SGU Episode 352
Links
Skeptical Rogues
- S: Steven Novella
- B: Bob Novella
- R: Rebecca Watson
- J: Jay Novella
- E: Evan Bernstein
Introduction
S: Hello, and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday April 11th 2012 and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella.
B: Hey everybody.
S: Rebecca Watson
R: Hello everyone
S: Jay Novella
J: Hey guys
S: And Evan Bernstein.
E: Good evening everybody.
J: Hello.
S: How's everyone doing this evening?
R: Super
B: Pretty good
J: Quite well
This Day in Skepticism
Titanic Disaster
R: Guess what today is.
S: uuuh, it is 100 years after the Titanic struck an iceberg.
R: Steve, why do you have to step all over my stuff?
S: Because you asked!
R: It was a rhetorical question, Steve.
S: Oh, I don't know Rebecca, what is today?
R: Today is the 100th anniversary of the Titanic sinking, you see how I said that even better that you did?
S: Except you were wrong.
R: Shut up.
S: The Titanic did not sink on the 14th, it struck the ice burg at 11:40 on the 14th. It sunk on the 15th.
E: Aaah. Sunk on the 15th, that's right.
R: I was going by Australian time, Steve.
S: (laughs) But not local ship time. I'm going by local ship time.
R: No.
E: Local shipwreck time.
R: I was trying to be kind to our Australian friends.
E: They said it hit a Goldberg? What? Oh, an iceberg.
S: (laughs) an iceberg, right.
E: That old joke.
S: But tell us the story.
R: You know the story, Steve. You know the story. Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet got on a boat. The boat sank. One of them died I guess, I didn't make it to the end.
(laughter)
R: Really long. Long movie. Yes, in 1912, the Titanic was the hot ticket supposedly unsinkable liner. And they were wrong. They hit an iceberg and sunk, there were not enough lifeboats to go around, lots of people died, we talked about this last week I believe.
S: We did, a lot of interesting details about the story. As I said last week, 1514 people died. There were only enough lifeboats on the Titanic for half of the current passengers, only a third of maximal capacity.
E: Yeah, and they didn't even fill those boats, like some of them launched with a dozen people. Cos it was a big mess, yeah.
S: Yeah, it was poor training. The crew didn't know how many people were supposed to go in the boats so they were launching them half-full yeah. It was crazy. And most of the men died, they did women and children first. Most of the men, even first class. 67%, two thirds of men in first class died. Most people who died, died from hypothermia. As soon as they hit the water, they lasted a minute. They died almost immediately. Were you guys aware that there was a ship that could have rescued everybody? The SS Californian was very close at hand, had spotted the Titanic, had spotted the flares, the rockets that were launched. The captain who was asleep, Captain Stanley Lord, he was awakened by a junior officer and he was like aaaah waah, alright whatever, he rolled over and went back to sleep. He basically said, well what colours were they, were they just trying to identify themselves or something? I guess the ships would use different coloured flares as ID. He said nope all the flares were white captain. It's like, alright keep me posted. But they didn't do anything. They could have. They arrived at 5 o'clock in the morning after the Carpathia had already rescued everybody who was in the lifeboats. It was too late to be of any use. So it was, really a tragedy. I mean, just no idea.
B: Oh my god, Steve now it's kind of worse.
E: Yeah.
J: Could you imagine that guy a week later?
S: Yeah.
R: Yeah.
J: He must have... it probably ruined his life.
S: Oh it did, he was actually, an enquiry found that he acted improperly. So probably his career was over at that point.
B: wow.
R: yeah, I hate to say this, but good. I mean it should ruin his live.
S: It should!
R: He ruined the lives of thousands of other people.
J: Yeah I agree.
B: Wow. Hey guys, I read, I went through a website that was just talking about the common myths of the Titanic, and one that surprised me was that this whole idea of the ship being unsinkable, according to this website anyway, the company that made the ship didn't really promote hardly at all this idea of it being unsinkable. And it seems to be a myth that was created after the sinking. And if you looked you really won't be able to find too much that said hey it's unsinkable before it actually sank. But after it sank, that's when that whole idea just kind of exploded. Which I thought was really, kind of odd.
S: I never heard that. That is interesting.
B: If that is true, I never heard of it either.
S: It's not odd, that makes perfect sense, that's exactly what happens. People change stories to make them more profound. How many times have you heard someone said, oh the doctors said I would never walk, and here I am walking. You know what, no doctor ever said that. You made that up after rehab and you were able to walk again. So it's the same, I totally believe that because I see that happen all the time in other contexts. But that is interesting because I'd never heard that before about the Titanic.
B: Yeah, I'm not surprised either, it just surprised me that after a century I would guess most people have no idea about that, if it's true. This is just based on one website that I read.
S: Yeah.
E: The Titanic had a sister ship, the Olympic.
S: There were two other ships in that class.
B: Britannia was one, was another one. Actually this website had another interesting titbit. You know there wasn't actually much recorded footage of the Titanic because, what was it, what was the first one that had its maiden voyage previously.
E: Olympic was in service in 1911. And it's Britannic, not Britannia.
S: So the Olympic had its maiden voyage previously, and the captain of the Titanic was also the captain of that ship. And they went and they sailed the exact same route by the way. So the fanfare wasn't as special of an event because it had already happened and some of the footage that you may see for the Titanic was actually not the Titanic, it was one of its sister ships. Because there wasn't a lot of footage for the Titanic because it was just kind of like, like almost like ho-hum here we go again type thing.
R: That reminds me of one of the other problems that people who really love the whole Titanic thing, one of the problems they face is that it's difficult to get any kind of souvenir that has the word Titanic on it. Because most of the things on the ship just said White Star Line because it was one of several basically identical liners.
S: Yeah.
J: Oh, that's interesting.
E: The Britannic was sunk by a mine during World War One.
S: A mine!
E: 1916! But the Olympic lasted quite a while, it was retired out of service in 1935, so it was the only one to not see a disastrous end.
S: Well happy 100th...
R: Sink day.
B: (laughs)
S: No, iceberg day.
R: Iceberg hitting day.
E: Ice burg day.
J: For the record, I thought the movie sucked. I know I'm in the minority, did not like the movie.
R: No it was an awful movie, are you kidding?
E: I saw Kate Winslet in an interview recently about the movie and it made me very happy when she said whenever she hears the Celine Dion song, her eyes roll, and in her mind she's thinking, wow I really can't stand this song at all.
R: Yeah I love her, Kate Winslet is awesome.
News Items
Blow Up Space Junk
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46980575/ns/technology_and_science-space/#.T4V1ZatSRLp
S:
Aristolochia Nephropathy
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/herbal-medicine-and-aristolochic-acid-nephropathy/
Homophobia
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120406234458.htm
Toilet Water
Monkey Bill Update
http://ncse.com/news/2012/04/monkey-bill-enacted-tennessee-007299
A Quickie With Bob
Who's That Noisy?
Questions and Emails
Grover's Algorithm
Gulf of Cambay Ruins
Question #1 - Grover's Algorithm Hi skeptics, really enjoy the show, but as a computer science student I just wanted to correct something Steve said in the explanation of one of the Science or Fiction items from the show for April 7. In the item about the quantum computer in a diamond, Steve said that the scientists tested it with an algorithm that finds an element in an unsorted database on the first try. I don't blame Steve, as it said this in the article too, but this is wrong. The algorithm used is called Grover's algorithm, and it does indeed search an unsorted database much faster than a classical computer, but not in one step. As Steve said, with a database with n elements, a classical computer would take on average n/2 steps to search it, or as we say in computer science, it has a time complexity of order n (represented as O(n) ). Using Grover's algorithm, a quantum computer can search the database with a number of steps that is the square root of the number of elements in the database, ( O(n^(1/2)) ), which is much faster but still not 'on the first try'. Too bad you couldn't have Gripp on for Science or Fiction, I'm sure he would have corrected this as well. Cheers, George Daole-Wellman Sunderland, Massachusetts http://www.bell-labs.com/user/feature/archives/lkgrover/
Gulf of Cambay Ruins OMG What will young earth creationist say. Then again now the believers of atlantis will be insufferable. http://www.spiritofmaat.com/announce/oldcity.htm. Theron from Battle Mtn NV
Interview
Science or Fiction
Item #1 Scientists have created a power cell inside a living snail that can generate usable electricity from the snails own energy stores. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120411120508.htm Item #2 A new study finds that fungal infections affecting the top five crops are responsible for destroying enough food to feed 600 million people each year. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120411132000.htm Item #3 A new survey finds that cancer patients prefer safe treatments with predictable outcomes to more risky, but possibly more effective, treatments. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-04-cancer-patients-risky-treatments-larger.html Announcer: It's time for Science or Fiction.
S: Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fictitious, then I challenge my panel of sceptics to tell me which one is the fake. Is everybody ready for this week.
Skeptical Quote
Superhero Pseudoscience "One sure mark of a fool is to dismiss anything outside his experience as being impossible." -Farengar Secret-Fire
S: Alright, well thank you for joining me this week everyone. And until next week, this is your Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.
The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by SGU productions, dedicated to promoting science and critical thinking. For more information on this and other episodes, please visit our website at www.theskepticsguide.org. You can also check out our other podcast the SGU 5x5 as well as find links to our blogs and the SGU forums. For questions, suggestions and other feedback please use the contact us form on the website or send an email to info@theskepticsguide.org. If you enjoyed this episode then please help us spread the word by leaving us a review on iTunes, Zune or your portal of choice.