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Can planets lose their atmospheres? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Hey, or hey, can you smell the spring in the air?
0:11
Speaker 1: The air does say makes for fresh these days? I
0:13
Speaker 1: think it's all those l A drivers in quarantine. Well,
0:17
Speaker 1: you better enjoy that fresh smell while it lasts. Is
0:21
Speaker 1: your particle collider going to create a black hole that
0:23
Speaker 1: sucks it all the way? Why do you always blame
0:26
Speaker 1: particle physicists for everything? Why would I not blame part
0:29
Speaker 1: of the physicists. I mean, it's definitely not the cartoonist fault.
0:32
Speaker 1: It's something happens point taken. But you know, the Earth
0:36
Speaker 1: is losing its air, but this time it's not actually
0:39
Speaker 1: our fault. I am Hornhammack, cartoonist and the creator of
0:54
Speaker 1: PhD comments. I'm Daniel Watson. I'm a particle physicist, and
0:59
Speaker 1: I'm not responsible for the end of the world, not yet,
1:03
Speaker 1: Not this time. Don't you have to give that disclaimer?
1:06
Speaker 1: Not this time? How many times? How many times are
1:08
Speaker 1: you guys expecting to end there? Well, it's sort of
1:10
Speaker 1: like running away from the bear, right, You don't need
1:13
Speaker 1: to run faster in the bear. You just have to
1:14
Speaker 1: run faster than your friend. So I just need to
1:17
Speaker 1: be the second person to destroy the world, and then
1:19
Speaker 1: I'm basically in a sense, because that makes no logical sense.
1:25
Speaker 1: Well helps me sleep at night at least. So I
1:27
Speaker 1: got into particle physics specifically because it has almost no
1:31
Speaker 1: practical applications and therefore cannot be weaponized or anything like that.
1:35
Speaker 1: So I would be devastated if it ended up destroying
1:37
Speaker 1: the world. Has no practical applications, but it does have
1:40
Speaker 1: practical implications we'll see. But welcome to our podcasts. Daniel
1:44
Speaker 1: and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of My Heart
1:47
Speaker 1: Radio in which we give you a tour of all
1:48
Speaker 1: the crazy, beautiful, nonsense insanity that's out there in the universe.
1:53
Speaker 1: All the things that seem like they don't make sense
1:56
Speaker 1: until we explain them to you, all the things out
1:58
Speaker 1: there in space and all the things here on Earth
2:00
Speaker 1: as well. We try to explain them so you can
2:02
Speaker 1: understand and also kind of realize how precious they are.
2:05
Speaker 1: Sometimes that's right, and we do our best to bring
2:07
Speaker 1: you to the forefront of scientific thinking, because what scientists
2:10
Speaker 1: are wondering about is what we are all wondering about.
2:13
Speaker 1: We'd like to know how long will the universe be around?
2:16
Speaker 1: What is everything made out of? End? How long can
2:19
Speaker 1: we rely on that fresh spring. How long would it
2:22
Speaker 1: all last? Any these days, it kind of seems like
2:26
Speaker 1: not that long, but people are feeling up to before
2:28
Speaker 1: Mega Maids sucks it all away. But no, you're right.
2:31
Speaker 1: I think that the l a air, I think is
2:33
Speaker 1: the cleanness it's ever been, maybe since the turn of
2:36
Speaker 1: the century, the last century. That's true. When we take
2:38
Speaker 1: our carefully socially distanced hikes and we get to a
2:41
Speaker 1: nearby peak, we can see like all the way up
2:43
Speaker 1: to Malibu. It's pretty impressive. And so I think, you know,
2:45
Speaker 1: air is something that we probably all take for granted
2:48
Speaker 1: because we've always had it. We have it all the time,
2:51
Speaker 1: and it's something we definitely need to breathe and to
2:53
Speaker 1: survive and which protects us from space. But people might
2:57
Speaker 1: be surprised to hear that it's actually kind of fragile. Yeah,
3:00
Speaker 1: I'm definitely pro atmosphere on that side of you. But
3:04
Speaker 1: the thing that you realize when you're sort of standing
3:06
Speaker 1: up on the top of a mountain and you're looking
3:08
Speaker 1: at the curve of the Earth is that the atmosphere
3:11
Speaker 1: is a tiny, tiny little layer on the surface of
3:14
Speaker 1: a huge ball. I mean, it's like one quarter of
3:18
Speaker 1: one percent of the radius of the Earth is our
3:21
Speaker 1: atmosphere point five of the radio points to five to five. Wow,
3:28
Speaker 1: So I've heard it say it's almost like a thin
3:30
Speaker 1: layer of paint on a bone. Yeah, it's like the
3:33
Speaker 1: most delicate little envelope surrounding a globe. If you're holding
3:37
Speaker 1: the Earth in your hand, you probably wouldn't even notice it.
3:40
Speaker 1: You know. Our oceans, for example, are like the thinnest
3:43
Speaker 1: layer of water on the surface of a planet, and
3:45
Speaker 1: the atmosphere is even more delicate. Right, Earth rocks, it's
3:48
Speaker 1: mostly rocks, mostly rock, a little bit of a shine
3:52
Speaker 1: to it, and a little bit of air surrounding it.
3:54
Speaker 1: And that's different from other planets. You know, other planets
3:56
Speaker 1: like Jupiter, there's like mostly atmosphere other place. Yeah. Well, yeah,
4:00
Speaker 1: Jupiter is all gas. Well at its core, you know,
4:03
Speaker 1: it still has a little bit of rock and there's
4:05
Speaker 1: some metallic bits down there, but the the gaseous part
4:08
Speaker 1: of it is, you know, it's a huge chunk of it.
4:10
Speaker 1: So Earth is a little bit different from some of
4:12
Speaker 1: the other planets, and so our atmosphere is especially thin
4:15
Speaker 1: and especially fragile. It's like a very delicate tupe on
4:18
Speaker 1: the top of a very bald head. Well, I guess
4:23
Speaker 1: the question is why do we even have atmospheres? And
4:26
Speaker 1: you know, as you said, we look around the Solar
4:28
Speaker 1: System and we see that other planets don't have them.
4:30
Speaker 1: They've actually lost their atmospheres, Like Marks, Yeah, Mars used
4:35
Speaker 1: to have an atmosphere and now it's gone. And sort
4:38
Speaker 1: of fascinating perspective on the universe is to imagine billions
4:41
Speaker 1: of years ago when Venus and Earth and Mars used
4:44
Speaker 1: to all be very similar. They had atmospheres, there's more
4:46
Speaker 1: similar service temperatures, and now Earth is basically the only
4:50
Speaker 1: place you would like to live. You know, Mars got
4:52
Speaker 1: super cold and lost its air, and Venus got super
4:55
Speaker 1: duper hot and its atmosphere is super dense. Well, it
4:58
Speaker 1: kind of depends how hot you like it, Daniel. Nobody
5:00
Speaker 1: likes it Venus hot except the Venusians. Yeah, exactly. I
5:06
Speaker 1: wonder what it's like for them to take vacations on
5:08
Speaker 1: the surface of the Earth. You know, they bundle up
5:10
Speaker 1: even in southern California and you're like, oh my god,
5:12
Speaker 1: this is so coolget but it's nine degrees on the
5:16
Speaker 1: surface of Venus. They're like, wow, we can make snowballs
5:18
Speaker 1: with wood water. That's crazy. But yeah, so it's it's
5:23
Speaker 1: a big question how does the planet lose its atmosphere?
5:26
Speaker 1: And I guess by consequence, how will Earth lose its atmosphere? Yeah?
5:31
Speaker 1: Will Earth lose its atmosphere? It's just another question that
5:34
Speaker 1: reminds you that on cosmic time scales, the Solar System
5:37
Speaker 1: and the universe are quite dynamic. The Solar System didn't
5:40
Speaker 1: always look this way. The Earth won't always look this way.
5:43
Speaker 1: Other planets have changed. When you only look on a
5:46
Speaker 1: hundred years or two hundred years time scale, things to
5:49
Speaker 1: seem to move pretty slowly and you might be confused
5:52
Speaker 1: and think that they're static. But things are changing actually
5:54
Speaker 1: quite quickly on a cosmological time scale. Yeah, and so
5:57
Speaker 1: I think scientists have lots of ways in which we
6:00
Speaker 1: can lose our atmosphere. I mean, it's just this thin
6:03
Speaker 1: layer of gas hanging on by gravity onto our giant
6:06
Speaker 1: ball of rock. But recently there's been a study that
6:09
Speaker 1: has a new crazy idea about how it could all
6:12
Speaker 1: be gone. Yeah, it was a fascinating new idea and
6:15
Speaker 1: it sort of adds to our understanding for how planets
6:18
Speaker 1: can get rid of their atmospheres and also sort of
6:21
Speaker 1: solves a mystery about exoplanets, and so do they on
6:24
Speaker 1: the bark and we'll be asking the question, how can
6:30
Speaker 1: the planet lose its atmosphere? You make it sound like
6:33
Speaker 1: it just sort of like put it down, walked away
6:35
Speaker 1: and came back and it was just gone, Like have
6:38
Speaker 1: you seen my keys that were on the counter. In
6:39
Speaker 1: terms of planetary scale time scales, it is sort of possible. Right,
6:43
Speaker 1: one day, we could have an atmosphere. Next day it's
6:46
Speaker 1: all gone. Somebody took it, right, and you're like, hey, Mars,
6:49
Speaker 1: you didn't use to have an atmosphere, and then I
6:51
Speaker 1: lost mine? Did you steal my atmosphere? That's another interesting question.
6:55
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you can planets steel atmospheres from each other
6:58
Speaker 1: they get close enough, you know, like a black hole
7:00
Speaker 1: sucking gas from a neutron star. Well, maybe we should
7:04
Speaker 1: keep our social distance from Mars. That's right, that's right,
7:07
Speaker 1: planetary distancing. Yeah, And so, as usually, we were wondering
7:10
Speaker 1: how many people out there in the public knew whether
7:13
Speaker 1: it was even possible to lose your atmosphere, or even
7:16
Speaker 1: possible to lose it in the way that this new
7:19
Speaker 1: study says that we could, and so I asked questions,
7:22
Speaker 1: but in a sort of a new way. You see,
7:24
Speaker 1: Irvine's campus is closed and we're all staying home to
7:27
Speaker 1: stay safe, and so I reached down to the internet
7:30
Speaker 1: to ask for volunteers to people who are willing to
7:33
Speaker 1: answer random questions from a scruffy looking physicist. And the
7:36
Speaker 1: internet didn't know you're a scruffy looking physicist. Did you
7:39
Speaker 1: get more responses this this way? You know, my avatar
7:41
Speaker 1: in the internet is the drawing you made in which
7:43
Speaker 1: you made me look pretty scrappy looking. So I think
7:46
Speaker 1: it's a fair representation. Oh man, Daniel, I am so
7:49
Speaker 1: insulted that I did not draw that avatar reviews it
7:52
Speaker 1: was another cartoon, is no, my avatar is the one
7:56
Speaker 1: that you drew. I have one also from Saturday Morning
7:58
Speaker 1: Breakfast Cereal that I is on Gmail. I see on
8:01
Speaker 1: social media. It's your drawing of me podcasting some people,
8:05
Speaker 1: you professor your favorite cartoons mean to other people it's
8:09
Speaker 1: a different cartoons. But anyways, I've been cheating on you
8:14
Speaker 1: with other cartoonists. Yes, anyway, I reached out to these
8:17
Speaker 1: folks online and here's what they had to say. And
8:21
Speaker 1: if you're interested in volunteering for a future round of
8:24
Speaker 1: Internet random Questions right to us at questions at Daniel
8:28
Speaker 1: and Jorge dot com and volunteer. I think next time,
8:30
Speaker 1: maybe you should just pick up the phone book and
8:33
Speaker 1: if you have a phone book, if the hymn exists
8:35
Speaker 1: these days, but pick up something like a phone book
8:37
Speaker 1: and just that all random numbers and see and ask
8:39
Speaker 1: this question right, because we all love telemarketers, and this
8:42
Speaker 1: is even better than telemarkers. It's telemarketers that make you
8:45
Speaker 1: feel ignorant as a telephysicist. It could be a trade.
8:48
Speaker 1: If you're like, Hi, I'm a physicist. If you have
8:50
Speaker 1: any questions about the universe, I will answer it right now.
8:53
Speaker 1: But first, all right, well here's what people had to say. Yes,
8:57
Speaker 1: given the fact that Earth's atmosphere isn't do so great
9:00
Speaker 1: at the moment, absolutely they can. Are magnetic field that
9:04
Speaker 1: encompasses the Earth protects our Earth from the Sun's radiation
9:08
Speaker 1: solar wind, and solar wind would blow the atmosphere away.
9:12
Speaker 1: If we didn't have the electro magnetic field around the Earth,
9:16
Speaker 1: then we would have no atmosphere, similar to Mars. I
9:18
Speaker 1: believe they can lose their atmosphere if they're too close
9:22
Speaker 1: to their Sun. I don't know. Really depends who was
9:25
Speaker 1: living there at the time. I think definitely, Yes, can
9:28
Speaker 1: be caused by an external can be a supernova, asteroid,
9:34
Speaker 1: or internal might be losing your manic the field. I mean,
9:40
Speaker 1: I know that we are constantly losing gases um without
9:44
Speaker 1: space due to atmospheric escape. But whether we could lose
9:49
Speaker 1: the whole atmosphere, I'm not so sure about that. I'm
9:52
Speaker 1: not sure how that would work. I definitely think so.
9:55
Speaker 1: If we know anything about the Earth, is we have
9:57
Speaker 1: like a core that's that's causing us to have a
9:59
Speaker 1: magnet at an atmosphere, and that protects us from like
10:02
Speaker 1: the solar winds, and we have like theories and ideas
10:05
Speaker 1: of how that amphair started. But I can definitely see,
10:08
Speaker 1: you know, a situation where on some certain planet the
10:11
Speaker 1: core stop spinning and the magnetism field stops, and elements
10:15
Speaker 1: of the atmosphere can just be blown away by a
10:18
Speaker 1: sun's wind, like a solar wind. Yes, I certainly think
10:20
Speaker 1: it's possible for a planet to lose its atmosphere m Mars,
10:25
Speaker 1: I think lost. It's a lot of the atmosphere once
10:29
Speaker 1: it's cool cooled down on the magnetic field fight in
10:34
Speaker 1: the Sun's blew a lot of the atmosphere away. Yeah. Absolutely, Um,
10:39
Speaker 1: Mars lost its atmosphere. Yes, a planet can definitely lose
10:43
Speaker 1: its atmosphere. All right, some pretty good answers there. Yeah,
10:48
Speaker 1: a lot of people have different ideas about how we
10:50
Speaker 1: can lose our atmosphere. Yeah, and these are all our
10:52
Speaker 1: podcast listeners, and so they've probably heard us talking about
10:56
Speaker 1: magnetic fields and solar winds and Mars. Do you think
10:59
Speaker 1: they cheated? Know? I'm saying, I'm proud that our listeners
11:02
Speaker 1: have learned something about astrophysics and space physics and that
11:06
Speaker 1: they have absorbed some knowledge. They're better educated on average
11:10
Speaker 1: on these topics than your random you see, Irvine undergrad
11:12
Speaker 1: Welcome to Daniel and Jorge University, the only university is
11:16
Speaker 1: still standing these days. But what I was interested in
11:21
Speaker 1: and was surprised by it was by how people need
11:24
Speaker 1: about all the different ways that we can lose our
11:25
Speaker 1: solar systems. So maybe let's start with that. Daniels, walk
11:28
Speaker 1: us through what are some of the ways in which
11:30
Speaker 1: we can lose our atmosphere? Well, the first way that
11:33
Speaker 1: people talked about, and the first thing that probably comes
11:35
Speaker 1: to your mind. And the way that we've talked about
11:37
Speaker 1: a lot in this podcast is that it can just
11:39
Speaker 1: get blown away. Like the Earth is surrounded by this
11:41
Speaker 1: ball of gas and it's held on by gravity. But
11:44
Speaker 1: there are winds out there in the Solar System that
11:46
Speaker 1: can help sort of sweep away particles from our atmosphere.
11:50
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's hard to remember that, you know, we're just
11:53
Speaker 1: a giant ball of rock floating in space, you know,
11:55
Speaker 1: and that the air that we breathe, our atmosphere is
11:59
Speaker 1: isn't it attatched to us. It's just hanging on by gravity.
12:02
Speaker 1: So if something comes over and blows it away, we
12:04
Speaker 1: could lose it, that's right. And this isn't like, you know,
12:07
Speaker 1: a hurricane blowing the wind to knock over your ice
12:09
Speaker 1: cream or anything most tortured analogy. Ever, the wind we're
12:13
Speaker 1: talking about here is the Solar wind, and the solar
12:16
Speaker 1: wind is not like the motion of the air on Earth.
12:20
Speaker 1: It's a stream of particles and radiation emitted by the
12:23
Speaker 1: Sun and so it's mostly protons, but it's also high
12:26
Speaker 1: speed electrons and other stuff. And what happens when these
12:29
Speaker 1: particles impact the Earth's surface is that they can knock
12:32
Speaker 1: off particles of gas. Because these things hit it really
12:35
Speaker 1: high speed. They hit it like a million miles per hour.
12:39
Speaker 1: It's like point one percent of the speed of light.
12:42
Speaker 1: And so it might knock the atmosphere particles and then
12:46
Speaker 1: throw them into space and then we'll lose them. Yeah, exactly.
12:49
Speaker 1: It's like a big billiard ball hits another one and
12:51
Speaker 1: they both go flying off into space because it has
12:54
Speaker 1: a huge amount of energy and it shares some of
12:56
Speaker 1: that energy with these particles of our atmosphere, and then
12:59
Speaker 1: they both have enough energy to escape. Okay, So that's
13:02
Speaker 1: not good. And so that that can happen like if
13:03
Speaker 1: there's a solar flare or something, or just it can
13:07
Speaker 1: happen anytime. It can happen anytime. It's happening all the time.
13:10
Speaker 1: Now during solar flares it can happen much more dramatically.
13:14
Speaker 1: But we have a shield, right, We have this like
13:16
Speaker 1: literal force field in space that mostly protects us from
13:20
Speaker 1: this method, and that's our magnetic field. Because most of
13:24
Speaker 1: the solar wind are charged particles, protons and electrons, their
13:27
Speaker 1: ions were not like being shot by neutral atoms of hydrogen.
13:31
Speaker 1: And that means that when they hit a magnetic field,
13:34
Speaker 1: they bend. That's what magnetic fields do. And so our
13:37
Speaker 1: magnetic field tends to deflect a lot of the solar wind.
13:40
Speaker 1: It's like we have a little envelope and the solar
13:42
Speaker 1: wind bends around us. But I heard there's a problem
13:46
Speaker 1: with polar winds that like that might make them vulnerable. Well,
13:50
Speaker 1: the magnetic field is not a perfect bottle, right that
13:52
Speaker 1: we have north pole and a south pole, and the
13:55
Speaker 1: magnetic field lines come out from the North pole and
13:57
Speaker 1: go down to the South pole and want to charge
13:59
Speaker 1: particle reaches the magnetic field line, it tends to bend
14:02
Speaker 1: left or right depending on its charge. But they can
14:04
Speaker 1: move along the field lines, and so what happens is
14:07
Speaker 1: that some of them get blown out into space, a
14:09
Speaker 1: lot of them, but some of them get funneled along
14:11
Speaker 1: those field lines up to the North pole and the
14:13
Speaker 1: South pole. And that's what causes the Northern lights and
14:16
Speaker 1: the Southern lights is energized particles hitting the atmosphere and
14:20
Speaker 1: making it glow. So basically the North Pole in the
14:22
Speaker 1: South Pole get a lot more of this cosmic radiation.
14:25
Speaker 1: You can get these plumes of gas leaving the atmosphere
14:28
Speaker 1: on the North pole and the south leaving, leaving the atmosphere. Yeah,
14:32
Speaker 1: just like when you know the solar wind, it hits
14:34
Speaker 1: the atmosphere, blows off particles. Most of the Earth is
14:37
Speaker 1: protected because of our magnetic field. But it's like we
14:40
Speaker 1: have these weak spots in the North Pole, in the
14:42
Speaker 1: South Pole, and then then then so there's gas leaving
14:45
Speaker 1: the Earth. But then and then it doesn't come back.
14:47
Speaker 1: It doesn't come back. You get these big plumes of
14:49
Speaker 1: gas and that's because you get really high energy particles
14:52
Speaker 1: hitting our atmosphere there where we're not protected and knocking
14:56
Speaker 1: particles off, and then and then we lose them forever
14:58
Speaker 1: because the Earth moves off forever, the Earth moves on. Yeah,
15:02
Speaker 1: and so you take these pictures you can see during
15:04
Speaker 1: solar flares especially, but all the time you see these
15:07
Speaker 1: plumes of gas being leaked at the north and the south.
15:10
Speaker 1: You know, like if we were the death Star, the
15:12
Speaker 1: north Pole in the South pole is where you would want,
15:14
Speaker 1: you know, to send your ex wing because that's our
15:16
Speaker 1: little weakness. Maybe we are maybe we are the Empire,
15:21
Speaker 1: Maybe we are the bad Everybody grows up to be
15:23
Speaker 1: their parents, right, just like the rebels will grow up
15:25
Speaker 1: to be to build their own death star, and then
15:26
Speaker 1: they'll realize we're just like our father. Welcome to Daniel
15:30
Speaker 1: Jorge process, Daniels daddy issues. But there's there's a bit
15:35
Speaker 1: of a controversy here because you know, some people think
15:38
Speaker 1: our magnetic field protects us, and that makes sense for
15:41
Speaker 1: all the reasons we just talked about. It deflects the particles.
15:44
Speaker 1: Some other scientists those say that maybe your magnetic field
15:47
Speaker 1: actually sometimes it bends particles towards the planet and it
15:50
Speaker 1: ends up focusing it like catches a huge larger swath
15:54
Speaker 1: of the solar wind than you otherwise would like. Your
15:57
Speaker 1: profile is much larger, focuses all those to shoot down
16:00
Speaker 1: near the poles, and you end up losing more atmosphere
16:03
Speaker 1: on these polar plumes than you would otherwise. So there's
16:06
Speaker 1: a little bit of controversy of whether or not the
16:10
Speaker 1: atmosphere is The atmosphere is definitely good for us, but
16:13
Speaker 1: there's a bit of a controversy about whether the magnetic
16:15
Speaker 1: field is in the end protecting us or or helping
16:19
Speaker 1: us lose our atmosphere. I think most scientists think is protection,
16:23
Speaker 1: but there is controversy and discussion in the field. In
16:26
Speaker 1: the field bump bump. And you know, we should specify
16:30
Speaker 1: that Earth has a nice magnetic field, which we think
16:34
Speaker 1: mostly protects us. But if you look nearby to Mars,
16:37
Speaker 1: for example, Mars doesn't have a magnetic field, and Mars
16:41
Speaker 1: is totally vulnerable to solar winds, and every time there's
16:44
Speaker 1: a solar flare, there's a huge flux of particles and
16:48
Speaker 1: it blows off a lot more of mars atmosphere. Alright, well,
16:52
Speaker 1: it sounds like there are a couple of ways in
16:55
Speaker 1: which we can lose our atmosphere, and there's one more
16:57
Speaker 1: way and then actually some pretty interesting seeing dynamics that
17:01
Speaker 1: can happen depending on the size of your planet. So
17:03
Speaker 1: let's get into that. But first let's take a quick break,
17:16
Speaker 1: all right, Daniel, So our atmosphere is not a given
17:20
Speaker 1: in our planet. We can lose it. It can blow
17:22
Speaker 1: away by solar winds, but it can also sort of
17:25
Speaker 1: explode out of our planet. Yeah, we're talking about impacts
17:28
Speaker 1: from like tiny little particles. The solar wind is a
17:31
Speaker 1: huge stream of tiny little particles. But you can also
17:34
Speaker 1: get hit by bigger stuff, right, like an asteroid. Yeah,
17:37
Speaker 1: you see shooting stars at night, that's a huge big
17:40
Speaker 1: rock hitting our atmosphere. You know what happens when you
17:42
Speaker 1: throw a rock into a pool as you make a splash,
17:44
Speaker 1: and so if you throw a big rock into our atmosphere,
17:47
Speaker 1: you make a splash and some of that splash drifts
17:49
Speaker 1: off into space. Yeah, so it's another way we can
17:53
Speaker 1: lose our atmosphere is we get we could get pelted
17:56
Speaker 1: by rocks and those blow the atmosphere away. Yeah, you
18:00
Speaker 1: can think of the atmosphere is like a cushion or
18:02
Speaker 1: like a force field against rocks, right, because it slows
18:05
Speaker 1: them down, it heats them up, it it immolates them
18:07
Speaker 1: before they hit the surface, which is nice. And that's
18:09
Speaker 1: why Earth doesn't have a lot of craters because we
18:11
Speaker 1: have this atmosphere. But it's not forever, right, we can
18:15
Speaker 1: use it up. If Earth get hits by a lot
18:17
Speaker 1: of asteroids, then it depletes the atmosphere unless you're lucky.
18:21
Speaker 1: You're unlucky enough to get hit by comets, which are
18:23
Speaker 1: actually like cosmic snowballs that can deliver water or gas
18:28
Speaker 1: when they melt in your atmosphere. And you know, this
18:30
Speaker 1: is not a big factor today, but we don't know.
18:34
Speaker 1: Some people think that this was a big factor in
18:36
Speaker 1: how Mars lost its atmosphere not just to the solar wind,
18:40
Speaker 1: but also to a lot of impacts. Well, I guess
18:42
Speaker 1: it's kind of a runaway effect, like if you start
18:45
Speaker 1: to lose it because of one thing, then you have
18:47
Speaker 1: less protection against the other kind. Yeah, exactly. And the
18:50
Speaker 1: estimates are that Mars lost more than two thirds or
18:53
Speaker 1: its atmosphere due to either impacts or the solar winds,
18:57
Speaker 1: and that solar wind effect is called sputtering by the
18:59
Speaker 1: signs is and so early on they think that that's
19:02
Speaker 1: that's the dominant way that Mars lost its atmosphere, but
19:05
Speaker 1: today there's actually something else going on on Mars. Al right, Well,
19:09
Speaker 1: it sounds like these are kind of maybe the basic
19:12
Speaker 1: ways in which you can lose your atmosphere, but there
19:14
Speaker 1: are sort of two new ways maybe that people are
19:18
Speaker 1: thinking about, right, like depending on the size of your planet.
19:22
Speaker 1: And one of them is kind of this interesting new
19:24
Speaker 1: study that maybe planets can eat their atmosphere. That's right, Yeah,
19:27
Speaker 1: we'll get to that in a little bit. But it
19:29
Speaker 1: turns out that the way that Earth is losing its
19:31
Speaker 1: atmosphere is mostly not due to polar wind or solar
19:35
Speaker 1: wind or meteor impact it's something wait wait wait wait
19:38
Speaker 1: wait wait wait wait, So we are losing our atmosphere.
19:41
Speaker 1: We are losing our atmosphere. Yes, really, as as we
19:44
Speaker 1: speak right now, we have less atmosphere right now than
19:47
Speaker 1: before we started talking. Oh. Man, see I knew, I knew.
19:50
Speaker 1: We're just blowing hot air here, Daniel. And that's making
19:54
Speaker 1: it worse because the reason Earth is losing its atmosphere
19:57
Speaker 1: is that it's literally just boiling off the planet it wow, Okay,
20:01
Speaker 1: so step us three here. So if the planet is
20:03
Speaker 1: too small, you're saying, the atmosphere can just gradually boil away.
20:08
Speaker 1: And that means kind of like when you put water
20:10
Speaker 1: on the stove, the particles that are on the surface
20:12
Speaker 1: that you get energized and they fly away. Yeah, it's
20:15
Speaker 1: that kind of what would Yeah, just like you know,
20:18
Speaker 1: water evaporates from a puddle, right, our atmosphere can just
20:21
Speaker 1: evaporate off into space. What is keeping the atmosphere on
20:24
Speaker 1: the planet is only gravity. So if your planet is
20:27
Speaker 1: too small, like, the smaller your planet is, the harder
20:30
Speaker 1: time it has hanging onto its atmosphere. Like why does
20:34
Speaker 1: the Moon have no atmosphere? Well, it's basically just too
20:37
Speaker 1: small to hold onto anything. Even if we created an
20:40
Speaker 1: atmosphere and shipped it to the Moon and put it
20:43
Speaker 1: on there, it would just drift away in you know,
20:45
Speaker 1: tens of years. Really, it would just drift away. It
20:48
Speaker 1: would just it would hang out for a bit for
20:50
Speaker 1: but eventually would it would all evaporate? Yeah? Well, the
20:53
Speaker 1: same laws of physics that applied to you have also
20:55
Speaker 1: applied to little particles. And just like how it's easier
20:57
Speaker 1: to leave the surface of the Moon, take a run
21:00
Speaker 1: and a jump and you could float off into space.
21:02
Speaker 1: Where that's is that true? Okay? Well not really. I
21:05
Speaker 1: mean you'd have to be super strong. You have to
21:07
Speaker 1: go like two kilometers per second. So I guess if
21:10
Speaker 1: you're iron man, maybe if you had any athletic ability,
21:15
Speaker 1: for hey, you would be able to drop off off
21:17
Speaker 1: of Mars the moon. Mars will be much harder to
21:19
Speaker 1: jump off of the Moon might be possible, But the
21:22
Speaker 1: same is true of little particles. Right, Earth is much
21:25
Speaker 1: better holding onto little particles than Mars is. Then the
21:29
Speaker 1: Moon is right and Jupiter much much better. And so
21:32
Speaker 1: if your planet is too small, it's just hard to
21:34
Speaker 1: hold onto your atmosphere. Interesting, but I guess you know,
21:38
Speaker 1: if even if things float away, why wouldn't they just
21:40
Speaker 1: come back due to gravity, because is it because we're
21:42
Speaker 1: moving through space and we sort of miss it. Well,
21:45
Speaker 1: once things float away, they don't come back. I mean
21:46
Speaker 1: that's what escape velocity is, right. Escape velocities how much
21:49
Speaker 1: speed you need to essentially be able to neglect the
21:53
Speaker 1: gravity of that object. Like if you shoot a satellite
21:56
Speaker 1: off into space and it reaches escape velocity, it doesn't
21:59
Speaker 1: come back like voyage or whatever. Isn't just on its
22:01
Speaker 1: way back. It's got some trajectory away from us, and
22:04
Speaker 1: the gravitational power is just weakening and weakening and weakening.
22:08
Speaker 1: And in the same way, if a particle has enough
22:11
Speaker 1: velocity to leave the Earth's atmosphere, there's no reason for
22:14
Speaker 1: it to come back unless it gets deflected, it bounces
22:16
Speaker 1: off the moon or you know that alien mother ship
22:19
Speaker 1: that's orbit orbiting quietly for the last few years. Okay,
22:22
Speaker 1: so then it would help to be heavier because then
22:24
Speaker 1: you can keep more of your atmosphere, that's right. So
22:26
Speaker 1: lighter planets tend to lose their atmosphere, and we also
22:30
Speaker 1: tend to lose different gases at different rates, like we
22:32
Speaker 1: lose hydrogen on Earth and helium, but we don't lose
22:36
Speaker 1: oxygen nearly as much because oxygen is heavier, and so
22:40
Speaker 1: that's why it falls to the bottom. Well, that's why
22:43
Speaker 1: Earth has very little hydrogen naturally occurring in our atmosphere
22:46
Speaker 1: because morbid bubbles away, whereas the heavier stuff, you know,
22:50
Speaker 1: xenon or oxygen or neon. That stuff is heavier, and
22:53
Speaker 1: Mars doesn't have the gravity to hold onto the same
22:56
Speaker 1: kind of things that we can, and so water vapor,
22:59
Speaker 1: for example, on Mars can easily reach escape velocity, whereas
23:02
Speaker 1: Earth has enough gravity to hold onto it because Mars
23:05
Speaker 1: is smaller than Earth. Mars is a lot smaller than
23:08
Speaker 1: Earth and it has weaker gravity. And so today the
23:11
Speaker 1: dominant process for how Mars is losing its atmosphere is
23:15
Speaker 1: not sputtering. It's not the solar wind. It's actually just
23:17
Speaker 1: being boiled off. And Mars is still losing its atmosphere
23:21
Speaker 1: at a rate of like one and a half kis
23:24
Speaker 1: per second. We need to kind of like a put
23:27
Speaker 1: a lit on it, I guess. So, I mean, if
23:30
Speaker 1: we're ever going to move to Mars, we need to
23:32
Speaker 1: provide a new atmosphere, and then we need to somehow
23:35
Speaker 1: prevent it from just leaving, right. We talked about terraforming,
23:38
Speaker 1: needing some sort of like huge new magnetic field to
23:41
Speaker 1: prevent sputtering to prevent the solar wind from blowing that
23:44
Speaker 1: atmosphere way, but we also need to sort of just
23:47
Speaker 1: keep it somehow on there. Yeah, although of course the
23:49
Speaker 1: process of atmosphere loss on Mars is very slow, so
23:53
Speaker 1: your new atmosphere would stick around for a long time
23:56
Speaker 1: before actually getting blown away. And so I don't know
23:58
Speaker 1: if you've seen spaceballs or emper, but they have this
24:01
Speaker 1: huge planet wide envelope to keep their atmosphere in place,
24:05
Speaker 1: no waste. Baseballs foresaw this situation thirty years ago. Spaceballs
24:10
Speaker 1: could foresee the future. I was trying to come up
24:12
Speaker 1: with a quote from the movie, but I can't. That's ludicrous.
24:16
Speaker 1: That's there, you go. And so that's how Mars is
24:18
Speaker 1: losing it tout this yere now right, These hot gases
24:20
Speaker 1: basically just boil off. The same thing is happening here
24:23
Speaker 1: on Earth. So we're so we're losing our atmosphere. That's
24:26
Speaker 1: shocking news. Every every breath we take there's less air. Yeah,
24:31
Speaker 1: and it's not at a tiny rate like Earth is
24:33
Speaker 1: losing three kilograms per second of hydrogen fifty grams per
24:38
Speaker 1: second of helio and so this adds up, you know,
24:41
Speaker 1: to like tons and tons of gases every year per
24:44
Speaker 1: second three kilograms, how much is that? Like a teaspoon?
24:49
Speaker 1: M a kilogram is a leader of water, right, So
24:52
Speaker 1: we're losing three liters of water is worth of hydrogen
24:57
Speaker 1: every second. Every second, it's just boiling out into space.
25:01
Speaker 1: Where where are people not more alarmed? Well, you know,
25:05
Speaker 1: we have a lot of hydrogen. Unfortunately, we're a big planet.
25:08
Speaker 1: And it turns out that by the time we lose
25:12
Speaker 1: most of our hydrogen, other things will have happened. Like
25:15
Speaker 1: we think in about a billion years, by the time
25:18
Speaker 1: we've lost significant atmosphere, you know, the sun will be
25:21
Speaker 1: ten brighter than it is today. And at that point
25:24
Speaker 1: we'll have other big problems. For example, you'll heat the
25:27
Speaker 1: planet up and the oceans will boil and break into
25:30
Speaker 1: water vapor, and probably all that hydrogen will also get
25:33
Speaker 1: lost into space. But all right, we're talking a billion
25:37
Speaker 1: years until we have to worry about Yes, exactly. You
25:39
Speaker 1: don't need to worry about your kids having enough air
25:41
Speaker 1: to breathe, or your kids kids or your kids, kids, kids.
25:44
Speaker 1: It's it's a lot of generation. I think in that
25:46
Speaker 1: time scale, wouldn't we evolve probably to breathe differently? Right
25:50
Speaker 1: in a billion years to biology would probably adapt. Yeah,
25:53
Speaker 1: perhaps we would. Perhaps we could breathe differently, or perhaps
25:56
Speaker 1: we will have just left this rock and explore the
25:58
Speaker 1: universe and found other places to live. Or we could
26:01
Speaker 1: do you know, geoengineering and protect the Earth from getting
26:05
Speaker 1: hotter and fabricate new new hydrogen, new oxygen and and
26:10
Speaker 1: you know, curate microbe that can produce more oxygen as
26:14
Speaker 1: we need it. Or something like a billion years is
26:16
Speaker 1: a long time to figure this stuff out. I mean,
26:19
Speaker 1: who knows. Maybe in a year, physicist bal end the
26:21
Speaker 1: year the planet all by ourselves with plenty of eric despair.
26:26
Speaker 1: You sound like you're rooting for that option, and I'm
26:31
Speaker 1: just trying to so I'm just trying to prepare mentally, Daniel,
26:34
Speaker 1: so it doesn't surprise me. I see. This is a
26:37
Speaker 1: classic relationship technique. It's called pre assignment of blame. This
26:41
Speaker 1: happens we agree it's your fault that we don't have
26:44
Speaker 1: to argue about it. I see you're a big fan
26:45
Speaker 1: of that, right, I'm a big fan of pre assignment
26:47
Speaker 1: of blame. Yes, well, if it does happen, we'll blame me. Yes,
26:52
Speaker 1: you can come to my house after I destroy the
26:54
Speaker 1: Earth and shout at me with plenty of air to
26:58
Speaker 1: shout at you. Fortunately. Right, So boiling off gases is
27:03
Speaker 1: basically what's happening here on Earth now, and it's now
27:06
Speaker 1: the dominant process on Mars also because the atmosphere is
27:09
Speaker 1: much more dilute there, and so this is something I
27:12
Speaker 1: wasn't even really aware of that this is a big
27:15
Speaker 1: factor in how you can lose your atmosphere. And so
27:17
Speaker 1: all of this is if your planet is small or
27:20
Speaker 1: too small to kind of have enough gravity to keep
27:23
Speaker 1: it all in, and so other things can happen if
27:26
Speaker 1: your planet is too big. So we'll get into that,
27:30
Speaker 1: but first let's take a quick break. All right, Daniel,
27:44
Speaker 1: we're losing our atmosphere, but it's not something to worry about.
27:48
Speaker 1: It's it's happening very slowly, maybe in a billion years,
27:50
Speaker 1: but by then we have other things to worry about.
27:53
Speaker 1: But there's a new study you were telling me earlier
27:55
Speaker 1: that talks about what can happen if your planet is
27:58
Speaker 1: too big, Because apparently you can lose your atmosphere in
28:01
Speaker 1: other ways if you are to be Yeah. Well, first
28:03
Speaker 1: of all, the title of this study is awesome. It's
28:06
Speaker 1: called Why Planets Eat their Own Skies and will include
28:10
Speaker 1: a link to the study in the episode of information
28:12
Speaker 1: that you can read it for yourself. It's from Stanford. Yeah,
28:15
Speaker 1: not a bad school. I hear it's a junior college.
28:17
Speaker 1: So I hear they give PSDs to cartoonists as well,
28:23
Speaker 1: So yeah they do. It's been on a down cycle
28:25
Speaker 1: ever since, then, said the Berkeley graduate. Of course, Man,
28:29
Speaker 1: go cow, go col Cow. How many football games have
28:32
Speaker 1: you been to with Cal Danny? Oh, I've been to
28:34
Speaker 1: a lot. Yeah, No, football games are a lot of fun.
28:36
Speaker 1: Were a little encapsulation of the old bear rivalry right
28:39
Speaker 1: here on Oh man, it's it's scientists versus engineers. It's
28:42
Speaker 1: Cal versus Stanford. What else, bananas versus not bananas. That's right.
28:47
Speaker 1: We satisfy all of your rivalry needs here on the program.
28:51
Speaker 1: You know this. Lots of people contributed this study, not
28:54
Speaker 1: just from Stanford. It was led by Edwin Kite at
28:56
Speaker 1: the University of Chicago, and they noticed something really interesting,
28:59
Speaker 1: they know, is that when we see other planets in
29:02
Speaker 1: other solar systems, which is now this thing we can
29:05
Speaker 1: do right as we can look at planets going around
29:07
Speaker 1: other stars, and we can measure two things about those planets.
29:12
Speaker 1: We can measure their mass and we can measure their radius,
29:15
Speaker 1: and that tells us like roughly what's going on in
29:18
Speaker 1: those planets. We can tell like how dense they are
29:21
Speaker 1: based on the mass and the radius information. And so
29:23
Speaker 1: the radius we can tell by looking at it, but
29:25
Speaker 1: the mass we tell by either orbits or something. Yeah.
29:28
Speaker 1: You can tell the radius by like how much of
29:30
Speaker 1: the star's light is being blocked, and you can tell
29:33
Speaker 1: the planet mass by how much it makes its star wiggle. Oh.
29:37
Speaker 1: This is a study of exoplanets out there in space.
29:41
Speaker 1: And what they noticed is that they see a bunch
29:44
Speaker 1: of planets sort of Earth sized, and they see a
29:47
Speaker 1: bunch of gas giants. But there's kind of a gap,
29:50
Speaker 1: like you go up to about like three times the
29:52
Speaker 1: size of the Earth what they call, you know, Neptune
29:55
Speaker 1: sized planets, and then bigger than that, there's like a gap.
29:58
Speaker 1: There's no like planets in between Neptune size and Jupiter size,
30:02
Speaker 1: and naturally you would expect sort of like you know,
30:04
Speaker 1: a big continuum. You expect like a smooth distribution that
30:07
Speaker 1: their planet is everywhere. Yeah, like a big rocks, smaller rocks, rocks.
30:11
Speaker 1: But you're saying that there's a gap there. There's just
30:14
Speaker 1: cut off before the gas giants and after sort of
30:17
Speaker 1: the Neptunes or the super Earth's. And they were trying
30:20
Speaker 1: to understand why, and it turns out that they came
30:22
Speaker 1: up with this cool explanation that if a planet gets
30:25
Speaker 1: big enough but not too big, and it has a
30:28
Speaker 1: rocky surface, then that rocky surfaces like lava, so you
30:31
Speaker 1: have like flava flowing on this hot surface, then it
30:35
Speaker 1: can actually absorb its own sky. The gas in the
30:38
Speaker 1: atmosphere gets sucked into these oceans of liquid magma because
30:42
Speaker 1: of the gravity. Well, the gravity is certainly part of it, right,
30:46
Speaker 1: But that's not happening on Jupiter, right. Jupiter also has
30:48
Speaker 1: a lot of gravity but still has vast atmospheres of gas.
30:52
Speaker 1: But it's something about this chemical interaction between the liquid
30:56
Speaker 1: magma ocean and the gas in the atmosphere. Oh, I see,
30:59
Speaker 1: And you're saying doesn't happen on Earth because we don't
31:01
Speaker 1: have magma and lava on our surface, because we are
31:06
Speaker 1: what not hot enough or not heavy enough. Both you
31:09
Speaker 1: need the liquid magma on the surface, and then you
31:11
Speaker 1: also need more gravity because you need the pressure. You
31:13
Speaker 1: need the gas to be like squeezed down onto this
31:16
Speaker 1: liquid magma that can sort of force it into it.
31:19
Speaker 1: And so they find that basically these planets just eat
31:22
Speaker 1: their atmosphere that stops them from growing bigger. Like, the
31:25
Speaker 1: reason Jupiter is so big is because a huge part
31:28
Speaker 1: of it is its atmosphere. Right on Earth, point to
31:32
Speaker 1: five of the radius of the Earth is the atmosphere.
31:35
Speaker 1: Jupiter is like a third or a half of Jupiter
31:37
Speaker 1: is atmosphere. Okay, so you're saying that, like, we see
31:40
Speaker 1: planets out there, and they get bigger and bigger in
31:43
Speaker 1: terms of the size, but we don't know how big
31:45
Speaker 1: the rock inside of them are, but you sort of
31:47
Speaker 1: see the size. And so at some point if the
31:50
Speaker 1: Earth suddenly grew in rocky nous in size, you're saying
31:54
Speaker 1: that at some point the first of all, the surface
31:57
Speaker 1: of Earth would turn into lava or that's not necessary,
32:00
Speaker 1: it's necessary for this to happen. I think in these larger,
32:03
Speaker 1: rockier planets, it's hotter, right, is more pressure because there's
32:07
Speaker 1: more gravity and so the surface is more likely to
32:10
Speaker 1: be magma, and then that pressure squeezes the gas down
32:14
Speaker 1: onto the surface of that magma and basically forces it
32:17
Speaker 1: in and it gets it dissolved in into the lava
32:21
Speaker 1: I see, into the like it traps. Yeah, so you
32:23
Speaker 1: get like carbonated lava, like sparkling lava, sparkling lava. It's
32:31
Speaker 1: like mountain dew, but literally made out of mountain. There's
32:33
Speaker 1: this whole new beverage trend, you know, sparkling water and
32:36
Speaker 1: sparkling this and sparkling that. Nobody has thought about selling.
32:39
Speaker 1: Sparkling lava, sparkling lava. Well, there you go. That's that's
32:44
Speaker 1: the new market. Yeah exactly. And so basically it forces
32:47
Speaker 1: you know, the gravity and the pressure forces the gas
32:50
Speaker 1: into the rock, and that keeps the planet from really
32:52
Speaker 1: growing inside because when your planet, you get to count
32:55
Speaker 1: the extent of your atmosphere as part of the planet. Right,
32:59
Speaker 1: And so where are the planets that are just bigger rocks?
33:02
Speaker 1: Why is there a gap or are they saying that
33:04
Speaker 1: suddenly at some point the planets grow in size because
33:08
Speaker 1: of their atmosphere, not because of the rock. Planets grow
33:10
Speaker 1: in size because of their atmosphere. Like the way to
33:12
Speaker 1: get a really big planet is to have a small
33:16
Speaker 1: icy core and then accumulate a lot of gas. You
33:19
Speaker 1: accumulate too much rock, then you can't really grow anymore
33:22
Speaker 1: because you can't attract anymore gas. But why can't I
33:24
Speaker 1: just have a Jupiter size rock floating around the Solar System?
33:29
Speaker 1: You know, I didn't say you couldn't. Go ahead, like
33:32
Speaker 1: do whatever you like. You can, you can, you can,
33:36
Speaker 1: but you know, there's just not that much rock. Like
33:38
Speaker 1: most of the material in the Solar System is gas,
33:41
Speaker 1: So if you want to get big, you got to
33:43
Speaker 1: include that in your budget. So like, if you just
33:45
Speaker 1: look at rocky centers, they maybe taper off, like they
33:48
Speaker 1: get bigger, bigger about the Earth, the size of Earth,
33:50
Speaker 1: three times the size of Earth, and then they don't.
33:52
Speaker 1: They don't. You don't see them get bigger. But you
33:55
Speaker 1: do see planets get bigger because then they start to
33:57
Speaker 1: accumulate atmosphere. Yeah, that's right. But if your rocky or
34:00
Speaker 1: is too big, then it can prevent you from growing
34:02
Speaker 1: a big atmosphere because it can suck it into the
34:05
Speaker 1: liquid magma in the core. I see, all right, So
34:09
Speaker 1: probably the bigger planets we see out in the universe. There,
34:11
Speaker 1: they don't have a rocky center bigger than ours. They
34:13
Speaker 1: have smaller rocky nuggets inside, but they're bigger because of
34:17
Speaker 1: the gas, and adding enough gas can turn any rocky
34:20
Speaker 1: object into a gas giant. We don't really know the
34:23
Speaker 1: size of the rocky cores and some of the big
34:25
Speaker 1: gas giants in exoplanet systems, but most of the volume
34:29
Speaker 1: is gas. That's why they are bigger. And if you
34:31
Speaker 1: look at the internal structure of Jupiter, it has a rocky,
34:35
Speaker 1: icy core, but it's pretty small. You know, it's not
34:37
Speaker 1: enormously vast. After that, it's like metallic hydrogen and all
34:41
Speaker 1: these things because of the high pressure and then vast,
34:44
Speaker 1: vast clouds of just gaseous hydrogen, and that's the way
34:47
Speaker 1: to go. But you know, there's even still a lot
34:49
Speaker 1: of questions about how planets like Jupiter form, Like how
34:52
Speaker 1: do you get so much gas accumulated. You need to
34:55
Speaker 1: have some sort of rocky core that forms rapidly enough
34:59
Speaker 1: that has time to accumulate all that gas because the
35:01
Speaker 1: gas is pretty light, and so it takes a while
35:04
Speaker 1: for gravity to gather that together. So we're still learning
35:07
Speaker 1: about how all these planets form you know, in ten
35:09
Speaker 1: years we could have a lot of new ideas for
35:12
Speaker 1: how any of these planets form. And I think we
35:14
Speaker 1: talked on another podcast about like should Jupiter sized planets
35:18
Speaker 1: form always in the outer Solar System or only in
35:21
Speaker 1: the inner Solar System? You know? Can they move back
35:24
Speaker 1: and forth? And so we're learning so much about our
35:27
Speaker 1: planet and other planets and how it all puts together
35:29
Speaker 1: just by studying other Solar systems. It's it's a fascinating time.
35:33
Speaker 1: And so they call it eating your atmosphere, eating your sky,
35:36
Speaker 1: because in a way, you're sort of like absorbing the gas, right,
35:39
Speaker 1: Like if your rock is big enough, it sort of
35:42
Speaker 1: absorbed the atmosphere. Yeah, it sucks it into itself, and
35:45
Speaker 1: it prevents it from getting bigger. It's like you sucking
35:47
Speaker 1: your stomach in, right, it keeps you from from looking
35:49
Speaker 1: larger than I don't think how do I think that
35:51
Speaker 1: works in real Physicsdanu, I'm surprised. All right, Well, it
35:56
Speaker 1: sounds like we should once again be lucky that we
35:59
Speaker 1: are just the right size, because if we were heavier,
36:02
Speaker 1: if the Earth was bigger, we wouldn't have an enmoshere,
36:05
Speaker 1: or if we were smaller, we wouldn't have an atmosphere either. Yeah,
36:08
Speaker 1: it's just another way that the Earth seems to be
36:10
Speaker 1: at this weird sweet spot. Right. We're just the right
36:13
Speaker 1: distance from the Sun, we have just the right amount
36:16
Speaker 1: of atmosphere, we have just the amount of stuff to
36:19
Speaker 1: hold onto that atmosphere, but not too much. We're like
36:22
Speaker 1: far enough away from the center of the galaxy to
36:24
Speaker 1: not be fried, but not so far away. But that
36:27
Speaker 1: there's no planets out there, and so it's it's amazing
36:31
Speaker 1: how many ways we seem to be lucky, you know,
36:33
Speaker 1: and it raises questions about about how many how many
36:37
Speaker 1: other planets are out there that could have as many
36:39
Speaker 1: lucky factors. Yeah, you can be too big or too small.
36:43
Speaker 1: You got to be just right, all right. Well, we
36:46
Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed that. And maybe when you go out
36:48
Speaker 1: there and breathe this new clean air that we're all
36:51
Speaker 1: enjoying because of where we are these days, um, think
36:55
Speaker 1: about how precious that breath of air is. In how
36:58
Speaker 1: it's we were a little bit different in this planet,
37:00
Speaker 1: we wouldn't have that nice fresh year and count your
37:03
Speaker 1: breaths because you only got about a billion years left
37:06
Speaker 1: to enjoy them. Depending if Daniel ends Universe and thanks
37:10
Speaker 1: to my friend and colleague and geologists Steve Davis for
37:13
Speaker 1: sending me to study and the idea for this podcast. Yeah,
37:16
Speaker 1: if you are a physicist out there listening to this
37:17
Speaker 1: program and you see a fun paper, send it to Daniel.
37:20
Speaker 1: I will definitely look forward to hearing again from him
37:22
Speaker 1: about it. But we want to hear about all your
37:24
Speaker 1: thoughts and all your questions. So if you have a
37:25
Speaker 1: question about anything going on in the universe or a
37:27
Speaker 1: study you see on the internet, please write to us
37:30
Speaker 1: at questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com. We do
37:33
Speaker 1: love our listener mail. See you next time. Thanks for listening,
37:43
Speaker 1: and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is
37:45
Speaker 1: a production at by Heart Radio. From more podcast from
37:49
Speaker 1: my Heart Radio, visited my Heart Radio, papp Apple Podcasts,
37:53
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your FILI shows. No