Earth's Extreme Forces and the Fight Over Pluto

0:00 Speaker 1 Sunday morning. Well, every Sunday we have Steve Cates, otherwise known as Dr. Sky. And he finished working at 2 o’clock this morning, New York time. And he’s on every Friday night from midnight to 2 a.m. Saturday morning and Sunday from midnight to 2 a.m. Sunday morning. Well, Steve Cates, I’m glad you woke up to be with us two

0:28 on Sunday morning here in New York. Give us what good stuff you have for us today.

0:33 Speaker 2 Well, John, always a privilege to be with you and the audience as we welcome you to Sunday. John, we’re going to talk a little bit about Earth mysteries. We’ll start off with earthquakes. Now, people think they understand about the dynamics, that is, scientists of earthquakes. Probably more recently, earthquakes on the increase because of changes deep within the

0:52 Earth’s core. Remember, the Earth has a big magnetic liquid core that spins pretty violently, and maybe blobs of that material come out, shaking the Earth into the crust. But, John, not to go through a litany of the greatest earthquakes ever.

1:06 The biggest magnitude on the Richter scale that we believe we’ve seen, at least in modern times, was the Great Chilean Earthquake in 1960, a 9.5 on the Richter scale. Another Alaskan earthquake in 1964, 9.2. And here’s a really disastrous one that many people may remember. In 2004, the Great Sumatra Indonesian quake, which also had a tsunami, John,

1:29 allegedly 280,000 people perished, not only from the earthquake, but also from the tsunami. And then in Japan in 2011, a 9.1 earthquake. We all heard about the Fukushima nuclear reactor and the thing that happened with the great tsunami. But, John, the question I’ll throw out there, and here it is, can we ever have a 10 on the Richter scale?

1:50 And according to geologists, no, you cannot. And here’s the reason why. They measure the intensity of these earthquakes by the length of the fault under the Earth. So in order to have a 10 on the Richter scale, you’d have to have, get a load of this, a fault as wide as the entire Earth. That doesn’t calm us,

2:07 but that is pretty interesting, don’t you think?

2:09 Speaker 1 But that means from 9.5 to 10, it’s got to increase substantially every 0.1 above.

2:18 Speaker 2 Yes, absolutely, John. And imagine, again, I’ve never felt an earthquake like the ones we’ve been talking about, but many of the people that I’ve actually talked to and probably even yourself and others listening, that is true. Every tenth of a point that you go up on that is an increase that’s what they call logarithmic. It’s not just

2:36 like adding one and one and two. It goes up in a square, you know, a square. So obviously, thank God we don’t have the high capability of a 10, but that doesn’t lessen our interest in earthquakes and try to prevent earthquakes. And of course, be prepared as best as people can. An interesting story. Going more, John, into

2:54 the earth science area, we find the highest earth temperatures in the ocean ever recorded. On August 22nd of this year, the average earth temperature of the ocean was 70 degrees Fahrenheit. That may not shock a lot of people, but John, the oceans make up and take up, I should say, more than 90% of the heat from the burning of

3:14 combustible fuels, even though we report it and say fossil fuels, which is really not a true story. Probably the big culprit in this year, the big El Nino, a super El Nino that’s affecting large parts of the world. Incredible stuff happening here on Mother Earth. As you and I always talk about, with all these disasters and the sad stories,

3:34 Mother Earth, right, John, has the ability to replenish itself, and thank God it does.

3:39 Speaker 1 Yes, me and you have talked about it. The planet Earth is a living entity, whoever our creator is. And it does replenish itself. The oil that comes out from the Earth, that moves the Earth’s crusts around, or whatever the plateaus we’re talking about, the planet Earth makes it to make it easier to move around. Yes.

4:04 Speaker 2 And we end off always positively with a great mystery of the week. And here it is, John. Why was the planet Pluto demoted? And I have a lot of personal experience with this. On August 24th, 2006, a group of astronomers, like a UN of astronomy, only 4% of the entire group that was present actually voted to the

4:24 demote this object, Pluto. So what’s about Pluto that’s so amazing? In school, my instructor was the discoverer, Dr. Clyde Tombaugh. He passed on and they sent the spacecraft called New Horizons. But why demote an object like this? It’s only 1,473 miles in diameter, smaller than the moon. And if you were able to land there, 5%, like I mentioned, of

4:45 the astronomers in the world, or 4% or 5% voted to change it. So, John, the 200-person pound weight on the planet Pluto, or now we call it the dwarf, they would weigh 12.5 pounds. But why are we talking about this? Because the interesting thing is, it really should be a planet in many people’s minds. It has five

5:04 attendant moons. And the big reason, John, that this whole controversy exists is, is nobody can really agree, John, on the definition of what a planet is. So back 20 years ago, on August the 24th, they demoted Pluto from a planet to a tiny dwarf. An interesting story in science.

5:22 A lot of scientists are not happy.

5:24 Speaker 1 Very interesting. And also, in the future, let’s talk more about Antarctica.

5:31 Speaker 2 And, you know, and....

5:36 Speaker 1 There’s some interesting stories going on around about it.

5:40 Speaker 2 John, I agree with you, and we shall do that, because we mentioned before in other reports the Russian station called Vostok. It registered the lowest temperature on Earth, and they’re 11,000 feet on top of the ice. But, John, underneath, very briefly, Lake Vostok is actually a fluid, you know, watered lake underground, and some say there were many forests

6:00 in the past. And, yes, we’ll continue about the Great Mysteries of that amazing continent, Antarctica. Good to be with you, John, and a happy Sunday to you and the listeners.

6:11 Speaker 1 Thank you so much, and we’ll catch up again real soon.