SGU Episode 1039

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SGU Episode 1039
June 07th 2025
"Vibrant yellow blossoms dancing under a clear blue sky, celebrating nature's beauty."
SGU 1038                      SGU 1040
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Quote of the Week
"The history of science is the history of corrected mistakes."
— David Gerrold
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 Wednesday, June 4th, 2025, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella. Hey everybody. Cara, Santa Maria.

C: Howdy.

S: Jay Novella. Hey guys. And Evan Bernstein.

E: Good evening everyone.

S: We got the OG, the original crew back on the show this week. Jay and Cara were last week welcome.

E: Back.

S: Welcome back.

J: Hi. We're back. OK, Is this a big deal? We, you know, we make 52 shows a year. You got to, you got to like, make this weird now.

S: Actually, you know, whatever you pop out whenever.

J: You told me not to speak about Disney, So what do you want me to say? Yeah, I was gone. Now I'm back.

S: Yeah, that's it.

J: I had a good time, I had a wonderful time. If you want to know more, watch the live stream that we've recorded on 6/4. And that's today. Yeah, that was today. You'll get everything. Well, not the day you you're listening to this, but Steve, I I got to say just one thing.

S: Sure.

C: Wait before you do. I noticed while I was away I was in Prague for the last week and so couldn't handle the time difference yet again. Did you?

J: Get defenestrated while you were there.

B: Oh, what? Hopefully good. Historical reference there, so.

S: The Defenestration of Prague.

C: I see. I noticed that we got a lot of emails. We always get a lot of emails, but sometimes I notice themes that aren't emails because I have acute powers of perception. And one of the themes that I saw coming in over and over had to do with the archive. And I'm wondering, did somebody mispronounce the archive on the show?

E: It's AAR Capital XIVR Arcsive. George.

S: Thought it was AR 14, but now we landed on it's pronounced archive. We pronounced it correctly, but none of us knew how those letters translated into the pronunciation archive because it didn't realize that that X in the middle is really a chi.

C: Yeah, yeah, yeah, a Greek letter, yeah, which?

B: Is cool, but yeah, we've we've pronounced it correctly on the show many, many times. But yeah, I didn't know that where that came from. And that's cool. Interesting to learn so.

E: Thank you of smashing up alphabets like that. I suppose this can be cool ish.

S: I always have a problem with too clever branding like that. It's generally it's generally frowned upon to have a brand that not 100% of the population is going to intuitively know how to pronounce it.

E: But the archive.

C: Identify it. I don't. Think it's a preprint outlet. I don't think it was ever meant for the general. Population. That's probably. It's meant for like nerdy scientists to use.

E: Not for the Gen. pops.

C: So yeah.

S: It reminds you of that movie. You guys remember the movie The Wonders? They Yes, it was about a pop. Yeah, band. They they spelled their band ONEDERS Wonders, but everyone pronounced it Oneiders.

C: Yeah.

S: Oh man. So once a professional got their hands on there like it's WONTERS, it's wonder, right?

B: How about the bands now? How about the band Lynyrd Skynyrd? I think for their first album they actually had a pronunciation key. Like like right there pronounced. Oh, 'cause people were like Lynard. Lynard. Leonard, it's Sky 9 Weedard.

E: Yeah, well, you know, I mean, and I understand George's take two anytime you see X1V together.

S: Yeah, but the if that were the case, they, the the X, the I and the V would all be capital.

E: Yes, I agree. I. Agree, but at the same time you know our brain will very easily make that correlation.

S: To my point, it was confusing and was making the best fit they could and we're mostly wrong.

E: That's right. So therefore what we're archives going to change it?

S: No, Nope, it's archive.

E: Not a chance. Nope.

S: All right. Well, we have a great interview coming up later in the, so let's get right to some content.

Quickie with Bob: Prepping for Q-Day (04:00)

• Prepping for Q-Day: Physics-based encryption aims to secure data in the quantum computing era 

S: Bob, you're going to start us off with a quickie.

B: Yes, thank you, Steve. This is your quickie with Bob dealing with quantum encryption threats in the news. The the we've talked about this a few times on the show. The coming revolution of quantum computing does pose a serious threat to today's powerful encryption methods like RSA 2048. Is that how it's pronounced? 2048 Whatever you know RSA.

C: And now we're paranoid.

E: Yeah, now we're paranoid. Don't say it.

B: Incorrect to read something a trillion times, but you don't really hear it spoken aloud. So RSA we're we've all familiar with RSA cyber criminals are increasingly using a technique called harvest now decrypt later. So these strategies, that's a strategy where they steal encrypted data today that they can't decrypt it because it's just too powerful, especially with classical computers who take, you know, a billion years or so to decrypt it. But they hope to hold, they want to hold on to it and hope to be able to decrypt them eventually in the future once quantum computers are robust enough. And this is pretty scary if you're an owner of online banking data or health records or even trade secrets, that kind of data could still be valuable even if it's 20 years, you got to sit on it for 20 years before it can be quickly decrypted by quantum computers. So that's a strategy that we're seeing increasingly happen in the modern in the modern world. So now researchers at Boston University, Cornell University and University of Central Florida, they're developing physics inspired encryption method that could not only enhance current data security, right, make it more robust, but also prove problematic for quantum computers in the future. And that could hopefully minimize this modern, you know, harvest now, decrypt later thinking and make it less attractive. These physics based solutions that they're working on are essentially it's a bridge solution, right? Instead of basing encryption keys on purely mathematical complexity like the large prime factors of RSA, they could be based on naturally a natural physical phenomena. So for example, microscopic imperfections on a silicon chip, right? Every chip has these microscopic imperfections. They don't matter. They still perform well, but there's something that is so random that even the manufacturer couldn't precisely predict what those are or recreate them 'cause they're, they're different for every chip. So that's something that if you, if you know what those imperfections are, then two people can can create these encryption keys based on that information.

S: So another useful variable consistency of Jay's meatballs.

B: Maybe you know one specific meatball. Yeah, 'cause I'm sure he's got some variability in there between the the meatballs. Let me give you another example then using chaotic physical systems, so like chaotic light waves that you need specifically tuned layers to decode them. So if two parties had knew how to tune their layers that lasers, I mean, they would share that information, then they could then they could encrypt things that that nobody else would really be able to decrypt because it's just too it's completely unpredictable. So here's a good analogy. Think of it like encoding data based on the unpredictable flickering of a candle flame, right? So unless you know exactly how the air moves around the flame, you can't really decode it. So that's something that that two parties can share that information as well and then bam, you can't. It's not something that could be brute force decoded using even quantum computers to certain extent, because it's just inherently unpredictable. You just got to have that information.

S: So basically it's a key that cannot be derived because it's way too complicated.

B: It's not just not just complicated, it could mean RSA is complicated because you got large.

S: I mean, it's like quantum computer level quantum complicated.

B: Yeah, it's, it's what basically that since they're, they're physical systems that have this, that are unpredictable. So you if you just don't, if you don't have that key, you're not going to be able to brute force it essentially. All right. So these quantum, these are quantum resistant algorithms. We're talking about these, these another big benefit here is that these could be integrated into modern systems without requiring major disruptions. You don't have to basically redo a lot of a lot of a lot of the components of the infrastructure because they can just be kind of more easily integrated than if you were trying to incorporate real quantum computers into the into the whole decryption encryption schemes here. But this is of course, it's not going to be easy. It's going to take a lot of work. It's going to take also a lot of cooperation between academia, industry and government. So will they do that? Who knows. We're we're going to see it's but it's going to become increasingly important and after a while it's just going to be too late, like oh, too late. The quantum computers are going to be here soon anyway, so you might as well start planning for that. Whatever. So we'll see what happens. It's good. Definitely not going to be boring in in this regard after a period of time. So this has been your quantum quickie with Bob. Back to you, Steve.

S: So you're saying, Bob, we can't afford a quantum computer gap?

B: Yeah, that's what you did there. That's a good one, Steve.

S: Thanks. That was very condescending, but thanks, all right.

C: Kind of like whenever you say Steve, whenever you go, proud of you.

B: Yeah, that's the liberally condescending That's like, on purpose. Right. So much so that. That So what are you assuming I wasn't doing that?

E: It jumps right from condescendence to humor at that point.

News Items

Seed Oils (09:21)

• Seed Oils Are Not Bad For You 

B: All right, what do you guys know about seed oils?

E: Oh, I hear good. I hear horrible things about them. They're terrible for you. Exactly not and RFK told me.

S: Yep, RFK.

B: Oh God, is this RFK thing?

S: No, it's not. It's a just a the latest health bad thing where they're demonizing seed oils. But of course, RFK Junior has jumped on that cranky bandwagon he posted on X, for example, he said he writes, Interestingly enough, this began to drastically rise around the same time fast he's talking about obesity began to drastically rise around the same time fast food restaurants switched from beef tallow to seed oils in their fryers. He's blaming the obesity epidemic on seed oils based upon this spurious correlation because he is a total crank.

E: It's rather simplistic, isn't?

S: It Oh my God what a nut job this guy is.

C: Not nut job. Good one.

S: There has been like again, health influencers, I even hate saying that term it you know have what one of the things that they do is they fear monger about specific foods, right? Everything is either going to make you live forever or kill you instantly. And so there would be no self help industry essentially, if everyone were honest, basically you could say the same health advice has been true for the last five decades. Eat everything in moderation and for most people you're probably okay. You know, like you're 95% of the way there and everything else is just window dressing. And the same is true of seed oils. So, but interestingly, seed oils are actually good for you if anything, right? It's the, it's a plant based oil. This of course, seed oils are oils derived from seeds, right, like sunflower or canola. And there's two ways you can get the oil out of the seeds. You could either cold press them, which is a little bit more expensive, or you can chemically get it out of the of the seeds and then you have to treat the oil to remove any anything that you don't want and the resulting seed oil. Here's what I think. It's hard to track down, like who started this fad of demonizing seed oils, but it comes from, as it often does, a simplistic misinterpretation of preliminary scientific data, right. Usually they're extrapolating from basic science data they don't understand, leaping over to clinical conclusions that are not justified by the data. But but here are some of the details to give you an idea of what they're doing. Plant based or seed. Seed oils contain Omega 6 fatty acid. Omega 6 fatty acid is one of the good fats, right? The evidence shows that it actually reduces the risk of heart disease, especially fatal heart attacks. This is partly why nutritionists were puzzled, you know, quote UN quote, puzzled by this, you know, health influencer pushback against seed oils. Plant based oils are healthier overall than animal based oils and we should be eating a lot of it. And Omega 6 fatty acids like linoleic acid, it not only is it essential, it's actually it's polyunsaturated essential fat and it reduces LDL, which is the bad cholesterol and it's overall a good thing. A recent systematic review of all the clinical studies that were published so far found that increased levels of linoleic acid reduces the risk of fatal coronary heart attack. So the clinical evidence shows that the net effect of this is reduced, you know, heart disease. But this is where the influencers and RFK junior and those, you know, types of cranks get things wrong. The question is what is the optimal level ratio of omega-3 to Omega 6, right? Omega-3 also a healthy usually nut based or fish based, you know, fat, right, the omega-3 fatty acids. So the pre in pre industrialized societies, a typical Omega 6 to omega-3 six to three ratio is anywhere from 1:00 to 1:00 to 4:00 to 1:00. Industrialized diets, however, because we mass produce seed oils, it can be closer to 20 to 1. So I think they're extrapolating a lot from that. It's like, oh, it's not natural. You know, we have way we were consuming way more, you know, Omega 6 than omega-3 and we have to get back to our quote UN quote natural ratio. That's essentially the chain of logic. Now they they have sort of tied it to a couple of things. One is the claim that Omega 6 can increase inflammation and two that it can increase blood clotting. The on the first score, actually the majority of the evidence shows that Omega 6 decreases inflammatory markers. So it's just not true that it increases inflammation. And again, you know, we're, we're talking about the difference between increasing some inflammatory marker in the blood versus like increasing the risk of autoimmune disease, right? Those are two different things. The immune system is one of those homeostatic dynamic systems in the body that exists in some sort of balance where you want just the right amount of it, but not too much, right? Too much inflammation can cause tissue destruction, not enough makes you susceptible to infection and illness. So you need there's a balance and just saying that something is increasing or decreasing inflammation is not necessarily good or bad. It depends on on the details. And just saying that, oh, this one marker, you know, which of course there could potentially be many of them is increasing or decreasing in the blood doesn't mean you're going to get more autoimmune disease. So again, these are sort of the leaps from preliminary kind of basic science findings to clinical outcomes that they're making. But in this case, it's not even true really. The clotting thing is the same. It's the same kind of issue. You want your blood to clot just the right amount. Too little and you bleed too much and you have strokes and heart attacks, right? And there's sort of a sweet spot even within that sweet spot, if you sort of push the push the system in One Direction or another, you know, if you, if you make, if you thin the blood, you'll increase bleeding but reduce vascular events. If you make it clot more, you'll increase vascular events but reduce bleeding. There's just no way around that. That's just the way the system works. And so again, they're just saying, oh, look, in this study with this marker or whatever, there's reduced or there's increased clotting. Therefore, it's going to cause heart attacks or strokes, but the but it doesn't probably this is all down in the noise of, you know, every food does everything. You know what I mean? Like if you really looked at at biomarkers, pretty much anything, you would probably have some effect on some clotting number or some, you know, inflammatory numbers somewhere. And it without having any net effect clinically because again, the body kind of adjusts for all this. It's all sort of comes out of the wash appears to be the same thing. Again, the bottom line is Omega 6 reduces your risk of heart disease. It does not increase it. But I think these are the reasons at least this is the how they're justifying their anti seed oil crusade rights. The ratio is off or whatever. Now, what actual nutritionists who know what they're talking about say is that there's just just don't worry about it. Do you? Go ahead and use seed oils, cook with them, eat them, put them in your salad. You're not getting too much. It's perfectly fine. There are plenty of things to worry about. Don't worry about seed oil. If you're worried about your six to three ratio, eat more omega-3 like don't restrain or restrict your Omega 6 increase your omega-3, which is a good thing anyway. Like we could all use more, you know, omega-3 in our diet. There's there's one tiny thread where there is maybe some legitimate concern like there always is, right? And that is if you re fry the seed oil at high temperature over and over again, right? So like in a deep fryer in McDonald's, right? Then there's a, there's an open question about whether or not that can form any unhealthy substances.

J: Why would that be hard to figure out? It seems like they could do it really quickly. Yeah, they got.

S: Lots of, well, because again it's a matter of dose, right, Yes, it forms aldehydes, but how long, how much of them are in there, how and does it get absorbed and how much of A clinical effect is there etcetera, etcetera. It's again it's a hazard versus risk thing. We could say, yes, there's aldehydes get we can get formed in seed oils that have been fried over and over again at a high temperature. Doesn't mean that it's actually a health risk. But again, this has nothing to do with home use or, you know, buying it from the in the grocery store and using it in your salad or cooking with it. This is sort of more like, should we, you know, have regulations about how frequently restaurants need to change their deep frying oil? You know what I mean? Like that sort of thing. Now probably going back to beef tallow like a animal based fat to fry foods in would be counterproductive, right? Which you guys very hallmark. RFK junior is using his misinterpretation of science to make bottom line recommendations which are actually harmful to your health. Right, Because he just doesn't know how to put everything into perspective. He's just sort of as I like to say he uses scientific evidence as a drunk, uses a light post for support rather than elimination. I didn't make that up, but it's a great it's a great phrase. So here are my take homes. Don't worry about it. Just don't worry about seed oil. Don't believe the demonization, don't believe the health gurus. It's fine. There's nothing to worry about. Again, if you want to, if you want to make your 63 ratio more pre industrial, eat more omega-3 fatty acids. Yeah, yeah, we should do more research on fryer oil. Probably whatever we use in the fryer is probably going to have, you know, something. And again, if you're concerned about that, you could try eating less fast food, fried food, that that would be one thing to do. And also do not listen to anything RFK Junior says. He's a dangerous crank. And as an extension of this RFK rule, don't get your health advice from health influencers on social media. So those are the takeaways. But don't worry about seed oil. It's fine. What's your what's your guys favorite oil?

J: I mean, I oh. Favorite. Oil. Virgin olive oil is probably oil.

C: I use avocado oil when I cook, mostly because it has a high burn point, so you can do, like, really high heat with it before it starts to smoke.

S: Yeah.

C: So yeah, like most of the things I cook with, I just stick with avocado because it's easier. I like olive oil the most if you're not cooking.

S: Yeah. I, you know, cook. With olive oil I put it in my salad. I only use like sesame oil for certain Chinese dishes. Yeah, and peanut oil, whatever. I use specific seed oils for specific dishes, but otherwise my go to is olive oil.

C: Oh yeah, I never cook with olive. I only use it for like it's. Great.

S: It's great for cooking, but I just read a study today. There's always something I just feel like you almost like this is the noise you should ignore where it says that that one type of fat and olive oil might promote fat cell growth and promote obesity. It's like crap. I'm just not going to worry about it until I see a clinical study, you know what I mean? And the guy, as I said, there's like probably everything you eat. And then we guy years ago I talked about this study which looked at I just went through a cookbook and looked at every the first hundred ingredients and almost every one of them either like prevented cancer or caused cancer. Like everyone, like the, you know, any food, you could look at any ingredient. There's some studies somewhere where people are promoting it as either it's healthy or it's terrible for you. You could, you could ignore all of it, you know, just have a generally A varied diet and you're fine. You know there's nothing. You can't eat anything.

C: Also the psychological, like I feel like so often when I've had friends who are, you know, I live in LA who fall victim to like the influencers sphere, like the health influencers sphere. And I feel like the biggest outcome of having a restricted diet due to fear mongering, that health influencers monger is anxiety. Yeah, there's so many people who I feel like their mental health suffers because they obsessively worry about what they're feeding themselves, what they're feeding their children. Everything's going to kill me. Everything's going to give me cancer. And while there is, you know, a prudent level of paranoia about certain foods that have demonstrable, you know, negative health consequences, the neurosis that I see very often, especially I don't, I don't know, I think it's yeah, it's especially bad. I.

E: Mean it would be to the point where where one of those people would like eat something accidentally they didn't realize was in it that they fear and then they would just really freak out about.

C: Yeah, all the time.

E: Even though they but part of their brain must know that eating that one maybe bad thing one time is. Not is like, not even that negative impact.

C: Yeah, and the problem is even more than just oops, I accidentally ate a thing. It's the obsessive worrying. It's the amount of money that they spend at the grocery store, the amount of time they spend online scrolling and reading. Just like the, I don't know, the portion of their life that's dedicated.

S: To a lot of time and attention, you know, that's a limited resource.

C: Yeah. It's increased anxiety. Depression. Anxiety. Yeah.

S: And increased expense, right, Because they'll pay for the stuff that apparently, you know, is the fad today that's avoiding the bad food or that is the good food. And probably, but with anything worse nutrition because they have a more restrictive diet.

C: Yeah. For sure.

Lead into Gold (22:59)

• Physicists turn lead into gold — for a fraction of a second 

S: All right, Jay, tell us how to turn lead into gold. Well, let me let me ask you guys a question first, is gold valuable? Inherently it it, yes, because it has some properties in electronics etcetera that are valuable.

C: But otherwise it's just a standard that we've chosen as a society to use.

S: But as valuable as it is in our society, like as monetarily, that's just convention.

J: I mean, I think there's a few ways to look at it. One, it is actually rare compared to other precious metals. It's hard to extract, right? It's got, it's got some complexity to it and it's beautiful, right. Gold has been sought after largely historically not, not because of the, you know, the fact that it has cool properties that we use today. But it's it's gorgeous. You know, it's a lot you can do.

E: Yeah.

J: Pirates bought those. Damn. So Steve said one of them. It's electrically, it's fantastic to use with electronics. It just has has a lot of electrical properties that are wonderful. It's biocompatible, so it doesn't corrode in the human body.

S: And doesn't get react to the immune system.

J: Yep. And it's chemically stable, so it has a lot of really good industrial properties that make it very sought after. But you know, can we create gold? Has gold ever been really created with this is this is a what I'm going to talk to you about tonight? And it's a little complicated. So, you know, the Large Hadron Collider, right? The LHC heard about it. Word on the street is that the physicist at CERN successfully transmuted lead into gold. So how did this happen? So this, you know, so CERN is near Geneva, right? And what they did was they did a lead ion collision experiment using the Alice detector. This is a large ion Collider experiment, right? And this is what they did. They had beams of lead ions that they that had were accelerated to almost the speed of light and they were directed to graze past one another rather than collide head on. And this is a key factor in how this how they pulled this up. So these near misses created a very strong electromagnetic field around each of these lead ions, and that electromagnetic field generated high energy photons. And when one of these photons hit hit a lead nucleus, it could knock out three of the protons. And since lead has 82 protons, losing 3 results in a nucleus with 79 protons, which is which is gold. But it's not exactly what you think. So let me give you, let me give you some details.

E: Pseudo gold.

J: It's never, yeah, it's never exactly what you know. You know, the analysis that came after there was a paper published in Physical Review, see on on May 7th, 2025. And they found that from 2015 to 2018, the LHC created approximately 86 billion gold nuclei. Right. It's not a lot. It sounds like a lot, but it's not a lot. This is equivalent to about 29 trillionths of a gram. It's also called 29 picograms Pico. So the gold atoms were super unstable. They existed only for a fraction of a microsecond and they were destroyed almost immediately by the further collisions that were happening or decay. So they they, you know, they were just, they were there for just the tiniest of time. And then to continue because it there is obviously more complexity. It wasn't the gold that we handle. It was a, what do you call it, Steve?

S: An isotope.

J: It was an isotope of gold, yeah.

S: There are 41 apparently isotopes of gold, but only one gold 197 is stable.

US#01: Yeah.

J: I see, so the this has scientific importance, not because they were trying to get rich. It confirms A theoretical model, or more than one, that electromagnetic interactions in high energy physics can actually do these things. You know, they're, they want to know what those electromagnetic interactions are and how they function. You know, this is how science works, right? They might not know exactly today, there might not be an application for this today, but there could be a lot of downstream applications that would take advantage of this. It also helps refine the future of particle accelerator experiments, you know, just gives us more data on what we can do with particles. It shows that the the precision and the power of the of our modern nuclear transportation techniques. This is a big deal. You know, they were, again, remember when I said they weren't head on collisions, they were grazing. These were grazing collisions, but they did that on purpose and they were able to control that, which I find to be unbelievable. Like I don't care who sits me down and explains to me how they do that. I, I, it's remarkable that Bob stay it remarkable. Thank you. It's remarkable that they do that. It also provides a clear example of proton removal nuclear alchemy through photo nuclear reactions. Yeah, listen back to that three times and I still don't understand exactly what the hell that is proton removal nuclear alchemy, that they're actually calling it alchemy. What?

S: You know, alchemy was about changing the base metals, you know, from one to another.

U: Yep.

B: So if, if if the if most of the isotopes are unstable, what do they decay into?

S: Yeah, that's a good question. So what isotope is created by this process? Gold.

J: What so stable gold has 79 protons and 118 neutrons, right? Gold 197. The CERN process knocked 3 protons off lead, the lead nuclei, but it didn't didn't carefully control the number of neutrons. So they left behind these gold isotopes with they had unusual neutron to proton ratios which made them incredibly unstable. So it wasn't a a a standard thing that it created. It created lots of different isotopes.

S: But mostly unstable.

J: Yeah. And there was radioactive decay that immediately, these immediately started to decay. So they were created and if they weren't smashed apart by other interactions that were happening around them, they just started to bingo, they started to decay instantly. They said that some of them likely underwent beta decay, fission and other nuclear transformations, turning them into different elements or just breaking apart completely the LHC.

S: Well, which would turn them into different elements.

J: Yeah, Now they said that the the LHC, like when they're when they're doing an experiment, it's considered to be a very violent place, right? Because there's there's a ton of particles that are super dangerous that are, you know, banging into each other and these the nuclei that were created during the collisions that were surrounded by extreme energy and radiation. So, you know, it's pretty, pretty serious environment that they're creating in there.

B: I see here that radioactive gold isotopes decay typically into mercury or platinum.

S: Oh platinum wouldn't be bad. That wouldn't be bad. That's a decay.

J: But still remember what I said it, it was like the tiniest of tiny, like there wasn't like someone picked up a chunk of platinum and they're like psych, you know that that didn't happen. But I, I like this because, you know, historically alchemists, they wanted to turn lead into gold through they had all these chemical processes that they were trying. They didn't know what they were doing. It's actually impossible to do because you know, the there's a fixed atomic number, right? Lead has 82 protons, gold has 79. What they were doing that that back then couldn't do what what they were hoping would just spontaneously happen. So it's really cool they took this idea of chemists back in. When were they doing this guy? I don't even know. When were people trying to do this? In the 16 hundreds 1400s?

US#05: Yeah, yeah. Sometime I forget exactly, like when it would hit his heyday, but sometime like that.

J: But the idea that today, now we perfectly understand what the difference is between lead and gold, like we, we with absolute precision, we completely understand that. And you know, we actually took a step in that direction to create an isotope of gold. But no, no gold that is going to turn into, you know, electronics or jewelry or anything.

S: Yeah. I wonder though if they could refine this to knock out like the right number of protons and neutrons to create either gold or just to like create the the isotope that decays into platinum because that's even better than gold. I'll be honest with you, in terms of rare keys and utilities is. The problem? Yeah.

E: Yeah, let's hope we don't get electrum though.

S: Electrum.

E: That's a Dungeons and Dragons joke, by the way.

S: Thank you, Evan.

E: Thank you, Cara.

S: All right, Cara, tell us what's happening to science in America.

American Lysenkoism (31:40)

• Exclusive: US veterans agency orders scientists not to publish in journals without clearance 

C: It's kind of a big, big topic. It's tough. So I think, you know, it's hard to even know where to start. But because we're recording this on the 4th of June, I was out of town for the past week. So I wasn't there last week when we recorded, I want to say during Nauticon. When was Nauticon? It's like so long. Ago, 1617. It was the 15/16/17. OK, So after Nauticon, there was an executive order that was released from the White House called Restoring Gold Standard Science. The day it was released, I know people, friends of mine who work in government agencies, who happen to be scientists with those kinds of jobs, texted us this executive order and said, like, you know, presented without comment. And it's, shall we say, worrisome to say the least. And here's just a little bit of language from the from the actual executive order. This comes from Section 3A. Within 30 days of the date of this order, the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policies of the OSTP Director shall, in consultation with the heads of relevant agencies, issue guidance for agencies on implementation of quote gold standard science in the conduct and management of their respective scientific activities. For the purpose of this order, gold standard science means science conducted in a manner that is. What do you guys think? Reproducible, transparent, commutative of air and uncertainty, collaborative and interdisciplinary. Skeptical of its findings and assumptions. Structured for falsifiability of hypothesis. Subject to unbiased peer review. Accepting of negative results as positive outcomes and without conflicts of interest. That sounds good, right?

S: Superficial.

C: Isn't that what we're always talking about here on the show? That is what gold standard science should look like. So why do we need an executive order calling for science to follow this gold standard? Well, as the executive order claims, and again, I'm quoting here the see, these are not my words. Over the last five years, confidence that scientists act in the best interest of the public has fallen significantly. Although when you look at Pew surveys, the general public still trust scientists significantly more than the federal government. That was my interjection there. OK, the the order continues. A majority of researchers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics believe science is facing a reproducibility crisis. The falsification of data by leading researchers has led to high profile retractions of federally funded research. Unfortunately, the federal government has contributed to this loss of trust, and then they go on to basically throw the previous administration under the bus with regards to COVID-19 guidance. They specifically call out the CDC. It literally says that executive departments and agencies have used or promoted scientific information in a highly misleading manner. They call out the National Marine Fisheries Service. They call out multiple agencies throughout this executive order. Now this comes kind of against the background of a lot of, I mean, I don't even know where to start, right? A different political appointees who have questionable if not outright science like anti science views being put in charge of scientific agencies. Let's see, since the presidency, since basically January 20th when Trump actually took office, different executive actions have significantly cut funding at the NSF, The National Science Foundation, fired staff scientists across different departments, right? Like EPA, NOAA, the National Weather Service. Recently you guys probably saw the government report on child health that cited research papers that don't exist, just fully fake citations.

S: They probably used, you know, AI to generate.

C: It Yeah.

S: And didn't double check it. And there's just like made-up shit in there.

C: So scary.

S: It's incompetent. It's gross incompetence.

C: I mean, it's beyond, it's weaponized incompetence. It's like intentional. And so we've seen just a bunch of undermining of research regarding climate change, regarding biomedical science, Health and Human safety. And so a fear here is the wording, right? Because the wording on its surface sounds like all the things that we're always talking about. Like, how do we make research papers rigorous and transparent, you know, open science movement, you know, reproducibility, unbiased peer review. But there was a letter of protest that was recently published by multiple scientists. Over 6000 scientists wrote this open letter, or I should say scientists and physicians and other researchers. And in their letter of protest, they said that the executive order is, quote, Co opting the language of open science to implement a system under which direct presidential appointees are given broad latitude to designate many common and important scientific activities as scientific misconduct. And so this echoes a movement that many people are aware of called Lysenkoism. And I've seen people writing even Ed science based medicine. David Gorsky wrote about kind of the new Lysenkoism and he started writing about it in March of this year. He's written two articles about it so far. I've used this term recently around some of my friends and some of my friends I noticed. And again, I was born in 1983, so even though I'm in my 40s right now and I have, you know, contemporary, it appears that are my contemporaries. Some of my friends didn't know who Lysenko was or this concept of Lysenko ISM was new.

E: To I was never taught until I was aware of through skepticism.

C: Is how I found it, and that's good to know.

E: Age 30.

C: Right, right. So even individuals who were like, I guess I shouldn't say now alive about because this actually Lysenko ISM was like a long time ago. But those, yeah, who saw the echoes of Lysenko ISM may not have, I don't know, may not be as aware of it. So what do you guys know about Lysenko ISM? Why don't we start there?

B: Well, it was supposed to basically repudiated Mendelian, Mendelian genetics and natural selection and Soviets took it upright agriculturally. They and and and even just regular science. And yeah, it was significant harm, I mean.

E: Yeah, when it was applied, it was so damaging.

S: It became the official state science and scientists who disagreed with it because they they agreed with the correct science were sent to the gulag and.

C: Sometimes.

S: Killed and then some of them killed. And then of course it did tanked the agricultural sector of the Soviet Union, causing mass starvation. And then even worse though is when it was taken up by China and then millions of people starved. So Lysenko was responsible for millions of deaths, Yeah.

C: Because so this started way back in, you know, the 20s and Lysenko ISM is named for Trophium Lysenko. So this was a, you know, a scientist. I was about to call him a geneticist. He was not a geneticist. He did not believe in genetics.

B: Apparatchik.

C: Yeah, he, well, some, some people called it like Marxist genetics. They're, you know, different terms that were used for genetics.

B: Yeah.

C: But it was it was basically like you mentioned, Bob, a repudiation of natural selection, of evolution via natural selection. And instead he favored Lamarckism. And I don't know if if folks remember Lamarckism, but this was kind of a prevailing view before it was debunked that instead of there being genetic material that's already existing in a population that's then under, you know, environmental pressure in which quote, the fittest survive, right, Those organisms who happen to already have those beneficial mutations tended to do well against those pressures. Instead of that Lamarckism, you know, claimed, Lamarck said. Well, there's behaviors that happen during the lifespan of an Organism, and those behaviors could then be passed down to their offspring. Can.

S: I say the character just because, just to not get an e-mail on this. Yeah, that that idea, the the passing on of acquired characteristics was not invented or unique to Lamarque. And he did, and he renounced it later in his career. So it's really not even fair to call it Lamarque. Lamarque.

C: Well, that's it's interesting. That is what it is.

S: I know it's known by that, but it's really unfair to him.

C: For Lamarck, well, but he changed his mind, right? But he did publish under that.

S: Yeah, but like everybody, like, again, he didn't invent the idea. It wasn't unique to him. There's like there's no reason legitimately to attach the idea to him.

C: Oh, that's so interesting because there's almost like not another, like I just looked up on Wikipedia like the term Lamarckism, also known as Lamarckian inheritance or Neo Lamarckism. Yeah, but there's no other also called the inheritance of acquired characteristics or more recently, soft inheritance. Maybe that's what we should start saying. We'll call it soft inheritance. So this idea of soft inheritance, right? And the example we often hear about is the giraffe, but it could be any example, like an Organism wants to reach, or let's say a bird wants to get at a certain seed and it pecks at the seed and it's, you know, beat gets like pointier and then it has offspring with pointy beaks and then their offspring have pointy beaks, right? Like, that's just not how it works, and it's long been debunked, although there are some. We could have a whole side conversation about epigenetics, which is really interesting. But we know that epigenetics still requires genetics. Yeah, you're right. Like we're still talking about DNA. And so his specific technique, which was called vernalization, was a really interesting process that he used to help certain plants survive more in Russia. And it actually worked with certain plants, and that's why it started to gain momentum. The problem is it didn't work beyond that. But Stalin thought that he was great. He loved his ideas. His ideas made sense to him. They were easy and palatable. They felt like they kind of went with the national nationalistic pride of the time, like, oh, we can, we can sort of have this new biology and it's just ours and we have this national pride for it. And because of that, as you mentioned, Steve, even against evidence, physical evidence, that this vernalization and, and grafting technique that he used was not working with specific crops and that the crops were failing. And, you know, more and more Lysenko had more and more power. He was able to kind of affect most of the policy around Soviet agriculture. He said, no, I don't want there to be any pesticides or herbicides that are used. I want to only use my specific form of agriculture. And these crops just started failing left and right. And even against that evidence, it was, you know, explain it away, keep going, keep pushing, oh, now we have new problems, but that's OK. Lysenko and his approach are going to fix them. And because of that, I want to say it was about a 30 year period where the crops failed and there was mass famine. And then of course, we know that there's kind of a, a ripple effect that happens after that because you can't just go back to how things were, you know, a day later, like there's some kind of evidence that there were still effects from Lysenko's decision making up through the 90s. Yeah.

S: Plus you you kill off a generation of experts. You can't recreate that expertise.

C: Exactly so it's not just about the science that's being practiced, it's also about the good science that's being suppressed. And those are actually 2 separate issues that have outcomes that are related. And so that's why I think, you know, I don't know if it's a if it's a direct correlation. Gorsky writes about Lysenko being, you know, like the RFK junior being the new Lysenko. And he does, I think, like to his credit, he says it's not Lysenko that killed all those people. It's, you know, it's Stalin like, but it's Stalin choosing Lysenko. And I think that's the part that we have to remember here, that these executive orders that with Trump at the helm, it's not just about RFK Junior, Trump is choosing RFK Junior. But even beyond RFK, we're seeing across federal agencies that have, you know, that control federal science and funding for federal science. So we're not just talking about Health and Human services. We're not just talking about biomedical science, we're talking about environmental science. We're talking about the climate. We're talking about all sorts of knock on effects.

S: It all flows down from Trump, but he is giving Kennedy a lot of free reign with absolute health care. So like, for example, Kennedy wants to at least he said he wants to ban American scientists who get federal funding from publishing in in journals in like publishing in the top journals we have. They want, like the CDC to create its own journal where you're forced to publish essentially. Again, this is sort of taking over the scientific process by the government, which is Lysenkoism. It's very, very bad.

C: It's super scary and these are this is new, but not new. So we've heard these these kind of mutterings. People were starting to publish this, you know, even a couple of months ago about this consideration of, you know, scientists from publishing and in journals like JAMA, in journals like The Lancet and journals like the New England Journal of Medicine. He Kennedy literally said, quote, we're probably going to stop publishing in The Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA and those other journals because they're all corrupt. He just like straight up they're just corrupt, which is bananas because these are some of the top tier medical journals to publishers.

S: Yeah, that's it. It's about, you know, undercutting, delegitimizing the institutions of science and and health and professionalism.

C: And we all saw this coming, right? Because what is what did we know RFK Junior as prior to this position?

S: I mean basically an anti vaxxer but.

C: An anti vaxxer? And why was he an anti vaxxer? Where were the original MMR studies published in The Lancet?

S: Lancet.

C: I mean, obviously they were retracted, but it's hard to unring a bell. It's but it's the retractions that probably made him so angry. And so there's a new piece to this puzzle and that was just published like yesterday or no like a couple of days ago. So 2 researchers from the VA, right, Veteran of Veterans Affairs, they're both pulmonologists. They published an article in the New England Journal of Medicine and that article was critical of the basically that these mass cancellations of contracts and the planned staff reduction of 80,000 VA employees is going to put the health of 1,000,000 veterans at risk. Like that's what they said in the article, including those seeking treatment for toxic exposure. This opinion piece was a warning. It was published and this bothered the administration. And so the administration basically is ordering staff scientists now not to publish in medical journals without first receiving official clearance. So it's one thing to like pontificate about it on a podcast like RFK Junior did. It's another thing to send out an e-mail to the VA saying no more publication until we approve it.

S: The only state approved science publication. And that's as they think.

C: It was. Totally.

S: And, and getting back to your and getting back to your original list of gold standard science, they're weaponizing it. They're just using that as an excuse to target because no science is pristine, right? You could nitpick any study, anything, any research or whatever. And you could, if you could say this is gold standard, then just, you know, gin up some reason to go after any study that or any scientist that you don't like the conclusion of you don't like.

C: Exactly. And I think the important question is according to whom, right? Because I would prefer that that be gold standard science according to the scientific community, wouldn't you? Of course, I don't want it to be according to RFK Junior or according to Donald Trump.

S: Or any, any politician?

C: Absolutely.

S: I mean, they're like the two worst I could think of, but yes. But any politician.

C: Any person who was put in a position of oversight at across these different organizations and government agencies who either are not even scientists themselves or if they are scientists are fully, fully biased at this point. It's so, so scary. So, you know, I think that up until now it's felt more theoretical and the alarm bells have been ringing, but we're starting to see more and more evidence. You know, it's one thing to cut funding. Yes, it has a really terrible knock on effect, right? And it, it definitely is a direct and quick way to say, I don't want you to do that thing. So I'm just going to not give you the money to do the thing. It's, I think an entirely different animal to say I don't want you to do that thing. I I command you not to do it, and that's really, really scary.

S: So this is something we definitely have to keep an eye on. And there's got to be like, the public has to complain about this, like there needs to be public pushback.

E: All your Congress people, folks, your senators, anybody, everybody. I.

C: Mean. Those people know that this is happening. That's the scary thing. Because if you read the executive order, it sounds like they're using all the right buzzwords. And unless you get it, yeah, it's so cloaked. It's like here in California, we see this all the time when we vote there, which is why you have to constantly read different voter guides because you'll sit down to vote on the different ballot propositions. And you'll be like, oh, that sounds good. And you don't realize because it's the way that the proposition is written, what they're actually getting to it's.

S: Frustrating.

C: It's so scary. Yeah. It's all propaganda. It's.

S: Like, you know a lawyer giving you a contract and signing it without having another lawyer read it right? Like you really think like as a non expert of layperson, you're gonna be able to parse all of the fine print and and know that you're not being screwed. It may superficially sound reasonable, but you have to know the details. It's the same thing with legislation. You got the devils in the details.

C: And I think that like an important outcome here because we've talked about this before, but this comes from, you know, I've read a lot of different articles and kind of pulled from different articles and quoted different articles when I was talking about this. But one that I'm looking at here from Environmental Health News, they do they like summarize the story and mostly they were pulling from a Washington Post story, but they did like a little why this matters at the end. And I think they kind of are saying it better than I could. Cutting off access to peer reviewed medical journals doesn't just isolate US research. It threatens global health standards and it further politicizes the nation's scientific institutions. Science does not thrive under censorship, and undermining scientific integrity does not bode well for maintaining robust public health systems. RFK Junior. And mark my words, like he said, he wants to do this. So when this happens, we need to be wary. Not only is he trying to ban the scientists from publishing in leading medical journals, he wants to start an HHS preeminent journal. He used that word to house taxpayer funded research. So if we start to see a government sanctioned journal, we know that that journal is biased.

S: Right.

C: It's very. Important science, right? I mean, who states Yeah. Here we go again. It's Lysenkoism. We have to remember that and spread the word about that.

S: The only question now is.

E: Kennedyism.

S: Will RFK Junior kill more people than Lysenko? And a lot of people think he will. He is on track to doing just that.

C: Right, because it's not just agriculture. No, no, this is, we're talking vaccinations. We're talking, you know, health advice. Like, what about the next pandemic?

S: There's a pandemic in the next three years. He absolutely will be responsible for more deficit.

C: Super scary. Yeah, yeah. And deregulating all the oh gosh, there's so much our food, our oh, OK, medicine.

S: All right, Evan, I need one more thing to worry about. Tell me about.

C: Great.

The Screwworm Is Coming (52:50)

• The ‘Man-Eater’ Screwworm Is Coming - The Atlantic 

S: Tell me about the screwworm.

E: What?

S: Wait, wait a second, wait a second. We're talking about worms now.

E: Have we talked about the screw worm on the SGU before? I don't think so. I don't.

S: Remember talking about it.

E: It's a good thing.

S: Not the boar worms.

E: It's a very good thing. It's a good thing we haven't, because this little parasite comes right out of one of Bob's nightmares. You're going to love it. But not screw worms come from blow flies, specifically the family. Oh, here we go, a Californiaid. Not California, but Californiaid. They belong to unique genera that set them apart from typical scavenger blowflies, and the two main screwworm producing species are, well, Old World screwworm Chrysomia beziana and New World screwworm cochleomeia. How many vorax? How many vorax? And. That homina which translates to Man Eater. Oh. Christ. That's the one we're talking about, New World screw worm. So NWS is what they call it for short. A screw worm is the larval also known as the maggot stage of a parasitic fly known for infesting and feeding on the living tissue of warm blooded animals including livestock, pets and yes even human beings. Now human fatalities from screw worm infestations are rare. The condition is known as my MYIASIS Miasis Miasis Miasis I believe fatal if not promptly diagnosed and treated. In fact, I looked it up the there was a death, 2 deaths last year in Panama from this of of humans and prior to that in Panama it you had to go back to the 1990s to find someone who died from it. And that's what this news item is going to be about. Animals at greatest risk include those that have recently given birth, have open wounds, or have undergone surgery or management procedures like dehorning and branding. The screwworm is obligate. Do you know what that means, Bob?

B: Yeah, for that. What's the finish? The sentence up means that it's it has to do.

J: Public at what?

E: Yes, it has to feed on living tissue, the opposite of necrophagious.

J: OK. And, and you know, where is it now in the world?

E: Yeah, it's so it's been relegated to the the deeper parts of South America, you know, in non human, in non human populations kind of holding it there and in Panama, because that's kind of where the efforts and there's been ongoing efforts for a long time to keep this parasite in check because it's super, super nasty. This parasite will kill a cow, for example, in as little as one week. If it gets it. That cow could be dead in seven days and no more than two weeks in many cases.

US#06: What can they do? What? What's the you know?

E: Yeah, it's again. The parasite will eat your flesh and let's see. If left untreated, infestations can disfigure the affected areas, lead to severe bacterial infections, cause sepsis or organ failure, and destroy critical anatomical structures including eyes, ears and genitalia.

J: Oh my God, so a worm can eat your balls?

E: Quite true. I'd say fly, but yes, specifically the larva state of the fly we have been battling. Do you know how long we've been battling the screw the the screwworm and keeping it in check?

J: 200 years.

E: Over 70 years.

J: Wow.

E: 70 years and This is why we haven't heard about it, because the the efforts in the mid 1950s were very effective at at pushing this really away from the United States and much of Central America. In the 1950's the US Department of Agriculture laid the groundwork for a continent wide assault on the screwworm. Workers raised screwworms and factories blasted them with radiation until they were sterile, and then dropped sterile adult screwworms by the hundreds of millions at its height weekly over the United States and then further South into Mexico and eventually the rest of North America. The screwworm was eradicated from the US, Mexico and Central America between 1966 and 2006. Eliminated. With what did I say?

S: Eradicated Eradicated is worldwide. Eliminated is from a region.

E: Oh, got you. OK.

B: Cool distinction.

E: Oh, clever. Steve, thank you for that correction. I'll remember that eliminated. And again, there was a barrier in Panama, the Darien Gap, which maybe you've heard of before, and that's basically where it's been held in check for all of that time. But it has broken through and identified in 2023 that it broke through the gap, the gap, it's heading back N into Central America. It's been detected in Mexico. And there's a heightening risk now of reintroduction into the United States to prevent this moving back northward. the US Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, they both collaborated with Panama to maintain the biological barrier zone in eastern Panama. So they're doing what they can to to reinforce that buffer zone. But again, it has been breached and there needs to be renewed efforts to to keep this parasite away. If you, I saw pictures of this fly and you know, it looks like a family. However, it has an orange face, including like orange eyes and an orange, what do you call it, muzzle or mouth area to it, metallic green, blue body. So it has that sort of shiny, you know, almost coat to it. And there are three black stripes on its thorax. If one of these burgers gets into you, into you within three days, there will be thousands of larvae present. They position themselves head down with their posterior ends visible at the surface of the wound and in deep or narrow wounds. The only way that you know, you might have this thing is the subtle movements under your skin and things that may be a visible sign. I'm getting all creeped out here just reading about this. So this is bad. I mean, again, for for people, for the most part, they get treated in time when they have this infection and few people, you know, are become victims. But it can impact people. It definitely, in fact impacts animals and especially livestock. This has already started to cause a little spike in cow and beef prices because of the extra efforts now that they're going to have to go through to keep this away. So it's already starting to. Manifest itself.

J: Is this what is this where they use ivermectin you?

E: Know they do have medicines and things that, that they can use in order to, in order to get rid of it in time. But again, if you know if, if a cow or a herd goes undetected in a few days or within a week, that that could be the end of the, of the herd. So it's it, it kills very quickly and it's not to be trifled with. And there's been an ongoing effort for 70 years to keep this contained in it. Now it has to be redoubled. If you happen to see one of these things, chances are you're not going to hopefully. But there is something called the USDA Screw Worm emergency hotline, 800-353-7575. It's a real service. And you know, like you said, Steve, just one more thing to kind of keep on the lookout.

S: For, but I mean, the, the, the, the real thing is that This is why we have agencies to deal with it, right? To keep an eye on this to, to address it, to react to it. And without that, without, you know, agencies funded, populated by scientists, free to do the work that they need to do, these kind of things are going to run wild. Right, right.

E: Can you imagine? I mean, what? What other kinds of?

S: Things are right, there should be experts to worry about it for you. Exactly.

E: And if they get defunded, guess what? How many things are going to get past the past the net? It's it's, it's unfathomable.

S: All right, Thanks, Evan.

Galactic Collision (1:01:31)

• Hubble casts doubt on certainty of galactic collision 

S: Bob I I always thought that Andromeda one day was going to collide with the Milky Way.

B: Yes, and it you know, it still is. We just are less certain about when that's going to happen. So yes Steve, new improved simulation simulation suggest that this this Milky Way, Andromeda collision is far less certain than previously thought. As Steve and I just discussed, it's no longer almost certain to happen within 5 billion years, which which was the consensus since about 2012. As usual, the reasons for this change of thinking is fascinating to me. Anyway, let's see if you guys agree. This is from the journal Nature Astronomy. The title non linear kinematic modeling suggests stochastic, divergent and collective collision trajectory. Actually that's not the title. I made that one up. The real title is no certainty of a Milky Way Andromeda collision. Like what? That's weirdly straightforward and to the point. OK, let's just roll with that. But I had to come up with some Kiki variant because that's what I'm used to. All right, so I'll start with an apology, maybe to Steve as well as countless people since 2012, because I've told many, many people that at our Milky Way Galaxy should collide and merge with the Andromeda Galaxy within about 4.5 billion years. I always was fascinated by that on. My Google Calendar, right? They even had a name. They have a name for it. Milko Pita. Milko pedia or something is just like, which I'd never really really care. Yeah, getting ready for really care for that one. But but you know, but hey, that's a game you play with science communication. Even a scientific consensus can be shaken up at times. And of course, that's perfectly fine if that's where the evidence leads, right? When you don't really care where it leads, it's just what the evidence, good evidence says. All right, So what happened? Now, we've known since 1912 that that the Andromeda Nebula, as it was known at the time, was headed in our direction. And 100 years later, 2012, they did a detailed study based on Hubble Space Telescope data, and that showed that there was a minuscule amount of sideways motion of Andromeda. So a Titanic collision between our Galaxy and Andromeda in 4.5 billion years seemed fairly certain, Very, very strong confidence on that. And of course, this would not be fun for the two galaxies. It would trigger massive starbursts as clouds of hydrogen just kind of smashed together. Stars would probably never collide. They're just too tiny in the schemes of things. But these huge hydrogen clouds would certainly be smashing together. There'd be more supernovae. Even our sun could be forced out of its orbit into a different galactic orbit. You know, the joke, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria. You know, it would still be kind of cool to have that happen. I'd actually love to see it right now. Now, however, we have better observational data. Not only new Hubble data, but we also have data from the Gaia telescope, which I think we've mentioned a couple times. And we also have new mass estimates of the galactic players involved. That new data, that new data was plugged into simulations that considered 22 distinct collision variables, each variable having an impact on the collision, and they ran it 100,000 times. And the new estimates put this chance of collision at wait for it, only 50% over the next 10 billion years, only 50%. Now, if you look at the simulations themselves, half the simulations show that are two mighty galaxies, the biggest in our local group of galaxies. These two galaxies fly past each other, separated by about 1/2 a million light years. That sounds huge and it is huge, but it's not too far away. However, to have our dark matter Halos interact, right, we had got these dark matter, our Halos around surrounding our galaxies, you know, beyond, you know, our Galaxy is what, 100,000 light years across. Beyond that, we've got these dark matter Halos and they would be interacting, our Milky Way and Andromeda, they would be interacting in a way causing what's called dynamic friction. And that friction would eventually bring the galaxies back around towards each other. You know, who knows, maybe circle each other a few more times, but eventually causing a merge. So that's half the simulations causing an eventual merge because of this dynamic friction. But most of the other half of the simulations show that these two galaxies will be too far away even for this dynamic friction to close the deal, meaning that we could dance together far, far into the now, you know, more unpredictable future. Not, you know, we just can't say at this time when they could potentially merge if they're if they're too far away for this dynamic friction to take over. So as of now that the old prediction of a direct collision in 5 billion years has what chance of happening to you?

S: 20%. 1%.

B: Oh. Evans closer 2%, we have only a 2% of happening. So it still could happen. That's how much uncertainty there is.

S: My answer had a 2IN it though what my answer had a 2 in it?

B: Ah, yes.

S: It did.

B: But yeah, in the wrong column though. So. Columns do matter. So yeah, 2 percent, 2%. So it could, it could still happen, but it's instead of being something like whatever what, 95%, 92% certainty back since 2012. Now it's back down. Now it's down to 2%. So now the the critical part of this new uncertainty. Hope my robots fell over crap. All right, they're good. They're good.

US#01: Please leave that in the show.

B: So a critical part of this new uncertainty that we seem to be experiencing, it really has nothing to do with the Milky Way or Andromeda, but our biggest satellite galaxies. The Andromeda have has the famous M33 Galaxy near it, which actually increases the probability of a merger. On the other hand, our Milky Way has our beautiful smear of a satellite Galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud, and that dude is actually pulling us away from a potential merger. So something's pulling it. Something is one satellite Galaxy is making it more likely for a merger. The other satellite Galaxy is making it less likely. So it's just like we had just can't really pin this down. And of course it's more complicated than that, of course, but it's actually fascinating that better data has actually increased the uncertainty, which which happens a lot. And it's just like one of the wonderful things about science. So Till Sawala, who is an astronomer of the University of Helsinki in Finland and lead author of the studies, said this. It's somewhat ironic that despite the addition of more precise Hubble data taken in recent years, we are now less certain about the the outcome of potential collision. That's because of the more complex analysis and because we consider more we consider a more complete system. But the only way to get a new prediction about the eventual fate of the Milky Way will be with better data, with even better data. So our future is uncertain. Well, actually it's not our future technically, if there seems to be a high probability that the Earth and even the sun as we know it will probably be gone by the time the Milky Way collides with collides with Andromeda. So will be will be long gone there. The the sun will just be, you know, white dwarf kind of slowly losing heat. So even though we can't yet pin a confident date on that collision, we are, we are very certain that not only will the two biggest members of our local group of galaxies collide Milky Way and Andromeda and merge for sure, but all the scores of galaxies bound together gravitationally into our our local group will also someday all merge as well into one mega Galaxy that was once or a part of it was at least once was once the home of humanity. But we'll be or, you know, maybe our robot descendants will be hanging out checking things out, but we probably won't be here. We absolutely.

Who's That Noisy? + Announcements (1:09:19)

J: All right, Jay, it's who's that noisy time? I've like totally lost track on what the previous noisy was. Well, I'll, I'll catch you up. Last time guys, was it 3 weeks ago Steve?

S: Something like that.

J: A month I played this noisy. Any guesses guys?

E: Broken digeridoo.

S: I would guess some kind of instrument, some kind of some kind of wind instrument, maybe the flatulator.

J: So is this what you're gonna play in your retirement, Steve?

B: I'm gonna take up the flatulator, yeah. Steve that reminds me of a fun movie, fun Disney movie Treasure planet, basically sci-fi pirates, which is such a fun movie. And there was an alien who whose language sound, you know, very, very close to that noise and they they they called the language the language had the best name. They called it Flatula, which I loved. I never. Forgot.

J: So it's not the. Flatulator I had I had a listener write in and say hi Jay, this week's Who's That? Noisy Sounds is the sound of a Goliath beetle bench pressing 94 lbs.

B: Triggering trigger. Nice call back.

J: And Bob, I remember you because of your meatball NASA shirt. Thank you for teaching me about that, another listener named BJ Tetralt said. Jay, Congrats to you and rogues. I've reached you 20 years on the podcast, he says. I was honored to be there for the Thousands show recording and it was great. I also went to the two DC shows but wasn't able to make it to Nauticon. I said this week's noisy sounds like a brass musical instrument, probably a trumpet that the player is playing, pedal tones. I forget the acoustic mechanism, but it's the way to play very low notes. It's probably it probably has something to do with the resonance of the instrument and the frequency of the player blowing in the mouthpiece. So this is actually I Poppy, by the way, and this is a very good guess, but not all the way there. Then Shane Hillier wrote in say Jabels for this week's guess. I think it this person is trying to learn to play a tuba again, you're in the vein there, but you are not. You're not all the way. James Lovell wrote in and said, James Lovell, That's right. I think this week's noisy is someone playing a trombone in such a way that they get the harmonic notes along the base note. They're likely using a particular armature to achieve this that's somewhat there. But let me give you the The winner is Mitch Burke for this week's noisy. And Mitch says, I'm sure many musicians have answered this one, but the noise this week's is a multi phonic ditty where a person blows a drone note on the instrument and hums a separate melody while blowing sounds like a trumpet, probably with a mute on the on this in this case. Hope this is specific enough. All right, So what we're seeing here, guys, what we're hearing here, This is actually from a listener named Sam Rumble. And Sam said, my old trumpet teacher is the clip in the clip. He actually, you know, videotaped his his teacher, he said, so hopefully the rights won't be an issue. This effect is created by playing the instrument with your lips and then also singing a note behind that was within your throat. This means you can play 2 notes. That was creating some really interesting harmonic effects and resonances between the played and song notes. In this clip, he is playing a single note on the actual trumpet while only changing the song notes. You can hear him change them if you listen closely. Yeah. So I mean, you know, there's, there was some definitely good guesses in here. I think out of all of them, James Lovell and and Mitch got got the closest. So let me play that again for those of you who play wind instruments. I was, I'm curious to know how many of you were able to tease this out. So I definitely hear the guy humming and you can hear where the notes don't perfectly match up. You know that there is some like almost dissonance vibrations happening in there. It's really cool. Sound waves are pretty damn interesting.

S: So a multi phonic trombone.

J: Yes, say I said, well, it's it's paired with, it's a drone note on the trombone with the singer. You're singing a scale that that is playing with that drone note. It's very cool.

S: Also known as a flatulator.

J: OK, that's right.

S: What do you got for this week?

J: This week's Who's That Noisy? Was sent in by a listener named Stella. Why? I can't answer that question. Still, I don't know. And here it is.

E: Wow all. Right, that was interesting.

J: All right, so if you think you know what this week's noisy is or you heard something cool, you got to e-mail me at wtn@theskepticsguide.org. Steve, we have a show coming up. The show is going to be in Kansas. It's the weekend of September 20th, but this is Saturday, the 20th of September and we will be doing 2 shows that day. We will be doing a private show and we will be doing a special extravaganza. You're going to love either or both of those shows. Both of those shows will be in the same venue on the same day at two different times. One of them will be like somewhere around noon and the other one will be at 8:00 PM. If you're interested, all you got to do is go to theskepticsguide.org and you'll see a button on there that will give you a link to buy the tickets.

S: Thanks, Jay.

Emails (1:15:00)

S: One very quick e-mail, this comes from Keith from Wales, United Kingdom. And he asks, I've just discovered your podcast and I've started episode one. This means that I now have nine years to catch up on. Try 20 dude, 20 no.

B: He meant. He meant nine years of listening straight through.

S: Yeah, maybe if I listen to episodes while I'm asleep, while I absorb all of the information in the podcast to a level that I can readily recall them in detail. No, OK, let's move on. So if you want a little bit more of a longer answer than that, really no, you cannot learn while you're asleep. So but you there is quote UN quote learning that goes on during sleep, but it's implicit learning, you know, it's like memory consolidation and you know, the brain doing its thing to try to like lock in information.

E: Defragging the hard drive, Yeah. I love that.

S: Yeah, but but yeah, you can't like listen to some. There's no conscious learning, right? Your brain is not processing new information.

E: Efficient. Oh my gosh, that would be incredible.

S: Yeah. So there, you know, and obviously there are stages. There are the, the deep stages of sleep where actually a lot of the implicit learning stuff is happening. Like you're in a coma, like you, there's no processing information going on at that time. You are not able to hear, understand and, and react to stuff. So no. And then REM sleep, you know, the, your environmental things can influence your dreams, but still like you're not really learning during the dreaming. That's a different thing that's going on. So there'll be no benefit to listening to the show while asleep. You have to be awake when you listen to the SGU.

Interview with Emily Schoerning (1:16:40)

https://www.americanresiliency.org/about

S: All right, let's go on with our interview. We are joined now by Emily Scherning. Emily, welcome to the Skeptics Guide.

Voice-over: Thanks so much for having me on the show.

S: So, Emily, you are the founder and CEO of something called American Resiliency. Tell us about that. What is American resiliency?

Voice-over: American Resiliency is a nonprofit. We're A5O1C3 and we're an education nonprofit. We're focused on getting actionable, accessible climate projection information to all Americans so that people can understand the changes that are likely to happen to their home and to places that they care about. There's a lot of range in the change nationwide.

S: Yeah. So this is a very challenging subject for science communicators. We talked been talking about this for 20 years, you know, for a couple of reasons. 1 is that this is one of the few issues where there are real stark differences, you know, among the population, like Americans, usually there isn't, there really isn't much of like a middle consensus. Like there isn't so many issues. We really are polarized. And two, it's like the one issue that does not respond to factual correction of information, right? You could tell the science denier, climate change denier, factual information. It doesn't change their mind. So first of all, do you find that and how do you deal with it?

U: I.

Voice-over: Think that the playing field has shifted enormously in the last 20 years where it is more common now. The majority of Americans believe that climate change is happening because we're feeling it on the ground. Yale Climate Communication has done a lot of great national survey work that gives us a more up to I think that we see that sort of perspective on all kinds of stuff, even on if the Earth is round right and we live in a world where the media is willing to set up two sides problems in situations where dichotomies really aren't appropriate.

S: Yeah, I agree. Like there's a false balance issue like that the media deals with. Yeah, it wasn't saying it's not the only issue, but it is one where there's a measurable polarization politically, which is not true of a lot of other issues. It's, you know, because the majority of people tend to fall in the middle. But in any case, the bigger problem, I think, is the fact that, again, we say climate denial, we're not talking necessarily about, you know, that's why people just straight up denying that climate change is happening. There's a whole spectrum of it. You could deny that it's happening or that it's anthropogenic or that it's going to cause bad things or that there's anything we could do about it. And right, they kind of shift up and down that spectrum sometimes, you know, just, you know, deliberately, like the Mott and Bailey defense where they just will will change their strategy based on the context of the situation. But at some level, at the end of the day, they don't want to do anything about climate change, you know?

Voice-over: You know. I think that that's true and that it is not a strictly polarized denial. I think that there are quite a few people who are very accepting of climate science who also deny that there's anything practical that we can or will do about it. I think that this is such a serious, existential issue that people bring a lot of deep psychology, deep emotions to their parsing of the issue, and that it's such a big problem that there's a natural human response to shut down instead of work the problem. But it's a problem we need to be working.

S: So what? What approach do you take in terms of public education about climate change?

Voice-over: I think that there are a number of nested approaches that I take based on my communications research. Some of it is using broadly accessible language. I think that when we're inside the world of science, we use a lot of specialized vocabulary that helps us communicate in world, that makes us sound completely irrelevant out of the world. Or we may start using vocabulary in specific ways without even realizing how foreign that can sound to a very educated person in another field, not even outside of academia. They could be on the other side of the building, right? So the language is important, and accessibility isn't just about using words that everyone can understand. It's about emotional engagement, it's about finding ways to connect, and it's about finding ways to translate knowledge into action. I think that the warmth, the connection and the action are all really critical elements of climate communication today.

S: So give me an example of how you connect it to people.

Voice-over: So when I am talking about really serious change, it's one thing to show numbers and graphs, it's another thing to say. And if we look right here, if we look right at this spot in Texas, this is where we see threats converging. And this is how we saw that start to show up in the derecho that hit Houston last year. And my friend Diane was in Houston. And because she used some of the preparedness techniques we've talked about with American resiliency, she had water when their utility briefly failed. You know, you got to go from the top down and to people's lived experiences. And I'm really fortunate that people around the nation share their lived experiences on the ground because I'm here in Iowa, You know, I don't see the whole national landscape just through my eyes. I'm glad to be part of the network of people who are paying attention.

S: How have you dealt with the straight up misinformation that's being pushed by the fossil fuel industry or other or you know, or you know, political agents who aren't trying to find the truth or for them, it's not an emotional issue. They are deliberately spreading misinformation.

Voice-over: You know, I am not interested in being right. I'm interested in change on the ground. And so is it really worth my time and energy to fight misinformation or is it worth my limited time and energy because everyone has limited resources to put my work into getting the message out there and to getting work done on the ground? I think that we have wasted too much time in quote, UN quote debate that's about not taking action and we need to be taking action.

S: So like what kind of action do you recommend?

Voice-over: The thing that I am personally fixed on is a small scale habitat creation, but that's because I'm in a situation where I have some access to land. I think that for everybody, there are meaningful actions that you can take beyond reduction of carbon footprints, which we often focus in the environmental movement on what you can stop doing right, on how you can reduce your consumption habits. I think that we're in a point in our relationship with the Earth where refraining from harm is not enough, that we need to be doing active good, that in our communities, wherever we are, we need to be doing things to nurture life, to make space for life and to put something positive into the world rather than just make ourselves smaller. So like at my place, I do a lot of small scale Prairie restoration and five years ago this was a very normal suburban yard and now it's the place where the monarch migration comes through. I get to have like huge clouds of butterflies in my yard every year. It's amazing.

E: You have the milkweed plants all all ready for them.

Voice-over: I have some milkweed, but I have a lot of butterfly Bush. They're really into the butterfly Bush.

S: Yeah, I got some of those in my yard. But people have complained that in Connecticut at least, they're technically they're not native, so they're not great. So yeah, at least in New England there's a big push for the milkweed, but it's got to be the right one. There's milkweed that's the wrong one that they don't like. So even there you got to be careful. You can't just go and say give me a weak milkweed. You got to do a little bit of research.

Voice-over: There are so many milkweeds and it's wonderful that there's this growing awareness of native plants and about the incredible diversity of native plants. But I think that it to me, rather than getting caught in analysis paralysis and making sure you do the perfect thing, you just do the best thing you can. And if it turns out that you bought an imperfect milkweed, you can get another one next year. Then you got 2 milkweeds.

S: Yeah, don't make the perfect the enemy of the good enough.

Voice-over: Yeah. You know, I think that a lot of people have very good intentions with climates. And of course climate is a topic that causes people to have enormous anxiety. Anxiety often freezes us. It stops us from taking action. Anything that we can do is generally going to be better than not do attempting a positive action.

S: So we often have a discussion about at what level should we really be focusing our efforts in terms of trying to, you know, slow down or, you know, avoid the worst outcomes of climate change. Essentially, is it at the individual level, at the community level, at the national level, you know, like the the biggest level And, you know, it's, it was not that there's been any resolution. It's just that we have to have that kind of meta discussion like because there's only, I think there's a lot individuals can do, but there's only so much individuals can do. And everything we do can come to nothing if big companies are still pumping out tons of CO2. So it sounds like from what you're saying, you're focusing more on this sort of individual community level. Do you do you get involved at sort of the biggest level as well?

Voice-over: Well, you know, I think that at this time my nested action is personal. It's related to my community on the ground and it's related to the nationwide AR community where people who are are doing the work and helping get the message out there and our volunteer network. But the fact that I'm focused on this sort of ground based ground up solution doesn't mean that I'm in opposition to other pieces of this puzzle. I think that we're in a place where if we want to slow this train down, it's an everything problem. It's an everything to the table problem. And that we also need policy level action as well as community up action. But I think a lot of people feel adrift. You know, a lot of people don't know what to do. And that if you start by making concrete changes around you, create changes that you can see in your life, where you can see the abundance and diversity of species increase around you, can see life coming up around you. That can be a very grounding thing because even on days where you're like, this is all for nothing, it's hopeless because there's no policy level change. You can look around you and you can say, well, at least I made a home for this thrush. You know, this Meadowlark is here because of me. That's a meaningful thing. I think that all life matters and that being able to connect with life is important. At this time. We're in a bottleneck event.

S: Do you find in your research or your experience that if you get people invested at that level, you know, like trying to make their own backyard, you know, more friendly for local species etcetera, that they then get more engaged at the political level, at the national level?

Voice-over: Once a person feels less stuck and starts moving forward, that they can end up going quite far on their journey, that they can become civically engaged, that they can become more involved with diverse national networks because there is a huge ecosystem of organizations working on climate, right? I think that for a lot of people, being able to feel grounded, knowing what they can do to start and knowing what their local outcomes are, are things that can be very freeing because there is such a huge diversity in local outcomes even at this next step of projected warming, which would be hitting about 2C above pre industrial baseline.

S: So, Emily, so do you have like a short list, like when people ask, hey, what can I do? I want to make the world a better place. What? What's your short list of things that people could think about or do in their own, Whether they're in an apartment or in a house or they have property or don't have property? What? What? What do you tell people they can do to get involved?

Voice-over: I encourage people to think about what could they be doing directly that will nourish life, that will nourish other living things, and that will nourish community. Because in times of change, it's impossible for any one person to completely provide for their own needs. We need community. And so whether you're engaged in nurturing life or nurturing community, these are good grounded places to start, where what grows up around you will make you stronger and help you to the next stage on your journey.

S: Do you have resources available for people on your on your website or on your your online presence?

Voice-over: We do. We have a workshop that I think a lot of people would enjoy that can be found through our YouTube channel and through our volunteer network. We have a variety of worksheets and trainings to help people cultivate the resilience on a variety of system levels in their home and in their community. So anyone who's interested in that, I'd love people to get in touch with me. There's a contact form on the website and I'll get you hooked up with the right person and resource.

S: And where should people go online to get to your stuff?

Voice-over: They should go to americanresiliency.org.

S: OK. Well, Emily, it was really fascinating talking with you. I would really appreciate the work you're doing at American Resiliency. So I encourage our listeners to check it out. Again, as you say, we need to be fighting this at at absolutely every level.

Voice-over: It's true, this is not a time where we should be fighting amongst ourselves. Anyone who's interested in life should be working together to get as much through this bottleneck as we can.

S: OK. Thanks, Emily.

Voice-over: Well, thank you.

Science or Fiction (1:31:46)

Theme: None Item #1: Astronomers have detected the most energetic explosions in the universe – stars that can release the total lifetime energy of 100 suns over the course of a single year. Item #2: Engineers have developed a 3D printer that can print with three different materials sourced from the same filament spool. Item #3: Researchers have used AI to accurately date ancient manuscripts, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, based upon the shape of their characters.

Answer	Item
Fiction	Engineers have developed a 3D printer that can print with three different materials sourced from the same filament spool.
Science	Astronomers have detected the most energetic explosions in the universe – stars that can release the total lifetime energy of 100 suns over the course of a single year.
Science	Researchers have used AI to accurately date ancient manuscripts, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, based upon the shape of their characters.

Host	Result
Steve	swept

Rogue	Guess
Jay	Engineers have developed a 3D printer that can print with three different materials sourced from the same filament spool.
Cara	Engineers have developed a 3D printer that can print with three different materials sourced from the same filament spool.
Bob	Engineers have developed a 3D printer that can print with three different materials sourced from the same filament spool.
Evan	Engineers have developed a 3D printer that can print with three different materials sourced from the same filament spool.

Voice-over: It's time for science or fiction.

S: Each week, I come up with three Science News items or facts. 2 real, one fake. And I challenge my panel of skeptics. Tell me which one is the fake. Just three regular news items this week, back into a more of a normal rotation. You guys ready? Yeah. All right. Here we go. Item number one. Astronomers have detected the most energetic explosions in the universe, stars that can release the total lifetime energy of 100 Suns over the course of a single year. Item number 2 engineers have developed a 3D printer that can print with three different materials sourced from the same filament spool. And item number 3 researchers have used AI to accurately date ancient manuscripts such as the Dead Sea Scrolls based upon the shape of their characters. Jay, go first.

J: Astronomers have detected the most energetic explosion in the universe, stars that can release the total lifetime energy of 100 Suns over the course of a single year. Wow, so they can release that energy?

S: Yeah, so like, you know, our sun. When I say Suns, I mean our sun.

J: Yeah, of course, overall.

S: It's not explosion, it's an entire 10 billion year lifespan released in a single year, but a hundred of those.

J: It's not an explosion.

S: Well, that's, you know, explosions are relative.

J: OK, Yeah, it's considered all right.

S: Yeah, it's considered an explosion.

J: OK, So the so you know, the quick equation in my head is if it's if it's like, you know, if it's say, what's with the gravity, right? You have the mass, the gravity is what holds everything together. So why would it be able to push out that much energy? You know, and the light is also, you know, when, when that light is created by the sun, it bounces around in the interior of the sun for a very long time before it escapes. OK, that's confusing. But, you know, I, I've, I learned something from Perry. And he said if it has anything to do with bacteria or outer space, the answer's yes, it can happen. Engineers #2 engineers have developed a 3D printer that can print with three different materials sourced from the same filament spool. All right, Now this is the one that bothers me when you read it the first time because I know my way around 3D printing and you're saying that it has one filament spool, but there could be 3 print with three different materials sourced from the same filament spool. How could it print from three different?

E: Define spool.

J: The spool is basically the.

E: The raw material.

J: It's the raw material that's wound up on a spool, just like a you know, just like thread, except it's printing.

B: It's thicker con.

J: Yeah. So that spool.

B: But can't you just wind two different materials around it?

J: Yeah, but how would it? Because the spool has to spin. The fact that they're bringing this up, the fact that they're even bringing up the spool here troubles me because if it's like a, if it's like the same spool, it's very different than two spools of the same exact sides kind of right next to each other that are both spinning, which is how today you would do, you know, do a 3D print with multiple colors. But Steve is saying here it's the same spool and that's very particular. It doesn't make any sense, doesn't make any sense to me that you have a spool that has three different filaments, 3 different materials sourced from the same filament spool. OK, so maybe maybe what Steve is saying here is that the filament itself has the three different things and the, the the printer head can can pick which one it's using out of that. Yeah, but then that's so wasteful. It's disgusting.

US#08: Why is it wasteful?

J: Because it's always going to not print 2/3 of what of the material and what happens to that material? Is it melted and discarded? Is it just spooling off, like going off to the side? I don't like it. I don't like this Steve. It really bothers me. Let me quickly go over 3 here. Researchers have used AI to accurately date ancient manuscripts such as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Well, okay, fine, that's great. I believe it. I think the 3D printer one is wrong and fake and not okay Cara.

C: What if the 3D printer, so most of these are polymers, right? So polymers are plastics, but they're made out of like, you know, kind of going to our material science brain, they're made out of these different compounds. What if it printed three different material source from the same filament using like, different levels of heat or different, you know, added some sort of chemical process to it to physically turn the filaments on the spool into three different materials. Right now I'm going to superheat it. And now it makes this harder plastic or this softer plastic. I don't know. Thinking outside the box here, but that sounds interesting. Jay didn't like it. Most energetic explosions in the. I have no idea. This is why Bob's going last. The stars that can release the total lifetime energy of 100 Suns. I mean, but our sun is kind of mid, right? So, like, would that surprise me? Yeah, I know it's a single year. Yeah, I know it sounds bananas, but I'm never not surprised. Like, things are always bigger and hotter and more violent than I ever think they will be. So that one doesn't really bother me. Especially because our sun is like, not anything that special and special.

J: To me.

C: I mean no, it's really special because of we exist because of it. But yeah I think it is pretty mid in the universe. And then finally, AI accurately dates ancient manuscripts such as the Dead Sea Scrolls based on the shape of their characters. OK, so basically looking at a bunch of old manuscripts and the the actual font like that, the writing on them. Yeah, I could see that. So like, you know, styles changed over time with how things were written. Yeah. I wouldn't, I wouldn't be surprised if the written word evolved a little bit with stylistically. So I think I'm going to go with Jay and say it's a 3D printer one. Like I think my idea is cool, but maybe they haven't pulled that off yet.

B: OK, Bob, all right, so let me go backwards here. The the manuscripts of Dead Sea Scrolls. It just seems kind of trivial. Now. Remember though, these are there's no printing press. I mean, these are written. So I'm not sure what's actually changing here. I mean, people write differently, the same language. They could, they all have everyone's different. It's not like, it's not like, oh, they're using this font and that font didn't become popular until this this century. Like, so that's kind of weird. It's kind of weird. The shape of the characters. I mean, is it the shape or is it actually, you know, the dialect of the language changing? I don't know. So there's a lot of questions there. And the second one here with the 3D printer, I mean, I don't know a lot about how three, you know, I haven't actually observed, observed 3D printers working that much. But I mean, I can't imagine a spool that has three sections to it, each independently spinning compared to the other two or one or whatever. And so you need some of this other material, then you, you use this side of the spool you use and for the another material you use the other one. But that might be going against the spirit of how this is worded where it seems like it's specifically saying that it's creating three different types of material from 1 spool. And then that's where care is interpreted comes in of, of adding something to a common spool that changes it into a different type of material. Shouldn't be too hard, but I don't know if it's increased heat or less heat, but it could be somewhat something else. So that seems reasonable that that would be true too. And the explosions of the universe, I mean, that one could be reasonable as well, depending on how you know, on the details. Of course. It's, it's, I mean, I'm not turned off by this possibility. It's not a knee jerk reaction, but I mean, it just depends on the details. So I'm going to, I'm going to go with the, the explosion one. That's so which one is less reasonable, the manuscript or the 3D printer? All right, I'm going to, Jay's got some good familiarity with it. And Carrie, you went with Jay as well. So I'll go with 3D printer fiction. OK. And Evan?

E: Last time I was put in this position, I I went a different direction and failed. Not that that's necessarily having an influence on me this time around, but Jay's passionate, and I mean passionate defense of the 3D printer being fiction I think has won me over on this particular occasion. And therefore, Jay, I side with you and the team, we're all going to go down together or raise the cup and victory together.

C: Sweet, sweet, sweet.

S: OK, well, there's definitely going to be a sweep in One Direction or the other. I guess I'll take these in order. We'll start with #1 astronomers have detected the most energetic explosions in the universe, stars that can release the total lifetime energy of 100 Suns over the course of a single year. You guys all think this one is science. So you realize that means that this star, this object, is 1 trillion times brighter than our sun?

E: Right, I didn't do that math.

S: Sure, a trillion. A trillion, 110 billion * 100, right? So that means it would shine as bright as 3 or 4 Milky Way galaxies, right?

B: Well, yeah, I mean. Our It seems extravagant, but.

S: So let me ask you, let me ask you a related question. How bright are the brightest supernova?

C: Less bright than that because you just said they detected the most energetic, so the brightest half.

B: Yeah, the classic description is that they're brighter than the entire their entire Galaxy. Briefly, but that's on the order of what weeks?

S: So a typical super, like a big supernova would, would release the energy of 1 sun over the course of a year. They usually only are really like bright, bright, bright for a few weeks, as Bob says.

B: Yeah.

S: But if you look at their entire like that year, you know, because they, they, it is a longer term event, basically they're releasing the energy of our sun's entire lifetime over a year. So this is 100 times brighter than a supernova.

C: Science. Science.

B: Yeah, I mean, well, all right, so now you're talking about a gravitational collapse supernova, I assume, right? Not a not a supernova 1A. So I mean for for those giant stars, I mean, they they are shedding outer layers. So it's really not the entirety of the star that's, you know, that's so there's there's less material to to create the energy, but there's something funky going on here. I'm pretty. Sure.

S: So this one is science. This is very cool science. So that the question is as Bob is getting to how is this happening? What do you think is it?

B: Tidal disruption?

S: Significant from what black hole? What kind of black hole?

B: The lighting black hole.

S: Super a super massive black hole. So this is what happens when a very large star gets too close to a super massive black hole. Super massive rips it apart and causes it to flame out in a year, burning as bright as a hundred of our sun's lifetime of energy over just one year.

B: Oh. Man, that is cool.

S: Yeah, that is cool. All right, These are bipeds. These are a new class of objects called ENT's Extreme nuclear transients. Extreme nuclear transients.

B: I got to read on that. ENT's. Oh, yeah. Look it up.

S: So cool bit of extreme nuclear transients. All right, Engineers have developed a 3D printer that can print with three different materials sourced from the same filament spool.

B: Better be right.

S: You guys all think this one is?

J: Fiction. Peek, before you say can I add one more thing? Yeah, go ahead.

US#05: Yeah.

J: Different materials require completely different printer heads that do you know what I mean? They function differently. It's not like every everything like there there's 3D printers that can print a wide variety of stuff, but you have to have a different printer head. So Nope, definitely not science.

E: Nice.

S: Well, what if I tell you that Cara was the closest to reality here and that it's the same material on the filament spool, but it's treated in different ways in order to change the physical properties of it, making it functionally a different material. Do you think that that is that make it plausible for you?

C: I think they tried and failed.

S: No, they they tried and succeeded.

C: But only with two but.

S: But only with two. But not only that they they did it with two two materials and also it wasn't a filament spool 3D printer. It was with a different kind of 3D printer. The VAT ones. You know were busy where you just.

B: Oh, the lasers that.

S: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

B: That cross and then they harden where they intersect. OK, those are cool too.

S: Yeah, that photo polymerization. So they, yeah, they basically they're growing the the 3D printed objects out of this VAT of polymer. And what they do is they essentially can make two different materials out of the same VAT of material of, you know, source material. One is hard and permanent and the other is is not permanent. It could be breakdown very easily. So essentially they're using the hard, so you have one pot of resin, right? And then you treat them with different frequencies of light and then the the hardened resin is your object and the more support.

B: The other parts of support.

S: The other part are the supports that you have to take away anyway. So this is to try to eliminate a step and make it easier to get rid of the supports that you have to put on in order to print it. The scaffolding. The scaffolding, yeah, yeah.

B: Like it? Thank you, Jay.

S: But Yep, that's a picture. So you guys swept me. And that means that researchers have used AI to accurately date ancient manuscripts such as the Dead Sea Scrolls based upon the shape of their characters is science. And Bob, it's the shape of the characters. It's what I said. I can't make it something else. It's not the any other aspect of the language. It is just by based upon the writing itself. What this reminded. So I was thinking the same thing. That was like, how different do do people make characters over historical time? But remember, like colonial America, remember, like all the s s look like FS, you know? Yes. So it was different like just a hundred, 200 years ago. Yeah. People's letters looked different than they look today. So that does not surprise me. Now there's a there and this is not they, they did the research on the Dead Sea Scrolls, but it's not obviously this technique is not limited to that. What they, however, what they need is a as a reference are dated documents. Now interestingly, like some ancient documents that we have, sometimes people put dates on them and sometimes they don't, right. And of course it's very useful if even 1 document is dated, like somebody wrote the date. So we know exactly, you know, when that was written that sort of anchors that in time. But the right for the Dead Sea Scrolls, very few of them are dated and so we don't have enough of them in order to do this. So you had they had to also use. What do you think?

E: Oh, radiocarbon.

S: Yep, radiocarbon dating. So they used radiocarbon dating and the precious few like dated documents to create the timeline. And then they could do, you know, with other documents, they can put them into that timeline based upon the AI analysis of the characters. And so, yeah, the hope is that now that they've done this, that they could apply this to other series of documents where, you know, we we want to be able to know not just like where individual documents fit into the sequence, but be able to like create the entire sequence of documents over time. Pretty cool. And this is not new. The the idea of doing this is paleography, right? So paleography is doing that very thing put placing writing into its chronology based upon the character shape itself. They're just using AI to do it better, you know, because it's opposite. This is what AI is good at, analyzing lots of data and finding patterns, etcetera. And it was pretty accurate. Yeah, 79%, which is pretty good.

E: And when when it was off, it was only off.

S: It wasn't off by that much, you know, it was like off by 30 years, you know, which is not nothing. So pretty cool. All right, well, good job, guys. Jay led the way. Good job.

E: Hey, Jay.

J: You're welcome, guys.

E: Appreciate that very much.

S: Nice gift to you.

E: I'll get you next week. I'll make it up to you.

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:48:56)

"The history of science is the history of corrected mistakes."  – — David Gerrold, (description of author)

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

E: A short quote this week. The History of Science is the history of corrected mistakes, and that was written or said by David Girald GERROLDA, science fiction writer and novelist. He wrote the script for the original Star Trek episode The Trouble with Tribbles. Oh. Awesome, awesome. Plus he created the Sleaze Stack race, so that's the. Series Land of the Lost Sleaze stacks. The. Sleaze stacks, guys, that was terrible. I mean, it was so campy. It was very campy. It was wonderfully campy, yeah. And he also wrote the novelette The Martian Child, which won the Hugo Award and Nebula Award.

S: Hugo.

E: Nice. So yeah, the history of science is the history of corrected mistakes.

S: Yeah, because pretty much everything we thought whatever 2000 years ago was wrong, and we've had to correct everything we thought we knew about the universe. Yep, and we're still doing it.

E: And we're still doing it.

S: Yep. All right, well, thank you all for joining me this week, guys. Steve, surely and until next week, this is your Skeptics Guide to the Universe.