SGU Episode 1013
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| SGU Episode 1013 |
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| December 07th 2024 |
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"Exploring the cosmos from the International Space Station, Earth below beckons." |
| Skeptical Rogues |
| S: Steven Novella |
B: Bob Novella |
C: Cara Santa Maria |
J: Jay Novella |
E: Evan Bernstein |
| Quote of the Week |
If an outsider perceives “something wrong” with a core scientific model, the humble and justified response of that curious outsider should be to ask, “What mistake am I making?” before assuming 100% of the experts are wrong. — David Brin |
| Links |
| Download Podcast |
| Show Notes |
| SGU Forum |
Intro[edit]
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 Tuesday, December 3rd, 2024, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella. Hey everybody, Cara Santa Maria. Howdy Jay Novella. Hey, guys. And Evan Bernstein.
E: Good evening everyone.
S: So guys, we're going to DC this weekend. When the show comes out, we will be basically in the middle of our private show in DC. And then we have the extravaganza. And it's going to be a little tricky because as some of you already know, I fell and cracked a rib last week.
C: Oh. Steve.
S: Don't do that, by the way. It's what do you find? I recommend you do not fracture a rib. It's not.
J: What happened I?
C: Hear that?
S: It was, you know, it's just, it was nothing. It was completely stupid. I was, you know, outside at night at my mother in law's place and I tripped on a stone like patio, thing fell on my right side and that's it.
J: You were drunk. Come on.
S: So unfortunately one of my ribs took the majority of the impact.
J: So how bad does it hurt for those of us who have not broken a rib?
S: So it's not bad it's a probably. I mean I haven't been X-rayed or anything I'm just diagnosing myself based upon symptoms. But it's probably a non displaced fracture. I could feel the rib. Everything feels good. Yes, I could take a. Hairline. I could take a deep breath without any problems.
B: Which that's the big damage, yeah, the. Organs. That's huge.
S: Yeah, well, it's been a week now. So. But it's just I'm very restricted in my movements, you know what I mean? I can't bear any weight with my right arm, which is very limiting. So you guys are going to have to do all my heavy lifting this weekend is basically what I'm telling you, no?
J: Interpretive dance at all?
S: Yeah, like to remember the last extravaganza where I did that Russian goose stepping dance, Whatever that.
E: Ain't happening.
S: Not happening this time. No. No physicality for me.
E: Oh no. Yeah, you. Just got a blind no. Freeze frame for you. Man, you'll, well, you'll be guessing the freeze frames.
S: Or I mean, I could, as long as I'm vertical, I'm fine. Like I'm not going on the floor. I'm not doing any ambitious. It really just, it's very, it's just miserable. It's, you know what it means. I have to get into very specific positions. Like there can't be any tension on my ribs. You know, it's one of those core muscle, you know, one of those positional things where you like, it's, it's like try to put your back completely at rest. Like it's very, very difficult to do it. Sleeping is terrible.
J: I guess. I guess you're gonna try really hard not to get into a fistfight with someone at the show, right? Yeah. Some audience.
S: Very, very hard. I know. Usually I get into two or three fistfights with audience. Members China, yeah.
J: Well, what the hell.
S: Go for that right side. And I can't really give like a full cough, so I'm always I'm doing these half coughs.
E: Oh, I hate those.
S: So I know I got just enough to because you're constantly clearing gunk out of your lungs, you.
E: Know, I know, humans are disgusting.
S: That's part of the problem with with anything that impairs your ability to cough is that you run the risk of the the gunk getting backed up.
C: Well, Steve, you know, the trick that I was taught before the hugging my YEAH is to, is to push into a pillow. Yeah. So after my hysterectomy, I had to. I mean, you still have to cough sometimes. It's brutal. Yeah.
S: But this isn't this isn't an abdominal problem. So that you that helps with the abdominal.
C: Higher.
S: It's yeah, it's on and on the side and it's yeah, like try, try breathing or coughing without moving your ribs, you know?
C: Yeah, but I mean, you can't breathe or cough without moving your abs either. I know I'm actually, you know, they're. All in play, yeah, I'm.
S: Trying to do abdominal breathing, yeah, rather than rib breath.
C: It's good for you. Yeah, I teach my patients how to do that, like diaphragmatic breathing, all the. Time, right?
S: Exactly.
C: Good for your blood pressure.
E: Oh, is that right?
J: So, well, I got some interesting news, guys.
E: Oh yeah? What? What'd you break, Jay?
J: We now have SGU dice.
E: Oh yeah, can't wait to see. Not what I was expecting you to say.
J: Yeah, So what what happened was Brian Wecht, you know, he and I talk all the time and he's constantly like he he's such a good friend that he is constantly throwing me ideas, whatever could be anything from show ideas to whatever. One day he said, hey, you guys ever sell dice? I'm like, no. And I'm like, why? I'm like, you think people that listen to a podcast would would want to buy dice? And he goes, yeah, he goes, look, I'm in an 80's rock band and we sold a ton of dice. You should try to do it. I think he.
S: Said they were his best selling swag item. Yeah, he did, yeah.
J: Yeah, so then I'm like, all right, I mean, look, because, you know, I always like it when I like the swag that we buy. Typically I like everything because I only buy things that are high quality and like something that I would want or buy because that's a good marker for me.
E: The J test.
J: So, you know, I, I scrubbed the Internet and I found a manufacturer. I liked them. I really dig this company that we're buying dice from and that's it. Steve and I picked out a couple of styles and everything. And so they're going to be at the DC show with us, which is, you know, people can buy those there if they want them.
S: They'll have our logo on them, obviously.
J: Yeah, they have. The 20D20 on the 20 has an SGU logo.
S: We got a bunch of new swag for.
J: This Yeah, yeah, I just, we just reloaded our swag. It was a good time to buy it because lots of things were on sale because of the holiday. That was basically the impetus right there.
E: Kara, have you ever rolled A20 sided die before?
C: Like.
E: Casahedron.
C: How many sides does the dye from Scattergories have?
E: Doesn't have 20 letters on it.
C: I'm about to find out Scattergories die is a 20 sided die then yes. So you have. Shot 20.
E: Shot.
C: Well, anybody who's played Scattergories has.
E: They're fun. Yeah, I think I have. I've played it. It's been a while I guess. You'll never forget your first D20, I promise you.
C: Totally forgot, that's why I. Still have mine.
E: I was 10 years old. I still.
S: Karen, now you can have an SGU D20.
C: OK, Yeah.
S: That's a keepsake. Yeah. All right, let's get on with some some skeptical content to your body.
Quickie with Bob: New laser technique achieves atomic-scale precision on diamond surfaces (06:00)[edit]
S: You're going to start us off with a quickie.
B: Thank you, Steve. This is your quickie with Bob. All right, How cool is this, guys? Imagine putting something under a microscope and being able to easily manipulate its surface with atomic precision. This is exactly what researchers claim in the study published and Applied Surface Science. The lead researcher, Dr. Motaba Mushkani said our laser method provides atomic level control over diamond surfaces in a standard air environment. This level of precision is typically only possible with large, complex vacuum equipment. The ability to achieve it with a simple laser process is truly remarkable. Remarkable. So yeah, this is really slick. To do this, they use a deep UV light laser to precisely deliver pulses of light onto the diamond surface, and these pulses trigger chemical reactions that can precisely remove carbon atoms from this top atomic layer. Now this could have tremendous impact on electronics, quantum computers, advanced manufacturing, specifically in materials where minor changes onto the surface can have dramatic performance improvements. For example, they showed and MIT Lincoln Laboratory confirmed that this technique was able to increase diamond surface conductivity by a factor of seven. They say. Professor Richard Mildren says he's the team lead. We were amazed that such a minor adjustment to the surface could yield such a substantial boost in conductivity. Now, you may be thinking, yeah, but doing this atom by atom, right? Isn't that how you would do it? It would just take forever. But no, this, this technique is precise and fast at the same time. They, they said that they were able to remove 1% of her surface monolayer in .2 milliseconds. Now, I don't know how big this surface monolayer was, but speed is not an issue with this technique, apparently. Doctor Mushkani said. We've shown that the process is both rapid and scalable. It's a compelling option for industries requiring advanced material processing. Professor Mildren said. This is just the beginning. We're excited to explore how this technique can be optimized further to unlock the full potential of diamonds in electronics, quantum technologies and beyond. So this is yet another technology that I will be following closely. So this has been your atomically precise quickie with Bob. Back to you, Steve.
S: Thank you, Bob. All right, Kara, this one's intriguing.
News Items[edit]
Innate Morality (08:19)[edit]
S: And this is different than this cuts against what I would have thought. So tell me about whether or not humans have innate morality.
C: Well, this cuts against what the researchers thought as well, which is why this is kind of a really interesting story. And in a way it relates back to. I've got to ask, do you guys remember when we were at Cycon? And it feels like a long time ago to us now, but to our listeners, I think it doesn't because didn't that episode just air last week? Yeah, that's correct. Time travel. Yeah, time travel. But the story that I covered was about how to sort of keep researchers honest and how to ensure that what we are doing in the publication world is appropriately vetted. And we talked about pre registering studies and we talked about Open Access and we talked about having raw data available for other researchers to look at. And I think in some ways this study is a bit of a case study in being able to do that. So published in Developmental Science on November 26th 20 24 is a paper called Infant Social Evaluation of Helpers and Hinderers, a large scale multi lab coordinated replication study. Researchers in this study looked at a Seminole study that was published by Hamlin and colleagues in 2007. And in that study that a lot of people have cited, researchers found that forming social evaluations, as they put it, based on 3rd party interactions. That's like a very wonky way to say observing a social engagement with another, either human or toy or character, that within the first year of life, infants would choose a helper over a hinderer. And they used a paradigm in which an object with eyes was trying to climb a hill and another object with eyes either gave it a boost or prevented it from going up. And using that paradigm in this study from 2007, researchers showed, hey, look, even within the first year of life, based on their eye gazes, these infants are spending more time looking at the helpers, less time looking at the hinderers. Therefore, they're preferring the helpers over the hinderers. Therefore there must be some sort of innate decision making around helping. If we want to call that morality, we can. The researchers don't just all the right arounds do so, which is not uncommon. Right? So this study said, OK, this is interesting because since that 2007 study, a bunch of studies said, hey, look, we found the same thing, but a bunch of other studies were like, not so fast. I don't think we found the same thing, and I'm confused. So they did something interesting. They said, OK, we want to do a different kind of experiment altogether. And in this study, they looked at a project across multiple labs in a really large scale. Ultimately, they ended up seeing of over 1000 infants across 40 different developmental psychology teams. They ended up using about half of that data for good reason. We can talk about that in a bit. But they looked at over 1000 children between the ages of 5 1/2 and 10 1/2 months across multiple labs and they developed a paradigm that was based on that hill paradigm that I described before. So there are four different conditions in the helping and hindering paradigm. There are social conditions and non social conditions. Two of them are social, 2 are non social, and they're helping or up conditions and hindering or down conditions. Two of them are helping, two of them are hindering. So we'll start with the helping up condition. Imagine a little yellow triangle with eyes and a little red circle about the same size with eyes. The helping condition that the yellow triangle helps the red circle get up the hill. The red circle can't go on its own. The yellow triangle comes up and gives it a boost from underneath and then it makes it up the hill. That same paradigm is shown in a non social condition where the little red character doesn't have eyes, so now it's just a ball rolling up a hill and the helper, the yellow triangle with eyes, moves that red ball up the hill. So it's non social, right? It's moving an object and not another character. In the other condition, the hindering condition, the red ball is trying to go up the hill, but a Blue Square comes from above it and pushes it down, preventing it from going up the hill. So the helper helps it up from behind the the yellow triangle, the hinderer, the Blue Square pushes it down from above. And there's also the non social version of that where the red character doesn't have eyes anymore and now it's just a red ball. So the googly eyes make it social if that makes sense. Now these are infants, remember? So they're bright colored. Very simple displays and they showed these different conditions to the infants. Now in the original study, they just looked at eye gazes, but in this replication study they did something even more interesting. They added a behavioral component where after the infants looked at these different conditions in randomized order, they then were shown a board with cutouts of the characters and they were asked to pick which character they liked. They were looking for. Researchers were, and this is based on a lot of research about working with infants, they were looking to see which of the characters the infants grabbed for and also looked at at the same time. Does that make sense? So they needed to look at it. They also needed to grab for it. Now, a lot of them were thrown out because some infants just didn't pick one. They either went back and forth between the two or they looked at 1 and grabbed the other. And it was, you know, inconsistent, which they were showing a preference for. So they couldn't use that data in the situations where it was obvious which character the infants went for. What do you think they found?
E: The same. It was the same fine.
C: The same. So overall 49.34% of the infants chose the helpers. Yeah. Oh, and that was in the social condition. 55.85% chose the helpers in the non social condition. And when they compared the two, there was number significant difference. Helpers or hinderers. It was no different from each other, no different from chance alone, coin flip. And so the researchers were like, whoa, because that was not their hypothesis. They were like, wait, we did this before. We showed that there was this pro social thing that appears to be innate. Not only do infants go for the helpers, but we're also hoping that they go for the social Group A little bit more too. They did find, I think, a slight preference for the social group, but they didn't find any significant difference between the helpers and the hinderers. So they then talk about why this might be the case. They have some different ideas. But of course, this is in the discussion section of a study. We just don't know. We are speculating. They are wondering if maybe this skill or this preference is present, just not this early. Maybe it's going to develop after 10 1/2 months, or maybe there is no innate preference at all. Or maybe this study isn't tapping in to the best way to look at an innate reference. Maybe they don't see a significant difference between the groups using the Hill paradigm, but maybe there are other sort of more naturalistic studies where they would see that pro social or that quote moral behavior. But what they like is that this was proof of concept for using these active measures. So the infants had a choice. They got to choose the character at the end instead of the classic way that researchers study where they just kind of count how long an infant gazes at an object and then they infer that that means they're more interested in that object. They're calling this a first of its kind study that shows proof of concept, a concept for using an active behavioral measure that is a manual choice in a large scale multi lab project studying infants. Oh and one thing I didn't mention that I should have is that every aspect of this study was pre registered and all of the data is available Open Access.
B: That's good now.
C: So they really did check a lot of those boxes because they were worried about the replication crisis. They were worried that this original study, which has been cited so many times that so many people were taking as truth, was kind of showing, I guess we could say ambiguous or maybe ambivalent. You know, like, yes, sometimes it's supported, sometimes it's not. It's kind of wiggly. OK, well, let's just look at it once and for all, across multiple labs, across multiple countries, We'll all do the exact same thing. We'll all collaborate on this study and we'll see if we find the same thing. So, you know, they talk quite a bit in the paper about the difference between doing a meta analysis and doing a large scale multi lab project and how there are different ways to approach it statistically. And you know, there are strengths and weaknesses of both, but it's a pretty robust paradigm. And the researchers were, they were surprised that the, that they failed to, to replicate that study. And I think it's also a great example of like publishing negative results, because just because the results are quote negative doesn't mean there's not a lot of really interesting stuff here.
S: Yeah, negative data is data.
C: Yeah, it tells us a lot.
S: Yeah, this is interesting. I mean, it's A1 interpretation of this is that, well, maybe the effect went away because it was all P hacking to begin with. And then when they did, when they controlled for P hacking, it goes away. That's one interpretation. The other one is that it's just not a good paradigm for what they're looking for. As you, as we say, everything's a construct, right? You can't. We don't know that this is a marker of morality and kids. It's just one way that they're choosing to look at it and it could indicate that because you could. The thing is, it's like one of those things where you could rationalize either way. Are kids more interested in the pro social character because they're drawn to it? Or are they more interested in the anti social character because that's more fascinating and it's almost like a morbid curiosity. It's like this. There's something wrong with this character. What's going on with this thing that he's being, you know, so you who? We can't tell what's going on in the minds of these infants. Obviously they can't they can't talk. And then the other thing I was thinking when I was reading this was like, well, you can't make statements like there is no evidence for innate morality. I mean that I think is massively over calling this as you say, you know it could just be well maybe it doesn't really manifest until 2 years old you. Know.
C: Yeah. And they talk about that, too, yeah.
S: The brain is still maturing at this point. That's that could be one of those, you know, sophisticated frontal lobe things that doesn't kick in for a while, you know.
C: Absolutely, they say. You know that their first interpretation is that infants between 5 and 10 months of age don't prefer pro social characters over antisocial characters after all. And then they talk about why those results could have been different, as you mentioned, P hacking being one of them. A second interpretation they say is that infants don't prefer helpers in the hill paradigm, but maybe would prefer them in some other context. And you know, they talk about a lot of the studies that is have been published, including a meta analysis that did find a preference for agents performing different kinds of pro social actions. And so you know, they say for those reasons, it seems plausible that even if infants don't prefer helpers over hinders in the Hill paradigm, by 10 1/2 months, they might nonetheless prefer, I'm quoting them directly, helpers. Or pro social agents more generally in other scenarios, perhaps when the intentions are overt or perhaps it's going to happen, you know, later in development. But to to sit on the assumption that infants between the ages of 5 1/2 and 10 1/2 months are intrinsically moral versus the assumption that they are intrinsically not moral, neither of those things is really borne by the literature. And so we have to be really careful when we interpret these studies to interpret them based on what they actually tell us. And I think that's a big difficulty in psychology because we're always working with constructs.
S: There's also different types of morality. I mean, there's justice and fairness, right? This is more pro social versus antisocial behavior, so again, you can't make sweeping statements about.
C: Yeah. And they, you know, they're very careful. They do talk about morality in the discussion, but they don't talk about it very often when they're talking. Yeah, through the study, they're saying helpers, hinderers, helpers. Right, Right. Social pro social, non social.
S: Interesting. All right.
America Needs a New Space Station (21:07)[edit]
S: Thanks, Kara. Jay, how's our space station doing?
J: Well, on a scale of one to 10, 10 is brand new. It's probably out of two. Yeah, there's some, you know, significant issues with it. I mean, let's face it, it's lasted longer than they expected it to. But let me give you the update. So first of all, you know, the International Space Station, it's been around since 1998, which means that they started building the components for it, you know, many, many years before that. So it's been in low Earth orbit for 26 years. And, you know, unfortunately, it's really showing its age now. And when they initially launched it, it started with just one module. Do you guys know what the name of that was?
E: Freedom.
J: It's a Russian module.
E: Oh wow.
J: There's a Zarya, ZARYA, Zarya, Yeah, The ISS today has 43 module facilities, and there's a lot of different. I mean, it's really cool. They have so many different sections that do different things. They have airlocks, robotic arms, power, life support, communication, you know, habitation modules, research facilities. You know, there's a lot of different modules up there, very complicated and unbelievably expensive. There's been an unprecedented and I think very noteworthy collaboration between nations. We have the United States, Russia, the European nations, Japan, Canada, Italy, Brazil, all being major contributors to the space station. But you know, like I said, it's unlimited time today. And most of the partner countries I listed, they plan to retire the station on or or around 20-30, which is coming up pretty quick. And Russia is also now saying that they it might even go earlier for them and they might want to withdraw by 2028.
E: Yeah, they've been talking about that for many years now.
J: Yeah, it's interesting to try to work out the details. What does that actually mean if they pull out? Like, what does that actually mean? You know, is it like they're not going to give any financial support or what?
E: I think they'll no longer be responsible for the upgrades or the the maintenance. Yeah, of their portion of of the state.
J: Yeah. OK. That makes sense. So NASA has already instructed SpaceX to design A deorbiting spacecraft that will guide the ISS safely into Earth's atmosphere. You know, like, it's a big deal. This is a really big deal to to deorbit that thing and to have it land in the ocean. You know, they want a controlled descent. And of course, this thing can't land in the city. It would do an amazing amount of damage. You know, there could be, you know, very dangerous. I think that they are totally up to the task. And I think, you know, NASA and SpaceX know exactly, you know what to do, but it's going to be expensive. But what kind of a show that will be, guys, huh. I mean, if it happens at night or during the day, you're going to see it. If you, if you're, you know, if, if, if you're in line of sight, you're going to see a huge, huge show we have that's going to that's going to burn up and really be visible. And even worse, guys, there's issues that might accelerate, you know, this 2028 or 2030 timeline. There's been these persistent air leaks in the Russian Zvezda module. And it's really got some serious air leaks. And they were first discovered, you know, back in 2019. That seems like a long time ago. So they've escalated this situation to a very critical level. The leaks are now rated 5 out of five on NASA's danger scale. And it is the number one top safety concern that's going on. And it is significant. The ISS is losing about 3.7 lbs of air per day. And that costs NASA about four grand a day, about 1.6 million a year to actually replace the atmosphere because it has to be brought up there, really. And these figures, you know, their estimates, but they show clearly that there's growing operational, you know, burden here of maintaining the station. It's not the only problems that they have. It is serious enough where the astronauts were told by NASA to spend more time in the American section of the station.
E: Probably having fewer problems.
J: Yeah, right. So. To prepare for a worst case scenario, SpaceX is developing an emergency evacuation plan for the crew. I would imagine that that is some type of craft that has, you know, that will be attached and will be ready to go at a moments notice. The structural issues on the station have made a top priority to replace the ISS. NASA already turned to the private sector, which is a really good idea because there's a ton of money in the private sector. They've, they've funded multiple initiatives to help keep, you know, human presence in low Earth orbit. I'm totally for this. I'm sure you know, most of us science enthusiasts, you know, we, we want people up there there. There's a lot of significant science that's being done there. It also is just, you know, human nature. I think we have to, you know, respect the fact that we're explorers and, you know, it is the final frontier. There are four major projects, and I think you'll find these interesting if you haven't heard of them. One of them is vast space, and they want to build their own independent station to go in low Earth orbit. And it's going to focus on modular and scalable designs. I'm sure most of you have heard of Axiom space. They plan to attach their modular station to the ISS initially and then over time it'll detach and function as a standalone station. So it might pull some of the modules with it and then they'll they'll slowly get rid of them as they they bring up their own new modules. There's a coalition a led by Blue Origin, Sierra Space, Boeing and Red Wire, and they're developing something called an Orbital Reef. This is a commercial station marketed as a mixed-use business park in space. I think that 1 is really interesting. And then the last one is Voyager Space. They're partnering with Air Airbus, Northrop Grumman and Hilton Hotels, which is, it might sound odd, but yeah, they're in the game. And they're working on Star Lab, which is a futuristic station with scientific and commercial applications. Right. I think it would be wonderful if more than one of these made it. As much as this is a Herculean effort, he's costing incredible amount of money. You know, NASA is trying to help these four projects. I think it's possible that we could have more than one, you know, within the next 10 years. The experts have outlined that they have significant doubts about whether any of the replacements will be operational by the 20-30 deadline. That might be the case, but that doesn't mean that that they're not going to end up getting up there eventually. Axiom Space. They faced financial issues. They had to delay payments to suppliers and, you know, they were struggling to pay their employees. That's a, you know, like a situation that, you know, that could kill a project very easily. And NASA, you know, they, like I said, NASA is supporting them as best they can. They want them to keep going, of course. So NASA is going to give them as much money as they can to keep them going. NASA plans to also award additional development contracts in 2026. And they've already invested over 500 million to help companies refine their designs, you know, build their prototypes and just keep those projects breathing air. So in the short term, NASA is probably going to need to implement some temporary fixes. You know, I think that's pretty obvious. They could involve, you know, sealing off the the Zezza transfer tunnel, like just closing it down and making it so, you know, no one can go into that module anymore. That is where the leaks are the most severe. So I think, you know, abandoning that would would, you know, it would be difficult thing. It's a it's a needed module. But, you know, what else can they do? These aren't ideal situations. They don't have ideal solutions, but they could extend the station's lifespan long enough to bridge the gap. So we don't, you know, we don't have a, you know, we, we want there to be a continuous space station for a lot of reasons. Like, you know, it would be great if they can move a module over with one of the new, you know, space stations and then move all the gear and all the expensive stuff. And you know that that's a good way to transport stuff from 1 station to the other. We don't want to have to pull that the entire space station down and everything in it, you know, if that would be really an unfortunate reality if that happens. I think just from a science perspective, I think it's worth it because we can definitely run tests and do things in outer space. You know, NASA does pass on a lot of its technology to the private sector for free in the United States. It'll just hand companies, you know, here you go. This is, you know, this product, you know, a product line that you could you could sell, you know, things like Velcro, right? Like, you know, they, they were created, you know, duct tape, like things you wouldn't imagine, but very useful stuff. And you know, it does boost the US economy. It's not insignificant. So I, I do think it's definitely worth every penny we, we spend on it. So, but the future is guys, it's all private investors. And, you know, there has to be a commercial component now to any of these endeavors going on in the future because, you know, single governments can't afford to do this. So they had, there has to be some type of private industry involved. And I, I think that's great, you know, because there's a ton of money out there. There's a lot of companies, you know, look at like Hilton hotels. They have a ton of money and they want to get in it. Great. Why, why wouldn't we encourage that? I think it's a, you know, an awesome collaboration between private companies and, and, and NASA to do this.
S: Yeah, I'm interested in the Voyager space station or Voyager station. This is the first one that there that is in the works. It's where there's planned that is would have a rotating wheel design that would have artificial gravity.
J: Oh, hello.
S: But they said, hey, we're going to start construction in 2026, but they don't have funding yet. So. So they have funding. Yeah, you know, then, or at least they haven't announced any funding. So until that happens, I mean naming a date is worthless.
B: Need a kickstart? I'm skeptical that they're going to try to incorporate artificial gravity in that. Way.
S: That's the plan, that's the design for that, for the Voyager station. That's the whole point. They want it to be a space hotel basically.
E: Yeah, a little 2000.
J: And it EV, if you look at the pictures, man, it looks, it does kind of look like that. You know, these are renderings and I'm sure that there are real plans out there. I mean, it's not like they're just sitting around a room and they're like looking at science fiction drawings, like.
E: They were thinking, oh, that looked cool.
J: They know what they want, they know what it's going to be. But all of the artwork that I've seen, it does have that vibe. And man, could you imagine if they're shuttling people up to a space hotel and that that becomes commonplace? That's amazing.
E: I still wouldn't go.
C: Not in a million years.
B: No, it'll it'll happen, but not that adventure. We'll be long dead.
U: Yep.
E: No, all right.
B: Well, that's that's pretty amazing. This shit never pans out the way we want it to pan. Those fuckers. Not, not not in your. Life forever.
S: Takes longer. All right. Thanks, Jay. Yep. I better switch topics before Bob gets too mad.
Climate Hot Spots (31:51)[edit]
S: Yeah. All right, Bob, I'm going to make you feel better. Global warming is even worse than we thought it was. Going great, there you go.
US#02: No surprise there.
S: There's a recent study looking at climate hotspots. And so the idea here is they wanted to, they looked at like a lot, a lot of data, you know, obviously, you know, climate data, but regional temperature data to try to identify regions where there are more likely to be heat waves. And they identified, you know, they basically made a map of the world, you know, identifying those regions, northern Africa, Europe, northwestern US and Canada where there have been like statistically outlier heat waves in the last 20 years. Their their conclusion is that a couple of things. Well, first of all, the, you know, statistically speaking, these are multiple standard deviations away from like average temperatures, like what the models would predict. You may remember like, you know, in northwestern Canada, they had temperatures that were literally 50° above the average temperature for that location and that time of year just, you know, massively outside of the of any like statistical distribution. So that's one observation that they made that there's these hotspots where we're seeing extreme heat waves. And the second thing is that, you know, the models don't really predict this, but it's not that the models, they don't contradict the models, The models don't drill down to this level of detail. The models are unable to tell us like what this regional, you know, these regional variations will be. And so in other words, we can't predict the these extreme weather events and yet they're happening. They're saying there's basically what's happening is that as the temperature increases, the variability is also increasing, right? So you're getting more extreme events that bell curve, if you will, is spreading out. And this, this includes both hot and cold temperatures. But of course, as the average temperature increases, it's worse at the hot end, you know, of that spectrum. And what this could mean is that, you know, earlier than the models would have predicted, we could be seeing these hot spots around the world with increasing frequency of increasing heat waves, like heat waves that are significantly above the average temperatures and that are obviously spiking deaths due to heat waves. And, you know, are making these regions, at least for the duration of the heat wave, they could be like, if you don't have air conditioning it, they're basically unliv, unlivable. So these are parts of the world where people don't traditionally have air conditioning, right, 'cause it doesn't get hot enough to require air conditioning. And now they're having heat waves like 100 and 10120° temperatures, and they don't have air conditioning, you know, because they've never seen temperatures like these are 10s of degrees higher than anything they've ever seen before. Obviously, the solution to this is to try to mitigate climate change as much as possible.
B: Oh yeah, that's a good idea. Let's try that.
S: But you know what? You know what it means. So they, they, the authors are recommending two things. Like first, we need to figure out how to predict these regional changes, even though like the models are not designed to do that. We need new models, right? We need new ways of trying to do this. Now here we're just looking back at what's happened, which is not necessarily the same thing as predicting, predicting what's going to happen in the future. And that's because, you know, this is the difference between climate and weather, right? We're starting to blur the lines here between climate and weather. You know, the weather is much more difficult to predict. We're not just looking at average global temperatures, which the models are very have been very good at predicting. But there are lots of complicated changes to the way weather is behaving on the world with increasing temperature, like increasing energy in the system. I know we talked on the show that we aired last week about the great, the cold BLOB and the shutting down the, you know, the conveyor belt, the the ocean currents. Yeah, these things just become harder and harder to predict because, you know, we're dealing with a very complicated system. So it is this could mean that we are see that we will be seeing extreme heat wave events earlier than the models predicted because regional variability is increasing. It's like this is a separate phenomenon. They're observing this increasing, the tails are spreading out basically and that wasn't something that the models predicted, but we're seeing it, it's happening. So that's not a good thing.
B: Well, imagine seeing such a such variation in a place that already occasionally sees, like, 120. Yeah. You know, imagine like, oh, Oh yeah, tomorrow it's going to be 140. I wonder if it could get quite that extreme that.
S: Yeah.
B: Oh my God. Wow.
S: And it's just it's we talked about this with Michael Mann, you know, on Man. Yeah, that's Icon and the show that aired a few weeks ago, that the effects of climate change are not evenly distributed. Right. And the effects of our attempts at mitigating it won't necessarily be evenly distributed either. There's going to be, you know, random winners and losers. You know, in this kind of scenario, I think we're all losers, but more losers and less losers, I guess. But no one is safe, I guess, is the other idea here. Like Canada, you know, had these ridiculous heat waves. North Carolina, deep in the mountains had flooding like a place that would nobody. There's no flooding infrastructure here. They don't have floods in this in this region of the country. But because of, you know, the increased moisture in the air, increased the rainfall due to Hurricane Helene, they had a massive flood that they weren't prepared for. So it's not just that. Oh, yeah, the hottest places on the earth are going to get even hotter. And they're going to feeling it, be feeling it first. Like, yeah, that is true. But it's not the only thing that's true. It's also going to be bringing extreme weather events to pretty much any part of the world. And it's kind of unpredictable how that will.
B: Happen. It's not a simple extrapolation from what you're currently seeing.
S: Right, exactly. Well, everyone, we're going to take a quick break from our show to talk about one of our sponsors this week, Aura Frames this year.
J: Guys, one of the best gifts that you can give someone is the Aura digital picture frame. Ora frames are the number one digital photo frame by Wirecutter. This is a really awesome platform there. It's incredibly smart, it's easy to use. You could upload an unlimited number of photos and videos from your phone to the frame. Plus you can order the frame online and you could preload it with the photos and videos that you wanted to share using the Aura app. So it's ready to go right out-of-the-box.
B: Yeah, I helped set this up, my personal Ora frame and my mom's, and it was just so ridiculously easy and it's really one of the best presents that I've ever given or received. It truly is. With the Aura frame, you can upload your favorite photos and they are there. It's really convenient, fantastic and a lot of fun. You'll be looking at it many times during the day, guaranteed.
E: So save on the perfect gift by visiting auraframes.com to get $35 off Aura's best selling Carver mat frames by using promo code SKEPTICS at checkout. That's a URA frames.com promo code SKEPTICS. This deal is exclusive to listeners, so get yours now in time for the holidays. Terms and conditions apply all.
S: Right, guys, let's get back to the show.
Orcas Wearing Hats (39:33)[edit]
S: OK, Evan, tell us about orcas wearing hats.
E: What? You don't run across that headline every day. Have you guys ever seen that nature documentary film? It's called Star Trek 4, The Voyage Home, where, you know, captain of engineering Montgomery Scott famously exclaimed. Admiral, there be whales. Here. Can you imagine if you said that and they're wearing salmons as hats? Scotty, you've been hitting the Brandy again, I think.
US#02: Sorry.
E: But. That was a night That movie came out in 1986. All right. But in 1987, researchers for the first time had noticed that a population of orcas had begun swimming around with dead fish on their heads, salmons on their heads. This was the first recorded observation of this behavior. It's I have to set it up like this because I need to talk for just a moment about groups of whales, family groups. They're called pods. So a pod of whales is led by the oldest female, the matriarch. And the matriarch passes down knowledge about hunting, migration route, social interactions. You know, they, they run the family essentially. And the offspring, both the male and female offspring remain with their mothers for life pretty much. And that's a tight knit family, a really, really tight bond. But pods can range from a small group of a few individuals to a large group of dozens or even in some cases hundreds of whales. And scientists will categorize these pods by letter, you know, a pod, B pod and so forth. And this isn't in 1987, it was observed that there was a female from K pod who started wearing a dead salmon on her head. And they then they noticed within a few weeks, other pods, other individuals in other pods, pods J and pods L. They also started to try to wear fish hats as well, fish on their head. And it was apparently something of a fad because that behavior soon afterwards, I guess had stopped or not been seen again until last month, November 2020. For Yep, when one of the whales from J pod, the same pod, the same family. Now this was a 32 year old male. So that particular whale was not yet born in 1987. But regardless, it's from the same family. So J 27 BlackBerry, 32 year old male was photographed exhibiting the same behavior of wearing the dead salmon on its head. And this was at point no point Washington off Whidbey Island in Puget Sound. And this took the observers, once again scientists by surprise. Yet Andrew Foot, who is an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Oslo in Norway, said it does seem possible to some individuals that experienced the behavior for the first time, or their family members may have started it again. And then there's Deborah Giles, who's a science researcher and the director at the nonprofit Wild Orca. She says we've seen mammal eating killer whales carries large chunks of food before under their pectoral fin, kind of tucked into their bodies. But the phenomenon by which they will also wear it on their head could just be another form of this. Like there's it's like storing food. They have extra food. So they're, you know, just hanging on to it in in a way, until they're ready to eat it at some point later. And this can happen because what there will be times during the course of the year in which there will be an abundance of food for some of these pods, more than they can eat on a on a regular basis. So they'll, you know, start storing it somewhere in and amongst their body. So this could be, although they're not, they're not 100% sure this could be that behavior, just another form of them kind of storing this food for a little while. But it, but it's fascinating though that, that it's kind of this cultural almost trend in a way that they've, that they've described it as. And again, not, you know, one pod of, of whales will exhibit a certain behavior and then other families will also learn one way or another from that pod. And they will also start exhibiting this, this behavior. And they think that this happens when orcas will go after boats, right? And an attacker, you know, throw their bodies onto boats, that one group will do it, another, another pod will see that and they'll imitate or they'll, they'll go ahead and exhibit that behave that behavior as well. It's very, it's very fascinating. It's very nuanced and it's, it's quite complex. I mean, these are mammals that are just, you know, have been have been studied so long and they have very complex social networks and collaborative behaviors, emotional and social bonds. I mean, you know, they not to be under, not to be underestimated, but I mean, anytime you see a headline where whales wearing fish on their heads, I mean, forget it. And the Internet goes crazy and there's memes and there's songs and there's videos and a million people are talking about it all over the place.
J: You know, like, I know that this must be the most common question, but how the hell are they swimming and they're keeping a dead fish on their forehead?
E: Well, I guess if all you if that's the medium you live in, your things like that become easier than perhaps it would seem to people who don't live their existence in in the water like.
J: That just from the physics of it though. You mean, you know, their skin is smooth? You'd think that it would just slip right off their head, you know?
E: Yeah.
C: If you swim against it then.
E: Yeah, they swim against. It they're able to bat right, they're able to to to have an equilibrium, a balance of some sort in which in which they're able to. To yeah, they don't have pockets so they got to wear put somewhere.
B: Could this be this orcas playing with their with their food again? I mean, you've seen the videos of of orcas like tossing seals like, you know, rag dolls up 3040 feet in the air and down. Could it just be them? Like look what I killed. I'm going to keep it here for a while. Could that be just food play?
E: I I mean, I suppose it could be they're, they're looking into it more, Bob. It just, they don't, they don't seem to have, you know, there's a lot, not a lot of data on this particular behavior. Obviously, you know, they saw it happen in 1987 and now it's 2024 and they're only seeing it again now, you know, observing it. So there's there's they are still really trying to figure it, figure it out. But yeah, it could be, it could be playfulness, I suppose. But again, you know, I, I think perhaps Deborah, Deborah Giles might be on on to something when she know, she observes that the whales will tuck dead fish into other parts of their bodies as well. And this could just be one. More, and they eventually eat it. Yeah, eventually they will eat it, Yeah. Whatever. Yeah.
J: That's playing with your. Fab, You know what it reminds me of?
Voice-over: But.
J: Look how I take this dead rat and turn it into a delightful hat.
E: Oh my God, is that Doctor Seuss?
S: That's the Nightmare before Christmas, yeah.
E: Oh gosh.
S: Do you guys remember one of the first? I think in the first year of our podcast, we talked about a story where dolphins were observed wearing sponges on their nose. And they do that so that they when they forage for fish who were on the ground, they protect their nose from coral and rocks or whatever on the sea floor. The guys are foraging for fish as again, cetacean wearing other. This is using it more as a tool, not just carrying it with them to eat later. This is actually even more sophisticated than what the orcas are doing, arguably, but yeah, not unusual behavior for these types of creatures. They're very intelligent, obviously.
Evidence Against Water on Venus (47:34)[edit]
S: Alright, Bob, Bob, has there ever been water on the surface of Venus?
B: Listen and find out. Earth's twin planet Venus is a hellish place now. But has it always been inhospitable? Some models say yes, some say no. But a new theory using clues from Venus's atmosphere points to a world that has always been evil and inhospitable. This is from researchers at the University of Cambridge. They published in the journal Nature Astronomy a paper called a Dry Venusian interior constrained by Atmospheric Chemistry. OK, what does that mean? All right, so we know Venus is a is, you know, nasty place, but it's, it's so similar to Earth that it's often referred to as our twin or sister planet. And there's lots of good reasons for that. Same size, same size, like Venus is 95% of Earth's diameter, similar mass, similar density. The internal structures are, are similar as well. They both have a rocky mantle surrounding an iron core. They formed at roughly the same time in in the history of the solar system from similar materials in the inner solar system. They both have volcanic activity now and in the past. But Venus is many other things. It's ridiculously hot. Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system until of course, you know, at some point Earth will beat that those records the way we're going. But but it's hotter hotter than Mercury at 477 C or 860 Fahrenheit. It would melt lead on the surface of Venus and.
E: The Soviets launched, right?
B: Venus. Venus.
E: Was that the one it actually landed on the surface? But what like moments?
S: Later survived for minutes I think. Yeah, yeah.
B: Yeah, you can get longer than minutes, but yeah, nothing. Yeah, anything we put land on there will not be lasting very long. I heard I saw one figure of maybe hours. I'm not sure about that one. But yeah, you're not going to have anything that's going to last there.
S: Is it Venera 13? Land lasted for 127 minutes.
B: Yeah, OK.
E: Wow.
B: So yeah, two hours. But then it's not just the heat, it's the the atmospheric pressure. The atmosphere is notoriously thick on Venus. So if if if Earth's atmospheric pressure at sea level is what? What's that called? 1 bar, right? That translates to 14.7 lbs per square inch. Venus is not one bar, but 92 bar. So at its surface, instead of 14.7 lbs per square inch, it's 13150 lbs per square inch. It's like a small car on every square inch of your body. It's like it's like going down a kilometer below the surface of the ocean. That's kind of pressure we're talking about on the surface of Venus. And it's also toxic. Let's just throw that in there. The atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide and there's thick clouds of sulfuric acid that shroud the entire planet. The only saving grace is that the acid rain never even reaches the surface. But then again, it doesn't reach the surface because it evaporates from all the intense heat. It's so hot that it can't even get down to the surface. It just evaporates away. And even the winds are 100 meters per second at some altitudes, and that's 60 times the planet's speed of rotation. So yeah, there's.
E: No.
B: Starbucks So yeah, hellish is like the perfect word for Venus. It's nasty. So how could such initially similar twins diverge so dramatically? To answer, the Scientists have used climate modeling to tell us what Venus was like when it was younger. SO2 models have been duking it out for a long time. 1 model contends that Venus was more temperate and Earth like in the past, enough to even have liquid water on its surface and probably even shallow seas. They these models, this specific model contends, but planet wide volcanic activity eventually after maybe even a couple of billion years, eventually spewed enough carbon dioxide to cause the famous runaway greenhouse effect that made the planet hotter and hotter, eventually becoming what we what we see today. So that's one model. The other model describes a dry venous scenario. In this one, Venus's distance is close enough to the sun that it's initial magma ocean. You know when a planet just formed and it's basically magma everywhere. It takes a long time to cool a far longer than the Earth. And that desiccates the planet. It removes most of the water, which was then never never able to collect as liquid water on its surface. So those are those are the two models. First author Teresa Constanta, now PhD student at Cambridge Institute of Astronomy, said both of those theories are based on climate models. But we want to take a different approach based on observations of Venus's current atmospheric chemistry. So that's what their paper is about. And the the goal was to study Venus's atmosphere to see how it might interact with the planet's interior, what the what the that loop is like. So to do that, they looked at the chemicals in the atmosphere that were being destroyed. And a couple of those were, were carbon, carbon dioxide and water were too right off the bat. So for Venus to have a stable atmosphere, it's going to have to replace the water and carbon that we're that we're getting being destroyed by various atmospheric processes. So those chemicals need to be replaced. So they looked at volcanic outgassing on Venus because that's something that could replace some of these these lost chemicals in the atmosphere. And they found the critical finding here was that the volcanic gases on Venus were only 6% water, and that was enough to replace what was in what was being lost in the atmosphere. But only 6% water when? Now remember, when magma rises from the deep within the planet, it brings the chemicals and gases that are down there to the surface. So what? So whatever is out gassed is very indicative of what's down there on Earth. Volcanic gases are mostly steam, which is one way to show that or to prove that that the interior of the Earth is water rich. If Venus is out gassing only 6% of the water, it's interior is likely to be just as dry as as the surface, and they say in the paper. The volcanic resupply to Venus's atmosphere therefore indicates that the planet has never been liquid water habitable habitable. So if you were dozing there for the past few minutes, the the TLDR or perhaps TLDTLDL which too long didn't listen this. This study shows that Venus was likely close enough to the Sun that in its the in its early epoch that had magma oceans took a long time to end, giving it a a lot of time to lose its water, meaning that it never had a temperate Earth like history and it probably never had water on its surface. Now, luckily the Earth was farther from the sun, causing our magma ocean to solidify on the surface earlier than Venus did. And that cap held in all the water that we had at that time. And that might be the key difference between Earth and Venus right there. And it was the distance we knew that Venus was on the edge of habitability, right. We we're not sure if it was it over that line or or not. And this is one bit of evidence showing that, yeah, Venus is is a little bit out of the habitable zone because, and primarily because the magma ocean is going to just last too long and all the water is going to go away basically. Now confirming this, though to A to a higher degree of certainty, it's going to require waiting for future orbiters and even Landers. And there's one actually planned for the end of this decade. Da Vinci hadn't heard about that that so the da Vinci mission will have orbiters and land and Lander. I'll see how long that one lasts and we'll maybe even be able to confirm some of these these theories that these people are saying then. So a reasonable take away now from this is that when we look for exoplanets that may have had or have life, we should not look at Venus like planets. We should narrow our focus these right these scientists contend we should narrow our focus to exoplanets that are more similar to Earth if that's what if your interest is looking looking for worlds exoplanets that that have life. I'll finish with a quote here from the paper we we would have loved to find that Venus was once a planet much closer to her own. So it's kind of sad in a way to find out that it wasn't. But ultimately it's more useful to focus the search on planets that are most likely to be able to support life, at least life as we know it, which I love when scientists are that there at the end, life as we know it. Yes, we've got one data point. So that's really good way to say that. So yeah, interesting stuff.
S: Yeah, Venus is very interesting, and the idea that there may be life in the upper atmosphere isn't faring so well.
B: You haven't heard too much good stuff about that either. Yeah. But if it is, if it is up there, it's not relying, it's not relying on water. Yeah, probably, but yeah.
S: All right. Thanks, Bob.
Who's That Noisy? + Announcements (56:01)[edit]
S: All right, Jay, it's who's that noisy time?
B: OK guys, last week I played this noisy.
J: You guys have any guesses?
B: Citation.
J: OK, well, we got, I'll say, right out of the gate, a ton of listeners knew exactly what this was. So a listener named Joe.
S: Bag of doughnuts.
J: Lanardria.
S: Bananas.
J: It's as if this guy's last name was created just so I couldn't pronounce it, he said. This week's Noisy immediately brought to mind images of crested dinosaurs waiting around in some prehistoric swamp, so I'm going to guess this sound was from a computer's reproduction of what, a parasolaf.
US#01: Parasyrolyphus.
J: Parasyrolyphus.
US#01: Parasyrolyphus.
J: It's like, you know, you get to like the second. As soon as I hit the second syllable syllable, it just like my brain just goes, you know? All right. So the dinosaur or related species would have sounded like based on a 3D model of fossilized skull Parasyrolyphus. I got it. OK. Thank you, Kara. Yep. I wish I just had you in my head where I could just hear you say it, then I could say it. Listener named Amanda Lee wrote in said. Hi Jay, I am absolutely convinced that this week's noisy is a cetacean. But which one? My guess is a toothed whale, maybe an orca. OK, so that is not correct, but we did mention orcas in this show so I give you 2 points. Leah Zitch said. Hey all, new listener here. I found you a few weeks ago, but I've gone back into the archives and I've listened to hours and hours of the show. I truly enjoy every episode. I'm excited that I think I finally know what this noise is. I'm quite confident that it's a zebra. She goes on. If you ever take Nada Con internationally, I'll be the first in line for tickets. I'm in Italy. That's awesome and I would love to have it in Italy and you should contact me to let me know if you think that there are enough English speaking skeptics out there that actually would come to the conference. You can e-mail us at info@theskepticsguy.org. I appreciate it. And send me some good meatballs. OK, moving on to a listener named Aiden. He goes Jay. Yes, he wrote my name with crazy number of A's in it. That sounded like a deer, probably a reindeer considering the holiday season. Not a bad guess at all, but not correct. Let's get right to the answer here. Crystal Haka was the first one to answer correctly. And we also had another correct guess by Shane Hillier. These two people basically guessed within seconds of each other, which I think is always funny. But Crystal writes, hey, this week's noisy definitely sounds like a bull elk in rut, maybe to about to fight, right. So you know, this is a, this is a elk that it's called bleeding, right? And it when they're in rut there, it's like mating season basically. And they're, they're trying to find each other, they're trying to fight each other. They're looking for alcohol. It gets really messy out there.
C: I kept thinking you were going to say something different.
J: Yeah. But the bottom line is that is an elk. Lots of listeners apparently lived near elk or knew someone that had elk or had some type of interaction with an elk and their vehicle. That's all I'm going to say. So thank you all for writing in. I really enjoyed your guesses this week, and I'm going to move right in to next week's noisy guys. This noisy was sent in by a listener named Bobby Duke. Now, lots of people might have some initial guesses, but a really good guess would be that that's the noise Bob makes when he's putting away his Halloween decorations. Right, Bob?
US#02: Yeah, folks from sobbing in between those cries and yes.
J: All right, so guys, if you think you know what this weeks noisy is or you heard something cool, you can e-mail us at WTN at theskepticsguide.org. Steve, hold on a second. All right, so first of all, it's the end of the year, right? It's Christmas time.
S: What would Christmas coming in?
J: If you guys know know someone that that listens to the show, you know a sibling, a parent, a friend, a neighbor, a neighbor, maybe you could give them an SGU patron membership. It's very easy to do so just go to patreon.com/skeptics guide and you will see that there is an option to gift someone a membership to the SGU. That would be a great way to give someone a nice gift and also support your favorite podcast. We would really appreciate it. Or you could become a patron on your own.
S: You could also buy either the Skeptics Guide to the Universe or the Skeptics Guide to the Future books. We have two books out there. They make great gifts. If you're giving somebody a gift membership in, you know, Patreon membership, you could represent that with a physical item in one of the one or both of those books. And if you bring them to a live event, we will sign them for you.
J: Yes, and I'll sign your forehead. Whatever you want, we'll do it. So anyway, you could join our mailing list. You can go to theskepticsguide.org and become a mailing list member, which basically means that every week we will send you an e-mail that has all the details about everything that we've done the previous week. Also, if there if you find a way to give our show a rating, we encourage you to do it because that helps new people find our podcast. As you hear this show, it'll be the 7th on Saturday. We will be doing 2 live shows so it's probably too late to buy tickets. But if there's some reason where it isn't, you could buy tickets to our private show and the the extravaganza which is at night. You can go to discussthisguide.org and buy tickets there. And the big one, which I'm putting a lot of time into, is not a con 2025.
B: Oh baby.
J: This is going to be the weekend of May 15th. And you know, you've heard me talk about this. It's a wonderful conference, tons of socializing. If you come there and you want to make friends, you will make friends. There's an extraordinary group of people that are, you know, the core patrons of the SGU that are going to attend. And they're they're awesome. And there's a lot of fun to be had. Brian WECT, Andrea Jones, Roy, George, Rob and the entire SGU will be there providing entertainment for the two days, 2.2 days. Like I said, Kara, and that's a good way to support the SGU. So please go to nauticon.com or you can go to theskepticsguide.org and you could find all the information that you need.
S: Thank you, Jay. Well, everyone, we're going to take a quick break from our show to talk about one of our sponsors this week, Mint Mobile.
J: With Mint Mobile, there's no hoops and there's no BS. It's $15.00 a month with the purchase of a three month plan. It really is that easy to get wireless for $15.00 a month. The longest part of this process is the time that you'll spend breaking up with your old provider.
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B: To get this new customer offer and your new three month premium wireless plan for just $15.00 a month, go to mintmobile.com/SGU. That's mintmobile.com/SGU. Cut your wireless bill to $15.00 a month at mintmobile.com/SGU $45.00 upfront payment required, equivalent to $15.00 a month. New customers on 1st 3 month plan only speed slower than 40 GB on unlimited plan. Additional taxes, fees and restrictions apply. Semen Mobile for details.
S: All right guys, let's get back to the show.
Emails (1:03:40)[edit]
S: Got a couple of emails. Couple of interesting corrections for this week. The first one comes from Doug Herr who writes has Steve realized that the Fisher, not Fisher Cat, no such thing, does not scream. Now I hope to find that Steve has realized that all of the Fisher screaming recordings are actually recordings of foxes as evidence. See the link in the Wikipedia reference. Nick gives a link to that. It shows how the person running that site realized that all the content on that site was people hearing and not seeing. It also shows that an expert with the with the animal has never heard much more than a hiss. It is time to be skeptical. I appreciate the correction, Doug, but you don't have to be so hurtful about it.
Voice-over: Yeah.
S: So yes, I I did as much this with the time that I had. I tried to find a video of a Fisher or Fisher cat, which is the common name. And apparently Fisher Cat is a particularly regional name of New England. So by disrespecting that, you are disrespecting my culture and my family.
E: We will accept apology.
S: We call them Fisher Cats in this family, no. So Fisher is the is the technical name. It is, however, a they you have many common names, one of which is fish or cat. But enough people use it, it becomes at least a common name. The name Fisher, by the way, said, well, it's not a cat. It's also not a Fisher, doesn't eat fish, doesn't fish. The that's a misnomer, too. It probably derives from the fact that, you know, American settlers thought that it looked like a European polecat and in French that's like fishet or whatever. It's so like they got it got bastardized to Fisher.
E: Oh, we're good at doing that.
S: Not sure why it became Fisher a cat, but it does kind of look like a cat so it's easy to say. Well some people thought it looked like a cat so they call it a Fisher cat. Whatever it is a member of the Weasel family.
E: Pop.
S: Yeah, they're actually kind of cute. They're, they're pretty good predators. And we, when we talked about the, the scream, you know, on the show, I, you know, I mentioned the fact that somebody from Europe said, no, that's a, that's a fox like, well, yeah, they foxes have that same scream. And there's actually lots of websites that have like how to tell the difference between a Fisher scream and a red fox scream. But now he's saying that it's all foxes, like there's no Fisher scream. And he, I think that may be correct. I have not been able to find a video of a Fisher screaming. You could, there's plenty of videos of fishers, but they're not screaming. And there's, there's video of like screaming coming from the woods, but you're not seeing the animal that's making that noise. I have not been able to find any actual video of a Fisher screaming. So it's possible that it doesn't in fact happen. And, and just from my reading, what experts say is that they probably don't. They, they mainly grunt and hiss. They're predators and they're pretty quiet creatures. But under stress, under distress, they, under rare circumstances, they may scream. They can't rule that out. But we don't really have it turns out it's not well documented. A lot of people assume that they do, but there's certainly a widespread belief that they do. But there's no it turns out there's no hard evidence. I'll keep looking. We get crowd sources. This as well. I don't know if there's any actual documented cases of a Fisher screaming. I could not find any, and it seems like the consensus is they probably don't, which is interesting. All right, next e-mail comes from Ron, who writes Hello, fellow skeptics and fellow Connecticut residents. There has been some buzz lately over the sighting of a UFO by a police officer in Connecticut. He even filmed some of it on his cell phone. You can Google it and go to the link in the news station. I would love to see Steve comment on the story. I think it's worth examining some of the logic in the story. At any rate, I'm a huge fan of the SDU. Keep up the good work. And then he provides a link. So, yes, as Bob says, so this was a yeah, this is in Fairfield County, like where we live. And there was a police officer who Robert Klein, who had it was the story goes, right. The story that he tells us, it was like 2 in the morning, 3:00 in the morning. He's he's pulling an overnight shift. He's riding on a lonely country Rd. With nobody around. And then suddenly he's blinded by this bright light shining into his cabin.
US#02: Oh my gosh.
S: Of his, you know, his police car and, you know, to the point where like he couldn't really see. And then he describes this like glowing orange, red orb that was beaming the light and then it flew across the lake and then you could see it sort of moving in the distance. And then he sort of overcame the shock of the whole situation, took out his phone and, and then taped, you know, filmed on his phone, the UFO in more now more in the distance. That's the story, right? I, I, I know you guys have all had an opportunity to see the, the news reports in the video. So of course, the local news does a total unsceptical hatchet job of reporting this because they're interested only in the sensation. And they put, they pull for an expert. This guy Ross Colthart, who is an investigative journalist, but he's a UFO nut, right? The bottom line is he's not really an expert in anything. He's just a true believer and this guy goes he proceeds to make every unsceptical uncritical trope, you know, pro UFO trope in this in his, you know, interview on the topic. It's just embarrassing.
B: His his attitude towards skeptics was galling. I mean, I, I just wanted to eviscerate all the straw men that he was throwing up. He actually said describing skeptics. He says that describing us as experiencing denialism in the face of overwhelming evidence. Sure that's what skeptics are all about, right. And then, but then later I like a minute later or two, he says it's important to be skeptical. Like, dude, make up your mind, right? What are you talking about? It's folks that's so mad, so mad at him.
S: Yeah, he's emphasizing this guy's a 25 year veteran. He's like, you know, So what? Yeah, So what? That is irrelevant. That's the credible witness kind of fallacy. It doesn't change the fact that it was late early in the morning. He's by himself. The guy could have been half asleep as far as we. Know the witching hour?
E: 3:00 AM. That's when most.
B: No, he made a point. They made a point. He made a point of saying he was. It was early in his overnight shift.
S: So.
B: It's so he wasn't up, meaning he wasn't up.
S: We don't know what his state of mind was even true, but shift, shift workers are sleep deprived period and and so whatever. But we, I don't know, I don't have any first hand knowledge of what his actual state was, but it certainly is plausible. But even without that, even if he was wide awake, it doesn't matter because that he's, he's assuming that, that he, you know, he can't be, that he's not subject to optical perceptual illusions, right? Like doesn't matter how long you've been a police officer, you have the same susceptibility to visual illusions as everybody else.
B: Now you're human. You're. Susceptible.
S: Absolutely. So what's the simplest explanation for the evidence we have? We basically have two things. We have his story and we have the video.
B: Right, I didn't, I didn't see his video though. I just saw the I saw.
S: His Well, yeah, the, the, the the news did a recreation which is utterly worthless. It's worse than.
E: Oh gosh, it was. It was misleading. I know.
S: It's like, what is it? It's worthless. What are you making A? Yeah, you're making a digit.
E: This. Fire in the Sky the movie what it's. Terribly.
S: But if you keep watching Bob, you keep watching the news report, they then start to show his actual video, right? And you know what it shows.
E: An airplane a.
S: Light in the distance. I guarantee you it's a drone. It's it's just a normal light, not moving in any way that's unusual. It's just it's, I mean, completely and easily explained by Oh my God, drone.
J: That's at it now. That is, that is so I mean, think about how how he exaggerated that story then.
S: And he said, Jay, I can guarantee you it wasn't a drone. Can you really can you really get the only hard evidence we have is 100% consistent with a drone? And then he said, first of all, he could have Esther, he could have underestimated how close it was, right? He thought it was moving very fast when actually just for super close, you know, a drone with a, with a light. If somebody was buzzing him with the drone because he was on the side of the road or whatever that and then he's interpreting the Halo of light around, you know what I mean? Like the you see that night and your your eyes are dark adapted and then there's a bright light you can see and you can see it on the video, this sort of glow around the light source. Then he's interpreting that as the thing itself, not just a visual, you know, or around a bright light source. So yeah, he just got surprised by that. He misinterpreted what he saw. He thought something was moving fast because it was probably closer than he thought, and then it flew off into the distance. He gets out his phone and he any videotapes are freaking drone. So this is again, it's a nothing burger. It's Much Ado about nothing. Again, the hard evidence is nothing. It's just nothing out of the ordinary at.
B: All and and even if I mean my first thought I'm looking at the video now like yeah, that clearly could be a drone for sure it's it's much I'll say I'll say this it's much more likely than an alien an extraterrestrial craft, right or but you know you know what else would be more plausible than that? How about ball lightning? That's that's a basically a thing at this point, right? I mean, that could have, could have potentially.
S: Have been ball lightning this video it's a drone I mean come on or.
B: Yeah, look at the video. I would definitely say it's a drone.
S: But Bob, you're denying this overwhelming evidence. But yeah.
B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I am. Yeah, that's what I am. I'm a skeptical. I'm a denier. Yeah. Denier Yeah, evidence is overwhelming. Overwhelming. Got to be a UFO. Got to be an alien craft.
E: May I add another layer to this? Please. The sighting took so two things. The sighting took place in 2022, yes. And the police officer only came out recently and talked about it for the first time. So there's a three-year gap here, folks. Two year right of time, a 3 1/2 year, I'm sorry, 2 1/2 year gap of time. So you have to take that into consideration as well. I went back and I looked up some news items back in April of 2022 when the supposed incident took place in Connecticut. Let's see, what do we have here? Oh Patch, Connecticut, the Lyrid meteor shower of 2022 in April, the 1st of the spring, meteor showers producing about 15 to 20 shooting stars in hours act seeing appearing as fireballs in the night sky. Yeah, but this is not that I will. I will propose, I will propose that there are perhaps 2 separate incidents here, perhaps because because he describes it as changing color. And if you've seen these things fall from the sky and I've seen them before, they do change color, right? They'll start, you know, as hot white, it'll go to green and then, you know, some shade of red or something. So they will tend to change. And they do light up like a flare in the sky, which is kind of what he was describing. I would say by the time he finally oriented himself, got out of his car, he focused on something else entirely, the drone or whatever it was over across the distance of the lake. I think he might be conflating 2 separate incidents. Possibly. Possibly just saying, you know, a little research online, you know, you can look up what was happening locally at the time. This is right here and you know these meteor showers can can produce. Those The thing is. I don't part those effects.
S: I don't. Care what the guy's testimony is, it's irrelevant. It doesn't matter. We have hard evidence. The hard evidence is completely unimpressive. It's a light in the distance consistent with probably again this this day and age, probably a drone. The other thing that that cold heart goes on and on about is how much these sightings are increasing recently. Gee, I wonder why that is. Why would there be an increase in sightings of drone like objects in the last? Few years. What could possibly be the explanation for that?
US#02: I can't imagine drone like you say, I don't know.
S: Unbelievable, all right? Terrible reporting, Lack of skepticism. Let's go on with science or fiction.
Science or Fiction (1:16:08)[edit]
| Answer | Item |
|---|---|
| Fiction | Of the human remains found in Machu Picchu, 80% are female. |
| Science | Koalas are the sleepiest animals, sleeping for 20-22 hours per day. |
| Science | About 10% of people have an atypical number of presacral spinal vertebra. |
| Host | Result |
|---|---|
| Steve | win |
| Rogue | Guess |
|---|---|
Jay | About 10% of people have an atypical number of presacral spinal vertebra. |
Evan | Of the human remains found in Machu Picchu, 80% are female. |
Cara | Of the human remains found in Machu Picchu, 80% are female. |
Bob | Of the human remains found in Machu Picchu, 80% are female. |
US#02: It's time for science or fiction.
S: Each week I come up with three Science News items or facts, 2 real and one fake, and then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. We have a theme this week, so these are just three facts that have to do with surprising statistics.
E: Surprise, here we go.
S: Item number one, koalas are the sleepiest animals, sleeping for 20 to 22 hours per day. Item number 2, about 10% of people have an atypical number of presacral spinal vertebra. And item number three, of the human remains found at Machu Picchu, 80% are female. OK, go first.
J: All right, The first one here, koalas are the sleepiest animals. I mean, I agree with that. They have a a hell of a life, those animals. Yeah, I think that that one is science. The second one here, it says about 10% of people have an atypical number of pre sacral, the sacral sacral sacral.
S: So what the spine is that the spine number? There's the cervical, thoracic, lumbar and sacral spine, so not caught, not including the sacrum. That's basically your tailbone, right? For the cervical, thoracic and lumbar part of the spine, 10% of people have an atypical number of vertebra.
J: Oh wow. And then the last one here. Of the human remains found at Machu Picchu, 80% are female. OK, so this is what I think about that. They did an awful lot of sacrificing and I could come up with a reason why they mostly sacrificed women. I just don't know enough about their culture to know if that was what they did, you know, and and then the second one, you said, you know, it's 10% of people have this atypical number. That is a low, relatively low percentage number. You know, it's like, OK, so you know, 10% of the people have like.
S: They either have extra vertebra or they have too few vertebra.
J: OK, you know, I think I'm going to go with that one. Is, is the fake because I, I don't know, something is rubbing me the wrong way about people's spines having not the same number. Yeah. So you have, you don't have the same number of bones as everybody else. I don't think so.
S: OK, Evan.
E: Koala is the sleepiest animals, sleeping for 20 to 22 hours per day. Oh, those eucalyptus leaves will do that to you, won't they? Yes, this could perhaps have been something we learned about on our first trip to Australia. And I seem to recall this being In Sync with that excursion we did to the what was it, the Sydney Zoo, I believe, Right. So I think that one's right. And then the second one, about 10% of people having an atypical number of pre sacral spinal vertebra. Well, yeah, I have. No, I have no idea. Never, you know, was invited to anywhere to talk about this by any experts. So I don't know 10% of people, I guess that could be variations in I wonder if there are other parts of the anatomy that also have these types of atypical numbers, right Or you know, other measurements that also equal the last one about Machu Picchu 80% or female. So this one, I think of the three is the one that I think I'm going to say is the fiction. They would gosh, unfortunately, I can only go based on kind of what I've seen on television shows and movies and things and who knows what that's all about. And it's I have no, I've I've seen those scenes in which they did sacrifice, have done sacrifices of people. They all seem to be male characters. That doesn't necessarily mean anything in the in the real world. But they, they, they, they were way skewed toward I never, I don't think I ever saw a woman be sacrificed in any of those movies. So, and 80% allows for a lot more range, I think, as far as all these options go. So I'll I'll put my nickel down there and say the Machu Picchu 1 is the fiction.
S: OK, Kara.
C: OK, so koalas are sleepy. This I know. I don't know if they're the sleepiest. I know that we have a koala. You guys remember the story at the LA Zoo who didn't like to go up in the trees at night and one time a keeper let it stay out and it slept on the ground and our resident Puma who has since died P22 snuck into the zoo and ate it. So they get for sleeping so much. I have no idea if they're the sleepiest, but yes, I think they are well known to be quite sleepy. I don't think the eucalyptus like is like a drug. I think it just doesn't provide a whole lot of energy. 10% of people have an atypical number of presacral spinal vertebra. I mean, I feel like if you took 10%, if you took a population of people, 10% of them would have something anomalous everywhere, you know what I mean? Like maybe not something big like polydactyly that might not be 10%, but I bet you if you looked at like 100 hearts, 10% of them would have like a weird little like it would be bending in a different direction or like there'd be a weird little extra something here like who knows, but that doesn't seem unreasonable 10%. I don't know why both of you think that this human remains found in Machu Picchu are like sacrificial remains. That feels like a leap to me. Wasn't Machu Picchu just? Saw it in a movie. Yeah, I feel like, wasn't this just a city and people died in cities and then they're.
E: Getting beheaded by the priests.
C: I don't know. I think there were just, there were just dead people at this ancient Inca city. So I don't know why that would be 80% feeble. Why would that? City was 80%. Feeble.
E: It should be more like 50, maybe 55% or.
C: Something what I'm thinking, yeah, I'm thinking maybe that one's not, not science just because it should be half. So I'm going to put my, I'm going to lightly put my nickel on that.
S: 2 nickels. OK. And Bob?
B: All right, so koalas, yeah, that makes sense. I've I've heard as well that they're very sleepy. And, and, and part of me is thinking, Steve knows. He remembers that day when we we all learned that and he now they found out that they're not and he's going. Oh, he's can't do that. Turns out to be the. Case I Oh, I could, yeah.
E: I will not be a happy.
B: It's, it's a distinct possibility. Let's see the variation in the, in the vertebra. It seems a little high, but I can see that. I mean, we, we got some, there's some crazy variations out there. Even with even with like types of muscles. Some people have like an extra muscle in their forearm that like most people don't have. It's a crazy stuff. So variation like that I can kind of see. But the, the remains found in Machu Picchu. I really, I don't know anything about Machu Picchu at all. Hardly. And just mainly based on that. The other ones I'm more familiar with. I'll just say that one is is fiction.
S: All right, so you guys all agree on the first one, so we'll start there. Koalas are the sleepiest animals sleeping for 20 to 22 hours per day. You guys all think this one is science, better be science, and this one is science. This is like.
B: Yeah, we would have killed you, Yeah.
S: They are. There are other, you know, almost as sleepy animals. But yeah, the koala is still considered to be the most sleepiest of the animals, most sleepy and yeah, 20, just sleeping 22 hours a day and you care. I think you're right. I think it's just because they don't get a lot of energy out of those eucalyptus sleeve. So they get.
US#02: Oh yeah, they're bereft of nutrition. It's.
C: Just like a hypoglycemic all the time.
S: Well, sleeping is an adaptation to, you know, energy efficiency, right? You don't want to expend any more energy than you absolutely have to. All right, I guess we'll take these in order. About 10% of people have an atypical number of pre sacral spinal vertebra. Jay. You think this one is the fiction, everyone else thinks this one is science. And this one, the question is, is it? 1%, is it 20%?
US#01: So 5% is it?
S: .1 percent. 90% This one is science. This is science. Now that number is there are different estimates right depending on the method that is used. But the best studies ones where they do like total spine MRI scan. So you could count every single vertebra comes in at around 10%, which is actually kind of high. But you're being Carrie, you're right. There's yeah. The what we learn of as normal anatomy is is like 8090.
Voice-over: The guideline.
S: It's yeah, that's it's sure. Like maybe sometimes it's 60%, sometimes it's 90%, sometimes it's higher. Sometimes like depending on how absolutely critical it is, the cervical vertebrae are pretty much are very rare and you have to have an abnormal number of neck vertebrae. But the thoracic and lumbar are not are are pretty common, you know, adding up to about 10%. People have like 6 lumbar vertebrae or five lumbar vertebrae, or they have 11 or 13 thoracic vertebrae. Interestingly, this can result in surgeons operating on the wrong vertebra.
E: Oh crap. You better count them all.
S: Yeah, and in fact, they think that abnormal vertebral numbers are responsible for 40% of the times when that happens. Holy moly, I go almost to.
C: Hell man, don't they do a full X-ray before?
S: Well, they just, they X-ray, but they might do a thoracic MRI scan and say, Oh yeah, that's the vertebra that we need to go for. But they're.
C: Do the whole back.
S: Well, that's, that's the paper that I was reading is basically saying, yes, we should do that because people are underestimating how frequent this is. And it actually can affect trying to figure out which level is causing like the pinched nerve. Like you have an L2 pinched nerve and you count out the L2 vertebra, but it's like, no, but it's actually the L1 because there's an, there's, you know, an extra vertebra in there or whatever you, it can cause the surgeons to make a mistake. So we have to consider variability and anatomy. It's more common than we think doing like nerve conduction studies for the last 20 years. This is comes up a lot there too. Like you see the the diagram of the nerve innervation, both like of the skin and of the muscles and everything. Like, yeah, that's like, yeah, it's 60%, seventy, 8090% of the time. But depending on, you know, what nerve you're looking at and especially the farther you get downstream, you know, I mean, like, yeah, everyone has an aorta, but the smaller you get, the more variability there is. And people have a lot of variability in there, like the nerve endings, even when you get to 2nd, 3rd degree, you know, branchings. So yeah, a lot of variability. OK. That means that of the human remains found in Machu Picchu, 80% are female. Is the fiction. However, I didn't make this up this. There was a study which showed that this was the case. An archaeologist surveying the the the bones found that was their estimate of 80% of the remains they found in Machu Picchu were female. But a later re examinations found out no, they're 5050.
C: Why did they think that so many were female?
S: I think they were using pelvic examination and then they later did DNA analysis and so.
C: Yeah, but I wonder why. Oh, well, weren't they very, very small people? I.
S: Think well, they're smaller than modern modern humans, but.
C: But even modern.
S: But you can either the sampling error or they just didn't. You know, if you're just going by the how the pelvis looks, they maybe weren't didn't do a good job or there was, you know, again, some kind of sampling issue with it in terms of what they were looking for. But a more thorough later analysis found that it was basically 5050. Now, what was Machu Picchu used for? Right. This has come up. So Machu Picchu is like the crown jewel of the Incan Empire in terms of our the lost city of the Incas. It is considered to be the most famous remains of a, of an Incan city. It's beautiful. And if you guys, I've never been there, but I've seen pictures of it. Oh yeah, the pictures, it's amazing. And we're not really.
C: Sure. Like a face, like the mountain looks like a face on its side. Yeah, yeah, Yeah. But you know, like, modern Peruvians are the shortest people in the world.
S: Yeah.
C: So that's interesting. Like, I was just looking it up. An average Peruvian woman is five feet and an average Peruvian man is 5 feet 4.
S: Wow, that is.
C: Short, so it might be hard just based on it.
S: Might be hard if they're more petite, yeah.
C: Yeah, to tell the difference of of of ancient remains if you're only looking at the, you know, the way they look.
S: So there were human sacrifices in the area there. There are temples at Machu Picchu. So it does have some religious significance. But that's exactly sure. It probably wasn't just a regular city. They think it might have been like the royal city or just like where the, you know, the rich people lived, or it could have been been mostly of religious significance. It wasn't just a place to sacrifice people. You know that again, that that wasn't the main thing that.
C: Was it was like. A whole city.
S: It was a city, Yeah. But there were they. There were, they said nearby, like there was, you know, places where they did human sacrifices. But that wasn't. Yeah, but care is right. That's not the bodies they were then. They were not just looking at the bodies of sacrificed individuals as the people in the city.
C: Yeah, they didn't just throw all the people into it like a somewhere else.
S: Well, there are, there are sites, No, Kara, there are sites where there are just pits of sacrifice people.
C: Yeah, yeah. I'm not.
S: Surprised this is not one of them though. But that yes. And then then they're all like have cat caved in skulls and stuff like like signs of extreme trauma. Oh.
E: Cautious. Nasty what?
C: Happened.
S: Yikes. Brutal. All right. Well, good job, guys. You got it, Evan.
Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:30:05)[edit]
If an outsider perceives “something wrong” with a core scientific model, the humble and justified response of that curious outsider should be to ask, “What mistake am I making?” before assuming 100% of the experts are wrong. — David Brin
– (author of quote), (description of author)
S: Give us a quote.
E: This week's quote was suggested by listener Pat from Michigan. Thank you, Pat. If an outsider perceives something wrong with a core scientific model, the humble and justified response of that curious outsider should be to ask, what mistake am I making before assuming 100% of the experts are wrong? David Brinn.
S: Bryn.
US#02: Yeah. David. Bryn.
S: Bryn.
E: Oh my God.
US#02: The Uplift Wars. Yeah, very good. I still remember. It's been like, what, 30 years? Do you even still remember?
S: Those stories, Great series, great science fiction series. Yeah, Yeah, really. The 1st science fiction series I read with actually alien aliens. You know what I mean? Not just humanoid aliens, but.
E: Right. Not Star Trek. Completely alien. Aliens.
S: Yeah, very good. All right. Thanks, Evan.
E: Thanks.
S: Well, thank you all for joining me this week. Got it, brother. And until next week, this is your Skeptics Guide to the Universe.
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- ↑ phys.org: New laser technique achieves atomic-scale precision on diamond surfaces
- ↑ neurosciencenews.com: Study Challenges the Idea of Innate Morality - Neuroscience News
- ↑ finance.yahoo.com: Why America Needs a New Space Station: Russia's Module Is Leaking
- ↑ theness.com: Some Climate Change Trends and Thoughts - NeuroLogica Blog
- ↑ www.msn.com: MSN
- ↑ phys.org: Astronomers deal a blow to theory that Venus once had liquid water on its surface
- ↑ www.discoverwildlife.com: Which animal sleeps the most?
- ↑ pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov: Rate of presence of 11 thoracic vertebrae and 6 lumbar vertebrae in asymptomatic Chinese adult volunteers - PMC
- ↑ www.goshen.edu: Machu Picchu