The Skeptics Guide #1029 - Mar 29 2025

Quickie with Bob: Extinction Survivors; News Items: Constructed Languages, Exercise and Brain Health, Curiosity Rover Finds Long Carbon Chains, Nanotech Lightsails, Vaccine and Autism Again; Who's That Noisy; Your Questions and E-mails: Technology vs Magic; 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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• 0:30Speaker 01

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

• 0:37Speaker 02

  Hello and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, March 26, 2025, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella,

• 0:47Speaker 03

  Hey, everybody.

• 0:48Speaker 02

  Jay Novella. Hey, guys. And Evan Bernstein.

• 0:51Speaker 03

  Oh, hi, everyone.

• 0:52Speaker 02

  Kara is off this week. She has her last exam to do tomorrow, and she is studying right up until the exam, so.

• 1:02Speaker 03

  How dare she miss an episode? That is just not cool at all. It's good to be back, by the way.

• 1:08Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:11Speaker 02

  You know, sometimes work intervenes.

• 1:14Speaker 03

  Yes, it does. But I'm glad to be back, and we wish Kara all the luck. She doesn't need it. She's gonna pass that.

• 1:21Speaker 02

  I'm sure she'll be fine. But you know, a big test like that come up, you need to just mentally be in a space, and you need to, you know.

• 1:28Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 1:29Speaker 02

  Last-minute review and everything.

• 1:30Speaker 03

  Right. It becomes immersive. You really do have to get your head in a space in which there are few other distractions going on around you. Trust me, I know this, because I've been in it for a while. But no, it is good to be back here again, and I do apologize for missing last week, but it was unavoidable.

• 1:48Speaker 02

  So there's an eclipse coming up this weekend.

• 1:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, I know. A kind of cool one, if you think about it.

• 1:55Speaker 02

  Partial eclipse.

• 1:56Speaker 03

  It's total if you're in the right position in out in space, but from Earth it will be partial. Yes.

• 2:03Speaker 02

  It's not total anywhere on the Earth. Yeah, it's just partial.

• 2:05Speaker 03

  Not on the Earth.

• 2:06Speaker 02

  Visible from the East Coast?

• 2:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's correct, which is us. So we may have actually a chance to witness this. One of the rare devil's horns eclipses, which I have I've read about before. I never thought I would have maybe a chance to actually see one in my lifetime, but here we go. And I may try to make an effort to go and see it. And what that means is that this is going to be any an eclipse in which during sunrise. So as the sun rises, it will be in a partial eclipse. And if you can envision kind of vision that in your head, what are you going to see first rising from the horizon? You're going to see these two little tips,

• 2:50Speaker 03

  you know, where the where the two circles are overlapping each other, and those will rise first. And that's how it gets the name the devil's horns.

• 2:58Bob Novella?

  Yeah, I've seen a picture of one rising from the ocean, and it really did look like devil horns coming out. It's just a very cool image. I'd love to see one.

• 3:07Speaker 03

  You have a chance, Bob.

• 3:08Speaker 02

  I won't be anywhere near the ocean, though.

• 3:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, yeah, I just don't know if we're gonna be in the right.

• 3:15Speaker 02

  It'll be it says between 4:50 AM Eastern Time and 8:43 AM Eastern Time. So you gotta get up pretty early. And

• 3:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's the point.

• 3:25Speaker 02

  coincide with sunrise. But this is a partial eclipse. So you should wear eye gear the whole time.

• 3:31Speaker 03

  Yes, good point.

• 3:32Speaker 02

  Because, yeah, there'll still be part of the sun exposed.

• 3:36Speaker 03

  Yes, plenty of damaging light heading your way. So be careful. But still, just amazing. I'm sure there's going to be a ton of great pictures taken of this, so long as the weather conditions permit. But most of the eastern seaboard of the United States, I think the northern half of it at least, will will be able to have a chance to see it. So that will be very cool.

• 3:59Speaker 02

  We're still talking about doing the solar eclipse in 2026 in Spain.

• 4:05Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 4:06Speaker 02

  No definitive plans yet, but we're

• 4:08Bob Novella?

  Oh, boy.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  preliminarily discussing it.

• 4:09Speaker 03

  We have to go.

• 4:12Speaker 02

  Total eclipse in Dallas was amazing. It was completely amazing.

• 4:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, still, still, I mean, really, how is that, you know, that is an all time memory right there.

• 4:23Speaker 03

  That moment.

• 4:23Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. I think about it all the time.

• 4:26Bob Novella?

  Especially considering the fact that we would, I would have, I would have bet my house on the fact that we weren't going to see shit.

• 4:32Speaker 02

  We just lucked out. We lucked out.

• 4:34Bob Novella?

  All the predictions were horrible over the, all of, most of Texas and, but man, it just like 15 minutes, not like an hour or two, it's like literally 10 or 15 minutes before go time, the god of clouds just said, I'm out of here, you know, which does happen from time to time, but it's not.

• 4:49Speaker 02

  It is a eclipse phenomenon because of the temperature changes.

• 4:52Bob Novella?

  You can't depend on it. You can't depend on, like if you were in, if you were in Austin, Texas, you, you know, you did not have a good day.

• 4:58Speaker 02

  All right. Well, we're going to get right into the news. Bob, you're going to start us off with a quickie.

• 5:02Bob Novella?

  Yes. Thank you. Steve, this is your quickie with Bob. This time I will be discussing research on the great dulling. It was actually called the great dying, which refers to the worst extinction event in Earth's history that we know of. 80% of all marine species died out during this end Permian mass extinction. So calling it the great dulling refers to the fact that for millions of years afterwards, after this extinction event, marine ecosystems looked boringly similar, literally all over the planet, you know, from the equator to the poles. It was just like, there's just so much sameness happening. Real scientists call it the Texanomic homogenization, and this has happened with other mass extinctions

• 5:44Bob Novella?

  as well. So they've been trying for a long time to try to figure out why, why this is, you know, a feature of mass extinctions, it seems. And for 200 years, I think they're, they've been trying to, trying to figure out exactly why this was happening. Stanford University researchers studied marine fossils, records, and made some interesting models. And they, they were trying to figure out why this global marine diversity takes such a hit in these situations. They found that it wasn't because of ecosystem level changes, which was one of the main theories. You know, for example, like a lot of the predators dying, allowing their prey to run amok all over the place. So those ecosystem level changes could have explained some of this, but it doesn't seem to be the case, at least

• 6:26Bob Novella?

  according to the, to the models that they developed. Their models show that their mass extinctions and environmental. Changes allowed some of the highly adaptable marine species like clams, oysters, and snails and slugs to spread all over the world, primarily because of their high adaptability. The hope here is that this can provide insight into how ecosystems will react to the crazy environmental disruptions and extinctions that we are causing right now. So hopefully, some good will come out of these revelations and maybe help save some species that are, and at least to understand what to expect in the future with this havoc that we are wreaking ourselves.

• 7:09Bob Novella?

  So, this has been your dull, homogenized quickie with Bob. Back to you, Steve.

• 7:14Speaker 02

  Bob, you know what creature dominated land ecosystems right after the Permian extinction?

• 7:21Bob Novella?

  After the Permian? Hmm.

• 7:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, the end Permian extinction. It was Lystrosaurus, which was a synapsid. They were pretty adaptable, pretty generic, a species that wasn't highly specialized, right? It was a generalist. And pretty much covered the Earth, you know, was pretty dominant for a while, but then the dinosaurs took over.

• 7:44Bob Novella?

  Yeah, it looks like a dinosaurian quadruped, but they predated the dinosaurs, you're saying.

• 7:53Speaker 02

  Well, it was a synapsid, which was like a reptile-mammal hybrid. You know, it was evolving into...

• 7:59Bob Novella?

  Oh, wow, mammal.

• 8:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, the synapsids were the group of reptiles that eventually became mammals. This was not, this was very, very early, was not very...

• 8:08Bob Novella?

  Okay, interesting. Wow, man. Cool.

• 8:11Speaker 02

  All right, let's go with the regular news items. What do you guys know about constructed languages?

• 8:16Speaker 03

  Constructed thing? Esperanto, would that be a constructed language?

• 8:21Bob Novella?

  It's the big boy, yeah.

• 8:23Speaker 02

  I don't know much about it, but I do know that they seem to be a complete waste of time. Why? Because nobody uses them. Well, it's not true that nobody uses them. There are 60,000 Esperanto speakers around the world. Esperanto was invented in 1887. It was designed to be an international language. So it was made with a simplest grammar. It uses syntax from Indo-European languages and 80% of the vocabulary is taken from Romance languages. So it was kind of meant to just be as easy and adaptable as possible. But the question is, if you take a made-up language like Esperanto, or, let's say-

• 9:00Speaker 03

  Klingonese.

• 9:00Speaker 02

  Klingon. Yeah, Klingon.

• 9:02Speaker 03

  Right, yeah.

• 9:02Speaker 02

  Or Na'vi from Avatar.

• 9:05Bob Novella?

  Na'vi Avatar, yeah.

• 9:06Speaker 02

  Or High Valyrian or Dothraki from The Game of Thrones.

• 9:10Speaker 03

  And Lord of the Rings has languages, yep.

• 9:13Speaker 02

  Elvish from Lord of the Rings. Whatever. You take a made-up language. How does our brain process that language? Does it process it like a natural language, like one that occurred organically over generations? Or does it treat it differently?

• 9:30Speaker 03

  Well, wouldn't it want to? Because that's like the easiest path, the path of least resistance, the least effort that it would take?

• 9:37Bob Novella?

  I would think that it's, since it's constructed artificially, that the brain wouldn't be quite as efficient with it as an organic language that arose through actual, you know, human interaction and need.

• 9:51Speaker 02

  Well, let me tell you what the, so that's the question for the study that we're going to be talking about today, is does the brain process conlangs? That's what they call them, conlangs.

• 10:00Bob Novella?

  Conlangs, constructed languages, alright.

• 10:03Speaker 02

  The same as natural languages. Now, prior research has looked at artificial languages such as math and computer code.

• 10:14Bob Novella?

  Oh.

• 10:14Speaker 02

  Right? How do you think about that? Now, when computer coders are working with a computer language, right, we call it a computer language, one that they are well-versed in, right? They're fluent in this computer language. And they are using it and they're looking at their brain with functional MRI scan, right, fMRI, which shows which parts of the brain are active. Do you think the language areas light up, or they don't light up?

• 10:40Speaker 03

  Light up.

• 10:42Speaker 02

  Sure, it'd light up.

• 10:43Bob Novella?

  I think they would light up.

• 10:44Speaker 02

  They do not light up.

• 10:46Bob Novella?

  Oh, no.

• 10:46Speaker 02

  Computer language.

• 10:47Speaker 03

  Long assumption.

• 10:48Speaker 02

  The brain does not treat a computer language like a language. It does not utilize the language centers. Rather.

• 10:55Bob Novella?

  At all.

• 10:56Speaker 02

  Rather, it uses the brain areas that are involved with complex cognitive tasks. Right, so it's different parts of the brain, ones that are, that are involved in symbology and complex tasks.

• 11:09Speaker 03

  Oh, so it's trying to decode a puzzle almost.

• 11:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like, exactly. It's more like it's trying to decode a puzzle than actually thinking in a language. So, the question is, is a conlang gonna be treated like a computer language? Or like a natural language? You guys wanna make your, make your bets?

• 11:27Speaker 03

  Not natural.

• 11:30Bob Novella?

  I'd say more, I'd say more natural still.

• 11:32Speaker 03

  Oh, you think more, more natural?

• 11:33Speaker 02

  Evan, you think more like a computer language?

• 11:35Bob Novella?

  More like a computer language.

• 11:36Speaker 02

  Jay? I agree with Evan. Alright, so they, they did a study. They looked at speakers of Esperanto, Klingon, Na'vi, Hyvalarian, and Dothraki.

• 11:47Bob Novella?

  Like fluent, like, like absolutely fluent.

• 11:48Speaker 02

  People who are, people who are, yeah, whatever, as fluent as you can get in those languages. And they looked at their brains while they were speaking this artificial language. And the language centers lit up, just like a natural language.

• 12:04Speaker 03

  Language.

• 12:04Bob Novella?

  Just like it.

• 12:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, it treats it like a natural language. So.

• 12:09Bob Novella?

  What's the difference?

• 12:10Speaker 02

  What's the difference? So the question is, what's the difference between computer languages? And conlangs and natural languages?

• 12:18Bob Novella?

  Well, computer languages, they're not expressing like feelings and emotions and describing events. It's just, it's like more mathematical.

• 12:24Speaker 02

  Right, exactly. So it's not describing internal state or external reality. It's just a code. Right? It's like math. It's way more like math than it is like a natural language.

• 12:37Speaker 03

  Right? No inflect, there's no inflections in code, right? Is that what we're talking about? Like how language sort of, sort of weaves along?

• 12:45Speaker 02

  That's interesting. So the question is, is it phoneme based? Or is it abstraction? Is it what the abstractly refers to? So here the, the authors of the study, this was their interpretation. "The features of conlangs that differentiate them from natural languages, including recent creation by a single individual, often for an esoteric purpose, small number of speakers, and the fact that these languages are typically learned in adulthood, appear to not be consequential for the reliance on the same cognitive and neural mechanisms. We argue that the critical shared feature of conlangs and natural languages is that they are symbolic systems capable of expressing an open-ended range of meanings about our outer and inner worlds."

• 13:30Speaker 02

  Right? So that was their interpretation. And again, they specifically wanted to say that, okay, well, the, I think what the serious hypothesis here was, is there something, like when, when languages evolve naturally in a population, is that going to map to the, our native language areas better than some guy, one person, just making up the language? And it would not, not be as good a fit. But apparently that doesn't matter. And I suspect it doesn't matter because even if you're making up a fake language and anyone who has tried to do this, like any GM, you know, in role-playing games, for example, you're going to follow, even if subconsciously, the rules of your native language.

• 14:15Speaker 03

  Because what else do you have to go by?

• 14:17Speaker 02

  Right, right. You're going to imitate a natural language. It's going to ultimately have the same features of that language.

• 14:23Speaker 03

  Right, that's the key right there.

• 14:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, so apparently they well enough that it doesn't matter. I also think the difference between a computer language and either a conlang or a natural language is you speak a language, right? You say the words in your head to some extent when you're reading, some people more than others, I know, but still. But you don't, you're not speaking the code. Even if you translate it into a language, if you say if this, then that, it's still not the same as speaking a language inside your head, even if you're reading it, right? You're just treating it as code. So it is, like Evan said, more of a puzzle. It's not a language. It's a set of instructions and operations.

• 15:08Speaker 02

  It's not referring to things and ideas.

• 15:10Bob Novella?

  Right.

• 15:11Speaker 02

  Directly, you know, you know, maybe indirectly. Now, here's another question. What about people? This is not this study, but this I just looked up, I looked this up separately because I was interested to take it one step further. What about people who speak in sign language? Ooh, that's a good one.

• 15:26Bob Novella?

  I don't know. No, that lights up that, I'd say that definitely lights up like a language. I suppose so.

• 15:33Speaker 02

  So let me give you some background information about prior research. So when you make nonverbal gestures, right, even if it's for communication purposes, if I'm, if I'm like trying to signal to you to come over here. That's a nonverbal gesture meant to convey information. Is that processed in my language area? Or is it processed, let's say, in the motor area?

• 15:57Bob Novella?

  Yeah, the motor, yeah, what the cerebellum, is that it?

• 16:00Speaker 02

  No, just like the motor strip. Cerebellum is different, that's coordination.

• 16:04Bob Novella?

  Could it be both?

• 16:05Speaker 02

  It's just more in the motor area. It's not processed in the language area. Right? So nonverbal gestures are processed like motor actions, not language.

• 16:16Bob Novella?

  Okay, like, like the middle finger.

• 16:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. If you flip the bird, that's a motor action, it's not a language action in the brain. But what about sign language? So is sign language? Processed like a gesture, like a nonverbal gesture, or like speech?

• 16:33Bob Novella?

  That's a great question. I'm gonna say speech. It's too, I mean, what's going on in your head when you're doing it is language.

• 16:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, but what would make sign language different?

• 16:43Speaker 02

  Sign language is just really elaborate, nonverbal gestures? Or are you actually speaking with your hands?

• 16:50Bob Novella?

  You're speaking with your hands. Yeah, you're speaking with your hands. And because when you're speaking normally, you're using your tongue and your lips and your mouth. I mean, you're coordinating all those movements as well. But it just becomes reflex. You're not really thinking about it. And I'm sure if you're good at ASL, you get to that point where you're really not even really thinking about the sequence of events. It just flows automatically because you're just like second nature.

• 17:14Speaker 03

  So it's like a combination of the other human reactions intertwined with this signing that turn it, that make the brain go to the, allows the brain to use the language interpretation parts to say this is language.

• 17:28Speaker 02

  It's a fascinating question, isn't it?

• 17:28Bob Novella?

  It is. Give me the answer.

• 17:31Speaker 02

  The answer is, it depends.

• 17:34Bob Novella?

  Oh, screw you. I'm raising my middle finger right now.

• 17:38Speaker 02

  What do you think it depends on?

• 17:41Bob Novella?

  How good you are. How long you've been doing it?

• 17:45Speaker 02

  Right, Steve? The person, either there's, are they saying the words in their head as they sign?

• 17:50Speaker 03

  Well, too many.

• 17:51Speaker 02

  So what do you think, Bob?

• 17:52Bob Novella?

  I think that it depends if you, if you learned it at, you know, at a young age and you needed to learn it because you were hearing impaired. I think that would be more language. But if you learned it as an adult, say, to communicate with a family member who needs to use ASL, then it would be more, you know, motor control and not language.

• 18:13Speaker 02

  That's exactly correct.

• 18:14Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 18:15Speaker 02

  I think you got it.

• 18:16Bob Novella?

  Makes sense.

• 18:17Speaker 02

  If you are congenitally deaf and fluent in sign language, you use your language area to sign. If you learned, if you weren't congenitally deaf, you learned it later, you brain process it like a gesture. And you'll never get to the point where it's a language.

• 18:36Bob Novella?

  But what does that mean, though?

• 18:37Speaker 03

  Even if you can't train yourself to that.

• 18:39Speaker 02

  I think it means that the language area.

• 18:42Bob Novella?

  It's like an accent.

• 18:43Speaker 02

  No, it's like when you are born deaf, the language area has no input. And you can substitute visual input for audio input.

• 18:54Speaker 03

  Plug it in.

• 18:54Speaker 02

  Into the language area. But if you grew up speaking, then your language area is already used for processing audio as language. And then if you try to add on top of that sign language, it's just an elaborate gesture to you. It doesn't use your language area. So you have to be congenitally deaf and fluent in sign language in order for it to be processed like a language. That's interesting, isn't it?

• 19:19Bob Novella?

  Yeah, I love it. That's really cool.

• 19:21Speaker 03

  Never thought of it. Never thought of it before.

• 19:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, now we have FMRI and other tools. So we could ask and answer these questions.

• 19:28Speaker 03

  Right.

• 19:29Speaker 02

  And it says a lot about how the brain develops and how the brain, like what different parts of the brain do. And, you know, the brain definitely is, you know, it's like you use it or lose it type of thing. But it's also, it develops to use. It develops with use. It maps to use.

• 19:46Speaker 03

  Right.

• 19:46Speaker 02

  And, yeah, so, and obviously there's also developmental windows with the brain, meaning that there are times when the brain's trying to develop its language, you know? And if you miss that window, you know, which lasts until you're about four years old, you could still learn later, but it will never be as fluent as it is if you learned to be four.

• 20:07Bob Novella?

  People that got vision after being blind, their vision will never be like our vision. It's really, I remember, I never will forget a story about a guy who got his vision back in adulthood. And he grew to hate it. He didn't like it. It was confusing.

• 20:25Speaker 02

  Processing it.

• 20:26Bob Novella?

  Hard time, because the brain just didn't grow dealing with it. So it just didn't. And one interesting side effect was that he was immune to basically illusions. Optical illusions he was immune to because it's like he was seeing more like the raw data than his brain's interpretation of it.

• 20:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:44Speaker 03

  Geordi La Forge imaging of things almost.

• 20:46Speaker 02

  And couldn't deal with things like glass and shadows. What if you're a robot? What do you mean? Yeah, I'm just asking.

• 20:54Speaker 03

  What if you were a robot?

• 20:56Speaker 02

  What if you were a robot?

• 20:57Speaker 03

  Have you ever thought about that?

• 20:58Jay Novella?

  Look, Bob, Bob wants to know, he's embarrassed to ask, so I'm asking for him. If you're a robot, is it a language or what? You tell me.

• 21:08Speaker 02

  I guess it depends on how we program the robots, right? You know, you'll use whatever part of your...

• 21:13Bob Novella?

  If you don't have that language model, you know, that language module installed, Jay, then you're going to treat it as gestures instead of language. It's the bottom line.

• 21:20Speaker 03

  Humanoid robots will learn, will sign eventually, right? There will be signing.

• 21:25Bob Novella?

  Oh, yeah, man.

• 21:26Speaker 03

  Humanoid robots.

• 21:27Bob Novella?

  Yeah. They're getting some dexterity levels that are, that should be up to the task, if not now, but soon.

• 21:33Speaker 02

  All right, Jay, talk to us about the effect of exercise on brain health.

• 21:37Bob Novella?

  Let me guess, it's awesome for brain health.

• 21:39Jay Novella?

  You know, when I first was scanning through some articles, looking for something, and I came across this, I'm like, this again? You know what I mean? I've read about this so many times. But I decided to peek inside, and I was pleasantly surprised to find some pretty interesting information here that's, it's new information and it's important information, so I thought I would let everybody know. So, there was a new umbrella review out of the University of South Australia that delivered what the experts are saying, it's like the strongest evidence to date that physical exercise, pretty much of any kind, can significantly improve brain function across the human lifespan. And, you know, we're not talking about a minor boost either.

• 22:22Jay Novella?

  It could be walking, you could be doing Tai Chi, you could be doing yoga.

• 22:27Bob Novella?

  Gardening.

• 22:28Jay Novella?

  Even interactive video games. Regular physical activity enhances general cognition, memory, and executive function in both healthy and clinical populations. We all, we all pretty much already knew this. You know, it's all about the degree and, you know, you know, when they mentioned interactive video games, I've done them, and yeah, you could get a really good workout from a video game.

• 22:50Speaker 02

  Beat Saber's a good one.

• 22:51Jay Novella?

  Oh, yeah, Beat Saber will get you going. But there are exercise games, you know what I mean? There are games, it's not really a game, it's more of a, you know, you're...

• 22:58Bob Novella?

  Remember Wii? The hell?

• 23:00Speaker 02

  Even just regular VR video games that are not optimized for exercise, you're standing up, you're moving around, it's just different than sitting, you know?

• 23:09Jay Novella?

  Definitely.

• 23:10Bob Novella?

  Oh my god, that's

• 23:11Jay Novella?

  I mean, I was playing Half-Life: Alyx.

• 23:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, awesome game.

• 23:15Jay Novella?

  Yeah, so I'm playing Half-Life: Alyx and you know, you're standing up the whole time. And I'm playing the game on the weekend and I was on my feet for four hours and I didn't, didn't feel it. You know what I mean? It was so engaging. It was an incredible experience to play the game, but also, yeah, you're on your feet. So much more healthy to be on your feet than it is to be seated. Anyway, okay.

• 23:36Speaker 03

  Part of the reason I used to love to LARP. I was getting out and running around. It was awesome.

• 23:41Jay Novella?

  We were in great shape back in those days.

• 23:42Speaker 03

  We were.

• 23:43Bob Novella?

  That was a workout, man.

• 23:44Speaker 03

  You had to be, yeah.

• 23:45Speaker 02

  I remember one weekend, we were running around so much, I got to the point where like my muscles tapped out, like they were out of energy.

• 23:54Speaker 03

  They, oh.

• 23:54Speaker 02

  I felt like, I just had to stop moving.

• 23:57Speaker 03

  Your brain was telling them to do things.

• 23:59Bob Novella?

  Your glycogen was gone.

• 24:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, and they refused to move.

• 24:02Bob Novella?

  ATP was at low levels. Nice.

• 24:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, just my glycogen stores were done, I guess. That's what it was.

• 24:08Jay Novella?

  Steve, we would be running from like 9:00 AM to 3:00 in the morning.

• 24:12Speaker 02

  And it's all adrenaline the whole time.

• 24:14Speaker 03

  Right. And you're thinking and you're doing puzzles and you're doing all this stuff and you're fighting. It's, gosh, it was fun. All right, sorry, Jay.

• 24:22Jay Novella?

  All right, so this was, in case you want to know, this was published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. The study pulled data from 133 systematic reviews and meta-analyses. This encompassed over 2,700 randomized controlled trials and more than, and this is an awesome number, 258,000 participants.

• 24:43Speaker 03

  I like that.

• 24:43Jay Novella?

  It's the most comprehensive synthesis ever conducted of the cognitive impact of exercise. So this, this has legitimate value and legitimate weight. And when I even give you more details, you'll see what they did in the study to make it even more accurate. Right? So the researchers found that exercise improves general cognition.

• 25:03Jay Novella?

  It improves memory and it improves executive function. But let me dig into each one of these real quick. So thinking and mental sharpness, right? This is your general cognition. They figured out that it improved by a noticeable amount. So people exercised regularly scored better on brain tests than those who didn't, enough to make a real difference in daily life. It's not a huge leap. You know, it's not like, oh, my God, I'm like, you know, be able to predict the future. No, but it is clearly better. People who are wanting their general cognition to improve absolutely will see a legitimate improvement if they're engaging in regular exercise. Memory improved by a small but meaningful amount. Now, when they say small, you know, we're not, you know,

• 25:45Jay Novella?

  these things are very hard to measure and they use like percentile points to figure out like how much better or whatever. So the real thing here is it is a meaningful amount that memory improves. Exercise won't, you know, it's not going to turn you into a genius, but it can help you remember things more easily. You know, like you will have a better memory, like names, appointments, you know, where you left your keys, all that short-term memory stuff definitely will improve. Now we have focus, planning and self-control. These are part of executive function and these got a modest boost. This includes skills like staying on task, making decisions, resisting distractions. It's very helpful if you have kids, if you're a student or people in particular with ADHD, you know, who suffer from focus problems and planning problems and self-control problems.

• 26:30Jay Novella?

  You know, their executive function will go up. And they specifically said people with ADHD will show the most significant bump here in executive function. So these gains held up even when the authors excluded lower quality studies and they corrected for publication bias. So these results, I think, can be highly trusted and are significant. While physical activity, you know, it's often marketed as a way to slow like age-related cognitive decline. The review found that the largest benefit was in children and adolescents. And here are the few things that really I thought blew me away. So particularly in memory performance, children and adolescents. Had the biggest gain.

• 27:14Jay Novella?

  And again, with the people with ADHD, the improvements in executive function were really pronounced, significantly outpacing any other group. Adults and older adults still showed statistically significant gains, of course, but the effects were smaller, but still not insignificant in any way. So to summarize this part, the data suggests that physical activity is not only preventative, but it's developmentally beneficial. So it's just as important in the classroom as it is in the retirement home. They were saying about children who are engaging in exercise frequently, it actually helps them developmentally. This is an important point that I'm not sure I made clear. It'll actually improve their cognitive function in a way that adults can't get the bonus anymore

• 27:58Jay Novella?

  because their minds are developing and still growing. So if they're exercising on a regular, they will actually, you know, their brain function will be better than kids who don't. Like it's part of the development process. So really keep that in mind. If you have young kids, you know, you should really have them get outside and not be on their phone or video games all the time. Like get them out even for a half an hour a day. So traditionally, it's been thought that vigorous aerobic activity is the gold standard for brain health, but the study shows that low to moderate intensity activities had the most consistent and robust cognitive benefits. So there were two standouts, something called Exor Games, which is what we were just talking

• 28:40Jay Novella?

  about, these video games that require physical movement like Pokemon Go or VR fitness apps. These had the largest impact on general cognition and memory. And mind-body practices like yoga and Tai Chi were the most effective for improving memory, and they think it's due to the combination of focused attention, physical coordination, and mindfulness. So the point to a key insight here is mental engagement during exercise matters. I have never heard this before. I don't know if you have, Steve. I haven't either. But this is brand new information. Activities that require both physical and cognitive effort like tracking sequences, solving problems, reacting quickly, these appear to stimulate brain networks more effectively than movement alone. So if you're on

• 29:22Jay Novella?

  treadmill and you're just mindlessly walking and not doing anything. That's not as good an exercise as actually doing one of these exercise video games. Where there's puzzles involved or you have to do, you know, you have to make fine mortar skills and deduce things while it's happening. Remarkably, this actually, the mental engagement matters in this overall success.

• 29:45Speaker 03

  Oh, it's like the biathletes, right? They cross-country ski and then they have to stop and shoot targets. Oh, I've always been impressed by that.

• 29:52Jay Novella?

  Now, Bob, this next one really applies to you. Right? The title of this next part of my news item here is called shorter is better. There's another really surprising finding here. So interventions that lasted just one to three months, right? Meaning that you get onto some type of regular exercise routine and you're only committing to one to three months and you don't force yourself to go any longer than that. And you could take a break, right? These delivered stronger cognitive gains than people who extended their exercise routines, you know, beyond six months. And there's, there's a couple of ideas that they have about why.

• 30:27Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 30:28Jay Novella?

  So one reason is that the shorter programs are easier to maintain. Right? Of course, you know, I can, I can exercise consistently for one to three months. It's not that hard. It really is hard to stick with it for six months, years on end or whatever. Like you have to be okay with you taking breaks. It's not a horrible thing to do. As a matter of fact, you might get more exercise at the end of the year. If you go on like a three-month, one-month-off type of routine, because you'll, your average exercise time will be better at the end of the year than if you try to just continue to do it every three times a week, whatever, right? Another reason could be that the brain responds best to, and Steve, I think you know what I'm going to say, to these novel engaging challenges.

• 31:09Jay Novella?

  Sometimes there's a decline when you continue to do the same routine over and over and over again. So if you do it for a little while and then take a break, when you come back. There'll be a newness to it, even though you did it for a while, like that break can actually help your body like re-engage with the exercise and it'll be like a new thing again. So they're not 100% sure. It's really hard to lock in these types of details when they're doing this type of testing because how would you really know unless you're cutting into all these brains? But the bottom line is that this is there. It's something to keep in mind when you're exercising. If you have a problem, you know, going past the three-month mark, don't worry about it. Take your break and then come back to it.

• 31:48Bob Novella?

  Yeah, but also, you know, don't use this as an excuse to quit and be like, even if you're enjoying it, just do what you enjoy in terms of like being active and moving around, no matter what it is. Don't worry about, oh, maybe I should stop for a month. If you're enjoying it and you're into it, because Jay, these benefits, these extra benefits by engaging and focusing the mind while you're working out, I mean, how much better is it to do that than just mindlessly moving? I mean, you know, a couple of percentage points, I mean, I'm sure it's not dramatic. It's probably detectable, but it's not necessarily like a dramatic improvement by focusing while you're doing cardio, right?

• 32:26Jay Novella?

  Bob, they were saying that you will get more of a cognitive bump if you are actually engaging your brain when you're doing it. Like again.

• 32:36Bob Novella?

  Fine, but how much? I mean, but I'm sure it's not a dramatic improvement. I mean, I'm sure just engaging in the exercise itself, even if it's like, you know, every other day for years, it's fantastic for you.

• 32:49Jay Novella?

  They said that they were able to see a correlation where it appeared to stimulate brain networks more effectively than just movement alone.

• 32:55Bob Novella?

  Yeah, I'm just trying to figure out how much more.

• 32:59Jay Novella?

  I would say it's probably hard to really get a level on that, but the point is, it does make sense and so what?

• 33:06Bob Novella?

  It's interesting though.

• 33:07Jay Novella?

  Just try it because, you know, and the other thing, if you're mentally engaged, this is the other thing. If you can find something, you know, go buy faster and you'll enjoy it more. Like you will enjoy Beat Saber more than just walking on the treadmill. Right? So watching TV doesn't count. You have to be doing something with your mind.

• 33:26Bob Novella?

  I just recommend try it. But watching TV while you do cardio, it will go by faster.

• 33:31Jay Novella?

  Yeah, that's, that's, I'm not putting that down. I'm just saying.

• 33:34Speaker 02

  Depends on what's on TV. I do the New York Times crossword puzzle on my iPad while I ride the bike.

• 33:39Jay Novella?

  Oh, there you go, Steve.

• 33:40Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 33:41Jay Novella?

  All right. So here's another thing, guys.

• 33:42Bob Novella?

  I won't be doing that.

• 33:43Jay Novella?

  There was, there was no clear dose response relationship. Benefits didn't increase in a linear fashion with longer session lengths or higher weekly volume. And that's good news for people like a lot of us who struggle with, with time or energy. So a few short cognitive engaging workouts each week may be enough to make the, the big difference.

• 34:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's, the, the curve is steep at first. Like anything's better than nothing. But you don't have to like dedicate your life to it. You don't have to, you know, be training for the Olympics. You know what I mean? Just do something. Do, do like some regular exercise and keep, keep mentally active.

• 34:19Jay Novella?

  So my takeaway from this is you don't have to be knocking yourself out with super intense weightlifting, super intense cardio. Like yes, resistance training is very healthy. Cardio, of course, is very healthy, but they're saying that even small spurts of, of exercise, moderate exercise, like you will see and have improvements if you're doing this. And it's, and it's reachable by most people. And you should, you really got to think about this, right? And, and part of the reason why I really wanted to talk about this, this particular news item is this, right? We live in an age, guys, where we are all, on one level or another, most of us are addicted to screens.

• 35:00Jay Novella?

  Like in a bad way. Like we all, and I think as an individual, if you're hearing this. You know, be honest with yourself for five seconds. Are you on your phone and on your, on your computer too much? You know, you're basically getting those little dopamine hits as you're on TikTok and, and breezing through, you know.

• 35:16Speaker 02

  Well, it's not just that, Jay. It's like, I work on screens. Like, I cannot do my job.

• 35:20Speaker 03

  I do too.

• 35:21Speaker 02

  You know?

• 35:21Speaker 03

  I have to as well.

• 35:22Jay Novella?

  The fact that, you know, by default, most of us are behind a screen all day. In every other free moment we have, the phone comes out. We can't stand to not be mildly entertained when we're just sitting there somewhere. Like, try to, please try.

• 35:35Bob Novella?

  Or lower with our thoughts, God forbid.

• 35:36Jay Novella?

  Be, be mindful of the fact that this is unhealthy.

• 35:39Speaker 02

  It also supports, you know, funding and prioritizing gym at school, right? Especially where they said kids, teens and

• 35:46Speaker 03

  Hair, hair.

• 35:47Speaker 02

  And children especially benefit from physical activity. So building that into the school day actually has academic benefits for those kids, you know?

• 35:57Jay Novella?

  Oh, my God, right? Yep.

• 35:59Speaker 03

  So there is a whole purpose for recess gym class.

• 36:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 36:03Speaker 03

  In the, in an academic sense.

• 36:05Bob Novella?

  It would also be helpful not to get up so early and go to school.

• 36:08Jay Novella?

  Put in your alarm, whatever phone or brand that you have, they all have alarms. Put in a daily alarm, a couple of times a day, right? Whatever you're, whatever you think you're most likely to have a little break time or whatever. Just put in, go for a walk for 10 minutes or, or go for, you know, do, do X activity for 15, 20 minutes. Put that in there and it'll, that reminder will help you like. A reminder, yeah, just to, you know, keep it in a daily thing. So you, you know, you're constantly being pinged, hey, man, get off your phone and do some exercise.

• 36:39Speaker 02

  You could also play Pokemon Go.

• 36:41Jay Novella?

  Yeah. It's legit, it's in there.

• 36:42Speaker 03

  That's still a thing, that's still a thing, huh?

• 36:44Speaker 02

  It is.

• 36:45Speaker 03

  Is it? They're, they're still supporting that?

• 36:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yep.

• 36:49Speaker 03

  Did they come up with like new things to collect?

• 36:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's still actively managed app. Don't ask how I know that.

• 36:56Bob Novella?

  Way too annoying. But.

• 37:00Bob Novella?

  Yeah, I would not go to, I would go to the same spot trying to, trying to pick up a creature and it wouldn't, nothing would be there because I had already collected it. Like, really? I gotta go find new places to go?

• 37:10Speaker 02

  You gotta walk around.

• 37:11Bob Novella?

  That's a bit late. But I thought, I thought that that would. It was a lot of fun to do for a while, and I thought it would it would be like the first, you know, the first game of similar AR type games that would appear. And it just didn't happen. It didn't materialize.

• 37:26Speaker 02

  Didn't take off as much as it should have. I like to to catch creatures in every city that I visit because it tells you where you caught it and when you caught it.

• 37:35Bob Novella?

  Yeah, that's cool.

• 37:36Speaker 02

  It's actually a way, a good way to mark all of my travels.

• 37:38Bob Novella?

  Steve.

• 37:40Speaker 02

  I know, it's nerdy. All right.

• 37:43Bob Novella?

  All right.

• 37:44Speaker 02

  Evan, tell us about the Curiosity Rover finding some long carbon chains.

• 37:50Speaker 03

  Uh, yes, yes. Can we do a little background first?

• 37:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, always.

• 37:54Speaker 03

  Before I get to the actual news. All right, here. I have a question. Is there life on Mars?

• 38:00Speaker 02

  No.

• 38:01Speaker 03

  Or has there ever been life on Mars?

• 38:02Speaker 02

  Maybe. We don't know yet.

• 38:03Speaker 03

  There you go. Now, those questions, right? That those questions right there have bedeviled both scientists and pseudoscientists for a long time, millennia, I would argue. For example, do any of you remember the canals on Mars theory?

• 38:21Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 38:22Speaker 03

  You should, right? 1877, Giovanni Schiaparelli, an Italian astronomer, observed Mars through a telescope and described seeing canali, which is Italian for channels or grooves.

• 38:33Bob Novella?

  Channels. That was the critical mistranslation, the right channels.

• 38:37Speaker 03

  Yes, that's right. But good old English, we translated to English. Canali becomes canals, and that means, oh, OK, not so much channels, but canals like things that are artificial that were constructed. Exactly. And there you go. Yeah, with that, that one, that one translation or mistranslation sparked an entire, what, generation of people thinking that, yeah, Mars, there was life on Mars, including some actual astronomers. Percival Lowell bought into that theory for for a while and and wrote about it. And that's just, you know, one example. Oh, the face on Mars. I mean, my gosh, talk about famous rock formations on Mars.

• 39:22Speaker 03

  That low resolution photo taken in 1976 by NASA's Viking One orbiter. And and how much cover time did that get on tabloids all over the world for like 30 years? I mean, that thing paid off in spades.

• 39:35Speaker 02

  Then they took a high resolution photo, which showed a mountain. And then they said, oh, they must have blown it up with an atomic bomb.

• 39:45Speaker 03

  Those Martians, they are clever.

• 39:47Speaker 02

  No NASA did it to hide it.

• 39:49Speaker 03

  Oh NASA, yes, of course, of course.

• 39:51Speaker 02

  NASA lies about everything, right Evan?

• 39:54Speaker 03

  But then we started sending more and more sophisticated vehicles to Mars and caught better images, among other things, but unfortunately, sort of our, you know, our tendency to see things where they aren't real continued. 2013, photo from Curiosity showed, well, what some claimed to look like a rodent or a lizard sitting on a rock, if you remember that, evidence of life, of course NASA's covering it up, conspiracy theories. Yeah, it was just the lighting that made it look animal-like. Oh, fish, a fish on Mars, 2016, same idea, you know, hey, look, it's a, it looks like a fish, but it's all about the angle and how the rock fractures and so forth. There have been other pyramids that have been taken

• 40:39Speaker 03

  through photographs from Curiosity, among other things that have landed on Mars. And what, the Bigfoot on Mars even, here you go, that's like the brass ring of pseudoscientists everywhere. Bigfoot on Mars, 2007, Rover Spirit sent back images to Earth. Sure enough, there it is. It's that same image of Bigfoot from the Patterson Gimlin film, right? You know, with that, that...

• 41:03Speaker 02

  It has the same kind of vibe to it.

• 41:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, with the Bigfoot sort of turning and looking over its shoulder at the person taking the photograph. It had, at that moment, it's sort of, you could line it up. So, people went crazy for that, but yeah.

• 41:17Speaker 02

  But, it was like, what was it, it was really small and at an angle.

• 41:20Speaker 03

  Correct. It was only a couple inches tall, right? But, you know, that's the way our brains work. Yep, Mars is devoid of canals, Egyptian-looking pyramids, yep, and even Bigfoot. Well, our rovers and landers have been scratching the Martian surface for decades now, my gosh, decades, trying to find evidence of the most basic traces of current life or life long since vanished. And at the moment, you know, it's just been this slow grinding work of scientists, along with the vivid imaginations of humans. But, but... A headline from just the other day, NASA's Rover Curiosity, that thing has been going for so long now, over a decade, it detected something that is curious.

• 42:02Speaker 03

  And I first read this report over at Livescience.com, and the author of this particular article, her name is Jess Thompson. Headline reads, "Longest molecules ever found on Mars may be remnants of building blocks of life. A chain of 12 carbon molecules linked together has been confirmed in the soil of Mars." That's according to a study published on March 24th, so just a few days ago, in the Journal of, uh, the Journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, PNAS. "The chain was detected in a 3.7 billion-year-old rock sample collected from a dried-up Martian lake bed named Yellowknife Bay." And, okay, you might think, wow, big deal, a strand of a dozen carbon molecules, so what? So what? Oh my gosh, bah!

• 42:47Speaker 03

  This might be the best evidence collected to date suggesting that Mars once had living organisms on the planet? I mean, that seems pretty significant to me. "The long carbon chains are thought to have originated from molecules called fatty acids, which on Earth are produced by what? You know, creatures, biological entities." But fatty acids can form without biological input, which could be the case on Mars. And, uh, but it could mean that there are signs of life lurking within its soil, or it once did. The co-author of the study, her name is Caroline Frisernet, an analytical chemist at the French National Center for Scientific Research in the Laboratory for Atmospheres and Space

• 43:29Speaker 03

  Observations, was quoted as saying this, "The fact that fragile linear molecules are still present at Mars's surface 3.7 billion years after their formation allows us to make a new statement. If life ever appeared on Mars billions of years ago, at the time life appeared on Earth, chemical traces of this ancient life could still be present today for us to detect." So cool. Yep.

• 43:53Speaker 02

  Got to get some of those samples to Earth.

• 43:54Speaker 03

  Well, that is the next part, right? And I know, Jay, you've spoken about this in some recent news items and brought it up. We got, we have to get, pick up those canisters, those little, what are they, titanium tiny little vials? That have been collected, there's samples within those vials and they're waiting to be picked up. That is the, what is that plan called? The sample retrieval lander, the SRL. It'll land near Perseverance, another robot on Mars, and deliver a small rocket called the Mars Ascent Vehicle. Perseverance and its backup helicopters, like mini drones, will deliver the catched samples into the lander. And then the Mav will launch those

• 44:39Speaker 03

  sealed samples into Mars orbit, and that'll be the first rocket launch from another planet. That's cool in of itself. Yeah. So it rendezvous in orbit with an ESA, a European Space Agency-built orbiter, which will catch those samples, and then it will start the long trip back to Earth. It will be sometime in the early 2030s. We don't know exactly when this will happen. We've got some years to wait. But talk about, that will be, that will be quite literally the catch. I mean, seriously. Yeah. It's one thing to have the robots do the analysis on the planet and send the data back, you know, for us to read. In fact, these samples, guys, these samples that they found these carbon chains in, they were actually collected in 2013. Mm-hmm.

• 45:24Speaker 03

  And it was only by, like, accident through some other experiments that they were doing that they realized, oh my gosh, fatty acids. Look at this. So they said they weren't necessarily surprised by it, but in a sense, they were, because they sort of had this data in their hands. They just didn't, they just had never had a technique to, to look at it, until they tried applying. What were they doing? They were trying a new technique. It was called, oh, not sure what it's called. But the researchers behind the new study thought to test out a new method for finding the molecules by preheating samples to 1100 degrees Celsius. Ooh, hot.

• 46:03Speaker 03

  Over 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit to release oxygen before analysis and the results showed no amino acids, but by pure luck, they discovered fatty molecules hiding there instead.

• 46:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:14Speaker 03

  So they kind of just stumbled upon it and actually we had these samples for well over a decade and only now are realizing this.

• 46:20Speaker 02

  It's unfortunate, there are so many things that are like primarily produced by living things or they're on earth, they're produced by living things, but they have some non like abiotic chemical production that so we can't completely rule out that the source is abiotic.

• 46:36Speaker 03

  I know.

• 46:36Speaker 02

  Like these, yeah, I mean, long chains of carbon are typical of life, you know, like for fatty acids, but they could have some theoretical abiotic source and that just keeps us from being able to conclude definitively that their source is life. But it is intriguing. It is very intriguing.

• 46:54Speaker 03

  Extremely.

• 46:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it would be nice when we eventually settle this question of whether there's life on Mars or not, you know, or ever was likely in the past.

• 47:03Speaker 03

  Someday.

• 47:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. All right. Thanks, Evan.

• 47:06Speaker 03

  Thanks.

• 47:08Jay Novella?

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• 47:52Jay Novella?

  Go to get.stash.com/sgu to see how you can receive $25 towards your first stock purchase and to view important disclosures. That's get.stash.com/sgu. Paid non-client endorsement, not representative of all clients and not a guarantee. Investment advisory services offered by Stash Investments LLC, an SEC-registered investment advisor. Investing involves risk and investments may lose value. Offer is subject to Ts and Cs.

• 48:27Speaker 02

  Bob, I like these two words together, and I especially like them together. Nanotech light sails.

• 48:33Bob Novella?

  Yeah, right. Yeah, this one's very, very cool. Researchers have made an interesting advance in light sail technology. Their new materials and production process could revolutionize not only small-scale deployment in our solar system, but outside our solar system as well. This was published in Nature Communications. The title is a fun mouthful. "Pentagonal Photonic Crystal Mirrors: Scalable Light Sails With Enhanced Acceleration Via Neural Topology Optimization." Damn. All right, so let's break that down a little bit and make it a little bit digestible. You'll notice that they mention light sails and not solar sails. Interesting distinction. Solar sails obviously imply the use of sunlight to push the sail, and light sails typically assume that powerful lasers will be doing the heavy lifting there.

• 49:18Bob Novella?

  So that's why it's light sails and not solar sails. This news item seemed to have started with an engineering project. You may remember, we briefly mentioned it not too long ago. Breakthrough Starshot, which is founded in 2016 by Mark Zuckerberg and Stephen Hawking. The goal was to create a fleet of tiny interstellar, like, chip probes, very, very lightweight probes, attached to light sails accelerated by, say, gigawatt-class lasers, sending them to Alpha Centauri, the Alpha Centauri system four light-years away. Conventional rockets, even with no cargo, would take about 10,000 years to get there.

• 50:00Bob Novella?

  But such a design with the light sails could conceivably reach speeds of 15% to 20% the speed of light, getting there in 20 years or so, right? I remember talking about that a while ago. So that's dramatic. To another star system in 20 years? That's crazy. It's such a compelling idea. But to do that, the biggest technical hurdle is arguably, you know, not the lasers or the actual probe itself, but the light sails themselves. For such a task, they would likely have to weigh less than a gram, but also be sufficiently Reflective across multiple wavelengths and of course also fairly strong as well.

• 50:41Bob Novella?

  So that's that's not easy. We cannot do that right now in the way that it would need to be done for a project like this. Now, the cost is especially critical here because a mission like this, you know, the mission design would likely use a shotgun approach, right? You'd you'd send not one of these probes and a light sail, but you'd probably send many, many of them in the hopes that at least one would would make it. Because who knows what could go wrong or even what little particles, you know, you go, you're traveling at 20% the speed of light. It doesn't, you don't have to interact, you know, you don't have to hit much to to obliterate the probe or the sail or whatever. So, yeah, they'd want to send a lot. So cost is important because you may need to create 10 or 20 of these or more, 100,

• 51:24Bob Novella?

  and send them all out and see what happens. So this is now where where the new paper comes in. These researchers made two impressive advances to achieve these goals. The first breakthrough and the most important one, in my opinion, involved what's called neural topology optimization, which you may remember from the title of the paper. The last two words, topology optimization, that's a common technique. It's it's been done for a very long time. It's essentially, it's a computational technique that tweaks the design and layout of a new material that you want to design. It tweaks it over and over, iterating it over and over until it reaches whatever the performance objectives are.

• 52:05Bob Novella?

  So in this case, for example, you might, your your performance objectives might be, you know, a light sail that would be, that's very lightweight, strong and reflective, and can accelerate to, you know, 20% the speed of light fairly quickly. Those are the kind of things you would probably want in light sails. And that's what you would want this this optimization process to kind of iterate itself towards. That's that's the goal you would want, you would program into it to get to. Now, the other part of this this technique is neural, the neural part of neural topology optimization. That that simply means that AI algorithms were used that were trained on huge amounts of data on doing

• 52:46Bob Novella?

  Specific things like identifying patterns and predicting optimal outcomes. So putting these two concepts then together, combining this AI, you know, these AI algorithms with this topology optimization technique, when you put them together, it resulted in a design of a five-sided crystal mirror structure, which not only greatly enhanced the performance possibilities of this light sail, but it also greatly reduced the fabrication cost at the same time. That's a pretty much, that's probably like an optimal result. You know, hey, I could do this for you now and it's going to be, it's going to perform even better and it's going to be a lot cheaper. I mean, what else can you ask for?

• 53:28Bob Novella?

  The second breakthrough was actually, this is kind of where the nanotech comes in, but it's not dramatic nanotechnology, of course. It's never really, I mean, it's fascinating, but it's not, whatever. It's not the nanotech I'd be wishing for in 2025. But all right, don't let me go off on that damn tangent. But the second breakthrough was manufacturing a small sample of the light sail. They were able to use advanced lithography techniques, you know, used for, you know, integrated circuits and, you know, printing chips and all that, which were, now remember that these lithography techniques were aided by this topology optimization step. Because this optimization step made it easy to create these elements, these optical elements.

• 54:11Bob Novella?

  So that's one of the reasons why the price was, you know, it was so cheap. So these optimization techniques helped create the silicon nitride light sail that was in their sample, 60 millimeters by 60 millimeters by 200 nanometers. So that was, that was the size of this test light sail that they created. But on that, on that medium, on that substrate that they created, they, they created a billion of those nanoscale crystals that they etched into it using those advanced lithography techniques. That's where the nanotech comes in. So that level of precision and control has never been done before. They, they estimate that creating the full-size light sail, which they, which they estimate to be about 10 square meters.

• 54:54Bob Novella?

  If you're using the old techniques to create that, it would have taken 15 years, 15 years to create a light sail that was 10 square meters. This new method, they claim, could make it in one day. One day.

• 55:07Speaker 02

  That's a pretty significant improvement.

• 55:09Bob Novella?

  That's it's it's it's like ridiculously dramatic. Like, what, really? Fifteen years of one day? The fabrication cost to do this was also dramatically reduced by a factor of 9,000, bringing the cost from an estimated 26 million euros per sale to 3,000 euros. 26 million to 3,000. So dramatic drop in in in cost. And mainly, you know, this now that was due, remember, again, not just to the advanced lithography techniques, but also this this neural topology optimization technique that they use. That's the I think I get the sense that that's the real reason why this was optimized to be so inexpensive. They're not where they need to be. That doesn't mean that they can now scale this up and create these light cells right now.

• 55:53Bob Novella?

  These are the first steps, but this is a this is basically like a couple of major breakthroughs in in this in this effort. Now, this could ultimately be the critical advance that light cells need to eventually send those those chip probes to the closest stars and exoplanets to us. Now, remember, let me let me reiterate, they would be quite small. They wouldn't the probes themselves wouldn't not weigh more than a gram, but they would still they should still be festooned with some with a lot of cool technology like sensors and cameras and transmitters and and and a lot more even that they that they want to be able and should be able to pack into these tiny devices more than enough to send images back to us from from light years away.

• 56:34Bob Novella?

  And of course, relying heavily on our, you know, on our high powered telescopes to be able to to intercept that that, you know, those signals and and create images from them. Just thinking about this, it's like I really envy the people, who knows, later this century, perhaps, that that could actually see close up images, not only of the closest stars to Earth, but also the exoplanets that are there. And some of them are extremely interesting exoplanets. Who knows what we might find on them? So, my God, can you imagine having those signals coming in finally, or however long that takes? This won't be the only application, though, of of such scalable, cost effective light cells. Most of their work that these light cells do, I think, will will take place closer to home.

• 57:16Bob Novella?

  Within our own solar system and probably a lot sooner than these things would ever even arrive at Proxima Centauri. Once we have this technology, you could send out thousands of these probes. You could send them out rapidly to explore the solar system, you know, the moons and asteroids and comets. You could even send them, hey, why not just send them to the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud? Now, these are not close. These are not close at all, even for these probes necessarily. But for example, the Kuiper Belt, if you go there with a chemical rocket, it would take you 10 years to get to the Kuiper Belt. If you use these probes at, say, I think 10% of the speed of light, less than five hours you can get to the Kuiper Belt. That is ridiculous.

• 57:58Bob Novella?

  The Oort Cloud, if you wanted to go to the Oort Cloud, remember, that's a light year away, ridiculously far. It would take thousands of years for a chemical rocket to get there. We are never going to send a chemical rocket, ever, to the Oort Cloud, because who the hell is going to send a rocket that's going to take 1,000 years? If you sent one of these probes at 10% of the speed of light, it's only 16 years, which is nothing compared to thousands of years. Amazing. Oh, there's so many other possibilities. You could send these probes out into deep space for early warning of, let's say, asteroids and monitoring. They would be great just for communication relays and you can use them to enhance communication bandwidth from probes that we may have deep, you know, by Saturn or Neptune, really, really

• 58:41Bob Novella?

  out there in our solar system to, you know, to beef up the communication bandwidth so they can send, you know, more data, higher resolution pictures in a lot, you know, a lot sooner than otherwise. How about this, you could send these probes to the James Webb Space Telescope. That's a million miles away. You can send one of these probes there pretty damn fast. And the other angle here is just, not even just exploring our solar system or even other solar systems, you can use these technologies, these light cells, for experimental physics. There's so many, you know, so many new possibilities open up. You know, accelerating masses to relativistic velocities will let us study light-matter interactions and even, you know, relativistic physics at macroscopic scales like...

• 59:26Bob Novella?

  In ways that we just can't do right now. And then I'll end with some more pie in the sky stuff. Much, much further in the future, we could, we could see the creation of extremely large light sails, like kilometers in size, and also using, say, terawatt or exawatt class lasers to rapidly ferry cargo, weighing even tons. Tons of cargo can be sent throughout the solar system. Of course, you know, you would, you would, the infrastructure you would need in place, the, you know, the powerful lasers and the light sail sizes would have to be immense. But that is physically doable and that could potentially, who knows how long that could take? That could take, you know, a century or two or more before we could see something where we can,

• 1:00:10Bob Novella?

  you know, station these, these super beefy lasers throughout the solar system to, you know, to speed up light sails with heavy cargo and then slow them down when they get to their destination. And, uh, and you can even scale that up to even, to even more, you know, crazy stuff happening. Who knows what kind of future? But, um, these light sails are fascinating and I hope they, they become part of our, our infrastructure for exploring not only our solar system, but the closest solar system as well.

• 1:00:36Speaker 02

  All right. Thanks, Bob. All right. One more news item. I'm trying to make this pretty quick. So we've talked in the past quite a bit about vaccines and autism. The fact that there isn't a connection between any vaccine, any vaccine ingredient, and the incidence of autism or autism spectrum disorder. This is now fairly well established over decades of research.

• 1:01:01Speaker 03

  Steve, did they initially blame it on the mercury, the tiny amount of mercury it used to be?

• 1:01:06Speaker 02

  It was originally blamed on the MMR vaccine, which does not have thimerosal in it, does not have mercury in it. That's the one that Andrew Wakefield, you know, blamed. So that was like in the nineties, you know, they were blaming the MMR. There's a ton of research, basically clearing the MMR of any association with autism. Then they revised it to, okay, guess it's the thimerosal, it's the mercury in the vaccines. And then by 2001 in the U.S., mercury, the thimerosal was removed from the,

• 1:01:36Speaker 02

  Not every single vaccine, but every vaccine in the standard childhood program, right? Right. Schedule. So, you know, the exposure to thimerosal plummeted and they said autism rates are going to plummet right along with it and they never did. Nope. Uh, here we are 25 years later, 24 years later and nope, never happened. They, man, they dragged that out as far as they could, you know, oh, there's still, people are still using the stored up vaccines and blah, blah, blah. Nope. And then of course, there's been tons and tons of studies. There was just a study in 2019. In fact, this is in Denmark. This was an MMR study though. They looked at, because you know, the Scandinavian countries

• 1:02:15Speaker 02

  have national healthcare data banks, right? So you could literally study millions of people epidemiologically, you know, observationally. It's not, obviously not a placebo controlled trial, but they looked at those, you know, millions of people over years and they found zero association between the MMR vaccine and either risk for autism, trigger for autism, susceptible children, clustering of autism after associated cases. They looked at it any way they could. There's just no correlation. So anyway, it's pretty well established that there's, that that was always spurious. There's no link between vaccines and autism. So, but you know, RFK Jr., who is our new Secretary

• 1:02:59Speaker 02

  of Health and Human Services, has not, would not let it go, right? Even he would not, he will not agree that vaccines do not cause autism. When he was asked straight up about this during his confirmation hearing, he said, well, if I see evidence that clear, that shows that it's not associated, I'll believe it. What do you mean if you see evidence? You've been talking about this for 30 years. Right. You have had plenty of time to review three decades of research showing that there's no correlation. It was a complete dodge. So, we knew that RFK Jr. as HHS was going to be a shit show, and guess what? It's a shit show. It's like exactly what we thought was going to happen.

• 1:03:38Speaker 02

  So now, this, he is directing the CDC to do a study of vaccines and autism. Completely unnecessary. But, you know, another, like, again, there's a Denmark study came out in 2019. Not really, well, because it was necessary, but because they could do it, right? They had the database, they had the data in the database to answer the question, so they did it. They ran the analysis. Nope, still no association. But there's no real opportunity or reason to do it. And two things have been floated, two types of ideas have been floated. One is to do something that anti-vaxxers have been asking for forever,

• 1:04:17Speaker 02

  which is never going to happen, and that is a vaxxed versus unvaxxed placebo-controlled double-blind trial. Why do you think you can't do this? It's inhumane. It's unethical. It's like ethically prohibited. You cannot withhold established effective care, or medicine, or whatever, from a study subject. So you could say, "Well, what about people who choose not to be vaccinated?" It's like, "Yeah, but now it's not randomized," right? That's the whole point, is if you're looking at people who choose to be vaccinated and choose not to be vaccinated, that introduces confounding factors. Confounding factors, yeah. It's not randomized, it's not blinded. You have to give people placebo vaccines, right? You can't do that ethically, period. You cannot do it.

• 1:05:02Speaker 02

  So, you know, for, for, basically, they're calling for a study they know will never be done as an excuse to say that vaccines are not adequately studied, which is nonsense. The other type of study that's been floated now is to do a, an observational database study in the, what we call the VAERS, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, which exists in the United States. What's the problem with VAERS? It's not a systematic database. Right. It is voluntary reporting. Self-reported, right? It's voluntary reporting. Again, confounding factors galore.

• 1:05:39Speaker 02

  And so it's very weak, very noisy.

• 1:05:42Speaker 03

  Noisy.

• 1:05:43Speaker 02

  Data.

• 1:05:43Speaker 03

  That would be the word, yep.

• 1:05:44Speaker 02

  Uh, in fact, we've written about the VAERS database over the last 20 years of science-based medicine. David Gorsky says, I love this term, is anti-vaxxers have been dumpster diving in the VAERS for years, basically looking for anything that they can, right?

• 1:06:02Speaker 03

  Does VAERS serve a legit purpose?

• 1:06:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. It does. Um, but you have to look at it very carefully. So if you're gonna do a study that's doing data analysis in the VAERS database, that data, that analysis has to be bulletproof. It has to be rigorous. It has to be really tight. It's got to be statistically, you know, ironclad. You should put together a team of completely objective, respectable experts who know how to do this kind of study to do it. Otherwise, it's not going to serve any purpose, right?

• 1:06:43Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:06:43Speaker 02

  So who do you think RFK Junior has tapped to do that study?

• 1:06:47Speaker 03

  Oh, no.

• 1:06:48Bob Novella?

  Musk. Oh, God.

• 1:06:49Speaker 02

  Literally the worst person in the universe to do that study.

• 1:06:53Speaker 03

  Sherri Tenen.

• 1:06:54Speaker 02

  David, David Gere.

• 1:06:55Speaker 03

  No, second worst.

• 1:06:56Speaker 02

  Mark and, no, Mark and David Gere is a father-son team who have been doing this dumpster diving kind of crappy, fatally flawed research for years. I mean, it's so bad, like the research, like they are, they make blatant errors, statistical errors. They, their technique is horrible. And of course, they always show that there's some association, right? Uh, so we've been tearing them apart ever since the beginning of science-based medicine because they're just horrible. So you basically have the absolute worst person in America as the Secretary of Health and Human Services, who was tapped, the absolutely worst person to do a very difficult study,

• 1:07:38Speaker 02

  person with a history of horrible research. The guy's not even a doctor. He's not a scientist.

• 1:07:42Speaker 03

  What are we doing?

• 1:07:43Speaker 02

  He's actually had, who was fined for practicing medicine without a license. This guy is dubious as hell and incompetent, doesn't know what he's doing.

• 1:07:53Speaker 03

  This guy should get zero contracts.

• 1:07:55Speaker 02

  This is the guy.

• 1:07:56Speaker 03

  Government.

• 1:07:56Speaker 02

  I know, exactly. This is the guy who's gonna do what RFK wants to be like the definitive, finally, we're gonna answer this question about vaccines and autism? Absolutely not. There's, all this will serve.

• 1:08:08Jay Novella?

  Is to produce a preordained outcome that RFK will use as a way of hampering vaccine uptake in this country. This is just fodder for the anti-vaxers. That's the only possible thing that this could serve. You know? It's like tapping a pseudoscientist to do a study of their own pseudoscience, you know?

• 1:08:34Speaker 03

  Right, let's get a dowser to be on the water, you know, draw on the water commission for the country.

• 1:08:40Jay Novella?

  You're not going to build consensus that way. You're not going to resolve anything that way. We've already pre-debunked it, you know what I mean? It's like, this is worthless. Absolutely worthless. So this is the horrible stuff that is and will continue to be done with a clown like RFK Jr. in charge of the Health and Human Services. Just absolutely terrible. Okay.

• 1:09:00Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:09:01Jay Novella?

  You know what that means? It's who's that noisy time?

• 1:09:06Speaker 03

  Who's that noisy in the data time?

• 1:09:10Jay Novella?

  Alright guys, last week I played this noisy.

• 1:09:16Speaker 03

  That's it?

• 1:09:17Jay Novella?

  That was it. Very short, right to the point.

• 1:09:19Speaker 02

  I mean, it sounds like a roar.

• 1:09:21Speaker 03

  Oh yeah.

• 1:09:22Speaker 02

  So it's some animal or it's a, like a reconstitution of what a T-Rex roar would sound like or something.

• 1:09:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, it sounds like a robot, T-Rex in one of those theme park, you know, Disney things. Animatronics.

• 1:09:36Jay Novella?

  Well, a listener named Joe Lanadria, he said, "This week's noisy sounds like some sort of gas venting." Yeah, we hear that at the STU all the time.

• 1:09:47Speaker 03

  Well, some.

• 1:09:49Jay Novella?

  "It sounds like there are birds in the background making me think this is some sort of natural outdoor environment, so I'm going to guess this is some sort of small geyser." This, you know, this noise can be anything. There's lots of different things that it would fit, so I've never personally heard a geyser, but that's a, I thought this was a cool guess. Another listener named Laurie Smith wrote in and said, "Hi, this sounds like a blast of gases." Yeah, it is. At first I was thinking a test fire of satellite altitude adjusters, but I can hear nature sound, you know, sounding noises in the background, so my guess is that the blowhole of some kind of whale. Another cool guess, not correct, but I thought that one was really cool. Hunter Richards wrote in, "Hey Jay, I was gonna guess an animal of some kind at a zoo,

• 1:10:32Jay Novella?

  but the ambient drones suggest a fixed exhibit maybe, so my guess is an animatronic dinosaur exhibit and the roar is a result of the proximity trigger." So that's kinda what you were saying, Ev.

• 1:10:44Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm. Yeah.

• 1:10:46Jay Novella?

  But Hunter, I'm sorry you were incorrect.

• 1:10:48Speaker 03

  Well, that means I'm incorrect.

• 1:10:50Jay Novella?

  I will be hearing animatronic dinosaur roaring soon with Bob and Steve.

• 1:10:54Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 1:10:55Bob Novella?

  Yeah, baby!

• 1:10:56Speaker 03

  Wait, wait, wait, where are you going?

• 1:10:57Jay Novella?

  Mister named Darwin Holly wrote in, "The background sound of birds makes me think of a rainforest, and although brief, the noise sounds like a howler monkey." And yeah, there is a little bit of howler monkey in there, definitely have heard that sound, and it definitely does sound like that, however, you are not correct. And then my last guess was from Visto Tuti, and Visto said, "I heard birds tweeting, so it's on Planet Earth, so that rules out the roar of a tonton from the snow plains of Hoth." It sounds bigger than a cucaracha. La cucaracha! So I'll say it's the roar of an elephant. Um, that's a good guess. Again, I've heard that, and it does sound kinda like that. That is incorrect, and there was no winner this week. Whoa. So I'll give you guys a hint.

• 1:11:38Speaker 03

  All right.

• 1:11:39Jay Novella?

  It is an animal, and it's a particular kind of animal.

• 1:11:42Speaker 03

  (laughing)

• 1:11:43Jay Novella?

  Do you guys wanna guess?

• 1:11:45Bob Novella?

  Play it again.

• 1:11:46Jay Novella?

  Uh, is it a big cat? Hold on, let me play it again.

• 1:11:48Speaker 03

  (roars)

• 1:11:52Jay Novella?

  Definitely sounds like a big cat, but it is not a big cat.

• 1:11:55Bob Novella?

  Is it an animalcule?

• 1:11:57Jay Novella?

  It's a bird.

• 1:11:58Speaker 03

  That's a bird!

• 1:12:00Jay Novella?

  That's a bird.

• 1:12:01Speaker 03

  Oh, like a ostrich or something, or a emu?

• 1:12:05Jay Novella?

  Cassowary.

• 1:12:06Bob Novella?

  Is it, is it a terror bird reconstruction?

• 1:12:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, one of those big birds that'll mess up your world in a heartbeat.

• 1:12:12Bob Novella?

  Oh, man, yeah, they just chop you in two with their beaks.

• 1:12:15Jay Novella?

  Leave us hanging here, Jay.

• 1:12:17Speaker 03

  The mythical thunderbird.

• 1:12:19Jay Novella?

  All right, this indeed, guys, is the Australian bustard roar.

• 1:12:23Speaker 03

  Nah, I don't know that.

• 1:12:25Jay Novella?

  It's a bird, it's, it's not that, that big of a bird, you know, it's not a small bird, but it's not like gargantuan, and it just makes this deep, deep growly roar. Yeah, here it is.

• 1:12:34Speaker 03

  That's a good defense mechanism. (roars) Yeah, no kidding.

• 1:12:39Jay Novella?

  If you hear that five yards in the brush, forget about it.

• 1:12:42Speaker 03

  Turn around, go away.

• 1:12:43Jay Novella?

  Forget about it.

• 1:12:45Jay Novella?

  So yeah, so that's a bird. Steve, you know what? I was shocked, man. I thought you were gonna, you were gonna go there.

• 1:12:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, I didn't, I wasn't familiar with that one.

• 1:12:52Jay Novella?

  Yeah, well, that's why we do this show, you know? I wanna see, what the, what the, how big is this bird? I have a new noisy for you guys. This is a noisy that was sent in by a listener named Jeremy Anderberg. Hey, guys, just, just for those of you who are sound sensitive, this could be a, a sharp, a little annoying kinda noise.

• 1:13:22Jay Novella?

  Alright, so guys, if you think you know what this week's noisy is, or you heard something cool, don't hesitate. I'm just an email away. Lots of people send in these cool guesses. It's a lot of fun and your, your noisy might be played on the show, so send me something in cool. Also, Steve.

• 1:13:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:37Jay Novella?

  You know, we're getting up there, man. And, you know, how many more of these Nauticon conferences can we actually have before we just, you know, we all just turn to dust, you know? Ten. Ten? Yeah, I think we could do about ten. But, but Nauticon 2025, we just did a livestream with George today. As we record this, it is 3:26, Wednesday, the 26th, and we did talk about Nauticon a little bit. I will just quickly remind those of you who don't know, or who have, haven't fully made up your minds yet, now would be a great time to buy your tickets. What we see happening is as people are getting into this close date range, because the, the conference starts on May 15th, where people

• 1:14:20Jay Novella?

  are, some people are realizing, oh, I can't go, and they've gotta relinquish their tickets, that there might be some VIP tickets or board game tickets available, right? Because we have a VIP on May 15th, that's a Thursday, that starts at 7:00 PM. And also the board game, which actually, I think, what are we starting at? Evan, is that at 3:30, 4:30?

• 1:14:39Speaker 03

  Four, I think, I believe 4 o'clock to 6:30 is the official game time, and we're gonna start checking people in around 3 that day, I believe.

• 1:14:46Jay Novella?

  Yeah, so there's a board game event where we're gonna have a bunch of different board games that people can choose from that they want to play and then we're gonna get in there. I will be running, I think, the Werewolf Game, which I think is a lot of fun live. So anyway, if you're interested in coming to this amazing event that we're gonna be having, go to noticoncon.com and you will be able to learn all the details, check out the schedule. So please do give us a consideration because of just how awesome it's gonna be, because George will be there. But don't let George know I said that, because the guy's got an out of control ego.

• 1:15:24Speaker 02

  Sure is.

• 1:15:27Jay Novella?

  Which is the exact opposite of reality.

• 1:15:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:30Jay Novella?

  Couple more things, guys. You could become a patron. We would really appreciate your support, particularly now because Steve is coming to the SGU full-time. We have a hell of a collection of years ahead of us to fight back the pseudoscience and the noise. Like, you know, we did a news item tonight about RFK. There's lots to talk about and lots of misinformation to fight back. Steve's gonna be doing that with me full-time. So we could use your support. Go to patreon.com/skepticsguide. You could also join our mailing list. I think you've heard this before. You could just go to our website. And the final thing I'd like to tell everybody is, don't bury your head in the sand with what's going

• 1:16:10Jay Novella?

  on in the United States. Stay informed, but stay healthy. Regardless of who you voted for or what's happening, it's a very uncomfortable, you know, country to live in right now. There's a lot, lots of stressors out there, lots of people, you know, very much, you know, we're divided. I don't care who you voted for. You gotta take care of yourself physically. You gotta take care of your mental health. Please, you know, do something for you and your friends and your family to do something that's healthy. Like, stay off your phone as much as possible. Get outside.

• 1:16:40Speaker 02

  Exercise. Stock up on food.

• 1:16:43Jay Novella?

  Actually.

• 1:16:44Speaker 02

  All right, thank you, Jay.

• 1:16:45Jay Novella?

  Mate, Steve, not done.

• 1:16:46Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:16:47Jay Novella?

  I wanna say one more thing.

• 1:16:49Speaker 02

  Go ahead.

• 1:16:50Jay Novella?

  Hello.

• 1:16:51Speaker 02

  Go ahead.

• 1:16:52Jay Novella?

  All right.

• 1:16:54Speaker 02

  One email that comes from David who writes, "Thank you for 20 years of excellent journalism and discussion. I remember where I was the day I listened to your first episode on my clunky iPod and twisted white headphones. The Skeptic's Guide is only one of a few podcasts I listen to on a weekly basis. I've been thinking about a quote that comes up frequently on your show, 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.' I wonder, is this still true?" Arthur C. Clarke, that's right. "Can you imagine anything that would appear magic after everything we know about the nature of the universe? Things appearing out of the air could be manipulated matter. Something floating could be warped gravity. Faster than light travel could be warped space, etc.

• 1:17:36Speaker 02

  Is it possible to be technologically advanced enough to understand physical possibilities, no matter how unlikely, and still understand something to be supernatural? Of course, it's impossible to imagine the unimaginable, but is there anything we could witness that is inconceivable? Keep up the good work. I look forward to the discussion." What do you guys think? So I think he's asking, you know, do you get to a point where your understanding of science and technology, of physics and, you know, potentialities is enough that you would never mistake advanced technology for magic, whereas more technologically primitive society would be more susceptible to interpreting advanced science and technology as magic?

• 1:18:19Jay Novella?

  Yeah, of course, I agree with that. I mean, I think, you know, as societies progress, you know, like using ours as the the single point of data that we have, yeah, I mean, we're because we're aware of what technology can do and everything. I mean, of course, we're going to be able to say, hey, you know, you could do that with, you know, technology instead of having it have to be magic.

• 1:18:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, we've conditioned ourselves to kind of go in that direction at this point.

• 1:18:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think there's two factors here. One is the technological advancement of the society that you come from, but I think also, you know, how skeptical you are, right? What your worldview is. So, but I think what he's asking is, so let's say, Jay, not that if you saw something that is technically possible with today's technology, or maybe just like an incremental advance on today's technology, what if you actually encountered alien technology that was super advanced? Would you still think that's got to be advanced technology? Or is there something that you would see would go like, damn, I don't know what's going on there. That is magic to me?

• 1:19:22Speaker 02

  Right, so somebody, let's say, an alien, super-advanced nanotechnology that literally could look like you're casting a spell, but it's really, at its core, it is technology, just super-advanced.

• 1:19:36Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:36Speaker 02

  Maybe harnessing ridiculous energies, for example, right?

• 1:19:41Bob Novella?

  I mean, I would, I wouldn't, I don't think I would ever say, I mean, that something was magic, because I could always contrive of some way to get around the need for supernatural magic. I mean, how would you, you have to define magic, first of all. What do you even mean by magic?

• 1:19:57Speaker 02

  I agree, I mean, something that's supernatural. I agree with you, but again, I think that does not, that's not because of our technological savvy, it's because we're skeptics.

• 1:20:07Bob Novella?

  Right.

• 1:20:07Speaker 02

  Because we know you should never do that. That's the, you know, the argument from ignorance, or the confusing unknown with unknowable, etc. Like, we know that even if something appears to be, quote-unquote, "magical," it has to have a naturalistic explanation.

• 1:20:23Bob Novella?

  Has to, right.

• 1:20:24Speaker 02

  We just don't know what it is. And even saying, even saying, "I may have just encountered a super-advanced alien technology," is more plausible than "it's literally supernatural outside." It's a philosophical thing at that point, right? We do not believe that there are supernatural things happening in the world, and therefore, there must be a naturalistic explanation. And also...

• 1:20:48Bob Novella?

  Right.

• 1:20:48Speaker 02

  It's also like, saying it's magic is the end of your curiosity and your exploration.

• 1:20:54Bob Novella?

  Yeah, you give up.

• 1:20:55Speaker 02

  Whereas if you say, "There's gotta be a naturalistic explanation for that," that motivates you to find one, even if it is that...

• 1:21:02Bob Novella?

  Yeah, there's a lot of work ahead of you.

• 1:21:03Speaker 02

  "I'm encountering alien technology," or whatever it is, or maybe just really clever leveraging of existing Earth technology, or...

• 1:21:09Bob Novella?

  Or "how am I fooling myself?"

• 1:21:11Speaker 02

  Or whatever. Or "I'm being fooled in some way, it's not what I thought it was," whatever. So, but let's put that aside. Let's see if we could put the skeptic versus not skeptic angle aside.

• 1:21:22Bob Novella?

  That's tough.

• 1:21:23Speaker 02

  Do you think that just based upon your level of exposure to technology, that the more primitive, you know, the technology of the society in which you grew up, makes you, just because of the gap between that and advanced technology is greater, you're more likely to think that it's, quote-unquote, "magical"? You know what I mean? Rather than... All things being equal in terms of philosophy and skepticism and all that. And I do think there is something to that. I don't think it's as absolute as David is saying. I think that the gap increases, but I don't think it ever goes away. In other words, you could frame it as, not that you think it's literally supernatural,

• 1:22:05Speaker 02

  but that to you, it does appear to be magical, right? Meaning that you have zero explanation for it. You can't even begin to reverse engineer what's happening. It might as well be magic, even if you don't believe philosophically that it's supernatural. Does that make sense? So yeah, I agree. Like if you show your iPhone to somebody from 2,000 years ago, they would have no other way of grappling with that, other than that this is some kind of magic. But if you showed us something, anything like that, like somebody levitating or whatever, something that I don't have a current explanation for, I would still think it was technological, you know?

• 1:22:44Bob Novella?

  Absolutely. And even if they violated some fundamental law of physics, I would still think, you know, I think the last place I would go is like, "All right, that appears to contravene some fundamental physics." That is so fundamental and unbreakable that they may have found a loophole in physics that would allow them to seemingly do that. And I would say that would be more possible, that would be my explanation, which would seem magical, but it's still, would ultimately be physics-based. Even if it's far beyond what I even think would be like faster than light travel. "Oh, sure, you found a loophole."

• 1:23:26Bob Novella?

  That's it. I wouldn't be that, you know, freaked out. I'd be happy.

• 1:23:31Speaker 02

  I think we can imagine more advanced technology.

• 1:23:36Speaker 02

  Right, we've lived through more change. We live with science fiction.

• 1:23:39Bob Novella?

  We wrote a book about it.

• 1:23:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, right. Exactly. We can imagine more, even ultimately advanced technology, whereas somebody from, say, medieval times, might not be able to imagine anything beyond

• 1:23:52Bob Novella?

  Right.

• 1:23:52Speaker 02

  the type of technology that they're, that they're used to.

• 1:23:55Bob Novella?

  I mean.

• 1:23:56Speaker 02

  Would not be able to imagine things like electronics, you know?

• 1:23:59Bob Novella?

  Right, how could they?

• 1:24:00Speaker 02

  Or computer technology, or whatever, yeah.

• 1:24:04Bob Novella?

  Right.

• 1:24:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're, you're.

• 1:24:05Bob Novella?

  Steve, as you know, I mean, that's one of my, one of my dreams, is the, the limits of technology based on physics.

• 1:24:14Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:24:15Bob Novella?

  I would love, one of my dream, like, books, or movies, or documentaries, what, according to the physics as we know it right now, what are the limits of physics in terms of, so what can technology do within the limits of physics?

• 1:24:28Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:24:29Bob Novella?

  That is something I think about all the time, and I explore, and I try to read about, and things like that. So, yeah, so that's like, yeah, this is not that hard for me. But that's just, you know, I'm just kind of weird that way. That's the kind of shit I, I think about a lot.

• 1:24:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I think, so, but. A lot of people in our culture who, because of science fiction, because we've lived through so many advances in technology, et cetera, we can imagine super advanced technology

• 1:24:52Bob Novella?

  Oh, absolutely. So much more now.

• 1:24:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, than, than earlier.

• 1:24:54Bob Novella?

  Yeah, than, than many years ago, for sure.

• 1:24:56Speaker 02

  In fact, I've encountered people, not infrequently, who make the opposite mistake, who assume that technology is more advanced than it currently is. Right? So, like, for example, Bob, I was working in your haunted corn maze, and I was in a zombie costume, and I had my, I had a mask on, and I had That was a costume? lights where my eyes are, right? And I moved.

• 1:25:24Bob Novella?

  Yes, I remember.

• 1:25:25Speaker 02

  Remember that? So, and I moved like a zombie.

• 1:25:27Bob Novella?

  That's going back.

• 1:25:27Speaker 02

  There were occasional people who thought I was an animatronic.

• 1:25:31Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:31Speaker 02

  Which is like, I'm sorry, we do not have animatronics that are able to walk like this. This was, again, this is like 20 years ago.

• 1:25:38Bob Novella?

  Yeah, this is, yeah, that's like, we're talking like 2008. So, that's even, yeah, quite, you know? Not recent. We didn't, didn't, definitely didn't have animatronics back then like that. And Steve, I, I do that even last year. I pretend to be, I pretend to be an animatronic. And so they, so people dismiss me. And then, and then I, of course, I jump at them and I do, I do non-animatronic movements. I'll put it that way. And some, some people aren't still, are still asking, is that a robot or not? To me, that's just experience and, and you know, your, your level of familiarity with that kind of stuff. They just don't know. And it's still shocking to me. Like what? There's no robot that's going to move like I just did. But that's just, but I'll make geek and that's what I think about.

• 1:26:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, yes. But it's also, I, I think people are more prepared to believe that technology can do amazing things. Like we encounter this in medicine all the time where people like, where's this super advanced medical intervention? You know, or people who watch a lot of CSI type shows. And then they're on a, on a jury, they think, well, where's this super advanced forensic technology?

• 1:26:46Bob Novella?

  Yeah, right. Hey.

• 1:26:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're sort of expecting more advanced stuff than, than, than does exist. Okay, let's move on with science or fiction.

• 1:26:58Speaker 06

  It's time for science or fiction.

• 1:27:08Speaker 02

  Each week I come up with three science news items, four facts, two real and one fake. And I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. We have three regular news items this week. Are you guys ready?

• 1:27:20Bob Novella?

  Yep.

• 1:27:20Speaker 03

  See.

• 1:27:21Speaker 02

  All right, here we go. Item number one, a new study finds that deep sea ecosystems have not yet fully recovered following mining of polymetallic nodules in a test bed 44 years ago. Item number two, computer scientists have produced certified randomness using a 56-bit quantum computer.

• 1:27:44Speaker 02

  And item number three, researchers find that as bicycle and e-scooter use increases in an urban setting, the relative risk of collisions with vehicles increases significantly. Evan, go first.

• 1:27:56Speaker 03

  Ooh, okay, uh, let's see, um, deep sea ecosystems have not yet fully recovered following mining of polymetallic nodules in a test bed forty-four years ago. I don't know what incident, is this a specific incident, or?

• 1:28:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, it was a test bed. So, you know what the polymetallic nodules are, right? So those are those potato-sized lumps of nickel and cobalt and other, they're like little batteries, you know what I mean? Like, it's all the, all the metals that we need to make batteries. And they're just, you know, there are certain parts of the ocean where they're just sort of strewn across the ocean floor. And the idea is we want to go in there and suck them all up, right?

• 1:28:35Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:28:36Speaker 02

  And billions of, you know, of, uh, of these nodules down there. So forty-four years ago, they did a test where they did a little strip, they, they vacuumed up all those nodules. And so now they're looking forty-four years, years later to see if the ecosystem is still affected. And what the study found, if you believe this one is true, is that even forty-four years later, the ecosystem has not fully recovered.

• 1:29:01Speaker 03

  Fully recovered, meaning gone back to the state prior to when it was?

• 1:29:04Speaker 02

  Right, in terms of biodiversity, you know, the number of organisms, et cetera.

• 1:29:10Speaker 03

  Well, you know, I don't know if this one will be fiction or not, you know, we've seen, we have seen evidence, though, of ecosystems, you know, bouncing back. Um, I, I think about Chernobyl a little bit, you know, about, uh, you know, the, some, you know, animals and things came back to the area to reclaim, even though it's, you know, people and things can't live there. But, uh, you know, that, that was sort of an ecosystem bounce. And we've seen, and I know, although overall, I know we've talked a lot about coral reef and the, you know, and how that bleaching is occurring. But all, there's also, you know, some evidence that some coral reefs have been repairing themselves and sort, and recovering. So.

• 1:29:51Speaker 03

  Maybe it hasn't yet fully recovered. Maybe that's the trick of this one. I don't know about this one. The second one, this is the one that intrigues me the most, maybe. Uh, computer scientists have produced certified randomness using a 56-bit quantum computer. I always thought, I was led to believe, and I'll blame someone else for this if I'm wrong on my memory, that you can't have certified randomness. Like it's like, like it would defy the laws of physics to, to have it. And then now to say that they've produced it using quantum computing, of course, that makes sense, but I don't know, this one like rings an alarm bell in my head. Did that, uh, cause I always thought it was, was physically impossible, uh, to have it.

• 1:30:35Speaker 03

  You could come close, but you can't have true, uh, you can, you cannot artificially generate randomness to its purest form. And then the last one, hmm. Bicycle and e-scooter use increases in an urban setting, the relative risk of collisions with the vehicle increases significantly.

• 1:30:52Speaker 02

  So just to, just to make sure you understand what that means, it's not just the absolute number, but the, but the percentage risk, like the relative risk goes up. Like you could think of it as like your chance of getting into an accident increases with the number of, of vehicles increasing, not just the absolute number of, because there's more bikes and e-scooters.

• 1:31:13Speaker 03

  Well, the thing about this one is at first read, you would think, okay, that makes a lot of sense. But as so many times you go and you, you actually do the research on these and they turn out not to be the way your initial perception of these things would be like, sure, it makes sense that yeah, if you're going to have more of these things around, you know, you're, yeah, the chances will go up, but maybe they found out that the opposite is actually true. Oh gosh, it kills me to guess against the certified randomness.

• 1:31:43Speaker 03

  But I think that's why you threw it in there. So I'm gonna say the bicycle and e-scooter urban setting one is the fiction.

• 1:31:49Speaker 02

  Okay, Jay.

• 1:31:50Jay Novella?

  Yeah, I mean, the whole thing about not being able to pick random numbers on computers has been true. And I was wondering if quantum computing was gonna be able to, you know, break past this problem, because, you know, it's a very difficult thing to even mimic, let alone achieve. You know, so I'm not surprised that a quantum computer could do it. I just don't know if we're there yet. But sure, I mean, we've been, we've been working on this for so long, and there's, there's functioning quantum computers out there that can do some pretty cool stuff already. So, all right, I'm gonna agree with that. I'll say that one is science. The first one, uh, study that the deep ecosystems have

• 1:32:28Jay Novella?

  not fully recovered following mining of polymetallic nodules 44 years ago. I mean, how much of the deep sea ecosystem, you know, like, what are we, not the whole thing, I would imagine, right, Steve?

• 1:32:42Speaker 02

  Well, it's in the testbed. They compared it to areas that were not mined.

• 1:32:47Jay Novella?

  All right. I mean, I could see how that could be a problem. Yeah, I mean, uh, this last one, I've been, you know, I've been turning this over in my head as well. I mean, I'm not reading anything about lots of accidents with these vehicles. You know, it doesn't hit my radar at all. I don't know. I mean, I, you know, there's lots of cities that have amazing amounts of traffic without, you know, without like crazy amounts of accidents and all this stuff. I mean, oh, God. I don't know anything about the deep sea one. Yeah, I'm gonna go with Evan. I think this one is probably the fiction.

• 1:33:19Speaker 02

  Okay, and Bob?

• 1:33:20Bob Novella?

  All right. Um, polymetallic, I was gonna say polymimetic alloy. The polymetallic, polymetallic, uh, nodules. Uh, it just, that seems like too long, that you would have pretty damn good recovery after almost a half a century. It almost seems like too obvious, like, well, of course it would have pretty well recovered there. Um, but it's just, it's just, I don't know, something's rubbed me the wrong way. And, um, I have a bigger problem with, potentially with, with number three. Number two, though, is very easy for me. Um, yes, pseudo-random number generators are a thing with like classical, you know, programming and classical computers. You cannot create.

• 1:34:04Bob Novella?

  A fully random number generator using those techniques. But using anything that's based on quantum processes, you absolutely can. And we talked about it on the show many years ago. They have done it already using, based on quantum processes. So the fact that they could do it with a quantum computer, it seems like a no brainer, like of course. So that one has gotta be true. I have really no doubt on that. The third one though, is the one that really rubbed me wrong. I mean, we've gone on those, we've used those scooters in various cities. They were a tremendous amount of fun. I mean, the best time I ever had in DC was with, with, with you guys.

• 1:34:44Bob Novella?

  We rented scooters one night and we, and we visited like most of the monuments at night using those damn scooters. And it was fantastic, so much fun. And you get so much coverage. But it was pretty safe. We had one goofy little accident and it wasn't with another car. It was Ian, it was going too fast and he flew off of it. And he's got a nasty road rash, but no cars were involved. And I mean, it's not hard to be safe on that, it seems to me, because your visibility is incredible. You've got full visibility all around you. There's nothing really in your way. Sure, people are reckless. And I also agree with Jay that I have never heard about, about any, anything about collisions with cars with those scooters.

• 1:35:26Bob Novella?

  So that one kind of makes me think maybe that one's the fiction. It seems more likely than, than the other ones. And the first one, I could be wrong about those polymetallic nodules. It just, it doesn't seem right to me. So I'll just go with the scooter and join the team.

• 1:35:40Speaker 03

  Yay, we're all riding together.

• 1:35:41Speaker 02

  All right, so why don't we take this in order? A new study finds that deep sea ecosystems have not yet fully recovered following mining of polymetallic nodules in a test bed of, test bed 44 years ago. You guys all think this is science and this one is science, unfortunately.

• 1:36:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, right, the unfortunate.

• 1:36:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, so you know. It's really unfortunate. We would love to be able to scoop up these polymetallic nodules. We really can use the metals to fuel our transition to EVs and electrifying everything and battery grid storage, all that stuff. But it's still understudied. It's still being studied to see what the effects on the ecosystem are going to be. And so this little test bed that was done 44 years ago for this specific reason, I didn't realize that.

• 1:36:33Speaker 03

  Oh, really?

• 1:36:34Speaker 02

  They started looking at that a long ago.

• 1:36:35Speaker 03

  You were thinking about it back then.

• 1:36:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, that the biodiversity and biodiversity has still not recovered. There are some creatures that just need the hard surface and there's nothing else there that really replaces that. So there's also the issue of the sediment because it turns up a lot of sediment. They said that pretty much did return to its previous levels. Like the sediment wasn't screwed up anymore, but the biodiversity has not bounced. It's improved. It is improving. It is starting to come back. But even 44 years later, it has not gone back to the way it was. So we really have to think very carefully about how and even if we're going to mine

• 1:37:21Speaker 02

  these polymetallic nodules. I was thinking when I was reading this, wouldn't it be awesome, I don't know how feasible this is, if we could make something like the polymetallic nodules, the same size and hardness, made out of carbon and then go down there and swap them out. So we take away all the metals and sequester a whole bunch of carbon.

• 1:37:45Speaker 03

  Pull an Indiana Jones statue bag of sand kind of trick.

• 1:37:48Speaker 02

  Can we do that economically though, right? Obviously, it's cheaper to go in there and just vacuum them all up, but that's the most disruptive to the ecosystem. If you go in there with robots or something, I guess, that have to swap them out, that could be cost prohibitive. But we'll see. I don't know. Well, this has to be studied more. Maybe we could just come up with some other method that maybe takes half of the modules away and not all of them, or does it with less disruption of the sediment, something. We need to develop technology that we can get access to at least some of these nodules without destroying the ecosystems.

• 1:38:25Bob Novella?

  No sediment in.

• 1:38:27Speaker 02

  All right, let's go on to the second one. Computer scientists have produced certified randomness using a 56 bit quantum computer. You guys all think this one is science. So there is a formal certification process for determining if something is truly random. And it was developed not that long ago, I think in 2018. It was developed.

• 1:38:49Bob Novella?

  Really?

• 1:38:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it has to be, as you say, like the sequence has to fit. A procedure to determine if it's truly random or not. And it has to be novel randomness, right? You can't be recycling a random sequence.

• 1:39:06Bob Novella?

  Right, yeah.

• 1:39:07Jay Novella?

  People, people will like, they'll generate random numbers. And then they'll just use that like as a text file, you know, as a file of information that they, you know, but that's not a good way to do it.

• 1:39:18Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:39:18Bob Novella?

  But how do you determine that it wasn't, you know, generated at some other time and reused? Like Jay is saying, how do you know that that's the case?

• 1:39:27Speaker 02

  Because you have to just generate enough of them and you have to be able to do it again. You know, whatever, they have to.

• 1:39:31Bob Novella?

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:39:32Speaker 02

  Show that it's not just following a stream.

• 1:39:33Bob Novella?

  A certain threshold.

• 1:39:35Speaker 02

  So, yeah, the threshold's pretty high and, and it hasn't been done, even with quantum computers. So the question is, have we finally done it? I thought one of you would say, would invoke the, wouldn't I have heard about this if it had actually happened?

• 1:39:52Bob Novella?

  That would most likely.

• 1:39:53Speaker 02

  This would be, at least in the geek circles, this would be pretty big news. So this one is.

• 1:40:01Bob Novella?

  Uh oh.

• 1:40:01Speaker 02

  Science, they did it.

• 1:40:02Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:02Speaker 03

  Oh, it is.

• 1:40:03Speaker 02

  It's true randomness, true certified randomness.

• 1:40:06Bob Novella?

  Whoa.

• 1:40:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:40:07Bob Novella?

  Steve, we talked about this about a decade ago about truly random numbers that were generated and done through a quantum, through quantum processes. It wasn't a quantum computer, but it was other, other quantum processes that they were able to use for that purpose. I'm pretty damn sure that this has been done before. But with not without without a quantum computer, though, but you've done before.

• 1:40:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is the first one that's certified by this new process certification process.

• 1:40:34Bob Novella?

  Okay.

• 1:40:35Speaker 02

  That's why you'll notice I didn't say in my I didn't say for the first time in the in the text, because I couldn't verify if it was the first time or not. They just said that they did it and it was certified and they never said this has never been done before. Um, or anything like it or whatever. So that's why I didn't put that in there because I wasn't 100% sure about that. But I this is certainly the first time they've done it this way.

• 1:41:02Bob Novella?

  Right, absolutely.

• 1:41:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, so they said certified random is using a trapped ion quantum processor. But I think certainly, even if they were so you have, listen, you people have generated random numbers before, but they use a physical system or they use something that requires some kind of physical randomizer. Uh, but that, of course, really slows down the ability to generate quantum, you know, um, random numbers.

• 1:41:25Bob Novella?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:41:26Speaker 02

  But this, because it's just a quantum, you know, computer, it's a 56 qubit computer. They can spit them out like in in massive amounts. So this is critical for

• 1:41:37Bob Novella?

  Oh, God, banking security, so many things.

• 1:41:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is like most that's probably going to be the most critical application of this is encryption. Uh, being able to generate truly random number.

• 1:41:47Bob Novella?

  You will not be able to unlock that. Right, forget it. That is the key.

• 1:41:50Speaker 02

  All right, that means that researchers find that as bicycle and e-scooter use increases in an urban setting, the relative risk of collisions with vehicles increases significantly is the fiction. This was, you know, an actual real research question. The the question was, would the increased just density of of vehicles sharing, you know, the available space, the available roads, would that lead would the crowding lead to increased risk of accidents? And what they found was the opposite, that the relative risk decreased by 20%.

• 1:42:28Bob Novella?

  Neat.

• 1:42:28Speaker 02

  And the reason for that, they think, is that when there are more, and this was like, so, for example, you could also, in some of the tests, they introduced or they they had a scheme where you could rent e-scooters or whatever. They did something so that the use of e-scooters increased significantly. And that reduced the rate of bicycle accidents by tw- by 20%. And the thinking is that with more, with the, with the increased use of these like micro-transport devices that they're calling them, that, um, or micro-mobility, micro-mobility, they, uh, that, that people in cars are more careful. They're more aware of them and they're more careful of them.

• 1:43:12Speaker 02

  Whereas if there's, if they're few and far between, they're just not, they're not thinking about them and they do risky things and they cut them off and they, you know. Now, the authors were, were, uh, careful to point out that while this is good, that the relative risk decreases just by the increased visibility of these micro-mobility options, we still need to think about sort of redesigning cities so to make, make dedicated space for more of this transportation because it's also, it's good for health. You know, if you're riding a bicycle.

• 1:43:46Speaker 03

  Oh, absolutely.

• 1:43:47Speaker 02

  You know, in the city, it's, it's, yeah, it's good exercise.

• 1:43:49Speaker 03

  Less emissions.

• 1:43:50Speaker 02

  It's less emissions, et cetera, and apparently.

• 1:43:53Speaker 03

  Less wear and tear on the streets themselves.

• 1:43:55Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:43:56Speaker 03

  I'm sure it probably saves money in the long run.

• 1:43:58Speaker 02

  Apparently it's safer. We just have to, we really just need fewer cars. You, I mean, and we need, we need, we need to control the traffic and we need drivers to be more aware and more careful of non-car traffic. And I do think this fits the overall idea that, you know, we kind of designed our cities and our roadways around car supremacy, right? Like the cars are the most important thing. They have the right of way, stay out of their way, et cetera. And we, and, and we really need to rethink that and say, we really should make more walking and micro-mobility friendly cities and cars should really be staying out of everybody's way, you know?

• 1:44:40Speaker 02

  And even a lot of cities now are setting aside like significant proportion of their streets as no cars, like these are no cars at all on these streets. So again, to make way for foot traffic, bicycle traffic, e-scooter traffic, uh, which I think is a great idea.

• 1:44:56Jay Novella?

  Definitely. There's European cities that are doing it, you know, and it works nicely.

• 1:45:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, it does.

• 1:45:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, as long as, you know, you know, winter climate cities, maybe not so much, but certainly there's plenty of cities in the zones where you have decent weather most of the year and that those are the ideal.

• 1:45:12Speaker 02

  If you have covered walkways or you just clear the walkways aggressively, you could still, you know, bike and e-scooter even in the cold if you have a jacket on, you know what I mean? Obviously, yeah, there's certain bad weather, like you're not gonna go out in driving rain or whatever. Obviously, there are times when it's just not gonna be feasible. But, yeah, but we should definitely be shifting away from cars and towards walking, biking, e-scooters and mass transit. Don't forget mass transport as well.

• 1:45:42Speaker 03

  Don't forget.

• 1:45:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's good for the environment, it's good for health, it's good for noise pollution, for air pollution, and it makes cities more livable and increases quality of life. You also have more space to plant more trees, you know, which also increases mental health and air quality and improves health overall. So, yeah, you know, thoughtful, thoughtful design and prioritizing in cities rather than just letting the chips fall where they may, you know what I mean? Like, is very important as we're sort of pushing the limits of what cities can do and how many people we can cram into them and all of the infrastructure that is needed, et cetera. I also think it'll be nice when, you know, the most of the cars

• 1:46:23Speaker 02

  on the road are EVs, you know, and they're not cranking out pollution. Think about how much more livable cities are gonna be when that's the case. All right, well, good job, guys. You swept me this week. I thought this was a tricky week.

• 1:46:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, well.

• 1:46:36Speaker 02

  Thought this was tricky, but you...

• 1:46:37Speaker 03

  It was a tricky week. That quantum one really was surprising.

• 1:46:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:46:40Speaker 03

  Easy.

• 1:46:42Speaker 02

  All right, Evan, give us a quote.

• 1:46:44Speaker 03

  People of goodwill may be misled by bad information, but people of ill will deliberately spread misinformation. Oh yeah. From the book Merchants of Doubt, written by Naomi Orskis and Eric Conway. That is a book, have you read that book, Steve?

• 1:47:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:47:04Speaker 03

  Oh, I have to read it. That's one of the many books that I have to obtain and get caught up on. Cause that book came out about 10 years ago.

• 1:47:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's very good. Yeah, I definitely highly recommend it. So this is something I have to constantly remind myself and other people about when I lecture about this as well. Like, we talk about as skeptics, all of the mechanisms of self deception and all the reasons why we need to have good critical thinking skills, et cetera. But you have to remember, sometimes there are just bad actors out there. You know, it's not like, we're not just having, people aren't just misleading themselves or falling for pseudoscience. They are doing those things, but in the mix also are people who are con artists, or who are shills, or who are paid by the industry to spread misinformation, or propaganda, right?

• 1:47:53Speaker 02

  We, there are countries generating disinformation, not just misinformation, but disinformation, designed to change the conversation. And yeah, so you have to keep that on the list of things to be wary of. It's not just misinformation. It's not just pseudoscience, and not just bad thinking skills. It's active, deliberate, purposeful disinformation. And sometimes that could be dominant. That could really dominate the conversation, you know? Or generate entire pseudosciences. What, you know, I was really surprised when at SciCon last year, during one of the lectures,

• 1:48:32Speaker 02

  I learned that the whole, the US government manufactured HIV as a, you know, as a weapon, was Russian disinformation. I didn't know that.

• 1:48:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's right. That's right.

• 1:48:46Speaker 02

  You know, we talked about that for years as skeptics, saying how it's a conspiracy theory, blah, blah, blah, without realizing that it was deliberate Russian, Russian disinformation. So yeah, we have to keep that on the list of possibilities, you know? There are bad faith actors out there. People acting in bad faith. All right. Well, thank you all for joining me this week.

• 1:49:06Speaker 03

  Thanks, Steve. Thanks, Steve, and good luck, Kara.

• 1:49:09Speaker 02

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

• 1:49:16Speaker 02

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

• 1:49:53Speaker 00

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