Stuff You Should Know - Can NASA predict natural disasters?

Episode Date: October 3, 2013

The US has developed some great equipment for peering into deep space that can also be used to great effect when trained on Earth. Now NASA is using satellites to track natural processes around the globe in an effort to better predict natural disasters like hurricanes and volcanoes. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hey, everybody, do you ever scream at your printer or hurl empty ink cartridges across the room? We all do, which means that you likely suffer from cartridge conniptions caused by irritating ink cartridges constantly running out of ink. It's the worst, everybody. We can all agree on that. But thankfully, the Epson EcoTank Printer is the perfect cure.

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Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles Bryant, Chuckers, you might know him as. Sure. There's a W in there somewhere. Sure. Or Wayne. Yes.

And if you're a Wayne coin. Right? No. We talked about that before. Yeah, John Wayne. Right, yeah. How are you doing? I'm great, man.

I am all over this NASA activity. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Good. Because it seems like all we hear about NASA these days is how they're having to shut down space programs. Right, they do other stuff, which is cool. Well, the impression I have is that they're kind of taking

their field of vision and mountain to outer space and turning it planetward toward Earth. Why not? That's where all the people are that are buying Big Macs. Right, well, if space exploration is going private, you got the Elon Musk and the Richard Branson's of the world saying, we got this NASA. You go do something else with all of your high-tech remote

sensing equipment. Right. Then it makes sense that NASA would say, OK, we'll become the watchdog guardian of the planet. And that's what they've become. Plus, also, if you're the United States, using NASA's remote sensing equipment on Earth is a dynamite cover for intelligence gathering.

Oh, yeah? Well, yeah. I mean, you have all sorts of satellites carrying out different functions. But really, all of them are taking pictures of the Earth 24-7, highly detailed ones, too. You want to know about Russian troop formation? Ask NASA.

Yeah, I don't know guys have sniffing out a volcano. Sure. Do you want to know what kind of sandwich Julian Assange had today? Ask NASA. Well, you don't need to ask NASA. Everyone knows that. What?

Tuna fish. Is that what his thing is? Sure. Every day. That's how he keeps his white mane white, him and Michio Kaku. Yeah, the white mullet. Actually, it's not so mullety.

It's just more of a mane, right? Mane, yeah. For sure, both of them have a mane. A big helmet of hair. So Chuck, I guess the question we've posed today, I feel like we need to answer, is can NASA predict natural disasters? I think we can go ahead and answer and say, not yet.

Right. But now that, again, they've mothballed space exploration, to an extent, we're still hitting Mars. Yeah, they're not mothballing it. But they've reached the point where they're like, OK, we've got all this really good equipment. Let's start monitoring Earth a little more, because there's a lot of questions we have.

Now they've reached this point where, since the beginning of the 21st century, they've started conducting missions. They have planned ones that are just being started now, some that are coming in the next couple of years. And from all this data, they'll be able to analyze it and start to be able to predict natural disasters. So they have this whole toolbox, I guess,

if you wanted to go into corporate buzz speak of programs and missions that they're carrying out, that will help them predict natural disasters pretty soon. That's right. Not the low-hanging fruit. Right. They're just trying to reach out and play together with the Earth.

In the same space. Yeah, in the same space. Maybe Java Storm. Boy, the corporate talk. We shun that at all costs here. All right, so let's talk about this. We talked about remote sensing. That is basically detecting energy

reflecting from something when it's pointed out in space, like when you're looking for new planets. It's pointed out in space. When you point it on Earth, it's a heck of a lot closer. Right, so you can get more detail. And they're using different kinds of detectors. They're detecting different kinds of energy, I should say, like microwave radiation, x-rays.

It's not just like using your peepers. Right. That information can be translated into something we use our peepers to look at. But they can use this equipment to sense all sorts of different stuff. Yeah, and like you said, it's mounted on aircraft, or it's part of a satellite, or is a satellite.

And yeah, it's all up there looking back at you right now. Yeah, so wave. Yeah, or it's looking at the Earth. We're just the insignificant tiny specks crawling around on the Earth. Yeah, and this is kind of a big deal. It makes sense. It's sensible what they're doing.

It's a smart thing to do with NASA's equipment. But it also really is we're at the threshold of a really big change in our understanding of our planet. I think there's kind of a lot of assumptions that people make about our understanding of the planet that are just totally incorrect. For example, I would have guessed that meteorologists and climatologists

knew how tropical storms form. Yeah. They do not. Yeah. And from using things like, well, there's actually a project that was carried out in the summer of 2010 that was dedicated to studying this. It was called GRIP, Genesis and Rapid Intensification

Processes. That's right. And for a couple of months, some NASA scientists flew around on a Gulfstream jet and took really precise measurements of what they believed were the beginnings of tropical storms to see how they form exactly. Yeah, and the goal with pretty much everything

that we're going to talk about today is early detection. Because you can't stop a hurricane. You can't stop a volcano or an earthquake. But like the old saying goes. That's right. But if you know it's coming, then you can get people out of the way. You can thwart some of them to some degree.

Yeah. Like anybody can point to a hurricane and be like, oh, there's a hurricane. Yeah. By then, it's a little too late. If you can point to the very beginnings, the cradle of the hurricane, the formation of a tropical storm, now you're talking about time

that you have to warn people like, you guys need to get out of here. Yeah. And there is one really cool program they've had going since 2002 called Grace. There's going to be a lot of acronyms today, by the way. Love those. Love them.

The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment. This is my favorite one. It's really cool. Basically, what they're doing, well, let's step back a minute. Let's talk about Newton. OK. Gravity depends on the mass of an object.

In the case of polar ice caps, the mass is changing. So if the mass is changing, the gravity is changing. Right. So when the polar ice caps melt and turn to water and then flow toward the equator, they are often so big that they left it in depression on the Earth's surface. Once they're gone, that depression can be filled in.

The mantle can fill back in in that area, changing the mass in that particular part of Earth and hence changing the gravity. Yeah. One estimate has between 2010 and 2011, the Greenland Ice Shield lost 224 gigatons of mass. So not only is that going to change the land formation and the mass, it's going to make the sea level rise

at a rate of about 0.7 millimeters a year. That's going to change the makeup of the Earth. Yeah. And so they have a couple of buddies, Tom and Jerry, that are in orbit, satellites, twin satellites, about 136 miles apart from each other. Do you know why they're called Tom and Jerry? Because they're chasing each other.

They're on the same orbit. Yeah, exactly. A polar orbit. Yeah, it's very cute. So they're constantly going from the North Pole to the South Pole as the Earth spins below them. Right? That's right.

And they're taking measurements, two different types of measurements, but they're precisely separated from one another and they're on precisely the same orbit. Yeah. So they can really, what they produce every 30 days is a full map of the gravitational field of Earth. Yeah, and they've, NASA, they always work with other people, it seems like,

which is a good thing to work with people around the world. But they worked with a company in Germany to develop an ultra precise distance measuring system that basically can measure within the precision what they say is 1 tenth of the width of a hair. That's pretty precise. Yeah, so basically these things are flying and between the two, they're measuring

the distances and discrepancies between these two identical twin satellites. And that's information is being relayed back and analyzed. Yeah, because I thought of this as number one, the Earth is not a perfect sphere. We know that. I can't remember what we talked about that in, oh, maps. Yeah, potato?

Yeah, and the gravitational field is not perfectly round either. It's lower in some places, higher in other places, the force of gravity. Yeah. So yeah, it's formed what, in 1995, was coined the pot-stam gravity potato. And if you look it up now, there's

some pretty cool artist rendering of what the Earth's magnetic field looks like as a three dimensional model. Yeah, it's very cool. So check that out. And that's been updated dramatically in the last couple of years thanks to this GRACE project. Yeah, and the ultimate goal basically is to measure this gravitational field over time,

see how it's changing with kind of accuracy we've never had before, which will, in turn, inform us on climate related junk. Right, and is it just a correlation between ice caps melting and a change in a gravitational field, or does the ice cap melting trigger that change in the gravitational field, which, in turn, has some other effect?

So there's a lot of, I think, understanding we can gain from knowing what the gravitational field is changing, how it's changing. Yeah, do you like using your GPS to get somewhere? Well, then this kind of information can go on to help GPS, because basically it's just going to improve the trajectories of these satellites. And everything is just more specific.

It's like 100 times more detailed than they've ever had before. So that's going to help everything out from detecting climate change, or temperature and potential hurricanes and stuff, to getting you to McDonald's, which is pretty important. 2023 is already well underway, everybody. So don't wait any longer to level up your small business.

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That's Gate the number one travel.com. Once again, use promo code HEART20 through January 30th to receive 20% off your 2023 trip. By the way, Chuck, the tropical storms, you wanna know how they think they form now? Um, no. Well, I'm gonna tell you. So the speed of waves on an ocean,

if it matches the speed of the movement of some air above it and an umbilical cord of warm, humid air can get into this little pillow sandwich. It forms this protective pouch. And from there, a convection current can start and form into a tropical storm which can then form into a hurricane. That's what they learned from the GRIP program.

Man, it seems like they would have known this stuff before then. You'd think so, you know? But we're talking like 2010 when they're through. I don't even think it's been proven. I think that that's what they think based on the data from the 2010 experiment. Yeah, aren't they still analyzing that stuff?

Mm-hmm. All right. I imagine like that's gotta be a pretty good field to get into now and in the next like five, 10 years analyzing NASA data. Yeah, and just anything to do with the climate probably. Sure. Don't you think?

Yeah, things that's changing. It's gonna be gangbusters. There's a lot of money in the weather. All right. All right, so that's tropical storms and hurricanes. We didn't talk about the GPM project. Oh, that's true. Yeah, that they're working with NASA's working with Japan

and their NASA, which is called the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA. And that is a global precipitation measurement. And they are using satellites to observe all kinds of precipitation patterns all over the world. And basically like before we could only place these things in certain spots that were easier to get to and you can't place them out over the ocean.

And you can't place them in the Andes because it's too rocky. This allows us to study the entire globe for the first time. So they're following, they're basically tracking the movement of water around the planet on like a daily, seasonal, a yearly basis. And what they hope to be able to gain from this is to predict when floods happen,

because apparently a major flood happens every day around the earth. Oh, really? Yeah. And a lot of times those floods lead to landslides. We saw first hand in Guatemala what happens when a landslide comes down, remember? Yeah, we were standing there and they said

this is literally 12 feet higher than it was. Yeah, we were standing on the remains of a village that got caught in the middle of the night and there were people down there still. Yeah, you could still see the swath that had been cut through the jungle and the mountain side. Right, so they're hoping, okay, well, if we can figure out when a flood's coming,

we can predict landslides in turn. So by tracking global precipitation, that's what they're hoping to be able to do with that. Yeah, they're also using a LIDAR, the LIDAR surface topography system. This is my second favorite one. The list one, and they're hopefully gonna be able to track things like volcanoes, earthquakes,

landslides and erosion, but not wildfires. No, not wildfires, that's crazy talk. That is crazy talk. But it's the same thing with tracking precipitation as of two years ago. We had to physically put some sensor somewhere and there were places we just couldn't get to. And now that we have satellites, we can track that stuff.

Same goes with this, we used to have to be able to find a fault line, put sensors there, and then monitor that with the list program with LIDAR. They're using lasers to monitor fault lines and find new ones that we didn't know were there before. Track their movement and use those to predict earthquakes and then similarly predict volcanoes. So listen to this.

The resolution now they have is a five meter horizontal resolution with a precision of four inches. Previously, the best data we could get was 30 meter resolution with a 32 foot precision. So it went from 32 feet to four inches. That's pretty good. They'd be like, give or take 32 feet. Now it's give or take four inches.

Yeah, with thanks to lasers. Yeah. So they could possibly detect volcanic activity before it happens. And the way that they're doing that, you would think while they're using thermal cameras, you'd be wrong. What they're doing is looking for land deformation.

Apparently before a volcano goes off, that land around it literally deforms. It swells due to pressure. And since we are tracking topography now using this program, we can say, oh well, that crater wasn't three times larger than it is now, like a week ago, maybe a volcano is about to go off there.

That's right. And it's not just volcanoes and natural disasters. They can also monitor erosion and topsoil loss, basically anything on the earth that's interesting. They can really accurately closely monitor now. And this said 2016, is it already underway? No, it's 2013, Chuck. No, it says it was gonna launch in 2016,

but is it already going? No. Okay, I think it's launching in 2016 still. Okay, so this is just the plan. Right, yeah, no, they have a lot of, like this just started. Like the, I think it might've been the GRACE program started in 2002, and it's been going on.

It is the GRACE program, the one with Tom and Jerry, right? Yeah, that was 2002. Right, and it had its 10th anniversary in 2012. I think that might've been the first project like this. Right. And now NASA's throwing like everything into this stuff. And we're just at the forefront, at the very beginning of this kind of thing.

This is a very timely episode, frankly. It is, actually. They have, in fact, I think these new probes are even newer than the LISP program, right? That NASA's proposing to launch. The one we were just talking about with the volcano deformation? Yeah. Yeah.

This is a pair of satellites that monitor little bitty changes in the surface. And I guess it's a funding thing, because I don't think these two are even, I think they're still just like in the proposition phase. So I guess we should say then they will be doing this. This is coming. Yeah, and like this particular project.

Yeah, and the precipitation when it launches in February of next year. So it sounds as though these things are already happening, but I think it's just like this is how it's gonna work. It sounds as though they're already happening because of us, the tents we're using. That's right. We're using present.

We should be using future perfect. One of the problems with the satellites though is, and with lasers is clouds. Right. Because clouds get in the way. It's gotta be a clear data use. Most of this stuff. Hold on.

I know you love talking about clouds. I do too. But before we go any further, what do you think about a message break? It's great. It's great. Stuff you shouldn't know. 2023 is already well underway, everybody.

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to receive 20% off your 2023 trip. Okay, so back to clouds. They cause trouble with lasers and with satellites. Yeah. So you gotta count on clear days. So it's not like these things are humming 24 seven, 365. No, weren't you surprised finding out that clouds are still an impediment to lasers?

No. I would have thought like, and the projects we're talking about are still like gee whiz that can't shoot through a cloud. Yeah, I thought that it just seemed kind of like, well, what are you guys gonna do about that? Cause that's a pretty big obstacle. Yeah, I guess you're right.

Yeah. Maybe they could have an anti seating program to disperse clouds. Nice. So Chuck, NASA doesn't need to turn its back fully on space. Like we said, it's still carrying out the Mars mission. What was after that? Are they going to Saturn?

I don't know. Saturn, Uranus maybe? Yeah. They're exploring some moon. I can't remember which one. They haven't turned their back on space and they don't need to because there's a huge threat from space bearing down on us constantly.

That's right, near earth objects. Right, which I feel like we should do a podcast just on near earth objects. So how detailed do you want to get here then? Some. Medium, sure. Go watch the movie Armageddon. All right.

Done. Yeah. Although that is deep impact on Armageddon. We're both, while fanciful, not too far off in that there are objects that come near the earth and we think if we can detect them soon enough that there is existing technology now that can throw these things off course.

Right, and earth is constantly being bombarded every day about 100 tons of material. That's a lot. Like rain down on the earth. We're talking little particles, things that break up in the atmosphere. Yeah, mostly like comet dust and stuff, right? Right, but there are, NASA estimates,

about 1,000 objects that could collide with earth that are a kilometer or more in diameter. That's 0.62 miles in diameter. And that if any one of these impacted earth, which they do about every 10,000 years, it would be what's called a global catastrophe. Actually, good news, buddy. What?

That is every several hundred thousand years. Oh, man. Okay, so what comes down every 10,000 years? About every 10,000 years, asteroids larger than about 100 meters could hit the earth and that would just be like a local disaster. So it'd be like a one the size of a football field. Yeah, and that's not great if you're near it,

but it's not like what they would call a global disaster, like the end of the world type scenario. And that's one that's like a kilometer in diameter. Yeah, and it says every several hundred thousand years or so. I feel a lot better, so thank you. What are the chances that that's gonna happen in the next like 40 years? I don't know, aren't we like on a,

when was the last one? It was about a quarter of a million years ago, wasn't it? I don't know, was it? The one that formed the Chisha Club crater? I don't think I pronounced it correctly, but you know what I'm talking about, people who are familiar with that. I do, or they do.

But the point is, we need a lead time on this stuff. Chihi Club? The Chiki Club? It's a, there's an X in there, but it's a, it's in Mesoamerica, so the X is like a hawk. Oh, it's pronounced Cthulhu, no, no. It was close.

Okay. The Chihi. Oaxaca. It's like that, but there's a Chi, and I believe a club afterwards. So I'm just gonna say Chihi Club crater. Okay. I think that was longer ago than 100,000 years ago,

that extinction event. So you're saying we're due? Yes. Okay. Well, the good news is if we have a little bit of lead time, like a few years, supposedly there are things that we can do to knock these asteroids off course. Like what?

Well, one is using nuclear fission weapons. You set it off, and the trick is you don't wanna blow this thing up. No, because then you might have a lot of problems. Yeah, that's even worse. But it would just set it off course, and even if you set something off course by a few millimeters over the course of years,

that could be enough. Sure. So it's not like they're looking to knock it miles away or anything. Right. Although in the movies, that's how they do it. Yeah. In the movies, that's how they did do it, I think.

Of course we may mine them, which we talked about. Yeah, asteroid mining. Sure. And tracking these things has actually become something of a crowdsource thing. NASA has this all-sky fireball network. That sounds so not real. Yeah, but it is, it's a real program they have

where they have cameras that are connected to the internet that are constantly filming the night sky. Most of them are along the Eastern seaboard. We got one here in Georgia. Yeah, and Alabama has them, Tennessee. They're grouped in clusters. And actually, if you want to propose your location as a place to host one of these cameras,

typically they're on schools or things like that. Oh, really? Yeah, you can submit an application. And if there's really just like four criteria, there can't be a lot of light pollution or a light nearby. And that rolls me out. You have to be able to, you have to be connected to the internet.

Yeah, that rolls me out. Like a couple of other things. But it's like you can get a camera set up and be part of the All Sky Fireball Network. That's pretty cool. I think the plan is to eventually have 15 of these in place. And I guess tracking fireballs. Yeah, which are good things to keep tabs on for sure.

You got anything else? No, that's all the news about NASA. I wish NASA would sponsor us, man, that'd be awesome. Yeah. Talk about someone we could stump for. NASA. Yeah. Let's do it, NASA, what's your problem?

You guys have deep pockets? Yeah. Let's see, if you want to know more about NASA, you can type that word into the handy search bar at howstuffworks.com. It'll bring up a bunch of articles. We love NASA here at How Stuff Works and stuff you should know.

And since I said handy search bar, Chuck, it's time for listener mail. Straight to listener mail. Yeah. Oh, do you hear that chime? Man. It's like 2009. All right.

Dear guys in Jerry, I just got home from another eight hour car trip with my hubby, during which we binge listened to stuff you should know. Yeah. This has been our car trip ritual for about a year now. We actually moved to Atlanta, Kenesaw last August, and we make pretty frequent trips to our hometown of St. Louis.

Well, that's a long car trip, I would say. Yeah, it sure is. I wonder if they know that you can fly there really quickly. He introduced me to the podcast on our first trip down here, and I have to admit, I didn't have much hope. I'm a ballet teacher who loves arts and fiction in long hours with Netflix, and he is a self-taught programmer

who loves biographies and doing math for fun in his free time. So when he told me what the show was, I was thinking, great, I'm going to feel dumb and bored, but we gave it a try anyway. I also have to admit, and this one is kind of funny, after listening to one or two episodes, I told him I didn't like it. He, not understanding how that was possible,

asking why not, and I said, dude, it's so condescending that the way they ask each other questions and converse is if they don't already know what the other person's going to say. As if. He sniffed me off the case right away, she says. So she's a true fan.

By saying, I don't think that's fake, I think they really write, don't write out a full script ahead of time. Believe it or not. He's right. Believe it or not, that changed everything, which might seem silly, but I bet you listened to a past episode,

and imagine it was totally scripted in rehearsal, she'd see what I mean. Now I recommend it to everyone. I can't even conceive of how we would be able to generate the level of clumsiness that we rise to every episode. You couldn't write that. Yeah.

So thanks guys for putting out a very entertaining program for people of all ages to enjoy, and for being less sad than this American life, which we also love, but sometimes we just don't have enough tissue and emotional resolve to listen to it. That is from Amber and Ben, Studebaker. Thanks to you guys.

Thanks to Amber and Ben, hey there. If you're on one of your road trips, drive safe, and drive safe to everybody out there who's listening on a road trip, or on a long haul, or on an airplane, whatever. If you're listening to us right now and you're traveling, I hope it's a nice time, agreed.

If you wanna tell us about those travels, you can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K podcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email. Yeah, to stuffpodcasteddiscovery.com. And you can join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. ["House Stuff Works"]

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The South Dakota Stories, volume three. It was my first time traveling alone, packed my car with hiking boots, a camera, and my dog, Randy. I don't know what I was searching for. Maybe it was something new with adventure. Maybe it was the idea of vacation I would never expect, filled with wildlife, national parks, rivers,

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