Skeptics Guide #1022

The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe Skepticast #1022 February 5th 2025 Segment #1. Quickie https://www.sciencenews.org/article/nuclear-x-rays-deflect-earth-asteroids Segment #2. News Items News Item #1 – Asteroid Chance of Hitting Earth https://www.space.com/180-foot-asteroid-1-in-83-chance-hitting-Earth-2032 News Item #2 – Does the Internet Affect Our Memory https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00292-z News Item #3 – The Growing Rat Problem https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/climate-change/rats-numbers-are-skyrocketing-across-us-cities-and-its-only-going-to-get-worse News Item #4 – Do Apes Have a Theory of Mind https://theness.com/neurologicablog/do-apes-have-a-theory-of-mind/ News Item #5 – NASA Harassed by Aliens https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/other/nasa-astronauts-are-harassed-by-125ft-aliens-with-wings-who-peek-into-space-shuttles Segment 3. Who’s That Noisy Segment #4. Science or Fiction Each week our host will come up with three science news items or facts, two genuine, one fictitious. He will challenge our panel of skeptics to sniff out the fake – and you can play along. Item 1: Scientists have demonstrated the effectiveness of a medicine that prevents and reverses inguinal hernia. Item 2: Archaeologists have identified 4,000 year old writing that likely represents proto-Indo-Anatolian, the language that gave rise to all Indo-European languages. Item 3: Researchers calculate that the probability of reentering space junk entering busy airspace is about 26% annually. Segment #5. Skeptical Quote of the Week "The most important thing that illusions can teach us is that it is possible, at least some of the time, to find in being wrong a deeper satisfaction than we would have found being right.” ― Kathryn Schulz, Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error