SGU Episode 1017

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SGU Episode 1017
January 04th 2025
"Viewing Earth from space: a breathtaking reminder of our planet's beauty and fragility."
SGU 1016                      SGU 1018
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Quote of the Week
“Hope & curiosity about the future seemed better than guarantees. The unknown was always so attractive to me...and still is.”
- Hedy Lamarr
Links
Download Podcast
Show Notes
SGU Forum

Intro

Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.

US#11: Hello, and welcome to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.

Psychic Predictions 2024 (00:12)

None

US#11: Today is Thursday, January 2nd, 2025, and this is your host, Stephen Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella. Hey everybody, Cara Santa Maria. Howdy, J Novella. Hey, guys. And Evan Bernstein.

E: Alive and thrive in 25, Yeah.

US#11: 2025 always interesting to start a new year. I got to delete all of yes last year's files and start with a fresh folder.

C: How many times are we going to write the date wrong?

E: I know I've already got it. I've already. Yes, I did my 1 and I swore aloud. I admit it, Steve, you like even number years and not odd number years, is that? Right.

C: But 25 is really. 25 is OK, 25 yeah.

US#11: Fives are the best of the odd number years because it's divisible with the 10.

E: I got it. That's your numerology got.

US#11: It it's all about.

C: Symmetry quarter, quarter.

E: Percent no.

US#11: They're coming to the end of the first quarter. We're heading into the second quarter of the 21st century A.

C: Year 2000 was a quarter century. What? What?

E: I know so much happened and so much didn't happen.

C: True.

E: It's a very true statement.

US#11: And all along the way, the psychics were basically wrong about it.

E: Here's my shocked face. Yeah.

US#11: So we're going to start off as we always do with our first episode of the year, by poking a little fun at psychics, looking back at some of the predictions they made for 2024 to see how accurate or inaccurate they were. And then we're going to pit ourselves against the professionals to see how well we do with our own predictions. Does anybody want to start anymore?

B: I guess I'll start it. No one else is chiming in.

US#11: Go for it.

B: All right. I found a few couple, a few different people. I didn't focus on one because I just didn't feel like it. Sonia Choquette. And she's of course a well known intuitive guide and this is an example, well known people that just fluff it out, they just throw out the the absolute fluff that infuriates me. So. She said she anticipated a widespread awakening in 2024 when more individuals will embrace their intuition and souls purpose. This shift will lead to a spread of authenticity, compassion and creativity. That, that, that kind of stuff. It just screams you can't predict crap. And they're just throw that out there. And every year it just pisses me off more. Oh, here's a good one. I don't know if you had this one, Steve, but Baba Vonga, I'll throw one out from her. She predicted the climate would worsen.

US#11: Yeah.

B: And it's like, and then she, I think, I think she threw, also threw out. It's going to be the warmest year on record. Wow. Really going out on a limb there, just like.

C: She keeps stealing mine, Yeah.

B: Right. And then, and then there's a psychic, Nikki, I don't remember her last name, but don't care that much. She envisioned she get this. She envisioned a dynamic U.S. presidential election. Really. It's gonna be dynamic, passionate debates and lively public engagement.

US#01: Well, I never worried thought of that.

B: Yeah. And then how about this?

US#01: One in a closet, right?

B: She she predicted the progression of climate change. Oh man, I expected it to stop and reverse last year. And then an increasing importance on environmental awareness and adaption. And it's like, oh, here's a here's a good one. Significant developments in artificial intelligence. Like you could maybe argue against that, but it's like, OK. And then then she throws one out from from left field. She's like, oh, also there's a possibility of peaceful extraterrestrial contact. OK All right. OK, there you go. I'm done.

US#11: With this, well, since you mentioned Baba Van Gogh, I mean, I, I just stuck with with her. So for those of you who don't know, she's the blind psychic. She actually died in 1996. But like Nostradamus, people keep following her predictions. She made predictions, apparently out to the year 5076 or something, which is when, of course, the world ends, because that's when her prediction ends.

E: Wonder what episode we'll be on by?

US#11: Then yeah, but she is the is the master of the vague prediction. Bob already mentioned one like there there will be climate crisis in the future. Like, OK, that's wasn't wasn't hard. But this is like she's saying this in the time of that like the first real period of time when the climate crisis was being discussed. You know, this is the unfortunate truth, you know? Period.

B: Yeah.

US#11: She said that similarly, there will be economic crisis in 2024. OK. Like, what does that mean? That can't be. It's almost an unfalsifiable thing. She gets. All right. She gets a little specific. And when she does, she gets completely wrong. Right. So she says a major country will engage in biological warfare and testing in 2024. Nope. There were no biological weapon attacks in 2024. Another another vague one. There will be breakthroughs in diseases like cancer and Alzheimer's. You know, like there is every year, you mean?

E: Right.

US#11: Again, just like big breakthrough in cancer, like what you know, the sun will rise and she's and she said, oh, and aliens will land, you know, and it'll be during by the way, during a sporting event like she had to throw that in there. Aliens will land during a sporting.

E: Isn't there a sporting event?

US#11: I mean, I think like on the midfield at the Super Bowl or something.

E: Oh, I see. Right. The halftime show. Got it, Got it.

US#11: Whatever. I'll take any, you know, unequivocal aliens landing like we are here. Like, yeah, no, but that didn't happen in 2024 either. Darn it. Yeah, a complete fail except for like the most vague predictions.

C: Yeah, and we saw something really similar with good old Nostradamus, did we? Yeah. He, I, I think like one, one of his predictions came to fruition, which was, Oh my gosh, the dry earth will grow more parched and there will be great floods when it is seen. Right. So this is like his climate change prediction. Nailed it. Nailed it, but like most of them were pretty also pretty specific and definitely did not happen. Like a king of the Isles will be driven out by force, which a lot of people thought that meant that like Charles was going to abdicate but that didn't happen. There's also through the death of a very old pontiff, a Roman of good age will be elected of him. It will be said that he weakens his sea, but long will he sit in biting activity. Well, the Pope's still there, so.

E: From the Omen or something. OK.

C: No, that's just how Nostra comments talk from a movie. Also something about European powers clashing with England and new foes being spawned.

E: I say.

US#11: Anyone else?

E: You want mine? I found a person. Her name is Kelly Sutliffe, a psychic medium author and guest radio host. She conducts readings for clients worldwide, and she predicts the upcoming year's events with much accuracy every year. That's right from her website. Sutliff. Sutliff also uses her gifts with much accuracy every year. Who wrote that? Sutliff also uses her gifts to help find the missing. It just says the missing, like, not children, animals. What do you the missing? OK, here are some predictions. Oh, some medical predictions. We love these an Ms. breakthrough on its connection to mold injuries and why the disease is caused. That's interesting.

US#11: Mold injuries No.

E: No, but that's an interesting prediction. At least that's not the usual. App. Does mold here's here's another one new innovative healing and medical research and cures around why inflammation causes disease in cancer. She wrote this disease and inflammatory, inflammatory diseases, myocarditis and Melanoma, OK.

US#11: She's just looking up medical terms.

E: Right. Isn't that what that seems like? All of this rapid succession of disease due to vaccine injury and why cells are going haywire will help heal those people with these issues. It's like a world cure comes in. That's a prediction. I don't think that happens.

US#11: Seem to align with reality in any way.

E: But Steve, she talks about water therapies and electromagnetic therapy and oxygen therapies and topical skin therapies. The new wave in our future of healing. 3020. 24.

C: And radium therapy.

E: Makes post dictions, not predictions. She also gave, you know, some usual stuff, election stuff, such as, oh, well, here we go. President Biden will not finish his term. Kamala Harris will become the new president when Biden steps down. Did not happen. Donald Trump will pick a woman as his vice president running mate. That did not happen. She delves into economics. Real estate will dip with interest rates 2 3/4 points down. That did not happen. It was more like one point, currency and cryptocurrency and Bitcoin get more regulated in 2024, whatever that means. But no. Oh, and then there's earthquakes and floods, you know, the usual kind of stuff. Anybody can predict that oil is up due to what's happening in the Middle East. Prices go up in 2024. That did not happen either. They went down. Leadership changes. OK, are these, did these leaders lose their lose their power, Vladimir Putin?

C: Absolutely. Not no.

E: Zelensky from Ukraine.

C: No, no.

E: Trudeau, Canada.

C: Nope.

E: Pope Francis.

C: Nope.

B: Nope.

E: Nope, she was O for four there.

C: Whoops.

E: All right, and here's her final bit of wisdom for us all as we head into 2024. Remember this was a year ago she wrote this. Remember we are in an 8 year. The number 8 has Infinity to it. Metaphorically, it means respect and love are limitless. So even though there will be lots of hell raising and conflict this year around the world, we'll return back to love and spirituality of what humans are, souls. Well. There you go. And people pay for that because she. Has. A She has a phone number and people pay for that. Book your session and give her a lots of money OK?

J: Yeah, I found somebody named Athos Salome.

E: Oh, that's a. Cool name I know.

J: I thought it was a great psych psychic name. He is. He has a subheading to his name. He's the living Nostradamus.

US#11: Oh yeah, everyone wants to be the living.

J: Nostradamus, I'm sure that he, he, you know, gave himself that name. So there was three things that this guy said that there was a that World War 3 was imminent in 2024. They said the worst is yet to come, suggesting the possibility of a global conflict. Then we have cyber threats, identified cyber warfare as a significant threat to global security, highlighting the potential for hacker attacks leading to global failures. Now I was thinking about this. If you read that every year for the last 15 years, that would have been an accurate prediction.

E: There you go. The more vague, the more accurate.

J: You know what I mean? But it's like, really, dude, that's your prediction? Cyber attacks, they're happening every second of every day, yeah.

E: Right. How many letters I got this year in the mail saying your your information may have been compromised? We're giving you a free year of credit protection. I got about nine of them over the course of the year.

J: I get, I get so many phishing attempts and you know, I get phone calls now like live people scam phone calls.

E: But these are from banks and you know, these, all these companies and stuff who can't stop it. They, they, they don't know how to get it under control. The most sophisticated companies.

C: Whoops, your Social Security numbers out there. Sorry.

E: Again.

J: That he's got one, one more here. The South China Sea tensions. They predicted a critical event in the South China Sea that could disrupt military and communication systems of superpowers.

E: That's where a Godzilla comes out of the ocean in this in the South China Sea.

J: But this guys doing the same thing. We should name this type of prediction. It's basically like, yeah, they're reading the news and they're going statistically, you know, this seems like it's going to be a hit.

US#11: Yeah, well, there's a few types of predictions that the psychics make and given given that they still do horribly. So 1 is the vague prediction, which we had a lot of examples of that, like there will be an earthquake, you know, the things that are that are just so vague that you could match them to anything once. Another one is this thing that's currently happening is going to continue to happen. You know, like there will be wars, there will be global warming, there will be whatever. Another was just the high probability prediction. Then there's the predictions that sound more specific than they are. They're not really specific, but they kind of can sound like they are.

C: That's like the horoscope prediction.

US#11: Yeah, like the horoscope, I see a red door, you know, kind of thing where it sounds like a really specific prediction. You don't realize how common is like a plane will crash with red and its tail fin. You mean like 85% of the, you know, airlines out there. And then there's the ones there's a shot in the dark, right, where they just sort of make these lateral left field predictions that and they're just counting on the fact that people will forget them. But if they hit if like one of their hundred out of left field predictions hits, that's the one they're going to broadcast to the world.

E: For years, For the rest of the year. Correct, Bob, That's right. For years, I mean, I saw. I saw psychics touting correct predictions from 2003 on this year.

US#02: Yeah, what have you predicted lately?

US#11: Now, now, let's see how the Rogues did last year. I'm going to go first, OK? I believe I got four out of four. But you say tell me what you.

B: Think I thought it was. Three.

C: Yeah, I only did 3.

US#11: I threw.

B: It Steve gave us a bonus.

US#11: A bonus one.

C: Oh, OK.

US#11: All right, so my first prediction, a health scare will cause Biden to drop out of the presidential. Race. Causing the Democrats to scramble for a replacement there. It is, I mean your job 100.

B: Percent.

C: That's very good, right?

B: Yeah. Did they really scramble that much?

C: Yes.

US#11: I mean they scrambled. I mean, they did not.

C: For a short period, but they could have done it much sooner than they did. That was.

US#11: Yeah, it was a scramble because it was so late. Yeah. All right, This one, this is the this is the softest one. This is the most ambiguous. The total solar eclipse in April will be only the second most interesting astronomical event of 2024. Now I did look up astronomical events of 2024 and some sites do give the naked eye visible comet as the most interesting because it's always unexpected like this. The the eclipses are predictable like everyone knew that it was going to happen but like an unexpected naked eye visible comet. This is a comet 2024 S 1 Atlas. I think that was it. It discovered in September 2024. So anyway, that's one's a little ambiguous, but there's at least a candidate #3 was 2024 will be the warmest year on record. Got that one, but that was too easy, which is why I gave a fourth one. A new CRISPR based drug will get regulatory approval of 2024. That happened. Those were the the two Bloodborne, that thalassemia and and the sickle cell CRISPR drugs were approved in 2024.

C: So, yeah, yeah.

E: Well.

US#11: Yeah, I made high probability predictions. The Biden 1 was the one that was a little out of left field, but that was a pretty good hit.

E: Yeah, it's your best. One, I think of those of the four, that's the one.

US#11: I mean, come on, if any psychic had that record they would be screaming it from the rooftops.

E: Right, if you could charge $350.00 an hour for a session.

US#11: With that was good. Steve Yeah. I think that was my best year. All right, Cara, you go.

C: OK so my first no mine mine are terrible. I feel like I can't go if you. Want someone else to go? I use the I use the vague method. I use the vague. OK, 2024 will be the hottest year on record.

E: Yeah, correct.

C: Correct. A new COVID surge will occur early in 2024. And I was just looking at the trends across 2024, and there are two large spikes and one was in like like January 13 was the highest death toll in 2024. And then the next spike was in September. So I'd say January 13 was early. I'm going to give myself a point on that. And then this last one, I'm still struggling to figure out the exact number but I said more than 15 species will go extinct in 2024, but I don't think we know yet the full number because it's January 2nd, 2025.

B: What's typical?

C: Yeah, I don't I don't even know the background extinction rate, but I mean I am I am finding website after website of just like long lists. It's actually really depressing. Why do I keep doing this to myself? I've.

E: Done that before as well.

C: Karen moved. Off.

E: I moved off.

C: Yeah, the Wyoming toad, The Spix's macaw, the Socoro isopod, the Socoro dove pear, David's deer, Kehansi spray toad, the Morian viviparous tree snail, the marbled swordtail fish, the Hawaiian crow, the Guam Kingfisher. This is so sad. Why do I do this? I'm going to come up with happier ones this year. Nope. The only.

E: Silver lining when you look those up is you can find that each year they take some animals or things off of off of the. That's true. They they, they like spot something.

C: Yeah.

E: Yeah.

US#11: Yeah, but sometimes they come off the the endangered list 'cause they're extinct. That's. True too.

E: Yeah, but you? Have to see why they were taken. Also because conservation efforts do make a difference.

C: Yeah, there. Are.

US#11: They do, they absolutely do. So Cara in 202323 species were taken off of the endangered list because they were declared extinct. So I think we'll at some point get an official number for 20/20.

C: Yeah. And I think it will probably be over 15. I will say there have been two wins here, Reintroduction, reintroduction, reintroduction program for the pro Walski's horse and the black footed ferret have both been pretty successful. So the horse was a wild horse species in Central Asia that was classified as extinct in the wild in 1996. It was then reintroduced and although there's a small population, it's increasing in the wild now. And the black footed ferret was designated extinct in the wild, but because of reintroduction program, there are some self-sustaining populations in the wild now. So that's pretty cool, yeah.

US#11: That's good.

C: Yeah.

US#11: All right. Evan, what did you do in?

E: Franklin My 3 predictions were as follows #1 The Summer Olympics. France will suffer a major blackout during the Olympics, causing massive delays in events. Here's a headline from the early in the Olympics. Paris blackout sparks chaos as Olympics get underway. Okay, but here's the details. Well hang, I'll read you the first paragraph. In Paris, Egyptian darkness took over on the night. From Saturday to Sunday, numerous photos and videos from the French capital appeared on social media. They show that the streets of the multi million metropolis were completely dark, services are explaining what caused the blackout, blah blah blah. But here's the thing. Yes, and there was a brief power outage in Paris during the 2024 Olympics. Limited to a few districts. Did not affect the Eiffel Tower. Lasted about 10 minutes. So.

C: Yeah, hey, it wasn't blackout it.

E: Just wasn't major.

C: Did you say it was major?

E: Yeah, I, I said. Major I know literally use the word mail well.

C: Now you got it. Now see, you're going to learn from your mistakes this year.

E: That's right. That's right. And then I'll up my price to people for my predictions.

US#11: Yeah, now if you just said France will suffer a blackout during Olympics causing chaos, 100% you would have got it. You got 2 specific.

E: How, how dare I, how dare I try to actually help people with my predictions? Second prediction in 2020 No predicated in 2023, IBM developed a quantum processor chip with which consists of more than 1000 cubits. My prediction? By the end of 2024, a company will announce the development of a 10,000 cubit QC or a quantum chip. Let's have a look and see what happened here. Oh, I've been June 2024, IBM reportedly partnering with Japan's AIST to develop 10,000 qubit quantum computer. So they didn't actually. They started the development.

US#11: Yeah, multiple companies are working on a 10,000 qubit chip, but none of them, none of them developed.

E: It they didn't get there, they announced it though, and that's a fair, but that was what I said though. By the end of 2024, a company will announce the development.

US#11: That 10,000 yeah, OK, that's like your.

C: Vague wording. Evan That was really smart.

E: Yeah, I know it. It's like it had double meanings.

C: They announced you could take it various ways. Yeah.

E: So, so that was good. I I get I get extra psychic points for that.

C: I think you do.

E: All right, 2026 or 2028 is now when they think that they'll actually up and running. The third one, commercial real estate foreclosures in the United States will exceed 10% where 8% was expected. Well, we don't have the exact numbers yet. However, we do have through the third quarter we have 3/4 of data because obviously the fourth quarter just ended, commercial real estate foreclosures are surging across the United States, foreclosures climbing 48% in September year over year. I looked at the month by month trends for each of the first nine months of the year. They were all up. In fact the highest one. There was a 238% increase when compared I think it was March compared to the year prior. So although I don't have all the data yet, I this one is trending probably towards being true That holds that one's going to that one's going to hold. So I did not do all that badly. I got a little too specific for my own good. Otherwise I would have had a really good psychic year all.

US#11: Right. Good job, Evan.

B: Bob, what you got?

E: Thanks.

B: I'll start with my favorite one. This was the weather prediction. April 8th, 2024 will absolutely be overcast over much of, if not all of Texas. And I think I absolutely nailed it. You were right. In the best way, because the area that we were in cleared up at the last possible moment. So that was like.

US#11: We have our cake and eat it too.

B: Yeah, that was wonderful. The rest of my predictions, not so much. Prediction #2 for 20/24. Open AI will release ChatGPT 5 in 2024. I already failed. Which will be sapient enough to realize it doesn't want anything to do with us and will leave the Earth to uplift the microbes currently under the ice on Europa. So yeah, that didn't happen.

US#11: But that is another genre of predictions, by the way. It is.

E: Unprovable.

B: No, it's the prediction that is so crazy, no one really expects it to come true. It's just entertaining in its own right, you know? What I mean? To entertain. And then my third prediction, the moon will be hit by a large asteroid visible from Earth, greatly enhancing our efforts to track and detect and deal with Near Earth asteroids or, yeah, asteroids.

E: I wish that were true.

B: That would have been cool to have to imagine having a video of something hitting the moon with a huge eject done.

E: Do you think we have cameras on the moon all monitoring it at all times?

B: Yeah, well, why?

E: Not around the around the planet. I mean is something always looking and recording the moon?

C: Well, maybe the near side.

E: Yeah, yeah. I would think if something dramatic happened on the moon, somebody there'd be a video.

C: Somewhere that it would happen on the far side it. Wouldn't. Yeah, right.

E: But AI is going to come along and show us something that's not true.

C: What is that? Murphy's so cool. Murphy's Moon Law, right?

E: Yes.

C: Is that the buttered toast law?

US#11: No, but always lands butter side down.

C: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. It only happens on the far side. I don't.

J: Know all right, Jay all. Right, my first one. Netanyahu will be unseated as Israeli Prime Minister.

C: Nope. Nope.

J: I felt like it was going to happen all year and never happened. The Tesla cyber truck will have horrible sales and and end production.

C: Oh no, But one did catch on fire the first day of.

US#12: Yeah, true, and one blew up yesterday. But that was intentional.

C: That was yesterday. That's.

E: What I the Cyber truck has been a massive failure.

C: They are everywhere in LA, you guys, it's.

E: Well, I've seen Connecticut now almost regularly on the roads. I mean it's.

US#11: Around here, it's more complicated than that. I mean their their sales are very low when compared to other Tesla products, but they're not low when compared to other like trucks in the same class.

E: Really. Well, I mean. Somebody can spend. $120,000 on.

US#11: A for for the cost, yeah, right. But but production didn't end, so I think that. No, it did not.

J: But they I've read so many negative things about the Cybertruck, like it just the list just continues to grow.

E: So don't get you one. Got it.

J: I said that the movie Godzilla -1 will win an Oscar and it did.

US#11: Won multiple Oscars.

J: That was my only win.

US#11: That was a solid win.

C: Yeah, that's because that's yeah 5 expected that.

J: Yeah, they did. They did well. They definitely did well. And then my last one, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelinsky, will win the Nobel Peace Prize, and he did not win it.

C: No, no did. Not win. Not yet.

US#11: No, no, Well, not 23. That was Nihon Hidankio, which was the guy who started the grassroots organization for atomic bomb survivors. Yeah, from Hiroshima. Nagasaki, not Solinsky.

C: Yeah. I just mean there's there's not still time this year. There's still time.

E: Well, sure, right? You can predict it again for 25 if you want.

US#11: So one out of four J is what I gave. You not bad not.

E: Bad. Better than most.

Who's That Noisy? + Announcements (26:35)

US#11: All right, let's go on to 2025. I have 4 predictions again for 20/20.

E: Oh, you did 4 again?

US#11: Because I'm doing like a bonus 1. Is my weather prediction at the end all right? All right, prediction #1 The Russia Ukraine war will enter a new, more dangerous phase.

E: So vague.

US#11: It's very specific, all right. Correct #2A potential techno signature will be discovered that will defy explanation throughout 2025, so it will not be not be definitively explained in 2025.

E: Gotcha. I like that one.

US#11: #3 AI applications will cross the uncanny valley, producing generative video indistinguishable from real footage.

E: Shoot.

C: Do not like I.

E: Was afraid of.

US#11: That and I had four. Here's my weather prediction. 2025 will not be the warmest year on record, but it will be in the top five.

C: Fucking.

E: The trend?

US#11: That's called La Nina, folks.

C: Oh, so you actually did research Crap. I didn't.

E: I looked into it.

C: I did not.

E: Well, you're next.

C: Cara like a true psychic, I just pulled them out. Just.

E: Winged it from the hip.

C: A stable democracy will fall when an elected leader successfully abolish his term limits.

E: Oh boy, Cara, what the hell? What are you doing to it? What are you?

C: Doing I didn't say which country, OK.

E: Cara, I just gave everyone agita.

C: All right, H5 N one will mutate to become transmissible from person to person.

E: These are. Happy we're addictions. Where's the love and the harmony?

C: Stuff 2020 Hey man, 2024 to 2025 was not the best transition. OK, 2025 will be the hottest year on record, God damn it. Wow, pitting. You and Steve. Pitting against each other, yeah.

E: Head to head.

US#11: One of you will win.

E: Not necessarily.

US#11: I also said it will be in the top five. Maybe it isn't.

E: Three more predictions 2025. My first one has to do with catastrophe. A bridge on an Interstate highway system will collapse, causing 0 fatalities.

C: You're right, you've got a nice optimism there.

E: Yeah, see what I did there? I turned something horrible and made it a story of no injury #2 technology. A computer will achieve 1.99 petaflops, becoming the new champion of supercomputers. So by comparison, in 20241.74 petaflops was tops. I went just short of 2.0. That was for you, Bob.

US#12: Thank you man.

E: Number cool. And my third prediction, Astronomy. Supernova explosions. Not one, but three of them will be visible to the naked. OK, what? You heard it here first. See you in a year 3. Evan at the same time or just say that I'm asking. You that that would be crazy. Would you like me to read it again?

US#11: But what do you think it will be at the same time? But you're going to go crazy. Go crazy.

E: No, no, I no, there will be 3 distinct events.

US#11: OK, all right.

E: This is why the naked eye if you. Predict one.

US#11: That would be huge predicting 3.

E: Three, I am tripling.

US#11: Down well will make me. If that happens, I will reconsider my views on your predictive power.

E: Holy jeez, I can't wait.

US#11: That mean that doesn't mean the odds of that are so incredible. I mean like.

E: Did you do any research about about supernova?

US#11: Well, it's one per century, right in the in our Galaxy. In a typical, yeah, typical Galaxy. But how? Many of them would be naked eye visible he.

C: Didn't say during the day.

US#11: It's true. So let's say if it would just use the one out of 100, but then times 3 is one in a million, if I get that right. Yeah, Well, you.

B: Probably even more than. Don't forget the naked eyes. That means that it's probably not relatively close.

US#11: I'm just assuming a one to 100 like at the. Low end, it's a million to one. It could.

E: Be I did not pull that out of the air. I did some research into this actually and used some information to make this prediction the basic.

US#11: Cider trading on Supernova. You think Beetlejuice?

E: Is gonna go the Beetlejuice thing? Yes, Steve, the Beetlejuice thing is one of them.

US#11: Even just saying Beetlejuice will go supernova in 2025, that's a huge prediction because it could still happen anytime over the last I don't know what thousands of years, it's still relatively close, but relatively close is still thousands of years. All right, we'll see what we'll see. We'll. Have a lot to talk.

B: Definition Bob Okay prediction one ChatGPT 5 will be won't be released until mid 2025 a year later than initially anticipated and I'm going to add more it will be even more lackluster than anticipated However, this will not start the third AI winter. There's been two winters in the past where thank you where there was so much hype. This is like in the 70s and 80s to mid 90s, there was so much hype that and inevitably didn't live up to it and funding dried up. I don't think that would happen here to maybe a little bit if it's chat GPD 5 is real shit. It may be a little bit, but it's this is they're too invested and I think there's still a lot to be could be done with it.

E: We've come too far to turn back.

B: Let's see #2 and echoing Cara, full on bird flu epidemic person to person. Come on, mutation will happen in 2025, but I said epidemic. I could have I considered that predicting pandemic, but I said Nah. If it is a pandemic then I predict America will have the worst deaths. You.

US#11: Got to you got to learn the psychic speed. You got to say epidemic if not a pandemic. Like you hedge your bets, but you still take credit.

C: For the whole thing, but you are hedging because if you say epidemic there, it's always an epidemic before it's a pandemic.

US#11: Right. But I'm just saying you want to get credit for the pandemic if it occurs. So you say if not a pandemic anyway.

B: Yeah, if I cared I might have considered that. But and 3rd prediction no threat to will win more Academy Awards than any other horror movie ever.

US#11: That's a solid prediction. Yeah.

B: I like, Yeah. Love to saw it last night.

US#11: It was really.

B: Recommended Wonderful. What a art piece. My God. Beautiful.

US#11: Oh, the similar talking, writing the. 1 from 100. Years. It was incredible. It was beautiful and horrible at the same time. You know what?

B: I.

US#11: Mean.

B: Yeah, solid, solid, solid movie on every at every level, pretty much. I recommend it all.

US#11: Right, Jay?

B: All right, ready, guys.

J: The prices of groceries won't go down in the United States.

C: Great prediction.

B: When you have two kids. It's hard. It's hard.

J: No company will ultimately achieve general AI. In order to make this fair, though, I have to define what I'm talking about. OK, so here's my definition of Artificial General Intelligence. This refers to a form of AI that possesses the ability to understand, learn and apply knowledge across a wide variety of tasks in a manner similar to human intelligence. So that I repeat, no company will achieve general AI in 2025. Yeah.

US#11: OK. Thank God.

J: I think, Cara, you and I agree on this one. The war between Ukraine and Russia will end. Yeah, right. You said that. Interesting. I agree. No, I said.

US#11: It will enter a more dangerous phase.

J: Somebody said it's good that war is going to end, I thought.

US#11: No, you said it in your mind.

J: All right, well, you read it out anyway. Yeah, And my final one, I agree with Bob here. The world will have another pandemic. Many Bothans will die. Okay, all right, there we are. We put our nickels down. Yeah, put ourselves.

US#11: Bridge collapse put ourselves up against the psychics. I think overall over the years we do better than they do.

E: Which is not.

US#11: Hard, which is not hard. I'm going to watch some news items. Jay, you're going to start us off by some of these are still look ahead kind of news items.

J: It's the first episode of the year. Jay, tell us about space exploration in 2025. Yeah, I'm going to hit some of the highlights. There's a very long list of things that are going to happen with in regards to space exploration. There's also, you know, quite a number of of visual events, you know, like comets and all sorts of stuff like that. You should read up on those. But these are the like the launches and the missions, right? We have the Lunar Trailblazer and Nova C IM 2 lunar mission. This is going to happen at some type sometime in January. This is a joint mission under NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Service, and it's led by the private company Intuitive Machines. And the Nova C IM 2 Lander will launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9, and it'll carry several NASA payloads. And among those, they'll have something called the Lunar Trailblazer, which is an orbiter designed to map the moon's water, water ice, and hydroxyl deposits. So this is pretty cool. I, I am looking forward to this, and it's going to happen soon.

Emails (35:58)

J: So everybody keep your eyes open. I'm hoping that there's video cameras on this thing so we can watch it land. We have the Blue Ghost lunar mission. This is also January of 2025. This is a separate CLPS mission led by the Firefly Aerospace, and the Blue Ghost Lunar Lander will carry something called the Lunar Planet Vac. What do you think they're going to do with that?

B: They're going to suck out all the atmosphere.

J: No, it's it is an advanced sampling instrument designed to collect surface material from the moon. I think this is pretty cool. You know, we need more moon rock it we definitely need it for research. And it's just a cool thing to have. Guy, could you imagine? There was a half a second when I thought Bob gave me and Steve a piece of moon rock for Christmas. It wasn't true.

US#12: It was even better.

J: So the other payloads that this is going to include, there'll be scientific equipment to study the lunar surface and environment. And the mission will aim to expand knowledge about the moon's resources and environment while demonstrating technologies for future exploration. It's so wordy, right? You're the Europa Clipper gravity assist. This is in March. This is NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft. It'll conduct a gravity assist at Mars and it'll fly with 950. It'll fly within 950 kilometers. This is 600 miles of the planet. The maneuver will adjust the spacecrafts trajectory for its journey to Jupiter, where it will set to study the icy moon Europa. The missions ultimate goal is to investigate Europa subsurface oceans for signs of habitability I want.

US#10: To see if it's habitable.

J: Habitable. So this thing I talked about this I was very excited talking about this news item last year. This is the one that's going to fly through the ejecta. Hopefully it'll get get to fly through some ejecta from from the moon, which is essentially, you know, one of the water spouts. Very cool. I mean this could be amazing if it hits, it's going to be a big one. We have a Lucy flyby of asteroid Donald Johansson April 20th of this year.

US#11: You know who Donald Johansson is?

J: He's a flyby.

US#11: But the asteroid was named after Donald Johansson.

J: Yeah, he's a guy.

US#11: Yeah, I'm asking you if you know who he is.

J: No.

C: Isn't he the guy who discovered Lucy?

US#11: Scarlett's brother. He's astronaut, yes, that's correct.

C: Oh, yeah, right. No, he's not an astronaut. He's a Yeah, He discovered Lucy in Ethiopia. I interviewed him on my podcast. That's.

US#11: Correct. That's great.

C: Yeah, he's really interesting. Guy.

US#11: Yeah, paleomanthropologist.

J: So the spacecraft is called Lucy, and it'll fly past asteroid 52246, Donald Johansson, and it's located in the asteroid belt. And this asteroid named after the discovery of Lucy fossil, is the second target in a mission to explore multiple asteroids. So I think that one's cool. Then we click forward to may we have the Tianwen 2 mission. This is in May 2025. China's ambitious mission will target 469219 Camo Olua. It's a quasi moon of Earth. I love the word quasi, by the way.

Voice-over: Yeah.

J: So it's a quasi moon of Earth and they're collect. They're going to try to collect samples from the asteroid and then return them to Earth. And the primary, if the primary mission is complete, it will continue towards comet 311 P blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. It's like it's going to go to a comet and it, you know, make it a dual purpose mission, which is always good. And its goals include advancing knowledge about small celestial bodies, planetary formation and potential asteroid mining, which we know guys, asteroid mining that is getting closer and closer as the gears click by man. So we have a couple more the juice gravity assist at at Venus. This is in August, late August this year, the Jupiter icy moon explorer named Juice, right? Juicy, right. Can you do that? Jupiter icy moon explore? Yeah, it works. Led by the European Space Agency, this will perform a gravity assist maneuver near Venus to adjust its trajectory towards Jupiter. This is pretty cool. There's going to be an Earth fly by with this thing going out to 2031. It'll focus on the planets, icy moons, and it will study their potential habitability and subsurface oceans. So we have a couple of couple of missions going out to Jupiter and then the last one. Is the end of Juno's extended mission. So this goes to September of 2025. NASA's Juno spacecraft, which has been orbiting Jupiter since 2016, it will conclude its extended mission. It was originally designed for 37 orbits, and Juno has basically provided us with groundbreaking data on Jupiter's atmosphere, which is great. Also, its magnetic field and its internal structure. During this extended mission, Juno studied Jupiter's moons and Aurora's. And the mission is expected to end with the spacecraft intentionally de orbiting into Jupiter to avoid contaminating its moons. And once it goes down into Jupiter, it will be basically reduced down to like, you know, an eighth of an inch and stay there till the end of time you.

US#10: Know what's not happening in 2025?

J: What is not happening?

US#10: The Artemis 2 mission, which was delayed from September 2025 now to April 2026.

J: They suck.

US#10: They're not saying NASA is not saying it's going to happen in April of 2026.

US#11: They're saying it's not going to happen before April of 2020.

E: Oh, that's even we have to. Work with more delays.

US#11: Oh, my God, yeah. I mean, there's so many things that they don't have ready. They don't even have the space suits, you know, fully dialed in. Wow, they're making progress. But yeah, of course it's slower than they say. We, you know, that's that would have been a low hanging fruit prediction. The Artemis mission will be delayed. You're right. Of course it will be all right. Thank you, Jay. Cara, so keeping on your upbeat theme, you're going to tell us about emerging diseases in 2025.

C: We talked, I think it was the last time we met or it might have been the time before that because what is time really over the holidays about?

US#11: Calories.

C: Right, about H5 N 1 bird flu and the number of cases that we have seen so far, I think the the count can, I mean it continues to rise, but well over 60 here in the US globally we're talking about kind of almost 1000 cases over the last couple of decades. So this is not like it's a very rare phenomenon that people get highly pathogenic avian influenza. So that's type AH5N1. The reason it's so rare, once again, is because it's a spillover event that is then not transmission from person to person. So that's why outbreaks aren't happening. There are massive outbreaks among birds, both wild and domesticate, and also massive outbreaks among cows here in the US and abroad. But we're not seeing epidemic proportions of bird flu because bird flu is not yet transmissible from person to person. But as I mentioned the last time I covered this story, it is. Researchers discovered that the only one mutation is necessary, one mutation, not a series of mutations like they used to think in order for this to become highly pathogenic from person to person. So obviously this is on everybody's radar that this could be the epidemic or pandemic of 2025 or moving forward. But when we actually look at the not what ifs, but the what ours, what do you think are the three biggest, let's say, diseases of concern, infectious diseases of concern worldwide?

US#11: I. Mean. Isn't Ebolas always on that list?

C: Is scary. So I shouldn't say biggest, I should say maybe most common so that the infectious diseases that cause the most concern globally, Ebola, yes, is very, very scary, but it's not in the top three. Think about one of the most ongoing pandemics. Yeah, HIV, OK, so that's viral. There's one that's parasitic and we see it Malaria, many, many countries malaria. And then there's one that's bacterial and it makes you cough blood, Tuberculosis, tuberculosis, tuberculosis is a bacterial infection. And so these three globally are kind of consistently on the lists. Covic is not anymore. And why is Kovid no longer in the top three?

US#11: Vaccines.

C: Vaccines, yes, because we have very, very effective vaccines and treatments available as well. And then of course there are different like watch lists of different pathogens that are becoming drug resistant or that are sort of ebbing and flowing in the background. But the bird flu is kind of on everybody's radar as sort of our biggest candidate right now. And part of the reason that it is scary is, well, it's multifold. It's multifactorial. One of them is that the mortality rate among human infections is around 30%. That's not good. We don't like that. Another reason is because I mentioned before we are potentially 1 mutation away from this becoming transmissible from person to person. And even if it does not become transmissible yet, the occurrence of bird flu happening in isolated spillovers is becoming more of a reality. And why is that if our cows have bird flu?

US#11: Because of it, they have raw milk.

C: Yes, because we literally have people in positions of public influence advocating for drinking milk that has the potential to be infected by bird flu. Mind boggling. It's really scary, right? Because up until now, most of the cases have been from farmworkers and from people drinking raw milk. Most of the cases have been spillovers from cows and they've happened from both of those incidences. And so we're seeing that there is a movement to prepare, right? The UK is stockpiling their 5 million doses of vaccine, H5 vaccine, kind of they're ready. There are pandemic preparedness plans for bird flu that have been developed and then reiterated over and over. But I got to admit, I'm concerned here in the US and I don't think historically I have had this level of concern about our ability to successfully prepare and mitigate a potential disaster like that.

US#11: We are living in the first act of a horror movie 100% right.

C: Right and and we've seen it. It's like it's like the four the foreshadowing is because of evidence. You know, it's like we lived it. We don't want to live it again. And so you know, really, I think remembering that HIV, tuberculosis and malaria and and obviously many others those are only the top three are continue to be these global detriments these quote slow pandemics. We have to remember too that even though here in the US and in many developed nations we have the privilege of thinking of these as either diseases of the past or chronic diseases, they aren't and they could just as easily rear their ugly heads here again. HIV is still a public health threat here in the US, although we have really good drugs to help prevent and manage. Tuberculosis could just as easily come back. So could a number of diseases if we continue to bend to anti vax rhetoric. And malaria could continue to spread throughout the globe directly as a function of human displacement and shifting climate. The actual makeup of the globe is changing. And so the things that were potential threats in the past are potentially more threatening now. And there are, you know, new risks that are popping up. The good news is across the globe, there are a lot of very dedicated people, public health experts, epidemiologists, researchers, who this is what they do. The bad news is they can't do it without funding and they can't do it without public support and governmental support. And so we have to hold our elected officials accountable. We have to remember that these things are these risks are real.

US#11: My biggest concern is that the very notion of public health is under assault. We saw that during the COVID pandemic, the idea that personal liberty supersedes public health, which doesn't make sense. It doesn't make moral or ethical sense. Like, for example, one person who chooses to drink raw milk and gets the bird flu could be the infection in which that mutation happens that causes it to to result in human to human spread, which causes a pandemic, which is basically going to be COVID but with 30% mortality rather than the whatever point 1% or 1%, whatever it was at the end of the day, right? That so that one person's liberty is not more important than the health of the world, you know, and the millions of people who could potentially die from such an outbreak. It's and the issue.

C: This rhetoric isn't new, but the its ability to take hold and its ability to be repeated and promoted at the highest levels of government is. Like when you look back at the archives during 1918, there were people marching against mass there.

US#11: Were anti massacres in 1918 a hundred? Percent.

C: Yeah, this is the rhetoric's not new, but it's really taken hold and in a way that is frightening that really. Yeah, it it hadn't backed.

US#11: Well, it's been politicized in a very dangerous way. So that did the, you know, the the public health officials respond perfectly in hindsight to the pandemic. Of course not. They admitted we're building this plane as we're flying it. They made mistakes. They made reasonable assumptions, some of which turned out to be not entirely accurate. You have to make trade-offs. You could play Monday morning quarterback them all the time, but we're living in a political environment in which those kinds of things gets turned into we can't trust the elites. We can't trust the experts. You know, they're they're assaulted our liberty for pseudoscience, whatever it turns into a really toxic, corrupt way of viewing public health really just setting us up for the next pandemic to to completely fail, you know, to deal with the next one that's. The IT only works if we all work together. Right, right. And now, as you said, we have the worst possible people in charge. You know, it's like as when I said horror movie, I'm imagining, you know, like you're watching the early scenes of a movie, you know, you basically know what the movie's about. Like the, you know, the the the people who are the protagonists are having a conversation and in the background on the TV is RFK Junior talking about whatever nonsense these conspiracy theories he's talking about. And like the audience knows that's the guy who's going to destroy the world, You know, in this movie, right? That's obviously I'm not, I'm not, you know, doom and glooming this. I'm not saying this is what's going to happen, but I'm just saying we are the pieces are in play, right? This as you, this is the foreshadowing. When we look back and ask how did this possibly happen? We know how it happened. The pieces are all there.

C: And it reminds me, Steve, of when we've talked about filmmaking, like the art of filmmaking. And one of your biggest frustrations is when an antagonist or a protagonist even just like continues to fail through ineptitude, Like, and that's why the plot is moved forward as opposed to there being these outside forces. It's like it's lazy filmmaking. I feel like we are, we are in a we are in lazy life right here we go. And it's so scary.

US#11: I know.

B: Oh man, we'll. Have a guy running our country who has in the past actually thrown away pandemic plans.

C: Right the pandemic preparedness binder he was. Like we don't need this.

B: Essentially burned it.

C: We don't need it.

B: Like here this work has been fuck.

US#11: Right, as I said, stock up on on toilet paper, which is just metaphorically do whatever you have to do to be prepared for another COVID like pandemic, but without a competent government, you know, in place.

Science or Fiction (53:01)

Theme: None Item #1: Anguiculus dicaprioi, or DiCaprio’s Himalayan snake, was named after actor Leonardo DiCaprio who helped discover the new species while on safari. Item #2: A new species of clearwing moth, Carmenta brachyclados, was discovered in a living room in South Wales based on an amateur photograph posted on Instagram and then seen by an amateur lepidopterist. Item #3: Myloplus sauron is a new species of vegetarian piranha discovered in Brazil and named after Sauron from Lord of the Rings.

Answer	Item
Fiction	Anguiculus dicaprioi, or DiCaprio’s Himalayan snake, was named after actor Leonardo DiCaprio who helped discover the new species while on safari.
Science	A new species of clearwing moth, Carmenta brachyclados, was discovered in a living room in South Wales based on an amateur photograph posted on Instagram and then seen by an amateur lepidopterist.
Science	Myloplus sauron is a new species of vegetarian piranha discovered in Brazil and named after Sauron from Lord of the Rings.

Host	Result
Steve	sweep

Rogue	Guess

US#11: All right, this next news item is very interesting. Bob and I are going to tag team and we're going to both cover the same news item for two reasons, partly because we both wanted to cover it, but also it's a little complicated. I think we we need both of us to really wrap our heads around this one. But go ahead, Bob, you're going to start us off.

B: OK, so a new model of cosmology called Timescape, recent study on that came out. It claims to more accurately describe the expansion of the universe. In fact, it suggests that dark energy is not even required at all to explain what is being observed. So potentially no dark energy. That got my attention. This is from Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters. The name of the paper is Supernovae, Evidence for Foundational change to cosmological models. Now the biggest change in cosmology during my life, Steve, sure you would agree with this, has been taking what I thought was essentially the totality of the universe, stars, planets, galaxies, life, etcetera. All the protons, neutrons and electrons, essentially baryonic matter basically, and it was shrunk down to only 5% of everything. And it seemed to happen fairly fairly quickly. That happened when we incorporated the dark sector, the so-called dark sector into the universe. That's dark matter and dark energy. Suddenly we knew basically nothing about 95% of the universe. A dark matter. We we all know that's right, dark matter. It's just, it's just weird matter that only appears to reveal itself through gravity and how that gravity shaped structures all over the universe. Dark energy discovered in 98. This was huge, huge, huge, huge news item. I mean, a Nobel Prize in 2011, a super supernova analysis showed that there was a mysterious energy inherent in space itself causing its accelerated expansion. Very, you know, high level definition. Of course, we, but we've just, we've covered this in detail over the years. Now I say we suddenly knew almost nothing because if you consider the entire mass energy of the universe, dark energy is 71%, dark matter 24% and all that we could see with our eyes and instruments is a paltry 5%. So if you're going to create a standard model of cosmology, now I've just I've discussed the standard model of physics there. There's also of course, a standard model of cosmology. If you're going to create this, then you, you would be correct if you think that it would have to focus on dark energy and dark matter, right? I mean, those are, those are the big boys now, you know, 75% or 95% of the universe. So that model would have to include that both of the, the entire dark sector in a big way. Now the standard model of cosmology does just that and it's called Lambda CDM. Now the name has two parts Lambda that's dark energy. CDM is cold dark matter, which is a very specific theory of dark matter. Cold in this context just means, you know, it's not, it's, it's moving slower than light. This model for years it's offered just what you would want from such a model. It explains what we observe, and it makes testable predictions. Awesome. There's a problem though. Recently, the Lambda or the dark energy part of this cosmological model has been getting beaten up lately. Here's a couple examples why. The cosmic microwave background radiation, the earliest radiation that we could see early universe was at a few 100,000 years after The Big Bang. It shows the early universe's expansion just doesn't fit with the current expansion, creating what's called the Hubble tension, which is a whole other topic that is way out of scope of this talk here. So there's that, and then there's the second reason why dark energy has been taking a beating is a research instrument called DESI, which is the Dark energy spectroscopic instrument, recently suggested that dark energy behaves differently than we have, we have thought for all these years, specifically its strength. Its strength has changed over time in a way that we just did not understand or or have believed over the years. The authors argue that a different model called the Timescape model, which accounts for the structure of the universe in the model itself, can account for supernova observations better than Lambda CDM. In fact, the lead author, Professor David Wiltshire, said, our findings show that we do not need dark energy to explain why the universe appears to expand at an accelerating rate.

Skeptical Quote of the Week (57:32)

“Hope & curiosity about the future seemed better than guarantees. The unknown was always so attractive to me...and still is.”  – - Hedy Lamarr, (description of author)

B: Steve.

US#11: Yeah. So this is this is where it gets interesting. I'm going to just clarify a couple things Bob said. So yeah, or give more detail. The Hubble tension, that's a critical concept here. So just to go one layer more deep, the this is problems with the cosmological constant, right? If you measure the cosmological constant with direct measurement like type 1A supernova or sepia variables, you get one answer, 73 to 74 kilometers per second per megaparsec if you use it. If you measure it using the cosmic right background, you get a different #67 to 68. They don't agree.

B: It's not, it's not instrument error. It's it's no, no, it's too big for that.

US#11: It's too big for that. They don't even overlap. So that tells us something's wrong. There's something we don't know about the universe or there's something wrong in our in whatever in the way we're we're we're going about this. There's also another problem and that is there are structures in the universe too large to exist if the cosmological constant, if dark energy exists. And we don't know how to resolve that problem either, right? So there's like if you can calculate how big something could be in the universe in terms of like a gravitationally bound structure, and we have observed directly observed structure bigger than the theoretical maximum if Lambda CDM is correct.

B: Which which? Which structures are those? Are those the quasar, Steve?

US#11: Yeah, there's like there's the giant circle 1, there's a few, there's a like two or three structures that are bigger than should exist at this point in time. There's also the fact that astronomers have absolutely no idea what dark energy is, right? They don't know what it is. They don't even know what it could be. They don't even know what could behave this way. It's something outside of our current model of matter energy in the universe.

B: Yeah, the biggest thing for.

US#11: Dark, right?

B: Yeah, The biggest thing for me is that dark energy does not dilute, right. You have a parcel, so you have a square, a square light year of, of space and there's a a certain amount of dark energy within that. If you go away and come back and that space has has increased 10 times, each cubic lightyear still has the same amount of dark energy as do all the other the others that have been created. So it doesn't. So that's why it just keeps getting stronger and stronger as you get, as you reach a, a critical like a maximum amount of space, you're going to really start noticing it. And that's why there were some predictions that you'd have the big RIP where that expansion became becomes so strong that it would actually rips apart at, you know, matter at the atomic and subatomic level, which is really scary. Not very. Likely even when we totally were buying into dark energy. But still, like, wow, that's scary ideas.

US#11: All right, so now basically the situation is now there are two models of cosmology that explain the expansion of the universe. There is the Lambda CDM and Timescape. The main difference between the two is that Lambda CDM assumes a uniform universe right, whereas Timescape accounts for the lumpiness in the universe right.

US#02: It's the structure the. Structure of the universe.

US#11: So in other words, but we could say it another way, but so the Lambda CDM model basically says that at the scale that we are making our observations, the universe is statistically homogeneous, right?

Voice-over: Yeah.

US#11: So it depends on at what scale does the universe become statistically homogeneous. And Lambda CDM says, well, at the scale where we're making our observations and time, Sapescape says, Nope, only much bigger than that. And at the at the scale where we're making observations, you cannot treat it as statistically homogeneous. And, and remember we've talked about this before. The homogeneous basically has two parts to it, homogeneity which is that every piece of the universe is like every other piece of the universe in terms of its mass density. And the other one is, is isotropy that no matter what direction?

B: Isotropy. I like that pronunciation. Go ahead.

US#11: Isotropy or isotropy, no matter what direction you look in, the universe looks the same, right?

B: Yeah.

US#11: So no matter where you are and no matter which direction you look, it should all be.

B: That's the key difference. That's the key difference.

US#11: But times gives us Nope. There's parts, there's there's voids and there's clumps of matter. And, and it's not statistically, you can't just say all right, all averages out at the scale where we're making our observations, including observations of the type 1A supernova that we use to measure the expansion of the universe. So this is where Relativity comes in. This is interesting.

B: Yeah.

US#11: So relativity says, says that when matter causes time to slow down, right. Remember, you know the the movie with the black hole. You get close to the black hole and time slows down for you.

B: That's gravitational time dilation.

US#11: Yeah. And and so, so, so time is traveling faster in the voids than in galaxies, right. And it's like significant. It's not a little bit. It's by I think it was the number was 30%.

B: Yeah, they said 35. That did seem a little high, but still.

US#11: But it's significant. Yeah, but it's significant. And So what the Timescape model says is that the acceleration of the universe is an illusion. It's an it's an illusion based upon the assumption of homogeneity in a non homogeneous universe. So if time is travelling faster in the voids, the universe will be measured as expanding faster in the voids and expanding slower in the clumps, right? And as the universe expands, the voids get relatively bigger because we're not making more matter, it's just getting farther apart from each.

B: Other right and Timescape actually has a, has a, has a, attaches a number to that. That's called the void fraction, which is very important in in this model.

US#11: So, so yeah, the void fraction, the amount of the universe that's void increases, meaning more of the universe has faster time and therefore faster acceleration. So if we're just looking out at the universe, it looks as if over time the expansion is happening at a faster and faster rate when really there's just bigger and bigger voids and it's just an illusion of that. But when you account for a local non homogeneity, it all works out, right. So they did in their analysis. Actually, Bob, I'll disagree with you on one thing. You said what? And this is because of the way it's being reported. Actually the Lambda CDM model and the Timescape model did the same they predict.

B: Earlier in the universe.

US#11: Yeah, they will. If you look at the whole, all the data, they basically performed the same. They, they matched observation as well as each other. And so, So what this data they're looking at is, is the the supernova 1A data. And we have more. This is the same data that was used in the 90s to say that the universe is accelerating, looking at the same data, but now we have 20 years or whatever, 30 years more data.

B: That's the pantheon plus data.

US#11: Yeah, the Pantheon Plus. So it's a lot more data, a lot more detailed, more precise measurements. They crunched through all that numbers. They said, all right, we'll see. How well does Time Scape predict this data? How well does Lambda CDM predict this data? Overall, they did the same, but Timescape did better in the local universe and the Lambda CDM did better in the early universe. But if you look at all the data, they're basically the same. So in other words, there's no reason, there's no reason to favor one over the other based upon this data. But they say Timescape gives us the ability to fix the Hubble tension, Yes. And to solve the problem of why are their structures bigger than Lambda? CDM says there should be. So the authors say they did a Bayesian analysis. We just said what's the probability this is true? So they said strong to very strong. So you know, this is not the final word. And even the authors can't say based upon their analysis that Lambda TM is not true or Timescape is proven or there is no dark energy. They can't say that the headlines are all there's no dark energy. But we cannot say that based on this study. All we can say is there's two models now. One requires dark energy. 1 does not require dark energy. And not requiring dark energy doesn't mean it doesn't exist, right? It just means that it's not required. So it's possible there may be a hybrid model right? Jane to hybrid hybrid that that Timescape may be a tweak on Lambda CDM. Cause The thing is, Lambda CDM has a lot of explanatory power. It's right. All models, as I said, all models are wrong. But some models are useful. Lambda CDM is a useful model. Timescape is may turn out to be a useful model too. We may end up using both of them to help explain things. But it may be that that eventually, as we take more detailed observations and we look at this, this could take years, maybe even decades. Eventually one of these two models may emerge as the winner as in other words, it just it just is more in line with the actual data. And then we don't know how that's going to go. Maybe they'll figure out some other way within Lambda CDM to figure out the hub, the Hubble tension, or maybe that. Time that would be here. Really is the answer to that. And that's because it's correct. You know, it's more it's closer to reality than Lambda C and maybe we don't need dark energy in order to explain why the universe appears to be accelerating over time. I do like the the to me, just aesthetically the fact that Timescape takes into account the structure of the universe and doesn't assume homogeneity that we know isn't there right. It seems to be an advantage, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's that it's correct. So it's really interesting scientific question. And you know, this is science at its best. We have two competing models. They're duking it out using data and math and logic. What Bob and I are describing to you is such a superficial metaphor level sort of description of what's going on when, you know, I actually tried to read the paper. I also tossed it into ChatGPT and had it explained to me what was going on.

B: Me too. Me too.

US#11: So much math going on. This is all math, you know?

B: Yeah.

US#11: You cannot under actually understand what the scientists are talking about unless you know, like the real high level math that's going on. This is just really just like a lay person level metaphor level description of what we're talking about.

B: Steve, I love the I like the this idea in Timescape of this void fraction. How much of the universe is a void? And the bigger the voids, the more you you could say that there's a disparity between these two models. Now let's check this one out. When voids started dominating the overall volume, right? Right when the when the voids became big enough where it they were the big players in a given volume of the universe when that happened suspiciously, when Lambda CDM at the same time, that's when Lambda CDM predicts the dark energy starts taking over. And that's right, you see that that that's telling. That's very that to me, that was like a very interesting point to do that shows that in in, you know, in some in a lot of ways, in some ways, at least Timescape seems to, you know, make a decent case, at least right now initially that, you know, dark energy. You could be, you know, as as we're describing it could be, you know, it, it could go away. It absolutely could go away. It's like another way to look at it. Is that this this whole idea of acceleration, you know, is it intrinsic to the universe itself? Or is it just really a consequence of how how you look at this observational data and interpret it in a universe that's non uniform, you have a non uniform cosmos and it's just how you're how you're interpreting that data is can lead to dark energy or maybe you don't need. Dark energy.

US#11: Yeah, it's interesting. Does that make sense to you guys? I mean, it took us a long time to wrap our head around this and I hope we've sort of.

E: Yeah, I totally get it. You did. Timescape winner.

US#11: Yeah. I mean, yeah, it unlike, for example, dark matter versus modified Newtonian dynamics. I think dark matter is kicking the crap out of mind, right. I think dark matter, it actually does exist. And the, you know, the, that's, you know, I think that's like the 95% answer right now. I think that's gonna that's going to emerge victorious.

E: With what, 40 years of?

US#11: Yeah, it's here like we have the CDM versus Timescape to me feels like a coin flip. I don't really have a what? I don't really at this point think that that I might have a slight edge towards Timescape at this point in time just. But that's only because I'm, well, I.

B: Mean.

US#11: But who knows, I think. It sounds cooler.

B: We'll have to wait till it's vetted. But based on what they're saying they're saying, they're saying that they, you know, Timescape outperforms Lambda CDM in, in explaining the Supernova 1A and other pantheon plus the observations, you know, if you're outperforming it. And that's in that context, that's, you know, pretty damn good, pretty pretty telling. It seems to me that's, that's important. And yeah, but like we said, we got to reiterate, this is not definitive. They need to do more work. They need to fine tune it so that they're not there yet. But this, this is I think this could eventually be be an important paper. We'll see. We'll see what happens when you know with as more as it's as this paper is vetted and we do more research.

E: We need more math.

US#11: Yeah, no, I mean, yeah. I mean, other experts may look at this and go, ah, you know, the math is crap and move on like it might not for all. Yeah, for all we don't.

E: Got to carry the.

US#11: Five, we're just trying to understand what they're actually saying, right? I think we were able to do that. OK, Evan. Now we're going to get really serious now. This is like cutting out science. You're going to tell us about Bigfoot deaths?

E: For the first time that I can ever remember, and you guys can let me know if you remember differently, Bigfoot now has a body count. I'm not talking about dead big Bigfoot bodies. I'm talking about a pair of Bigfoot enthusiasts who recently went into the wooded area of Skamania County, which is in the upper northwestern United state of Washington. This was back on December 24th, 2024, Christmas Eve Day. Two men set out on their quest to find the mythical creature and when they failed to return to their homes later that evening, the authorities were contacted. In an all out search began on Christmas Day by more than five dozen rescue workers and volunteers. They utilized footage from something called a flock safety camera. I just learned about that and this is how the search team located the vehicle. A flock safety camera is a type of automated license plate recognition piece of technology used by law enforcement. They were able to pick up the picture of the camera and find the vehicle. They actually found the vehicle. There is your starting point for the search. The men's car was located at the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, which is 1.3 million acres of forest, wildlife habitat, watersheds, mountains that includes Mount Adams, Mount Saint Helens National Volcanic Monument, among other sites to see there. That's a massive amount of territory to cover. And it did take them three days for the team to finally discover the bodies of the two men. The cause of the death was determined to be the result of weather exposure, and they were clearly ill prepared to survive in overnight conditions at this time of year in this part of the country. Yeah, so.

US#11: Nature will kill you dead.

E: It will kill you. Dead. Yeah. And you know, I'm. I'm about to get to that. Couple other things. The search for the men took place amid difficult terrain and harsh weather conditions. Yep. Tough time of year to be going out into the woods like that. Freezing temperatures, snow, high water levels all made for a challenging search. Oh by the way, in this county, if you harm Bigfoot, you will you will be fined $1000 and perhaps go to jail for a couple of weeks. According to the Chamber of Commerce, it's a law meant to protect the mysterious creature and to prevent hunters with large beards from accidentally getting shot. This is what they said. Yeah. All right. In all seriousness, though, here are some lessons to be learned here. These are my takeaways. First of all, have you guys ever heard of people dying in a search for Bigfoot? I don't recall.

C: No.

E: This is my first recollection of anything like this taking place, so I can't say it's a common occurrence, but it it's unfortunately a tragic occurrence in which here we go again. Believing in nonsense is not harmless. It it it is not. And, and here we have another example. I mean, do we even have to explain why Bigfoot does not exist in the first place?

US#11: Give a give a bullet.

E: Yeah, lack of physical evidence. No DNA, no bones, no remains, no fecal material. They have no habitat. We've discovered no nests, no dens, no tracks, Only faked tracks. No actual tracks, no evidence of them eating food, no verified photos or videos. Again, we have plenty of fake photos and fake videos, but nothing.

US#11: Misidentified.

E: Yeah, absolutely. And Despite that amount, that incredible amount of negative evidence, you've got television shows, you've got podcasts, movies, books, organizations, and hey, right here a government agency who are stocking the coals of the Bigfoot legend because, well, I don't, you know, there are groups of people who want to believe in these things that are not real. And then there are other groups of people who frankly, in some way want to in a sense, profit off of the off of those beliefs of those people. So I don't know. I, I think everybody shares, I think everybody in these categories, Shane shares a very small piece of responsibility in the death of these two unfortunately gullible people. And they need to remember that, that there is harm involved with believing in nonsense. It may not always come, it may not always result in death like this, but in this case it did. And this is another reminder of that.

US#11: Now, you could argue that Bigfoot is incidental to the story because they these are two people who went into the woods in in challenging weather conditions and they were ill prepared apparently that they weren't experienced and they were I'll equipped to deal with it and that's what killed them. But I would argue, and I think is what you're saying is they probably wouldn't have done that if they weren't motivated by belief in Bigfoot. You know, they basically got in over their heads and, you know, not that people will do that for other reasons, but that was the reason in this case, it seems, Yeah.

E: And I don't know, but I don't know enough about Bigfoot organizations and collectives and groups and stuff. Do they do they have classes that do teach people proper survival skills or if they are going to go venturing off into the woods, I.

US#11: Don't know some might, but again, some might do you really want to get your survival skills from a Bigfoot believer. I'm seriously like that's part of the problem is that these are like amateur organizations that they're probably themselves I'll equipped, you know, to deal with this because, you know, the people involved and the motivation behind it. They're not like serious organizations that have invest in the skill and resources and also like we'll make good decisions about, you know, like we're not going to go out in this weather because, you know.

E: There are stories of people who have hiked the Appalachian Trail in in the United in the United States. These are these are you know, what you would consider either professional or you know, but amateur enthusiast hikers and they know the rules of the trail. You don't go off the trail because they have found bodies like 100 feet off the trail. When you go looking for Bigfoot in it in in a park or something like that, guess where you're you're not staying to on the trails. There are no bigfoots on the trails. There are no bigfoots, but you're not going to find Bigfoot on the trail. Where are you going? You're going off the trail, folks. So you are already putting yourself into a massive, massively more dangerous situation than you would have been had you just stuck to the trail in the 1st.

US#11: Place the motivation to get more risky. But I mean, having said that, even professionals die because they get overwhelmed by the they do the weather. Yeah, this is dangerous even for people who know what they're doing if you're not.

E: Very dangerous. And don't rely on your cell phone to get you out of them. I mean, your cell phone is likely not going to work out there. You've got to have the proper communication equipment. It has to be satellite based devices, shortwave radio, shortwave walkie talkies. I mean, those are the kinds of things you really need to have. And, you know, I don't know what they were thinking, but you have to also assume worst case scenario, you have to have a shelter with your emergency blankets, dry rations, fire starting materials, cold weather. You can't just go make it a day exploration into the woods to find Bigfoot or look for a bird or whatever it is you're going to do. You have to. Yeah, you have to have to be much better prepared for that. You're taking your life in your hands. And unfortunately, these two people died as a result.

US#11: Yeah. All right.