. So, 2.5 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun.

ok

P: Why uhmm. Excuse me.

S: Go ahead.

P: So why basically um are uh, there are so many more gas giant type planets than planets like the Earth.

B: Well Perry, it's a situation where you're looking where the light's the best. That's really the only method we had when we were using the previosu method in determining the wobble that the planet exerted. The gravitational pull on the star. with the wobble; only a big planet close to the sun can produce that kind of effect, small planets can't. Now with this gravitational microlensing technique, now they are going to start seeing a lot more Earth-sized planets. So that. So basically the answer to the question is that those were the only ones we could detect using the old technique.

S: So we don't know. We don't really know, because we haven't really been able to look for the smaller planets. We're hoping of course that we're gonna find a lot of Earth-like planets around other stars. But it's also worth noting that this partical star is a red giant. Uh. It's a lot cooler and dimmer than our sun. So the; although um this planet is only about two and half times the distance from its star as the Earth is from the Sun, it's very very cold. It's about as cold as Pluto. Um.

P: That's cold

S: Yeah.

P: Hmmm

S: -364 degrees F. So ... Too cold to support liquid water and probably therefore life that we would recognize. So ...

J: What's the name of the planet?

S: Uh. The article does not have a name. It has a uh designation: "OGLE 2005 BLG 39 LB."

P: Right

B: There could, there could be life on that planet. I mean. There is .. You don't need photosynthesis for like it could be chemosynthetic life you know. Look at Europa. You got tidal forces. Well, it depends. If there's a lot of um tidal forces being acting on the planet, you would generate a lot of heat to melt ice and create a liquid environment (S: Hmmhmm) and minerals to produce life that may exist in Europa. I agree that could ...

S: Right or geothermal energy

B: Right.

P: So Bob, you think that surely there could be talking with "OGLE 2005 BLG 39 OLB - ians"?

laugher

P: Is that what you're saying?

B: Nope. and uh Nah. It's too far and it's.

J: One of my ex girlfriends

Stolen Memories (8:20)

S: Well, the other news item that caught my eye this week was a report about stolen memories. Now, of course as skeptics we're always interested in the fallacies of human memory. Often true believers use anecdotal experiences or reports to justify their claims and beliefs, and it's very critical to recognize the fact that human memories are incredibly unreliable and malleable. Well here's a report coming out of a psychologist from Duke University and also the University of Canterbury in New Zealand that memories can be quote unquote stolen. What they were studying are siblings, mainly twins but also people who are siblings but not twins, who both claim that a memory that they share happened to them, when clearly the nature of the memory is such that it could have only happened to one or the other. One of the siblings or twins quote unquote stole the memory from the other one. The one example that they give is twins that, after they were given roller skates as a birthday present, one of them fell off their roller skates and injured their knee, but they both remember that incident and they both remember it happening to them.

P: I never heard of such a thing.

S: Right.

B: I mean, is that so new and surprising? I mean, I've recently experienced that phenomenon myself. It's pretty interesting, but it's nothing outlandish to me. Jay, do you remember going skiing years ago, and, in a van, and hitting a patch of ice, and our driver, our old friend Larry, turned around and just said something like "Iccce" and the car spun or something?

J: Yup.

B: I mean, when I recently kind of thought about that memory, just like a week ago, I thought I was in the car. Just hearing you tell me that story years ago and thinking about it, it kind of like morphed into a memory of me actually being there, and I thought I was actually in there, but I wasn't, apparently.

P: Now, Steve, are you sure this just isn't stupidity? (laughter) I mean it sounds (garbled)

B: Are you calling me stupid?

P: I just, I'm interpreting.

S: Twenty-year-old memories, the key is, this is anything dramatically new. Bob is right. It's kind of just a new take on concepts well established. The fact is that if you imagine a memory, because someone shares the story with you, or, for example, like the example Bob gave, or maybe the memory is genuine, but it may morph in such a way that you become more central to the memory or you become an object of the memory. So you're the person who fell and hurt your knee or kissed the boy at camp, or whatever, not your sister.

P: I've certainly had arguments about who had an original idea.

S: Right.

P: You know, that was my idea; no that was my idea. I mean, I've been in those discussion before.

S: Sure, and the key is that your imagination can become a memory. And that false memory is indistinguishable from a real memory.

J: Actually, I have the same problem with dreams. The dreams that I have tend to get confused with my reality from time to time. Like I can't keep track a hundred percent of conversations that I've had, and even though a lot of times dreams are outlandish, I think a lot of dreams that we don't remember were very mundane.

S: Jay, was this before or after the drug use?

P: During.

J: I can't, Steve, I can't give you a good answer. I'm not clear about all those years.

B: Jay, that's pretty common. That's happened to me, many times.

J: Well, I think it's common, and I just think that it's part of the experience. You know, you don't analyze every dream that you have. You can't because you don't even remember all of them, so

S: Right.

J: confusing things. And Bob, I've had that experience many times where I've heard you, Joe or Steve, my three brothers, recount something, and I've confused myself with whether I was there, and I've had a few times where you guys corrected me and said, no, you were like two, three years old when that happened.

B: That's funny. It just goes to show, memory is so malleable and not trustworthy.

S: Right. And you can't know. Your confidence in a memory, or how real a memory feels to you, says nothing about how accurate it is.

B: Absolutely. And even flashbulb memories, so-called flashbulb memories, memories that occur when something really dramatic happens, like, where were you when Kennedy was shot; when the shuttle exploded; even those memories are entirely, not any more reliable than any other memory. In fact, they might be worse because your confidence level is high for these flashbulb memories.

P: Yeah.

B: So you can more easily dupe yourself with the thinking that it's __________________ fact.

P: It's true. It would be hard to convince me that I don't remember where I was when the Challenger blew up.

S: Um hmm. Me too.

P: It would be hard to convince me.

J: But now you make me think. I have a very vivid memory of where I was. I remember exactly where I was. And Steve, are you saying that I should actually question that memory. Like, to me that memory is a hundred percent vivid.

B: Yeah, but Jay, I'm not . . . nothing so basic as where you were. I mean that's hard to really mess that up. I'm talking maybe more subtle details about the memory. Maybe what you were wearing, who you were with, how you heard it. You know, those kind of things are the ones that are more suspect than something as big as where you were.

S: Although that may morph too, Bob.

B: It can.

S: You may be merging two memories. One memory of where you were when something else happened. Maybe it was when you were telling somebody about the shuttle rather than when you heard it. And those memories get confused.

B: Possible. But I'm less skeptical about that type of memory.

S: Yeah.

P: It's interesting. When I think back on my memory of the shuttle, I can remember where I was, an apartment in New York; I can remember where in the apartment I was, and how I was looking at the TV screen. I was not in front of it. I was off to the side looking at it diagonally, by our very tiny kitchen. I can't remember what I was wearing, but I remember that much.

S: Right.

P: Or so I think I do.

S: And it seems very compelling and very specific, but we just don't know.

P: It does.

S: You just don't know. But whenever the studies have been done where people recount what they were doing after a major historical event, and then they were asked four years later, what were you doing, you know, at this event, and they gave completely different accounts. And their confidence level in the accuracy of their memory did not have anything to, did not predict how accurate their memory was.

P: Huh. But not everyone got it wrong, right?

S: No. No, some people got it right. And some memories can be locked and can be more stable. Trauma tends to be a good pneumonic, tends to make your memories more vivid and more enduring. It seems that we pay attention more whenever, when we're, our minds are very alerted by emotionally traumatic experiences.

P: I can remember one memory I had when I was sick in the hospital and I got very afraid. And when I thought back on that specific memory several months later, I was hit with the fear again. And I pushed it out of my mind. That's the only time I can ever recall that happening in my life, you know. So I imagine someone who, oh, I don't know, is shot or something, you know, and they block it out completely, I can more understand that now.

S: You have a little post-traumatic stress going on there?

P: (laughing) I guess, I mean it wasn't so harsh. And I wonder if I were to harken back to it now that I would still feel, you know, this six years later.

S: Well, you know the limbic system, the part of our brain that remembers stuff, is intimately connected to the part of our brain that feels emotions. So that makes sense that there's an intimate connection between memories and emotions.

P: What about déjà vu?

S: Ah, that's interesting. Déjà vu could just be a memory that's sort of replaying through your short-term memory loop that you have. And again, the sort of hippocampus and limbic system. It also, déjà vu occurs sometimes when people are having seizures. It can also occur at times when people are having a panic attack. Again, that connection between emotion and memory. It's not totally understood, neurologically, what it is, but it's definitely just a neurological phenomenon in that part of the brain.

B: Right. Yeah, one thing we can positively say about it is there's nothing paranormal about it.

S: Right.

J: I don't know, Bob, I really think that déjà vu has to do with aliens time traveling to near us.

B: Get off this podcast.

S: Distorting our time stream. No, Jay, that's not aliens. That's the matrix. (laughter)

J: Actually, that was the coolest explanation ever of déjà vu. (laughter)

S: In a science fiction way, yeah.

Ask the Skeptic

Evolution and the Origin of Life (17:50)

S: So, we have an "Ask the Skeptic" this week. Occasionally we get questions to us at our website. This one is just signed "R.C." Didn't give a full name. So R.C. asks the following. He says

I'm a Christian, but I don't believe intelligent design and creationism are science, nor can scientists deal meaningfully with metaphysics or the supernatural. Although I agree with your comments on id and creationism, you are ignoring the real problem, evolution. I'm all for acknowledging scientific evidence. I believe that natural selection is fact and that DNA mutates at some statistical frequency, but I also see major gaps in evolution theory. Let's start with the most basic: the theory is based on the postulate that life originated spontaneously on earth unassisted by God, by some fortuitous mixing of some materials of the universe. A happy accident. What proof do we have of this? Can you recreate this event? No, you can't. You believe that it happened as an act of faith. Is that any different than believing in God or a similar act of faith. Can you really be so certain about evolution when it's based on something that can't be proved or demonstrated?

B: Straw man!

S: Yeah, so that paragraph is riddled with logical fallacies, but, we'll start first with his false premise that the theory of evolution is based on the postulate that life originated spontaneously on earth. That is actually not evolution. Evolution has absolutely nothing to say about the origin of life from non-life. Evolution deals exclusively with what happens to life after it has arisen. It is the change in life, in genetic information over time brought about largely by variation and natural selection. That's evolution, not the origin of life in the first place.

P: Such a basic misconception at the outset is very telling.

B: But, Perry, it's very common. Pat Buchanan made that error in his articles recently.

S: That's right.

P: As I said, it's very telling.

S: Yes, it is. It is, it is. So, there's a separate science that deals with the origin of life from non-life. And it is highly speculative. We don't have a lot of fossil and material evidence to tell us about that process. We know chemically what was going on at that time. There was lots of organic molecules available, you know, the so-called organic or primordial soup in the oceans. We know that, we find amino acids on meteors. I mean amino acids which are the basic building blocks of proteins and therefore life are pretty much found everywhere. So, it's not too much of a leap to say that all the materials were there, and really all you need to have happen is for a molecule to arrive that can make a crude copy of itself. Once you have that, then you have the pieces that you need for evolution. You have a reproductive system with variation and then selective pressures can act upon that. And it's also, I think, a big misconception that a lot of evolution deniers have, is that, they are constantly trying to debunk this notion that a modern cell arose spontaneously. And they talk about how complex a single cell is and how ridiculous it is to think that it arose spontaneously. But, that is a straw man. No scientist believes that a modern cell, not even a bacteria, let alone a eukaryotic cell, arose spontaneously. Cells took billions of years to evolve. All of the basic biochemistry and organelles and stuff inside a cell took three billion years to evolve. It took much longer to evolve a single cell than it did to evolve us from that single cell. The evolution of multi-cellular life only took about 600 million years. So, the other that he, the other major, I think, logical fallacy in this question is the good-old god-of-the-gaps argument from ignorance claim. The idea that there are gaps in evolutionary theory and that scientists have to fill those gaps with faith, and therefore why not just fill those gaps with faith in God? In fact, that's not how science operates. Science operates by postulating testable hypotheses and then trying to figure out some way to test them. And when gaps in our knowledge are not filled in by leaps of faith, they're just currently unknown. And that's all science has to say about them until somebody can come up with a way of gathering further information or come up with new hypotheses or new ways of testing old ideas.

J: What I find very interesting is how, maybe this has been going on for awhile, since the beginning, when Darwin proposed evolution; but I find it very interesting lately I seem to be reading a lot more about how threatened religion is, certain religions, particularly with modern science. And, to be honest with you, Steve emailed all of us this letter before the podcast, and I was, actually first-off, my first impression was I was pretty happy that this guy decided to write you and open up a dialog. At one point in the email, didn't he say that he was interested in having a debate with you about it?

S: Yeah, he said "I'll explain my views and gladly challenge you to a discussion on this question" is how he closed his email.

J: I thought that was a very good sign of intelligence, first of all. But I also, while reading the letter, felt like wow, I'm just hearing a lot of this, the turmoil between religion and evolution in particular now, more than I have, you know, if you go back five years, I don't remember it being this hot.

S: Yeah.

(garbled comments)

S: Because of intelligent design

P: Yeah, it's the rise of ID.

S: 2005 was certainly, it was a hot-button issue. But it's never gone away, certainly.

P: Well, Scopes Monkey Trial.

S: Right.

P: '25, it was?

S: 1925, that's right.

B: In the 1980s, the Supreme Court, it was pretty hot.

S: It waxes and wanes.

J: Yeah, I guess that's, maybe what you said, Steve, that 2005 was hot. There was a lot of activity with it then. You know, Pat Buchanan really just knocked my head off my shoulders the past six months with the things that he's saying too, and I'm paying a lot of attention to him lately.

S: Just incredible. We do have a news item in the, on the ID front. Now, in California a school system proposed an intelligent design course called "Philosophy of Design." The difference here is that this course was being taught not in the science classroom, but in the philosophy classroom. It was being taught as a philosophy class. And I guess that the IDers were thinking that this would be some other way to get around the separation of church and state issue because they weren't teaching it as science. It was being taught by a minister's wife, basically trying to advance in the basic intelligent design notion that life's too complex to have evolved. But under pressure, the school system withdrew the course. So they have scrapped their intelligent design course. Basically that plan was not gonna work, and again it's good that yet another avenue is being closed off. It doesn't matter if you're teaching it in a philosophy class, you're still teaching it as a science. I mean, the concept was still basically to replace conventional accepted scientific views with religious views. And what they were teaching was not so much philosophy as it was just blatant Christian religion. I mean it was

J: The thing that colored very poorly was that the teacher actually said something along the lines of "this is what God wants me to teach."

S: Um hmm. Um humm.

J: Right:

S: Right. I mean, they often can't help tipping their hand like that. They try sometimes to be coy and say "oh, we're not teaching religion" or

P: We're not saying who the designer is, all that nonsense.

S: Right. And then she comes out and says "Oh God wanted me to teach this course." All righty.

P: Why can't they just be satisfied with teaching it in Sunday school?

S: Right. I don't know.

P: Teach it in whatever religious institution you have.

J: Perry, I went to a Catholic high school, and I'm telling you that in science class religion never came up.

P: No. The Jesuits are not gonna teach this nonsense.

S: Yeah, that was a Jesuit school, yeah.

P: Of course not.

J: It's interesting. I had multiple Bible classes and religious history classes. But that school never blurred the lines between science and religion.

P: Jesuits are intellectually rigorous.

S: It's definitely possible to keep them absolutely separate, even in a very religious setting. So, if we have any further responses from R.C. we'll certainly let you all know. And if anyone out there has any other questions, just send us an email. You can send it to us through www.theness.com. And better yet, send us your recorded questions on voice mail or MP3, any format. We'll include you in the podcast.

Science or Fiction (27:05)

(27:05)

S: We have a special treat this week guys. Perry is going to debut his first Science or Fiction It’s time to play, Science or Fiction.

P: Yay! Ok, so for Science or Fiction this week I’ve made a slight change. We’re going to give out 3 facts. And in this case 2 are false and 1 is true. Slightly different from normal.

B: Did you get authorization to make that change?

P: I am the executive director, I need none. 2 are false, and 1 is by definition true.

J: Which 2 are false?

P: Alright here it goes. You’ll tell me. Ok, A: Light travels at approximately 10 miles per hour. B: The Sun is approximately 10 miles from the Earth. C: Perry DeAngelis is demonstrably more intelligent than his colleagues on the Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe. 2 are false 1 is true. We’ll start with our president, Steven Novella MD.

S: This is a tough one. None of them sound true. I’m going to have to say the 10 miles per hour. That’s just the most plausible of the three.

P: That was a bit of levity here on Science and Fiction here tonight –

B: Actually, light can be made to travel very slowly depending on what medium it’s going through.

J: Very true, very true.

S: Yah, if it’s going through molasses it should travel very slowly.

P: And this levity is still carrying on. Very well, now moving on to the real Science and Fiction.

S: Oh that wasn’t real?

P: No, that wasn’t real. I said we’re having a bit of levity on SGU. So we’re back to our standard format. I’ll give you three items, one of which is false and two are accurate. Ok? Everybody with me?

J: Gotchya yes.

B: Gotchya.

S: Shoot.

P: Ok, just because I’ve always been interested in it, the sort of subject for my science o fiction is atomic time.

S: Atomic Time. That’s the theme for tonight.

P: Yes, that’s the theme.

B: Interesting.

P: Ok, so A) The atomic clock kept at the US Naval Observatory is in fact 556 atomic clocks, B) Recently the first atomic clock wrist watch has been invented, and C) A cesium fountain atomic clock will neither gain nor lose a second in more than 60 million years. That’s A, B and C, and Steve we will start with you.

S: Ok, well the uh 56 atomic clocks huh? That certainly plausible.

P: 556 clocks

S: 556 separate atomic clocks. I guess, um, I don’t see why not. I guess they could do that to calibrate each other. So that’s plausible, I’ve just never heard about that. The atomic clock wrist watch. Now, I’ve seen advertisements for wrist watches which synchronize with atomic clocks.

P: Yes, you have.

S: Now, I assume that’s not what you’re referring to. You’re referring to where the watch itself is an atomic clock.

P: Should I give you this hint?

S: I’m going to assume that’s what you meant, and not that it synchronizes with an atomic clock. That I know exists. Just basically uses radio signals whatever to locate the nearest atomic clock and synchronizes with it. And the third one, well that’s about right. that’s about right, that’s what I recall, that it gains and loses a second in millions of years, that is the right order of magnitude, so I’m going to say that one is correct.

P 60 million years. Six Oh million years.

S: That’s about right. So I’m going to say that number 2 is fake.

P: Ok.

S: The wrist watch, the atomic wrist watch.

P: Alright. Evan?

E: It’s a good one, Perry. It’s a good one.

P: Thank you.

E: However, I, I don’t want to sound like a copycat, but my first thing I did in my mind was that number 2 was also the fake one. A wrist watch? Just don’t know, don’t know. Whereas the other two do seem like they have much more plausibility to them. I just don’t know if you can get something as small as a wrist watch to be atomic clock capable. So, um, yah, at the risk of being a copycat here –

P: So you’re going to say number 2?

E: I’ll go with Steve as well.

P: And, uh, Jay our guest. What do you have to say about this?

J: Well first of all, I’m not a guest.

S: He’s a semi-regular panel member, an irregular panel member.

E: Semi-annual.

J: I’m trying to get back into the podcast. Well I’ll tell you quickly what I think. First of all, I have absolutely no information about how many clocks they’d string together so that does sounds plausible to me. The second one, the atomic wrist watch, yet again I’m going to have to say that I don’t know how big an atomic clock has to be in order for it to be an atomic clock, and I don’t doubt that someone would try to come up with that. I really don’t know, so that one seems plausible to me. The third one is the one that I thought was a little farfetched, that 60 million years wouldn’t lose or gain one second, so I’m going to go with three.

P: Ok. So so far we have two Bs and a C. And finally Bob.

B: The first option, 556 atomic clocks to come up with the time. I can pretty much verify that that’s right. I’ve read about stuff like that, where they take clocks from all over the place and they synchronize them. I think I’ve read that in a book called Faster by James Gleek.

P: Ok.

B: The atomic clock wrist watch, that’s going to get my vote. That’s just too small. I don’t think, everyone I’ve seen or read about was a pretty hefty affair.

P: Ok.

B: Nothing tiny. It’s a lot of technology involved to do that, unless like Steve said you use radio technology to synchronize. And the 60 m years sounds right to me, so I’m gonna go with B the wrist watch.

P: Ok. So in the end we have three Bs and the only dissenter being Jay with his notable C.

S: His minority report.

P: Very good.

J: You could call me vanguard though too, you could say that.

P: We will start by saying that C, a cesium fountain atomic clock will neither gain nor lose a second in 60 million years is in fact true. So Jay I’m afraid you were incorrect.

E: The real question is who will be around 60 million years from now to tell us if that holds true.

P: That’s true, that’s true, we’re accepting this on the evidence given.

S: Well Bob will be of course.

E: Oh that’s right.

S: When he has his head frozen.

E: I thought it was frozen.

J: Come on guys, let’s face it, I’m the only one here that buys into cryonics.

P: That’s true.

E: We’ll have to deal with that in another episode.

S: That’s another episode, yes.

P: Moving right along. I will now tell you that A) the atomic clock at the US Naval Observatory is in fact 556 atomic clocks, is inaccurate.

E: It’s 555 clocks.

P: It is 56 clocks.

S: 56 clocks.

P: Not 556 clocks. There are 44 cesium and 12 Hydrogen Maser clocks. They are in fact strung together. The average of those clocks is used to come up with the official time, which the US Naval Observatory disseminates. The second one is the one, B) the one that three of you chose is the one that I thought would catch you, and I will admit I took a little bit of leeway with this. I am now, and I want this link everyone will be able to get to this on our webpage. If gentlemen you will look I just sent you the link to the atomic wrist watch and if you will please click on it.

S: Holy

P: And there it is.

E: Oh

P: As you can see it is in fact a little bit silly, as it is in fact a Hewlett Packard atomic clock. This guy is wearing it on his wrist, so it’s about the size of a VCR.

B: Actually, it’s more of a forearm watch.

P: Nonetheless, it is all the definitions of an atomic clock wrist watch, and so I in fact included it.

J: To describe it to the people who can’t see the picture.

S: It looks like a large PC, a desktop PC.

P: Yah, yah.

S: Strapped to this guy's forearm, basically.

B: And, it’s got a plug!

P: It has a battery, I checked. It had a battery that lasts for 45 minutes. And then you have to recharge it. So it’s a stretch.

S: You didn’t say it was practical.

P: I didn’t say it was practical, but it does fit the definition. And it thought it would catch you and in fact it did. It caught most of you. And the one that was false, I mean it was 56 and I made it 556, I made it a lot more.

S: It was conceptually right, it was just an order of magnitude more. Good job Perry.

P: I stumped you all.

E: Well done, well done.

P: Thank you very much

J: I feel hoodwinked so I’m not going to

E: I will be a little more wary of your Science or Fictions.

P: As well you should. As well you should.

S: It was Perry’s first time, so we’ll give him of leeway on that.

P: It was. Don’t forget my first question in that one that was C was true, and I’ve just proven that with my Science or Fiction.

E: Now… did they drop one of these on Hiroshima or Nagasaki?

B: That was a hydrogen watch.

E: Oh right of course, I’m sorry my mistake.

P: It’s actually highly interesting to read about the atomic clocks. The US Naval Observatory site, it’s actually “tycho.usno.navy.mil”, but like I said, we’ll get this link to the wrist watch so you can see it, I think it’s quite comical, on our webpage associated with this podcast. That’s it for Science or Fiction.

(37:55)

Two Views of American Education (37:57)

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

Government and Wacky Science (55:40)

S: The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is a production of the New England Skeptical Society. For more information about this and other episodes, visit our website at www.theness.com. 'Theorem' is performed by Kineto and is used with permission.

References