SGU Episode 907

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SGU Episode 907
November 26th 2022
Cichlids from the crater lake Xiloá in Nicaragua. A study team discovered fish in the crater lake in 2018 that resembled hybrids of the two cichlid species.
SGU 906                      SGU 908
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Quote of the Week
Science and art can touch one another, like two pieces of the jigsaw puzzle which is our human life, and that contact may be made across the borderline between the two respective domains.
M. C. Escher, Dutch graphic artist
Links
Download Podcast
Show Notes
Forum Discussion

Introduction, SGU on Media Bias Chart

• Ad Fontes Media's "Media Bias Chart"
  

Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.

8.56 32.60 S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Thursday, November 15th, 2022. And this is your host, Stephen Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella,

B: hey everybody,

S: Cara Santa Maria,

C: howdy,

S: Jay Novella.

J: Hey, guys,

S: and Evan Bernstein.

E: Good evening, everyone.

S: So guys, did you see this media bias chart on Facebook? You know we did, we were just talking about it. But only before we turned on the switch, Bob. It only counts if we turn on the switch. It's not real unless we're recording. Oh, I see. Clearly, according

44.44 49.96 E: to this chart that we wound up being a part of. Yeah, it's fine. So I do like these sort

49.96 90.24 S: of media bias charts. I look at them a lot. You know, hopefully the source is reliable. It basically says there's two axes left right is politically left right and then up down is some measure of quality, you know, objectivity or whatever. In this chart they have at the top, it's a little odd that you have the top is fact reporting. And then one notch below that is mostly analysis or or mix of fact reporting and analysis. So they're putting analysis inherently below fact. You know, I'm not sure I agree with that, but yeah, that is you keep going. Then it just straight up says opinion. Yeah, then it's opinion.

90.24 102.88 S: And then incomplete, unfair persuasion, propaganda, propaganda starts to hit and then contains misleading info and contains inaccurate fabricated fabricated info. Oh, my God, you're making

102.88 127.24 C: shit up. I get it, though, because if you look at the axis label, they're literally calling it news value and reliability. So it's true. Like the higher up on this axis, the more it's just straight reporting the news with no analysis whatsoever. This is what happened. And then down at the bottom, it's like, you know, completely fabricating stuff. Right. Yeah. It's fiction. Right. And then, of course, an op ed is going to be somewhere

127.24 148.96 S: in the middle. Yeah. But we're so we we're pretty high. They put us just a tad bit left of center, which OK. I mean, I don't necessarily agree with that, but I think reality is a little bit tad left of center. But to be honest with you, I know I stole that joke, but it works. I love the fact that Joe Rogan is like in his own little space way down in the middle.

148.96 154.38 E: Way down. He is. He's all alone straddling the depths into misleading information. He's

154.38 223.68 C: weirdly in the middle, which I am very question. I like question. He's dead center.

I don't get how he's dead center and right.

And my only idea and it's funny because lots of people are commenting that to like since when is Joe Rogan in the middle? Oh, they replied to this person who asked. So this is from the media company who produces Rogan himself has various political views, but his shows are mostly the guests talking about their views. So his ratings are guest dependent, making it both ballast, balanced bias and varying in reliability. So basically they're saying there's a ton of misleading claims and it and it's all over the show, but it's all over the place in terms of its partisanship because his guests are all over the place.

That kind of makes sense actually.

And I have a feeling they're looking at his whole back catalog, not just how his show is now because his political bent has changed a lot. But yeah, ours hasn't. Has it? I mean, I don't know. Were you guys would you say that we skew more left now than, you know, 15 years ago when the show started simply because the goalposts have moved in our in our like actual political discourse, like in the country?

223.68 240.40 S: It's hard. Obviously, it's hard for us to say that, you know, first of all, probably little, you know, I would say probably a little only because the center of gravity on the right has moved so far to the right that even if you're standing still, you're going to be holding shift left. You know what I mean?

240.40 244.50 E: As a result of the earth moves below your feet. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what's interesting

244.50 255.64 S: is just politically speaking, four of the five people on this show, and you can probably guess who that is, are 20 years ago would have described ourselves as right of center.

255.64 264.72 S: Interesting. And now we're basically left of center. And again, I think it's mainly because the right has moved so far to the right. Yeah, because you can't even define

264.72 275.64 J: moderate anywhere near the same way you could 15 years ago. I mean, Biden is actually a moderate if anything, you know, like 20 years ago, he what his politics are today would

275.64 286.80 C: have would have been moderate politics. And also, like all of this is within the context of the American lens. Because if you plucked any of this up and put it in other countries,

286.80 292.48 S: they would have wildly different rate. Center, center politics in America is right politics in Europe.

292.48 310.36 J: But I think the more important lens to look at a critical thinker or a skeptic would be that we are following whatever, whatever the evidence says, whatever the science of it says, that's where we're at. Right.

310.36 333.08 S: So yeah, we are we try to be nonpartisan as much as we can be. It's hard. It's really hard. It's very hard. But that's our goal. And we do our best. And, you know, we're pretty close to the middle. There's why I think that that's, you know, assuming this is a reasonable assessment, we struck pretty close to our goal. And we yeah, we we are overtly about analysis. That's what we do. Right. Which is why we're not

333.08 338.76 C: at the tippy tippy top, because the tippy top of the of the curve is straight fact reporting.

338.76 343.04 E: This is we're not we don't do that. We do critical thinking, critical thinking. It's inherently analysis.

343.04 353.36 B: Yeah, true. But but we do a lot of straight science reporting, though, where there's not, you know, necessarily a tremendous amount of like analysis.

353.36 363.16 E: And where are the where the science podcasts, though, on this on this grouping? Are we it? We might be the only because I'm looking at it. Let's see anyone else that they brought in for science on this.

363.16 386.70 C: A lot of these are actually political podcasts. Yeah. Which is kind of interesting. I don't know why. I guess that a bias. Well, no, I think it's probably because we are a science podcast, but we are covering science news very often. Yeah. So as opposed to just saying this is interesting science, it's like, right. You know, Reuters just reported that

386.70 394.80 E: blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But they could have put a race care. But they could have put 100 science podcasts in here. They chose us. I think it's probably just a function

394.80 421.44 C: of listenership, really. I think it's like this is an influence probably more than like some. I don't know. It would be it would be interesting to ask them, what were your parameters for inclusion? If I had to guess, it would be based on listenership. I'm happy to be here. And I think they pegged us pretty correctly. I agree. But I would like as Bob mentioned earlier, like, how do we climb even higher? I mean, but the truth is, climbing higher would mean just like straight reporting. Yeah. With no analysis. And that's not what we do.

421.44 430.76 S: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, because we're doing more than, you know, giving our own analysis of science news. We are teaching how to think about it and how to think critically and putting

430.76 451.96 C: it into a skeptical context, you know. And it makes sense that we're higher up than the middle because the middle is sort of like or just below the middle or is that the actual middle is opinion. And that isn't what we do. Sometimes we offer our opinions, our informed opinions, but we are not an op-ed show. Exactly. Yeah. And our format is unique.

So that's true, too.

What's the Word? (7:33)

• Soundscape ecology: Geophony, Biophony, and Anthropophony

451.96 456.16 S: Yeah. All right. Well, Cara, you're going to start us off this week with a What's

456.16 492.20 C: the Word? Yeah. OK, so earlier today, I podcasted with a fascinating woman named Dr. Karen Bakker. And we were talking about she has a new book called The Sounds of Life, which is all about bioacoustics research. And as we were talking, this will be like out and actually will have already come out by the time this airs on Talk Nerdy. But as we were talking, she was using a bunch of terms that I had never heard before. And we dove deep into them and I was like, these would be perfect for What's the Word? So here they are. The first time or the first term that she used was geophony. Have you guys heard that word before? Geophony.

492.20 498.84 S: It's not geophony. Spelled the same way. But I had literally never heard this word before.

498.84 515.12 C: Yeah, I haven't heard it. It's novel to you guys, too, right? Yeah. And then related, biophony. And this one I'm having to guess because she didn't use it. But as I started to dig, I noticed that it was also related to the other two. Anthropophony or anthropophony.

515.12 523.16 C: I'm not sure like how you would and anthropophony. So geophony, biophony and the anthropophony.

523.16 550.84 C: If we were to guess the roots are pretty straightforward, right? The etymology of geophony would be you could break it up into geo and phony. When you hear geo you think earth earth. And when you when you think phony, baloney. Sound. Yeah. Same thing when we think of biophony bio life. Life. Right. And phony and then anthropophony or anthropophony. Anthro, human.

550.84 557.40 C: Human. Right. So what this is, it's part of a larger field called bio acoustics. Oh, yes.

557.40 566.76 C: Where they actually record the sounds of either the earth or all of the organisms on the earth.

566.76 665.32 C: Sometimes this is referred to as acoustic ecology, a soundscape ecology. And they can actually using different like AIs and different technological approaches, get a handle on the basically the health, the ecological health of a certain biome or of a certain area. And so you may be able to notice species die out, deforestation, habitat loss, things like that, because the soundscape of that region changes or it has holes in it. It's a fascinating field and we dug super, super deep into it in in this episode. But that's basically what these words are. The geophony is the sounds that are produced by a certain geographic or geological area. So like, like the seismic sounds that and when I say sounds, I think it's really important to, to note that we tend to think through our human lenses. So the concept of sound to us means things we can hear, but that's not what sound is. Sound is just the compression of waves, right? We have tools that can detect sounds that we can't physically detect. And there are a lot of organisms out there that can perceive sounds that we cannot perceive. So we actually have tools to be able to measure the quote sound of plates, tectonic plates, the sound of rocks, the sound of streams, the sound of things that are not alive. And then of course, there are the sounds of things that are alive plants, animals, microorganisms, and there is a collective sound that these things put off and it's absolutely fascinating. And we can use it to study ecology that way.

665.32 666.88 B: Cool. What about heliophony?

666.88 669.12 B: Heliophony? Would that be the sun?

669.12 670.12 C: Sound of the sun?

670.12 671.64 C: Yeah. I mean, can we measure that though?

671.64 672.64 C: Oh, yeah.

672.64 673.64 C: I don't know.

673.64 674.64 B: Absolutely.

674.64 675.64 B: Really?

675.64 678.08 B: Yeah, the reverberations within the sun, you can turn it into sound.

678.08 684.48 C: You can turn it into sound, but is it an actual sound wave that we're detecting? I don't think so. I think we're transducing it into...

684.48 685.48 C: Right.

685.48 690.96 C: Yeah, that's what I'm saying. So that wouldn't be heliophony. We're actually talking about physical sound waves that we can measure.

690.96 694.40 S: But they do call it sun seismology, I think.

694.40 695.40 S: That would be something.

695.40 702.00 S: We talked about that before because they were able to do that to see the other side of the sun, see the side of the sun away from the earth.

702.00 712.20 B: Yeah, but what about the disturbances though that could be made in space gas? Like there's gas in space and then the compressions and rarefactions that are...

712.20 715.84 C: Well, yeah, like gravitational waves even, for example. We've converted that.

715.84 717.98 C: Right. I mean, that's kind of a sound.

717.98 734.44 C: It's kind of like a sound, but it's like on this cosmic scale. But I don't think... It is a gravitational wave. It's not a sound wave. We can transduce it into sound so that we can better make sense of it. But I do think that's a transduction. I think the wave itself is technically a gravitational wave.

734.44 749.12 C: But that's also a fun... I love diving into these construct taxonomy debates. And Bob, I think you're on to something. What's the difference between... At what point does something become sound? How small does the wave need to be?

749.12 756.92 B: Right. Or the process that creates the compressions and rarefactions within the medium, the media.

756.92 777.56 C: Yeah. It's an interesting scientific but also kind of philosophical question. Anyway, I was really enamored with this conversation and I learned a lot. It was just a field I'd never been exposed to really. And when she just said it so fast, she was like, well, and the geophony of whatever. And I was like, what?

777.56 779.12 C: Slow down. Did I hear you right?

779.12 811.36 C: So good. And so, anthropophony, that one's really hard for me to say, obviously would be the collective sounds that are created by people. And this whole discipline is only like a decade or two old. But there's just been a lot of really interesting research on how these basically human induced sounds, like the background hum of our machines, of our existence affects nature.

811.36 812.36 C: Yeah.

812.36 816.68 C: Like there's a lot of downstream effects of that that we just take for granted.

816.68 825.44 S: I know, yeah, the issue of the sound of boats interfering with whale song, whale navigation

825.44 885.16 C: is huge. Yeah, they're like those super obvious examples where we can be like, okay, the motor of the boat and then it travels through the water. And then of course, it's like screwing with like echolocation or screwing with whatever like sonar. But then we don't think about the fact that there's just this low level. And again, we can't always perceive these because sometimes they're above or below the frequencies that we can hear. But this low level background noise pollution, just like in the world, because humans are literally everywhere. And how does that affect all of the different organisms that actually utilize sound and almost every organisms, this I didn't know either, almost every organism utilizes sound waves in a similar way to how they do like chemo sensation. Like sound waves are a tool for so many organisms, whether they physically hear them the way we do, like with a cochlea in our ear, or whether they have hair cells on the outside of their bodies, they can, they can perceive sound waves and it affects them.

885.16 896.96 S: Yeah, hearing is different than detecting sound waves. That involves processing it into a sensory phenomenon. Right, right. All right. Thanks, Cara.

News Items

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(laughs) (laughter) (applause) [inaudible]

Artemis I Launch (14:55)

• Artemis I mission shares spectacular view of Earth after a historic launch

B: ... Scotty

E: (grunts, à la Tim "the Tool Man" Taylor)

S: Yeah, Bob.

B: Yes, sir.

S: Did Artemis one finally launch?

896.96 933.16 B: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, now that that's done moving on. All right. After four delays, November 16th, 2022 uncrewed Artemis one launched on a historic first step mission to get people back on the moon, which has happened 599 months ago now the last time. Yes, that's a lot of months. If you haven't seen the launch, stop right now. Go to YouTube and at least watch the 10 second countdown and the launch. You don't

933.16 937.84 C: have to stop. You can do it while you're listening. No, fully immerse yourself into the launch.

937.84 1080.12 B: This is a bad idea. I don't care. No one's going to listen to me anyway. You never direct someone away from a recording. It was, it was, this is worth it. It was sublime. I mean, to fully appreciate what I'm about to say, I think they should watch it. All right. I can't remember feeling that way viewing a launch except maybe seeing the live launch in Florida of the last space shuttle to take off. It was really amazing. As Douglas Adams once said, describing the technology of a sci-fi spaceship, he described it as a ballet of technology. Now you, some of you, hopefully none of you will be saying, what is all this Artemis crap I've been hearing about Artemis? It's a program created by four space programs, NASA, ESA, JAXA, and CSA, United States, Europe, Japan, and Canada. The space programs all have pitched in to reestablish a human presence on the moon. And I think Artemis is really is a wonderful name for it. Um, it's Jay's wife, Courtney's favorite God. I learned today, Artemis. Artemis is the goddess of the moon and the twin sister of Apollo, which of course is poignant, uh, not only because of the old Apollo moon program, but also because NASA regards the name Artemis to represent the program's goal of inclusion, meaning it intends to put the first woman on the moon before this program is over. Artemis one is simply the first mission of multiple missions that are going to make all that happen. Now Artemis one has two big chunks of awesome technology that comprise it. First is the magnificent, amazing, super heavy lift space launch system rocket, the SLS. And that's just what took off. We talked about this on the show a bit before. This is, this is a beast. It's the most powerful rocket NASA has ever built 15% more powerful than the mighty Saturn five. Wow. It has the highest payload capacity of any launch vehicle currently in use. And it has the third highest capacity of any rocket capable of reaching orbit only behind Energia and Saturn five. And that will change in the future. Bob, what do you mean that'll change? Well, as, as, as its carrying capacity, as its cargo capacity increases in the upcoming iterations, I think it'll, it'll pass the, uh, the cargo, the capacity of Saturn five in terms of just sheer hauling stuff. What? So they're versioning the rocket?

1080.12 1120.20 B: Well, I mean, yeah, there's different, yeah, there's different it's, it's not really even one rocket. Jay, this is a space launch system. Yes. And people describe it as a fleet and space launch system is, yeah, is, is actually, you know, in, in the name, it's, it's, it's going to be many iterations, some optimized for crew, some optimized for cargo, and there's going to be, you know, different versions of this as you know, in the future, some taller, some are going to get even taller than the Saturn five was. So yeah, this, this isn't just one little, this isn't one type, one rocket like the Saturn five was, it's going to be changing and iterating. So now the business end of the rocket, the bottom of it, the core stage, which was essentially the orange-ish, the orange-ish part of the rocket, right?

1120.20 1147.96 B: The one that like doesn't look painted. That's the core stage. And at the bottom of that is the four RS25 engines operating at 109% efficiency, which makes me think there's an engineer involved somewhere called Scotty attached on the sides of the core stage are the two largest solid fuel rocket boosters ever made giving the SLS system as a whole 8.8 million pounds of thrust.

1147.96 1149.92 B: Wow. Sounds like a lot.

1149.92 1196.38 B: That's intense. Now on top of this and this, this controlled explosion happening, you know, with the core stage and the solid and the solid fuel rockets is the other critical piece of tech for Artemis one, the Orion spacecraft, that's the human part of the rocket, if you will. And that has three major components. If you look at the very tippy pointy top, that's the launch abort system, which I hope is, is never needed. Under that, you've got the pressurized crew module, which can house four astronauts. And right now it's housing like three mannequins that will be testing, you know, a stresses and radiations and stuff on human bodies and, and how good the space suit, the new space suit is under that, under that, under the pressurized crew module, you've got probably the most critical component here.

1196.38 1201.80 B: And that's the European service module and which is essentially the powerhouse of Orion.

1201.80 1289.16 B: It's got 11 kilowatts solar panels that could power two, three bedroom houses. Lots of electricity available. It also provides things like maneuverability, consumables like water and oxygen for the astronauts really quite critical. And as of November 17th, which is tonight, Orion is now on its way to the moon and which will, it'll orbit for a while and come back perhaps by December 11th. But I guess there's some wiggle room there. Some estimates put have wiggle room. That's many days, like a week or more. I've heard numbers from 25 to 40 days. I'm not sure what that's about, but they're, they're expecting it back on or about December 11th. The crew module at that point will separate from the service module and the crew module will splash down. And then, then it's all the the post-mortem, all the testing to find out how did everything go, you know, how were the mannequins, you know, how did, and they're just going to go over all of that information and see, to see how much of a success Artemis one was. And, and as of right now, it seems it's an amazing success. Like I said, it's not a rat, it's not a rocket. It's a, it's going to be optimized for cargo. It's going to be optimized for crew, whatever is needed. And also the lack of reusability for SLS was kind of annoying, especially after, after, you know, so much time watching, you know, SpaceX and watching the rockets coming back down and all that stuff. But as I looked into the reusability of SLS, it became somewhat less annoying.

1289.16 1346.52 B: When you look at the reasoning it's still annoying, but it's like, all right, I can, I see where they're, where they're coming from here because they're SLS is going to be doing basically one launch per year for the next decade. And at least financially speaking, the case for reusability is less strong in that case than for a company like SpaceX, which has many launches per year. Some of the engineers for SLS were saying that, yeah, if, if this, if, if Artemis was going to launch for, you know, five, six times a year, then that argument becomes much, much, much, much strong. It'd be really kind of ridiculous at that point, but, but at one a year, I guess, you know, it would be, it would be a lot more expensive if they, if they planned in and built in the reusability, although it would have been really cool. You know, maybe after 10 years, they'll, you know, they'll do something more about that, but we're not going to see the SLS be reusable at all. All right. So the next few years, of course, are going to be very exciting.

1346.52 1394.24 B: Artemis two in 2024 is going to have four Artemis astronauts in Orion, and they're going to do a lunar flyby and they're going to fly farther than, than any humans have ever flown before in terms of distance from the earth. Yeah. I'm sure they're going to be, you know, happy and quite sad to see the moon and go around it. I'm like, ah, I wanted to land there. And then if so, if all goes well, of course, for Artemis one and two, then in 2025, Artemis three will land women and men on the moon for the first time since 1972. And they're going to use a lander to get down to the South pole and stay for about a week. And I will be glued to the TV in that when that happens in 2025, I hope like I was when we first landed on the moon, footy pajamas and all.

1394.24 1413.12 E: I think the original estimate when Artemis was first rolled out and the timeline was revealed, I think 2024 for the target to put boots back on the moon. So that's not too bad. Just basically one year off of that target from the original estimate. I'd say that's pretty impressive.

1413.12 1427.16 B: But I think initially though, um, they, it was, it was not going to be 2022 because didn't, didn't Trump bring it down to 2024? It's a no, do it sooner, do it in 2024. And everyone was like, that's not going to happen. Right. That's, that's what my memory is telling

1427.16 1436.28 S: me. Yeah. It was, it's the timeline's way more complicated than that because the SLS was delayed a lot. You know, this is, you can't say that we're ahead of schedule now.

1436.28 1446.08 S: We are not, we're years behind schedule, but in terms of landing on the moon, that was supposed to be, I think 2028 and then they moved it up to 2024 and then back to 2025.

1446.08 1466.92 B: Yeah. Yeah. This Artemis is way as awesome as it is. It's way, you know, like over budget and behind schedule. The first launch, the launch that we just saw initially was supposed to happen, I believe in 2016 or 2017. I mean, so, you know, but that's, that's par for the course. I mean, right. I'd be shocked. I mean, how long did we wait for the James Webb to

1466.92 1519.16 S: let's go? Yeah. I mean a lifetime. Bob, did you read about the red crew? The red crew? Oh no, they all didn't survive. No. The red crew. So when SLS was on Artemis one was on the launch pad, they detected another leak, a liquid hydrogen leak. That's this go around this go around and they were worried that they were going to have to scrub it just like they had to scrub the previous one. And if it would, if they couldn't fix it on the pad, they might've had to roll it back to the tower. But they say had a red crew, a team of engineers who they sent out, they had to go out beneath the fueled, essentially live rocket and fix the leak before it could take off. And you should listen, you know, listen to the interviews with these guys. Like they were saying, so you're standing below a fueled live rocket.

1519.16 1525.72 S: It's creaking, it's venting, it's moaning. And it's like, it was scary as hell. All they

1525.72 1533.24 B: needed was a little duct tape. So it was leaking. It in fact was leaking again and they fixed

1533.24 1539.40 S: it. They fixed it on the pad and they kept it on schedule. Why the hell was it leaking

1539.40 1544.28 J: again? Yeah, it's a problem to design because it's one of the most complicated things ever

1544.28 1553.72 B: built. You know what I mean? Yeah, but I'm wondering if this is a design flaw leaking, leaking hydrogen twice. Yeah. You know, so, uh, but a million things have to be correct.

1553.72 1558.50 J: You know, it's, it's so unbelievably complicated. Like it doesn't surprise me at all that they

1558.50 1563.76 B: had issues. They must've had one thing, but the same issue, you know, multiple times.

1563.76 1574.52 S: That's when I started getting a little bit more concerned. They have two years to nail that down. They got to figure that out. I agree. Yeah. All right. All right. Thanks Bob. So we are definitely going to be following this for the next couple of weeks. Oh my God.

1574.52 1579.32 E: Yeah. Watch the launch. It's huge. It's awesome. Well, we're going to take a quick break from

1579.32 1583.78 S: our show to talk about one of our sponsors this week, Aura Frames. A digital picture

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1661.36 1672.54 S: and conditions apply. All right, everyone, let's get back to the show.

Skin-Like Electronics (27:46)

• Skin-like electronics could monitor your health continuously

S: All right, Jay, tell us about skin like electronics. Well, Steve, you know a little bit about wearable

1672.54 1768.94 J: technology because you, Bob and I, our book, The Skeptic's Guide to the Future came out a month and a half ago and we wrote about wearable technology. We had late night long heartfelt discussions about what are we going to, how are we going to write this chapter and what's it going to be about? So this was, you know, I'm still reading articles about it, and that's why this one caught my eye because I'm really waiting for wearable technology to kind of have a legitimate footprint. Like right now, there isn't really a lot of high end wearables out there. There are some very expensive wearables that are mostly expensive because they're flourished with gold and diamonds. Like, you know, you could buy an Apple watch, which is a wearable, right? It has a lot of legitimate technology on there. It is in a way augmenting, you know, the information that you have available to you about what you're doing about your body, lots of different details. I also found a motorcycle helmet that's made by a company called Scully that this is pretty cool. This is a helmet. Evan's so happy. Yeah, I know, right? Scully, it's a joke. When companies are correctly named, I love it. Well, this one, this helmet, Evan, it has a HUD, right? Heads up display. This is considered augmented reality and the helmet shows rear and side view cameras so the rider can easily see what's around them without having to turn their head. Neat. If you've never ridden, rode a motorcycle, you know, when you're driving a motorcycle, you really don't want to have to turn your head away from what's in front of you. But I think people

1768.94 1775.98 C: do constantly, their heads are like on a swivel when they're riding, no? Yeah, it is a little,

1775.98 1796.84 J: it takes a while to get used to. It could be disorienting. It's just not good, but this helmet actually allows you to see all around you without having to turn your head. You just have to move your eyes, which is much faster and easier. The helmet also has a GPS navigation system and it could also connect to your smartphone. So I didn't try it out.

1796.84 1808.74 J: I don't know much else about it, but if they executed all of this technology well, this could be a very, very helpful and legitimate wearable. Yeah, but a wearable could be lots

1808.74 1821.92 S: of different things. What do we say in the book, the oldest wearable technology was like a pouch? Yeah, sure. Pocket. Yeah. World's first pocket. It's hugely advantageous, imagine

1821.92 1862.08 J: that. Yeah, for sure. More supial action. I think the definition has to evolve as the technology evolves. Sure. As we discussed on the show, I think it was as recent as last week. The most expensive wearable that's out today might end up being a high-end hearing aid, right? Didn't we say that there was like $20,000 hearing aids? $10,000. $10,000 hearing aids. Because of recent advancements, that technology is starting to be matched by common earbuds that are relatively affordable. Essentially, what those hearing aids can do, most, if you get like a pair of say Apple, the ear pods. Air pods. The air pods, right? The air pods.

1862.08 1871.76 J: If you get those, they can do almost everything that the $10,000 hearing aids can do. But anyway, still, it's expensive and most people can't afford to purchase that without insurance.

1871.76 1875.72 B: Are they worth it? I still haven't bought air pods. I love my air pods. Really? Why?

1875.72 1878.60 C: I'm addicted to them. They're great. They work very well. Yeah, they work very well.

1878.60 1881.64 B: Well, you got to charge them. That's another thing you got to charge. Doesn't matter. Yeah,

1881.64 1893.16 C: of course, but they're always in my ears. And here's the cool thing, the case charges them. So if the case is fully charged and they die, you can put them in the case and then they charge in the case. You just charge everything when you're sleeping, Bob. You

1893.16 1896.96 B: know the drill. Yeah, exactly. I know, I know. But it's just like, ugh. So one kind of wearable

1896.96 1906.76 J: that companies have been working on is a medical sensor. This is something that we've talked about previously on the show for lots of different news items that we've covered.

1906.76 2021.68 J: Scientists are working on them. And the one that I'm going to talk about today, this is a skin-like wearable that's flexible and it's being developed by US Department of Energy, the DOE Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago's Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering. And this whole effort was led by Si-Hong Wang, who is an assistant professor. The wearable that they're working on would be worn all the time and it would frequently collect data and could one day detect developing health problems like cancer, multiple sclerosis and heart disease. That's pretty significantly different than, say, the Apple Watch today, which could just basically tell you what your heart rate is. These kinds of illnesses could be detected before obvious symptoms occur, which is great. If you think about early detection, that's where it's all about. All the data collected would be analyzed alongside your existing medical records. So all of that data would be used together to try to figure out what's going on. Things like factoring in the patient's age and their current medical history. This would require a lot of data storage, though, because it would be frequently scanning you and collecting data and then that data has to go through some pretty significant computer processing in order to figure out what's what. Now, far more processing than today's Apple Watch, like a lot, lot more processing would have to be done. And this is where, dun, dun, dun, artificial intelligence comes in. I'm sure nobody is surprised. So in order to do the processing fast and also to try to do it minimizing the energy that the processors need, the research team is now using something called neuromorphic computing, which is something that Steve knows a lot about, but did not invent. Steve, you did not come up with neuromorphic, right?

2021.68 2023.32 J: Neuromorphic, no.

2023.32 2054.48 J: No. This is the use of electronic circuits that are built to function like the human brain, like a neurobiological architecture. These are things that are present in the human nervous system. So these systems consume less energy and work well with running artificial intelligence. You know, AI can run very cleanly on these types of processors. A future wearable device like this could significantly outperform existing ways to screen for health issues.

2054.48 2149.32 J: So let's think about that statement real quick. Like, so this wearable, if they get it to where they can see themselves getting it in the near future, that it could significantly outperform existing ways of screening for health issues. So what are the existing ways that we screen for health issues, right? We go to our primary care physicians, we have checkups, we take physicals. You're supposed to get a physical every year. You're supposed to let your doctor know if anything out of the norm or anything that might be troubling you. You know, you go to your doctor, you have them essentially be the quote unquote artificial intelligence that's analyzing all of your symptoms and everything that's going on. Well, let's face it though, you know, most people aren't doing this as well as they should be. I mean, I remember at one point I had to like tell Bob, go get a freaking physical. You know what I mean? Like you haven't gone in a few years. So if we're not doing that, if a lot of people are not going and getting their physicals as much as they should, and I think that we could eventually get an artificial intelligence to the point where it could be doing a good enough job to at least alert medical professionals when something comes up, right? That's probably what the short term, near term goals could be. At least get you to the doctor when you need to go. So the research team had to come up with a flexible material that would be able to house a flexible semiconductor. And this is the other part that I thought was really cool. A flexible semiconductor, right? So that is so it would fit comfortably. It would be the kind of thing that's on you all the time.

2149.32 2153.44 J: You know, you kind of forget that it's there type of thing. It wears like skin, right?

2153.44 2213.68 J: The team came up with the neuromorphic chip that is on, it's on a thin film of plastic that has gold nanowire electrodes and their device is able to stretch out to double its size and still function without breaking, which I think is, you know, freaking awesome because when you think of a, of a computer chip, you know, you're thinking of something that's mounted to a hard plastic that's rigid that you don't want to move. You know, it would break if it, if it, you know, was meant to stretch, you know, if it stretched as much as this thing can stretch, right? So they, they came up with a chip that actually can be flexible and bend and stretch and double its size. To test their wearable tech, the team trained their AI to detect electrocardiogram signals and it was able to identify the electrical input that they gave it with 95% accuracy. They're doing what I consider to be, you know, very foundational work on the, the near term wearable tech of the future. That's good.

2213.68 2240.06 J: That could happen, you know, relatively soon, you know, it, it seems like this team has made a lot of progress and they're coming up with the, you know, the, the software, the hardware and the soft hardware, right? Did you get my joke there? And you know, at some point it'll be able to collect all the data and then we need to simultaneously develop the ability to process all of that data. That's where the artificial intelligence comes in.

2240.06 2254.96 J: And then it'll kind of be like, you know, owning a high end electric car where there'll be updates where the software gets updated as you go and it might become more, it'll be more accurate or be able to detect new things that it wasn't able to detect before.

2254.96 2264.80 J: Now let me ask you guys a question. How do you feel about wearable tech? Would you get something that is semi permanent or permanently attached to your body? I mean, permanent's

2264.80 2273.24 S: hard. I mean, semi permanent, fine. But what could the permanent is like, what if you don't like it? You know, you're kind of screwed. It has to be great advantages to, it would

2273.24 2304.64 C: have to, yeah. The great advantages would have to outweigh any sort of like dystopian, like weirdness about it. And I bring this up because I personally, and I think I told you guys about this this summer, had been wearing like just a Garmin. It's like a Fitbit, but like the Garmin version. And I was like pretty good about tracking all of my steps and tracking all this stuff. And I was getting abnormal heart rate alerts so often that it was like stressing me out. And I, like my heart would just be racing out of the blue.

2304.64 2352.80 C: And so I went to a cardiologist. Well, first I went to my primary care and then I went to a cardiologist, blah, blah, blah, blah. Long story short, after wearing a Holter monitor for a week and after like doing like a full echocardiogram and all this stuff, which was the right thing to do. Basically the diagnosis was your heart is just fast. It's totally healthy and normal. More and more people are wearing these fitness trackers and we're getting all of these like, I guess you could call it a, no, it's not anxiety. This is my heart is faster than most people's. So we're getting, we're better understanding the normal variation and range of people that is still within a healthy, within healthy boundaries. But most of these trackers are still at the level where they're saying this is abnormal because they haven't caught up with the data.

2352.80 2359.64 S: Yeah. I was going to say that, you know, to follow up with Jay was saying more monitoring is not always better.

2359.64 2362.56 C: Exactly. Because you get all of these like false negatives.

2362.56 2363.56 C: Yeah. False positives.

2363.56 2372.92 C: Oh, you're right. False positives. Yeah. I mean, and it's, it's weird because it's like, yes, my heart was fast, but that doesn't mean that I was in danger.

2372.92 2373.92 C: Right.

2373.92 2374.92 C: And you can't turn it off.

2374.92 2405.80 S: And then that could lead to unnecessary followup testing, even unnecessary treatment. And, you know, so it has to be, I think that that kind of technology is ultimately going to be used for other things than what it's being developed for. You know what I mean? Like which is often the case, like we think of it for one thing, but actually it, you know, when you actually test it out in the real world, people realize, oh, it's actually better for this other thing. And the original application actually isn't that good.

2405.80 2429.16 C: But there's also the worry of like, and this seems to happen anytime we talk about biomedical advancements where it's like, this thing would be really great for people who are struggling with sickle cell. And then somebody else comes along and goes, yeah, but how can it maximize my potential even though I'm not sick? And then you get this like whole pseudoscientific industry of people going like, I just want to have like human maximization of potential.

2429.16 2433.60 C: And it's like really worrisome to me, like medical intervention when it's not needed.

2433.60 2442.08 S: Not only that care, all the neurotic patients who are going to be using it constantly monitoring their heart rate and then contacting their doctor.

2442.08 2452.56 C: Yeah, that's what you mentioned about anxiety. Yeah. I'm very lucky that I'm not an overly anxious person because that would have been really like extra scary if I was prone to anxiety on top of that.

2452.56 2459.12 S: Yeah. So it has tremendous positive potential, but also tremendous unintended negative consequences.

2459.12 2469.64 S: As well that we have to think very carefully about, but just the technology itself, having flexible electronics and sensors, you know, could have a lot of...

2469.64 2470.64 C: 100% necessary.

2470.64 2481.20 S: Yeah. It could have a lot of great applications. Absolutely.

Homoploid Sympatric Speciation (41:14)

• New Method of Speciation

S: All right, guys, let me ask you something. What does this phrase mean to you? Homo ploid sympatric speciation.

2481.20 2482.68 S: Same ploid speciation.

2482.68 2484.00 C: Okay. Ploidy is...

2484.00 2487.52 S: Say it again, Steve. Homo ploid sympatric speciation.

2487.52 2493.16 C: So homo is same, ploidy is how many copies of the chromosomes there are.

2493.16 2494.16 C: Yeah.

2494.16 2496.36 C: A sympatric and allopatric, shoot.

2496.36 2498.56 C: Those guys from Ireland.

2498.56 2504.00 C: No, this had something to do with where ecological niches were, right?

2504.00 2508.04 S: Yeah. If you understood this phrase, you'd be very excited right now because...

2508.04 2512.16 C: Yeah, I feel like Bob with a space one. I'm like, come on, I know this.

2512.16 2515.28 E: It's a good thing they couch it in terms that are hard to distinguish.

2515.28 2520.96 S: But this is the kind of scientific jargon I love because it's very poetic.

2520.96 2522.96 S: And it's exactly what it says it is, right?

2522.96 2530.04 S: It's tight and it's exactly what it says it is. And if you're like, you know what it means, like, ooh, homo ploid sympatric speciation, that's exciting, right?

2530.04 2531.04 S: Right there with you.

2531.04 2532.04 B: You dirty man.

2532.04 2546.36 S: So let me back up a little bit and we'll talk about just speciation in general. So that is when you have new species arise. So either one species turns into two or two species create a hybrid third species.

2546.36 2547.36 S: It's a hybrid.

2547.36 2555.36 S: It's a hybrid. And we've spoken about this before and I think sympatric and allopatric or it was a what's the word at some point, Cara. So allopatric...

2555.36 2557.12 C: Yeah, it was. That's why I was like, I know these.

2557.12 2585.92 S: Yeah, yeah. Allopatric speciation is the most common type. And that is when species occur because they're geographically separated, right? So in order to have speciation, you need genetic isolation. That's the key ingredient. In order to have two different species, they have to be genetically isolated from each other. And there's different ways that you can achieve that. The most common ones that they're physically separated from each other, right?

2585.92 2586.92 S: The mountain range or something.

2586.92 2596.84 S: Yeah. So they migrate to an island or over time, like the land moves apart or a chasm occurs or they go into a mountain range or whatever. But you have a...

2596.84 2598.52 B: Like chimps and bonobos.

2598.52 2621.48 S: Whole populations of a species that are over a large range and there's some variability in the environment. And as the environment shifts, you might have species going into different directions. This population over time more and more adapts to the desert while the other one adapts to the forest or whatever. And so they just become physically separated.

2621.48 2636.60 S: Sympatric speciation is when one population or one species becomes two species in the same physical space when their ranges overlap. And the reason why that's rare is because, well, you know...

2636.60 2637.60 B: Crossbreeding should happen.

2637.60 2648.80 S: Because people breed, right? Animals breed with each other, plants pollinate each other, whatever. It happens. Why would they? Why would members of the same species not interbreed?

2648.80 2664.00 S: So there has to be a reason. The most common reason is that they're genetically unable to. Even if they're physically in the same place, they cannot produce fertile young.

2664.00 2665.24 B: And they're the same species.

2665.24 2698.16 S: Well, they started out as the same species, but then something happens where a group of those individuals genetically are no longer compatible with the parent species. The most common genetic mechanism for that is polyploidy, right? So for example, a plant... This happens frequently in lots of different kinds of plants, like potatoes, for example, where you have an offspring that keeps both copies of the genome. So now they have double the chromosomes.

2698.16 2707.84 S: They have polyploidy, and then they can't breed with members of the previously same species that has only a single copy because they have different numbers of chromosomes.

2707.84 2708.84 S: They don't line up.

2708.84 2714.08 C: Right. Oh, that's fascinating. And that's how you end up with like octaploidy. Like you end up with some pretty bananas.

2714.08 3030.04 S: You have some plants with like 96 chromosomes, incredible large numbers of chromosomes because they speciate through polyploidy. Now, homoploid sympatric speciation means that you have two populations of the same species becoming two. They are genetically isolated from each other, but they have the same number of chromosomes. So they should be able to interbreed. Again, that's why if you knew what that phrase meant, you'd be like, that's weird because you only, you know, traditionally you only get sympatric speciation when you have polyploidy or heteroploidy, where you have different numbers of chromosomes. So what, how does that happen? Well, that's the news item that I'm going to talk about because it's an observation of a speciation event through homoploid sympatric speciation. This is in cichlid fish, right? This is like a common type of, they're like small, um, tropical freshwater fish. So in this case, these are species that live in, it's a lake in Nicaragua, yeah, Central America. So it's a lake is about a kilometer wide, you know, so it's not that big. And there were, you know, there's lots of fish in there. There was two related species of cichlid that, that apparently had a mistaken mating event. So typically when that happens, these fish, uh, they look very different. They're very colorful, right? And even though they might be very closely related, they could look extremely different. And so just behaviorally, they do not interbreed because they, they only breed with fish that look like themselves. Um, but at some point, two, you know, members of different, of these close, closely related, but different species mated with each other and had a hybrid offspring still with the same number of chromosomes and still, um, fertile with both parents species, but they looked very different from either parent species. Although they probably at some point, cause you know, if it was only one, they had to back cross to one of the parents species, but eventually you had a stable hybrid population that only bred with itself. And there's essentially two reasons why that was able to happen. One was because they looked distinct from either parent species. So they were able to, you know, recognize each other as the same species and, and only mate with themselves. And two, they were physically different enough, uh, that they were able to occupy a different niche in the lake. Um, so they didn't compete with them for the same food source. The reason was that the, they were faster. Like there's just the shape of their tail fin was such that they were faster swimmers than either of the parent species. And that enabled them to hunt for food that the other, the parent species couldn't hunt for. They also found when they examined the genetics, that there were some unique genetic characteristics. So it wasn't just like in between the two parent species, it was a hybrid, but also there were some unique genetic mutations or whatever in that new population. So they said, this is, this is not just a hybrid. This is a new, this is a new species, a new species, right? So it's a documented recent example of, of homoploids and Patrick speciation due to just genetic and morphological characteristics and behavioral characteristics, allowing them to occupy a new niche. And they look different enough that they only mate with themselves and not with their parents species. So they are, they are a new species and that's a very rare event. That's a very, you know, obviously given a few hundred million years, you know, even rare events are going to happen every now and then, right? The only previously described examples of homoploids and Patrick speciation are in insects. This is the first one in vertebrates that have ever been described in the scientific literature. Yeah, very, very unusual. So it's cool. It's, you know, and just the whole idea of speciation is cool because you, you know, obviously all the species extant today, 10 million of them derived from, I don't know, we, we talked about this one parent species or, you know, right, we're all related. So that means there had to be some common ancestor of all life on earth. So speciation events obviously have happened billions of times over the course of, of history of life on earth. And understanding how they happen, you know, evolutionarily is, is, you know, it's a discipline unto itself. Yeah. So, but the sin Patrick speciation is, is definitely near. But we, I think when we, the last time we talked about this was with killer whales because they, there are different populations of killer whales. They're technically all in the same place cause there it's one worldwide ocean. You know what I mean? So they could technically contact each other, but, but there are different populations in different locations that just don't interbreed with each other.

3030.04 3042.92 C: And that's interesting cause like there's some thought about like it being like a cultural thing, like they're an out group and they don't have the same like fishing techniques and they don't, you know, they might even like quote speak the same language, however you would want to define

3042.92 3052.28 S: that. It's pretty, pretty cool. Yeah. It's interesting to think of being behaviorally isolated rather than geographically isolated. Yeah. It's neat.

3052.28 3054.52 C: There are these little, they're like whale bigots.

3054.52 3057.72 C: Yeah, right. They smell funny. Yeah.

3057.72 3061.16 E: They don't have stars on them.

3061.16 3067.32 S: Yeah, they only have, they don't have stars on their bellies.

Lab Grown Blood (51:04)

• In world-first trial, lab-grown blood was just injected into two people

Water Meteorite (59:19)

• Winchcombe meteorite bolsters Earth water theory

Who's That Noisy? (1:07:55)

Answer to Noisy from Episode 501:

answer to 501's WTN from 2015

Answer to Noisy from Episode 999:

answer to another show's WTN from 2015

Answer to Noisy from Episode 999:

answer to another show's WTN from 2015

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Science or Fiction (1:19:56)

Theme: Turkeys Item #1: An adult wild turkey has between 5,000 and 6,000 feathers. Item #2: Only male turkeys gobble. Females can yelp, cluck, and purr, but they are unable to gobble. Item #3: The last common ancestor of chickens and turkeys lived 40 million years ago.

Answer	Item
Fiction	Only male turkeys gobble
Science	5,000-6,000 feathers
Science	Chicken turkey ancestor

Host	Result
Steve	win

Rogue	Guess
Evan	Only male turkeys gobble
Jay	Chicken turkey ancestor
Bob	Chicken turkey ancestor
Cara	Chicken turkey ancestor

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

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:30:56)

Science and art sometimes can touch one another, like two pieces of the jigsaw puzzle which is our human life, and that contact may be made across the borderline between the two respective domains.
– M. C. Escher (1898-1972), Dutch graphic artist

Signoff

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

S: Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by SGU Productions, dedicated to promoting science and critical thinking. For more information, visit us at theskepticsguide.org. Send your questions to info@theskepticsguide.org. And, if you would like to support the show and all the work that we do, go to patreon.com/SkepticsGuide and consider becoming a patron and becoming part of the SGU community. Our listeners and supporters are what make SGU possible.

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Today I Learned

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

References

Vocabulary