SciShow Tangents - Spaaaace Compilation

Episode Date: September 19, 2025

To infinity, butt facts, and beyond! It's not a shock that we here at Tangents love space. This wide-ranging set of episodes takes us all over our seasons - and all throughout our universe - as we learn about the wonders of space both near and very, very, very far.Episodes in this compilation:S1 E3 - Satellites, original airdate: November 27, 2018S1 E36 - The Apollo Program, original airdate: July 16, 2019S2 E19 - Experiments in Space, original airdate: March 17, 2020S3 E7 - Exoplanets, original airdate: March 9, 2021S4 E9 - Asteroids, original airdate: May 3, 2022S4 E19 - Spaceships, original airdate: August 2, 2022Sources for each episode can be found in the descriptions of the original episodes of your preferred podcasting platform.SciShow Tangents is on YouTube! Go to www.youtube.com/scishowtangents to check out this episode with the added bonus of seeing our faces! And go to https://complexly.store/collections/scishow-tangents to buy some great Tangents merch!While you're at it, check out the Tangents crew on socials:Ceri: @ceriley.bsky.social@rhinoceri on InstagramSam: @im-sam-schultz.bsky.social@im_sam_schultz on InstagramHank: @hankgreen on X Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello, and welcome to SciShow Tangents, the lightly competitive knowledge showcase starring some of the geniuses that make the YouTube series Sci Show happen. Hello, everyone. Today we're joined by Stefan Chin. What's your tagline? Oh, rip them up, Scotty. And also Sam Schultz. Hello. What's your tagline?

Already listening to Halloween music. Oh. By the time this comes out, that won't be weird. But at the time we're recording it, it's a little troubling. We're also joined by Sari Riley over here on the science couch. Hello. Tagline lady. Soup boy.

Soup boy. Soup boy. Get over here. And I'm Hank Green. Pan-fried lattes. So to explain what we're doing here at SciShow Tangents, every week, we get together and we try to one-up each other. We try to amaze each other. We try to delight each other with science facts.

We're playing for glory, but we are also keeping score, and we will be awarding Hank Bucks to people who do well on our challenges we do everything we can to stay on topic but judging by the previous conversations we have had before it will we will not be good at that so if you want to go on a tangent this rule is a matter of debate amongst the panelists well we're still feeling it out still feeling it out you have to spend a hank buck to go on your tangent i would gladly lose every round every game just do it just for my tangents i think it's okay i think it's okay to not win I don't, you don't seem like the kind of person who is always trying to win at the games. Little games is fine.

Board games love to win them. Video games can't get enough of winning them. Like life and stuff. That's right. That's right. Life is not a game. Yeah. It's not a game to win or lose.

Yeah, it's a healthy of me. Yeah. Very, thank you for that. Thanks. Thank you. For that dose of wisdom, Sam Schultz. We're going to start out, as we always do, with a. science poem. And this week, I, Hank Green, am your science poet. So have you, any of you ever

played the game of Curbel Space Program? I've never played. I've watched people play it. It's a game where you run a space program and you try and get your little kerbils into space. And so this is a poem about my general experience playing kerbal space program. The engines on her rocket were lit. I instructed her booster to floor it. But then my mom called. and I didn't press pause. She ran out of fuel in her orbit. Orbital mechanics give me the panics whenever I play KSP.

My rescue sped faster, but then flew right past her. A satellite, she always will be. Oh. That's beautiful. That game's not that old that you were living with your mom while you play.

No, my mom called on the phone. Oh. Sorry to imply that you were living with your mom. And, you know, Yes, I have left many a curbin as artificial satellites around the planet Curbel because it's very hard to get them back down once you do that. And so if you look at my game, there's just a lot of them floating around up there. And they all seem fine.

Like they're still alive? Are they dead? They don't die. You can kill Kerbils, but not by starvation. They have to blow up or something? Yeah, I have to blow them off. Can you get them back? You can get them back if you're exceptionally skilled player at the game and have the time to do it.

Okay. But before we continue to talk about Curbel Space Program for the rest of the episode, Sari, can you define what a satellite is for the listeners at home and also maybe me? I had to look this up, too, because I'm not a super intense space person. It's, to my knowledge, an object that orbits around another bigger object. So it can be natural, like a moon, or it can be artificial, like a metal chunk that we put up there to do something. Does I mean like a spaceship? A metal chunk with purpose?

Yeah, a purpose little chunk. Yeah. It's got more than metal. It's a chunk of metal and silicon. Other elements in there. Yeah. Space age rubber. Yeah.

It's got space age rubber. Gaskets. Yeah. Got some nice stickers maybe. Is the sun a satellite? Yes. Yes. I guess satellites are defined relative to the system that they're in.

Yeah. Maybe. But I guess like, Because the sun is part of the galaxy. Yeah, just like the Earth is part of the solar system. Yeah, that's true. It orbits the center of the galaxy. There's the black hole there too.

Yeah. So, like, the more massive object that the sun orbits is all of the other mass inside of the solar system. But is that considered enough of an object for the sun to be considered a satellite? I don't know. Is the sun a satellite, you guys? I'll tell you what. The Internet doesn't seem to have any strong thoughts on whether the sun is a satellite. I'm going to call it it is.

Okay. That is my opinion is that the sun is a satellite. The science couch declares, I'll get on board with that just for the heck of it. Science couch declares the sun is a satellite, a natural satellite. You're already here first, folks. You're already here first. And if we're wrong, you let us know, and we'll issue a correction. This is why space episodes make me nervous, because I can just say whatever.

I don't know if it's right anymore. Well, that's the thing. But at least you're not supposed to know. Yeah. Which is why it's so great to just be a general science dilettante like me. If we hit a biochemistry episode, I'm going to feel super pressure to not get things wrong. But generally, I just read like pop-sized stuff. So I'm not supposed to really know.

The real answer would drive you mad. That's good. Yeah. But we should say that more often. That's my excuse. Can't look too deep into the abyss. Our first segment of the episode is... One of our panelists has prepared three science facts for our education and enjoyment,

but only one of them is true. The other three panelists have to figure out either by deduction or wild guesses which is the true fact. If we get it right, we get a hank buck. If we are tricked, the presenter gets a hank buck. Everyone, Sam, this week has brought three science facts for us to noodle over, and I'm very excited to find out what they are. Sam. Oh, all right.

You guys ever heard of MIR? MIR? MIR. The space station. Yeah, space station launched in 1986. Its name means, it can be translated to mean peace or village or something else. There were three. That's two of them.

So the Soviet Union launched this space station. And it was up there for like almost 20 years. Then it crashed in the Pacific Ocean. But on its... But on purpose, to be clear. It wasn't like people in it at the time. No, no, they all got out of there. They have plenty of warning that it was going to crash into the ancient.

But in its decade of service, some weird stuff happened on it. Here's three potential weird things. Oh, I know. Okay. All right, number one. Mere was riddled with giant free-floating hair balls that jammed vital systems. Oh. Two.

What? Wait. Okay. Gross. You keep going. Mier launched and tested a giant mirror that redirected the sun's light to combat the long, dark Russian winters. Okay.

Or three, Meir smelled like caramel popcorn and nobody could figure out why. I mean, considering what I imagined space to smell like, that sounds great. Like, my thought has always been like, well, you're, it's basically like being in a car with the doors closed and the windows up all the time. For like a year. And everybody's like, probably stress sweating constantly.

Yeah. And like no easy way to take a shower. Yeah. And also, I'm not. entirely clear on how pooping works. So what are our facts again, Sam? Okay. Free floating giant hairballs, infested mirror, the giant space satellite mirror,

and the caramel popcorn, it smelled like caramel popcorn. Well, I feel like if there were giant floating hair balls, people would know. People would be, and it would be pretty easy to clean up. I'm also dubious about hairballs because I feel like that's a solvable problem. Also, they're soft. So, like, you won't want other things flying around, so maybe if someone, like, lost a hair clump, you could collect it. It wouldn't be an immediate crisis. Right.

The popcorn smell sounds interesting. That sounds real. That one sounds the most real. It sounds most real. Because, like, people talk about the metallic smell of space all the time. So it would make sense that we did something wrong and it smelled sweet instead. Of space or spaceship? Or spaceships.

Spaceships. I can sort of imagine, like, that smell coming off of, like, something. Something going a little bit weird with the electronics and like a little bit of a burned smell. What was the purpose of the mirror? It was to warm up Russia. This is a thing that I did hear about. Like, Russia definitely did this. I don't know if it was launched from mirror.

And I don't know if it actually happened. Maybe I'm getting confused and it was just planned. But they launched a giant mirror into space to like shine light, like extra light on areas of Russia to like make it brighter. so they could see better at night or so they would be a little warmer. Because you don't want to stop working. It's Russia. Screw the rest of the world. We put something in space. So let's just use the mirror for just us. Well, it's a tiny little dot. They can't use it to shine all. Yeah. You could do more.

They could do a bunch of them. Well, you could do a bunch of them. And in fact, there have been proposals to send mirrors up to reflect light away from Earth. Oh. To fix a jam. To fix a jam. We've gotten ourselves in too. So not to, like not now, not like as things currently are, but if stuff starts to get really bad and sort of like a runaway thing that's leading us toward like Venus, that you could put a bunch of stuff at like L1, the point between the gravitationally stable place between Earth and the sun, but a bunch of like mirrors that would shine light away. Do you even need mirrors? Well, it turns out that mirror is a like mirror material is the easier thing to do than like a black material because the black material would get really. hot so you want to reflect it away makes sense what a sad state of affairs that would be hey it's better than better than boiling oceans yeah because as soon as the oceans start to boil

that is really then it then it's like all it's basically over because then all the water vapor is like a really strong greenhouse gas and that's in the air and that's trapping the heat too so you really it would have to get way way hotter you want to happen all right yes yes the ocean is Nowhere near boiling anywhere. Right. It's a very high temperature. Would we be around still when the ocean's boiling? I bet there'd still be some people.

Okay. Not the number we have now. Yeah, probably not. So the Space Mirror, I know that this is a thing. I think that they did it. They did like a small-scale test version of it. But I don't think that it launched from Mir. I don't think they did it.

And I also don't think that it went up on Mirr because I don't think they did it. Okay. Oh, insubordination. Insubordinate. Well, we're going to find out. We'll find out, yeah. Because that is definitely a partial true fact. I'm going to go with space popcorn, you guys.

I also love space popcorn. We're all in on space popcorn. Do we get it wrong? It was the space mirror. It was the dummy. Oh, my God, Sam's rolling in the Hank books. All right, so. Yikes.

Oh, man, I should have gone for. Yeah. Space mirror was weird. And it was going to get weirder. No, so Vladimir, Cero, Miatnikoff was a Russian scientist who invented a lot of the early ways for space capsules to like hook onto each other. So like some kind of ceiling thing that two space capsules would meet and connect to each other. But what he really wanted to do was make solar sails so that

they can explore space. But the Soviet government convinced him that he should concentrate on something more practical. So he changed his research to be about the space mirror and redirecting light to Russia so that people could work longer and there'd be free light and heat so he worked on that for a long time he started before the soviet union fell and it's the project survived the fall of the soviet union eventually he developed znamia which was a 65 foot satellite mounted mirror and uh they shot it up into space and it sat on the mirror for a little while the mirror the mirror The mirror sat on the mirror, and eventually they sent it out, and it opened up, and it bounced a 5-kilometer-wide beam of light about the intensity of the full moon back at the earth. The clouds kind of messed it up, so it wasn't that impressive.

But it technically worked. The Russian government got really excited, and they had this big plan to do more mirrors so that they could light a bunch of stuff at once. So they sent another one into space. They launched that one off the mirror, but it got stuck on the mirror, and it got all smashed up. So then after that, they were like, eh, we don't really care anymore. So the plan just kind of, like, stopped in its tracks. But people were starting to get worried

because it would be, like, people's rhythms are going to get screwed up. There's going to be, like, these big space mirrors everywhere. Yeah, do we need to throw more energy at the Earth right now? Yeah. It'd be nice to have them up there just in case you want to flip them around, though. Be like, hey, sorry, less sun. We want less sun.

Yeah, well, if you live in Siberia, maybe you want more sun. Right. But so that was the space mirror. But for Phoenix, Arizona, maybe just love a little disc up there, give them a little shade around noon. Yeah, just make one. How big is five kilometers? I don't know.

Large? That's a question for a bit. Yeah, that's pretty big. That's not the size of the mirror, though. That's the size of the shadow it made, yeah. So they could just go hang out in the big circle of shade for the day. That'd be great. When the eclipse happened, we were here, I was here in Missoula, and it was only like 70, 80%,

but the temperature dropped like 10 degrees in that period of time. And I was like, this is cool and weird. So anyway, the other two are based on stuff. also. So the giant hairballs, there actually were floating globs of water that were filled with dozens of different like funguses and bacteria, protozoas, dust mites, and everybody was really worried that something would happen and they would get like sucked into the air and give everybody horrible diseases. Then they were worried that when they crash landed, they would have mutated somehow. Well, people were worried about it, but they all just burned up. It was fine. And then the

other thing is it smells like caramel popcorn actually just smelled like shit basically there was this weird fungus

that infected the like a metal eating fungus got into the ship and it was melting the metal and making it

that's a plot of a Star Trek episode literally a plot of a Star Trek episode well they stole it from Mir did it make everything stink in the episode no

oh okay no but it was causing a lot of problems on the USS Enterprise I'll tell you that by the end of the mirror the mirror smelled real bad so i get three bucks all right well you keep you keep loading them up sam uh in the meantime

we have to earn some a real box for all of us so we're going to hear from a couple of our sponsors have one point. Sam, you have all the rest of the points. That's what I like to hear. That's three points and nothing for Stefan or Sari. So let's see how this goes in the end. I think you're probably going to win. I think it's impossible for me not to. It is now time for the Sashot Tangents fact off. So two of our panelists have brought science facts to present to the other panelists an attempt to blow their minds. The presentees each have a Hank Buck to award to the fact that they like the most and we can choose not to award the Hank buck if we just want to throw it in the trash and to decide who goes first we're going to go with who likes Dave Matthews band

the least the least who likes Dave Matthews band I've never listened to Dave Matthews band do you have an opinion of Dave Matthews band um pretty neutral pretty neutral yeah okay sorry I don't know who they are you don't know I didn't know that was a thing before those words were just said one guy? No, Dave Matthews and his band. I don't even like them and I know everything about them compared to you. He's a man. His name is Dave Matthews band.

Anyway, I think by default, Stefan, probably he dislikes them more because he's actually aware of who they are and made the choice not to listen to them. Oh, that's right. I guess. Whereas Sarah has never consciously made a choice to not get into Dave Matthews band. She could have just learned about her favorite new band. Yeah, check it up. Go home.

Listen to satellite. Don't drink the wall. and such. How much do you like to him at these fans? I don't listen to music regularly at all. Do you like something? If there's some kind of music that is good for Sari? Is it just like you're into classical or like musical or something?

I don't listen to. Do you just sit in silence? Yeah, you've ridden in a car with me before. It's just silence. I just like live with my own thoughts in this hellscape. Jesus. That's horrible. You should listen to music.

I feel like... There's science that says that people who listen to happy music for two weeks every day become happier people. I read an article about it today, and the happiest song that they found of all the people rating which songs were happiest was Don't Stop Me Now by Queen. Oh. Oh, that's a great song. Sure. You know that song? Yes.

I know maybe. Hey, I have a whole... Yeah. I have a whole... I have a whole playlist of Halloween music I can see. If you want to dip your foot in with novelty music. Yeah, start. From the 60s.

All right, okay. Stefan. Okay, so earwigs have wings, which is not a thing that I knew before looking this up, but they do. And they look kind of like those Japanese fans that you like flick your wrist and they fold out. So they have all these little folds in them. And their wings don't require any muscle activation to open or close. they like release a special joint and they pop open and then it must like a similar action and they completely fold up and they're stable in both positions but they sort of unfold and fold

automatically and they're also they are the smallest when compact compared to when they're open they have that the best ratio out of all winged things in the animal kingdom but basically researchers have figured out how their folding mechanism works and they think that that can be used for a variety of things like better maps and tents and like all kinds of shit, but also potentially for like solar sales or different appendages

on satellites. I've read something similar about ladybug wings, which I was watched like a slow-mo video of how ladybug wings work and how they fold up inside of their casings, which you don't think about, but yeah. They described them like as origami in this sort of way, but it's, they

don't obey the laws that origami does. Like part of how works is that you have to have elasticity in the folds to basically like store energy in a way and act as a spring. And so like the, they 3D printed a bunch of like models of this where it's like these hard plastic sheets that are connected with softer elastic bits. And by varying the thickness of those bits, like you can get it to like form the shape that you want. Boy, what a beautiful thing too. If you go and Google some, some earwig wings on, uh, on, on Google.

Really pretty ones. Wait, so have they made satellites with this technology yet? No, so this was actually fairly recent. This was a few months ago. Okay. Sort of figured this out.

So it's cool. Prototyping. It sort of reminds me of a slap bracelet in a way in the way that you like push the end and then it slaps into the other position. Oh yeah. Mm-hmm.

It's very weird. And then you get it out and then it stays. It's stable in both positions. Yeah, exactly. So it takes muscles to put them back in position, though. I'd imagine, right?

It must. The phrase was like release a special joint. Uh-huh. So it seems like there's a thing that like lock a locking mechanism and when they release that it like

automatically snaps to the other. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I think we have heard and thought enough and it is time for Sari to lay down her fact for the fact off

three, two, one. Begin. Okay. So before we had satellites that could communicate by sending radio, waves to send signals back to the antennas on the earth to get pictures beamed back to us. TV? Is that TV? TV and also just like images of the earth. Oh, sorry. We had film cameras

and early spy rockets, which I didn't learn until today, had to take film. So they took up like up to 60 miles of film, recorded it for 124 days, and then launched it back towards the earth. Oh, my God. And then a plane had to swoop by and try and grab this film to take it back to get developed so that researchers had to scrutinize it. Why didn't they just land on the ground? Because then people would have to pick it up. And one time they did, one time it fell into the ocean and the U.S. had to launch a submarine and go find it on a secret reconnaissance mission. One time it landed in Venezuela. Oops.

And it was bad, the end. So why? Why? Explain to me why they couldn't just let them? them fall on the ground. Because is there a parachute? Are they on a parachute already? They're in what was called a bucket. It's like this

capsule. What was called a bucket? Was it a bucket? It's a five-gallon bucket. It's what people call a bucket. It was from its hardware. It had a lid and a handle. No, it's plastic. It was like one of the Sandcastle buckets. Just a

pale? Yeah. Okay. So it was in what was called a bucket. With the parachute. The plane had to go and catch the Parachute. Yes. And I'm guessing it's just because, like, we can generally target where things land. And I think they intended a lot of these to land in the Pacific Ocean, like, by Hawaii or in that empty region. But they weren't sure they didn't want civilians to know about it.

All this was classified until the mid-90s or, like, I think 2011 was when they did another wave of declassification. So no one had to know that these existed. And so you just had to, like, send a plane with basically a bug catch. Touch the ground. Yeah, don't let anyone have a possibility of even seeing it and you're going to collect this mysterious capsule. I just, I feel like that somebody convinced somebody to spend a bunch of money when they didn't need to. It definitely, like, it made sense to me when I first heard it, but now I'm like, yeah, like, if they, if they know where it's landing well enough to, like, to, like, fly a plane right past it, then you, you know where you can send a boat. Yeah.

To just hang out. Like you could make it land, like, outside of Area 51. Yeah. And, like, a field that you, like, or just, there's a bunch of places that the government owns that have fences around it. A lot of America. They could have dropped it on the White House. And the president just could have gone up and take a look.

Probably not the White House. Just like this huge capsule coming down. It's like a five-gallon bucket from Ace Harder with a big parachute on it. They're like, top secret, like, branded on the side. Interesting. I'm interested in the cameras that they had on. the satellites where they just like how good a pictures were they taken do you know i think they got it down to like one meter to half a meter resolution okay so not as good as the current satellites

yeah but not bad yeah um i think they had some sort they had usually had two cameras on the satellites and they got bigger and bigger so they started out the corona program was the starting one but then hexagon was the biggest so the hexagon had two panoramic mirror cameras that rotated and they swept back and forth so I imagined like kind of a robot like sweeping and apparently intelligence officials referred to it as mowing the lawn which seems like a very weird corporate thing to say so like the CIA agents were bustling around well just mowing the lawn across China today I love the ingenuity of things like we went to space too early and then we had to figure out a bunch of weird ways to do things and we end up with globs of like water behind everything yeah fungacy globs of water

and dropping giant canisters of miles and miles of film and catching it with an airplane. You have to develop all of it. It's so stupid. You have to take it to Walgreens. So, no, wait. Here's 60 miles of film, please.

How long is to stay? It says one hour. Yeah. Hurry up. All right. Well, so that's good. I think I've got to give it to Stefan. I feel like Sarah's

is really good, but Stephens is like the future of mankind. I'm a big enough fan of early spaceflight that I'm a sucker for early space facts. So I'm going to go with Sarah. And now it is time for Ask the Science Couch, where we ask listener questions to our couch of finely honed scientific minds, of which I am apparently one. So we have a question, and it's read by me, according to our show notes. So I'm going to ask it. It's for Marie, who asks, who decides where each human-made satellite goes? Well, somebody.

It's a good question. Because they can knock against each other, and you want to make sure that doesn't happen. I sometimes get the picture from people that we're afraid that space is super full, and things are going to start knocking into each other. And then we're going to have, like, a scenario, like, gravity with Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. And things just suddenly, it's just a sphere of pure. space trash, there's a lot of space and space. I don't know if you've noticed, but Earth is big. Space is even bigger.

And if you have like sort of the sphere around the Earth that is like a good place for satellites to be, like an optimal orbit for like being geostationary or something, then like you're looking at going out from Earth into this new sphere with a larger. And so there's a lot of space, but you do have to keep track of it. So that is a thing that I felt that, like, there's so much space and, like, we'll never launch enough satellites to fill all that up. Obviously, there's a lot of debris from things breaking up, but I did find, this is a fun side fact a little bit, but I found that in low Earth orbit, there's still enough atmospheric drag that it sort of clears itself of debris, and so those orbits tend to be. Like the spatial orbit.

Yeah, yeah. But there is a point out in space where the real estate is actually kind of limited, and that's at a point directly above the equator about 35,786 kilometers out into space, which is pretty far. But basically, there's this ring that if you're in that, at that altitude, you're orbiting at the same speed that Earth rotates. And so to people on the ground, you don't move in the sky, which is. Great for like a communication satellite or something. Right. Like all the TV, like the satellite TV when you have, you have to point at one point in space and not move your satellite. And so you want the satellite to stay in the same place relative to that person's house.

Right. But so there's a limited number of spaces where satellites can be and not interfere with each other. I'm sure there's still a lot of space, but there is an international body that assigns those slots to people. And another fun fact, in 1976, eight nations. tried to claim the space above their countries as sovereign territory. But everyone else was like, nah, we've got the outer space treaty. This is in space. That's a different jurisdiction.

So claim rejected. Were we one of them? No. Okay, cool. But now we're like, let's militarize space. Yeah. It's all good. Why haven't we done that yet?

That seems like a no-brainer. Let's put weapons there. Yeah, I'm in. I'm going to sign up. You're going to sign up for a space, the space, Force. I'm going to be the general of the space force. I mean, if anybody, I would want it to be you.

That's going to be me. If there's going to be a space force and it needs a general, Sam Schultz is my first choice. Yeah, I'm going to save you from the aliens when they come. That's not what I want from you. Oh, what do you want from you? I want you to use the power of the space force to build empathy. Ah, I could do that.

We could etch some nice stuff in the moon. Yeah, we could etch some nice stuff in the moon like Cherface Chippendale does in the tip. Yeah, but mine will say, be nice. How about that? Just the moon with B-Nice written in it with a giant space laser? Yes. Okay. We finally got merch for tangents.

The moon, by the way, is 238,000 miles, 384,000 kilometers away. So 10 times farther than geosynchronous orbit is. So that's how far geosynchronous orbit is. It's pretty far away. Yeah. Are there any other, like, crowded or useful orbits? Yeah. So also in the geosynchronous orbits or geostationary.

I think geostationary is the one point geosynchronous is it's just the same speed that the earth is turning, which can stay at any longitude, but the equator is like prime, prime real estate because that's the exact same spot. There are geostationary operational environmental satellites that send atmospheric information and just constantly monitor, and those are mainly for like big storm systems happening. So I think like big water vapor changes, big wind changes, hurricanes reporting things like that. There are medium orbits, which are around 20,200 kilometers above the surface, and a satellite at that height takes around 12 hours to complete an orbit, so you can go, like, cross the same spot twice a day. Is there a certain orbit that people aren't allowed to go into, like where the Space Station is or something?

Space Station is at one of the Lagrange points, I think. Maybe, no. No, it's just orbiting. No. Telescopes are at the Lagrange points. Maybe. There are some telescopes at Lagrange points. That's where the James Webb is going.

That's probably what I read. Yeah. What's a Lagrange point? So, there are gravitationally stable points for any two-body system. So if the sun is part of the system and the Earth is part of the system, there's a place between the Sun and the Earth where something can sit and not move. And it just orbits the Sun and the Earth is tugging on at the same amount that the Sun is tugging. on it. There's another one on the other side of the Earth that will always be in the shadow of the Earth. So it orbits along with the Earth always in a direct line. Like, you can draw a line

from the Sun through the Earth to this point. That's gravitationally stable. And it's basically orbiting, from its perspective, the Sun and the Earth are one body. And it's orbiting that body. And that's the one where the Web Space Telescope is going to be because it's always in the shadow of earth. And so it won't be interfered with by the sun. Like there won't be any light there. All right. Well, that seems like a good end. Yeah. Which brings us to our final scores. Anybody want to guess who won? Was it me? It was you. The rest of us all have one point. At least we're on the board, you guys. Yeah. Sam is a stupid mirror. If you like this show, there are several ways you can help us out. And it's really easy to do that. And we really

appreciate it. First, you can leave us a review on iTunes. That helps us know how you think we're and it also helps get the word out about the show. Second, you can tweet out your favorite moment from this episode. Thank you to at Rodney Rock and at George Garrett and everybody else who tweeted us your questions. And finally, if you want to show your love for Tangens, you can just tell people about us. Thank you for joining us. I have been Hank Green. I've been Sarie Riley.

I've been Stephen Chin. And I've been Sam Shultz. SciShow Tangens is a co-production with WNYC Studios. It's produced by us and Caitlin Hofmeister. Our art and music are by Hiroka Matsushima. and Joseph Tunamettish. Our social media organizer is Victoria Bonjourno, and we couldn't make any of this

without our wonderful patrons on Patreon. Thank you. And remember, the mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be light. But one more thing. So the increase in private space exploration has brought up concerns that private companies

will land on the moon and mess up all the sites where the original landers landed, including the poop that the astronauts pooped and threw on the ground. They're worried. So Heritage Foundations are worried that they're going to land there, and they're going to be like,

there's poop everywhere and clean it all up. But it's historic poop. This belongs in a museum. 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, we've got our regular crew. I'm joined by Sam Schultz. Hello. Sam, what's your tagline?

Emergency mustard supply. That's good to have one of those. We're also joined by Stefan Chin. Hi. What's your tagline? Oh, up, up and away. Wee, wee, woo. Sarah Riley is also here.

Yep, I'm here. All right, what's your tagline? Easy, breezy and very queasy. And I'm Hank Green. My tagline is vibrating. Every week on SciShow Tangents, we get together to try to one up and amaze and delight each other with science facts. We're playing for glory, and we're playing for Hank Bucks. We do everything we can to stay on topic, but judging by previews,

conversations, we won't be good at that. So, if the rest of the team deems the tangent unworthy, we will force you to give up one of your Hank bucks. Now, as always, we introduce this week's science topic with the traditional science poem this week from me. In July of 1969, the numbers counted down. A trio of historic dudes then lifted off the ground, to sky to space, to land again upon another world. A treasure of geology, Earth's history unfurled. Two men stepped upon the land their feet sunk in the dust, fighter pilots, both of them, one kneel the other buzz. The rocks they'd tread upon that day were foreign in some ways, and others, they were part of us, if you look back a ways. The moon was once the earth, the earth was once the moon,

to bridge that gap life evolved from algae to baboons. It took four billion years to cross that ocean once again, but with will and ingenuity, we did that thing, my friends. Are you sure? So the topic this week is Apollo, celebrating the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11. Sari, what is Apollo besides a god? Oh, it's a space program that had, I feel like you're better equipped to define this than I am, so I didn't look it up. But it's the space program that was like the big space race thing that happened where we made the push to put a man on the moon. And so it was all the missions leading up to that, all the manned space.

flights that were leading up to that, and the eventual four landings? Oh, no. Six landings, I think. Okay. So is everything after Apollo 11, 11, 11, 11, 14, 15, 16? And 17. Oh. I don't know 17 existed.

The secret mission. The forbidden mission. There was 18 and 19, which didn't happen. There might be more than that even, but there were planned missions that they were like, actually, this has gone pretty well. And we keep doing this. We will learn more science, but we are increasing the odds of someone dying on a moon. And also, there wasn't that much public opinion supporting it.

We all like it now, but back in the day, a lot of people were like, hey, we got other things to work on. Well, were they bringing back helpful information from all the moon trips? I mean, we learned a lot planning the moon trips. We learned a lot in terms of science. The moon is sort of like this time capsule of what the Earth geologically consisted of four and a half billion years ago. So it's definitely a scientific trove up there But yeah, that's what Apollo is

It's the only time that people have ever gone to another world And it was 50 years ago And we still haven't done it again Over what span of time did this happen? From 1969 to 1972 or the landings. That's really... That's fast. That's wild that they got to the point

where they could bring up like a buggy for them to drive around and stuff. I think that they always had sort of the weight capability of doing that. They didn't change the rockets. They were dipping their toes in the water at first seeing what they could do? Okay.

Can we get them there at all? When they come back inside, will they die of moon dust? Which was an open question. Or will they bring moon dust contaminants back to Earth and then kill all of us? With alien bacteria. No, was the answer. Everything was fine. We've also got a sideshow thing coming out.

It's like the first time we're doing something like this, a long-form sort of documentary-style episode, where we talk about whether Apollo was a good idea. I mean, I probably can guess where we came out on that question. But just asking it, I think, was really interesting. And so if you want to check out, Sy Show, we're trying something new. And you can check that out. We sent people to Alabama. We sent people all over the place.

Yeah. So that is Apollo. Now, it is time for Trichelphame. Stefan has prepared three science facts for our education and enjoyment, but only one of those facts is real. The rest of us have to make our guesses. And if we get it right, we get a Hank Buck. And if we don't, then Stefan gets it. Stefan, take us into your mind of lies and do.

Duplicity. Okay. So these are things that Apollo astronauts left on the moon. Oh. One is real. Two are fake in some way. Fact number one. During Apollo 11, the cremated ashes of a NASA engineer who had tragically died in a car accident were deposited on the moon.

Number two. During Apollo 14, Alan Shepard left two golf balls and a makeshift golf club on the moon. After taking a couple swings, send me the balls flying for miles and miles and miles. Okay. Or number three, during Apollo 16, Charles Duke left a portrait of his family on the moon with a message on the back, including his name and home planet. So, one, cremated ashes of an Apollo engineer, two, Alan Shepard's golf balls and makeshift golf club, or three, Charles Duke's family portrait with the name and home planet on the back. My gut's telling me the golf ball one is a trick somehow. Yeah.

Yeah. So I know that people hit golf balls on the moon. Right. Makes sense that that would be Alan Shepard. So the golf balls must still be there. They didn't go to collect them. No. But what about this makeshift golf club?

Why not just bring a real golf club if you bring in golf balls? Yeah. I don't know. Where do you hide it? Do you have to hide it, though? I guess it weighs that much, I don't think. I think it weighs more than you'd want to bring on a mission. Yeah, you could bring like a smaller, a smaller one.

Do you have like a weight allowance? Like you could bring a certain amount of stuff that is your choosing. I think I read something like it was half a pound. What? Of stuff, which is not very much. So, like, small memorabilia, like pictures or coins or things like that. Wow, that's cruel. Yeah, I don't know.

You're not going to let me bring. What else are you going to bring? A golf club. A baseball bat? So that I can hit baseballs and rocks on the moon. They just need to do a whole sports mission to the moon. Yeah. See how fun they all are.

I feel like that seems kind of likely because if he would have had to make shift his own golf club. Yeah. But wouldn't you've brought it home if you made a golf club on the moon? And maybe you just hit it with like a moon rock or something, like a long run. No, we definitely had a golf club. I've seen the pictures. Charles Duke seems like something you'd do. Everybody should have done that.

It's less than half a pound. Got to put it down upside down so it doesn't get bleached by the sun. Premated ashes of an Apollo engineer, everybody. It seems like it could happen. That sounds like something that would come up when you Googled the Apollo level. It also seems like lots of people die. And none of them got to go up. They should have gotten a bunch of people's ashes, mixed them all up,

Taking a can of that. And it's like 50 or 60 people in there. That's how they make hamburger. All right. I'm going to make Sam guess. I'm going to go with the picture. The picture. I'm going to go with golf clubs.

I'm going to go with the picture as well. It was the picture. I actually knew that. You did not say it. You played it really cool. Oh, thanks. I'm pretty sure he left it face up. Well, in an interview, he said that he had.

put it down, took a picture of it, and then never looked at it again. But he was pretty sure that it would have been faded by now. The message on the back was, this is the family of astronaut Charlie Duke from the planet Earth who landed on the moon on April 20, 1972. But now that there's no picture on it, it's kind of a weird message. Yeah, the aliens will be like, wow, these people are white. So the Ashes thing happened in the 90s. So it wasn't Apollo related at all But Eugene Schumacher

Was a planetary geologist Who with his wife and another astronomer Had co-discovered this comet that impacted Jupiter Apparently that was televised I didn't know they televised like comet impacts But that was the first time that we saw things impact Oh it was like other objects Yeah yeah

Basically live footage of it happening Yeah but he had he was involved in Apollo astronaut training And like wanted to go to the moon himself But had a disease that disqualified him So when he died in a car accident in 1997, they took some of his ashes and put it on the lunar prospector and launched that, which eventually crashed into the moon. So he eventually made it. Cresced into the moon on purpose. Yes, after the mission was done.

Tell me about this golf club that misled Sari. Thanks. So the golf club part was the lie. Like, he did not leave the golf club. The golf balls are still there. They know roughly where they are. but the golf club he brought back and that's now in a golf museum somewhere.

And it was a makeshift golf club? Yeah, so a lot of people think that this was like he smuggled it on because I think it was a half pound. I think you're right about that. So the handle of the golf club is like part of a tool that they were already taking because that was the heavier part and he had a custom like head made for the end so that it would attach to that like pole.

He apparently also like got permission for this. Like they were like, no, let's not do. that but then he was like look if anything goes wrong like i won't embarrass the agency i won't do it like and eventually like he was very persistent about it and then they were like yeah okay seems like something a bunch of dudes in the 70s would be into yeah totally golf on the moon yeah next up it's time for a short break and then the fact off We're back. Hank Buck Total. Sarah, you've got nothing. Sam, you got one, Stephanie, you got one, and I'm in the lead with two. Now it's time for the facts. Two panelists. Spring Science Facts present to the others in an attempt to blow our minds. The presenters, each have a Hank Buck to award the fact that we like the most. And this week, it is Sam versus Sari. We're going to go by the person who most recently bought some space, related memorabilia.

Uh-oh. Oh, I just did. Oh, you just did? Uh-huh. What did you buy? Uh, it's like a, it's like a long poster of the Apollo program that I found in a print shop in L.A. Wow. So I think that counts probably.

That does. That seems like it counts. Mm-hmm. Have you bought anything since Saturday? No. I don't know the last space memorabilia thing I've bought. So I guess that means the same's going to go first. Yeah.

I'm a bigger space fan, I guess. All right. Give us your fact, boy. All right. A fairly important element of the. Apollo 11 mission and like all the Apollo missions was the ability for astronauts and mission control to be able to talk to each other for the entirety of the trip both when they were on the moon but maybe even more importantly when they were leaving the earth and coming back to the

earth both near earth and deep space communication have their own sets of like considerations and problems when you're far from earth you have a direct path to more antennas and like dishes that pick up your stuff but the signal's weaker so you need really big ones to pick it up. Okay. Is that right? Yeah, that makes sense. Okay.

When you're close to Earth, you can't see as many antennas at once, but your signal's better, so you need, like, lots of little ones. NASA had a system to track and communicate with near-Earth man missions from all the previous programs they did, and they had something set up to track deep space stuff, but they had to kind of like make changes to their near-Earth program with deep space satellites to make Apollo work, because it was a little bit. of deep space, a little bit of close-up. Mostly what they did was build a lot of the huge dishes to talk to them.

Then they built tons of little antennas, and they built even more of them where the splashdown was going to happen, because that was where they were going to be closest, obviously. So the first of these dedicated communication stations was built in Guam in 1966. It was set up for near-Earth communication, and it would be the last antenna capable of communicating with Apollo 11 before they landed. Fast forward to the night of July 23rd, 1969, which was just a couple hours before Apollo was going to splash down the morning of July 24th. So Charles Force was the director of the Guam tracking station, which was the last one they'd be able to communicate with. And he had a big problem because a bearing in the antenna had seized up and communication was basically impossible once they got close enough.

So to properly fix it, they would have had to take the whole antenna apart and put it all back together. And by then they would have be landed or dead or whatever would happen. But he did have an idea, which was to grease the bearing that made it turn. But the problem was that the hole to get to the bearing was too tiny for all of the guys who worked there to reach their arm in. But luckily, he had a 10-year-old child named Greg Force or G-Force. And he called him up at 10 o'clock at night, and he had him driven over to the base. They greased up his arm, and he reached in the little hole. and this big, dangerous piece of machinery,

and he greased up the bearing, and he made the whole thing work again, and they landed safely, which they might have done anyway, but they landed safely, and then he got to shake Neil Armstrong's hand, and he gave him a little note that said, thanks for helping with the Apollo mission, Greg.

Was his hand still greasy? I was going to ask. I think this was, like, a couple of years later. Give him a well, Lily, when it was greased up hand. That's up, Neil. I love it. Yeah, so a little boy, save the day.

I'm glad that his arm is safe. Yeah, they've been a little boy-sized holes into their antennas, I guess. Yeah, and how lucky that it was his own son. Because you can't just put a call for a boy at 10 p.m. I need a boy. I need a small human. I bet Greg's arm would fit in there.

You think Greg's arm would fit in there? Yeah, called his wife and had her measure Greg's arm. How big around is it? I feel it this way about modern car engine bays. Like, they're so small and tight. Yeah, like you can't reach anything. No. But I was looking at a picture of the oxygen generation system on the ISS,

and, like, it's all designed so that everything is, like, very boxy. There's, like, a lot of room, so, like, it looks like you can just take off a couple screws. I was like, that's how it should be done. It's not the prettiest, but it's functional. But you don't need a little boy to fix it. If I wanted to put, like, new RAM on my laptop, I could do that by buying a new laptop. Yeah. That's pretty much it.

Yeah. You need a really little boy to reach into your laptop. Through the USB port. Yeah, just I need an ant-man to shrink down with some RAM. And then like, swoop. Okay, good fact, Sam. Okay, there's a nonverbal cue to start going. So, space suits have to be really, really carefully made to keep astronauts safe.

They have to be pressurized and have a tight seal to keep in oxygen, resist extreme temperatures, protect against UV radiation, be tough but flexible enough so that they can do things. And so when I picture spacesuits being manufactured, I imagine, like, high-tech machining and proprietary polymers. and some sort of, like, complicated NASA facility where they're doing all this in secret. Yep. But for the Apollo 11 mission, the spacesuits worn on the moon were custom made for the astronauts

using a lot of the same materials as bras, diaper covers, and girdles, and they were handcrafted by seamstresses with more sewing, gluing, and rubber-dipping precision than luxury clothing. On giant custom sewing machines where each foot pedal push

did just one stitch through somewhere between 17 to 21 layers of fabric. Whoa. Yeah, and so they had like hundreds and hundreds of meters. Giant needles? They had, I think they had small needles but big machines to like fit all those layers of fabric in there. Sam, a giant needle is just a stick. Hey, let's point to it on there.

Giant four needle is still pretty small. And they needed small needles because I think the NASA specifications were one sixty-fourth of an inch of precision. Couldn't make too big a hole in it. Yeah, couldn't make too big of a hole. couldn't like go off seam too much because everything needed to be sealed so precisely. These spacesuits were called the AL7, A for Apollo, seven for the generation,

so there were like six before that, an L for the International Latex Corporation who made the suits. And ILC was mostly known for Playtex underwear and stuff, but there was a part of the company that submitted bids for industry and government contracts of flight suits and things like that. This happened over lots of years

and there were bid processes, and there was work with other military suppliers to the Apollo Missions space suits. And it was all very fraught. And the International Latex Corporation was dismissed a lot. And they were fired once. And it almost didn't happen. Like their involvement was almost completely nixed. Until there was a spacesuit competition in July, 1965, where they competed against two other agencies and won,

mostly because of the strong, bendy joints that they developed called convoluts for mobility. because a lot of the other space suits submitted were really boxy and couldn't let the astronauts move or, like, fit within the lunar module model. Got to wear that thing inside. Yeah. And also. You can't put it on outside. Oh, I never even thought about that.

Yeah. You got to, like, bend over and pick up rocks and do all that with a tight seal. So, yeah, I just thought it was cool that a lot of the reason that Apollo 11 astronauts were safe, like, bouncing around on the moon was because of expert seamstresses who are so good at their jobs. and doing like traditionally very feminine work, but on a superhuman level, like more than any other clothing process that has ever been. That also sort of makes me think of the women who wove all the coding. Yeah. Because it was like individual copper wires that they had to weave together to like hard code all the like software for Apollo.

Core rope memory with the little ladies. They knit. They knitted software. Yeah. I feel like I'm going with Sari. This is a better anecdote. You aren't, Sam. Greg wasn't really doing science, though.

He just had a greasy arm. Yeah, Sarah seems like sort of a big endeavor. And also, like, with the communications, it's just, like, all of the things that had to happen that weren't, like, big space rockets. Yeah. You also have to build a bunch, like, a whole communication network, and you have to figure out how to make spacesuits

that you can walk around on the moon with. Almost everything that happened wasn't the big space rocket, basically. Yeah, mostly the big space rocket was, we'd already, we know how to do that. Yeah. I would think once you got to the point of little ladies, knitting stuff for you, you'd be like, maybe we should wait a few years until we know how to do this, but I guess it was an important step.

Well, you can listen to our new episode of SciShow that... Talk about the little old ladies? We don't, but we talk about how there's some logic to the idea that maybe if we'd put this back a few years, it would have been easier. But there's also some logic to say, like, maybe if we had waited, there wouldn't have been a political will to do it. And we'd still be sitting here, never having been to the moon. Was the political will all Soviet?

largely it was proving that America and capitalism were better than the Soviet Union and communism. Stefan, did you award your point? I have to give a point. I like the seamstresses. I think Greg deserves a point. Yeah.

To Sam. Thank you, Craig. And Stefan. Is Greg still alive? Yes. I believe he is still alive. He wanted to be an astronaut, but he was colorblind,

so he couldn't be one. So now it's time for Ask the Science Couch where we ask listener questions to our couch of finely honed scientific minds. At S-Path 73 asks, how alone was Michael Collins while Armstrong and Aldrin were on the surface of the moon? Did he ever lose communication with Houston? I don't know they answered that question, but generally asking how alone was anyone?

It's just like, I don't know, man. How alone are we all locked in our bodies incapable of ever exiting them, occupying the physical space? but arguably he was in the most alone position anyone has ever been in he had the least amount of people next to him that anybody else ever had but he did have those two people that were on the moon yeah but everybody else had more people nearer to them in the whole rest of the every other human being for sure do you think he was still within five feet of a spider I bet all the spiders got scrubbed out

They should have sent him up with like questionnaires They did like post interviews What did you do when you were completely alone? Yeah But like when I'm alone in my room It's basically the same As orbiting around the moon Yeah alone is alone

You can't be more or less alone He didn't really have that made days to think about it either, I guess. Less than a day. Armstrong and Aldrin spent 21 hours, 36 minutes on the lunar surface, and so he only spent less than a day completely alone in the command module. But was he ever

completely out of communication with Houston? I actually don't know. I feel like he must have been. It didn't have a system for relaying the data. Did he orbit the way that he could always see the Earth, or did he orbit the way that he was going behind the moon? Behind the moon. He was behind the moon? He was behind the moon. Yeah, so for about 47 to

48 minutes of each orbit, he was behind enough of behind the moon that he can have any radio contact with Earth or anyone else. And so there was a chunk of time. And I think someone did the math based on like the 21 hours, 36 minutes. He was alone in the command module. An estimate is that he made 18 orbits all that. So like 18 times for about a little less than an hour, he was completely out of contact with anyone else. Did he have any statements on his aloneness? He says contradictory statements about his aloneness. That sounded really sassy, but...

You can't keep his story straight. It's been 50 years. He remembers things differently. Yes. So, like, the very big Michael Collins quote is that I am alone now, truly alone, and absolutely isolated from any known life. I am it. If a count were taken, the score would be $3 billion plus two over on the other side of the moon, and one plus God knows what's on this side.

Very, very dramatic. Very angsty, very dramatic. I am the most lonely man ever. Was that a written line? Did they script that far? He must have written that down. Yeah, nobody says that. Maybe he thought that's when nobody could hear him.

He was just talking to himself. Just muttering to himself. Yeah. But a July 15th, 2009, so 10 years ago, feature on NASA, had new statements from him. Okay. And this quote was, far from feeling lonely or abandoned, I felt very much a part of what is taking place on the lunar surface. I know that I would be a liar or a fool if I said that I, have the best of the three Apollo 11 seats, but I can say with truth and equanimity

that I'm perfectly satisfied with the one that I have. Yeah. Those things aren't necessarily contradictory. And also the question was circling the lonely moon by yourself, the loneliest person in the universe, weren't you lonely?

Prime, three lonely. Answer, no. No. I wasn't lonely. That's good. I have two questions. Would you be mad if you didn't get to step on the moon if you were up there?

No. I think I might be a little bit. I think I'd be mad if I was an Apollo 13 astronaut, and I thought I was going to and didn't. I would be, I might be mad when I found out on the day when they gave the assignments, and they were like, you know, you're not, but I'm like, when you're up there. That's true. I think in my mind, I'm like, oh, yeah, I'd be so mad. But thinking about my actual personality, like, if I find out I have to go to the pool, I'm like, ooh, dangerous. I don't want to.

You have to go to the pool You know, so people are going to the pool I'm like, all right, I guess we'll go to the pool It's going to the deep end. I don't know if I'll make it. I don't know. You'd be mad. I think I would be.

I think I'm the opposite of Stefan where I think I wouldn't be mad where it's like, oh, I'm used to behind the scene stuff. Like I like write for videos. I don't do anything on camera. But if it comes to going to the moon, I think I'd be really like the competitive fire or like something in me would spark up

and I'd be like, no, I want to just put my foot. on that rock. Yeah, he's just like hit Neil Armstrong in the head in the morning and you're like, it looks like he's going to have to stay up here. Yeah, or like talk someone else into it be like, you know, command module pilot

higher rank. You got to do all these checks, make sure we can get back to Earth. Are you a Slytherin? Yes. Hell yeah, me too. That's why we'd be mad. Wow, we got like three Slytherans on this podcast. Are you one too? Oh, man. That's a bombshell. Do people know that?

I mean, look. Okay, here's what. My second question, more science-tific. More science-tif. How did they keep them warm up there? Did they just have a bunch of heaters? Yeah, heaters, man. Well, first, in the daytime on the lunar surface, it's hot.

Right. The sun's hitting you. So you've got to cool people off. Yes, the bigger challenge is cooling systems and space suits. So is the thing on their back for that kind of stuff? Yeah, it's like an AC unit, basically. Interesting. And then the capsule just had, like, heaters and air conditioning.

Yeah. The space station has to do with that a lot, where it's just like, it's sudden. in the cold and then it's in the hot and it's like blazing hot and blazing cold that's a huge amount of energy too right what are they powering that is that solar power yeah a lot of the materials that they create to launch into space so like the the space suits that I talked about they had to develop a new material to go on the outside where it's like teflon coated fiberglass to withstand thousands of degrees Fahrenheit worth of temperature and that is the kind of design that goes into a lot of material science that goes into space as far as I can tell.

It's like, how do you create really, really resistant materials that won't melt or burn up or things like that in these extreme fluctuations? So the people who are making diaper covers were best for that, apparently. It turns out you need some industrial strength stuff to keep it all in there. Keep everything sealed up tight. If you want to ask the science couch your question, you can follow us on Twitter at Syshow Tan. where we will tweet out topics for each upcoming episode every week.

Thank you to at Tagalong 572 at Artemis Myths, and everybody else who tweeted us your questions this week. Hank Buck, final scores, Sari, and Stefan are tied for last with one. And Hank and Sam are tied for first with two. Hooray. If you want to see what we're up to on SciShow, head over to YouTube.com slash SciShow, where we have our big, long-form documentary kind of thing going up soon,

where you can learn all about Apollo and what we did and why we did it and whether it was a good idea at YouTube.com slash SciShow. If you like this podcast, it's easy to help us out. You can leave us a review wherever you listen. That helps us know what you like about the show

and other people see that we have a good podcast and then they will also listen to it. And then they'll tell their friends and then someday we will all take over the world. Or just the moon. Also, we're always on the lookout for new episode ideas and Sam had an idea. So if you go and leave us a review

and you put your topic idea in there, we will put it into consideration for an episode. So, write your ideas in your reviews, everybody. Cheese. Cheese would be a great one. Somebody can have that idea for free. Second, you can tweet out your favorite moment from this episode. I love it when people do that.

And finally, if you want to show your love for SciShow Tangents, tell people about us. Thank you for joining us. I have been Hank Green. I've been Sarah Riley. I've been Stefan Chin. And I've been Sam Shelt. SciShow Tangents is produced by 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 Heroku Matsushima. Our sound design is by Joseph Tuna Mettish. Our social media organizer is Victoria Bonjourno, and we couldn't make any of this stuff 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 so in the episode about satellites we talked about how astronauts left poop on the moon and there are 96 bags of poop up there they think they estimate 96 bags of poop there might be more in recent years scientists have been wondering about the contents of those bags and specifically if the microbes inside of them could either still be alive or lived for a long time after they were deposited on the moon so the odds that this happened happened aren't really that great due to temperature variations, the possibility that the bags didn't retain the moisture from the poop, and like the constant bombardment by solar rays. But even if they lived for a little while, we might be able to go back, get them, and look at them and see what natural selection looks like in a lunar environment.

Oh, my gosh. I love this. I want to send another mission to the moon just to get poop. Yeah. So do a lot of like NASA scientists want to do the same thing. They want to go get. I'm surprised I didn't get one in any of the later missions. They're not close together

You couldn't drive over there Pick up some Some Neil Armstrong's poop Come home auction it off I got a bag of Neil Armstrong's poop Hey everybody This is Sam A lot has changed since we recorded

This episode of SciShow Tangents Just a couple weeks ago The spread of coronavirus Is affecting everyone And I speak for all of us At SciShow Tangents When I say we hope you And your loved ones are safe

We feel lucky that you choose to spend time with us every week. And we hope the podcast can take you off on a tangent and be a reminder of fun and silly things during a stressful time. If you're looking for more information on COVID-19, our YouTube channel, YouTube.com slash SciShow has a few videos explaining the disease and the pandemic. Thank you for being part of our socially distant community, because we're all fighting this together. Take care of yourselves. Now, on with the show. Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangent, 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 Zhang. Hello. What's your tagline? Fucked up from the neck up. Not expecting that. I say it because I'm...

I'm wearing a, I mean, I think it's fair to say a snazzy shirt. Yeah. But I haven't shaven in days. I haven't had a haircut in months. I'm just, it's a mess up there. Yeah. We're also joined by Sam Schultz. Sam, what's your most boomer quality?

I must have one, but I feel like I'm pretty much young at heart. I do like mowing the one. Oh, yeah, that's pretty boomer. I live on a second floor, so I have some AstroTurf on my back porch. And I do like to go out and sweep it. That's nice. That's pretty boomer. Yeah, I like that a lot. What's your tagline?

Down with homework. And Sarah Riley is also here. What's your tagline? Rumbly-Tumbly. Ooh. Delicious. And my name is Hank Green, and my tagline is the floppiest flippers. Every week here on SciShow Tangents, we get together to try to one-up, amaze and delight each other with science facts.

We're playing for glory, but we're also keeping score and awarding Sam Bucks from week to week. We do everything we can to stay on topic, but sometimes we go on tangents. And if the rest of the crew deems that tangent unworthy, you will be docked, a Sam buck. And I need every Sam buck I can get because I wasn't here for two episodes. You're down in the mud with me. It's down in the mud with Sam. Luckily, I get to drag myself out one point at a time, starting with the science poem to discuss our topic of the day. The science poem this week is from me. Light a fire on the ground, we know what it'll do, or how a mouse will procreate or how a human poos. We know the ins and outs of life upon the planet's face, but there's always more to know,

just ask, but what's it like in space? A sphere that spins in gravity, spins different in freefall, and facets of microscopy just aren't the same at all. We have to know where fire will go or how a crystal grows, and the effect upon the body, well, there's so much more to know. It's good that we have orbiting a handy ISS, because when you ask if something's different there, the answer's always yes. Space Experiments is our topic of the day. Sarah, what's a space experience? Well, it is any science that you do outside of the Earth's atmosphere?

Yeah, I guess. It doesn't have to be in free fall, I suppose. No. If you, like, shoot something up past the atmosphere and it's, like, in low Earth orbit, a satellite would probably be a space experiment. It doesn't even have to be in orbit. Oh.

You could just get it up there. And it's in freeball. And in orbit mean the exact same thing, basically? Yes. Yeah, I mean, not exactly. Because you can be in free fall but not in orbit. If you are in free fall and not an orbit, you will run into the planet. Or you're on a roller coaster.

Yeah. Oh, right, right. I guess you don't have to run into a planet. You will just have to be caught. You will soon be caught by something. Or you will run into the planet. I didn't go in this direction, but I was wondering whether, like, New Horizons counts as a space experiment.

Yeah. Okay. What is New Horizons? a probe that we send out to, like, study other planets and things. Sure. I looked up the etymology of space. The first use was maybe Paradise Lost, English poet John Milton's thing, to refer to anything beyond the Earth.

Right. And so it's still kind of a vague word as far as, is it the emptiness between planets? Is it an experiment on Mars, a space experiment? Right. As long as it's not Earth, is everything space? Yeah. I would like to think that it's everything between planets. So, like, if it's a Mars rover, it's a Mars rover.

But if it's in space, it's, like, in the void. Right. So even if it's orbiting Mars, that's a space experiment. Yes. Okay. I think so. Or is that just a Mars experiment? Yeah.

Or is it an Earth-Exper? Or, yeah, it feels kind of Mars-y to me. Well, I mean, here's the difference. When we're doing experiments on the ISS, we're doing them on space. Yeah. Like, we're thinking about, like, what's life like in space with, like, more. electromagnetic radiation and you're you know you don't have gravity so that's that's that space right whereas if you got a probe that's like circling the earth and it's like taking pictures of earth

yeah but it's just a camera that's just an earth experiment but a better angle but in space it's an earth experiment in space yeah from space i should have called this episode experiments on space but my topic wouldn't fit anymore so well yeah i mean we're doing experiments on space but we're also doing experiments on things that are in space. That's mostly what we're doing. It's like, what's this thing like when it's in space? And pretty much all the ISS is doing is experiments in space, right? Yeah, that's mostly what it does.

And, like, being, like, in space. Yes. A lot of what the ISS does is, like, stay up. So just maintenance and keeping everything good, making sure there's plenty of food for the astronauts and air and water and not falling down. I thought you were referring to it as a symbol of our human economy. That, too. It does also do that.

It does also, like, put a bunch of humans together in one place, and it says, we are not from any country, but we are humans, which is not something we get in many ways these days. The area code for the phone number on the ISS is apparently Houston, though. So it's, like, a little bit American in that respect. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's the thing where there's some argument over, like, what Catholic bishop oversees the moon? Oh. Because the idea is that, like, until you, like, set up a bishopric or whatever in the new place, the bishop from the place where the journey began is the bishop of the new land. So, basically, it's the bishop of, like, Orlando is the bishop of the moon.

So, like, if a Catholic person died on the moon, that's who would go take care of that? Yeah. And if you're, like, raised on the moon and you need some Catholic administration done, I think most people. It's administrative what the bishops do rather than because the local preacher would. But I guess you don't have one. Right. So maybe you have to go all the way up the chain to the bishop.

Yep. Put them in a rocket. I don't think you can tell it. Just put a call to her. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, doing a confessional over, over, I guess there's probably a secure line you could get on. Yeah.

What are we talking about? That seems like we went a little bit off. That was definitely me. How are you feeling about it? I learned something. It was a very fun fact. We're going to move on. It is time for truth or fail.

One of our panelists has prepared three science facts for education and enjoyment. But only one of those facts is true. The other ones are big, fat, stinking lies. And we have to guess which one is the true one. And if we get it wrong, then Sam gets a Sam buck because Sam is doing truth or fail. In the grim darkness of the far future, space is full of brands. spatial space flight advertising publicity stunts

and outlet while on the moon it will all come to pass in the future but for now a few brands have already gotten their foot in the door by funding space experiments which of these are a real brand funded experiment in space number one

KFC funded research into using chicken fat as an eco-friendly rocket fuel component number two Nike branded shoes with sensors designed to monitor astronauts' feet while exercising to help fight bone loss. Okay. Or number three, a study funded by a perfume company to see a flower smell

different in space. KFC. Kentucky Fried Chicken. Is it called, is it just KFC? I think officially it's just KFC, but you can call Kentucky Fried Chicken. Okay, so just for clarity, for the people at home, who may not be aware, in America, we have a thing called Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Yeah. Other countries, too. It's very popular in China. Yeah. Oh, never mine then. I just assumed by the Kentucky in it that it would be... I think that's why they call it KFC. Oh, you're like, I don't want to know about this. They don't care where it's from. So there's KFC-sponsored chicken fat rocket

fuel. Rocket fuel? Rocket fuel. Nike sponsored shoes that have sensors in them to help protect against bone density loss or a study funded by a perfume company to see if flowers will smell different in space. What perfume companies say? A perfume company.

Unspecified. Unspecified perfume company Okay Would they smell different? This is the thing Like as my poem says Nothing is the same in space Everything is different

And I think I have heard something About things smelling different in space I could see this being a lie though If it's an unnamed perfume company Of just like some perfume company Didn't want to see a flower smell different They just like sent up nice smelling things To the space station

It's like oh you're stinky up there here's like nice smells. Yeah, that seems like more of a brand deal than like, I want to know what flowers smell like. But you never know. Maybe they just want to help science happen. Yeah. And I know that Nike has those things that they put in the shoes for a while. Do you guys remember this?

They have things that they put in the shoe. They hook up to an app or something. Yeah. Yeah. And like go in your shoe and it would be under the soul and it would be basically like a Fitbit but in your shoe. And I think that they sort of got replaced by Fitbits. Oh. I was going to say it sounds better to have the Fitbit in the shoe.

But you're not always wearing the shoe, whereas the Fitbit's always on you, and it tells you what time it is. That seems very reasonable to me, especially because it's like, if we could be the shoe on the mission to Mars, that'd be pretty cool. Oh, heck, I mean, yeah, Nike's definitely got to get that one. You're not going to let Under Armour be the freaking sportswear brand of the Mars mission. It's got to be Nike. Just do it. A little swoosh on the astronaut boot. Oh, swoosh on the boots.

I'm feeling perfume. Really? Yeah, I know. I think it's wild because it's, but like, I don't know, I'm not going to rationalize it too much because I don't. because I don't want to sway you to my side and have you guys get my points because of my wisdom. We didn't talk about the chicken fat.

It didn't have to say, it doesn't have to work necessarily. They could just fund it and like slap KFC on the side of rocket. I think that's because I'm hungry for lunch and now I want fried chicken, but I'm going to go with that one. Oh.

Does KFC have Uberites? I'm just wondering if we should get an order for everybody because that sounds good. By the time we finish, it'll be here. Yeah, that sounds good. We can't order KFC in the middle of our pie. This is a minus one tangent. I feel like this is a minus one.

Who gets the minus one tangent for the KFC? Well, Hank, for suggesting that we should order and then pulling out his phone. Just saying if it's available. I am also leaning towards the KFC one. It does sound sort of plausible to me only because fats have a lot of calories compared to, like, protein and carbs. and so I could see them processing it in some way that maybe it could be used as a fuel. We definitely have turned fat into fuel, you know, biodiesel.

We can't get KFC, but they got Popeyes. Do you want Popeyes? I would eat it. I'm hungry. I'm getting some Popeyes for me and Sarah. Do you want some Sam? I mean, if you're getting Papa. I'm not going to say no. All right, we ordered Popeyes.

What's the answer? Because it's been 100 years, please remind me, What are you all picked? I picked KFCFAT. KFCFat. And I picked the perfume. The correct answer is the perfume. Hey, what?

So can I tell you why I thought it was perfume that I didn't tell everybody? Yeah. Because I don't think that NASA likes it when there's too much closeness between the thing and the brand. So if they were like actually saying, like, does this perfume smell super good? Then it'd be like, no. But if it's like, we just want to know how people. smell in space, and then the perfume company can put out of press release. It's like

we funded this scent study, whereas these other ones seem too close and NASA wouldn't like it. That was my mistake. Couldn't trick Hank. So in 1998 International Fragrance and Flavors, that's the name of the company. Nice. Boring. I like it.

Yeah, it's kind of old-fashionedy, huh? Very 50s name. That's a great conglomerate name. Yeah, it's a fragrance conglomerate, and they worked with NASA's Commercial Space Product Development Program, which is a whole thing, a wing of NASA devoted to that product development in space. They sent a rosebud

to the ISS in a plant growth chamber and when it bloomed they took samples of its scent compounds and they reported that the smell had changed from a very green fresh rosy smell to a more floral rose aroma which is really

too different. Yeah, I can definitely know that's very different from one another I'm sure. Rose was in both of them One was more green, though. They both smelled like rose. Who smelled it? Just the astronauts? No, the astronauts collected samples, and then they brought it back to...

Oh, to like the experts who smell for a living. I think or something like that. And then the experts who smell for a living were like, ah, different. Notes of green. They think this happens because in the rose, the compounds were mixing in different ways because it was just in no gravity. So things were just mixing together differently, I guess, or sitting in one part of the flower longer than they would have

or less time than they would have. The fragrance was deemed to be more pleasing than the regular boring old earth rose fragrance, and they started to mass produce. The companies started to mass produce and sell the space rose smell. And there's at least one product that uses it that I could find a Japanese perfume called Zinn, which is described as floral, woody, and spiritual incense.

It smells like the inside of your soul. Yeah, and you can buy that if you want to, like a space rose. But they don't even advertise it as space smell? They do not seem to, no. Okay. You'd think they would, but they don't. The chicken fat thing was not funded by KFC and not a rocket fuel, but in 2011, NASA tested

a jet fuel made of chicken and beef fat to see if it was more environmentally friendly than traditional fuel, and it was by quite a bit. They ran this jet airliner idling, and it produced 90% less black carbon. When they did the takeoff routine, it produced 60% less black carbon. So, that seems cool. I couldn't find where they were getting all this chicken fat. From around. Maybe KFC.

Yeah, I mean, probably the place where the chickens get turned into food. Into food, yeah, maybe. KFC did fund some stuff in the 90s about egg development in space. And the little box that the eggs went up and had a Colonel Sanders picture on it. And then bone loss is not funded by any brand, but there's a special pair of pants and shoes that astronauts wear to determine if they're basically getting enough exercise of their legs. So there's different exercise machines they can use up there to try to keep their bone density up because it's a big thing in space that your extremities bone density will go down because you're not using them enough. And so this one

experiment was in 2002 through 2006 and it was called the foot ground reaction forces during space flight or as NASA shortens it to foot, which is not how those things work at it. But that's what they call it. And this particular one determined that it was not even close. They were not getting even close to the right amount of exercise. So then they went back to the drawing board and made up harder exercises for them to do in space. So hard to be an astronaut. It's one thing to like exercise and no you're not really doing enough. It's another to have like hundreds of people examining how much you're exercising and then telling you you're not doing enough.

Yeah, and that your bones are now bad. Right. Soft and spongy. I think if all I had to do was science and exercise, though. That would be okay? That would be okay. I think I would exercise more if I didn't have to deal with

all the other things that come with living on Earth like laundry cooking I bet they have to do laundry in space though they like eject it out they just like don't wash their clothes they just put it into a pot and send it back down to Earth

I think so or like get it destroyed so they're decinerated right there in space not in space but like in something that will get destroyed in the atmosphere instead of like getting it safely back so they just go up with like enough shirts and pants and stuff to last them for as long as they need I didn't look into this enough

But that's kind of what I do When I go on trips to Europe I just take what I need And then buy new stuff as it goes along Oh really? Yeah, bring all my old underwear And I buy new nice European underwear Do you leave the old underwear?

Yeah, I mean I don't like leave it for someone to find Yeah, I leave it in the trash Really into geocaching with his own underwear All right We're going to take a short break And then it'll be time for the fact off Welcome back, everybody. Sarah's got nothing, Stefan's got nothing.

I've got one, though I should have two. No. But I wanted Popeye. And Sam's got two as well. All right. Everything is as it should be. Now it's told for the fact off. Two panelists have brought science facts and presented the others

in an attempt to blow our minds, and we each have a Sam Buck to award to the fact that we like the most. And to determine who's going to go first, we're going to ask you these questions. What year did dogs Belka and Stralka go into space with several of their rodent pals to become the first creatures born on Earth

to go into orbit and return back to Earth alive? 1953 That's way earlier than I would have thought 1962 The correct answer is 1960 Ooh Okay

Well done, Sarah Are they shooting things in the space in 1953 Sputnik was 57 Okay It all happened in the 60s in my head No matter when it was a lot of it happened I was a little too early It moved really fast

From the first thing to being on the moon Was 12 years And then we were like Let's never do that Yeah, we're good. So I guess that means that Sarah, if you want to go first, you can. Or you can make Stefan do it.

I will go first, because last time I made Stefan go first, he won. And then I won. So, you know, the thing that happens when you're driving behind a semi-truck to save fuel? It's called tailgating or drafting

because the truck pushes air particles out of the way to reduce the air resistance of your car as you're driving forward. Scientists in the 90s, during a few space shuttle missions, wanted to do this experiment in space to see if they could create an ultra vacuum in low Earth orbit that's 1,000 to 10,000 times better than the best vacuum chambers on Earth. So the tool, the device they used to do this is called the Wake Shield facility, which is basically a 4 meter in diameter disk that they launched with a robotic arm. They like let it go behind the shuttle, and it would hover around 75 kilometers behind the shuttle. And I think it just followed in the shuttle's wake. It was described as a free-flying platform, and I couldn't find anything to say that it had its own fuel or anything on it.

So basically, the shield would fly in the wake of the shuttle, and then in the wake of the shield, it would push away any other, like lingering particles that could be in space. And the vacuum, the ultra vacuum, was created behind this. disk. And it worked. And the reason for all this trouble is they wanted to test creating thin film materials with a process called epitaxi, which is basically depositing really thin layers of a substrate. And so I think on the back of this disc, they had a substrate that they wanted like thin oxidized layers of crystal or something to build up on, to research things like really, really fine semiconductor layers, photo cells, which are sensors that detect

light that can be really thin and even research into bionic eyes because they wanted to grow very, very thin ceramic films to act as replacement retinas because silicon, which is, I don't know, they were trying it out, reacted really badly with eye tissue. And so then ceramic was seen as more biocompatible. And so they wanted to grow these like ultra, ultra, ultra thin films that that you could only do in an ultra vacuum. The last news that I heard about, the bionic eyes because that was the coolest part was in 2002 so I don't know if anyone's still doing it or if it

just like because the films worked like they learned about vacuums here and this experiment worked two of the three times that they put it into space but as far as I can tell they were just like seeing what could be done in an ultra vacuum right we did it yeah we did it huh when you started that

I was like oh they're like gonna launch two rockets and have one follow the others so that it uses less gas get a little bit better mileage you know Oh, no, that seems, that seems iffy. Yeah, no. They just wanted to see what happens if you create an ultra vacuum. And then deposit crystal and stuff on a surface very, very, very thin.

So we have talked about things that are like one micron thin. Is that a micron the smallest thing you can do? Oh, there's a smaller thing. Or is there just some things that you could only spread extremely thin in a super vacuum like that? I think it's like it spreads smoother. in an ultra vacuum because in air there's a bunch of other particles

and even in like a good vacuum but not a great vacuum there's the chance of something disrupting like a single layer of atoms being layered on top to form a perfect crystalline structure and so it like just prevents contamination

that there would be any other atom just happening to float around and get incorporated in the crystal structure. Is that like more of a vacuum than space space? Yeah because there's still some stuff in space is to push whatever stuff might come across the path of this Wake Shield facility, push it out of the way to make even more of a vacuum. Right, and it's moving too fast for stuff to like rush in there.

I feel like we should say that in real life on Earth, when you're driving, you shouldn't tailgate trucks to try to get better mileage. That's a super not safe thing to do. Stefan knows. No, I never tailed them that closely because I was aware. Okay. But yes. Yeah, that's probably a good safety.

I dabbled in hypermiling for a while. It's also good to not drag yourself behind a space shuttle. So, Stefan, you got to, can you follow that? We'll see. So there's an experiment that was done by Jaxa and the University of Yamanishi as a first step in figuring out how viable it is to store sperm long-term in space. And so the idea is that in the future, the far future, there will be colonies or just like long-term missions, like multi-generational. missions, perhaps, where we need some kind of assisted reproductive technology in space, both for, like, humans to maintain genetic diversity, but also for, like, livestock and things.

And also, they presented the idea, which I had never thought of, of just, like, storing genetic material off world in case of an emergency down here. Like, if something bad happens, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, what? A seed vault. A seed vault. Right.

But, like, human seed. on the moon or something. But the problem is that if cosmic radiation causes a lot of damage to stored sperm, it could affect the future generations that are produced with it. So they collected sperm from 12 mice, separated them into two sets of vials,

and one was sent to the ISS, and one was kept on Earth. They called that the ground control sperm. And in both sets, the sperm were freeze-dried and went through the same temperature changes at the same times for the same durations. And one of the things they pointed out is that in other studies on, like, reproduction in space, the genetic material is not frozen. And so it's actively metabolizing, which means that DNA repair is happening.

And so you might not see exactly how much damage is taking place because the cells are actively repairing themselves. Right. But if you're storing sperm long term, they are going to be frozen. And so after you thaw them out, they have to be able to repair any accumulated damage. And so that's kind of what they're testing here. the freeze-drying part of this is also super weird to me because it like freeze-drying sperm kills them but if I understood this whole thing correctly

like once you can still rehydrate them and inject them into fresh like oocytes and then the fresh alive cells will repair the DNA of the sperm and then get fertilized and the oocytes will repair the sperm DNA I think that is what it is saying happens so they left these violins

in a freezer on the ISS for nine months and then brought them back and like did a bunch of testing and there was no difference in the appearance of the sperm but the space sperm did have slightly more damage but when they injected all the spermies into the oocytes both groups

can I continue if you say eggies you can only say spermies if you say eggies otherwise it's the patriarchy and you lose a hang when they injected all the sperm into the little eggies, both groups, the space sperm and the ground-controlled sperm went on to produce little mice pups at basically the same rate.

How long were the spermies up there? Nine months. If we're going to do a seed vault, we need longer than that. That's why I was saying it's like kind of a first step experiment because like when we do artificial insemination on Earth, those things have been in storage for like over a decade sometimes. And so like we need to be able to test very long-term storage. bury them in the moon.

Yeah, if they bury it and shielded, then that would be okay. That was kind of the thing, as they were like, yeah, you could make like an ice shield or you could stick these in a lava tube on the moon or something, and that would help protect it. But so far, based on these results, it seems like it is possible to recover from whatever damage is happening in nine months of being freeze dried in space. All right, so do we go with Sari's Wake Shield facility to create? a super vacuum in space or Stefan's holding on to freeze-dried sperm

for nine months in the ISS to see if mouse pups can happen from space sperm. Sam, are you ready to go? I'm ready. Three, two, one, Sari. Oh, interesting.

What's a difference? I like Sari's because I like the idea that space is not enough of a vacuum. And we had to be like, let's spend a lot of money to make space extra. vacuum me. I like

Stephens because he said spermies. I was pretending. All right, everybody, it's time for Ask the Science Couch. We've got a listener question for our couch of finally honed scientific minds. This one is from At Scared Hippie and at Clubja. What could happen if

someone got pregnant in space? It seems bad. It does. It seems like it's one of the most delicate moments of human life. And as stated, twice already in this episode, everything is different in space. Is anybody interested in actually learning more about human baby,

like embryonic development and like birth in space? So NASA is and also a startup in the Netherlands. So not KFC. Yeah. Not KFC, not Nike. So to follow up to stay, Deffen's study, so they did the mouse sperm in 2017, is that what I said? In 2018, apparently NASA sent a bunch of human and bull sperm to the ISS.

It's called Mission Micro11. They wanted to test whether if they're sent to space and back to see if the mobility of the sperm changes. And I don't think they're actually using eggs, which makes it like ethically more sound, but they're just seeing like, does it wiggle enough? Right, right. And in what way? And I don't think. So is that the main concern why there hasn't been a lot of, like, putting male and female mice in the same agency and what happens? Because they're just, like, sort of ethically concerned about the results of that.

You know, partially, because it's iffy. If we don't have a reason why we're doing this, then it seems like a lot to put a potential maybe I was through. And secondarily, like, might just be bad PR. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think it's like we don't know what the radiation will do, even though that's, like, an interesting question. from a biological standpoint and better to experiment with mice or like a test organism. Also, just like logistically having sex in space seems difficult. And like, I don't buy this.

I feel like for animals, saying an animal wouldn't even probably want to try. Yes. Because they'd be in such a different, like I've read about ants and stuff in space and they don't even try to do anything. Oh, man. Yeah, I guess I could see that. I don't know. But my understanding of biology is basically that, like, if you can, then you will. Unless maybe you're floating in the voice space.

But if there's a stressor that is big enough that makes you sort of think, that's not a thing to do. I do not buy that no one has had sex in space. I got the tapes. There's a company that doesn't want to make people have sex in space. They want to send a pregnant woman up to space. with a medical team to deliver a child. They, I don't know, they just, like, want to see what happens if a baby is born in space, like, at the moment of birth. It doesn't seem very useful for, like, a long-term study because then there's no development happening.

No, I hate that. I've been there for a birth, and you want gravity. You want gravity so bad. You want to keep all that things going in a direction. Yeah. A suction tube. So it's, like, all the question of, like, fluids. Yeah.

Gravity is not helping get the baby out. But then also you can answer questions like if a baby is born in space, if your first breaths are like oxygen in a spaceship instead of like Earth air. I don't know how the composition is different. Is that different? It can be, yeah. It usually isn't now. We now, I think, just use the same nitrogen-oxygen mix that we use on Earth.

The big question is like, how do you make it back to Earth with a baby also? Yeah, I hate this on multiple levels. This is a bad idea. Like, I just don't, like, I don't see learning anything just from the having other... It just seems like it's just going to make things harder and more dangerous. Yeah. And that's it. You don't really learn anything.

So the question is, what would happen if you got pregnant in space, right? So, like, simply put, what could happen? We don't know. Bad? Probably more challenges than there are on Earth in all steps of the process. Right. Mm-hmm. And slightly more, like, a higher probability of having a health problem. You have to put a lot of tarps up on the International Space Station.

Yeah, I think suction tubes is definitely the thing to do. Ultra vacuum. I had that thought when I was reading about my thing because of the livestock in space seems terrible. Like you've got chicken feathers all over the place. Oh, yeah. Tube them up. Gravity is so helpful. You never really think about how necessary it is.

Like sometimes it's really annoying, like when you fall and you're like, ow. But the rest of the time, gravity's great. Yeah, it's like I'm glad my poop fell in the toilet. If you want to ask your questions to the science couch, you can follow us on Twitter at SciShow Tangents, where we will tweet out topics for upcoming episodes every week. Thank you to at MacGuber, at a Philostronaut, and everybody else who tweeted us your question is this week.

Sam Buck final scores, Sari and Hank and Stefan, we're all tied for second, and Sam coming in. The natural orders for six. If you like this show and you want to help us out, it's easy to do that. You can leave us a review wherever you listen. That's super helpful. Helps us know what you like about the show.

Also, we look at iTunes reviews for topic ideas for future episodes, so you can leave those there. Second, you can tweet out your favorite moment from this episode. We love to see those. And finally, if you want to show your love for SciShow Tangents, just tell people about us. Thank you for joining us. I've been Hank Green. I've been Sarah Riley. I've been Stefan Chin.

And I've been Sam Shultz. Saishot Tangents is a co-production of Complexly and the wonderful team at WNYC Studios. It was created by all of us and produced by Caitlin Hofmeister and Sam Schultz. who also edits a lot of these episodes, along with Heroku Matsushima. Our editorial assistant is Deboki Chakravardi. Our sound design is by Joseph Tuna Meddish. Our social media organizer is Victoria Bonjourno this week, but not in the future. We're sad to see Victoria moving on.

And also, 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. Flatworms, which are known to regenerate, got their heads and tails cut off and then sent to the ISS for five weeks. And because they don't have anus,

I'm counting the tail as the butt. And one of those that got sent to the spaceship unit and came back grew ahead instead of a butt. So it had two heads. And when they cut off its two heads, it grew two more heads. Usually, very rare event. But then because of space radiation, this lost its butt forever. What?

Lost its butt forever. So sad. What a sad tale. That's it. Is the Popeye's here yet? It is. Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents, the lightly competitive knowledge showcase. I'm your host, Hank Green, and I'm joined this week as always by science expert, Sari Riley. How comfortable are you with that title?

Oh, not at all. I was just thinking about that. Every time you say it, I'm like, no, that's fake. The expert is not anywhere in the top, like, 50 words I'd used to describe myself. We are also joined by our resident, Everyman, Sam Schultz. I'm very comfortable with that title. If you could go on a vacation to someplace that doesn't exist, what would it be like there? Like, tell me your ideal vacation spot.

Anything can be different. It can be purple. You can fly. It could be low gravity, high gravity. This is because I just watched a documentary about the seas mission, which is they spent a year on an island in Hawaii, as if they were on a mission to Mars. It was like a group of six people. It would be cool to go to just somewhere like that where it's like rocky and weird and probably more weird things to discover, like, non-earthly tide pools in like green water. And like there's lots of animals and all of them taste just like Welch's fruit snacks.

No, I don't want to eat them. I'd be a gentle tourist. Isn't it like leave only footsteps, take only memories? And bites. Just a little nibble. Come on. You guys want to go on a vacation where you're working and doing science? Is that what you're saying?

No, it's not working. If I have to think hard about it, then it's working. But if I can just look at it and go, oh, I'm learning. And that's fun learning instead of working. learning. I just go to Disneyland or something. But I've never been on a vacation that wasn't more work and exhausting than not being on vacation. So I'd like to just go somewhere else where I could sit in a chair and everybody would leave me alone. Yeah, vacation is definitely work. And in fact, I am almost certain that the majority of the enjoyment I get out of a vacation is thinking about it

beforehand. I don't know who you are. I love vacation. I love not doing anything. Well, it's just that I never not do anything. I always end up doing stuff. I'm like, oh, I'm in this place. I need to do the things. You got to figure out where to sleep. Yeah. What to do. I hate figuring out what to do. I just wander. I just pick a direction and walk and then figure out something to do. And then I'm like, I'm so satisfied with this vacation. Well, my goal is to someday go visit some other planet. That sounds very stressful and hard. And also impossible. So it's good to have dreams that you're definitely not going to achieve. So you're listening to SciShow Tanzidge right now. And every week on this show, we get together to try to one-up, amaze, and delight each other with science facts and science games.

And we try to stay on topic. But we aren't always great at that. Our panelists are playing for Hank Bucks and for Glory. And I'll be awarding those Hank Bucks as we play. And at the end of the episode, one of you two will be crowned the winner. Now, as always, we're going to introduce this week's topic with the traditional science poem from Sari. When humans of Yore first gazed up at the sky, they marveled at objects, but then wondered why. Some stars stayed static, but others did fly across the horizon as weeks passed them by. These stars weren't stars at all, it turns out. These wandering orbs of astronomical doubt, they were planets like Earth on an elliptical route, round the sun which our system could not exist without. Scientific advancements like telescopes and

such led to ideas about planet formation so much that we dreamt of other stars with planets in a clutch, and astronomers went seeking with a careful touch through the method of Doppler and patience we found one exoplanet, then another was crowned, then two and twelve more and a thousand abound, thanks to Kepler and Tess and other spacehounds. In more and more ways, our instruments can show other worlds, potential life, new things to know. How lucky we are to see skies a glow, all the awe of the universe summed up with, whoa. That was like a tear Jerker. Yeah, I got inspired. I remember being a kid and being taught that, like, we don't know if there are any other planets in the whole galaxy and the whole universe. And then now it's like, you know, one thing I learned from that is that I'm pretty sure everybody was pretty sure there were. But like, we didn't have any evidence for it. And so scientists don't say things that they don't have evidence for. And after all, there are a lot of freaking stars. So it would be really unusual if there were not planets. But I remember very specifically being told, like, we don't know. if there are other planets out there. And now it's just like that the idea that during my life

for a pretty big hunk of it, we just had no idea that there were planets outside our solar system. And now it is like knowledge as true as knowledge gets. It's really cool. So our topic for the day is exoplanets. That's a pretty easy thing to define. Planet is hard to define. But once you've defined planet, then exoplanet gets easy. Yeah. Yes. Once you have list of things that make up a planet, then exoplanet is just a planet that orbits around another star that is not our sun. Very easy to distinguish them from other kinds of planets because there are like rogue planets that don't have a star. Those aren't exoplanets. They specifically have to be orbiting a star that is not our sun for it to fall under that level.

I didn't know that. I would have assumed that rogue planets would count as exoplanets because they are after all exo. And planets. They are in fact both exo and planet. but they are also rogue, which trumps both of those. Oh, okay. Where does the word planet come from? I think it comes from, oh, it comes from wandering stars, so from a word of uncertain etymology,

Planistai, P-L-A-N-A-S-T-H-A-I. And so, like my poem, that's how I got inspired. I looked up the etymology first, and I was like, oh, old humans were just staring up at the sky, and they were like, oh, some of the stars they wander. And then no one to call them. And so they were like, wandering stars. And then we were like, hmm, a planet is a different thing, actually. I mean, I imagine the exact same thing would happen on any planet where there was somebody

looking up with the sky being like, look at those. Look at those special stars that are just like, I don't care. I don't care about the rest of y'all. I'll be in a different place every night. Yeah, very slowly. So not so much like, but more like, ooh, woo, woo. I mean, time passes. faster back then.

Uh-huh. It does seem like there should be a way to define what a planet is because it seems pretty clear that, like, Jupiter and Earth are different from, like, an asteroid. But it turns out there is, like, there's a bit of a sliding scale where it's like, well, what is series? It's in the asteroid belt.

It's really big. It's spherical. But it's not really a planet. And we knew about it for a long time. We never called it a planet. And then if you say that, then like, okay, well, what about Pluto then? And it's like, that's a,

it's a slippery slope, because if Pluto's a planet, then we're going to have to start thinking there might be tons of them. What was our problem with Pluto? It was too small? They decided, like, what's a definition that's going to work for us and where there will be a clear line that we can draw? And that was, it has to be a sphere, and it has to have sort of cleaned up the area around its orbit. So it's not like sharing its orbit with a bunch of other things. So it's big enough that it's collected all of the rocks for the most part in its orbit. And Pluto very much hasn't done that. It's got a lot of other stuff around it. I'm not sure about Pluto, but definitions of planets also have to do with mass, and that's where, like, when the International Astronomical

Union defines these things, they put equations in their definition bullet points. Because, like, for example, the working definition of an exoplanet includes, I'm reading this from their website, objects with true masses below the limiting mass for thermonuclear fusion of deuterium. That orbit stars. brown dwarfs are stellar remnants that have a mass ratio with the central object below the L4-slash-L-5 instability equation are planets, no matter how they are formed. Right. I always forget, in our solar system, we don't have to worry about this because we don't have any brown dwarfs or it's not like a binary star system.

We don't have to worry. But most star systems have more than one star, so that matters to them. But it does not matter to us. Yeah, yeah. So you get more complicated, the more objects you try. to fit under the same definition. You have to really, really draw those boundaries carefully to be like, this little, this size of thing

is planet, everything else, something else. With all that being said, I think it is now time for us to start our first game, because we have been going on for a while. And I would like to introduce you to our game for the week, Exoplanet or Earth, socially distanced vacation destinations. We've all been cooped up.

We've been scrolling through Airbnb listings, and we've been writing little stories in our heads about our preferred vacations in a cozy cabin on the other side of the world. But one day, we will be free to plan vacations and trips again. And when that time comes, wouldn't it be nice to go on a trip to an exoplanet? It may sound unlikely with the uninhabitable conditions and distant travel. But if we could travel to those planets, we could see all sorts of amazing things. And the following are descriptions to tell you what to expect on your potential exoplanet visit,

some of which are exoplanets and some of which are just very weird places here. on planet Earth. It's up to you to decide exoplanet or Earth. Are you ready? Uh-huh. So I'm going to give you four destinations. You both get to each vote on whether you think it's planet Earth or planet XO. Vacation destination number one.

Are you finding yourself at odds with your travel partners? Maybe even yourself over whether you want to visit somewhere hot or cold. Never fear the days of having to choose are long behind us. This destination pulls a double duty for those of you who want to stream cold, there's plenty of that to test even your toughest parkas. And for those of you who want a little bit of warmth out of your vacation, or just a little sit by the fire after a long, cold, nice hike, take a nice, relaxing nap next to our lava lake. There's got to be lava lakes on Earth. Sounds like Greenland or something to me. This is interesting because I think this is

one situation where my knowledge of Earth will mess me up. There's like a sulfurous volcano, but that's somewhere tropical, I think. It's like a lake, but it's very caustic. I think there's a lava lake in, I want to say Antarctica, but I'm not positive. There aren't just lava lakes everywhere. That seems like something that would be everywhere. Okay. I'm going to say Antarctica then, which is on Earth. I might have misled you.

I'm going to guess exoplanet, Sam, because I don't trust myself. Oh, man. It's on Ross Island in Antarctica. Sari not only knew it, but knew it exactly and still got it wrong. I feel terrible. It's Mount Erebus. Mount Erevis in Antarctica, and it is very, very cold there, as you might expect, because not only is it on Antarctica, but it's also a mountain, so it's high up in the atmosphere,

and I have the lava lake at it. Freaking heck, I need to stop. This is my problem throughout my entire 16 years of school, too. If I thought more than, like, 10 seconds about a question, I was going to get it wrong and overthink it. I just need to say the first thing that comes out of my mouth. That's what I always do. That works for me.

Or just say the first thing that comes out of Sari's mouth. That's even better. Vacation destination number two, are you looking for a nice romantic spot to take your favorite person? You could just go to your local sunset lookout or you could step things up and give your beloved the gift of a very strange sunset.

Come visit us and you'll be able to witness an unusual sight in the evening, a sunset that sets not with our beautiful but familiar shades of orange and pink, but rather goes from blue to green. This unique sight is the result of gaseous chemicals around you that absorb red light, resulting in a display that is sure to delight and amaze. I think there's a beach in L.A. where the sunset is green. And that has chemicals everywhere, because it's L.A.

I've never heard of that beach in L.A., so you're teaching me something. I know there are, like, northern lights. So the aurora borealis on Earth, which is like those blue-green. atmospheric phenomena. That's not a sunset thing, isn't it? It's not a sunset, yeah, but there are like gases being energized in Earth's atmosphere, but I don't think, it makes me think that those gases only appear for a very short time and, like, not concentrated enough regularly for it to be, like, a foreshore green blue sunset.

I'm going to go with Earth again. I'm going to go Exoplanet again. All right, swapped it on its head. Sam was wrong and Sarah was right. This was about HD 209-458B, also known as Osiris. It's a gas giant that has an atmosphere of carbon monoxide and sodium. The sodium particles absorb the red light, which would likely give you a blue-green sunset. Much of its atmosphere is currently escaping, and also carbon monoxide and sodium, in general, two of the worst things to breathe in.

Vacation, destination number three, for the rock climbers among you. This is going to be the destination of your ascension dreams. When you arrive, you'll be surrounded by basalt, that volcanic rock that makes for exciting climes. With a landscape that's been compared to the moon, even the non-climers in your group will have plenty of sights to take in and appreciate. And with cloudy weather, rarely a problem here, you should be able to make the most of your trip. Maybe you'll even want to extend it. I don't know. There's basalt on Earth.

I know that. There are basalt columns like in Washington. I think this is somewhere in like Utah or something. I also think this feels like on Earth where you train rovers or something like that. So I'm going to guess Earth. Sam, Earth? Oh, yeah, Earth. I'm sorry, that was the exoplanet LHS 3844B.

It's a rocky planet. Our biggest clue here was that it is unlikely to rain because it does not seem to have an atmosphere. They think that it's covered in basalt and that the cooled rocky parts of it would resemble the darkest parts of the moon called the Maray, I think. LHS 3844B is tidily locked, meaning one side of it is permanently facing the star at orbits, and the star-facing side is around 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit. So while you would not get rained on, you probably would be praying and hoping for a little bit, a couple drops, please. Thank you very much. And finally, vacation destination number four. For a relaxing retreat, a visit to our baths is sure to inspire you. You may be surprised to find

it among the rocky scenery, but when you arrive, it is hard to miss the dazzling point. pools of neon green that fill in depressions left by ancient volcanoes. The impressive hue is a product of sulfur that fills the depths. Though, of course, given that sulfur is neither gentle on the skin nor the nose, it may be best to enjoy these baths from a distance. Well, you go first this time. I'm going to give you the right answer. You're going to give me the right answer?

I already talked about this. This is the volcano in Indonesia, I think. I think it's, and I'm going to screw myself over if this is wrong, but I think it's called Kawa'i Jen, and I think it's like a sulfury blue-green lake. It's very cool and weird. So Earth, I'm very confident Earth. I think Hank's having a little fun with us,

and he's talking about Yellowstone National Park, which is right in our backyard. So I'm going to go with Earth as well. You are both right. It is Earth, though the specific neon green pool of water that I was talking about was neither of the ones, though you are both right that those places have sulfury water. But the Devil's Bath in New Zealand,

Waiotapu as like it looks like the Simpsons green radioactive color. It is amazing. Oh, this is super green. Yeah. It looks like surge. Oh, God. This is where they poured it all in that, when that soft drink went defunct. No one wanted surge anymore.

So they just took it to New Zealand. So that means that you tied it up here. You both each got two points. Next up, we're going to take a short break. Then it'll be time for the fact off. Did you know SciShow Tangens has a Patreon? Help us.

Head on over to Patreon.com slash SciShowTanans to learn more about how you can help support the show and get great rewards. We've got stuff for you. We got bonus episodes. There's access to a Tangents patron-only Discord. Sam, what Patreon perk are you most excited about? Well, I got to say,

it's pretty hard to beat a bonus episode. but I worked all day today on the Tangents Newsletter, which I think is turning out really fun. It's going to have pictures, it's going to have art, it's going to have bonus science couch questions, going to have bonus but facts. It's going to have whatever I want to put in it because it's all mine. But the thing that really makes me radiate with true joy

is that once we reach 500 subscribers, we have a goal where we will record an audio commentary for Cars 2 and Time Travel Mater so we can figure out once and for all. If and how cars drink water. And I want to do it so bad. I didn't know about this idea. I mean, I still have never, I've not seen this. I still not seen it.

Fresh for you? Fresh for me. I never seen me either. I'm not a baby. I never seen cars too. After you asked me if I would watch Cars 2 for the Patreon, I was like, now I can never see it in my normal life. No, we can't.

We can't watch it. Or time travel later. If you want to join the show Tangents, Patreon community, get lots of good parks and help us reach this very lofty and important goal. Check out patreon.com slash SciShowTangents. Or to search SciShowTangents Patreon on Google. Welcome back, everybody. It's time for the fact off. Our panelists have brought in science facts to present to me in an attempt to blow my mind. And after they have presented all their facts, I will judge them and award Hank Bucks any way I see fit. And to decide

who goes first. I have a trivia question for you. The Milky Way galaxy is thought to have trillions of planets. To date, we've confirmed over 4,000, and we have another 5,000-plus candidates waiting to be confirmed. Out of trillions, that doesn't seem like much, but we haven't been able to seriously search for very long. The first exoplanets discovered and confirmed were two rocky planets orbiting a pulsar in the Virgo constellation. They were found in January of what year? Okay. Howell tank. So it can't be older than that. How old is, how old is Hank, Sam?

You've got to be 40, right? 40, I think. 40 is the correct answer. Was the 80s 40 years ago? Yeah, 81. Okay, okay. Now we're getting somewhere. I will say,

1985. I'm going to say 1992. Because that is the correct answer, and you knew that. You knew it, didn't you? I'm pretty sure that you just knew that. Yeah, I did. You made it look like you didn't know,

but I knew you knew it. You did the math on your fingers. with me. She knew the whole time. It was a bonding experience, Sam. We had to, like, bring the listeners along with our learning journey. That's what it was. That's science expert, Sari Riley, right there.

Coming in for the kill. I'll go first. So Sam has time to recollect himself. In October 2017, there were a bunch of spacey articles with titles like, Hubble observes exoplanet that snows sunscreen, about the exoplanet Kepler 13A.B. And I guess I'm going to, well, actually, NASA and Popular Mechanics and the Eureka Alert press release because it's not that chemically simple.

It's a much weirder story. So Kepler 13AB is called a hot Jupiter because it's a gas giant exoplanet, and it's actually one of the hottest known exoplanets, partially because it orbits so close to its parent star. And it's tidily locked, so there's one light side and one dark side, and this will be important. Astronomers think there's a compound in the atmosphere of hot Jupiter's called Titanium 2 oxide, or TIO, which is one atom of titanium bonded to one atom of oxygen. As a gas, it absorbs light from the star and radiates it as heat, making the atmosphere warm and toasty.

And Kepler 13A.B is quite weird because strong winds push this titanium oxide gas around, and on the dark side, it condenses into clouds and crystal flakes like titanium oxide snow instead of water snow. And then the exceptionally strong surface gravity of the exoplanet makes the snow fall towards the surface. And because of this titanium oxide snow falling, there's less gas absorbing light and radiating heat in the upper atmosphere. So it's cooler and higher altitudes, which is the opposite from other exoplanets like this. And this is what the 2017 paper was studying, a weird atmospheric pattern. Now, titanium 2 oxide sounds a whole lot like the chemical titanium 4 oxide, also called titanium dioxide or TIO2, which is one atom of titanium bonded to two atoms of oxygen. And that's found a lot on Earth.

It's everywhere from white paint called titanium white to sunscreen because titanium dioxide's chemical structure makes it really good at scattering UVA and UVB rays, so it's reflective and bright and protects our DNA. And as far as I can tell, it does not radiate heat. So mixing up those two chemical names is the source of confusion in those headlines saying, wow, sunscreen is falling like snow. Wow. And unlike titanium dioxide, which is in sunscreen, titanium oxide on exoplanes.

that warms their atmospheres is rarely found or made on Earth. So Kepler 13A.B, in my opinion, doesn't really have sunscreen snow. It's more like little hot rocks falling out of the sky, leaving atmospheric cold spots in their wake, which in some way seems cooler, no pun intended to me. Could we do this and would it be useful to us? There is a hypothesized experiment saying we should shoot titanium dioxide nanoparticles into Earth's atmosphere to counteract global warming in the greenhouse effect. Why not?

I mean, is there that much titanium dioxide around? There's a lot of it naturally. Huh. Because I usually, like, you hear titanium and you're like, ah, titanium, that's expensive. Yeah, but titanium dioxide, it's in like everything. It's like a food additive. It's in paint. It's in whatever else I said, sunscreen.

Titanium is the ninth most common element in the Earth's crust. It's got a great marketing department because it does. Yeah, I mean, it's just a good name. Titanium. So did you identify this inconsistency on your own, Sari? You're just like, why you keep saying that? That's a different thing. Yes, yeah.

It was weird because in the press release and within all the articles, they said it was, like, titanium dioxide was found in the atmosphere. And then I went to the paper, and it was, there was no dye oxide anywhere. It was all T-I-O. And then I looked at the, like, the pub bed or whatever, the pub-chem articles about. the two compounds. And I was like, no, these are different things. They, like, don't overlap in any way. And so it was very weird because at first I was like, oh, I'll talk about sunscreen snow.

And then as I was researching, I was like, I'm going to talk about how everyone was wrong about sunscreen snow. Perfect. Well, actually. Sam, it's time for you to take it on. So one of the first questions that jumps into people's minds when a new exoplanet is discovered is, could there be life on it? And since we know that life exists on Earth, we came up with the Earth similarity index by which we measure how similar to Earth an exoplanet is, and by extension, how likely it is to have life as we know on it.

So the ESI is an equation that looks at a planet's radius and density. I think because if a planet is too big, it would squish us. Is that why? Like, is gravity would squish us? Yeah. Okay. It's escape velocity, so we know that it won't just go flying off away from its sun, I suppose, at some point.

I think that that's probably the escape velocity of the planet, which would just be a metric for like gravity at surface level. Oh, okay. So they're not worried that we're going to land somewhere and then it'll get flung off into the universe. No, probably not. Okay. Well, that makes more sense.

And temperature, because humans are sensitive and they need a nice place to live if we're going to go take over this planet. So the equation spits out a number from zero to one of a planet's earthness and the closer to one it is, the more Earth like a planet is. So Mars's ESI is 0.55, for example, right now. I guess because there are a lot of good things going on for it, like size is okay, but it's a barren hellscape otherwise. So it's only half as good as Earth. So if a planet's not in our solar system, pretty much all we can figure out by looking at them is how long it takes to orbit their star

and possibly how big they are because of how much they move the star they're orbiting or how much light they block when it passes in front of the star. So most other measurements, from what I could tell, were purely speculative, especially temperature, which I think scientists are just sort of like could be like this based on how far away and what kind of star it's around. Nevertheless, there are plenty of lists of hypothetically habitable planets floating around on the internet

that humans could either escape to or find life on. Unfortunately, many of them are thousands of light years away. But in April 2007, scientists at an observatory in Chile found Glyis 581C, a mere 20.4 light years away from Earth.

And on top of that, it seems to check off off all of the right Earth similarity index boxes. It appeared to be the perfect distance from its star. It wasn't too much bigger than Earth. And its average temperature, if it had an Earth-like climate, was estimated to be around 104 degrees. Fahrenheit?

Well, yeah, 104 degrees Fahrenheit. A little steamy, but it's okay. That's fine. Yeah, and that's, you know, within the realm of possible. Yeah. It's not 104 degrees Celsius. No, no, just Fahrenheit. I don't know Celsius, so I won't say that one.

It was calculated at the time to have an ESI of 0.92, which was, if not the highest number ever reported, among the highest ever reported. Another exciting thing happening in 2007 was social media. So Twitter was founded just the year before, and there were lots of social media sites popping up that don't exist anymore, like Bebo, which was a blogging platform owned by AOL, the name of which was an acronym for a blog early, blog often. So social media was really new and exciting. and the market was super crowded, so sites were always finding opportunities to get their names out. And news about a potentially habitable planet not too far from Earth was just the right kind of opportunity for a marketing scheme. So in the interest of fostering interstellar friendship and brand awareness, Bebo ran a competition called A Message from Earth, where users could vote on

image and tech submissions to Bebo, and the top 500 would be beamed from a radar telescope in the Ukraine to Glease 581C. So I couldn't find a complete. list of the submissions that we sent, but some of them were pictures of someone getting their first kiss, messages from various politicians, and a shout-out from the British boy band McFly, which I've never heard of, but we're a big deal in 2007, I guess. The winning messages were shot in the space in October of 2008 and are expected to arrive in mid-2020. So it's possible that in 2049, a bunch of aliens will show up and they'll be ready to see McFly live in concert, except That's not very likely because by November of 2007, which was just months after Gliase 5-81 was discovered, its livability had already been basically disproven.

The main strike against it was that there was a new model that showed that its temperature was more like 800 degrees than 104 degrees. But that didn't stop Bibo. So they sent the message anyway. But since then, we found other planets in the same system, two other planets specifically, that could be habitable. and they're much more likely to be habitable. And luckily for us, the Australian government already shot a bunch of tweets at one of them in 2009. So when those aliens show up in 2050,

they will want to meet Balloon Boy and David After Dentist. Oh, God. And they'll be like, how's Bebo doing? I just love the concept that all aliens will have this totally outdated idea of what we are into. And they'll seem so lame when they get to us. Well, and they're not going to like zoom here at the speed of light.

probably. They'll just send us a little message and be like, oh, here's our newfangled social media platform that's going to be bankrupt in two years. Yeah. Send to McFly albums, please. We love it. If we got a song, just one song from another solar system. That would kick ass. It'd be such a banger. God, I hope it would be good. What if it sucked? What if we got the one song that sucked and then we went to that planet and we were like, this song kicks ass? And they were like, that song? Come on. That's how it would go down. Oh, man, that's cool. And it's, it's, the German is Gleisa.

I don't know how we say it. I'll go back through it and it'll be like, Gleesa. I'll just put that in. Every time. Gosh, I was so ready to give Sari the points, but then weird marketing got involved. I'm still, I'm still going to, I'm still a Sari point. I'm going to give five points to Sam and six points to Sari. Yes.

So that means Sari is coming out on top with eight points to Sari. Sam's 7, and it's time to ask the science couch. We've got a listener question for our couch, virtual couch, or finally honed scientific minds. It's from at Emily, Janet 6, and at Andrew Tops. They ask, how do people create those artist renderings of what we think exoplanets look like? What information are those things based on?

So Sam went over a little bit of it. Like, you know if it's rocky, you know it's density. You can figure out its density. You can figure out how big it is. you can figure out some things about its atmosphere depending on how you're detecting it. And like you're going to make guesses at how hot or cold it is.

And so by, with that information, you can know a little bit about what the surface looks like. Do you get atmosphere stuff by looking at how the light is going through like the atmosphere of it if there is one? Yeah. So if it passes through,

if it passes like in front of a star, that's how we detect a lot of exoplanets. Like they pass in front of their star and the like the brightness from the star dips. But you can see dips not just an overall brightness, but in different wavelengths. And based on the dips and those wavelengths, you can be like, ah, it's not just blocking light. At the edges, it's blocking certain wavelengths of light. And those are wavelengths that are blocked by carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide or methane or

whatever. And then you can link those pieces of information together to find other things. So, like, if you know what's in the atmosphere and you know what temperatures on the surface, you can guess whether that's going to be in gaseous phase or liquid phase or solid phase, kind of like I was describing with, like, the titanium oxide snow. It was like, the dark side is cold enough that it will condense. And so you hypothesize what the weather is like based on what you know about weather on planets and moons and other things that we can observe. And that's a big part of it, too, is like taking a look at objects we do know about and can see or can image pretty directly. and then applying those characteristics to exoplanets because it's kind of like I don't want to reduce paleo art, but my understanding of it is, like, we know what reptiles and birds look

like nowadays, and so you can take those characteristics and extrapolate them to dinosaurs. So you can look at Jupiter's moon, I.O., which is its volcanic moon, and it's like lava and volcanic terrain, and they found that Trappist 1B, the exoplanet, was also kind of. kind of like reddish and lava-e. And so they were like, well, let's just make it look a little bit like Io. Let's, let's render some surface characteristics that look similar. What's interesting is it seems to be like this is two guys niche in science and art, which is quite fun.

There is a visualization scientist named Robert Hurt and a producer named Tim Pyle, who has a background in Hollywood special effects. And they've been working together for at least 12 years now. And so, like, have been putting their skills together, I guess, like, with 1992 being the first exoplanet, as we're finding more systems, they're, like, the go-to guys to help draw them. And then they kind of bounce off each other of, like, using visualization software and then checking scientific knowledge. What is interesting, I read a few articles that interviewed them about various things. like the Trappist system or a Kepler planet, Kepler 186F. And they seem very concerned about making things seem less Earth-like.

So they like learn that a planet may have liquid oceans and like land masses and things like that. And then they have a conversation of like, well, this is probably going to show up in a scientific article with like NASA found another Earth. And so they don't want to mislead people and they like want to make it enticing but not. too enticing, like, that just looks like Earth. And so then they do it in a scientifically accurate way, but look at like the light spectrum or something and say, well, if there was vegetative life, it would be orange instead of green. So we're going to tint the landmass is orange so that when people look at this, it's going to be like a weird proportion of land and water and kind of orange-y so people don't look at it and are like, why don't we just go there

to Earth, too? If you want to ask the science couch your questions, follow us on Twitter at Syshow Tangents, where we'll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes every week. Thank you to at SunGamer 101 and at Jim Jam James and everybody else who tweeted us your questions this episode. You can go to patreon.com slash show tangents to learn more. That's right. We have a Patreon. Patreon.com slash show tangents. We would really love your support. We want to keep making this podcast. We also will make extra podcasts for our Patreon patrons. So if you like this show and you want to help us out, the biggest thing you can do is become a supporter of ours on Patreon. Of course, you can also tweet about your favorite moments from the episode. You can leave a

a review wherever you listen. And also, of course, if you like SciShow Tangents, just tell people about us. Thank you for joining us. I've been Hank Green. I've been Sarah Riley. And I've been Sam Schultz. SciShow Tangents is created by All of Us and produced by Caitlin Hofmeister and Sam Schultz, who also edits a lot of these episodes along with Heroka Matsushima. Our social media organizer is Paola Garcia Prieto. Our editorial assistant is Dubuki Chalkervardi. Our sound design is by Joseph Tuna Medish 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 2016, NASA proposed a contest called the Space Poop Challenge asking for proposals for an insuit design that could collect human waste for up to six days in case like your spaceship explodes and you're just, floating around out there. You don't have to hold in your poop. The first place winner was Dr. Thatcher Cardin, who designed what is basically a poop airlock that you can open and close when you're ready to release your stored up ducky. It's like a, it's like a little plug on the crotch of your suit and you pull it off and then the poop like sucks itself out, I think. How does the poop get in there? You poop it in there. So you just poop whenever you want, kind of like a diaper? You poop and it sucks it up into this airlock is what I'm pretty sure is happening. Then you open the airlock and then it sucks out into space from there.

I just hold it in. Booping in space seems like the ultimate nightmare. There's a lot of enthusiasm around space stuff right now. And it's just all, there's, they're trying to build a space hotel. And I'm like, man, you guys are going to have to deal with a lot of dookie. Yeah. I guess you've got to have good vomit capturing devices as well. Oh, yeah. The moment people get up there, it's not like these are astronauts. No. They're just rich people. They're going to be pukers. Hello, and welcome to SIEGEL TURAN, Hello and welcome to Size Show Tangents, the lightly competitive knowledge showcase.

I'm your host, Hank Green, and joining me this week as always is science expert, Sari Riley. Hello. And our resident everyman, Sam Schultz. Hello. You guys, I was just out of the grocery store. And by complete chance, I noticed when I went to go get a Coke, there was a Coke that said on it, Coke, Starlight. Coca-Cola Starlight. And on the bottom, it said space-flavored.

And I'm like, I'm about to go, I'm about to go record a science podcast. I haven't heard about this. Space, science, this, it's going to be a spacey episode in general. I have to get this space-flavored Coca-Cola. I tried to read the press release that Coca-Cola, of course, put out about this. And they said nothing about why it was space-flavored. They were like, we worked very hard on this. We gave so much freedom to our creative flavor teams.

They were able to work without constraints in a non-linear fashion to make whatever it was that this is. I don't, but at no point was it like, here's why it's space flavored. Like, space has these compounds that are aromatic and they smell like this. And so maybe if you concentrated space, it would taste like this Coke. But I would like to know what you think this space Coke is going to taste like, and then I'm going to taste it. Oh. And you will notice, you will notice that it's like half drank already. But I wasn't paying attention for the first three or four six.

I was just very thirsty. I was having a spicy chicken stick, and so there's no tasting happened. I drank it, but I didn't taste it yet. The problem is, is any flavor I can think of for space is gross. It's like dust, or is it metallic? I don't think either of those things are marketable enough that Coke would do this much of a push. No, they wanted to taste good for sure. Yeah.

You'll notice it's also like red. I don't know if that helps. Yeah. It's like a dark red instead of brown. I feel like, so there is also at the grocery store, but a while ago, at the grocery store in Missoula, where there's the shelf of discarded the lost toys shelf. Man, there's nothing I love more than that. Shelf at the food farm with a bunch of things that nobody else wanted. I miss it so much.

Just one end cap of complete, just unhinged food ideas. Correct. So on that shelf, at one point, there were polar seltzer for kids. Unicorn Kisses flavor. And unicorn kisses, polar seltzer, if I remember correctly, tasted kind of like cotton candy, like they just dump sugar, sugar fruit into it. And so I imagine I could see that all those images of space looking like cotton candy. So my guess is that. this space Coke tastes like unicorn kisses, which tastes like cat and candy. Samuel Schultz. Hank, I got some sore news for you, brother. I've had like five bottles. You're addicted to the flavor space.

I hadn't bought a bottle of Coke for years. Yeah, we talked about this. This stuff's my shit. I love it. Wow. Yeah. So I can't weigh in because I know exactly. I'm all too familiar with how it takes.

Wow. You just keep going back for more? Yeah. You're going to say, you're going to drink it and go, oh, I don't like it. But that's not going to stop me. I really, I deeply doubt it. I've looked at the ingredients and it's got all the stuff I like the most. I fruct those corn syrup. Yep. Uh-huh. That's basically it. Artificial flavors. Maybe a natural flavors thrown in there. Who knows? Yeah, they got natural flavors. They got fruit and vegetable juice for color. They got That's it. It's not a very long list.

No. I will say. It's good for you. Let's, it's good for you. Oh, the cap wasn't on. So I didn't get the noise. Oh, well. Shh.

Psh. Tuna mix all three of those together. It'll sound just like a cook. It smells like cherry coke is what it smells like to me. But not quite. You know, a little less cherry cook, but a little less. oh yeah that's delicious it certainly got a sweetness that is reminiscent of cotton candy it's got a little bit of that caramelized flavor that is kind of cotton candy you know i don't know

what they do to cotton candy to make a cotton candy but it's got like a caramel feel sorry wasn't too far off there's a little bit of maybe a raspberry to it uh-huh uh and it has kind of like almost like a minty minthali finish i said i would say it does yeah i hadn't noticed that until you said it it's got a little bit of a cool. It's got a little bit of a physically cool. Like you have ice cube in your mouth or something. Oh, yeah, you're right. And you can just imagine yourself.

Floating in space in a nebula, but you're alive, you're not dead. You're just floating in stardust. And you just breathe it in and it tastes like that. Yeah. Coca-Cola, congratulations. I looked and I saw that you did a brand deal with some pop star. And I got to say, I am available. I'm a space guy.

You have a channel called, Spachio. Yeah. You could have worked with an astronaut. You could have worked with me. You could have worked with probably CGP Gray. I don't know. Kurtz Kazat. All those people, but congratulations to the people at Coca-Cola for making new and interesting things happen to people's mouths. Yeah. Thank you, Coke. It's the longest we've ever talked about anything on this show ever. That was a really cheap brandy. Holy crap. All right. Every week here on Tensions, we get together to try to one-up amaze and delight each other with science facts while also trying to stay on topic. Our panelists are playing for glory and for Hank Bucks, which I will be awarding as we play.

At the end of the episode, one of them will be the winner. Now, as always, we introduced this week's topic with the traditional science poem. This week, it's from Sam. It was a pleasant day in primordial spring, though to the asteroid. That didn't mean a thing. The mass extinction that ended dinosaurs reign from a cosmic perspective was somewhat mundane. See, physics had forecast this fateful meeting in the earliest days of the millennia preceding. A star system formed, just like many before, with the usual planets and a sun at the core,

when planet exploded in asteroid belt forms. This is all very common, well within the norm. A rocks jostled loose, breaks gravity's hold, and its date what the planet Earth was foretold. And through trajectory, inertia, and a little bad luck, Earth had no choice except to be struck. To have its crust scarred, to lose most. its inhabitants. That's just how it happens, not on purpose or accident. It was a pleasant day in primordial spring, though to the asteroid that didn't mean a thing. Sam, that was beautiful. I went into a few states. I feel like you worked really hard on that one. Yeah, that felt like

librarian Sam or like Professor Sam came out. It was like, hello, let me teach you about asteroids. You're so red right now, like you're embarrassed that your poem was good. I am embarrassed because you're both looking at me, as you always are. Yeah, I have this big shit eating grin because it was just good. You use so many big words. I was like, wow, poetry. Yeah. There was a lot of things I didn't expect, but then they one of my favorite things is when you don't, you're like, where's this going to go? And then it's like, ah, there. That's probably, well worked well.

It's not like, uh, it's not like Sam when you sometimes is like, I'm going to make this rhyme. Now, wait a minute. It doesn't. You could just say nice things to me for once in your life. I love all your poems, Sam. The topic of today's episode is asteroids, which are sari. You know, the more I read about them, the more I realized. The fuzzier the line got. Yeah, that was my experience, too.

It seems like we started out knowing what they were. As with many things in science, we were like, ah, a new thing, a rock in space. That's not so small, and it's not so big. I'm going to name that after hemorrhoids. I'm going to name after stars plus. Yeah, star hemorrhoids. Is that real? No, it's not for hemorrhoids.

Oid, but it's to know or to see. That is oid. So a hemorrhoid is just like a blood thing. Yeah. Yes. That's not great. Like that. But yes, it's from like a star thing, like stir, like asterisk or.

asteroid or astronaut or any of the astros is in there. The general discovery of asteroids, the first one was series, which is Hugh Mungo, one of the big boys in the asteroid belt. And the second one to be discovered was Palace. They were discovered in 1801 and 1802. And as astronomers and science-y, rich white dudes in Europe were debating. what to call them. A lot of words got thrown out, including planarette, planetel.

Love it. Planet tool. Planet kin, which is a little weird. That's cute. Planetling. Okay. I like these. But then William Herschel, I don't, some astronomer, one of the astronomers, was like,

I do not want to confuse asteroids with planets. Great debate of the sky. They're so small. They're so rocky. They haven't earned it. They haven't, yeah, they haven't earned the planet title. And so he was like, well, if you look at them through a telescope, they're kind of like bright points of light, kind of like a star. So I'm going to call them asteroids because they're star-like.

Yes, you found the one thing that they're less like than planets. And I think according to this article that I was reading, I didn't have time or the desire to read two books about the nomenclature of asteroid. But there was a nice article that summarized the, the, the best. and forth argument. But apparently he felt like we'll just come up with something better in the future. Little did he know how lazy we are. I think Planet Ling would have been dope and we maybe should have done that. But it's done and we can't win that fight now. Yeah, to reprint so many books. Is there a thing that is an asteroid and a thing that is a comet and like a sharp line between them? Is it like where they are in the solar system or is it what they're made out of or

etc. Both. It's not a sharp line though. It's more like we started naming some things asteroids and comets and thought there was a hard line and then that line has become blurrier and blurrier as we found more things. Of course. This is what happened with the butt. Yeah. Yeah. It's what happened with literally anything in science. Words are just approximate descriptors. So if you have rocky stuff in space on the on the tiny end is your meteoroid, which is just like a, relatively small object. You can hold it in your hand somewhere between the size of a grain of dust and like a small asteroid. Like a small asteroid like a like a watermelon? Like a, yeah, I think like a watermelon. My house. Like a watermelon or a couple meters, somewhere between a watermelon

and a yardstick. Well, I'll tell you, I don't think I could pick up an asteroid that was that was a meter long. Yeah. But that's where it starts becoming an asteroid. But then asteroid, the other end of asteroid is around the size of series or Vesta, which are 530 kilometers in diameter, which is like... That's big. Big. Like, starting to get nowhere near the size of our moon, but still like a big rock. You could walk on it and have a good time.

You could jump and you might come back down. Yeah. And then you get to nebulous rocks that are dwarf planets and planets that are just bigger than that. But what distinguishes a dwarf planet versus a planet is how it's cleared the area around it. But you become a dwarf planet when you're like big enough to make yourself into a sphere. Yes. Yeah.

And so there are, so series, for example, the asteroid I keep bringing up because it was the first one discovered, is also a dwarf planet. It is in the asteroid belt. But it's also an asteroid. But it's also an asteroid. And then just to flesh out the definition, so a comet as opposed to an asteroid, an asteroid is mostly made of of like rock or metal, whereas a comet is mostly made of ice and like very tiny dust particles. And that's what gives it its tail effect is the water vaporizing or the dust trailing out behind it. I guess I'm surprised in some ways, but not super surprised in other ways that it took so long to find one of these.

But did we know that there were like rocks zipping around up there before we actually laid eyes on one? Or were we like, what the heck? Because they were landing on us, right? We just hadn't thought about where they were before they were here or something. Yes, and no. I think when people discovered, or from my research, when people found meteoric iron on the earth. So like before we smelted iron, the main metal tools used by human civilizations were meteoric iron that they found and then honed or crafted in some way, which is very cool. It's so epic.

Yeah. It's so epic. It's like, are you like, like, what's, what is that? Oh, you know, just a thing that, like, doesn't exist on the planet. Mm-hmm. Landed here. Just came down from the sky. We're like, I can't believe people thought of all the things.

They thought, do, can you not believe it? What a strange universe. The only way to make a, to make a metal knife was stuff falling out of the sky. Mm-hmm. And so I think there was some acknowledgement that those things fell from the sky and were like weird, but I don't know where the mythology

crossed over into the scientific of there are other rocks up there and that these small chunks of metal came off of bigger rocks called asteroids. The observations of the first asteroids in European cultures were when we had already started tracking the movements of planets and stars in the sky,

or like the relatively static positions of stars in the sky compared to planets, then they would image the sky over and over again and find things that were moving in patterns, unlike planets and unlike stars. And they were like, oh, this is a third thing. This is a rock in the sky. So I imagine anyone who was doing that kind of astronomical measurement also realized that there were more things. things in the sky. I just don't know in what ways it was recorded in history and in what ways that has been passed down knowledge-wise in a way that we can capture on this podcast. Like,

I don't know. Who would have found asteroids beforehand? And, like, there's probably a lot of, like, oral histories that include rocks from space, but I don't know them. Yeah. And also, what is space? Yeah. Like, it took us a long time to figure out what that space is. That space is was yeah that it was well i think that makes me feel like i have a general idea of what an asteroid isn't is not and also that all of course we're just making up words for stuff and now we also have the etymology of hemorrhoids which turns out is not grand and that is that it's time to move on to the quiz portion of our show this week we're going to be playing an asteroids through their face people have been looking to the skies for ages discovering stars and discovering planets and

process asteroids. Surely they have been driven by noble pursuits like understanding the fundamental truths of the universe. But at the end of the day, even scientists are human and are complicated, nuanced creatures, which means their motivations can be tinged by pettier needs like vanity and competition. The following are three stories of the very human pursuit of asteroids. Only one of them is true. Which one is it? Sounds like someone's going to have sex with an asteroid in this? Is that what's happening? No. Okay. No, you know, you'll get, you'll understand.

Fact number one, in the 19th century, a team of astronomers banded together into a group that they called the celestial police, because they were on the hunt for what they believed was a missing planet between Mars and Jupiter. But they did not find that planet, but they did discover Vesta, the brightest asteroid in the asteroid belt. I love that, the celestial police. Or it could be fact number two. In the 1970s, an astronomer had been following the trajectory of an asteroid for months when one night they realized that they could no longer see the asteroid because a competing astronomer had sabotaged their telescope. But in the process of repairing the telescope and retracing their measurements, the

astronomer discovered a set of asteroids whose orbits would cross with the Earth. Or it could be fact number three. Asteroids sometimes take on strange shapes like the dog bone-shaped Cleopold. Patra. In 2013, a group of astronomers at JPL decided to create an office pool to see who could find a stranger asteroid than that. And the winner was 2014 RC, which won not because it looked strange, but because it is one of the fastest rotating asteroids ever discovered. So is it the celestial police, the starry scientific sabotage, or the office pool discovery? What year was the police one?

It was the 19th century. Are they using the word police back then? Where that word comes from? I'm pretty sure that the word was around. I mean, that makes sense because a lot of people throughout history and even nowadays are like, is in the asteroid belt another planet that just broke apart like a secret planet. And so that's like been a longstanding guess or wonderment about the universe. And so I can totally imagine scientists going for that too and being like, I'm going. going to find the planet first, and then finding something else instead.

Sounds like Hank that of a fun word and wrote a fact around it to me. Is sabotage actually pretty common? Or was pretty common? There's definitely stories of scientific sabotage. There was a long period of constant sabotage in paleontology, where it was really a sort of ego game for a long time. That's sort of like where it's most famous. Rock people are a little reference. tumble. I feel like that's, that's how they're portrayed in the scientific community.

Yes. Yeah. I feel like people try and sabotage each other all the time. And especially with asteroids, when we were first discovering them, people were like, ah, got to name them. I want to name them cool things. And I know there's a period of time where people named asteroids just for fun. Like, one's named Mr. Spock after not Star Trek, but like, indirectly because it's someone's cat was named Mr. Spock. And so they named the asteroid after their cat, which is named after Star Trek. And so I can totally see someone being like, okay, I'm on the track. I'm going to name this after my wife or something like that.

I'm going to name this cool rock. And then someone else sabotage is their telescope. I really like the office pool one. And here's why. Because it feels like they thought of this idea. And they were like, well, it's fine. Weird meteors. And then after a few weeks, they were like, this is kind of boring.

but I guess somebody has to win so we'll just make up some other reason that's this person won because I'm tired of I'm tired of this I don't want to be doing this anymore yeah we've looked at so many they're mostly just shaped but you know this one's fast

so I guess you win so I'm going with that one so what are you going to go with Sarie I'm going to go with the first one I'm going to start with the Starry scientific sabotage because Sarah that one was fake but you got like remarkably

close to the reality No. By accident. So the sabotage completely made up. Wouldn't be surprised if it happened, but as far as I can tell, the thing like that didn't happen. But this was inspired by the Aten Asteroids, which are a group of asteroids whose orbits intersect with Earth's orbit. And the first one was discovered in the 70s by Eleanor Henlin, an astronomer at JPL, who discovered lots of asteroids and minor planets. And in 1991, Star Trek debuted a ship named the USS Henlin on Star Trek 6, the undiscovered country. So you were right. There was a Star Trek. check connection. I don't know how you knew that, but you did. As for the office pool discovery, 2014 RC is a small asteroid that flew close to the Earth in 2014, and astronomers measured that the asteroid rotated every 15.8 seconds, making it one of the fastest rotating asteroids ever measured, but there was not, as far as I could tell, any bet involved. And so the answer is indeed the celestial police. So at the end of the 18th and 19th centuries, astronomers were super fascinated by this mathematical law. I don't know how it's pronounced, Titius Bodes

law, which is a theory that predicted the spacing between the planets and that William Herschel used to discover the planet Uranus. And it also, this law predicted that there was a missing planet somewhere between Mars and Jupiter. So astronomers were very excited to find it and be the first ones to find it. And that included the celestial police, a group of astronomers from across Europe who gathered at an observatory in Germany in pursuit of this planet. That turned out to not exist. In 1801, Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi appeared to beat them, finding what astronomers at the time thought was a small planet that Piazzi named Ceres. The Celestial Police decided to keep looking, and two of their members, Harding and

Olbers discovered more small little planets in the same area. That includes the Olber's discovery of Vesta, which is so bright that it can sometimes be seen with the naked eye. was it just a fluke that it was right about uranus no no no no um and in fact like the it the planet that it predicted was kind of the asteroid belt so like this collection of objects that just didn't for lots of complicated reasons stick together so titius nailed it he nailed it a titius bowed and there were other planets

too small to be predicted by this law and olbers hypothesized that these minor planets were actually fragments of a planet that had been blasted apart by a comet. They were more likely a planet that was never able to form due to Jupiter's gravity. Eventually, Herschel would coin the word asteroid itself to describe these things and astronomers would begin looking for them all over the place. And we are still discovering them today. And they thought of a fun little name for themselves too. You know, I'd like to be a member of a secret society.

Like, I just wanted tattoo that somebody like can look at and be like, oh, you too? me too you get 20% off your frozen yogurt here because you got that tattoo yes this is what this is what I want I want it to be mostly in a less expensive uh donuts yeah next up we're going to take a short break then it will be time for the fact off All right, everybody, it's time to get ready for the fact off. Our panelists have brought science facts to present to me in an attempt to blow my mind. And after they have presented their facts, I will judge which one is going to be the best TikTok and reward it points. But to decide who goes first, I have a trivia question.

On August 16th, 2020, an asteroid, now known as 2020 QG, flew by the Earth. The asteroid was somewhere between 10 and 20 feet in diameter, and it flew over the Pacific Ocean. But what is most striking about 2020 QG is that it flew so close to Earth that at least as of 2020, it was the closest we've ever seen an asteroid come to Earth without actually hitting it. So at its closest point, how far was this asteroid from Earth? Okay. I feel like it wasn't close enough for me to have heard about it because I didn't. If it was like 10 feet. It's not that big.

It flew just over your head and then decided not to go there. I'm going to guess. Oh, I forget how far away the moon is. Isn't it like hundreds of thousands of miles away? I'm like pretending I can do math to get it. I can't. 5,000 kilometers. You're going to say 5,000 kilometers?

Yeah, that's my guess. All right. So it says 5,000 kilometers. Can I say miles? Yeah. Okay. It's 28 miles. Oh, man.

Oh, God. It's a bird. It's a plane. That's not in space. That's in the atmosphere. Well, maybe it could have been in the atmosphere. Yeah, I guess. Probably would have slowed down and hit the planet eventually.

It was around 3,000 kilometers, which is around 2,000 miles up. Ah, shoot. That's really far away. It's very, very close. Yeah. And really far away. This is very much the thing with space. It's always like, it's very, very big.

and also very, very small. And it's very close and very far away, and it's very empty and very full. And that's space for you. Sari, you get to decide who goes first. I'll go first. So ancient Egyptian jewelry is filled with some stunning gems from the blues of turquoise and lapis lazuli

to the reds of garnet and jaspers. But one scarab on a necklace from Tutankham's tomb stands out. It's a translucent yellowy, green glass. And when researchers tested the jewel in the late 1990s, they found that it was much older than any Egyptian civilization. That means that it was collected in some way rather than forged by humans. And it turns out that geologists had been investigating these weird, glassy rocks scattered throughout part of the Sahara Desert around Egypt and Libya since the 1930s. Scientists called these rocks Libyan Desert Glass and now believed they formed around 29 million

years ago, but the way they formed is still kind of a mystery. Many think that it's an impact type, which is a category of metamorphic rock that forms because of the heat and pressure from the impact of a rock falling from space, an asteroid crashing down. So the two major hypotheses are either that an asteroid crashed into the sand and made a crater and a bunch of glassy rock chunks that have scattered over time, or that there was a huge explosion in the atmosphere, kind of like the Tengasca event or the Chelyabinx event. that melted the rocks on the surface of the earth below. And on the one hand, mineral analyses of these desert glass rocks,

like the different structural elements or the chemical composition, are pointing towards the asteroid crash hypothesis. But the big thing we still haven't found is a crater in the Sahara Desert. And other places on Earth that have glassy impact types, like Darwin glass in Australia or Atacama Desert Glass in Chile, have clear craters or mediums. right chunks associated with them. And on the other hand, researchers who publish a 2013 paper found a, quote, angular black, shiny,

extremely hard, and intensely fractured, end quote, rock in the Libyan desert that they called the Hypatia stone. And they think it's part of an asteroid that exploded in the atmosphere and then fell to the ground in little weird scraps rather than smashing into the sand. So people are going to be arguing, they've been arguing for a century and the jury is still out. an asteroid was probably involved in some way, but it might take a while for us to keep piecing together the scraps of geological evidence to figure out

how this cool yellow-green desert glass formed. Is it too sandy for a crater to form? I think there would still be impacts below the sand. Like you'd be able to tell geologically. Look into it, scientists. Okay. My thought was, it got covered up by sand. Yeah.

It's very, sand moves around. just like some sand blew over it but like I also not a rock person and so I'm sure that someone's thought of that well I don't know if they hadn't our names get to be in the paper if we're if they're right right yeah my name is Hank Green and I have a podcast listen to my theories have you considered that sand moves oh I see okay so it's the whole it's not like it's actually carved out of this glass I got to say it looks delicious. I want to eat that scary.

What do you think it would taste like? Lemon, candy, come on. No, juicy pear. Oh. I think, yeah, I think you're taste. It's like a juicy pear jelly belly. The gummy bear, the white gummy bear, whatever flavor that is. I mean, also this is this piece of jewelry is just gorgeous.

And I love the idea that they just like somebody found a piece of glass and was like, I got to give this to the queen. You know who's going to like this? He's going to like this. He's going to love. Love this shit. This kid's going to love a shiny rock. Libyan Desert Glass. Very cool.

Sam, what you got? Hey, I have a similar story, but more sad. Deep Impact, Armageddon, don't look up. Hollywood loves to fantasize about the destruction of Earth or at the very least society via an asteroid. And it's a concept that seems pretty well relegated to the world of blockbusters to us. But is it? An indigenous culture dubbed the Hope Well inhabited a lot of the middle of North America. centered in the Ohio River Valley area from around 200 BCE to around 500 CE, and they have quite a legacy to this day.

The Hopewell people are known for their elaborate earthwork burial mounds, irrigation systems, and religious monuments, which are some of the largest like earthwork structures in the world or maybe the largest, as well as their metalworking and extensive trade networks. And DNA analysis shows that several different indigenous nations are descended from the Hopal people. But there is a bit of a mystery surrounding the end of Hopewell Society. By the late 400s, according to archaeological findings, their culture had declined significantly, and there's never really been a good explanation for why that is. But in February 2020, a group of researchers proposed an answer to this mystery straight from a disaster movie. A massive asteroid exploded in the upper atmosphere, causing repercussions that destabilized the Hopewell way of life. So their largest piece of evidence is the fact that when you dig down,

down to the layer of dirt that was on the surface in 400 BC, you find a layer of charcoal. In fact, remnants of wooden structures from around that time at every Hopewell site that they looked at show evidence of being scorched. And organic samples from around that time also show evidence of being burned. And the evidence suggests that all of the burning and all of the places was happening at the same time. So, like, it could have been big wildfires, a big war, or even a volcano, except that the layer of charcoal soil also contains high.

amounts of platinum and iridium, which are both commonly found in meteors. Weird. And that jewelry and metal work that I mentioned earlier, it contains metal forged from dang meteorites. So scientists have known that the Hopewells used meteorite metal for a long time, just like everybody was using that kind of metal back then, which is, I think, what put them on this line of thinking in the first place. And on top of that, there's cultural evidence of the meteor, too.

So there's oral history from descendants of the Hopewell that include stories about the day the sun fell out of the sky, or like creatures coming from the sky and causing havoc. And a very wild detail, there's even an earthwork shrine that looks like a big meteor with a tail streaking out the back of it. And researchers say that their evidence suggests that it's both located fairly near the epicenter of the asteroid's explosion, but it's also oriented the same direction that the meteor came from. So like the tail and head of it are pointing the right way. So based on this evidence, the meteor is sought to have exploded above the earth sometime around the 400s, demolishing crops and structures in an area

thought to be around 9,200 square miles, which led to food shortages and displacement, which led to the dissolution of major population centers that the Hopewell people lived in in the Ohio River Valley. So the next time you're watching a movie where an asteroid wipes out civilization, remember that just because it hasn't happened to us doesn't mean that it hasn't happened. I mean, this is the thing. Like the Tunguska event happened. Happened in recorded history. We've got pictures of it.

So obviously it's been happening for a long time. Probably every, like, you know, it's, we've had big air blast meteors caught on dash cams, you know? It's happened in the last 10, 20 years. So it's definitely a thing that happens. And so it's definitely a thing that ancient people experienced, which is wild. Well, Sari had the point from the beginning.

Sam brought me a story of a civilization destroyed by an asteroid, but it's maybe. It's a better fact, but it's still kind of a maybe. A lot of this stuff is maybe. How many things have we said that have been maybe on this show? Come on. Oh, everything's a maybe. Yeah. If anyone comes to me asking if anything's definite, absolutely not.

There's a spectrum of maybe. though. And also like Sarah's up here like probably there was and I'm like yeah. Sarah wouldn't even say that it was an asteroid but it was we just haven't found the crater. Yeah. Because of the sand.

I think Sam wins. Sam you're the one of the episode. I was going to appeal to a higher power if you had made Sari win. Congratulations to Sam and now it's time for Ask the Science Couch where we've got some questions for our finally honed virtual couch of scientific minds. At be forget asks, why hasn't the belt between Jupiter and Mars coalesced into a planet?

We talked a little bit about that because of Jupiter or something. Yeah, well, you kind of talked about it. You said for a lot of complicated reasons, and I was like waiting for you to expound, but. No. That's it, yeah. But it'd have to be real hot and melty also. It's too late. It'll miss the boat.

Oh, they get hot and melting when they start running into each other. Yeah. But the thing is, is there isn't much stuff there. As Hank said, there's a lot of emptiness in space. And as much as sci-fi would like us to believe that the asteroid belt is like, ooh, I'm dodging a rock here. I'm squeezing in between boulders. They're so far apart.

They're like hundreds of kilometers apart. That's very disappointing. Oh, yeah. Like we send like probes through the asteroid belt and we're like, probably won't hit anything. We don't like check to see if they'll hit something. Aw, that's too bad. This is wild. Yeah.

Yeah, in order to, like, find an asteroid, all these missions to asteroids need to be very carefully calculated to, like, find them. You're not just going to run into an asteroid. And a lot of them are fairly small. There are a couple big ones. So, Ceres, Vesta, Palace, and Hygiea are, like, the four biggest asteroids in the belt and make up about half the mass of it. And so everything else is smaller.

There's a bunch of other ones, tens of thousands to millions of smaller ones. But together, the mass is less than 4% of the moon. So even if they were to coalesce, so much of the asteroid rocky matter has been ejected from the solar system or like pulled into different places and stabilized that, there isn't enough stuff to make a planet anymore. Like it would be a loose cluster of things. But the like the physicsy explanation for it, I don't know, I put that in quotes. The physics explanation for it.

I put it in quotes because I'm so unconfident in my physics abilities and I'm just waiting for people to come get me is that it has to do with Jupiter's gravity. Gravitational force is complicated. It's a lot of like pushing and pulling and any two bodies have gravitational force exerting on each other. So, like, we are exerting gravity on the Earth in the same way that the Earth is exerting gravitational force on us. Physics. And because of the interaction between Jupiter's gravity and Mars's gravity and the gravity of the asteroids and the asteroid belt, they have basically stabilized the rocks so that they don't collide with each other. So not only

are they far apart because there's not very many of them and there's not much mass, but the gravitational forces acting on the asteroid belt means that they are not in a collision course with each other and they're hovering in these pockets of stability or these orbits that are stable relative to the planets around it. You've ruined the asteroid belt for me. Yeah, it's just another boring thing now, isn't it? We can get it. We can make it into a planet. We can do it. We just have to destroy Jupiter.

Yeah. That's all, it's the only thing standing in the way of us, getting a true new rocky planet. We have to go get Jupiter. We have to tell it. It can't be here anymore. It's got to go outer solar system, leave the solar system. Jupiter, we're coming for you.

You're just going to light you on fire. You're made of hydrogen. You'll just explode, right? It'll just burn. You might have to destroy Mars, too, to get the extra rock from it to re, you could create Mars to. We'll move Mars out there. Yeah.

Get all the asteroids to come stick to it, and then we'll bring it back in. We'll put it like nearby us, so it's warmer. Super Mars. The New Planet. If you want to ask the science couch your question, you can follow us on Twitter at Syshow Tensions, where we will tweet out upcoming topics for upcoming episodes. Or you can join the Syshow Tensions, Patreon, and ask us on our Discord.

Thank you to at Afentalia, Connor, on Discord, and everybody else, who asked us your questions for this episode. If you like this show and you want to help us out, there's some ways to do that. First, you can go to patreon.com slash Syshowtangents to become a patron, and you will support the show. you will make it possible for us to make this show and all the people who listen to this show and love this show will be like

I'm so grateful to that person for supporting it. That's most of what you get, but you also get access to things like our newsletter and our bonus episodes and us being really dumb doing various things. Second, you can leave us a review

wherever you listen. That helps us know what you like about the show and helps other people know what you like about the show. And finally, if you want to show your love for SciShow Tangents, Just tell people about us. Thank you for joining us. I've been Hank Green. I've been Cary Riley, and I've been Sam Shultz.

SciShow Tangents is created by all of us and produced by Sam Shultz, who edits a lot of these episodes along with Seth Glixtman. Our story editor is Alex Bilo. Our social media organizer is Pala Garcia Preeto. Our editorial assistants are Dubu Kierprivardi and Emmettas. Our sound design is by Joseph Tuna Meddish. Our executive producers are Caitlin Hofmeister and me, Hank Green. 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. Before we had a specific word for asteroids, people used more general words for objects in space, like meteor, which comes. from the Greek meteoros on adjectives that means high up or raised up. And that same

adjective also gives us the medical term meteorism, which is where so much gas builds up in your gut that your abdomen bloats out. There are a number of different causes of meteorism from appendix issues to bowel obstruction, but one super common symptom is, as you might expect, excessive farting.

So meteors are just rocks in the sky, but meteors in our body are just a bunch of farts waiting, to be unleashed. A meteor never landed on anyone's ass or anything that you could find. No, I couldn't find a single butt meteor.

No one's, no one wrote about sticking meteor, meteoric iron in their butt, so I had to go with something else. I mean, I'm sure somebody's try it. Oh, I'm sure. Yeah. Yeah. That's the new homeopathic trend is whatever.

You can fit up there, really. Make sure it has a flared end. and cross your fingers. Hello, and welcome. Hello, and welcome to Sy Show Tangents, the lightly Competitive Science Knowledge Show Show Showcase. I'm your host, Hank Green, And joining me this week, as always, is science expert, Sari Riley. Hello.

And our resident everyman, Sam Schultz. Hello. What a time in the history of our universe where you can take a picture of a galaxy 13 billion miles away. And also, you can have any guest host of your dreams on SciShow Tangens. Who is it? It's not actually true. But I want to know who would be your absolute. thrill of the moment to be on the podcast has to be a living person.

No Abraham Lincoln's. No ghosts on the pod. They're too scary. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We can get them, but give me the heby-jibis. Yeah. I'm so scared of everyone I respect that it's worse than ghosts. I will say that I have a fantastic idea for if we can ever get John on the podcast.

Oh, yeah, okay. Just a great idea. Oh, I can see what I can do about that. Do you want me to go first? Yeah. Because you guys are so afraid. I think it's not impossible to get Alf. Who is?

Yeah, yeah, Alf, yeah. He's got a literal, like a different, like a totally different view on science being from another planet. He's from Melmac. He's from Melmac. And I think it has just a wildly different sort of outlook on the world. But I feel like he'd be quite a classic guest host for SciShow Tangents, especially the video version. Yeah, that would be essential. Do you know Alph's real name?

I did at one point. I think that I did a trivia about Alf once, and I knew it for that reason. It's the best fictional name of all time, I think. Gordon Shumway. Yeah. I love that. All right. So I didn't mind, Alf.

Who's yours? Oh, shit. That's such a good answer. So the closest I can come up with is just Tycho YTT because I would like to have said that I would have a conversation with him. And I think he could carry. He'd be so good at it. He would carry the entire 30 minutes with comedy. We would not get a single joke in.

And if one of us made him laugh, that would be a story we tell for the rest of our lives. That's the best. That's better than Alf. I'm just like slide into his DMs right now. I'm sure they're open to me. No. I'd throw up if a famous person was on her. show don't do this soon you don't want us to succeed sam no he seems like a down-to-earth famous

person too he naps all the time he doesn't have that many more followers on twitter than me oh yeah you're famous i forgot about that he's uh alf follows him really that's it we get him on and then we get alf on it's a one-two kind of deal all right every week here on tangents we get together to try to one-up amaze and delight each other with some science facts while also trying to stay on topic and failing. Our panelists are playing for glory and for Hank Bucks, which I will be awarding as we play. At the end of the episode, one of these Beeple is going to be crowned the winner.

And yes, I did call you Beeple. We've come to the end of Kids Month, a month and some change of celebrating the childlike wonder of science. We hope you enjoyed, and we hope that you will also enjoy SciShow Kids, our YouTube channel for Early Elementary Learners. It's hosted by Jesse Kunitin Kastinietta,

who you may know from her channel Animal Wonders, and Anthony Brown, and Squeaks the Robot Rat. Now, as always, we're going to introduce this week's topic with the traditional science poem this week from Sam. On TV, spaceships look like fun in games, like when flown by George Jetson or his wife, Jane. They can zip all around the Milky Way and ships with fake gravity and advanced sick bays. But in real life, when you're on a spaceship, you put your ass on a vacuum just to take a shit, and artificial gravity isn't real.

You float around when you sleep and eat goo every meal. You and four people all trapped in a can, and you can't take a shower. until you get back to land. And though there's Universal Splendor wherever you look, there probably aren't even video games. I bet you have to read books. So astronauts are cool, but spaceships are no fun. Get back to me when they have warp drives and sweet laser guns.

That's great. Our topic for the day is spaceships. I don't want my spaceship to have laser guns because that means that somebody else's spaceship has laser guns. You're shooting asteroids with it. Come on. It's just to clear up the asteroids. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay. All right, all right, all right. Yeah, you're right. Spaceships have the biggest gap between what it's actually like in real life and what it should be like based on what the name is. Yes. It's like a submarine, but worse. Oh, a submarine's pretty bad, too, but yeah, you're not floating around in the submarine. Hopefully, if you are, you're in big trouble. That's the, oh, my God.

So, Sari, what is a spaceship? Well, if you try to Google spaceship or you look in any academic paper, the stuffy scientists, no one writes about spaceships. It's solidly in the world of fiction. Okay. So there are no spaceships is what I'm hearing. So they don't exist at the end. No. All of these terrible spaceships we have now, those don't count.

Those don't count because no one ever calls them a spaceship. They call them spacecraft instead. Oh. And I started speculating as to why. but it seems like this is the rabbit hole that I fell down instead of the normal etymology because spaceship is pretty standard, like it's space as an outer space and ship as in a boat and then you squish them together and then you got a spaceship. But the earliest known use of the word was from 1879, a passage in the book, I think,

progress and poverty by Henry George, who was talking about spaceship Earth. So the Earth as a spaceship, which Disney World has really capitalized on. But the idea that we are, we are hurtling through space and have all our necessities. And we are the crew. If this is a spaceship, then this is a great spaceship. What an amazing spaceship. It doesn't even need a lid. It's open air. It's like a space train more like, though. It don't get to go anywhere. It just sort of on the rails. It's true. Yeah.

So we got a space, we got a space train there. Space train, Earth. We got a change of the name. And then a writer named J.J. Astor wrote a novel called A Journey in Other Worlds, published in 1894. And that's when the word spaceship is generally credited to in the sense of a spacecraft that is piloted in outer space, as opposed to, like, something that was fired out of a canon or autonomous in some way, because science fiction writers have dreamed up all kinds of scenarios. So that's where the word came from.

And as far as I can tell, this is where it gets into Ceri speculation. There's a lot of nautical stuff going on. There's been a lot of nautical stuff for a while in, like, a big ship, a big tankard. You travel across the ocean. And so it made sense to science fiction writers and in communicating these speculative fictions to draw comparisons between space and the sea because they're both vast, they're both scary, you go off into the unknown, and you can kind of visualize it with similar mechanisms. Like you have little ports, and then you go to and from various destinations, and in between there's this vastness that you have to navigate. And planes really weren't a thing until the 1900s. So when we started dreaming of space travel, we didn't have space plane.

Couldn't come up with that word. We had the word ship around, so it was easy. So you're telling me that we were thinking about spaceships before we had planes? I think so. I don't know about flying machines. It was before the Wright brothers. We had earlier planes, but we had the idea of a spaceship before we had regular air. Just like bullets getting shot into the moon's eye and stuff.

What I'm getting, though, is the vague sense that we've never made a spaceship, just because our spaceships aren't quite cool enough. No, I don't think we've ever made a spaceship. And the thing that is closest to it is like a crude spacecraft. So any spacecraft, which is like a thing that we send in the space. The shuttle. The shuttle got pretty close. Yeah. And it looks right.

Or like a space station. There are people inside and it's floating around. It's not really being piloted, but it's moving in space. And it has a lot of accoutrement. One of the things that our spacecraft don't have is the ability to, like, go somewhere at will. Yeah. You know? Yeah.

Like, that's where the space shuttle kind of seems like a spaceship, because it could go to the space station, or it could go to Hubble, or it could go various places in relatively low Earth orbit. It almost seems like a spaceship to me. Mm-hmm. And it can go back down and land on land, which is cool. The space shuttle didn't just orbit. It could jet around. No, it just went. up to the orbit that it wanted to go to,

but it could go to a variety of different orbits. Oh, okay, okay. Well, it's easier to define what our topic is when it doesn't quite exist yet. So the topic is well covered. And now we're gonna play a game. You guys, are you ready for a game? Yes.

We're gonna play that game called Scientific Definition. Do you remember that game? Yeah. You say words and we tell you what they mean as best we can. So it's taken a lot of ingenious, engineering and smart people to figure out how to create giant vehicles that can launch into space and do stuff. And it's also taking a lot of parts.

So today, we're going to play Scientific Definition Spaceships Edition. I'm going to give the name of a spaceship part. And it is up to you to guess what that part does. Whoever comes up with the closest to the actual definition wins a point. Are you ready to play? Yes. You're going to have to stretch your brain muscles to tell me what is a yo-yo weight. Oh, man. I've played a lot of space team, but that has prepared me none to do this.

So these are things that are real? This is a real thing. A yo-yo-it is a real thing. I think a yo-yo-wait probably has something to do with getting the satellite out of the back of the space shuttle. You know, when that thing opens up and the thing goes out of it. Somewhere in there is where it's happening with the yo-yo-e. Yeah. Some kind of counterbalance for lifting a thing out of a thing. Exactly. Sounds good.

I don't know if you need a counterbalance in space, I guess. Sure, you do. You do? Okay. There's mass up there. Okay, okay. I'm going to do the opposite of that, but maybe not opposite enough for you to clearly decide a winner. A yo-yo weight is something that you, it's like a grappling hook in space, where if you want to go somewhere, you kind of throw your yo-yo and then drag yourself along behind it.

Oh, that's cool. So you throw out your yo-you and then you drag yourself along the yo-yo? It's up like a bladed yo-yo. I'm a magnetic yo-yo. I think you can hook the yo-yo on to things or I don't know how physics works enough to really visualize it, but you're using the yo-yo's weight to heft yourself around. And when you say yourself, who is on the other end of the yo-yo?

You must be close. Because you guys are both a little close. I'm getting granular. I think it's someone in who's doing extra vehicular, an EVA. So a human being? A human being. Yes, not an object. All right.

Well, then it's going to Sam because no human being is involved in yo-yo weights. So it's a part of a mechanism that's called a yo-yo D-spin that helps stop the spin of satellites and spacecraft after they launch. So when they launch, they might be launched with something called spin stabilization, which keeps them spinning around their axis. It reduces the effects of wind or drag or other variables that might apply torque to the spacecraft and get it off course. So this acts like a gyroscope and it works pretty well, but it also means that the spacecraft keeps spin. after launch does nothing to slow it down or stop it from spinning and that might mess instruments inside up so to slow the spin down the yo-yo d-spin is deployed the idea is sort of like the opposite of a figure skater who brings in their arms to keep spinning faster instead the yo-yo d-spin extends weights out on cords and then releases increases increasing the moment of inertia and slowing the spin until it's really easy for it to slow it the rest of the way and yes that means that there are yo-yo-y waits just floating up there in space oh they let go of them let go yeah so it goes out until it like slows down and then it's like pop and then it stays slow we have no respect for our orbit at all just full

junk up there it all falls back eventually it's there's a lot of space up there I guess so we've very little respect for our earth too have you seen someone finish a sandwich and just go to the piece of paper So. All right. So our second part on a spaceship that might, that is real, and you don't know what it does, is the rapid scat. Oh, God, I've heard of this one. Have you? Yeah.

Rapid scat. I bet it's something to do with, like, a detection. So it's an implement that's on the, like, tool control module of whatever space. craft is. Is that a thing? Yeah, the TCM. Oh, okay. Yeah, you know. If I use more fancy words, then it sounds more real.

Yeah, yeah. But it's like the less cool equivalent of the little green radar that goes bloop, bloop, bloop, if an asteroid's coming towards you, it just like rapidly scans around you and tells you if there's anything of note

okay. Or like the general status of your system. I think it's some kind of little propulsion system that makes tiny adjustments to push you around just a little bit.

That one's going to Sari because it is in fact a detection system kind of but does not do what you said it did but it's a scatterometer which is apparently a thing on board the International Space Station was launched in 2014 its job was

does not there anymore to measure ocean winds, which made it very important to a lot of agencies as a way to keep track of weather patterns and detect big storms. The rapid scat was actually created to replace NASA's quicksat Earth satellite, which had stopped working in 2009. JVL needed to find a way to quickly and cheaply replace it, so they found a way to reuse hardware that had been used to test the quick scat to assemble the rapid scat and send it the ISS. The rapid scat ran for two years before it was decommissioned. What happened to it just got tired? I think they found a, they launched a real replacement for the quick stat.

Okay, okay. They launched better scat. Thanks for not guessing a poop thing, you guys. The next one we have is a whipple bumper. No. I'm not kidding. It's a real thing, the whipple bumper. Whipple bumper.

Can you use it in a sentence? Yeah. So they, they used the whipple bumper on the space station. Okay. Okay. So when you're on stuff like that, there's got to be like some kind of arm or something that's going moving around and when you're spacewalking if that bumps into you you're in trouble that's where the wipple bumper comes in

so you're the whipple yeah if you get bumped the wipple bumper protects you from getting bumped i suppose it's some kind of skirt or some kind of something with air inside of it to prevent damage to spacewalkers from being bumped from being bumped which is kind of the only thing that can happen to in space, really, isn't that? Just bumped by various things in variously serious ways. Life is just a series of bumps. It's kind of all that can happen to you, period, huh? Yeah, even here on Earth, we're just bumping into the floor. That's a great Will Smith's on. We're here on Earth, we're just bumping. Yes, Siri. I think a Whipple bumper is like when

one space station module and another space station module love each other very much and then they're like want to become a bigger space station and then they whipple bump together and they like lock, interlock and become one larger space station.

You guys got sharp brains today. The wipple bumper is neither of those things but it does, it's closer to what Sam said. It's a wipple bumper also known as a wipple shield is an aluminum shield around a spacecraft that breaks up approaching debris to distribute its impacts and lessen the damage to the craft.

It gets his name from the inventor of it, Fred Whipple, who designed the shield in the 1940s. So it's like the enterprise has its like deflector shield, but it's just a piece of metal. Yeah, it's a particularly crafted, layered aluminum thing that's really good at spreading out the impact of impact. All right. We got one last thing here.

It's called Sherlock. Okay. So it doesn't have a K on it. So you know it's an acronym. Yeah. They love to name these things roughly after what they do, I feel like. It is the super. Oh, God, you're going to do the old acronym?

Yeah. Heavy, exciting. Oh. Rock. Locator. or Crusher. Well, you could have just been locator and it's like LOC.

Oh, you're right. Yeah. Well, I said or Crusher. It's documented, so now my shame is public. So you think it both locates and crushes rocks. Yeah, well, like hypothetically.

Yeah. They like fist bump it and go, you crush that, Sherlock. There's at least a bump because of how everything bumps. Yeah, they can't not be a bump. Yeah, they can't be a bump. Yeah.

And so, it does is it locates rocks it's like oh and then they say good job sherlock you found cool rock that's like the same oh it's not warning it about rocks no it's like detecting the so let's say it's detecting the the rock rocky composition of asteroids or the moon i don't know anything nearby rocky bodies nearby that's almost exactly what i was going to say i was going to say it was like a sample analyzer but now i can't say that so it is a uh it's a health monitor of some sort for humans on something on a station strap it on your belly and it tells you how you're doing yeah exactly it says it says you're gonna have to go soon yeah

you're eating too much of goo you gotta get back to earth well um congratulations to both of you sam i don't know why you didn't go for it i would have tried to find some way in which your sherlock's were different but the sherlock indeed is a tool on the person Reference Rover, and it's tasked with searching for organic compounds, minerals, and other signs of past microbial life on Mars, and it does that with a whole bunch of cameras and spectrometers and a laser, so it bumps with light, at least, which is another kind of bumping. And it does that with its co-investigator, Watson.

So Sherlock stands for scanning habitable environments with ramen and luminescence for organics and chemicals, and Watson stands for wide-angle, topographic sensor for operations and engineering I was going to say I love how they can always make it work but it really makes it work so yeah great great work

and also Sam but you should just committed and fought for it I wanted to you know Sarah needs a win thank you well you came out of it exactly tied so well done on that

next up we're going to take a short break and then it'll be time for the fact-off I thought of some people I want on the show. Can I just interrupt real quick? Hit me, hit me. I want Bill Oakley, the man who invented steamed hams from the Simpsons. Do you know what I'm talking about? Is that a real person?

Yeah. Like the steamed ham he wrote the episode? He does like a pretty popular TikTok reviews of food. So you and him would have a lot to talk about. I mean, Alfa is also not really a real person. Well, Bill Oakley is literally a real person. Okay. I want Joel from Mystery Science Theater.

Okay. That's actually maybe doable. Yeah. I know people who know him. And I want John Hodg-I-I think John Hodgman would be fun. Oh, I know people who know John Hodgman. I know John Hodgman. I know someone who knows John Hodgman.

It's you. Okay, now we can go to break. Oshh. All right, everybody, it's time to get ready for the fact off. Our panelists have brought science facts to present to me in an attempt to blow my mind, and after they have presented their facts, I'll judge them and award Hank books to the one that I think will make the best TikTok. And to decide who goes first, I have a trivia question. One of the most important tasks of building the James Webster's telescope was figuring out how to actually get it into space.

In the early 2000s, decades before the actual launch of the telescope, NASA settled on a launch vehicle, the Arian 5, which belongs to the European Space Agency. They picked the Arian 5 because they considered it to be one of the world's most reliable launch vehicles, and the only launch vehicle that met the Institute's requirements for transporting the telescope. Between 2003 and 2017, the Arian 5 had a very impressive string of missions that launched consecutively without failure. How many missions did it launch in that time? Oh, I have no concept of how many missions humanity does in any time. This is a good question. I want to say less than one per year. That feels too expensive and fast.

But it's all of Europe, Sari. I'm going to guess 10, a nice even 10. I'm going to guess 25. 82. Whoa. That's so many. We go out of space a lot, huh? Yeah.

So a lot of successes, but the mission. that broke the streak of success was in 2018 and they figured out that it happened because the rocket was given the wrong coordinates. Oh no. So it was not really the rocket's fault.

That sent it 20 degrees off course and caused the rocket to lose contact with ground control and that was bad. Human error. It doesn't count. It worked so well that the Jet EBST launch that it saved the telescope

a bunch of fuel extending its operational time from 10 years to 20 years. so that's not bad as long as as long as it's fairly safe from those micrometeoroids which are now my biggest fear oh yeah what happened

it got hit by one it got hit by so like they knew it was going to get hit by a little technically micrometeeroid because micrometeerites only happen when they hit the planet I guess

when they hit our atmosphere anyway there's dust in space and it's moving real fast and they expected it's to happen but it got hit by a piece that was bigger than they expected, which is concerning, because if it's going to get hit by pieces that big, like, basically, if it took six months before that thing hit it, if this happens every six

month, it could, over the course of the mission, significantly degrade the ability of the telescope to get, you know, the same quality of science that we're getting right now, though it would still be better than anything that we have by a wide, wide margin. Chee. Needs a whipple bumper, huh? Well, you can't really put a whipple bumper on your, uh, jump. giant beryllium gold-plated mirror. Okay.

Because it needs to see. I guess so. But yeah, exactly. If only we could have built Star Trek-style wibble bumper made out of... Light or whatever it's made out of. I have no idea. Yeah. Deflection feelings.

Yeah. All right. So, well, that means that same gets to decide who goes first. I'm going to go first. I had an off week, so I'm just going to... I'm not going to... I'm sorry. When humans...

launch things into space. We basically make a big old mess. From satellites to manned spacecrafts, launches leave different rocket stages in orbit, and even the craft and satellites themselves can become space junk eventually. And in Earth's orbit, this is getting to be an issue. According to NASA, there are about 23,000 bits of man-made space junk orbiting Earth, and each of those things is a potential hazard to other things that are launching into space and to people, because something might squish them someday or something like that. There is, of course, another heavenly body that we sent people and other stuff to the moon and junk accumulates in its orbit too right now there's estimated to be a couple dozen bits of debris orbiting it but the moon he's just a little guy and with several

governmental and private entities interested in getting back to the moon in the near future an estimated 50 missions in the next decade the concern is that there's going to be just a big dangerous mess up there in pretty short order and on top of that the moon is so bright that it's long been considered impossible to track things that orbit it, because you just look at it. It's a big orb of light. Impossible, that is, until 2020, when a scientist named Vishnu Reddy was observing China's Changi-5 lunar probe

using a regular backyard telescope and discovered sort of accidentally that he could see a slight flicker at the edge of the moon as a probe orbited. And he figured out, because of these flickers, how to track it within 100 miles just from his own observations with his backyard telescope. Then he gathered more data

and brought it to his colleague, Roberto Furfaro to develop an algorithm that could accurately forecast the orbit of the satellite. And this got the attention of the Air Force, who gave the team a $7.5 million grant to develop what will be, in essence, an air traffic control AI that can track all of the crap that's orbiting the moon and help map out safe routes so manned ships aren't getting hit by stuff. So right now the team is like cataloging all the junk up there before they start writing the AI. And that leads me to my real fact, because this was all just a preamble. The facility these researchers are working out of is none other than Biosphere 2. The program is run by the University of Arizona, which I guess owns Biosphere 2.

And Biosphere 2 apparently has an observatory or like an array of sensors called the Space Domain Awareness Observatory, which I looked up and all I could find about it was this article, basically. So Wacky Old Biosphere 2 could become the space air traffic control tower of the future. and I think they should invite us there to look at it and do an episode of tangents So doctors for Faro and Ready If you're listening, please I want a podcast from Biosphere too

Gotta get in a play with our microphones That sounds a little humid but very fun It would be great We would sit in the desert room We could sit in there and do it We could sit anywhere As long as I get to act out scenes from Biodome Yeah, I'll watch it and we can do it together

Oh my God Oh and then we could do a comment for our Patreon patrons. We could do a commentary for Biodome in Biosphere 2. That's the best idea I've ever heard. It seems achievable. The biggest problem is getting Sari on a plane. I can go to Arizona, please.

For this, for something this is important. I'm there. It's good to know. We'll replace her with John Hodgman for that episode. No. Being you and John Hodgman in Biosphere 2, doing a commentary of biodome. That's very weird.

I would think that people would just know where they're sounding. satellites are. They had to look. I don't think anybody cared to keep tabs on them. So it's just about, it's like stuff left over from all of the missions that have landed and stuff like that. I like that thing hit the moon recently and everybody was like, what the heck? What the heck? There's nobody's like, nobody's like keeping track of any of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is weird that we had like a big rocket booster fall on the moon and everyone was like, oh, yeah, yeah, I guess that I don't know.

It was some, it was some a thing that was up there. Okay, Sarah, what do you got? Like Sam mentioned in his poem, an important part of all kinds of sci-fi spaceships is artificial gravity. So instead of floating around like astronauts and the ISS, our imagined fictional space travelers are walking around with their feet on the floor of the ship, also making film sets a lot more convenient for everybody. But real-life engineers are also interested in artificial gravity to possibly combat some health effects from sticking human bodies and microgravity environments over long periods of time like. say, a journey to Mars. So there have been a handful of hypotheses over time and one absolutely wild experiment on September 14, 1966. It involved the Gemini 11 spacecraft, which had a crew of two, and the uncrewed Agena Target Vehicle, which was a modified rocket stage that had been used

in a variety of experiments like practicing docking. The goal was to unravel a 100-foot tether between the Gemini 11 and the Agena, keeping it nice and taught. Then they wanted to fire thrusters to spin the whole system, generating a center of gravity in the middle of the tether and a force that pushes outward,

like those Gravitron fair rides. And theoretically... There's people in one of them? There's people in one of them. They were firing the thrusters. And theoretically, if the capsule spun fast enough, the astronauts would be able to walk along the edge as if it was the ground

and experience some artificial gravity, like in 2001 a space odyssey. What could go wrong? Turns out that whipping two objects that weigh thousands of pounds each around in a circle while they're connected by a rope is pretty chaotic.

There were a couple hiccups during setup like the tether getting stuck at 50 feet and then at 90 feet and then the tether not pulling taut as nicely as they had hoped. And so then they were instructed to fire the thrusters a little to pick up the slack.

But then the tether started whipping around like a jump rope between the Agena and the Gemini 11 capsule, which was definitely really fun, not scary at all. Even with that terrifying sight, they kept firing the thrusters and straightened out the tether until they got a comfortable 38 degree per minute rotation going through the night. And because scientists can be both smart and dumb, the folks on the ground then asked the Gemini crew to spin faster. They were like, you got it stable.

Now hit the gas again. Let's go. Let's go. And that tightened the tether and started slingshotting the astronauts around, at which point one of them yelled, oh, look at the slack. It's going to jerk this thing to heck. Oh, no. I'm glad he didn't swear. Yeah.

And somehow, those weren't his last words, and the astronauts stabilized the whole system to a speedy 55-degree-per-minute rotation, which doesn't seem worth the trouble, which generated a whopping. 0.0015G of artificial gravity. So very small. So like you basically, if you put something on the ground, it might not come back up. Yep. And that's exactly basically what they did, which was they couldn't feel it,

but they placed a camera against the instrument panel of Gemini 11 and let go. And then it moved parallel to the direction of the tether and hit the back wall. And they were like, well, that's our artificial gravity, I guess. that's the last time we're going to try that yeah and then they released the tether and got a safe distance from the gena capsule hooray question mark um and there are a lot of hypothetical problems of spinning spaceships and practical ones if you count the chaos of this mission and i don't think we've tried anything since but i'm sure it is just one of plenty of other wild ideas brewing when it comes to artificial gravity that will experience someday maybe the the idea that

you do that with a craft that had people in it yeah like you could do that without people in it yeah it's like you have to have people who are like oh i'm feeling gravity in 1969 it was a lot easier to do with people in it because you had to have somebody to push buttons literally because a computer uh could only add i don't know like Like, because it was, because it was significantly less advanced than your phone is, of course. Yeah. But like, so now I feel like we should try that out. Like, we have a lot more control over things now than we did then.

But still, I wouldn't want to be on one end of that tether because if anything goes wrong, what did he say? It's going to. It's going to jerk this thing to heck. Yeah. You don't want that to happen. like it's going to jerk that thing to heck and when that happens you just shoot off you just shoot off once it gets jerk to heck if you're lucky enough to keep your vacuum seal you just get flung off in whatever direction you happen to be going in when you when it broke couldn't they have done it

tiny with like an ant or something also couldn't they have put like an ant in a ping pong ball and been like all right think spin it around inside the thing just like like a hamster wheel Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing that it all went to the early space missions went as well as they did. All right. So now I have to choose between these two things. I got two excellent facts.

I've got air traffic control for the moon from Biosphere 2, which could be a great place to record an episode of tangents. Or is Sari really ridiculously dangerous but ultimately, I guess, successful. Everything is fine. experiment during Gemini. Ah, gosh. I'm going to go with Sari. It's just a slightly better story

because the people were almost killed. Well, okay. I feel like you have a bias, but that's okay. What do I have a bias towards? I'm going to... What's my bias? What's my bias? It's towards Sarah.

Oh. Yeah. Not toward like space or toward death. Toward weird historical missions. No, just toward Sari specifically. Yeah. Okay. I'm okay, be your fan favorite.

I can be pod favorite. Hank's favorite? Yeah, I can't Hank's favorite. I'll be Hank's favorite podcaster. And that means it's time to ask the science couch. We've got one from Muhammad ML Eng who asks, how does a gyroscope help compensate for the rotation of tape reels, tools, etc? It's just a spinning top, right?

It's just a spinning top, right? All I know is if you. you're holding a fidget spinner, you can feel the force of the spin, whatever this force is. And so a gyroscope wants to stay in one position. And if you push on it, then it will push back. And you can use that push back to change the orientation of stuff in space. Am I right? Yeah, that's the bet.

It took me probably an hour of research to get to that point where I could, explain it that simply. I was like, I got to digest all this physics. I got to make sure, watch these videos in uncomprehensible. I'm going to say it good. And then you just said it good. That's why I picked this question. Remember I said, Hank's going to know the answer. I know, but I was like, I was prepared to not embarrass myself. Well, I can tell you, I don't really understand the physics of it. Like, like, I, it is only because of fidget spinners that I have any intuitive understanding of how a gyroscope works. Without that, I wouldn't.

Like, it's real weird that, uh, that that momentum creates, um, a for, because, I mean, I guess it's, because like, it's spinning away and it has inertia in that direction. And when you change the direction, you're changing the inertia. You're pushing against the, you are forcing it to go against where its inertia wants to go. Um, and I've also seen astronauts in space. do stuff with gyroscopes where they're like they put it there and instead of like doing what anything else would do it just like float around it's just like yeah oh weird i think an answer to the the end part of this question which is it's just a spinning top right so the gyroscopes you see

are not just a top a spinning top is either governed by or has a gyroscopic effect on it which is that once it's spinning fast enough, it wants to remain spinning around that axis, like I think was saying. But a gyroscope, like the ones that you see in the space videos, or the ones that are little desk toys, are a spinning wheel that are mounted onto those rings around it, called gimbals, so that as forces are exerted upon it to, like, switch. how the gyroscope would be spinning, it remains around the same axis, and instead, the gimbals spin around it.

Like, it exerts a counterforce onto the gimbals, and then those move around it. And so that is how the gyroscope, like the flat surface of the gyroscope, remains spinning on the same plane. And it can be readjusted by, like, a human poking it, but as space is moving around it, it will stay moving,

and the gimbals are going to be the things that switch, because the spin, like that angular momentum is what is maintaining the orientation of it. And this is something we're using a lot in space? Oh, yes. Yeah. So we use it in a lot of different technologies. They're called collectively inertial navigation systems. And they use a combination of gyroscopes and accelerometers to get information about which way a thing is pointing.

and how fast it's moving in that direction to make little corrections. And it's how like, so if a satellite wants to change orientation in space, it doesn't have to use reaction mass. It doesn't have to, like, throw stuff out to change its orientation. It can use the gyroscopes to actually alter the way it's pointing. It can't, like, move in a direction,

but it can move, it can change the direction it's facing. Whoa, I never even thought about how they would do that. Thanks to everybody for your hard work. We are podcast hosts. I'd just like to see him try to do our job, though. Come on. That's right. Well, if you want to ask the science couch your questions,

you can follow us on Twitter at SciShow Tangents. We tweet out topics for upcoming episodes every week and then look for questions. Or you can join the SciShow Tangens Patreon and ask us on our Discord. Thank you to at Mucolepticon Napoleon on Discord and everybody else who asked us your questions

for this episode. If you like this show and you want to help us out super easy to do that. First, you can go to patreon.com slash SciShow Tangents to become a patron and get access to things

like our newsletter and our bonus episodes and second, you can leave us a review wherever you listen. That's very helpful and helps us know what you like about the show.

And finally, if you want to show your love for SciShow Tangents, just tell people about us. Thank you for joining us. I've been Hank Green. I've been Sari Riley. And I've been Sam Shultz. SciShow Tangens is created by all of us

and produced by Sam Schultz. Our editor is Seth Gliksman. Our story editor is Alex Billo. Our social media organizer is Julia Buzz Bezio. Our editorial assistant is Duboki Chakravardi. Our sound designed is by Joseph Tuna Mettish. Our executive producers are Caitlin Hofmeister and me, Hank Green.

And of course, 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. The first U.S. spaceflight program was Project Mercury, so NASA was figuring out a lot of stuff from scratch. And of course, one concern was keeping astronauts.

as comfy as possible while they experienced the extreme 3G or so force during launch. So, some of the astronauts that were selected for Project Mercury over the years had a personalized butt mold made so engineers could design spaceship seats that would perfectly cradle their butts. That's nice. Why didn't all of them, though? Some of them just don't care about their butts? They were like, turns out it doesn't matter that much.

Just stick a big pillow down there, and it'll be uncomfortable no matter what you do. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, get a memory foam pillow.