Skeptics Guide #924

The Skeptics Guide To The Universe

The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe Skepticast #924 March 23rd 2023 Segment #1. What’s The Word Pleonasm Segment #2. News Items News Item #1 – Rolls-Royce Nuclear Engine https://gizmodo.com/rolls-royce-nuclear-reactor-engine-space-travel-1850071767 News Item #2 – Tik Tok and Misinformation https://www.popsci.com/technology/tiktok-guideline-updates-ai-climate/ News Item #3 – 3D Printed Rocket https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/3d-printed-rocket-launches/ News Item #4 – Beethoven’s Hair https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2023/03/22/beethoven-genome-hair/ News Item #5 – Uranus Moons with Subsurface Oceans https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.space.com%2Furanus-moons-ariel-miranda-active-subsurface-oceans Segment #3. Quick Follow Up Oumuamua Comet Hypothesis https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05687-w Segment #4. Who’s That Noisy Segment #5. Science or Fiction Each week our host will come up with three science news items or facts, two genuine, one fictitious. He will challenge our panel of skeptics to sniff out the fake – and you can play along. Theme: Random Facts #1) The shortest regular commercial flight lasts just 53 seconds. #2) Researchers discovered a 1,500 year old human coprolite (fossilized feces) that contained a whole rattlesnake. #3) The Morse code signal “SOS” does not stand for “save our ship”, but originally was meant to stand for “SalvO aSinus” which is latin for “save our ass”. Segment #6. Skeptical Quote of the Week "Whenever we propose a solution to a problem, we ought to try as hard as we can to overthrow our solution, rather than defend it." Karl Popper, Logic of Scientific Discovery, Preface to First English Edition (1959)