SGU Episode 924

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SGU Episode 924
March 25th 2023
"Rolls-Royce Holdings says it's developing a micro-nuclear reactor that the company hopes could be a source of fuel for long trips to the Moon and Mars."
SGU 923                      SGU 925
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Quote of the Week
Whenever we propose a solution to a problem, we ought to try as hard as we can to overthrow our solution, rather than defend it.
Karl Popper, Austrian-British philosopher and social commentator
Links
Download Podcast
Show Notes
Forum Discussion

Introduction, 3/23/23, universal time, climate changes

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 Thursday, March 23^rd, 2023, 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: Steve, what did you say today's date was?

S: March 23^rd, 2023.

E: Somewhere on the planet, it must be 11:23 in the evening and 23 seconds. So if I stream all those numbers together, I get 0, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3. If I'm not mistaken.

S: Yes.

C: But even if you don't, it's still 3, 2, 3, 2, 3.

S: Right.

E: Sure, if you want to put the 2-0 in there and the 3. But if you want to shorten the year, you've got a string of 23s there.

C: Wait, but that's only like in the US. Because other places do the month first.

S: Today there would be 2023.

E: Well, they're wrong. And-

C: (laughs) For the purposes of this presentation.

E: And I was thinking about this today.

S: You were really?

E: I was really, because I brought this up when we were saying what we're going to talk about for opening banter. And this is what I thought of. And then I thought of, well, okay. I thought the planet had one time zone, as opposed to 20, however many, 24 at least, if not more time zones.

J: Yeah.

E: How badly would society break down if, or fail to work correctly? If everything were the same time? Like does it matter if we call 1am and the sun is out in the middle of the day on one part of the planet?

C: Right. It's really just a construct, right? I think it's the shift that would make everything fall apart. It's not if it was sort of always that way. We would just be used to it.

E: Right. Yeah. So it's an adaptation of society, right?

C: Oh, 100%.

E: So you could eliminate the entire time zone craziness.

S: Exactly, you just adapt to it.

C: But who would like claim it? Would it be Greenwich mean? And then everything would just be on Greenwich mean time, probably.

E: I suppose that's the traditional...

J: Well, the disconnect would be then like what 7am to us right now could be 2 in the afternoon to somebody else, which is kind of weird.

C: But only until it's not weird anymore.

E: Correct. Correct. One universal time. Well, one planetary time. What time is it on your planet? It would become.

S: Yeah.

E: And I don't know. Maybe in the distant future when we're inhabiting other worlds and things there, there may be a deed for something more like that.

S: One standard rotation.

E: What time is it on Jupiter? It's that time.

J: Evan, I'm all for it, man.

E: Good. Well, I've started something here.

S: And for the record Evan, that already exists. It's called Zulu time or a universal coordinated time, just that people don't use it day to day.

C: You also started me thinking about the word universal, which is so funny, because we think of that word as meaning applies to everyone or everything. But like within the universe, we're really, we're never talking about the universe. We're not never, but we're usually not talking about things within the universe when we say universal.

E: Yeah, it's more of a colloquialism than a literal definition of it.

S: But every human on earth is probably every human in the universe.

C: Probably. Yeah.

J: Well, I would say absolutely. Yes, to that one.

S: Well, what if someone was abducted by aliens or there's a population of humans living on another stellar system because they were brought there? You don't know.

B: I think we could assume this.

C: We're not in parallel universe where there were humans.

B: Not true.

C: Bob, you liked that one.

E: Bob, you're in a poke holes. You're ready to poke holes all over the place.

B: You're very safe and good about assuming that that's not true.

S: It's a reasonable assumption, but Jay said for sure, we don't know that for sure.

J: Well, Steve, do you think that there is an (laughter)

S: No.

J: -tiny possibility that a human existed in other solar systems somewhere? Sorry.

S: I'm saying Bob's the one who's always saying that he wishes that there was like alien cameras videotaping dinosaurs from 65 million years ago. And you're telling me they couldn't have popularized another world with humans? Sure they could.

J: But who are they?

S: Some aliens.

E: Exactly.

S: Alien civilization.

E: What time is it there?

C: 3, 2, 3, 2, 3.

E: Yeah.

S: But no matter how you reckon time, the important thing is that it actually is spring. Now we are now officially spring.

C: You and your spring obsession. I love it.

S: In northern hemisphere.

B: Yes, it's awesome.

E: It's more to do with a amount of daylight I find.

S: Totally.

E: I find that's the most satisfying aspect of it is collecting more daylight as we move towards summer.

S: Cara, think about it. We are at the very beginning of the top half of the analemma for the next six months.

E: That's the most part.

S: We will be getting the most light and heat for the whole year. That's the best part.

C: It's just funny because it's also so relative, right? And I agree with the light part. I'm so excited about light. Like yesterday I left work so late and it was really lovely that at least before I left to work the sun hadn't set when I left the sun has set. Yes, but at least beforehand I looked out and I was like, oh, the world is alive. But this part of the calendar is the most brutal in Florida. Like this is the time when it hurts to be outside.

S: Definitely have the perspective of a Connecticutian.

C: It's actually quite lovely right now. I really like the weather right now, but we're on the precipice of it becoming.

S: Yeah, spring is good for everyone.

C: Yeah, exactly. And there's baby animals.

J: As someone who really likes living in New England, I really enjoy the seasons. The seasons can be very wonderful here. This was one of the worst winters we've ever had and it's because of global warming.

E: Climate change, yeah.

S: Or it was one of the best ones.

B: In terms of what?

J: We had one snowstorm and it sucked. I want snowstorms.

E: Yeah, it wasn't much of a classic winter for New England.

S: We had almost no time with snow on the ground, but I'm okay with that actually.

B: Yeah, I shoveled really like one and a half times.

S: I managed to not shovel at all.

E: But Jay, I understand what you're saying and I think it's a sentiment that maybe has some nostalgia to it, right?

J: There isn't an inner beauty to a snowstorm. They're wonderful and they're fun. You know what I mean? I look forward to that time that I'll spend with my kids. There's just nothing better in the winter than a wonderful snowstorm. It makes me very sad that the global weather is changing and New England is no longer the same anymore.

C: Right. But talk about like, like, chain global changes. I mean, I haven't been able to experience it firsthand because I've been here in Florida for this internship, but back home in LA, it's like the apocalypse right now.

E: It's crazy.

J: Why? What's going on?

C: Just the amount of rain, there's been snow and hail. There was a tornado right outside of LA today.

E: Yes, I saw that.

B: Wow, really?

C: A tornado, like right outside the city. I think it was in Montecito or Montabello. I'm not sure. Like, let's see. A tornado. Yeah, it was one of those Monta. Tornado Los Angeles. I'm sure if I Google, it'll come up. Yeah. Montabello. I mean it was an EF1 but still, there's like all this footage of it. Yeah, the region's strongest in 40 years. What is sucked at teacher out of a classroom. Ok these headlines, come on. But yeah, it was pretty intense, like it's been weird in LA nonstop rain, flooding, all sorts of damage.

E: The atmospheric river that hit. I think what, a couple of weeks, a week or two ago?

C: What's an atmospheric river?

E: A plume of moisture that helps carry saturated air from the tropics to higher latitudes. So yeah, it comes rolling in over the Pacific Ocean and nails California. It's like, it has the vast majority of geography for it.

J: Evan, I've read that all of the farms that grow berries and things like that, it's like very time of year in California. They are underwater.

E: That's horrible.

J: Yeah, it's bad.

C: Yeah, well, I didn't mean to be such a bummer, but yeah, shit be crazy y'all.

E: Yeah, sure is.

C: What is going on on this?

J: Cara, you know what I always say when things are bad?

C: What?

J: Let it's snow. (laughter)

C: Just let it snow.

E: Let it snow in California.

What's the Word? (8:49)

• Pleonasm

... _text_re_cara_not_knowing_word_jackal_ ^{[link needed]}

News Items

S:

B:

C:

J:

E:

(laughs) (laughter) (applause) [inaudible]

Rolls-Royce Nuclear Engine (14:54)

• Rolls-Royce Nuclear Engine Could Power Quick Trips to the Moon and Mars

Tik Tok and Misinformation (23:03)

• TikTok is taking on the conspiracy theorists 

3D Printed Rocket (33:06)

• 3D Printed Rocket Launches 

Beethoven's Hair (45:30)

• Beethoven's DNA decoded from locks of hair saved by his fans 

Uranus Moons with Subsurface Oceans (56:23)

• Two moons of Uranus may have active subsurface oceans 

Questions/Emails/Corrections/Follow-ups

_consider_using_block_quotes_for_emails_read_aloud_in_this_segment_
with_reduced_spacing_for_long_chunks –

Who's That Noisy? (1:11:57)

Answer to previous Noisy:

Honeybee Queen piping

_text_re_Bee_culture_magazine_writeup_

New Noisy (1:16:34)

[Crackling and background buzzing with buzzing hums]

short_text_from_transcript

Announcements (1:17:26)

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Science or Fiction (1:23:33)

Theme: Random facts Item #1: The shortest regular commercial flight lasts just 53 seconds. Item #2: Researchers discovered a 1,500 year old human coprolite (fossilized feces) that contained a whole rattlesnake Item #3: The Morse code signal "SOS" does not stand for "save our ship", but originally was meant to stand for “SalvO aSinus” which is latin for "save our ass".

Answer	Item
Fiction	SOS meaning
Science	Shortest commercial flight
Science	Whole rattlesnake in poop

Host	Result
Steve	win

Rogue	Guess
Evan	SOS meaning
Bob	Whole rattlesnake in poop
Cara	SOS meaning
Jay	SOS meaning

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

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:41:44)

Whenever we propose a solution to a problem, we ought to try as hard as we can to overthrow our solution, rather than defend it.  – from The Logic of Scientific Discovery, by Karl Popper (1902-1994), Austrian-British philosopher, academic and social commentator

Signoff

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

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

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Today I Learned

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

References

Vocabulary