First, Jeff witnesses an awkward encounter at Walgreens. But then we get to some amazing facts about space. We won’t spoil it with these notes, but prepare to have your mind blown. We really are on a tiny blue marble in a vast sea of a universe that has no ending.
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First, Jeff witnesses an awkward encounter at Walgreens. But then we get to some amazing facts about space. We won’t spoil it with these notes, but prepare to have your mind blown. We really are on a tiny blue marble in a vast sea of a universe that has no ending.
1. Topics
2. Additional Resources
3. Merchandise/Support the Show
4. Contact Us/Follow Us/Rate/Subscribe
New episodes every week!
Listen, rate, follow, and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts!
Follow us:
This week. Oh, you think you're significant? Think again. Welcome to Subpar Talks. Hey everybody. Welcome to Subpar Talks, where we have conversations about everything. I'm Jeff.
Chris:And I'm Chris.
Jeff:Thank you again for joining us and, as always, before we get into this week's topic, we have our disclaimer, listener discretion advised. We like to curse, and sometimes we like to do a lot of it. So you will hear profanity, and we do tend to touch on, occasionally at least, some mature subject matter. So if that doesn't set well with you, and the fact that we like to inject humor into a lot of the stuff we talk about, then maybe we're not your cup of tea. But for everybody else, grab your favorite beverage, put your feet up, turn the volume up, because here we go with this week's topic. I'm drinking. Are you drinking?
Chris:I am drinking. It's one of those days.
Jeff:It is one of those days. So, it's a day that ends in"Y"?
Chris:Yep.
Jeff:What are you drinking?
Chris:I'm drinking Crown and Coke today.
Jeff:Well, that's a little hardcore compared to what I got. This is gonna sound really hoity toity when I say what I'm drinking, but, and like I'm fancy, but I'm not. It's Pinot Grigio. I got a glass of wine.
Chris:That's good stuff though.
Jeff:It is good. And I'm, I, uh, I'm pretty select on the types of wine that I like and I do like that one, so...
Chris:I am too. I like that one. And I am select also. That, that's one of, that's definitely one of my favorites. I'll also say though, or you're saying it's hoity toity is, wine hits me differently than other stuff. I can have two to three glasses of wine and be as much or more messed up than two to three like, hard liquor drinks.
Jeff:It, yeah, me too. And it depends on the type of wine, but the drunkest I have ever been was when I just drank red wine. Holy shit.
Chris:Yeah.
Jeff:That was, that's rough. And I don't really like red wine anyway, but it was what was being served and damn.
Chris:It can hit you.
Jeff:It was a rough night. Before we get into what we're gonna talk about, I just thought about this and I figured I'd let you in on it, and I think our listeners will like it too. But I was at Walgreens yesterday and there's an old white woman, and white is key here. It was an old white woman behind the counter, and there's a black guy who looked like he was, I don't know, mid sixties maybe. He was in front of me. And when it came time for him to put his stuff on the counter, the old white woman says, Hey, Mr. Williams. And he looked at her and then turned around like, who are you talking to? And he said, that's not me. And she said, you're not Mr. Williams. And he said, no. And then, I mean, of course everybody who heard this is thinking the same thing. Oh, here we go. It's a white person thinking all black people look alike.
Chris:Right.
Jeff:So, it was awkward right there, and for the next two minutes that she was dealing with him, she was trying to convince him that you really do look like this Mr. Williams.
Chris:Like, do you know who you are?
Jeff:Right. It was very awkward. It made me think of George and Sugar Ray Leonard. You know his...
Chris:Oh, yeah.
Jeff:Whoever that was that he worked with, said he looked like Sugar Ray Leonard. But anyway.
Chris:That's awesome.
Jeff:It was awkward. OK, so that doesn't segue into anything we're talking about today, but we are talking about, I mean, in a nutshell, space and time, and this is something that we are both fascinated with on several different fronts. but I think you have some facts, figures. I do, yeah. That you're gonna share. And then we're gonna roll through these and as always, who knows where this is gonna lead, but go ahead. What do you got? So something, and I don't remember how old I was. I wanna say I was in late elementary school, but they showed us a. A video and it was called, it was something called like Your Place in the Universe or something like that. I don't remember it. It just fascinated me though because it started showing a person, like I think they were laying out in the grass, like a picnic thing or so. And it starts zooming out. And so basically where the, where the video goes from that point is zooming out and showing your, well exactly like your place in the universe, but essentially just how tiny you know a person is when you start zooming out and look at. You know, the city, the country, the earth as a whole, the solar system, et cetera, and it goes all the way out, you know, into multiple galaxies and so on in the universe. Well, then it very quickly comes and zooms back into that person and then starts to go microscopic. Oh, that's cool. And starts to look at all of. You know, all of the bits and pieces inside the person and cellular makeup and all of that. And it's just fascinating. Like that is a world all by itself anyway. Yeah, and I've always been fascinated with space and time, but that really got my attention. And so, you know, you and I have talked about this multiple times. And it's really been kind of off the cuff conversations, and so I really wanted to look up some of these facts and see just kind of where our conversation goes from here because OK, so much of this is just amazing. All right. So the first thing I was gonna start with here is, uh, and, and this is a, a list. It's, it's on hello giggles.com. Don't have any idea what that site is, but they, they've got 11 facts about space. Uh, some of it more local to our solar system, and some just about the universe as a whole. So the very first thing says Earth really isn't that? Saying Earth is the fifth largest planet in the solar system, but as big as you think the sun is compared to the earth. And just to put this in perspective, the sun is 330,000 times. When I say that as in 330,000 Earth, Would fit in the sun. God, that's crazy. So at Earth already being the fifth largest planet, it's gonna take 330,000 of them to equal the sun. And the sun is a small star. Yes, it is. So that's, that's where I was going with this is the largest known star in the universe at this time, is 1,420 times. Larger than the sun. Oh my God. Wow. So 1420 times 330,000 is how much bigger it is than Earth and it expel expels 30 times the mass of Earth every year. In the form of dust and gas. Oh, I was gonna ask you what that means. OK. So it was just blowing it off. It's shitting out, it's shitting out an earth or whatever you said, Exactly. It's, it's, it's waste. It's excrements. Wow, that's nuts. Yeah. 30 times the mass of earth every year. And just, and that stuff is just going out. Does just going out in space and then what? I don't know. Yeah, well, floats towards something else that I guess, you know what its own gravitational pole brings it in, I guess, or, you know, here's a question we always talk about, you know, the, the we as people like talking about, you know, the birth of the universe and, OK. Planets formed and stars formed. all of these things formed as a result of whatever, whether mm-hmm. you know, I think the Big Bang is still considered the most plausible of those events, but still, even with the Big Bang, that just means you've got a, a mass of shit flowing through the universe. Yeah. Until. It starts creating what we now know, but knowing that these stars and that one in particular are putting all this stuff out in the, into the universe like you said, then what, like is this stuff that's being put out there, is that forming other planets? I have no idea. Cause that's supposedly where we think the planets came from anyway, is just this massive crap. That came from the explosion. Right. You know? Yeah. I mean, we're just living on a ship pile here. kind of answers a lot of questions. I couldn't, I could've told you that before we started the show. Yeah. Hey, did you see the meteor that well, OK. You sent me the video that where it crashed into the ocean, wherever that was, but this was in Texas Mission, Texas. I'm not sure exactly where that is. but there was a meteor that was streaking across the sky and people caught it on, on video. No, I didn't see that one. Yeah, it was really cool. Mission's right by, right by. It's really down near the The end, right by Mexico. Oh, OK. You don't know where that was? Wow. No, I didn't see that. I saw another one that someone caught, and I can't remember if this was recent or. Within the last couple of years, but they caught a great video of one streaking through, I don't know, seems like, um, and this, there was this one that someone discovered on a, a normal telescope. They said it was like a two foot telescope or something. They discovered this media headed toward Earth and it came through the atmosphere in like two hours and no one had seen it. I mean, that's scary. That is scary. Now what are you people looking at if you're not gonna see something that's gonna hit us in two hours? Yeah. Didn't NASA come up with something to blow asteroids up? They tested that recently. Yeah, they did. And it, it worked, it, it worked at least to, to split it, I think, and, and get it off course. So a meteor meteorite is what killed off the dinosaurs. Supposedly, right? Like that's the most plausible theory of how they die. I, I don't understand how that happens. Do you like an so an asteroid hits the earth? Why does that wipe out an entire species? Well, like
Chris:what happened? That one was, that one was supposed to have been so big that it kicked up so much such. Cloud of dust and debris and all of that, that went into the atmosphere that basically just darkened everything. OK. And so then I think it like killed off vegetation and
Jeff:OK. So their
Chris:food supply. All right. Yeah, so food supply for sure. I don't know if there was any other, did something else besides that. I can't remember. But at least food supply. Yeah. Hmm. I don't, I think it only hit land though. I was gonna say, you know, if you have something that big that hits the water well then you're gonna have massive flooding problems. But I don't guess that would be worldwide. I think the issue there was, was just atmospheric problems from it kicking up all the crap into the air. You know, you think about it, you've got just a volcano that erupts. Now you're gonna have that ash going all the way around the world. Have we talked about
Jeff:this on this show? I think we might have, but like George Washington didn't even know about dinosaurs.
Chris:Cause that is is so crazy. Fossils
Jeff:hadn't been
Chris:discovered yet. Yeah, that's a while. Yeah. Well, I'll tell you, I mean, and this is here just in my lifetime at least people that I remember being around as a kid, still had doubts about dinosaurs. Oh, I've heard that. Yeah, I remember. Because they're not in the Bible. Well, there's that Yeah, there's that. That's a whole thing by itself, I guess. And maybe that's where some of those doubts were coming from and I didn't know that, but it was, you know, we were being taught about dinosaurs and like second grade, but I remember coming home to my mom and saying, do you believe in them? As in this was a question. Yeah. And, and yet it wasn't being presented as a question in school. Yeah. So I'm already trying to figure out, you know, are, are we talking about myths here? That, that maybe people think happened? Yeah. Or are we talking about real facts? And if we're talking about real facts and why do you overhear question it? Why don't you believe it? They found bones. What do you think that is? Right.
Jeff:There's a creation museum in somewhere in Kentucky. Mm-hmm. and I've read, I don't know if I've seen any pictures of it, but they have exhibits where people are like writing dinosaurs, like Adam and Eve riding around on dinosaurs, because they can't d I mean, some people deny that, that any of that's real. They just think it's made up, you know, the bones put together and all that. But if you buy into it, Then you still have to go by what if, and you're a creationist. You have to go by what the Bible says. So you have to take a leap of faith that dinosaurs and humans existed at the same time, which right, we know obviously didn't happen, but.
Chris:Well, and then something's way, way off because you got that right. How do you, how do you get to the millions of years of existence and the millions of years that have passed
Jeff:since? No, no, no, no, no. The earth is between six and 10,000 years old. Right.
Chris:That's what I'm saying. Like something,
Jeff:something's missing. Oh, there's a lot missing
Chris:OK, so this next one is, the number of stars in existence is unknown, so that just kind of seems like a given. I mean, we, mm-hmm. we know that we don't know because we can't see the edge of the universe. So how in the hole would we know exactly how many are out there? But it
Jeff:blows my mind though. It blows my mind how far out they can see stuff.
Chris:Yeah, absolutely.
Jeff:But OK, so
Chris:go ahead. Well, so, so this guy, uh, Cornell University astronomer says he's offered an explanation of the number of stars and he's estimating, he said, We've used a rough estimate of 10 trillion galaxies in the universe. Oh
Jeff:my
Chris:God. And multiplying that by the Milky Ways. Estimated 100 billion stars.
Jeff:So, oh my God. So 10 trillion times
Chris:Yeah. 10 trillion galaxies times a hundred billion in the Milky Way is a one with 24 zeros after it. I don't even know what that number is.
Jeff:That's amazing.
Chris:Yeah. And then hold on. That guy emphasized, um, corn Reich, Cartwright,
Jeff:Cartwright,
Chris:He emphasized that number is likely a gross underestimation. as more detailed looks at the universe will show even more
Jeff:galaxies. Ah, tack Another zero on. Yeah. What's another
Chris:zero? Exactly. I know. So when I was in, I think I was like in, I don't know, kindergarten or so, I had this calendar that was some, some facts for, you know, kids of that age. Mm-hmm. And one of the things that always stuck out in my mind that was on there was saying the sun was 93 million miles. right? Well, as like a kindergartner, that's just a number to me, right? Mm-hmm. and it's big. So 93 million miles. Oh, that's a long way. That's, that's all I needed to know at the time. But when you think about, say, a a million, for example, that is a thousand thousands. Yes. Right. It's a thousand, a thousand times is just 1 million. Yeah. And you think about a thousand miles. That would be like us going to the east or west coast from here. Right. Just kind of straight out. Mm-hmm. So you'd have to go to the east or west coast and back a thousand times to you and I 1 million miles. God. and now you gotta do that 93 times. Yeah. Back and forth. That's like, and that's just the distance to the sun.
Jeff:Yeah. See, I can't, I can, uh, in my head, I can wrap my head around a million, tens of millions, but I start losing it when you start talking about a billion, like mm-hmm. That's hard for me to wrap my head around. But then a trillion, I can't, I can't do that. And there's quadrillion and whatever the hell that number is that you just pointed out. One with 24 zeros. I'm sure it has a name, but I'm sure it does. God. But yeah, I remember hearing this. A million Seconds was about 11 days ago. Mm-hmm. and a billion seconds was about 32 years. That
Chris:blows my mind. That literally blows my mind. Yeah, I know. As you, I mean, it's like you said, tack on. What's another zero? It's a whole hell of a lot.
Jeff:It really is. All right. All right. What else? I'm loving this. This is good stuff.
Chris:Yeah, I do too. It's, it's so crazy to think about. All right, next one. Our sun takes up most of the solar systems mass. says that our son is 99% of the solar systems mass. Whoa. Well, we're nothing. No, I've never heard that. But when you think about if the earth is the fifth largest planet and say Jupiter as an example, being the largest and how much larger it is, and one of these other points on here, isn't it like
Jeff:300
Chris:Earth? Um, something like that. Yeah. But you know, there's, uh, there's a point on here about, um, one of the, here, one of Jupiter storms is larger than Earth, just one of the storms on
Jeff:Jupiter, big red dot.
Chris:I don't know if that's the one. I guess they have multiple ones, but mm-hmm. just knowing that a storm on Jupiter is bigger than the whole Earth and then you add all of those planets up and they're less than 1% of the mass of the solar system where the sun is taken up. The other 99% just
Jeff:nuts. I didn't realize that. Yeah.
Chris:Hey, I, I had no idea.
Jeff:So why didn't the Soviets ever go to the moon? Why didn't they send somebody to the moon? Did they not? No, I don't think so. Oh, I don't think they did. Why would they be in this massive space race where both countries are trying to get somebody to the moon and then we get to the moon and then they're like, oh, fuck it. We don't need to do that. Seems like they would've
Chris:I don't know.
Jeff:I think the Americans are the only ones who've been, are you Googling it?
Chris:Yeah, I did. This says the Luna nine spacecraft launched by the Soviet Union performed the first successful soft moon landing February 3rd, 1966. What? That's unmanned. I mean, we were the first ones. Oh, I don't think I
Jeff:knew that.
Chris:I didn't either. Let's see. But here's a question. Why did the Soviets not go to the moon? It says lack of money. 24 astronauts went to the moon, all Americans and 12. OK. And 12 of them walked on it. OK. So yeah, only Americans.
Jeff:They say the American flag on the moon is probably completely white by. because I mean, there's no atmosphere. So the sun has just been pounding it for 50 whatever
Chris:years. Oh, fading it. Oh, I didn't think about that. Yeah. Oh, I bet that's very true. It's a white flag. America surrenders. we've given up. Yep. You can have it That's awesome. I so. All right, let me collect my thoughts. OK. So I've always wondered why have I never seen a picture of the American flag on the moon since we've been there? Yeah, we have telescopes. I mean, here we are talking about this. We have telescopes that can see however far and light years into the past. Right. You know, looking that far out. Why can't we just get a picture from a telescope of that flag on the moon? That's a good question. Seems like we'd be able to see it as good as taking a picture on the surface itself.
Jeff:I would think so, but I don't know. You're gonna lend credence to the, uh, The people who say we never made it to the moon, we never went. See, the reason they don't have a picture of it's cuz it's not there. They could still fake a picture of us right? Why not fake
Chris:a picture? go out to New Mexico like they did the first time.
Jeff:And exactly. All right, what else?
Chris:All right, so another one is sunlight. Taking eight minutes and 20 seconds to reach. I mean, that's a fairly well known thing, but you know, the idea that light is traveling. I remember when I first learned, this just blew my mind, and I don't, I just have an understanding of it now, but I feel like understanding and truly like grasping and comprehending are a little bit d. I understand the idea of a light year, how far light is gonna travel in a year. Yeah. Well, at 186,000 miles per second, which is unbelievable. Multiply by however many seconds there are in a year is how far it's gonna travel. Yeah. But the very idea that we have stars emitting light that takes tens and hundreds and thousands of light years to get to us is. My mind is completely blown. It
Jeff:is, yeah. Right. Grasping and comprehending. Yeah. I get the concept, the, the principle of it. Uh, but it blows my mind. And the stars we're seeing. Some of them might not even be in existence anymore. Yeah. They
Chris:burned out. That
Jeff:one's really huge. And think about this, I mean, this is purely hypothetical, but if. if some species on a far away planet had the technology to look at us, to be able to see us on earth, they're not gonna be seeing us. They're gonna be seeing stuff that happened, like they're gonna be seeing dinosaurs because the, the light that they're getting from the earth would've taken, you know, but sometimes blow your mind.
Chris:Maybe that's why they've never been here. They're like, we're not going there. Look at
Jeff:that thing. No, I'm not going there. Look at eaten
Chris:up. Like clearly there's no intelligent life. right? Well, even if they saw us, they might think the same thing. right?
Jeff:Bunch
Chris:of idiots walking around Room. All right, so the next one is that the universe is estimated to be, and of course these things tend to change often because of how much more we can see, but it's estimated to be 13.8 billion years old, and I can't rub my head around that. No. And so there we are. So there's a good example, right? Earth is estimated to be, what? Four, 4 billion?
Jeff:Uh, I was thinking like six, but who knows? I don't know.
Chris:Well, even in that case, we're, we're talking about a big difference between four or six versus 13.8. So that means the universe could have been around for billions of years before Earth came into existence. Mm-hmm. So that just goes back to my question of this massive star putting all this shit out into the universe. What happens to it? Is it gonna be, you know, one or 2 billion years from now, some new planets are formed? I don't know. It's amazing. All right, so the next point going on this is it is still expanding.
Jeff:Yeah. It's still still going. Yeah. So that must have been some Bane
Chris:Yeah, no kidding. Yeah. However big we think it is. By the time you measure it, it's already bigger than that. So this was from 2005, was a team that estimated the radius of the observable universe. Being 45. Yeah. Get, get both of those. Mm-hmm. this is an estimate and it's the radius of observable, and that's 45.7 billion light years. Whoa. That means you're talking about roughly 90, 92 billion in diameter. Mm-hmm.
Jeff:Unbelievable. Yeah, I can't, I can't. That's another one I can't wrap my head around.
Chris:No, just, wow. I don't even know. Yeah, I don't even, I don't know what to do with that
Jeff:information. I don't either. And there's no end to it. It's infinite. It just keeps going. Yeah, like it's not like you could get out there and you're gonna hit a wall. Like it just goes on
Chris:like the Truman. True
Jeff:right? Yeah.
Chris:I think it was a comedian, I was trying to remember if it was Ricky Gervais, but somebody's talking about the universe as this, you know, massive bit of nothingness that keeps expanding into more nothingness. Mm-hmm. because that's the very idea, if you think about it, expanding, what's it expanding into? It's expanding into. Nothing like there. I guess there's nothing out there, and now it's expanding in to take up that space. Mm-hmm. just, I don't know, another one of those things, like how do you even begin to comprehend that
Jeff:I can't, especially with two glasses of wine in
Chris:All right. New planets are constantly being discovered. Mm-hmm. So says we're still not sure if we're the only living species, even vaguely like us out there, but it's kind of hard to find out when We haven't even nailed down the number of planets that exist. It says there are seven Earth-like planets that scientists announced earlier in this year, and this is actually from 2017. Mm-hmm. Later that year, they identified 200 more potential planets in a single month. Whoa.
Jeff:They ramped it up. Yeah, they did. They got serious about it.
Chris:I know. That's just unbelievable.
Jeff:So yeah, they talk about planets, they have found in the Goldilocks zone, right? So, mm-hmm. where it could inhabit life. You and I have talked about this before. Why do they think life has to be what sustains humans or what humans are like? Like it could be any other life form that they have no idea about that could survive on. Who knows what. That doesn't necessarily have to have oxygen and water.
Chris:Exactly. I mean, and we are just common everyday people like why? Why are scientists limiting? Limiting their view like that. Like for example, they're always looking for evidence of water. Mm-hmm. like you said, what if they don't need water? Yeah. What if they are hydrogen breathing, non-water needing beings? And how would we know if we found it?
Jeff:and why can't they name a planet something normal? Every time I hear about a discovery of some other planet, it's always like a letter and then 15 numbers after it, something ridiculous. Why can't they call it like something we have in our solar
Chris:system? I know I don't know. I guess it was easy enough to come up with eight other names, but
Jeff:that's their max. Yeah, I don't know.
Chris:I think about that just driving around town is like, how do they come up with New Street names all the
Jeff:time? Just, that's a good question. Yeah.
Chris:And And some of'em are weird. Yeah. Like, would you wanna live on a street named whatever that is. There's a street right around here that's called regret. Hey, what the fuck? Yeah, I live on regret. I live with regret, but
Jeff:that's funny. That reminds me of the Chris Rock bit when he is talking about Martin Luther King and how he stood for nonviolence. And if you go to any city now on mlk, there's a whole lot of fucking
Chris:violence going on. That is the truth. That and Malcolm X, man, if you're around, if you're around Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, yeah. Get
Jeff:out There's some violence going down. Yeah, of course it was a bigger issue. I show it to my classes sometimes cuz it's a bigger issue of substandard housing for African Americans and them getting you. Pushed into certain areas of cities and all that. But anyway, maybe that's a topic for another day. Let's stick to space. That is a good one.
Chris:Yeah, just go down that road. All right. What else? All right. One of Jupiter's. All right. One of Jupiter's storms is larger than Earth, and this is talking about the great red spot. Yeah. OK. It says it is basically the largest storm in the entire solar system. It's bigger than Earth. It was even bigger decades ago. So, OK. I
Jeff:was gonna ask that like a storm here on Earth doesn't just keep going it right? Dissipates. So why has that not dissipated?
Chris:I don't know. I don't know how they know it's a storm or why they think it is. and what kind of storm is that? I don't know because right there, I've never heard about them talking about water. On Jupiter, when we talk about a storm, it's a thunderstorm, which means rain and lightning. Rain, yeah. Like what is the,
Jeff:what is this? I don't know. I guess so. I guess there's no water because Jupiter's just a bunch of gas.
Chris:Right. So is it just a mass of gas? I don't know. Gas. And what makes that a storm? I don't know. so
Jeff:many questions. What? Yeah, what this is gonna confirm is that we have made way more questions than we have answers.
Chris:Yeah. Well, and what bothers me is I know that we have questions that nobody has the answer to. This is not even just a matter of, Ooh, if we spent long enough, we could find the answers. If we spent long enough, we'd end up with that many more questions. Yeah. All right. Mars is home to a volcano that's three times the size of Mount Everest. Whoa. Yeah. Like in height. Uh uh. That's what I'm thinking. I'm guessing that's what I'm taking from it. Wow. But I mean, consider, you know, Everest is like 29,000 something feet. So just say 30, you know, round to the zero Right. That means that's like 90,000 feet.
Jeff:OK. So, It's a volcano. So there's lava and shit in it on Mars,
Chris:evidently. Wow. I mean, they're calling it a volcano, so I guess so. And I didn't know that. Yeah, I didn't know that.
Jeff:Yeah, I didn't either. I didn't know that they knew of any volcanoes on Mars. No. So 90,000 feet in the air, that's gotta be pretty scary.
Chris:That would be incredibly frightening. I
Jeff:remember, uh, so gather around kids before the internet we had encyclopedias and we had the World Book Encyclopedia in our home. And I would look up, I mean, I, it was cool because if you were bored, You could just pick some some letter from the encyclopedia and just start thumbing through it and look at shit.
Chris:Yeah, but see that was you and me because other people would define that as boredom,
Jeff:Well, maybe so, but I remember looking at pictures of Mars from the. I think it was the Viking Expedition that went to Mars, I think in the mid seventies. I don't know. But anyway, they had pictures from it in this World Book encyclopedia, and it was in color, and I was fascinated. I was like, holy hell, that's another planet that I'm looking at right there. It was amazing. But yeah, obviously we know way more about Mars now than they did back in, you know, when they got those pictures back. That's
Chris:cool. It really is. I remember, so in the seventies they launched the Voyager missions? Mm-hmm. There were two of them, Voyager one and two, and I think it was like 70, is it 76 and seven or 77 and eight maybe that
Jeff:was it. That
went
Chris:to Mars. Well, are you talking about landed on Mars? Yeah, because these,
Jeff:OK. That would've been, well, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I just know there were pictures of it.
Chris:Yeah. OK. That may have been it then. So this one, I remember it was like 80 was 82 or 83 when it passed. By Saturn. Mm-hmm. and. Got the most beautiful and vivid pictures that we had ever seen of Saturn rings. Mm-hmm. you know, all the colors in them and how big they are. All of that kind of stuff. Never had had, see back then we didn't even have telescopes that could get that kind of clarity. Yeah. And so it took the ship going by it to get that, but that was in 82 or 83. and I don't remember, you know, this is where you can lose track of time. I don't know if this was five years ago, 10 years ago, but let's just say even 10 years ago. So essentially 30 years after that is when the Voyager spacecraft left our solar system. Yeah. So already being out at Saturn in the early eighties, It took it another 30 years to exit. Get out the solar system. Yeah. Yeah.
Jeff:So is that the one they sent? This must be it. They put some stuff in it, like there would, have you heard of this? There was a record they put in with different things on it. I think so. Uh, like d. Sound bites. I don't remember what, uh, I think a song or a few songs on there. I think something from like Beethoven or Bach or somebody like that and yeah. So that was it. Yeah. It was the mid seventies that they did that. Wow. Yeah. And it's gone, like they, they don't have contact with it anymore. Like it's, yeah,
Chris:they just recently lost the contact with it. I, I think they were, they were getting very intermittent. pings or something. Mm-hmm. And then I think it finally went away. Wow. But, but even that was quite some time after it had exited the solar system. Mm-hmm. But they thought they would've lost contact well before that. So the last point on here, and this can just open up a whole topic for another show, is time is only an illusion. And this says. So our minutes, days, weeks, years, and other increments of time measurement only tools made up by humans. That's what some research suggests according to physicists who say, gravity lacks the strength to push everything in the universe in a forward direction. We'll see with time. That's, that's our whole. Measurement is time is going forward. Going
Jeff:forward. Yeah.
Chris:Yeah. Time is going forward and never goes back. Well, what defines time going forward? It's that we go from one day to the next and so on. I mean, we do have enough technology now to know, like if the. Earth, you know, started spinning the other direction, but, but see there again, like, OK, what if the earth did start spinning the other direction? We wouldn't call that going back in time. I think it'd be
Jeff:disastrous.
Chris:Well, it would be disastrous but that's just it. You know, we measure time in seconds, minutes, days, as. The earth turning and getting daylight going into darkness, coming back into daylight again. If the earth started going backwards, we wouldn't say it's going back in time. No. So then what
Jeff:defines time? What is that? Yeah, what is time? I saw that, uh, there was an NPR article recently and I didn't read it. I wish now that I had, cuz I didn't know that we were doing this list. Yeah, it said experts called Time and Illusion, and I kind of, I flagged it. I was like, OK, I'm gonna come back and read that and I forgot about it. But here's something I've thought about before. There are reasons that we measure certain things the way we do. So a day is a complete rotation of the Earth. 24 hours. Mm-hmm. a month. Is basically the lunar cycle, right? So you know, it's 30, usually 30, 31 days a year is a complete revolution of the earth around the sun. What, why do we do things with weeks? What is that? Why? What are weeks, weeks mean? Nothing in terms of all that other stuff,
Chris:I don't know, but. Except for the one day, you know, a year is 52 weeks.
Jeff:Yeah.
Chris:But why, what is a week? Which is and a week. Well, and so then why is a week seven days? Yeah. I don't know. I'm sure there's something to that. I don't know what it is. Hmm.
See
Jeff:more
Chris:questions. Yep. So I, I think we need to, I, I think we should do another, Similar to this and talk about time now here, we've talked a whole lot about space.
Jeff:Yeah, that's a good idea. Do you think there are? Do you think there's life out there somewhere besides us?
Chris:I can't imagine that there's not. Honestly, I think knowing what we know of how much is out there, it would have to be just. Absolutely. I don't know. I think it would just have to be unbelievable. Literally unbelievable that there's not anything else out there. Yeah, because how, how are we here then? Right? How, how and why would we be here and with all of that out there that absolutely nothing else
Jeff:exists. See, I've had to do a complete 180 on that because in my environment growing. There can't there, there cannot be life out there because it's not mentioned in the Bible that, that humans are the only ones mentioned in the Bible. So how could there possibly be any life out there? God didn't create anything else, but I'm not that same person who's growing up in that environment and I'm the same way. Like how could there not be? There's gotta be the whatever diameter you said the universe is. I mean, and it's as old as it is. I mean, there's gotta be something out there. Yeah. We may never know.
Chris:That's the frustrating thing right there. Yeah. And even if we quote unquote, we know mm-hmm. it may not be us. I mean, I can't, Ima, I have a hard time believing that for what we don't know now, that in our lifetime we're gonna find out. Yeah.
Jeff:Have you seen the movie? Uh, it was a book, but it was also movie The Martian, the movie had, uh, I haven't, Matt
Chris:Damon. Yeah, I haven't seen
Jeff:it. It was good. I'm not big on science fiction stuff, but it was, it was a good movie. Yeah. Anyway, that's all I got on that.
Chris:It just resolved itself. It did. I have heard it was good, but for some reason it's just not come across my path to watch it, but I, yeah, I guess I should.
Jeff:All right. There you go. That is another episode, and we said we're gonna do space and time. I think really all we talked about was space, so we'll have to do stuff on time. There's a. There to talk about. Maybe we'll do that in the next episode. Does that sound all right? Yeah, absolutely. All right. If you like this kind of stuff, you are our kind of people, and this is your type of podcast, so you should absolutely follow us. On whatever platform you listen to podcast on, go ahead and subscribe. Follow us. You'll get new episodes delivered to you every Tuesday. That's when they drop. And while you're there, go ahead and rate us. We would be really, really grateful if you'd give us five stars. And while you're there, go ahead and write something. It doesn't matter what you write, but the way these apps. If you write something that makes it easier for people to discover the show, so go ahead and put whatever there. Uh, we're gonna read. It doesn't matter what it is. We have a website that is Subpar Talks dot com. There you can email us, leave us a voicemail. You can learn more about me, Chris other show stuff. And we are on social media on Twitter. We are at Subpar Talks on Facebook. We are Subpar Talks. If you wanna follow our personal Twitter accounts, we would welcome that as well. On there. I am at@independentjeff
Chris:and I am at Chris Bradford tx.
Jeff:And last but not least, go ahead and share Subpar Talks with your friends. Share this on social media, your acquaintances, colleagues, family, whoever you encounter. Let'em know about Subpar Talks because the more people we have listening to this show, the easier it is for us to get this content to you each and every single. So that's a little bit about space. I feel insignificant now. I already felt insignificant before we started the show, but even more so now, man,
Chris:it gives you perspective. I
Jeff:tell you what. Sure does. All right. That is another episode of Subpar Talks and until next week, so long.
