SGU Episode 331

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Introduction

You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.

S: Hello and welcome to The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is November 16, 2011, and this is your host Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella,

B: Hey, everybody.

S: Rebecca Watson,

R: Hello, everyone.

S: Jay Novella,

J: Yup-up.

S: and Evan Bernstein.

E: Olas Nuetes. To all of our listeners who speak the Galician language.

J: Or Galactican.

E: Yeah, that's what I thought it looked like, too, Jay, but, in looking at it a little closer, Galician is the language.

S: What is Galician?

E: It has its roots from a Latin-derived language based out of western Spain and Portugal, around the time of the 13^th century. And there's currently 3.2 million native speakers in the world, of that language.

S: Um hmm.

E: So it's the Yiddish of Spain, let's call it that.

J?: (In a Yiddish accent) Vat is this, Galician? (laughter)

E: You know, you learn something new every day.

S: That's what you learned today?

E: That's what I learned today. I didn't learn anything else except that.

This Day in Skepticism (01:10)

S: Well, how about November 19^th in history?

E: Yes. On November 19^th, this day, in history, the Apollo 12 astronauts, Pete Conrad and Alan Bean, land at the Ocean of Storms on the moon, and become the third and fourth humans to walk on the moon.

S: Oceanus Procellarum. Awesome.

E: That is it.

S: Sounds cooler in Latin.

R: It does. I don't know, Ocean of Storms, that's pretty cool, too.

E: Ocean of Storms is pretty cool.

S: Isn't that the next book in the Game of Thrones series?

B: Oh my god, I was thinking the same thing. (laughter)

J: Isn't that, isn’t that also a region on the moon?

S: Yeah.

R: Good one, Jay. (laughter)

E: Love it.

S: It's where they landed.

E: Apollo 12 is the, one of the missions that really gets forgotten about. You know, you have, obviously, Apollo 11, which is the seminal moment.

S: Yeah. 12 is the one after that, right?

E: 12 is, yes. And the one after that is Apollo 13. Of course, you know, the botched mission, with the failure and everything and the very popular, excellent movie, it was based on. But 12 kind of gets lost in the mix.

S: It's the forgotten Apollo mission.

R: (sadly) Oh.

E: It is.

S: You know why, because it was successful! It was the second, so, you know, it wasn't the first, and nothing bad happened. They went to the moon, they completed their mission, they came back.

E: Well, actually something bad sort of did happen. They almost had to abort the mission.

S: Yeah, but almost doesn't count.

R: Horseshoes and hand grenades.

E: But 36-1/2, this is cool . .

B: And Tiddly-Winks.

E: Their end lift-off, 36 seconds into the mission, and lightning becomes discharged through the ship, down through the Saturn V rocket, right down to the Earth. It was, through the ionized plume. And the protective circuits on the fuel cells in the service module falsely detected overloads and took all the fuel cells off-line. They didn't know what to do. They almost had to abort the mission, until Bean remembered seeing this in a simulation about a year ago, that they were practicing for, and they switched something over to auxiliary power, and that corrected the problem. But they, it was really a guess. They weren't sure that that was gonna work. But turns out it did, and off to the moon they went.

S: Awesome.

E: On a less-than-memorable mission, right?

S: That's good work, boys.

E: And something else, one other little interesting factoid. They used Doppler radar in order to land, pretty much precisely on target, where they wanted to, and that was the first time that that had been used by NASA.

S: Yeah, I know Apollo 11 landed way off. So they were testing this new method for precise landing, and it worked well.

E: It did. So, the moon is cool.

News Items

Item 1: The Moon's Magnetic Field (03:55)

Who's That Noisy? ()

Questions and Emails ()

Question 1 () Question 2 () Interview with "..." ()

Science or Fiction ()

Skeptical Quote of the Week ()

Announcements ()

Voiceover: The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by SGU productions, dedicated to promoting science and critical thinking. For more information on this and other episodes, please visit our website at www.theskepticsguide.org. You can also check out our other podcast the SGU 5x5 as well as find links to our blogs and the SGU forums. For questions, suggestions and other feedback please use the contact us form on the website or send an email to info@theskepticsguide.org. If you enjoyed this episode then please help us spread the word by leaving us a review on iTunes, Zune or your portal of choice.

References