ASM106 Intelligent Women, Laboratory Black Holes, and Jesus Drinking Wine

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intelligent women laboratory black holes and jesus drinking wine all that and more on this week's episode of ask science mike [Applause] science faith welcome to ask science mike the weekly podcast where i answer your questions about science faith and life we've got a really fun show this week and we're back to our traditional studio format there's no more ask science mike live events on the calendar and the finding god in the ways tour is winding down so let's do it old school today what do you think let's get it started [Applause] [Music] and it almost feels weird to do a normal ask science mic show again i'm really curious what will happen i think there's uh based on the numbers in the program uh there's a lot of new people a lot of people found the show for the first time while i was on tour and that means most of your experience with ask science mike has been live shows which have this amazing energy because these brilliant people show up to ask questions that i'm not qualified to answer so if you're new to the program and i know there's a lot of folks because i've been getting so many emails and tweets and facebooks about you know what are your credentials what are your qualifications let's talk about why i'm science mike for just a second i don't have any credentials or qualifications at all i worked in advertising for about 16 years i have a technology background i know a lot about computer science but i am not a scientist i don't even have a college degree so this show ask science mike is more about creating a space where questions are allowed where we explore our curiosity together and we're people that have maybe had difficult experiences in the past with their faith or people who don't have a faith background who grew up in a secular environment but are looking for a safe environment to explore ideas of faith that's what this show is about and i don't have any special qualifications to answer questions other than the fact that i'm very honest and very vulnerable and that i do work really hard to research and fact check the answers on the program and most of the emails i get from scientists who work in the fields from questions i end up answering on the program say i do a pretty good job of that so i'll take their confidence as a sign that i'm on the right track but i do make mistakes so you may be wondering why am i listening to this show if credentials are really important probably not the show for you but if a space where every question is allowed and encouraged and we dive into curiosity and generosity and compassion for all mankind well i'd like to welcome you to ask science mike and speaking of i do have some more events coming up in march the calendar is uh winding down a little bit over the summer i'm going to be working on my next book so i can't be on the road so much but i do want to let you know that march 20th i'll be at the iris conference at the university of georgia in athens on march 24th i'll be at the blue conference in fairfax virginia in march 29th i'll be at the christ and creation conference with biologos in houston texas really excited about all those events if you'd like to learn more about those events see where you can get tickets if tickets are required get more information you can just go to asksciencemike.com click on the events button i also want to let you know we've completely redone our work around the liturgist podcast so the podcast itself isn't changing by the way that's a second show i do co-hosted by a guy named michael gunger it's actually a little more than twice as popular as this program we've added some meditations and some additional resources for spiritual growth and development so if you go to the liturgist.com and click the donate button you can learn more about those resources that we're up to it's like five bucks a month you'll get a weekly meditation and during lent we're actually going to do a daily lectio divina meditation if you don't know what that is don't worry about it but if you've been one of the people have been asking me about more meditation resources we are finally creating those so it's really good to be back i don't know if you can hear my voice even though i'm recording this at night i feel a lot more rested i've actually been home multiple nights in a row and seen my family and slept in my bed so uh i guess we'll get back to normal here see what it feels like for me to sit in this studio all by myself and talk to all of you so let's see what our first question is this week hey science mike my question today regards laboratory black holes i saw something in passing while i was in an airport on cnn about a black hole that has been successfully built in a laboratory then i googled black holes in a laboratory and kind of found what i found was articles referencing black holes in a laboratory quantum entanglement hawking radiation all sorts of great stuff but not like the actual mechanism by which these black holes exist in a lab and don't swallow up our existence on earth because that's my primitive understanding of a black hole so please fix it help me understand better what's going on here thanks science mike love you well first thank you so much for a science question hooray the show has turned into basically dear abby uh only dear science mike and i i love that and i'll keep doing that but i really do love talking about scientific concepts and that was the original vision for the show was to to explore science and faith and it seems like the science and faith in life has become life life life life some science and a bit of faith right which is fine you guys run the show and i also want to thank my patrons for picking this question for giving me a science question i'm so excited your understanding of black holes is not primitive because you have any understanding of black holes whatsoever so let's talk a little bit for get everyone else caught up on what a black hole is in the first place albert einstein had this idea about gravity and space time einstein thought and put forth the math to demonstrate that space and time where a single indivisible fabric and einstein's theory of relativity tells us that gravity actually warps or bends space time okay so what a black hole is is when you get mass that's so compressed so tightly compressed its gravitational will become so steep that nothing can escape from it including light so if you could imagine for a second if you were holding a towel out in front of you and you placed a golf ball on that towel it would create a little divot that's what a planet does to space-time and if you created if you know set up a bowling ball on the towel you would really struggle to hold the towel up at all and that would be more like what a star does to space-time because stars are much more massive than planets but if you were to set oh i don't know a bowling ball that weighed as much as a car on that towel you couldn't possibly hold it up and if you were strong enough the towel would rip so if we imagine a towel that cannot be ripped you kind of have space time and so you you would try to hold the towel up it would pull your hands together right you'd have two ends of the towel touching and then this towel bubble underneath holding that bowling ball that weighed as much as a car and that would be a black hole right that's an event horizon that's the area around the black hole that light and matter cannot escape now there's a weird thing about black holes they they make some challenging assumptions about physics that theoretical physicists don't like for one the entropy in a black hole is understood to be a function of the area of its surface and not its volume and uh that runs afoul of physics with that's probably too deep for us to go into without making this like a like a 20 minute or 30 minute answer uh but just just trust me on that entropy in black holes is an issue so stephen hawking came up with something called hawking radiation and basically there's this idea in physics that in the vacuum of space little virtual particles appear at random and every particle has an anti-particle and they're attracted to each other and they annihilate and it doesn't matter right you can create mass in the universe as long as it's annihilated by an equal anti-bit of mass through antimatter and the idea with hawking radiation is that if you have virtual particles that pop into existence on either side of an event horizon and one of the particles gets sucked into the black hole or stays inside the event horizon the other escapes and therefore is not annihilated that energy has to come from somewhere because of the laws of physics and so the black hole just lost a little tiny bit of mass energy so the idea here is actually believe it or not that even though light can't escape a black hole directly black holes do evaporate through hawking radiation now large black holes are generally eating matter all the time they're sucking down clouds of dust and other stars even colliding with other black holes and so they're eating much faster than they're evaporating in fact if we imagine the large black hole suddenly stopped getting any supply of matter it would take much longer than the age of the entire universe for a black hole of any significant mass to evaporate via hawking radiation very slow process but the less mass a black hole has the faster it evaporates so a very small like a microscopic black hole the kind of thing we could feasibly create if we had more advanced technology on the earth in something like a very much more powerful version of the large hadron collider well a microscopic black hole would evaporate almost instantly long before it could consume any additional matter to grow and its event horizon would be so tiny it would be very unlikely that anything would cross it anyway but the experiment in reference did not create a proper black hole with an event horizon instead it produced a sonic black hole a condition in physics in which sound should not have been able to cross the event horizon of this quote black hole unquote that was actually made out of super cooled helium it was it was called very near absolute zero and then rapidly churned and based on our understanding of fluid dynamics sound shouldn't have been able to escape that simulated black hole using sound instead of light and what this experiment found was that there actually was a leakage of information from that black hole as roughly predicted by hawkins theory right hawking's theory that's really interesting and intriguing but a couple points they didn't create a black hole in a lab two although it appears according to the comments of many physicists the experiment was was beautiful and elegant and interesting it may not really tell us anything at all it's super intriguing but it may or may not inform theoretical physics as the data from the experiment is examined more deeply so really fascinating stuff but don't worry our planet's not getting consumed by a laboratory created black hole anytime soon our next question came in via email and it reads mike i've been learning about myself as an enneagram 9 myself listening in on your stories and interactions with others thank you for sharing your life with all of us out here my question is this i have heard that the full moon is a significant period of time for creativity as an artist that we should take advantage of is this valid are there other effects celestial or cosmic bodies may have on our brains and lives thanks a ton micah uh micah i have terrible news very few studies have demonstrated any linkage between human behavior and the lunar cycles there are a handful especially dealing with violent crime but those studies have generally either been shown to have methodological flaws or their findings have been refuted by studies with larger sample sizes and more rigorous methodologies that's how peer review works so there were some studies especially i think in the 60s that did show a possible linkage and and further studies have pretty much erased that even using data from the same time period ouch but think about the word lunacy for a second luna is right in there right the root for the word lunar and uh this linkage and the popular consciousness between a full moon and wild and crazy or creative human behavior is both very common and ancient why could that be if the data is just not there to support it well first of all full moons are way more noticeable than other moon phases i mean they light up the night sky when you're outside when you're driving whatever circumstance it is you always notice a full moon and it's more memorable so if something happens that night you're more likely to associate it with the moon than on other less remarkable moon phases that's just how human memory works it seems that this linkage we find we perceive is kind of a false positive by the human brain's pattern seeking systems we are animals that crave finding patterns in our sensory information a signal amongst all that noise and it helps us find food and avoid predators really well but it also means sometimes we make conclusions that aren't actually based on good information now if you feel more creative during a full moon and you act on that feeling well guess what you could actually start to condition yourself to feel more creative during the full moon so even though there's no inate mechanism here for the moon or the planets or the stars or any other celestial body to directly influence your behavior it is possible for you to train yourself to feel more creative during the full moon and if you enjoy that i say enjoy the effect it you could even conceivably have a placebo effect from your belief that the full moon enhances your creativity the downside is by asking me that question you could start to doubt that experience and lessen the effect so you have a couple of options realize that this enhanced creativity you may have been experiencing is available to you anytime or decide that i don't know what i'm talking about and enjoy your placebo full moon [Music] hi science mike my name is alana and i have a question about something that has bothered me my whole life for most of my life i have remained single despite a desire to be in a romantic relationship i was told by friends time and time again that the cause might be my intimidation factor according to close friends i am generally an intimidating person some have even told me that they were scared of me the first time that we met upon further discussion the conversation inevitably works its way to three characteristics of mine that in combination apparently make me intimidating those three things are my high level of intelligence my self-confidence and my bold outspoken nature we always end up at the conclusion that men are simply intimidated by me and that is why they are not interested i decided long ago that just because men in general couldn't seem to handle me i wasn't going to change now i am in a very loving and strong relationship with a wonderful man that appreciates all of me most importantly those three characteristics previously discussed however a few days ago i was on social media when i came across an article from psychology today describing a study from the warsaw school of economics which made my blood boil here it is again men are intimidated by intelligence to make matters even worse the article states that not only is there a clear point at which men stop valuing a woman's increasing intelligence but women's level of attractiveness actually decreases as their perceived intelligence increases science mike can you please speak to this issue and why it is that generally men don't value intelligent women thanks for all your hard work i look forward to hearing your answer well it's a great question it's a little depressing but it's a great question and uh i went and looked up uh the study and question and the psychology today article that you referenced by the way thanks for really clear references that made it easy for me to research that's very helpful and yeah there's no methodological flaws i could find in the research it appears to have done reasonably well in peer review well let's all catch up with what we're talking about huh uh they did a study with men and women uh where they would go on on dates speed dates really and then they would rate their uh partners physical traits and and uh mental traits so they would say you know how attractive on a scale of one to ten they thought someone was and they would find how attractive they or how intelligent they believe they were and then how likely they were to go on a date with them again and what we found with both sexes men and women by the way from my friends who don't cleanly identify on a gender binary i would like to apologize if if discussed in this research is in any way alienating to you this this study did not have the methodological capability to look beyond sort of cis heteronormative assumptions but in that framework of men and women as a binary uh who are by the way uh they tested heterosexuals in this research what we saw was both sexes were more attracted to people they found more attractive in there for more likely to go out with them again right so there was no no diminishing returns on attractiveness you had the best chance at going out with a woman again if you were a 10 out of 10 attractive male and the same was true for females what they found was that to a point increased intelligence could influence women to be more likely to uh say they wanted to go out with a man again so if a man was a little less attractive but more intelligent it increased his probability although there was a much stronger correlation between physical attractiveness and a desire to see someone again than intelligence so far more important to be good-looking than smart with the women in the study now when it came to men the same was true they loved the attractiveness of women but they found that on average anything past a 7 out of 10 intelligence actually decreased the chance that men would want to see a woman again so if the woman was a little bit more attractive a man might take an eight out of ten in intelligence and if she was a little less attractive then she actually needed to be a little less intelligent to increase her chances of going out again man what is going on here that is crazy now first what have we learned both men and women are very likely to weigh physical attractiveness as extremely important in the early stages of relationship building we're at least according to this study pretty superficial um but women have uh appreciate intelligence as it increases and men actually start to find high intelligence is unattractive and reducing the chance of going out with someone again i don't have a research based answer for you that there's not a lot of other studies i could find that would help me you know give you a better answer which i would call like purely scientific or from the social sciences i would say that when i look at that through feminist scholarship it makes a lot of sense actually that men don't value intelligent women the same way we know that that many men report they're uncomfortable if a woman that they're in a relationship with makes more money than they do or is more successful than they are and that is the kind of toxic depiction of masculinity that's offered by our patriarchal social structures and norms we train men from a very young age that they have to be what the smartest the biggest the strongest the most successful they can be in order to provide for women and feminism has made more strides i believe in shaping the imagination of women than it has the imaginations of men i'll tell you if my wife jenny made more money than i do or she was more successful than i am i would be elated positively elated and i've always enjoyed the company of intelligent people but especially intelligent women because they haven't been socialized to spar in the same way so i've actually found you can have better conversations often with very smart women than very smart men um but i also grew up as a nerd who is called a [ \_\_ ] a lot right so i've always i think i i comfortably identify as male i think i have a lot of masculine qualities but i'm very comfortable with what we might ascribe as a an idea of femininity as well i don't have any particular pressure to conform in many ways to male social norms precisely because i've so frequently experienced rejection from men in my life in social context maybe that needs to happen to more men i don't know i i do know we need to do a better job when we talk to young boys about what it means to appreciate women as equals as fully human and not as objects right you don't want an object you own to be superior to you but you do want a partner in life to be strong and weak however their life made them to be again i don't have research to back it up but my my take on that data definitely is men have been trained to see women primarily as something to acquire and to control and to own and uh not as equal partners in life [Music] our last question comes in via email and it reads the liturgists gathering in denver was neato inducing a two-hour tier field excuse me tear filled i got southern for a moment heartfelt argument love riot between my wife and i i identify with your reasoned approach while my wife holds deep convictions beyond the veil of logic your story is helpful to me my sincere thanks now because i far prefer reading heretics like you roar bell and the like my understanding of kingdom of god has shifted to mean god's way of doing things right here right now but in preparing for a supper club communion tonight i was reading about the last supper and yeshua says he will not share this meal with his disciples again until the meal is fulfilled when the kingdom of god comes this usage doesn't jive with the understanding i've come to embrace wtf question mark exclamation point hit me well first of all a great question what a balanced show this week we've had like science questions and live questions and faith questions i just i don't i don't think i could be happier with the questions this week really really well done except that i'm woefully unqualified to answer these kind of core biblical hermeneutics questions you know i've noted uh you know rob is like a trained pastor richard rohr is richard rohr so they have like intense graduate and postgraduate level bible educations and i'm just a kid that went to sunday school every week and who reads a lot so i have to start by disqualifying my answer right off the bat you know i felt pretty good about my science answers this week but i i feel i feel woefully unqualified here you have to understand there's a lot of ways to interpret the bible remember every every every book of the bible was written by a specific author with a specific audience with a specific agenda and a specific cultural context and we don't always know what those things are and so there's legitimate scholarly debate about what an author might have meant about any part of the bible any verse any sentence any paragraph okay so let's just set that there you can reasonably disagree academically then you add in christian theology where you imply an interpretive lens based on your understanding of god across the entire ark of scripture and that can radically alter how you interpret a given verse so when you speak specifically about this verse it's common to three of the gospels the three synoptic gospels all have some variation of this so if we look at mark 14 25 it says truly i tell you i will never drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when i drink it new in the kingdom of god okay now matthew 26 verses 29 says i tell you i will never drink of this fruit of the vine until that day when i drink it new with you in my father's kingdom luke 22 18 that says for i tell you that from now on i will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of god comes so that's three uh paraphrases of the same word now by the way for people who are biblical literalists who say that the bible is the inerrant word of god you know which three of those sentences is exactly what jesus said anyway that this is one of the things that hung me up when i was going through the bible years ago trying to figure out what it said about marriage and then if you go to john the non-synoptic gospel is just not in there which he mainly focuses on like jesus washing the feet of his followers and a really really wordy speech so you know this this portion of the gospel of john the the jesus in john is is wordier in general than the other gospels but it is especially pronounced when looking at the last supper so what does it mean what are they talking about well some christian schools of thought would be that this is literally jesus talking about what happens at the end times the eschatology uh it's it's saying that when we're all in heaven i'll drink from this vine again i think a lot of scholars especially secular scholars would call that into question and they would say that uh the people who wrote down the gospels generally expected to see a resurrection in their lifetime that or a return of christ not just a resurrection they believed in a resurrection but a return of christ in their lifetime and that this was meant to be understood that you know you're all the kingdom of god is coming now what did that mean did that mean you know a literal new city of gold as depicted in revelation coming down from the sky did that mean roman rule being cast off of jerusalem and jesus returning as a divine being to make rome leave and to rule the kingdom you know historians would differ on that and this is where i think it's actually appropriate for us as christians to bring in church history and to bring in some theological interpretation of this text and if you assume the kingdom of god is something we invite [Music] near and that becomes new well that happens as we serve and follow christ as we become agents of peace in the world as we become good neighbors and that jesus is only able to drink of the fruit of the vine when we make the world peaceful how does that mean when we make the world completely peaceful in eschatology in which the world is completely renewed with christ or is there a poetic image here that anytime we create a space of peace christ is present with us well the way i study the bible today i do try to strive for academic credibility i try to understand multiple schools of thoughts i try to study the work of secular and religious bible scholars but i also place myself within the church and therefore what different churches have to say is important to me and especially important to me is the united methodist church because i'm a member of chosen to be a part of that particular expression of the church again i acknowledge all christian denominations as equally valid equally part of the body of christ including non-denominational churches including you people that listen to my show and four of you get together and you talk about your fears and your hopes and your dreams and god and you take the eucharist while the kids play in the other room together all those things are the church and in all those things i believe christ is present so placing myself as a weird non-theistic methodist i would read this deeply poetically jesus is talking about the fact that he's leaving and that his incarnation only continues on earth as the body of christ drawing the kingdom of god near that's why i why i get so misty every time i take the eucharist every time i had the fortune of leading a time of prayer with some college students at good samaritan tallahassee my church and uh i got pastor betsy my my pastor you've heard on the liturgist podcast before i she served me the eucharist and as i tasted the fruit of the vine i remembered christ and sometimes when i'm traveling i've had the good fortune of of receiving the eucharist again from rob bell which is very special to me if you've heard my story you know i had an extremely powerful mystical moment the first time rob served me the eucharist and it's how i became a christian again and it's why i'm science mike but every time i'm present at that table i'm reminded of the pledge i made to god on the beach that night if we can stay together god i commit to being broken and poured out for others as jesus was broken and poured out for me so whatever these verses mean i am committed to making sure that jesus once again gets to drink of the fruit of the vine in the new kingdom of god you know these are troubling times aren't they don't we all just love the president i mean hate the president don't we think that people who disagree with us about the president are just knuckle-dragging morons aren't they just the worst i'm not crazy about trump i genuinely think he's a threat to many people in the country i care about but can you hear the joy in my voice can you hear the genuine excitement i have to talk with all of you and that includes the you know you know two and ten or three in ten of you that voted for donald trump i love you too and i hope uh you love me back because one day he's not going to be the president anymore and we're still going to have to deal with each other i realized why i'm so happy recording this show i'm so grateful i'm so grateful to do this i spent all day today writing and recording meditations for the liturgists and now i'm ending my day recording ask science mike for you and you all make my life possible so you come up to me at events and you say how much my work means to you well let me tell you something oh internet listener you mean more to me you make my whole life possible and i am so thankful i'm also thankful to greg nordine who worked so hard every week to make this show sound wonderful i'm thankful to andrew golucky who works hard sorting through all your questions and picking uh eight for the beautiful people on patreon who make sure i eat and that i pay my mortgage that they then pick the final answers they not only contribute to the show they do the work of picking the questions that goes on it can you believe it what a blessed community this is and i mean that not hashtag blessed i mean an expression of grace and beauty and love in our world be encouraged i would encourage you now lent by the time you hear the show is a few days in but go ahead don't just drop chocolate or wine or whatever you want to take out of your life could i challenge you between now and easter to pick something up to create some practice that fills your life with hope and joy and peace it could be meditation it could be to say kind things to people you disagree with whatever it is find some way that helps you see the truth that all is not lost that all is not hopeless that no matter what's happening in washington we all have the power to create a world of peace by being a good neighbor so this week i'd like to end the program by asking you this question who is your neighbor