Marvels of the July skies.

0:00 Speaker 1 With us today is Steve Kates. Welcome to the fourth of July weekend. We also know him as doctor Sky and he is our in house genius. As far as when we look at the sky, what is up there and we learn something new when we look down in the bottom of the ocean, he knows about those things too. Uh,

0:20 Steve Kates, Happy fourth of July weekend. What’s going on this weekend?

0:26 Speaker 2 Well, happy fourth of July to you, John and the listeners America’s two hundred and forty seventh birthday. But I thought i’d do the back of this program first. We always talk about what people can see and if people have an opportunity over the holiday weekend to look due south in the sky, maybe about thirty degrees high, there’s

0:43 a brilliant blue star called Spiker, and it’s in the constellation of Virgo. John, that star is about two hundred and forty seven light years away. What does that mean? It means as you’re looking at that star, the sacred Constitution of the United States was signed. And how about it, John, the light of that star just got here now. As

1:04 if you’re seeing that star’s light from when they signed the Constitution, I think that’s totally amazing. As we open up our minds on Sunday, what say you.

1:13 Speaker 1 Well, I mean those stars are up there, and when we talk about stars, we talk about millions of years, and Price was only born two thousand years ago.

1:28 Speaker 2 Absolutely, And then we go on to something else, John, closer to home. Virgin Galactic this past the week just launched their first commercial flight. Now they’ve had a lot of difficulties. I’ve been trying to get commercial flights going to space since two thousand and four. But the spaceship two actually launched with some Italian scientists and of course

1:48 some people from their company at Virgin Galactic. But John, they have a backlog of eight hundred people that are now put down. I believe some four hundred and fifty thousand dollars each to take this ninety minute ride. So they went well above, say, fifty miles where we believe space begins. But it’s kind of interesting. But on a

2:09 strain side, we should be asking you and maybe Larry Kudlow. After the successful mission, their stocks fell this morning. It was at a high of about sixty two plus dollars back in twenty twenty one, but it went down nine point five percent after today’s flight, I’m kind of missed on that. What are you say? That’s kind of interesting?

2:28 Speaker 1 Well, i’ll tell you what. I think that after this experimental or whatever you want to call it, a deep dive in the Titan, Uh, maybe bigionnaires a little bit more nervous about going up into new type aircraft or new type submarines, whether you’re going up or whether he going down.

2:51 Speaker 2 Well, you know, it makes sense, John, and I know like in all you know, due respective Virgin Galactic, they’ve tried, they’ve had a few, you know, serious accidents where they lost some people. So maybe there’s the answer right in front of us that until we can maybe guarantee, and who knows, there’s no guarantees in life. But maybe, like

3:07 we talked about last week when we had this particular titan craft, we obviously have to have some better controls over the testing and some regulations. You know, even Elon Musk when he launches his giant you know, starship rocket.

3:20 We know that that one didn’t go off too well. But there were so many concerns by the EPA. But I think we can all work together and maybe hopefully figure this thing out. Because space is of course the next frontier. But John, we always have the mystery of the week. And here’s something bizarre. Back in nineteen seventy six,

3:37 America sent these Viking spacecraft. They landed on Mars, two very successful missions. But it’s true we might have killed life that we might have detected on Mars. What’s that the particular Viking sound some chlorinated organics, you know, little complex molecules, and what we did the spacecraft added water to it, and that they say might have killed whatever

3:59 that type of life was, because we thought that that was contamination that was on board the spacecraft from the Earth. But that’s interesting. We’ve never had that situation occur, at least now the new rovers. But John, you know, this is a great subject to talk about. Hopefully they’ll find some organic life and we may have found it, and

4:19 once again we might have unintentionally destroyed it. I think that story is most amazing.

4:25 Speaker 1 Well, I believe that life exists in many, many, many places, and the question is intelligent life. I’m sure at someplace, and you know, whether it’s the cleons or whether it’s the whatever, but it probably does exist somewhere, and I hope in our lifetime Steve takes me and you our lifetime that we’re able to find out the truth.

5:01 Speaker 2 Totally agree, John, And in closing some things that people can see. In addition to talking about that star Spika, which of course when you see it, the light left when the Constitution was signed, we find Venus and Mars in the northwest, John, they’re going to conjunct on July first, about three degrees apart. That’s a beautiful sight. But even

5:19 more spectacular is the first of three months of supermoons. So as you’re looking at the sky on Sunday, that beautiful full buck moon you see rising the supermoon, John, is when the moon is closest to the Earth, and it also lies at the position when it’s exactly full.

5:37 So if by chance you look at the moon tonight and into Monday, it looks a little bigger and brighter. It truly is. We get two full moons, two supermoons in August, and then the most beautiful one, in my opinion, is the super moon that we have in September on the twenty ninth, obviously, John, the beautiful full harvest moon.

5:56 So we always want to keep our minds open and expand them.

6:00 Speaker 1 One sideblock question. A couple days ago, the post guard brought up some pieces of the Titan which they felt that they’ve had some human genes on him. Have you heard anything more about that? And what kind of equipment does her coast guard have to go to that food down to a retreat.

6:25 Speaker 2 John, It’s fascinating, And again, I think we talked to her last week about how many of these secrets they knew when this imploded. They didn’t share it with the audience because I’m sure our navy has so many sophisticated ways to track objects. But I’m even more amazed that they pulled that they actually have hard remains of this.

6:41 It’s still speculative and I don’t have a confirmation that there’s human remains on there, but it’s the sad story. We want to be positive on Sunday mornings, but the reality is when not imploded, the temperatures inside there momentarily for a microsecond literally just vaporized everything. And that means all the you know, human body parts, but we really

7:01 don’t know, and we’ll keep our minds open and try to explore more. But it’s such a horrific way to go, and obviously if we get these certifications to test these tile craft. Maybe future generations can do this, but I don’t know for sure, John, if they actually found human remains at point, some speculation is not fact.

7:20 Speaker 1 Well, thank you Steve Kates, and have a great foota July weekend. God bless America.

7:25 Speaker 2 Thank you, God bless America. Thank you. John had a good day.