Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / Have interstellar meteors hit the Earth?

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Have interstellar meteors hit the Earth? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Hey, Kelly, do you have strong feelings about invasive species?
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 0:13
  Speaker 3: I mean, on the one hand, it's usually our fault.
• 0:16
  Speaker 3: But I do think that in general, ecologists get a
• 0:19
  Speaker 3: bit unnerved when you mess with a local ecosystem.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: But shouldn't you have some sort of like respect for
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: these invaders. I mean, they just like came in and
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: they were better suited to survival, right.
• 0:28
  Speaker 3: I mean, I guess so, but in a lot of cases,
• 0:31
  Speaker 3: like the new environment doesn't have their usual parasites or predators,
• 0:34
  Speaker 3: so they have like an unfair advantage at least initially.
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: But like, also, would you feel that way if advanced
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: aliens came and started killing us, Like, would it be
• 0:46
  Speaker 3: okay because they can? Would you have grudging respect?
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: I actually would have grudging respect, And I hope that
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: you know, they would share the physics behind their laser
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: beams and immolation devices and all that stuff, and it
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: might be worth it.
• 1:01
  Speaker 3: Okay, wait, hold on, remember both my kids, who I
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: know you're always trying to kill and your kids are
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: included on the list of being fried by aliens in
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: the scenario.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: I know, but I still learned the secrets of the universe,
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: so I already factor that in. I'm still pro invasion.
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: All right, that's the first shuttle that goes to Mars.
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: I'm putting your name on the manifest I don't want
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: you on the same planet as my.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: Kids, no way, fair point. Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: particle physicist and a professor at UC Irvine, and I'm
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: happy to be negotiating on behalf of Earth when the
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: aliens arrived.
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: I'm Kelly Waiiner Smith, adjunct at Race University, and I
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: hope that Daniel is far away from Earth when the
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: aliens arrive. He might trade our children for some tiny
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: little physics secret.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: Look, it's all going to be on the table, right
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: You never know what the aliens are gonna want. Maybe
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: they just want to like scoop up some algae and
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: slurp it. But maybe they want to fry our children.
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: You keep my children off the table. They can have
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: the algae, although I can imagine there being some bad
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: downstream effects. My phycology friends would not be happy. But
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: definitely you're not giving them my kids.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: Oh you're so parochial. You're on the wrong side of
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: history here, Kelly.
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: I'm alright with that.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Well, welcome to the podcast Daniel and Jorge explain the universe,
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: where we do our best not to fry our children
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: and sacrifice them to invading aliens, but to understand the
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: universe anyway. Somehow, with all the photons and the particles
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: and the little bits of rock that arrive here on Earth,
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: we've managed to piece together and understanding of how the
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: universe works. Out there, what's out there? What the tiny
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: little quantum particles are, the super massive black holes that
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: shape our galaxies. All that is sending us clues, and
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: we're trying to digest them and explain them to you.
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: And that's why we don't need the aliens and their information.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: But Kelly, we've been doing it for thousands of years,
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: and there's still so much we have left to figure out.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: Wouldn't you like to fast forward to a super advanced understanding.
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: Not if I'm trading my kids for it?
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: All right, everybody, you heard it. If we are living
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: in ignorance, it's because of Kelly's selfishness.
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: Wait wait, I'll trade Daniel's kids for it, so problem, So.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: Okay, see the negotiation begins. All right, We're starting to
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: thaw that cold position of yours. But nobody wants anybody's
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: kids to fry, absolutely, But we do want to understand
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: the universe, and frustratingly, we are mostly limited to figuring
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: it out based on the clues that arrive here on Earth,
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: photons that have traveled for billions of light years across
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: the universe, little bits of protons and electrons and all
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: sorts of cosmic rape particles. We are working hard to
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: piece that together to get a picture of everything that's
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: out there in the universe.
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: And we'll get there without the aliens.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: And while the photons that arrive here on Earth do
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: travel almost all the way across the universe, I mean
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: we see things from very very early in the universe,
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: we are limited when it comes to the stuff that
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: arrives here, the actual chunks of stuff that we can
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: use to study things that happen on other planets. We
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: found little bits of Mars on Earth. We sometimes get
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: rocks from elsewhere in the Solar System. But the universe
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: is vast, and we would love to have a sample
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: of bits from other places. Wouldn't you like to have
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: a scoop of a distant star or a sample from
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: an atmosphere of an exole planet.
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Note that would be pretty awesome.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: Who knows what we could find. Is our solar system
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: the same as all those other solar systems? Is it
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: totally different? What can be found in the hearts of
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: distant stars under the surface of distant exo moons. We
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: don't know, and we'd love to find out. And we
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: know that the universe is always holding surprises for us.
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: Oh, I want to start asking you questions about what
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: we might expect, how we might expect those things to
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: be different than what we found on Earth. But I'm
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: probably jumping the.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: Gun you are a little bit. But today on the podcast,
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: we're going to be exploring that question, whether it's possible
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: to sample planets around other stars, whether we can just
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: sit here on our own little rock and wait for
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: those bits to come to us. So today on the podcast,
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: we'll be answering the question, have interstellar meteors hit the Earth?
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: Oh, there's nothing better when the data comes to you.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: We would you love to just sit at home and
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: have all the parasites like walk through your kitchen and
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: report for duty.
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: Ah, you know what, I actually have mixed feelings about that.
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: It depends on the parasites.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: So your kids do live in that same kitchen and
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: eat breakfast there, so probably you want to keep a
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: sharp line between those.
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: Things, all right, Right, it's great when physics data comes
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: to us, but the parasitology data I'll go collect.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: And we have done a little bit of exploring, you know,
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: we've been to the Moon, and we've sent probes to
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: Mars and to orbit other places in the Solar System,
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: but really the amount of stuff that we have to
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: study that comes from off of Earth is vanishingly small,
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: like a few pounds of Mars rocks, a little bit
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: of an asteroid that we managed to collect, and most
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: of the stuff that isn't from Earth that we can
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: study came to us automatically. We didn't send a robot together.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: We just waited for rocks to hit the Earth and
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: gather them.
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: Is it possible that there's just like loads of rocks
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: from our Solar System that are still on Earth, But
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: we just look at them and we're like, that's a rock.
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: And my friend Callon would say all rocks are interesting,
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: but he's a geologist. I'm not quite sure he's right
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: about that. But do we probably have tons more data,
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: but we just don't recognize it. As being different than
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: the Earth rocks.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely, Meteors are hitting the Earth all the time,
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: and they have four billions of years and so these
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: things are scattered all around the surface of the Earth
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: and even buried within it. I recently read a study
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: that showed that they see traces of the proto planet
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: that hit the Earth and led to the formation of
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: the Moon. They call it fear. It's probably happened four
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: billion years ago. They can see bits of it lodged
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: in our mantle, like they can identify underground which bits
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: came from that proto planet and how it created this
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: weird distortion in the shape of our mantle.
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: Oh my god.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: So everything on the surface of the Earth and underneath
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: reveals its history, its history of bombardment. So yeah, there's
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: probably stuff all over the surface of the Earth for
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: people to just pick up and learn about our solar system.
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: So when my kids come home with like pockets full
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: of rocks, I shouldn't throw them out the window when
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: they're not looking, because they might be more valuable than
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: I realize.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: They absolutely might be. But I agree with your geologist friend.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: Every rock is interesting because every rock tells a story.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: It was formed at a certain moment, and then it
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: was weathered, it was oxidized, it captures stuff within it.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: Each of them really tells us something about the billion
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: years long journey that they've survived. They're like a little
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: time capsule.
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I know you're right.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: But the most interesting ones are not the ones in
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: your kid's pocket, which probably come from Earth, and also
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: not the ones that even come from our solar system.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: While little bits of Mars are fascinating, we would love
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: to explore much deeper out into the universe and see
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: things from other planets, remnants from other solar systems. And
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: that's why today we're asking the question about interstellar meteors.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: So before we dig into what, I wanted to know
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: what people out there thought about the question of whether
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: interstellar metiors have hit the Earth. So thank you very
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: much to everybody who participates in this audience play along
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: segment of the podcast. If you'd like to join for
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: future episodes, don't be shy. Write to me you questions
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: at Daniel and Jorge dot com. So think about it
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: for a minute. Do you think interstellar meteors have hit
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: the Earth? Here's what people had to say.
• 9:14
  Speaker 4: Well, it's been around for an extremely long time, so
• 9:18
  Speaker 4: you would think that sooner or later some interstellar meteors
• 9:22
  Speaker 4: would have hit the Earth. So I'm just gonna go
• 9:26
  Speaker 4: with a guess that, yes, interstellar meteors have hit the Earth.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: I suspect they have, but it would be surely very rare.
• 9:39
  Speaker 5: I would side probably, but none that we know.
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: Of interstellar videos would have to be very lucky to
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: even head out galaxy. And even if they made it
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: to a galaxy, they would have to be very lucky
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: to make it through all the other stars and planets
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: and the gravitation gravity that they have to actually if
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: but I feel like there's a chance that maybe one
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: or two has made it through. So I'm going to
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: say yes.
• 10:10
  Speaker 5: I'm gonna say no because I imagine coming into our
• 10:17
  Speaker 5: Solar system I would probably be caught up in the
• 10:20
  Speaker 5: gravitational pull of a different planet or become an orbit
• 10:27
  Speaker 5: in one of the asteroid belts.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: Maybe what do you think of these answers?
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: Kelly, Well, so for starters, I had never heard O
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: how do you say that? Okay, So for starters, I
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: had never heard of. Oh muamua and that is an
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: incredible name. I love it. It's so much fun to
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: say it's beautiful. Uh, and no, I thought these were
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: all good responses. I mean, but you know, so like
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: we've only been watching the skies for you know, a
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: small fraction of humanity's existence. How how do we know, Like,
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: you know, if you find a rock in your backyard
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: and you're like, well, maybe this is from Mars, how
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: could you be sure that it was an interstellar Like
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: how do you know that it wouldn't look the same
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: because everything's made out of the same stuff.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great question, and we don't know for sure. Right,
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: we know something about the formation of our solar system,
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: and so we know what rocks on Earth look like.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: And we can tell if a rock was from Mars
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: because it has a different chunk of stuff, Like Mars
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: is made of different elements and different ratios of those
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: elements and different isotopes because of where it was formed
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: and how it was formed and its history. So we
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: can tell when our rock is from Mars rather than
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: from Earth. But what we don't know is if solar
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: systems out there have Earth like planets and Mars like
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: planets with the same elements, whether you could tell the
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: difference between a rock from Earth and a rock from
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: some exo Earth, or if they're very very different, and
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: our Solar System is unique in some way, so that
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: planets formed around other stars could be very different from
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: the planets that formed around our star. That's sort of
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: the basic question.
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: Okay, so it seems like you are sort of starting
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: to already tell me why we would want interstellar your
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: meteors in the first place, not just because you like
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: rock so much, but these rocks in particular could tell
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: us something cool.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: Exactly we want interstellar meteors for the same reason we
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: want to study meteors. Meteors give us a sample of
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: the rest of the Solar System. How exactly did the
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: asteroid belt form? What is Pluto made out of and
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: where does that tell us about the formation of the
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: Solar System? What is really at the core of Jupiter?
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: Where did Jupiter form in the inner Solar System or
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: in the outer Solar System? Samples from these planets can
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: give us clues about the story of the formation of
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: our Solar System and the dance of the planets made
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: as the whole thing was evolving. And in the same way,
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: samples from planets around other Solar systems would tell us
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: about how those formed and give us the context for
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: the formation of our own solar system. That's sort of
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: the most specific answer, that most general answer for like
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: why you would want to see in interstellar meteors is
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: just curiosity, Like who knows what's in it. We've been
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: thinking about the universe and exploring it with photons, But
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: every time we've developed a new capability, every time we've
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: figured out a way to probe the universe and a
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: way we haven't before, it's always revealed something surprising, sometimes
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: mind blowing, sometimes in a way that really up ends
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: our entire understanding of the universe and the context of
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: our lives. So if we got an interstellar media and
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: it could study it, it could reveal something totally crazy,
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: things beyond what even science fiction authors could imagine.
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: Okay, so you've convinced me that this is interesting, and
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: I've been convinced that ooh muamoa see how do you
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: say it? Oh muama, oh muhamoa is also fascinating. Tell
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: me tell me more about that.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: Right, So, we know that some interstellar objects have come
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: through our solar system, but we've only ever seen two
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: of them, Like, there's thousands and thousands of asteroids out
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: there and things hit the Earth all the time, but
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: only twice have we identified things that we are sure
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: didn't come from within our Solar system. And the first,
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: the most famous one. But what I'm kind of embarrassed
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: for you, Kelly, that you never heard of as a
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: as a deputized physics nerd is O Muamula, which came
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: through the Solar system in twenty seventeen.
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: I'm a deputized physics nerd.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: Yes, congratulations, thank you.
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: Oh I'm sorry I've let you down. This is a
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: real emotional rollercoaster for me. But tell me more.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: No, you officially have a PhD in podcast physics from
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge University.
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: Fantastic, I'm putting it on my TV.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: But in twenty seventeen, the pan Star's telescope noticed this
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: rock and it was moving really fast twenty six kilometers
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: per second. But most importantly, it had a non solar trajectory,
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: meaning it was moving along a path, a direction, a
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: location of velocity which would not allow it to orbit
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: the Sun. Meant that had come in from outside the
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: Solar System was going to bend around the Sun and
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: then shoot again out of the Solar system.
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: Was there some giant smashing happening in a different solar
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: system and this thing got shot out of their solar
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: system super fast?
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: It's a great question. There's lots of question marks about
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: this object. We saw it sort of on its way
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: out of the Solar system. It sort of passed near
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: the Sun, and by the time we spotted it, it
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: was already headed out. It was moving really really fast.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: So we have really limited data about it. We don't
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: know a lot about its shape, we don't know a
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: lot about its reflectivity. The best speculation is that it's
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: a chunk of ice, probably lost by some other star.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: You know, most stars have not just planets, but like
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: big chunks of frozen ice balls and a halo around
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: the star, like we have the Ort cloud, which is
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: a source of long period comets. These things are little
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: chunks of ice and they're really really far away from
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: the star, so they are gravitationally bound. But they can
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: also be kicked out of their stable orbit by a
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: passing star, interactions with other galactic stuff, and so sometimes
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: that means it falls inwards towards the inner Solar System
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: it becomes a comet, or maybe smashes into a planet
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: and kills all of its dinosaurs, And sometimes it means
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: they might be lost by that star and just float
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: through interstellar space, occasionally randomly encountering another Solar system And is.
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: That the only one we've seen? Or maybe I shouldn't
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: ask any more questions because I don't want to lose
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: my dju physics degree.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: No, once you have tenure, you can't lose it, Kelly,
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: it doesn't matter.
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: Oh my goodness.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: So that was the first one, and it was very
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: spectacular and people really wondered about it. There's a lot
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: of stuff we still don't understand about it, like very weirdly,
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: as Omuamua was leaving the Solar System, it seemed to
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: accelerate a little bit, like it wasn't just moving on
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: a pure gravitational orbit. It actually sped up a little
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: bit as it was leaving, which led some people to speculate, like, oh,
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: is this an alien ship or is it like a
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: little bit of alien junk, like maybe a light sail
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: lost by some alien civilization these days, the best explanation
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: is that it's probably a chunk ice and as it
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: was leaving, some of that ice boiled off and gave
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: it like a little poof.
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: I have decided that my feelings are hurt and that
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: it was an alien ship that, you know, maybe was
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: watching one of our news channels and was like I'm out,
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: and they left as best.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: As they could. Maybe most of the astronomy community and
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: the astrophysics community thinks that the chunk of interstellar ice
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: is the most likely explanation. On the other side of
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: the debate is famous Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb, who wrote
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: a book about how Omumua was probably a chunk of
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: alien tech, though most people think he doesn't know what
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: he's talking about, and we did a whole podcast episode
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: sort of dissecting his claims and why there's no basis
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: for them.
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, let's just be clear. I really think the ice
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: answer is the way to I was joking.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: But these things are pretty rare that we did see
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: a second one. In twenty nineteen, an amateur astronomer, someone
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: who makes his own tellelescopes, a guy named Borisov, saw
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: a second one. This thing also came through the Solar
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: system on a trajectory that makes us sure that it
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: didn't come from our solar system. The additive velocity in
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: a direction that just is not compatible with motion around
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: the Sun. And this thing is probably a ten kilometer
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: wide comet.
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: Wow, that's like extinction level, right.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. The closest approach to Earth was about two au,
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: so we were in nowhere in danger. But yeah, these
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: things can be moving really fast relative to our solar
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: system because they're not linked to us gravitationally, and as
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: the Sun moves through the galaxy, these things could be
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: going in any direction. So yeah, they are a little dangerous, fortunately,
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: and unfortunately they're.
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: Pretty rare, and they come and go so quickly that
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: there's no chance for us to plan a mission to
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: go explore them. Is that right?
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: Exactly? People thought, oh, let's go sample something from Omuamua,
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: but it was already moving so fast that if you
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: launched a probe it would take forever to catch up
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: and then forever to send back data. And so these
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: things are basically once and gone. You're lucky to get
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: any pictures of them, not to mention samples, which is
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: why everyone would love if one of these things would
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: hit the Earth. Obviously, not a really big one, you know,
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: not one that's going to vaporize us, but one that's
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: going to survive the atmosphere, land on the ground, not
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: hurt anybody, and leave us a bunch of clues about
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: what's going on out there in the universe.
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: But gosh, this was a quick podcast episode because that
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: hasn't happened. Right.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: Well, that's exactly what we're going to dig into as
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: soon as we come back from this break.
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: All right. So Daniel was just about to tell us
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: that the podcast episode is over because we don't have
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: any interstellar meteors.
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: Well, there's a really interesting discussion about one possible blob
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: that could have been interested.
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: Tell me more about that.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: So in twenty fourteen, this is now ten years ago,
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: a meteor hit over Papa, New Guinea, and this thing
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: is about the size of a dishwasher. They're pretty sure.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: It weighs about half as much as a giraffe.
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: All right, so pretty big but not gonna kill us.
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: All that's great.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: The thing is big enough to make a detonation in
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: the atmosphere, but not big enough we think to like
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: land on the surface and like have a chunk of
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: rock that you can look at and point to and
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: even find.
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: But it was traveling. So you just told us that
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: our other two potentially interstellar visitors were coming from a
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: trajectory where we knew that they weren't from our solar system,
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: and so this one was was it doing that?
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: So that's one of the questions, and av LOBE in
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, together with the Harvard undergraduate combed through a
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: bunch of data from US Intelligence satellites and looked for
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: meteors that had a trajectory that might have been interstellar.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: So they combed through this database and they found this one.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: They're like, oh, this is interesting. According to the measurements
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: of this thing's velocity and direction, it might have been interstellar.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: And so they got kind of excited about it.
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: And by might have been what are the error bars
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: on a phrase like that?
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: Mmm?
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And so there's a lot of discussion about exactly that.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: The thing is that this data comes from US Space
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: Command and it was observed by US intelligence satellites. But
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: the data from those satellites are a little bit obscure,
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: Like we don't get the super high precision data from
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: US intelligence satellites because the US doesn't want to reveal
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: like everything it can measure. This is like classified secrets.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: But in early twenty twenty two, US Space Command issued
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: this declaration saying that it was probably interstellar. They said
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: that their trajectory was quote sufficiently accurate to indicate an
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: interstellar trajectory.
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: All right, that's I mean, that's awesome. That sounds that's
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: pretty confident.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: That sounds pretty exciting. And so in twenty twenty three,
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: Lobe and his team at Harvard decided they were going
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: to go try to find this thing like it hit
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: over the ocean, and they think maybe it fragmented in
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: a fireball and then sprayed little bits of itself into
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: the ocean, and if they went and dragged a sled
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: across the surface of the bottom of the ocean, they
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: might pick up little bits of it.
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: So that sounds like the ultimate needle in a haystack.
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: Activity how hard would it be to retrieve fragments from
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: the seafloor.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: It's definitely not easy. But Avy Lobe was like, hey,
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: let's at least try. Let's see if we can figure
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: it out. And his thought was that some of the
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: bits of this meteor were gonna be iron, and these
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: things are gonna be magnetic, and so if you could
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: drag a magnetic sled across the seafloor. Maybe you'll pick
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: up little bits of this thing, little like chunks of
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: the meteor that survived the atmosphere and hit the ocean
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: and then sank down to the bottom. Now, if you
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: have a science mind at all, there's lots of questions here,
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: like how sure are you where it landed? How do
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: you know about the tides and the currents, how do
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: you know where it's going to fall? What else might
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: be there? How could you distinguish it from the other stuff,
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: How would you know if it was interstell or All
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: of these questions are raised immediately by this fishing expedition.
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: It's a long list.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: They went and they did it, and so for two
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: weeks they dragged this custom built sled equipped with magnets
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: and cameras and lights, across the seafloor, and at regular
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: intervals they pulled it up and they gathered any metallic bits,
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: and in the end they have a bunch of these
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: things they call spherules, like basically tiny little iron balls
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: around like a quarter of a millimeter up to two
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: millimeters in radius.
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: Okay, so, first of all, why would you be sure
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: that this object had iron in it, And then also,
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: aren't there a lot of iron containing objects on the
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: seafloor to.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: Begin with, yes, absolutely. It turns out the seafloor is
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: covered with these iron spherules from Solar System meteorites and
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: from other sources of iron, so it's not that rare
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: to find sperials. And in a minute we'll talk about
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: analysis by experts in this area and how skeptical they
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: are of the claims that Lobe and his team ended
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: up making.
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: They Okay, they found some, and then what evidence did
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: they provide to suggest that these were interstellar instead of
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: just like boring old Earth iron.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: They found like seven hundred these things in the area
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: where they thought this meteorite had hit, and they also
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: went and checked a couple other areas and they found
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: fewer of these little spherials, So that led them to conclude, like, oh,
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: maybe we found the right region, Maybe we have hit
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: on this sort of destruction path, this wreckage from this meteorite,
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: because there are more Sperials here than there are nearby.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: And then they did an analysis of these things. If
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: you look at their paper, you can see they have
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: like super close up pictures of these things, and they
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: are like tiny little iron bebes, and they did things
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: like measure the elemental composition, like how much beryllium, how
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: much uranium, how much iron, what kind of isotope of
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: iron are there? And from that they try to learn
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: whether or not these things are consistent with bits of
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: our solar system or inconsistent with bits of our solar system.
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: And you said, tried to, which makes me think that
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: the argument was not iron clad.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: So they make two kinds of arguments. One is about
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: the ratio of iron isotopes. Like iron is an element,
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: but there's a few different varieties of iron. There's iron
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: with more or fewer neutrons in it, so it's like
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: a tiny bit heavier and a tiny bit lighter. By
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: the ratio those isotopes, you can tell something about where
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: it came from and like the chemical interactions it's been
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: involved in, which will dig into in a minute. But
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: they also looked at the beryllium, the lanthanum, and the
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: uranium in these things, so like more exotic elements, and
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: some of these things have like more beryllium, lanthium, and
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: uranium than they expected, and so they claim that these
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: things are consistent with an interstellar meteor, for example, there's
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: a lot of beryllium in there, and beryllium kind of
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: hard to make, so they suggest that maybe the beryllium
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: in this thing was made as this interstellar meteor passes
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: through interstellar space and it's hit with radiation, which is
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: one of the ways that you make beryllium.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: Hmm.
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: But couldn't something that got shot from Mars get hit
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: with interstellar radiation before it landed on Earth or the
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: argument is that it would have taken a lot more
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: time for that, but it could take a long time
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: to get from Marster Earth.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you could be floating around in the Solar System
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: for a long time. And this is a bit of
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: a weak argument, I agree, But the interstellar radiation is
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: a little bit different than the inside the Solar system's
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: solar wind, so there might be a little bit of
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: an argument there.
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: So they had these spuriles and they looked a little
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: weird according to them and based on their expertise, so
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: they posted this paper in late twenty twenty three claiming
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: spurials of likely extrasolar composition. So like this was a
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: big claim. This made a huge splash, like discovering bits
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: of an interstellar would have enormous scientific consequences, and.
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: So I'm sure they did an enormous amount of work
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: to make sure that they were correct before they released this.
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: And so my first thought is, you say paper post it?
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: Do you mean like paper posted after peer review or
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: I mean, I know physicists do things a little differently.
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: They tend to post things on archive first before peer review.
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: Is that right? So maybe that would be standard, But
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: tell me what paper posted meant?
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: So they put it on the internet. They put it
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: on the archive. It had not yet been peer reviewed.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: And in some fields it's a standard, like actually, in
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: particle physics, we post our papers assume as we're done
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: with them before they're peer reviewed, but everybody knows they're
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: not yet peer reviewed, and so you got to wait
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: and see if it really stands up. In astronomy and
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: in astrophysics it's actually the opposite. People wait and post
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: their papers to the archive after they're peer reviewed. And
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: so this was a pretty unusual move, not just because
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: they posted the paper before peer review, but also because
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: the claims in the paper, Like they didn't just claim
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: that these things were likely extra solar composition like a
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: hunk of rock from another solar system, they said, and
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: I have to quote this because it's amazing. They quote,
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: may reflect an extraterrestrial technological origin. Like, yes, not only
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: are they suggesting these things could just be bits of
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: rock from another solar system, already amazing, but bits of
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: technological junk from an intelligent civilization from another solar system.
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: Like to make that leap to me is just incredible.
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: Wait, have we just not yet talked about the evidence
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: that they used to support that claim, or because we've
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: like skipped it so far, or have we really talked
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: about everything.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: No, there is no evidence to support that claim. Just like, hey, look,
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: these are weird and they have a strange mix of elements.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: Maybe they come from an alien iPhone. That's really the
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: whole argument there, and then and then add to the mix.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: The same day this paper is posted. In twenty twenty three,
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: Ivi Lobe publishes a popular book for a mass audience
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: called Interstellar, The Search for Extraterrestrial Life that's all about
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: his search for little bits of technology from alien species
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: elsewhere in the colex and then he gives a bunch
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: of interviews and in the interview He sort of like
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: conflates whether the paper has been published as in Peer
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: reviewed or just post it online, And so he really
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: gives people the impression like, oh my gosh, look this
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: is really backed up with scientific study.
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: Doesn't sound good.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: And so everybody was like, hmm, that's interesting. We'd love
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: to believe it, right, we're scientist. Let's keep an open mind.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: Maybe Lobe did discover bits of an alien iPhone. That
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: would be fantastic. Nobody wants to reign on the parade
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: if it's true, right, But you know, extraordinary claims extraordinary evidence,
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: And so I for one, was waiting for a detailed
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: critique from experts, people who know, like, how likely is
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: a meteor to survive this thing? How likely was it
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: that it had an interstellar origin? What can we conclude
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: from the elemental composition of this stuff? And very recently
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: there was a paper by Stephen Desh and Alan Jackson,
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: two experts in this area, professors at ASU and Towson University,
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: and they went through in a meticulous fashion and took
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: apart his claims.
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: Oh boy, so who's who are we going to side with?
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: By the end of this episode.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: We're going to decide with the evidence, of course.
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: All right, so where do we start then, digging into
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: the many arguments we just talked about.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: I want to start by reading this paragraph from desh
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: and Jackson's paper, which I think sums it up pretty
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: well and like, this is not the kind of thing
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: you typically find in a science paper. This is fire.
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: So what they wrote is quote. Because of the boldness
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: of the claim, it might be expected that Lobe at
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: all exercise due diligence to eliminate alternative, more prosaic explanations
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: for the data, and would report their results carefully and deliberately.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: They did not flight lowbit all hardly considered, and did
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: not test the simplest alternative hypothesis. The spherals they found
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: were of a common and well understood type found worldwide
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: from Solar System asteroids. Apparently, the authors did not seek
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: expert opinion and posted the discovery manuscript before it had
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: been peer reviewed and accepted or even submitted to a
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: science journal.
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: En quote, I am getting I'm getting heart palpitations. As
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: a fellow scientist, I cannot handle this. This is very
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: My empathy is through the roof right now. But if
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: they should have done due diligence.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: I know, being publicly called out like this, not just like, hey,
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: look we disagree, we took another look at the evidence.
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: We think maybe you were wrong. Have you considered, But
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: this is really calling them out for sloppy science, for
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: not considering reasonable alternatives, and basically for looking to confirm
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: the story they were hoping to find. It's really pretty damning.
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: Well let's dig in, Okay, So tell me about more
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: about those. Should we start with the spherals or should
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: we talk about the you know, how good were the
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: trajectories suggesting it was interstellar?
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's start with whether or not this thing even
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: was interstellar, which is sort of the reason this whole
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: thing got started, right, Like, the US Space Command issued
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: this statement that it was an interstellar trajectory. That sounds
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: pretty solid, right Yeah, But you know, then NASA chimed
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: in and said the short duration of collected data less
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: than five seconds, makes it difficult to definitively determine if
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: the object's origin was indeed interstellar. What this comes down
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: to is the precision of the measurements of this thing,
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: Like how well do we know how fast it was
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: going and the direction of its motion?
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: Wow? So what that doesn't sound good? So how often,
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: like when you only have about five seconds worth of data, like,
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: how much error do you have in that?
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: That's exactly the question to ask. And so in this case,
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: whether or not it was interstellar comes down to its velocity. Like,
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: anything at our radius that's going about faster than forty
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: two or forty three kilometers per second has escaped velocity
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: and is not bound to the Sun. So if this
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: thing was moving faster than forty two kilometers per second
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: relative to the Sun, it's not bound to the Sun
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: and it was interstellar. So that's the question. Now, they
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: measure the velocity of this thing to have like sixty
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: one kilometers per second relative to the Sun, which is
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: like almost twenty kilometers per second above the threshold. So
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: it seems pretty safely interstellar. But then the question is, well,
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: what are the uncertainties. If it's sixty kilometers per second
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: plus or minus one or two, yeah it's interstellar. If
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: it's sixty kilometers per second plus or minus sixty kilometers
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: per second, then you really don't know very much, right, Yeah,
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: so low, But his paper claims that based on US
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: space command, we can be ninety nine point ninety nine
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: percent certain this thing is interstellar. But in Desh's paper
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: they reveal the source of this, and it's basically just
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: an assumption. They assume that the uncertainties are like ten percent,
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: that this thing is like, you know, sixty kilometers plus
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: or minus six kilometers.
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: Oh that's not good.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's basically just an assumption. And there are
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: other people who have studied the accuracy of these measurements
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: from US Space Command. Sometimes you get like two different
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: measurements of the same rock as, so you can say, oh, well,
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: let's see how accurate it is. And it turns out
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: that this data from the intelligence satellites, maybe because they're
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: not precise, maybe because it's fudged, maybe because it's purposely
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: smudged because it's intelligence data, shows really large variations. So
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: the uncertainty could easily be much more than ten kilometers
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: per second.
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: So there's there's pretty good reason to believe that the
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: error is so big that it would include objects that
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: are not of interstellar origin exactly.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: So even if this thing is measured to be sixty
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: kilometers per second with an uncertainty of ten or fifteen,
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: that seems to still keep it above the forty two
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: kilometer threshold. But remember how the statistics here like it
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: gives it like a one in one thousand chance of
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: being mismeasured. And you might think, oh, that's still pretty good,
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: Like it's got a one in one thousand chance of
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: being mismeasured and a nine hundred and ninety nine out
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: of a thousand chance of being accurately measured to be interstellar.
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: But remember that there are lots and lots of these rocks,
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: and so if you look at thousands or millions of rocks,
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: you're going to see one in a thousand events every
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: once in a while. It's like if you roll the
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: dice a thousand times, you're going to see really rare
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: stuff eventually.
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: And we have essentially been rolling the dice thousands of times,
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: right exactly.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: There are thousands of things in this database, and so
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: if you look through the whole database, you'll see really
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: rare looking events just because you've looked lots and lots
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: of times. And so the evidence that this thing is
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: interstellar is actually pretty weak. It might just be a
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: very mismeasured solar system asteroid, and you expect a mismeasured
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: solar system asteroid to it looked like an interstellar object
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: one in a thousand times.
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: About okay, so it might not have been traveling from
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: an interstellar location. That's problem one. Let's move on to
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: critique two. Where are we going next?
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: So next, Dish points out that this thing probably would
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: not have survived reentry. The idea that enough of it
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: survived to like land in the ocean and cause these
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: spherals seems really unlikely. This thing was coming into like
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: one hundred and forty times the speed of sound, and
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: at that speed, like the front of it gets melted
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: and heated and vaporized and the whole thing would have
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: come apart. So Desh did a calculation that showed that
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: ninety nine point nine nine nine nine nine percent of
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: it would have been vaporized. So basically, like almost all
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: this thing is gone. It's just like in little individual
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: particles by time it reaches the ocean surface.
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: And then it's going to slowly sync to the bottom,
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: and your chance of finding it, if anything survived, would
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: have been pretty low. But yeah, basically, and we probably
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: have pretty good data on this right because we've probably
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: observed a lot of stuff that hits our atmosphere and
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: burns up in the atmosphere.
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: Absolutely people know how this works. And DSH actually went
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: back to Lobe's paper and checked their calculations, and they
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: found a mistake, like they cannot confirm the number that
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: load calculates for like how this thing would have melted
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: in the atmosphere. So they suspect that they just like
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: plugged in the wrong number and that's why they misunderstood exactly.
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: So so far, it looks like this thing was probably
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: not interstellar, and even if it was, probably would not
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: have left any remnants when it hit the atmosphere. It's
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: just too small for anything to survive all the way
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: through the atmosphere.
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: Okay, all right, But so let's say it was interstellar
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: and something did survive, how likely are we to have
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: been able to find it and then know that it
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: was interstellar once we got it.
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this is basically or question when you first heard this, right, like,
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: how would you even find this thing? It's a needle
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: in a haystack. So yeah, assume it's interstellar and that
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: some of it survives, and then you get enough iron
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: that it hits the surface of the ocean that sinks
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: down that you could potentially find it, that it's even
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: there for you to find it. Another big problem is, hey,
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: the ocean is really big. It turns out and find
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: finding like basically Bebe's on the bottom of the ocean.
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: You need to really know where you're looking. And there's
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: a lot of uncertainty about this thing. We got like
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: five seconds of data about its trajectory, and if you
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: extrapolate that to the surface of the ocean, there's a
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: pretty wide range where this thing could be. And now
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: you're going to like drag your tiny little magnetic sled
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: over this thing. You know, what are the chances you're
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: even dragging it in the right place?
• 38:50
  Speaker 4: Well?
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: And can we take one more step back? And I'm
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: sorry if you said this, and my brain was just
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: discombobulated at the time. How do we know for sure
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: that it's gonna be that it would be iron, and
• 39:03
  Speaker 3: that this magnet is what we should be using to
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: collect it. How can we be sure that this intertellar
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: thing is iron?
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: We can't. But there's a lot of iron out there
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: and a lot of heavy metals, and iron is a
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: pretty common thing because it's like the end point of
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: nuclear fusion, making things heavier than iron is hard, and
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: so iron is pretty widely distributed in rocks in the
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: solar system and maybe in rocks in other solar systems.
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: But it's a great question, like maybe our solar system
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: is weird, and once we get samples from other solar systems,
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: we'll discover, Wow, iron isn't as common as we thought.
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: So yeah, this is a big assumption that rocks from
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: other solar systems will have enough iron to make little
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: metal balls we can pick up with our magnets.
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: Okay, all right, So let's assume it is iron for sure,
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: and that the magnet method is gonna work. The ocean
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: is big and deep, and so what like range of
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: like locations where it would have fallen, like how good
• 40:03
  Speaker 3: was there certainty? And where it would have potentially fallen.
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: So the location data we have, if you believe it,
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: gives a box that's like twenty kilometers by twenty kilometers
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: or where this thing might have landed, and like that's huge, Right,
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: You're not going to drag your magnetic sled to cover
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: an entire square twenty kilometers by twenty kilometers. So lob
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: in them did is use a little bit more data.
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: There's a seismometer on an island about ninety kilometers away
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: that also measured like a blip around the same moment,
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: And so they use that information to try to narrow
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: it down a little bit, and they find like a
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: little band through this box that they think maybe is
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: where this thing landed. So they have like a slightly
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: narrower region, and they drag their sled basically through this
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: band and then a couple other spots to get control measurements.
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: Did that blip on the seismometer. Does that increase our
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: confidence that maybe something did make it to the ocean
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: bottom or did survive re entry.
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: The seismometer is actually most likely measuring the detonation in
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: the atmosphere, right, because this thing, as it comes through
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: the atmosphere, it's going to explode as like pockets of
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: gas or whatever inside of it heat up unevenly. So
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: probably this is measuring the explosions in the atmosphere. But
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: as deshan All point out number one, all these measurements
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: are very uncertain, like the seismometer itself is very uncertain
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: if you take a look at the data, like there
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: are a lot of blips nearby that could have been anything,
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: so lob in them assigning this blip from the seismometer
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: to this particular bit of rock is very very speculative,
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: you know. Basically, they were just looking for a way
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: to slice the region down and hope they find something.
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: There's not really strong evidence that this is the region.
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: The most damning thing that Desh points out is that
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: according to Space Command, there's two possible locations. There's the
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: box that lobe serch, and then there's another location that
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: could have been where it hit like sixty kilometers away.
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: So it could be they were looking in completely the
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: wrong place.
• 42:03
  Speaker 3: Oh man, okay, all right, So might not have been interstellar,
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: probably wouldn't have survived reentry. If it did survive re entry,
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: where we're not super sure where it landed, and only
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: one of two possible spots was searched, and maybe not
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: even all of the possible of one of the two spots.
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: Let's take a break to build suspense and then and
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: then let's talk about the spheres that they did find
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: and how they tried to argue that. How good was
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: the evidence that those were not from here?
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: All Right?
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: I feel like my blood pressure is going up as
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: I'm watching someone else's arguments get dismantled. It's a weirdly
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: personal it's a weird experience.
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: But okay, so I know, I know, you don't want
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: anybody out there in science to like be publicly dismantled.
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: It's terrible, it's embarrassing. If people are making good faith
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: efforts to do their science, we should treat it with
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: respect and we should take it seriously. The question here
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: is like whether Lob and A really are making a
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: good faith analysis of this data or whether Lobe is
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: just promoting his book.
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: Well, And also, at the end of the day, sometimes
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: people are going to be made uncomfortable because science needs
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: to be picked apart for the process to work. And
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: so so here we go. Okay, so tell me more
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: about those speruals and how certain we are that they
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: were interstellar, right.
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: Because even if you don't believe this thing was interstellar
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: and might have not a survived reentry and you don't
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: know where to look, they did drag something across the seafloor,
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: and if they found something weird that we can't explain,
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: those other arguments don't really matter, right, Like they found
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: something cool, maybe it was a different interstill in media
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: or whatever. So let's think about what they actually found.
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: So they did find a bunch of these ferules, and
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: they did compare the number that they found on their drags,
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: so numbers in other areas. They're like, you know, boat
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: it over to other regions and drive the sled across
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: a couple other spots to try to understand what was typical,
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: what was common? How many ferals do you expect to
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: find on the ocean floor. And according to their analysis,
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: they found more in this region where they were looking
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: for this interstellar meteor than in the other spots.
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: But there's not only one reason for why one area
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: could have more spherals than others, right.
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: Exactly exactly, And so when you readsh this paper, you realize, boy,
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: it'd be helpful to understand this field at all before
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: you dive into it, because it turns out number one,
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: the ocean floor is littered with these things, like the
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: Earth is getting slammed by meteors all the time, where
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: little bits of it are making to the ocean surface
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: and then sinking to the ocean floor. Like you drag
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: a magnetic sled across anywhere in the ocean, and you're
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: gonna find these fuerals and then they're going to vary. Apparently,
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: the variation in the number of ferials you find depends
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: on lot of stuff, the currents, the shape of the
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: ocean floor, all sorts of stuff affects the variation. And
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: the number of sphereals is just huge. There's millions of
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: these little balls of iron per square kilometer, and so
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: even if this thing did happen to land here, this
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: metior would contribute like much less than one percent of
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: all the little spheres you find on the ocean floor.
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: Even if it was there, it'd be very hard to
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: find spheres from this particular meteor among the like millions
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: of spheres you expect to find on the ocean floor.
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: And Lobe's team only found like seven hundred, So you
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: would expect like a very small number to be from
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: this medior even if it did hit in this region.
• 45:41
  Speaker 3: Okay, all right, and so that but the seven hundred
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: that they found, and.
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: One more comment on the number, even the seven hundred
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: they found, Lobanoll claim is like, ooh, we found extra
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: in the region we were searching compared to the control regions.
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: They didn't take enough data in the control regions to
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: really measure how much should be in the control regions.
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: So the variation the claim like oh we found more
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: here than elsewhere, is not even statistically significant. But all right,
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: maybe they were lucky and maybe they found something really exciting.
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: So what they did is they measured what's in these spherules,
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: like how much iron is there and which iron isotopes,
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: and then also what are the weird elements that are
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: in it. So first the iron isotopes, they measure iron
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: in all these different isotopes. There's iron fifty four, iron
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: fifty six, iron fifty seven, and the ratio of these
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: isotopes tells you something about wars formed and what's happened
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: to it since, and.
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: Was it weird?
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: So low in them look at the ratios and they
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: see something a little weird. That's true. Earth isotopes tend
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: to have a particular ratio of fifty seven to fifty
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: four and fifty six to fifty four, and a lot
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: of these little iron balls that they found had like
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: more or less of one of these two iron isotopes.
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: The problem is that this can be very easily explained
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: by chemistry, like a m out where you take an
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: iron sphereal from the Earth and you do some chemical
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: process like interaction in the atmosphere or interaction with seawater.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: Even then it tends to lose the lighter isotopes faster
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: because the interaction depends on the mass, and things that
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: are lower mass will move around more and interact more.
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: So this changes like these ratios in a very predictable way.
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: And all of the iron balls that they found on
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: the seafloor lie exactly across the line you would expect
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: stuff to happen if it came from our solar system
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: and then interacted with seawater. This is like exactly what
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: you would expect for a solar system iron balls.
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: And they'd been sitting down there for a decade or something, right,
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: so there's plenty of time. If this is from the
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: right asteroid that they were trying to find, it would
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: have been down there for a decade.
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: Reacting yeah, exactly. And so Lobes team seem to claim, oh, look,
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: these are different from the nominal ratio we expect, but
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: they doesn't seem to understand like the seawater chemistry will
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: give you exactly this kind of variation. Did they took
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: us like a real dagger in the heart of their claims.
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: It proves that these are Solar system iron balls because
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: they lie exactly on this line. If things came from
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: another Solar system, you might expect them to have a
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: very different elemental composition. If it came from a star
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: from like five billion years ago, maybe there was less
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: iron form because it was earlier in the universe, and
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: just like less metal had been made, and so you
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: might expect like really weird elemental compositions. But what they
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: found is like pretty normal, the kind of stuff you
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: find on the sea floor all the time. They just
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: didn't seem to understand the context.
• 48:38
  Speaker 3: Ouch uh, so have we is the massacre done? Or
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: is there is there more?
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: There is a tiny little bit more. They claim that
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: the composition of the other elements like beryllium, lanthanum, and
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: uranium is very unusual. But it turns out also that
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: this beryllum can be explained with just interaction with the seawater.
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: And you would never even get this much beryllium from
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: interstellar travel, Like even interstellar travel would not create this
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: much beryllium, But you can do it just by sitting
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: on the seafloor and interacting with seawater. We'll do this.
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: If they've done a more systematic scan of the ocean floor,
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: they would have found lots more examples of this stuff,
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: not just where they thought the interstellar media hit, but
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: elsewhere in other places. These things are not that unusual.
• 49:27
  Speaker 3: So you know, there's always a part of me that
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: holds out a little bit of hope for the scientist
• 49:32
  Speaker 3: who's getting kind of destroyed in an argument like this.
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: Have they has Loben his collaborator responded to these arguments
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: to provide some counterpoints or is this pretty much the
• 49:46
  Speaker 3: final word?
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: It's hard to imagine them responding in a way that
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: their claim survives. So far, we haven't heard anything from them.
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: But before this paper came out, Lobe complained that nobody
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: is taking his sign seriously. That is like dismissed by
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: the mainstream science community. And this is evidence that like
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: academia's closed minded and science is dogmatic. And you know,
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: it's the kind of thing people tend to say when
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: their work isn't taken seriously, that there's some other reason
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: other than like, well, maybe your work is not that serious.
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: And so Lobe, because he's a Harvard astrophysicist, you know,
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: he has a lot of credibility with the media, and
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: so he complains that nobody took him seriously. And then
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: he said, quote, if someone comes to me and says,
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: for these scientific reasons, I have a scenario that makes
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: much more sense than yours, then I'd rip up that
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: paper and accept it. That's a direct quote from Lobe.
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: So now it stands to see like somebody has come
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: forward with scientific reasons, with a much more plausible scenario
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: that fits the data much better. Let's see if Lobe
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: concedes or if he comes back where the scientific Rebuttalance says, actually,
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: here's another way to analyze the data.
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: How long has it been since the counter paper came out?
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: So Deshen Jackson's paper came out November thirteenth, so it's
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: in about a month since this recording. So everybody's waiting
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: to see what Lobe is going to come back with.
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: But I thought it was important that we discussed this
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: today in the podcast, because you know, we're teaching everybody
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: to think like a physicist, to be skeptical but also excited,
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: and you have to balance those things. You have to remember,
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: like we want to be open to crazy, new surprising
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: discoveries and learn things about the universe, but we also
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: have to be very careful in our methods, and we
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: have to make sure that what we're doing is reasonable,
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: so that we're building knowledge and not just spinning fantasies.
• 51:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely. And it's so easy to get super excited
• 51:34
  Speaker 3: about a results that you know would be a real
• 51:38
  Speaker 3: game changer. But those are the times when you really
• 51:41
  Speaker 3: need to think, Okay, how what do I need to know?
• 51:44
  Speaker 3: You want to try to prove yourself wrong in as
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: many ways as possible, and it doesn't feel like that
• 51:51
  Speaker 3: due diligence was done here.
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Before I publish any paper, I'm always attacking it myself.
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: I'm always asking what could we have done wrong? Or
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: how could we have been confused? Used, et cetera, et cetera,
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: Because it'd be terrible to publish something and be like, oops, sorry,
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: we misled everybody, even if it was in good faith.
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: And so while it seems clear here that the science
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: is not solid, we can't actually say it wasn't in
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: good faith. But it certainly doesn't feel like a good
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: faith science argument.
• 52:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, agreed. Whenever Zach and I are talking to someone
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: about their new results, our go to question is what
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: is the least interesting explanation for your results, because often
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: it's problem, it's probably the answer, And it seems like
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: here the least interesting explanation wasn't considered thoroughly enough exactly.
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: And I'm like the biggest cheerleader for this kind of stuff,
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: Like I would love to meet aliens, and I would
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: love for it to be evidence that aliens have visited Earth,
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: or even that rocks from other solar systems have landed
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: on Earth and we could study them. I so much
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: want to believe that, but that makes me also need
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: to be skeptical, because again, we want to uncover the truth,
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: not just tell ourselves stories.
• 52:58
  Speaker 3: Right, And you want to know when you're emotionally invested
• 53:00
  Speaker 3: in an answer, so that you can try to particularly
• 53:03
  Speaker 3: keep your eye on those sorts of questions.
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: Or financially invested because you're selling a book about how
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: you discovered alien technology. That's right, all right, Well, thank
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: you very much everybody for listening to today's episode, and
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: thank you for Kelly for taking his ride with me
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: where we take a careful and critical look at some
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: astounding claims in science.
• 53:26
  Speaker 3: Thank you for letting me ride shotgun on this uncomfortable journey.
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: So far, our children are safe and your children are safe,
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: and no aliens have arrived for us to negotiate away
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: with their lives. But stay tuned.
• 53:38
  Speaker 3: If those aliens come, I am hiding my kids from you,
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: all right.
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, everybody, See you next time. For more
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: science and curiosity, come find us on social media where
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: we answer questions and post videos. We're on Twitter, Disport,
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: Instant and now TikTok. Thanks for listening, and remember that
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio.
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.