SGU Episode 1050
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| SGU Episode 1050 |
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| August 23rd 2025 |
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"A mesmerizing glimpse of a comet surrounded by distant celestial bodies." |
| Skeptical Rogues |
| S: Steven Novella |
B: Bob Novella |
C: Cara Santa Maria |
J: Jay Novella |
E: Evan Bernstein |
| Quote of the Week |
The human understanding is unquiet; it cannot stop or rest, and still presses onward, but in vain. Therefore it is that we cannot conceive of any end or limit to the world, but always as of necessity it occurs to us that there is something beyond. |
Francis Bacon |
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| Download Podcast |
| Show Notes |
| SGU Forum |
Intro
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, August 20th, 2025, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me, the speaker, Bob Novella. Everybody. Cara Santa Maria.
Voice-over: Howdy.
S: Jay Novella. Hey guys. And Evan Bernstein.
E: Good evening everyone.
S: Jay, go over to Kansas. Has any everyone of you been to Kansas before of?
E: Course been through Kansas it's.
S: OK, I've been to Kansas.
J: I honestly can't remember, I don't know.
S: Heard about it?
E: In 1981 my family moved from Dallas, TX to Denver, Co. A part of it was a Midwest trip we took, so we went S up through the north, straight up the center of Kansas. Pretty much drove through. Then when my family moved from Denver, Co to Connecticut in 1983, we drove West to east. So I literally did a crisscross of the state. I mean, we may have stopped for a meal, but that was probably.
C: About, well, stopping for a meal. I don't want to start beef here or anything, Evan, but you lived in Dallas first. Would you say Texas BBQ?
E: Or oh gosh, yes.
C: Barbecue. I know I'm Texas all the way. I'm.
E: I'm very biased with that.
C: Though But I'm gonna be open while we're there, I'm gonna eat me some Kansas City BBQ.
E: Absolutely. Gosh, how can we not?
S: Well. Kansas is like right smack dab in the middle of the country.
E: You know it is. You know, watch some documentaries on things like the Dust Bowl, like from the 1920s. Is it incredible, just devastation of what happened in in Kansas and much of that part of the country? And it's like a little piece of American history that you don't hear about so often. It's not talked about, it's not recollected about, but it's still unbelievable to to learn about.
S: Oh, yeah.
E: And then the and the fears of a future Dust Bowl, which very well was climate change, continues very well could happen again.
S: That was really a lot of soil mismanagement, right?
E: Sure. Yeah.
J: Well, the good news is that we're not going to be dealing with that when we're there. We're going to be dealing with two shows. We have a Steve, we like to call this the private show plus, which is a three hour live podcast recording and random fun, sometimes crazy or ridiculous entertainment with audience participation. And George Robb will be there with us, right. And I say this every time, but it's it's worth noting that when we do these private shows, yes, we're recording a legitimate SGU episode, but we go off the rails. We, we, you know, don't hold back. We don't edit ourselves. Steve has to do all that.
B: Yeah. It's a minimum of eight curse words.
C: Yeah, the editing happens afterward. Before before it goes into the ship A. Lot of post production.
J: So those are a lot of fun, not just for us, but the audience always has a great time when we when we do those. And then, you know, we got the extravaganza. This is our stage show. This is a hour and 45 minute to two hour show where we there's a few things going on. It has a backbone of science to it. We are teaching you about how you cannot trust your senses and how your brain fools you. And mixed in with that, there is a lot of, you know, straight up improv stuff. George will pose crazy things at us and we have not we don't know what he's going to do. And it's all kind of an impromptu that puts us all on the spot. All the things that we've come up with. We've been honing this show for 10 years. It's a ton of fun. We really think that if you haven't been to 1, you really should consider going to this. So this this Kansas show is going to be just like all the others. It's going to be a really good time. If you're interested, go to ourhomepagethatstheskepticsguide.org and you know the tickets are available there and you'll, we get to see us. There's AVIP tickets also available for that extravaganza, which is another thing where we get a little wacky. Now we we take audience questions and usually turns into a conversation about one or two things that somebody brings up. We get into details. It's a lot of fun and you get, you get some swag, you get to hang out, you get signatures, you know, whatever you want.
S: The other thing we have on the schedule, we have the final, final dates. We're going to Australia next summer.
J: Yeah, you want to hear all about that?
S: Oh boy.
E: Oh, is this now official?
J: Yeah. Official, we're doing this.
E: Is official. OK, so we have then we have dates.
B: Yay.
J: OK, so it's a little complicated.
E: Well, isn't that what science is all about, Jay?
J: Cuz you know when you when you cross international date lines. So we will be very likely on sorry on July 18th of 2026. We will be doing a SGU extravaganza that night and then a private show probably the next morning. So that'll be that'll be Sunday the 19th.
B: Where's that Jay? Where's the?
J: Venue that's going to be in in LA.
US#00: LA Yeah, I'm still.
E: Hometown.
J: Show, I'm still picking the exact venue, but it's going to be, you know, central to LA.
E: Can you see if the Hollywood Bowl is available?
J: I already had that rented out, but that's where we're sleeping those, you know, it's going to be on those two dates. There is a chance that we might do both shows on the 18th, you know, but of course, I'm going to work out these details very, very soon. But you know, it's, it's a lot of things to consider and I'm in charge of moving a lot of people to a lot of places. So I got to make sure that everything lands exactly correct. But we will give you more info when that comes out and then what we are going to do then is we all fly to Sydney, Australia and then the conference will happen on Thursday the 23rd, Friday the 24th and Saturday the 25th. It'll start with something happening mid afternoon on Thursday. That that like this year. What did we do? Have we did the board game?
E: Yes, the board. Meeting.
J: Yeah, that board meeting was so much fun. We had a bunch of different games happening at about 5 or 6 different tables, and you know, things got pretty heated. A couple of times. Evan got into a fistfight with someone over Monopoly. But. No, so we played a bunch of different games. Everybody got to give input on what the games are. But the real thing is, is that we're getting, you know, kind of lubricated up for the conference. And typically, and we're very likely going to do the Thursday night VIP that that morphs into a, a celebration for everyone to join at some time on Thursday night and then two full days of programming. The thing about these conferences, the these not a con conferences is that we give plenty of time for people to meet, socialize and hang out, which in our collective opinion is the best absolute thing about all of these conferences that we go to. It's, it's being able to meet people, talk to people, make friends, whatever all of that is. You know, the things that I remember the most particularly about going to Tam was that I, I ended up making friends with like a couple of 100 people during those years.
S: And the events that we do do, I said do, are very audience participation. They're designed to have the audience not only interacting with us, but with each other. So it even further fosters this community, correct?
J: So that's going to be that. And then it's, it's possible that we might be doing some type of engagement in New Zealand. I am still finalizing details. There's, you know, a lot of people have a lot of decisions to make in order to to check all these boxes. But we're talking to those guys. If anything's going to happen there, it's going to happen the next weekend, which is the weekend of the 31st into August into August 1st. And we'll let you know more about that. But you are you're going to be able to buy these tickets for all of these shows very, very soon, hopefully at least the conference within the next week.
S: And if you want us to come to your hometown, sent us an e-mail. But here's the thing, honestly, just getting an e-mail from one person saying, hey, come to this remote part of the world and have a conference. We'd love to. But, you know, logistically, if you're going to fly seven of us out, which is really what it takes to do the live events, we need to know there's enough people there that are going to come out and see us. So if you can give us any information about what the local skeptical audience is like there, that will help in our prioritization of where we can logistically go.
J: Yeah.
S: All right. Thanks, brother. Let's get started.
Quickie with Steve: Fusion to Make Gold (08:24)
- [2507.13461 Scalable Chrysopoeia via $(n, 2n)$ Reactions Driven by Deuterium-Tritium Fusion Neutrons] [1]
S: I want to start us off with a little bit of a quickie.
B: Boy.
S: We ask you a quick question though. What do you guys think about turning base metals into gold? Is this alchemy? Is it fiction?
B: Is this ever all for it? Witchcraft should be burned at the stake. I'm all for this. I have to recuse myself so.
C: I I don't know.
S: All right, when you think about turning a base metal into gold, what, what base metal do you? Generally lead, of course.
B: Lead, yeah.
E: Lead.
S: Lead, sometimes iron, Iron into gold. What about Mercury?
E: Yeah. Is it Mercury?
B: Is. There is there a lot of gold in the in the planet Mercury? Is that what you're saying?
S: I'm talking about the element mercury. All right, So you know what that's called when you turn?
B: Transmutation.
J: Trans.
B: Transmodification. Transmogrification. I like that. Word.
S: There's also a more technical term, crisopia.
U: I don't like it.
J: Well, Crisopia that does not roll off the tongue.
B: No it does not. And it's got, it's got P in it.
S: Crisopia. All right? It's like Onomatopoeia, but it's Crisopia.
J: Anyway, we got it, but what the hell.
S: So, all right, some, some silly physicists have specific published this is in the archive. So it's a preprint of it, right? They, they said it's a really at this point it's like a thought experiment. They, they basically said they did they crunched the numbers and it's possible to turn mercury into gold into a stable isotope of gold AU 197 specifically from HG 198, right, using the output of a fusion reactor, specifically a deuterium tritium fusion reactor. So they ran the numbers and they said that you could do this without in any way reducing the electricity output and also allowing for tritium breeding, which is critical. So tritium is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, right? Hydrogen. It has two neutrons, right? Deuterium has one, hydrogen has is just a proton, no neutrons. Deuterium has one neutron, tritium has two neutrons. So it's it has a fairly short half life and it doesn't really exist in significant amounts naturally. So we would have to create it as we go. You know, if we're going to have a fusion economy, we're going to need to make, you could purify deuterium from water, but we're going to pretty much need to make tritium. So one of the the ideas is that, you know, you could build a fusion reactor that breeds its own tritium from the hydrogen. And so they said you could do that. So a deuterium tritium fusion, like tokamak plasma fusion reactor that breeds its own tritium. And as a side reaction, if you just line some, you know, part of the chamber with this Mercury 198, it will turn it into gold. And they calculated the amounts that would be generated as just part of the the running of the fusion reactor. And they concluded that the amount of gold that would be created would essentially double the revenue generated by the whole system.
B: That's huge right there is my Yeah.
S: So if you make, they would make as much money from producing gold as they would from producing electricity.
J: That is freaking amazing, but it's the.
B: Price of gold plummet, yeah. That's the question. How you know would it wouldn't the key would be to not to destabilize the the gold mark, but it sounds like it wouldn't be it wouldn't do that. It wouldn't be that. Much.
S: There's a lot of gold in the world. It'd be hard to, you know, it wouldn't plummet, but it might affect gold prices. Yeah.
B: Well, it's said a couple of metric tons a year, so. That's a lot. And this is. Just the volume, if you think about how dense and heavy that is, it's not a lot of volume, but yeah, it's, I wonder how much of an impact. But hey man, even if it does drop gold prices a little bit, hey, they're high enough anyway.
E: What's the limiting factor? What's to stop a private corporation from ramping this up? Jay, how much? Really going crazy.
S: How much gold do you think is mined every year?
J: I mean, I've, I've read weird statistics, Steve. Or like the amount of gold that exists in the world is the size of an Olympic swimming pool or whatever. So like, oh.
S: No, it's way more that's.
J: Right, I figured it was, but I've read things like that.
S: I really it's not ridiculous. 2002, 1500 to 3000 and tons of gold are mined each year, so adding a couple of extra tons is negligible.
J: That's true, But tell me again, Steve, how renewable energy doesn't just blow away any other form of energy? I mean, we're going to have unlimited power and gold.
S: Yeah.
E: How much energy does this take? Or does it not? It's already happening. It's already happening.
S: It's just using the basically the radiation that's going to be produced by the whole process.
E: Which is otherwise wasted, not captured for anything.
S: Yeah, basically.
E: Let's see why not if it's just lying around doing nothing. So make it do something.
B: Would it be radioactive? For a while.
S: Well, there's yeah out of the gold itself. I don't, no, it's a stable isotope. AU 197 fusion reactors will create radioactive waste from the containment vessels, you know that then have to be replaced etcetera. So there is going to be some radioactivity, but it's not like it's not using fissionable materials. It's not going to be spent nuclear fuel. It's just going to be in the the structure.
J: So the gold won't be dangerous.
S: No, it'll be a stable isotope of gold, right. Yeah. So again, this is all theoretical, of course, just like fusion is all theoretical at this point. And there's a lot of non trivial typical hurdles to getting to the point where we're going to be making commercially viable deuterium tritium fusion. But this is just an interesting wrinkle to that. And yet, doubling the profitability of a tokamak fusion reactor is an interesting idea that certainly makes it seem like it would be more be.
B: A better more.
S: Commercially viable or commercially viable sooner or however, if this all works out, you know, that's true. Interesting little tip.
B: All right, Yeah.
News Items
Older Americans Using AI (14:19)
S: Cara, tell us about older Americans using artificial intelligence.
C: Yeah. So there was a, a recent poll that was it was actually conducted at the University of Chicago for the University of Michigan's Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation. It's called the the National Poll on Healthy Aging, and they've recently published their report. They interviewed A randomly selected stratified group of US adults, 2883 in total, with an oversample of non Hispanic, black, Hispanic and Asian American and Pacific Islander individuals. Here's something I don't like. The age range was 50 to 97. But of course in all of the write ups of this, they show like somebody in their golden years and I'm like 50 that's not older. Yeah.
E: That's a beard scratcher.
C: Right. So everything is like.
B: Reading it right there.
C: This is how older adults blah blah blah. I get it. I get it for youth on a poll on healthy aging.
E: I know I may know why care of 50 because people are eligible for groups like AARP at age 50 and it could be just a could be grab data from sets like.
C: Totally.
E: Yeah, But you're not in line with that.
C: Eligible for Medicare? You're not eligible for Social Security. No, unless you're disabled. Yeah, correct. Yeah. So they basically asked a bunch of people, you know, almost 3000 people between the ages of 50 and 97 about their AI usage. And I'll give you some of the top line, But you know, they kind of opened. There's a write up in the conversation by one of the study authors, Robin Brewer, who is an associate professor of information at the University of Michigan. And she basically wrote that, you know, when we talk about AI, we're often talking about like AI use in schools or AI use in the workplace. And it's sort of biases the conversation toward younger people. And I do wonder, I mean, when I think about AII guess, I kind of just assume that most of the people using it are younger. And that may still be true, but older adults do use AI. They use AI maybe in different ways than you would think. So yeah, 55% of people who responded to the poll said that they have used AI technologies that you speak or type to for a bunch of different purposes. But interestingly, what do you think is the top category? And it's one I wouldn't have even thought of for use.
S: Google Home or Siri devices, Yeah.
C: Yeah. So 80% used AI powered voice assistance, 96% used AI powered home security devices. I didn't even know that was a thing. I mean, I guess it makes sense. But yeah, home security was by far the number one category. And then AI powered voice assistance after that, I think it was closer to one in four had used a so of the people who used some type of AI technology that they could speak to or type to, voice assistants were much more popular. About half of the people who reported using either of those reported using a Voice Assistant within the past year, and only one in four reported using a chatbot or something like ChatGPT. So that's actually one of the least popular mechanisms would be like an LLM or you know.
E: Possibly because they can't type as fast as younger people maybe.
C: Could be that same thing we talked about a little bit on the show last week, like they might not see the utility or know how to do it and a lot of these other tools and technologies like home security devices like Alexa or Siri, it's like just built in to the technology there we have for.
E: The past ten 1015 years of this technology being available.
C: Yeah. So, you know, there are some, I'll give some more kind of outcomes of the poll, but I'll try to contextualize them a little bit. The author of the of the write up here in the conversation and one of the authors of the study mentioned how independent living is a really important component to this conversation. Most older Americans want to live at home and they want to live at home independently or with minimal support. And one of the ways that they can do it because they either don't want to live in a long term care community or they can't afford to, is to use AI tools. And a lot of older adults say that AI in their homes is actually making it easy and it's helpful for them to live safely and more independently. So I mentioned before AI powered home security devices. Nearly everybody said that they feel safer using one. They also talked about trust in AI in the study that, you know, a lot of older adults are struggling with whether or not they should trust content that was generated by AI, which I think is a good thing. So 54% of them said that they trust it, 46% said that they don't. I wonder how that maps against younger people, but interestingly, the more people used it, the more they said that they trusted it. Also, there are demographic differences in older adults who use AI. Who do you think is more likely to use it? More educated people? Yeah. Those with higher income and those with more education tend to use AI more often, which, you know, follows the same patterns of most technologies, Right? Like they're going to be more likely to use smartphones and to use tablets and to use different things. Not a surprising. Yeah. Yeah. And so some more interesting things here, though, like there are some tools, you know, they talk about how AI literacy tools are probably really important for older adults. In the survey, 9 and 10 people said that they wanted to like some sort of label on AI generated content. And we do see that now, like when you go to Google and you search for something and they give you an AI overview, it's labeled AI overview, right? And different states have different policies. But it seems like a lot of the enforcement, at least from this write up, tends to be required only in political ads. And it's it, it, it varies by state, but other contexts, there doesn't seem to be a lot of regulation around whether or not you have to say if something was AI produced. So, yeah, a lot of older adults are are pushing to say, no, I, I think I need to know because I'm not as good at telling the difference between something being authentic and something being produced, or I shouldn't say authentic, but something produced by AI and something produced by people. And so they talk a lot about how, yeah, AI can really support healthy aging when used, you know, appropriately and when there's good training on how to use AI. Interestingly, only 12% of the respondents said that they used AI for social connections. Still not as much adoption like using kind of like social media or using different apps. 14% say that they've used AI to receive health information, and I think that that can be really empowering, especially when used appropriately. I love that 11% said that they used AI to create text or images. So I mean, it's a low number, but like the fact that they're using it in that way, I don't do it, but I'll be in your demographic in about 8 1/2 years. And then 9% said that they used it to plan like a trip or another activity. Good. Yeah. So it's interesting. A lot of people are using AI across the board and we shouldn't ignore or bias our literacy training and even our marketing towards younger people because it is a tool that I, I think can help everybody at any age.
S: Yeah, I love it as the idea of using it for people who are in that Gray zone, you know, to help people be independent longer for whatever reason, because of normal aging or because of any other disability. So, you know, before I retired, you know, many of my patients are in that Gray zone, right? This is like an almost weekly conversation that I was having with some family member and patient about should they continue to drive? Can they live independently? What, you know, support do they need? And yeah, just because of our this in the United States especially, you know, we, we don't really live in extended families as much anymore. You know, when it when everyone was living together, that was kind of people's parents would live in the house with them and that's how you would take care of it. And now we don't really do that so much. So like even GPS helps people who are in that Gray zone where they can drive. But they might get. Lost every now and then, but if they always can Take Me Home and can find their way home, it keeps them independent longer. Yeah. And yeah, I would love to see an AI app that's really designed to be an A, an AI assistant for people who are trying to live independently, who are kind of in that great zone, who are kind of.
E: Purpose for.
C: That yeah, absolutely. Like Just like that has all of the reminders in one. Place oriented. Oriented.
E: Help dispense your pills too, right?
S: Apps, so many little things. It's like just what we used to call like an ectopic brain like this is just helping you remember all things you need to remember checking in. They can also give you reminders. They can answer questions. They could contact your family, your contacts like your in case of emergency kind of people if necessary. Like all, you know, remind you where you kept your keys, like all these little things that that people can have difficulty with with like minimal cognitive impairment or early dementia, for example.
C: Absolutely. And even if you didn't.
E: Think there are letters to the editor to the and it.
C: Could be, it could be humanized too. I mean, I think often times we think about these things in sort of like a cold clinical or like technological way. But obviously an older adult who maybe is experiencing like mild cognitive impairment to have some sort of app or AI assistant that's like on a device or on a phone. We could talk about, you know, connectivity, like the Internet of Things and tracking tags and things like that for like you mentioned, keys in their car. Integrating all of that into one place, but also with photos, with voice notes, with a lot of like rich reminders of family and home, I think could be really beneficial psychologically.
S: And also make them feel less lonely.
C: Oh, for sure, yeah. Yeah. I think that's a huge part of it. And so maybe it'll be interesting to watch these data and see if those numbers go higher as individuals or the numbers at least on on AI use for social connection go higher, the more AI becomes, you know, a part of People's Daily lives.
S: So let me pivot a bit because we spoke about AI last week. We got a lot of feedback from it and I thought a lot of the feedback was quite honestly unfair. And it was mostly like, you guys are too positive about AI and so you didn't mention any of the negatives. And it was like you were as a commercial or you were just gullible. All this stuff. It's like, well, first of all, we were talking about one very specific thing. We were talking about chat CPT 5 and is it useful, right? Just how good is it as a tool? We can't go into every aspect of every complex topic every time it comes up.
B: Plus, Steve, the, the other component here was that this was just released. I want to wait a little, a little while at least before we get some real serious feedback. And to be fair, I didn't mean I went through a lot of websites looking at a lot of information. And by far the, the, the main thing that was being reported so soon after the release was this pushback, the this major pushback of the release and how bad the release was and. Which we talked about. You talked. About which which I talked about and of course the other, you know, the the people that that felt like they lost a friend because the the earlier models were no longer available and that was everywhere, everywhere. And I that definitely needed to to be discussed so. So yeah.
S: I think it would take us an hour to talk if we every time we brought up on this news item, do we have to go through the litany of all the positive and negative on it every single time we bring it up. So I.
C: Don't think so, but I do think that sometimes the critical feedback that we get and you know, maybe I'm an opposing voice here is I'm often the person who's like, I don't use this and I don't really get it. And maybe I don't need it. Maybe I do. And I think that you guys did a good job of explaining to me like where it's helpful and why maybe it's not necessary. I think what I want to remind listeners of is we have dedicated whole news items to the environmental impact exactly. LMS, yes, we probably could mention because I think sometimes we can be gushy, gushy about new technology, like this is so exciting. This is so exciting. Yeah, sure. And in the same breath, we have to be mindful of the fact that it could also be somewhat detrimental to the environment or these might be other drawbacks. Yeah.
S: But this is a chronic issue that comes up like how? Yeah, sometimes we have to expect people to understand that when we talk about a complex topic like this, it's cumulative. I say we've talked about this in 20 news items and we can't give we can't talk about what you want us to talk about every single time we're going to be talking about different aspects of it. But but let me just run through all of the issues very again, I did this when I wrote about it on my blog very quick. So yes, LLM training is very expensive. Data centers use a lot of energy. Training can violate creators rights to use their own material without compensation. There's a lot of hypes running AI and the reality is way more modest. AI can be disruptive and cost jobs. They still have problems with hallucinations. They have a problem with sycophancy, and some people are falling into emotional relationship with software owned and controlled by a corporation. They are causing problems for teachers as it is now trivial to have AI do your work for you. And AI is creating a tsunami of deep fakes. Yes. So just we, every time we talk about AI, assume that we are caveating it with all of that because that is, we have talked about all of those things before. That is true of AI. I don't think by saying, oh, it could be a useful tool, we're saying we're we're minimizing these problems or endorsing any particular regulation or non regulation, whatever. We've also been pretty clear that we feel AI needs to be regulated, that we feel that companies who are training AI need to be responsible for their own energy production. You know, these are trillion dollar companies. They could make sure that they're powering their data centers with green energy, you know, all those things that's not going to happen under the current administration, but whatever. So give us a little bit of credit. We talk about all these things. It's you have to give us recognize that this is a bit of a cumulative topic that we talked about over many, many episodes. And no, we can't go into an hour long discussion of all the negatives every time something comes up about AI. And I didn't just, I'll say for myself, it's a freaking useful tool. We need to find a way to make it work. I don't think just abandoning it because of these downsides is the way forward. It's first of all, it's not going to happen, so you're living in Nirvana. Other countries are working on this as well. It's too powerful a tool not to figure out how to make this work well to fit.
C: But now is the.
S: Time all solvable they.
C: Are. Yeah, they are. But now is the time to solve those problems. We don't want to get so deep though. Oops. You know, because we are aware of it and it is a clear, you know, it's different than the certain decisions that were made during the Industrial Revolution when we like, had no idea, right? We probably did. But, but you know, we, we know this, we know all of these issues and we, we need to be aware of that. Totally.
S: And none of us are endorsing the move fast and break things approach or the just let them run wild and no regulation. And you know, yeah, the tech Bros will sort it out. Like none of us are endorsing that approach. But the need for moral purity I feel is behind a lot of this. Like you could say, yeah, these are the downsides and some of these are very serious and still say, but it is a damn useful tool when used properly.
C: That's the thing that I think is so dangerous about that type of, and I'll use like a, an informal logical fallacy like that type of black and white thinking is that, you know, we do it with fossil fuels too. Like we can talk about all the dangers and all of these things, but like we couldn't just turn off the tap tomorrow, like civilization would collapse. We do rely on these things and we need to, you know, work in a way to to obviously making our entire energy structure more more sustainable. But I think there's a tendency for people like I might be more critical and less like like excited and you guys might be more optimistic, but we are all talking about both sides of that. But there's a tendency for people to hear me be critical and be like Cara's anti AI and hear you guys being excited and be like, you are so pro. You're not even looking at the negatives. And it's like, no, no, no, we're all somewhere in the middle.
S: Yeah, we're all doing both. The same thing happens like whenever Musk comes up, right, Because it's such a divisive figure.
US#03: Oh yeah.
S: If we say anything positive about them, then we're a Musk fanboy. If we say anything negative then we're or a Musk denier and hating. Or. Hating on Musk, it's like, no, he's both at the same time. He's a complicated dude who has done some great things and some horrible things at the same time. And our feelings about him are complicated. And we're just trying to appreciate the full nuance here. But you got to give the devil his due, right? You always got to call it like it is good or bad. And it's most of reality is a mix of good and bad. I say most the cyber cars.
E: Sucks. Oh yeah. It's. A spectrum I could. I love my test, it's great.
S: Cyber trucks are ugly, right? Yeah, come on, I love SpaceX. I don't like Musk's, you know, mentorship of of X, you know, formerly Twitter, whatever. Even you know the guy is problematic. But anyway.
J: Wait, can I say what I think about him?
S: Yeah.
C: Oh, no, yeah.
J: To me, he did a slippery slope. You know, this guy like slipped down some crazy pathways here and did some horrible things with the US government.
S: That wasn't really an invitation to dish on Musk. I'm just bringing him up with an example. It's.
C: I'm with you. I'm with you, Jay.
E: He is, yeah. He's a world recognized example. I get that. Yeah, easy to make an example.
S: Right. But, but, you know, there's a big sense I get with a lot of these emails. Like no, it's got to be all good all the time or all bad all the time.
E: Yeah.
S: So there are people who will not give Musk credit for the things that he has done, which I think is wrong. You got to give credit for bringing Tesla to what it was. He didn't invent it himself. He wasn't the engineer, but he did invest his money in that and pushed it through years ahead of what would have otherwise happened. You've got to give him credit for that and even if you hate everything else about him.
E: Yep, history and science are replete with examples like this of people who have done wonderful things and at the same time either later, Washington.
S: Their own slaves deal with it, you know what I mean?
E: It's just it's minus. Pauling.
S: Minus Pauling was a great scientist who became a crank in his later years. Deal with it. But right. Yeah, just it's it's pretty feel so uncomfortable, you know, having that right to be able to say that there's good and bad and people we just like there to be this in this morally pure narrative anyway.
E: Welcome to reality.
Semi-Solid State EV (33:45)
S: Jay, tell us about semi solid-state EVs.
J: Yeah. You know, I keep up on these like, you know, we all like to talk about the latest battery technology and what's happening. There's a ton of money being spent on battery technology and there are some goals that the industry is trying to get to. And of course, like everything else, you know, that whole 5 to 10 year thing is always is always hovering around any of these claims that are being made. So I thought I'd clarify some things that are going on right now. Like I said, there's a ton of companies out there that are trying to make batteries safer, you know, faster charger charging, longer lasting, you know, bigger energy storage and, and solid-state batteries have been pretty much thought of as some kind of Holy Grail that will replace the flammable liquid electrolytes in conventional lithium ion cells. And, you know, it seems like this is true so far. You know, everything is pointing to these batteries will be much safer. They should have the capacity increases that we want. But there are some things that are going on here that I think you should know about. There is a Chinese automaker called Sake or SAIC. This is under its MG brand and they announced the launch of the MG4 EV. This is a vehicle of theirs with a semi solid-state battery. This was developed by, forgive me for my pronunciation, Sushu Quintao Power Technology. And it's been promoted as the world's first production electric vehicle to carry something close to a solid-state battery. And I will remind you, though, this is a it's a hybrid battery. It's a hybrid, which is fine. You know, it's not fully solid-state, but it's taking, you know, serious steps in that direction. They're calling it like a technological bridge than a final destination. That's all good. The creators of the batteries say it has better cold weather performance, a longer life cycle, enhanced safety compared to traditional lithium ion batteries. These are all good things if it's.
S: All true specific energy density.
J: Yeah, I'll get into that. At the same time, Nissan announced the partnership with Lycap LICAP Technologies to accelerate development of an all solid-state EV battery with a goal of commercial production around 2028. Now that is sub five years and anything that goes below that five year mark, my ears perk up because it makes me think, OK, they're they're definitely not in.
S: The pipeline. It's not just the theory.
J: Correct. Yes, things are actually really happening here. So meanwhile another company, Quantum Scape, which is a well funded US startup, they revealed a new, you know, Cobra process for producing ceramic separators, right? What's a ceramic separator? These are thin heat resistant membranes that go inside of a solid-state battery that keeps the anode and the cathode apart while allowing the lithium ions to pass, making set the cells safer, more stable than the ones that the current ones that have plastic films in that in that same position. Sure, these could significantly improve manufacturing speed, which is a huge part of the problem. It is one of the biggest bottlenecks that are preventing solid-state batteries from scaling up. So this right there, that one piece of technology that was developed by this company could solve that problem. And solid-state batteries are no longer going to have the the manufacturing bottleneck to prevent them from going, you know, worldwide. Now there's another company called Stalantis. Have any you guys ever heard of this company?
B: I've.
E: Heard of it, Stalantis?
J: It's one of those companies that you wouldn't be a big surprise if you hadn't heard of it, but you know of it, in a sense. Stalantis made headlines earlier this year when it validated solid-state cells from factorial energy that can reportedly charge from 15 to 90% in just 18 minutes at room temperature. And those are good numbers. Now, what is Stalantis? They are ranked among the world's largest car makers and this year they are the 5th largest in global sales volume and they own 14 car brands. And I'll just name some of them here. You might recognize Alfa Romeo, Chrysler, Dodge, Fiat, Jeep, Maserati, Peugeot, Ram trucks, you know, that's not all of them, but that's, that's the the ones I thought most people would know incredible company. They they have, they own all those brands and this is a huge player in the in the car market. So what we're seeing here is that there there is real potential, there is real growth happening. They're making improvements and and they're they're knocking down these hurdles as the years go by. We don't have any anything right now that is like here. It is where you've got to product and it's, you know, this much better and and all these, you know, all of the traits that it has blow away what we currently have. That's not we're not here yet, but I do believe that that is coming. So the, there's a payoff to for them to develop, develop this new technology because solid electrolytes could allow for denser energy storage, which is a big deal. And it also means that the batteries could be lighter and longer range. All these properties are super important to batteries. They can suppress dendrite formation. We've talked about this on the show several times. These are like these needle like lithium growths that can cause short circuits in the lithium ion cells very bad that, you know, we don't want any of that going on. And without the flammable liquids inside, the risk of, you know, horrible fires happening significantly drops.
S: When are they flammable or are they inflammable?
J: They're inflammable means the current batteries we have. Or it doesn't are flammable you if you haven't seen a video, look up a video of batteries catching on fire or whatever. And it's crazy what happens there is it's very flammable when it when the battery is compromised. So these new solid-state batteries are supposed to be much, much, much less flammable. And again, like, imagine if they're using these on future electric airplanes or electric flying vehicles. You know, you don't want to be up 300 feet, 1000 feet, whatever, and have a fire happen. You know, that's like snakes on a plane. Like, no good, don't want it. You know, we got to do everything we can to prevent that. On the consumer side, faster charging could help make EV ownership feel more like filling up a gas tank, which is great, right? Because, you know, it's essentially how much time is it going to take? I went through this with Steve when we went to that conference together about a month ago and it was really not that big of a deal to charge up the car.
S: It was fine you had we had lunch.
J: Yes, what they're saying is, you know, the, the, the newer batteries, you know, you plug in for 10 minutes and you'll get most of your range back, which is really nice. They say for grid scale storage, the solid-state batteries can make renewable energy more practical. This would be by storing larger amounts of energy, safer, longer periods, everything you know, it's got, it's got all the features that that we want to hear about. So to look at this with a hard skeptical angle, there's a couple of catches here. We've been here before. Solid states have been five years away, like I said, for for over a decade. You know, these laboratory breakthroughs that we hear about in the news, you know, I'm reading probably all of them, right? I'm sure you guys are reading them too. They rarely translate into mass production because you know, they're talking about like I will achieve this, but you know, they haven't achieved mass production, which that's where the tires hit the road because great, you can do it in the lab and it's really small, but you want to build them out, make them, you know, have a huge amount of storage with all the other properties. That way we want, you know, most advancements don't make it when in regards to everything when it comes to technology of any kind. However, the MG4 has the semi solid solid-state pack. It's impressive. It offers energy density similar to existing existing lithium ion batteries. Scaling up solid electrolytes, it's difficult. It's a very hard thing for them to figure out. The solid-state manufacturing defects can easily ruin their performance to produce large quantities of these batteries at a reasonable cost. You know, this hasn't been fully demonstrated. Even if Nissan hits their 2028 goal, the batteries won't instantly replace lithium ion batteries across the industry like we're all hoping. Again, the adoption is going to be gradual, as, you know, the costs slowly drop and the supply chain constraints slowly go away. You know, we should see these batteries like picking up momentum, but it isn't going to be a wake up in three months and they got it. And, you know, the next year your EV is going to have it. That's not where we're at. We have to get confirmation that they can be mass produced at a competitive price. That's huge. We need them to show real world improvements in their range and their recharge cycle life and they have to be independently validated for safety and performance. So as critical thinkers, you know that's what we're looking for. So watch out for the claims, be mindful that of the fact that technology is progressing and we're looking forward to hearing, you know, what happens over the next two to three years. Now let me give you some numbers. Steve, you asked for numbers. The new solid-state batteries that we're talking about here, they're expected to be 20 to 50% higher energy density compared to today's typical lithium ion. Packs right?
S: You have a Watt hours per kilogram.
J: Well, I'm going to tell you mileage just so you can understand it. It's more readily accessible because Watt hours might mean something to you, but I bet for most people that listen to the show doesn't really speak that much. So let's just talk about miles. The current batteries we have 250 to 350 miles or 400 to 560 kilometers per charge for mid range EVs. The the the. First version of the solid-state batteries that are expected to come out 400 to 450 miles or 640 to 725 kilometers on. This with the same battery weight but with the same vehicle.
S: I'm assuming that all the variables being in the same but.
J: Keep in mind that their density is more meaning that you know, because they have a higher density of energy storage. If they bring the weight up to the weight of current batteries, I think that's where we're getting the gain from, right? Because it's, you know, you, you want to compare the weight to weight because it really with batteries, it comes down to how heavy they are.
S: Yeah, or you can give the Watt hour per kilograms.
J: Yeah. So I am like a lot of other things going on, you know, mRNA technology, CRISPR fusion, all these things like I'm hopeful. I'm sitting in the wings. I'm waiting for, you know, the right people to say we got it. It's not, you know, happening across the board with all these technologies. What we are seeing is slow, incremental process, which tracks perfectly with everything that is going on with science and technology advancements.
S: All right, but let me. I think that was what do you got? Let me, let me come back to you because now when I'm looking up the Watt hours per kilogram, which is now you're comparing apples to apples of the MGEV semi solid-state battery. They say as an energy density of 180 Watt hours per kilogram, right 180. Your current lithium ion batteries are 160 to 250. So it's right in the same range. But not only that, the current silicone anode lithium ion batteries are already reaching 500 Watt hours per kilogram, with prototypes getting up to 700.
J: Wow, that's a.
S: Lot solid-state could potentially get up to 800, but I here's the thing.
J: I read 900 but that's pie in the sky.
S: Yeah, that's fine. But whatever is like but the ultimate potential. So The thing is silicone at anode, lithium ion batteries are already in production, already in mass production and they use the same production equipment as a lithium ion batteries. And so I think for the next 5 years that's going to become the state-of-the-art. They're coming out in 2627. Ev's with the with these batteries.
J: Oh, I.
S: Basically, with twice the energy density of the of the current, you know at typical.
J: Yeah. We've talked about this. We've talked about that's coming for sure.
S: So the solid-state batteries are gonna are years away from beating that.
J: But how safe are the are those new batteries?
S: They're safer than the current ones that that we're using.
J: That's fantastic.
S: Now the I think the solid-state has more potential, but I I think that's, that's the battery of the 20 thirties. To be honest with you that the next 5 plus years are going to be the the age of the silicone nanolithium ion batteries. And then sometime in the 20 thirties we might see solid-state unless something else got eclipses it. But that's what I think because it's going to be, it's going to take that long to get the production costs down and the Watt hour 4 per kilogram, the energy density to it's not fair to compare it to last year's battery. You got to compare it to the thing that's going to be coming out in a year, you know what I mean? At the same time.
J: Yeah, OK. It's.
S: Already like in the 405 hundred Watt hour per kilogram range, so we'll see how it plays out, but it's all good. It's a good problem to have, right? We have two great options on the horizon and like predicting which one is going to eclipse the other, who cares Whichever one does it's good. We're we're poised for doubling basically energy density in our car batteries, which is going to be great.
J: What we need is Tony Stark to create a real arc reactor, yeah, and put them in everything.
E: Is he listening now? Maybe he can. He probably is. OK, good.
S: Yeah, he only put it in his own chest and never use it for anything.
J: Else I know, I guess he says it's dangerous. He doesn't want that's to that amount of power is dangerous.
E: Yeah, but the radiation can make gold. So that's that's like double the price, double the value.
J: Either way, you know what, I'm glad to see technological progress happen. I love it when these big companies are spending billions, billions and billions of dollars to, to push the ball forward because they, you know, of course they're doing it to make money, but it everybody benefits.
S: All right. Thanks, Jay. Bob, tell us about nonsurgical LASIK.
B: Yeah, this one was fascinating, guys. Researchers have described a new technique for fixing common vision issues like near sightedness and their their experiments on rabbit test eyeballs show that it could really be an alternative to LASIK surgery that is completely non invasive pain free and other interesting adjectives. So so they they released this information at a recent fall meeting of the American Chemical Society and these researchers were from Occidental College and the University of California at Irvine. All right, now imagine treating your myopia or near sightedness right in less than a minute, non invasively, no scalpels, no lasers, no cutting, no pain. It seemed to me when I was reading this, it seemed more at home at the enterprise of Sick Bay and then, you know, rather than the clinic of the near future. It was really fairly remarkable. I think it's such a cool idea that I never would have even guessed was even possible.
E: Retinax 5.
B: Yeah, right. And, and it this might be possible before we all die, except you, Steve. And this technique is called Electro electromechanical reshaping. This is where Steve should have said something similar to like, yeah, but you're older than me, Bob. And I would have said, yeah, but I'm Bob. But OK, that joke failed. Sorry. So.
S: Lead you the line you were hoping, Bob.
B: Yeah. You know, it was, you know, it was a reasonable, reasonable probability, yeah.
S: But play your game, Bob.
B: Yeah, that's OK. Still, everyone was laughing at you. All right, so this works. All right, guys, serious. This works by essentially relaxing your your cornea so that it can be molded into the optimum shape and then making it rigid it again so it holds its new shape. So that's kind of like the, you know, 40,000 foot overview of what's happening here. So it's like taking jello. This is this is the lame analogy I came up with. It's like taking jello and making part of it softer so you can change its shape and then making it stiff again. So how do they do this? That's the key, right? How do you even do this? How do you soften the cornea like that? They do it by putting a platinum contact lens on your eye over specifically right over your cornea that has a the precise diet desired shape of your for your cornea, right? So it's like a mold of what they want your cornea to be. So now the the contact lens acts as an electrode and they apply a small current to it and then that current. Now here's the critical part. The current changes the pH of that part of your cornea that's actually touching the contact lens. And that's really the critical part because because some of the components of your cornea are positively charged and some of them are negative, negatively charged. And that attraction these, these pieces of your cornea that are attracted to each other, That's what makes the cornea firm and taut. That's what makes it have, you know, the feel. And if you could touch your, you know, if you put on contacts you've touched your cornea, it's, it's stiff and firm. That's what that's what's doing. It is these negative, these negative and positive charges that are trying to get to each other. But when you change the pH though, it weakens this positive, negative attraction so that the upper part of the cornea, the part that's specifically touching that platinum contact lens that that's going to relax a little bit. And when it relaxes and D stiffens, if you will, it makes it fit into that contact lens mold. Can you can you picture that? It softens up and then it kind of just goes slurp into into the contact lens and the difference between the cornea as it was and the and the contact lens. The difference is super small. I mean it's not like this big change. It's really, really tiny. I mean that's all it takes to fix some of these these these vision problems. So then what they do is they take the they turn the current off of the device and your cornea re stiffens into its new shape and with no cuts, no tissue damage and just pretty pretty amazing. So how slick is that? I mean they say there's no pain but I think probably would feel kind of weird but who knows. Who knows. I'm sure it's pretty. I mean, I've had injections in my eyelid so this probably would be absolutely not even noticeable by me.
C: They probably do. They make like kind of numbing drops that aren't overly intense.
B: I've had, yeah, I've had numbing eye drops that are that they might have to do. I don't know. It seems it's they've mentioned multiple times that this, you know, this is there's no, there's no cutting, there's no blades or lasers. So it's it's just, I think it just might feel weird, but I don't know.
C: Yeah, but I mean, for people for whom it's like it eats them out to have like somebody pushing on their eyeball or like just that weird feeling.
B: Yeah, that's true.
C: Numb it.
B: That's true. Yeah, sure. Do. The drops, that's fine. They're they're they're not all right. So to test the technique, they tried it on enucleated rabbit eyeballs. And so that means they use just rabbit eyeballs with no other parts of the rabbit attached ex vivo if you will, poor bunnies. So they used 12 of them. They did the electromechanical reshaping procedure on them to correct for near sightedness on these 12 rabbit eyeballs. All the tests succeeded. There was no trauma to the eye. And and then they did subsequent, of course, they did some measurements and close up measurements of the of the cornea and they showed that it was all the corrections that they wanted to get to were were absolutely successful. And one of the articles I read read showed that it reached a sort of -3.12 diopter change in the, in the refractive power of the corneas. So I think I'm not familiar with, I mean, I don't have, I just have readers. I don't really have regular normal glasses. I'm not familiar with with diap diopters. But 3.12 I think, I think that's fairly standard, pretty, it seems to me they could make almost any change that you would normally make with LASIK. They could probably do with this procedure, it seems. And then they also said that there was some other experiments that apparently show that this procedure can also potentially treat some chemical caused cloudiness to the cornea. There's some, you know, we've all heard of your lens being clouded, but also apparently the cornea can get cloudy. And if, if that happens, if it gets bad, from what I from what I briefly read on this is that you would need a corneal transplant. And that doesn't sound like fun, but this this technique could potentially treat that as well. So that's pretty much the extent of the of the news item in terms of what they've accomplished, where they are right now. So what's the future of electromechanical reshaping? So this is the initial stages of research. They they, they go to pains to say, yeah, we're just really getting getting started with this. There's a still a lot of work to do. Doctor Brian Wong is a professor and surgeon at the University of California, described the next steps as the long March through animal studies that are detailed and precise.
S: What do you think about 5 to 10 years?
B: So he's like girding his loins. I for this type of thing. I have no idea what what what it could take. I mean, so I'm not even going to throw out a number here, so.
S: Yeah, it could be 10 to 20.
B: Yeah, that wouldn't surprise me at all. Obviously, what the team's going to do in the near future is determine, you know, what kind of cornea corrections are possible with the electromechanical reshaping. Certainly they'll be trying, you know, for the full trifecta, near sightedness, far sightedness and astigmatism. But remember, presbyopia, they can't be directly corrected with this technique since since that's a lens issue and this is the cornea, it's treating the cornea, it's not treating the lens. But apparently it may also, it may be able to help a little bit by tweaking the cornea to fix, to help or at least improve presbyopia. So there's a little bit of hope for me for this because that's what I have. So that's, that's unfortunate for me, but I still fascinating technique that that could potentially, you know, be a really viable alternative for LASIK. And Lasik's great. They've there's like a 95% success rate. Almost every one of my family's had it. Many people in my family have had it and they've all done fantastic with it. But there are people, there are some people that that don't tolerate it or don't forget, you know, when you're, when you do LASIK, you are, you're cutting, you're using a laser to cut into the cornea. So you are, you know, you are destabilizing the cornea and it could have your worst case scenarios, I'm sure are not fun with that type of, you know, when when you mess with the structural integrity of the cornea, you know things when when it goes bad, it goes bad, even though it's extremely rare. So it seems to me that this type of technology where you're not even doing anything like that, that it would potentially be even, you know, even greater than 95% success rate it seems based on this technique, as far as I can tell anyway. But so just an interesting little new research that these guys have done that look interesting and very promising.
S: All right. We'll have to give give an update on this in five to 10 years.
B: Yes.
S: All right. Thanks Bob. Sure.
Ad Hominem Attacks Online (56:26)
- Beyond ad hominem attacks: A typology of the discursive tactics used when objecting to news commentary on social media [4]
B: Man.
S: All right, guys, again, I'd like to start my news items with questions. There was a recent study looking at the comments online and this was to videos on YouTube and Twitter. And what do you think was the most common response when somebody objected to the content of the video or previous comment?
E: You mean, how did those people reply in the negative? Yeah, you're a jerk. I mean, probably.
C: Some, Oh yeah, probably just being like you're, yeah, you're a Dick or something.
E: Didn't didn't address the subject at all, Just didn't like.
C: You're a shill for big Pharma.
S: That's exactly correct. It was an ad hominem attack. That's the most common response online, which I do not find surprising at all. So they they examined 6500 comments, replies to trending news videos on YouTube and Twitter and it's provided 7 distinct objection tactics. And they said like which one was the most common? And the most common was the the ad hominem. So this one mainly uses as a jumping off point to talk about that phenomenon. So first of all, I want to make a distinction between an ad hominem logical fallacy and an ad hominem attack. They're just talking about an ad hominem attack, which like if I said J your meatballs suck, that would be kind of or you're a bad. More to the point, you suck at making meatballs. That would be an ad hominem attack, right? But in end homological fallacy, you'll be like, Jay, you're wrong about this because your meatballs are terror because you can't make meatballs. So concluding that someone's wrong because of their negative characteristics is the fallacy. Just saying.
C: Well, it's like what we were talking about earlier, like Elon Musk is a Dick, so Tesla's suck.
S: Right, Right. Yeah, that's a saying. Saying someone's a jerk is not a logical fallacy. It's just an it's just a personal attack. Saying that they're wrong about something because they're a jerk is a logical fallacy.
E: There you go.
S: Does that make sense?
C: Yep.
E: Yes.
S: So often times I will have people make that mistake. They, they do the fallacy fallacy thing like, oh, you're wrong because you're committing an ad hominem fallacy. It's like, first of all, no, they're just calling you a jerk because you are a jerk. And 2nd, that doesn't make them wrong anyway, right? It just means that that's not a a good or a very a nice or a viable really line of argument doesn't mean that the conclusion is wrong. That's the fallacy fallacy and I'm sure you guys do as well. I'm not sure if you do as much as I do because I'm managing 2 blogs and then managing blogs involves paying somewhat attention to the comments. I occasionally dip into the comments on my TikTok videos and on our YouTube and sometimes even on our just when we put the show up on our Patreon page. You know, it is absolutely the default mode of most comments is to be attack anyone you disagree with. And often times you know what I had an anti vaxxer come on to my blog recently and out of the gate opens up with a frontal assault of ad hominem attacks. You know, in terms of like you never look at the evidence, you're a shell, you're corrupt, blah blah blah. Of course, it could also get even worse if people use, you know, they people have like racist, sexist, whatever can be part of those attacks. But The thing is, is that skeptics do it too, you know, and we do have to be very aware that we tend to do that. It's it's so tempting. And again, it's not necessarily even wrong, but as soon as you start to as soon as you frame. Your feedback towards the person, like not that this argument is weak or this argument is wrong or it's not backed up by citations of evidence or whatever, but saying that you're gullible or you know, you have these negative attributes or you know, you're a true believer or whatever, that's this. That's really, it's a weak form of argument. Sometimes it evolves into a logical fallacy if you start to use that as the basis for saying that they're wrong. So you have to be very, very careful with that. And this happens almost every time we talk. Like when we do, we're just doing this thing on the live stream and we were doing a long format review of a video and it was horrible that the, you know, the person was a psychiatrist who was basically shilling her book where she says there's evidence for life after death and, you know, dualism and all these things. And she's just trying to brand herself, make her own guru brand for herself, right? But, you know, it's just inevitable that we get into a conversation of how much does she believe her own nonsense? How much is she, you know, just straight up lying? Is she a fraud or is she a true believer? Is she sincere? And you know, how fake is this whole thing? The thing is like, we usually don't know and it usually doesn't matter.
E: You're you know what I mean?
S: You're better off just not focusing on that.
E: Don't go there.
S: Yeah. Unless, again, my standard is if somebody, if I have actual evidence that someone's a fraud, that's different, right? We like, we've, we've talked about psychic surgery before. Somebody's palming, you know, the chicken parts and pretending to pull them out of people. That's not a true believer. That's a magic trick. That is deliberate deception. There's really no other way to interpret that. If you catch somebody in explicit deception, then you could draw conclusions from.
E: That Peter Popoff.
S: Peter Popoff Yeah, You have the radio, you know, signals from backstage, right? Like things like that. That's clear fraud. But most of the time it's, again, we talked this gets back to the clean narrative type of thing. Most of the time there, it's a complicated mix. And I think people have, you know, some kind of level of belief, right? But then they cut corners, and they have some awareness that they're cutting corners and they engage in motivated reasoning. And they may have some sense that, you know, yeah, they're really, you know, making a lawyer's case for one position. And you know what I mean? Like really pushing hard on the narrative that is in their interest. That's not the same thing as lying or being a fraud. It is more of what psychologists call bullshit. Literally as a technical term meaning an indifference to whether something is true or not. Lying means you have to know it's not true. Bullshit means you don't care if it's true or not. So I think that most people are somewhere between sincere and self deluded and bullshitting or the OR sort of the pious fraud where they are saying something that you know wasn't strictly true, but they think it's justified because they do believe the conclusion. You can't read people's minds and you can't really know we. So just police yourself. Don't just go right for the ad hominem. It's cheap, it's easy, doesn't really get you anywhere. You know, try to discipline yourself to, in my opinion, and this is just more effective, especially if you're tussling, you know, in the comments section of something online because the conversation just degrades so quickly once somebody goes ad hominem, especially if somebody else. That's what I find myself doing it most when somebody else goes there first, you know what I mean? Like they come at me guns blazing.
B: Whoa.
S: Yeah. You know, it's hard to be charitable at that point.
B: But you are always.
S: I I tend to be at least the first time, but I do I will occasionally say, Oh yeah, that's spoken like a true conspiracy theorist nutjob. Yeah, I got that right. Occasionally those kind of things will come out.
B: I love.
E: Seriously, what do you want to do? Invest your time in somebody who's going to throw ad hominins around or invest time with someone who's going to try to, you know, make some rational points about things? I mean, yeah, it's a no brainer to me. I would. I wouldn't waste my time with those.
S: People, Yeah, again, remember, See, most of the time I'm engaging in a conversation with somebody online, it's for the audience, not for them. It's not about them. It's about people who are onlookers to the conversation, setting the record straight, especially in my own blog. I'm not going to let propaganda drop on my own blog and not straightening it out. Then we will. You know, I also have continuously confront you guys. Tell me what you think about this, the endless dilemma of how heavy-handed moderation you do. Because the way I see it is a catch 22. If you have light moderation, you can't have no moderation, right? No moderation is just crazy time. Like you can't do that, but then you will, you will just accumulate psychopaths over time, right? You have to be able to at least get rid of the psychopaths. But if you have a light moderation, you do end up with a lot of trolls. Although I would argue that trolls in the is often there. Yes, there are some behaviors, but it's also in the eye of the beholder. If you have heavy moderation, you end up with an echo chamber You you. Then you can have a pleasant conversation only with people you agree with.
E: So there's some utility to allowing the trolls in.
S: Well, I like, you know, I'm always trying to allow enough for there to be active conversation and as long as I feel like it's being handled. But there, you know, there's again, there's this big Gray zone of people.
E: But it's good to practice those skills too.
S: Yeah, but then I get other commenters complain about like, not having more heavy-handed moderation, but it's kind of a no win.
E: Scenario you can't satisfy.
S: It it's kind of a no win scenario. I know it's like they poison it for everybody.
E: As long as you're consistent in your policy, I think then and you set 1 and that's it, it's the way it is.
S: Yeah. I mean, but there's always you do, there's always gonna be some subjectivity in that kind of policy, but.
E: Oh yeah, you can't avoid that.
S: No, no, yeah. I'm fairly consistent with we're, I don't moderate science based medicine. Other people do that and they're way more heavy-handed than I am. Neurologically, I'm pretty light. I've banned people on a regular basis, but it's only the worst of the worst. I have a pretty high tolerance for people who I completely disagree with as long as they're having a conversation, you know what I mean? As long as I think there's some utility to it. It's still frustrating. It is frustrating for people to drop absolute propaganda or to be corrected on the same misinformation over and over and over again. You know, it's like there's no learning curve. It's frustrating. But of course if I banned everyone who did all of those things, there would be nobody left, you know what I mean? There would be like 3 people who all agree with each other so.
C: That's like, disappointing to hear.
S: It's just, I know it's unfortunate. It's unfortunate. And part of it also is cultivating sort of a culture by example. You know, that's why I think it's so big. You know, especially for me, like, it's my own blog. If I let loose thing that gives everybody permission to do it right, in a way. But yeah, I struggle. I'm just to say I struggle with like, where is the optimal moderation policy? You know, I don't think you could fix the problem of Internet balls and you know, all the problems with social media with, with common policy, it's just trade-offs and it's like pick your trade off, but there's no, there's no, there's no solution. There's only trade-offs, right. That's. There's only trade.
E: Offs, the saying goes. Right.
S: But I do think that this one is kind of a no brainer. It's like just police yourself as much as you can about the ad hominems. It's just, it just poisons the conversation. It brings it down, doesn't accomplish anything. And it earns you a lot of credit for that. You it allows you to point out the nonsense and the bad arguments and all that stuff. Anyway, food you guys have any other thoughts on that?
C: It's tough. I mean, yeah, obviously it's a It's not just a problem for you.
S: I know.
C: Yeah. It's like a match. This is the. Exactly. It's. Like a match problem, most people.
S: Respond with an ad hominem attack that's just. The Yeah. That's how we go.
J: I'm, I'm online all the time arguing with people and everything. I mean, I take what you said to heart many, many, many years ago, Steve, and that is you're going to give yourself like, you know, a minute of satisfaction typing, you know, the thing. They're basically, Oh yeah, you know, getting, you know, pushing back on that person. But if you take the High Road all the time, you know, and they're the only one that is throwing insults and everything, the people who read it are going to feel that difference significantly.
S: The other, the other sort of guiding principle is like, it's a cliche, but it's true. Don't mud wrestles with the pig, right? Because you're going to lose. And they like it. You know, you're just getting down in the mud with them. Yeah, they like, but don't argue on their level. They're they will. You know what I mean? That's they want you to argue on that level because all of the superiority of your arguments and your evidence goes away. If you're arguing, if you're trading personal insults, you've now brought yourself down to their level, basically. That's that's actually a strategy that they might consciously use. If not, I think it's often.
E: Oh yeah, they. Try to trap. Trap people. Sure, it's a trap. It's a trap.
S: Yeah, but if you keep it as let's just keep it with on the level of evidence and logic, that's the area where we have the distinct advantage or should, right.
Non-Surgical LASIK (1:10:11)
S: All right, Evan, you have yet another update on Three I Atlas. What is that bad boy doing now?
Now 3I-Atlas is Glowing (1:10:20)
- Mysterious Object Hurtling Toward Us From Beyond Solar System Appears to Be Emitting Its Own Light, Scientists Find [6]
E: This this was going to be in the news until this thing makes its closest approach in October.
S: Leaves the solar system.
E: Yeah, well, that that too. So I don't know. Is this like one of the main news items of the year? So Science News items, maybe 3. I Atlas. Is it making its own light? That's a provocative claim that is bubbled up around 3:00. I Atlas. Which is that newly. Newly discovered interstellar visitor now cruising through the inner solar system. It might be emitting its own light rather than merely shining reflected sunlight. Now, can anyone guess as to who the prime mover behind this particular claim? Avi Loeb, of course. Is there anyone else more invested on this planet in this object? Being a spacecraft, I can't. I can't think of a single person. And more on Avi in a minute. And yes, his claims are at odds with the best available observations, which continue to describe Three Eye Atlas as an active comet whose visible glow comes from sunlight scattering off of dust and gas. A real quick reminder of what exactly 3 Eye Atlas is. That is an interstellar comet, basically, that's coming on through our system. It was discovered July 1 to 2025 by the Atlas Survey Telescope in Chile, hence its name, Three I, because it's the third of these objects that has been discovered. SO4I5 I will will someday make make their appearances, but until then, three I is what we're looking at. It is on a strongly hyperbolic path, and that's proof that it came from outside of our solar system. The perihelion will be October 29, 2025. So that's why I said in October, what was that? You're Halloween, right, Bob?
B: Yeah.
E: The Halloween comet. I'm loving it.
B: That's cool.
E: They're still figuring out exactly how big this thing is. Hubble imaging. Hubble's been keeping track of this thing. A few others have as well, but they're saying it's somewhere between about half a kilometer and maybe as large as almost 6 kilometers in diameter. That seems like a a wide range, but I guess that's the best that they've got right now. The Reuben Observatory has also taken images of it and they it was analyzed as part of a commissioning study, independently verified that there is no evidence for significant non gravitational acceleration. In other words, this thing is not propelling itself. It is working under the known forces of gravity and how gravity works. So not a rocket like push that you would otherwise perhaps see from something that would be of alien design, shall we say. And yeah, so multiple teams have now reported these observations. They are consistent with an icy, dusty comet water ice features inferred in the coma material that reflects sunlight rather than generating it. That is where the evidence is pointing right now. But you know Avi Loeb has other thoughts. I took this. Let's see, I took one paragraph from his blog from the other day that he wrote about this. Alternatively, 3 Eye Atlas could be a spacecraft powered by nuclear energy and the dust emitted from its frontal surface might be from dirt that accumulated on its surface during its interstellar travel. This cannot be ruled out, but it requires better evidence to be viable. Interesting thought, you know. And why would he? Why would he posit that? And or is anyone else really positing that? I couldn't find anyone else who is suggesting that that is the likelihood or it really comes into the comes into the equation here at all. I suppose it could be, but if you know Avi Loeb, he kind of has a predisposition again for this thing and and and so far all the objects that have come through one I2I and now three I as being interstellar spacecraft. Heck, he wrote a book about it, Extraterrestrial, The First Sign of Intelligent life Beyond Earth, published in 2021. And yeah, so, yeah, he has definitely a history of this, but the data is showing otherwise. And again, this is high resolution imaging from Hubble Space Telescope, among other observations that that have been made. They're keeping a very close eye on this. Everything is there's no clear evidence for central condensation from the analysis. It is classic comet behavior attribute to attributable to a star like point source nucleus dominating the light is not the case. This is definitely definitely what you would see. It's all well within the range well within the range of of how we observe comets and the light it it admits. So I really don't know where Avi Loeb is is coming up with this other than he's trying to, you know, do some retrofitting here to to to meet his preconceived.
S: Evan, my understanding is that the argument is so it has a coma and it's glowing, but there's no tail. If it were a comet, it should have a tail. Therefore it's not a comet. Therefore it's not a coma, and it's glowing for some other reason. But here's the thing. It has a freaking tail.
E: Right, that's everything I've read it has. A short tail.
S: It's not a typical dramatic commentary tail, but there's one definite and another probable reason for that. The definite 1 is that it's not that close to the sun yet. Give it time we would expect so the closer it gets, it's it's the more of a tail it's developing like a typical comet. The second thing is though, that it may not have the same composition as regular climates. You know, this is the first interstellar comet that we have detected. And if there's more dust on the comet on the surface, then that may make delay the volatiles becoming gas gaseous and forming a big dramatic tail. And right now there's the short dusty tale. But once all that dust goes away, then we'll start to see a more of a dramatic typical comic tale. We'll see. But again, it's all within the realm of astronomy, right? There's no reason to go for, to reach for the alien hypothesis here unless you're, I don't know, just trying to promote yourself and sell books and get donations and stuff. But yeah, it's just. And every prediction he's made has turned out to be wrong.
E: Correct.
S: Every time he says, oh, it's doing that, you know, it's it, it has this feature. It's bigger than it should be. It's actually not that big. It doesn't have a tail. Actually, it does have a tail. You know, everything with all these interstellar objects. So it's not not impressive.
E: No, not impressive. And he has a bad track record of, of, of doing this. You know, I, I brought up a news item, I think it was two years ago when they're, you know, they got some of these metal spherical. Yeah, they collected off the floor. Yeah. That was a good right of the Pacific Ocean. And Navi Loeb said, Oh yeah, that was from the interstellar interstellar meteor that crashed. And here it was. But it turns out it wasn't from that because he was using data. It was seismic data, basically suggesting that there was a loud explosion over here. There's where the crash was. No, what it turned out is that where the instruments read recorded that there was a truck driving by the facility and it recorded the rumble of the truck. Not the right. So it's like the kind of thing, right? Exactly. Bad science and stuff, you know, like, you know, we've seen what was it in Virginia or West Virginia where the microwave was interfering with with signals and they thought it was alien signals, right. So those kinds of ideas, though, don't even come into his entire calculus, when before he's making the suggesting these things, he must certainly know about terrestrial interference on measurements and things.
S: He'll bring it up, he'll pay Idlib service. But The thing is, you know, there's no reason at this point to even hypothesize this could be.
E: Alien exactly, exactly the only other than to try to retrofit what he's talked about before, because he has said what the Omumua was a interstellar, interstellar visitor under, you know, under its own propulsion of some system. So that's basically the rehashing of this again. So that's it. And you know, certainly the media likes it. They made it, it made it to headlines everywhere. So which?
S: Is probably why it's happening.
E: We'll know a lot more about it. Let's get closer.
S: All right. Thanks, Evan.
Who's That Noisy? + Announcements (1:18:48)
S: Jay, it's who's that noisy time?
J: You want to do that again, huh?
S: I do.
J: All right, guys. Last week I played this noisy. Yeah, so that's the thing.
US#00: Don't like it?
J: I'm not surprised, Cara.
E: You.
US#00: Don't like that thing?
J: Anybody want to take a stab?
E: It's some kind of critter.
C: Right, Anna Mccule.
E: A living Organism made those noises, or it's 2. Living words. Donald Duck on meth.
J: Somebody wrote in about Donald Duck. Well, the first person here, the name is they, they gave me their name phonetically, so I'm loading that into my head. So it's Kieron, Kieron Ruane. Cool name. I said. Hi Jay, greetings from Dublin. First time guessing this sounds like a duck laughing at a fountain. I thought that that was a very on the nose guess. Somebody did write in something about Daffy Duck. So there is a duck noise in there. Evil like wrote in said. I don't know why, but my guess is a pissed off catfish. Catfish. I know they can make the sound of chewing rubber, but this guy sounds like he's being noodled, whatever that means, Cooper Parish said. Howdy. Sounds like an underwater recording of a Beaver to me. OK, so straight out of the gate, nobody won this week, and I was. Certain that this one was going to be easy. Now, Carrie, you're on to something. I know you and you know me. So what is it?
C: Oh, is it a marine mammal?
J: It is.
C: Wow my my dislike for the noises they make is really consistent.
J: Yeah, it is. I mean, when you said that, I'm like, Oh my God. And nobody guessed it. I can't.
C: Believe it, I only guessed it because you said that. I never would have thought that was a marine mammal.
J: Yeah, but you still didn't like. It.
C: Exactly. My brain knew it was a marine mammal.
J: From the person who sent it in, Andrew Denman, he said apparently it's the vocal. Apparently it's the vocalization of a monk seal. But it does kind of sound like a human in there. And he thought it was funny. He said it sounds like he's saying work, work, work, work. So listen to it again. Work, work, work, work.
US#07: It's like a chance. So it's a Gregorian, yeah.
J: They make lots of other noises. I but you know, the underwater noise was there. It has that same sound as as like all the other aquatic animals that you know, like seals and stuff. So anyway, I'm surprised, but I'm not disappointed because I know how hard this game actually is. I'm the guy, you know, coming from the guy who knows the answers every single time, like even before I listen to it, I usually know the answer. So anyway, good try everybody. Lots of fun guesses. There was a hell of a lot of not ready for prime time guesses that people sent me that are funny but I couldn't use for obvious reasons. You know who you are. But still send me that stuff because I left. We have a new noisy this week. This was sent in by a listener named And here we go. Good luck pronouncing my name. It's Gabor. Foggerashi Gabor. Let me know if I I did good on that one. And here it is. I did pick that one because it has the same cadence as the previous one. I thought that would be fun. So if you think you know what this week's noisy is or you heard something cool, you can e-mail me at wtn@theskepticsguide.org. The only thing I want to tell you is if you enjoy the work that we do, if you think it's important, please consider becoming a patron. To help support the work. You can go to patreon.com/skeptics Guide and you can join our mailing list. You can go to theskepticsguide.org and you can find a link for that there. Thanks.
S: All right. Thanks Jay.
Emails (1:22:57)
S: Going to do a quick e-mail. A bunch of people wrote in about this. I'm going to read one example. This comes from Simon who says hi Steve and team. I'm probably not the only one to point out that there are many elemental drugs apart from lithium. While many indications are for replacement in physiological deficiency, for example iron, these have pharmacodynamic properties used to treat a distinct disorder. Then he lists several magnesium and eclampsia, calcium and hemorrhage and massive transfusion, Arsenic and chemo, gold and rheumatoid arthritis, silver and burns. And it's an antimicrobial, iodine and thyroid disease. So I hope this provides some additional information for listeners. I use many in my work as an anesthetist. Anesthesiologist in your parlance, I guess. I think he means Americans. Kind regards. So, yeah, so and other people wrote in with other examples. Some, I think of the examples that people wrote in with were straight up wrong. Like somebody was claiming that oxygen is a drug. So it might in some instances be a regulatory drug. You might have to write a prescription for it if you're using it to treat something specific. But oxygen is not a pharmaceutical. This is at the end of the day, let me just say this, at the end of the day, this is about another categorization issue. How do you categorize a drug? What is the difference in a drug and a nutrient or something that is just an electrolyte or something that's physiological? What makes it an actual pharmaceutical? And it is actually tricky, right, to have a operational definition that is absolutely consistent. A couple of people mistook things like they said, well, you know, like Divel Pro X sodium is counts because of the sodium. It's like, well, the sodium isn't the active part that's just makes it into a salt that you can digest. But it's the Divel Pro X which is the drug, right? So the difference is it's lithium, you know, carbonate or lithium orotate. Lithium is the drug.
C: Because what about I take, I take sodium oxybate, Yeah. So that is sodium.
S: Yeah. What do you take it for?
C: Xywav, it's it's my sleep medication.
S: Oh yeah, yeah. But that's what. But so that's the other thing is.
C: Yeah, it's an oxybate of sodium.
S: But does but is is it? Are the properties derived from the sodium or they derived from a new chemical structure? So the.
C: Sodium salt of hydroxybutyric acid of GHB.
S: Yeah. So that is that.
C: The.
S: Ingredient So this is where it all gets fun like so he's had arsenic and it and from what I could find the chemotherapy for of arsenic is arsenic trioxide. Is that still count as elemental arsenic? And of course the lithium is not in its elemental form. It's the salt form. But but trioxolate does not is not the same thing as just putting it into a salt so you could consume it. It's changing the chemical properties of it. I do think his gold example is correct. Gold for rheumatoid arthritis. As far as I can see, it is just gold, you know, different forms of gold. But at the end of the day, it's basically it's gold the way lithium is lithium.
C: What about something like, you know, I take iron like Venifor, which is just iron sucrose in my vein because I don't make enough iron, so I don't have enough iron.
S: Yeah, I would consider that a nutrient.
C: Yeah, but it's but it's called a drug.
S: It's regulated like it's a regulatory drug. So again, so what's in the United States, you're a drug if you are, if you treat a disease, that's it doesn't matter what it is. And if you make a drug like claim for it, you're regulated like a drug no matter what it is. So that you can't use that. That's like the oxygen thing. You can't use that definition as A to say that this is scientifically a pharmaceutical. Here.
C: So how would you describe a pharmaceutical like, like or how would you describe what you would consider a drug?
S: So again, there's it's hard to come up with an absolute ironclad operational definition, but I would include it's something that has pharmacological like activity in the body. It is doing something beyond its effects physiologically as just a nutrient, right? It's not just a source of calories, it's not just a balancing your electrolytes. It's not just again, something that a vitamin or, or something that's a basic nutrient and it is, you know, it is acting, it is having specific, you know, pharmacological activity in the body. It's binding to a receptor or something like that. But granted, there are things in the Gray zone 100%. So silver for as an as a topical antimicrobial, antimicrobials are interesting because they could do nothing to your body. Their activity is against bacteria or viruses, right? Or something else. And if it's topical, well, a lot of things could be a topical antimicrobial that aren't really drugs. You know what I mean? Is honey a drug if you put it on a wound in order to have antimicrobial effects? And here's one that's, I think, solidly in the Gray zone. And again, I hate the name nutraceutical for how overused it is. But if there's anything that I think legitimately is a nutraceutical, it's this, and that's magnesium. So magnesium is an electrolyte, right? You get it in food, it's a nutrient, it's a micronutrient. However, if you take it in a high dose, it begins to have drug like activity, right? So magnesium at 400 milligrams a day can treat seizures or migraines or eclampsia or cardiac rhythm.
J: What's eclampsia?
S: It's hypertension at the end of pregnancy, and it could also give you, it could treat Constipation. It could loosen your stool, so it could even cause diarrhea if you take too much of it. So it's really having not just nutrient effects, but pharmacological effects in high enough doses.
US#00: Yeah.
S: But that's true of most nutrients, right? In a high enough dose, it becomes a toxin. And toxins are drugs. That's basically the same thing. So definitionally it's tricky and you and you, there's lots of things that you could say are having are drugs and from one perspective or another. But I think their primary action really is as a nutrient. Lithium I think still is kind of different, you know, in that it really is just lithium that is having real straight up pharmacological effects. They're not nutrient, they're not radiation. Another one like saying, you know, radioactive elements. If it's that the radioactivity, does that make it a drug? That's that's right. That's that's interesting to think about that.
C: Yeah. I mean, because the age it again, it totally depends because I think for a lot of people their definition of a drug is it's something that treats something.
S: That's a therapeutic, but is it a pharmacological agent? So iodine is a great one because iodine is just really just a nutrient. But if you take iodine when you're exposed to radioactivity, it could block the uptake of radioactive iodine and protect you from that. But also you can give people radioactive iodine to to kill their thyroid gland. And is that a drug, or is that just a way of delivering radioactivity to a targeted location? There's no right or wrong answer here. It's like, how many continents are there, right? It's like there's no necessarily objectively right or wrong answer, but it did bring up this categorization thing yet again. We're like, wow, really is hard to fully, fully operationally define like a pharmaceutical. You know, I mean, we tend to use a little bit of wiggle room verbiage when we describe things like that. Then like it typically has this or Jeb, but but we leave to leave the room open for these edge cases like high doses of magnesium or radioactive isotopes or whatever, you know, I mean, interesting, OK.
E: Google's AI says there are 7 continents on there. Yeah, I'm just saying.
S: We've had that conversation on the show before, yes.
E: We'll get 12. Emails.
S: I know like is Europe and Asia one continent of two? Why is it 2?
E: New Zealand deal. Zealand deal?
S: Did my favorite is so when they made the pot the Panama Canal? Did they separate North America and South America into two continents? Was it 1 continent before? How thin does the land bridge have to be for it to not count as one continent? There's no right or wrong answer here, right? All right, let's move on with science or fiction.
Science or Fiction (1:31:28)
Theme: None
Item #1: Astrophysicists have published exact solutions to Einstein’s gravity relativity equations that allow for pre-Big Bang cosmology.[7]
Item #2: Scientists observe a unique supernova that observationally confirms, for the first time, the layers of different elements that make up the deep internal structure of massive stars.[8]
Item #3: Researchers have created a protein qubit that can function inside biological systems and potentially be used for imaging inside living cells.[9]
| Answer | Item |
|---|---|
| Fiction | Astrophysicists have published exact solutions to Einstein’s gravity relativity equations that allow for pre-Big Bang cosmology. |
| Science | Scientists observe a unique supernova that observationally confirms, for the first time, the layers of different elements that make up the deep internal structure of massive stars. |
| Science | Researchers have created a protein qubit that can function inside biological systems and potentially be used for imaging inside living cells. |
| Host | Result |
|---|---|
| Steve | clever |
| Rogue | Guess |
|---|---|
Jay | Astrophysicists have published exact solutions to Einstein’s gravity relativity equations that allow for pre-Big Bang cosmology. |
Bob | Scientists observe a unique supernova that observationally confirms, for the first time, the layers of different elements that make up the deep internal structure of massive stars. |
Cara | Astrophysicists have published exact solutions to Einstein’s gravity relativity equations that allow for pre-Big Bang cosmology. |
Evan | Researchers have created a protein qubit that can function inside biological systems and potentially be used for imaging inside living cells. |
US#07: It's time for science or fiction.
S: Each week I come up with three Science News items or facts, 2 real and one fake and then I challenge my panelists, skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. Just three regular news items this week. Y'all ready? Yep, here we go, item number one. Astrophysicists have published exact solutions to Einstein's gravity relativity equations that allow for pre Big Bang cosmology. I #2 Scientists observe a unique supernova that observationally confirms for the first time the layers of different elements that make up the deep internal structure of massive stars. I #3 researchers have created a protein qubit that can function inside biological systems and potentially be used for imaging inside living cells. J Go first.
J: OK, Steve. Astrophysicists, they have published exact solutions to Einstein's gravity relativity equations and that allow for pre Big Bang cosmology. I mean come on, do I even have to read the other ones? I don't know about you guys. Like that just seems utterly impossible.
E: That's what the cow said.
J: Item number 2 Scientists observe a unique supernova that observationally confirms for the first time the layers of different elements that make up the deep internal structure of massive stars. I I completely believe that one. I think that one is is science. Researchers have created a protein qubit that can function inside biological systems and potentially be used for imaging inside living cells. A protein qubit. I don't understand that a qubit.
S: Is is the fundamental component of a quantum computer. It's like a bit to a conventional computer.
J: They created a protein one that's that's incredible. I kind of, I don't know, Steve. I mean, I got to go with the first one here about the astrophysicists. I mean, how could they possibly, how could they absolutely claim that they can? They can do? Nope. That one's a fiction. I can't imagine that that's there's anything based on reality with that.
B: OK Bob, exact solutions to Einstein's gravity relativity equations. I mean just just pre Big Bang cosmology. Well, that allow oh man, you're just that one might be worded in a way that that allows for pre Big Bang cosmology. Let's see 22 sounds reasonable. Let me see. But even this one, you've got a supernova, a unique supernova that where you could actually see the layers with it where you have enough information. I mean, and we're talking about a supernova that's almost certainly not in our Galaxy and they're getting that level of detail. But was it a see? But even that one's tricky. And then the third one, really a cubit inside biology that that doesn't interact with the environment and you know, microseconds where you getting this crap? I mean this would deco here in moments would be utterly use useless. That's why you need super exotic conditions for qubits. You know, whether it's a you typically ridiculously cold that can function inside. Yeah, you just did some tricky bullshit here and potentially be imaging. I mean, I'm just going to do some meta crap and just go with the, the the star and say that that's fiction because I don't know what to think about any of this crap. So I'll say that. I'll say #2 the layers, that's fiction. Because there's some tricky stuff about the other ones that are. Just make them see that. Make them somewhat reasonable, because they don't seem reasonable right now.
S: OK, Cara.
C: Yeah, I'm always trying to look for like language that you're using. Obviously, I don't really know enough here, but OK, it's pronounced cubit, right?
E: Cubit.
C: Yeah, Cubit. Yeah. So a protein cubit that can function inside biological systems and potentially be used. OK. So right. How long is it functioning? You know, how long does it let like that? That's really left out. So that's like, OK, maybe that's possible. The first time is interesting in the supernova 1. So scientists observe a unique supernova that observationally confirms, OK, so there's an observation there that confirms for the first time the layers of different elements that make up the deep internal structure of massive stars. That sounds like something we absolutely wouldn't be able to do. I would think that we need like, that this is all inference. And then I have no my take. OK, astrophysicists have published exact solutions to Einstein's gravity relativity equations. What is this? An exact solution to an equation? I don't even know what that means. But my guess is that that's like a real thing in physics, like an exact solution is something. And that if they did an exact solution, it doesn't mean they have that they solved the grand unified theory. It means that they have some sort of solution. So I think I'm going to go with Bob on this because it feels like that the observational confirmation for the very first time seems harder to achieve.
S: OK. And Devin?
E: A qubit was the length of measurement for Noah's Ark, so therefore. That still different. Protein qubits must be the fiction. No, I will just jump right to it. I'm going to join and lock arms with Jay. And I have a feeling that, yeah, exact solutions. I think exact could be the the keyword here about that. And it, it, it almost sounds how this is written, Steve, that if this were to have happened, this could have been some kind of enormous news in science. And I don't know, I, I haven't seen it cross my desk. And so therefore I'll use that personal bias to declare that it is fiction.
S: All right, so even split. So you all agree on the third one on the Qubit 1 researchers create a protein, create a protein qubit that can function inside biological systems and potentially be used for imaging inside living cells. You all agree that this one is science and this one is science. It is science.
B: No.
S: Oh my God, this is a fluorescent protein spin cubit.
C: OK.
S: Yeah. So spin cubit, Yeah, it's made, it's a, it's a protein. So the the part of it that is cubit, that is the cubit superposition makes it, what's in superposition here is the spin of electrons in one particular part of the protein, right. So another way that they've done this spin cubits for is to have the voids inside is the nitrogen vacancy centers in diamonds. That's another spin cubit material, right? So the reason why they were using fluorescent proteins is because they're genetically encodable, right? And they could be used in biological systems. So this could be potentially used for to make a quantum sensor and which and it functions at room temperature, right? And that therefore they could use optically detected magnetic resonance in order to image even inside living cells potentially. So yeah, this is the thing. This is again, this is a the basic science. They made the protein and they showed that it functions as a spin qubit. The applications are to be determined and that's down the road.
B: But yeah, enough about those. I don't know enough about those spin qubits I guess.
S: Yeah, yeah, there I had to do. I'd spent some time trying to figure out but the basics of not that I fully understand, just just to say what I said. All right, let's go back to #1 astrophysicists have published exact solutions to Einstein's gravity relativity equations that allow for pre Big Bang cosmology. Jay and Evan think this one is the fiction. Bob and Cara, I think this one is science and this one is. Now what do you think I mean by pre Big Bang cosmology specifically?
C: I didn't even get that if it gets.
S: Cosmology.
E: Cosmology that goes beyond the observable.
S: It just means that they could think about, they could pose questions about what came before The Big Bang. And they have. Yeah, that's all something says.
B: They. Have some basis asking Yeah, easy.
S: Not one or another thing is viable or consistent with.
B: You know this is bullshit. So come on. So what happened before there was time? How does that work?
S: So this one is the fiction, but not necessarily finally, not necessarily for the reason that you think. Evan, actually come on, pretty much hit the nail on the head. It did because they did come up with, they did publish a paper looking at Einstein's gravity equations. They didn't come up with an exact solution. They came up with a numerical solution, which means that it's just they basically used what's called numerical relativism. So instead they just use simulations to brute force like what the answers could be, not solving the equations themselves. Does that make sense? And they said with this, you can, you know, address questions about big cosmological questions such as what was go, what happened before The Big Bang? What's the ultimate fate of the universe? Are we going to come up? Is there going to be a big RIP all these kind of things? They said, yeah, if you just forget about trying to solve the equations, because that's why our physicists have been focusing on trying to come up with specific exact Rep, you know, solutions to general relativistic equation, you know, to come up with the quantum loop gravity or whatever, whatever. The ultimate unifying solutions. Quantum, Yeah, to quantum gravity, basically. And to forget that we're just going to come up with probabilistic ones based upon simulations and then use those to test.
B: How helpful could that possibly you know?
J: Steve, aren't there certain questions that immediately turn into a blue screen of death? I mean this, like this is one of them. Like you can't even begin to ask that question.
S: You can't because even though, like the universe began with The Big Bang, you could ask like all right, from what happened at the, you know, within tiny fractions of time after The Big Bang can does that tell us anything about maybe what happened before The Big Bang? It isn't necessarily no apps. What's stopping point?
B: What's on the other side of dividing the universe by zero?
S: Right. But that's the equation part of it, right? We that's where you can't. Yeah, but you got to go through that.
B: You got to go or you just man if you.
S: If that's the point, that they solve that problem by not trying to come up with solutions to the equation itself.
B: Oh, so, so they're, so they're pulling a data move of not of not trying to win, but just trying not to.
S: Basically, I guess you could put it that way, but again, this is the fixture which I don't have to endorse any of this. I'm just telling you this is where I got it from.
E: I have one question though, Steve. If it were, if it were science, if there were, it was an exact solution. Would that not be a? Normal.
S: Absolutely, Absolutely. The part that Bob is saying is correct. You don't have exact solutions because they don't work right. That's the problem.
E: Right, and and there won't be a.
S: URL unless we come up with a deeper equation that the quantum gravity basically all right, which means, oh, serious height does observe a unique supernova that observationally confirms for the first time the layers of different elements that make up the deep internal structure of massive stars. Now what am I talking about here? So you know.
US#00: No idea.
S: Stars begin their life as mostly hydrogen, and as they fuse the hydrogen into helium, helium collects at the core until so much of it collects that there isn't enough heat and pressure to fuse more hydrogen. The star collapses until the helium gets so hot and dense that it starts fusing into even heavier elements. And then that cycle goes through again until each successive time, the heavier element at the core of the star starts to fuse into still more heavier elements. And the bigger, the more massive the star, the farther you can go until the most massive stars can can fuse down to what? What's the stopping point?
J: Lead iron.
S: Iron because iron, it costs energy to fizz or fuse, right? That's sort of the bottom of the through. So you can't get any energy out of it nuclear wise. And so that's it. So you end up with this is the theory, right? So you have this layer, you know, the massive stars will have this onion layer structure. Sure. You have hydrogen, then helium, then lithium, then whatever, then heavier. Yeah, then all the way down to iron. But The thing is, we've never observed this. This is just theory.
B: Wow, so that. We haven't directly observed it.
S: We have observed now in a supernova, right when a star blows out its outer layers, we can see the inner layers, but we can only see a couple of layers deep. We've never gotten to the deep internal layers of the most massive * cars until this most recent supernova which had the deeper layer. When it exploded we were seeing Oh my God there's the deeper layers. So how did that happen? So they're not sure, but it seems as if before it went supernova, something happened to cause it to shed its outer layers. So when it when it did go supernova, it was already stripped down to silicon and sulfur. And those are the ones that we could see when it when it blew, when it blew those layers away, Right? That makes sense. So it was just we happened to catch a supernova of a stripped down star that had the inner layers exposed and that allowed us to visually confirm like Yep, those are the layers. When when you get a star that big, it will have those layers on the inside. And specifically it was silicon and sulfur. So cool.
B: Spectroscopy. But they were looking at it after it already blew. So the, so they're pulling this information out of, you know, an exploding star. So that, yeah, that's really cool.
S: You know what they were using for that, Steve? Are they used Spectra photometry, the Lick Observatory and the Keck Observatory?
E: The Keck? That's the one in Hawaii, right?
S: The European Southern Observatory, So they had multiple observatories collecting data.
B: Cool.
S: I didn't realize that, that we didn't really have any observational confirmation of that. You know that notion. Pretty cool.
B: Yeah, but if they could detect all those layers after the explosion, why can't they detect those layers with a regular?
S: I guess because they don't get blown away because they they just collapse I guess into the core, you lose the outer layers. So that that's the thing, They didn't know if these inner layers could themselves explode into a supernova, but apparently, apparently they can't.
E: Yeah, that makes sense.
S: But they didn't, Yeah, didn't know that before.
J: Can we get back to the fact that me and.
S: Evan Yeah, you guys, you guys did it. Good job.
E: Thanks. Thanks for leading the way. I appreciate.
S: It I thought you might be a solo win this week, Jay, but Evan joins you. It's a good. Friend, no, I'm happy to be joined. This was this was. These were three hard items like this week.
E: Very, very.
B: They were effing ridiculous.
S: Yeah, but you guys have been kicking my ass this year, so that's what you get.
B: Give. Me a break. Yeah.
S: All right.
B: Evan, you're welcome.
Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:47:25)
The human understanding is unquiet; it cannot stop or rest, and still presses onward, but in vain. Therefore it is that we cannot conceive of any end or limit to the world, but always as of necessity it occurs to us that there is something beyond.
– Francis Bacon, (description of author)
B: Here's the quote. I I I should have just totally gone with the pre Big Bang bullshit. That's what should have made like that. He's. Going to be talking, Yeah, that's all that. Make your brain kind of go right by so there's. No. Way but see yeah, Steve is evil. I I can hear him chuckling. This is really going to get Bob.
S: I don't target you specifically, Bob.
B: Oh, it's just AI. Just. Turned out that way.
E: All right, here's this week's quote I'm going to get Bob. Steve Novella. No, the human understanding is unquiet. It cannot stop or rest and still presses onward, but in vain. Therefore it is that we cannot conceive of any end or limit to the world, but as always, as of necessity, it occurs to us that there is something beyond. That was written by Francis Bacon very, very early. Science.
B: It was pretty awesome.
E: English philosopher, born in 1561. He died in 1626. Essayist who is considered a founder of modern scientific thought.
S: There's always something we don't know. What a legacy.
E: Right. And you keep going and it's unquiet. You never rest, you never stop. That's that's the nature we have to keep going. We can always learn. There's always, always 100% of the time more to learn.
S: And with that comedian or brand or something, he said. If science knew everything, it would stop, right?
E: Science was wrong because it got this wrong. No, it evolved and added to its body of knowledge. I mean, how many, how often have you heard that throughout our. Lives.
S: They used to think X now they think why? Yeah, that's what happens when you gather new information.
E: What do you do? You're right. Welcome to.
B: Reality. Stick with your with your old beliefs no matter what I guess.
S: All right. Well, thank you guys for joining me this week. Of course.
E: Thanks.
S: Steve and until next week, this is your Skeptics Guide to the Universe.
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- ↑ arxiv.org: [2507.13461 Scalable Chrysopoeia via $(n, 2n)$ Reactions Driven by Deuterium-Tritium Fusion Neutrons]
- ↑ theconversation.com: Older Americans are using AI − study shows how and what they think of it
- ↑ electrek.co: The first EV with a semi-solid-state battery is cleared for sale
- ↑ journals.plos.org: Beyond ad hominem attacks: A typology of the discursive tactics used when objecting to news commentary on social media
- ↑ newatlas.com: New non-invasive method may replace LASIK eye surgery
- ↑ futurism.com: Mysterious Object Hurtling Toward Us From Beyond Solar System Appears to Be Emitting Its Own Light, Scientists Find
- ↑ link.springer.com: Cosmology using numerical relativity
- ↑ www.nature.com: Extremely stripped supernova reveals a silicon and sulfur formation site
- ↑ www.nature.com: A fluorescent-protein spin qubit