The Skeptics Guide #1033 - Apr 26 2025

Quickie with Steve: Game Transfer Phenomenon; Geoengineering, Biosignature Candidate, Skull Rock on Mars; Commercial Perovskite Solar Panels; Who's That Noisy; Your Questions and E-mails: Another Unified Theory; Science or Fiction

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:42Speaker 00

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• 1:03Speaker 01

  You're listening to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.

• 1:10Speaker 02

  Hello and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, April 23rd, 2025, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella.

• 1:19Bob Novella?

  Hey, everybody.

• 1:20Speaker 02

  Jay Novella. Hey, guys. And Evan Bernstein.

• 1:23Speaker 04

  Oh, good evening, everyone.

• 1:24Speaker 02

  Kara is in China this week, and apparently her VPN isn't working. She doesn't have a consistent connection to the internet. She just wasn't able to join us tonight because of technical reasons.

• 1:36Speaker 04

  Oh, that's a drag.

• 1:38Bob Novella?

  She's smart, she'd go to Shanghai Disney.

• 1:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:42Speaker 04

  Why, do they have excellent internet connections there?

• 1:44Bob Novella?

  Well, I don't care.

• 1:49Bob Novella?

  Biggest castle of any Disney castle and, and what seems to be the best Pirates Ride in the world.

• 1:55Speaker 04

  Um, when I visited Disney World Orlando once in my life, well, I've been there one time, it was 1999.

• 2:01Bob Novella?

  I'm sorry.

• 2:02Speaker 04

  Uh, I saw the castle, I saw the Magic Castle, right? The, the iconic, you know, Disney castle.

• 2:07Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 2:08Speaker 04

  It was smaller than I thought it was gonna be.

• 2:10Bob Novella?

  Oh, my God, you're lucky you didn't go to Disneyland in California. That's the castle that you're like, what? It, you know, it was the first one. And, and, you know, back in the day, it was great, but when you compare it to other castles, it is so small and short, and like, what's happening?

• 2:25Speaker 04

  And when you think castle, you think large, oversized, majestic, you know, all the, you know, the grandiose, everything. But then, then you see, oh, it's only a model, basically, when you get there.

• 2:38Bob Novella?

  Well, I mean, they do employ forced perspective, right, where it gets smaller as it gets taller to give the impression of more height. But I think they're, I think they're all beautiful. And I never, for some reason, your expectations were way out of whack because the Orlando castle is, is beautiful. And it seems large to me. The Paris one might be even a little bit better, though. It's much, it's more whimsical. And they're, they're just all awesome. I can't complain about any of them, really. But I've got to see, I want to see the biggest one in China.

• 3:11Speaker 05

  So where is that, Bob?

• 3:13Bob Novella?

  Shanghai.

• 3:14Speaker 05

  Shanghai.

• 3:15Speaker 02

  You need to get Shanghai. So I got my hearing aids today.

• 3:21Speaker 05

  Oh, wow.

• 3:22Speaker 04

  I had no idea.

• 3:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I got, yeah, I got them on now.

• 3:25Speaker 04

  Fitted for hearing aids.

• 3:26Bob Novella?

  Steve, can you hear me right now?

• 3:28Speaker 02

  Can you hear what I'm saying?

• 3:29Bob Novella?

  Can you hear me right now?

• 3:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I don't know how much we've talked about this on the show. When I had my hearing test, my lower, you know, frequencies are fine, actually, are normal. But then I have the normal drop off with age in the upper frequencies, but I have a notch, I have a zone of frequencies that are in the speech zone that I have a trouble, I have trouble hearing. And that's, that's because of my tinnitus. It's like right in the frequency of my tinnitus. But the hearing, I mean, the hearing aid technology is pretty spiffy. And the ones that I got are, like, you know, the, you know, the ENT was going through everything with them. It's like, this is like, brand new, like, very, very recent, the kind of features that the one I have has. So it's very programmable. First of all, it's Bluetooth. I could actually connect it to my phone.

• 4:14Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 4:14Speaker 02

  You know, I could basically use them as really,

• 4:16Speaker 04

  That's a must have.

• 4:17Speaker 02

  Really expensive earbuds. Yeah. Yeah. It's like my phone, computer, whatever, anything in Bluetooth, I could play through, through them. And then, which is good, because I could basically have, you just automatically have earbuds in. But it also, they program it. So they, when I first got them, you know, we had to calibrate and everything. So she had me just And so I went first, it sounded really tinny and echoey. And then it just suddenly sounded a million percent better. You know, like the computer just analyzed my voice and hearing my, and you know, basically hearing my own voice through the hearing aids and then fixed it, you know?

• 4:53Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 4:53Speaker 04

  Huh.

• 4:54Bob Novella?

  Oh, interesting. Yeah, because it could sample your voice normally.

• 4:58Speaker 02

  So it doesn't.

• 4:58Bob Novella?

  Through the system.

• 4:59Speaker 02

  It doesn't boost my own voice so that I don't get here in echo when I talk.

• 5:04Bob Novella?

  Oh, yeah, man, that. Do you remember when we were, where the hell were we? We did a show.

• 5:09Speaker 02

  Or North Australia, I think we were in Australia.

• 5:12Bob Novella?

  It was almost like you're paralyzed because you're hearing an echo of yourself a moment after you say it. And it short circuits your head. It was hard. It took a serious effort to actually say stuff.

• 5:24Speaker 02

  It was almost debilitating. It was bad.

• 5:26Bob Novella?

  Yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 5:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was the worst acoustics we've ever had, unfortunately. And they didn't have speakers facing back to us. You know what I mean? So it was.

• 5:36Speaker 04

  Right, right. No returns.

• 5:38Speaker 02

  To drown it out or whatever. It was just the echo off the distant back of the wall. It was similar, but not as bad at one of the Tams. It was the one where Carrie joined us for the first time. It wasn't bad while we were doing it live, but in the recording, there's this echo that was just really, really bad.

• 5:57Bob Novella?

  So bottom line it, man, what's the end result?

• 6:00Speaker 02

  So I mean, I haven't really had it. I mean, now I'm wearing headphones, so it's hard to say. But yes, what I notice is that I'm hearing a lot of more background noise, especially crinkly noise. Like I could really hear the clacking of the keyboard. When I signal in my car, like the clack, the clicking of your signal like seems really loud and distinct, like all that noise. Because my brain, this is what, this is what the ENT said. My brain is basically not used to hearing all that noise because I, because it's, you know, it's because of decreased hearing. Over time, though, if I wear the, the hearing aids consistently, my brain will learn to filter that out better. It won't be as.

• 6:43Speaker 05

  Okay, yeah. Steve, how long will it take to filter out your wife's voice?

• 6:47Speaker 02

  Well, they have a, a special nag mode. You just hit one button and it automatically filters out. I have to train it to her voice and then I can completely eliminate it. No, it doesn't have that, but.

• 7:00Speaker 02

  So is it helping though?

• 7:01Speaker 04

  Have we talked about that supposed? Have we talked about that supposed phenomenon in which if you have familiarity with somebody, you you do tend to either like lose them in the back in the background noise, it's harder to hear them over time. Have we talked about that? Because I I know that's a

• 7:18Bob Novella?

  I don't remember.

• 7:18Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 7:20Speaker 04

  That is something. You guys have heard of that before, right?

• 7:23Speaker 02

  I mean, you do tend to you tend to notice very familiar things less because they don't stand out to you, but for for

• 7:30Speaker 04

  I thought they studied couples long, you know, couples who were married a long time and they they tracked a phenomenon. I thought I will look into it and get back to you with a report.

• 7:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, look it up right now.

• 7:40Speaker 04

  And let you know what I find.

• 7:41Speaker 02

  So so it's too early to tell. I'm still getting adapted to it and it's too early to tell what the net effects. I mean, bits I have 60 days to evaluate it and see if I like it. But I think it's probably going to be fine. It also has the notch therapy, which doesn't boost frequencies at the frequency. It's a very at the very narrow frequency of my tinnitus. The idea is that it will it'll help arrest those neurons so that they're less noisy. So we'll see how that works, too.

• 8:08Speaker 04

  Spouses learn to ignore each other's voices over time, a study says.

• 8:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. I don't remember that one.

• 8:14Speaker 04

  I thought we touched on it.

• 8:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe. Maybe. Yeah, so we'll see. This is just another milestone in my, you know, the endless decay of my body.

• 8:21Bob Novella?

  Oh, it will end.

• 8:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, it'd be endless as long as I'm alive.

• 8:28Speaker 04

  Sorry, Bob.

• 8:29Bob Novella?

  What happens even after you? That's not true.

• 8:31Speaker 02

  It's constantly adapting to to aging.

• 8:35Speaker 04

  Entropia.

• 8:35Speaker 02

  The first thing was when I had to wear like the first real knew I had to wear reading glasses.

• 8:40Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 8:40Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  I literally thought like there was something wrong with my computer monitor. It's like these it's out of focus. I can't get it to focus. What's going on here?

• 8:48Speaker 05

  My eyesight like changed overnight. I woke up and

• 8:50Speaker 04

  Oh, mine was too. I woke up one morning and that was it. Like, well, that's that. I knew exactly what happened.

• 8:56Bob Novella?

  I lasted a while, but I I eventually succumbed to the readers as well.

• 9:01Speaker 04

  Forty eight. I was forty eight when I needed them.

• 9:04Bob Novella?

  Yeah, I think I was like late 50s.

• 9:05Speaker 04

  That's good, Bob. You beat I think you beat the average there.

• 9:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was. I think I was 45. I mean, before I had noticed the presbyopia, as they call it, but I think before I had like, yeah, routinely wear reading glasses, like maybe if you have 47, 48.

• 9:18Speaker 04

  I'm gonna have telomere extension therapy.

• 9:20Bob Novella?

  Mm hmm.

• 9:21Speaker 04

  You're all welcome to join me.

• 9:23Bob Novella?

  I'll wait to see how it goes with you.

• 9:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, right. Some side effects include monsters.

• 9:29Bob Novella?

  I remember doing eye exercises, not consistently or many times at all, but they said a good exercise would be to focus on something very, very close and then very, very far away. Go back and forth, back and forth. I remember doing it, but I never did it much. So I don't say that that's the reason why I'd lasted a while before I needed glasses. But I'm just wondering if that, if that would have made a difference, you know, forcibly changing focus to the extremes over and over. Like working out the eye muscles? Yeah. I wonder if that would have made any difference at all. I don't know.

• 10:01Speaker 02

  As far as I can tell, there's no proven method for preventing presbyopia. Just the lens loses flexibility. So it can't, you know, ball up enough to focus really close.

• 10:11Speaker 05

  My mother-in-law got her, um, you know, the cataract surgery where they take out her lenses and they put in fake ones. You know, they use sound to break up the old lens and they pull out the pieces and they just fold over the, the new one, slide it in there. And she is reporting it's absolutely remarkable. Like she has 2020 vision.

• 10:30Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 10:31Speaker 05

  She, um, can see close up and far away. You know, she needs glasses to read, but you know, she has a good spectrum of distance that she can focus on without a problem. No pain. You know, she just pretty much can't believe how good it's functioning and the fact that she's got a man-made lens in her eye.

• 10:48Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 10:49Speaker 05

  Which is encouraging.

• 10:51Bob Novella?

  Must be awesome.

• 10:52Speaker 05

  You know, your, like, her body is actually changing the shape of that lens. Her eye is pushing that lens and making a change shape so she can focus.

• 11:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:01Bob Novella?

  Yeah. I remember thinking, how do you, how do you reattach those, those attachments to the lens, the muscle attachments?

• 11:06Speaker 05

  There is no attachments.

• 11:07Bob Novella?

  And Jay, you were saying that it's kind of like this little, this little sleeve that, that the lens goes in. It doesn't need a direct connection to the muscles. You just needs to be within that little.

• 11:17Speaker 05

  Yeah. From what I understand, because you know, I asked that because I, for some reason, I have this picture in my head of like, you know, the, that lens being attached, specifically attached to muscles, right?

• 11:28Bob Novella?

  Yeah, me too. I had the same visual.

• 11:30Speaker 05

  I guess it's in a muscle, a sleeve of muscle. You know, it's like putting a waffle in the toaster, you know, it's like inside that the waffle's the lens and the toaster is the muscles surrounding it that can shape the lens, I guess, I mean, you know.

• 11:46Speaker 04

  Well, the light still has to go through it, though, so it can't be a full coverage. Full coverage.

• 11:49Speaker 05

  Yeah, but the bottom line is, these surgeries are happening, you know, they're super quick, there's, you know, I'm sure that the doctors get so damn good at it. But, you know, like, her surgery was like a 10, one of those 10-minute surgeries, you know what I mean, for one eye.

• 12:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, they have, they're called accommodating lenses, accommodating intraocular lenses. They can change their shape to focus at different distances.

• 12:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, but still remarkable.

• 12:15Speaker 02

  But it does work off the ciliary muscles, apparently. But I have to do a deeper dive and let's see exactly how the tech works.

• 12:21Speaker 05

  You know, but we got that, you know, Steve, that totally kick-ass surgery when, you know, when your lens gets cloudy, or, you know, like, in our case, like, you know, we can't focus them that well anymore. But nothing for the ears, just nothing, man, like, you know, the hearing aids, okay, you know, but they're not like a, it's not as good as I was hoping it would be when we got up to this age. I mean, I remember thinking about it 30 years ago.

• 12:44Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. Things always take longer than you think. I mean, the hearing aid technology is pretty extreme now, which is good. But, yeah, and if you're totally deaf, you could obviously get.

• 12:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's not like you can replace the follicles in the ear, right?

• 12:57Speaker 02

  They need to be able to regenerate that, that stuff, you know?

• 13:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, where's that?

• 13:01Bob Novella?

  Yeah, but Jay, look at the example, the main example in your life, your mom, you know, mom has, she's basically deaf in one ear and mostly deaf in the other ear. She's so deaf in her, in her good ear that without her hearing aid, she can't hear, you know, herself talking or, or anything. She said she feels basically 100% deaf without the hearing aid. But with that hearing aid, she can understand, she can understand me well enough that we can communicate pretty well. If, you know, if your voice is in the right range, she really doesn't have that much of a trouble. So, I mean, without that, she'd be screwed, without that hearing aid. She would be, she's basically, functionally deaf.

• 13:40Speaker 02

  All right, let's go on with some news items. Actually, I'm gonna start with a quick, kind of a quickie. Depends on how much you guys want to talk about this. Have you guys heard of game transfer phenomenon?

• 13:52Speaker 05

  No.

• 13:53Speaker 02

  Game train, what do you think it is?

• 13:55Speaker 05

  Game transfer. Game.

• 13:56Bob Novella?

  Game.

• 13:57Speaker 05

  Game. G A M E. Game transfer phenomenon.

• 14:00Bob Novella?

  You transfer your character from one server to another game server.

• 14:03Speaker 02

  No.

• 14:04Speaker 04

  You take animals.

• 14:05Speaker 02

  It's a neurological or psychological phenomenon, I'll tell you that.

• 14:08Speaker 04

  Oh, so it's not game animals, sorry.

• 14:11Speaker 02

  It is, it's like digital, you know, video games. So have you ever had the experience of playing a game obsessively for a while? And then you start to develop reflexes that carry over into real life?

• 14:24Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 14:25Bob Novella?

  Oh geez.

• 14:26Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 14:27Speaker 04

  Uh, you mean like when my muscles ache?

• 14:29Speaker 02

  No.

• 14:30Speaker 04

  When I'm, when I'm in a position like too long at a computer?

• 14:34Bob Novella?

  I can't say definitively, but I think if zombies ever really appear, I will be able to take them out very well, especially with my freeze and fire attacks.

• 14:41Speaker 04

  Ooh, inflated sense of competence. I like that.

• 14:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. So essentially the, this is the, the term was coined, you know, by a psychologist studying it. And the idea is that some people, it's actually not that common for it to be like a significant manifestation. But, but, you know, people have reported that each, you know, in the extreme versions, like after playing a, you know, a role playing game for a while, like a multiplayer game, they actually were like seeing health bars over people's heads, you know?

• 15:11Speaker 05

  Oh, that's crazy.

• 15:12Speaker 04

  Whoa. Uh, I don't know that I've ever immersed myself long enough in a game to have something like that happen.

• 15:20Bob Novella?

  A problem.

• 15:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a little bit extreme, but, but, you know, the idea is that it could happen in a lot more subtle ways. I definitely noticed like just my muscle memory gets trained, like my fingers will go to the ASWD keys automatically. Right? I don't know if you guys experienced that.

• 15:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, of course.

• 15:37Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 15:37Speaker 05

  That's, that's muscle memory big time.

• 15:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's just muscle memory, even though they should go to the typing home keys. They do that too, but I noticed if I've been gaming, like they'll, it'll more likely do that. So the question is, this is the question that I had. Is how bad is this gonna get when VR becomes really common? Because the evidence shows that the more immersive the experience, the more likely this is to happen. And also the more time you spend doing it. So imagine like the movie Ready Player One.

• 16:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 16:13Speaker 02

  You know, imagine if you get to that level where you, you know, most people are spending four or five hours a day, six hours a day, eight hours a day. In fully immersive virtual reality.

• 16:22Speaker 05

  So you're saying that, you know, there could be artifacts from the game like the health bar or whatever. You know, what if you're, you know, you're wearing some type of tech on your virtual hand that you might see that in the real world?

• 16:37Speaker 02

  But yeah, it's not purely visual. It could, it's mostly behavioral. So here's like a worst case scenario. Let's say you are playing a character that can fly. And you sort of develop those instincts. This is like a extreme version of putting your fingers on the ASW D keys. And then you like jump off a balcony expecting to fly.

• 17:01Speaker 05

  Gosh.

• 17:01Speaker 02

  Because that's what you do eight hours a day.

• 17:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 17:04Speaker 02

  You sort of develop that behavior.

• 17:05Speaker 05

  I can see you're distracted and you have just a weird moment where you're like, oh yeah. And then, you know, just a split second decision that basically.

• 17:13Speaker 02

  They just revert to a different, the wrong set of instincts, you know, you don't.

• 17:18Speaker 05

  Right, right. Yeah.

• 17:20Speaker 02

  Which will definitely happen, definitely happen. So I've done, there's other examples of that. Have you guys ever tried to pause live radio? Because you're so used, you're so used now, like with everything is streaming, you could stop, pause, reverse anything on TV. I find myself instinctively trying to do that when I'm listening to other media that can't be reminded.

• 17:42Speaker 05

  Oh yeah. Anything with a screen you try to, try to interact with.

• 17:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right. You also try to, to use screens that are not touchscreens. Like, why isn't this moving?

• 17:56Bob Novella?

  Oh no.

• 17:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the digital and analog worlds, you know, the meat space and the virtual worlds are sort of blending together. Now, in fact, that border is going to become increasingly indistinct because of augmented reality, right? So now you have augmented reality. When you're actually in physical space, you-

• 18:17Bob Novella?

  Combination.

• 18:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, you have a combination. You have information or visual auditory, whatever, overlaid on top of the physical world. And then invert the more immersive virtual reality gets the harder time your brain will have distinguishing when you're in meat space versus when you're in virtual space. So that's, it's going to be, we're just seeing, I think, the very beginnings of it, right?

• 18:41Speaker 05

  That's going to be really bad. I mean-

• 18:43Bob Novella?

  Yeah, I'll deal with it.

• 18:45Speaker 04

  Yes, the results will be-

• 18:47Speaker 05

  Maybe when you're in VR, like, don't do any one of those things too much. Like, don't fly too much, you know, don't, uh, whatever. You know, who the hell knows what they're going to be doing?

• 18:57Bob Novella?

  Or you would have an AI inhibitor that would be looking out for that kind of behavior and stop you from doing it in real life, even if it's just an auditory, like, "Hey, stop, can't fly, jerk." Or something even more extreme, potentially.

• 19:12Speaker 02

  They may have to design those VR experiences in such a way to give you some kind of feedback that would be missing in the physical world. So as a reminder, it's like, you're not able to fly right now, don't, you know, or whatever it is that you're, that you're getting used to.

• 19:30Bob Novella?

  Yeah, yeah, they could have digital signs up in meat space saying, "You can't fly," or just something like that. Or imagine if they actually manipulate physical reality to prevent people from, like, they identify certain areas that are especially prone to have people try to fly from because it's just the way it's designed and just make it even more, you know, make it harder to try to fly from that space.

• 19:56Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 19:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, interesting to think about.

• 19:58Speaker 04

  Unanticipated problems. And it can be behavior that is not even so foreign as something like flying. Like, let's say you immerse yourself in a game in which you're driving race cars or something like that. I could see that translating, then you go to get in your real car and your muscle memory and other things sort of take over. And your real driving becomes more hazardous, more dangerous.

• 20:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, and there's going to be a lot of benign ways too, like, you know, in a virtual game, you may be able to pull up your menu by swiping your hand in a certain direction or whatever. And people will be doing that in the, in the physical world, like expecting a menu to pop up. They just sort of thoughtlessly do that. Like, you know what I mean? I'm sure there's other examples of that as well.

• 20:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:42Speaker 02

  There are other, and it's not only just gaming, like, you know, we've, when we've been immersed in a weekend of LARPing, it takes a day to decompress or two, remember that?

• 20:50Speaker 04

  It does, absolutely. Yeah, you're, you have to recalibrate.

• 20:54Speaker 02

  You have to recalibrate.

• 20:55Speaker 05

  Steve, you remember, like, I remember the three of us, me, Evan and Steve, talking about having like that PTSD twitch, because you've been on alert for so long.

• 21:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. Oh, you get twitchy. Yeah, it takes, it takes a, you're looking over your shoulder.

• 21:08Speaker 04

  Four straight days of doing that.

• 21:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. And you, and you find yourself looking for things, you know?

• 21:15Speaker 04

  Right. Is that a dragon?

• 21:17Bob Novella?

  Nope, no.

• 21:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, but yeah, no, I absolutely had that experience without, without a doubt.

• 21:23Speaker 02

  Imagine what real PTSD is like, right? Imagine being in a war situation with bullets flying past you. It's, I mean, obviously, we just had like the, what we had was just a whisper of that, but.

• 21:33Speaker 05

  Yeah, for sure.

• 21:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, but you could definitely see how, you know, your brain adapts to that kind of combat situation. And you just can't turn it off after a while, right? So it is, I think it's all part of the same kind of phenomenon. Your brain gets trained for one experience. And you can't just turn it right off.

• 21:50Speaker 04

  So what, proceed with caution?

• 21:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think probably at the end of the day, good game hygiene is going to be important. Like limit to limit the amount of time, certain number amount of time at once, certain amount of time per day. Make sure you get physical activity. Make sure that when you transition to the real world, you gotta make sure that you're paying attention and that you're, you know, you're very present.

• 22:12Speaker 04

  The programs may have to come with a timing mechanism by which, okay, you can only do this for 90 minutes and we're shutting it down, whether you want it or not.

• 22:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I, that's pretty draconian. That may be the best thing, but it's, it's hard to imagine that's going to happen.

• 22:26Speaker 04

  Maybe, I mean, what if there's liability issues here with some of the manufacturers of these products? Only takes one incident and one court or judge or jury or whatever to make a decision as to what really happened there. And that could change a lot of things.

• 22:40Speaker 02

  One guy jumps off a balcony, ruins it for everyone else.

• 22:46Speaker 04

  It sounds, it sounds almost ridiculous, but that does happen in real life.

• 22:50Speaker 02

  Like that one guy burns himself with coffee and then now they can't sell hot coffee anymore. Well, it'll be interesting to see how that plays out. All right, Jay, tell us about experiments with geoengineering.

• 23:00Speaker 05

  I'm curious, do you guys think that sunblock can save humanity?

• 23:06Speaker 04

  You mean like sunscreen, like the lotion we put on ourselves?

• 23:09Speaker 05

  Whatever you, however you want to interpret it.

• 23:11Speaker 04

  Save humanity? That seems extreme to me, but.

• 23:16Speaker 05

  Well, but there are kinds of sun blocking that may very well be really helpful. But it depends, there's a, it's a little controversial as well. So the UK government has launched a 50 million pound program to begin outdoor experiments in geoengineering. This initiative, which is being run by the Advanced Research and Invention Agency, also called ARIA, aims to test whether sunlight blocking technologies can offer a temporary way to actually cool the planet. And it's one of the largest investments in geoengineering research to date, and it marks a significant shift in how seriously some governments are taking these proposals. That it's nice to see governments. Put the money in and want to push the ball forward in one way or the other.

• 24:01Speaker 05

  And I, you know, I actually think it's really good that they're talking about it at the very least. So at the center of the effort is something called solar radiation management, SRM. And the basic idea here is to reflect a small portion of sunlight back into space using methods like brightening clouds or releasing reflective particles into the upper atmosphere. And these approaches hopefully could theoretically lower surface temperatures and, and help delay some of the worst climate impacts. So in practice, we still don't know how effective or dangerous any of these ideas are. And that's why they're exploring them just to see, you know, if they can vet them out and see, you know, how, how safe could it be done? Is it cost effective, et cetera?

• 24:43Speaker 05

  So a man named Mark Simes, Professor Mark Simes, who leads the ARIA initiative, says the global goal is to collect real world data that can confirm whether these technologies work and what side effects they might cause. The computer models that they've worked up and the lab testing that they've done, right? Can only go so far. And I guess they do need to do some type of real world testing. And with the climate system, as everybody knows, it's nearing, you know, this tipping point. We keep hearing, you know, this is going to happen and that's going to happen. You know, collapsing ice sheets or whatever, changing ocean currents. It's all very scary and it all seems like time is running out very quickly. So he said that we need to understand what is actually possible in physical terms.

• 25:28Speaker 05

  And I think that's legitimate. The program insists that no harmful materials will be used, which is a freaking relief to hear. I hope that, you know, they're going to have some type of watchdog thing going on. They'll be subject to environmental reviews and have public consultation. Who knows how far that'll go? I mean, I want to give them the, I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt, but absolutely, you know, people need to be watching what they're doing. That said, not everyone is convinced. There's lots of scientists that are arguing that researching SRM creates a moral hazard. If people see sunlight blocking as a backup plan, they might feel less urgency to cut carbon emissions or whatever. I thought that was kind of hooey. I don't really buy that personally.

• 26:10Speaker 02

  Why not? Why don't you buy that?

• 26:12Speaker 05

  The idea that like if one method is used to help in one, you know, percentage wise, it could, it can help this much. Like all of a sudden, everyone's just going to throw away any other plans that they have to cut carbon emissions.

• 26:23Speaker 02

  It's not, I mean, you're saying it in the extreme. I think it's, but you know absolutely that like, for example, the fossil fuel industry will use this as another excuse to delay action. It's like, oh, we have plenty of time. We'll just block this on and we're good. So that's exactly what they're doing, for example, with carbon capture. Exactly what they're doing.

• 26:42Speaker 05

  I stand corrected. I mean, I, and I didn't take it as an industry thing. I was thinking more like the public, but okay. I mean, I could see what you're saying there, Steve, for sure.

• 26:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:51Speaker 05

  So critics have also pointed out the potential for dangerous disruptions to rainfall, particularly in regions that depend on, you know, seasonal monsoons for food production. This all sounds legitimate. One researcher called the entire concept barking mad. He said it's like treating cancer with aspirin. A separate 10 million pound project by the UK's National Environmental Research Council will look at SRM through computer modeling and using historical data that's available. And it will not involve any new outdoor testing. Natural events like volcanic eruptions have, have already shown that aerosols can cool the planet, but they also reveal just how complex and unpredictable

• 27:33Speaker 05

  consequences can be to, you know, introducing anything foreign into the atmosphere or, or doing anything that has a large volume of stuff that we're pumping out anywhere.

• 27:43Speaker 02

  Sounds like a massive risk. It's good to study it. It's good to study. I would be shocked if like this becomes the actual plan.

• 27:50Speaker 05

  Well, right now, there's no international agreement on how SRM should be governed. And just as like a point of reference, we also don't have any national, international agreement how AI should be governed, right? Like, that's a much, much more complicated thing. But it is a major concern. You know, a country acting on its own could absolutely affect weather patterns across borders. That would, that would have very, very serious diplomatic consequences. Dr. Sebastian Eastham of Imperial College London is part of the team studying the political risks. Dr. Eastham said, even the idea of deploying SRM would shape global relations. And he says that we need to understand how the rest of the world might respond.

• 28:33Speaker 05

  So, you know, there, there is a lot of talk starting to happen. You know, that's because the, you know, legitimate amount of money has been put into this so far. I think all the right questions are being asked, from what I can tell. But, you know, we don't know if it will work. We don't know how dangerous it is. We don't know how damaging this could be to the environment. We don't know how hard it will be politically. And, you know, it's, it's, to me, it's ironic, I guess, that all of these problems that we have now with the environment came from industry, right? But it's not industry that's trying to fix it. It's science programs and grants and, you know, the public's money is going into trying to fix these problems that corporations became, you know, billionaires and trillionaires

• 29:16Speaker 05

  off of, which I, I, you know, that really pisses me off. You know, I think, you know, government should be going to the, to the, you know, to these industries that created this problem and said, look, you benefited from it and you're going to put the money in to solve it.

• 29:29Speaker 02

  Okay, get this, you guys following the recent Supreme Court case? So basically petroleum producers are suing California over their emissions standards because it's hurting their business by shifting the market towards electric cars. So they can't sell as much gasoline.

• 29:48Speaker 05

  Oh, my God. That's ridiculous.

• 29:50Speaker 02

  Like, isn't that the point of those laws? Isn't those regulations? That's the whole point is to reduce the use of gasoline?

• 29:57Speaker 05

  Oh, my God.

• 29:58Speaker 02

  That's hurting our business. You can't do that. That's what they're doing.

• 30:03Speaker 05

  It's ridiculous.

• 30:03Speaker 02

  Isn't that maddening?

• 30:04Speaker 05

  Yep. Yep, it is maddening. It's maddening that-

• 30:07Bob Novella?

  Enraging and murderous.

• 30:09Speaker 02

  It's gonna get people to be more environmentally responsible. We can't have that.

• 30:12Speaker 05

  Lots of money will be spent and lots of human hours will be, will be put into this. And the screwy thing is, is in the world that we currently live in, who the hell knows what the outcome is gonna be at this point?

• 30:24Bob Novella?

  Oh, yeah.

• 30:24Speaker 05

  Certainly not prioritized.

• 30:26Speaker 02

  Okay, thank you, Jay. Bob, tell us about this biosignature candidate. This is the, this is kind of the news of the week, I think.

• 30:34Bob Novella?

  Yeah, yeah, this came out last week, just as we were starting to record. I'm like, oh, man, we missed this one, but next week, and I grabbed it. So, yes, biosignatures in the news. The James Webb Telescope recently had a second look at an exoplanet. And the University of Cambridge's press release about, about that had five very compelling words in it. Strongest hints yet of biological activity. And so that's certainly got my attention. So, have we discovered aliens? No, but the real question is, how hard of a no is that no? So, let's see how hard that is. So, this started actually in 2023, when the James Webb Space Telescope looked at exoplanet K2-18B, 124 light-years away. The planet orbits, I'm gonna call it a K2, K2 orbits in the habitable-

• 31:20Speaker 02

  Habitable.

• 31:21Bob Novella?

  Habitable zone of its red dwarf host star, making, so that, making liquid water on its surface a possibility, which is like, whoa, when that happens, it's like, oh, wow, that's fantastic. No matter what else is true, that's always cool. So, this planet is a sub-Neptune classification, though. It has a radius of about 2.5 times out of Earth and 8.6 times more massive, so beefy, beefy boy here. It was not clear what the surface of the planet was like, though, which is always like, very frustrating and understandable, because, you know, 124 friggin' light-years away. So, they found clear signs of methane and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, clear, pretty fairly unambiguous.

• 32:03Bob Novella?

  And they argued that those chemicals would make sense if the planet had a hydrogen-rich atmosphere.

• 32:10Bob Novella?

  And a global water ocean. That would explain what they were, what they were seeing. And also, and the implication was that a global water ocean, of course, could potentially support life. And they also found back in 2023, weak signals indicating DMS, dimethyl sulfide. A DMS is produced by life on Earth, especially marine microbes like phytoplankton. It's been described, this is fun, it's been described as part of the smell of a sea breeze. This DMS, I like that description. No other known processes on Earth other than life makes DMS. Now, we have, we have found DMS outside the Earth, but those chemical processes can't account for the quantities that we're, that we're seeing on, on K2.

• 32:55Bob Novella?

  So yeah, um, DMS is definitely a promising biosignature if it holds up. But then, okay, and then the most recent observations of, of K2 was recently documented. James Webb's new data brought the confidence level for detecting DMS up to three sigma from two sigma. Three sigma is roughly 99.7% chance that the signal is real. Though not necessarily that it's DMS, but that the signal itself is real. The gold standard, of course, we've said it many times on the show, is five sigma. And the researchers think that they, that they will get there before too long for whatever that's worth. So that all sounds fairly compelling, but many astronomers are still quite skeptical, as they should be.

• 33:38Bob Novella?

  One example here, MIT planetary scientist Sarah Seeger said, "With thousands of exoplanets in view, the temptation to overinterpret is strong, and some are jumping the gun. When it comes to K2 118b, enthusiasm is outpacing evidence." Came across an interesting article on this, on Ars Technica by John, John Timmer. He explains, he explains this quite well. He describes three questions that any exoplanet biosignature evidence needs to answer with a yes. Okay, the three questions, is the planet what we think it is? Is the signal legit? And is the signal only produced by life, right? This seems common, like common sense. So let's look at, let's look at these one. By one. So the first one, is the planet what we think it is?

• 34:23Bob Novella?

  The researchers think this is a Hyacinth world. So this is a portmanteau of hydrogen and ocean. Hyacinth. I like that word. The James Webb data makes sense if the planet has a hydrogen atmosphere and a water ocean. So that's why they think this could potentially be an Hyacinth world. They kind of think it is. But the problem is, the problem is, for this world to exist, for this Hyacinth world to exist, it would require to be a very cloudy or a hazy planet. And that would be needed because there's a lot of radiation coming in from, from the parent star. And that light needs to be blocked. Otherwise, the ocean is going to boil away. So it's very important that there's, that it's quite cloudy.

• 35:04Bob Novella?

  Unfortunately, James Webb did not find any clouds or haze over the planet. That doesn't necessarily mean it's not there, but it's not encouraging. But making this whole thing worse, though, other research has concluded that not enough light is being reflected from the planet to prevent that this boiled away ocean scenario. So this may very well be just too hot. Now, let's see. Another, another paper suggests that, that what we're seeing can be explained also by a magma ocean. So would that make it a Magmian world? Did I just coin that? I don't think so. Maybe, but who cares? Nobody's gonna care. So is, maybe it's a Magmian world.

• 35:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, but we got it backwards, though. It would be, it would be Hyssagma.

• 35:46Bob Novella?

  Hyssagma? Yeah, you're right.

• 35:48Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 35:49Bob Novella?

  Well, yeah. You're right. Whatever. No one's gonna, no one, these people don't like cool names. They don't care. So we're never gonna hear those again.

• 35:56Speaker 02

  I prefer the record. Hyssagma is cooler and more correct.

• 36:00Bob Novella?

  Potentially, though. Potentially. So bottom line, this, this planet, based on this first question, is a planet what we think it is? Eh, maybe, maybe, probably it, it isn't. This planet seems more likely to be way too hot to support any life. Except for maybe, like what? That magma alien from Planet Excalbia on Star Trek? Remember that episode?

• 36:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:21Bob Novella?

  He seemed like he would be, remember his, his claws would click and stuff? He was kind of weird, a weird alien. I just love the non-humanoid aliens, though. All right. So know what I'm doing right now? I'm imagining the SGU being teleported to K218B to fight alongside Carl Sagan and Arlen Schwarzenegger against Trump, Musk, and RFK Jr. And we would so kick their asses. If you know that episode, I'm hopefully, I'm hoping that you're giggling just a little bit right now.

• 36:47Speaker 02

  Can we have Abe Lincoln, too?

• 36:48Bob Novella?

  Okay. If it's, if it's the version of Abe Lincoln where he can, he kills vampires, that I would absolutely take him. All right.

• 36:56Speaker 04

  Abe Lincoln was a boxer in his day. He was a fighter.

• 36:58Bob Novella?

  That movie had some very, it had the most interesting battle between two people amongst a stampede of horses that I've ever seen. Actually, it was the only time I've ever seen, and it was a really cool scene, worth, worth the entire movie. All right. The second question, is the signal in fact legitimate? Is this, is this signal good?

• 37:17Speaker 04

  Right. How are they able to confirm this thing?

• 37:19Bob Novella?

  Something real could very well have been detected on K2. Three sigma implies 99.7 certainty after all that something was detected. But the researchers only, get this, this would surprise me. The researchers only compared the spectral signal that they had against 20 chemicals that could potentially produce that spectrum. And DMS, that methyl sulfide was the most likely fit of those 20. So, okay, but there's a lot more chemicals that they potentially could have compared the spectral features against, and maybe one of them would be a better fit than DMS. So why, I would like to find out, and I couldn't figure it out. Why did they only compare it against 20 candidate elements and not more? Because, so DMS is the best fit. That's okay. That's cool.

• 38:03Bob Novella?

  But maybe there's other elements that would be a much better fit. I don't get that at all. Also, there's another problem with the second question. Remember, the second question is, is the signal legit? Comparing the spectrum from a mini Neptune planet to the spectrum of Earth at room temperature in one atmosphere is also obviously and potentially problematic. And even the authors recognize that fact. So did you follow that one? Because they, they looked at the signal that you would get from the spectrum of DMS from Earth, and they compared that to the spectrum they got from K2. And so that's what they did, the comparison, but it's not very apples to apples. Because it's not a, you know, it's a small planet to a sub-Neptunian planet.

• 38:45Bob Novella?

  So it's maybe, that might be a dramat, you know, more of a problem than you would think. Okay. The final question, is the signal only produced by life? This is, this is a big one. We might, we might determine, yes, this is DMS. It's there, but. If we find out it's not produced by life, it's far, far less interesting. All right, so there's, there's nothing on Earth that makes us think that DMS can be abiotic, right? But that's just, just Earth. But there are some recent studies that suggest that, that there are certain unusual conditions that could allow DMS to form without life. I think they found, they found some signals in space that potentially could do it and

• 39:26Bob Novella?

  some other exoplanet that gave them this idea that, yeah, maybe DMS can be produced by an abiotic process. But, but these processes that they've, that they've discussed are, they're speculative. And, and even if they do work, they seem very unlikely to produce the amount, the sheer amount of DMS that seems to be present on K2. But still, it's, it's a big maybe, and the burden of, the burden of proof is really, really high here. So what we have here, it turns out, is it's a fascinating clue, but it's not the smoking gun that I had, that I had hoped it was, at least very initially, when you start reading headlines. But as you dig deeper, you know, it's not the smoking gun that it appears, and it's just, it's just an interesting clue, right now, anyway.

• 40:09Bob Novella?

  You know, I hate when the universe teases us with these maybes. So for now, the best answer is no aliens, not yet, anyway. But who knows? This is going to take time. If, if you're going to want to answer these questions with a yes, in order to really say, we have discovered life on another world, those three questions are going to have to be yes. Is the planet what we think it is? Is the signal legit? And is the signal only produced by life? You need a yes for those, and that's not going to happen fast. You're not going to, you know, make a discovery and be like, yep, that's it, that's, we're good, we have the answer, there is life on this planet. It's going to take a protracted, a prolonged discussion by scientists to really look at

• 40:51Bob Novella?

  the data and, and multiple missions and all these other extra, extra steps beyond just one mission, looking at another planet. It's going to take a while. Hopefully, we'll get there, but it's not going to be an easy decision to be, you know, very, very confident, you know, especially five sigma level confidence.

• 41:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, unfortunately, most of the potential biosignatures have abiotic sources, you know?

• 41:13Bob Novella?

  Yes.

• 41:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's not fair.

• 41:15Bob Novella?

  Yeah, well, what was good about this one is that, you know, when you've got sources like carbon dioxide and methane, those, you know, those are good signatures, but there's so many ways that you can make that geologically and whatever. DMS dimethyl sulfide was interesting because, you know, there's no obvious way to make a huge amount of this stuff. So it's it's a more of a more of a compelling bio-signature, but still, it's still very problematic.

• 41:40Speaker 02

  Is the next step just more observations with the James Webb Space Telescope?

• 41:44Bob Novella?

  I think so. Looking at it with maybe with different instrumentalities and, and maybe even different different telescopes would help and, you know, trying to trying to get answers, approaching these three questions and trying to get a solid yes for each of these. And yeah, that's what it's going to take time, multiple missions and more work. But, you know, got to try, you know, assuming science doesn't utterly collapse everywhere. It will be done.

• 42:08Speaker 02

  All right. Thanks, Bob. Bob, actually, you don't have to worry because we, you know what? They found a skull on Mars.

• 42:16Speaker 04

  You do not have to go that far.

• 42:18Bob Novella?

  If they did, I want it in my collection.

• 42:21Speaker 04

  Skull on Mars, right? Well, as I speak right now, Bob is boarding a spacecraft. He's heading to Mars. Radiation issues be damned. If there's a skull on Mars, Bob has to have it.

• 42:33Bob Novella?

  All right. Who's saying that? Is that you just pulling my leg? What's happening?

• 42:36Speaker 04

  Well, depends on which headlines you read. I gave a news item about Marzo about a month ago, but we're going to revisit the red planet from whence men originated. Do you think our younger audience even has any idea what that's all about? Remember Venus? Women are from Venus, men are from Mars. Remember that whole thing?

• 42:57Bob Novella?

  That is going back, but yeah.

• 42:58Speaker 04

  Oh, my God. Right? When was the last time we talked about that? We talked about that early in the SGU, but I don't think we ever revisited it. But there it is again. Skull on Mars. What is this all about? What are we talking like another face on Mars? You know, which obviously has been a thing since the 1970s and, uh, you know, certainly captured the imaginations of a lot of people. Or is it one of these fossilized fish that they think that they've taken pictures of on Mars? Rodent, lizard, sitting on a rock. And of course, my all time favorite, Bigfoot. Yes, there Mars is teeming with life, both current and past. Uh, no, not really. Whenever I hear about the latest, greatest description

• 43:42Speaker 04

  of something, either living on Mars, or something that was once alive and died on Mars, my Martian antennas definitely perk up. So check out this headline. NASA Rover discovers out of place skull in quotes on Mars and scientists are baffled. That headline is over at Live Science. That is a very reputable website. I know Bob. Live Science ran with that, right?

• 44:07Bob Novella?

  Oh, my God.

• 44:08Speaker 02

  I think those quotation marks are doing a lot of heavy lifting.

• 44:11Speaker 04

  Probably. It's not just scientists that are baffled. Now Evan is baffled and Bob too, apparently. But actually, you know what? Good job over at Life Science for pulling me in with that headline. Here's the real story. NASA's very aptly named Perseverance Rover recently discovered an unusual rock formation on Mars dubbed Skull Hill. That is the full name of this rock that it actually took a picture of. And it's intriguing the scientists because it has distinct characteristics and they are not exactly certain about where this thing came from. There is a place on Mars called the, called the Jezero Crater.

• 44:53Speaker 04

  That is a barren, bowl shaped depression north of the Martian equator. And scientists suspect that it held a lake. There was a lake there billions of years ago. And since December of 2024, Perseverance has been trekking down a tall slope called Witch Hazel Hill in this crater.

• 45:12Bob Novella?

  Witch Hazel, love it.

• 45:13Speaker 04

  I know. I love that Witch Hazel.

• 45:16Speaker 04

  And obviously, you know, they're, they think it's a good place to look for clues about Mars's past climate. Well, recently, this was April 11th, 2025, and there it goes. Perseverance is descending Witch Hazel Hill, and it encountered a dark toned angular rock starkly contrasted with surrounding lighter terrain. The rock, they named it Skull Hill, and it features a pitted surface. It's considered a float rock, meaning it likely originated somewhere else and was transported to its current location.

• 45:50Speaker 02

  Could it not be a meteorite?

• 45:51Speaker 04

  They did test it. They did observe it and thought, well, yes, perhaps this could be a meteorite.

• 45:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, because it has two features that are typical for meteorites, at least on Earth. It has sort of these dark coloration and this thumbprint kind of indentations around the pitted surface.

• 46:08Speaker 04

  Fortunately, Perseverance has something called Supercam, the Supercam instrument, which can do a chemical analysis of the rock. And it did. It lacked the high iron and nickel content that is typical of meteorites. So that's why they believe it. Well, yeah, no, they didn't. That's not mentioned in this particular article. But they did say that based on what analysis they were able to make, the composition suggests it is likely an igneous rock formed from cooled magma or lava, and contains minerals like olivine and pyroxene, which apparently are indicative of magma lava. So yeah, this is a float rock. The pits on

• 46:51Speaker 04

  the rock may have formed due to erosion of embedded clasts or wind scarring, which would make sense. And they say that it's fortunate that they found this rock in this particular location. They said it provides valuable insight into the geological history of Mars, and that it may have been transported by ancient water flows or ejected from impact craters. Which indicates dynamic geological processes and studying the rocks will help scientists reconstruct the planet's past environments and assess its potential to have supported life. So apparently they do have a sample of this thing. And in the past few months, Perseverance has collected samples of five different kinds of rocks and have analyzed

• 47:35Speaker 04

  seven others in detail, zapped 83 more with its laser for remote study. The explorer's fastest pace of scientific data collection since landing on Mars four years ago. And this was courtesy of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory who released some bulletins about this most recent find. And they said, let's see, Katie Morgan, Perseverance's project scientist at JPL, one of Perseverance's project scientists at JPL, said, crater rims, you gotta love them. The last four months have been a whirlwind for the science team and we still feel that Witch Hazel Hill has more to tell us. It's all we've had hoped for and even more. The key here, the real analysis will take place when hopefully we

• 48:19Speaker 04

  will be able to pick up those samples that Perseverance has been collecting and get them back to Earth to determine, help determine if, hey, life ever existed at one point on Mars. Getting those samples back, we have to, you know, continue the efforts and hopefully the funding and things don't get cut for that particular part of NASA's budget. Let's hope.

• 48:40Speaker 02

  You know what I can't find, Evan, is any mention of how big it is. Did you find it anywhere?

• 48:45Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, they should be able to know that. I don't know why they wouldn't report that.

• 48:49Speaker 02

  Maybe they just haven't taken time to measure it yet to calculate the size.

• 48:52Speaker 04

  I suppose not. Maybe, yeah, because it is, it is a new find. So maybe they are still trying to determine it from the, from the photographs and the analysis. But no, I'm not reading anything about the size of this rock. So when you hear about skulls on Mars, get excited, but don't get too excited because it's not exactly what you think.

• 49:10Speaker 02

  And it's really Skull Hill is what they're calling it. It's not a skull.

• 49:12Speaker 04

  Skull Hill, yes. Right, right. But they, you're right. They tweak, you know, they took a little liberty there, I think. They took a lot of liberty, kind of shitty.

• 49:23Speaker 04

  I know, Bob, you're terribly disappointed. Skull on Mars, what?

• 49:26Bob Novella?

  What's happening?

• 49:27Speaker 04

  Hit the brakes.

• 49:28Bob Novella?

  That's a big, like, thing to leave out. It's, I mean, it seems like total bait and switch, clickbait.

• 49:35Speaker 04

  Skeleton on Mars. Over at Skeleton Hill, they've...

• 49:42Speaker 04

  Trixie, false.

• 49:43Speaker 02

  All right, thanks, Evan.

• 49:44Speaker 04

  Thanks.

• 49:45Speaker 02

  So, guys, you know, I've been track, uh, solar panel technology pretty closely.

• 49:50Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 49:51Speaker 02

  And I saw an interesting news item today on, uh, perovskite solar panels. So, perovskite is basically a mineral that, you know, there's been a lot of experimentation and development over the last 10 years or so to develop perovskite solar panels, uh, as sort of the successor to the silicon-based solar panels. You know, the perovskite cells have the advantage of having a potentially higher efficiency in terms of the energy conversion. But they've had a significant detriment in that they're not as stable, uh, so they break down more quickly.

• 50:34Speaker 04

  Oh, I see, not as long lasting time.

• 50:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:36Speaker 04

  Hmm, yeah, that's a problem.

• 50:38Speaker 02

  And they're making great progress there, but it's not quite, for most of them, not quite where it should be. However, well, there's a however, but let me talk to you about the news item. So, this is just a pretty, um, specific thing, but there was a study looking at altering the chemical that is used in the, um, synthesis of the, you know, the manufacture of the perovskite solar panels. The solar cells, and they're, they're, um, essentially combined with fullerene. You guys know what's about fullerene?

• 51:10Speaker 04

  Never heard about.

• 51:11Bob Novella?

  Buckminster.

• 51:12Speaker 02

  Mr. Fullerene. Yeah, this is a carbon alatrop, and it's a C60 molecule, basically. It's, I think it's basically the shape of like the, uh... Epcot Center ball, right? The, that, what is that called?

• 51:27Bob Novella?

  Back to the

• 51:28Speaker 02

  The geodesic structure?

• 51:31Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 51:31Speaker 02

  Um, so yeah, 60 carbon atoms in that kind of a spherical, uh, shape. Um, so for over a decade, that C60, that Bugmister Fulleren, has been an integral component of perovskite solar cells. However, there is a weak interaction between the C60 and the perovskite, which is why, what leads to it to mechanically degrade over time, especially with exposure to sunlight, which, you know, obviously is the whole point. So they've been, they've been, as long as it's in the dark, it's fine.

• 52:04Bob Novella?

  Yeah, awesome.

• 52:05Speaker 02

  So the, the new study looks at a, they, a replacement for C60. It's C60, it's C60, but combined with an ionic salt. And it's C60 derived ionic salt and it's, or CPMAC. So they, they, uh, were able to develop the, you know, the solar cell with perovskite and the CPMAC rather than the usual C60 that they've been using. And what they found was two things. One, that it stabilized it tremendously because it forms much tighter bonds with the perovskite. And, uh, so, and then in studies, after exposure to bright light and heat,

• 52:49Speaker 02

  the, it, it degraded at only one third the rate of the C60 perovskite. So that's a significant improvement. Uh, however, the other thing that they've noticed was a 0.6% higher solar cell uh, energy conversion efficiency. Doesn't sound like a lot, but 0.6% is, it's incrementally better. And that if you're, if for example, that you're, um, calculating the energy output of a one gigawatt power plant, solar power array, that 0.6% can power an extra 5,000 homes. So it's not insignificant at scale and sort of any incremental improvement in efficiency is good. So it's a double benefit.

• 53:30Speaker 02

  The, the cells are more, more stable, they last longer and they have a slightly higher efficiency. That's, that's nice, but I said, I wanted to see where the Perovskite solar module technology is today. And specifically, are there any commercial products available? And it turns out there are. So Oxford PV has developed, this actually was released in September of 2024, so this is about whatever, six months ago, a tandem Perovskite silicon solar panel. So there's both silicon solar cells and Perovskite solar cells in tandem. And which is something I've been reading about as well. I didn't realize that they

• 54:14Speaker 02

  had released a, released it commercially. They're targeting this more at the, the power company level, not like the individual home level. It's probably still more, more expensive than a standard solar, silicon solar panel. But this raised the efficiency to how much? Where do you think we are right now? What is the efficiency of these commercially available tandem Perovskite silicon?

• 54:36Speaker 05

  Thirty-three percent.

• 54:37Speaker 04

  Twenty-five percent.

• 54:39Bob Novella?

  Ninety-nine percent.

• 54:40Speaker 02

  Twenty-seven percent, which is huge, considering that the industry standard is more in the, more like the twenty-three, twenty-four percent. So bumping up to twenty-seven is actually, it's pretty significant.

• 54:55Speaker 04

  It's like a ten percent increase, yeah.

• 54:57Speaker 02

  No, it's like a three, three percent, well, relative or absolute, absolute three percent, yeah, relative of ten percent. And so, yeah, thirty-three percent, you're like, we're, we can get there, you know, we can get there with, with this technology. There are lab-tested tandem solar panels that are getting into the thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-four point six percent range. So, but you know, that's not commercially being produced yet, but that's sort of the, where the industry is headed. So, that's huge, you know, so we're already now in the upper twenties. And remember when we started talking about solar panels at the beginning of the SGU, they were at 12% and they incrementally improved over the years, got up into like

• 55:42Speaker 02

  the 20 to 22% range, which is where we've been, you know, for a while now, we're at like 24%, 23, 24%. And but they were kind of running up to the, against the limit of silicon. I think the theoretical limit of silicon is less than 30%. I think it's like 29%. So if we're going to break 30, we need to make this lateral move over to perovskite. And I do think the tandem technology is where things are headed, using both, you know, silicon and perovskite, because then you get the best of both worlds. You know, they have different frequencies where they're optimal and the silicon can stabilize the perovskite, et cetera. So

• 56:19Bob Novella?

  Cost, more expensive?

• 56:20Speaker 02

  Of course. Yeah. Yeah, it's going to be more expensive. But overall, if you talk about the cost per amount of energy being produced, that's continues to go down, that continues to decrease. You know, if you're paying for a higher efficiency, it could be cost effective.

• 56:38Bob Novella?

  Is there any way, is there any way to shift what's left of my 401k into this, into this?

• 56:45Speaker 02

  Sure. Yeah, you could buy individual stocks.

• 56:48Bob Novella?

  All right. Some of the company names after the show. Thank you.

• 56:52Speaker 02

  No, I do think long term, these are, these are solid, you know, companies and that this is where the industry is heading. And I do think that there's a lot of headroom for solar. So worldwide, approximately 5.5% of global, global electricity production is solar, 5.5. You know, where's it going to top out? Who knows? But we should be able to get up to 20%, 30% maybe worldwide. So

• 57:19Bob Novella?

  Oh, yeah.

• 57:20Speaker 05

  So when do these roll out, Steve?

• 57:21Speaker 02

  Well, again, the 27% ones are out now. They are, they've been available since September. The breakthrough that I just talked about today, who knows, right? These things take time to translate, to get translated to actual production. But again, do, having done this for the last 20 years, you know, we read a lot of these laboratory breakthroughs, but then five, 10 years later, they're actually in commercial products. Some of them are anyway. They don't always translate, but When the commercial products come out, like I remember, like we talked about the silicon anode lithium ion batteries, you know, we talked about them when they actually came on

• 58:02Speaker 02

  the market, but it was 10 years earlier when we talked about that news item on the show as a laboratory breakthrough. And then 10 years later, the battery with the actual technology and it comes out. So who knows how many years it will take, but it's good to know that these incremental advances keep accumulating. We keep reading about them. Like every, I don't know, a few weeks or so, I'm reading about a pretty interesting or significant incremental advance in the Perovskite technology. So I think, you know, five years from now, 10 years from now, if we're still talking about such things, you know, who knows what we'll be up to, maybe in the low 30s at that time.

• 58:42Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 58:43Speaker 02

  And at the same time, you know, there is a parallel project, you know, they're developing the organic solar cells, which are getting into the upper teens, but the big advantage there, there's two. One is that they're flexible and the other one is that they're cheap. So they're less expensive to install, they're less expensive to produce. So again, if you're talking about cost per amount of electricity generated, they're getting competitive with, you know, the silicon slash Perovskite solar panels. So that may, so then it's a trade off and it depends on what you need. Do you need to make optimal use of the surface area that you have, or you just need the cheapest option, right?

• 59:23Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 59:24Speaker 02

  But it's good. It's gonna be good to have a lot of options.

• 59:26Speaker 05

  So the fact that you said these have been available since September, does that mean that all the big solar companies are already using them?

• 59:33Speaker 02

  So again, I think this is mainly for, not like for home rooftop solar, but for solar power.

• 59:42Speaker 04

  Industrial.

• 59:43Speaker 02

  This is for utility scale solar, like where you have a big solar installation that's hooked up to the grid, not on somebody's rooftop, right? Whereas you're, you know, you're making money off the electricity that you're producing and therefore as an investment, like going from 24 to 27% efficiency, even from the more expensive solar panels, it may be worth it, a worthwhile investment, you know, if you're selling the electricity. Yeah. So that's a pretty big jump, like from 24 to 27%. That's huge.

• 1:00:15Speaker 05

  Sweet, man.

• 1:00:16Speaker 02

  All right. Let's go on. Alright Jay, it's Who's That Noisy Time?

• 1:00:21Speaker 05

  Alright guys, last week I played This Noisy.

• 1:00:46Speaker 05

  Crazy! What do you guys think this one is?

• 1:00:49Speaker 04

  Is that one of those flutes they make out of a human skull? Remember that, Bob?

• 1:00:52Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:00:53Speaker 02

  Is it a glass harmonica?

• 1:00:55Speaker 05

  What happened to the H?

• 1:00:57Speaker 04

  Ask Ben Franklin.

• 1:00:59Bob Novella?

  I'm wondering that too. What's that, harmonica?

• 1:01:00Speaker 05

  It is not an harmonica, yo. It's um, it's something out of this world. I don't know. I couldn't guess this, guys, if I was presented this myself. Because it is a very tricky one. A listener named Hunter Richards sent in a guess. He said, "Hi Jay, singing bowls. That raspiness sounds like rock vibrating against the surface. Maybe it's being played with a wooden bamboo rod?" Question mark. That's a good guess. This is not singing bowls, but you tripped on something in your guess there that was not completely incorrect. Another listener named Bill Whites wrote in and said, "Jay, today's noisy is someone swinging a hose from a vacuum cleaner. If you vary the speed, you can vary the pitch." Now, we've all done this.

• 1:01:44Speaker 05

  And I've also, you know, I remember buying my kids toys that are basically just like a, you know, like a tube that you spin over your head. And depending on how fast you swing it over your head, it changes the pitch. And it sounds like that a little bit, but that is not correct. But thank you for trying. Another listener named Shane Hillier wrote in and said, "I don't know, boss. I will guess it is some automated pan flute, like a player piano, but for pan flutes." I thought that was pretty funny.

• 1:02:12Speaker 04

  Oh, Zemfier. Remember him? Oh, you could buy his albums also on cassette, Nate Track, by the way.

• 1:02:20Speaker 05

  And there is, I mean, if you've ever heard of a pan flute or heard one, yeah, there is a little bit of a pan flute vibe in their sound. I can definitely recognize, although that is not what this is. A listener named Pierce Kennedy wrote in and said, "Hi Jay, my son's Cathal, age nine, and Fionn, age six, would like to guess. Cathal thinks it's a squeaky violin. Fionn thinks it's a broken sound machine. They also really liked the bit about the crows, as they are big bird fans." Well, cool, guys. Thank you both for guessing. You know, this is a tricky one. I'll say that you both guessed absolutely these were good guesses, but you guys were not correct. But it was a very hard one. This is not easy. We did have a winner. The winner's name is Agent Method.

• 1:03:04Speaker 05

  I suspect that might not be the person's real name. And Agent says, "It's the guy with the rocks, and they're waffled, right? They're cut to different sizes to change the pitch, and he's dragging some smaller rocks across them." So, yeah, the basic description is, imagine, if you will, the surface of a rock that's standing vertically, you know, a pretty large rock, maybe like, you know, an eight-feet-tall by four-foot-tall rock surface that has a grid cut out in it. And the size of the squares in that grid vary. And then you take another rock and rub it across these pieces, right, the grid. And as it goes to different pieces in the grid,

• 1:03:48Speaker 05

  it'll make a different tone because of the size difference, right? So it's basically like vibrating a rock that's been cut to play specific notes. And each note is basically a square in the grid. And the size difference determines the pitch. Listen again. You can hear the rock scraping.

• 1:04:19Speaker 05

  So those note changes, those note changes are the person scraping a different part of the rock that's standing up that has been cut to be the actual instrument, I guess.

• 1:04:30Speaker 02

  So it's a rock harmonica.

• 1:04:35Speaker 05

  So why drop the "H," though?

• 1:04:37Speaker 02

  That's what it's called.

• 1:04:38Speaker 05

  All right. Well, I don't know, man. I think it's weird. Everybody always says "harmonica."

• 1:04:42Speaker 02

  But that's a different instrument.

• 1:04:45Speaker 05

  Well, why didn't you say so in the first place?

• 1:04:47Bob Novella?

  Yeah, man, I just can't lock off a letter and not let us know you're talking about something different.

• 1:04:51Speaker 02

  He did tell you. I didn't make this up. We've talked about the glass harmonica before.

• 1:04:56Speaker 05

  I'm agreeing with you, Ab.

• 1:04:58Bob Novella?

  What the hell's happening right now?

• 1:04:59Speaker 05

  All right, good guesses this week, guys. I have a new noisy for you guys this week, and it was sent in by a listener named Brandon Ailman.

• 1:05:29Speaker 05

  Alright guys, if you think you know what this week's noisy is, or if you heard something cool, email me at [email protected].

• 1:05:37Bob Novella?

  I think it's Grogu, isn't it Grogu?

• 1:05:39Speaker 05

  Hey, if you'd like to support the work that we do here on this podcast, you can become a patron. You can go to patreon.com/skepticsguide. We have different levels of patronage. Any and all are absolutely appreciated and welcome. We really couldn't function without our patrons. They've been the glue here for us. You know, we are in our 20th year, you know, this is the 20th year.

• 1:06:01Speaker 02

  Hey, just a couple of weeks, May 4th.

• 1:06:03Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:06:04Speaker 02

  Technically, May 5th.

• 1:06:06Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 1:06:08Speaker 04

  So it's the 4th or the 5th?

• 1:06:09Speaker 05

  I would prefer the 4th because that's Star Wars Day.

• 1:06:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:13Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:06:15Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:06:15Speaker 04

  We're allowed to...

• 1:06:16Speaker 02

  In your mind, it could be the 4th.

• 1:06:18Speaker 05

  Yes, May 4th.

• 1:06:19Speaker 02

  It's close enough.

• 1:06:20Speaker 04

  May 4th. I like that.

• 1:06:21Speaker 02

  It's either the 4th may be with you, or it's Cinco de Mayo, right? It's a win-win.

• 1:06:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's true. Hey, guys, Nauticon 2025 happening in White Plains, New York, May 15, 16, and 17. All of the SGU will be there, including George Robb, Andrea Jones-Roy, Brian Wecht, and Ian will be manning the tech table and doing all the voodoo that he does. There will be absolutely no watermelon accidents happening at this conference, as far as we can tell. If you're interested in going to the conference, go to theskepticsguide.org, and there's a button on there for you. We also have two SGU private shows happening at the conference. It is going to be one hour on Friday during lunch and one hour on Saturday during lunch. If you buy a ticket, you're going to be buying a ticket for one of those

• 1:07:10Speaker 05

  two hours, or you could buy one for both if you want to. But those two hours together will make up a... SGU episode by itself. We will not be doing news items. It will be an off topic, probably crazy episode. If you'd like to join us live, please go to the skeptics guy.org to also buy tickets for that. We are also doing a private show and a Skeptical Extravaganza stage show. This is happening in Kansas on September 20th. If you're interested, again, go to the SGU homepage for the link. There's a button there that we've put to make it super easy. It's gonna be a lot of fun. We hope to see you there. And my final thing is that, just a reminder, time is ticking and Steve is coming to the SGU. Very, very

• 1:07:55Speaker 05

  excited. I can't wait. We have, we have new content that we're working on, that we will be releasing after Steve, you know, after he goes full time for the SGU, but we still need, of course, time to, to start really getting to the heavy lift. But we know what we're gonna do, and we're excited, and we are definitely in full combat insanity.

• 1:08:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, we just, we want, we want more properties out there to help fight back, just all of the myths and disinformation and the crazy that's going on in the world. So that, that's a huge, a huge thing that's going on here at SGU that we're hard at work, producing new content to hopefully shed some light on all of this.

• 1:08:36Speaker 02

  All right. Thank you, Jay. We're gonna do one email. This comes from another listener who wants us to review his new theory. And not gonna actually get into the details. I'm just gonna read a piece of the email that he sent me. He says, "The work is titled, 'The Unified Theory of Consciousness: A Cross-Species Model for Intelligence and Regulation.' At its core is a model I call 'Dragony,' which maps dopamine, serotonin, adrenaline, cortisol, GABA, endocannabinoids, narrative, and energy into an interactive axis, a living system capable of explaining states of emotion, behavior, burnout, addiction, and even artificial

• 1:09:18Speaker 02

  intelligence. Wrapped around that axis is a story that honors the body, the bones, the sentiments we come from." And he reassures me, "This is not pseudoscience. It's not spiritual bypass. It's not a manifesto. It's a map born from breakdown, made legible by cross-disciplinary synthesis, and written to honor the skeptical mind without losing the poetic one." I'm not doing a deep dive on this guy's unified theory of consciousness. Maybe on a future episode, it depends. But I wanted to just talk about the phenomenon itself of people who think they've hit upon some deep understanding of reality, right? One aspect of reality, whatever that aspect is.

• 1:09:59Speaker 02

  Because this is very common and we encounter this on a regular basis, either because they directly contact us or because they're putting it out there into the world. So I responded to this person, I just wanted to tell you what my response is. I said, "Listen, I'm willing to take a look at anyone's theory, but you need to be able to do two things. The first thing is you need to be able to give me an executive summary in 800 words or less." And that's important for a couple of reasons. One, because typically these people say, "Well, you've read my 500-page treatise." And the answer is, "No, I'm not going to read your 500-page treatise." If you can, you know, what's interesting about if you do have a new idea, like you

• 1:10:44Speaker 02

  have some new insight, I'm not saying it wouldn't require, like a full explanation or exploration would not require tens or hundreds of pages, but you should be able to give a concise, coherent, executive summary. What I have noticed is that that is the level at which the cranks always fail.

• 1:11:06Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:11:07Speaker 02

  They cannot do that because they don't have a coherent vision, right? They just have a lot of stuff that they think they see a pattern in, but they don't really have some coherent idea, right? And so if you can't boil it down to its nuts and bolts, and that should include, "This is what the scientific community currently thinks, this is what we don't know, this is the new bit, this is the problem it solves," right? That's like a three, four paragraph kind of thing you need to be able to stitch together. This is why I think this is the way the reality works. And the second question I ask is what? What do you think is my second question?

• 1:11:48Speaker 04

  Balsifai?

• 1:11:48Speaker 02

  Yes. How can you test it?

• 1:11:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:11:51Speaker 02

  Tell me one or more ways, at least one way, that you can do an observation or an experiment to test it, to distinguish, don't tell me... About the observations you made that made you think of this theory. Tell me how you can falsify this theory going forward and distinguish it from the other theories that are already out there. If you can't do those two things, you have nothing, right? I don't care what you think you have, but you have nothing. And you certainly don't have access to my time, right? And you're not going to get access to any scientist's time either. If you can't convince them that what you have is interesting with the so-called elevator

• 1:12:35Speaker 02

  pitch, then you probably don't have anything.

• 1:12:38Speaker 04

  James Randi used to tell us that the main obstacle that people who would want to take the million dollar paranormal challenge would be that they cannot describe what it is they feel they can do. They can't do it. And he said that was the vast majority of applicants.

• 1:12:57Speaker 02

  It's a good first level filter. Yeah. It's like, tell me exactly what it is that you do. Like, it's the operational definition thing. It's like, what is it very specifically that you are doing? And if you can't, that's because they can't do that because they only have a vague sense anyway.

• 1:13:14Speaker 04

  Right. It makes sense inside their brain, but it's not conveyable.

• 1:13:18Speaker 02

  Right. And I think with these sort of theories of everything is it's similar in that it tends to be this sort of long rambling thing and without any coherent bit to it. I remember there was this one TikTok video that I did a response to, I probably shouldn't have, to be honest with you, but it was one of those where it was this, you know, a woman who has this theory about the causes of some kinds of developmental problems in children. And I can't even tell you what it is because she, again, she had a 500-page manifesto and no, I could not find a coherent explanation of what it is she was actually claiming.

• 1:14:03Speaker 02

  What is your actual claim? And how is this just you not just stitching together a bunch of published studies? You know, I didn't know what she was trying to say. It was, there was no coherent point to it. How is it different than what scientists currently are saying?

• 1:14:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, and this, and this follows a very distinct pattern that has been.

• 1:14:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:23Speaker 04

  That plays out for, for people who do have these kinds of ideas, that they, they cannot boil it down.

• 1:14:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, so if, so this is to everyone out there who, who wants to, us to review their idea, to say if they're on to something, you do those two things. Give us a concise executive summary. What is the new bit that you're actually claiming? A specific, as specific a definition as you can. And how is it testable? How could we, even in theory, demonstrate if your idea is correct or not? So what they, what, what you typically get instead is, you know, sometimes like the people, you could tell the people who are delusional, not just cranks. Cranks are just, usually they tend to be smart, interested people who just don't know how to interface with actual scientists. Right?

• 1:15:14Speaker 02

  They're just not aware of how much they don't know and how, how it's done. But I always, the other thing I say to them is like, if you're really on to something, this is what you need to do. And if you don't do that, it's probably because you're not really on to something. But then the delusional people are like, I out predict Einstein, you know, I'm, I'm smarter than Galileo. It's like, all right, you just, you should, probably you have a follow-up appointment with your, whoever's taking care of you. No, so that's, they're, they're sort of, you're on, they're, they're having a different problem, you know? Uh, it's not just that they don't understand how science works. But in any case, I don't think there's anything I could say to get through to those people.

• 1:15:55Speaker 02

  But to people who are like, you know, I think are with it, they just are not sure why they haven't fixed physics or whatever, or why they haven't discovered some new underlying unified theory of consciousness, or whatever it is. I think the key thing that's missing, and if you look back at a lot of cranks throughout history, is they don't understand that science is a cooperative endeavor. Right? Science, at least especially in modern times, is not something you can do by yourself in your garage. No more armchair physicists. Yeah, it's hard. You have to bounce your ideas off of experts. Right? It's a conversation.

• 1:16:40Speaker 02

  Science is a conversation. Right. And if you're spinning it up all on your own, in your own head, chances are you have drifted away from reality. And it's possible, again, if you could get the attention of an actual expert, they could probably explain to you why you're wrong in five or 10 minutes. But you have to be open to that. But first, you have to be able to explain your idea to them in a coherent way. And if you can't do that, then just stop. You have nothing. All right, anyway, let's move on with science or fiction.

• 1:17:16Speaker 01

  It's time for Science or Fiction?

• 1:17:25Speaker 02

  Each week, I come up with three science news items, four facts, two real, and one fake, and I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. So I just have three regular news items this week. Are you guys ready? Yep. All right, here we go. Item number one, scientists have published a robust framework for attributing the cost of climate change to the emissions of specific companies, showing that the top five emitters have cost the world economy about $9 trillion between 1991 and 2020. Item number two, researchers have found the first direct skeletal evidence of Roman gladiator combat against lions.

• 1:18:09Speaker 02

  And item number three, engineers have created a 3D printed ceramic metamaterial that can withstand temperatures 10 times hotter than the ceramic tiles on the space shuttle, up to 12,000 degrees Celsius. Jay, go first.

• 1:18:25Speaker 05

  All right, the first one here, scientists, you know, they, they published a robust framework for attributing the cost of climate change to the emissions of five specific companies. I don't know, there's something about that that I think is science. And if it's not five specific companies, it might be five specific industries. But I think there's something true about that one. Second one, researchers have found the first direct skeletal evidence of Roman gladiator combat against lions. I mean, you know, that's, that's not impossible. You know, they, um, I mean, I just, I don't see them burying a dead gladiator with a dead lion. I don't know, I just don't see them doing that for some reason. Um, so I'm kind of iffy on this one.

• 1:19:08Speaker 05

  And the final one, engineers have created a 3D printed ceramic metamaterial that can withstand crazy high 12,000 degree temperatures. So the idea that it's a, it's printed, I think is, um, that's the sticky, the sticky thing in that news item. I mean, could they actually 3D print something made of ceramic? So metamaterial means it's ceramic mixed with something else, Steve?

• 1:19:33Speaker 02

  No, I'll give you a definition of it. Metamaterial is a material whose properties are not dependent solely on the chemical structure, but on its physical structure, usually at the nano type of scale.

• 1:19:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, okay, I think that one's the fiction because a 3D printer can't, doesn't have that level of resolution. So I think that's gotta be the fiction.

• 1:19:55Speaker 02

  Okay, Bob.

• 1:19:56Bob Novella?

  Climate change, top five emitters, that sounds, sounds about right. Doesn't sound too egregious either, in either direction. The skeletal evidence of Roman gladiators combat, I mean, okay, whatever. But yeah, the one that grabbed me here was the third one as well. So I agree with Jay that, um, metamaterials are typically very, very tiny components that need to be accounted for, you know. Potentially even at the nano scale. So doing that with a 3D printer is dramatic. But not only that, an order of magnitude hotter than the tiles on the space shuttle, that would be, that just sounds like a little bit too much at this point. It's an interesting idea of using meta-materials to handle that kind of heat. That's, I haven't, I don't remember

• 1:20:38Bob Novella?

  seeing a meta-material that can deal with that. And I don't, and I don't think that meta-materials won't be able to do that. I just think it's a little bit too dramatic right now for that. Plus, coupled with the 3D, the 3D printer aspect, I think makes that a solid fiction.

• 1:20:52Speaker 02

  Okay, and Evan?

• 1:20:53Speaker 04

  I agree, because I think it's the 10 times stood out to me initially on this one, and I think that's way too high. It's likely going to wind up being two times, maybe, twice.

• 1:21:05Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:06Speaker 04

  But not 10. Um, I think the rest of it.

• 1:21:09Bob Novella?

  I hope it's true, man. I hope it's true.

• 1:21:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think that's the, that's the piece of that one. I think that also makes it the fiction.

• 1:21:14Speaker 02

  Okay, so you guys all agree on the third one. So let's take these in order. Scientists have published a robust framework for attributing the cost of climate change to the emissions of specific companies, showing that the top five emitters have cost the world economy about $9 trillion between 1991 and 2020. You guys all think this is science, and this one is science.

• 1:21:39Speaker 04

  You changed it, bastard. Nice try.

• 1:21:41Speaker 02

  What did I change?

• 1:21:42Bob Novella?

  Um, I was just scanning stuff of an hour ago or so, and I saw one that, that addressed this specifically, but I thought it was like 20 companies and like 29 trillion, not fewer companies with fewer trillions.

• 1:21:56Speaker 02

  No, it's both.

• 1:21:57Bob Novella?

  Oh, good. I didn't, I didn't dive too deep.

• 1:22:01Speaker 02

  I didn't say they only looked at five companies, just that.

• 1:22:03Speaker 04

  The top five amount to 9 trillion.

• 1:22:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the, yes, there was the top 20 companies. It was, it was something, it was actually 111 companies cost the world economy $28 trillion.

• 1:22:16Bob Novella?

  111?

• 1:22:17Speaker 02

  111.

• 1:22:18Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:18Speaker 02

  It was attributed, yeah, the companies cost the world economy 28 trillion, but 9 trillion were attributed to the, just the top five emitters alone.

• 1:22:26Speaker 04

  One-third of that amount, roughly.

• 1:22:28Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:28Speaker 04

  To the, just the top five.

• 1:22:30Bob Novella?

  Yeah, so I didn't read the whole article, but I, the, I, so I knew the bigger numbers, but not the smaller ones. So it, it seemed like you just, you just tweaked it to be still true, but different than the top-line title of the article.

• 1:22:42Speaker 04

  Send them the bill.

• 1:22:43Speaker 02

  Evan, that's the exact point of this study.

• 1:22:46Bob Novella?

  What?

• 1:22:46Speaker 02

  Is to send them the bill, right? So the, the, the point, the point of the study was really to show that you can have a robust framework for doing this, to attribute the cost of climate change at the corporate level, right? Not just at the country level or at the national level, but to say, the activity of Chevron, of this one specific company, contributed this much to climate change, resulting in this loss of, whatever, of, to the economy of the world over this period of time. And they said that with this information, it means you can have a science-based method for attributing liability to individual companies.

• 1:23:32Bob Novella?

  Yeah, I don't think that they necessarily should have to pay that because it's, it's not, I mean, did they break the law? I mean, it's, it's just, you know?

• 1:23:41Speaker 04

  It will, it will help with the future and how to deal with these companies.

• 1:23:44Bob Novella?

  Yeah. And they can go and forward. It could be more powerful, like, all right, you're on notice.

• 1:23:49Speaker 02

  It's definitely an easier thing to apply going forward, right? And you could say that, all right, that we're going to make you pay for the carbon you emit now. That's a carbon tax, right? And which is, economists agree, is probably the most effective method, but it's just hard to get the political will to do that, but this might help us get there.

• 1:24:08Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:08Speaker 02

  It's also, when you calculate the subsidies to different industries, it's, you know, oftentimes, like, I've seen, like, the fossil fuel industry gets, you know, one trillion dollar subsidy, whatever, and, but, part of that is direct subsidies. Part of that, though, is

• 1:24:30Bob Novella?

  Indirect, the indirect subsidies.

• 1:24:31Speaker 02

  Is indirect subsidies by not, by allowing them to externalize costs, including climate change. So now, we can put a more accurate number on that. The climate change subsidy for the fossil fuel industry is this amount of money.

• 1:24:46Bob Novella?

  Right.

• 1:24:47Speaker 02

  Which means when we're comparing that to the cost, for example, of subsidizing renewable energy or nuclear power or grid upgrades or battery, you know, grid storage or whatever. It's like, yeah, but that's actually nothing compared to the indirect subsidy that we're giving to the fossil fuel industry by not making them pay for the predictable and demonstrable effects of their industry. And in terms, in order to make it work retroactively, as you say, make them pay for the cost they've already induced, you would have to prove some kind of malfeasance.

• 1:25:21Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:22Speaker 02

  Not that that's impossible. That's basically what they did for the tobacco industry.

• 1:25:27Bob Novella?

  Yeah, right. That's true.

• 1:25:28Speaker 02

  Basically find them for stuff that happened in the past because you were able to prove they knew about the risks. They tried to cover it up. I don't think that would be impossible to do for the fossil fuel industry, to be honest with you.

• 1:25:40Bob Novella?

  Sure.

• 1:25:41Speaker 02

  Again, I'm not recommending that. I'm just saying that it, that's not impossible. But the point of this study was to have a science-based number that you could attach to it. Because otherwise you could say, well, how can we really know? Like, how much, how can we put a number on this? It's like, well, they did it. They put a number on it.

• 1:25:59Speaker 04

  Here's a structure.

• 1:26:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. There's a framework for it.

• 1:26:02Bob Novella?

  I'm sure they'll say it's inaccurate, but screw those guys.

• 1:26:04Speaker 02

  All right. Well, why don't we jump to number three. Engineers have created a 3D-printed ceramic metamaterial that can withstand temperatures 10 times hotter than the ceramic tiles on the space shuttle up to 12,000 degrees. See, you guys all think this one is the fiction.

• 1:26:20Speaker 04

  But Jay said so.

• 1:26:21Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:22Speaker 02

  So this is based on a real study. I won't tell you if it's the science or the fiction. I'll tell you some details of the study that are accurate.

• 1:26:28Bob Novella?

  Trixie.

• 1:26:30Speaker 02

  So it's at least partly true.

• 1:26:32Speaker 04

  Which part?

• 1:26:34Speaker 02

  So they did make 3D-printed ceramic material that does have properties outside the range of normal ceramic material.

• 1:26:49Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:50Speaker 02

  The name of the paper is macro scale ceramic origami structures with hyper elastic coating. What they were able to do is produce essentially flexible ceramics.

• 1:27:03Bob Novella?

  Flexible.

• 1:27:04Speaker 02

  This is the fiction. It's not the, it's not the, uh, the heat resistance. It's the flexibility of it.

• 1:27:12Bob Novella?

  Malleability of ceramic.

• 1:27:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. So they coated with a hyper elastic coating. And that enables it to be not brittle, right? To be able to bend in response to forces and then regain its initial structure.

• 1:27:25Bob Novella?

  Well, how thin is the ceramic underneath?

• 1:27:27Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 1:27:28Bob Novella?

  It's gotta be, it's gotta be quite thin to be, to still bend and not break.

• 1:27:31Speaker 02

  But I think that's also the origami structure is part of that as well.

• 1:27:35Bob Novella?

  Okay.

• 1:27:36Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:27:37Bob Novella?

  Oh, man. Interesting. Meta, is, is it considered a meta material still?

• 1:27:41Speaker 02

  I don't think so.

• 1:27:42Bob Novella?

  Okay.

• 1:27:43Speaker 04

  Ah.

• 1:27:44Bob Novella?

  Yeah, still very.

• 1:27:45Speaker 04

  So that's, that's the part, maybe. Yeah.

• 1:27:47Bob Novella?

  It doesn't sound like meta material, although I don't know too many details yet, but it's cool. I'm gonna read about it.

• 1:27:52Speaker 02

  So it wouldn't have to be like the 3D printing wouldn't have to be what imposes the meta material structure to it though. Right? You could be 3D printing with a meta material.

• 1:28:01Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:28:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. I didn't think that was gonna be the point of contention, to be honest with you.

• 1:28:07Bob Novella?

  Really?

• 1:28:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. So the thing is, so I had to look up, I was like, maybe I just may say it's a, it could, like, I knew like the ceramic tiles on the space shuttle. So maybe there's just ceramic that's even more heat resistant than the ceramic tiles on the space shuttles. But I had to look up what that was. Um, so the space shuttle had both high temperature reusable surface insulation and low temperature reusable surface insulation. The high temperature was able to endure up to 2,300 degrees Fahrenheit or 1,260 degrees Celsius. But current tiles can go up to what temperature do you think? Current ceramic tiles. So the space shuttle tiles were 1,260 degrees.

• 1:28:47Bob Novella?

  Fahrenheit. 5,000 degrees?

• 1:28:49Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, we're at 4,000 degrees now.

• 1:28:51Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:52Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:28:52Speaker 02

  So that's how far we've come since. So I had to make it more than that, you know, significantly more than that. That's why I went up to 12,000. But I knew that was a stretch, but you know, it's because we've.

• 1:29:02Bob Novella?

  That's a dramatic change. I mean, that's, that would make it then. Basically, much easier to re-enter the atmosphere, like, you know, you're so, you're much farther away from the top, from the high tolerances that it's, it should be pretty smooth.

• 1:29:17Speaker 02

  Do you guys remember what causes the heat of re-entry when?

• 1:29:21Speaker 04

  Friction.

• 1:29:22Bob Novella?

  No, no, no, no, you're compressing the atmosphere ahead of you and the compression is heating up the atmosphere.

• 1:29:29Speaker 02

  Exactly, it is not friction, that's the, that's the wrong answer everyone thinks is correct. That's the knee-jerk answer, but it's actually, yeah, it's compression of the air, not, it's not friction. Yeah, so it's good that we have even more advanced ceramic tiles.

• 1:29:42Bob Novella?

  That's great. I wonder if, um, like, I wonder if the, you know, the military, the United States military has a shuttle-type ship that, that still goes up there, right?

• 1:29:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, they do have, yeah, they have unmanned, unmanned vehicles that go up there.

• 1:29:57Bob Novella?

  Right, right, I wonder if that's, has the, you know, the higher quality ceramics, maybe, maybe it doesn't even quite need that, that level, it's like overkill almost, maybe it's too expensive because it, you don't need that much right now with the, the way they re-enter, I don't know. Cool. Which means?

• 1:30:13Speaker 02

  Which means, by the way, I told you, the, um, they have ultra-high-temperature-resistant tiles now, and the SpaceX Dragon capsule, what do you think that has? It has a heat shield made of PICA-X tiles.

• 1:30:27Bob Novella?

  PICA?

• 1:30:28Speaker 02

  P-I-C-A dash X.

• 1:30:30Bob Novella?

  Sounds like a brand name.

• 1:30:31Speaker 02

  It's a phenolic impregnated carbon ablator, that's what it's called. Phenolic impregnated carbon ablator.

• 1:30:37Speaker 04

  No way.

• 1:30:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, yeah, so part of the, the way the heat shields work, like, the Apollo-era heat shields, that was all ablation, meaning they heat up and they evaporate, right?

• 1:30:50Bob Novella?

  Right.

• 1:30:51Speaker 02

  So they're, that they, that's how the-

• 1:30:52Bob Novella?

  They gotta be thick enough.

• 1:30:53Speaker 02

  It carries the heat away because it's ablating, but it's not, yeah, no reuse, right? The, the space shuttle, they had to make a reusable heat shield, which is why they went to the tiles. Remember that, I forgot how many ridiculous number of tiles they had, and they were, each one was its own shape.

• 1:31:10Bob Novella?

  Yes.

• 1:31:11Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:31:12Bob Novella?

  No standard shape for those.

• 1:31:13Speaker 04

  Specific, yes.

• 1:31:14Speaker 02

  Each tile had to go into its very specific- They had to get like replaced every time.

• 1:31:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, some would fall off, yeah.

• 1:31:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, they had to be, yeah, they had to be basically be be fixed each time, you know, some would have to be replaced. They'd have to make sure that they were, whatever, they were good to go for for another round. Dragon capsule uses, I guess, a combination, both heat shield and a blade of material.

• 1:31:34Bob Novella?

  Interesting, alright.

• 1:31:37Speaker 02

  Alright, this all means that researchers have found the first direct skeletal evidence of Roman gladiator combat against lions is science. Have you guys, any of you guys seen this story?

• 1:31:48Speaker 04

  No. Not skeletal evidence.

• 1:31:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, so they, basically, it's a skeleton. Uh, they found, it was in England, but it was in a, it was in a Roman city.

• 1:31:57Speaker 04

  Bite marks on the skeleton?

• 1:31:59Speaker 02

  Exactly, there were teeth marks on the pelvis of this skeleton.

• 1:32:05Speaker 04

  That hurt. I feel it now.

• 1:32:07Speaker 02

  And they were matched to a large cat, they said probably a lion. But they also said to make you feel a little bit better, this could have been scavenger bite marks. So this might have been something that was done after the person was dead.

• 1:32:22Bob Novella?

  Postmortem, yeah, yeah. That seems reasonable possibility as well.

• 1:32:27Speaker 02

  Because of the location.

• 1:32:28Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:29Speaker 02

  But that's, yeah, it's the first time you have skeletal evidence. Cause it does, it, we actually have apparently a lot of documentation about the gladiatorial games. And like descriptions of what went on, so we have lots of historical evidence to indicate that the gladiators fought animals. Bears and lions, I think were the most popular. Yeah.

• 1:32:50Speaker 02

  But gladiator remains are very rare in this, in the archaeological record. So they found a pit with multiple, multiple, you know, male skeletons, all with traumatic injuries. With gladiator like injuries, you know what I mean? And this one had had lion bites on its pelvis. So it's a pretty, I mean, you know, that's, it's direct evidence, it's not, it's not ironclad, but it's pretty compelling evidence that, yeah, these were probably gladiators.

• 1:33:21Bob Novella?

  I wonder if you could tell from the bones that, yeah, this was a robust individual and not some. Frail, you know, old guy.

• 1:33:28Speaker 04

  It wasn't just some peasant that you threw in there.

• 1:33:30Speaker 02

  You can peasants were hardy. I mean, they probably.

• 1:33:32Bob Novella?

  That's true. That's that's true.

• 1:33:34Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, they they worked them pretty hard.

• 1:33:36Speaker 02

  You can tell because of the insertions, the tendon insertions on the bone. Yeah.

• 1:33:40Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:33:40Speaker 02

  Hypertrophy, you know, so you you can tell how robust somebody was physically by their bones.

• 1:33:46Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:46Speaker 02

  Yep, pretty cool. All right. Good job, guys.

• 1:33:49Bob Novella?

  All right.

• 1:33:49Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 1:33:50Speaker 04

  Hey.

• 1:33:50Speaker 02

  Evan, do you have a quote?

• 1:33:52Speaker 04

  I do have a quote, and this week's quote was suggested by a listener. His name is Roger, and he's from Connecticut, a local listener. Thanks for suggesting this, Roger. All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated, and well-supported in logic and argument than others. Douglas Adams.

• 1:34:13Bob Novella?

  Oh, DNA, man. Love that guy.

• 1:34:16Speaker 05

  But he was awesome.

• 1:34:18Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:34:18Bob Novella?

  Got to listen to some of his stuff again. It's been a while, too long.

• 1:34:21Speaker 04

  I know. Same here. Well, it's last time.

• 1:34:23Bob Novella?

  It's hard to find his audio books that he narrated there.

• 1:34:27Speaker 02

  He does a great job of narrating his own books.

• 1:34:29Bob Novella?

  He is killer. If you listen, I mean, I've said it before, but I haven't said it in years. If you like Douglas Adams, read the books, that's fine. But if you really want to appreciate having him narrate The Hitchhiker's Guide and even the Dirk Gently stories, he is, as you might imagine, an amazing narrator, and this is his stuff. So it just makes it extra, extra special that this is how he present presents his his works. It's like, you know, it's like getting a a tour in a museum and having the artist describe the artwork to you. Um, you know, it just can't beat that. You can't beat that. So this is, it's like a fuller appreciation of his art. Because it's his, it's his voice. Look for him. And if you find hit, if you find any of his books narrated by him, please let me know.

• 1:35:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I like this quote, although it does require a little bit, I think, of explication in that it the all opinions about facts are not equal, right? Opinions about reality, about what is true. Where there is some kind of objectivity to it, to the opinion. But opinions that are purely subjective value judgments. You could, I mean, still, you could say some are more sophisticated than others. That's kind of a

• 1:35:42Bob Novella?

  Nuanced, yeah.

• 1:35:43Speaker 02

  Or nuanced. He was talking about like But if someone says like, I like this piece of music better than that piece of music.

• 1:35:48Bob Novella?

  That's it.

• 1:35:49Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:35:49Bob Novella?

  Conversation's over, basically.

• 1:35:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's just a, it's a value judgment. It's not really like, versus like, in my opinion, the dinosaurs were wiped out by a meteor, not by something, whatever, like, a scientific opinion, absolutely, some are, some are better than others. Some are thoughtless, naive, whatever, not, not based on facts or evidence or logic, and others are more robust. But yeah, just saying, like, just using the shield of, that's my opinion. It's like, ah, that's, it's kind of intellectually lazy. Right. All right, well, thank you all for joining me this week.

• 1:36:25Bob Novella?

  You're welcome. Thanks, Steve.

• 1:36:27Speaker 02

  And until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.

• 1:36:34Speaker 02

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

• 1:37:11Speaker 06

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