Episode #1023
News Items
- Demographics of Misinformation
- The Toll of Fake Research
- Dangerous Street Drugs
- Nearby Habitable Exoplanet
- Reverse Engineering Alien Technology
Science Quiz
Evan asks his fellow rogues science questions.
Questions and Emails
One of the items in last week’s Science or Fiction was space junk. Just before I heard that, I read that 4-5 Starlink satellites de-orbit *every day*. That’s nuts. I hope they are de-orbited purposefully. https://spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=07&month=02&year=2025 Bill Wohler Menlo Park, CA SETI Institute/NASA Ames Research Center Software engineer for Kepler, SOFIA, TESS, Ziggy.
Science or Fiction
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Item #1
Science
Biologists have engineered a bacteria that can continuously deliver drugs into the intestine and demonstrated its effectiveness in treating chronic inflammation and obesity. https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1073480
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Item #2
Science
In a recent study adults were able to learn absolute pitch after 8 weeks of training to a >90% accuracy. https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13423-024-02620-2
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Item #3
Fiction
Astronomers announce the detection of a super high energy “cosmogenic” neutrino that is the most energetic elementary particle ever detected at 120 PeV.https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00444-1
Skeptical Quote of the Week.
“One of the problems with anecdotes is that they tend to be provided by the satisfied customers, not the unsatisfied or dead ones.” ― Robert Carroll, Unnatural Acts: Critical Thinking, Skepticism, and Science Exposed!