SGU Episode 998
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| SGU Episode 998 |
|---|
| August 24th 2024 |
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Ancient stones rise against the clear blue sky, nature’s artistry on full display. |
| Skeptical Rogues |
| S: Steven Novella |
B: Bob Novella |
C: Cara Santa Maria |
J: Jay Novella |
E: Evan Bernstein |
| Quote of the Week |
“The real trouble begins when confirmation bias distorts your active pursuit of facts.” |
― David McRaney, You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself |
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| Show Notes |
| SGU Forum |
Intro
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 Wednesday, August 21th, 2024, 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 Evan Bernstein.
E: Good evening everyone.
S: So this is episode 998. That means in two weeks, Episode 1000 will air, but we've already recorded it. We recorded it this past weekend.
C: Weird.
E: I know.
S: Slightly out of order. It doesn't really matter. The order was irrelevant to the content of the show.
E: Every once in a while, podcasting allows you to be a time traveler.
S: Every listener is time traveling every time.
C: You remember that time when we time traveled forward?
S: Yeah, we did do that one. Eventually we'll catch up to that episode.
E: And all those photons that passed us.
S: So yeah, we had a great weekend in Chicago.
E: I think great's an understatement, actually.
S: It was really good. It was a very good, excellent weekend. We did two extravaganzas, both, I think, among our best shows. We keep iterating it. We keep upping it, like, keeping the aim material. If things are feeling a little crusty or draggy, then we replace them. And yeah, so it just keeps getting better and better. So hopefully every show will be our best show going forward.
C: Yeah. But that was a particularly good audience, I have to say.
S: The audience for the whole weekend was great.
B: It really was.
E: To the point where the venue was complimenting the audience.
S: We did a five-hour live show, which flew by. Five hours was nothing, right?
E: No way. It felt like half that time, and I'm not exaggerating. That is how it felt.
S: It's almost only just a normal show, like a normal two hour show or three hour show, five hours, whatever. We had great interviews. Bill Nye appeared and Richard Wiseman, who was hilarious. The guy's constantly hilarious.
B: Oh my God, he's so funny.
C: Oh my gosh.
E: And is that his baseline? I think it is. I don't think he is even really doing his performance. He's not showing up as a stage personality, right? That's just him.
C: Yeah.
E: It's tremendous.
C: He's just a funny guy. It's funny because I feel like I've been lucky enough to meet a lot of comedians in my life, and there are some people who are very different when they're on versus when they're off, and there are other people who are just the exact same person but doing material. You know what I mean? And I feel like he's just funny naturally.
S: Yeah, I think so.
C: He's just a fun person to hang out with.
E: Definitely.
J: We also had, Christian Hubicki, and we had Brian Wecht and Andrea Jones-Roy. And Ron Segev, we had Josh Carter, which is Jimmy Carter's grandson, was sitting in the front row and we were like, hey, Josh, what's up? We start chit-chatting with him. And then we invited them up and he was telling us about his podcast and some other interesting details about projects that he's working on. Just amazing guy. It was an unbelievable experience because it was extraordinarily intimate, right? I mean, we really let it all hang out and told the audience exactly.
C: We didn't literally let it all hang out.
J: No.
S: Metaphorically.
C: Metaphorically.
J: You know. Some people cried. I'm not going to tell you who.
E: I apologized to them.
J: Bob and Evan had the best one-liners for the entire weekend.
B: Yep.
J: I loved you in Aquaman. I'll never forget that, Evan. That was so good.
C: No, Jason Momoa.
E: Jason Momoa was the actor. Jason Momoa, yes.
B: Who did not show up.
S: Who did not show up. Yeah, just a member of the audience who happened to look just like Jason Momoa.
C: What do you mean? That wasn't Jason Momoa?
E: Right? You look familiar where I've seen you before. Oh, yes. It's fun. Yeah, it's moments like that that make those kinds of weekends special. You know, it's one thing to do a podcast, but it's another thing to be able to also meet everybody. Those are great opportunities for us, and just such a great pleasure to meet so many people. And there was ample time to actually speak to a lot of people one-on-one and get some catching up done.
J: Yeah, for sure.
S: And the whole weekend was logistically flawless.
E: Mm-hmm.
C: Oh, yeah, as always.
S: Right up until the end.
J: Yeah, it's almost like as soon as things left my control, they went south. Because as everybody here knows, I don't run United Airlines. Maybe they need to hire me. So we had, it was a lot of shows. We had three shows. It was very complicated. There was a lot of people, there was a lot of things going on, but you know, like Steve and I have discussed, I think on the live stream today, we discussed it on TikTok. I've been doing it for a while, I got my thumb on top of this, but man, we get to the airport, and we are psyched to go home, and we're having dinner, and then we all get a text message, your flight has been delayed by 30 minutes, and we're like, okay, whatever, we can deal with it. You know, we found out actually there was one delay even before we left. Then another. And then like every hour, they delayed it a half an hour, an hour, and then by 11 o'clock, like canceled. Ha ha. You're stuck in the airport. All the employees are gone. There is no information for anybody to help them in any way possible. You are not getting your luggage.
S: They really cut us loose. They really did.
J: They just cut you loose. It's like they pulled a lever and there was a trapdoor and we found ourselves on the street outside of the airport. That's what it felt like.
E: Right, and we're looking around at each other like, what just happened?
C: And so, but you're kind of leaving something out.
S: There was a huge flood.
C: There's a massive flood where you live and you couldn't land.
S: Yeah, it was a weather event. It wasn't, the flight wasn't canceled because of United, but because there was a weather event, it means a lot of flights were canceled. There were hundreds of people who were stranded and they were just like, whatever. They told us, well, you'll probably get a plane out Tuesday. That's what they told us.
C: That's what they told?
B: Sunday night, Tuesday.
S: And don't even try to get your luggage back. At some point that will go to your final destination, but don't even try to get it back.
E: I saw a movie about that.
S: And there was like no hotel rooms. Maybe they'll set up cots in the airport. So it was like a terrible situation. We rented a car and drove home.
E: Maybe we'll set up cots.
C: Did you guys fly out of New York? Do they deliver luggage when things like this happen? Okay, that's good.
S: No, they sent it to LaGuardia, and then, yeah, they sent it.
C: Oh, no, you should check. They may send it to your house.
S: No, we had already picked it up.
J: But they won't do anything if the problem was out of their control.
C: I see. If it was in their control, they might send it to your house.
J: Yeah, if it's God-related stuff, they literally tap out like a dealer and walk away.
E: Well, what do we do to anger God?
C: So I need to check in on this because if you guys, it's been overshadowed by your saga but I had my own saga on the way to Chicago.
S: Oh, yeah, that's right.
C: If you guys remember, I flew Southwest and Southwest loves Boeing. And so I was on a MAX. Oh, joy. The good news is all the doors remained in place and the plane did not explode. The bad news is when we were approaching our destination, which was Midway Airport in Chicago, we got diverted. So we flew, I saw the runway and we passed it by and we flew out into the water and then we came back. And then the second time that we flew past the runway again, I started to become concerned. And then the captain came on and said, so we've been diverted to Indianapolis. We'll catch you up with what's going on once we get on the ground. And we're all like, what with the what what? So then we get to Indianapolis and we land. And he's like, so this plane is very heavy. It's so heavy, in fact, that with what little fuel we had left, it couldn't land on a wet runway. The first time we came in to land, we were good. But then we circled around and came back and we had less fuel. The second time we circled, we did our calculations and realized it would not be safe for us to land. I guess that means they can't stop in that length of time on the runway. So we had to go to Indianapolis to fuel up. Of course, the first fuel machine was broken. We were there for hours, several hours. But we were in the plane on the tarmac. They didn't let us out. So anybody who knows FAA regulations, let me know. Am I owed money here? Isn't there some sort of limit of the amount of time you're allowed to just sit and taxi?
J: Of course there is, yeah.
C: You're not supposed to be in this metal tube on the ground for a significant amount of time. And Southwest, as many people know, doesn't have food. So I missed my window to eat dinner, because by the time we landed in Chicago, nothing was open, at least not in the airport. Just went straight to the hotel and slept. It was fine. I was just tired the next day, because I got in brutally late. But you guys got in, what, like a day later? How long is that drive?
S: It was basically from the time we were done with the show at five o'clock on Sunday. On Sunday, it was 24 hours plus before we got home. We were getting home at six o'clock at night.
E: Yeah, 25 hours.
C: Yeah, that's brutal because mine was 12 hours from the time I left my house on Friday to go to Chicago to the time I got to the hotel, which that's like a four and a half hour flight, by the way.
S: The thing is, it wouldn't have been horrible if we had known and just went straight from the event. We wasted six hours in the airport.
E: We had a vehicle that could have sustained us for the drive.
C: And then what about when you got back? Had the flooding subsided? Like, was it still pretty brutal there?
J: Well, in my town, Cara, Oxford, it got hit the worst out of all of Connecticut. I think it got hit the worst pretty much out of anywhere. We had significant flooding to the point where cars were being swept away.
B: Two people died.
J: Yeah, two people died. I drove around today to go to the studio. I haven't really been driving around specifically because there's only one way in and out for me. The things that I saw were like, I've never seen this before, like you know how like when they build a bridge to make it so they can have water pass under the road, like they have these big cement pipes, it's just a way for water. Well, they put guardrails on those, right? So you don't drive off the road. Those guardrails had an incredible amount of tree pieces stuck in them. So my son Dylan, who came with me today, was like, Dad, why is it, why is there wood sticking? I'm like, Dylan what that is? That is that is what the water dragged. And that's like a grill that was holding the wood. And they were, the guardrails were mangled, kind of like Magneto would mangle them in in the movies. You know what I mean? Like it had that look like that scary bent up like tons and tons of force.
C: Water is so forceful. It's so heavy. It weighs so much. It's always surprising every time when you start to do the calculations of how much it weighs and when it's moving very fast. Yeah, it is deadly and it causes tons of damage.
J: Yeah, houses were destroyed. You know, it's really bad. I mean, I hear people on Facebook saying billions of dollars a day, which I honestly don't know. But the town got effed up pretty bad. And, I'm lucky. My wife and I live on a hill. You know, I had water in my basement because the groundwater level raised up to like the ground, like the surface of the ground. That's how that was the water level. So sure, I got water in there. I took care of it. But I can't complain because there are people right now that don't have homes?
C: Yeah, yeah, terrifying.
J: But you know what's awesome?
B: One video of the house collapsing is pretty dramatic.
J: My town has mobilized. Restaurants are offering free meals. You know, supermarkets were giving away stuff. Like there's all, lots of people out there just helping people that have tractors and all this stuff. So, we'll be fine. This is why we need communities. And, you need the state to come in and give you money and all that stuff. But. It's fine, we're gonna survive.
S: Was it declared an official disaster area?
J: Let me look that up, Steve.
S: Meanwhile, while we're in the airport, trying to deal, like troubleshoot being abandoned, we're getting these pictures from our families back home of like these washed out roads, like completely collapsed roads what I mean, like with rivers running through them and cars.
C: And you're like, I'm coming, I'm gonna drive right into it.
E: Well, yeah. Wild. You know, we leave the state for a weekend.
J: It's a disaster.
S: Yeah. Official disaster. Yeah, I imagine. All right, well, let's move on, guys.
Quickie with Steve: https://phys.org/news/2024-08-mammoths-ice-age-people-pikes.html (13:05)
S: We're going to start with a quickie. This is kind of a fun little item I came across, wanted to talk about very quick. So how do you think—
E: With my brain.
B: Four for one.
S: How do you think our human ancestors in the New World, how do you think they killed mammoths and mastodons?
J: With spears, right?
C: Shear strength.
S: With spears. All right, Jy. What did they do with those spears?
E: Well, clearly they...
J: Alright, let me see if I can... I used to read about this when I was a kid, so from what I remember, there'd be a huge group of them, and then they would spear them, and then run with them and tire them out, and then they would try to direct them to run off of cliffs.
S: So, yeah, there were some times when they did do that. But I don't know if the Clovis people were doing that in the New World, or if that was universal. So, we have the Clovis points. These are the stone points that have a particular shape to them. Many of them discovered in the New World. Some bigger, some smaller, and the bigger ones obviously were used to hunt big game. But, if you have a human with a spear with one of these larger Clovis points, throwing that spear at a mammoth, it's not going to do anything. You can't generate enough force. It's a pinprick, right? It's going to be an annoyance at most. So how did they do it? How did they get these? How did they kill, mammoths with with their little spears?
B: I know.
S: Because you read the article that I sent? So a new study trying to sort this out concludes that they probably what they did was they used large spears that they set against the ground to receive a charge, right? So as the mammoth is charging them, they have the spear set against a rock or something, and then the mammoth would run into the spear.
C: They would impale themselves?
S: Yes, they would impale themselves.
C: Smart.
S: That's what it means. If you play D&D, Cara that's what it means to set to receiver charge.
E: But don't forget your modifiers.
S: You have to have your modifiers.
B: It's a great idea, man.
S: No, it is.
C: Yeah, it's very passive. It requires very little energy. Like, it's smart.
E: Let them do all that.
C: Yeah, exactly.
S: So what they found was that there would be at least an order of magnitude more force to the impact than the best human possibly throwing the spear.
E: But you risk getting crushed.
S: And that would be enough to deeply penetrate the mammoth and kill them.
C: Well, would you really risk getting crushed or would they bury the spears in the ground?
E: Yeah, would they be able to hold them? I mean, would they be sturdy enough to stay up in that direction?
C: You'd think they would just bury them.
S: That's a good question. Yeah, but the mammoth wouldn't necessarily run into a spear that was already set. You might have to lift it up at the last second. I don't know.
C: Maybe they couldn't see them. I wonder if there was a reason, like if there was a way you could direct them that was more powerful than their sight to see this small pointy thing sticking out.
S: Yes, so it's possible they could have lured them, not over a cliff, but get them to chase them and then have them run into a field of these set spikes.
C: Right, because the people could run between them.
S: Which were maybe concealed with branches or something, who knows?
B: Well, maybe they cloaked them with metamaterials.
S: No. They probably didn't do that.
B: No?
S: Or maybe they had a really long spear, like 14 feet or something. And then they set it at the base of a tree. And then as the mammoth charges, they lift it up at the last minute and get themselves behind a tree. I don't know.
E: That would need an assist pole, though, from underneath, 90 degrees to the ground to wedge it against. You can't have a 14-foot spear sticking on its own without help.
S: No.
E: So you either need people holding that thing, or you need some sort of apparatus that would support that spear. Right?
C: Well, the ground would support it. No?
E: Well, I mean, how do you hold a 14-foot pole at an angle without support?
C: Bury it.
B: Mine.
S: And wood is stiff enough that you wouldn't sag, you know?
E: Did the article suggest how they may have...
S: Well, they don't know, right? Because we only have points. We don't have the actual wood.
C: But the assumption is that it's wood, right?
S: Yeah, yeah.
C: Wood's pretty hard.
S: We just have the points, though, so we don't know what the whole shit, what the shafts look like?
B: I'd make one as big as those arrows that they fired against the dragons in the House of Dragons.
C: Do you think they even made them? They probably just found branches.
S: Well, yeah, so they basically said we have the points is that they have sometimes they have bone shafts that would have been at the end of the spear. But the shafts are like the wooden part of it, the base, the anything that they use any pitch or lacing or whatever, we have no information about.
C: Like why on earth would they go to the lengths of like carving something when they could just find a really straight strong branch?
S: Yeah, cut down a little tree or something, attach the point and a bone shaft to the end of it, and then just brace that against something and somehow get the mammoth to run into it.
E: Run into it and not bend it like a twig or a toothpick kind of thing. You have to get the right angle and the right density of that wood so it wouldn't snap on impact, so you'd really impale yourself on it. It was probably a lot of trial and error on their part. They had ones that worked a lot better than others.
C: Yeah, making the points too.
E: Good point.
S: Anyway, interesting to think about that. They also used other evidence from paintings and whatnot. It wasn't just the points themselves and just trying to sort of reverse engineer what they did. So they think this might have been an actual strategy that they used. And it makes sense that if you're hunting mammoths, you've got to figure something out, right? But just the idea of like throwing a spear at a mammoth, which always seemed to me like, does that really work? Especially with all their fur, you what I mean?
E: Yeah, it's like hobbits throwing rocks at ogres. Really?
S: It's exactly like that.
B: I likes mine raw.
S: Those are trolls, but yeah.
News Item #1 - Water on Exoplanets (19:20)
S: Okay, Jay, tell us about water on exoplanets.
J: Well, well, well, look who fell in the well. The traditional view of Earth's inner structure is what, guys? We have the iron core, the silicate mantle, and then all the surface oceans.
S: The crust.
B: Inner core and outer core.
J: And this has been our basic model for understanding exoplanets as well, because how many planets do we know really well? Well, basically ours and the ones in our solar system. These are planets, exoplanets are planets that orbit stars outside our solar system and we use the information that we have from the planets that we can observe to try to figure out what the makeup is of planets that we're looking at from very very far away. So recent research led by Caroline Dorn, who is a professor of exoplanets at ETH Zurich, is challenging this, the long-held and quite simplified model of what, the way, what is inside of planets, right? So Dorn and her colleagues have found that planets are actually far more complex than we previously thought, especially when it comes to their composition and the behavior of water inside of the planets. Most known exoplanets, these are located close to their stars, which means they're extremely hot and they often have their surfaces covered by oceans of molten magma, right? Hot magma, right, as Dr. Evil would say.
C: Liquid hot magma.
J: Of course Cara knows. Other than a solidified mantle like the Earth has, we have dirt and things to walk on. You can't walk on hot magma. So in these magma oceans, water dissolves more easily than gases like carbon dioxide, which tend to outgas and escape into the planet's atmosphere. So this raised questions about how water is distributed within the planets and particularly between the silicate mantle and the iron core. To investigate further, what Dorn did was first off she collaborated with researchers Haiyang Lao and Ji Deng from Princeton University and they used model calculations based on these fundamental physical laws that we already know to study how water interacts with iron in the high pressure conditions found inside these large exoplanets. What did they find? So, their findings were published in journal Nature Astronomy and in there they reveal that in planets larger and more massive than Earth, water has a tendency to bind with iron droplets within the molten magma. These iron droplets, which are enriched with the water, they sink towards the planet's core. This is a little complicated, but that's what happens, and that effectively is trapping water deep within the planet. So Dorn explains that the development of the iron core in a planet is a slow, gradual process, and initially a significant portion of the iron exists in the form of droplets suspended in the hot, molten magma. There you go, Cara. So these iron droplets absorb water and then they transport the iron down into the core of the planet, acting like, just like it conveys it down there because of, I guess, the relative weight with the water. And this phenomenon had been observed at moderate pressures similar to those found in our planet, in Earth. But Dorn's study extended this understanding to these larger planets that are quite common out there. And these have much higher internal pressures. So the research revealed that under the extreme conditions, iron could absorb up to 70 times more water than silicates, right, than, dirt, basically. However, due to the immense pressure near the core, the water doesn't remain in an H2O form. Instead, it disassociates into hydrogen and oxygen. Isn't that cool? The scientists say it disassociates. Have you ever heard that turn of phrase before? I just wanted to point that out. I think it's really cool.
B:Yes.
J: Of course you did, Bob.
B: It's a nice phrase.
J: About four years ago, scientists discovered that the oceans on Earth's surface account for only a small fraction of the water found on our planet. Simulations have suggested that more than 80 times the volume of Earth's oceans could be within our planet's interior. That's a big deal, right? That's a lot more water. These findings are supported by seismological measurements and experiments that they've done, and they've all hinted at the complex interplay of water under these extreme high pressure conditions. So the new understanding now of how water is distributed within planets has really big implications for interpreting astronomical data like the exoplanets and what's going on there, right? We have to rethink the way we're making these calculations. So when astronomers observe exoplanets, they have to rely on something called a mass radius diagram, which are based on measurements of a planet's size and mass to infer what the composition of the planet is. Now, if the solubility and distribution of water within the planets are not accounted for, the amount of water present could be underestimated by as much as an order of magnitude. Again, that's a huge difference in what we originally thought. So Dorn's research suggests that the planets may be much more water abundant than previously assumed, and that's basically to take away from their study. Trying to get a better understanding of how water is distributed within a planet, this is also critical for studying planetary formation and the evolution of planets. So water that sinks to a planet's core remains permanently trapped, right? It's stuck down there. While water dissolved in the mantle's magma ocean can eventually outgas and rise to the surface, the surface, it can go into the atmosphere, it can create oceans as the mantle cools. Now this means if water is detected in a planet's atmosphere, This could indicate a much larger reservoir of water hidden within the interior. So we have the James Webb Telescope. It's going to be looking at a couple of exoplanets, and it's expected to give us more information by being able to detect molecules in the atmosphere of these exoplanets. Now, it can only directly measure the composition of the upper atmosphere. It can't look deeper than the upper atmosphere. So, Dorn's research group aims to bridge the gap between the atmospheric measurements that James Webb can give us and the deeper layers of these exoplanets. So, like I said, there's two exoplanets that they're going to be looking at soon, and we'll hope that they, with confidence, can say, hey, yes, we can take the data from the James Webb telescope looking at the upper atmosphere, and we can infer what's going on inside the planet.
S: All right, thank you, Jay.
J: You're welcome.
News Item #2 - MPOX (26:14)
S: Cara, are we ready for the next pandemic?
C: Well, no.
J: Wait, wait, why are we even talking about it? Are we thinking that there might be one coming?
S: Oh, there's definitely one coming.
C: Yeah, it's a matter of when. But right now we are facing what is being referred to by the WHO as a global emergency. And that is, can anybody other than Steve guess which disease? Have you been following the news?
B: Monkey pox.
J: I've been following it, monkey pox.
C: So we don't call it monkey pox anymore. So I looked through the archives and we first talked to, I've covered this story twice, both in 2022. And both of those times I was calling it monkey pox because at that time that was the name of the disease. It's still the name of the virus that causes the disease, but it has been changed across the globe to MPOX, mostly because of the – there was an initiative several years ago to ensure that the names of diseases don't carry undue stigma, and monkeypox virus was named before that initiative. But since then, we've changed the name – we, everyone – the name has been changed to MPOX, or I've even heard some people referring to it as MPOX. I'm not going to do that because it takes longer to say, but as MPOX to reduce that stigma around it. And so I'll do the quick review of what it actually is. But then we'll get into like the new bit. So MPOX is viral. It's caused by the monkey pox virus, that's a species of the genus Orthopox virus, and it is related to the other pox viruses, so it's similar in some ways to smallpox, it's similar in other ways to chicken pox, but it is its own unique disease. And there are two different clades of the virus that exist, and this is very important for the new outbreak that's occurring. So in 2022, we saw MPOX spreading around the globe. It was a global health emergency at the time. In 2022, the MPOX that was spreading all around the world, but we also saw concentrated spread in the US, was clade two. All MPOX cause the following symptoms. Skin rash or lesions in the mucosal membranes, they typically last between two and four weeks. During that time, people usually have a fever, a headache, pain in their muscles, especially in their back, fatigue, swollen lymph nodes, a lot of the things that you see accompanying viral infection. It's relatively easy to spread, especially through respiratory droplets or physical contact. Obviously you can also get it from its animal vectors. We still don't know the original vector of MPOX. I know it sounds like it would be monkeys, but it's actually not. The first identified cases were in laboratory monkeys, but those monkeys didn't get it from themselves. And actually monkeys are not a common vector of this disease. So it's kind of a misnomer. It was just named for where it was first discovered. And scientists still don't know what the actual animal vector is. But right now, we're dealing with an outbreak, a global outbreak. It's started and seemed to be local in the DRC, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. But now we've found, and they're still yet to fully confirm these cases, but cases have been identified and are actively being tested in Sweden, in Thailand, and in the Philippines. So the difference is that these are part of clade 1b. And the biggest difference between clade 1 and clade 2 is the fatality. Clade 2 has a 0.2% death rate. That was what was observed and documented across the 2022 to 2023 outbreak. Clade 1 has a death rate of 3%. So it's over an order of magnitude more deadly. We're seeing that the rates in the Congo are simply increasing. Just today, the AP reported more than 1,000 new MPOX cases in a week in Congo. And I have some numbers here for what's happening global that were updated yesterday as of this recording. So the World Health Organization is reporting that, according to Africa CDC, which is their infectious disease organization across the continent, actually, MPOX cases across all of Africa were up 160% and deaths were up 19% compared with the same period in 2023. And it's important to remember, MPOX clade 2 didn't, like, come up two years ago and then go away. It's still circulating. We still have cases in the US. MPOX clade 2 still exists in the population and is continuing to infect people. But now that we have this clade 1b, we're seeing that the rates are skyrocketing. So the WHO has recorded more than 14,000 cases and 524 deaths in Africa in 2024 so far. So that's higher than the rates last year. And more than 96% of those cases and deaths were in the DRC alone. So you've got to think we're right at the beginning of this. If 96% of recorded cases and deaths are all in one country, and now we're starting to see that unaffected African nations like Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi, places where they did not have this problem, are starting to report cases, it is spreading. We also have unconfirmed cases in three different countries, as I mentioned, Thailand, Philippines, and Sweden, outside of the African continent. And they're saying right now suspected cases have passed 17,000, which is a big jump from the only 7,146 cases by this point in 2022. So this is considered now, because of the spread, a global emergency. The US announced this as a public health emergency. One thing that's important to remember is that right now in the US, we have not identified any clade 1 cases, and we have not seen any spikes. The background level of MPOX is the same as it has been during the 2022-2023 outbreak. Also, apparently the way that the virus spreads seems to be a little bit different between clade 1 and clade 2. In the 2022 outbreak, that clade 2 virus was spreading globally, mainly among men who have sex with men. And so in kind of a global public health effort, behavioral changes like social distancing, the use of condoms, and a targeted vaccine campaign really reduced those rates and kind of got that under control. Until this outbreak, most cases in the DRC resulted from consumption of meat or close contact with infected animals. But this new type, this clade 1B type, appears to spread primarily through heterosexual transmission. And so because of that, there is a kind of a newfound risk that it's going to be harder to identify and target vulnerable populations. It does appear that those who are most vulnerable are children. A large percentage of the deaths are in children under the age of 15. And also pregnant women are most at risk. Now there's a vaccine. Why is this a problem? Well, there's not enough of the vaccine. And there hasn't been a very targeted vaccine campaign to date. We're starting to see that different nations are donating their stockpiles in order to ramp up vaccination efforts, especially at the source. The problem is that sometimes it just takes a while. It takes a while to make more vaccine. It takes a while to then have this organized effort to go in and vaccinate people. Now again, I mentioned before, this is not necessarily a deadly disease. It's deadly among 3% of people. That's pretty high. That's a pretty scary number. But it's a painful disease. So even if you don't die from mPox, it's not something that you want to experience.
J: What would it be like, Cara?
C: So from everything that I've read, you've got to think about, I know probably none of us on the show right now have had smallpox, but I think most of us have had chickenpox, right?
S: Very young, but yeah.
E: Yes, 11 years old chickenpox.
C: Sort of somewhere in between. So MPOX lesions are different than both, like the smallpox lesions are more prevalent, they spread more and they're more densely packed. And the MPOX lesions tend to cluster on like the face, on the hands, on the genitals, but they apparently are painful. And if in individuals, yeah, they look bad, they look scary. And in individuals who are immune compromised, like those with cancer, and especially with those with HIV/AIDS, your body can't fight this off as well. Here's the main issue. There is no treatment for MPOX. There's vaccines. The smallpox vaccine is 85% effective, which is great. We already have that lying around. The problem is we've kind of stopped making as much because-
S: There's no smallpox?
E: Don't need it.
C: Yeah, because we've eradicated it. But there are several different vaccines actually on the market. The problem is if you catch MPOX, the treatment is supportive care. It's fluids, it's fever reducers.
S: We have no antivirals.
C: No, there's no direct treatment for Empox except keep the person as comfortable and as safe as you can so their body can fight it off themselves. And so if you are a person whose immune system is not capable of fighting off the virus because it's already threatened by diseases like HIV/AIDS, you're just at really high risk. That's also why children are very often at higher risk. It's a worrisome disease. Again, if you're an American listening to this, if you're a European listening to this, you are not probably at acute risk right now, but the whole point is that we need to have public health efforts already in place to prevent that from happening because we thought we were okay in 2022 and then people started getting really sick and people started to die, even here in the US. I think when we think about public health, We often think of places where certain diseases are endemic as very far away, but we live in a global society now. Everybody is connected. Everybody is traveling. Things don't stay in one place anymore.
S: It can jump very quickly.
C: And disease outbreaks in the DRC are everybody's problem. It's important to remember that. I mean, obviously, hopefully the compassion is there. We are sending the vaccines over because we don't want people in the DRC to get sick and die. But there's also a concern of the spread. Both of those things are important.
S: Yeah, but we do have the vaccine, which is great. And the CDC has recommendations for who should and should not get vaccinated. So we don't want to give it to people who don't need it because we don't have to go around.
C: Yeah, here in the US, we have very, very specific targeted campaigns. We used them last time, they may need to start to shift because this is a different disease. But as of right now, we don't have any cases here. We've got to get ready for if we do. But the main thing is that, right now there's just there's not enough vaccine and the vaccine isn't in the right hands. But we've already seen multiple nations donating. You know, I think the U.S. is donating 50,000 doses. I think that the EU is donating quite a few. It was like over 150,000 doses of the vaccine.
S: Is there an effort to ramp up production?
C: There is also an effort to ramp up production. So all those pieces are in place right now, but there's still concern that we wouldn't really be able to see a totally effective and immersive vaccine program until the end of the year.
S: Yeah. Man, how frustrating would that be if we got caught with our pants down again?
C: Well, and that's the whole point, right? That's why I'm seeing also all of these op-eds around MPOX titled things like, another pandemic looms. Guess what? We're still not ready. And yeah, just like across the board, wealthy nations must prioritize the global fight against MPOX. You know, these different conversations about how like, guys, we've been through this. Like here, the Africa CDC said it only has about 200,000 MPOX doses available, and they need 10 million.
S: Give it to them. I mean, it's the thing that we have to realize. It's cost effective. It is healthcare effective for Western and developed nations to jump on these outbreaks in remote parts of the world.
C: A hundred percent.
S: Because they're going to come home to roost if we don't.
J: No doubt about it.
C: 100% and so like yeah and we are, a lot of nations are donating their stockpiles and they're donating money to ramp up production but it's just not there and it's never there fast enough and I think part of the problem here that's like a little bit frustrating is this didn't happen overnight. It's been happening for years.
S: Yeah yeah exactly. All right, thanks, Cara. Hopefully this won't be one of those episodes that we look back on.
C: I know.
E: Remember when?
S: Remember in the before time? Yeah, OK.
J: You're saying like this could be like, oh, and on episode 998, that's the first time they talked about it. Holy Christ, they didn't even know what was coming, right?
S: Right.
J: No, no.
News Item #3 - Darkling Beetles (40:35)
S: All right, Bob, tell us about Darkling Beetles.
E: Oh.
S: Sounds cool.
E: Yeah. John, Paul, tell us about them.
B: Oh, boy. All right. So sometimes you read a title of a paper or news item, and it really just sucks you in, even if it has nothing to do with physics or astronomy, if you can believe that. This time, the title is from a phys-org science news site called Masters of Shapeshifting, How Darkling Beetles Conquered the World. So shapeshifting and conquering, you had two great words. For a very compelling title, my first thoughts, of course, based on those words, were aliens, right, from John Carpenter's The Thing. And then the Changelings, the Changelings from Star Trek Deep Space Nine. I'm sure they were your favorite Cara, right?
C: Oh, yeah, totes.
B: In this case, it's referring to beetles, which is a great opportunity to bring up one of my favorite evolution quotes. This one is often attributed to biologist J.B.S. Haldane. One story says he was asked by theologians what our living world tells us about a creator, and he's supposed to have said something like, if there is a creator, he must have an inordinate fondness for beetles. Which is such a perfect quote from so many different angles. But by that he meant, of course, that there's a shit ton of beetles. There's so many of them. And not just the sheer number of them. There's 400,000 described species of them. That's an amazing number. That's 40% of all described insects, 40%, and it's 25% of all known animal species. A quarter of all the species of animals that we know are beetles. And get this, I didn't realize this, some estimates put the total number of beetle species potentially between one and two million. So not just 400,000, potentially two million of them. That would be, if that were true, and if no other species jumped up in a similar way, beetles would be 62% of all animals in terms of just species number. So yeah, there's a lot of them. So why are they so species? That's a word. I discovered it today.
J: And when you say that, do you mean why they have so much sex with each other? Is that what you're saying?
B: It's far beyond sex, Jay. This has been a little bit mysterious. Teasing out the details of why they are far and away more numerous than anything else, it's a tough question. And this is what the researchers from the Australian National University and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Center organization in Australia, that's what they wanted to better understand, to tease out the details of how that came about in evolutionary history. They honed in on one of the most diverse families of beetles, 30,000 of these guys, Tenebrionidae. These are the darkling beetles. Darkling are hyper-diverse, both in species number and morphologically as well. In their paper, they said they have occupied nearly all terrestrial niches, ranging from cylindrical wood-boring forms to hemispherical surface-grazing forms. They are found in every habitat from rainforests to deserts and at all elevations from coastal sand dunes to mountaintops. Primarily scavengers, these beetles feed on a variety of dead organic matter. So for their study, so they're everywhere, they're just basically wherever you look, yeah, they're everywhere. So for their study, they extracted the DNA from museum specimens to scrutinize their genomes and they also digitized 900 different morphological shapes. So using all that information, and I'm sure a lot of computer time, they were able to peer back into evolutionary history 150 million years for 300 different species to get a handle on how they're related and how they evolved. So as a result, Dr. Yoon Lee concludes that darkling beetles went through multiple of what he calls Big Bang evolutionary moments from the outset, even from the earliest time they went back, this was happening. This very fast evolution is described in the paper as quantum evolution. Steve, have you heard of that?
S: No.
C: I don't like that.
B: Oh my God, this is new to me too. So my knee-jerk reaction for that term is to compare it to quantum leap, which is really annoying.
C: Right?
B: This isn't as egregious as quantum leap, but it's still trying to get a handle on why they pick that. But there's a lot of ways to look at quantum evolution. Some compare it to punctuated equilibrium, which it seemed initially at least that punctuated equilibrium was just a better term for it because it's just more common. It doesn't have the quantum baggage. But I think after doing more reading, I think that even punctuated equilibrium would not be fast enough for the idea behind this one. So the idea behind quantum evolution, essence of the idea I think is that instead of the classic slow gradual change, there's a quick dramatic change, but perhaps in a few generations in morphology, physiology, and behavior, all due to ecological demand. So it's happening really, really fast, as fast as probably revolutionarily possible. Dr. Lee said, our results show that quantum evolution occurred frequently across the evolutionary tree of darkling beetles. We discovered more than 60 rapid evolutionary jumps that are linked to ecological changes to highly specialized environments in which these beetles were living in. Now some of these quick bursts of evolution happened near the end of the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction, and that was about 66 million years ago. That's the one that wiped out 70% of all species. So I think that would clearly classify as a new environment or a new open niches that they could go into. And that's something that they apparently really took advantage of, all those open spots for them. Dr. Lee continues. He said, this is how darkling beetles have been able to conquer a variety of environments which have changed over hundreds of millions of years, from tropical savannas and arid deserts to coastal dunes and mountaintops, and even our backyards. So interesting idea, interesting that they finally were able to figure out, at least scratching the surface of why, how they got so diverse, so much more than other species. So I think, though, the big takeaway from this is, if you're playing 20 Questions and they say it's an animal or an insect, go with the odds and just say beetle. It's a beetle.
J: Always. Yeah, always.
B: Hey, at least 25% chance. Got it. So quantum evolution, Steve. That's a first.
S: I've heard of that concept before, of the idea that evolution can happen, a speciation event can happen almost within a single generation, because if you have a genetic event like a splitting or combining of chromosomes, and then that somehow gets passed on in a way that is self-sustaining, it's like you have a one-generation speciation event right there.
B: Yeah, they were saying that it could happen anywhere along the line of whether it's an order, sub-order, super-family, family, class. But they said that it seems to be more preferentially happening for the higher order taxa. Like family and order, at that higher level rather than just species. So that's how, within a very brief period of time, you can have a whole new family. Bam, there's a whole new family, which is what, a couple levels higher?
C: Because then they would all kind of like specialize underneath that.
B: Yeah, so yeah, it really interesting. I just wonder why haven't other organisms, showed similar amounts of quantum evolution? They offered in one example, another example that was much, like, I think at the bacteria level, but I wonder if there are others-
C: Beatles are famously, like the most diverse, right?
B: Well, yeah. And this is why. They are the most diverse. I'd like to know what's the second most diverse. Nothing comes near. Nothing comes near the Beatles, though. They are just like, bam. They just, probably because they are so crucial. I mean, they're, they're very important for, for getting rid of and dealing with, decaying organic matter. I mean, that's a critical job that needs to be done in the environment. So that's part of it, I guess.
S: Alright, thanks Bob.
B: Sure.
News Item #4 - Moon Gravity Assist (49:05)
S: Evan, tell us about this moon gravity assist.
E: Yes, interesting one here. A space mission. You know, the cutest name ever for a spacecraft. It has to be this one called JUICE. J-U-I-C-E.
B: The juice is loose.
E: The juice is loose. The juice was set loose a year ago, but now we're seeing some interesting stuff already. Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer. Yep. And guess what? It's on its way to Venus and eventually to the moons of Jupiter. According to the ESA, that's the European Space Agency, the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer will make detailed observations of the giant gas planet, Jupiter, and its three large ocean-bearing moons, Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa, with a suite of remote sensing, geophysical, and in-situ instruments. The mission will characterize these moons as both planetary objects and possible habitats, explore Jupiter's complex environment in depth, and study the wider Jupiter system as an archetype for gas giants across the universe. Very cool mission. So, several firsts for this mission. JUICE is the first interplanetary spacecraft to the outer solar system. Not launched by the United States. Yep, European Space Agency for this one. First, JUICE. If successful, it will be the first to set orbit around a moon other than Earth's moon. That's very cool. And, JUICE is now the first spacecraft to successfully complete a Lunar Earth flyby and gravity assist. Yep, that's a double flyby and a double gravity assist. First time ever. That's the news this week. It just happened a few days ago, August 19th and August 20th. Closest approach to the moon was on August 19th at about 9.15 UTC, that used to be Greenwich Mean Time, and it guided juice towards a closest approach with Earth 24 hours later, right almost at 10 o'clock in the evening on August 20th. But, wait a minute, didn't I start by saying that JUICE was heading for Venus? And then if you were paying attention I said it was heading to the moons of Jupiter? What? Venus is towards the sun and then it has to go back away from the sun towards Jupiter? But it went around the moon and now around the earth? What's going on? I imagine I'm driving flat earthers crazy right now because we all know if we want to send something to another planet the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, right?
S: Not necessarily.
E: No. Certainly not when it comes to sending spacecraft to other planets. Yep. I wonder what the Flat Earthers' excuses are about this particular mission.
S: It's all live from NASA, right?
E: Absolutely. Right. A conspiracy theory. 70 years of space exploration, all of it false, right? Nope. No straight lines. When getting hurtled through space, you use the gravity of the bodies in the solar system. Give you a nice either gravity boost or gravity breaking. So, the flyby of the moon increased JUICE's speed by 0.9 kilometers per second relative to the sun, and that guided JUICE towards Earth. And then the flyby of Earth that happened the other day, it reduced JUICE's speed by 4.8 kilometers per second relative to the sun, and this now put it on its trajectory towards Venus. Ignacio Tonko, spacecraft operations manager for the mission said, the gravity assist flyby was flawless. Everything went without a hitch. We were thrilled to see JUICE coming back so close to Earth. JUICE flew just 6,800 kilometers above Southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean, and it took a series of images with its onboard monitoring cameras. And those pictures are available over at the ESA website along with anywhere else you probably look for it and search for it on the internet. And the photographs are great. And they're going to be sending back more information in regards to this flyby and this gravity assist. They will be releasing that information later on. They're still processing that data, but there's more coming from this particular flyby. It was so well executed and so efficient in a sense that they saved fuel. They didn't have to use as much fuel to make corrections that they thought they might have to. So what that means is it will probably extend the life of the mission on the back end, which is very good. Very good news.
C: I think about the calculus that goes into this, like just the phenomenally complex mathematics. And I know that when we look back to, like, for example, NASA when NASA was was it NACA First.
E: Oh, before it was NASA?
C: Yeah, before it was NASA, I think it was NACA. When there were literally just like women calculating all this stuff by hand.
B: Yeah, they were the calculators.
E: When you said calculator, it was a person.
C: It was a person. And I know obviously it wasn't doing flybys by Jupiter's moons, but still like the trajectories, the calculations required for this have to be so precise and they're so complex.
E: And using what, Newtonian mechanics?
S: Well—
C: Yeah, probably then, yeah. Yeah.
E: Right?
S: Well, it depends on how precise you need to be. They probably do use relativity.
C: Yeah, probably now they do. I don't know if they did then.
E: Were they in the 50s or were they still relying on—
S: I mean, we had the equations in the 50s. It's just, did they need that level of precision to get to the moon?
C: To get to the moon, yeah.
S: Like, we probably did in order to get, like, to Pluto or to do multi-planet flybys. I suspect we do..
B: Ah, I'm leaning towards no.
S/�C: Really?
B: I think Newtonian's fine for getting to planets.
C: I think so long as we stay like in our solar system, we're good.
B: I mean, yeah, I mean, as long as you're not dealing with incredible speeds or incredible masses, you should be fine.
E: So do you know JUICE is going to do two more flybys of Earth before it heads off to meet with Jupiter? How crazy is that?
B: It's because of the rocket equation and the expense.
E: I mean, yeah, right.
B: It's frustrating as hell.
E: I know, it is frustrating. But again, it's kind of cool though, right? So it's heading towards Venus now, right? Because it just passed Earth, heading that way. But it'll reach Venus in 2025, then it's going to head back towards Earth 2026, September 2026, where it will get a boost again from Earth. And then its next official booth will be in January of 2029, Earth again. I was watching a video, a graphic that they put of the flight, the flight path. And it shows all the inner planets and where it goes. Now, between those two Earth boosts of 2026 and 2029, it looks like it's going to rendezvous with Mars. But it didn't say anything in the mission about a Mars intercept or a boost or a break or anything, one way or the other. So maybe, I don't know, maybe it's going to come close to Mars but not use Mars. I don't know. I really don't know. But it will go out that far before it comes back to Earth again for that second assist. And then July 2031, that's when it will finally reach Jupiter, where it will orbit Jupiter 67 times. And also after that, it's going to be, what, 35 flybys in total around the three moons, Europa, Callisto, and Ganymede. And then it will end up finally going into orbit around Ganymede. There it will live and exist for the rest of its life, however long that will be. And if by any chance the spacecraft was infected with those Darkling beetles, Bob, that you were talking about, little stowaways, ESA is ready to rename the spacecraft Beetlejuice. Thank you.
B: Nice.
S: By the way, NASA uses mostly Newton's law of gravity. But then they use general relativity for small corrections when necessary.
B: I wonder how often it's necessary. I wouldn't think it'd be too frequent.
E: Newtonian mechanics still work. That's so what you mean.
C: They probably need it to track wherever the hell Voyager is.
E: Yeah.
News Item #5 - Luminescent Solar Concentrators (57:41)
S: So guys, do any of you know what the luminescent solar concentrators are?
E: I know what those three words mean independently of each other.
J: I really don't, Steve. Why? What's happening?
S: All right. Well, they do relate to solar panels. They're not solar panels, but they relate to solar panels. It is a technology for improving the efficiency and the cost-effectiveness of solar panels. Let's back up a little bit first and talk about how can we improve the efficiency of converting sunlight into energy, into electricity. So right now, the state of the art is silicon rigid solar panels using the photoelectric effect, photovoltaic panels to turn photons into current, into electricity. The commercial ones have an efficiency of about 22 to 24%. The theoretical limit of silicon is about 29%. Perovskite can get higher than that, maybe 35, up to 40%. The organic solar cells have lower efficiency, but they're cheaper and more flexible. So there's a trade-off there. So that's sort of the limit of a single layer of material with the photovoltaic effect. So how could we increase efficiency measured as either cost-effectiveness or converting the greater percentage of photons into electricity? What options do we have? What do you think?
C: More layers.
S: Yeah. So you could layer it. Exactly. So obviously, you can improve the efficiency of the material itself, but I just told you we're sort of running up to limits there.
C: Yeah. We have to find a new material.
S: Yeah. And that new material is perovskite, but that- We're getting close to, I think, that being commercializable, but not quite there yet. But one thing is you can layer it. And so you can have different layers. And that does a couple of things. One, the different layers can have different peak efficiencies in terms of their wavelength, right, the color of light they absorb. So that way you can capture a greater range of light color. And also, that can create multiple opportunities for photons to be absorbed, because it'll be hitting multiple layers that could absorb it and convert it into electricity. So that's one way, layering. What else?
B: You can move the Earth closer to the sun.
S: Yep, we could do that.
E: That'll happen.
S: We'll get right on that. So one thing we already do for rigid panels is they work best with direct light.
C: So like you rotate them?
S: Yeah, you put them on movers. You mount them and track the sun, so just sun track. We already do that, but that's expensive.
C: Is it really? I would think the technology for that would be really cheap, like light seeking technology.
S: But you're moving these heavy rigid panels, like no rooftop solar does this, right? You just sort of take the best angle you have to the sun. But if you have a commercial solar farm, a commercial solar farm, those could be mounted and they could track the sun. What else can you do?
B: Solar satellites out and get it above the atmosphere.
S: Yeah, but that's not going to be practical anytime soon.
B: Oh, it's got to be practical, too?
S: Well, that's the whole idea. The whole idea is practical, cost-effective, and greater efficiency.
C: Okay, so layer it, chase the sun, improve the actual material being used.
S: One more.
B: Yeah, broaden the spectrum. It could convert.
S: That's the layering. You could do that. Well, this is where—
E: Concentrator, right?
C: Capture—yeah, capture the sun more efficiently.
S: Luminescent solar concentrators come into effect, right? So that's another option.
C: A magnifying glass. So, well, you could basically gather the light to the solar panel, right? Bring the light to the solar panel. So a cheap and effective way to do that is with mirrors, right? You don't move the solar panel. You just sort of move the mirrors to reflect the light directly onto the solar panel, right?
B: Well, we could do that. I mean, that's—
S: We already do that. But this is a different technique. Luminescent solar concentrators. What they do is this is a different material that's luminescent. It absorbs the light and then re-emits the light. It luminesces. Now you can connect these to basically fiber optic cables, right? What's called total internal reflection. A material where when the light hits the interface between the material and the air, it always gets reflected inward, so it never leaves the material, so it just propagates along it, right? That's how fiber optic works.
C: Right, it's a light wire.
S: Yeah, it's basically a light wire. So you have, imagine like these fronds of this luminescent solar gathering material connected with veins of this light fiber, right, down to a stem. Can you get the picture I'm drawing for you here? And then that, it's like a leaf, right? And then that stem beams the light directly onto a solar panel. So that gives you a few advantages. One is that you can gather light from a broad area and then concentrate it onto the solar panel. So you don't need as much solar panel. And the solar panels are expensive. And these LSCs, these luminescent solar concentrators, are cheap. They're glass or plastic. They're not silicon. So that's one advantage. Another one is that it's all emitting at the same frequency, so you just have the solar panel optimized for the frequency of the solar concentrator. And here's a big one. I remember solar panels like direct light. These luminescent solar concentrators don't care. They can gather diffuse light, scattered light, dim light.
J: That is huge.
S: It's huge. If any light hits it, it gets concentrated down to the end where it directly then impinges on the solar panel.
C: I want one of these on my truck. I'm camping. I'm constantly moving my truck to chase the sun. And it's infuriating because sometimes the sun is bright, but it's not hitting it just the right angle and I get no energy out of it.
B: So Steve, if you don't like your neighbor, could you steal the sunlight from their solar panels and diverge yours?
C: Well, you could probably steal their sun if they're not using it. Like they don't have panels. Like what? You don't need this sun. I'm going to take your sun.
S: So there was a recent study looking at these are these have existed for a while and they're just sort of ramping up the production and efficiency etc. And there was a recent study essentially trying to figure out how to make this technology more effective and they found that you could if you make each individual LSE smaller, that the efficiencies go way up, and then you just sort of cluster them like a leaf. So this is the sort of getting to that leaf kind of design. So you could imagine like a literal tree of these things, right?
C: It's probably actually prettier too.
S: Yeah, they say they're very pretty because they're, they can be any color. You can have them any color. They're obviously semi-transparent. And yeah, they can be very aesthetic, more so than what people think solar panels are. So that's another potential advantage. But imagine you have either a bush or a tree or whatever of these solar concentrators, and collecting diffuse light from any angle on cloudy days whenever, and then funneling all that light down to smaller solar panels. So the whole thing will be a lot cheaper. And the efficiency is higher if you optimally arrange it. They also said that, trees evolved the way they did for a reason, right? So one thing that leaves do is they scatter light to other leaves, right? So as the light goes through a tree, it's not just the surface leaves absorbing the light, the light gets internally scattered so that other leaves have a greater chance of picking it up. So they maximize You know, their efficiency, their conversion of light to energy by doing that. Trees are not very efficient because,they're just made out of biological materials and, there's other efficiencies that they have to calculate in there. But if you translate that to technology, to solar panels, this is the kind of thing that could get up to really high efficiencies combining this technology with solar panels.
C: That's really cool. Another advantage I would think too is that like, I think about my home, which is a small lot home. So my roof area is very small. And when I had the solar companies come out, they were like, until we get these really ultra high efficiency ones cheaper, it's not cost effective for you to do this. You just don't have enough space on your roof. But if you could have these little tentacly leaf things collecting all of the sun, you don't need that much space on your roof.
S: Right, yeah, I saw one picture, like an artist's conception of what it would look like, with essentially like a roof with a bunch of bushes on top. You know, like rows of bushes of this material, instead of just flat panels. Yeah, so it's a more surface area. And again, it's gathering light from any direction, and scattered and diffuse light. So yeah, it's...
C: That's also like a very, what do we call this again? Biomimicry?
S: There's some biomimicry there.
C: Not only is it biomimicry in the terms of, like, this is how leaves work, but think about all conserved organisms. To increase surface area, they wrinkle shit up. Like, all over the human body, where we need more surface area, stuff gets wrinkly.
S: Yep. They also said these can be made very modular, which means that they're really easy to upgrade, to replace, to fix, whatever. Again, you're replacing expensive silicon panels with cheap glass or plastic solar concentrators. You know what I mean?
C: Which also means people can probably DIY a lot of this, which is very cool. Like this could also, yeah.
B: Is there a limit to the light that could potentially overwhelm the panel?
S: Well-
C: Just melt it?
S: You just don't over-engineer, right? Whatever the surface area of the panel you have is can only absorb so much light, so just don't bring more light to it than it can absorb.
B: I just wonder what that is.
S: So I'm sure they'll have a calculation of what that would be. It still might be advantageous to have all the solar panels, but by doing this, they would be more efficient, and they would work in more conditions, a longer part of the day. Like for my house, I have solar panels on my house, and they're arranged pretty good, but there are just times of the day when the light is really not at a good angle to the solar panels. With this, it wouldn't matter.
C: Yeah, and just the places on the planet. It's so funny to me, and I know that this has much more to do with culture and to do with political will than anything else, but when I'm in parts of Europe, the amount of solar is significantly more than when I'm in parts of the US, and those parts of Europe are like cloudy and dark, and the parts of the US are like bright. And so it's so funny to think that in places where they're already using this technology, but they're using it at very low efficiencies, this would be a boon.
S: It is so in the US, 60% of new power generation is solar. So it is increasing. It's still-
C: Oh, yeah, it is. I'm more I'm more talking about sort of the individual choice to put it on your own home. It was adopted, I think, and it depends on the country, but there are definitely countries where I'm like, wow, everyone has solar and it's always gray here.
S: That's probably regulation, you what I mean?
C: Probably, yeah. I think they're starting to regulate that more heavily. Here in California. I thought I remember, I know that we have rules about like new homes can't have dark roofs, so like they have to have light roofs.
S: Yeah, there's certainly there's proposed legislation saying that all new construction has to incorporate solar panels. Just that's it.
C: I've seen that. I just don't know if we've passed it yet.
S: Yeah, not that I know it, but that's sort of proposed. But I think like for now, the most important thing is the net metering is the if you have to use the grid as backup, like you're selling your excess production to the grid, they have to give you full credit when you then buy that electricity back. And that is state by state. And I think we need, it would be good to have like this federal legislation saying you have to have 100% net metering.
C: Some lobbying around that, yeah.
S: Yeah, yeah. I know like in Florida they're trying to roll back those laws, like the solar, the power companies are trying to say, we only want to pay wholesale for the electricity we get from customers.
C: Yeah, I mean we need consumer protection.
S: Then we'll charge them retail and we sell it back to them. You know, it's a total rip off.
C: And what you're promoting for people to do is to go off-grid at that point, because we're getting close. Like, there are a fair amount of people, if you have enough batteries, to just go off-grid.
S: Well, that's the other thing, yeah. If you pair it with batteries, then you're less dependent on the grid for your backup. And it also helps the grid more, because it helps stabilize the grid. So now there's also initiatives to sort of reimburse people, give them tax breaks, et cetera, for having home battery backup. That exists in our area. Right now, my company, my solar company, doesn't participate in the program yet.
B: Punks.
S: I know. I'm still waiting for them to come around and do that, and then I'll get it the moment that it's possible.
E: Jay, call them up.
C: That's the thing that's so annoying. The energy companies will benefit from this in the long run, but they don't see that. They just want the money.
S: What percentage of world energy production is solar right now, what do you guys think?
C: 15?
J/E: 15?
B: 15.1.
C: Price is Right rules.
S: Jay, what do you think?
J: We all said 15.
E: Jay and I said 15 at the same time.
S: 5.5. 5.5.
C: Oh, that's brutal. We all lost.
S: Yeah, you all overshot. Only 5.5. But it's 75% of new capacity, 60% of new generation. Capacity is the capacity to generate electricity. Generation is how much you actually generate. It's not as much for solar because it's only half the time, you know what I mean? It's like only when the sun's shining. It's less than half the time. It's like 30-40%. Anyway, let's move on.
Who's That Noisy? + Announcements (1:12:22)
S: Jay, it's Who's That Noisy time.
J: All right, guys, last week I played this noisy. [plays Noisy]
B: It sounds a little bit like turtles having sex.
C: It kind of does actually.
S: I think it's an aquatic mammal.
C: Probably is, but it's a very goat-like aquatic mammal.
E: I think it's carbon-based.
J: All the things that you guys are saying are representative of what the patrons and the listeners were saying. So Henry Rodriguez wrote in and said, Hi Jay, Henry here from Canada. I'll be damned if this isn't a very thirsty goat plunging its head in the water then gasping for air. Okay, I guess you've seen that, Henry. Henry represents about 25% of the submissions here about goats. This is not a goat. Then Garrett Williams said, is that a tortoise having sex? That's not correct. Then Evil Eye wrote in and said, well, it's not going to be the tortoise having sex. So I'm going to guess a new instrument, the automaton. Have you guys ever heard of an automaton?
E: Saxamophone.
J: No, it's not an automaton.
S: Sure it's not automaton?
J: Automaton, yeah whatever.
C: Oh no, you're blowing his mind right now.
J: Not really, Cara. A good 6% of the words I say I mispronounce. Anyway, so Aaron writes in, hi Jay, long time listener, first time guessing, I believe the sound this week is a young camel that is exhausted and whining.
C: They do kind of sound like that.
J: Yeah, so Aaron is not correct, but that's a good guess, too.
E: Poor camel.
J: One more guess. Marcy Bacon wrote in and said, Hello, I think I've heard this sound before on a video my kids showed me. It sounds like a puffer fish exhaling or vocalizing out of water. Now Marcy, if you remember, I've had that sound on the show before, but that is not correct. I have a winner though, guys, and I was getting scared because there was nobody and then suddenly Hunter Richards, I read his email, he says, hi Jay, I hear snow crunching under boots. Sounds like a baby animal. So it's an animal that's born in winter. I'm going to guess a harp seal. Very good guess. Now, I can't tell you exactly what kind of seal it is because it wasn't obvious in the video. But let me play it for you again. This is a seal probably begging for food. [plays Noisy] Now Hunter was correct. There is snow being crunched under boots. That's a very, very particular sound that is not, as far as I know, doesn't sound like anything else. But anyway, very good job.
C: Can I give you my hypothesis, Jay?
J: Absolutely.
C: For why this makes me so uncomfortable. These like marine mammals.
J: Go ahead.
C: These noises. Because they're all like in the human register.
B: Yeah.
C: And I think it's giving uncanny valley, like the ick factor.
J: It does. I totally agree with you. I mean, this sounds like a human can make that noise very easily.
C: Totally. It's the right register.
J: Yeah. Everything about it, the shape and the tone. Yeah. So anyway. All right. So Cara, it's OK. It's OK. No seals were killed in the making of this noisy. Everybody's good. I have a new noisy. I'm going to say straight up, Cara. This one's fine. OK?
C: OK. OK.
J: And this noisy was sent in by a listener named William Grew Mullins. [plays Noisy] You know, that's exactly what Bob's haunted house sounds like, by the way. So if you think you know what this thing's noisy is, or if you heard something cool, email me at WTN@theskepticsguide. Steve, I almost have nothing to say, but I do have something to say. Okay, so we will be at SciCon. This is at the end of October of this year in Las Vegas. It's the SciCon conference and from what I understand, I'm hearing people say this, I don't know how true it is. I'm gonna have to email Barry Carr and find out. This might be their last one or they're moving it to New York. I don't know. I'll find out. But either way, if you ever been to Vegas or you have never been, this would be a great time to go. Guys, if you're interested in going, that's SCIConference, that's SCIConference.org. People like Neil deGrasse Tyson and Brian Cox and Banacek and Michael Mann and the SGU will all be there. So it's going to be a great time. We've gone before. It's a really good conference. Lots of fun. Lots of great people. There's no reason not to go if you're free. So please do check us out there. A couple of quickies. We have a show planned in Washington, DC. This show is called the Skeptical Extravaganza of Special Significance. You may have heard of it. So we're doing it again. We'll be in DC. That's going to be on December 7th, but on December 6th, Friday night, we will be having a private SGU show. I will be posting the tickets for that in about a week. So next week, around this time, those tickets should be up and ready to roll. And then beyond that, Steve, so tickets for those two shows can be purchased on the SGU's website. But beyond that, we are now planning, we're in pre-pre-planning of, what is it Cara?
C: NOTACON!
J: NOTACON, yes. We're very excited. We're already talking about what are we going to do at NOTACON, and we've already come up with some pretty awesome, fun ideas. So, please pay attention to the show as I slowly and painfully unveil when that's going to be, but it's going to probably be in May. There's one thing on the website that you can go check out. We have decided to let people suggest where they would like NOTACON to happen. So you could go to theskepticsguide.org and you'll see a button on there that will allow you to put in your submission. Now we're basically picking cities up and down the eastern seaboard all the way up to Boston and all the way as far south as Washington DC. The reason why is because we have to drive there because we have tons of equipment to bring and we can't afford to fly it because of course that would make ticket prices be way too high. So we're trying to keep it real but we're going to let you help us pick the city. The default will be back in White Plains simply because I know all the numbers and everything and it's very easy to predict and I will be much more accurate. And then I came up with the idea today, I was telling Steve, that Washington DC could be a really good place because there's tons of awesome hotels in Washington DC. But anyway, we want to hear what you think. Go to the website and check us out. That's it, Steve. They can join our mailing list, get the email that we send every week. That's a summary of everything we've done the previous week. Other than that, Steve, I got nothing.
S: All right, Jay, thanks.
From Tik Tok (1:19:30)
The Sage Wall https://www.tiktok.com/@mysterymaven_1/video/7402640457135607073?_r=1&_t=8p345eSJvSM
S: So we're going to do a From TikTok. This is something I talked about on TikTok today. Have you guys ever heard of the Sage Wall?
E: The Sage Wall? Is that a color green?
S: No.
C: Like burning sage?
S: No. It's in a-
B: Wise wall?
E: Is it a wall that talks to you and tells you things? Yeah.
S: This is in the sage region of Montana, southwestern Montana. It is a giant wall made of granite blocks. It could be 20 plus feet high in some places. The granite rocks are huge. The biggest one would weigh 91 tons.
C: So it's like a sheer, it's a natural, like sheer face?
S: That's the question. That's the question. Is it natural formation or is it-
E: Person made?
C: Person made! Yes!
S: Is it constructed? Is it a construction? Is it an artifact? So the one of the listeners sent us the TikTok. It's from an episode of Joe Rogan with Joe Rogan saying, now, people are saying this is a natural formation. It says, shut the F up. It's clearly man-made. These are rocks piled on top of each other, fit together. Anyone looking at this would know it's obviously man-made, right? And, Joe Rogan, of course, is not an archaeologist or a geologist or an expert of any kind, as far as I know. And he is just, he is basing his opinion on a very superficial, casual look at, the superficial features of this wall. And of course, when you do look at it, without context, if I just showed you a picture of this, you might think, okay, that looks like a wall that somebody constructed. Although, if you see the scale and you see how big it is, then you're like, damn, who built that? You would need a crane to move the 91-ton blocks into place. That's not like somebody's backyard stone wall.
C: But wait, Steve, is there actual controversy here?
S: No. No, there isn't. There is no actual controversy here.
C: We know that it's not.
S: We know that it's not.
E: It's not a scientific, right.
S: What's interesting is the lines of evidence that actual scientists use to determine that this is a natural formation. So first of all, in this region of southwestern Montana, there are structures like this all over the place. It's not like this is just one thing and there's nothing else around it, anything like it. It's not like Stonehenge. You know what I mean?
E: This has a tourist gift shop thing.
S: Well, it's on private property.
C: Was he talking to somebody in this clip?
S: Yeah.
C: And was that person like, yo, zoom out?
S: No, he was agreeing with them. So there's lots of similar formations. This one just happens to be straight for a period of time, like for a couple hundred yards or something.
C: Sometimes things are straight in nature.
S: But there's plenty of examples of this. So what this is, what geologists say this is, is a basaltic formation. Basically you have this like layers of rock which then get pushed up by plate tectonics and then erode away. And when it cools, right, so it raises up first as like magma I guess, and then when it cools it cracks. And granite cracks in long straight lines. Right? So, and then when those cracks erode, they get rounded off. So yeah, kind of looks superficially like a constructed wall. Again, not when you know the scale, then it's, then it becomes implausible. But, but you know, having like this flat sort of surface, you also notice that the pictures of it are always from one side, right? They're from the side that looks like a wall. The other side doesn't look quite so much like a wall because, again, it's like the ground is uplifted, so it drops on one side but not on the other what I mean? Like it goes up and then drops. And you're looking at the drop, so that face looks like a wall from that side.
C: What a weird thing to have a strong opinion about something you've never actually seen in person.
S: Or just like completely ignore what the scientists have to say and just tell them to shut the F up. It's obviously man-made. So therefore, some ancient civilization must have made it, right? That's the whole point. Like this is an ancient civilization thing.
C: Or aliens.
S: Or aliens.
C: Yeah, therefore aliens. Exactly.
S: Therefore aliens. All right. So here's the knockout punch though, right? This is the knockout punch as to how scientists know it's a natural formation. Any of you have a guess, by the way, because it's kind of fascinating.
E: Crystals.
S: Well, there's the structure of the rock itself.
B: It's actually, if you look at it, it's connected. It's one piece, right? Does the cracking not go through the whole depth of it?
S: Yeah, the cracks go very deep. Yeah, but you're right. This is one rock that would then cool, then cracked. Absolutely. Alright, but here's the big evidence, right? This is the one that's like unavoidable conclusion. The granite that these are made of, that's igneous rock, right? It cools out of magma. And granite is this coarse-grained rock that has a lot of crystals in it, of mica and quartz, for example. And it creates a fingerprint structure of the granite. Now, if this was one rock, the wall, right, was one rock that just formed in place, you would expect there to be a smooth, continuous structure throughout.
B: Oh, nice!
S: If this were a constructed wall, then you would expect different rocks with slightly different structure mixed together, right? And in fact, sometimes, like with things that we know were constructed like the pyramids, we can identify the quarry that they came from by matching this fingerprint in the grains in the granite, right? So this is all one rock. There's really no way around that conclusion.
E: And what did that TikToker have? Like, what, three million views or something probably about his stupid theory?
S: Yeah. There's also, by the by, a complete absence of things like tool marks, right? There's no tool marks. There's no signs of construction. There's no tools. There's no artifacts. And it's also in the middle of nowhere. I don't mean with reference to our civilization. I mean, even the native people in this region wouldn't set up shop here. It's by nothing. It's not like there's a river nearby or a hunting ground nearby. There's no evidence that anybody ever lived here for any period of time. There's not a single artifact. So why would they build this massive wall? Which would have taken enormous resources for them to do that in this particular location and without a single fragment of evidence that there was ever anybody here?
B: To eff with us in the future, right?
C: Do you know what I sometimes wonder contributes to this kind of thinking? And what I really mean is like the superficiality of this kind of thinking, the initial like urge or thought. Right, but like if you think any deeper about it, of course, like obviously it's debunkable, but even beyond it looks like it was made by human hands. I don't know. I had this experience, and I'm curious if you guys have had this experience, where I was camping recently with some friends, and we were going on this hike on this mountain, and there was just this moment, I call it the Disneyfication of our minds, where I was like, this feels like I'm on a set. And it was like, I think we are so divorced from nature in our day-to-day lives, and then we actively experience approximations of nature in this really artificial way all the time, that when we're in real nature, it feels artificial.
E: Because we don't have a good sense of what reality is.
C: Isn't that so, like, dystopian?
J: Yeah, I mean, Cara, the similarity for me is like when I look at the clouds, a lot of times I'm like, wow, those look like a painting of clouds.
C: Right. Because you're more exposed to paintings of clouds that looking up. That's so sad. Because we spend so much of our lives inside.
S: It's also, I think, a manifestation of, sometimes nature involves regular straight lines you know what I mean? Especially when you're dealing with minerals.
C: And geometric patters, yeah.
S: A very iconic example is the Bimini Road. It looks like a cobblestone pathway going into the ocean. With these regular hexagonal paving stones, right? But it's just this certain kind of rock that crystallizes in that hexagonal pattern. And that's it. It's a repeating regular pattern that occurs in nature, just like crystals, right? I mean, that's the thing. People say, oh, there's no straight lines in nature. Again, if you ignore all those crystals that exist in nature, I think they're confusing biology. There's no straight lines in biology.
C: But even there are. But we have crystals in our bodies, too.
S: Well, yeah, I know.
C: So if you go small enough.
S: It's a good rule of thumb, like if you're looking at an X-ray of somebody, if you see a perfectly straight line, that's probably a foreign body, right?
E: Something inside.
S: That's a good rule of thumb. But if you're looking at rocks, seeing straight lines should not surprise you. That absolutely can be a natural formation.
C: And veining can be straight. And the weird thing, too, is that so many of these things that we think of as human produced because they were, were modeled after nature. Like if you go back far enough, that was the original inspiration. But we're so divorced from that.
S: It's not just Rogan's. It's many, many videos on this, many, many people who are saying this is clearly a construction and therefore aliens, or whatever, or ancient civilizations. And none of them address or account for this scientific consensus. There's a strong, powerful scientific consensus here built on really good arguments and really good evidence, and it's utterly ignored. And by the cranks and charlatans out there, the Graham Handcocks of the world who think that everything is ancient civilizations.
C: It's just so easy to like look at a Wikipedia article. And I'm not saying that's the end-all be-all, but like you could start there.
S: You could start there.
C: Right? Like in your problem pretty quickly. It's like with homeopathy. Any of my friends who like have something homeopathic in their cupboard or they're into like natural bullshit, I'm always like, do you actually know what homeopathy is? Because if you just read the Wikipedia article, you would be embarrassed to have this on your shelf.
S: They probably don't unless they're really into woo, but yeah, but many of them do not.
C: Yeah, because once you learn what it is, then you either have that motivated reason where you go, well, they're just using the term that's not actually what they're doing, so they'll justify it that way, or they'll just pretend they never read it. Yeah.
S: It can't be that, because that's stupid. That's basically the response.
C: It's like, yeah, and it is. Why do you think I think it's bullshit?
S: And often it's like, it's worse than what you said. That's usually if they actually do investigate it. It's even worse than I imagined based upon what you were telling me. Alright guys, let's go on with science or fiction.
Science or Fiction (1:31:15)
Theme: None
Item #1: A recent study finds using a mixture of 50% crushed glass in potting soil results in faster growth rates than using 100% potting soil.[6]
Item #2: Astronomers have identified a near-Earth asteroid rich in lithium, estimated to have enough lithium to meet current demand for over 200 years.[7]
Item #3: MIT engineers have developed the first comprehensive mathematical model of wind turbine aerodynamics.[8]
| Answer | Item |
|---|---|
| Fiction | Item #2 |
| Science | Item #1 |
| Science | Item #3 |
| Host | Result |
|---|---|
| Steve |
| Rogue | Guess |
|---|
Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.
S: Each week I come up with three science news items, four facts, two real, and one fake, and I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. You ready for three regular news items here? All right, here we go. Item number one. A recent study finds using a mixture of 50% crushed glass and potting soil results in faster growth rates than using 100% potting soil. Item number two, astronomers have identified a near-Earth asteroid rich in lithium estimated to have enough lithium to meet current demand for over 200 years. And item number three, MIT engineers have developed the first comprehensive mathematical model of wind turbine aerodynamics. Bob, go first.
B: Oh boy. All right, so 50% crushed glass in potting soil, faster growth rates. That makes a lot of sense because people will put their hands in the dirt, get cut, bleed into the soil, and that helps plants grow. So that makes absolutely perfect sense.
E: What makes the grass grow? Blood, blood, blood.
B: Let's see, we've got a near-Earth asteroid rich in lithium. 200 years. First off, that's just too – well, I don't know how lucky it is because to get it and extract it would be ridiculously expensive. And the fact that they are saying 200 years, I mean, do they really have a good estimate of how much is in there? I would think that if they found an asteroid, they would say, yeah, we could – it's enough for 2,000 years or whatever. That kind of thing. That's a little fishy to me. All right. So we've got a mathematical – comprehensive mathematical model of wind turbine aerodynamics. Damn, my gut reaction to that one is that that type of aerodynamics is nigh-unsolvable, just so complex that it's just like – the fact that they're – now that they're saying they've got a comprehensive model is not believable. But is that what I'm thinking of? Is it turbine aerodynamics? That's really stupidly hard.
S: And therefore–
B: Crap. And therefore – all right. The 200 years is really irking me. So I'll say that the lithium one is fake.
S: OK, Cara.
C: So mixture of 50% crushed glass results in faster growth rates than using 100% potting soil. I feel like is this really that interesting? I don't know. I have lots of house plants and my potting soil has rocks and shit in it. And I think that you want there to be like little pockets in your soil with stuff that's not soil so that you can aerate roots and things like that. And it depends on the plants too. Like orchids, you don't even plant in soil. They're in like wood chips and stuff. So, I don't know, I feel like probably that is science. I have no idea on this near, I know that we're looking at asteroids for mining metals, but I don't know if lithium is one of those metals. And I still don't think it's feasible. But is it fiction? And then the first comprehensive mathematical model of wind turbine aerodynamics – it's so funny because, Bob, you were like, my first impression is that this is unsolvable. And my first impression was, wait, they haven't done this already. So clearly, I don't know what I'm talking about. But I don't know. I got to go with my gut. And my gut was like, wait, we don't already have a comprehensive mathematical model of wind turbine aerodynamics? Like I can't imagine that there aren't lots of people working on that and haven't been for years. So I think I have to go with the asteroid as well. Maybe it's not lithium. Maybe you picked a different metal or something.
S: Okay, Evan.
E: Oh, okay. Some good points made. I'll do the first one, mixture of 50% crushed glass in potting soil resulting in a faster growth rate. Do you remember that guy who got up in front of Congress and said he is not a potted plant? Do you remember them when that happened?
C: I do not.
E: In the 80s. I think it was the Ollie North trial or something, which has- Well, it has nothing to do with this, but it got me thinking about this. I am not a potted plant. And therefore, yeah, okay, right. Cara, I think good points. There's, I think, reason why you would want to have something, rock, glass, maybe something in the mixture to create space. Why, though? Yeah, right, when you have your lawn, when you're supposed to poke all the holes in your lawn to allow the grass kind of to grow more efficiently, perhaps it's along those lines. So I think that one's right. And then the lithium, and that, yeah, the asteroid. Okay, you're not gonna get it, so there's that. I mean, they identified it, okay, to meet current demands for over 200 years. Probably, probably. And then the last one. The first comprehensive mathematical model of wind turbine aerodynamics. Didn't know they hadn't done this already. This is probably bigger news than I realize because I just realized that they hadn't done this, so no clue. But Bob, I think you brought up some good points. I think I'll lean towards you. I'm going to ride your coattails on this one. I'll go with the lithium fiction.
B: GWB.
S: All right, and Jay.
E: Here it is.
J: So I've been thinking long and hard about this putting crushed glass in the potting soil. The first thing that occurred to me was does it help with the water distribution or does the glass help the water stay up in the soil because maybe the water is adhering to the glass somehow? Then I thought about it, I don't think that's it. But I do think that one is science for some oddball reason. There's some reason, some benefit that the glass is providing when it's not there. I just don't, I have no idea. But that one just seems like, okay, sure, somebody experimented with that and it has some benefit. Second one here, astronomers have identified this near-Earth asteroid rich in lithium. I mean, what does near-Earth mean? What does rich in lithium mean? And demand for over 200 years according to what estimate was what? I mean, there's a lot of questions in this one that seem a little weird and vague to me.
S: There are answers to all those questions.
J: Well, not that you're going to give it to me.
S: Well, near-Earth asteroid is a specific definition, right?
J: What does it mean?
S: You know, that is a category of asteroids that are covered in certain distance of the Earth.
B: I've talked about them many times.
S: And they don't have to estimate future demand. If you take the current demand you could meet current demand for over 200 years.
J: Gotcha. Okay. So still, I don't know. Let me move on to the next one and I'll compare the two. The MIT engineers have developed the first comprehensive mathematical model of wind turbine aerodynamics. Well, of course they did. It makes perfect sense to be science as well because they're constantly looking for ways to improve on these renewable energy technologies. So I mean that one seems like a no-brainer. The first one seems like, okay, I don't know what the mechanism is, but it seems like that seems legit. Something about this one in the middle here, I don't like – what's the point then? You know? What's the point? We're not flying a spaceship to go get this stuff anywhere in the near future. How about that, Steve? That's not going to happen. It's pointless. That one's fake. There you go.
S: So you all agree on number two, so we'll just take these in order, I guess. A recent study finds that using a mixture of 50% crushed glass and potting soil results in faster growth rates than using 100% potting soil. You guys all think this one is science, and this one is... Science. Now-
B: Blood, baby.
S: It's not the blood, Bob, and I'll tell you why. Because they rolled the glass to smooth it out. So there was no sharp edges.
C: So they're just pebbles.
S: So they're basically like grains of glass sand.
E: Mini marbles.
S: The point of this was to see if they could use recycled glass to basically just do something with it that was useful.
E: Recyclable.
C: They can't just use recycled glass to make more glass?
J: Recyclable.
B: Nice, baby.
S: Yes, but this is, I guess, another use for it. Recyclable glass. They crushed it, they rolled it, tumbled it to smooth it out, and then they tested it. They had different tests where they were looking at between 0% and 100% glass versus – they did all different ratios. No glass, 100% soil, all glass, no soil, and different ratios in the middle. When you get over 50% of the glass, that's when you had the optimal growth rate.
C: Steve, no offense, but this sounds like a science fair project.
S: Yeah, it kind of does.
C: I mean, how did nobody do this before?
S: Now, they did find that it does a couple things, and Cara, I think you mentioned these. One is that it aerates the soil and allows more oxygen to get to the roots.
J: What about water?
S: It has greater water retention.
J: There you go.
S: And now this may have been a quirky finding, but the plants that were grown in the 100% potting soil mix had fungal growth, whereas the ones with the glass did not have fungal growth.
E: It's an antifungal?
C: Well, it's probably just there's less organic material there. I mean, it's probably harder to get a fungus on glass.
S: What's interesting is that they did not use any fertilizer, and of course there would be more nutrients in the 100% potting soil, but I guess the other factors outweighed the nutrient factor. That's what they were trying to figure out, like where would be the balance, where would be the optimal ratio.
C: It's kind of like you were saying before with like how leaves aren't the most efficient, but it kind of doesn't matter because they're very passive.
S: They're cheap to make for the tree as well.
C: Exactly, yeah, so it's a good bet. They evolve to be the most efficient based on their resources.
S: Yeah, exactly. So yeah, that one was pretty easy, but that was science. All right, number two, astronomers have identified a near-Earth asteroid rich in lithium, estimated to have enough lithium to meet current demand for over 200 years. You guys all think this one is the fiction, and this one is the fiction. This is the fiction.
B: Yeah, baby!
S: Even though I don't agree with any of your arguments, but...
C: Right for the wrong reasons.
S: Whether or not we can use it doesn't matter. We have identified asteroids that have nickel and cobalt, but not lithium. Lithium is probably not common in asteroids. The study that inspired this actually is really cool. I almost used this as one of the science. New technology extracts lithium from brines inexpensively and sustainably. So they found a technique to get lithium out of salty, briny water, which is at 40% of the cost of current methods. So this would be less than half.
B: What's the downside?
S: There is no downside. It's less toxic, uses less water, and it's faster and it's cheaper.
B: That's wonderful.
S: So they're saying the research team estimated that this approach would cost $3,500 to $4,400 per ton of high-purity lithium hydroxide compared to the current method, which is $9,100 per ton in terms of the cost of extraction. Now, the market price of battery-grade lithium is $15,000 per ton, but it spiked in 2022 at $80,000 per ton because of demand. So, anyway, the current method is to let the brine sit in pools for like a year. That's the current method. And it has to be under- And it just separates naturally? Well, it evaporates down. You're basically letting it evaporate down to concentrate it, concentrate it until you have a high concentration sludge, basic lithium sludge, and then you have to purify from that using chemicals and stuff, and it's not good. This uses redox-coupled electrodialysis. So that method uses less electricity, is faster and cheaper, and the overall...
C: And probably less dirty too.
S: Less dirty and less water use, so just a better method overall. So these kind of techniques are important because we are struggling to keep up with the growing demand for lithium because of the battery market. And so this is good. This will enable us to get more resources of lithium.
C: Bob, that was like the most wholesome thing I think I've ever heard you say when you go, that's wonderful.
B: Yeah, it's pretty sweet. Trying to think of a downside.
S: It's a win-win, just a technological advancement. It's a win-win.
B: Steve just wasn't excited enough. I had to throw some excitement in there.
S: I was excited on the inside. All right. MIT engineers have developed the first comprehensive mathematical model of wind turbine aerodynamics. That is science. And yeah, I was a little surprised that we didn't already have a workable, at least workable theory of turbine aerodynamics. And in fact, we don't. We're still going on a pretty old mathematical model. And it breaks down under a lot of conditions. It just does not account for...
E: Boeing adapted it.
S: It doesn't account for... You have to account for the design of the blades, the angle of the wind, the angle of the rotators, and also the wake that one wind turbine creates for any wind turbines that are downwind from it. And we don't have a way of mathematically modeling this and therefore using those models to engineer not only the panels but how to orient them in a field of wind turbines. So basically we trial and error it, you know what I mean? We just sort of tweak it. By the way, we're still using the momentum theory equations developed by Albert Betts in 1920, but they just do not work for wind turbines. So not only that, but the article was saying that some of the calculations not only are quantitatively wrong, they're qualitatively wrong. They predict that forces will increase in situations where they decrease and vice versa. So it actually gets the direction of the effect incorrect. But now, these MIT scientists have developed an accurate mathematical model that doesn't break down, that accounts for all of these variables. So the hope is that this will be useful in designing more efficient wind turbines and more efficient placement of wind turbines. But also not only it's also that they're actively managed, that wind turbines have to be oriented and you have to do things in terms of like how fast you let the blade spin, etc. So there's a lot of active management happening of these wind turbines in different windy conditions. And maybe this would mitigate a lot of that as well, if we could sort of model it up front rather than constantly having to make adjustments. So, this could be a huge win in terms of just improving the overall efficiency of wind turbines as a source of energy. So, we talked today about improving solar panels. This will improve wind farms. We'll get more lithium for our batteries. So, there's a theme winding its way through the show this week. This is all good for renewable energy.
B: Yeah, baby.
S: All right, good job, everyone.
E: Yay. Nice.
S: Evan, give us a quote.
Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:47:52)
“The real trouble begins when confirmation bias distorts your active pursuit of facts.”
– ― David McRaney, You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself, (description of author)
E: "The real trouble begins when confirmation bias distorts your active pursuit of facts." Oh yeah, always remember that. David McRaney from his book You Are Not So Smart, Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself. And I must pick up this book.
B: I like it.
E: Yeah, exactly. Gotta add that to my collection.
S: I do have a quibble, though, with the quote. Because I think the real trouble begins way before it affects your active pursuit of facts. Confirmation affects your passive pursuit of facts, your subconscious curating of reality, of information. Not just your pursuit of facts, but just how you passively absorb them from your environment. That's what makes it really dangerous, because it's just happening in the background.
C: It's shaping in the background, how you then later go out and pursue facts.
S: Yes. By the time you're at the point where you're actively seeking supporting facts, like you've already been-
C: Super biased.
S: Yeah, exactly. Confirmation bias has already taken its toll.
E: We will be able to talk more with David about it because he will also be at SciCon. 2024 at the end of October out in Las Vegas. And we hope that you will join both David and us out there. Love to see you.
S: Now, I'm saying-
B: Join us.
S: Maybe taking that quote out of context, he may say all of that. I haven't read the book, but maybe he says all of this before he gets to this one sentence.
C: Right.
S: Out of context, this one sentence could be interpreted. We don't want to mislead our listeners. Confirmation bias goes way beyond your active pursuit of facts. He probably says that before he gets to this point. All right.Well, thank you all for joining me this week.
B: Sure, man.
C: Thanks Steve.
J: You got it, brother.
S: —and until next week, episode 999 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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- ↑ www.eurekalert.org: Planets contain more water than thought
- ↑ www.sciencenews.org: Why MPOX is a global health emergency — again
- ↑ phys.org: 'Masters of shape-shifting': How darkling beetles conquered the world
- ↑ www.forbes.com: See The New Photos From The First-Ever Moon-Earth Flyby
- ↑ theness.com: Luminescent Solar Concentrators for Solar Power - NeuroLogica Blog
- ↑ www.acs.org: Pilot study uses recycled glass to grow plants for salsa ingredients - American Chemical Society
- ↑ www.sciencedirect.com: None
- ↑ news.mit.edu: MIT engineers’ new theory could improve the design and operation of wind farms