WEBVTT - The Doomsday Water 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:06.800 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:12.680 --> 0:00:14.600 Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My 0:00:14.680 --> 0:00:15.800 name is Robert Lamb. 0:00:16.079 --> 0:00:19.200 And I am Joe McCormick. And hey, if you are 0:00:19.400 --> 0:00:22.319 new to the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast, I 0:00:22.320 --> 0:00:24.360 thought we do a brief explainer of who we are. 0:00:24.400 --> 0:00:26.040 We don't usually do a bumper at the beginning of 0:00:26.079 --> 0:00:28.280 our shows to say like, here's who we are, this 0:00:28.400 --> 0:00:30.840 is our deal, but we thought we might have some 0:00:30.920 --> 0:00:33.559 new people on board because we just recently added a 0:00:33.600 --> 0:00:36.960 new video component of our podcast. We've been running a 0:00:37.000 --> 0:00:38.639 long time. Got how many years. 0:00:38.440 --> 0:00:40.040 At this point, We've always been here. 0:00:40.240 --> 0:00:43.040 Yeah, I think I've been on this show since twenty 0:00:43.280 --> 0:00:46.720 fifteen or so, Rob, you've been doing it significantly longer 0:00:46.720 --> 0:00:50.400 than that. But as an audio format podcast, so for 0:00:50.440 --> 0:00:54.480 many years we've covered topics, a lot of topics related 0:00:54.520 --> 0:00:57.720 to science, a general nexus of kind of science and culture. 0:00:57.760 --> 0:01:01.840 But we have interdisciplinary tastes. We like to talk about 0:01:01.840 --> 0:01:06.800 stuff where science connects to literature or mythology, all kinds 0:01:06.840 --> 0:01:09.319 of stuff like that. So that's who we are. We've 0:01:09.319 --> 0:01:11.640 been around a long time, and the video thing is new. 0:01:11.800 --> 0:01:14.920 So if you are here watching us, on Netflix here 0:01:14.959 --> 0:01:16.400 at the beginning of a new phase. 0:01:16.800 --> 0:01:19.440 Yeah, and as you hear us refer back to old episodes, 0:01:19.920 --> 0:01:21.800 you might wonder, well, where are these episodes? I do 0:01:21.880 --> 0:01:24.680 not see them. Well, you may be able to hear them. 0:01:25.040 --> 0:01:27.200 Just go to wherever you get your podcast, look for 0:01:27.200 --> 0:01:30.240 Stuff to Blow your Mind. Go ahead and subscribe. You'll 0:01:30.240 --> 0:01:33.839 also find all of our podcast episodes there from years 0:01:33.840 --> 0:01:34.480 and years back. 0:01:34.720 --> 0:01:38.840 That's right, So end bracket on the prelude there. Today, 0:01:39.160 --> 0:01:42.160 on the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast, we're going 0:01:42.200 --> 0:01:47.400 to be talking about a substance called polywater. And I 0:01:47.440 --> 0:01:50.080 think the first thing we need to establish about polywater 0:01:50.720 --> 0:01:54.520 is that polywater does not exist. So this is not 0:01:54.720 --> 0:01:56.800 going to be one of those episodes where we're talking 0:01:56.880 --> 0:02:02.640 about an interesting, hypothetical, maybe existing substance. It's not like 0:02:02.720 --> 0:02:05.960 the you know, the various candidates for dark matter, like 0:02:06.240 --> 0:02:11.840 axions or weekly interacting massive particles. You know, these substances 0:02:11.919 --> 0:02:15.760 where there's a reasonable debate about whether they exist or 0:02:15.800 --> 0:02:19.560 there's a theoretical reason to keep looking for them and 0:02:19.639 --> 0:02:23.720 tests to see if they exist. Polywater is not like that. Today, 0:02:24.120 --> 0:02:28.760 no credible scientist thinks polywater is real, and there's really 0:02:28.760 --> 0:02:32.600 no theoretical reason to think it might be real or 0:02:32.639 --> 0:02:33.760 to keep looking for it. 0:02:34.160 --> 0:02:36.280 Yeah, I do want to throw out, just to avoid 0:02:36.320 --> 0:02:41.359 any confusion, this is polywater lowercase P. There is also 0:02:41.680 --> 0:02:46.440 polywater capital P. So what we're talking about here not 0:02:46.520 --> 0:02:50.040 to be confused with the American Polywater Corporation, the name 0:02:50.080 --> 0:02:52.440 of which comes from a nineteen seventy three water based 0:02:52.560 --> 0:02:57.160 cable pulling lubricant. Basically, the idea is that this was 0:02:57.280 --> 0:03:01.080 trademarked under the name polywater as an odd to what 0:03:01.120 --> 0:03:05.840 we're talking about here today. So which just to avoid 0:03:05.840 --> 0:03:06.880 confusion there. 0:03:06.760 --> 0:03:10.120 That will become increasingly hilarious the more you learn about 0:03:10.440 --> 0:03:14.040 the scientific polywater controversy, like why would you name a 0:03:14.080 --> 0:03:14.960 product after this? 0:03:15.440 --> 0:03:20.360 Supposedly the creator just considered polywater. Polywater that we're talking 0:03:20.360 --> 0:03:22.440 about here is kind of like the Holy Grail. It's 0:03:22.480 --> 0:03:25.480 kind of like a unicorn, and he just was really 0:03:25.520 --> 0:03:27.960 attached to the idea, like I'm going to name it polywater, 0:03:28.080 --> 0:03:30.760 and okay, it has stuck. It's the name of the corporation. 0:03:31.280 --> 0:03:35.280 So if lowercase P polywater never existed, why are we 0:03:35.400 --> 0:03:40.240 talking about it? Well, because, as with many cases in 0:03:40.400 --> 0:03:43.360 history where people got something very wrong, there's actually a 0:03:43.360 --> 0:03:46.640 lot you can learn by looking at the ways people 0:03:46.760 --> 0:03:50.920 came to incorrect conclusions and sort of following their logic 0:03:51.280 --> 0:03:54.680 and seeing where they went astray. So polywater has been 0:03:54.960 --> 0:03:58.320 used in many interesting books and articles over the years 0:03:58.360 --> 0:04:01.960 as a great example of what is called pathological science, 0:04:02.840 --> 0:04:08.040 certain types of patterns of behavior that can lead researchers 0:04:08.240 --> 0:04:12.160 into dead ends where they delude themselves into believing things 0:04:12.200 --> 0:04:15.160 that are not based in fact. And one thing I 0:04:15.160 --> 0:04:18.160 think we should really emphasize about polywater is that it 0:04:18.240 --> 0:04:21.440 was not just some obscure little rabbit hole that a 0:04:21.480 --> 0:04:25.159 few people went down at one point in history. For 0:04:25.440 --> 0:04:27.960 a period of a few years, beginning in the nineteen 0:04:28.040 --> 0:04:32.360 sixties and stretching into the early seventies, polywater was a 0:04:32.600 --> 0:04:35.960 huge deal. A bunch of people all around the world, 0:04:36.080 --> 0:04:40.800 including many leading scientists on the cutting edge of physical chemistry, 0:04:41.480 --> 0:04:46.200 became convinced that it did exist, and some even became 0:04:46.480 --> 0:04:51.080 quite obsessed with it, because if polywater did exist, it 0:04:51.200 --> 0:04:57.440 would be a revolutionary, potentially world changing discovery. In one 0:04:57.440 --> 0:05:00.359 of the sources I was reading, there is a quote 0:05:00.360 --> 0:05:04.359 attributed to the Irish physicist John Desmond Bernal, who was 0:05:04.400 --> 0:05:08.400 famous for pioneering the use of X ray crystallography. There's 0:05:08.400 --> 0:05:10.719 some dispute about whether he actually said this or not, 0:05:10.800 --> 0:05:14.359 but it's at least widely attributed to him secondhand that 0:05:14.680 --> 0:05:19.000 he said, this is the most important physical chemical discovery 0:05:19.120 --> 0:05:19.960 of the century. 0:05:20.560 --> 0:05:20.920 Wow. 0:05:21.480 --> 0:05:24.720 And the popular media, by the way, went crazy for polywater. 0:05:24.839 --> 0:05:28.200 So you know, once this leapt out of the scientific 0:05:28.240 --> 0:05:32.880 conferences and journals into the popular press, people were speculating 0:05:33.040 --> 0:05:37.640 wildly about how polywater might drive all kinds of astounding 0:05:37.720 --> 0:05:43.480 new technologies, from machine lubrication to new designs for nuclear reactors. 0:05:43.800 --> 0:05:47.000 Maybe it's the key to understanding the secrets of life. 0:05:47.040 --> 0:05:51.240 It's like what drives cell biology. Maybe it will unlock 0:05:51.480 --> 0:05:55.040 eternal longevity. You know, we can live forever because of polywater. 0:05:56.279 --> 0:05:59.760 There's a great There was a Wall Street Journal article 0:06:00.040 --> 0:06:03.240 that I found quoted in a book that said, quote, 0:06:03.320 --> 0:06:06.160 a few years from now, living room furniture may be 0:06:06.279 --> 0:06:07.120 made out of water. 0:06:07.600 --> 0:06:09.279 Okay, all right, I would love that. 0:06:09.480 --> 0:06:14.480 Yeah. But by around the year nineteen seventy three, basically 0:06:14.640 --> 0:06:19.279 everyone had figured out, oh, this was never real. So 0:06:19.320 --> 0:06:23.200 we've been talking about how its hypothetical existence was processed. 0:06:23.240 --> 0:06:26.200 But what was it? What was polywater supposed to be 0:06:27.320 --> 0:06:31.800 Polywater was claimed to be not just some weird, obscure, 0:06:32.120 --> 0:06:38.279 newly discovered molecule, but rather the until now hidden liquid 0:06:38.400 --> 0:06:44.320 form of a very familiar molecule. Polywater was supposed to 0:06:44.320 --> 0:06:48.200 be water. It was chemically identical to regular water. It 0:06:48.240 --> 0:06:52.479 was H two oh, but it was allegedly a new 0:06:52.680 --> 0:06:56.760 liquid structure of water discovered in a lab in the 0:06:56.760 --> 0:07:01.679 Soviet Union, with a polymerized structure at the molecular level. 0:07:02.120 --> 0:07:05.920 There were different ways of imagining what this polymer structure 0:07:05.960 --> 0:07:10.640 looked like. Maybe these arrangements of squares or arrangements of hexagons. 0:07:10.880 --> 0:07:13.880 Maybe we can talk more about that later in the episode. 0:07:14.720 --> 0:07:20.880 But this polymerized arrangement of the water molecules was said 0:07:20.920 --> 0:07:25.200 to give the water different characteristics, like a higher boiling point, 0:07:25.760 --> 0:07:32.360 lower freezing point, and at room temperature, a thick, viscous consistency, 0:07:32.440 --> 0:07:35.320 often compared to petroleum jelly. It was said to be 0:07:35.400 --> 0:07:38.880 roughly forty percent denser or up to forty percent denser 0:07:39.200 --> 0:07:40.200 than liquid water. 0:07:41.200 --> 0:07:43.040 Thicken your suits, I guess exactly. 0:07:43.200 --> 0:07:46.600 Yeah, just so even better than wondra, you know. So 0:07:46.840 --> 0:07:50.640 imagine a form of water with no additives. Its just 0:07:50.680 --> 0:07:55.360 plain water that has rearranged itself so that it feels 0:07:55.440 --> 0:07:57.600 and behaves kind of like vasileine. 0:07:58.880 --> 0:08:03.440 Okay, all right, hard to imagine, but which is weird, 0:08:03.520 --> 0:08:08.200 you know, because we're not talking about like sentient water 0:08:08.320 --> 0:08:12.800 or anything. It's just but still it's like, it's hard 0:08:12.840 --> 0:08:15.960 to imagine. Yeah, I have a hard time imagining water 0:08:16.040 --> 0:08:18.800 that behaves like basoline without thinking of just being some 0:08:19.000 --> 0:08:20.280 basoline type substance. 0:08:20.320 --> 0:08:22.680 You know, Yeah, you'd think it was something else, But no, 0:08:22.840 --> 0:08:25.360 this is the idea. This is just another form water 0:08:25.400 --> 0:08:29.840 can take. And what's more shocking is that some researchers 0:08:29.880 --> 0:08:33.120 working on polywater, certainly not all, but some of them 0:08:33.320 --> 0:08:37.360 came to the conclusion that actually it was the most 0:08:37.679 --> 0:08:42.680 stable form of water, more stable than the regular, thin, 0:08:42.840 --> 0:08:45.840 sloshy water all around us and all throughout the environment, 0:08:46.520 --> 0:08:51.280 raising the question of whether polywater was not actually the 0:08:51.480 --> 0:08:55.319 true form of water, the water to which our form 0:08:55.360 --> 0:09:00.600 of water wanted to return. So one interpretation take by some, 0:09:00.679 --> 0:09:03.880 again not all, but some, was that it was possible 0:09:04.040 --> 0:09:08.120 all the water around us could, given the right circumstances, 0:09:08.480 --> 0:09:12.440 be turned into polywater, and it might be extremely difficult 0:09:12.600 --> 0:09:14.400 or impossible to turn it back. 0:09:15.360 --> 0:09:20.280 All right, All the water around us includes everything, it 0:09:20.320 --> 0:09:23.520 includes us. Yeah, so this is what neat that yea, yeah, 0:09:23.559 --> 0:09:26.800 this is a pretty dire outlook, yes, yeah. 0:09:26.840 --> 0:09:29.559 So I want to emphasize this was not the consensus 0:09:29.640 --> 0:09:32.880 of polywater proponents at the time, but it was a 0:09:33.000 --> 0:09:35.800 view being talked about in public. And just to set 0:09:35.840 --> 0:09:39.600 the tone of how seriously some people took this idea, 0:09:40.320 --> 0:09:43.520 I want to read an excerpt from a highly alarming 0:09:43.600 --> 0:09:46.839 letter published in the journal Nature in nineteen sixty nine. 0:09:46.880 --> 0:09:49.439 So this is not in some you know, crank publication. 0:09:49.559 --> 0:09:52.600 This is like the premiere scientific journal. It's in Nature, 0:09:53.000 --> 0:09:56.520 written by a chemist named F. J. Donaho of Wilkes 0:09:56.559 --> 0:10:02.640 College in Pennsylvania. So here's some excerpts from note. Donaho writes, quote, 0:10:03.400 --> 0:10:06.920 after being convinced of the existence of polywater, I am 0:10:07.000 --> 0:10:11.440 not easily persuaded that it is not dangerous. The consequences 0:10:11.480 --> 0:10:14.600 of being wrong about this matter are so serious that 0:10:14.720 --> 0:10:18.439 only positive evidence that there is no danger would be acceptable. 0:10:19.000 --> 0:10:24.160 Only the existence of natural ambient mechanisms which depolymerize the 0:10:24.200 --> 0:10:28.320 material would prove its safety. Until such mechanisms are known 0:10:28.360 --> 0:10:32.120 to exist, I regard the polymer as the most dangerous 0:10:32.160 --> 0:10:36.079 material on Earth. Every effort must be made to establish 0:10:36.120 --> 0:10:39.960 the absolute safety of the material before it is commercially produced. 0:10:40.440 --> 0:10:44.280 Once the polymer nuclei become dispersed in the soil, it 0:10:44.320 --> 0:10:47.800 will be too late to do anything. Even as I write, 0:10:47.920 --> 0:10:52.240 there are undoubtedly scores of groups preparing polywater treat it 0:10:52.320 --> 0:10:56.000 as the most deadly virus until its safety is established. 0:10:56.400 --> 0:10:59.360 Oh wow, keep watching the sky energy amazing. 0:11:00.200 --> 0:11:03.560 Note very firmly again that not everyone agreed with this 0:11:03.679 --> 0:11:07.240 level of alarm, and the next issue of Nature published 0:11:07.400 --> 0:11:12.439 several replies from prominent experts arguing that this warning was 0:11:12.800 --> 0:11:16.640 grossly exaggerated and misguided, and they offered some good arguments 0:11:16.679 --> 0:11:20.719 why polywater was not dangerous in the way Donahoe suggested. 0:11:20.720 --> 0:11:23.640 We'll get more into that later. And of course there's 0:11:23.679 --> 0:11:26.880 an added level of absurdity in that the substance they 0:11:26.880 --> 0:11:29.760 were arguing about turned out to have never existed at all, 0:11:29.920 --> 0:11:31.760 or at least not in the way that was understood. 0:11:32.480 --> 0:11:36.600 But given what was believed at the time, these researchers, 0:11:36.640 --> 0:11:40.040 I think had good arguments against Donahoe's level of alarm, 0:11:40.720 --> 0:11:44.400 But I want to be sympathetic to people who would 0:11:44.400 --> 0:11:47.120 have been really freaked out by this. When I put 0:11:47.120 --> 0:11:51.240 myself in the place of a non expert in nineteen 0:11:51.320 --> 0:11:55.680 sixty nine who maybe reads a newspaper article about this 0:11:55.880 --> 0:12:00.160 note published in a leading scientific journal, and I don't understand, 0:12:00.200 --> 0:12:03.720 or I maybe don't even encounter the soothing counter arguments 0:12:03.800 --> 0:12:09.080 against it. It is a terrifying proposition. The feeling to 0:12:09.120 --> 0:12:11.000 me when reading this note was kind of like when 0:12:11.080 --> 0:12:14.120 Sarruman says, you know, the hour is later than you think. 0:12:14.760 --> 0:12:17.280 He's got that line. Even as I write this, groups 0:12:17.320 --> 0:12:22.119 around the world are creating this stuff, that microscopic quantities 0:12:22.160 --> 0:12:26.199 of a substance that, if it escaped containment, could turn 0:12:26.360 --> 0:12:31.120 Earth into a lifeless wax world. So many things about 0:12:31.160 --> 0:12:34.920 this are so frightening if you don't if you imagine 0:12:34.960 --> 0:12:38.760 yourself without the benefit of hindsight and maybe not understanding 0:12:38.800 --> 0:12:43.400 the expert arguments against them, like the threat is microscopic. 0:12:43.880 --> 0:12:47.040 Once it escapes, it is too late. I have no 0:12:47.160 --> 0:12:50.200 control over this. Other people are doing it that I 0:12:50.320 --> 0:12:55.160 can't stop them. They're making it right now. Also, imagine 0:12:55.160 --> 0:12:57.960 this in the context of Cold War paranoia and the 0:12:58.040 --> 0:13:01.120 nuclear arms race. You know, everybody's got a mindset of 0:13:02.240 --> 0:13:04.920 you know, races to achieve new types of weapons and 0:13:04.960 --> 0:13:09.320 potentials on either side of the Cold War. And then finally, 0:13:09.520 --> 0:13:14.720 just the specific image of catastrophe conjured up here is 0:13:14.800 --> 0:13:19.559 so weird and grotesque, Like, imagine all of our water 0:13:20.160 --> 0:13:25.080 is now transformed into some kind of waxy substance or gel. 0:13:25.400 --> 0:13:28.800 Yeah, the oceans turning into some sort of grotesque jell 0:13:28.880 --> 0:13:33.640 o product, or our bodies suddenly transforming into some sort 0:13:33.679 --> 0:13:37.760 of I'm only imagining here, but like a denser sludge 0:13:37.800 --> 0:13:40.280 body that of course is also lifeless because it would 0:13:40.440 --> 0:13:44.440 it would kill us. Yeah, crazy, crazy to imagine. And 0:13:44.480 --> 0:13:48.240 then I think the atomic tie in is key because 0:13:48.240 --> 0:13:50.880 at this point we are well aware of the fact 0:13:51.040 --> 0:13:56.120 that the Cold War competition and other drivers in our 0:13:56.200 --> 0:14:01.640 culture have certainly proven that we will totally race toward 0:14:02.920 --> 0:14:07.679 complete and collective annihilation. Yeah, so it's not you know, 0:14:07.800 --> 0:14:10.440 it's not like we would all say, whoa hold on, 0:14:11.160 --> 0:14:13.400 let's not do polywater. It would be like, oh, if 0:14:13.400 --> 0:14:15.599 you're doing polywater while I'm doing polywater, I'm gonna do 0:14:15.679 --> 0:14:17.640 polywater even harder, right, and then. 0:14:17.520 --> 0:14:20.960 We're all sledge Yeah, And we can talk about some 0:14:21.160 --> 0:14:35.120 analogies to this later on. One thing I'm sure lots 0:14:35.120 --> 0:14:38.040 of people listening or watching out there are already thinking 0:14:38.040 --> 0:14:42.960 of is the connection to Cat's Cradle. Tons of authors 0:14:43.000 --> 0:14:48.760 writing on this subject have compared Donahoe's polywater doomsday scenario 0:14:48.840 --> 0:14:53.080 in this letter to a famous literary analog, and that 0:14:53.240 --> 0:14:56.440 is the fictional substance known as ice nine from Kurt 0:14:56.520 --> 0:15:01.760 Vonnegut's novel Cat's Cradle, which is responsible for the apocalyptic 0:15:01.920 --> 0:15:05.440 ending of the book. People made this comparison, I want 0:15:05.440 --> 0:15:08.520 to emphasize at the time the novel was already out. 0:15:08.560 --> 0:15:10.720 It was published in nineteen sixty three, so this is 0:15:10.760 --> 0:15:14.760 not just a retrospective comparison we're making now and people 0:15:14.760 --> 0:15:18.560 were writing about it in nineteen sixty nine. 0:15:18.880 --> 0:15:22.320 Yeah. Yeah, this is fascinating. We've touched on Einstein before 0:15:22.360 --> 0:15:24.800 because we did some episodes on different forms, different types 0:15:24.800 --> 0:15:25.200 of ice. 0:15:25.520 --> 0:15:26.160 Yeah. 0:15:26.240 --> 0:15:28.520 So, first of all, it is totally fictional. There's no 0:15:28.600 --> 0:15:31.800 such thing as ice neine, But within the context of 0:15:31.800 --> 0:15:33.920 the novel, it's said to be a polymorph of water 0:15:34.080 --> 0:15:37.440 with a much higher freezing point, and it converts all 0:15:37.520 --> 0:15:40.640 water to ice nine upon contact. So it could be 0:15:40.680 --> 0:15:43.360 the ocean, it could be the water inside a human 0:15:43.400 --> 0:15:47.640 body if it makes contact it's going to change that 0:15:47.720 --> 0:15:50.960 water into this new form of water, and that is 0:15:50.960 --> 0:15:53.080 going to be disastrous for all concerned. 0:15:53.480 --> 0:15:56.600 Yeah, it would be acting as what's called a seed crystal. 0:15:56.680 --> 0:15:58.480 The idea is it goes in and it provides a 0:15:58.600 --> 0:16:02.240 nucleation point that all of the water around it around 0:16:02.240 --> 0:16:06.120 it to rearrange into the ice nine form. Yeah, and 0:16:06.200 --> 0:16:09.360 so would change all of the water in the biosphere 0:16:09.400 --> 0:16:12.160 into this form that is frozen up to I think 0:16:12.240 --> 0:16:14.520 like one hundred and fourteen degrees fahrenheit they say in 0:16:14.520 --> 0:16:17.200 the novel. So obviously that's not good and it is 0:16:17.200 --> 0:16:20.800 apocalyptic in the story. In fact, I have my copy 0:16:20.840 --> 0:16:22.960 of Kat's Cradle right here. I got it off the shelf. 0:16:23.000 --> 0:16:25.240 I was trying to find a good passage at the 0:16:25.320 --> 0:16:28.800 end here that describes it. I didn't. I don't know, 0:16:28.840 --> 0:16:30.600 maybe there is one I didn't dig up. There's one 0:16:30.640 --> 0:16:33.520 part where so at the end of the story spoiler 0:16:33.560 --> 0:16:36.680 alert for Kat's Cradle. But at the end of the story, 0:16:36.720 --> 0:16:40.040 the ice nine does get out and it transforms all 0:16:40.080 --> 0:16:43.400 of the water in the natural environment into ice nine. 0:16:44.200 --> 0:16:47.920 And so the main character talks about like peeking up 0:16:47.920 --> 0:16:51.800 out of a bunker into the world and he says. 0:16:52.920 --> 0:16:55.520 He says, there were no smells, there was no movement. 0:16:55.880 --> 0:16:58.800 Every step I took made a gravelly squeak and blue 0:16:58.800 --> 0:17:02.840 white frost, and every squeak was echoed loudly. The season 0:17:02.840 --> 0:17:05.800 of locking was over. The earth was locked up tight. 0:17:06.200 --> 0:17:08.000 It was winter now and forever. 0:17:09.560 --> 0:17:13.640 Yeah that's bleak. Yeah, So I actually have not read 0:17:13.720 --> 0:17:17.240 Cat's Cradle. This is not one of the Vonnegut books 0:17:17.240 --> 0:17:19.840 I've read. Do people get ice nined in this as well? 0:17:19.960 --> 0:17:20.399 Or is it just the. 0:17:21.280 --> 0:17:25.200 Yes, it works out badly for people. Not a happy ending. 0:17:25.840 --> 0:17:28.119 Now. I did look up the origin story, or at 0:17:28.160 --> 0:17:32.920 least what is said to be the origin story of 0:17:31.600 --> 0:17:38.800 this novel, and the story here goes that you had HG. Wells, 0:17:39.000 --> 0:17:44.080 the noted author, legendary author science fiction during the nineteen thirties. 0:17:44.080 --> 0:17:47.840 He visits GE Labs and while there he meets Irving 0:17:47.920 --> 0:17:51.560 Lagmir who were actually going to come back to His 0:17:51.600 --> 0:17:54.760 work included some ice based cloud seating. I think he 0:17:54.800 --> 0:17:58.639 did some de icing research as well, and he pitched 0:17:58.680 --> 0:18:00.440 the idea to HG. Wells. He's like, hey, you should 0:18:00.440 --> 0:18:03.320 do a story about some sort of room temperature stable ice, 0:18:04.200 --> 0:18:08.920 and Wells of course never wrote anything with that concept, 0:18:09.240 --> 0:18:14.480 but people overheard this exchange. Apparently it included Kurt Vonnegut's brother, 0:18:14.680 --> 0:18:17.879 his older brother, who apparently worked at G E. Labs 0:18:17.880 --> 0:18:20.960 at the time, as did Kurt Vonnegut, I believe, And 0:18:21.040 --> 0:18:24.680 so again, Wells never used it, and after both Lagmuir 0:18:24.720 --> 0:18:27.920 and Wells had passed away, Kurt figured, hey, it's fair game. 0:18:28.560 --> 0:18:30.160 I can take this and run with it now, and 0:18:30.240 --> 0:18:32.439 he did. How much of that is true? I don't know. 0:18:32.480 --> 0:18:34.040 That's the story anyway. 0:18:34.600 --> 0:18:38.080 And we should note that there actually is a form 0:18:38.119 --> 0:18:40.600 of ice known as ice nine, but it does not 0:18:40.640 --> 0:18:42.960 have any of the properties described. 0:18:43.480 --> 0:18:48.520 And I think cannot exist on Earth given the pressures 0:18:48.520 --> 0:18:52.480 that we have on Earth. So it's yeah, for many 0:18:52.560 --> 0:18:55.600 different reasons, this does not exist, and nothing like ice 0:18:55.680 --> 0:18:56.880 nine in the novel exists. 0:18:57.119 --> 0:19:00.520 Kind of like the polywater doomstay scenario for multiple reasons. 0:19:00.520 --> 0:19:01.600 Not something to worry about. 0:19:01.880 --> 0:19:07.440 Yeah, now, are there things like polywater to maybe worry about. Well, 0:19:07.840 --> 0:19:09.879 maybe we'll get back to those, either later on in 0:19:09.880 --> 0:19:11.600 this episode or in a subsequent episode. 0:19:11.760 --> 0:19:15.760 Yeah, Okay, Robert, you cool if we jump here into 0:19:16.280 --> 0:19:18.919 sort of a historical sketch of the polywater affair. 0:19:19.440 --> 0:19:20.080 Yeah, let's do. 0:19:20.119 --> 0:19:23.120 It, Okay. So I'm going to try to run through 0:19:23.480 --> 0:19:27.320 a basic timeline of the polywater craze, and I want 0:19:27.359 --> 0:19:30.639 to mention a couple of my main sources here. One 0:19:30.800 --> 0:19:34.960 is an article called case Studies in Pathological Science published 0:19:35.000 --> 0:19:38.760 in American Scientist in the year nineteen ninety two. The 0:19:38.840 --> 0:19:42.560 author of this article is Dennis L. Rousseau, a PhD. 0:19:42.640 --> 0:19:46.760 Physical chemist who was a longtime technical staff member at 0:19:46.760 --> 0:19:48.520 Bell Labs. I looked him up and it looks like 0:19:48.560 --> 0:19:51.480 now he's affiliated with Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 0:19:51.520 --> 0:19:54.800 New York. But Rousseau is a great source on this 0:19:54.920 --> 0:19:58.439 because he not only has he's not only done the 0:19:58.480 --> 0:20:02.360 research to give this historical sketch and couch it in 0:20:02.440 --> 0:20:06.920 the framing of pathological science, he was also personally involved 0:20:07.040 --> 0:20:11.679 in polywater research on the skeptical side. He was the author, 0:20:11.800 --> 0:20:15.360 the lead author of one of the main experiments that 0:20:15.640 --> 0:20:18.440 really put the nail in the coffin of the polywater program. 0:20:18.520 --> 0:20:20.800 That was kind of the final embarrassment to it. 0:20:20.880 --> 0:20:22.000 I killed polywater. 0:20:22.320 --> 0:20:25.280 Yeah. And I don't frame it like that, like he's 0:20:25.320 --> 0:20:27.199 trying to crow over it or be mean like that. 0:20:27.280 --> 0:20:30.200 I mean he approaches the subject, I think with some humility, 0:20:30.240 --> 0:20:33.720 but yes, he did put out an experimental result that 0:20:33.880 --> 0:20:38.199 was potentially kind of humiliating to polywater, even if it 0:20:38.200 --> 0:20:41.520 wasn't meant to be. The other source that I found 0:20:41.600 --> 0:20:44.760 really useful is a fantastic chapter in a book called 0:20:45.000 --> 0:20:47.280 H two OO, A Biography of Water by the British 0:20:47.320 --> 0:20:51.359 science writer Philip Ball, great science writer who I always 0:20:51.400 --> 0:20:53.600 like his work. This book was first published in nineteen 0:20:53.640 --> 0:20:57.000 ninety nine, and Ball has a really good historical overview 0:20:57.040 --> 0:21:00.240 of polywater and again frames it within the context of 0:21:00.280 --> 0:21:06.560 pathological science. So research on polywater began in the Soviet 0:21:06.640 --> 0:21:10.199 Union in the early nineteen sixties, and it's worth pointing 0:21:10.200 --> 0:21:13.960 out that it was not initially called polywater. For the 0:21:14.000 --> 0:21:18.040 first few years, publications on this subject mostly referred to 0:21:18.080 --> 0:21:22.239 it as anomalous water. And I think that difference in 0:21:22.359 --> 0:21:26.120 naming may be more important than you might assume at first. 0:21:26.600 --> 0:21:29.639 We'll maybe come back and discuss that later, but I 0:21:29.680 --> 0:21:32.639 want to start off here kind of framing this within 0:21:32.760 --> 0:21:37.000 the environment of global science in the nineteen sixties. So 0:21:37.080 --> 0:21:40.240 obviously at this time, huge advancements were being made in 0:21:40.280 --> 0:21:45.680 a bunch of fields, you know, computer science, aerospace, molecular biology, 0:21:46.320 --> 0:21:49.800 and Philip Ball really flags this as well. Scientists were 0:21:50.040 --> 0:21:54.960 constantly making discoveries that they, in many cases correctly predicted 0:21:55.000 --> 0:21:58.000 would change the world. So it's a frothy time in 0:21:58.040 --> 0:22:03.119 the sciences. But the global advance of science at this 0:22:03.280 --> 0:22:05.760 time was made sort of awkward by the Cold War. 0:22:06.640 --> 0:22:10.320 For the most part, Western scientists published in British and 0:22:10.359 --> 0:22:14.360 American sometimes continental European journals, the majority of which were 0:22:14.359 --> 0:22:18.879 in English, while Eastern Bloc scientists mostly published in Russian 0:22:19.000 --> 0:22:24.120 language journals, And there was transmission of scientific information back 0:22:24.119 --> 0:22:28.880 and forth, like there was translation of journals going from 0:22:28.960 --> 0:22:32.480 each side to the other, but the transmission of information 0:22:32.560 --> 0:22:36.119 between the two spheres was limited in certain ways, for 0:22:36.240 --> 0:22:41.160 both intentional and unintentional reasons. And these reasons included everything 0:22:41.200 --> 0:22:45.320 from certain types of government restrictions on travel and communication 0:22:45.440 --> 0:22:49.120 across the Iron Curtain to simple things like the language 0:22:49.119 --> 0:22:52.480 barrier and the financial costs of acquiring Western journals in 0:22:52.520 --> 0:22:56.720 the Soviet Union. And it seems to me that motivations 0:22:56.720 --> 0:23:00.159 and outlook throughout the scientific community were very mixed. Like 0:23:00.240 --> 0:23:03.639 some scientists on both sides had a more global view 0:23:03.840 --> 0:23:07.320 of worldwide cooperation, very you know, for the good of 0:23:07.400 --> 0:23:11.080 humankind kind of approach to scientific work. Others were more 0:23:11.160 --> 0:23:15.560 partisan or nationalistic, you know, trying to advance their side 0:23:15.600 --> 0:23:18.760 in the Cold War and kind of jealous or suspicious 0:23:18.760 --> 0:23:22.360 of the other side. So while communication of cutting edge 0:23:22.400 --> 0:23:26.800 science between East and West did happen, it was sometimes 0:23:26.880 --> 0:23:30.200 limited or delayed, and in certain fields that were seen 0:23:30.240 --> 0:23:34.080 as more crucial for national security, it was more often 0:23:34.119 --> 0:23:37.840 tightly constrained or not shared at all, And a lot 0:23:37.880 --> 0:23:42.080 of times when new discoveries were shared between the two spheres, 0:23:42.560 --> 0:23:46.880 it happened at these international conferences, through lectures or even 0:23:46.920 --> 0:23:49.640 just individual chance meetings between scientists. 0:23:50.200 --> 0:23:54.960 We've discussed before on the show how this competitiveness in 0:23:55.000 --> 0:23:57.320 the Cold War it led also led to things like 0:23:58.760 --> 0:24:02.679 paranormal research on both sides, where a lot of it 0:24:02.720 --> 0:24:04.800 seemed to have been fueled by the idea that, like, 0:24:04.840 --> 0:24:07.239 there may be nothing to this, but if there is 0:24:07.280 --> 0:24:10.480 something to yes, we want we want to at least 0:24:10.480 --> 0:24:13.000 be on equal footing with the enemy. And of course 0:24:13.040 --> 0:24:14.240 there was nothing to any of it. 0:24:14.440 --> 0:24:17.600 Yeah, if the Soviets are training psychic assassins, we better 0:24:17.680 --> 0:24:19.680 check that out too and see if there's something going 0:24:19.720 --> 0:24:20.160 on here. 0:24:20.400 --> 0:24:23.320 Yeah, even if in reality we might maybe we're even 0:24:23.760 --> 0:24:26.520 we're even falling into a trap, wasting our time, and 0:24:26.560 --> 0:24:29.720 that was the whole point. So yeah, we've discussed that 0:24:29.760 --> 0:24:33.000 on the show before, so similar energy in some of this, I imagine. 0:24:33.440 --> 0:24:37.639 So the timeline for polywater within this context starts in 0:24:37.680 --> 0:24:40.400 the early nineteen sixties. I think the first research would 0:24:40.400 --> 0:24:44.280 have been around nineteen sixty two when a Soviet researcher 0:24:44.359 --> 0:24:48.600 named Nikolai Fedyakin made a discovery while working at the 0:24:48.640 --> 0:24:51.720 Polytechnical Institute in Kostroma, which is a city on the 0:24:51.800 --> 0:24:57.400 Volga northeast of Moscow. And what Fedyakin found was that 0:24:57.600 --> 0:25:03.120 when you put water inside a very narrow glass capillary tube, 0:25:03.760 --> 0:25:07.040 so imagine like a tiny, tiny glass straw where the 0:25:07.080 --> 0:25:09.120 tube is only about as wide as a human hair, 0:25:09.320 --> 0:25:13.159 or even narrower. When you did that, it appeared that 0:25:13.240 --> 0:25:19.080 the water would somehow separate into two different columns of liquid. 0:25:20.080 --> 0:25:23.399 So think about like you ever mix up a salad dressing. 0:25:23.440 --> 0:25:25.720 You're mixing up oil and water. If you don't have 0:25:25.800 --> 0:25:28.480 a good to mulsifier in there, you might shake it 0:25:28.560 --> 0:25:30.400 up and it'll get all mixed up, but then over 0:25:30.440 --> 0:25:33.080 time the suspension will separate and the oil will float 0:25:33.119 --> 0:25:38.919 to the top. Fadyakin was watching something like this happen 0:25:39.280 --> 0:25:43.240 over a period of days or weeks inside these extremely 0:25:43.400 --> 0:25:48.000 tiny glass tubes, except it wasn't oil and water, it 0:25:48.080 --> 0:25:50.960 was just water. So it was like pure water was 0:25:51.000 --> 0:25:58.040 separating into water and question marks something else. What could 0:25:58.040 --> 0:26:03.080 it be? And this anomolus secondary substance would tend to 0:26:03.200 --> 0:26:06.000 appear at the top of the column in the tube, 0:26:06.359 --> 0:26:09.320 and it seemed to grow in volume proportional to a 0:26:09.400 --> 0:26:12.679 loss of water at the bottom of the tube. It 0:26:12.720 --> 0:26:14.919 wasn't like all of the water became the stuff at 0:26:14.960 --> 0:26:17.639 the top, but it looked to Fedyakin like some of 0:26:17.680 --> 0:26:21.359 it turned into this water at the top. So it 0:26:21.440 --> 0:26:24.560 really seemed like what was happening was that the regular 0:26:24.600 --> 0:26:28.680 water was evaporating from below and then condensing above, having 0:26:28.760 --> 0:26:34.080 been transformed into something else. But there was no physical 0:26:34.200 --> 0:26:37.960 reason it should have been evaporating and condensing somewhere else, 0:26:38.040 --> 0:26:41.160 because the temperature and the pressure in the tubes were 0:26:41.160 --> 0:26:45.800 supposedly held constant throughout. So the only way this would 0:26:45.800 --> 0:26:49.480 really make sense was if the secondary water was somehow 0:26:49.760 --> 0:26:54.000 different from the primary water, with a lower vapor pressure 0:26:54.600 --> 0:27:00.160 meaning a higher boiling point, and Fedyakin believed this secondary 0:27:00.200 --> 0:27:03.320 liquid was still water, but it was a new form 0:27:03.359 --> 0:27:06.840 of water, chemically identical irregular water, so still h two oz, 0:27:07.400 --> 0:27:10.600 but with a different physical structure that gave it different 0:27:10.640 --> 0:27:14.440 properties at scale. For example, it seemed to be denser 0:27:14.480 --> 0:27:16.840 than normal liquid water. And I'll come back to those 0:27:16.880 --> 0:27:20.320 properties in just a minute. But here we have the 0:27:20.359 --> 0:27:23.760 intervention of a figure who will become incredibly important in 0:27:23.800 --> 0:27:28.639 the history of polywater. After Fedyakin publishes his findings in 0:27:28.640 --> 0:27:32.320 a Russian journal, they catch the attention of an extremely 0:27:32.359 --> 0:27:38.320 distinguished and important Soviet chemist and named Boris V. Der Yagan. Deryagan, 0:27:38.760 --> 0:27:42.320 working out of Moscow, believed this anomalous water to be 0:27:42.600 --> 0:27:46.959 of immense scientific and technological importance, so he started a 0:27:46.960 --> 0:27:51.000 collaboration with Fedyakin, and then it seems he effectively took 0:27:51.040 --> 0:27:54.520 over research on the subject. So for a while, Derriagan 0:27:54.560 --> 0:27:57.760 would become sort of the anomalous water guy. He's the 0:27:57.840 --> 0:28:01.720 main advocate for this program, and he and his colleagues 0:28:01.760 --> 0:28:05.040 published ten papers on the anomalous water by the time 0:28:05.200 --> 0:28:08.760 he presented on this subject at a conference in nineteen 0:28:08.800 --> 0:28:13.960 sixty six. So we mentioned earlier what some of the characteristics, 0:28:14.000 --> 0:28:17.560 the alleged characteristics of this anomalous water were, but I 0:28:17.680 --> 0:28:20.399 just want to run through them briefly again here. The 0:28:20.520 --> 0:28:23.800 numbers cited tend to be different in different sources, and 0:28:23.840 --> 0:28:27.560 I think this probably reflects a range of reported results 0:28:27.600 --> 0:28:30.439 in the primary literature, so I'm trying to kind of 0:28:30.440 --> 0:28:34.199 put them all together here. This water somehow did not 0:28:34.400 --> 0:28:37.360 boil at the regular boiling point of water, so did 0:28:37.359 --> 0:28:39.840 not boil at one hundred degrees celsius. It had a 0:28:39.920 --> 0:28:43.160 much higher boiling point. Some sources place it at about 0:28:43.200 --> 0:28:46.720 two hundred degrees cee. Others say more like three hundred degrees. 0:28:47.360 --> 0:28:51.880 That's going to definitely hurt your soup thickening applications here. 0:28:52.200 --> 0:28:55.640 Yeah, some problems here. Its freezing point seem to also 0:28:55.680 --> 0:28:59.120 be more of a range, beginning at about negative thirty 0:28:59.160 --> 0:29:02.760 degrees celsia, and then I've seen other sources say negative 0:29:02.800 --> 0:29:05.920 fifty degrees celsius. And again it was said to be 0:29:06.000 --> 0:29:09.160 more dense and viscous than normal water. So we get 0:29:09.160 --> 0:29:11.959 a range of figures, but it's up to like forty 0:29:12.000 --> 0:29:17.280 percent denser than normal water and fifteen times more viscous. 0:29:17.320 --> 0:29:21.360 Sources describe its consistency as similar to that of petroleum 0:29:21.440 --> 0:29:25.240 jelly like vacilline, or sometimes compare it to paraffin wax. 0:29:26.360 --> 0:29:29.640 I want to emphasize though here there was very little 0:29:29.760 --> 0:29:31.920 of it being made, So this wasn't like they were 0:29:31.920 --> 0:29:34.600 making bowls of it and sticking their hands into it 0:29:34.640 --> 0:29:38.360 and saying, oh, it's like vacoline. They were making microscopic 0:29:38.600 --> 0:29:45.160 quantities and then extract extrapolating from those microscopic quantities into 0:29:46.000 --> 0:29:48.920 what they thought the macroscopic qualities would be. 0:29:49.920 --> 0:29:52.400 Okay, reminds me a little bit of our recent episode 0:29:52.520 --> 0:29:57.480 on the idea of manufacturing gold and what is currently 0:29:57.560 --> 0:30:00.400 possible like small unstable amounts so forth. 0:30:00.880 --> 0:30:03.400 Oh yeah, yeah, I mean yeah, this is a somewhat 0:30:03.440 --> 0:30:07.400 similar It is a manufacturing program of this very interesting 0:30:07.600 --> 0:30:11.240 and potentially quite valuable new material. But they can only 0:30:11.280 --> 0:30:25.600 make tiny, tiny amounts at a time. So this anomalous water, 0:30:26.040 --> 0:30:31.480 if it really existed, would have bizarre and fascinating implications. 0:30:31.600 --> 0:30:34.920 For one thing, Philip Ball explains this in his chapter, 0:30:35.920 --> 0:30:38.280 it might not even make sense to call this new 0:30:38.320 --> 0:30:42.680 water anomalous water, because really this form of water, with 0:30:42.840 --> 0:30:47.440 the lower vapor pressure would potentially be the more stable 0:30:47.720 --> 0:30:51.840 form of water. So really it would be the regular water, 0:30:52.280 --> 0:30:54.840 and the water that we know would be the weird 0:30:54.920 --> 0:30:57.760 water that would be it would be the unusual form. 0:30:58.480 --> 0:31:03.400 It might be what can mists call meta stable. Meta 0:31:03.400 --> 0:31:08.880 stable would mean it's in a semi stable form occupying 0:31:09.000 --> 0:31:13.280 a local energy minimum, which, given the right conditions to 0:31:13.280 --> 0:31:17.920 get past that energy barrier, will hop down and transform 0:31:18.040 --> 0:31:23.080 into the more stable lower energy form. As a rough analogy, 0:31:23.120 --> 0:31:26.600 you can think of meta stability as the chemical equivalent 0:31:26.720 --> 0:31:29.320 of like a ball sitting in a bowl on the 0:31:29.440 --> 0:31:32.680 edge of a table. So the ball is stable sitting 0:31:32.680 --> 0:31:35.880 in the bowl. It's not going to suddenly fall through 0:31:35.920 --> 0:31:38.720 the bottom of the bowl and through the table onto 0:31:38.720 --> 0:31:42.600 the floor. But if it's somehow perturbed, like if it 0:31:42.680 --> 0:31:45.120 is knocked over the lip of the bowl and off 0:31:45.160 --> 0:31:48.240 the edge of the table, gravity will act on it 0:31:48.280 --> 0:31:50.000 and pull it all the way down to the floor. 0:31:50.360 --> 0:31:53.520 So in this analogy, the bowl is the liquid water 0:31:53.600 --> 0:31:56.760 we know and the floor is the anomalous water. Here 0:31:56.800 --> 0:31:58.400 we get back to that scary image. 0:31:58.640 --> 0:32:02.360 Yeah, yes, scary is a good description because it does 0:32:02.400 --> 0:32:04.960 remind me of a number of the concepts that you 0:32:05.120 --> 0:32:08.560 encounter in cosmic horror. You know, where there's generally some 0:32:08.600 --> 0:32:12.360 sort of a scenario by which reality, be it inner 0:32:12.400 --> 0:32:16.640 reality or outer reality as we know it turns out 0:32:16.640 --> 0:32:20.840 to be in a lot more fragile a place. Yes, 0:32:21.240 --> 0:32:24.360 and just by knowing about its fragility, you put it 0:32:24.360 --> 0:32:24.840 at risk. 0:32:25.240 --> 0:32:28.800 Yes. Yes, that the horror of what you thought was 0:32:28.840 --> 0:32:32.480 normal is actually the brief exception, and we were about 0:32:32.560 --> 0:32:36.520 to return to the more normal state of reality, which 0:32:36.560 --> 0:32:37.680 is horrifying to us. 0:32:38.080 --> 0:32:38.920 Yeah. 0:32:39.160 --> 0:32:41.440 So I feel like I need to emphasize again that 0:32:41.520 --> 0:32:44.719 this was by no means agreed on by all proponents 0:32:44.760 --> 0:32:48.840 of the new water. But to some it seemed possible 0:32:48.880 --> 0:32:53.920 that thermodynamically all water wanted to be the anomalous water, 0:32:54.440 --> 0:32:57.440 and with the right push, like some kind of seed crystal, 0:32:57.640 --> 0:33:02.400 it could turn into polywater. So what would have been 0:33:02.560 --> 0:33:08.120 the theoretical reason that water took this different form. Philip 0:33:08.120 --> 0:33:11.360 Ball's account here again has a great section explaining the reasoning. 0:33:12.240 --> 0:33:16.440 One thing that is absolutely true is that molecules of 0:33:16.480 --> 0:33:22.320 liquid water behave weirdly and assume new structures when they 0:33:22.360 --> 0:33:26.480 come into contact with a surface or a wall. At 0:33:26.520 --> 0:33:30.880 the interface with a surface, several layers of liquid water 0:33:31.000 --> 0:33:36.920 molecules nearest the surface will often form unusual patterns and arrangements, 0:33:36.920 --> 0:33:40.479 so they'll act differently than water. Just in the center 0:33:40.560 --> 0:33:43.800 of a mass of liquid water, right up at the wall, 0:33:44.120 --> 0:33:48.680 they start to arrange themselves in different ways. Boris Deriagan 0:33:49.160 --> 0:33:54.040 knew something about this and proposed that something about the 0:33:54.160 --> 0:33:58.720 interaction with the glass surface on the inside of the 0:33:58.760 --> 0:34:04.040 capillary tube caused the water to assume this new structure 0:34:04.440 --> 0:34:08.960 and then, even more remarkably, somehow remember or retain this 0:34:09.040 --> 0:34:16.160 new structure even after evaporating and condensing again. So Derriagan 0:34:16.280 --> 0:34:19.000 and his team they started, you know, they fired up 0:34:19.080 --> 0:34:22.440 production and started making samples of this anomalous water. They 0:34:22.440 --> 0:34:25.520 came up with a faster system than Fidyakin had used, 0:34:25.840 --> 0:34:28.120 though the amounts they were able to produce it at 0:34:28.160 --> 0:34:31.760 a time were still very, very small, because the tubes 0:34:31.800 --> 0:34:34.560 were tiny, Like the tubes were like a tenth of 0:34:34.600 --> 0:34:38.239 a millimeter in width, and the columns of this anomalous 0:34:38.320 --> 0:34:40.640 water they were making, you know, might only be a 0:34:40.640 --> 0:34:45.439 millimeter tall. So you're talking tiny, tiny amounts. And one 0:34:45.480 --> 0:34:48.600 thing we're thinking about is that when you've got that 0:34:49.120 --> 0:34:52.120 little of a sample to work with, with these tiny, 0:34:52.200 --> 0:34:55.600 tiny amounts, you really need to be conscious of the 0:34:55.680 --> 0:35:00.200 dangers of contamination. Philip Ball flags this and Rousseauta talk 0:35:00.200 --> 0:35:03.120 about this in his paper as well. You're making so 0:35:03.640 --> 0:35:07.760 little of it that even a tiny amount of contamination 0:35:09.120 --> 0:35:12.880 in total in the capillary tubes would be a significant 0:35:12.920 --> 0:35:18.799 part of the final product and could change its properties significantly. So, 0:35:19.080 --> 0:35:22.720 you know, there were all these efforts made to ensure 0:35:22.960 --> 0:35:26.759 that the samples were of the highest possible purity, Like 0:35:27.080 --> 0:35:31.840 Derriogan and colleagues they used. They made sure that the 0:35:31.920 --> 0:35:35.200 silica used to make the glass capillary tubes was made 0:35:35.400 --> 0:35:38.440 was very pure. It was made from pure quartz, and 0:35:38.480 --> 0:35:42.440 this was to prevent like trace inorganic materials getting mixed 0:35:42.440 --> 0:35:44.799 in with the glass and then some leeching into the 0:35:44.800 --> 0:35:47.879 water in the tubes. And they also worked very hard 0:35:47.880 --> 0:35:50.720 to ensure that the water used in the experiment was pure. 0:35:50.840 --> 0:35:53.440 So they're of the you know, if you suggest to 0:35:53.480 --> 0:35:56.399 them that their samples are contaminated, they're like, no, look 0:35:56.440 --> 0:35:58.879 at all these links we go to to make sure 0:35:58.920 --> 0:36:02.160 that the samples cannot be contaminated. It's very very pure. 0:36:03.239 --> 0:36:06.680 But at the same time, it was still quite laborious 0:36:06.680 --> 0:36:10.000 to produce the anomalous water and very little was available, 0:36:10.040 --> 0:36:12.799 which limited the testing that could be done on it. 0:36:13.440 --> 0:36:15.960 So this is happening kind of in a bubble for 0:36:16.000 --> 0:36:19.719 a while, right, but eventually polywater is going to leak out. 0:36:19.600 --> 0:36:22.840 That's right. So the Western scientists start catching on to 0:36:22.960 --> 0:36:28.560 polywater beginning in around nineteen sixty six, Derriagan gave some 0:36:28.640 --> 0:36:31.879 conference presentations on it. Gave one in nineteen sixty five 0:36:32.840 --> 0:36:38.600 in Moscow, another in England in sixty six. Some scientists 0:36:38.680 --> 0:36:42.680 did attend these, but not many took notice, but a 0:36:42.719 --> 0:36:46.600 few did so ballflags a few scientists who got interested 0:36:46.640 --> 0:36:50.640 from these earliest talks. One was named Brian Pethica, who 0:36:50.800 --> 0:36:54.680 was a director of Unilever Research Laboratory at Port Sunlight 0:36:54.760 --> 0:36:57.640 in England. And another one is a figure I mentioned 0:36:57.640 --> 0:37:01.400 earlier in the episode, John Desmond Bernal, very famous and 0:37:01.440 --> 0:37:06.719 respected crystallographer, and supposedly after one of these I think 0:37:06.719 --> 0:37:10.399 it's the presentation in England, Bernal took der Yagan back 0:37:10.400 --> 0:37:13.719 to his lab at Birkbeck College in London and they 0:37:13.760 --> 0:37:16.400 had a talk where they were talking they were like 0:37:16.480 --> 0:37:19.640 talking about the procedure for making the anomalous water. And 0:37:19.760 --> 0:37:24.200 this was at this meeting. This was when Bernal allegedly 0:37:24.239 --> 0:37:25.919 said that this is going to be, you know, one 0:37:25.960 --> 0:37:31.560 of the most important discoveries of the century. So the 0:37:31.560 --> 0:37:34.560 two scientists I just mentioned in their associates, they start 0:37:34.560 --> 0:37:37.719 cranking on trying to do polywater research. It's not called 0:37:37.719 --> 0:37:41.600 polywater yet though, it's still anomalous water. And then meanwhile 0:37:41.640 --> 0:37:47.040 some American scientists get interested as well. You have Robert 0:37:47.080 --> 0:37:51.520 Stromberg of the National Bureau of Standards in Maryland, and 0:37:51.560 --> 0:37:56.160 then also Ellis Lippencott of the Center for Materials Research 0:37:56.200 --> 0:37:59.840 at the University of Maryland. They start cranking on polywater 0:38:00.080 --> 0:38:03.520 search as well. I think this was roughly nineteen sixty eight, 0:38:04.440 --> 0:38:07.319 and then anomalous water really started to break out into 0:38:07.320 --> 0:38:10.799 the open in sixty nine, when you had Pethica's team 0:38:10.880 --> 0:38:14.440 publish a paper in Nature. They reported their attempts to 0:38:14.480 --> 0:38:18.960 recreate the substance via dir Yogan's methods, and they started 0:38:19.000 --> 0:38:22.239 talking about the properties of the new water. Very importantly. 0:38:22.360 --> 0:38:26.640 Their publication included photographs, so now there's something to look at. 0:38:26.719 --> 0:38:30.680 You can see these microscopic columns, something that had condensed 0:38:30.680 --> 0:38:35.120 in the tubes. But one thing here is that Pethica's 0:38:35.120 --> 0:38:39.000 team offered some reasonable caveats For example, they said, we 0:38:39.040 --> 0:38:41.799 can't rule out that something is leeching out of the 0:38:41.800 --> 0:38:44.959 pyrex glass tubes and mixing with the water to form 0:38:44.960 --> 0:38:49.240 a gel. That's possible, but they thought that might explain 0:38:49.320 --> 0:38:52.560 our results. But it doesn't explain Deryogan's results because they're 0:38:52.640 --> 0:38:56.319 not using just like normal pyrex glass. They're using this 0:38:56.400 --> 0:39:02.920 special pure quartz silica glass. And then also they mentioned 0:39:03.000 --> 0:39:05.960 that their attempts to figure out what this stuff was 0:39:06.160 --> 0:39:09.200 were severely limited by how little of it could be produced. 0:39:09.440 --> 0:39:13.000 Microscopic amounts are hard to study. There is a quote 0:39:13.000 --> 0:39:17.360 attributed to one of JD. Bernell's students saying, if only 0:39:17.440 --> 0:39:21.520 we could make a thimbleful, but the anomalous water would 0:39:21.600 --> 0:39:26.279 really become a sensation. A few months later, when Stromberg 0:39:26.320 --> 0:39:30.760 and Lippincott published their own research in the journal Science, 0:39:30.880 --> 0:39:33.560 and their research was a big deal because it used 0:39:33.560 --> 0:39:39.760 the technique of infrared spectroscopy. So spectroscopy is a powerful 0:39:39.760 --> 0:39:42.440 tool of analysis that lets you study a substance by 0:39:42.440 --> 0:39:46.520 measuring how it absorbs, emits or scatters various kinds of 0:39:46.600 --> 0:39:51.439 electromagnetic radiation, like infrared or UV light or visible light. 0:39:52.320 --> 0:39:56.279 Each molecule has its own special pattern of absorption or 0:39:56.320 --> 0:40:00.480 emission or scattering, determined by things like the atomic makeup 0:40:00.640 --> 0:40:04.000 and the chemical bonds within it. So you can make 0:40:04.040 --> 0:40:07.319 a spectrum graph of a substance and that will tell 0:40:07.360 --> 0:40:10.359 you things about its molecular makeup and structure which are 0:40:10.360 --> 0:40:13.400 too small to see with the naked eye. Spectroscopy is 0:40:13.480 --> 0:40:16.000 used all throughout various kinds of sciences. It's not just 0:40:16.040 --> 0:40:19.600 in chemical analysis, you know, it's used in like astronomy. 0:40:19.640 --> 0:40:22.799 We use spectroscopy to try to figure out what elements 0:40:22.840 --> 0:40:25.759 are in the atmosphere of another planet we're looking at, 0:40:25.880 --> 0:40:29.800 or something like that. Stromberg and Lippincott publish their paper 0:40:29.840 --> 0:40:32.799 in the journal Science in nineteen sixty nine, and they 0:40:32.800 --> 0:40:36.720 were building on some previous research that had also used spectroscopy, 0:40:37.360 --> 0:40:40.520 but they were trying to show that the anomalous water, 0:40:40.920 --> 0:40:44.800 because it produced this different spectrum, had a different structure 0:40:44.840 --> 0:40:48.360 from familiar water, and they proposed that it was something 0:40:48.520 --> 0:40:52.359 like a stable polymer. And this paper is where we 0:40:52.600 --> 0:40:57.200 get the term polywater. It was the paper's title. And 0:40:57.239 --> 0:41:00.400 I think we should pause here to think of this, 0:41:00.440 --> 0:41:04.240 because I think it's wise not to overlook the power 0:41:04.760 --> 0:41:10.320 of giving something an intriguing name. Naming is persuasive. Naming 0:41:10.440 --> 0:41:13.680 is rhetorical. I think in a lot of cases, giving 0:41:13.719 --> 0:41:17.680 a concept an evocative name really affects how it is 0:41:17.760 --> 0:41:21.200 received in multiple ways. For one thing, if there's a 0:41:21.400 --> 0:41:24.799 name for something, instead of just talking about something in 0:41:24.880 --> 0:41:28.879 descriptive terms, like anomalous water, if there's a specific new 0:41:29.000 --> 0:41:32.120 name for it feels like it's something that really exists, 0:41:32.200 --> 0:41:34.160 doesn't it. You know, why would it have a name 0:41:34.200 --> 0:41:37.520 if it didn't exist? And then the qualities of the 0:41:37.600 --> 0:41:41.120 name affect how we think about the thing. To me, 0:41:41.239 --> 0:41:45.480 when I hear polywater sounds new, sounds exciting, sounds like 0:41:45.560 --> 0:41:49.320 a product almost. In fact, that may be one reason 0:41:49.640 --> 0:41:51.920 why it could have been appealing to adopt as the 0:41:52.040 --> 0:41:54.600 name of a product line actually, which you were talking 0:41:54.600 --> 0:41:55.240 about earlier. 0:41:55.960 --> 0:41:58.440 Yeah, this is a great point though. Yeah, once you've 0:41:58.480 --> 0:42:01.719 given it an intriguing name, polly water, it's like a 0:42:03.200 --> 0:42:05.880 like the brain kind of chews on it when it 0:42:05.920 --> 0:42:09.640 absorbs the term, because you know, water as mundane as 0:42:09.680 --> 0:42:12.680 it and as it gets also being you know, essential 0:42:12.719 --> 0:42:18.479 to pretty much everything. But that what does polywater mean? 0:42:18.680 --> 0:42:20.440 Like you have to sort of like break down what 0:42:20.480 --> 0:42:22.600 the con what it even means and it doesn't sound 0:42:23.520 --> 0:42:26.400 overtly evil or anything. It's not like they called it 0:42:26.480 --> 0:42:30.759 doom water or and it's also not super goofy. They 0:42:30.760 --> 0:42:33.480 didn't call it like, I don't know, ranch water or something, 0:42:34.880 --> 0:42:39.320 but polywater. It just it begins to raise questions in 0:42:39.360 --> 0:42:41.360 the mind. And it does kind of feel like the 0:42:41.400 --> 0:42:44.120 sort of thing like like it's like it's it's hiding, 0:42:44.200 --> 0:42:47.160 you know, like it's it could be secretly bad, but 0:42:47.600 --> 0:42:50.040 we just don't know how to feel about it. Just 0:42:50.080 --> 0:42:51.759 based on that that that term. 0:42:52.040 --> 0:42:54.319 Yeah, well, these authors, I think we're not making the 0:42:54.360 --> 0:42:55.600 case it was secretly bad. 0:42:55.719 --> 0:42:55.920 You know. 0:42:56.280 --> 0:42:58.040 They were not one of the ones saying, oh, it's 0:42:58.080 --> 0:43:00.399 gonna it's gonna take over the earth and and olar 0:43:00.480 --> 0:43:01.560 water into vasoline. 0:43:02.000 --> 0:43:02.200 Yeah. 0:43:03.280 --> 0:43:06.080 So, now that the substance had an and I should say, 0:43:06.120 --> 0:43:08.440 by the way, that at this point a bunch of 0:43:08.480 --> 0:43:15.480 people writing about anomalous water now polywater, were proposing physical 0:43:16.480 --> 0:43:19.600 molecular structures for the polymers. Some of them were saying, oh, 0:43:19.640 --> 0:43:24.960 it's a square form with four linked water molecules. Others 0:43:24.960 --> 0:43:29.080 were saying it's a hexagon form forming these sheets of 0:43:29.239 --> 0:43:34.600 water molecules. This was, again without having actually established firmly 0:43:34.640 --> 0:43:37.160 that it was water, but they were you know, they 0:43:37.160 --> 0:43:40.400 were moving on quickly to the theoretical stage and trying 0:43:40.440 --> 0:43:43.640 to say like what can how does it work before 0:43:43.800 --> 0:43:47.040 firmly establishing that it actually is something. 0:43:46.920 --> 0:43:49.080 Well, and then also the fact that it's being picked 0:43:49.160 --> 0:43:54.760 up increasingly by science communicators, by writers, right, yeah, because 0:43:55.360 --> 0:43:58.080 in bringing a concept like this to a wider audience, 0:43:58.640 --> 0:44:00.760 you you kind of do have to to get beyond 0:44:00.920 --> 0:44:04.839 like just the pure chemistry and speculative structure of the thing, 0:44:04.960 --> 0:44:07.960 and you have to end up talking about the practicalities 0:44:08.000 --> 0:44:11.759 or hypothetical practicalities in order to make people understand like 0:44:11.800 --> 0:44:13.600 what you're talking about, you know, you have to sort 0:44:13.600 --> 0:44:18.439 of work back from that to communicate the chemistry that's right. 0:44:18.520 --> 0:44:22.120 So yeah, now that it had been named I think, 0:44:22.239 --> 0:44:26.080 very importantly and had been given credibility by respected scientists 0:44:26.120 --> 0:44:28.800 in a Western journal, it was kind of polywater fever, 0:44:29.120 --> 0:44:32.600 you know. In nineteen sixty nine, a lot of researchers 0:44:32.640 --> 0:44:35.520 in relevant fields took notice. They started talking and writing 0:44:35.560 --> 0:44:39.000 about the subject. There was a division of opinion. Some 0:44:39.040 --> 0:44:41.480 were skeptical about it. Some were like, are we sure 0:44:41.520 --> 0:44:46.600 this isn't just contamination or impurities? Others were more bullish 0:44:46.600 --> 0:44:48.280 on it. You know, they're like, no, this is real. 0:44:48.480 --> 0:44:51.200 You know, this is going to change the world. There 0:44:51.239 --> 0:44:54.360 was this proliferation of theoretical work on the structure of 0:44:54.400 --> 0:44:58.360 poly water, but as you alluded to by it was 0:44:58.360 --> 0:45:00.799 by the summer of nineteen sixty nine really that the 0:45:00.840 --> 0:45:05.560 mainstream press caught wind of it and started going going bananas. 0:45:06.800 --> 0:45:11.080 So Philip Ball mentions that once the subject move from 0:45:11.200 --> 0:45:16.000 professional and scientific journals into the mainstream press, the mainstream 0:45:16.040 --> 0:45:20.239 press kind of became the preferred venue for even the 0:45:20.280 --> 0:45:24.160 scientists themselves to communicate on the subject. Maybe not all 0:45:24.239 --> 0:45:26.239 of them, but some of them, the most you know, 0:45:26.640 --> 0:45:29.719 the most eager to argue, wanted to go straight to 0:45:29.920 --> 0:45:32.640 the mainstream press. And you know what, you still see 0:45:32.800 --> 0:45:35.839 versions of this phenomenon today, don't you. Like, somebody has 0:45:35.880 --> 0:45:39.640 a revolutionary new idea, it's not really getting traction with 0:45:39.680 --> 0:45:43.400 their professional colleagues. So you can just bypass your expert 0:45:43.440 --> 0:45:46.040 colleagues and take your claims straight to the daily mail, 0:45:46.160 --> 0:45:48.239 or you know, you go straight to some kind of 0:45:49.040 --> 0:45:52.319 blog or popular press, or now even easier, you go 0:45:52.360 --> 0:45:54.720 to social media or the podcast circuit. 0:45:55.160 --> 0:45:59.600 That's right, Yeah, then you're you're avoiding then the the 0:45:59.640 --> 0:46:04.879 peer of scrutiny that you would otherwise go through, and 0:46:05.440 --> 0:46:08.480 you're also throwing out, you know, what may be just 0:46:08.719 --> 0:46:14.680 a very loose hypothesis into the public arena where there 0:46:14.719 --> 0:46:19.239 may be less of an understanding at times regarding you know, 0:46:19.280 --> 0:46:22.600 the nature of hypothesis and and how these ideas work. 0:46:22.640 --> 0:46:26.160 And indeed, the enterprise of science that that every scientific 0:46:26.200 --> 0:46:30.480 idea that is presented is not is not one solidified yet, 0:46:30.480 --> 0:46:33.759 that we go through this process. So so, yeah, you 0:46:33.760 --> 0:46:35.399 can see where the problems emerge here. 0:46:35.840 --> 0:46:39.000 Yeah, process is so important that that science is a 0:46:39.160 --> 0:46:44.880 process of gradual understanding and clarification that you know, over time, 0:46:45.000 --> 0:46:48.640 you you bring things into sharper focus and you figure 0:46:48.680 --> 0:46:52.440 out you're able to weed out what you thought yesterday. 0:46:52.480 --> 0:46:54.600 You know, the things you thought yesterday, some of them 0:46:54.640 --> 0:46:57.160 actually do make sense and are are borne out by 0:46:57.200 --> 0:46:58.080 results and some are not. 0:46:58.560 --> 0:47:02.640 Yeah, and when you do realize that, okay, polywater never existed, 0:47:02.880 --> 0:47:05.120 like that is part of the scientific process. That is 0:47:05.120 --> 0:47:07.400 like a natural part of it. That's not like ohe 0:47:07.440 --> 0:47:11.080 science messed up. Yeah, you know, the mistakes are part 0:47:11.120 --> 0:47:12.680 of the of the whole process. 0:47:13.080 --> 0:47:15.120 Though I think it's important to be fair and be 0:47:15.200 --> 0:47:17.520 clear about the fact that polywater was not something that 0:47:17.680 --> 0:47:22.880 was roundly rejected as fringe crankery by by prestigious scientists 0:47:22.960 --> 0:47:26.399 at the time. A lot of very respected scientists were 0:47:26.440 --> 0:47:28.960 buying into it. Certainly not all the were sceptics too, 0:47:29.040 --> 0:47:33.240 but it was treated as a legitimate, lively debate. 0:47:33.600 --> 0:47:33.799 Yeah. 0:47:34.239 --> 0:47:36.960 Meanwhile, in the popular media, you had all this you know, 0:47:37.080 --> 0:47:39.920 wild stuff. We mentioned earlier, the idea that you know, 0:47:39.960 --> 0:47:41.279 they were saying, we're going to use it as some 0:47:41.360 --> 0:47:43.320 kind of super lubricant or it's going to be in 0:47:43.400 --> 0:47:47.040 nuclear reactors. Philip Ball highlights that quote from the Wall 0:47:47.040 --> 0:47:49.560 Street Journal about how our furniture is going to be 0:47:49.560 --> 0:47:50.560 made out of polywater. 0:47:51.480 --> 0:47:53.120 How is that? How would that even work? 0:47:53.680 --> 0:47:54.239 I don't know. 0:47:54.840 --> 0:47:56.239 It's like waterbeds sort of. 0:47:56.480 --> 0:47:58.080 I didn't. I didn't dig in and get to the 0:47:58.080 --> 0:47:59.799 bottom of that, but I would like to know more. 0:48:00.080 --> 0:48:02.680 I'm guessing stuffing of couch cushions with polywater. 0:48:02.920 --> 0:48:07.840 But anyway, here's one detail. This is also mentioned in 0:48:07.880 --> 0:48:11.399 Ball's account that I love the idea came up in 0:48:11.440 --> 0:48:15.680 some popular media that, h what if the lunar regolith 0:48:16.040 --> 0:48:19.399 that was that was sticking to the astronaut's boots during 0:48:19.400 --> 0:48:23.680 the moon landing was actually a kind of polymer moon mud. 0:48:24.120 --> 0:48:28.000 It was lunar soil with polywater mixed in. Like, wouldn't 0:48:28.040 --> 0:48:30.160 that be a cool way that the Moon could have 0:48:30.280 --> 0:48:32.960 retained water over the past billions of years. 0:48:33.520 --> 0:48:37.960 Oh yeah, that's just like essentially oceans of water pudding. 0:48:38.120 --> 0:48:44.279 Yeah, yeah, moon mud, polymud, And again other articles we're 0:48:44.280 --> 0:48:46.080 talking about, Oh, it's it's going to be the key 0:48:46.080 --> 0:48:49.840 to understanding how how life works, or it's going to unlock, 0:48:49.960 --> 0:48:53.759 you know, the secrets of eternal life. Maybe it plays 0:48:53.800 --> 0:48:57.960 some role in cells. And this is also, of course, 0:48:58.160 --> 0:49:00.880 the time we get to that letter Thatajo sends to 0:49:01.000 --> 0:49:04.719 Nature about how polywater is potentially the most dangerous substance 0:49:04.719 --> 0:49:18.799 on Earth and its containment was of absolute necessity. Now 0:49:18.800 --> 0:49:22.560 we already explained early on what Donahoe's reasoning was there 0:49:22.600 --> 0:49:25.200 that okay, so a bit of a bit of this 0:49:25.360 --> 0:49:29.359 polywater acts as a seed crystal. It transforms all of 0:49:29.400 --> 0:49:32.560 the water in the environment into the more stable form 0:49:32.600 --> 0:49:35.920 of water, which is polywater, and then if there is 0:49:35.960 --> 0:49:39.680 no ambient mechanism to turn it back, then we're really 0:49:39.800 --> 0:49:43.680 in a bad situation. There However, in the next issue 0:49:43.680 --> 0:49:48.400 of Nature, Donahoe's note was rebuked by responses from multiple 0:49:48.520 --> 0:49:52.640 esteemed scientists, including Bernal who I mentioned earlier, who is 0:49:52.680 --> 0:49:57.520 a very very dogged proponent of polywater, very much a believer, 0:49:58.320 --> 0:50:02.839 also by a British chemist named Douglas Everett, and their 0:50:02.880 --> 0:50:06.240 point was like, well, you are getting way ahead of yourself, 0:50:06.320 --> 0:50:08.680 and there are good reasons for thinking that this is 0:50:08.719 --> 0:50:12.680 not going to happen. So they've pointed out, for example, 0:50:13.440 --> 0:50:17.279 we've seen polywater in contact with regular water already. We've 0:50:17.320 --> 0:50:20.320 seen that in the laboratory, and we have not observed 0:50:20.360 --> 0:50:23.520 it transforming the normal water through touch alone. So it's 0:50:23.560 --> 0:50:26.880 not like water comes into contact with polywater and then 0:50:27.040 --> 0:50:30.600 is all transformed. That's not what we observe. And then 0:50:30.719 --> 0:50:33.920 second they say, you know, if polywater exists, it must 0:50:33.920 --> 0:50:38.399 occur sometimes in nature because there are natural quartz surfaces, 0:50:39.160 --> 0:50:42.120 some must have pores and capillaries like the tubes in 0:50:42.160 --> 0:50:46.799 our experiments. And it is not already the case that 0:50:46.920 --> 0:50:50.120 all of Earth's water has been transformed into polywater. So 0:50:50.160 --> 0:50:53.200 if that were going to happen through exposure to poly water, 0:50:53.280 --> 0:50:55.120 it would have already happened in the past four and 0:50:55.120 --> 0:50:57.839 a half billion years. If it hasn't already happened, it's 0:50:57.840 --> 0:50:58.920 not going to happen. 0:50:59.040 --> 0:51:02.640 Right, Right, because to be clear, like, it's not like 0:51:02.719 --> 0:51:05.360 the invention of glass and putting water in glass tubes 0:51:05.719 --> 0:51:09.000 created a drastically different environment that it never existed on 0:51:09.080 --> 0:51:10.759 Earth before, right, And. 0:51:10.719 --> 0:51:13.759 These seem like reasonable arguments to me, though again it's 0:51:13.840 --> 0:51:17.560 this double confusion to sort through when you're trying to 0:51:17.560 --> 0:51:20.719 figure out whether it's reasonable to fear a doomsday scenario 0:51:21.120 --> 0:51:24.719 from a substance that within a few years everyone would 0:51:24.719 --> 0:51:26.319 agree does not exist at all. 0:51:26.680 --> 0:51:30.960 Yeah, it's really fascinating to think about, especially the scientist's 0:51:30.960 --> 0:51:32.840 point of view and all of this at the time. 0:51:33.280 --> 0:51:36.000 And you see this in various other scenarios that are 0:51:36.280 --> 0:51:40.440 similar to the poly water scenario that we'll get to later, 0:51:41.480 --> 0:51:43.960 where you know, how do you proceed if you're faced 0:51:44.000 --> 0:51:49.360 with even a slim possibility of a disastrous consequence? Do 0:51:50.040 --> 0:51:53.520 stop researching? Do you put up you know, you know, 0:51:53.600 --> 0:51:57.959 blockers and you'd refuse to go forward? Do you run 0:51:57.960 --> 0:52:01.879 more tests? Like how how does science proceed? Because we've 0:52:01.880 --> 0:52:04.080 talked about before, like science, you know, we think of 0:52:04.120 --> 0:52:06.600 it as kind of like a slime mold and a maze, 0:52:06.960 --> 0:52:09.720 and it's branching out and it's going through the different 0:52:09.719 --> 0:52:12.360 corridors of the maze. But then if you say no 0:52:12.520 --> 0:52:14.960 slime mold, you don't go down this corridor, like that's 0:52:15.239 --> 0:52:18.960 that's you know, that kind of runs against the whole scenario. 0:52:19.120 --> 0:52:21.640 But on the other hand, like there are definite there 0:52:21.680 --> 0:52:24.759 are definite times and places where you where we as 0:52:24.840 --> 0:52:27.320 a culture have to say no, we can't, we can't 0:52:27.360 --> 0:52:30.600 test like this, We can't, we can't or shouldn't go 0:52:30.680 --> 0:52:35.640 after this. But it becomes a very nuanced conversation regarding 0:52:35.680 --> 0:52:36.920 some of those corridors. 0:52:37.160 --> 0:52:41.160 Yeah, it's hard to know where the line should be, 0:52:41.360 --> 0:52:44.160 especially I think when you're dealing. I mean, it's clear 0:52:44.200 --> 0:52:47.080 if it's like there's a pretty good chance of very 0:52:47.160 --> 0:52:50.359 catastrophic danger, Okay, then it becomes very clear we should 0:52:50.400 --> 0:52:52.920 do what we can to limit this research. What if 0:52:52.960 --> 0:53:00.200 it's like the danger would be absolutely apocalyptic if if 0:53:00.239 --> 0:53:03.319 it became real, but the chance of it happening is 0:53:03.800 --> 0:53:07.400 considered very very low. What do you do there? 0:53:07.680 --> 0:53:09.960 Yeah, yeah, and then yeah, what are the potential of 0:53:10.080 --> 0:53:13.160 positive outcomes and so forth. So again we'll come back 0:53:13.160 --> 0:53:17.480 to some other scenarios that also have these parameters in place. 0:53:18.160 --> 0:53:21.520 By the way, while all of this media frenzy is 0:53:21.560 --> 0:53:23.759 going on and all of this debate is raging back 0:53:23.800 --> 0:53:27.080 and forth, Philip ballflags something that I think is really 0:53:27.239 --> 0:53:30.319 worth noting. He says, while all this is happening, there 0:53:30.560 --> 0:53:34.920 still has not been a single high quality chemical analysis 0:53:34.960 --> 0:53:39.680 of polywater published anywhere. So while we're arguing about what 0:53:39.800 --> 0:53:43.839 its polymer structure is, about whether or not it's dangerous, 0:53:44.840 --> 0:53:49.600 nobody has actually shown definitively that it is water. There's 0:53:49.680 --> 0:53:52.560 been no experiment that has demonstrated this, and again it's 0:53:52.600 --> 0:53:56.279 difficult because of how little of it there is. So 0:53:56.440 --> 0:53:59.000 let's check in with the polywater skeptics at the time, 0:54:00.080 --> 0:54:04.160 mentions one named Arthur Cherkin of the Veterans Administration Hospital 0:54:04.160 --> 0:54:09.400 in Sepulvada, California. Churkin is out there suggesting, are we 0:54:09.440 --> 0:54:12.520 sure this is not just contamination from the glass tubes, 0:54:12.719 --> 0:54:15.600 Like what if particles of silica from the glass or 0:54:15.640 --> 0:54:18.520 getting into the water turning into a kind of gel 0:54:18.640 --> 0:54:21.600 or being dispersed in the water, and that is affecting 0:54:21.600 --> 0:54:25.160 the properties of the water. Of course, again, the polywater 0:54:25.239 --> 0:54:28.000 advocates were as they often said. They were like, well, 0:54:28.040 --> 0:54:32.680 maybe your samples are contaminated, but ours are pure. So 0:54:32.760 --> 0:54:35.919 you know, the fact that you might find a contaminated 0:54:35.960 --> 0:54:39.839 sample doesn't show that there's anything wrong with ours. Also 0:54:39.880 --> 0:54:43.120 want to mention a polywater skeptical researcher named Robert Davis 0:54:43.160 --> 0:54:46.360 of Purdue University. He had his own theory about the 0:54:46.360 --> 0:54:50.920 origins of polywater. He said, I think it's sweat, and 0:54:51.120 --> 0:54:55.920 he actually this wasn't original to him. He highlighted a 0:54:56.080 --> 0:55:00.360 previously little notice finding that had been public in a 0:55:00.480 --> 0:55:04.760 Russian language journal years earlier in nineteen sixty eight, which 0:55:05.480 --> 0:55:08.680 tried to create the anomalous water and had determined that 0:55:08.760 --> 0:55:14.240 it was almost entirely made of organic contaminants, which Davis 0:55:14.280 --> 0:55:19.400 interpreted as mostly sweat. Oh wow, And here's where the 0:55:19.440 --> 0:55:23.359 author of the case Studies in Pathological Science paper comes in. 0:55:23.680 --> 0:55:27.399 The author Dennis Rousseau. He talks in the paper about 0:55:27.440 --> 0:55:30.719 how he started studying polywater when he was an associate 0:55:30.760 --> 0:55:33.879 of the professor Sergio Porto at the University of Southern 0:55:33.960 --> 0:55:38.640 California around nineteen sixty nine. They initially they got very 0:55:38.680 --> 0:55:43.440 excited about polywater. They thought, actually, I'm going to read 0:55:43.480 --> 0:55:47.160 a quote from his paper, he said, quote could polywater 0:55:47.280 --> 0:55:51.839 alter biological processes? We wondered if polywater could extend longevity, 0:55:51.920 --> 0:55:56.319 possibly being the long awaited fountain of youth. So they 0:55:56.320 --> 0:56:01.040 got excited, but they started their own experiments. They tried 0:56:01.080 --> 0:56:04.759 to do a Raman scattering measurement. This is another type 0:56:04.760 --> 0:56:08.280 of spectroscopy experiment where you're going to try to measure 0:56:08.360 --> 0:56:12.160 vibrational modes of the molecule. So you shoot the sample 0:56:12.239 --> 0:56:14.719 with a laser and then you examine the spectrum of 0:56:14.760 --> 0:56:19.239 the scattered light. However, they hit a snag here. I'm 0:56:19.239 --> 0:56:21.960 going to read from Rousseau. Quote as soon as we 0:56:22.000 --> 0:56:25.680 directed our laser on polywater, it turned into a black char. 0:56:27.840 --> 0:56:28.640 Doesn't seem right? 0:56:28.840 --> 0:56:29.440 Yeah? Yeah. 0:56:29.719 --> 0:56:32.120 He goes on to say, quote, this was no polymer 0:56:32.200 --> 0:56:36.560 of water, but more likely a carbonaceous material. We quickly 0:56:36.560 --> 0:56:42.359 abandoned our grandiose plans for exploiting polywater's immortal qualities. So 0:56:42.480 --> 0:56:44.920 something has gone wrong here. Water is not supposed to 0:56:44.920 --> 0:56:47.760 burn up and turn into a carbon soot under a laser. 0:56:47.840 --> 0:56:50.640 Obviously the polywater they had was not water. 0:56:51.080 --> 0:56:55.280 Yeah. Even the worst chefs among us have not managed 0:56:55.280 --> 0:56:56.480 to burn water like this. 0:56:56.719 --> 0:56:59.359 Yeah, right, So they talk about how they also did 0:56:59.400 --> 0:57:03.920 some research trying to do some chemical analysis of supplied 0:57:03.960 --> 0:57:08.560 polywater samples, and they discovered that the samples were heavily 0:57:08.640 --> 0:57:13.080 contaminated with sodium. In fact, so heavily contaminated that they 0:57:13.080 --> 0:57:17.720 were mostly contamination. Somewhere between twenty and sixty percent of 0:57:17.760 --> 0:57:22.120 their polywater samples were by weight were sodium. They also 0:57:22.280 --> 0:57:26.200 had some potassium, some sulfate, chlorine, and trace amounts of 0:57:26.240 --> 0:57:29.280 other stuff. So it wasn't just that it was contaminated, 0:57:29.320 --> 0:57:33.720 it was like almost all contamination. So Rousseau goes on 0:57:33.760 --> 0:57:36.480 to explain that his experience did not end after the 0:57:36.560 --> 0:57:40.720 laser incident. He moved on in his career and became 0:57:40.760 --> 0:57:43.520 a researcher at Bell Telephone Laboratories in the summer of 0:57:43.560 --> 0:57:48.320 nineteen sixty nine, where he there found his colleagues and 0:57:48.360 --> 0:57:51.680 managers in a state of excitement about polywater. They were 0:57:51.720 --> 0:57:54.080 trying to figure out what all this meant, and he 0:57:54.200 --> 0:57:58.000 recounts being invited to one meeting to discuss whether polywater 0:57:58.680 --> 0:58:04.240 could be to blame for dielectric losses in transatlantic telephone cables, Like, 0:58:04.400 --> 0:58:07.360 was polywater somehow is it seeping into the cables? And 0:58:07.480 --> 0:58:10.280 changing the properties of the cable or the insulating material. 0:58:11.000 --> 0:58:14.560 So he was put in charge of investigating polywater at 0:58:14.560 --> 0:58:16.560 Bell Labs or I don't know if he was the 0:58:16.600 --> 0:58:18.960 head guy in charge, but he was given he was 0:58:19.000 --> 0:58:23.840 tasked with investigating it, and he kept he was By 0:58:23.840 --> 0:58:26.280 this point he was pursuing the idea, I think we've 0:58:26.320 --> 0:58:30.400 got a serious impurities and contamination problem, and that may 0:58:30.400 --> 0:58:34.000 be to explain what's going on with polywater. Again, he 0:58:34.040 --> 0:58:36.680 got the response we've mentioned earlier, these these kind of 0:58:36.720 --> 0:58:40.320 handwaving responses from the polywater proponents that are like, well, 0:58:40.440 --> 0:58:44.320 maybe the sample you tested was contaminated, but our samples 0:58:44.320 --> 0:58:50.360 are not contaminated. So Rousseau attacked to this in several directions. 0:58:50.360 --> 0:58:54.760 One experiment he did was that he he tried to 0:58:54.920 --> 0:58:59.400 make polywater using not regular water but heavy water. We've 0:58:59.400 --> 0:59:02.080 done episodes on heavy water in the past, but heavy 0:59:02.120 --> 0:59:05.800 water is made with the hydrogen replaced with a heavier 0:59:05.840 --> 0:59:10.160 isotope of hydrogen known as deuterium. And when he made 0:59:10.240 --> 0:59:14.120 polywater following the standard method with heavy water, and then 0:59:14.240 --> 0:59:18.080 he did infrared spectroscopy on it, he got the same 0:59:18.240 --> 0:59:22.840 line that they had showed in the original polywater spectroscopy experiment. 0:59:23.440 --> 0:59:26.120 So that shouldn't be right, you know, it shouldn't be 0:59:26.200 --> 0:59:30.080 looking the same with heavy water, So it kind of 0:59:30.080 --> 0:59:33.240 makes it look like the stuff we're calling polywater isn't water. 0:59:34.240 --> 0:59:38.880 And then he writes quote, Determined to understand polywater's infrared spectrum, 0:59:38.920 --> 0:59:43.040 I turned to my athletic passion handball. After a lively game, 0:59:43.080 --> 0:59:45.640 I returned to the laboratory with my sweaty t shirt 0:59:45.680 --> 0:59:48.880 and wrung the perspiration into a flask. When I placed 0:59:48.920 --> 0:59:52.919 the sweat in an infrared spectrometer, the spectrum looked strikingly 0:59:53.040 --> 0:59:56.000 similar to that of polywater. And then he shows the 0:59:56.040 --> 0:59:59.960 graph side by side and they look almost exactly the same. 1:00:00.680 --> 1:00:04.120 So what did this mean? This was some pretty strong 1:00:04.200 --> 1:00:08.920 evidence that polywater was not water. It was probably in 1:00:09.000 --> 1:00:13.840 different experiments, different things, but at least in the experiment 1:00:13.880 --> 1:00:18.640 that had produced this famous spectrum graph that everybody was 1:00:18.720 --> 1:00:21.000 using as proof that this is really different than the 1:00:21.040 --> 1:00:24.640 structure of regular water. In that case, it was probably 1:00:24.680 --> 1:00:28.280 a result of organic contamination of the capillary tubes where 1:00:28.280 --> 1:00:31.600 it was being condensed, and that contamination may well have 1:00:31.680 --> 1:00:35.160 been sweat. And he says, you know, after he published 1:00:35.160 --> 1:00:39.440 this result, research on polywater really pretty quickly started to 1:00:39.480 --> 1:00:43.200 grind to a halt. There was still some stuff going 1:00:43.240 --> 1:00:45.720 through the peer review process that would continue to kind 1:00:45.720 --> 1:00:48.200 of trickle out over the next couple of years, but 1:00:48.360 --> 1:00:53.680 new research stopped pretty quick and eventually even borister Yagan 1:00:53.800 --> 1:00:57.280 and the pro polywater Associates they admitted that the entire 1:00:57.320 --> 1:01:01.280 phenomenon was probably just a mistake. Is probably a result 1:01:01.360 --> 1:01:06.800 of biological contaminants like sweat being mistaken for a type 1:01:06.840 --> 1:01:07.280 of water. 1:01:07.920 --> 1:01:09.960 Given the amount of time and energy invested in it, 1:01:10.000 --> 1:01:13.560 I think it's like this noble though, yeah, to say, 1:01:13.720 --> 1:01:16.000 you know, actually we got it wrong and not like 1:01:16.160 --> 1:01:18.720 double down and then enter into like a realm of 1:01:18.760 --> 1:01:21.080 true ignorance on the topic. You know. 1:01:21.680 --> 1:01:24.440 Yeah, it sounds like they took some mighty convincing, but 1:01:24.480 --> 1:01:26.760 they did eventually admit it, and that's more than you 1:01:26.800 --> 1:01:29.080 can say for you know, a lot of people out 1:01:29.120 --> 1:01:31.640 there today pushing their own pet theories. Who are They're 1:01:31.680 --> 1:01:33.640 never going to admit that they were wrong, you know, right, 1:01:34.640 --> 1:01:36.880 So hats off to der Augen for finally getting there 1:01:36.920 --> 1:01:39.040 saying like, yeah, it looks like this was a mistake. 1:01:39.840 --> 1:01:41.880 Now as we get closer to the end of this episode. 1:01:42.120 --> 1:01:48.200 Joe We mentioned pathological science earlier, what what is pathological 1:01:48.320 --> 1:01:50.800 about the polywater scenario here? 1:01:51.520 --> 1:01:56.280 Well? So, Rousseau in his article compares the history of 1:01:56.320 --> 1:01:59.560 polywater with other cases of what he calls pathological science, 1:01:59.600 --> 1:02:04.320 like cold old fusion and infinite dilution. He says, in 1:02:04.400 --> 1:02:11.360 all cases, these were research programs where proponents could have 1:02:11.720 --> 1:02:17.480 performed definitive experiments that would have immediately answered the question 1:02:17.720 --> 1:02:21.040 once and for all, that would have shown whether the 1:02:21.080 --> 1:02:25.520 discovery was real or an illusion, but that these definitive 1:02:25.520 --> 1:02:30.440 experiments were always kind of avoided somehow, with proponents preferring 1:02:30.480 --> 1:02:34.200 to expand on and nibble around the edges of whatever 1:02:34.280 --> 1:02:39.120 initial result inspired the craze. And he takes that as 1:02:39.240 --> 1:02:43.160 kind of a a fear of confronting, you know, the 1:02:43.800 --> 1:02:47.680 final Like there is some indication that there's a fear 1:02:47.760 --> 1:02:50.440 of what if I'm wrong about this, and so you 1:02:50.480 --> 1:02:53.200 don't want to just like find out once and for all. 1:02:53.840 --> 1:02:54.280 Yeah. 1:02:54.480 --> 1:02:56.480 So for you know, like I mentioned, for so long 1:02:56.520 --> 1:03:01.600 with poly water, there were these seriments or not experiments, 1:03:01.640 --> 1:03:05.000 theoretical work trying to get into the polymer structure of 1:03:05.040 --> 1:03:09.920 it when no one had fully done a like rigorous 1:03:10.000 --> 1:03:12.840 chemical analysis to prove yes, this is h two OZ. 1:03:13.920 --> 1:03:17.800 So maybe we can save some of Rousseau's core ideas 1:03:17.840 --> 1:03:22.640 about like the characteristics of pathological science for the next episode. 1:03:22.640 --> 1:03:26.280 But there are a couple of peripheral pathological science related 1:03:26.320 --> 1:03:29.080 ideas I want to visit here right before we wrap 1:03:29.200 --> 1:03:31.560 up today. One thing I want to say is, I 1:03:31.600 --> 1:03:36.200 think the wrong takeaway from the Polywater episode is that, 1:03:36.680 --> 1:03:38.440 you know, we should look at these people and think, oh, 1:03:38.480 --> 1:03:40.680 what a bunch of idiots, you know, that we should 1:03:40.760 --> 1:03:44.640 feel superior to them because they fell for an erroneous enterprise. 1:03:45.520 --> 1:03:48.720 I think it's a lot more useful to acknowledge that 1:03:48.800 --> 1:03:51.720 these are smart people. They knew what they were doing 1:03:51.760 --> 1:03:56.160 in various ways, but they they got tricked, they fell 1:03:56.280 --> 1:03:59.200 for something that wasn't true, and so it's much more 1:03:59.400 --> 1:04:01.919 useful to look for ways that we can all learn 1:04:02.000 --> 1:04:04.439 from this episode because we're all fallible in this way. 1:04:04.520 --> 1:04:08.200 We can all get wrapped up in an idea that 1:04:08.240 --> 1:04:12.200 we're stuck on for some reason, for maybe emotional ego reasons, 1:04:12.320 --> 1:04:15.440 or we just found ourselves really convinced of it, you know, 1:04:15.600 --> 1:04:18.000 at a certain time and place in which you know, 1:04:18.320 --> 1:04:22.400 we wanted to hear something like this, and for whatever reason, 1:04:22.440 --> 1:04:26.240 we're stuck on it and we can't see the good 1:04:26.320 --> 1:04:29.960 reasons for doubting it, and so like, are there patterns 1:04:29.960 --> 1:04:31.840 to be aware of, to watch out for so we 1:04:31.840 --> 1:04:35.120 don't find ourselves falling for the next polywater. That's a 1:04:35.120 --> 1:04:38.640 big part of what the pathological science idea is about. 1:04:38.680 --> 1:04:40.360 And again we can come back to that next time. 1:04:40.920 --> 1:04:43.480 But another thing I want to talk about is something 1:04:43.480 --> 1:04:47.280 that Philip Ball mentions in his chapter. He highlights some 1:04:47.320 --> 1:04:50.520 comments by a scientist and named Felix Franks, who wrote 1:04:50.560 --> 1:04:54.240 a book about the polywater controversy in nineteen eighty one, 1:04:54.360 --> 1:04:57.920 and Franks argues that part of what made the polywater 1:04:57.960 --> 1:05:02.840 illusions so powerful and so irresistible was the role of 1:05:02.880 --> 1:05:07.040 the mass media. It was because it wasn't just happening 1:05:07.080 --> 1:05:10.240 in the scientific journals and with you know, written correspondence 1:05:10.280 --> 1:05:13.840 going back and forth there, that it's spilled over into 1:05:14.080 --> 1:05:18.480 the mainstream press and the popular media. And there were 1:05:18.680 --> 1:05:22.400 multiple problems with this, Like, of course people in the 1:05:22.400 --> 1:05:25.840 media without expertise or understanding of the subject would engage 1:05:25.920 --> 1:05:29.520 in their own wild speculation, but they would also encourage 1:05:29.560 --> 1:05:32.560 scientists to do the same sort of encouraging the worst 1:05:32.600 --> 1:05:37.520 tendencies of certain scientists involved in this controversy. It also 1:05:37.720 --> 1:05:41.480 provided an outlet with a less discerning audience. You know, 1:05:41.560 --> 1:05:44.120 that's not to insult people like us, you know, the 1:05:44.280 --> 1:05:49.480 regular readers, non scientists, but we don't have the expertise 1:05:49.520 --> 1:05:54.520 always to understand whether what a supposed authority says is 1:05:54.680 --> 1:05:59.920 reasonable or not. So instead of talking to knowledgeable, skeptical peers, 1:06:00.240 --> 1:06:02.760 you're now talking to people who have no idea if 1:06:03.760 --> 1:06:07.000 they should take what you're saying seriously. And then one 1:06:07.000 --> 1:06:11.160 thing that I think is especially probably toxic about this 1:06:11.360 --> 1:06:13.600 and is very relevant I think to the world today 1:06:14.200 --> 1:06:18.840 is the increasing velocity of public comment. How Like, if 1:06:18.880 --> 1:06:22.040 things are going back and forth in scientific journals, there 1:06:22.120 --> 1:06:25.440 is a delay, and that can have some downsides, like 1:06:25.480 --> 1:06:29.520 it can slow down scientific progress obviously, but it also 1:06:29.560 --> 1:06:32.800 has a lot of upsides, like you are more considered 1:06:32.960 --> 1:06:35.480 in your responses if you have to wait, you know, 1:06:35.520 --> 1:06:39.240 there's a waiting period before you can get your comment 1:06:39.320 --> 1:06:43.240 in response out in public. And if you speed up 1:06:43.360 --> 1:06:46.720 the ability to respond back and forth between you know, 1:06:47.000 --> 1:06:50.000 between people who are criticizing each other or arguing about something. 1:06:50.640 --> 1:06:53.280 I think a lot of times that degrades the quality 1:06:53.320 --> 1:06:57.880 of the argument. It increases the likelihood of people making 1:06:58.160 --> 1:07:00.800 responses and arguments that really, if they had time to 1:07:00.800 --> 1:07:03.840 think about it, they would know or not great or 1:07:03.880 --> 1:07:05.120 not the best way to reply. 1:07:06.480 --> 1:07:09.360 Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. And really, like the 1:07:09.440 --> 1:07:13.480 media often ends up filling that space between the peer 1:07:13.600 --> 1:07:18.840 viewed correspondence and the more scientific correspondence. This is happening. 1:07:18.880 --> 1:07:20.680 I mean, like, I just think of various cases where 1:07:20.720 --> 1:07:25.640 there'll be some sort of amazing headline grabbing the finding, 1:07:26.320 --> 1:07:28.800 and you know, there's going to be kind of a 1:07:28.840 --> 1:07:32.960 balancing that occurs in the aftermath of something like that usually, 1:07:34.000 --> 1:07:36.960 but if it just hits the headlines, then it kind 1:07:37.000 --> 1:07:39.920 of solidifies out there for so many different people, people 1:07:39.920 --> 1:07:43.600 who may not tune in for the follow up studies 1:07:43.720 --> 1:07:44.919 and so forth. 1:07:45.240 --> 1:07:48.480 Yeah, Okay, well, should we wrap it there for today 1:07:48.640 --> 1:07:51.760 and then come back in our next core episode to 1:07:52.000 --> 1:07:55.800 talk some more about the relationship of polywater to the 1:07:55.840 --> 1:07:59.800 idea of pathological science and then also maybe to other 1:08:00.240 --> 1:08:05.280 cases where there have been proposed containment dangers of speculative 1:08:06.320 --> 1:08:12.240 technologies or scientific experiments, some that might be more actually 1:08:12.360 --> 1:08:16.080 dangerous or more potentially actually dangerous than the polywater scare 1:08:16.160 --> 1:08:16.720 turned out to be. 1:08:17.160 --> 1:08:19.840 Yeah, I mean, yeah, definitely. I mean there's some that 1:08:19.880 --> 1:08:22.840 we're living through right now and others that are maybe 1:08:22.840 --> 1:08:25.639 a little bit more far fetched. But we again come 1:08:25.680 --> 1:08:28.280 back to the scenario we're talking about with polywater researchers, 1:08:28.280 --> 1:08:33.639 where hindsight is twenty twenty on all of these things, 1:08:33.720 --> 1:08:36.519 and like when you're in the moment and you're staring 1:08:36.600 --> 1:08:42.120 down some potential catastrophe in the future based on new 1:08:42.200 --> 1:08:46.799 avenues of research, new scientific findings, like, how do you respond? 1:08:47.280 --> 1:08:49.519 And so in the next episode we'll get into some 1:08:49.560 --> 1:08:52.919 of that as well. Now, as for how you respond 1:08:53.040 --> 1:08:56.720 a listener, you can certainly email us. We would love 1:08:56.760 --> 1:08:58.120 to hear from you. We're going to throw out that 1:08:58.120 --> 1:09:00.559 email address in just a minute here, but yeah, if 1:09:00.600 --> 1:09:02.479 you're new to the show, people write in all the time, 1:09:02.840 --> 1:09:08.240 and we love it if you have additional insight based 1:09:08.280 --> 1:09:11.559 on your profession or your passions, your travels, or just 1:09:11.600 --> 1:09:15.000 your day to day reality. Yeah, right in, tell us, 1:09:15.160 --> 1:09:19.200 tell us what's up. We also take episode suggestions and 1:09:19.360 --> 1:09:22.120 just you know, just right in to say hi if 1:09:22.160 --> 1:09:24.040 you like. As well, just to remind you here that 1:09:24.040 --> 1:09:26.120 the stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science 1:09:26.120 --> 1:09:29.240 and culture podcast. Again, we've been around for years. You 1:09:29.280 --> 1:09:31.960 can find all of our episodes wherever you get your podcasts. 1:09:32.000 --> 1:09:33.760 Just look for Stuff to Blow your Mind. We have 1:09:33.800 --> 1:09:37.280 our core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays usually, and on 1:09:37.280 --> 1:09:39.679 Wednesdays we do a short form episode and on Fridays 1:09:39.880 --> 1:09:42.120 that's when we set aside most serious concerns and we 1:09:42.200 --> 1:09:44.519 just talk about a weird movie on episodes that we 1:09:44.600 --> 1:09:45.880 call Weird House Cinema. 1:09:46.080 --> 1:09:50.160 Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer, JJ Posway. 1:09:50.800 --> 1:09:52.439 As Rob said, if you would like to get in 1:09:52.560 --> 1:09:54.519 touch for any reason, if you want to suggest a 1:09:54.600 --> 1:09:56.639 topic for the future, if you want to give feedback 1:09:56.640 --> 1:09:59.120 on this episode, or if you just want to give 1:09:59.160 --> 1:10:02.120 us a friendly hello, you can email us at contact 1:10:02.240 --> 1:10:12.200 at stuff to blow your Mind dot com. 1:10:12.240 --> 1:10:15.200 Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. 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