The Butterfly Effect

This is [singing] Twist. This week in science, episode number 1074, recorded September 2nd, 2026. The butterfly effect. Hey everyone, I'm Dr. Kiki, and tonight on the show, I will fill your head with butterflies, dark matter, and raindrops. But first, thanks to our amazing Patreon sponsors for their generous support of Twist. You can become a part of the Patreon community at patreon.com/thiswecience. Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. The future depends on today. Make no mistake. What you choose has impact. Ripples from each of us expand and interact. We are not isolated islands, but a massive ven diagram. Let's act like our lives depend on us and enjoy this week in science. Coming up next. [music] >> I want to learn everything. I want to fill it all up with new [music] discoveries that happen every day of the week. There's only one place to go to find the knowledge I seek. I want to know what's happening. What's happening? What's happening [music] this week in science? What's happening? What's happening? What's happening this week in science? [music] Good science everyone and welcome to another episode of This Week in Science. I'm back. Dr. Kiki here to talk about science with you. I mean really it's all about what's happened, what we're curious about, and what other questions we can come up with. So I'm really glad that you have decided to spend your time with me this week. All right. Blair is out tonight because she's got some new school stuff for her child and also some possible job stuff. But, you know, she'll be hopefully back next week. We'll see. We'll see what comes of all of this. We don't know. The future is still in store. So, let's be good to each other and let's have questions and let's explore. All right. What do we have tonight? I've got a big eye in the sky. We've got some big dark matter. got some beauty bias, a little gut brain connection, also some raindrops on card tops and anyway, corrosive actions and uh maybe a cure for Alzheimer's in mice. But before we get to all those stories, I do want to remind you that as we jump into the show here, subscribing to the Twist podcast is the best way you can get Twist wherever you are, whenever you are on your favorite podcast platform. We're on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitch every week, broadcasting live around 8:00 p.m. Pacific timeish. And you should hit those notification buttons if you want to know when a new episode is published. or when we're going live. If you want show notes and links to stories and those fun things, well, I want to make sure that you get to twist.org, our website. All that information is there, in addition to links to our Patreon and our Zazzle store. So, that's great. And now it's time for the science. You ready? I don't have Blair's voice here going, "Yeah." Okay. All right. Let's dig into the science. Quick call back to last week. We talked with um with Weather West and had a wonderful conversation about uh El Nino last week. What a great great conversation that was. Just a day or two later, a new study was published by researchers who have been studying coral records outside the Galapagos or from the Galapagos Islands. And uh from these records what and this is published in science. What they were able to say is that hey recent strengthening of this eastern Pacific ENSO El Nino oscillation right um this is the strongest over the last decade or so. It's the strongest it's been in a thousand years. So they were able to go back using the coral record off the Gapagos from the eastern Pacific Ocean to be able to look at the history of ocean warming and cooling based on oxygen events. And what they were able to show is that hey it's been going on since uh about 1100 AD, right? Yeah. 80 um until about the industrial revolution where it kind of evened off for a while until about from about 1850 to 1984. And then there was extreme increases from 1984 to current day. And so as a result, where we are is unprecedented. Woohoo. Yay. Thanks, Coral Record. Anyway, anyway, I just thought I'd give you a nice reminder of our conversation with Daniel Swain last week and hopefully get you thinking about um putting any weather stripping or weather precautions into your homes or other properties that you might have that might be appropriate. I think that would be appropriate. Our optimistic wonderful news for this week. NASA has launched the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope successfully on its journey to the L2 Lrange point, four times the distance the moon from the Earth, but you know out there where it has a nice gravitational dwell point that it will be able to sit along with some other spacecraft. That's not the only one out there. But this telescope, the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope, otherwise known as or priorly known as the W first telescope, was launched on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket this week and it was able to it it it's going on. It's going to take three months to get to this Lrangee point. It's not going to be doing anything really till it gets there. Once it gets to the launch lrangee point, it's going to undergo similar startup, you know, making sure everything works similar to what we saw the web go through. This telescope, we're very excited about it because it's spy technology. Well, I mean, that's not why we're excited about it, but it is repurposed spy telescope technology. the National Reconnaissance Office or Surveillance Office had [snorts] two of these amazing telescope mirrors that it wasn't using because of funding that got cut for some surveillance program in the past. And so like be prior to the whole COVID kurfuffle that we went through, there was money and a mission put together and a bunch of people have been able to get this telescope going. Whereas the web took decades. It went over budget. It had all these issues. The Nancy Grace Roman Telescope named after the first chief astronomer for NASA who was a woman. It's wonderful. It was on budget, under budget. It was on time, early even. It's like 9 months ahead of schedule. This is incredible. It's getting out there. Fingers crossed everything is hunky dory once it gets out to its lrangee point. But the excitement is that because of the size of the mirror and the view that it's going to be able to get. It's got some near infrared. It's also got some real light, but it has a massive field of view. And this is the exciting thing. Everybody is absolutely excited that what we're going to be able to do is see much more of the sky at a time than with the Hubble or even with the web. So the web is looking at deep field, but it's also looking in this infrared, right? Um but it's not the same view. So the Nancy Roman uh Nancy Grace Roman telescope is going to be huge percent of like 12% of the sky whereas the Hubble can only do like 1%. And so we'll be able to get really great views of more of the sky. We're going to over the course of the fiveyear mission for this craft, we are going to have something like 20 pabytes worth of data. Um, it's an incredible amount of data, one terabyte of data per 20 per day, something like that. um they're going to have to be using a different download for this space data than the deep the deep space network. We're going to have to have a very special uh a special a special pipe from the sky, I guess, for all the data coming from this from this telescope and it's going to be able to give us much more information. And so one of one of the things they're very excited about is not just the big view of the sky and being able to see much more and much more with clarity and high resolution. It's also going to be uh enabling um us to look at transits of stars. And so there is a one of the tools it has is a way of kind of ob obsticating uh star light. So you can see stuff around the stars more easily. And so this might give us better views of exoplanets around stars which is really cool. This coronosphere kind of view is going to be very exciting for the search and the identification of other planets. We are going to be able to look at our entire Milky Way galaxy in a time that we have never we've never look we will never have looked at it. This is brand new. Our view of it is going to be totally fast and brand new and it's very exciting. So really, I hope that it works really well. But the bad news, I'm gonna, you know, come back down to Earth here. We don't have any more telescope missions scheduled. We really don't have any big missions scheduled in NASA anymore. And this is a really big concern. Um it's not good to have not have another mission in the pipeline. And so um because we know how long missions take to build and come to fruition. It's just it's hugely rare for the speed at which they were able to get this telescope together and to make it work and get it out there. That missions don't do this normally. So, um I really hope that we are able to get Congress and NASA back on the exploration plan and really trying to do science around our solar system locally. Like we have to send things places and we have to put that in the timeline, the time it takes to get places and to do things. And so if you want more amazing science for your kids generation or I even moving forward, we have to push for it. We have to ask for that science to happen. So you know ask your representatives to support NASA and the science that NASA does. I mean we also need to look here at home. We do need to be keeping an eye here at home, but I really don't think that it it should be other countries and I mean other countries are going to keep still keep doing stuff, but I also don't think that it should be corporations taking the lead. Is it going to be a corporate space? I really don't think that's a great idea. But that's just me. Um I'm I'm not like the rest of people. Um so you all know me, of course. you say yes, no, Kiki, you're not like the rest of people. Um, but it's a wonderful new space telescope and we will find out in a couple of months whether or not it's able to get first light and whether things are working. Um, and whether the coronagraph is working and it's going to be amazing. We're going to get great data from I I am going to be optimistic here. We're going to get great data from the Nancy Roman Space Telescope. There are uh three core surveys to the Space Telescope. It's going to be looking at the galactic bulge. So, there's go we're going to be looking for exoplanets, transients, and black holes. And it's going to have a massive spread of the sky. The area of as they say 8.5 full moons. The full SE survey area is going to be imaged every 12 minutes over 438 days in six sets of 72 days each. There's also the high latitude wide area survey. This is going to be looking at 12% of the entire sky. That's the equivalent of 25,500 full moons. This is the full 5-year mission for the Roman telescope. The exposure time is going to be from 11 to 150 minutes. That depends on distance, resolution, all the things they want to be getting there. And then the third mission, the third survey for the mission is the high latitude time domain survey. And this is over 180 days, which is about how many days my child goes to school every year. And [snorts] he was mentioning this morning on the way to school how strange it is that it's really that little. Anyway, this is going to be over 2 years for the Roman Space Telescope. uh 30 hours every five days and it will be doing a timed survey looking for supernova transients, galaxies and also dark energy. Some really cool stuff there on the uh the the topic of dark energy. Let's get away from this space telescope that I am exceedingly excited about, but we just have to wait and see what's going to happen and what's what'll come what'll come from it. The there is a question uh a paper that was recently published in physical review letters. It is a closed access paper, but there is a link to the preprint in archive.org. And so I've taken a look at the archive.org or paper and also there's a good summary that we we will link to on the twist website on the site astroytes. All right. Zachary SC Picker from UCLA has published a paper questioning the size of dark matter. The paper is called dark matter hail detecting macroscopic dark matter with asteroids, planetary rings and craters. And so we've always talked about dark matter as you know this idea of uh I don't know subatomic particles that the dark matter is little stuff that doesn't interact with light. Dark matter is just matter that does not interact with light. But what if it's bigger and what kind of limitations are there on the size and how could it how big could these things be? And so the idea that Zachary has put forward is that maybe there are primordial black holes. Maybe there are clumps of quarks or what they're calling quark nuggets. Also maybe there are stable clumps of fields and particles called Q balls and fairmy balls. And how big could they be? Like instead of subatomic particle size, what if they are hailized? What if they are asteroid size? What if they are the size of a planet? How big could they be? So the question is, how do we look for them? And really the author says, well, you got to look for the damage that they do. And so the uh Zachary is has put together this idea that we need to be looking around our own solar system for the signature of damage from dark matter particles. So damage that we know did not occur from particles that interact with light, but rather damage that we can't really that we've been like, "Oh, I don't know what would do that." Anyway, it's a really interesting idea that's kind of breaking my brain a little bit. And I love the concept that why does it have to be subatomic? Why does it like distributed subatomic if it's clumpy? Not exactly like berionic matter but just matter that doesn't interact with light. What property if it's like normal matter otherwise what properties would keep it from growing in size accumulating? So he lists a whole bunch of different possibilities for things we should be looking at. So asteroid destruction, Kyper belt evaporation, ring particle destruction, ring evaporation, whole bunch of different ideas. And so what damage could there be? What should we be looking for? And so he comes up with a bunch of possibilities and says the first place we really should be looking for this evidence of dark matter hail is our own solar system. It's close. Why don't we just look at our solar system as a model system for all sorts of ideas related to astronomical phenomena? So that's I mean the Roman telescope is going to be amazing for looking way out there. But still like let's keep looking at our own solar system. There's so much here for us to take a lot take a look at. [snorts] But it's a wonderful question. I am it dark matter has [snorts] mass like berionic ma it's basically berionic matter that does not interact with light why would it not interact with light I don't understand these things myself but being like any other matter with mass it would attract it would clump it would interact with other matter potentially unless of course there's Um and and we know that dark matter does interact with other matter because of the signature of dark matter clouds and uh where how we have seen the large evidence of dark matter um over in the galactic scale. Anyway, so it's it's a very interesting thing. Paul Disney saying uh if it clumps it would have to use a force other than gravity or electromagnetic to match the effects that dark matter seems to have or not on structures in the universe. Right? I could say I I think maybe not electromagnetic, right? But uh gravity, why not? So, uh I think gravity would still potentially work with dark matter, but electromagnetic interactions would not necessarily work in the same way. Ah, Paul, dark matter affects gravity but does not seem to be affected by it. How much do we really I mean I gota like keep looking at that. But um Kevin Ruden says it does not interact with light but does interact with matter by showing some damage. So it wouldn't be the damage to dark matter. would be the damage to the matter it inter interacts with and which is where we've seen on the galactic scale where there are clouds that have um been separated from certain areas because where the mass is separated from the matter and it doesn't make any sense. So you've got a visual of matter yet you have a measurement of mass in another place. And so that is that separation that has led us to hypothesize that there is this massive amount of dark matter in the universe. So who knows there are still so many questions but I think it's very interesting. So, the weather for forecast, right? We're going to be looking at hail, dark matter, hail in our solar system. So, cratering. Should we find craters on Earth from dark matter? Can that even be possible? This is so weird. Such It's an interesting question. There is the possibility that it will bear no fruit whatsoever. But I think it is um this is what science is about. It's about asking questions and getting rid of hypothesis, you know. Oh, that one didn't that idea didn't work. That's okay. There I'm going to move away from [laughter] right law coned. We see everything end on. We don't know what anything really looks like. And then Paul says, "Everything looks like chicken." No, everything tastes like chicken. Paul, not looks like it necessarily. Moving on from chickens to butterflies. And this is the butterfly effect, but it's not the quantum butterfly effect. This is actually a conservational butterfly effect. And I would love to talk about this story with Blair, but she's not here. researchers published in current biology their investigation of how conservation databases in Europe and conservation efforts have impacted different butterfly species. And so the researchers were looking at different conservation um databases and looking and they were like okay let's see how the human like idea of beauty how does that or what we think is beautiful how does that influence conservation and what they determined in this study is that ugly butterflies or the plain butterflies guys. They've gotten ignored by some of the major uh European databases that are being used for conservation efforts. The IUCN, which is the International Union Conservation Network, that database, it has all of the endangered butterflies in it. All of the, you know, almost extinct, endangered, soon to be endangered, those are the ones that are. So, all of them are listed in there. However, when it comes to the butterflies that are actually getting attention and are getting the the public's benefit, it's not the pretty ones. The I mean, or it is the pretty ones, the plain ones, the ones that are more mothlike, the ones that are drab, the ones that don't capture your attention, they are getting ignored. But you know my question is is it be it's not beauty necessarily is it just what people pay attention to? We we are drawn to the bright colors because of our visual system. So movement might first get us to something but more often it's movement with color. And so in a shadowed place, we're very likely to misidentify, not identify, not even see butterflies that are potentially highly endangered because they just don't strike our fancy. So this study was pretty much pretty much nail on the head which is hey people your ideas of beauty are negatively impacting conservation efforts. We need to pay attention to more drabby ugly things. We really need to pay attention to things that don't strike our fancy. Not everything needs to be a panda with wings, right? I mean, Blair would really like this story, I'm sure. Yeah. Charismatic mega insects. Abs. [laughter] Exactly. Those are the only ones we're paying attention to, Lon. Absolutely. So, if we were really just paying attention to mods at night, then you pay attention to moths. like the the butterflies that are really rare, the ones that are potentially really being influenced and affected by human activity, by pesticides, by so many things, they're being ignored and then they're being lost. And this is to our detriment. Butterflies are pollinators. So, it is to our benefit to pay attention to all the butterflies, not just the pretty ones. If it's got wings, go look at it. Okay. [laughter] Eric Knap is saying Steve Irwin talked about this issue. Said, "Beautiful animals got all the attention and that's why he liked working with crocs and reptiles." And I I understand that. But I mean I still think that crocs and reptiles are megapauna that are charismatic megapa because we think of them as dangerous. Who thinks of a gray butterfly as dangerous or even interesting, right? Yet it may play an integral role in an ecosystem. And um yeah, we're just we are not wired for beige. I mean, maybe we will be after like several decades of AI influence, but right now we are not wired for beige. We really like color and activeness and charismatism. Charisma. Charisma. Yeah. All right. Uh moving on from butterflies. Let's talk about the gut brain connection. So, a study out of the University of Suri is the one of the first to really put a link between our microbial action in our gut and the human brain's neurochemistry. And I really think this this paper is interesting because this is one of the first papers where the uh the sample population is only women and it is not because women have menstrual cycles or might complicate it. It it is just they only they only recruited women for their study. So they had around 60 women in their study between the ages of 17 and 25. So this is the college student population. And um the researchers used what's known as proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy. So really, you know, magnetic MRI spectros spectroscopy to see which areas of the brain are being activated at certain periods of time. And they were looking at specifically GABA and glutamate which are these are neurotransmitters involved in activation and deactivation within the brain and also the rest of the body. They also took poop samples to analyze the uh the metabol. So the metabolum was able to tell them what microbes were in their guts of the 60 ladies and what genetic capacity those microbes had to be able to carry out certain metabolic processes. And the of course these processes involve GABA, glutamate and then other things like short-chain fatty acids and other neuro neuroactive compounds that are known to be neuroactive. Okay. Generally GABA and glutamate like it's not uniform across the brain. They had uh one particular area that was kind of a control region. That's the inferior occipital gyrus. This is a visual processing area and it is really not known to be influenced one way or another by gabaglutamate or these neuroactive compounds. It's just generally active and so it had like micro it was associated with microbial actions in the gut just generally if the microbes were doing it that area was active. However, the anterior singulate cortex, this is involved in attention, cognitive control and emotional regulation. This was linked to microbial action in the gut related to glutamate and another compound called proprianate. Another area the dorsolateral preffrontal cortex. This is involved in cognition and emotion and that was associated with gut micro GABA production. So they were able to specifically connect these areas of the brain with what the bugs in the gut were doing and how they made people feel. So they had the had the participants also uh self-report their psych their psychological outcomes. So whether or not they were feeling particular way, how they were doing and they found that like all these micro processing pathways were connected to specific emotional states. Uh they're associated with depression, mental health, anxiety, etc. And so they're um they're very excited that we might be at there needs to be much more study of course, but they're very excited that this might be one of the first real connections of the gut brain axis where there's stuff happening in the gut that is specifically influencing particular areas of the brain. And of course they do say, you know, well, we didn't look at menstrual activity or illness or other things. And so there might be some, you know, there might be some other uh confounding factors out there. But at the same time, they're really excited because this gives some real direction for looking at microbial pathways and how they influence cognition and emotion within the human brain. And because of this, there may be pathways that can be uh used can be can be impacted for micro microbiome based interventions. So instead of affecting the brain directly with neuro with um anti-depressants, neurotransmitter focused drugs, maybe there's probiotics, maybe there are foodbased or nutritionally based supplements that can be given to help cognition and emotion within the brain. understanding how these things work together. There's a lot more work to be done, but I think it is very interesting. Yeah, a gut response. That's right, Kevin Ruden. Okay, two more studies for the night. This is not going to be my longest show ever because it's just me and you and I don't have Blair for all the conversations, but we're going to keep moving forward. I have two more stories. The next story is related to raindrops. And I really think somebody needs to make this song instead of the uh raindrops on roses and you know that that old song. But this is raindrops on cart tops and I don't know something corrosion. Turns out based on this new study published in Nature that raindrops are super corrosive and not because they're acid rain because they are electric electrically charged. So there is electrification of raindrops and we know that in the atmosphere the atmosphere is charged. We have clouds and rain and charges are going on. We have lightning to discharge current out of the uh between the atmosphere and the ground. This study just published this is uh from the Maxplank Institute for Polymer Research in Mines Germany. They're basically this study basically suggests that we need to put much better coatings on our vehicles to keep the the metal from corroding bridges. Um anything related to infrastructure that is metal and can be corroded we need to look at it complete from a completely different direction. So this is an open access study and I think it's just fa fascinating because really what we have done is looked at uh the coding of of so many uh of so many surfaces from a chemical perspective and not from an electrochemical perspective where there could be a a current or charge basis that could lead to a discharge and cratering of a metallic surface and basically corrosion in like a faster rate of corrosion. We know that okay, we've got outdoor your the furniture out on your patio. If you live on the coast, you've got special patio furniture that doesn't get corroded as quickly, hopefully. But these researchers were like, "Wow, what's going on about how these drops move and whatever." And so, basically, they had uh a measurement of uh of raindrops that they simulated from the lab. They had them roll down surfaces to see when they impacted a surface. Did they take the charge from the surface they rolled down with them? And how did that impact the surface that they landed on? Well, the impact was not great. So what they were able to show is that there was a massive increase in this pock marking this corrosion and it comes from not a chemical impact but from the charge that h that is involved. And so, um, I just find this, uh, a fascinating new finding because what they suggest, the bottom line is is that we need to either have thicker coatings over our cars, our planes, our patio furniture to keep them from corroding as quickly. or we need to figure out how to create anti-charge coatings that do not that aren't that aren't impacted as much by the amount of electrification that raindrops bring. Yep. Uh they had a they tried on a bunch of surfaces about 3,000 drops which is about the equivalent of an afternoon of moderate rain. Maybe like what we had in Portland today. They had copper plates beneath different surfaces that had Teflon coatings. Atomic Force microscopy of the impact zones found pits several nanometers deep in places deeper than the entire thickness of the Teflon film, meaning the damage ran clean through the coating into the metal. Drops that fell directly on the target without sliding first and did not carry a charge left the surface pristine after the same 30,000 impacts. This is from an article in RS Technica that will be linked to on our website by Jessek Kerwink. It's a it's a fascinating um investigation from of the physics of raindrops and how they impact our everyday life. And it could impact so much about I mean when we think about the the nuts and bolts on our bridges that corrode out too quickly. Maybe this has to do with it, not just the paint. Um, but we're we haven't been thinking about this enough. And so, are we taking electric fields into account when it comes to our materials for our infrastructure? It's cool stuff. Very cool stuff. And then finally, my last story. Oh, look. I'm sharing everything, all the behind the scenes with you. you get to see all of my pictures. Um, we have Oh, this was a great picture of their charge measurement. Maybe I'll share that one. It's nice. This was It's fun stuff where they uh were able to show the charge that was able to um that the raindrops picked up from moving down surfaces. And it doesn't even the thing is the raindrops don't even need to move down surfaces. They get charged in the atmosphere. So that happens in clouds in the atmosphere. This was just in a laboratory. They were trying to do something. But can you imagine the charge that like you've got it coming from the atmosphere. Maybe it lands on a leaf. Maybe it lands on a roof. It rolls off the roof. Lands on your car. Whatever. Rolls down a bridge. It's a very um I am now thinking of raindrops from a very different perspective. Uh final story. Let's talk about Alzheimer's being cured in mice because of course it's always in mice and never in people. But maybe, just maybe, we will actually be able to see this happen in people in the future. I mean, that is really where we hope we can get with all this stuff, right? researchers publishing in cell bio this uh this last week. Cell biio materials they are using um a platform that they call nano eraser. Now, nano eraser delivers antibodies across the bloodb brain barrier and according to their abstract achieves potent astroight specific intracellular degradation of PTBP1. I don't know what that is but it's very exciting actually. PTBP1 is a molecular barrier to neuronal identity. And so according to their abstract, the targeted protein depletion triggers robust aststerite to neuron conversion. So what does that mean? When they get rid of PTBP1 with their nano eraser, aststerittes can turn into neurons. So cells that are evolved in neuronal support or immune function can actually be converted into neurons. And so this is kind of an interesting side step of uh the regular stem cell neurogenesis pathway. But what this does is it restores neurogenesis in the hippocampus which is an area of the brain responsible for memory and a lot of cognition and our daily functioning. It reverses nano eraser reverses cognitive impairments in mice with um that are a model for as Alzheimer's disease. So this work, if they can get it to work in humans, the exciting aspect of it is that if we can get nano eraser to work in humans, it could reverse the damage of Alzheimer's disease. It wouldn't fix the underlying problem necessarily, but it would instead of having a brain that no longer has neurogenesis or creates new neurons, now at least you have a function to create new neurons and have neurogenesis within the adult human brain to form a connected network and regenerate functional connections with new neuron. It it could be really amazing. Um I mean there are other steps to it that are essential in that we do have to figure out the metabolic trigger for Alzheimer's disease. Is it you know is it the immune system? Is it the lymph? Is it um you know what could is it mitochondria? Is it is it the aststerytes? What could it be? So there's there are the causal aspects that need to be need to be fixed. and need to be determined. But this this new tool, if they can move it past the mouse model, this could be a tool for repairing the damage caused by Alzheimer's disease, which in itself would be huge. There are so many of us who with family members who are impacted by Alzheimer's disease and it is it is something that we should be getting rid of. You want to do that? I would like to do that. Anyway, those are my stories for the night. Did anybody else have exciting news? Any stories that you think are the best stories in the entire world for science? Did I miss anything big? It's 9:00 here on the West Coast. Let's see. H Kevin Rearen, the primary cause of Alzheimer's disease is the human brain. Get rid of that. You get rid of Alzheimer's. Wacka wacka waka. [laughter] Uh let's see. One by land asking how the lunar eclipse was. It was fantastic. We ran out and were able to catch it at the very last minute. Um absolutely beautiful. really really enjoyed getting to see the lunar eclipse and um how lucky that Portland had a clear night for us to be able to view it. Uh went up to Council Crest Park with my son and my husband and there were so many people out sitting on the sitting on the grass enjoying a beautiful night, one of the probably last nights of summer here in the Pacific Northwest. So it was really a really amazing >> [laughter] >> Paul Disney is saying, "Oh, what's going on in the world?" Eyeballs deep in video editing. Something about the heat death of the universe being called into question. It does seem neat. I think those kinds of stories, they're always coming up. It just is a back and forth, a constant lob and a return in the in the theoretical astrophysics community. So, um, yeah, we'll see. So, the the the lunar eclipse, going back to that for a minute, it wasn't a complete eclipse, but it was like 96%. So, it was dark. It did get very reddish. It was very It was wonderful to see. [clears throat] Got to see that, if not the solar eclipse this year, which was a gift. What a wonderful thing to be able to see something like that. >> [laughter] >> And yeah, Paul, the uh the back and forth of science is where things are most interesting for sure. It's where that's the conversation. It's what information what idea do we have? What information do we have support it? What what information is against it? What other ideas? What what works? What doesn't work? Right? It's so great. Kevin, I'm sorry that your lunar eclipse was fogged over in San Diego. That's unusual. The sky is full of satellites. All right. Well, it is the end of my show for this evening. So, I'm going to finish it up with the normal show end. Bring us to the end of things with a thank you. Thank you for joining me. Yes. Well, from Britney, Kevin Reen, Paul Disney, One by Land. Who else is there? We've got FOD, we've got Gourd, we've got Eric Knap, got some great lawn, if you're still there, Derek Schmidt, whoever's around in the chat room still, thank you for being here tonight. I really, really appreciate you're joining me. Thank you. I appreciate your time and your thoughtful comments and questions. I hope these news stories gave you a little bit of curiosity and I don't know little optimism for the world that we are in. B thank you for your help with social media and show notes. Gourd R and lure others thank you for keeping the chat room I mean all of you really thank you for keeping the chat rooms great places to be. Identity 4, thank you for recording the show. And Rachel, thank you for editing. And to our Patreon sponsors, and I know there are a couple of people who have also supported us through PayPal, but the names from PayPal don't end up in the Patreon. So, I have to figure out um how to remedy that. But I want to say if you are supporting through PayPal, I do appreciate that help as well. Patreon sponsors Aaron Anathema, Adam Mishkan, Alan Viola, Ally Coffin, Andrew Swanson, Ardum, Arthur Kepler, Bob Calder, Brendan Minish, Brian Carrington, Chris Wnjiaak, Christopher Dryer, Christopher Rapping, Craig Landing, Craig Pototts, Daryl Mshack, Dave Wilkinson, David Young Blood, Derek Schmidt, Don Mundus, EO, Eden Mandel, Eric Knap, flying out, Fred 104, Gurton, Latimore, Greg Briggs, Jack, Jason Olds, John Atwood, John McKe, John Ret, Swami, Johnny Gridley, Ken Hayes, Ken Northcoat, Kevin Perichchan, Kevin Rearen, Kurt Larson, Lawn Makes, Lauren Gford, Mary G, It's Marjgery Marqueeslow, Mark Jenkins, Noodles, Patrick Patrick Bakaro, Paul Paul Dney, Paul Ronovich, Pierre Velazar, Richard Badge, Robert Norland, Robert W. Farley, Rodney Lewis, Rudy Garcia, Day, Sean Clarence, Lamb, Shubru, Stephanie Embry, Steven Albron, Steve Leman, aka Zimu, Dostra, Theresa Smith, Tony Steel, Vagar, Chefad, and what the if. Thank you so much for your support on Patreon. And if you would like to be uh mispronounced as your name at the end of the show, I really do try my best, but if you would like your name read at the end of the show, please head over to twist.org, click on the Patreon link, and uh sign up to support Patreon at support Twist at $10 a month or more on Patreon. Um but we do honestly any amount if any amount you're able to give one time, multiple times, it all helps. And I really do appreciate all your support because this is a listener supported show and it's all about community, right? It's all about us understanding and being curious about the universe together. We'll be back again next Wednesday night at 8:00 p.m. Pacific time broadcasting live from Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook. And if you want to listen to us as a podcast, look for This Week in Science wherever you like to listen to podcasts. We're probably there. And please, if you like the show, get your friends to subscri subscribe, too. If you like the stories, if you want to know more about the show, the show notes, links to stories, etc., head over to twist.org where you can also sign up for a newsletter that will come once in a blue moon. And we do love your feedback. So, if there's a topic you want us to cover or address something we haven't talked about yet, an interview maybe, let us know on one of our social media accounts, usually at Twist Science or This Week in Science, or send us an email. Woohoo. Just put Twist in the subject line so your email doesn't get spam filtered into a corrosive raindrop. I really do look forward to discussing science with you again next week. Oh my goodness. It's the end of the show. And if you've learned anything from this show, please remember it's all in your head. [laughter] >> This week in science. [music] This week in science. [music] This week in science, it's the end of the world. So, I'm setting up shop. Got [music] my banner unfurled. It says the scientist is in. 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