The marvels of the Fall sky.

0:00 Speaker 1 Where is today is Steve Kates, otherwise known as doctor Sai. That’s with us every Sunday morning, and it allows us to relax, look up in the skies and scratch a what the heck is up there? Steve Kates tell us what’s going on this week?

0:15 Speaker 2 Well, John, good morning to you and everybody listening to the Cat’s Roundtable. I’m still here in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I was over at the International Balloon Fiesta. They had about three to four hundred thousand people show up at this event all about hot air balloons. But they asked me to be on stage with the local ABC affiliate

0:34 here to talk about it. But I hope everybody in the New York listening area and around the nation had a chance to see the eclipse safely. That’s an event that we’ll be talking about. But he builds up John to the bee event next year in April, the giant total solar eclipse in April, and we’ll have more to

0:50 say about that. But talking about the Sun, we want to talk about something interesting today, John, the NASA, this Parker Solar Probe has just reached the new and set a new record, a record for what it’s traveled faster than any human spacecraft built spacecraft ever in history. Get a load of this. Back in September. It races around

1:11 the Sun at three hundred and ninety five thousand miles an hour on its seventeenth orbit of the Sun. What’s interesting about this if in comparison, it’s like if you could fly from New York City to la in twenty seconds and the gravity of the Sun. John pushes this thing.

1:28 This is great technology, amazing stuff as it helps us learn more about our.

1:32 Speaker 1 Sun and we need to know how long does it go? How long does it go on like that?

1:37 Speaker 2 John, It’s going to continue for a number of years. But get a load of this, folks. John got closest to the Sun of any space probe ever, only four and a half million miles, which if you and I were sitting in a spacecraft like that, we just simply wouldn’t exist. It has so many temperature shielding things. What

1:57 do you think of temperature is well, it’s estimating on the other side, the heat side of that. They’re talking probably about seven thousand degrees fahrenheit, which is amazing that on the other side of this big solar shield that they have the temperatures can operate in a near decent environment that electronics work, So that’s amazing. Only a distance

2:20 from one side of the spacecraft to the other of about maybe six feet you have that much shielding. So great kudos to the scientists who’ve developed the Parker Solar Probe. But the real reason it’s there, John, is to help us learn more about the dynamics of the Sun. And we move on to another story that’s very much related

2:37 and well everybody should be paying an attention to. We found out in eighteen fifty nine we have.

2:44 Speaker 1 Before we move on, have we discovered anything new?

2:48 Speaker 2 We have, John, We’ve understood that the solar energy that comes off the Sun, these coronal mass ejections. We’re studying more about how we can see that they work. Now, here’s a weird thing. The temperature of the surface of the Sun, if there was a surface, is twelve thousand degrees fahrenheit. They’re finding out and trying to answer the

3:07 question is how can the outer atmosphere of the Sun, called the corona be millions of degrees in temperature. So they’re understanding that there’s a strange physics going on there and it’s all going to help us hopefully understand how these solar energy and these pernal mass ejections actually occur.

3:24 And now to talk about the second solar story. Here, in eighteen fifty nine, we had this massive solar flare we all know about it, called Carrington, but scientists are telling us that fourteen thousand years ago an event that was thousands of times more powerful than that, called the Miyaki event. So this is interesting, John. The Sun is

3:44 reaching a peak of its solar cycle. The Sun’s poles are actually changing, they’re flipping. So we just need to know that we’re kind of like in a well, not a direct hit, but the Sun’s energy is just so powerful, and we live in this electronic world where we’re so susceptible to these flares, but we’re learning so much more

4:04 about the Sun, even though it’s taken us so long to do it.

4:09 Speaker 1 Wow, that’s some story.

4:11 Speaker 2 It is amazing when we talk about this, you know, this whole story about the mystery of the week. And this may sound very bizarre to people, but a gentleman that I had the honor of talking and interviewing a long time ago. His name is Rizwan Urk. He’s a billionaire in the gaming industry, and he wrote a book

4:29 called a Simulation Hypothesis. What he was saying, simply, John, is that we basically live in an artificially created world. I know this sounds crazy when people are having their first, second, or third cup of coffee.

4:41 Speaker 1 On a Sunday.

4:42 Speaker 2 If you look at the movie The Matrix, he’s saying that we live in this simulation, that everything that is around us is already run by some sort of a force behind the curtain, so to speak. But a scientist are saying this even more specifically, and they’re finding out that there’s something called the second law of information dynamics.

5:01 Now this gets very complicated, but scientists are understanding through quantum physics, John, which is just so amazing. If we think one in one is two in our reality world, one in one may be three in the cosmic realm, in the world of quantum physics.

5:16 Speaker 1 So isn’t that.

5:17 Speaker 2 Amazing that somehow, some way we may all be living in a simulation that’s controlled by some force beyond what we call simply like somebody behind the curtain. I find that totally amazing and maybe shocking. What do you think about that?

5:34 Speaker 1 Well, yeah, you scratch your head. Sometimes people say that we actually got created a half hour ago with all the memories.

5:42 Speaker 2 Absolutely, you said it past. And that’s even simpler than what I tried to explain, because really, John, nobody really knows. But it’s fascinating as we explore and keep people’s minds open and expand their minds on things that we may not necessarily think about with all the craziness that’s going on and a lot of good world but all the

6:01 things that are going on in the world today, it’s always good to take a reprieve from that and expand their minds. And we end off by talking about what people can actually see. So this week, John, we’re approaching a meteor shop or call the orionids. They all come from the constellation Ryan, of course. So if people look

6:18 in the early morning sky, say around three am to sunrise, this is the week right around the morning of the twenty second it peaks. But these are all pieces of Halley’s Comet, one of the most famous commets of all.

6:30 So if you’re not going to be around in twenty sixty one when Haley’s comes around again, just think these little debris, this bit of debris that you see from the comet. Well, it’s all from Helly’s comment. Meteor showers are fascinating, John, and a lot of people get to really relax and enjoy these, and I’m hoping the listeners

6:48 here of the Cats Roundtable can partake in it. And we always remind people, why yeah.

6:55 Speaker 1 That we look up at the sky and try to relax a little.

6:58 Speaker 2 Absolutely, John, we all need it, and we have so much to say, but I know it’s limited time and appreciate your time. Always. More information at WABC radio dot com with the Doctor Sky Experience on all these great realms from astronomy, space, aviation, and weather, and of course John closer to home stories of American exceptionalism that make

7:18 our country great. And we continue to believe that Steve.

7:23 Speaker 1 Kate have a great time of watching those big balloons and enjoying life. And we’ll catch up with you again next week.

7:31 Speaker 2 Thank you, John, a privilege and honor, and a good morning to everybody listening. Thank you,