SGU Episode 947

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SGU Episode 947
September 2nd 2023
The saguaro is a tree-like cactus species that can grow to be over 12m (40ft) tall.
SGU 946                      SGU 948
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
G: George Hrab
Quote of the Week
Among all the geographic areas of the United States, the Southwest in general and Arizona, in particular, is blessed with a panoramic beauty that almost defies description. Only a limited number of poets, painters, and photographers have been able to do justice to her splendor.
Marshall Trimble, AZ official state historian
Links
Download Podcast
Show Notes
SGU Forum

Introduction, Live from Tucson, UAPs

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. (applause) Today is Saturday, December 17^th, 2022, and this is your host, Steven Novella. (applause) Joining me this week are Bob Novella...

B: Hey, everybody! (applause)

S: Cara Santa Maria...

C: Howdy. (applause)

S: Jay Novella...

J: Hey guys. (applause)

S: Evan Bernstein...

E: Good evening undisclosed location! (applause)

S: And George Hrabb...

G: Oh, hi! (applause)

S: So we are recording, as the listeners can probably tell in front of a live audience, here in Tucson, Arizona. (applause) Now you might think it's warm in Arizona. (laughter) You'd be wrong. It's December, but yeah, we knew it was going to be hot. But it was pretty chilly today. I'm looking at a room of people wearing coats and scarves.

J: I've been to Phoenix many times, always in the summer. I actually expected it to be like 60s. High 60s maybe. But yeah, it's cold.

G: Steve, I got to say, like many people, I watched the Beatles get back special last year, and I was yelling this town's name at one point because they're writing the song, Get Back, and they're trying to think of what goes with Tucson, Arizona, something left, something Arizona, something. I'm yelling, Tucson, Tucson, Arizona, the lyric is, come on, Paul, come on, John. And then they do it and you go.

B: Nice, nice.

G: And here we are, Tucson, Arizona.

B: That was a great documentary.

G: Unbelievable.

B: I want to watch it again. It was so amazing.

G: I have a question. Since we are in a hotel here, how do these car keys work? Car keys, card keys work?

S: They're magnetic.

B: You press them against a plate.

G: You're magnetic. Where's the, like, and then what?

C: So a magnet is...

G: No, I know, I know, but like, isn't it an RFID chip or what is it? Is it a chip in here? It's super thin, right?

E: Yep. Flexible.

J: You just ruined that key.

G: But is it a chip or is it a magnet thing?

J: It's a chip. That chip has a, like an ID number that the reader has to be matched with.

G: How thin and tiny is this chip that's in here?

E: About that thin.

G: But I don't even, like, I was trying to peel it apart. I was trying to see if it was like...

E: Don't do that.

J: George, it's definitely inside the plastic and it's super small. It doesn't need to be big.

G: So not magnets?

J: No, it's not magnetic.

G: So they used to be magnets. Oh, you used to have a strip.

C: Well, I think they used to have a strip.

S: The reader was magnetic.

C: Right, you used to swipe them.

S: Is the reader magnetic? It's a lot, well, so this is what happened. Bob and I are staying in the same room. I get there first. My card key doesn't work. And they literally put me in the room that was as far away from the front desk as you can possibly get it.

C: Somehow they did that for all of our rooms.

G: Because they knew that was the party room.

S: So then I had to go all the way back, tell them my card key isn't working. They reprogram it. I go back and it still doesn't work.

B: Meanwhile, I went there and tried my key and that didn't work.

S: So then we had to go back again. But we figured out, Bob and I did a little experiment. We tried our key on another door and a red light beat came up. And then we tried it on our door and no lights. So the keys were the problem. The door was broken. And then they said the battery must be dead. Like what? They were like, so wait a minute. Every door in this hotel has a battery in the reader? And some jackass has to go around changing all of those batteries? How frequently do they go out? Bob was like, didn't they hardwire? Yeah, but where would the wire go? It's a door.

C: Yeah, you couldn't. Yeah, it's a battery. Yeah, my door at home has a keypad and it's battery also. They last pretty long. I mean, I think if you use lithium ions, they last longer.

B: I thought it'd be more than six months. I would figure out maybe it's like 12 or 16 months.

C: It probably depends on the model.

S: But what is there 1,000 rooms in this hotel that means it's got to be going dead every day?

J: That's why they have the maintenance guys.

E: They're supposed to keep track of that stuff, like the heat.

S: The best part of the transition from the incandescent to LED bulbs is I'm not changing bulbs every single day. I was changing them all the time, just in my house. You got to get up on a stool or whatever. Now it's like I haven't changed a bulb in years.

E: Oh, gosh.

S: It's wonderful.

E: 17 years.

S: So this morning, breaking news, this show's coming out in a while, but we have to talk about it. The Pentagon had an updated announcement about their UFO investigation program, their UAPs, right?

E: Oh, finally.

S: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.

E: Here it is.

S: A big announcement, huge announcement. They're going to be putting out NFTs of UFOs. (laughter)

E: Oh, wow.

B: Superhero UFOs.

C: Win a chance to win a trip to the Pentagon.

S: The UAP now stands for Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, as opposed to Aerial Phenomena.

B: It's the same initialism.

S: Same initialism. Very clever.

B: Which is a good one.

E: Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena. How nebulous can you get?

S: Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena. I know.

C: But that's the point.

S: That's the point.

C: We don't know what it is.

S: The reason for the change is that they also want to investigate anomalies in the water. So they're not aerial. And what they call transmedium phenomena, so that things that go from the water to the air or vice versa.

B: Or space in the air.

S: Even though they haven't found any yet, they wanted to have a name ready to go in case they do find it.

E: Very forward thinking.

S: Yeah. They also said, by the way, we have extreme methods of surveillance. Just so you know. We can't tell you what they are. And enough said. But you know.

B: That was it.

S: But you know.

E: George, that key you were holding up earlier? Just saying. I'm just saying.

G: Do you have extreme methods of surveillance?

S: But think about it.

G: But aliens are not real?

S: Think about Google Earth. Think about what the military must have. Right? And for decades they've had this crap.

B: And satellite coverage.

S: There are spaceships flying around and they don't know about it.

E: I'm curious, anyone in this audience ever work for government agency?

S: Or currently working for government agency.

E: Are there things that we at the public have absolutely no clue about? Thumbs up. Thank you very much. That's all we need to know.

B: Can we interrogate you? I mean, talk to you later?

S: Hey, we consulted for the CIA.

E: Yes, we did.

B: That was cool.

S: We legit did. Some people were not happy about that. But we're like, well, yeah, we can work for the government.

G: It was jst a mailman, isn't it?

C: A mailman for the US Air Force.

G: That's right.

S: There's a third thing that I pulled out of their announcement. And that was, they said, regarding whether or not we've identified any alien activity on Earth, no. (laughter) The bottom line is, no.

E: Which is better than them leaving the question unanswered. Because that's the space in which all the kooky people operate. That is their home base, right?

S: But now they move over to the government's lying. So it's not like it shuts them down. They just change their narrative slightly.

B: It never shut them down.

Special Report: P-22 puma put down (7:25)

C: So Steve, I have a, there's something else that was actually 30 minutes ago that was just announced. It's a very sad thing. So I want to get it over with at the top of the show. But I feel like if we don't talk about it, I'm not doing somebody who's been very close to me in my life, as an Angelino, justice. But for those of you who are actually from Arizona, then you may keep up with the news in California about our resident mountain lion, P-22.

E: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

C: He was just euthanized about 30 minutes ago.

S: Oh, P-22.

C: We kind of knew that something was coming. We darted and captured him a couple of days ago. He's been increasingly acting out, erratic. He's much older than anybody expected him to live. He's been alone in Griffith Park now for many, many years. He was discovered soon after I moved to LA. And an adult male mountain lion usually needs 200 square miles at least to roam. And he's been roaming in about, I think, eight square miles for years.

E: So it's practically captivity.

C: Yeah, but he chose it, right? So he escaped the Santa Monica Mountains, which most of them do. They cross several freeways to get to whatever place they want to roam. He chose to stick around in Griffith Park with no mates and no other members of his species at all. And he lived pretty, well, I wouldn't say successfully, but he was doing well for a while. But within the past few months he's been acting out, he approached a person and ate their chihuahua, which was problematic. He had previously eaten a koala at the zoo, which is hilarious. And nobody was really that upset about that because they left the koala out. But the fact that he was moving more into residential areas, the fact that he was unafraid to approach people was worrisome. They darted him, captured him. He was severely malnourished. He had a little bit of mange. It looks like he had been hit by a car and they don't think that he's going to, or they didn't think that there was a good way to recover him safely. So they opted, which was the right choice, but a very sad choice because it's the end of an era in Los Angeles. Oh yeah, P22 is a hometown hero. And he is the reason, actually I should give a big shout out to my friend Beth Pratt, who is the California lead of the National Wildlife Federation, who really single-handedly, her and her team are responsible for giving P22 an identity, like a Facebook page, and they really helped draw attention to the problem of non-connectivity of wildlife in LA. And so, but because of that, we have successfully, there's been enough money raised to build a wildlife crossing at the Santa Monica Mountains so that we can increase connectivity among these animals, which is a really big deal. It's not built yet. Obviously it's too late for P22, but.

G: Why was that his name?

C: Oh, so Puma 22. Yeah, so they're all collared in the order that they were captured and collared.

B: So why not a better name?

C: We did, we did. We did a drawing. Everybody voted in LA. And P22 won.

S: Oh yeah?

C: Yeah, like they put out, let's name him a beloved name, and people voted on names, and people wrote in P22 because they knew him as P22. That's his name.

S: It also makes him sound like a droid.

C: He's badass. Yeah, he was badass. And so, yeah, Puma is actually one of these cool species names where I think it's, in North America, in the English language, it's the animal that has the most different names for the same animal. It's like Puma, Mountain Lion, Panther, Cougar, Catamount, yeah, that's all the same species.

G: That's all the same animal?

C: Yeah.

G: Wow.

C: I know, it's cool.

G: Oh, that's cool.

C: Yeah, so P22, we will miss you, and we love you.

S: Yeah, we definitely have to learn to live more seamlessly with wildlife, and the corridors is critical. We've isolated them. They can't mate. They can't roam around.

E: The ones they have in Europe are amazing. These entire land bridges that go over there.

C: That's what we're building. In LA, yeah.

E: Oh, they're incredible. Look them up on YouTube, they're amazing.

C: That's incredible. Yeah, look up Liberty Canyon Crossing. That's the one that we're building.

News Items

Toughest Metal (11:26)

• This Alloy Is The Toughest Known Material on Earth, And It Gets Tougher in The Cold 

S: All right, we're gonna start with a couple of quick news items, and we have a couple of discussion topics for you to get to, some more news items. We're gonna mix it up a little bit. Bob, you're gonna start us off by telling us about the world's toughest metal.

B: Yeah, this is a fascinating story. The scientists discovered the toughest recorded metal ever.

E: Define tough.

S: Of ever?

B: I shall, I shall. Chromium, cobalt, and nickel.

G: No, it's Pantera. That's the hardest recorded metal, come on.

B: So this is researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Oakland, and so this is chromium cobalt nickel is a HEA high entropy alloy, which you may not have heard of. So most alloys that you're familiar with, it's got, there's a primary metal in there, and then there's like doped with smaller amounts of other ones to make it an alloy. These alloys, HEAs, have pretty much equal amounts. So it's pretty much an equal amount of chromium, cobalt, and nickel in this metal. They were discovered 20 years ago, and scientists wanted to, were experimenting with it, and they put it into liquid nitrogen, and its toughness was like off the hook. We've all seen the experiment, you put the rose in liquid nitrogen, and then it smashes, and that's what happens to pretty much almost everything you put in something that cold. It gets crazy brittle, and metals are no exception. But this was very tough, and it actually got even, seemed to get a little bit tougher as it got colder. So they wanted to figure out, all right, what are we gonna do with that? Now, let me describe and answer your question, Evan. What does that mean? I mean, there's adjectives for metal, ways to describe metal that are very specific and technical, not colloquial at all. Hardness is one, which is resistance to scratching. And so if you have a drill bit, you wanna make it not only strong, but you wanna make it hard so that it's not gonna scratch. There's also toughness, which means that it doesn't, it's hard to make a permanent deformation in the metal. There's ductility, ductile metal is easy to shape and form in some regards. And so this one, it looked like it was tough, which is high strength and ductility, which is really hard, because usually it's a compromise. You want it, it's strong and a very strong and a little ductile or the opposite, but having it bolt at the same time is almost unheard of. And it's very, very, very rare and very desirable, as you might imagine. So they wanted to test it in liquid hydrogen. They wanted to get it a lot colder, say 20 Kelvin minus what, four, it's at 424 Fahrenheit. I don't know what that is in Celsius. So they wanted to do that, but they can't just like throw it into liquid hydrogen and test it, it took 10 years. It took them a decade to get to the point where they could find a facility that could not only test it, but also put it through its paces and then analyse the results. So it actually took them 10 years to do that, which is surprising. But I mean, the technology evolved and it takes a while, it took them 10 years. So once they got into liquid hydrogen, they did a test of fracture toughness. How tough is this? How resistant is it to fracturing, which is a critical measure? And the units they use, I never heard these units before, megapascals square root meters. All right, that's the unit, that's the unit. This measured at 500, this gave it a 500. And now to put that in context, see a quote from one of the co-leader researchers, Robert Ritchie. He said, "The toughness of a piece of silicon is one. The aluminium airframe in a passenger airplane is about 35. And the toughness of some of the best steels is around 100." So 500 is a staggering number. This is crazy tough. And at that low temperature, it's just like mind boggling.

S: I wonder if that would make it a good metal to use, a good alloy to use for like the hydrogen tanks on a rocket.

B: This is like a no brainer for like space applications. Cause like the vacuum of space, I mean, we're talking crazy temperature ranges.

C: Is it heavy?

B: I don't know, I don't know.

S: Well, nickel cobalt and chromium, so yes.

E: How much would you need?

B: Compared to like aluminium, I don't know.

S: Oh, it's heavier than aluminium.

B: Is it a deal breaker? Is it a deal breaker?

S: It's heavier than titanium, but maybe not as steel, I don't know. But those are heavy.

B: So I'll throw out another quote here from co-lead Easo George. He said, "When you design structural materials, you want them to be strong, but also ductile and resistant to fracture. Typically it's a compromise between these properties, but this material is both. Instead of becoming a little brittle at low temperatures, it gets tougher." Okay, so why is it so tough? And this was hard to put into.

G: Ha.

B: Ha ha. This was hard. I did a lot of reading how to put this into terms that are kind of like reasonable and not too technical based on what they were saying. So what happens is that they looked at this, they took atomic maps. They wanted to see why is this so tough? Is this something that's part of these high entropy alloys or is it specific to this one? They wanted to know what the atomic level, and that's what they did. They looked at the atomic level, and they saw exactly why this was so tough. And so what happens is you've got metals, which is like crystals. You've got a lattice structure of atoms, and there's imperfections. It's not perfect. There's imperfections that create dislocations, and those dislocations can move. So when you bend a spoon, you've got these dislocations that are kind of moving around and causing it to bend. But for some metals, these atomic obstacles arise. As you put force into the metal, these obstacles arise that prevent these dislocations from moving, and so it makes it stronger. With this metal, you put in some energy, and a specific type of obstacle arises to prevent it from fracturing. Then you put even a little bit more energy into it, and another type of obstacle arises. And it's got names, nanotwinning, and all these different technical names for them. But then, and that creates an obstacle, and that makes it stronger as well. And then you put even more force, and a third obstacle rears its head.

E: And these obstacles, do they get?

B: They prevent these dislocations from propagating and fracturing and snapping the metal.

E: And one's more resilient than the next?

B: Not necessarily, but it makes it resilient in kind of like a different way. So you have three of these. You have like a synergistic relationship between these different types of atomic obstacles that arise. There are different types of changes to the lattice. Okay? And they've seen these before. Other metals show them. You know, you could have nanotwinning in this metal, and another type of obstacle in this metal, but we've never seen these three appearing bam, bam, bam, one after the other, the more energy you put into it. So that's what makes this metal extremely tough. You've got this synergy between these three types of obstacles that arise, making it stronger, making it very hard to fracture and pull apart. So it's really an amazing metal. So I'm sure they're gonna pour a lot of research into this to see what other HEAs can do this and what different ways they can apply this specific chromium cobalt nickel to other space hardware or whatever. Cool stuff.

S: Unfortunately, the thing that comes to mind is that cobalt and nickel are both used in the lithium ion batteries, and they're running short. And so it's not like we have a lot of these around. Unless we mine asteroids over.

B: And that's why they're looking into other types of metals that are HEAs that could potentially have similar toughness.

S: Right. All right.

B: Cool.

Eyewear from Coffee Grounds (18:42)

• Ukrainian Eyewear Maker Continues to Spin Coffee Grounds into Frames 

S: All right, George.

G: Yes, sir.

S: You can make glasses out of coffee grounds?

'G: Ah, yeah. This is a story which is very near and dear to my heart because a place in Ukraine, I'm a first generation Ukrainian, have had my heart broken my entire life repeatedly with stories from Ukraine, from the history of its horrible famines, it's dealing with the Soviet Union, of course, Chernobyl, when I was in grade school or middle school, corruption, invasion, wars, and now the latest Putin insanity, which is happening. Well, a little piece of good news popped out. The Ukrainian people, and I say this proudly, are just unbelievably resilient, and they're fighting their way through what they're dealing with in ways that it's very inspiring. And it's also just reminds me not to complain about things, which is also a really good deal. You know, when I don't get the great parking spot, I always think like, oh, yeah, I have electricity today. A lot of the, in Kiev specifically, which is the capital city, there's a lot of businesses, restaurants, and coffee shops that have two menus. They have a menu for when power is available and a menu for when power is not available. So it's like, which menu today? Oh, no power, okay, so we got the cold salad and the not, you've got sandwiches, and oh, no, we have power today, so we can there's no bombs today, so we can have power. Well, one of the companies there is taking advantage of the fact that Kiev specifically is a very coffee-centric city. They love coffee shops, and coffee shops have been an essential thing during the war for people to get together, for people to get information, to disseminate information, and also just to have moments of sanity where they can just get together and forget about the outside world for just a minute or two. And these coffee shops keep producing tons and tons of coffee grounds. This one gentleman, Maxim Gavrilenko, figured out a way to take coffee grounds and turn them into basically a resin, which then can be made into eyeglasses.

S: Or really anything, right?

G: Really anything, but he's-

S: It's like a type of plastic.

G: It's the frame, yeah. It's basically a plastic that is completely organic, so he's taking these coffee grounds. The coffee shops, they just throw out. So they don't want this stuff, so they're like, take this, we don't, go, you can enjoy it, whatever.

C: They're probably paying to have this.

G: I wonder, they might, I think he's just got this deal where they just take it and they compress it. They combine it with some natural resins. There's no plastics involved. It's natural resins and some oils. And you get this very strong plastic-like structure, and they use it to make frames. The actual lens itself is a traditional plastic, because you can't make it quite good for that, for the clarity of that. But the frame is a coffee-based plastic frame, and it actually smells like coffee. So if you're a fan of coffee, when you first get your glasses, they say, when you open up the box, you're hit with this nice little burst of caffeinated goodness. And over time, it fades.

B: Oh, it doesn't work with decaf?

G: Yeah, I wonder, flavored, whatever.

S: Yeah, 2.0, and I want decaf.

G: But they biodegrade 10 times faster than regular materials. They are totally sustainable. They're a business model in terms of what they're doing, the waste that they're producing. They are trying to be totally environmentally friendly. You can order stuff online from them. They're called Ochis, O-C-H-I-S, which in Ukrainian, an oka is an eye, and ochis is eyes. So they're called ochis, which is this interesting Englishification of the, because ochi is plural, but they're called ochis, which I thought was really interesting. It's like, you can Google ochi. They're like 200 to 300 bucks, and they're really hip frames. They've got some really lovely designs. I haven't gotten a pair yet, but I plan to get a pair at some point. And it just made, it just gave me a warm little caffeinated heartbeat, more so than usual for my heartbeat. That really just felt nice that you can just, there we go, yeah. They're hip, they're cool, and apparently only, I think, 20% of their business is Ukrainian. The rest is international, that they've kind of gotten out there, and people are, and it's a wonderful way to support a Ukrainian business that is doing its dirtiest, not to just maintain environmental footprint and doing the right thing, but also supporting the whole community of the coffee baristas that are in Kiev that are trying to desperately have some moments of sanity and normalcy within this unbelievable situation.

S: I love the whole idea of upcycling, of taking what is essentially a waste stream from another industry and diverting that to become a raw material stream for a different industry.

G: It's like the fryer oil that runs cars. It's fantastic. There should be so many more things like that.

S: And there is a lot of that just because it's efficient. Like coal ash can be used for cement or whatever. There's all kinds of things like that, but emphasizing that, I think, there's definitely a lot of attention being paid to that because we do need to get to more of a circular economy where we're recycling or upcycling as much as possible and rather than relying on an endless stream of input of new, completely new material.

G: I saw a story, a woman in Africa who started a company, she takes plastic, like soda bottles, and makes bricks out of them. Bricks are three times stronger than cement and five times lighter, so they can actually build a house out of this stuff. That's the kind of thing.

J: This is the type of thing, there's lots of things that come into news that are like this. You know what I mean? There was an innovation, like this guy made plastic bags out of seaweed or something and then you could literally put them in water and they'd dissolve. And my question is, why isn't there massive adoption? Like these coffee frames, it's such a smart thing to do. The world is full of coffee grains, right? I wish that, like the big eyeglass companies online, I forget the Zenny or whatever, the ones that you and I have talked about. Wouldn't it be awesome if they were like, yeah, we're only gonna use this now because it's good for the environment. This is what Cara's talking about. We need to, I don't know, as consumers make decisions because the companies are gonna do what's in their best interest, the government isn't gonna tell companies what to do that much. They're not gonna say stop using plastics, but they should.

S: A lot of it comes down to economics, and I suspect the reason they're making frames for glasses is because it's something you could sell for a couple hundred dollars, right? If you were making something that had a market value of $20, it might not be worth doing it. So you just gotta find that niche. You gotta find that thing that makes economic sense, not just technological sense.

G: People are used to spending X on this product. We're gonna substitute that with a very low, or a high profit margin, which also has the ecological benefits and stuff. So yeah, that's the sweet spot. Find those products, like the plastic bags. That's a great thing.

S: All right.

Asides: Bags, raccoons, and bears (25:48)

B: Jay, those bags that dissolve in water, so if it rains, you're...

S: While you're on the way from the store, yeah, it's raining.

J: But it's still the idea.

G: No, it takes a couple weeks or something, but it does eventually dissolve. You can get them wet, but it's not like made of sugar. (laughter) Cotton candy bag, this is great. This is terrible.

E: Why, what?

J: You ever see the video?

C: With the raccoon?

J: The raccoon, it puts the cotton candy in the water, and it just...

C: It's so sad.

J: You can just tell the raccoon was like, what the hell just happened?

C: So sad.

S: Raccoons are super smart.

C: I know, it's like he was trying to rinse it off or something, and then it just disappeared.

J: I have a raccoon that visits my house all the time. I know you do too, Steve, because you have bird feed on it.

S: They have a family of them.

J: Well, you have a bear that came on your porch and he... Parked its ass there.

S: Multiple times, multiple times.

J: Right on Steve's porch, and he was eating bird seed out of the bucket.

S: He was balancing on the rail at one point.

G: Did you film it? Do you have pictures?

E: Well, during our live stream, it happened.

S: We have, yeah.

E: Remember that?

S: There's a neighborhood black bear. Gorgeous animal. Gorgeous. Perfect coat of fur.

G: B-22? (laughter)

S: No, he gets spotted all the time.

C: Is he collared? Do they collar bears?

S: Not collared.

C: They might ear tag them. Yeah, they probably ear tag them.

S: Yeah, I think he might have a tag. I think he might have an ear tag, but he...

C: He probably does if he's in the neighborhood.

S: He comes up on our deck. And I can usually tell, because my dog goes crazy, and he has a different bark.

E: Yeah, the bear bark.

G: Really?

S: Yeah, when there's an animal on the deck, it's a different bark than any other bark. But he has the same bark for raccoons as he does for the bears, so you don't know what you're gonna get.

E: You have to fix that.

S: So you were saying?

B: My favourite raccoon video was a raccoon walking on two legs, two legs, and scoops some dog food and walks away with it. What's happening? Just don't expect that to happen.

G: That was the Avengers, Bob.

E: It had a big gun, and it pointed at the spaceship.

J: Raccoons don't really have front paws. They have hands.

C: They do.

J: They can articulate their hands. So this one raccoon, we know each other now. Like, this has happened a couple of times where sometimes I'll take a bag of garbage and I'll put it in the garage and not take it to the bin because it's too cold, and I'm just like, all right, fine. It's not gonna stink in there because it's cold, right? So I open the garage door. I'm doing the garbage one night. I go back inside, come back out, and the raccoon dragged one of the garbage bags out into the driveway. And I'm literally like, I see you. I know it's you, bastard.

B: The raccoon says, hi, Jay.

J: But he's not afraid of me. He's not afraid.

S: They got balls.

J: We have a 10-foot buffer that he will allow, he or she, whatever, will allow. So I had the bird feeder that you gave me, right? So the little son of a bitch is out there, and he knows, he hits the thing, and some bird seed falls out. And I think, it wasn't on this big pole. It was right near the ledge where he could do it. So he's doing that. So I come out, and he sees me. We have that moment. You know, I'm like, okay. Then I walk towards him, and he takes a step back. And it's literally like this. He knows, we don't get any further or closer to each other. But I'm so curious to know a tamed one, kinda tamed, what are they like? What kind of pets?

S: They're terrible pets.

J: They've gotta rip your house apart, right?

S: Yeah, because they pee everywhere. But also, the worst thing about raccoons is that their go-to move is to bite. And so that's what they do. If they get upset, they get scared, they go whatever, they bite. And so they're just terrible pets. Do not have a raccoon as a pet.

G: That's Jay's rule, though, too. (laughter)

C: Jay makes a bad pet.

News Items, continued

Water Worlds (51:59)

• Ocean worlds around red dwarfs … common? 

Psychic Fraud (1:00:43)

• The Wild Story of the Psychic, the Sheikh and the $90 Million Diamond Heist 

Special Segment: Rogues' Expert Advice (1:05:37)

Evan on tax scams

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Science or Fiction (1:39:56)

Theme: Arizona Item #1: Other than a few stray plants, Arizona is the only state in the US with the famous saguaro cactus (Carnegiea gigantea). Item #2: With 3,928 peaks and summits, Arizona is considered the most mountainous state of the 48 contiguous states. Item #3: Arizona is the most venomous state in the US, with the only venomous lizard, the gila monster, 13 species of rattlesnake, scorpions, africanized bees, a venomous centipede, and the insect with the most painful bite, the tarantula hawk.

Answer	Item
Fiction	Most mountainous state
Science	Only state w/ saguaro cactus
Science	Most venomous state

Host	Result
Steve	sweep

Rogue	Guess
George	Only state w/ saguaro cactus
Cara	Only state w/ saguaro cactus
Evan	Only state w/ saguaro cactus
Bob	Only state w/ saguaro cactus
Jay	Only state w/ saguaro cactus

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

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:52:15)

Among all the geographic areas of the United States, the Southwest in general and Arizona, in particular, is blessed with a panoramic beauty that almost defies description. Only a limited number of poets, painters, and photographers have been able to do justice to her splendor.  – Marshall Trimble (1939-present), American author, singer, professor, and Arizona's official state historian

Signoff

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

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