SGU Episode 53

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SGU Episode 53
July 26th 2006
Click for the gallery of uploaded files Add an appropriate caption here for the episode icon
SGU 52                      SGU 54
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
R: Rebecca Watson
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Quote of the Week
QUOTE
AUTHOR, _short_description_
Links
Download Podcast
Show Notes
[ https://sguforums.org/index.php?BOARD=1.0 Forum Discussion]

Introduction

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, July 26^th, 2006. This is your host, Stephen Novella, president of the New England Skepical Society. Joining me tonight are Rebecca Watson...

R: Hey everybody.

S: Bob Novella...

B: Good evening everyone.

S: Perry DeAngelis...

P: Guilty by reason of insanity.

S: ...and Jay Novella.

J: Hey guys.

S: How's everybody doing this evening?

R: Beautiful.

J: Pretty good Steve.

B: Not bad.

P: That's a match.

News Items

Budget Increase for NASA (0:42)

• Nasa spending to support shuttle

S: First of the news items, I see that Congress, I think it's just a committee in Congress, has proposed an increase in NASA's budget. Now if you guys remember, when we had Phil Plait down, we talked about the fact that NASA's budget was slashed in order to, other science budget was cut in order to fund the shuttle and the Moon and Mars mission. So President Bush told NASA to go back to the Moon and it go on to Mars, but didn't give him any money to do that. So they had to cannibalize money from the science programs. Well, apparently that message has gotten to Congress and they're going to give them an extra billion dollars basically to fund the shuttle and these missions and hopefully that money will replenish their science budget.

B: I thought the increase in the budget was primarily for the shuttle and for the space station.

S: That's right, but the funds are fungible.

B: Good word.

S: Still it's a billion dollars.

P: Has the decision been made with regards to the shuttle, are they building a new one?

S: They have plans for a new shuttle. They're working on it already.

P: But they're still going to fly this one until the new one's ready?

B: No, I think they're going to retire the shuttle like what, 2010 or something.

S: There's going to be a gap. Their goal is to keep the current shuttle flying until the space station is built. And then probably retired at that point.

P: I mean, that thing is a bucket of bolts.

S: Yeah.

P: You know, it has to go down.

S: It's ancient.

P: It has to be put down.

J: It has gone down a few times, Perry.

B: Yeah. Still the most complex machine ever created.

P: I'm sure. I like that 1970s technology.

R: NASA also just changed their mission statement.

B: Yeah.

S: They did. Yeah, they removed.

J: They snuck that through.

S: They removed the phrase that basically said that NASA's mission is to protect the earth.

R: Now what's going to happen when the aliens come? We're screwed.

J: The raëlians will protect us.

S: No they're on their side.

R: Yeah, seriously. Get with it.

B: But we got to, we got to mention if you read between the lines, though, what does that actually mean?

S: Well, some of the people at NASA are saying it's actually it's not just words because they put they reference the mission statement when they submit proposals for projects as a way of justifying the project. And if that's that's not in the mission statement, it'll be harder for them to get funding for-

R: Projects like global warming?

S: Yeah. Research to document global warming or to investigate it.

P: What was NASA's reasoning? Was it articulated?

S: Yes, they said, well, first of all, that phrase was only in there in 2000 since 2002. So it's not like this is a really long history of having this mission. They said that they changed the mission statement to read to better reflect what they're actually doing now. That was basically their justification.

J: Steve, what happens with this, the International Space Station when the United States doesn't have a fleet for five years or whatever?

S: Yeah, well, we still have rockets and I think that we're going to be depending to some degree on the Soviet fleet of the Russian fleet. But you're right. I don't know what the plan is how we're going to maintain a space station without a shuttle.

P: Remember the big news conference eight or nine years ago about the alleged or possible fossilized microbial life from Mars?

B: Yes.

P: What's happened with that? I don't even hear about it anymore. Did they have they confirmed it?

S: No, it's not confirmed. There are still some scientists who are holding on to that hypothesis. They found an asteroid in Antarctica that was a meteorite rather than from Mars. They were able to by isotope analysis, say, yes, this is a chunk of Mars. And it had little tiny microscopic bubbles in it much smaller than Earth bacteria. And the question was, were these small bubbles essentially fossilized microbial life or was it some natural, mineralogical formation? So far, they haven't really proven it one way or the other.

P: Really? 10 years later. It was a big deal when they had that news conference.

S: I think the data is just not there to really prove it one way or the other.

B: We just need to go to Europa and settle this.

S: Or in this case, to actually put people on Mars.

J: Now get your ass to laws.

Indigo Children (4:53)

• So-Called Indigo Teen Says She Can Read People

S: Rebecca, you blogged recently about a news report on Good Morning America informing us all about the Template:Indigo children.

R: It's good thing that they're really getting that sort of important news out to the population. Because more Americans get their news from ABC News than any other source I've heard from their advertising. That's what they claim. So more Americans are getting their outrageous pseudoscience from ABC News than any other source as well. Because, yeah, now they're talking about indigo teens, which are basically spoiled brats who want to feel special. Or at least their parents want them to feel special. So their parents are raising them to believe that they have psychic powers because they're special. Some of the traits to look for in indigo kids are if they're highly accomplished and deeply spiritual. If they get along better with adults than with kids, they might be an indigo child. Apparently, blue eyes help too. So I'm pretty sure that I'm an indigo child. That's what I'm getting at.

P: Is this the reemergence of the master race?

R: It kind of looks that way from the guest that ABC had on. And somebody on my blog actually, I think it was a bug girl who blogged for me a few weeks ago, mentioned that there might be kind of a racial component to that because, yeah, like pure-seen blue eyes are described as one of the key physical features of indigo kids.

J: Oh, God.

R: Yeah.

J: This girl, I read the article in this woman, she's 17 now, and she actually said, I see dead people.

S: Yeah, she said the phrase, I see dead people. I see my grandmother who visits me all the time. I have always been visited by spirits. She also said she was treated for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder with medication and she had a bad depression, et cetera. So I think you characterize these kids as spoiled brats. I think some of the other kids who are characterized indigo have the opposite problem. I think they're just losers who are socializing very well.

P: Is that a medical diagnosis?

S: Yeah, if you're a parent of a child who doesn't do well in school maybe that has social problems, maybe has hyperactive disorder or some other similar psychological problems, do you want to believe that your kids, just a loser or do you want to think that they have some deeply spiritual, special gift and they're just misunderstood?

R: Well, Steve, I want to point out though that a spoiled brat is just a loser who's been pumped up by his parents. So I mean, the two things aren't mutually exclusive.

S: Fair enough. But the psychology here is obvious.

R: Obvious to us, but apparently not obvious to the producers at ABC, which is frightening.

S: No, actually, I think the producers of ABC don't care. Having dealt with TV producers, honestly, they do not care.

P: No, don't care.

S: Is this bit going to sell well on TV? This is going to be-

P: That's all. Whatever is going to put eyeballs on screen.

S: Yeah, that's it.

P: That's all they care about.

R: that's actually even sadder.

J: Steve, what does this in the article, what does this statement mean to you? They said, "No rigorous scientific tests have proven the existence of these so-called paranormal gifts. Said psychology professor David Stein."

S: Yeah, that's their token skepticism. Which wasn't on the show, by the way. This is just in the written article, but it wasn't on the-

J: But that sentence doesn't make sense to me. No rigorous scientific tests have proven the existence of these so-called paranormal gifts. So what does that mean?

S: It means there's no scientific evidence that any of this has been this true. This is all, they made it up.

P: Means these claims are sans evidence. That's what it means.

R: Okay, bunk.

P: And I would also like to say that regardless of what my skeptical colleagues on the show might say about me, I am in fact misunderstood.

S: And it's a good thing too.

R: You mean you're not just a depressed asshole? Like Sandy? You are misunderstood?

P: You're not a loser. I am misunderstood. Thank you.

R: Okay.

J: Perry, do you see dead people? Do you see mob people? Who do you see?

S: I see dead people in the morgue.

J: Yeah, in the morgue. They're not talking to me.

Insanity for Andrea Yates (9:17)

• Insanity for Andrea Yates
• [url_from_show_notes _article_title_]

S: Andrea Yates is back in the news this week. This is from Texas, right? The Texas mother who decided one day that she had to murder her five children.

P: I believe they were possessed by demons.

S: Yes, and she was saving them from their demonic possession?

P: Right.

S: Is that the story?

P: By chasing them down through her house one at a time and drowning them.

S: Drowning them. Right. It's a very sad sad story. And the controversy, of course, is whether or not the very legitimacy of the insanity defense because she got off on the insanity defense the second go around.

P: On her retrial, which she deserved in the first trial, the prosecution put on a state witness who lied. So she was deserving of a retrial. And this time the jury found it's just today innocent by reason of insanity.

J: Yeah. But what do they do with you when you're innocent? Okay, she's innocent because she's insane, but she's so insane that she kills children. So what do they do with her?

S: Going to an asylum a psychiatric ward until psychiatry's deemed you safe to go back into the general population.

P: That's correct.

J: It's a lot better to be declared insane and going to a psych ward than it is to say go to prison.

S: And go to the big house?

R: Yeah.

P: It's endlessly better.

S: Oh, yeah.

P: She's been a prisoner since her first trial, what some five years ago or so. And as of this afternoon, she's no longer a part of the Department of Corrections.

S: Right.

P: She's going to a hospital when the people there decide that she's healthy, she'll be released.

J: It's if that's even possible, though, Perry. I mean, she's probably cuckoo for cocoa puffs, right? I mean, this chick is off her rocker.

P: She seemed very sane in the courtroom. During the murders. She was sane enough to wait for her husband to leave and murder the children quickly before her mother arrived.

R: Wait, maybe I'm just not up to date on this enough, but why would a sane person kill her children then? I'm just wondering like, what's the motive? Because clearly you think she's sane, so I'm just wondering why what motive you think she would have?

P: I don't know why exactly she murdered her children. I mean, I really don't. She said there were possessed by demons.

R: Right. See, that to me says, says insane right there.

S: Perry, you don't buy the insanity defense in principle, though, right?

P: I like some states have a verdict known as guilty by reason of insanity. I support that. A finding of guilty by reason of insanity means you go to the mental hospital and when they declare you're sane and when they declare that you are sane, you're not sent to the street, you're sent to prison to finish your sentence. I think that's what should have happened to this woman who took the lives of these five innocent people.

R: Okay, but Texas doesn't have that?

P: No, did not. That's why they had this other finding.

S: Right, but from a practical point of view, that's guilty.

P: Okay.

S: Because there's no, so you disagree with innocent by reason of insanity.

P: I don't like it. I don't like that some doctors can decide you're sane and set you free. Too many cases of people set free and they go on to butcher folks.

J: Yeah, unless she was suffering from something that medication can help. I think once you cross the line of you can kill people and you do it, not out of self-defense or any of those things, she flat out, she killed her kids. There's no coming back from that abyss.

P: And she planned it.

S: The test is not whether or not you premeditated it. The test is, at the time you committed the crime, did you know the difference between right and wrong?

P: She must have. Why did she wait for her husband to leave?

R: Perry you are sane then that you think she was sane when she killed her kids. Regardless of whether or not she's guilty or innocent.

P: I have a huge problem or because with the line of demarcation. Where did this insanity begin and where did it end?

R: She was insane when she killed them though, right?

P: Was she insane when she waited for her husband to leave? Why didn't she just grab the kids in the middle of the night and drown them?

S: Well, we didn't hear all the testimony that jury did.

J: Hey guys, people have killed people in the name of God and for religion for thousands of years. So, does she really stand that far apart from all the other people that have done this?

S: Yeah, having an ideology is different than not knowing the difference between right and wrong because your brain is malfunctioning. Because you think your thinking has become disordered and bizarre and disconnected from reality for whatever reason. Our brains don't always function perfectly. It's possible for the brain function to be impaired to such a degree that you cannot think properly.

J: Temporarily?

S: Sure. Perry, you were in that state yourself. You had a condition where you were temporary delirious.

B: Remember those five kids you killed?

P: I was tied down.

S: Should you hold somebody legally responsible for actions they take when their brain is malfunctioning?

B: Right, but she should be separated from society for the rest of her life.

S: The question then, are you punishing her? You're just protecting society from her?

B: More protection, more protection.

S: Then the test is she should be separated from society as long as she represents any danger. Now you can argue that we should err on the side of making sure that she isn't a danger before letting her free.

J: Are we forgetting the whole point behind this is that she did it because she thought her kids were possessed.

S: What's the relevance of that?

J: Well, I think there's relevance to it, Steve, because people's belief systems actually can influence their behavior like this.

R: But I think if it weren't that, then it would have been she thought that they were-

S: Aliens.

R: -dragons.

S: Or whatever.

P: They came from a very pious background. The husband, he is a whack job.

S: I think there's a difference between and we, there were cases of this as well. Say a mother who is very, very religious, who because of her religious beliefs comes to believe that her child is possessed by demons and then kills them in the process of performing an exorcism. That's manslaughter at the very least. I think they're responsible for their actions. It's having a deeply held, even fanatical or unusual religious belief is not the same thing as being clinically insane, as legally insane as your brain not functioning.

J: Okay. You're right.

R: If anything, she was going to kill her kids and her religious background gave her just tinged that fantasy with her.

S: When people become psychotic, when they start to have delusions, they incorporate their belief systems and their culture into whatever their delusions are. I mean, it's definitely, it's an interesting discussion to have. It's about what the definition should, of legal insanity, should be in what the implications of it are.

P: Again, I ask you, where did the craziness begin and where did it end?

S: Well, Perry, there doesn't have to be a clean demarcation line in order for her to be insane.

P: I have trouble with it in this case.

S: That's the false spectrum logical fallacy where you're saying-

B: U-huu.

R: Wait, sorry, Steve, which fallacy is that? I don't think I've ever heard that one.

S: It's the false spectrum. You're basically saying that because you can't draw a sharp line between two ends of the spectrum that you can't reasonably define those ends of the spectrum.

J: I think that you can be crazy and guilty.

S: Yeah.

P: Right. Guilty by reason of insanity.

J: Yeah, she's guilty. She did it. She's dangerous.

R: Right. She's dangerous and should be put away. Which she is.

J: Lock her up. But the fact of the matter is, this is crazy as I get. I'll never murder somebody. I'll never never pull an insane stunt like that.

R: You don't know that you'd never murder somebody. You can say that right now you're sane enough to say you would never murder someone but who knows. You could crack-

J: Some guy cut me off last week if I didn't kill him I'm not going to kill anybody.

B: I think he could safely say he won't do anything like she did.

S: Unless something happens you're supposed to get the brain tumor in your frontal lobe, which makes you insane.

J: Yeah, that's true. That's true. But you know what, Steve, if it happens to me, if I do something like that, I just are, I'm guilty and I should be blocked away. One way or another.

S: But then you are holding people responsible for actions that they undertake when they were not capable of making a reason decision when their brain was not functioning through no fault of their own.

J: In my opinion, the person is guilty. They did it. They're capable of doing it again and they should be taken out of society.

B: Well, that's the key right there. How capable is she of doing this again? If you could definitively say that she will not do this again, then I think her incarceration should be limited. But if you could say that, well, we really don't know if she could do this again. She's in the clink for the rest of her life.

P: Again, you're going to depend on doctors to decide that.

S: Well, let's move on to emails.

Questions/Emails/Corrections/Follow-ups ()

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Monkey Eating Eagle ()

Greetings from Milford, Ohio. We are just a hop, skip and a jump from the soon to be opened Answers In Genesis Creation Museum in northern Kentucky. (And it's about damn time. I want answers! But I digress.)

I'm still catching up on your podcasts having discovered them only recently so I am a bit behind you folks but I wanted to respond to the remark by your resident 'birdist', Perry, concerning monkeys and eagles. On your May 10th podcast he threw down the gauntlet to our avian friends by claiming any monkey could kick any bird's ass. Go to the URL below and repent, Perry!

boojum.as.arizona.edu/~jill/Cynthia/report.html

Love the show, by the way. Oh, and one more thing; who is the hot sounding Brit babe who introduces the podcast?

John Burris
Milford, Ohio

Bird flight ()

Dear Dr. Novella,

I am a big fan of the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe podcast. I eagerly await a new podcast each week. I think the addition of Rebecca to your table of 'esteemed skeptics' is a wonderful addition.

You mentioned on one podcast (I think the one where Eugenie Scott was a guest) that you attended Johns Hopkins and studied with Pat Shipman. I got my Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolution from Johns Hopkins and knew Pat as well. I graduated in 1982.

I appreciated the most recent podocast with Bill Bennetta. Textbook adoption is certainly in a sad state of affairs. I felt I should write because of Bill's comments about Bernoulli's principle and bird flight.

I am an ornithologist and teach ornithology regularly here at Colby College. My own research expertise is in the foraging behavior of birds and bird vocalization. I do however follow the literature on bird flight closely.

Bill stated that the importance of Bernoulli's principle for bird flight has been debunked for 40-50 years but still appears in textbooks. He argued instead for a mechanism where a flat bird wing pushes down on the air, elevating the bird.

I believe Bill's interpretation would be rejected by most ornithologists. Bernoulli's principle is alive and well in our understanding of bird flight.

To begin with, airfoils (the shape that best takes advantage of Bernoulli's principle) occur at different scales in birds. The cross-section of a wing is an airfoil, the cross-section of the major flight feathers (the primaries and secondaries) are also airfoils. Finally, the body of a bird with a blunt head and sloping body defines an airfoil.

Let's begin with the discuss of dynamic soarers like albatrosses and other tubenoses. These birds travel hundreds of miles a day over the ocean, scarecely flapping a wing. They turn into the nearly omnipresent ocean winds to gain lift via Bernoulli's principle and then turn downwind to glide.

If one wishes to argue that albatrosses glide rather than use powered flight, let's consider a bird like a goose. Slow-motion photography of a flying goose reveals that the inner part of the wing (the radius and ulna bearing the secondaries) stays remarkably level through a complete wing stroke. The distal part of the wing (the fused hand bearing the primaries) however pivots strongly, almost parallel to the dorso-ventral axis of the bird at the end of the downward power stroke.

The interpretation of this movement is that the distal part of the wing is acting as a propeller. We need to be aware that Bernoulli's principle does not depend on a particular orientation with respect to gravity. As the distal part of the wing is forced downward, Bernoulli's principle results in lower pressure on the anterior side of the distal wing and higher pressure on the trailing edge. The result then is a force parallel to the surface of the earth, namely thrust. As the bird moves forward because of this thrust, air rushes over the relatively stable inner wing. Bernoulli's principle here results in an upward force or lift. So, a bird's wing really consists of two parts, one of which can be rotated by about 90 degrees. Each part is shaped as an airfoil. Because of differences in orientation, the inner wing produces lift to counteract gravity and the outer wing produces thrush to counteract drag.

Bill's explanation of bird flight cannot explain the function of the alula feathers at the base of the hand. Those feathers act as an aerodynamic slot, allowing the angle of attack of the airfoil to be greater, thereby maximizing the pressure difference between the upper and lower part of the wing.

On take-off, birds use as high an angle of attack as possible to rapidly take-off. To land, birds tilt their wings to an angle of attack at which laminar flow no longer occurs across the top of the wing with the result of rapid loss of lift. In a controlled manner, birds set up a turbulent flow to allow themselves to lower gently to a perch.

I can refer you the Wikipedia entry on bird flight that I think is reasonably accurate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_flight

You will note that one of the references cited in the Wikipedia article is Dave Alexander's book on animal flight. Dave received his Ph.D. about 20 years from Duke where he worked with Steve Vogel and Vance Tucker. These two scientists are superb biomechanics, certainly among the most eminent in the country. Dave is a leading authority on powered flight.

The explanation I present above and described in the Wikipedia entry is also given in Frank Gill's Ornithology textbook. Frank's book has essentially cornered the market. He had experts in particular areas of ornithology review specific chapters. A similar description is given in the first volume of the magnificent Handbook of the Birds of the World, also cited at the end of the Wikipedia articles.

I would certainly not argue we have a complete understanding of the mechanics of powered flight at this point. However, when such understanding is achieved, Bernoulli's principle will have the major role in permitting powered flight in birds.

Best wishes,

Herb Wilson


Editor's Note: Here is a good review article on the Bernoulli effect and its contribution to flight. (www.aa.washington.edu/faculty/eberhardt/lift.htm)

From the boards ()

I am also convinced and outraged at the low quality of our high school textbooks, and as a high school teacher in Illinois District 214, I have twenty years of personal experience bolstering my outrage. However, Bill Bennetta's obvious contempt for teachers is unfortunate. Perhaps he does not realize how many of us struggle with this problem on a daily basis and agree with many of his points. Here is what my colleagues and I do in response to this problem: we do not use the textbooks. They sit on the shelves in our classrooms and gather dust. Or, better yet, my colleagues in the history department use the textbooks to show students how slanted particular views of history can be. The books are used as bad examples, giving students practice at critical thinking. High school students generally enjoy this sort of irreverence, making for lively classroom discussion.

In the English classroom (my own discipline) the problem is not that the textbooks contain faulty information, but that the textbook companies have gone out of their way to avoid offending anyone, which means they have to leave out any references to magic or religion, any comment that may be interpreted as sexist, agist or racist, any representation of a child eating junk food or showing disrepect to an elder, representations of young people watching too much television or indulging in hours of video game playing....and the list goes on. I once had a friend who worked for a textbook company. She showed me the list of taboo topics her editors forbade; it was ridiculous. The effort to offend no parent leads to vast, heavy compilations of innocuous and dull literature. So...my freshmen literature textbooks sit on the shelf in my classroom gathering dust. My students instead read paperback novels, short stories and plays that I pick out myself, or they read from photocopied material.

As for the bleak view that there is nothing anyone can do, this is untrue and self-defeating. I realize that some people may throw up their hands in despair if a phone call to the principal doesn't immediately lead to the dismissal of a textbook, but I can guarantee that principals keep track of these phone conversations, and when a textbook comes up for adoption, parent views are certainly considered. In fact, this is both a good and a bad thing. Fear of offending parents is part of the reason that administrators choose the bad (but seemingly safe) textbooks that we are all complaining about.

Ms. B

E-mail #4 ()

Wonderful show guys. It's nice to know you're out there
somewhere.
Firstly, I would love to hear a brief comment from each of your panelists (and yourself of course) as to which of the A-Z of pseudo-sciences they would most like to be true and why.(This is purely for fun.) This is a question which could also be put to many of your interviewee's for a good laugh.
Thanks again for your great efforts.
Leigh.

Name That Logical Fallacy ()

• _Fallacy_Topic_Event_

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This statement is from the most recent e-mail from Neal Adams, in our ongoing debate regarding his 'expanding earth' claims.

'I do think the whole of the scientific community is wrong about the assembly of atoms. In fact I, for one have not heard a cogent theory about the assembly of atoms in my life, Except those general statements like Um .... 'In the massive furnaces of gigantic stars fusion processes this Hydrogen into the higher elements of the universe.'

They don't exactly say how. They just DO, and I should shut-up!'

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Science or Fiction (h:mm:ss)

Item #1: _item_text_from_show_notes_ Item #2: _item_text_from_show_notes_ Item #3: _item_text_from_show_notes_ Item #4: (_item_text_from_show_notes_)

Question #1: Cracking one's knuckles can cause arthritis later in life. Question #2: Sitting in a hot bath for an extended period of time can render a male temporarily infertile. Question #3: It is possible to contract the flu from the flu vaccine. Question #4: You should keep someone awake for 24 hours following a serious concussion.

Answer	Item
Fiction
Science

Host	Result
Steve

Rogue	Guess

Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.

Skeptical Puzzle ()

Last Week's puzzle:

If you are floating in a boat on a pond, and you are holding a 20lb cannon ball - if you drop the cannon ball overboard into the pond will the level of the pond rise, fall, or stay the same?

(Contributed by listener John Maddox)

Answer - the level of the pond will fall. The ball displaces its full weight in water when floating on the boat, but once in the pond it only displaces its volume in water. Since it is denser than water, its weight in water is greater than its volume in water.

New Puzzle:

All the electricity was out in Aberdeen. None of the street lights or traffic signals had power. A dark limousine was cruising down the newly paved blacktop, with its headlights off. A young boy dressed totally in black (with no reflectors) stepped out to cross the street. The moon wasn't out and the boy had no flashlight, yet the driver stopped to let the boy cross the street. How did the driver see the boy?

Skeptical Quote of the Week ()

(quoted text)  – (author of quote), (description of author)

Signoff/Announcements ()

S: —and until next week, this is your Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.

S: The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by the New England Skeptical Society. For information on this and other podcasts, please visit our website at www.theskepticsguide.org. Please send us your questions, suggestions, and other feedback; you can use the "Contact Us" page on our website, or you can send us an email to info@theskepticsguide.org. 'Theorem' is produced by Kineto and is used with permission.

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Today I Learned

• Fact/Description, possibly with an article reference
• Fact/Description
• Fact/Description

References

Vocabulary