Sept. 6, 2021

Possible Detection of a New Type of Gravitational Wave

The Astronomy, Technology, and Space Science News Podcast.
SpaceTime Series 24 Episode 100
*Possible detection of a new type of gravitational wave
Scientists using a ground-breaking new high frequency gravitational wave detector have made two possible...

The Astronomy, Technology, and Space Science News Podcast.
SpaceTime Series 24 Episode 100
*Possible detection of a new type of gravitational wave
Scientists using a ground-breaking new high frequency gravitational wave detector have made two possible detections which are sparking a lot of excitement.
*A break discovered in one of the Milky Way’s spiral arms
Astronomers have discovered what appears to be a break in one of the Milky Way galaxy’s majestic spiral arms.
*The fastest asteroid ever seen
Astronomers have discovered the fastest asteroid ever seen. The kilometre wide space rock named 2021 PH27 – takes just 113 days to complete each orbit of the Sun.
*Martian snow is dusty
A new study has confirmed that Martian snow is very dusty. The findings reported in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets looked at the grain size of the dust in the red planet’s snow cover.
*The Science Report
Scientists have reported a potential new COVID-19 variant.
A new study claims people can change their sexual orientation after finding it’s really on a spectrum.
Two new species of dinosaurs discovered in the Appalachian mountains.
People are swearing less now than what they used to back in the 1990s.
Skeptic's guide to the Dunning–Kruger effect
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The Astronomy, Space, Technology & Science News Podcast.

Transcript

SpaceTime S24E100 AI Transcript

[00:00:00] Stuart: This is spacetime series 24 episode 104 broadcast from the 6th of September, 2021. Coming up on space time, the possible detection of a new type of gravitational wave, a break discovering one of the Milky ways, majestic spiral, arms, and the fastest asteroid ever seen all that and more coming up. Um, space time.

[00:00:27] VO Guy: Welcome to space time with Stuart Gary

[00:00:46] Stuart: Scientists using a ground-breaking new, higher frequency gravitational wave detector have made two possible detections, which is sparking a lot of excitement. Researchers are yet to determined exactly what it is. They've detected the two events, which have never been seen before were spotted during the devices.

[00:01:04] Stuart: First 153 days of operation. The study's authors say the detections could be signs of high-frequency gravitational waves generated by primordial black holes or possibly even a cloud of dark matter particles. Gravitational waves were first predicted by Albert Einstein who theorized that the movement of astronomical objects could cause waves in space, time, curvature sending ripples through the universe.

[00:01:31] Stuart: Almost like the waves caused by stones dropped in a flat Palm. Like so much of his work Einstein's prediction was proven, correct. In 2015, when a gravitational wave signal was the ticket for the first time by LIGO the laser interferometer gravitational wave observatory. Now, these were, what's known as low frequency gravitational waves, which are caused by things like merging neutron stars and black holes.

[00:01:58] Stuart: LIGO comprises two identic facilities located at Livingston, Louisiana and Hanford Washington. Each LIGO observatory fires lasers into a beam splitter, which then shoots the beams along to perpendicular four kilometer long tubes equipped with mirrored test masses at each end. The reflected laser light is then sent back to the detector where eventually they should theoretically recombine.

[00:02:24] Stuart: However, as a gravitational wave generator, buy something like a moving Massell, merging black holes through the cosmos. It causes the very fabric of space, time to stretch and compressive so slightly by just a fraction of the diameter of a proton local space time, including the two beamlines and the test masses are stretched and compressed ever so slightly leaving them out of phase the signature of a gravitational wave.

[00:02:53] Stuart: Using marble gravitational wave detectors allows scientists that determined the direction of the wave source. A third detector called Virgo, which is located near Peter in Northern Italy as further improved detection while a fourth observatory Japan's Cammie Oka gravitational wave detector is the first to be built underground.

[00:03:13] Stuart: However, there are a number of hypotheses, which suggest that primordial black holes and possibly even dark matter might also generate gravitational waves, but at higher frequencies, and this would require a different type of gravitational wave detection. The new detector developed by the Australian research council center of excellence for dark matter particle physics and the university of Western Australia uses an experimental quartz, crystal Bach, acoustic wave resonating.

[00:03:42] Stuart: The detective said it's around a quartz crystal disc, which vibrates at high frequencies, judo, acoustic waves, traveling through the device and these waves induced electric charge across the court's desk, which are detected through conducting plates on the discs out outer surfaces, the resonators connected to a superconducting quantum interference device, which acts as an extremely sensitive amplifier for the low voltage signal from the bulk acoustic wave resonance.

[00:04:09] Stuart: The assembly was then placed the moddable radiation shields, protect it from stray electromagnetic fields and cooled to a low temperature to allow low energy acoustic vibrations from the courts were still to be detected as lodge voltages using the amplifier. The two newly discovered signals, whatever they are, if not being reported in the American physical society's journal APS, physi.

[00:04:31] Stuart: One of the study's authors professor Michael turbo from the university of Western Australia and the AARC center for excellence in dark matter, particle physics. This is the team and are working to determine the actual nature of the signal, potentially confirming the detection of high-frequency gravitational way.

[00:04:47] Stuart: Dave's of course, gravitational waves. It just one possible candidate disabilities include the presence of charged particles or mechanical stress build up a meteor event, or even an internal atomic process. Still turbo says it's exciting because this event has shown that the new detector is sensitive and giving results, but of course now scientists needed to determine exactly what it is.

[00:05:10] Stuart: Those results mean. This equipment is one of only two, currently active in the world, searching for high frequency, gravitational waves and turbine, and colleagues have plans to extend the research, looking for even higher frequencies where no other experiments have looked before. It is the next generation of experiment involves cloning, the existing detector, and also immune detector sensitive to cosmic particles.

[00:05:35] Stuart: And if the two detectives find the presence of gravitational waves, that would be exciting

[00:05:40] Guest: happens. This is more akin to what's known as a resonant detective resonant, a free mass protector. So what happens is that the it's more like a mass spring system. And if that mass spring system is also lighting just due to ambient noise, like thermodynamics around it, just the KT, you have energy.

[00:05:59] Guest: If there's an extra amenity comes in. The resonator will start automating at a bigger app. And respond to that kick

[00:06:07] Stuart: and your job is to work out what's causing the kick. Yeah.

[00:06:10] Guest: Cause we built this system very isolated from anything that's got shielding from the environment and you generally, we just see the motion due to the random temporary.

[00:06:22] Guest: Yeah, and we just monitor that random temperature then out of the 153 days, we saw two clear kicks that were the critical God in the crystal. There's different modes of vibration, just like in a structure, like a bridge or something. We'll have different modes of vibration at different frequencies. And when we're monitoring different frequencies, we noticed.

[00:06:42] Guest: These kicks suddenly occur close to five megahertz. So we're monitoring one buyer to five megahertz and another one, I think it was eight or nine megahertz. I can't remember exactly. And that one never saw this kick means that the energy of the gravity wise is determined by its frequency. If they were gravity wise or the energy of the process where the texting.

[00:07:02] Guest: Equivalent to five megahertz and frequency energies is usually given by maybe frequency, whatever the energy of the, or whatever the frequency of the gravity wave is. We detect it around five megahertz, but we didn't see it in the other modes that were not at five megahertz. So there's some process. It's giving the crystal a cake, sort of like an impulse kick around the five megahertz

[00:07:27] Stuart: in frequency, things like quantum fluctuations, you know, the Casimir effect.

[00:07:31] Guest: Well, the chasm manifests more of a, uh, that's more like a random fluctuation, like temperature, so that wouldn't get, so this has to be some sort of process signal that's coming in externally and kicking. So either it could be like relaxation in the crystal, but it's around, but I don't know why that would be around five megahertz or it could be an external excitation.

[00:07:51] Guest: Like gravity wave or a cosmic rye or something like that, giving it a kick with the funding we had, we just built one system and then we just get it running. We kept it running and then. Daughter. And it was a surprise to see these two events. And so now we have to determine what these events are back in 2014 Maxime, who was first author on the paper.

[00:08:12] Guest: And I worked out that these things would be sensitive to high-frequency gravity waves and we published a proposal. Then we got some funding from the IFC to test some fundamental physics without technology. And part of that grant was. So for these high frequency gravity waves. So with the money we had, we built a system we cooled to very low temperatures and read out with what's known as a superconducting quantum interference device or a squid, which is a quantum limited amplify.

[00:08:37] Guest: And, um, then we, we measure, we can measure the thermal noise. We're able to measure the temperature of the surroundings by looking at how the motor excited. And we were able to calibrate the texter if it was, if the gravity wave. And then we teamed up with my ex. Professor in Glasgow. See, I'm hanging too, to see how we could.

[00:08:58] Guest: Cause he's an aid works on Lego on the data analysis. He came from our lab. And so we, we, we used to work together on this bigger restaurant bar and I gotta be in bothered with here in the lab. This was at UWA. Back in the eighties and nineties, and it was a big red barn and a half time resonant bar and myself, Eugene.

[00:09:16] Guest: Who's also a coauthor on the paper where one of the main researchers, I did my PhD on that. And we looked at this big one and a half hadn't IBM box grabbed the wives about 700 a hook. And then I was realizing there's been Maxine time to work with us from France, these PhD in France. And where were you?

[00:09:33] Guest: Because I was interested in his high to court's technology and he brought that technology. And we started using to a range of test the fundamentals. Including a lot of different tests, not this gravity wise, quantum gravity and the ranching, Baron revenues based devices. It occurred to me that these devices could also be sensitive to gravity wise because I saw some papers who were trapping fears with optics and looking at the resonant frequency of Cyrus trap is to look for gravity wise and occurred to me that they had good properties.

[00:10:03] Guest: And we could look at five minutes. Then back the same and I can, um, went and calculated the sensitivity and published a proposal paper in 2014, that was before LIGO detected anything. And then we set about building without funding and resources. We finally built it and got a student who was, will Campbell working on it.

[00:10:22] Guest: And we got it running. We got the data and he looked at the data and found these events, and then we confirmed them with Yom hangs through how to look at our data and confirm that there was, there was some smallest, smaller events with lower signal to noise ratio, but we couldn't with any competence say they were events, but there was definitely two events we could say with competence, our events, and two to some external source of excitement.

[00:10:47] Guest: Now we built the detector to detect gravity waves. So that's one possibility because we know it's sensitive, but to do proper, to determine whether they are, we have to build more than one and do cross correlation. And make sure that they occur at the same time. We've got these events occurring at the same time in two different modes and five gigahertz.

[00:11:05] Guest: So whatever the process is, we know that they occur in around five megahertz and they have a certain like an impulse because it has a certain width and it can excite more than one mode. So we know that. And so now we want to build more than one system and do a proper job to work out what these are. And that, that is a step up in.

[00:11:26] Guest: Um, experimental physics. Cause we have to build all sorts of, um, Beto systems. We've got to look for, um, cosmic particles to make sure it's not cosmic particles, exciting the system. And I'm determined whether these adjust maybe local press releases in the crystal or maybe some. Some events coming from, um, the cosmos, which could be gravity waves or, or, um, it could be cosmic rise or it could cause I can excite crystal too.

[00:11:57] Guest: Um, if it was cosmic rise, we might expect to see more events unless they're really high energy events. We were expected to see more. Yeah. Could also be a dark matter particle, which is what our sensor is. That would be very exciting. Yeah. Whatever it is, we need to find out what they are. Right. Whatever we find out will be exciting weather, even if it's.

[00:12:21] Guest: In the, in the structure itself, it's still a finding that people haven't, well, you're going to find out something new.

[00:12:27] Stuart: We need to find that

[00:12:32] Stuart: John from LIGO and Virgo and there's anyone in Japan as well, and they're looking at much lower frequencies, detecting things like merging black holes and neutron stars and things. Yeah. They said, yeah, they're

[00:12:44] Guest: looking at expected events, which is expected in current physics. Not many signals are expected because it's a bit theoretical, but there are some predicted signals that could occur, which, and also if certain physics exists, like maybe an axial on dark matter exists and you get a collapsing, um, you you've got all these actually arms around the back hall at night.

[00:13:06] Guest: I can, I can make a high frequency gravity wave two that just emits as a burst. So there's now a group that is looking for the high frequency gravity waves. There's a consortium of all blacks. They're looking for anywhere between a megahertz up to gigahertz. High-frequency gravity wise. If the tech that will be new, which will be totally new.

[00:13:26] Guest: It's just like when high frequency, electromagnetic radiation was discovered, you know, gamma rise that wasn't expected, but it led to a whole new astronomy. So we know gravity waves exist. So we should look for high frequency too, because if we discover them in physics and relate to my people, thinking about what they are.

[00:13:43] Guest: So, this is why I put pursuing this work. We have the technology to do it, and we find it interesting

[00:13:47] Stuart: to do so now you've got to build another one and, uh, the testing equipment to, uh, to be able to compare the two and see. Yeah,

[00:13:55] Guest: well, what we want to do is build three and we want to read out more than one mode in principle, we can use CPAs and read out 16 modes at a time.

[00:14:04] Guest: And if we have three, if we had presets and detectives rating, that we would get all the information we need to try and determine what, what these events are. That's

[00:14:12] Stuart: professor Marco turbo from the Australian research council center of excellence in dark matter, particle physics and the university of Western Australia.

[00:14:21] Stuart: And this space-time still to come a break discovered in one of the Milky ways, majestic spiral, arms, and the fastest asteroid ever seen, or that a mall store to come on space time.

[00:14:51] Stuart: Astronomers have discovered what a piece to be a break in one of the Milky ways, majestic spiral arms, the newly discovered feature reported in the journalist's neurology and astrophysics office, fresh insights into the large-scale scale structure of our galaxy, which is difficult to study from a position deep inside.

[00:15:08] Stuart: It it's a bit like trying to see the forest for the tree. The spiral arm break is actually a previously unrecognized contingent of young stars and star forming gas clouds sticking out from, or the Milky way, spiral arms, sort of like a splinter poking out of a plank of wood, stretching out some 3000 light years.

[00:15:29] Stuart: This is the first major structure identified with an orientation, said dramatically different from that of the galactic arm. Astronomers have a rough idea of the size and shape of the Milky way. And its arms that much remains are known that's because we're located deep inside the galaxy and much of it is hidden behind foreground stars, gas, dust clouds.

[00:15:51] Stuart: And of course the galactic bowl. Therefore astronomers can really only infer a lot about the galaxy structure indirectly to learn more. The authors focused on a nearby portion of one of the galaxy spectacular spirals known as the Sagittarius arm. Our solar system lies near a small partial arm called the Orion spur, which is located between the Sagittarius and Perseus.

[00:16:17] Stuart: The authors used infrared data for massive Spitzer space telescope. Did it take newborn stars, nestled deep inside the molecular gas and dust cloth with a form while a visible light from these new stars remains hidden by the surrounding clouds spits that could see the infrared wavelengths, which the stars are emitted.

[00:16:36] Stuart: And because young stars and nebulae are thought to align closely with the shape of the arms they reside in. This provides astronomers with a two dimensional map of where they are and consequently, where the spiral arm is to get a three-dimensional view of the arm segment. The authors turned to the European space agencies, guy emission, to measure the precise distances to the stars.

[00:16:58] Stuart: The combined data revealed that the long thin structure associated with a Sagittarius arm is made up of young stars moving at nearly the same velocity and in the same direction through space, the study's lead author, Michael Kern from Cal tech, the California Institute of technology says a Cade property of spiral arms is how tightly they wind around the galaxy, which is measured by the arms pitch angle.

[00:17:23] Stuart: Yeah, a circle as a pitch angle of zero degrees. And as the spiral becomes more and more open, the pitch angle increases most models. The Milky way suggest the Sagittarius arm forms a spiral that has a pitch angle of around 12 degrees. But this newly discovered structure has a pitch angle of nearly 60.

[00:17:42] Stuart: Similar structures sometimes called spurs or feathers are commonly found jetting out of the arms of other spiral galaxies. And for decades, scientists have wondered if the Milky way spiral arms is also dotted with these structures or tentatively, whether it's all relatively smooth. The newly discovered features contain four well-known Nebula of breathtaking beauty, the Eagle Nebula, which contains the famous pillars of creation, the omega Nebula, the Triffid biller, and the lagoon Nebula in the 1950s, astronomers made rough distance measurements to some of the stars in these nebulae.

[00:18:19] Stuart: And from that we're able to infer the existence of the Sagittarius. And it was that work, which provided some of the first evidence of our Milky way galaxy spiral structure. This is space time still to come the fastest asteroid and a new study shows that Martian snow is awfully dusty, all that, and more still to come.

[00:18:42] Stuart: On space time,

[00:19:00] Stuart: astronomers have discovered the fastest asteroid ever seen the kilometer wide space rock named 2021 page 27 takes just 113 days to complete each orbit of the sun. It is a highly elongated elliptical orbit, which takes it to well within 20 million kilometers of the sun and a semi major axis of 70 million kilometers, meaning it crosses the orbits of both mercury and Venus.

[00:19:26] Stuart: Only the planet. Mercury is known to have a shorter orbit and semi major axis. It takes just 88 days to orbit the sun, but the asteroid swings in much closer. So close in fact that the sun's massive gravitational field causes it to experience the largest general atavistic effects of any known solar system object being so close.

[00:19:48] Stuart: Awesome means its surface temperatures awfully high exceeding 500 degrees Celsius. Astronomers discovered the asteroid using the 570 mega pixel dark energy camera, Chile. 2021, pH 27. It's believed to be one of around 20 known at Tierra. Asteroids is all, but it's a completely interior of Earth's orbit around the sun Citus thing.

[00:20:11] Stuart: It probably began its life in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, but then got this lodged by gravitational, perturbations and disturbances and thrown in towards the inner planets. Eventually drawing closer and closer to the sun. However it's high orbital inclination of 32 degrees compared to the ecliptic suggest that might instead be an extinct comment from the outer solar system.

[00:20:35] Stuart: Future observations of 2021 page 27 or shed more light on its origin. From the little we can tell so far, it's odd. It's probably very unstable over long periods of time. Many will likely eventually either collide with mercury Venus or the sun, or be ejected out from the inner solar system or the gravitational influence of the inner planets.

[00:20:58] Stuart: It's discovery is somewhat of a triumph. The astronomers have a hard time finding these interior asteroids because they're often hidden by the intense Clare of the sun and their survival rate. Isn't all that great. See when they get so close to the sun, they experience a variety of stresses, such as thermal stresses from the sun's heat and physical stresses from gravitational tidal forces.

[00:21:21] Stuart: These stresses could cause some of the more fragile asteroids to break apart. Understanding the population of asteroids interior of earth over around the sun's important in order to complete the senses of near-Earth asteroids, including some of the most likely earth impactors that may approach the earth during daylight.

[00:21:39] Stuart: And so would not easily be discovered because 2021 page 27 is so close to the science massive gravitational field, inexperienced as some of the largest general relativistic effects of any non solar system objects. This reveals itself as a slight angular deviation and the asteroids elliptical orbit over time, a movement notice procession, which amounts to about one minute per century that we'll have to wait to find out more.

[00:22:07] Stuart: See the asteroids now entering what's known as solid conjunction went from our point of view here on earth. It will be seen to move behind the sun, making observation impossible. Still it's expected a return to visibility from earth early in the new year. When you observations will be made to determine its orbit in more detail.

[00:22:26] Stuart: At which time the asteroid will also be given an official name. This is space time, still the calm and you study confirms that marsh and snow is very dusty. And later in the science report discovery of concerning new variant of COVID-19 all that and more stored account. On space time.

[00:23:03] Stuart: A new study is good from that marsh and snow is actually very dusty. The findings were reported in the journal. Geophysical research planets looked at the grain size of the dust and the red planet. Snow cover. These measurements are crucial in helping scientists determine how old the ice is and therefore how it was deposited.

[00:23:22] Stuart: The findings are based on combining data from NASA's Phoenix, Massland emission and the agencies. Mars, reconnaissance orbiter together with computer simulations used to predict snow in glacial ice brightness on earth. The data allowed scientists to successfully match the brightness of the marsh and ice and determinants does content.

[00:23:42] Stuart: One of the study's authors Adichie Kula from Arizona state university says because Mazda is a dusty planet, much of its ice is also dusty and much darker than fresh snow sinner on earth. And the thing is the dusty of the ice is the darker it is. And thus the warmer the ice gets, which can affect both its stability and its evolution through time.

[00:24:04] Stuart: Under the right conditions. It also means that the ice could melt on Mars cooler says is the chance that this dusty and dark ice might melt a few centimeters down and any subsurface liquid water produced from the melting would be protected from sublimating in Mazda's ultra thin atmosphere by the overlying blanket of ice.

[00:24:25] Stuart: Based on their simulations. The orthos predicted the ice dug up by the mass Phoenix land emission was formed from dusty snowfall sometime over the last million years, which is similar to other ice posits previously found across the mash in mid-latitudes. And this all supports the widely believed hypothesis that masters experienced marble.

[00:24:45] Stuart: I said just throughout its history. And that looks like the ice be exposed throughout the mid-latitudes of Mars is a remnant of this ancient dusty snowfall. This space-time

[00:25:05] Stuart: and Tom at to take a brief look at some of the other stories, making, using science this week with a science report, scientists have discovered a potentially new COVID-19 varied of interest, which they're classifying as C1. The mutation was first detected in South Africa back in may and has since spread to at least seven other countries, spanning Africa, Europe, Asia, and New Zealand, a yet to be peer reviewed study of the new variant reported in the journal med archive suggest that it's accumulated a high number of mutations.

[00:25:38] Stuart: Many already identified in the four primary variates of concern, alpha beta gamma, and Delta. Both the authors warned. There are also additional mutations which provide a fresh cause of concern. The world health organization says more than 8 million people have been killed by the COVID-19 Corona virus with over 4.6 million confirmed fatalities and some 230 million people infected since the deadly disease was first spread out of where China and you study claims that people can change their sexual orientation.

[00:26:11] Stuart: Once they're shown data, indicating that sexuality exists on a spectrum. The findings published in the journal. Scientific reports are based on a sample of 460 individuals, including 232 females and 228 males. All of whom identified as being straight prior to the study, the subjects were each then given two short scientific papers to read.

[00:26:34] Stuart: One of the papers claim. There are many graduations of sexual attraction towards men and women, and people can fall anywhere along the continuum from exclusive attraction to males, to exclusive attraction to females. The other paper claimed sexual orientation can change over time and thus be fluid.

[00:26:53] Stuart: Compared to a control group. After reading the first article participants were 28% more likely to identify as non exclusively heterosexual and 19% more likely to indicate they were willing to engage in same-sex sexual activities. Similar though slightly weaker effects were found when people read that sexual orientation is better characterized as fluid rather than stable throughout life.

[00:27:19] Stuart: Paleontologist have identified two new species of dinosaur discovered in the Appalachian mountains. The dinosaurs reported in the journal, Royal society, open science birthdate back some 85 million years to the lake contagious. One of the specimens is a large meeting theropod related to tyrannosaur. It consists of a partial skeleton of a large predatory theropod with some identification markers suggesting it's probably a tyrannical.

[00:27:46] Stuart: The specimen contained several features in its hind limb, similar to drop the sores. And it has massive claws on its forearms. Very unlike Tyrannosaurus Rex, the other discoveries that have the partial skeleton of a plant eating hadrosaur, which is providing important information on the evolution of the dinosaur shoulder girdle.

[00:28:06] Stuart: And you study has found that on average people are swearing less now than what they were back in the 1990s. The findings reported in the journal, text and talk looked at house wearings changed in casual, British English conversation between 1994 and 2014. Researchers compare the use of 16 of the UKs most common swear words, finding that people are swearing 27.6% less now than what they were back in the 1990s.

[00:28:34] Stuart: In fact swearing was down from 1,822 words per million spoken in 1994 to just 1,320 words per million in 2014, researchers also found that the F word has finally overtaken bloody as the most popular exploitive in the UK, both have dropped in overall usage at the F word was only down slightly, whereas bloody has seen an 80% fall in popularity.

[00:29:01] Stuart: And that's left the door open for the S word to move up into second place, doubling in usage or searches also found that men are still far more likely to swear than women and one's use of explosives tends to pick in your twenties. And while the use of obscene language is commonly seen as a sign that the speak elapsed vocabulary or even intelligence, numerous studies have shown that swearing relieves stress and has been linked with traits of verbal fluency, openness and honesty.

[00:29:30] Stuart: The Dunning Kruger effect is a well-known hypothetical conjunctive bias steading that people with a low understanding of a subject or task tend to overestimate their own ability to know that subject or perform that task. Conversely, people with a lot of knowledge about an issue, tend to underestimate their own ability to understand the issue.

[00:29:52] Stuart: Effect is named after psychologist, David, Danny, and Justin Kruger. And it best demonstrates the ability of some people to objectively evaluate their own level of competence. Tim. And I'm from Australian skeptics says explains why people who believe in things like your pho and COVID-19 conspiracy theories are so confident about their facts.

[00:30:13] Stuart: Basically

[00:30:13] Tim Mendham: it hits if the topic was crops up quite a lot, as we ask as to why people believe things and yeah, those individual motivations of things I've seen or things I've experienced convince them that are counted, normally veins or UFO, whatever is happening. There's also the idea of what's called the Dunning-Kruger effect, which is basically.

[00:30:29] Tim Mendham: People who don't have a lot of knowledge, right. To themselves convinced themselves up. I have a lot more knowledge. So the reverse is also true that people who do actually have a lot of knowledge or skills are more modest, even concerned that they don't have enough skills. So you get this sort of discontinuity between what you can do, what you can't do.

[00:30:45] Tim Mendham: And the suggestion is that people who don't have a lot of training in, in critical thinking or whatever, what can you can call that education? If you won't go down that path, have more confidence. In what they believe and people who do have more training, perhaps more training exposed to more alternative explanations of things, or just uncertainty, if you like about that knowledge and science would say nothing's a hundred percent known in science.

[00:31:06] Tim Mendham: So uncertainty is part of science and that's, that's a good thing. Cause I've been carried through that places where we have lower education, you have a right, a competence and your belief, and then includes paranormal and new effects. Only people of low intelligence education. There are people with very high intelligence, but as soon as they get outside their area, they might leave 12 for the three card trick.

[00:31:28] Tim Mendham: And believe

[00:31:34] Tim Mendham: me, I'm magazine about it. You people who are well-known scientists received the Nobel prize for, they work in a particular area to take one step to one side, or they pass a use by date, or they'd be tired or whatever. I tried to assign critical thinking about everything and I will. And those, those things, because there's a certain imprimatur to other things people say, oh, he must be true.

[00:31:55] Tim Mendham: Either Nobel prize. We were like, well, the thing about the skeptics is you find that intelligence is not equal, critical thinking

[00:32:00] Stuart: necessarily. From Australia and skeptics.

[00:32:20] VO Guy: And

[00:32:20] Stuart: that's the shut for now? The space-time is available every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday through apple podcasts, iTunes, Stitcher, Google podcast. PocketCasts Spotify outcast, Amazon music com SoundCloud, YouTube. Your favorite podcast, download provider and from space time with Stuart, gary.com space times also broadcast through the national science foundation on science own radio and on both iHeart, radio and tune in.

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[00:33:30] Stuart: That's all one word and that's tumbler without the year. You can also follow us through at Stuart, Gary on Twitter at space-time with Stuart, Gary on Instagram. Through our space-time YouTube channel and on Facebook, just go to facebook.com forward slash space time with Stuart, Gary and space-time is brought to you in collaboration with Australian Sky and Telescope magazine, your window on the universe.

[00:34:00] VO Guy: You've been listening to space-time with Stuart Gary. This has been another quality podcast production and from bitesz.com.

Tim MendhamProfile Photo

Tim Mendham

Editor

Editor with Australian Skeptics