SGU Episode 1036

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SGU Episode 1036
May 17th 2025
"Revolutionizing offshore operations: A floating platform designed for efficiency and innovation."
SGU 1035                      SGU 1037
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Quote of the Week
“The difference between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil.”
- Mon Mothma, Andor
Links
Download Podcast
Show Notes
SGU Forum

Intro

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

S: Hello, and welcome to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe. Today is Monday, May 12th, 2025, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella. Hey everybody, Cara Santa Maria.

C: Howdy.

S: J Novella, Hey guys. And Evan Bernstein.

E: Good evening everyone.

S: So guys, I don't actually, I think we forgot to mention last week.

E: What happened last?

S: Week, but we have now completed fully completed 20 years of podcasting.

E: Oh my. Gosh.

C: What was the date of the very first episode?

S: So we recorded that first episode on May 5th, 2005, which kind of fell between weeks this time. When did it air that Saturday? So.

E: We'd have to go back.

S: To 8th. The 8th.

E: Yeah, that makes sense.

C: OK, Yeah.

S: So now we have officially completed 20 years and this is the episode of recording. Right now is episode 1036.

E: When I talk with people about our podcast nowadays, I have to remind them that we were podcasting in a time really before YouTube. There was no video podcast. It was an audio only platform at the time. We primarily remain that way to this to this day. So when I'm talking with someone about a podcast today, the first thing they asked me, if they're new to it, it's like, oh, where can I watch it? That's what they say to me.

US#02: I know. Oh.

E: Wow, I have to remind them it's an audio. That's why I have to say audio only, audio only. Something I didn't expect to have to happen you. Know point them to the live streams. Certainly, of course, of course I do. I tell them about all the social media channels, everything, everything that we do, the whole slate.

C: I find that strange because it's not like every podcast has a video component. Most.

S: It is common now though.

C: Some podcasts do have video components now, but the podcast itself is still on a feed.

S: And the, the crazy thing is when we do the live streams, most people listen to the audio only. Mm hmm. And then they complain about the bits that are video only. You know what I mean? They say, oh, I Fast forward past this, 'cause you can't see anything. What's 'cause it's a live video stream and you just watch, you're choosing to listen to the audio, which is fine. We make it available to you, but you can't win, you know, thinking.

US#02: Right.

S: Wow, I didn't know that.

E: So, yeah, you just have to and that's how far we've come. That's how far this, the platform itself has evolved, the product has has evolved in lots of different ways. But that, that's one of the main ways at least I have to be, I have to make that distinction regularly to people because there's still so many people discovering our show for the first time. Yeah. Well, again, 20 years.

S: It's long enough that our entire new generation has come up that didn't exist or we're, you know, toddlers. We started podcasting.

E: And I think we also, we also have to couple that with the, I don't know, it was practically 10 years of skeptical activism We did before there was a new podcast. You know, we didn't just walk into it cold. We we had we had almost 10 years of experience under our belts.

S: We earned our bones, absolutely.

E: We were in the field.

S: Newsletter 4 newsletters newsletters.

C: Wait, so then have I been on the show for half of the life of the show or more or less?

E: I think I have.

C: Right, it has.

E: 2015 you joined?

C: Yeah.

E: So yes.

S: Yeah, that's weird to think about that She'll think he was the New Girl, you know, But in a way, even though it's been a long time, but it's probably the thing, yeah.

C: Half the time. 10A decade. Wow.

E: That's amazing.

J: Yeah, you know the thing? The thing about this whole 20 years, you know, and of course it predates 20 years. You guys, you know, did a lot more than I did because I was busy playing music. But you know, when the podcast started, I was always all in the thing that really, I just can't wrap my head around the fact that we've been doing this for 20 years. And like very soon after we got our feet wet. You know what I mean? We're like, OK, we got got our sea legs doing it. We haven't missed an episode. You know, we have consistently put out an episode for, you know, 19 1/2 years. Say when when we hit that mark, that accomplishment really was impactful to me because this is really like the longest commitment to anything I've ever had in my life. And you know, it's fantastic. I mean, think about it, think about all the people that we've gotten to know and meet. Think about all of the, all the times that we've helped people figure out, you know, not only what the truth is, but you make career paths and things like that just because, you know, our science communication inspired them in one way or another. Like I, I am humbled to that. I feel, you know, honored that any work that all of us do gets to do that kind of thing. And then, you know, Carol, like meeting you, it's like the you are like the closest thing to destiny in my life, right? Because it really, you know, when I first met you, I was like, I want to work with her. It was immediate.

B: Yeah, right.

J: We are just like with George, like it was like a let a switch went off. I really like her. She's really smart. And I wanted I want to work with you.

E: Yeah, your natural communication talents just shine. They do.

J: It's so, it's how I feel like we're all lucky, you know, we have a family. Yeah. Feel here.

C: When did you guys meet George?

J: Very early on, yeah.

C: Really.

J: Wait, Steve, I think it was at that Tam.

S: No, it was we met. No, it was prior to.

J: That Are you sure?

S: Yeah. Wasn't it like the first Tam or the second one?

J: It was. The second the.

S: Second one that we went to that we went.

E: 2000 SO.

J: I believe the story is we saw him and all of us had the same first impression of George. He's like, wow, that guy's really cool. He's too.

S: Cool to be a Tam.

J: And. Well, I saw.

S: I remember the first image in my mind of seeing George. George was, you know, dressed in a, a suit and tie. He was holding his guitar in one hand and he had a, you know, a woman on his other arm, which was, I believe Donna, you know, is a friend of ours. We know now, you know, I think they were dating at the time. And I'm like, who the hell is that guy? Like he was. He stood out so much from the rest of the crowd it was funny.

C: That's funny.

E: You just have any kind of conversation you want with George. It doesn't even have to be about skepticism or science or anything.

C: Oh no, like that.

E: Kind of person who just, you know, whatever tickles your fancy, he'll converse right back with you about whatever that topic is. It's fits right in.

C: Awesome dude. Faux Show.

J: I love his look by the way. I mean.

C: Oh yeah, everyone loves his look.

J: It's cool if I. If I didn't have a weird shaped head I would I would go bald as well.

E: It's the glasses as well that helps the whole image, you know, it makes him distinctive in a way, and.

J: Carol, you and George in particular like getting, getting to know you guys intimately and realizing, you know, you guys are profoundly high quality people. You know, it's like it's not just we're, we're working together, you know, we, we are a family in every sense of the word. You know, like we we except biological. Yeah, we. Have like the actual. Literal sense of the word except. For except for literally, you know, my wife, like Courtney will say to me, she always asks me like, we're doing something and, you know, as if Cara's not going to be there, but she's like, is Cara going? She's like, I go, yeah. And she goes, I should go, you know, I miss.

C: Court. I miss her.

J: But anyway, I'm just thankful and I thank you, Steve. You know, Steve, I've been very vocal about your profound contribution, but you know, it's been, it's been a pleasure doing this with you, Steve, because you, you are, you've just kept us all on track. You make sure that everything happened.

S: Every project needs a task masker.

J: Tell me about it. I know it's true and you're but you're great at it. You know, you just you've really like taught us a lot. It's all it's all been positive and I wouldn't change anything. I just, well, I would like to have actually earned a lot more money. But beyond that? But that goes without saying in general for everybody. But anyway, thank you all guys. I love all of you and I love doing what we do and I'm I don't even think about it ending.

S: Yeah, I know I could do. This is my I do sometime. Forever job, basically, as long as I'm until I go demented or something, you know, I still at some point you guys will have to tell me Steve, it's time to stop.

E: Are we? Are we the ones to make that determination?

S: Whoever is like the least demented to keep the rest of us.

E: Cara that's. Huge.

S: I think we need to have a, you know, an ongoing demented rating that just to see who you know, just in case we need to know fast. So part of the reason why I'm retiring now from medicine, from treating patients actually is because there is no question that I am still at peak performance cognitively and professionally, you know what I mean? And I, I didn't want to be one of those doctors who's like people look at him and go, he should retire.

C: You know what I mean? This like this like because. You're fever when you're planning on taking some time for yourself.

S: Yeah, exactly. I mean, God, there are some of my colleagues, like 75, you know, upper 70 still working and like, what the hell? Oh my God, Don't you have any other interests? You have?

J: No. Right.

E: These people die at their work, I mean.

S: I enjoy it, but it's like, I want, you know, this is I'm ready for the next phase of my life.

J: I mean, unless you're making science fiction movies, like, you know, work is work. And even, you know, even the SGU, I love a lot of it, but it's work. I would rather be doing the stuff I don't do when I'm working. Right.

S: Yeah. So, but at least this again, this is as you say, we're all working, we're friends. We could, I could work for my office at home mostly I could sleep in, you know what I mean? Like it's just different than having scheduled. Professional.

E: No rat race.

S: Exactly. No treadmill, no rat race, except for just getting the podcast out every week, which I've been doing anyway. So now I'm not going to be doing that.

J: It's going to become very easy, Steve, because you're going to go from, you know, working 40-50 hours a week to not doing any of that and. How you think I'm only working 4050? Hours A. Week.

S: That's adorable, Jay.

J: I mean what is it say it?

S: Well, you know Jay, I'm working almost 40 hours a week for my day job.

J: That's what I was referencing.

S: And you got to attack 20-30 hours on top of that.

J: But what, what I was saying was, you're going to, like, eliminate that 40 or 50 hours of work a weekend. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm, I'm, you know, I'm tired and messed up right now, but I'm not stupid. Yeah. And again, like, you know, I think, and I hate to be morbid about this, but this will continue until we meet Steve, right? Like we're going to keep doing, we're going to keep making these shows until Steve is is no longer with us. And then that's it.

S: Either mentally or physically. All right, well, I'm in. I'm, I'm, I don't plan on stopping anytime soon. All right, guys, let's go on with the show. Mm. Hmm. Evan, you're going to start us off with a new hybrid segment. Yes, the dumbest word of the week.

E: Thank you, Steve. Throughout history, there have been a few combinations that have changed the world. For example, hydrogen and oxygen, fire and food, hand washing and healthcare, peanut butter and chocolate. Hi Bob. Today marks the latest and perhaps most significant combination of two distinct things that will be recognized as equally significant of a turning point in history. I've combined what's the word with the dumbest thing of the week. And and so for for the first time in history of this universe and all other universes combined, I present to you the dumbest word of the week. It's the dumbest word of the week. Come with me. Let's take a peek where it's OK to binge, even though we might cringe at what I speak. The dumbest word of the week. You know that song, right?

US#02: What's what's happening right now?

E: A new segment, A new, a new Jingle.

US#02: That's the rule.

E: Absolutely.

S: All right, no more new segments.

E: For those, for those of us brave enough, for those of us brave enough to tread such waters, true this week's the initial dumbest word of the week is mock Sebastian.

US#02: What the hell, man?

E: That is a compound word. Would anyone like to care or guess at what 2 words make mock Sebastian?

US#02: Combustion. Yeah, combustion, second one, yes. The first one that was like Moxi.

E: Moxa Moxa refers to the dried leaves of mugwort traditionally used in heat therapy.

Dumbest Word of the Week (12:44)

moxibustion None

E: Combustion refers to the process of burning, which is central to the moxibustion practice. What is the moxibustion practice? Glad you asked because I'm not certain. Steve, you may have a different thought on this. I don't think we've ever talked about this before on the shows.

S: I'm sure I, I know I haven't done a dedicated segment on it, but I'm sure I've done a drive by while we're while talking about other things like acupuncture and cupping.

E: Exactly, and that's where this comes in. Moxa bust in a traditional East Asian therapy that involves the burning of dried mugwort called moxa, near or on specific acupuncture points on the body. The goal is to stimulate the flow of chi, you know, life energy, and expel cold and dampness from the body according to traditional Chinese medicine principles. How does it work in practice? Well, there are two main types of moxibustion. There is direct moxibustion, in which you place a small cone of moxa directly on the skin and you burn it. However, that can cause some burns or scars, especially in the traditional scarring moxibustion method. That's the thing, the scarring moxibustion method. The other way is the indirect moxibustion in which that's more common today. You know, they're not actually burning people. It's burned near the skin and it's held over. The acupuncture points are on top of the acupuncture acupuncture needles. Sometimes a moxa stick like a cigar is used and waved over areas of the body. Moxibustion supposedly dates back over 2500 years, which could be earlier than acupuncture itself. In traditional Chinese medicine, diseases are often thought to stem from the imbalances of Ying and Yang, and moxibustion is seen as a warming Yang strengthening therapy. Here are some of its claimed benefits. It warms and invigorates the flow of chi and blood. It treats cold conditions like arthritis and menstrual cramps, And it helps breech baby's turn in utero. That's a popular claim. Helps breech baby's turn in utero. What is the scientific evidence for this? None. There are studies though, particularly from China, that claim these effects, but they're considered weak and biased and I think that's probably very generous. Generous. The breach baby claim got attention from a few small trials suggesting A slight increase in fetal movement when combined with acupuncture, but this has not been able to be replicated. So the science really says no. Safety and criticisms? Oh yeah, burns. Blistering can occur if you're doing it wrong. The smoke from the burning moxa contains a particulate matter that can irritate your lungs, especially if you're using it indoors. And overall, this is definitely ironclad pseudoscience based on non falsifiable and unproven concepts. So congratulations to the term Mach Sebastian, the very first, what is likely to be many more in this new segment. The dumbest word of the week. Oh, and stay tuned for more hybrid segments in the future, including the newly thought of segment swindlers. Quickie back to you, Steve.

S: I thought you were going to do science or noisy.

E: I got to save something for the future. We have 20 more years of doing.

J: This quickie when I do Swindler's List, what are you? What are you doing?

E: Swindler's Quickie. That's another. That's another hybrid I'm.

J: Going to do the quickie quote then I that's my new segment I'm. Going to do quote. And then anything you come up with, I'll just put Quickie in front of it and that'll be my new bit.

E: Perfect. See how easy it is?

News Items

Cold Plunges (16:28)

• Do cold-water plunges really speed post-workout muscle recovery? 

S: OK, let's go on with some full news items. Cara, Start us off with the science of cold plunges.

C: Yeah, some new, well, evidence question mark about cold plunges just published in PLOS ONE. The article is titled. No. Well, that kind of gives it away, doesn't it? Damn it Spoiler alert is titled No acceleration of recovery from exercise Induced Muscle damage after cold or hot Water immersion in women, a randomized control trial. So the authors, you know, anytime researchers set out to ask an interesting scientific question, they justify the question. They say, you know, why is this important? What is this going to contribute to the literature to to our kind of field of knowledge right now? And one of the arguments that the authors make is that the vast majority of research in existence right now on things like cold plunge or cryotherapy or cold water immersion post exercise for recovery are done on men, That there's very, very little evidence using women research participants. The other argument is that the evidence on men is weak at best. There is some evidence showing some changes, but a lot of it has not been easily replicated and there's a fair amount of evidence showing no improvement. I even just did a quick kind of Google search before sitting down to do this story where I just looked up, you know, cryotherapy or cold water immersion skeptic and found, you know, a ton of summary articles over the years starting, you know, back when this got really big and like the teens up until recently talking about things like whole body cryotherapy or cold water immersion and how the evidence is just kind of all over the place. But it's not very good so far. It's just not very good that this is actually beneficial, and there is a fair amount of harm that can come from things like cryotherapy or cold water immersion if done inappropriately or done kind of not under the supervision of like, let's say, APT or a physician. So what did these researchers do? Well, they said what happens if we take a group of women? They took thirty women and they had them complete something called an exercise called a drop jump. Have you guys ever done drop jumps? They're not box jumps. They're different. I had to like watch a video about it. It looks brutal. Bob, what is in them?

US#04: I know what a box jump is though.

C: It's like the opposite of a box jump. It's like you start elevated, not too too high, just a little bit elevated like thigh high and then or even lower and then you jump onto the ground and immediately rebound and spring up. So it's like hit the ground and jump as fast as you can.

E: Yeah, I've seen it.

C: Yeah, and sometimes you just jump. Sometimes you jump onto another box.

E: Like a it's a CrossFit exercise.

C: Yeah, it's like a, it's like a high intensity, you know, exercise and so hard to do. Yeah, they had them do five sets of 20. So it's enough of an exercise that it should cause some amount of like muscle damage, right? Or at least irritation of your muscles. And so then they had the, and these were young women. They were, the average age was 23. They had them do one of three different protocols. They did either a 10 minute dip in 10°C water, a 10 minute dip in 40°C water or nothing, right? That's the control group. So they did cold water immersion, hot water immersion or no water immersion. And that was immediately after. And then again two hours after that first soak, they did another one. So they did an. An immediate soak and then a delayed soak. And then they looked at a bunch of different markers 1-2 and three days after the experiment, both subjective and objective measurements. So everything from their muscle strength, how sore they felt, how swollen their muscles were, and creatine kinase, which is a marker of muscle damage in the blood. So they had these subjective and these objective measures and they found that across the board, muscle recovery looked the same. Whether somebody did a cold water plunge, a hot water plunge, or no plunge at all, their muscles sort of recovered in the same way. They did find some differences. So they found that the cold water immersion protocol reduced oxygenation of the muscles and they are referring to that as oxygen saturation within the muscles. So they found that the cold water protocol reduced oxygen saturation within the muscles and the temperature of the skin by a significant margin. They also found that the hot water protocol increased core body temperature and the temperature of the skin. So they did affect a measure, right? Which?

E: I imagine they predicted ahead of time with yeah.

C: There was some confusion about the oxygen saturation. It was actually kind of interesting in the discussion. I don't want to get too into the weeds, but they like, they found that typically the reason that there's some, there's still a lot of debate within like the exercise science community about whether cold or hot is beneficial or deleterious is because they both do interesting things. And the question is which, you know, do they counteract each other? We don't know. So obviously, when you apply cold to your muscles, what happens? Like what are tractions?

S: Reduces blood flow.

C: Yeah, reduces blood flow. Right, that's a constriction. Which can be yeah, which is a bad thing, but it also reduces inflammatory response, which could be a good thing potentially. And then when you apply but.

S: Actually, I don't think it is because that's part of the muscle building activity. It requires that inflammation.

C: If it's a, shall we call it like a normal healthy amount of muscle damage, but if there's injury or anything beyond that, it you know, it can actually be a good thing. But then on the flip side, what happens when you apply heat?

S: Get increased. Blood.

C: Yeah, you've got increased vasodilation and so you've got metabolic increases, nutrient delivery increases, an increase in the removal of these waste byproducts. And so it's like, OK, well heat sounds like it would be good, but maybe in some instances cold would be good. Or maybe we shouldn't do either and let the body do what it's supposed to do the.

S: Body do what it's going to do, like that it evolved over millions of years to do.

C: And also, is this something where this is damage that's beyond normal activity or is it normal damage like this is complicated? Right. Does it mitigate pain? And that's another question, right? What happens for if you feel pain in your muscles, if you feel soreness? And so they were like, OK, we want to look at all of these things. And they found that yes, when they applied cold, the muscles were less oxygenated, but actually, weirdly, they immediately vasodilated and then they constricted. So when they looked at the first measurement in both the heat and the cold group, there was vasodilation and they were like, well, that's weird. But then they found that similar to some other studies, there does appear to be this like biological response that's sort of like a the body's reaction to frostbite. So when the body is a can tell that it there's been an extreme drop in temperature and that it could be dangerous for tissue, it actually will vasodilate before it vasoconstricts. So that's kind of interesting. They call it cold induced vasodilation. It's proposed to occur a few, it's after cold exposure to protect against injuries from the cold like frostbite. But then it usually reverses. So, but that's like neither here nor there. So they found that overall across the board, in the cold group, the muscles were more oxygenated and the skin got colder, OK. In the hot group, the core body temperature raised and the skin got hotter, OK. But there was no measurable difference in any recovery parameter. So they didn't see any subjective or objective characteristics in the cold water immersion group or the hot water immersion group compared to the passive control. Participants didn't feel any better. And participants didn't have any metrics that showed that their muscles were healing or improving faster. And that was at, you know, immediate measurements and up to three days later. Now, there are some limitations of this study, obviously, with small sample size. They didn't, and they talk about this a lot in the study, which I think is interesting. They didn't do any sort of pretest about psychological bias, like they didn't ask them, do you think this will work? Or what kinds of things do you typically do and what works for you? And they do know that there could be a psychological component to these types of post exercise rituals. Because we've all met people. Yeah, we've all met people who are like, I always do this thing and I always feel better after. And it's like, well, yeah, because maybe you think you're going to. Feel.

S: Psychological Conditioning.

C: Yeah, totally. And so they didn't test for that. But either way, what's interesting is they did find no measurable difference. And so they argue in their paper that not only is this an important contribution to the literature because, you know, the literature on cold water immersion and cryotherapy is all over the place. And this is just another sort of nail in that coffin that says it doesn't seem to work. But also most all of that literature, all of those studies have been performed on men. And so here is a study showing something that is important to talk about the unique Physiology of women when it comes to exercise science. So I liked this study for multiple reasons. And it's just one more thing that we can kind of reference when cryotherapy comes up in conversation, as it so often does.

S: Got to be careful, Joe Rogan's not going to like you now. Right I.

C: Think that ship has sailed?

S: That's we got you got you didn't like me because I said there's no evidence to show that cryotherapy or this cold plunge treatment is good for muscle recovery or good for anything. And there still isn't years later, there still isn't evidence. In fact, what evidence we do have, as you say, it's all over the place, which is always a sign that the it's the null hypothesis. But this is pretty much a dead negative.

C: Study and even when it comes to areas where we have really good evidence, like I still find myself frustrated. So I'm going to see an ortho tomorrow because I, I don't know if you guys remember, but I sprained my ankle way back in February. I was very good and I wore a boot, an air boot for a couple of weeks. I was, I babied it for a while, but then eventually I went back to gymnastics and I went back to hiking and doing all the things that I love to do. And it just is not healing. And every time I would talk to a physician, they would be like, well, you have to stay off of it. And I'd be like for how long? And they would say until it stops hurting. And I was like, it doesn't hurt until I work out and then it hurts again. And they're like, well, until it doesn't hurt after you work out. And I'm like, well, I am not psychic, so I don't know how to figure that out. Right. And, and fine. And the X-rays keep showing nothing. So obviously I'm going to need to get an MRI and see if I have any damage to my ligaments. But I hear all the time from different providers, well, have you been icing it? Well, have you used a heating pad? And I'm like, which one when? Why I ice it when it's swollen. I think I'm supposed to do that, but I don't know when to use heat.

S: The general rule of thumb is like 1st 24 hours you I used to reduce swelling and then after that you use heat to make it feel better. You know, relax the muscles just to prevent spasm. None of that promotes healing, it's just to make you feel better.

C: Exactly. And I don't think there's anything going on with my muscles maybe, but it could be ligament it.

S: Could be ligament, yeah, it's.

E: Just tendon.

C: But I.

S: Then it takes a long time to get better and. There's long time feet.

C: Exactly. You can't stay off your feet.

S: Well, you can. You can use crutches you.

C: Know exactly. Or an air boot to at least, yeah.

E: Foot injury and professional athletics is is awful. It takes them out of the game for a long time. We take our feet for granted quite a bit.

S: Well, any part of the body that is like a part of your just core functionality, like you can't not use it. That's why like back problems are so bad, because you can't not use your back, you know?

C: Oh, yeah, after, if you guys remember a couple years ago after my hysterectomy, I really had taken for granted how often I use my abs.

S: Yeah. Oh yeah.

C: You know, and it's like you just, you can't move your abs after hysterectomy.

S: Core body.

C: Yeah. And it's you can't do anything and everything you do, you have to be so controlled and so intentional about it for weeks.

The End of Life (28:58)

• Ever wondered when life on Earth will end? A supercomputer has the answer 

S: All right. Thank you, Cara. Jay, when is life on Earth going to end? Guys, what's going to kill all the life on earth first?

E: Oh, what will? What will the cause be?

S: Yeah, just throw out your guesses.

E: Well, the easy guess is. Other nuclear winter. People.

B: People. Yes.

S: All life on earth, I would say if.

B: You're including bacteria, then it's it's got to be the increasing heat of the sun.

E: Well, right, it would happen.

S: Well, I think it's between, well, there's a few things I could do. It could be that just by necessity, eventually will the sun will grow, you know the temperature will increase and eventually the earth will boil. But before that, we may be hit with a gamma ray burst, or we may be hit with an extinction level asteroid event.

J: Well, barring any outside effects, you know, like Bob, Bob was in the right, the right zone has definitely has something to do with the sun. So, you know, when we when we think about the long term future of the Earth, you know, like you were saying, Steve, we often think of like, you know, weird things happening to the continents and asteroid impacts. And then, you know, I remember as a kid being told that the sun is going to like engulf the Earth. And I thought that was really horrifying. It's terrifying. But the cool thing and the interesting thing, well, first of all, we don't have to worry about any of this. Everyone. It's all good. This is going to happen a very long time. For now, so long before any of that nonsense happens there, there is a slow and silent killer that could reshape the Earth's biosphere. And what that means is there there would be a complete loss of atmospheric oxygen. And that, my friends, is it that kills everything on the planet.

E: What about the anaerobic bacteria?

J: Well, they'll they'll hang out for a little while and then they'll die too.

E: And the tardigrades.

J: There creatures like that will probably be the very very last.

E: Lucky's.

J: You know, it's hard to grades, you know, who knows and and who knows what. Yeah, it's really cool. I I'm curious to know. I wonder, I wonder if there would be, you know, evolution happening for creatures like that to survive.

S: Yeah.

J: So let's get into the details. So Kazumi Ozaki at Toho University and Christopher Reinhart at Georgia Institute of Technology published their study in Nature Geoscience. And they used a sophisticated Earth system model to forecast the fate. You know, the, you know, we have an oxygen rich atmosphere. And they wanted to know, you know, what was going to happen to, you know, all the elements of the Earth when the sun eventually starts really heating things up. So they concluded that Earth's breathable air isn't going to last forever. And according to their simulations, the planet has about 1.8 one point O 8 billion years left and with an error bar of about 140 million years before oxygen levels like plunge. And this would happen within about 10,000 years of when it starts, it'll be all over and and there is no recovery from it. So they they were saying that this would leave the atmosphere like the the Archaean Earth, right? You know, very, very, very long ago before, you know, we had the oxygen rich atmosphere that we have now. So as our sun ages, it's gradually going to become more luminous, which sounds very pretty, but that with that extra luminosity we have, you know, heat and lots of different things changing, lots of levers are going to change that. It increases the solar energy. It kicks off this crazy cascade of geochemical and biological feedbacks that will ultimately trigger a total collapse in atmospheric oxygen. So at the core of the model, they're saying it's photosynthesis. So the process that generates all the oxygen over billions of years on the planet, you know, these come from lants and microbes, and they need CO2. But the more solar radiation Earth receives, the more chemical weathering occurs, which scrubs CO2 from the atmosphere. And that's it. That's the marble. So as CO2 levels drop, photosynthesis will eventually start to stumble and then it will completely breakdown. And then the biosphere can no longer sustain high levels of of atmospheric oxygen. It just the production will stop and eventually even oxygen producing life like cyanobacteria and plants, they're just not going to be able to survive and it's going to like it's going to plummet very quickly. So like I said, they estimated that once this tipping point is reached, oxygen levels will will fall severely over the span of about 10,000 years, which is nothing from a geological time scale. And the atmosphere, it's going to end up being rich in methane, very low in oxygen. It's going to resemble Earth about 2.5 billion years ago, prior to what has been called what the Great Oxidation Event.

S: Yeah, oxygen revolution.

J: Yeah. So they're just going to, it's just going to do a 180 on that. And this change isn't about habitability in the abstract. It's about, you know, the fact that the habitability of the planet, it's complicated. It's oxygen dependent and microbes and extremophiles might be able to to last a little longer and everything. But it's just going to get to the point where it it, it's going to change the atmosphere so much that they're saying they don't think anything is going to survive. You know, we know exactly what the sun's going to do. You know, it's not a mystery in any way. We know exactly what what the stages are. And, and, you know, because of the size and makeup of our sun, we, we know like pretty accurately how long it's going to take for it to become more luminous and what that change in temperature and everything is going to do. And it just makes this whole thing fascinating, even though it's terrible, right? But it's so far in the future. And any, any humanity that is alive or any, you know, anything that is the, you know, comes after humanity that's alive at that point is probably not going to need Earth anyway, which I, I find to be kind of sad too. So I'm not worried about it like, you know, killing humanity in a sense. You know what?

S: I'm saying in years like we won't even exist, not certainly in the state that we're currently in.

J: But like everything, most humans, like we take everything for granted, including the simple fact that we have an oxygen rich atmosphere. And it's not a fixed feature, though it wasn't here when the Earth began. And it's not going to be here for a, you know, for quite a long time before the Earth really does get engulfed by the sun. And they're saying like, you know, we, we should think about it as it's a fragile system. But if you look at the freaking Earth from outer space, there's this tiny thin layer of roughly on average 70° oxygen rich atmosphere and that's it. And there's nothing between US and space, just just a column of air that isn't that much. So it was interesting to hear them say, you know, take a deep breath and enjoy it. You know, it's, it's wonderful and we should be be thankful.

S: I know we got a billion years left.

J: Yeah, but we could screw up our our atmosphere. I mean, we're.

S: Oh, sure.

J: We are doing things that are damaging ourselves right now. Like we know we should show some freaking respect to humanity and to the earth and not allow these things to happen. Or at least once we discover it, do something, you know, very, you know, very severe to undo it. But, you know, we're just not doing it. But I'm breathing and I'm enjoying it and I just don't want to lose that feel.

S: All right, Thank you, Jay.

Floating Nuclear Power (35:56)

• Floating Nuclear Power Plants - NeuroLogica Blog 

S: Well, Jay, I have a solution for you.

J: Go ahead.

S: For global warming.

J: Yep.

S: For our energy conversion into a low carbon future.

J: What is it?

S: You ready? Floating nuclear power plants. I'd like this.

J: Why?

S: Would you do that?

J: Wait, floating and the ocean are floating in the air exactly on?

C: The ocean so exciting, so.

S: When we take care of, that's a big difference.

C: You know that's true. That is true.

S: Yes, floating on water. Now what? When was the first nuclear powered vessel commissioned?

E: Oh, that was the the Nautilus. Yeah, that's the submarine, the 1956.

S: 55 good guess, I mean 1955 the USS Nautilus. So we have basically been operating nuclear powered reactors on ships for 70 years without incident.

E: Isn't that that's that is impressive.

S: That's the USI mean.

E: Right. Not the Kursk right in the Russian.

S: The Soviets had a couple of mishaps, but yeah, I don't think that's inherent to the technology itself, let's say that. So, yeah, so it seems like it seems pretty doable. Right now. There are 160 nuclear powered ships in operation, mostly submarines and aircraft carriers. So the idea is, well, why not make a ship that is a nuclear power plant, like not powering the ship, but just making power. So a typical ship will generate several 100, you know, 203 hundred megawatts of electricity compared to a typical land based nuclear reactor which generates 1600 or more megawatts. But you could certainly make one that again, since it's you're not using it as a aircraft carrier or submarine, you're just using it as a a nuclear power factory, You could get up to like that range, you know, 506 hundred megawatts. Yeah, GW, how do?

B: You plug it into the grid though.

S: That's a good question that yeah, we'll get to that. So OK.

E: I figured I just wanted to say it for anybody else did. You take the three prongs and you click it in and yeah.

S: So what would be the advantages and the disadvantages to doing this as opposed to just building nuclear reactors on the land, which is what we're currently doing?

B: You can move them to where the powers needed. Mobility. Yeah. So mobility is what obviously.

S: So there's a company that's currently you think the farthest along. Yeah, Core power, they say that they're further of the farthest along from what I could tell of any company. There are other companies working on this as well in terms of being able to produce this these these floating nuclear power plants. So they point out that 65% of economic activity occurs in coastal regions. So that's a lot.

US#03: Yeah.

S: As Bob said, these nuclear barges could be towed to a port and they could just park them in the port. Like right now we park nuclear aircraft carriers in ports, right? You could do it no problem. Plug it in and you have power where it's needed. And I don't know that the moving thing is going to be that critical. You know what I mean? Like once you put them where they need to be, that probably will be there for a while. But the big advantage, though, is you don't have to do any site preparation.

E: Yeah, right.

S: Before you build a nuclear power plant, you got to prepare the the the land for.

E: It sure.

S: And that's a lot to do that. It's a huge delay. There's a lot of regulations.

E: And environmental studies.

S: Costs a lot of money so.

E: Much.

US#02: Damn red tape.

S: This way you just float it where you want it to be and that's it. There's no site preparation, right? Or at least not where the the power plant is going to be itself. The other thing is we already have a shipbuilding industry, right? We basically already have an infrastructure with the people, with the training and, you know, the shipyards to do this. All we have to do is adapt that to building these nuclear barges. So and then they could be produced relatively quickly. It'd be kind of like the similar idea to the small modular reactors where you come up with a design and then just produce a bunch of them in a factory, you know, rather than bespoke power plants on site. This way, like a way, once you come up with a design, you can build 100 of these ships, these nuclear barges, send them to where they need to go. They would all be centrally produced in shipyards, which could also handle maintenance. Fueling, you know, refueling and waste disposal, right? So all of that could be handled with this sort of centralized infrastructure. And you can even park someone, some of them further offshore, if that makes more sense, if you don't want them in the port. And that would work as well. So Bob, you bring up one point is like, well, how are they going to get plugged into the grid, right? Because obviously that's that is important. And so, yeah, that would be the one infrastructure thing that we would need to do. We would need to make sure that there was a place for them to plug in, right? They would need to be an access port for the grid wherever they are. That's obviously not a deal killer that that's just, but that's some infrastructure that we would have to that we would have to build as opposed to say building a nuclear power plant on the site of a decommissioned coal-fired plant, which is something else I think that we should be doing. We are doing that in some cases, but that's again some of the low hanging fruit with the big advantages. We have an existing connection to the grid. You're just swapping out a coal-fired plant for a nuclear plant. That's awesome. This would be a new location. So but so you would need new connections to the grid. It's like to me that's the one main downside. But other than that, I think it sounds like a good idea. There are a lot of advantages and it's a way of getting the nuclear power close to its end use just offshore, you know, and a lot of our cities, a lot of our infrastructures built along the coast for obvious reasons.

B: There'd still be a lot of red tape, right? Because you would still, now you wouldn't need to prep the area necessarily for the construction, but you need to prep it for the regulations of having a nuclear power plant right there, you know?

S: Yeah, but as I said, we already park nuclear powered ships in these ports, right?

B: Yeah, but they're not there. You said once they go there, they're probably going to stay there for quite a while. And so those ships don't stay for that long.

S: Yeah. So there's, I'm sure there's going to be some regulatory steps here and of course that's all I'm saying the the companies are working with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and you know, all of the regulatory aid necessary regulatory agencies and that and they will have to get all of that. What I would like to see happen is an operation warp speed for these nuclear power plants, you know, get streamline the regulations without compromising safety, of course, but you know that we are nowhere near the optimal compromise of speed and safety. We are at way towards the end of inefficient bureaucracy, way more inefficient than it has to be. And and a lot of it just that we don't have the resources. Like you put it on someone's desk, like, yeah, I'll get to that in a year. You know, that kind of thing is going on where if you just had more people who could, you know, pile through this like Operation Warp Speed for the vaccine for Kovid, it didn't reduce the research. It just allowed them to happen at the same time, right? Instead of saying, OK, now you've got to do your phase one. And then when that's done, stop, pause, we'll look at everything, we'll go over everything. And then once you get your approvals, now you can start planning for the second phase, right? So it takes years. And the warp speed was like, just do it all at once. You still have to do everything and get approval of everything, but you don't have to wait to get started. And right, it's more in parallel rather than in series. So we could do the same thing. We could, you know, find ways to streamline the process, increase the regulatory resources. So that's not a log jam, right? That's not slowing down the process and just make it happen. You know, just make it happen. And then we could be deploying these fairly quickly and this could be a great addition to our transition to low carbon energy. So hopefully this will this will proceed fairly quickly. I do think this is nuclear power now, interestingly is like the one thing that has bipartisan support in the US because it has traditional Republican support and the Democrats like it's better than global warming, you know what I mean? So they're, they're coming around to it as well. The Biden administration was all in on nuclear. They did a lot of, they passed a lot of things to Fast forward nuclear power. And it's like the one thing I don't think that the Trump administration is going to go back on. I mean, we'll see. But it looks like the, I mean, other than there's a generic destroying the infrastructure of our federal government. But other than that, the, the hope is that at least we can continue to move forward on, on the nuclear power. So by coincidence, I think this is a total coincidence. Right after I, you know, wrote my article on floating nuclear power plants, I read a research study on floating solar farms. So this is kind of the another low carbon energy solar power. The idea here is that you build a, a grid scale solar, you know, power plant, you have floating solar panels, you put them on a body of water, right. This is already happening, you know, and China of course is doing more of it than anybody else. And the growth rate is pretty huge right now. There's about 13 gigawatts of floating solar capacity installed worldwide, but the growth rates about 34% per year and accelerating. So this is obviously it's going to level off at some point, but I think we're sort of picking the low hanging fruit. Mostly it's going on artificial bodies of water, so reservoirs and irrigation ponds, you know, not on like natural legs and not on the ocean or anything. Now here there's an interesting synergy here because if like if you have an irrigation pond or if you have a body of a reservoir used as part of closed loop hydro grid storage power, right? We talked about that before. Yes, you need anti evaporation measures, right? So guess what? The floating solar panels yeah, that can it can be your anti evaporation strategy and win, win. Yes. So now you gotta imagine like a vast solar farm on top of a closed loop hydro reservoir. It prevents evaporation, it produces the energy that the closed loop hydro is storing, you know, so it's like its own little system. So that's it. That's another, I think opportunity. The biggest. So the reason why that is critical, in my opinion, is because the what's the biggest downside of solar power?

E: It's that it's intermittent battery.

S: It's intermittent.

E: Oh, transmission.

S: Land use it uses a lot of land. Do you what do you what do you guys think is the most intensive land use per like if you talk about how many meters squared per MW hour, how what's what type? What source of power uses the most land for the amount of power it generates?

US#02: By biofuel.

S: No.

US#02: Is it solar?

S: Nope. Hydro, hydro, hydro #2 Concentrating solar. So not a photovoltaic, but mirrors pointed at a tower, right?

J: Okay.

S: 3 is coal power 4.

J: What about sand power?

S: 4 is photovoltaics solar, so it's pretty close to the top 19 meters squared per MW hour. Hydropower is 33. The best is. What do you think?

J: Oh, least. Two, yeah. Land use.

S: Least land per MW hour.

E: Is it nuclear?

S: By far Nuclear by far. 0.3 Literally 2 orders of magnitude less than hydropower.

E: Generates so much power.

S: Yes, and and on a fairly small footprint this would even be less. All right, but close to the bottom 1.2 is rooftop solar. That's.

E: That is why.

S: I'm a big fan of rooftop solar, even though it's not the most cost effective per SE. Big solar installations may cost less for the energy generated, but they use a lot of land, so if you don't, if you include the land use, they become much less attractive. So I think we should just have solar on every rooftop, or at least the top 2/3 efficiency wise. You know what I mean? We we could, if we, if by one estimate of every rooftop in in the country had solar power panels on it, that would generate 45% of our electricity. So let's say we do 20 to 30%. We pick the low hanging fruit. That's like almost no land use, right? It's just on rooftops. Yeah, it's great. But in cases where we need some solar installations, we can put have them floating on bodies of water that are artificial that we just have sitting there that we need anti evaporation technology for anyway. The only issue is it does affect water birds because they do use those bodies of water. And so that's that actually was the news item that I came across that they're studying the interaction between water birds and floating solar panels, both how how they affect each other. Right. So no real conclusions that that just laying out the questions that we need to research to make sure that we're having a minimal footprint. You know, it's kind of like with wind turbines. Do you guys remember, like how many birds do wind turbines kill each year in the United States? Oh.

US#03: I don't want to know. Hundreds of thousands. Isn't it?

S: It's hundreds of thousands. Estimates are between 150 and 700,000 birds. Yeah, sounds like a lot, but that's nothing. It's a round off error.

US#03: It's a lot more than that, right? Yeah.

S: Domestic cats Domestic cats kill 1 to 3 billion birds a year.

US#03: Good Kitty.

S: 1 billion birds die annually just flying into wind.

US#03: Windows. Yeah, the window does. We gotta get rid of all those so.

S: Even if you rounded up wind turbines to 1,000,000, it's a round off error. It's nothing compared to that, to the billions that are dying from these other reasons, you know, essentially anthropogenic reasons. So we would, we could do more, we could save more birds just by having bird safe windows in buildings, you know what I mean? Rather, and but not having said that, we should be putting wind turbines in locations that minimize their impact on birds, especially the, you know, large Raptors. You know, we don't want to put them right in a, you know, you know, mating pathway or feeding pathway for for large Raptors. And we're getting better at that. We're studying it, we're getting better at it. We're trying to minimize the impact. We're designing them so that they're that they're less disruptive to to the birds, etcetera. You could put them at a height where most birds don't go. You could put them offshore, you know, not Again, nothing has a 0 ecological impact, but we could minimize. It minimize it.

US#04: It's always minimizing.

S: It's all about minimizing it. Yeah. So for all of these things, wind and solar and floating solar and floating nuclear, it's all about minimizing the footprint, minimizing the economic, the ecological impact, not to 0, but just to, you know, to to less. And here's the other thing. How many birds do you think burning fossil fuel kills a year?

US#04: It's got to be any 10s of millions if not hundreds.

S: Quintillions 14.5 million. So again, an order of magnitude more than than wind turbines and that's only from direct causes. That doesn't even include global warming. That's just, they just you know, the burning fossil fuel, fossil fuel factories, you know, themselves directly just in pollution and just interaction with the birds, 14.5 million birds a year. So any of the like global warming deniers would go, oh, their turbines are killing birds are hypocrites. They're lying hypocrites because the fossil fuel kills way more, way more wildlife, way more birds than all of the clean energy combined. It's not even close. And that's not, and that's even before you include global warming. All right, guys, let's move on.

Visualizing Special Relativity (52:04)

• A snapshot of relativistic motion: Special relativity made visible 

S: All right, Bob, how can we better visualize special relativity?

B: OK, let's do this. So, All right, so researchers have confirmed in a lab the Terrell Penrose effect, which I didn't even hear about as of two weeks ago. It's a theory that at speeds close to the speed of light, objects would appear to be weirdly rotated and not flattened as early interpretations of Einstein special relativity predicted or seem to predict. So I promise to be gentle with this one. This is from researchers in Vienna. The title of their paper is A Snapshot of Relativistic Motion Visualizing the Terrell Penrose effect. OK, so we've all heard of Einstein. Special theory of relativity largely deals with the idea that the speed of light in a vacuum absolutely refuses to be measured at any other speed, no matter what. 186,000 miles per second, 300,000 kilometers per second. See, no matter what speed you're moving at, that's what you're going to measure. So it just, that might seem like not too dramatic, but when you but really though, it's, it's such a dramatic universe changing statement. Imagine you're zooming through space at 99.9999% the speed of light and then you turned on the ships outside lights and you measured that light, it would still fly away from you at 300,000 kilometers a second. What the hell is going on? You're traveling almost that speed right now. How could it go? It's same old speed. It doesn't make any sense, of course, not to our like highway traveling, traveling car sense, right, But that this is the way the universe works apparently so. So for that to be real, for that to be an actual thing that happens, that would mean that some of the basics assumptions that we make every day would not be true. Like space and time, you know, time and length have to be assumptions that aren't going to always hold true. So at such relativistic velocities, time would have to slow down dramatically for you in some real sense for you to measure light as unchanged, right? So this is this is relativistic time dilation talked about it about a billion times. Less well known to the uninitiated anyways, is that length contraction or a flattening in the direction of movement is also a real and dramatically large thing at such speeds according to observers as usual. Now you wouldn't notice any of this inside your ship, but outside observers, as I just said, could. And scientists have confirmed time dilation and length contraction over and over through the decades. But one ramification of this, of these effects, specifically length contraction, has not been confirmed, and that's this Terrell Penrose effect theorized in 1959 by Roger Penrose and James Terrell. The key insight of this theory, one of them was that if an object is moving across your field of view at near near the speed of light, and if you could also somehow somehow see it or image it with a camera or whatever. So given that those assumptions, it would not appear to be visually flattened or Lorentz contracted as the boffins say, it would mainly appear rotated and with some other effects, but mainly rotated, even though it's not really rotated, this optical effect would be is what would be visualized. So how many of you guys have seen that representation of a of a contracted ship, like a flattened ship moving at near the speed of light? Yeah, it's like all I've seen it many, many times. It's common. And it's not really wrong because our measurements would indeed show a shorter length if it if it weren't for, for one thing, getting in the way the finite speed of light, which is what is creating this optical illusion of this rotation, if you could in fact image it. So now if you imagine a Borg cube on impulse, of course, don't even think about that warp Dr. crap. It's on impulse traveling near the speed of light across your field of view. And you have some technology that somehow lets you image it and you take a picture of the cube. OK, so that's the scenario. Now you know you're not seeing the cube as it is, right? Exactly. Specifically this instant, right? You're that you're not really seeing that because you see the ship. It's like a it's like a time mosaic. The image is, is in a sense, you know, ideally it's it's it's kind of a mosaic in time as it was. This image of the ship is as it was at different points in the recent past, right? Different parts of the ship at different points in time, all put together, constructed, composited together in a sense. So I'm not talking about Star Trek time travel, just the fact that the let you see left the ship at a different time depending on how far away that part of the ship was, right. The back of the ship is farther away than the than the near side of the ship. So that's true even when you look at an object like a jet, right? If you're looking at a jet or one of those those fast penis rockets, right? They're moving so slowly, OK, but they're moving so slowly that the time differences of the light from the near sides and the far sides of those ships for all intents and purposes are the same. And there essentially is no time delay because it's they're just not moving fast at all. The Borg ship though, is moving near the speed of light. That's the difference here. That means that the ship travels A relatively large distance as all the light that's coming from it gets together for your image. So think about it. The light from the rear of the ship had to travel farther. It left earlier when that part of the ship was farther back. Now, light from the front travelled a shorter distance and left more recently. So the image is stitched together from light emitted at different times and positions. That's the key. The image you're looking at, when you're looking at that Borg ship traveling across your field of view at near the speed of light, that image you're looking at is stitched together from light that's emitted at different times and different positions. And that's why the object appears rotated, because of that optical illusion that's created. It's this artifact of taking an image of something moving that fast. It's important to know and reiterate to outside observers, this rotation effect is an optical illusion. It's caused by a Lorentz contracted ship. Because this ship is still Lorentz contracted, it's still flattened in the direction of motion. That's still, that's not going away at at all. So this is kind of like a veil in front of that if you, if you tried to image it. So let me say it again. It's an optical illusion caused by a Lorentz contracted ship that's moving so fast that the light from different parts of it builds up over time and distance, which stretches the image, making it seem not contracted. So over time you're building up these photons that are that happen to arrive at the same time for your image. And as that's happening, it's stretching out the Lorentz contracted ship so that it doesn't look contracted anymore. That one's kind of tough to wrap your head around. I hope I'm describing that. OK, so how do you even test this? You can't do real world testing. We're not. There's nothing we that we could possibly do with a quintillion dollars to do a real world. We'll test on this. You'd have to move something relativistically that is absolutely gargantuan on scale for this to even be remotely feasible. So it's not you're not going to do this.

S: You can't put a little model of a spaceship in the the Large Hadron Super Collider.

B: Yeah, that's not going to work, Steve. But nice thought though. But in this case, the scientists used a sophisticated camera that had picosecond laser flashes and rotating mirrors and essentially to to trick the camera into seeing what a sphere and the cube would look like if it were travelling at these ultra relativistic speeds. So that's what they kind of did. They, they made this analog that would, you know, run the equations from a special relativity and build it up in a way that was basically identical to what would a real world system, but without you having to use a real world system, which never would happen. This involved timing when the light from the objects hit. The cameras were timed when the the light light hit the created the image, basically reconstructing what a relativistic fly. By would look like so that's what they did and the result was the Terrell Penrose effect was real. The object seemed looked rotated and also just there's also these distortions like relativistic aberrations that happened to that bends the curves and stuff that but that's kind of like not important to this right now. So a very, very, very slick experiment and fascinating to see what this look at some of the videos online of, of what you would actually see. They're, they're really cool. And it, it depends a lot on where it is in your field of view, how far away it is, Is it approaching you? Is it, is it moving farther? Is it moving away from you? And all those differences can, can change how you would see the, the object. So in the future, this experiment could open up other avenues for exploring other relativistic phenomena and laboratory settings. So that's, that's interesting. And it's there's always this hope I have that would actually make me giggle out loud in the movie theater, the hope that someday they will actually incorporate A Borg ship or probably better, a spaceship, a regular spaceship that actually shows some of these real relativistic effects that they never really do hardly ever. I'm having a hard time thinking of a science fiction movie that really shows some of these relativistic effects because if these relativistic effects are fascinating and world changing, really help illuminate what the universe is really all about at these at these velocities. But they're, they're never going to, they don't do that in the movies because even near the speed of light is not fast enough. You need to go warp speed. You need to go thousands of times the speed of light in order to, to, to travel any distance in science fiction. So they're not, you know, they're not very interested and they, I don't know, would you, I wouldn't, I'm sure you guys would enjoy seeing real bizarre relativistic effects in science fiction, but it's just not there, right? I mean, I just think they're just not. There's no motivation to do it because that's not fast. Enough. What was?

E: Happening in Star Trek The Motion Picture when they went through that worm.

B: Oh, that's all baloney we have. We have no idea that yeah, that's that's fast, that's faster than light. That's just.

E: Wasn't that an attempt to kind of capture that thought? Would you say you know where they distort everything and things become stretched and pulled and.

B: No, no, I don't think so. I think it's just whatever's going to look, You know, they throw out the, they don't even use wormhole. They they're just, you know, warping space around the ship and it's just all kind of nonsense. And it it looks good, but I think.

S: The only movie with realistic visuals was Interstellar.

B: Yeah, black hole. They they actually, they actually did so much work for that movie that they wrote a paper from the research they did to to to show a black hole in in a way that is is realistic. And that was, yeah, that was unprecedented and probably singular at the level that they they achieved.

S: But.

E: Yeah, it was great. Clever singularity. Got it.

S: All right.

Brainspotting Pseudoscience (1:03:02)

• Brainspotting Is Pseudoscience 

S: Thanks, Bob. Evan, tell us about brain spotting. Is that like Trainspotting? That was a good.

E: News wasn't that everyone's first thought? Maybe when they heard this word Brain spotting Trainspotting the movie right in the 90s. But no brain spotting is a thing. It's a psychotherapy by definition that aims to help people access, process and release trauma, emotional pain, and other psychological challenges by using spots in the patient's visual field. The Here's how the method is described. There's a therapist who will guide their patient to find a quote brain spot, which they define as a specific eye position that seems to correlate with the activation of a traumatic memory or emotion. The patient then focuses on that spot while observing their while observing their inner experience. The process is usually silent and allows the brain to quote unwind stored trauma without detailed verbal discussion. This was developed by a doctor, Doctor David Grand, in 2003 as an offshoot of EMDR, which eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. Thank you, EMDR. Right now, EMDR, from what I've read, I don't know how much we've spoken about this on Spoken Show.

C: Yeah, we've covered.

E: It it's scientific, right? It's evidence based.

C: Well, yes, but no.

US#08: It's complete, OK.

C: Oh, it is complete.

E: Wait, wait, I'm getting, I'm getting multiple signals here. Is it good or is it?

C: No, no, no, it's not that simple. It is considered an evidence based treatment by the American Psychological Association, but that is very problematic because of the type of research that they did to come to that conclusion. Basically the underlying component, which is the therapy that's done for post traumatic stress disorder is evidence based and works. The moving your eyes thing is a hat on a hat. They just do that on top of it and they go look, see how much better they are, right? And that's the problem.

E: So you're saying you can achieve the same result without the eye movement part?

C: Exactly.

S: It's a part of this nutritious breakfast treatment.

C: Yeah.

E: Yes. Thank you. That's an excellent way, excellent way of putting that.

S: And it's But The thing is, it's neuroscientifical nonsense. It makes absolutely no sense. It's not based on any basic science about how the brain works. It's just people just spouting pseudo Babble you know? That's all it is.

E: And are you at all surprised that there are proponents of EMDR out there and they are all over, you know, I mean, singing its praises?

S: Basically it's just, you know, as Cara said, it's quote UN quote evidence based. What that is is an indictment of evidence based standard. That's why that is why we have a science based standard, because it's absolutely not science based.

E: So this becomes a good example of the difference between something that's evidence based versus.

S: Science, but even even the advocates of EBM would say they're doing it wrong. There are some people who say because there is a study which shows an effect that it's quote UN quote evidence based. But that's not what it really means. You know, I mean, you have to do an actual systematic review that shows a number of things that there is efficacy and it doesn't do that. There's no efficacy to the EMDR part of the intervention. So they basically just stopped controlling for it, right? They stopped doing the kind of studies that would show that EM if AMDR has efficacy or not. So they just focus on studies which show that people who get it in addition to effective therapy feel better, right?

E: OK. All right. That makes sense. And therefore because this brain spotting therapy, if you want to call it that, is what an offshoot of EMDR.

S: Makes perfect sense.

E: And therefore, that's why Doctor Gary Wank wrote in Psychology Today recently that brain spotting is pseudoscience. That's the name of the article and the news item for this week. I'll read you a couple of the highlights from what he wrote. A recent publication examined an egregious example of pseudoscience brain spotting for its lack of plausible underlying neural mechanisms of psychology of psych psychopathology, and for its promotion of a method of intervention that is literally impossible for a human therapist to implement. Brain spotting is a talk therapy Cara that Imagine you're familiar with talk therapy.

C: Well, yeah, all, I mean all psychotherapies talk. There eyes. OK. All right.

E: So it's just another way of describing.

C: That same psychotherapy, Yeah.

S: I mean, as opposed to pharmacotherapy, right, It's a big category, big category of intervention, yeah.

E: And this is based on the unproven idea that eye positions correlate with activation of specific brain regions involved in unconscious emotional experiences.

S: So they fail right there. I just have to say they fail right there. That is not true. That is, they just make that up, that the idea that like if your eyes are in a certain position so that they're looking at a certain place in three-dimensional space, that that correlates to an area of your brain stem.

E: This reminds me of a homunculus. It is, it is.

S: It's basically a good neuro homunculus and and not only that Evan, but that that part of your brain stem is where the traumatic memories are stored.

E: Oh no.

S: That's where the the actual physical trauma is stored wrong. And you can, and I know that you can release it by looking at it and without having to actually even talk about it. I mean, it's nonsense from top to bottom. It makes.

E: No.

C: Sense that's no different than like than reflexology. It's no different than it's. Reflexology. Of your liver? Yeah, absolutely.

E: Wow. OK, well, the creators of this therapy client, you know, I got right to the spoiler alert there, but the creators of the therapy claim that where a person looks effects how they feel. And that's what this, that's what Gary Wank wrote about here. He says that is absolute nonsense. Brain spotting requires that the therapist identify very brief pauses in the patient's eye movements while the patient is following a moving target. Essentially, the principal component of the treatment requires that the therapist must accomplish a task that is physically impossible for humans to perform at the naked eye. Right. So there's another total implausible aspect of this is that, you know, people cannot do this what they, what they're claiming that they.

S: Can do it's kind of like in astrology, like if you're using a the kind of astrology, this ideal astrology where you have to know the minute of your birth. Nobody knows the minute of their of their birth. Nobody knows it. But that's not really the worst part of the astrology, right? It just happens to be this additional technical limitation that emphasizes how much nonsense it is. But it's the nonsense goes a lot deeper than that.

E: And the body of evidence so far to date to support this is anecdotal.

S: It's non existent so I looked it up. I did a you know, just did a literature search. There were 4-4 studies, 22IN medical hypothesis, which is worthless. That's a that's a pseudoscientific journal, in my opinion. And the other two were in studies. They were just talking about it in 23 years or 22 years, right. So that's also a red flag.

C: Massive. Yeah, like. Also, it's a red flag that like, I've never heard of it, right? Well, yeah, I was surprised, Karen, I said. Hey, Karen, have you heard of this?

E: You're like, Nope.

C: No, this is not taught in Yeah, I hope not. At least, Yeah, it never even came across any book I read.

E: No, the only way. The only way this should be taught is an example of pseudoscience. That's the only time this should be taught.

S: Exactly.

E: So good on Gary Wank over at Psychology Today for bringing this to the public's attention and making it so clear what this really is.

S: All right. Thanks, Evan.

E: Thanks.

Who's That Noisy? + Announcements (1:11:13)

S: All right, Jay, it's who's that noisy time?

J: Last week I played this noisy. Anybody have any guesses?

S: Sounds mechanical.

J: Well, that's always a good guess because there's tons of mechanical things all over the planet. So a listener named Michael Blaney wrote in and said, Hey, Jay, sounds like some kind of electronic leaf sweeper. And then I was thinking about it. I'm like, if there if there was and there probably is an electronic leaf sweeper, I could totally hear it sounding like that. So I think that's a good guess. A listener named Christine Andrews wrote in and said, I think this week's noisy is an air raid siren motor without the blower horn attachment attached. I thought that was a genius guess because I would never have thought of that as a source of sound, right? Because it's, you know, an air horn, an air raid horn basically, without the blower. Like, what does that sound like? So I don't think anybody knows. And then another guest from another listener named John Geiss and he says, Jay, this weeks noisy is the sound of a paper going through a shredder. If you need more specifics, it's Doctor Steve shredding his accumulated notes records after retirement. Did you do that or do you have to end up doing that, Steve?

S: Well, everything is digital now, so no, we don't even keep physical records anymore.

J: Do you have like a whole bunch of personal things there?

S: No, just books and stuff which I'm just leaving behind for the residents of.

J: Okay, wow, that's cool. All right, so I had two, two winners this week. One of them came in first. His name is Robert Caldwell. And Robert said, hi, Jay. I was starting to wonder if I would ever know any of the noisies that were on the show. But this week I've got it. The sound is from a Boeing horizontal stabilizer trim wheel. This is a manual trim wheel located in the cockpit that's used to reduce control pressure. So yes, Robert, you're absolutely right. And another listener named Paul Redmond wrote in said, hi, Jay. I think this week's noisy sounds like an aircraft's elevator trim wheel in motion. So from what I have been explained by the person who sent in the noisy, there is a wheel that is in the housing that is between, let's say you know, in that on that plane in particular, there's the pilot and the copilot. So there's like a, a round looking thing that is in between them, right? And it inside of that casing is a flywheel. And that flywheel helps Orient the, when you look at the back tail of a plane, right? You have a a horizontal stabilizer airfoil, That's the thing. And if I'm wrong, somebody e-mail me. But that's, that's how it was described to me. Yeah. And it makes this noise. Oi remembered something else too. This wheel mechanism, it's part of, of course, it's part of a system that's in the plane. It actually auto controls that stabilizer fin in the back of the plane, right? So the pilot doesn't have to constantly be, you know, doing the trim. And I remember when I when I did go for flights in, you know, a single prop, you know, Cessna or whatever, there is a wheel in there that the pilot manually moves, right. It's like it's like a mouse wheel next to the seat, but it's big. And they just kind of roll it with their hand to to, you know, trim out this thing that levels the plane off. It's really cool. Of course. Yeah, it's automatic in those bigger planes. All right, moving on. I have a new noisy this week sent in by a listener named Sam Rumble. If you guys think you know what this weeks noisy is, or if you heard something cool, e-mail me at wtn@theskepticsguide.org.

S: So, Jay, when this episode goes up, we'll be at Not a Con.

J: Yes, Saturday, yeah, that'll be the, that'll be the 17th.

S: And next week's show is going to be that episode that we record, so it'll be a couple of weeks before we reveal this. Who's that noisy?

J: That'll give people plenty of time to do it. Tons of research. As a side note to that noisy, be specific please. It'll, it'll just help you win. So a couple quick things, Steve, because we have nothing to say about Nauticon at this point other than we'll tell you how great it was when, when it's over. I just want to say if you like the work that we do and you want to support us, you can go to patreon.com/skeptics guide. That's one word. You could join our, our mailing list. We send out an e-mail every week and you can join that on theskepticsguide.org homepage. You could give our show a rating on any podcast player you're using or just use iTunes because I think people still use that for podcast ratings. And we will be in Kansas the weekend of September 20th and we'll be doing a live SGU recording as one event and, and the night time event. We will be doing a skeptical extravaganza. If you haven't made it to any of these shows, please join us. It's a ton of fun. You know you give us a day of your life and we will entertain you for most of that day, right, Steve?

S: We'll try our best. All right, thanks, Jay.

Emails (1:16:35)

S: All right, let's go on with some questions and emails. We got a couple. So one, we've got a few emails and and also just reading the comments in various locations. So some when we talking about the the pig heart transplants, right, genetically engineered pigs in order to harvest their organs, specifically their hearts for human transplant. We didn't get into the ethical discussion partly because the discussion was long as it was and that's a whole other can of worms, right. But enough people wrote in about that we should talk about at least for a few minutes. So any.

E: Animal studies in general.

S: Anytime animals are involved, there's ethics involved. Absolutely sure there's ethics involved with animal research, with any use of animals in medicine and also with any use of animals, period, right. If we're using animals for their parts, there's ethics involved with that. I'll just give you my personal take, which is going to be, you know, reiterate things that I've said in the past. You guys could tell me what you think or if you think there's any other angle here. First of all, you know we've raised and slaughter pigs for food, right? So pigs will be raised and slaughtered and slaughtered the well, seriously. So, you know, and I know people think that's unethical, but the point is we're just talking about raising and sacrificing them for another purpose. So if you think that eating animals is ethical, you shouldn't have a problem, at least at a fundamental level, with using animals to save lives. You know, by donating organs, right, Sacrificing them for their organs. The, for me, the only real ethical consideration. Well, they mean not the only ethical consideration, but the important bit is how are they treated, right? What is, what is their, their treatment like? And there are rules to that, right. Just like there are in research. There are rules about treating any animals in, in research or medical use ethically, humanely, no gratuitous cruelty, right. Nothing that no torture.

E: Yeah.

S: Nothing is done. You know, they have good living conditions, clean, they're fed, they're cared for. In fact, the, you know, pigs that would be used for transplant organs are treated really well in terms of just how their, their environment is extremely clean. They're, you know, they, you know, they, they can't get any infections. Obviously, the only thing that you, you can't say that some people pointed out is that they're, they're not free range, right? They're in a very, very controlled environment.

C: That doesn't mean that it can't be built in such a way that they have a lot of stimulation.

S: Right, exactly.

C: But I, I, I think, I think it's important to point out that the laws around welfare of research animals are significantly stricter than the laws around research or around the welfare of animals raised for food in this country. So we already have that in place. And for me, I mean, this is something I've like written about a lot and talked about a lot, and it's kind of near and dear to my heart. I think that everybody has a line in the sand. Everybody has a certain level of complexity or of, you know, whatever word you want to use to define it. Where you say above this, I don't think it's ethical to use these animals. And below it, I do think it's ethical to use these animals. You know, for me, I don't think it's ethical to do research or to engage or to eat, for example, elephants or cetaceans. Or primates. Yeah, or primates or or apes at least. At the very least for some people, they would add dogs and cats and pigs and cows to that. And for some people they would say, you know, no animals, not even a fruit fly. It's about how do you live your life? Where is that line in your sand, right? What are your, what are your personal ethics and your morals and what are you willing to, I guess, do in your own personal life to to hold on to that? Because I think it's valid for somebody who practices veganism and who is opposed to using animals in any way to say, I don't want to add to the burden, right? Like we've already used them for food. I already am against that. I already fight against that. I don't want to see them also used for this purpose. I think what's important to recognize is they're already used for research. And so while that's a valid position to have, if it's morally consistent with how you live your life, it's important to speak up and to have those kinds of conversations about it and to do your activism in in a, in a way that is respectful, right, and is legal. I don't think there's anything wrong with being against it per SE. I think the problem is when people are somewhat morally inconsistent with those values. Exactly. Those are the two points, Yeah.

S: One is be internally consistent, right? You can't be like, I can eat pigs, but I don't want to use them for donating organs or being sacrificed for their organs, right? But assuming people are being internally consistent, as you say, it's like, yeah, I'm against using animals for food and for research and for medical purposes or whatever. I will only go, you know, down, you know, so far. It's a continuum, right? I mean how?

C: It's always a continuum. Some people are perfectly fine with fruit fly and nematode research, but they don't want to see, let's say, vertebrates being used for research. Exactly.

E: Does that mean they're going to not take antibiotics and other medicines and things from which we'd from which those studies ultimately, you know? But I think we have to be the. End of the road.

C: I think we have to be careful with that argument too, because while I agree that it is morally inconsistent to say, OK, I think this is wrong, but I want to take these meds, we have to remember that we can do things now that we couldn't do 20-30, forty, 100 years ago. There are ways that we can do research now that increase welfare of animals was significantly more than we did in the past. We know that we used to do really messed up stuff in the lab. Oh, yeah. And we have a lot. Yeah. And now we have a lot of laws that protect against them. There's a lot of basic research with animals that we don't have to do anymore because we already have those answers. And we're moving beyond that, right? We don't. There are a lot of things that we can synthesize now that we don't have to extract from animals, for example. And so I do think it's a little bit like unfair to be like, well, then you can never take an antibiotic because we do a lot of drug research now. Yes, we still do a lot on mice, but we don't, we don't I it's not this to the same extent that it was historically.

S: You know, I think Everett's point is more like if you're one of those people who's like, we shouldn't harm a fruit fly, it's like, OK, but so no pesticides is what you're saying? So we.

C: Exactly. It's like, think about all the.

S: But also, yeah, but if you think that you can't, you're killing millions of bacteria to save yourself. Is that okay? And if you're drawing the line at bacteria, why can't we draw the line at fruit flies? And why can't we draw the line at invertebrates? Or why can't we draw the line?

C: And that's the important question. What is your moral argument for that? I think it's very rare. I use the fruit fly example. It's an extreme example. Mostly we're talking about people who practice like really extreme Buddhism. And many of these individuals may actually be living in monasteries. But but for some people saying, you know, no vertebrates or no whatever, if you have a solid argument, like I have an argument, if if you want to really get into it with me, I'll tell you why I think no apes, no cetaceans, no elephants, and why I'm more permissive when it comes to other vertebrates. Yeah, I'm with you. It's not just. That's where I draw, yeah. It's like I'm not. Pulling it out of my ass. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But but it's OK to have a line to make sure that you've done the work.

S: Exactly. And then see, and my response is all these pigs aren't, are not being treated well, whatever is to treat them better, right. Just I think same thing like with with the meat industry and I eat very little meat, you know, it just doesn't for multiple reasons. But I do think that there's we're trying to to produce too much me. And if we just reduce that, then we could it, it becomes easier to have high standards, you know, in terms of the way animals are treated, right. I think we need to regulate it so that animals are treated humanely. And that is the solution, not to not do life saving research or, you know, do life saving transplants from genetically modified pigs. I think we absolutely should be doing that and just treating them well and I think we.

C: Yeah, I often think throwing the baby out with the bathwater is is the most extreme reaction and regulation is probably a good first.

S: Step, I agree. So that's where we are and we have a reason to do that. It's not being faultless. It's not like we don't care. Some people said we were shameful and I think that's not a very useful way to to approach this issue. It's like if you draw the line in a different place, just don't be judgmental about people who draw a line in an in a different place from you. If it's thoughtful and internally consistent and reasonable, it's OK to say, all right, we have a slightly different values, that's fine. Rather than saying anyone who's to the left of me is shameful, you know what I mean? Like that's that is not a useful way to approach it. OK, let's go on to the next question. This is interesting. This comes up every now and then. This one comes from Matthew who writes. I am convinced that flat earthers don't really exist in their 2025. Interesting in the year 2025. With today's technology and education, there is no way flat Earther philosophy can thrive. Instead, those who are self-proclaimed flat earthers or conspiracy theorists continue to advocate for what they believe in because they benefit somehow or in some way, such as receiving attention or monetary gain. Think about all the TV shows, podcasts, news clips, blogs or whatever. Those who proclaim to be a flat earther just do it for some reason other than that is what they truly believe and everyone is giving way too much attention to this nonsense. Would you agree to this?

E: So they're role-playing the fact that they're flatter, so.

C: I've I've often, I've often grappled with this question. I don't know if I fully agree with Matthew, but I've asked myself, is this for real or these people just doing this? It's power.

S: No, right.

C: Yeah, exactly.

S: So I think the answer is yes, both of these things. I think there are people out there who don't care if they're flatter, if it's real or not, they're just, it's just something to gain clicks or, or to be part of a community. I think for some people, the conspiracy is the thing. They're conspiracy theorists and this is just one, this is like a grand conspiracy. I think for some people they went down this rabbit hole. So The thing is, I might have felt felt this way 20 years ago, but I have personally experienced people who genuinely are flat earthers. There's no question that they are genuine flat earthers and also people who are just, you know, not scientifically literate and who were exposed to some of the claims of flat earthers and are, you know, questioning, right? They just are like, I don't know this. They say things that make sense and I don't understand this. And there's something going on, you know, And then also just sort of somewhat distrusting of authority. And so there's a, there's a whole continuum here. And we don't think you could make any simple statement as they're all just in it for the money or attention or they're all true believers. I think it's a it's pretty much every permutation across the spectrum.

E: Makes sense?

S: Right. But we, yeah, I, I have met personally people who are absolutely real flat earthers. And also just, you could just, you know, there are, you could watch the documentaries like Behind the Curve and, and other things online that show I think a pretty broad breadth of, of who is in this community. And there's definitely true believers in that community.

Science or Fiction (1:27:58)

Theme: None Item #1: Researchers find that the parasite, Entamoeba histolytica, evades the host immune system by crawling inside white blood cells. Item #2: A new analysis finds that atmospheric mercury has decreased by about 70% since 2000. Item #3: A recent study finds that the universe will end (heat death) much sooner than previously calculated, in 10^78 years rather than the previous estimate of 10^1100 years.

Answer	Item
Fiction	Researchers find that the parasite, Entamoeba histolytica, evades the host immune system by crawling inside white blood cells.
Science	A new analysis finds that atmospheric mercury has decreased by about 70% since 2000.
Science	A recent study finds that the universe will end (heat death) much sooner than previously calculated, in 10^78 years rather than the previous estimate of 10^1100 years.

Host	Result
Steve	win

Rogue	Guess
Jay	A recent study finds that the universe will end (heat death) much sooner than previously calculated, in 10^78 years rather than the previous estimate of 10^1100 years.
Evan	Researchers find that the parasite, Entamoeba histolytica, evades the host immune system by crawling inside white blood cells.
Cara	Researchers find that the parasite, Entamoeba histolytica, evades the host immune system by crawling inside white blood cells.
Bob	Researchers find that the parasite, Entamoeba histolytica, evades the host immune system by crawling inside white blood cells.

S: All right, guys, let's go on with science or fiction.

E: It's time. For. Science or? Fiction.

S: Each week I come up with three Science News items or facts, 2 deals and one fake. But I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. Got three good news items this week. Are you ready? I said. Are you ready? Do.

E: It.

C: We've gotten so afraid of being, I know. No utterances whatsoever earlier and. Earlier.

S: All right, here we go. Item number one. Researchers find that the parasite and amoeba histolytica evades the host immune system by crawling inside white blood cells. Item number 2A new analysis finds that atmospheric mercury has decreased by about 70% since 2000. And I #3 a recent study finds that the universe will end heat death much sooner than previously calculated in 10 to the 78 years rather than the previous estimate of 10 to the 1100 years. Jay, you go first.

J: All right, this first one, researchers find that the parasite Entameba.

S: Entameba histolytica.

J: Entameba histolytica. That's cool. Evades the host immune system by crawling inside white blood cells. Oh shit, could you? That's not cool at all. God, I've never even heard of that. Go inside the body's system of removing foreign bodies. That's genius. I think that's science. I absolutely think some some creature figured out to do that #2A new analysis finds that atmospheric mercury has decreased by about 70% since 2000. OK, so if Mercury, if atmospheric mercury was going to go down, what's what's putting it into the atmosphere? Damn, what would be putting Mercury in the atmosphere? I know that there's something for sure industry is any kind of exhaust MMR vaccines. I I don't think that anything has changed. I, I don't know, I think this might be the fiction because I just don't think that there has been massive changes in any kind of regulations that would be mindfully removing mercury from the atmosphere. And I just simply don't think 70% would go. It would, it would drop by 70% without human intervention. I know I'm speculating, but I really do think that's a fiction. Let me go on to the third one. A recent study finds that the universe will end heat death much sooner than previously calculated, 10 to the 78 years rather than the previous estimate of 10 to the 1100 years. Well, that sucks. And I guess my news item kind of fits in there somewhere.

US#03: Wow.

S: What? Nine years.

J: Steve, my gut is telling me that if there was a 70% decrease in atmospheric mercury, I don't think that that would happen on its own. And I'm not seeing activity by, you know, the governments that have large populations and everything. I'm not seeing anything that it would point in that direction. I mean, there's a lot of holes in my reasoning because I I simply don't know what's putting it in the atmosphere. But I think that was a fiction.

S: OK, Evan.

E: Well, yeah, Jamie, you brought up some good points. And the first one here about the parasite evades the host immune system by crawling inside white blood cells. Yikes. How how does it get in there? Well, yeah, I suppose so. And I maybe This is why this would be leaning towards it being science. But at the same time, wouldn't it be rejected in some other way if it like the white blood cells? I need to know more about white blood cells as well. And how the body would react to that because to use it as like a shield seems kind of against what part of the reason, what the function of what white blood cells should be doing. So I don't know about that one. The Mercury 1 is the second one. Atmospheric mercury has decreased by 70% since 2000. Was it the aerosols? Is it the chlorofluorocarbon? Is that atmosphere, is there, was there mercury in that stuff? Or is it just kind of we've, we've phased out mercury from a lot of products in over the course of the 20th century realizing, I mean, you know, they knew even before that that mercury was, you know, deadly. So there may have been efforts very early on to, to, to, to do mercury prevention efforts. Maybe this one's the science as well, the last one about the universe and heat death, 10 to the 78 years rather than the previous estimate of 10 to the 1100 years. And yeah, OK, a recent study, I think that one's of the three is the most science in in in the context of this game. Because sure, you can have all kinds of studies. I'll go with, I'll mix it up and say the Parasite 1 is the fiction. But yeah, I would not be surprised if you're correct and the Mercury one is the fiction. How about that?

S: Thank you. All right, Cara.

C: I feel like it's the one that makes like that. I would feel the most comfortable.

E: Oh, there you go.

C: Not with it being science, but with like, why my reasoning that it might not be science is the case because the atmospheric mercury 1. I don't know. But it doesn't surprise me that there's been some sort of like, massive change due to human activity in a molecule in the atmosphere. So, well, that's not even a molecule, that's an element in the atmosphere. So like, yeah, that that doesn't surprise me. There's probably some stupid thing we've been doing that's completely changed the makeup of our atmosphere. The heat death of the Universe 1. I don't know. These numbers are not numbers. They mean nothing to me. I so struggle.

E: Get out your.

C: Scientific calculator. I know it's real. It's just so meaningless to me when we get into like.

E: Steve, why didn't you put the 78 zeros behind that time?

C: Thanks, Steve. If you just typed it out it would yeah, more sense.

E: And then Bob could have said some fancy thing like septillion Killian billion zillion gillion billion Lillian.

C: Yep, Yep. But the parasite being OK, so entomebia, entomebia, amoeba, amoeba. So like enteric, like inside, I don't know, a histolitica. See that one bugs me because it's histological. So it's in the cell. Maybe that's how they discovered it as they saw it inside of cells. So it's like that one feels like, OK, maybe that's how it works, but this is a new discovery, right? How? How would a parasite crawl inside of you? Don't want to be in that white blood cell my friend.

E: Right, that's what.

C: I don't want to.

E: Be thank you, I was trying to express that I knew something was seemed to be a miss there like.

C: I feel like parasite going straight to to he's just walking into the into taking himself to death. It's like.

E: Bacteria going into the antibacterial room.

C: Right, yeah, I don't like this one. So I feel like maybe there's something else going on, or maybe the real thing here is that it turns off the white blood cell knowing to to attack it, but just crawling inside of a white blood cell I feel like is not enough. I don't like this one. I'm going to call it the fiction.

B: Okay. And Bob? All right, I'm going to start with #3 and go back down, Evan, for your edification. That number is a quintillion Novem decillion. And yeah, I've heard of the of this type of stuff before. It a new study, a new theory can change it and, you know, can change the anticipated end of the universe. Sure, it's a big drop down to 6:50 to the 78, from 10 to the 1100. But I told I'm totally buying that. The second one, let's see. I know nothing about atmospheric mercury at all. I really don't know what's going on with that. But I totally believe that, that it could be, you know, humans screwing up the atmosphere yet again one way or the other, doing something, something ridiculous. OK, Number one, this is the one that really rubbed me the wrong way. Yeah. I just can't imagine how this is going to happen. If the parasite squeezes itself into the white blood cell without without destroying it, and then what? Then it's got to come out later to do what's parasitic business, and then it goes back in again or in another one. I just crazy. Not buying that at all. I'll say that is fiction.

S: OK, so you all agree on the third one, so we'll start there. A recent study finds that the universe will end by heat death much sooner than previously calculated, in 10 to 78 years, rather than the previous estimate of 10 to the 1100 years. You all think this one is science and this one is science? This one is science, Yeah. I had to put heat death in there just so you wouldn't think it was going to be, you know, die from some other reason before it dies of the heat death. Notice that the heat death is going to happen quicker. So. So. Yeah. So the idea is that I think the bottom line is that they didn't, they didn't think that white dwarfs would decay with Hawking radiation, but they say they would decay just slower. But if you even if you just consider the Hawking radiation. So what that means is it's, you know, Stephen Hawking just first described this phenomenon with the black hole. If you have a particle antiparticle pair emerging out of the quantum foam, right? And it happens right on the event horizon. So that one particle goes into the black hole and the other particle escapes from the black hole before they can annihilate each other, right? So what this means is that black holes are evaporating. They're giving off Hawking radiation and they're evaporating what however you think that that's happening. So, so this study is like, well, if that's happening to white dwarfs, which they think it is, then would it would be much slower because they're less massive, the the evaporation would be much slower. So they said to the 10 to 78 years is how long would it, it would take for black for white dwarfs to evaporate through Hawking radiation? They, they used to think it would take 10 to the 1100 years, but now it's now it's only going to take 10 to the 78 years. So that moves up the date for the ultimate heat death of the universe by that much, which is quite a lot, but it's still a long time. But it's nothing compared to 10 to 1100 years. All right, let's, let's go back down to #1. Researchers find that the parasite and amoeba histolytica evades the host immune system by crawling inside white blood cells. Bob, Cara and Evan, you think this is the fiction, and you think it's the fiction for various reasons. I want to examine those reasons.

E: No, don't do that.

US#03: That's not, that's not, that's not cool.

C: I I.

S: So first of all, these are not macrophages, right? So macrophages would eat the yent amoeba, right? But there are lots of other kinds of white blood cells that themselves don't.

C: Eat. You didn't specify.

S: Well, the Ritz, well, I said that's I know, but I didn't.

E: Different types of.

S: White, there are different types of white blood cells, but you're definitely this. Yeah, the, you know.

E: Off white.

S: Definitely wouldn't want to crawl inside a macrophage, but.

C: No, that's the whole point. You're just coming to the macrophage, so the way.

S: I want you to think about this is like on Men in Black. Remember when the alien wore a human suit?

Voice-over: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, too.

S: So this is the same kind of thing where the end amoeba hystolytica wears a white blood cell suit in order to look like the host. You know a NA self cell from the host to so that the immune system doesn't attack it.

C: But why would it pick a white blood cell and not another type of cell?

S: I don't know evolution. Red blood cells are way too small.

C: No red blood cell would. Be too small. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

S: Well, probably because it's serving a double function of also taking out the immune system, which a lot of of parasites and bacteria do.

C: Damn, are you saying this is science?

S: But yeah, that's one of Steve's boys. He does that from time to time.

Voice-over: The the flow of the cadence.

S: Are you saying I'm becoming too predictable, Bob? Not so.

Voice-over: Much predictable, it's just one of the games that you.

S: Play unpredictably. Yes, this one is the fiction is the fiction. Now the reason why it's the fiction is because the Ant amoeba which is an amoeba is way bigger than a white blood cell there's.

E: A size mismatch.

C: Here. So is it a different kind of cell? Does it hide in like a?

S: No, what it does is it eats the white blood cell and then displays its proteins on its outer coat and disguises itself as a host cell. That's what it's doing. It's not inside or wearing it. It's just eating it and then displaying the protein, which a lot of cells.

C: Do Yeah, that's what system.

S: Yeah, it works. It freaking works. Tricks. How do cells detect, you know, foreign? Bodies by the proteins on their.

C: Proteins, yeah.

S: That's how they do it. So they. Yeah. So the immune system's like, oh, OK, that's that self. I don't have to worry about that guy over there, right. But it's.

C: Yeah, Remember when we talked about spike proteins with the COVID vaccine and all that good stuff? Yeah.

E: How long has this been happening?

S: A long time we just.

E: Then why hasn't the white blood cell system adapted to?

S: Well, it's a, it's a, it's an arms race, Evan, Right. We're evolving. They're evolving. This is just the current. State of things.

C: It's an infection that kills people. Oh yeah. It's not like we're we're not all walking around with this all the time. No, no, no, no, no, no. That's why. So this is yeah, if we if we were all walking around with.

S: This, this is a infection that is that comes from dirty water, right? So very rare in developed nations unless you have recent travel or you're just coming from a place where there isn't good sanitation right There wasn't the availability of clean water and the hystolytica carrier it that means that it breaks down cells it this is the. Histolysis. Histolysis this this this causes abscesses of liquefied tissue really bad that's. Really. Disgusting.

C: Most, but it also makes sense that it would break down these white.

S: Yeah, most infections lead to just really bad diarrhea and you could get very sick from it and you get these abscesses. But worldwide, 700,000 people die every year from this.

C: Yeah, that's hard because abscesses get infected. Secondary infections and also bad diarrhea can kill. You.

S: Yes, it can, yeah.

US#03: Yeah, yes, yeah of.

S: Course, I have. I I again, I probably should bet this, but my memory is that like in you go back to like Alexandra the Great and some war that he fought. Like most of the soldiers die of dysentery. They don't die of dissent. They don't die of wounds. They don't die on the field. They die of dissent. It's true of a lot.

C: Of Yeah, I know most people playing Oregon Trail also died of dissent.

S: Yeah. Which means that a new analysis finds that atmospheric mercury has decreased by about 70% since 2000 Is science, Jay, You're too cynical.

C: It's bad.

S: And this, this is science specifically because of regulations. That's it, 100% due to regulations.

C: Oh, it's a good thing that atmospheric mercury has. Gone.

S: Yeah, Mercury's. Bad. Mercury's very.

C: Bad. Excellent.

J: I guess I. Missed all those news items? It's the.

S: Mini Mata Minamata Convention on Mercury basically sets standards for for minimizing atmospheric mercury, which is mostly released through, you know, through man made activity. Anthropogenic release, it used to be so there's natural anthropogenic biomass burning which is very little and terrestrial just coming from the dirt. But it of course it gets in there because of because of anthropogenic reasons. So to some extent. So anyway, the the man made portion of it massive decrease since 2000 and to leading to a total of 70% reduction in atmospheric mercury, which is good, very, very good. And it's just a direct result of regulation just agreeing we're not going to do things that puts a lot of mercury, like not burning super dirty coal or requiring, you know, that you have you filter it out, you know, at the smokestack level, things like that. You can't burn certain things. Yeah, it's very, very good. And the part of the reason why this caught my eye was because very little quick history. So, you know, and Bob, you mentioned MMR, by the way, MMR vaccine never contained mercury. The, the, that's just a misunderstanding. But the soon after the MMM, like in the 1990's, the anti vaccine vacciners, anti vaxxers were saying, oh, the MMR is causing autism. And then that was disproven very quickly. They never agreed that it was disproven, but they moved on to thimerosol, which contains ethyl mercury. And so it's the mercury in the, in the vaccines that's causing it, which is not the MMR, but other vaccines. And then we took thimerosol out of the vaccines, right? And the autism rates continued to go up. So then they said it's atmospheric mercury. So they were blaming it on atmospheric mercury right at the time that it was massively decreasing.

E: So they're so they're more than wrong.

S: So it's just another way in which they're hopelessly wrong, right? They just make shit up right then without looking at data. It's like, oh, the IT was the vaccines. But now as the thimerosal was decreasing, atmospheric mercury was probably increasing, but in fact, it was also decreasing at the same time. Losers. OK.

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:45:26)

“The difference between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil.”  – - Mon Mothma, Andor, (description of author)

S: All right, Evan, give us a quote.

E: This week's quote was suggested by a long time listener and participant of the show, Jay Novella.

J: I guess I am a listener too. Sure.

E: You are a listener. We're all listeners. Thank you Jay for suggesting this one.

J: I had to.

E: The difference between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all of the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil. Mon Mothma from the Star Wars universe. Now, Jay, maybe you can tell. Oh and well yes, the Star Wars universe, but the Andor series? Yep. And Jay Man, Mothma, can you tell us about that character?

J: I mean, she, she's really a cool character. I mean, I, I loved her in the original series. And I mean, I, I find that, hold on. I mean what? Is is her rank general?

S: She is the political head of the rebellion.

US#04: Political head.

J: Yeah, let me say that so I don't.

S: She's like the Sinn Fein, you know, of the rebellion.

US#04: Wow.

J: So the thing that the reason why I sent that to Evan is I love when science fiction, you know, has something to say about modern times. Star Trek the original series did this like wonderfully. You know, it was just unbelievable how almost every episode was talking about a very, you know, serious social issue that was going on. And I read that quote and I'm like, damn, that is like, that is so prescient. You know, it's like 100% what's going on right now.

S: So when my wife and I watched that episode last week when it came out and when I was watching her give that speech, she's giving a speech in front of the Senate, right? And that's the it's a longer speech that I think is the is the the money quote. And we definitely about the time we were like, that is so deliberate and aimed at the current moment in America. 100%. Like, it was so obvious. Without a doubt. Yeah. Like you could just pluck that speech out of, you know, Coruscant and put it into Washington, DC and it would be 100% relevant. Definitely deliberate. I loved it too. I thought it was very, very good. So I was not surprised to see that pop up as the quote this week. Very nice. Yeah. But yeah, that is it is one of the that's one of the things I like about science fiction. Pay attention to Cara is that you can you can make these big social points basically separated from their cultural context, right?

C: Oh yeah, that's the only thing I like about. Yeah. So it's like, yeah, so. You that's like that's all the best science fiction for exactly.

S: But a lot. Yeah, a lot of good science fiction has that in there. It's like, yeah, it's sometimes it's a little ham fisted like on Star Trek when you have like the half black, half white people fighting each other, you know, it's a little heavy-handed, but it's at least like, Oh yeah. Like you could see. Are you the social issues playing out in another culture, in an alien culture, so that you're it's not, you're not reacting to it and it basically divorces it from your tribal reactions or your identity. It's just in the abstract. This of course, you could see how this is true when you're looking at another culture, you know. So yes, science, good science fiction does that very well. And this was very powerful. I thought it was very, very powerful the way they did that. And or also by the way, is my single favorite Star Wars property.

J: Wow, that's that's a. Big.

S: It's great. It's just really, really good.

J: That's a big opinion. Wait wait, when you say that do you mean like? Better than Empire?

S: I meant it. I mean, yes, it is. It is, it's it's, it's gritty, it's really well written. The characters are fabulous and it's, you know, I love it. It's, it is the best manifestation of the Star Wars universe in my opinion. So so there.

E: That's amazing.

S: Yeah, anyway.

E: Thanks for suggesting the quote, Jay. Very. Welcome.

S: All right, Well, thank you all for joining me this week. You got it, Steve.

E: Thank you, Steve.

S: And until next week, this is your Skeptics Guide to the Universe.