Speaker 1: Welcome to you Stuff you should know from house Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, There's Jerry AND's
Speaker 1: the stuff you should know. Just a few geezas, what not?
Speaker 1: Galizas very good? That was terrible, is what it was.
Speaker 1: I read an article the other day on my people
Speaker 1: find puns so offensive. It's very interesting. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: know it is. Yeah, I'm sending my way, will you sure? Thanks,
Speaker 1: You're welcome. Chuck. Yes, have you ever heard of an
Speaker 1: exo planet? Yes? You have. Well that's all I got.
Speaker 1: I'm down. I'm done with Kepler. Kepler is pretty awesome,
Speaker 1: isn't it. Kepler is way awesome. Let's talk about Kepler.
Speaker 1: What is it? Well, Kepler is a guess what you
Speaker 1: call it? A program? Sure, the Kepler Project program. It's
Speaker 1: a mission. Yes, it's all the mission. And since two
Speaker 1: thousand nine they have Their task has been to survey
Speaker 1: the sky in fact, um, well a small patch of
Speaker 1: sky right now. And it's an outer space telescope. Yeah. Sure,
Speaker 1: it's spine on people in the city park. No, no no,
Speaker 1: they shot it out in a space. It's dressed in
Speaker 1: like a silver um jumpsuit, so you can tell it's
Speaker 1: a space telescope and not just like a regular one.
Speaker 1: And uh yeah, it has a little twelve degree um
Speaker 1: field of vision, and what it's doing is just looking
Speaker 1: out into the cosmos in the Milky Way. Still. Yeah,
Speaker 1: specifically near the constellations Sickness and Lira. For now. For now,
Speaker 1: you gotta start somewhere, right, you only have twelve degrees.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not the big ear. It's like a journey.
Speaker 1: You have a thousand miles starts through the singles that. Uh. Basically,
Speaker 1: what they're trying to do is see I think the
Speaker 1: ultimate goal it's just to see what's out there. But
Speaker 1: what they really secretly get giddy about and titter about
Speaker 1: um late at night is finding exoplanets that are like
Speaker 1: our own Earth. I know. I think the whole thing
Speaker 1: was a straight up planet hunting mission. Well yeah, but
Speaker 1: like I said, they're not just like we want to
Speaker 1: find another Earth. They they're like, we want to see
Speaker 1: what's out there because we don't know what's out there. Yes,
Speaker 1: and they get really excited when it's not a big
Speaker 1: giant ball of gas. So the Kepler mission actually the
Speaker 1: first Kepler mission ended this past May because the Kepler
Speaker 1: telescope I think ran out of battery power or something
Speaker 1: like that to turn itself. But they started there. They're
Speaker 1: ramping up the K two mission, which is actually this
Speaker 1: is so amazing to me. I love this stuff. It's
Speaker 1: they're going to use photons light from the Sun to
Speaker 1: move it. Pretty amazing. And the photons are going to
Speaker 1: move this thing called solar power to direct it and
Speaker 1: look in different directions. It is very much so amazing. Um.
Speaker 1: So the whole point is is defined planets. But really,
Speaker 1: like you say, what they're looking for our planets that
Speaker 1: fall within what's called the Goldilocks zone or the habitable zone.
Speaker 1: And there's a couple a couple of different types of zones. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if we're talking the Goldilocks zone, what we mean is
Speaker 1: a planet that, um where there is water that doesn't
Speaker 1: evaporate immediately or freeze. Well, yeah, that's one way to
Speaker 1: put it. You know, flowing water would be great, so
Speaker 1: CEO two that'd be awesome. So the whole Earth earthlike planets, right,
Speaker 1: earthlike is what it what it comes down to, able
Speaker 1: to sustain life, right, and the the whole thing. I've
Speaker 1: read this really interesting article, Chuck, and it was I
Speaker 1: think it was an aon magazine like it is one
Speaker 1: of the greatest online magazines ever created, so interesting, everything
Speaker 1: is so well written. It's just great. A on magazine,
Speaker 1: aon magazine anyway. Um, the the person writing this article said,
Speaker 1: what if our conception of life is really limited? And
Speaker 1: when we think of life, we think of like um
Speaker 1: genetic genetic molecules capable of self replicating, right, like us,
Speaker 1: like life, like anything that that can make new copies
Speaker 1: of itself, cellular reproduction. Right. So, um, what if there's
Speaker 1: life has evolved in many, many other ways, not just
Speaker 1: out an outter of space, but here on this planet,
Speaker 1: Like we could be surrounded by life and not even
Speaker 1: be aware of it because we're not thinking of it
Speaker 1: that way. We're strictly looking for evidence of um DNA
Speaker 1: based life. If life evolved in other ways and it's
Speaker 1: we're surrounded by it, that's pretty neat. That's one of
Speaker 1: those late night college conversations, if you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: But with Kepler too, it's looking for planets that could
Speaker 1: sustain a certain brand of life, which is the life
Speaker 1: that we know and the whole thing is predicated on
Speaker 1: the idea that you need water and liquid form to
Speaker 1: be the foundation, the the sustaining foundation of life. And
Speaker 1: so that's what that's what this habitable zone is. It's
Speaker 1: a planet that is far enough away from the Sun
Speaker 1: that it can um. It's it's surface water is not
Speaker 1: going to boil away and turn it into um and
Speaker 1: just just go into the atmosphere far away from its star. Right,
Speaker 1: not necessarily the Sun. Right, it's star is what I mean.
Speaker 1: It's version of our Sun, yes, yes, oh, and but
Speaker 1: it's not so far away that it's not getting enough
Speaker 1: heat so that it just frees. So it's within this
Speaker 1: what's called the circumstellar habitable habitable zone. It's or it's
Speaker 1: in this little distance like we are in our sun.
Speaker 1: Our stars habitable zone are its circumstellar habitable zone, right,
Speaker 1: And so it's looking for planets that um are surrounding
Speaker 1: stars in that little band that's not so close that
Speaker 1: it's too hot and not so far away that it's
Speaker 1: too cold. It's just right. I love it. That's called
Speaker 1: the Goldilocks zone. Yeah, that's the name for it. Um.
Speaker 1: So there are they have the Kepler mission has returned
Speaker 1: UM a lot of startling information like thousands, perhaps tens
Speaker 1: of thousands or hundreds of thousands of planets maybe out there. Um,
Speaker 1: in fact, probably are out there. I think it's forty
Speaker 1: billion in the the Milky Way alone, is what estimates
Speaker 1: are unbelievable in the Milky Way alone. Forty billion Earth
Speaker 1: sized planets, not just all plants. Forty potentially Earth sized
Speaker 1: planets in the Milky Way alone. Yeah. So, like I
Speaker 1: was saying, UM, giant balls of gas are fun gas
Speaker 1: giants like Saturn and Jupiter, they're needo torpedo. But UM,
Speaker 1: as far as science really getting um getting their rocks off,
Speaker 1: these Earth size planets are the ones that that that's
Speaker 1: where the money is, you know, right, And when I
Speaker 1: say money, I don't mean cash money, although if we
Speaker 1: colonize them, I guess it could be cash money. But
Speaker 1: the smaller planets, what they call terrestrial planets earthlike planets,
Speaker 1: UM are terrestrial planets would be a great band name,
Speaker 1: by the way, because they are They have heavy metal
Speaker 1: cores and rocky mantle, and they have smaller orbits, shorter years,
Speaker 1: they're close to the host star. All these things that
Speaker 1: are Earth like, which could mean potentially you know something there,
Speaker 1: so okay, so something living. You've got the circumstellar habitable zone,
Speaker 1: which is not too close to the Sun or not
Speaker 1: too close to the star, not too far away from
Speaker 1: the star. But there's also um a larger habitable zone
Speaker 1: that that kind of if you have that one, great,
Speaker 1: But there's some other qualifications that a planet has to
Speaker 1: hit to be considered habitable, and these are galactic habitable zones, right,
Speaker 1: So part of that is that it has to have
Speaker 1: a heavy metal core, like you say, it's got to
Speaker 1: be terrestrial. It also has to um it can't be
Speaker 1: tidally locked. Right. There's we found actually some planets out
Speaker 1: there that fit the bill, except they are tidally locked
Speaker 1: with their star, which means only one side and the
Speaker 1: same side is always facing the sun, which means that
Speaker 1: that is a very very hot body of water right
Speaker 1: there that's facing the sun. And then on the back side,
Speaker 1: the dark side, it's just completely frozen and since it's
Speaker 1: not turning, the atmosphere is not being um kept around,
Speaker 1: the planet is able to like migrate to like say
Speaker 1: the dark side of the planet and just freeze there.
Speaker 1: That's a great example of how you can have all
Speaker 1: these other things. That planet might be in the habitable
Speaker 1: zone for its star, but it falls out of the
Speaker 1: category of a truly habitable planet because it's missing some
Speaker 1: other factors, for example not being tidally locked. So that
Speaker 1: would be the case with Gliza fight one G. So yes, okay,
Speaker 1: So that is was discovered in two thousand ten, and
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of back and forth between a
Speaker 1: lot of different countries and scientists saying is it really there?
Speaker 1: Is it not there? I think where it lands now is?
Speaker 1: They are pretty sure it's there. Um. But with Glees
Speaker 1: eight one g um, it faces uh the star at
Speaker 1: all times, one side of it does, so it's tightly locked,
Speaker 1: tightly locked. Um. Although it does orbit once every thirty
Speaker 1: seven days, it keeps that face. So basically what they think,
Speaker 1: because if there could be life there, you have what
Speaker 1: they would call an eyeball Earth with a one part
Speaker 1: of this planet having being liquid water right and the
Speaker 1: rest of frozen, so like an eyeball in the middle
Speaker 1: kind of neat. I think what keeps Glees of eight
Speaker 1: one g in the news is the fact that it's
Speaker 1: only twenty point five light years away. Um. And we'll
Speaker 1: talk about some more of these, but a lot of
Speaker 1: them are like over a thousand light years away. So
Speaker 1: let's take a break real quick and we'll get back
Speaker 1: to exoplanets right after this. So check you you touched
Speaker 1: on something I think is very important before we go
Speaker 1: any further there. People say, well, yeah it exists, or no,
Speaker 1: it doesn't exist. And there's a lot of back and
Speaker 1: forth in the scientific community. And the reason is, is
Speaker 1: the as as high powered and awesome as the Kepler
Speaker 1: telescope is it really is. It doesn't look at a
Speaker 1: star and say, oh, look at that planet. That's a
Speaker 1: fine looking planet right there. It looks like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I can see water on there and wall like a
Speaker 1: giant pterodactyl like a monkey head. Yes it is. No,
Speaker 1: it can't see these kind of things, right. So there's
Speaker 1: different techniques that are used for hunting planets exoplanets, um,
Speaker 1: that use deduction in a lot of ways in concert
Speaker 1: with these telescopes right to surmise the existence of planets.
Speaker 1: So um, there's three main techniques that even these telescopes
Speaker 1: us Like the Kepler telescope is it uses a photometer
Speaker 1: which senses light, right, and it'll look at a star,
Speaker 1: are and it'll just keep looking at the star, looking
Speaker 1: at the star. It's got a really good Uh, something
Speaker 1: weird just happened at the star got dim and then
Speaker 1: it went back to normal light. And what just happened
Speaker 1: was probably a planet orbited in between the telescope and
Speaker 1: the star, which dim the light of the star. That's right.
Speaker 1: They called that a transit and that technique is called
Speaker 1: the transit method. And so they, like you said, they
Speaker 1: use that photometer and um, if they see that dim
Speaker 1: that's a lead in the right direction. Yeah, and now
Speaker 1: it doesn't prove anything, no, so that that that planet
Speaker 1: becomes a candidate planet. So they go back and they
Speaker 1: look at it. And if they say, use a different technique,
Speaker 1: or if they um, if they come up with the
Speaker 1: same data using that same technique again and again, then
Speaker 1: most likely that planet does exist and it becomes a right,
Speaker 1: it becomes a confirmed planet. So it goes from a
Speaker 1: candidate planet to a confirmed planet. Um. And there's a
Speaker 1: lot of criticism in this side actific community because when
Speaker 1: a candidate planet is found, it is far from being
Speaker 1: proven as existing. But um, it's very frequently rushed out
Speaker 1: to the media, which treats it like a new planet's
Speaker 1: been discovered and we know all about it, when we
Speaker 1: really don't even know for a fact it exists, And
Speaker 1: very infrequently the science behind having to deduce its existence
Speaker 1: is explained in in the in the articles that are
Speaker 1: written about them. So it just gets rushed to press
Speaker 1: a little too premisuarly to keep that public interest up,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, but it wouldn't hurt to also educate
Speaker 1: the public at the same time. So a lot of
Speaker 1: people say, oh, well that we just discovered a new
Speaker 1: planet where it's still a candidate planet and it doesn't
Speaker 1: we don't necessarily know it exists. It's a good point, um.
Speaker 1: So that the transit method is is the one where
Speaker 1: the light pulses, the star pulses, well, it dims because
Speaker 1: the planet comes in between the telescope and the yeah star.
Speaker 1: Then you have the wobble method, which is pretty neat
Speaker 1: in itself. Um. It looks for changes in relative velocity
Speaker 1: caused by the gravitational pull of another nearby planet. So
Speaker 1: basically what happens is they use the spectrum of light
Speaker 1: for this one and they analyze that spectrum around this
Speaker 1: uh what they think could be a planet. It planet
Speaker 1: it planet it can planet it so, thank you. So
Speaker 1: what happens is if it is being pulled by another planet,
Speaker 1: when it surges towards Earth and then away, it causes
Speaker 1: variations in that light spectrum. So when it comes towards Earth, um,
Speaker 1: it shortens a wavelength and you see a blue spectrum
Speaker 1: more um. When it goes away from Earth, it lengthens
Speaker 1: and you see red more So it's almost like a
Speaker 1: color pulse. Uh. And that is the Wobble method. So
Speaker 1: that's number two. And that's the Doppler effect. Uh is it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: but with light instead of sound. But the Compler effect
Speaker 1: is only sound. No, it's any kind of wavelength. Oh
Speaker 1: I thought the Doppler effect was strictly sound. No, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's any I'm telling you. It's the thing that
Speaker 1: links bats to earthlike planets, to Doppler to a passing ambulance. Yes, man,
Speaker 1: I'm so psyched about the Doppler effect. Uh. And you
Speaker 1: want to go ahead and hit us up with that
Speaker 1: last one micro lensing that's pretty neat too, yes. So, um,
Speaker 1: when you have a star and another star passes, if
Speaker 1: you're looking at a star with say if um, like
Speaker 1: the the Kepler telescope, which the Kepler telescope strictly uses
Speaker 1: the transit method from what I understands, So you have
Speaker 1: another telescope that that is more open minded. Yeah. UM,
Speaker 1: And you're looking at a star and another star comes
Speaker 1: in between you and the star. You're looking at that
Speaker 1: star that's in the foreground, that's in between you and
Speaker 1: the original star. UM actually takes the light and acts
Speaker 1: as a kind of a magnifying lens and intensifies the
Speaker 1: light of the star behind it thanks to its gravity.
Speaker 1: This is called micro lensing. Right. If a planet falls
Speaker 1: into that that's an orbit around that other star falls
Speaker 1: in line with this, it takes that um that micro
Speaker 1: lensing effect and amplifies it even further. And then you
Speaker 1: can calculate, based on the amplification of the micro lensing effect,
Speaker 1: the mass of all of the stars and this new
Speaker 1: mystery planet that just came into into line with this orbit. UM,
Speaker 1: And they use that mind blowingly enough to deduce the
Speaker 1: presence of planets around stars too. So you've got these
Speaker 1: three methods and all of them though again it's really
Speaker 1: important to remember this, all of these used deduction, Like
Speaker 1: none of these planets have been visually observed. They are
Speaker 1: all deduced to exist based on um, the mathematical evidence
Speaker 1: that there's something going on here, like that this light
Speaker 1: is dimming, this color is changing, or the light is
Speaker 1: being amplified by something, and it all has to do
Speaker 1: with mass and gravity. It's pretty amazing. Yeah, alright, so
Speaker 1: we'll take a little break here and come back and
Speaker 1: talk about some of these exo planets and if there
Speaker 1: are people living there, there aren't so chuck. Remember we
Speaker 1: mentioned the transit method. You can also use these things
Speaker 1: to deduce even more stuff about these planets once you
Speaker 1: confirm they exist. Personality, right, it's signed like kind of things. Um.
Speaker 1: There's something called transit spectroscopy which uses the apparently the
Speaker 1: atmosp fear of a planet leaves a certain kind of
Speaker 1: mark on the light that it messes with in the
Speaker 1: star that you're looking at. So not only are you
Speaker 1: deducing that the planets there, you're deducing by the effect
Speaker 1: that that planet has on the light the type of
Speaker 1: atmosphere it has as well. So pretty amazing, right, So
Speaker 1: once they figure out that yes, the planet is likely there,
Speaker 1: they go back and look at it and the planet
Speaker 1: goes from a candidate to a confirmed planet, and the
Speaker 1: Kepler Um came up with one thousand and thirty confirmed exoplanets,
Speaker 1: twelve of which are in a Goldilocks zone. Right. Um,
Speaker 1: they really start going to town studying this planet and
Speaker 1: figuring out what its atmosphere is like, where it is
Speaker 1: in relation to the star, what the temperature is, and
Speaker 1: they can tell some pretty amazing stuff about an exo
Speaker 1: planet just from all of these deductions. Yeah, Like, uh,
Speaker 1: I guess let's just talk about a couple of these
Speaker 1: UM the the Gliza. Uh I guess it's a group
Speaker 1: because there are several glazes. There's a gliza. So each
Speaker 1: one of these UM exoplanets is named after the star
Speaker 1: that it orbits. Yeah. So so the Glaza Gleaz is
Speaker 1: a star. Yeah, and it has several potential habitable planets
Speaker 1: around it. We already talked a little bit about five
Speaker 1: eight one G, but there's also a five eight one C.
Speaker 1: It is twelve thousand miles in diameter UM, which is
Speaker 1: not too much bigger than Earth um, and makes one
Speaker 1: complete revolution in thirteen Earth days, which means it's too hot,
Speaker 1: but it balances that out because it has a surface
Speaker 1: temperature one uh that of our Sun, which means potentially,
Speaker 1: and again this is all speculation. Potentially the temperature range
Speaker 1: on the surface of five eight one C could be
Speaker 1: thirty two degrees to two degrees fahrenheit, such as in
Speaker 1: the wheelhouse. It isn the wheelhouse. I think further study
Speaker 1: has kind of discarded the idea that um gleeza vibe
Speaker 1: eight one c is habitable. Yeah, it's pretty quick right
Speaker 1: as far as breaking news goes. But you raise a
Speaker 1: really good point that if this thing has a revolution
Speaker 1: a year that's thirteen days long, the there's no part
Speaker 1: of the planet that's going to get cool enough to
Speaker 1: even things out. It's gonna just stay too hot. And conversely,
Speaker 1: if the thing has a year that lasts too long,
Speaker 1: it's gonna it's not gonna get hot enough. It's gonna
Speaker 1: stay cool. So that's another galactic habitable zone factor. Well,
Speaker 1: I love him, man, keep them coming. I know. I
Speaker 1: basically went and looked today. I was like, what are
Speaker 1: the most likely habitable exoplanets? And an article from a
Speaker 1: year ago has a top five that's different from an
Speaker 1: article now, Like that's how quickly things change, right, Well,
Speaker 1: I mean these things were all just basically theoretical, like
Speaker 1: we assumed that, you know, a star would have planets
Speaker 1: orbiting it, but it wasn't until the Coupler mission within
Speaker 1: the last like ten years or so, I think it
Speaker 1: was from the Arecibo telescope was the first confirmed exo
Speaker 1: planet to be detected. And that was but once Kepler
Speaker 1: started going, it's they started to come like hard and fast.
Speaker 1: And once they started and people started rushing to press,
Speaker 1: then the science is having to retract them now and
Speaker 1: things are going from yeah, well, well there's a new
Speaker 1: exit planet that we could just travel to now if
Speaker 1: we wanted to to. This thing actually doesn't exist or
Speaker 1: it's not really habitable. I looked. The most recent one
Speaker 1: I found was from like three months ago and May
Speaker 1: of this year, and they say, I believe this was
Speaker 1: from space dot Com said that Kepler forty eight B
Speaker 1: is the most earthlike planet yet that we've discovered. Um
Speaker 1: it orbits a distant star in the constellation of Lira,
Speaker 1: which is where Kepler is looking. Which eight B. It
Speaker 1: gets really confusing. They need to start naming these things,
Speaker 1: they do, you know, So four thirty eight B is
Speaker 1: a little bit bigger than Earth, uh more heat than
Speaker 1: Earth than what we received from the Sun though. UH.
Speaker 1: It's small though, which means it is UM just because
Speaker 1: it's twelve percent larger means it's seventy has a seventy
Speaker 1: chance of being rocky like Earth. UH. It is four
Speaker 1: d and seventy light years away, which is not too
Speaker 1: bad considering some of these are thousands and thousands of
Speaker 1: light years away. UH completes an orbit around its star
Speaker 1: every thirty five days, which is about ten times as
Speaker 1: fast as Earth. UM. And basically the Harvard Smithsonian Center
Speaker 1: of astro UH for Astrophysics said that UM, they announced
Speaker 1: this one along with seven other planets UM in the
Speaker 1: same habit of ball zone. So decent chance. But UM,
Speaker 1: like I said this this, By the time this comes out,
Speaker 1: this may be old news and debunked. Who knows. UM.
Speaker 1: There's another one that I think they discovered even more recently,
Speaker 1: which is Kepler fifty two B and it's light years
Speaker 1: away UM, and it is an earthlike planet. I think
Speaker 1: it's UM like uh si larger in diameter than the
Speaker 1: Earth UM, but it's still Earth like. It is a
Speaker 1: super Earth, yes, UM. No, that automatically qualifies it as
Speaker 1: a super Earth. So it's it's Earth size, but it's
Speaker 1: not so big that it's like a gas giant. It's
Speaker 1: terrestrial likely um. And it's in the Goldilocks zone for
Speaker 1: its star um, and they're pretty excited about it. Actually.
Speaker 1: I think the it has a mass that's five or
Speaker 1: six times Earth's and so you would be you you
Speaker 1: would feel about double your weight or you would weigh double.
Speaker 1: Well you do here. But they think that if we
Speaker 1: did sink colonists there, their bodies would adapt to be
Speaker 1: like working out all the time. Um, but you would
Speaker 1: become super strong, and if you came back to Earth
Speaker 1: you could just beat everybody up. Interesting because you'd be
Speaker 1: twice as strong. Pretty cool, huh, it'd be great. That's
Speaker 1: the point of space travel is to find ways to
Speaker 1: just walk around and come back and beat everybody up
Speaker 1: on Earth. It's a bully program. That is a good question, though,
Speaker 1: what's the point of all this? If these things are
Speaker 1: light years away? What's what's the point? Um geez, just
Speaker 1: to keep looking beyond? I mean, isn't that exploration the
Speaker 1: whole point? I guess, because it's not like we could
Speaker 1: colonize any of these places, well not now. But I
Speaker 1: think that some people have an eye toward that that
Speaker 1: the if we ever do figure out interstellar travel, um,
Speaker 1: it would be really good to know where we could
Speaker 1: go and take off our helmets and breathe. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think of it more in the opposite way, like you
Speaker 1: can't stop doing stuff like this. No, I agree with
Speaker 1: because then you've just I don't know, then you're just
Speaker 1: you've given up. You're an isolationist. Yeah, you're adults living
Speaker 1: on Earth and o'tre I'm just gonna die anyway. Well,
Speaker 1: the other thing that they're looking for that that exoplanets
Speaker 1: searches bring into the fold is steady the search for
Speaker 1: estratra extra extraterrestrial intelligence or just the search for life
Speaker 1: um elsewhere. And again, if you're looking at planets that
Speaker 1: can sustain humans, they could conceivably sustain other types of
Speaker 1: life as well. So we're hedging our bets for the future.
Speaker 1: We're also looking to see if we're alone out there
Speaker 1: or not. Imagine there are people out there that thinks
Speaker 1: there's a big waste of time and money though probably
Speaker 1: you know, whatevs. The adults, the isolationists, you got anything
Speaker 1: else right now? Oh? This is uh, this is good.
Speaker 1: Stuff is a little heady and it's such a rapidly
Speaker 1: changing thing. Yeah, we could revisit this easily. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean this will be outdated in six months. But tops, Hey,
Speaker 1: we we like to do these topical things every now
Speaker 1: and then. Uh, if you want to know more about
Speaker 1: earth like planets, you can type that into the search
Speaker 1: part how stuff forks dot com. And since I said
Speaker 1: search parts, time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this,
Speaker 1: uh road rage and no not road rage. Citizens arrest. Okay,
Speaker 1: there's kind of a difference, big difference. Guys. Have a
Speaker 1: citizens rest story. Um from two thousand one. I was
Speaker 1: a naive nineteen year old behind the wheel of the
Speaker 1: first car ever bought myself when I was rear ended. Um.
Speaker 1: It was two thousand one, so we didn't have cell
Speaker 1: phones and there was no phone booth nearby, so we
Speaker 1: could not call the highway patrol or police. The other
Speaker 1: driver had insurance, but did not have a valid driver's license,
Speaker 1: only an expired one. Later found out he obtained a
Speaker 1: license during a window time when the Governator of California
Speaker 1: announced him to be issued to undocumented persons who had
Speaker 1: emigrated without completing all their legal steps yet. So basically
Speaker 1: this guy got in a window had it license at
Speaker 1: one point it was expired. I got my crunch car
Speaker 1: home that afternoon and, at the suggestion of my parents,
Speaker 1: called the local cops to file a police report since
Speaker 1: we couldn't do one at the scene in the accident.
Speaker 1: The officer that came out to my home was the
Speaker 1: most militant, sour woman in law enforcement that I have
Speaker 1: ever had the pleasure or displeasure I'm encountering. She impatiently
Speaker 1: asked the questions and took notes, all while sneering at me.
Speaker 1: When I got to the part about the other driver
Speaker 1: having expired license, she literally yelled at me for not
Speaker 1: placing him under citizens arrest. Mind you, this was a
Speaker 1: car full of men. I was a nineteen year old
Speaker 1: girl who weighed a hundred pounds and was four ft ten,
Speaker 1: and she chastised me for not placing an entire car
Speaker 1: full of grown men under citizens arrest for driving on
Speaker 1: an expired license. Uh. She went on about how many
Speaker 1: undocumented persons have criminal records and can be very dangerous,
Speaker 1: and this would have been a good opportunity to get
Speaker 1: them deported. Well, this is an explosive listener mail. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or a car full of potentially dangerous men. Maybe you
Speaker 1: should not try and place under citizens rests would be
Speaker 1: my idea. At this point, my father had enough of
Speaker 1: her shenanigans and asked her to leave. That was the
Speaker 1: end of that, but we still chuckled this day over
Speaker 1: the absurdity of her suggestion. Uh. And she goes on
Speaker 1: to say that the guy in the car and the
Speaker 1: dudes were very nice, and the exchange insurance and it
Speaker 1: wasn't like a bad scene or anything. So, um, it
Speaker 1: just sounds like this officer was not a very nice persons. Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: and every cop that we heard from after citizen arrest
Speaker 1: said don't do it, and this lady saying, now try it.
Speaker 1: A little four ft tin lady shot on a car
Speaker 1: full of men, and um, all of sudden, you want
Speaker 1: to point out that I forgot that one of the
Speaker 1: most legendary Remember I was trying to think of famous
Speaker 1: citizens arrests. The most legendary of all time is, uh,
Speaker 1: the night Stalker. Oh yeah, he got arrested by a
Speaker 1: citizen by citizens Like he was checked the knight Stalker
Speaker 1: did no not him? Richard Richard Ramirez. He was recognized
Speaker 1: out on this because they eventually found out who he
Speaker 1: was and blasted his face out everywhere in this group
Speaker 1: of Hispanic women saw him and started screaming in uh
Speaker 1: in Spanish like night stalker, night stalker. And he was
Speaker 1: gang piled by like fifteen people and cops had to
Speaker 1: pull people off. He was almost beaten to death. So
Speaker 1: I guess you would call that a citizen's arrest. I
Speaker 1: would call that, yes, yeah, like a good one, yeah,
Speaker 1: an effective one. Yeah, well they got a serial killer.
Speaker 1: You always gotta feel good about that citizens arrest. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I fell down the rabbit hole of reading all about
Speaker 1: that guy recently. Yeah. Yeah, man, what a crazy time
Speaker 1: to be living in l A. I bet people were
Speaker 1: because there was no rhyme or reason and it was
Speaker 1: like one night, then two nights later, than three nights later,
Speaker 1: than two nights later, and just crazy, awful, awful things.
Speaker 1: That was like The Zodiac, one of my favorite movies
Speaker 1: of all times. Zodiac. It's a great movie. That was
Speaker 1: a great one. But then you read ramirez is background
Speaker 1: and it's like abusive father, Um, this crazy uncle that
Speaker 1: was in Vietnam that showed him pictures of like decapitated bodies,
Speaker 1: and you know, he was dropped on his head like
Speaker 1: three times, like he had a whole list of things
Speaker 1: that's like how to become a serial killer. And uh
Speaker 1: so it's two times you're fine, that third time you
Speaker 1: get dropped on your head, that's big. And let's not
Speaker 1: say every head trauma leads to that, but they think
Speaker 1: it could have something to do in cases like that.
Speaker 1: It was just it was very sad and fascinating. Yep,
Speaker 1: do you have a particular article you recommend on the dude? Uh? No, Okay,
Speaker 1: well look, come up. Yeah, uh if you want to
Speaker 1: let us know about your personal story of something that
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