Skeptics Guide #1021

The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe Skepticast #1021 January 29th 2025 Segment #1. What’s the Word Geyser Segment #2. News Items News Item #1 – Self Replicating AI https://www.livescience.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/ai-can-now-replicate-itself-a-milestone-that-has-experts-terrified News Item #2 – DeepSeek https://theness.com/neurologicablog/the-skinny-on-deepseek/ News Item #3 – PEPFAR Freeze https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/28/health/trump-pepfar-freeze.html News Item #4 – Chemical Looping https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.energyfuels.4c02643 News Item #5 – Giant Clams and Tiny Algae https://phys.org/news/2025-01-tiny-algae-evolution-giant-clams.amp Segment 3. Who’s That Noisy Segment #4. Your Questions and E-mails Question #1: More On Telepathy Tapes Segment #5. 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. Theme: The Moon Item 1: The Moon is the densest moon in our solar system. Item 2: A recent analysis finds evidence of geological tectonic activity on The Moon as recently at 160 million years ago, suggesting it might still be active. Item 3: The Moon has a weak magnetic field, measured at the Apollo 16 site at 0.31 microtesla (compared to Earth’s 50 microtesla field). Segment #6. Skeptical Quote of the Week “Our beliefs do not sit passively in our brains waiting to be confirmed or contradicted by incoming information. Instead, they play a key role in shaping how we see the world.” ― Richard Wiseman