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[Steven Novella]

Special Guest: Brian Dunning
News Items: Enceladus Update, Synthetic Organisms, Spray On Glass, Gasoline from Carbon, Oral Conception
Who's That Noisy
Name That Logical Fallacy: False Analogy
Science or Fiction

[Chew]

deleted.

[seaotter]

Sorry interesting reasonable doubts lecture on sex. Hold on a sec.

[Reitstoen]

WTN: Sounds like lasts weeks WTN sped up. I bet the audiophiles will confirm or deny that pretty quick

[seaotter]

Parthenogenesis?

[seaotter]

Totally know the wtn but I don't want to get the evil eye treatment from the board so I'll sit out this week.

[seaotter]

There is a poll for that.

http://sguforums.com/index.php/topic,14715.0.html

[werecow]

WTN: Sounds like lasts weeks WTN sped up. I bet the audiophiles will confirm or deny that pretty quick

Yeah, they sound pretty similar, but my audio editing software is a bit crappy so comparing them directly is a bit tricky.

EDIT: well, if it's the same thing slowed down, it's certainly not the same sample; the new one is longer than the old one, and they don't look very similar.

[Trinoc]

WTN: Molten lead shot falling into water from a tower?

(I think that's how it's made ... the drops form near perfect spheres as they fall.)

Edit: Didn't think so. I think azinyk has got it (see next post).

About gasoline from CO₂ ... If it was feasible it wouldn't be a completely stupid idea, even if it took more energy to make than it released. You could manufacture it right next door to a nuclear, solar, wave, hydro power plant or whatever, so no grid distribution costs. It could then work in existing vehicles, unlike hydrogen or battery power which requires a complete car redesign, not to mention a whole new distribution network for re-fuelling.

I'm doubtful, though, about extracting CO₂ from the air. At about 400 parts per million you have to process a hell of a lot of air to get not much carbon. Processing flue gases from coal fired power stations would be more feasible, but it would only be getting a second slug of energy from the same carbon. The carbon from the coal would still end up in the air, so as soon as we stopped burning coal the gasoline supply would also run out.

Anyway, we already have things that extract CO₂ from the air and make fuel. They are called trees.

[azinyk]

WTN guess: Aurora Borealis (or possibly Aurora Australis).

Listening to Northern Lights	DQ

  at 6m32s.

 - Ashley Zinyk

[Reitstoen]

WTN guess: Aurora Borealis (or possibly Aurora Australis).
 - Ashley Zinyk

Sounds very similar indeed. So i think you are correct
My first guess was that this was something astronomical, and in fact an aurora borealis/australis, but i couldn't find any sounds of it. Think i need to improve my google-skills

[savocado]

I really liked the idea of inviting Brian to be a guest on the podcast, he's great skeptic and a very entertaining person. I hope his new project will be successful. I liked his 'Here Be Drangons' movie, directed towards a more mainstream audience, that needs to be educated.

I don't know why, but I did a search for 'Cherry 2000', when it was mentioned and what I found, made mi snigger.

[azinyk]

WTN update: more specifically, an "Auroral Chorus" recorded using very low-frequency radio.  I don't think you can hear sounds like that just with your ears.

http://www-pw.physics.uiowa.edu/mcgreevy/
http://www-pw.physics.uiowa.edu/cgi-bin/unzip-wav?mcgreevy/chorus.zip?alb_chor.wav

[Zeno Izen]

Point of culture:  Kids aren't saying "shout outs" anymore.  These days it's "big ups."

[werecow]

Hooray for using the photosynthesizing seaslug, Steve! I love that critter.
Here's the PNAS article, btw. I guess it was a bit out of date; it's actually from mid 2008, though it only reached the popular press fairly recently. Still, very cool case.



I'm a bit surprised that the ID-ists haven't jumped all over it, though. This would've been pretty easy for them to twist around.


The Aurora sound is really cool btw. I'd heard about that, but I never heard the actual sound before.