Selenology (THE MOON) with Raquel Nuno

Oh hi, it's that friend from high school who calls shotgun and then leans over you to scream their.

Order into the drive through.

Ali ward back with another episode. Apologies, oh man, this topic is one that is close to my heart and our planet. In full disclosure, I knew very little about any of this before this interview, so I may have asked the most stupidest questions of any episode to date. Which is exciting. That's exciting, So get ready to get cozy with the moon, our little buddy floating out there. What is its deal? But first, my buddies, Thank you for supporting on Patreon, patreon dot com, slash ologies. A

Any tips on microphone? Used to just look talk straight into it.

Yeah, okay, let me adjust your levels a little bit more. Okay, cal recal orcal okay? Good. So what exactly would you say when you introduce someone and say what you do? What do you tell them?

I tell them that I'm a planetary geologist. That's just what I say. And people usually have no idea what that means. They're like, I know geology, I don't know planetary what does that even mean? So then I say I'm a space geologist. I study rocks on other planets.

And that's what I tell them, And then they lose their minds and then they're like what does that what?

Yes, Yes, that's what I do.

And so what does a space geologist necessarily do?

So I say that I'm actually an armchair geologist, So I sit on a chair and do geology.

You're recliningologists, lining or geologists.

Yeah, so we we have samples from rocks in other worlds, but most of the time we don't, So I essentially use spacecraft data to analyze either images. I also do a lot of programming, so a lot of computational modeling of what's happening surface processes that are happening in other worlds.

And so you are crunching numbers and data to try to figure out what is happening with the rocks on other planets. That's right, that's what I do. That's crazy.

All of the planets are just a few of the planets, just a few of the planets. So my two babies are the Moon and Mars.

So Roquel got her bachelor's in geophysics and space physics, she got a master's inn geology, and she's now completing her PhD in geology and planetary science. This is all at UCLA. The first day that I met her, Roquel mentioned that she studies rocks and she's always liked rocks. And I was like, Rockel, huh, Rockel, Yeah, how about that? And she said that she'd never really connected that she has the word rock in her name. And this discovery, as you can imagine, thrilled your old dad ward here

But the moon is my passion project. It's the I love the moon. It's just one of the coolest planetary bodies ever, and it's so close, so it's you see it every day. It's just so tangible to me and to a lot of people.

So we do a lot of staring up at it. Yes, we do a lot of moon and toward the moon. I remember someone was telling me once like Isaac ms Rahie, the fashion designer, was on a podcast and he was he got caught up being like, wait, is the moon a planet? Is the moon a planet? And he had one of those moments where he just didn't remember. Okay, So I look this up because if I don't share it, I will regret it to my grave. And this was

I plant at it from looking back.

The planet Moon from the planet. The Moon is star.

The Moon is a planet, Dar, The Sun is a star.

Is the moon really a planet? The Moon is a planet.

Don't look at me like that.

The Sun is a star. Is the sun not a star? I don't know what the sun?

The Sun.

Is a star. The moon is not a planet. I know it. I you were trying to take me down that road.

Is not a planetstening to.

Someone.

I can guarantee someone's googling right now it was a planet. Is not a planet?

What else?

It's a planet? Not I believe it's a star or something. It is a do A lot of people tend to think that the Moon is a planet.

Uh okay that if you'd ask a planetary scientist, they would say, yeah, it's a planet because it acts like a planet, it behaves like a planet, but it's just orbiting the Earth versus orbiting the Sun. So it's not in the true definition of what a planet is. It's not a planet, but I have to say planetary body because it's not technically a planet.

So it's a planet if it's orbiting the Sun.

That's right.

And I mean, I'm going to ask just stupid ask questions. I have no shame. How do you guys determine what's a planet? What's an exoplanet? What's a planetary I mean a planetary body is not orbiting a sun, but it could be orbiting another planet.

Well, a planetair body can be a planet as well. Oh okay, so the Earth is a planetary body, but so are asteroids. Asteroids are planetary bodies because they're orbiting. They're in our Solar system, so they're a planetary body.

I feel like it's kind of like a not all cack not all succulents are cactive, but all cacti are.

Yeah, yeah, something like that. Okay, Yeah, So if you have to be a planet, if you so, you have to be round, So you have to have enough gravity to have formed a around shaped object. So there's a lot of asteroids that are that look like potatoes or like weird dumb bell things, and those are not could never be planets because they're not shaped like a planet is. So you have to have enough mass that you create

I don't think I've ever realized that we're kind of like a swiffer, Like that's part of where we get all of our stuff to make things is just by picking it up as we go. Yeah, so it's actually interesting.

We Earth acquires a lot of mass just by traveling through space. And when you see like meteor showers, that's us traveling through a trail of rocks of stuff that then encounters our atmosphere, or that we encounter it and then they come crashing in beautiful light shows in the sky.

That's so exciting. Yeah, what voice was that? I'm sorry, I just could not contain myself here thinking about meteor showers, and I sound like I've just found a kitten in my pocket for like most of this episode anyway. And have we always had the moon?

So the moon essentially? So the moon formed very very soon after the Earth did so essentially when you're thinking about geologic time, Yes, the moon has always been here with us.

And why did you grow up loving the moon so much?

Because you see it? You see it. It's some and it changes every day. It's either a little bit brighter, a little bit darker. It's like a kid that you would hear songs about the moon or or read like the Little Prince. I love the little Prince.

You know who hasn't been impacted by the Little Prince? I mean I was for sure right, no pun on the impact crater. So The Little Prince is a novella and it was written by this French writer, poet and aviator whose name I can't pronounce in French. So I'm going to sabotage it and try pronouncing it with a Texas accent. Antoine to Saint Aukesbury. Now, the book was published in nineteen forty three. It's about a prince who lived on a tiny asteroid. Anyway, it's this pensive, moody,

So I actually grew up in Portugal, in Lisbon, so I did live in the city. But my birthday is August eleven, and around that time there's a meteor shower that peaks on the twelfth, So for my birthday. Every night we would go, me and my family and my friends. We would go out to the beach to watch the meteor showers. That was like a thing every year we would go and do so. Yes, there was pollution, but at the same time, there was this event around my

My god, it was like free firework. It was free fire It's just just for me. And when did you decide to start studying the moon and studying planetary chology.

Oh man, it's been a very, very windy road. That wasn't always the plan. I actually had an internship at JPL when I was a community college student, but I was studying electrical engineering. I was not going to do planetary science. I wasn't going to be doing science at all because I wasn't sure that was a practical thing. I actually didn't even know really what a scientist. I had no idea. My parents were artists, like they were not scientists. I hadn't really been exposed to what a

But working at.

GPL, this is where they it's a Jet propulsion Laboratory here in California in Pasadena, where they build a lot of these rovers and spacecraft that go study other planets. That's our discovery. WHOA, there's this whole field out there that is just dedicated to study our solar system, our world, and the world's near us, and just opened up this whole world that I didn't even know existed about science.

I switched to geophysics and space physics.

Because I now I knew that there was there that was something I could study. I could study the planets, and I could help send spacecraft to other worlds, and I wanted to be part of that. I wanted to be part of that world, the.

Wather in free wish I could be part of that. Take me back a little bit too, because I understand you were in the military. I was, yes, And so before you got to community college even what was your what was your process?

Yeah, So I was seventeen when I graduated high school and I joined the US Air Force right after graduation.

When did you move from Lisbon to.

The US, I was eleven years old, So I moved un I says, when I was eleven. And so the reason I joined the military was my my father had terminal cancer. Was he was dying and because we weren't US citizens at that time. You couldn't get he couldn't work, so he couldn't He didn't have health care, and so you couldn't get Medicaid or Medicare because we weren't citizens. So he was without health care. And the just the

Oh don't cry, No.

It's and honestly, I think that that's the thing that I'm the most proud of in my life, is to be able to You're going to make me cry too, but it's it's a thing that I'm the most proud of that I think I've ever done. Because I was able to be there for him, both financially and emotionally. The Air Force was great about helping, so I would. I would they. I worked the night shift so that I could during the day, I could take him to the hospital, that I could take him to his appointments.

So it was it was great for that. Sorry. I was fully red faced, wet cheeks, ugly crying recording this. Can you clone yourself? Can we just repopulate Mars with just you all? So when in when how long did you serve in the Air Force?

Four years? I did four years, so I was in a US citizen when I went in. I got my citizenship through the military, which is great, but I couldn't get any of the cool jobs in the military because I couldn't get secret clearance, so I couldn't I couldn't work with satellites or like the space side of the military, which I'd always liked space.

They don't tell you about what really happened in Roswell and they don't tell me. No, I think I'm just kidding. Well, don't don't even start with my.

So I picked how I ended up picking the job that I got. So I worked in the medical field. I was the person who draws your blood and tests it. Oh, that's what I did for four years, testing people's urine and poop and growing bag teria.

Yeah, you were just on like the bodily fluid schimmany.

Yes, that's what I did for four years. But I didn't know what I wanted to do when I got out. I didn't really like wasn't crazy about the medical field. I didn't want to stay in there. I knew I liked science and math, but I hadn't taken a math or science class in like four years, and I was really afraid to fail. So I bartended for many years, just trying to find myself and figure out what I

I study rocks.

And it's funny to think that a lot of the rovers, like all of the rovers that have gone to Mars, they're all robotic geologists.

It's that's what they are.

They're not astronomers. They're geologists.

Yeah they're not. They're looking down, they're not They're not right. Yeah, that's right. That's hot goss about the moon. Okay, so I didn't learn until way too late, and I was like, the Moon is made of a bunch of junk from Earth that just maybe chunked off. Explain to me, where does this goddamn moon come from? Yeah.

So the cool thing is actually we're not one hundred percent sure what, which is really really cool. It's just how many science questions are still left answering. We don't know that much about the Moon. There's still so much more to learn. But the idea is the prevalent, the

And it's gravity that's keeping it all together and into a ball.

Yeah, that's how planets get bigger. You start out with little dust particles that are electrically attracted to each other, and they start getting sticking together, and everything has mass. Even a tiny dust particle has mass, and so it starts attracting the next dust particle, and then now you have little pebbles, and now the pebbles start getting stuck together, and then eventually you form a planet that's gravitationally bound to itself.

Do you think there's any place on Earth where it's like we got in a collision. We still have a little bit of a dent.

Yes, there's actually lots of craters that we see on Earth, well not lots compared to them. And when you look at the Moon, all those dots that you see on it, those are craters, and there's still some here on Earth. The thing about Earth is we have plate tectonics, which is always recycling our crust. We have the atmosphere and the wind and water, which erases a lot of the evidence that we have of impacts that have happened here on Earth. But there's a really beautiful one in Arizona.

So side note, I haven't been, but the Nerd Brigade orized a trip in a motor home a few years ago,

Well, I'm spending on a corner in Winslow, Arizona.

The guy in the Eagles doesn't even mention the crater in the song, though, which is a disappointment. But this nearby meteor crater is sometimes known as the Behringer Crater, after mining engineer Daniel Moreau Barringer, who first postulated, Hey, y'all, I think this huge ass crater was caused by a meteor. Let me dig into it and become rich. So he got the right to mine it, thinking there must be like a huge chunk of iron under the surface, worth

We have here on Earth, but our atmosphere protects us from a lot of them. If the rock is small enough, it'll just break up in the atmosphere, whereas on the Moon there is no atmosphere. I'll just slam into the ground and it'll be left. There'll be a hole there. And that's actually one of the cool things about studying

So the Moon is kind of like a responsible sober friend who recalls details that haven't been blurred by atmosphere or shifting plates. Also, what's of the Moon's core? Is it like a jobbreaker? Raquel says, it has a core, it's just much smaller than the Earth's. Then she told me something truly crazy. I lost my damn mind. What's one of the.

Cool things that I think when I think about the Moon and the impact that caused it was there was so much energy that collected from that original impact that form the Moon that the entire Moon was just a magma ocean. So that's the Yeah, just imagine the whole moon. No, just magma. Yeah, so that's what that's the prevailing theory, and we have evidence for that. So it's just lava.

Again, a lava ocean. The moon was a lava ocean. Was the lava ocean here we are thinking it's cheese, but at one point it was haben narrow? Okay, So what is life?

It's here on Earth we have different types of rocks. We have igneous rocks, outimentary rocks, whereas the Moon, it's essentially all that light stuff is just one one thing and the only way that you can form something like that is if it all just pretty much formed at the same time from the same stuff. And so we think it's just a big anorthosie crust, except for the dark regions that you see on the Moon, and those are ancient volcanic planes.

Wait, so there were volcanos also on the Moon. Yes, okay, yes, okay, yeah, what a back store. So we so something hits Earth, shit flies into the atmosphere. At what point does it be called lava?

Well, from all the heat, from all the heat of it, like heat, you know, when you hit something, you generate energy, and that energy is probably heat and make sound in it and whatnot. But yeah, it's heat, and so just from accretion, which is stuff coming together. It just melted the whole because it's not that big, right the Moon. I mean it is big, but not that big, so it's it's easier to melt the whole thing.

How big around is the moon comparatively? What's the size difference between the moon.

So if you were so, if the Earth were to be a basketball mm hmm, then the Moon is a tennis ball. Oh yeah, perfect, Yeah, done, amazing, That's how I.

Like to think of it. Yeah. And then what about these volcanoes.

Yeah, so they were a long time ago, like three billion years ago, so very ancient volcanoes that flooded towards So there's not a lot of them on the far side of the moon. So it's not the dark side. It's the far side because it's it's not dark.

We've been saying it wrong. Thanks King Floyd.

There is no dark side in the moon really, matter of fact, it's all dak The only thing that makes it look light is the sun.

How dare you? So?

The side near to us is actually crust, is thinner, so it's easier for lavas to bubble up, and so what you see when you look up those dark regions. We're just ancient lava planes that flowed and found a low place on the Moon and just settle there.

Okay, so now this is very stupid, but where is the moon in relation? It goes around like where is the moon at any given time? How do moon phases work? Just like, pretend I'm someone you met at the car wash who doesn't know jackshit about the moon, because that's pretty much what's happening. But we're not at a car wash.

So the faces of the moon are caused by what we're seeing is where the sun is lighting the moon. So during a full moon, the sun is directly behind If you were to be staring at the moon and it's a full moon, the sun would be directly behind you. But the reason that there's if you see the full moon and it's not an eclipse.

Is because that.

There's a slight tilt to the Moon's orbit, so it's not perfectly in line with the sun, and so you see the sun lighting up the full face of the moon. Now, when the sun, if you're again staring at the moon and you see only half of it light, that means that the sun is to your either to your left or to your right, And when it's a new moon, when you don't see any light of the moon is because the sun is lighting the dark side of the moon, the far side, what we call the far side.

So it's always a full moon somewhere. It just depends on where.

You're hanging out, that's right. Yeah, it's only our perspective that makes the phases of the moon happen.

How does the moon affect the oceans and maybe us?

So the moon has a couple of effects on us. So it creates our tides, so high tide, low tide, that's from the It's the moon and the sun. A lot of people think it's just the moon, but it's a combination of both.

But the moon.

Isronger because it's it's closer, so it pulls on our oceans. Depending on where it is on the on the planet, which area where on the planet's closest to, it's going to tug on that part of the planet. So it actually tugs the rocks as well. It's not just the water just the water is just easier to deform.

Oh my gosh, so it's tullling.

Yeah. So actually our earth is yeah, our Earth is slightly oblate because we have the Moon tugging at it, the Moon and the Sun. Of course, then we tug at it. We tug at the Moon as well.

Oh man, I'm going to have galaxy brain break down right now.

And the other way it affects us as we it slows down our days.

So the Earth used to be.

Spinning a lot faster than it used to be, but because of conservation of momentum angular momentum, it has slowed down the Earth's spin.

So about every one hundred years we get two point five milliseconds slower. And in twenty twelve we had to add a second to the world clock just to make up for it. Moon's like I did that. Likewise, Earth's gravity pulls on the Moon, the Moon slows down a little,

To me right now. It's it is rotating. So the Moon does rotate, so it spins around itself at the same period that it goes around the Earth, so that's the reason why we always see the same face.

I never knew that.

Yeah, I never knew that it's not stationary. If it were stationary, you would see all the faces. So it's rotating with the Earth, so it is spinning and that's the reason why we see the same face always.

Oh my god, I didn't know for the longest time that we don't see the other side of the moon. Like I just didn't know. It didn't even occur to me. I was like, the moon changes so much. Sometimes it just looks like like big old God just left a toenail clipping right up in this sky and you're like, it's like, come on, man. And other times it's just it's just like full beach ball. Okay, listen, I am your QBC host right now. Okay, let me be your

More craters. Okay, less lava, much less lava. Most of the lava, the ancient lava fields are here on the near side. Like I said, the crust is thinner, so it's easier for lava to bubble up on this side. So the far side it just like a much lighter color to the moon because it's mostly that north the site that I was talking about earlier, and lots of impact craters side notes.

So yes, the light side is on the dark side, which is really the far side. So the far side has tons of craters and it's lighter in color, and so far no alien communes. Now the near side is smoother and has darker splotches of basalt. Those are called mares because way back in the day folks thought they were oceans. Now the Mares are flatter and they have fewer craters because it's younger terrain, so lighter parts a north to side rock called the Highlands. The darker parts

One all for Man.

One.

It's pretty cool and we should go back. There's still so many questions to answer, and the Moon is so interesting and it's so close, and it's just the perfect place to go before we go to Mars. There's water there, you know that there's wait, there's water on the moon. Ice water, ice on the Moon. Yes, yes, where is it in these at the polls? There's these craters that

Oh my god.

And it's actually one of the places that we've ever measured the Solar system are inside these craters colder than the surface of Pluto. Yeah, yeah, so there's trapped ice there that we've thrown a something into one of these and then detected the plume that it that it's spewed and there's water. So there, you know, we know, we

Okay, yes, of course I had to look up solar wind, and it's a stream of plasma from the Sun, charged particles, mostly electrons and protons. Also, I found an article showing data that the Apollo astronauts have significantly higher mortality rates from heart disease than there colleagues who did not visit the Old Moon. So they did some studies with mice too, and they found that yes, deep space radiation can affect

And another reason the Moon's cool is like, there's lava caves.

Do you know about the caves? No, there's caves, I look like, I know.

Yeah, there's caves where we can set up human bases because they'll be shielded from radiation and from the cold and the heat. Because the sun, the sun heats up the surface a lot. So there's it's either very very hot or very very cold, depending on if you're in the shade or in the sun.

How cold how hot?

We talk in oh Man. In these permally shadowed craters, you can get down to fifteen degrees calvin. So that's so zero kelvin is absolute zero, and you can I mean, this is just fifteen degrees higher than that is very very very cold.

So to put that in context with the thermometer on your porch or like your car's dashboard, daylight on the Moon can get up to two hundred and sixty degrees fahrenheit, and at night it's a brisk negative two hundred and eighty fahrenheit. That's one twenty seven celsius and its hottest and minus one seventy three celsius when it's cold, which means if we do end up cramming ourselves into caves on the Moon, we're gonna need a lot of extra space just for scarves and parkas for the thirteen Earth

I know, it's it just wanders from hot cold hot cold. And so then we need to if we do set up bases there, we need to shield our astronauts from that. And I think caves are a good place to do it, or maybe inside some of these craters.

I mean we start in caves here.

Yeah, that's a good point, right, Yeah, we should continue. This is like the way to continue human exploration and just find caves and go live.

And would you ever go to the moon if you give them a chance. I feel like.

That My opinion changes often. Before I had kids, It's like, yeah, of course, And then I had kids, and I'm like, they need me, They need me here until they are the self sustaining, so like thirty.

Okay, I'm just saying, you know what, humans live longer than they used to. So maybe it's part of the natural order that it's getting later for us to make a blanket, nest on the couch and the den and neat our parents' cheese until we're thirty four. Raquel's children, I'm sure will move out when it's time bring them to the moon. I would.

I would be so happy if my kids became astronauts. I don't know why, Like it's super weird because it's probably not the safest thing for them to do, but to explore, I don't know, to become exploited. There's something so poetic and beautiful about, you know, pushing the boundaries of what humanity has done and can do.

Do you read them The Little Prince?

I have The Little Prince in Portuguese and I've read it to them, but they don't.

I don't think they speak. She case sadly, it's a little secret. I just amazoned her one in English, like a sketchy little holiday elf, but then the gift option wasn't working, so it's just arriving unceremoniously with no card, just like here, which is embarrassing. Also, do her kids like the moon?

My little I mean, my my he's two and a half now, but I think ever since he was like a year and a half, he'll point to the moon and be like moon moon, because I think like every night I set up the telescope just to look at the moon, like almost every night. It's I love looking at it and it doesn't get old every time. I look through that eyepiece or through my camera, it's it's just beautiful, and I don't know, breathtaking to me every time doesn't get old.

Do you have favorite craters or mares or I know the lingo?

Now, yeah, you're in it.

Oh man, she definitely has the patience of someone capable of raising a toddler. Bless her.

I really like Copernicus Crater and Eratosthenes. And the reason why is they I think they pretty much set off the entire field of lunar science. So and well, how we study how things age and impact craters. So Copernicus Crater is is a bright, bright.

Crater.

So this is something we could talk about space weather. So if something is fresh, it's bright, and as it's exposed to space weather, it darkens. Oh so if you see something that's a crater that's very right on the Moon, it's a younger crater than something else. Yeah. And the reason we knew this is because so this crater, Copernicus Crater, has these crater rays, and crater rays are material that were ejected during the impact. You punch the ground and a lot of stuff comes up and then gets flown

So is it kind of like a paint drippings You can tell what's on top because of the splatter.

Yeah, yeah, something like that. Yeah. And then we use samples brought back from the Apollo missions to sort of ground truth what we think the age of something is. So now you can create a curve of how many creators? What does that mean for age?

So you kind of test it out on the Moon and then those theories hold for otherwise. It's people have fights about this.

Actually at conferences, people will break out into well, I had a professor told me that he saw somebody punch somebody else. We're at a conference over creator counting statistics like this. People fight about this because there's a lot of uncertainties. And you know, if you tweak something, there's different models, and if you tweak something in something small in one a completely different answer. And so people are always battling like, no, you did that wrong. No, this

Maybe it was a full moon that day. Probably I want to ask about a particular crater, Okay, I like to call it the moon's butthole. Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's just it's just like a cat walking away from you, you know what I mean? Why did he Why is it named after Tychobrie, right, Tachobria? And do you know anything about him?

I do know that his nose was cut off and apparently he died because he felt like his bladder exploded. Oh no, because it was impolite to leave dinner or somebody was like at a dinner party.

This is a story I've heard. I don't know if it's true or not. This man, oh lord, Okay, So he was a Danish astronomer and a nobleman who had a long mustache that looked kind of like two drooping harry lip slugs, and he made a ton of very precise astronomical observations in his time, which is all very exciting. But yes, hello, He did also lose part of his nose in a duel with his third cousin. What was

Do we know all of the creators are named after scientists? They are ye, craters on the moon are named after scientists.

Who gets to name these things?

There's a committee. There's so many craters on the moon. A lot of them are not named because they're not either big enough or maybe we ran out of sciences.

Because I think they have to be dead.

I think have to be done. I think so.

I wonder if anyone's like, can you sue me? Very? Can you push me? I want a creator? May so many poison my drink. I did a little follow up fact checking, and the Taycho moose situation is even weirder. He would send his moose out to parties without him and it won. The moose just straight up drank too many beers and fell down some stairs and died. Also, the name of the moon is different for different areas, so scholars are in one quadrant. Greek names are toward

It's called Seven Eaves. I don't remember the author. I'm really bad with the names.

Neil Stevenson, copyright twenty fifteen.

But it's called Seven Eaves. And the first thing that happens in the first page, so I'm not giving anything away, is the.

Moon explodes caboo ouch.

And then it's the story of the next five thousand years of what happens. Ooh, it's a beautiful story and it's it's a good book. Does it recommend it?

Does it explode because some pesky human went and through something one of its lava caves.

I'm not going to give anything away.

It's like, ouch, do what are you doing? And then again, stupid question, I don't care. When the moon is really really huge in the sky and it's very impressive, or when it's really orange at the horizon, what is happening? When sometimes we look out and we're like, oh my god, is a witch gonna fly past that? What's happening? Moon? Why are you so big?

So that actually happens to be a perspective thing. It just looks big because it's near things in the horizon, so it's actually not that big. It just looks it's a perspective thing. It's the same size as when you later on you look up and it just looks small. But it just because there's nothing else around it, it just looks boring. It's kind of like in photography when you're trying to get like the scale. If you're trying to take a picture of a landscape and you really

When you see the moon, you're like, oh, the man's so pretty. I'm going to take a picture and send it to my boyfriend. Be like, look at the moon, and then you take a picture. It looks like shit.

Because it's an optical illusion because the camera is actually capturing what it truly is, but your brain is interpreting it to be a lot more epic than it actually is.

Yes, oh my god, I did not know. Doubt. I know, I know it's so sad, but we can still marvel at it.

Oh yeah, I do every time, do it every time. And the redness is our atmosphere. Our atmosphere more easily scatters blue light, and so the red what reaches us is usually more the red lights if it's traveled for a long time. That's why sunsets are beautiful, because it has more atmosphere to travel through, so a lot of the blue light has been scattered away, leaving us with just the red tones and the orange tones.

How do you feel when people get amped for supermoons? I mean, I love.

When people get ampt about the moon because I get ampt about the moon. It was cool because it actually does look bigger during the supermoon, so that's and it looks it's bigger because it's closer. So the orbit of the Moon is not perfectly circular, so there's sometimes when it's closer to Earth and other times it's further away.

Do you think that? And there's always been a certain number of supermoons, but we maybe they make the news.

More absolutely Yeah, okay, yeah, I.

Feel like we need something good to talk about, and we're.

Like the moon.

What we got, guys, The moon's bigger. We've run that story, like, okay, I have questions from Patrin Okay, it's a lightning round. Oh my goodness, Okay, I got a lot of questions. I was like, oh damn, because we all love the moon. The other thing about the moon, what has the moon ever done to you. It's true the moon. I feel like the moon is that friend that you can you can rely on. Yeap. Sometimes they're close, sometimes they're far, but no one's The Moon's never pissed anyone off, not yet.

Although it's getting further away though, so every year about three point eight centimeters every year it's moving whither way just little orbit. The orbit is getting bigger.

Did you find another planet that LI likes better?

We're gonna go love on Mars or something. I have a board of, like these people suck.

Actually, before I get to Patren questions, how do you feel about the moon just being called the moon? All the other moons have freakin' names.

Yeah, but this is the moon with capital M.

Good point.

So this is something that actually I get upset about when people talk about the moon and it's in lower case.

I'm like, no, it's a bricase it's the moon.

If you talk about Earth's moon, then you can it can be lower case. But if it's the Moon, it's capital.

It's like the edge the guitarist for you too, who else is going to put a capital T capital E? You know what I mean?

That's bala, that is baller.

So the fact that it doesn't need it a little cute little nickname based on a Latin or based on a Greek god.

That's right, it's own thing.

Just call it the moon. Do you feel weird? Same about that? Our solar system is just called the solar system.

Well, it's the best one because we're here. It formed us. Like I'm not upset about those things because these are things that we are here.

That's our perspective.

Like if we weren't here, the Solar system would be boring because there'd be nothing to appreciate it or to study it or to So I think a lot of when it comes to two astronomy planetary science, it's like we are able to appreciate that. So, yes, it's the moon because it's our moon and we are the ones who are studying it. So this can be our our thing.

Right, like it can rain diamonds on Titan, but like this is our moon, our moon.

Yeah, exactly, screw Titan. It's got lover craters. There's our moon. It's our moon.

So the moon is like mom. If it's anyone's mom, that's a lowercase. But your mom, well that's like the mom capital t capital M because it's special, it's ours and super quick. Before the lightning rapid fire around, I want to do a very quick promo swap with another podcast. They are listeners of ologies. They have their very own show in which they freak each other out with the ghost stories. Is it science not so much? Is it fun? Heck yes, so I'll let them tell you about them.

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See you on the other side. Okay, we're back with Raquel, are you ready for larning? Yeah? Okay, Water, the answer is yes, yes, you got this. I'm gonna just fire off as many as I can and total transparency. I didn't look through them atter of time because I just put this up last night. So we're gonna go for it. Got it? Okay? But before we take questions from you, our beloved listeners, we're gonna take a quick break for sponsors of the show. Sponsors. Why sponsors? You know what

Yeah, there's been So there's a spacecraft right now that's orbiting the Moon called LRO the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, and it has taken spectacular, high definition, beautiful pictures of the entire Moon and you can go to their website and find pictures of the of the dark side, far sides, not the dark side, the far side of the Moon. It's one of the coolest thing is that I think

Recently, on Roquel's Instagram, the space geologist, she did a live stream of her looking at lunar dust under a microscope because some other folks in her lab were studying the optical properties of it, So how light or dark does it look in certain lights?

Yes, we have Moondust lying around and sometimes my advisor takes it out to show classes and every time.

I'm like, oh my god, I saw someone asked if you were afraid to sneeze around it.

Yes, yes, I've been so afraid of sneezing around it. But uh, and so I try to cover if I'm so, We've used these samples for outreach events where it'll be like tons of people coming through, and I will always cover it with glass because I'm petrified of people just bumping into it, or I don't want to lose Moondust like na it would be so mad at us because it's alone. It's alone to us by NASA. Yeah, can precious stuff?

Can you own anything from the Moon?

Not legally the stuff that was acquired by the Apollo mission. So I think that there's been some Russian selling of of samples that I think there have been missions by the Russians that brought back samples, not manned missions, but robotic missions that have brought back samples from the Moon. And so I think I've seen some of that on sale, and like eBay or something, but it won't be an Apollo mission dust that those are not allowed to be sold.

I mean if I put a pumice stone in the Vita mix, I could make a railing on eBay. Yeah, there's so many Jabroni's so excited. Remind me to make this mixed cash that way. Maria Camrou wants to know. Have you ever yelled at the moon like buzz Aldron on thirty Rock? Did he do that? I see you, I see what you're doing. Return to the night. You've no business here. Never saw that one. No idea, But the answer is gonna be no. I guess yeah, no yelled at the moon. Jason con wants to know is

I loved asking feeble this. Do you see anything when you look at the moon?

No?

Oh, what I never see? I got off the face?

Okay, now, okay, but there's other things you can see. I've seen all kinds of things.

I see the butthole? What did I say about me? So we pulled up a photo together and Roquel showed me that she sees a frog jumping onto a lily pad, or a bunny with two ears. Also, Weirdly, if you're in the Southern hemisphere, the moon is upside down to how us Northerners see it. How bananas. So Roquel pointed out the face of the man in the Moon, which I had literally never seen before.

Eyes, nose, mouth, maybe to see like those two maybe.

Wow, this is like Matt.

And I feel like you have to squint to be able to see these things. Sometimes I feel like you.

Might have to just get pharmaceutical grade LSP to see it, which is not gonna happen for me anytime soon.

Okay, So a face Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I've never seen that before my whole life. Okay, I swear whenever they talked about the man in the moon, I always was like, Okay, that's something I don't get this person. Jason Cott says that he sees a woman's face.

You I always see the frog.

Frog.

Yeah, that's the first thing that pops out to me, the frog jumping on to a lily pad.

It's such an ink blot test to see, Like, what do you I guess everyone go look at a picture of the moon and see what you see and report back. Let us know, please, Christina SHOWI wants to know which theory on the origin of the Moon is your favorite.

The impact theory that thea hit early Earth.

And it formed the moon. But now here we are in here. Howard Yarmish wants to know what would happen to the Earth if the Moon got either closer or farther away.

So well, depending on what caused it to go further away. So it is getting further away, so the tides would be less, and I think that our days are slowing down and it would slow down even more. So, Oh, it happen to the Earth.

So you see how.

An ice skater and when they stick out their arms they slow down, and then when they bring it in it they go faster. So it's the same thing that's happening. It's just the distribution of mass of the Earth Moon system.

So if the Moon.

Were farther away, like the whole thing would just like slow down more.

So we could get more done in a day.

Yeah, this is cool, This is cool.

Yeah, I guess you're like, the Earth is like moon, give me a little space. It's working, Okay. Letting McGinnis has a question and then I'm sure so many people do, which is do the phases of the moon affect people's moods. You also worked a little bit in healthcare, ID or the airports.

No, it doesn't because the phase the moon is still there. It's not any closer or any further. I mean, even if it does, like you wouldn't have an effect on us. It's just the sunlight. It's what we see, the sunlight hitting one side or the other side. So I don't see how it could affect us.

But and now the tides are affected more on a day to day basis, not around the month.

Right right, Okay, yeah, I do have.

A friend who gets her period on a full moon every time, no matter what kind of birth control she's on, no matter what happened, no matter how every time the moon is very regular.

It's it rotates on itself.

What is the effect of like a twenty eight day cycle, twenty eight day menstrual cycle in the moon.

But that I think it's just coincidence. Okay, it's coincidence. But it your friend must be that is her timing, that is her her cycles like twenty eight point something days, and it just happens to coincide with the moon. That's pretty cool, I'm sure there's there's got to be other people. I mean, if you have enough women, enough people, one of them will eventually right have that eight chance?

Okay, so like three percent, three and a half percent ps. Look this up. And in the age of apps, we have a bunch of data to play with, for good and for bad. So there's a period tracker called Clue that analyzed seven and a half million users cycles and found no correlation between lunar faces. None. So Natalie Mastik, Julie Platten, and Michael BelAZ also asked us, and sorry science is saying it's just rando, folks, talk to your crotch.

Uh? Not, that explains everything that we see the THEA hitting the Earth is still the one that answers the questions.

Yeah, so nothing new, like you knows aliens. So for funzies, feel free to look up the hollow moon or the spaceship moon hypothesis, that is what it's called. So essentially, some folks think that the moon is a death star. No biggie, And before you go just like spinning up your folgers laughing at this, do know that our beloved Carl Sagan for a while thought that one of Mars moons was just a cavernous storage shed installed by clutter

I know that's what I'm saying, we should. The moon is the next logical stuff. I think it's right there.

It's right there.

We can set up bases, we can make things there, we can make fuel there. It's much less gravity, so it's easier to launch from there. It just makes so much sense to go to the Moon and not Mars, like it's harder to leave the Earth's gravity well, whereas it'd be so much easier to do that from the Moon.

It reminds me of living in la It's like, why would I go vacation in Florida when there's like a beach right here. Jay Owens wants to know does it really ring when impacted? Does it ring like a belt? I've heard that before.

Look, there's definitely moonquakes.

I look this up and according to an article by NASA, because the Moon is dry and rigid, moonquakes continue to rumble. It's like vibrations hitting a metal tuning fork. Something to consider if you move into one of its space caves. And I wonder what they would charge for rent Rinne Couli wants to know who owns the moon? Nobody? Okay, it's so.

There was a space treaty that was signed. I don't remember the year, nineteen sixty seven, but it says that no one nation owns anything in space.

Okay, so if you go and pee on it, it's not yet, it's not. Dang it. Well there's my plan.

There is a company a few years back selling moon plots because they were like, well it's not I'm not a nation, I'm a company. So I'm just gonna claim that it's mine. And I think some people actually bought stuff. But I don't know. I don't know what happened to that.

What are you gonna do? Go retire there like k grats maybe one day? Oh, that'd be so cool.

Imagine going on vacation to the moon.

To the moon, bring up Parka, it's a little chili. Mad's Clement wants to know if there were two guys on the moon and one of them killed the other, would that be fucked up or what?

It's the only QUI Okay, I think it's a yes, yes, definitely.

Ah.

Yeah.

Marley Shipe wants to know, how do you feel about the moon impacting the way humans feel like if it impacts water in the tide were made of water? Is that a thing? Not a thing?

I don't think it's a thing. I think there have been studies that show that it's It doesn't there's I remember a few years ago people were saying that there's higher hospital admissions during a full moon. But I think that's been debunked. I think that there's been studies to show that.

That's not true. Okay, that might be flimplam. Yeah, I'll investigate. Yeah, everyone wanted to know this. This question was also asked by Heather Shaver, Anna m Castro, Renoso, Kelly rand Ray, Kasha Kimberly Thomas, Maher, Meredith Ostro, Micah Eckhard, and Elizabeth Gable. So I did a little digging and according to data, no real correlation. The hypothesis that the moon is tugging on our sloshy brainwaters doesn't make a ton of sense because its effect on the tides happens even when it's

Maybe I don't know, it's because it's party, it's pretty, it's beautiful. Yeah, yeah, I think that's what I think.

That's what I think.

And for example, like in Portuguese it's female a lua, so it's it's a female, and I think in Spanish the same thing la luna, so it's I think in a lot of languages. So I think it's like very Yeah, I think it's because it's beautiful.

I'm going to go with that, because it's what we see it as an object for us to look at and probe. No, because it's a beautiful thing. Maybe because this is sinister, but maybe because it accompanies us. Maybe we put women in helper, Yes, exactly, we put in a stay in my orbit. I'm the big thing and almost like a eve was made of Adam's rib and the moon is made of earth chunks. So maybe that's

Well, I think the biggest unknown is just how did it form? You know, it's it's so similar to our Earth and like made it the same stuff, but you think it's a lot more it'd be a lot more different, But it's not. And the coolest thing. I think there's water there.

There's Yeah, that's nuts. That's pretty cool. Bree Johnson wants to know do you think there will ever be a time where humans can live on the Moon, And Lindsay K Trotter also asked, can we colonize this thing or what?

Yeah, for sure, but I think that it'll be more of a jumping ground. You might go to the moon first to acclimate or you know, not acclimate in the sense of acclimate to the weather, but acclimate to living in the space environment or not Earth lighter gravity and.

How's the gravity on the Moon versus Mars.

A sixth so you could jump pretty high. There's actually this really cool compilation video of the Apollo astronauts hopping and falling, and they've somebody speed it up so it just looks like they're just like some silly music in the background.

Look this up and I found a video of Apollo seventeen astronaut Jean Cernon fully suited up in his moon ensemble, just lightly bounding along the lunar landscape, singing as he went. So there's your little frog and bunny on the moon. Also, astronauts will train in zero gravity flights. They fly in these parabolic curves and it gives a few seconds of the sensation of weightlessness each curve. Now, for a civilian

I was on a vomit comet ones and they one of the things. It's not just zero gravity. They also do diminish like less gravity, so that Mars gravity and Moon gravity. And so for the Moon gravity, you can hop pretty high. It's really cool because get to experience what it would be like to jump. You can jump so high.

God, So there's much less gravity on the Moon than Mars because it's a smaller planetary body.

So on Mars is a third of the Earth and the Moon is a sixth.

Yeah, so it's hippitie hoppity, like one of those places where you can go on the trampolines. Yes, yes, all the time. I'm looking for a couple more questions. Kirsty Chippendale says, can a moon have its own moon? Is that possible?

I'm sure it's possible. It's probably just not very stable because the bigger object would end up grabbing it and then it would just orbit the bigger object instead of the Okay, you know.

What I mean. E Brown asked, I didn't even think of this question. How come you can sometimes see.

The Moon during the day, So the Moon is always orbiting us, So sometimes it's orbiting us when it's night time, when sometimes it's during its daytime, So it's it's always either on our side during the day or on the other side. So it just depends on where it is on its orbit, and it's just cruising, it's just hanging out. Yeah.

Well, what makes me sad to think of the moon as like a kid with divorce parents, where it's like at one house or the other. It's like sometimes it's like, yeah, it's going to be on this side or our side. Okay, let me see. Maggie Schminker said, So the moon is tidally locked. Has it always been this orientation to the Earth?

No?

No, Or did the first little footy fish hauling themselves out of the primordial ooze see a different part of the moon.

They might have seen a different part of the moon. Yeah, although we think that it it got tidally locked pretty early in it's because it's so small that it's it's easier to for it to become tidally locked.

Yeah, I never knew that was a term. Justin Westerfield wants to know casually what happened if Elon Musk blew up the moon. It's like a never end explosion. Is he going to do that? I hope not.

Uh well, we we wouldn't have as much, the tides wouldn't be as pronounced. We didn't have the moon anymore.

I mean if it.

Just you blew it up and then it disappeared, right, we wouldn't have and our plan and might wobble a lot more.

So.

The moon makes our planet stable, so kind of like a spinning top, you know how sometimes like it moves.

Yeah.

Yeah, so the moon actually keeps us from doing that. So our seasons are a lot more stable because we have our moon to stabilize our orbits. So if we didn't have a moon, we would be we might like the go through like ice ages and then crazy warm periods a lot more than what we do now.

Got it once again? Yeah, moon's like a woman, Thank you, stabilizes shit. That's right. Okay, So two questions as I always ask. Okay, shittiest thing about your job or the worst thing about the moon. Oh feel free event about the moon right now. I can't think of a thing the Moon's done to anyone, But I don't know.

So shittiest thing about my job.

It's hard. Do you have to answer a lot of conspiracy theories about not landing on the moon?

Oh? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get that sometimes, mostly on social media because I try to I do a little psychom through my Instagram, and I inevitably always somebody's like, well, we never went there, so I don't know how you can say that that's actual moon dees Like I actually had somebody DM me that.

That's cute.

People have their mind set up because they will always say, well, those images are doctored, those aren't really the footprints or were prints, that that's photoshop or something. It's and it's hard to argue with that. Yeah, what about anything about computer crashes? Just code networking, And sometimes it's just because you forgot to put a semi colon somewhere and you spend hours trying to figure out, like what did I do wrong? And it's just like something stupid, like you

Hm, it's cool. Soide note, how much do you love someone who loves to solve programming errors? What's the best thing about what you do or the best thing about the moon?

The best thing is getting to think about these things that are so much bigger than myself. It just takes me out of whatever is going on in my personal life or whatever is going on in the world. Just focusing on something that is just out there and it's so much bigger than us and bigger than whatever is happening in our world is kind of like a vacation

There's there's relief in that.

And not having to worry about me or anything directly related to me.

Yeah, I guess it's all about perspective the moon once again. Yeah, but you know it's I think that especially in la where we don't get a lot of weather. Getting to be able to track the Moon and see where it's at and check in with it. It does feel like a little buddy. Yeah, you know, like, how where are you in this guy? Right now here? What's going on?

Yeah?

What would your dream job be as a planetary geologist?

I would love to be involved in miss missions, mission design and just thinking about like what are the big questions that we still have to answer and how can we design missions to answer those science questions?

Get us back on the moon man, right, come on, what do we gotta do? Guys back, It's right there, It's there.

Although you know, for all that we can say about this, this administration, they love the Moon. So NASA is actually part of the executive branch. And if you knew that it's it's it's part of the executive So whatever the president says is like what happens. It's it's an.

Executive branch department.

Of the government Space Force.

And so NASA actually.

Ends up being at the whims of whatever administration is running it, which is kind of crazy. So you end up losing a lot of money because you know, you start designing a mission and most of the time it will go to completion, but there's you might lose funding at some point because this administration doesn't like this project. Or but right now, this administration really.

Likes the moon.

I wonder what because it's close, and I think, I think what it is is that you can there's a lot of commercial partners, the possibility where if you do something really far away like Mars, there's so much, so much more can go wrong that commercial partners don't want to be involved, like private companies don't want to be involved. So but the Moon, I think there's a lot of interest, and are we going.

To mind the moon? We could? Whoa? I wonder what I got up there?

Well, I think.

Geez. And where can you find Raquel on social media?

The one that I spent the most time on is Instagram, and you can find me at the Space Geologist.

That's that's where.

I talk about. There's also some baby stuff in there, but mostly science things that are happening.

I love your Instagram. I always learning, Oh that's so nice. I love it so much. Whenever you have a new story pop up, I'm like, oh, what she got? I get very excited about it. Nice, thank you, cool moon photos, And I'm like, ah, she's killing it. Thank you so much for doing Thank you for having me so keep asking smart people stupid questions because look how nice they are. And you can follow Raquel again at the Space Geologist on Instagram. You can find Ologies at Ologies on Twitter