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A father and daughter discuss life across their generations. Science, medicine, music, and whatever else they choose to discuss are on the table.
Aubrey
00:00
Yeah, the answer is yes and no and not really and kinda.
Peter
00:15
Welcome back to Generations. I am one of your co-hosts, Peter.
Aubrey
00:18
And I am your other co-host, Aubrey.
Peter
00:21
Aubrey, how are you?
Aubrey
00:23
I am good. I am good. Um, it is officially fall here in Wisconsin.
Peter
00:31
Okay. Does it feel like it?
Aubrey
00:33
It it does. It does. It is colder.
00:37
It is getting colder. Um it is no longer shorts weather. Um it is pants and a lot of the times jacket weather.
Peter
00:49
Okay.
Aubrey
00:50
I'm trying to enjoy it because I know what is on the horizon very soon. Um So I'm trying to enjoy the fact that I can go outside with a light jacket.
Peter
01:03
Sure, sure.
Aubrey
01:04
Um, and that the the trees return in the pretty colors. Um and it is not yet cold or not not yet dark at 4 PM. Uh so I am trying to enjoy the very short fall that we will have. Um
Peter
01:22
Yeah. Yeah, ours has been not quite uh fall yet really. I mean it's it's inching that way. But it's been like fifties at night. And we've had a couple days in the sixties, but we're still mostly in the mid to high seventies.
Aubrey
01:41
Yeah.
Peter
01:41
During the day. So it is it is still very much uh I mean, it's always short weather for me, but You know , it is it is still very much people uh don't feel the need. Like uh I w I got a new hoodie the other day with some band merch, and I was like I wonder if it's a hoodie day. And I looked and I said, nope, high of 77, not a hoodie day.
Aubrey
02:06
Not a hoodie day. No, certainly not. Um yeah, but other than that, I am getting my I'm taking my personal training exam at the end of October. So I'm studying for that Um other than that, I'm just kinda chilling. So yeah, how are you?
Peter
02:28
I'm doing okay. We're just in the midst of You know, that transition into kind of that fall where work is the same for me, but uh Gareth is busy with swim. He's always busy with swim, but there are a lot more meets uh during high school season. You know, it's basically a meet pretty much every week. There may be a missed week here and there.
Aubrey
02:53
Mm-hmm.
Peter
02:53
But as opposed to when he's swimming with um with a club, it's it's a lot You know, there it's a swim meet every probably one every month, but we're usually only going to one every kind of four to six weeks. This it's a lot. He was over for a an invitational, a brave night invitational.
03:17
Over in Boise. And uh he did really well. Got some PRs.
03:24
He's feeling strong. He's been doing some PT for a hip thing. Uh that seems to be getting better.
03:29
And so So that's all looking good. Another net just kind of doing the regular, regular same old stuff.
Aubrey
03:37
Yeah, regular smigular.
Peter
03:38
But we're glad to be back. We took a a week off a couple weeks ago because you were you were busy celebrating.
Aubrey
03:45
Yep, indeed. It was our one year anniversary, so we went camping for the weekend.
Peter
03:52
Um the last
Aubrey
03:53
last camping trip of the season, I think, which is very sad, but but we kind of we we made the most of the the camping gear we have. We really did. We went on lots of camping trips, lots lots of hikes.
04:07
I'm still doing lots of hikes, so I've been trying to do we've been doing all the outdoor things. Which has been very good. He got me Hayden got me snowshoes for our anniversary.
04:17
So I can continue.
Peter
04:20
Get out there once the once the snow starts falling.
Aubrey
04:23
Yep, because then if I have seasonal seasonal depression, I can at least be outside with seasonal depression. Which is better than being inside with seasonal depression. So yeah.
Peter
04:34
Yeah, it definitely is better. So Well, this week you came up with a th a a fun idea that I'm looking forward to. You know, a a number of episodes ago, earlier, uh kind of the end of spring, start of summer.
04:48
We did a health myth myths episode. And this time you suggested we do a space myths episode. And I think it's a brilliant idea.
04:58
Um, you've got the space knowledge on us. And so we've kind of compiled a list of myths, and then uh you'll go ahead and you're gonna answer these for us. So
Aubrey
05:08
indeed.
Peter
05:09
All right. I'm just going to go down the list, how we have them in order here in the document. And I'm going to start with this one that I know I've heard.
05:18
And I'm not going to lie, every time I hear it, I go. Really? But this is one that is repeated frequently, and that is the Great Wall of China is visible from space or the moon.
05:31
and it is the only human made object visible from space.
Aubrey
05:35
Mm-hmm. So no no and no. Um it is very narrow. It's like as narrow as like a highway.
05:45
So it is way too narrow to be seen from the moon. specifically. Um it's also like the same color as its surroundings, so even in lower orbit from like the International Space Station, which is several several hundred kilometers up Um it's still really difficult to see.
06:05
Um most astronauts have just been like, nope, literally have never been able to see it. Um and a few of them have been able to see it with the help of cameras or binoculars with the right atmospheric conditions, the right lighting, knowing exactly where to look, kind of everything has to align for them to catch a maybe a glimpse of it. Um but at that lower orbit, the things you're gonna be able to see that are human made is like cities.
06:30
Like that is way more visible than the Great Wall of China. So that is not
Peter
06:36
yeah. Well, and you bring up an interesting point, and this is one of those things why it's always seemed very weird to me. The Great Wall of China, I now I am not downplaying its impressiveness.
Aubrey
06:47
Right.
Peter
06:48
Given especially the time it was built and such.
Aubrey
06:51
Absolutely.
Peter
06:52
But the Great Wall of China is long. It's not big.
Aubrey
06:57
Yeah.
Peter
06:58
Like it's it's kind of high, but not that high. And as you said, it's it's no more wide than I mean it's less wide than a lot of our freeways, especially here in America.
Aubrey
07:09
Yeah.
Peter
07:10
It's just
Aubrey
07:11
Yeah, it's like thirty feet thirty feet wifteen to thirty feet wide ish.
Peter
07:15
Yeah. It's like yeah, I mean I think about and and this is just because of where I grew up in northern Utah, but I think about the Kennicott copper mine Which is this great big pit mine. And I'm like, well, that'd be way easier to see because it's just a lot more large across.
Aubrey
07:33
Exactly.
Peter
07:34
So we're good. It's good to know that my my my head scratching, dubious uh mindset whenever I would hear that is is justified.
Aubrey
07:44
Yep, indeed.
Peter
07:45
Now, and this is definitely one that I know that I've heard and probably at some point in the past just went ahead and accepted as fact. And that is that Mercury is the hottest planet because it's closest to the sun.
Aubrey
07:58
Yep, so this one is a is a pretty common pretty common one, but the answer is no. Venus is the hottest planet because it has an atmosphere that is so thick It will trap the heat from the sun. So no matter where you go on the planet, the temperature on the surface is always around 460 degrees Celsius. Which is a eight hundred and sixty degrees Fahrenheit.
Peter
08:25
That's that's really hot.
Aubrey
08:27
Very, very hot. But on Mercury, because there is not an atmosphere the side towards the sun, yeah, it gets pretty hot about 425 degrees Celsius or almost 800 degrees Fahrenheit But the side facing away from the sun cools down significantly to like negative 190 degrees Celsius or negative 315 Fahrenheit Which is very, very cold.
Peter
08:55
Very cold.
Aubrey
08:57
Yes. The answer is it is not the hottest planet. Venus is the hottest planet.
Peter
09:03
Okay.
Aubrey
09:04
All right. There you go.
Peter
09:05
Now what about Polaris? Polaris, aka the North Star.
Aubrey
09:10
Mm-hmm.
Peter
09:11
I always was told That, oh, look to Polaris because it's the brightest star in the sky at night. And and and I'm gonna just be honest and tip my hand a little bit. I always thought, is it is there something wrong with my eyes? Because the only way I could ever figure out which one's Polaris was because I had to do the little follow the end of the Great Dipper and
Aubrey
09:34
Right.
Peter
09:34
That sort of thing to to to f to point to it because I'd look around and I'm like, huh.
Aubrey
09:40
Right. Yeah, so you're correct. Um, it is not the brightest star in the night sky. The reason why it is the north star is because it sits almost directly above the Earth's north pole. it aligns pretty pretty well with the rotational axis so as the earth spins it kind of looks like all the other stars circle like circle around it.
Peter
10:04
Okay.
Aubrey
10:04
It's the North Star. But the brightest star in the night sky is Sirius, or more officially called Alpha Canis Majoris, because it's
Peter
10:14
I like to call it the dog star.
Aubrey
10:16
The dog star, yep um because of the constellation that it is in. It is the brightest star in the night sky significantly by by a very wide margin. It is it has an apparent magnitude of negative one point four six, which The apparent magnitude scale, the lower the number, the brighter it is.
Peter
10:35
Okay.
Aubrey
10:35
Um, because that makes logical sense. Everything makes perfect sense. Um whereas Polaris has an apparent magnitude of 1. 98. So it that seems like not that big of a jump, but it's not exactly An an order of magnitude, but each each magnitude, like one magnitude, is way way higher like the difference between a magnitude of one and a magnitude of two huge difference in actual like luminosity like actual brightness So it's a very large jump. And the reason why it is so bright, so much brighter than Polaris is, it is so much closer than Polaris's.
Peter
11:17
Sure. Um
Aubrey
11:18
Sirius is only like eight point seven light years away from us. Um and I don't remember how far away Polaris is, but It's a lot, lot farther than that. Um yeah, Sirius is a um an A star, which on the like star classification scale. Of course this makes also perfect sense. The brightest is O, then the next brightest is B, then the next brightest is A Um because that makes absolute perfect sense.
Peter
11:54
Yep.
Aubrey
11:54
Um after A is F and then G. Um, and then K and then M It makes perfect perfect sense. Y of course. Everyone would think that O is the brightest and the biggest.
12:09
Ob like obviously. Why would it be A? Um but yeah, so A an A star is still pretty bright, um whereas our sun is a G star.
Peter
12:17
Okay.
Aubrey
12:18
So that is
Peter
12:19
So So what does the, and this is a little bit of a deviation, but the brightness of a star as we perceive it, in part, I imagine, is determined by its proximity to us.
Aubrey
12:29
Yes.
Peter
12:30
But that's clearly not the only thing because Proxima Centauri is like half the distance like it's half again closer to us than Sirius at like what four and a half or something light years away. But it's not as bright as Sirius. So what is the difference between these two?
12:46
Is it size? Is it what type of star? What what sort of goes into that other than just proximity?
Aubrey
12:52
Yeah, so the um apparent magnitude is the scale that we're talking about. So apparent means how bright it is to us.
Peter
13:03
Right.
Aubrey
13:03
Which is different than absolute magnitude. And absolute is obviously like how much actual luminosity is being produced from from the star. So with Sirius versus Proxima Proxima Centaur Centa however you say it, geez. Um Proxima Centa Centauri is a tiny tiny tiny dim red dwarf
Peter
13:34
Oh.
Aubrey
13:34
So it is tiny. Basically with the with the stars, the more massive it is, the brighter it is. Um because it is going through it has all this material that it is burning, quote, to where it is fusing the elements and then producing luminosity, more mass, more luminosity is brighter. So Sirius is an A star, so it's a massive blue-white star, and Proxima Centauri is a tiny tiny red dwarf, which is like the eighth of the sun 's mass mass, and Sirius is like twice the mass of the Sun
Peter
14:10
Okay.
Aubrey
14:11
Um so that is pretty much the the biggest difference. If it is a big massive star, is brighter. Um so yeah, Proximo Centauri, you're right, it's about four point two light years away and Sirius is about eight point six, but The mass is just such a huge difference that the uh how far away it is just doesn't even matter at that point. So
Peter
14:32
cool.
Aubrey
14:33
Yeah. Yeah.
Peter
14:34
Cool. All right, next one. Nothing can escape a black hole's gravity because its gravity is infinitely strong. Hmm.
Aubrey
14:41
Yes. So this one is a little a little funky. There is a few things kind of technically wrong with the statement.
14:49
Um gravity in itself is not necessarily infinite. It still follows the same laws. um, like the gravitational law is just gravitational law.
15:01
Um however things do get very messy mathematically once you get very close to the black hole and close to that singularity point in the center of the black hole, which is kind of where Everything breaks down and it's like infinitely massive and infinitely you know, it just things get a little close to infinity and gets a little weird and funky. Um, but the real reason why nothing can escape is because once you get within a certain radius of the black hole, um there's that point of no return, which is called the event horizon where Mathematically, the escape velocity, so how fast you have to go to escape the gravity, exceeds the speed of light. It would have to, you'd have to be going faster than the speed of light to escape.
15:44
Um so yeah, in order to escape its gravitational field you'd be having you'd be have to be moving faster than the speed of light, which obviously Can't do that.
Peter
15:54
We can't do that. At least not right now in our reality
Aubrey
15:59
understanding
Peter
15:59
of physics.
Aubrey
16:00
Yep. Okay. So that's that's kind of that. That's kind of that explanation. But
Peter
16:05
Okay. So the next one is we know what happened at the exact moment of the Big Bang.
Aubrey
16:12
Mm-hmm. Yes. So this one is funky and there's a few of these about the Big Bang where it's it's kind of a misleading name where it kind of is saying it's like a big firecracker that happened at like one point and then expanded outwards. So it's really a kind of confusing name for a very confusing process. We do not know exactly what happened at the like at time equals zero.
Peter
16:43
Sure.
Aubrey
16:44
Time equals zero No, we don't know. But we can know, based on theoretical physics, basically what happens starting at 10 to the negative 43 seconds after
Peter
16:58
Okay.
Aubrey
16:58
Time equals zero. Which like it seems like that's, you know, oh then we do know. No, we still don't. That time, but we just don't close t equals zero.
17:10
And T equals ten to the negative forty-three seconds is still a lot of things that we do not know. So yeah, the one thing I kind of have learned from being in astrophysics is that we don't actually know anything And we can say, yeah, we know what happened at T equals ten to the negative forty three seconds, but like we don't actually know anything. And the orders of magnitude barely matter and orders of magnitude also do matter.
17:35
And nothing ever makes sense and we don't know anything. So that's what I that's what I've learned from from this field. So that's my answer to that one.
Peter
17:43
Okay. Very cool. So kind of dovetailing off that idea of the uh the Big Bang and everything. So What about the idea, the thought that the universe is expanding faster than the speed of light? So that kind of violates relativity.
Aubrey
18:04
Mm-hmm. So this one's kind of a funky one because The whole thing with C, Einstein's C, the speed of light, it applies to objects moving through space. Which is not what we're talking about when we're talking about the expansion of the universe. We're not talking about objects moving in space. We are talking about the s stretching of the fabric of space itself, which is not an object moving through space.
Peter
18:35
Sure, sure.
Aubrey
18:36
So we're not breaking any rules because relativity Like the expansion of the universe, yes, can produce the velocities that exceed the speed of light at those very large distances where super far away things are you know, we're expanding super, super fast. But again, that's a feature of space-time expansion and that doesn't violate special relativities like local speed limit because we're not moving locally We're not moving an object through space locally. We're stretching the fabric of space-time.
Peter
19:11
So basically what you're telling me is this doesn't break the rules. Because we haven't figured out the rules for what this is doing yet.
Aubrey
19:20
Correct. It doesn't break the rules because the rule doesn't apply and we haven't found a rule that does apply.
Peter
19:25
It kind of, I don't know why this is where my brain goes, but it's like You know, at the uh end of Back to the Future, where um then when Doc comes back and Marty's like, there's not enough road, and he's like, Road? Where we're going, we don't need roads. It's kind of like, you know, out there, it's like where this is expanding, we don't have rules.
Aubrey
19:47
Exactly. Exactly.
Peter
19:49
Very cool.
Aubrey
19:50
Yeah.
Peter
19:51
So what about again, the idea that we could see the Big Bang and we could observe it if we were far enough away? Because in essence we'd be looking back in time to the birth of of the known universe.
Aubrey
20:05
Right. Yeah. So this one's a little confusing as well because the answer is kind of like yes and no. We're not again, we're not we're not able to like see the Big Bang.
20:17
Like we're not able to like see a point in space where in space or time where things went kablooey. Um because the Big Bang happened everywhere all at once and was a process happening in time, not a point in time. Um so we can't really see it, like the Big Bang, but we can see the heat from the Big Bang that was there about three hundred and eighty thousand years quote after the Big Bang, which is like when galaxies started to form and stuff like that.
20:56
So this heat from the Big Bang covers the entire sky, fills the universe, is everywhere. That is called the cosmic microwave background. So it's in microwaves.
21:06
Which is how we're able to observe it. Um and I actually have I'm gonna show you. I have a little plushie of the cosmic microwave background that Gareth got me for for my birthday.
21:21
Which I love very much, which obviously the audio listeners will not be able to see, but he's just this little guy with the cosmic microwave background, and he has a little smile. Um, but that is the image that is usually shown with all of these all of those colors. It just shows the microwaves of the heat that is still radiating from the Big Bang.
21:42
So yeah, the answer is yes and no and not really and kinda.
Peter
21:47
Okay. Okay. So again, rules where this is going, we don't have rules.
Aubrey
21:55
Exactly. Exactly.
Peter
21:56
Okay, now this is a fun one. This is a fun one.
Aubrey
21:59
Uh-huh.
Peter
21:59
A planet called Nibiru is on a collision course with Earth.
Aubrey
22:05
Mm-hmm. So this one was a fun one to remember and read a little bit more about the details. So This myth started with this lady in 1995 called Nancy Leader, I think is how you say her name.
22:22
I don't know, Nancy. She claims And claimed that she is a contactee with the ability to receive messages from aliens um through an implant in her brain um from the Zeta reticulli star system, which is like a binary big wide binary star system about 40 like years away from us. She was claiming she was in contact with those aliens.
22:47
Um she started this whole website um called Z Zeta Talk. Um and she said she was chosen to warn mankind about this object, Nibiru Nibiru. Um, and that it would she was chosen to warn mankind that it would sweep through the inner solar system in May 2003 and destroy humanity.
23:08
um and basically, you know, collide with Earth, throw Earth off of its axis, shift the magnetic poles, and then basically there would be it would just like collapse Earth, basically.
Peter
23:20
Oh yeah, for sure.
Aubrey
23:21
Um but then that date passed Um and she said, well, actually, if I reveal the real date, it would give those in power enough time to declare martial law and be able to trap people in cities. For this magnetic pole shift and lead everyone to their deaths. So she has not you know, she's d didn't reveal a new date Um but the name Nibiru is is from um these works of one of the an ancient astronaut Guy, which like the ancient astronauts is the specific pseudoscientific set of beliefs, where like aliens visited Earth um in ancient times and has made contact with us in the past and has like shaped our culture and religion and technology and all this stuff.
24:10
So basically this guy misinterpreted Sumerian and ancient Mesopotamian texts, um, where this giant planet passes by Earth like every three thousand ish years allowing its beings to interact with humanity, and that giant planet was called Nibiru Um so this guy basically denied any connection between his work and Nancy's claims, but she was basically saying Planet X, this planet that's gonna come kill us, is Nibiru. It is from these ancient texts, it is they are one and the same, whatever. Um, but after her date passed and like literally nothing happened, um other people kind of took up their that idea and created their own dates.
24:55
Um like December twenty-first, twenty twelve, which was the end of the Mayan calendar and everyone freaked out. Um and they were like, Oh, it's gonna happen, like this is the time. Um But obviously, there's a million reasons why this is not an actual worry, and there's not like a planet-like object that's on a collision course with Earth.
25:15
Um Because we would know very incredibly early if something like this were to happen. And also a lot of other events would occur before it would actually quote hit Earth. Um Like if an object was so close to Earth, um it would be visible to the naked eye naked eye probably and would cause a lot of effects in the orbits of the outer planets anyways.
25:39
It would kind of mess up everything in the solar system before it even got to us. Um and if this planet were to have done a flyby in like ancient times, like they said, um the Earth would not be in its near circular orbit anyways, because it would have flown by and messed it up. And we probably would have lost the moon in that flyby.
26:01
Um, so all the physics that Nancy said would happen, like the magnetic pull shift and all this random stuff Also is not physically possible, um none of the things she said were physically possible, and that's not actually what happened Yeah, she's the planet would like stop the Earth's rotation and shift it off its axis and all this stuff, and that's just not what would happen if we had an object close to Earth and close to the solar system, so So yeah, that one's just not facts. Um that one was a fun one to read more about though because I remember in 2012, I was in fourth grade. And everyone was freaking out like before Christmas break and everyone was like, Oh my gosh, like the world's gonna end because the calendar ends, which means the world has to end.
26:44
And I was like What? Like I was like, do I need to be worried? I didn't realize like this is such I was like, geez, I gotta now I gotta start freaking out.
26:53
What do what what do we do? But of course Nothing happened. It's okay.
26:59
There was another another whole um conspiracy around 2017 when this kind of was brought up again with the whole Nibiru situation And there was some guy, I don't remember his name, who was really freaked out. He was saying that like Obama was gonna be elected for another third term. There's gonna be earthquakes everywhere and Obama's hiding the fact that this earth this planet is already in the solar system and it's called a black star and it's on the outside of the solar system and all the The establishment is hiding it from us so that we all just die and yeah, it was a whole it was a whole thing.
27:39
It was a whole thing.
Peter
27:41
Great. So anyway. Good to know. Good to know.
Aubrey
27:43
There we go. Yep.
Peter
27:44
Excellent. All right. What about the idea that Saturn is the only planet that has rings?
Aubrey
27:51
Yes, so this one is also a common not known fact that all of the outer giant planets have rings actually. Um Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, because I'm not gonna say Uranus , and Neptune. Um Jupiters are super faint, so you can't really see them very well.
28:15
They're made up of mostly dust, whereas Saturn has the super bright um icy rings. They're more easy to see Um Uranus has also some pretty narrow, pretty dim rings made up of some larger chunks of dust and debris that are very dark. Neptune also has some very thin, very faint rings.
28:36
But yes, all four of those have rings.
Peter
28:38
Very cool. Uh what about the idea that nebulae are supernovae that do actually look like the pictures with fancy colors?
Aubrey
28:51
Yes, so unfortunately I did think when I got to college that they did actually look like that. Those beautiful big fancy images with all the colors of the planetary nebula and the supernova and the galaxies and everything that had super fancy colors. Um unfortunately The word look implies that we can see that with our eyeballs.
29:15
Um, if we were to go out in space and just look with our eyes, we would not really see anything. We would not really see any structure. or any colors.
29:24
Um, we might see some like smudged green if we did used like a telescope with really, really long exposure that's like just visible light spectrum. Um, but alas, the stunning images are built from just data that are captured in wavelengths we can't see, like infrared and UV. um an X-ray and then everything gets mapped to the visible colors so that they're useful for scientific interpretation.
29:49
So like red and blue and green all are emission lines from different elements and all of those things. So sadly, they do not actually look like that.
Peter
30:02
That is a bit of a bummer. All right. Here was a final question in our list, our final myth. How much bigger is the sun than the solar system planets?
Aubrey
30:13
So this one is a fun one just because it puts into perspective how much bigger the sun is. Um the sun is huge, like giant Um by volume uh in the sun, you could fit twenty-three million mercuries into the sun. Um if you were to fit Venuses in the Sun, it would be 1.
30:39
5 million Venuses could fit in the Sun. Um Earths, you could do 1. 3 million Earths in the Sun.
30:49
uh nine hundred and eighty Jupiters, which is crazy because if it's one point three million Earths could fit in the Sun But only 980 Jupiters.
Peter
31:01
Gives you an idea how big Jupiter is.
Aubrey
31:03
Gives you an idea of how big Jupiter is. Then 1700 Saturns could fit in the sun. 20,600 Uranuses and 22,600 Neptunes approximately could fit in the sun. So it really does put everything into perspective where at the same time we are so small and our solar system is so small in comparison to the rest of the universe. However Things are so big in comparison to us as humans and our human scale.
Peter
31:40
I feel bad. Mars got left out
Aubrey
31:43
Mars did get left out. I forgot about Mars. Well, Mars is just kind of the same as us, so I feel like it's 1. 6 or something like that.
Peter
31:49
So what I'm reading is Mars is quite a bit smaller than us.
Aubrey
31:53
Oh.
Peter
31:54
And so based on that, I'm reading seven million Mars' could fit in the sun. And in the same time that this is quoting it saying by comparison, it could fit the 1. 3 million Earths.
Aubrey
32:05
Interesting. Is it by volume?
Peter
32:08
Yeah, that's going by volume.
Aubrey
32:09
Let's see how many mores can fit in the sun. Wow Wait, that doesn't make any sense.
Peter
32:19
Right.
Aubrey
32:20
Wait, that's crazy. So yeah, Mars is about half the size of Earth. I forgot about that.
32:26
Half the size of Earth. If Earth was a nickel, Mars would be as big as a raspberry. What?
32:33
That doesn't make any sense. If Earth were the size of a nickel, Mars would be as big as a raspberry. This is on s nasa.
32:37
gov. What is this? That doesn't make any sense.
Peter
32:40
So here's what I'm reading is that Mars is about fifty-three percent of the Earth's diameter, but because volume scales with a cube of diameter, it's only about fifteen percent of Earth's volume.
Aubrey
32:49
Oh, I see.
Peter
32:50
So it's a six point six three to one ratio volume-wise. um for Earth to Mars.
Aubrey
32:57
Yep, that makes sense. There you go.
Peter
32:59
So basically now that I look at that
Aubrey
33:02
Yeah.
Peter
33:03
All of these ideas that people have that Mars is so similar to Earth that we're gonna colonize Mars is bogus. Right? Right. We're not we're not colonizing Mars, right?
Aubrey
33:17
Yeah. There is some very cool um obviously everything's hypothetical and and theoretical. Um videos on the the Kurds Kazott channel um on YouTube where they've done some like colonizing Mars or colonizing Venus videos, but Mars is hard because like it's a very hostile environment for us. It's very cold and dead and kind of bad.
Peter
33:45
You know, it's just funny. We just recently for The Middle of Culture, we watched and compared uh the 1990 Arnold uh Schwarzenegger version of Total Recall to the 2012 version of Total Recall.
Aubrey
33:58
Oh yeah.
Peter
33:59
And in the 2012 version they don't they're not going to Mars. It's the the it's all on Earth. But it is funny because in the 1990 version, it's like they're just like boop bop booping around on Mars and like running around like normal gravity's all like normal like earth. Everything physics-wise is just working like Earth. And it's funny how how much that would not be the case.
Aubrey
34:25
Indeed. And The gravity yeah the gravity difference is crazy. The um the gravity on Venus, however, is like 90% of Earth's gravity, so it's not a huge difference, which is why Venus is usually called like the Earth's twin, but the Mars gravity is like 38 % as strong. So you would just be like jumping around crazy.
Peter
34:56
Yeah, you would.
Aubrey
34:57
Which is funny. So
Peter
35:00
very cool. Well Those were our list of questions. Did you have anything else that in particular you wanted to bring up?
Aubrey
35:08
Not in particular. I think there's just so many fun and funky either misconceptions about space or just general questions that people always have about how certain objects work and stuff like that. It's just space is so big and there's so much to learn. So I thought it'd be fun to do to do a little myths episode. So
Peter
35:30
No, I agree. I thought those were great. I I definitely learned some things myself. So
Aubrey
35:36
Yeah. I'm also I'm reading, I don't know if you what book you're reading right now, but I am reading Red Rising.
Peter
35:44
Okay.
Aubrey
35:45
Have you have you read or heard of? I think you have.
Peter
35:48
I have I started it a little bit ago and then I don't remember why I got distracted and started something else. I'm I am slogging my way through the Robert Fagel's translation of the Iliad right now.
Aubrey
36:01
Nah.
Peter
36:02
I am about a little over halfway through the 900 and something pages. So.
Aubrey
36:08
Wow. Well
Peter
36:09
that's that's what I'm working on.
Aubrey
36:11
That's fair. I'm on the second book now of Red Rising, which I think is it's like a he's writing the seventh book, but there's a first trilogy and then there's like a second trilogy, but then he's doing the yeah. Um but it's like in the future, you know, with space travel and colonized all the planets.
36:32
um which is very, very cool to read from my from my perspective. So I've been really enjoying the the space travel, the They colonized the moon, Mars, Ven all the things. They've colonized everything, even Pluto.
36:48
So
Peter
36:49
There you go.
Aubrey
36:50
It is very it is a very fun it's a very fun read. So
Peter
36:54
It's on my TBR pile. I just I I I got some other things to get there first. So
Aubrey
36:59
Yep. There you go. Very good.
Peter
37:01
Cool. Well, I don't have a specific health factor or anything to share right now, other than uh I'll sort of throw a hint that I I have recently become somewhat interested, but also a little doubtful. about heart rate variability's actual translation into our recovery and and all this kind of stuff.
37:30
Because it's become this hot thing where it's like everything right now is measuring your heart rate variability. And then it's telling you how ready you are for the day based on that. How was your heart rate variability?
37:41
or how stressed you are during the day based on what your heart rate variability is. And and and I'm I'm I am coming to the opinion that while I think that there is some stuff that it does mean, and I think that we can measure it, I think its applicability to our daily lives may be total balogna.
Aubrey
38:04
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Peter
38:05
So I'm doing a little research into that as something that I'm curious about because I I just I'm doubtful and I feel like it is It is something that we see a lot in um in in the the world of fitness and and health and and all this stuff.
Aubrey
38:31
Mm-hmm
Peter
38:32
Um because we like things that we can measure and this is something we can measure But then we have to convince people that it means something. So then we start telling people it means something that maybe we don't have the the the evidence to support that. But then everybody kind of gloms on to it. So now everybody's talking about heart rate variability and and I just I I I feel like this may be yet another one in the long list of things that go on the not Really basically that w what we what we're being told we're we're being sold isn't what we're getting.
Aubrey
39:15
Yeah.
Peter
39:16
So something that I'll hopefully have in the in the future once I've done more of a deep dive into what the evidence actually shows. So
Aubrey
39:24
Yeah, I with having the Athletic app and it telling me my recovery every day, I have been interested to see when it thinks I'm really recovered. versus when it's like, oh my gosh, do not work out today. Like you're going to die. And I'm like, uh, I feel fine.
Peter
39:47
Yep. I feel fine. That's the same way for me.
Aubrey
39:50
Or on the p on the flip side, it's like, oh my gosh, a hundred percent recovery. Do every single workout you could ever possibly imagine today. Get one million steps. And I'm like actually Yeah, I'm like, actually today is a rest day and I'm going to take it easy and maybe go for a walk and that's it.
Peter
40:07
Yeah.
Aubrey
40:08
Like, what do you mean? Yeah. I'm I'm interested in your thoughts when you have them.
Peter
40:14
Well, hopefully, like I say, I've kind of put together the stuff I need to look into. So hopefully in the next week or two, I uh I'll I'll have that all together.
Aubrey
40:25
Very good. Very good.
Peter
40:27
Okay. Well, we'll go ahead and wrap it up here now. Thanks again for that great information, Aubrey.
40:31
That was a lot of fun. I liked it. We'll be back in another couple of weeks.
40:36
And until then, go ahead, share, like, subscribe, leave a review, star rating, all that fun stuff. And we'll talk to you later.