The Skeptics Guide #1013 - Dec 7 2024

Quickie with Bob: Atomic Scale Precision; News Items: Innate Morality, New Space Station, Climate Hot Spots, Orcas Wearing Hats, Evidence Against Water on Venus; Who's That Noisy; Your Questions and E-mails: Fisher Scream, CT UFO; 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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• 0:33Speaker 01

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

• 0:40Speaker 02

  Hello and welcome to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Tuesday, December 3rd, 2024, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella,

• 0:49Jay Novella?

  Hey, everybody.

• 0:50Speaker 02

  Kara Santa Maria. Howdy. Jay Novella. Hey, guys. And Evan Bernstein.

• 0:55Speaker 04

  Good evening, everyone.

• 0:56Speaker 02

  So, guys, we're going to DC this weekend. When the show comes out, we will be basically in the middle of our private show.

• 1:02Jay Novella?

  Ooh.

• 1:02Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:02Speaker 02

  In DC, and then we have the extravaganza. And it's gonna be a little tricky because, as some of you already know, I fell and cracked a rib last week.

• 1:12Jay Novella?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:13Speaker 02

  What? Steve, what happened? Don't do that, by the way. It's, I recommend you do not fracture a rib. It's not

• 1:20Jay Novella?

  What happened?

• 1:21Speaker 02

  I hear that. It was, you know, it was nothing. It was completely stupid. I was, you know, outside at night at my mother-in-law's place, and I tripped on a stone, like patio thing, fell on my right side, and that's it.

• 1:35Jay Novella?

  You were drunk. Come on.

• 1:40Speaker 02

  So, yeah, unfortunately, one of my ribs took the majority of the impact. Oof.

• 1:45Jay Novella?

  So, how bad does it hurt for those of us who have not broken a rib?

• 1:48Speaker 02

  So, it's not bad. It's a probably...

• 1:50Jay Novella?

  Constant pain.

• 1:51Speaker 02

  I mean, I haven't been x-rayed or anything. I'm just diagnosing myself based upon symptoms. But it's probably a non-displaced fracture. I could feel the rib. Everything feels good. Yeah. I could take... I could take a deep breath without any problems.

• 2:05Bob Novella?

  That's the big one.

• 2:06Cara Santa Maria?

  It can damage any of your organs.

• 2:07Bob Novella?

  That's huge.

• 2:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, it's been a week now, so. But it's just, I'm very restricted in my movements. You know what I mean? I can't bear any weight with my right arm, which is very limiting. So you guys are gonna have to do all my heavy lifting this weekend. Basically what I'm telling you.

• 2:23Jay Novella?

  No interpretive dance at all.

• 2:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, so remember the last Extravaganza where I did that Russian goose stepping dance, whatever? That's not happening this time. No, no physicality for me.

• 2:35Bob Novella?

  Oh, no.

• 2:35Cara Santa Maria?

  No double-blind tricks.

• 2:37Bob Novella?

  So no freeze frame for you, basically?

• 2:38Speaker 04

  Well, you'll be guessing the freeze frames.

• 2:40Speaker 02

  Or, I mean, I could, as long as I'm vertical, I'm fine. Like, I'm not going on the floor. I'm not doing anything ambitious. It really, it's just, it's very, it's just miserable. It's like, you know what I mean? Because I have to get into very specific positions. Like, there can't be any tension on my ribs, you know? It's one of those core muscles, you know, one of those positional things where you like, it's like, try to put your back completely at rest. Like, it's very, very difficult to do it. Sleeping is terrible.

• 3:07Speaker 04

  Oh, sleeping's the worst part of all this.

• 3:08Jay Novella?

  I guess you're gonna try really hard not to get into a fistfight with someone at the show, right? And some audience member?

• 3:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, very, very hard. I know, usually I get into two or three fistfights with audience members.

• 3:17Speaker 04

  I know, yeah.

• 3:18Jay Novella?

  Well, what the hell, man?

• 3:20Speaker 04

  Go for that right side.

• 3:21Speaker 02

  And I can't really give, like, a full cough, so I'm always doing these half coughs.

• 3:26Bob Novella?

  Oh, I hate those.

• 3:27Speaker 02

  Ooh.

• 3:30Speaker 02

  I know, I gotta, like, just enough to, because you're constantly clearing, you know, gunk out of your lungs, you know?

• 3:36Speaker 04

  I know. Humans are disgusting.

• 3:37Speaker 02

  That's part of the problem with, with anything that impairs your ability to cough is that you run the risk of the gunk getting backed up.

• 3:45Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, Steve, you know, the trick that I was taught before.

• 3:48Speaker 02

  The huggy pillow?

• 3:49Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, is to, is to push into a pillow. So after my hysterectomy, I had to. I mean, you still have to cough sometimes. It's brutal.

• 3:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, but this isn't, this isn't an abdominal problem. See, that, that helps with the abdominal issue. It's, yeah, it's on, and on the side, and it's, like, try, try breathing or coughing without moving your ribs, you know?

• 4:08Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, but I mean, you can't breathe or cough without moving your abs either.

• 4:11Speaker 02

  I know. I'm actually trying, I'm trying to do abdominal breathing.

• 4:15Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 4:16Speaker 02

  Rather than rib breathing.

• 4:17Cara Santa Maria?

  That's good for you. Yeah. I teach my patients how to do that, like, diaphragmatic breathing all the time.

• 4:21Speaker 02

  Right, exactly.

• 4:22Cara Santa Maria?

  It's good for your blood pressure.

• 4:23Speaker 04

  Oh, is that right?

• 4:26Jay Novella?

  Well, I got some interesting news, guys.

• 4:28Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah?

• 4:29Speaker 04

  What'd you break, Jay?

• 4:30Jay Novella?

  We now have SGU dice.

• 4:32Speaker 02

  Ooh.

• 4:34Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 4:34Speaker 02

  I can't wait to see that.

• 4:35Cara Santa Maria?

  Not what I was expecting you to say.

• 4:36Jay Novella?

  Yeah, so what happened was Brian Wecht, you know, he and I talk all the time and he's constantly like, he's such a good friend that he is constantly throwing me ideas, whatever, it could be anything, from show ideas to whatever. One day, he said, "Hey, you guys ever sell dice?" I'm like, "No." And I'm like, "Why?" I'm like, "You think people that listen to a skeptical podcast would want to buy dice?" And he goes, "He goes, "Look, I'm in an 80s rock band and we sold a ton of dice. You should try to do it."

• 5:04Speaker 02

  I think he said they were his best-selling swag item.

• 5:06Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 5:06Speaker 04

  He did.

• 5:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:07Jay Novella?

  Yeah, so then I'm like, "All right." I mean, look, you know, I always like it when I like the swag that we buy. Typically, I like everything because I only buy things that are high-quality and like something that I would want or buy because that's a good marker for me.

• 5:20Speaker 04

  A J test.

• 5:21Jay Novella?

  So, you know, I scrubbed the internet and I found a manufacturer that I liked. I mean, I really dig this company that we're buying dice from. And that's it. Steve and I picked out a couple of styles and everything. And so they're going to be at the DC show with us, which is, you know, people can buy those there if they want them.

• 5:37Speaker 02

  They'll have our logo on them, obviously.

• 5:38Jay Novella?

  Yeah, they have the D20 on the 20 has an SGU logo.

• 5:42Speaker 04

  Ooh.

• 5:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, we got a bunch of new swag for this.

• 5:44Jay Novella?

  Yeah, yeah, we just reloaded our swag. It was a good time to buy it because lots of things were on sale because of the holiday. That was basically the impetus right there.

• 5:52Speaker 04

  Kara, have you ever rolled a 20-sided die before?

• 5:56Speaker 02

  Like Casa Heidrin?

• 5:58Cara Santa Maria?

  How many sides does the die from Scattergories have?

• 6:01Speaker 04

  It doesn't have 20 letters on it?

• 6:02Cara Santa Maria?

  I'm about to find out. Scattergories die is a 20-sided die. Then, yes, I have.

• 6:07Speaker 04

  So you have rolled 20.

• 6:09Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, anybody who's played Scattergories has.

• 6:11Speaker 02

  They're fun.

• 6:11Bob Novella?

  Yeah, I think I have. I've played it. It's been a while, I guess.

• 6:14Speaker 04

  You'll never forget your first D20. I promise you.

• 6:17Cara Santa Maria?

  Totally forgot. That's why I had to Google it.

• 6:19Speaker 04

  I still have mine. I was 10 years old. I still have.

• 6:22Speaker 02

  Well, Kara, now you can have an SGUD20.

• 6:24Cara Santa Maria?

  Okay.

• 6:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:25Speaker 02

  That's a keepsake.

• 6:26Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 6:27Speaker 02

  All right, let's get on with some skeptical content here. Bob, you're going to start us off with a quickie.

• 6:32Jay Novella?

  Thank you, Steve. This is your quickie with Bob. All right, how cool is this, guys? Imagine putting something under a microscope and being able to easily manipulate its surface with atomic precision.

• 6:43Speaker 04

  How?

• 6:44Jay Novella?

  This is exactly what researchers claim in a study published in Applied Surface Science. The lead researcher, Dr. Motaba Moschani, said, "Our laser method provides atomic-level control over diamond surfaces in a standard air environment. This level of precision is typically only possible with large, complex vacuum equipment. The ability to achieve it with a simple laser process is truly remarkable." Remarkable? So, yeah, this is really slick. To do this, they use a deep UV light laser to precisely deliver pulses of light onto the diamond surface, and these pulses trigger chemical reactions that can precisely remove carbon atoms from this top atomic layer. Now, this could have tremendous impact on electronics, quantum computers, advanced

• 7:26Jay Novella?

  manufacturing, specifically in materials where minor changes to the surface can have dramatic performance improvements. For example, they showed, and MIT Lincoln Laboratory confirmed, that this technique was able to increase diamond surface conductivity by a factor of seven. They say, Professor Richard Mildren says, he's the team lead, "We were amazed that such a minor adjustment to the surface could yield such a substantial boost in conductivity." Now, you may be thinking, "Yeah, but doing this atom by atom, right? Isn't that how you would do it? It would just take forever." But no, this technique is precise and fast at the same time. They said that they were able to remove 1% of a surface monolayer in 0.2 milliseconds.

• 8:10Jay Novella?

  Now, I don't know how big this surface monolayer was, but speed is not an issue with this technique, apparently. Dr. Moschani said, "We've shown that the process is both rapid and scalable. It's a compelling option for industries requiring advanced material processing." Professor Mildren said, This is just the beginning. We're excited to explore how this technique can can be optimized further to unlock the full potential of diamonds in electronics, quantum technologies and beyond. So this is yet another technology that I will be following closely. So this has been your atomically precise quickie with Bob. Back to you, Steve.

• 8:45Speaker 02

  Thank you, Bob. All right, Cara, this one's intriguing, and this is different than this cuts against what I would have thought. So tell me about whether or not humans have innate morality.

• 8:57Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, this cuts against what the researchers thought as well, which is why this is kind of a really interesting story. And in a way, it relates back to, I've got to ask, do you guys remember when we were at SciCon? And it feels like a long time ago to us now, but to our listeners, I think it doesn't because didn't that episode just air last week?

• 9:17Speaker 02

  Yes, that's correct.

• 9:19Jay Novella?

  Time travel.

• 9:20Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, time travel. But the story that I covered was about how to sort of keep researchers honest and how to ensure that what we are doing in the publication world is appropriately vetted. And we talked about pre-registering studies, and we talked about open access, and we talked about having raw data available for other researchers to look at. And I think in some ways, this study is a bit of a case study in being able to do that. So, published in Developmental Science on November 26, 2024, is a paper called Infant Social Evaluation

• 10:01Cara Santa Maria?

  of Helpers and Hinders: A Large-Scale, Multi-Lab, Coordinated Replication Study. Researchers in this study looked at a seminal study that was published by Hamlin and colleagues in 2007. And in that study, that a lot of people have cited, researchers found that forming "social evaluations," as they put it, "based on third-party interactions," that's like a very wonky way to say, observing a social engagement with another

• 10:37Cara Santa Maria?

  Either human or toy or character that within the first year of life, infants would choose a helper over a hinderer. And they used a paradigm in which an object with eyes was trying to climb a hill. And another object with eyes either gave it a boost or prevented it from going up. And using that paradigm in this study from 2007, researchers showed, hey, look, even within the first year of life, based on their eye gazes, these infants are spending more time looking at the helpers, less time looking at the hinderers. Therefore, they're preferring the helpers over the hinderers. Therefore, there must be some sort of innate decision making around helping.

• 11:21Cara Santa Maria?

  If we want to call that morality, we can. The researchers don't, just all the right arounds do. So, which is not uncommon, right? So this study said, okay, this is interesting because since that 2007 study, a bunch of studies said, hey, look, we found the same thing. But a bunch of other studies were like, not so fast. I don't think we found the same thing and I'm confused. So they did something interesting. They said, okay, we want to do a different kind of experiment altogether. And in this study, they looked at a project across multiple labs in a really large scale. Ultimately, they ended up seeing over a thousand infants across 40 different developmental psychology teams.

• 12:06Cara Santa Maria?

  They ended up using about half of that data for good reason. We can talk about that in a bit. But they looked at over a thousand children between the ages of five and a half and 10 and a half months across multiple labs. And they developed a paradigm that was based on that hill paradigm that I described before. So there are four different conditions in the helping and hindering paradigm. There are social conditions and non-social conditions. Two of them are social, two are non-social. And there are helping or up conditions and hindering or down conditions. Two of them are helping, two of them are hindering. So we'll start with the helping up condition. Imagine a little yellow triangle with eyes and a little red circle about the same size with eyes.

• 12:51Cara Santa Maria?

  The helping condition, the yellow triangle, helps the red circle get up the hill. The red circle can't go on its own. The yellow triangle comes up and gives it a boost from underneath and then it makes it up the hill. That same paradigm is shown in a non-social condition where the little red character doesn't have eyes. So now it's just a ball rolling up a hill and the helper, the yellow triangle with eyes, moves that red ball up the hill. So it's non-social, right? It's moving an object, not another character. In the other condition, the hindering condition, the red ball is trying to go up the hill, but a blue square comes from above it and pushes it down, preventing it from going up the hill. So the helper helps it up from behind, the yellow triangle.

• 13:35Cara Santa Maria?

  The hinderer, the blue square, pushes it down from above. And there's also the non-social version of that where the red character doesn't have eyes anymore and now it's just a red ball. So the googly eyes make it social, if that makes sense. Now, these are infants, remember? So they're bright colored, very simple displays. And they showed these different conditions to the infants. Now, in the original study, they just looked at eye gazes, but in this replication study, they did something even more interesting. They added a behavioral component where after the infants looked at these different conditions in randomized order, they then were shown a board with cutouts of the characters and they were asked to pick which character they liked.

• 14:18Cara Santa Maria?

  They were looking for, researchers were, and this is based on a lot of research about working with infants. They were looking to see which of the characters the infants grabbed for and also looked at at the same time. Does that make sense?

• 14:31Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 14:32Cara Santa Maria?

  So they needed to look at it, they also needed to grab for it. Now, a lot of them were thrown out because some infants just didn't pick one. They either went back and forth between the two or they looked at one and grabbed the other and it was, you know, inconsistent which they were showing a preference for, so they couldn't use that data. In the situations where it was obvious which character the infants went for, what do you think they found?

• 14:57Jay Novella?

  The same.

• 14:58Cara Santa Maria?

  Mm-hmm. It was the same.

• 14:59Jay Novella?

  Yeah, same, fine.

• 15:01Cara Santa Maria?

  It was the same. Probably not right. So overall, forty nine point three four percent of the infants chose the helpers. Yeah. Oh, and that was in the social condition. Fifty five point eight five percent chose the helpers in the non-social condition. And when they compared the two, there was no significant difference. Helpers or hinderers, it was no different from each other, no different from chance alone. Coin flip. And so the researchers were like, whoa, because that was not their hypothesis.

• 15:28Cara Santa Maria?

  They were like, wait, we did this before. We showed that there was this pro-social thing that appears to be innate. Not only do infants go for the helpers, but we're also hoping that they go for the social group a little bit more, too. They did find, I think, a slight preference for the social group, but they didn't find any significant difference between the helpers and the hinderers. So they then talk about why this might be the case. They have some different ideas, but of course, this is in the discussion section of a study. We just don't know. We are speculating. They are wondering if maybe this skill or this preference is present, just not this early. Maybe it's going to develop after ten and a half months.

• 16:11Cara Santa Maria?

  Or maybe there is no innate preference at all. Or maybe this study isn't tapping in to the best way to look at an innate preference. Maybe they don't see a significant difference between the groups using the Hill paradigm, but maybe there are other sort of more naturalistic studies where they would see that pro-social or that, quote, "moral" behavior. But what they like is that this was proof of concept for using these active measures. So the infants had a choice. They got to choose the character at the end, instead of the classic way that researchers study where they just kind of count how long an infant gazes at an object, and then they infer that that means they're more interested in that object.

• 16:55Cara Santa Maria?

  They're calling this a first-of-its-kind study that shows proof of concept for using an active behavioral measure that is a manual choice in a large-scale, multi-lab project studying infants. Oh, and one thing I didn't mention that I should have is that every aspect of this study was pre-registered and all of the data is available open access. That's good. So they really did check a lot of those boxes because they were worried about the replication crisis. They were worried that this original study, which has been cited so many times that so many people were taking as truth, was kind of showing, I guess we could say ambiguous or maybe ambivalent, you know, like, yeah, sometimes it's supported, sometimes it's not,

• 17:37Cara Santa Maria?

  it's kind of wiggly. Okay, well, let's just look at it once and for all, across multiple labs, across multiple countries. We'll all do the exact same thing. We'll all collaborate on this study and we'll see if we find the same thing. So, you know, they talk quite a bit in the paper about the difference between doing a meta-analysis and doing a large-scale, multi-lab project, and how there are different ways to approach it statistically. And, you know, there are strengths and weaknesses of both, but it's a pretty robust paradigm. And the researchers were, they were surprised that they failed to replicate that study. And I think it's also a great example of, like, publishing negative results, because just because the results are, quote, negative, doesn't mean there's not a lot of really

• 18:21Cara Santa Maria?

  interesting stuff here.

• 18:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, negative data is data.

• 18:25Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah. It tells us a lot.

• 18:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is interesting. I mean, it's a one interpretation of this is that, well, maybe the effect went away because it was all P-hacking to begin with. And then when they did it, when they control for P-hacking, it goes away. That's one interpretation. The other one is that it's just not a good paradigm for what they're looking for. As we say, everything's a construct, right? You can't, we don't know that this is a marker of morality in kids. It's just one way that they're choosing to look at it. And it could indicate that. Because you could, the thing is, it's like one of those things where you could rationalize either way. Are kids more interested in the pro-social character because they're drawn to it? Or are they more interested in the antisocial character because that's more fascinating? And it's almost like a morbid curiosity. It's like, there's something wrong

• 19:11Speaker 02

  with this character. What's going on with this thing that he's being injured? You know, so we can't tell what's going on in the minds of these infants. Obviously, they can't talk. And then the other thing I was thinking when I was reading this was like, well, you can't make statements like there is no evidence for innate morality. I mean, that I think is massively overcalling this. As you say, you know, it could just be, well, maybe it doesn't really manifest until two years old, you know?

• 19:36Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, and they talk about that, too. Yeah.

• 19:38Speaker 02

  The brain is still maturing at this point. That's, that could be one of those, you know, sophisticated frontal lobe things that doesn't kick in for a while, you know?

• 19:46Cara Santa Maria?

  Absolutely. They say, you know, that their first interpretation is that infants between five and 10 months of age don't prefer pro-social characters over antisocial characters after all. And then they talk about why those results could have been different, as you mentioned, um, pee hacking being one of them. A second interpretation, they say, is that infants don't prefer helpers in the Hill paradigm, but maybe would prefer them in some other context. And, you know, they talk about a lot of the studies that has, have been published, including a meta-analysis that did find a preference for agents performing different kinds of pro-social actions. And so, you know, they say for those reasons, it seems plausible that even if infants don't prefer helpers over hinders in the Hill paradigm by 10 and

• 20:27Cara Santa Maria?

  a half months, they might nonetheless prefer, I'm quoting them directly, helpers or pro-social agents more generally in other scenarios, perhaps when the intentions are overt, or perhaps it's going to happen, you know, later in development. But to, to sit on the assumption that infants between the ages of five and a half and 10 and a half months are intrinsically moral versus the assumption that they are intrinsically not moral, neither of those things is really borne by the literature. And so we have to be really careful when we interpret these studies to interpret them based on what they actually tell us. And I think that's a big difficulty in psychology because we're always working with constructs.

• 21:11Speaker 02

  There's also different types of morality. I mean, there's justice and fairness, right? This is more pro-social versus antisocial behavior. So again, you can't make sweeping statements about this very limited paradigm.

• 21:24Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, and they, you know, they're very careful. They do talk about morality in the discussion, but they don't talk about it very often when they're talking through the study. They're saying helpers, hinderers, helpers, social, pro-social, non-social.

• 21:36Speaker 02

  Interesting. All right. Thanks, Cara. Jay, how's our space station doing?

• 21:40Jay Novella?

  Well, on a scale of one to 10. Ten is brand new. It's probably at a two.

• 21:46Speaker 04

  Yeah. Oh, no.

• 21:47Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 21:47Speaker 04

  Uh oh.

• 21:48Jay Novella?

  There's some, you know, significant issues with it. I mean, let's face it, it's lasted longer than they expected it to. But let me give you the update. So first of all, you know, the International Space Station, it's been around since 1998, which means that they started building the components for it, you know, many, many years before that. So it's been in low Earth orbit for 26 years and, you know, unfortunately, it's really showing its age now. And when they initially launched it, it started with just one module. Do you guys know what the name of that was?

• 22:16Speaker 04

  Freedom?

• 22:17Jay Novella?

  It's a Russian module.

• 22:18Speaker 04

  Oh, wow. Oh.

• 22:20Jay Novella?

  It was a Zarya. Z A R Y A. Zarya. Yeah, the ISS today has 43 module facilities and there's a lot of different, I mean, it's really cool. They have so many different sections that do different things. They have airlocks, robotic arms, power, life support, communication, you know, habitation modules, research facilities, you know, there's a lot of different modules up there. Very complicated and unbelievably expensive. There's been an unprecedented, and I think very noteworthy collaboration between nations. We have the United States, Russia, European nations, Japan, Canada, Italy, Brazil, all being major contributors to the space station. But, you know, like I said, it's unlimited time today, and most

• 23:05Jay Novella?

  of the partner countries I listed, they plan to retire the station on or around 2030, which is coming up pretty quick. And Russia is also now saying that it might even go earlier for them, and they might want to withdraw by 2028.

• 23:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, they've been talking about that for many years now.

• 23:22Jay Novella?

  Yeah, it's interesting to try to work out the details. What does that actually mean? If they pull out, like, what does that actually mean? You know, is it like they're not going to give any financial support or what?

• 23:31Speaker 04

  I think they'll no longer be responsible for the upgrades or the maintenance

• 23:36Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 23:37Speaker 04

  of their portion of the station.

• 23:38Jay Novella?

  Yeah, okay, that makes sense. So NASA has already instructed SpaceX to design a de-orbiting spacecraft that will guide the ISS

• 23:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:48Jay Novella?

  safely into Earth's atmosphere, you know, like, it's a big deal. This is a Really big deal to deorbit that thing and to have it land in the ocean. You know, they want a controlled descent. And of course, this thing can't land in a city. It would do an amazing amount of damage. You know, it could be, you know, very dangerous. Um, I think that they are totally up to the task. And I think, you know, NASA and SpaceX know exactly, you know, what to do, but it's going to be expensive. But what kind of a show that will be guys, huh? I mean, if it happens at night or during the day, you're going to see it. If you're, you know, if you're in line of sight, you're going to see a huge, huge show. That's going to, that's going to burn up and really be visible.

• 24:32Jay Novella?

  And even worse, guys, there's issues that might accelerate, you know, this 2028 or 2030 timeline. There's been these persistent air leaks in the Russian Zvezda module. It's really got some serious air leaks and they were first discovered, you know, back in 2019. That seems like a long time ago. So they've escalated this situation to a very critical level. The leaks are now rated five out of five on NASA's danger scale. And it is the number one top safety concern that's going on, and it is significant. The ISS is losing about 3.7 pounds of air per day. And that costs NASA about four grand a day, about 1.6 million a year

• 25:16Jay Novella?

  to actually replace the atmosphere because it has to be, you know, brought up there.

• 25:19Speaker 04

  Really? Oh.

• 25:20Jay Novella?

  And these figures, you know, they're estimates, but they show clearly that there's growing operational, you know, burden here of maintaining the station. It's not the only problems that they have. It is serious enough where the astronauts were told by NASA to spend more time in the American section of the station.

• 25:38Speaker 04

  Probably having fewer problems. Yeah.

• 25:39Jay Novella?

  Yeah, right. So to prepare for a worst case scenario, SpaceX is developing an emergency evacuation plan for the crew. I would imagine that that is some type of craft that has, you know, that'll be attached and will be ready to go at a moment's notice. The structural issues on the station have made a top priority to replace the ISS. NASA already turned to the private sector, which is a really good idea because There's a ton of money in the private sector. They've they've funded multiple initiatives to help keep, you know, human presence in low Earth orbit. I'm totally for this. I'm sure, you know, most of us science enthusiasts, you know, we want people up there. There's a lot of significant science that's being done there.

• 26:18Jay Novella?

  It also is just, you know, human nature. I think we have to, you know, respect the fact that we're explorers and, you know, it is the final frontier. There are four major projects, and I think you'll find these interesting if you haven't heard of them. One of them is VAST Space, and they want to build their own independent station to go in low Earth orbit, and it's going to focus on modular and scalable designs. I'm sure most of you have heard of Axiom Space. They plan to attach their modular station to the ISS initially, and then over time, it'll detach and function as a standalone station. So it might pull some of the modules with it, and then they'll they'll slowly get rid of them as they they bring up their own new modules. There's a coalition led by Blue Origin, Sierra Space, Boeing, and Redwire,

• 27:04Jay Novella?

  and they're developing something called an Orbital Reef. This is a commercial station marketed as a mixed-use business park in space. I think that one is really interesting. And then the last one is Voyager Space. They're partnering with Airbus, Northrop Grumman, and Hilton Hotels, which is, it might sound odd, but yeah, they're in the game. And they're working on StarLab, which is a futuristic station with scientific and commercial applications, right? I think it would be wonderful if more than one of these made it. As much as this is a Herculean effort, it's costing incredible amount of money. You know, NASA is trying to help these four projects. I think it's possible that we could have more than one, you know, within the next 10 years.

• 27:44Jay Novella?

  The experts have outlined that they have significant doubts about whether any of the replacements will be operational by the 2030 deadline. That might be the case, but that doesn't mean that that they're not going to end up getting up there eventually. Axiom Space, they faced financial issues. They had to delay payments to suppliers, and, you know, they were struggling to pay their employees. That's a, you know, like a Situation that, you know, that could kill the project very easily. And NASA, you know, they, like I said, NASA is supporting them as best they can. They want them to keep going, of course, so NASA is going to give them as much money as they can to keep them going. NASA plans to also award additional development contracts in 2026.

• 28:27Jay Novella?

  And they've already invested over 500 million to help companies refine their designs, you know, build their prototypes and just keep those projects breathing air. So in the short term, NASA is probably going to need to implement some temporary fixes. You know, I think that's pretty obvious. They could involve, you know, sealing off the, uh, the, the Zvezda transfer tunnel, like just closing it down and making it so, you know, no one can go into that module anymore. That is where the leaks are the most severe. So I think, you know, abandoning that would, would, you know, it would be a difficult thing. It's a, it's a needed module, but you know, what else can they do? These aren't ideal situations. They don't have ideal solutions, uh, but they could extend the station's lifespan long enough to bridge the gap.

• 29:11Jay Novella?

  So we don't, you know, we don't have a, you know, we, we want there to be a continuous space station for a lot of reasons. Like, you know, it would be great if they could move a module over with one of the new, you know, space stations and then move all the gear and all the expensive stuff. And, you know, that, that's a good way to transport stuff from one station to the other. We don't want to have to pull that, the entire space station down and everything in it. You know, that would be really an unfortunate reality if that happens. I think just from a, a science perspective, I think it's worth it because we can definitely run tests and do things in outer space. You know, NASA does pass on a lot of its technology to the private sector for free in the United States. You know, just hand companies, you know, here you go.

• 29:54Jay Novella?

  This is, you know, this product, you know, a product line that you could. You could sell, you know, things like Velcro, right? Like, you know, they were created, you know, duct tape, like things you wouldn't imagine, but very useful stuff. And, you know, it does boost the US economy. It's not insignificant. So I do think it's definitely worth every penny we spend on it. So, but the future is, guys, it's all private investors. And, you know, there has to be a commercial component now to any of these endeavors going on in the future because, you know, single governments can't afford to do this. So there has to be some type of private industry involved. And I think that's great, you know, because there's a ton of money out there. There's a lot of companies, you know, look at like Hilton Hotels, they have a ton of money and they want to get in it. Great.

• 30:39Jay Novella?

  Why wouldn't we encourage that? I think it's a, you know, an awesome collaboration between private companies and NASA to do this.

• 30:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm interested in the Voyager space station, the Voyager station. This is the first one that is in the works. It's where there's planned that is, would have a rotating wheel design that would have artificial gravity.

• 30:59Speaker 04

  Ooh, hello.

• 31:00Speaker 02

  But they said, hey, we're going to start construction in 2026, but they don't have funding yet. So, so they have funding, you know, then, or at least they haven't announced any funding. So until that happens, I mean, naming a date is worthless.

• 31:12Speaker 04

  Need a Kickstarter.

• 31:13Bob Novella?

  I'm skeptical that they're going to try to incorporate artificial gravity that way.

• 31:17Speaker 02

  Well, that's the plan. That's the design for that, for the Voyager station. That's the whole point. They want it to be a space hotel, basically.

• 31:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, a little 2000.

• 31:26Jay Novella?

  And Ev, if you look at the pictures, man, it looks, it does kind of look like that, you know?

• 31:31Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 31:32Jay Novella?

  These are renderings, and I'm sure that there are real plans out there. I mean, it's not like they're just sitting around a room and they're like looking at science fiction drawings, like.

• 31:41Speaker 04

  Right, thinking, oh, that looks cool then.

• 31:43Jay Novella?

  They know what they want. They know what it's going to be. But all of the artwork that I've seen, it does have that vibe. And man, could you imagine if they're shuttling people up to a space hotel and that that becomes commonplace? That's amazing.

• 31:54Speaker 04

  I still wouldn't go.

• 31:56Cara Santa Maria?

  Not in a million years.

• 31:58Speaker 04

  No.

• 31:59Bob Novella?

  It'll happen, but we'll be long dead.

• 32:02Cara Santa Maria?

  Yep.

• 32:03Speaker 04

  No. All right. Well, keep some reservation then.

• 32:06Jay Novella?

  Wow, Bob, that's pretty nasty.

• 32:07Speaker 04

  Bob.

• 32:09Bob Novella?

  This shit never pans out the way we want it to pan.

• 32:12Speaker 02

  It always takes longer.

• 32:13Speaker 04

  Not in your lifetime.

• 32:15Speaker 02

  It takes longer. All right, thanks Jay.

• 32:18Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 32:19Speaker 02

  But it's switch topics before Bob gets too mad.

• 32:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 32:23Speaker 02

  All right, Bob, I'm gonna make you feel better. Global warming is even worse than we thought it was going to be.

• 32:28Speaker 04

  Great.

• 32:28Bob Novella?

  And no surprise there.

• 32:31Speaker 02

  There's a recent study looking at climate hotspots. And so the idea here is they wanted to, they looked at like a lot of data, you know, obviously, um, you know, climate data, but regional temperature data to try to identify regions where there are more likely to be heatwaves. And they identified, you know, they basically made a map of the world, you know, identifying those regions, uh, northern Africa, Europe, northwestern US and Canada, where there have been like statistically outlier heatwaves in the last 20 years. Their, their conclusion is that, a couple of things.

• 33:13Speaker 02

  Well, first of all, the, you know, statistically speaking, these are multiple standard deviations away from like average temperatures, like what the models would predict. Uh, you may remember like, you know, in northwestern Canada, you, they had temperatures that were literally 50 degrees above the average temperature for that location and that time of year. Just, you know, massively outside of, of any like statistical, um, distribution. So that's one observation that they made, that there's these hotspots where we're seeing extreme heatwaves. And the second thing is that, you know, the models don't really predict this, but it's not that the models, they don't contradict the models.

• 33:57Speaker 02

  The models don't drill down to this level of detail. The models are unable to tell us like what this regional, you know, these regional variations will be. And so in other words, we can't predict the, these extreme weather events, and yet they're happening. They're saying, it's basically what's happening is that as the temperature increases, the variability is also increasing, right? So you're getting more extreme events that bell curve, if you will, is spreading out. And this, this includes both hot and cold temperatures, but of course, as the average temperature increases, it's worse at the hot end, you know, of that spectrum.

• 34:38Speaker 02

  And what this could mean is that, you know, earlier than the models would have predicted, we could be seeing these hotspots around the world with increasing frequency of increasing heat waves, like heat waves that are significantly above the average temperatures and that are obviously spiking deaths due to heat waves and, you know, are making these regions, at least for the duration of the heat wave, they could be, like, if you don't have air conditioning it, they're basically unlivable. So these are parts of the world where people don't traditionally have air conditioning, right, because it doesn't get hot enough to require air conditioning, and now they're having heat waves, like 110, 120 degree temperatures, and they don't have air conditioning, you know, because they've never seen temperatures,

• 35:23Speaker 02

  like, these are tens of degrees higher than anything they've ever seen before. Obviously, the solution to this is to try to mitigate climate change as much as possible. Oh, yeah, that's a good idea. Let's try that. But, you know, what it means, so the authors are recommending two things. Like, first, we need to figure out how to predict these regional changes, even though, like, the models are not designed to do that. We need new models, right? We need new ways of trying to do this. Now, here, we're just looking back at what's happened, which is not necessarily the same thing as predicting predicting what's going to happen in the future. And that's because, you know, this is the difference between climate and weather, right? We're starting to blur the lines here between climate and weather. You know, the weather is much more difficult to predict, because you're not just looking at average

• 36:08Speaker 02

  global temperatures, which the models are very, have been very good at predicting, but there are lots of complicated changes to the way weather is behaving on the world with increasing temperature, like, increasing energy in the system. I know we talked on the show that we aired last week about the great cold, the cold blob and the shutting down, the, you know, the conveyor belt, the ocean currents. Yeah. And these things are just becoming harder and harder to predict because, you know, we're dealing with a very complicated system. So it is, uh, this could mean that we are seeing, that we will be seeing extreme heat wave events.

• 36:50Speaker 02

  Earlier than the models predicted because regional variability is increasing. It's like this is a separate phenomenon they're observing this increasing. The tails are spreading out basically, and that wasn't something that the models predicted. But we're seeing it, it's happening, so that's not a good thing.

• 37:09Bob Novella?

  Well, imagine seeing such a very such variation in a place that already occasionally sees like 120.

• 37:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:15Bob Novella?

  You know, imagine like, oh, oh yeah, tomorrow it's going to be 140? I wonder if it could get quite that extreme.

• 37:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 37:22Bob Novella?

  Oh, my God, wow.

• 37:23Speaker 02

  And it's just, it's, we talked about this with Michael Mann, you know, on

• 37:27Bob Novella?

  Mann?

• 37:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, at SciCon, the show that aired a few weeks ago, that the effects of climate change are not evenly distributed, right? And the effects of our attempts at mitigating it won't necessarily be evenly distributed either. There's going to be, you know, random winners and losers, you know, in this kind of scenario. I think we're all losers, but more losers and less losers, I guess. But no one is safe, I guess, is the other idea here. Like, Canada, you know, had these ridiculous heatwaves. North Carolina, deep in the mountains, had flooding, like a place that would, nobody, there's no flooding infrastructure here. They don't have floods in this, in this region of the country.

• 38:09Speaker 02

  But because of, you know, the increased moisture in the air, increased the rainfall due to Hurricane Helene, they had a massive flood that they weren't prepared for. So it's not just that, oh, yeah, the hottest places on the earth are going to get even hotter and they're going to feeling it, be feeling it first. Like, yeah, that is true, but it's not the only thing that's true. It's also going to be bringing extreme weather events to pretty much any part of the world. And it's kind of unpredictable how that will happen.

• 38:39Bob Novella?

  It's not a simple extrapolation from what you're currently seeing.

• 38:42Speaker 02

  Right, exactly. Well, everyone, we're gonna take a quick break from our show to talk about one of our sponsors this week, Aura Frames.

• 38:49Jay Novella?

  This year, guys, one of the best gifts that you can give someone is the Aura Digital Picture Frame. Aura Frames are the number one digital photo frame by Wirecutter. This is a really awesome platform. It's incredibly smart. It's easy to use. You could upload an unlimited number of photos and videos from your phone to the frame. Plus, you can order the frame online and you can preload it with the photos and videos that you wanted to share using the Aura app. So it's ready to go right out of the box.

• 39:16Bob Novella?

  Yeah, I helped set this up, my personal Aura Frame and my mom's. It was just so ridiculously easy. And it's really one of the best presents that I've ever given or received. It truly is. With Aura Frame, you can upload your favorite photos and they are there. It's really convenient, fantastic, and a lot of fun. You'll be looking at it many times during the day, guaranteed.

• 39:38Speaker 04

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• 40:01Speaker 02

  All right, guys, let's get back to the show. Okay, Evan, tell us about orcas wearing hats.

• 40:08Speaker 04

  Yeah. You don't run across that headline every day. Have you guys ever seen that nature documentary film? It's called Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home? Where Captain of Engineering Montgomery Scott famously exclaimed, "Admiral, there'd be whales here." Can you imagine if he said that? "And they're wearing salmons as hats." Scotty, you've been hitting the brandy again, I think. Sorry. That movie came out in 1986. All right. But in 1987, researchers, for the first time, had noticed that a population of orcas had

• 40:50Speaker 04

  begun swimming around with dead fish on their heads, salmons on their heads. This was the first recorded observation of this behavior. I have to set it up like this because I need to talk for just a moment about groups of whales, family groups. They're called pods. So a pod of whales is led by the oldest female, the matriarch. And the matriarch passes down knowledge about hunting, migration routes, social interactions, you know, they, they run the family essentially. And the offspring, both the male and female offspring, remain with their mothers for life, pretty much. And that's a tight knit family, a really, really tight bond.

• 41:30Speaker 04

  But pods can range from a small group of a few individuals to a large group of dozens or even in some cases, hundreds of whales. And scientists will categorize these pods by letter, you know, A pod, B pod, and so forth. And this was in 1987. It was observed that there was a female from K pod who started wearing a dead salmon on her head.

• 41:54Jay Novella?

  Wow.

• 41:54Speaker 04

  And they, then they noticed within a few weeks, other pods, other individuals in other pods, pods J and pods L, they also started to try to wear fish hats as well, fish on their head. And it was apparently something of a fad because that behavior soon afterwards, I guess, had stopped or had not been seen again until last month, November 2024. Yep. When one of the whales from J pod, the same pod, the same family. Now, this was a 32 year old male, so that particular whale was not yet born in 1987. But regardless, it's from the same family. So J27 BlackBerry, 32 year old male was photographed exhibiting the same behavior

• 42:37Speaker 04

  of wearing the dead salmon on its head. And this was at Point No Point, Washington off Whidby Island in Puget Sound. And this took the observers, once again, scientists by surprise. Yet. Andrew Foot, who is an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Oslo in Norway, said it does seem possible that some individuals that experienced the behavior for the first time or their family members may have started it again.

• 43:07Speaker 04

  And then there's Deborah Giles, who's a science researcher and a director at the nonprofit Wild Orca. She says, "We've seen mammal-eating killer whales carry large chunks of food before under their pectoral fin, kind of tucked into their bodies. But the phenomenon by which they will also wear it on their head could just be another form of this. Like, there's, it's like storing food. They have extra food. So they're, you know, just hanging on to it in a way until they're ready to eat it at some point later. And this can happen because what, there will be times during the course of the year in which there will be an abundance of food for some of

• 43:51Speaker 04

  these pods, more than they can eat on a regular basis. So they'll, you know, start storing it somewhere in and amongst their body. So this could be, although they're not 100% sure, this could be that behavior, just another form of them kind of storing this food for a little while. But it's fascinating, though, that it's kind of this cultural, almost trend, in a way, that they've described it as. And again, you know, one pod of whales will exhibit a certain behavior, and then other families will also learn, one way or another, from that pod, and they will also start exhibiting this behavior. And they think that this happens when orcas

• 44:35Speaker 04

  will go after boats, right? And attack, or, you know, throw their bodies onto boats. That one group will do it, another pod will see that, and they'll imitate, or they'll go ahead and exhibit that behavior as well. It's very fascinating. It's very nuanced, and it's quite complex. I mean, these are mammals that are just, you know, have been studied so long, and they have very complex social networks and collaborative behaviors, emotional and social bonds. I mean, you know, not to be underestimated, but, I mean, anytime you see a headline where whales wearing fish on their heads, I mean, forget it, and the internet goes crazy. And

• 45:17Speaker 04

  there's memes, and there's songs, and there's videos, and a million people are talking about it all over the place.

• 45:23Jay Novella?

  I know that this must be the most common question, but how the hell are they swimming and they're keeping a dead fish on their forehead?

• 45:30Speaker 04

  Well, I guess if all you if that's the medium you live in, you're it things like that become easier than perhaps it would seem to people who don't live their existence in in the water like that.

• 45:42Jay Novella?

  It just from the physics of it, though, you mean, you know, their skin is smooth. You'd think that it would just slip right off their head, you know?

• 45:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, you'd think so.

• 45:49Cara Santa Maria?

  If you swim against it, then you're forcing it.

• 45:52Speaker 04

  They're able to back right. They're able to to to have an equilibrium, a balance of some sort in which in which they're able to to maintain it.

• 45:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, they don't have pockets, so they gotta wear it somewhere.

• 46:03Bob Novella?

  Could this be this orcas playing with their with their food again? I mean, you've seen the videos of of orcas like tossing seals like fly, you know, rag dolls up thirty, forty feet in the air and down. Could this just be them like, huh, look what I killed. I'm gonna keep it here for a while. Could that be this food play?

• 46:23Speaker 04

  I I mean, I suppose it could be. They're they're looking into it more, Bob. It just they don't. They don't seem to have, you know, there's a lot, not a lot of data on this particular behavior, obviously. You know, they saw it happen in nineteen eighty seven, and now it's twenty twenty four, and they're only seeing it again now. You know, observing it. So there's there's they are still really trying to figure it, figure it out. But yeah, it could be. It could be playfulness, I suppose. But again, you know, I I think perhaps Deborah Deborah Giles might be on on to something when she know she observes that the whales will tuck dead fish into other parts of their bodies as well. And this could just be one more.

• 47:05Speaker 02

  And they eventually eat it.

• 47:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, eventually they will eat it. Yeah.

• 47:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, whatever.

• 47:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:10Jay Novella?

  Bob, you know what it reminds me of?

• 47:12Speaker 04

  What?

• 47:13Jay Novella?

  Look how I take this dead rat and turn it into a delightful hat.

• 47:18Speaker 04

  Oh my God, is that Dr. Seuss?

• 47:20Jay Novella?

  That's the nightmare before Christmas.

• 47:22Speaker 04

  Oh, gosh.

• 47:24Speaker 02

  Do you guys remember one of the fir-, I think in the first year of our podcast, we talked about a story where dolphins were observed wearing sponges on their nose. And they do that so that they, when they forage for fish who are on the ground, they protect their nose from coral and rocks or whatever on the sea floor. Yeah, as they're foraging for fish. Again, cetacean, wearing other... This is using it more as a tool, not just carrying it with them to eat later. This is actually even more sophisticated than what the orcas are doing, arguably. But yeah, not unusual behavior for these types of creatures. They're very intelligent, obviously. All right, Bob. Bob, has there ever been water on the surface of Venus?

• 48:09Bob Novella?

  Ah, listen and find out. Earth's twin planet Venus is a hellish place now, but has it always been inhospitable? Some models say yes, some say no, but a new theory using clues from Venus's atmosphere points to a world that has always been evil and inhospitable. This is from researchers at the University of Cambridge. They published in the journal Nature Astronomy, a paper called "A Dry Venusian Interior Constrained by Atmospheric Chemistry." Okay, what does that mean? All right, so we know Venus is a nasty place, but it's so similar to Earth that it's often referred to as our twin or sister planet. And there's lots of good reasons for that.

• 48:48Speaker 04

  Same size.

• 48:48Bob Novella?

  Same size, like Venus is 95% of Earth's diameter, similar mass, similar density. The internal structures are similar as well. They both have a rocky mantle, surrounding in an iron core. They formed at roughly the same time in the history of the solar system, from similar materials in the inner solar system. They both have volcanic activity now and in the past. But Venus is many other things. It's ridiculously hot. Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system, until, of course, you know, at some point, Earth will beat that, those records, the way we're going. But it's hotter than Mercury at 477 C or 800.

• 49:28Bob Novella?

  60 Fahrenheit, it would melt lead on the surface of Venus.

• 49:32Speaker 04

  And the Soviets launched, right?

• 49:34Bob Novella?

  It's a Venira?

• 49:36Speaker 04

  Was that the one? It actually landed on the surface. But what, like, moments later?

• 49:42Speaker 02

  It survived for minutes, I think, yeah.

• 49:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 49:44Bob Novella?

  Yeah, you can get longer than minutes, but yeah, nothing, yeah. Anything we put land on there will not be lasting very long. I heard, I saw one figure of maybe hours, I'm not sure about that one. But yeah, you're not gonna have anything that's gonna last there.

• 49:58Speaker 02

  You said Venira 13 lasted for 127 minutes.

• 50:02Bob Novella?

  Yeah, okay.

• 50:03Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 50:03Bob Novella?

  So, yeah, two hours. But then it's not just the heat, it's the atmospheric pressure. The atmosphere is notoriously thick on Venus. So if Earth's atmospheric pressure at sea level is what, what's that called? One bar, right? That translates to 14.7 pounds per square inch. Venus is not one bar, but 92 bar. So at its surface, instead of 14.7 pounds per square inch, it's 1350 pounds per square inch.

• 50:30Speaker 04

  I crush your head.

• 50:31Bob Novella?

  It's like a small car on every square inch of your body. It's like, it's like going down a kilometer below the surface of the ocean. That's the kind of pressure we're talking about, on the surface of Venus. And it's also toxic, let's just throw that in there. The atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide and there's thick clouds of sulfuric acid that shroud the entire planet. The only saving grace is that the acid rain never even reaches the surface. But then again, it doesn't reach the surface because it evaporates from all the intense heat. It's so hot that it can't even get down to the surface, it just evaporates away. And even the winds are ridiculous, 100 meters per second at some altitudes. And that's 60 times the planet's speed of rotation, so, yeah.

• 51:11Speaker 04

  And there's no Starbucks, so.

• 51:12Bob Novella?

  Yeah, hellish is like the perfect word for Venus, it's nasty. So how could such initially similar twins diverge so dramatically? To answer this, scientists have used climate modeling to tell us what Venus was like when it was younger. So two models have been duking it out for a long time. One model contends that Venus was more temperate and earth-like in the past. Enough to even have liquid water on its surface and- Probably even shallow seas, they, these models, this specific model contends. But planet-wide volcanic activity eventually, after maybe even a couple of billion years, eventually spewed enough carbon dioxide to cause the famous runaway greenhouse effect

• 51:54Bob Novella?

  that made the planet hotter and hotter, eventually becoming what we see today. So that's one model. The other model describes a dry Venus scenario. In this one, Venus's distance is close enough to the sun that its initial magma ocean, you know, when a planet just formed and it's basically magma everywhere, it takes a long time to cool, far longer than the Earth, and that desiccates the planet. It removes most of the water, which was then never, never able to collect as liquid water on its surface. So those are, those are the two models. First author Theresa Konstantinou, PhD student at Cambridge Institute of Astronomy, said, "Both of those theories are based on climate models, but we want to take a different approach based on observations of Venus's current atmospheric chemistry."

• 52:39Bob Novella?

  So that's what their paper is about. And the, the goal was to study Venus's atmosphere, to see how it might interact with the planet's interior, what the, what the, that loop is like. So to do that, they looked at the chemicals in the atmosphere that were being destroyed. And a couple of those were carbon, carbon dioxide and water were two, right off the bat. So for Venus to have a stable atmosphere, it's going to have to replace the water and carbon that were, that were getting destroyed by various atmospheric processes. So those chemicals need to be replaced. So they looked at volcanic outgassing on Venus, because that's something that could replace some of these, these lost chemicals in the atmosphere. And they found, the critical finding here was that the volcanic gases on Venus were only 6% water.

• 53:22Bob Novella?

  And that was enough to replace what was in, what was being lost in the atmosphere, but only 6% water. When, now remember, when magma rises from the deep within a planet, it brings the chemicals and gases that are down there to the surface. So whatever, so whatever's outgassed is very indicative of what's down there. On Earth, volcanic gases are mostly steam, which is one way to show that, or to prove that, that the interior of the Earth is water-rich. If Venus is outgassing only 6% of the water, its interior is likely to be just as dry as the surface. They say in the paper, "Volcanic resupply to Venus's atmosphere therefore indicates that the planet has never been liquid water habitable." Habitable.

• 54:04Bob Novella?

  So if you were dozing there for the past few minutes, the TLDR, or perhaps TLDL, which too long didn't listen. This study shows that Venus was likely close enough to the Sun that in its early epoch that had magma oceans, took a long time to end, giving it a lot of time to lose its water, meaning that it never had a temperate Earth-like history, and it probably never had water on its surface. Now luckily, the Earth was farther from the Sun, causing our magma ocean to solidify on the surface earlier than Venus did, and that cap held in all the water that we had at that time. And that might be the key difference between Earth and Venus, right there. And it was the distance. We knew that Venus was on the edge of habitability, right?

• 54:49Bob Novella?

  We're not sure if it was it over that line or not. And this is one bit of evidence showing that, yeah, Venus is a little bit out of the habitable zone, primarily because the magma ocean is going to just last too long, and all the water's going to go away, basically. Now confirming this, though, to a higher degree of certainty, is going to require waiting for future orbiters and even landers. And there's one actually planned for the end of this decade? Da Vinci? Hadn't heard about that. So the Da Vinci mission will have orbiters and lander. I'll see how long that one lasts, and we'll maybe even be able to confirm some of these theories that these people are saying. So a reasonable takeaway now from this is that when we look for exoplanets that may

• 55:32Bob Novella?

  have had or have life, we should not look at Venus-like planets. We should narrow our focus, these scientists contend, we should narrow our focus to exoplanets that are more similar to Earth, if that's what, if your interest is looking for worlds, exoplanets that have life. I'll finish with a quote here from the paper. "We would have loved to have find that Venus was once a planet much closer to our own, so it's kind of sad in a way to find out that it wasn't." Similarly, it's more useful to focus the search on planets that are most likely to be able to support life, at least life as we know it, which I love when scientists throw that there at the end. Life as we know it, yes, we've got one data point. So that's really a good way to say that. So interesting stuff.

• 56:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, Venus is very interesting. And the idea that there may be life in the upper atmosphere isn't faring so well.

• 56:21Bob Novella?

  You haven't heard too much good stuff about that either.

• 56:25Bob Novella?

  But if it is, if it is up there, it's not relying, it's not relying on water.

• 56:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, probably.

• 56:29Bob Novella?

  But, uh, yeah.

• 56:30Speaker 02

  All right. Thanks, Bob. All right, Jay, it's who's that noisy time?

• 56:34Jay Novella?

  Okay, guys, last week I played this noisy.

• 56:44Jay Novella?

  You guys have any guesses?

• 56:46Bob Novella?

  Cetacean.

• 56:47Jay Novella?

  Okay, well, we got,

• 56:50Jay Novella?

  I'll say right out of the gate, a ton of listeners knew exactly what this was. So a listener named Joe

• 56:55Speaker 02

  Bag of Donuts?

• 56:56Jay Novella?

  Lenardria.

• 56:58Bob Novella?

  Bananas.

• 56:59Jay Novella?

  It's as if this guy's last name was created just so I couldn't pronounce it. He said, this week's noisy immediately brought to mind images of crested dinosaurs waiting around in some prehistoric swamp. So I'm going to guess this sound was from a computer's reproduction of what a parasoloph-

• 57:18Cara Santa Maria?

  Parasolophus.

• 57:19Jay Novella?

  Parasolophus.

• 57:21Cara Santa Maria?

  Parasolophus.

• 57:22Jay Novella?

  It's like, you know, you get to like the second, as soon as I hit the second

• 57:26Bob Novella?

  Syllable.

• 57:27Jay Novella?

  Syllable, it just, like, my brain just goes, ha, ha, you know? All right, so the dinosaur or related species would have sounded like based on a 3D model of fossilized skull. Parasolophus, I got it. Okay. Thank you, Kara.

• 57:41Cara Santa Maria?

  Yep.

• 57:42Jay Novella?

  I wish I just had you in my head where I could just hear you say it, then I could say it. Listener named Amanda Lee wrote in and said, hi, Jay, I am absolutely convinced that this week's noisy is a cetacean, but which one? My guess is a toothed whale, maybe an orca. Okay, so that is not correct, but we did mention orcas in this show, so I give you two points. Leah Zitch said, "Hey all, new listener here. I found you a few weeks ago, but have gone back into the archives and have listened to hours and hours of the show. I truly enjoy every episode. I'm excited that I think I finally know what this noise is. I'm quite confident that it's a zebra." She goes on, "If you ever take Nauticon internationally, I'll be the first in line for tickets. I'm in Italy."

• 58:24Jay Novella?

  That's awesome, and I would love to have it in Italy, and you should contact me to let me know if you think that there are enough English-speaking skeptics out there that actually would come to the conference. You can email us at [email protected]. I appreciate it. And send me some good meatballs. Okay, moving on to a listener named Aiden. He goes, "Jay!" Yes, he wrote my name with a crazy number of As in it. "That sounded like a deer, probably a reindeer, considering the holiday season." Not a bad guess at all, but not correct. Let's get right to the answer here. Crystal Haka was the first one to answer correctly, and we also had another correct guess by Shane Hillier. These two people basically guessed within seconds of each

• 59:06Jay Novella?

  other, which I think is always funny. But Crystal writes, "Hey, this week's noisy definitely sounds like a bull elk in rut, maybe two about to fight, right? So, you know, this is a elk that it's called bleeding, right? And when they're in rut, it's like mating season, basically, and they're trying to find each other, they're trying to fight each other, they're looking for alcohol. It gets really messy out there."

• 59:30Cara Santa Maria?

  I kept thinking you were gonna say something different.

• 59:33Jay Novella?

  Yeah. But the bottom line is, that is an elk. Lots of listeners apparently lived near elk, or knew someone that had elk, or had some type of interaction with an elk and their vehicle. That's all I'm gonna say. So, thank you all for writing in. I really enjoyed your guesses this week, and I'm gonna move right in to next week's noisy. Guys, this noisy was sent in by a listener named Bobby Duke.

• 1:00:07Jay Novella?

  Now, lots of people might have some initial guesses, but a really good guess would be that that's the noise Bob makes when he's putting away his Halloween decorations, right, Bob?

• 1:00:16Bob Novella?

  Yeah, some sobbing in between those cries and yes.

• 1:00:20Jay Novella?

  All right, so guys, if you think you know what this week's noise is, or you heard something cool, you can email us at [email protected]. Steve, hold on a second.

• 1:00:31Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:00:31Jay Novella?

  All right, so first of all, it's the end of the year, right?

• 1:00:35Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:00:36Jay Novella?

  It's Christmas time.

• 1:00:37Speaker 02

  What with Christmas coming at all?

• 1:00:38Jay Novella?

  If you guys know someone that listens to the show, you know, a sibling, a parent, a friend.

• 1:00:45Speaker 02

  A neighbor.

• 1:00:46Jay Novella?

  A neighbor, maybe. You could gift them an SGU patron membership. It's very easy to do. So just go to patreon.com/skepticsguide and you will see that there is an option to gift someone a membership to the SGU. That'd be a great way to give someone a nice gift and also support your favorite podcast. We would really appreciate it. Or you could become a patron on your own.

• 1:01:10Speaker 02

  You could also buy either The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe or The Skeptic's Guide to the Future books. We have two books out there. They make great gifts. If you're giving somebody a gift membership in Patreon membership, you could represent that with a physical item in one or both of those books. And if you bring them to a live event, we will sign them for you.

• 1:01:30Jay Novella?

  Yes. And I'll sign your forehead. Whatever you want, we'll do it. So anyway, you could join our mailing list. You can go to theskepticsguide.org and become a mailing list member, which basically means that every week we will send you an email that has all the details about everything that we've done the previous week. Also, if you find a way to give our show a rating, we encourage you to do it because that helps new people find our podcast. As you hear this show, it'll be the 7th on Saturday, we will be doing two live shows. So it's probably too late to buy tickets, but if there's some reason where it isn't, you could buy tickets to our private show and the extravaganza, which is at night. You can go to theskepticsguide.org

• 1:02:11Jay Novella?

  and buy tickets there. And the big one, which I'm putting a lot of time To is Not a Con 2025.

• 1:02:18Speaker 02

  Oh, baby.

• 1:02:19Jay Novella?

  This is going to be the weekend of May 15th. And, uh, you know, you've heard me talk about this. It's a wonderful conference, tons of socializing. If you come there and you want to make friends, you will make friends. There's an extraordinary group of people that are, you know, the core patrons of the SGU that are going to attend and they're, they're awesome. And there's a lot of fun to be had. Brian Wecht, Andrea Jones Roy, George Robb, and the entire SGU will be there, providing entertainment, uh, for, for the two days, 2.2 days. Like I said, Kara, and that's a good way to support the SGU. So please go to notaconcon.com or you can go to the skepticsguy.org and you could find all the information that you need.

• 1:03:03Speaker 02

  Thank you, Jay. Well, everyone, we're going to take a quick break from our show to talk about one of our sponsors this week, Mint Mobile.

• 1:03:09Jay Novella?

  With Mint Mobile, there's no hoops and there's no BS. It's $15 a month with the purchase of a three month plan. It really is that easy to get wireless for $15 a month. The longest part of this process is the time that you'll spend breaking up with your old provider.

• 1:03:24Speaker 04

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• 1:03:43Bob Novella?

  To get this new customer offer and your new three month premium wireless plan for just $15 a month, go to mintmobile.com slash SGU. That's mintmobile.com slash SGU. Cut your wireless bill to $15 a month at mintmobile.com slash SGU. $45 upfront payment required, equivalent to $15 a month. New customers on first three month plan only. Speeds slower than 40 GB on unlimited plan. Additional taxes, fees and restrictions apply. See Mint Mobile for details.

• 1:04:08Speaker 02

  All right, guys, let's get back to the show. Got a couple of emails, couple of interesting corrections for this week. First one comes from Doug Herr, who writes, "Has Steve realized that the fisher, not fisher cat, no such thing, does not scream? I hope to find that Steve has realized that all of the fisher screaming recordings are actually recordings of foxes, as evidenced, see the link in the Wikipedia reference." And he gives a link to that. "It shows how the person running that site realized that all the content on that site was people hearing and not seeing. It also shows that an expert with the animal has never heard much more than a hiss. It is time to be skeptical."

• 1:04:46Speaker 04

  Ooh.

• 1:04:47Speaker 02

  "I appreciate the correction, Doug, but you don't have to be so hurtful about it."

• 1:04:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:04:53Speaker 02

  So, yes, I did as much as, with the time that I had, I tried to find a video of a fisher, or fisher cat, which is the common name, and apparently, fisher cat is a particularly regional name of New England. So by disrespecting that, you are disrespecting my culture and my family.

• 1:05:14Speaker 04

  We will accept apologies.

• 1:05:17Speaker 02

  We call them fisher cats in this family. Now, so fisher is the, is the technical name. It is, however, they do have many common names, one of which is fisher cat. But if enough people use it, it becomes at least a common name. The name fisher, by the way, is, well, it's not a cat. It's also not a fisher. Doesn't eat fish, doesn't fish. That's a misnomer, too. It probably derives from the fact that, you know, Americans settlers thought that it looked like a European polecat, and in French, that's like fichette, or whatever. It's so like, they got, it got bastardized to fisher.

• 1:05:53Speaker 04

  Oh, we're good at doing that.

• 1:05:54Speaker 02

  Not sure why it became fisher cat, but it does kinda look like a cat, so it's easy to say, well, some people thought it looked like a cat, so they call it a fisher cat, whatever. It is a member of the weasel family. Yep, they're actually kinda cute. They're, they're pretty good predators. And we, when we talked about the, the scream, you know, on the show, I, you know, I mentioned the fact that, you know, somebody from Europe said, "No, that's a, that's a fox." Like, well, yeah, they, foxes have that same scream, and there's actually lots of websites that have like, how to tell the difference between a fisher scream and a red fox scream. But now he's saying that it's all foxes, like, there's no fisher scream. And he, I think that may be correct. I have not been able to find a video of a fisher screaming.

• 1:06:38Speaker 02

  You could, there's plenty of videos of fishers, but they're not screaming. And there's, there's video of, like, screaming coming from the woods, but you're not seeing the animal that's making that noise. I have not been able to find any actual video of a fisher screaming. So it's possible that it doesn't, in fact, happen. And, and just from my reading, what experts say is, like, they probably don't. They, they mainly grunt and hiss. They're predators and they're pretty quiet creatures. But under stress, under, like, distress, they, under rare circumstances, they may scream. They can't rule that out. But we don't really have, it turns out, it's not well documented.

• 1:07:20Speaker 02

  A lot of people assume that they do, but, um, there's this, you know, certainly a widespread belief that they do, but there's no, it turns out, there's no hard evidence. I'll keep looking. We could crowdsource this as well. I don't know if there's any actual documented cases of a fisher screaming. I could not find any, and it seems like the consensus is they probably don't, which is interesting. All right, next email comes from Ron, who writes, "Hello, fellow skeptics and fellow Connecticut residents. There has been some buzz lately over the sighting of a UFO by a police officer in Connecticut. He even filmed some of it on his cellphone. You can Google it or go to the link in the news station. I would love to see Steve comment on the story. I think it's worth examining some of the logic in the story. At any rate, I'm a huge fan of the SGU. Keep up the good work."

• 1:08:05Speaker 02

  And then he provides a link. So, yes. Ah, as Bob says. So this was a, yeah, this is in Fairfield County, like, where we live, and there was a police officer- Officer who, Robert Klein, who had, it was, the story goes, right, the story that he tells us, it was like two in the morning, three in the morning.

• 1:08:23Speaker 04

  Oh, it's.

• 1:08:24Speaker 02

  He's pulling an overnight shift, he's riding on a lonely country road with nobody around. And then suddenly, he's blinded by this bright light shining into his cabin.

• 1:08:34Speaker 04

  Oh, my gosh.

• 1:08:35Speaker 02

  Of his, you know, of his police car, and, you know, to the point where like he couldn't really see. And then he describes this like glowing orange red orb that was beaming the light. And then it flew across the lake, and then you could see it sort of moving in the distance. And then he sort of overcame the shock of the whole situation, took out his phone and, and then taped, you know, filmed on his phone, the UFO in more, now more in the distance. That's the story, right? I, I, I know, I know you guys have all had an opportunity to see the, the news reports and the videos. So of course, the local news does a total un-skeptical hatchet job of reporting this, because they're interested only in the sensation.

• 1:09:18Speaker 02

  And they pull, they pull for an expert, this guy Ross Colthart, who is an investigative journalist, but he's a UFO nut, right? The bottom line is, he's not really an expert in anything. He's just a true believer. And this guy goes, he proceeds to make every un-skeptical, uncritical trope, you know, pro-UFO trope in this, in his, you know, interview on the topic. It's just embarrassing.

• 1:09:47Bob Novella?

  His, his attitude towards skeptics was galling. I mean, I, I just wanted to eviscerate all the straw men that he was throwing up. He actually said, describing skeptics, he says that, describing us as experiencing denialism in the face of overwhelming evidence. Sure, that's what skeptics are all about, right? And then, but then later, like a minute later or two, he says, it's important to be skeptical. Like dude, make up your mind, right? What are you talking about?

• 1:10:12Speaker 02

  It's faux skepticism.

• 1:10:14Bob Novella?

  I just got so mad, so mad at him, oh.

• 1:10:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, then he's emphasizing, this guy's a 25-year veteran, he's like, you know, a straight shooter. Yeah, so what? That is irrelevant, that's the credible witness kind of. It doesn't change the fact that it was late, early in the morning, he's by himself. The guy could have been half asleep as far as we know.

• 1:10:33Speaker 04

  The witching hour, 3 a.m., that's when most people see the stuff.

• 1:10:36Bob Novella?

  They made a point, he made a point of saying it was, it was early in his overnight shift.

• 1:10:40Speaker 02

  So?

• 1:10:41Bob Novella?

  So he wasn't up, meaning he wasn't up.

• 1:10:43Speaker 02

  But we, but we don't know what his state of mind was, even.

• 1:10:46Bob Novella?

  True.

• 1:10:46Speaker 02

  Was he, shift, shift workers are sleep deprived, period. And, and so whatever, but we, we, I don't know, I don't have any firsthand knowledge of what his actual state was, but it certainly is plausible. But even without that, even if he was wide awake, it, it doesn't matter because that he's, he's assuming that, that he, you know, he can't, that he's not subject to optical perceptual illusions, right? Like, it doesn't matter how long you've been a police officer, you have the same susceptibility to visual illusions as everybody else.

• 1:11:16Bob Novella?

  If you're human, you're susceptible.

• 1:11:17Speaker 02

  Absolutely. So what's the simplest explanation for the evidence we have? We basically have two things. We have his story and we have the video, right?

• 1:11:27Bob Novella?

  I didn't, I didn't see his video, though.

• 1:11:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:29Bob Novella?

  I just saw the recreation.

• 1:11:30Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, the, the, the news did a recreation, which is utterly worthless. It's worth the cost.

• 1:11:35Speaker 04

  Oh, gosh, it was, it was right out of Hollywood script.

• 1:11:38Speaker 02

  I know, it's like, what is it, it's worthless, what are you making, yeah, you're making a digital.

• 1:11:41Speaker 04

  What is this, Fire in the Sky, the movie?

• 1:11:43Speaker 02

  It's terrible. Well, no, if you keep watching, Bob, you keep watching the news report, they then start to show his actual video.

• 1:11:49Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:11:50Speaker 02

  And you know what it shows?

• 1:11:51Speaker 04

  An airplane?

• 1:11:52Speaker 02

  A light in the distance, I guarantee you it's a drone.

• 1:11:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, or something.

• 1:11:56Speaker 02

  It's just a normal light, not moving in any way that's unusual, it's just, it's, I mean, completely and easily explained by, it was a drone.

• 1:12:06Bob Novella?

  I'm looking at it now.

• 1:12:08Jay Novella?

  That is, that is so, I mean, think about how, how he exaggerated that story then.

• 1:12:13Speaker 02

  And he said, Jay, I can guarantee you it wasn't a drone. Can you really? Can you really guarantee? The only hard evidence we have is 100% consistent with a drone. And then he's saying, first of all, he could have, he could have underestimated how close it was, right? He thought it was moving very fast when actually it was just super, super close. You know, a drone with a light, if somebody was buzzing him with the drone because he was on the side of the road or whatever, that, and then he's interpreting the halo of light around, you know what I mean? Like, you see, if you, it's at night and your, your eyes are dark adapted, and then there's a bright light, you can see, and you could see it on the video, this sort of glow around the light source, then he's interpreting that as the thing itself,

• 1:12:57Speaker 02

  not just a visual, you know, aura around a bright light source. So, yeah, he just got surprised by that. He misinterpreted what he saw. He thought something was moving fast because it was probably closer than he thought, and then it flew off into the distance. He gets out his phone and he, and he videotapes a freaking drone. So, this is, again, it's a nothing burger. It's much ado about nothing. Again, the hard evidence is nothing. It's just, nothing out of the ordinary at all.

• 1:13:23Bob Novella?

  And, and even if, I mean, my first thought, I'm looking at the video now, like, yeah, that clearly could be a drone for sure. It's much, I'll say, I'll say this, it's much more likely than an alien, an extraterrestrial craft.

• 1:13:35Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:13:36Bob Novella?

  Or, but you know, you know what else would be more plausible than that? How about ball lightning? That's, that's basically a thing at this point. Um, right? I mean, that could have, could have potentially have been ball lightning.

• 1:13:45Speaker 02

  This video, it's a drone. I mean, come on.

• 1:13:46Bob Novella?

  Yeah. Looking at the video, I would definitely say it's a drone.

• 1:13:49Speaker 02

  But Bob, you're denying this overwhelming evidence.

• 1:13:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, Bob.

• 1:13:53Bob Novella?

  Yeah. Yeah. That's what I am. Yeah. That's what I am. I'm a skeptical den, I'm a denier.

• 1:13:57Speaker 04

  Denier.

• 1:13:59Bob Novella?

  Yeah. The evidence is overwhelming, overwhelming. Gotta be a UFO, gotta be an alien craft.

• 1:14:03Speaker 04

  May I add another layer to this, please? The sighting took, so two things. The sighting took place in 2022.

• 1:14:10Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:14:11Speaker 04

  And the police officer only came out recently and talked about it for the first time. So, there's a three-year gap here, folks.

• 1:14:17Speaker 02

  Two years.

• 1:14:18Speaker 04

  Right? Of time, a three and a half year, I'm sorry, two and a half year gap of time. So, you have to take that into consideration as well. I went back and I looked up some news items back in April of 2022, when this supposed incident took place in Connecticut. Let's see, what do we have here? Oh, Patch, Connecticut. Hmm. The Lyrid meteor shower of 2022 in April, the first of the spring meteor showers, producing about 15 to 20 shooting stars an hour, seeing, uh, appearing as fireballs in the night sky.

• 1:14:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, but this is not that.

• 1:14:52Speaker 04

  I will, I will propose, I will propose that there are perhaps two separate incidents here. Perhaps because because he describes it as changing color. And if you've seen these things fall from the sky, and I've seen them before, they do change color. Right? They'll start, you know, as a hot white, it'll go to green and then, you know, some shade of red or something. So they will tend to change. And they do light up like a flare in the sky, which is kind of what he was describing. I would say by the time he finally oriented himself, got out of his car, he focused on something else entirely. The drone or whatever it was over across the distance of the lake. I think he might be conflating two separate incidents.

• 1:15:33Speaker 02

  That's possible.

• 1:15:34Speaker 04

  Possibly, possibly. Just saying, you know, a little research online and give, you know, if you look up what was happening locally at the time. This is right here and, you know, these meteor showers can can produce those.

• 1:15:48Speaker 02

  The thing is.

• 1:15:49Speaker 04

  Those part, those effects.

• 1:15:50Speaker 02

  I don't care what the guy's testimony is. It's irrelevant. It doesn't matter. We have hard evidence. The hard evidence is completely unimpressive. It's a light in the distance consistent with probably again, the this, this day and age, probably a drone. The other thing that that Coldheart goes on and on about is how much the sightings are increasing recently. Gee, I wonder why that is. Why would there be an increase in sightings of drone like objects in the last few years? What could possibly be the explanation for that?

• 1:16:23Speaker 04

  I can't imagine. Drone like you say? I don't know.

• 1:16:27Speaker 02

  Unbelievable. All right. Terrible reporting, lack of skepticism. Let's go on with science or fiction?

• 1:16:38Speaker 01

  It's time for science or fiction?

• 1:16:48Speaker 02

  Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake. And then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. We have a theme this week. So these are just three facts that have to do with surprising statistics.

• 1:17:03Speaker 04

  Surprise.

• 1:17:04Speaker 02

  Here we go. Item number one, koalas are the sleepiest animals, sleeping for 20 to 22 hours per day. Item number two, about 10% of people have an atypical number of pre sacral spinal vertebra.

• 1:17:21Speaker 02

  And item number three of the human remains found at Machu Picchu, 80% are female. Jay, go first.

• 1:17:29Jay Novella?

  All right, the first one here, koalas are the sleepiest animals. I mean, I agree with that. They have a hell of a life, those animals. Yeah, I think that that one is science. The second one here, it says about 10% of people have an atypical number of pre-

• 1:17:45Speaker 02

  Sacral.

• 1:17:46Speaker 04

  Sacral.

• 1:17:46Jay Novella?

  Sacral. Sacral?

• 1:17:48Speaker 02

  So, the spine, I'll tell you, the spine, there's the cervical, thoracic, lumbar, and sacral spine. So, not including the sacrum, that's basically your tailbone, right? For the cervical, thoracic, and lumbar part of the spine, 10% of people have an atypical number of vertebra.

• 1:18:05Jay Novella?

  Oh, wow. And then the last one here of the human remains found at Machu Picchu, 80% are female. Okay, so this is what I think about that. They did an awful lot of sacrificing, and I could come up with a reason why they mostly sacrificed women. I just don't know enough about their culture to know if that was what they did. You know, and then the second one, you said, you know, it's 10% of people have this atypical number. That is a low, relatively low percentage number, you know? It's like, okay, so 10% of the people have like-

• 1:18:37Speaker 02

  They either have extra vertebra or they have too few vertebra.

• 1:18:40Jay Novella?

  Okay. You know, I think I'm gonna go with that one is the fake, because I don't know. Something is rubbing me the wrong way about people's spines having not the same number. You don't have the same number of bones as everybody else. I don't think so.

• 1:18:54Speaker 02

  Okay, Evan?

• 1:18:55Speaker 04

  Koalas, the sleepiest animals, sleeping for 20 to 22 hours per day. Oh, those eucalyptus leaves will do that to you, won't they? Yes. Uh, this could perhaps have been something we learned about on our first trip to Australia. And I seem to recall this being in sync with that excursion we did to the, what was it? The Sydney Zoo, I believe, right? Um, so I think that one's right. And then the second one about 10% of people having an atypical number of pre-sacral spinal vertebra. Well, yeah, I have no, I have no idea. Never, you know, was invited to anywhere to talk about

• 1:19:36Speaker 04

  this by any experts. So I don't know. 10% of people, I guess that could be variations in other, I wonder if there are other parts of the anatomy that also have these types of atypical numbers, right? Or, you know, other measurements that also equal that. The last one about Machu Picchu, 80% are female. So this one, I think of the three is the one that I think I'm going to say is the fiction. They would, uh, gosh, unfortunately, I can only go based on kind of what I've seen on

• 1:20:14Speaker 04

  television shows and movies and things. And who knows what that's all about. And it's, I have no rec, I've seen those scenes in which they did sacrif, have done sacrifices of people. They all seem to be male characters. That doesn't necessarily mean anything in the, in the real world. But they, they, they were way skewed toward, I never, I don't think I ever saw a woman be sacrificed in any of those movies. So, and 80% allows for a lot more range, I think. As far as all these options go. So I'll, I'll put my nickel down there and say the Machu Picchu one is the fiction.

• 1:20:53Speaker 02

  Okay, Kara.

• 1:20:54Cara Santa Maria?

  Okay, so, hmm, koalas are sleepy. This I know. I don't know if they're the sleepiest. I know that we have a koala, you guys remember the story at the LA Zoo, who didn't like to go up in the trees at night. And one time a keeper let, let it stay out and it slept on the ground. And our resident puma, who has since died, P22, snuck into the zoo and ate it.

• 1:21:19Cara Santa Maria?

  That's what they get for sleeping so much. I have no idea if they're the sleepiest, but yes, I think they're well known to be quite sleepy. I don't think the eucalyptus like is like a drug. I think it just doesn't provide a whole lot of energy. 10% of people have an atypical number of pre sacral spinal vertebra. I mean, I feel like if you took 10%, if you took a population of people.

• 1:21:39Cara Santa Maria?

  10% of them would have something anomalous everywhere.

• 1:21:42Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:21:42Cara Santa Maria?

  You know what I mean?

• 1:21:43Speaker 04

  That was my thought.

• 1:21:44Cara Santa Maria?

  Like, maybe not something big like polydactily, that might not be 10%. But I bet you if you looked at like 100 hearts, 10% of them would have like a weird little, like it would be bending in a different direction or like there'd be a weird little extra something here. Like, who knows? But that doesn't seem unreasonable, 10%. I don't know why both of you think that this human remains found in Machu Picchu are like sacrificial remains. That feels like a leap to me. Wasn't Machu Picchu just a city?

• 1:22:13Speaker 04

  Saw it in a movie once.

• 1:22:13Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I feel like, wasn't this just a city? And people died in cities and then they got buried.

• 1:22:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, but getting beheaded by the priests.

• 1:22:21Cara Santa Maria?

  I don't know. I think there were just, there were just dead people at this ancient Inca city. So I don't know why that would be 80% female.

• 1:22:31Speaker 04

  Right, why would that?

• 1:22:32Cara Santa Maria?

  Unless the city was 80% female.

• 1:22:33Speaker 04

  It should be more like 50, maybe 55% or something.

• 1:22:36Cara Santa Maria?

  That's what I'm thinking. Yeah, I'm thinking maybe that one's not, not science, just because it should be half. So I'm gonna put my, I'm gonna lightly put my nickel on that.

• 1:22:45Speaker 02

  Woo, two nickels. Okay, and Bob?

• 1:22:47Bob Novella?

  Um, all right, so koalas, yeah, that makes sense. I've, I've heard as well that they're very sleepy and then part of me is thinking Steve knows, he remembers that day when we, we all learned that and he, now they found out that they're not and he's gonna.

• 1:23:00Speaker 04

  Oh, if, if, if that turns out to be the case.

• 1:23:03Cara Santa Maria?

  Bob, you can't do it.

• 1:23:04Speaker 04

  I will, I will not be a happy camper.

• 1:23:06Bob Novella?

  It's a distinct possibility.

• 1:23:09Speaker 04

  Don't even.

• 1:23:09Bob Novella?

  Let's see, the, the variation in the, in the vertebra, it seems a little high, but I can see that. I mean, we, we got some, there's some crazy variations out there, even with, even with like types of muscles. Some people have like an extra muscle in their forearm that like most people don't have. It's crazy stuff. So variation like that, I can kind of see. But the, uh, the remains found in Machu Picchu, I really, I don't know anything about Machu Picchu at all, hardly. And just mainly based on that, the other ones I'm more familiar with, I'll just say that one is, is fiction.

• 1:23:39Speaker 02

  All right. So you guys all agree on the first one? So we'll start there. Koalas are the sleepiest animals, sleeping for 20 to 22 hours per day. You guys all think this one is science?

• 1:23:51Speaker 04

  Better be science.

• 1:23:51Speaker 02

  And this one is science. This is science.

• 1:23:56Bob Novella?

  Yeah, we would have killed you.

• 1:23:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. They are, there are other, you know, almost as sleepy animals, but yeah, the koala is still considered to be the most sleepiest of the animals.

• 1:24:06Bob Novella?

  Most sleepy.

• 1:24:07Speaker 02

  And yeah, 20, they're just sleeping 22 hours a day. And yeah, Kara, I think you're right. I think it's just because they don't get a lot of energy out of those eucalyptus leaves, so they get.

• 1:24:14Bob Novella?

  Oh yeah, they're bereft of nutrition.

• 1:24:16Cara Santa Maria?

  They're just like hypoglycemic all the time.

• 1:24:20Speaker 02

  Well, sleeping is an adaptation to, you know, energy efficiency, right? You don't want to expend any more energy than you absolutely have to. All right, I guess we'll take these in order. About 10% of people have an atypical number of pre sacral spinal vertebra. Jay, you think this one is the fiction. Everyone else thinks this one is science. And this one, the question is, is it 1%? Is it 20%?

• 1:24:45Cara Santa Maria?

  5%.

• 1:24:46Speaker 02

  Is it 0.1%?

• 1:24:48Bob Novella?

  90%.

• 1:24:49Speaker 02

  This one is science. This is science. Now, that number is, uh, there are different estimates, right? Depending on the method that is used, but the best studies, ones where they do like total spine MRI scan. So you could count every single vertebra, comes in at around 10%. Which is actually kind of high, but you're, I mean, Kara, you're right. There's the, what we learn of as normal anatomy is, is like 80, 90%.

• 1:25:18Bob Novella?

  It's a guideline.

• 1:25:19Speaker 02

  It's, yeah, that's, it's sure, like maybe sometimes it's 60%, sometimes it's 90%. Sometimes it's higher, sometimes like depending on how absolutely critical it is. The cervical vertebra are pretty much, are very rare, you know, to have an abnormal number of neck vertebra. But the thoracic and lumbar are not, are, are pretty common. You know, adding up to about 10%. People have like six lumbar vertebra or five lumbar vertebra. Or they have 11 or 13 thoracic vertebra. Interestingly, this can result in surgeons operating on the wrong vertebra.

• 1:25:56Speaker 04

  Oh crap. You better count them all.

• 1:25:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, and in fact, they think that abnormal vertebral numbers are responsible for forty percent of the times when that happens.

• 1:26:06Speaker 04

  Holy moly.

• 1:26:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, like almost half.

• 1:26:08Cara Santa Maria?

  Don't they take a full, don't they do a full x-ray before?

• 1:26:11Speaker 02

  Well, they just, they x-ray, they might do a thoracic MRI scan and say, oh yeah, that's the vertebra that we need to go for.

• 1:26:17Cara Santa Maria?

  No, do the whole back.

• 1:26:18Speaker 02

  Well, that's, that's, the paper that I was reading is basically saying, yes, we should do that because people are underestimating how frequent this is. And it actually can affect trying to figure out which level is causing like the pinched nerve, like, yeah, well, you have an L2 pinched nerve and you count out the L2 vertebra, but it's like, no, but it's actually the L1 because there's an, there's, you know, an extra vertebra in there, whatever. It, you, uh, it can cause the surgeons to make a mistake. So we have to consider variability in anatomy. It's more common than we think. Uh, doing like nerve conduction studies for the last twenty years, this is, comes up a lot there too.

• 1:26:58Speaker 02

  Like, you see the, the diagram of the nerve innervation, both like of the skin and then the muscles and everything, it's like, yeah, that's like, yeah, it's sixty percent, seventy, eighty, ninety percent of the time, but depending on, you know, what nerve you're looking at, and especially the farther you get downstream, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, everyone has an aorta, but the smaller you get, the more variability there is. And people have a lot of variability in their, like, the nerve endings, even when you get to second, third degree, you know, branchings. So, yeah, a lot of variability. Okay, that means that of the human remains found in Machu Picchu, eighty percent are female, is the fiction. However, I didn't make this up, this, there was a study which showed that this was the case.

• 1:27:40Speaker 02

  An archaeologist surveying the, uh, the, the bones found, that was their estimate, the eighty percent of the remains that they found in Machu Picchu were female. But a later reexamination found out, no, they're fifty-fifty.

• 1:27:56Cara Santa Maria?

  Why did they think that so many were female?

• 1:27:58Speaker 02

  I think they were using pelvic examination and then they later did DNA analysis.

• 1:28:03Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, but I wonder why. Oh, well, weren't they very, very small people?

• 1:28:07Speaker 02

  Well, they're smaller than modern, modern humans, but they-

• 1:28:11Cara Santa Maria?

  But even modern-

• 1:28:11Speaker 02

  But you can, either it was a sampling error, or they just didn't, you know, if you're just going by the, how the pelvis looks, they maybe weren't, didn't do a good job. Or there was, you know, again, some kind of sampling issue with it, in terms of what they were looking for. But a more thorough later analysis found that it was basically 50/50. Now, what was Machu Picchu used for, right? This has come up. So Machu Picchu is like the crown jewel of the Incan empire in terms of our, the lost city of the Incas. It is considered to be, you know, it's the most famous remains of an Incan city. It's beautiful. And if you guys, I've never been there, but I've seen pictures of it. Oh, yeah, the pictures are just- It's amazing. And we're not really sure-

• 1:28:51Cara Santa Maria?

  It looks like a face. Like the mountain looks like a face on its side.

• 1:28:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:28:54Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah. But you know, like, modern Peruvians are the shortest people in the world.

• 1:28:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:00Cara Santa Maria?

  So that's interesting. Like, I was just looking it up. An average Peruvian woman is five feet, and an average Peruvian man is five feet four.

• 1:29:09Speaker 02

  Wow, that is short.

• 1:29:10Cara Santa Maria?

  So it might be hard, just based on-

• 1:29:13Speaker 02

  It might be hard if they're more petite, you know?

• 1:29:14Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, to tell the difference of ancient remains, if you're only looking at the, you know, the way they look.

• 1:29:21Speaker 02

  So there were human sacrifices in the area. There are temples at Machu Picchu, so it does have some religious significance, but they're not exactly sure. It probably wasn't just a regular city. They think it might have been like the royal city, or just like where the, you know, the rich people lived. Or it could have been mostly of religious significance. It wasn't just a place to sacrifice people. You know, again, that wasn't the main thing that was happening.

• 1:29:48Cara Santa Maria?

  It was like a whole city.

• 1:29:49Speaker 02

  It was a city, yeah. But there were, they said nearby, like, there was, you know, places where they did human sacrifices. But that wasn't, yeah, but Kara is right, that's not the bodies they were, then they were not just looking at the bodies of sacrificed individuals, it's the people in the city.

• 1:30:05Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, they didn't just throw all the people into it like somewhere else.

• 1:30:09Speaker 02

  Well, there are, there are sites though Kara, there are sites where there are just pits of sacrificed people.

• 1:30:15Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I'm not surprised.

• 1:30:17Speaker 02

  This is not one of them though, but that, oh yes. And then they're all like, have cap caved in skulls and stuff like, like signs of extreme trauma.

• 1:30:27Speaker 04

  Oh gosh, nasty what happened.

• 1:30:28Cara Santa Maria?

  Yikes. People are gross.

• 1:30:31Speaker 02

  Brutal. All right, well, good job, guys.

• 1:30:33Jay Novella?

  You got it.

• 1:30:34Speaker 02

  Evan, give us a quote.

• 1:30:37Speaker 04

  This week's quote was suggested by listener Pat from Michigan. Thank you, Pat. If an outsider perceives something wrong with a core scientific model, the humble and justified response of that curious outsider should be to ask, what mistake am I making? Before assuming 100% of the experts are wrong.

• 1:30:57Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:58Speaker 04

  David Brin.

• 1:31:00Speaker 02

  Great author.

• 1:31:01Speaker 04

  Brin, oh my gosh.

• 1:31:03Speaker 02

  The Uplift Wars, yeah, very good.

• 1:31:05Bob Novella?

  Yes, I still remember, it's been like, what, 30 years, do you even still remember those stories?

• 1:31:09Speaker 02

  Great, great series, great science fiction series, yeah. Yeah, really, the first science fiction series I read with actually alien aliens, you know what I mean? Not just humanoid aliens, but...

• 1:31:19Speaker 04

  Right, not Star Trek.

• 1:31:20Speaker 02

  Completely alien aliens.

• 1:31:21Speaker 04

  Humanoids, right?

• 1:31:22Speaker 02

  Very good. All right, thanks Evan.

• 1:31:25Speaker 04

  Thanks.

• 1:31:26Speaker 02

  Well, thank you all for joining me this week.

• 1:31:28Cara Santa Maria?

  Sure, man.

• 1:31:29Jay Novella?

  You got it, brother.

• 1:31:30Speaker 02

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

• 1:32:20Speaker 07

  There it is. What is it detecting? Fresh produce, fresh meat. OK, what happens if it detects something really fresh? Apparently, we celebrate. At Food Lion, you can count on fresh food at fresher prices when your fresh detector is going off. Head to your local Food Lion or shop at foodlion.com.