The Skeptics Guide #1047 - Aug 2 2025

You're listening to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality. Hello and welcome to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, July 30th, 2025, and this is your host, even Navella. Joining me this week are Bob Navella. Hey, everybody. Kara Santa Maria. Howdy. And Evan Bernstein. Good evening, everyone. Jay is on break this week. He's actually on his way to Alaska. He might be there by now, I'm not sure. Flying, I hope. Yes, flying to Alaska. What the hell of a drive? And while he's there, he's going to visit with Bob's daughter, who works in Alaska. Ashley. Hi, Ashley. I wish I could be there. Move back to Connecticut. Where in Alaska is it? Juneau? Is it... Juneau. Gerd, about an hour from Anchorage. Gerd Wood. So, the greater Anchorage. So I found an interesting Reddit post that got my attention, and within 15 seconds I emailed the entire SGU crew about it. Whoa. I have not read it. What was it? What was it? It's a video. Oh, it's a video. Okay. This is Dr. Peter Carter. Dr. Peter Carter, expert IPCC reviewer and director of Climate Emergency Institute. Basically, he's calling it. He joins David Suzuki in official recognition of unavoidable end game on planet, climate and homo sapiens. And that's a weird ending to that sentence. It's the beginning of the end, huh? So I didn't see the full video, Steve. So what was your take on it? You know, I disagree with him. So... Well, good, because it was a little concerning that this guy would be saying, Game over, kids. The game isn't over. I mean, it's never... Well, it can never be over. Right. Right. You could always make it less worse than it would have been if you didn't do anything. So that's why I was not surprised. It could always be worse. But his pessimism seems extraordinary. Like, it's too late. We're doomed. It's fine to be pessimistic. It doesn't help. It doesn't really help. And the specific things that he's saying are correct. It's just the way he's framing it as quote unquote, too late, which is bullshit. And that's what, you know, as we discussed with Michael Mann when he was on the show last time. Right. Mann. That's the latest denialist strategy. Well, it's too late. So why do anything? Right? Do you think it's that... Well, I don't know. This is a devil's advocate position, because I don't know really, like, we're not inside of his head. But do you think that it's that like the emergency, like that approach isn't working? And so saying like, we're past the point, guys. Like we are effed. Is that a hope that people will act? It's fine to say he's not calling for action. He's been saying the fossil fuel industry won. The climate deniers have won. The big bankers who are backing it all have won. We have lost game over. He doesn't think we could now that we have the capability to do anything about it. So it's not that he's saying that interventions won't have any effect. Right? Like what we're saying is it could be worse if we do something it will still make it less bad, etc., etc. He's saying, yeah, whatever, even if that's true, we have lost the political game. It's the political game is over. We lost. And so nothing is going to change. And I think the final nail in the coffin for him, as he said it, was Trump's election. Because in his mind, that represents the victory of all of those forces, the victory for climate denial, for fossil fuel, for the current economy as it is set up. Yeah, but in four years, that'll all change again. Exactly. Well, yeah, it definitely can. One presidential election is not permanent. Right? I don't find this dialogue helpful when people say these things like this. Here's one quote from the video. I assume it was him saying this, but the IPCC sixth assessment said that global emissions had to be in decline by 2025 at the latest 25 at the latest this year. It's too late. So it's basically this big deadline. Too late for what? It's almost to say for what? To avoid negative consequences. Yeah, but we already know we're too late to avoid negative consequences. We've been there. We are too late to avoid negative consequences. I'm sure that's not a big revelation. But the problem is when you throw up your hands in defeat, it's not too late to continue to work on this. I mean, why give up a defeat? That's completely worthless strategy. Also, I'm sorry, but we're not the only country in the world. Why is such an America centric? I mean, I get that we have sort of an outsized influence and that this administration is quite detrimental, but other places are doing really big things and there are a lot of people within our borders that are doing really big things. I don't know. I mean, the numbers are still haven't turned around. The amount of CO2 we're releasing into the atmosphere is still increasing every year. Barring COVID and things like that, barring temp short term temporary reversals, but the overall trend is still up. We have not turned the ship around yet. No, of course not. Yeah, which we have said all of this. Yes, we are increasing our renewable portfolio. We are building a lot of wind and solar. But that's just the increase in our energy demand. We haven't started displacing fossil fuel. We're just some of the new energy capacity that we're installing is renewable, is carbon neutral or whatever. We've got to get nuclear going. We have to do everything. I agree. Yes, not in any one thing. I keep getting to arguments with well meaning skeptics who insist that we could do this all with just solar and batteries. What the hell, man? I mean, you can't print. No, it's like an article. You need a bridge. I mean, yeah, yeah. Where do you think it's coming from? I think it's generally coming from that political segment that was always anti nuclear. And this is how they're remaining anti nuclear in the face of reality, in my opinion. Yeah. And the thing is, when you get into an argument with somebody, a discussion and they don't address your key points, that's a problem. You know, they just reiterate. So like they always say, hey, listen, solar and battery is the cheapest form of new energy that we could add to the grid. And solar plus battery, obviously, you know, the battery backup helps extend, you know, the solar and etc. etc. Okay, I acknowledge all of that. But there's multiple problems. The amount of new energy that we have to add to the grid. So the old estimates were we have increased by 100, you know, to 150% by 50% by 2050. I think those estimates are outdated because of crypto and AI. So we're going to have even more increase in energy demand. There isn't enough copper in the world, you know, we were not producing enough copper in order to build all the batteries we have to build, even just for EVs, let alone grid storage, you know, update the grid like solar and wind requires and build the solar panels. We do not have the resources to do it. And it's you know what I mean? It's just silly. And plus in parts of the world, it just doesn't work. You know, like in the north and half of the United States, there's no way we're going to displace solar energy production seasonally. You know what I mean? I have solar panels on my roof. I'm in Connecticut. I produce almost all my electricity over the late spring, summer and early fall. I produce almost no energy over the winter. So I would have to store three months of energy or more in order to be completely on solar. So then the only other option is you got to get solar from Arizona to me or Florida to whatever to me. Right. It's like, OK, that's fine too. And when is the grid going to be upgraded to allow that to happen? The argue, they just don't address those issues. Well, nuclear is the bridge to getting there. It's not. I mean, it's whatever we are. We already are at 19, whatever, 20 percent nuclear. You want that to go away. You want to replace all existing fossil fuel, add 50 plus percent and replace 20 percent nuclear all with wind and solar and not realistic. None of its storage. And you know, you think that's the 25 years. That's the fastest way to decarbonize the grid. Forget about it. We got to do everything. We have to do everything. There's just no reason to take it off the table. But they're just so dedicated to like, no, it's got to be all renewable. It's just purest. It's just so frustrating. And you have to do the gloom people we got to deal with. It's too late already. The renewable purists. The renewable purists tend to make anti-nuclear arguments or do they just not touch nuclear? So they do. They say it's too expensive. It takes too long. It's not that it's dangerous. That's not their argument. They don't really fall on that. That's not one of their go-to's because it's not dangerous. It's simply one of the safest. It's called it on the run of fire. In terms of like the lives lost per unit of energy produced, it's one of the safest. And it's not too expensive if you include the entire cost of the infrastructure, right? Yeah, wind and solar are cheap. But not when you consider to get past a certain percentage. And that's what we're talking about. It's cheap at this end of the spectrum. It's cheap when we have 5% penetration of wind, of solar rather, like 10% of wind. That's cheap. But when you say if you're going to do 100%, then first of all, wind, way too much land use. Just way too much land use. Solar, it's only during the day and it's only year round in sunny parts of the country, which means we need massive grid storage. Know how long it's going to take to build that grid storage longer than it would take to build nuclear? So the duration argument doesn't hold. It literally takes just as long to build pumped hydro as it does to build nuclear. And the newer, like the Natrium nuclear power plants can do grid storage too. They can keep their molten salt and do grid storage. And burn their own waste fuel. Well, they have fewer spent nuclear fuel than the older designs. So are those the ones that are meltdown proof? Yeah, they're pretty much meltdown proof. Yeah. If you don't put them in an earthquake zone. To get out of the weeds and stop looking at the trees and just back off to the forest, isn't it better to just invest in all roads because they all lead to the same place? Yeah. That's what I never understand about pure soil. Zero sum argument. It's like, don't divert money from wind and solar to nuclear. It's like, well, you haven't demonstrated this is a zero sum game. We're saying build nuclear instead of coal and natural gas. Yeah. We need to stop expanding those things for sure. And the other advantage is you can swap a coal plant out one for one with a nuclear plant in the same infrastructure, the same land and the same grid connections. And you just can't do that. You just can't do that. I listen. I love wind and solar. I have solar on my roof. I'm all for it for what it does. But it has a downside. Too much rare earths and copper and all that stuff. Too much grid storage. Too much upgrading the grid. All that will take a super long time and it's too much land use. Right. To do 100%. Right. Not any time soon. Maybe in 100 years, fine. I don't care. That's fine. But if the goal is to get carbon neutral as fast as possible, there's no reason we should take anything off the table. And nuclear's advantages are huge. If the only disadvantage is money, who cares? Spend the money. It's cheaper than the climate change. Right? Yes. Well, that's the point. Yes. I hate to say what the guy who posted the piece is saying in the sense of like, I hear that argument and also to some extent it's moot for the next three and a half years because they're not going to spend the money on any of it. Well, there's a much better chance they'll spend money on nuclear than renewables. True. That's my hope. At least kind of like, I don't know, kater or pandor to that. Yes. Right. Danny, I care it. Right. But we'll see. Just tell them you can burn the Epstein files in the nuclear reactor. Exactly. Let's not go there. All right. Let's move on. I want to start you off with something that Bob and I talked about on TikTok today because it's an update to the evolving three eye Atlas story. Three weeks ago, Bob. 31 Atlas. Yeah. 30. So one of the conspiracy theories on YouTube is like 31 Atlas fail. Sorry, dude. Three eye Atlas. Minor points. But you know. Yeah. The eye stands for interstellar. But the sloppy the sloppiness is, you know, throughout his argument. That was just one funny example. Okay. So Bob first presented a few weeks on the show. Third interstellar object confirmed total first one that is a interstellar comet. And bigger than the other two. That's bigger than the other two. What's the other three of them? It's the biggest of three. And that was it. And we were, you know, it's it's heading towards its close approach to the sun, which will be in October and November. It'll come around the other side in early December and then it will leave the solar system. Oh, yeah. So because that's it's a hyperbolic orbit. That's how we know it's interstellar. Right. Yeah. Then our old friend Avi Loeb chimed in saying this could be an alien artifact just like a Mua Mua and the other interstellar objects. And gave a list of completely ridiculous arguments for why that is. So now that has broken out into the mainstream and there's tons of, you know, internet, TikTok, conspiracy theorists saying a Harvard physicist is saying we're going to be invaded by aliens. What? It's not great when these, when people like this lend their quote unquote credibility to the to the crazy people out there. Like, it's total. I hate it. I hate it when that happens. So frustrating. And this, despite the fact that in his paper, he actually says, he at the very end, I guess near the end, he says, by far, the most likely outcome will be that three eye atlas is a completely natural interstellar object. He even admits that. And these people still, of course, didn't read the paper and don't even know that. He said that, but that's what he said. Right. And they're still running away with the worst clickbait titles that I have like ever seen. Oh, here's one. This is from MSN. Right. This is mainstream journalism. Here's the headline. Hostile alien spacecraft in quotes may strike earth in November. Oh, God. What? That's like tabloid. So that's tabloid level. That's just straight up lying. Yeah. And putting it in quotes makes it seem like somebody said that. Right. The first of the hostile was completely just inserted into the narrative at some point. Yeah. Right. Bobby Loeb didn't say that. He just said, you know, they're a probe. They're trying to communicate with us, look, you know, examine us, etc. He never introduced this notion of being hostile. Now that's now the narrative that we're going to be invaded by aliens, that there is an alien ship. And then all the reporting gets loaded now. It's like some they're saying it's going to be passing behind the sun. So they report that it'll be hiding behind the sun so that it could maneuver in secret. It's not hiding. It's just a where it's coming from. It's passing. Where it's going. Somebody said that that's a tactical maneuver. It's tactical. That's a tactical maneuver. If ever I saw or it's just a random path of a random chunk of ice. I really need something right now to hold on to. I guess. No, they're rooting for the earth to be invaded. Yeah, I don't know. I think they just want like it's like reality TV, right? Yeah. Clickbait. Yeah, it's just total clickbait. Well, it's not just that. It's yes, it is clickbait, but the idea is something to pull your attention away from the joint. Oh, LARP. There you go. Exactly. Yeah, much more satisfying. Take up a hobby. Yeah, do something that's pure fantasy and you know it. That's your distraction. Don't write reality. You're a fantasy game. I agree. But that's totally what they do. Yes, they do. But yeah, it's just galling that Avi Loeb, he's getting a lot of shade from anybody with any scientific chops and intellectual integrity. You know, for doing this, but it's like this guy. I think he's too far. He's too far gone now. He can't retreat. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know that that's true. He's acting that way for now, but I haven't talked to the guy. I don't really know what his motivation is or why he's so far gone. I mean, you could, you know, I would argue that if he didn't come up with these sorts of ideas, nobody would know the name Avi Loeb at all. That's certainly true. And he wouldn't have his institute being funded by tech pros. But right. I just think he's one of these scientists who may be technically, you know, good in his field, but he does not understand the difference between pseudoscience and science. He doesn't understand critical thinking. And so he's falling for really basic critical thinking fails. Yeah. When was the last time he corrected himself? And there's no learning curve apparently because he's just making the same mistakes over and over again. Is he a pretty magical thinker in other areas? Do we know? Not that I know of. Like, is he religious? No, this seems to be his name. He's like a miracle guy. I've not seen him comment on other things other than these. I've read some of his papers that were, you know, I guess in his, more in his lane and they were, they were interesting. I talked about them, but this stuff is like, I mean, I might not, every paper I see from him now, even if it's completely unrelated, I'll just be suspected. Like, because I don't trust this guy's thinking. Yeah. That's what I'm always confused when I see, like, I know plenty of academics who are religious, but like secular religious, you know what I mean? But I'm always really amazed when I meet academics, especially in STEM fields or related fields who believe in magic, but only in this one area. I'm like, hmm, how do you keep it, you know, see it all the time? Yeah. Yeah. You could be technically proficient. You can be, you could function as a physician, as a PhD, as a researcher and not understand the philosophical underpinnings of science, not understand the logical nuance of science versus seawall. You're always technically proficient in your area and that you're a setup for falling for what to us is really obvious pseudoscience. Especially if you're already in sort of community that reinforces that. Like I remember when I was in graduate school, the first time, so I was getting my masters, there was a woman on our lab getting her PhD. She was an older woman, not older, but like older than most of us that were, you know, fresh out of undergrad. She was a seventh day Adventist, but she was very literal in her beliefs and she would talk about dinosaurs as though Jesus put them in the ground and our professor would literally be like, I, he would put his fingers in his ears and he would be like, I cannot hear this or I will not graduate. Wow. She would actually outwardly talk about. Yeah. Like we would go to the bar after like lab and she would just like talk about her beliefs and he would be like, I'm your science professor. Like you're getting a neuroscience PhD in my lab. You can't talk like that. Yes. That's interesting. It's interesting. They don't have there and not able to control themselves, I guess is the way to. Well, they just, they think this is the way reality works, you know, so why should they hold back? But yeah, we've talked about this before. Like should, like should that be a problem? Should you have an issue graduating a science PhD because they believe magic? And I think the best approach is what you believe in your heart of hearts is your business. Right. You have to demonstrate knowledge. You have to demonstrate you understand evolutionary theory. But the thing is, I would say you have to demonstrate that you understand the philosophy and logic of science and it's kind of hard to demonstrate that and profess belief in pseudoscience. Yeah. And profess things that go against it. Yeah. Yeah. That's like, okay, well, which one is it then? Are you just saying what you need to say to graduate? What do you actually think? Right. Because that's what scholarship is. Yeah. I can't think of a single field where when you write your dissertation, you're not expected to have your own thoughts and ideas. Like that's the whole point. A dissertation is a creative work. It can't just be, look, this is what other people said. Right. That's not a dissertation. Yeah. You don't go off the rails and talk about creationism and things. That's what I'm saying. Like obviously not going to be part of whatever it is the dissertation has. I would hope not, God. I mean, unless you're a theology. Oh, okay. But even then, they're not usually, right? Yeah. But I would still say we can't police the faith of our students. No, of course not. They have to understand the difference between faith and empirical claims. If they get those things confused, that's a problem. So you're basically forcing them to essentially wall off their faith from science. And not just like, yes, this is what the scientists say, even though I don't believe that they've got to, at the graduate level, like the doing research level, as you say, they have to be able to think, live, and breathe science to its core or they're not going to be a competent scientist. No. And it's one thing if we're talking about an undergrad trying to get a degree. It's another thing, when you're going for a PhD, it's not like, look, I took these classes and I earned my PhD. It's look, I did this creative research project and I proved that I am of sufficient knowledge and theoretical and applied knowledge to be able to defend these views to the very person, my major professor, who holds the ability to pass me in their hands. Don't talk about that stuff to them. It's not a good idea. Yeah, it's a bad strategy. Bad strategy. Yeah. All right, Kara, tell us about this artery calcium scan. Yeah, so I came across an article in the New York Times. They have, I guess, a vertical called New Old Age. It was written by Paula Spann on July 26th and updated on July 29th. The headline is, this test tells you more about your heart attack risk and the very, the subhead is the coronary artery calcium scan can offer blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, ah, I just did one of those like two weeks ago. So I got excited because I wanted to read more about it. When my primary care physician recommended that I get a coronary artery calcium scan, I had never heard of it before. And in this article, the journalist mentions that most people haven't heard of these scans. Have you guys heard of a coronary artery calcium or coronary calcium CT? Sometimes it's called that. Yes. Never once, but I'm not surprised I haven't heard of it. Right, and Bob, you haven't either. No. So here's what it is. And this is so, I mean, interesting. And throughout the article, the journalist talks to different cardiologists, different individuals in the medical profession, and kind of across the board, they're singing its praises and saying like, I often recommend this to my patients. What it does, it's a CT scan that images the vessels around your heart. When I went into my doctor's appointment, I had my kind of regular physical, she was like, we're going to get your blood work. We're going to look at everything and see where we're at. And she's like, okay, as has been the case for the past few years, my cholesterol, my total is a little bit high. This is something that is in my family. So maybe I have genetically high cholesterol. Maybe it's due to some lifestyle factors. A lot of my family struggles with obesity. I don't, and I'm quite active and I eat pretty well. So she's like, when we take your cholesterol in your blood, all we're looking at is circulating cholesterol. Right? We're seeing how much cholesterol is like in your actual blood sample. And that's all that it can really tell us. When we, and then I was like, well, I've had like an echocardiogram, right? So that's where they image your heart. It's not just like an EKG. So like I've had a full echocardiogram before and she was like, yeah, they're looking at your muscle and they're looking at your, your valves and everything like that. But they don't look at the arteries of your heart when you do an echocardiogram. What this coronary calcium CT does is it looks for small calcifications that could be the beginnings of that plaque buildup in your arteries. And so this is a test that is relatively cheap. It's very easy. It's noninvasive. But here's the kicker and it's probably the reason that most people don't know about it and haven't gotten it. It's not covered by your insurance. You may be lucky enough that your insurance does cover it, but I have very, very good insurance through the hospital where I work and I, it wasn't covered by my insurance either. Maybe my primary care found me a lab that will do it for $100 flat. So you can get it done relatively cheap. I mean, I know for some people that's quite a lot of money for other people. That's what their copay would be anyway. But what it does is it images your heart and the those that interpret the test, they look for these small kind of calcifications and they use an algorithm based on a bunch of different risk factors. And based on what they see, they give you a percentage. Like the score that you get on the test is a percentage. I was very lucky. My calcium CT score was zero. When you have a score of zero, that means there's no calcification in your vessels at all. That means that you are at what they're calling zero percent risk of a major cardiac event within the next 10 years. Anything between, I want to see where the cutoffs are. Anything between 10 or sorry, zero and 5%, they consider unnecessary to treat. So you don't need statins. You don't need any other intervention. Five to 20% is the gray zone for a lot of cardiologists. And then over 20%, for example, Dr. Philip Greenland here, preventive cardiologists at Northwestern, he said over 20%, quote, there's no doubt the risk is sufficiently high to justify medication. Okay. And sorry, I may have been a little bit unclear because zero percent is the same thing as a score of zero, right? And that means no calcification and zero percent risk of a major cardiac event within the next 10 years. Based on that algorithm I mentioned, they take the score from the coronary CT scan and a lot of other things like your age, whether or not you smoke, your activity level, your diet, and they'll calculate a risk percentage. So 5% or lower risk, you don't need drugs, 20% or higher, you probably do need drugs. But looking at the actual score itself with no other sort of ancillary information, different cardiologists will recommend different things. So any score over zero, some cardiologists might offer statins. A score over 100, they'll suggest higher intensity statins. And if your score is 300 or higher, you've got about the same risk as somebody who's already had a heart attack. So your intervention is probably going to be similar to that of somebody who's had a heart attack. So this gives you what cardiologists argue is a better understanding of the actual disease process taking place. It's not just a proxy for that disease process, which is what your circulating cholesterol is. Yes, that's a cheap and easy test, and it's really important to do as part of your physical, but it's definitely not the whole story. A couple caveats here. The main one is that there's been no randomized controlled trial linking the calcium cardiac score specifically with disease outcomes. But there have been studies that show obviously statin use and its capability to prevent heart attack or stroke. And then there is a new study, I think that came out of Australia, where they looked at asymptomatic patients with family histories, and they found that after three years, those had undergone the scans, had a sustained reduction in cholesterol and lower risk of heart disease than those who had not been tested. So that same Dr. Greenland said, the test leads to more statin prescriptions, better adherence to statins, less progression of atherosclerosis and less plaque growth. It kind of tips the scale. Who is this test for? It's for asymptomatic individuals between the ages of 40 and 75. It gets a little bit less clear cut over 75, because over 75, most people are going to have arterial plaque anyway. And so the scan may not tell you much. And also, I guess those who already have heart disease or other histories of coronary problems, probably they have other interventions and other screening tools that are less broad, I guess you could say. So those who don't have a history between 40 and 75 are those who most cardiologists, they would really benefit from this test. And I was so glad that my primary recommended it, because I was like, I've never heard of that. And now I know my score is zero. And it makes me feel better and less stressed about, basically, I'm not going to go on statins if I don't need to. And I may have been one of those people who started statins early without necessity. And, you know, drugs come with some side effects. They're relatively low with statins. They're pretty safe drugs by and large. But usually when you start a statin, you don't come off of it. So, you know, they said, we'll repeat the study in five years and we'll see if anything has changed. But for the time being, it was kind of, I don't know, it's kind of validating for me to have that test and to know that at least my arteries look healthy, even if sometimes the numbers in a blood test aren't exactly where you want them to be. Yeah. A couple of little things. So yeah, the score considers the area. The end density of the calcium. Yeah. They also can express it as a percentile. Yeah. There's a percentile that has other, I guess, variables put into it. Yeah. But the calcium score is like zero to 100 is low risk, 100 to 300 is moderate risk, over 300 is high risk. And the score could get over 400 if it's super high. In terms of statins, I just wrote about statins on science-based medicine today. It was a recent review article that reviewed all the evidence for cholesterol, LDL, HDL and statins and other interventions. And they concluded that, yeah, the best evidence supports the use of statins versus any other intervention. You should always do the lifestyle stuff, right? But obviously, most people don't adequately do that. But in any, and even if you are doing all of the lifestyle stuff, you should be doing statins still help. It's not like you don't have to do that if you do the lifestyle things. And they said that the evidence for high doses is better and that they recommend starting at the high dose because people will generally stay at whatever dose they start on. Just from a public health perspective, you know, better options, starting at the most effective treatment that has the best evidence for reducing LDL and reducing cardiac events and morbidity and mortality. So they are extremely effective. And that's good to know because like, you know, they kind of talked about different patients in this article, like one guy who went in and his, you know, it sounds like his cholesterol was kind of like mine. It was like a little too high, but not high enough. And, and they were like, I'm not sure. And then he did the scan and his score was like 175. And they were like, geez, we need to get you on statins right away. And he was like, thank goodness, like this could have saved my life. But then they talked about another person who, you know, she ran every day and she ate a really good diet. And like, there wasn't really a lot of room for her on the lifestyle stuff. And that can be frustrating when all you hear every time you go in is, well, just kind of reduce your fat intake and make sure you're active. And you're like, well, I'm already doing all of that. So what's next? That means it's familial. Yeah. And that's, that's what I think is going on with me because every single person in my family has. Yeah. And which means you need statins. Yeah. Which means I will need statins. But not at 41. Thank goodness. Five years. We'll, we'll find out. Reassess. Yeah. All right. Thanks, Cara. Bob, talk about everything, like not taking anything off the table. Tell us about perhaps possibly a new technique for geothermal drilling. Yes, I agree. Perhaps possibly. I mean, lots of caveats here for sure. But this is really interesting. So extracting geothermal energy from the earth. I don't know where else you would extract it from. Maybe on the verge of a renaissance, researchers have demonstrated that a device called a gyratron, basically a high powered microwave cannon, can efficiently vaporize rock, potentially replacing, you know, mechanical drill bits and enabling geothermal energy almost anywhere on the planet. This is a fascinating and I'm a little excited about it. I hope it pans out, but you know, so many things can go wrong here. But let's, let's, let's go over what's happening here. Geothermal energy, it's a renewable energy resource. I don't think we've mentioned it much on the show, right? Not, not too much. We're just focusing on so many nuclear and solar and wind primarily. But this energy takes advantage of two types of heat under the ground. One is simply the leftover heat from the earth's formation. Right. The other is the heat caused by radioactive decay. A geothermal energy currently provides less than 1% of global energy. So not a lot going on there right now. But the amount of geothermal energy available in the earth is vast. It's really dramatically gargantuan. The earth's total heat content is estimated at a whopping 10 to the 24 megajoules. It's an octillion joules. Trust me, that's a lot of joules. Yeah, oh yeah. Oh yeah, you know that. So, so we'll never tap into all that because that's all of it. That's never going to happen. But the usable potential thermal energy is estimated at 10 to the 18 megajoules. The caveat there is that it implies using modern, modern technology. Some estimates say that humanity could survive on just that for like 5,000 years, which would be pretty awesome, right? That's with nothing else. No other energy sources, but geothermal, we could just tap into that. You know, what's extractable? 5,000 years. Now, modern geothermal plants drill down to where the hot rocks are, right? Like hundreds of degrees and they send water down there to turn it into super critical steam that comes up and turns a turbine. And then from there, of course, you get electricity. Just the classic electricity production, right? So why don't we just have these everywhere? And the answer to that is primarily because it's just too damn expensive, right? And the good heat is generally too deep. We just really can't get deep enough. The modern geothermal plants that exist now, but they're in special places near volcanoes, they're near hot springs or tectonic plate boundaries. And these areas only need very shallow drilling, like something like 400 feet. Yeah, I'm pretty sure like all of Iceland uses geothermal. Like the whole country. Yeah, yeah. Iceland, but also California, Philippines and Kenya. No, but I mean, I think Iceland is 100% geothermal. Iceland is 100% renewable, but that is 65% geothermal. So they're mostly geothermal, but not quite 100%. So yeah, that's that's damn impressive. But they're just in a lucky spot. They don't have to go very deep. 400 feet is nothing. Is nothing. You what you would need to do is go down elsewhere. Kilometers, many kilometers. Now, if we could just dig deep enough easily, right? If we could just dig, go anywhere and just dig deep enough and we could extract energy anywhere that we wanted. And that would be, I think that would be potentially a game changer. Since geothermal is reliable, it's predictable 24 seven. Doesn't matter what the weather. It doesn't matter the wind doesn't matter even battery technology. It's all irrelevant. It's just always going to be there. So it would be for a baseline, right? Steve, for a baseline, it would just be beautiful. Big, big, beautiful geothermal energy. So this would also, of course, change the total amount of extractable geothermal energy. If we could just go anywhere, then that number that I gave, 10 to the 18 megajoules would go way up. It would go up from like the quintillion megajoules, which is 10 to the 18, or perhaps you can go as high as a six trillion megajoules. That's just back of the envelope right there. But I mean, it seems reasonable that that it could be a few orders of magnitude greater. Well, the deeper you can go, the more area is accessible to geothermal. Yeah. So but if you could, you using this being able to go down anywhere, that would be enough for our society. If you just extrapolate, that would be like a 500,000 years of all the energy that we would need at our current levels, of course. Crypto a couple of thousand years from now. Yeah, right. Yeah, you include crypto and AI that would go down to like, you know, 250,000. Yeah, probably. So this technology, the technology that makes this potentially happen is just one word, gyratron, which I had heard of in the past, but it really didn't. It's like a transformer or something. Right. Right. It really didn't get a full sense of what a gyratron really is. Now this this these exist. A gyratron exists. It's a specialized type of vacuum electron tube that generates really high powered electromagnetic waves. Now these devices exist. They're used routinely today. When a Takamak fusion reactor is heating plasma to 100 million degrees Celsius, they're using they're using a gyratron to heat that. And in other industries, like some specialized industries, they use them today for precisely melting and vaporizing materials. So this is this exists. But now it's never been used to vaporize rock. Right. And now that this is what they're using it for. Now this device starts with an electron gun. It's kind of complicated, but it's actually not too hard to explain. So it starts with an electron gun. So the electrons that the gun produces, right, encounters a very powerful magnetic field, which causes the electrons to move in circles as they move forward. OK. So imagine the earth. I've tried to think of how would you picture this in your mind? Imagine it's like the earth's moving around the sun as the sun moves through space. Right. So it's kind of orbiting, but it's also in a spiral. Can you picture that? Yes. That's a spiral or helical. It's a helical path. And since accelerating charges emit radiation, the gyratron emits very powerful radiation in this case, the radiation is in the millimeter wave range, essentially high powered, rock melting microwave beam is what's coming out of this bad boy. And it's far more powerful than a maser, which is essentially a laser that uses microwaves, right? So even more powerful, which is which really took me by surprise. So of course, there are differences between a maser and the gyratron. So using a gyratron to drill holes is now no longer in the lab. And that's why it's in the news. The company Quays Energy tested their new 100 kilowatt gyratron in the field in Texas, they successfully dug a hundred meter hole in the test site and they have a second apparently they have got a second 100 kilowatt gyratron. They got two of them. And then so they're doing another test. And I think that's ongoing right now. And that's also going very well. So the next big step for them would be testing a gyratron. That's 10 times more powerful. So this would be in the megawatt range because this the old one, the second one was in the kilowatt, 100 kilowatts. So this is in the megawatt range. And it would probably end up being maybe three or four kilowatts. I mean, megawatts because there's all this support equipment and stuff. And this thing wouldn't be just shooting a beam into the earth like the enterprise. And remember that episode that just drilled a hole with their phaser into the planet to release some. I do remember that was the original series. Yeah. I'm talking about the one from from next gen where they were they were. Oh, was that a next gen? Yeah. Why do I remember an original series? Oh, well, in any case, I think they might have done it in classic, but they didn't actually show the hole like they did in next generation. OK, so they've got a lot of support equipment and also they wouldn't be just shooting the beam from the surface all all the way down as deep as they want to go. There's equipment going down and the the wave guides have to go actually in the ground as well. So it's never it's never really far away from the the melted rock because it because then it's got to also clean it up and get it and get what happens to the material. Yeah. The stuff that doesn't just vaporize out of there. It does. There's a device that's going down there with it. And it just kind of sweeps a vacuum or something. Yeah, it kind of sucks it up and it's because it's got to pull it all out of there. Right. So now this megawatt jiretron that would be the next stage should be able to bore holes that are eight inches across and would be basically it seems as as powerful as a commercial scale system would be. So that you wouldn't really need to go too much higher than than multiple megawatts. Like, like, you know, this you don't need to go to gigawatts in this scenario. You could you could dig the holes that they need to dig for just if it's if it's megawatt scale. Matthew Hoode, who was the co-founder and chief of staff at Quaze says, if we can scale those depths to 10 to 20 kilometers, then we can enable super hot geothermal to be worldwide accessible. So 10 to 10 to 20 kilometers. Yeah, that's deep as hell. Yeah, but when I hear those words, if we can scale. Yep, that's of course at that point. That's those are those are big words. You know, that's that's the whole deal right there. If we can scale that's technologies live or die often. Yeah. And it seems to me that this is this is all about getting deep. If you can get if you can get deep with with this technology and it seems like they can they can Bob, let me let me add to that. It's about getting deep and hot regardless of depth. I think so. For my reading, this tech is costs more than conventional drilling. It's more expensive, but they are hoping that when they scale it, right? They'll be able to get to deeper depths faster, faster and hotter. And they could do what's called super geothermal or super hot geothermal. It's super credible, which can extract five to ten times more power per well. And that will offset the higher cost of the drilling. So if you don't get to hotter rock, it's not cost effective. Right. Exactly. You got to get deep enough where the water creates a super critical steam, which is which is the which is the sweet spot right there. And they think conventional drilling, you imagine that drill that's going down. That drill has got to it's got to come all the way back up. It's got to be changed. It's got to be fixed, whatever. There's lots of things like non-production episodes where where nothing's really you're not digging because you're doing stuff that a physical drill is required. That wouldn't be required for using this gyratron. So yeah, they would like to do. I think they were talking about a few meters an hour contint continuously. And yeah, yeah, we don't know if they're going to be able to pull this off. But if they can, if they can do it fast, because you can't wait years, like the deepest holes that we've ever dug, Steve, were drills. It took 10, like 10, 15 years or more. That's not what we're talking about here. If they can't do it much, much faster than this is just going to be ridiculous. So the company does mention they did mention one hurdle that I came across that that they say they need to overcome. And that's like that is drilling non-vertical holes because some sites, depending on I think depending on the geology, you may you may need to drill holes at an angle. This is designed to go basically just a vertical all the way down. So that so that could potentially be one of the hurdles. But of course, other experts I've talking about some other hurdles. Some and of course, some of these other skeptics are more skeptical in general. And you know, the skeptical essentially that quays is going to essentially reinvent drilling and it's a huge ask. I mean, this is a huge endeavor. Of course, the rewards would be would be tremendous. But yeah, this is changing an industry like this. Of course, you've got to be skeptical about it. Let's see, Roland Horn, he's a lead lead of the geothermal program at Stanford University. He said, burning holes in rocks is impressive. However, that's not the whole of what's involved in drilling. So sure. Yeah. It's a lot more complicated than just phasering your way into a deep hole in the ground. So in other words, melting rock is just one of the challenges, right? The system still needs to be able to withstand the immense heat and pressure at those depths because it just keeps getting hotter and hotter. The deeper you go, I can't even imagine what it would be like when you're if you're 10 kilometers down, 15, 20 kilometers down, how hot it's going to get. And the rock is kind of like it's kind of like a gooey mess down there. So really not even rock, I think, when you go that deep. So I'm not sure how that would work, but I'm sure they've thought about that. So that so we're going to have to wait and see how the how the rest of this testing with this this new stage of the the gyro gyro tron goes. So we'll see how that goes. And but I know what else you're thinking. I know what you're thinking. Geothermal energy is cool and all. But what kind of sci-fi weapon would a gyro tron make? That is not what I was thinking about. That's all right. I'm disappointed, Kara. I'm sorry. But but that's what I was thinking. So of course, I did some research and what kind of weapon would the stamp thing make? Now, remember this this energy beam, this beam, this microwave beam is very energy dense, 10, 10 megawatts per cube per square meter. It can boil metals or punch a hole through tough rock continuously. This is meant. This isn't like those pulse lasers. This is this is meant to deliver that continuously for, you know, potentially hours at a time. So this is just an amazing amount of energy transfer here. If you used if this was a weapon on a planned surface with an atmosphere, it would it could be effective, but it would have some drawbacks. If you guys have ever used a microwave in a kitchen, right? You know how water absorbs microwaves. So it would not work that great in our atmosphere, for example, there's some alien world that's got humidity because the water is just going to absorb it. So that's going to retain weight, the beam. So that wouldn't be good. And it's also it's not a laser beam. So you can't do a tight focus with the gyro tron microwave beam that you could do with a laser beam. So it doesn't have that. But actually, we do have this technology, very similar technology for crowd control. You guys have probably seen that the past 10 years. It's a device. It's a it's a truck mounted device that emits. It's a similar type of technology. I don't don't necessarily think that it's got an actual gyro tron in there, but it emits microwave beams that essentially makes you very hot and very uncomfortable. So if you want to disperse the crowd, they've they've used it. This is a this is a device that's been available for many years now. And it's very effective. If you're if you've got if you've got, let's say, riders or something, and you want to disperse a crowd, this thing will make them running because all of a sudden it it doesn't really damage your skin. But it makes it feel like your skin is on fire. You will just like run away from wherever you are if you get hit with this thing. So this thing actually exists as a type of weapon. It could also be used for anti drone or electronics warfare. But this the gyro tron would really shine though in space. A jar a jar tron would kick some serious but because, of course, there's no there's no there's nothing in space to absorb the microwave beam. There's no there's no water to absorb or anything like that. So it would be much more effective. And then with it, with its megawatts of continuous output, it could last a lot longer. Most lasers would would just overheat before the jar tron would even really get going. Now, to be fair, though, a lot of lasers aren't really meant to be to operate continuously for for hours at a time. So it's not necessarily a very fair comparison. Let's see, against other ships, a jar tron would would be very, very effective. It would damage optics, it would disable electronics. It could even deal it could even deal with the common countermeasures that lasers have to contend with. They put out like a like a fog of material that would that would scatter the beam. You know, microwave these microwave beams would kind of go through a lot of those countermeasures apparently. So bottom line, if you're writing some sci fi for space battles, you might want to include a fusion reactor powering a petawatt class jar tron and that would be really cool science fiction. All right. Thanks, Bob. So my news item is also about alternative energy. This one about wind power. This is it by design. This just caught my eye and it happens to be have an angle for wind power. So a company is planning on building the largest cargo plane ever built in order to increase wind power. So how does that how do those two things relate to each other? Oh, clue. How would I do? I read it, so I know. Yes. Kara, did you read it? I did not. I do not know. OK. The largest cargo plane ever for wind power. Are they going to like capture wind off the plane? No. OK. It's very indirect, but it shows you how how things relate. So let's back up a little bit. So right now, the wind industry is building bigger and bigger wind turbines with bigger and bigger blades. And the reason they do this is because they are more efficient at bigger size. Right. You get more bang for the buck. You get more energy for the inputs. The biggest coming. The biggest wind turbines are offshore. We're building these like mega wind turbines offshore with blades that are 100 meters. Ever see a ever see a blade up close? They're massive. It's like something out of science fiction. That can't be that big. They're ridiculous. Now, the biggest ones on land are not as big. They only get up to about 70 meters. Why do you think that is? Roads. It's the delivery. We can deliver these 100 meter blades on a ship to an offshore wind turbine. But we don't really have a convenient way and a cost effective way to deliver something that big over land. Enter the cargo plane. Enter the cargo plane. Exactly. So this is exactly why. How big is that mother? The idea even came into being. So this is the idea of aerospace engineer Mark Lundstrom. He founded a company called Radia in 2016 specifically to build what he's calling the Windrunner. That's the name of the aircraft. If built, if it ever gets built, it would be the largest aircraft in the world. Oh, it's pretty loose. It's specifically in what way? It's the heaviest. I just think the physics volume wise, the biggest and has the biggest cargo area. Important. It's still the largest before this. What? Spruce Goose, you know, the Howard Jones. Yeah, I think this would be bigger. Yeah. Yeah, it would have to be, wouldn't it? Right. But I think to date, that is still the largest cargo plane. No, no, no, something else. Maybe Russians built the Russians built one. Yeah, and then it's all there. Yeah, and it actually was destroyed. It was in Ukraine and it was destroyed in the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Yeah, the Anatov and 225 Miria. So yeah, there are some big, big boys at that. But nothing this big, nothing as big as the Windrunner is planned on being. It's actually being designed so that it's big enough to carry a hundred meter wind turbine blade or it could carry two 90 meter ones or three 80 meter ones. You know, it can carry the big ones, but it can carry a hundred meter blade. So this would enable it to transport the blade anywhere where you could land a plane. Right. So it's designed to be able to land on standard runways, but also to be able to land on a makeshift runway. Right. So one that you just set up near a field where you want to build a bunch of mega wind turbines. OK, I think I would think that'd be that'd be pretty damn important, because even if you could land it at an airport, you still got to get it on site. Yeah, it doesn't you to a half hour away, an hour away. Now, they definitely specifically deliver to the site. Want to be able to land it on a rough airstrip that was built just because it's in the airfield, the field where the turbines are. They actually considered whether or not they should use vertical take up and ridgables. No. Oh, what is that word? Interesting. I don't know that word. A dirigible is a lighter than lighter than air. The lighter than air. Yeah. What else? What are the other words for it? Ultralight, not ultra light. What though? A blimp. Oh, blimp. Oh, blimp. Oh, Zeppelin. Zeppelin. I think blimp, Zeppelin's and dirigibles are all a little different. But it's in that it's in that general airship. An airship. Airship. OK. Yes. OK. They specifically were going to they looked into building an airship, which would be better in some ways. But it would not. There's no infrastructure. We don't have an infrastructure for landing airships where we would need to land them. And they wanted to be able to land them at standard airports. So they decided to go with an airplane, a jet. And so they're designing the windrunner. So if this comes to being, this would make inland mega wind turbines economically and logistically plausible. And Lundstrom says he hopes once he builds these windrunners to build a million of these super wind turbines around the world, not just in the US, in the world. Geez. Which, which, you know, that's the kind of order of magnitude that we need to really take a bite out of fossil fuels. So which is the goal here. Because again, as I said earlier in the show, the big limitation of wind turbines is the land use. There's only so many places we can put them where they have good wind. It's near infrastructure. It's not in the middle of a raptor's breeding zone. Whatever. You have to put it someplace where it's not going to have too much of an impact on the environment, etc., etc. Velociraptors are extinct. We're talking about. The other dinosaur raptors. So yeah, so I wish them well. I hope this all works out. It'd be nice to see and also just amazing to see one of these things. You know, going to be so massive. Yeah. But who knows? Who is at this point? It's just the plan of a company, you know, to build these things. It doesn't exist yet. But but it's not implausible against not really. It's only a little bit bigger than planes. You know, jets that are functioning and in existence. So it's not like it's pushing the limits that much. It's just designed specifically to take these giant blades. You know, the pictures I'm seeing of these things are just computer generated. Yeah, yeah, concepts. Yeah, doesn't exist yet. Yeah. I wonder how they design it specifically to be able to land in a field. Is it just like the landing gear and shocks? I guess so. Yeah. I guess. Right. Yeah. All right. Evan, tell us about this new dental floss vaccine idea. What is this? That isn't that interesting? I hadn't heard of this one before. I wish Jay were here for this news item, right? It has to do with dentistry. And he I think he has a fascination with teeth and more of a fetish. Yeah. OK. I guess we could call it the flossing your teeth. That is generally considered good for your health for several reasons. Among them, it helps prevent gum disease by removing plaque and food particles between teeth and along the gum line, reducing the risk of gingivitis and periodontitis. It reduces tooth decay, cleaning areas your toothbrush can't reach. It improves your breath. We're all grateful for that reduces. Halitosis, halitosis, bad breath, enhances overall oral hygiene, contributing to a cleaner mouth, helping to maintain healthy teeth and gum supporting long term oral health and can reduce the risk of disease because there are studies that suggest a link between gum disease and heart disease, diabetes and other conditions. So these are good flossing habits that can really help improve. But Evan, can I say? Health, can I say if you dig into the medical literature, there really is a good evidence for any of those claims of any of those health benefits above and beyond good brushing. If you do a good solid, thorough brushing of your teeth, there really isn't evidence that flossing on top of that has like clinically significant benefits. This doesn't mean you shouldn't do it or that it shouldn't be part of your routine. I'm just just we have to be pedantic and just say that there isn't like this home run clinical evidence that that all of those claims are true for flossing above and beyond thorough brushing. Are there any dentists out there who are to do not recommend flossing? I don't think they go that far. It's like not recommend flossing, but it's like thorough brushing is really effective. That's the point here. But Steve, a lot of people don't necessarily do thorough enough flossing. I mean, thorough enough brushing. Flossing on top of that can help close the gap. But like you can't like toothbrushes don't go in between your teeth. Yeah. I mean, they do a little bit. I mean, you know, well, yeah, I mean, up under the gum line. Yeah, but not deep in between. Right. Certainly. I think our experience has been we've brushed our teeth and then flossed and seen the things that come out exactly on the actual thread. But I understand what you're saying, Steve, and maybe I don't know. Do you think the reason for that? And I'm sorry to get a little off topic here is because you would have to test it by having people not brush their teeth and only floss and see what happens in those cases. I think there's just not that much room for improvement. And so that means that you would have to do a really big study to have the statistical power to detect that small effect. We've run into this in medicine all the time where the benefits there's just not that much headroom for benefit. In fact, this just came up when I was writing about statins because the question is, does supplementing HDL, the good cholesterol, does that reduce heart attacks? And the evidence there is also very weak, except for this one particular type of HDL, which has some recent positive evidence. But the researchers were saying this is probably because of all because people who need to reduce their cholesterol around statins and other treatments. And so there's just no room left for improvement. Because we don't do it, like as you say, we can't do it instead of effective therapy. So one effective therapy can obscure the benefits of other interventions because you're just not left with that much room for improvement. So I think that's what we're talking about. Again, that doesn't mean it's not a good idea to floss. I'm not saying don't floss. I'm just saying because you said it has all these health benefits, just because we've said it before on the show, they're actually not that proven. Because again, if you take good care of your teeth otherwise, you've already gotten 90 percent of the benefit or whatever. And it's just really hard to detect what's left. Does that make sense? Didn't we interview a dentist and he said that there just hasn't been enough good quality? Yeah, you would need, as I said, you would eat really big solid studies to detect the small clinical benefit that's remaining to a statistically significant point. It's interesting that they don't have it. I wouldn't have thought that. But OK, all right. Well, all that considered and good food, good food for thought there. What if what if you could floss and deliver a vaccine to yourself all at the same time? I would consider that an added potential. I'll call it potential benefit on top of the other potential benefits that flossing is said to is said to have. And I read this first this headline over at science.org in which they write, dental floss could be the future of vaccines. Engineers transform dental floss into needle free vaccines. Hmm. Medical. Why? Yeah, primarily for people who are reluctant to get shots, basically fear of the need. We already have nasal spray vaccines. They do. They do. And they compare this as far as its effectiveness from what they've tested from this particular study as comparable with nasal vaccines. But I don't know enough about nasal vaccines to know if not. My understanding is, though, that not all vaccines can be delivered. No, that's usually just like the live virus ones. All right. Yeah, there's like certain flu ones that you can use. Right. And this is what they tested. They did use influenza in this particular test. Medical researchers worldwide are simultaneously discovering that one of the most effective ways to reach the body is through the gum line. There's a new study published in Nature Biomedical Engineering where researchers revealed they could trigger immune responses in mice by coating floss with proteins and an inactive flu virus, then jamming it between their tiny teeth. Flossing little mice to make this test. How did they make floss that small? Yeah. Little mice teeth are so tiny. So how does one floss a mouse? That that was one of the major basically questions about this. OK, we have this idea. How are we going to do this? I think they researched it and it never been done. They couldn't find any research about it. So they had to come up with the technique themselves. So they say it's a two person job. One scientist gently pulls the mouse's jaw down. I imagine the mouse is knocked out for this, I would hope. And you pull the mouse's jaw down with a metal ring from a key chain while the other scientist administers the floss. So it's definitely a two person job here is what they did. The title of the study is called Floss-Based Vaccination Targets, the Gingival Sulkus from Mucosal and Systemic Immunization. In mice, I'll read from the abstract. In mice, floss-based immunization induced strong and sustained immune activation across multiple organs, robust, systemic and mucosal antibody responses and durable protection against lethal influenza infection, independent of age, food and liquid consumption. Floss-based vaccination was superior to sublingual and comparable with intranasal vaccination. There was also a test, not of the not of the flu, but of a fluorescent dye in humans in which human participants took this fluorescent dye delivered via floss picks that effectively reached Gingival Sulkus, supporting clinical feasibility. These findings established floss-based vaccination as a simple needle free strategy that enhances vaccine delivery and immune activation compared with existing mucosal immunization methods. There's an immunologist from Yale University, Steve, maybe you knew him. You know everyone at Yale. Akeko Awasaki, who is quoted as saying, I had honestly never thought of using floss as a vaccination strategy. The results are quite impressive. Vanderbilt University immunologist James Crowe said, it's tough to develop an effective vaccine that can be administered through those entry points because they have naturally tough defenses against foreign molecules. Your mouth basically helps protect you. But these scientists were able to do it during a test run. The team found that when researchers coded floss with fluorescently labeled protein, 75 percent of the protein was successfully delivered to the mouse's gums back to the mouse. And even two months after flossing, the mice had elevated levels of antibodies in their lungs, noses, feces and spleens, suggesting a robust immune response to the protein. And you know, why not? If it works and I don't I don't know how many people do not get vaccinated simply because of their fear of a shot. Steve, maybe you have some insight into that. It's not insignificant. I don't have a number off the top of my head. OK, but right. So not insignificant. So and then if you can go this route, that sounds like a clinical efficacy. This is just proof of concept. Yeah, the proteins get in the body, but does it actually work? I guess. And my fear is like and I don't know. Maybe you guys can speak to this. But like when you get a shot, it's measured and all of it goes into you. Yes. Right. Like when you are flossing your teeth, how much of the drug are you actually getting? My thoughts exactly on that. Yeah, I don't want to get a subclinical dose. And I also don't want to have to take so much that I'm guaranteed to get enough in me because what if there is a dose response issue here? That would be is that just an engineering tweak? Or it just or is it just down to the user following the directions correctly in order to get enough of the medicine, you know, the vaccination into them? Well, I just I just foresee different people getting different uptakes. Yeah, there's no way that could be controlled. I don't think it's probably a better than nothing strategy. Yes, but not a preferred first line strategy. Yeah, it's also always better for any public health measure. The one and done always better than you have to do this, you know, a number of times over time or whatever. So but, you know, it's more tools in our toolbox, the better. Again, it's there's a lot of people out there, not everything works for everybody. So I see this actually being like less for vaccines and more for like just drugs. Well, sure. Right, Kara, that's a good point. What else can can you deliver into the body through the online at this point? Imagine they'll do some more research in those other areas as well. All right. Thanks, Evan. Yep. So no Jay this week. So no, who's that noisy Jay? We'll be back in two weeks to pick up where he left off there. So I'm going to go to a couple of questions. Bob can make a noise. I'm going to make a noise. Bob does that a lot. This is Bob sipping coffee. All right. So the first email comes from Jeremy from Melbourne, Australia. And Jeremy writes in the show two weeks ago, he's referring to episode one thousand and forty five during science or fiction. Kara said something like, we know that apes can learn sign language when discussing the river pigs alleged intelligence. I thought the narrative of signing apes had been debunked. I re listened to Skeptoid's podcast number six thirty on the subject to confirm my memory wasn't flawed. Love the show and love seeing you guys in person in Melbourne a few years ago. Thanks for writing, Jeremy. So Kara, I did look up exactly what you said because you asked me. Yeah, I asked, I was like, did I say sign? Did I say sign language? You said gorillas can communicate with sign language was the exact quote. So that's vague. And I'm not sure what you remembered or meant by that. So why don't you just tell us what you what you know? Well, just that they can represent objects like they can use symbolic. And they can communicate. Yes, they can communicate. And that's the difference, right? Language is a slippery word. Yeah, it's super slippery. And it's funny because I just looked at, you know, just a quick sampling of the literature from like maybe 2020 forward. It's all over the place. It does look like most researchers agree that that gorillas or even chimpanzees, they're not using grammar and that they are babbling from time to time. But they also all agree that they can learn specific signs for specific things, even if it's just operant conditioning. Exactly. Yeah. That's what I found as well. So yeah, yeah. So so chimpanzees, you know, gorillas can learn to associate a specific sign with a specific thing like banana. And when they want a banana, they will make the sign for banana. They can also at times represent their immediate state of being, right? An immediate desire or an immediate state. But they can't communicate thoughts and ideas. They can't use language. They can't use syntax. So essentially what they went, the a lot of the times like the trainers who were saying, look what I showed, you know, what I taught, you know, Coco the gorilla, whatever to do, they're cherry picking from a vast data set and only picking out the things that seemed that they could weave a story, you know, retrofit to some kind of communication. But if you look at all of the data, which has been done, what you basically find is that it's nonsensical babble, babble, babble, banana, babble, babble, babble, right? Or a banana, blah, blah, blah, bit, banana, me, banana, banana, me, blah, blah, right? It's just very simple me banana. You know, that's the extent of what they can. So that is communicating. Yeah, it is. And some people argue that it's a type of language that is just very simplistic. But no, it doesn't have grammar. No, but it's not like they're not using language the way we do. They're not conveying thoughts and ideas. And it has been massively over interpreted over the years. Absolutely. It's been over and then clawed back by a more objective, skeptical reviews of the actual evidence. But what I don't like is then the kind of counter claim that and even, I mean, not to call you out, Jeremy, but like the way that you worded it. And of course I get it because you're calling me out on my wording, which was quite broad is I thought the narrative of signing apes had been debunked. Well, no, apes sign. Yeah, they do sign. Yeah, like there's no debunking. They can learn signs for a specific thing. But it's not language. It's not language. I think that's a better way. It's not language. Yeah, if if you yeah, depending on how you define language, like I'm reading an article that's kind of an interesting one and like the end of their abstract where they looked at studies from the 1960s up until they published in 2020. And they said, focusing on symbol use by chimpanzees and bonobos, we describe evidence that argues for understanding of words, including capacities for declarative communication. We conclude that the many decades of research using a variety of symbol systems challenges the absolutist position that chimpanzees and bonobos cannot learn or understand the concept of a word. So it's like it's it's it's wiggly. Yeah, has that been confirmed by studying the brains of the chimpanzees and the gorillas? And well, they don't have like the physical components just are not there. That is correct. They do not have the language area that we do. Yeah, but is that a question of they don't have it because it wasn't used? Well, they have a they have a proto language area. Exactly. It's a primitive version of it. It's definitely much less than humans, but it's not zero. It's not human language didn't start from nothing. It evolved out of primate language, which is very pretty good. It's a proto language. It's very primitive, very simple, straight forward. But we obviously elaborate on it tremendously. So it's really just where along that spectrum are they? It's not zero. It's not human level. It's not full sentences with grammar. It's absolutely one or two words. Simple, immediate. I want banana like me banana. That's it. That's about as it's as complicated as it gets. And it gets with other mammals that, you know, maybe dolphins or well, dogs, a good example of dogs, they can't do expressive or declarative, but they have receptive. So you can say get Fox and it knows to get the Fox toy. You can recognize words. Can they can? Yeah. So but they can't do declarative. But no, like dolphins are not signing. But you know, the the dog mats where they have like a dozen words and the dogs will put their paw on the words to communicate. That's all bullshit. I've seen those videos. I am not convinced at all. It's the same. I think we need more studies. It's like randomly hitting words and then the person over interprets what they're saying and maybe acts in a certain way. Maybe they've learned to like, like, operately associate this button with going outside or something. But they're not putting together words and communicate. No, yeah, they're getting there. They're putting they're doing top top left means go outside. This one over here means I get a treat. That's like the probably the extent of it. Well, and the annoying thing is those grids always have some combination that always makes sense no matter what you say. It's like treat me, mom. Mom treat meaningful to a dog. There's nothing in there as a trick. You know, that would trick them up. But the reason that we know that dogs can do the receptive when it comes to symbols for objects is like, I have a friend whose dog can do this. I've like seen it, but also obviously it's been studied really well is that you can say the name of the object. The dog gets the object like from the from a basket in the other room. And then you can say the name of something that's not in the basket and they'll get something that they don't know the name for. So they do know like these are the things I've learned and these are things I don't know. So maybe it's one of those. And that's pretty cool. They're pretty smart. Yeah. They're just nothing evolved language the way we did. No, no, no, no. And I think ultimately the question is and it's an operational definition question. I'm not a linguist, so I don't know where the threshold is. But at what point does communication become language? What do we call because they definitely communicate. Most animals communicate. Yeah. I mean, I think you need syntax and grammar and a few things like that in order to classify it, right? I mean, not just. Yeah. Also how sophisticated are the ideas that they're communicating? Mm hmm. Right. Can they philosophize? No. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. OK. No evidence of that. Right. You have another email that comes from Aaron who says, Hi all. Just writing into note that in this week's episode, Evan mentioned that a ham sandwich was how Mama Cass went. This is fairly humiliating. This is a fairly humiliating myth. She actually died of a heart attack. It's so easy to hear pop culture events and not question them, especially if one has no real interest in the person in question and doesn't care enough to look into it. So no judgment here. I just think it's important that this myth like any doesn't keep on being perpetuated. Love the show. Keep up the amazing work that you do. Evan, what do you have to say for yourself? Jay was the one who brought up the ham sandwich. And I can't remember what he was talking about, but death by ham sandwich was his general comment and then my reaction to that. I just blurted out that that's how Mama Cass went because that sort of is the what it's known for. Right. I mean, I mean, what else could it be? That Jay, so it was just more of a playoff of what Jay was saying rather than a statement of fact. I take the point. I hear you. I just want to because I never heard this myth or if I did, I remember it. Oh, really? So I really never did. I'm not big into the mamas and the poppers or whatever. I assumed I knew she died of a heart attack. I assumed you used ham sandwich as a metaphor for heart attack. You know what I mean? Because people do that. People say like you died. He died of a pork sandwich or whatever. Like that means that of a heart attack. But that's funny. That's what I thought. Maybe you had heard it. I didn't think you made it. Literally died of a ham sandwich. No, but that's what people said. Now that's the best. So yeah, so apparently, apparently, apparently that word gets you so often. I know she was just coming off like a 36 hour stint. And her assistant did prepare a ham sandwich and leave it on her nightstand. But she went to bed without ever touching it. She didn't eat the ham sandwich and she had a heart attack. There was an autopsy and the autopsy determined that she died of a heart attack. And that there were no drugs in her system. And so natural causes. She had a heart attack. She pushed herself too far. There's also she had obviously issues with obesity. She did at the time. Nobody knew what they were doing like in terms of treating obesity. She was treated with amphetamines, which is like the worst thing you could do. Gosh, apparently she wasn't using them for by the way. She wasn't using them at the time because nothing was found in her symptoms in her system. But that would not have been a healthy way to treat her her weight. And just sort of crash dieting with amphetamines could have done harm. You know, certainly would not have been healthy for her heart. So she was only 32, very tragic. Yeah, that's so young. You know, yeah, I mean, yeah, it's the victim of circumstance of the poor medicine of the time. You know, it's funny. I had a completely different reaction. I remember that I remember Evan saying that and I remember thinking, wait, I recently read somewhere that she didn't die from the ham sandwich that she died of a heart attack. I was trying to remember what my source was and then and then it was just like too late to the conversation. Right. Yeah. It moved on because it was gone. Like it was a throw. Jay was just being, you know, trying to be funny and I just, you know, threw in the the follow up comments. So I should have chimed in now. I should have. But that's often how these things are. It's like when I said the sign language thing, it was like I was we were doing science or fiction. It's an off the cuff throwaway. That we didn't bet. But we do we do have to be careful about that. I need to be careful about that in post production, which I do actually. I do filter out a lot of these offhand comments. Is that actually true? And then that's and I will either make a correction or I'll just edit it out. So right in this case, though, I didn't think you were making a claim. I thought it was just being a euphemism. So that's why I didn't trigger my post production. And you you did also you also did not have knowledge of the of the history of. Yeah, I didn't know. The comments. I didn't know that that was a thing. So I do think this is an important myth to correct because her family is really hurt by it. They really find that it's very more than annoying. Like it is really depressing that this is how she's remembered, you know, that this persistent myth dogs her, you know, right? Whatever part of the culture in a way. Yeah, we know how hard it is to expunge the record, you know, and get it correct. Once it's in the culture, it's very hard, if not impossible to get it correct. Very hard. So we certainly don't want to contribute to that. We're happy to correct that and to, you know, increase awareness that that is a myth. It's not not how she died. You died of a heart attack. So yeah, keep that in mind. All right, we're going to do a name that logical fallacy. This comes from Jason in Massachusetts. And Jason writes, I've been listening for many years and this is my first time contacting the show for context. My earliest memories are the inflating earth and birds versus monkeys. That's like a second year. That's way back. Yeah, I was watching a clip of some internet rando saying evolution couldn't have happened because paraphrasing, half an organ wouldn't work, e.g. an incomplete I wouldn't have vision as we know it. It's not the biggest argument. We've heard the whole I thing a million times and this betrays a lack of understanding of adaptation and evolution and is quite ableist. But I had a sudden realization that this might be a very specific logical fallacy. So that's yeah, we could talk about what's wrong with that claim and then see if that one or more logical fallacies are occurring. Jason in a post script said which fallacy he thought it was. I won't say that until we discuss it. So for background, it is a very common evolution, denying creationist. Oh, yeah, very well. Yeah, claim that. Well, how could you evolve wings? Like what purpose would they serve until you got to the point where they were good enough to fly? Right? What good is half a wing? I've actually had somebody say that exact quote to me. What good is half a wing? Or, you know, like what were our ancestors walking around with like half an eye hanging out of their head, like really ridiculous straw man. Right. But of course, that's not what evolutionary biologists think. That's not what would have to have happened. You know, and things work for for what they evolved to do at every step of the way. But the key bit that they're missing is that a current structure, right, did not necessarily have to evolve directly to its current function. It could have evolved through a series of other functions that it was perfectly adapted to or adapted to just fine and then got co-opted to a new use. Right. So, for example, wings like feathers were probably for thermal insulation and then maybe display and then maybe helping to capture prey. And then jumping from branch to branch. Extending the duration of a leap or a jump and maybe gliding and then flying. Well, we know for a fact that our hands were flippers. Yeah, right. Like we know that like we crawled out of the ocean. Yeah, so we didn't need to walk in the ocean. No, they were they came from like flipper hands. They were flipper hands and then they were walking on the bottom of the floor of the ocean. Yeah. So they adapted to be able to hold up weight and then to on land and then to the claws and then to hands or whatever. It went and I like I stop every step of the way to take light. Yeah, that's all they do. They just detected whether it was light or dark. Right. Exactly. I've heard every step of the way. Yeah, even just being able to say light is that way. You know, the surface of the ocean is in that direction and that dark is this way. That's going deeper into the ocean is adaptive and useful. So half an eye is actually extremely useful. And it's not a half an eye. Right. It's a whole but less evolved. The whole proto I don't know what you want to call it. But even even that's the thing. Like our terminology so by is like if you say it's a proto eye, you're implying that it's on its way to becoming an eye, which you can. Right. We have the benefit of hindsight. Exactly. We only know that in hindsight at the time. It's not a proto anything. It's it's what it is and it's adapted to what how it functions. And there are organisms alive today who have those versions of things. Right. We have to remember that too. And those things are alive right now. They still exist. And all you could see all the intermediary steps that our eye went through is extant. Right. So are we going to try to guess? But what's the logical fallacy specifically here? I mean, I think it's black or white thinking. I think straw man and I thought straw man and personal incredulity are kind of like in the ball. Oh, interesting. See, I see it as black and white. Like it's either this or it's not that at all. Oh, this or that. Like a false dichotomy. Yeah. Yeah. So I think the reason why this can be so hard is because the informal logical fallacies are so context dependent. It kind of depends on how exactly you formulate your claim. And so we could we're just we're like we're not responding to someone's specific claim here. It's more of just the idea of the this kind of argument. But the the the most the only thing we have in quotes here here is half an organ wouldn't work. And so I think it is absolutely a straw man. I think definitely that is happening here because sure. Because nobody's claiming nobody's claiming that. That is a straw man version of evolutionary theory that, you know, it would require evolving through a half formed version of the final quote unquote final structure. And all of that is is behind site bias. It's not a half anything. It's not a proto anything. It's not a pre anything. It is what it is. It doesn't know what future descendants will use it for and devolve it in other directions. It just is what it is. So I think that's the biggest one. I do think there's there's a lot of non sequiturs in there, which is kind of just a generic logical fallacy. But I could see the I think. So he said, I'll tell you what he said, because I think you're kind of on the same page as him. He said it was a nirvana fallacy because I'm not sure if that fits really. Nirvana fallacy is it's not perfect. So it's useless. Yeah, I mean, he's kind of making that claim. I know. Yeah. I think it's all of them. Yeah. So it depends on how you frame it. It's like, yes, a half an organ is not perfect. So it's worthless. That's kind of a nirvana fallacy. But it's there's a piece that you need that it's it's only half of. Or whatever. But it's only partial current utility, but it's a fully formed something else. Right. So it's just that's what makes it a non sequitur and a straw man. It's it's you know, I mean, it's looking at it incorrectly. Yeah. Right. That's fast. I always find it fascinating to deconstruct, you know, logic. But I guess you could also say it's not purely a logic problem. It's a false premise. Right. Yeah. And the false premise is what I said. The false premise is that things evolve to their current use. Evolve the only possible history of things that it evolved to its current use. And it's hard to blame somebody for seeing evolution that way. Because sadly, until you're at like a college level, it's often taught. Yeah, I agree. Which I don't like. And it's represented that way in totally in popular culture. But you know, I think a lot of this and often when we talk about pseudoscience or or like woo or especially when we're talking about like charlatans will ask questions like, do they know that it's bullshit? Or like, are they peddling intentionally or have they like bought what they're selling? And often the answer is, does it really matter? But I think in these situations where you're talking to a friend and your friend is like, wait a minute, but how could this happen? It is important to know where they're coming from and to dig deep into what their actual argument is. Are they making a black and white assumption? Are they making a straw man? Is it a nirvana fallacy? And you can figure that out by asking follow up questions. Because sometimes you can actually counter it if you know what they're trying to say. Right. And maybe, you know, maybe this person is just like, I'm a creationist and I'm dying the wool and I'm never changing my mind. But maybe they're like, I just don't get it. Help me get it. Yeah, they rarely are saying help me get it in my experience. But I hear what you're saying. But the thing is, it's important to understand. So the false premise or the unstated major premise is really hard to detect in yourself. Right. Because it's a premise you are not aware you are making. And therefore it's unstated. It's unstated. It's unknown. He doesn't realize that the thing is how does he react? How do they react when it's pointed out to them? Right. And that, of course, they never, you know, in my experience say, oh, gee, I didn't realize that I was wrong. You know, it's usually they double down in some way. And then maybe later they may realize that they're thinking, yeah, it was. I guess I give it the benefit of the doubt. I think of like a child. If a child is conceptualizing evolution the way that, you know, popular culture has taught it to them and they're sophisticated enough to go, but half an eye wouldn't work. Right. And you go, oh, yeah, that I could see where you would go from here. Let's back it up. Yeah. And I was going to say along those lines that often times pseudo scientists and science denialists, et cetera, are debating against like a fifth grade understanding of the science, really elementary school level of scientific understanding, and they think that's the science. It's like, no, that's not the science. That's how it's poorly explained to elementary school students. Yeah. That's the level at which you're operating. That's literally dumbed down science. It's like, you know, whenever we do good psychom, I always avoid the term dumb it down because you don't want it to be simplified to the extent that it's no longer correct. It can't be so simple. It's wrong. It's got to be true as far as it goes. Hello, Michio Kaku. OK, let's move on to science fiction. It's time for science or fiction. Each week I come up with three science and news items or facts to real one fake. I challenge my panelists skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. Just three regular old news items this week. You guys ready? OK. All right. Here we go. Item number one, scientists have built and confirmed a neutrino detector able to detect neutrinos with just three kilograms of detector mass compared to the multiple tons of other detectors. I number two, a new study finds that Roman concrete is more sustainable than modern concrete requiring 10 percent less water and releasing 20 percent less CO2 in its manufacture. I number three, researchers have developed and now successfully tested gene therapy to prevent HIV infection that works in infants for several years after a single treatment. Kara, go first. OK, so a neutrino detector, it's both been built and confirmed. It detects neutrinos with just three kilograms of detector mass, whatever that means, compared to the multiple tons of other detectors. So just like the size of the they made it with carbon fiber. I don't know. They just made it lighter. The detector itself. Is that what you mean by detector? The detector mass. I'll tell you that you're going first. The detector mass is basically the substance that's interacting with the neutrinos. Oh, OK, OK. Got it. So it's like what's ever like in the tube when the neutrinos, I don't know how neutrino detector works. I'm thinking of a particle accelerator, but yeah, whatever the neutrinos are passing through or something that they're measuring. OK, Roman, a new study finds that Roman concrete is more sustainable than modern. 10 percent less water, releasing 20 percent less CO2. Oh, God, I mean, that could be the case. I mean, they definitely weren't using like modern synthetic chemicals when they built it. Developed and successfully tested gene therapy. So you don't say if it's in people. No, you said that works in infants. OK, so that means people in France. Not necessarily. OK, all right. So just a gene therapy to prevent HIV infection for several years after a single treatment. So this is some sort of genetic modification that makes the babies. So instead of like antiretrovirals that moms are taking during pregnancy, the little baby, what would be the point of that? Is it in utero? This is confusing to me. Why would you want that? You would need it earlier than when they're infants. So this is to prevent vertical transmission from the mother to the baby. So it is mainly breastfeeding. OK, so in case she she gave birth to a baby, even if she had HIV, she gave birth to a baby that was HIV negative if she's going to continue to breastfeed. OK, we want to reduce that risk. So the gene therapy would make it so that somehow it's not transmissible. I mean, if that's the case, I that gene therapy should be able to be applied then to adults later, so we just can't catch it. I mean, that would be cool to just make a whole generation of people who are HIV resistant. That one seems least likely, but it could have just been in mice. I have no idea on the neutrino one and the Roman concrete. I'm glad you didn't say that it was like stronger or something, because I feel like we just talked about that last week. And even though it was really strong, I doubt it's stronger than modern concrete. But is it more sustainable? Oh. I like those noises. I know, this is so tough. Maybe I'll I'm going to say the concrete ones. Thinking noises. OK, Bob. Let's see. So for the third one, gene therapy, HIV. Yeah, I think we've made so many advances in HIV therapies over the years, especially recently that this this doesn't surprise me at all. So I'm going to definitely have to go with that one as science. Let's see. Roman concrete is more sustainable. I mean, I'm trying to remember the latest that we heard about whether it was actually superior to what is it? What is it called? A courtland cement? If I remember, it is better in some ways. But the fact that it could be better, but also more sustainable seems less likely. So I'm going to say that it's less sustainable. So I'll say, oh, wait, oh, fuck. I would have asked for the neutrinos. Roman is more sustainable. No, I'm going to say that it's less. So I'm going to have to say that one's fiction, then. The concrete one. But I'm really having a hard time doing that because of number one. Neutrinos with just three kilograms of detector mass. Oh, that's crazy. Because that's because I mean, neutrinos, if you've listened to anything I've said about neutrinos in the past 20 years, you know, they they can go through like light, literally a neutrino can go through like light years of lead before interacting with with an atom. It's just like they're so ghost like they just don't interact with anything. And the modern detectors that I'm aware of have like all like ultra pure, like many, many tons, many suing pools worth of like ultra pure water. And they they they collide with an atom and they create like drink of radiation. So the fact that they can do with three kilograms. Now, all right, three kilograms. It must be aerogel mass that's super lightweight, super diffuse. So it's a large area that a lot of neutrinos would go through. That's the only way that that makes sense. But I'm super curious about that one. But I think you were trying to totally screw me on that one, Steve. So I'm going to go with the the Roman concrete is more sustainable is fiction. OK, and Evan. Bob, you clearly did not see that scientific documentary called 2012 in which neutrinos, it turns out, definitely impact and have have an impact on the Earth's core, right? Which causes a shift of some kind and the crust becomes unstable and starts to and John Cusack goes crazy. So you I think you missed that in your analysis of this particular news item. OK. Had you brought that into this discussion, you'd come to the same conclusion that this one is probably science. I know, you know, so much more about neutrino detectors than I will likely ever know. So congratulations on that. The Roman concrete one, more sustainable. I was when Kara was discussing this or speaking her mind on this, I was having many of the same thoughts. So thank you for confirming my thoughts there, Kara. No way. Because we did talk about this last week when Steve was discussing his trip to Malta and the concrete there. That's when it came up and how durable. I mean, you know, long lasting it is. But that does not mean more sustainable than modern concrete. So I have I think I'm going to join both of you in saying that that one's going to be the fiction and then Kerry, you also brought up a good point about the third one about the gene therapy that works in infants for several years. You asked if it was human infants. And Steve said not necessarily so with some other animal they probably tested this on, I don't think, which led me to believe I was thinking maybe this one's the fiction. But you brought up that point. Now I'm pretty sure that that one's going to be science. So I agree, concrete fiction in this case. All right. You all agree on number two, so we'll start number one. Scientists have built and confirmed a neutrino detector able to detect neutrinos with just three kilograms of detector mass compared to multiple tons of other detectors. You guys all think this one is science and this one is science. Wow. This is surprising. Bob was going to be the most surprised by this. Holy crap, man. So yeah, this is the Conus experiment. They set it up outside of a fission nuclear power plant because nuclear fission creates neutrinos and they were able to use it to detect the excess neutrinos from the nuclear power plant. They knew like what the background number would be and over a very long period of time, yeah, we had extra neutrino detections. So coming from the nuclear power plant. So yeah, Bob, this is it's a new sort of interaction. So whoa, wait. Yeah, this is new type of neutrino interaction. I fully understand it. But let me just tell you what the description is. All right. So it's so it's the it's I think the key is that the neutrinos are scattering off of the anatomic nuclei of germanium. So they they they co says in this process, neutrinos do not scatter off the individual components of the atomic nuclei in the detector, but rather coherently with the entire nucleus. This significantly increases the probability of a very small but observable nuclear recoil. So I guess because it's hitting the new the like the whole nucleus, the nucleus reacts in an observable way. The says that the recoil caused by neutrinos scattering is comparable to a ping-pong ball bouncing off a car with the detection being the changing motion of the car. So not very much, but this was above the threshold of detection. So the scattering partners are the atomic nuclei of germanium observing. This effect requires low energy neutrinos such as those produced in large numbers in nuclear reactors. But yeah, the dramatic thing here was just three kilograms of detector mass in this detector. So they said, this is a proof of concept they've actually proven this technique works. This really opens up neutrino research because then you don't you don't necessarily need these vast underground pools of pure water or whatever as your detector or or the ice I know in like the Antarctic neutrino detector. Right. Maybe that's how Geordi detects neutrinos with his little vise space. Sure. That's a Star Trek reference, Kara. Oh, thank you. All right, let's move on to number two. A new study finds that Roman concrete is more sustainable than modern concrete requiring 10% less water and losing 20% less CO2 in its manufacture. You guys all think this one is fiction. Although it sounds like for various reasons. And this one is the fiction, the fiction. So frustrating. I wish you would guess. But all for the wrong reasons. So what the study showed was that Roman concrete is exactly has exactly the same water use and CO2 release as modern concrete. However, they said it's more sustainable because it's stronger and more durable. So it would it's only more sustainable in that it would have to be replaced less often, which I think you alluded to. It is because it's stronger and more durable. But otherwise, like in the manufacturing process, it's the same. It's the same amount of water use, same amount of CO2 release. But they just say that we long term could be useful to use the older recipe, if you will, because it is more durable. All right, all of this means that researchers have developed and now successfully tested gene therapy to prevent HIV infection that works in infants for several years after a single treatment is science. This is actually potentially very huge. There's a few details in here. So, Kara, I could understand why you're a little perplexed without knowing these details. So this was done in primates in macaques, because there is a like whatever a primate version of HIV that they can use as their that's called SIV. Yes, that's right. That's exactly right. And they're testing something that's been around for a while called broadly neutralizing antibodies. Now, this already exists as a treatment to prevent infants from contracting HIV from their mothers. The problem is it requires an infusion and it only lasts for a short time. So you need repeated infusions of these broadly neutralizing antibodies. And that is not practical in the parts of the world where this is the highest risk. Right? Yeah. So unfortunately, lots of newborns, lots of babies get infected with HIV. It's a huge problem. 300 children are infected with HIV every day. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. More than 100,000 children acquire HIV annually, primarily through mother to child transmission after birth from breastfeeding. So it's a major vector for HIV. And of course, you're infected as an infant. Like that's that's your life. Right? Yep. What they were testing was using a Dino associated virus, AAV. So this is a virus that itself can insert genes into DNA. So you don't it's not there's no CRISPR involved here. Just AAV that's been altered with a gene that and the gene makes the broadly neutralizing antibodies. So they infect the muscle with the virus, which inserts the gene into the muscle tissue. Muscle tissue survives for a long time, which is good. And those the muscle tissue then starts cranking out the broadly neutralizing antibodies. Now, there's a reason why we're not going to be using this in adults. OK, fortunately, it's because when you do this, even in older children, and I mean just like even if you wait a couple of months, there tends to be a lot of immune rejection. And so you need like a pretty naive. You need to get the babies when their immune system is naive enough that they accept it and they don't reject it. And this study showed that it works better in the younger infants. You know, you want to get them within a couple of weeks of being born. But it worked for for the macaques. It provided good protection from HIV infection for three years, which is like their adolescence. So the hope is that it would work in human babies, you know, until they're like older children or even until they're adolescents. Definitely long, you know, to get definitely for if it's a couple of years even that's through the breastfeeding period, right? So that would get you through the point where you're where most children who get infected are getting infected through breastfeeding. And again, it's a one and done treatment. One injection, you're done. That's way better than like crap or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's very practical for again, the people who need it the most. Yeah, so very hopeful, very, very hopeful. Because there's still parts of the world. I mean, I remember when I was in Eswatini, it's got the highest HIV rate in the world. And like most of the kids we worked with were HIV positive. Yeah, it's so sad. It is. Yeah. OK, so that's a hopeful technology. Good job, everyone. Sniffed it again. Yeah, thanks for your help, friends. All right, Evan, give us a quote. Be not astonished at new ideas. For it is well known to you that a thing does not therefore cease to be true because it is not accepted by many. Baruch Spinoza. Yeah, that's kind of the inverse of the logical fallacy of argument. Popular. Yeah, it's popular. Therefore, it must be true. This is the it's not popular. Therefore, it must be wrong. Right. Same idea, though, neither of which are true. It's irrelevant. Popular acceptance is irrelevant to whether something is true or not. I would say a broad consensus of experts is different. Again, logical fallacy, informal logical fallacies are context dependent. If you're talking about, yeah, pretty much all climate scientists think that anthropogenic global warming is happening, that's not an argument at populi. That's a consensus of expert opinion. But we can use this, say, on a more modern concept, UFOs, for example, our culture is saturated with UFO belief. All the saturation in the world does not make any of it true. Right. Yeah. And the popular unpopularity of GMOs doesn't mean that they're not good. Because they are, in my opinion, and the opinion of the vast majority of scientists. That is the issue still where there's the hugest disconnect between popular opinion and scientific opinion. And especially scientists who work in that area. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. So yeah, so it depends on who you're talking about. Yeah, it's a good general idea here. Popular opinion doesn't really predict whether a scientific idea is true or not. And I think he's focusing on new ideas because new ideas generally take time to become accepted, depending on what they are. Yeah, and he was, you know, was he Renaissance? Baruch Spinoza? I think it was just after the Renaissance. So we're talking about some new ideas or ideas that were lost for a very long time and that just started coming back. Born in 1632. So yeah, right. Yeah, where you are in history kind of puts a different spin on that. If you're in this sort of nation scientific era, pretty much everything that was all of the established ideas were wrong. Right. You know, new science ideas were probably way more likely to be true than whatever they were replacing. So that would definitely, you could see how somebody who was living at that time be like, don't reject new ideas because they go against the authority or because they're unconventional or because they're new. Imagine living at a time where pretty much most of the things that the authorities believed were wrong. Oh my gosh. Imagine that. Imagine that. Thank goodness we live in the modern age. Scholars at the time, not talking about the politicians. Right. Controlled by the churches and so much other. And even that is not like, you know, doctors believed nonsense. But nobody knew that they that it wasn't true. I know. They thought it was true. But then somebody says, I think there might be germs causing these like, he's crazy, he's a witch. Burn him. I don't know. I just want out of this timeline. Right. You're going to roll the dice for a random timeline. You want to be able to pick your timeline. Oh, picking it would be nice. He would be. Well, sure. All right. Well, thank you all for joining me this week. Thanks. See you next week. And until next week, this is your Skeptics Guide to the Universe. Skeptics Guide to the Universe is produced by SGU Productions, dedicated to promoting science and critical thinking. For more information, visit us at the skepticsguide.org. Send your questions to info at the skepticsguide.org. And if you would like to support the show and all the work that we do, go to patreon.com. Skeptics Guide and consider becoming a patron and becoming part of the SGU community. Our listeners and supporters are what make SGU possible.