Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to bow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and my name is Julie
Speaker 1: Dante Decklas. That's your that's your your nickname today. Does
Speaker 1: that make me Robert Virgil Lamb? Yes, I did that.
Speaker 1: I think that And um, you know we're talking about
Speaker 1: hell all Hell. Yep. We just did a whole episode
Speaker 1: which I think would be like an hour about the
Speaker 1: problem of Hell and about this our belief in Hell
Speaker 1: and where it comes from, why it's problematic, and what
Speaker 1: some of the what a couple of studies say about
Speaker 1: how it may affect the way we go about our
Speaker 1: daily lives. And so in this episode we're taking on
Speaker 1: the science of Hell, where we're gonna look at some
Speaker 1: scientific explorations about the structure of Hell, how it works,
Speaker 1: how big it is. Um, A lot of this deals
Speaker 1: with with doant but but but some of it gets
Speaker 1: a little Miltonian as well. It does, And we're covering
Speaker 1: this because it's sort of the ultimate magical thinking. We've
Speaker 1: talked about magical thinking before, about ascribing these supernatural properties
Speaker 1: to this construct. All right, and here we have an
Speaker 1: extension of our mind. Uh, that's troubled by being physically
Speaker 1: tethered to this body. This is how this is my
Speaker 1: read of hell, by the way, So we're unable to
Speaker 1: escape our physical selves or even our minds, and in
Speaker 1: that there's there's a certain amount of pain to be processed,
Speaker 1: physical pain and mental pain. And to me, this the
Speaker 1: repository for all of this is Hell. It's the pit.
Speaker 1: And we have put so much effort into Hell that
Speaker 1: we've actually mapped it out, or rather those of us
Speaker 1: who came before us, like Dante, have mapped it out,
Speaker 1: just so that we can place that angst, in that
Speaker 1: pain in very specific pockets. Yes, well, I think that's
Speaker 1: a pretty good read on it. Yeah, and it's only
Speaker 1: we've put a lot of effort into mapping it out,
Speaker 1: creating depictions of it. And a lot of it stems
Speaker 1: from the fact that if you're an artist, or if
Speaker 1: you're a writer, you're a poet. Um the idea of
Speaker 1: Hell is just a rich territory to play around in.
Speaker 1: And if you're living in a time when say, the
Speaker 1: Catholic Church holds way over pretty much everything, it's pretty
Speaker 1: much it's one of the few acceptable ways to say,
Speaker 1: draw a grotesque monster making love to a woman. You
Speaker 1: know that that kind of stuff in the same way
Speaker 1: that the Classics allowed the painters to to paint the
Speaker 1: you know, the the nude human body. And if it's
Speaker 1: incorporated into the right um, mythical or religious context, then
Speaker 1: it's okay. So before we get into all these explorations,
Speaker 1: I want to read just a quick bit from Chris
Speaker 1: Wright's Measuring hell Um, which appeared in the Boston Globe
Speaker 1: Um when he was talking about a publication that came
Speaker 1: out dealing with Galileos calculations about Dante's Inferno, which will
Speaker 1: discuss shortly, But but this particular quote I think sums
Speaker 1: up a lot of why we're talking about it. He says,
Speaker 1: debating the mechanics of the inferno might sound like intellectual horseplay,
Speaker 1: the sixteenth century equivalent of M. I. T. Cafeteria debates
Speaker 1: about the viability of star trek teleporters. But there was
Speaker 1: more to the lectures than this. The insides Galileo gleaned
Speaker 1: from analyzing Dante's measurements in fact anticipated a vital principle
Speaker 1: of structural engineering by asserting that you cannot create a
Speaker 1: giant Lucifer by supersizing the model of a man that
Speaker 1: increasing an object's magnitude would create a whole new set
Speaker 1: of structural and material imperatives. Galileo was paving the way
Speaker 1: for the construction of everything from ocean liners to skyscrapers
Speaker 1: to Macy's parade floats, um. And he goes down in
Speaker 1: that article to even compare it to our our attempts
Speaker 1: to understand many other things in the universe that that
Speaker 1: are based in science, but we cannot see. You're trying
Speaker 1: to understand how this universe works, and so you're applying
Speaker 1: these thought experiments to aspects of it, which is pretty
Speaker 1: cool because it's not just a repository for our fears.
Speaker 1: It's a thought experiment, right, It's a way for us
Speaker 1: to try to figure out physical universe. And a lot
Speaker 1: of these these studies, they do have a lot in
Speaker 1: common with some of these fun papers that you see.
Speaker 1: There's one that came out recently dealing with the created
Speaker 1: world of George R. Martin's wester Ros in the Game
Speaker 1: of Thrones series, in the and in books, and and
Speaker 1: they were trying to figure out, well, how would the
Speaker 1: celestial mechanics of this planet work to provide it with
Speaker 1: this weird seasonal cycle you see. Any we've we've seen
Speaker 1: some other papers though there's a number of them that
Speaker 1: dealt with the Harry Potter universe, where they're like, well,
Speaker 1: how the genetics of muggles and vizards work? And it's
Speaker 1: it's it's fascinating because it allows people to take their
Speaker 1: science and sort of play around with it, put it
Speaker 1: into this this box and and see what comes out
Speaker 1: of it. I can't help but think that of gale
Speaker 1: Leo's studies came out today that he would have been
Speaker 1: awarded a Noble prize. Yes, but which is kind of great.
Speaker 1: I talked about that Noble prize. Noble prize wonderful because
Speaker 1: it's not merely in some cases a little mocking. But
Speaker 1: but in most of the time, it's not about saying,
Speaker 1: look at this idiot doing this study. It's like, this
Speaker 1: is awesome. This person is is taking the science, applying
Speaker 1: it to some some little corner of of our understanding
Speaker 1: and uh and creating something useful out of it, or
Speaker 1: you know, marginally useful, but still amazing. Alright, so let's
Speaker 1: talk about the troublemaker who started this all. Dante and
Speaker 1: his publication of a Divine Comedy in thirteen fourteen. Yes,
Speaker 1: Dante a Leghari born twelve sixty five and Florence, Italy.
Speaker 1: Died September fourteen one in Ravenna, Italy. And that's pretty
Speaker 1: key because because of course Dante loved Florence and this
Speaker 1: was his hometown and he eventually was not allowed to
Speaker 1: return to it, and it was it was a bitter,
Speaker 1: bitter fact for him, and and it factors into a
Speaker 1: lot of his writings. But Uh, Dante was orphaned at
Speaker 1: a young age, but he grew off with with well
Speaker 1: off relatives in Florence, and he was well educated in
Speaker 1: the classics and poetry, and he went on to be
Speaker 1: a number of things in life. He was a businessman,
Speaker 1: he was a soldier, he was a politician, he was
Speaker 1: a philosophy professor, and of course, most importantly, he was
Speaker 1: a writer. Uh and eventually, as I said, a writer
Speaker 1: in exile from his beloved Florence. And of course he
Speaker 1: was also extremely interested in the sciences um, which as
Speaker 1: we've discussed before, um, when we're talking about consciousness and philosophy, UM,
Speaker 1: to be interested in the sciences was to be interested
Speaker 1: in philosophy. They often went hand in hand, and for instance,
Speaker 1: he uh he read the works of of Aristotle, including
Speaker 1: Aristotle's Meteorology. So what do you do if you are
Speaker 1: exiled from your country and you have, uh, maybe some
Speaker 1: very interesting ideas to explore, Well, you maybe map out
Speaker 1: this terrain, not so much of your country, but of
Speaker 1: your psyche. And this terrain would be in the form
Speaker 1: of hell purgatory in heaven. And this is the divine comedy.
Speaker 1: No comedy does not mean like funny, ha ha. Comedy
Speaker 1: means that is going to end well, yes, which it
Speaker 1: does in Paradise, Um. But the divine comedies. Inferno is
Speaker 1: the part that we really want to talk about because
Speaker 1: it's it's part of this epic poem, and the detail
Speaker 1: is so florid, it's so imaginative, and it is so
Speaker 1: very complete. It reminded me of Um the author. And
Speaker 1: this is going to escape me. It's gonna dropping nuts.
Speaker 1: So I'll follow up with this. But we talked about
Speaker 1: this in one of our mapping episodes. He spent thirty
Speaker 1: years creating this world language for he mapped it out
Speaker 1: in great detail, the topography and in a way, Dante's
Speaker 1: Inferno reminds me of this, because there's so much detail
Speaker 1: packed into this that it really became for people the
Speaker 1: landscape of how and it became such a popular text
Speaker 1: because of this. Yeah, I mean you, you really can't
Speaker 1: underscore this is the amazing level of world creation's going
Speaker 1: on here, um, exceeding at least on part of not
Speaker 1: exceeding the work that you see in uh in George R.
Speaker 1: Martin's novels, or in Tolkien's novels, any kind of fantastic
Speaker 1: world that we we think of when someone has created wholesale. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, Dante basically did this with with the Inferno.
Speaker 1: He figured out exactly what the landscape would be, he
Speaker 1: figured out who the characters occupying it were, and and
Speaker 1: to your point, it is as much uh dante psyche
Speaker 1: as place as it is uh an imagined version of Hell.
Speaker 1: Because too, to read Inferno and and to read the
Speaker 1: Divine Comedy as a whole, is to get to know
Speaker 1: Dante's mind in and out. He doesn't hold back about
Speaker 1: his feelings about about this person or that person, about
Speaker 1: this subject or or this subject, And certainly along those lines,
Speaker 1: the Divine Comedy is a crash course in in medieval
Speaker 1: Italian culture, everything from the body stories and a little
Speaker 1: bit of dirt on this guy to what the church
Speaker 1: was doing. Who you know, what kind of heresies we
Speaker 1: were we're taking place in the world, and when we're
Speaker 1: still resonating, um, he's at times pursuing sort of petty
Speaker 1: vendetta's with individuals and and other times he's championing individuals
Speaker 1: who who who are are kind of scandalized, but that
Speaker 1: he had a lot of empathy for their. Plenty of
Speaker 1: characters there's there are one or two characters in particularly
Speaker 1: the encounters in Hell that he kind of kicks them
Speaker 1: on there down because they weren't they weren't friends with Dante.
Speaker 1: But there are others that he's really sympathetic for. Right,
Speaker 1: So you see some of the Florentine politicians who didn't
Speaker 1: square with him end up in Hell. See a number
Speaker 1: of popes are down there as well. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: popes that they send as well, right in uh in Dante.
Speaker 1: So let's walk really quickly through the landscape of this
Speaker 1: so we can kind of get rooted in what is
Speaker 1: important here when we talk about the science of Dante's Inferno,
Speaker 1: all right, so you can find maps of this everywhere.
Speaker 1: I encourage anyone listening to this who's not driving a
Speaker 1: vehicle whatnot, to look up a map and I'll try
Speaker 1: and include one on the blog posts that accompanies this.
Speaker 1: But to imagine Dante's Hell, Dante's Inferno, imagine, first of all,
Speaker 1: the round Earth, the Earth, that is the center of
Speaker 1: the universe. Okay, and uh, then Lucifer falls from about
Speaker 1: falls from Heaven like a rogue asteroid, and his impact
Speaker 1: forms an enormous crater in the Earth, all right, craater
Speaker 1: all and the crater goes all the way down to
Speaker 1: the core of the Earth. And that's where Lucifer stops.
Speaker 1: That's where he hits the bottom, okay, And that there's
Speaker 1: this enormous crater up aroun on him. Now, then you
Speaker 1: cover that crater with a vast vault, okay, So you
Speaker 1: have this vaulted crater in the Earth. The Earth has
Speaker 1: been pushed up for this entrance into Hell. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: the and the some of the displaces Earth too, has
Speaker 1: come out on the bottom the other side of the
Speaker 1: planet in the form of the Mount of Purgatory. But
Speaker 1: more on that in a little bit. So let's go
Speaker 1: to the very bottom of this this crater again where
Speaker 1: Lucifer fell. He's down there still his his crotch. Is
Speaker 1: basically the center of the of the world, kid. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is the very bottom of the crater. It's also
Speaker 1: the center of the Earth and kind of the bottom
Speaker 1: of the universe too. And so Lucifer is frozen in
Speaker 1: the Lake of Cassias. Okay. And also you'll find other
Speaker 1: traitors frozen here as well. Uh. This is also the
Speaker 1: Well of Giants where we find the Titans of Greek lore. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's also the ninth circle of Hell overall the
Speaker 1: domain of treacherous fraud. Okay. So let's we're walking out
Speaker 1: outward from the center and and emerging out of Hell. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we're going up, We're going it up. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: doing the reverse of Dante on this. Okay. So when
Speaker 1: we reached the edge of this domain is a high
Speaker 1: cliff that rises up to a region of ascending terraces,
Speaker 1: each composed of the pit and this is the Maliboca,
Speaker 1: the eighth circle of Hell, and each bolgia, each each
Speaker 1: terrace that's kind of a pit unto its own uh
Speaker 1: and ringing all the way around. Okay. Uh, it's devote.
Speaker 1: Each one is devoted to a different form of simple fraud,
Speaker 1: such as there's one for panderas and seducers, there's one
Speaker 1: for flatters, one for sorcerers and astrologers, one for hypocrites. Um,
Speaker 1: it's worth exploring on your own, believe me. And then
Speaker 1: there are these demons who work there as well, the Malibraca,
Speaker 1: and they are in charge of tournamenting the individuals that
Speaker 1: are imprisoned. There one thing you mentioned when you were
Speaker 1: looking at this, you you were a little surprised to
Speaker 1: find that that Lucifer at the very bottom of this
Speaker 1: is just stuck and he's they're chewing on the three
Speaker 1: great traders of all time, Mark Anthony, Brutus and Judas right,
Speaker 1: because my satan is it is tethered into the version
Speaker 1: of of Paradise Lost, where he's just he's ruling and
Speaker 1: he's causing all sorts of mayhem. Yeah, he's a sympathetic character.
Speaker 1: But here falling more in line with some of the
Speaker 1: traditional accounts of hell previous, a lot of them would either,
Speaker 1: because Dante was again wasn't the first person to describe
Speaker 1: a trip to to even a Christian hell, but in
Speaker 1: the past a lot of times they would just sort
Speaker 1: of reference Lucifer or Satan from Afar. They wouldn't really
Speaker 1: get into him as a character. And so here Lucifer
Speaker 1: is very prominent, but he's not really a character. He's
Speaker 1: more just a force. He's the he's the force that
Speaker 1: formed this whole entire region. So he's really more asteroid
Speaker 1: than character. He's kind of in suspended animation because he's
Speaker 1: trapped in this ice. But what I do of is
Speaker 1: the imagery of his, not his public region, but his
Speaker 1: you know, his his hairy legs sticking up and then
Speaker 1: traveling across it. But we'll get okay, so um, so
Speaker 1: again we we we came out of that pit, out
Speaker 1: of the casitas. Then we encountered the mal the mal Bojo,
Speaker 1: with all these olds and all these little terraces where
Speaker 1: people were pubnished. Okay, and if the limits of this
Speaker 1: circle again we're moving out. We climb another steep cliff,
Speaker 1: and now we're at the seventh circle, the violent, and
Speaker 1: this is where the violence against other self or God.
Speaker 1: It's a fiery plane. At first we crossed that, and
Speaker 1: then we pass through the wood of the suicides. We
Speaker 1: have these individuals whore grown into trees. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: we pass over the boiling blood river of the Flagathon
Speaker 1: and then there's another sheer cliff wall okay, and we
Speaker 1: climb that wall. Then we're in the sixth circle. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is the domain of the heretics, and beyond that
Speaker 1: we find the walls of diss. This is this basically
Speaker 1: a medieval fortress, walled fortress, and it goes again. It's
Speaker 1: a circle, it's a ring wall. It's all the way around.
Speaker 1: So you can almost think of this wall existing to
Speaker 1: keep the horrors of inner hell from spilling out into
Speaker 1: the outer hill. Uh. Not that it's actually doing that.
Speaker 1: They just think of that in terms of a dividing point.
Speaker 1: It's a fiery fortress. Um. As you said, it's kind
Speaker 1: of where um it's staff only works right, and just
Speaker 1: in the train it's it's situated on a plateau here.
Speaker 1: So beyond the gates of Disk we pass into an
Speaker 1: outer region of lighter sins. First there's the angry the
Speaker 1: fifth circle, and then there's another cliff wall, and then
Speaker 1: there's the fourth circle of average, and then there's another wall,
Speaker 1: and then there's the third circle of Gluttony. Then there's
Speaker 1: the second circle of lust, where the souls are whipped
Speaker 1: about in the vortex of winds. And then there's another
Speaker 1: cliff and we find the first circle of Limbo, where
Speaker 1: the noble thinkers of old reside, people who are basically,
Speaker 1: you know, they're they're too good for Hell, but they're
Speaker 1: stuck there in the technicality. So so that's where they live,
Speaker 1: on the outskirts of Hell basically. But then finally we
Speaker 1: get to the we cross the River Acron and we
Speaker 1: find the real very outskirts of Hell, and that's where
Speaker 1: the lukewarm are, like, you know, the whole thing with Jesus,
Speaker 1: the luke you know, the lukewarm a warm I spit
Speaker 1: you out. You know you're not you know, you know
Speaker 1: they're good, they're bad. You really don't have a place
Speaker 1: in this And that's where these guys are. They're not
Speaker 1: even bad enough to get into Hell, but they're not
Speaker 1: good enough to be anywhere else. I guess you could
Speaker 1: say ne'er do wells or loafers. Yeah, right. They didn't
Speaker 1: really commit to need one thing, and so that's why
Speaker 1: they haven't done any wonderful deeds in there in heaven
Speaker 1: or anything terribly bad. And they're cast about into another level. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like yeah, they're just like, yeah, we don't have
Speaker 1: a place for you here. You can hang out outside
Speaker 1: the gates, I guess. Yeah. So, as you guys can see,
Speaker 1: this is a vast hell. We're talking about nine circles
Speaker 1: featuring three rivers, one very cold lake. There's fire, there's ice. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a lot going on here, and just to get
Speaker 1: into the detail of it would probably take us hours,
Speaker 1: but we wanted to try to at least steep you
Speaker 1: guys at the beginning here with the basic geography. Yeah,
Speaker 1: with the vestival at the very top in the city
Speaker 1: of disc in the middle of just fiery compound, and
Speaker 1: then at the very bottom because site is the lake.
Speaker 1: So there you go, basic geographic summary of Hell. It's
Speaker 1: very important because this is the this is the world
Speaker 1: that these scientific inquiries and papers are going to deal with.
Speaker 1: So after the break we're gonna come back. We're gonna
Speaker 1: look at how the roof of Hell works, We're gonna
Speaker 1: look at how the weather in Hell works, and we're
Speaker 1: going to look at another a couple of other scientific
Speaker 1: concerns as well, regarding the inferno. All right, let's get
Speaker 1: back to Galileo and in what might have been his
Speaker 1: ignoble Prize for his studies about Hell and the measurements
Speaker 1: concerning them. Yeah, the year was galile I was just
Speaker 1: twenty four years old, hadn't really made a name for
Speaker 1: himself yet, He's a medical school dropout. And then he
Speaker 1: was invited to deliver to deliver a couple of lectures
Speaker 1: on Dante's Divine Comedy um and particularly about the structure
Speaker 1: of Hell, how hell might work from a a an
Speaker 1: architectural physical standpoint. Now, just put this in the proper context.
Speaker 1: By this time, Dante's Inferno or Divine Comedy would have
Speaker 1: been extremely well known and was the authority on Hell.
Speaker 1: People took a lot of stock in this is, taking
Speaker 1: it really as a sort of gospel of what Hell
Speaker 1: might look like. So for this upstart to come in
Speaker 1: deliver this speech about how the mathematics don't really hold up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the very least, this was a highly regarded text. It
Speaker 1: was this is like you know, I mean, it stands today,
Speaker 1: it's still one of one of the greatest works of
Speaker 1: Western civilization, and at the time it was was still
Speaker 1: very well regarded. And so for anyone to come along
Speaker 1: and start knocking at the science of it and saying, well,
Speaker 1: you know, pointing out plot holes essentially. You know, people,
Speaker 1: you can get a little up in arms over there
Speaker 1: and to be weaving science with a little story here. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: in particular, the interesting thing he did um in this
Speaker 1: talk was that he dealt with a couple of existing theories.
Speaker 1: He was not the first person to do a little
Speaker 1: science thinking about the structure of the inferno. Uh So
Speaker 1: what he did is he attacked one particular architectural model
Speaker 1: of the inferno for an inferno, one proposed by Alexandro
Speaker 1: Valtulio of of Luca and while while he supported a
Speaker 1: second model that was suggested by the Florentine architect Antonio Manetti. Now,
Speaker 1: of course Florence again the birthplace of Dante. Uh it's
Speaker 1: important to keep in mind, well, it's kind of like
Speaker 1: the Bloods and the Cripts here too, because Luca is
Speaker 1: kind of like Bloods and and Florence is the Cripts
Speaker 1: and they have a long standing rivalry. Yeah, and Florence
Speaker 1: had just suffered a humiliating defeat by Luca in four
Speaker 1: and so this is on everybody's mind. So what does
Speaker 1: Galileo come It comes in. He comes in and says,
Speaker 1: Belatulo's his argument, his structure for the inferno that would
Speaker 1: just collapse. The guy's got it right, is our boy
Speaker 1: from Florence. And so he hands uh, he hands Manetti
Speaker 1: the victory and uh and then leaves. Basically, now, after
Speaker 1: the fact, he probably realized that both models would collapse
Speaker 1: because that is a huge vault that would have to
Speaker 1: be constructed to cover this enormous crater in the earth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but he did. He took all the measurements that he
Speaker 1: could from the town X, like the blasted canyons and
Speaker 1: the valleys and the rivers, and he did find out
Speaker 1: that they did not stand up to mathematical scrutiny. As
Speaker 1: you say, he did sort of discredit one of um,
Speaker 1: one of them, But then later on he just quit
Speaker 1: talking about that whole thing. Yeah, and he knew that
Speaker 1: both of them were wrong, and a lot of Galileo
Speaker 1: scholars they kind of just they just kind of cast
Speaker 1: this this aside. It's just being sort of an early,
Speaker 1: kind of fun but not really important aspect of Galileo's life,
Speaker 1: And really it is more of a footnote to the
Speaker 1: great things that he would do later on. Yeah, But
Speaker 1: as Chris Wright had said, you know, it's his measurements
Speaker 1: of Hell inadvertently contributed to the foundation of theoretical physics. Exactly.
Speaker 1: All right, let's get out of the weather in Hell.
Speaker 1: And I believe they're used. My wife was telling me
Speaker 1: they used to be a website. We could go and
Speaker 1: you could get the weather in Hell, like whatever the
Speaker 1: weather is going to be, and it's gonna be like
Speaker 1: like a flash floods of ran said, yogurt and stuff.
Speaker 1: But you know, even better would be David Lynch reading it. Yes,
Speaker 1: there's a website where you can also get the weather.
Speaker 1: It's the weather than the normal world, right right by
Speaker 1: David Lynch. So Dante was of course possessed of an
Speaker 1: amazing curiosity, and and as I mentioned earlier, he'd already
Speaker 1: certainly read Aristotle's work on meteorology. He found rich poetic
Speaker 1: use of not only the weather, because certainly everyone loves
Speaker 1: to throw a little weather into a poem or whatnot,
Speaker 1: but he also understood the mechanics of weather, and you
Speaker 1: like to play with that as well. So meteorological themes
Speaker 1: pop up throughout his work in some of his earlier poems,
Speaker 1: and certainly uh with in the Divine Comedy. He lacked
Speaker 1: our modern understanding of meteorology. But but the relationship between
Speaker 1: water and earth, all of it factors into some of
Speaker 1: his earliest poems, and it's certainly a part of the Inferno.
Speaker 1: So yeah, he would have taken this knowledge and then
Speaker 1: applied it to this mapping of Hell, in this descent
Speaker 1: into Hell, and in the article a great article, the
Speaker 1: Weather of Hell by Randy Servenni, actually take a look
Speaker 1: at specifically his descriptions of the weather and how it
Speaker 1: really weirdly lines up what would would really happen if
Speaker 1: you have Hell in those weather systems. Again, we talked
Speaker 1: about sort of the basic landmarks here, but let me
Speaker 1: just describe them once more. You have the Vestia Puble,
Speaker 1: which is at the very top. You have the city
Speaker 1: of Discs in the middle, and then you have Casitas,
Speaker 1: the frozen lake at the very Okay, and I want
Speaker 1: to point this out again because Casita is the frozen
Speaker 1: lake in the city of dis and all of its fireingness.
Speaker 1: These are creating two major circulation cells in Hell, which
Speaker 1: the author points out is um creating various winds and
Speaker 1: so on and so forth. That would really line up
Speaker 1: with what would happen. So, uh, with that in mind,
Speaker 1: let's talk about circulation cells. Because we're not going to
Speaker 1: go into weather in earnest. But hey, in fact, I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna briefly run through some run through some stuff
Speaker 1: from our article how weather works that I wrote. Okay,
Speaker 1: so two key properties that govern the atmosphere air pressure
Speaker 1: dictated by gravity, and air temperature dictated by solar and
Speaker 1: terrestrial radiation. But all these gases make up the make
Speaker 1: up the atmosphere, and they don't just stay in one place.
Speaker 1: As he certainly observed, air moves. Vertical air currents result
Speaker 1: from changes in temperature and pressure. When air heats up,
Speaker 1: its molecules move around more rapidly, pushing each other farther apart.
Speaker 1: The air becomes less dense and rises up through the
Speaker 1: troposphere towards thinner air. In doing so, however, it moves
Speaker 1: into colder regions, it begins to cool, and it eventually
Speaker 1: cools down to a denser state and sinks back down. Okay,
Speaker 1: So when the air in one area heats up faster
Speaker 1: than the air in an enjoining area, the pressure differential
Speaker 1: generates wind. For example, Uh, look, you can just look
Speaker 1: at a modern city. All that concrete and steel observed
Speaker 1: absorbs a much more heat than the surrounding countryside. As such,
Speaker 1: the air in that city grows hotter during the day,
Speaker 1: becomes less dense, and rises in a vertical movement known
Speaker 1: as an updraft. Meanwhile, the cooler air in the countryside
Speaker 1: is under far more pressure and begins to flow into
Speaker 1: the city in the form of surface wind to fill
Speaker 1: the low pressure area. Once it enters the hot city, however,
Speaker 1: it heats up and begins to rise in an updraft.
Speaker 1: The air above it cools, but it can't settle back
Speaker 1: into place due to all the rise hot air underneath it. Instead,
Speaker 1: the cooling air simply pushes out to the side in
Speaker 1: the form of an upper air wind heading back to
Speaker 1: the countryside, and this wind cycle continues in a nightfall
Speaker 1: sends everything into reverse as the city cools faster than
Speaker 1: the surrounding areas. So to put this into the form
Speaker 1: of a simplified version of the Earth, imagine an Earth
Speaker 1: that doesn't rotate and doesn't experience night In this example,
Speaker 1: let's also pretend that the sun heats the areas around
Speaker 1: the equator the most, and the poles the least. This
Speaker 1: is a lot like the city example, except the entire
Speaker 1: equatorial belt would be the city in the scenario, and
Speaker 1: the land and sea cooling towards the poles would be
Speaker 1: the countryside that This would result in two massive bowl
Speaker 1: shaped convection cells, one for each hemisphere. Surface flows of
Speaker 1: cool air would sweep toward the equator, heating up along
Speaker 1: the way. Upon arrival, this air would ascend in an updraft,
Speaker 1: and then it would sweep back toward the poles in
Speaker 1: a cooling upper air wind. So there's a simplified version
Speaker 1: of how air moves in the real world. It's all
Speaker 1: about about pressure differentials and air swooping into one area,
Speaker 1: rising and swooping back across over the top. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: So in a nutshell, you've got the sun which is
Speaker 1: heating the molecules. They rise because they they've got high
Speaker 1: pressure now, and then you've got low pressure more condensed
Speaker 1: air rushing into displace. That we're talking about displaced air,
Speaker 1: and that's how winds are creating. That's how air moves about,
Speaker 1: and it creates this circular movement of air. Right, So
Speaker 1: you have a circulation cell, so you have certain areas
Speaker 1: that become this this closed loop. And when you look
Speaker 1: at Dante's inferno, you have to circulation cells. And the
Speaker 1: first one starts, of course, at the very beginning, and
Speaker 1: it ends at the city of This. Okay, because you
Speaker 1: have again all of this weather happening, this heat from
Speaker 1: the city of This, which is informing things at say,
Speaker 1: the first circle of Hell. Yeah, and pluses of boiling
Speaker 1: river next to it, so you have the hat heading
Speaker 1: to the possible heat as well. Um. So yeah, hot
Speaker 1: air rises from the sixth circle just beyond the walls
Speaker 1: of dis and then it rolls back towards the gates
Speaker 1: of Hell at a high altitude and then sinks back
Speaker 1: down at the first circle of Hell, and it sweeps
Speaker 1: across the surface till it blows through diss and back
Speaker 1: up the sixth circle again. So that's the the upper
Speaker 1: circulation cell as laid out by Serviny. But then he
Speaker 1: also says that are Dante's text lays out this lower
Speaker 1: circulation cell as well. Yeah. Now that second loop stretches
Speaker 1: from the rising air of the the fiery city of
Speaker 1: discs as it redistributes air towards the central pit of Hell,
Speaker 1: and it sinks into the bone freezing cold um of
Speaker 1: the Cosatukcitis excuse me lake, and then it makes its
Speaker 1: way back over Malbolga, which is the terraced area, and
Speaker 1: then back up to the city of Diss. So that's
Speaker 1: your second circulation cell. Yes now, and I'm gonna I'll
Speaker 1: sketch out a little version of what this looks like
Speaker 1: and include this on the website so you can you
Speaker 1: can look at it. It's it's really incredible because Serveni
Speaker 1: makes a really strong case that you if you look
Speaker 1: at the meteorological details that are included in Inferno, and
Speaker 1: there are a lot of them, because because Dante's clearly
Speaker 1: a weather bug, and it included all these details along
Speaker 1: with all these other world building details of what Inferno
Speaker 1: consisted of. But you you read the details, you read
Speaker 1: about the movements of air and the descriptions of what
Speaker 1: the wind is doing and what the temperature is doing.
Speaker 1: It clearly spells out a working um to sell air
Speaker 1: circulation system. It does, and we can actually run through
Speaker 1: every single point or every single circle and help, but
Speaker 1: we won't do that. But I did want to talk
Speaker 1: about a couple of them because it's really interesting. Uh.
Speaker 1: Servening talks about in the vegetable in the first circle.
Speaker 1: That these are dominated by high pressure with pretty calm winds.
Speaker 1: But when Virgil and Dante enter the second circle, them
Speaker 1: with a stormy blast of hell and um. This is
Speaker 1: where Servenny says the strong pressure gradient causes winds as
Speaker 1: a function of the high and low pressure systems. And
Speaker 1: this is kind of a nice touch because when you
Speaker 1: go into the second circle, it's extremely windy, and this
Speaker 1: is where the lustful are punished and the winds are
Speaker 1: whipping around them, the winds of their desires. And then
Speaker 1: of course you go in the third circle and there's
Speaker 1: lots of showers and uh, that's that's where it's really
Speaker 1: heavy and cold wind and it's really stank there by
Speaker 1: the way. Um. And then the third circle of course
Speaker 1: has glotony and there's intense storms. Um. And again this
Speaker 1: is a result of the strong surface heat blowing back
Speaker 1: from the city of Discs and the low pressure system
Speaker 1: that exists in the valley that descends before Dante in Virgil.
Speaker 1: So again, as you say, Dante had a really good
Speaker 1: idea of how weather systems were working, a good enough
Speaker 1: idea to try to imagine it in this place and
Speaker 1: set the territory and the geography to the weather conditions.
Speaker 1: It's kind of beautiful. It is, I mean, it's it's
Speaker 1: amazing to think of because it's I mean, you'd be
Speaker 1: hard pressed to find an earlier, more fully formed world
Speaker 1: in in in literature and in someone's mind, as as
Speaker 1: as the Inferno and Them and Purgatory in Paradise as well.
Speaker 1: But but certainly Infernos the best of the three because
Speaker 1: it's it's it's where you have all these rich, gross details.
Speaker 1: That's where you have demons playing trumpets with their butts. Um.
Speaker 1: You don't encounter much of that though, the higher up
Speaker 1: you get, so there's less because because Dante's Inferno is
Speaker 1: rather humorous at times, there is some good schatology and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and of course because there's so much treacherous detail that
Speaker 1: he had to put some sort of comedy elements in
Speaker 1: there just as a little break. Now, some people would
Speaker 1: take issue with gravity, yes, because in Dante's Inferno, when
Speaker 1: Dante in Virgil are descending, they're experiencing the same kind
Speaker 1: of gravity that they would on the surface of Earth.
Speaker 1: So if they're crossing a bridge or you know, if
Speaker 1: they're dodging arrows, or you know, some sort of missile
Speaker 1: as with hell Um. Then that's all being acted on
Speaker 1: as if everything were normal. But things, of course, as
Speaker 1: we know, would not be normal. If you plunged down
Speaker 1: into Earth. Well now, I've read arguments though that that
Speaker 1: cross gravity is is due to mass, and so you
Speaker 1: have the gravity on the Earth is determined by the
Speaker 1: amount of mass involved. I've read arguments though that that
Speaker 1: that you descended deeper, it would be about the mass
Speaker 1: around you, and that would that would determine how much
Speaker 1: up a gravitational pull was beneath your feet. It would
Speaker 1: slow you down because there's more there's more mass above
Speaker 1: you and around you, so your descent would be slower.
Speaker 1: In fact, we have a really good article by Nicholas
Speaker 1: Gurbas called what would happen if I drolled the tunnel
Speaker 1: through the center of the Earth and jumped into it?
Speaker 1: Now that's a little bit different. We're talking about a
Speaker 1: free fall jump as opposed to just descending in but
Speaker 1: the idea is essentially the same. It is, but in
Speaker 1: gurbs article he does say that at the core as
Speaker 1: you as you get to the core the planet's center,
Speaker 1: your acceleration uh due to gravity is zero, and Earth's
Speaker 1: maths around you, and then gravity cancels out and you
Speaker 1: are weightless. And a curious thing happens along these lines.
Speaker 1: In Dante's Inferro, at the very end, after they've worked
Speaker 1: their way to the very bottom, the like Accitis, they
Speaker 1: see the massive Lucifer there with his three faces, ting
Speaker 1: on the three great traders of Western civilization. Uh. They
Speaker 1: go up and the way out is down, and they
Speaker 1: start climbing down the furry shanks of Lucifer. Uh. And
Speaker 1: remember his clatches the center of of of the planet
Speaker 1: in this model. So what happens when they reach the
Speaker 1: very center, Well, there is up as down and down
Speaker 1: as up, just as if you were in space, right.
Speaker 1: And this is called the antipodes. Yeah, this is what
Speaker 1: NASA has to say about it. This is from Angela
Speaker 1: Richard about the center of the Earth, not about Lucifer's hinder. Uh.
Speaker 1: She says, if you could be at the exact center,
Speaker 1: the forces that each bit of Earth matter exerted on
Speaker 1: you would counsel out up, canceling down, east, canceling west, etcetera.
Speaker 1: This only occurs for a single point, though, and you
Speaker 1: would still feel a gravitational force on the rest of
Speaker 1: your body. So there would be this point that where
Speaker 1: things would switch, and that's what happens to Virgil and Dunte. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Servendice says that Dante may have lifted this concept
Speaker 1: from first century writer Plutarch, who said, if a man
Speaker 1: should so coalesce with the earth that its center is
Speaker 1: at his navel, the same person at the same time
Speaker 1: has his head up and his feet up too. So yeah,
Speaker 1: this idea that the portal kind of shifts. And this
Speaker 1: is actually taken from Dante's Inferno. It says, and when
Speaker 1: we had come to where the huge thigh bone rides
Speaker 1: in its socket, that the haunts swell my gude with
Speaker 1: labor and great exertion, turned head to where his feet
Speaker 1: had been, and fell to hoisten himself up in the air,
Speaker 1: so that I thought us mounting back to Hell. In
Speaker 1: other words, this is he's completely discombobled and trying to
Speaker 1: figure out where he is and he sees this different
Speaker 1: view of Satan's hairy leg. Yeah. Now, some of this
Speaker 1: also comes from Professor Andrew J. Simolson's article The Gravity
Speaker 1: of Hell the Gravity of Hades rather and he gets
Speaker 1: into a little Miltonian physics as well um Milton's A
Speaker 1: Paradise Lost. Of course, we mentioned this uh briefly earlier
Speaker 1: in this podcaster and the other one about Hell. Uh.
Speaker 1: In Milton's Paradise Lost, Lucifer's and more relatable character, sympathetic character,
Speaker 1: and the dark Angel. He's the dark Angel and we
Speaker 1: get to learn about his fall. So somos and looks
Speaker 1: at this, and he's realized that naturally, Lucifer's fall from
Speaker 1: Heaven to Hell is the perfect measuring stick to figure
Speaker 1: out what is the distance between Heaven and Hell. So
Speaker 1: in this article he looks at at Lucifer's descent from
Speaker 1: from Heaven to Hell and says, well, this would be
Speaker 1: a great way of measuring the distance between Heaven and
Speaker 1: Hell if we could figure out if we could apply
Speaker 1: some equations to this. And that's what he does in
Speaker 1: this paper. He applies a lot of mathematical computation to
Speaker 1: what he can glean from the test from the text.
Speaker 1: Uh and basically it says uh him Satan the almighty
Speaker 1: power hurled headlong, flaming from the eternal sky with hideous
Speaker 1: ruin and combustion down to bottomless perdition and uh and
Speaker 1: apparently it takes him about nine days to reach between
Speaker 1: Heaven and Hell. So he starts breaking that down. Uh
Speaker 1: you know, how how how great a distance would that be?
Speaker 1: And then you also have to wonder, Okay, if this
Speaker 1: occurred not long after the Big Bang, then maybe certain
Speaker 1: laws are not applying. Is he bound by the speed
Speaker 1: of light, is he bound by the uh, by the
Speaker 1: speed of a physical object? Or is he surpassing it?
Speaker 1: So it could take you know, forty million years, he figures,
Speaker 1: if he was to reach the center of the Milky Way,
Speaker 1: but it could take, you know, take a much shorter
Speaker 1: amount of time if he's going faster than light. So
Speaker 1: it's it's some some wonderful thought experimentation it's going on
Speaker 1: in that article. Yeah, it's again, it's a wonderful Hell
Speaker 1: is a wonderful idea to play with to explore our universe.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, there you go. Hopefully we did not
Speaker 1: lose you too much in the descriptions of hell and
Speaker 1: the descriptions of weather in the real world. But uh,
Speaker 1: but but again, look at some of these charts that
Speaker 1: we're talking about. Look on the website, and I think
Speaker 1: that should help it. I'll make a little more sense.
Speaker 1: It's again it's very much in keeping with some of
Speaker 1: these papers that are out there about about how the
Speaker 1: how DNA works, how genetics work, and Harry Potter how
Speaker 1: the solar system works in Game of Thrones. Uh, but
Speaker 1: then it also hints it something greater. This the idea
Speaker 1: that the science is this this way that we can
Speaker 1: we can feel the unknown, we can reach out and
Speaker 1: touch things that we haven't yet explored yet and and
Speaker 1: try to figure out what is the black hole? Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, what is dark matter. But then we can
Speaker 1: also reach them into the imagined worlds and try and
Speaker 1: figure out the limits of those worlds as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, what are the coordinates of Satan's touch exactly?
Speaker 1: Science is still the science is still still out on that,
Speaker 1: by the works. So in the meantime, if you would
Speaker 1: like to get in touch with us, you can find
Speaker 1: us in the usual ways. Again, that website is Stuff
Speaker 1: to Abow your Mind dot com. You can also find
Speaker 1: us on social media. We're on Twitter as Blow the Mind.
Speaker 1: We're on Facebook and tumbler as Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: On YouTube we are Mind Stuff Show and you can
Speaker 1: always drop us a line at Blow the Mind at
Speaker 1: Discovery dot com. For more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com.