EVSN, Airdate 2023 April 1: Pareidolia, Pattern Matching, and AI Art

Hello and welcome to our April 1st episode of Escape Velocity Space News. I have to admit I am one of those people who has completely fallen prey to various fake stories over the years, including one NPR story about women getting plastic surgery to get rid of their belly buttons. Why did I think that could be true? I can’t explain that. What I can say is that EVSN is your safe news source today.

Every story in today’s episode is based in reality, and we’re even going to use our Closer Look segment to examine some of the more fantastical cases of mistaken identity in astronomy, including the geology behind that “Face on Mars”.

And, you know the constellation Scorpio? It has been seen as a scorpion by pretty much every culture that can see that suite of stars.

Humans are the ultimate pattern matchers – at least for now. I have to admit I’m looking forward to the day I can give some new AI a set of images and ask it to tell me what animals it can find among the nebulae. The software isn’t there yet…

But we’re also going to take a closer look at how art and AI look at space.

And also science: From looking at active volcanism on Venus to eruptions on the Sun to rotating black hole jets and more, we take you on a journey through all that is new in space and astronomy.

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