Mars volcanos. Was there once a sea?

0:00 Speaker 1 What is today is Steve Kates, otherwise known as Doctor Sky, and he always comes on on Sunday mornings, tell us to expand our minds and look up into sky and what are we going to see and what are we going to dream about? Steve, what’s up on the front page today?

0:18 Speaker 2 Well, John, good morning to you and the listeners. We start off with the innermost planet Mercury, which by the way, people can actually see this weekend if you look in and excuse me, into the northwest sky after sunset. Mercury, as we know, is a very elusive planet. But the Europeans sent the spacecraft toward Mercury called bebby Colombo. And

0:38 what it does or what it’s doing, is it actually detected like we have on the Earth, these auroras where the skylights up from protons from the Sun. But since Mercury has hardly an atmosphere, this spacecraft saying that this particular planet, which is bathed in the heat of the Sun only thirty six million miles away from the Sun,

0:58 auroras actually exist on this planet, Mercury. And what happens is protons from the Sun hit the dark side of Mercury shoot up into the above atmosphere if you want to call it a slight atmosphere and actually go and pound the ground on the daylight side. So on Mercury, this is bizarre Aurora’s John would start off on the

1:19 ground and if you were on the surface of Mercury, you would see this amazing kaleidoscope of colors. Well, the universe continues to get more interesting, don’t you think?

1:30 Speaker 1 It certainly does. And we know a fraction a fraction of what we are going on. And that’s why I think so many people enjoy your piece every Sunday morning, because it adds to the mysteries. It adds to our ways of dreaming about learning someday of what’s going on.

1:52 Speaker 2 Well, thanks John for the compliment, and you know we continue with this mystery of the week. We talked about it before. The question is the mystery what happened to the water on Mars? But it gets more interesting. Mars is only about forty two hundred miles in diameter, obviously smaller than the Earth, but this particular planet has the

2:11 largest volcano in the Solar System. It goes up to a seventy five thousand foot height. Remember, Mount Everest is just a little over maybe twenty nine thousand feet. It’s as big John as the entire state of Arizona, where I’m at three hundred and seventy five miles wide. So that’s the largest big volcano in the Solar System. It’s

2:32 actually larger than what we call on Earth. Mount Everest is not the tallest of all mountains, at least from the surface of the Earth. It looks that way. Manta Loa and Manikeaa, of the volcanoes in Hawaii, are actually taller than Mount Everest. But let’s go back to Mars.

2:46 Scientists are saying that this particular big giant volcano by the way, called Olympus Mons was active billions of years ago, and around it, they theorized, was this gigantic deep ocean. So Mars in its early days was very active with volcanism.

3:04 And imagine seeing John, a volcano the size of the state of Arizona. But where the heck did the water go? And the simple answer is at least a complicated answer that astronomers hope to find. The answer officially to is that Mars lost its magnetic field. But I think between you and I, a lot more things happened. But this

3:23 volcano is absolutely massive on a small planet.

3:28 Speaker 1 Well, yeah, certainly sounds like it. How is our rovers going up there in Mars.

3:36 Speaker 2 Well, we find Perseverance is still continuing. There’s obvious changes in the weather on Mars and what we’re going through right now, John is remember the light time that it takes to send signals between Earth and Mars. Mars is one of its most distant distances from the Earth right now, we’re talking about two hundred million miles, so it takes

3:56 those signals a long time. But the rovers continue to do I can say there to be stellar work, no pun intended. What they’re doing is particularly perseverance. It’s actually drilling into the surface of Mars and removing in these small what we call them type test tubes, so that in the future a Mars return sampling mission will land

4:14 on the surface of Mars near let’s say, Perseverance scoop up hopefully this sounds like science fiction, but it’s real and return those precious samples back to the Earth from the red planet. So Mars is still continuing to be on the front page. It’s amazing how those robots continue to work and fairly flawless, but a lot of them

4:34 are done and use that as solar power. And the little Ingenuity helicopter it had a period of time where dust actually settled on the solar panels, but hopefully that’s been cleared because that’s done. Amazing work as a tiny little drone. But there’s something John and closing closer to home, scienceists.

4:53 Korean scientists are saying that removing too much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere may simply not fix climate change. What does this all about? But changes in atmospheric circulation may persist for centuries. They’re saying after CO two decreases. So you did an experiment and they hypothetically said, let’s increase the amount of carbon dioxide for one hundred and forty years,

5:15 and let’s see what would happen if we tried to reduce it over another one hundred and forty years, And they found out that the climate would not return to normal in their simulation for another two hundred years. So this is amazing. We’re all talking about global warming. Some people talk about years ago global cooling. But the simple

5:34 point I’m trying to get across to the audience, and hopefully you know very simply today a theory is that even though CO two is considered a demon substance, it’s still necessary for life on Earth. But these scientists are saying that, well, even if you tried to decrease it, you may have some serious circulation problems in the atmosphere.

5:55 And one of the reasons John, that this whole big, serious summer here in Phoenix we call it the Epicenter of Hell, is that these weather systems get stalled and these high pressure systems. More about this hopefully in future additions, But I wonder what your take on this is. It’s just so fascinating that we’re talking about what might happen

6:15 if you tried to reduce cot CO two. Excuse me, but necessarily that may not be the solution to climate change.

6:24 Speaker 1 Wow. And we had a person from NASA addressing our breakfast group last Saturday, and we got at it and he felt that the warm temperatures is permanent climate change. And I said, well, you know, the Earth traditionally goes up and down over hundreds of years. Absolutely, what else would you like this Sunday morning?

6:52 Speaker 2 Well, John, I want to end off always on the super positive note, the things that people can actually see in the sky. We talked about the innermost planet Murderer. You can actually see it with the naked eye. Look just about twenty minutes after sunset in the northwest, if you have a clear and unobstructed view of the horizon.

7:08 But after that beautiful supermon by the way, we get another one on the thirtieth. We call that the super blue Moon. That’ll be the closest full moon of the entire year. But John, the meteor shower called the Perseas is actually you know, warming up. It’ll peak on the morning hours of August the thirteenth. But what we can

7:26 tell people is look in the northeast sky after midnight, even though the moonlight might interfere a little bit, but toward the twelfth and thirteenth. I’ve watched it for over forty years, and this is a great sky show. If you’re away from the city lights, even city lights, may be able to see a few northeast sky around one

7:43 am till sunrise. The sky may pour forth many many meteors. And to learn always much more about what we do proudly here on seventy seven Talk Radio seventy seven WABC, simply go to WABC radio dot com for the doctor Sky experience, John. We have a brand new update. People can listen in and they can learn so much more

8:02 about things that they can see as we open people’s minds up on Sundays on the Cats round Table. Proud to be part of your show.

8:10 Speaker 1 Thank you so much, Steve Cats, and we’ll catch up with you again real soon. Enjoy your ride to the mountains.

8:16 Speaker 2 Have a good morning. Thank you,