0:00

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season. Does sometime after Thanksgiving

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work for you? Some things you just

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can't plan. Sorry, November's bad. I have

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Maddie scheduled for the flu. That's why

0:11

we built a network of Stanford pediatricians

0:13

conveniently located all over the Bay Area.

0:15

And while you can't always plan for

0:17

when your kids need to see their

0:19

doctor... Mom, is it okay if I

0:22

get pink eye next week? It's nice

0:24

to know we're close by. Stanford Medicine

0:26

Children's Health. Access to excellence. Visit stanfordchildrens.org

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to find a pediatrician. Unborn babies may

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kick their mother 30 times

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Children's Health. This is Space

0:45

Time Series 27, Episode 124, for broadcast on the 14th of

0:47

October, 2024. Coming

0:52

up on Space Time... It

0:54

turns out galaxies are much, much bigger

0:57

than we thought. The

0:59

discovery of live microbes living

1:01

inside two billion-year-old rocks. And

1:04

the United Launch Alliance Vulcan spacecraft

1:07

snatches victory out of the jaws

1:09

of defeat. All that

1:11

and more coming up on Space Time.

1:14

Welcome to Space Time with

1:17

Stuart Gary. Space

1:27

Time with

1:29

Stuart Gary

1:34

A new study has concluded that galaxies

1:36

are actually much, much bigger than what

1:38

we thought they were. The

1:40

key to their true size apparently

1:42

lies in the amount of gas

1:45

surrounding them, which it now appears

1:47

extends far further into intergalactic space

1:49

than previously thought. The

1:51

findings reported in the journal Nature Astronomy

1:54

are based on detailed measurements of the

1:56

circumgalactic medium of a star-bursting galaxy located

1:58

some 200,000 light-years away. 270

2:01

million light years away. The

2:03

observations made using eudybspace imaging

2:05

techniques were able to detect

2:07

the cloud of gas glowing

2:09

outside the galaxy 100,000 light

2:11

years into intergalactic space. Now

2:14

if this galaxy is typical, then our

2:16

own galaxy, the Milky Way, is already

2:18

interacting with our larger neighbouring galaxy Andromeda.

2:21

Astronomers had previously figured the two wouldn't collide

2:23

and merge for at least another 3.7 billion

2:25

years. The

2:28

studies lead author, associate professor Nicole

2:30

Nielsen from Swinburne University, Astro 3D,

2:32

and the University of Oklahoma, says

2:35

it begs the question where does

2:37

a galaxy end and deep space

2:39

begin? Now that seems like a

2:41

simple question until you look more

2:43

closely at the gas surrounding galaxies,

2:46

known as the circumgalactic medium. It

2:48

turns out this halo of gas surrounding the

2:51

galactic disk accounts for about 70% of the

2:53

total mass of the galaxy,

2:55

excluding dark matter, but until now

2:57

it's always remained something of a

2:59

mystery. In the past, astronomers

3:01

have only been able to observe the gas

3:04

by measuring the light from background objects. But

3:07

that limits the picture of the cloud

3:09

to a pencil-like beam through it. It

3:11

doesn't give you a true sense of

3:13

the sheer vastness involved. To

3:15

envisage the true size of this gas cloud,

3:17

the astronomers needed to consider all the galaxy's

3:20

starlight, and that's what you typically view as

3:22

the galactic disk of the galaxy. In

3:24

this case, it extended around 7,800 light

3:27

years from the galactic center.

3:29

What this current study did was observe

3:31

the physical connection of hydrogen and oxygen

3:34

from the center of the galaxy, far

3:36

into space. And it clearly

3:38

showed that as you went further from the

3:40

center of the galaxy, the physical conditions of

3:42

this gas changed. Nielsen says,

3:44

put simply, these are usually fuzzy boundaries,

3:47

but in this case, the authors seem

3:49

to have found a fairly clear boundary

3:51

in this galaxy, between its interstellar medium

3:54

and its circumgalactic medium. The

3:56

study observed stars ionizing gas with their

3:58

photons within the galaxy. In

4:01

the circumgalactic medium, the gas was

4:03

being heated by something other than

4:05

typical conditions inside stars. This

4:08

likely includes heating from the diffuse emissions

4:10

of the collective galaxies in the universe

4:12

and possibly some contribution due to shock

4:14

fronts. And it's this change

4:16

which provides some of the answers as to

4:18

where a galaxy really ends. This

4:21

study is adding another piece to the puzzle

4:23

that's one of the big questions in astronomy

4:25

and galactic evolution. How do galaxies evolve? How

4:28

do they get their gas? How do they

4:30

process that gas? And where does that gas

4:32

eventually go? Nielsen says the

4:34

circumgalactic medium plays a huge role in

4:37

the cycling of that gas. So

4:39

being able to understand what it looks

4:41

like around galaxies of different types, ones

4:43

that are star forming and those that

4:46

are no longer star forming, and those

4:48

that are transitioning between the two, will

4:50

allow astronomers to observe differences in this

4:52

gas, and that might be driving the

4:54

differences between the galaxies themselves. It

4:56

seems like with this gas that we

4:58

observed around this particular galaxy, the ionized

5:00

gas seems to actually be shocked at

5:03

that boundary that we found in the

5:05

surface brightness of this gas. And

5:07

so, yeah, the physical conditions are changing.

5:09

It's being ionized by the stars and

5:12

then it's being shocked at that boundary.

5:14

And then beyond that, it's being ionized

5:16

by other galaxies instead. This has to

5:18

bring us to the cosmic web of

5:21

the universe itself. The filaments and strands

5:23

that contain the stars and galaxies and

5:25

galaxy clusters and superclusters around vast voids.

5:27

And this is all part of that

5:30

mechanism. Yep, definitely. It's part of all

5:32

those fuzzy boundaries between all the different

5:34

things that make up that cosmic web.

5:37

And so how did you actually make

5:39

this discovery? So we used the KEC-10-meter

5:41

telescopes with a fairly new instrument called

5:43

the KEC cosmic web imager. It's absolutely

5:46

named. And so it's this very sensitive,

5:48

integral field spectrograph. So what it does

5:50

is it takes basically an image or

5:53

like a region of the sky and it

5:55

splits it up into different parts of the

5:58

sky and then it splits it up into

6:00

the spectrum. So it spreads out the light

6:02

and it does it in a way that

6:04

it can detect very faint glowing emissions from

6:06

very distant things. So we used it and

6:09

we found glowing hydrogen and oxygen gas with

6:11

temperatures about 10 to the 5

6:13

Kelvin. And we saw it everywhere we looked,

6:15

which was really exciting. And you can use

6:17

this to provide you with an insight into

6:19

the structure of galaxies overall and how they

6:21

interact with each other. Yeah. So

6:24

just understanding where all of that

6:26

gas is and finding like where

6:29

it's located, its distribution, its temperature

6:31

and physical conditions and how it

6:33

connects to the galaxies themselves. Were

6:36

you able to determine what types of gas

6:38

were involved, what the actual elemental composition is?

6:41

It's mostly hydrogen and oxygen. So it's ionized hydrogen

6:43

and oxygen. Those are

6:45

the only elements we were able to detect

6:47

just because we were limited in what wavelengths

6:49

were able to observe. So the other elements

6:52

that we might be able to observe are

6:54

either too faint or they're not covered by

6:56

the instrument at the time. If we were

6:58

to go back and observe this galaxy again

7:00

with the same instrument, it's now got a

7:02

much wider wavelength range. And so we get

7:04

a little bit more information about say like

7:06

sulfur and nitrogen as well, which we expect

7:09

to be there as well. Tell us about

7:11

the galaxy itself. What's it called? How far

7:13

away is it? Yeah. So the

7:15

nickname we've given it is IRAS-08. So it's

7:17

just a catalog name. The catalog is

7:20

IRAS and then it's O-8 is part

7:22

of the declination and RAN declination. But

7:24

the galaxy itself, so it's 270 million

7:26

light years away. So it's actually quite

7:29

a close galaxy for most of the

7:31

work that I tend to do with

7:33

this gas. But it's quite

7:35

small. So it's about 8,000 light years in radius

7:38

and it's a starburst in galaxy. So it's forming

7:40

about 10 solar masses per

7:42

year. In contrast, like the Milky Way

7:44

is only forming one solar mass per

7:46

year. So one star like our sun

7:48

every year. And this galaxy was really

7:50

exciting because we know it's forming stars

7:52

and we can see evidence of those

7:55

stars ejecting lots of processed material out

7:57

of the galaxy towards us. as the

7:59

observer. And then we also knew that

8:01

there was a lot of neutral hydrogen

8:03

outside of this galaxy and kind of

8:05

the plume of gas that's kind of

8:07

either coming off of the galaxy or

8:09

falling on to the galaxy. So we

8:11

thought maybe all of that neutral hydrogen,

8:14

which is like 70% of the neutral

8:16

hydrogen in the whole system itself, we

8:18

thought that maybe that was falling on

8:20

to the galaxy to provide fuel for

8:22

that starburst and all those stars that

8:24

are being formed. So yeah, we observed

8:27

it to look for all of this ionized

8:29

gas to see if we could see it

8:31

also accreting on to the galaxy. But yeah,

8:33

this galaxy is quite an interesting one and

8:35

it's very beautiful in the Hubble Space Telescope

8:37

imaging as well. Is

8:40

it very isolated or has it got

8:42

lots of galactic companions around it, satellite

8:45

galaxies? It does have a smaller companion

8:47

about, well I can tell you in

8:49

kiloparsecs, it's about 50 kiloparsecs away. So

8:52

twice as far as we observe the

8:54

gas, this galaxy, this companion galaxy is

8:56

about a tenth of the mass so

8:58

it's quite a bit smaller. So it's

9:01

not doing any really strong interacting just

9:03

yet with the galaxy we observe. So

9:05

the galaxy we observe still has its

9:08

grand spiral arm structure and

9:10

there doesn't seem to be any

9:12

clear evidence that it's being torn

9:14

apart by the other galaxy yet.

9:16

But otherwise it seems to be

9:18

fairly isolated. And extrapolating that to

9:20

our own Milky Way galaxy, you

9:23

point out that it could mean

9:25

that our interaction, let's be honest,

9:27

our collision with Andromeda may already

9:29

have started. Yeah, I mean this

9:31

circum-galactic medium, all of this gas

9:33

that's around galaxies, it extends out

9:35

to hundreds of kiloparsecs and Andromeda

9:37

and the Milky Way are about

9:39

thousand kiloparsecs away from each other

9:41

and so this gas is likely

9:44

already starting to touch between the

9:46

two galaxies and starting to interact

9:48

and mix. Over the next few

9:50

thousand years, millions of years, probably

9:52

millions and billions. 3.5 to

9:54

4 billion years, okay. What will astronomers

9:56

of the future be seeing as the

9:59

gas from the two galaxies enter more?

10:01

Are we going to be seeing something

10:03

like the heliopause, the shock front or

10:06

something? I imagine there might be some

10:08

shock fronts a little bit maybe, but

10:10

not sure actually. We haven't really studied

10:12

this gap in the circumgalactic medium and

10:15

how it interacts between galaxies very much

10:17

yet. So we're not quite sure what

10:19

it's going to look like at that

10:22

boundary. But I imagine there might be

10:24

some shock interaction here. Is that

10:26

sort of where this research will now head? What

10:28

do you hope to do with it? Yeah.

10:31

So we found this boundary of this

10:33

galaxy and it's only one galaxy. And

10:35

so what we hope to do is

10:37

to do this for more galaxies that

10:39

not only are similar, so they're also

10:42

star bursting just to see if our

10:44

galaxy is special in some way, but

10:46

also to look at galaxies that are

10:48

not forming as many stars because their

10:51

gaseous reservoirs might actually be quite different.

10:53

And understanding what this circumgalactic medium looks

10:55

like around these different galaxies will help

10:57

us understand how galaxies evolve to go

10:59

from the star bursting galaxies to something

11:02

that's more red and dead and no

11:04

longer forming stars and has used up

11:06

all of its gaps. So yeah, we've

11:08

already obtained more observations with the Keck

11:11

cosmic web imager of other galaxies. They

11:13

just need to be analyzed and put

11:15

together and hopefully we'll get some other

11:17

galaxies that are not as star forming

11:19

and start to really put together this

11:22

picture of what this gap looks like

11:24

around a wide variety of objects. I

11:26

guess because each galaxy has its own

11:28

history, it's going to be very different

11:31

for each galaxy. Our Milky Way, for

11:33

example, we've got the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy

11:35

plowing through it. We've got two other

11:37

galaxies, the large and small matulonic clouds,

11:39

having their stars and

11:42

gas being sucked into the Milky Way

11:44

already through. Definitely. So all these interactions

11:46

are going to be very individual for

11:48

each galaxy. Yep, and in fact, RSO-8,

11:50

the galaxy we studied, when I look

11:52

at the Hubble Space Telescope imaging of

11:54

it that I have and look very

11:57

close to the galaxy, it looks like

11:59

there's a very beneath

16:00

the surface, somehow managing to survive

16:02

for thousands, even millions, or in this

16:04

case billions of years. These

16:07

tiny resilient organisms appear to live

16:09

life at a slower pace, scarcely

16:11

evolving over geological time spans, and

16:13

so offering researchers a chance to

16:15

literally look back in time. The

16:18

studies lead author Yohai Suzuki from the

16:20

University of Tokyo says the previous oldest

16:23

geological layer in which living microorganisms are

16:25

being found was a mere 100 million

16:28

year old deposit beneath the ocean floor.

16:31

The Bushfield Igneous Complex is a

16:33

rocky intrusion in north-eastern South Africa,

16:35

formed when magma slowly cooled below

16:38

the Earth's surface. It

16:40

covers an area of roughly 66,000 square kilometres. It's

16:43

about the size of an island, and varies

16:46

in thickness but up to 9 kilometres. It

16:48

contains some of the richest ore deposits on

16:50

Earth, including about 70% of the world's mined

16:53

platinum. Due to the

16:55

way it was formed, and the minimal

16:58

deformation or change occurring to it since

17:00

then, the rocks believed to have provided

17:02

a stable habitat for ancient microbial life,

17:04

allowing it to continue to thrive until

17:06

today. The authors obtained a

17:08

30 centimetre long rock core sample from

17:11

about 15 metres below ground. The

17:13

rock was then cut into thin slices

17:15

and analysed, which is when the team

17:17

discovered the living microbial cells densely packed

17:19

into cracks in the rock. Many

17:22

gaps near these cracks were clogged with

17:24

clay, making it impossible for these organisms

17:26

to leave or for other things to

17:28

enter. By staining the

17:30

DNA of these microbial cells, and

17:32

using infrared spectroscopy to look at

17:34

the proteins in the microbes and

17:37

surrounding clay, the authors could confirm

17:39

that these microbes were both alive

17:41

and not contaminated. This

17:44

is space-time. Still

17:46

to come, the United Launch Alliance's new

17:48

Vulcan Centaur rocket snatches victory out of

17:50

the jaws of defeat. And

17:52

later in the science report, we look at the 2024

17:54

Nobel Prizes for science which have just

17:58

been awarded in Stockholm. All

18:00

that and more still to come on Space

18:02

Time. The

18:19

United Launch Alliance's new Vulcan Centaur

18:21

rocket has managed to snatch victory

18:23

out of the Jules of Defeat,

18:25

overcoming a faulty strap-on solid rocket

18:27

booster to successfully place its payload

18:29

into orbit. The mission

18:31

from Space Launch Complex 41 at the

18:34

Cape Canaveral Space Force Base in Florida

18:36

was the second of two certification test

18:38

flights needed before the new Vulcan booster

18:40

could be used to carry high-priority payloads

18:42

for the National Reconnaissance Office. In

18:45

10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4,

18:47

3, BE4 ignition, 2, 1, and liftoff

18:49

of Vulcan SERT-2.

18:59

For the second time and for the first time

19:01

under the light of the rising sun, Vulcan

19:04

has lifted off from Slick 41

19:06

at Cape Canaveral Space

19:08

Force Station. All temperatures and pressures

19:10

look good. People have begun in such a proper

19:12

way. We have two good BE4s and we've ended

19:14

the pitch progress of the Vulcan now at 0.5

19:16

or 0.5 knots. However,

19:20

during the launch SRB Number 1,

19:22

one of two Northrop-Gromen solid

19:24

rocket boosters strapped

19:33

onto the core stage suffered an

19:35

anomaly, limiting performance and affecting the

19:37

balance of the rocket. Amazingly, the

19:39

Vulcan's two Blue Origin-built methane burning

19:42

BE4 engines and the remaining SRB

20:00

managed to continue its climb to

20:02

orbit, successfully compensating for the failure.

20:05

The booster anomaly could be clearly

20:07

seen in long-range tracking camera views

20:09

as a shower of sparks and

20:11

what looked like debris falling away

20:13

from the SRB 37 seconds after

20:15

liftoff. The problem appeared to

20:17

originate near the nozzle at the base

20:20

of the booster, the exhaust plume changing

20:22

shape dramatically, but the Vulcan was able

20:24

to compensate, continuing its climb to orbit.

20:26

The step-on boosters continued to burn out,

20:29

but were jettisoned 20 seconds later than

20:31

planned. And we have a separation of those

20:34

SRBs a little bit later than according

20:36

to the planned timeline. Mission managers say

20:38

the trajectory was normal throughout the climb.

20:40

Next step we're anticipating here in the

20:43

timeline is booster engine cutoff just before

20:45

the five-minute mark into flight. Excellent

20:48

work from our tracking team this morning. Continue

20:50

to have two good engines, body rate trending

20:52

toward zero, and we're now about one minute,

20:55

denominable, ego. Vulcan is now one quarter

20:57

of its liftoff weight, and Vulcan is now

20:59

passing the Carmen line. Vulcan

21:01

now in space. We're about 30 seconds away

21:03

from booster engine cutoff, or BECO. And

21:06

we started boost-based chill down on the second-stage engine,

21:09

and the BE-4s are throttling to maintain a

21:11

constant acceleration. And we've concluded our

21:13

boost-based chill down, and PU has gone to

21:15

open loop, and we have BECO, booster

21:17

engine cutoff, and we have Vulcan

21:20

Centaur separation, and pre-start on LH2 and

21:22

LO2. And we have

21:24

full thrust on the RL10, and

21:26

bearing jettison has been indicated. And

21:29

we've begun thermal loop conditioning on the RCX,

21:31

and fixed angles on the TARPU. Vehicle

21:33

is now 123 miles in altitude, 345 miles downrange, and

21:35

traveling at 10,000 miles per

21:39

hour. And we're getting indications that

21:42

booster performance was within expectation. RL10

21:44

continues to perform nominally, and

21:46

we are partway through a 10 and a half minute

21:48

burn. The first-stage carrier dummy

21:50

payload was originally slated to launch the

21:53

first Sierra Space Dream Chaser winged spaceplane.

21:55

Dream Chaser will eventually ferry supplies

21:58

to the International Space Station. But

22:00

delays during testing at NASA forced

22:03

United Launch Alliance to use a

22:05

substitute mass simulator loaded with extra

22:07

flight data instrumentation, as well as

22:09

a couple of technology demonstrator experiments

22:11

designed to help enable future long-duration

22:13

spaceflights. This latest launch

22:16

follows Vulcan's flawless maiden flight back on

22:18

January 8, which sent a

22:20

lunar lander onto the moon. The

22:22

new Vulcan booster replaces the earlier

22:24

Atlas V and Delta IV family

22:26

of rockets. They date back

22:28

to the early days of the US space program. The

22:31

Delta IV has now been formally retired, however the

22:33

United Launch still has 15 Atlas V's

22:36

in its inventory. One of

22:39

the problems is the Atlas V uses

22:41

the Russian-built RD-180 engines in its core

22:43

stage, and with the West's boycott of

22:45

Moscow following the Kremlin's invasion of Ukraine,

22:47

once those engines are all used up,

22:49

there will be no more. Eight

22:52

of the remaining Atlas V rockets will

22:54

be used to launch Amazon's new Kuiper

22:56

Internet satellites. A further six is slated

22:58

to fly Boeing's treble-plagued Starliner at once

23:01

its return to flight status. They

23:03

will be used to transport crew to the International

23:05

Space Station. And the remaining

23:07

Atlas V is slated to carry

23:09

a V-asset telecommunications satellite into space.

23:13

This is Space Time. Most

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time now for a brief look at some of

25:01

the other stories making news in science this week

25:03

with the science report. And

25:05

of course the big news in the

25:08

past week has been the awarding of

25:10

the 2024 Nobel Prizes for Science in

25:12

Stockholm, Sweden. The Nobel Prize

25:14

in Physics has been awarded to

25:16

John Hopefield and Jeffrey Hinton for their

25:18

work in developing the tools for

25:20

understanding the neural networks that underpin artificial

25:23

intelligence. Back in 1982 theoretical biologist

25:26

Hopefield, who was a background in

25:28

physics, came up with a network

25:30

that described connections between virtual neurons

25:33

as physical forces. It

25:35

became known as associative memory. That's

25:37

because it evokes the process of

25:39

trying to remember a word or

25:41

concept based on related information. Meanwhile

25:43

Hinton, a computer scientist, later used

25:45

principles from statistical physics which are

25:47

used to collectively describe systems made

25:50

up of too many parts to

25:52

track individually to further develop Hopefield's

25:54

work. These artificial neural networks

25:56

were different from other types of

25:58

computation because they learn from examples.

26:01

examples, including from complex data that

26:03

would have been challenging for conventional

26:05

software based on step-by-step calculations. The

26:09

2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology

26:11

or Medicine has been awarded to

26:13

geneticists Victor Ambrose and Gary Rufkin

26:16

for their discovery of microRNA. This

26:18

is a class of tiny RNA

26:21

molecules that help control how genes

26:23

are expressed in multicellular organisms. During

26:26

the 1990s the pair identified

26:28

genes that encoded four microRNAs

26:30

in roundworms. For

26:32

years that discovery was considered just a

26:34

quirk unique to roundworms, but

26:36

the later discovery that microRNAs conserved

26:39

across the tree of life caused

26:41

this research field to explode. The

26:44

Nobel Prize in Chemistry was split

26:47

between computer scientist Demis Hasabas and

26:49

theoretical chemist John Jumper. They

26:51

won it for their work on

26:54

the Deep Mind Artificial Intelligence and

26:56

the AI2 alpha fold, which can

26:58

predict the structure of nearly every

27:00

artificial protein in the process, transforming

27:02

biology. The pair share

27:04

the prize with computational biophysicist David

27:06

Baker, who led the development of

27:08

the first protein with an entirely

27:10

novel structure, called TOP7. His team

27:13

are now redesigning proteins to do

27:15

things like catalyzing specific chemical reactions

27:17

by specifying the amino acids responsible

27:19

for specific functions and letting the

27:21

AI dream up the rest. A

27:25

new study has found that two

27:28

diametrically opposed personalities both enjoy magic

27:30

tricks the most. First,

27:32

there are sceptical rational folk, the category

27:34

where most of our listeners fit into.

27:37

We love magic tricks. And

27:39

the second group are those who believe

27:41

in superstitions and the paranormal. They love

27:43

magic too. And it seems the

27:45

rest, when it comes to magic tricks, I guess you'd call

27:47

them muggles, can take her to leave it. Dave

27:49

Mendham from Australian Skeptic says it's best

27:52

to simply enjoy the magic. That's all

27:54

that matters. of

28:00

anything and they do a survey of the sort

28:02

of people who like magic. Now there was a

28:04

number of people who don't like magic and apparently

28:06

they built another paper that they wrote looking at

28:09

the loathing of Leger Demain, which is magic, sleight

28:11

of hand and of course they chose that because

28:13

it's LOL, ha ha ha, makes you wonder how

28:15

serious the research is but anyway. There's a particular

28:17

study they did, it was quite scientific and they

28:19

looked at a lot of people, looked at their

28:22

beliefs and their backgrounds and all that sort of

28:24

stuff and asked them if they liked magic and

28:26

it turns out that there are two particular groups

28:28

who really like magic and one is the sceptical

28:30

rational folk which is like me anyway, I don't

28:33

know if it's like you. I love magic but

28:35

I also like magic too. I love magic but

28:37

I'd like to know how the trick was done

28:39

as well. I find that just as fascinating. Yeah

28:41

the other group that I like that are the

28:44

superstitious and the paranormal. You're almost going to get

28:46

extremes on the rationality front although the superstitious would

28:48

probably say they're rational as well. So yeah there's

28:50

a lot of people in between who are not

28:52

that interested but there's the two strongest groups based

28:54

on their attitude towards magic. Now the trouble is

28:57

the sceptical rational people would say that like

28:59

you, I enjoy magic and I want to know

29:01

how it's done, the critical thinking and they do

29:03

their research or just try and figure it out

29:06

on the spot and the people who believe in

29:08

paranormal who might actually believe it's true that magic

29:10

is real and most magicians will tell you they

29:12

can make a lot more money if they pretend

29:14

that what they were doing is real as we

29:16

know and call themselves psychics or whatever, telekinesis, that

29:18

sort of stuff, moving objects, sort of stuff that

29:20

magicians do all the time and magicians are therefore

29:22

very good at debunking a lot of people with

29:25

these particular claims, Yuri Geller being a case in

29:27

point, for being debunked and Houdini being a case

29:29

in point of someone who'd like to go around

29:31

and debunk them. So there are these two groups

29:33

but one of them is a believer in all

29:35

the magic and the other ones are saying I

29:37

want to know how we're done. The interesting thing

29:39

is that when you get sceptics together and the

29:41

sceptics are an amazing trick, they do come up

29:44

with explanations for how a trick is done and

29:46

I've spoken with magicians about it and they love

29:48

it because they say the sceptics come up with

29:50

the most convoluted explanations whereas the simplest explanation is

29:52

the one which is most likely. It's a trick,

29:54

it's the sleight of hand, it's distraction, it's all

29:56

sorts of things like that which the techniques that

29:58

magicians use. It's not something particularly hugely complicated technology.

30:01

You'd wonder if skeptics are trying to say,

30:03

I can't be fooled easily, therefore the reason

30:05

must be complicated. Whereas the paranormal superstitious person

30:07

would say, I can't be fooled easily, but

30:09

this is so nice that it must be

30:11

true. So they tend to believe that that's

30:13

true and the others say it's fun, but

30:15

I don't know how it's done, but I

30:17

like to figure out. And it's these two

30:19

extremes that are looking at the way that

30:21

the belief in magic. That's Tim

30:24

Mindom from Australia and skeptics. And

30:41

that's the show for now. Spacetime

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