View source for SGU Episode 1040

== News Items ==

{{anchor|news_item1}}
=== NASA Budget <small>(11:13)</small> ===
{{shownotes
|weblink = https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c87jq0djw00o
|article_title = Trump-Musk row fuels 'biggest crisis ever' at Nasa
|publication = www.bbc.com
}}

'''S:''' Jay, how's NASA's budget looking?

'''J:''' This new development is that NASA has these potential crisis looks like it's, you know, it's going to manifest. That has nothing to do with, you know, anything that they're developing or, you know, people on the moon or any of that. It has to do with economics and the government. So we have a combination of, you know, massive proposed budget cuts and the political feud between Trump and Musk have this has created a really bad outlook for NASA. If the current newly proposed budget, if that goes through, guys, then there'll be, you know, decades of investments that have already been made in space science and climate monitoring, you know, international partnerships and everything and all that stuff could just simply go away. So the basics of this situation are the White House has submitted their 2026 budget. This is what is being referred to as the big beautiful bill, and it cuts NASA's total funding from 25 billion to 19 billion. So that's a significant drop. Slashes the Science directorate by up to 52%, reduces Earth science funding by 53%, Cancels or suspends 40 active or planned missions. And the only thing that they did was they boosted funding for human missions to the moon and Mars by 100 million. So that collectively, this is what is considered a complete train wreck. All of it is being oddly justified where they're saying that they want to refocus their quote UN quote strategic priorities. It seems, though, but all they want to do is they want to plant flags on the moon and on on Mars. So here's some missions that are on the chopping block. This is not all of them, just just some of them. The Mars sample return. You guys, remember we we talked about the the fact that the Rover was dropping regular samples and that they were they came out come up with ways to return those to Earth. They did come up with a way. So that has been cancelled. Oh, no. And you guys can look, look these up. There's because there's a lot of them and I won't get into descriptions on everything, but they're cancelling Maven. Da Vinci.

'''S:''' Wait, wait, they're cancelling Maven?

'''J:''' Yeah.

'''S:''' That's like, but the probes are already there around Mars, isn't it?

'''J:''' I I believe it is Steven and they're just cancelling it I.

'''E:''' Guess the future funding for it has been pulled.

'''J:''' They're cancelling Veritas, Osiris, Apex, New Horizons, Juno, Then we've talked.

'''E:''' About so many of these probes.

'''J:''' I know we talked about all of it Earth observation, the land sat next pace, which is plankton, aerosol cloud, ocean ecosystems, geocarb. This is where George goes on a carb free diet, surface water and ocean topography and then the collaborative missions or international missions, the ESA's Rosalynn Franklin Rover, which is a Mars Rover, ESA's Envision, which is a Venus Rover and support for Lunar Gateway contributions, Lunar Gateway guys.

'''US#00:''' No.

'''J:''' So these aren't speculative future projects. A lot of these are already operational and most are in development with launch with their launch costs already paid. So what's being cut now are, you know, relatively low cost operating budgets. You see what's happening, meaning like they bought the car, they paved the street, but they don't want to pay the cheap price of gasoline to run it. That that's essentially what they're doing here. So this war between Trump and Musk has a very powerful and negative downstream effect. After Musk criticized Trump's immigration rhetoric and this recent spending bill, Trump threatened to cancel federal contracts with SpaceX. And Musk responded by hinting he could withdraw the Dragon capsule from service, which currently, you know, is used to move astronauts and cargo to and from the International Space Station. That would be devastating. Now, I'm hoping it's posturing because, you know, who wants to lose all that money? And, you know, we can't, of course, strand our astronauts up there. But who the hell knows, right? Because we've seen crazy stuff going on. SpaceX holds about 22 billion in U.S. government contracts. So if that relationship dissolves, NASA's in big, big trouble. And there's no backup ready to fill the gap. As much as you know, other companies are are scrambling to try to do that. There's nobody, no one close to where SpaceX is. Next thing is the phasing out of the SLS. So another shift here is the plan to phase out the Space Launch System, right? This was after Artemis 3. The SLS costs about 4.1 billion per launch and that is that's very expensive compared to the 100 million for Spacex's Starship. That's crazy expensive. However, that's what it costs. And Blue Origins, New Glenn is expected to be in a similar price range, I think to Spacex's, which is great, right? So we have, you know, these much less, you know, less expensive ways to launch. But Starship has failed three of its if its last Test launches, and New Glen hasn't even reached orbit yet. So both rockets are still significantly under development. And NASA is, however, betting on the future of human spaceflight programs on private systems. And these private systems aren't ready. And their funding depends on essentially 2 billionaires staying interested than all of it. So the, the climate science that that's happening is taking a hit. And, you know, it's already had lots of problems, but now things are getting kind of worse. You know, they're making these these cuts to the budgets. And these budgets are essential for monitoring, right? So what are we monitoring? Atmospheric CO2 levels, ocean temperatures and health, ice melt in the Arctic and Antarctic and severe weather patterns. Now, I couldn't pick one of these to remove from this list, let alone all of them. These programs are basically our early warning signs, right? To all sorts of bad things that we already know are in motion, right? We know that atmospheric CO2 levels are rising, we know ocean temperatures are rising, we know that there's significant ice melt, and we know that weather patterns are going to become more and more severe as more energy is put into Earth's atmosphere. So what the hell, right? We won't be able to to model or predict any climate events with any real accuracy. And it's just a dangerous, dangerous way to move forward. Now, hopefully here Congress might step in. You know, we have some Senate Republicans, they've pushed back. They're proposing 10 billion to restore Artemis SLS, you know, some other science missions. But if Congress can't agree on a new budget, then these proposed cuts very likely will take effect, you know, and just completely, you know, hit our science programs like a tsunami and and just drag it all away. You know, and the the problem is, is once you shut these very expensive and lots of gears moving at the same time with these missions, right, once you shut them down, it is cost prohibitive to start them back up again. Because because you lose that momentum, you lose the people, you lose the hardware. You can't just shut them down and then a year later start them back up because if that would have probably end up costing a ton more money and you know, these, you know, people are not sitting on their hands.

'''E:''' Right. Part of these cuts are going to be we're going to lose the personnel, they're going to go elsewhere, they're going to. And you're right, you can't easily just bring these people back and start where you left off.

'''J:''' No, I mean, you know, we already saw it with, you know, Doge cutting all the, you know, 100,000 jobs from the US government, you know, and then a lot of those people are administrators, but they have this knowledge and know how and skills that you can't just snap your fingers and hire new people, right. It's it's the kind of stuff that, you know, is passed on from generation to generation particular. And you are, you know, when you're a rocket scientist, when you're in charge of even the, you know, even the people that are in charge of just dealing with, you know, fueling the Rockets before they launch. These are all super specialized jobs. You know, you shut you shut them down and they either get other jobs, they retire, they do what they do. But these people aren't sitting there waiting for the US government to like change its mind in four years. That's not how it goes if they if they just go away.

'''S:''' It's also massively inefficient. You know, the way they're going, the.

'''C:''' Opposite of efficiency.

'''S:''' The massive loss of efficiency, they're doing it in the name of efficiency, which is ironic, but they're they're it's a the wastage is just profound. You know, it's also the, you know, the arbitrary nature of so much of it is is difficult, like with the UJ you're talking about, like the recent fight between Trump and Musk, you know, like. Trump threatening to cut off funding for SpaceX and SpaceX threatening to like, stop taking our astronauts from the the space station and whatnot. I mean, is that kind of thing really just at the whims of these two guys, you know?

'''C:''' Isn't that scary?

'''S:''' It is scary. Plus, you know, SpaceX, you know, as part of this, I learned that SpaceX in 2024, they launched more missions, launched more tonnage into space, launched more satellites, 83% of all satellites and the rest of the world combined. That's how critical SpaceX has become. We have through government contracts to our, you know, aerospace industry. You can't just, you know, turn that off because you're having a spat. You know what I mean? It worth the process. We do have a little bit more crazy to talk about.

{{anchor|news_item2}}
=== RFK Jr. Sacks Vaccine Panel <small>(20:51)</small> ===
{{shownotes
|weblink = https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/rfk-jr-sacks-entire-cdc-vaccine-committee/
|article_title = RFK Jr. Sacks Entire CDC Vaccine Committee | Science-Based Medicine
|publication = sciencebasedmedicine.org
}}

'''S:''' I could not avoid. Could not avoid this topic this week.

'''E:''' Better not have avoided this one, yeah?

'''S:''' So I wrote about this on science based medicine. It's actually an update even since I wrote my article. RFK Junior just sacked the entire US vaccine committee.

'''E:''' It's. Brilliant, Yeah, Great job.

'''S:''' Yeah, this is the. Advisory. Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP.

'''E:''' Who needs that?

'''S:''' So this is the committee, it's a 17 member committee that reviews all the scientific evidence and makes recommendations for the CDC in terms of, you know, which vaccines to recommend for which population. So in which conditions like what's the vaccine schedule for childhood? You know who should get a covic vaccine, who should get a flu vaccine, who should get the shingles vaccine, etc.

'''C:''' Do they also choose which like which flu strain? Like, you know, what do we need to make for the next flu season?

'''S:''' I don't know if that committee makes that decision, but they definitely make the recommendation. So we saw this coming. And I've got to give credit to David Gorsky. Four months ago when RFK became the HHS secretary, he said this is how he's going to destroy the vaccine infrastructure in America. And, and he's been doing everything that David said he was going to do. And this was on his list as well. He's but what David said was all right, you know, the committee members have staggered terms and over the next four years he'll be able to replace all of them. But of course, he said, but he might not, he could decide not to wait and just replace them all now, which is what he did.

'''Voice-over:''' Bingo.

'''S:''' The fear now is that he's going to pack the a CIP committee with anti vaccine cranks. And that's the now just, you know, looking at the news, he that's exactly what he's doing. He's already appointed eight people to this committee, anti vaxxers pretty much all. One person is Martin Kuldorf who's one of the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration. Do you guys know what that is?

'''E:''' I've heard.

'''S:''' That that's a yeah, it's read, look it up on science based medicine. We go into great detail about it. Basically they were the ones who were saying we should not be vaccinating people for COVID. We should just let COVID RIP through the, the, the population to create herd immunity that way. That was their recommendation, which of course is batshit crazy because then you get, of course you get all of the death and disease and long COVID and everything from that as opposed to the vaccine, which gives you immunity without the disease and without the risk and all the downside. It was just nuts. So wonderful. That guy's on the committee. Then there are other people, again, who are, you know, known associates of of RFK or who are prominent vaccine critics who have been members of anti vaccine groups. So, you know, again, that's like our worst fear, just firing all the actual experts and then putting in his anti vaccine crank buddies who are going to going forward base their decisions on their ideology. Now what he wrote, what RFK wrote on X was all of these individuals are committed to evidence based gold standard science and common sense. They each have committed to demanding definitive safety and efficacy data before making any new vaccine recommendations definitive safety and efficacy data, which means you could set that bar as arbitrarily high as you want. You can, we talked about this last week, care about the gold standard, using gold, weaponizing basically standards not to have the optimal outcome, but to basically get rid of anything you don't like, so. Actually use the rhetoric to your licensing advantage. Yeah. So it's like a denier portraying themselves as a skeptic, right? It's the same thing using the language of skeptics, but with the foreordained conclusion of denying science they don't like. In this case, they're like, yeah, we're only going to accept definitive safety and efficacy data, which is code for no vaccines are getting through. Yeah, like, no vaccines are going to get through. This committee. They're not going to be recommending any new vaccines. They're going to be pairing back there, which is already happening, recommendations for existing vaccines. And so this means that it's going to basically shut, you know, bring any progress or any new vaccines to a halt. And, you know, removing recommendation like removing vaccines from the the schedule, for example, means that insurance companies could stop covering it, right? They won't pay for it. And even if they do, some people won't get it. And you know, the vaccines are, you know, it's all about compliance, like how what percentage of people get the vaccine? And in order to maximize as any public health measure, if you're going to maximize any outcome, you have to make it as easy as possible. You have to make it affordable to everybody. And you have to have consistent and persistent messaging on it, right? We need people to understand vaccines are important. Get them off their butt, get them to the doctor, get their vaccine. Now all of that's going away, right, That he's altering the messaging saying, you know, emphasizing personal choice. He's all, you know, pulling funding for new vaccine research like they pulled funding for the end of bird flu mRNA vaccine. Gee, I wonder if bird flu is something we need to worry about. It's only like the most likely candidate for the next pandemic. So no research to develop a vaccine for that. And, and now he's packing the, the CDC committee that reviews vaccines. So this is the worst case scenario. This is, you know, we had David called all of it. He said this is what he's going to do. He's doing all of it. He completely lied through his teeth to the, his confirmation hearings saying that he wasn't going to take vaccines away, that he would look at the evidence. It was all bullshit. It was all completely transparent BS. And, and they knew it. They absolutely knew it that the senators who voted for him crazy. And now we're exactly what we said was going to happen is happening. And as we said last week, the only real question is how many millions of people is RFK junior going to kill? Is he going to be responsible for the death of how many people because you know it all told luck of the draw at this point depends on how bad is this measles epidemic. And again, what's when's the next pandemic going to happen? What you know, what is the nature of that going to be? Well, how what's gonna be going to start dropping below herd immunity now on you know, all of our vaccines because they're not going to be recommending or paying for them anymore or whatever, including them in the schedule. So we'll have to keep an eye on this and see how it actually plays out. But right so far it's the worst case scenario that we predicted absolutely terrible. And you can say what do we do about it? Well, certainly, you know, individual people should be up to date on all their vaccines. You know, despite our RFK junior's efforts, you should get vaccinated, but also write to your congressman and representative, make sure, you know, give them as much hell as pot as you possibly can for inflicting this boil on American medicine. And you know, when the time comes, get out there and vote. That's the ultimate answer to all of this because this is, it is horrific. I mean, we're trying to be objective and scientific and rational and nonpartisan here. And I think we are being all of those things. But this is what's happening. If an anti vaccine crank is in charge of healthcare and he's packing the CDC committee on vaccine recommendations with anti vaccine cranks, they were in charge. Now just think about that. It's insane. It is absolutely insane.

'''E:''' Hopefully doctors will still continue to ignore what they have to say and and give the correct advice to their patients.

'''S:''' But what are you going to do if insurance like we're not going to pay, we only pay for the that's a real big.

'''E:''' Problem.

'''S:''' Massive problem for.

'''C:''' That especially Medicare, you know, these, these large insurance, they, they set the standard and they're government funded or government run at least. Yeah.

'''S:''' All right.

{{anchor|news_item3}}
=== Digital Life After Death <small>(29:06)</small> ===
{{shownotes
|weblink = https://theconversation.com/do-you-know-how-to-prepare-for-your-digital-life-after-death-cu-boulders-student-run-clinic-has-some-advice-257867
|article_title = Do you know how to prepare for your digital life after death? CU Boulder’s student-run clinic has some advice
|publication = theconversation.com
}}

'''S:''' We're going to pivot away from these type, this type of stuff now.

'''C:''' Yeah.

'''S:''' Cara, tell us about our digital life after our death.

'''C:''' Yeah, I thought this was an interesting.

'''S:''' No, Bob, that's not cool.

'''C:''' No, it's, I mean, it's an interesting topic, right? And I don't think it has to be dark or depressing. It obviously is in line with the work that I do. I counsel patients with cancer and I kind of focus on end of life, although I see them across the lifespan. Oftentimes when I'm counseling patients about end of life, the things that come up, some of the larger things that come up have to do with advanced care planning, right? Like filling out an advanced directive, doing some of the legal work, but also the emotional work that comes along with saying goodbye. That comes along with feeling like you've completed certain relationships and it can give a really important sense of psychological calm. You know, it can be a really good alleviation of anxiety to know that you have a bit of control in what happens to your things, what happens to your assets. But one of the things that we often ignore is your digital assets or your digital life. You know, very often when we're talking about, oh, these paintings or, you know, my home or the furniture or the jewelry, these are physical things. So whether somebody allocates them or doesn't in in a will, when they die, something has to happen to those physical things. But when it comes to a digital legacy, many times people not only don't think about it, but there's no obviously physicality to it. So you're not confronted with like a house full of things. So a couple of researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder wrote a piece in the conversation about how to prepare for digital life after death. And they introduce a really interesting concept. They have a student run clinic at their campus that actually serves people, of course, online. So I think across the country, I don't think you have to be in Colorado to, to access this clinic, but it's called the digital legacy Clinic. And in that clinic, they help folks understand sort of the tech side of what is online, what can they do about it? Everything from like social media pages to different online accounts that may be password protected that once you die, your password may be dying with you. So they cover, as they mentioned, a lot of digital, what they call it digital estate concerns. So like having trustees or Trusted Contacts across like Google or Apple or meta accounts, choosing people to manage your profile and also guidance on what to do with public facing accounts like social media accounts. Like, I guess I didn't realize before. Did you guys know this that like if you you have a Facebook account right when you die, you can either request that that account be removed or you can memorialize it. And in order to do that, somebody has to be entrusted with providing proof of death, the date of death. So either death certificate or an obituary and verification of their relationship to you. And then they can request that that account become memorialized or shut down. But also think about all the things that exist now in the cloud, all the things that are online, photos, videos, important documents, legal documents, music, exactly what do we do with those things? So in this clinic, these students, which it's pretty cool, like because they're obviously students from across different disciplines who are learning how to engage with older adults or with with sicker individuals to help them both understand sort of the technical side of it, like I mentioned, but also this psychologically difficult conversations. It's hard enough to talk about end of life planning. It's even harder when you're talking about something that maybe is is difficult to even understand how it works. And so the students are learning how to, you know, communicate these difficult topics with empathy and how to navigate things like privacy laws, how to manage sensitive data. So I guess anybody can visit. They, they said that they sort of operate it kind of like a pro bono law clinic. So, so community members can contact the clinic for help. They fill out a form and then they'll often meet via Zoom and have like a personal plan developed for free. It's only been around for several months, so it's still kind of an experiment, but it's an interesting approach. And hopefully we'll see more and more of this kind of guidance, whether it just be online kind of lists, you know, checklists or books that you can purchase to walk through the process or individuals with expertise. Much like, I don't know, an accountant or a lawyer who you would maybe hire for a consultation to help you walk through how to manage your, your digital assets, which gosh, I don't think I thought about very much, did you guys?

'''S:''' I mean, I've definitely thought about it in the context of the of your, the music that you own, right. That's your collection that you pay for. And I know it's been a controversial question over whether or not you can give it to some of those. Yeah, just can somebody inherit your digital music collection? They could certainly inherit your records or your CDs or whatever. Why shouldn't they be able to? You bought them, you own them, you should be able to turn.

'''C:''' Them well and more and more younger people don't own music at all, they just pay for. Just the average stuff and buy service.

'''S:''' That's why they go, so they part of the reason why they've moved to that model, because then there is nothing to own, so it's not an issue anymore.

'''C:''' Right. So then it's just about what do you do with the account so that you're not still getting billed, so that you know, if there is any personal information there that it is not open to the public or that it's still, you know, the privacy is still maintained after death. That's a that's a complicated issue that when you die, all of your passwords die with you. I mean, I remember when I attended a medical aid and dying death, a maid death here in in California with a younger individual who had brain cancer the day of prior to taking the medication he was talking to his family about. Oh, yeah. Make sure you write down the password to my bank. Make sure that you, oh, I'll make sure, you know, I emailed you guys this so that you can have access to that like things that we don't often think about, but it's, it's really important.

'''E:''' Yeah, I because I deal with people for their taxes on an annual basis. Part of our reminders to them are certain things not having to do directly with taxes, but these related sorts of topics such as who, who has your power of attorney, who makes your medical decisions for you, who are your beneficiaries for your accounts, you know, and make sure that they're properly. And we do also remind people to have a book, have a physical book or piece of paper with the list of your important accounts, your passwords. Put it somewhere safe in a safe, safe deposit box wherever you have and get, you know, let someone you trust assign it to them along with your instructions and your wishes on, on how to handle all of that. So it it is something that I because of my profession, I regularly do think about and I'm constantly reminding my clients about these things.

'''C:''' Well, and what's interesting is that, you know, we think about, Oh yeah, I've got, I've got like a few accounts I would have to worry about, but there's.

'''E:''' I have only 100.

'''C:''' Yeah, there's a study listed here that's recent studies by both Nordpass and Dash Lane, which are passport password management companies. The average Internet user maintains more than 150 online accounts.

'''E:''' Yeah, I think I'm at 1:11 or 1:12 last time I checked.

'''C:''' And that's just that you like were able to access and know about. There's probably some that you know are slipping.

'''E:''' Off that could be, yeah, some that I've forgotten about or just don't use anymore. I probably still have a Myspace password.

'''C:''' Right. Isn't that funny? And then they also mentioned that many tech companies haven't really gotten, you know, hip to this. So fewer than 15% of popular online platforms have clear kind of protocols for what to do when a user dies and customer supports like, I don't know. And so it's, it's obviously something that the tech companies have to keep up with or catch up to as well. But something to think about, you know, I mean, it's hard enough. We've got to think about, like you mentioned, advanced care planning, including things like advanced directives, like, so that's your healthcare proxy, wills, power of attorney, all these different things. But yes, more and more, our digital lives are are deeply woven into our regular lives. And we've got to think about that as well because. Definitely. So much personal information there and and things that are valuable like like again photos, videos, like.

'''E:''' Bitcoin what? What time? What will happen for people who start to pass away? Who are Bitcoin investors and where? What if you're?

'''C:''' If you don't. Have the.

'''E:''' If you don't have the keys, it's over. It's.

'''C:''' Over that, that, yeah, that Bitcoin dies with you. All that money is just gone.

'''B:''' And, and Oh my gosh, that could be a nightmare for families. More importantly, what about, you know, my zombies and skeletons? Geez, that's. Do you have directives for each one? Bob, as far as you have a. Note each one.

'''C:''' Are they digital? Bob, you have digital zombies.

'''B:''' No, I'm just. Talking about stuff.

'''S:''' Not yet. Cara, what do you think about having a digital avatar that lives beyond your death?

'''C:''' Yeah, I mean, that's another conversation. As I was linking out to some of these articles, I was seeing that there was a, a Holocaust educator who died I think 2-3 years ago. And because of the vast amounts of like talks that she had given online that they were able to use AI to develop a tool to interact with friends and family at the funeral. And I think, I think about all of us like we have thousands of hours of online content. So an AI could easily learn me and engage with people as me. And so you just map that to an avatar and right there, how difficult will it be to tell the difference? I don't think podcast listeners would be able to tell the difference. I and I wonder if the people I'm like the absolute closest to would be able to tell the difference.

'''B:''' You may be an AI right now.

'''C:''' Sure. True. It's very meta, Yeah, and.

'''B:''' Imagine when we, you know, when we've got hard drives that are just. You know, yottabytes of hard drives and you know, imagine I think we'll get to the point where people will basically be this live recording most of their lives all the time. Imagine having literally decades of film of you in your your normal life. Not just, not just when you're trying, not just when like you're blogging or podcasting or, or writing a speech, but just like your everyday, you know, hanging out and, and chatting and just doing little quotidian things that just everyday things that aren't very special. Imagine the fidelity of the Avatar at that point.

'''C:''' Well, and Bob, it's interesting that you use terms like hard drives and film. It's, it's so funny that you used those terms because the truth of the matter is all this stuff is in the cloud now. Yeah, it's not, it's all digital. And so it's not even on a draw, a physical drive anymore. And so I mean, it is somewhere but not one that you have access to so.

'''B:''' I would think though, if you're recording your entire life, I don't think you'd want to a lot of that go into the cloud. I mean, if you could have, if you could have a button, if you could have a button on your chest, that's that's like a yottabyte. I mean that's it's all there and you could back it up to to your local home based computer. I just, I wouldn't. Want some of that shit on the cloud?

'''C:''' Bob, your your entire photo collection on your phone is on the cloud right now. Oh.

'''B:''' Yeah, on purpose, I don't.

'''C:''' Want exactly exactly like we don't want to carry all of that storage.

'''J:''' Wait, Carol, like even all those nudes I took, I mean, what?

'''C:''' Well, that's the thing. If you put them in a hidden folder, they're still on the cloud. Like we are more than happy to offload a lot of this very private stuff to the cloud simply because of convenience. So I disagree that people are going to be that careful. I think it's just going to be normalized.

'''Voice-over:''' Oh, gosh.

'''C:''' But but the real question is then what happens when you die? Does, you know, is it in the fine print that Meta gets to or that Google or whoever Alphabet gets to just take that data? You know, oh, you don't need it anymore, You're dead. Privacy laws don't apply anymore. You're dead. You know, these are things we have to think about.

'''S:''' Yeah, your estate needs to own that.

'''C:''' And we have seen some really interesting legal arguments with I don't know if you guys remember when the whole like Pepper's ghost phenomenon where like Tupac was made into a quote hologram.

'''B:''' Pepper's ghost. How did that play into that?

'''C:''' Well, that that's the actual It wasn't a real hologram, it was a Pepper's ghost.

'''B:''' Oh, was it a Pepper's?

'''C:''' Ghost Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, there was a lot of conversation around that time of, like, who owns the likeness of a dead person? And they're, you know, we can kind of have conversation about who owns their musical library, but what about their voice? What about their, you know, their likeness? Yeah. Are you allowed to just use that or does the estate have to approve it?

'''B:''' If it was a Pepper's ghost, what was the actual Tupac thing? Then? What was creating the reflection?

'''C:''' Mirrors.

'''B:''' No, but yeah. But for for Peppers goes to work. You need to reflect something onto a mirror that makes it look transparent.

'''C:''' Yeah, if it was on a stage. So I don't know if it was like a mesh or something, but yeah, the Tupac.

'''B:''' Thing I don't think it was a Peppers ghost. Almost positive it was a Peppers ghost. Huh?

'''C:''' I'm almost positive it was a pepper. 'S no.

'''B:''' A pepper's ghost is a reflection of something, an object onto a mirror, onto a glass that makes it look ethereal and see and transparent. So you need something. You need a solid object in order to reflect it off of the glass.

'''C:''' Well, you can. A Pepper's Ghost can also use a projector.

'''B:''' Of what's being projected.

'''C:''' Yeah, a Pepper's ghost. I'm looking up the even the Wikipedia article here. It's an illusion technique used in theatre, cinema, amusement parks, museums, in which an image of an object off stage is projected so that it appears to be in front of the audience. And they specifically cite the Tupac and Elvis and Michael Jackson.

'''S:''' That's an alternate version, Bob.

'''C:''' You can use it. So oftentimes people call that a hologram or a holographic, but it's not it's it's not actually, it's a Pepper's ghost.

'''B:''' That's yeah, that's weird. I've never heard of a Pepper's ghost referring to a pure and only of a reflection.

'''C:''' No, not a reflection of projection.

'''B:''' I mean a pure, you know, just a pure projected image. I've never heard of that as a. So if yeah, if Pepper's ghost encompasses that use as well, then that's fine. But typically.

'''C:''' Well, no, that is the actual definition.

'''B:''' Well, the, the classic Peppers ghost is like the Haunted Mansion where you where you were passing in front of a like a grand hall that's got actually got a, a pane of glass 5 feet from you that you don't see. And the dancing ghosts, you see ghosts and those dancing ghosts are actually physical animatronics that are below you and above you being reflected on the glass to your eye. So this this is like from the late 1700s. This is a very old, very old illusion. And it's they never use projectors. It's always been with a solid object that is being lit up and reflected onto glass, into somebody'd eye at an angle. That's the classic. That's the classic. Peppers.

'''C:''' Peppers goes his name for John Henry Pepper in 1860.

'''B:''' Two No 1790s. 1862 we have a. Controversy. The technique was been used since the late.

'''C:''' 70s that technique might have been used, but the actual naming of of what we now know to be the Pepper's Ghost was named for a guy in 1862.

'''B:''' Yep. He had a degree. He was Doctor Pepper.

'''C:''' He was a scientist, so he may have been Doctor Pepper. I'm not.

'''B:''' Familiar with the original name then, but OK, it says here 1860s Pepper's ghost has become a universal term. Or any illusion produced via reflection. Any illusion. So yeah. So it has a broader definition than than I that I'm aware of. And I've read about this many times. And I've also come across this, that late 1700s, it was been used in stage work since the late 1700s. I've just read that over and over and over.

'''C:''' Well, yeah, they weren't using projectors then 'cause they didn't have projectors then.

'''B:''' No, but it was.

'''C:''' But as soon as they could project, yeah, of course.

'''B:''' But I'm I've read that the the term Pepper's ghost was first the techniques was used in the late 1700s.

'''S:''' Yeah, it was popularized by him in the 1860s.

'''B:''' Well, maybe he made it popular, but that technique has been used in stage work since, you know, for for since then, according to the, you know, the many, many sites that I've that I've come.

'''C:''' Across, but either right about it you're yeah, you're being like a purist about something that is not the pure definition.

'''S:''' OK.

'''B:''' That was.

'''C:''' Anyway, that was such a weird aside.

'''B:''' To have something that I've read over and over just swept away.

'''S:''' Like an impromptu throw down. It was cool.

'''C:''' That's funny.

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=== Light out of Nothing <small>(46:26)</small> ===
{{shownotes
|weblink = https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/06/250608072527.htm
|article_title = Photons collide in the void: Quantum simulation creates light out of nothing | ScienceDaily
|publication = www.sciencedaily.com
}}

'''S:''' All right, Bob, can we get light out of nothing?

'''B:''' Oh, let's see, shall we? Scientists have for the first time simulated how extremely intense lasers can interact with a vacuum to produce bizarre effects that could potentially help discover new physics, which I love. This comes from scientists from the University of Oxford working in partnership with the University of Lisbon researchers published in Communications physics called the papers called computational modeling of the semi classical quantum vacuum in 3D. Sounds cool, huh? But it gets even cooler. This one can get heady kind of pretty quickly, but I got you covered guys. Don't worry. The news item has at its foundation one of the most well tested and validated theories out there. QED quantum electrodynamics. This is essentially a fusion of special relativity and quantum mechanics. This it's a really an amazing theory. It deals with fundamental particles we know, like photon of light, and charged particles like electrons. It describes them as excitations of an underlying field. So when QED's view, there are many fields permeating the universe, 1 being the electron field, which means that any and all electrons according to that theory are an excitation in that electron field. It's really a fascinating topic. Look it up. There's some really good YouTube videos too as well. So QED also represents a vacuum as something special. Quantum vacuum. Classic physics sees 100% pure vacuums as what just like it's like a parcel of profoundly empty space, right? Just devoid of particles as nothing, as as nothing gets. That's, that's a classic vacuum. QED, though, has this conception of the fields permeating everything, right? So even within what we would consider the purest of pure vacuums, it would, they're still in there. In such a place, these fields would still be there, but they would be at their minimum, right? Their minimum activity, if you will, of course, their so-called ground state as it's called. But that minimum doesn't mean that the fields are perfectly still within that vacuum. And that's because of what famous principle, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Oh.

'''US#01:''' I wasn't sure about that. OK.

'''B:''' In this context, Heisenberg uncertainty principle means that you can't know precisely both the amplitude of a field and how fast it's changing or its momentum. Therefore, the fields within a vacuum can't have no, no values. OK, so now the ground state of fields within the quantum vacuum jiggles then, right There's a, there's this an inherent jiggling that won't go away of a very these subtle energy fluctuations kind of like a restless nothing of sorts. So these minimal fluctuations are described as virtual electron pairs. Virtual is the critical word there. These are these are strange mathematical blips that aren't real particles in the traditional sense. And they they are undetectable and ephemeral at the same time. Absolutely. Yeah, they're they're very weird. Check those guys out if you if you want, if you're interested in them, if you haven't heard about them. I know we've talked about them a few times. So now we get into the crux of this newsletter. QED predicts that very intense electromagnetic fields, like from wickedly strong laser beams, right can alter the vacuum in such a way that light interacts with the vacuum differently than it otherwise would. Now, specifically, the theory says or I get this, Jay, you're going to like this one. The theory predicts that 3 high-powered forward laser beams can interact in such a way within within this in the vacuum that the energy is redistributed into an entirely new beam with a different frequency and direction. So it's like this beam that comes out of comes out of the vacuum at a nowhere in a sense, that's how it could seem to you. So this process has a very boring name. This this theoretical prediction has a very boring name. It's called vacuum four wave mixing, but I'm giving it a new name. I'm calling this Death Star photon convergence now, right. Doesn't this sound like the death far did the Death Star? You've got beams converging and then another beam emerges from them. You know, the beams don't pass through each other as they as they would and classically, right, but they converge and they a new beam comes out and it's of course it can blow up planets. It's so funny how how it made me think of the Death Star and the Death Star. I actually got images of the Death Star firing its lasers and I counted 9 beams, which is three sets of three beams that the theory predicts. So all right, it was just totally funny and I'm just totally going to run with that. All right now guys, you got to remember this theory was confirmed through models and simulations. No real lasers have been used yet. All right, this. Is this? Is just simulated yes so so if you're interested the the the simulation software package that they use is called Osiris, which models the interactions between laser beams and and matter or or plasma. The timing for this simulations, confirmation of the theory is actually pretty fortuitous because there's multiple facilities that recently either came online or are being constructed that use this latest generation of experimental multi petawatt class lasers. And many of them are going to want to test this theory because previous lasers just were not powerful enough to to to even do this. So some of the facilities that are either online or soon to be online includes the 10 petawatt beams in Romania as part of their extreme light infrastructure. I mean, I didn't even know that Romania even had petawatt beams. That's that's pretty amazing. I don't know they were even in that industry to such a level to create these multi petawatt lasers. Pretty cool way to go Romania. Let's see, there's also the 20 petawatt Vulcan 2020 laser in United Kingdom and there's two 25 petawatt beams proposed as part for the United States for the EP Opal project. Now the wayside, got to say sorry, got to say the way science funding is going in the US though, I'm sure that they will use that. They will either probably cancel those lasers or use them to fire at alien spaceships. So one of those two, the most exciting new facility though, where do you think the the the most exciting new facility is with these multi petawatt class lasers that's being built? Who would be building it? Huh. You.

'''E:''' Mean capability. What are they in?

'''B:''' Country. What country? What country has the most exciting new petawatt lasers? China. It's China. China, you called it. Absolutely. They've got get this, they're creating 100 petawatt beam at the the Station of Extreme Light. So they're building that in China. I don't know when that's going to be completed, but that is just that is 100 petawatt laser is just off the hook crazy 100 quadrillion Watt pulsed laser. That's just like, nuts.

'''E:''' But when I when we did our special episode in which it was the year 2035, if you recall, yeah, yeah, yeah. My, my news item that I made-up had to do with petawatt lasers that they were going to use. But at the time, and I predicted 50 petawatt lasers at the time and I got feedback from listeners, they wrote me and said that that's ambitious even for 2035.

'''B:''' Oh my God, so.

'''E:''' If they're talking about 100 in the near future, wow that's a big nuts.

'''B:''' Just a of course, I got to riff a little bit on this. This 100 petawatt laser, that's over 5000 times the total power consumption of the Earth at any given moment. Yeah, it's 5000 Times Now. But you got to remember though, this is a this is a pulse laser. This isn't a continuous laser. A continuous laser at 100 petawatts is just ridiculous. No, that's just, we are so far from being able to do that. So this is 100 petawatt laser pulsed laser, remember? Now this is delivering just a few paltry kilojoules. It's not a lot, that's not a lot. But the key here is that it does it over the tiniest sliver of a second of Femtos over I think it's femtoseconds. So they're delivering a little bit of energy over over a ridiculously brief period of time. So, so that means that the power of it now the power is what? Energy over time, right? So you've got a little bit of energy over a ridiculously little amount of time, which means the power is really, really high, right? So you don't need a lot of energy. Study co-author Professor Louis Silva, Visiting Professor in Physics at the University of Oxford, said a wide range of planned experiments at the most advanced laser facilities will be greatly assisted by our new computational method implemented in Osiris. I think these new laser facilities are going to be singing the praises of these researchers that I've been talking about the ones that ran these simulations. Because these simulations and models described in this paper should be critical for these experimenters. Because when they're setting up their petawatt lasers and they want to do their experiments, this paper will describe to them critical things they need to know like realistic laser shapes, the the exact pulse timings and how the the interactions are going to evolve, you know, evolve over time and how the the subtle asymmetries in the beams geometry can change the outcome. These are just critical things that they're going to be they're going to be testing and going over and over and with with this paper, they can basically just dial it in a lot faster. And instead of spending who knows days, weeks, months trying to learn what this paper has already learned in their simulations. So this papers confirmation that Death Star photon convergence is, is, is real would clearly not just be of academic interest in, in my opinion, and a lot of these scientists as well, it could really be a landmark achievement when they actually do this in, in real life. The the, the quantum vacuum itself could go from something that's mostly theoretical right at this point and into an object. The vacuum can become an object that can literally be manipulated by experiments. I mean, manipulating the, you know, the quantum vacuum was just so amazing and interesting. The, the, the real laser test in the near future could help confirm some of these deepest foundations of, of quantum electrodynamics, you know, theories and predictions that haven't been fleshed out yet. On the other hand, perhaps these new experiments will find some very subtle cracks in, in the foundation of the theory that could lead to, to the Holy Grail new physics that we've been trying to, trying to get for, for so many years now. It's ridiculous. So either way, we have these scientists to thank these scientists from Oxford and has been we have to thank them because they are these guys are the first to confirm that this theory, this theory is actually a legitimate, at least according to their simulation. And as I finish, there was there's even more here that I couldn't even cover this this their simulation showed interesting things about weird stuff called vacuum birefringence and even photon photon scattering, which I didn't even want to go into because this is like already ridiculous. So so look it up online if you're interested. Really fascinating stuff. Adios, I'm out of here.

'''E:''' I don't want to point out you've used the terms yottabyte, femtometer and petawatt in the same podcast. So yeah, this. Episode So thank you. I appreciate that.

'''S:''' All right. Thanks, Bob.

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=== Possible New Treatment for HIV <small>(56:58)</small> ===
{{shownotes
|weblink = https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/jun/05/breakthrough-in-search-for-hiv-cure-leaves-researchers-overwhelmed
|article_title = Breakthrough in search for HIV cure leaves researchers ‘overwhelmed’ | Global development | The Guardian
|publication = www.theguardian.com
}}

'''S:''' Evan, tell us about this new possible treatment for HIV.

'''E:''' Yeah, read about this over at the Guardian. With their headline breakthrough in search for HIV cure leaves researchers overwhelmed. And by overwhelmed, they mean that in a good way. The human immunodeficiency virus HIVHIV can hide in the body, making it difficult to detect and cure. And that's primarily due to the formation of latent reservoirs where the virus remains dormant and inactive and infected cells. And that can escape the detection and control of ART or antiretroviral therapy and the immune system. But even when treatments suppress HIV, some of the virus lies dormant, and it rests within something called the CD 4 positive T cells. And a CD 4 + T cell is a type of white blood cell that plays a crucial role in the immune system, especially in coordinating the body's response to infections. So this dormant HIV virus can come back if the treatment stops in the person. Researchers from the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity in Melbourne, Australia, have demonstrated a way to make HIV visible, paving the way to fully clear it from the body, or at least get a lot more of it than they used to be able to get. This paper was published in Nature Communications and the research and the researchers have shown this is for the first time that mRNA can be delivered into the cells where HIV is hiding by encasing it in a little specially formulated fat bubble. The mRNA then instructs the cells to reveal the virus. This was previously thought impossible to deliver mRNA to the type of white blood cell that is home to HIV because those cells do not take up the fat bubbles or lipid nanoparticles, LNPS that are used to carry it. But here's what the researchers did. They created a new delivery tool which they call LNPX which is a tiny fat based bubble designed to carry RN AM RNA and it delivers it to those T cells but it does so without damaging the cells which they were very surprised at. I believe as the as the result they loaded LNPX with mRNA instructions for HI VS Tat. TAT protein. This is something else I really hadn't known about before. Transactivator of transcription TAT, a crucial regulatory protein produced by HIV. It's a protein which helps switch on the hidden virus. On delivering the Tat mRNA woke up the virus in infected T cells without overactivating those other T cells. They successfully delivered mRNA into testing CD 4 + T cells and achieved activity in over 70% of the cells, which they have declared, quote, an unprecedented success. And again, the cells didn't experience harmful side effects or mass activation. And that's extremely important. First time that this mRNA has been shown to be to effectively work this way. It offers. They're saying this will offer a new path towards an HIV cure. Using what's known as a shock and kill strategy, you wake up the hidden virus and then you destroy it. Now it was, you know, they did this in the laboratory with cells. So there's we don't have animal testing yet. We don't have human testing yet. So, you know, there's we're way off from that. They say it's going to be many years before we get to these stages. But this they will continue to research this and it's very promising, surprisingly promising. Thank you, mRNA Technology.

'''S:''' So a couple of things to add to that. So first of all, we already have treatments that do exactly this, meaning that they take HIV out of its latent stage. These are called latency reversing agents, LRAS. They there are several drugs already on the market that do this, Varino Stat, for example, Roma Debson Panabenostatic right. So these are already part of the protocol of an HIV treatment protocol. You give the LRAS, they keep the virus from remaining dormant so that the other anti HIV drugs can can kill more of the virus. And this reduces the overall viral counts much greater. It's not a cure, but it does help keep the viral counts minimal, which is, you know, effectively keeps the the disease at Bay. So what's? The new bit here, is it a different mechanism just. A different mechanism, just a different way. It's just a new mechanism of an LRA, a latency reversing agent. As Evan said it the, the, the virus is transcriptionally silent, right? It's not transcribing and therefore it can't be seen by the immune system or by drugs that target HIV. And this forces them to become transcriptionally active so that they're no longer latent and they could be targeted by anti HIV drugs. So it's another way, it's just another mechanism. I doubt it's going to lead to a cure. I mean, it would be nice if it does, if you can, when combined with other strategies, if it's so effective that it could be a quote UN quote, a cure. But, you know, the probability is it'll just be yet another, you know, drug in the armamentarium that'll make overall HIV treatment incrementally more effective, you know, keeping the viral loads mineral minimal and and reducing the risk of, you know, reactivation of the disease or of, you know, of, of, you know, people stop your or, or pause their anti HIV drugs of it coming back. Yeah. So it's I mean, the headlines always make it seem they they always do this, right. It's just a pattern. They always exaggerate how poorly we're doing now and how great the new thing is going to be, right? That's just par for the course when it comes to mainstream Science News reporting. They either ignore or underestimate current treatments. And they say this is going to be a cure, you know, for HIV. Well, no. This is an incremental, you know, new strategy that we're already doing that'll make things incrementally better, right? Once we have whatever 5 to 10 years it's going to take to get this to the actual clinic.

'''E:''' Do many viruses have latency latency latent reservoirs like this?

'''S:''' No, not typically, but you know, but most viruses don't 'cause this kind of a chronic like lifelong infection. Ones that do, you know, have a way of hiding. Another virus that I could think of off the top of my head that does this is chicken pox, right? Go. It goes into the anterior horn cells. So the, the chicken pox virus goes into, you know, a part of the spinal cord basically, and it goes dormant there. And it could be there dormant for decades, and then it could become activated. And that's what causes shingles. Yeah. Is that it's activated, comes out to the skin, causing the rash. It it goes into the nerves and a fan causes neuropathic pain and it's really bad.

'''E:''' So have they been looking at, so have they been using those other procedures that you mentioned to to try to?

'''S:''' No, totally different mechanism. The treatment there is just get the shingles vaccine so that if it does get activated, your immune system can pounce on it and prevent it from causing shingles. Basically HIV is, you know, has pretty unique mechanisms for causing the infection that it does. You know, it's so preemptively taking out the immune system, that's what causes the, you know, causes AIDS, basically the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome and other infections do that as well. So a lot of a lot of bugs evolve the ways of undercutting the immune system as a way of surviving, right. But HIV is just really good at it.

'''C:''' Isn't it? There's something kind of unique about HIV being a retrovirus.

'''S:''' Yes. And it's not, it's not the only retrovirus, but.

'''C:''' Yes, but there's not that. I mean, there are a few, but there's not that many.

'''S:''' That adds to why it's so nasty.

'''C:''' Yeah.

'''S:''' Yeah, it can insert its DNA into.

'''C:''' Yeah, into the host cell and and it can be like dormant for a really long time. Yeah, right.

'''S:''' And then it comes out and it wipes out your immune system. Yeah. Nasty virus. Yeah. So yeah, any new tool in fighting it is most welcome.

'''C:''' Yeah.

'''S:''' All right. Thanks, Evan.
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