AstroNutter

Red Stone-NATO Nearly Fired on a UFO Fleet—causing widespread alarm!

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Fwd: Skeptoid: AI Psychosis: Is It a Moral Panic?

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---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Skeptoid Companion Email <noreply@skeptoid.com>
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2026 at 13:22
Subject: Skeptoid: AI Psychosis: Is It a Moral Panic?
To: <zvagoman@gmail.com>

The weekly companion email provided with each new episode of the Skeptoid podcast

Skeptoid #1060: AI PSYCHOSIS: IS IT A MORAL PANIC?

In 2025, the New York Times published the story of Eugene Torres, a 42 year old accountant in Manhattan who used ChatGPT to discuss the theory that reality is actually a computer simulation. The chatbot said many people have the intuition that something about reality feels off, and asked if he’d ever had that feeling. by Ashley Hamer Pritchard
Go to the full episode

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WONDER OF THE WEEK

Near 100% efficient solar desalinization process

Solar-tracking desalination system (CC BY 4.0/Light Sci Appl 10.1038/s41377-026-02315-4)

Of the many dire effects of climate change, lack of potable water ranks near the top. Many countries already rely on converting ocean water into fresh water, but reverse osmosis and thermal distillation are both energy intensive and release brine that makes the water more salty, reduces oxygen levels, and thus harms sea life. The demand for water for both people and industry is going nowhere but up.

Researchers from the University of Rochester have published a paper describing a new approach that's solar-thermal, uses less energy, doesn't generate brine (put a pin in that), and doesn't require pre-treating the water with chemicals.

The novel technology is based on an SWBM (superwicking black metal) panel that has been treated with femtosecond laser pulses. The panel absorbs sunlight, heats up, wicks the water, evaporates it and removes the salt. It's highly hydrophilic (attractive to water) and can pull water uphill against gravity, allowing effective solar tracking.

The evaporated water, now distilled, can be extracted from the panel and the remaining salts are directed to the passive (untreated) part of the panel. That makes it both self-cleaning and able to continuously desalinate the water.

Now, just high-efficiency desalination would be wonderful enough, but let's get back to the part about not generating brine: Most of the salt in the sea is sodium salt, which is plain table salt. Know what other mineral is common in the ocean?

Lithium. So this system could not only supply drinking water and salt for food and industry, but lithium for making batteries. And it does it all while cleaning itself.

Lead researcher Chunlei Guo says, "The most important advance is that our system can desalinate real ocean water continuously using sunlight alone, without generating waste, with little to no maintenance and while recovering valuable minerals such as lithium. By using a superwicking, selfcleaning surface invented in my lab to move salts away from the evaporation region, we overcame the clogging bottleneck that has limited solar desalination until now. This is the first time we have achieved stable, lowmaintenance, highefficiency and nearly 100% salt-recovery performance with actual seawater."

The team's next project is scaling up the technology and integrating it with solar cells. They've already found that the desalination process can cool the solar cells, yielding more electrical output while still producing fresh water. "This approach could lead to a synergistic water-energy system that operates sustainably," Guo told Physics World.

Contributed by Craig Good.

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100 EPISODES AGO

100 ago I Know What Scares You — Seven creepy stories from seven listeners, and seven guesses by me.

200 EPISODES AGO

200 ago Illuminating the Hornet Spooklight — Legend has it this ghost light has been spooking people in Missouri for hundreds of years.

300 EPISODES AGO

300 ago The 1994 Ruwa Zimbabwe Alien Encounter — This popular tale claims 62 African schoolchildren were contacted by an extraterrestrial.

400 EPISODES AGO

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Fwd: Rare disease diagnosis | SpaceX Starship reaches orbit | New clues in ancient Egypt ruler mystery

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---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Live Science <livescience@smartbrief.com>
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2026 at 12:36
Subject: Rare disease diagnosis | SpaceX Starship reaches orbit | New clues in ancient Egypt ruler mystery
To: <zvagoman@gmail.com>

It can take years to diagnose rare diseases, and scientists are trying to fix that

Created for zvagoman@gmail.com | Web Version

September 29, 2026

Amazing science every day

Top Science News

'The right diagnosis is unbelievably powerful': It can take years to diagnose rare diseases, and scientists are trying to fix that

ANALYSIS | Tens of millions of Americans live with rare or undiagnosed diseases. These scientists are working to deliver them better diagnostics and treatments.

Question of the Day

NASA has teased a new telescope called PRIMA. What do the letters stand for?

(Learn the answer here)

Probe far-Infrared Mission for Astrophysics

Probing Infrared Mission for Astronomy

Proving Readiness for Interstellar Missions for Astronauts

Potential Radio waves from Intergalactic Modulations and Atmospherics

Live Science Pro

The super El Niño could cause torrential rainstorms. Americans may need to stock up on food to prepare, experts say.

ANALYSIS | A U.K. government minister has urged people in Britain to stock up on essentials to prepare for storms magnified by the record-breaking El Niño. Should Americans heed the same advice?

Opinion

'It is something we must know before we go where no man has gone before': Readers react to NASA's Roman telescope mission

HAVE YOUR SAY | NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is about to begin scanning our universe as it journeys through space. Live Science readers shared their thoughts about what they're most excited to see from the new space telescope.

Leave a comment

History & Archaeology

'Listen, father!': 1,700-year-old tomb discovered in Egypt contains a poem in ancient Greek and spells to protect the dead

Archaeologists in Egypt have discovered a 1,700-year-old limestone tomb with a rare poem inscribed on it in ancient Greek, likely from a son lamenting his father's death.

A 72-year-old photo is revealing new clues about 'Meretneith,' a powerful woman who may have ruled Egypt 5,000 years ago

An ancient Egyptian woman named Meretneith had a lavish tomb, and on it her name was written the same way as a pharaoh.

Planet Earth

Newly discovered iron minerals might hold primordial water from when Earth formed

Researchers may have found a missing link in how Earth's mantle gets wet: newly discovered iron minerals that can store water at the extremely high temperatures and pressures present near our planet's core.

Animals

13,000-year-old butchered bones of long-tusked beast found in Chile give more evidence of early first Americans

Archaeological excavations in the Lake Tagua Tagua basin in central Chile have revealed stone tools and animal bones with cut marks dated to 13,000 years ago.

Space Exploration

SpaceX's Starship reaches orbit for the first time, then returns early and blows up in a fiery explosion

SpaceX got its Starship rocket into orbit, but after a tense few minutes of comms and the loss of an engine, the call was made to end the mission early.