SGU Episode 257
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| SGU Episode 257 |
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| 14th June 2010 |
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| (brief caption for the episode icon) |
| Skeptical Rogues |
| S: Steven Novella |
B: Bob Novella |
J: Jay Novella |
E: Evan Bernstein |
| Quote of the Week |
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened. |
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| SGU Podcast archive |
| Forum Discussion |
Introduction
You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.
S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Monday, June 14th, 2010 and this is your host Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella–
B: Hey everybody.
S: Jay Novella–
J: Hey guys.
S: and Evan Bernstein.
E: Hey everyone. How are you doing tonight?
B: Okay.
J: Quite well.
E: Good.
S: No Rebecca tonight because we are on the lead up to TAM recording schedule. We going to have a little bit of a weird recording schedule the next few weeks and Rebecca was not available tonight and she has no internet access.
J: That's because her and Sid bought a house.
S: That's right.
J: She hasn't been able to get internet and cable, I guess, to the house yet.
E: Yeah. But it's a big secret. Don't tell anyone, folks.
S: They're moving into a new flat. Is it still a flat if it's a house?
B: No. Wait wait, no, a flat's an apartment, isn't it?
S: Are they moving into a house house, or is it like a condo or what is it?
J: I think it's a house house.
S: But no cable yet.
J: Bob, if she has a house, that means she has a basement which means she could run a haunt in her house.
B: Not necessarily. Florida houses don't have basements but that's because of the water table.
J: Well, no. If she's in England she has a root cellar.
B: Yeah, right.
J: Which is even creepier.
This Day in Skepticism (1:19)
E: Well, on this day in 1648 Margaret Jones was hanged in Boston for witchcraft. The first such execution for the Massachusetts colony.
S: How many people were killed?
E: Yeah, they didn't stop with Margaret. It was 20 people.
S: Were executed.
E: We executed for witchcraft.
J: Wow. And we got off lucky. Didn't–in Europe wasn't it a much bigger phenomenon in Europe?
S: A conservative number is around 60,000 deaths directly attributable to the witch hunts.
J: Wow.
S: Depending on how you count it. There were 20 people executed in Salem. 19 hung and that one guy, Giles Corey was crushed to death cause he refused to enter a plea.
News Items
Hayabusa Returns (2:02)
S: Well Bob, tell us about Hayabusa returning to Earth.
B: Yeah, this is pretty cool. I totally forgot about this guy but this is an interesting story. The Japanese space agency known as JAXA, Jay-Ay-Ex-Ay, completed a mission recently to bring a sample of an asteroid back to Earth. This is something that's never been accomplished before and regardless of what happens there has never been a spacecraft that touched down on an asteroid and then came back to Earth. So regardless if they even brought anything back with them this was a first. Like I said, the only real question that remains as of the taping of this podcast anyway is whether the canister they retrieved in Australia has any asteroid. If you remember back in 2003, JAXA's Hayabusa craft began a 2 year journey to an asteroid named Itokawa and I wish I could say the mission went swimmingly but I can't. The craft really experienced some nasty technical difficulties. It seems likes throughout the whole way, or at least through a lot of it. They just kept hitting problem after problem. They even had some–some solar flair even messed up with it's power source so the energy that it had was less than they had anticipated and some of the biggest failures, though, was they had this metal ball that they would shoot–or they planned on shooting at the asteroid to collect rock samples and that failed. And then there was another mechanism, which they were planning on using to stir up the dust around the lander on the asteroid and that failed as well to collect any samples. So you might think that it was a total bust but the real hope at this point is that they hope that the dust that stirred up during the landing kind of just was swirling around and entered the canister–the collection canister so that's really all their hope is on that.
S: So they really don't know if there's going to be anything in that canister.
B: Oh, yeah, they have no idea at this point. It doesn't look good to me.
J: Is it on it's way back to Earth or it can analyze it.
B: It came back to Earth. The craft burned up in the atmosphere but it ejected this heat protected canister which landed at the Woomera Protected Area which is a restricted military zone in south Australian desert. Now some conspiracy hypothesists may say that in reality this whole 7 year mission was a subtle attempt to get access to this restricted military zone. But, ya know, I'm just saying.
J: Look at that. It landed in Area 51. Could we go get it?
B: Yeah. Yeah.
(laughter)
B: But, being silly, but I want to congratulate JAXA, though. Even if there's no sample which would really be nasty, but even if there's no sample, it was a great effort that tested lots of new technologies, like, for example, sampling and retrieval, electrical propulsion, autonomous navigation. So lots of interesting new technologies and this really was a test bed. Problems like this are to be expected.
J: At this point any kind of space exploration is awesome.
B: Yeah, right.
J: In the time when we're worried that it's all gonna go away and dry up–
B: Yeah.
J: I'm really happy to hear about stuff like this.
B: That's true. But you really got to hand it to JAXA, though, because they relentlessly attacked every difficulty that arose creatively solving problems, and according to some people it was Apollo 13 in scale in terms of how difficult these problems were.
J: Wow.
B: But granted, lives were not on the line, but still they had to go through a lot. On the way home they lost half of their engines kicked out and they had to figure out how to get home with only half the engines running so they did an amazing job.
J: I don't like you comparing it to Apollo 13 because it being unmanned is one thing and the other thing was they got those people back to Earth safely with an enormous amount of effort. Nothing can match that.
B: Yeah, I'm not comparing it and I did kind of say that not in terms of the lives but in terms of creative problem solving it was similar. Some people are comparing it.
J: Well, if they make a movie about it I might believe it then.
S: Cause it's not real unless Hollywood does a movie about it.
B: As you can imagine this is a huge, huge news story in Japan. They're really playing it up. It's all over the place, cause this is–it's quite a feat. Regardless of what happens this is a first, so that's great. If they have a sample, even better, cause you learn lots of things about the solar system–because we don't have–think about it–the material we have from asteroids really is just meteorites, right, that have landed on the earth and they've gone through the atmosphere. They're not the same.
S: Yeah.
B: When you come through the atmosphere–they're not the same.
E: Burn, yeah. Stuff burns away and, yeah.
B: This will be pristine. This will be pristine rock and that will be invaluable.
J: Do you guys think that one day we will park satellites in orbit and just mine them?
S: Oh yeah. Mine asteroids?
E: You mean bring them into a close orbit and then we send up vehicles and stuff to start plowing them for their platinum and all they're goodies?
J: Yeah. And how about–
B: Absolutely.
J: One thing that I remember thinking about when I was younger, why not put it in the same orbit that the earth is in, but just behind the earth. Would that mean that it would have to be the same size as the earth, though, in order to be in the same orbit?
B: The velocity would be very different then. It couldn't have the same velocity because the mass would be so different, so, at some point, it would intersect with the earth. So I don't think that would work, Jay.
E: You would need something to constantly regulate it's distance from the earth, right?
S: You put it at a Lagrange point and it will sit there.
B: Yeah. There ya go. Problem solved.
S: A Lagrange point is a–if you have a map, a three dimensional map of the gravitational fields of the earth and the sun, for example, or any large body orbiting another large body, then those fields hit a pit, or they dip to a minimum. So anything that is at those points it's like being at the bottom of a hill, it's stuck there and it won't move away so it's actually fixed in position relative to the earth. So it would be perfect for something that we want to put someplace and have it stay there in terms of it's relationship to the earth.
J: It's kind of like drafting, right?
S: No.
(laughter)
J: Come on, a little bit.
S: But to complete that discussion there are a total of 5 Lagrangian points. One in the orbit of, lets say the earth, in front of it. One behind the earth in it's orbit. One on the opposite side of Earth's orbit. One between the earth and the sun and one outside the orbit on a line between the earth and the sun but farther than the earth. So five points total. A few of which would be pretty close. But also, there are asteroids that are said to quote unquote "stalk" the earth. For example, recently discovered the 2009 BD. It's not stationary with respect to the earth but it does–cause it interacts with the earth's gravity and it's not at a Lagrangian point, but it does get close to the earth and will sort of corkscrew around the earth's orbit and stay very close to use for a while and then maybe drift away and come back in it's orbit. It's got a very weird orbit but it does stay close to the earth.
Einstein's Brain (9:22)
NPR: Einstein's Brain Unlocks Some Mysteries Of The Mind
S: Jay, tell us about the amazing adventure of Einstein's brain.
J: So this is a very interesting story. Before I get into the story let me just ask you guys a few questions. One, what makes you think Einstein was so smart? What was it about his brain that makes him smart? Some things that I'm sure most skeptics have heard was that, "Einstein used 10% of his brain where the regular person only uses 2 or 2.5%." You guys have heard of that, right?
B: Oh, course.
E: Or something similar to it, yeah.
S: That's only be debunked about a million times on the internet and elsewhere, I believe, in our publication.
E: Of course. That's what my phrenologist says.
S: That's right.
J: Here's one that is less common, but I've also heard and I believe I also used to think about this when I was younger and not knowing much about the brain but another thing that people think is that Einstein's brain had more hills and valleys on the exterior part of his brain.
S: Sulci and gyri?
J: Yeah. So, that's basically the shape of the brain on the outside that makes it look like a brain. All those hills and valleys and little bumps and stuff that are on the outside of somebodies brain.
S: Yes.
J: But, Steve, you said at one point that that does not mean you're smarter, correct?
S: Well, not comparing one individual to another. There's too much variation to say that but that certainly is true when you compare species. The–what those do–what the gyri and sulci do–if you imagine the layers of the cortex and then fold it upon themselves like a ribbon that's what forms that structure and what the essentially does is it increases the surface area of the brain. So it's just a way of squeezing more computational surface area into a smaller three dimensional space which was obviously important to the evolution of our bigger, juicier brains. But you can't compare person A to person B and go, "Oh, he's got to be smarter because his brain looks smarter on an MRI scan. He's got more sulci." Doesn't work that way.
B: Steve, why not also fill in the valleys between the hills? Between the gyri or the sulci or whatever they are?
S: They're squished together. It's not significant.
B: Oh, okay.
S: I mean, when you get old and your brain shrivels up and atrophies then you see expanded sulci and spaces but–
J: Your brain really shrivels up, huh?
S: Yeah, doesn't that suck?
J: What the hell?
B: Yeah, but Steve, I thought the idea, though, behind that was that they're not sure if the brain is really truly atrophying really, hugely, impacting cognition or is it just paring away the unessential parts of the brain that really aren't needed.
J: Yeah, like motor skills and deep thinking.
(laughter)
B: Barring, of course, dementia.
J: Yeah, right Bob?
S: Well, that's a complicated question. First of all those are not mutually exclusive cause both those things could be occurring at the same time. The pruning hypothesis where it's just cutting back neurons were sitting there waiting to be recruited but they haven't been, so they just go away at some point, but even still you imagine that there's fewer neurons around to be recruited so–after 50 or so we do start to lose our capacity to learn new things. We lose our flexibility. At least most of us. Some people really don't and they're brains don't atrophy as much, either.
J: Bastards.
S: So, some people genetically are built for more neurological longevity. But, yeah, you can't–I don't think it's accurate to say that there's no relationship between the atrophy of the brain as we age and the loss of cognitive ability. There absolutely is a relationship but it's complicated and we're not sure exactly what it is.
B: Yeah.
E: Yeah, it's not a black and white issue. It's more of a grey matter.
B: Oh.
J: Oh, wow, Evan, really?
(laughter)
J: Alright, so guys, let me continue. It's basically a story that I'm going to quickly tell everyone and then we'll discuss it.
B: Alright.
E: I love stories. Okay. I'm ready.
J: So this man, named Thomas Harvey–
B: Harvey.
E: Harvey.
B: Harvey.
J: and he–he actually performed the autopsy on Einstein at Princeton. Now this back in–Now this was when, '55 I believe Einstein died?
B: Yeah, around there.
E: Yes.
J: Okay. So, this is what the article said. The article said that during the autopsy routine the brain would be removed, examined, and then put back in the person's body for burial. Okay?
S: Which, by the way–we don't do that today. I don't know–that sounds odd. We don't put the brain back in the head. You take it out, you put it in a jar of formaldehyde and pickle it for 2 weeks, so that you can slice it up and look at it. Cause otherwise it's too much like jelly. You can't really slice into it. So that bit of that story certainly is not what's done today.
J: Well maybe he took it out–cause it did say that he did put it in formaldehyde–
S: Well that's routine. That's routine.
J: He was preparing it. He kept it out for the amount of time necessary and then instead of putting it back after the examination of the brain he kept it.
S: Yeah. Well, I think probably what happened is normally you would take it out, you pickle it for 2 weeks then you do what's called brain cutting. You slice it all the way through and you look for pathology and you look for the structures and whatnot and that's it. Then slides get filed away and the rest of it get thrown out, gets discarded as medical waste. Or, or, what can happen, sometimes the family may request that every last scrap of material gets returned and gets buried with the body.
J: Alright. I'm sure that's–
S: That happens sometimes, too. In fact, that happens even with–sometimes people will donate their body to science and their body will be dissected by medical students. Sometimes those bodies are just cremated. Other times everything's got to be put back–you don't put it back together but basically all bundled up and then sent back to the family to be buried or whatever they want to do with it. So–
E: That is a typical Jewish custom. I don't know how religious or close Einstein was to strict Jewish customs but I can tell you that that is Jewish customs. You bury as much of the remains as you possibly can.
S: Yeah. So he probably–he held back the brain. He didn't do with it whatever was normally supposed to happen to it.
J: No. He stole it. That's what happened.
S: Yeah. He stole it. Yeah.
E: Brain thief.
B: I'm going to donate my body to science fiction.
(laughter)
J: Alright. Continuing on–
S: You stole that joke from somebody.
J: So Thomas Harvey, because of what he did, because he kept Einstein's brain, he lost his job. Which seems to be the appropriate thing to take place.
E: Bad trade.
S: Cause that was unethical. What he did.
J: And during that process he claimed that Einstein's son, Hans, gave him permission but that claim was denied by the family.
S: What about Frans?
(laughter)
J: So, as I'm reading through this I realize, of course, hindsight being 20/20, I don't disagree with what the guy did. I think it was obvious to him at the time that there was something important about Einstein's brain and it should be studied further. Shouldn't just be thrown away.
S: Yeah. It kind of makes you wish that somebody at NASA thought that about the moon landing footage.
B: Oh my God.
S: "Ya know, I'm going to put this aside and not put it–file it with the rest of the tapes that are going to get erased and reused."
B: Yeah. Or, "Lets make a couple of backups, just in case. Or put it somewhere else. I don't know."
S: Alright. Anyway.
J: I've really gotta–let me sprint to the finish guys.
B: Thanks for reminding me.
S: Alright, go ahead.
E: Yes.
J: Alright. So I mentioned that I don't disagree. What Thomas Harvey wanted was he wanted neuro-anatomists to analyse Einstein's brain and see if they could find something out about it that we didn't know about the human brain before and that was his goal but as the story goes–so 40 years passes and then a writer named, Paterniti, he heard about all these events that we just went through and he decided that–I guess he wanted to write about what had taken place so he tracks down and finds Harvey. Okay?
S: Did he sue him?
J: No. This guys an author.
S: So he didn't give him a Paterniti suit?
(laughter)
J: Oh my god. You're on a roll tonight, Steve.
B: Oh my god.
J: Any who, so, he tracks down Harvey, gets into a long conversation with him and, I guess, between the conversation and the two of them going back and forth they mutually decide the brain should be returned to Einstein's family and, I guess they new at the time that his granddaughter Evelyn was still alive so they wanted to return it to her. So Paterniti drives to Harvey's house, he described Harvey as bringing out Einstein's brain in a Tupperware jar. In a Tupperware container.
E: Tupperware.
J: Okay.
E: Ah. That would seal in the freshness, yeah.
J: So the two of them planned to drive across the country from New Jersey all the way to California where the granddaughter lived. I guess they conversation had continued during this drive and Paterniti found out that Einstein had indeed–I'm sorry, that Harvey had indeed been sending out Einstein's brain when samples were requested he would take the samples and send them to neurologists across the globe. So, when saw the brain in the Tupperware container it had been cut up. It was sliced up. So, Harvey sent 3 different samples to a scientist named Marian Diamond and she had contacted Harvey years earlier and requested samples from 3 different parts of Einstein's brain and he did end up shipping them to her but he ended up shipping them to her in an old mayonnaise jar.
B: Oh my god.
J: Okay? Not making this up.
E: Wow.
J: This was around 1980. She studied the samples. She found that Einstein's brain had normal amount of neurons but he had a higher than normal percentage of a different kind of brain cell and that cell was called a glial cell. That increase in glial cells was found especially in the parts of the brain that involved imagery and complex thinking, so that definitely made Diamond realize, "Well, this is very curious. Let me look into it." But first, Steve, why don't you tell us what a glial cell is.
B: Support cells, aren't they?
S: Yeah. It's the other kinds of cells in the brain other than neurons and they are–yeah, for many years we thought they were basically support cells.
B: Like structural cells.
S: Not just structural but they create the friendly environment for the neurons.
B: Okay.
S: Right, they're there keeping the neurons alive and happy while the neurons are doing their job of remembering and calculating and stuff.
B: Kind of like the Remora around sharks.
S: I guess.
J: So, at the time–
(laughter)
J: Diamond was now asking questions like, "Well, why would there be more of these cells here if they're really just support cells? What's the significance of there being more of them here?" And it was a very odd idea at the time to think that glial cells had anything to do with Einstein's intelligence. Being that the cells were thought to be there for perhaps structural integrity perhaps there to just be, like Steve said, like more support cells than actual cells that were there for thinking. Alright, so now we go forward another 10 years and another researcher named Steven J. Smith published a paper that changed the perception of and understanding of the brain because what he did was–he was studying neurons and he was also studying these glial cells and he speculated that glial cells also were a part of the communication that happened within the cell and that also these cells weren't only communicating chemically but they were communicating with electricity in the manner that neurons communicate. And then he kept on fleshing out his idea and he also said that these glial cells could possibly be picking up communication between neurons–neurons are communicating with each other, glial cells would be listening in on this communication and then sending that data to other parts of the brain. So he came up with this idea that the brain–it's another way that the brain could be communicating internally. Which at the time was a profound idea. They though, at the time, that only neurons were doing the heavy lifting and that even though there was a ton of other cells in the brain that they didn't think really were doing anything. Neurons were it, but once they realized, "You know what? These glial cells might actually be doing complex things like be involved in learning and memory and ideas that we have of like what does it mean to be a genius. Glial cells might have something to do with high end thinking." So, once that started that started to really open up new ideas and that started a whole different school of thought. So then yet another scientist named, Doug Fields, he reproduced Smith's research and confirmed that it was actually valid. And, at one point, Doug Fields wrote, "Now we can see scores of ways in which astrocytes could be involved in many cognitive processes." And now it's not so crazy to find that there were abnormally high numbers of astrocytes in the parts of Einstein's brain involved in imagery and mathematical ability and that sort of thing. So, that was a pretty huge milestone and a huge leap forward in our understanding of the human brain. So in 2007, Harvey died. He really didn't know that him taking Einstein's brain, actually through these steps and through these different people actually lead to a move forward in our understanding of the riddle of the mind, but it seems that he actually did have something to do with it. And, Einstein's granddaughter didn't end up wanting her grandfather's brain so Harvey, before he died, he returned the brain back to the pathology department at Princeton, where it is today.
E: Hey, can you only find out the number of astrocytes by cutting into a brain or is there a way to test it while you're still alive?
S: Yeah, you can estimate it just by knowing what the density of astrocytes are and then calculating it by volume but if you want to look at an individuals astrocyte density, yeah, you gotta stain it. You gotta cut into it.
J: So, Steve, could you just take a little–take a biopsy of somebody's brain and test it that way?
S: Yeah. You could.
E: I don't think you could do–really?
S: Yeah. Why not?
E: Well, are you supposed to be biopsying the brain for this kind of testing purposes. It's really more for diseases.
S: Well, you wouldn't do this. You wouldn't do that. You wouldn't biopsy a humans brain just out of curiosity but we do it for diagnostic purposes but it's got to be worth while to the person.
E: Right. There's got to be something going on that you're looking for the answer for a cure or something.
B: Risk benefit.
J: Steve, if they–I know it's not uncommon–brain surgery happens all the time. They open up people's skulls. They literally get in there with tools and go deep into the brain and remove tumors and do things like that. Cognitively if you did take someone's skull off, or a portion of the skull, and just cut out, say a jelly bean sized piece of the brain, under the idea that the person isn't going to bleed to death or whatever, just removing a piece of the brain then putting the skull piece back and letting the person heal. What would they lose from losing a portion of the brain that size?
B: Depends. It depends on the portion.
E: Lobotomi–You're lobotomizing a person at that point.
B: It totally depends. My guess would be that either it's totally unnoticeable or you'd be completely debilitated.
S: Bob's right. It completely depends on which jelly bean piece of brain you take out.
B: Take the hypothalamus and you're f'd.
S: For example, the right frontal lobe is largely redundant and you could do a lot of stuff to that without producing and noticeable deficits.
E: Wow.
S: And, in fact, when surgeons have to go into the brain they prefer to do the non-dominant frontal lobe because it's mostly redundant, but, you take out language cortex and you can make somebody completely lose their ability to speak, for example.
B: It'd be like a stroke, Jay. It'd be like a stroke.
J: But even a piece that small?
S: If it's critical, yeah.
J: So there is one place in your brain that a certain type of functionality is happening and there's parts of your brains which is just storage for memory, there's parts of your brain that is doing something like processing what you see or what you hear. So you're better off losing a little portion of your memory than you are like a major piece of functionality, of course, but, I thought it was more evenly distributed.
S: No. No no. It's not and it's also–memory's pretty evenly distributed but functions are localized and there's also–it's not just how localized it is it's how redundant it is. If something's really lateralized to one side you only have one piece of your brain that's doing that thing then you don't want to lose that. If you have bilateral redundancy then obviously you can afford to lose one cause the other side will make up for it. So, yeah, it depends on a lot of things. Interestingly, when reading through science news items this week–just this week was a study published by Swedish researchers from the University of Gothenburg and they were looking at astrocytes, which are a form of glial cells, and their effects on neuronal connections and function and essentially what they found is that the astrocytes are modulating the strength of the signalling between the neurons. Now, they basically are effecting how those synapses between neurons change over time. So what that means is is that the astrocytes might actually be directly involved in the formation of memories and plasticity of the brain and learning. Which, again, is just further evidence for their greatly enhanced role in actual memory function of the brain, not just, again, as support cells. So that research is ongoing and that was a huge shift in our thinking about the role of astrocytes.
Largest Radio Telescope Array (27:49)
S: Well lets go on. We have another bit of astronomy news, Bob, you're going to tell us about the largest radio telescope ever.
B: Yeah. This one's a quickie. This is the biggest radio telescope in the world and it was recently unveiled by scientists in the Netherlands. It's called LOFAR which stands Low Frequency Array. I think we touched upon this a while back. It consists of a whopping 25,000 small antennas and they're real tiny. They range in size from 50 centimeters to about 2 meters across. So they're not very big at all. And they're all spread out all over, not only the Netherlands, but also Germany, Sweden, France and Britain. And it's pretty cool. This thing is really going to do some amazing work I predict. Femke Beckhurst of the Netherlands Radio Astronomy Institute said, "Today we have launched the biggest radio telescope in the world. When you combine all the antennas you get a giant telescope with a diameter of about 1,000 kilometers," which is about 600 miles so that's pretty big. And it takes some nifty software to actually take all those separate signals and stitch them together. They're actually using a supercomputer to do some of that work. It's the Blue Gene P supercomputer which is a petaflop class supercomputer. So it's pretty fast. So with these observations that this radio telescope, or, I guess you can call it radio telescopes–So, the observations that they're going to be able to make with this–they're going to learn about the origin of the universe and some people are saying that they'll be able to go to the moment right after the big bang. Other–some other key science projects for LOFAR are what they call the epoch of re-ionization which is basically when the universe turned on. When things became. Also, things like ultra high energy cosmic rays which are a bit of a mystery, such as the one we mentioned–we mentioned one such cosmic ray a while back called the Oh My God Particle in 1991 which is probably the most energetic cosmic ray ever detected which was so powerful–imagine it was a subatomic particle with the energy of a baseball travelling at 60 miles an hour. Imagine, you get hit with one proton and it knocks you on your butt like it was a baseball travelling 60. So, amazingly fast. We're not sure what could have imparted so much energy to such a tiny thing. It was travelling so close to the speed of light it was essentially just a whisker–
S: Yeah. But to clarify, it wouldn't really knock you on your butt, right? It would just go right through you.
B: No. It's too tiny. Right. It is too tiny and it could do some damage, though, if it happened to hit the right, whatever in your body, DNA or something.
E: Well, what if it hit a computer or something? It would really screw that up.
B: That's a lot of kinetic energy. I don't know where–how all the kinetic energy would be transferred. Would it be transferred into heat. Would it fly right through? Probably–it might just fly right through.
S: Or maybe it will smash through several particles on its way.
B: Yeah. It might hit–if hit's something squarely it could start a cascade so I think if it's just right it could actually–it could be noticeable. But there's other things–the solar science and space weather, cosmic magnetism, so I'm sure this thing is going to be used for a really long time and hopefully maybe even get even bigger.
E: Hey, Bob, what's the difference between the moment of the Big Bang and the moment of first illuminosity, I think is the word you used?
B: Well, I believe it was 100,000 years or 1,000 years, it was a lot of time before things calmed down enough. Things were just so energetic that light–any photons that might have been generated were just bouncing around all over the place and they really couldn't settle down and just take a straight line any direction so there's nothing to see if you look back in visible light there's nothing to see cause all the photons are just kinda bouncing around. But also this epoch of re-ionization–that's kind of a different term than I'm used to. They refer to it as when things became luminous so I think it depends on–are they talking about the first stars, the first galaxies, the first quasars?
S: I guess so.
B: If that's what they're talking about then that would actually be after what I'm talking–what I've just mentioned which is also called photon decoupling. So actually this epoch is a little bit different. I think it's later on.
E: It's just amazing that they can make that distinction or make the determination that so much–however much time it is happened between the two.
B: Yeah.
E: You think of the Big Bang–certainly in a visual display you're watching some show on TV that kinda of describes it and it's an intense white spot of light from the get go. At least that's how the depict it. So–
S: Yeah. But they always give you the impossible perspective of being outside the universe when the Big Bang happens.
B: Space time, yeah.
S: But that's not a possible perspective. So it's kind of misleading.
J: Yeah. A little.
S: And a lot of that is–evidence is theoretical. They're just well what should have happened if you have the mass of the universe at a point and then what would happen over time? Based upon the temperatures and what things are like at those temperatures. You know what I mean?
E: But maybe this large radio telescope will help fill in those gaps.
B: Some of them.
S: Hopefully.
B: If it can actually get close to the moment after the Big Bang then absolutely it will be able to do–it will illuminate us in many ways.
E: Very cool.
J: I still don't get the concept that when the Big Bang took place–like, where it was specially in reality. You can't go to that space–that place in outer space because it doesn't really–
S: Yeah.
B: Sure you can. Wherever you go, there you are.
J: Oh, geez. Really, Bob?
E: It happened everywhere–
B: It's true. It's true. It's everywhere. You can't point to it because it's not one specific spot. It's everywhere.
J: Well, it didn't happen right here.
E: It might have.
S: Every part of the universe was at that point, Jay, at that time.
J: Yeah, so, meaning that the universe is growing in size.
S: Of course. But it's like–if you do the two dimensional analogy, it's like blowing up a balloon. Where was it before you blew it up? Well it's–
J: How–right. Try to explaining to a two dimensional creature on that balloon where–
E: It was in the package.
J: where the center is.
S: You'd have to point into the 4th dimension.
B: Exactly.
J: I can't picture it.
S: Right.
Amityville Horror House for Sale (34:11)
Rogue's Gallery: Amityville Horror House for Sale
Who's That Noisy? (38:46)
Questions and Emails
Soy (41:02)
Steve - You made the offhand comment that there are "serious concerns" that soy milk is producing an estrogen type hormonal effect. I am a vegan bodybuilder who drinks a quart of soy milk everyday. I am concerned your offhand comment will scare people away from switching to a healthier milk alternative with no saturated fat. I've looked in the past when people have made these claims, and all I can find is that there may be some very mild effect, but nothing that rises to the level of your "serious concern" comment. If there was, there would be serious estrogen related issues throughout Asian countries. Since you felt it necessary to scare people away from soy by telling them about the "serious concerns" science has with soy milk, I hope you will provide the research on you next show that proves soy milk causes serious estrogen like effects. I do love the show, and I thank everyone for the time and effort you guys put into it every week. Michael Wilson Prescott, AZ
Cursed Cell Phone Number (45:50)
The cursed cell phone number Thought you guys might like this story of truly stupid superstitious thinking that misses the glaringly obvious.
Telegraph: Mobile phone number suspended after three users die in 10 years
Danforth France Glendale, CA
Magic Bee Juice (50:27)
One of the branches of the company I work for in Japan has started selling Propolis as a means to make more money in a bad economy. This branch has repeatedly tried to get me to buy some of this magic bee juice. Many of my Japanese co-workers have taken the bait. They are putting bee juice in their drinks and swallowing magic bee juice pills. When I ask them if they feel any better, they all say they aren’t sure. Hmm… I think the company I work for has a snake oill division. Do you know of any scientific evidence that shows any benefit to taking Propolis? All the information I found say that Propolis may contain lead and other garbage bees pick up while flying around the city. Thank you for your time. David Gardner Osaka, Japan
Name That Logical Fallacy: Personality Tests (54:41)
Steve, I'm trying to figure out the difference between the Incorrect Cause fallacy and the Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc fallacy? Skepticwiki is telling me that Post Hoc is a type of Incorrect Cause Fallacy, but I'm just not getting the difference. They seem to be one and the same. Any help would be appreciated. I'm trying to complete a 5x5 recording we did a few months ago and I'm recording a missing part which was about the "Incorrect Cause" fallacy. The topic of the 5x5 was Chemtrails and it seems to me that the Post Hoc fallacy would work better here. Mike Lacelle Canada
Science or Fiction (1:00:07)
- Item number one: NIST scientists have developed a "dark laser" that is endothermic - it takes heat away from an object on which it is focused.
- Item number two: A new analysis suggests that many comets, including well-known comets like Halley's and Hale Bopp, originated from other solar systems.
- Item number three: Scientists report a 5-fold increase in the growth of rice plants from manipulating the genetics of a fungus that grows on its roots.
Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:14:40)
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.
Announcements
NECSS Con (1:18:11)
S: The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by the New England Skeptical Society in association with the James Randi Educational Foundation and skepchick.org. For more information on this and other episodes, please visit our website at www.theskepticsguide.org. For questions, suggestions, and other feedback, please use the "Contact Us" form on the website, or send an email to info@theskepticsguide.org. If you enjoyed this episode, then please help us spread the word by voting for us on Digg, or leaving us a review on iTunes. You can find links to these sites and others through our homepage. 'Theorem' is produced by Kineto, and is used with permission.
References
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