Speaker 1: It's night with Dan Ray. I'm telling you easy Boston.
Speaker 2: Thank you Dan Watkins for announcing that the third hour
Speaker 2: is upon us. This is Nightside. Dan Ray is off.
Speaker 2: I am here and speaking of Dan, I mentioned Rob
Speaker 2: has assistance tonight. It's not an intern Dan and Rob.
Speaker 2: What is Dan's last Dan Cantano is is here with Rob.
Speaker 2: So if the phone is answered and it's not a
Speaker 2: voice with which you're familiar, it might be Dan Kintano.
Speaker 2: And I mistakenly called him an intern. He's a full
Speaker 2: fledged employee, paycheck and everything. He's just learning how to
Speaker 2: handle Nightside from that side of the glass. I am
Speaker 2: now switching to a little discussion, an introduction for my
Speaker 2: next guest. About a couple of years ago, he called
Speaker 2: my show, my Saturday Show, The Morgan Show, and he
Speaker 2: told me about an upcoming celestial event, something in the skies,
Speaker 2: an eclipse. And he made it clear to me that
Speaker 2: he knew about the eclipse and all the details surrounding
Speaker 2: the eclipse. So when the eclipse became imminent, I scheduled
Speaker 2: him and had him on. Did an excellent job, and
Speaker 2: I've used him one or two other times. And you
Speaker 2: must admit up in the sky over the past i'll
Speaker 2: say six to eight weeks, there's been a bunch of
Speaker 2: goings on. So I brought Dave McDonald here to talk
Speaker 2: about some of the things that have happened, and more importantly,
Speaker 2: a couple of things scheduled to happen. So Dave, welcome
Speaker 2: to Night's Side.
Speaker 3: Well, thanks, Morgan, it's a pleasure to be here as always.
Speaker 2: And did you tell your friends and family you're going
Speaker 2: to be in the radio tonight.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, And I have some friends getting the word out
Speaker 3: among their friends and hopefully, you know how networking goes,
Speaker 3: Hopefully it'll just keep spreading, all right.
Speaker 2: Explain why? And I never ever remember this happening at
Speaker 2: any point in my life. I'm in my seventies, I'm
Speaker 2: seventy one years old, and I can never remember. And
Speaker 2: I have a pretty good memory of northern lights being
Speaker 2: so clearly seen in the Boston area as happened a
Speaker 2: week and a half ago.
Speaker 3: Tell us why, Yeah, So the northern lights happen as
Speaker 3: a result of activity on the sun. There are water
Speaker 3: called CMEs, which stands for coronal mass ejections, and the
Speaker 3: sun is a very active place, and there are what
Speaker 3: we call solar minima and solar maximums, and we're kind
Speaker 3: of in a season of solar maximums right now, which
Speaker 3: means there's more sun spots than usual. And the cycle
Speaker 3: of sunspots is an eleven year cycle, so we're kind
Speaker 3: of again in the realm of the high spot, and
Speaker 3: then it will dwindle down and re emerge again in
Speaker 3: another eleven years. But right now, being in the high
Speaker 3: spot of solar activity, there's more sun spots, which are
Speaker 3: magnetic connections. Is like a north pole in the south pole.
Speaker 3: Sun spots generally come in pairs, and every once in
Speaker 3: a while. The magnetic force on the sun is so powerful,
Speaker 3: Like you're familiar where everybody's played with magnets when they
Speaker 3: were in elementary school, and sometimes I still play with magnets.
Speaker 3: It's just a lot of fun to see how they
Speaker 3: repel each other. And there's a lot of force we're
Speaker 3: familiar with, like doors these days, you know, instead of
Speaker 3: just you know, locks with keys and such, we got
Speaker 3: magnetic locks. Magnetism is very, very powerful, and so now
Speaker 3: that there's a greater chance of these coronal mass ejections,
Speaker 3: which is when these sunspots erupt and spew a lot
Speaker 3: of material out of the Sun out into space. When
Speaker 3: one of these is facing Earth, and this material comes
Speaker 3: out towards Earth, traveling at millions of miles an hour,
Speaker 3: and a great volume of this material in a day
Speaker 3: two or three, depending exactly how fast the material is traveling.
Speaker 3: About three days or so after the CME erupt it
Speaker 3: reaches our magnetosphere, which is the protective zone around Earth
Speaker 3: that keeps us safe from radiation and from solar particles
Speaker 3: causing too much damage. But when one of these powerful
Speaker 3: cmees is directed towards Earth, it interacts in a very
Speaker 3: deep way with the magnetosphere and depending upon the angle
Speaker 3: that it hits at and how strong it is, will
Speaker 3: determine how far south the aurora might be seen. And
Speaker 3: as you mentioned, yes we saw well, I should say you.
Speaker 3: I was not in Boston myself, but yeah, it got
Speaker 3: down to Boston and even in lower latitudes, which is unusual.
Speaker 3: But one of the reasons, again is a the power
Speaker 3: of the coronal mass ejection and the angle be that
Speaker 3: it hits Earth at is in terms of how low
Speaker 3: the latitude will be that will experience the Northern lights.
Speaker 3: And needless to say, you and others it has been
Speaker 3: an amazing show. So many people have taken pictures post
Speaker 3: of them online. And the amazing variety of colors from
Speaker 3: vibrant red and orange and pink and purple and some
Speaker 3: underlying blues and greens, and the curtain like effect. I mean,
Speaker 3: needless to say, it's a it's a beautiful sight that
Speaker 3: we get to enjoy every once in a while.
Speaker 2: What I remember from sixth grade science, red is the
Speaker 2: most dominant color in the spectrum. And I've heard of
Speaker 2: the northern lights not having any red splotches or red coloring,
Speaker 2: and I've also heard of red being very dominant. And
Speaker 2: what colors we see, what makes that happen or not
Speaker 2: happen the dominance of red.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So, as you mentioned, the electromagnetic spectrum that we
Speaker 3: see from wavelengths of four hundred nanometers. A nanometer is
Speaker 3: a billion of a meter, so very very small. From
Speaker 3: four hundred to seven hundred nanometers is the range which
Speaker 3: we see. And depending upon again the interaction of the
Speaker 3: solar wind with the magnetosphere that is around our Earth,
Speaker 3: it creates vibrations at different frequencies, and depending upon what
Speaker 3: frequency is vibrating, it gives off that color according to
Speaker 3: that frequency, and the higher the frequency, we tend to
Speaker 3: be towards the blue, and the lower numbers tend to
Speaker 3: be towards the red. So it's a matter of how
Speaker 3: the vibrations are happening when the interaction between the solar
Speaker 3: wind and Earth's magnetosphere happens. So sometimes we get the red,
Speaker 3: sometimes we get the blue. And I think this pastime
Speaker 3: we really had a nice mixture.
Speaker 2: I've got a break to take, but when we come back,
Speaker 2: I want to talk about that comment that's out there,
Speaker 2: and I am told it comes back every twenty thousand years.
Speaker 2: I don't know how they figure that out, and that
Speaker 2: it's trail. It's trailing a lot of stuff behind it.
Speaker 2: So I want to talk about that and what we
Speaker 2: should be on the lookout for. That's in our our
Speaker 2: future up in the sky. So let me give the
Speaker 2: phone numbers. Anybody wants to call in you got a
Speaker 2: question about the things you see up there, here's the
Speaker 2: man to talk to. Six one, seven, two, five, four
Speaker 2: ten thirty or eight eight, eight, nine to nine, ten thirty.
Speaker 2: My guest Dave McDonald is here, and he's here for
Speaker 2: your questions on night side time and temperature ten sixteen
Speaker 2: fifty nine degrees.
Speaker 1: Now back to Dan Ray live from the Window World
Speaker 1: night Side Studios on WBZ News Radio.
Speaker 2: Dave McDonald is my guest. We are talking about the sky,
Speaker 2: space and things that actually demand our attention to look up, observe,
Speaker 2: and be put in a state of awe when you
Speaker 2: think about what we're looking at. And Dave, I have
Speaker 2: a question. There were two movies came out, oh a
Speaker 2: good twenty years ago, and they came out within a
Speaker 2: year of each other, Armageddon with Bruce Willis and Deep
Speaker 2: Impact with Teleone and Morgan Freeman as our president. And
Speaker 2: in both movies, there was a comet that was going
Speaker 2: to strike Earth and it was science and NASA and
Speaker 2: politics that did the best to interrupt the trajectory of
Speaker 2: these comets hitting our planet. And when I hear that
Speaker 2: there's a comet that's in the neighborhood of Earth, I'm
Speaker 2: wondering if one of these things ever did zero in
Speaker 2: on Earth, would we be able to throw something up
Speaker 2: there to stop it.
Speaker 3: Well, that's a great question, and that is something that
Speaker 3: astrophysicists and people involved in various space agencies around the world,
Speaker 3: because I mean, we obviously have NASA, There is the
Speaker 3: European Space Agency, the Canadian Space Agency, and there are
Speaker 3: space agencies around the world. And obviously military governments and
Speaker 3: their militaries are interested in this sort of thing because
Speaker 3: we don't want to be hit. We know that sixty
Speaker 3: five million years ago or so, a large meteor hit
Speaker 3: Earth and wiped out the dinosaurs and a bunch of
Speaker 3: other life, So things can hit us now. As far
Speaker 3: as being able to do something about it, that's a
Speaker 3: tough one. We have tried to move an asteroid a
Speaker 3: little bit, and depending upon how big the object is,
Speaker 3: how soon we detect it that it might be on
Speaker 3: a collision course, and how fast we can get something
Speaker 3: there with enough power, and maybe it even needs to
Speaker 3: be a nuclear blast of some sort to move an object.
Speaker 3: These things are tough to move because one they're large,
Speaker 3: and secondly they're moving very fast. So is it possible
Speaker 3: to the tweet a little bit, yes, But are we
Speaker 3: in a position to handle anything of any major significance.
Speaker 3: Probably not.
Speaker 2: Have we tried in reality, not science fiction, not a movie,
Speaker 2: But have we really tried to do just this very thing.
Speaker 3: In a very small scale, Yes, And I don't remember
Speaker 3: the name of the mission or the asteroid that it visited.
Speaker 3: But yes, it has been tried, and there has been
Speaker 3: a little bit of change of direction of the asteroid,
Speaker 3: which is not a big one. So I guess we
Speaker 3: could say that that text technology does exist and we're
Speaker 3: working on it. But as I said, we're not ready
Speaker 3: to handle the big boys yet. But as the technology
Speaker 3: does exist, the ideas, the concepts, the blueprints, if you will,
Speaker 3: exist for doing what you're talking about.
Speaker 2: Earlier this week, I saw a news story that the
Speaker 2: asteroid that made the dinosaurs wave goodbye was only the
Speaker 2: second in size of an asteroid that hit Earth. There
Speaker 2: was a bigger one, but it didn't do as much damage,
Speaker 2: which they lost me on that. Did you hear the
Speaker 2: story of which I'm.
Speaker 3: Speaking, No, Morgan, I haven't heard that story.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, there was allegedly three times bigger than
Speaker 2: the one that made all the dinosaurs go away. Yet
Speaker 2: and still, if it was that big and one second
Speaker 2: in size to it made the dinosaurs go away, how
Speaker 2: did we survive that? But if you didn't hear about it,
Speaker 2: never mind what.
Speaker 3: I didn't hear about it, But a quick off the
Speaker 3: tough answer would be it would also depend upon the
Speaker 3: angle you know that it hit Earth would have something
Speaker 3: to do with it. Whether it was a you know,
Speaker 3: kind of a perpendicular impact straight on or where it
Speaker 3: hit how it hit more of it at an angle? Correct? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right? Let me ask about what's upcoming in
Speaker 2: the skies. I know eclipses come around every two to
Speaker 2: ten to twenty years. When's the next eclipse or something
Speaker 2: of note that we should see in the sky.
Speaker 3: Well, why don't we hang out with the comment theme
Speaker 3: for a moment, Because if you were to go outside tonight,
Speaker 3: and I believe it's clear, you could go out and
Speaker 3: take some time to enjoy the night sky and you
Speaker 3: might see a meteor flashby. And meteors are sometimes referred
Speaker 3: to as shooting stars, but to spoiler alert, stars don't shoot.
Speaker 3: Stars explode. And that's something else that we can talk
Speaker 3: about maybe in whatever the timeframe works, five or ten minutes.
Speaker 3: That's an important thing to look out for, I think.
Speaker 3: But if you were to go outside tonight or the
Speaker 3: next couple nights and see some meteors shoot through the sky,
Speaker 3: you might be looking at Haley's comic. Now, Haley's Comet,
Speaker 3: the basic Big nucleus of the comet isn't due to
Speaker 3: be back until I think sixty one or twenty sixty two,
Speaker 3: but it's last time going by us in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 3: It left a debris trail or a dust trail of
Speaker 3: material that got blown off of the comet, and that
Speaker 3: debris trail stays in orbit around the Sun, because that's
Speaker 3: what comets do. Cormets orbit the Sun. There are long
Speaker 3: period cormt comets, which the current comet A three, we
Speaker 3: can talk about that if you want to, is a
Speaker 3: long period comet. Haley's commet is a relatively short period comet.
Speaker 3: But what's happening right now is Earth is going through
Speaker 3: plowing through the debris field left by Haley's comet. So
Speaker 3: if you were to see a meteor or two or
Speaker 3: three any given evening in the next few nights, chances
Speaker 3: are high that it was particles from Haley's commet. And
Speaker 3: that's called the Orionid media shower.
Speaker 2: Now, if I'm not mistaken, Oh, the timeframe between Haley's
Speaker 2: comment coming close enough to Earth to see with the
Speaker 2: naked eye is seventy five years. Is that accurate?
Speaker 3: So that sounds about right, Yes, okay.
Speaker 2: All right, well I'm gonna loss for words.
Speaker 3: The well, but to stay with the commet theme for
Speaker 3: a moment. The next major shower coming up is the
Speaker 3: Leonid Media Shower, which will be in November.
Speaker 2: In November, didn't we have that come through about a
Speaker 2: month or two ago.
Speaker 3: No, No, we might be thinking about the Percied Media Shower,
Speaker 3: which was in August. That's a big one.
Speaker 2: That's what I was thinking about.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, and the Leondis is in November, but a
Speaker 3: couple of offshoots for that is. The high point or
Speaker 3: the maximum or the peak of the Leanded Media Shower
Speaker 3: is November seventeenth. But the bad news is we are
Speaker 3: going to experience a super moon on November fifteenth, which
Speaker 3: obviously indicates it's a full moon. So it's going to
Speaker 3: be tough seeing meteors, you know, the fourteenth, fifteen, sixteen, seventeenth,
Speaker 3: because it's going to be so bright because of the moon,
Speaker 3: medias are going to be hard to come by. But
Speaker 3: if you start looking a week or so earlier, like
Speaker 3: perhaps November tenth, and your patient, the moon is going
Speaker 3: to be setting around midnight, so it's out of the way.
Speaker 3: After midnight is typically the best time to look for meteors,
Speaker 3: so November tenth, eleventh, the moon sets around midnight and
Speaker 3: you can go out and perhaps you'll see some limids
Speaker 3: which are left by the Comet temple puddle which last
Speaker 3: came by in nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 2: I'm going to start your here to take a quick
Speaker 2: hit of news again. People, if you want to call
Speaker 2: in and talk what's up in the sky. Six one seven, two, five,
Speaker 2: four ten thirty eight eight nine to nine, ten thirty,
Speaker 2: give my guest the call. I'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 2: Dave McDonald is my astrology, not astrology. There's a difference
Speaker 2: from astronomy and astrology, and he's the person that I
Speaker 2: always think of when it comes to this subject. So
Speaker 2: I'm going to take my break if you want to
Speaker 2: call During the break, Robyn, Dan are waiting for the
Speaker 2: phone to ring. I'm six one seven, two, five, four,
Speaker 2: ten thirty eight eight eight nine two nineteen thirty. Time
Speaker 2: and temperature here at BZ on nightside ten thirty one
Speaker 2: fifty nine degrees.
Speaker 1: It's Nightside with Dan Ray on WBZ, Boston's news radio.
Speaker 2: Before we get back to our subject, and we have
Speaker 2: a phone call too, I want to let you know.
Speaker 2: For those you hear me fill in for Dan Ray periodically,
Speaker 2: but you might not be aware that I have my
Speaker 2: own show Saturday evenings ten to midnight, and author Tom
Speaker 2: Claven has a new book, so we'll be discussing that
Speaker 2: as well. Anthony san Marco will be on, a historian
Speaker 2: who knows all the ins and outs of Boston's communities.
Speaker 2: Boston split up into fifteen, sixteen seventeen separate sections, and
Speaker 2: he's written he Anthony san Marco has written a book
Speaker 2: about each community, so that's coming up. He's written almost
Speaker 2: ninety books. In case you care about that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: And if you want to come interact with me live
Speaker 2: every Tuesday, im at the Midway Restaurant in Denham to
Speaker 2: sixty nine Washington Street, give Way Prizes and you'll see
Speaker 2: a lot of people there, maybe some of the people
Speaker 2: here in the radio, like Mel Simon's who's on with
Speaker 2: me every other month. So I've told you those things,
Speaker 2: and now my guest David McDonald, I'm going to ask
Speaker 2: one question and then I'm going to take a phone
Speaker 2: call Dave Sure, why did the scientific community pick on
Speaker 2: poor old Pluto and take the status of a planet
Speaker 2: away from it.
Speaker 3: Well, now we can do a whole show sometime on
Speaker 3: this topic. Okay. So first of all, yeah, so, first
Speaker 3: of all, understand this that Pluto is a planet. It
Speaker 3: is the largest member of a new class of planet
Speaker 3: called dwarf planet. So one of the things that got
Speaker 3: Pluto in trouble was its orbit is inclined a little
Speaker 3: more than the other planets to what we call the
Speaker 3: ecliptic or the pathway of the Sun around Earth, which
Speaker 3: technically is the pathway of Earth around the Sun. And
Speaker 3: then a guy named Mike Brown found this object out
Speaker 3: there called it became called Eris, and this is an
Speaker 3: object that was almost twice as far away as Pluto,
Speaker 3: and he thought believed it was bigger than Pluto. So
Speaker 3: then the question became, hmm, is this a planet? And
Speaker 3: so that begged the definition of a planet needed to
Speaker 3: be established. So a real long story, kind of kind
Speaker 3: of short. That was August twenty fourth, two thousand and six.
Speaker 3: I saw live on the Internet the meeting of the
Speaker 3: International Astronomical Union where they took up this question. So
Speaker 3: I know personally Alan Stern. Alan Stern is the principal
Speaker 3: investigator of the new Horizons mission which visited Pluto on
Speaker 3: July fourteenth, twenty fifteen. And the data we got from
Speaker 3: the New Horizons mission, which flew by Pluto within seven
Speaker 3: thousand min aisles of its surface, detected a possible underwater ocean,
Speaker 3: detected mountains, visually imaged mountains, glaciers on these mountains, an atmosphere,
Speaker 3: and though many features, it's round and it looks like
Speaker 3: it has all the ingredients that the planet would have.
Speaker 3: And so Pluto is in a new class of planet
Speaker 3: called dwarf planet. We have Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars.
Speaker 3: They're in a class called terrestrial planets and their planets.
Speaker 3: We have Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, which are gas
Speaker 3: giants or Jovian planets. They're planets. And now we have
Speaker 3: a new class of planet of which Pluto is the
Speaker 3: largest member. But it's a planet. And I had a
Speaker 3: direct quote from Alan Stern, who probably is the most
Speaker 3: knowledgeable person in the world literally about Bluto, and I
Speaker 3: have him on video saying, you can take this to
Speaker 3: the bank. Bluto was a planet, it is a planet,
Speaker 3: and it will always be a planet.
Speaker 2: Okay, I will drop that subject because that's a definitive statement.
Speaker 2: Let's go to John in Boston and see what he
Speaker 2: has to say here on night side John good evening, Hi.
Speaker 4: Hi Morgan, and Hi Dave. I think it is.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I love.
Speaker 4: Can Okay, I love looking at the nice sky and
Speaker 4: the day sky too. Not just a nice guy. I
Speaker 4: think I see Jupiter out there tonight. I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: Yes you do.
Speaker 4: It's really bright like Venus almost, you know, but I
Speaker 4: kind of get I'm an amateur, but I've looked at
Speaker 4: the website sometimes night Sky or something like that Night
Speaker 4: Sky Boston, or I'll google night Sky Boston, and they
Speaker 4: get pretty good examples of what's rising setting and what's
Speaker 4: visible right now by the naked eye or by a binocular.
Speaker 4: I don't have a telescope or anything like that. But
Speaker 4: I'm disappointed I live in the city because I know
Speaker 4: it really interferes, and I've never seen the northern life.
Speaker 4: I'd like to see some data or sometime or even
Speaker 4: that recent comment that came by that was neither rising
Speaker 4: in the west there. I never got a chance to
Speaker 4: see that because of the city stuff.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: But anyway, if you're going to recommend a book, is
Speaker 4: there any book I mean, the universe is fascinating the
Speaker 4: infinity of it. I feel like it's almost spiritual for
Speaker 4: me and them. You know, it's just so massive and
Speaker 4: can't be understood, almost to me. And I don't know
Speaker 4: if there's any basic book that you'd recommend, just as
Speaker 4: a general basic book.
Speaker 3: Thank you tell I'll tell you. I do have an
Speaker 3: author in mind with two books that meant a lot
Speaker 3: to me. And interestingly enough, I mentioned the New Horizons Mission.
Speaker 3: And you may or may not know that Brian May
Speaker 3: the lead guitarist of Queen, one of the founders of
Speaker 3: the rock group Queen. He's an astrophysicist. Uh he as
Speaker 3: his doctorate. He's Doctor Brian May. He also has been knighted.
Speaker 3: He's Sir Doctor Brian May. And I had the opportunity
Speaker 3: to meet him and to chat with him at the
Speaker 3: flyby of New Horizons going by ultimately, and we found
Speaker 3: out in our conversation that we both got our love
Speaker 3: for astronomy from the same person, Sir Patrick Moore. And
Speaker 3: Sir Patrick Moore wrote several books, but two that I
Speaker 3: would recommend. One is called Naked Eye Astronomy and the
Speaker 3: other one is simply called Astronomy. And these two books
Speaker 3: meant a lot to me. They got me going and
Speaker 3: with a you know jam packed of you know, with
Speaker 3: information about things that you can see, how to see things.
Speaker 3: And then I would add to it a magazine either
Speaker 3: Astronomy Magazine or Sky and Telescope Magazine so that you
Speaker 3: can keep up on you know, what's current, what's going
Speaker 3: on in the night skylight tonight this week, this month,
Speaker 3: and I happen to have, speaking of this month, I
Speaker 3: happen to have a TV show on YouTube and it's
Speaker 3: on some local cable TVs. It's called the Sky this
Speaker 3: Month with Dave McDonald and I talk about you know,
Speaker 3: what's going on for the month in the night in
Speaker 3: the night sky. But Naked Eye Astronomy Astronomy by Sir
Speaker 3: Patrick Moore would be two books that I would recommend.
Speaker 3: And then either Astronomy or Sky in Telescope magazine to
Speaker 3: see what the latest and the greatest is that's happening
Speaker 3: right now.
Speaker 4: John, Okay, thank you, and also just quickly, I get
Speaker 4: a lot out of the old Farmer's Aminac. Thank you.
Speaker 3: Hell yeah, John, thank you for your call. Appreciate it.
Speaker 2: All right, all right, there goes John, and I have
Speaker 2: two more people to take and only fifteen minutes or
Speaker 2: less than that to get them on. Let me get
Speaker 2: the breakout the way and Jerry and Jack you'll get
Speaker 2: your chance to speak to Dave after this break time
Speaker 2: and temperature ten forty five still as it's been all night,
Speaker 2: fifty nine degrees.
Speaker 1: Now back to Dan Ray live from the Window World
Speaker 1: night Side Studios on WBZ News Radio.
Speaker 2: Things, a lot of things. Dave McDonald is make yes, Dave.
Speaker 2: Do you have a website if people wanted to get
Speaker 2: in touch with you?
Speaker 3: I have an email which is astroman A S t
Speaker 3: R O M A N n H for New Hampshire.
Speaker 3: I'm like the astro Man of New Hampshire at gmail
Speaker 3: dot com astro Man NH at gmail dot com.
Speaker 2: One of my favorite cartoons when I was a kid
Speaker 2: was Astro Boy. Yeah, I can't use that because it's
Speaker 2: still out there. There's still definite active things happening. Let
Speaker 2: me take the last two calls of the night. Let's
Speaker 2: go line too and speak to Jerry and Worcester. Jerry,
Speaker 2: good evening.
Speaker 5: Hey, thank you, good eating. Hey guys, had I had
Speaker 5: a question about the moon. I'm sixty three years old
Speaker 5: and no one's been able to answer this question for
Speaker 5: me in a way that I understand it. Why do
Speaker 5: we always see the same side of the moon if
Speaker 5: it rotates?
Speaker 3: Okay, that's a great question. So the moon rotates once
Speaker 3: a month and the same side faces us because it's
Speaker 3: what we call tidally locked. So when the moon was formed,
Speaker 3: which one of the leading theories, I may say, the
Speaker 3: leading theory is that when Earth was in its formative years,
Speaker 3: a large object hit Earth and it caused a big
Speaker 3: chunk of Earth be removed, and it became the moon
Speaker 3: in orbit around Earth. But when that happened, the orbit
Speaker 3: of Earth, so sorry, the orbit of the Moon was
Speaker 3: such that one revolution around Earth was the same period
Speaker 3: of time as one rotation of the moon. So the
Speaker 3: moon does rotate, but it rotates only once for every
Speaker 3: time it goes around Earth. And that's called tidally locked.
Speaker 3: And that's why we only see one side of the moon.
Speaker 5: Yeah, a little bit. So, I mean what I'm thinking
Speaker 5: is when it's daytime, you can't see the moon the
Speaker 5: other side is showing.
Speaker 3: Now that's not true. You can see the moon very
Speaker 3: clearly in the daytime. Well, yeah, that's it depends on
Speaker 3: what phase you know the moon is in. But you
Speaker 3: can see the moon clearly in the daytime, you can
Speaker 3: obviously see it at night. It takes twenty seven and
Speaker 3: a third days for the moon to go around Earth,
Speaker 3: and it takes twenty nine and a half days from
Speaker 3: full moon the full moon because Earth is orbiting the Sun,
Speaker 3: so it takes almost the nextra two days for the
Speaker 3: moon to rotate back into the position of the next
Speaker 3: full moon, so to speak. But a new moon is
Speaker 3: when the moon is closely lined up with the Sun,
Speaker 3: so we don't see the moon at all, and it's
Speaker 3: the far side of the moon that's lit up. And
Speaker 3: a full moon is like two weeks later, and we
Speaker 3: see the side that's fully lit up on our side,
Speaker 3: but the side that's unlit is the far side.
Speaker 2: Are you getting an ice cream headache now, Jerry?
Speaker 5: I probably have to set up one of the little
Speaker 5: models we had in high school where you spink yeah
Speaker 5: for just to see it, just to see it. So
Speaker 5: but thank you so much. I appreciate that we were
Speaker 5: draft and I love Scott. You guys sit care.
Speaker 2: How can I thank you for your phone called Jerry
Speaker 2: that note We're going to go to the last call
Speaker 2: of the night down on Cape card Jack.
Speaker 6: Good evening, Good evening, guys, Dave. That was a great
Speaker 6: explanation that you just gave that I've been pondering myself
Speaker 6: for quite a while and it was a yeah, I
Speaker 6: write that down because it really it really kind of
Speaker 6: clicked for me. But here's my here, here's my my.
Speaker 3: Questions question.
Speaker 6: Okay, the the flares that recently came off the Sun
Speaker 6: were strong, but they were not X twenty five class flares.
Speaker 6: So the fact that we're seeing the aroar way down
Speaker 6: on these lower latitudes I am suggesting as a topic
Speaker 6: of here of our conversation is that the magnetosphere is
Speaker 6: weak and that we are at some point in our
Speaker 6: future going to encounter a magnetic pole shift on the Earth.
Speaker 6: That is one phase. And the second question is has
Speaker 6: the government done any simulation of what that would mean
Speaker 6: for all the electronic spheres we have? And secondly, as aside,
Speaker 6: would that change the right hand rule or right hand
Speaker 6: some rule for magnetism.
Speaker 3: So your lasting questions are based on the idea of
Speaker 3: the poles on Earth flipping correct right.
Speaker 6: In other words, the magnetic pole would would would shift
Speaker 6: to the south and the southern pole would shift to
Speaker 6: the north. And this has happened periodically. To know that
Speaker 6: it's I mean, well, you know, one hundreds of thousands
Speaker 6: of years in between. But when it happens, it does happen.
Speaker 3: Well, it happens slowly, like the magnet. And maybe you
Speaker 3: know this. I don't mean to you know, tell you
Speaker 3: things you don't know, but maybe other listeners don't know.
Speaker 3: The magnetic north pole, for example, is constantly in motion.
Speaker 3: I'm a pilot. I fly airplanes and we have to
Speaker 3: buy we have to buy a doesn't have to be
Speaker 3: put published by the government, but I think most are.
Speaker 3: But anyway, we need to buy a flight chart and
Speaker 3: for navigation. And one of the reasons, apart from new
Speaker 3: towers and TV towers and cell phones and power lines
Speaker 3: and besides all the infrastructure that may be new and
Speaker 3: being built and put on the maps, the magnetic pole moves.
Speaker 3: And in order to navigate correctly, you know where true
Speaker 3: north is. True north doesn't move. True north is always
Speaker 3: at the north pole, but a relationship to it because
Speaker 3: you fly by your compass. You set your directional gyro
Speaker 3: according to your compass, and your compass points to magnetic north.
Speaker 3: But magnetic north is constantly moving and on the navigation
Speaker 3: chart it tells you how much it's moving by every week.
Speaker 3: Every three months, we have to get a new chart. Right.
Speaker 6: But if you look into the the I believe it
Speaker 6: came from the lava dead examinations that indicate the polarity
Speaker 6: of the magnetic sphere of the Earth. It historically it
Speaker 6: has slipped. The magnetic polls flip randomly and then they
Speaker 6: then they readjust back.
Speaker 2: But okay, and Jack, Jack, gentlemen, I hate to do it,
Speaker 2: but I am almost all out of time. I got
Speaker 2: baire enough time to say thank you to my guests.
Speaker 6: So the answer that we've.
Speaker 2: Given have to do, Jack, But thank you for your call.
Speaker 2: Ind I'm going to have you back in uh December
Speaker 2: because I'll be getting some Dan Ray fill in, because
Speaker 2: i want to talk about the five year NASA project
Speaker 2: to get to Europa because allegedly water up there, and
Speaker 2: we didn't get you to talk about it tonight. So
Speaker 2: I'm going to say good night to you, but I'll
Speaker 2: I will call you and bring you back in December.
Speaker 3: Okay, Okay, And we have to talk about a style
Speaker 3: it's due to explode.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, indeed, we do. It won't explode before December,
Speaker 2: will it.
Speaker 3: I hope not. I want to be able to save
Speaker 3: it for our conversation.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, Dave, thank you very much. I'm going to
Speaker 2: get out of here and do an hour of news.
Speaker 2: Come an hour of news, do five minutes of news,
Speaker 2: and come back and do the final hour of night
Speaker 2: side time ten fifty eight, temperature fifty nine degrees