SGU Episode 363
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Introduction
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 Monday June 25th 2012 and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella.
B: Hey everybody.
S: Rebecca Watson.
R: Hello everyone.
S: Jay Novella.
J: Hey Guys.
S: And Evan Bernstein.
E: Hey, hey, hey.
S: (laughs)
B: What's happening!?
(laughter)
E: What's happening!?
J: Hey, rerun.
B: The ectomorph, the endomorph and the mesomorph.
E: Gosh, that must be deeply stored somewhere in my brain, I can't believe I pulled that out.
This Day in Skepticism (0:40)
June 30, 1908 - The Tunguska event occurs in remote Siberia.
R: Well guess what was happening 104 years ago today.
E: What was happening 104 years ago today?
S: A great big space kablooie?
R: I don't know if I'd say a space kablooie because technically it kablooied in the Earth's atmosphere, but yes on June 30th 1908, something exploded near the Tunguska river in Russia and that is most likely to have been a meteoroid that exploded in mid-air and left tons of trees levelled and on fire and stripped of course.
B: 80 million trees, by the way. Lots o'trees.
R: That's a good factoid. I have a few more. The explosion was approximately 1000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
E: Much less deadly though.
B: I found a website that said it was equivalent to 185 Hiroshima bombs, so...
R: Hmmmm.
B: Um, so somewhere in there.
J: Yeah, but big. It was a big explosion.
E: Maybe 1000 Nagasaki bombs.
R: And in some places, the shock wave would have been equivalent to an earthquake of 5.0 on the Richter scale.
J: Whoa, that's big.
B: Wow.
S: I think you mean magnitude scale, not Richter.
R: The area of levelled forest was 2000, about 2000 square kilometres, or about 800 square miles.
J: Oh my god.
E: Wow. Devastating.
R: And this other interesting thing that I actually saw on the wikipedia page of all places, in 1938, a researcher did an areal photographic survey, but the photos he got were burned in 1975 by order of Yevgeny Krinov, who was the chairman of the committee on meteorites of the USSR academy of sciences and apparently, Krinov says he was burning them because they were a fire hazard.
J: He, wait wait wait. He burned them because they were a fire hazard.
R: Yeah.
J: Something's not right.
R: Yeah, it's possible that he actually burned them because it was a giant mystery and nobody knew the solution to it yet and it was embarrassing to Soviet scientists, but who knows.
S: SO there's still a bit of a controversy over what exactly exploded over Tunguska. Was it a meteoroid of a comet, basically ice with debris or just a chunk of ice? Probably not just a chunk of ice because there was some mineral debris discovered, but recently Italian researchers, I think we discussed this before, but they recently published some evidence saying that they think a big chunk of whatever it was actually impacted the lake a few miles from what was believed to be ground zero and there are two lines of evidence. One is that they have some seismic evidence to say that there's some big, solid chunk underneath there and second, that the silting is about 100 years worth of silt or sediment so that puts it, dates it about the right time as the Tunguska event.
B: Really?
S: Yeah. So it doesn't sound definitive, smoking gun evidence, but they have a pretty plausible hypothesis and they might actually be on the trail of a big chunk of whatever it was that impacted there.
J: Well what else could it possibly be, guys?
E: Alien ship?
R: It seems that the meteoroid exploding in mid-air is the most popular theory, but cometary fragment of ice is a big one just because there's a chance that it would have melted and therefore, you know, like the old using an ice pick as the murder weapon dealie? But and also that theory fits in with a lot of reports from people at the time who said that they saw strange blueness in the skies for the days following the explosion, it's suggested that maybe those came from the particles left in the air from a cometary fragment.
S: Yeah.
J: OK.
B: According to Don Yeoman, he's the manager of the Near Earth Object office at NASA's JPL, he said, his characterisation of this event is that it's the only entry of a large meteoroid we have in the modern era with first-hand accounts, which is interesting. It's the only one really that we have. We've been hit many times, but only once have we seen something this big and had somebody eyewitness it. And some of the eyewitness accounts were interesting. One guy is quoted as saying that suddenly in the North sky, suddenly the sky was split in two and high above the forest the whole Northern part of the sky appeared covered with fire. At that moment there was a bang in the sky and a mighty crash.
J: Wow.
E: Wow.
B: He actually saw this thing, and another guys, it's amazing, the shock wave must have been pretty intense. This guy was sitting on his porch 40 miles away in Siberia, and he was hurled from his chair and he said his shirt felt like it was on fire. 40 miles away.
R: The eyewitness reports are really interesting to read because all of them sound like they were witnessing this apocalyptic event that must have just scared the pants off of them.
J: Oh hell yeah.
R: And it's really interesting to have them all describe something that epic, you know, and I mean just imagine being one of the only people in the world to have seen something like that, it's pretty incredible.
E: And survived to tell about it.
R: Yeah.
News Items
The Science of Prometheus (06:07)
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Time Slowing Down (42:04)
Quickie with Bob - Higgs Update (51:11)
Higgs announcement expected
Who's That Noisy? (53:42)
- Answer to last week: Wendy Wright
Questions and Emails
Nessie Disproves Evolution (57:29)
I saw this article today and was just absolutely amazed. I hope you're able to share it with your listeners. http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/education/how-american-fundamentalist-schools-are-using-nessie-to-disprove-evolution.17918511 Michael Denman United States
Science or Fiction (1:02:18)
Item number one. Awareness is the birthplace of possibility. Item number two. To know the world feel your body. Item number three. Established in Being, perform action. And item number four. Knowledge is the path to your own positivity. http://www.wisdomofchopra.com/
Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:10:11)
Ripley: Ash, can you hear me? Ash? Ash: [speaking in an electronic, distorted voice] Yes, I can hear you. Ripley: What was your special order? Ash: You read it. I thought it was clear. Ripley: What was it? Ash: Bring back life form. Priority One. All other priorities rescinded. Parker: The damn company. What about our lives, you son of a bitch? Ash: I repeat, all other priorities are rescinded. Ripley: How do we kill it Ash? There's gotta be a way of killing it. How? How do we do it? Ash: You can't. Parker: That's bullshit. Ash: You still don't understand what you're dealing with, do you? Perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility. Lambert: You admire it. Ash: I admire its purity. A survivor... unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality. Parker: Look, I am... I've heard enough of this, and I'm asking you to pull the plug. Ash: [Ripley goes to disconnect Ash, who interrupts] Last word. Ripley: What? Ash: I can't lie to you about your chances, but... you have my sympathies.
Scene from the movie, Alien
Announcements (1:11:41)
References
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