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The Skeptics' Guide To The Universe - Podcast 268 - 9/1/2010
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The Skeptics' Guide To The Universe
The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by SGU Productions, LLC - dedicated to promoting critical thinking, reason, and the public understanding of science through online and other media. The first episode of the SGU podcast went online on May 4th, 2005. It soon became a popular science/skeptical podcast, and remains one of the most popular science podcasts on iTunes.
SGU Podcasting Awards: SGU on XM: You can listen to the SGU on America's Talk XM 166 every Saturday night from 8-9pm Eastern.
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Podcast
268
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September 01, 2010
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Interview with Donald Prothero
News Items: Thorium Power, Impacts and Extinction, Spontaneous Combustion, Enfield Poltergeist, Ghost Train
Who's That Noisy
Your Questions and E-mails: Mitochondrial Eve Follow Up
Science or Fiction
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Segment: News Items
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Segment: Who's That Noisy
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Who's That Noisy
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Answer to last week: Embolisms occurring in plant vasculature
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Segment: Questions and E-mails
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Question #1 - Mitochondrial Eve Follow Up
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I want to offer a quick correction about mitochondrial eve as described in episode 266 of the skeptic's guide. Steve described mitochondrial Eve as our most recent female common ancestor. This is not necessarily, and almost certainly isn't, true. Mitochondrial Eve is our most recent female common ancestor along the all-female line, but we could have more recent female common ancestors along other lines. The mother of our most recent male common ancestor, who, because of certain advantages men have over women in creating large numbers of progeny, almost certainly existed much more recently than mitochondrial Eve would be one such more recent female common ancestor. In fact, of all the lines of ancestry we could follow back, the all female line is likely to be among the very longest that we would have to follow to get to a common ancestor. I don't know how likely it is that mitochondrial Eve lived during an evolutionary bottleneck, but it's not clear to me that that should be the case.
I know you love these corrections, you can blame my intro to human evolution teacher for this one.
Chris Zerhusen
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Segment: Interview
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Interview with Donald Prothero
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Donald Prothero teaches Physical and Historical Geology, Sedimentary Geology, and Paleontology. His specialties are mammalian paleontology and magnetic stratigraphy of the Cenozoic. His current research focuses on the dating of the climatic changes that occurred between 30 and 40 million years ago, using the technique of magnetic stratigraphy.
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Segment: Science or Fiction [ Click Here to Show the Answers ]
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Segment: Quote of the Week
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Quote of the Week
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"You can learn more from failure than success. In failure you're forced to find out what part did not work. But in success you can believe everything you did was great, when in fact some parts may not have worked at all. Failure forces you to face reality."
- Fred Brooks
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