Daniel and Jorge Explain the UniverseVisit the far side of the moon with Daniel and Jorge
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
If you love iPhone, you'll love Apple Card. It's the credit card designed for iPhone. It gives you unlimited daily cash back that can earn four point four zero percent annual percentage yield. When you open a high Yield Savings account through Apple Card, apply for Applecard in the wallet app subject to credit approval. Savings is available to Apple Card owners subject to eligibility. Apple Card and Savings by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City Branch, Member FDIC terms and more at applecard dot Com. When you pop a piece of cheese into your mouth, you're probably not thinking about the environmental impact. But the people in the dairy industry are. That's why they're working hard every day to find new ways to reduce waste, conserve natural resources, and drive down greenhouse gas emissions. How is US Dairy tackling greenhouse gases? Many farms use anaerobic digesters to turn the methane from manure into renewable energy that can power farms, towns, and electric cars. Visit us dairy dot COM's Last Sustainability to learn more.
Hey, it's Wilfordell and Sabrina Bryan and we're the hosts of the new podcast, Magical Rewind.
You may know us from some of your favorite childhood TV movies like My Date with the President's Daughter.
And the Cheetah Girls movies.
Together, we're sitting down to watch all the movies you grew up with and chat with some of your favorite stars and crew that made these iconic movies happen.
So kick back, grab your popcorn, and join us. Listen to Magical Rewind on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, brought to you by State Farm like a good neighbor State Farm is there?
Hey, Daniel, did you know we're not the first people to join physics and cartooning?
What I thought we were definitely on the forefront there.
No, you know one of my favorite comic scripts ever is named after something awesome in physics.
Ooh, let me guess Calvin and Hobbs.
No, No, that's philosophy.
Uh thinking Garfield?
Wait? Do you think I like Garfield? It's the same joke every time?
That's true?
Are you thinking just because of quantum fields?
Like?
Maybe Garfield is another quantum field?
Maybe peanuts? I don't know, I have no idea how peanuts could relate to physics.
I am officially disappointed in you.
All right, I give up.
Hi am Jorge. I'm a cartoonist and the creator of PhD comics.
Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I have no idea what cartoons relate.
To physics, especially ours, right, especially ours? And Welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of iHeartRadio.
In which we talk about crazy things about the universe. Things that are close by, things that are far away, things on one side, things on the other side, and we break it down and attempt to explain something to you that's both mind blowing and actually understandable.
That's right, all the things that are both maybe right here and kind of far away.
That's right at the same time, that's right nearby and yet hidden. We seek to reveal those truths to you, so to me.
On the podcast, we'll be talking about something that is basically in our everyday lives, right, every well, every night lives, every night life.
Yeah, my night life is not that exciting anymore, but back when I used to go out at night, Yeah, it's something that.
I would thank before Netflix.
Back tofore kids. But yeah, this is the kind of thing, you know, you can look up in the sky and easily wonder about.
Yeah, it's right there almost every night, and yet we can't see it. Nobody really knows what it looks like.
Right until recently, that's right, nobody had ever seen it, even though it hangs right there.
And so today we're talking about what's on the far side of the moon.
That's right. If you look up in the night sky often you may notice the moon, of course, and a sharp observer may notice that the moon looks similar every time. The portion of it you can see changes, right, becomes a crescent, becomes larger. But if you pay attention, you notice that the features you see on the moon are actually the same every night.
Yeah, it never changes that, right. That's mind blowing to think, because the moon is a giant sphere and where sphere, and we're you know, going around the Sun spinning and the Moon is spinning around us, and yet we always see the same side of the Moon all every night. That's right, It doesn't change.
One side of the Moon is the near side, that's the side that faces the Earth, and the other side faces a wave from the Earth towards the rest of the universe, and until nineteen fifty nine, no human had even seen a picture of it. We had no idea what could be on it. It could have been like filled with crazy lunar civilization, or you know, have a message written on it, or something like I can't believe you took you guys this long, or something.
Right, it could have been filled with Israeli tardigrades for all we know.
I think you're fast forwarding a few decades.
Yeah, but yeah, I mean, there could have been even nothing, right. It could have been just a half sphere for all we know. The Moon could have just been like a like a slice orange and we only see one side of it.
Right, Yeah, it could have been that the moon is actually a big prop right and always, and if we come around the other side we see like the scaffolding and all that stuff. That could have been amazing.
And you know, we make a joke even I'm known that the moon was the sphere and not just like a giant disc floating in space.
I think it'd be pretty hard to get a giant disk in any model of moon formation. But you never know, right, And this is why we explore, because you got to see stuff to really understanding. You can speculate, you can say we think we know what the backside of the moon is like, turns out when we saw it there were some surprises and until you really yeah, there were some surprises. The backside of the moon is not the same as the front side of the moon, and you know, you got to go and look. This is why we do experiments, this is why we explore the universe, because until you see it, you never really know.
And so only a handful of humans have actually seen the other side of the moon, right.
Seen it? Yeah, I mean we've had pictures and only a handful of humans have seen it sort of like with their own eyes. Yes, that's true. It takes you have to orbit the moon in order to see that. So yeah, only a few people have ever seen this. But you know, fewer people have ever seen my moon. It's not quite as prestigious.
But yeah, let's not get into that on this podcast. Let's say that for Daniel and Jorgey after dark.
Okay, all right, that's folks, that's the sound of Jorgey carefully stepping away backwards from that joke. No, but it's a fascinating topic and I was wondering did people understand that because it's kind of odd?
Is it like a giant cosmic coincidence? Or is it totally normal for us to only see one side of it? That's a that's why I'm blowing to me.
Yeah, So I walked around and I asked people, you know, what do they think about this? Were they aware of it? Did they realize did they understand it? Could they give a physical explanation?
Yeah? So, as usual, Daniel went out there somewhere in the world. Where were you this time, Daniel? Were you in California? Or no?
I was back in California. So these are you see Irvine summer students who answered these questions?
As usual, Daniel went out and asked random people on the street the question of the episode, and today's question was.
Today's question was did you know that that half of the moon always faces away?
So think about it for a second. If you had realized this, or if you knew this. I'm sure a lot of our reader listeners knew this, but maybe you hadn't thought about it for a while. And so think about what you would answer if a random physicist approach you on the street.
Yes, do you know why that is.
Just I know, because I know that the Earth rotates and I know the Moon doesn't.
There's a reason why we only see one face of the Moon and never the other.
I did not that there was a side of the Moon that did not face the Earth because the verse rotation as well.
Yeah, I mean my understanding is the mooning around the Earth, and the Earth rotates on its axis.
Because it's spinning. But yeah, I didn't realize the Moon was spinning too.
I didn't think it was.
I guess because both the Moon and the Earth are rotating, and so we never see the.
Backside related to rotations of the stellar bodies. I did not know that.
Yes, well do you know why that is? Is that a coincidence? Is there a physical reason?
Physics?
Physics? Awesome?
All right, So a lot of people didn't know. Yeah, and a lot of people didn't know.
Yes, some people were really shocked, and as soon as they understood that it was happening, they were like, that's really weird. How could that be?
What?
Yeah, it's almost like it's doing it on purpose, right, Like the Moon is suspicious of us and doesn't want to turn its back to us, you know, like it's it's hurling through space, but it's like I don't want to I need to be facing the Earth at all time.
And it's slowly backing away also, right, I don't forget. We're losing it very gradually. So the moon is sort of like edging away from us, the way you're edging away from my inappropriate jokes.
Yeah, so I guess it's not as well known as I would have guessed it was. You know, a lot of people seem surprised.
And of the people who did know that it happened, none of them could give me an explanation for why. Right, nobody understood the physics of it. People appreciated the concept, but nobody could explain why.
Well, you know, I think the question I have is what's the official name for it. I think we've called it the far side of the moon, the backside of the moon. I think Floyd called it the dark side of the moon.
It's called the far side of the moon, right, And I think that's probably the inspiration for that cartoon, right, the far side, because like, what's going on over there, like the weird hidden side. Though I'd love to ask Gary Larson about that one day. It's not the Dark side of the h though, because.
Oh, actually I do know the answer to that, because I just read a little bit of his biography.
What is the answer.
The answer is he had another name for it, but then when he sold it to a syndicate or a newspaper, they said, hey, how why we call it the far Side? And He's like, sure, editors.
Actually contribute something, I've never heard of that before.
Yeah, that's the anti climatic story.
And if our editors listening to this podcast, we love everything you suggest, by.
The way, that's right, and we mean newspapers.
That's right, Comic editors. No. So, the far side is the backside of the moon, the side of the moon that always faces away into the cosmos, away from the Earth. The dark side of the Moon is the name of a Pink Floyd album, right, and is not the same thing because the side of the moon that's lit up is the side of the Moon that faces the sun, right, not the side of them and that faces the Earth. So the dark side of the moon is the side of the moon that faces away from the Sun, right. So sometimes the far side of the moon is lit up, like when the moon is right between the Earth and the sun. Then the far side is totally bright and the near side is totally dark.
Oh wow, I never thought about that before. Yeah, because I guess the far side of the moon gets lit up.
Sometimes and so like sometimes the sun is just like blasting with energy, but there's nobody there to look. Right. It's like whatever secrets the far side of the moon holds, you know, are being revealed by the sun, but nobody's looking at it.
So, right, all those beautiful lunar sunsets and sunrises, nobody there to appreciate it.
Because the moon doesn't have a stable dark side, right, it's not always the same side that's dark. The temperature is on the moon very like crazy, right. If you're on the bright side of the moon, it can get warmer. If you're on the dark side of the moon, it gets like super duper cold. And because there's no atmosphere to hold in the temperature, it basically as the boundary between the bright side and the dark side moves across the surface of the moon, the temperature just is like plummeting super quickly.
So the dark side of the moon changes all the time, but the far side of the moon never changes. That's right, that's the.
Weird part, right, that's right.
Yeah, and you heard and it's never changed or it's it's you know what I mean, Like, are we looking at a different moon than humans ten thousand years ago, or it's never changed.
That's a great question. You know, in old drawings of the moon it looks the same, but that only goes back, you know, like a thousand years or so. But the physics that we'll explain in a few minutes suggests that it hasn't changed in a long long time. It shouldn't be stable. Yeah, and that is so weird. It is weird. And you know, let's describe exactly how weird that is, because in people's responses you could hear there was some confusion about like exactly what's doing the spinning and what could be affecting it. So let's go through that in some detail and explain what's happening before we explain why.
Because the Earth is spinning around, we're spinning around, and the Moon is spinning around us at a different rate.
That's right, And the only things you really need to think about. You don't need to think about the fact that the Earth spins. It doesn't matter, or the Earth is orbiting the Sun. The only two things you need to think about are the Moon moving around the Earth. Right, the Moon is in orbit around the Earth. It goes around the Earth, and the Moon is spinning.
It's kind of like we are spinning around the Sun once every year, but we're also spinning in place kind of that's right on.
Exactly, and a different part of the Earth faces the Sun literally every day, right. It's the Earth doesn't have a near side and a far side to the Sun, right right, So, and that's because we orbit. It takes us a whole year to go around, right, but only takes us a day to spin. Right. But in the case of the Moon, it spins at exactly the right speed, so that the same side of the of the Moon is always facing the Earth. Those two numbers, how long it takes to go around the Earth and how fast it spins around are perfectly syncd up, so that the same side of the Moon is always facing the Earth.
Oh and not just synced up, but they have to be syncd up going the opposite way, right, Yeah, If the Moon is going around the Earth clockwise, then the Moon has to be going around spinning in place counterclockwise at exactly the same number of times per per day or per night.
Let me just check that my mental model. It's hard to figure out. So if it's moving around clockwise, imagine the nearest you have the near side. It start at twelve o'clock, right, and the near side of the moon is of course facing the Earth. If the moon didn't rotate, then by the time you got to six o'clock, then the what we call the far side of the moon would be facing the Earth. So in order for that not to happen, it also has to rotate actually clockwise, right, So it moves around the Earth clockwise, and it rotates clockwise so that it's the same side is always facing the Earth. Oh right, Yeah, it's tricky.
Yeah, yeah, sorry, I got that totally.
Yeah, it's hard to keep track of.
Hey, editor, can you please.
Can you make Orge never say anything wrong?
Yeah? Can you make me sound a little bit more intelligent?
There?
Thank you?
Yeah, there you go.
Oh, you're right, you're right. It has to kind of like spin. Oh wow. Yes, it has to spin the same direction at the same rate exactly.
It has to spend the same direction at exactly the same rate. And you know, anytime you see a coincidence in physics, like these two numbers, which could be different, happen to be exactly the same thing. You got to look for a physical reason because either it's a ginormous coincidence, or it's a signal from the folks who invented the simulation that is our universe, or there's a physical reason that it has to be that way.
Right, right, because it's it's it's I feel like it's rare, right, Like the Earth doesn't do that around the Sun, and none of the other planets do that around the Sun, right, Like they not just spin at different speeds, but they spin in like different axes in different directions. And so it's like, just because you're going around a larger object doesn't mean that you're going to have this perfectly synced orbit.
Right, Yeah, you're right. None of the planets in our Solar system have the same feature, though there are some other moons. Some of the moons of Jupiter do the same thing to Jupiter, right. So, and that's a clue, right, because if you have a one coincidence, that's crazy. If you have the same coincidence several times, then you know that's a sign that there's some physics happening.
I think you're telling me that it's all due to this very interesting physical effect, right, Like, there is a physics of why this happened.
There's definitely some physics.
Yeah, yeah, So let's get into it. But first let's take a quick break.
With big wireless providers, what you see is never what you get. Somewhere between the store and your first month's bill, the price, your thoughts you were paying magically skyrockets. With mint Mobile, You'll never have to worry about gotcha's ever again. When Mint Mobile says fifteen dollars a month for a three month plan, they really mean it. I've used mint Mobile and the call quality is always so crisp and so clear. I can recommend it to you. So say bye bye to your overpriced wireless plans, jaw dropping monthly bills and unexpected overages. You can use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number along with your existing contacts. So dit your overpriced wireless with Mint Mobiles deal and get three months a premium wireless service for fifteen bucks a month. To get this new customer offer and your new three month premium wireless plan for just fifteen bucks a month go to mintmobile dot com slash universe. That's mind mobile dot com slash universe. Cut your wireless build a fifteen bucks a month at mintmobile dot com slash universe. Forty five dollars upfront payment required equivalent to fifteen dollars per month new customers on first three month plan only speeds slower about forty gigabytes on unlimited plan. Additional taxi spees and restrictions apply. See mint mobile for details.
AI might be the most important new computer technology ever. It's storming every industry and literally billions of dollars are being invested, so buckle up. The problem is that AI needs a lot of speed and processing power. So how do you compete without cost spiraling out of control. It's time to upgrade to the next generation of the cloud. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure or OCI. OCI is a single platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs. OCI has fourty eight times the bandwidth of other clouds, offers one consistent price instead of variable regional pricing, and of course nobody does data better than Oracle. So now you can train your AI models at twice the speed and less than half the cost. Of other cloud if you want to do more and spend less, like Uber eight by eight and Data Bricks Mosaic. Take a free test drive of Oci at Oracle dot com slash Strategic. That's Oracle dot com slash Strategic. Oracle dot com slash Strategic.
If you love iPhone, you'll love Apple Card. It's the credit card designed for iPhone. It gives you unlimited daily cash back that can earn four point four zero percent annual percentage yield. When you open a high Yield savings account through Applecard, apply for Applecard in the wallet app, subject to credit approval. Savings is available to Applecard owners, subject to eligibility. Apple Card and Savings by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City Branch Member, FDIC terms and more at applecard dot com.
All right, we're talking about why the moon always looks the same every night all the time, Like it's it's out there spinning around the Earth and it's spinning around its own axis, but it always seems to face the Earth the same way, and so that's weird, right, Yeah.
It's due to an effect called tidal locking, which is connected to something we've talked about several other times called tidal forces, And it's pretty simple.
Right, like the tides of the ocean.
Yeah, just like the tides of the ocean. Right, it's the same effect. And the idea is the gravity will pull more strongly on stuff that's nearby than stuff that's far away. Right, That makes perfect sense. We're familiar with that, but we're used to thinking about objects sort of as points. Like the Earth goes around the Sun, we just think about the force on the whole Earth, right, Or the Moon goes around the Earth, we think about the force on the whole moon. But the moon is kind of big, right, which means that the force on the close side of the Moon is stronger than the force on the far side of the moon. Right.
Oh, the Earth is pulling the parts of the Moon that are closest to it more than it's pulling the stuff that's in the behind it.
And those are called tidal forces. And if tidal forces are strong enough, like if you're clear near a black hole, then the difference in the force on one side of the object and the other can be enough to tear it apart. Right, And you might be thinking tear it apart? What if you're pulling on something with two different forces in the back on the front side, that's the same thing is pulling it apart. That's the same thing as applying a force from one side to the other. And so for example, if you get too close to a black hole, you will literally get shredded into bits. And you know, we've seen this before, like Shoemaker Levy was a comet that came too close to Jupiter and Jupiter pulled it apart into twenty six pieces. It still went around the Sun and slammed into Jupiter, so it got its revenge. But tidal forces are a thing. Anytime you have an object that's large compared to the force of gravity, then it's going to have a big difference in the gravity on one side and the other. And that's the same way the Moon makes tides on Earth, right, it pulls the water closer to it to make the tides.
But it's not just with big objects in space. It's it's like happening all the time to everyone everywhere, right, that's right. Yeah, Like if I stand up, if I stand up right here in my studio, my feet are getting pulled by the Earth more than the top of my head.
That's right. The Earth is literally pulling you apart. Now, your body is strong enough to withstand that fairly small difference between the force and your head and the force on your feet. But yes, the Earth is trying to pull you apart, unless you're lying down flat, in which case the Earth is pulling on every part of you the same way. And if you're really tall, you know, then the Earth might pull you to pull you to bits. But it mostly happens to large objects where the distance between one side and the other side is large, so that the magnitude of the force of gravity is large between the two and.
That's when you know the difference is larger.
Yes, exactly, So the difference is larger, and the Moon is big enough that the Earth's gravity pulls one part of it harder than the backside of it, and it actually changes the shape of the Moon a little bit. So the Moon is not a sphere. It's like and it's like an obloid object. It's like a three D ellipse.
The Moon is not perfectly spherical.
Not perfectly spherical, because it's getting squeezed by the Earth. And if these tidle forces were stronger, then the Earth and the Moon will get pulled apart. Right, That's what happens when the Moon gets too close to a planet, for example, it can get pulled into pieces, and that's and turned into rings. Right, And so the Moon is in this place where it's close enough to the Earth to be an orbit, close enough to have these strong tidle forces, but not so close that the Earth pulls it apart.
Interesting, and so Earth kind of squishes the Moon out of us perfectly spherical shape. But then how does that relate to why we only see one side of it?
Well, because then it gets stuck. Right, So now the Moon is not a sphere, it's an ellipse. And the half that's closer to the Earth is even closer than it was back when it was a sphere. Right, It's like it's fallen down a little bit, and so that part gets heavier, right, has a stronger force of gravity. And on the backside it's a also and that part it gets even lighter. So now the nearer side of the Moon weighs more than the back side of the Moon, meaning it's a stronger force of gravity. So now it's sort of stuck. Right, it's like a ball in a hole. The close side of the Moon can't spin, can't spin away, right, because.
If it spins, then the fat part gets pulled back towards.
The Earth exactly. You know. Imagine you have like a bicycle wheel, right, and you're holding it, and it spins freely, and it's happy to be in any arrangement.
Right.
It spins because every arrangement is the same if it's a perfect circle. But now put something heavy on one spot of the bicycle wheel. What's going to happen. It's going to prefer for that part to be down right, and if you push it away a little bit, it's going to spin back so that the heavy part is down That's what happened to the moon. The near side of the Moon is heavier than the far side because it's closer to the Earth and it's sort of stuck that way.
And that's the reason, that's the reason why we only see that one side of the moon.
That's the reason it's called tidal locking. Right. Tidal forces change the shape of it a little bit, and then that shape makes it more conducive to always face the heavier side towards the planet. And so it happened to the Moon, and it's happened to several moons of Jupiter, and it's not that uncommon a thing. So it's not a coincidence at all. Right, it's physics.
Yeah, so blame the tides.
The tidal forces of the Moon caused tides on Earth, but the tidal forces of the Earth cause the Moon to always have a near side.
The Wait, I'm a little bit confused. In order for the Earth to deform the moon, doesn't the moon need to be stationary, do you know what I mean? Like, if the Moon was spinning, then this tidal force would even out across all sides, right, kind of like the Earth is a little bit fat around the middle because we're spinning and part of it gets more attracted to the Sun sometimes.
Yeah, if that's a good point, I think if the Moon was spinning fast enough, it might have been able to avoid this, right, because it could it could sort of spin out of that little well that it gets stuck in and have another part of it, right, so the stretching would be evened out. But I guess that just means that in the early days, the moon was not spinning fast enough to avoid this. Remember the Moon formed out of debris, right, The moon was just a big cluster of debris. It's not like the Moon was a perfect sphere that was spinning and then just sort of placed on Earth. It was formed in place, right, and the Earth had a role in that formation.
Oh and when it formed, it formed in this weird deformed shape which locked it into always facing the right the same way.
Yeah, so it probably was never a sphere, right, It's not like back in its early days and its youth, it remembers being having a perfect body and the Earth.
Ruined it and then it hooked up with the Earth and exactly, Oh, I see the Moon formed into the right blob, into that blob, right. And but that also means that all of the debris that formed the Moon didn't have a lot of spin to it, right, Like maybe it was sort of basically kind of when it formed, because it would you know, you know what I mean, Like if it formed out a debris that's moving flooring flowing around, it would eventually coalesce into a spinning ball.
Right.
Yeah, Basically everything has some angular momentum, right, because to have no angular momentum would mean for everything to magically cancel out. So if you just took all that debris and for those of you who aren't familiar with how the Moon is formed, we did a whole podcast episode about how the Moon probably came from some of the collision of a small planetoid with an early Earth, and a huge amount of debris was thrown out into space, and some of that stuff coalesced into rings and then eventually into the Moon, and so it's you know there. We don't have a lot of information about exactly what that collision looked like, but the amount of rotation, amount of spin in that debris depends a lot on like how that first planetoid hit the proto Earth, how much spin there was.
There must not have been a lot of spin, because if there had been a lot of spin, then it would you know, the Moon would have started out spinning and maybe this tidal force would not have deformed it into the right block.
Spinning fast is a good defense against getting stretched out by title forces.
You know, it's a good good way to keep your shape, keeping shape.
That's right. I recommend spin classes to the Moon.
There you go cool. So that title forces is the reason that we always see the same side of the moon.
Physics explains it. In the end. One more mystery dismantled by physics.
Once more, the magic has gone thanks.
To physics, ruining the magic for thousands of years.
All right, now, let's get into what is on that far side of the moon. Are there? Aliens? Are there? Nothing? Are there?
Is there a secret message to you?
That's right, But first let's take a quick break.
When you pop a piece of cheese into your mouth or enjoy a rich spoonful of Greek yogurt, you're probably not thinking about the environmental impact of each and every bite. But the people in the dairy industry are. US Dairy has set themselves some ambitious sustainability goals, including being greenhouse gas neutral by twenty to fifty. That's why they're working hard every day to find new ways to reduce waste, conserve natural resources, and drive down greenhouse gas emissions. Take water, for example, most dairy farms reuse water up to four times. The same water cools the milk, cleans equipment, washes the barn, and irrigates the crops. How is US dairy tackling greenhouse gases? Many farms use anaerobic digestors that turn the methane from maneure into renewable energy that can power farms, towns, and electric cars. So the next time you grab a slice of pizza or lick an ice cream cone, know that dairy farmers and processors around the country are using the latest practices and innovations to provide the nutrient dense dairy products we love with less of an impact. Visit us dairy dot com slash sustainability to learn more.
Hey guys, it is Ryan.
I'm not sure if you know this about me, but I'm a bit of a fun fanatic one.
I can.
I like to work, but I like fun too, And now I can tell you about my favorite place to have fun, Chumba Casino. They have hundreds of social casino style games to choose from, with new games release each week. You can play for free, and each day brings a new chance to collect daily bonuses. So join me and the fun. Sign up now at chumbacasino dot.
Com sponsored by Chumba Casino.
No purchase necessary VGW Group Ford.
We're prohibited by Law eighteen plus. Terms and conditions apply.
Hey everybody, this is Jody Sweeten from how Rude Tanerto's and I have to tell you all about Hondai's most electric ev lineup. Yet and how it will completely change the way you look at and feel about EV's, specifically Hyundai EV's Now. Let me tell you, as a Hondai owner, I love my Hyundai Now. One of my favorite aspects is Honday's fun to drive lineup. I love these cars. I mean these EV's are tech confused with standard safety features like highway driving assists and blind spot collision warning. Being a mom, these safety features are extremely important to me. And what's better than knowing my family is safe in our vehicle while also knowing I look stylish at the same time.
Kind of nothing.
You also get America's best warranty with a ten year, one hundred thousand mile limited electric battery warranty. Honday's EV lineup has everything you've been yearning for in your next or your first EV, boldly captivating your senses. Learn more about Hyndaiev's at Hundai USA dot com. Call five six two three one four four six zero three for complete details. America's best warranty claim based on total package of warranty programs. See dealer for limited warranty details. See your Hundai dealer for further details and limitations.
All right, we're talking about the Moon and why it always looks the same every night. It doesn't seem to be spinning the Moon, even though it's a giant spherical object. And so we figured out we talked about that it's due to tidal locking. So it formed in such a way that it's always spinning at the right rate that we always see it the same way.
That's right. The near side of the Moon's basically become heavier because it's turned into a little bit of an ellipse, and that makes it prefer to keep that side to the Earth.
I imagine that that was an always the case, you know, when the first Can you imagine being on the Earth when the Moon formed, Like, you know, I.
Think that'd be pretty hot and nasty, given that it formed out a huge collision and the Earth is basically a ball of lava. Yeah, that'd be a short trip.
Okay, not so romantic.
No, no, No, hot and nasty, but not in a good way.
All right.
So, due to this title force, the Moon when it formed, formed such a way that it basically got locked into always facing the Earth the same side.
That's right, which means that there's a side of the Moon that we cannot see from the Earth, and people didn't see until nineteen fifty nine when the Soviets finally sent something up there to take a picture of it.
Really, it was the Soviets who first saw it.
Yeah. Remember back in the day, the Soviets were leading us in the space race, right in the fifties and the early sixties, spot nacking all that stuff. They were ahead. And actually it's pretty funny because the Soviets were there first, right, they were the first ones to see this stuff, and so the Soviet scientists they just started naming things in Russian right, and boyd this annoyed the Americans, not only because they, you know, didn't get to see it first and they didn't get to take the first pictures, but now everything on the backside of the Moon is like has some crazy Russian name.
Wow?
Is that true?
Yeah? Totally you think I just make this stuff up? Maybe, no, this is totally true.
Well, so they what did they send like a satellite and it took pictures as it went around the backside of.
The Moon exactly. Yeah, and back then, you know, we didn't have digital photographs and all this kind.
Of stuff, so they had like the pictures first, and they started naming the craters and the features first, exactly, so everything on the backside is named in Russian.
It started out that way, but then the Americans got the International Astronomical Union to intervene, and then they decided to do a sort of international process, which is, you know.
What do you mean intervene, Like they were in the middle of naming things and then they're like whoa, whoa stop.
Stop, yeah, exactly exactly. Anyway, it turns out that the backside of the Moon is not just like the near side of the moon, right, it's not exactly this different.
How can it be different?
Yeah, it's still sort of a mystery. We don't actually still understand it now. It's not dramatically different. I mean, in the end, it's still just rocks and dust, right, It's not like there's a glittering ocean there or some civilization or like crazy mountains or anything like that. No, it turns out that there are more craters, and you know, if you look at the Moon from the Earth, you see these sort of pop marks, and you also see these open areas that we call seas, even though there's no water in them, and the backside of the Moon has more of these craters and fewer of the.
Seas, so it has a different complexion.
Yeah, exactly, it has more acme. And you might be tempted to think, oh, that's because you know it's facing out and so it's going.
To get hit right right, Yeah, like a shield.
Yeah, but the Earth is not actually very large in the sky of the of the moon, right the Moon is kind of far away, and the Earth only protects the Moon by about like three percent of its sky or something. So if there's a rock aiming at the Moon, it's most likely still just going to hit the Moon. So that's not enough to account for the difference.
And remember, really both sides of the gravity, like the Earth gravity protects the Moon's like this side of the moon maybe.
No, no, no, it's not a big enough effect, and so it's a big mystery. You know, there's a lot of speculation that maybe there's more like tectonic activity on the front side of the Moon, which is sort of smoothing it over. Remember we talked about Euroba, that weird moon that has almost no craters on it that are older than like ten or twenty years old. Because there's a lot of resurfacing like stuff coming up and making a new surface. It could be that that's happening more quickly on the front side of the Moon than the backside, but people don't really understand, like why would that be. So there's some interesting mysteries there.
It's like squishy or on this side.
Yeah. Yeah, it's sort of getting refreshed, right, Like the near side of the moon gets its skin scrubbed, it gets a spa treatment more often.
I think the moon is just thinking, like, you know what, nobody's going to look at my side. Nobody cares. There's nobody back here. I'm just going to let it go.
Yeah, and folks, this is your motivation, you know, keep your hygiene spherical.
Keep your back end it's agony free.
Yeah, there's hygiene advice from a scientist and a cartoonist. That's definitely who you want to be listening to.
So why do you think there's more churn or more like volcanic activity on this side? Is it related to the fact that it's being it's closer to the Earth.
It could be, right, I mean, we're talking about how the moon is formed and the internals of it and what's going on inside and is it still hot enough to like flow and move it around. But it's it's something we've only recently really started to explore and to understand. So it's still a question. Lunar scientists don't know the answer to this as far as I'm aware, So it's it's an open question. And you know, until recently, we didn't know basic stuff about the Moon, like does it have a strong magnetic field? And you know, why are there pockets of magnetism here and there? And so you know, even though we went to the Moon fifty years ago, you haven't been back very much, and so there's a lot of questions we just don't have answers to.
You know, I think people who study the Moon are officially like to be called Mooni's.
Well, you're in charge of naming, So if they're not called that, if they weren't called that before, they are now.
All right. So that's the far side of the Moon. And Daniel, is it somewhere that we want to go or is it would be interesting to go to or you know, for vacation or for science.
I wouldn't recommend it for vacation, but it is interesting just because it's not well explored, which means there's always an opportunity for surprises, right, which is sort of my whole philosophy about science. It's like, science is about exploration. You can think you know what something's going to do. You can think you know what something's going to look like. You can think you you know whether there are particles there. But until you go and look, you haven't given yourself the opportunity to be surprised by the universe. And so it's definitely worth exploring because it's also not that far away. And it was in twenty nineteen, right this year, that humans finally landed something on the far side of the Moon.
Really, that's right yet just now.
Just now, yeah, just a few months ago, China landed something and took a bunch of pictures and it's doing experiments over there. And so it's an interesting place, right, like do we understand how the Moon formed? It gives us insights to how planets formed and the early history of the Earth and stuff. It's also not a terrible place to do science because it's shielded by the whole Moon from all this noise of radio broadcast and annoying podcast hosts and all that stuff that's spewing stuff out into space. So if you want to build, for example, a radio telescope, that's a really nice quiet spot.
It's like the most you can get away from other people.
Exactly, it's an introverts vacation, exactly.
There you go. That's how you market it.
But you can only market it to like one introvert at a time.
If you speak Russian and one a quiet place too, with no signal you're on your phone. The far side of the moon would be ideal.
Yeah. The market for that are super zillionaire Russian introverts.
Right, which I imagine there might be a few. Rights have a bunch of millionaires.
Yeah, zillionaire Russian introverts listening to this podcast. We will sell you a ticket to the far side.
Of the moon, that's right. We will tell you how to get.
There, exactly exactly. But it's one of my favorite kind of things because people can really grasp it. You can look up at the sky and you can think, you know, it's crazy that my ancestors and my ancestors ancestors have all been looking at this same thing hanging in the sky, and the same side of.
It too, also not seen the same thing we don't see.
Yeah, exactly. That for thousands of years, no human who had been looking up at the sky had seen the backside of this thing until basically our generation, right or the generation before us, finally cracked this mystery, finally lifted our eyeballs off the surface so we could see the other side of this thing, which is right there in our faces.
Cool. Well, it's amazing to think there are still mysteries even as close as the moon, right, there are mysteries places that are hard to get to but just unexplained to i'mina in physics.
Yeah, yeah, exactly, And that's you know, that's why physics goes on, right, because there are always mysteries. Some people ask me, like, you know, are we ever going to figure things out? And I'm pretty sure. And there's always going to be some person with a question out there, you know, why is this this way? Why isn't it that way? And why does this look different from this other thing? There's always questions to be answered, and there are always interesting insights to be uncovered when you dig into those questions. Each one is like a little thread in the fabric of the universe, which if you tug on, it might unravel and reveal something fascinating.
Yeah, humans are annoying like that. You know, never satisfy humans or physicists or three year old kids, basically the same.
It's one category. It's one category, all right.
Well, we hope you enjoyed that and got you to think a little bit about the moon and how it formed and what's out there that we still don't know. Every time you go out into the night and look up at the night's.
Card, that's right. And if you have questions about something you don't understand you'd like us to explain, please send them to us a questions at Daniel and dot com.
And if you are a Russian billionaire with the disposable income let.
Us know that's right, send it to money at Danielanjorge dot com.
See you next time.
Thanks for tuning in. If you still have a question after listening to all these explanations, please drop us a line. We'd love to hear from you. You can find us at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge that's one word, or email us at Feedback at Danielandhorge dot com. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. When you pop a piece of cheese and your mouth, you're probably not thinking about the environmental impact. But the people in the dairy industry are. That's why they're working hard every day to find new ways to reduce waste, conserve natural resources, and drive down greenhouse gas emissions. How is us dairy tackling greenhouse gases? Many farms use anaerobic digestors to turn the methane from manure into renewable energy that can power farms, towns, and electric cars. Visit you as dairy dot COM's Last sustainability to learn more.
Lucky land slots asking people what's the weirdest place you've gotten lucky?
Lucky in line at the Delhi I guess.
Ah, in my dentist's office more than once.
Actually do I have to say?
Yes?
You do? In the car before my kids PTA meeting? Really yes, excuse me?
What's the weirdest place you've gotten lucky?
I never win? And tell well, there you have it. You could get lucky anywhere.
Playing at Lucky landslots dot com play for free right now.
Are you feeling lucky?
No'll purchase necessary vegdltgroup what we're prevorited buy low htplus.
Terms and conditions apply.
This is Malcolm Gladwell from Revisionist History. eBay Motors is here for the ride. With some elbow grease, fresh installs, and a whole lot of love, you transformed one hundred thousand miles and a body full of rust into a drive that's all your own, break kits, led, headlights, whatever you need, eBay Motors has it and with eBay Guaranteed Fit, it's guaranteed to fit your ride the first time, every time, or your money back plus. At these prices, you're burning rubber, not cash. Keep your ride or die alive at ebaymotors dot com. Eligible items only.
Exclusions apply
