This is Spacetime Series twenty seven, Episode ten, for broadcast on the twenty
second of January twenty twenty four. Coming up on Space Time, the Dark
Energy Survey. It still can't answer the key question is dark energy changing over
time? Titans Magic Islands finally explained, and the failed Pereguin Luna Lander burns
up in the atmosphere above Australia in the South Pacific. All that and more
coming up on Spacetime Welcome to Spacetime with Stuart Gary. Astronomers taking part in
the recent release of data from the Dark Energy Survey say the findings closely follow
existing predictions on the properties of dark energy, but still cat answer the key
question of whether or not it's changing over time. Dark energy is a mysterious
force at the opposite to gravity, causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate
over cosmic timescales. The Dark Energy Survey was an international collaboration involving more than
four hundred astronomers from over twenty five institutions. They mapped an area almost an
eighth of the entire sky using the five hundred and seventy megapixel Dark Energy Digital
Camera. The camera was matted on the Victor M. Blanco telescope at the
National Science Foundation's Sarah Tololo Intero American Observatory in Chile. The survey took data
for seven hundred and fifty eight nights over some six years, tracing out the
history of cosmic expansion over a wide range of distances with large samples of exploding
stars known as type one A supernovae. Type one A supernovae a white dwarf
stars that accumulate matter from surrounding material and other stars. When they reach a
specific size roughly one point four times the mass of our Sun, they explode
in the thermonuclear supernova event. And since they always explode at roughly the same
mass, they explode at roughly the same level of luminosity, and consequently they
can be used as standard candles to measure cosmic distances across the universe. It's
a bit like looking at a row of street lights down a road. Even
though you know they all have the same intrinsic brightness, the more distant lights
will appear fainter than the narrow ones simply because they're further away, and that
ratio can be determined using a simple formula known as the inverse square law,
and astronomers use this change in apparent brightness to determine cosmic distances for each super
and ova. They combine its distance with the measurement of its red shift,
that is, how quickly it's moving away from Earth due to the expansion of
space time. Put simply, what the survey has been trying to tell us
is whether or not dark energy density has remained constant or changed over time.
That's important because that will help determine the ultimate fate of the universe. As
the universe expands, its matter density goes down. Now, according to the
standard cosmological model, the density of dark energy in the universe is supposed to
be constant, which means it doesn't dilute as the universe expands. And if
this is true, the parameter represented by the letter W should equal minus one.
But the latest Dark Energy Survey results found that W actually equals minus zero
point eight zero plus or minus zero point one eight. Now, combined with
priminary data from the European Space Energy's Plank telescope, W does reach minus one
within error bars. So W is tantalizingly close but not exactly on minus one.
If the universe is expanding and the dark energy density remains constant. It
means the total proportion of dark energy must be increasing as the volume of the
universe increases. The findings reported in the Astrophysical Journal covered some fourteen hundred and
ninety nine high redshift Type one A supernovae using the full five year data set
of the Dark Energy Survey, So while the findings are close to what was
predicted, they're not a perfect match. That means astronomers will need to develop
a more complex model in order to determine if dark energy does indeed vary with
time. One of the studies authors, doctor Annelie Muller from Swinburne University,
says the latest findings at least help to reduce uncertainties to new low levels,
but she admits more data will be needed. So the Dark Energy Survey is
this international effort that has to stun over a decade. We basically took images
from a wonderful telescope in Chile called the Victor M. Blanco Telescope, and
we image the southern sky in certain parts. So we try to understand what's
the effect of dark energy in our universe with different probes or different ways of
measuring its effect. One of them is using one is supernova, which are
these bright exploding stars in far aware galaxies, which allows us to actually measure
directly the effects of dark energy. Now, what is the efect of dark
energy in the universe. Basically, the universe is expanding in an accelerated way,
and we say to explain this thing that we're measuring that the reason is
that there see some dark energy that makes this universe expand in an accelerated fashion.
That one is supernova are amazing objects. So if we want to study
how the universe is becoming bigger, you have two choices. Either measure where
a galaxy far away is and then wait millions of years to see how how
much is that's moved away, or because we want to do this in our
life time, we actually use what we call a standard or a standardizable candle.
These are objects that shined roughly in the same way. For example,
when superannour when they explode, we kind of know how bright they are.
So basically, if you have a light bulb that has the same power close
by or far away, the difference of the brightness that you see here on
Earth will be linked to that distance. To that object and type one and
supernova is exactly that, but astrophysical, very far away, very extreme perfect.
So it allows us to measure distances to these objects, and together with
distances we measure redchet, which is kind of an equivalence of like a velocity,
and with that we can actually map how the universe is becoming bigger.
That, however, assumes that type one a sup and are they really are
all the same mass or roughly the same mass, and so really do explode
with the same degrave of luminosity? How comfortable are you with that? Oh?
So we thought, so one is supernova our standardizable because we think their
brightness is power by nikols fifty six, So they are not perfect standard candles.
They're not all exactly the same, and we know this for a while.
They are what we call it standardizable. So in the nineteen nineties we
already knew that we needed some corrections on this type one in supernova to really
get those distances very precisely. So we know, for example, that bluer
supernova are brighter, and depending how long they last, you can also correct
for that brightness. So we are comfortable with these for corrections for the measurements
and we have others doing the analysis more and more information. For example,
now we know a little bit more about some of the type one in supernova.
Depending in the galaxies that they leave, they are actually slightly brighter or
teamer, and we make these corrections into our analysis. So although they are
not perfect, they are still the best probe that we have right now to
measure this direct extension. I'm pretty comfortable by using them. We have been
using them for twenty five years, and there is an old price involved well,
the things like very onacoustic ostellations. Could they be used a rule absolutely.
So the idea with the dark Energy Survey is to have different probes to
actually check the effect of dark energy in our universe. And what it's interesting
is like VAO or the varianatristic oscillations or the large scale structure measurements can help
us to constrain as well that effect of dark energy in our universe, but
in a different way. So each of the measurements that we use and also
weeklensing for example, tell us something slightly different in a different way. So
those results combined is what makes our constraint of dark energy so powerful. So
for example, The publication that we released last week that we're very excited about
is the tightest constraints on the effect of dark energy in our universe, combining
type one is supernova from the Dark Energy Survey and measurements from the Satellite Plank
from twenty twenty. So together these two gives really really tight constraint and that
can straight is w Wickle's minor zero point eight zero plus or minus zero point
one away? There isn't it? Yeah, So we can we can explain
what we're measuring with different models. So the canonical model that we're using in
cosmology is what we call the flat landa CVM, so lambda is a cosmological
constant something that is not changing with cosmic times and called dark matter, which
is dark matter that is basically not interacting too much. If we use that
model to try to explain our observations, we have, as you said,
a flat land of CVM a constraint. But we can also try to constrain
the data we have with other types of models. And one of the models
that we tried and actually almost the preferred one but barely, is the dark
energy that is changing with cosmic times. So through the evolution of the universe
its density is changing, and that it could be very exciting if confirmed,
because that means that the universe will be slightly younger than we're saying, and
it will give us an idea as well. What could dark energy be,
because for the time being, we don't know whether it's a constant or something
changing with cosmic time, and that can actually limit the number of theories that
we can used to say what dark energy is. You've been making inferences on
the well the teams, you make inferences on the energy density of the universe.
As a result of all this, in order to maintain a constant,
the universe as it's expanding has to be getting less dense, but dark energy
then has to be getting more dance. Yes exactly, so that would be
in the case that it's a constant, but it could be the other way
around, and we are trying to measure this exactly. For the time being,
we're really constraining dark energy between being a constant what number of that concept,
But because we still don't know if it's minus one or minor zero point
ninety nine or minor zero point nine five, or whether it's changing with time
and with costic time which I think that will be an amazing measuremental health.
The importance of this isn't just to understand our universe as it is now,
but also to help determine what the ultimate fat of the universe will be exactly.
The more we know about the universe bus the more we can actually extrapolate
towards the future. So this is part of what we do. We're kind
of historians, but also predictors of how the universe is evolving. So I
think it's a pretty cool job. And right now, I guess the universe
looks like it's going to be a cold, dark place. Just our local
galaxy group will be visible in the future, yes, well in the very
very very far away future, so we won't be around to see that one.
Definitely. Yeah, for the time being, it will be very slow.
Nothing you're worry about, No, not at all. The survey,
the way you're conducting it, it's grown dramatically. There were only what a
small group of stars in the beginning that were isolated and used for the measurements.
Now that are almost fifteen hundred. Yes, it's really amazing. Twenty
five years ago when all these type one is supernovas started to be used to
probe the effect of dark energy. There was only around sixty fifty two supernovas
in the type one is supranova, and now we have one thousand, four
hundred ninety nine Type one ispanova that go into these measurements. So it's a
huge leap from twenty five years ago to now and a huge effort for a
lot of communities around the world trying to get this type one in supernova and
measuring them very precisely, because when you think about cosmology, we're really trying
to get the best measurements that we can. This takes a lot of observing
time to do all this. That must be getting you in trouble with fellow
astronomers who they want to use the same telescope for other things. I guess
that's where new telescopes like Nancy Grace Roaming come in. Yes, absolutely so.
One thing that is interesting that the Dark Nary Survey took images for five
years in seasons and parts of that year to get the supernova one A.
Now we did an analysis, the traditional analysis that we do usually in cosmology
that we classify the supernova with a spectroscopy. So why do we want classification
because not all supernova are Type one A, so we only want type one
A because they are the ones that we can use to measure distance. So
if you would classify them using the traditional approach that is using spectroscopy, which
is basically having this huge telescope observing the type one supernova and getting their spectras
or basically the decomposition of the light into the distant wavelane, you really only
get a small percentage of classification because we don't have enough telescope time to do
that. Spectroscopic resources are really really scarce, and also you need that these
supreneurs are bright, very bright, and also you need to get that information
when they're signing brightly. So this is like a couple of weeks of a
window time windows. So we don't want to take all the telescope in the
world, so we change a little bit how we did this analysis. This
time. Instead of use in spectroscopy, we use machine learning algorithms to actually
select this type one in supernova using only the brightness evolution over time that we
already had, so we didn't need to take extra information from other telescopes.
We could use directly the data from the darkenery survey and we actually improve that
sample by three times what we could have with other methods. So I think
this is a pretty big thing for us, is that we're really pioneering methods
to get more type one is supernova from the same data using less resources.
And this would be super important for other telescopes like the Ruben or Roman in
the future. This is looking at the flux of the take of the like
using photometry, yes exactly. We basically get the photometry evolution over time,
so this we call a like curve of brightness evolution over time. And with
that information alone, we can actually select which are the type one is supernova,
get the probability of in type one ispernova, and actually use it in
our cosmology analysis. And we have shown that this way of doing the selection
that many people didn't believe it was possible, is actually super precise and the
contamination from other objects that from a misclassification is so tiny that it really doesn't
affect our results. And this is where we see Reuben and Nancy Grace Roman
come in exactly. So especially I am very involved with the Rubin Observatory because
we expect over ten years to get every night up to ten million detections of
things changing in the sky, and this will include supernova variables are active,
guy active, nuclear etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And from this we really
need to get those type one in supernova for the cosmology, and we expect
to get millions of them. But how do we get those millions from this
huge dataset? And these methods that we're pioneering with the Darkenery Survey are exactly
the answers for us getting the most out of Rubin in the and the Anglo
Australian Telescope has a little role to play as well. I believe yes,
So it was really exciting. So we have the Australian Dark Energy Survey that
we call as this. Of course we did a very important job here with
the aat the Angle Australian Telescope. So we use for cosmology, as I
told you, distances derived from the supernova directly from that like curve brightness evolution
over time. But to study how the universe is expanding, we also need
wretches and retches we usually get them from the galaxy that hosts those type one
esperana, these type one and supernour stars that brightly explodes they live in galaxies
and we actually get a spectra from the galaxy with the AAP to actually get
the red chests that go into our cosmology analysis. So this was a beautiful
program that we beat over one hundred nights in the Siting Spring Observatory, and
I can tell you how much I enjoy observing there with the war on bungles
around me. It's an amazing trace to go when you talk about if you're
talking about how fast and object is moving away from us exactly, it tells
you how much the universe is expanded, or how much space time is expanded.
Yes, and we need that together with distances to really measure that effect
of arkenners. So the two ingredients are important. Getting those type one in
supernova and measuring how they evolve with time, and getting those wretchies to actually
understand that expansion. As we grow up in these cosmology measurements, we need
more and more information. So the variety Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and
Time. We will have an spectroscopic counterpart programs in the Foremost telescope that it's
called TIDES the program, and that will be the main role of the formal
telescope with Rubens in this time domain. Astrum Roman will be in space,
and it's pretty exciting because it's actually reaching wavelengths of life that we cannot get
here on Earth eachily. So all these three informations will be highly complimentary.
But we will also have data from DEAFI, which is a survey getting the
large constructure in the northern hemisphere, and we would get more and more information
as we go through times from different groups of researchers that we can combine all
together to constrain the effect of dark energy in our universe. So it's a
huge collabariative effort and it's very very international. Based on what you know so
far, what can you tell us about dark energy? So dark energy is
we have confirmed that their energy is actually there. Our observations can only be
explained with the presence of dark energy. This is one of the most important
parts and the second part and I think that's like the tantalizing hint that we
have that dark energy may not be the constant that for twenty years we have
thought it is, but maybe is something that is varying with cosmic time.
And I think that's really really exciting. However, we need to wait for
Reuben and Roban to be online, taking they and do this analysis to actually
confirm this. So the truth is, for the time being, we don't
know what our energy is. But the more we measure its effect on the
universe, the more we will be able to say, oh, it cannot
be this, it cannot be that, it cannot be that, then it
must be this, and then try to get more measurements to confirm it.
So slowly we're peeling that knowledge from the universe. What is that the idea
that what's happening here is more dependent on our position in the universe. For
example, the readings will be different if we're located in a loud void rather
than in the middle of a filament in a cosmic wave. Yees. So
there's a lot of people trying to probe this. For the time being,
we haven't found any evidence that the universe looks different from one place to the
other. So we have the cosmological principle where for us, the universe is
the same wherever you are have directions. Yeah, basically you can have some
local changes. For example, we will leave in a galaxy group. There
are some velocities from these local groups so if you measure things close by,
you need actually to correct for it. But this is very local. This
is not in the large scale of plain. So in the large scale of
things looks all the same. Okay, so the void doesn't come into it.
Yeah, until now we haven't. Until now, we haven't found any
evidence that that's the case. An important role in all this is that played
by artificial intelligence and machine learning. Tell me about it. Yes, it's
very exciting because these are very new technologies that we're seeing their effect in our
society. We have all heard about a deputy and all these machine learning recommendation
systems that we have nowadays in our day to day's life. But how can
we use this technology to do science and to really harness the power of these
huge data sets that we make so much effort in getting. And this is
exactly what we did. We took data from the Darkenedy survey. We developed
a classification algorithm using machine learning. So I did developed the main ones using
deep learning algorithms, and we were able to use this technology to really really
precisely classify this that one needs to bring on. So it's pretty amazing that
this technology can be in our day to day, but can also be in
these high precision measurements of how the universe is becoming bigger. So when you
think about it, it's a little bit mind blowing. Not one of the
big scary things about artificial intelligence is it's a black box. We often don't
understand how it reaches its conclusions. That's going to be especially concerning for science.
Yes, so a big part of my research is interpretibility, so understanding
how the machine learning algorithms classify objects and how robust this is. So we
did a lot, a lot of tests trying to break the classifier and the
machine learning algorithms to see if we were doing something that affected the cosmological results
that we would get. And we tried for many years, not only myself
but other groups in the UK and in the US, and we couldn't break
it. So we were really really careful trying to get this machine learning algorithm
in a way that is not only a black box, but it's something that
you is robust and you can trust its outputs. But of course, if
you're curious about becoming not a black box in machine learning, there are so
many things that we are doing right now to try to open the knowledge on
what the machine learning algorithm is paying attention on, or how confident it is
when you don't, would you give it, for example, for training dogs
and cats, and you give it an image of a sebra and us what
it is. So these are all stories that we're actually doing, not only
because we're curious, but also because for us it's important in cosmology to be
sure that if the output makes sense. Let's doctor Nie Smuller from Swinburne University
in Melbourne. And this is space time still to come. Titans, magic
islands only explained, and the failed pereguine lun Lander finally ends its mission,
burning up in the atmosphere above Australia in the South Pacific. All that and
more still to calm on space time. Satan's largest moon, Titan, is
the only world in our Solar System other than Earth where clouds form liquid rain,
which then pours into rivers and flows into lakes and seas. But untitaned,
the liquid isn't water, it's ethane and methane. Untightened it's so called
the water is frozen solid, forming part of the bedrock. Now in New
Steady claims ethane and methane and other organic compounds on Titan can accumulate on the
surface as chunks, and they may even be harving off like glaciers at the
edges of the Saturnian Moon's methane lakes, forming the ephemeral magic islands. Astronomers
have long wondered about these magic islands, which appear in some images and then
disappear, And they don't always appear at the same spots, but seem to
float across the lake's surface. It's all incredibly mysterious. The findings, reported
in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, describe how Titan's magic islands are likely to
be floating icebergs, chunks of porous frozen organic solids. A hazy orange atmosphere
fifty percent thicker than Earth's and rich in methane and other carbon based or organic
molecules blankets Titan. When the European Space Agencies Huygen's lander descended from NASA's Cassini
mission down on the surface of Titan, it touched down in what it later
described as feeling like wet sand. But the strangest thing with a Cassini radar
in images of shifting bright spots on the sea surface of Titan, which appear
a last from just a few hours to several weeks or longer. Scientists first
spotted these ephemeral magic islands back in twenty fourteen with the Cassini Huygens mission and
have been trying to work out exactly what they are ever since. Previous studies
suggested they could be phantom islands caused by waves, or real islands made of
suspended solids, floating solids, or simply bubbles of nitrogen gas. The new
studies lead author Jingtingyu from the University of Texas and San Antonio, wanted to
investigate whether the magic islands could actually be organics floating on the surface, like
pummets from volcanic eruptions floating on water here on Earth. Titan's upper atmosphere is
dense with diverse organic molecules. These molecules can clump together, they can freeze,
and they can fall down onto the Moon's surface, and that includes falling
onto eerily smooth rivers and lakes of liquid methane and ethane, which have waves
only a few millimeters high. You and her colleagues were interested in the fate
of these organic clumps once they reached Titan's hydrocarbon lakes. She wanted to know
whether they would float or sink. To find an answer, the team first
investigated whether Titan's organic solids would simply dissolve in the Moon's methane lakes, because
these lakes are already saturated with organic particles. They determined that the falling solids
wouldn't dissolve when they reached the liquid. The thing is, titans lakes and
seas are primarily methane and ethane, both of which have low surface tension that
makes it harder for solids to float. The models suggested that most of the
frozen solids would have been too dense and the surface tension too low to create
Titan's magic islands, unless, that is, the clumps were porous, like
squished cheese. If these icy clumps were large enough and had the right ratio
of holes and narrow voids to solids, then the liquid methane would only seep
in slowly, possibly slowly enough for them clumps to linger on the surface for
a while before becoming saturated and sinking. The author's modeling suggest that individual clumps
are likely too small to float by themselves, but if enough clumps are massed
together near the shoreline, larger pieces could break off and float away, similar
to how glaciers carve off on Earth. So with a combination of bigger size
and the right porosity, these organic icebergs could well explain the magic island phenomena.
And in addition to the magic islands, a thin layer of frozen solids
coating Titans seas and lakes would also explain the liquid body's unusual smoothness, And
so these findings could explain two of Titan's many mysteries this space time still to
come, the Pereguine Lunar Lander breaks up in the skies above Australia and the
South Pacific, and later in the science report, Chinese scientists say they've been
experimenting with a new mutant strain of Cover nineteen that is guaranteed one hundred percent
lethal. All that and more still to come on Spacetime Mission managers have now
confirmed that the troubled Pereguine Luna Lander made a fire return to Worth on Thursday,
burning up in the skies over eastern Australia in the South Pacific during atmospheric
reentry. The two hundred and eighty three kilogram spacecraft had been launched ten days
earlier as the primary payload aboard the maiden Thud of the United Launch Alliances new
Vulcan Centre rocket. Included aboard the Lander were a series of NASA experiments,
as well as the partial remains of at least seventy people and a dog as
part of a space burial promotion. While the launch of the Vulcan Center and
load deployment went smoothly, the Pereguine Lander began experiencing problems soon afterwards. Pereguine's
operators astrobotics say technical anomalies began when Pereguine failed to orient its top solar panel
array towards the Sun in order to change its batteries at the same time it
was drifting off course, and then suddenly communications were temporarily lost. Eventually,
engineers were able to re establish contact and reorient the spacecraft to keep it tilted
in the right direction to keep its solar panels pointing towards the Sun. The
problem was eventually traced to a faulty valve in part of the spacecraft's propulsion system.
An image taken by an onboard camera showed the multi layer insulation badly damaged
by what appears to have been some sort of propulsion system explosion, resulting in
a dramatic loss of fuel and in the process doing the mission to fail.
It means Peregrine would never have had enough fuel to make a soft landing on
the Moon. While Paragua and could have been commanded to crash onto the lunar
surface or left drifting in space, Astrobotic instead elected to return the probe to
Earth so it could burn up in the atmosphere and prevent it from adding to
the growing problem of space junk. While the Paragua mission is now over for
Astrobotic, all is not last. Astrobotic have another chance to reach the Moon
in November when their Griffin spacecraft lander transporting NASA's Viper Lunar rover, will attempt
a turn landing on the lunar surface at the South Pole. We'll keep you
informed this Space time and time out to take a brief look at some of
the other stories making news and science this week with a science report. Ice
sheets around the world have been retreating over the last few decades, but a
new study shows that the Greenland ice sheets have been shrinking at an especially fast
rate since the nineteen nineties. The findings were reported in the journal Nature,
are based on new satellite observations showing that Greenland has lost more than one thousand
gigatons of ice since nineteen eighty five. The new observation showed the extent of
this retreat. They find that Greenland has lost about five thousand and ninety one
square kilometers of ice cover just in the last four decades. In fact,
the analysis shows the ice sheet shrenk by an average of two hundred and eighteen
square kilometers every year since January two thousand. The authors say this loss doesn't
appear to substantially contribute to sea level rise because the ice is already floating on
the water, but it may be playing a critical part in ocean circulation patterns
consequently, how heat energy is distributed across the planet well. Just four years
after the start of the COVID nineteen pandemic in Wuhan, China, Chinese scientists
have confirmed that they're experimenting with a new mutant strain of COVID nineteen that has
proven itself to be one hundred percent lethal in humanized mice. The deadly new
virus, known as GXP two V attacks the brain after first infecting the lungs,
bones, eyes, and trachea, with victims dying within eight days.
A report on the preprint website bio Archive states that in the days before their
deaths, victims lost a lot of weight, exhibited a hunched posture, and
moved extremely sluggishly, with their eyes turning completely white on the day before death.
An ex post by Professor Francois Balu, an epidemiology expert at the University
College London's Geneics Institute, slammed the research, describing it as terrible and scientifically
totally pointless. Others say it could be a new biological weapon. Official figures
suggest over seven million people have already been killed by the COVID nineteen coronavirus since
it was first detected among workers at China's Willhand Institute of Virology back in September
twenty nineteen. However, the World Heath Organization estimates the true death toll is
likely to be above eighteen million, with some seven hundred and seventy five million
confirm cases globally. Scientists have successfully cloned a healthy reesius monkey, which has
now survived more than two years. While cloning has become more and more common
with plants and lower level animals, Cloning primates has been especially difficult. Now.
A report in the journal Nature Communications claims the key to success with primates
involves providing a cloned embryo with a healthy placenta. The authors analyze the differences
between two early stage embryo is made from two reproductive technologies, those using in
vitro fertilization and those cloned using a process called somatic cell nuclear transfer. They
found abnormalities in the way genetic information can be assessed and read by the developing
clone embryo, and in the size and shape that placenter's enclosed monkeys developing in
surrogate mothers. To address these issues, researchers have now developed a method to
provide the developing cloned embryo with a healthy placenta, in the process successfully developing
a healthy clone monkey. A new study suggests that narcissists are far more likely
to believe in conspiracy theories than the rest of the population. The findings are
based on your research looking at the different characteristics and personality traits associated with belief
in conspiracy theories. Scientists found a consistent link between conspiracy beliefs and narcissism,
especially conspiracy theories supporting a person's belief system and worldview. Timendum from a Strands
Skeptics says, buying into conspiracies make some people feel like they have special knowledge,
which when you think about it, is incredibly alluring to any narcissist.
This research by a PSCs at University in Queensland was trying to see the motivations
for people to believe in conspiracy theory why they picked up on this one,
not that one, et cetera and whatever, and they were suggesting that one
characteristic of some conspiracy theory believers is narcissism, their own belief in themselves and
the wonderfulness that they are. He was suggesting this this research is that following
a conspiracy theory makes you feel special, right, that I've got this knowledge
that others don't have. Therefore I'm pretty cool, and that you don't have
a your student un bright and therefore I will believe a conspiracy theory because I
believe in how important I am and my judgment is now. One thing the
researcher doesn't say that you could add is also that definitely narcissistic that a conspiracy
theory is there after me because I'm important, I have this special knowledge,
et cetera. So that's very narcissistic because it ends up being paranois. Just
describe my friend George, and I describe people I know who say, yeah,
there after me, they will try and kill me. And I once
said, You're not that important that people would want to kill you, that
argument with George, and because it's narcissistic. But what this researcher was saying
is that people who have a high opinion of themselves, where's the Dunning Kruger
high opinion themselves? They're really not worthy of it for high opinion themselves,
and that therefore they can see things that others can't and wipe up they see
it. It's so obvious to me because I'm super bright and so observant,
and at the same time, oh, I'm so important. I can see
this stuff, and that they will come and kill me because they have this
secret knowledge and because I'm important, and therefore the narcissism works into paranoia and
all sorts of things. So it's definitely about the belief that they have special
skills. At other sides, Now, not every believe in a conspiracy theory
is going to be a narcissist, but not every narcissist is going to believe
every conspiracy theory. But it makes for an interesting concept because you can't tell
narcissistic people that that's what they are, and they have a firm commitment to
the conspiracy theory that they follow, so you can't sun necessarily weed them off.
But that's true of anybody, whether they're narcissistic or not. Narcissists will
take a correction as the personal attack. Yeah, when my friend George raises
this issue and I challenge him on it, that's why are you're going after
me. I'm brighter than you. Therefore I have special knowledge and you don't.
That's timendum from Australian skeptics, And that's the show for now. Space
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