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Speaker 1: Hey, Kelly, do you have strong feelings about invasive species?

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Speaker 2: Yeah?

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Speaker 3: I mean, on the one hand, it's usually our fault.

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Speaker 3: But I do think that in general, ecologists get a

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Speaker 3: bit unnerved when you mess with a local ecosystem.

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Speaker 1: But shouldn't you have some sort of like respect for

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Speaker 1: these invaders. I mean, they just like came in and

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Speaker 1: they were better suited to survival, right.

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Speaker 3: I mean, I guess so, but in a lot of cases,

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Speaker 3: like the new environment doesn't have their usual parasites or predators,

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Speaker 3: so they have like an unfair advantage at least initially.

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Speaker 3: But like, also, would you feel that way if advanced

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Speaker 3: aliens came and started killing us, Like, would it be

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Speaker 3: okay because they can? Would you have grudging respect?

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Speaker 1: I actually would have grudging respect, And I hope that

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Speaker 1: you know, they would share the physics behind their laser

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Speaker 1: beams and immolation devices and all that stuff, and it

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Speaker 1: might be worth it.

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Speaker 3: Okay, wait, hold on, remember both my kids, who I

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Speaker 3: know you're always trying to kill and your kids are

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Speaker 3: included on the list of being fried by aliens in

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Speaker 3: the scenario.

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Speaker 1: I know, but I still learned the secrets of the universe,

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Speaker 1: so I already factor that in. I'm still pro invasion.

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Speaker 3: All right, that's the first shuttle that goes to Mars.

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Speaker 3: I'm putting your name on the manifest I don't want

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Speaker 3: you on the same planet as my.

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Speaker 1: Kids, no way, fair point. Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a

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Speaker 1: particle physicist and a professor at UC Irvine, and I'm

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Speaker 1: happy to be negotiating on behalf of Earth when the

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Speaker 1: aliens arrived.

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Speaker 3: I'm Kelly Waiiner Smith, adjunct at Race University, and I

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Speaker 3: hope that Daniel is far away from Earth when the

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Speaker 3: aliens arrive. He might trade our children for some tiny

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Speaker 3: little physics secret.

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Speaker 1: Look, it's all going to be on the table, right

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Speaker 1: You never know what the aliens are gonna want. Maybe

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Speaker 1: they just want to like scoop up some algae and

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Speaker 1: slurp it. But maybe they want to fry our children.

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Speaker 3: You keep my children off the table. They can have

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Speaker 3: the algae, although I can imagine there being some bad

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Speaker 3: downstream effects. My phycology friends would not be happy. But

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Speaker 3: definitely you're not giving them my kids.

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Speaker 1: Oh you're so parochial. You're on the wrong side of

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Speaker 1: history here, Kelly.

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Speaker 3: I'm alright with that.

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Speaker 1: Well, welcome to the podcast Daniel and Jorge explain the universe,

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Speaker 1: where we do our best not to fry our children

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Speaker 1: and sacrifice them to invading aliens, but to understand the

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Speaker 1: universe anyway. Somehow, with all the photons and the particles

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Speaker 1: and the little bits of rock that arrive here on Earth,

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Speaker 1: we've managed to piece together and understanding of how the

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Speaker 1: universe works. Out there, what's out there? What the tiny

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Speaker 1: little quantum particles are, the super massive black holes that

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Speaker 1: shape our galaxies. All that is sending us clues, and

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Speaker 1: we're trying to digest them and explain them to you.

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Speaker 3: And that's why we don't need the aliens and their information.

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Speaker 1: But Kelly, we've been doing it for thousands of years,

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Speaker 1: and there's still so much we have left to figure out.

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Speaker 1: Wouldn't you like to fast forward to a super advanced understanding.

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Speaker 3: Not if I'm trading my kids for it?

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Speaker 1: All right, everybody, you heard it. If we are living

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Speaker 1: in ignorance, it's because of Kelly's selfishness.

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Speaker 3: Wait wait, I'll trade Daniel's kids for it, so problem, So.

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Speaker 1: Okay, see the negotiation begins. All right, We're starting to

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Speaker 1: thaw that cold position of yours. But nobody wants anybody's

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Speaker 1: kids to fry, absolutely, But we do want to understand

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Speaker 1: the universe, and frustratingly, we are mostly limited to figuring

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Speaker 1: it out based on the clues that arrive here on Earth,

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Speaker 1: photons that have traveled for billions of light years across

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Speaker 1: the universe, little bits of protons and electrons and all

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Speaker 1: sorts of cosmic rape particles. We are working hard to

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Speaker 1: piece that together to get a picture of everything that's

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Speaker 1: out there in the universe.

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Speaker 3: And we'll get there without the aliens.

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Speaker 1: And while the photons that arrive here on Earth do

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Speaker 1: travel almost all the way across the universe, I mean

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Speaker 1: we see things from very very early in the universe,

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Speaker 1: we are limited when it comes to the stuff that

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Speaker 1: arrives here, the actual chunks of stuff that we can

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Speaker 1: use to study things that happen on other planets. We

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Speaker 1: found little bits of Mars on Earth. We sometimes get

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Speaker 1: rocks from elsewhere in the Solar System. But the universe

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Speaker 1: is vast, and we would love to have a sample

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Speaker 1: of bits from other places. Wouldn't you like to have

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Speaker 1: a scoop of a distant star or a sample from

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Speaker 1: an atmosphere of an exole planet.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. Note that would be pretty awesome.

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Speaker 1: Who knows what we could find. Is our solar system

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Speaker 1: the same as all those other solar systems? Is it

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Speaker 1: totally different? What can be found in the hearts of

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Speaker 1: distant stars under the surface of distant exo moons. We

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Speaker 1: don't know, and we'd love to find out. And we

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Speaker 1: know that the universe is always holding surprises for us.

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Speaker 3: Oh, I want to start asking you questions about what

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Speaker 3: we might expect, how we might expect those things to

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Speaker 3: be different than what we found on Earth. But I'm

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Speaker 3: probably jumping the.

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Speaker 1: Gun you are a little bit. But today on the podcast,

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Speaker 1: we're going to be exploring that question, whether it's possible

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Speaker 1: to sample planets around other stars, whether we can just

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Speaker 1: sit here on our own little rock and wait for

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Speaker 1: those bits to come to us. So today on the podcast,

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Speaker 1: we'll be answering the question, have interstellar meteors hit the Earth?

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Speaker 3: Oh, there's nothing better when the data comes to you.

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Speaker 1: We would you love to just sit at home and

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Speaker 1: have all the parasites like walk through your kitchen and

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Speaker 1: report for duty.

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Speaker 3: Ah, you know what, I actually have mixed feelings about that.

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Speaker 3: It depends on the parasites.

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Speaker 1: So your kids do live in that same kitchen and

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Speaker 1: eat breakfast there, so probably you want to keep a

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Speaker 1: sharp line between those.

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Speaker 3: Things, all right, Right, it's great when physics data comes

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Speaker 3: to us, but the parasitology data I'll go collect.

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Speaker 1: And we have done a little bit of exploring, you know,

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Speaker 1: we've been to the Moon, and we've sent probes to

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Speaker 1: Mars and to orbit other places in the Solar System,

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Speaker 1: but really the amount of stuff that we have to

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Speaker 1: study that comes from off of Earth is vanishingly small,

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Speaker 1: like a few pounds of Mars rocks, a little bit

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Speaker 1: of an asteroid that we managed to collect, and most

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Speaker 1: of the stuff that isn't from Earth that we can

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Speaker 1: study came to us automatically. We didn't send a robot together.

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Speaker 1: We just waited for rocks to hit the Earth and

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Speaker 1: gather them.

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Speaker 3: Is it possible that there's just like loads of rocks

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Speaker 3: from our Solar System that are still on Earth, But

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Speaker 3: we just look at them and we're like, that's a rock.

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Speaker 3: And my friend Callon would say all rocks are interesting,

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Speaker 3: but he's a geologist. I'm not quite sure he's right

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Speaker 3: about that. But do we probably have tons more data,

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Speaker 3: but we just don't recognize it. As being different than

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Speaker 3: the Earth rocks.

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Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely, Meteors are hitting the Earth all the time,

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Speaker 1: and they have four billions of years and so these

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Speaker 1: things are scattered all around the surface of the Earth

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Speaker 1: and even buried within it. I recently read a study

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Speaker 1: that showed that they see traces of the proto planet

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Speaker 1: that hit the Earth and led to the formation of

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Speaker 1: the Moon. They call it fear. It's probably happened four

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Speaker 1: billion years ago. They can see bits of it lodged

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Speaker 1: in our mantle, like they can identify underground which bits

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Speaker 1: came from that proto planet and how it created this

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Speaker 1: weird distortion in the shape of our mantle.

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Speaker 3: Oh my god.

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Speaker 1: So everything on the surface of the Earth and underneath

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Speaker 1: reveals its history, its history of bombardment. So yeah, there's

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Speaker 1: probably stuff all over the surface of the Earth for

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Speaker 1: people to just pick up and learn about our solar system.

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Speaker 3: So when my kids come home with like pockets full

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Speaker 3: of rocks, I shouldn't throw them out the window when

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Speaker 3: they're not looking, because they might be more valuable than

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Speaker 3: I realize.

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Speaker 1: They absolutely might be. But I agree with your geologist friend.

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Speaker 1: Every rock is interesting because every rock tells a story.

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Speaker 1: It was formed at a certain moment, and then it

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Speaker 1: was weathered, it was oxidized, it captures stuff within it.

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Speaker 1: Each of them really tells us something about the billion

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Speaker 1: years long journey that they've survived. They're like a little

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Speaker 1: time capsule.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I know you're right.

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Speaker 1: But the most interesting ones are not the ones in

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Speaker 1: your kid's pocket, which probably come from Earth, and also

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Speaker 1: not the ones that even come from our solar system.

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Speaker 1: While little bits of Mars are fascinating, we would love

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Speaker 1: to explore much deeper out into the universe and see

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Speaker 1: things from other planets, remnants from other solar systems. And

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Speaker 1: that's why today we're asking the question about interstellar meteors.

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Speaker 1: So before we dig into what, I wanted to know

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Speaker 1: what people out there thought about the question of whether

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Speaker 1: interstellar metiors have hit the Earth. So thank you very

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Speaker 1: much to everybody who participates in this audience play along

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Speaker 1: segment of the podcast. If you'd like to join for

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Speaker 1: future episodes, don't be shy. Write to me you questions

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Speaker 1: at Daniel and Jorge dot com. So think about it

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Speaker 1: for a minute. Do you think interstellar meteors have hit

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Speaker 1: the Earth? Here's what people had to say.

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Speaker 4: Well, it's been around for an extremely long time, so

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Speaker 4: you would think that sooner or later some interstellar meteors

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Speaker 4: would have hit the Earth. So I'm just gonna go

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Speaker 4: with a guess that, yes, interstellar meteors have hit the Earth.

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Speaker 1: I suspect they have, but it would be surely very rare.

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Speaker 5: I would side probably, but none that we know.

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Speaker 2: Of interstellar videos would have to be very lucky to

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Speaker 2: even head out galaxy. And even if they made it

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Speaker 2: to a galaxy, they would have to be very lucky

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Speaker 2: to make it through all the other stars and planets

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Speaker 2: and the gravitation gravity that they have to actually if

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Speaker 2: but I feel like there's a chance that maybe one

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Speaker 2: or two has made it through. So I'm going to

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Speaker 2: say yes.

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Speaker 5: I'm gonna say no because I imagine coming into our

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Speaker 5: Solar system I would probably be caught up in the

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Speaker 5: gravitational pull of a different planet or become an orbit

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Speaker 5: in one of the asteroid belts.

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Speaker 1: Maybe what do you think of these answers?

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Speaker 3: Kelly, Well, so for starters, I had never heard O

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Speaker 3: how do you say that? Okay, So for starters, I

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Speaker 3: had never heard of. Oh muamua and that is an

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Speaker 3: incredible name. I love it. It's so much fun to

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Speaker 3: say it's beautiful. Uh, and no, I thought these were

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Speaker 3: all good responses. I mean, but you know, so like

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Speaker 3: we've only been watching the skies for you know, a

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Speaker 3: small fraction of humanity's existence. How how do we know, Like,

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Speaker 3: you know, if you find a rock in your backyard

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Speaker 3: and you're like, well, maybe this is from Mars, how

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Speaker 3: could you be sure that it was an interstellar Like

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Speaker 3: how do you know that it wouldn't look the same

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Speaker 3: because everything's made out of the same stuff.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great question, and we don't know for sure. Right,

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Speaker 1: we know something about the formation of our solar system,

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Speaker 1: and so we know what rocks on Earth look like.

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Speaker 1: And we can tell if a rock was from Mars

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Speaker 1: because it has a different chunk of stuff, Like Mars

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Speaker 1: is made of different elements and different ratios of those

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Speaker 1: elements and different isotopes because of where it was formed

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Speaker 1: and how it was formed and its history. So we

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Speaker 1: can tell when our rock is from Mars rather than

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Speaker 1: from Earth. But what we don't know is if solar

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Speaker 1: systems out there have Earth like planets and Mars like

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Speaker 1: planets with the same elements, whether you could tell the

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Speaker 1: difference between a rock from Earth and a rock from

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Speaker 1: some exo Earth, or if they're very very different, and

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Speaker 1: our Solar System is unique in some way, so that

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Speaker 1: planets formed around other stars could be very different from

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Speaker 1: the planets that formed around our star. That's sort of

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Speaker 1: the basic question.

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Speaker 3: Okay, so it seems like you are sort of starting

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Speaker 3: to already tell me why we would want interstellar your

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Speaker 3: meteors in the first place, not just because you like

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Speaker 3: rock so much, but these rocks in particular could tell

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Speaker 3: us something cool.

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Speaker 1: Exactly we want interstellar meteors for the same reason we

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Speaker 1: want to study meteors. Meteors give us a sample of

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Speaker 1: the rest of the Solar System. How exactly did the

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Speaker 1: asteroid belt form? What is Pluto made out of and

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Speaker 1: where does that tell us about the formation of the

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Speaker 1: Solar System? What is really at the core of Jupiter?

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Speaker 1: Where did Jupiter form in the inner Solar System or

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Speaker 1: in the outer Solar System? Samples from these planets can

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Speaker 1: give us clues about the story of the formation of

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Speaker 1: our Solar System and the dance of the planets made

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Speaker 1: as the whole thing was evolving. And in the same way,

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Speaker 1: samples from planets around other Solar systems would tell us

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Speaker 1: about how those formed and give us the context for

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Speaker 1: the formation of our own solar system. That's sort of

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Speaker 1: the most specific answer, that most general answer for like

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Speaker 1: why you would want to see in interstellar meteors is

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Speaker 1: just curiosity, Like who knows what's in it. We've been

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Speaker 1: thinking about the universe and exploring it with photons, But

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Speaker 1: every time we've developed a new capability, every time we've

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Speaker 1: figured out a way to probe the universe and a

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Speaker 1: way we haven't before, it's always revealed something surprising, sometimes

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Speaker 1: mind blowing, sometimes in a way that really up ends

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Speaker 1: our entire understanding of the universe and the context of

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Speaker 1: our lives. So if we got an interstellar media and

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Speaker 1: it could study it, it could reveal something totally crazy,

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Speaker 1: things beyond what even science fiction authors could imagine.

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Speaker 3: Okay, so you've convinced me that this is interesting, and

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Speaker 3: I've been convinced that ooh muamoa see how do you

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Speaker 3: say it? Oh muama, oh muhamoa is also fascinating. Tell

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Speaker 3: me tell me more about that.

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Speaker 1: Right, So, we know that some interstellar objects have come

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Speaker 1: through our solar system, but we've only ever seen two

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Speaker 1: of them, Like, there's thousands and thousands of asteroids out

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Speaker 1: there and things hit the Earth all the time, but

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Speaker 1: only twice have we identified things that we are sure

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Speaker 1: didn't come from within our Solar system. And the first,

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Speaker 1: the most famous one. But what I'm kind of embarrassed

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Speaker 1: for you, Kelly, that you never heard of as a

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Speaker 1: as a deputized physics nerd is O Muamula, which came

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Speaker 1: through the Solar system in twenty seventeen.

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Speaker 3: I'm a deputized physics nerd.

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Speaker 1: Yes, congratulations, thank you.

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Speaker 3: Oh I'm sorry I've let you down. This is a

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Speaker 3: real emotional rollercoaster for me. But tell me more.

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Speaker 1: No, you officially have a PhD in podcast physics from

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Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge University.

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Speaker 3: Fantastic, I'm putting it on my TV.

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Speaker 1: But in twenty seventeen, the pan Star's telescope noticed this

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Speaker 1: rock and it was moving really fast twenty six kilometers

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Speaker 1: per second. But most importantly, it had a non solar trajectory,

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Speaker 1: meaning it was moving along a path, a direction, a

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Speaker 1: location of velocity which would not allow it to orbit

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Speaker 1: the Sun. Meant that had come in from outside the

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Speaker 1: Solar System was going to bend around the Sun and

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Speaker 1: then shoot again out of the Solar system.

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Speaker 3: Was there some giant smashing happening in a different solar

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Speaker 3: system and this thing got shot out of their solar

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Speaker 3: system super fast?

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Speaker 1: It's a great question. There's lots of question marks about

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Speaker 1: this object. We saw it sort of on its way

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Speaker 1: out of the Solar system. It sort of passed near

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Speaker 1: the Sun, and by the time we spotted it, it

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Speaker 1: was already headed out. It was moving really really fast.

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Speaker 1: So we have really limited data about it. We don't

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Speaker 1: know a lot about its shape, we don't know a

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Speaker 1: lot about its reflectivity. The best speculation is that it's

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Speaker 1: a chunk of ice, probably lost by some other star.

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Speaker 1: You know, most stars have not just planets, but like

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Speaker 1: big chunks of frozen ice balls and a halo around

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Speaker 1: the star, like we have the Ort cloud, which is

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Speaker 1: a source of long period comets. These things are little

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Speaker 1: chunks of ice and they're really really far away from

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Speaker 1: the star, so they are gravitationally bound. But they can

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Speaker 1: also be kicked out of their stable orbit by a

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Speaker 1: passing star, interactions with other galactic stuff, and so sometimes

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Speaker 1: that means it falls inwards towards the inner Solar System

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Speaker 1: it becomes a comet, or maybe smashes into a planet

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Speaker 1: and kills all of its dinosaurs, And sometimes it means

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Speaker 1: they might be lost by that star and just float

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Speaker 1: through interstellar space, occasionally randomly encountering another Solar system And is.

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Speaker 3: That the only one we've seen? Or maybe I shouldn't

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Speaker 3: ask any more questions because I don't want to lose

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Speaker 3: my dju physics degree.

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Speaker 1: No, once you have tenure, you can't lose it, Kelly,

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Speaker 1: it doesn't matter.

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Speaker 3: Oh my goodness.

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Speaker 1: So that was the first one, and it was very

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Speaker 1: spectacular and people really wondered about it. There's a lot

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Speaker 1: of stuff we still don't understand about it, like very weirdly,

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Speaker 1: as Omuamua was leaving the Solar System, it seemed to

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Speaker 1: accelerate a little bit, like it wasn't just moving on

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Speaker 1: a pure gravitational orbit. It actually sped up a little

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Speaker 1: bit as it was leaving, which led some people to speculate, like, oh,

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Speaker 1: is this an alien ship or is it like a

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Speaker 1: little bit of alien junk, like maybe a light sail

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Speaker 1: lost by some alien civilization these days, the best explanation

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Speaker 1: is that it's probably a chunk ice and as it

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Speaker 1: was leaving, some of that ice boiled off and gave

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Speaker 1: it like a little poof.

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Speaker 3: I have decided that my feelings are hurt and that

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Speaker 3: it was an alien ship that, you know, maybe was

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Speaker 3: watching one of our news channels and was like I'm out,

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Speaker 3: and they left as best.

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Speaker 1: As they could. Maybe most of the astronomy community and

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Speaker 1: the astrophysics community thinks that the chunk of interstellar ice

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Speaker 1: is the most likely explanation. On the other side of

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Speaker 1: the debate is famous Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb, who wrote

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Speaker 1: a book about how Omumua was probably a chunk of

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Speaker 1: alien tech, though most people think he doesn't know what

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Speaker 1: he's talking about, and we did a whole podcast episode

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Speaker 1: sort of dissecting his claims and why there's no basis

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Speaker 1: for them.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, let's just be clear. I really think the ice

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Speaker 3: answer is the way to I was joking.

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Speaker 1: But these things are pretty rare that we did see

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Speaker 1: a second one. In twenty nineteen, an amateur astronomer, someone

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Speaker 1: who makes his own tellelescopes, a guy named Borisov, saw

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Speaker 1: a second one. This thing also came through the Solar

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Speaker 1: system on a trajectory that makes us sure that it

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Speaker 1: didn't come from our solar system. The additive velocity in

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Speaker 1: a direction that just is not compatible with motion around

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Speaker 1: the Sun. And this thing is probably a ten kilometer

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Speaker 1: wide comet.

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Speaker 3: Wow, that's like extinction level, right.

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Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. The closest approach to Earth was about two au,

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Speaker 1: so we were in nowhere in danger. But yeah, these

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Speaker 1: things can be moving really fast relative to our solar

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Speaker 1: system because they're not linked to us gravitationally, and as

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Speaker 1: the Sun moves through the galaxy, these things could be

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Speaker 1: going in any direction. So yeah, they are a little dangerous, fortunately,

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Speaker 1: and unfortunately they're.

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Speaker 3: Pretty rare, and they come and go so quickly that

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Speaker 3: there's no chance for us to plan a mission to

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Speaker 3: go explore them. Is that right?

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Speaker 1: Exactly? People thought, oh, let's go sample something from Omuamua,

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Speaker 1: but it was already moving so fast that if you

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Speaker 1: launched a probe it would take forever to catch up

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Speaker 1: and then forever to send back data. And so these

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Speaker 1: things are basically once and gone. You're lucky to get

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Speaker 1: any pictures of them, not to mention samples, which is

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Speaker 1: why everyone would love if one of these things would

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Speaker 1: hit the Earth. Obviously, not a really big one, you know,

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Speaker 1: not one that's going to vaporize us, but one that's

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Speaker 1: going to survive the atmosphere, land on the ground, not

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Speaker 1: hurt anybody, and leave us a bunch of clues about

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Speaker 1: what's going on out there in the universe.

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Speaker 3: But gosh, this was a quick podcast episode because that

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Speaker 3: hasn't happened. Right.

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Speaker 1: Well, that's exactly what we're going to dig into as

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Speaker 1: soon as we come back from this break.

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Speaker 3: All right. So Daniel was just about to tell us

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Speaker 3: that the podcast episode is over because we don't have

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Speaker 3: any interstellar meteors.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 1: Well, there's a really interesting discussion about one possible blob

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Speaker 1: that could have been interested.

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Speaker 3: Tell me more about that.

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Speaker 1: So in twenty fourteen, this is now ten years ago,

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Speaker 1: a meteor hit over Papa, New Guinea, and this thing

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Speaker 1: is about the size of a dishwasher. They're pretty sure.

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Speaker 1: It weighs about half as much as a giraffe.

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Speaker 3: All right, so pretty big but not gonna kill us.

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Speaker 3: All that's great.

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Speaker 1: The thing is big enough to make a detonation in

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Speaker 1: the atmosphere, but not big enough we think to like

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Speaker 1: land on the surface and like have a chunk of

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Speaker 1: rock that you can look at and point to and

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Speaker 1: even find.

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Speaker 3: But it was traveling. So you just told us that

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Speaker 3: our other two potentially interstellar visitors were coming from a

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Speaker 3: trajectory where we knew that they weren't from our solar system,

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Speaker 3: and so this one was was it doing that?

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Speaker 1: So that's one of the questions, and av LOBE in

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Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, together with the Harvard undergraduate combed through a

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Speaker 1: bunch of data from US Intelligence satellites and looked for

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Speaker 1: meteors that had a trajectory that might have been interstellar.

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Speaker 1: So they combed through this database and they found this one.

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Speaker 1: They're like, oh, this is interesting. According to the measurements

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Speaker 1: of this thing's velocity and direction, it might have been interstellar.

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Speaker 1: And so they got kind of excited about it.

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Speaker 3: And by might have been what are the error bars

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Speaker 3: on a phrase like that?

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Speaker 2: Mmm?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, And so there's a lot of discussion about exactly that.

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Speaker 1: The thing is that this data comes from US Space

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Speaker 1: Command and it was observed by US intelligence satellites. But

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Speaker 1: the data from those satellites are a little bit obscure,

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Speaker 1: Like we don't get the super high precision data from

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Speaker 1: US intelligence satellites because the US doesn't want to reveal

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Speaker 1: like everything it can measure. This is like classified secrets.

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Speaker 1: But in early twenty twenty two, US Space Command issued

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Speaker 1: this declaration saying that it was probably interstellar. They said

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Speaker 1: that their trajectory was quote sufficiently accurate to indicate an

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Speaker 1: interstellar trajectory.

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Speaker 3: All right, that's I mean, that's awesome. That sounds that's

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Speaker 3: pretty confident.

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Speaker 1: That sounds pretty exciting. And so in twenty twenty three,

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Speaker 1: Lobe and his team at Harvard decided they were going

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Speaker 1: to go try to find this thing like it hit

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Speaker 1: over the ocean, and they think maybe it fragmented in

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Speaker 1: a fireball and then sprayed little bits of itself into

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Speaker 1: the ocean, and if they went and dragged a sled

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Speaker 1: across the surface of the bottom of the ocean, they

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Speaker 1: might pick up little bits of it.

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Speaker 3: So that sounds like the ultimate needle in a haystack.

439
00:22:26,359 --> 00:22:31,200
Speaker 3: Activity how hard would it be to retrieve fragments from

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Speaker 3: the seafloor.

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Speaker 1: It's definitely not easy. But Avy Lobe was like, hey,

442
00:22:35,720 --> 00:22:37,600
Speaker 1: let's at least try. Let's see if we can figure

443
00:22:37,640 --> 00:22:40,399
Speaker 1: it out. And his thought was that some of the

444
00:22:40,400 --> 00:22:42,920
Speaker 1: bits of this meteor were gonna be iron, and these

445
00:22:42,920 --> 00:22:45,200
Speaker 1: things are gonna be magnetic, and so if you could

446
00:22:45,280 --> 00:22:49,240
Speaker 1: drag a magnetic sled across the seafloor. Maybe you'll pick

447
00:22:49,320 --> 00:22:52,199
Speaker 1: up little bits of this thing, little like chunks of

448
00:22:52,240 --> 00:22:55,440
Speaker 1: the meteor that survived the atmosphere and hit the ocean

449
00:22:55,840 --> 00:22:58,280
Speaker 1: and then sank down to the bottom. Now, if you

450
00:22:58,280 --> 00:23:00,720
Speaker 1: have a science mind at all, there's lots of questions here,

451
00:23:00,760 --> 00:23:04,399
Speaker 1: like how sure are you where it landed? How do

452
00:23:04,440 --> 00:23:06,439
Speaker 1: you know about the tides and the currents, how do

453
00:23:06,440 --> 00:23:09,080
Speaker 1: you know where it's going to fall? What else might

454
00:23:09,119 --> 00:23:11,359
Speaker 1: be there? How could you distinguish it from the other stuff,

455
00:23:11,359 --> 00:23:13,360
Speaker 1: How would you know if it was interstell or All

456
00:23:13,440 --> 00:23:18,000
Speaker 1: of these questions are raised immediately by this fishing expedition.

457
00:23:18,160 --> 00:23:19,080
Speaker 3: It's a long list.

458
00:23:19,960 --> 00:23:21,680
Speaker 1: They went and they did it, and so for two

459
00:23:21,760 --> 00:23:25,520
Speaker 1: weeks they dragged this custom built sled equipped with magnets

460
00:23:25,560 --> 00:23:29,080
Speaker 1: and cameras and lights, across the seafloor, and at regular

461
00:23:29,080 --> 00:23:31,800
Speaker 1: intervals they pulled it up and they gathered any metallic bits,

462
00:23:32,119 --> 00:23:34,040
Speaker 1: and in the end they have a bunch of these

463
00:23:34,040 --> 00:23:39,080
Speaker 1: things they call spherules, like basically tiny little iron balls

464
00:23:39,160 --> 00:23:41,920
Speaker 1: around like a quarter of a millimeter up to two

465
00:23:42,000 --> 00:23:43,400
Speaker 1: millimeters in radius.

466
00:23:43,600 --> 00:23:46,080
Speaker 3: Okay, so, first of all, why would you be sure

467
00:23:46,240 --> 00:23:49,480
Speaker 3: that this object had iron in it, And then also,

468
00:23:50,040 --> 00:23:52,480
Speaker 3: aren't there a lot of iron containing objects on the

469
00:23:52,520 --> 00:23:53,160
Speaker 3: seafloor to.

470
00:23:53,080 --> 00:23:56,840
Speaker 1: Begin with, yes, absolutely. It turns out the seafloor is

471
00:23:56,960 --> 00:24:01,199
Speaker 1: covered with these iron spherules from Solar System meteorites and

472
00:24:01,240 --> 00:24:04,840
Speaker 1: from other sources of iron, so it's not that rare

473
00:24:04,920 --> 00:24:07,359
Speaker 1: to find sperials. And in a minute we'll talk about

474
00:24:07,400 --> 00:24:10,480
Speaker 1: analysis by experts in this area and how skeptical they

475
00:24:10,520 --> 00:24:13,600
Speaker 1: are of the claims that Lobe and his team ended

476
00:24:13,640 --> 00:24:14,119
Speaker 1: up making.

477
00:24:14,400 --> 00:24:16,560
Speaker 3: They Okay, they found some, and then what evidence did

478
00:24:16,600 --> 00:24:19,080
Speaker 3: they provide to suggest that these were interstellar instead of

479
00:24:19,119 --> 00:24:21,200
Speaker 3: just like boring old Earth iron.

480
00:24:21,240 --> 00:24:23,399
Speaker 1: They found like seven hundred these things in the area

481
00:24:23,440 --> 00:24:26,720
Speaker 1: where they thought this meteorite had hit, and they also

482
00:24:26,760 --> 00:24:28,879
Speaker 1: went and checked a couple other areas and they found

483
00:24:28,880 --> 00:24:32,200
Speaker 1: fewer of these little spherials, So that led them to conclude, like, oh,

484
00:24:32,280 --> 00:24:34,920
Speaker 1: maybe we found the right region, Maybe we have hit

485
00:24:35,000 --> 00:24:39,679
Speaker 1: on this sort of destruction path, this wreckage from this meteorite,

486
00:24:39,720 --> 00:24:42,720
Speaker 1: because there are more Sperials here than there are nearby.

487
00:24:43,200 --> 00:24:45,000
Speaker 1: And then they did an analysis of these things. If

488
00:24:45,040 --> 00:24:46,440
Speaker 1: you look at their paper, you can see they have

489
00:24:46,560 --> 00:24:49,159
Speaker 1: like super close up pictures of these things, and they

490
00:24:49,160 --> 00:24:52,760
Speaker 1: are like tiny little iron bebes, and they did things

491
00:24:52,840 --> 00:24:56,760
Speaker 1: like measure the elemental composition, like how much beryllium, how

492
00:24:56,840 --> 00:25:00,280
Speaker 1: much uranium, how much iron, what kind of isotope of

493
00:25:00,320 --> 00:25:02,680
Speaker 1: iron are there? And from that they try to learn

494
00:25:02,720 --> 00:25:05,399
Speaker 1: whether or not these things are consistent with bits of

495
00:25:05,440 --> 00:25:08,960
Speaker 1: our solar system or inconsistent with bits of our solar system.

496
00:25:09,040 --> 00:25:12,600
Speaker 3: And you said, tried to, which makes me think that

497
00:25:12,640 --> 00:25:14,760
Speaker 3: the argument was not iron clad.

498
00:25:16,320 --> 00:25:18,639
Speaker 1: So they make two kinds of arguments. One is about

499
00:25:18,640 --> 00:25:22,200
Speaker 1: the ratio of iron isotopes. Like iron is an element,

500
00:25:22,200 --> 00:25:24,480
Speaker 1: but there's a few different varieties of iron. There's iron

501
00:25:24,520 --> 00:25:27,040
Speaker 1: with more or fewer neutrons in it, so it's like

502
00:25:27,040 --> 00:25:29,720
Speaker 1: a tiny bit heavier and a tiny bit lighter. By

503
00:25:29,720 --> 00:25:32,720
Speaker 1: the ratio those isotopes, you can tell something about where

504
00:25:32,720 --> 00:25:35,320
Speaker 1: it came from and like the chemical interactions it's been

505
00:25:35,359 --> 00:25:38,159
Speaker 1: involved in, which will dig into in a minute. But

506
00:25:38,240 --> 00:25:41,600
Speaker 1: they also looked at the beryllium, the lanthanum, and the

507
00:25:41,720 --> 00:25:46,280
Speaker 1: uranium in these things, so like more exotic elements, and

508
00:25:46,480 --> 00:25:49,399
Speaker 1: some of these things have like more beryllium, lanthium, and

509
00:25:49,560 --> 00:25:53,920
Speaker 1: uranium than they expected, and so they claim that these

510
00:25:53,960 --> 00:25:58,120
Speaker 1: things are consistent with an interstellar meteor, for example, there's

511
00:25:58,160 --> 00:26:00,480
Speaker 1: a lot of beryllium in there, and beryllium kind of

512
00:26:00,520 --> 00:26:03,520
Speaker 1: hard to make, so they suggest that maybe the beryllium

513
00:26:03,640 --> 00:26:07,360
Speaker 1: in this thing was made as this interstellar meteor passes

514
00:26:07,400 --> 00:26:10,840
Speaker 1: through interstellar space and it's hit with radiation, which is

515
00:26:10,840 --> 00:26:12,639
Speaker 1: one of the ways that you make beryllium.

516
00:26:12,880 --> 00:26:13,120
Speaker 2: Hmm.

517
00:26:14,520 --> 00:26:18,000
Speaker 3: But couldn't something that got shot from Mars get hit

518
00:26:18,080 --> 00:26:21,600
Speaker 3: with interstellar radiation before it landed on Earth or the

519
00:26:21,720 --> 00:26:23,560
Speaker 3: argument is that it would have taken a lot more

520
00:26:23,560 --> 00:26:25,680
Speaker 3: time for that, but it could take a long time

521
00:26:25,720 --> 00:26:26,640
Speaker 3: to get from Marster Earth.

522
00:26:26,880 --> 00:26:29,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, you could be floating around in the Solar System

523
00:26:29,000 --> 00:26:30,800
Speaker 1: for a long time. And this is a bit of

524
00:26:30,840 --> 00:26:34,240
Speaker 1: a weak argument, I agree, But the interstellar radiation is

525
00:26:34,280 --> 00:26:36,920
Speaker 1: a little bit different than the inside the Solar system's

526
00:26:36,960 --> 00:26:39,439
Speaker 1: solar wind, so there might be a little bit of

527
00:26:39,440 --> 00:26:40,240
Speaker 1: an argument there.

528
00:26:40,520 --> 00:26:40,840
Speaker 3: Okay.

529
00:26:41,080 --> 00:26:43,359
Speaker 1: So they had these spuriles and they looked a little

530
00:26:43,359 --> 00:26:46,320
Speaker 1: weird according to them and based on their expertise, so

531
00:26:46,359 --> 00:26:49,560
Speaker 1: they posted this paper in late twenty twenty three claiming

532
00:26:49,800 --> 00:26:54,639
Speaker 1: spurials of likely extrasolar composition. So like this was a

533
00:26:54,680 --> 00:26:59,080
Speaker 1: big claim. This made a huge splash, like discovering bits

534
00:26:59,080 --> 00:27:03,760
Speaker 1: of an interstellar would have enormous scientific consequences, and.

535
00:27:03,720 --> 00:27:06,440
Speaker 3: So I'm sure they did an enormous amount of work

536
00:27:06,480 --> 00:27:09,120
Speaker 3: to make sure that they were correct before they released this.

537
00:27:09,240 --> 00:27:13,200
Speaker 3: And so my first thought is, you say paper post it?

538
00:27:13,240 --> 00:27:17,080
Speaker 3: Do you mean like paper posted after peer review or

539
00:27:17,840 --> 00:27:20,440
Speaker 3: I mean, I know physicists do things a little differently.

540
00:27:20,520 --> 00:27:25,159
Speaker 3: They tend to post things on archive first before peer review.

541
00:27:25,240 --> 00:27:27,040
Speaker 3: Is that right? So maybe that would be standard, But

542
00:27:27,560 --> 00:27:29,040
Speaker 3: tell me what paper posted meant?

543
00:27:29,200 --> 00:27:31,040
Speaker 1: So they put it on the internet. They put it

544
00:27:31,080 --> 00:27:33,600
Speaker 1: on the archive. It had not yet been peer reviewed.

545
00:27:34,119 --> 00:27:36,320
Speaker 1: And in some fields it's a standard, like actually, in

546
00:27:36,359 --> 00:27:38,800
Speaker 1: particle physics, we post our papers assume as we're done

547
00:27:38,840 --> 00:27:41,720
Speaker 1: with them before they're peer reviewed, but everybody knows they're

548
00:27:41,760 --> 00:27:43,800
Speaker 1: not yet peer reviewed, and so you got to wait

549
00:27:43,920 --> 00:27:47,240
Speaker 1: and see if it really stands up. In astronomy and

550
00:27:47,320 --> 00:27:50,960
Speaker 1: in astrophysics it's actually the opposite. People wait and post

551
00:27:51,000 --> 00:27:54,280
Speaker 1: their papers to the archive after they're peer reviewed. And

552
00:27:54,359 --> 00:27:57,720
Speaker 1: so this was a pretty unusual move, not just because

553
00:27:57,720 --> 00:28:01,119
Speaker 1: they posted the paper before peer review, but also because

554
00:28:01,160 --> 00:28:04,399
Speaker 1: the claims in the paper, Like they didn't just claim

555
00:28:04,440 --> 00:28:07,720
Speaker 1: that these things were likely extra solar composition like a

556
00:28:07,800 --> 00:28:10,800
Speaker 1: hunk of rock from another solar system, they said, and

557
00:28:10,840 --> 00:28:13,639
Speaker 1: I have to quote this because it's amazing. They quote,

558
00:28:13,840 --> 00:28:20,960
Speaker 1: may reflect an extraterrestrial technological origin. Like, yes, not only

559
00:28:21,040 --> 00:28:23,200
Speaker 1: are they suggesting these things could just be bits of

560
00:28:23,280 --> 00:28:27,080
Speaker 1: rock from another solar system, already amazing, but bits of

561
00:28:27,240 --> 00:28:32,800
Speaker 1: technological junk from an intelligent civilization from another solar system.

562
00:28:32,920 --> 00:28:35,600
Speaker 1: Like to make that leap to me is just incredible.

563
00:28:35,640 --> 00:28:39,560
Speaker 3: Wait, have we just not yet talked about the evidence

564
00:28:39,560 --> 00:28:42,640
Speaker 3: that they used to support that claim, or because we've

565
00:28:42,680 --> 00:28:45,160
Speaker 3: like skipped it so far, or have we really talked

566
00:28:45,160 --> 00:28:45,840
Speaker 3: about everything.

567
00:28:46,800 --> 00:28:50,000
Speaker 1: No, there is no evidence to support that claim. Just like, hey, look,

568
00:28:50,040 --> 00:28:53,680
Speaker 1: these are weird and they have a strange mix of elements.

569
00:28:53,960 --> 00:28:56,760
Speaker 1: Maybe they come from an alien iPhone. That's really the

570
00:28:56,800 --> 00:29:02,280
Speaker 1: whole argument there, and then and then add to the mix.

571
00:29:02,400 --> 00:29:04,680
Speaker 1: The same day this paper is posted. In twenty twenty three,

572
00:29:05,080 --> 00:29:09,160
Speaker 1: Ivi Lobe publishes a popular book for a mass audience

573
00:29:09,320 --> 00:29:13,640
Speaker 1: called Interstellar, The Search for Extraterrestrial Life that's all about

574
00:29:13,680 --> 00:29:18,280
Speaker 1: his search for little bits of technology from alien species

575
00:29:18,640 --> 00:29:21,360
Speaker 1: elsewhere in the colex and then he gives a bunch

576
00:29:21,400 --> 00:29:23,320
Speaker 1: of interviews and in the interview He sort of like

577
00:29:23,400 --> 00:29:26,560
Speaker 1: conflates whether the paper has been published as in Peer

578
00:29:26,600 --> 00:29:30,160
Speaker 1: reviewed or just post it online, And so he really

579
00:29:30,160 --> 00:29:32,440
Speaker 1: gives people the impression like, oh my gosh, look this

580
00:29:32,480 --> 00:29:34,320
Speaker 1: is really backed up with scientific study.

581
00:29:35,600 --> 00:29:36,600
Speaker 3: Doesn't sound good.

582
00:29:38,920 --> 00:29:41,760
Speaker 1: And so everybody was like, hmm, that's interesting. We'd love

583
00:29:41,840 --> 00:29:44,600
Speaker 1: to believe it, right, we're scientist. Let's keep an open mind.

584
00:29:44,840 --> 00:29:48,200
Speaker 1: Maybe Lobe did discover bits of an alien iPhone. That

585
00:29:48,240 --> 00:29:51,120
Speaker 1: would be fantastic. Nobody wants to reign on the parade

586
00:29:51,160 --> 00:29:56,200
Speaker 1: if it's true, right, But you know, extraordinary claims extraordinary evidence,

587
00:29:56,760 --> 00:29:59,520
Speaker 1: And so I for one, was waiting for a detailed

588
00:29:59,520 --> 00:30:02,920
Speaker 1: critique from experts, people who know, like, how likely is

589
00:30:02,960 --> 00:30:05,720
Speaker 1: a meteor to survive this thing? How likely was it

590
00:30:05,760 --> 00:30:08,440
Speaker 1: that it had an interstellar origin? What can we conclude

591
00:30:08,480 --> 00:30:12,280
Speaker 1: from the elemental composition of this stuff? And very recently

592
00:30:12,320 --> 00:30:15,360
Speaker 1: there was a paper by Stephen Desh and Alan Jackson,

593
00:30:15,400 --> 00:30:19,600
Speaker 1: two experts in this area, professors at ASU and Towson University,

594
00:30:20,040 --> 00:30:22,920
Speaker 1: and they went through in a meticulous fashion and took

595
00:30:22,920 --> 00:30:24,120
Speaker 1: apart his claims.

596
00:30:24,280 --> 00:30:26,520
Speaker 3: Oh boy, so who's who are we going to side with?

597
00:30:26,560 --> 00:30:30,560
Speaker 3: By the end of this episode.

598
00:30:29,680 --> 00:30:31,920
Speaker 1: We're going to decide with the evidence, of course.

599
00:30:32,720 --> 00:30:34,840
Speaker 3: All right, so where do we start then, digging into

600
00:30:34,880 --> 00:30:36,600
Speaker 3: the many arguments we just talked about.

601
00:30:36,720 --> 00:30:39,720
Speaker 1: I want to start by reading this paragraph from desh

602
00:30:39,760 --> 00:30:42,320
Speaker 1: and Jackson's paper, which I think sums it up pretty

603
00:30:42,360 --> 00:30:44,640
Speaker 1: well and like, this is not the kind of thing

604
00:30:44,640 --> 00:30:47,960
Speaker 1: you typically find in a science paper. This is fire.

605
00:30:48,440 --> 00:30:52,160
Speaker 1: So what they wrote is quote. Because of the boldness

606
00:30:52,160 --> 00:30:54,600
Speaker 1: of the claim, it might be expected that Lobe at

607
00:30:54,600 --> 00:30:59,240
Speaker 1: all exercise due diligence to eliminate alternative, more prosaic explanations

608
00:30:59,240 --> 00:31:02,680
Speaker 1: for the data, and would report their results carefully and deliberately.

609
00:31:03,120 --> 00:31:07,520
Speaker 1: They did not flight lowbit all hardly considered, and did

610
00:31:07,560 --> 00:31:12,080
Speaker 1: not test the simplest alternative hypothesis. The spherals they found

611
00:31:12,080 --> 00:31:15,480
Speaker 1: were of a common and well understood type found worldwide

612
00:31:15,760 --> 00:31:19,480
Speaker 1: from Solar System asteroids. Apparently, the authors did not seek

613
00:31:19,520 --> 00:31:22,680
Speaker 1: expert opinion and posted the discovery manuscript before it had

614
00:31:22,720 --> 00:31:25,880
Speaker 1: been peer reviewed and accepted or even submitted to a

615
00:31:25,960 --> 00:31:26,760
Speaker 1: science journal.

616
00:31:27,200 --> 00:31:30,960
Speaker 3: En quote, I am getting I'm getting heart palpitations. As

617
00:31:31,120 --> 00:31:34,240
Speaker 3: a fellow scientist, I cannot handle this. This is very

618
00:31:34,320 --> 00:31:36,880
Speaker 3: My empathy is through the roof right now. But if

619
00:31:36,920 --> 00:31:39,080
Speaker 3: they should have done due diligence.

620
00:31:38,760 --> 00:31:41,840
Speaker 1: I know, being publicly called out like this, not just like, hey,

621
00:31:41,840 --> 00:31:44,560
Speaker 1: look we disagree, we took another look at the evidence.

622
00:31:44,600 --> 00:31:46,920
Speaker 1: We think maybe you were wrong. Have you considered, But

623
00:31:47,000 --> 00:31:50,280
Speaker 1: this is really calling them out for sloppy science, for

624
00:31:50,520 --> 00:31:54,720
Speaker 1: not considering reasonable alternatives, and basically for looking to confirm

625
00:31:54,760 --> 00:31:58,080
Speaker 1: the story they were hoping to find. It's really pretty damning.

626
00:31:58,280 --> 00:32:03,000
Speaker 3: Well let's dig in, Okay, So tell me about more

627
00:32:03,040 --> 00:32:06,880
Speaker 3: about those. Should we start with the spherals or should

628
00:32:06,920 --> 00:32:09,880
Speaker 3: we talk about the you know, how good were the

629
00:32:10,040 --> 00:32:12,040
Speaker 3: trajectories suggesting it was interstellar?

630
00:32:12,280 --> 00:32:14,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's start with whether or not this thing even

631
00:32:14,760 --> 00:32:17,600
Speaker 1: was interstellar, which is sort of the reason this whole

632
00:32:17,600 --> 00:32:21,200
Speaker 1: thing got started, right, Like, the US Space Command issued

633
00:32:21,200 --> 00:32:24,080
Speaker 1: this statement that it was an interstellar trajectory. That sounds

634
00:32:24,120 --> 00:32:27,680
Speaker 1: pretty solid, right Yeah, But you know, then NASA chimed

635
00:32:27,720 --> 00:32:30,680
Speaker 1: in and said the short duration of collected data less

636
00:32:30,680 --> 00:32:34,600
Speaker 1: than five seconds, makes it difficult to definitively determine if

637
00:32:34,600 --> 00:32:39,080
Speaker 1: the object's origin was indeed interstellar. What this comes down

638
00:32:39,120 --> 00:32:41,680
Speaker 1: to is the precision of the measurements of this thing,

639
00:32:41,800 --> 00:32:44,280
Speaker 1: Like how well do we know how fast it was

640
00:32:44,320 --> 00:32:46,160
Speaker 1: going and the direction of its motion?

641
00:32:46,520 --> 00:32:51,240
Speaker 3: Wow? So what that doesn't sound good? So how often,

642
00:32:51,400 --> 00:32:54,840
Speaker 3: like when you only have about five seconds worth of data, like,

643
00:32:54,880 --> 00:32:58,000
Speaker 3: how much error do you have in that?

644
00:32:58,000 --> 00:33:01,480
Speaker 1: That's exactly the question to ask. And so in this case,

645
00:33:01,560 --> 00:33:05,200
Speaker 1: whether or not it was interstellar comes down to its velocity. Like,

646
00:33:05,360 --> 00:33:09,080
Speaker 1: anything at our radius that's going about faster than forty

647
00:33:09,120 --> 00:33:12,640
Speaker 1: two or forty three kilometers per second has escaped velocity

648
00:33:12,680 --> 00:33:14,840
Speaker 1: and is not bound to the Sun. So if this

649
00:33:14,880 --> 00:33:17,640
Speaker 1: thing was moving faster than forty two kilometers per second

650
00:33:17,720 --> 00:33:20,160
Speaker 1: relative to the Sun, it's not bound to the Sun

651
00:33:20,240 --> 00:33:23,160
Speaker 1: and it was interstellar. So that's the question. Now, they

652
00:33:23,240 --> 00:33:25,880
Speaker 1: measure the velocity of this thing to have like sixty

653
00:33:26,000 --> 00:33:28,720
Speaker 1: one kilometers per second relative to the Sun, which is

654
00:33:28,760 --> 00:33:31,920
Speaker 1: like almost twenty kilometers per second above the threshold. So

655
00:33:31,920 --> 00:33:36,160
Speaker 1: it seems pretty safely interstellar. But then the question is, well,

656
00:33:36,200 --> 00:33:39,360
Speaker 1: what are the uncertainties. If it's sixty kilometers per second

657
00:33:39,440 --> 00:33:42,000
Speaker 1: plus or minus one or two, yeah it's interstellar. If

658
00:33:42,000 --> 00:33:45,120
Speaker 1: it's sixty kilometers per second plus or minus sixty kilometers

659
00:33:45,160 --> 00:33:49,000
Speaker 1: per second, then you really don't know very much, right, Yeah,

660
00:33:49,120 --> 00:33:52,040
Speaker 1: so low, But his paper claims that based on US

661
00:33:52,120 --> 00:33:54,600
Speaker 1: space command, we can be ninety nine point ninety nine

662
00:33:54,600 --> 00:33:58,080
Speaker 1: percent certain this thing is interstellar. But in Desh's paper

663
00:33:58,120 --> 00:34:00,360
Speaker 1: they reveal the source of this, and it's basically just

664
00:34:00,400 --> 00:34:03,800
Speaker 1: an assumption. They assume that the uncertainties are like ten percent,

665
00:34:04,200 --> 00:34:06,400
Speaker 1: that this thing is like, you know, sixty kilometers plus

666
00:34:06,480 --> 00:34:07,680
Speaker 1: or minus six kilometers.

667
00:34:07,760 --> 00:34:10,720
Speaker 3: Oh that's not good.

668
00:34:11,160 --> 00:34:13,799
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's basically just an assumption. And there are

669
00:34:13,840 --> 00:34:16,720
Speaker 1: other people who have studied the accuracy of these measurements

670
00:34:16,760 --> 00:34:19,760
Speaker 1: from US Space Command. Sometimes you get like two different

671
00:34:19,840 --> 00:34:22,799
Speaker 1: measurements of the same rock as, so you can say, oh, well,

672
00:34:22,880 --> 00:34:25,680
Speaker 1: let's see how accurate it is. And it turns out

673
00:34:25,719 --> 00:34:28,480
Speaker 1: that this data from the intelligence satellites, maybe because they're

674
00:34:28,520 --> 00:34:31,520
Speaker 1: not precise, maybe because it's fudged, maybe because it's purposely

675
00:34:31,560 --> 00:34:36,000
Speaker 1: smudged because it's intelligence data, shows really large variations. So

676
00:34:36,040 --> 00:34:39,359
Speaker 1: the uncertainty could easily be much more than ten kilometers

677
00:34:39,400 --> 00:34:40,000
Speaker 1: per second.

678
00:34:40,360 --> 00:34:42,839
Speaker 3: So there's there's pretty good reason to believe that the

679
00:34:43,239 --> 00:34:47,880
Speaker 3: error is so big that it would include objects that

680
00:34:47,960 --> 00:34:50,200
Speaker 3: are not of interstellar origin exactly.

681
00:34:50,320 --> 00:34:53,200
Speaker 1: So even if this thing is measured to be sixty

682
00:34:53,239 --> 00:34:56,080
Speaker 1: kilometers per second with an uncertainty of ten or fifteen,

683
00:34:56,480 --> 00:34:58,880
Speaker 1: that seems to still keep it above the forty two

684
00:34:59,000 --> 00:35:02,600
Speaker 1: kilometer threshold. But remember how the statistics here like it

685
00:35:02,680 --> 00:35:05,000
Speaker 1: gives it like a one in one thousand chance of

686
00:35:05,040 --> 00:35:08,480
Speaker 1: being mismeasured. And you might think, oh, that's still pretty good,

687
00:35:08,520 --> 00:35:09,960
Speaker 1: Like it's got a one in one thousand chance of

688
00:35:10,000 --> 00:35:12,480
Speaker 1: being mismeasured and a nine hundred and ninety nine out

689
00:35:12,480 --> 00:35:16,080
Speaker 1: of a thousand chance of being accurately measured to be interstellar.

690
00:35:16,520 --> 00:35:18,880
Speaker 1: But remember that there are lots and lots of these rocks,

691
00:35:18,920 --> 00:35:22,080
Speaker 1: and so if you look at thousands or millions of rocks,

692
00:35:22,080 --> 00:35:24,279
Speaker 1: you're going to see one in a thousand events every

693
00:35:24,320 --> 00:35:27,160
Speaker 1: once in a while. It's like if you roll the

694
00:35:27,200 --> 00:35:30,160
Speaker 1: dice a thousand times, you're going to see really rare

695
00:35:30,200 --> 00:35:31,120
Speaker 1: stuff eventually.

696
00:35:31,400 --> 00:35:35,640
Speaker 3: And we have essentially been rolling the dice thousands of times,

697
00:35:36,080 --> 00:35:37,759
Speaker 3: right exactly.

698
00:35:37,800 --> 00:35:40,400
Speaker 1: There are thousands of things in this database, and so

699
00:35:40,960 --> 00:35:44,080
Speaker 1: if you look through the whole database, you'll see really

700
00:35:44,239 --> 00:35:47,000
Speaker 1: rare looking events just because you've looked lots and lots

701
00:35:47,040 --> 00:35:50,000
Speaker 1: of times. And so the evidence that this thing is

702
00:35:50,080 --> 00:35:54,279
Speaker 1: interstellar is actually pretty weak. It might just be a

703
00:35:54,440 --> 00:35:58,799
Speaker 1: very mismeasured solar system asteroid, and you expect a mismeasured

704
00:35:58,800 --> 00:36:01,600
Speaker 1: solar system asteroid to it looked like an interstellar object

705
00:36:01,880 --> 00:36:03,400
Speaker 1: one in a thousand times.

706
00:36:03,120 --> 00:36:08,640
Speaker 3: About okay, so it might not have been traveling from

707
00:36:08,680 --> 00:36:13,600
Speaker 3: an interstellar location. That's problem one. Let's move on to

708
00:36:13,920 --> 00:36:16,240
Speaker 3: critique two. Where are we going next?

709
00:36:16,480 --> 00:36:19,040
Speaker 1: So next, Dish points out that this thing probably would

710
00:36:19,040 --> 00:36:21,920
Speaker 1: not have survived reentry. The idea that enough of it

711
00:36:22,040 --> 00:36:24,680
Speaker 1: survived to like land in the ocean and cause these

712
00:36:24,719 --> 00:36:28,719
Speaker 1: spherals seems really unlikely. This thing was coming into like

713
00:36:28,760 --> 00:36:31,360
Speaker 1: one hundred and forty times the speed of sound, and

714
00:36:31,400 --> 00:36:34,240
Speaker 1: at that speed, like the front of it gets melted

715
00:36:34,320 --> 00:36:37,080
Speaker 1: and heated and vaporized and the whole thing would have

716
00:36:37,160 --> 00:36:40,359
Speaker 1: come apart. So Desh did a calculation that showed that

717
00:36:40,440 --> 00:36:44,160
Speaker 1: ninety nine point nine nine nine nine nine percent of

718
00:36:44,200 --> 00:36:47,520
Speaker 1: it would have been vaporized. So basically, like almost all

719
00:36:47,600 --> 00:36:50,719
Speaker 1: this thing is gone. It's just like in little individual

720
00:36:50,800 --> 00:36:54,480
Speaker 1: particles by time it reaches the ocean surface.

721
00:36:54,320 --> 00:36:56,600
Speaker 3: And then it's going to slowly sync to the bottom,

722
00:36:56,640 --> 00:36:59,879
Speaker 3: and your chance of finding it, if anything survived, would

723
00:36:59,920 --> 00:37:03,520
Speaker 3: have been pretty low. But yeah, basically, and we probably

724
00:37:03,560 --> 00:37:06,400
Speaker 3: have pretty good data on this right because we've probably

725
00:37:06,400 --> 00:37:08,759
Speaker 3: observed a lot of stuff that hits our atmosphere and

726
00:37:08,760 --> 00:37:10,040
Speaker 3: burns up in the atmosphere.

727
00:37:10,400 --> 00:37:13,960
Speaker 1: Absolutely people know how this works. And DSH actually went

728
00:37:14,120 --> 00:37:17,399
Speaker 1: back to Lobe's paper and checked their calculations, and they

729
00:37:17,440 --> 00:37:20,480
Speaker 1: found a mistake, like they cannot confirm the number that

730
00:37:20,520 --> 00:37:23,040
Speaker 1: load calculates for like how this thing would have melted

731
00:37:23,080 --> 00:37:25,719
Speaker 1: in the atmosphere. So they suspect that they just like

732
00:37:25,800 --> 00:37:30,600
Speaker 1: plugged in the wrong number and that's why they misunderstood exactly.

733
00:37:31,280 --> 00:37:34,560
Speaker 1: So so far, it looks like this thing was probably

734
00:37:34,560 --> 00:37:37,960
Speaker 1: not interstellar, and even if it was, probably would not

735
00:37:38,160 --> 00:37:41,200
Speaker 1: have left any remnants when it hit the atmosphere. It's

736
00:37:41,280 --> 00:37:44,239
Speaker 1: just too small for anything to survive all the way

737
00:37:44,280 --> 00:37:45,160
Speaker 1: through the atmosphere.

738
00:37:45,200 --> 00:37:49,000
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, But so let's say it was interstellar

739
00:37:49,160 --> 00:37:53,279
Speaker 3: and something did survive, how likely are we to have

740
00:37:53,280 --> 00:37:57,000
Speaker 3: been able to find it and then know that it

741
00:37:57,040 --> 00:37:58,840
Speaker 3: was interstellar once we got it.

742
00:37:58,960 --> 00:38:01,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is basically or question when you first heard this, right, like,

743
00:38:01,960 --> 00:38:04,000
Speaker 1: how would you even find this thing? It's a needle

744
00:38:04,000 --> 00:38:07,480
Speaker 1: in a haystack. So yeah, assume it's interstellar and that

745
00:38:07,600 --> 00:38:10,360
Speaker 1: some of it survives, and then you get enough iron

746
00:38:10,680 --> 00:38:12,880
Speaker 1: that it hits the surface of the ocean that sinks

747
00:38:12,920 --> 00:38:15,120
Speaker 1: down that you could potentially find it, that it's even

748
00:38:15,200 --> 00:38:19,080
Speaker 1: there for you to find it. Another big problem is, hey,

749
00:38:19,200 --> 00:38:22,680
Speaker 1: the ocean is really big. It turns out and find

750
00:38:23,560 --> 00:38:26,960
Speaker 1: finding like basically Bebe's on the bottom of the ocean.

751
00:38:27,560 --> 00:38:29,680
Speaker 1: You need to really know where you're looking. And there's

752
00:38:29,680 --> 00:38:31,840
Speaker 1: a lot of uncertainty about this thing. We got like

753
00:38:31,960 --> 00:38:35,319
Speaker 1: five seconds of data about its trajectory, and if you

754
00:38:35,360 --> 00:38:38,200
Speaker 1: extrapolate that to the surface of the ocean, there's a

755
00:38:38,320 --> 00:38:41,640
Speaker 1: pretty wide range where this thing could be. And now

756
00:38:41,680 --> 00:38:44,760
Speaker 1: you're going to like drag your tiny little magnetic sled

757
00:38:45,239 --> 00:38:47,879
Speaker 1: over this thing. You know, what are the chances you're

758
00:38:47,920 --> 00:38:49,720
Speaker 1: even dragging it in the right place?

759
00:38:50,200 --> 00:38:50,319
Speaker 4: Well?

760
00:38:50,360 --> 00:38:52,560
Speaker 3: And can we take one more step back? And I'm

761
00:38:52,600 --> 00:38:54,759
Speaker 3: sorry if you said this, and my brain was just

762
00:38:56,080 --> 00:38:59,480
Speaker 3: discombobulated at the time. How do we know for sure

763
00:39:00,280 --> 00:39:03,080
Speaker 3: that it's gonna be that it would be iron, and

764
00:39:03,120 --> 00:39:05,520
Speaker 3: that this magnet is what we should be using to

765
00:39:05,520 --> 00:39:07,799
Speaker 3: collect it. How can we be sure that this intertellar

766
00:39:07,840 --> 00:39:08,480
Speaker 3: thing is iron?

767
00:39:08,920 --> 00:39:11,200
Speaker 1: We can't. But there's a lot of iron out there

768
00:39:11,680 --> 00:39:13,880
Speaker 1: and a lot of heavy metals, and iron is a

769
00:39:13,920 --> 00:39:16,319
Speaker 1: pretty common thing because it's like the end point of

770
00:39:16,480 --> 00:39:21,120
Speaker 1: nuclear fusion, making things heavier than iron is hard, and

771
00:39:21,160 --> 00:39:24,440
Speaker 1: so iron is pretty widely distributed in rocks in the

772
00:39:24,480 --> 00:39:27,560
Speaker 1: solar system and maybe in rocks in other solar systems.

773
00:39:27,880 --> 00:39:30,360
Speaker 1: But it's a great question, like maybe our solar system

774
00:39:30,480 --> 00:39:32,840
Speaker 1: is weird, and once we get samples from other solar systems,

775
00:39:32,840 --> 00:39:36,080
Speaker 1: we'll discover, Wow, iron isn't as common as we thought.

776
00:39:36,360 --> 00:39:38,920
Speaker 1: So yeah, this is a big assumption that rocks from

777
00:39:38,960 --> 00:39:41,680
Speaker 1: other solar systems will have enough iron to make little

778
00:39:41,680 --> 00:39:43,680
Speaker 1: metal balls we can pick up with our magnets.

779
00:39:44,000 --> 00:39:46,920
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, So let's assume it is iron for sure,

780
00:39:46,960 --> 00:39:51,320
Speaker 3: and that the magnet method is gonna work. The ocean

781
00:39:52,080 --> 00:40:00,319
Speaker 3: is big and deep, and so what like range of

782
00:40:00,880 --> 00:40:03,640
Speaker 3: like locations where it would have fallen, like how good

783
00:40:03,719 --> 00:40:06,880
Speaker 3: was there certainty? And where it would have potentially fallen.

784
00:40:07,640 --> 00:40:11,120
Speaker 1: So the location data we have, if you believe it,

785
00:40:11,160 --> 00:40:15,560
Speaker 1: gives a box that's like twenty kilometers by twenty kilometers

786
00:40:15,920 --> 00:40:19,439
Speaker 1: or where this thing might have landed, and like that's huge, Right,

787
00:40:19,440 --> 00:40:21,800
Speaker 1: You're not going to drag your magnetic sled to cover

788
00:40:22,160 --> 00:40:26,640
Speaker 1: an entire square twenty kilometers by twenty kilometers. So lob

789
00:40:26,680 --> 00:40:28,600
Speaker 1: in them did is use a little bit more data.

790
00:40:28,920 --> 00:40:32,800
Speaker 1: There's a seismometer on an island about ninety kilometers away

791
00:40:33,160 --> 00:40:35,920
Speaker 1: that also measured like a blip around the same moment,

792
00:40:36,400 --> 00:40:39,320
Speaker 1: And so they use that information to try to narrow

793
00:40:39,360 --> 00:40:41,120
Speaker 1: it down a little bit, and they find like a

794
00:40:41,160 --> 00:40:44,640
Speaker 1: little band through this box that they think maybe is

795
00:40:44,960 --> 00:40:48,000
Speaker 1: where this thing landed. So they have like a slightly

796
00:40:48,120 --> 00:40:50,960
Speaker 1: narrower region, and they drag their sled basically through this

797
00:40:51,080 --> 00:40:54,239
Speaker 1: band and then a couple other spots to get control measurements.

798
00:40:54,440 --> 00:40:58,239
Speaker 3: Did that blip on the seismometer. Does that increase our

799
00:40:58,280 --> 00:41:01,160
Speaker 3: confidence that maybe something did make it to the ocean

800
00:41:01,160 --> 00:41:03,399
Speaker 3: bottom or did survive re entry.

801
00:41:03,520 --> 00:41:06,719
Speaker 1: The seismometer is actually most likely measuring the detonation in

802
00:41:06,760 --> 00:41:09,799
Speaker 1: the atmosphere, right, because this thing, as it comes through

803
00:41:09,800 --> 00:41:12,120
Speaker 1: the atmosphere, it's going to explode as like pockets of

804
00:41:12,160 --> 00:41:15,600
Speaker 1: gas or whatever inside of it heat up unevenly. So

805
00:41:15,719 --> 00:41:19,279
Speaker 1: probably this is measuring the explosions in the atmosphere. But

806
00:41:19,400 --> 00:41:22,720
Speaker 1: as deshan All point out number one, all these measurements

807
00:41:22,719 --> 00:41:25,920
Speaker 1: are very uncertain, like the seismometer itself is very uncertain

808
00:41:25,960 --> 00:41:27,719
Speaker 1: if you take a look at the data, like there

809
00:41:27,719 --> 00:41:30,400
Speaker 1: are a lot of blips nearby that could have been anything,

810
00:41:31,000 --> 00:41:34,719
Speaker 1: so lob in them assigning this blip from the seismometer

811
00:41:34,960 --> 00:41:38,680
Speaker 1: to this particular bit of rock is very very speculative,

812
00:41:39,080 --> 00:41:41,040
Speaker 1: you know. Basically, they were just looking for a way

813
00:41:41,080 --> 00:41:43,640
Speaker 1: to slice the region down and hope they find something.

814
00:41:44,400 --> 00:41:47,200
Speaker 1: There's not really strong evidence that this is the region.

815
00:41:47,920 --> 00:41:50,520
Speaker 1: The most damning thing that Desh points out is that

816
00:41:50,560 --> 00:41:54,279
Speaker 1: according to Space Command, there's two possible locations. There's the

817
00:41:54,320 --> 00:41:56,960
Speaker 1: box that lobe serch, and then there's another location that

818
00:41:57,000 --> 00:42:00,360
Speaker 1: could have been where it hit like sixty kilometers away.

819
00:42:00,680 --> 00:42:02,560
Speaker 1: So it could be they were looking in completely the

820
00:42:02,600 --> 00:42:03,240
Speaker 1: wrong place.

821
00:42:03,640 --> 00:42:07,880
Speaker 3: Oh man, okay, all right, So might not have been interstellar,

822
00:42:08,360 --> 00:42:11,719
Speaker 3: probably wouldn't have survived reentry. If it did survive re entry,

823
00:42:11,760 --> 00:42:14,719
Speaker 3: where we're not super sure where it landed, and only

824
00:42:14,760 --> 00:42:17,080
Speaker 3: one of two possible spots was searched, and maybe not

825
00:42:17,120 --> 00:42:21,200
Speaker 3: even all of the possible of one of the two spots.

826
00:42:21,760 --> 00:42:26,759
Speaker 3: Let's take a break to build suspense and then and

827
00:42:26,840 --> 00:42:30,360
Speaker 3: then let's talk about the spheres that they did find

828
00:42:30,840 --> 00:42:34,000
Speaker 3: and how they tried to argue that. How good was

829
00:42:34,000 --> 00:42:36,040
Speaker 3: the evidence that those were not from here?

830
00:42:49,080 --> 00:42:49,399
Speaker 2: All Right?

831
00:42:49,840 --> 00:42:52,520
Speaker 3: I feel like my blood pressure is going up as

832
00:42:52,560 --> 00:42:56,240
Speaker 3: I'm watching someone else's arguments get dismantled. It's a weirdly

833
00:42:56,480 --> 00:42:58,800
Speaker 3: personal it's a weird experience.

834
00:42:58,840 --> 00:43:01,439
Speaker 1: But okay, so I know, I know, you don't want

835
00:43:01,480 --> 00:43:05,520
Speaker 1: anybody out there in science to like be publicly dismantled.

836
00:43:05,560 --> 00:43:08,440
Speaker 1: It's terrible, it's embarrassing. If people are making good faith

837
00:43:08,480 --> 00:43:10,600
Speaker 1: efforts to do their science, we should treat it with

838
00:43:10,640 --> 00:43:13,600
Speaker 1: respect and we should take it seriously. The question here

839
00:43:13,640 --> 00:43:15,920
Speaker 1: is like whether Lob and A really are making a

840
00:43:15,960 --> 00:43:19,040
Speaker 1: good faith analysis of this data or whether Lobe is

841
00:43:19,080 --> 00:43:20,279
Speaker 1: just promoting his book.

842
00:43:20,239 --> 00:43:23,320
Speaker 3: Well, And also, at the end of the day, sometimes

843
00:43:23,640 --> 00:43:26,040
Speaker 3: people are going to be made uncomfortable because science needs

844
00:43:26,040 --> 00:43:28,200
Speaker 3: to be picked apart for the process to work. And

845
00:43:28,280 --> 00:43:32,360
Speaker 3: so so here we go. Okay, so tell me more

846
00:43:32,560 --> 00:43:36,839
Speaker 3: about those speruals and how certain we are that they

847
00:43:36,880 --> 00:43:38,640
Speaker 3: were interstellar, right.

848
00:43:38,560 --> 00:43:40,640
Speaker 1: Because even if you don't believe this thing was interstellar

849
00:43:40,760 --> 00:43:43,160
Speaker 1: and might have not a survived reentry and you don't

850
00:43:43,160 --> 00:43:46,360
Speaker 1: know where to look, they did drag something across the seafloor,

851
00:43:46,400 --> 00:43:48,840
Speaker 1: and if they found something weird that we can't explain,

852
00:43:49,000 --> 00:43:51,399
Speaker 1: those other arguments don't really matter, right, Like they found

853
00:43:51,400 --> 00:43:53,640
Speaker 1: something cool, maybe it was a different interstill in media

854
00:43:53,760 --> 00:43:56,480
Speaker 1: or whatever. So let's think about what they actually found.

855
00:43:56,880 --> 00:43:59,000
Speaker 1: So they did find a bunch of these ferules, and

856
00:43:59,040 --> 00:44:02,400
Speaker 1: they did compare the number that they found on their drags,

857
00:44:02,640 --> 00:44:05,200
Speaker 1: so numbers in other areas. They're like, you know, boat

858
00:44:05,239 --> 00:44:07,760
Speaker 1: it over to other regions and drive the sled across

859
00:44:07,760 --> 00:44:10,920
Speaker 1: a couple other spots to try to understand what was typical,

860
00:44:11,000 --> 00:44:13,400
Speaker 1: what was common? How many ferals do you expect to

861
00:44:13,440 --> 00:44:16,680
Speaker 1: find on the ocean floor. And according to their analysis,

862
00:44:16,719 --> 00:44:19,360
Speaker 1: they found more in this region where they were looking

863
00:44:19,440 --> 00:44:22,280
Speaker 1: for this interstellar meteor than in the other spots.

864
00:44:22,360 --> 00:44:25,680
Speaker 3: But there's not only one reason for why one area

865
00:44:25,719 --> 00:44:28,400
Speaker 3: could have more spherals than others, right.

866
00:44:28,160 --> 00:44:33,000
Speaker 1: Exactly exactly, And so when you readsh this paper, you realize, boy,

867
00:44:33,040 --> 00:44:36,440
Speaker 1: it'd be helpful to understand this field at all before

868
00:44:36,440 --> 00:44:39,120
Speaker 1: you dive into it, because it turns out number one,

869
00:44:39,200 --> 00:44:42,279
Speaker 1: the ocean floor is littered with these things, like the

870
00:44:42,320 --> 00:44:45,640
Speaker 1: Earth is getting slammed by meteors all the time, where

871
00:44:45,719 --> 00:44:47,880
Speaker 1: little bits of it are making to the ocean surface

872
00:44:47,920 --> 00:44:50,319
Speaker 1: and then sinking to the ocean floor. Like you drag

873
00:44:50,360 --> 00:44:54,000
Speaker 1: a magnetic sled across anywhere in the ocean, and you're

874
00:44:54,000 --> 00:44:57,160
Speaker 1: gonna find these fuerals and then they're going to vary. Apparently,

875
00:44:57,160 --> 00:44:59,800
Speaker 1: the variation in the number of ferials you find depends

876
00:44:59,800 --> 00:45:02,560
Speaker 1: on lot of stuff, the currents, the shape of the

877
00:45:02,560 --> 00:45:06,239
Speaker 1: ocean floor, all sorts of stuff affects the variation. And

878
00:45:06,320 --> 00:45:09,080
Speaker 1: the number of sphereals is just huge. There's millions of

879
00:45:09,080 --> 00:45:12,160
Speaker 1: these little balls of iron per square kilometer, and so

880
00:45:12,320 --> 00:45:15,399
Speaker 1: even if this thing did happen to land here, this

881
00:45:15,520 --> 00:45:19,040
Speaker 1: metior would contribute like much less than one percent of

882
00:45:19,120 --> 00:45:21,560
Speaker 1: all the little spheres you find on the ocean floor.

883
00:45:21,600 --> 00:45:24,360
Speaker 1: Even if it was there, it'd be very hard to

884
00:45:24,400 --> 00:45:28,920
Speaker 1: find spheres from this particular meteor among the like millions

885
00:45:28,960 --> 00:45:31,560
Speaker 1: of spheres you expect to find on the ocean floor.

886
00:45:32,000 --> 00:45:35,400
Speaker 1: And Lobe's team only found like seven hundred, So you

887
00:45:35,440 --> 00:45:38,640
Speaker 1: would expect like a very small number to be from

888
00:45:38,680 --> 00:45:41,080
Speaker 1: this medior even if it did hit in this region.

889
00:45:41,760 --> 00:45:44,800
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, and so that but the seven hundred

890
00:45:44,840 --> 00:45:45,839
Speaker 3: that they found, and.

891
00:45:45,800 --> 00:45:47,959
Speaker 1: One more comment on the number, even the seven hundred

892
00:45:48,000 --> 00:45:51,560
Speaker 1: they found, Lobanoll claim is like, ooh, we found extra

893
00:45:51,600 --> 00:45:54,200
Speaker 1: in the region we were searching compared to the control regions.

894
00:45:54,440 --> 00:45:56,799
Speaker 1: They didn't take enough data in the control regions to

895
00:45:56,880 --> 00:45:59,840
Speaker 1: really measure how much should be in the control regions.

896
00:46:00,160 --> 00:46:02,560
Speaker 1: So the variation the claim like oh we found more

897
00:46:02,680 --> 00:46:06,960
Speaker 1: here than elsewhere, is not even statistically significant. But all right,

898
00:46:07,040 --> 00:46:10,000
Speaker 1: maybe they were lucky and maybe they found something really exciting.

899
00:46:10,480 --> 00:46:13,120
Speaker 1: So what they did is they measured what's in these spherules,

900
00:46:13,239 --> 00:46:16,839
Speaker 1: like how much iron is there and which iron isotopes,

901
00:46:17,000 --> 00:46:19,879
Speaker 1: and then also what are the weird elements that are

902
00:46:19,880 --> 00:46:22,960
Speaker 1: in it. So first the iron isotopes, they measure iron

903
00:46:23,280 --> 00:46:26,160
Speaker 1: in all these different isotopes. There's iron fifty four, iron

904
00:46:26,200 --> 00:46:29,680
Speaker 1: fifty six, iron fifty seven, and the ratio of these

905
00:46:29,719 --> 00:46:33,560
Speaker 1: isotopes tells you something about wars formed and what's happened

906
00:46:33,600 --> 00:46:35,200
Speaker 1: to it since, and.

907
00:46:36,960 --> 00:46:37,520
Speaker 3: Was it weird?

908
00:46:37,880 --> 00:46:39,879
Speaker 1: So low in them look at the ratios and they

909
00:46:39,880 --> 00:46:43,319
Speaker 1: see something a little weird. That's true. Earth isotopes tend

910
00:46:43,360 --> 00:46:46,520
Speaker 1: to have a particular ratio of fifty seven to fifty

911
00:46:46,520 --> 00:46:48,680
Speaker 1: four and fifty six to fifty four, and a lot

912
00:46:48,719 --> 00:46:51,200
Speaker 1: of these little iron balls that they found had like

913
00:46:51,400 --> 00:46:54,560
Speaker 1: more or less of one of these two iron isotopes.

914
00:46:54,920 --> 00:46:57,960
Speaker 1: The problem is that this can be very easily explained

915
00:46:58,120 --> 00:47:01,360
Speaker 1: by chemistry, like a m out where you take an

916
00:47:01,400 --> 00:47:04,120
Speaker 1: iron sphereal from the Earth and you do some chemical

917
00:47:04,200 --> 00:47:08,080
Speaker 1: process like interaction in the atmosphere or interaction with seawater.

918
00:47:08,200 --> 00:47:11,880
Speaker 1: Even then it tends to lose the lighter isotopes faster

919
00:47:12,400 --> 00:47:14,719
Speaker 1: because the interaction depends on the mass, and things that

920
00:47:14,719 --> 00:47:17,600
Speaker 1: are lower mass will move around more and interact more.

921
00:47:18,120 --> 00:47:21,720
Speaker 1: So this changes like these ratios in a very predictable way.

922
00:47:22,360 --> 00:47:24,759
Speaker 1: And all of the iron balls that they found on

923
00:47:24,800 --> 00:47:28,440
Speaker 1: the seafloor lie exactly across the line you would expect

924
00:47:28,520 --> 00:47:31,360
Speaker 1: stuff to happen if it came from our solar system

925
00:47:31,440 --> 00:47:34,680
Speaker 1: and then interacted with seawater. This is like exactly what

926
00:47:34,719 --> 00:47:37,920
Speaker 1: you would expect for a solar system iron balls.

927
00:47:38,440 --> 00:47:41,399
Speaker 3: And they'd been sitting down there for a decade or something, right,

928
00:47:41,520 --> 00:47:45,040
Speaker 3: so there's plenty of time. If this is from the

929
00:47:45,800 --> 00:47:48,200
Speaker 3: right asteroid that they were trying to find, it would

930
00:47:48,239 --> 00:47:49,320
Speaker 3: have been down there for a decade.

931
00:47:49,400 --> 00:47:53,760
Speaker 1: Reacting yeah, exactly. And so Lobes team seem to claim, oh, look,

932
00:47:53,840 --> 00:47:57,239
Speaker 1: these are different from the nominal ratio we expect, but

933
00:47:57,280 --> 00:48:00,439
Speaker 1: they doesn't seem to understand like the seawater chemistry will

934
00:48:00,440 --> 00:48:03,560
Speaker 1: give you exactly this kind of variation. Did they took

935
00:48:03,640 --> 00:48:06,000
Speaker 1: us like a real dagger in the heart of their claims.

936
00:48:06,000 --> 00:48:09,640
Speaker 1: It proves that these are Solar system iron balls because

937
00:48:09,680 --> 00:48:12,480
Speaker 1: they lie exactly on this line. If things came from

938
00:48:12,520 --> 00:48:15,200
Speaker 1: another Solar system, you might expect them to have a

939
00:48:15,320 --> 00:48:18,800
Speaker 1: very different elemental composition. If it came from a star

940
00:48:18,920 --> 00:48:22,120
Speaker 1: from like five billion years ago, maybe there was less

941
00:48:22,120 --> 00:48:24,520
Speaker 1: iron form because it was earlier in the universe, and

942
00:48:24,680 --> 00:48:27,239
Speaker 1: just like less metal had been made, and so you

943
00:48:27,320 --> 00:48:30,920
Speaker 1: might expect like really weird elemental compositions. But what they

944
00:48:30,960 --> 00:48:33,319
Speaker 1: found is like pretty normal, the kind of stuff you

945
00:48:33,360 --> 00:48:35,880
Speaker 1: find on the sea floor all the time. They just

946
00:48:35,920 --> 00:48:38,120
Speaker 1: didn't seem to understand the context.

947
00:48:38,480 --> 00:48:45,200
Speaker 3: Ouch uh, so have we is the massacre done? Or

948
00:48:45,360 --> 00:48:47,759
Speaker 3: is there is there more?

949
00:48:47,920 --> 00:48:49,920
Speaker 1: There is a tiny little bit more. They claim that

950
00:48:49,920 --> 00:48:53,680
Speaker 1: the composition of the other elements like beryllium, lanthanum, and

951
00:48:53,840 --> 00:48:57,200
Speaker 1: uranium is very unusual. But it turns out also that

952
00:48:57,239 --> 00:49:00,560
Speaker 1: this beryllum can be explained with just interaction with the seawater.

953
00:49:01,239 --> 00:49:04,320
Speaker 1: And you would never even get this much beryllium from

954
00:49:04,440 --> 00:49:07,759
Speaker 1: interstellar travel, Like even interstellar travel would not create this

955
00:49:07,880 --> 00:49:10,200
Speaker 1: much beryllium, But you can do it just by sitting

956
00:49:10,280 --> 00:49:13,399
Speaker 1: on the seafloor and interacting with seawater. We'll do this.

957
00:49:13,960 --> 00:49:16,720
Speaker 1: If they've done a more systematic scan of the ocean floor,

958
00:49:16,760 --> 00:49:19,000
Speaker 1: they would have found lots more examples of this stuff,

959
00:49:19,320 --> 00:49:22,319
Speaker 1: not just where they thought the interstellar media hit, but

960
00:49:22,560 --> 00:49:26,320
Speaker 1: elsewhere in other places. These things are not that unusual.

961
00:49:27,360 --> 00:49:30,160
Speaker 3: So you know, there's always a part of me that

962
00:49:30,239 --> 00:49:32,800
Speaker 3: holds out a little bit of hope for the scientist

963
00:49:32,880 --> 00:49:36,200
Speaker 3: who's getting kind of destroyed in an argument like this.

964
00:49:37,000 --> 00:49:42,120
Speaker 3: Have they has Loben his collaborator responded to these arguments

965
00:49:42,200 --> 00:49:46,080
Speaker 3: to provide some counterpoints or is this pretty much the

966
00:49:46,080 --> 00:49:46,720
Speaker 3: final word?

967
00:49:47,280 --> 00:49:50,040
Speaker 1: It's hard to imagine them responding in a way that

968
00:49:50,080 --> 00:49:53,319
Speaker 1: their claim survives. So far, we haven't heard anything from them.

969
00:49:53,800 --> 00:49:57,200
Speaker 1: But before this paper came out, Lobe complained that nobody

970
00:49:57,239 --> 00:49:59,839
Speaker 1: is taking his sign seriously. That is like dismissed by

971
00:49:59,840 --> 00:50:03,080
Speaker 1: the mainstream science community. And this is evidence that like

972
00:50:03,200 --> 00:50:06,880
Speaker 1: academia's closed minded and science is dogmatic. And you know,

973
00:50:06,920 --> 00:50:09,160
Speaker 1: it's the kind of thing people tend to say when

974
00:50:09,160 --> 00:50:12,160
Speaker 1: their work isn't taken seriously, that there's some other reason

975
00:50:12,239 --> 00:50:14,719
Speaker 1: other than like, well, maybe your work is not that serious.

976
00:50:15,360 --> 00:50:18,799
Speaker 1: And so Lobe, because he's a Harvard astrophysicist, you know,

977
00:50:18,880 --> 00:50:21,800
Speaker 1: he has a lot of credibility with the media, and

978
00:50:21,880 --> 00:50:24,319
Speaker 1: so he complains that nobody took him seriously. And then

979
00:50:24,360 --> 00:50:26,800
Speaker 1: he said, quote, if someone comes to me and says,

980
00:50:27,000 --> 00:50:29,319
Speaker 1: for these scientific reasons, I have a scenario that makes

981
00:50:29,400 --> 00:50:31,759
Speaker 1: much more sense than yours, then I'd rip up that

982
00:50:31,840 --> 00:50:34,400
Speaker 1: paper and accept it. That's a direct quote from Lobe.

983
00:50:35,040 --> 00:50:38,040
Speaker 1: So now it stands to see like somebody has come

984
00:50:38,080 --> 00:50:42,200
Speaker 1: forward with scientific reasons, with a much more plausible scenario

985
00:50:42,239 --> 00:50:45,680
Speaker 1: that fits the data much better. Let's see if Lobe

986
00:50:45,760 --> 00:50:49,240
Speaker 1: concedes or if he comes back where the scientific Rebuttalance says, actually,

987
00:50:49,520 --> 00:50:51,320
Speaker 1: here's another way to analyze the data.

988
00:50:51,560 --> 00:50:55,439
Speaker 3: How long has it been since the counter paper came out?

989
00:50:55,960 --> 00:50:59,879
Speaker 1: So Deshen Jackson's paper came out November thirteenth, so it's

990
00:51:00,040 --> 00:51:03,200
Speaker 1: in about a month since this recording. So everybody's waiting

991
00:51:03,239 --> 00:51:05,200
Speaker 1: to see what Lobe is going to come back with.

992
00:51:05,280 --> 00:51:07,160
Speaker 1: But I thought it was important that we discussed this

993
00:51:07,200 --> 00:51:10,480
Speaker 1: today in the podcast, because you know, we're teaching everybody

994
00:51:10,520 --> 00:51:13,719
Speaker 1: to think like a physicist, to be skeptical but also excited,

995
00:51:14,040 --> 00:51:16,240
Speaker 1: and you have to balance those things. You have to remember,

996
00:51:16,280 --> 00:51:18,880
Speaker 1: like we want to be open to crazy, new surprising

997
00:51:18,920 --> 00:51:22,000
Speaker 1: discoveries and learn things about the universe, but we also

998
00:51:22,040 --> 00:51:23,799
Speaker 1: have to be very careful in our methods, and we

999
00:51:23,840 --> 00:51:26,600
Speaker 1: have to make sure that what we're doing is reasonable,

1000
00:51:26,640 --> 00:51:29,880
Speaker 1: so that we're building knowledge and not just spinning fantasies.

1001
00:51:30,560 --> 00:51:34,120
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely. And it's so easy to get super excited

1002
00:51:34,239 --> 00:51:37,959
Speaker 3: about a results that you know would be a real

1003
00:51:38,000 --> 00:51:41,000
Speaker 3: game changer. But those are the times when you really

1004
00:51:41,040 --> 00:51:44,680
Speaker 3: need to think, Okay, how what do I need to know?

1005
00:51:44,560 --> 00:51:47,319
Speaker 3: You want to try to prove yourself wrong in as

1006
00:51:47,320 --> 00:51:50,759
Speaker 3: many ways as possible, and it doesn't feel like that

1007
00:51:51,040 --> 00:51:52,319
Speaker 3: due diligence was done here.

1008
00:51:52,840 --> 00:51:56,160
Speaker 1: Yeah. Before I publish any paper, I'm always attacking it myself.

1009
00:51:56,160 --> 00:51:58,880
Speaker 1: I'm always asking what could we have done wrong? Or

1010
00:51:58,880 --> 00:52:01,239
Speaker 1: how could we have been confused? Used, et cetera, et cetera,

1011
00:52:01,719 --> 00:52:04,800
Speaker 1: Because it'd be terrible to publish something and be like, oops, sorry,

1012
00:52:04,840 --> 00:52:08,000
Speaker 1: we misled everybody, even if it was in good faith.

1013
00:52:08,560 --> 00:52:11,080
Speaker 1: And so while it seems clear here that the science

1014
00:52:11,160 --> 00:52:14,040
Speaker 1: is not solid, we can't actually say it wasn't in

1015
00:52:14,120 --> 00:52:16,560
Speaker 1: good faith. But it certainly doesn't feel like a good

1016
00:52:16,600 --> 00:52:17,760
Speaker 1: faith science argument.

1017
00:52:17,960 --> 00:52:20,399
Speaker 3: Yeah, agreed. Whenever Zach and I are talking to someone

1018
00:52:20,400 --> 00:52:22,960
Speaker 3: about their new results, our go to question is what

1019
00:52:23,120 --> 00:52:29,040
Speaker 3: is the least interesting explanation for your results, because often

1020
00:52:29,120 --> 00:52:32,120
Speaker 3: it's problem, it's probably the answer, And it seems like

1021
00:52:32,200 --> 00:52:38,520
Speaker 3: here the least interesting explanation wasn't considered thoroughly enough exactly.

1022
00:52:38,560 --> 00:52:40,920
Speaker 1: And I'm like the biggest cheerleader for this kind of stuff,

1023
00:52:41,000 --> 00:52:43,000
Speaker 1: Like I would love to meet aliens, and I would

1024
00:52:43,040 --> 00:52:45,839
Speaker 1: love for it to be evidence that aliens have visited Earth,

1025
00:52:46,120 --> 00:52:49,000
Speaker 1: or even that rocks from other solar systems have landed

1026
00:52:49,040 --> 00:52:51,520
Speaker 1: on Earth and we could study them. I so much

1027
00:52:51,600 --> 00:52:53,879
Speaker 1: want to believe that, but that makes me also need

1028
00:52:53,880 --> 00:52:56,920
Speaker 1: to be skeptical, because again, we want to uncover the truth,

1029
00:52:57,280 --> 00:52:59,080
Speaker 1: not just tell ourselves stories.

1030
00:52:58,840 --> 00:53:00,960
Speaker 3: Right, And you want to know when you're emotionally invested

1031
00:53:00,960 --> 00:53:03,240
Speaker 3: in an answer, so that you can try to particularly

1032
00:53:03,360 --> 00:53:05,680
Speaker 3: keep your eye on those sorts of questions.

1033
00:53:06,560 --> 00:53:09,480
Speaker 1: Or financially invested because you're selling a book about how

1034
00:53:09,520 --> 00:53:15,719
Speaker 1: you discovered alien technology. That's right, all right, Well, thank

1035
00:53:15,760 --> 00:53:18,400
Speaker 1: you very much everybody for listening to today's episode, and

1036
00:53:18,400 --> 00:53:20,480
Speaker 1: thank you for Kelly for taking his ride with me

1037
00:53:20,719 --> 00:53:23,200
Speaker 1: where we take a careful and critical look at some

1038
00:53:23,600 --> 00:53:25,920
Speaker 1: astounding claims in science.

1039
00:53:26,160 --> 00:53:29,520
Speaker 3: Thank you for letting me ride shotgun on this uncomfortable journey.

1040
00:53:31,080 --> 00:53:33,680
Speaker 1: So far, our children are safe and your children are safe,

1041
00:53:33,680 --> 00:53:36,080
Speaker 1: and no aliens have arrived for us to negotiate away

1042
00:53:36,080 --> 00:53:38,440
Speaker 1: with their lives. But stay tuned.

1043
00:53:38,560 --> 00:53:41,960
Speaker 3: If those aliens come, I am hiding my kids from you,

1044
00:53:44,160 --> 00:53:44,480
Speaker 3: all right.

1045
00:53:44,520 --> 00:53:51,919
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, everybody, See you next time. For more

1046
00:53:51,960 --> 00:53:55,040
Speaker 1: science and curiosity, come find us on social media where

1047
00:53:55,080 --> 00:53:58,960
Speaker 1: we answer questions and post videos. We're on Twitter, Disport,

1048
00:53:59,080 --> 00:54:02,719
Speaker 1: Instant and now TikTok. Thanks for listening, and remember that

1049
00:54:02,840 --> 00:54:06,680
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio.

1050
00:54:06,960 --> 00:54:12,080
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

1051
00:54:12,239 --> 00:54:14,600
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.