Speaker 1: Welcome to the nonprofits. Another exciting episode that can only
Speaker 1: go up. Now. When I say up, I don't mean
Speaker 1: that kind of up, but I'm talking about looking up Aaron.
Speaker 1: Once you go ahe and fill us in.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Earthlans are witnessed to a once in a civilization event
Speaker 3: as Comet su Chin Sean Atlas, or as it is
Speaker 3: technically known, Sea Slash twenty twenty three A three has
Speaker 3: been visible from Earth since the end of September and
Speaker 3: will continue to be visible to the end of October
Speaker 3: of twenty twenty four, as on the comets to eighty
Speaker 3: thousand year journey around the Sun. The last time this
Speaker 3: commet was seen by any creature on Earth, wooly mammos
Speaker 3: were walking around and Homo sapiens were still hunters and gatherers.
Speaker 3: For those of North America, if you look up to
Speaker 3: the southwest about ninety minutes after sunset, you should be
Speaker 3: able to see the comet. Up until October twentieth, humans
Speaker 3: have done wild, unpredictable things when they see unprecedented celestial
Speaker 3: events like this. Is this comet important of things to come?
Speaker 3: Or a reason to let our human freak flag fly?
Speaker 3: This story is from Earth dot com by Eric Rawls,
Speaker 3: published September twenty ninth, twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: Thanks Aaron, And I've got to say that, being the
Speaker 1: oldest person on the panel, I just want to assure
Speaker 1: that everyone that I was not around the last time
Speaker 1: this comment came around. It was closed.
Speaker 3: But that's really not Actually that's really good.
Speaker 1: But on that note, you know, eighty thousand years does
Speaker 1: seem like a long time, But in the realm of
Speaker 1: the universe, we were to take the universe and say,
Speaker 1: compress it down a timeframe that we could understand better,
Speaker 1: how long would eighty thousand years be, and say, compare
Speaker 1: it to the universe?
Speaker 3: Yeah, the Earth, the universe, last I've heard it was
Speaker 3: thirteen and a half billion years old. I've heard some
Speaker 3: people say fourteen billion, but I went with thirteen billion.
Speaker 3: If you compress thirteen billion years down into one year
Speaker 3: of time, that means the comment was last year point
Speaker 3: zero zero zero five to nine percent of the entire
Speaker 3: life of the universe, which equals about three seconds ago.
Speaker 3: That's how that's how long the universe is. The comet
Speaker 3: was eighty thousand years in our term galactically speaking, or
Speaker 3: you know, universe speaking, it's like three seconds ago, and
Speaker 3: human population, the human civilization has even been around for
Speaker 3: a second. So uh, it's it's it's old, it's been
Speaker 3: around for a while, but it's also very very young.
Speaker 1: Well, I've got to say that I'm pretty fascinated with
Speaker 1: astronomical astronomical things. When I was a kid, I bought
Speaker 1: a telescope and was just absolutely fixated with with a
Speaker 1: lot of these things. But I know that many people
Speaker 1: don't really know the difference between one celestial object to another.
Speaker 1: So ahs one or can you share some clarification on that.
Speaker 2: I'm glad you asked. I mean, I love science clearly,
Speaker 2: so allow me to get a little bit nerdy and
Speaker 2: technical here for a moment. You know, there are a
Speaker 2: lot of objects up in space, you know, so what
Speaker 2: is the difference between all of these space things? So
Speaker 2: an asteroid is a rock and metal, you know, there
Speaker 2: can be a combination of both and iron and stuff
Speaker 2: like that, and they come from the asteroid belt that's
Speaker 2: between Mars and Jupiter. Then you have meteor which is
Speaker 2: not actually an object. It's more like the burning effect
Speaker 2: that results from a meteoroid when it enters the atmosphere
Speaker 2: and it starts to burn. And then a meteoroid is
Speaker 2: what most people think of as a meteor or the
Speaker 2: confused part of the names. As I say, the meteor
Speaker 2: is just the light that it reflects, so it's a meteoroid.
Speaker 2: There's a chunk of an asteroid from the asteroid belt,
Speaker 2: and the comet, which is what we're talking about here,
Speaker 2: is mostly ice and dust. Sometimes it can sort of
Speaker 2: grab rocky objects along the path because it's traveling so
Speaker 2: fast and it's made of ice, so you know, stuff
Speaker 2: kind of sticks to it, and so a comed is
Speaker 2: just kind of like a bunch of space junk. That's
Speaker 2: why they're often called dirty snowballs.
Speaker 1: Well, I have to first say that when Steven mentioned
Speaker 1: the eighty thousand years and you seem to be buying
Speaker 1: into that too, I just want to go ahead and
Speaker 1: start out with lies of the Devil, because we all
Speaker 1: know that the world is actually six thousand years old
Speaker 1: and started on a Tuesday around three pm, So I
Speaker 1: don't know what you guys are talking about.
Speaker 4: Timeline was humid in the Genealogy of Jesus found in
Speaker 4: Luke chapter three.
Speaker 1: Amen, brother, and I'm glad you're aware of it now.
Speaker 1: Stephen I know that you're an artist, so I know
Speaker 1: that you're going to look at this from a from
Speaker 1: an artist perspective. What do you see in this whole
Speaker 1: story about this comment and it's eighty eighty thousand year trip?
Speaker 1: What do you see with this?
Speaker 4: Like I cannot rap remember, I just you want to
Speaker 4: know how how good I am with numbers. I just
Speaker 4: found out today that I sent a package. I thought
Speaker 4: I was sending it to my address, but I like
Speaker 4: mixed up two numbers. I sent it to four or
Speaker 4: five one and said five four one. I've lived here
Speaker 4: for two and a half years and I still can't
Speaker 4: keep my address right. That that's how well numbers click
Speaker 4: in my brain. Right, So eighty thousand years is just
Speaker 4: what does that even mean? And especially like the idea
Speaker 4: that this comet is, you know, orbiting the Sun and
Speaker 4: it's spending most of its time out beyond Pluto, like
Speaker 4: it's that far away and yet still the Sun is
Speaker 4: what is like whipping? It's still the Sun is pulling?
Speaker 4: Like how how how does this work?
Speaker 2: It?
Speaker 4: Just like I know if for myself, if I hopped
Speaker 4: into a car and I drove away from anything for
Speaker 4: forty thousand years and no point when I say, you
Speaker 4: know what, I kind of want to I feel like
Speaker 4: I should turn around and go back to where I
Speaker 4: came from after forty thousand years. I'm like, no, I
Speaker 4: am gone. I do not owe you anything. I'm going
Speaker 4: to just keep on going in direction. I'm going, I
Speaker 4: am not turning around. And yet for this comment, it
Speaker 4: is out there for so far, for so long, and
Speaker 4: he's like, you know what, I still I just can't.
Speaker 4: I just can't say no to that, son. I just
Speaker 4: got to keep on being tugged around by it. It
Speaker 4: just blows my mind.
Speaker 1: Well, I've got to say that with the name, and
Speaker 1: I'm not even to try to enunciate it. I'm glad
Speaker 1: Aaron had that job, and I'm going to leave it
Speaker 1: with him. And I'm just gonna call it the Dorothy
Speaker 1: Dorothy comment, because clearly it thinks there's no place like home.
Speaker 1: So it's coming back now. Seriously, though, Aaron, why do
Speaker 1: you think there's this tendency with us and then I
Speaker 1: don't meet us, particularly on the panel, but human tendency
Speaker 1: to assign meaning to celestial events like comments, and and
Speaker 1: how how do you think that that influences our understanding
Speaker 1: of science versus mythology.
Speaker 3: Oh, I think it's I think it's built in. I
Speaker 3: think it's it evolved. Our brains evolved to be storytelling brains.
Speaker 3: Don't know why. It must have something with survival and
Speaker 3: being able to notice things that are dangerous to us
Speaker 3: and surviving those dangers.
Speaker 4: But we are.
Speaker 3: Our brains literally make up stories on what's happening in
Speaker 3: the world, literally make things up. And so when you
Speaker 3: see a come in the sky, oh my gosh, what
Speaker 3: the heck is that? It must mean the world is
Speaker 3: about to end or some other Or you see in
Speaker 3: eclipse a solar eclips or a luminary eclips Oh my gosh,
Speaker 3: what does that mean? The sun is red? Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3: So your brain is your brain has to know, and
Speaker 3: it wants to know so bad that it just makes
Speaker 3: shit up and makes stories up. And that's what That's
Speaker 3: the beauty of science is the beauty of science is
Speaker 3: it eliminates that bias that we have. It takes all
Speaker 3: the biases that we have, the confirmation biases, the ad
Speaker 3: popular biases, the you know, all those minds that we have,
Speaker 3: and it gets rid. It tries to get rid of them,
Speaker 3: and it tries to see the world for the way
Speaker 3: it really is. It tries to find out what is
Speaker 3: the truth, how does the world really operate? What is
Speaker 3: that big thing in the sky. Is it a monster
Speaker 3: coming to devour the earth or is it something else?
Speaker 3: In science then investigates and tries to figure out what's
Speaker 3: the truth here, what's going on. Unfortunately, we live at
Speaker 3: a time where science is kind of came. Without science,
Speaker 3: we wouldn't be talking on these electronic devices, we wouldn't
Speaker 3: have the Internet, we wouldn't have the travel that we have.
Speaker 3: We wouldn't be able to understand that a comment is
Speaker 3: just a hawk ice that's literally falling towards the Sun
Speaker 3: and melting, and that's why we see it has the
Speaker 3: long tail.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: Without science, we wouldn't know that an eclipse is just
Speaker 3: the Earth getting in the way of the Sun or
Speaker 3: the moon Moon getting away of the Sun and blocking
Speaker 3: it from the Earth's view. So science is an invaluable
Speaker 3: to it to helping us understand the truth of what
Speaker 3: real reality is like. Without all our storytelling, nonsense in
Speaker 3: our brains getting in the way.
Speaker 2: And without science, you would not be watching the nonprofits.
Speaker 1: You would not be that is absolutely not and speaking
Speaker 1: of science, I hail science. I think I hail science.
Speaker 1: I completely agree, And you know, I think that you
Speaker 1: hit on several good things talking about you know, science
Speaker 1: and how it takes away these buys and these allow
Speaker 1: us to look at the data and sort out things.
Speaker 1: And but that also kind of goes the question I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk to you about, AJA is about you know,
Speaker 1: we have computer simulations that we can calculate these things.
Speaker 1: I know that some people look at this and go, yo,
Speaker 1: you're you're taking the mystery away. You're you're you're taking
Speaker 1: the fun out of it by breaking it down in
Speaker 1: the numbers. But what about you? How do you feel
Speaker 1: about that? I know you have you enjoy science. Does
Speaker 1: it deepen your appreciation of these type of events that
Speaker 1: we have been able to learn so many things, and
Speaker 1: we obviously don't know everything, but that we've been able
Speaker 1: to learn this and understand and predict these types of things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Aaron said, you know, we have been able to
Speaker 2: do so many things through science, and science is just
Speaker 2: to me, it's amazing. And we have been able to
Speaker 2: learn some incredible things about the history of humans, the Earth,
Speaker 2: the galaxy, you know, the whole universe. In science is
Speaker 2: Athlete has helped us understand that the last individuals to
Speaker 2: witness this, you know, cosmic events more ancestors who first
Speaker 2: wentured out of Africa eighty thousand years ago. And there
Speaker 2: are several factors that scientists can use and look at
Speaker 2: to determine when a comet will come close to the
Speaker 2: Earth and whether it has come close to Earth before.
Speaker 2: They can use computer simulation, which is extremely intricate and
Speaker 2: complicated and detailed. They can calculate the speed, the size,
Speaker 2: the axis, the rotation, and they can observe the orbit
Speaker 2: for long periods of time to learn, you know, what
Speaker 2: shape the orbit has, whatever it's you know, a perfect
Speaker 2: circle or over all or whether it's just fluctuating, and
Speaker 2: how long it takes that orbit, you know, after it
Speaker 2: has gone through it a couple of times. So it's
Speaker 2: just mind blowing. As Steven mentioned, what kind of work
Speaker 2: goes into getting more detailed history about these these objects
Speaker 2: because they can't look at any kind of object, like
Speaker 2: you said, you know, comments meteors, meteoroid's, asteroids, any kind
Speaker 2: of object and to you exactly what it was on
Speaker 2: what is going to be? And I wish this kind
Speaker 2: of stuff got a lot more attention.
Speaker 1: I was very tempted to ask Steven a very simple question,
Speaker 1: and of course by simple, I mean, what do you
Speaker 1: think that cosmology would look like? Explaining a comment from
Speaker 1: the flat earth perspective?
Speaker 4: But I'm not going to do that, just something that's
Speaker 4: just a glitch in the what's what's the I'm blanking
Speaker 4: on the celestial dome that's over.
Speaker 1: Oh the firmament.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, exactly, It's all a big.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Steven. I'm glad to ask you because now I
Speaker 1: know you knew not only explained it to me, but
Speaker 1: you've now converted me to be a flur. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of win win, right, So we can go and
Speaker 1: shut the show down and do our own thing. But
Speaker 1: actually I have a real question for you. Do you
Speaker 1: think that conversations about space and science can create a
Speaker 1: more profound sense of curiosity exploration? And perhaps these things
Speaker 1: lead to people looking at the world in ways that
Speaker 1: have nothing to do with the comment or any of
Speaker 1: these things, and recognize that the world is a lot
Speaker 1: bigger than perhaps that they saw it before.
Speaker 4: Exactly precisely, like I like, this conversation is reminding me
Speaker 4: of a book that me and the kids took out
Speaker 4: from the library a number of months back, and it
Speaker 4: was this, It was a story told by our rock
Speaker 4: that Neil Armstrong brought back from the Moon, and it
Speaker 4: was just like, yep, here's my life story. I started
Speaker 4: off this way, and oh yeah, how I think it
Speaker 4: started off as on Earth and then there was a
Speaker 4: collision and whatever caused the moon like just kind of
Speaker 4: like giving the millions of years of history and just
Speaker 4: what went into creating the Moon and how this rock
Speaker 4: was on the face of the Moon for millennia and
Speaker 4: it hadn't even like looked back at the Earth since humans,
Speaker 4: you know, first came about on the Earth, that it
Speaker 4: wasn't even aware that people were down here. And it
Speaker 4: was just so it was so neat to, especially for
Speaker 4: my kids, just to be able to open up their
Speaker 4: minds to this idea that the world is so the galaxy,
Speaker 4: the universe, the cosmos are so big, and it's just
Speaker 4: and especially because we're in a you know, a rural
Speaker 4: setting here, just to shake them free from any idea
Speaker 4: that what we see right here is basically all that
Speaker 4: there is. It is so much bigger and it's such
Speaker 4: a deep, wonderful place to explore and just to incite
Speaker 4: curiosity and desire to know more. Absolutely, like, more of
Speaker 4: that information we have, the more we can share, the
Speaker 4: more we can wonder, and the more the more we wonder,
Speaker 4: the more we can dig in.
Speaker 1: You know, I think that that's something that we all
Speaker 1: can be reminded sometimes, because it's easy to get wrapped
Speaker 1: up and think that, you know, the little small bubble
Speaker 1: you live in is the world, and obviously it isn't.
Speaker 1: There's a whole big world right here on this rock.
Speaker 1: But really, when it comes down to it, the rock
Speaker 1: we live on is really quite small and infitesimal compared
Speaker 1: to this vast universe that really, as Aaron pointed out,
Speaker 1: this eighty thousand year trek of a comment is still
Speaker 1: just a very small portion of that universe. And aj
Speaker 1: I was wondering, I know that some people they tie
Speaker 1: themselves into a bubble of you know, studying religious texts.
Speaker 1: Do you think that their exposure to wonders of the universe,
Speaker 1: which this, in my opinion, even though it is a
Speaker 1: dirty snowball, is a wonder. It's a pretty cool thing.
Speaker 1: And so do you think that this wonder of a
Speaker 1: snowball dirty snowball that we're talking about here. Do you
Speaker 1: think that, uh, this is something that people will look
Speaker 1: at and perhaps reconsider those religious texts. Do you think so?
Speaker 2: I think they could, you know, like what Aaron said
Speaker 2: earlier about how we see the world and how we
Speaker 2: use science, and that that is exactly what we should
Speaker 2: be doing. We should be looking more so at at
Speaker 2: other books, not just the one book, because place is
Speaker 2: just so fascinating. So I'll never understand why people spend
Speaker 2: their lives studying scripture and grasping stars to make sense
Speaker 2: of these supernatural claims when they could just look up
Speaker 2: at the sky making effort to understand was actually truly
Speaker 2: going on. After there's no heaven, there's no sky, Daddy,
Speaker 2: there's no supernatural involved. But I suppose that you know,
Speaker 2: the vastness of the cosmos can sometimes feel intimidating because
Speaker 2: it is just so complex and a lot of people
Speaker 2: have a hard time understanding it.
Speaker 1: I think you're right. And one of the things that
Speaker 1: I wanted to reach out to Aaron on is that
Speaker 1: do you do you think that there's enough focus on
Speaker 1: scientific literacy and you know, and not just in astronomy,
Speaker 1: but in sciences in general. Do you think our society
Speaker 1: tends to gloss over that, or do you think that
Speaker 1: we could benefit from a greater focus on I think we.
Speaker 3: Could definitely benefit from from a focus on science. I
Speaker 3: think we could really benefit from a focus on understanding
Speaker 3: that humans are bias machines. We do not see the
Speaker 3: world the way it really is. And all you have
Speaker 3: to do to prove that is go do a search for.
Speaker 4: Oh, what is it?
Speaker 3: Of course, every time I want to say it illusions,
Speaker 3: optical illusions, Go do a search on the never optical
Speaker 3: illusions or audio illusions, and you'll see that our brain
Speaker 3: does not process the world in a truthful, accurate way.
Speaker 3: And so when people if people understood that we are
Speaker 3: just emotional, irrational creatures, and that the purpose of science
Speaker 3: isn't too you know, disproved, isn't to you know, tell
Speaker 3: you that your religion is a lie. The purpose of
Speaker 3: science is to help us see the world in an
Speaker 3: accurate way, and then whatever the consequences of that is,
Speaker 3: let those consequences be. But science is there to show
Speaker 3: us the way the work, the way the world really is,
Speaker 3: and help us understand how things really work. Because when
Speaker 3: we understand how things really work, then we can control them,
Speaker 3: we can understand them, we can move forward, we could
Speaker 3: take advantage of them.
Speaker 1: And yeah, well, and I was just wondering. I know
Speaker 1: that I'm going to go ahead and get all my
Speaker 1: family and friends together that are prepared for the comment.
Speaker 1: We're going to have a nice, big prayer meeting. Okay, No,
Speaker 1: maybe we're not. But you know, this is definitely one
Speaker 1: of those things that I think, and I think you're right, Aaron.
Speaker 1: I think that it's not our goal necessarily, or it's
Speaker 1: not the goal at all for science. Science is not
Speaker 1: about a God claim. But I do think that scientific
Speaker 1: literacy does help allow certain bad beliefs to be perpetuated.
Speaker 1: And I think that when people learn things and they
Speaker 1: understand that somebody's not just pulling up a number of
Speaker 1: eighty thousand years out of their rectum and saying this
Speaker 1: is the official science, and they understand the science behind it,
Speaker 1: sometimes that causes people to reconsider their views now, and.
Speaker 3: It can be read it can be threatening for science
Speaker 3: to reveal things about the universe that contradict our deeply
Speaker 3: held beliefs, and that's a really tough spot.
Speaker 2: To be in. Yep.
Speaker 1: And you know, for me, I was raised in a
Speaker 1: very conservative sect that almost everybody was younger Earth, but
Speaker 1: I wasn't. Well, my dad had a geology background, so
Speaker 1: he thought the idea of a young Earth was just
Speaker 1: absolutely stupid. But he also you know, so I learned
Speaker 1: a lot of things, like the global flood wasn't true,
Speaker 1: and that the Earth wasn't six thousand years old, but
Speaker 1: it is for some people. It's almost like it's a
Speaker 1: personal offense if you even imply that this could be
Speaker 1: the case. And well, far be it for me to
Speaker 1: offend anybody. I would never do that. Okay, once again,
Speaker 1: but I was wondering, Stephen, did you have anything you
Speaker 1: wanted to wrap up with?
Speaker 4: Like, the more we the more we know, the more
Speaker 4: we understand, the greater, the more the doors that will
Speaker 4: be opened up to us, the better we can understand
Speaker 4: our place in the world, and maybe hope we can
Speaker 4: save it from ourselves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that I think you might have set a
Speaker 1: really high bar there, but yeah, we can hope for that. Now,
Speaker 1: any anything you want to close with?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wanted to add to what Aaron said about science. Literacy,
Speaker 2: science communication is inquitely important for society to grow and
Speaker 2: make progress, you know, like when I was rebeating this article,
Speaker 2: realize how little I know about astrophysics. But that is
Speaker 2: exactly what I love having experts explain it to me
Speaker 2: in simple terms, and you know that I can understand,
Speaker 2: like I love listening to the gas tison. And there's
Speaker 2: another one saving host and fielder I think is her name,
Speaker 2: and they make learning about astronomy and physics fun and engaging.
Speaker 2: And there are so many other scientists sharing about whatever field, biology, genetics, archaeology.
Speaker 2: They have YouTube channels, podcast audio books, and they all
Speaker 2: open the conversation to the average person and invite them
Speaker 2: to talk about whatever topic they enjoy. You know, you
Speaker 2: never know what might pipe your interest in, and you know,
Speaker 2: a completely new career in the scientific field. And it's
Speaker 2: one of the greatest benefits that we have in the
Speaker 2: age of information. There is easy and open and often
Speaker 2: free access to knowledge that everyone should be taken advantage of.
Speaker 1: Well, this is a little awkward because I thought they
Speaker 1: scheduled you on the program tonight, Aja because of your
Speaker 1: technical astrophysics and expertise. So this is very unsettling. So
Speaker 1: I had to talk to somebody about that. But Aaron,
Speaker 1: is there anything you wanted to close with, Yeah.
Speaker 3: We are emotional creatures. We're irrationally emotional creatures, and so
Speaker 3: science can sometimes get in its own way in trying
Speaker 3: to communicate the amazing universe that we live in. And
Speaker 3: so it's really important that when we focus when we
Speaker 3: tell scientific stories, that we tell stories and that can
Speaker 3: kind of seem disingenious or contradictory to science. But the
Speaker 3: best science communicators tell stories about the science and they
Speaker 3: help you feel the feel the importance of the science
Speaker 3: and why it's there. And so remember, tell a story,
Speaker 3: Tell a good story that has basis in scientific fact
Speaker 3: and truth.
Speaker 1: I think that's a good way to look at things
Speaker 1: because if you talk over your audience, no one's going
Speaker 1: to hear you. And with that type of approach of
Speaker 1: telling stories, you get people interested in engaged and wanting
Speaker 1: to learn more. And with that type of attitude, people
Speaker 1: will put the effort in to learn. Now, I will
Speaker 1: say though that I know that we have episodes is
Speaker 1: one of everybody know. Drop on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and
Speaker 1: Saturday at six pm Central Time,