SGU Episode 1033

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SGU Episode 1033
April 26th 2025
A fascinating Martian rock resembling a crystal, revealing the planet's geological wonders.
SGU 1032                      SGU 1034
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Quote of the Week
“All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated, and well supported in logic and argument than others.”
-Douglas Adams, author (11 Mar 1952-2001)
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Show Notes
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Intro

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

S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, April 23rd, 2025, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella.

B: Hey everybody.

S: Jay Novella.

B: Hey, guys.

S: And Evan Bernstein.

B: Oh, good evening everyone.

S: Tara is in China this week and apparently her VPN isn't working. She doesn't have a consistent connection to the Internet. She just wasn't able to join us tonight because of technical reasons.

B: No drag. She's smart. She'd go to Shanghai Disney.

S: Yeah.

B: Why do they have excellent Internet connections there? But I don't care. Biggest castle of any Disney castle and and what seems to be the best Pirates ride in the world.

E: When I visited Disney World Orlando once in my life, when I've been there one time, it was 1999.

B: I'm sorry.

E: I saw the castle. I saw the Magic Castle, right? The the iconic, you know, Disney Castle.

B: Yeah.

E: It was smaller than I thought it was kind.

B: Of Oh my God, you're lucky you didn't go to Disneyland in California. That's the castle that you're like what it, you know, it was the first one and, and you know, back in the day it was great. But when you compare it to other castles, it is so small and short and like what's happening.

E: And when you think castle, you think large, oversized, majestic, you know all the, you know the grandiose, everything. But then then you see, oh, it's only a model basically when you get there.

B: Well, I mean, they do employ the force perspective right where they where it gets smaller as it gets taller to give the impression of more height. But I think they're, I think they're all beautiful. And I never for some reason, your expectations were way out of whack because the, the, the Orlando castle is, is beautiful and it seems large to me. The Paris 1 might be even a little bit better, though it's much, it's more whimsical. And they're, they're just all awesome. I can't complain about any of them really. But I've got to see, I want to see the biggest one in China.

J: So where is that Bob?

B: Shanghai.

J: Shanghai.

S: Shanghai So I got my hearing aids today.

J: Oh wow, yeah.

B: I had no idea. About.

S: Yeah, I got it. Yeah, I got them on now.

B: Fitted for you? What's happening? Steve, can you hear me right now?

S: Can you hear what I'm saying?

B: Can you hear me right now?

S: Yeah. So I don't know how much we talked about this on the show when I had my hearing test my lower, you know, frequencies are fine, actually are normal. But then I have the normal drop off with age in the upper frequencies. But I have a notch. I have a zone of frequencies that are in this speech zone that I have a trouble. I have trouble hearing. That's because of my tinnitus. It's like right in the frequency of my tinnitus.

E: Uh huh.

S: But the hearing, I mean the hearing aid technology is pretty spiffy and the ones that I got are like the other the, you know, the ENT was going through everything with like this is like brand new, like very, very recent that the kind of features that the one I have has. So it's very programmable. First of all, it's Bluetooth. I could actually connect it to my phone.

E: Yeah.

S: You know, I could basically use them as. Really.

E: That's a must.

S: Really expensive ear, but yeah, yeah, it's like my phone, computer or whatever, anything in Bluetooth I can play through through them and then which is good because I could basically have you just automatically have earbuds in. But it also they program is so they, when I first got them, you know, we had to calibrate and everything. So she had me just count up. And so I went first. It sounded really tinny and echoey and then it just suddenly sounded 1,000,000% better, you know, Like the computer just analyzed my voice and hearing what and, you know, basically hearing my own voice through the hearing aids and then fixed it, you know?

B: Yep. Huh. Oh, interesting. Yeah, because it could sample your voice normally. So it doesn't. Exist.

S: It doesn't boost my own voice so that I don't get hear an echo when I talk.

B: Oh, yeah, man, that. Do you remember when we were? Where the hell were we? We we did a show.

S: Or North Australia, I think we were in Australia.

B: It was almost like you're paralyzed because you're hearing an echo of yourself a moment after you say it and in short circuits your head like it was hard. It took a serious effort to, actually. Say something. It was almost the billing. It was bad, Yeah, yeah, yeah.

S: That was the worst acoustics we've ever had, unfortunately. And they didn't have speakers facing back to us, you know, I mean, so it was.

E: Yeah, right, right. No returns.

S: To drown it out or whatever. It was just the echo off the distant back of the wall. It was similar but not as bad at one of the Tams. It was the one where Kerry joined us for the first time. It wasn't bad while we were doing it live, but in the recording there's this echo that was just really, really bad.

B: So bottom line it man, what's the end result?

S: So, I mean, I haven't really had it, have it. I mean, now I'm wearing headphones, so it's hard to say. But yes, what I notice is that I'm hearing a lot of more background noise, especially crinkly noise. Like I could really hear the clacking of the keyboard when I signal in my car. Like the clack, the clicking of your signal, like seems really loud and distinct. Like all that noise because my brain, this is what this is what the ENT said. My brain, it's basically not used to hearing all that noise because I kill it because it's, you know, because of decreased hearing. Overtime though, if I wear the the hearing aids consistently, my brain will learn to filter that out better. It won't be as interesting as.

J: Steve, how long will it take to filter out your wife's voice?

S: Well, they have a a special nag mode. You just hit one button and it automatically filters out. I have to train it to her voice and then I can completely eliminate it. Now it doesn't have that, but. So is it how we talked about?

E: That's the next model. Have we talked about that supposed phenomenon in which if you have familiarity with somebody, you do tend to either lose them in the background noise, it's harder to hear them over time? Have we talked about that? Cuz I know that's a. Remember.

S: I don't know.

E: This is something that you guys have heard of that before, right?

S: I mean, you do tend to take you tend to notice very familiar things less because they don't stand out to you. But I don't for for.

E: I thought they studied couples long, you know, couples who are married a long time and they they they tracked A phenomenon. I thought I will look into it and get back to you with a report you.

S: Know look it up right now and.

E: Let you know what I find.

S: So. So it's too early to tell. I'm still getting adapted to it and it's too early to tell what the net effects. I mean, it's like I have 60 days to evaluate it and see if I like it, but I think it's probably going to be fine. It's also has the notch therapy, which doesn't boost frequencies at the frequency. It's a very at the very narrow frequency of my tinnitus. The idea is that it will it'll help rest those neurons so that they're less noisy. So we'll see how that works too.

E: Spouses learn to ignore each other's voices over time, a study says. Yeah, I don't remember that. One I thought we touched on. It Yeah, Maybe. Maybe not.

S: Maybe. Yeah. So we'll see. There's just another milestone in my you know, the endless decay of my body.

E: Oh, it will end.

S: Yeah, yeah, endless. As long as I'm alive.

B: Sorry. Bob, what happens even after you? That's not true. It's.

S: Constantly adapting to it's too aging entropy. The first thing was when I had to wear like the first knew I had to wear reading glasses.

J: Yep.

B: Yeah.

S: I literally thought like there was something wrong with my computer monitor. It's like these. It's out of focus. I can't get it to focus. What's going on here?

J: My eyesight like changed overnight. I woke up and Oh my focus.

E: I woke up 1 morning and that was it. Like, well that's that. Yeah, I knew exactly what.

B: Happened I I lasted a while, but I I eventually succumbed to the readers as well.

E: 48 I was 48 when I needed them.

B: Yeah, I think I was like late 50s.

E: That's good, Bob. You beat, I think you beat the average there.

B: Yeah, I was, I think I was 45.

S: I mean, before I had noticed the presbyopia, as they call it. But I think before I had like, yeah, I'd routinely wear reading glasses. Like maybe if you have 4748.

E: I'm going to have telomere extension therapy. You're all welcome to join me.

B: I'll wait to see how it goes with you.

E: Yeah, right. Some side effects include monster.

B: I remember doing eye exercises, not consistently or many times at all, but they said a good exercise would be to focus on something very, very close and then very, very far away and go back and forth, back and forth. I remember doing it, but I never did it much. So I don't say that that's the reason why I'd lasted a while before I needed glasses. But I'm just wondering if that if that would have made a difference, you know, forcibly changing focus to the extremes over and over. Working out the eye muscles, yeah. I wonder if that would have made any difference at all. I don't know.

S: As far as I can tell, there's no proven method for preventing presbyopia, just the lens loses flexibility so it can't, you know, ball up enough to focus really close.

J: My mother-in-law got her, you know the cataract surgery where they take out her lenses and they put in fake ones. You know, they use sound to break up the old lens and they pull out the pieces and they just fold over the the new one sliding in there. And she is reporting it's absolutely remarkable. Like she has 2020 vision. She can see close up and far away. You know, she needs glasses to read, but you know, she has a good spectrum of distance that she can focus on without a problem, No pain. You know, she just pretty much can't believe how good it's functioning and the the fact that she's got a man made lens in her eye. Which is encouraging.

C: Awesome.

J: You know, you're like, her body is actually changing the shape of that lens. Her eye is pushing that lens and making it change shape so she can focus.

B: Yeah, yeah. I remember thinking, how do you, how do you reattach those, those attachments to the lens, a muscle? Attachment. There is no attachments. And Jay, you were saying that it's kind of like this little, this little sleeve that that the lens goes in, it doesn't need a direct connection to the muscles. You just needs to be within that.

J: Little yeah, from what I understand, because, you know, I, I asked that because I for some reason I have this picture in my head of like, you know, the that lens being attached, specifically attached to muscles, right?

B: Yeah. Me too, I had the same.

J: Visual, I guess it's in a muscle, a sleeve of muscle. You know, it's like putting a a waffle in the toaster. You know, it's like inside that the waffles, the lens and the toaster is the muscles surrounding it that can shape the lens, I guess. I mean, you know the.

B: Light still has to go through it though, so it can't be a full coverage. Full coverage.

J: Yeah, but the bottom line is these surgeries are happening. You know, they're super quick. There's they're, you know, I'm sure that the doctors get so damn good at it, you know, like her surgery was like a 10/1 of those 10 minute surgeries, you know what I mean? For one eye.

S: Yeah, they have what they're called accommodating lenses, accommodating intraocular lenses. They can change their shape to focus at different distances.

J: Yeah, but still remarkable.

S: But it does work off the ciliary muscles apparently. But I have to do a deeper dive and let's see exactly how the tech works.

J: But we got that, you know, Steve, that totally kick ass surgery when, you know, when your lens gets cloudy or, you know, like in our case, like, you know, we can't focus them that well anymore. But nothing for the ears. Just nothing, man. Like the, you know, the hearing aids, OK, you know, but they're not like a it's not as good as I was hoping it would be when we got up to this age. I mean, I remember thinking about it 30 years ago.

S: Things always take longer than I think. I mean, the hearing aid technology is pretty extreme now, which is good. But yeah. And if you're totally deaf, you could obviously get.

E: It's not like you can replace the follicles in the ear. Right.

S: You need to be able to regenerate that that stuff, you know.

E: Yeah, where's that?

B: Yeah, but Jay, look at the example, the main example in your life, your mom, you know, mom has, she's basically deaf in one ear and mostly deaf in the other ear. She, she's so deaf in her, in her good ear that without her hearing aid, she can't hear, you know, herself talking or, or anything. She said she feels basically 100% deaf without the hearing aid. But with that hearing aid, she can understand, She can understand me well enough that we can communicate pretty well. If you know, if your voice is in the right range, she really doesn't have that much of A trouble. So I mean, without that she'd be screwed. Without that hearing aid, she would be basically functionally deaf.

S: All right, let's go on with some news eyes.

Quickie with Steve: Game Transfer Phenomenon (12:44)

• Game Transfer Phenomenon - NeuroLogica Blog 

S: I actually, I'm going to start with a quick kind of a quickie. How much you guys want to talk about this? Have you guys heard of game transfer phenomenon?

J: No.

S: Game Train, What do you think it is?

J: Game trans Game game. Game.

B: Game.

J: Game transfer phenomenon.

B: You transfer your character from one server to another game server, no?

J: You take animals.

S: It's a neurological or psychological phenomenon, I'll tell you that.

B: So it's not game animals, no.

S: It is like digital video games. So have you ever had the experience of playing a game obsessively for a while and then you start to develop reflexes that carry over into real life?

E: Yes.

B: Geez.

E: You mean like when my muscles ache? No, when when I'm when I'm in a position like too long at a computer.

B: I can't say definitively, but I think if zombies ever really appear I will be able to take them out very well, especially with my freeze and fire attacks.

E: Oh, inflated sense of confidence. I like that.

S: Yeah. So essentially the this is the term was coined, you know, by a psychologist studying it. And the idea is that some people it's actually not that common for it to be like a significant manifestation. But but, you know, people have reported that each you know, in the extreme versions, like after playing a, you know, a role-playing game for a while, like a multiplayer game, they actually were like seeing health bars over people's heads, you.

E: Know oh, that's crazy. Whoa, I don't know that. I've ever immersed myself long enough and. That sounds like something like that a problem.

S: Yeah, that's a little bit extreme, but but you know, the idea is that you could happen in a lot more subtle ways. I definitely notice like just my muscle memory gets trained, like my fingers will go to the ASWD keys automatically, right? I mean, if you guys experienced.

J: That yeah, of course, that's that's muscle memory big time.

S: Yeah, that's just muscle memory. Even though they should go to the typing home keys, they do that too. But I notice like I've been gaming like they'll it'll more likely do that. So the question is, this is the question that I had is how bad is this going to get it when VR becomes really common? Because the evidence shows that the more immersive the experience, the more likely this is to happen and also the longer the more time you spend doing it. So imagine like the movie Ready Player 1.

J: Yeah.

S: You know, imagine if you get to that level where you, you know, most people are spending four or five hours a day, six hours a day, 8 hours a day in fully immersive virtual reality.

J: So you're saying that, you know, there could be artifacts from the game like at the health bar or of whatever. You know what if you're, you know, you're wearing some type of tech on your virtual hand that you might see that in the real world.

S: But yeah, it's not purely visual. It could just, it's mostly behavioral. So here's like a worst case scenario. Let's say you are playing a character that can fly and, and you sort of develop those instincts. Mm hmm. This is like a extreme version of putting your fingers on the ASW D keys and then you like jump off a balcony expecting to fly.

B: Gosh.

S: Because that's what you do 8 hours a day. Yeah, you sort of develop that behave those you can see.

B: You're distracted and you have just a weird moment where you're like, Oh yeah. And then, you know, just a split second decision that basically.

S: They just revert to a different the wrong set of of instincts. You know you don't.

B: Right, right. Yeah.

S: Which will definitely happen. Definitely happen. So I've done, there's other examples of that. Have you guys ever tried to pause live radio because you're so used? You're so used now, like with everything is streaming, you could stop, pause, reverse anything on TV. I find myself instinctively trying to do that when I'm listening to other media that can't be reminded.

B: Oh yeah, anything with a screen you try to try to interact. With yeah, that's right.

S: You also try to to to use screens that are not touch screens. Like why isn't this moving?

E: Yeah.

S: So the, the digital and analogue worlds, you know, the, you know, meat space and the virtual worlds are sort of blending together now in fact, that that border is going to become increasingly indistinct because of augmented reality, right? So now you have augmented reality. When you're actually in physical space, you.

B: Combination.

S: Yeah, you have a comment, you have information or visual, auditory, whatever overlaid on top of the physical world and then invert. The more immersive virtual reality gets, the harder you time your brain will have distinguishing when you're in meat space versus when you're in virtual space. So that's it's just going to be, we're just seeing I think the very beginnings of it, right?

J: That's going to be really bad. I mean, I'll.

E: Deal with it. Yes, the results will.

J: Be maybe when you're in VR, like don't do any one of those things too much. Like, don't fly too much, you know, don't whatever. You know who the hell knows what they're going to be doing?

B: You would have an AI inhibitor that would be looking out for that kind of behavior and stop you from doing it in real life either even if it's just an auditory like hey stop can't fly jerk or, or something even more extreme potentially.

S: They may have to design those VR experiences in such a way to give you some kind of feedback that would be missing in the physical world. So to like as a reminder, it's like you're not able to fly right now, don't you know, or whatever it is that you're that you're getting used to.

B: Yeah, yeah, they could have digital signs up in in meat space saying you can't fly or it's just something like that. Or imagine if they actually manipulate physical reality to prevent people from like they identify certain areas that are that are especially prone to have people try to fly from because it's just the way it's designed. And just make it even more, you know, make it harder to try to fly from that space. Wow. Yeah, interesting thing. Anticipated problems.

E: And it can be behavior that is not Even so foreign as something like flying. Like let's say if you immerse yourself in a game in which you're driving race cars or something like that, I could see that translating. Then you go to get in your real car and your muscle memory and other things sort of take over and your real driving becomes more hazardous more.

S: Data yeah, there's going to be a lot of benign ways to like, you know in a virtual game you may be able to pull up your menu by swiping your hand in a certain direction or whatever and you people will be doing that in the in the physical world, like expecting a menu to pop up. They just sort of thoughtlessly do that like, you know I mean I'm sure there's other examples of that as well. Yeah, there are other than it's not only just gaming like, you know, we've when we've been immersed in the weekend of LAR ping, it takes a day to decompress or to remember that.

E: Absolutely. Yeah.

S: You're you're you have to recalibrate. You have to recalibrate. Yeah, Steve.

J: Remember, like I remember the three of us meet me, Evan and Steve talking about having like that PTSD twitch where, you know, 'cause you've been on alert for so long.

S: Yeah. Oh, you get twitchy. Yeah, it takes it. Takes it. Oh sure, you're looking over your shoulder straight.

E: Days of doing.

S: That yeah, and you and you find yourself behavior looking for things, you know.

E: Right. Is that a? Is that a dragon? Nope, No. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, no, I absolutely had that experience without without a doubt.

S: Imagine what real PTSD is like, right? Imagine being in a Boy War situation with bullets flying past you. It's, I mean, obviously we just had like the possible we had was just a whisper of that. But yeah, for sure. Yeah. But you could definitely see how, you know, your brain adapts to that kind of combat situation and you just can't turn it off after a while, right? So it is. I think it's all part of the same kind of phenomenon. Your brain gets trained for one experience and you can't just turn it right off.

E: So what proceed with?

S: Cost, yeah, I think probably at the end of the day, good game hygiene is going to be important like limit to limit the amount of time, certain number, amount of time at 1, certain amount of time per day. Make sure you get physical activity. Make sure that when you transition to the real world, you got to make sure that you're paying attention and that you're, you know, you're very present.

E: The programs may have to come with a timing mechanism by which, OK, you can only do this for 90 minutes and we're shutting it down whether you want it or not.

S: Yeah, I mean, I that's pretty draconian. That may be the best thing, but it's it's hard to imagine that's going to happen.

E: I see. Maybe. I mean, what if there's liability issues here with some of the manufacturers of these products and then someone only takes one incident and one court or judge or jury or whatever to make a decision? As to. What really happened in there? And that could change. A lot.

S: One guy jumps off a balcony, ruins it for everyone else. Well, I.

E: Mean it sounds sounds almost ridiculous, but that does happen. No, I agree.

S: Like that one guy burns himself with coffee, and then now they they can't sell hot coffee anymore. Well, it'd be interesting to see how that plays out.

News Items

Geoengineering (21:57)

• UK scientists to launch outdoor geoengineering experiments 

S: All right, Jay, tell us about experiments with geoengineering.

J: I'm curious. Do you guys think that sunblock can save humanity?

E: You mean like sunscreen? Like the lotion we put?

J: On whatever you however you want to interpret it.

E: Save humanity? That seems extreme to me, but.

J: Well, but there are kinds of sun blocking that may very well be really helpful, but it depends. There's a, it's a little controversial as well. So the UK government has launched a £50 million program to begin outdoor experiments in geoengineering. This initiative, which is being run by the Advanced Research and Invention Agency, also called Aria, aims to test whether sunlight blocking technologies can offer a temporary way to actually cool the planet. And it's one of the largest investments in geoengineering research to date. And it marks a significant shift in how seriously some governments are taking these proposals that it's nice to see governments put the money in and want to push the ball forward in one way or the other. And I, I, you know, I actually think it's really good that they're talking about at the very least. So at the center of the effort is something called solar radiation management, SRM. And the basic idea here is to reflect a small portion of sunlight back into space using methods like brightening clouds or releasing reflective particles into the upper atmosphere. And these approaches hopefully could theoretically lower surface temperatures and, and help delay some of the worst climate impacts. So in practice, we still don't know how effective or dangerous any of these ideas are. And that's why they're exploring them just to see, you know, if they can vet them out and see, you know, how, how safe could it be done? Is it cost effective, etcetera. So a man named Mark Simes, Professor Mark Simes, who leads the Aria initiative, says the global goal is to collect real world data that can confirm whether these technologies work and what side effects they might cause. The computer models that they've worked up and the lab testing that they've done right can only go so far. And I guess they do need to do some type of real world testing. And with the climate system, as everybody knows, it's nearing, you know, this tipping point. We keep hearing, you know, this is going to happen. And that's going to happen, you know, collapsing ice sheets or whatever, changing ocean currents. It's all very scary. And it all seems like time is running out very quickly. So he said that we need to understand what is actually possible in physical terms. And I think that's legitimate. The program insists that no harmful materials will be used, which is a freaking relief to hear. I hope that, you know, they're going to have some type of watchdog thing going on. They'll be subject to environmental reviews and have public consultation. Who knows how far that'll go. I mean, I want to give them the, I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt. But he absolutely, you know, people need to be watching what they're doing. That said, not everyone is convinced. There's lots of scientists that are arguing that researching SRM creates a moral hazard. If people see sunlight blocking as a backup plan, they might feel less urgency to cut carbon emissions or whatever. I thought that was kind of hooey. Why not?

S: Why don't you buy that?

J: The idea that like if one method is used to help in one, you know, percentage wise it could it can help this much like all of a sudden everyone's just going to throw away any other plans that they have to cut carbon emissions. It's.

S: Not, I mean, you're saying it in the extreme. I think it's but you know, absolutely that like, for example, the fossil fuel industry will use this as another excuse to delay action. It's like, oh, we have plenty of time. We'll just block this on and we're good. That's exactly what they're doing, for example, with carbon capture. Exactly. What?

J: I guess I stand corrected. I mean, I and I didn't take it as an industry thing. I was thinking more like the public, but OK. I mean, I could see what you're saying there, Steve, for sure.

S: Yeah.

J: So critics have also pointed out the potential for dangerous disruptions to rainfall, particularly in regions that depend on, you know, seasonal monsoons for food production. This all sounds legitimate. 1 researcher called the entire concept barking mad. He said it's like treating cancer with aspirin. A separate £10 million project by the UK's National Environmental Research Council will look at SRM through computer modeling and using historical data that's available. And it will not involve any new outdoor testing. Natural events like volcanic eruptions have already shown that aerosols can cool the planet, but they also reveal just how complex and unpredictable consequences can be to, you know, introducing anything foreign into the atmosphere or or doing anything a large volume of stuff that we're pumping out anywhere sounds like a massive. Risk.

S: It's good to study it. It's good to study. I would be shocked if like this becomes the actual plan. Well, right now there's no.

J: International agreement on how SRM should be governed. And just as like a point of reference, we also don't have any national international agreement how AI should be governed, right? Like, and that's a much, much more complicated thing, but it is a major concern. You know, a country acting on its own could absolutely affect weather patterns across borders. That would that would have very, very serious diplomatic consequences. Doctor Sebastian Eastham of Imperial College London is part of the team studying the political risks. Dr. Eastham said even the idea of deploying SRM would shape global relations. And he says that we need to understand how the rest of the world might respond. So, you know, there, there is a lot of talk starting to happen. You know, that's because the, you know, legitimate amount of money has been put into this so far. I think all the right questions are being asked from what I can tell. But, you know, we don't know if it'll work. We don't know how dangerous it is. We don't know how damaging this could be to the environment. We don't know how hard it will be politically. And, you know, it's, it's, to me it's, it's ironic, I guess, that all of these problems that we have now with the environment came from industry, right? But it's not industry that's trying to fix it. It's science programs and grants. And, you know, the public's money is going into trying to fix these problems that corporations became, you know, billionaires and trillionaires off of which I, I, you know, that really pisses, you know, I think, you know, government should be going to the, to the, you know, to these industries that created this problem and said, look, you benefited from it and you're going to put the money in to solve it. OK, Get this you guys.

S: Following the recent Supreme Court case, So basically petroleum producers are suing California over their emissions standards because it's hurting their business by shifting the market towards electric cars so they can't sell as much gasoline.

B: Oh my God, that's like, isn't that the point of those laws?

S: Isn't those regulations? That's the whole point is to reduce the use of gasoline. But you God, that's hurting our business. You can't do that. So that's what they're doing. It's ridiculous. It's not.

J: Madding. Yep.

S: Yep, it is madding.

J: It's madding and raging and.

B: Murdering people to be more.

S: Environmentally responsible. We can't have that lots.

B: Of money will be.

J: Spent and lots of human hours will be will be put into this and the screwy thing is is in the world that we currently live in who the hell knows what the outcome is going to be at this point Oh yeah we're.

S: Certainly not prioritized.

J: OK.

S: Thank you, Jay.

Biosignature Candidate (29:27)

• K2-18 b could have dimethyl sulfide in its air. But is it a sign of life? 

S: Bob, tell us about this bio signature candidate. This is the this is kind of the news of the week, I think. Yeah, yeah, this came out.

B: Last week, just as we were starting to record, like, oh man, we missed this one, but next week and I grabbed it. So yes. Bio signatures in the news. The James Webb Telescope recently had a second look at an exoplanet, and the University of Cambridge's press release about about that had five very compelling words in it, strongest hints yet of biological activity. And so that's certainly got my attention. So have we discovered aliens? No, but the real question is how hard of a no is that? No. So let's see how hard that is. So this started actually in 2023 when the James Webb Space Telescope looked at exoplanet K2-18B124 light years away. The planet orbits, I'm going to call it a K2K2 orbits in the habitable. Habitable zone of. Of its red dwarf host star making so that it making liquid water on its surface a possibility which is like whoa when that happens it's like oh wow that's fantastic. No matter what else is true that's always cool. So that this planet is a sub Neptune classification though it has a radius of about 2.5 times out of Earth and 8.6 times more massive. So beefy, beefy boy here. It's it was not clear what the surface of the planet was like, though, which is always like very frustrating and understandable because, you know, 124 friggin light years away. So they found clear signs of methane and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Clear, pretty fairly unambiguous. And they argued that those those chemicals would make sense if the planet had a hydrogen rich atmosphere and a global water ocean. That would explain what they were with it, what they were seeing. And also, and the implication was that a global water ocean of course, could potentially support life. And they also found back in 2023, weak signals indicating DMS dimethyl sulfide. A DMS is produced by life on Earth, especially marine microbes like phytoplankton. It's been described, this is fun. It's been described as part of the smell of a sea breeze. This DMS, I like that description. No other known processes on Earth other than life makes DMS. Now we have, we have found DMS outside the Earth, but those chemical processes can't account for the quantities that we're that we're seeing on, on K2. So yeah, DMS is definitely a promising biosignature if it holds up. But then OK. And then the most recent observations of of K2 was recently documented. James Webb's new data brought the confidence level for detecting DMS up to three Sigma from 2 Sigma. 3 Sigma is roughly 99.7% chance that the signal is real, though not necessarily that it's DMS, but that the signal itself is real. The gold standard, of course, we've said it many times on the show, is 5 Sigma, and the researchers think that they that they will get there before too long, for whatever that's worth. So that all sounds fairly compelling, but many astronomers are still quite skeptical as they should be. One example here, MIT planetary scientist Sarah Seeger said with thousands of exoplanets in view, the temptation to over interpret is strong and some are jumping the gun. When it comes to K2118B, enthusiasm is outpacing evidence. Came across an interesting article on this on Ars Technica by John John Timmer. He explains he explains this quite well. He describes 3 questions that any exoplanet bio signature evidence needs to answer with a yes. OK. The three questions, is the planet what we think it is? Is the signal legit? And is the signal only produced by life, right? This seems common, like common sense. So let's look at let's look at these one by one. So the first one is the planet, what we think it is. The researchers think this is a Hycean world. So this is a portmanteau of hydrogen and ocean Hycean. I like that word. The James Webb data makes sense if the planet has a hydrogen atmosphere and a water ocean. So that's why they think this could potentially be a high CN world. They kind of think it is. But the problem is the problem is for this world to exist, for this high CN world to exist, it would require it to be a very cloudy or a hazy planet. And that would be needed because there's a lot of radiation coming in from, from the parent star and that light needs to be blocked, otherwise the ocean is going to boil away. So it's very important that there's that, that it's quite cloudy, unfortunately James Webb and not find any clouds or haze over the planet. That doesn't necessarily mean it's not there, but it's not encouraging. But making this whole thing worse. Though other research has concluded that not enough light is being reflected from the planet to prevent that this boiled away ocean scenario. So this may very well be just too hot. Now let's see another another paper suggests that that what we're seeing can be explained also by a magma ocean. So would that make it a magma in the world? Did I just coined that? I don't think so. Maybe, but who cared? Nobody's going to care. So it's maybe it's a magme in world Magma would.

S: Be you'd be highsagma, highsagma.

B: Yeah, you're right. Oh well.

S: Yeah.

B: You're right.

S: Whatever.

B: No one's going to, no. One, these people don't like cool names. They don't care. So it's no, we're never going to do this again. But for the record, Highsagma. Is cool like designations. Potentially, though, potentially. So bottom line, this this planet based on this first question is a planet what we think it is. Maybe, maybe, probably it isn't. This planet seems more likely to be way too hard to support any life except for maybe like what that magma alien from planet Excalbia on Star Trek. Remember that episode? He seems like he would be remember his his claws would click and stuff. He was kind of weird, a weird alien. I just love the non humanoid aliens though. All right, so I'm doing right now, I'm imagining the SGU being teleported to K218B to fight alongside Carl Sagan and Arlen Schwarzenegger against Trump, Musk and RFK Junior, and we would so kick their asses. If you know that episode. I'm hopefully, I'm hoping that you're giggling just a little bit. We have Abe Lincoln, okay?

U: If it's. If it's the.

B: Version of Abe Lincoln where he can he kills vampires that I would absolutely take him all right the second the boxer in his. Day he was.

E: A fighter. That movie had some.

B: Very, it had the most interesting battle between two people amongst a Stampede of horses that I've ever seen. Actually, it was the only time I've ever seen and it was really cool scene worth worth the entire movie. All right, the second question is the signal in fact legitimate? Is this is this signal good? Right. How are they able to confirm?

E: This thing something could very.

B: Well have been detected on K23 Sigma implies 99.7 certainty. After all that something was detected, but the researchers only get this. This was surprised me. The researchers only compared the spectral signal that they had against 20 chemicals that could potentially produce that spectrum and DMS that methyl sulfide was the most likely fit of those 20. So OK, but there's a lot more chemicals that they potentially could have compared the spectral features against and maybe one of them would be a better fit than DMS. So why? I would like to find out and I couldn't figure it out. Why did they only compare it against 20 candidate elements and not more? Because so DMS is the best fit. That's OK, that's cool. But maybe there's other elements that would be a much better fit. I don't get that at all. Also, there's another problem with the second question that remember the second question is, is the signal legit? Comparing the spectrum from a mini Neptune planet to the spectrum of Earth at room temperature and one atmosphere is also obviously and potentially problematic. And even the authors recognize that fact. So did you follow that one? Because they, they looked at the signal that you would get from the spectrum of DMS from Earth and they compared that to the spectrum they got from K2. And so that's what they did the comparison, but it's not a very apples to apples because it's not a you know, it's a small planet to a sub Neptunian planet. So it's maybe that might be a dramatic, you know, more of a problem than you would think. OK, the final question is the signal only produced by life. This is this is a big one. We might, we might determine, yes, this is DMS. It it's there. But if we find out it's not produced by life, it's far, far less interesting. All right, so there's, there's nothing on Earth that makes us think that DMS can be abiotic, right? But that's just just Earth. But there are some recent studies that suggest that that there are certain unusual conditions that could allow DMS to form without life. I think they found, they found some signals in space that potentially could do it and, and some other exoplanet that gave them this idea that, yeah, maybe DMS can be produced by an abiotic process. But the, but these processes that they've that they've discussed are they're speculative and, and even if they do work, they seem very unlikely to produce the amount, the sheer amount of DMS that seems to be present on K2. But still it's, it's a big maybe. And the burden of the burden of proof is really, really high here. So what we have here, it turns out, is it's a fascinating clue, but it's not the smoking gun that I had that I hoped it was at least very initially when you start reading headlines. But if you dig deeper, you know, it's not the smoking gun that it appears. And it's it's just it's just an interesting clue right now anyway. So, you know, I hate when the universe teases us with these maybes. So for now, the best answer is no aliens. Not yet anyway. But who knows? This is going to take time. If if you're going to want to answer these questions with a yes, in order to really say yet we have discovered life on another world, those three questions are going to have to be yes. Is the planet what we think it is? Is the signal legit and is the signal only produced by life? You, you need a yes for those. And that's not going to happen fast. You're not going to, you know, make a discovery and be like, Yep, that's it. That's we're we're good. We have the answer. There is life on this planet. It's going to take a protracted, A prolonged discussion by scientists to really look at the data and, and multiple missions and all these other extra, extra steps beyond just one mission looking at another planet. It's going to take a while. Hopefully we'll get there, but it's not going to be an easy decision to be, you know, very, very confident, You know, especially 5 Sigma levels. Confidence. Yeah, unfortunately.

S: Most of the potential biosignatures have abiotic sources, you know. Yes.

B: Right, it's.

S: Not fair. Yeah. Well, what's?

B: Good about this one is that you know, when you've got sources like carbon dioxide and methane those you know, those are good signatures, but there's so many ways that you could make that geologically and whatever DMS dimethyl sulfide. It was interesting because you know, there's no obvious way to make a huge amounts of this stuff. So it's it's a more of a more of a compelling buyer signature, but still it's still very problematic. Is the next step just more?

S: Observations with the James Webb Space Telescope? I think so.

B: Looking at it with maybe with different instrumentalities and, and maybe even different, different telescopes would help and, you know, trying to trying to get answers approaching these three questions and trying to get a solid yes for each of these. And yeah, that's what it's going to take, time, multiple missions and more work. But, you know, got to try. You know, assuming science doesn't utterly collapse everywhere, it will be done. All right. Thanks, Bob.

S: Bob actually don't have to worry because we you know what?

Skull on Mars (41:10)

• NASA rover discovers out-of-place 'Skull' on Mars, and scientists are baffled 

S: They found a skull on Mars.

E: You know man.

B: If they did, I wanted in my collection.

E: Skull on Mars, right? Well, as I speak right now, Bob is boarding a spacecraft. He's heading to Mars, radiation issues be damned. No, there's a skull. On Mars. Bob has to have it.

U: All right, who's saying?

B: That Is that you just pulling my leg? What's happening? Well.

E: Depends and on which headlines you read. I gave a news item about Mars, oh about a month ago. But we're going to revisit the Red Planet from when some men originated. Do you think our younger audience even has any idea what that's all about? Remember being as women or from women or from Mars? Remember, remember that that is going back.

B: But. Yeah, Oh my God, right.

E: When was the last time we talked about that? We talked about that early in the SGU, but I don't think we ever revisited it. But there it is again. Skull on Mars. What is this all about? What are we talking? Like another face on Mars, you know, which obviously has been a thing since the 1970s and, you know, certainly captured the imaginations of a lot of people. Or is it one of these fossilized fish that they think that they've taken pictures of on Mars? Rodent, lizard sitting on a rock, and of course my all time favorite, Bigfoot. Yes, they're Mars is teeming with life, both current and past. No, not really. Whenever I hear about the latest, greatest description of something either living on Mars or something that was once alive and died on Mars, my Martian antennas definitely perk up. So check out this headline NASA Rover discovers out of place skull in quotes on Mars and scientists are baffled. That headline is over at Live Science. That is a what? Reputable website? Live Science. Live Science, that. Ran with that right? Oh my God, I think.

B: Those those A. Reputable.

E: Those quotation marks are doing a lot of heavy lifting. Probably it's not just scientists that are baffled. Now Evan is baffled and Bob too, apparently. But actually, you know what? Good job over at Life Science for pulling me in with that headline. Here's the real story. NASA's very aptly name Perseverance Rover recently discovered an unusual rock formation on Mars dubbed Skull Hill. That is the full name of this rock that it actually took a picture of and it's intriguing the scientists because it has distinct characteristics and they are not exactly certain about where this thing came from. There is a place on Mars called the Jezero Crater that is a barren bowl shaped depression north of the Martian equator and scientists suspect that it held a lake. There was a lake there billions of years ago and since December of 2024, Perseverance has been trekking down a tall slope called Witch Hazel Hill in this crazy Witch Hazel. Love it, I know.

B: I love that witch.

E: Hazel And obviously, you know, they, they're, they think it's a, a good place to look for clues about Mars's past climate. Well recently this was April 11th 2025 and there it goes perseverance. It's descending witch Hazel hill and it encountered a dark toned angular rock starkly contrasted with surrounding lighter terrain. The rock. They named it Skull Hill and it features a pitted surface. It it's considered a float rock, meaning it likely originated somewhere else and was transported to its current. Could it not be a? Meteorite, they did. Test it. They did observe it and thought, well yes, perhaps this could be a meteorite. Yeah, because it has 2 features.

S: That are typical for meteorites, at least on Earth. It has sort of these dark coloration and this thumbprint kind of indentations around the the pitted surface, fortunately.

E: Perseverance has something called Super Cam, the Super Cam instrument, which can do a chemical analysis of the rock, and it did. It lacked the high iron and nickel content that is typical of meteor. That's why they believe it. Well, yeah, no they didn't. That's not mentioned in this particular article. But they did say that based on what analysis they were able to make, the composition suggests it is likely an igneous rock formed from cooled magma or lava and contains minerals like olivine and pyroxene, which apparently are indicative of magma lava. So yeah, there's a there's a float rock. The pits on the rock may have formed due to erosion of embedded clasps or wind scarring, which would make sense. And they say that it's fortunate that they found this rock in this particular location. They said it provides valuable insight into the geological history of Mars and that it may have been transported by ancient water flows or ejected from impact craters, which indicates dynamic geological processes. And studying the rocks will help scientists reconstruct the planet's past environments and assess its potential to have supported life. So apparently they do have a sample of this thing. And in the past few months, Perseverance has collected samples of five different kinds of rocks. And I've analyzed seven others in detail, zapped 83 more with its laser for a remote study, The explorer's fastest pace of scientific data collection since landing on Mars four years ago. And this was courtesy of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who released some bulletins about this most recent find. And they said, let's see. Katie Morgan, Perseverances Project scientist at JPL 1 of Perseverance's project scientists at JPL said crater rims, you got to love them. The last four months have been a whirlwind for the science team and we still feel that Witch Hazel Hill has more to tell us. It's all we've had hoped for and even more. The key here, the real analysis will take place when hopefully we will be able to pick up those samples that Perseverance has been collecting and get them back to Earth to determine, help determine if hey life ever existed at one point on Mars. Getting those samples back, we have to continue the efforts and hopefully the funding and things don't get cut for that particular part of Nasas budget. Let's hope now what I can't find.

S: Evan, is that any mention of how big it is? Did you find that anywhere? Yeah, they should.

E: Be able to know that I don't know why they wouldn't report that we just haven't taken time to.

S: Measure it yet to calculate the size? I suppose not. Maybe.

E: Yeah, cuz it is it is a new find. So maybe they are still trying to determine it from the from the photographs and the analysis. But no, I'm not reading anything about the size of this rock. So when you hear about skulls on Mars, get excited, but don't get too excited because it's not exactly what you think and it's really skull. Hill is what they're calling.

S: It's not a skull Hill. Yes.

E: Right, right. But you're right, they tweaked, they took a little liberty there. I think they took a lot of liberty. Kind of shit the headline. I know, Bob, you're terribly disappointed. Skull on Mars, What happening?

B: Hit the brakes.

E: That's a big like.

B: Thing to leave out. I mean it seems like total bait and switch. Click bait Skeleton on.

E: Mars over at Skeleton Hill. Trixie.

B: False.

E: All right. Thanks, Evan.

S: Thanks SO guys.

E: You have been trying.

S: To track a solar panel technology pretty closely.

E: And I saw.

Commercial Perovskite Solar Panels (48:51)

• Perovskite panels headed to US solar farm 

S: An interesting news item today on perovskite solar panels. So perovskite is basically a mineral that there's been a lot of experimentation and development over the last 10 years or so to develop perovskite solar panels as sort of the successor to the silicon based solar panels. You know, the proscribed cells have the advantage of having a potentially higher efficiency in terms of the energy conversion, but they've had a significant detriment in that they're not as stable, so they breakdown more quickly. Oh, I see, not as long.

E: It'll last as long time, yeah. Yeah, that's a. Problem and they're making great progress.

S: There, but it's not quite for most of them, not quite where it should be, however. Well, there's a however, but let me talk to you about the news item. So it's a this is just a pretty specific thing, but there was a study looking at altering the chemical that is used in the synthesis of the, you know, the manufacturer of the perovskite solar panels, the solar cells that and they're they're essentially combined with fullerene. Do you guys know what about fullerenes? That's never but.

B: Mr. Fullerenes.

S: Yeah, this is a carbon allotrope and it's AC 60 molecule basically. It's, I think it's basically the shape of like the Epcot center ball, right? The that what is that called? The Geo, that geodesic structure? Yeah. So it has 60 carbon atoms in that kind of a spherical shape. So over over a decade that C60, that Buckminster fullerene has been an integral component of perovskite solar cells. However, there is a weak interaction between the C60 and the perovskite, which is why what leads to it to mechanically degrade over time, especially with exposure to sunlight, which, you know, obviously is the whole point. So they've been, they've been as long as it's in the dark, it's fine. Yeah, awesome. So the, the new study looks at a, the a replacement for C60. It's C60, it's C60, but combined with an ionic salt and it's C60 derived ionic salt and it's or CPMAC. So they, they were able to develop the, you know, the solar cell with perovskite and the CPMAC rather than the the usual C60 that they've been using. And what they found was two things. One, that it stabilized it tremendously because it forms much tighter bonds with the perovskite. And so the, and then in studies after exposure to bright light and heat the IT, it degraded at only one third the rate of the C60 per of Skate. So that's a significant improvement. However, the other thing that they've noticed was a 0.6% higher solar cell energy conversion efficiency doesn't sound like a lot, but .6% is incrementally better. And that if you're if for example, that you're calculating the energy output of A1 GW power plant solar power array, that .6% can power an extra 5000 homes. So it's not insignificant at scale. And sort of any incremental improvement in efficiency is good. So it's a double benefit that the cells are more stable, they last longer and they have a slightly higher efficiency. That's, that's nice. But I said I wanted to see where the perovskite solar module technology is today and specifically it are there any commercial products available? And it turns out there are. So Oxford PV has developed this actually was released in September of 2024. So this is about whatever six months ago, a tandem perovskite silicon solar panel. So there's both silicon solar cells and perovskite solar cells in tandem. And which is something I've been reading about as well. I didn't realize that they had released a released it commercially. They're targeting this more at the the power company level, not like the individual home level. It's probably still more more expensive than a standard solar silicon solar panel. But this raised the efficiency to how much? Where do you think we are right now? What is the efficiency of these commercially available tandem perovskite silicon 33%?

E: It's 25%. 99. Percent.

S: 27%, which is huge considering that the industry standards more in the more like the 2324%. So bumping up to 27 is actually it's pretty significant, 10% increase, yeah.

E: You know, it's like a three, three.

S: Percent well relative or absolute an absolute 3% yeah relative 10% and so yeah 33% like we're we can get there you know we can get there with with this technology. There are lab tested tandem solar panels that are getting into the 30 three 3434.6% range. So, but you know, that's not commercially being produced yet, but that's sort of the, the, where the industry is headed. So that's huge. You know, so we're already now in the upper 20s. And remember when we started talking about solar panels at the beginning of the SGU, they were at 12% and they incrementally improved over the years, got up into like the 20 to 22% range, which is where we've been, you know, for a while now. We're at like 24 percent, 2324%. And but they were kind of running up to the against the limit of silicone. I think the theoretical limit of silicon is less than 30%. I think it's like 29%. So if we're going to break 30, we need to make this lateral move over to perovskite. And I do think the tandem technology is where things are headed using both, you know, silicon and perovskite because then you get the best of both worlds, you know, they have different frequencies where they're optimal and the silicon can stabilize the perovskite etcetera. So cost more expensive.

E: Of course it's yeah.

S: Yeah, it's going to be more expensive. But overall, if you talk about the cost per amount of energy being produced, that's continues to go down, that continues to decrease. You know, if you're paying for a higher efficiency, it could be cost effective. Is there any? Way.

B: Is there any way to shift what's left of my 4 O 1K into this into this? Sure.

S: Yeah, You could buy individual stocks, all right. Some of the company names.

B: After the show. Thank you.

S: No, I do think long term these are, these are solid, you know, companies and that this is where the industry is heading. And I do think that there's a lot of headroom for solar. So worldwide, approximately 5.5% of global global electricity production is solar 5.5. You know, where's it going to top out? Who knows, But we should be able to get up to 20 percent, 30% maybe worldwide. So, Oh yeah.

J: So when do these roll out, Steve? Well, again, the.

S: The 27% ones are out now. They are, if they've been available since September, the breakthrough that I just talked about today, who knows, right? These things take time to translate, to get translated to actual production. But again, do having done this for the last 20 years, you know, we read a lot of these laboratory breakthroughs, but then 5-10 years later they're actually in commercial products. Some of them are anyway, they don't always translate. But when the commercial products come out, like I remember like we talked about the the the silicone anode lithium ion batteries, you know, we talked about them when they actually came on the market. But it was 10 years earlier when we we talked about that news item on the show as a laboratory breakthrough. And then ten years later the battery with the actual technology and it comes out. So who knows how many years it will take, but it's good to know that these incremental advances keep accumulating. We keep reading about them like every, I don't know, a few weeks or so I'm reading about a pretty interesting or significant incremental advance in the Proofsky technology. So I think, you know, five years from now, 10 years from now, we're still talking about such things. You know, we'll, who knows where we'll be up to or maybe in the low 30s at that time. And at the same time, you know, they're there as a parallel project. You know, they're developing the organic solar cells which are getting into the upper teens. But the big advantage there, there's 21, is that they're flexible and the other ones that they're cheap. So they're less expensive to install, they're less expensive to produce. So again, if you're talking about cost per amount of electricity generated, they're getting competitive with, you know, the silicon slash perovskite solar panels. So that may. So then it's a trade off and it depends on what you need. Do you need to make optimal use of this surface area that you have or you just need the cheapest option, right? But it's good, it'll be good to have a lot of options. So the fact that.

J: You said these have been available since September. Does that mean that all the big solar companies are already using them? So again I.

S: Think this is mainly for not like for home top rooftop solar, but for solar power industrial. This is for utility scale solar, like when you have a big solar solar installation that's hooked up to the grid, not on somebody's rooftop, right. Whereas you were you, you know, you're, you're making money off the electricity that you're producing. And therefore, as a as an investment, like going from 24 to 27% efficiency, even from the more expensive solar panels, it might be worth it, a worthwhile investment, you know, if you're selling the electricity. Yeah. So that's a pretty big jump, like from 24 to 27%. That's huge. Sweet man. All right, let's go on.

Who's That Noisy? + Announcements (59:18)

S: All right, Jay, it's who's that noisy time? All right, guys, last week.

J: I played this noisy. Crazy. What do you guys think this one is? So what are those flutes?

E: They make out of a human skull. Remember that, Bob? Yeah. Is it?

S: A glass harmonica? What happened to the H?

E: I'm wondering that too. What's that? Harmonica.

S: It is not an.

J: Harmonica, yeah, it's, it's something out of this world. I don't know. I I couldn't guess this guys if I was presented this myself because it's it is a very tricky 1. A listener named Hunter Richards sent in a guest. He said hi Jay singing bowls that raspiness sounds like rock vibrating against the surface. Maybe it's being played with a wooden bamboo rod question mark. That's a good guess. This is not singing bowls, but you you tripped on something in your in your guest there that was not completely incorrect. Another listener named Bill Weitz wrote and say, Jay, today's noisy is someone swinging a hose from a vacuum cleaner. If you vary the speed, you can vary the pitch. Now we've all done this and I've also, you know, I remember being by my kids toys that are basically just like a, you know, like a, a tube that you spin over your head and depending on how fast you you swing it over your head, it changes the pitch. And it it sounds like that a little bit, but that is not correct. But thank you for trying. Another listener named Shane Hillier wrote in and said I don't know boss. I will guess it is some automated pan flute, like a player piano but for pan flutes. I thought that was pretty funny. Oh zem fear.

E: Remember right. Oh, you could buy his albums on also on cassette Nate track by the way. And there is. I mean if.

J: You've ever heard of a pan flu or heard one? Yeah, they there is a little bit of a pan flute vibe in there sound I can I can definitely recognize, although that is not what this is, a listener named Pierce Kennedy wrote in said. Hi Jay, My, my sons Cathol, age 9 and Fion, age 6 would like to guess Cathol thinks it's a squeaky violin. Fion thinks it's a broken sound machine. They also really liked a bit about the crows as they are Big Bird fans. Well, cool guys. Thank you both for guessing. You know, this is a tricky one. I'll say that you both guessed absolutely. These are good guesses, but you guys were not correct. But it was a very hard one. This is not easy. We did have a winner. Winner's name is Agent Method. I suspect that might not be the person's real name. And Agent says it's the guy with the rocks and their waffled right. They're cut to different sizes to change the pitch and he's dragging some smaller rocks across them. So yeah, the the basic description is imagine, if you will, the surface of a rock that's standing vertically, you know, pretty large rock, maybe like, you know, in 8 feet tall by 4 foot tall rock surface that has a grid cut out in it. And the, the size of the squares in that grid vary. And then you take another rock and rub it across these pieces, right? These the grid. And as it goes to different pieces in the grid, it'll make a different tone because of the size difference, right? So it's basically like vibrating a rock that's been cut to play specific notes. And each, each note is basically a square in the grid. And the the size difference determines the pitch. Listen again. You can hear the rocks scraping. So those no changes, those no changes are the person scraping a different part of that, the rock that's standing up that has been cut to be the actual instrument, I guess. So it's a rock.

S: Harmonica. So why drop the?

J: H though, that's what it's called.

S: All right, well, I.

J: Don't know man. I think it's weird. Everybody always says harmonica, but that's that's.

B: A different instrument. Well, why didn't you say so in the?

J: 1st place Yeah man, just.

B: Can't lock off a letter and not let us know you're talking about something he did tell you. I didn't make this up. We've talked about the glass harmonica before. I'm agreeing with you AB. What? The Hell's happening right now? All right. Good guesses.

J: This week guys, I have a new noisy for you guys this weekend. It was sent in by a listener named Brandon Aylman.

U: All right, guys, if you think.

J: You know what this week's noisy is? Or if you heard something cool, e-mail me at wtn@theskepticsguide.org. I think it's Grogu.

B: Isn't it Grogu? Hey if you'd like to support.

J: The work that we do here on this podcast, you can become a patron, you can go to patreon.com/skeptics Guide. We have different levels of patronage. Any and all are absolutely appreciated and welcome. We really couldn't function without our patrons. They've been the glue here for us. You know, we are in our 20th year. You know, this is the 20th year. Hey, just a couple of weeks, May.

S: 4th OK, it's actually technically May 5th. Is our.

E: 25th. Anniversary.

S: So. It's the 4th or the 5th.

J: I would prefer the 4th. Because that's Star Wars Day. Yeah, it could be like the 4th.

S: Yes, we're.

J: Allowed to in your mind. It could be the 4th. Yes, May 4th, it's close to that.

S: May 4th I like.

J: That it's either it's either the.

S: 4th may be with you, or it's Cinco de Mayo to win, win. Yeah, it's true.

J: Hey guys, not a con 2025 happening in White Plains, NY May 15th, 16 and 17. All of the SGU will be there including George Robb, Andrea Jones, Roy, Brian Wecht, and Ian will be manning the tech table and doing all the voodoo that he does. There will be absolutely no watermelon accidents happening at this conference as far as we can tell.

U: If you're. Interested in?

J: Going to the conference? Go to theskepticsguy.org and there's a button on there for you. We also have two SGU private shows happening at the conference. It is going to be 1 hour on Friday during lunch and one hour on Saturday during lunch. If you buy a ticket, you're going to be buying a ticket for one of those two hours, or you could buy one for both if you want to, but those two hours together will make up a SGU episode by itself. We will not be doing news items. It will be an off topic, probably crazy episode. If you'd like to join us live, please go to theskepticsguide.org to also buy tickets for that. We are also doing a private show and a Skeptical Extravaganza stage show. This is happening in Kansas on September 20th. If you're interested, again, go to the SGU homepage for the link. There's a button there that we've put to make it super easy. It's going to be a lot of fun. We hope to see you there. And my final thing is that just a reminder time is ticking and Steve is coming to the SGU very, very excited. I can't wait. We have we have new content that we're working on that we will be releasing after Steve, you know, after he goes full time for the SGU. But we were still need of course, time to to start really getting to the heavy lift. But we know what we're going to do and we're excited and we are definitely in full combat insanity. What would you you know, we just, we want it. We want more properties out there to help fight back. Just all of the myths and disinformation and the crazy that's going on in the world. So that that's a huge, a huge thing that's going on here at SGU that we're hard at work producing new content to hopefully shed some light on all of this. All right. Thank you, Jay.

Emails (1:07:36)

S: We're going to do 1 e-mail. This comes from another listener who wants us to review his new theory and not going to actually get into the details. I'm just going to read a piece of the e-mail that he sent me. He says the work is titled The Unified Theory of Consciousness, a cross species model for intelligence and regulation. At its core is a model I call dragony, which maps dopamine, serotonin, adrenaline, cortisol, GABA, endocannabinoids, narrative and energy into an interactive axis, a living system capable of explaining states of emotion, behavior, burnout, addiction, and even artificial intelligence. Wrapped around that access is a story that honors the body, the bones, the sediments we come from. And he reassures me, this is not pseudoscience. It's not spiritual bypass, it's not a manifesto. It's a map born from breakdown, made legible by cross disciplinary synthesis and written to honor the skeptical mind without losing the poetic 1. I'm not doing a deep dive on this guy's unified theory of consciousness. Maybe on a future episode, it depends. But I wanted to just talk about the phenomenon itself of people who think they've, they've hit upon some deep understanding of reality, right? One aspect of reality, whatever that aspect is, because this is very common and we encounter this on a regular basis, either because they directly contact us or because they're putting it out there into the world. So I, I responded to this person, I want to tell you what my response is. I said listen, we're willing to take a look at anyones theory, but you need to be able to do 2 things. The first thing is you need to be able to give me an executive summary and 800 words or less. And that's important for a couple of reasons. One, because typically these people say, well, you've read my 500 page treatise and the answer is no, not going to read your 500 page treatise. If you can, you know what's interesting about if you do have a new idea like you have some new insight, I'm not saying it wouldn't require like a full explanation or exploration would not require 10s or hundreds of pages, but you should be able to give a concise, coherent executive summary. What I have noticed is that that is the level at which the cranks always fail. They cannot do that because they don't have a coherent vision, right? They just have a lot of stuff that they think they see a pattern in. But they don't really have some coherent idea, right? And so if you can't boil it down to which nuts and bolts and that that should include, this is what the scientific community currently thinks. This is what we don't know. This is the new bit. This is the problem it solves, right? That's like a 3-4 paragraph kind of thing you need to be able to stitch together. This is why I think this is the way the reality works. And the second question I ask is what? What do you think is my second question? Yes.

E: How can you test it?

S: Tell me one or more ways, at least one way that you can do an observation or an experiment to test it, to distinguish. Don't tell me about the observations you made that made you think of this theory. Tell me how you can falsify this theory going forward and distinguish it from the other theories that are already out there. If you can't do those two things, you have nothing, right? I don't care what you think you have, but you have nothing. And you certainly don't have access to my time, right? And, or, and you're not going to get access to any scientist's time either. If you can't convince them that what you have is interesting with the so-called elevator pitch, then you probably don't have anything James Randi used to.

E: Tell us that the that the main obstacle that people who would want to take the $1,000,000 paranormal challenge would be that they cannot describe exact what it is they feel they can do. They can't do it. And he said that was the vast majority of applicants. It's a good first level.

S: Filter, yeah, it's like, tell me exactly what it is that you do. Like it's the operational definition thing. It's like, what is it very specifically that you are doing? And if you can't, that's because they they can't do that 'cause they only have a vague sense anyway, right? It makes sense.

E: Inside their brain, but they it's it's not conveyable right and I.

S: Think with these sort of theories of everything is. It's similar in that it tends to be this sort of long rambling thing and and and without any coherent bit to amber. There was just one tick tock video that I did a response to. I probably shouldn't have to be honest with you, but it was one of those where it was just, you know, a woman who has this theory about the causes of of some kinds of developmental mental problems in children. And I can't even tell you what it is because she gets she had a 500 page manifesto. And no at in I could not find a coherent explanation of what it is she was actually claiming. What what is your actual claim? And how is this just you not just stitching together a bunch of published studies? You know, I didn't know what she was trying to say. It was there was not no coherent point to it. How is it different than what scientists currently are saying? Yeah. And this and this follows.

E: A very distinct pattern that has been yeah, that plays out for for people who do have these kinds of ideas that that they, they cannot boil it down. Yeah. So if so.

S: This is to everyone out there who who wants to us to review their idea to say if they're on to something. You do those two things, give us a concise executive summary. What is the new bit that you're actually claiming a specific a specific a definition as you can and how is it testable? How could we even in theory demonstrate if your idea is correct or not? So what they what, what you typically get instead is, you know, sometimes like the people you could tell the people who are delusional, not just cranks. Cranks are just usually, they tend to be smart, interested people who just don't know how to interface with actual scientists, right? They're just not aware of how much they don't know and how how it's done. But I always the other thing I say there was like, if you're really on to something, this is what you need to do. And if you don't do that, it's probably because you're not really on to something. But then the delusional people are like, I out predict Einstein. You know, I'm I'm smarter than Galileo. It's like, all right, you should probably you have a follow up appointment with your whoever's taking care of you, you know, so that's they're they're sort of you're on a they're they're having a different problem. You know, it's not just that they don't understand how science works. But in any case, you know, I don't think there's anything I could say to get through to those people. But the people who are like, you know, I think are are with it, they just are not sure why they haven't fixed physics or whatever, or why they haven't discovered some new underlying, you know, unified theory of consciousness or whatever it is. I think the key thing that's missing, and if you look back at a lot of cranks throughout history, they is they don't understand that science is a cooperative endeavor, right? Science, at least especially in modern times, is not something you can do by yourself in your garage. It's just no more armchair.

B: Yeah, it's just. It's hard.

S: You have to bounce your ideas off of experts, right? It's a conversation. Science is a conversation. And you can't. If you're spinning it up all on your own, in your own head. Chances are you have drifted away from reality, and it's possible again, if you could get the attention of an actual expert, they could probably explain to you why you're wrong in 5 or 10 minutes. But you have to be open to that. But first, you have to be able to explain your idea to them in a coherent way. And if you can't do that, then just stop. You have nothing. All right? Anyway, let's move on with science or fiction.

Science or Fiction (1:16:15)

Theme: None Item #1: Scientists have published a robust framework for attributing the cost of climate change to the emissions of specific companies, showing that the top 5 emitters have cost the world economy about $9 trillion between 1991 and 2020. Item #2: Researchers have found the first direct skeletal evidence of Roman gladiator combat against lions. Item #3: Engineers have created a 3D printed ceramic metamaterial that can withstand temperatures 10 times hotter than the ceramic tiles on the Space Shuttle, up to 12,000 degrees C.

Answer	Item
Fiction	Engineers have created a 3D printed ceramic metamaterial that can withstand temperatures 10 times hotter than the ceramic tiles on the Space Shuttle, up to 12,000 degrees C.
Science	Scientists have published a robust framework for attributing the cost of climate change to the emissions of specific companies, showing that the top 5 emitters have cost the world economy about $9 trillion between 1991 and 2020.
Science	Researchers have found the first direct skeletal evidence of Roman gladiator combat against lions.

Host	Result
Steve	swept

Rogue	Guess
Jay	Engineers have created a 3D printed ceramic metamaterial that can withstand temperatures 10 times hotter than the ceramic tiles on the Space Shuttle, up to 12,000 degrees C.
Bob	Engineers have created a 3D printed ceramic metamaterial that can withstand temperatures 10 times hotter than the ceramic tiles on the Space Shuttle, up to 12,000 degrees C.
Evan	Engineers have created a 3D printed ceramic metamaterial that can withstand temperatures 10 times hotter than the ceramic tiles on the Space Shuttle, up to 12,000 degrees C.

E: It's time for science or fiction.

U: Each week I come up with.

S: Three Science News items or facts. 2 real and one fake. And I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. So I just have three regular news items this week. Are you guys ready? Yep. All right, here we go. Item number one. Scientists have published A robust framework for attributing the cost of climate change to the emissions of specific companies, showing that the top five emitters have cost the world economy about $9 trillion between 1991 and 2020. Item number 2, researchers have found the first direct skeletal evidence of Roman gladiator combat against lions. And ion #3 engineers have created a 3D printed ceramic metamaterial that can withstand temperatures 10 times hotter than these ceramic tiles on the space shuttle, up to 12,000°C. Jay, go first. All right. The first one here.

J: Scientists, you know, they published A robust framework for attributing the cost of climate change to the emissions of five specific companies I don't know there's something about that that I think is science and if it's not 5 specific companies, it might be 5 specific industries, but I think there's something true about that one. Second one, researchers have found the first direct skeletal evidence of Roman gladiator combat against lions. I mean, you know, that's, that's not impossible. You know, they, I mean, I just don't, I don't see them burying a dead gladiator with a dead lion. I don't know, I just don't see them doing that for some reason. So I'm kind of iffy on this one. And the final one, engineers have created a 3D printed ceramic meta material that can withstand crazy high 12,000° temperatures. So the idea that it's a, it's printed, I think is that's the sticky, the sticky thing in that news item. I mean, could they actually 3D print something made of ceramic? So meta material means it's ceramic mixed with something else, Steve. Now I'll give you a definition.

S: Of it, a meta material is a material whose properties are not dependent solely on the chemical structure, but on its physical structure, usually at the nano type of scale. Yeah, OK. I think that one.

J: 'S the fiction because a 3D printer can't doesn't have that level of resolution. So I think that's got to be the fiction. OK, Bob.

S: Climate change Top.

B: 5 emitters that sounds sounds about right doesn't sound too egregious either in either direction the skeletal evidence of Roman gladiators combat I mean OK, whatever but yeah the one that grabbed me here was the third one as well. So I agree with Jay that meta, you know, meta materials are typically very, very tiny components that need to be accounted for, you know, potentially even at the nanoscale. So doing that with a 3D printer is dramatic, but not only that, an order of magnitude hotter than the tiles on the space shuttle. That would be, that just sounds like a little bit too much at this point. It's an interesting idea of using meta materials to handle that kind of heat. That's I haven't, I don't remember seeing a meta material that can deal with that. And I don't think that meta materials won't be able to do that. I just think I think it's a little bit too dramatic right now for that plus coupled with the 3D, the 3D printer aspect I think makes that a solid fiction. OK. And Devin, I.

S: Agree because I think.

E: It's the the 10 times stood out to me initially on this one and think that's all way too high. It's likely going to wind up being 2 times, maybe twice, yeah, but not ten. I think the rest of the true wind up being.

B: True.

E: Yeah, I think that's the that's. The piece of that one, I think that also makes it the fiction. OK, so you.

S: Guys all agree in the third one, so let's take these in order. Scientists have published A robust framework for attributing the cost of climate change to the emissions of specific companies, showing that the top five emitters have cost the world economy about $9 trillion between 1991 and 2020. You guys all think this is science, and this one is science. You changed it.

B: Bastard. Nice try. What did I change?

S: I was just.

B: Scanning stuff of an hour ago or so and I saw one that that addressed this specifically, but I thought it was like 20 companies and like 29 trillion, not fewer companies with fewer trillion stuff.

S: Felt. Good.

B: I didn't.

S: I didn't die.

B: I didn't say they only looked.

S: At 5 companies, just that, the top five.

B: That amount that yeah. Yeah.

S: So yes, it was the top 20 companies that was it was something that was actually 111 companies cost the world economy $28 trillion a 111. 100. And eleven, Yeah, it was attributed, Yeah, the companies cost the world economy 28 trillion, but 9 trillion were attributed to the just the top five emitters, 1/3 of that amount.

E: Roughly, yeah to the just. The top five, yeah.

B: So I.

E: Didn't read the whole article.

B: But the I so I knew the bigger numbers but not the smaller ones. So it it seemed like you just you just tweaked it to be still true, but different than the top line title of the send them the bill.

E: Evan, that's the exact.

S: Point of this study what is to.

U: Send in.

S: The bill, right, So the point, the point of the study was really to show that you can have a robust framework for doing this, to attribute the cost of climate change at the corporate level, right? Not just at the country level or at the national level. But to say the activity of Chevron of this one specific company contributed this much to climate change, resulting in this loss of whatever of to the economy of the world over this period of time. They said that with this information, it means you can have a science based method for attributing liability to individual companies.

B: Yeah, I don't think that they. Necessarily should have to pay that because it's it's not, I mean, did they break the law? I mean it's it's just you know, it will, it will help with the.

E: Future and how to deal with these companies yeah and and I think going forward it could be more.

B: Powerful like all right, well, you're on notice it's.

S: Definitely an easier thing to apply going forward, right? You could say that, all right, that we're going to make you pay for the carbon you emit. Now that's a carbon tax, right, And which is economists agree which is probably the most effective method, but they're just hard to get the political will to do that. But this might help us get there. It's also when you calculate the subsidies to different industries, it's, you know, often times like I've seen, like the fossil fuel industry gets, you know, $1 trillion subsidy, whatever. And but part of that is direct subsidies. Part of that though is indirect subsidies by not by allowing them to externalize costs, including climate change. So now we can put a more accurate number on that. The climate change subsidy for the fossil fuel industry is this amount of money, right? Which means we're, when we're comparing that to the cost, for example, of subsidizing renewable energy or nuclear power or grid upgrades, a battery grid storage or whatever, it's like, yeah, but that's actually nothing compared to the the indirect subsidy that we're giving to the fossil fuel industry by not making them pay for the predictable and demonstrable effects of their industry. And, and in terms of in order to make it work retroactively, as you say, make them pay for the cost they've already induced, you would have to prove some kind of malfeasance. Not that that's impossible. Be that's basically what they did for the tobacco industry. Yeah, right. That's true. You know, basically fined them for something that happened in the past because you were able to prove they knew about the risks, they tried to cover it up. I don't think that would be impossible to do for the fossil fuel industry, to be honest with you.

B: Sure.

S: And I'm not.

B: Recommending that I'm.

S: Just saying that it that's not impossible, but the point of this study was to have a science based number that you could attach to it because otherwise you could say, well, how could we really know? Like how much, How can we put a number on this? Like, well, they did it, They put in. There's a structure.

B: Yep. There's a sure they're. I'm sure they'll say it's inaccurate, but screw those guys. All right, Well, why don't we jump to number?

S: Three engineers have created a 3D printed ceramic meta material that could withstand temperatures 10 times hotter than the ceramic tiles on the space shuttle up to 12,000°. See, you guys all think this one is the fiction, but Jay said so.

E: Yeah, so.

S: This is based on a real study. I won't tell you if it's the science or the fiction. I'll tell you some details of the study that are accurate tricksy, so it's at least partly true.

B: Which part?

E: So they did.

S: Make 3D printed ceramic material that.

E: Does.

S: Have properties outside the range of normal ceramic material.

C: The name of the paper.

S: Is macro scale ceramic origami structures with hyper elastic coding. What they were able to do is produce essentially flexible ceramics. So this is the fiction. It's not the, it's not the the heat resistance, it's the flexibility of it, malleability of so.

B: Hyper. Yeah.

S: So they coat it with a hyper elastic coating and that enables it to be not brittle, right, To be able to bend in response to forces and then regain its initial structure. Well, how thin is this ceramic?

B: Underneath, I don't know.

S: It's gotta be. It's gotta.

B: Be quite thin to be to still bend and not break. I think that's also the.

S: Origami structure is part of that as well. OK.

B: Oh man, interesting meta. Is it considered a meta material still? I don't think so.

S: OK.

B: Still. Yeah. Still very. So that's that's the part, yeah.

E: It. Doesn't sound like meta material.

B: I don't know too many details yet, but it's cool. I'm going to read about it so it wouldn't have to.

S: Be like the 3D printing wouldn't have to be what imposes the meta material structure to it though, right? You could be 3D printing with a meta material, right. Yeah. I didn't think that was going to be the point of contention, to be honest with you really. Yeah. So The thing is, so I had to look up, I think maybe just may say it's a it could like I knew like the ceramic tiles on the space shuttle. So maybe that's just ceramic that's even more heat resistant than the ceramic tiles on the space shuttles. But I had to look up what that was. So the space shuttle had both high temperature reusable surface insulation and low temperature reusable surface insulation. The high temperature was able to endure up to 2300°F or 1260°C. But current tiles can go up to what temperature do you think current ceramic tiles? So the space shuttle tiles were 1260° there at 5000°.

J: Right, Yeah, we're.

S: At 4000° now, yeah. OK, so.

J: That's how far we've come.

S: Since I had to make it more than that, you know, significantly more than that. That's why I went up to 12,000. But I knew I was a stretch. But you know, it's because we that's a dramatic. Change.

B: I mean, that's that would make it then basically much easier to to re enter the atmosphere like, you know, you're so you're much farther away from the top from the high tolerances that it's it should be pretty smooth. Do you guys remember?

S: What causes the heat of re entry when friction?

B: No, no, no, no. You're you're compressing, it's compression, you're ahead of you and the compression is heating up the atom. Exactly. It is not.

S: Friction. That's the that's the wrong answer everyone thinks is correct. That's the knee jerk answer, but it's actually it's compression of the air, not it's not friction. Yeah. So it's good that we have even more advanced dynamic tiles.

B: That's great.

S: I.

B: Wonder if if like I wonder if they know the military. The United States military has a shuttle type ship.

E: That that still.

B: Goes up there, right? Yeah, they do have. Yeah, they have.

E: Unmanned, unmanned vehicles, right, Right. I wonder if that's has the?

B: You know, the higher quality ceramics maybe, maybe it doesn't even quite need that, that level. It's like overkill almost. Maybe it's too expensive because it you don't need that much right now with the the way they re enter. I don't know. Cool. Yeah. Which means, which means that, by the way.

S: I told you the they have ultra high temperature resistant tiles now and the SpaceX dragon capsule. What do you think that has? It has a heat shield made of pica X tiles. Pica Pi CA-X sounds like a brand. It's a.

E: Phenolic.

S: Impregnated carbon ablator, That's what it's saying for. No, look. Impregnated carbon ablator? No way. Yeah.

E: So yeah, so part.

S: Of the, the way the heat Shields work, like the Apollo era heat Shields, that was all ablation, meaning they heat up and they evaporate, right, right. So they're that they, that's how they got to be thick.

B: Enough it carries the heat away.

S: Because it's ablating, but it's not. Yeah, no reuse, right. The the space shuttle they had to make a reusable heat shield, which is why they went to the tiles. Remember that? I forget how many ridiculous number of tiles they had. And they were each one was its own shape. Yes, yes, no standard.

B: Shape. Yes, each.

E: Tile had to go into.

S: Its very specific tiles and they had to get like replaced every time. Yeah, some would fall.

E: Off. Yeah, yeah, they had to be full.

S: Yeah, they had to be basically being be fixed each time, you know, someone had to be replaced. They have to make sure that they were whatever they were good to go for. For another rant, the Dragon capsule uses, I guess, a combination both heat shield and ablative material. Interesting. All right.

C: All right, this all means.

S: That researchers have found the first direct skeletal evidence of Roman gladiator combat against lions is science. Have you guys, any of you guys seen this story? No.

E: Skeletal evidence, yeah. So they basically.

S: It's a skeleton they found. It was in England, but it was in a it was in a Roman city. Like bite marks on the skeleton.

E: Exactly. They were. Yeah, it's.

S: Got OK teeth marks on the pelvis of this Oh scouting that hurts I. Feel it now. And 2000.

E: Eight.

S: They were matched to a large cat that said probably a lion, but they also said to make you feel a little bit better this could have been scavenger bite marks. So this might have been something that was done after the person was dead post.

B: Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah, that seems. Reasonable possibilities because because of the location.

S: Yeah. But that's, yeah, it's the first time you have skeletal evidence because it, there's it. We actually have apparently a lot of documentation about the gladiatorial games and, like, descriptions of what went on. So we have a lots of historical evidence to indicate that the gladiators fought animals, bears and lions. I think we're the most popular. Yeah. But gladiator remains are very rare in this in the archaeological record. So they found a pit with multiple, multiple, you know, male skeletons, all with traumatic injuries, with gladiator like injuries. You know what I mean? And this one had had lion bites on its pelvis. So it's a pretty, I mean, you know, that's, it's direct evidence. It's not, it's not ironclad, but it's pretty compelling evidence that, yeah, those were probably gladiators. I wonder if you could tell from the.

B: Bones that, yeah, this was a robust individual and not some frail, you know, old guy. This wasn't just usually.

E: Peasant that you threw in there, you know peasants were hearty.

S: I mean, they probably that's true. That's. True.

E: Yeah, they. Worked them, but you could tell because of the.

S: Insertions, the tendon insertions on the bone.

E: Yeah. Yeah.

S: OK. Hypertrophy, you know, so you, you can tell how robust somebody was physically by their bones. Yeah. Yeah, Pretty cool. All right. Good job, guys, Right. Thank you.

E: Hey, Evan. Do you have a quote?

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:32:51)

“All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated, and well supported in logic and argument than others.”  – -Douglas Adams, author (11 Mar 1952-2001), (description of author)

S: I do have a quote.

E: And this week's quote was suggested by a listener. His name is Roger, and he's from Connecticut, a local listener. Thanks for suggesting this, Roger. All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others.

B: Douglas Adams. DNA man, love that guy. He was. He was. Awesome.

E: Yeah, got to listen. To some.

B: Of his stuff again. It's been a while too long, I know. Same hero.

E: Once last time, it's hard to find.

B: His audio books that he narrated there he does a great job of narrating. His own book.

S: He is killed if you listen.

B: I mean, I've said it before, but I haven't said it in years. If you like Douglas Adams, read the books, that's fine. But if you really want to appreciate having him narrate the Hitchhiker's Guide and even the Dirk Gently stories, he is, you might imagine an amazing narrator and this is his stuff. So it it just makes it extra, extra special that this is how he present presents his his works. It's like, you know, it's like getting a a tour in a museum and having the artist describe the artwork to you. You know, it's just can't beat that. You can't beat that. So this is, it's like a fuller appreciation of his art because it's his. It's his voice. Look for him. And if you find him, if you find any of his books narrated by him, please let me know. Yeah. And I like this quote.

S: Although it does require a little bit, I think of explication in that the all opinions about facts are not equal, right? Opinions about reality, about what is true, where there is some kind of objectivity to it, to the opinion. But opinions of that are purely subjective value judgments.

B: You.

S: I mean, still you could say some are more sophisticated than others. That's kind of a nuanced yeah or new one talking about like, but if someone.

B: Says like.

S: I like this piece of music better than that piece of music. That's OK.

B: Conversation, you know, basically. Yeah, it's just a yeah.

S: It's a value judgment. It's not really like versus like in my opinion, the dinosaurs were wiped out by a media or not by something, whatever, like a scientific opinion. Absolutely. Some or some are better than others. Yeah. Some are thoughtless, naive, whatever, not not based on facts or evidence or logic. And others are more robust. But yeah, just saying, like just using the shield of that's my opinion. It's like, yeah, that's it's kind of intellectually lazy. Right. All right. Well, thank you all for joining me this week. God, Steve. Thanks, Steve.

E: And until next.

S: Week This is your Skeptics Guide to the Universe.