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Speaker 1: Okay, so what if everything you thought you knew about

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our planet was just well the surface, like just a

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tiny glimpse of this incredibly ancient and dynamic story happening

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beneath our feet.

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Speaker 2: It's a fascinating thought, isn't it.

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Speaker 1: Totally imagine entire continents that have vanished, not into myth,

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but actually into the Earth itself, or maybe they're just

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quietly hiding, you know, under other continents. We're deep down

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in the oceans where we haven't really looked right.

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Speaker 2: And today we're not just talking about old legends.

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Speaker 1: No exactly, We're diving into real, tangible, scientific discoveries, stuff

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that's basically rewriting Earth's history, showing us a world it's

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way more active and mysterious, maybe even more alive than

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we usually think.

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Speaker 2: It's constantly changing, constantly evolving.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to the deep dive. This is where we grab

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a whole stack of fascinating sources and just plunge right

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into the heart of our well, constantly evolving planet.

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Speaker 2: And today's journey really spans scales, doesn't it, For microscopic

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clues in ancient rocks, all the way.

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Speaker 1: Up to the grand scale that sort of slow motion

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dance of supercontinents. We'll explore the immense power of geology,

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listen to these weird sounds from the deep ocean.

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Speaker 2: The enigmatic whispers yeah, and.

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Speaker 1: Even try to glimpse Earth's future. It feels like every

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discovery doesn't just add a piece to the puzzle, It

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kind of changes the whole picture.

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Speaker 2: It really transforms our understanding.

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Speaker 1: So our mission here in this deep dive is to

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give you a shortcut, a way to get truly well

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informed about Earth's hidden marvels without having to weigh through

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all the raw data yourself.

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Speaker 2: We'll try to unravel these geological puzzles, look at the

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cutting edge science behind how we're finding this stuff out.

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Speaker 1: And kenneth the dots right. See why these huge, often

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invisible changes actually matter to us, to life on Earth

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and the future of our home world.

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Speaker 2: Get ready for some potentially mind bending moments.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, prepare for some aha moments, because what we're

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exploring today might just shift how you think about the

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very ground you're standing on.

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Speaker 2: It's genuinely humbling when you realize how much we're still

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finding out about our own planet. We tend to see

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Earth as this, you know, static backdrop, a stage for

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our lives, right, just kind of there exactly. But these

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sources paint a picture of a churning, living thing with

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this incredible deep memory constantly reshaping itself.

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Speaker 1: Is a profound thought, and maybe the best place to

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start unraveling that memory is with something huge, like an

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entire tectonic plate just vanishing.

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Speaker 2: It sounds impossible, doesn't it.

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Speaker 1: It really does. For years, geologists were apparently stumped by

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this weird gap in the sea between South China and Borneo.

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And even if you know about plate tectonics, the idea

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of a whole plate disappearing, yeah, it's just mind boggling.

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How does subduction actually achieve that? Making something that big.

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Speaker 2: Just vanish it is monumental. So, you know, tectonic plates,

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these enormous puzzle pieces making up Earth's outer shell, the

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Lifo sphere. They're not floating on lava like some people.

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Speaker 1: Think, right, that old misconception.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, They're gliding on a semi fluid layer of the

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mantle underneath. And subduction is the key. When a denser

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plate's edge slides under another, it's not just the edge.

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Given enough time millions of years, the entire massive plate

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can get pulled down into the mantle, pulled down and

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basically recycled, exactly melted and recycled. The is Anagi plate,

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for example. Everyone thought that one subducted completely maybe fifty

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five million years ago, But in that specific spot between

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South China and Borneo, the evidence for Isanagi just didn't

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quite line up. It left this big geological riddle.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so if the is an Aggie story didn't fit

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the local evidence, how did researchers finally figure it out?

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Because what they found it wasn't just not is Anagi,

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it was something totally new, right, like a ghost from

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the past.

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Speaker 2: Precisely, researchers at Utrek University they finally cracked it. They

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figured out that this unexplained gap, it wasn't is Anoggi's

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leftover footprint at all. It was actually the mark of

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a previously unknown plate, a ghost tectonic plate.

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Speaker 1: They called it a ghost plate.

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Speaker 2: I love that they named it the Pontus plate, after

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the ancient Pontus Ocean it used to sit under.

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Speaker 1: That name just evokes so much mystery. But okay, if

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it disappeared so long ago, how on earth do scientists

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find these things. It's not like they leave. You know,

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footprints we can follow.

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Speaker 2: No, not footprints, but something maybe even better. Rocks. Rocks

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are amazing time capsules. Right as they cool down and

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solidify magnetic minerals inside them, things like magnetite. They align

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with Earth's magnetic field at that exact moment in time, like.

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Speaker 1: Tiny compass needles frozen in place exactly.

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Speaker 2: It freezes a record of the field's direction and strength.

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And because the field's direction changes depending on latitude, these

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old rocks give you a snapshot of where they were

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relative to the equator when they first formed.

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Speaker 1: That is genuinely ingenious. So what did the rocks and

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Borneo show that pointed towards this Pontius Plate.

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Speaker 2: Well, the researchers in Borneo, they collected and studied these

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ancient rocks really carefully, and what they found was pretty strange.

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They the magnetic signature showed these rocks came from much

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farther north than they should have if they'd been part

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of Asanagi or any other plate.

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Speaker 1: We knew about way off the expected mark completely.

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Speaker 2: So that discovery led them to two realizations. First, there

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was this weird gap in the known geology for that area,

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and second, there had to have been another hidden plate there,

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the Pontis Plate.

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Speaker 1: Wow.

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Speaker 2: And to really piece this geological ghost together, they used

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these advanced computer models. They simulated the whole region's geology

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over one hundred and sixty million years, painstakingly rebuilding the

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Pontas Plate, figuring out its original massive size.

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Speaker 1: So this Pondas Plate, just how big are we talking?

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What happened to it in the end?

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Speaker 2: Oh, it was immense truly colossal. They think it formed

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at least one hundred and sixty million years ago, maybe

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even older. And size wise picture about one quarter the

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size of the entire Pacific.

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Speaker 1: Ocean and quarter of the Pacific. That's staggering, it really is.

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Speaker 2: But like many plates, it eventually met its end around

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twenty million years. It got completely pulled under, subducted beneath

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the Australian Plate to the south and under China to

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the north, just vanished back into the mantle. It's a

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powerful reminder of that constant recycling process.

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Speaker 1: And it wasn't just those magnetic clues in the rocks, right,

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Were there other breadcrumbs that they followed to track down Pontus.

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Speaker 2: That's a great question. Yeah, there were other subtle hints

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traces found in places like Palawan, which is an island

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in the Philippines, and also in the South China Sea. Actually,

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the scientific community I kind of suspected there might be

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a missing Western plate for maybe a decade or more.

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Oh really, Yeah, Studies looking at how the crust moved

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between Japan and New Zealand suggested there needed to be

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a subduction zone and some unknown plate out west to

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make the models work. And beyond rocks, you know, subducting

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plates changed the mantle below them. They caused volcanoes, earthquakes,

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deep ocean trenches.

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Speaker 1: Probe the big geological markers.

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Speaker 2: Exactly, and they changed the mantles chemistry and temperature too,

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creating these detectable anomalies. So it's really like piecing together

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clues from multiple angles, magnetic, seismic, structural.

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Speaker 1: It's amazing we can reconstruct history that deep. But seeing

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these things miles under of the ground, that sounds incredibly hard.

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You mentioned traditional methods or maybe costly or low res.

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What's the new tech giving geologists this kind of X

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ray vision.

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Speaker 2: Well, the real game changer recently has been something called

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distributed acoustic sensing or DAS.

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Speaker 1: A DAS.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, DAS. It's incredibly clever. It basically turns existing fiber

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optic cables, the same ones used for high speed internet,

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into thousands and thousands of tiny earthquake detectors.

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Speaker 1: Whoaah wait How.

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Speaker 2: They send laser beams down the cables and any tiny

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movement in the ground from an earthquake or even just

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heavy traffic or ocean waves hitting the coast, It causes

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microscopic changes in how the light reflects back.

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Speaker 1: So the cables themselves become sensors.

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Speaker 2: Exactly thousands of them along the length of the cable.

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This lets scientists create these unprecedented almost ultrasound like images

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miles down, especially in the Moho region, that boundary between

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the crust and the mantle. DAS is revealing major fault lines,

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how continents were shaped billions of years ago, and yeah,

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new clues about hidden plates like Pontus. It's revolutionizing how

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we map the Earth's insides.

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Speaker 1: It really does sound like we're finally giving the Earth

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a proper checkup. And speaking of continents, you know, we

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all learn about the seven continents in school, right the

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standard map, But geoscientists they define continents differently, right, not

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just by land above water, but by rock type, and

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from that angle, the number of continents actually goes up

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because of these lost continents hidden away.

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Speaker 2: That's right. It broadens our definition. It's not just about

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what pokes above the sea level. It's about the underlying geology,

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the continental crust. And yeah, there are these other continental

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masses hidden beneath other land masses or submerged under the oceans.

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Speaker 1: And one of the most amazing examples sounds completely fantastical.

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Greater Adria, a land mass the size of Greenland now

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buried under Europe, Italy, Grease, the Baltics. They're sitting on

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top of a lost continent. That's just wild.

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Speaker 2: It genuinely is mind bending. Greater Adria formed maybe two

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hundred and forty million years ago. It broke off from

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the ancient super continent Gondwana, and then it drifted north

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like this giant geological ship, sailing across ancient seas for

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millions of years. Eventually, though, it collided.

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Speaker 1: With Europe and that was the end of it.

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Speaker 2: Well, yes and no. The collision caused it to shatter

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and mostly subduct slide underneath Europe, but it left fragments behind.

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Parts of it are embedded in the Alps. You find

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chunks in modern day Italy and Croatia, and here's a

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beautiful link. Yeah, the limestone rocks from Greater Adria. When

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they got buried under immense heat and pressure, they transformed

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into marble, the same marble used in countless ancient Greek

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and Roman temples. Oh way, Yeah, it's like a geological

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that literally provided the building blocks for parts of Western civilization.

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Speaker 1: That's incredible and going away gift. So Greater Adria is buried. Yeah,

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But then there's Zeelandia, which is more like hiding under

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the ocean. You can even see it's Atlanta Google Maps right,

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Earth's eighth continent.

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Speaker 2: Zeelandi is a perfect example of hiding in plain sight.

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A massive ninety five percent of it is underwater beneath

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the Pacific. It stretches from New Caledonia down towards New Zealand.

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Speaker 1: How big is it compared to say, Australia.

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Speaker 2: It's roughly two thirds the size of Australia and more

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than double the size of Greater Adria. Only about seven

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percent is above sea level. That's New Zealand and Stuart Island.

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But geologically it is continental crust. It's just thinner and

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younger than the core parts of other continents.

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Speaker 1: And how do we know it's continental?

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Speaker 2: Scientists found ancient zircon crystals in its rocks, those amazing

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time capsules again dating back one point three billion years plus.

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They've mapped its mass using magnetic data, topography, even satellite

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gravity tracking. It broke away from Antarctica about one hundred

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million years ago, another silent giant beneath the waves.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so buried continents, submerged continents. And now this really

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radical idea Icelandia, a submerged micro continent between Greenland and Scandinavia.

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That sounds like it throws a wrench in the standard

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story of the North Atlantic opening up.

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Speaker 2: The Icelandia theory is definitely starring the pot. Yeah, it's

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still controversial, but it suggests this submerged land mass maybe

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two hundred and thirty thousand square miles, was once dry land.

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It challenges the long held view that the North Atlantic

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only formed when Pangaea split apart two hundred million years ago.

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Speaker 1: What's the evidence for it?

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Speaker 2: A key piece is the crust beneath iceland itself. It's

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unusually thick, about twenty five meters compared to maybe five

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meters for typical oceanic crust, and it's made of silica

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and granite, which are typical continental rocks. Ah Plus, magnetic

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surveys of the ocean floor show these weird stripe patterns

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of molten crust that might fit this continental remnant idea.

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They need more research, of course, drilling for Zircon's more

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seismic surveys. And there's even talk of a greater Icelandia. Yeah,

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some proponents speculate about a much larger ancient land mass

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connecting Ireland, Britain, Scandinavia and Greenland. Think about the implications

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for ancient forests, maybe even ancient migration routes. It's speculative,

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but fascinating. Someone even joked about future oceanic trains connecting them.

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Speaker 1: An oceanic train, it's quite the image. Okay, So the

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world wasn't always separated by these vast oceans. We had

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land bridges too, like the Broken Ridge and the Indian Ocean,

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connecting India and Antarctica exactly.

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Speaker 2: These land bridges are crucial for understanding how plants and

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animals spread in the past. Broken Ridge, this oceanic plateau

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physically linked India and Antarctica millions of years ago, and

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from clues on nearby islands, scientists think its climate was temperate, rainy,

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supporting tropical life, almost like modern New Zealand.

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Speaker 1: Wow, so different from Antarctica today.

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Speaker 2: Totally different. It shows how dramatically things can change.

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Speaker 1: And speaking of connections, Madagascar, that unique island actually came

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from India, not Africa. And there's another loss cottonent involved Marisia.

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Speaker 2: That's right, Madagascar split from India about one hundred and

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twenty million years ago. And the Mauritia discover under Mauritius

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Island is amazing. They found these incredibly old zircon crystals,

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some up to two billion years old, mixed in with

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much younger volcanic.

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Speaker 1: Rock two billion years Yeah.

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Speaker 2: These ancient crystals are remnants of a lost liver of land,

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a kind of ribbon like continent called Mauritia that once

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stretched from Mauritius to the west coast of India, another

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forgotten piece of the Gondwana super continent.

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Speaker 1: Puzzle. The Earth just keeps revealing these lost chapters. And

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even if we go back just fifty thousand years, Southeast

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Asia looked completely different. No Sumatra, Borneo, Java, as separate islands, not.

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Speaker 2: As we know them today. Back then, during the Last

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Ice Age, when sea levels were lower, you had two

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massive land masses, Sunda, which was basically mainland Southeast Asia

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extended much further south Okay, and Sahoul which was greater Australia,

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connecting Australia, New Guinea, Tasmania, even the Aru Islands into

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one huge continent.

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Speaker 1: Wow. And what separated them.

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Speaker 2: A deep water trench, a significant barrier even then, was

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effectively the southernmost tip of Asia.

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Speaker 1: At that time.

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Speaker 2: This geography was fundamental to how early humans and animals

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migrated across the region.

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Speaker 1: That deep trench separating Sunda and Saho, that sounds like

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a perfect lead into the Wallace line, this invisible divide

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Alfred Russell Wallace spotted one hundred and fifty years ago

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in the Malay Archipelago.

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Speaker 2: It's one of the classic stories in biogeography. Wallace noticed

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the startling difference. On islands like Borneo and Sumatra, the

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animals were clearly Asian rhinos monkeys, but just across this

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invisible line, on islands like Sulawesi and Lumbach, they were

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Australian cockatoos. Marsupials.

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Speaker 1: So different yet so close geographically. What explains it?

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Speaker 2: The explanation is pure geology, deep time geology. Around thirty

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five million years ago, Australia, having broken off Antarctica, started

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drifting north. Eventually it began colliding with Asia. One source

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called it a continental love triangle.

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Speaker 1: Oh, I got it.

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Speaker 2: This massive collision created the island chain we see today

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the Malay Archipelago. But it it also triggered huge climate shifts.

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The Asian side stayed warm and rainy, and Asian species

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thrived using the new islands as stepping stones towards Australia. Okay,

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But the Australian animals, adapted to cooler, drier conditions, found

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it much harder to cross into this new tropical environment.

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The Wallas line marks that ecological boundary created by the

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continental collision.

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Speaker 1: So this ancient smashup is basically why Australia has such

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unique animals kangaroos platypus.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely, it's the fundamental reason the collision isolated Australian fauna

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and shaped its evolution. It highlights how profoundly living things

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are affected by the shifting land. Some even think it

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might help explain homolusinensis, that ancient human species found in

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the Philippines with weird primitive features. Maybe their ancestors were

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isolated on.

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Speaker 1: That southern side.

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Speaker 2: Fascinating link and understanding this helps scientists predict how animals

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might react to future climate change. Too. It's not the

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only line either. Weber's line is another attempt to map

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these boundaries.

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Speaker 1: This constant movement just underscores that continents aren't fixed. They've

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come together and broken apart before, like with Pangaea. The

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ultimate super.

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Speaker 2: Continent, Pangaea, meaning all Earth. It existed roughly three hundred

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to two hundred million years ago, bringing all of today's

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continents together into one giant land mass surrounded by one

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huge ocean, Panthalasa, and an inner sea called the Tephis.

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It's fundamental to understanding Earth's cycles.

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Speaker 1: And Alfred Wiener proposed continental drift back in nineteen twelve,

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seeing how the coastlines fit like South America and Africa

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and finding similar rocks and fossils. But people didn't buy

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it at first, did they?

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Speaker 2: No, He faced huge skepticism. The big problem was how

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could these massive continents possibly plow through the ocean floor.

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Nobody could explain the mechanism. It wasn't until the nineteen sixties,

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with the development of the theory of plate tectonics, that

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Wijener was finally vindicated. Plate tectonics provided the how the

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Earth's outer shell is broken into plates and these plates

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are moving.

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Speaker 1: So they're not floating on lava. How did these massive

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plates actually move? What's driving them?

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Speaker 2: Think of Earth like a maybe a peach or on

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the thin skin. The crust below that is the thick mantle,

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mostly solid rock, but under incredible heat and pressure. It

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behaves like extremely thick, slow moving honey or syrup over

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millions of years.

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Speaker 1: Okay, convection currents exactly.

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Speaker 2: These slow convection currents and the upper mantle drag the

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rigid tectonic plates along on top, so the plates crack, stretch, bend, collide,

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slide under each other's subduct This whole engine, driven by

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heat escaping from the Earth's core, started maybe three point

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five billion years ago and formed earlier super continents too,

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like er and Rodinia. It's this incredibly slow but powerful.

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Speaker 1: Process, mind boggling time scales and forces. But this drifting

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isn't over. Scientists are predicting the next Pangaea maybe two

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hundred and fifty million years from now.

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Speaker 2: That's right, the cycle continues. Geologists project that in roughly

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two hundred and fifty million years, the continents will likely

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all come back together again, forming a new super continent.

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There are a few different scenarios based on current pleat movements,

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like what Well. One is Novopangia. In that one, the

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Atlantic keeps widening, the Pacific closes up, and the Americas

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and Antarctica eventually smash into Afro Eurasia. Another is Amasia.

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Here both the Pacific and Atlantic close and most continents

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drift north, clustering around the North Pole. The Americas fuse

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with Australia and kind of pivot towards Siberia. There are

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others too, like Pangaea, Ultima, and Aura, each with slightly

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different configurations depending on which oceans close and where the

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continents end up meeting.

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Speaker 1: These future worlds sound incredibly different. What would the consequences be?

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It's more than just redrawing the map, surely.

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Speaker 2: Oh, the consequences would be profound, completely changing life on Earth.

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A super continent would drastically alter global climate. Imagine vast

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scorching deserts in the interior, totally different ocean currents, radically

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different weather patterns. It would likely cause mass.

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Speaker 1: Extinctions, tough time for life.

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Speaker 2: Definitely, humans, if we're still around, would need incredible creativity

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just to adept and sur But what's also useful about

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these models is they help scientists understand the potential climates

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and geology of exoplanets we're discovering around other stars. It

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gives us a framework for thinking about planetary evolution everywhere.

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Speaker 1: From supercontinents to impassable jungles. Let's shift to some extreme

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environments on Earth today. We have to talk about the

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Darien Gap, that sixty mile stretch of dense jungle and

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mountains between Panama and Columbia, a true natural barrier.

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Speaker 2: The Burying Gap is really something else, a genuine no

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man's land, no roads, no real infrastructure. It's this natural

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wall connecting North and South America, known as one of

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the most dangerous places on Earth, completely isolated.

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Speaker 1: And tragically, it's become this route of desperation for migrants

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heading north. The numbers are just staggering, from under ten

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thousand crossing in twenty fourteen to over half a million

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in twenty twenty three. A humanitarian crisis in this incredibly

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hostile place.

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Speaker 2: The dangers they face are almost unimaginable. Insect bites to

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severe infections, serious broken bones from falls, the constant thread

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of thieves because there's zero law enforcement. Dehydration is rampant,

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forcing people to drink contaminated river water, leading to terrible

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intestinal problems. The heat is brutal, often over ninety five

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degrees fahrenheit.

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Speaker 1: And no help if something goes wrong.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely none, no medical aid whatsoever. It's an environment that

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seems almost designed to break human resilience.

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Speaker 1: Nature's obstacle course what makes the terrain itself so uniquely difficult.

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Speaker 2: You're looking at incredibly dense rainforest. Visibility is practically zero

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in places. The paths where they exist are steep, incredibly muddy, treacherous.

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You're clamoring over boulders, getting tangled in vines. Add constant

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heavy rain, landslides, flash floods, must and the rivers powerful

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fast moving rivers that can be shouldered deep and literally

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rip your shoes off. It's just a constant physical battle.

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Even historically well equipped expeditions struggled immensely, and eighteen fifty

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four expedition van for forty nine days battling starvation. It's

403
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always been incredibly harsh.

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Speaker 1: And wildlife isn't exactly friendly either, I assume definitely not.

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Speaker 2: You've got jaguars, aggressive white lipped peckeries and the highly

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venomous Fardelon snake. Swarms of mosquitoes spreading diseases. Even the

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plants are dangerous. The Chunga palm has these eight inch

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long spines covered in bacteria that cause nasty infections if

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you stumble into one. Getting lost is a constant danger,

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00:21:27,640 --> 00:21:31,480
though apparently there are some color coded markers now blue

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green for the path, red for wrong way, put up

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by previous migrants or guides.

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Speaker 1: Given all that, why hasn't a road been built? The

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Pan American Highway goes from Alaska all the way down

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to Argentina, but just stops dead at the Darien. What's

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the hold of It's a combination of factors.

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Speaker 2: The humid climate, the incredibly difficult terrain, the constant rain.

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It makes road building not just hard but astronomically expensive.

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But beyond the cost and logistics, there's huge opposition from

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environmental groups and indigenous communities. The Darian Gap is one

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of the most biodiverse places left on Earth. About one

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in five species there is endemic found nowhere else, like

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the Darien pocket gopher. Ah the biodiversity Angle exactly attempts

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to build a road in the seventies and nineties were

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scrapped specifically to protect this unique ecosystem. They tried a

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ferry service as an alternative, but it wasn't profitable, and

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recently Panama actually put up barbed wire fencing to try

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and close the migration route. It remains this unconquered natural barrier.

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Speaker 1: From the jungle to the ice, flying to Antarctica or

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even just over the South Pole. It sounds straightforward, but

431
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it's incredibly difficult, right right, Why is it so hard?

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Speaker 2: It's mainly down to the extreme conditions and the almost

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complete lack of infrastructure. There are very few airports and

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none are equipped for regular commercial passenger flights. Critically, there

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are no refueling stations suitable for the kind of long

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haul commercial traffic we see elsewhere, so it's mostly specialized

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cargo or research flights serving the tiny population there.

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Speaker 1: And the conditions must be for pilots too. Special training required.

439
00:23:02,480 --> 00:23:06,240
Speaker 2: Absolutely, pilots need specific, expensive training to handle the harsh,

440
00:23:06,359 --> 00:23:10,480
unpredictable Antarctic weather. Plus there are strict regulations called e

441
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TOPPS Extended Range twin Engine Operational Performance Standards ETEPS. Yeah,

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these rules dictate how far a twin engine plane can

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fly from the nearest suitable emergency airport. Since there are

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so few airports in Anerica, huge swaths of the continent

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are effectively off limits for many standard flight paths. Historically,

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it made flying directly over much of it almost impossible.

447
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Newer planes have longer e top PS ratings now maybe

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three hundred and thirty or three hundred and seventy minutes,

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but large areas are still restricted.

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Speaker 1: Is there any way for say, a tourist to fly there.

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Speaker 2: There is one operation, Antarctic Airways, billed as the world's

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most exclusive transcontinental flight, but it only runs from December

453
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to March, mostly to King George Island, and the prices

454
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are steep ol steep, around fifty five hundred dollars for

455
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just a day trip, up to one hundred and twenty

456
00:23:58,720 --> 00:24:01,079
five thousand dollars if you want a charter, but it

457
00:24:01,160 --> 00:24:03,359
is much faster than a cruise ship. Two hours flying

458
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versus maybe two days sailing. You get to see a

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research station penguin colonies.

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Speaker 1: Wow, still quite exclusive. It wasn't there a major tragedy

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involving Antarctic sight seeing flights years ago?

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Speaker 2: Yes? Tragically Air New Zealand flight nine oh one crashed

463
00:24:17,079 --> 00:24:20,079
into Mount Erebus back in nineteen seventy nine. All two

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hundred and fifty seven people on board were killed. These

465
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are popular sites seeing flights over Antarctica.

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Speaker 1: What caused it?

467
00:24:26,240 --> 00:24:29,880
Speaker 2: Initially they blamed pilot error, but a later rural commission

468
00:24:29,920 --> 00:24:33,359
found the main cause was a critical error back at headquarters.

469
00:24:33,960 --> 00:24:36,960
Someone changed the flight path coordinates in the navigation system,

470
00:24:37,480 --> 00:24:40,000
directing the plane towards the mountain instead of the safe

471
00:24:40,119 --> 00:24:43,480
route over McMurdo Sound, and crucially, the flight crew was

472
00:24:43,519 --> 00:24:48,400
never told about the change. A terrible, avoidable tragedy, Just awful.

473
00:24:48,599 --> 00:24:50,720
Speaker 1: It seems like the skies over the South Pole are

474
00:24:50,759 --> 00:24:54,359
incredibly empty compared to the North Pole. Why the big difference?

475
00:24:54,759 --> 00:24:57,480
Speaker 2: It really comes down to where people live. Something like

476
00:24:57,559 --> 00:25:00,200
eighty eight to ninety percent of the world's population in

477
00:25:00,240 --> 00:25:03,480
the northern hemisphere, so naturally you have far more air

478
00:25:03,519 --> 00:25:06,880
traffic connecting cities. There are routes like Copenhagen to La

479
00:25:07,279 --> 00:25:10,160
or London to Tokyo often fly near or over the

480
00:25:10,200 --> 00:25:10,720
North Pole.

481
00:25:10,880 --> 00:25:11,400
Speaker 1: Makes sense.

482
00:25:11,559 --> 00:25:15,279
Speaker 2: Southern Hemisphere flights are fewer, mainly connecting places like Australia,

483
00:25:15,400 --> 00:25:19,519
New Zealand, Southern South America and Southern Africa. Direct flights

484
00:25:19,559 --> 00:25:23,039
over the South Pole are extremely rare. Some airlines like

485
00:25:23,160 --> 00:25:26,079
Kontis or Latam fly routes that pass close to the

486
00:25:26,119 --> 00:25:29,359
Antarctic coast mainly to take advantage of favorable winds, but

487
00:25:29,440 --> 00:25:31,200
not directly over the pole itself.

488
00:25:31,599 --> 00:25:35,000
Speaker 1: And we can't forget the penguins. Apparently the penguin factor.

489
00:25:35,160 --> 00:25:39,160
Speaker 2: Huh. Yes, it's a slightly humorous but real point. Penguins

490
00:25:39,200 --> 00:25:42,039
and Antarctica have no natural land predators, so they're completely

491
00:25:42,160 --> 00:25:45,920
unafraid of humans or structures. Trying to build anything significant

492
00:25:45,920 --> 00:25:49,000
like a major airport in their territory would be incredibly

493
00:25:49,039 --> 00:25:51,960
disruptive and face huge opposition. They kind of rule the

494
00:25:52,000 --> 00:25:52,720
roosts down there.

495
00:25:53,039 --> 00:25:55,279
Speaker 1: So from the challenges on the surface, let's go underneath

496
00:25:55,279 --> 00:25:59,440
the ice again to the gambert Sev subglacial mountains. Antarctica's

497
00:25:59,440 --> 00:26:03,519
secret out a huge mountain range completely hidden.

498
00:26:03,720 --> 00:26:06,640
Speaker 2: It's an incredible concept, isn't it. A vast mountain range

499
00:26:06,759 --> 00:26:09,799
similar in scale to the European Alps, buried under miles

500
00:26:09,799 --> 00:26:14,200
of ice, mountains, valleys, hills, plains, a whole landscape totally

501
00:26:14,240 --> 00:26:18,839
untouched and unseen by human eyes, a land inside another land.

502
00:26:19,039 --> 00:26:22,079
Speaker 1: When were they discovered and why are they still so mysterious?

503
00:26:22,400 --> 00:26:25,319
Speaker 2: They were first detected back in nineteen fifty eight using

504
00:26:25,400 --> 00:26:29,200
seismic instruments, basically listening for echoes bouncing off the rock

505
00:26:29,279 --> 00:26:31,640
beneath the ice, but they remain one of the most

506
00:26:31,720 --> 00:26:34,880
poorly studied major features on Earth simply because of the

507
00:26:34,920 --> 00:26:38,000
immense thickness of that ice sheet covering them. It makes

508
00:26:38,079 --> 00:26:41,240
direct exploration incredibly difficult and expensive.

509
00:26:41,559 --> 00:26:44,519
Speaker 1: So it's not full of ancient cities or hidden spaceships then, huh.

510
00:26:45,759 --> 00:26:48,839
Speaker 2: While the imagination can run wild, the real scientific value

511
00:26:48,880 --> 00:26:52,559
is immense. We know mountain ranges usually form when tectonic

512
00:26:52,559 --> 00:26:56,039
plates collide over millions of years, like the Himalayas still

513
00:26:56,119 --> 00:26:59,519
rising today as India pushes into Asia. But the Gambert

514
00:26:59,599 --> 00:27:01,720
says a different, much older story.

515
00:27:01,880 --> 00:27:03,960
Speaker 1: Okay, so how did these buried mountains form.

516
00:27:04,119 --> 00:27:06,920
Speaker 2: Their origins go way back to the formation of the

517
00:27:06,920 --> 00:27:10,920
super continent Gondwana, maybe seven hundred million years ago. Gondwana

518
00:27:10,960 --> 00:27:15,319
included what's now Africa, South America, Australia, India, and Antarctica.

519
00:27:15,559 --> 00:27:19,319
It seems the Gambritzevs formed when two huge land masses

520
00:27:19,319 --> 00:27:23,960
collided within Gondwana, creating a rift valley. Then intense heat

521
00:27:24,000 --> 00:27:27,359
from the mantle caused uplift along the wrist flanks, pushing

522
00:27:27,440 --> 00:27:30,799
up these mountains. It wasn't just a simple collision. It

523
00:27:30,880 --> 00:27:34,920
involved rifting and heat from below. They likely reached Himalayan

524
00:27:34,960 --> 00:27:38,079
heights around five hundred and eighty million years ago, during

525
00:27:38,079 --> 00:27:41,640
a period when Gondwana itself was assembling and stabilizing.

526
00:27:41,759 --> 00:27:45,160
Speaker 1: And how do scientists date something like that buried under

527
00:27:45,200 --> 00:27:47,279
so much ice? Is it those zircons again?

528
00:27:47,599 --> 00:27:51,839
Speaker 2: Exactly? Zircons are the geologist's best friend for dating ancient events.

529
00:27:52,039 --> 00:27:56,519
These tiny, super durable mineral grains contain uranium, which decays

530
00:27:56,559 --> 00:27:59,799
into lead at a perfectly known constant rate. By measuring

531
00:27:59,839 --> 00:28:02,519
their ratio of uranium to lead and zircons found in

532
00:28:02,559 --> 00:28:05,359
sediments derived from the gamber Sevs like an offshore drill course,

533
00:28:05,559 --> 00:28:08,519
scientists can pinpoint when the mountains formed and cooled. It's

534
00:28:08,519 --> 00:28:10,160
like reading a geological clock.

535
00:28:10,319 --> 00:28:12,319
Speaker 1: And what's really unique about the Gambert sevs is how

536
00:28:12,359 --> 00:28:15,680
well preserved they are, right unlike mountains exposed to the elements.

537
00:28:15,839 --> 00:28:19,079
Speaker 2: That's one of the most amazing aspects. Most mountain ranges

538
00:28:19,119 --> 00:28:22,720
get eroded down over hundreds of millions of years by rivers, glaciers,

539
00:28:22,839 --> 00:28:26,799
wind rain, but the Gambert sieves have been protected, kept

540
00:28:26,799 --> 00:28:29,000
in this kind of deep freeze under the Antarctic ice

541
00:28:29,039 --> 00:28:32,279
sheet for possibly over five hundred million years. They haven't

542
00:28:32,279 --> 00:28:34,799
really eroded much since the ice formed, so they're one

543
00:28:34,839 --> 00:28:38,519
of the best preserved ancient mountain belts on the entire planet,

544
00:28:38,720 --> 00:28:41,319
a snapshot of Earth's deep past.

545
00:28:41,799 --> 00:28:45,160
Speaker 1: So why explore them? What's the big draw? Given the

546
00:28:45,240 --> 00:28:47,880
huge challenges and cost, What could we find down there?

547
00:28:47,960 --> 00:28:51,880
Speaker 2: The potential payoff is just immense scientifically thrilling. If we

548
00:28:51,880 --> 00:28:54,759
could drill through the ice and sample the rocks the valleys,

549
00:28:55,079 --> 00:28:58,960
we might find frozen ancient plants, insects, maybe even bacteria

550
00:28:59,000 --> 00:29:01,240
that lived when are to go is warmer, maybe even

551
00:29:01,279 --> 00:29:03,319
forested half a billion years ago, like.

552
00:29:03,279 --> 00:29:04,960
Speaker 1: A lost world preserved in ice.

553
00:29:05,240 --> 00:29:09,880
Speaker 2: Potentially it could completely change our understanding of Earth's past climates,

554
00:29:10,200 --> 00:29:13,960
the evolution of life in extreme conditions, maybe even raise

555
00:29:14,000 --> 00:29:18,039
the highly speculative but fascinating idea of finding genetic material

556
00:29:18,079 --> 00:29:21,240
from ancient creatures. It's a window into a completely different

557
00:29:21,240 --> 00:29:25,079
earth locked away under the ice. The logistical challenges are enormous,

558
00:29:25,119 --> 00:29:27,559
but the potential discoveries are revolutionary.

559
00:29:27,640 --> 00:29:31,079
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, from hidden giants under the ice to unseen

560
00:29:31,359 --> 00:29:35,519
terrifying forces in the ocean, underwater avalanches or turbidity currents.

561
00:29:35,960 --> 00:29:38,759
You're saying these can be more dangerous than landslides on land.

562
00:29:38,880 --> 00:29:41,920
Speaker 2: Often, Yes, they can be vastly larger, travel much faster

563
00:29:42,000 --> 00:29:45,440
and further, and carry enormous destructive power. And because they

564
00:29:45,440 --> 00:29:49,200
happen underwater, they're invisible, hard to predict, difficult to measure directly,

565
00:29:49,319 --> 00:29:52,240
and they pose this huge risk, especially to our global

566
00:29:52,240 --> 00:29:53,599
communication infrastructure.

567
00:29:53,799 --> 00:29:57,160
Speaker 1: And there was a truly massive one, the Aggadier Canyon Monster,

568
00:29:57,240 --> 00:30:00,720
off Africa's coast, sixty thousand years ago. Tell me about that.

569
00:30:00,960 --> 00:30:04,799
Speaker 2: This event really opened scientist's eyes to the sheer scale possible.

570
00:30:05,440 --> 00:30:08,319
It started relatively small, maybe zero point three to five

571
00:30:08,400 --> 00:30:11,880
cubic miles of sediments sliding underwater in the Agadier Canyon,

572
00:30:12,400 --> 00:30:15,519
but as it rushed down slope and across the Atlantic seabed,

573
00:30:15,960 --> 00:30:18,920
it grew and grew, apparently in training more sediment as

574
00:30:18,960 --> 00:30:21,759
it went over one hundred times its initial size.

575
00:30:21,440 --> 00:30:22,559
Speaker 1: One hundred times bigger.

576
00:30:22,680 --> 00:30:27,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, it carved this devastating path, eroding a huge section

577
00:30:27,079 --> 00:30:29,839
of the canyon, cutting hundreds of feet into its size,

578
00:30:29,839 --> 00:30:33,160
and damaging an area of seafloor over seventeen hundred square miles.

579
00:30:33,240 --> 00:30:36,240
That's bigger than Rhode Island. It showed scientists they had

580
00:30:36,279 --> 00:30:38,680
been seriously underestimating the potential destruction.

581
00:30:38,880 --> 00:30:41,079
Speaker 1: But this isn't just ancient history. A more recent one

582
00:30:41,079 --> 00:30:43,920
from the Congo River in twenty twenty actually broke Internet

583
00:30:43,960 --> 00:30:45,079
cables right exactly.

584
00:30:45,359 --> 00:30:49,640
Speaker 2: January fourteenth, twenty twenty, a huge turbidity current rushed over

585
00:30:49,680 --> 00:30:52,640
six hundred and eighty miles out from the Congo River estuary.

586
00:30:53,160 --> 00:30:56,000
It was triggered by severe river flooding combined with unusually

587
00:30:56,119 --> 00:30:59,160
large spring tides. This avalanche of sand and mud carried

588
00:30:59,160 --> 00:31:01,319
an amount of sediment equal to about a third of

589
00:31:01,359 --> 00:31:03,119
what all the rivers in the world produce in a

590
00:31:03,119 --> 00:31:07,519
whole year. Incredible volume, and it accelerated from about seventeen

591
00:31:07,519 --> 00:31:09,920
feet per second up to twenty six feet per second.

592
00:31:10,200 --> 00:31:13,680
It became the longest running sediment avalanche ever directly measured

593
00:31:13,880 --> 00:31:16,319
two days later when it reached the deep ocean, it

594
00:31:16,440 --> 00:31:20,759
snacked two vital seabed telecommunication.

595
00:31:20,000 --> 00:31:23,000
Speaker 1: Cables, cutting off internet speeds across Africa.

596
00:31:23,200 --> 00:31:27,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, significantly slowing down Internet data across West, Central and

597
00:31:27,559 --> 00:31:30,559
South Africa, a very real modern consequence.

598
00:31:30,640 --> 00:31:33,759
Speaker 1: What triggers these things? Earthquakes, floods.

599
00:31:34,039 --> 00:31:36,480
Speaker 2: It can be a range of things. Earthquakes are a

600
00:31:36,519 --> 00:31:41,440
major trigger, yes, also powerful typhoons or hurricanes, extremely high tides,

601
00:31:41,880 --> 00:31:45,680
major river floods, dumping lots of sediment, suddenly, even volcanic

602
00:31:45,759 --> 00:31:49,319
eruptions near the coast. And worryingly, many of these triggers,

603
00:31:49,359 --> 00:31:52,119
like extreme floods and storms, are becoming more frequent or

604
00:31:52,160 --> 00:31:53,440
intense with climate change.

605
00:31:53,480 --> 00:31:54,799
Speaker 1: And how often do they happen.

606
00:31:54,680 --> 00:31:58,079
Speaker 2: It varies hugely. Canyons right off shore from major rivers

607
00:31:58,160 --> 00:32:01,880
might see several smaller avalanches every year, but these giant

608
00:32:01,960 --> 00:32:04,519
basin scale events like the Agadeer one might only happen

609
00:32:04,559 --> 00:32:06,759
once every ten thousand years or even longer in a

610
00:32:06,799 --> 00:32:10,400
particular system. But crucially, the size of the trigger doesn't

611
00:32:10,400 --> 00:32:13,680
always predict the size of the avalanche. Well, the Big

612
00:32:13,759 --> 00:32:17,279
Lisbon earthquake in seventeen fifty five only cause a tiny

613
00:32:17,359 --> 00:32:21,200
underwater avalanche, But a magnitude seven point two earthquake off

614
00:32:21,240 --> 00:32:24,119
Newfoundland in nineteen twenty nine triggered the largest recorded one.

615
00:32:24,200 --> 00:32:26,960
It traveled that maybe forty two miles per hour, snapped

616
00:32:26,960 --> 00:32:29,759
eleven seabed cables one after another, and even caused a

617
00:32:29,759 --> 00:32:31,880
tsunami that killed twenty eight people on land.

618
00:32:32,000 --> 00:32:35,279
Speaker 1: Wow. So how does scientists even study these things if

619
00:32:35,279 --> 00:32:36,920
they're invisible and deep underwater.

620
00:32:37,039 --> 00:32:40,640
Speaker 2: It's incredibly challenging, but researchers are getting clever. One team

621
00:32:40,640 --> 00:32:44,200
in Liverpool used decades of survey data to reconstruct a

622
00:32:44,319 --> 00:32:47,799
massive submarine avalanche, mapping this flow that was the size

623
00:32:47,799 --> 00:32:51,680
of a skyscraper and traveled a distance like Liverpool to London.

624
00:32:52,200 --> 00:32:54,480
It carved a trench one hundred feet deep and nine

625
00:32:54,480 --> 00:32:57,079
miles wide and covered an area bigger than the UK

626
00:32:57,240 --> 00:32:57,799
with sediment.

627
00:32:57,880 --> 00:33:00,000
Speaker 1: That's incredible detective work and it's vice.

628
00:33:00,359 --> 00:33:02,720
Speaker 2: We need to understand these events to protect those crucial

629
00:33:02,759 --> 00:33:06,079
seafloor internet cables. There are over five hundred and fifty

630
00:33:06,119 --> 00:33:09,480
active cables now totaling nearly eight hundred and seventy thousand miles,

631
00:33:09,519 --> 00:33:11,720
carrying almost all international data.

632
00:33:11,559 --> 00:33:14,039
Speaker 1: Traffic right the backbone of the Internet exactly.

633
00:33:14,359 --> 00:33:16,480
Speaker 2: When the Taiwan earthquake hit in two thousand and six,

634
00:33:16,759 --> 00:33:20,759
it triggered avalanches that cut numerous cables, causing massive Internet

635
00:33:20,759 --> 00:33:23,519
outages like ninety to one hundred percent loss of traffic

636
00:33:23,559 --> 00:33:26,400
in some parts of Southeast Asia. That's why researchers are

637
00:33:26,400 --> 00:33:29,440
even using things like physical models pools, where they create

638
00:33:29,519 --> 00:33:32,839
mini basins and simulate tribidity currents to see how they

639
00:33:32,880 --> 00:33:34,279
flow and deposit sediment.

640
00:33:34,680 --> 00:33:38,559
Speaker 1: Fascinating. Okay, from the deep ocean's power to Earth's fiery heart,

641
00:33:38,880 --> 00:33:42,720
let's talk volcanoes, starting with these so called zombie volcanoes

642
00:33:43,119 --> 00:33:46,480
like Udorunku and Bolivia, dormant for ages but now showing

643
00:33:46,480 --> 00:33:47,160
signs of life.

644
00:33:47,240 --> 00:33:49,480
Speaker 2: It's Runku is a great example. It's a strata volcano

645
00:33:49,559 --> 00:33:52,039
that hasn't had a major eruption for about two hundred

646
00:33:52,039 --> 00:33:54,960
and fifty thousand years, but for the last fifty years

647
00:33:55,079 --> 00:33:59,000
or so it's been restless. There are gas emissions, small earthquakes,

648
00:33:59,000 --> 00:34:01,880
and the ground around it is bulging upwards, rising maybe

649
00:34:01,920 --> 00:34:04,640
four inches a year. Looks like a sombrero hat. Someone

650
00:34:04,640 --> 00:34:05,359
described it.

651
00:34:05,319 --> 00:34:07,720
Speaker 1: A bulging sombreros So does that mean it's about to blow?

652
00:34:07,839 --> 00:34:09,599
Is there a big blob of magma moving up?

653
00:34:09,639 --> 00:34:12,360
Speaker 2: That was the initial fear. Yeah, there's a known large

654
00:34:12,400 --> 00:34:15,880
magma body deep underneath that whole region, the Altiplanta Puna

655
00:34:15,880 --> 00:34:19,599
Magma Body or APMBB. People worried magma was rising from

656
00:34:19,639 --> 00:34:21,199
it towards Uturunco.

657
00:34:20,880 --> 00:34:24,559
Speaker 1: But more recent studies using data from thousands of small

658
00:34:24,599 --> 00:34:28,559
earthquakes and analyzing rocks suggests something slightly different and maybe

659
00:34:28,639 --> 00:34:32,559
less immediately alarming. It seems hot fluids and gases, mostly

660
00:34:32,639 --> 00:34:35,599
steam and CO two, are rising from that deep magma

661
00:34:35,599 --> 00:34:39,239
body through cracks like a chimney. Okay, these fluids get

662
00:34:39,280 --> 00:34:42,079
trapped closer to the surface, causing the ground to swell

663
00:34:42,119 --> 00:34:44,920
and triggering those small quakes. But it doesn't look like

664
00:34:44,960 --> 00:34:47,480
significant amounts of magma are getting close to the surface,

665
00:34:47,639 --> 00:34:51,000
at least not yet. So good news. Probably not an

666
00:34:51,000 --> 00:34:52,119
imminent eruption.

667
00:34:51,960 --> 00:34:55,119
Speaker 2: Probably not eminent. Yeah, but it definitely shows the volcano

668
00:34:55,239 --> 00:34:59,360
is still alive and rumbling deep down. Domance certainly doesn't.

669
00:34:59,079 --> 00:35:02,840
Speaker 1: Mean dead, no care and thinking about eruptions. Mount Tambora

670
00:35:02,840 --> 00:35:06,760
in eighteen fifteen, its shadow still looms large that global

671
00:35:06,760 --> 00:35:10,880
impact the year without a summer even inspiring Frankenstein, It's

672
00:35:10,920 --> 00:35:13,360
hard to grasp how one eruption could do all that.

673
00:35:13,519 --> 00:35:16,840
Speaker 2: Tambora was a truly catastrophic event on a planetary scale.

674
00:35:16,960 --> 00:35:21,360
It ejected this absolutely colossal cloud of particles, mainly sulfur dioxide,

675
00:35:21,400 --> 00:35:22,000
way up into the.

676
00:35:22,000 --> 00:35:23,760
Speaker 1: Stratosphere and that acted like a shield.

677
00:35:24,079 --> 00:35:28,320
Speaker 2: Essentially, Yes, the sulfur dioxide turned into tiny aerosol particles

678
00:35:28,320 --> 00:35:32,480
that reflected sunlight back into space. This caused significant global

679
00:35:32,480 --> 00:35:35,639
cooling the infamous year without a Summer in eighteen sixteen.

680
00:35:36,199 --> 00:35:40,960
It led to massive crop failures, widespread food shortages, famine disease,

681
00:35:41,840 --> 00:35:45,199
immense suffering across Europe and North America. It really shows

682
00:35:45,239 --> 00:35:47,239
how interconnected the Earth system is.

683
00:35:47,480 --> 00:35:49,519
Speaker 1: And it's the sulfur dioxide, the SO two that's the

684
00:35:49,599 --> 00:35:51,440
key ingredient for that cooling effect.

685
00:35:51,599 --> 00:35:55,679
Speaker 2: Primarily, yes, those tiny sulfate aerosol particles are very effective

686
00:35:55,679 --> 00:35:59,280
at scattering sunlight. Mount Pinatuba's eruption in nineteen ninety one,

687
00:35:59,360 --> 00:36:03,039
a much small event than Tambora, still lowered global average

688
00:36:03,079 --> 00:36:05,400
temperatures by about half a degree celsius for a couple

689
00:36:05,440 --> 00:36:08,519
of years. Tambora dropped global tempts by about one degree

690
00:36:08,559 --> 00:36:09,960
fahrenheit maybe more regionally.

691
00:36:10,280 --> 00:36:13,199
Speaker 1: But we shouldn't think of this volcanic cooling as a

692
00:36:13,239 --> 00:36:15,159
good thing to offset global warming.

693
00:36:14,960 --> 00:36:18,440
Speaker 2: Right, Absolutely not. It's a dangerous misconception. While it does

694
00:36:18,480 --> 00:36:22,239
cool the planet temporarily, these sudden temperature shifts are devastating

695
00:36:22,239 --> 00:36:25,480
for agriculture, as eighteen sixteen showed. They also mess up

696
00:36:25,559 --> 00:36:28,880
rainfall patterns, often leading to drought in monsoon dependent regions

697
00:36:28,920 --> 00:36:30,599
like parts of Africa and Asia.

698
00:36:30,679 --> 00:36:32,800
Speaker 1: And there are feedback loops with climate change too.

699
00:36:33,000 --> 00:36:36,159
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's complex. Some research suggests climate change might even

700
00:36:36,280 --> 00:36:39,719
enhance the cooling effect of future eruptions. Changing air circulation

701
00:36:40,199 --> 00:36:44,199
might make the aerosol smaller and more reflective. Conversely, climate

702
00:36:44,239 --> 00:36:49,079
change itself melting ice caps, reducing pressure on volcanoes, increased rainfall,

703
00:36:49,119 --> 00:36:52,760
interacting with magma systems could potentially trigger more eruptions. And

704
00:36:52,800 --> 00:36:54,719
we haven't even mentioned the immediate.

705
00:36:54,320 --> 00:36:56,039
Speaker 1: Dangers right for people living nearby.

706
00:36:56,440 --> 00:36:59,440
Speaker 2: Exactly around eight hundred million people live within range of

707
00:36:59,480 --> 00:37:04,320
activel canoes. A major eruption could obviously devastate cities with ashfall,

708
00:37:04,480 --> 00:37:08,760
pyroclastic flows, lahars. The local impact is terrifying.

709
00:37:08,960 --> 00:37:13,679
Speaker 1: Speaking of terrifying local impacts, can't be flee gray near Naples, Italy.

710
00:37:14,440 --> 00:37:17,920
The Fields of Fire, a supervolcano system with twenty four craters.

711
00:37:18,199 --> 00:37:20,800
The ancients thought it was a gateway to the underworld.

712
00:37:20,559 --> 00:37:23,840
Speaker 2: And you can see why. It's this vast, restless volcanic

713
00:37:23,920 --> 00:37:26,840
landscape right next to a major city. It's a constant

714
00:37:26,880 --> 00:37:30,599
source of worry. Its biggest known eruption the Campanion Ignombrite,

715
00:37:30,639 --> 00:37:33,920
about forty thousand years ago. It was enormous. It covered

716
00:37:34,039 --> 00:37:37,280
huge parts of Europe and ash caused maybe seven degrees

717
00:37:37,320 --> 00:37:40,360
fahrenheit of cooling, a volcanic winter that likely had a

718
00:37:40,480 --> 00:37:43,320
huge impact on Neanderthal populations at the time.

719
00:37:43,440 --> 00:37:44,280
Speaker 1: Did it wipe them out?

720
00:37:44,639 --> 00:37:48,920
Speaker 2: That's debated. Some scientists think it might have significantly raisured them,

721
00:37:49,000 --> 00:37:52,360
maybe even giving Homo sapiens a temporary advantage or reprieve

722
00:37:52,400 --> 00:37:55,840
as they expanded into Europe. There was another nasty eruption

723
00:37:55,920 --> 00:37:58,199
in fifteen thirty eight that created a whole new hill,

724
00:37:58,400 --> 00:38:00,000
Montane Wuovo, right there in the bay.

725
00:38:00,199 --> 00:38:01,960
Speaker 1: So what's happening there now? Is it active?

726
00:38:02,760 --> 00:38:05,679
Speaker 2: The ground there is constantly moving, rising and falling. It's

727
00:38:05,679 --> 00:38:09,039
called brady seism. Italian authorities raise the alert level to

728
00:38:09,119 --> 00:38:11,840
yellow Back in twenty twelve because of increased activity, more

729
00:38:11,880 --> 00:38:15,440
ground uplift, more small earthquakes. There was a noticeable four

730
00:38:15,480 --> 00:38:18,760
point four magnitude quake just recently in March twenty twenty

731
00:38:18,760 --> 00:38:20,719
five that definitely got people's attention.

732
00:38:20,960 --> 00:38:22,360
Speaker 1: So should people be worried?

733
00:38:22,639 --> 00:38:26,480
Speaker 2: Scientists are definitely concerned and monitoring it intensely. But importantly,

734
00:38:26,519 --> 00:38:29,239
they say there are currently no signs of magma actually

735
00:38:29,239 --> 00:38:32,159
moving towards the surface, which would be the key indicator

736
00:38:32,199 --> 00:38:35,960
of an impending eruption. There's even a project, the Campy

737
00:38:36,000 --> 00:38:39,360
Flegray Deep Drilling Project, trying to drill down almost two

738
00:38:39,400 --> 00:38:43,280
miles to study the magma chamber directly. But the potential

739
00:38:43,320 --> 00:38:46,079
threat to the million or so people living nearby is mense.

740
00:38:46,199 --> 00:38:48,519
It's one of the highest risk volcanic areas in the

741
00:38:48,559 --> 00:38:49,559
world and is not.

742
00:38:49,480 --> 00:38:52,119
Speaker 1: The only one. Vesuvius is right there too, famous for

743
00:38:52,159 --> 00:38:53,039
Pompeii right.

744
00:38:52,920 --> 00:38:56,400
Speaker 2: Next door, and today three million people live in its shadow.

745
00:38:56,920 --> 00:38:59,400
An eruption could send rock and ash flying at one

746
00:38:59,480 --> 00:39:02,000
hundred millip are, potentially wiping out Naples.

747
00:39:02,400 --> 00:39:04,599
Speaker 1: What about Papocatta Pedal in Mexico.

748
00:39:04,559 --> 00:39:07,719
Speaker 2: Very active only forty miles from Mexico City twenty two

749
00:39:07,719 --> 00:39:11,199
million people and thirty miles from Puebla six million. It's

750
00:39:11,239 --> 00:39:14,760
been erupting pretty constantly since the early two thousands, mostly ashfall,

751
00:39:15,280 --> 00:39:17,679
but a really big eruption could cover Mexico City in

752
00:39:17,719 --> 00:39:23,079
eight inches of ash, causing chaos, blocking drains, disrupting water electricity,

753
00:39:23,079 --> 00:39:25,440
plus the danger of pyroclastic flows.

754
00:39:25,239 --> 00:39:27,039
Speaker 1: And Mount Saint Helen's here in the US.

755
00:39:27,519 --> 00:39:30,960
Speaker 2: Still a threat, still active, yes, and expected to erupt again.

756
00:39:31,559 --> 00:39:35,280
But the massive nineteen eighty eruption with that huge landslide

757
00:39:35,320 --> 00:39:39,519
and sideways blast, actually created a deep crater that makes

758
00:39:39,559 --> 00:39:42,440
another catastrophic sideways blast less likely.

759
00:39:42,559 --> 00:39:42,840
Speaker 1: Now.

760
00:39:43,039 --> 00:39:45,800
Speaker 2: Future eruptions are expected to be more conventional up through

761
00:39:45,840 --> 00:39:49,159
the crater. Still dangerous, but perhaps not on the nineteen

762
00:39:49,199 --> 00:39:49,800
eighty scale.

763
00:39:49,880 --> 00:39:53,360
Speaker 1: Okay, Shifting from eruptions to the ground shaking itself. Yeah,

764
00:39:53,480 --> 00:39:56,119
mega thrust earthquakes. These are the biggest ones where one

765
00:39:56,119 --> 00:39:57,679
plate forces its way into another.

766
00:39:57,760 --> 00:40:00,960
Speaker 2: That's right. These occurrent subduction zones and the most powerful

767
00:40:00,960 --> 00:40:04,719
earthquakes the planet produces. The plates get locked, strain builds

768
00:40:04,800 --> 00:40:07,400
up over centuries, and then bang, a massive release of

769
00:40:07,519 --> 00:40:11,239
energy and crucially, when the seafloor suddenly thrusts upwards. During

770
00:40:11,239 --> 00:40:13,960
one of these quakes, it displaces a huge amount.

771
00:40:13,719 --> 00:40:15,920
Speaker 1: Of water, creating tsunamis.

772
00:40:15,239 --> 00:40:19,360
Speaker 2: Exactly colossal tsunamis, sometimes called telesunamis that can travel across

773
00:40:19,519 --> 00:40:23,320
entire ocean basins and devastate coastlines thousands of miles away.

774
00:40:23,360 --> 00:40:26,639
Speaker 1: In Japan's nankitrov is a prime example of this danger zone,

775
00:40:26,800 --> 00:40:29,239
authority is issue to make a quake advisory there recently.

776
00:40:29,639 --> 00:40:32,400
Speaker 2: Yes, the Nankai Trough is where the Philippine Sea plate

777
00:40:32,519 --> 00:40:36,119
is diving under Japan. It's a notorious zone. Based on

778
00:40:36,239 --> 00:40:38,960
historical patterns, there were destructive quakes in nineteen forty four

779
00:40:38,960 --> 00:40:42,079
and nineteen forty six. Scientists estimate there's a very high

780
00:40:42,119 --> 00:40:45,760
probability maybe up to eighty percent, of a magnitude eight

781
00:40:45,800 --> 00:40:48,519
or nine earthquake there within the next few decades. It's

782
00:40:48,519 --> 00:40:51,280
a constant, looming threat they live with and prepare for.

783
00:40:51,400 --> 00:40:54,159
Speaker 1: And closer to home on the US West Coast, there's

784
00:40:54,199 --> 00:40:58,239
the Cascadia subduction Zone stretching from northern California up to

785
00:40:58,320 --> 00:41:02,480
Vancouver Island. Test they're worried because it's been too quiet.

786
00:41:02,760 --> 00:41:06,480
Speaker 2: Precisely, Cascadia has a history of massive earthquakes at least

787
00:41:06,480 --> 00:41:09,199
thirty major ones in the last fourteen thousand years or so,

788
00:41:09,559 --> 00:41:11,880
averaging about one every five hundred years. The last big

789
00:41:11,880 --> 00:41:14,440
one was in seventeen hundred, so we're well within the

790
00:41:14,440 --> 00:41:16,719
window for the next one. The long period of quiet

791
00:41:16,800 --> 00:41:19,360
means the plates are locked tight, an immense strain is

792
00:41:19,360 --> 00:41:19,840
building up.

793
00:41:19,920 --> 00:41:21,719
Speaker 1: What could happen when it finally goes.

794
00:41:21,719 --> 00:41:25,440
Speaker 2: A sudden release could cause a magnitude nine earthquake, potentially

795
00:41:25,480 --> 00:41:28,960
lasting for five minutes. The shaking would be incredibly intense,

796
00:41:29,079 --> 00:41:33,159
possibly causing liquefaction where the ground behaves like quicksand, and

797
00:41:33,239 --> 00:41:36,719
it would generate a massive tsunami, maybe lasting ten hours,

798
00:41:37,079 --> 00:41:41,159
inundating coastal communities. Experts have called it potentially the worst

799
00:41:41,360 --> 00:41:45,119
natural disaster in US history. Could destroy over six hundred

800
00:41:45,159 --> 00:41:48,000
thousand buildings, leave communities cut off for weeks.

801
00:41:48,239 --> 00:41:51,719
Speaker 1: That's terrifying. Are there any warning signs? Smaller slips?

802
00:41:51,920 --> 00:41:54,519
Speaker 2: They do detect slow slip events, that's where the plates

803
00:41:54,559 --> 00:41:57,159
move very slowly over weeks or months, releasing a bit

804
00:41:57,199 --> 00:41:59,519
of stress. It's not enough to prevent the big one,

805
00:41:59,559 --> 00:42:03,360
but well, scientists, the fault is active and they're improving monitoring.

806
00:42:03,639 --> 00:42:07,000
There's a ten million dollar project placing seismic sensors and

807
00:42:07,039 --> 00:42:10,239
pressure gauges on a fiber optic cable off Oregon's coast

808
00:42:10,239 --> 00:42:12,440
to listen more closely to the fault and hopefully provide

809
00:42:12,480 --> 00:42:13,280
earlier warnings.

810
00:42:13,320 --> 00:42:16,920
Speaker 1: Its race against time in Japan, dealing with fifteen hundred

811
00:42:17,039 --> 00:42:20,519
noticeable quakes a year. So they've become experts in building resilience,

812
00:42:20,559 --> 00:42:22,280
haven't they? Incredible engineering?

813
00:42:22,360 --> 00:42:25,920
Speaker 2: They absolutely have. Living with that constant threat has forced

814
00:42:25,920 --> 00:42:30,039
them to innovate. They have incredibly rigorous building toads. Since

815
00:42:30,079 --> 00:42:33,159
the nineteen fifties, buildings had to withstand a magnitude seven

816
00:42:33,239 --> 00:42:36,920
quake without collapsing. Since the eighties, the codes are even stricter.

817
00:42:37,239 --> 00:42:40,000
Buildings should only have minor damage up to magnitude seven,

818
00:42:40,360 --> 00:42:43,440
remain functional and not collapse even in stronger quakes.

819
00:42:43,639 --> 00:42:44,519
Speaker 1: How do they achieve that?

820
00:42:44,719 --> 00:42:49,519
Speaker 2: Lots of ways, thicker beams, pillars, walls. A key technology

821
00:42:49,599 --> 00:42:53,639
is base isolation, putting buildings on giant rubber pads or

822
00:42:53,679 --> 00:42:57,159
bearings that separate them from the grounds shaking. Another is

823
00:42:57,239 --> 00:43:00,719
using dampers like giant shock absorbers, often filled with liquid,

824
00:43:00,760 --> 00:43:04,559
installed between floors and skyscrapers. These absorb the quick's energy,

825
00:43:04,760 --> 00:43:07,159
allowing the building to sway safely, maybe up to five

826
00:43:07,199 --> 00:43:07,840
feet at the top.

827
00:43:07,920 --> 00:43:08,239
Speaker 1: Wow.

828
00:43:08,280 --> 00:43:11,760
Speaker 2: Even really complex modern designs like the Tokyo Skytree Tower

829
00:43:11,840 --> 00:43:16,480
incorporate sophisticated dampers, sometimes drawing inspiration from traditional designs like

830
00:43:16,480 --> 00:43:19,400
the central pillar in ancient pagodas, which also help them

831
00:43:19,400 --> 00:43:22,599
with stan earthquakes. It's an amazing blend of tradition and

832
00:43:22,639 --> 00:43:24,440
cutting edge engineering.

833
00:43:24,039 --> 00:43:27,079
Speaker 1: From the earth shaking to something almost ghostly in the

834
00:43:27,079 --> 00:43:33,840
polar seas. Brincles, these fingers of death. Strange twisting ice

835
00:43:33,920 --> 00:43:34,760
tubes forming.

836
00:43:34,599 --> 00:43:39,199
Speaker 2: Underwater brinacles are truly otherworldly, elegant, eerie, twisting tubes of

837
00:43:39,239 --> 00:43:42,079
ice reaching down from the sea ice towards the seafloor,

838
00:43:42,480 --> 00:43:45,159
like something from a dream or maybe a nightmare for

839
00:43:45,280 --> 00:43:46,400
small sea creatures.

840
00:43:46,519 --> 00:43:48,119
Speaker 1: How do they form? What's the science?

841
00:43:48,360 --> 00:43:52,079
Speaker 2: It starts when seawater freezes to form cs the ice

842
00:43:52,119 --> 00:43:55,719
crystals exclude the salts. You get pockets of extremely cold,

843
00:43:55,880 --> 00:44:00,719
super salty, dense brine trapped within the ice. Okay, super salty, right,

844
00:44:00,840 --> 00:44:03,440
And because this brine is much colder and denser than

845
00:44:03,480 --> 00:44:06,760
the surrounding seawater, which is just below freezing, it starts

846
00:44:06,760 --> 00:44:09,239
to drip downwards out of cracks in the sea ice.

847
00:44:09,800 --> 00:44:13,119
As the super coold brine falls, it freezes the slightly

848
00:44:13,159 --> 00:44:15,440
warmer seawater it comes into contact.

849
00:44:15,000 --> 00:44:17,320
Speaker 1: With, forming an ice tube around the dripping brine.

850
00:44:17,360 --> 00:44:20,920
Speaker 2: Exactly. It creates this icy sheath, like an icicle, growing

851
00:44:20,960 --> 00:44:25,159
downwards underwater. This sheath protects the flow of brine, allowing

852
00:44:25,159 --> 00:44:28,320
the brinnacle to grow longer and thicker, sometimes several feet long,

853
00:44:28,559 --> 00:44:31,599
reaching all the way to the seabed. It's this crazy

854
00:44:31,760 --> 00:44:34,000
downward spiral of ice formation.

855
00:44:34,039 --> 00:44:37,280
Speaker 1: And the fingers of death part they trap animals.

856
00:44:37,480 --> 00:44:40,880
Speaker 2: Yes, that's where they get their ominous nickname. When the

857
00:44:40,920 --> 00:44:44,599
tip of the brinnacle touches the seafloor, the supercold brine

858
00:44:44,599 --> 00:44:48,880
doesn't just stop. It spreads outwards along the bottom. As

859
00:44:48,880 --> 00:44:52,320
it spreads, it keeps freezing the surrounding water and anything

860
00:44:52,360 --> 00:44:53,199
else it touches.

861
00:44:53,440 --> 00:44:55,760
Speaker 1: Like starfish and sea urchins exactly.

862
00:44:56,320 --> 00:45:00,199
Speaker 2: Small slow moving bottom dwellers like starfish and sea urchines

863
00:45:00,199 --> 00:45:04,000
can get caught completely off guard. The ice spreads around them,

864
00:45:04,119 --> 00:45:07,719
forming this kind of ice net or ice cage, trapping

865
00:45:07,760 --> 00:45:11,719
them and freezing them solid, sometimes instantly. It's a brutal fate.

866
00:45:11,960 --> 00:45:14,000
Speaker 1: Grim are They hard to film.

867
00:45:13,679 --> 00:45:17,599
Speaker 2: Incredibly difficult, they're fragile, They form in very cold, remote locations.

868
00:45:18,000 --> 00:45:20,719
The first time one was successfully filmed forming back in

869
00:45:20,760 --> 00:45:23,719
twenty eleven was apparently a mix of careful planning and

870
00:45:23,760 --> 00:45:26,239
sheer luck, but it gave us amazing insight into these

871
00:45:26,320 --> 00:45:27,800
unique polar processes.

872
00:45:27,840 --> 00:45:30,800
Speaker 1: But here's the twist. Scientists aren't just looking at them

873
00:45:30,800 --> 00:45:33,760
as death traps. They're now wondering if brinacles could be

874
00:45:33,760 --> 00:45:36,119
linked to the origin of life. How does that work?

875
00:45:36,320 --> 00:45:39,480
Speaker 2: This is where it gets incredibly thought provoking. Think about

876
00:45:39,480 --> 00:45:42,199
those tiny channels within the sea ice where the super

877
00:45:42,199 --> 00:45:46,280
cold brine forms, or even within the brinacle itself. These

878
00:45:46,280 --> 00:45:51,559
are tiny, confined spaces like natural test tubes, mini labs exactly,

879
00:45:52,000 --> 00:45:54,719
mini labs where chemicals dissolved in the water can become

880
00:45:54,920 --> 00:45:59,119
highly concentrated. The theory is that these confined salty environments

881
00:45:59,159 --> 00:46:02,880
could provide the perfect conditions for complex chemical reactions to occur,

882
00:46:03,320 --> 00:46:06,480
maybe allowing simple molecules to self assemble into more complex

883
00:46:06,519 --> 00:46:10,039
ones like amino acids or other building blocks of life,

884
00:46:10,159 --> 00:46:12,880
kind of like chemical gardens, fostering prebiotic chemistry.

885
00:46:13,159 --> 00:46:15,239
Speaker 1: Wow, and this could be happening elsewhere.

886
00:46:15,360 --> 00:46:19,760
Speaker 2: That's the really exciting implication. Scientists speculate that similar processes

887
00:46:19,800 --> 00:46:22,320
could be happening right now on icy moons in our

888
00:46:22,320 --> 00:46:26,760
Solar system, like Jupiter's moon Europa, or Saturn's moon's Ganymede

889
00:46:26,800 --> 00:46:30,320
or Enceladus, which have subsurface oceans beneath icy shells.

890
00:46:30,480 --> 00:46:33,239
Speaker 1: So Britnacles on other worlds could be creating life.

891
00:46:33,400 --> 00:46:37,079
Speaker 2: It's a possibility they might be providing the initial chemical steps,

892
00:46:37,360 --> 00:46:40,840
laying the foundations for life to emerge in these extreme environments.

893
00:46:41,639 --> 00:46:44,960
It just shows how a seemingly simple, strange phenomenon here

894
00:46:45,000 --> 00:46:48,239
on Earth can hint at profound answers to questions about

895
00:46:48,280 --> 00:46:51,920
life's origins, both here and potentially far beyond.

896
00:46:51,920 --> 00:46:55,239
Speaker 1: From icy origins to the mysteries of the deep ocean itself.

897
00:46:56,119 --> 00:47:00,800
Sounds and submersibles. Let's start with sounds. For deck, Scientists

898
00:47:00,800 --> 00:47:03,639
heard weird quacking in Antarctica.

899
00:47:03,519 --> 00:47:06,599
Speaker 2: Bioduck Yeah, bioduc first recorded way back in nineteen sixty,

900
00:47:07,039 --> 00:47:10,679
and there were similar but higher pitched sounds called biogoose

901
00:47:10,880 --> 00:47:13,880
off Australia. For years, people thought they must be mechanical,

902
00:47:13,920 --> 00:47:16,559
maybe sonar or something. They just didn't sound biologically. They

903
00:47:16,599 --> 00:47:19,480
were eventually, Yes, they were identified as calls made by

904
00:47:19,519 --> 00:47:22,639
mink whales. What was really interesting was that the signals

905
00:47:22,679 --> 00:47:27,000
apparently never overlapped, which suggested they might be communicating, maybe

906
00:47:27,039 --> 00:47:30,519
taking turns in a kind of conversation, a secret.

907
00:47:30,159 --> 00:47:34,199
Speaker 1: Language talking whales. And didn't scientists recently try to actually

908
00:47:34,239 --> 00:47:35,440
talk back to a whale?

909
00:47:35,679 --> 00:47:40,119
Speaker 2: Yes? That was Project's CEI, a groundbreaking experiment by University

910
00:47:40,119 --> 00:47:44,360
of California researchers. They played recorded humpback whale greeting calls

911
00:47:44,400 --> 00:47:46,840
to a whale named Twain off the coast of Alaska.

912
00:47:47,239 --> 00:47:49,079
Speaker 1: And did Twain respond amazingly?

913
00:47:49,199 --> 00:47:52,639
Speaker 2: Yes, Twain responded thirty six times over about twenty minutes,

914
00:47:53,079 --> 00:47:56,199
and apparently Twain even matched the intervals between calls, waiting

915
00:47:56,239 --> 00:47:59,519
about ten seconds before answering, as if engaging in a deliberate,

916
00:47:59,559 --> 00:48:03,159
polite exchange. It's early days, but it hints at the

917
00:48:03,159 --> 00:48:07,480
potential for understanding, maybe even communicating with these intelligent creatures.

918
00:48:07,599 --> 00:48:10,599
Speaker 1: That's incredible. What about other mystery sounds? The bloop that

919
00:48:10,719 --> 00:48:11,639
sounded terrifying.

920
00:48:11,719 --> 00:48:14,039
Speaker 2: The bloop was a huge one recorded in nineteen ninety

921
00:48:14,079 --> 00:48:16,599
seven near Point Nemo in the South Pacific. That's the

922
00:48:16,639 --> 00:48:19,119
spot in the Ocean for this from any land, a

923
00:48:19,199 --> 00:48:23,199
real water desert. It was this incredibly powerful ultra low

924
00:48:23,280 --> 00:48:27,199
frequency sound see bonds. That was the initial speculation, naturally,

925
00:48:27,639 --> 00:48:30,440
but scientists later concluded it was almost certainly the sound

926
00:48:30,480 --> 00:48:33,519
of massive icebergs cracking and breaking up. An ice quake.

927
00:48:34,039 --> 00:48:37,280
Just shows the immense power involved in Antarctic ice dynamics.

928
00:48:38,000 --> 00:48:40,039
Point Nemo, by the way, is also used as a

929
00:48:40,079 --> 00:48:43,039
graveyard for old satellites. They deliberately crashed them.

930
00:48:43,079 --> 00:48:47,880
Speaker 1: There a satellite cemetery in iceberg roars huh okay, But

931
00:48:47,960 --> 00:48:50,039
one sound remains truly unexplained.

932
00:48:50,800 --> 00:48:54,480
Speaker 2: Upsweep Upsweep is still a genuine puzzle, Recorded first in

933
00:48:54,559 --> 00:48:57,360
nineteen ninety one in the Pacific. It's a series of

934
00:48:57,440 --> 00:49:01,960
distinct rising tones repeated at intervals. Its intensity changes with

935
00:49:02,000 --> 00:49:05,679
the seasons, peaking in spring and autumn. Is volcanic or

936
00:49:05,719 --> 00:49:08,320
seismic origins have been pretty much rolled out. The best

937
00:49:08,360 --> 00:49:11,639
guess is it's biological, maybe some kind of fish or

938
00:49:11,719 --> 00:49:15,280
marine mammal communication or navigation signal. We haven't identified yet,

939
00:49:15,320 --> 00:49:17,880
but honestly, nobody knows for sure. It remains one of

940
00:49:17,920 --> 00:49:20,239
the Ocean's great unsolved acoustic mysteries.

941
00:49:20,519 --> 00:49:22,760
Speaker 1: Okay, from sounds we can't explain to places we can't

942
00:49:22,760 --> 00:49:26,000
easily see. Let's talk about the submarine RAN exploring under

943
00:49:26,039 --> 00:49:27,199
Antarctica's ice shells.

944
00:49:27,519 --> 00:49:32,559
Speaker 2: RAN was this amazing sleek autonomous underwater vehicle or AUV,

945
00:49:33,159 --> 00:49:37,079
meticulously programmed to map the hidden world beneath Antarctica's massive

946
00:49:37,119 --> 00:49:39,920
ice shelves, like the Dots and ice shelf. It was

947
00:49:39,960 --> 00:49:41,960
like sending a probe to the dark side of the Moon,

948
00:49:42,079 --> 00:49:44,000
revealing landscapes never seen before.

949
00:49:44,079 --> 00:49:46,079
Speaker 1: And what did it find down there? Using it sonar?

950
00:49:46,360 --> 00:49:50,239
Speaker 2: It used advanced sonar like bats or dolphins to build

951
00:49:50,239 --> 00:49:54,119
detailed three D maps, and it found a surprisingly rugged

952
00:49:54,159 --> 00:49:58,960
and dynamic environment beneath the ice, huge channels carved by meltwater,

953
00:49:59,079 --> 00:50:02,719
ridges that look like sand dunes formed by currents. And

954
00:50:02,760 --> 00:50:06,480
these strange swirling, tear drop shaped patterns on the seabed

955
00:50:06,599 --> 00:50:08,119
over thirteen hundred feet long.

956
00:50:08,280 --> 00:50:09,960
Speaker 1: Tear drop patterns? What caused those?

957
00:50:10,119 --> 00:50:12,599
Speaker 2: They think They're shaped by the complex interaction of warm

958
00:50:12,599 --> 00:50:14,920
ocean water melting the base of the ice shelf and

959
00:50:14,960 --> 00:50:18,039
the coriolas effect the spin of the Earth influencing water flow.

960
00:50:18,519 --> 00:50:20,800
These patterns told a story of how and where the

961
00:50:20,800 --> 00:50:24,400
ice was melting fastest, giving crucial data on accelerating ice.

962
00:50:24,239 --> 00:50:27,400
Speaker 1: Loss, and rand's final mission was to the Thwaits Glacier,

963
00:50:27,480 --> 00:50:28,679
the doomsday glacier.

964
00:50:28,960 --> 00:50:32,840
Speaker 2: Yes, Thwaites is critically important because it's melting fast and

965
00:50:32,960 --> 00:50:36,719
has the potential if it collapses entirely, to raise global

966
00:50:36,760 --> 00:50:40,320
sea levels significantly. RAN had mapped parts of it before,

967
00:50:40,360 --> 00:50:42,840
and this final mission was to gather more data on

968
00:50:42,880 --> 00:50:45,840
how warm ocean water was getting underneath it and driving

969
00:50:45,880 --> 00:50:50,159
the melting high risk, high rewards science. But then it

970
00:50:50,280 --> 00:50:54,679
vanished tragically, Yes, early in twenty twenty four, while exploring

971
00:50:54,719 --> 00:50:58,280
deep beneath Waits. We're talking depths between six hundred and

972
00:50:58,280 --> 00:51:01,039
fifty and one thousand, six hundred and fifty feet under

973
00:51:01,119 --> 00:51:05,480
fifteen hundred feet of solid ice, RAN just disappeared, no warning,

974
00:51:05,599 --> 00:51:06,880
no distress signal.

975
00:51:06,679 --> 00:51:08,119
Speaker 1: Just gone. And they know what happened.

976
00:51:08,559 --> 00:51:10,320
Speaker 2: No, they still don't know for sure. It could have

977
00:51:10,320 --> 00:51:12,559
gotten trapped in a crevasse under the ice, caught in

978
00:51:12,599 --> 00:51:16,480
an unexpectedly strong current, collided with the seabed. It's incredibly

979
00:51:16,480 --> 00:51:19,599
difficult terrain. But despite the loss, the data RAN collected

980
00:51:19,599 --> 00:51:22,400
over its forty plus missions is invaluable. A treasure trow

981
00:51:22,440 --> 00:51:24,320
if they called it about glacial meult in. These hidden

982
00:51:24,320 --> 00:51:25,639
subglacial worlds.

983
00:51:25,440 --> 00:51:27,960
Speaker 1: A poignant reminder of the challenges, and it connects back

984
00:51:28,000 --> 00:51:31,679
to Antarctica's deeper past too, right. Finding rainforests under the

985
00:51:31,719 --> 00:51:32,960
ice exactly.

986
00:51:33,079 --> 00:51:36,880
Speaker 2: Discoveries like finding fossilized roots, pollen, and spores from a

987
00:51:36,960 --> 00:51:40,119
ninety million year old temperate rainforest near the South Pole

988
00:51:40,239 --> 00:51:43,760
just completely reshape our view. They show an Antarctica that

989
00:51:43,840 --> 00:51:46,559
was once warm, green, and teeming with life when the

990
00:51:46,559 --> 00:51:49,159
continent was in a different position and global climate was

991
00:51:49,239 --> 00:51:53,559
much warmer. It forces us to rethink Earth's climate history.

992
00:51:53,840 --> 00:51:56,880
Speaker 1: Okay, let's shift from the deep past and deep ocean

993
00:51:57,440 --> 00:52:01,639
to some weird human const r excent alignments on the surface.

994
00:52:01,719 --> 00:52:05,000
The International Date Line, for instance, how can crossing an

995
00:52:05,000 --> 00:52:07,599
imaginary line add or subtract a whole day?

996
00:52:08,199 --> 00:52:11,239
Speaker 2: The IDL is purely a human convention designed to handle

997
00:52:11,239 --> 00:52:13,000
the fact that if you travel all the way around

998
00:52:13,000 --> 00:52:15,599
the world, you need to adjust the calendar somewhere. Crossing

999
00:52:15,599 --> 00:52:18,599
it eastward, you repeat a day or subtract twenty four hours.

1000
00:52:18,800 --> 00:52:22,000
Crossing it westward, you skip a day, add twenty four hours.

1001
00:52:22,199 --> 00:52:24,920
Speaker 1: Like Taylor Swift flying from La to Tokyo for her tour.

1002
00:52:25,159 --> 00:52:27,760
She left on February tenth, flew for twelve hours, but

1003
00:52:27,880 --> 00:52:31,360
landed on February eleventh in the afternoon, effectively losing almost

1004
00:52:31,400 --> 00:52:33,159
a day to the time zones and the dateline.

1005
00:52:33,159 --> 00:52:36,840
Speaker 2: Crossing exactly or flying the other way, you could potentially

1006
00:52:36,920 --> 00:52:39,239
leave on a Tuesday and arrive on Monday. It messes with.

1007
00:52:39,199 --> 00:52:41,360
Speaker 1: Your head, and the line itself isn't straight, is it.

1008
00:52:41,360 --> 00:52:42,639
It's this crazy zigzag.

1009
00:52:42,800 --> 00:52:45,760
Speaker 2: Oh, it's completely absurd. Looking on a map. It has

1010
00:52:45,800 --> 00:52:49,400
to wiggle around islands and land masses to avoid splitting

1011
00:52:49,440 --> 00:52:53,480
a single country or island group into two different calendar days.

1012
00:52:53,559 --> 00:52:56,400
Speaker 1: Like those Diomede Islands between Alaska and Russia.

1013
00:52:56,440 --> 00:53:01,480
Speaker 2: Perfect example, Big Diamede, Russia and Little Diomede, USA are

1014
00:53:01,599 --> 00:53:03,960
just two point five miles apart, but they're twenty one

1015
00:53:03,960 --> 00:53:06,800
hours apart in time. Because the dateline runs right between them,

1016
00:53:06,880 --> 00:53:10,320
you can practically see yesterday from today. That's nuts, and

1017
00:53:10,519 --> 00:53:13,599
countries have even moved the line. Curebody, a nation of

1018
00:53:13,639 --> 00:53:17,000
islands spread across a huge area of the Pacific, decided

1019
00:53:17,039 --> 00:53:19,960
in nineteen ninety four to just skip Saturday, December thirty first,

1020
00:53:20,159 --> 00:53:23,599
entirely shifting the line eastwards, so their whole country would

1021
00:53:23,639 --> 00:53:26,199
be on the same side and conveniently be the first

1022
00:53:26,239 --> 00:53:29,519
place to see the new millennium. The line also detours

1023
00:53:29,519 --> 00:53:31,280
around the Aleutian Islands of Alaska.

1024
00:53:31,599 --> 00:53:34,599
Speaker 1: It's all arbitrary, so it was just decided at a conference.

1025
00:53:34,880 --> 00:53:39,440
Speaker 2: Pretty much. The eighteen eighty four International Meridian Conference in Washington,

1026
00:53:39,480 --> 00:53:43,599
d C. Established Greenwich, England as the prime meridian zero

1027
00:53:43,639 --> 00:53:46,880
degrees longitude and put the IDL roughly opposite it at

1028
00:53:46,920 --> 00:53:50,159
one hundred and eighty degrees longitude, But its exact path

1029
00:53:50,239 --> 00:53:54,159
is based on political and practical convenience, not nature, just

1030
00:53:54,239 --> 00:53:58,280
like time zones themselves. India, for example, spans a huge

1031
00:53:58,320 --> 00:54:01,119
east west distance but uses just one time zone.

1032
00:54:01,159 --> 00:54:06,800
Speaker 1: Okay, from imaginary lines to possibly real but weird energy spots,

1033
00:54:07,519 --> 00:54:11,880
These vile vortices twelve creepy places around the globe where

1034
00:54:11,880 --> 00:54:13,400
strange things supposedly happened.

1035
00:54:13,519 --> 00:54:16,760
Speaker 2: This is a more fringe concept proposed by researcher Ivan Sanderson.

1036
00:54:17,119 --> 00:54:20,280
He identified twelve areas, mostly clustered around the tropics of

1037
00:54:20,280 --> 00:54:22,960
Cancer and Capricorn, plus the North and South poles, where

1038
00:54:22,960 --> 00:54:27,719
he believed anomalous events, disappearances, magnetic irregularities, strange phenomena seemed

1039
00:54:27,760 --> 00:54:28,440
to concentrate the.

1040
00:54:28,440 --> 00:54:30,639
Speaker 1: Bermuda Triangles, the most famous one August.

1041
00:54:30,320 --> 00:54:33,280
Speaker 2: Way Right, the poster child for vile vortices, known for

1042
00:54:33,400 --> 00:54:36,880
dozens of unexplained ship and plane disappearances. But Sanderson identified

1043
00:54:36,880 --> 00:54:40,599
others too, like what Mahenjo Daro in Pakistan, that ancient

1044
00:54:40,639 --> 00:54:45,559
Indus valley city mysteriously abandoned around seventeen hundred BCE Easter

1045
00:54:45,679 --> 00:54:49,760
Island with its enigmatic giant Moi statues. How were they moved?

1046
00:54:49,880 --> 00:54:53,400
Why were they built? The Dragon's Triangle south of Japan

1047
00:54:53,840 --> 00:54:58,000
another zone known for disappearances, even places like Great Zimbabwe

1048
00:54:58,079 --> 00:55:01,760
in Africa mysteriously abandoned than the fifteenth century, and the.

1049
00:55:01,840 --> 00:55:04,920
Speaker 1: South Atlantic Anomaly where radiation is weird.

1050
00:55:05,119 --> 00:55:08,079
Speaker 2: Yes, that's a known scientific phenomenon. It's an area where

1051
00:55:08,119 --> 00:55:11,559
Earth's inner radiation belt dips closer to the surface. It

1052
00:55:11,559 --> 00:55:15,119
does affect satellites, computers can glitch, astronauts report seeing flashes

1053
00:55:15,119 --> 00:55:18,440
of light. The International Space Station needs extra shielding when

1054
00:55:18,480 --> 00:55:21,599
passing through it. Sanderson included this and places like the

1055
00:55:21,599 --> 00:55:24,920
Wharton Basin and the Indian Ocean known for unusual earthquakes,

1056
00:55:25,079 --> 00:55:28,079
and even the North and South Poles themselves associated with

1057
00:55:28,079 --> 00:55:29,960
disappearance stories in extreme condition.

1058
00:55:30,119 --> 00:55:32,400
Speaker 1: Okay, so a collection of mystery spots. But what's the

1059
00:55:32,440 --> 00:55:33,880
really weird part about this theory?

1060
00:55:34,000 --> 00:55:36,079
Speaker 2: The weirdest claim is that if you connect these twelve

1061
00:55:36,079 --> 00:55:39,119
points on a globe, they supposedly form the vertices of

1062
00:55:39,159 --> 00:55:43,239
an icosahedron, a twenty sided geometric shape and nicosahedron.

1063
00:55:43,400 --> 00:55:44,840
Speaker 1: Seriously, that's the claim.

1064
00:55:45,119 --> 00:55:48,320
Speaker 2: Is it a massive coincidence, a result of confirmation bias,

1065
00:55:48,599 --> 00:55:51,679
just picking spots that fit a pattern, or does it

1066
00:55:51,760 --> 00:55:55,920
hint at some underlying geometric energy grid on Earth? It's

1067
00:55:55,920 --> 00:55:59,400
definitely out there, but it's an intriguing idea that captures

1068
00:55:59,440 --> 00:55:59,920
the imagining.

1069
00:56:00,599 --> 00:56:03,920
Speaker 1: Definitely intriguing. Okay, let's wrap this section with a thought experiment.

1070
00:56:04,440 --> 00:56:09,320
What if we drained the oceans. Imagine the Atlantic just vanished.

1071
00:56:09,440 --> 00:56:11,679
Speaker 2: It's a dramatic way to think about how much water

1072
00:56:11,800 --> 00:56:15,079
there is and what's hidden beneath it. The Atlantic covers

1073
00:56:15,119 --> 00:56:18,119
a fifth of the Earth's surface. Ninety seven percent of

1074
00:56:18,159 --> 00:56:20,360
all Earth's water is salty ocean.

1075
00:56:20,000 --> 00:56:22,639
Speaker 1: Water, and life depends on it utterly completely.

1076
00:56:22,679 --> 00:56:26,079
Speaker 2: Without the ocean's Earth becomes a desert, a giant dust bowl,

1077
00:56:26,199 --> 00:56:29,559
no water cycle, no rain, rampant fires, no drinking water,

1078
00:56:30,119 --> 00:56:33,519
oceans regulate temperature. Without them, the equator would scorch. They

1079
00:56:33,519 --> 00:56:35,239
are absolutely essential for life.

1080
00:56:35,079 --> 00:56:36,960
Speaker 1: As we know it, so if we could drain them,

1081
00:56:37,119 --> 00:56:38,679
what hidden landscape would appear?

1082
00:56:38,960 --> 00:56:41,599
Speaker 2: We'd see that the topography beneath the waves is actually

1083
00:56:41,719 --> 00:56:44,480
far more extreme, more dramatic than most of the land surface,

1084
00:56:44,599 --> 00:56:48,800
like Monokia exactly Monochia in Hawaii. Measured from its base

1085
00:56:48,840 --> 00:56:51,320
on the ocean floor. It's the tallest mountain on Earth

1086
00:56:51,440 --> 00:56:54,440
thirty three thousand, five hundred feet, nearly a mile taller

1087
00:56:54,480 --> 00:56:56,719
than Mount Everest, but most of it is underwater.

1088
00:56:56,840 --> 00:56:58,400
Speaker 1: In the Mid Atlantic Ridge.

1089
00:56:58,320 --> 00:57:02,519
Speaker 2: The largest single geological feature on the planet, almost entirely submerged.

1090
00:57:03,039 --> 00:57:05,599
This underwater mountain range runs down the center.

1091
00:57:05,360 --> 00:57:06,039
Speaker 1: Of the Atlantic.

1092
00:57:06,400 --> 00:57:09,840
Speaker 2: It's about half the height of Mount Kilimanjaro and stretches

1093
00:57:09,960 --> 00:57:12,679
for tens of thousands of miles, about a tenth of

1094
00:57:12,719 --> 00:57:15,880
the Earth's circumference. We only see tiny bits of it

1095
00:57:15,920 --> 00:57:18,519
poking out, like an Iceland or the Azores. It wasn't

1096
00:57:18,519 --> 00:57:21,519
even properly mapped until the nineteen fifties. Shows how much

1097
00:57:21,559 --> 00:57:23,480
ocean is unexplored.

1098
00:57:23,039 --> 00:57:25,480
Speaker 1: And that Ridge is where new ocean floor is being

1099
00:57:25,519 --> 00:57:27,639
created right. Plate tectonics in.

1100
00:57:27,679 --> 00:57:31,360
Speaker 2: Action precisely, it's a divergent boundary where the North American

1101
00:57:31,440 --> 00:57:34,320
and Eurasian plates and the South American and African plates

1102
00:57:34,360 --> 00:57:38,039
further south are pulling apart. Magma wells up, creates new

1103
00:57:38,079 --> 00:57:40,679
crust and pushes the continents apart by about one point

1104
00:57:40,719 --> 00:57:43,480
five inches a year. It's the engine driving the Atlantic

1105
00:57:43,480 --> 00:57:44,719
Ocean's widening, will.

1106
00:57:44,599 --> 00:57:48,679
Speaker 1: The Pacific is closing, leading to that amaggious super continent

1107
00:57:48,719 --> 00:57:49,599
idea in the future.

1108
00:57:49,840 --> 00:57:53,480
Speaker 2: That's the projection. As the Atlantic widens, the Pacific is

1109
00:57:53,519 --> 00:57:57,440
generally shrinking, with subduction zones around its rim. The model

1110
00:57:57,480 --> 00:58:00,519
suggests that in maybe fifty million years or so, the

1111
00:58:00,559 --> 00:58:04,039
Pacific could close entirely, with the Americas eventually colliding with

1112
00:58:04,119 --> 00:58:07,000
Asia clustering around the North Pole to form a mesia.

1113
00:58:07,480 --> 00:58:10,679
The constant opening and closing of ocean basins amazing.

1114
00:58:11,000 --> 00:58:13,559
Speaker 1: Okay, let's move into our final section, looking at the

1115
00:58:13,639 --> 00:58:17,239
human and ecological footprint on this dynamic planet. Starting with

1116
00:58:17,360 --> 00:58:22,239
barriers people build, like the Dingo fence in Australia three thousand,

1117
00:58:22,360 --> 00:58:23,559
one hundred miles long.

1118
00:58:23,639 --> 00:58:27,320
Speaker 2: That's immense, It's truly colossal, longer than the distance from

1119
00:58:27,320 --> 00:58:30,960
London to New York, stretching across three states from Queensland

1120
00:58:31,000 --> 00:58:34,559
down to South Australia. Just this massive wire mesh fence

1121
00:58:34,639 --> 00:58:37,639
about six feet tall, sometimes with an electric wire, built

1122
00:58:37,679 --> 00:58:41,320
primarily to keep dingoes, Australia's largest native land predator, out

1123
00:58:41,320 --> 00:58:43,199
of the southeastern sheep farming regions.

1124
00:58:43,239 --> 00:58:45,199
Speaker 1: And it needs a full time staff just to maintain it.

1125
00:58:45,440 --> 00:58:48,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, about twenty people constantly patrolling, repairing damage from weather,

1126
00:58:48,840 --> 00:58:51,280
animals trying to get through. Costs about seven hundred and

1127
00:58:51,280 --> 00:58:53,400
fifty thousand dollars a year just for upkeep. It's a

1128
00:58:53,480 --> 00:58:54,760
huge ongoing effort.

1129
00:58:54,920 --> 00:58:57,760
Speaker 1: But these kinds of interventions, trying to control nature on

1130
00:58:57,840 --> 00:59:01,280
such as scale, they often have unexp consequences, don't there?

1131
00:59:01,320 --> 00:59:04,480
Speaker 2: Oh? Absolutely. The dingo fence is a classic example of

1132
00:59:04,559 --> 00:59:10,400
complex unintended ecological impacts. By removing the apex predator, the dingo,

1133
00:59:10,519 --> 00:59:11,440
from inside the.

1134
00:59:11,400 --> 00:59:13,639
Speaker 1: Fence, kangaroo numbers went up exactly.

1135
00:59:13,880 --> 00:59:17,920
Speaker 2: Kangaroo populations exploded, which meant more competition with sheep for

1136
00:59:18,000 --> 00:59:21,920
grazing land. This overgrazing then led to less diversity in

1137
00:59:22,000 --> 00:59:25,400
plants and fewer small animals, which in turn affected.

1138
00:59:24,960 --> 00:59:27,239
Speaker 1: Soil quality a whole cascade effect totally.

1139
00:59:27,599 --> 00:59:30,519
Speaker 2: The fence also blocks the migration routes of other animals,

1140
00:59:30,559 --> 00:59:33,760
affects how seeds are dispersed, even changes how sand dunes

1141
00:59:33,800 --> 00:59:37,719
form and move. And interestingly, researchers found that kangaroos inside

1142
00:59:37,719 --> 00:59:40,519
the fence tended to be smaller and lighter, while those

1143
00:59:40,559 --> 00:59:43,840
outside the fence, still facing dingo predators, had bigger feet

1144
00:59:43,920 --> 00:59:46,559
and heads, not because of diet, but because of different

1145
00:59:46,599 --> 00:59:49,960
evolutionary pressures. It just shows how interconnected.

1146
00:59:49,360 --> 00:59:52,360
Speaker 1: Everything is in Australia has a history with problematic fences.

1147
00:59:52,559 --> 00:59:56,039
Speaker 2: Thinking back to the rabbits ah Yes, the Great rabbit

1148
00:59:56,119 --> 01:00:00,239
Plague started by one guy, Thomas Austen, releasing just twenty

1149
01:00:00,239 --> 01:00:03,119
four rabbits for hunting in eighteen fifty nine with no

1150
01:00:03,320 --> 01:00:09,519
natural predators. They bred like well. Rabbits completely devastated huge areas.

1151
01:00:09,199 --> 01:00:11,320
Speaker 1: Of farmland, and they built fences to stop them.

1152
01:00:11,440 --> 01:00:15,400
Speaker 2: They built three massive rabbit proof fences. The first one

1153
01:00:15,440 --> 01:00:17,880
was over two thousand miles long, the longest fence in

1154
01:00:17,920 --> 01:00:20,639
the world at the time, but ultimately they didn't work.

1155
01:00:20,920 --> 01:00:24,039
The rabbits always found ways over, under, or through them.

1156
01:00:24,480 --> 01:00:27,519
A stark lesson in the difficulty of controlling invasive species

1157
01:00:27,559 --> 01:00:28,559
once they're established.

1158
01:00:28,599 --> 01:00:31,559
Speaker 1: Wow, are there other weird fences out there? The notes

1159
01:00:31,599 --> 01:00:32,960
mentioned an aquarium fence.

1160
01:00:33,320 --> 01:00:36,400
Speaker 2: Ha ha ha. Yes, apparently someone in Turkey built a one

1161
01:00:36,480 --> 01:00:38,880
hundred and sixty four foot long aquarium as the fence

1162
01:00:38,920 --> 01:00:42,360
around their luxury villa, filled with diverse marine life, connected

1163
01:00:42,400 --> 01:00:44,559
to the agency by a long pipeline, gives them an

1164
01:00:44,559 --> 01:00:47,280
ocean view from their garden. I suppose secured by facial

1165
01:00:47,280 --> 01:00:48,199
recognition cameras.

1166
01:00:48,280 --> 01:00:51,559
Speaker 1: Naturally, that's certainly unique. And a bra fence in New Zealand.

1167
01:00:51,440 --> 01:00:54,639
Speaker 2: That one sounds more accidental. Apparently, back in nineteen ninety nine,

1168
01:00:54,800 --> 01:00:58,679
some bras mysteriously appeared on a rural fence in central Otago.

1169
01:00:59,119 --> 01:01:01,599
Then more appears, and it just grew and grew into

1170
01:01:01,639 --> 01:01:05,400
this quirky tourist attraction. Eventually it caused traffic problems because

1171
01:01:05,440 --> 01:01:07,719
so many people stop to look or add to it.

1172
01:01:07,800 --> 01:01:13,480
Speaker 1: Okay, from weird fences to a weird population mystery. Tasmania.

1173
01:01:13,800 --> 01:01:16,480
It's the big island, twenty sixth largest in the world,

1174
01:01:16,920 --> 01:01:21,840
beautiful nature, cool climate, yet it's Australia's least populated state.

1175
01:01:22,159 --> 01:01:25,079
Speaker 2: Why it is a paradox. Tasmania is about the size

1176
01:01:25,079 --> 01:01:28,559
of Ireland or Switzerland stunningly beautiful in many parts, but

1177
01:01:28,679 --> 01:01:31,320
has just over half a million people, much less dense

1178
01:01:31,360 --> 01:01:33,519
than mainland Australia. It's definitely an enigma.

1179
01:01:33,719 --> 01:01:36,320
Speaker 1: Did the ghost stories play a role? Port Arthur Prison

1180
01:01:36,360 --> 01:01:37,039
haunted houses?

1181
01:01:37,079 --> 01:01:40,840
Speaker 2: Well, Tasmania certainly plays up at sinister past and creepy atmosphere.

1182
01:01:40,840 --> 01:01:44,039
You've got Port Arthur, the brutal former convict prison now

1183
01:01:44,039 --> 01:01:47,440
a tourist site with ghost tours. Franklin House, an oldest

1184
01:01:47,440 --> 01:01:51,400
state rumored to have moving objects in weird noises, Hobart Prison,

1185
01:01:51,559 --> 01:01:55,280
more ghost tours, Richmond Bridge supposedly haunted by a cruel

1186
01:01:55,320 --> 01:01:58,199
guard pushed off by convicts. These stories at a certain character,

1187
01:01:58,280 --> 01:01:58,960
for sure.

1188
01:01:58,880 --> 01:02:01,880
Speaker 1: But they're not the real reason people don't move there intros.

1189
01:02:02,159 --> 01:02:05,480
Speaker 2: No, the real reasons are much more practical and frankly

1190
01:02:05,719 --> 01:02:08,679
quite challenging for residents. They paint a picture that's far

1191
01:02:08,719 --> 01:02:10,480
from the idyllic tourist brossures.

1192
01:02:10,719 --> 01:02:12,440
Speaker 1: Like, what what are the big issues?

1193
01:02:12,559 --> 01:02:17,320
Speaker 2: Okay, First, apparently the internet connection is notoriously weak and unreliable.

1194
01:02:17,480 --> 01:02:20,360
That's a huge drawback in the modern world, especially for

1195
01:02:20,480 --> 01:02:21,119
remote work.

1196
01:02:21,280 --> 01:02:21,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, crucial.

1197
01:02:22,079 --> 01:02:25,559
Speaker 2: Then there are logistical difficulties being an island separated by

1198
01:02:25,559 --> 01:02:29,480
the base Strait means higher prices for goods, longer delivery times.

1199
01:02:30,079 --> 01:02:33,639
The cost of living is high, congent, generally rising rents,

1200
01:02:33,760 --> 01:02:37,599
expensive food and basics. Care a major issue, long waiting

1201
01:02:37,639 --> 01:02:40,800
lists for many procedures in the public hospitals. People often

1202
01:02:40,840 --> 01:02:44,239
have to travel to the mainland, which is expensive for specialized.

1203
01:02:43,639 --> 01:02:45,599
Speaker 1: Care and jobs opportunities.

1204
01:02:45,639 --> 01:02:49,000
Speaker 2: That's another big one. Tasmania has an aging population and

1205
01:02:49,079 --> 01:02:52,159
many young people leave because there are limited career opportunities,

1206
01:02:52,480 --> 01:02:56,360
lower salaries compared to the mainland, and relatively high unemployment.

1207
01:02:56,800 --> 01:03:00,519
So despite the natural beauty, there are significant hers to

1208
01:03:00,599 --> 01:03:01,639
living there comfortably.

1209
01:03:01,920 --> 01:03:04,800
Speaker 1: That paints a very different picture. But it does have

1210
01:03:04,920 --> 01:03:07,719
incredible natural assets right World Heritage Sites.

1211
01:03:07,760 --> 01:03:11,280
Speaker 2: We absolutely nearly a quarter of Tasmania is World Heritage listed.

1212
01:03:11,639 --> 01:03:16,679
It has these amazing ancient, cool temperate rainforests, incredibly rich

1213
01:03:16,760 --> 01:03:20,559
archaeological sites showing human presence going back twenty thousand years,

1214
01:03:21,239 --> 01:03:24,679
unique wildlife and plants like the Centurion tree, this massive

1215
01:03:24,719 --> 01:03:27,599
eucalyptus four hundred years old, over three hundred and thirty

1216
01:03:27,599 --> 01:03:32,320
feet tall. It offers incredible peace, calm and unique nature.

1217
01:03:32,559 --> 01:03:33,400
Speaker 1: So it's a trade off.

1218
01:03:33,840 --> 01:03:36,840
Speaker 2: It really is. It forces you to ask, as a listener,

1219
01:03:36,920 --> 01:03:39,480
might would you live there? Knowing the beauty but also

1220
01:03:39,519 --> 01:03:42,519
the challenges. The hope is that Tasmania can find ways

1221
01:03:42,519 --> 01:03:44,880
to improve its economy and opportunities to keep its young

1222
01:03:44,880 --> 01:03:49,480
people while still protecting its incredible natural heritage. Finding that balance.

1223
01:03:49,800 --> 01:03:53,519
Speaker 1: What a journey we've taken across vanished continents, deep into

1224
01:03:53,559 --> 01:03:56,800
the earth core, exploring ocean depths, even glimpsing the future.

1225
01:03:56,840 --> 01:03:59,239
It feels like the common thread is just this constant,

1226
01:03:59,320 --> 01:04:01,119
restless dam of our dynamic Earth.

1227
01:04:01,639 --> 01:04:05,639
Speaker 2: Absolutely, from those ancient magnetic whispers in the rocks to

1228
01:04:05,719 --> 01:04:09,000
the strange sounds and the deep ocean, our planet is

1229
01:04:09,039 --> 01:04:13,639
just brimming with hidden knowledge, layers upon layers of stories waiting.

1230
01:04:13,360 --> 01:04:16,039
Speaker 1: To be uncovered. And we've heard how questions that seemed

1231
01:04:16,079 --> 01:04:21,079
impossible are actually being answered, how new tech keeps revealing

1232
01:04:21,159 --> 01:04:22,760
wonders we barely imagined.

1233
01:04:23,119 --> 01:04:26,000
Speaker 2: The Earth really isn't just a static stage. It's alive,

1234
01:04:26,360 --> 01:04:30,360
constantly reshaping itself, leaving these fascinating cludes and presenting us

1235
01:04:30,360 --> 01:04:34,800
with these incredible challenges, but also opportunities for discovery. Every

1236
01:04:34,880 --> 01:04:38,840
lost plate, every hidden mountain range, every powerful earthquake, every

1237
01:04:38,920 --> 01:04:43,119
weird sound. They're all part of this grand, ongoing story

1238
01:04:43,159 --> 01:04:43,840
of our planet.

1239
01:04:44,119 --> 01:04:46,400
Speaker 1: It really makes you think about the ground beneath your feet.

1240
01:04:46,199 --> 01:04:49,559
Speaker 2: Differently, and the vast oceans we still know so little about.

1241
01:04:49,880 --> 01:04:52,920
It reveals this profound interconnectedness of everything.

1242
01:04:53,039 --> 01:04:56,360
Speaker 1: So the final question, then, what's next? What incredible new

1243
01:04:56,480 --> 01:04:59,800
lost piece of our planet, What unimaginable phenomenon are Maybe

1244
01:04:59,800 --> 01:05:03,119
what profound secret about life itself is just waiting out

1245
01:05:03,159 --> 01:05:03,960
there to be discovered.

1246
01:05:04,000 --> 01:05:05,239
Speaker 2: It makes you wonder, doesn't it.

1247
01:05:05,400 --> 01:05:08,239
Speaker 1: Maybe the most thrilling journey isn't to some distant star,

1248
01:05:08,559 --> 01:05:11,599
but right here beneath our feet, we're deep in our

1249
01:05:11,639 --> 01:05:15,280
own oceans. Keep asking questions, keep being curious, because this

1250
01:05:15,360 --> 01:05:18,119
deep dive into Earth's mysteries, it feels like it's only

1251
01:05:18,239 --> 01:05:18,800
just beginning