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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, the production of

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Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick,

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Speaker 1: and its moons once again. That's right, The Stuff to

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Speaker 1: Blow your Mind tour of moons continues. We've over the years,

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Speaker 1: we've previously covered the moons of Saturn, the moons of Jupiter,

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Speaker 1: more recently the moons of Mars, and we intend to

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Speaker 1: move on to the other moons out there, the other

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Speaker 1: lunar systems. But in today's episode, we're going to consider

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Speaker 1: the moons of the two innermost worlds, Mercury and Venus.

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Speaker 1: I see a flaw on your plan immediately, Yes, because

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Speaker 1: here's the thing. Mercury and Venus do not have any moons. Well,

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Speaker 1: that can't stop us, can it. I mean, we we

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Speaker 1: could stop right there. We could just we could just

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Speaker 1: call the episode. But no, we're gonna keep going because

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Speaker 1: instead we're going to consider some additional questions and hypotheses

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Speaker 1: as so aated with these two moonless worlds. Yeah, we're

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Speaker 1: gonna look at the question where, you know, why are

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Speaker 1: they moonless? Were they always moonless? Did we ever think

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Speaker 1: they might have moons and um and so forth, and

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Speaker 1: you know what is also what is this moonless aspect

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Speaker 1: of Mercury and Venus seemed to tell us about the

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Speaker 1: uh the the neighborhood, the orbital neighborhood more immediately surrounding

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Speaker 1: the Sun. All right, well, maybe before we get into

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Speaker 1: the specifics of these two planets, we should do a

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Speaker 1: little bit of general moon review or revision as the

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Speaker 1: Brits would say, Yes, so yes, as a refresher, how

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Speaker 1: does any moon tend to uh form or arrive or

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Speaker 1: what have you? How does it how do you get

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Speaker 1: a moon established in orbit? Well, as we've discussed in

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Speaker 1: past episodes, uh, there seemed to be a few different ways.

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Speaker 1: One of the big ones is the the impact hypothesis. Now,

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Speaker 1: this is basically a situation where something large collides with

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Speaker 1: a given planet, knocking debris into orbit and beyond orbit,

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Speaker 1: and there is alting orbital debris forms into a moon. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and this seems to be the leading contender to explain

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Speaker 1: the origin of our moon, Earth's moon. And the theory

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Speaker 1: goes something like this. Very early after the Earth formed,

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Speaker 1: so roughly four and a half billion years ago, it

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Speaker 1: had a collision with another rocky planet, which was a

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Speaker 1: Mars sized object hypothetically named THEA. And after this giant crash,

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Speaker 1: most of Earth and THEA after they crashed together, melted

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Speaker 1: and then reformed together into a new sphere that is

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Speaker 1: now the Earth we live on today. But a small

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Speaker 1: amount of the mass of that crash turned into debris uh,

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Speaker 1: and that debris coalesced in orbit around the newly formed

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Speaker 1: Earth and became the Moon. And the collision hypothesis seems

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Speaker 1: to be consistent with a lot of the available evidence

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Speaker 1: when it comes to Earth in its moon, including analysis

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Speaker 1: of lunar material brought back by the Apollo missions. Uh.

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Speaker 1: In fact, I just dug up a NASA press release

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Speaker 1: about new research from providing further support for the giant

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Speaker 1: impacts hypothesis on the basis of different levels of light

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Speaker 1: versus heavy chlorine and that are found on on the

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Speaker 1: Earth in the Moon. So we don't know for sure,

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Speaker 1: but giant impacts looks like the best explanation for how

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Speaker 1: we got our moon. But there are other ways for

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Speaker 1: moons to come to exist, that's right. Another way of

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Speaker 1: looking at it is the hypothesis of coformation. So basically,

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Speaker 1: the Moon forms along with the planet out of the

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Speaker 1: same material that long ago accreed it into a planet.

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Speaker 1: And I think this is often used to explain the

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Speaker 1: likely origin of say, the moons of Saturn, like the

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Speaker 1: gas giants. I think also the moons of Jupiter. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: kind of a garlic knots and crazy bread situation here

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Speaker 1: where a little that was left over and the making

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Speaker 1: of the great pizza. Uh, and it becomes the moon

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Speaker 1: in this case, I like the way you think. Now.

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Speaker 1: The next hypothesis is the capture hypothesis. And this one,

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Speaker 1: of course, is when we talked about a good deal

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Speaker 1: in our Mars episode. Uh, the moon. In this case,

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Speaker 1: the moon itself is an object like an asteroid that

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Speaker 1: is captured by the planet's gravity and drawn into orbit. Right, So,

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Speaker 1: as you say, capture is one of the proposed explanations

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Speaker 1: for the moons of Mars. It fits some characteristics of

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Speaker 1: those moons, but not others. We go into more depth

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Speaker 1: about this in the episodes on phobos and demos, but

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Speaker 1: the short version is Uh. In terms of physical characteristics

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Speaker 1: and composition, the moons of Mars look a lot like

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Speaker 1: asteroids that would support the idea that they were originally

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Speaker 1: orbiting the Sun, they were part of the asteroid belt.

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Speaker 1: They they somehow slipped into what's known as the hill

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Speaker 1: sphere of Mars, the sort of the area around Mars

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Speaker 1: where an object can fall into a stable orbit around

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Speaker 1: the planet, and then they got stuck there. But there

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Speaker 1: are other things about the moons of Mars, such as

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Speaker 1: their orbital characteristics, which are near circular and near equatorial,

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Speaker 1: that don't really look like capture, because when an object

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Speaker 1: is haptured originally going on its own trajectory, you'd expected

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Speaker 1: to have a sort of more elongated elliptical orbit and

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Speaker 1: also to be offset from the equator. So they're outstanding

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Speaker 1: mysteries about the moons of Mars that their characteristics seem

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Speaker 1: to be a little from column A and a little

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Speaker 1: from column B, and maybe future missions to those moons

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Speaker 1: can can tell us something that will help solve that mystery.

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Speaker 1: But there is one moon in the Solar System that

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Speaker 1: looks absolutely like it was captured, and that is Neptune's

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Speaker 1: moon Triton. Now how would we really know this moon

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Speaker 1: was captured, Well, one very big clue is that its

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Speaker 1: circles Neptune in a retrograde orbit, so it orbits the

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Speaker 1: planet opposite the direction of the planet's rotation. That does

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Speaker 1: not look like something that would naturally happen if say

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Speaker 1: a moon co formed with a planet as an accretion disk. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Like I said, my my main analogy that I made

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Speaker 1: in the Mars episode, it's like cats. You know, if

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Speaker 1: you raise a cat from a kitten, you know there's

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Speaker 1: going to be it's maybe gonna be a little more

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Speaker 1: orderly situation. But if you have have brought a a

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Speaker 1: feral cat into your house, Uh, it's gonna be a

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Speaker 1: bit wilder. The orbit of that cat is going to

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Speaker 1: be wilder. That's the way I like to think of it. Anyway,

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Speaker 1: Oh I I think that's exactly right now. Hopefully in

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Speaker 1: the cat's situation, it's not as doomed as the Triton

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Speaker 1: capture situation, because one thing I was reading about is

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Speaker 1: how Neptune's gravity is actually sort of dragging on Triton

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Speaker 1: the fact that Triton is orbiting in retrograde to the

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Speaker 1: rotation of Neptune means the gravity is slowing down the

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Speaker 1: orbit of Triton over time because they're going across purposes,

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Speaker 1: and this is making Triton spiral a little bit closer

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Speaker 1: to the planet every time it goes around, and in

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Speaker 1: a few million years I'm not sure exactly how long,

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Speaker 1: but some number of million years from now, Triton will

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Speaker 1: get close enough to start to get tidally broken up

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Speaker 1: by Neptune's gravity and maybe turn into a ring. Yeah. Interesting.

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Speaker 1: And then on the cat front, I mean all cats

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Speaker 1: will eventually explode. That's just now. These are three of

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Speaker 1: the major explanations for where moons of the Solar System

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Speaker 1: come from. You've got yeah, like you say, impacts co

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Speaker 1: formation and capture. But there is actually one more major

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Speaker 1: theory that has been used to explain at least the

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Speaker 1: origins of Earth's moon. I don't know if it's been

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Speaker 1: proposed for any other object in the Solar System, but

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Speaker 1: this was the fission hypothesis, the idea that the Moon

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Speaker 1: is originally a mass of molten material that somehow was

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Speaker 1: ejected from a rapidly rotating Earth at some point in

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Speaker 1: its early history. This hypothesis, weird trivia, was actually advanced

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Speaker 1: by the astronomer George Howard Darwin, the son of Charles Darwin. Now,

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Speaker 1: I don't think this is a widely held theory at

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Speaker 1: this point. If I recall correctly. It makes some assumptions

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Speaker 1: that are kind of hard to square with other facts,

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Speaker 1: like I think it predicts an extremely high original rotation

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Speaker 1: speed for the Earth, but it is at least conceivable

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Speaker 1: in theory. And it does connect to one very eye

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Speaker 1: popping paper that I came across years ago that has

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Speaker 1: stuck in my mind ever since, not necessarily because it's

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Speaker 1: very likely to be true, but just because it's a

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Speaker 1: captivating image. And this is an idea that's explored in

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Speaker 1: a paper published in the journal Chemical Geology by R. J. Demeyer.

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Speaker 1: At All and the authors here argue that the fission hypothesis,

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Speaker 1: the idea that the Moon was somehow flung out of

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Speaker 1: the Earth or spun out of the Earth, would help

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Speaker 1: explain some of the isotopic similarity between Earth material and

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Speaker 1: Moon material. Of course, this would make sense if they

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Speaker 1: originally came from the same ball. But the question is

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Speaker 1: how does the ejection of the Moon actually happen? Like,

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Speaker 1: how do you fling off a moon sized chunk of

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Speaker 1: a planet? Well, they've got a guest to explain this,

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Speaker 1: and I want to read from their abstract quote. We

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Speaker 1: showed that the dynamics of this scenario requires on the

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Speaker 1: order of ten to the twenty nine to tend the

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Speaker 1: thirty jewels almost instantaneously generated additional energy if the angular

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Speaker 1: momentum of the proto Earth was similar to that of

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Speaker 1: the Earth Moon system. Today, the only known source for

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Speaker 1: this additional energy is nuclear fission. We showed that it

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Speaker 1: is feasible to form the Moon through the ejection of

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Speaker 1: terrestrial silicate material triggered by a nuclear explosion at Earth's

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Speaker 1: core mantle boundary or CMB, causing a shock wave of

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Speaker 1: propagating through the Earth. So I'm definitely not convinced it's correct,

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Speaker 1: but that is a memorable take a naturally forming nuclear

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Speaker 1: geo reactor that went supercritical and blew up the planet. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: still as best I can tell, I think most scientists

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Speaker 1: in the relevant fields would tell you that the giant

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Speaker 1: impact hypothesis is currently the best at explaining the most

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Speaker 1: Now there's another. This one this was a moon formation hypothesis.

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Speaker 1: It's it's closely related to examples one and two that

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Speaker 1: we aid here, and that is, uh, the idea of

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Speaker 1: a ring of debris consolidating into a rough moon. And

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Speaker 1: this is one of the hypotheses concerning the Martian moan

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Speaker 1: Phobos that we discussed, and um, you know, while it's

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Speaker 1: it's not something to to jump to with moons, you

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Speaker 1: know that there is also the concept of an advanced

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Speaker 1: civilization establishing an artificial moon in a planet's orbit. Again,

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Speaker 1: that was one briefly held hypothesis regarding Phobos. There's no

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Speaker 1: evidence for this now that concerning Phobos, there's no evidence

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Speaker 1: that an artificial moon exists or has ever existed, But

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Speaker 1: some scientists have considered it as the sort of thing

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Speaker 1: we could someday, you know, look for, we could look

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Speaker 1: for in other systems. Uh, you know, it's the kind

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Speaker 1: of thing that we might do in the future if

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Speaker 1: we reach the point where we have uh that level

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Speaker 1: of scientific power. Um. But but again, no artificial moons

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Speaker 1: are known to exist. I don't think any any moon

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Speaker 1: in our Solar system is currently um a thought to

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Speaker 1: be artificial in form But it's one of those things

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Speaker 1: you have to sort of keep on the table, you know,

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Speaker 1: and the towards the back of the table. But it's

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Speaker 1: it's technically on the table, all right. So let's get

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Speaker 1: to the question, then, why wouldn't any of these various

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Speaker 1: processes result in moons For mercury or venus. So, first

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Speaker 1: of all, here's some more general stats about moons in

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Speaker 1: our Solar system. Our Solar system has a current known

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Speaker 1: total of around two hundred and fourteen moons is according

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Speaker 1: to NASA, that entails both a hundred and fifty eight

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Speaker 1: confirmed moons and fifty six provisional moons and all told,

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Speaker 1: if you go planet by planet in order, uh you know,

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Speaker 1: from the Sun outward, the moon count goes like this zero,

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Speaker 1: that's mercury, zero, that's venus. One, that's Earth, and then

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Speaker 1: it goes to two seventy nine eight, two fourteen, and

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Speaker 1: those bigger numbers in the middle are of course the

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Speaker 1: gas giants. Now the rest of the moons out there,

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Speaker 1: and that that that two fourteen total. Those are a

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Speaker 1: tree did to the dwarf planets Pluto, Airishmia, Maki, Maki,

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Speaker 1: and Series with only Series boasting zero moons. H Pluto

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Speaker 1: has five. Series will remind you is the largest object

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Speaker 1: in the asteroid belt, but it's quite small. Pluto, which

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Speaker 1: has five moons again is fourteen times the size of Series,

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Speaker 1: and Series is the smallest recognized dwarf planet, so Series

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Speaker 1: has none, but the larger actual planets of Mercury and

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Speaker 1: Venus also have none. Yeah. Now, yeah, I mean the

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Speaker 1: reason I'm rolling through all this, I guess, is just

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Speaker 1: to make the point that it's like, you can't just

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Speaker 1: look at Mercury and say, okay, well, Mercury is the

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Speaker 1: smallest of the recognized planets, so maybe that's why it

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Speaker 1: doesn't have have a moon. Because again, Pluto Um, which

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Speaker 1: we don't consider one of the core planets anymore. Uh,

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Speaker 1: you know it it has five moons, but it is

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Speaker 1: smaller than Mercurys. So you know, something else other than

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Speaker 1: just the the absolute mass of the world is in

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Speaker 1: play here. Now, there is something that Mercury and Venus

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Speaker 1: haven't common, which, even without knowing much about how the

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Speaker 1: Solar system was formed, you could probably just guess is

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Speaker 1: a major reason that they don't have moons, and it's

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Speaker 1: that they are the closest to the Sun. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: this basically relates to the short form simple answer to

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Speaker 1: this question. This is the the answer that you'll find

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Speaker 1: across NASA's web presence, especially in various short form and

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Speaker 1: q A articles. Uh. Yeah, they're just simply too close

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Speaker 1: to the Sun. If a moon were to orbit one

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Speaker 1: of these worlds there would be two major risks in play.

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Speaker 1: If we were to venture too far from the planet

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Speaker 1: it's orbiting, it would venture into an unstable orbit and

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Speaker 1: the Sun would capture it. And if it was too

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Speaker 1: close to the planet, they'd be destroyed by tidal gravitational forces.

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Speaker 1: And while there is a stable orbital zone around these

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Speaker 1: planets that could remain viable for billions of years, it's

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Speaker 1: likely so narrow that nothing has ever been captured by

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Speaker 1: it or created within that stable zone. Yes, and so

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Speaker 1: this does apply to some extent to both of these planets,

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Speaker 1: but especially to Mercury. It would be really hard for

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Speaker 1: Mercury to have a moon. Uh, and it would be

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Speaker 1: and it looks like it would be somewhat difficult for

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Speaker 1: Venus to have a moon, though, though not as difficult

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Speaker 1: as for Mercury. Right right, So, you know, we don't

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Speaker 1: know for certain. Um, we know there are no moons

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Speaker 1: orbiting either world now, but scientists have wondered if there

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Speaker 1: if there have been moons in times past. So we'll

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Speaker 1: get into some of these questions as as we go,

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Speaker 1: Planet by planet. Now, brief throwback to a past episode. Uh,

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Speaker 1: there's the hypothetical planet Vulcan that was once thought to

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Speaker 1: exist between mercury and the Sun, and we actually call

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Speaker 1: such hypothetical bodies, especially asteroids between mercury and the Sun, vulcanoids. Now,

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Speaker 1: vulcan was proposed by French a mathematician or Bann la

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Speaker 1: Verier during the nineteenth century to account for irregularities and

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Speaker 1: Mercury's orbit there are now explained by general relativity. Uh,

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Speaker 1: but occasionally you'll see some you know, people talking about

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Speaker 1: the possibility of vulcanoids. No evidence of a vulcanoid has

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Speaker 1: ever been reported. Granted, it's difficult to or of things

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Speaker 1: that close to the Sun, but it's it's interesting because

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Speaker 1: we've discussed the shadowy world of potential mysteries in the

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Speaker 1: transplutony and outer reaches of the Solar System. But it's

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Speaker 1: also interesting interesting how the bright inner realm of the

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Speaker 1: Solar System can also be shrouded in mysteries. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: this is one of the major themes we talked about

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Speaker 1: in in that previous episode. If you want to go

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Speaker 1: look that up. It might have been a two parter

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Speaker 1: or I don't recall, but it was called The Lost

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Speaker 1: Daughters of Otten, where we talked about multiple hypothetical planets

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Speaker 1: or other planets that were believed to exist at one

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Speaker 1: time or another, and and we're later discovered not to exist.

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Speaker 1: And and it was cool, yeah, that the idea of

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Speaker 1: vulcan and inner planet that would explain the precession of

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Speaker 1: Mercury's orbit was in fact done away with by not

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Speaker 1: by an observation, but by a new theory, which, as

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Speaker 1: you say, was general relativity. But it makes me wonder

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Speaker 1: if we still have kind of a geocentric impulse in

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Speaker 1: our understanding of the Solar system. Like we know the

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Speaker 1: Earth is not the center of the universe. We know

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Speaker 1: our son is not the center of the universe. We

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Speaker 1: know our planet orbits the Sun, and yet we kind

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Speaker 1: of we think about our Sun. We kind of think

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Speaker 1: of that is like the center of things like and

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Speaker 1: therefore it should be the center of knowledge. It should

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Speaker 1: be the bright inner part of the city that we

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Speaker 1: know the most about. And yeah, the outskirts are dark

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Speaker 1: and mysterious, but but surely the inner area that place

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Speaker 1: right next to the light, we shouldn't have any any

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Speaker 1: mysteries or outstanding questions about that, but but we do

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Speaker 1: because we don't. We don't live there. We live we're

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Speaker 1: more in the suburbs, the Goldilocks suburbs. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 1: I mean another way you can think about it is

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Speaker 1: when we're looking for stuff way out in the in

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Speaker 1: the dark, that's the problem is too little signal. We're

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Speaker 1: when we're looking for things really close to the sun,

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Speaker 1: there's too much noise. Yeah, all right, well let's let's

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Speaker 1: talk some more about mercury here. So again, Mercury has

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Speaker 1: no moons, and this knowledge is based on observation, number crunching,

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Speaker 1: and two previous admissions to Mercury Mariner In which launched

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Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy three, which conducted one fly by of

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Speaker 1: Venus and three fly bys of Mercury, and the other

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Speaker 1: is Messenger, launched in two thousand four, which did two

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Speaker 1: Venus fly bys, three Mercury fly bys, and an orbital insertion,

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Speaker 1: achieving a quote unquote perfect orbit before it ran out

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Speaker 1: of fuel for for alterations and its orbit decayed and

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Speaker 1: it crashed into mercury surface. So it didn't see any moons. Correct, No,

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Speaker 1: no moons were observed, And I don't think there are

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Speaker 1: any serious scientific arguments for the existence of of of

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Speaker 1: of a mercur in moon today. But this hasn't always

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Speaker 1: been the case, so I thought we might go back

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Speaker 1: in time to nineteen seventy four. And before we get

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Speaker 1: into this, I need to drive home something I've probably

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Speaker 1: said before and and related before, and that is that

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Speaker 1: I do not like April fools Day. It's it's abominable.

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Speaker 1: It should be illegal. I regret every time I've done

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Speaker 1: in April fools Day thing in the past. I resent

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Speaker 1: everybody who does April Fool's Day things to day, especially

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Speaker 1: given I just earlier, earlier this morning, was reading about

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Speaker 1: an article in a respectable but I'm not going to

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Speaker 1: name names, but an article in a respectable publication that,

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Speaker 1: in a hugely embarrassing mistake, UH extensively referred to as

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Speaker 1: a source an April fools Day article, an interview with

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Speaker 1: an author that didn't actually take place and was posted

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Speaker 1: originally as an April Fool's hoax. And I live in

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Speaker 1: constant fear that this is going to happen to me,

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Speaker 1: that I'm just not going to notice that something was

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Speaker 1: an April Fool's joke and I'll think it was real

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Speaker 1: and refer to it on this show and just die. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's I mean, it's a celebration of low hanging fruit

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Speaker 1: and so and like sheep got you humor and and

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Speaker 1: it's it's often used by like reputable like reputable people

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Speaker 1: and sources engage in it, and yeah, it makes it

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Speaker 1: confusing later on when you're like going back through the

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Speaker 1: archives of something and then you're like, wait, all right,

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Speaker 1: this is this is April one, this is or this

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Speaker 1: is you know, the day before, the day after April first,

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Speaker 1: and you know it's it's if we're going to celebrate

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Speaker 1: April Fool's Day, we can't we can't like not do

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Speaker 1: other news on that day. You know, It's that's ridiculous.

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Speaker 1: Uh So, anyway, I'm we we mentioned all this because, uh,

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Speaker 1: the the the the incident they were discussing in nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventy four. Uh, it was covered in the New York

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Speaker 1: Times on April one, nineteen seventy four. But this is

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Speaker 1: a legitimate news article by Walter Sullivan and not an

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Speaker 1: April Fool's Day joke. But really part of me wishes

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Speaker 1: they could have just held on it this when published

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Speaker 1: it on April two. And this was confounded by the

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Speaker 1: I mean, our confusion was confounded anyway, when you found

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Speaker 1: an actual April fools Day joke by Uh was this

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Speaker 1: by NASA? Um? That came out many years later? Yeah? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think this was posted on April Fool's Day twelve.

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Speaker 1: It's now labeled April fools Day. I don't know if

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Speaker 1: it was at the time. And it was the announcement

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Speaker 1: of a discovery of a moon of mercury. Imagine our confusion. Yeah, so, um,

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Speaker 1: I think it was posted maybe as NASA's Astronomy Picture

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Speaker 1: of the Day that they do. Uh. And it's called

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Speaker 1: Mooning Mercury t he and it says that there's a

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Speaker 1: moon that it's approximately seventy meters or two hundred and

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Speaker 1: thirty feet in diameter that orbits mercury at a mean

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Speaker 1: distance of fourteen thousand, three hundred kilometers. The proposed name

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Speaker 1: for the moon is Caducius, named after the staff that's

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Speaker 1: carried by the Roman god mercury. Uh. And and this

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Speaker 1: it just it reads like a real piece of of

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Speaker 1: NASA copy, you know, it's not just like an obvious

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Speaker 1: wet joke. So imagine my irritation and reading about this

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Speaker 1: and then trying to figure out if this is somehow

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Speaker 1: related to the April first news article you're talking about

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Speaker 1: from decades previous. Yeah, because the link you shared here

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Speaker 1: for this, uh, for this, aside from the tag April

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Speaker 1: Fool's Day, there's no punchline in this, or at least

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Speaker 1: none that resonates with with with me or or certainly

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Speaker 1: the casual reader. Um, Like, there needs to be some

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Speaker 1: in my opinion that you need to get to that

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Speaker 1: like ridiculous point where it's clear that they're messing with us.

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Speaker 1: But but at any rate, yes, so I did a

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Speaker 1: little research on this just to be sure, because it

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Speaker 1: made me nervous as well, according to David Dickinson Dickinson

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Speaker 1: in Universe Today in the article Astronomical Pranks of April

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Speaker 1: Fool's Past, Dickinson writes that quote, spurious moons are apparently

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Speaker 1: the low hanging fruit of astronomical April Fool's pranks, and

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Speaker 1: so he mentions this one specifically, but does point out

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Speaker 1: that there was, indeed, Yeah, there was indeed a two

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Speaker 1: twelve April Fool's Day joke about Mercury having a moon,

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Speaker 1: but that the nineteen seventy four confusion uh, and subsequent

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Speaker 1: you know, press coverage of it was legitimate. So again,

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Speaker 1: maybe we're making too big a deal out of this.

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Speaker 1: But I want to be clear, like this is not

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Speaker 1: an April fool's joke. Uh, the nineteen seventy four publication here. Okay,

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Speaker 1: So the seventy four article was about something that they

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Speaker 1: thought had been discovered perhaps by the mirror in er ten. Yes,

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Speaker 1: and I'm going to read from part of it here. Uh, Pasadena, California,

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00:22:10,840 --> 00:22:14,199
Speaker 1: March thirty one. That's refreshing that the it's actually tagged.

401
00:22:14,200 --> 00:22:17,639
Speaker 1: The day before um quote, an ultra violent scanner aboard

402
00:22:17,640 --> 00:22:20,200
Speaker 1: the mirror in er Tin spacecraft is detected what seems

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Speaker 1: to be a small moon in orbit around Mercury. It

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Speaker 1: would be the first moon discovered orbiting either Venus or Mercury,

405
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Speaker 1: the two planets between the Sun and the orbit of Earth.

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Speaker 1: Then it goes on for a bid. It comes back

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00:22:31,720 --> 00:22:34,080
Speaker 1: Mayor in er Tin flew by Mercury Friday for the

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Speaker 1: first close up reconnaissance of that planet. The mysterious object

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00:22:38,080 --> 00:22:41,280
Speaker 1: that maybe in orbit around Mercury was reported by Dr

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Speaker 1: Lyle Broadfoot of kit Peak National Observatory in Arizona and

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Speaker 1: Dr Michael McElroy of Harvard University. From the observation so far,

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Speaker 1: it appears to be moving at about ten thousand miles

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Speaker 1: an hour relative to the planet in rather eccentric or

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Speaker 1: egg shaped orbit, roughly fifteen thousand miles above mercury surface

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Speaker 1: and more or less in the planet's equatorial plane. It

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Speaker 1: is thought to be far enough from Mercury to be

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Speaker 1: spare destruction from stresses induced by the planet's gravity. However,

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Speaker 1: as noted by Dr Bruce C. Murray of the California

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Speaker 1: Institute of Technology, the head of the picture interpreting team,

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Speaker 1: any moon of Mercury would be subject to a quote

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Speaker 1: title tug of war between that planet and the Sun.

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Speaker 1: All Right, So it seems like some of the same

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Speaker 1: concerns we've already talked about are being stressed as as

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Speaker 1: possible reasons to be skeptical of this discovery at the time.

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Speaker 1: And it would turn out that this discovery at the

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Speaker 1: time was a false one, right. And I should also

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Speaker 1: point out the article, which you can read in full

428
00:23:37,040 --> 00:23:39,119
Speaker 1: in the New York Times Archives. It goes on to

429
00:23:39,200 --> 00:23:42,359
Speaker 1: speculate that this might be an asteroid captured by the

430
00:23:42,400 --> 00:23:44,479
Speaker 1: planet's gravity, but then also goes on to just talk

431
00:23:44,560 --> 00:23:47,920
Speaker 1: about a number of other interesting additional findings that were

432
00:23:47,920 --> 00:23:50,840
Speaker 1: coming in from the Mariner ten spacecraft at that point.

433
00:23:51,320 --> 00:23:54,800
Speaker 1: But yeah, looking at it especially, you know, with knowing

434
00:23:55,400 --> 00:23:58,440
Speaker 1: what we know now, so that this is what occurred.

435
00:23:58,600 --> 00:24:00,919
Speaker 1: The details of this seemed to be that one of

436
00:24:01,000 --> 00:24:06,080
Speaker 1: Mariner ten's instruments registered a bright UV emission what we

437
00:24:06,080 --> 00:24:09,919
Speaker 1: would call now a far UV that seemed out of place.

438
00:24:10,240 --> 00:24:12,080
Speaker 1: Then it was gone the next day. Then three days

439
00:24:12,160 --> 00:24:15,400
Speaker 1: later it was back and seemed to be coming from

440
00:24:15,440 --> 00:24:20,200
Speaker 1: an object that, as Swedish astronomy author Paul Schleiter explains

441
00:24:20,240 --> 00:24:26,160
Speaker 1: in in in Hypothetical Planets quote, seemingly detached itself from Mercury.

442
00:24:26,240 --> 00:24:28,840
Speaker 1: So one idea was, well that maybe we're looking at

443
00:24:28,840 --> 00:24:31,119
Speaker 1: a star. Uh, you know, we're just watching, you know,

444
00:24:31,240 --> 00:24:33,439
Speaker 1: we're seeing the light of a star as it as

445
00:24:34,000 --> 00:24:36,040
Speaker 1: the planet is moving between us and the light of

446
00:24:36,080 --> 00:24:38,199
Speaker 1: that star. But then it was it was observed that

447
00:24:38,240 --> 00:24:40,920
Speaker 1: the emissions were in two directions, and they thought, well,

448
00:24:40,960 --> 00:24:43,080
Speaker 1: maybe it's a great it's a great deal closer to us,

449
00:24:43,160 --> 00:24:47,120
Speaker 1: like something orbiting Mercury. But subsequent data indicated that it

450
00:24:47,160 --> 00:24:50,119
Speaker 1: was not in fact something orbiting Mercury. It was not

451
00:24:50,240 --> 00:24:52,560
Speaker 1: a moon. It seemed to move, then it seemed to

452
00:24:52,600 --> 00:24:54,879
Speaker 1: move beyond Mercury, and then it was determined that this

453
00:24:55,080 --> 00:24:59,119
Speaker 1: actually was not a moon, was not something orbiting Mercury.

454
00:24:59,160 --> 00:25:02,919
Speaker 1: It was bright UV light stemming from the binary star

455
00:25:03,040 --> 00:25:08,680
Speaker 1: system thirty one. Criteris located three thousand, one sixty six

456
00:25:08,720 --> 00:25:11,840
Speaker 1: point sixty three light years away from Earth. But this

457
00:25:11,880 --> 00:25:14,119
Speaker 1: finding itself ended up proving very useful because it was

458
00:25:14,160 --> 00:25:18,320
Speaker 1: the realization that extreme UV could travel UH this well

459
00:25:18,480 --> 00:25:22,560
Speaker 1: across interstellar space. Interesting. So, despite what you may have

460
00:25:22,640 --> 00:25:25,920
Speaker 1: read April fool stay or otherwise, Mercury has no moon.

461
00:25:26,200 --> 00:25:29,280
Speaker 1: It's probably not ever gonna have a moon. Just this

462
00:25:29,320 --> 00:25:32,040
Speaker 1: is not a happy place for moons to live, right,

463
00:25:32,160 --> 00:25:34,920
Speaker 1: But for a brief moment there, it apparently seemed possible.

464
00:25:35,480 --> 00:25:39,600
Speaker 1: But it seemed possible because there was UH because of

465
00:25:39,640 --> 00:25:42,480
Speaker 1: the information we were receiving, and we didn't know quite

466
00:25:42,480 --> 00:25:44,639
Speaker 1: how to analyze it and how to understand it. But

467
00:25:44,680 --> 00:25:47,440
Speaker 1: then subsequently we did. And this is not the only

468
00:25:47,480 --> 00:25:50,639
Speaker 1: example of far UV there are. There are other examples

469
00:25:50,640 --> 00:25:54,280
Speaker 1: that have subsequently been UH have been detected, so that

470
00:25:54,400 --> 00:25:57,919
Speaker 1: it's not that this alone is not an anomaly. Right, Well,

471
00:25:57,960 --> 00:26:00,480
Speaker 1: are you ready to talk about the planet van Us?

472
00:26:00,560 --> 00:26:03,480
Speaker 1: Let's do it. So Venus is as we said earlier,

473
00:26:03,520 --> 00:26:05,960
Speaker 1: another planet without a moon, though it wouldn't be as

474
00:26:06,000 --> 00:26:09,760
Speaker 1: surprising to find a moon orbiting Venus as it would

475
00:26:09,800 --> 00:26:13,640
Speaker 1: be to find one orbiting Mercury. Observation of Venus through

476
00:26:13,640 --> 00:26:16,639
Speaker 1: a telescope actually has a very interesting history with a

477
00:26:16,640 --> 00:26:20,800
Speaker 1: lot of cool controversies and mysteries in it. One example

478
00:26:20,840 --> 00:26:22,399
Speaker 1: that we've talked about on the show before I Know

479
00:26:22,600 --> 00:26:25,760
Speaker 1: is that the observation of Venus was one of the

480
00:26:25,800 --> 00:26:29,000
Speaker 1: lines of evidence offered by Galileo in support of the

481
00:26:29,000 --> 00:26:32,159
Speaker 1: heliocentric model of the Solar System. Now, there are a

482
00:26:32,240 --> 00:26:35,760
Speaker 1: number of arguments he offered. One was based on observations

483
00:26:35,920 --> 00:26:38,760
Speaker 1: of the surface of the Moon through a telescope. You know,

484
00:26:38,800 --> 00:26:40,359
Speaker 1: when you look at the surface of the Moon, it

485
00:26:40,400 --> 00:26:44,879
Speaker 1: appears cratered and to have terrain, going against the idea

486
00:26:44,960 --> 00:26:47,040
Speaker 1: that these objects in the heavens are just sort of

487
00:26:47,080 --> 00:26:50,600
Speaker 1: like perfectly smooth ideal bodies. Instead, it looks like the

488
00:26:50,600 --> 00:26:52,840
Speaker 1: Moon is made of rock, much like the Earth is.

489
00:26:52,880 --> 00:26:55,760
Speaker 1: And then the other things where he saw the the

490
00:26:55,800 --> 00:26:59,639
Speaker 1: Galilean moons named for him of Jupiter, and so the

491
00:26:59,680 --> 00:27:02,840
Speaker 1: obs ovation that there could be things orbiting another planet

492
00:27:02,960 --> 00:27:05,520
Speaker 1: like Jupiter made it seem like, well, then maybe not

493
00:27:05,640 --> 00:27:09,479
Speaker 1: everything orbits the Earth, maybe just things orbit other things,

494
00:27:10,000 --> 00:27:12,480
Speaker 1: and so it seems more plausible that the Earth could

495
00:27:12,480 --> 00:27:15,679
Speaker 1: be orbiting the Sun. But then also one of the

496
00:27:15,800 --> 00:27:18,520
Speaker 1: lines of evidence he produced what had to do with

497
00:27:18,640 --> 00:27:21,920
Speaker 1: the observation of the phases of Venus. Of course, Venus

498
00:27:22,000 --> 00:27:25,679
Speaker 1: from our perspective has phases just like our moon, And

499
00:27:25,760 --> 00:27:28,760
Speaker 1: the question is why, why why does our moon have

500
00:27:28,880 --> 00:27:31,640
Speaker 1: phases to begin with it? Well, the moon is full

501
00:27:31,720 --> 00:27:34,040
Speaker 1: when it's on the opposite side of the Earth from

502
00:27:34,080 --> 00:27:37,119
Speaker 1: the Sun, allowing sunlight to reflect off of the full

503
00:27:37,320 --> 00:27:41,199
Speaker 1: disk back in our direction. So the phases of a

504
00:27:41,280 --> 00:27:44,520
Speaker 1: spherical object that we see in the sky are determined

505
00:27:44,640 --> 00:27:49,080
Speaker 1: by our viewing angle of the day side of that object.

506
00:27:49,240 --> 00:27:51,760
Speaker 1: You know, the sun is always shining on half of

507
00:27:51,800 --> 00:27:55,199
Speaker 1: that sphere. What is our viewing angle on the on

508
00:27:55,280 --> 00:27:59,640
Speaker 1: the brightly lit half. And Galileo observed that Venus also

509
00:27:59,720 --> 00:28:02,520
Speaker 1: went through phases like this that would be consistent with

510
00:28:02,600 --> 00:28:05,560
Speaker 1: it orbiting the Sun rather than the Earth, for example,

511
00:28:05,880 --> 00:28:08,720
Speaker 1: appearing more as a half disc when it's further away

512
00:28:08,760 --> 00:28:12,080
Speaker 1: from the Sun, but growing full when it neared alignment

513
00:28:12,119 --> 00:28:13,919
Speaker 1: with the Sun. So if you try to picture that

514
00:28:14,000 --> 00:28:16,560
Speaker 1: when Venus is on the opposite side of the Sun

515
00:28:16,680 --> 00:28:19,159
Speaker 1: from Us. Roughly we're gonna get the best view of

516
00:28:19,200 --> 00:28:22,560
Speaker 1: its full day side. But another one we've talked about

517
00:28:22,680 --> 00:28:26,080
Speaker 1: before was the interesting issue of the ashen light. You

518
00:28:26,080 --> 00:28:30,199
Speaker 1: remember this one. Yeah, So this is a supposed faint

519
00:28:30,320 --> 00:28:34,320
Speaker 1: glow emanating from the shaded regions of the surface of Venus,

520
00:28:34,359 --> 00:28:37,320
Speaker 1: which has been observed or at least claimed by a

521
00:28:37,320 --> 00:28:39,480
Speaker 1: bunch of astronomers over the years. You can go back

522
00:28:39,520 --> 00:28:41,280
Speaker 1: and listen to our full episode on that if you

523
00:28:41,320 --> 00:28:44,160
Speaker 1: want to know more. But the planet Venus has also

524
00:28:44,240 --> 00:28:49,400
Speaker 1: been subject to spurious satellite sightings, and uh, I figured

525
00:28:49,440 --> 00:28:52,120
Speaker 1: we should talk about a few. So one of the

526
00:28:52,240 --> 00:28:55,280
Speaker 1: Venusian moon sightings, and this is probably the first ever,

527
00:28:55,920 --> 00:29:01,600
Speaker 1: was by a seventeenth century Neapolitan astronomer named Francesco Fontana.

528
00:29:02,200 --> 00:29:04,320
Speaker 1: And Rob, I've attached a picture for you to look

529
00:29:04,320 --> 00:29:06,719
Speaker 1: at of this guy. I don't know how accurate this

530
00:29:06,800 --> 00:29:09,320
Speaker 1: drawing of him is. Actually it's an engraving from the

531
00:29:09,360 --> 00:29:12,080
Speaker 1: seventeenth century, I guess, or actually I'm not sure when

532
00:29:12,120 --> 00:29:14,959
Speaker 1: this was produced. But in this picture, he looks like

533
00:29:15,120 --> 00:29:17,560
Speaker 1: he's up to no good. He looks like he's thinking

534
00:29:17,600 --> 00:29:20,840
Speaker 1: about I don't know, going through your trash or something. Yeah,

535
00:29:20,880 --> 00:29:23,080
Speaker 1: he looks kind of like a like kind of like

536
00:29:23,120 --> 00:29:26,160
Speaker 1: a cabbage patch doll, a little bit like a slightly

537
00:29:26,200 --> 00:29:29,560
Speaker 1: sinister cabbage patch doll with a with a mustache and goatee.

538
00:29:30,080 --> 00:29:34,120
Speaker 1: Fontana was actually originally a lawyer by training. He studied

539
00:29:34,200 --> 00:29:37,680
Speaker 1: law at the University of Naples, but apparently at some

540
00:29:37,760 --> 00:29:42,240
Speaker 1: point his interests shifted and he became more interested in

541
00:29:42,320 --> 00:29:47,200
Speaker 1: the study of mathematics and astronomy, and so Fontana actually

542
00:29:47,200 --> 00:29:51,600
Speaker 1: became one of the early telescope makers of the telescope revolution.

543
00:29:52,160 --> 00:29:54,560
Speaker 1: Now another thing you'll recall that we've talked about before.

544
00:29:54,600 --> 00:29:56,840
Speaker 1: I think this was actually in an invention episode we

545
00:29:56,880 --> 00:30:01,000
Speaker 1: did on the telescope. Um, it's difficult to say, really

546
00:30:01,080 --> 00:30:05,240
Speaker 1: with with confidence, who should get credit for inventing the telescope,

547
00:30:05,280 --> 00:30:08,400
Speaker 1: because you can make arguments, uh, you know, like what

548
00:30:08,520 --> 00:30:11,120
Speaker 1: really counts as the invention? And when did they first

549
00:30:11,160 --> 00:30:13,520
Speaker 1: have it? You know, was it Galileo, was it lip

550
00:30:13,680 --> 00:30:16,520
Speaker 1: or shy Uh? Something was sort of in the air

551
00:30:16,640 --> 00:30:19,200
Speaker 1: in the early sixteen hundreds, and a lot of people

552
00:30:19,240 --> 00:30:23,720
Speaker 1: were experimenting with lenses and magnification. In this first decade

553
00:30:23,720 --> 00:30:27,880
Speaker 1: of the sixteen hundreds. Galileo's famous initial observations were in

554
00:30:28,000 --> 00:30:32,120
Speaker 1: sixteen o nine, but Francesco Fontana was part of this

555
00:30:32,200 --> 00:30:35,600
Speaker 1: movement also. He was making telescopes right around the same time,

556
00:30:36,240 --> 00:30:39,400
Speaker 1: and according to the Danish historian of science science Helga

557
00:30:39,480 --> 00:30:43,600
Speaker 1: Krog in his book The Moon That Wasn't, Fontana was

558
00:30:43,840 --> 00:30:47,719
Speaker 1: one of the most respected early telescope makers in Italy,

559
00:30:48,240 --> 00:30:51,000
Speaker 1: and he achieved high levels of magnification at the time

560
00:30:51,040 --> 00:30:55,160
Speaker 1: by pairing together two convex ocular lenses in in alignment.

561
00:30:55,320 --> 00:30:59,520
Speaker 1: But this reputation for making high magnification telescopes did not

562
00:30:59,640 --> 00:31:03,600
Speaker 1: necessary fairly translate into a reputation for being a good

563
00:31:03,600 --> 00:31:07,240
Speaker 1: astronomer or being a good scientist. But try he did

564
00:31:07,560 --> 00:31:10,440
Speaker 1: crowd rights that by using a telescope of his own design,

565
00:31:10,560 --> 00:31:13,520
Speaker 1: Fontana was able to produce the first known drawings of

566
00:31:13,600 --> 00:31:17,960
Speaker 1: Mars in the sixteen thirties, though unfortunately his drawings appear

567
00:31:18,040 --> 00:31:21,680
Speaker 1: to be based mostly on optical illusions rather than genuine

568
00:31:21,680 --> 00:31:25,360
Speaker 1: surface detail, and so to read from Krog here quote

569
00:31:25,720 --> 00:31:28,720
Speaker 1: in observations of sixteen thirty six and sixteen thirty eight,

570
00:31:28,760 --> 00:31:32,240
Speaker 1: Fontana saw in the middle of Mars quote a black

571
00:31:32,400 --> 00:31:36,400
Speaker 1: cone like a very dark little globule, but he was

572
00:31:36,480 --> 00:31:40,040
Speaker 1: uncertain quote whether it was separate from the planet itself

573
00:31:40,120 --> 00:31:43,160
Speaker 1: and a satellite of it, or rather a big hollow

574
00:31:43,280 --> 00:31:46,640
Speaker 1: on its disk. So so here's a good pitch for you, right,

575
00:31:46,720 --> 00:31:51,120
Speaker 1: the black Cone of Mars. Yeah, this is you know,

576
00:31:51,120 --> 00:31:56,200
Speaker 1: we've discussed this phase of of of the telescope and

577
00:31:56,200 --> 00:31:58,320
Speaker 1: and looking for things and how and how you know,

578
00:31:58,400 --> 00:32:00,600
Speaker 1: ultimately we have to remind usel this one. In a

579
00:32:00,640 --> 00:32:03,720
Speaker 1: situation where you're taking a photograph, taking some getting some

580
00:32:03,720 --> 00:32:07,680
Speaker 1: sort of like a high um you know, high detail um,

581
00:32:07,720 --> 00:32:12,280
Speaker 1: you know, objective imagery. You know, there's it's it's someone,

582
00:32:12,360 --> 00:32:16,479
Speaker 1: it's a human observing something. And so all the various

583
00:32:16,480 --> 00:32:20,200
Speaker 1: optical illusions and illusions of perception, uh that are that

584
00:32:20,240 --> 00:32:22,440
Speaker 1: are there just you know in our everyday life are

585
00:32:22,480 --> 00:32:25,600
Speaker 1: also present through the telescope. Right. So for the first

586
00:32:25,640 --> 00:32:28,640
Speaker 1: few hundred years of astronomy, there are a lot of

587
00:32:28,640 --> 00:32:31,480
Speaker 1: cases where somebody says they saw something and somebody else

588
00:32:31,480 --> 00:32:33,200
Speaker 1: looks for it and they can't see it, and then

589
00:32:33,240 --> 00:32:36,120
Speaker 1: they just argue back and forth and other people chime

590
00:32:36,160 --> 00:32:38,400
Speaker 1: into yeah I saw it. No I I didn't see it.

591
00:32:38,400 --> 00:32:40,360
Speaker 1: I don't think it's there. So there's a lot that

592
00:32:40,360 --> 00:32:42,360
Speaker 1: can go on there. You know, you can you can

593
00:32:42,720 --> 00:32:44,760
Speaker 1: you can just be straining to see something and think

594
00:32:44,800 --> 00:32:46,880
Speaker 1: you see something and then reinforce that idea that you

595
00:32:46,880 --> 00:32:49,320
Speaker 1: saw something. You may you know, you may be picking

596
00:32:49,400 --> 00:32:53,280
Speaker 1: up on some sort of momentary um you know, you

597
00:32:53,320 --> 00:32:56,000
Speaker 1: know illusion that is, you know, due to the physical

598
00:32:56,000 --> 00:32:58,400
Speaker 1: structure of the eye. Uh, something to do with the

599
00:32:58,480 --> 00:33:00,920
Speaker 1: lens is perhaps, UH have to mention you get into

600
00:33:01,080 --> 00:33:03,600
Speaker 1: atmospheric phenomena as well, like there's so many things that

601
00:33:03,600 --> 00:33:06,280
Speaker 1: could interfere with it. Yeah, totally, and a minute ago

602
00:33:06,320 --> 00:33:08,240
Speaker 1: I should at just to clarify, I think I said

603
00:33:08,240 --> 00:33:10,240
Speaker 1: the first few hundred years of astronomy, I mean the

604
00:33:10,240 --> 00:33:13,080
Speaker 1: first few hundred years of telescope astronomy. Obviously people have

605
00:33:13,080 --> 00:33:15,640
Speaker 1: been doing naked eye astronomy for a long long time.

606
00:33:15,720 --> 00:33:18,480
Speaker 1: But so yeah, so Fontana was, as we say, a

607
00:33:18,640 --> 00:33:24,200
Speaker 1: respected telescope maker, but his astronomical observations were not similarly

608
00:33:24,320 --> 00:33:27,720
Speaker 1: respected by his peers. In fact, Uh, this book I'm

609
00:33:27,760 --> 00:33:32,080
Speaker 1: talking about by by Helga Kroc uh just catalogs a

610
00:33:32,120 --> 00:33:36,440
Speaker 1: bunch of people talking trash about Fontana. A lot of

611
00:33:36,440 --> 00:33:38,640
Speaker 1: them are like, this guy is not smart, he is

612
00:33:38,680 --> 00:33:43,520
Speaker 1: not good and Galileo was apparently somewhat contemptuous of anything

613
00:33:43,600 --> 00:33:47,120
Speaker 1: Fontana reported seeing. Uh, sort of like, yeah, he makes

614
00:33:47,120 --> 00:33:50,560
Speaker 1: pretty good telescopes, or at least high magnification telescopes. I'll

615
00:33:50,560 --> 00:33:53,200
Speaker 1: give him that, but don't believe him if he says

616
00:33:53,240 --> 00:33:57,000
Speaker 1: he saw something that was essentially Galileo's attitude. And there's

617
00:33:57,000 --> 00:33:59,960
Speaker 1: a great quote in this book where Galileo's assistant Evangelie

618
00:34:00,040 --> 00:34:04,320
Speaker 1: sta Toricelli, was writing a letter in sixteen forty seven, uh,

619
00:34:04,360 --> 00:34:08,600
Speaker 1: and he was writing about Fontana's observations. He writes, quote,

620
00:34:08,920 --> 00:34:12,680
Speaker 1: I have the book of Foolishness observed rather dreamed by

621
00:34:12,719 --> 00:34:16,400
Speaker 1: Fontana in the Heavens. If you want to see insane things,

622
00:34:16,440 --> 00:34:20,879
Speaker 1: that is, absurdities, fictions, effronteries, and a thousand similar outrages,

623
00:34:20,920 --> 00:34:28,479
Speaker 1: I will send you the book. Oh man, yeah, yeah,

624
00:34:28,520 --> 00:34:31,560
Speaker 1: they should print that on the back. But in the

625
00:34:31,680 --> 00:34:36,319
Speaker 1: sixteen forties Fontana made observations of Venus, and looks like

626
00:34:36,360 --> 00:34:39,680
Speaker 1: here he also got a lot of things incorrect. So,

627
00:34:39,760 --> 00:34:43,640
Speaker 1: for example, one thing he thought he saw was so

628
00:34:43,960 --> 00:34:46,920
Speaker 1: when he's when you're looking at Venus, he is seeing

629
00:34:46,920 --> 00:34:50,520
Speaker 1: the phase of Venus, right, So it's partially illuminated and

630
00:34:50,560 --> 00:34:53,560
Speaker 1: he thought, based on the partially illuminated circle that he

631
00:34:53,640 --> 00:34:57,920
Speaker 1: was seeing, that Venus must actually not be spherical but

632
00:34:58,040 --> 00:35:00,239
Speaker 1: more of an oval shape. The way he through it

633
00:35:00,400 --> 00:35:02,959
Speaker 1: makes it look like it's sort of elongated from pole

634
00:35:03,000 --> 00:35:05,160
Speaker 1: to pole, which I guess a lot of planets actually are,

635
00:35:05,280 --> 00:35:07,680
Speaker 1: but not to the point they would see it as

636
00:35:07,680 --> 00:35:11,360
Speaker 1: an oval like this. This is definitely exaggerated. This looks

637
00:35:11,400 --> 00:35:14,200
Speaker 1: like more like a lima bean or something. Yeah, and

638
00:35:14,200 --> 00:35:15,959
Speaker 1: then and I'm just a straight up bean. It looks

639
00:35:16,000 --> 00:35:18,239
Speaker 1: like a great being in the sky. Yes, it is

640
00:35:18,360 --> 00:35:21,239
Speaker 1: very bean or almost banana like. To be fair to him,

641
00:35:21,280 --> 00:35:24,359
Speaker 1: he is. He's drawing I guess the illuminated portion of it,

642
00:35:24,480 --> 00:35:27,800
Speaker 1: but it's still it's it's stretched out. He also drew

643
00:35:27,960 --> 00:35:31,400
Speaker 1: fringes around the planet. Crowd rights that this is this

644
00:35:31,480 --> 00:35:35,480
Speaker 1: is not something that's actually there. This is an optical effect. Um.

645
00:35:35,520 --> 00:35:38,319
Speaker 1: But here is where we get to the moon or

646
00:35:38,440 --> 00:35:42,280
Speaker 1: moonlike observation. Uh so here here to read from crag

647
00:35:42,360 --> 00:35:47,640
Speaker 1: crowd rights. Quote on the evening of eleven November, Fontana

648
00:35:47,719 --> 00:35:50,960
Speaker 1: observed near the center of Venus of the Venus crescent

649
00:35:51,040 --> 00:35:55,960
Speaker 1: quote a certain spot of subdued reddish color, noting that

650
00:35:56,000 --> 00:36:00,160
Speaker 1: this was quote a new discovery, hitherto unknown. He did

651
00:36:00,200 --> 00:36:02,480
Speaker 1: not report the size of the spot, but from his

652
00:36:02,560 --> 00:36:05,200
Speaker 1: drawing it appears that it had a radius of about

653
00:36:05,239 --> 00:36:08,959
Speaker 1: one fifth of that of Venus. The Neapolitan telescope maker

654
00:36:09,040 --> 00:36:12,200
Speaker 1: further reported, and this is a block quote from Fontana

655
00:36:12,320 --> 00:36:16,360
Speaker 1: himself in translation. Obviously, two small dots were seen to

656
00:36:16,400 --> 00:36:19,920
Speaker 1: accompany Venus, which I would suppose to be her courtiers

657
00:36:19,960 --> 00:36:23,120
Speaker 1: and attendants, as we shall also call those of Jupiter

658
00:36:23,239 --> 00:36:26,480
Speaker 1: and Saturn. This is a new discovery, not yet published,

659
00:36:26,480 --> 00:36:28,799
Speaker 1: in my opinion. But it is true that they do

660
00:36:28,840 --> 00:36:32,680
Speaker 1: not always appear, but only when Venus is shimmering, as

661
00:36:32,719 --> 00:36:36,080
Speaker 1: will be revealed in the diagrams, and these little dots

662
00:36:36,080 --> 00:36:38,800
Speaker 1: were always seen to be of a more reddish color.

663
00:36:39,320 --> 00:36:42,120
Speaker 1: These little dots were, however, not always seen in the

664
00:36:42,200 --> 00:36:45,680
Speaker 1: same situation on Venus, but they moved back and forth

665
00:36:45,760 --> 00:36:48,680
Speaker 1: like fish in the sea. From this, it can be

666
00:36:48,760 --> 00:36:51,759
Speaker 1: deduced that Venus itself moves in the same way and

667
00:36:51,880 --> 00:36:55,440
Speaker 1: is not attached to any part of the sky. Okay,

668
00:36:55,480 --> 00:36:57,880
Speaker 1: so moving around like little fish in the sea, he

669
00:36:57,920 --> 00:37:01,479
Speaker 1: sees at least one dot, maybe sometimes multiple dots, though

670
00:37:01,560 --> 00:37:04,480
Speaker 1: it might be notable that he he only notices that

671
00:37:04,560 --> 00:37:09,600
Speaker 1: when Venus is shimmering. Now Fontana's claims. He went on

672
00:37:09,640 --> 00:37:12,240
Speaker 1: to say that he saw the globes or the globe

673
00:37:12,280 --> 00:37:14,360
Speaker 1: I think it. At one point he sort of resolved

674
00:37:14,360 --> 00:37:16,280
Speaker 1: it to say, well, maybe there's just one of them.

675
00:37:16,320 --> 00:37:19,160
Speaker 1: But he claimed to see them on multiple subsequent occasions,

676
00:37:19,560 --> 00:37:23,000
Speaker 1: and his claimed observations immediately caught people's attention. A number

677
00:37:23,000 --> 00:37:27,640
Speaker 1: of other astronomers expressed skepticism about Fontana's claims, though, and

678
00:37:27,680 --> 00:37:31,240
Speaker 1: reported having independently searched for these moons and found nothing.

679
00:37:31,760 --> 00:37:33,840
Speaker 1: So I just wanted to mention a couple of examples

680
00:37:33,880 --> 00:37:37,240
Speaker 1: of his contemporaries who were not impressed by these claims.

681
00:37:37,600 --> 00:37:43,960
Speaker 1: One was an anti Copernican astronomer named Giambatista Riccioli uh,

682
00:37:44,000 --> 00:37:46,239
Speaker 1: and I a couple of notes on him. Number one,

683
00:37:46,280 --> 00:37:49,000
Speaker 1: I think this was actually the guy who was the

684
00:37:49,000 --> 00:37:51,920
Speaker 1: first observer, or one of the early observers of the

685
00:37:51,960 --> 00:37:55,279
Speaker 1: so called ash and light on Venus. But if he's

686
00:37:55,280 --> 00:37:58,000
Speaker 1: an anti Copernican astronomer, I think that means he is

687
00:37:58,040 --> 00:38:01,960
Speaker 1: holding out for geocentrism, which is cool. But he described

688
00:38:02,000 --> 00:38:06,319
Speaker 1: Fontana's observation of a possible moon of Venus to be fair.

689
00:38:06,360 --> 00:38:08,840
Speaker 1: I don't think Fontana said it was a moon or

690
00:38:08,840 --> 00:38:10,719
Speaker 1: said he was certain it was a moon. He just

691
00:38:10,760 --> 00:38:15,120
Speaker 1: saw a dot whatever this globule was. And so Ricchieoli

692
00:38:15,239 --> 00:38:20,080
Speaker 1: he called this observation very ungraceful, which I thought was

693
00:38:20,120 --> 00:38:22,000
Speaker 1: really funny. It's like, you know, oh, you saw a

694
00:38:22,000 --> 00:38:27,640
Speaker 1: moon of Venus. Gross dude. The Crag quotes Ricchieoli in

695
00:38:27,880 --> 00:38:30,840
Speaker 1: his in his writings on this, and Richie Ali says

696
00:38:30,880 --> 00:38:33,960
Speaker 1: that you know, whatever it was Fontana was looking at

697
00:38:34,040 --> 00:38:36,880
Speaker 1: was quote, either something like a meteor or a little

698
00:38:36,920 --> 00:38:40,000
Speaker 1: cloud in the evening, or something like sun spots in

699
00:38:40,040 --> 00:38:43,200
Speaker 1: front of Venus, or the lunar image of a cave

700
00:38:43,280 --> 00:38:46,600
Speaker 1: and of mountains. And then he added quote I have

701
00:38:46,840 --> 00:38:51,760
Speaker 1: never and neither has Francesco Maria Grimaldi, nor Pierre Casindi

702
00:38:51,880 --> 00:38:54,719
Speaker 1: other astronomers of the time, as seen in book three

703
00:38:54,760 --> 00:38:59,040
Speaker 1: of his Institutionists astronomic A admitted ever to have observed

704
00:38:59,080 --> 00:39:03,160
Speaker 1: at Venus or close to Venus any globules in any telescope.

705
00:39:03,239 --> 00:39:06,880
Speaker 1: So no globules. And I almost feel kind of bad

706
00:39:06,920 --> 00:39:10,680
Speaker 1: for Fontana because it seems like, of all these contemporaries,

707
00:39:10,719 --> 00:39:14,600
Speaker 1: it's like nobody likes him. He's got Helio centrists and geocentrists,

708
00:39:14,680 --> 00:39:19,120
Speaker 1: both insulting him constantly. I don't know, maybe the selection

709
00:39:19,200 --> 00:39:21,839
Speaker 1: of quotations that that I've come across in this book

710
00:39:21,880 --> 00:39:24,600
Speaker 1: are are especially bad. Maybe people were saying nice things

711
00:39:24,640 --> 00:39:28,000
Speaker 1: about him elsewhere, But um, he would definitely not be

712
00:39:28,120 --> 00:39:30,560
Speaker 1: the last to believe that he had seen a moon

713
00:39:30,760 --> 00:39:34,239
Speaker 1: or some other kind of object near Venus, because here

714
00:39:34,239 --> 00:39:36,520
Speaker 1: we're going to get to a much more celebrated and

715
00:39:36,560 --> 00:39:41,640
Speaker 1: well remembered astronomer, Giovanni Domenico Cassini, who also saw the

716
00:39:41,640 --> 00:39:44,120
Speaker 1: moon that supposedly didn't exist, though I think he also

717
00:39:44,200 --> 00:39:48,000
Speaker 1: never said it was a moon. Cassini lives six to

718
00:39:48,040 --> 00:39:51,319
Speaker 1: seventeen twelve, and he was in Italo, French astronomer and

719
00:39:51,360 --> 00:39:55,560
Speaker 1: mathematician who was known for having discovered multiple moons of Saturn.

720
00:39:56,080 --> 00:39:58,880
Speaker 1: The Cassini space probe, which visited those moons of Saturn,

721
00:39:59,040 --> 00:40:03,200
Speaker 1: was named after him, and Cassini believed that he observed

722
00:40:03,239 --> 00:40:06,840
Speaker 1: a small object in orbit around Venus or near Venus

723
00:40:06,960 --> 00:40:10,640
Speaker 1: multiple times, once in sixteen seventy two and then again

724
00:40:10,800 --> 00:40:14,360
Speaker 1: in sixteen eighty six. He thought that the object was

725
00:40:14,400 --> 00:40:18,520
Speaker 1: about one quarter the diameter of Venus, and he says

726
00:40:18,560 --> 00:40:22,160
Speaker 1: he observed it in one case for about fifteen minutes,

727
00:40:22,719 --> 00:40:25,399
Speaker 1: and then lost track of it. But then he has

728
00:40:25,440 --> 00:40:27,879
Speaker 1: a In one of his writings he has a full

729
00:40:27,920 --> 00:40:32,040
Speaker 1: description of his observations, and this is from the observation

730
00:40:32,280 --> 00:40:37,400
Speaker 1: on January sixteen, seventy two. He says, quote, Venus was

731
00:40:37,480 --> 00:40:41,280
Speaker 1: then horned, and this object, which was of diameter almost

732
00:40:41,360 --> 00:40:44,240
Speaker 1: one quarter that of Venus, was of the same shape.

733
00:40:44,600 --> 00:40:47,120
Speaker 1: It was distant from the southern horn of Venus a

734
00:40:47,200 --> 00:40:50,520
Speaker 1: diameter of Venus on the western side. In these two

735
00:40:50,520 --> 00:40:53,160
Speaker 1: observations I was in doubt whether it was or was

736
00:40:53,239 --> 00:40:56,359
Speaker 1: not a satellite of Venus, of such a consistence as

737
00:40:56,400 --> 00:40:58,839
Speaker 1: not to be very well fitted to reflect the light

738
00:40:58,880 --> 00:41:02,000
Speaker 1: of the Sun, and which in magnitude born nearly the

739
00:41:02,040 --> 00:41:04,760
Speaker 1: same proportion to Venus as the Moon does to Earth,

740
00:41:05,200 --> 00:41:08,000
Speaker 1: being at the same distance from the Sun and Earth

741
00:41:08,120 --> 00:41:11,520
Speaker 1: as was Venus the phases of which it resembled. But

742
00:41:11,600 --> 00:41:13,799
Speaker 1: in spite of some research I have done from time

743
00:41:13,840 --> 00:41:16,640
Speaker 1: to time after these two observations in order to complete

744
00:41:16,680 --> 00:41:20,000
Speaker 1: a discovery of such great importance, I have never succeeded

745
00:41:20,040 --> 00:41:22,840
Speaker 1: to see it except these two times. And this is

746
00:41:22,880 --> 00:41:26,480
Speaker 1: why I suspend my judgment. So Cassini's holding off a

747
00:41:26,520 --> 00:41:28,360
Speaker 1: little more. He says, I thought I saw something a

748
00:41:28,400 --> 00:41:31,200
Speaker 1: couple of times separated by many years, but I'm gonna

749
00:41:31,320 --> 00:41:34,040
Speaker 1: reserve judgment because I'm not sure what I saw, if

750
00:41:34,080 --> 00:41:37,080
Speaker 1: I saw anything, and uh, and I'm not sure it

751
00:41:37,160 --> 00:41:39,319
Speaker 1: was a moon if I did see it. But in

752
00:41:39,360 --> 00:41:42,439
Speaker 1: the decades that followed this, many other astronomers, I think

753
00:41:42,680 --> 00:41:45,319
Speaker 1: probably dozens, based on what I was reading, at some

754
00:41:45,440 --> 00:41:48,840
Speaker 1: point claim to see a satellite or companion to Venus.

755
00:41:49,560 --> 00:41:52,319
Speaker 1: But then many others looked for it and failed, And

756
00:41:52,360 --> 00:41:54,759
Speaker 1: of course the observations of a moon of Venus were

757
00:41:54,800 --> 00:41:58,120
Speaker 1: all wrong. We know now Venus has no moon. A

758
00:41:58,280 --> 00:42:01,719
Speaker 1: number of reasons for these faulty observations have been have

759
00:42:01,800 --> 00:42:06,960
Speaker 1: been advanced as possible explanations, many involving optical illusions caused

760
00:42:07,000 --> 00:42:10,440
Speaker 1: by problems with telescope lenses or interference between the telescope

761
00:42:10,480 --> 00:42:13,759
Speaker 1: lens in the eye, as well as the mistaken observation

762
00:42:13,800 --> 00:42:17,080
Speaker 1: of stars in the background for objects in the foreground.

763
00:42:17,680 --> 00:42:21,600
Speaker 1: But there is one interesting variation on explaining these observations

764
00:42:21,640 --> 00:42:25,279
Speaker 1: that was put forward by a Belgian astronomer named Jean

765
00:42:25,440 --> 00:42:29,040
Speaker 1: Charles Huzzo, who was once a director of the Royal

766
00:42:29,080 --> 00:42:33,279
Speaker 1: observatory in Brussels. Huzo tried to square the circle of

767
00:42:33,320 --> 00:42:36,879
Speaker 1: all these conflicting observations by suggesting that the object being

768
00:42:36,920 --> 00:42:41,240
Speaker 1: observed was not a moon of Venus, but another planet

769
00:42:41,680 --> 00:42:45,759
Speaker 1: which often appeared near Venus, often appeared in conjunction with

770
00:42:45,800 --> 00:42:49,000
Speaker 1: it at certain times of year when their orbits lined up,

771
00:42:49,560 --> 00:42:52,279
Speaker 1: And this also proved to be incorrect. But it's a

772
00:42:52,360 --> 00:42:55,200
Speaker 1: very interesting idea, and he gave the hypothetical planet a

773
00:42:55,320 --> 00:43:00,800
Speaker 1: very cool name, ninth. Yes, ninth. Ninth is interesting because

774
00:43:00,800 --> 00:43:03,960
Speaker 1: this is the name of an Egyptian goddess. Uh So

775
00:43:04,160 --> 00:43:06,400
Speaker 1: I had to look. I had to look a knife

776
00:43:06,640 --> 00:43:10,560
Speaker 1: up in the book on Egyptian mythology by Geraldine Pinch

777
00:43:10,960 --> 00:43:14,160
Speaker 1: that I've really enjoyed this year. And Pinch describes Um

778
00:43:14,680 --> 00:43:18,200
Speaker 1: nine as quote a formidable creator goddess who could be

779
00:43:18,239 --> 00:43:21,560
Speaker 1: called the Great Mother, and the name literally means the

780
00:43:21,760 --> 00:43:25,760
Speaker 1: terrifying One, an imposing goddess who wore the red crown

781
00:43:25,800 --> 00:43:30,040
Speaker 1: of the North, and whose curious symbol Um may have

782
00:43:30,320 --> 00:43:34,320
Speaker 1: originally represented the click beetle. Uh. Click beetle is found

783
00:43:34,320 --> 00:43:36,399
Speaker 1: near water, so there would be linked to the Nile.

784
00:43:36,480 --> 00:43:39,320
Speaker 1: And in addition, we talked about that in previous episode

785
00:43:39,560 --> 00:43:43,640
Speaker 1: and then it's importance in Egyptian mythology, but the same

786
00:43:43,680 --> 00:43:47,000
Speaker 1: symbol was later interpreted to be two arrows crossing a shield.

787
00:43:47,480 --> 00:43:51,040
Speaker 1: She can be considered the mother of both Raw and Horace,

788
00:43:51,160 --> 00:43:54,240
Speaker 1: but also sometimes so Back as well. She has goddess

789
00:43:54,280 --> 00:43:58,400
Speaker 1: of all things linked to the quote fertile primeval waters.

790
00:43:58,400 --> 00:44:01,520
Speaker 1: She's the mother of snakes in the mother of crocodiles

791
00:44:01,560 --> 00:44:05,080
Speaker 1: creatures quote who are in the Abyss. She is sometimes

792
00:44:05,080 --> 00:44:09,400
Speaker 1: depicted as a crocodile headed goddess nursing young crocodiles, and

793
00:44:09,480 --> 00:44:12,360
Speaker 1: so Back is of course linked to crocodiles as well.

794
00:44:12,800 --> 00:44:15,680
Speaker 1: Um and when she spat into the Abyss, the chaos

795
00:44:15,840 --> 00:44:19,080
Speaker 1: god Apophus is said to have been born, and so

796
00:44:19,200 --> 00:44:21,759
Speaker 1: she's also the mistress of the bow, which she uses

797
00:44:21,800 --> 00:44:24,359
Speaker 1: to shoot down the enemies of Raw, as well as

798
00:44:24,400 --> 00:44:28,319
Speaker 1: the offspring of the chaotic Apophus, who is uh, at

799
00:44:28,600 --> 00:44:33,120
Speaker 1: least in some accounts, her own offspring. So anyway, really

800
00:44:33,160 --> 00:44:36,759
Speaker 1: cool goddess to to to draw your name from. In

801
00:44:37,040 --> 00:44:40,640
Speaker 1: coming up with potential names for hypothetical planets. Oh yeah,

802
00:44:40,680 --> 00:44:44,240
Speaker 1: I'm all in favor of more Egyptian naming of celestial objects.

803
00:44:44,280 --> 00:44:47,200
Speaker 1: I mean, you obviously we love Greek and Roman mythology,

804
00:44:47,239 --> 00:44:49,280
Speaker 1: but you know there's plenty of Greek and Roman mythology

805
00:44:49,320 --> 00:44:52,560
Speaker 1: already in the heavens. I yeah, get Egyptian mythology more

806
00:44:52,680 --> 00:44:55,600
Speaker 1: up in there, and all all the mythologies. Yeah, I mean,

807
00:44:55,600 --> 00:44:58,440
Speaker 1: we're doing it to to a certain extent that I

808
00:44:58,440 --> 00:45:02,520
Speaker 1: feel like we keep drawing names from from other cultures

809
00:45:02,520 --> 00:45:06,279
Speaker 1: and other deities and other pantheons, and certainly there's no

810
00:45:06,640 --> 00:45:08,839
Speaker 1: there's no shortage of things out there to to give

811
00:45:08,880 --> 00:45:11,759
Speaker 1: fancy names too. So we'll we'll probably run out of

812
00:45:11,920 --> 00:45:15,040
Speaker 1: gods and goddesses first. Eventually we'll reach, you know, the

813
00:45:15,080 --> 00:45:18,600
Speaker 1: point in our culture's future where we're having to name

814
00:45:18,680 --> 00:45:24,640
Speaker 1: stars stuff like Gozer. We'll have to draw on fictional pantheons.

815
00:45:24,760 --> 00:45:26,800
Speaker 1: Very good, but I kind of dread the day we

816
00:45:27,160 --> 00:45:38,279
Speaker 1: get like asteroid Relord, the Lord of Light. Now, there's

817
00:45:38,280 --> 00:45:40,680
Speaker 1: one more thing I wanted to mention about Venus, which

818
00:45:40,880 --> 00:45:43,840
Speaker 1: is an idea I came across in an astronomy paper

819
00:45:44,000 --> 00:45:47,080
Speaker 1: from two thousand six. I'm not sure how well this

820
00:45:47,239 --> 00:45:49,120
Speaker 1: is held up in the years since, but it's a

821
00:45:49,200 --> 00:45:53,120
Speaker 1: suggestion that Venus could have possibly had a moon or

822
00:45:53,200 --> 00:45:57,040
Speaker 1: even multiple moons in the past. And it also connects

823
00:45:57,080 --> 00:46:00,640
Speaker 1: to an interesting fact about Venus which concerns it's rotation.

824
00:46:01,280 --> 00:46:04,719
Speaker 1: The rotation of Venus is unusual. First of all, it's

825
00:46:04,880 --> 00:46:09,120
Speaker 1: very slow. In fact, it's so slow that on Venus

826
00:46:09,160 --> 00:46:12,960
Speaker 1: a day is actually longer than a year, So the

827
00:46:13,000 --> 00:46:16,120
Speaker 1: planet goes all the way around the Sun before it

828
00:46:16,160 --> 00:46:20,400
Speaker 1: completes a single full rotation. And the second fact is

829
00:46:20,480 --> 00:46:24,479
Speaker 1: that its rotation goes in the opposite direction from most

830
00:46:24,480 --> 00:46:28,520
Speaker 1: of the other planets. So the standard rotation orientation in

831
00:46:28,560 --> 00:46:32,200
Speaker 1: our Solar System is counterclockwise from the north pole, but

832
00:46:32,440 --> 00:46:37,280
Speaker 1: Venus spends clockwise at this creeping pace. So what would

833
00:46:37,320 --> 00:46:40,359
Speaker 1: these facts potentially have to do with a hypothetical moon

834
00:46:40,400 --> 00:46:43,600
Speaker 1: of Venus. Well, in the year two thousand six, at

835
00:46:43,640 --> 00:46:47,160
Speaker 1: the a S Division for Planetary Sciences meeting, there was

836
00:46:47,200 --> 00:46:50,640
Speaker 1: a presentation given by a couple of cal Tech researchers

837
00:46:50,719 --> 00:46:55,239
Speaker 1: named Alex Ellimi and David Stevenson called why Venus has

838
00:46:55,239 --> 00:46:58,520
Speaker 1: no moon? Now, given our best theories about how the

839
00:46:58,600 --> 00:47:03,000
Speaker 1: early Solar System worms, it's pretty likely that most inner

840
00:47:03,040 --> 00:47:07,600
Speaker 1: planets planets like Earth and like Venus, would undergo heavy

841
00:47:07,640 --> 00:47:11,360
Speaker 1: bombardment in their early years. Including at least one large

842
00:47:11,440 --> 00:47:14,959
Speaker 1: collision at some point. Uh now, like we already talked about,

843
00:47:15,000 --> 00:47:18,240
Speaker 1: a large collision between Earth and a Mars sized object

844
00:47:18,360 --> 00:47:22,240
Speaker 1: probably created our moon. And in this study, the authors

845
00:47:22,320 --> 00:47:25,840
Speaker 1: argue that the same type of catastrophic impact happened to

846
00:47:25,960 --> 00:47:29,880
Speaker 1: Venus at least twice. So according to their model, the

847
00:47:29,920 --> 00:47:34,240
Speaker 1: sequence goes like this. Venus suffers a massive collision early

848
00:47:34,320 --> 00:47:38,160
Speaker 1: in formation, and the resulting debris in orbit around Venus

849
00:47:38,280 --> 00:47:43,080
Speaker 1: becomes its first moon. Because of tidal interactions with Venus,

850
00:47:43,120 --> 00:47:47,120
Speaker 1: this moon gains momentum over time and drifts farther and

851
00:47:47,200 --> 00:47:50,040
Speaker 1: farther away from the planet. And actually, as a side note,

852
00:47:50,360 --> 00:47:53,280
Speaker 1: the same thing is gradually happening to Earth's moon today,

853
00:47:53,320 --> 00:47:55,960
Speaker 1: but at a very slow pace, so as the Moon

854
00:47:56,160 --> 00:47:59,560
Speaker 1: raises tides on Earth, the Earth contributes back to the

855
00:47:59,600 --> 00:48:03,359
Speaker 1: Moon's orbital energy, and the Moon's orbit becomes wider and

856
00:48:03,400 --> 00:48:06,960
Speaker 1: wider all the time. Alami and Stevenson are proposing the

857
00:48:07,000 --> 00:48:10,120
Speaker 1: same thing happened to Venus and its first moon that

858
00:48:10,200 --> 00:48:13,919
Speaker 1: formed here. But then, according to their model, about ten

859
00:48:13,960 --> 00:48:17,120
Speaker 1: million years later, so Venus gets hit by a giant

860
00:48:17,160 --> 00:48:21,560
Speaker 1: impact again. The second impact happens at an angle in

861
00:48:21,640 --> 00:48:25,600
Speaker 1: velocity that ends up reversing the planet spin, and this

862
00:48:25,640 --> 00:48:28,840
Speaker 1: would account for why Venus spins in the opposite direction

863
00:48:28,920 --> 00:48:32,080
Speaker 1: from the other planets and why its rate of rotation

864
00:48:32,239 --> 00:48:35,840
Speaker 1: is so sluggish. But now because the planet is rotating

865
00:48:35,840 --> 00:48:39,799
Speaker 1: in the opposite direction, tidal interactions drag on the Moon

866
00:48:39,960 --> 00:48:42,840
Speaker 1: rather than adding energy to its orbit, so the Moon's

867
00:48:42,840 --> 00:48:46,600
Speaker 1: spirals in instead of spiraling out, and it ends up

868
00:48:46,920 --> 00:48:50,640
Speaker 1: merging into Venus. Uh and uh. And if there was

869
00:48:50,640 --> 00:48:53,960
Speaker 1: another moon created by this second collision, it would have

870
00:48:54,080 --> 00:48:57,200
Speaker 1: also fallen down and been absorbed into the planet as well.

871
00:48:57,840 --> 00:49:00,840
Speaker 1: So again this is just a model, just a hypothetical proposal,

872
00:49:00,920 --> 00:49:04,239
Speaker 1: but if they are correct, Venus would have had at

873
00:49:04,320 --> 00:49:07,880
Speaker 1: least one moon in the past, possibly multiple moons, but

874
00:49:08,080 --> 00:49:12,560
Speaker 1: catastrophic impacts made it eat its own satellite, the violent

875
00:49:12,600 --> 00:49:15,360
Speaker 1: formation of of of a moon and then the violent

876
00:49:15,960 --> 00:49:18,960
Speaker 1: destruction of the moon as well. One strange trivia effect

877
00:49:19,000 --> 00:49:20,800
Speaker 1: I came across that I wanted to mention one of

878
00:49:20,840 --> 00:49:25,719
Speaker 1: the main writers who was an astronomer who dispelled with

879
00:49:25,800 --> 00:49:28,960
Speaker 1: the notions of a satellite for Venus and explain them

880
00:49:29,000 --> 00:49:32,360
Speaker 1: away in terms of various other possible explanations for the sightings.

881
00:49:32,680 --> 00:49:36,520
Speaker 1: Was a guy named Maximilian Hell, also known as Father Hell.

882
00:49:37,080 --> 00:49:39,840
Speaker 1: Oh wow, there's any version of that name is cool.

883
00:49:40,040 --> 00:49:45,200
Speaker 1: Maximilian Hell, max Hell, Father Hell, oh man, Mr Hell.

884
00:49:45,440 --> 00:49:47,880
Speaker 1: It's very good. He will set you straight about the

885
00:49:48,160 --> 00:49:53,160
Speaker 1: super hot, high pressure world. All right, Well that does

886
00:49:53,160 --> 00:49:56,480
Speaker 1: it for me? Yeah, I guess that about rounds it up.

887
00:49:56,520 --> 00:49:59,680
Speaker 1: I mean, I think a sizeable episode about the moons

888
00:49:59,800 --> 00:50:01,839
Speaker 1: of two planets that have no moons, So I think

889
00:50:01,880 --> 00:50:04,560
Speaker 1: it bodes well for the future when we moved back

890
00:50:04,800 --> 00:50:08,360
Speaker 1: to planets that actually have moons and discuss the details

891
00:50:08,360 --> 00:50:13,080
Speaker 1: of those those actual actual lunar bodies. UM. So I

892
00:50:13,120 --> 00:50:14,520
Speaker 1: look forward to and I guess the one thing I

893
00:50:14,560 --> 00:50:15,880
Speaker 1: would like to hear from everyone, like, where do you

894
00:50:15,880 --> 00:50:17,279
Speaker 1: want us to go next? Do we do we just

895
00:50:17,400 --> 00:50:20,239
Speaker 1: keep going in order? Do we look to uh to

896
00:50:20,719 --> 00:50:23,200
Speaker 1: Uranus and Neptune do we go? Or do we just

897
00:50:23,400 --> 00:50:26,239
Speaker 1: shoot straight to Pluto and go there? Or do we

898
00:50:26,280 --> 00:50:29,399
Speaker 1: start looking at at the dwarf planet? Yeah, other dwarf

899
00:50:29,440 --> 00:50:33,200
Speaker 1: planets and there their various moons. Uh. Let us know.

900
00:50:33,680 --> 00:50:36,359
Speaker 1: There's also the just the whole topic of of um

901
00:50:36,960 --> 00:50:39,040
Speaker 1: you know, talking about hypothetical moons and all is like

902
00:50:39,040 --> 00:50:42,440
Speaker 1: the subject of of of exo moons, of moons around

903
00:50:42,480 --> 00:50:45,600
Speaker 1: exo planets, and uh, what what we what we expect

904
00:50:45,600 --> 00:50:47,880
Speaker 1: to see, uh, and what we have seen or haven't

905
00:50:47,880 --> 00:50:51,200
Speaker 1: seen in particular, this is an interesting topic as well.

906
00:50:51,520 --> 00:50:53,080
Speaker 1: Or maybe you're sick of moons. I don't know, let

907
00:50:53,160 --> 00:50:55,640
Speaker 1: us know about that as well. We we cover kind

908
00:50:55,640 --> 00:50:58,080
Speaker 1: of wide variety of topics here, and we know that

909
00:50:58,400 --> 00:51:01,719
Speaker 1: you know some topics or not for for all listeners.

910
00:51:02,360 --> 00:51:04,040
Speaker 1: But you know that's just part of trying to to

911
00:51:04,160 --> 00:51:07,400
Speaker 1: cast a wide net and you know, to stay curious

912
00:51:07,440 --> 00:51:10,959
Speaker 1: about reality. We promise here and now that we will

913
00:51:11,040 --> 00:51:14,160
Speaker 1: never do in April Fool's Day episode where we report

914
00:51:14,239 --> 00:51:17,799
Speaker 1: the existence of a spurious moon. Yes, that's the that's

915
00:51:17,840 --> 00:51:20,480
Speaker 1: that's the stuff to blow your mind promise. All right,

916
00:51:20,520 --> 00:51:22,560
Speaker 1: we're gonna go and close it up here then, but yeah,

917
00:51:22,600 --> 00:51:23,880
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from you. Let us know what

918
00:51:23,880 --> 00:51:28,080
Speaker 1: you thought about this episode, possible future episodes, anything else.

919
00:51:28,200 --> 00:51:30,560
Speaker 1: It's just right in let us know. In the meantime,

920
00:51:30,560 --> 00:51:33,440
Speaker 1: you can find stuff to blow your mind wherever you

921
00:51:33,480 --> 00:51:35,200
Speaker 1: get your podcast. Just look for the Stuff to Blow

922
00:51:35,239 --> 00:51:38,480
Speaker 1: your Mind podcast feed. You'll find core science and culture

923
00:51:38,480 --> 00:51:41,400
Speaker 1: episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, we have short form episodes

924
00:51:41,800 --> 00:51:44,480
Speaker 1: on Mondays and Wednesdays, and on Fridays we do Weird

925
00:51:44,480 --> 00:51:47,799
Speaker 1: how Cinema. That's uh, that's the when we set the

926
00:51:47,840 --> 00:51:50,400
Speaker 1: science aside and we talk about a weird movie for

927
00:51:50,440 --> 00:51:54,120
Speaker 1: a little bit. Uh So, Yeah, tune in and if

928
00:51:54,160 --> 00:51:56,920
Speaker 1: the platform gives you the ability to do so, just rate, review,

929
00:51:56,960 --> 00:51:59,840
Speaker 1: and subscribe. Huge things as always to our excellent audio

930
00:52:00,000 --> 00:52:02,879
Speaker 1: producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get

931
00:52:02,880 --> 00:52:05,120
Speaker 1: in touch with us with feedback on this episode or

932
00:52:05,120 --> 00:52:07,400
Speaker 1: any other, to suggest topic for the future, or just

933
00:52:07,440 --> 00:52:10,200
Speaker 1: to say hi, you can email us at contact at

934
00:52:10,280 --> 00:52:20,279
Speaker 1: stuff to blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow

935
00:52:20,320 --> 00:52:22,879
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936
00:52:22,880 --> 00:52:25,479
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