Skeptics Guide #1100

The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe Skepticast #1100 August 1st 2026 Live from Christchurch, New Zealand Guests Andrea Jones Rooy, Brian Wecht and George Hrab Segment #1. Intro The SGU Down Under Segment #2. News Items News Item #1: Telescope Ranch https://starfront.space/ News Item #2: The Fate of Earth https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/earth-might-not-be-engulfed-by-the-sun-in-5-billion-years-after-all/ar-AA26q9TH News Item #3: The Science of Community News Item #4: Terraforming Mars https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/07/260714225535.htm News Item #5: Fauci Under Fire https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/27/us/politics/fauci-in-private-diary-reflected-on-covids-origins-and-his-own-fame.html?emc=edit_ufn_20260729&nl=from-the-times&segment_id=223861 News Item #6: AI Satellites https://theness.com/neurologicablog/proposed-satellites-would-ruin-astronomy/ News Item #7: AI Solves 90 Year Math Puzzle https://mathworld.wolfram.com/JacobianConjecture.html Segment #3. 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 - Science and Rock Item 1: Brian May, the guitarist of the rock band Queen, holds a Bachelor of Science (BSc) in Physics and a PhD in Astrophysics, both from Imperial College London. His doctoral thesis, was titled "A survey of radial velocities in the zodiacal dust cloud.” Since earning his doctorate, he has remained highly active in the scientific community, working with NASA on missions like New Horizons and OSIRIS-REx Item 2: Jerry Speiser, original drummer from Men At Work was a physics major from La Trobe University. He is currenbtly the foremost Austrailian scholar on the works of American architect and systems theorist Buckminster Fuller, whose 'generalised principles' Speiser has used to coach the likes of pharma giant Bristol-Myers Squibb and Melbourne software group Zero Corporation. Item 3: Tom Scholz, founder of the band Boston, is an MIT-trained engineer who designed and built his own recording studio in an apartment basement in the early 1970s. Among his many, many studio inventions was an unreleased proprietary headphone design, that he eventually sold to Noel Lee from the company Monster Cable. Monster Cable then partnered with Dr.Dre’s company Beats Electronics which eventually went on to became the multi-billion dollar brand Beats by Dre. Segment #4. Skeptical Quote of the Week "It was almost as incredible as if you fired a 15-inch shell at a piece of tissue paper and it came back and hit you." Ernest Rutherford