SGU Episode 870

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SGU Episode 870
March 12th 2022
(brief caption for the episode icon)
SGU 869                      SGU 871
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
Guest
BW: Brian Wecht, American theoretical physicist
Quote of the Week
Our Richie? The world’s smartest man? God help us!
Richard Feynman's mom
Links
Download Podcast
Show Notes
Forum Discussion

Introduction

Voice-over: 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 Tuesday, March 8^th, 2022, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella...

B: Hey, everybody!

S: Cara Santa Maria...

C: Howdy.

S: Jay Novella...

J: Hey guys.

S: ...and we have a special guest rogue this week Brian Wecht. Brian, welcome back to the SGU man.

BW: Hi, I'm happy to be here.

S: Evan is literally busy doing some Ukrainian man's taxes. He wrote his email saying my friend like this whole horrible situation about somebody who has to go to Ukraine to get their family out or whatever and like he has to do his taxes tonight before he leaves for Ukraine.

BW: Oh poor guy.

S: Yeah so Evan's like I can't not do this I have to miss the recording yeah and we're not flexible unfortunately this week, this is the only night we can record. So no Evan, but we got Brian. Brian's visiting us in Connecticut.

BW: I'm live from Steve's basement.

C: Really?

BW: Yeah, yep.

C: Oh, awesome.

BW: Yep.

S: Not that you could tell, we're all just in front of computers. But yeah he's physically here and he was visiting because we were we're testing our new fully live version of the boomer versus zoomer game show that he's helping us develop.

C: Oh fun.

BW: Yeah it was, the set, so Jay and Ian constructed this set and it looks, it just looks so great. I'm staring at it right now, and it really is like when, when this thing, the first time we're gonna do it live is that the the no-show on, what's the day, is it April 23^rd?

S: April 23^rd.

BW: Right. In Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. And it's gonna be so much fun to have this thing actually go live. We've done it online a few times but this is like definitely a level up from from that.

S: Yeah it's a lot of fun, you know, the bit the core of the show is we pit the four generations against each other. Boomers, gen z, millennials and zoomers. We have different categories of questions. And the questions are kind of balanced so there are some questions that you know the older generation should have a little bit of an edge on and then there's other questions that the young kids will definitely have an edge, on you know what I mean? So it's like who knows more about the other person's generation. It's a lot of fun and yeah we've play tested it several times and the winners have pretty much spanned across the age range, so I think we're you know, George is mostly writing the questions, I think he's doing a great job of sourcing them, you know.

BW: The last couple times it's been the zoomer because yeah we're trying to make sure it's not just trivia, but there's also like other you know kind of mental challenge brain games kind of stuff so it is accessible to really anybody.

Ukraine Invasion Updates (2:45)

S: So we talked about Russia's invasion of Ukraine last week and there's a couple of updates because you know, we're talking mainly off the cuff but yeah we're trying to keep up to date as best as we can on the news. It's hard because obviously we you know, we don't have any special access to inside information,we're just basing what we're saying on the you know public mainstream media basically. A lot of people have asked us like, how does somebody follow an event like this? How do you get access to reliable information? How do you know what's reliable? We don't know, we don't have any inside track, so that we use the usual method which is basically be skeptical of everything. If something sounds weird you know double, triple, quadruple check it. Try to use as many different sources as possible and see if there's, how reliable they are, and are they all sort of pointing in the same direction. But again that doesn't totally answer your question for you because sometimes all of the media is telling the same narrative even though the narrative is bullshit.

C: Well especially when the media's state run.

S: Yeah well, yeah but we're not even talking about like Russian media, just like US media, like how does our US media know what's going on. So you know you want to just listen for clues just like is this speculation, are there, where are they getting this information, you know, how solid. Tis is like an official report from. Is there a video showing the person saying the thing. Like you know, just as much objective information as you can. And then of course the internet is a wash with it, good and bad, right. So there's people on like in the streets where the war is happening showing videos. And yet, and there's also things being shared going viral on social media that are that are misinterpretations or fake. It was funny Jay and I were talking yesterday like oh did you see this the video with the girl driving the tank? And I'm like yeah Jay that that's not real. He's like oh no. It's a Russian YouTuber basically who recorded that like a month ago and nothing to do with the invasion of Ukraine. But that's the thing, if something feels really good, like it's iconic, like it just fits perfectly it's probably fake, right? Or there's you know if it feels too good to be true it probably is.

BW: You know what, what I've been struggling with on this is, is how best to support the people there, like it's so hard and to find a charity that you trust that you think is going to actually get the money on the ground in a way that is going to benefit people.

C: Have you seen what a lot of people I know have been doing which I think is very cool.

BW: No, what?

C: They've been going on Airbnb and directly renting rooms from Ukrainians and then just leaving messages that say I'm not actually going to stay here I just wanted to support you.

BW: Oh yeah you know when I booked the Airbnb to come out to this trip to Connecticut and right on the front page it says you know get rooms in Ukraine right now.

C: Yeah so because we know that that money goes directly to the pockets of the people who own those homes or those apartments that are that are in Ukraine.

BW: Oh that's interesting.

C: Kind of cool yeah, yeah.

B: I like it.

S: There's one thing I wanted to follow up on because Cara you mentioned briefly like what percentage of the Russian populace that the public supports the invasion.

C: And I didn't mention a percentage by the way.

C: No no you just said like the majority whatever, large portion or something yeah used, you know, vague terminology, because that's all we have, is just the impressions, you know. There's certainly been a lot of protests, thousands of people being arrested, that's unusual you know.

C: And against like pretty scary odds, it's not just like if somebody speaks up there's no you know retribution for that, like they could go to prison they could face something worse. Scary.

S: But, hot off the presses, as we're recording this, an actual survey.

C: Oh no way.

S: Coming out of Russia. Independent. And again according to the article I'm reading on the Washington Post it's, they say that this is a good, reliable, independent you know organization. And you know they're having to keep the details unfortunately hidden just because they're you know that Russia is clamping down on information coming out of Russia. But here it is. About 58% of Russians approve of the invasion of Ukraine, 23% oppose it. The rest are either, don't know or on the fence, you know, don't have an opinion or don't want to say are on the fence. And this, confirming what I've heard in more vague terms but it's the people who are against the invasion of Ukraine are younger and more urban.

C: Right.

S: And then the older and more rural people who are in support of it.

C: Which makes sense because they've been under this sort of propaganda regime for a really long time, older people obviously I think that we do tend to see those tendencies you know, we see similar things in in the United States and in other countries. Like this more kind of patriotic and singular sort of allegiance to whoever's in power. But I also worry that even those numbers. Like how honest can people be right now?

S: Yeah we don't know.

BW: Well and how how did, they say how big the survey is?

S: Yeah it was 1 640 adults, it was a phone survey.

C: It's just like, I don't know, if somebody called me up on the phone and I lived in Russia and they were like "Do you support Pputin" I'd be like "Is this a trap? Yeah of course I do".

BW: 100%, yeah.

C: You know like it's scary to speak out so yeah I'm not sure.

BW: Also who's, who's answering the phone?

C: It's true.

BW: You know like it's 2022. I don't know what the deal is within, in Russia, if it's here, but your phone, random phone rings, if you're old you're maybe more likely to answer it.

C: Right.

B: Yeah good point.

S: Yeah, there's obviously an unscientific survey but it's what we got.

C: And it does it does kind of rock Steve with with some of the emails that we've gotten from people who were like Cara, you and Jay were talking about your sort of empathy for the Russian people whose own you know whose leadership is leading them in a direction they don't want the leadership to go. But like do not underestimate the power of propaganda. Like a lot of people there actually support Putin and support this war. And I'm sort of in that that interesting place, like we often talk about, let's say, anti-vax rhetoric. Like who is duped and and who's the duper. And at what point are they responsible for being duped but then perpetuating rhetoric.

S: Yeah so victim and perpetrator are blend together.

C: Yeah. Yeah and when you've been living under a propaganda regime for a long time it's hard to not believe what you're fed, because all of the media says the same thing.

S: Yeah they're basically being told, the narrative is that this they are liberating Ukraine from Nazis, right? That's literally, that's the propaganda. And it's just a special, it's not even it's not an invasion, it's not a war, it's just a special military operation to liberate those Ukrainians. And they also are being told that Russians in Ukraine are being slaughtered. If you speak Russian like they'll kill you, you know they, so it's, it's also, they're doing a humanitarian effort to save Russians in Ukraine from genocide. That's what they're being told. That's what they're being told. Yeah so that's all you hear. Even if you think, all right this is half, it's still like it's a framing thing, it's an anchoring thing, right? So you're anchored to the propaganda as your starting point, and even if you try to correct for it. You're still I guess but it's probably a good idea that we're going in there, you know what I mean? Whereas you know it's harder to like completely detach from the swamp of propaganda that you're being buried in, and have some kind of independent evaluation.

B: But if you have access to the internet and you see.

C: But they don't.

B: They don't have access to the internet?

S: No. Well it's being it's being censored, they can't get on Facebook, they can't get on Twitter.

BW Especially in the last couple of weeks, stuff has been taken away.

B: Oh wow, I didn't know that.

C: And they also just, the very last independent news network just went offline, right? Yeah, it's scary. And and this is coming from people who live in the United States where I think it's important for us to to also kind of reflect on ourselves and exercise some humility that we ourselves have our own propaganda that we you know our own anchoring problem.

B: Oh yeah.

S: Yeah.

BW: For sure.

C: And yes, it's completely different because we do have a free press. But, in some ways it's not that different, we've had a long national narrative of like American exceptionalism, and this is an anchoring problem that a lot of Americans come from. And so we have blinders on when we do terrible things politically and geopolitically and we're moving from that.

S: Our international listeners frequently remind us of our American narrative anchoring, absolutely. And we try to be as aware of that as we can be and we love you know getting feedback from other perspectives. But also, it's not just an American narrative Cara, it's, there are sub culture narratives within America. There is a definitely a republican narrative, a democratic narrative, a libertarian narrative, a religious right narrative there's─

B: A Halloween narrative. (laughter)

S: ─and those are narratives those are way more intense, those sub ecosystems of information are a much more insular, much much more extreme, you know much more unforgiving of information that goes against the narrative.

C: It kind of also just goes to show how dangerous nationalism, patriotism can be, that there's a dark side of a singular pride that people feel in their country, especially when their countries are a large military power.

S: So I think yeah for me I think there's always a sweet spot like there's a balance. Like I think it's okay to be patriotic but not nationalistic, right? Like there's a point where like yeah I can take pride in my culture, and the good things about the place that I live etc., but you have to stop short of it becoming a prejudice─

C: Or we are somehow better than others.

S: ─or becoming jingoism. Us versus them. It's more like, we're great, you're great too. It's just all the diversity of humanity. And wouldn't it, wouldn't it suck if we were just one homogeneous you know culture, that would be terrible, it's great that we have these deep cultural differences and histories, and it's you know, but we have to learn how to celebrate that without making it in us versus them, or demonizing or othering you know different groups.

BW: I mean for for me in my, in my lifetime, I feel like the real shift was right around after 9/11, was when it started to be it started, I mean at least in my adult maybe, I was born in 1975 so that was a you know a young adult at the time, and that's when it started to feel like people were pushing way too hard on some of the pro-America stuff. That felt like an inflection point to me, but that also might just be my age.

C: Yeah, yeah it could be that that's when you you know had those formative experiences, but you're right I think obviously 2000, 9/11 was a watershed moment for a lot of people.

S: But my my recollection was there was kind of a good kind of patriotism and love of country after 9/11 but of course that gave way eventually to old [inaudible]─

C: Mass destruction.

S: ─reasserting themselves

BW: Pretty quickly, yeah.

S: Yeah. All right let's move on, got a lot of interesting science news items to talk about.

News Items

Solid State Batteries (14:06)

• Solid State Li-ion Batteries

S: Jay you're going to start us off, telling us about solid state batteries. Yes, more battery news.

C: Yey.

J: Yeah Steve, this one could be interpreted as good news. So as much as we'd like to have a profound breakthrough in battery technology. It's just not likely that it's going to happen. But we have more and more companies investing in battery development. And what we're seeing now is that there's an incremental change that's happening in batteries quite frequently, right? We're getting, we're getting like you know improvements in the technology coming from different parts of the battery. And this is great news because all of those small changes add up and as we're seeing now, battery technology is making some real strides. What properties do we want out of modern batteries? You know, what do we want our modern batteries to be able to do? Well a big one is something called energy density.

S: Energy density is the maximum energy but per the volume, whereas specific energy is per mass.

J: We of course wanted to recharge as fast as possible. We want the battery to last a long time. The way we gauge this is how many charge-discharge cycles can the battery perform. We'd like batteries to be inexpensive, and be made out of materials that don't harm the environment, and easy to get materials of course. They need to be able to operate in a variety of temperatures. They also need to be manufactured in large quantities. And this is a part of battery production that could just literally stop new technologies if they can't ramp it up and make tons of batteries in in a factory setting, then they can't sell it, right? If they can't make them, they can't sell them so that could kill any technology right there. We want long capacity retention, this means the battery holds onto its charge while it's not being used. And the last one is that we would prefer they don't catch on fire right when they're in our pockets, because you know this actually happens.

BW: Always a good thing.

C: Or in our garages, like my car was gonna do which is why I had to take it in for a recall.

S: Oh boy.

J: Right now lithium-ion batteries are the leading battery design that checks most of the boxes, most of the things that I listed above. There's actually four different types of lithium-ion batteries. They use different minerals and all of the properties that they have are different depending on which minerals that they use, right? So lithium-titanate, lithium-cobalt-oxide, lithium-nickel-manganese, cobalt-oxide, lithium-iron-phosphate, each one of these can do different things is better at certain things than other things. All of these batteries have a liquid electrolyte core, that's job is to conduct charge between the batteries electrodes. Researchers are working on a solid-state version of the lithium-ion battery which is really cool. Once they work out the remaining kinks, these batteries will be able to have two times the specific energy and energy density compared to today's lithium-ion batteries. This means that these batteries are going to be able to do a lot more for us. The solid-state version can do this because they can use much thinner separators between the electrodes, they can also use an approved electrode that's 100% made of lithium instead of a lithium graphite combination. The all lithium electrode is just simply lighter which makes it better. Researchers say the solids, the solid state batteries will have a longer lifespan and will also be safer because they're more stable which means less pocket fires. So in the real world this means that in one battery upgrade your cell phone and laptop will have twice as much capacity, it's a big deal, you know this is the type of bump that we've all been waiting for. Now consider what this will do for electric vehicles, this is where it really shines, the solid state lithium-ion battery will add 50% more range and on top of that it'll weigh 25% less, which will actually give your car even more distance.

S: Well Jay but that example, it's you go from 350 to 500 but with a 25% decrease in your battery weight. Which actually would extend your range a little bit more. So you basically, you could keep the same battery size and have didn't have a 700 mile range or you could go to, where you could have the same range and have a half a battery that's half the size and weight. Or you could compromise somewhere in the middle. The question is going to be where's the sweet spot right, where, how much range do you, would you, do you want to pay for. And you know I've been driving an electric car now for about almost a year with a 350 mile range, which is great, it's awesome but on long trips, we've done it and it works but we would definitely appreciate more range on long trips. I would say something like 500 might be the sweet spot.

BW: Have you gone more than 500 miles in your in your car?

S: Yeah, you just got, you just have to know where you're going to recharge, you know.

C: Yeah you have to plan around it. I've done, I've done a couple trips that were not super, super intensive but even like I think my range is three no, not even, like 260? And if I'm gonna go someplace that's like 240, I'm not gonna risk it, I'm gonna stop at a super charge yeah and and have lunch and and do 80% you know and then continue on my way. Which is easy because it takes like 20 minutes and it's like five dollars.

C: But the the thing that's gonna really make that better is more recharge stations. Like one, the first time we did a long trip with our with our Tesla, the hotel we were staying at said that they had recharging stations. So we get there and they had one recharging station.

BW: Oh no.

S: Which was free and we used it to completely recharge our car overnight. But what if it weren't free? What if that, what if someone else are using that one station and the one night we had to recharge our car, we did, what would we have done? That would be solved by more recharging stations.

C: And that's, and that's really the case out here on the west coast. You're not nearly as beholden because there are, the infrastructure there's so much better here.

S: Yeah, this was in Maryland.

C: Yeah, yeah yeah.

J: Like I said these batteries are not ready for prime time, there are, there is one real hurdle that needs to be resolved and they are working on it. The solid state batteries have an instability that happens between the solid electrode and the electrolyte. Lithium dendrites which are metallic microstructures that form on the negative electrodes during the charging process. These form inside the battery. So these little dendrites can reduce and significantly do reduce the battery's lifespan. If this issue can't be engineered away, it'll kill the solid-state lithium-ion battery for good. The researchers have found solutions that either cost too much or don't scale up for manufacturing, and that's you know the problem I mentioned before. But don't let yourself lose your charge just yet because a new study shows promise that a solution was found that has a very small price increase to the manufacturing process. What they discovered was that during the battery manufacturing process, the ceramics that are used inside the batteries is the real culprit. During the manufacturing process the ceramic components are heated. And until they get kind of soft and sticky, so they can stick to themselves. Now when they can stick to each other when they're at that temperature the ceramics are now picking up CO₂ from the air that they're surrounded by. And that CO₂ makes cut it forms a compound with other material, and that material actually reduces the battery's ability to conduct electricity. So you know when I say this it's going to be really obvious but they have, they came up with a simple solution here, they're just going to put it in a an environment like an all oxygen environment, so there's no CO₂ there so the ceramics can't interact with the CO₂ and actually do bad things. So I even have more good news. Literally today as we record this March 8^th, 2022 a company called Gogoro and another company called Prologue Gym, these two companies released a solid-state, lithium-ion battery. Very, very cool. Now I, we're going to learn more about this, you know this is brand new information, I'm not 100% sure what the situation is. Steve you actually had some info on this.

S: So their battery, they're claiming 140% more capacity than lithium-ion batteries. I guess it's because it's always compared to [inaudible].

B: 40%?

S: 140 increase. They have a system of swappable batteries for like motorcycles.

B: Oh swappable.

S: Yeah so you basically just pull it out, you get a fresh one, and you're good to go in minutes you're done. So that and that's something that we've been talking about for decades you know. Maybe this is the problem to the range anxiety is that you just have swappable batteries. They have them, it exists. These are solid state lithium ceramic batteries, solid state. They're, it's a working technology. I think they're using the older solution which is to coat the electrodes, that works, that solves the problem, it's just expensive. So this is basically just a cheaper way to solve the problem. This is more than an incremental advance, like this, we're shifting to a new technology from lithium ion to solid-state lithium-ceramic batteries. And, and we're going to get more than an incremental jump, when the technology is fully working and scalable. So I think again it's working, but this will make it more scalable, because it makes it cheaper to mass produce, then we get that you know 100 to 140% increase in range. You know, whatever, some combination of reduced battery cost in size and increased range. And I think we're already way above the line in terms of EV technology being you know widely adoptable. But this would make it even more so, right? This would probably wipe away the last vestiges of range anxiety and the technology will be fully there.

C: Which is good because like, I don't think we're gonna have gas cars much longer. I think that EV is definitely going to [inaudible].

B: Oh yeah, days are numbered, for sure.

S: Yeah could be 30 years, maybe 30 years.

C: Until they're completely gone maybe but I think that electric cars are going to own the market within the next 10. What we're already seeing.

BW: Some manufacturers haven't they said all electric by some given year, right?

B: Ford was saying 2050 I think.

C: A lot of manufacturers have decided to do that.

S: Well listen so in terms of like all new car sales, we'll be shifting, by the time most new car sales are EV that'll be like 20, early 2030s, something like that is what we're projecting. But even when we're a 100% new EV car sales it will still take 20 years from that to replace all of the internal combustion engines that are on the road. So that puts us into the 2050s, which is why that's what people─

C: I see.

S: ─I wish we were 10 years ahead of where we are though in battery technology, would be nice but still, we're in a good place though and it's going, it's getting better, it's definitely that we're on the steep part of the curve in terms we're living through this transition you know, it's going to happen.

C: And we can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Like there are good cars right now there are good options available.

S: I love my Tesla I absolutely love it.

BW: Well and especially when you think about even five years ago, it's it's just stunning how much there is now.

S: Absolutely.

C: My car has four times the range that my first electric car had, four times the range, for the same price.

BW: Yeah.

C: Amazing.

Are Coronal Loops Real? (24:56)

• A solar illusion: Coronal loops may not be what they seem

COVID Anosmia (34:25)

• How the Coronavirus Steals the Sense of Smell

Alcohol and the Brain (43:48)

• Alcohol Is Bad for the Brain

Quickie with Bob (1:14:49)

• 3D-Printed "Nano-Skyscrapers" Help Bacteria Convert Sunlight Into Electricity

Who's That Noisy? (1:17:16)

Answer to previous Noisy:

Air going through 3D-printed vocal cords, esophagus, and palate of an ancient mummy

New Noisy (1:22:05)

[two things in a jungle setting making horror movie-style cries/calls]

J: ... If you think you know what it is or if you heard something really cool this week, you know what to do. You have to email me at WTN@theskepticsguide.org.

Announcements (1:23:26)

J: Now, Steve?

Science or Fiction (1:24:28)

Item #1: A new study calculates that the addition of lead to gasoline in the 20th century resulted in the loss of 824 million IQ points from more than 170 million Americans alive today. Item #2: The oldest Vampyropod squid fossil discovered, 328 million years old, indicates that the common ancestors between squid and octopuses had only two arms. Item #3: A study of linguistic convergence finds that people imitate speech they hear, even parts of speech they do not hear but anticipate, such as imitating parts of a Southern American accent they were not exposed to in the experiment.

Answer	Item
Fiction	Two-armed ancestors
Science	IQ points lost to lead
Science	Imitating anticipated speech

Host	Result
Steve	swept

Rogue	Guess
Brian	Two-armed ancestors
Bob	Two-armed ancestors
Jay	Two-armed ancestors
Cara	Two-armed ancestors

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

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:49:08)

Our Richie? The world's smartest man? God help us!
– Richard Feynman's mom

Signoff/Announcements (1:50:55)

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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