SGU Episode 867

This episode is in the middle of being transcribed by Hearmepurr (talk) as of 2022-04-06. To help avoid duplication, please do not transcribe this episode while this message is displayed.

Template:Editing required (w/links) You can use this outline to help structure the transcription. Click "Edit" above to begin.

SGU Episode 867
February 19th 2022
(brief caption for the episode icon)
SGU 866                      SGU 868
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Quote of the Week
Quote
Author
Links
Download Podcast
Show Notes
Forum Discussion

Introduction, Bread-making, Wordle

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, February 16^th 2022, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella...

B: Hey, everybody!

S: Cara Santa Maria...

C: Howdy.

S: Jay Novella...

J: Hey guys.

S: ...and Evan Bernstein.

E: Good evening folks!

S: How are you all this lovely evening?

B: Doing well.

C: Doing well doing well.

E: Keeping it together.

S: This is that part of February where you're like, is it gonna be like another month of winter hell or you're gonna get an early spring.

E: Depends on the groundhog.

S: And it's all over the place.

C: Unless you live in LA.

J: As long as it's not slushy you know I don't mind it snowing and I don't mind it being like springtime, I just don't, I hate the slush.

S: Yeah.

J: (laughs) I hate that so much but listen guys I had a great week and a half because I started baking homemade bread.

S: Yeah?

C: You're late to the party.

J: Yeah I look I start, it's an adventure that I've been wanting to do for a while and I just said that's it I'm gonna, it's time you know some little check box got ticked in my head and I just said okay this is it I'm gonna start doing it. So I got very very lucky and on the fourth recipe I tried I hit the mother lode. And I you know last night I made three loaves and they all came out amazing. It was like real like rustic Italian style bread, flavor was incredible and I learned a lot you know just watching YouTube videos and reading about all sorts of things to do with yeast and flour. So I've just had so much fun and I loved seeing my wife and a couple of people that we had over and my mother-in-law like I love seeing them eating the bread and their reaction to it because everyone was really excited.

S: Nothing better than fresh baked bread. But bread is it's tricky I mean I got I got pretty good at making the sourdough bread. I was doing that for a while like the beginning of the pandemic, I do want to get back into it. I got a dutch oven so I want to use that to make some some bread in. But you got to really stick to the recipe, you know?

J: Yeah.

S: Baking's not like cooking. Cooking you could fart around do whatever you want and experiment, whatever. Baking is like chemistry you know like the exact stoichiometry you know is critical.

J: Stoic.

S: Stoichiometry.

C: Did you guys see that meme going around that was like wordle is the sourdough of 2022. And like it makes such sense but go back in time to like 2018 if somebody said that to you you'd be like what in the hell are you talking.

S: Today's word was hard cock.

C: Oh whatever this will be like a week late, right?

S: It won't matter.

C: Yeah it doesn't matter.

E: Oh you can't play prior words or it can't go back into the?

C: No it's one a day.

E: There's one a day.

C: But I did hear that the New York Times because you know New York Times bought it and they're folding it over some people are still on the old site and they have a different word.

E: Whoa double your word.

C: Yeah like until it switches over for you, you're you're on a slight, you're on a different word it's weird. Like that's not cool.

J: Well you'd figure that they would just forward the old address to the new one so anybody yeah I don't know it seems yeah but they're easy to do.

C: It's yeah I don't get it.

B: Well Jay I can't wait I mean I had I had Jay's bread the the first batch and it was real, I really liked it it had a nice crust it was nice and chewy and inside you know hearing him and his wife go off on this fourth batch was like the ultimate I can't wait to taste it Jay.

C: You gonna bring some to our show when you guys come to when we're all meeting up in New York?

J: Yeah if I have if I have any you know the thing is it it really does take a lot of time like you know this isn't, it's timely because there's a lot of like, do this for five minutes and then wait an hour, you know what I mean? So you're kind of tied to the kitchen which is fine you know like on a weekend when you're hanging out at home or whatever it's no big deal. But yeah right before we do those shows if I have time Cara I'd be so happy to make you a loaf.

S: Well Jay you'll have to have a bake off with our friend Bruce Press who basically became an expert bread baker over the pandemic.

E: Yeah oh an expert.

J: Yeah Bruce Bruce would destroy me Steve, he's like crazy.

S: But you're missing the point, that the rest of us get to eat all the bread.

E: Yeah but there'd be twice as much bread.

C: Exactly.

S: Either way whoever wins or loses we win.

J: With my bread you know my one loaf that I know how to do now.

E: Jay here's what you do show up with your own churned butter with your bread that'll put you over the top.

J: Well I lost my mind because I realized that my bread is absolutely the perfect companion to my meatballs, which I mean the two of them together, I don't know I might travel in time if I eat them both at the same time. I love it.

S: Are any of you into any other rustic skills like old-timey skills.

C: Oh I have so many you guys I knit oh god.

E: That's right.

C: I didn't say ing at the end I know now to not say that─

S: I'm knitting.

C: ─full frame (laughter) I know a lot of like craft kind of things you know that are helpful in the post-apocalyptic world.

J: Well I was gonna make a stone wall you know by hand but I got carpal tunnel instead so that project got delayed indefinitely.

E: Instead of a wall you got a tunnel.

B: Last year last October I made a big graveyard that's an old-timey skill for sure.

(laughter)

S: I garden I guess that's an old-timey skill. But I like think a lot about doing it it's just hard, I don't have the time to like really. I do the research like yeah this is a good thing wait one time at one point I'm like I wonder how hard it is to make cheese? I think that that would be fun, right? I mean─

E: Oh my gosh.

S: ─and it's you know so I learned all about how to make cheese it's like yeah I'll do that sometime and I never did it, you know but.

C: Yeah.

J: What kind of cheese would you make would it be like a blue cheese?

S: Well, so the the easiest cheese to make is the buffalo cheese which is basically mozzarella, right? So it's you get this whole milk it's overnight like the next day you have boots you know that's it it's very it's very easy. But in Parmesan you have to age for like six months.

C: Yeah any hard cheese would probably be really hard to do.

S: You gotta like keep it under a bowl in your refrigerator and just have to keep it moist and whatever. Any cheese makers out there let us know if you're doing it at home as a hobby let us know how it's going.

C: I once for my birthday my best friend and I emulated one of our favorite dishes from a very expensive nice like Michelin-starred restaurant here in LA, and we made our own sausage like we got all the different types of meat and all the spices and put it through the meat grinder.

S: Did you grind the meat three times?

C: Uh no.

E: Twice?

C: Were we supposed to?

S: Yeah.

C: We ground it as many times as the recipe told us to grind it.

S: You don't understand that reference anyone anyone?

C: I do not. Shit.

S: Grind the meat three times.

C: Eww, no.

S: That's from Sweeney Todd.

J: Oh yeah.

E: Oooh.

S: Gotta get all the the toenails out of the meat.

J: Oh my gosh.

E: So gross.

S: We have to keep up our rustic skills so that when the the zombie apocalypse happens─

C: Yeah for sure.

S: ─we'll be able to do things like you know bake our own bread and make our own cheese.

All right well let's move on with our actual show Jay you're going to do, I guess this is a new segment you're going to do a segment about something you learned today that is interesting.

Special Segment: Today Jay Learned (7:29)

• The first scientist

J: Yeah, I'm going to talk about who was the first scientist. And of course this is all up to opinion there you know, how do you define who the actual real first scientist was I mean you know it's really just you're it's up to you. But historians do tend to to agree on at least a few people who kind of you know fit the fit the mold here better than others. You know the history of science what goes back very very far depending on who you ask but I think a really good place to put the first flag would probably be ancient Egypt you know around 3000 BCE. Right the Egyptians created a numbering system, they had a methodology to their healing practices that included examination and diagnosis and treatment and prognosis. Like you know they had some stuff going on you know that was that was noteworthy. But you know we're gonna we're gonna zoom down first to Aristotle quickly. He was born in 384 BC in Greece you know you probably have heard of him he was the first to use logic the first human to use logic think about that. He also you know was heavily into observing right he was just he thought observation was very important. Inquiry and demonstration are also things that he is known for. And imagine being the first and only person guys to use you know methodological logic think about that.

S: Well we don't know that he was the first person to use logic, he was the first person to develop a system of logic.

J: Right that's what I mean.

S: Operationalizing.

J: That's that's what I mean.

S: I know that's what you mean but just to be clear because you know.

C: There were logical people prior to Aristotle.

J: But just imagine like and we think we have it bad today like imagine like I am the only person that uses logic oh my god.

E: Sometimes it feels like that.

J: Yeah right? So Aristotle took inspiration by observing the natural world. You know he at some point it occurred to him you know that there is a seeming order to things and and he wanted to understand how it worked. Now keep in mind, to be fair, most of what he concluded was wrong. Straight up wrong. Like the things that he said okay so if this then this then this and this is what I think and this is how I think it works most of those ideas were just factually wrong because you know he just didn't have a lot of ways to gain real information or very useful information that could give him the the you know a better truth than what he was thinking. But still you know it wasn't that's really not the point here. His curiosity about the natural world led him to want to understand how our reality worked and that's that's what's cool about what was going on in his head.

S: But again I feel the need to defend Aristotle a little bit here. So you're correct in terms of his conclusions about how the natural, the physical world works.

J: Yeah.

S: His philosophy was like he basically figured everything out like right at the beginning you know what I mean? In terms of the big ideas of philosophy and thought you know they they kind of worked out the basics you know right there at the very beginning of it all.

J: You know Socrates came to the conclusion that thinking was really the only way to understand reality and Aristotle straight up was like no observation is the way to to gain understanding about how the world worked. That's huge. Now how well he did that that's another thing to discuss.

S: Yeah.

J: So he was legitimately formulating theories based on observation that is remarkably close to the scientific method today, right? I mean it's a part of it, and it was there he he had the he had the bones of it. And as a quick example Aristotle observed that the mast of a ship was the first part of the ship that could be seen when it approached from the sea, right? So he was able to discover from that that the Earth was round and he said it the Earth was round because of that observation. Damn that's, good that's good man if I was with him I'd be like you're a smart guy dude you know what I mean like very good you know me of course you know thousands of years in the future with all the things that I got to learn. But the the point here is that you know there's a good, you can make a very good argument that he was the first scientist, right? You know not lab coat scientist but at least scientific thinker. Another person who I thought I should mention he's frequently considered the first scientist and his name was Ibn al-Haytham, have you guys heard of him of course you have. He was a Muslim Arab mathematician, astronomer and a physicist. And he was born in 965 AD. So he extensively studied light and vision which you know when you think about all the way back then he is spending his time trying to figure out like how does light work you know how how do we perceive things with our eyes. These are pretty profound questions. He's also thought to have invented the camera obscura as well as the pinhole camera. And if you're interested look those up and read about them because there's quite a bit of information about those. He conducted legitimate experiments with candles and described how an image is formed by rays of light, rays of light, that's cool as hell. Traveling in straight lines that's real legit right there and he was the first person to develop a hypothesis and then he tested it with verifiable experiments. So you know between those two they they were definitely people who who pushed the ball forward. Look like you know the truth is this guys it took thousands of people, you know you know undetermined amount of number of people but a lot of people to slowly push the concept of science forward you know enough to take the form that we understand it today. But you know there was there was landmark people in there that that came up with with very important concepts on their own and these two people were definitely in that list but there's more there's more moments in time and people that that were significant which is fun to read. One more quick fun thing Steve if you don't mind.

S: Go right ahead.

J: For your information the term scientist dates back to only 1834 a philosopher named William Whewell, right? W-h-e-w-e-l-l came up he came up with the word to include all practitioners of the ever-expanding fields of science.

S: What was science called before then?

E: Natural philosophy.

C: Yeah but I think scientists I think science is still older than what year did you say scientist was dubbed?

J: 1834.

C: Yeah science as a word is definitely older than.

J: Oh yeah yeah because he took that word and put 'tist' on the end of it.

S: We don't know who coined the term science but William Whewell was first one to coin the term scientist.

C: Yeah science is probably from the mid 14th century and yeah before that it was natural philosophy before that it was philosophy just like generally philosophy.

S: Part of philosophy.

C: Yeah, which is why you still get a PhD in science.

E: And before that it was religion.

C: It just was it was just looking around.

E: Religion and science were pretty much the one in the same, it wasn't good science but that's what it was.

News Items

S: All right. We're going to start off the News segment with a pair of astronomy news items.

Psyche May Not Be the Iron Giant (14:25)

• Psyche, the iron giant of asteroids, may be less iron than researchers thought

S: Bob, you're going to start us off by talking about Psyche, which is an asteroid, and what's it made of?

B: So guys, famous asteroid 16 Psyche has been reevaluated in terms of its composition and future belters the world over are in tears. So what the hell am I talking about? Well I'll tell you. This is (laughter) based on a study, this is based on a study published in Geophysical Research Letters and it's a classic example of how science can lead to disappointment no matter how much closer it gets to get you to the truth. It happens. Psyche in this context isn't that thing in your head that gets shattered by horrible science news. It's also not Psyche the Greek goddess of the soul who married Eros also known as Cupid. The Psyche I'm going to talk about was named after this classical Greek figure and is what I'm sure she'd consider an insult since it's a class M asteroid. Now this doesn't follow the Star Trek convention of class M planets being habitable come on it's an asteroid of course it's not habitable, but it's class M and in here it means that it has a higher proportion of metals I guess perhaps the M stands for metal, makes sense like iron and nickel. And it has more of those metals than most asteroids which contain mostly the more pedestrian silicate rocks. Its diameter is 220 km, 140 mi. Big, pretty dam the biggest class M asteroid out there. And basically you know about the size of the distance between Los Angeles and San Diego, Cara that was for you.

C: Wow that's really big.

B: Yeah and now M-class specifically refers to the spectra of an asteroid, that's what it's dealing with, and in this case it shows that there's a lot of exposed metals on the surface. Now based on that astronomers made reasonable extrapolations, you know based on the sheer immensity of this thing if the surface is metal then you know it's pretty much mostly metal probably. So they were saying things like oh it's 90 to 95 percent metal, making it the core of a planetesimal or protoplanet, a very early planet from billions of years ago. So that would have to mean then that it was likely produced from a titanic collision with another object that literally ripped away the crust and mantle leaving just this this exposed core of a planet. Now imagine that the exposed core of a planet from billions of years ago, you know the potential to learn about the early solar system and fill in a lot of blanks is huge, which is part of the reason why there was so much interest in this. But from an avaricious point of view think about it, a 220 kilometer block of mostly iron but also nickel, platinum and gold is a treasure pretty much beyond imagining. This could this could make everyone on earth a billionaire which really really realistically of course wouldn't happen since the gold market would collapse.

C: Yeah I was gonna say.

B: We'd have major financial instability and lots of other bad things but you know but the point remains the sheer quantity of wealth that we're talking about, Forbes put Psyche's worth at 10, wait for it, 10 quintillion dollars. 10 quintillion that's 10 billion billion, or, it's 10 times a million cubed. Or, it's a hundredth of a sextillion and I'll stop now.

E: (laughs)

C: Or it's the amount of money Elon Musk makes in a month.

B: Let's put it in this perspective then Cara, the global economy is 94 trillion, so Psyche, Psyche would be worth about a hundred and six thousand times the global economy.

C: That's insane.

B: So that's exciting right I mean NASA even created a mission specifically to visit Psyche, this mysterious asteroid with so much metal in it and you know it's leaving later this year. But but, Psyche gives us mixed signals, much like when Jay is on a diet and he's got 10 meatballs within easy reach.

E: It's pyrite it's not real gold.

B: So if you if you measure its mass, all about mass and density in this story, if you measure its mass and density based on its gravitational tug on nearby objects, it doesn't act like a gargantuan lump of metal. If it were mostly metal still it would have to be about 50% porous, 50% porous, which I guess is not impossible. So the good scientists like like all good scientists or most of them they ran models. And so these models were based on the known thermal properties of metallic iron, right, you'd kind of need to know that, to make these models work. And also what we knew about the early solar system. And so as the model of psyche evolved over time in the model they determined that such a lump for such a lump to remain porous it would have to cool down to below 800K fairly quickly. Otherwise right imagine if it if it cools down too slowly then that the weight the the sheer weight and gravitational pull of this of all that metal in, this porous malleable metal would collapse on into in itself. So, bottom line, there's no way Psyche cooled that fast, so that it could remain porous, even if the porosity was induced later in life later down the road by an impact for example. It can't be that porous. So then, what do we got left now? So the only reasonable option then is and the conclusion of the paper is that Psyche has a metallic surface right because the, it's class M it's got the you know, the spectrum says that this is this is a metal surface. But the core itself probably a metal as well but the interior, the mantle if you will, has got to be normal silicate rock like most other asteroids which and that is what's driving its density down. It's that. So so now I think you appreciate why future belters working in our main asteroid belt mining for precious metals are are very very upset because you know there's still of course there's still probably a lot of metal out there, even just on Psyche but nowhere near the amount that would that people have been talking about literally for years and would make these you know hundreds of belters trillionaires in the future. But there's more, there's more because this all begs the question, right? Why is the surface metal and the mantle is not? How did that, oh I dropped a robot okay never mind, moving forward.

(laughter)

E: That was not a non-sequitur either.

B: So why? Why? So then how did that happen? That's kind of you got a metal shell, what's going on? So one possibility is ferrovolcanism. Yes iron spewing volcanoes. So how cool is that? So we know of two volcano types, there's silicate volcanism and that's what we see all over the Earth and on other planets and other moons silicates, rocks, right? Just magma spewing out. Then there's cryovolcanism and we see that on Enceladus and Triton and maybe Europa and that's essentially magmas made of liquids and gases that would be otherwise frozen on the surface of the moon that we see this on. Okay that's cryovolcanism, now ferrovolcanism has never been observed but it seems like it probably has happened based on the surfaces of other of other bodies in this in the solar system. And what you would have you'd have flowing liquid metal instead of the more viscous rocky magma, right? Theoretically that could occur on all metal worlds or hybrid metal rocky worlds like six like 16 Psyche, how cool is that? Ferrovolcanism never heard of, that that's fascinating.

E: Something that small can have that can have a volcanic feature to it?

B: Yeah I mean yeah I mean it's dense, it's big enough and so sure I mean yeah I can see what I see what you mean that it doesn't seem like there'd be enough, I mean if this was the core of a planet then this was under a hell of a lot of pressure for a hell of a long period of time before that even happened, so that that heat just doesn't go away. So now the future of Psyche is now essentially in the hands of its NASA mission, which will launch this year and arrive in 2026. And of course you know we probably won't find a place reminiscent of that very cool Disney movie called Treasure Planet, seriously check it out, it's the best fusion of pirate and science fiction that I've ever seen a fun fun animated movie. But I'm sure that 16 Psyche is going to offer many many surprises and I really can't wait to see what happens when we get up close. Speaking though of science fiction and I will end with this. Now remember I said that the only reasonable option for a low density asteroid was that it had lower density rock inside? There's another slightly less reasonable possibility, that I would like to explore. I coincidentally finished a very very cool short story last night called Owner Space by Neal Asher, Owner Space really cool, he's got a few books off on that riffing off of that too which I recommend. So in the story in it was a moon that wasn't as dense as it should have been, similar to Psyche, right? In the end it's revealed to be a mind-bogglingly massive ship created by some superhuman whose name is the Owner. So NASA maybe when NASA gets there I'm just saying. (laughter) That's it. Just saying.

J: What are you saying?

E: Just saying.

S: So what's the new estimate of Psyche's value?

B: Oh I've, I people I think are just too depressed to calculate it. It's certainly not going to be uh 10 quintillion, but it you know it would be you know it could be many many trillions or you know or maybe even low quadrillions I don't know. But it was this was the crown jewel though you know I've seen these beautiful you know artists interpretations of what Psyche looks like and I don't know who drew the this his impression of Psyche but they they drew an amazing looking asteroid. Really funky and weird too because of all the metals that are on the surface. It's beautiful, and people have been talking about this for years of how you know can you imagine an asteroid that's all metal and now it's just like ah it's just you know it's it's just the surface really and and probably not the interior and it's not worth 10 quadrillion, it's just kind of a bummer. I mean because that industry will happen in the future right, I mean that's pretty almost guaranteed that we will have an industry in the asteroid belt that will have access to crazy amounts, crazy amounts like economy-ending amounts of materials like gold and platinum and iron.

C: And we are so stupid.

E: Well...

C: So stupid.

B: Well I mean I mean if you have if you have the if you have the resources and the wherewithal to get there and mine it and then bring you know you wouldn't be stupid about it you would bring it back judiciously, you'd bring it back in small amounts and you wouldn't flood the market. Especially with gold and platinum. The iron's a different story I mean you can come back you know you could still damage the economy if you came back with 10 mountains worth of iron. But the iron, iron, we need iron for steel and steel is still the man you know steel is still it.

E: Right Steve with our swords?

S: Absolutely.

E: I looked up a picture of the asteroid Psyche. All these pictures you know what they have in common they it's from the perspective of the two craters which look like two eyes, I mean we're so human when it comes to some things.

B: Yeah that crater looked cool.

E: It is but it but really I mean you know we couldn't see it from a different side, no we have to have the side which looks so it looks like a face.

B: And if you looked at what we actually can see it's like this blurry blob that's totally I mean it's all made up all those details. And when I first saw it I thought oh man that's a pretty damn good close-up. How did we get that?

E: Bob as we get closer what if it's more like a human skull in features.

B: Dude there is a there was a skull asteroid out there─

C: Yeah that was cool.

B: ─and from, in under certain lighting from a certain angle it looked absolutely you know like the top of the skull and it was so such an interesting picture.

S: Looked very good but you're right I mean it's incredibly, it even has like the the ridged middle of the nose.

B: Yeah it was really cool but of course you know just a trick of the light really, just like the face on Mars.

Possible Planet Around White Dwarf (26:20)

• Possible Planet Around White Dwarf

S: All right what do you guys think of this headline, this comes from BBC News from the science correspondent at BBC Life could exist on planet orbiting 'white dwarf' star what do you think about that?

E: Life could exist on the planet orbiting─

J: That's BS.

E: That's, that's that's a big claim.

C: This is a habitable zone?

B: Yeah if it's tidally locked it you know it could be in the the the far side.

S: Habitable, habitable.

C: I love that word. The Goldilocks zone. So I think it's BS but here here's what they did find. Astronomers have found a possible planet orbiting a white dwarf star. What's a white dwarf star? That is the stellar remnant, it's a it is the core of a medium-sized star, a star like our own Sun after it throws off its outer layers, right, so our Sun is going to expand to the point where the it takes up the beyond the orbit of Mars, right?

E: Yeah.

B: And we'll be in trouble.

S: Yeah it'll expand, yeah so we'll be burned crisp at that point. It'll be like a red giant, like Betelgeuse is today. This is the normal life cycle of a star. And and then after that you know as it's going through its fuel burning hydrogen to helium and then helium at the heavier elements bow until then it gets to the point where it's it either gets the iron, which is the last thing it can get to, you can't go beyond that, or it gets to whatever however heavy the heaviest element it confuses based on its mass, right? The more mass the heavier elements that you could fuse. When it can no longer fuse stuff there's nothing to keep the the star propped up, the the core will collapse, the outer layers will fluff off. If it's big enough it'll supernova, our stars are not big enough to do that. And then, depending on the size of the core left behind, it'll either be a white dwarf, beyond a certain limit it'll collapse to a neutron star beyond a certain limit and that will collapse into a black hole, right? A white dwarf is not burning fuel and it's not producing energy, it's just a glowing ember of the of the star that it was a part of.

C: So it's considered a dead star?

S: Well it's it's a stellar remnant, they don't use the term dead. It's still very hot though.

B: Cara just like a neutron star and black hole are you could say that they're dead stars.

C: Yeah they're dead stars.

B: In the sense.

C: They're no longer doing that furnace.

B: Yeah they're not fusing.

S: They're not burning, they're not fusing.

B: That major fusion anyway. Nothing essentially next to nothing.

S: All right so when a white dwarf initially forms, it's gonna be around, it's gonna be pretty hot though, it's gonna have a temperature of about a hundred thousand Kelvins. That's hotter than you know the surface of our Sun, right? Which is a little bit less than six thousand Kelvin. Because it's not in any kind of equilibrium, it's just cooling, right? So it's going to from that point it's going to cool. After about two billion years that 100 000 Kelvin will cool to about 8 000 Kelvin. Still hot. Still you know hotter than like our Sun but it will continue to cool from there you know, it get, the cooling slows because you know the hotter it is the more heat the more the more heat you radiate away and so the faster you cool. There's a question of how long will it take until it cools down all the way, like to the background radiation. So it'll get close in 15 to 20 billion years but getting all the way down could take quadrillions of years because─

E: Whoa.

S: ─that has a long long long long tail, and there may be quantum effects going on that are producing a little bit of heat, and the Universe is cooling too so it's kind of a little bit of a race.

B: Quadrillions?

C: That sounds like it could support life.

S: It takes longer, it takes longer than the age of the Universe for a white dwarf to cool to that point so we don't know there aren't any white dwarfs that have cooled that far. When when you when the─

B: Black dwarf?

S: ─yeah cools to the point where it's no longer visible we call it a black dwarf but you know there aren't any out there yet.

C: But there's a brown, what's a brown dwarf?

E: There are brown dwarfs.

C: We have brown dwarfs.

B: That's a planet, that's a big big big planet.

S: Yeah it's a failed star.

C: Very confusing naming system.

B: Get used to it.

S: Yeah, black dwarf is, yeah the brown dwarf is not quite big enough to ever be a star. This is a black dwarf is a white dwarf that's cool to the point where it's no longer visible. So yeah so it's it has a habitable zone but here's, the there's a couple of problems here. That habitable zone is close to the star, close to the white dwarf.

B: Tidal force is nasty.

E: Like Mercury is?

S: There's two problems, there's two problems one is like any small dim object it's it's so close that you would probably any planet that's close enough to be in the habitable zone would be tidally locked. That's not a deal killer not a deal.

C: Just have life on half the planet.

E: A ring around the planet.

S: In the terminal in the terminus or in also a world where ocean and atmosphere could actually very effectively redistribute heat and it actually wouldn't be as bad as you would think. Probably you wouldn't want to be on the the the point directly under the sun or or directly opposite but there could be a pretty sizable you know reasonable you know livable zone there.

'E: So the planet itself has a Goldilocks Zone.

S: Yeah exactly. So from that perspective and that's this perspective that they're talking about it's in the Goldilocks Zone and what do we consider that that's the the range at which you could have liquid water on the surface. And of course that depends on your atmosphere because the more carbon and you know greenhouse gases you have the farther away you could be and still be in you know in the habitable zone whatever there's sort of a maximum you know range you could have for for any star. But but the problem comes from imagining a scenario in which you have a planet orbiting a white dwarf in the habitable zone that has life. Because first of all remember what I said before that star turned into a white dwarf it would have been a red giant. So any planets close to it, any planets in the habitable zone would have been inside the red giant you know that it was before right it died. And so it would have been burned to a crisp, no life would have survived that transition.

C: Yeah but after that it could have started, a biogenesis could have started, I mean we only need what a couple billion years.

S: Yeah but thing is, you need a couple of billion years, right?

C: Yeah.

S: And in those couple of billion years─

B: Planetary migration?

S: ─the habitable zone will have massively moved─

E: Shifted.

S: ─that planet would not be in the habitable zone for two billion years, it the habitable zone will move quickly through the planetary orbit you know as the as the white dwarf cools. So you know maybe it would have a half a billion years or whatever. So one other scenario is that the planet may be migrated in.

B: Yeah.

S: So maybe the planet was farther out.

B: Hot Jupiter.

S: It was a frozen world you know a moon or whatever a frozen planet that was in the outer reach of the solar system and then with with all this going on the orbits were disrupted and one of the small planets spiraled into the habitable zone where it melted and became you know had liquid water on the surface and then life evolved.

B: But remember guys when Steve says "habitable zone" that's that's life as we know it─

S: As we know it.

B: ─it could be chemosynthetic life that has a huge habitable zone.

S: Yeah but that's all bets are off with that.

B: Why?

S: Because that's not what we're talking about, as I said by definition this Goldilocks or habitable zone that we're talking about is liquid water on the surface. If you if you assume life that doesn't require that then the guys I said all bets are off then what then we're not even talking about.

B: Just just keep that in mind though it's not like oh you can't be yeah there can't be any life.

E: Bob don't move the goal post.

J: Yeah you're talking about bacterial life right Bob that type of life?

B: Not necessarily.

S: There could be critters in the oceans of Europa, that's not in our technically in our habitable zone you can't have liquid water on the surface of Europa but because it's next to a gas giant and because it had could have liquid water under the surface there could be life there but you know again it would have to be chemosynthetic because it wouldn't be getting any light. But we're putting all of that aside and we're just saying Earth life that requires liquid water.

B: We're such chauvinists.

S: Yeah if if you take that criteria, that's what they're talking about in this article. This planet is in that habitable zone. But the again, this is even assuming this planet exists, we'll talk about that in a second.

(laughter)

J: Steve did they mention Cthulhu because Cthulhu could live anywhere.

S: Yeah that's true. The thing is it's just there's no scenario where it's likely that a planet is going to be in a white dwarf habitable zone for any length of time. Because it's such a moving target. Because the star is const, the white dwarf is constantly cooling and then. Initially it's cooling you know from a stellar system a life-evolving perspective fairly quickly. Again you go from a hundred thousand Kelvin to eight thousand Kelvin in two billion years. That's a massive difference. That's a complete, there's no planet that's going to just stay in that habitable zone throughout those two billion years. And then it gets cooler from there and so you're going to be outside you know you're going to be you know on the other side of the habitable zone you're going to be you're going to freeze in another half a million years or whatever. So I guess it's possible that if we like we're able to explore that planet we would find frozen fossils of life that briefly flourished in its brief sojourn through through that habitable zone─

C: I mean that's still be pretty col.

S: ─before the world froze. Yeah but there's not but it's not like there's going to be a thriving ecosystem there. You could think about well maybe an alien civilization settled that world because it was in its habitable zone. They don't care like oh in a million in 10 million years at this planet's going to freeze who cares, 10 million years yeah okay we'll live here for a couple of million years and then we'll move on, right? We won't we don't have you know civilizations─

B: Just shrug it off and not even care.

S: ─you don't you don't even where you don't worry about the millions and billions of years so from it from that perspective. Not I don't think there'd be enough time for life to evolve but you know it may be subtle but then we were looking for techno signatures, right? They were talking about a civilization that could probably terraform and and settle an alien world. Also there's a couple other problems though, one big problem is what kind of light is that star putting out? And it all depends on what temperature it is right it's putting out you know the frequency of light based on temperature─

B: White dwarf like.

S: ─they tend to put out a lot of ultraviolet and x-rays.

C: That's healthy for life.

S: Well, so I guess─

E: Life as we know it.

S: ─life could evolve to tolerate that you know or there might be some super ozone around the planet or whatever.

C: Or maybe just like evolves super fast because of all the mutations.

B: Yeah right. Or they live in an ocean and they don't won't care about UV if they live in the ocean.

S: Yeah but if you were a surface dwelling you know civilization why would you go there you know what I mean?

B: For the tans?

S: Some strategic importance but then you probably build shelters and stuff. So just it's not wouldn't be a great place for life you know for for all of those reasons. But and emphasizing that in the article I thought was a huge red herring. Like it's that's not what's cool about this news item, it's just that this would be only the second planet that we've discovered around a white dwarf, and it's just interesting that white dwarfs can have planets around them, it's interesting that one would be so close to it because where did it come from? Why wasn't it completely destroyed when the when in the red giant phase? So it probably was captured or migrated in or whatever. But here's the thing the evidence for this is it's interesting but it's not direct like there's this is not like transit method or anything. The the astronomers were looking at the movement of other things orbiting the white dwarf and their orbits were more stable than they should than should have been than the models predicted that they would be. Ad that stability could be explained if there were a planet in a close orbit around the white dwarf. So it's a bit removed you know, it's a bit inferential.

C: But even if it's true like that's as you mentioned interesting in and of itself like why, I mean I feel like this is just another example of science editors or science writers underestimating the interest level, the curiosity, the intelligence of the reader. You're like we have to make something else up otherwise people won't even care.

S: Right. Yeah they have to they have to play the life angle and it's not really a very plausible angle. And it gives people the wrong impression because there's so much. And figuring out the answering the question what are the prospects for life around a white dwarf you learn a lot about white dwarfs in the lifetime you know the life cycle of a white dwarf and there's a lot of good reasons why it wouldn't be a great candidate for life.

C: And they could even write it that way. Why this potential planet probably doesn't harbor life?

S: Yeah.

C: And then you get to learn about it all.

S: Right, but it's so cool you know it might be planets around white course, it doesn't, and every time we you know this comes up it's it's good to think about like what are the probabilities for planets we would find comfortable you know out there in the galaxy out there in the Universe. And I know we've talked previously about, there are several Goldilocks zones, right? There is around any individual star but also there's a Goldilocks zone in the galaxy. You want to be far enough out where you're not going to be constantly bombarded with gamma-ray bursts but not so far out that you don't have enough metallicity to form you know complex organisms so there's kind of a zone in the in the Milky Way where stars are most likely to have planets that could form life.

C: Yeah I mean it sounds like there's also a temporal Goldilocks zone that this very story illustrates.

S: Totally. And so the temporal one so that and we talked about this but─

B: Early universe population one star.

S: ─well in terms of like in terms of which which kinds of stars you know if we had a survey of all the life out there what would be the most common type of star that has life out there.

B: Population three, population three right?

S: Yeah well it will definitely want you wouldn't want to be a first generation star because then you don't have any metals you have to perform out of the cloud of an older star but I'm talking about like how massive the stars. The more massive the star the the the hotter they burn but the shorter they live.

B: They live like a few hundred million years.

S: Yeah, right the big ones the blue ones few hundred million years nope those are not good candidates for life. At the other end of the spectrum we have the red dwarfs and they last the longest, they might last for trillions of years, we think okay, well you know the most stars are red are red dwarfs and they're stable for a really long period of time so maybe they have a lot most of the life. Problem is they're unstable early on in their lives and they probably would blast the atmosphere away from any close planets close enough to be in in their habitable zone. Also their habitable zone which probably will probably be tidally locked but again not a deal killer as we said but not ideal. But then it's again we get back to maybe planets migrate in after their angry phase when they've settled down, so there's still a possibility there. But still they're not ideal, it's possible, astronomers go back and forth. Yellow stars like ours are they're solid they're good they last 10 billion years or so and you know they are have a generous habitable zone. But the sweet spot is probably the orange stars.

B: Really?

S: Because there are many more of them than yellow stars they live much longer like 20 to I think it's 20 to 50 billion years. And and so therefore there'll be more of them right because they have a longer life span. So that's probably most of the life out there is lives on planets around orange stars.

B: So where, so we're minorities?

S: We probably might be in the minority having a yellow sun.

C: Cool.

S: Yeah cool so that's it there's lots of, lots of Goldilocks zones in terms of like where are we most likely to find life. I wouldn't waste a lot of time looking around white dwarfs for planets with life.

B: No.

S: It's just the numbers don't add up.

Falling Birds (43:04)

• Did a Flock of Birds Crash into the Ground in Mexico?

HIV Cure (55:07)

• A Woman Is Cured of H.I.V. Using a Novel Treatment

Who's That Noisy? (1:04:35)

Answer to previous Noisy:

Tiger "talking"

New Noisy (1:09:58)

[Male tenor voice reading an old or fictional language in an oratory style]

... what are we hearing right there?

Name That Logical Fallacy (1:12:42)

• Discussing formal vs. informal logical fallacies, Unstated Major Premise

_consider_using_block_quotes_for_emails_read_aloud_in_this_segment_ with_reduced_spacing_for_long_chunks –

Science or Fiction (1:29:18)

Item #1: Surgeons successfully implanted the first wireless electrodes that bypass the retina and optic nerve and directly stimulate the visual cortex with information received from an external camera. Item #2: Scientist have used data from radio telescopes to finally shed light on an enduring mystery – what initiates a lightning strike – supporting the theory that it begins with propagating streamers of cold plasma. Item #3: Scientists have observed untrained orangutans in captivity that, when provided with a hammer and rock core, spontaneously used the hammer to create sharp rocks that they then used as a cutting tool.

Answer	Item
Fiction	Untrained orangutans
Science	First wireless electrodes
Science	What initiates lightning

Host	Result
Steve	win

Rogue	Guess
Evan	Untrained orangutans
Bob	Untrained orangutans
Jay	First wireless electrodes
Cara	Untrained orangutans

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

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:49:25)

TEXT
– AUTHOR (YYYY-YYYY), _short_description_

Signoff (1:51:56)

S: —and until next week, this is your Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.

S: Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by SGU Productions, dedicated to promoting science and critical thinking. For more information, visit us at theskepticsguide.org. Send your questions to info@theskepticsguide.org. And, if you would like to support the show and all the work that we do, go to patreon.com/SkepticsGuide and consider becoming a patron and becoming part of the SGU community. Our listeners and supporters are what make SGU possible.

[top]                        

Today I Learned

• Fact/Description, possibly with an article reference
• Fact/Description
• Fact/Description

References

Vocabulary