Speaker 1: Oh hi, it's that friend from high school who calls
Speaker 1: shotgun and then leans over you to scream their.
Speaker 2: Order into the drive through.
Speaker 1: Ali ward back with another episode. Apologies, oh man, this
Speaker 1: topic is one that is close to my heart and
Speaker 1: our planet. In full disclosure, I knew very little about
Speaker 1: any of this before this interview, so I may have
Speaker 1: asked the most stupidest questions of any episode to date.
Speaker 1: Which is exciting. That's exciting, So get ready to get
Speaker 1: cozy with the moon, our little buddy floating out there.
Speaker 1: What is its deal? But first, my buddies, Thank you
Speaker 1: for supporting on Patreon, patreon dot com, slash ologies. A
Speaker 1: dollar a month gets you in. Thank you for getting
Speaker 1: merched at ologiesmerch dot com, and thank you for rating
Speaker 1: and subscribing and reviewing ologies on iTunes. Y'all know I
Speaker 1: creep your reviews. You know I do it. So this
Speaker 1: week thank you Ace LEEO four who says that they
Speaker 1: wish I live next door. Quote you could drink wine
Speaker 1: while baking lopsided chupacabre shaped cookies while singing at the
Speaker 1: top of your lungs and looking through telescopes waiting for
Speaker 1: the sun to come up so you could go explore
Speaker 1: the backyard with magnifiers and microscopes in between rem filled
Speaker 1: naps in Brazilian hammocks that life. It sounds like a
Speaker 1: good one, Ace Lee, I would like to sign up.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Okay, onward and upward to the moon. Okay.
Speaker 1: So the word selenology it comes from the Greek celen
Speaker 1: for moon, and someone who studies the moon's movements or
Speaker 1: composition or formation is a selenologist. It's a real word.
Speaker 1: I mean, yes, sure, sure they can be geologists an
Speaker 1: astrophysicists too. There are many different names, but selenology it's
Speaker 1: a thing. It's cool. And while the term peaked in
Speaker 1: the late nineteen sixties, probably due to all the Apollo hullabaloo,
Speaker 1: we're bringing it back right now, oligites. So this selenologist
Speaker 1: studies both Mars and the Moon. She is a wonder.
Speaker 1: I am very lucky to have this gaggle of friends
Speaker 1: known as the nerd Brigade. And I was introduced to
Speaker 1: her at a barbecue through Derek Muller aka Veritassium on YouTube,
Speaker 1: and upon meeting her, all of us were like, this
Speaker 1: person rules. We love her. She's permanent. Now she's currently
Speaker 1: getting her PhD while also doing science communications, so she's
Speaker 1: done research and production with Veritasium. She's written for NASA's
Speaker 1: Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera aka l rock blog, and all
Speaker 1: around she's just an earthling. I'm very proud to know.
Speaker 1: So she came over on a Sunday afternoon. She was
Speaker 1: wearing NASA sneakers and we chatted on my couch and
Speaker 1: I am now so much more informed about the moon.
Speaker 1: So get ready to marvel at the glow of selenologist
Speaker 1: Raquel Nuna.
Speaker 2: Any tips on microphone? Used to just look talk straight
Speaker 2: into it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, let me adjust your levels a little bit more. Okay,
Speaker 1: cal recal orcal okay? Good. So what exactly would you
Speaker 1: say when you introduce someone and say what you do?
Speaker 1: What do you tell them?
Speaker 2: I tell them that I'm a planetary geologist. That's just
Speaker 2: what I say. And people usually have no idea what
Speaker 2: that means. They're like, I know geology, I don't know
Speaker 2: planetary what does that even mean? So then I say
Speaker 2: I'm a space geologist. I study rocks on other planets.
Speaker 1: And that's what I tell them, And then they lose
Speaker 1: their minds and then they're like what does that what?
Speaker 2: Yes, Yes, that's what I do.
Speaker 1: And so what does a space geologist necessarily do?
Speaker 2: So I say that I'm actually an armchair geologist, So
Speaker 2: I sit on a chair and do geology.
Speaker 1: You're recliningologists, lining or geologists.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we we have samples from rocks in other worlds,
Speaker 2: but most of the time we don't, So I essentially
Speaker 2: use spacecraft data to analyze either images. I also do
Speaker 2: a lot of programming, so a lot of computational modeling
Speaker 2: of what's happening surface processes that are happening in other worlds.
Speaker 1: And so you are crunching numbers and data to try
Speaker 1: to figure out what is happening with the rocks on
Speaker 1: other planets. That's right, that's what I do. That's crazy.
Speaker 2: All of the planets are just a few of the planets,
Speaker 2: just a few of the planets. So my two babies
Speaker 2: are the Moon and Mars.
Speaker 1: So Roquel got her bachelor's in geophysics and space physics,
Speaker 1: she got a master's inn geology, and she's now completing
Speaker 1: her PhD in geology and planetary science. This is all
Speaker 1: at UCLA. The first day that I met her, Roquel
Speaker 1: mentioned that she studies rocks and she's always liked rocks.
Speaker 1: And I was like, Rockel, huh, Rockel, Yeah, how about that?
Speaker 1: And she said that she'd never really connected that she
Speaker 1: has the word rock in her name. And this discovery,
Speaker 1: as you can imagine, thrilled your old dad ward here
Speaker 1: to like the point of giddiness. I was so much
Speaker 1: more excited about it than I think she was. But
Speaker 1: that's okay anyway. So she studies Mars rocks as well.
Speaker 2: But the moon is my passion project. It's the I
Speaker 2: love the moon. It's just one of the coolest planetary
Speaker 2: bodies ever, and it's so close, so it's you see
Speaker 2: it every day. It's just so tangible to me and
Speaker 2: to a lot of people.
Speaker 1: So we do a lot of staring up at it. Yes,
Speaker 1: we do a lot of moon and toward the moon.
Speaker 1: I remember someone was telling me once like Isaac ms Rahie,
Speaker 1: the fashion designer, was on a podcast and he was
Speaker 1: he got caught up being like, wait, is the moon
Speaker 1: a planet? Is the moon a planet? And he had
Speaker 1: one of those moments where he just didn't remember. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I look this up because if I don't share it,
Speaker 1: I will regret it to my grave. And this was
Speaker 1: actually live on QBC with host Sean Killinger. Now she's
Speaker 1: holding up like a blousey amorphously patterned turquoise and key
Speaker 1: line top is perfect for like a lady's lunch in
Speaker 1: Boca ratone, and she's with fashion designer Isaac Musrahi, who
Speaker 1: is not known for his humility. Now, anyway, I'm playing
Speaker 1: you a portion of this because I applaud QBC for
Speaker 1: being a safe space to chat space science. And also
Speaker 1: just a side note, folks do not feel ashamed to
Speaker 1: not know things because nobody knows everything and you don't
Speaker 1: learn unless you ponder something openly. While selling a blouse
Speaker 1: on QBC, I love that color. That's such a happy,
Speaker 1: beautiful rich It almost kind of looks like what the
Speaker 1: Earth looks like when you're a bazillion miles away from
Speaker 1: the planet.
Speaker 2: I plant at it from looking back.
Speaker 1: The planet Moon from the planet. The Moon is star.
Speaker 2: The Moon is a planet, Dar, The Sun is a star.
Speaker 1: Is the moon really a planet? The Moon is a planet.
Speaker 2: Don't look at me like that.
Speaker 1: The Sun is a star. Is the sun not a star?
Speaker 1: I don't know what the sun?
Speaker 2: The Sun.
Speaker 1: Is a star. The moon is not a planet. I
Speaker 1: know it. I you were trying to take me down
Speaker 1: that road.
Speaker 2: Is not a planetstening to.
Speaker 3: Someone.
Speaker 1: I can guarantee someone's googling right now it was a planet.
Speaker 1: Is not a planet?
Speaker 3: What else?
Speaker 1: It's a planet? Not I believe it's a star or something.
Speaker 1: It is a do A lot of people tend to
Speaker 1: think that the Moon is a planet.
Speaker 2: Uh okay that if you'd ask a planetary scientist, they
Speaker 2: would say, yeah, it's a planet because it acts like
Speaker 2: a planet, it behaves like a planet, but it's just
Speaker 2: orbiting the Earth versus orbiting the Sun. So it's not
Speaker 2: in the true definition of what a planet is. It's
Speaker 2: not a planet, but I have to say planetary body
Speaker 2: because it's not technically a planet.
Speaker 1: So it's a planet if it's orbiting the Sun.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: And I mean, I'm going to ask just stupid ask questions.
Speaker 1: I have no shame. How do you guys determine what's
Speaker 1: a planet? What's an exoplanet? What's a planetary I mean
Speaker 1: a planetary body is not orbiting a sun, but it
Speaker 1: could be orbiting another planet.
Speaker 2: Well, a planetair body can be a planet as well.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, so the Earth is a planetary body, but
Speaker 2: so are asteroids. Asteroids are planetary bodies because they're orbiting.
Speaker 2: They're in our Solar system, so they're a planetary body.
Speaker 1: I feel like it's kind of like a not all
Speaker 1: cack not all succulents are cactive, but all cacti are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, something like that. Okay, Yeah, So if you
Speaker 2: have to be a planet, if you so, you have
Speaker 2: to be round, So you have to have enough gravity
Speaker 2: to have formed a around shaped object. So there's a
Speaker 2: lot of asteroids that are that look like potatoes or
Speaker 2: like weird dumb bell things, and those are not could
Speaker 2: never be planets because they're not shaped like a planet is.
Speaker 2: So you have to have enough mass that you create
Speaker 2: enough gravity to round out your your shape. You also
Speaker 2: have to have cleared your orbit, and what that means
Speaker 2: is that there's no debris in front of your behind you.
Speaker 2: You have collected all of the matter that's in your
Speaker 2: path to form yourself, to form the planetary body.
Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever realized that we're kind of
Speaker 1: like a swiffer, Like that's part of where we get
Speaker 1: all of our stuff to make things is just by
Speaker 1: picking it up as we go. Yeah, so it's actually interesting.
Speaker 2: We Earth acquires a lot of mass just by traveling
Speaker 2: through space. And when you see like meteor showers, that's
Speaker 2: us traveling through a trail of rocks of stuff that
Speaker 2: then encounters our atmosphere, or that we encounter it and
Speaker 2: then they come crashing in beautiful light shows in the sky.
Speaker 1: That's so exciting. Yeah, what voice was that? I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I just could not contain myself here thinking about meteor showers,
Speaker 1: and I sound like I've just found a kitten in
Speaker 1: my pocket for like most of this episode anyway. And
Speaker 1: have we always had the moon?
Speaker 2: So the moon essentially? So the moon formed very very
Speaker 2: soon after the Earth did so essentially when you're thinking
Speaker 2: about geologic time, Yes, the moon has always been here
Speaker 2: with us.
Speaker 1: And why did you grow up loving the moon so much?
Speaker 2: Because you see it? You see it. It's some and
Speaker 2: it changes every day. It's either a little bit brighter,
Speaker 2: a little bit darker. It's like a kid that you
Speaker 2: would hear songs about the moon or or read like
Speaker 2: the Little Prince. I love the little Prince.
Speaker 1: You know who hasn't been impacted by the Little Prince?
Speaker 1: I mean I was for sure right, no pun on
Speaker 1: the impact crater. So The Little Prince is a novella
Speaker 1: and it was written by this French writer, poet and
Speaker 1: aviator whose name I can't pronounce in French. So I'm
Speaker 1: going to sabotage it and try pronouncing it with a
Speaker 1: Texas accent. Antoine to Saint Aukesbury. Now, the book was
Speaker 1: published in nineteen forty three. It's about a prince who
Speaker 1: lived on a tiny asteroid. Anyway, it's this pensive, moody,
Speaker 1: wonderful French tale about exploration and also love. And it
Speaker 1: contains gems like all the stars are a riot of flowers.
Speaker 1: And it involves a rose and a fox and a
Speaker 1: prince and the geological composition in orbit of small planetary bodies.
Speaker 1: So yes, this book about an asteroid made an impact.
Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit about where you grew up.
Speaker 1: Where you grew up, Was there a lot of light pollution?
Speaker 1: Were you able to see stars and moons and planets
Speaker 1: when you grew up?
Speaker 2: So I actually grew up in Portugal, in Lisbon, so
Speaker 2: I did live in the city. But my birthday is
Speaker 2: August eleven, and around that time there's a meteor shower
Speaker 2: that peaks on the twelfth, So for my birthday. Every
Speaker 2: night we would go, me and my family and my friends.
Speaker 2: We would go out to the beach to watch the
Speaker 2: meteor showers. That was like a thing every year we
Speaker 2: would go and do so. Yes, there was pollution, but
Speaker 2: at the same time, there was this event around my
Speaker 2: birthday that we would go and see. So it's just
Speaker 2: always being looking at space was always something that was
Speaker 2: like special and fascinating.
Speaker 1: My god, it was like free firework. It was free
Speaker 1: fire It's just just for me. And when did you
Speaker 1: decide to start studying the moon and studying planetary chology.
Speaker 2: Oh man, it's been a very, very windy road. That
Speaker 2: wasn't always the plan. I actually had an internship at
Speaker 2: JPL when I was a community college student, but I
Speaker 2: was studying electrical engineering. I was not going to do
Speaker 2: planetary science. I wasn't going to be doing science at
Speaker 2: all because I wasn't sure that was a practical thing.
Speaker 2: I actually didn't even know really what a scientist. I
Speaker 2: had no idea. My parents were artists, like they were
Speaker 2: not scientists. I hadn't really been exposed to what a
Speaker 2: scientist does. So I'm like, okay, I like science, I
Speaker 2: like math, what's a practical thing that I could do?
Speaker 2: So an engineer. Of course, I'm going to go be
Speaker 2: an engineer. So I got an internship at JPL to
Speaker 2: do engineering type things. But my advisor there project wasn't
Speaker 2: set up yet. So he's like, well, I have this
Speaker 2: data for you to analyze. Would you rather do that instead?
Speaker 2: So I said yes, So I started. I was actually
Speaker 2: using magnetometer data looking at the magnetic fields of Jupiter.
Speaker 2: That's what I started doing. So this was your busy work.
Speaker 2: This was magnometera Jupiter. Yes, yes, is it? That's what
Speaker 2: he was like, Okay, well we figure out the project.
Speaker 2: You do this. But it really opened up this whole
Speaker 2: field that I didn't know existed. I had no idea
Speaker 2: that planetary science existed. I knew about astronomy. I knew
Speaker 2: that there was the people that would study the stars
Speaker 2: and the planets, and I always just thought those were astronomers.
Speaker 1: But working at.
Speaker 2: GPL, this is where they it's a Jet propulsion Laboratory
Speaker 2: here in California in Pasadena, where they build a lot
Speaker 2: of these rovers and spacecraft that go study other planets.
Speaker 2: That's our discovery. WHOA, there's this whole field out there
Speaker 2: that is just dedicated to study our solar system, our world,
Speaker 2: and the world's near us, and just opened up this
Speaker 2: whole world that I didn't even know existed about science.
Speaker 2: So then when I had transferred to UCLA for my
Speaker 2: undergrad as an electrical engineering major, and I ended up switching, So.
Speaker 1: I switched to geophysics and space physics.
Speaker 2: Because I now I knew that there was there that
Speaker 2: was something I could study. I could study the planets,
Speaker 2: and I could help send spacecraft to other worlds, and
Speaker 2: I wanted to be part of that. I wanted to
Speaker 2: be part of that world, the.
Speaker 1: Wather in free wish I could be part of that.
Speaker 1: Take me back a little bit too, because I understand
Speaker 1: you were in the military. I was, yes, And so
Speaker 1: before you got to community college even what was your
Speaker 1: what was your process?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I was seventeen when I graduated high school
Speaker 2: and I joined the US Air Force right after graduation.
Speaker 1: When did you move from Lisbon to.
Speaker 2: The US, I was eleven years old, So I moved
Speaker 2: un I says, when I was eleven. And so the
Speaker 2: reason I joined the military was my my father had
Speaker 2: terminal cancer. Was he was dying and because we weren't
Speaker 2: US citizens at that time. You couldn't get he couldn't work,
Speaker 2: so he couldn't He didn't have health care, and so
Speaker 2: you couldn't get Medicaid or Medicare because we weren't citizens.
Speaker 2: So he was without health care. And the just the
Speaker 2: supporting just so he could be comfortable. Pain medicine and
Speaker 2: anti anxiety medicine that you need when you're going through
Speaker 2: the dying process was costing. I think he was like
Speaker 2: eleven hundred dollars every ten days and we couldn't afford it.
Speaker 2: That was just there's nothing we could do. And I'm
Speaker 2: an only child. I had to do something, and I
Speaker 2: was seventeen. What could I do? And so I figured
Speaker 2: the military would be a good way to be able
Speaker 2: to provide for my family, And that's why I joined
Speaker 2: the military.
Speaker 1: Oh don't cry, No.
Speaker 2: It's and honestly, I think that that's the thing that
Speaker 2: I'm the most proud of in my life, is to
Speaker 2: be able to You're going to make me cry too,
Speaker 2: but it's it's a thing that I'm the most proud
Speaker 2: of that I think I've ever done. Because I was
Speaker 2: able to be there for him, both financially and emotionally.
Speaker 2: The Air Force was great about helping, so I would.
Speaker 2: I would they. I worked the night shift so that
Speaker 2: I could during the day, I could take him to
Speaker 2: the hospital, that I could take him to his appointments.
Speaker 2: And I made him a dependent of mine, which meant
Speaker 2: that they could the military would pay for his medical care.
Speaker 2: So of course it was terminal. He was going to die,
Speaker 2: but that I could, he could get the medicine that
Speaker 2: would make it more comfortable going through that process.
Speaker 1: So it was it was great for that. Sorry. I
Speaker 1: was fully red faced, wet cheeks, ugly crying recording this.
Speaker 1: Can you clone yourself? Can we just repopulate Mars with
Speaker 1: just you all? So when in when how long did
Speaker 1: you serve in the Air Force?
Speaker 2: Four years? I did four years, so I was in
Speaker 2: a US citizen when I went in. I got my
Speaker 2: citizenship through the military, which is great, but I couldn't
Speaker 2: get any of the cool jobs in the military because
Speaker 2: I couldn't get secret clearance, so I couldn't I couldn't
Speaker 2: work with satellites or like the space side of the military,
Speaker 2: which I'd always liked space.
Speaker 1: They don't tell you about what really happened in Roswell
Speaker 1: and they don't tell me. No, I think I'm just kidding. Well,
Speaker 1: don't don't even start with my.
Speaker 2: So I picked how I ended up picking the job
Speaker 2: that I got. So I worked in the medical field.
Speaker 2: I was the person who draws your blood and tests it. Oh,
Speaker 2: that's what I did for four years, testing people's urine
Speaker 2: and poop and growing bag teria.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you were just on like the bodily fluid schimmany.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's what I did for four years. But I
Speaker 2: didn't know what I wanted to do when I got out.
Speaker 2: I didn't really like wasn't crazy about the medical field.
Speaker 2: I didn't want to stay in there. I knew I
Speaker 2: liked science and math, but I hadn't taken a math
Speaker 2: or science class in like four years, and I was
Speaker 2: really afraid to fail. So I bartended for many years,
Speaker 2: just trying to find myself and figure out what I
Speaker 2: wanted to do. I started going to community college, just
Speaker 2: take a class year and there, and then I started
Speaker 2: doing well, and I'm like, Okay, maybe I can do this.
Speaker 2: This is a path I can take. And then slowly
Speaker 2: just taking more and more classes and I was doing well,
Speaker 2: and I said, okay, well I'm going to go get
Speaker 2: a science degree, an engineering degree, until you got until
Speaker 2: I got that internship at JPL that open the world
Speaker 2: of planetary science to me. I talk to a lot
Speaker 2: of people and when I tell them what I do, Oh,
Speaker 2: you're an astronomer, Like, no, I'm not. I don't. I'm
Speaker 2: not an astronomer. I'm a planetary scientist.
Speaker 1: I study rocks.
Speaker 2: And it's funny to think that a lot of the rovers,
Speaker 2: like all of the rovers that have gone to Mars,
Speaker 2: they're all robotic geologists.
Speaker 1: It's that's what they are.
Speaker 2: They're not astronomers. They're geologists.
Speaker 1: Yeah they're not. They're looking down, they're not They're not right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. That's hot goss about the moon. Okay, so
Speaker 1: I didn't learn until way too late, and I was like,
Speaker 1: the Moon is made of a bunch of junk from
Speaker 1: Earth that just maybe chunked off. Explain to me, where
Speaker 1: does this goddamn moon come from? Yeah.
Speaker 2: So the cool thing is actually we're not one hundred
Speaker 2: percent sure what, which is really really cool. It's just
Speaker 2: how many science questions are still left answering. We don't
Speaker 2: know that much about the Moon. There's still so much
Speaker 2: more to learn. But the idea is the prevalent, the
Speaker 2: one that most people think is the real. Thing that
Speaker 2: happened was that a marsized object, which we call thea,
Speaker 2: was just floating around space and crashed into the pro
Speaker 2: the early Earth, and they collided and stuff kind of
Speaker 2: it was flung out into space and coalesced to form
Speaker 2: the Moon. When you look at what the Moon and
Speaker 2: the Earth are made of, they're very similar. They look
Speaker 2: like they're made of the same stuff. So we think
Speaker 2: that that's what happened. Things collided, they mixed together, and
Speaker 2: then a big chunk of it got or several chunks
Speaker 2: of it got flown into space and then eventually coalesced
Speaker 2: into what our moon is today.
Speaker 1: And it's gravity that's keeping it all together and into
Speaker 1: a ball.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's how planets get bigger. You start out with
Speaker 2: little dust particles that are electrically attracted to each other,
Speaker 2: and they start getting sticking together, and everything has mass.
Speaker 2: Even a tiny dust particle has mass, and so it
Speaker 2: starts attracting the next dust particle, and then now you
Speaker 2: have little pebbles, and now the pebbles start getting stuck together,
Speaker 2: and then eventually you form a planet that's gravitationally bound
Speaker 2: to itself.
Speaker 1: Do you think there's any place on Earth where it's
Speaker 1: like we got in a collision. We still have a
Speaker 1: little bit of a dent.
Speaker 2: Yes, there's actually lots of craters that we see on Earth,
Speaker 2: well not lots compared to them. And when you look
Speaker 2: at the Moon, all those dots that you see on it,
Speaker 2: those are craters, and there's still some here on Earth.
Speaker 2: The thing about Earth is we have plate tectonics, which
Speaker 2: is always recycling our crust. We have the atmosphere and
Speaker 2: the wind and water, which erases a lot of the
Speaker 2: evidence that we have of impacts that have happened here
Speaker 2: on Earth. But there's a really beautiful one in Arizona.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you've ever been to Media Crater.
Speaker 1: So side note, I haven't been, but the Nerd Brigade
Speaker 1: orized a trip in a motor home a few years ago,
Speaker 1: and at the last minute I couldn't attend. But this
Speaker 1: meteor that bitch slapped northern Arizona is estimated to have
Speaker 1: weighed three hundred thousand tons and it hit the earth
Speaker 1: with the force one hundred and fifty times that of
Speaker 1: the Adam baumb in Hiroshima and left what looks like
Speaker 1: a geological chicken pox scar one mile across fifty five
Speaker 1: stories deep, near a town called Winslow, which was side
Speaker 1: note made famous partly because it's eighteen miles from a
Speaker 1: giant crater, but also Winslow was memorialized in the song
Speaker 1: take It Easy after a remember of the Eagles had
Speaker 1: his car break down there once.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm spending on a corner in Winslow, Arizona.
Speaker 1: The guy in the Eagles doesn't even mention the crater
Speaker 1: in the song, though, which is a disappointment. But this
Speaker 1: nearby meteor crater is sometimes known as the Behringer Crater,
Speaker 1: after mining engineer Daniel Moreau Barringer, who first postulated, Hey, y'all,
Speaker 1: I think this huge ass crater was caused by a meteor.
Speaker 1: Let me dig into it and become rich. So he
Speaker 1: got the right to mine it, thinking there must be
Speaker 1: like a huge chunk of iron under the surface, worth
Speaker 1: hundreds of millions of dollars. But after twenty five years
Speaker 1: and almost all of his savings, he got a report
Speaker 1: that the meteor wasn't buried under the earth. It just
Speaker 1: would have vaporized, so there was nothing to mine for
Speaker 1: and days after getting this report, Barringer died of a
Speaker 1: massive heart attack, but the Barringer family still owns the crater,
Speaker 1: and scientists refer to it as Barringer Crater as kind
Speaker 1: of a tip of the hat to be like, hey,
Speaker 1: thanks dude for knowing that this huge bowl in the
Speaker 1: Earth was formed by a space projectile. What a sincere
Speaker 1: bummer that the stress of it killed you. So why
Speaker 1: on Earth aren't there more of these craters to which
Speaker 1: we can take road trips?
Speaker 2: We have here on Earth, but our atmosphere protects us
Speaker 2: from a lot of them. If the rock is small enough,
Speaker 2: it'll just break up in the atmosphere, whereas on the
Speaker 2: Moon there is no atmosphere. I'll just slam into the
Speaker 2: ground and it'll be left. There'll be a hole there.
Speaker 2: And that's actually one of the cool things about studying
Speaker 2: the Moon. The Moon has experienced pretty much everything that
Speaker 2: the Earth has experienced, so and because it doesn't have
Speaker 2: plate tectonics and it doesn't have an atmosphere, it acts
Speaker 2: as a witness plate to everything that the Earth has experienced.
Speaker 1: So the Moon is kind of like a responsible sober
Speaker 1: friend who recalls details that haven't been blurred by atmosphere
Speaker 1: or shifting plates. Also, what's of the Moon's core? Is
Speaker 1: it like a jobbreaker? Raquel says, it has a core,
Speaker 1: it's just much smaller than the Earth's. Then she told
Speaker 1: me something truly crazy. I lost my damn mind. What's
Speaker 1: one of the.
Speaker 2: Cool things that I think when I think about the
Speaker 2: Moon and the impact that caused it was there was
Speaker 2: so much energy that collected from that original impact that
Speaker 2: form the Moon that the entire Moon was just a
Speaker 2: magma ocean. So that's the Yeah, just imagine the whole moon. No,
Speaker 2: just magma. Yeah, so that's what that's the prevailing theory,
Speaker 2: and we have evidence for that. So it's just lava.
Speaker 2: The whole thing is just oh my god. And so
Speaker 2: then what happens as you start cooling down, your crystals
Speaker 2: start forming, and the heavier crystals sort of sink to
Speaker 2: the bottom and the lighter stuff floats to the top.
Speaker 2: And so when you look at the Moon, you see
Speaker 2: that there's different shades. There's the light stuff and then
Speaker 2: there's the dark stuff. And we've brought rocks back from
Speaker 2: the Moon during the Apollo missions. We know that that
Speaker 2: light stuff is a north a site which is a
Speaker 2: very not dense rock. It's a very light type of rock.
Speaker 1: Again, a lava ocean. The moon was a lava ocean.
Speaker 1: Was the lava ocean here we are thinking it's cheese,
Speaker 1: but at one point it was haben narrow? Okay, So
Speaker 1: what is life?
Speaker 2: It's here on Earth we have different types of rocks.
Speaker 2: We have igneous rocks, outimentary rocks, whereas the Moon, it's
Speaker 2: essentially all that light stuff is just one one thing
Speaker 2: and the only way that you can form something like
Speaker 2: that is if it all just pretty much formed at
Speaker 2: the same time from the same stuff. And so we
Speaker 2: think it's just a big anorthosie crust, except for the
Speaker 2: dark regions that you see on the Moon, and those
Speaker 2: are ancient volcanic planes.
Speaker 1: Wait, so there were volcanos also on the Moon. Yes, okay, yes, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: what a back store. So we so something hits Earth,
Speaker 1: shit flies into the atmosphere. At what point does it
Speaker 1: be called lava?
Speaker 2: Well, from all the heat, from all the heat of it,
Speaker 2: like heat, you know, when you hit something, you generate energy,
Speaker 2: and that energy is probably heat and make sound in
Speaker 2: it and whatnot. But yeah, it's heat, and so just
Speaker 2: from accretion, which is stuff coming together. It just melted
Speaker 2: the whole because it's not that big, right the Moon.
Speaker 2: I mean it is big, but not that big, so
Speaker 2: it's it's easier to melt the whole thing.
Speaker 1: How big around is the moon comparatively? What's the size
Speaker 1: difference between the moon.
Speaker 2: So if you were so, if the Earth were to
Speaker 2: be a basketball mm hmm, then the Moon is a
Speaker 2: tennis ball. Oh yeah, perfect, Yeah, done, amazing, That's how I.
Speaker 1: Like to think of it. Yeah. And then what about
Speaker 1: these volcanoes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they were a long time ago, like three
Speaker 2: billion years ago, so very ancient volcanoes that flooded towards
Speaker 2: So there's not a lot of them on the far
Speaker 2: side of the moon. So it's not the dark side.
Speaker 2: It's the far side because it's it's not dark.
Speaker 1: We've been saying it wrong. Thanks King Floyd.
Speaker 3: There is no dark side in the moon really, matter
Speaker 3: of fact, it's all dak The only thing that makes
Speaker 3: it look light is the sun.
Speaker 1: How dare you? So?
Speaker 2: The side near to us is actually crust, is thinner,
Speaker 2: so it's easier for lavas to bubble up, and so
Speaker 2: what you see when you look up those dark regions.
Speaker 2: We're just ancient lava planes that flowed and found a
Speaker 2: low place on the Moon and just settle there.
Speaker 1: Okay, so now this is very stupid, but where is
Speaker 1: the moon in relation? It goes around like where is
Speaker 1: the moon at any given time? How do moon phases work?
Speaker 1: Just like, pretend I'm someone you met at the car
Speaker 1: wash who doesn't know jackshit about the moon, because that's
Speaker 1: pretty much what's happening. But we're not at a car wash.
Speaker 2: So the faces of the moon are caused by what
Speaker 2: we're seeing is where the sun is lighting the moon.
Speaker 2: So during a full moon, the sun is directly behind
Speaker 2: If you were to be staring at the moon and
Speaker 2: it's a full moon, the sun would be directly behind you.
Speaker 2: But the reason that there's if you see the full
Speaker 2: moon and it's not an eclipse.
Speaker 1: Is because that.
Speaker 2: There's a slight tilt to the Moon's orbit, so it's
Speaker 2: not perfectly in line with the sun, and so you
Speaker 2: see the sun lighting up the full face of the moon. Now,
Speaker 2: when the sun, if you're again staring at the moon
Speaker 2: and you see only half of it light, that means
Speaker 2: that the sun is to your either to your left
Speaker 2: or to your right, And when it's a new moon,
Speaker 2: when you don't see any light of the moon is
Speaker 2: because the sun is lighting the dark side of the moon,
Speaker 2: the far side, what we call the far side.
Speaker 1: So it's always a full moon somewhere. It just depends
Speaker 1: on where.
Speaker 2: You're hanging out, that's right. Yeah, it's only our perspective
Speaker 2: that makes the phases of the moon happen.
Speaker 1: How does the moon affect the oceans and maybe us?
Speaker 2: So the moon has a couple of effects on us.
Speaker 2: So it creates our tides, so high tide, low tide,
Speaker 2: that's from the It's the moon and the sun. A
Speaker 2: lot of people think it's just the moon, but it's
Speaker 2: a combination of both.
Speaker 1: But the moon.
Speaker 2: Isronger because it's it's closer, so it pulls on our oceans.
Speaker 2: Depending on where it is on the on the planet,
Speaker 2: which area where on the planet's closest to, it's going
Speaker 2: to tug on that part of the planet. So it
Speaker 2: actually tugs the rocks as well. It's not just the
Speaker 2: water just the water is just easier to deform.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, so it's tullling.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So actually our earth is yeah, our Earth is
Speaker 2: slightly oblate because we have the Moon tugging at it,
Speaker 2: the Moon and the Sun. Of course, then we tug
Speaker 2: at it. We tug at the Moon as well.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I'm going to have galaxy brain break down
Speaker 1: right now.
Speaker 2: And the other way it affects us as we it
Speaker 2: slows down our days.
Speaker 1: So the Earth used to be.
Speaker 2: Spinning a lot faster than it used to be, but
Speaker 2: because of conservation of momentum angular momentum, it has slowed
Speaker 2: down the Earth's spin.
Speaker 1: So about every one hundred years we get two point
Speaker 1: five milliseconds slower. And in twenty twelve we had to
Speaker 1: add a second to the world clock just to make
Speaker 1: up for it. Moon's like I did that. Likewise, Earth's
Speaker 1: gravity pulls on the Moon, the Moon slows down a little,
Speaker 1: and then the Moon becomes what's called tidally locked. So
Speaker 1: its orbit around us takes twenty eight days, and its
Speaker 1: own rotation takes about twenty eight days, which means that
Speaker 1: it's daylight for over thirteen earth days straight, Raquel explains.
Speaker 1: And as you will hear, this was news.
Speaker 2: To me right now. It's it is rotating. So the
Speaker 2: Moon does rotate, so it spins around itself at the
Speaker 2: same period that it goes around the Earth, so that's
Speaker 2: the reason why we always see the same face.
Speaker 1: I never knew that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I never knew that it's not stationary. If it
Speaker 2: were stationary, you would see all the faces. So it's
Speaker 2: rotating with the Earth, so it is spinning and that's
Speaker 2: the reason why we see the same face always.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I didn't know for the longest time
Speaker 1: that we don't see the other side of the moon.
Speaker 1: Like I just didn't know. It didn't even occur to me.
Speaker 1: I was like, the moon changes so much. Sometimes it
Speaker 1: just looks like like big old God just left a
Speaker 1: toenail clipping right up in this sky and you're like,
Speaker 1: it's like, come on, man. And other times it's just
Speaker 1: it's just like full beach ball. Okay, listen, I am
Speaker 1: your QBC host right now. Okay, let me be your
Speaker 1: QBC host. I will throw my pride into a dumpster
Speaker 1: and ask the questions we're all too embarrassed to ask.
Speaker 1: But it's okay. I'm living in active inquiry. I'm not ashamed.
Speaker 1: How does the moon work? So the far side of
Speaker 1: the moon, what exactly is there? What's happening on the
Speaker 1: far side of the moon?
Speaker 2: More craters. Okay, less lava, much less lava. Most of
Speaker 2: the lava, the ancient lava fields are here on the
Speaker 2: near side. Like I said, the crust is thinner, so
Speaker 2: it's easier for lava to bubble up on this side.
Speaker 2: So the far side it just like a much lighter
Speaker 2: color to the moon because it's mostly that north the
Speaker 2: site that I was talking about earlier, and lots of
Speaker 2: impact craters side notes.
Speaker 1: So yes, the light side is on the dark side,
Speaker 1: which is really the far side. So the far side
Speaker 1: has tons of craters and it's lighter in color, and
Speaker 1: so far no alien communes. Now the near side is
Speaker 1: smoother and has darker splotches of basalt. Those are called
Speaker 1: mares because way back in the day folks thought they
Speaker 1: were oceans. Now the Mares are flatter and they have
Speaker 1: fewer craters because it's younger terrain, so lighter parts a
Speaker 1: north to side rock called the Highlands. The darker parts
Speaker 1: are basalt called the mares. Boom the highlands and the Mare.
Speaker 1: So Pallo sixteen landed in the Highlands at the lighter regions.
Speaker 1: But again they tried to look for a place that
Speaker 1: was nice and flatten on the lot of craters because
Speaker 1: it's safer for the astronauts and for the lander to
Speaker 1: land in. And then Apollo seventeen landed right on the
Speaker 1: edge between High and Ama because they were trying to
Speaker 1: sample the rocks from the two different places. How many
Speaker 1: times have we been to the Moon? Six We've been
Speaker 1: to the Moon six times. The first time was everyone
Speaker 1: Everyone cared that it is July twentieth, nineteen hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty nine, and man is about to land on the Moon.
Speaker 4: One all for Man.
Speaker 3: One.
Speaker 2: It's pretty cool and we should go back. There's still
Speaker 2: so many questions to answer, and the Moon is so
Speaker 2: interesting and it's so close, and it's just the perfect
Speaker 2: place to go before we go to Mars. There's water there,
Speaker 2: you know that there's wait, there's water on the moon.
Speaker 2: Ice water, ice on the Moon. Yes, yes, where is
Speaker 2: it in these at the polls? There's these craters that
Speaker 2: never see sunlight. They're so deep that sunlight never actually
Speaker 2: enters the crater, so they have not seen sunlight for
Speaker 2: billions of years.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: And it's actually one of the places that we've ever
Speaker 2: measured the Solar system are inside these craters colder than
Speaker 2: the surface of Pluto. Yeah, yeah, so there's trapped ice
Speaker 2: there that we've thrown a something into one of these
Speaker 2: and then detected the plume that it that it's spewed
Speaker 2: and there's water. So there, you know, we know, we
Speaker 2: know that there's ice in these things. How much we're
Speaker 2: not sure, you know, we have guesses, but we think
Speaker 2: it's plenty to provide water to generate fuel to shield
Speaker 2: us from radiation because water is a great shielding material
Speaker 2: for radiation that might be coming in from the solar wind.
Speaker 1: Okay, yes, of course I had to look up solar wind,
Speaker 1: and it's a stream of plasma from the Sun, charged particles,
Speaker 1: mostly electrons and protons. Also, I found an article showing
Speaker 1: data that the Apollo astronauts have significantly higher mortality rates
Speaker 1: from heart disease than there colleagues who did not visit
Speaker 1: the Old Moon. So they did some studies with mice too,
Speaker 1: and they found that yes, deep space radiation can affect
Speaker 1: vascular health. Also, twelve people have walked on the Moon,
Speaker 1: which is weird because you can probably name the two
Speaker 1: maybe three. So if you're ever stressed out about an
Speaker 1: embarrassing thing that, like you said at a party, just
Speaker 1: know that there are ten people who have walked on
Speaker 1: the frickin Moon, and most of us don't even recall
Speaker 1: their names. Life is long, memories fade. Just do what
Speaker 1: you want to do. Just be nice to each other.
Speaker 1: Oh and what did we toss into the moon? Was
Speaker 1: it a firecracker? No? So in two thousand and nine
Speaker 1: we strategically dropped a spent rocket stage into a South
Speaker 1: Pole crater and then it was like wow. And then
Speaker 1: we followed it with a spacecraft covered in sensors to
Speaker 1: go whiff up the dust. So it's like a very
Speaker 1: well calculated Oops, a daisy did I drop? That? Followed
Speaker 1: by a robot bloodhound.
Speaker 2: And another reason the Moon's cool is like, there's lava caves.
Speaker 1: Do you know about the caves? No, there's caves, I
Speaker 1: look like, I know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's caves where we can set up human bases
Speaker 2: because they'll be shielded from radiation and from the cold
Speaker 2: and the heat. Because the sun, the sun heats up
Speaker 2: the surface a lot. So there's it's either very very
Speaker 2: hot or very very cold, depending on if you're in
Speaker 2: the shade or in the sun.
Speaker 1: How cold how hot?
Speaker 2: We talk in oh Man. In these permally shadowed craters,
Speaker 2: you can get down to fifteen degrees calvin. So that's
Speaker 2: so zero kelvin is absolute zero, and you can I mean,
Speaker 2: this is just fifteen degrees higher than that is very
Speaker 2: very very cold.
Speaker 1: So to put that in context with the thermometer on
Speaker 1: your porch or like your car's dashboard, daylight on the
Speaker 1: Moon can get up to two hundred and sixty degrees fahrenheit,
Speaker 1: and at night it's a brisk negative two hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty fahrenheit. That's one twenty seven celsius and its hottest
Speaker 1: and minus one seventy three celsius when it's cold, which
Speaker 1: means if we do end up cramming ourselves into caves
Speaker 1: on the Moon, we're gonna need a lot of extra
Speaker 1: space just for scarves and parkas for the thirteen Earth
Speaker 1: days of nighttime. Also perhaps some flip flops and a
Speaker 1: hibachi for those long ass days, and some sunscreen made
Speaker 1: out of magic were they Again, it's funny because you
Speaker 1: think of the Moon. I think the images we see
Speaker 1: of the Moon look relatively flat, and everything looks so
Speaker 1: dark that it just seems there's something like it just
Speaker 1: seems very inert. Oh like it must just be like
Speaker 1: tepid room temperature and everything very flat, and that's just
Speaker 1: not what's happening.
Speaker 2: I know, it's it just wanders from hot cold hot cold.
Speaker 2: And so then we need to if we do set
Speaker 2: up bases there, we need to shield our astronauts from that.
Speaker 2: And I think caves are a good place to do it,
Speaker 2: or maybe inside some of these craters.
Speaker 1: I mean we start in caves here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good point, right, Yeah, we should continue.
Speaker 2: This is like the way to continue human exploration and
Speaker 2: just find caves and go live.
Speaker 1: And would you ever go to the moon if you
Speaker 1: give them a chance. I feel like.
Speaker 2: That My opinion changes often. Before I had kids, It's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: of course, And then I had kids, and I'm like,
Speaker 2: they need me, They need me here until they are
Speaker 2: the self sustaining, so like thirty.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm just saying, you know what, humans live longer
Speaker 1: than they used to. So maybe it's part of the
Speaker 1: natural order that it's getting later for us to make
Speaker 1: a blanket, nest on the couch and the den and
Speaker 1: neat our parents' cheese until we're thirty four. Raquel's children,
Speaker 1: I'm sure will move out when it's time bring them
Speaker 1: to the moon. I would.
Speaker 2: I would be so happy if my kids became astronauts.
Speaker 2: I don't know why, Like it's super weird because it's
Speaker 2: probably not the safest thing for them to do, but
Speaker 2: to explore, I don't know, to become exploited. There's something
Speaker 2: so poetic and beautiful about, you know, pushing the boundaries
Speaker 2: of what humanity has done and can do.
Speaker 1: Do you read them The Little Prince?
Speaker 2: I have The Little Prince in Portuguese and I've read
Speaker 2: it to them, but they don't.
Speaker 1: I don't think they speak. She case sadly, it's a
Speaker 1: little secret. I just amazoned her one in English, like
Speaker 1: a sketchy little holiday elf, but then the gift option
Speaker 1: wasn't working, so it's just arriving unceremoniously with no card,
Speaker 1: just like here, which is embarrassing. Also, do her kids
Speaker 1: like the moon?
Speaker 2: My little I mean, my my he's two and a
Speaker 2: half now, but I think ever since he was like
Speaker 2: a year and a half, he'll point to the moon
Speaker 2: and be like moon moon, because I think like every
Speaker 2: night I set up the telescope just to look at
Speaker 2: the moon, like almost every night. It's I love looking
Speaker 2: at it and it doesn't get old every time. I
Speaker 2: look through that eyepiece or through my camera, it's it's
Speaker 2: just beautiful, and I don't know, breathtaking to me every
Speaker 2: time doesn't get old.
Speaker 1: Do you have favorite craters or mares or I know
Speaker 1: the lingo?
Speaker 2: Now, yeah, you're in it.
Speaker 1: Oh man, she definitely has the patience of someone capable
Speaker 1: of raising a toddler. Bless her.
Speaker 2: I really like Copernicus Crater and Eratosthenes. And the reason
Speaker 2: why is they I think they pretty much set off
Speaker 2: the entire field of lunar science. So and well, how
Speaker 2: we study how things age and impact craters. So Copernicus
Speaker 2: Crater is is a bright, bright.
Speaker 1: Crater.
Speaker 2: So this is something we could talk about space weather.
Speaker 2: So if something is fresh, it's bright, and as it's
Speaker 2: exposed to space weather, it darkens. Oh so if you
Speaker 2: see something that's a crater that's very right on the Moon,
Speaker 2: it's a younger crater than something else. Yeah. And the
Speaker 2: reason we knew this is because so this crater, Copernicus Crater,
Speaker 2: has these crater rays, and crater rays are material that
Speaker 2: were ejected during the impact. You punch the ground and
Speaker 2: a lot of stuff comes up and then gets flown
Speaker 2: all over the place. And creating these beautiful crater rays,
Speaker 2: and some of those crater rays went into another crater.
Speaker 2: So that's how we knew that stuff that was right
Speaker 2: must be younger than the stuff that is darker, because
Speaker 2: we have these rays that are going into these craters.
Speaker 2: So and that's how we call the superposition and a
Speaker 2: lot of dating on planetary bodies because we don't have
Speaker 2: samples from it get done through these crater counting and
Speaker 2: superposition principles of what is on top of something else?
Speaker 1: So is it kind of like a paint drippings You
Speaker 1: can tell what's on top because of the splatter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, something like that. Yeah. And then we use
Speaker 2: samples brought back from the Apollo missions to sort of
Speaker 2: ground truth what we think the age of something is.
Speaker 2: So now you can create a curve of how many creators?
Speaker 2: What does that mean for age?
Speaker 1: So you kind of test it out on the Moon
Speaker 1: and then those theories hold for otherwise. It's people have
Speaker 1: fights about this.
Speaker 2: Actually at conferences, people will break out into well, I
Speaker 2: had a professor told me that he saw somebody punch
Speaker 2: somebody else. We're at a conference over creator counting statistics
Speaker 2: like this. People fight about this because there's a lot
Speaker 2: of uncertainties. And you know, if you tweak something, there's
Speaker 2: different models, and if you tweak something in something small
Speaker 2: in one a completely different answer. And so people are
Speaker 2: always battling like, no, you did that wrong. No, this
Speaker 2: is right, this is wrong. Anyways, rama, it's so much drama. Yeah,
Speaker 2: crater counting so much drama in planetary science.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was a full moon that day. Probably I
Speaker 1: want to ask about a particular crater, Okay, I like
Speaker 1: to call it the moon's butthole. Yeah, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just it's just like a cat walking away from you,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Why did he Why is
Speaker 1: it named after Tychobrie, right, Tachobria? And do you know
Speaker 1: anything about him?
Speaker 2: I do know that his nose was cut off and
Speaker 2: apparently he died because he felt like his bladder exploded.
Speaker 2: Oh no, because it was impolite to leave dinner or
Speaker 2: somebody was like at a dinner party.
Speaker 1: This is a story I've heard. I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's true or not. This man, oh lord, Okay, So
Speaker 1: he was a Danish astronomer and a nobleman who had
Speaker 1: a long mustache that looked kind of like two drooping
Speaker 1: harry lip slugs, and he made a ton of very
Speaker 1: precise astronomical observations in his time, which is all very exciting.
Speaker 1: But yes, hello, He did also lose part of his
Speaker 1: nose in a duel with his third cousin. What was
Speaker 1: it over? Good question? Who was a better mathematician? But
Speaker 1: he also married a commoner for love, and he was
Speaker 1: eventually exiled for pissing off the king's doctor. So this
Speaker 1: man lived life. So this is what I know about him.
Speaker 1: So we actually thought about naming one of our children Tycho,
Speaker 1: but I knew the history of Tycho, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: I cannot name my child. He also had a pet
Speaker 1: moose that lived in his mansion that would get drunk. No,
Speaker 1: I didn't character the fact that there hasn't been like
Speaker 1: a John Malkovich movie about Tyger Bryan's criminal. Then he
Speaker 1: will listen to this. I would like to pitch it.
Speaker 1: But why is the biggest crater on the moon that
Speaker 1: we see named after him?
Speaker 2: Do we know all of the creators are named after scientists?
Speaker 2: They are ye, craters on the moon are named after scientists.
Speaker 1: Who gets to name these things?
Speaker 2: There's a committee. There's so many craters on the moon.
Speaker 2: A lot of them are not named because they're not
Speaker 2: either big enough or maybe we ran out of sciences.
Speaker 1: Because I think they have to be dead.
Speaker 2: I think have to be done. I think so.
Speaker 1: I wonder if anyone's like, can you sue me? Very?
Speaker 1: Can you push me? I want a creator? May so
Speaker 1: many poison my drink. I did a little follow up
Speaker 1: fact checking, and the Taycho moose situation is even weirder.
Speaker 1: He would send his moose out to parties without him
Speaker 1: and it won. The moose just straight up drank too
Speaker 1: many beers and fell down some stairs and died. Also,
Speaker 1: the name of the moon is different for different areas,
Speaker 1: so scholars are in one quadrant. Greek names are toward
Speaker 1: the north. And I found a NASA document from nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty one that read quote newcomers to lunar studies often
Speaker 1: expressed dismay at the apparently haphazard and illogical disposition of
Speaker 1: names and letters on lunar maps. Their dismay is not
Speaker 1: without some foundation. Also, the Tycho crater is sometimes referred
Speaker 1: to as the Umbilica, so now it's even more confusing.
Speaker 1: Belly button, lunar butthole. So many names. Moving on movies
Speaker 1: about the moon, m Are there any that you love?
Speaker 1: Hate paper Moon, Moonstruck? The Moon is a little like love,
Speaker 1: Will you marry me? I will marry you. I will
Speaker 1: be your wife. You love them Loretta oh good? And
Speaker 1: you love them? They drive you crazy? Anything moon related
Speaker 1: in pop culture that either really gets your goat or
Speaker 1: that you love. Oh my gosh, there's a book about
Speaker 1: the moon. Okay, I really like what is it?
Speaker 2: It's called Seven Eaves. I don't remember the author. I'm
Speaker 2: really bad with the names.
Speaker 1: Neil Stevenson, copyright twenty fifteen.
Speaker 2: But it's called Seven Eaves. And the first thing that
Speaker 2: happens in the first page, so I'm not giving anything away,
Speaker 2: is the.
Speaker 1: Moon explodes caboo ouch.
Speaker 2: And then it's the story of the next five thousand
Speaker 2: years of what happens. Ooh, it's a beautiful story and
Speaker 2: it's it's a good book. Does it recommend it?
Speaker 1: Does it explode because some pesky human went and through
Speaker 1: something one of its lava caves.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to give anything away.
Speaker 1: It's like, ouch, do what are you doing? And then again,
Speaker 1: stupid question, I don't care. When the moon is really
Speaker 1: really huge in the sky and it's very impressive, or
Speaker 1: when it's really orange at the horizon, what is happening?
Speaker 1: When sometimes we look out and we're like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: is a witch gonna fly past that? What's happening? Moon?
Speaker 1: Why are you so big?
Speaker 2: So that actually happens to be a perspective thing. It
Speaker 2: just looks big because it's near things in the horizon,
Speaker 2: so it's actually not that big. It just looks it's
Speaker 2: a perspective thing. It's the same size as when you
Speaker 2: later on you look up and it just looks small.
Speaker 2: But it just because there's nothing else around it, it
Speaker 2: just looks boring. It's kind of like in photography when
Speaker 2: you're trying to get like the scale. If you're trying
Speaker 2: to take a picture of a landscape and you really
Speaker 2: want to convey this scale of something. If you just
Speaker 2: take a picture of the thing that's really far away,
Speaker 2: it's like eh. But if you put something in the
Speaker 2: foreground you can it becomes a lot more majestic because
Speaker 2: now you have this perspective of like, okay, well the
Speaker 2: human looks this big against it, Oh wow, that must
Speaker 2: be huge. So it's the same idea. It's the same
Speaker 2: Oh my god, it's an optical illusion. Yeah, exactly, why
Speaker 2: is it?
Speaker 1: When you see the moon, you're like, oh, the man's
Speaker 1: so pretty. I'm going to take a picture and send
Speaker 1: it to my boyfriend. Be like, look at the moon,
Speaker 1: and then you take a picture. It looks like shit.
Speaker 2: Because it's an optical illusion because the camera is actually
Speaker 2: capturing what it truly is, but your brain is interpreting
Speaker 2: it to be a lot more epic than it actually is.
Speaker 1: Yes, oh my god, I did not know. Doubt. I know,
Speaker 1: I know it's so sad, but we can still marvel
Speaker 1: at it.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I do every time, do it every time.
Speaker 2: And the redness is our atmosphere. Our atmosphere more easily
Speaker 2: scatters blue light, and so the red what reaches us
Speaker 2: is usually more the red lights if it's traveled for
Speaker 2: a long time. That's why sunsets are beautiful, because it
Speaker 2: has more atmosphere to travel through, so a lot of
Speaker 2: the blue light has been scattered away, leaving us with
Speaker 2: just the red tones and the orange tones.
Speaker 1: How do you feel when people get amped for supermoons?
Speaker 1: I mean, I love.
Speaker 2: When people get ampt about the moon because I get
Speaker 2: ampt about the moon. It was cool because it actually
Speaker 2: does look bigger during the supermoon, so that's and it
Speaker 2: looks it's bigger because it's closer. So the orbit of
Speaker 2: the Moon is not perfectly circular, so there's sometimes when
Speaker 2: it's closer to Earth and other times it's further away.
Speaker 2: But it's you know, it doesn't get that much bigger
Speaker 2: in the sky, but it's perceivable to our to our
Speaker 2: eye because we're so used to seeing it every day
Speaker 2: that you know, any small change like oh yeah, that
Speaker 2: actually looks pretty majestic, pretty epic because it might be
Speaker 2: like seventeen percent and bigger, but to us, I get
Speaker 2: apparently that's a big change for our eyes.
Speaker 1: Do you think that? And there's always been a certain
Speaker 1: number of supermoons, but we maybe they make the news.
Speaker 2: More absolutely Yeah, okay, yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Feel like we need something good to talk about, and we're.
Speaker 2: Like the moon.
Speaker 1: What we got, guys, The moon's bigger. We've run that story, like, okay,
Speaker 1: I have questions from Patrin Okay, it's a lightning round.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, Okay, I got a lot of questions.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh damn, because we all love the moon.
Speaker 1: The other thing about the moon, what has the moon
Speaker 1: ever done to you. It's true the moon. I feel
Speaker 1: like the moon is that friend that you can you
Speaker 1: can rely on. Yeap. Sometimes they're close, sometimes they're far,
Speaker 1: but no one's The Moon's never pissed anyone off, not yet.
Speaker 2: Although it's getting further away though, so every year about
Speaker 2: three point eight centimeters every year it's moving whither way
Speaker 2: just little orbit. The orbit is getting bigger.
Speaker 1: Did you find another planet that LI likes better?
Speaker 2: We're gonna go love on Mars or something. I have
Speaker 2: a board of, like these people suck.
Speaker 1: Actually, before I get to Patren questions, how do you
Speaker 1: feel about the moon just being called the moon? All
Speaker 1: the other moons have freakin' names.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but this is the moon with capital M.
Speaker 1: Good point.
Speaker 2: So this is something that actually I get upset about
Speaker 2: when people talk about the moon and it's in lower case.
Speaker 1: I'm like, no, it's a bricase it's the moon.
Speaker 2: If you talk about Earth's moon, then you can it
Speaker 2: can be lower case. But if it's the Moon, it's capital.
Speaker 1: It's like the edge the guitarist for you too, who
Speaker 1: else is going to put a capital T capital E?
Speaker 1: You know what I mean?
Speaker 2: That's bala, that is baller.
Speaker 1: So the fact that it doesn't need it a little
Speaker 1: cute little nickname based on a Latin or based on
Speaker 1: a Greek god.
Speaker 2: That's right, it's own thing.
Speaker 1: Just call it the moon. Do you feel weird? Same
Speaker 1: about that? Our solar system is just called the solar system.
Speaker 2: Well, it's the best one because we're here. It formed us.
Speaker 2: Like I'm not upset about those things because these are
Speaker 2: things that we are here.
Speaker 1: That's our perspective.
Speaker 2: Like if we weren't here, the Solar system would be
Speaker 2: boring because there'd be nothing to appreciate it or to
Speaker 2: study it or to So I think a lot of
Speaker 2: when it comes to two astronomy planetary science, it's like
Speaker 2: we are able to appreciate that. So, yes, it's the
Speaker 2: moon because it's our moon and we are the ones
Speaker 2: who are studying it. So this can be our our thing.
Speaker 1: Right, like it can rain diamonds on Titan, but like
Speaker 1: this is our moon, our moon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, screw Titan. It's got lover craters. There's our moon.
Speaker 2: It's our moon.
Speaker 1: So the moon is like mom. If it's anyone's mom,
Speaker 1: that's a lowercase. But your mom, well that's like the
Speaker 1: mom capital t capital M because it's special, it's ours
Speaker 1: and super quick. Before the lightning rapid fire around, I
Speaker 1: want to do a very quick promo swap with another podcast.
Speaker 1: They are listeners of ologies. They have their very own
Speaker 1: show in which they freak each other out with the
Speaker 1: ghost stories. Is it science not so much? Is it fun?
Speaker 1: Heck yes, so I'll let them tell you about them.
Speaker 4: Two Girls, One Ghost is a new podcast hosted by
Speaker 4: us Karen and Sabrina. It's not what you think, or
Speaker 4: is it.
Speaker 1: It's not. It's a paranormal comedy podcast.
Speaker 3: Who doesn't love a good ghost story.
Speaker 4: We sure do, and we bring you new haunting tales
Speaker 4: each week.
Speaker 2: Are you planning a hike?
Speaker 1: Not anymore? What about a trip abroad? You might want
Speaker 1: to rethink that.
Speaker 4: Pack your stage sticks and prepare to find out your
Speaker 4: favorite pizza place is anything but family friendly.
Speaker 3: We cover topics like black eyed kids, shadow people, haunted prisons,
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Speaker 3: Two Girls, One Ghost is available wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1: See you on the other side. Okay, we're back with Raquel,
Speaker 1: are you ready for larning? Yeah? Okay, Water, the answer
Speaker 1: is yes, yes, you got this. I'm gonna just fire
Speaker 1: off as many as I can and total transparency. I
Speaker 1: didn't look through them atter of time because I just
Speaker 1: put this up last night. So we're gonna go for it.
Speaker 1: Got it? Okay? But before we take questions from you,
Speaker 1: our beloved listeners, we're gonna take a quick break for
Speaker 1: sponsors of the show. Sponsors. Why sponsors? You know what
Speaker 1: they do? They help us give money to different charities
Speaker 1: every week. So if you want to know where Ologies
Speaker 1: gives our money, you can go to Aliward dot com
Speaker 1: and look for the tab Ologies gives back. There's like
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty different charities that we've given to already,
Speaker 1: with more every single week. So if you need a
Speaker 1: place to go donate a little bit of money but
Speaker 1: you're not sure where to go. Those are all picked
Speaker 1: biologists who work in those fields, and this ad break
Speaker 1: allows us to give a ton of money to them.
Speaker 1: So thanks for listening and thank sponsors. Okay, your questions.
Speaker 1: He wants to know will we ever know what's on
Speaker 1: the dark side? Also genus slick to who's petit Taylor Munich,
Speaker 1: Mark Larson, Laura Harder, Bonnie Joyce, Anthony Stall, Emily Manner
Speaker 1: keef All requested some hot gossip about the far side
Speaker 1: of the Moon. Yeah, we know, we do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's been So there's a spacecraft right now that's
Speaker 2: orbiting the Moon called LRO the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, and
Speaker 2: it has taken spectacular, high definition, beautiful pictures of the
Speaker 2: entire Moon and you can go to their website and
Speaker 2: find pictures of the of the dark side, far sides,
Speaker 2: not the dark side, the far side of the Moon.
Speaker 2: It's one of the coolest thing is that I think
Speaker 2: those cameras have done. They've actually imaged the Paula landing sites,
Speaker 2: so you can see the footprints and the rover prints
Speaker 2: that the astronauts left at the surface, and like the
Speaker 2: lunar module and the rover, it's still and you can
Speaker 2: see it's it's in. The images were taken by l Rock,
Speaker 2: the cameras on board le RO.
Speaker 1: Recently, on Roquel's Instagram, the space geologist, she did a
Speaker 1: live stream of her looking at lunar dust under a
Speaker 1: microscope because some other folks in her lab were studying
Speaker 1: the optical properties of it, So how light or dark
Speaker 1: does it look in certain lights?
Speaker 2: Yes, we have Moondust lying around and sometimes my advisor
Speaker 2: takes it out to show classes and every time.
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh my god, I saw someone asked if
Speaker 1: you were afraid to sneeze around it.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, I've been so afraid of sneezing around it.
Speaker 2: But uh, and so I try to cover if I'm so,
Speaker 2: We've used these samples for outreach events where it'll be
Speaker 2: like tons of people coming through, and I will always
Speaker 2: cover it with glass because I'm petrified of people just
Speaker 2: bumping into it, or I don't want to lose Moondust
Speaker 2: like na it would be so mad at us because
Speaker 2: it's alone. It's alone to us by NASA. Yeah, can
Speaker 2: precious stuff?
Speaker 1: Can you own anything from the Moon?
Speaker 2: Not legally the stuff that was acquired by the Apollo mission.
Speaker 2: So I think that there's been some Russian selling of
Speaker 2: of samples that I think there have been missions by
Speaker 2: the Russians that brought back samples, not manned missions, but
Speaker 2: robotic missions that have brought back samples from the Moon.
Speaker 2: And so I think I've seen some of that on sale,
Speaker 2: and like eBay or something, but it won't be an
Speaker 2: Apollo mission dust that those are not allowed to be sold.
Speaker 1: I mean if I put a pumice stone in the
Speaker 1: Vita mix, I could make a railing on eBay. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's so many Jabroni's so excited. Remind me to make
Speaker 1: this mixed cash that way. Maria Camrou wants to know.
Speaker 1: Have you ever yelled at the moon like buzz Aldron
Speaker 1: on thirty Rock? Did he do that? I see you,
Speaker 1: I see what you're doing. Return to the night. You've
Speaker 1: no business here. Never saw that one. No idea, But
Speaker 1: the answer is gonna be no. I guess yeah, no
Speaker 1: yelled at the moon. Jason con wants to know is
Speaker 1: there a man in the moon? Because I see a
Speaker 1: woman's face? Oh?
Speaker 2: I loved asking feeble this. Do you see anything when
Speaker 2: you look at the moon?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 1: Oh, what I never see? I got off the face?
Speaker 2: Okay, now, okay, but there's other things you can see.
Speaker 2: I've seen all kinds of things.
Speaker 1: I see the butthole? What did I say about me?
Speaker 1: So we pulled up a photo together and Roquel showed
Speaker 1: me that she sees a frog jumping onto a lily pad,
Speaker 1: or a bunny with two ears. Also, Weirdly, if you're
Speaker 1: in the Southern hemisphere, the moon is upside down to
Speaker 1: how us Northerners see it. How bananas. So Roquel pointed
Speaker 1: out the face of the man in the Moon, which
Speaker 1: I had literally never seen before.
Speaker 2: Eyes, nose, mouth, maybe to see like those two maybe.
Speaker 1: Wow, this is like Matt.
Speaker 2: And I feel like you have to squint to be
Speaker 2: able to see these things. Sometimes I feel like you.
Speaker 1: Might have to just get pharmaceutical grade LSP to see it,
Speaker 1: which is not gonna happen for me anytime soon.
Speaker 2: Okay, So a face Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: I've never seen that before my whole life. Okay, I
Speaker 1: swear whenever they talked about the man in the moon,
Speaker 1: I always was like, Okay, that's something I don't get
Speaker 1: this person. Jason Cott says that he sees a woman's face.
Speaker 2: You I always see the frog.
Speaker 1: Frog.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the first thing that pops out to me,
Speaker 2: the frog jumping on to a lily pad.
Speaker 1: It's such an ink blot test to see, Like, what
Speaker 1: do you I guess everyone go look at a picture
Speaker 1: of the moon and see what you see and report back.
Speaker 1: Let us know, please, Christina SHOWI wants to know which
Speaker 1: theory on the origin of the Moon is your favorite.
Speaker 2: The impact theory that thea hit early Earth.
Speaker 1: And it formed the moon. But now here we are
Speaker 1: in here. Howard Yarmish wants to know what would happen
Speaker 1: to the Earth if the Moon got either closer or
Speaker 1: farther away.
Speaker 2: So well, depending on what caused it to go further away.
Speaker 2: So it is getting further away, so the tides would
Speaker 2: be less, and I think that our days are slowing
Speaker 2: down and it would slow down even more. So, Oh,
Speaker 2: it happen to the Earth.
Speaker 1: So you see how.
Speaker 2: An ice skater and when they stick out their arms
Speaker 2: they slow down, and then when they bring it in
Speaker 2: it they go faster. So it's the same thing that's happening.
Speaker 2: It's just the distribution of mass of the Earth Moon system.
Speaker 1: So if the Moon.
Speaker 2: Were farther away, like the whole thing would just like
Speaker 2: slow down more.
Speaker 1: So we could get more done in a day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is cool, This is cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess you're like, the Earth is like moon,
Speaker 1: give me a little space. It's working, Okay. Letting McGinnis
Speaker 1: has a question and then I'm sure so many people do,
Speaker 1: which is do the phases of the moon affect people's moods.
Speaker 1: You also worked a little bit in healthcare, ID or
Speaker 1: the airports.
Speaker 2: No, it doesn't because the phase the moon is still there.
Speaker 2: It's not any closer or any further. I mean, even
Speaker 2: if it does, like you wouldn't have an effect on us.
Speaker 2: It's just the sunlight. It's what we see, the sunlight
Speaker 2: hitting one side or the other side. So I don't
Speaker 2: see how it could affect us.
Speaker 1: But and now the tides are affected more on a
Speaker 1: day to day basis, not around the month.
Speaker 2: Right right, Okay, yeah, I do have.
Speaker 1: A friend who gets her period on a full moon
Speaker 1: every time, no matter what kind of birth control she's on,
Speaker 1: no matter what happened, no matter how every time the
Speaker 1: moon is very regular.
Speaker 2: It's it rotates on itself.
Speaker 1: What is the effect of like a twenty eight day cycle,
Speaker 1: twenty eight day menstrual cycle in the moon.
Speaker 2: But that I think it's just coincidence. Okay, it's coincidence.
Speaker 2: But it your friend must be that is her timing,
Speaker 2: that is her her cycles like twenty eight point something days,
Speaker 2: and it just happens to coincide with the moon. That's
Speaker 2: pretty cool, I'm sure there's there's got to be other people.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you have enough women, enough people, one
Speaker 2: of them will eventually right have that eight chance?
Speaker 1: Okay, so like three percent, three and a half percent ps.
Speaker 1: Look this up. And in the age of apps, we
Speaker 1: have a bunch of data to play with, for good
Speaker 1: and for bad. So there's a period tracker called Clue
Speaker 1: that analyzed seven and a half million users cycles and
Speaker 1: found no correlation between lunar faces. None. So Natalie Mastik,
Speaker 1: Julie Platten, and Michael BelAZ also asked us, and sorry
Speaker 1: science is saying it's just rando, folks, talk to your crotch.
Speaker 1: I got no answers. Ryan Carter wants to know, given
Speaker 1: that the prominent theory for the Moon's creation early impact
Speaker 1: with THEA isn't matching up exactly with what we're seeing
Speaker 1: in the moon's composition, is there any competing theories that
Speaker 1: are coming to the fore a combination that explains the inconsistencies.
Speaker 2: Uh? Not, that explains everything that we see the THEA
Speaker 2: hitting the Earth is still the one that answers the questions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so nothing new, like you knows aliens. So for funzies,
Speaker 1: feel free to look up the hollow moon or the
Speaker 1: spaceship moon hypothesis, that is what it's called. So essentially,
Speaker 1: some folks think that the moon is a death star.
Speaker 1: No biggie, And before you go just like spinning up
Speaker 1: your folgers laughing at this, do know that our beloved
Speaker 1: Carl Sagan for a while thought that one of Mars
Speaker 1: moons was just a cavernous storage shed installed by clutter
Speaker 1: bogged Martians. So the universe it's a mystery. One patro
Speaker 1: On Martinez wants to know, why don't we go back
Speaker 1: to the Moon.
Speaker 2: I know that's what I'm saying, we should. The moon
Speaker 2: is the next logical stuff. I think it's right there.
Speaker 1: It's right there.
Speaker 2: We can set up bases, we can make things there,
Speaker 2: we can make fuel there. It's much less gravity, so
Speaker 2: it's easier to launch from there. It just makes so
Speaker 2: much sense to go to the Moon and not Mars,
Speaker 2: like it's harder to leave the Earth's gravity well, whereas
Speaker 2: it'd be so much easier to do that from the Moon.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of living in la It's like, why
Speaker 1: would I go vacation in Florida when there's like a
Speaker 1: beach right here. Jay Owens wants to know does it
Speaker 1: really ring when impacted? Does it ring like a belt?
Speaker 1: I've heard that before.
Speaker 2: Look, there's definitely moonquakes.
Speaker 1: I look this up and according to an article by NASA,
Speaker 1: because the Moon is dry and rigid, moonquakes continue to rumble.
Speaker 1: It's like vibrations hitting a metal tuning fork. Something to
Speaker 1: consider if you move into one of its space caves.
Speaker 1: And I wonder what they would charge for rent Rinne
Speaker 1: Couli wants to know who owns the moon? Nobody? Okay,
Speaker 1: it's so.
Speaker 2: There was a space treaty that was signed. I don't
Speaker 2: remember the year, nineteen sixty seven, but it says that
Speaker 2: no one nation owns anything in space.
Speaker 1: Okay, so if you go and pee on it, it's
Speaker 1: not yet, it's not. Dang it. Well there's my plan.
Speaker 2: There is a company a few years back selling moon
Speaker 2: plots because they were like, well it's not I'm not
Speaker 2: a nation, I'm a company. So I'm just gonna claim
Speaker 2: that it's mine. And I think some people actually bought stuff.
Speaker 2: But I don't know. I don't know what happened to that.
Speaker 1: What are you gonna do? Go retire there like k
Speaker 1: grats maybe one day? Oh, that'd be so cool.
Speaker 2: Imagine going on vacation to the moon.
Speaker 1: To the moon, bring up Parka, it's a little chili.
Speaker 1: Mad's Clement wants to know if there were two guys
Speaker 1: on the moon and one of them killed the other,
Speaker 1: would that be fucked up or what?
Speaker 2: It's the only QUI Okay, I think it's a yes, yes, definitely.
Speaker 1: Ah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Marley Shipe wants to know, how do you feel about
Speaker 1: the moon impacting the way humans feel like if it
Speaker 1: impacts water in the tide were made of water? Is
Speaker 1: that a thing? Not a thing?
Speaker 2: I don't think it's a thing. I think there have
Speaker 2: been studies that show that it's It doesn't there's I
Speaker 2: remember a few years ago people were saying that there's
Speaker 2: higher hospital admissions during a full moon. But I think
Speaker 2: that's been debunked. I think that there's been studies to
Speaker 2: show that.
Speaker 1: That's not true. Okay, that might be flimplam. Yeah, I'll investigate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: everyone wanted to know this. This question was also asked
Speaker 1: by Heather Shaver, Anna m Castro, Renoso, Kelly rand Ray,
Speaker 1: Kasha Kimberly Thomas, Maher, Meredith Ostro, Micah Eckhard, and Elizabeth Gable.
Speaker 1: So I did a little digging and according to data,
Speaker 1: no real correlation. The hypothesis that the moon is tugging
Speaker 1: on our sloshy brainwaters doesn't make a ton of sense
Speaker 1: because its effect on the tides happens even when it's
Speaker 1: not fully illuminated. So it may just be that when
Speaker 1: the moon is bright, people stay out at night longer
Speaker 1: and just clinically speaking, are out wild and or it's
Speaker 1: bright and people get less sleep, so they're a little
Speaker 1: bit cranky and clumsy. Or maybe we're all distracted by
Speaker 1: the moon and we crash our cars into trees or
Speaker 1: trip on things. Sonya Karpolovic says, why is the moon
Speaker 1: seen as feminine, as in it's often associated with Artemis
Speaker 1: and other women because it looks delicate.
Speaker 2: Maybe I don't know, it's because it's party, it's pretty,
Speaker 2: it's beautiful. Yeah, yeah, I think that's what I think.
Speaker 1: That's what I think.
Speaker 2: And for example, like in Portuguese it's female a lua,
Speaker 2: so it's it's a female, and I think in Spanish
Speaker 2: the same thing la luna, so it's I think in
Speaker 2: a lot of languages. So I think it's like very Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think it's because it's beautiful.
Speaker 1: I'm going to go with that, because it's what we
Speaker 1: see it as an object for us to look at
Speaker 1: and probe. No, because it's a beautiful thing. Maybe because
Speaker 1: this is sinister, but maybe because it accompanies us. Maybe
Speaker 1: we put women in helper, Yes, exactly, we put in
Speaker 1: a stay in my orbit. I'm the big thing and
Speaker 1: almost like a eve was made of Adam's rib and
Speaker 1: the moon is made of earth chunks. So maybe that's
Speaker 1: something to the mythology of it. Maybe, but I think
Speaker 1: in reality it's a complex and has taken some shit
Speaker 1: from a meteor and is still up there doing its thing.
Speaker 1: It's thing, Okay, So maybe it's in built misogyny of
Speaker 1: treating women like accessories, or maybe it's because of the
Speaker 1: twenty eight day thing. I don't know whatever. Anna Thompson
Speaker 1: wants to know, what is the biggest unknown about the
Speaker 1: moon still or the coolest thing we've learned about the Moon?
Speaker 2: Well, I think the biggest unknown is just how did
Speaker 2: it form? You know, it's it's so similar to our
Speaker 2: Earth and like made it the same stuff, but you
Speaker 2: think it's a lot more it'd be a lot more different,
Speaker 2: But it's not. And the coolest thing. I think there's
Speaker 2: water there.
Speaker 1: There's Yeah, that's nuts. That's pretty cool. Bree Johnson wants
Speaker 1: to know do you think there will ever be a
Speaker 1: time where humans can live on the Moon, And Lindsay
Speaker 1: K Trotter also asked, can we colonize this thing or what?
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, but I think that it'll be more
Speaker 2: of a jumping ground. You might go to the moon
Speaker 2: first to acclimate or you know, not acclimate in the
Speaker 2: sense of acclimate to the weather, but acclimate to living
Speaker 2: in the space environment or not Earth lighter gravity and.
Speaker 1: How's the gravity on the Moon versus Mars.
Speaker 2: A sixth so you could jump pretty high. There's actually
Speaker 2: this really cool compilation video of the Apollo astronauts hopping
Speaker 2: and falling, and they've somebody speed it up so it
Speaker 2: just looks like they're just like some silly music in
Speaker 2: the background.
Speaker 1: Look this up and I found a video of Apollo
Speaker 1: seventeen astronaut Jean Cernon fully suited up in his moon ensemble,
Speaker 1: just lightly bounding along the lunar landscape, singing as he went.
Speaker 1: So there's your little frog and bunny on the moon. Also,
Speaker 1: astronauts will train in zero gravity flights. They fly in
Speaker 1: these parabolic curves and it gives a few seconds of
Speaker 1: the sensation of weightlessness each curve. Now, for a civilian
Speaker 1: to experience zero g's, it costs about five g's. But
Speaker 1: warning it got the name vomit comet for a reason.
Speaker 2: I was on a vomit comet ones and they one
Speaker 2: of the things. It's not just zero gravity. They also
Speaker 2: do diminish like less gravity, so that Mars gravity and
Speaker 2: Moon gravity. And so for the Moon gravity, you can
Speaker 2: hop pretty high. It's really cool because get to experience
Speaker 2: what it would be like to jump. You can jump
Speaker 2: so high.
Speaker 1: God, So there's much less gravity on the Moon than
Speaker 1: Mars because it's a smaller planetary body.
Speaker 2: So on Mars is a third of the Earth and
Speaker 2: the Moon is a sixth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's hippitie hoppity, like one of those places
Speaker 1: where you can go on the trampolines. Yes, yes, all
Speaker 1: the time. I'm looking for a couple more questions. Kirsty
Speaker 1: Chippendale says, can a moon have its own moon? Is
Speaker 1: that possible?
Speaker 2: I'm sure it's possible. It's probably just not very stable
Speaker 2: because the bigger object would end up grabbing it and
Speaker 2: then it would just orbit the bigger object instead of
Speaker 2: the Okay, you know.
Speaker 1: What I mean. E Brown asked, I didn't even think
Speaker 1: of this question. How come you can sometimes see.
Speaker 2: The Moon during the day, So the Moon is always
Speaker 2: orbiting us, So sometimes it's orbiting us when it's night time,
Speaker 2: when sometimes it's during its daytime, So it's it's always
Speaker 2: either on our side during the day or on the
Speaker 2: other side. So it just depends on where it is
Speaker 2: on its orbit, and it's just cruising, it's just hanging out. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, what makes me sad to think of the moon
Speaker 1: as like a kid with divorce parents, where it's like
Speaker 1: at one house or the other. It's like sometimes it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's going to be on this side or our side. Okay,
Speaker 1: let me see. Maggie Schminker said, So the moon is
Speaker 1: tidally locked. Has it always been this orientation to the Earth?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 1: No, Or did the first little footy fish hauling themselves
Speaker 1: out of the primordial ooze see a different part of
Speaker 1: the moon.
Speaker 2: They might have seen a different part of the moon. Yeah,
Speaker 2: although we think that it it got tidally locked pretty
Speaker 2: early in it's because it's so small that it's it's
Speaker 2: easier to for it to become tidally locked.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I never knew that was a term. Justin Westerfield
Speaker 1: wants to know casually what happened if Elon Musk blew
Speaker 1: up the moon. It's like a never end explosion. Is
Speaker 1: he going to do that? I hope not.
Speaker 2: Uh well, we we wouldn't have as much, the tides
Speaker 2: wouldn't be as pronounced. We didn't have the moon anymore.
Speaker 1: I mean if it.
Speaker 2: Just you blew it up and then it disappeared, right,
Speaker 2: we wouldn't have and our plan and might wobble a
Speaker 2: lot more.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 2: The moon makes our planet stable, so kind of like
Speaker 2: a spinning top, you know how sometimes like it moves.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the moon actually keeps us from doing that.
Speaker 2: So our seasons are a lot more stable because we
Speaker 2: have our moon to stabilize our orbits. So if we
Speaker 2: didn't have a moon, we would be we might like
Speaker 2: the go through like ice ages and then crazy warm
Speaker 2: periods a lot more than what we do now.
Speaker 1: Got it once again? Yeah, moon's like a woman, Thank you,
Speaker 1: stabilizes shit. That's right. Okay, So two questions as I
Speaker 1: always ask. Okay, shittiest thing about your job or the
Speaker 1: worst thing about the moon. Oh feel free event about
Speaker 1: the moon right now. I can't think of a thing
Speaker 1: the Moon's done to anyone, But I don't know.
Speaker 2: So shittiest thing about my job.
Speaker 1: It's hard. Do you have to answer a lot of
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories about not landing on the moon?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get that sometimes, mostly on
Speaker 2: social media because I try to I do a little
Speaker 2: psychom through my Instagram, and I inevitably always somebody's like, well,
Speaker 2: we never went there, so I don't know how you
Speaker 2: can say that that's actual moon dees Like I actually
Speaker 2: had somebody DM me that.
Speaker 1: That's cute.
Speaker 2: People have their mind set up because they will always say, well,
Speaker 2: those images are doctored, those aren't really the footprints or
Speaker 2: were prints, that that's photoshop or something. It's and it's
Speaker 2: hard to argue with that. Yeah, what about anything about
Speaker 2: computer crashes? Just code networking, And sometimes it's just because
Speaker 2: you forgot to put a semi colon somewhere and you
Speaker 2: spend hours trying to figure out, like what did I
Speaker 2: do wrong? And it's just like something stupid, like you
Speaker 2: put the semicolon in the wrong place. Or it's stupid
Speaker 2: shit like that. But that's but that's the nature of
Speaker 2: the job. I don't know, problem solving is kind of fun.
Speaker 1: Hm, it's cool. Soide note, how much do you love
Speaker 1: someone who loves to solve programming errors? What's the best
Speaker 1: thing about what you do or the best thing about
Speaker 1: the moon?
Speaker 2: The best thing is getting to think about these things
Speaker 2: that are so much bigger than myself. It just takes
Speaker 2: me out of whatever is going on in my personal
Speaker 2: life or whatever is going on in the world. Just
Speaker 2: focusing on something that is just out there and it's
Speaker 2: so much bigger than us and bigger than whatever is
Speaker 2: happening in our world is kind of like a vacation
Speaker 2: in a way of everyday problems. And I think that
Speaker 2: that's what I love the most about it, to be
Speaker 2: able to think about these things that are you know,
Speaker 2: it might not impact me, that probably don't impact me
Speaker 2: at all directly, but.
Speaker 1: There's there's relief in that.
Speaker 2: And not having to worry about me or anything directly
Speaker 2: related to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess it's all about perspective the moon once again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know it's I think that especially in la
Speaker 1: where we don't get a lot of weather. Getting to
Speaker 1: be able to track the Moon and see where it's
Speaker 1: at and check in with it. It does feel like
Speaker 1: a little buddy. Yeah, you know, like, how where are
Speaker 1: you in this guy? Right now here? What's going on?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: What would your dream job be as a planetary geologist?
Speaker 2: I would love to be involved in miss missions, mission
Speaker 2: design and just thinking about like what are the big
Speaker 2: questions that we still have to answer and how can
Speaker 2: we design missions to answer those science questions?
Speaker 1: Get us back on the moon man, right, come on,
Speaker 1: what do we gotta do? Guys back, It's right there,
Speaker 1: It's there.
Speaker 2: Although you know, for all that we can say about this,
Speaker 2: this administration, they love the Moon. So NASA is actually
Speaker 2: part of the executive branch. And if you knew that
Speaker 2: it's it's it's part of the executive So whatever the
Speaker 2: president says is like what happens. It's it's an.
Speaker 1: Executive branch department.
Speaker 2: Of the government Space Force.
Speaker 1: And so NASA actually.
Speaker 2: Ends up being at the whims of whatever administration is
Speaker 2: running it, which is kind of crazy. So you end
Speaker 2: up losing a lot of money because you know, you
Speaker 2: start designing a mission and most of the time it
Speaker 2: will go to completion, but there's you might lose funding
Speaker 2: at some point because this administration doesn't like this project.
Speaker 2: Or but right now, this administration really.
Speaker 1: Likes the moon.
Speaker 2: I wonder what because it's close, and I think, I
Speaker 2: think what it is is that you can there's a
Speaker 2: lot of commercial partners, the possibility where if you do
Speaker 2: something really far away like Mars, there's so much, so
Speaker 2: much more can go wrong that commercial partners don't want
Speaker 2: to be involved, like private companies don't want to be involved.
Speaker 2: So but the Moon, I think there's a lot of interest,
Speaker 2: and are we going.
Speaker 1: To mind the moon? We could? Whoa? I wonder what
Speaker 1: I got up there?
Speaker 2: Well, I think.
Speaker 1: Geez. And where can you find Raquel on social media?
Speaker 2: The one that I spent the most time on is Instagram,
Speaker 2: and you can find me at the Space Geologist.
Speaker 1: That's that's where.
Speaker 2: I talk about. There's also some baby stuff in there,
Speaker 2: but mostly science things that are happening.
Speaker 1: I love your Instagram. I always learning, Oh that's so nice.
Speaker 1: I love it so much. Whenever you have a new
Speaker 1: story pop up, I'm like, oh, what she got? I
Speaker 1: get very excited about it. Nice, thank you, cool moon photos,
Speaker 1: And I'm like, ah, she's killing it. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for doing Thank you for having me so keep
Speaker 1: asking smart people stupid questions because look how nice they are.
Speaker 1: And you can follow Raquel again at the Space Geologist
Speaker 1: on Instagram. You can find Ologies at Ologies on Twitter
Speaker 1: and Instagram. I'm Ali Ward with one L on both
Speaker 1: and if you like Ologies, tell a friend. If you
Speaker 1: want merch, go to ologies merch dot com. Thank you
Speaker 1: Bonnie Dutch and Shannon Feltas for managing that. Thank you
Speaker 1: patrons at patreon dot com slash Ologies for making the
Speaker 1: show possible. Thank you Aaron Talbert and Hannahlippo for managing
Speaker 1: the Ologies podcast Facebook group. The theme song was written
Speaker 1: and performed by Nick Thorburn of the band Islands, and
Speaker 1: editing was done by the luminous Stephen Ray Morris, host
Speaker 1: of the Percast and See Jurassic Right podcasts about kats
Speaker 1: and dinos, respectively. And also this week we got some
Speaker 1: editing help from the disturbingly handsome share a Sleeper. It's
Speaker 1: unsettling really. He hosts the wonderfully candid and really funny
Speaker 1: mental health podcast called My Good Bad Brain. Check that out.
Speaker 1: We all have brains and if you listen to the
Speaker 1: end of the show, I tell you secret, And this
Speaker 1: week my secret is that I slept twelve hours last
Speaker 1: night and then I took a two hour nap today,
Speaker 1: and I'm making myself go to the doctor about it tomorrow.
Speaker 1: This is weird. I feel like a hefty bag filled
Speaker 1: with wet cement. Maybe I'm just tired. I'm not sure. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm going to sleep now. For BC Pacadermatology, Hobbiology, ydo Zoology, Lithology, Zeminology, meteorology, pathology, anthology, seiology, elinology,
Speaker 1: it give mem