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Speaker 5: Oh hi, it's Smologies. This is the first ever episode.
Speaker 5: I'm Ali Ward. These are small Ologies episodes delivering blue, tiny,
Speaker 5: bite sized brain snacks, little episodes that are refreshers on
Speaker 5: your favorites and classroom friendly, all ages cuts of Ologies
Speaker 5: episodes that you love. So I hear it from folks
Speaker 5: every day. I get messages, Yo, dad word, I see
Speaker 5: you have bleeped episodes, But what about making Ologies super
Speaker 5: family friendly? Can you change your whole vibe for Smologites?
Speaker 5: And I can't. I love you, but I love the
Speaker 5: way I get to make the full length Ologies episodes
Speaker 5: that come out and land on your feed every Tuesday.
Speaker 5: But I did decide I can tweak what we have
Speaker 5: and release these clean, shorter edited versions as free bonus
Speaker 5: episodes so that when you see the Smologies title, you
Speaker 5: know that you can listen with your kids and my parents.
Speaker 5: And Smologies are quicker, cleaner cuts of the back catalog
Speaker 5: favorites that are just perfect for my wheezy jog around
Speaker 5: the block, or your dinner prep or anytime you have
Speaker 5: about twenty minutes to burn and if you want the
Speaker 5: full scoop, all the juicy full episodes with more facts
Speaker 5: and backstories and words that we would not say around youngsters,
Speaker 5: you can find a link to that full version in
Speaker 5: the show notes. So with that, welcome to Smologies, which
Speaker 5: are dropping twice today as a little honeymoon break debut
Speaker 5: this week, just kind of an introduction to our podcast Baby,
Speaker 5: and then Smologies will be out every other week on
Speaker 5: Thursdays as a bonus. So introducing somologies number one. Selenology
Speaker 5: a word that comes from the Greek sellen for moon,
Speaker 5: So get ready to bask in the glow of selenologist, raquel,
Speaker 5: new nomology.
Speaker 2: Old.
Speaker 5: Prologyology, schologies. So what exactly would you say when you
Speaker 5: introduce someone and say what you do? What do you
Speaker 5: tell them?
Speaker 6: I tell them that I'm a planetary geologist. That's just
Speaker 6: what I say. And people usually have no idea what
Speaker 6: that means. They're like, I know geology, I don't know
Speaker 6: planetary what does that even mean? So then I say
Speaker 6: I'm a space geologist. I study rocks on other planets,
Speaker 6: and that's what I tell them, And.
Speaker 5: Then they lose their minds and then they're like what
Speaker 5: does that?
Speaker 6: What?
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, that's what I do. So what does a
Speaker 5: space geologist necessarily do?
Speaker 6: So I say that I'm actually an armchair geologist, So
Speaker 6: I sit on a chair and do geology.
Speaker 5: You're reclining geologists, lining or geologists.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so we we have samples from rocks and other worlds,
Speaker 6: but most of the time we don't. So I essentially
Speaker 6: use spacecraft data to analyze either images. I also do
Speaker 6: a lot of programming, so a lot of computational modeling
Speaker 6: of what's happening surface processes that are happening in other worlds.
Speaker 5: And so you are crunching numbers and data to try
Speaker 5: to figure out what is happening with the rocks on
Speaker 5: other planets.
Speaker 6: That's right, That's what I say.
Speaker 5: That's crazy. Do all of the planets or just a
Speaker 5: few of.
Speaker 6: The planets, just a few of the planets. So my
Speaker 6: two babies are the Moon and Mars. So Raquel got
Speaker 6: her bachelor's in geophysics and space physics, she got a
Speaker 6: master's inn geology, and she's now completing her PhD in
Speaker 6: geology in planetary science. Is all at UCLA do A
Speaker 6: lot of people tend to think that the Moon is
Speaker 6: a planet. Okay that if you'd ask a planetary scientist,
Speaker 6: they would say, yeah, it's a planet because it acts
Speaker 6: like a planet, it behaves like a planet, but it's
Speaker 6: just orbiting the Earth versus orbiting the Sun. So it's
Speaker 6: not in the true definition of what a planet is.
Speaker 6: It's not a planet. Have to say planetary body because
Speaker 6: it's not technically a planet.
Speaker 5: So it's a planet if it's orbiting the Sun.
Speaker 6: That's right.
Speaker 5: How do you guys determine what's a planet, what's an exoplanet?
Speaker 5: What's a planetary body? I mean, a planetary body is
Speaker 5: not orbiting a sun, but it could be orbiting another planet.
Speaker 6: Well, a planetary body can be a planet as well.
Speaker 6: Oh okay, so the Earth is a planetary body, but
Speaker 6: so are asteroids. Asteroids are planetary bodies because they're orbiting.
Speaker 6: They're in our Solar system, so they're a planetary body.
Speaker 5: I feel like it's kind of like a not all
Speaker 5: cack not all succulents are cactive, but all cacti are.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, something like that. So you have to be round,
Speaker 6: so you have to have enough gravity to have formed
Speaker 6: a around shaped object. So there's a lot of asteroids
Speaker 6: that are that look like potatoes or like weird dumb
Speaker 6: bell things, and those are not could never be planets
Speaker 6: because they're not shaped like a planet is. So you
Speaker 6: have to have enough mass that you create enough gravity
Speaker 6: to round out your your shape. You also have to
Speaker 6: have cleared your orbit and what that means is that
Speaker 6: there's no debris in front of your behind you. You
Speaker 6: have collected all of the matter that's in your path
Speaker 6: to form yourself, to form the planetary body.
Speaker 5: I don't think I've ever realized that we're kind of
Speaker 5: like a swiffer, Like that's part of where we get
Speaker 5: all of our stuff to make things is just by
Speaker 5: picking it up as we go.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So it's actually interesting. We Earth acquires a lot
Speaker 6: of mass just by traveling through space. And when you
Speaker 6: see like meteor showers, that's us traveling through a trail
Speaker 6: of rocks of stuff that then encounters our atmosphere or
Speaker 6: that we encounter it and then they come crashing in
Speaker 6: beautiful light shows in the sky.
Speaker 5: That's so exciting. Yeah, And have we always had the moon?
Speaker 6: So the moon essentially, so the Moon formed very very
Speaker 6: soon after the Earth did so essentially, when you're thinking
Speaker 6: about geologic time, yes, the moon has always been here.
Speaker 6: With that, I talk to a lot of people and
Speaker 6: when I tell them what I do, Oh, you're an astronomer, Like, no,
Speaker 6: I'm not. I don't. I'm not an astronomer. I'm a
Speaker 6: planetary scientist. I study rocks. And it's funny to think
Speaker 6: that a lot of the rovers, like all of the
Speaker 6: rovers that have gone to Mars, they're all robotic geologists'
Speaker 6: that's what they are. They're not astronomers. They're geologists.
Speaker 5: Yeah they're not. They're looking down, they're not They're not right. Yeah,
Speaker 5: that's right, that's hot. Goss about the moon. Okay, explain
Speaker 5: to me where does this moon come from?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 6: So the cool thing is actually we're not one hundred
Speaker 6: percent sure, which is really really cool. It's just how
Speaker 6: many science questions are still left answering. We don't know
Speaker 6: that much about the Moon. There's still so much more
Speaker 6: to learn. But the idea is the prevalent, the one
Speaker 6: that most people think is the real thing that happened
Speaker 6: was that a marsized object, which we call THEA, was
Speaker 6: just floating around space and crashed into the pro the
Speaker 6: early Earth, and they collided and stuff. Kind of it
Speaker 6: was flung out into space and coalesced to form the Moon.
Speaker 6: When you look at what the Moon and the Earth
Speaker 6: are made of, they're very similar. They look like they're
Speaker 6: made of the same stuff. So we think that that's
Speaker 6: what happened. Things collided, they mix together, and then a
Speaker 6: big chunk of it got or several chunks of it
Speaker 6: got flown into space and then eventually coalesced into what
Speaker 6: our moon is today.
Speaker 5: And it's gravity that's keeping it all together and into
Speaker 5: a ball.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's how planets get bigger. You start out with
Speaker 6: little dust particles that are electrically attracted to each other,
Speaker 6: and they start getting sticking together, and everything has mass.
Speaker 6: Even a tiny dust particle has mass, and so it
Speaker 6: starts attracting the next dust particle. And then now now
Speaker 6: you have little pebbles, and now the pebbles start getting
Speaker 6: stuck together, and then eventually you form a planet that's
Speaker 6: gravitationally bound to to itself.
Speaker 5: So why on Earth aren't there more of these craters
Speaker 5: to which we can take road trips.
Speaker 6: Our atmosphere protects us from a lot of them. If
Speaker 6: the rock is small enough, it'll just break up in
Speaker 6: the atmosphere, whereas on the Moon, there is no atmosphere.
Speaker 6: I'll just slam into the ground and it'll be left.
Speaker 6: There'll be a hole there. And that's actually one of
Speaker 6: the cool things about studying the Moon. The Moon has
Speaker 6: experienced pretty much everything that the Earth has experienced. So
Speaker 6: and because it doesn't have plate tectonics and it doesn't
Speaker 6: have an atmosphere, it acts as a witness plate to
Speaker 6: everything that the Earth has experienced.
Speaker 5: So that's why the surface of the Moon is pitted.
Speaker 5: But what about the Moon itself? Does it have a
Speaker 5: pit like a peach? What's of the Moon's core? Is
Speaker 5: it like a jawbreaker? Raquel says, it has a core,
Speaker 5: it's just much smaller than the Earth's.
Speaker 6: One of the cool things that I think when I
Speaker 6: think about the Moon and the impact that caused it,
Speaker 6: was there was so much energy that collected from that
Speaker 6: original impact that formed the Moon that the entire Moon
Speaker 6: was just a magma ocean. So that's the Yeah, just
Speaker 6: imagine the whole Moon. No, just magma. Yeah, So that's
Speaker 6: what that's the prevailed theory. Here on Earth, we have
Speaker 6: different types of rocks. We have igneous rocks atimentary rocks,
Speaker 6: whereas the Moon, it's essentially, all that light stuff is
Speaker 6: just one one thing, and the only way that you
Speaker 6: can form something like that is if it all just
Speaker 6: pretty much formed at the same time from the same stuff.
Speaker 6: And so we think it's just a big anortheisie crust
Speaker 6: except for the dark regions that you see on the moon,
Speaker 6: and those are ancient volcanic planes.
Speaker 5: How big around is the moon comparatively? What's the size
Speaker 5: difference between the moon?
Speaker 6: So if you were so, if the Earth were to
Speaker 6: be a basketball, then the moon is a tennis ball.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, perfect, Yeah, done, amazing, That's how I like
Speaker 6: to think of it. Yeah, so the side nearer to
Speaker 6: us is actually the crust is thinner, so it's easier
Speaker 6: for lavas to bubble up. And so what you see
Speaker 6: when you look up those dark regions, we're just ancient
Speaker 6: lava planes that flowed and found a low place on
Speaker 6: the moon and just settle there.
Speaker 5: And you can see more of those areas when the
Speaker 5: moon is full, which makes me wonder how do moon
Speaker 5: phases work? Just like, pretend I'm someone you met at
Speaker 5: the car wash. She doesn't know jack about the moon,
Speaker 5: because that's pretty much what's happening. But we're not at
Speaker 5: a car wash.
Speaker 6: So the faces of the moon are caused by what
Speaker 6: we're seeing is where the sun is lighting the moon.
Speaker 6: So during a full moon, the sun is directly behind
Speaker 6: If you were to be staring at the moon and
Speaker 6: it's a full moon, the sun would be directly behind you.
Speaker 6: But the reason that there's if you see the full
Speaker 6: moon and it's not an eclipse, is because that there's
Speaker 6: a slight tilt to the Moon's orbit, so it's not
Speaker 6: perfectly in line with the sun, and so you see
Speaker 6: the sun lighting up the full face of the moon. Now,
Speaker 6: when the sun, if you're again staring at the moon
Speaker 6: and you see only half of it lit, that means
Speaker 6: that the sun is to your either to your left
Speaker 6: or to your right. And when it's a new moon,
Speaker 6: when you don't see any light of the moon is
Speaker 6: because the sun is lighting the dark side of the moon,
Speaker 6: the far side, what we call the far side.
Speaker 5: So it's always a full moon somewhere.
Speaker 6: It just depends on where you're hanging out, that's right. Yeah,
Speaker 6: it's only our perspective that makes the phases of the
Speaker 6: moon happen.
Speaker 5: How does the moon affect the oceans and maybe us,
Speaker 5: so the Moon has a.
Speaker 6: Couple of effects on us. So it creates our tides,
Speaker 6: so high tide, low tide, that's from the it's the
Speaker 6: moon and the Sun. A lot of people think it's
Speaker 6: just the moon, but it's a combination of both. But
Speaker 6: the Moon is stronger because it's it's closer, so it
Speaker 6: pulls on our oceans depending on where it is on
Speaker 6: the planet, which area where on the planet's closest to,
Speaker 6: it's going to ug on that part of the planet.
Speaker 6: So it actually tugs the rocks as well. It's not
Speaker 6: just the water, just the water is just easier to deform.
Speaker 5: Oh my gosh, so it's tulling.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So actually our earth is Yeah, our Earth is
Speaker 6: slightly oblate because we have the Moon tugging at it.
Speaker 6: The Moon and the Sun. Of course, then we tug
Speaker 6: at it. We tug at the moon as well.
Speaker 5: Oh man, I'm going to have galaxy brain break down
Speaker 5: right now.
Speaker 6: And the other way it affects us as it slows
Speaker 6: down our days. So the Earth used to be spinning
Speaker 6: a lot faster than it used to be, but because
Speaker 6: of conservation of momentum angular momentum, it has slowed down
Speaker 6: the Earth's spin.
Speaker 5: So about every one hundred years, we get two point
Speaker 5: five milliseconds slower, and in twenty twelve we had to
Speaker 5: add a second to the world clock just to make
Speaker 5: up for it. Moon's like I did that. Likewise, Earth's
Speaker 5: gravity pulls on the Moon. The Moon slows down, and
Speaker 5: then the Moon becomes what's called tidally locked, so its
Speaker 5: orbit around us takes twenty eight days, and its own
Speaker 5: rotation takes about twenty eight days, which means that it's
Speaker 5: daylight for over thirteen earth days straight, Raquel explains. And
Speaker 5: as you will hear, this was news to me. How
Speaker 5: does the moon work? So the far side of the Moon,
Speaker 5: what exactly is there? What's happening on the far side
Speaker 5: of the Moon.
Speaker 6: More craters, Okay, less lava, much less lava. Most of
Speaker 6: the lava, the ancient lava fields are here on the
Speaker 6: near side. Like I said, the crust is thinner, so
Speaker 6: it's easier for lava to bubble up on this side.
Speaker 6: The far side. It just like a much lighter color
Speaker 6: to the Moon because it's mostly that Anorthas site that
Speaker 6: I was talking about earlier, and lots of impact craters
Speaker 6: side notes.
Speaker 5: So yes, the light side is on the dark side,
Speaker 5: which is really the far side. So the far side
Speaker 5: has tons of craters and it's lighter in color and
Speaker 5: so far no alien communes. Now the near side is
Speaker 5: smoother and has darker splotches of basalt. Those are called
Speaker 5: mares because way back in the day folks thought they
Speaker 5: were oceans. Now the mares are flatter and they have
Speaker 5: fewer craters because it's younger terrain, so lighter parts a
Speaker 5: north to side rock called the highlands. The darker parts
Speaker 5: are basalt, called the mares. Boom.
Speaker 6: So Pollo sixteen landed on in the Highlands, at the
Speaker 6: lighter regions, but again they tried to look for a
Speaker 6: place that was nice and flatten on the ladder craters
Speaker 6: because it's safer for the astronauts and for the lander
Speaker 6: to land in. And then Apollo seventeen landed right on
Speaker 6: the edge between highlands and a mare because they were
Speaker 6: trying to sample the rocks from the two different places.
Speaker 5: How many times have we been to the moon? Six
Speaker 5: We've been to the moon six times.
Speaker 7: Yeah, there's water there. Do you know that there's wait,
Speaker 7: there's water on the moon ice water ice on the road? Yes, yes,
Speaker 7: where is it in these at the poles? There's these
Speaker 7: craters that never see sunlight. They're so deep that sunlight
Speaker 7: never actually enters the crater, so they have not seen
Speaker 7: sunlight for billions of years.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 6: And it's actually one of the coldest places that we've
Speaker 6: ever measured. The Solar system. Are inside these craters colder
Speaker 6: than the surface of Pluto.
Speaker 5: No, no, yes, how cool? Is that? Literally? Very very cool?
Speaker 1: So chilly.
Speaker 6: Another reason the moon's cool is like there's lava caves.
Speaker 6: Do you know about the caves?
Speaker 5: Caves?
Speaker 6: I look like, Yeah, there's caves where we can set
Speaker 6: up human bases because they'll be shielded from radiation and
Speaker 6: from the cold and the heat because the sun, the
Speaker 6: sun heats up the surface a lot. So there's it's
Speaker 6: it's either very very hot or very very cold, depending
Speaker 6: on if you're in the shade or in the sun.
Speaker 6: How cold how hot we talk in oh man, In
Speaker 6: these permally shadowed craters, you can get down to fifteen
Speaker 6: degrees calvin. So that's so zero kelvin is absolute zero,
Speaker 6: and you can I mean, this is just fifteen degrees
Speaker 6: higher than that.
Speaker 5: Is very very very cold. So to put that in
Speaker 5: context with the thermometer on your porch or like your
Speaker 5: car's dashboard. Daylight on the Moon can get up to
Speaker 5: two hundred and sixty degrees fahrenheit, and at night it's
Speaker 5: a brisk negative two hundred and eighty fahrenheit. That's one
Speaker 5: twenty seven celsius at its hottest and minus one seventy
Speaker 5: three celsius when it's cold, which means if we do
Speaker 5: end up cramming ourselves into caves on the Moon, we're
Speaker 5: gonna need a lot of extra space just for scarves
Speaker 5: and parkas for the thirteen Earth days of nighttime. Also
Speaker 5: perhaps some flip flops and a hibachi for those long days,
Speaker 5: and some sunscreen made out of magic. It's funny because
Speaker 5: you think of the Moon. I think the images we
Speaker 5: see of the Moon look relatively flat, and everything looks
Speaker 5: so dark that it just seems there's something like it
Speaker 5: just seems very inert. Oh like it must just be
Speaker 5: like tepid room temperature and everything very flat. That's just
Speaker 5: not what's happening.
Speaker 7: I know.
Speaker 6: It's it just wanders from hot cold hot cold, And
Speaker 6: so then we need to if we do set up
Speaker 6: bases there, we need to shield our astronauts from that.
Speaker 6: And I think caves are a good place to do it,
Speaker 6: or maybe inside some of these craters.
Speaker 5: I mean we started in caves here. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 5: good point, right, Yeah, we should continue.
Speaker 6: This is like the way to continue human exploration, to
Speaker 6: just find caves and go live.
Speaker 5: And would you ever go to the moon if given
Speaker 5: a chance.
Speaker 6: My opinion changes often Before I had kids, it's like, yeah,
Speaker 6: of course. And then I had kids, and I'm like,
Speaker 6: they need me, they need me here until they are
Speaker 6: the self sustaining, so like thirty, bring them to the moon.
Speaker 5: I would.
Speaker 6: I would be so happy if my kids became astronauts.
Speaker 6: I don't know why, Like it's it's super weird because
Speaker 6: it's probably not the safest thing for them to do,
Speaker 6: but to explore, I don't know, to become exploited. There's
Speaker 6: something so poetic and beautiful about, you know, pushing the
Speaker 6: boundaries of what humanity has done and can do do.
Speaker 5: Her kids like the moon.
Speaker 6: My little I mean, my my he's two and a
Speaker 6: half now, but I think ever since he was like
Speaker 6: a year and a half, he'll point to the moon
Speaker 6: and be like moon Moon. Because I think, like every
Speaker 6: night I set up the telescope just to look at
Speaker 6: the Moon like almost every night. It's I love looking
Speaker 6: at it, and it doesn't get old. Every time I
Speaker 6: look at that eyeps or through my cameras, it's just
Speaker 6: beautiful and I don't know, breasttaking to me every time
Speaker 6: doesn't get old.
Speaker 5: Do you have favorite craters or mares or highlands?
Speaker 6: I know the lingo, No, yeah, you're in it. I
Speaker 6: really like Copernicus Crater and Eratosthenes. And the reason why
Speaker 6: is they I think they pretty much set off the
Speaker 6: entire field of lunar science. So and how we study
Speaker 6: how things age and impact craters. So, Copernicus Crater is
Speaker 6: a bright, bright crater. So this is something we could
Speaker 6: talk about space weather. So if something is fresh, it's bright,
Speaker 6: and as it's exposed to space weather, it darkens. So
Speaker 6: if you see something that's a crater that's very bright
Speaker 6: on the Moon, it's a younger crater than something else.
Speaker 6: And the reason we knew this is because so this crater,
Speaker 6: Copernicus Crater, has these crater rays, and crater rays are
Speaker 6: material that were ejected during the impact. You punch the
Speaker 6: ground and a lot of stuff comes up and then
Speaker 6: gets flown all over the place and creating these beautiful
Speaker 6: crater rays, and some of those crater rays went into
Speaker 6: another crater. So that's how we knew that stuff that
Speaker 6: was bright must be younger than the stuff that is darker,
Speaker 6: because we have these rays that are going into these craters. So,
Speaker 6: and that's how we call the superposition, and a lot
Speaker 6: of dating on planetary bodies because we don't have samples
Speaker 6: from it get done through these crater counting and superposition
Speaker 6: principles of what is on top of something else.
Speaker 5: So is it kind of like a paint drippings You
Speaker 5: can tell what's on top because of the splatter.
Speaker 6: Yeah, okay, yeah, something like that. Yeah, And then we
Speaker 6: use samples brought back from the Apollo missions to sort
Speaker 6: of ground truth what we think the age of something is.
Speaker 6: So now you can create a curve of how many
Speaker 6: craters what does that mean for age?
Speaker 5: Also, what's with this moon wobble that's in the news
Speaker 5: these days. Well, scientists in the seventeen hundreds discovered that
Speaker 5: the Moon's orbit does a little bit of a wonky
Speaker 5: dip every eighteen point six years, and for half of
Speaker 5: it the tides are a little lower and for the
Speaker 5: other half tides will be higher. So hunker down for
Speaker 5: that between twenty thirty and forty. Aren't we so thankful
Speaker 5: for a planetary scientists so much that we're donating to
Speaker 5: some of the ologists choosing since Raquel says, the Planetary
Speaker 5: Society is doing great work. Their CEO is Bill Nigh
Speaker 5: and their mission is to introduce people to the wonders
Speaker 5: at the Cosmos and to inspire and educate people from
Speaker 5: all walks of life, so you can learn more about
Speaker 5: them at planetary dot org. And that donation we made
Speaker 5: was made possible by the following sponsors.
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Speaker 5: Okay, let's blaze through some questions. Are you ready for
Speaker 5: a lightning round? Okay, water The answer is yes, yes,
Speaker 5: you got this. Julie wants to know, will we ever
Speaker 5: know what's on the dark side?
Speaker 6: So there's a spacecraft right now that's orbiting the Moon
Speaker 6: called LRO, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, and it has taken spectacular,
Speaker 6: high definition, beautiful pictures of the entire Moon. And you
Speaker 6: can go to their website and find pictures of the
Speaker 6: dark So hour fire sight's not the dark side, the
Speaker 6: far side of the Moon. The coolest thing is that
Speaker 6: I think those cameras have done They've actually imaged the
Speaker 6: Paula landing sites, so you can see the footprints and
Speaker 6: the rover prints that the astronauts left at the surface,
Speaker 6: and like the lunar module and the rover, it's still
Speaker 6: and you can see it. It's in the images that
Speaker 6: were taken by l Rock, the cameras on board.
Speaker 5: Lro Christina SHOWI wants to know which theory on the
Speaker 5: origin of the Moon is your favorite.
Speaker 6: The impact theory that thea hit early Earth and it
Speaker 6: formed the Moon.
Speaker 5: But now here we are and here we are. Lettia
Speaker 5: McGinnis has a question that I'm sure so many people do,
Speaker 5: which is do the phases of the moon affect people's moods?
Speaker 5: You also worked a little bit in healthcare I did,
Speaker 5: or the airports. No, it doesn't because the phase the
Speaker 5: moon is still there. It's not any closer or any further.
Speaker 5: I mean, even if it does, like you wouldn't have
Speaker 5: enoughffect on us. It's just the sunlight. One paper on
Speaker 5: Martinez wants to know why don't we go back to
Speaker 5: the moon.
Speaker 6: I know That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: We should.
Speaker 6: The moon is the next logical step.
Speaker 5: I think it's right there.
Speaker 6: It's right there. We can set up bases we can
Speaker 6: make things there, we can make fuel there. It's much
Speaker 6: less gravity, so it's easier to launch from there. It
Speaker 6: just makes so much sense to go to the Moon
Speaker 6: and not Mars, like it's harder to leave the Earth's
Speaker 6: gravity well, whereas it'd be so much easier to do
Speaker 6: that from the Moon.
Speaker 5: Rene Couli wants to know who owns the Moon?
Speaker 6: Nobody, Okay, it's so. There is a space treaty that
Speaker 6: was signed. I don't remember the year nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 6: but it says that no one nation owns anything in space.
Speaker 6: Anna Thompson wants to know what is the biggest unknown
Speaker 6: about the Moon still or the coolest thing we've learned
Speaker 6: about the Moon?
Speaker 3: Well, I think the.
Speaker 6: Biggest sunknown is just how did it forms? It's so
Speaker 6: similar to our Earth and made it the same stuff,
Speaker 6: but you think it's a lot more it'd be a
Speaker 6: lot more different, but it's not. And the coolest thing
Speaker 6: I think there's water there.
Speaker 5: There's Yeah, that's nuts. That's pretty cool. Bree Johnson wants
Speaker 5: to know do you think there will ever be a
Speaker 5: time where humans can live on the Moon? And Lindsey K.
Speaker 5: Trotter also asked can we be colonize this thing or
Speaker 5: what Yeah, for.
Speaker 6: Sure, but I think that it'll be more of a
Speaker 6: jumping ground. You might go to the Moon first to
Speaker 6: acclimate or you know, not acclimate in the sense of
Speaker 6: acclimate to the weather, but acclimate to living and living
Speaker 6: space environment or not earth lighter gravity?
Speaker 5: And how's the gravity on the Moon versus Mars.
Speaker 6: A sixth so you could jump pretty high?
Speaker 5: E Brown asked, I didn't even think of this question.
Speaker 5: How come you can sometimes see the Moon during the day?
Speaker 6: So the Moon is always orbiting us, So sometimes it's
Speaker 6: orbiting us when it's nighttime and sometimes it's during it's daytime,
Speaker 6: So it's always either on our side during the day
Speaker 6: or on the other side. So it just depends on
Speaker 6: where it is on its orbit.
Speaker 5: What's the best thing about what you do or the
Speaker 5: best thing about the moon?
Speaker 6: The best thing is getting to think about these things
Speaker 6: that are so much bigger than myself. It takes me
Speaker 6: out of whatever is going on in my personal life
Speaker 6: or whatever is going on in the world. Just focusing
Speaker 6: on something that is just out there and it's so
Speaker 6: much bigger than us and bigger than whatever is happening
Speaker 6: in our world. Is kind of like a vacation in
Speaker 6: a way of everyday problems, and I think that that's
Speaker 6: what I love the most about it.
Speaker 5: And we love Roquelle Nuno, selenologist and everybody's best moon
Speaker 5: friend and also a planetary geologist who has the word
Speaker 5: rock in her first name. It's amazing. Follow Roquel on
Speaker 5: Instagram and Twitter at the space Geologist. Her handle is
Speaker 5: linked in the show notes. We are at ologies. I'm
Speaker 5: at ali Ward with one L and since this is
Speaker 5: a shorty episode, you can find all the credits of
Speaker 5: all the amazing folks who work on the show in
Speaker 5: the show notes too, and at aliward dot com slash smologies. Oh,
Speaker 5: one last thing before I go, some dad word life
Speaker 5: advice which I will cap every episode with. So sometimes
Speaker 5: when you're tired, are cranky, you're just thirsty. So if
Speaker 5: you're having a bad day, hydrate and see if that helps. Okay,
Speaker 5: go ask questions probie somologites, smology, olomologies, smologies.
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