SciShow Tangents - Natural Disasters

Episode Date: July 2, 2019

Natural disasters are a fact of life when you live on a giant ball of water, ice, and rock with a gooey magma center that’s hurtling through space… and all the pollution we’re pumping into the environment doesn’t really seem to be helping, either.Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions! If you want to learn more about any of our main topics, check out these links:[Truth or Fail]Cloud seedinghttps://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-935704-30-0_9https://science.sciencemag.org/content/195/4274/139Absorbent polymerhttps://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/C5d.htmlhttp://discovermagazine.com/2002/sep/featrainHail cannonhttps://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0477(1981)062%3C0368%3AHRTFHC%3E2.0.CO%3B2https://www.businessinsider.com/volkswagen-hail-cannons-mexico-farmers-draught-2018-8https://books.google.com/books?id=h-ADAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA548https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/hail-cannons-the-devices-that-supposedly-blast-away-bad-weatherSoothttps://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/C5b.html[Fact Off]Year Without a Summer:https://scied.ucar.edu/shortcontent/mount-tambora-and-year-without-summerhttp://mentalfloss.com/article/73585/15-facts-about-year-without-summerhttps://medium.com/@spencerbaum/the-year-without-summer-and-the-origins-of-frankenstein-13e6884c3eceTae Bo “earthquake:”https://www.geek.com/geek-cetera/korean-skyscraper-shakes-from-17-middle-aged-people-doing-tae-bo-1405157/http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2011/07/117_91209.htmlhttp://mentalfloss.com/article/31349/how-power-literally-rocked-house[Ask the Science Couch]Glass rain:https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/alien-worlds/galaxy-of-horrors/Cryovolcanoes: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/media/cassini-20081215b.htmLhttps://www.nature.com/news/2009/090325/full/news.2009.190.htmlIce quakes on Earth: http://climate.missouri.edu/news/arc/mar2014b.phphttp://time.com/5517690/frost-quakes-ice-polar-vortex-sounds/[Butt One More Thing]Hurricane Florence poop:https://www.govtech.com/em/disaster/Hurricane-Florence-Bathed-North-Carolina-in-Raw-Sewage-New-Figures-Show-it-was-Even-Worse-than-we-Thought.htmlhttps://www.livescience.com/63625-pig-manure-overflow-hurricane-florence.html

Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents, the lightly competitive knowledge showcase starring some of the geniuses that make the YouTube series SciShow happen. This week, as always, I'm joined by Stefan Chin. What's your tagline, buddy? Oh, yippee! This is the whole thing? I don't know. Good.

Sam Schultz is also here. Hi. What's your tagline? New shoe goofin'. New shoe goofin'. Sam Schultz got new shoes. The first time since maybe I've known him. I think that's true.

They're so, like, clean. I walked into the studio to shoot SciShow, and I was like, look at those! We're also joined by Sari Reilly. Hello. What's your tagline? Pickle burps. And I'm Hank Green, and I'm so excited to be here with my friends to talk about science. And my tagline is, feet are neat.

Every week here on SciShow Tangents, we get together to amaze, one-up, and delight each other with science facts. We're playing for glory, and we're playing for joy, but we're also playing for Hank Bucks, and we're playing to win. We do everything we can to stay on topic, but judging by previous conversations and the name of the podcast, we won't be great at that. So if any of the team deems your tangent unworthy, we will force you to give up one of your Hank Bucks. So tangent with care. Now, as always, we introduce this week's science topic with a traditional science poem this week from Sam. Our planet is a writhing mass of magma, water, rock, and gas.

And sometimes these things conspire to make weather that is dire. Waters rise and breach their shores, or from the sky a cyclone roars. Lightning can ignite a forest, hail can fall in massive torrents. It was a very beautiful poem, but it also sounded like you were shaming us for not not you the weather the governments it's on all of us together but also the government so this week if you couldn't tell our topic for the week is natural disasters but also how natural are they anymore certainly some are still very natural but what are they anymore? Certainly some are still very natural. But what are they? Oh, you're looking at me. So when I was researching this,

I thought it was interesting because there were two terms to refer to natural disasters. There were natural hazards and then natural disasters. Can I guess what a natural hazard is? Yes. Like a hole you can fall down?

Like an animal crossing a pitfall yes they're all the time yeah no it's it becomes a disaster when it starts impacting human society so like a hurricane over the ocean that doesn't ever hit a city is a natural hazard but it becomes a natural disaster when it starts messing with people okay but if there's like a boat in the hurricane does then it does it count as automatically a disaster i think i think the the terms are a little wibbly and like everyone uses natural disaster conversationally but i think the term natural hazard was introduced to imply that it's a weather phenomenon like these are earthquakes and landslides and tsunamis and things that happen naturally that could be hazardous to humans.

And then the disaster element is our buildings are crumbling. The disaster actually happens. So if my boat gets knocked over by a hurricane, that's not a disaster. That's just like a car accident. Or if the tornado picks up 15 sharks, that's not a disaster because it didn't affect humans. But then if it drops those sharks onto people, it's a disaster because it didn't affect humans but then if it drops those sharks on humans oh man disaster for sure so worse tornadoes and stuff than there have been in the history because of human stuff sure those are all natural disasters too yeah they're still natural disasters uh but

like then then you get into the place of like if we're influencing the climate is a hurricane a natural disaster anymore and it's like the, eh. The line gets blurry. Yeah. If we're dumping a man-made byproduct into the oceans, then that's like a man-made disaster environmental mess. Right. But climate change related stuff, all bad and all messy. So it's hard to know.

But the fact that the sea level is already a little higher does mean that every time there is a coastal flooding event, it's a little bit worse because of global warming. We started out really happy. We have to love each other. Because otherwise. That's what my poem's about. So now it's time for Truth or Fail. Where one of our panelists has prepared three science facts for our education and enjoyment, but only one of those facts is real.

This week, Sari is attempting to fool us, and the other panelists have to figure out, either by deduction or wild guess, which is the true fact. If we do, we get a Hank Buck. If we don't, you get the Hank Buck. Sari, fool away. Can I say something real quick before you start? Yes.

If you get all three points, you will be tied with Hank for second place. Holy shit. Whoa. Wow. Trick is with Hank for second place. Holy shit. Whoa. Wow. Trick is good. Trick is good. Now the pressure is on. So even though we might not think of it as like the biggest natural disaster, hail is a really big pain.

Hailstones can grow big enough to seriously damage cars, planes while they're flying, buildings, and most expensively, crops. So humans have been trying to suppress hail with science for hundreds of years. I didn't know that. And so nowadays, cloud seeding is a pretty common type of weather engineering, where a chemical like silver iodide is sprinkled in clouds to provide more condensation nuclei so that rain forms and storms dissipate. And in the case of hail, ideally, instead of forming big hail, it just rains. But we've tried some unusual methods, too. So which of these three is real? So we actually can influence hail already.

We could do that on purpose? We're not sure, but, like, there are claims. They do it anyway. They do it anyway. Okay, yeah. People cloud seed. I don't want to incite conspiracy theorists, but people do cloud seed to try to dissipate storms. And hail is a part of

that. Number one, dumping a super absorbent polymer into clouds that becomes a gooey gel by absorbing the water to try and make sure there isn't enough water to form hail. It's like just slime tutorials on YouTube. Number two, using a cannon to launch shockwaves into the atmosphere to try and prevent hailstones from growing so the waterfalls is rain instead. Or number three, controlled burning of a lot of heavy petroleum to produce a bunch of soot, which gets released into the atmosphere, absorbs radiation, and heats the air up enough so that the clouds can't become cold enough for hail formation. So, can I start out by saying're i don't want to feed the conspiracy theorists but is it possible that hail is fake hail is a government scam they want to keep us scared it's a bunch of people in morph suits throwing ice cubes at us and then the simulation

our brains are programmed yeah it's for big windshield. They gotta break our windshield so we all go buy new ones. That's right. The government is the big windshield.

We have a fair amount of hail in Montana. I didn't really expect that when I moved here. And it does seem like otherworldly when the big hailstone

started to come down and you're like, this doesn't feel real. That's not how this works. Yeah. I feel the same way about earthquakes where I'm like,

Earth, you have one job. Don't move. Every day of my life so far, you have done that. And then one day you're like,

jiggle, jiggle, jiggle. I'm like, no, that's not what you do. You just sit in a chair for a little while. You gotta like, wiggle your back a little bit. Otherwise, it's gonna get stiff. Yeah, I guess that the no, that's not what you do. You just sit in a chair for a little while. You kind of like wiggle your back a little bit. Otherwise, it's going to get stiff.

Yeah, I guess the earth is just getting stiff. Yeah. So the things we have to choose from. Caution. Number one, dumping super absorbent polymers into clouds so that a gel forms instead of hail. Number two, cannons launching shock waves to keep hail from forming. Or number three, controlled burning of heavy petroleum to produce a bunch of soot.

God, that all sounds like stuff we would do. So the goopy stuff, though, then it would just have, you'd have goopy rain instead of Yeah, that sounds kind of gross. But like, gross, but at least it's not like destroying my crop. So the goop dissolves. It's

similar stuff to the stuff in diapers and then like like that kind of super absorbent thing forms a polymer and then when it gets into salt water like the ions in it help it dissolve you seem to know a lot about this one why didn't you describe it as diaper clouds earlier that was additional information for the question and answer part okay and then uh and then cannons launching shock that's not gonna do anything but i trust that someone would be like give me 50 and i'll shoot a cannon at your storm what are you shooting you're shooting just like a sound just a sound wave sound yeah how much does it cost to have someone shoot a cannon at your farm? Oh, I don't know the price per sonic boom, but I think there's like several tens of thousand dollars to build one of these cannons.

Oh, wow. You're so sneaky today. You also know a lot about that one. And then, look, controlled heavy burning of petroleum. If you've got a chance to burn dirty petroleum, why wouldn't you? It's America. And that's just sort of like creating nuclei sort of similar as silver iodide. Is that the idea?

Create condensation nuclei? I think so. And I was trying to do reading on this because like if a volcano launches a lot of ash into the air, then the surface gets cooler. But it seems like the air itself gets warmer because the carbon particles absorb the UV radiation and trap heat in the upper atmosphere. And so I think that's the goal with the soot is both condensation nuclei and just warming up the clouds because they have to stay freezing while the water moves up and down to make hail. Sari, you're supposed to give us one real fact and two fake ones. Very real.

All right, I'm going to go with the diaper clouds. One real fact and two fake ones. Very real. Yeah. All right. I'm going to go with the diaper clouds. I'm going to go with controlled burning of heavy petroleum. Seems very us. I don't know. I'm also going to go with burning petroleum. Okay.

It was sound cannon. No. Wowee. petroleum okay it was sound cannon wow you had everybody on background you had all the stuff okay i guess first we have to start with these like huckster sound cannon people yeah they're wild so they started out around 1899 1900 with winemakers so their grape crops would get hailed on they had sound cannons yeah at that point sure you had cannons cannons make sound whether or not you got cannon balling that's true and the first ones were designed by a winemaker, and they were like these big funnels pointing upward, and their goal was to launch smoke rings up at the clouds. The idea being that they thought the smoke particles would stop hail from forming in the clouds. I don't know what the logic was scientifically, but they were just like, the smoke's going to blast the water out of the way. We didn't know how things worked.

Yeah. But we still don't really. Would that make more precipitation happen or would it just not do anything the smoke could potentially act as condensation nuclei to make it rain instead of hail it seemed like they just did this a bunch and then when it worked they were like we're geniuses and when it didn't they were like we must have launched the cannon wrong so they basically like to picture it, they look like megaphones pointing up.

They're very wild. And then modern hail cannons, and they've been used by Nissan and Volkswagen. Like above car dealerships or what? Above car manufacturing plants. Yeah, where there's like lots of cars all outside. Glass and fragile stuff.

Don't put your car manufacturing plant in a hail zone. Yeah. They rely on shockwaves instead. So they just detonate like explosions beneath these big megaphones. And they make like weird booming noises up towards clouds every couple of seconds. And there are these articles of people getting very annoyed by the global plants. Does it work? All the meteorologists that are interviewed for all these various articles are like,

there's no evidence that they actually do anything. But weather is also very complicated. So it seems like general scientific consensus is probably not. But I guess we might as well explode a bunch of stuff under our giant sky megaphone. And if it does anything we don't really know the science behind it because i think that why it works yeah the idea is that the shock wave would mess with the water as it's going through the motions to form hail and they don't think that that would happen i can believe that like in 1898 we were doing this. I can't believe they're doing this now at like a Nissan plant.

It's wild. That is wild. Like 2005 and I think 2017 was the most recent report of someone like using this regularly. So it sounds like the diaper clouds were real in some way. You seem to know a lot about them. The diaper polymer exists. Like polyacrylate is a real thing there was a company that created a product that was basically polyacrylate that wanted to add it to clouds for hurricane remediation instead so not

specifically as a hail strategy you goop up that hurricane it can't the wind can't blow so fast it's just like i'm all gooped up now you're just gonna have horizontal goop yeah just like goop up all the liquid before it becomes too stormy. A lot of hurricane remediation strategies are like keep the water from evaporating because you want to keep the storm from building up any bigger. Hurricane remediation things? Yeah. By the time we're dying, I bet we'll be able to not have hurricanes. We're just going to cover the ocean in black balls. There's a bunch. By the time we're dying, I bet we'll be able to not have hurricanes. Well, how, though?

We're just going to cover the ocean in black balls. There's a bunch. We're going to cover the ocean in black balls. People suggested covering the ocean with oil, too. Oh, good. And then set it on fire. Uh-huh. But it seems like some guy at this company was just like,

oh, I've learned that this polymer is weird and absorbs and makes this weird gel thing. So let's try dumping it in clouds. And I think they might have experimented with it a couple times. But it's so impractical because you need tens of thousands of tons of this to absorb one storm. And then all the polyacrylate would end up in the oceans, which is not the best place for it to be probably. Was there reality behind burning heavy petroleum? That was just a suggestion from humans in the 1970s. Also for hurricanes to modify tropical cyclones.

They were like, I don't know, I guess we could burn things. And they were really into carbon aerosols. But that has never been tried out in real life. All right. Next up, we're going to take a short break and then the fact off. Welcome back. Hank Buck Total's series is in with three.

I've got none. Sam's got one. And Stefan's got none. Zippo. This is my time. Well, it's my time to try and get a point. Because I and my friend Stefan are doing the fact-off. Where two panelists bring science facts to present to the others in an attempt to blow their minds. The presentees each have a hank buck to award to the fact that blows their mind the most.

And the person who's going to go first is the person who has been in the most noticeable earthquakes. Yeah, I lived much of my life in California. And in the 90s, there was... I actually don't know exactly when it was. And I was very young. And in the 90s, there was, I actually don't know exactly when it was, and I was very young, but there was an earthquake that knocked the TV off of the stand or whatever. That was the worst one that I've ever been in. But you've been in lots more than that? Yeah, but the rest of them were very mild. But more than three?

Sure. Okay. Yeah. Because I've got three in my belt. So in 1815 in Indonesia, Mount Tambora erupted, and this was rated as a VEI 7. And so the volcanic eruptions are measured on a 0 to 8 scale, with 0 being like, eh, and 8 being a super volcano. So this was a 7. It's pretty big. And other eruptions have happened throughout history that have disrupted the climate significantly. But this was the most recent VEI7 eruption.

And there were a couple of things that sort of combined to make it extra bad timing. In the few years leading up to that eruption, there were a few other smaller eruptions that had added their dust and ash to the atmosphere. And so it had accumulated a bit. And this was also during a period of unusually low solar activity. So like there was already a little bit less sunlight hitting the earth. And then this thing happened and like through, it was like 127 cubic kilometers of crap into the atmosphere. And so all of this sort of combined to lower the global average temperature somewhere between half a degree and one degree celsius uh which is pretty significant uh doesn't sound like

a lot but what did that do about 10 000 people just died immediately from like being too close to this thing um but the following year 1816 was known as the year without a summer. And I guess some people called it 1800 and froze to death. It was just super cold. Well, in the Northern Hemisphere, they were getting below freezing temperatures and snow in May through July, which is when they're trying to grow food. Yeah. So it wiped out a lot of crops.

There was a bunch of food shortages and famines. And they didn't have infrastructure to transport things around like we do now. So anywhere that the crops died had famines and things. And it just caused a lot of erratic weather patterns. So there was a lot of flooding, like massive flooding in China, but all over the northern hemisphere. And it also contributed to several epidemics of typhus and cholera. And apparently typhus tends to follow natural disasters. They had estimated that about 100,000 Irish people, just Irish people died from typhus in the few years following that.

And there weren't death toll estimates for a lot of these regions. I don't know if they just didn't keep super good records back then. So they estimated about like 90,000 in the area around the eruption. They looked at how many people they estimated before and then how many people they estimated afterwards and like, well, there's about 100,000 people missing. So I guess they probably perished from this thing.

So it's far from the deadliest disaster in history, but it's just kind of an example of how much you can affect things by changing the climate by one degree Celsius, which is maybe relevant

for our current times. Why would typhus be more prevalent after something like that? I think typhus is like if there's dead people and dead things around.

When things are going badly, generally, people have worse hygiene. There's more dirty, dead things around. And then typhus spreads more easily. My other fun fact about this summer, Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein during it, I think. I heard that as well. Because they were like, it's so cold and wet, let's just all go to a cabin and write. as well. Because they were like, it's so cold and wet, let's just all go to a cabin and write. She went and her husband went and a bunch of other people were like, let's write short stories.

Did they know at the time that it had anything to do with this earthquake or this volcano? I don't think so. So in 1883 was the Krakatoa eruption. But by that time we had telegraphs. Right. And so like word spread very quickly of that one. But for this one, I think it was, like, research done by, like, climatologists, like, much later that were, like, piecing this together and being like, oh, like, that's why there was all this weird stuff happening. Also, there was this, like, giant Category 7 volcano. Yeah. Interesting. It's, like, weird, too, because, like, these are, like, mountains. volcano.

Yeah. It's like weird too because like these are like mountains and then like I think Mount Tambora was one of the tallest mountains in the region and now it's just not because

it like collapsed. Right. And like shot a bunch of material. The entire thing went into the atmosphere. So weird. We live on a danger.

Uh-huh. A danger ball. A danger ball. It just does a bad burp every now and then. Yeah. Everyone has a little indigestion. Yeah. Yeah. You never know when they just like the mountain's just gonna come kill you all right i'm gonna go now okay in 2011 just a few months after the massive earthquake in japan

that we all remember that had the tsunami and lots and lots of people died um the top 20 stories of a 39-story office and shopping tower in South Korea began to sway violently. The shaking continued, peaking after, I'm going to guess, around 3 minutes and 43 seconds. That's just a guess. And then the tower continued to shake, and it shook for a total of around 10 minutes. After the shaking stopped, the tower was evacuated, and everyone was shocked to find that no other buildings in the area had been shaking, and no one had experienced an earthquake.

Everybody else was just going about their daily business. Was there something wrong with the building? Had there been a bomb set off in the foundation? Was there some strange subsurface hyper hyper local geology thing happening no my friends the tower remained evacuated for two days as scientists investigated and discovered a probable cause a class of 17 people on the 12th floor was doing a taibo workout to i've got the power and their workout happened to exactly match the resonant frequency of the building. Their movements multiplied and caused the entire building to sway, not dangerously, but upsettingly.

I've got the power is now, I assume, banned in the building. Here's the best sentence I read about the whole debacle. The tentative conclusion was the consensus among the six professors from an architectural institute and vibration measurement experts who participated in a recreation of the event. Ooh, yes! So they had their workout instructor

come back and teach the class again and together the 17 of them shook the tower. So they actually went and shook the tower again. They did it again. Oh, my God. To, like, make sure that that was the cause, because they were, like, freaked out. They were like, what is doing this?

We have to make sure. So does every building have the one workout routine that you could do inside of it that would destroy it? I mean. We have got to find our building. Yeah. You just need. Yeah, I think this building would be okay. It's pretty small.

Yeah. A tall building. Yeah. And I think there's probably like a place in the building where it's best to do it, which is interesting. Like, were they like at the right? Like, were they in the middle? Because they were in the 12th story of a 40-story building. If they were at the top, would it be more? Or do you need like a different song for different floors?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. How long did it take the scientists to figure this out? A couple of days where they like interviewed people and like the tower was empty for a couple of days and it was like a big building full of like shopping, a lot of shopping. It still seems like very fast to come to this particular conclusion.

Right, they just like interviewed a bunch of people and they were like, what's going on? What were you doing at the time? And everybody was like, well, I was just shopping. And then these people were like, what's going on? What were you doing at the time? And everybody was like, well, I was just shopping. And then these people were like, it all started. Right after snaps, I've got the power began. And then when we finished that workout routine, the earthquake stopped.

Apparently those people didn't even notice. That's what I was going to ask. Could they tell? Yeah, they didn't. Oh,'s what I was gonna ask could they tell yeah they didn't so they were oh man that's like a superpower almost

I know that's my fact everybody that's a fun that's a different direction to go in no one died everyone was fine just one song

got banned so the facts are Stefan's year without a summer and my Technomart Tybo earthquake Technomart is the name of the building I liked both of them Stefan's year without a summer and my Technomart type of earthquake. Technomart is the name of the building.

I liked both of them. Stefan's felt more like the gravitas of natural disasters. That's for sure. And relevant to modern climate. So I'm going to give my point there. How convenient. But I did enjoy the dancing. I'm too scared. I'm too scared.

I'm too scared. Because if I give it to Stefan, I'll get Hank's wrath. And if I give it to Hank, then... There's no wrath. It's fine. There's a little bit of wrath. Just give it to the best dancing fact. Because I really thought that was a delightful story.

But it wasn't about an actual disaster, really. You just kind of sneakily made it about one. I just wanted to talk about dancing. Couldn't wait for the dancing week. I'm going to give it to Hank. Oh, no. I'm sorry. He said it's done.

Were you going to say trash can? Yes, but I didn't. That's not right, because I liked both the stories. You can't throw it in the trash can if you like both the stories. I did. Well, you were mad, too. I'm not mad. I'm just scared.

It's time for Ask the Science Couch, where we ask our listener questions to the finely honed couch of scientific minds. We honed our couch, everyone. Sam, read us the question before I dig myself deeper. At Mr. Nitrum asks, Are there any odd natural disasters that occur on other planets which we couldn't experience here on Earth, like weird storms on Jupiter or ice quakes on Europa? Oh, definitely. Well, but there's like glass rain on some planets. That would be bad.

There is. Sounds like a natural hazard. Because we defined this earlier as affecting humans. And we ain't anywhere else. Yeah, but if we were there, then you definitely. If we had cities on Mars, then the global dust storms would definitely be a natural disaster. Because it'd be like, oh, this is so annoying. There's dust everywhere.

We can't go outside. The solar panels aren't doing anything useful. Yeah. Can't communicate with Earth very effectively. That would, there would be economic costs

to the extent that I think that you would call it a disaster. Mars doesn't have much else going on, just those. Is it tectonically active? Mm-mm. Oh. My impression maybe

from sci-fi is that every other planet that isn't Earth is just constantly He's a disaster all the time. Yeah. With like. Yeah, yeah. I mean, Venus is just, yeah, it's like boiling hot, like raining lead and sulfuric acid. So, bad. Yeah.

And so that's why this is like an interesting question because it's phrased as like odd natural disasters but for a human any planet any other exoplanet would be in a natural disaster state so like yeah you said exoplanet there i'm sure there are some exoplanets that are constantly perfect weather one or two at least just just a few there is actually is actually a planet where it rains glass. HD 189733b. NASA has a very delightful gallery of exoplanets called NASA's Galaxy of Horrors. I think it was a Halloween film.

The true danger orb. So you thought Earth was a danger orb. But yeah, there's 5,400 mile per hour winds or 2 kilometers per second which is 7 times the speed of sound and there's a bunch of silica

you'd just be bones right yeah you'd be bones but then later you would be not bones all your flesh would be really

quickly ripped off of it and then disintegrated by this glass so other than that Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune are all pretty windy like

there's also no ground yeah so it's all wind all gas but but like the great red spot on jupiter is a giant storm that's going on and people liken it to a hurricane but it's not like water vapor necessarily it's i don't know it's not like water vapor necessarily. It's, I don't know, other hydrogen compounds like ammonia and things going on in there. And Saturn and Neptune have similar, like very high speed winds, very big storms that appear on the surface as very distinctly a storm.

Like there's a patch of color and gas patterns that are like, that's weird and intense and maybe lightning-y. Icequakes exist on Earth. the guy mentioned in the question like ice quakes on europa ice quakes happen on earth where like liquid water freezes really suddenly underground and then oh it rumbles the earth oh i crashed the coolest i don't know natural disaster likelike thing that I found were ice volcanoes or cryovolcanoes. Oh, sure. Yeah. So like ice ball moons that have tidal interactions with their host planet, like that tidal interaction keeps some like energy in the system and that keeps some water melted.

And then so you have like this liquid core of water and then you have this frozen outer shell. And then because it's getting stretched all the time by the tidal interaction, you get weaknesses and you get faults and you get tectonic activity and get volcanoes. And the first time we flew by one of these, we saw like a misty halo and we were like, what the frick is that?

And discovered that for the first time there was volcanic activity somewhere else and that it was spewing out liquid water, which is like, well, once it hits space, it's not liquid water.

But that there is liquid water, you know, below the surface on those ice moons, which, let's go. Let's go and see what kind of soupy,

weird diaper goop is down there. Yeah. And if you want to ask the Science Couch, follow us on Twitter at SciShow Tangents, where we will tweet out topics for upcoming episodes every week. Thank you to at MyLime21, at Nathan Gillum, and everybody else who tweeted us your questions this week. Final Hank Buck scores. Stefan, Sam, me Are all tied with one point Sari's our winner with three

Nice I feel like once you pull ahead We're no None of us are ever catching up again I've firmly plateaued And you Sam Sam has ceased pointing

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Thank you for joining us. I have been Hank Green. I've been Sari Reilly. I've been Stefan Shin. And I've been Sam Schultz. SciShow Tangents is a co-production of Complexly and the Amazing Team at WNYC Studios. It's created by all of us and produced by Caitlin Hoffmeister and Sam Schultz, who also edits a lot of these episodes along with Hiroko Matsushima. Our sound

design is by Joseph Tuna-Medish. Our social media organizer is Victoria Bongiorno, and we couldn't make any of this without our patrons on Patreon. Thank you, and remember, the mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be lighted. but one more thing in 2018 hurricane florence hit north carolina and it became a quite literal shit storm when 121 million gallons of untreated and partially treated sewage washed out and like was swept up in this storm as well as 2.7 million gallons of waste from hog lagoons which is like where they dump all like the pig goop the quote

in the part that you sent said, polluted floodwaters swamped coal ash ponds at power plants. Oh God. Rising waters engulfed private septic systems in backyards. The unwholesome mix inundated hog waste lagoons on farms. Wow. So you took all the bad stuff and put it together. Yeah. And it's unwholesome even before it got to the hog.

Yeah. The unwholesome mix then reached the hot lagoon.