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Speaker 1: My welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hey, 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 today we're going to be exploring a ghost light

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Speaker 1: of astronomy. So in the past we've done episodes about

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Speaker 1: things like the Will of the Whisp, Right, remember that one,

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Speaker 1: Robert that was Strange Lights in the Wood. Yeah, that

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Speaker 1: was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it. And

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Speaker 1: the thing about things like the Will of the Wisp

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Speaker 1: is you have so many sightings of it over the years.

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Speaker 1: People claim they see a light over the marsh or

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Speaker 1: a light in the swamp or something like that. Um

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Speaker 1: that you have to assume it's not just people making

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Speaker 1: stuff up. Somebody at some point really did see something.

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Speaker 1: But obviously we don't think it's a ghost or a

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Speaker 1: spirit or a malevolent blacksmith who died in the swamp

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Speaker 1: and now wants to lead people off of cliffs and

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Speaker 1: to quicksand uh, those stories are pretty great, but you

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Speaker 1: have to assume something is there, right, well, something is

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Speaker 1: there that the woods. The woods are filled with various

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Speaker 1: some things. I always come back to the star jelly example, right, Uh,

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Speaker 1: the the idea that there's a shooting star and someone says, hey,

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Speaker 1: I think there's a meteorite out there in the woods.

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Speaker 1: I'm going to go find it. And then they start

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Speaker 1: going out and they start looking around, poking around in

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Speaker 1: a place that they have passing familiarity with but have

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Speaker 1: no real expertise. And then as they're poking around, they

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Speaker 1: find something strange to them, some sort of gooey substance,

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Speaker 1: and it's it's probably, I mean, it certainly is some

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Speaker 1: sort of natural occurring is you know, maybe it's Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there's a lot of oozy stuff in the woods if

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Speaker 1: you poke around enough, and that's what they find. But

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Speaker 1: then they think this is the thing, this is the

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Speaker 1: goo that fell from the sky, and and so I

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Speaker 1: think there there's there's certainly a case to be made.

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Speaker 1: I imagine. I discussed this in the Will of the

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Speaker 1: Whisp episode, and we both discussed this that we noticed something,

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Speaker 1: we have no immediate explanation for it. But then if

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Speaker 1: we have some sort of predominant theory to tie into it,

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Speaker 1: or some bit of a myth or folklore, then it

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Speaker 1: can take on a life of its own. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

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Speaker 1: But then with a lot of this stuff, you do

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Speaker 1: actually have to wonder about it in ways that you

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Speaker 1: you feel disinclined to, because, like with the Will of

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Speaker 1: the Whisp, there are so many reports over the years,

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Speaker 1: you think, well, people had to be seeing some kind

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Speaker 1: of light. We don't know what it was. We think

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Speaker 1: there was a materialistic explanation for it, but we don't

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Speaker 1: know what it was, but there must have been something.

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Speaker 1: Then again, how often are people seeing Will of the

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Speaker 1: Whisp today? What where did all the sightings go? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's kind of a strange question. If people really were

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Speaker 1: seeing something, how come they don't seem to be seeing

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Speaker 1: it with nearly the same frequency anymore? And if you're

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Speaker 1: if you're intrigued by that question, you should check out

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Speaker 1: our Will of the Whisp episode. Will include a link

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Speaker 1: to it on the landing page for this episode is

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Speaker 1: Stuff to your Mind dot Com. Today we want to

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Speaker 1: focus on a totally different type of ghost light, one

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Speaker 1: of the most interesting elusive lights in the history of science.

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Speaker 1: And this is not something that you would see in

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Speaker 1: the Mars shore. This fickle, unexplained light in the swamp.

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Speaker 1: This is a fickle, unexplained light that astronomers have claimed

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Speaker 1: to see through the vast reaches of outer space on

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Speaker 1: the surface of another planet. Now, to be clear, we're

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Speaker 1: not talking about seeing it, just gazing up into the

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Speaker 1: sky and seeing it. We're talking about using a telescope, right,

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Speaker 1: because obviously planets other than I don't know if you

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Speaker 1: call the Moon a planet, things out there other than

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Speaker 1: the Moon and the Sun resolved to a kind of

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Speaker 1: point like light source for the naked eye, right. And

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Speaker 1: and of course we're all familiar with the various strange

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Speaker 1: lights one can observe in the sky. Uh, and then

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Speaker 1: attribute to any number of of natural or appearing normal

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Speaker 1: or causes. Yeah, we're not talking about UFOs or anything

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Speaker 1: like that. We're gonna be looking at a planet in

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Speaker 1: our Solar system. So I want to start off this

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Speaker 1: mystery hunt by introducing you to a seventeenth century Italian astronomer,

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Speaker 1: and his name was Giovanni Batista Riccioli. He lived fIF

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Speaker 1: to sixteen seventy one. And Riccioli was a Catholic priest

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Speaker 1: and an astronomer working in the generation after Galileo. So

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Speaker 1: this was a great time of innovation and progress in astronomy. Right,

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Speaker 1: So you've had Galileo's strong case made for the Copernican cosmology, right,

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Speaker 1: and you've had Galileo improving telescope optics and and so

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Speaker 1: the people working at this time to appear into the

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Speaker 1: night sky had a lot of new ideas and a

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Speaker 1: lot of new technology available to them, better able to

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Speaker 1: see and model observable universe exactly. Riccioli was also a

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Speaker 1: very important lunar astronomer, and he made detailed maps of

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Speaker 1: the Earth facing side of our moon. As we know,

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Speaker 1: the Moon is tidally locked with planet Earth, so we

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Speaker 1: always see the same side of the Moon, and that

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Speaker 1: side has a bunch of topographical features like seas and craters,

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Speaker 1: and so a lot of the names of the features

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Speaker 1: on the surface of the Moon come from Riccioli's original nomenclature,

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Speaker 1: like the Sea of Tranquility and so forth. But on

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Speaker 1: January nine three, richili was examining the planet Venus through

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Speaker 1: a telescope when it was in its crescent phase. So

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Speaker 1: what does it mean for Venus to be in a

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Speaker 1: crescent phase. The easiest point of comparison for this would

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Speaker 1: be our moon, right, which goes through phases of its own.

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Speaker 1: You've got full moon, give us crescent new moon. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And of course the moon orbits around the Earth, and

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Speaker 1: as it does, it's always day on the side of

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Speaker 1: the moon facing the Sun and night on the side

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Speaker 1: of the moon facing away from the Sun. And so

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Speaker 1: the type of moon we see depends on how much

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Speaker 1: of the day versus night side of the moon we

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Speaker 1: see facing the Earth. So when the moon is between

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Speaker 1: the Earth and the Sun, we're looking at the dark

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Speaker 1: nighttime side of the moon, and we get a new moon.

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Speaker 1: And when the moon is on the opposite side of

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Speaker 1: the Earth from the Sun, we're seeing the bright daytime

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Speaker 1: side of the moon, so we get a full moon.

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Speaker 1: We're always looking at the same side of the moon,

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Speaker 1: but it but sometimes it's day, sometimes it's night on

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Speaker 1: that side that we can see. Uh. And then of

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Speaker 1: course in between those phases there there are crescents and

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Speaker 1: stuff like that. So a crescent moon happens when the

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Speaker 1: half of the moon facing us contains mostly the moon's

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Speaker 1: night side and then a little sliver of the lid

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Speaker 1: up day side. Now, of course, Venus isn't orbiting Earth, right,

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Speaker 1: so the timing of these phases is somewhat different, but

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Speaker 1: the same basic principles apply Venus orbits the Sun on

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Speaker 1: a different schedule than we do. So when Venus is visible,

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Speaker 1: sometimes the side facing Us is mostly the bright daytime

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Speaker 1: side which reflects a lot of sunlight and looks very

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Speaker 1: bright in the sky. And other times when Venus comes

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Speaker 1: sort of between the Earth and the Sun. As you

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Speaker 1: can imagine if you picture this, the Venus orbits inside

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Speaker 1: the Earth's orbit, so it sort of comes between the

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Speaker 1: Earth and the Sun. The side facing Us is mostly

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Speaker 1: or entirely the darkened night time side of Venus that's

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Speaker 1: facing away from the Sun. And Robert, I bet you've

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Speaker 1: heard about this before. But of course the phases of

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Speaker 1: Venus play a role in the history of establishing how

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Speaker 1: the Solar system works, right like this was a point

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Speaker 1: of contention for Galileo and and his critics during during

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Speaker 1: the time he was alive. Yeah, I mean, this is this,

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Speaker 1: this all it makes for a major advancement just celestial mechanics,

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Speaker 1: just understanding how the planets in our Solar system are

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Speaker 1: moving exactly because the first time we actually know of

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Speaker 1: that the phases of Venus that seeing it as so

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Speaker 1: sort of more darkened or more or more bright and

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Speaker 1: more daytime side. Uh. The first time these phases were

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Speaker 1: observed through a telescope and described was by Galileo, and

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Speaker 1: this was in the early sixteen hundreds, and at the

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Speaker 1: time the phases of Venus were more than a curiosity.

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Speaker 1: They were a kind of brutal line of evidence against

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Speaker 1: the Ptolemaic geocentric model of the universe. And the reason

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Speaker 1: for this is that Galileo showed with the telescope you

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Speaker 1: could look at Venus and that it had phases just

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Speaker 1: like our moon. But he observed the unlike our moon,

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Speaker 1: Venus had a full phase when it was roughly in

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Speaker 1: the same direction in the sky as the Sun. So

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Speaker 1: think about that. You're looking toward Venus and it's in

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Speaker 1: pretty much the same direction as the Sun, but the

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Speaker 1: side we can see of it is all lit up

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Speaker 1: and bright. The Moon's never like that. When the moon's

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Speaker 1: in the same direction as the Sun, the side of

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Speaker 1: it we can see as dark. So if all of

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Speaker 1: the planets in the Sun went around the Earth, how

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Speaker 1: would it be possible for Venus to appear full to us,

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Speaker 1: lit up in daytime side when it's in the same

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Speaker 1: direction as the Sun. It couldn't were forced to to

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Speaker 1: reevaluate the entire structure of our our solar system. Exactly. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: So what this showed was that Venus, because it showed

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Speaker 1: a full phase at the same time that it was

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Speaker 1: in the same direction as the Sun, it couldn't be

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Speaker 1: between the Earth and the Sun. It had to be

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Speaker 1: on the other side of the Sun from Us, which

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Speaker 1: meant that Venus was not orbiting Earth, it was opening

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Speaker 1: the Sun. And so Galileo first published this argument in

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Speaker 1: his sixteen thirteen Letters on Sun Spots, which was a

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Speaker 1: sort of a series of letters that he turned into

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Speaker 1: a pamphlet, and which turned out to be the first

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Speaker 1: place Galileo actually officially endorsed the Copernican model of the

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Speaker 1: solar system, in which the planets go around the Sun

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Speaker 1: instead of everything going around the Earth. And of course

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Speaker 1: we all know that this was kind of a this

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Speaker 1: was rather a controversial theory at the time. It it

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Speaker 1: was not well received by by some powerful individuals. Yeah, exactly.

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Speaker 1: I mean this put Galileo on course to have extreme

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Speaker 1: conflicts with both the scientific and religious hierarchies of the day. Uh. People,

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Speaker 1: people forget that it wasn't just the church that was

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Speaker 1: persecuting Galileo. I mean a lot of his scientific colleagues,

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Speaker 1: I just thought he was wrong for reasoning, you know,

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Speaker 1: for reasons of their own. Yeah, and there were a

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Speaker 1: lot of people that were very invested in the previous model.

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Speaker 1: He's really changed everything, whether you were looking up at

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Speaker 1: the stars with a with a more of a scientific

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Speaker 1: mindset or or a purely religious one exactly. But anyway,

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Speaker 1: so when an astronomer looks at Venus in its crescent phase,

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Speaker 1: they're seeing mostly the night side of Venus, right, and

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Speaker 1: so you've got this sliver of daytime that's separated by

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Speaker 1: what's known as the terminator line. The terminator line is

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Speaker 1: the boundary between the night side and the day side

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Speaker 1: on the surface of a planet. And if you've never

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Speaker 1: seen this, it can be very haunting, Like if you

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Speaker 1: view the terminator line on Earth from the International Space Station.

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Speaker 1: There are videos of this you can look up online

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Speaker 1: where the station is rapidly orbiting the Earth. You see

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Speaker 1: the ground beneath passing along and it's the daytime side

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Speaker 1: of the planet and suddenly this curtain of dark just

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Speaker 1: sweeps over the face of the planet. Uh. It's it's

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Speaker 1: kind of terrifying to see actually but also very beautiful.

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Speaker 1: It's it's worth looking up alright. So so we're looking

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Speaker 1: up at the night side of Venus here gazing into

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Speaker 1: the dark, just into the dark on another planet, right,

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Speaker 1: What is the curious incident of the Venus in the

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Speaker 1: night So on that j Your evening sixteen forty three,

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Speaker 1: Richie Ali's looking at Venus through his telescope in this

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Speaker 1: crescent phase where there's a small crescent limb of light

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Speaker 1: and there's the terminator line, and most of Venus should

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Speaker 1: be dark. The crescent portion was at roughly thirty percent

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Speaker 1: of the planet when when Richieli was looking at it. Now,

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Speaker 1: when you look at Venus in a crescent phase like this,

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Speaker 1: the nighttime side of the planet is supposed to be

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Speaker 1: completely invisible. It's so dark compared to the brightly lit

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Speaker 1: up crescent of the daytime side that you shouldn't be

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Speaker 1: able to see it at all. The daytime sliver of

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Speaker 1: the planet should be like a bright melanrind floating in

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Speaker 1: space by itself with nothing else there. But when Richili

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Speaker 1: looked at it that January evening in sixty three, something

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Speaker 1: was not right. Instead of a bright crescent and an

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Speaker 1: invisible nighttime side, Richie Eli believed he saw something startling,

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Speaker 1: a very faint glow coming from the dark side of Venus.

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Speaker 1: The side of Venus where it was currently night time

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Speaker 1: appeared to be ever so faintly shining gray light into space.

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Speaker 1: And Richie Eli gave this glow a name. He called

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Speaker 1: it the ashen Light of Venus. Spooky. Huh, yeah, it

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Speaker 1: has it has it certainly has an anonymous ring to it. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's It's funny. How if you just give something a

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Speaker 1: really good name, it'll end up getting a lot more

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Speaker 1: attention than something that doesn't have a good name. Uh

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Speaker 1: And and I think that's probably the case here. The

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Speaker 1: ashen light, I think maybe gets more attention from amateur

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Speaker 1: astronomers trying to find it and stuff like that than

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Speaker 1: a similar observation would be if it was just called

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Speaker 1: something very mundane. It sounds like a like like a

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Speaker 1: new metal album from from the early two thousands, so

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Speaker 1: people were like, yeah, let's look for that ashen light.

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Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure there is a is a metal band

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Speaker 1: called Ash and Light. You just know it happens, right,

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Speaker 1: It's like there's nothing left. The metal bands have scoured

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Speaker 1: the earth. It's like going through a post apocalyptic wasteland

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Speaker 1: has been picked clean of every bit of canned food

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Speaker 1: and ammunition and everything you think you might want. If

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Speaker 1: there's an idea or an ordering of words that sounds cool,

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Speaker 1: it has been scavenged by a metal band in Ohio somewhere.

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Speaker 1: I don't know. I have a feeling that before we

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Speaker 1: make it through this this episode will have found something

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Speaker 1: that some fledgling metal band can latch onto and embraces

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Speaker 1: their name. But anyway, the Action Light itself. So Ever,

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Speaker 1: since Riccioli's original sighting, other astronomers, both professional and amateur,

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Speaker 1: have been looking for the Action Light, and a lot

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Speaker 1: have claimed to see it, but many others have looked

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Speaker 1: when it should be visible and found nothing. So this

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Speaker 1: controversy exists. Does the Action Light really exist? And if

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Speaker 1: it does exist, what is it? What is making the

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Speaker 1: night time side of Venus glow? On that note, we're

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Speaker 1: going to take a quick break, and when we come

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Speaker 1: back we will discuss subsequent sightings or claims of sightings

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Speaker 1: of the Action Light and some ideas about just what

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Speaker 1: it could be. Alright, we're back. So we've been discussing

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Speaker 1: Giovanni Batista Riccioli's original sighting of what he thought was

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Speaker 1: the action light on the night side of Venus in

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Speaker 1: sixty three, and here's how he described it. So he said,

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Speaker 1: it appears to be a dull, faint glow, some sort

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Speaker 1: of gray, somewhat like earth shine on the dark side

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Speaker 1: of the moon. Now what is earth shine. That's when

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Speaker 1: the moon is in a crescent phase, meaning most of

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Speaker 1: the moon's sunlit day side is facing away from Earth

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Speaker 1: and most of the moon's darkened night side is facing

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Speaker 1: towards Earth, and light from the Earth shines on the

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Speaker 1: night time side of the Moon to produce a soft, gray,

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Speaker 1: glowing reflection. But the action light is allegedly even fainter

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Speaker 1: than the earth shine on the moon. Because we know

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Speaker 1: the earth shine on the moon exists, we've got evidence

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Speaker 1: of that that the action light is still controversial. So

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Speaker 1: you've got all these claims of sighting this of this

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Speaker 1: dull brownish or copper or gray light on the other

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Speaker 1: side of Venus. Now where do some of these sightings

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Speaker 1: come from? One of them was by William Durham in

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Speaker 1: seventeen fourteen, so that was apparently the next sighting after

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Speaker 1: richie Oli. Uh seventeen fourteen, the English natural philosopher William

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Speaker 1: Durham was observing Venus through a telescope and he called

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Speaker 1: the light a dull, rusty color. Then you had actually

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Speaker 1: a big name in the history of astronomy, the German

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Speaker 1: born British astronomer Sir William Herschel. Oh yeah, yeah, nature

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Speaker 1: name there. So he lives seventeen thirty eight to eighteen

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Speaker 1: twenty two. And Herschel was the discoverer of Uranus in

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Speaker 1: seventeen eighty one, which was extremely significant because I think

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Speaker 1: a lot of people don't really It's got a mythological name,

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Speaker 1: right like the other planet. So a lot of times

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Speaker 1: I think people assume that Uranus was known about by

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Speaker 1: the people who believed in the god Uranus or Uranus

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Speaker 1: like I guess, however you say it, both both are correct,

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Speaker 1: just once more funny solistic with Uranus. But yeah, the

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Speaker 1: Uranus was actually discovered in sev one. It was. This

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Speaker 1: was extremely significant because it was the first discovery of

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Speaker 1: a new Solar System planet since ancient times. The ancients

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Speaker 1: had been able even before telescopes, to see planets like

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Speaker 1: Jupiter with the naked eye, so to be clear at

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Speaker 1: this point, we've we've already established there's not just one

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Speaker 1: individual who saw it, and it's not just uh, and

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Speaker 1: and and and Also we're talking about like noted astronomers

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Speaker 1: of of their day here, not near amateurs who just

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Speaker 1: happened to pick up a telescope and and gaze hopefully

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Speaker 1: up at Venus to see what they could see. No,

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Speaker 1: these were respected astronomers and observers of the sky. These

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Speaker 1: are people who we can talk about this more in

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Speaker 1: a minute. But there are people who you wouldn't expect

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Speaker 1: to be hoaxing. You know. It's not like somebody is

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Speaker 1: just like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I saw a willow,

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Speaker 1: the whisp and the swamp. Yeah it was great. But

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Speaker 1: then to be clear too, whereas the willow will of

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Speaker 1: the whisp already has like supernatural connotations to it, this

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Speaker 1: was more of a purely scientific observation without getting into

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Speaker 1: some of the possible reasons that could be attached to it. Uh,

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Speaker 1: just gazing at another planetary body and and and seeing

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Speaker 1: some sort of illumination or seeing just anything, any kind

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Speaker 1: of phenomena that they could not be easily explained. I mean,

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Speaker 1: that's kind of part for the course of gazing up

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Speaker 1: at other planets. I mean, I would be shocked if

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Speaker 1: over the years, somebody at some point didn't claim that

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Speaker 1: the ashen light was caused by I don't know, the

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Speaker 1: fires of hell burning on the surface of Venus where

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Speaker 1: all the damned and heretics went. I mean, just think

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Speaker 1: of Herschel for example, here like which is the crazier thing,

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Speaker 1: Which is the bigger moment in his life? Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: saw some of this light that this other guy was

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Speaker 1: talking about. I saw it on on the dark side

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Speaker 1: of Venus, versus I've discovered a new planet. Yeah, he

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Speaker 1: don't planet exactly. That's a good point. He didn't need

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Speaker 1: to be like a tension seeking or anything. There's no

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Speaker 1: reason really for Herschel to claim to see this without

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Speaker 1: actually seeing it, though of course he could be mistaken

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Speaker 1: about seeing right, And when we're discussing it in hindsight,

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00:18:02,320 --> 00:18:05,199
Speaker 1: the action light is more of a mystery, yeah, versus

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Speaker 1: the the the awe that would have been associated with

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Speaker 1: discovering a new planet. Because, like you say, we've known

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Speaker 1: of of Uranus our entire lives. It's just it's one

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Speaker 1: of the planets to memorize, and we often fall into

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Speaker 1: the traffic, just thinking that humans have known about it

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Speaker 1: for ages. Yeah, exactly. Uh so. Another observer in the

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Speaker 1: nineteenth century Thomas William Webb in eighteen seventy eight. He

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Speaker 1: was a British astronomer. He was a reverend, and he

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Speaker 1: claimed he saw the light in eighteen seventy eight on

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Speaker 1: January thirty one, with a two hundred and thirty eight

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Speaker 1: millimeter reflector, so you know, mirror based telescope. And he

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Speaker 1: writes quote on January thirty feet after having many times

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Speaker 1: looked for it in Vain in former years, I saw

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Speaker 1: it without specially thinking about it, with powers of about

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Speaker 1: ninety and two twelve on my nine point three at

356
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Speaker 1: inch or two hundred two hundred and thirty eight millimeter mirror,

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Speaker 1: coming out at intervals rather paler and browner than the

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Speaker 1: twilight sky, and equally visible when the bright crescent was

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Speaker 1: hidden by a field bar. Now, this field bar, or

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Speaker 1: sometimes called an occulting bar, would be a device that

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Speaker 1: essentially blocks something bright so that you can see dimmer

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Speaker 1: things better. In this case, it would block out the

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Speaker 1: crescent on Venus, because that's the daytime side is very bright,

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Speaker 1: and that would allow you to see whether there's something

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Speaker 1: visible on the nighttime side by eliminating the glare. And

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Speaker 1: I also want to point out for anyone who lacked

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Speaker 1: unto the fact that this guy was a reverend um

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Speaker 1: a number of these sort of gentlemen scientists of the

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Speaker 1: of the day. Uh, we're also religious individuals as well,

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Speaker 1: so that's not really that uncommon. Oh yeah, Especially in

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Speaker 1: the history of astronomy, you see tons of astronomers who

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Speaker 1: were affiliated with, for example, the Catholic Church, or with

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Speaker 1: the Church of England or something like that. Another astronomer

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Speaker 1: named C. V. Zinger of Prague said he observed the

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Speaker 1: ghost slide of Venus in January eight eighty three and

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Speaker 1: that the disc of the planet was quote splendidly visible.

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Speaker 1: The most important feature of the observation was the ring

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Speaker 1: that I could detect all around the disk dark part

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Speaker 1: and crescent of brownish red color more pronounced on the

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Speaker 1: illuminated side than on the dark part of the limb,

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Speaker 1: but of a peculiar coppery hue. And then of course

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Speaker 1: there were many reported sightings in the twentieth century. A

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Speaker 1: bunch of sightings in nineteen fifty three with independent observers

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Speaker 1: claiming to see the light at the same time in

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Speaker 1: different locations. Uh. There were also a number of alleged

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Speaker 1: sightings in nineteen fifty six and fifty seven. Also, I

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Speaker 1: think I read about sightings in nineteen forty and I

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Speaker 1: think on all in all these years I mentioned there

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Speaker 1: were sightings on consecutive nights reported to the British Astronomical Association.

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Speaker 1: But already we can see that if something is occurring,

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Speaker 1: if there actually is a light there, it's not it's

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Speaker 1: not there all the time, right, Yeah, So this is

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Speaker 1: something that's going to contribute to the mystery and maybe

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Speaker 1: help us reason about if it really exists what it is. Um,

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Speaker 1: Now you may be noticing so far that we're all

396
00:20:59,000 --> 00:21:02,879
Speaker 1: talking about visual sightings, not about capturing images of it.

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00:21:02,960 --> 00:21:04,919
Speaker 1: Now that that'll that will play into our discussion. In

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Speaker 1: a minute, just to mention a couple more sightings real quick.

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Speaker 1: Um and Dale Crookshank, a planetary scientist at NASA Ames

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Speaker 1: Research Center, and William K. Hartman, another planetary scientists, they

401
00:21:15,640 --> 00:21:19,720
Speaker 1: observed Venus at inferior conjunction. Now that conjunction is when

402
00:21:19,800 --> 00:21:23,200
Speaker 1: planets line up in a line, So inferior conjunction would

403
00:21:23,200 --> 00:21:27,119
Speaker 1: be when the Earth Venus and the Sun line up together,

404
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Speaker 1: with Venus on the same side of the Sun as

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Speaker 1: the Earth. I guess obviously it would have to be

406
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Speaker 1: on the same side of the Sun as the Earth

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00:21:33,280 --> 00:21:37,480
Speaker 1: if we're observing it now. The thing here that I'm

408
00:21:37,480 --> 00:21:39,240
Speaker 1: sure it's jumping out at everyone though, as we mentioned

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Speaker 1: these dates, is that none of these dates are particularly recent,

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00:21:43,440 --> 00:21:47,120
Speaker 1: and it's it's easy to just assume that. Okay, as

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00:21:47,240 --> 00:21:51,879
Speaker 1: as as our technology increases, is our ability to view

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Speaker 1: and capture images of venous increases. If sightings go down,

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Speaker 1: then that's that's a huge red flag. It absolutely is.

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Speaker 1: That's a very good point in something that other astronomers

415
00:22:04,760 --> 00:22:07,160
Speaker 1: uh we we will talk about later in the episode,

416
00:22:07,160 --> 00:22:09,800
Speaker 1: have pointed out. But yeah, it seems that while there

417
00:22:09,800 --> 00:22:13,640
Speaker 1: have been all these numbers of sightings, sightings apparently get

418
00:22:13,720 --> 00:22:17,520
Speaker 1: more rare as our ability to capture faint images with

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00:22:17,640 --> 00:22:22,920
Speaker 1: astronomical equipment becomes better. Uh So, uh Dale, Dale Crookshank,

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Speaker 1: and William Hartman that I mentioned a minute ago, they

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Speaker 1: did not capture an image of it. They drew an

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00:22:28,040 --> 00:22:31,760
Speaker 1: image of it based on their visual observations. Um. They

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Speaker 1: said that the circle of the disk within the ring

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Speaker 1: of light glowed to kind of dull brown color, and

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00:22:37,359 --> 00:22:39,320
Speaker 1: they said that this was a different color from the

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Speaker 1: blue sky behind the planet, and that the color difference

427
00:22:42,440 --> 00:22:44,439
Speaker 1: seemed to be the strongest near the crescent. And so

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00:22:44,480 --> 00:22:48,320
Speaker 1: I added an illustration of what they think they saw. Robert, Now,

429
00:22:48,520 --> 00:22:51,120
Speaker 1: it looks kind of like if there's a bright ring

430
00:22:51,200 --> 00:22:54,240
Speaker 1: and then inside it there's just a slight, slight hue

431
00:22:54,240 --> 00:22:56,639
Speaker 1: of brown, right right, And now trying to include this

432
00:22:56,680 --> 00:22:58,520
Speaker 1: image on the landing page for this episode of Stuff

433
00:22:58,520 --> 00:23:00,000
Speaker 1: to Plow your Mind dot Com so that people can

434
00:23:00,040 --> 00:23:02,960
Speaker 1: can see what we're talking about as well. Just one

435
00:23:03,000 --> 00:23:06,360
Speaker 1: more alleged siding, the English astronomer Sir Patrick Moore, who

436
00:23:06,359 --> 00:23:09,320
Speaker 1: passed away unfortunately in two thousand twelve. He claimed to

437
00:23:09,359 --> 00:23:11,879
Speaker 1: have seen the ash and light many times throughout his career,

438
00:23:11,920 --> 00:23:14,600
Speaker 1: including a siding in nineteen eighty that he regarded as

439
00:23:14,600 --> 00:23:17,679
Speaker 1: sort of unmistakable, in which he described as looking like

440
00:23:17,720 --> 00:23:21,440
Speaker 1: earth shine on the moon. Now, despite all of these

441
00:23:21,560 --> 00:23:25,120
Speaker 1: claims of observations, as we've been discussing, there is emerging

442
00:23:25,119 --> 00:23:28,520
Speaker 1: a pattern of like questions that somebody skeptical of this

443
00:23:28,560 --> 00:23:33,560
Speaker 1: phenomenon should should be asking, right, the British astronomers Dr

444
00:23:33,640 --> 00:23:36,359
Speaker 1: Paul Abel and Pete Lawrence, writing for BBC Sky at

445
00:23:36,440 --> 00:23:38,960
Speaker 1: Night magazine right about how part of the problem with

446
00:23:39,000 --> 00:23:41,480
Speaker 1: the ash and light is that all the claimed sidings

447
00:23:41,480 --> 00:23:44,760
Speaker 1: over the years have just been people claiming to see

448
00:23:44,760 --> 00:23:48,760
Speaker 1: it directly with their eyes through the eyepiece of the telescope,

449
00:23:49,119 --> 00:23:53,840
Speaker 1: and no one has ever captured a good, really unmistakable

450
00:23:53,920 --> 00:23:57,720
Speaker 1: photo or digital image of the glow. And they discuss

451
00:23:57,800 --> 00:24:00,359
Speaker 1: how lots of astronomers have searched for the low over

452
00:24:00,400 --> 00:24:02,600
Speaker 1: the years and never been able to see it, despite

453
00:24:02,680 --> 00:24:06,000
Speaker 1: earnest attempts many many years in a row. For example,

454
00:24:06,040 --> 00:24:09,959
Speaker 1: the famous American astronomer Edward Emerson Barnard tried to see it,

455
00:24:10,000 --> 00:24:12,720
Speaker 1: but he never could And the authors themselves at the

456
00:24:12,720 --> 00:24:15,280
Speaker 1: time of writing claimed they've never been able to see

457
00:24:15,320 --> 00:24:17,359
Speaker 1: the ash and light. Yeah, all you have here is

458
00:24:17,400 --> 00:24:20,879
Speaker 1: observation data. You have no like like hard measurements of

459
00:24:20,960 --> 00:24:23,119
Speaker 1: it based I mean, besides what can be made with

460
00:24:23,160 --> 00:24:25,480
Speaker 1: the human eye and then recorded, which opens it up

461
00:24:25,480 --> 00:24:27,760
Speaker 1: to a number of different errors in cognition and memory

462
00:24:27,840 --> 00:24:30,560
Speaker 1: encoding that can occur. And really you have to realize

463
00:24:30,600 --> 00:24:33,239
Speaker 1: to here, that's like most people that are looking at

464
00:24:33,359 --> 00:24:37,560
Speaker 1: venus do not see it. Only some people are seeing it.

465
00:24:37,960 --> 00:24:41,639
Speaker 1: Some people are arguably good at seeing it, whereas others

466
00:24:41,640 --> 00:24:46,320
Speaker 1: are are less skilled at seeing the ash and light. Now,

467
00:24:46,480 --> 00:24:48,920
Speaker 1: to be fair to proponents of the ash and light,

468
00:24:49,560 --> 00:24:52,200
Speaker 1: it's it seems to be part of the phenomenon. If

469
00:24:52,280 --> 00:24:56,120
Speaker 1: it is real, that it is infrequent, like it only

470
00:24:56,160 --> 00:24:59,080
Speaker 1: appears at certain times, and we could discuss later what

471
00:24:59,200 --> 00:25:01,800
Speaker 1: could cause that. If it really is a is an

472
00:25:01,840 --> 00:25:04,199
Speaker 1: actual glow coming from the planet and not just a

473
00:25:04,200 --> 00:25:07,879
Speaker 1: trick of the eye. Uh So, I guess before we

474
00:25:07,920 --> 00:25:11,080
Speaker 1: get into explaining what it could be if it is real,

475
00:25:11,240 --> 00:25:13,919
Speaker 1: we should explain what could cause all these sightings if

476
00:25:13,920 --> 00:25:16,119
Speaker 1: it is not real. One of the things you always

477
00:25:16,160 --> 00:25:18,560
Speaker 1: have to consider, of course, is the possibility of a hoax.

478
00:25:18,640 --> 00:25:21,359
Speaker 1: But that really doesn't seem very likely to me in

479
00:25:21,400 --> 00:25:25,240
Speaker 1: this case, because you've got so many reports from very

480
00:25:25,280 --> 00:25:29,200
Speaker 1: apparently serious people over the years. Um, like, this wasn't

481
00:25:29,200 --> 00:25:32,080
Speaker 1: a ghost reported by some drunk high schoolers in a

482
00:25:32,119 --> 00:25:34,360
Speaker 1: in a swamp or something. No, But but I think

483
00:25:34,359 --> 00:25:38,120
Speaker 1: it is important to realize that seeing a UFO whilst

484
00:25:38,240 --> 00:25:41,040
Speaker 1: drunk in the swamp is exactly the kind of thing

485
00:25:41,160 --> 00:25:44,000
Speaker 1: that a that a that a that a non scientist

486
00:25:44,800 --> 00:25:50,639
Speaker 1: might see, but seeing an astronomical detail that other experts

487
00:25:50,640 --> 00:25:53,200
Speaker 1: have reported over the years. I mean, that's the kind

488
00:25:53,200 --> 00:25:58,600
Speaker 1: of thing that an astronomical observer might uh want to see, right,

489
00:25:58,960 --> 00:26:01,359
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I I certainly think that they could

490
00:26:01,400 --> 00:26:03,600
Speaker 1: the people seeing it could be mistaken. Well, I was

491
00:26:03,600 --> 00:26:05,240
Speaker 1: going to mention that in a second, but I'm trying

492
00:26:05,240 --> 00:26:08,080
Speaker 1: to rule I don't think it's deliberate hoax. That that

493
00:26:08,119 --> 00:26:11,160
Speaker 1: seems like it doesn't fit. Uh, you know, why would

494
00:26:11,160 --> 00:26:14,800
Speaker 1: William Herschel be participating in a deliberate hoax and all

495
00:26:14,840 --> 00:26:17,440
Speaker 1: these different people over the years. It just doesn't does

496
00:26:17,440 --> 00:26:21,840
Speaker 1: not seem like a good explanation to call this wilful misrepresentation. Now,

497
00:26:21,840 --> 00:26:25,600
Speaker 1: on the other hand, observer error is a very strong candidate.

498
00:26:25,640 --> 00:26:28,240
Speaker 1: As as you're talking about Able and Lawrence right in

499
00:26:28,280 --> 00:26:32,159
Speaker 1: their article quote, it's reasonable to suppose that under certain conditions,

500
00:26:32,200 --> 00:26:37,240
Speaker 1: the brilliant crescent of Venus, combined with poor seeing tricks

501
00:26:37,359 --> 00:26:40,280
Speaker 1: the human eye into thinking it can see the night

502
00:26:40,359 --> 00:26:43,920
Speaker 1: side of Venus when in reality it is not visible. Now,

503
00:26:43,920 --> 00:26:46,440
Speaker 1: we've talked before about different kinds of optical illusions on

504
00:26:46,480 --> 00:26:48,960
Speaker 1: the show, and a very common kind of optical illusion

505
00:26:49,320 --> 00:26:51,720
Speaker 1: is a kind of completion effect of the eye. Right,

506
00:26:51,800 --> 00:26:55,200
Speaker 1: you see part of a figure, and the brain knows

507
00:26:55,280 --> 00:26:57,520
Speaker 1: what the rest of the figure should look like and

508
00:26:57,640 --> 00:27:01,520
Speaker 1: kind of seese it. Because our brain, our vision is

509
00:27:01,640 --> 00:27:05,959
Speaker 1: not a camera or a video recording device. No, our

510
00:27:06,040 --> 00:27:09,760
Speaker 1: vision is cognitive. It is a cognitive process. And and

511
00:27:09,800 --> 00:27:12,439
Speaker 1: therefore it's not just our brains are not just seeing

512
00:27:12,440 --> 00:27:15,400
Speaker 1: what we're seeing. Our brains are forming the picture of

513
00:27:15,440 --> 00:27:18,480
Speaker 1: the world that our eyes are helping us to to

514
00:27:18,560 --> 00:27:20,720
Speaker 1: take in. Yeah, so you see with your eyes, but

515
00:27:20,840 --> 00:27:23,399
Speaker 1: you also see with your emotions, and you see with

516
00:27:23,480 --> 00:27:26,440
Speaker 1: your memory, and you see with your biases. These these

517
00:27:26,480 --> 00:27:29,440
Speaker 1: actually affect what you see. Like you say, Robert, it's

518
00:27:29,480 --> 00:27:34,040
Speaker 1: not just a totally neutral device taking pictures of things

519
00:27:34,040 --> 00:27:37,640
Speaker 1: and recording different light levels at each pixel spot. Yeah.

520
00:27:37,640 --> 00:27:40,920
Speaker 1: I'm instantly reminded of times that I've looked at, say,

521
00:27:41,240 --> 00:27:43,960
Speaker 1: you know, a three D image one of these of

522
00:27:44,080 --> 00:27:46,200
Speaker 1: what were they called? They they had whole books off them,

523
00:27:46,200 --> 00:27:48,040
Speaker 1: and you had to sort of stare magic I have

524
00:27:48,119 --> 00:27:50,760
Speaker 1: the magic Eye books, and uh, some of those I

525
00:27:50,800 --> 00:27:53,040
Speaker 1: could see fairly easily, but others that would just stare

526
00:27:53,040 --> 00:27:54,480
Speaker 1: at and stare at, and then you reach a point

527
00:27:54,480 --> 00:27:56,480
Speaker 1: where you're like, do I see it? I think maybe

528
00:27:56,480 --> 00:27:59,560
Speaker 1: I see it. I kind of want to stop staring

529
00:27:59,600 --> 00:28:02,119
Speaker 1: at it, but maybe I see it. Um maybe this

530
00:28:02,160 --> 00:28:03,920
Speaker 1: means there's something wrong with my brain. But I was

531
00:28:04,119 --> 00:28:07,159
Speaker 1: never able to see those things. Well, this could be

532
00:28:07,200 --> 00:28:10,200
Speaker 1: something we explore in a future episode, like why why

533
00:28:10,440 --> 00:28:13,600
Speaker 1: do some people see the Magic Eye things more more

534
00:28:13,640 --> 00:28:17,080
Speaker 1: readily than others? Um Or is it? Maybe it's all

535
00:28:17,080 --> 00:28:20,240
Speaker 1: a hoax. Maybe there's there's nothing there. But if you

536
00:28:20,280 --> 00:28:22,320
Speaker 1: stare at it long enough and people were expecting you

537
00:28:22,400 --> 00:28:25,320
Speaker 1: and priming you to see these images, then you eventually say, yes,

538
00:28:25,400 --> 00:28:28,080
Speaker 1: it's a tiger. Clearly, the Emperor has no clothes. The

539
00:28:28,119 --> 00:28:31,200
Speaker 1: magic Eye is fake. There is no tiger. It's all

540
00:28:31,240 --> 00:28:34,439
Speaker 1: just gibberish. Everybody's like, oh, yes, yes, I see the fleas.

541
00:28:35,200 --> 00:28:38,160
Speaker 1: I mean, I've also had that situation with I mean

542
00:28:38,360 --> 00:28:41,200
Speaker 1: and being a little glimp here about the magic Eye.

543
00:28:41,200 --> 00:28:46,080
Speaker 1: But I've had that situation with the attempt to observe

544
00:28:46,240 --> 00:28:50,120
Speaker 1: something supernatural, the like the the desire to say, see

545
00:28:50,320 --> 00:28:52,640
Speaker 1: a spaceship, you know, as a kid, like look up

546
00:28:52,680 --> 00:28:55,600
Speaker 1: at the stars and and maybe you know you're afraid

547
00:28:55,640 --> 00:28:57,240
Speaker 1: to see something, but you also you just want to

548
00:28:57,280 --> 00:29:00,000
Speaker 1: see something staring into the woods and hoping to see

549
00:29:00,000 --> 00:29:02,760
Speaker 1: a ghost, that kind of thing. And I never did

550
00:29:02,800 --> 00:29:06,560
Speaker 1: see anything of that nature, um in either case. But

551
00:29:06,720 --> 00:29:09,840
Speaker 1: there's this you can feel the straining at time, like

552
00:29:09,840 --> 00:29:12,200
Speaker 1: like do I see something? Do I see something? Like

553
00:29:12,240 --> 00:29:14,920
Speaker 1: it almost like you're pushing yourself up to that line

554
00:29:15,520 --> 00:29:19,160
Speaker 1: of telling yourself you see something. Uh you know whether

555
00:29:19,200 --> 00:29:22,040
Speaker 1: you're willing to actually cross that line, uh you know

556
00:29:22,160 --> 00:29:24,360
Speaker 1: or not. But it's not. But I don't think that

557
00:29:24,400 --> 00:29:27,360
Speaker 1: line is necessarily a situation of today. I shall make

558
00:29:27,400 --> 00:29:30,200
Speaker 1: something up today, I will will create the story of

559
00:29:30,240 --> 00:29:32,080
Speaker 1: how I saw a UFO. I feel like that's a

560
00:29:32,160 --> 00:29:35,640
Speaker 1: line that we that we sometimes creep up to. Oh

561
00:29:35,760 --> 00:29:37,600
Speaker 1: and then suddenly you're standing on the other side of it.

562
00:29:37,640 --> 00:29:39,920
Speaker 1: I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

563
00:29:39,920 --> 00:29:42,480
Speaker 1: I mean it's like, uh, it's like listening for the

564
00:29:42,560 --> 00:29:47,040
Speaker 1: sounds of ghosts whispering in an echoeek cathedral, Like you

565
00:29:47,080 --> 00:29:49,240
Speaker 1: know your you might not be likely to hear that

566
00:29:49,280 --> 00:29:51,880
Speaker 1: if you just stand there listening, But if you're trying

567
00:29:51,920 --> 00:29:54,640
Speaker 1: to hear a ghost speaking in a cathedral, you might

568
00:29:54,680 --> 00:29:56,760
Speaker 1: not think that you're making it up, but you will

569
00:29:56,800 --> 00:30:01,000
Speaker 1: be sensitive to kind of anomalous and m pops and

570
00:30:01,080 --> 00:30:03,880
Speaker 1: sounds that you can apply your cognitive filters too and

571
00:30:03,920 --> 00:30:06,040
Speaker 1: make something out of. Yeah, and we've discussed before in

572
00:30:06,080 --> 00:30:08,240
Speaker 1: the show how you know, we've already talked how the

573
00:30:08,440 --> 00:30:10,200
Speaker 1: brain is sort of filling in the blanks of vision,

574
00:30:10,560 --> 00:30:13,280
Speaker 1: and when we are presented with limited stimuli, be it

575
00:30:13,360 --> 00:30:18,600
Speaker 1: auditory or visual, the brain can kind of create, uh,

576
00:30:18,760 --> 00:30:21,400
Speaker 1: patterns where there are no patterns. It can create a

577
00:30:21,480 --> 00:30:23,320
Speaker 1: voice where there is no voice, a sound where there

578
00:30:23,400 --> 00:30:26,280
Speaker 1: is no voice. And and ultimately you're talking about astronomical

579
00:30:26,360 --> 00:30:30,320
Speaker 1: data that is limited visual stimuli. That's right, But then again,

580
00:30:30,440 --> 00:30:32,360
Speaker 1: I I also don't want to go over the edge

581
00:30:32,400 --> 00:30:34,320
Speaker 1: and be too dismissive because you've got a lot of

582
00:30:34,360 --> 00:30:37,440
Speaker 1: reports over the year. There's a lot of undeniable And

583
00:30:37,720 --> 00:30:40,200
Speaker 1: again getting back to that that very important point that

584
00:30:40,320 --> 00:30:44,320
Speaker 1: whatever it is, we're just if we were just to assume, yes,

585
00:30:44,560 --> 00:30:48,000
Speaker 1: there is was an action light on venus, like you said,

586
00:30:48,040 --> 00:30:51,320
Speaker 1: it is clearly not observable all the time, so it's

587
00:30:51,360 --> 00:30:54,720
Speaker 1: not something that can be is regorously tested, as say,

588
00:30:54,800 --> 00:30:56,920
Speaker 1: the the idea of canals on Mars, which we'll get

589
00:30:56,920 --> 00:31:00,280
Speaker 1: to in a bit, right, So if it does cist,

590
00:31:00,360 --> 00:31:02,239
Speaker 1: I think we should transition to talk about, if it

591
00:31:02,280 --> 00:31:05,600
Speaker 1: does exist, what could explain it? What would match the

592
00:31:05,640 --> 00:31:09,400
Speaker 1: descriptions people see, what kind of light could be shining

593
00:31:09,440 --> 00:31:12,480
Speaker 1: off of the night time side of venus uh And

594
00:31:12,560 --> 00:31:16,120
Speaker 1: I think clearly, clearly the best explanation for the ashen

595
00:31:16,240 --> 00:31:20,160
Speaker 1: light comes to us from the Bavarian astronomer and physician

596
00:31:20,280 --> 00:31:24,920
Speaker 1: Franz Vonpaala Growthhausand uh from who he lived from seventeen

597
00:31:25,520 --> 00:31:29,720
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty two. And he was you know, it seems

598
00:31:29,760 --> 00:31:33,840
Speaker 1: to me he wasn't a dummy, but he was obsessed

599
00:31:33,880 --> 00:31:36,240
Speaker 1: with space aliens. Oh yeah, he was. He was the

600
00:31:36,280 --> 00:31:38,960
Speaker 1: real deal. He was a major contributor of the day

601
00:31:39,000 --> 00:31:42,600
Speaker 1: to fields of urology and lithotrity, which is the treatment

602
00:31:42,600 --> 00:31:47,400
Speaker 1: and removal of gall stones, bezors, and kidney stones. We

603
00:31:47,400 --> 00:31:49,600
Speaker 1: we discussed all three of these on our Stone of

604
00:31:49,640 --> 00:31:53,720
Speaker 1: Madness episode did a few years back. Uh So he

605
00:31:53,760 --> 00:31:58,160
Speaker 1: developed key technologies that helped make bladderstone removal safer and

606
00:31:58,280 --> 00:32:00,680
Speaker 1: less likely to result in the horror rible death of

607
00:32:00,720 --> 00:32:03,960
Speaker 1: the patient. As we discussed in that Stone of Madness episode,

608
00:32:03,960 --> 00:32:08,719
Speaker 1: not only were kidney stones painful ordeals, but the methods

609
00:32:08,760 --> 00:32:10,920
Speaker 1: of treating and removing them, but they had the other

610
00:32:11,000 --> 00:32:15,160
Speaker 1: days were just barbaric. Uh. So there was a very

611
00:32:15,280 --> 00:32:19,240
Speaker 1: high mortality rate for surgical intervention and growth thousand helped

612
00:32:19,320 --> 00:32:22,240
Speaker 1: change that. He helped establish the technologies that allowed the

613
00:32:22,920 --> 00:32:26,920
Speaker 1: uh these fields to evolve and for people to uh

614
00:32:27,000 --> 00:32:29,840
Speaker 1: to to engage in the treatment of of of various

615
00:32:29,840 --> 00:32:34,640
Speaker 1: stones without without facing down death quite as often. So

616
00:32:34,640 --> 00:32:37,360
Speaker 1: so real physician, not a dummy, Yeah, not a dummy.

617
00:32:37,400 --> 00:32:39,640
Speaker 1: He was highly influential in his field. During his life.

618
00:32:39,760 --> 00:32:42,440
Speaker 1: He went on to write hundreds of scientific articles and

619
00:32:42,520 --> 00:32:44,920
Speaker 1: a number of books that covered various topics in the

620
00:32:44,960 --> 00:32:47,240
Speaker 1: field of natural sciences. So he was, you know, he

621
00:32:47,280 --> 00:32:49,680
Speaker 1: was something of a renaissance man in that regard, and

622
00:32:49,760 --> 00:32:52,520
Speaker 1: he was he was a legit astronomer. Yeah. He became

623
00:32:52,560 --> 00:32:55,440
Speaker 1: professor of astronomy at the University of Munich in eighteen

624
00:32:55,440 --> 00:33:01,200
Speaker 1: twenty six. So again, very bright guy. Uh, No mere amateur.

625
00:33:01,240 --> 00:33:03,240
Speaker 1: He didn't just pick up a telescope and say, hey,

626
00:33:03,320 --> 00:33:05,080
Speaker 1: I see the ash and light. I'm going to write

627
00:33:05,080 --> 00:33:07,160
Speaker 1: a book about it. Uh. He knew what he was

628
00:33:07,200 --> 00:33:10,200
Speaker 1: talking about. But at the same time, I think it

629
00:33:10,320 --> 00:33:14,640
Speaker 1: could definitely be argued that he he engaged with uh,

630
00:33:14,880 --> 00:33:19,800
Speaker 1: with astronomy, with a certain imagination. Uh, nothing wrong with imagination,

631
00:33:19,840 --> 00:33:23,840
Speaker 1: but you should remember the difference between imagination and good theory. Yeah.

632
00:33:23,960 --> 00:33:27,720
Speaker 1: So for starters, he believed Earth's moon was habitable, which

633
00:33:27,760 --> 00:33:30,080
Speaker 1: is not a crazy thing to to think. There are

634
00:33:30,080 --> 00:33:33,560
Speaker 1: people today who think that that, yes, given appropriate technology,

635
00:33:33,640 --> 00:33:36,440
Speaker 1: we could live on the moon. And and it certainly

636
00:33:36,560 --> 00:33:38,800
Speaker 1: wasn't all that unusual back then a lot of people

637
00:33:38,840 --> 00:33:42,520
Speaker 1: thought stuff like this. But what's more, he also identified

638
00:33:42,600 --> 00:33:45,560
Speaker 1: what he took to be structures on the moon. He

639
00:33:45,680 --> 00:33:48,400
Speaker 1: thought he observed a vast city. And even when it

640
00:33:48,440 --> 00:33:53,479
Speaker 1: had called it Volver, wasn't that a craft ferk album?

641
00:33:54,320 --> 00:33:56,760
Speaker 1: It could be. It could also be a great name

642
00:33:56,800 --> 00:33:59,479
Speaker 1: for a metal bands. There you go, We've already had

643
00:33:59,520 --> 00:34:03,160
Speaker 1: another possible suggestion there. So again he's he's he's not

644
00:34:03,200 --> 00:34:06,200
Speaker 1: a nobody. He's making this this uh, this this claim.

645
00:34:06,680 --> 00:34:08,319
Speaker 1: So if he says there are cities on the moon,

646
00:34:08,640 --> 00:34:12,160
Speaker 1: even one called Velver, people people take the sea, they took,

647
00:34:12,280 --> 00:34:15,319
Speaker 1: they took notice that there's a certain amount of sensation ensued. Uh,

648
00:34:15,520 --> 00:34:18,520
Speaker 1: I mean cities on the moon. Right, So the notion

649
00:34:18,600 --> 00:34:21,160
Speaker 1: resonated through the media of the day, through the culture

650
00:34:21,200 --> 00:34:24,359
Speaker 1: of the day, influencing the literary world, and and not

651
00:34:24,400 --> 00:34:27,719
Speaker 1: just early sci fi. It laid the seeds for the

652
00:34:27,800 --> 00:34:31,800
Speaker 1: nineteenth and twentieth century telescope sightings of canals on Mars,

653
00:34:32,120 --> 00:34:34,719
Speaker 1: which will discuss more in a bit, which you know

654
00:34:34,760 --> 00:34:37,760
Speaker 1: greatly influenced our perception of the red planet and continues

655
00:34:37,800 --> 00:34:41,319
Speaker 1: to sort of color our our perception and expectations of

656
00:34:41,360 --> 00:34:46,440
Speaker 1: the planet Mars. Yeah. It also, uh again, influenced literature.

657
00:34:46,880 --> 00:34:51,160
Speaker 1: Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote of of these lunar cities in

658
00:34:51,200 --> 00:34:54,920
Speaker 1: his poem tim Buck two. He wrote, I saw the

659
00:34:54,960 --> 00:34:59,840
Speaker 1: smallest grain that dappled the dark Earth, the indistinctist atom

660
00:35:00,040 --> 00:35:03,600
Speaker 1: in deep air, the Moon's white cities, and the opal

661
00:35:03,719 --> 00:35:09,160
Speaker 1: width of her small glowing lakes, her silver heights unvisited

662
00:35:09,160 --> 00:35:14,360
Speaker 1: with dew of vagrant cloud, and the unsounded, undescended depth

663
00:35:14,680 --> 00:35:18,640
Speaker 1: of her black hollows. That's good stuff, man. Yeah. Tennyson

664
00:35:18,719 --> 00:35:20,600
Speaker 1: is not usually one of my favorite poets, but I

665
00:35:20,760 --> 00:35:22,919
Speaker 1: like that. Well, yeah, you you inject a little sci

666
00:35:22,920 --> 00:35:26,200
Speaker 1: fi and uh it's a it's a whole different kettle

667
00:35:26,239 --> 00:35:29,040
Speaker 1: of fish, right. I should also point out the growth

668
00:35:29,080 --> 00:35:31,840
Speaker 1: thousand Uh you know, it wasn't all just cities on

669
00:35:31,880 --> 00:35:35,799
Speaker 1: the Moon. Uh In terms of his astronomical contributions, he

670
00:35:35,840 --> 00:35:39,800
Speaker 1: also suggested that lunar craters were caused by meteorite strikes,

671
00:35:40,360 --> 00:35:44,000
Speaker 1: which is reasonable, right, uh So, but we should get

672
00:35:44,040 --> 00:35:47,279
Speaker 1: to his explanation for the ashen light, which is fantastic.

673
00:35:47,360 --> 00:35:50,320
Speaker 1: So this is quoted and discussed in the book Atlas

674
00:35:50,360 --> 00:35:54,320
Speaker 1: of Venus by Peter Cattermole and Patrick Moore from Cambridge

675
00:35:54,400 --> 00:35:58,440
Speaker 1: University Press. And so they're writing about growth thousand. I'm

676
00:35:58,480 --> 00:36:00,520
Speaker 1: sure I'm saying his name wrong, but that that's the

677
00:36:00,560 --> 00:36:03,960
Speaker 1: closest I can do growth thausand his opinions on the

678
00:36:03,960 --> 00:36:07,840
Speaker 1: action light of Venus. And so apparently Growthausand noticed that

679
00:36:07,960 --> 00:36:11,400
Speaker 1: astronomers had claimed to see the light in seventeen fifty

680
00:36:11,480 --> 00:36:15,280
Speaker 1: nine and then again in eighteen o six, which means

681
00:36:15,320 --> 00:36:18,920
Speaker 1: that the main previous sightings in his lifetime were separated

682
00:36:18,920 --> 00:36:23,040
Speaker 1: by forty seven Earth years, which is seventy six Venus years.

683
00:36:23,640 --> 00:36:27,480
Speaker 1: And Growthausand wrote, quote, we can assume that some Venusian

684
00:36:27,600 --> 00:36:32,960
Speaker 1: Alexander or Napoleon then attained universal power if we estimate

685
00:36:33,040 --> 00:36:35,920
Speaker 1: that the ordinary life of an inhabitant of Venus lasts

686
00:36:35,920 --> 00:36:39,000
Speaker 1: a hundred and thirty Venusian years, which amounts to eighty

687
00:36:39,080 --> 00:36:42,040
Speaker 1: Earth years. The reign of an emperor of Venus might

688
00:36:42,120 --> 00:36:46,480
Speaker 1: well last for seventy six Venusian years. The observed appearance

689
00:36:46,560 --> 00:36:50,120
Speaker 1: is evidently the result of a general festival illumination in

690
00:36:50,200 --> 00:36:52,759
Speaker 1: honor of the ascension of a new emperor to the

691
00:36:52,800 --> 00:36:56,839
Speaker 1: throne of the planet. What do you think, Thumbs up?

692
00:36:56,880 --> 00:36:58,839
Speaker 1: Thumbs down. I'm gonna have to give a thumbs down

693
00:36:58,880 --> 00:37:03,000
Speaker 1: to that. Why, I mean, assuming he wasn't just joking around,

694
00:37:03,080 --> 00:37:06,480
Speaker 1: if if he's presenting this is uh, is anything close

695
00:37:06,480 --> 00:37:09,320
Speaker 1: to a possible explanation that it is a bit ridiculous.

696
00:37:09,320 --> 00:37:12,319
Speaker 1: It's there's so many, so many leaps of faith one

697
00:37:12,360 --> 00:37:16,120
Speaker 1: has to take there. I think that's that's a terrible explanation,

698
00:37:16,320 --> 00:37:18,920
Speaker 1: even if you think there's life on the surface of Venus,

699
00:37:18,920 --> 00:37:22,480
Speaker 1: because how would you be timing out the coronation process later. Yeah,

700
00:37:22,520 --> 00:37:27,719
Speaker 1: you're making so many assumptions about about life on Venus. Uh.

701
00:37:27,760 --> 00:37:30,360
Speaker 1: He also later suggested that the ashen light might be

702
00:37:30,440 --> 00:37:34,759
Speaker 1: due to Venutian slash and burn agriculture, in which farmers

703
00:37:34,800 --> 00:37:37,880
Speaker 1: of Venus would burn down these huge stretches of jungle

704
00:37:37,960 --> 00:37:41,240
Speaker 1: in order to clear the land for tilling and planting. Quote,

705
00:37:41,560 --> 00:37:44,520
Speaker 1: large migrations of people would be prevented so that possible

706
00:37:44,600 --> 00:37:47,560
Speaker 1: wars would be avoided by abolishing the reason for them.

707
00:37:47,840 --> 00:37:51,120
Speaker 1: Thus the race would be kept united. Well, I don't

708
00:37:51,120 --> 00:37:53,880
Speaker 1: know that feels a little more reasonable. I mean, really,

709
00:37:54,440 --> 00:37:59,480
Speaker 1: I guess in both cases what he's essentially doing is reasonable.

710
00:37:59,520 --> 00:38:03,000
Speaker 1: He's saying, how would I explain this light on venus?

711
00:38:03,400 --> 00:38:05,960
Speaker 1: And on both cases he's assuming that there is some

712
00:38:06,040 --> 00:38:08,680
Speaker 1: sort of intelligent life form. What do we do on

713
00:38:08,680 --> 00:38:11,279
Speaker 1: our planet? And then how might I model behavior on

714
00:38:11,320 --> 00:38:13,600
Speaker 1: the other side. Yeah, if if the dark side of

715
00:38:13,680 --> 00:38:16,719
Speaker 1: Earth is shining, what causes that? Well, it's probably some

716
00:38:16,880 --> 00:38:21,359
Speaker 1: huge illumination for some festival or its agricultural burning. Right,

717
00:38:21,400 --> 00:38:23,560
Speaker 1: it can't be just the light of cities, because then

718
00:38:23,600 --> 00:38:26,160
Speaker 1: it would be more stationary, wouldn't be this, wouldn't have

719
00:38:26,200 --> 00:38:29,399
Speaker 1: this this frequency to it, right, Uh, And so all

720
00:38:29,440 --> 00:38:32,600
Speaker 1: this stuff it's it sounds cookie to us, but it's

721
00:38:32,640 --> 00:38:35,920
Speaker 1: not in principle as cookie as it sounds. Because Robert,

722
00:38:35,920 --> 00:38:38,200
Speaker 1: as you mentioned a minute ago, lots of people used

723
00:38:38,200 --> 00:38:41,080
Speaker 1: to believe that there were visible civilizations on the surfaces

724
00:38:41,080 --> 00:38:43,919
Speaker 1: of other rocky planets in the Solar System. We've talked

725
00:38:43,920 --> 00:38:47,080
Speaker 1: before about the American author and astronomer Percival Lowell. You know,

726
00:38:47,160 --> 00:38:48,880
Speaker 1: he comes to mind who Around the turn of the

727
00:38:48,920 --> 00:38:52,560
Speaker 1: twentieth century he was writing about the supposed canals of Mars,

728
00:38:52,560 --> 00:38:55,080
Speaker 1: which we talked about. I thought that the canals of

729
00:38:55,120 --> 00:38:58,319
Speaker 1: Mars were evidence of the handiwork of Martian civilization. Now,

730
00:38:58,320 --> 00:39:01,080
Speaker 1: of course, later it was discovered that the observations that

731
00:39:01,120 --> 00:39:04,359
Speaker 1: people thought were canals on the surface of Mars were illusions,

732
00:39:04,400 --> 00:39:07,240
Speaker 1: and Mars does not have canals. Yeah, they were actually

733
00:39:07,239 --> 00:39:11,680
Speaker 1: first observed in eighteen seventy seven and then confirmed, uh

734
00:39:11,719 --> 00:39:14,840
Speaker 1: if you will, by various dedicated astronomers around the world.

735
00:39:15,400 --> 00:39:18,320
Speaker 1: So this is something that Carl Sagan actually wrote a

736
00:39:18,360 --> 00:39:21,239
Speaker 1: little bit about in The Demon Haunted World, his his

737
00:39:21,320 --> 00:39:27,640
Speaker 1: book that essentially about science communication and the struggle between uh,

738
00:39:27,719 --> 00:39:32,280
Speaker 1: you know, scientific literacy and uh uh and our susceptibility

739
00:39:32,320 --> 00:39:36,799
Speaker 1: to everything from conspiracy theory to pseudoscience. He wrote A

740
00:39:36,880 --> 00:39:39,880
Speaker 1: network of single and double straight lines was reported criss

741
00:39:39,920 --> 00:39:44,440
Speaker 1: crossing the Martian surface, and with such uncanny geometrical regularity

742
00:39:44,520 --> 00:39:48,319
Speaker 1: that they could only be of intelligent origin. Evocative conclusions

743
00:39:48,320 --> 00:39:51,560
Speaker 1: were drawn about a parched and dying planet populated by

744
00:39:51,560 --> 00:39:56,560
Speaker 1: an older and wiser technical civilization dedicated to conservation of

745
00:39:56,640 --> 00:40:01,920
Speaker 1: water resources. So hundreds of canals were actually mapped and

746
00:40:02,120 --> 00:40:05,560
Speaker 1: named um. But but just as with the action light,

747
00:40:05,640 --> 00:40:08,200
Speaker 1: there were no photos. This was all based on observation

748
00:40:08,280 --> 00:40:13,480
Speaker 1: through telescopes. Most astronomers did not see them, but some did,

749
00:40:13,960 --> 00:40:16,480
Speaker 1: and says Sagan suggests that, you know, it might have

750
00:40:16,520 --> 00:40:21,000
Speaker 1: even been more of a you know, perceptual delusion. But

751
00:40:21,000 --> 00:40:23,560
Speaker 1: but one of the key differences here is that canals

752
00:40:23,600 --> 00:40:26,840
Speaker 1: on Mars, that's something that you can keep looking for.

753
00:40:27,920 --> 00:40:33,560
Speaker 1: Unless you're rolling out some elaborate explanation about canals disappearing

754
00:40:33,640 --> 00:40:37,200
Speaker 1: or being hidden by secretive Martians, They're going to remain

755
00:40:37,239 --> 00:40:39,560
Speaker 1: there and you can look for them. Yeah, it should

756
00:40:39,560 --> 00:40:42,319
Speaker 1: be a fixed feature of the surface. Right, So as

757
00:40:42,320 --> 00:40:46,800
Speaker 1: our observation abilities improved, we found that they did not exist.

758
00:40:46,880 --> 00:40:50,840
Speaker 1: When Marin or nine orbited the planet in nine UM

759
00:40:50,840 --> 00:40:54,560
Speaker 1: and Sagan was an experiment er for that mission, he said,

760
00:40:54,719 --> 00:40:57,280
Speaker 1: there were, of course no canals at all, and nobody

761
00:40:57,320 --> 00:41:00,560
Speaker 1: was surprised by this by that point. But but again,

762
00:41:00,600 --> 00:41:04,719
Speaker 1: this was a perfectly testable situation in the science corrected

763
00:41:04,719 --> 00:41:08,759
Speaker 1: our expectations and understanding of the surface of Mars. And

764
00:41:08,800 --> 00:41:11,040
Speaker 1: now we understand, as we've discussed in the past, we

765
00:41:11,120 --> 00:41:13,040
Speaker 1: understand more about the surface of Mars than we do

766
00:41:13,080 --> 00:41:17,399
Speaker 1: about the the bottom of earth oceans. Yeah, uh yeah,

767
00:41:17,480 --> 00:41:21,520
Speaker 1: And so that's a fortunate situation where this misconception could

768
00:41:21,560 --> 00:41:24,080
Speaker 1: be cleared up. Like you say, but as you implied,

769
00:41:24,160 --> 00:41:26,360
Speaker 1: the problem with the light on Venus is that it

770
00:41:26,520 --> 00:41:30,880
Speaker 1: is observed to be infrequent and difficult to detect, very faint,

771
00:41:30,920 --> 00:41:33,720
Speaker 1: and it's not always there. So this makes it harder

772
00:41:33,800 --> 00:41:38,040
Speaker 1: to verify or disconfirm through experimentation. Right now, as far

773
00:41:38,080 --> 00:41:41,240
Speaker 1: as as the idea of life on Venus, we actually

774
00:41:41,280 --> 00:41:43,840
Speaker 1: just did a recent episode on the possible existence of

775
00:41:43,880 --> 00:41:45,680
Speaker 1: life on Venus. But of course, as we know, if

776
00:41:45,719 --> 00:41:48,320
Speaker 1: it were to exist, it would not take the form

777
00:41:48,360 --> 00:41:52,200
Speaker 1: of a surface dwelling agricultural civilization. The surface of Venus

778
00:41:52,440 --> 00:41:54,880
Speaker 1: has an average temperature of over four hundred and fifty

779
00:41:54,920 --> 00:41:57,960
Speaker 1: degrees celsius or over eight hundred and fifty degrees fahrenheit.

780
00:41:58,239 --> 00:42:01,359
Speaker 1: Then that makes complex life totty much impossible. If if

781
00:42:01,440 --> 00:42:05,000
Speaker 1: life were to exist on Venus, astrobiologists generally think that

782
00:42:05,040 --> 00:42:08,800
Speaker 1: it would consist of micro organisms living dispersed in vapor

783
00:42:08,880 --> 00:42:12,520
Speaker 1: droplets in the clouds of the upper Venusian atmosphere, higher

784
00:42:12,560 --> 00:42:14,839
Speaker 1: up where it's cooler. So I guess we should get

785
00:42:14,840 --> 00:42:17,120
Speaker 1: back to the question of the action light. It is

786
00:42:17,200 --> 00:42:20,120
Speaker 1: the action light like the canals of Mars. Is it

787
00:42:20,320 --> 00:42:23,880
Speaker 1: just an observer illusion? And if not, what is the

788
00:42:23,920 --> 00:42:27,160
Speaker 1: real cause? What could really make the nighttime side of

789
00:42:27,280 --> 00:42:30,160
Speaker 1: Venus glow? All right, We're gonna take a quick break

790
00:42:30,200 --> 00:42:33,560
Speaker 1: and then when we come back we will continue. Thank you,

791
00:42:33,760 --> 00:42:36,279
Speaker 1: thank you. All right, we're back. So I think it's

792
00:42:36,280 --> 00:42:40,600
Speaker 1: time to turn to a paper by William Sheehan, Klaus brosch,

793
00:42:41,040 --> 00:42:44,640
Speaker 1: Dale Crookshank, and Richard Baum from the Journal of the

794
00:42:44,640 --> 00:42:49,160
Speaker 1: British Astronomical Association, and the papers called the Ashen Light

795
00:42:49,239 --> 00:42:53,719
Speaker 1: of Venus the oldest unsolved solar system Mystery, and this

796
00:42:53,760 --> 00:42:55,759
Speaker 1: paper tried to take a look at the action light

797
00:42:55,880 --> 00:42:58,640
Speaker 1: to determine if it's real, and if it is real,

798
00:42:58,760 --> 00:43:02,120
Speaker 1: what could explain it. So they point out that many

799
00:43:02,160 --> 00:43:05,320
Speaker 1: of the observations of the action light are very likely illusory,

800
00:43:05,440 --> 00:43:09,439
Speaker 1: based on optical illusions or inadequate equipment, poor telescopes, all

801
00:43:09,480 --> 00:43:12,120
Speaker 1: that stuff. But really the question is not are some

802
00:43:12,360 --> 00:43:15,440
Speaker 1: of the observations of the action light illusory obviously some

803
00:43:15,560 --> 00:43:18,879
Speaker 1: of them are, but are all of them illusory? Or

804
00:43:19,000 --> 00:43:21,880
Speaker 1: is there there's something real to it? And there's a problem.

805
00:43:21,920 --> 00:43:25,360
Speaker 1: The identify in the term action light apparently appears to

806
00:43:25,400 --> 00:43:29,560
Speaker 1: refer to at least three different kinds of observation scenarios.

807
00:43:29,600 --> 00:43:32,760
Speaker 1: So one of them is you've got the dark side

808
00:43:32,760 --> 00:43:36,560
Speaker 1: of Venus and it appears paler or the same brightness

809
00:43:36,560 --> 00:43:40,480
Speaker 1: but a different color or darker against a bright twilight

810
00:43:40,640 --> 00:43:44,640
Speaker 1: or daylight background. And then another type of observation is

811
00:43:44,800 --> 00:43:49,160
Speaker 1: the planet is observed near inferior conjunction. Remember that's when Venus,

812
00:43:49,200 --> 00:43:51,680
Speaker 1: Earth and the Sun line up, with Venus and Earth

813
00:43:51,760 --> 00:43:54,359
Speaker 1: on the same side of the sun, so we're near that,

814
00:43:55,200 --> 00:43:58,279
Speaker 1: and they see the planet against a bright sky or

815
00:43:58,280 --> 00:44:01,200
Speaker 1: in daylight, and the extent shin of the horns of

816
00:44:01,239 --> 00:44:03,720
Speaker 1: the crescent planet seemed to go all the way around

817
00:44:03,800 --> 00:44:06,120
Speaker 1: the planet and form a bright ring, and they say

818
00:44:06,160 --> 00:44:09,080
Speaker 1: this is probably due to scattering of sunlight from the

819
00:44:09,120 --> 00:44:14,520
Speaker 1: planet's atmosphere. And then third, finally there's the true ashen light,

820
00:44:14,600 --> 00:44:17,440
Speaker 1: in which the dark side of the planet appears as

821
00:44:17,480 --> 00:44:22,000
Speaker 1: a brighter glow against a darker background sky, and it's

822
00:44:22,000 --> 00:44:24,640
Speaker 1: that third category we're going to be most interested in here, right,

823
00:44:24,680 --> 00:44:26,879
Speaker 1: because that is that is the true action light. Yes,

824
00:44:27,320 --> 00:44:31,200
Speaker 1: though all three categories are met by various observations around

825
00:44:31,200 --> 00:44:33,120
Speaker 1: the years, so so they take a look at all

826
00:44:33,160 --> 00:44:35,160
Speaker 1: of them, but that the third one is considered the

827
00:44:35,160 --> 00:44:38,239
Speaker 1: true ash and light. And given the different uses for

828
00:44:38,239 --> 00:44:40,359
Speaker 1: the term, obviously it can be hard to nail down

829
00:44:40,360 --> 00:44:42,480
Speaker 1: an explanation that fits them all perfectly. I mean this

830
00:44:42,520 --> 00:44:44,400
Speaker 1: goes back to our Will of the Wisp episode. Like

831
00:44:44,440 --> 00:44:47,399
Speaker 1: if you're trying to say, Okay, if people really did

832
00:44:47,440 --> 00:44:51,600
Speaker 1: see something, what's the best material explanation for it? You've

833
00:44:51,600 --> 00:44:55,120
Speaker 1: got a problem in that the sightings are so different

834
00:44:55,280 --> 00:44:58,879
Speaker 1: in the way they're described. Yeah, they range from the

835
00:44:58,960 --> 00:45:01,640
Speaker 1: original ashtion lie to these descriptions of something that's more

836
00:45:01,719 --> 00:45:05,000
Speaker 1: rusty and uh and sort of like the color of

837
00:45:05,080 --> 00:45:09,759
Speaker 1: dried blood. But there have been plenty of explanations proposed

838
00:45:09,760 --> 00:45:13,160
Speaker 1: over the years. So for example, how about the idea

839
00:45:13,160 --> 00:45:16,880
Speaker 1: of earth shine, Like is light reflecting off of Earth

840
00:45:16,960 --> 00:45:20,400
Speaker 1: and then bouncing to Venus so that we can occasionally

841
00:45:20,560 --> 00:45:24,160
Speaker 1: occasionally see the light bouncing off of Earth reflected from

842
00:45:24,200 --> 00:45:27,360
Speaker 1: the surface of Venus at night. Uh, The authors say no.

843
00:45:27,560 --> 00:45:30,719
Speaker 1: Many calculations have been done and found earth shine to

844
00:45:30,760 --> 00:45:34,080
Speaker 1: be much much too weak to explain the observations, but

845
00:45:34,360 --> 00:45:36,680
Speaker 1: people have tried to reason this way. One explanation along

846
00:45:36,719 --> 00:45:40,080
Speaker 1: these lines was offered by a guy named god Free Sykes,

847
00:45:40,280 --> 00:45:43,680
Speaker 1: who apparently worked for Personal Lowell, uh you know Personal

848
00:45:43,760 --> 00:45:46,319
Speaker 1: Lowell of the Canals of Mars fame and god Free

849
00:45:46,400 --> 00:45:49,879
Speaker 1: Sykes thought that Venus was tidally locked with the Sun,

850
00:45:50,000 --> 00:45:52,200
Speaker 1: which would mean that one the same side of it

851
00:45:52,239 --> 00:45:54,960
Speaker 1: was always facing inward towards the Sun, and that it's

852
00:45:55,080 --> 00:45:58,000
Speaker 1: dark side, which always faced away from the Sun, would

853
00:45:58,040 --> 00:46:01,319
Speaker 1: be completely covered in a hemisphere year of ice. And

854
00:46:01,400 --> 00:46:05,440
Speaker 1: this ice, being highly reflective, would reflect light from the

855
00:46:05,480 --> 00:46:09,000
Speaker 1: Earth and other planets and stars and all all that

856
00:46:09,120 --> 00:46:11,520
Speaker 1: all that light coming into the dark side of Venus

857
00:46:11,520 --> 00:46:14,040
Speaker 1: would reflect off of the ice, the ice sheet on

858
00:46:14,080 --> 00:46:16,040
Speaker 1: that side of the planet back out into space, and

859
00:46:16,040 --> 00:46:18,520
Speaker 1: thus we would see that kind of shine. Obviously this

860
00:46:18,600 --> 00:46:21,799
Speaker 1: is wrong for you know, clear reasons, because we now

861
00:46:21,840 --> 00:46:24,040
Speaker 1: know that Venus is too hot for liquid water, let

862
00:46:24,040 --> 00:46:27,160
Speaker 1: alone ice. Alright, what else do we have? People have

863
00:46:27,239 --> 00:46:30,080
Speaker 1: proposed lightning? How about lightning? Well, that makes sense, So

864
00:46:30,200 --> 00:46:32,279
Speaker 1: we have lightning in our world, and it certainly can

865
00:46:32,400 --> 00:46:34,600
Speaker 1: light up the sky. Yeah, there's actually long been a

866
00:46:34,680 --> 00:46:37,520
Speaker 1: question of whether there's lightning in the clouds of Venus

867
00:46:37,560 --> 00:46:40,640
Speaker 1: and if so, how much. And there does appear to

868
00:46:40,680 --> 00:46:43,920
Speaker 1: be some evidence for lightning on Venus, including these what

869
00:46:44,000 --> 00:46:47,840
Speaker 1: are called low frequency quote whistler waves that are detected

870
00:46:47,880 --> 00:46:51,080
Speaker 1: in the Venusian atmosphere, like for example, they were detected

871
00:46:51,080 --> 00:46:54,840
Speaker 1: by the Venus Express vehicle. But astronomers have also largely

872
00:46:55,000 --> 00:46:58,520
Speaker 1: ruled out the lightning explanation because the lightning would just

873
00:46:58,960 --> 00:47:01,520
Speaker 1: be too faint to be seen on Earth. So the

874
00:47:01,560 --> 00:47:04,400
Speaker 1: authors of this paper right quote, the auroral and lightning

875
00:47:04,440 --> 00:47:08,200
Speaker 1: theories have both been eliminated because though visible spectrum night

876
00:47:08,239 --> 00:47:11,240
Speaker 1: side air glow on Venus was discovered by the veneera

877
00:47:11,320 --> 00:47:15,080
Speaker 1: nine intent spacecraft, and lightning has also been confirmed from

878
00:47:15,160 --> 00:47:19,879
Speaker 1: spacecraft observations, the illumination they produce is orders of magnitude

879
00:47:19,880 --> 00:47:22,839
Speaker 1: too faint to be detectable with the eye from Earth.

880
00:47:22,920 --> 00:47:24,680
Speaker 1: So it's not just a little bit too faint, it

881
00:47:24,680 --> 00:47:27,960
Speaker 1: would be way too faint. And it likewise that means

882
00:47:28,000 --> 00:47:32,920
Speaker 1: that whatever is occurring, if it's occurring, is uh is

883
00:47:32,960 --> 00:47:36,200
Speaker 1: substantial enough that it is it is orders of magnitude

884
00:47:36,200 --> 00:47:39,920
Speaker 1: beyond what near lightning activity or rural activity would consist

885
00:47:39,960 --> 00:47:42,080
Speaker 1: of right for us to be seeing it with the

886
00:47:42,160 --> 00:47:44,880
Speaker 1: eye and telescopes from Earth. Now, you've got a couple

887
00:47:44,880 --> 00:47:49,800
Speaker 1: of remaining hypotheses. One of them is infrared thermal emission

888
00:47:49,920 --> 00:47:52,880
Speaker 1: from the night side. We know that the surface and

889
00:47:52,920 --> 00:47:56,120
Speaker 1: lower atmosphere of Venus are red hot, and she had

890
00:47:56,320 --> 00:47:59,719
Speaker 1: at all right quote. Since the absorption and light scattering

891
00:47:59,719 --> 00:48:04,040
Speaker 1: by sulfuric acid aerosols in venous atmosphere are weak at

892
00:48:04,120 --> 00:48:07,560
Speaker 1: visible and near infrared wavelengths, a number of authors have

893
00:48:07,640 --> 00:48:11,080
Speaker 1: proposed that at least in principle, the lower atmosphere from

894
00:48:11,120 --> 00:48:14,840
Speaker 1: fifty kilometers down to the surface might produce a glow

895
00:48:15,080 --> 00:48:18,560
Speaker 1: that for a suitably dark adapted observer under the right

896
00:48:18,600 --> 00:48:22,400
Speaker 1: atmospheric conditions both on Venus and the Earth, may be

897
00:48:22,640 --> 00:48:27,000
Speaker 1: dimly perceived at visual wavelengths. So maybe the planet is

898
00:48:27,080 --> 00:48:30,279
Speaker 1: so hot it's glowing in a way that the atmosphere

899
00:48:30,320 --> 00:48:33,880
Speaker 1: does not appropriately scatter the light, and the light comes

900
00:48:33,920 --> 00:48:37,400
Speaker 1: through to us. And in their article Able and Lawrence

901
00:48:37,480 --> 00:48:40,640
Speaker 1: right about this idea, uh they write that apparently the

902
00:48:40,760 --> 00:48:44,440
Speaker 1: thick atmosphere occasionally thins in places, allowing the hot surface

903
00:48:44,520 --> 00:48:47,719
Speaker 1: to be seen. Quote. The problem is that this would

904
00:48:47,760 --> 00:48:50,360
Speaker 1: only be visible in the infrared part of the spectrum,

905
00:48:50,600 --> 00:48:54,080
Speaker 1: well beyond the threshold of the human eye, So infrared

906
00:48:54,239 --> 00:48:58,359
Speaker 1: heat is below the frequency of the visual band of

907
00:48:58,400 --> 00:49:02,680
Speaker 1: the the electromagnetic spectra. And she Han and co authors

908
00:49:02,760 --> 00:49:05,560
Speaker 1: right quote. Thermal emission of a body at venus temperature

909
00:49:05,560 --> 00:49:08,040
Speaker 1: reaches its peak value at about three point nine five

910
00:49:08,160 --> 00:49:12,279
Speaker 1: micrometers wavelength, which is invisible to the eye, and decreases

911
00:49:12,400 --> 00:49:15,879
Speaker 1: very rapidly towards shorter wavelengths that the eye can detect.

912
00:49:15,960 --> 00:49:19,120
Speaker 1: The longest wavelength visible to the human eyes about zero

913
00:49:19,160 --> 00:49:23,319
Speaker 1: point seven micrometers. Using Planks law, we calculate that wind

914
00:49:23,440 --> 00:49:27,400
Speaker 1: venus is very near inferior conjunction when it just a

915
00:49:27,440 --> 00:49:30,719
Speaker 1: few degrees of separation from the sun. The intensity of

916
00:49:30,719 --> 00:49:33,759
Speaker 1: the heat emission at zero point seven micrometers is some

917
00:49:33,960 --> 00:49:38,520
Speaker 1: thirty thousand times weaker than the brightness of the sunlit sky,

918
00:49:38,640 --> 00:49:41,960
Speaker 1: So the lowest possible frequency of light that could feasibly

919
00:49:42,040 --> 00:49:44,680
Speaker 1: be seen by the human eye, that the lowest frequency

920
00:49:44,719 --> 00:49:47,919
Speaker 1: that's visible to us is produced at far too weak

921
00:49:48,000 --> 00:49:51,320
Speaker 1: an intensity. On an object of the temperature of venus,

922
00:49:51,400 --> 00:49:54,040
Speaker 1: compared to the sky around it. So, yes, Venus is

923
00:49:54,120 --> 00:49:56,960
Speaker 1: very hot, but not hot enough to glow in a

924
00:49:57,000 --> 00:49:59,160
Speaker 1: way that we could see from Earth with the naked

925
00:49:59,160 --> 00:50:02,279
Speaker 1: eye through a telescope lens. Alright, so it has to

926
00:50:02,280 --> 00:50:04,799
Speaker 1: be something else, right, Yeah, So it can't be the

927
00:50:04,800 --> 00:50:07,840
Speaker 1: planet glowing from heat. So what's left pretty much just

928
00:50:08,000 --> 00:50:13,120
Speaker 1: one hypothesis, and that's the hypothesis of oxygen emission. So

929
00:50:13,320 --> 00:50:16,839
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty seven, the Mirrorner five spacecraft did an

930
00:50:16,840 --> 00:50:19,759
Speaker 1: early fly by Venus and detected what was believed to

931
00:50:19,800 --> 00:50:23,440
Speaker 1: be an ultra violet quote night air glow on the

932
00:50:23,520 --> 00:50:25,880
Speaker 1: dark lamb of the planet. So there was a nighttime

933
00:50:26,520 --> 00:50:29,200
Speaker 1: on the night side of the planet. The atmosphere was

934
00:50:29,280 --> 00:50:32,759
Speaker 1: glowing slightly and scientists at the time thought that this

935
00:50:32,880 --> 00:50:34,680
Speaker 1: night glow on the dark side of the Venus might

936
00:50:34,680 --> 00:50:38,160
Speaker 1: be due to chemical reactions in the atmosphere or possibly

937
00:50:38,200 --> 00:50:41,920
Speaker 1: due to the atmosphere being bombarded by charged particles from

938
00:50:41,960 --> 00:50:45,440
Speaker 1: the Sun. And then later the Mirrorner ten vehicle did

939
00:50:45,480 --> 00:50:48,000
Speaker 1: another Venus fly by in nineteen seventy four and it

940
00:50:48,120 --> 00:50:52,480
Speaker 1: also found both a daytime and nighttime air glow around Venus,

941
00:50:52,880 --> 00:50:55,359
Speaker 1: and it was found to be ten times brighter than

942
00:50:55,400 --> 00:50:58,560
Speaker 1: had been predicted. So this sounds really promising, right, Yeah,

943
00:50:58,600 --> 00:51:02,680
Speaker 1: and this is this is a perfectly reasonable scientific explanation

944
00:51:02,719 --> 00:51:04,960
Speaker 1: for what could be occurring. Yeah, exactly. So at the

945
00:51:05,000 --> 00:51:07,279
Speaker 1: time people thought that the problem of the ashen light

946
00:51:07,400 --> 00:51:10,600
Speaker 1: maybe was solved. So one version of the chemistry explanation

947
00:51:11,000 --> 00:51:14,320
Speaker 1: from oxygen emission goes like this, You've got UV radiation

948
00:51:14,360 --> 00:51:17,400
Speaker 1: from the Sun also ions charge particles flying out from

949
00:51:17,440 --> 00:51:20,200
Speaker 1: the Sun, and this UV radiation and other stuff hits

950
00:51:20,280 --> 00:51:24,000
Speaker 1: particles in the upper atmosphere of Venus. And the atmosphere

951
00:51:24,000 --> 00:51:27,480
Speaker 1: of Venus is made made up mostly of carbon dioxide,

952
00:51:27,680 --> 00:51:31,239
Speaker 1: which contains one carbon atom and two oxygen atoms. And

953
00:51:31,280 --> 00:51:35,360
Speaker 1: when the solar bombardment hits these carbon dioxide molecules, it

954
00:51:35,560 --> 00:51:38,359
Speaker 1: splits them into and what it leaves in their wake

955
00:51:38,480 --> 00:51:40,319
Speaker 1: when when they get split up is you get a

956
00:51:40,360 --> 00:51:44,800
Speaker 1: carbon monoxide molecule which has one oxygen atom one carbon atom,

957
00:51:45,000 --> 00:51:48,520
Speaker 1: and then you get a single isolated oxygen atom. And

958
00:51:48,600 --> 00:51:52,640
Speaker 1: single isolated oxygen atoms are not happy. They're lonely, they

959
00:51:52,680 --> 00:51:54,640
Speaker 1: don't want to be out on their own, and they

960
00:51:54,680 --> 00:51:57,960
Speaker 1: tend to recombine into other molecules. In this case, combining

961
00:51:58,000 --> 00:52:01,120
Speaker 1: with other free oxygen atoms to orm O two, two

962
00:52:01,160 --> 00:52:05,320
Speaker 1: oxygen atoms together in a molecule, and when this combination happens,

963
00:52:05,520 --> 00:52:09,160
Speaker 1: the atoms emit photons of light in the visible spectrum,

964
00:52:09,560 --> 00:52:12,920
Speaker 1: and it's often described as a green light. And apparently

965
00:52:12,960 --> 00:52:16,279
Speaker 1: this has been observed with instruments like apparently the Keeck

966
00:52:16,360 --> 00:52:19,960
Speaker 1: one telescope in Hawaii has previously spotted green light in

967
00:52:20,000 --> 00:52:23,359
Speaker 1: the atmosphere of Venus, which is consistent with the light

968
00:52:23,400 --> 00:52:26,640
Speaker 1: that would be emitted by free oxygen atoms combining to

969
00:52:26,719 --> 00:52:29,719
Speaker 1: form O two in the in the Venusian atmosphere. And

970
00:52:29,760 --> 00:52:32,680
Speaker 1: that light was apparently also observed by the Soviet spacecraft

971
00:52:32,760 --> 00:52:36,040
Speaker 1: Vanera nine and Vanera tin. And what's more, this theory

972
00:52:36,080 --> 00:52:39,759
Speaker 1: could help explain why there are some years when so

973
00:52:39,840 --> 00:52:42,160
Speaker 1: many observers claim to see the light and other years

974
00:52:42,160 --> 00:52:45,360
Speaker 1: in which nobody can find it, because this would depend

975
00:52:45,520 --> 00:52:48,680
Speaker 1: on the atmosphere of Venus being bombarded by the Sun.

976
00:52:49,120 --> 00:52:53,600
Speaker 1: So variations in solar activity could explain variations in the

977
00:52:53,640 --> 00:52:57,080
Speaker 1: emissions due to atmospheric chemistry on Venus, like when the

978
00:52:57,120 --> 00:53:00,960
Speaker 1: Sun is hitting the planet hardest, the oxygen mission becomes

979
00:53:01,000 --> 00:53:04,000
Speaker 1: the strongest, well it sounds like a pretty strong theory. Yeah,

980
00:53:04,320 --> 00:53:06,600
Speaker 1: it does. It's so far at least so, but is

981
00:53:06,640 --> 00:53:09,800
Speaker 1: it is it accepted? Is this is anywhere you're accepted?

982
00:53:10,160 --> 00:53:13,640
Speaker 1: Unfortunately not. The authors conclude that while this this theory

983
00:53:13,680 --> 00:53:17,480
Speaker 1: probably has the best chance of being correct, ultimately they

984
00:53:17,520 --> 00:53:21,880
Speaker 1: decided probably is not the correct explanation. So they decided

985
00:53:21,880 --> 00:53:25,040
Speaker 1: to investigate the validity of the oxygen emission hypothesis in

986
00:53:25,080 --> 00:53:27,400
Speaker 1: the spring of two thousand twelve, and they used visual

987
00:53:27,440 --> 00:53:31,600
Speaker 1: observation and cc D or charge couple device recorded imagery

988
00:53:32,040 --> 00:53:36,080
Speaker 1: of with different telescopes and different filters and observing visually.

989
00:53:36,160 --> 00:53:39,160
Speaker 1: There were occasions where they thought maybe they saw the

990
00:53:39,200 --> 00:53:41,760
Speaker 1: ashen light when they looked at Venus in two thousand twelve.

991
00:53:41,960 --> 00:53:45,359
Speaker 1: The authors actually quote Johann Shredder saying it had the

992
00:53:45,440 --> 00:53:49,840
Speaker 1: texture of thought, Oh well, that's that's a that sounds

993
00:53:49,840 --> 00:53:53,120
Speaker 1: a lot like I'm making it up. Yeah, well no,

994
00:53:53,239 --> 00:53:55,200
Speaker 1: I mean I think that's what they're saying. It's like

995
00:53:55,320 --> 00:53:58,320
Speaker 1: they're sitting there looking at it and they think maybe

996
00:53:58,360 --> 00:54:01,400
Speaker 1: they can see it, but they get the sensation that

997
00:54:01,560 --> 00:54:04,960
Speaker 1: maybe they're seeing with with their minds as much as

998
00:54:05,000 --> 00:54:07,440
Speaker 1: seeing with their eye. This is this is staring at

999
00:54:07,480 --> 00:54:11,600
Speaker 1: the magic eye image. This is staring into the woods

1000
00:54:11,600 --> 00:54:14,400
Speaker 1: and trying to convince yourself you see something. Yeah. But

1001
00:54:14,480 --> 00:54:17,040
Speaker 1: of course the authors here aren't aren't just trying to

1002
00:54:17,040 --> 00:54:20,080
Speaker 1: go by their own perceptions. They want to use neutral

1003
00:54:20,200 --> 00:54:22,360
Speaker 1: imagery to see if they can capture this somehow. So

1004
00:54:22,360 --> 00:54:25,160
Speaker 1: they used a special filter for green light, and with

1005
00:54:25,280 --> 00:54:28,720
Speaker 1: that special filter they were able to detect a glow

1006
00:54:28,800 --> 00:54:31,000
Speaker 1: that could be imaged. I've actually got an image here

1007
00:54:31,719 --> 00:54:35,239
Speaker 1: with a very creepy looking crescent and and some green light.

1008
00:54:35,480 --> 00:54:38,239
Speaker 1: I don't know if you can see that, Robert, it's

1009
00:54:38,360 --> 00:54:41,200
Speaker 1: yeah on here. Yeah, that that that is. That is

1010
00:54:41,200 --> 00:54:45,319
Speaker 1: creepy looking. But the authors also used some planet simulation

1011
00:54:45,400 --> 00:54:49,200
Speaker 1: comparisons to establish that the red and green ashen light

1012
00:54:49,239 --> 00:54:52,080
Speaker 1: perceptions that they thought they saw and that were imaged,

1013
00:54:52,200 --> 00:54:55,880
Speaker 1: we're probably due two scattered light from the illuminated to

1014
00:54:55,920 --> 00:54:59,520
Speaker 1: the unilluminated side, and there was no actual ashen light detected.

1015
00:55:00,120 --> 00:55:02,840
Speaker 1: Another big problem I'm thinking about here. Most of the

1016
00:55:02,840 --> 00:55:05,279
Speaker 1: astronomers who have reported seeing the ash and light over

1017
00:55:05,320 --> 00:55:08,880
Speaker 1: the past three centuries have not had this kind of equipment,

1018
00:55:08,960 --> 00:55:11,200
Speaker 1: you know, with with the equipment available in the past,

1019
00:55:11,600 --> 00:55:14,520
Speaker 1: it seems highly possible that observers would not likely have

1020
00:55:14,560 --> 00:55:17,719
Speaker 1: been able to see this emission for moto formation. So

1021
00:55:17,760 --> 00:55:20,000
Speaker 1: it's not that there is no light coming off of

1022
00:55:20,080 --> 00:55:24,040
Speaker 1: venus from from the chemistry of the atmosphere, that it

1023
00:55:24,120 --> 00:55:26,160
Speaker 1: does appear to be coming off of venus. The question

1024
00:55:26,239 --> 00:55:29,480
Speaker 1: is would it have ever been bright enough for people

1025
00:55:29,600 --> 00:55:32,640
Speaker 1: with telescopes hundreds of years ago to see And the

1026
00:55:32,640 --> 00:55:35,720
Speaker 1: answer looks like probably not. It's kind of like staring

1027
00:55:35,760 --> 00:55:38,880
Speaker 1: across a great lake, right, and maybe you can distantly

1028
00:55:38,920 --> 00:55:42,080
Speaker 1: see the distantly see the other side. And then if

1029
00:55:42,160 --> 00:55:44,239
Speaker 1: you if you're trying to figure out if you can

1030
00:55:44,280 --> 00:55:46,480
Speaker 1: see people or not, you know, and then if you

1031
00:55:46,520 --> 00:55:49,200
Speaker 1: if you investigate, you can later find out, oh, yeah,

1032
00:55:49,200 --> 00:55:51,880
Speaker 1: there are people on the other side, but it's it's

1033
00:55:51,920 --> 00:55:54,600
Speaker 1: a far different thing than being able to actually see

1034
00:55:54,640 --> 00:55:58,840
Speaker 1: them from your shore. Yeah. So ultimately the authors conclude

1035
00:55:58,880 --> 00:56:02,279
Speaker 1: that they don't know for sure. The most sensible explanation

1036
00:56:02,440 --> 00:56:06,440
Speaker 1: at this point is, unfortunately, the illusion hypothesis that despite

1037
00:56:06,440 --> 00:56:10,399
Speaker 1: the many reports over the years by by very respected astronomers,

1038
00:56:10,440 --> 00:56:14,520
Speaker 1: the phenomenon is most likely due to observer error and

1039
00:56:14,640 --> 00:56:19,160
Speaker 1: sort of optical artifacts from imperfect telescopes. And there's an

1040
00:56:19,200 --> 00:56:22,480
Speaker 1: example they give and in their paper. In the early es,

1041
00:56:22,520 --> 00:56:25,160
Speaker 1: there's a there was a German astronomy writer named Daniel

1042
00:56:25,200 --> 00:56:28,440
Speaker 1: Fisher who produced an example of what he thought at

1043
00:56:28,440 --> 00:56:31,600
Speaker 1: the time was a directly captured digital image of the

1044
00:56:31,640 --> 00:56:33,920
Speaker 1: action light with a charge coupled device, you know, like

1045
00:56:33,960 --> 00:56:37,759
Speaker 1: a digital camera. Unfortunately, it now seems clear that the

1046
00:56:37,760 --> 00:56:39,839
Speaker 1: image is actually just a case of what's known as

1047
00:56:39,880 --> 00:56:43,799
Speaker 1: filter leakage, and Fisher himself has accepted the fact that

1048
00:56:43,840 --> 00:56:45,880
Speaker 1: the image is is not a real image of the

1049
00:56:45,920 --> 00:56:49,200
Speaker 1: action light and has actually come to strongly doubt the

1050
00:56:49,239 --> 00:56:52,560
Speaker 1: existence of the action light. So the reasons he gives

1051
00:56:52,560 --> 00:56:55,120
Speaker 1: are there are no good direct images of it captured

1052
00:56:55,160 --> 00:56:58,760
Speaker 1: by a neutral device. And then he he says, quote

1053
00:56:59,080 --> 00:57:02,640
Speaker 1: just as amateur planetary imagers have started getting really good

1054
00:57:02,840 --> 00:57:05,440
Speaker 1: reports have dwindled. This is what we talked about earlier.

1055
00:57:05,520 --> 00:57:07,839
Speaker 1: It's kind of like, you notice how as soon as

1056
00:57:07,920 --> 00:57:12,160
Speaker 1: cell phone cameras are everywhere, suddenly bigfoot sightings and UFO

1057
00:57:12,280 --> 00:57:16,480
Speaker 1: sightings drastically drop off. It seems like, just as people

1058
00:57:16,640 --> 00:57:20,000
Speaker 1: should be really having the ability to capture this image

1059
00:57:20,040 --> 00:57:23,360
Speaker 1: but on a neutral recording device, suddenly people aren't seeing

1060
00:57:23,400 --> 00:57:26,240
Speaker 1: it nearly as much as they used to uh, and

1061
00:57:26,320 --> 00:57:29,160
Speaker 1: so Fisher actually now thinks that the phenomenon is fringe

1062
00:57:29,160 --> 00:57:33,120
Speaker 1: science and calls it quote the locknest monster of astronomy. Now,

1063
00:57:33,160 --> 00:57:35,200
Speaker 1: I don't think it's that bad because it's it's not

1064
00:57:35,240 --> 00:57:39,080
Speaker 1: a monster. There's no reason that you you shouldn't expect

1065
00:57:39,120 --> 00:57:42,880
Speaker 1: to find some kind of strange, chemically produced light on

1066
00:57:42,880 --> 00:57:45,440
Speaker 1: the dark side of a planet, right, that's perfectly plausible.

1067
00:57:45,760 --> 00:57:48,280
Speaker 1: The question is just we're people really seeing it or

1068
00:57:48,360 --> 00:57:50,200
Speaker 1: was it all tricks of the eye and tricks of

1069
00:57:50,200 --> 00:57:52,760
Speaker 1: the mind. And certainly the more it became a mystery

1070
00:57:52,840 --> 00:57:55,560
Speaker 1: to write it has this appeal, Like you the near

1071
00:57:55,560 --> 00:57:59,440
Speaker 1: fact that we're talking about it is is evidence of this,

1072
00:57:59,600 --> 00:58:02,360
Speaker 1: you know, and the action light of Venus. Who who

1073
00:58:02,400 --> 00:58:04,720
Speaker 1: doesn't want that to be real? Who doesn't want to

1074
00:58:04,720 --> 00:58:07,439
Speaker 1: to glimpse that and partake of the mystery as well? Yeah?

1075
00:58:07,480 --> 00:58:11,000
Speaker 1: Exactly so. Ultimately, the authors of the paper conclude quote

1076
00:58:11,120 --> 00:58:13,880
Speaker 1: none of the putative images of the actual action light

1077
00:58:13,920 --> 00:58:16,640
Speaker 1: can be regarded as convincing. They appear to be due

1078
00:58:16,720 --> 00:58:21,280
Speaker 1: to filter leakage, crescent glare, and excessive image processing used

1079
00:58:21,280 --> 00:58:24,760
Speaker 1: to bring out dark side detail. And yet despite their doubts,

1080
00:58:24,840 --> 00:58:27,320
Speaker 1: they say it's still possible that the action light does

1081
00:58:27,360 --> 00:58:31,680
Speaker 1: exist despite their inability to detect it. One possible explanation

1082
00:58:31,720 --> 00:58:36,440
Speaker 1: could be that maybe it's only during extraordinary solar events,

1083
00:58:36,480 --> 00:58:40,560
Speaker 1: such as like coronal mass ejections, because that would provide

1084
00:58:40,680 --> 00:58:45,040
Speaker 1: extra bombardment of the planet Venus enough that its atmosphere

1085
00:58:45,240 --> 00:58:48,160
Speaker 1: really has a lot of oxygen emission going on, and

1086
00:58:48,200 --> 00:58:51,160
Speaker 1: that oxygen emission spectrum can be seen from Earth only

1087
00:58:51,240 --> 00:58:53,760
Speaker 1: during those times when the planet is hit with really

1088
00:58:53,840 --> 00:58:57,480
Speaker 1: strong solar radiation. Well, that that makes sense, and it's

1089
00:58:57,520 --> 00:58:59,520
Speaker 1: in as in a sense, it would be the echo

1090
00:58:59,560 --> 00:59:02,959
Speaker 1: of a may your solar anomaly. Yeah, exactly. They don't

1091
00:59:03,000 --> 00:59:06,480
Speaker 1: mention whether what because we know about we know about

1092
00:59:06,480 --> 00:59:09,800
Speaker 1: solar activity in the past, so they don't mention trying

1093
00:59:09,800 --> 00:59:12,600
Speaker 1: to line up observations of it in the past with

1094
00:59:12,720 --> 00:59:14,560
Speaker 1: what the Sun was doing at the time. I wonder

1095
00:59:14,600 --> 00:59:17,760
Speaker 1: if somebody tried to do a correlation analysis there if

1096
00:59:17,800 --> 00:59:20,439
Speaker 1: they would find anything that seems like the logical next step,

1097
00:59:20,480 --> 00:59:22,520
Speaker 1: doesn't it, But they right at the end quote for

1098
00:59:22,560 --> 00:59:24,760
Speaker 1: the time being, we can say no more. The action

1099
00:59:24,880 --> 00:59:27,960
Speaker 1: light cannot yet be laid to rest, though inevitably it

1100
00:59:28,040 --> 00:59:31,360
Speaker 1: becomes a little harder to believe in. With each passing elongation,

1101
00:59:31,800 --> 00:59:35,200
Speaker 1: it might finally transpire that the longest standing mystery and

1102
00:59:35,240 --> 00:59:38,720
Speaker 1: Solar System astronomy is nothing more than a stubborn illusion.

1103
00:59:39,040 --> 00:59:41,960
Speaker 1: But in the meantime, the observer who enjoys a challenge

1104
00:59:42,080 --> 00:59:45,280
Speaker 1: is encouraged to remain on the key viv or on

1105
00:59:45,360 --> 00:59:48,520
Speaker 1: the alert. So here's my By the way, I had

1106
00:59:48,520 --> 00:59:52,200
Speaker 1: a crazy idea float here's my crazy question linking our

1107
00:59:52,240 --> 00:59:54,560
Speaker 1: two venous episodes. So, first of all, I do want

1108
00:59:54,600 --> 00:59:57,880
Speaker 1: to say I accept their their conclusion that by far

1109
00:59:58,040 --> 01:00:00,800
Speaker 1: the most reasonable explanation of the point seems to be

1110
01:00:00,840 --> 01:00:05,439
Speaker 1: observer error. But if it is real, what if there

1111
01:00:05,560 --> 01:00:08,080
Speaker 1: is microbial life in the clouds of Venus, And if

1112
01:00:08,080 --> 01:00:12,120
Speaker 1: there is, what if it's bioluminescent. How do you like that? Yeah?

1113
01:00:12,240 --> 01:00:14,720
Speaker 1: So like if the ashen light is real and it's

1114
01:00:14,760 --> 01:00:18,600
Speaker 1: the glowing equivalent of periodic algal blooms and the clouds

1115
01:00:18,600 --> 01:00:21,439
Speaker 1: on the hot house planet, So uh yeah, I wonder

1116
01:00:21,480 --> 01:00:25,720
Speaker 1: about that. Astrobiologists, astronomers, planetary scientists tell me why this

1117
01:00:25,800 --> 01:00:29,120
Speaker 1: is wrong? Well, I mean, the the one idea that

1118
01:00:29,160 --> 01:00:31,080
Speaker 1: comes to mind here is that it would have to

1119
01:00:31,120 --> 01:00:33,320
Speaker 1: be pretty intense during these flare apps. They would have

1120
01:00:33,360 --> 01:00:35,600
Speaker 1: to be again an order of orders of magnitude above

1121
01:00:36,000 --> 01:00:39,640
Speaker 1: what mere lightning or a rural activity would consist of. Correct,

1122
01:00:40,360 --> 01:00:42,720
Speaker 1: And it's I mean it's difficult to I mean, we've

1123
01:00:42,760 --> 01:00:47,200
Speaker 1: all seen terrific lightning storms. We've seen uh, you know,

1124
01:00:47,400 --> 01:00:50,760
Speaker 1: the Aurora borealis at least in you know, images of it,

1125
01:00:51,440 --> 01:00:56,040
Speaker 1: and it's uh, it's it's on inspiring and also challenging

1126
01:00:56,080 --> 01:01:01,000
Speaker 1: to imagine some sort of biological phenomena occurring of the

1127
01:01:01,000 --> 01:01:04,680
Speaker 1: same caliber, you know. But but then again, I mean

1128
01:01:06,200 --> 01:01:08,440
Speaker 1: it's a long shot, but maybe yeah, somebody at least

1129
01:01:08,600 --> 01:01:10,680
Speaker 1: if you if you know what kind of spectra that

1130
01:01:10,720 --> 01:01:14,720
Speaker 1: a big luminescent organism in a cloud could produce, Uh,

1131
01:01:15,000 --> 01:01:17,600
Speaker 1: do the math? What does that? Is it possible? I

1132
01:01:17,600 --> 01:01:19,800
Speaker 1: mean it kind of matches up really with the ideas

1133
01:01:19,880 --> 01:01:24,720
Speaker 1: of like coronations and wars and slash and burn agriculture,

1134
01:01:24,880 --> 01:01:29,600
Speaker 1: because what are these but um, but the infrequent bursts

1135
01:01:29,600 --> 01:01:34,000
Speaker 1: of activity that line up with biological activity on our planet.

1136
01:01:34,760 --> 01:01:38,320
Speaker 1: So this could be, yeah, the case of an intense

1137
01:01:38,320 --> 01:01:41,959
Speaker 1: season of mating or even some sort of essentially a war.

1138
01:01:42,200 --> 01:01:44,840
Speaker 1: You know, I'm thinking about the way that that different

1139
01:01:45,480 --> 01:01:48,680
Speaker 1: varieties of coral wage wars against each other for dominance,

1140
01:01:48,680 --> 01:01:52,120
Speaker 1: and it's just um the and the you know, the

1141
01:01:52,200 --> 01:01:55,560
Speaker 1: death that takes place at the borders between the two. Uh.

1142
01:01:55,720 --> 01:01:58,480
Speaker 1: Maybe the action light is that sort of phenomenon, the

1143
01:01:58,600 --> 01:02:05,600
Speaker 1: you know, two different rival species of bioluminescent organisms clashing,

1144
01:02:06,080 --> 01:02:09,320
Speaker 1: you know, micro microbial war in the venus and clouds.

1145
01:02:09,600 --> 01:02:13,680
Speaker 1: That's a good that's a good story. I like that one. Well,

1146
01:02:13,840 --> 01:02:16,360
Speaker 1: here's another thing I want to know. Do we have

1147
01:02:16,400 --> 01:02:19,720
Speaker 1: any astronomers out there among you all in the audience

1148
01:02:19,800 --> 01:02:21,920
Speaker 1: who have seen the action Light? Do you think you've

1149
01:02:21,960 --> 01:02:25,000
Speaker 1: seen it? If you've seen it, Uh, do you think

1150
01:02:25,000 --> 01:02:26,840
Speaker 1: it's likely you could have been mistaken or there are

1151
01:02:26,920 --> 01:02:29,920
Speaker 1: reasons you have for thinking you were not mistaken? We

1152
01:02:29,960 --> 01:02:32,080
Speaker 1: would like to hear about this. Yeah, anybody else who

1153
01:02:32,120 --> 01:02:35,200
Speaker 1: has any stories about attempting to see something and that

1154
01:02:35,280 --> 01:02:37,880
Speaker 1: that curious mindset that we're talking about, where you're you're

1155
01:02:37,920 --> 01:02:40,400
Speaker 1: sort of screening to see something you don't see or

1156
01:02:40,440 --> 01:02:43,680
Speaker 1: hear something you can't hear, and what it's like to

1157
01:02:43,800 --> 01:02:47,400
Speaker 1: sort of creep your way up towards that line. Yeah,

1158
01:02:47,400 --> 01:02:51,520
Speaker 1: it's always shocking what our brands are capable of can't

1159
01:02:51,520 --> 01:02:54,000
Speaker 1: trust them. You can't, you can't. But it's all we have.

1160
01:02:55,160 --> 01:02:56,880
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not all we have. We have science.

1161
01:02:56,920 --> 01:03:00,240
Speaker 1: That's the one of the the key r D mints

1162
01:03:00,280 --> 01:03:03,960
Speaker 1: here is that we do have scientific inquiry. We have uh,

1163
01:03:04,040 --> 01:03:07,200
Speaker 1: the ability to observe and record data. That should be it.

1164
01:03:07,280 --> 01:03:11,040
Speaker 1: That's a great pro science slogan. Science better than your brain,

1165
01:03:11,320 --> 01:03:13,960
Speaker 1: that's right, I mean created by our brain. But uh,

1166
01:03:14,000 --> 01:03:18,440
Speaker 1: but but so much better at tackling problems like this. Agreed. Well, uh,

1167
01:03:18,920 --> 01:03:20,560
Speaker 1: I think that does it for today. But this has

1168
01:03:20,600 --> 01:03:22,960
Speaker 1: been fun, Robert, Yeah. Yeah. Perhaps we'll return to Venus

1169
01:03:23,000 --> 01:03:25,400
Speaker 1: in the future. For the time being, head on over

1170
01:03:25,400 --> 01:03:27,000
Speaker 1: to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's where

1171
01:03:27,000 --> 01:03:29,840
Speaker 1: we'll find all the episodes of the podcast, including those

1172
01:03:29,880 --> 01:03:33,640
Speaker 1: past episodes on Venus, including that Will of the Whisp episode,

1173
01:03:34,040 --> 01:03:36,280
Speaker 1: and social media links. If you want to find out

1174
01:03:36,320 --> 01:03:38,480
Speaker 1: what we're doing on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblo, you want to

1175
01:03:38,560 --> 01:03:40,640
Speaker 1: see if we have some sort of revide live tour

1176
01:03:40,680 --> 01:03:42,640
Speaker 1: in the works, there will be a tab up there

1177
01:03:42,680 --> 01:03:45,760
Speaker 1: for that. Huge thank you as always to our excellent

1178
01:03:45,840 --> 01:03:49,640
Speaker 1: audio producers Alex Williams and Tarry Harrison. If you would

1179
01:03:49,680 --> 01:03:51,560
Speaker 1: like to get in touch with us directly, to let

1180
01:03:51,600 --> 01:03:53,840
Speaker 1: us know feedback on this episode during the other to

1181
01:03:53,920 --> 01:03:56,040
Speaker 1: let us know if you've seen the ashen light or

1182
01:03:56,080 --> 01:03:58,760
Speaker 1: looked forward and not seen it. To let us know

1183
01:03:59,080 --> 01:04:02,000
Speaker 1: uh topic you think maybe we should cover in the future,

1184
01:04:02,280 --> 01:04:03,840
Speaker 1: or just to say hi, let us know where you

1185
01:04:03,920 --> 01:04:05,760
Speaker 1: listen from, tell us who you are. You can email

1186
01:04:05,840 --> 01:04:08,439
Speaker 1: us at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot

1187
01:04:08,480 --> 01:04:19,800
Speaker 1: com for more on this and thousands of other topics.

1188
01:04:19,920 --> 01:04:28,960
Speaker 1: Does it how stuff works dot com. B