SGU Episode 741
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Introduction
Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.
S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, September 18th, 2019, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella...
B: Hey, everybody!
S: Cara Santa Maria...
C: Howdy.
S: Jay Novella...
J: Hey guys.
S: ...and Evan Bernstein.
E: I love science.
S: Thank you. I'm happy for you. Evan, what if I told you that mathematicians used a planetary computer in order to find the question, the correct answer to which is the number 42?
E: Oh, yeah, boy. Let's see. That's a darn good book you're reading.
S: And this really happened. No, this is real life. This really happened.
E: Okay, we've gone from fiction to reality. All right.
S: It's real, it's true. I know Cara's heard about this because she tweeted about it. But you guys heard this?
B: Yeah, awesome. Sum of the three cubes, baby.
S: Yeah, sum of the three cubes.
J: I don't know what the hell you're talking about. I mean, I recognize the 42 and everything, but this is a real news item?
S: eah, this is real. So in 1954, at the University of Cambridge.
E: Uh-huh, I've heard of that.
S: Yeah, so the mathematicians proposed this, what's called the Diophantine equation. It's X cubed plus Y cubed plus Z cubed. So sum of three cubes equals K. And they wanted to solve that for all numbers from one to 100. And they did, except for two, the number 33 and the number 42. However, recently, they solved it for 33, which left 42 as the only number, the only integer between one and 100 for which-
E: There was no answer.
S: There was no answer, right. There was no sum of three cubes that added up to the number 42.
B: Right, so you needed a distinct number multiplied by itself three times, and add that to yet another distinct number, different from the first one, multiplied by itself three times, plus a third one.
S: It has to be an integer, right?
J: Why is this important?
C: It's fun.
S: It's one of those math problems. Yeah. So it was recently solved by mathematician, Professor Andrew Booker at MIT. It's kind of a funky solution because the three numbers are all huge, but one of them is negative. So I guess it almost balances out, except for a residue of 42.
E: Well, that seems like it took them an awfully long time to nail this particular one down. You're saying 1954 is when this was started?
S: Yeah. And they did use a quote-unquote planetary or worldwide computer. They used one of those engines where, it's called the Charity Engine, where it basically uses 500,000 PCs around the world.
B: Hence the planetary computer.
S: Yeah.
E: Neat. Okay, kind of what's similar to what SETI does with their project?
S: Yeah, it's like a computing at home app, yeah.
B: Wait a second, wait a second. Wait, those are huge numbers.
S: Yeah, I know, but I just said that, Bob. One of them is negative.
B: But wait a second, if K equals one to 100, and the one that they're solving for is 42, how are you gonna cube those big numbers?
S: Bob.
B: Oh, because of the negative.
C: He's a mathematician from MIT, you gotta trust him on this.
S: They're just adding them together, so you add a big negative number to two slightly smaller positive numbers, and yeah, it adds up to 42.
B: Gotcha, gotcha, cool.
S: I had the same reaction, like, wait a minute, these numbers are huge, oh, the first one's negative.
B: The negative. Yeah, the negative.
E: Negative will do that. So that's fascinating.
S: Yes, it is. Now, that provokes the question, is this a coincidence, or did Douglas Adams know this? Did he pick the number 42 because he knew about this?
E: Because he knew 33 and 42 were the two outstanding numbers at the time that he wrote Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?
B I doubt it, Evan, I doubt it. Because they've been, I think, I mean, that was many, many years ago, it was like in the 70s that he did that, and I think some of these have been solved since then, and some of them were actually, some of them decided they were unsolvable. They do mention that in the article, where some of them were just like, like, 71, sorry, that's been shown to be unsolvable, so they know they didn't have to work on that one anymore. But they didn't go into any detail, how many were unsolvable? So I looked up what the origin of 42 was in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and the answer is-
B: 42.
S: Nobody knows, except Stephen Fry. So there is an answer, but Douglas Adams only told Stephen Fry, and he, of course, died.
E: I'm dubious.
S: Douglas Adams passed away at the age of 49.
B: Sad day.
S: And Stephen Fry has promised to take that secret to his grave.
J: No, why would he do that?
E: I'm sorry.
C: Who said that he only told Stephen Fry? Did Douglas Adams say that, or did Stephen Fry say that?
E: Right, is this part of a skit?
S: I don't know.
B: Yeah, that's good, he could be totally making that shit up.
C: Because Stephen Fry could just say that.
S: Say, I know, but I'm not telling anybody?
C: Yeah.
S: I don't know if that was confirmed, but, so apparently, that will be a mystery. He did not want to reveal to the world where he got 42 from.
B: That's fine, I'm fine with that.
C: Probably because he just made it up.
E: Right, I mean, that could be the answer.
C: It's probably just a non-story.
E: It's like, oh, it's just 42.
B: I like it, because you think of something yourself. It doesn't, it would kind of detract from it if it was some mundane source that he got 42 from.
C: Yeah.
E: Well, sure, but at the same time, it's not this international mystery that must be solved, I don't think.
S: Well, and I suspect that Adams wanted it to be its kind of meta, it is a mystery, right? The number, the origin of the number itself in The Hitchhiker's Guide itself is a mystery.
C: Yeah, Evan, I feel like you may be underestimating the nerdiness of nerds a little bit.
E: Oh, jeez, okay, all right.
B: And aren't they, are they wrong about this whole idea of the planetary computer? Because Deep Thought designed the planetary computer, otherwise known as Earth.
S: Yeah.
B: Right?
S: Yeah, this is just, it's just a metaphor. They're just trying to make as much of a connection as possible. I know, in The Hitchhiker's Guide, the computer was Earth. The whole Earth was the computer.
B: Yeah, Deep Thought designed it.
S: Worldwide distributed computer network.
B: Yeah, but they, my point is that they bring up Deep Thought and it wasn't Deep Thought.
S: Oh, yeah, they're making an error in the reference. Well, Deep Thought came up with the answer, 42.
B: Right, and the planet Earth was created to come up with what the question was. You know, when you're coming up with a really epic question, you better think it out a little bit.
S: And what was the question? What is six times eight?
B: How many paths must a person take? I don't know, I forget. It's been so long. It's due for another listen of Douglas Adams reading his Hitchhiker series.
E: According to Bob, that is the only way-
B: The only way, the best way, I'll put it this way, the best way to enjoy that series. You could read it, read the words, fine. You could listen to Stephen Fry. I think Stephen Fry and some really awesome people narrate those books, and they're good too. But nobody is like Adams reading his own work. And he was just a wonder, as you can imagine, he was a fantastic narrator.
E: All right, Jay, you and I have to go and hang out with Stephen Fry and knock a few back and get him to loosen up so that he spills the secret. What do you think?
J: I would think more about threatening to kill him if he doesn't tell the world. I mean, this is a big deal.
C: Very aggressive, Jay.
J: I mean, it's the answer. You know what I mean? It's too big, it's too important for just one man to carry the weight.
C: I can't fathom the fact that we've been talking about this for 10 minutes straight at this point.
S: What do you want to talk about, polio?
C: Geez, yeah, sorry. Onto more pressing matter.
News Items
News_Item_1 (m:ss)
- [url_from_show_notes _article_title_] [1]
S: All right, Cara, tell us about polio. Go ahead.
C: Oh, gosh. Well, I'd like to say that the polio virus saga has been, I think in many ways, a real testament to biomedical science. And we've talked about this before on the show. I feel like we might hit it like once a year, something like that, because I'm always really interested when there are new developments. And so the newest development in the conversation about polio virus is that there is a new vaccine being designed right now that could help with the remaining cases that exist. So let's do like a little quick and dirty background. So poliomyelitis is caused by the polio virus. And there are three different types of wild type polio virus. There's wild type one, two, and three. But there's also a type of polio virus that's a vaccine-derived polio virus. And it typically comes from wild type two within the vaccine. So currently, globally, there are two types of polio vaccines. You guys have heard of the Salk vaccine. That was the first one that was developed, I think in 1955, if I'm not mistaken. And that is an injection. And then there's an oral polio virus vaccine, which was developed like five or six years later. And the difference between the two is that the injection has killed virus in it, and the oral virus is attenuated. So that's like a weakened virus. The oral virus seems to be more effective in single dose. Like you usually need more than one dose of the injectable virus. And it's also easier to administer than having to have the needles for the injectable virus. So the oral virus tends to be used more worldwide. The problem is, every so often, people who take the oral virus will actually, they'll be populated with polio virus, but it's weakened polio virus. It won't make them sick, but it'll undergo mutations in the GI tract. And by the time they kind of poop the virus out into the community, into the water, or into the soil, it may, on very, very, very rare occasions, have actually mutated and be able to be virulent again. And so there are actually a number of cases of polio worldwide, which are caused by this vaccine-derived polio because of this attenuated virus. And I think I have a list here of the numbers we're looking at right now. So this year today, as of this week, this is as of September 11th, so that's the most recently published numbers. Globally, there are 78 cases of wild-type polio virus. That's amazing, isn't it? Can we just take a minute to think about how incredible that is?
J: Yeah, I never realized that there was that many independent versions of it. I mean, are they all as deadly as the next?
C: So they are, I actually don't know if one, two, and three vary in terms of their effects. Because the thing about polio is that talking about whether or not it's deadly is very individual. Like most people who actually contract polio don't even show symptoms. A percentage of people who contract it show flu-like symptoms, and only, I think, one in 200 people that contract it will have neurological symptoms. And so when we think of like the most devastating aspects of polio, like we think of like images of the iron lung and people on crutches, that's a very, very small percentage of people who even contracted the virus. But I'm not really sure if type one, type two, type three actually have any sort of difference in effect. I do know that type two is fully eradicated in the wild. So what a lot of people thought about doing is actually figuring out how to remove type two from the vaccine altogether because of the risk of the wild type, or of the vaccine derived. And we'll get to this new development in just a second. But so 78 people globally with wild type virus, all 78 are only in three countries. These are the endemic polio virus countries, Nigeria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. And then 72 so far this year, cases of circulating vaccine derived polio virus. And that's in, 15 of them are in those endemic countries, but a full 57 of them are in non-endemic countries. And so that's where the real fear comes out is that this spreads more. Also, there are a lot of countries where polio has been eradicated for so long that people aren't getting vaccinated.
S: Yeah, that's scary.
C: Yeah, so that's a real risk, right? So these researchers were like, okay, what do we do? How do we keep this type two that's in the oral vaccine from becoming virulent again? And they did a bunch of research and they realized that there's four different things that seem to happen in order for the vaccine to kind of mutate and revert to becoming virulent. There were 104 polio cases last year just due to the type two polio virus circulating and actually periodically, some of those cases did lead to paralysis. As I was saying, the things that they had to do, the steps that they had to take are kind of complicated, but there were four important changes that were made. One of them prevents it from folding up into the appropriate protein shape that it can do on its own in order to become revirulent. Another one involved changing the enzymes within the vaccine that actually copy the RNA so that when it makes a copy of itself, it's more accurate and it's less likely to mutate. The third change is that they, I'm not really sure how they did this, but they were able to reduce, oh, it's through the same enzyme that they use to change the way that it copies its RNA. It actually prevents, or not prevents, but reduces its recombinatory capability. So it's less likely to recombine with other viruses that are already populating the person who took the vaccine. And then lastly, the actual attenuated virus in the vaccine had its genetic material kind of rearranged a bit so that regions of RNA, if it were to combine with a different wild virus, would actually kill it instead of allowing it to be a new mutant. So for example, a lot of people in these countries are also carrying other gut viruses. It's not uncommon. One of the ones that they mention, and I don't really know anything about this, Steve, is Coxsackie, Coxsackie virus. So apparently a lot of kids carry Coxsackie virus, especially in these regions where this is a concern. And what sometimes happens is that the attenuated poliovirus will actually combine with portions of the Coxsackie virus, and that's how it'll mutate to become virulent again. But this change actually makes it so that when it tries to combine, it actually kills the virus, which is great. So they've tested this so far in cells. They've tested it in a mouse model, and they've also done a phase one clinical trial, which we talked about a lot last week. So that showed that they did not make people sick. They were pretty well-tolerated. The immune response is there, so the vaccine is working. Unfortunately, it didn't completely eradicate the reversion to virulence, but it did reduce it compared to the original oral vaccine. So that's a really good sign. So long story short, this is what happens at the end of an eradication effort. I mean, I think it's fair to say, or when you're doing really well in an eradication effort, when this started in 1988, we saw a 99% reduction in rates. It might've even been like 99.9 or 0.8%. We went from thousands of cases, maybe even tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of cases, down to 100 cases a year. It's incredible. But now that we're playing whack-a-mole trying to get rid of these last few cases, because once it's fully eradicated, it's gone. Only humans carry this virus. There's no reservoir. It's amazing.
S: So it can't be eradicated. Unlike, not every virus can be eradicated.
C: Yeah, unlike Ebola or something, which is living in bats or rats or whatever.
E: It would still exist in laboratories and contained areas.
C: Like, is smallpox eradicated?
S: Yes, but smallpox exists in labs.
C: Yeah, exactly. So it's like eradicated from the human population, but it might still be in vials. And that's necessary, right? In case if something did happen. Or in case if we detected a virus that was somewhat similar.
S: It's a debate. There's a debate about whether or not we should get rid of any stored virus once it's eradicated, because then it's gone from the world. There's no possibility of an accident or a theft or whatever. So that's an open question, actually.
E: Interesting.
C: Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting question, too.
B: Trivial.
S: I don't think so. I mean, there's something to be said for it. Imagine it's like there is no smallpox virus in the world. They can't possibly come back.
B: Big deal. They're gonna be creating, they'll be creating viruses and infections that never existed in nature, that are 1,000 times more vicious.
C: Who is they?
B: The bad people.
C: Oh, the bad people.
S: The bad people.
C: But I mean, what happens, Steve, and I'm sure, obviously, this is part of the conversation, if a cowpox virus or some other type of pox does crop up that is genetically somewhat similar to smallpox, and if we still had those smallpox stores, we would be able to fast-track vaccine research. I think that's probably the argument for keeping things is that a lot of viruses are somewhat similar.
S: And it's so frustrating, because we were so close like 10 years ago, but it was the anti-vaccine fears that kept it going. We missed our chance, and now we're trying to recreate it.
C: And I mean, we're still, but let's be clear, we're still so close. Like, we're very close. We're talking only 150 cases so far this year.
S: Yeah, yeah, but that's so many more than there was when we were close last time. And close doesn't really count. We gotta get over that finish line until it's eradicated, because then we still have to keep up vaccinating everybody, et cetera.
C: Yeah, once it's eradicated, we don't have to get the vaccine anymore at all. That's amazing. So yeah.
S: All right, we'll keep pushing. And who knows, maybe eventually we'll be able to reverse aging, right, Jay?
C: Oh, God.
E: Really?
C: That's a whole other conversation we will not be having right now.
News_Item_2 ()
- [url_from_show_notes _article_title_] [2]
J: Yes, actually, we are having it right now.
C: Damn it! Jay, I'm gonna have to keep my mouth shut this whole time.
J: If you wanna die, Cara, it's gonna happen, so don't worry about it. You'll die.
C: Thank you. That's a very enlightened perspective.
J: But for those of us who don't think that a scant 60 to 80 years is quite enough, because it isn't.
E: 60?
J: So look, I'll start off by saying that this is a very early, early, early small study. There are a couple of things about this news item worth really digging into, but everything else, we just need a ton more research done before we could actually say anything definitive. But according to a recent study, it seems that a certain combination of drugs was able to reverse the test subject's biological age, and that is a key term in the sentence, which they determined examining changes to their DNA, right? So they're looking at these test subjects' DNA. So let's get into the details. The study was published on September 5th, 2019 in the journal Aging Cell, and it consisted of nine healthy white males between the ages of 51 and 65. Now, three times a week, the test subjects had to administer a combination of growth hormone, a diabetes medication, and what I believe to be a second hormone supplement. These articles that are coming out aren't giving 100% of the details. So at the end of the year of research that they did on these nine test subjects, they found that the subjects' DNA were on average 2.5 years younger than their previous biological ages. Are you already confused? Because it is a little confusing. So let me get into what I'm actually saying here. So this means that over the course of the test year that the subjects were taking the medication and they aged chronologically another year, but their biological age, as I will explain how that is determined in a second, their biological age seemed to decrease by 1.5 years, which if you add it to the year of testing, it's 2.5 years. So anyway, let me get into what's actually going on here. So before the medication was administered, the test subjects had their DNA examined for common signs of aging that biologists call epigenetic clocks. So they're using these markers that are found on human DNA. And over a human's lifespan, DNA acquires these certain chemical tags that are found riding on top of the double helix as we age. And as an example, one of these tags is made up of a carbon and a hydrogen atom stuck together, and they stick to the outside of the DNA strand. And these tags, scientists believe, can alter how a particular part of a genetic piece of information is read. And that's what they think one of the reasons why we have an actual physical effect of aging, one of the reasons why we actually age could be that these epigenetic molecules are sticking to the outside of our DNA and causing it to be, I guess, misread. You can think of these epigenetic changes or chemical tags as flags that demonstrate a person's biological age. So they will look for these chemical tags, they will see a certain arrangement of them, a certain frequency of them, and the scientists have a way to determine a person's quote-unquote biological age by doing this type of examination. And they say that it's as accurate as a two- to three-year range, which is really accurate and a little bit scary.
C: Yeah, but that also means that the outcome of the study is within the error bars.
J: Yeah, I know.
C: Which means that it could have done nothing. Nobody is saying here that they're 100% sure. They're only sure about one thing, which I'll get to in a second. So this early test does not prove that the test subjects actually became biologically younger, meaning that they actually grew to become younger. The scientists are trying to figure out if the epigenetic clocks are the cause of the aging themselves or if they just operate more like an after effect of the aging process. Does that make sense, guys?
S: Yes, because most of the things that we measure like that, that's what they are. They're markers that are just an effect of the thing that we're looking at, not the cause of the thing, right? So I'm sure there's a lot of things that happen in aging that doesn't mean that it's causing the aging, and that's actually one of the questions they're asking. Are we looking at something that's actually responsible for aging to some extent?
J: Or the result of aging, right?
S: Or just one of the probably many markers of aging.
J: It's kind of like, you can kind of think of it as an accumulation of scars that you get on your skin as you walk through life. Now, the scars aren't making you older. They're the result of just living a longer life. You get more scars. Okay.
S: That's a good analogy.
J: What they really did was they first identified the biological epigenetic markers that attach themselves to DNA. They were like, okay, we know that these exist. We know how to read them, and we know that they're pretty accurate in determining somebody's biological age. They administered the drugs for a completely different reason, but then when they went back and tested blood samples and took DNA tests of those blood samples, after the one-year drug regimen was over, they saw that some of those epigenetic markers were gone or changed in what they would read as a younger person's biological age. So that's it. And that's all they're claiming in all the headlines that you're reading. Nobody knows exactly. Like, nobody appeared younger. Nobody like, you know. The only thing that they noticed, and this was the one thing that I was gonna tell you, Cara, was they were testing part of the immune system, and they did find that these medications specifically rejuvenated a part of the immune system. And actually, more tissue was actually present after the study than before the study.
C: Oh, that scares me. That sounds like a precursor to cancer to me.
J: No, no.
S: You're talking about the thymus.
J: The thymus, yeah. The thymus functionality.
S: There was some thymic regrowth.
J: The studies, though, the study was limited, and I'll give you some things that you could talk to people about if they're saying that this is, you know, we're all gonna live forever. So they were saying that work has to be done to disprove the actual effects of the drugs, to prove or disprove. So as an example, there was no control group. There was only nine test subjects, which is amazingly small. And if the participants made any other positive lifestyle changes, they did not take that into account. So they don't know.
C: Which I'm sure they did in a study like this. Well, I'm not sure, but that's not uncommon.
S: It's common. They went off that heroin, you know.
C: Yeah, exactly.
J: But the other thing that they did say was six months after the test was over, they re-sampled blood samples of six of the people that did the test, and the positive, the quote-unquote positive effects of their epigenetic markers was still there. So whatever it did, it did make a change that was lasting at least six months after the test.
C: My biggest concern with this is, yes, the sample size is small. Yes, there's no control group. Those are massive issues. But also, how much did they baseline test? Did they do a single sample?
J: I think that their baseline testing is the only thing that they could possibly use to-
S: How long did they do it for?
J: Express their-
C: But that's what I'm saying. Did they also do six months prior to starting?
J: Well, what this test is gonna do though, because again, and like I said, the initial test, the whole project here, wasn't based on this. This was just another thing that came out of it. So now, of course, they will move on to specifically design a much more robust test and be able to dig in to more detail. And actually, they'll do it much more correctly. I don't know. I wouldn't say they did anything incorrectly. They just didn't have that-
S: No, they just gotta do more. They gotta do more subjects. They gotta do a better baseline. They have to do a longer follow-up. They need more subjects in a double-blind, placebo-controlled arm. And they also need to test more things. So what they need to do is also is validate this marker as meaning something. In other words, does it predict the risk of dying over that period of time? That would be a good thing to correlate it with.
C: And also compare the other epigenetic markers that are established. Like, did it do anything for histone length? Did it do anything-
J: Sure.
C: I'm sorry, for loss of histones. Yeah, not, sorry, I didn't mean histone.
S: Not histones.
C: I didn't mean telomeres. I actually meant hist-
S: Okay.
C: Yeah, but that's not what I meant.
J: Not Cara, another-
C: One of the biggest epigenetic marks of aging is actually losing histones. And so, like, how is their histone count? Like, how, you know? And maybe, yeah, look at telomeres, look at other types of markers.
S: Telomere length, histone count, yeah.
C: Things like that.
J: Now, there was another cool thing that I didn't say, Cara, but there was one other side effect that one of the test subjects had.
S: Some monsterism?
J: The guy was able to shoot lightning from his fingertips.
C: Oh, see, that's why you're excited.
J: Yeah, so this, you know, it's a little scary, and he did seem to get more wrinkly in the face every time he shot the lightning out of his fingertips.
E: So his voice got a little hoarse.
J: It's a little, it's a little scary. Yeah, so, no, but again, you know, I know, look, as soon as I read the headline, I'm like, ooh, ah, ah, you know? Like, I got a little excited.
C: And as soon as you read the headline, I was like, uh, womp, womp, womp.
S: Well, it's just, this is such an early study. The probability of this turning into anything is, like, less than 1%, right? That's basically, at this stage, you have some marker, it's gonna turn out to actually have therapeutic application, very, very low. And it's gonna take us 20 years to know, or more, right?
C: Not 5 to 10, we've moved on.
S: No, we're in the, this is definitely in the 20 years. Five to 10's like when you're at the phase three level, like you're starting the phase three trial. This is sort of the 20 year mark. There's a lot to work out, a lot to work out with this.
News_Item_3 ()
- [url_from_show_notes _article_title_] [3]
S: All right, Bob, let me ask you a question.
B: Okay.
S: Have you ever heard of Red Mercury?
E: The movie?
B: What, in science fiction? I have, I have, I have heard of that.
C: What is Red Mercury?
S: Red Mercury, that's a good question, Cara. So it is, it's essentially an urban legend that has come around again because of social media, but it's a very interesting story. It goes back, actually, to the Middle East. Not really sure exactly how long. It's kind of like, it's a cultural legend in some cultures in the Middle East. It's like the djinn, right? But the idea is that it is a healing elixir that was used by the ancient Egyptians, and the only way to get it today is from the mouth of an Egyptian mummy.
C: Wait, what? I just Googled Red Mercury, and it talks all about nuclear waste.
E: So I was right, science fiction.
S: That's the second, that's the second life I'm getting to that.
C: Oh, sorry.
S: This is partly why it's interesting, because it has its origin in a particular culture and is tied in with a lot of their cultural beliefs, and it's this notion that the ancient Egyptians have this sort of mystique, and whatever is associated with the mummies, you might think there was some kind of mojo going on there. And so, and anything that has even the whiff of healing about it, then people are gonna immediately get very, very interested. So yeah, so Red Mercury had this sort of initial urban legend life as this healing elixir from ancient Egypt, and Westerners heard about it mostly from archaeologists who have had to fend off people who were prospecting for this Red Mercury in mummy's tombs. So people were trying to get it from Egyptian mummies, and they had to fend them off. That's how we came to learn about it.
B: And therefore?
S: But in the 1970s, a separate Red Mercury urban legend or myth developed, and it's unclear what the relationship is with the original Red Mercury healing elixir legend. The story, the properties are completely different. Whether it was just a coincidence that they used the same term, or that people used that term because it already was out there as kind of this legendary mythical material. All right, so this Red Mercury was supposed to be a very, very, very high-energy chemical compound, literal mercury that was combined with antimony, and then irradiated in the core of a nuclear reactor. And when you do that, according to the legend, you get this very, very high-energy chemical compound that could be used in order to make, to use as a very, very small trigger device for a nuclear bomb, either a fission or a fusion bomb. So by making a very, very small trigger, this could basically create the possibility for a briefcase fusion bomb.
E: Suitcase nuke.
S: Yeah, so that was the fear. But also, it could just be used as a dirty bomb if you had combined it with some radioactive material, or it could just be a high explosive unto itself. There was a lot of interest in obtaining Red Mercury by terrorists. And that caused the intelligence agencies in the West to take it seriously, because we had to figure out, okay, is this real or not? I found an article in the New Scientist from 1995, basically debating whether or not Red Mercury is a real terrorist threat, or is it complete nonsense, and quoting different experts with opposite opinions. Some saying it's nonsense, others saying this could be a real threat to civilization if this thing, if this gets out. It's possible that this was a hoax that was committed when the Soviet Union fell, right? Although the idea already existed, but imagine the Soviet Union is collapsing, and there was definitely a lot of profiteering going on at that time. So if you were on the inside in the Soviet Union, you could tell people around the world, yeah, this Red Mercury stuff's real, and it was made by the Soviet Union, and now we could get access to it, because the Soviet Union's not keeping an eye on things anymore. There was actually a real fear when the Soviet Union collapsed that what would happen to the nuclear weapons and nuclear material, yeah, would find their way, and this whole Red Mercury hoax rode the coattails of that fear, and then people started selling fake Red Mercury for incredible amounts of money, hundreds of thousands of pounds, British pounds, for a vial of it, very, very expensive. There's another angle to this that's very interesting, and it's possible that Western intelligence agencies used the offer of Red Mercury as their own sting operation to flush out terrorists, right?
E: That I could believe.
S: Yeah, so pretending to be somebody who's selling Red Mercury, and then a terrorist comes to you to buy it, and you got him, right, so that was the idea. But of course, that perpetuated the urban legend, it perpetuated the myth, it lent it credibility. And now Red Mercury is getting a third life, which is sort of the newsy item, recently on social media. You could actually find YouTube videos online where people show you how to make it, but it's just, apparently all you need is mercury, lemon juice, and cheesecloth, and you could make quote-unquote Red Mercury. But what they're showing is, so you can fake Red Mercury in a few ways on video, you could just, because real mercury is silvery, it's highly reflective, and so if you have anything red above it, it will just reflect that red color, or the red light, and look red. Or you could just put dye, you could put red dye into the mercury itself.
C: Isn't it kind of dangerous to be messing around with mercury?
S: Yeah, and if you look at the videos, they're wearing gloves, which does, I don't know if that's just for the drama, or if it's because they're actually using a little bit of mercury. But yeah, mercury's toxic, you shouldn't be playing with it. Or you could use video effects. And there are some videos out there, this is sort of another angle. So it's really interesting how this legend is morphing over time, from a healing elixir to a nuclear material, and now to like this magical substance. So there are videos online purporting to show that Red Mercury has no reflection in a mirror. Why? Which of course is just a very simple video thing. Yes, so there's a vampire connection, because there are, some people claim, so this is how the legend morphs, that Red Mercury can be sourced from bat nests. Of course, bats don't have nests, so that's a problem. But that aside.
J: That aside though.
S: And so once somebody made the connection to bat, then vampire bat, then vampires, yeah, bat. And so if there's a connection to vampires, and you can prove that connection by showing it doesn't have a reflection in a mirror. So that's the latest incarnation of the morphing of this legend of Red Mercury, which probably does not exist.
C: It's so sad too, isn't it, Steve, where people have these like heuristics in their head, where like, depending on how steeped you are in lore and stuff, if somebody were like to just say a few words about it and throw in some of those buzzwords in their head, so it'd be like, yeah, that checks out.
S: Yeah, right.
C: Bats, blood, vampires, they all kind of exist. Oh yeah, totally.
S: It's all connect. That's, yeah. Now, of course, there is a Red Mercury-based mineral. Does anybody know what that is? Cinnabar, yeah, Cinnabar. But it's solid.
E: I've heard of Cinnabar.
S: Yeah, it's a solid, it's not liquid. But it has nothing to do with this. It's just, yeah, sure, there's some mineral that contains mercury that's red, but it's not this stuff. So anyway.
C: Non-existent stuff.
S: A fascinating tale of something that doesn't exist. And of course, this all reminded me of red matter. You guys remember red matter?
E: That was from Star Trek, yes.
S: That was terrible.
E: The movie relaunch, oh gosh, they mined it.
C: What was it?
J: Very dangerous stuff, man. Don't mess with it.
C: Tell me.
S: It's crazy. So yeah, so Spock had this glob of red matter, which was a liquid mercury-like red substance, which is sort of a similar kind of vibe to it, that had properties so that you could sort of create a singularity with a drop of the stuff. Get this, Cara, he used it in order to stop a supernova from destroying the galaxy.
C: Well, that's good.
B: Makes a lot of sense.
E: Yeah, it's a practical application.
C: And also vampires.
S: And also vampires. Of course, Spock had no reflection. I don't know if you knew that.
C: The conspiracy deepened.
News_Item_4 ()
- [url_from_show_notes _article_title_] [4]
S: All right, let's go on to some real science news. Evan, tell us about crystal healing.
E: Best segue of the night.
S: The other day, I read an article in The Guardian, Guardian Online, titled Dark Crystal, The Brutal Reality Behind a Booming Wellness Craze.
S: By the way, does the Dark Crystal reboot?
C: They rebooted The Dark Crystal?
S: Yeah, Dark Crystal as a series, as a TV series.
C: Is it Jim Henson still? Is it puppets?
S: Well, Jim Henson is dead.
J: It's his production company, his estate.
C: Well, I know, but his company?
S: Yes, it's all with puppets. And although there's a little bit of a CG overlay, just to make it a little bit less puppety. And it's really good. It's gorgeous, actually. And it's a prequel. It's actually a prequel to the movie. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
J: It's super faithful to the look and feel of the original movie and the sound. I mean, it's almost identical.
E: And that was one of the reasons I was drawn to this headline, Steve.
S: Yeah.
E: Dark Crystal, obviously, the movie from 1982 and Henson and Franca. So it's a very clever title to use for the article. And then subtitle describing the brutality of the wellness craze of crystals, or as we're fond of saying here in America, crystal healing. So what is crystal healing? Well, here's what The Guardian article says about it. Believers say crystals conduct ambient energy, like miniature phone towers picking up signals and channeling them onto the user, thus rebalancing malign energies, healing the body and mind. So that's about as deep as they get, but there's more to it than that. Here's the rest of the pseudoscience of it all. The belief that crystals have healing properties is a form of energy medicine, which we have talked about quite a bit on the show. Crystals can contain, they can amplify, attract, or repel different kinds of energy. And energy medicine in general, we're not talking about any kind of real energy that can be identified or measured by physicists. So the energy referred to in energy medicine is purely metaphorical and mythical. And it's also sometimes referred to as spiritual energy. You may hear it referred to in that context. Can't be measured by science, but apparently it does have effects in the rest of the measurable world. Therein lies the contradiction. This is why it's an extraordinary claim. This is why it's pseudoscience, and why it's nothing more than a belief system.
S: It's faith. It's faith healing with crystals, basically.
C: Is this what people push around when they do Reiki?
E: I believe, yes, that is right.
S: Reiki is also an energy medicine-based thing. So is acupuncture, so is straight chiropractic.
C: Oh, okay.
E: All part of the same.
S: It's all spiritual energy you can't detect.
E: Can't detect it. And if you look online, some cursory searching for crystal energy or crystal healing, you can see what they're describing. Now, it's not only scientifically unfounded, but how they describe these things are, I think, rather childish and overly simplistic when trying to tie in the physical characteristics of the crystals to the powers that they claim to have. For example, rose quartz, commonly used for attracting and keeping love as well as protecting relationships. Well, that's because it's pink, and pink is a color of love.
J: It is. Oh, wait, wait, wait. This is really starting to make sense now.
E: That's right. But beware the obsidian crystals. Ooh, well, don't beware them. You need them to protect you from shadows, ooh, addictions, fears, anxiety, anger, all this black, ugly stuff.
S: White walkers. Don't forget white walkers.
E: Oh my gosh, I almost forgot that. Must have your obsidian crystals around. So it's kind of childish the way it goes. Something so ridiculous must be considered fringe, right? An outlier of society. Belief that only people from a less scientifically advanced time would fall prey to. No, because according to Pew Research Center data in 2018, more than 60% of U.S. adults hold at least one new age belief, such as astrology or psychics. 42% think spiritual energy can be located in physical objects such as crystals.
S: 42.
�E: That is disturbing. And more about this article makes it even more disturbing. You know, we've seen a rise in this, especially lately, kind of the last eight to 10 years, we've covered several stories on the show describing examples of how, especially in the United States and a lot of Western cultures, they're abandoning more traditional forms of religion and religious identification, but at the same time, they're embracing more new age beliefs and practices, astrology, psychic abilities, and crystals and crystal therapy. They're seeing a resurgence and ascension. And this is where the Guardian article kind of takes a closer look at it. Check this out.
S: You could find websites that will tell you which crystal you should use according to your astrological sign. It doesn't get more scientific than that.
E: In a way, it makes perfect sense. Isn't that right? Pseudoscience begets more pseudoscience. Why not? There's plenty of room on the pile for it all.
J: I would have been rich by now, guys.
E: Jay, you totally would have been rich. Hashtags for crystals and hashtag healing crystals, tens of millions.
J: Yeah, I came up with this idea when it was like a year before we started the SGU. I'm like, all right, I'm gonna make a website that recharges crystals. And I built it. It was done.
C: It recharges them.
J: The website was completed. It was done. And Steve had a very severe, I don't wanna say severe, he had a very heart-to-heart with me. Like, Jay, don't do this. And I'm like, yeah, but Steve, they're gonna spend their money anyway. Like, why shouldn't, you know, why can't I have that money, you know?
C: Or why not like divert all of that money to like embryonic stem cell research?
J: Cara?
C: Or like something that'll really help the world.
J: So many good things would have benefited from me becoming rich 10 years ago.
C: There's a crystal shop like in my old neighborhood. I just recently moved. So I don't walk by it anymore.
J: What goes on in there?
C: Well, it's like they sell crystals and like dream catchers and shit. And there, I walked by it with my very good friend who happens to be really into this stuff. And there was a gift card in the window. And it said like, I love you even though, or like, I love you because you don't mind that I'm into all this woo-woo bullshit. And I was like, that's so us because I really love my friend and I'm constantly trying to like get her out of it. But at the end of the day, I have to just love her regardless of the fact that she believes in all this woo-woo bullshit.
E: Oh my gosh. There are a couple of people in my life as well, Cara, who absolutely, absolutely believe in crystals and crystal power.
C: Hook, line, and sinker.
E: Pyramids as well.
C: Pyramids, oh no.
E: It's remarkable. Yep. The thing about this particular Guardian article, getting back to the article, is that although they don't really go into this deep dive about the bunk of crystals and crystal healing, they take a look into the actual trade, the actual market for these things and how the heck do these things get from remote parts of the earth onto the shelves and into the stores of where we can buy them here in America and elsewhere. So it's scary and it reads like something out of the movie Blood Diamond, to be perfectly honest. And they go to Madagascar. Madagascar, large island country off the east coast of Southern Africa. Also one of the poorest countries in the world, but it has lots and lots of minerals and crystals. Rose quartz, amethyst, citrine, labradorite, among others. Some very popular ones that we see and buy here in the West. Gems and precious metals were Madagascar's fastest growing export in 2017, up 170% from 2016. So in just one year, whoa. They are among the other nations such as India, Brazil, China, these really large industrialized nations. Madagascar is right alongside them as far as one of the key producers of crystals for the entire world. But it's human bodies rather than machinery that pull the crystals from the earth. The people are the beasts of burden. More than 80% of crystals mined in Madagascar are mined by small groups of people, families, with no regulation and they're practically paid nothing for their labor. It is so poorly regulated, the mining locations are out there in remote areas of what are already remote areas of the world. Far from the eyes of authority, from health officials and from humanitarian groups. These countrysides are run by gangs. They rule the area using ruthless tactics such as theft and intimidation and rape and murder. So this is the environment in which these mines exist and they are terribly unsafe. They're prone to collapsing. Workers become buried alive to die. They can't always get them out. People are seriously injured in landslides and dirt avalanches. They have little to no protective clothing, these workers. They don't wear masks, they're barefoot. They're constantly breathing in dust and rock particles. They become sick. They're exposed to higher risks of cancer and silicosis. And the longer they try to make a living in these mines, the more subject they are to it. Child labor, child labor is widespread. U.S. Department of Labor and the International Labor Organization estimate that about 85,000 children work in the mines of Madagascar. Ew. And it's a particularly nightmarish scenario for children because in some cases, think of this, they are lowered by ropes into holes in the ground which are barely one meter in diameter and they go down as far as 25 meters below the surface to scrape and dig by hand.
J: Oh, man.
E: Which in a space which I would generously define as claustrophobic. I mean, to me, that's the stuff of nightmares. It's hard to even imagine it. No shaft support whatsoever, literally just a hole in the ground. And in some cases, 19 tons of soil and rock above you, suspended only by its own natural cohesion and at any point, these things can collapse. So when we talk about what's the harm, talk about belief in nonsense, we remind people every day that there's a huge cost to the belief in the ridiculous and the non-scientific. Crystals may seem like harmless or at least it's my body, who else am I hurting by believing that crystals have healing properties? Well, you only need to peer down, I think one of these black holes in the grounds of Madagascar to get your answer. Pseudoscience can kill and cause tremendous suffering, not just to the person trying to make use of the nonsense, but all the people and steps it takes to deliver these dangerous goods to our shelves and our markets.
S: Yeah, but I would say though, that is a distinct problem because nothing wrong with collecting minerals, I love to collect gems and gemstones, et cetera. But yeah, we definitely have to address the issue. It's like the conflict-free diamond thing, trying to be conscious about where your gems are being sourced. Unfortunately, most of these semi-precious stones are being sourced all around the world in these kind of lawless places, but what do we do about it? Even if there wasn't a crystal healing culture, there would still be a market for these. We just wouldn't be as big as this.
C: And the thing is, you want to support industry, you just want to also support regulation and obviously civil rights. And so that's where the conflict really comes in. We know it's relatively clear how to stay away from blood diamonds now. It's relatively clear not to buy rubies now. We know certain things, but it's hard, I guess, as a consumer to really understand that.
S: Yeah, but you're not gonna think about rose quartz.
C: Yeah, exactly, or just quartz. It's everywhere, yeah. It's like, where did I get this stone?
S: I do think though, if your industry is based on pseudoscience, then I do think that's a setup for problems. We talked about the traditional Chinese medicine market, trafficking in parts of endangered animals like pangolin scales, or the supplement industry trafficking in contaminated and adulterated products. If your whole business is a scam, you're probably not worrying about where you're sourcing your raw material. I think that's really the problem. Yeah.
News_Item_5 ()
- [url_from_show_notes _article_title_] [5]
S: All right, Bob, tell us about this massive neutron star.
B: Yes, the biggest neutron star ever has apparently been discovered. It's so big that some think we may never find one bigger. So are they correct? If so, why or why not? This was recently published in Nature Astronomy. We've talked about neutron stars over and over and over. They're not really stars, right? They're kind of corpses of stars. Beautiful and fascinating, but still pretty much burned out cinders in many ways. But they are still amazing, city-sized with the mass of a sun or two squeezed into that tiny, tiny volume with gravitational effects and behaviors that are just mind-boggling and still very, very mysterious. So the name of this neutron star is kind of long and boring. I won't even say it. I'm gonna call it Fred. Fred is-
E: Fred.
B: Fred is 4,600 light years from Earth, and it emits radio waves and spins 289 times per second around its axis, and that makes it a pulsar, of course. The really fascinating part of the story, though, is not just its huge mass, but the method that they used to determine its mass was especially interesting. I hadn't heard of it before. So kind of put your imagination goggles on. We've got, it's a binary system. It's not just a neutron star. It's a binary. There's another player here, and it's a white dwarf. The white dwarf and the neutron star were orbiting each other, and it also was nearly edge-on. The orbital plane was pretty much edge-on to the astronomer's eyes. So then, so you have this white dwarf orbiting around a black hole, essentially, and every four days, it would kind of finish an orbit, or so every four days, it would kind of come between us and the neutron star. So that's kind of critical. What happens when that, in this very specific scenario, is you have what's called a Shapiro delay. When the white dwarf was between us and the neutron star, the effects on space-time around the white dwarf impacted the radio waves coming from the neutron star behind it, okay? And that would actually delay, just by a little bit, the pulsar's radio waves from hitting the Earth. And the delay only amounted to about 1 ten-millionth of a second. So very minor, very tiny, tiny delay. Unless the white dwarf was between us, there would be no delay, but only when it was between us, you'd have this delay. So what that delay would give us is the mass of the white dwarf, because the amount of delay is directly related to the mass of the white dwarf. And so now, we have the mass of the white dwarf, and that would then give us the mass of the other partner in the binary system, because that's a relatively simple calculation. If you have one mass, and you know about the binary system and its orbit, you can then calculate the mass of the other object, which is the neutron star, which is what they did. So that was the technique, very fascinating technique, apparently very, very accurate. So when it was all said and done, the mass was calculated to be 2.14 solar masses. So the neutron star had the equivalent mass of 2.14 of our sun, in terms of its mass. So, oh, big deal, what is 2.14? Actually, that's a very interesting number, because as far as we could tell, as far as what our theories are telling us, that the maximum mass that a neutron star could have is 2.16, or probably maybe closer to 2.17. So this bad boy was really, really close to having the amount of mass it needs, the maximum mass it could have, without turning into a black hole, okay? So, and that's because of degeneracy pressure. We've talked about this a few times on the show. Real quick, once you get past, once you get past, say, 2.17 solar masses, then the neutron degeneracy, the neutrons together, are saying, you can't go any farther than this, it's pushing back, pushing back, but when you have more than 2.17 solar masses, the neutron degeneracy pressure gives out, and that's the last thing that was holding back that mass from becoming a black hole. So once you go a little bit beyond that, bam, you go into a black hole, you have a singularity, and all the beautiful, wonderful, mysterious things that happen with a black hole. And you, essentially, you're leaving the universe, right? I mean, the neutron star is great because it's so exotic, but it's a real thing in our universe that we could learn about. A black hole is, you know, is hidden, and it's mysterious, and some things that we will never, ever, you know, penetrate the veil of the event horizon. So it's a major, you talk about a major milestone there, and this neutron star is really, really, really close to it. So close that if Jay threw a meatball at Fred the neutron star, it could collapse into a black hole. And, of course, that's completely wrong because it's not just a meatball. Jay's meatballs are big, but they're not that big. What you would need is a meatball around 1,300th the mass of the sun to tip over Fred the neutron star into Fred the black hole.
S: That's a big meatball.
B: That's a big meatball.
E: That's a spicy meatball.
J: Now, Bob, does it matter, like, if I put any pork in this meatball, or does it just have to be beef? Like, give me some straight.
E: Mass is mass.
B: None of that matters. You could throw marbles in there, too.
J: Wait, wait, are you saying that pork in a meatball doesn't matter? What?
B: A black hole doesn't give a crap about it.
J: Oh, the black hole, I got you.
B: So that amount of mass, 300th the mass of the sun, it's a lot, and it's a little, depending on how you look at it. I think it's enough. I think there's enough wiggle room here that we will eventually find another neutron star, that we'll eventually find one that is even closer, you know, 2.15, 2.159, or six, whatever. I think, I hope we'll find one that's even closer and closer, because I would love to find the point where it's so close that maybe we could even potentially catch it in the act of swallowing just a little bit more extra mass and seeing it reach the tipping point and transition from a neutron star into a black hole. That would be amazing. But all of this is amazing, and that's why astrophysicists, astrophysicists?
C: Fizzle cysts. Fizzle cysts.
B: Yeah, reminds me of Jay's boy, Dylan. Fizzle cysts, what a great word. So that's what makes astrophysics so fascinating and valuable. It's really a laboratory in space that we will never really be able to truly recreate in a lab on the Earth. It's the only way we can find out some of this type of information until we evolve our technology for another couple millennia, and then we'll be able to just recreate it in our heads. But until then, we have to rely on laboratories in space. It's an amazing universe out there, and we're learning new things like this neutron star every day, and I just can't wait for the next news item.
Who's That Noisy? ()
S: All right, Jay, it's Who's That Noisy time.
J: Last week, I played this noisy. [lays Noisy] It's kind of repetitive, huh?
E: A bit, a bit.
J: It is more on the noisy side of a noisy, isn't it?
B: Nice.
J: So Visto Tutti wrote in and said, okay, it's an alarm siren, but I suppose you want more than that.
B: What's that name?
J: Visto Tutti.
B: Visto Tutti, wow, awesome name.
J: So I will say that it is the alarm at the Large Hadron Collider. That's funny. So let's say here, he said, you gotta warn people that the tunnel is about to get, as the British would say, quite thoroughly irradiated. So that would be a horrifying alarm noise. Listen to that and think of it as an alarm. [plays Noisy]Wow.
C: Yeah, because it's like screaming at you.
J: Yeah. What are you doing? Get out of here now. So Mark Constantine wrote in, hi, goddammit, I knew that Sydney subway won, but I thought it was too simple because I hear the damn thing every day. So anyway, this week, it sounded like a lyrebird imitating a car alarm. That is not correct, my friend. Although I would not doubt that a lyrebird, if it heard that noise enough, could actually make a noise that sounds exactly like the one you just heard. But that's not a cromulent guess, my friend.
S: Yeah, but about any noise, you could say it's a lyrebird imitating that noise.
J: Yeah, I will say, well, the only thing is, is if the lyrebird does something so good that I have to play it on the show, I probably, you know, I'm just saying, I'm probably not gonna play a lyrebird imitation again because I've already heard it do amazing things like chainsaws and camera clicks, but you never know, another lyrebird mimicking noise might be worthy to get on the show. But unlikely. Richard Hosker wrote, Jay, this week's noisy is the sound of a screaming hamster running in a hamster wheel. Damn, that's a good guess. You are not correct, but it certainly does sound like that.
C: Can hamsters scream?
J: They certainly do, if they're stuck on a wheel, you know.
C: Ooh.
J: So, we've got so many weird guesses this week because it's such a weird noise. So we do kind of have a winner. This is a close, so I'm gonna give this person the win. This person's name is Brian and his nickname is iPuppy. I don't know why. I think it's cute. He said, hey, long time, several time. I'm going to try to guess the noisy each week and here it goes, nothing. The sound is like the noise a weather fax machine on the bridge of a ship makes. The screeching is the data coming over the radio. The repetitive mechanical sound is the thermal printer head printing the image on the fax paper or it's something similar, old telephone, fax machine, mimeograph, or large format printer. So this is pretty close. So here's the actual answer and this is coming from the person who sent it in last week. They said, hey, Jay, here's my suggested noisy. It's a recording of a balinograph operating or also known as a wire photo invented by Edouard Bellin at the first way to send photos by wire. He said, he looked into this at his place of work, a university in Toulouse, France. It's on Avenue Edouard Bellin and on the street name sign, it says inventor of the balinograph or balinography. He's recently been getting into the podcast and thank you for listening. So what is this? It is the device that first was able to digitally send or electronically by some means send a photo from one place to another. So it is kind of, I believe, like a fax machine and kind of like a printer at the same time, but I could not find any video of this machine operating and that is the unbelievably horrible noise that it made. And thank God, like we moved away from it, right? Imagine if that's what all of our office machines sounded like.
C: Well, you remember what it used to sound like when we dialed up?
J: Well, that was, I did. Cara, I might be romanticizing it, but I certainly did like those tones especially when it worked well. You know, like there was something fun about it.
C: Nope, not good.
J: Nope, okay. Man, it's like, if you think back then, like we lived through those years. We were there, we had the computers that were around at the time and to dial up and you had to use your phone line. Like, you know, it's like it was so inconvenient but amazing at the same time. I remember when like the first internet fun stuff started to happen and me and all, you know, all you guys and my friends, we were all like sharing these funny files with each other. We would go to each other's houses with disks and they'd be like, here, man, like look at this stuff I found, you know, and you'd like share like the booty from the past couple of weeks. Those days are long gone.
New Noisy ()
J: Okay, so this week's noisy guys was sent in by a listener named Patrick Johnstone. And Patrick gave me a single clue that I am not going to give the audience because he did the surprise one where he sent me the noisy and then a file attached that is the reveal, which you don't ever, you know, for future reference, you guys don't have to do that. But if you want to go ahead, but you don't have to. I did not guess what it was. I actually guessed completely wrong. And this is one of those noisies, man. It's a toughie, but check this out.
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy]
Oh, I don't know what happened at the end there. Anyway, very, very fun and interesting noisy this week. So thank you, Patrick, for sending that in. If you think you know what this is, and if you heard anything cool this week, now, Cara, you went to Africa. Like where are my 25 noisies per day that you heard over there that you could have just given me like the download of amazing sounds? What happened?
C: Yeah, but people would know what they are.
J: Yeah, but at least one animal making a weird noise that you wouldn't think came out of the mouth of that animal, anything.
C: Okay, I'll get you something.
J: Thank you.
C: You're welcome.
J: And you know what, when we do it, Cara, we'll do a special, like Cara, who's that noisy as the person who suggested it, and I'll wear a costume or something. I'll do something fun for you.
C: And nobody will be able to see it.
J: Right, but at least you would know.
C: Good.
J: So email me at WTN@theskepticsguide.org.
S: All right, guys, let's go on with science or fiction.
Science or Fiction (h:mm:ss)
| Answer | Item |
|---|---|
| Fiction | |
| Science |
| Host | Result |
|---|---|
| Steve |
| Rogue | Guess |
|---|
Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.
S: Each week, I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake, and I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. Cara, you're coming off a solo win last week. You beat the boys.
C: I'm gonna not have false confidence.
S: Good. There's another theme this week. The theme is dragonflies.
J: Wow.
S: What do you know about dragonflies?
J: I don't think anything.
S: Well, good. All right, here we go. Three items.
J: Oh, good, good.
E: Excellent.
S: That's good. We'll see, we'll see what you know about dragonflies. All right, here we go. Item number one. Dragonflies may swarm in groups so large, numbering in the billions, that they show up on weather radar. Item number two. Of the over 7,000 species of dragonfly, a few dozen have venomous bites or stings, but none threatening to humans. And item number three. Dragonflies are voracious predators, and the large ones have been reported eating hummingbirds and other small vertebrates.
C: What?
S: Oh, Cara, that sounds like you wanna go first.
Cara's Response
C: No.
B: That's why I don't say shit.
C: I know. I think that the, I think that dragonflies have swarmed to the extent that they've shown up on weather radars. I feel like this happened recently in LA, but it wasn't dragonflies. It was like ladybugs. But I feel like I've read that dragonflies do that too, but I could be wrong. I could just be mixing them up with ladybugs. But if ladybugs can do it, why can't dragonflies? 7,000 species. Well, but that's not that weird, right? But I always think of numbers that high as being beetles.
J: Right.
C: 7,000, that's dragonfly. That's very specific. That seems like a high number. And venomous bites, I've literally never heard of a dragonfly. You always think of dragonflies as being the quote-unquote sweet insects?
J: Yeah.
C: That they don't bite. So I don't know. That one, just my spidey sense says maybe that one's the fiction. They're voracious predators, and the large ones have been reported eating hummingbirds and other small vertebrates. Hummingbirds can be really small, and dragonflies can be really big. So I don't know. This one doesn't, it sounds crazy, but the more I think about it, the more I think that one could be science. So I'm gonna say the 7,000 with some being venomous is the fiction.
S: Okay, Bob.
Bob's Response
B: All right, swarming in the billions. I don't think I've ever seen two dragonflies together unless they were having sex.
C: Yeah.
B: Right? I've never seen a swarm of them, but I haven't seen a swarm of locusts either, and I know they swarm. So what is, yeah. So let's see. Let's jump down to three, voracious predators. Yeah, Cara makes a good point. I mean, hummingbirds can get small, and they can get fairly big. So, and they can, I know they can maneuver like a mother. I mean, with those four wings, two sets of two, they are amazingly maneuverable. So I could see them catching a hummingbird, I guess. But yeah, I'm gonna, I'll have to do a GWC here. 7,000 species seems high, and I've never, being venomous and stinging? Wow. I mean, I thought they were just kind of cool and never anything that could do that to you. So I'll go, I'll say that number two, 7,000 species and venomous is fiction.
S: Okay, Evan.
Evan's Response
E: Yeah, I think I'm inclined to agree with Cara and Bob here. Few dozen have venomous bites or stings, but none threatening to humans. None of those few dozen is what you're referring to in that item, Steve, right?
S: None of the 7,000.
E: None of the 7,000. Okay, so that's, that takes to that. Well, I kind of still feel like this one's the fiction. Maybe the dragonfly can't really get through your skin, kind of like a, what, a daddy long legs, right? They have poison, but they can't get through your skin. So technically it does have venom that could affect you, but can it even get there? I think maybe it's something along those lines. You know, one flies in your open mouth, you're probably in big time trouble there. And then as far as the other ones, the group's so large and they show up on weather radar. Yeah, I've heard lots of reports of different kinds of insects having that impact on the radar. So I'm not surprised there. And then the large ones, these things do get pretty large in some places. And to eat a hummingbird? Sure, I don't see why not, especially because they do have venomous bites and stings, and a hummingbird, you can get through their skin pretty easy. So I agree, Cara and Bob, the venomous bites and stings is threatening to humans is fiction.
S: Okay, although you just used that, you used two to justify three, but you're saying it's a fiction.
E: Used two to justify three? Yeah.
C: You said that they are venomous.
E: Well, yes, but-
S: So I'm sure I followed that. I don't think that quite scanned, but that's okay. You're saying number two.
E: All right, I am saying number two's the fiction, same as Cara and Jay's.
S: Okay, all right, and Jay.
Jay's Response
J: Well, I'd like to begin by saying that I read the three of these and I don't believe any of them because they're all unbelievable, right? So dragonflies swarming in the billions, what? I see one once a year.
C: You only see one? Oh, you need to hang out at more ponds.
J: Okay, well, yeah, I'm not really, pool's good for me, you know?
S: The pond or the pool.
B: I'll hang out with you next time at a pond.
J: So here's my logic. Okay, I'm saying to myself, Jay, remember, these are insects. So then, okay, the billions, okay. Yeah, especially after they all mate, then they all give birth and they're all hanging around the same place because they like to mate and give birth in the same place, or whatever, laying their eggs. All right, but billions, wow, okay, but they're insects. So I'll say that one is a definite possibility. The second one here about having venomous bites or stings, but none of them threaten humans. I listened to what everybody said. I didn't know, like, first off, you could have got me just on 7,000 species. There's biting and stinging. I don't know, I don't think they sting at all. Like my instincts are telling me that these are not stinging type of insects. So that is a check towards me saying this one is fiction. The last one, the voracious predator one, I just, for some reason, I just don't picture dragonflies flying around going, ha-da, ha-da, you know, like they're not slathering like my puppy running around biting sheetrock. They're not those kinds of creatures. Okay, dragonflies and eating the birds, wow. I mean, I'm scared of these bastards, if this is true. I don't know, but everyone's said it. I think I'm gonna go with the group, Steve, because I don't think that they sting, and I don't think that they, yes, this one, that one seems to be the most fictiony of all of them, so I will say that.
Steve Explains Item #1
S: Okay, so let's take this in order. Dragonflies may swarm in groups so large, numbering in the billions, that they show up on weather radar. You guys all think this one is science, and this one is science.
B: Wow.
S: And yeah, I agree with you guys. You usually don't see like a swarm of dragonflies, even like in the summer next to water in their environment where there's a lot of, you see individual dragonflies, or you see dragonflies mating. You know, they kind of make that, you know, that C kind of configuration, the head-to-toe-to-tail thing. That's the male using the long, you know, tail as a sperm depositor.
B: Let's not get explicit here, we got kids.
S: And they don't usually travel in swarms, but if the weather conditions are just right, they will tend to bunch up, and these bunches of these swarms can get really, really large. And they have shown up on weather radar. They may be also mixed in with other insects, and not necessarily just 100% dragonflies, but they're primarily swarms of dragonflies. Very cool.
E: It's intimidating.
S: Let's go on to number two.
Steve Explains Item #2
S: Of the over 7,000 species of dragonfly, a few dozen have venomous bites or stings, but none threatening to humans. So there's a lot of elements there that could be incorrect. You guys seem to think that 7,000's a lot of species of dragonfly, and that you're not sure that any of them are venomous or sting, although Evan is not sure.
E: Yeah, I'm not 100% sure.
S: But you guys all think this one is the fiction, and this one is the fiction.
C: Yes!
J: All right.
E: Thanks, Cara.
C: Woo, you're welcome.
S: Well, let's break it down. So the 7,000 species is correct.
C: Oh, jeez, really?
S: That's not a lot. That is not a lot, guys.
C: I know, but it's a lot. It's not a lot for an insect.
S: It's not a lot for an insect. There's over 100,000 species of beetle.
E: Oh, beetle's the number one. Beetle's the king.
B: Oh, God is inordinately fond of them.
S: But tens of thousands is typical for many groups of insects. So 7,000's actually not that much for a group of insects, to be honest with you. You know what the closest relative to the dragonfly is in the same group with it? The damselfly.
C: Oh, damselfly, yeah.
S: Yeah, do you know what the difference between a dragonfly is and a damselfly?
J: Yes.
C: Number of wings?
S: Nope, they all have four wings.
J: The females fly backwards.
S: No. So dragonflies have rigid wings.
J: Rigid wings, there you go.
S: Always.
C: Love that.
S: Always extended. Damselflies can fold their wings back.
B: Nice.
S: Have any of you guys seen Carnival Row?
B: No, I keep hearing about it.
C: Is that a TV show?
S: It's great, I love it. Yeah, it's a great show. Carnival Row, I highly recommend it. It's an alternate universe where there are fairies, right? And the fairies have four insect wings. They fly with their rapidly beating wings. But when they're not flying, they fold back down along their back. So basically they have damselfly wings, the fairies. But anyway, but there are no dragonflies that are venomous or sting. So that's the part that's made up.
J: Okay. Yeah, they don't have stingers.
S: They don't have stingers. They 100% don't have stingers. And I could not find a statement anywhere that there are no venomous dragonflies. But I read as much as I could, I could not find any mention of any venomous dragonflies. And I read entries that if there were, it would have said it. But still, I was looking for that magic phrase, there are no venomous dragonflies. I couldn't find it. But as far as I could tell, and I'm pretty confident from the extent that I read, that's why I threw in the stings to make it 100% fiction. But they are not threatening to humans, but they do bite. So they do have very deadly mandibles if you're a bug.
J: And if you're very small.
S: And if you're very small. Even a hummingbird, yeah, the big ones have these enormous mandibles, these big teeth. And they will bite you though. If you capture a dragonfly and hold it in your hand, they will probably bite you as a defense mechanism. And if it's a big dragonfly, it may actually even hurt. But it probably won't break the skin or draw blood.
J: Okay, note to self, don't be fearless around dragonflies anymore.
S: Dragonflies will not attack a human being and they will not bite you unprovoked. But if you threaten them, if you capture one and hold it in your hand, it will probably bite you to try to get away. But you-
C: But it probably won't even hurt.
S: You probably won't feel it, right? But if it's a big one, if it's a big one, it may hurt. You may feel a pinch, you may feel a pinch. Yeah.
J: What do you recommend, Steve?
S: Harm you, it's not gonna harm you.
E: Wear gloves if you're gonna capture these things.
S: Yeah.
J: I'm just saying that if they get too close, you shoot them with a shotgun.
C: Oh, what about that horrible tennis racket thing you got me?
J: Horrible? That thing is amazing, Cara.
C: But I would never zap a dragonfly. I'm only gonna zap-
J: No, I would not.
C: Mosquitoes, houseflies, and cockroaches.
B: Hummingbirds.
Steve Explains Item #3
S: Because dragonflies are voracious predators and the large ones have been reported eating hummingbirds and other small vertebrates is science.
C: Yay.
S: And Cara is right, dragonflies eat mostly insects. This is rarely. A large one will occasionally take out a little lizard or a hummingbird or something, but you can see pictures of it online. And it's amazing, you see a picture of a dragonfly that's as big as a hummingbird, holy crap.
C: That's awesome.
S: But they eat, they just go through, they are voracious. They eat so many insects.
B: Like bats.
S: Yeah, they are amongst the most successful hunters if you keep track of how often they capture their prey when they go after them. What do you think their success ratio is?
J: For whenever they attack?
S: Yeah.
J: I'd say one in five.
C: No, it's gotta be higher than that because they eat so much, so they must be pretty successful.
E: One in-
C: 60%?
S: 95%, they are among the most successful hunters. And they have a very sophisticated nervous system. So first of all, they have like among the best, if not the best eyes in the insect world. They have like 30, 40,000 facets to their eyes. They have, the wings give them excellent control, as Bob said, but also their brains. Recently, neuroscientists studying dragonfly brains have discovered that they have incredible ability to focus in on their prey. And they can also like keep track of one fly or one insect in the middle of a swarm. So their brains can filter out everyone else. Like once they focus on their prey, their brain filters out everything else.
J: Hey, Bob.
S: Even in a swarm, they can keep track of that fly.
J: Bob, remember in the movie Alien, the first one?
B: Yes.
E: Oh yeah.
J: And the android actually looks up to the creature, you know, he admires it.
B: Yeah.
J: This is Steve. Steve is, this is Steve acting just like that android right now.
S: Oh, it's true. But here, one more thing. The dragonflies are really cool insects.
B: Oh yeah.
S: The other thing is they don't chase their prey.
J: They stroll. They're very casual about it.
S: No, they intercept them. So their brains can calculate distance, speed, trajectory, and then they take an intercept path and they go where their prey's going to be, right? They intercept its path. They don't just chase it down. And that's partly why they're so successful.
B: Yeah, you intercept Mars. You don't chase it.
S: Yeah. And then once they capture their prey, the first thing they do is bite their wings off. So they're immobilized. And then they generally eat the insects that they kill. They generally eat them from the head down. And they just will constantly, constantly eat. There was, I read one report of a dragonfly that got caught in a spider's web and then ate the spider.
J: Wow.
C: That's awesome.
E: That'll learn you.
J: Wow.
S: Turn the tails on it. They are, they are.
B: Spiders, and what the hell?
S: Incredible predators. They are incredible predators.
J: I'm not trapped in here with you. You're trapped in here with me.
B: You're trapped in here with me.
E: The Watchman, that's a great saying.
S: But it's funny that if you ask people like what the three nicest or prettiest or friendliest insects are, they're butterflies, ladybugs, and dragonflies.
J: And dragonflies. Yeah, I know. They're pretty, they're beautiful.
S: I love them, I know.
E: You can't judge an insect by it's-
J: I'm gonna stay away from it. And Cara, I am never gonna eat a dragonfly meal or flower, okay?
C: I don't think they make that, so you don't have to worry about it. Well, there are probably some cultures where they do eat dragonflies.
E: Oh, I imagine, sure.
C: But I don't think you can like buy dragonfly flower on the shelf right now. It's mostly crickets.
J: Okay.
S: And you can find online, you can find websites for how to attract dragonflies to your property.
C: Yay.
S: Yeah, but it's basically you make a little pond and you put little fish in there because they actually will eat little fish. Here's the other thing. The dragonfly larvae, also voracious killers. They will eat fish.
J: Oh my God.
S: The larvae themselves, yeah. Yeah, these things are hungry. Now imagine back in the Jurassic era.
J: Prehistoric.
E: Yes.
J: When they were the size of bats, you know?
E: The size of a bus. Of a bus, not quite a bus, but no.
J: I'd like to think that back then they had Cockney accents, you know? At least one of you laughed. Thank you, Cara. I missed you. When you were gone, this was a humorless show.
C: There's a void.
J: There was nothing going on.
S: The largest dragonfly discovered had a wingspan of 710 millimeters.
J: Why don't they just say an inch, you know?
S: You want to do like that?
J: No, I'm just joking.
S: That's about 20 inches.
B: 30 inches. 30 inches, oh my God.
C: That's enormous.
E: Get that thing away from me.
C: No, that's beautiful.
J: That is totally out of the movie Caveman, like for real.
B: Yeah, totally thinking about that, Jay.
E: And Jay, you would need a shotgun at that point, probably.
J: Right, at that point. At that point-
S: You would need a shotgun.
J: Cara, what if there were billions of them?
E: Oh yeah, showing up on prehistoric radar. I mean, gosh.
C: That's true, they would eat you. They would just eat you and carry you away.
J: You walk outside one morning and one of them's driving your car, you know?
S: Then you'd wish you'd had that tennis racket.
J: That's right.
E: Who's laughing now?
S: That would be cool, though. Could you imagine seeing a meter long dragonfly?
C: That would be awesome.
E: Only if I'm behind six inches of transparent aluminum, yes.
C: Oh, come on.
J: It'd be cool on TV. I'm kind of happy we live in a small insect world, okay?
C: I think big bugs are really cool. I'm always so excited when I see them in other countries. We don't have, you're right.
J: In other countries, notice Cara didn't say, whenever I see them in my bathroom. She said, in other countries.
C: Living in L.A., I don't see that many really big bugs and it kind of bumps me out. We do have some periodically, but I follow a friend from South Africa on Instagram and he just posted today that there was a whip scorpion in his garage.
E: It's called an insect gram.
J: No thanks.
C: I'm like, that's so cool. That's that bug that I put on my face when I was in the Amazon video.
E: Oh, the face.
C: The face bug.
S: Cara, you want to go to Madagascar, they have the Madagascar hissing cockroach.
C: I know, those are awesome.
S: Those are like five to seven centimeters.
C: There's so many cool big, big bugs, especially in Southeast Asia. So I'm hoping that I'm going to go to Indonesia at the end of this year and I want to see some really big bugs in Indonesia.
S: Yeah.
C: Fingers crossed.
S: I like big bugs and I cannot lie.
C: I knew you were going to go there.
Skeptical Quote of the Week ()
(quoted text)
– _alternate_display_text_for_name_ (_birth_year_-_death_year_), (description of author)
S: All right, Evan, give us a quote.
E: Hey, Steve, I'm flipping the script tonight.
S: Okay.
E: I proposed a quote. I'm changing to a different quote.
S: Oh, an unapproved quote.
J: And it's a quote from Evan's wife. It's, get the hell out of the bathroom, you bastard. Jennifer Bernstein.
S: What are you doing in the bathroom day and night? Why don't you get out there and give someone else a chance?
J: Lossy.
B: Bam, bam, bam, bam. Just trying to remember that quote.
E: I'm combing my hair. All right, so this is a quote suggested by a listener, Adam Mullis from Iowa. And I'll read the email and then I'll read the quote, okay? Hi, Evan, I'm a graduate student in chemical engineering at Iowa State University, studying nanoparticles that improve the potency of existing antibiotics.
B: Cool.
E: I came across this quote on the Chemistry World podcast and I thought it fit in with the medical misinformation theme that comes across frequently in the show. It's attributed to the FDA commissioner's decision during the banning of Laetrile. Here it is. "The Laetrile proponents maintained that even if the drug did not work, people should still have the right to take it because they deserve freedom of choice. But the sellers of Laetrile did not offer a free choice. They persuaded cancer victims, desperate and dying, to buy a drug that did not work on the basis of false hope. Only informed choices are free."
S: Yep, awesome.
C: Yeah, yeah.
B: Nice.
S: That's a good quote.
E: Yeah. Oh boy, the whole Laetrile story. Have we ever, have we talked about that on the show?
S: We have, we have, but maybe we could come around again. If it ever pops up in the news anywhere, we'll readdress it, but yeah.
E: So I thought that was a fantastic.
S: That's old school, old school.
E: Thank you, Adam.
S: All right, well thank you, Evan.
E: Thank you.
S: Thank you all for joining me this week.
B: Sure, man.
E: Pleasure.
J: Right.
E: Pleasure.
Signoff
S: —and until next week, this is your Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.
S: Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by SGU Productions, dedicated to promoting science and critical thinking. For more information, visit us at theskepticsguide.org. Send your questions to info@theskepticsguide.org. And, if you would like to support the show and all the work that we do, go to patreon.com/SkepticsGuide and consider becoming a patron and becoming part of the SGU community. Our listeners and supporters are what make SGU possible.
Today I Learned
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