Latest / The Wes Carroll Morning Show / Dragon Con 2023: Science!

Transcript

Dragon Con 2023: Science! · The Wes Carroll Morning Show

0:01
The news, opinions, commentary, and interviews you need to start your day.
0:06
You're listening to the West Carol Morning Show. Friday morning, first day
0:11
of September. I'm Wes, thanks for joining me kicking off the month of
0:18
September together and officially Dragon con underway this morning in downtown Atlanta. It's kind
0:28
of a soft open, if you will. On Thursdays. The convention used
0:33
to be a Friday through Labor Day event, and now Thursday and really Wednesday.
0:40
There are people that are already in attendance here in Atlanta for the convention,
0:47
and that happens as the convention has grown over the years, people get
0:51
here a little bit earlier. Bit. I think they were probably people here
0:53
Monday and Tuesday. I did see someone posting that they were heading to Atlanta
0:58
on Monday, So that gives you an idea of how this convention is now
1:00
grown. For some to an eight day or deal now. For those that
1:04
are traveling great distance, they probably want some time to get settled in to
1:08
their hotels and all that before things get underway. But things officially underway today.
1:15
Me and my crew came up yesterday to get ready for well, we
1:22
had some stuff to attend last night, but really to be and ready to
1:26
go full swing. First thing this morning as the convention officially underway today,
1:33
so we do the annual dragon Con pregame show on radio, and we do
1:38
it as a podcast. If you haven't checked that out yet, you can
1:42
hear interviews with Phil Lamar, Adam Savage, cosplayer Angie Starr. I believe
1:49
she's already here. I'm confident I saw her last night. She's here already
1:53
and already working her way through some of her planned costumes for the weekend.
2:00
So check out the podcast if you did not already listen to it, many
2:06
of you already have and I've already heard some feedback from you. Thank you
2:08
for that. If you're planning to come up for the weekend, there's some
2:12
tips in there about parking, there's some advice about hotels and things, and
2:19
of course just talking with some of the guests who are attending. The guest
2:22
list has changed just a little bit. It is a fluid thing. I
2:24
haven't checked it this morning, but you can check out the attending guests and
2:30
professionals on their website DragonCon dot org. Our coverage of dragon Con, powered
2:38
annually by Columbus State University's Coca Cola Space Science Center. So one of the
2:44
things I did not only did I talk with the director of media Engagement for
2:49
dragon Con. In the pregame show, I talked with the CEO of this
2:53
year's not for profit that is a partner with dragon Con this year, Cure
2:58
childhood Cancer. And I always appreciate a not for profit that the title of
3:04
the organization tells you their mission statement right there in three words. And I
3:08
also talked with, as I said, Adam Savage and Phil Lamar and Angie
3:13
Starr, cosplayer and twitch gamer. But I also talked with my good friend,
3:17
doctor Shawn Kruisen in the show because of the sponsorship of the Coca Cola
3:23
Space Science Center of our coverage, and we do a podcast together on Thursdays
3:30
called Me to Stars. If you haven't checked that out. We did a
3:32
show yesterday drops every Thursday that's a weekly show versus this daily show that I
3:38
do. So this year on the pregame show, I talked with Sean.
3:42
One of the things I talked with him about and I'm going to offer this
3:46
up to you today because some of you that maybe over the years have thought,
3:51
hey, it's a big science fiction convention. I don't go, so
3:55
why aren't you talking about it? And it's more than just a science fiction
4:00
convention. It's a pop culture convention. It covers so many different facets of
4:04
pop culture. This is not just the old school remember of the William Shatner
4:09
on SNL talking about you know, get a life, your losers. That's
4:14
not what Dragon con is. It really covers so much more. Literature is
4:20
covered, Comic books are covered. Illustrators are here. They'll draw things for
4:25
you. You can pay people to draw things for you. You want to
4:28
be a superhero, they'll put your head on a body in some cases.
4:30
There's a lot to take in over the course of the weekend. There's folks
4:34
from TV and film, as well as voices of your favorite video games and
4:40
animation projects. There are actual scientists that attend this convention every year, and
4:46
the scientists this year. One of the topics that will be a big topic
4:50
this year. UAPs, formerly known as UFOs as this has now become a
4:57
mainstream news story with much more credible witnesses talking about their experiences with these UAPs.
5:05
Formerly UFOs, now they're called unidentified anomalous phenomenon because they were aerial,
5:14
and then they change the a to anomalous because at one point these things were
5:18
spotted going under water and that made it different than arial and they wanted to
5:21
give it a better explanation. So that's the new name UAPs. There are
5:26
people here that will be talking about UAPs over the course of the weekend.
5:30
There's also scientists here this weekend who are consultants on TV shows and movies and
5:39
your favorite fiction, whether it's science fiction, whether it is fantasy, whatever
5:45
it is that they work alongside the creators to help make the things that you
5:49
like to read or watch and enjoy. So I talked with doctor Kruzen aka
5:57
Shawn. He's doctors into some He's Shawn to me. We've known each other
6:01
a long time, but we talked on the Dragon Con pregame show about how
6:06
and we've talked about this over the years, but how science and science fiction
6:11
directly have an impact on one another. Okay, so you have science that
6:16
ultimately has an impact on science fiction. Science fiction has an impact on science.
6:20
Think about Star Trek. Think about them walking around back on the original
6:26
Star Trek and then the next generation basically with iPads, and then suddenly we
6:30
have iPads. They weren't a thing back then. Suddenly they're just iPads or
6:35
communicators that they're using effectively with nothing in there. They're just tapping the thing
6:41
on their chest and they're talking to each other. You know, that's very
6:45
much in line with what we do now with cell phones, especially if you
6:47
get those things in your ears. So Sean and I on the pregame show
6:51
talked about some of the things in science that will be having an impact on
6:58
science fiction writers moving forward. And I'm gonna now tee up Sean and let
7:02
him talk about that here. Yeah, jwst an amazingly successful scientific instrument.
7:10
We'll get to that in just a second, but I'm just gonna throw out
7:12
this thought really quickly. It's interesting to go back and read science fiction from
7:18
a previous century, like Jules Verne, for instance, Right, So Jules
7:24
Verne was writing from a perspective about the future based on things that they knew
7:30
at the time. H. G. Wells another person writing about the future
7:38
or about advanced science, but basing that on what they knew at the time.
7:44
So when we read some of those older science fiction stories, we think,
7:49
well, there's certain elements of all of this. That's kind of point
7:53
because it's like, oh, well, they thought things were going to be
7:56
like that in the future, and that's based on you know, their projections
8:01
of a scientific vector based on the eighteen hundreds, and it turns out that
8:05
they had no idea how to predict certain developments that we've come up with in
8:09
the future. Well, that's every day, right, So if somebody's setting
8:15
out to write a science fiction book, let's say in the nineteen forties or
8:18
the nineteen fifties or the nineteen sixties, their perspectives were all different, even
8:24
just decade by decade, because science at that time was taking major advances,
8:31
and I might include engineering in that too, both science and engineering taking major
8:35
advances decade by decade, and so then there was just more material to incorporate
8:41
in your science fiction that simply wasn't known before. And so off Air West
8:46
and I had this discussion about this, saying, well, you know what,
8:50
some of these discoveries from the James Web Space Telescope, they're really significant
8:54
enough that they're going to be changing the way that science fiction authors think about
9:01
the Solar System, think about planets around other stars, think about the large
9:09
scale structure of the universe, the galaxies and how they form, and even
9:13
think about these weird interactions with exotic sounding terms like dark matter, dark energy,
9:20
that kind of thing. So we've put together a brief list of some
9:24
James Webspace Telescope discoveries that we really think is going to change science fiction because
9:28
they're going to have to adapt to some of these new things that are discovered.
9:33
And first on my list, coming from the James Webspace Telescope, is
9:37
a confirmation of water ice preserved in the asteroid belt. Now you might think,
9:43
well, okay, big deal. Why is that important, Well,
9:48
because, ladies and gentlemen, it was never known that comets in the asteroid
9:52
belt had lots of different, large, large amounts of water content on their
10:00
services. So the first thing to think through is are there comets in the
10:03
asteroid belt? Aren't those two different things? Don't comets normally come from much
10:07
farther off, Yes, they do, and they come from a place that's
10:09
much colder, and so the ideas when they get in the inner part of
10:13
the Solar system, a lot of the volatile materials like water would vaporize away.
10:18
But with the James Webb Space Telescope. They pointed it at a comet
10:22
in the asteroid belt and found that that comet is actually preserving fair amounts of
10:28
water in relatively nearby space. So why does this matter to science fiction authors.
10:33
Well, where you have water, ladies and gentlemen, you have both
10:37
rocket fuel and breathable air. And now if you think about, you know,
10:41
science fiction stories where we're migrating out and colonizing the near Solar System,
10:46
we now know about large amounts of water stored in these commentary bodies within the
10:52
asteroid belt. So suddenly there's a source for rocket fuel and breathable air and
10:56
all those kinds of things right there in the the very near part of the
11:01
Solar System. So that's interesting on that front. Another great discovery by the
11:07
James web Space Telescope is the existence of carbon dioxide in the atmospheres of exoplanets.
11:13
An exoplanet is a planet a run another star. And yes, we
11:16
probably thought that carbon dioxide was there, but we now have confirmation of it.
11:22
So there's a planet called Wasp thirty nine B and the James Webs Space
11:26
Telescope was actually able to detect for the very first time the presence of carbon
11:31
dioxide in the atmosphere of that planet. Ladies and gentlemen, think for a
11:35
moment, what do plants digest from the atmosphere. We breathe oxygen out of
11:43
the atmosphere, but plants breathe carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere for their survival.
11:48
So this is part of what we know is the life chain here on
11:50
Earth. It could be that it's part of the life chain now in these
11:54
exoplanets, and it's a real game changer for the scientists who are studying exoplanets
12:00
out there in the soul, out there in the galaxy. Another really amazing
12:05
and interesting discovery and maybe the most shocking discovery from James web Space Telescope in
12:13
terms of upending paradigms about things, was when James web Space Telescope peered through
12:18
a four ground cluster of galaxies and actually used that the gravity from those galaxies
12:24
as an extra lens from gravitational lensing. They were able to observe the most
12:28
distant set of galaxies in the entire universe, the furthest galaxies both back in
12:33
space and time that we've ever observed before. They found out that galaxies were
12:39
pretty well developed and had pretty advanced star formation at a mirror three hundred and
12:46
fifty million years after the Big Bang. All right, yes, we can
12:50
all agree three hundred and fifty million is a big number, and three hundred
12:54
and fifty million years is a long time if you're a snail or a human
13:00
or a tree. But if you're a galaxy, that's hardly any time at
13:05
all. And if you're a star like our Sun. The Sun has approximately
13:09
a ten billion year life cycle, so three hundred and fifty million years would
13:13
be like its infancy. And the fact that after the Big Bang, a
13:18
mere three hundred and fifty million years after the Big Bang, James Webspace Telescope
13:24
has detected fully developed stars and mostly developed galaxies after that very short time is
13:33
absolutely astounding, and it's kind of it's not upending the Big Bang theory,
13:39
but it is making astronomers reconsider how they how they think that these objects got
13:46
to such an advanced stage of formation in such a very short time. So
13:50
this is a really fun set of discoveries and it's changing the way that astronomers
13:54
are understanding the universe, which in turn changes the way that signs. Fiction
14:00
writers have to explain their stories or incorporate these elements into their work. So
14:05
that's a real game changer about the large scale structure of the universe. All
14:09
right, well there's an associated story. Now. We just talked about this
14:11
last week on our podcast, so if you want to hear it in detail,
14:16
check out our mat of Stars podcast. Go back to the early August
14:20
episodes and you'll find where we talked about dark stars, which is a really
14:24
interesting object. In order for these very infant galaxies to be of such mature
14:30
stages, and in order for them to have fairly advanced stars, there may
14:35
have had to be a generation of stars that burned first, which didn't burn
14:43
regular hydrogen and helium and what we call from a nuclear refusion, but instead
14:48
consumed dark matter through matter antimatter reactions, generating enough energy to be a whole
14:58
primary generation of stars that we never even imagine could exist before. And James
15:03
Webb Space Telescope has been able to identify some of the signatures in the early
15:09
universe that make us think that these dark stars stars that that power through dark
15:16
matter may have actually existed, and if they existed, that could be the
15:20
energy mechanism which drove the early formation of stars and therefore galaxies that we just
15:26
talked about in the in the previous story. So so once again, what
15:31
better title for a science fiction book than dark Star or something with the phrase
15:35
dark star in the title. Right, Well, dark stars may now appear
15:39
to be a thing, and it's a great discovery by jwst And you know,
15:46
there's lots of places to go out and read about that online, but
15:48
just do a quick search for dark Stars and you're going to find out the
15:52
latest discoveries from James Webb Space Telescope. They're setting on their ear both the
15:56
worlds of science and science fiction. So luck you aspiring sci fi writers out
16:02
there, I hope you have a great time with carbon dioxide on exoplanets and
16:07
water in the asteroid belt, and galaxies and stars forming in a really rapid
16:11
time, and then the crazy phenomenon of dark matter eating guzzling stars called dark
16:18
Stars. Today's show brought to you by Columba State Universities Coca Cola Space Science
16:22
Center, inspiring and educating the youth and future STEM leaders and STEM career holders
16:30
that really of all ages. I mean, they do it for school age
16:34
kids. As school aged kids visit the Coca Cola Space Science Center, but
16:37
they also do it through their university programs where you can learn engineering, astronomy,
16:44
physics, and the careers in space and stem fields are booming right now,
16:49
and you can learn more about maybe getting your degree on their website CCSSC
16:57
dot org. While you're there, also check out some of their upcoming programs.
17:03
They've got this incredible collaboration that they do with the Schwobe School of Music
17:07
from Columbus State University called Music under the Dome. It's unlike any concert experience
17:14
that you can get anywhere else. It's one of those things that when you're
17:17
watching it in Columbus, Georgia, you think, is this really in Columbus,
17:21
Georgia. I mean, this is a major city attraction that happens right
17:26
here in Columbus inside the planetarium at the Coca Cola Space Science Center and the
17:33
new season of Music under the Dome. Check out upcoming dates for the shows
17:38
and also check out when the next Astronomy nights coming up. Where you can
17:41
get outside, sometimes you do it at the Coco Cola Space Science Center.
17:45
Sometimes you get outside somewhere outside the city lights. You don't any light interference
17:51
and you can do that as well upcoming Astronomy Night events also on their website.
17:56
It's CCSSC dot org. As Shan Kruzen says Charlie Charlie Sam Sam Charlie
18:02
dot org, I just remind you that it stands for Coca Cola Space Science
18:07
Center CCSSC dot org. Today's show brought to you by Overhead Door Company of
18:12
Columbus. For all of your garage door needs, commercial or residential. Maybe
18:18
you have regular maintenance that it's time for. It's always good to get maintenance
18:23
on anything that has parts that move and have electronics. The folks at Overhead
18:29
Door Company of Columbus can take care of squaring that away for you, and
18:33
while they're there, you can always ask them questions about some of the maybe
18:37
cosmetic changes you'd like to make to your garage door. Maybe your curb appeal
18:41
isn't quite what you want it to be and you need some repair work done
18:45
to the outside door. Maybe you need a brand new garage door completely.
18:49
Maybe it's making a noise when your garage door opens and closes. Maybe it's
18:53
some sort of insulation issue that you've got with colder or warmer weather. Sometimes
18:59
that stuff get it's in and it's inconvenient. Maybe you're looking at a situation
19:03
where you'd like to add a screen door to your garage door system that you
19:07
can put down and you can use your garage space as a sort of outdoor
19:11
but indoor. You know, if you'd like to work on your own cars
19:15
in there, or maybe you just want a little man caved. You'd like
19:18
to be able to open the door up and not invite all the insects in.
19:22
They can do that for you as well, and again they do after
19:25
hours calls. There's nothing worse than that thought of having your car trapped inside
19:29
your garage and your garage door won't open and you need somebody to come help,
19:33
and they do those as well. Seven oh sixty five eight forty five
19:37
hundred, seven h six three five eight forty five hundred O DC Columbus dot
19:42
com More West Carol Morning Show right after the break. Thanks again to Sean
19:56
Cruisen and the folks at Columbus State univer Citi's Coca Cola Space Science Center for
20:02
sponsoring our Dragon Con coverage. We'll be up here for the weekend by all
20:07
means. You can reach out to me on social media. If you're going
20:10
to be here, get a chance to say hi. I'll be moving around.
20:14
We move and I'll be incognito. I mean not in the Adam Savage
20:18
way that he goes incognito. I'll be recognizable. I think with some of
20:22
the costumes that I'll be wearing this weekend. I'm not typically in the past
20:26
someone who would wear costumes, but I've started to do that just to take
20:30
in the full Dragon Con experience a little bit more this year. So I,
20:33
you know, hit me up, let me know that you're here.
20:36
I'd love to say hi while we're It's a lot of people, but we
20:38
could find each other in one of the five hotels or in America's Mart.
20:42
If you're in America's Mart, that's a chance I'll be near where they sell
20:45
the dice. Just saying that's where I spend a significant amount of my time
20:51
in America's Mark checking out dice. I collect them. But thanks again to
20:55
columb State University's co Colla Space Science Center sponsoring our coverage help and make sure
20:59
that we're able to be here every year. And thanks to the media relations
21:03
team here for taking really good care of us over the course of the week.
21:07
We were at a party with them last night. That's why I say
21:11
we had to get here early. We had things to do yesterday. So
21:14
thanks again to them and all the folks at dragon Con and the work that
21:18
they're doing at Cure Childhood Cancer. Check them out Cure Childhood Cancer dot org.
21:22
They are the charity organization that dragon Con has partnered with this year.
21:27
Come on up, hit me up while you're here. I'd love to see.
21:32
Thank you to our patrons, thank you to our sponsors, and thank
21:37
you for listening. I'll catch you back here on Tuesday morning. This is
21:41
the West Carroll Morning Show powered by Overhead Door Company of Columbus, the Holiday
21:47
and Resort in Panama City and CSUS Coca Cola Space Science Center. Overhead Door
21:53
Company of Columbus has all of your garage door needs covered, residential and commercial
21:59
serve us and repairs. If you need a new garage door, or you're
22:03
just looking to upgrade or repair your current door, Overhead Door Company of Columbus
22:07
has you covered. Plus they've got your emergency repairs or service covered as well.
22:12
Seven oh six three five eight forty five hundred seven O six three five
22:17
eight forty five hundred ODC Columbus dot com. Have you checked out the Made
22:22
of Stars podcast yet, Well you probably should. The Georgia Association of Broadcasters
22:26
is named Made of Stars the best podcast series at the annual Gabby Awards.
22:32
Every Thursday, Doctor Shaun Cruising from Columbus State University's Coca Cola Space Science Center
22:37
and I talk about the week space news, including what's going on at NASA,
22:41
as well as companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin, Axiom Space, and
22:45
Boeing. Plus we fill you in on what's happening beyond our atmosphere, throughout
22:48
our Solar System, and into the deepest known regions of space. Check out
22:52
Best Podcast Series Gabby Award winning Made of Stars. New episodes every Thursday on
22:59
Spotify, Apple, Google, or wherever you listen to your podcast