S26E51: Deep Space Mysteries and Earthly Explosions: Latest Astronomy and Space News

WEBVTT

1
00:00:00.120 --> 00:00:04.799
This is Spacetime Series twenty six,
episode fifty one, for broadcast on the

2
00:00:04.879 --> 00:00:10.240
twenty eighth of April twenty twenty three. Coming up on Spacetime, the mystery

3
00:00:10.240 --> 00:00:15.720
of fast radio bursts deepen, the
Tongue and volcanic explosion, now regarded as

4
00:00:15.759 --> 00:00:21.920
the biggest in over a century,
and China launches more spy satellites. All

5
00:00:22.000 --> 00:00:32.200
that and more coming up on Spacetime. Welcome to Spacetime with Stewart Gary.

6
00:00:45.759 --> 00:00:51.520
A mysterious blast of energy from the
dark riches a deep space as astronomers scratching

7
00:00:51.560 --> 00:00:56.000
their heads. The blast was a
fast radio burst that seemed to be coming

8
00:00:56.079 --> 00:01:00.960
from a dynamic binary star system,
but the data doesn't add up. Fast

9
00:01:00.079 --> 00:01:04.799
radio bursts a sudden, ephemeral blasts
of radio energy, usually lasting just a

10
00:01:04.920 --> 00:01:10.239
nanosecond or so, but releasing more
power in that time than our Sun does

11
00:01:10.319 --> 00:01:15.920
in an entire year. The explosions
occur at very specific wavelength, usually at

12
00:01:15.959 --> 00:01:19.959
cosmic distances in the spiral arms of
galaxies, often beings of light years away.

13
00:01:21.439 --> 00:01:25.319
The first was detected back in two
thousand and seven in data from the

14
00:01:25.359 --> 00:01:30.239
Park's radio telescope in the central west
of New South Wales. Since then,

15
00:01:30.439 --> 00:01:36.040
hundreds more of being detected ultra bright
flashes of radio energy all over the sky,

16
00:01:36.480 --> 00:01:41.480
hundreds of times a day. Some
flashes last just milliseconds, others over

17
00:01:41.519 --> 00:01:46.400
a second, and they can span
a wide range of radio luminosities. The

18
00:01:46.519 --> 00:01:52.239
first bursts were all singular events,
occurring just once at a specific location and

19
00:01:52.319 --> 00:01:56.319
then never again. That suggists they
may have been caused by some sort of

20
00:01:56.359 --> 00:02:01.200
cataclysmic event, such as a supernov
exploding star, But astronomers and a detecting

21
00:02:01.200 --> 00:02:07.439
many fast radio bursts that are repeating
from the same location and that suggest a

22
00:02:07.519 --> 00:02:13.000
very different origin. The leading contender
is a highly magnetized neutron star called a

23
00:02:13.080 --> 00:02:17.800
magnetar, but feeding black holes and
glitching neutron stars haven't yet been ruled out.

24
00:02:19.439 --> 00:02:23.039
The different types of FRBs or fast
radio bursts means there could be two

25
00:02:23.159 --> 00:02:29.319
separate sources for these mysterious deep space
blasts, or it could simply be that

26
00:02:29.400 --> 00:02:34.439
all fast radio bursts are repeaters,
with some simply repeating a lot more often

27
00:02:34.439 --> 00:02:38.960
than others. The truth is astronomers
are still struggling to try and make sense

28
00:02:39.000 --> 00:02:44.159
out of it all, But now
a new study in the journal Nature's cast

29
00:02:44.199 --> 00:02:47.520
a new light onto the debate by
providing a treasure trail of data for one

30
00:02:47.599 --> 00:02:53.360
specific repeating fast radio burst, known
as FRB twenty twenty eleven twenty four A.

31
00:02:54.319 --> 00:03:00.599
Meanwhile, separate study the journal Nature
Communications suggest a possible cause for this

32
00:03:00.680 --> 00:03:06.199
repeating burst's behavior. The problem is
the two studies aren't matching up, and

33
00:03:06.280 --> 00:03:10.800
so the debate continues. The monoble
bursts coming from FRB twenty twenty eleven twenty

34
00:03:10.800 --> 00:03:16.879
four A were first detected by CHIME, the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment back

35
00:03:16.919 --> 00:03:23.039
in twenty twenty ninety one. Hours
of fin up observations were then made using

36
00:03:23.159 --> 00:03:30.039
China's massive fast or five hundred meter
aperture spherical radio telescope. The authors detected

37
00:03:30.080 --> 00:03:35.400
some one eight hundred and sixty three
bursts over fifty four days, and that

38
00:03:35.479 --> 00:03:40.039
represents the largest sample of fast radio
burst observations ever recorded from a single source

39
00:03:40.120 --> 00:03:46.240
that included polarization data. The polarization
data is important because that allows astronomers to

40
00:03:46.319 --> 00:03:51.319
determine the strength of the magnetic field
and the density of the plasma near the

41
00:03:51.360 --> 00:03:57.000
source. But surprisingly they found that
either the magnetic field or the density near

42
00:03:57.000 --> 00:04:00.800
the fast radio burst source kept changing, and the changes were occurring within time

43
00:04:00.800 --> 00:04:06.439
scales of just a few days.
To explain these strange observations, the team

44
00:04:06.520 --> 00:04:11.439
writing in the journal Nature Communications,
which included two of the authors from the

45
00:04:11.560 --> 00:04:15.719
Nature paper, suggested that the fast
radio bursts were being generated in the region

46
00:04:15.759 --> 00:04:19.759
around the magneta, where a strong
magnetic field dominates. But they also say

47
00:04:19.800 --> 00:04:26.000
the magneta must be in a binary
system with a massive spectro type ob bluestar

48
00:04:26.120 --> 00:04:30.560
companion a very specific type of extremely
luminous blue star, which is a circumstanllar

49
00:04:30.680 --> 00:04:36.040
disc of gas, making it a
bee star. They suggested the magneti's violence

50
00:04:36.120 --> 00:04:42.040
supernerva birth probably caused the kick,
sending the orbital plane and the disc plane

51
00:04:42.040 --> 00:04:46.680
into misalignment, and so as the
pair orbit each other, radio bursts from

52
00:04:46.680 --> 00:04:50.959
the magnetar sometimes passed through different parts
of the blue stars disc, thereby creating

53
00:04:50.959 --> 00:04:56.879
the fast changes being observed, and
it all sounds very plausible. The same

54
00:04:56.920 --> 00:05:00.160
sort of thing had been seen before
in another system contain a bee blue star,

55
00:05:00.319 --> 00:05:03.639
this time with a different type of
a neutron star quarter pulsar, and

56
00:05:03.720 --> 00:05:09.800
yet another fast radio burst with similar
properties could also be explained by a system

57
00:05:09.800 --> 00:05:15.000
with a bee blue star companion.
The problem is FB twenty eleven twenty four

58
00:05:15.040 --> 00:05:19.839
A doesn't appear to repeat regularly as
would be expected in the binary system.

59
00:05:20.439 --> 00:05:26.120
So the team decided to observe the
fast radio burst host galaxy using the giant

60
00:05:26.160 --> 00:05:30.040
ten meter Kick telescopes upon Mona k
in Hawaii, and they discovered a metal

61
00:05:30.160 --> 00:05:35.079
rich, barred spiral galaxy very similar
to our own Milky Way. The fast

62
00:05:35.199 --> 00:05:40.120
radio burst was spotted erupting in one
of the outer arms, a long way

63
00:05:40.199 --> 00:05:45.360
from the galactic core and not usually
an area known for young stars such as

64
00:05:45.399 --> 00:05:50.000
ob blue stars. Jonathanali, the
editor of Australian Sky and Telescope magazine,

65
00:05:50.319 --> 00:05:55.160
is the best way to make headway
in solving this puzzle is to capture more

66
00:05:55.279 --> 00:05:59.800
data on the fast radio burst,
including a multi wavelength, multi messenger and

67
00:06:00.040 --> 00:06:04.639
multinational approach where scientists can bring together
the observations of many different teams and telescopes

68
00:06:04.800 --> 00:06:09.759
in order to challenge the theory.
So it's been a topic that's been around

69
00:06:09.800 --> 00:06:13.000
for quite a while now because scientist
couldn't figure out what these fast radio bursts

70
00:06:13.040 --> 00:06:15.439
were. A fast radio burst is
something I think it's between anything that last

71
00:06:15.480 --> 00:06:19.399
between three million seconds up to three
seconds, just a burst of radio waves

72
00:06:19.399 --> 00:06:23.959
from something somewhere out in space.
And because they're so brief, you know,

73
00:06:24.000 --> 00:06:26.800
you have to be looking in the
right direction at the right time with

74
00:06:26.839 --> 00:06:30.319
a radio telescope order about to pick
it up. So they're actually designed systems

75
00:06:30.319 --> 00:06:31.959
now that are always on the look
for these things so that they can pick

76
00:06:31.959 --> 00:06:35.759
them up and try and then identify
where it's coming from exactly in space.

77
00:06:35.800 --> 00:06:39.560
So they've been trying to pin down
the origin of this phenomenon, and for

78
00:06:39.560 --> 00:06:42.639
a long time no one really knew
what produced them. Then some observations,

79
00:06:42.680 --> 00:06:45.519
as you said, seem to show
that a kind of star called a magnetar

80
00:06:46.399 --> 00:06:50.279
was the culprit. A magnetar is
a neutron star was a particularly intense magnetic

81
00:06:50.360 --> 00:06:55.120
field. Not all neutron stars are
like this, but Magnetar's arts neutron star

82
00:06:55.199 --> 00:06:59.519
with a really intense magnetic field,
and a neutron star itself is just the

83
00:06:59.639 --> 00:07:02.240
square core of a star that has
exploded. It's sort of one step removed

84
00:07:02.279 --> 00:07:08.040
from forming a black hole. But
now some scientists are not so sure that

85
00:07:08.079 --> 00:07:11.399
the magnetire idea is the complete picture, or even whether it's right at all.

86
00:07:11.959 --> 00:07:16.480
That's because some Chinese scientists have started
a particular magnetarre from which fast radio

87
00:07:16.600 --> 00:07:25.439
versts have been seen and found that
the magnetic polarization of the radio versts varied

88
00:07:25.560 --> 00:07:29.279
on very short time scales, on
the order of days. And what they've

89
00:07:29.319 --> 00:07:31.439
come up with to explain this is
that as they think there might be another

90
00:07:31.480 --> 00:07:38.399
star, young star orbiting around the
magnetar, and the versts of radio waves

91
00:07:38.399 --> 00:07:42.720
that are coming out of the magneti
a sort of passing through some of this

92
00:07:42.759 --> 00:07:46.560
other star going straight through it,
and thereby end up getting changed the polarization

93
00:07:46.680 --> 00:07:51.480
changes as the radio waves goes through
this companion star. Sounds pretty good.

94
00:07:51.519 --> 00:07:57.160
Scientists think that the reasonable scientific explanation, but other astronomers are not so short.

95
00:07:57.399 --> 00:08:01.839
As you see, this particular source
of fast radio verse is located in

96
00:08:01.879 --> 00:08:07.360
a somewhat emptier area between two spiral
arms in its host galaxy, sort of

97
00:08:07.399 --> 00:08:11.720
like the backblocks of this particular spiral
galaxy, and these astronomers say that this

98
00:08:11.800 --> 00:08:18.879
is not the kind of galactic neighborhood
where you would actually find either magnetars or

99
00:08:18.000 --> 00:08:22.759
this proposed young companion star going around
it. You would think that you would

100
00:08:22.800 --> 00:08:28.040
find a magnetar and young stars in
parts of the galaxy where there's more star

101
00:08:28.079 --> 00:08:31.120
against more stuff going on, rather
than sort of the outskirts of the backblocks.

102
00:08:31.600 --> 00:08:35.919
So if that is the case,
then this thing that they're getting these

103
00:08:35.000 --> 00:08:39.759
radio ways from is not a magnetar, and then perhaps magnetars are not the

104
00:08:39.799 --> 00:08:41.600
answer for these fast radio bursts,
or maybe not for all of them.

105
00:08:41.679 --> 00:08:48.039
And so it seems that it's back
to the drawing board again. And having

106
00:08:48.039 --> 00:08:50.279
said that, I mean, there's
no agreement on this. So some people

107
00:08:50.320 --> 00:08:54.480
say this and some people say that, So we don't know which is right

108
00:08:54.600 --> 00:08:58.840
or whether both are wrong or whatever. So it looks like fast radio bursts

109
00:08:58.840 --> 00:09:01.480
are going to hold theirs a little
while yet. That's Jonathan Ally, the

110
00:09:01.639 --> 00:09:07.879
editor of Australian Sky and Telescope magazine. And this space time still to come,

111
00:09:09.279 --> 00:09:13.080
the tongue and volcanic eruption now believed
to be the biggest volcanic explosion in

112
00:09:13.120 --> 00:09:18.840
a century, and China launching more
spy satellites. All that and more still

113
00:09:18.879 --> 00:09:41.320
to come on spacetime. Scientists have
now confirmed that last year's tongue and volcanic

114
00:09:41.480 --> 00:09:46.919
eruption was the largest natural explosion on
the planet in over a century. In

115
00:09:46.000 --> 00:09:52.399
December twenty twenty one, a series
of eruptions began on Hua Tongue, a

116
00:09:52.519 --> 00:10:00.360
submarine volcano and the Tonguan Archipelago in
the Southern Pacific Ocean. Hunga tong five

117
00:10:00.440 --> 00:10:03.759
kilometers north of Tonga Tapoo, Tonga's
main island, and is part of a

118
00:10:03.879 --> 00:10:11.120
highly active specific ring of fire.
The eruption finally reached its massive climax nearly

119
00:10:11.120 --> 00:10:15.240
four weeks later, on the fifteenth
of January twenty twenty two, with a

120
00:10:15.399 --> 00:10:20.039
mega explosion so powerful it could be
heard thousands of kilometers a way in New

121
00:10:20.120 --> 00:10:24.720
Zealand, Fiji. It generated chalk
waves that could be detected five hundred kilometers

122
00:10:24.759 --> 00:10:30.600
out in space that's higher than the
orbit of the International Space Station. The

123
00:10:30.759 --> 00:10:35.720
explosion had a volcanic explosivity in dex
or veei of at least five and was

124
00:10:35.759 --> 00:10:41.799
described by a scientist as a mega
hammer, resulting in the largest volcanic eruption

125
00:10:41.879 --> 00:10:46.000
since the nineteen ninety one eruption of
Mount Pinatubo and the most powerful eruption since

126
00:10:46.000 --> 00:10:52.440
the eighteen eighty three eruption of Kracketza. At its height, the volcano produced

127
00:10:52.440 --> 00:10:58.120
a series of four underwater thrusts,
displacing ten cubic kilometers of rock, ash

128
00:10:58.159 --> 00:11:05.000
and sentiment and generating the largest atmospheric
explosion ever recorded by modern instrumentation. The

129
00:11:05.120 --> 00:11:09.639
eruption also caused megasunamis, with waves
up to forty five meters high along the

130
00:11:09.679 --> 00:11:15.679
coast of Tonga's Taufu Island and waves
up to seventeen meters on the main island

131
00:11:15.679 --> 00:11:20.840
of Tonga Taupu. Tsunamis also struck
Fiji, American Samoa, Vanawatu, and

132
00:11:22.000 --> 00:11:26.559
right along the Pacific rim, including
New Zealand, Japan, the United States,

133
00:11:26.600 --> 00:11:31.440
the Russian Far East, Chile in
Peru. The new analysis, reported

134
00:11:31.440 --> 00:11:35.480
in the journal Science Advances, uses
a combination of before and after satellite imagery,

135
00:11:35.639 --> 00:11:41.240
drone mapping, and field observations collected
by scientists to produce a tsunami simulation

136
00:11:41.399 --> 00:11:46.480
of the Tongan Archipelago. The results
showed that the complex shallow berthemetry of the

137
00:11:46.559 --> 00:11:50.720
region acted as a sort of low
velocity wave track, capturing a more than

138
00:11:50.840 --> 00:11:56.840
hour long tsunami with waves up to
eighty five meters high one minute after the

139
00:11:56.879 --> 00:12:01.159
initial explosion. The studies lead off
at sam Perkis from the University of Miami's

140
00:12:01.279 --> 00:12:07.879
Rosenstiel's School of Marine, Atmospheric and
Earth Sciences says while the eruption rivaled the

141
00:12:07.960 --> 00:12:11.440
eighteen eighty three eruption of Krakatoa,
which killed more than thirty six thousand people,

142
00:12:11.679 --> 00:12:18.600
it claimed far fewer lives despite its
size and long duration. The megasunami

143
00:12:18.679 --> 00:12:22.200
that resulted from Hunga, Tonga,
claimed just four lives. Because of its

144
00:12:22.240 --> 00:12:28.440
location, the COVID nineteen pandemic,
which was keeping people indoors, and increased

145
00:12:28.440 --> 00:12:33.200
evacuation drills carried up by Tongan authorities
in the years prior to the eruption,

146
00:12:33.919 --> 00:12:39.840
The study horses suggested that the eruptions
location relative to urban centers saved Tongue from

147
00:12:39.919 --> 00:12:43.480
a worse outcome, But Perkis warns
that while twenty twenty two may have been

148
00:12:43.519 --> 00:12:48.679
a lucky escape, there are lots
of other submarine volcanoes which pose the capacity

149
00:12:48.759 --> 00:12:54.960
to spawn future tsunamis on a similar
scale. He says this eruption holds important

150
00:12:56.039 --> 00:13:03.559
lessons for both past and future tsunamis
in Tonga and beyond this spacetime still to

151
00:13:03.600 --> 00:13:09.360
come. China launches more spy satellites
as it continues it's preparations for war,

152
00:13:09.960 --> 00:13:15.759
and later in the science report new
warnings about the dangers of artificial sweeteners.

153
00:13:16.440 --> 00:13:37.240
All that and more still to come
of spacetime, China has launched a new

154
00:13:37.279 --> 00:13:41.799
constellation of Earth observing satellites. Abought
a long March two D rocket from the

155
00:13:41.879 --> 00:13:48.159
Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in Juanxi Province. This new constellation is different. It

156
00:13:48.240 --> 00:13:54.039
consist of a central three hundred twenty
kilogram pivot satellite and three two seventy kilogram

157
00:13:54.080 --> 00:13:58.840
assistant satellites. All are equipped with
interferometric synthetic aperture radars, and they can

158
00:14:00.320 --> 00:14:05.639
network is sensitive enough to detect geological
changes at millimeter levels. The mission came

159
00:14:05.679 --> 00:14:09.879
just over a week after the launch
of Acquaiju one, a solid fueled rocket

160
00:14:11.000 --> 00:14:15.720
from the Gaikuan Satellite Launch Center in
the Gobi Desert, carrying four weather satellites

161
00:14:15.720 --> 00:14:20.279
into orbit. Two days earlier,
a four stage long March eleven solid fueled

162
00:14:20.360 --> 00:14:24.480
rocket was also launched from Jaiquan,
this one carrying the classified Chian nineteen spy

163
00:14:24.559 --> 00:14:30.720
satellite into space. The clandestine spacecraft
was placed in a five hundred and eighty

164
00:14:30.759 --> 00:14:35.000
kilometer high orbit. Meanwhile, China
has just launched a long match for b

165
00:14:35.240 --> 00:14:39.440
rocket carrying another weather satellite, the
feng Yu and three Z seven, also

166
00:14:39.519 --> 00:14:45.559
from Jaiquan. Beijing now has an
estimated six hundred and twenty four satellites orbiting

167
00:14:45.600 --> 00:14:50.000
the Earth, including over two hundred
and sixty six Earth Observations, surveillance and

168
00:14:50.039 --> 00:14:54.080
reconnaissance satellites, including at least forty
seven GO thing and some one hundred and

169
00:14:54.080 --> 00:15:16.000
twelve YEAH gangs by satellites. This
is spacetime and time that to take another

170
00:15:16.039 --> 00:15:20.360
brief look at some of the other
stories making using science this week, where

171
00:15:20.399 --> 00:15:24.720
the Science report a new study using
data for more than three hundred thousand people

172
00:15:24.919 --> 00:15:31.159
has found that vitamin DT efficiency may
be causing premature death. The study involved

173
00:15:31.159 --> 00:15:37.919
a technique called Mendelian randomization, which
uses genetics to allow scientists to determine whether

174
00:15:37.039 --> 00:15:41.840
one thing causes another, rather than
the two just being linked. Research is

175
00:15:41.840 --> 00:15:46.480
from the University of South Australia found
that the risk of death decreased steeply with

176
00:15:46.679 --> 00:15:52.759
increasing vitamin D levels up to recommended
levels, and the biggest effect was in

177
00:15:52.840 --> 00:15:58.000
people with severe efficiency. The authors
say more research is needed in order to

178
00:15:58.080 --> 00:16:03.519
identify strategies that will reduced premature risk
of death associated with low vitamin D levels.

179
00:16:06.240 --> 00:16:11.200
A new study warns that artificial sweeteners
should no longer be considered as a

180
00:16:11.200 --> 00:16:15.080
healthy and safe alternative to sugar.
The findings are reported in the British Medical

181
00:16:15.200 --> 00:16:19.720
Journal. Based on a large study
looking at artificial sweetener intake and health,

182
00:16:21.399 --> 00:16:26.080
Scientist looked at dietary intakes and consumption
of artificial sweeteners, as well as other

183
00:16:26.159 --> 00:16:30.360
health and lifestyle factors for over a
hundred thousand French adults. They found that

184
00:16:30.440 --> 00:16:37.960
total artificial sweetener intake was associated with
an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. A

185
00:16:38.080 --> 00:16:42.360
new study shows when it comes to
teen dating violence, boys are more likely

186
00:16:42.399 --> 00:16:48.519
than girls to report being the victim
of violence, either being hit, slapped,

187
00:16:48.600 --> 00:16:52.679
or pushed. That's the surprising finding
of new research reported in the Journal

188
00:16:52.679 --> 00:17:00.399
of Interpersonal Violence. Scientist analyzed data
from three British Columbia adolysts and health these

189
00:17:00.519 --> 00:17:04.920
involving thirty five thousand youth at grade
seven to twelve who were in dating relationships.

190
00:17:06.519 --> 00:17:11.279
They found that overall, fewer teens
are experiencing physical abuse from their dating

191
00:17:11.319 --> 00:17:15.319
partners, with five percent of teens
reporting dating violence, down from six percent

192
00:17:15.440 --> 00:17:19.599
a decade ago. How Whether,
the researchers found five point eight percent of

193
00:17:19.640 --> 00:17:23.480
boys, as opposed to just four
point two percent of girls, said they

194
00:17:23.559 --> 00:17:29.640
had experienced violence during a date in
the past year. The researchers now need

195
00:17:29.720 --> 00:17:36.319
to understand why boys are reporting more
dating violence than girls. If you're a

196
00:17:36.319 --> 00:17:41.119
police detective or investigative journalist, then
you already have a wealth of experience and

197
00:17:41.240 --> 00:17:45.680
resources and background knowledge to help you
separate fact from fiction. And if you

198
00:17:45.759 --> 00:17:51.359
still support the fiction after that,
then you're either stupid or corrupt. But

199
00:17:51.599 --> 00:17:56.880
how does the average person separate fact
from fiction or whether a conspiracy theory has

200
00:17:56.920 --> 00:18:03.680
any validity or it's just propaganda to
push particular viewpoint. Temendum from Australian Skeptics

201
00:18:03.720 --> 00:18:07.559
says they've been lots of studies and
guides on the subject, and now a

202
00:18:07.640 --> 00:18:11.119
new one presents a sivil ten point
plan. Conspiracies pop up all the time.

203
00:18:11.240 --> 00:18:15.079
Sometimes they're justified a lot of signs, they're not a lot of the

204
00:18:15.119 --> 00:18:18.480
times. They're just there to explain
why horrible things happen to you. So

205
00:18:18.599 --> 00:18:21.200
naturally no one can say, oh, that's just bad luck. They have

206
00:18:21.319 --> 00:18:22.880
to say it for them that did
it to me, or them that are

207
00:18:22.920 --> 00:18:26.039
doing it to society, whatever.
So a lot of conspiracies fly around.

208
00:18:26.039 --> 00:18:30.319
They have four hundreds of years.
They're flying around better these days because they've

209
00:18:30.319 --> 00:18:33.079
got social media to spread through it, where they're much the same nature of

210
00:18:33.160 --> 00:18:37.759
things. You know, a group
or a industrial military complex, or a

211
00:18:37.920 --> 00:18:41.680
group of politicians or what everyone and
that have been plotting to rule us and

212
00:18:41.759 --> 00:18:42.960
around the world. And one of
the things that crops up a lot is

213
00:18:42.960 --> 00:18:48.880
acause the secret information about vaccines,
COVID vaccines actually hurting people. Someone wrote

214
00:18:48.880 --> 00:18:53.640
an article fairly recently called the ten
Step Guide to Sense checking conspiracy theory claims

215
00:18:53.920 --> 00:19:00.680
using the recent example of thirty two
Canadian doctors who've died at an early age.

216
00:19:00.039 --> 00:19:03.279
I'm asking, is this proof of
a problem with vaccines? Now?

217
00:19:03.319 --> 00:19:07.079
Presumably because they're doctors, they have
had vaccines, and presumably they've had more

218
00:19:07.119 --> 00:19:11.759
than one. So he gives these
rules for what you should look at using

219
00:19:11.839 --> 00:19:15.279
this example, but more broadly applicable, so one you evaluate the reliability of

220
00:19:15.319 --> 00:19:18.880
the source, if it's coming from
the net, if it's coming from some

221
00:19:18.319 --> 00:19:22.720
person who's a rat bag, or
something continual campaign or against vaccines you assume

222
00:19:22.839 --> 00:19:26.079
they've got that particular for the line
of approach, line of an argument.

223
00:19:26.160 --> 00:19:30.279
You look for other sources. If
you see the same wording, repeat the

224
00:19:30.359 --> 00:19:33.359
repeat the repeater, that just means
their copy and pasting. So you look

225
00:19:33.400 --> 00:19:36.960
for something that's independent. The third
aspect is looking for ground zero, which

226
00:19:37.000 --> 00:19:38.160
is what's the basis of the claim? Do you try and find where it

227
00:19:38.160 --> 00:19:41.400
originally came from? All right,
then you might medical journal or whatever.

228
00:19:41.480 --> 00:19:45.519
Yeah, medical journal be one thing. Someone on the net, on their

229
00:19:45.599 --> 00:19:48.599
podcasts or on their website, et
cetera, is probably not necessarily the best

230
00:19:48.680 --> 00:19:49.640
sort of source to go to it. Now, thiss is you, of

231
00:19:49.640 --> 00:19:55.039
course space your thing is definitely on
the good side of things, but someone

232
00:19:55.079 --> 00:19:57.319
who has a particular acts to grind
might not be the best person to take

233
00:19:57.359 --> 00:20:00.680
evidence from. Okay, Then you
look at the mote is why are people

234
00:20:00.720 --> 00:20:03.400
doing it? Obviously, conspiracy theories
are to explain things that they're doing to

235
00:20:03.519 --> 00:20:07.559
me, and it wasn't my fault, it was them, And therefore you

236
00:20:07.559 --> 00:20:11.000
look at sort of why they're sort
of saying these things. Then you evaluate

237
00:20:11.039 --> 00:20:14.079
the claims individually. You look at
them and say, is this correct?

238
00:20:14.279 --> 00:20:18.480
Dis these things actually happen and truth
of statements made in the conspiracy theory?

239
00:20:18.559 --> 00:20:22.000
Are they just generalizations or do they
actually have some basis in fact? And

240
00:20:22.119 --> 00:20:26.119
that means you look at a sixth
element, which is contextualizing the claims,

241
00:20:26.240 --> 00:20:30.440
seeing how they fit in with these
thirty two Canadian doctors. How many doctors

242
00:20:30.480 --> 00:20:33.000
would die at a young age in
Canada, And they're close to one hundred

243
00:20:33.079 --> 00:20:37.920
thousand doctors in Canada, so a
fair number of them will die early and

244
00:20:37.000 --> 00:20:41.240
die young. In fact, this
article points out that they probably didn't die

245
00:20:41.240 --> 00:20:44.920
of vaccine poising, which is what
the conspiracy theory is saying. In fact,

246
00:20:44.960 --> 00:20:48.160
there should be more than thirty two
who have died. Have you just

247
00:20:48.279 --> 00:20:51.880
chosen out these thirty two because they
sort of fit your preconception? People die

248
00:20:51.880 --> 00:20:55.160
all the time, Unfortunately a lot
of people die young. But these ones

249
00:20:55.200 --> 00:20:56.440
they talk about, some of them
were up in their sixties, so they

250
00:20:56.440 --> 00:21:02.359
stop that young. So therefore it's
cherry picking evidence. It's not giving enough

251
00:21:02.480 --> 00:21:07.039
context to what these claims are.
I've heard other things theories performed about these

252
00:21:07.079 --> 00:21:10.839
persons died young because they had a
vaccine and a vaccine injury, et cetera

253
00:21:10.960 --> 00:21:12.640
cause them to die for she COVID
vaccines, they're saying, and some of

254
00:21:12.640 --> 00:21:15.880
the examples they use are so far
out. Now the least one case where

255
00:21:15.880 --> 00:21:18.599
someone died in a car crash,
their death at a young age, you're

256
00:21:18.640 --> 00:21:22.319
cited as being a vaccine death.
Then again, you hear people who die

257
00:21:22.359 --> 00:21:23.519
in their eighties or nineties, and
they also say, well, that's a

258
00:21:23.599 --> 00:21:27.359
vaccine injuries, and excuse me,
they're old people die. Seventh point,

259
00:21:27.400 --> 00:21:32.400
You look at the consistency of the
darker set, and that doesn't apply over

260
00:21:32.440 --> 00:21:34.359
a whole period of time. Look
at the bigger picture, in other words,

261
00:21:34.480 --> 00:21:37.200
and see if there is a theme
running through this or if there is

262
00:21:37.279 --> 00:21:41.240
not. You look for questionable assertions
the only word sort of outrageous claims at

263
00:21:41.400 --> 00:21:45.839
rageous phraseology. You come down to
do a what this article caused? A

264
00:21:45.880 --> 00:21:49.960
plausibility smell test. If it smells
off, it probably is off. If

265
00:21:49.960 --> 00:21:53.359
it seems dodgy, it probably is
dodgy. A claim that is too good

266
00:21:53.359 --> 00:21:56.279
to be true, it probably is
not true. So you just look at

267
00:21:56.279 --> 00:22:00.440
it from you stand back. You
think, does this make sense but doesn't

268
00:22:00.480 --> 00:22:03.000
sound a bit dodgy? Who's the
person telling me? Etc? And then

269
00:22:03.039 --> 00:22:04.759
you ask an expert. If you
can, you ask someone who actually knows

270
00:22:04.759 --> 00:22:08.039
what they're talking about and doesn't have
a particular act to grind and see where

271
00:22:08.079 --> 00:22:12.359
they think. So there's ten steps
to going through conspiracy theories, from looking

272
00:22:12.400 --> 00:22:17.039
at the source, looking at the
data, the evidence being put forward,

273
00:22:17.119 --> 00:22:19.319
how is it phrased, does it
make sense, what is the truth of

274
00:22:19.319 --> 00:22:22.440
it within a context? Are they
just cherry picking out a particular bit of

275
00:22:22.519 --> 00:22:26.119
data, does it smell off?
And what do the experts think rather than

276
00:22:26.200 --> 00:22:30.799
the person on their blog. I'm
an anti baccer dot blogs, you know

277
00:22:30.880 --> 00:22:33.400
sort of thing. And that's the
philosophy for life when you think about it,

278
00:22:33.480 --> 00:22:37.880
is it is? I mean it's
basically critical thinking, critical thinking sis.

279
00:22:37.920 --> 00:22:40.480
I want to look at the evidence
before I make a decision. I'm

280
00:22:40.480 --> 00:23:00.200
not going to just leap in.
That's timendum from Australian Skeptics and that's the

281
00:23:00.279 --> 00:23:06.440
show for now. Spacetime is available
every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through Apple

282
00:23:06.519 --> 00:23:11.400
Podcasts, iTunes, Stitcher, Google
podcast pocket Casts, Spotify, Acast,

283
00:23:11.599 --> 00:23:18.240
Amazon Music, bytes dot Com,
SoundCloud, YouTube, your favorite podcast download

284
00:23:18.279 --> 00:23:22.960
provider, and from Spacetime with Stewart
Gary dot Com. Spacetime's also broadcast through

285
00:23:22.960 --> 00:23:29.240
the National Science Foundation, on Science
Zone Radio and on both iHeartRadio and tune

286
00:23:29.240 --> 00:23:33.440
In Radio. And you can help
to support our show by visiting the Spacetime

287
00:23:33.480 --> 00:23:37.880
Store for a range of promotional merchandising
goodies, or by becoming a Spacetime Patron,

288
00:23:37.960 --> 00:23:41.640
which gives you access to triple episode
commercial free versions of the show,

289
00:23:41.839 --> 00:23:45.599
as well as lots of burnus audio
content which doesn't go to war, access

290
00:23:45.640 --> 00:23:51.319
to our exclusive Facebook group, and
other rewards. Just go to Spacetime with

291
00:23:51.400 --> 00:23:56.079
Stewart Gary dot com for full details, and if you want more Spacetime please

292
00:23:56.160 --> 00:23:59.039
check out our blog where you'll find
all the stuff we couldn't fit in the

293
00:23:59.079 --> 00:24:03.359
show, as well heaps of images, news stories, loads of videos and

294
00:24:03.480 --> 00:24:07.799
things on the whereby find interesting or
amusing. Just go to Spacetime with Stewart

295
00:24:07.839 --> 00:24:11.839
Gary dot Tumbler dot com. That's
all one word, and that's Tumbler without

296
00:24:11.839 --> 00:24:15.519
the E. You can also follow
us through at Stewart Garry on Twitter,

297
00:24:15.920 --> 00:24:21.720
at Spacetime with Stewart Garry, on
Instagram, through our Spacetime YouTube channel,

298
00:24:21.920 --> 00:24:26.119
and on Facebook. Just go to
Facebook dot com, forward slash, Spacetime

299
00:24:26.160 --> 00:24:30.839
with Stewart Gary and Spacetime is brought
to you in collaboration with Australian Sky and

300
00:24:30.920 --> 00:24:36.200
Telescope magazine, Your window on the
universe. You've been listening to Spacetime with

301
00:24:36.319 --> 00:24:42.640
Stewart Gary. This has been another
quality podcast production from bytes dot com.