A Very Special 'Are We Alone'

A massive black hole lies at the center of our galaxy, a monster hunkered down in the Milky Way’s innermost sanctum. Here, the bizarre laws of General Relativity take over, as the physics we know break down. And our spaceship is headed straight for it.

Join us on a special dramatized 26,000 light-year adventure to the Galaxy’s hulking heart of darkness. We explore a cosmos held together by gravity – discover why it’s not really a force – and try to avoid getting too close to a black hole, the ultimate expression of gravity.

This program is part of the traveling exhibit: “Black Holes, Space Warps and Time Twists,” a production of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Find out more at: http://web-bh.cfa.harvard.edu/

Cast:
Seth Shostak - himself
Molly Bentley - herself, Dr. Barsky
Doug Vakoch - News Anchor
Roland Pease - Dr. Childschwartz
Lilia Roman - SOPHIA
Roe DeVasto - Ship Computer
Patrick Porter - Dr. G
Gary Niederhoff - DAN, Albert Einstein, Dr. Dutch

Master of Camouflage

This week's show about the evolution of intelligence features a segment on the ability of cuttlefish to change the colors and patterns of their skin to match their surroundings. As Roger Hanlon, senior scientist at Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory in Massachusetts, describes in "Feather Knows Best", this helpful adaptation has been honed to the point that the cuttlefish can undergo this transformation in the blink of an eye. In the video above, a cuttlefish floats just above the ocean floor, its color ranging from purple to yellow. At about 27 seconds in, it suddenly takes on the colors and pattern of the ocean floor, and if you didn't see it happen, you'd probably swim right by without seeing the animal at all. At least, that's what it hopes.

Correction

At the end of this week's show, Molly asks Seth what NASA stands for, and Seth incorrectly replies, "National Air and Space Administration". The correct answer, of course, is National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Also acceptable: Never Ask Seth Anything.

Vaccines take a shot

Our Skeptic Check program that includes an interview with Pediatritian Paul Offit about the safety of vaccines went out just last night and has already generated responses in our email inbox and on Facebook. In general, people feel that vaccines are safe and important - but there is a lingering mistrust of the industry behind them. Below is a letter from one listener and the response from Paul Offit. You can hear the show at: Vaccines: Give 'Em Your Best Shot.

Dear AWA,

I want you to know how much I enjoy the show you folks put together every week. I was pleased that you took on the vaccine controversy. There have been people in my life who believed the autism canard and I found it impossible to reason with them. I'm writing because I think you came up short in your discussion of why these attitudes exist...

Read the entire letter

Paul Offit's reply:

While I certainly agree that pharmaceutical companies have acted aggressively, unethically and even illegally (witness the recent Pfizer settlement) regarding the sale and promotion of drugs, I just don't see where this applies to vaccines...

Read the entire reply

Happy Thanksgiving!

"The Turkey that Ate St. Louis" (1969)


This Thanksgiving, the dinner tables are turned as we bring back this turkey of a film to feast on you.

Seth comments:

One of the many doubtful activities of my youth was making films. I started doing this at age 11, and by the time I was a teenager, my buddy Jerry Rebold and I had already constructed a sound system that occasionally worked with our wind-up, 16mm camera.

In 1967, while in grad school, fellow student Bob O’Connell, Jerry Rebold and I made a half-hour film entitled “The Teenage Monster Blob from Outer Space, Which I Was.” This parody of 1950s sci-fi films starred six pounds of Play-Doh.

The film bombed. It was, as O’Connell called it, “a turkey.” This disgusting failure prompted us to change our cinematic strategy in two ways: (1) our next film was just going to be a trailer, rather than a complete film – that way we could save money and just put in the good parts, and (2) if we were making turkeys, why not make a REAL turkey?

Ergo, this short “preview” film, shot mostly at Caltech and at that school’s Owens Valley Radio Observatory. Observant viewers will note then-department chair Jesse Greenstein in the role of Walter Cronkite, and a few other astronomers too (including yours truly).

“The Turkey that Ate St. Louis” was entered in the Baltimore International Film Festival, and automatically inserted into the feature-film category, where it faced competition from major motion pictures from both America and Europe. Despite this uneven playing field, “The Turkey” lost.

“The Teenage Monster Blob” eventually became more popular. Too late.

Happy Birthday SETI Institute!

Twenty five years ago, on November 20, 1984, the SETI Institute was founded. It's history goes much deeper than that, of course. Nearly fifty years ago, Frank Drake conducted the first radio search for extraterrestrial intelligence, known as Project Ozma. Today, the Institute, independent astronomers, home computers, and supporters like you continue to bring SETI closer to the detection of a signal from our celestial neighbors. Hear all about SETI's history, from the Drake equation and the Allen Telescope Array to SETI@home and optical SETI, on this week's show.

This Calendar Weighs an EschaTon

Do you see the part where it says we'll all die on December 21, 2012? Mayan scholars don't see it either. Ancient Mayan glyphs and their concepts of language and time aren't fully understood by anyone, but no one who studies their ancient beliefs is under the impression that they ever forecast the end of anything other than various cycles of time. Like many cultures, the Mayans understood time as being cyclical, rather than linear. Hence, the round calendar. They had short counts of time within long counts of time, just as we do. One of the longest counts, the Baktun, ends on what some argue to be December 21, 2012, just like one of our long counts, the year, ends on December 31, 2009, and then starts over.

In this week's show, Seth and NASA Astrobiologist Dave Morrison discuss some of the unlikely harbingers that some say are the fulfillment of Mayan doomsday prophesy, including those postulated by the marketing campaign of a certain new disaster movie coming out this week.

Note: It has been pointed out that the picture above is an Aztec calendar. Of the many cultures that developed in the Yucatan region in the past three thousand years, the Maya were most instrumental in developing this calendar. The Aztecs just figured out how to make it look pretty.