SGU Episode 885: Difference between revisions
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== News Items == | == News Items == | ||
'''S:''' | === Jupiter Ate Baby Planets <small>(17:53)</small> === | ||
* [https://www.livescience.com/jupiter-ate-baby-planets-while-growing Scientists find remains of cannibalized baby planets in Jupiter's cloud-covered belly]<ref>[https://www.livescience.com/jupiter-ate-baby-planets-while-growing Live Science: Scientists find remains of cannibalized baby planets in Jupiter's cloud-covered belly]</ref> | |||
'''S:''' Bob tell us how Jupiter ate your baby. | |||
'''E:''' Oh no. | |||
'''B:''' Yes. That's one way to put it Steve. Based on new insights into Jupiter's interior. Researchers conclude that our largest planet must have consumed baby planets left and right during the early days of the solar system billions of years ago. Now this was published in the journal [https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2022/06/aa43207-22/aa43207-22.html Astronomy and Astrophysics]. Lead author Yamila Miguel an astronaut. Nope. Not an astronaut although I bet she could be. She's an assistant professor of astrophysics at the Leiden observatory in the Netherlands Institute for Space Research. So I love the title to the live science article that sucked me into this topic. The title was: "Scientists find remains of cannibalized baby planets in Jupiter's cloud-covered belly." Oh my god what a title. It did suck me in. It might not have if it was more of a boring title. But I can't help but think of the internal thoughts of the person. You got people that come up with the titles and he or she must have been thinking something like this. Like you know if I can get the words cannibal and baby in the same sentence and that's what they did. And wow okay all right so let's start on this one. So have you guys seen those crazy detailed images of Jupiter's clouds in the news? Like from the past year or two? If you've seen them then they're probably from the Juno cam on the {{w|Juno spacecraft}} which has done something like well over 40 flybys of close flybys of Jupiter and its moons. But Juno wasn't just looking at Jupiter's pretty face and all those awesomely detailed clouds. It can also see the interior of Jupiter using what they call the gravity science instrument. That name. The gravity science instrument. Totally uninspired. Right guys? Totally. It's really boring. So I think they should have called it the GDAS or the gravitometric dopplerized analytical surveyor, right? Am I right? Isn't that sound much cooler? | |||
'''E:''' You're not wrong. | |||
'''B:''' So they used the gravitometric dopplerized analytical surveyor ''(Evan laughs)'' to hopefully show which of the two competing rocky formation theories fit Jupiter, right? They got two primary theories that are kind of mutually exclusive. One theory says that Jupiter's initial rocky core formed from boulder-sized rocks kind of glomming together. So this theory for some reason is nicknamed not the boulder theory or the heavy rock theory but the pebble theory. It's called the pebble theory. But we're talking boulder-sized stuff. The other competing theory argues that baby planets called planetesimals a few miles across or so they smashed together to form the core. So one of them's right the other one's wrong. So what did the GDAS as I call it show. So the gravity data from Juno and even from {{w|Galileo (spacecraft)|Galileo}}. Remember Galileo? Oh my god. | |||
'''E:''' Sure. | |||
'''B:''' That was an amazing time. So Juno and Galilean data showed the distribution of heavy elements near the core of Jupiter. That was kind of the main goal here. Let's look at what kind of heavy elements are in there and what's their distribution and mass. So this was detected because those knots of heavy elements that they detected are denser. And if they're denser they've got a little bit of more of a extra gravitational pull and that pull will then can affect the atmosphere above it in ways that are detectable. Now the models that the researchers created to look into this concluded that there must be between, get this, 11 and 30 Earth masses worth of heavy elements within Jupiter. And that's 3-9% of Jupiter's mass. And that was a lot more. A lot more than they anticipated. Now Jupiter is gargantuan. It is the biggest planet in our solar system and you could fit what? What's the number? A thousand Earths inside. But for it to have potentially 30 Earth masses of these heavy elements was a real shocker but it did prove pretty much definitively proved which of those theories is most likely to be true. And that was the planetesimal accretion theory is overwhelmingly likely to be correct. So that's because it's not really obvious at all. But that's because there's just too many heavy minerals otherwise. There's so many heavy metal minerals there it had to be the planetesimal accretion. So imagine this. So imagine just to see just to visualize what was happening. Now imagine you've got a rocky core of Jupiter before the gaseous envelope kind of accreted on onto it to become the amazingly huge atmosphere of the gas giant Jupiter. So you've got the big rocky core. It starts pulling in even the super lightweight hydrogen and helium to build up the atmosphere. That inflow of gas causes a pressure barrier that's like a force field. And that force field won't let in any of the smaller boulder-sized chunks of rock and heavy metals. So but if you're a big three mile wide planetesimal you can plow right through that pressure barrier shield and then you can just keep doing it. So as the atmosphere is getting bigger and bigger you still have the planetesimals coming in and adding more and more and more of these heavy metals to the interior of Jupiter. Whereas the boulder-sized rocky masses and minerals could never continue. It would start and then it would stop and it would give you just a certain amount of the heavy minerals and you couldn't surpass it. And you couldn't get anywhere near what they're finding now. So it's got to be the planetesimal. So that theory is the one that seems to be absolutely correct. So lead author Yamila Miguel said that: "Jupiter was the most influential planet in the formation of the solar system. Its gravitational pull helped to shape the size and orbits of its cosmic neighbors, and so determining how it came to be has important knock-on effects for other planets." Knock-on effects. Have you? | |||
'''E:''' No I don't know that one. | |||
'''B:''' That's a new idiom for me. | |||
'''C:''' Really? | |||
'''B:''' But in context. Yeah knock-on? | |||
'''C:''' Yeah in this context. | |||
'''B:''' In this context it's obvious. So since Jupiter was the first guy on the block pretty much learning about the formation of Jupiter could really clue us in about the formation of all the other planets. Because Jupiter was such a big beast that it it really influenced absolutely the rest of the formation of the entire solar system. And imagine we may have had 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 planets in orbit around the Sun if Jupiter just didn't suck up all those poor little baby planets. And of course if you extrapolate a little bit Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, maybe they have planetesimal origins as well. I would think it would be kind of likely at this point. So this all means then that distant exoplanet gas giants they may be hiding more mineral mass in their interiors than maybe apparent by their atmospheres. So even when the mighty James Webb telescope, which is basically designed to measure the atmospheres of gas giants and their compositions, when James Webb calculates the heavy minerals that are likely to be in the planet they it could very well be quite wrong because there won't be another Juno in orbit with its own, say it with me, its own gravitometric dopplerized analytical surveyor in orbit around it telling us what's going on inside. Because from what I've read you had to get up and close to Jupiter to find this information out. We really were not ever going to find out about this for an observatory in orbit or on the Earth. You need to be pretty much up close and personal. And who knows? They may develop a technology to infer it accurately in the future. But I don't think anything's on the drawing board that could that could actually do the job of Juno from a distance. So cool. Interesting story. Kind of different. I liked it. | |||
'''S:''' Yeah I mean it's interesting that we can infer that from looking at Jupiter today. That we can know something about its deep history like that. | |||
'''B:''' | '''B:''' Yeah. | ||
''' | '''S:''' Because it's really just a big giant ball of clouds. | ||
''' | '''E:''' Does this mean we now have to assume that gas giants have some sort of hard core in their centers? | ||
''' | '''S:''' Totally. | ||
'' | '''B:''' Well. ''(laughter)'' We're not sure. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean you start with the rocky core and then it gets so big and so dense that it starts pulling in the gases. Sure. You gotta bring in those glass somewhere. I mean you could potentially have a pocket of gas that just kind of rotates and collapses in on itself. Like a little star, right? | ||
''(laughter)'' | |||
'''S:''' Yeah but Bob the other option is that Jupiter never ever ever got hit by an asteroid, you know what I mean? In its 4 billion year history. Why would that be the case? Anything rocky that ever got captured by Jupiter's gravity we're just sitting in the core. | |||
'''B:''' Right right. And determining exactly you know what actually is the makeup. How many how much heavy metals, how much is rocky, how much is metallic. I always thought, remember Steve it wasn't too long ago when it was like oh yeah it's like metallic hydrogen in the core. But now that now I guess that's not the consensus anymore and it's definitely I mean there's definitely heavy metals and the density has got to be pretty damn wicked in the core for sure. But the exact composition is not quite what they thought. | |||
=== The Risk of Sitting <small>(27:10)</small> === | === The Risk of Sitting <small>(27:10)</small> === | ||
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{{anchor|wtw}} <!-- leave this anchor directly above the corresponding section that follows --> | {{anchor|wtw}} <!-- leave this anchor directly above the corresponding section that follows --> | ||
== What's the Word? <small>(1:08:16)</small> == | == What's the Word? <small>(1:08:16)</small> == | ||
{{Page categories | {{Page categories |
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SGU Episode 885 |
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June 25th 2022 |
Computer illustration shows NASA's Juno spacecraft over the Great Red Spot. |
Skeptical Rogues |
S: Steven Novella |
B: Bob Novella |
C: Cara Santa Maria |
E: Evan Bernstein |
Quote of the Week |
If we're never wrong then we're never surprised. If we grow too protective of our existing beliefs, then we stagnate and stop learning. If we've reached any degree of competence within our field, it's because we got things wrong along the way. So why stop now? It's interesting, I think, for each of us to consider the following: What am I currently wrong about? It's an impossible question to answer, but a curio, though, to contemplate nonetheless. |
Hector Chadwick, UK-based mentalist |
Links |
Download Podcast |
Show Notes |
Forum Discussion |
Introduction, Stomach bugs, Heat waves
Voice-over: 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 Wednesday, June 21st 2022, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella...
B: Hey, everybody!
S: Cara Santa Maria...
C: Howdy.
S: ...and Evan Bernstein.
E: Good evening everyone!
S: Jay is out because he has a tummy bug.
C: Jay has a tummy ache so he can't be here.
E: I've had I've known some other people right around this time who has also come down with this. I don't know they're calling it a foodborne illness. They think it's something they ate and it knocked them out for 24 hours or so.
C: It usually is. Like a norovirus or a rotavirus or a bacterial illness.
S: Could be an enterovirus. That's a summer virus and can give you a GI infection. So he's probably got one of those.
C: I had noro twice and it was the sickest I think I've ever felt in my entire life. It was horrible.
S: Do you feel worse when you have like a bad stomach bug or when you have a bad upper respiratory infection? What makes you feel worse?
C: Well it's it's interesting because I feel like a stomach virus is really acute. So you feel way worse but it's over faster. Whereas the upper respiratory is like stressful and lengthy and you're just like over it because it takes so long to clear. But when I have─
S: Cruddy.
C: ─yeah it is. It is. But when I had noro. Like I thought I was gonna die. Because you're tethered to the bathroom.
S: Yeah. It's more debilitating.
C: Yeah and I also it's kind of weird. I haven't vomited since I was a child. I have like a weird paranoia around puking. And so yes I've had noro twice and did not puke either time. So I was like I was green and like pressing my face against the tile and like oh it was bad it was really bad. For most people it comes out of both ends. For me it was only one end but I probably would have felt better if I had puked. I just refused. I refused.
E: So you suppress the urge?
C: Oh yeah because I had that thing you get where you start to salivate uncontrollably and you're burping. Oh it's terrible.
B: Wow.
C: I didn't throw up.
E: Yeah it's like it's almost like you have a blockage and you have to clear the blockage by vomiting.
C: Yeah but I just didn't. I was like keep it down just deep breathing. A lot of real kind of like focus.
E: I'd rather get it over with.
C: That's what a lot of people say and I probably should have actually looking back. But I couldn't eat for two days. It was I mean it was a whole thing. It was bad. So I'm hoping that Jay doesn't have that because I would not wish that on anyone.
E: But as Steve mentioned it could be a summer virus and that could be the case. Do you know why? Because today's June 21st. First day of summer.
B: Yes that's right. Longest day of the year. And that means Cara what?
C: Shortest night?
B: Yes. The other side.
E: Beautiful thing.
C: So so explain me this solstice experts. Why is it the first day of summer and not the middle of summer?
S: Yeah it's arbitrary. Well I've wondered that since I was a child. Why is the summer begin halfway through the warmest section. And part of it I think is because the weather like the seasonal weather is delayed a little bit behind the position of the Earth and the Sun, you know what I mean? It's because it is true. The next couple of months are going to be warmer than the last couple of months. Not like we're in the─
B: Absolutely.
S: ─middle of the hot season. We're not. It is shifted a little bit later. But also you look at like the analemma. You have like the figure eight with the Sun at the top, the bottom and the two sides. So that's where they made the cutoffs for the seasons. But they could have made them in where like the top quarter was the summer and the lower quarter was the winter. Instead of making the topmost point the beginning of summer. But ultimately arbitrary it's fine. But I always thought that was a little weird too.
C: Agree, yeah. It just feels like─
B: It didn't.
C: ─it's been summer. Here in LA at least it feels like it's been summer for two months.
B: Yeah well for you.
E: Yeah that's the difference Cara.
B: Yes I agree but for in New England I mean we had just a couple days ago where I was wearing a jacket outside.
C: Really?
B: It was chillier than it had been a in a while and you would never get that in July and August. Never.
E: That's right because when you have we experience every flavor of season here in New England. We get the cold cold winters and we get some pretty darn hot summers and everything in between. But Cara in lovely southern California you don't have those kinds of extremes in your weather.
C: No no no. It's really temperate here. But I was on the phone with my mom earlier today and I thought it was brutally hot today so much so that I was trying to arrange going hiking with a friend and we decided we're not going to hike we're going to go on a swim instead. But I was talking to my mom on the phone who's of course in north Texas and I was like oh it's brutal here today it's like 88. What is it like for you? And she was like. Well my car says it's 106. I was oh gosh.
E: The south has been on fire. Some of the hottest temperatures on record in June in the south.
S: Yeah they're having a heat wave really bad heat wave.
E: That a song? (laughter)
S: So Elon Musk has acquired twitter. Did it did that happen?
B: Did that happened?
C: That just happened?
E: When? When? Today?
B: Check it out Steve because I heard that he was one step closer.
E: He passed some hurdle or the government [inaudible].
S: Okay. I just saw that he was like meeting with twitter employees and he's planning on cutting back on this. He's talking as if he's running Twitter. Like wait wait wait when did that happen?
C: Yeah I don't know.
E: Twitter board unanimously recommends Musk's takeover bid. That happened earlier today.
S: There we go.
E: That's gonna be it. Is he gonna pay the money though? He's trying to get a low, he's trying to get it now for less because he thinks that there's more bots than they reported and therefore it's not worth as much.
S: Yeah but of course that's all part of the negotiation, right?
E: Of course. Right. Yeah. But he's clearing hurdles that's for sure. Welp.
S: Welp.
B: Welp.
E: See we'll see where that goes. So yeah interesting happenings in the world of Musk.
S: Right. And crypto is tanking. It's chaos.
E: Oh gosh, are we gonna go there? Oh my gosh. Luna.
Special Segment: Secret of Skinwalker Ranch (6:37)
A friend asked me to watch secret of Skinwalker Ranch on the History Channel. The name of the channel gets it off to a terrible start. I tried sticking to my guns that I don't want to waste my time with multiple sessions of a ghost hunting show where they run around collecting weird data results and only ask questions. But he said it's not like that. However I watched the clip on YouTube and that's exactly what it is. Does the SGU have even five minutes on an upcoming show to comment towards this? Thank you so much. Love all you do. Please keep it up.
S: Evan let's talk about the Skinwalker Ranch.
E. Yeah. We're going to talk about that as a little special segment here because we received an email from a listener. Ben in Michigan. And let me read to you what he wrote to us: "A friend asked me to watch secret of Skinwalker Ranch on the History Channel. The name of the channel gets it off to a terrible start. I tried sticking to my guns that I don't want to waste my time with multiple sessions of a ghost hunting show where they run around collecting weird data results and only ask questions. But he said it's not like that. However I watched the clip on youtube and that's exactly what it is. Does the SGU have even five minutes on an upcoming show to comment towards this? Thank you so much. Love all you do. Please keep it up." Thank you Ben and yes we do have five minutes to cover Skinwalker Ranch. Because this is actually a subject that I have touched on before when talking about Luis Elizondo and he's that former official at the United States department of defense. He has the UAP/UFO fetish. A few years ago 2018 there was a New York Times story that revealed the formerly classified department of defense program that studied UAPs which is unidentified aerial phenomenon. And that was way back in 2007. It was all secret. And the fellow Luis Elizondo was part of that team and some of that money went to Bigelow Aerospace. Enter Robert Bigelow. Real estate billionaire and strong UFO and alien visitation proponent. I'll read you what some of my thoughts about back in 2018 when I first reported on this[link needed]. So Robert Bigelow. Among his claims to extraterrestrial fame is the purchase of a supposedly haunted ranch in Utah which some describe as a hyper-dimensional portal area or stargate. The ranch is said to be infested by an alien or paranormal shape-shifting creature known as a Skinwalker taking its name from Native American legends similar to European legends about werewolves. Bigelow's approved team of paranormal researchers investigated the ranch starting in 1996. They compiled an impressive collection of what might be termed ghost stories but in spite of having access to sophisticated electronic equipment they failed to obtain any actual proof of anything that was unexplainable going on. So in the skeptical community we've known about Skinwalker ranch since the late 1990s. Bob you remember the late 1990s? You just installed Windows 98 on your PC. 512 MB jazz drive, right?
B: Ha-ha. Nice.
E: So let the horror of that historical context sink in. And like most fantastic stories of paranormal activity. And that's all they are. 100% of them. They are stories in one form of another. This UFO story refuses to quit. So fast forward from 1998 to 2020. Courtesy of the History Channel of course. You get the secret of Skinwalker Ranch the television series. Now, in a literal sense if Skinwalker Ranch is a secret it's one of the worst kept secrets on TV. We've known about it for more than 20 years. Obviously it's been reported on for even longer than that. So I don't know what's the secret behind this. I don't know. Interdimensional leprechauns that pop in and out or something. That must be the secret that the history channel--but in any case here's how they describe the show on their website. "The investigation of the world’s most mysterious hot spot for UFO and “High Strangeness” phenomena continues as astrophysicist Dr. Travis Taylor returns to" and this was written about the second season "join real estate tycoon Brandon Fugal, along with his team of scientists and researchers on Utah’s notorious Skinwalker Ranch. In this groundbreaking second season, the team goes deeper and higher than ever before, applying cutting edge technology to investigate the 512-acre property to uncover the possibly “otherworldly” perpetrators behind it all." Yeah. "With everything from mysterious animal deaths to hidden underground workings and possible gateways that open to other dimensions, witness the close encounters that go beyond conventional explanation, as the team risks everything to finally reveal the ultimate secret of Skinwalker Ranch." That's the write-up from History Channel. That's what you get.
B: Wow.
E: You're right. So this okay property in Utah 512 acres. Look in the 1960s and 70s there was a flurry of UFO sightings in this particular region as there was in lots of places. Especially out west in the 60s and the 70s among other places. It was just part of the culture. Part of the phenomenon. But then you get to the mid 90s and you get these stories about the strange going ons and the interdimensional creatures. And all these other stories kind of start to emerge including UFOs and cattle mutilations. Right Steve? We used to talk about cattle mutilations and early skeptic conferences that and get-togethers in meetings. It was one of our topics. And you kind of wonder okay we're the and you got Robert Bigelow. He's this billionaire. It might be and he's got this penchant and the sort of disposition towards the UFOs and things paranormal. Perhaps maybe you're talking more about these stories in order to sort of up the price on the ranch perhaps? Or get them to be more interested in actually purchasing it? But regardless Bigelow after he's done with his research 2016 he sold it to this real estate guy Brandon Fugle. And Brandon said in a recent interview that Skinwalker Ranch is the most scientifically studied paranormal hot spot on the planet. With the highest frequency of documented UFO sightings, bizarre cattle mutilations, electromagnetic anomalies and unexplained phenomenon. Wow. That's a lot. Well the hot spot on the planet. I not only watched the promotional clip. I actually watched the first episode of season one. And I did so that way Ben you don't have to watch it no one else out there has to watch it. I took the hit for everyone. So let me give you a very quick description of the opening sequence and I think we can kind of maybe draw this to a conclusion. You have a person running across a field heavily breathing towards a group of other people standing around something lying in the field. The looks on their faces is of horror and disbelief. That running person, his name's Travis, he reaches the group and we can see they're all standing around a dead cow. They roll the dead animal over on its side. One of the people checks it with a Geiger counter to see if it's radioactive. One of the other people mentions that they saw the cow earlier in the day was alive. But there's no trauma. No animal tracks. No animal marks. No sign of struggle. Travis suddenly whips out his meter, that's all he calls it: his meter, and he says look at the meter. It's making a static noise and the meter it gets louder in volume and he says it's going crazy. It's jumping all over the place. What happens next is that the whole team whips out all of their meters. And then they start holding their devices over the dead cow like McCoy taking a medical reading on a tricorder basically over a person. Handheld spectral analyzer is what these machines say. "What does that mean?" says one investigator. What's this spike? What is this? What are these readings? Travis says: "We do not know the answer. But something out of the ordinary could be happening right now. We've got to get out of here." That's your opening sequence and then it rolls the opening credits and so forth. That's the sequence. Right away the producer of the show in 60 seconds successfully trotted out over a half dozen paranormal tropes that we've been familiar with since we all became skeptical activists back in the 1990s. It is the same old tired product that the world of gullible paranormal investigators they live on it. They breathe it. It is their stock in trade. All this is something with a little bit of a different skin to it. That's all it is. And yes I did. I won't bother you with any more description of what the whole show was about but Ben you were correct it absolutely is 100% that. Total paranormal show just like any others in which they sit around they ask questions of each other. There's no true evidence to see. There's no science going on here.
S: But Evan they have more meters.
E: I know they had meters. Electromagnetic meters.
S: Well were they electromagnetic? They don't say it because they're not even bothering to pretend.
E: Oh they did later in the show.
S: I thought they were spectral analyzers.
E: Yeah well they did a spectral analysis as well. They have lots of meters and there's lots of sciencey things appear to be going on. They have cameras for surveillance. They have noise detection devices planted all over the over the ranch. They look for disturbance they have meters and things that can detect sort of disturbances. Ground vibrations that are going on. They've got aerial--they've taken aerial photography. They've got aerial monitoring cameras pointing every single direction. So yes it has all the trappings of what appears to be science. They even call it the control room that they have. It looks like a I don't know an air traffic control center almost. In a way. With all 50 screens up in front of you if you look that direction. And all the analyzers over to your right. They spent a lot of money, you can tell, on all of this stuff. But what's their evidence? What did they actually come up with? Not a darn thing.
S: Yeah because they're doing pure pseudoscience. Literally. That's the very definition of pseudoscience. Just they have the trappings. They have meters. Tou know they have no idea how to use them. They're not doing any actual hypothesis testing. It's just mystery mongering. That's it.
E: Yep. And then when there are some suggestions and the fellow Travis who is an astrophysicist and apparently has some and degrees in engineering and some other bonafides that are legitimate. He's brought in to help them figure out what's going on here. And unfortunately they're using him as a veil of being authentic.
S: Yeah but the scientist guy whatever should be ashamed of himself. I mean there's no excuse for what he's doing. He should know better. And like if he's telling, I mean I'm sure he's just enjoying the fame but you can't even tell yourself oh but I'm at least I'm going to introduce some actual science into this. No you're not. Because you quickly learn when you do these sort of things. Because back early in our career we would get asked to be on documentaries or whatever. And we did a bunch of stuff. And you very quickly figure out that whoever's doing it, like the director, they have a story to tell. They're going to tell their story no matter what you do or say. You are irrelevant. They're just quote-mining you. You're a prop.
E: Yep. You're prop, yes.
S: I would always like when there's a preliminary interview about before you do the actual on camera interview. I'm always interviewing them. Like what is your take on this. What story are you telling basically. And if it's a gullible pseudoscience promotion story don't do it. It's not worth it. You're just gonna lend credibility to nonsense.
E: Yep. That's all it is. And you're right I think─
S: So they're complicit─
E: ─yep yep.
S: 100%.
E: Yep. Absolutely. It's part of the problem.
S: All right let's move on.
News Items
Jupiter Ate Baby Planets (17:53)
S: Bob tell us how Jupiter ate your baby.
E: Oh no.
B: Yes. That's one way to put it Steve. Based on new insights into Jupiter's interior. Researchers conclude that our largest planet must have consumed baby planets left and right during the early days of the solar system billions of years ago. Now this was published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. Lead author Yamila Miguel an astronaut. Nope. Not an astronaut although I bet she could be. She's an assistant professor of astrophysics at the Leiden observatory in the Netherlands Institute for Space Research. So I love the title to the live science article that sucked me into this topic. The title was: "Scientists find remains of cannibalized baby planets in Jupiter's cloud-covered belly." Oh my god what a title. It did suck me in. It might not have if it was more of a boring title. But I can't help but think of the internal thoughts of the person. You got people that come up with the titles and he or she must have been thinking something like this. Like you know if I can get the words cannibal and baby in the same sentence and that's what they did. And wow okay all right so let's start on this one. So have you guys seen those crazy detailed images of Jupiter's clouds in the news? Like from the past year or two? If you've seen them then they're probably from the Juno cam on the Juno spacecraft which has done something like well over 40 flybys of close flybys of Jupiter and its moons. But Juno wasn't just looking at Jupiter's pretty face and all those awesomely detailed clouds. It can also see the interior of Jupiter using what they call the gravity science instrument. That name. The gravity science instrument. Totally uninspired. Right guys? Totally. It's really boring. So I think they should have called it the GDAS or the gravitometric dopplerized analytical surveyor, right? Am I right? Isn't that sound much cooler?
E: You're not wrong.
B: So they used the gravitometric dopplerized analytical surveyor (Evan laughs) to hopefully show which of the two competing rocky formation theories fit Jupiter, right? They got two primary theories that are kind of mutually exclusive. One theory says that Jupiter's initial rocky core formed from boulder-sized rocks kind of glomming together. So this theory for some reason is nicknamed not the boulder theory or the heavy rock theory but the pebble theory. It's called the pebble theory. But we're talking boulder-sized stuff. The other competing theory argues that baby planets called planetesimals a few miles across or so they smashed together to form the core. So one of them's right the other one's wrong. So what did the GDAS as I call it show. So the gravity data from Juno and even from Galileo. Remember Galileo? Oh my god.
E: Sure.
B: That was an amazing time. So Juno and Galilean data showed the distribution of heavy elements near the core of Jupiter. That was kind of the main goal here. Let's look at what kind of heavy elements are in there and what's their distribution and mass. So this was detected because those knots of heavy elements that they detected are denser. And if they're denser they've got a little bit of more of a extra gravitational pull and that pull will then can affect the atmosphere above it in ways that are detectable. Now the models that the researchers created to look into this concluded that there must be between, get this, 11 and 30 Earth masses worth of heavy elements within Jupiter. And that's 3-9% of Jupiter's mass. And that was a lot more. A lot more than they anticipated. Now Jupiter is gargantuan. It is the biggest planet in our solar system and you could fit what? What's the number? A thousand Earths inside. But for it to have potentially 30 Earth masses of these heavy elements was a real shocker but it did prove pretty much definitively proved which of those theories is most likely to be true. And that was the planetesimal accretion theory is overwhelmingly likely to be correct. So that's because it's not really obvious at all. But that's because there's just too many heavy minerals otherwise. There's so many heavy metal minerals there it had to be the planetesimal accretion. So imagine this. So imagine just to see just to visualize what was happening. Now imagine you've got a rocky core of Jupiter before the gaseous envelope kind of accreted on onto it to become the amazingly huge atmosphere of the gas giant Jupiter. So you've got the big rocky core. It starts pulling in even the super lightweight hydrogen and helium to build up the atmosphere. That inflow of gas causes a pressure barrier that's like a force field. And that force field won't let in any of the smaller boulder-sized chunks of rock and heavy metals. So but if you're a big three mile wide planetesimal you can plow right through that pressure barrier shield and then you can just keep doing it. So as the atmosphere is getting bigger and bigger you still have the planetesimals coming in and adding more and more and more of these heavy metals to the interior of Jupiter. Whereas the boulder-sized rocky masses and minerals could never continue. It would start and then it would stop and it would give you just a certain amount of the heavy minerals and you couldn't surpass it. And you couldn't get anywhere near what they're finding now. So it's got to be the planetesimal. So that theory is the one that seems to be absolutely correct. So lead author Yamila Miguel said that: "Jupiter was the most influential planet in the formation of the solar system. Its gravitational pull helped to shape the size and orbits of its cosmic neighbors, and so determining how it came to be has important knock-on effects for other planets." Knock-on effects. Have you?
E: No I don't know that one.
B: That's a new idiom for me.
C: Really?
B: But in context. Yeah knock-on?
C: Yeah in this context.
B: In this context it's obvious. So since Jupiter was the first guy on the block pretty much learning about the formation of Jupiter could really clue us in about the formation of all the other planets. Because Jupiter was such a big beast that it it really influenced absolutely the rest of the formation of the entire solar system. And imagine we may have had 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 planets in orbit around the Sun if Jupiter just didn't suck up all those poor little baby planets. And of course if you extrapolate a little bit Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, maybe they have planetesimal origins as well. I would think it would be kind of likely at this point. So this all means then that distant exoplanet gas giants they may be hiding more mineral mass in their interiors than maybe apparent by their atmospheres. So even when the mighty James Webb telescope, which is basically designed to measure the atmospheres of gas giants and their compositions, when James Webb calculates the heavy minerals that are likely to be in the planet they it could very well be quite wrong because there won't be another Juno in orbit with its own, say it with me, its own gravitometric dopplerized analytical surveyor in orbit around it telling us what's going on inside. Because from what I've read you had to get up and close to Jupiter to find this information out. We really were not ever going to find out about this for an observatory in orbit or on the Earth. You need to be pretty much up close and personal. And who knows? They may develop a technology to infer it accurately in the future. But I don't think anything's on the drawing board that could that could actually do the job of Juno from a distance. So cool. Interesting story. Kind of different. I liked it.
S: Yeah I mean it's interesting that we can infer that from looking at Jupiter today. That we can know something about its deep history like that.
B: Yeah.
S: Because it's really just a big giant ball of clouds.
E: Does this mean we now have to assume that gas giants have some sort of hard core in their centers?
S: Totally.
B: Well. (laughter) We're not sure. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean you start with the rocky core and then it gets so big and so dense that it starts pulling in the gases. Sure. You gotta bring in those glass somewhere. I mean you could potentially have a pocket of gas that just kind of rotates and collapses in on itself. Like a little star, right?
S: Yeah but Bob the other option is that Jupiter never ever ever got hit by an asteroid, you know what I mean? In its 4 billion year history. Why would that be the case? Anything rocky that ever got captured by Jupiter's gravity we're just sitting in the core.
B: Right right. And determining exactly you know what actually is the makeup. How many how much heavy metals, how much is rocky, how much is metallic. I always thought, remember Steve it wasn't too long ago when it was like oh yeah it's like metallic hydrogen in the core. But now that now I guess that's not the consensus anymore and it's definitely I mean there's definitely heavy metals and the density has got to be pretty damn wicked in the core for sure. But the exact composition is not quite what they thought.
The Risk of Sitting (27:10)
NASA Joins Study of UAPs (42:26)
Galapagos Giant Tortoise Not Extinct (59:52)
What's the Word? (1:08:16)
- Nostrum[v 1]
_consider_using_block_quotes_for_emails_read_aloud_in_this_segment_
Questions/Emails/Corrections/Follow-ups (1:12:48)
Followup #1: Testing AIs
_consider_using_block_quotes_for_emails_read_aloud_in_this_segment_
with_reduced_spacing_for_long_chunks –
Science or Fiction (1:23:43)
Theme: Geology
Item #1: Geologists estimate that the next major earthquake along the San Andreas Fault would cause vastly more damage from the resulting tsunami than the quake itself.[5]
Item #2: The Pacific ocean is so large that it contains its own antipode.[6]
Item #3: Sapphires and rubies are actually the same mineral, corundum.[7]
Answer | Item |
---|---|
Fiction | Tsunami more damaging |
Science | ...has its own antipode |
Science | ...are the same mineral |
Host | Result |
---|---|
Steve | swept |
Rogue | Guess |
---|---|
Cara | Tsunami more damaging |
Bob | Tsunami more damaging |
Evan | Tsunami more damaging |
Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.
Cara's Response
Bob's Response
Evan's Response
Steve Explains Item #3
Steve Explains Item #2
Steve Explains Item #1
Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:35:39)
If we're never wrong then we're never surprised. If we grow too protective of our existing beliefs, then we stagnate and stop learning. If we've reached any degree of competence within our field, it's because we got things wrong along the way. So why stop now? It's interesting, I think, for each of us to consider the following: What am I currently wrong about? It's an impossible question to answer, but a curio, though, to contemplate nonetheless.
– Hector Chadwick, UK-based mentalist
Signoff/Announcements
S: —and until next week, this is your Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.
S: Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by SGU Productions, dedicated to promoting science and critical thinking. For more information, visit us at theskepticsguide.org. Send your questions to info@theskepticsguide.org. And, if you would like to support the show and all the work that we do, go to patreon.com/SkepticsGuide and consider becoming a patron and becoming part of the SGU community. Our listeners and supporters are what make SGU possible.
Today I Learned
- Fact/Description, possibly with an article reference[8]
- Fact/Description
- Fact/Description
Notes
References
- ↑ Live Science: Scientists find remains of cannibalized baby planets in Jupiter's cloud-covered belly
- ↑ ScienceAlert: An Enormous International Study Just Confirmed The Ugly Truth About Sitting Too Much
- ↑ Neurologica: NASA Joins Study of UAPs
- ↑ Nature: The Galapagos giant tortoise Chelonoidis phantasticus is not extinct
- ↑ Bustle: Can A San Andreas Earthquake Cause A Tsunami?
- ↑ CN Traveler: The Gulf of Tonkin's Big Secret
- ↑ Minerals.net: The Mineral Corundum
- ↑ [url_for_TIL publication: title]