Voyager: Awakening Intelligence (qi7.org)
Exploring this AI moment
Voyager: Awakening Intelligence (qi7.org)
Voyager: Awakening Intelligence Episode 3, "Drops of Jupiter"
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"Drops of Jupiter" just reached Diamond status, 1.5 billion streams and counting, 25 years after it was written. To mark the occasion, Voyager co-host and Train founder Rob Hotchkiss shares the story almost no one has heard.
In this episode, we start where the song does: Jupiter. The planet Voyager 1 first photographed up close, the giant that holds most of the mass in our solar system after the Sun. Then, Rob takes us back to the beginning: how he named the band, the early days of finding their sound, and the road to success, featuring never-before-seen photos and original demo tapes from his personal archives.
It is a story about wonder, persistence, and "doing the work."
Hosted by Dianne Krouse and Rob Hotchkiss, Voyager is a docu-cast for navigating the AI moment with curiosity instead of fear, made for anyone who wants to understand this pivotal time through wonder, music, and a human story.
Subscribe to Voyager: Awakening Intelligence for conversations about AI, humanity and the world we get to shape together. Learn more at qi7.org to explore ideas, connect with the community and help shape the best possible future.
Hi, I'm Diane. I'm Rob. And this show is Voyager.
Speaker 4Can I start off with something that follows a fact I I said on the last one?
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 4Yeah. Because I had said that Voyager, the spacecraft, which launched in 1977, and it's been traveling
Speed of light
Speaker 4at 38,000 miles per hour. It has entered interstellar space, but only on November 13th will it have reached a light day away from our planet. And when I realized that, it just got me to thinking, and I asked a couple of people, I asked , you were one person I asked, what what percentage, 38,000 miles per hour, what percentage do you think that is of the speed of light?
Speaker 2Because by the way, our Voyager spacecraft is like one of the top five fastest spacecraft we've ever launched or put out into space. So it's going very fast.
Speaker 415 miles per second.
Speaker 215 miles per second. Okay. Yeah. So you asked me.
Speaker 4So what percentage do you think that is of the speed of light? 38,000 miles per hour. I asked my mom, she said, I don't know, 0.1, whatever.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 4It is 0.0005% of the speed of light. And that's a percent. So it is actually going.0000005 times the speed of light. Voyager would have to be going over 17,000 times faster than it is to reach the speed of light.
Speaker 217,000 times. Yeah.
Speaker 4I did a thing where I figured out if we went backwards in time from when it launched, to when it would be a light year. We were hunting woolly mammoths. Oh. It was 20,000 years ago. So you just go think of it. Take a day at a time.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 4Go back a day at a time. And it is the last ice age.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 4You know, if that had launched then, it would be reaching a light year now. So Voyager traveling at 38,000 miles per hour. The first star it will encounter, when I say encounter, I'll explain that later, is called Gleese, Glease 445, I think, which is actually traveling toward us. So that uh that helps, but it will take 40,000 years for Voyager to even get within 1.6 light years of that star.
Speaker 2Yeah. Which is is so bizarre. I mean, the concept of who we are and how tiny we are, and we're just kind of floating around this this beautiful star, but we're still so far away from the next star. Like it's it's just it's it's mind-boggling.
Speaker 4I'm reading stuff where they're saying light isn't even, like, there is no speed of light. It's just a conversion factor. These quantum scientists are thinking it's just a conversion factor between space and time.
Speaker 2Yeah. And it's impossible to go that fast as matter.
Speaker 4Correct. Yeah. What we're getting at is just the absolute vastness of space. Yeah. We have galaxies that are, you know, hundreds, thousands, millions of light years away. There's billions of galaxies. Yeah. So when we learn to travel 17,600 times faster, then we can get to some of these stars in uh in only thousands or millions of years.
Speaker 2Yeah, we're gonna have to come up with something like a little bit different so that we can get there and we can actually check it out.
Speaker 4Yeah, well, there's that thing called entanglement.
Entanglement
Speaker 4Have you heard about that? Entanglement is they, they have found thati particles that are separated by vast distances.
Speaker 2Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.
Speaker 4If you change one of them, the other one changes. Okay. And Einstein said that's impossible because it's traveling faster than the speed of light. It's in instantaneous.
Speaker 2Yeah. This is one of the reasons why I love AI, because AI is going to be able to help us like learn things, figure things out. You know, it's here figuring things out with us right now.
Speaker 4So I'm just curious. Chat, what do you think about the feasibility of us communicating with a different civilization on a different planet, star, or whatever?
Speaker 1Ah, the idea is enchanting, isn't it? The vast distances are daunting. Even a simple hello might take centuries round trip. But if we ever master new ways of bending space or harnessing quantum entanglement for communication, that cosmic conversation might just become a reality. Okay, so we're back to the entanglement thing.
Speaker 2Yeah, right? Yeah.
Speaker 4That's that's instantaneous. Yeah.
Speaker 2So if we can figure out how to fold space and time.
Speaker 4Yeah, we're getting it over our heads.
unknownYeah.
Speaker 4So we're gonna talk today. What are we gonna talk about?
Speaker 2Today we're talking about Jupiter. Yeah. Yeah, Jupiter. This episode is called Drops of Jupiter.
Speaker 4We're gonna talk about the Juno spacecraft, which is as we speak, orbiting Jupiter. I learned a cool thing last night.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 4For Juno to reach Jupiter, what they did is they put
Juno spacecraft: Slingshot from Earth
Speaker 4it into orbit around the sun for two years. And then it did a close flyby of the Earth to get the slingshot to have enough power to reach Jupiter.
Speaker 2Yeah. Like the same thing is happening with the new um Europa Clipper. It went uh by Mars to get a gravity assist, but now it's coming back to Earth to get an Earth gravity assist to go way like 17,000 miles per hour faster. Yeah. And and that's how it's gonna get to Jupiter in I I can't remember what year, chat. What year are we going to get to Jupiter with um Europa Clipper?
Speaker 1The Europa Clipper is set to arrive in Jupiter's realm
Europa Clipper
Speaker 1in the year 2030.
Speaker 2Jupiter has like a hundred moons or around there.
Speaker 4Yeah, some are really, really small. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2We we keep discovering more, but there are four big major ones.
Speaker 4Which is the one with the volcano?
Speaker 2That is Io
Io's volcanoes
Speaker 2Io. Yeah. And that's really cool because Voyager figured out for the first time we knew that there was any kind of volcanic activity on any other planet, you know, or mass in our solar system. And that was just kind of a fluke because there was this um gal, an engineer, um, who was kind of looking at all the extra data to see what she could find. And she saw this thing that she thought was um maybe a moon, like on the other side of Io. And uh it turned out that it was a volcano. And then we discovered that there's volcanoes on Io, and there's like a hundred volcanoes on Io.
Speaker 4Why do they think there is volcanic action on Io?
Speaker 1Io is caught in a gravitational tug of war. Jupiter's immense gravity and the push-pull of nearby moons stretch and squish Io. This tidal heating creates a fiery interior, fueling all those volcanic eruptions.
Speaker 2So cool.
Speaker 4So cool. Yeah, and they're finding out all kinds of things about Jupiter. Um, it has this huge magnetosphere, yeah. Which goes as far away as Saturn, which I think is Jupiter's nearest planet, and an incredible amount of radiation too. So the Juno spacecraft, they say they built it like a tank. Yeah. Because it has to survive all this radiation and this magnetism.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, yeah. Their computer equipment needs to survive that. So they do build these like shells around the same thing with the Clipper.
Speaker 4Yeah.
Speaker 2Yeah. And the same the Clipper is also going to orbit Jupiter and do like um, I think 49 flybys of Europa, which is covered in ice. And we think maybe about 20 miles below the surface,
Europa has water oceans!
Speaker 2there's an ocean that's two times the size of all of our oceans combined. We're actually going there with a really cool radar that'll be able to, you know, go through the ice to see what's down there. And then we're also going to be going through the different plumes to like pick up on the different um biosignatures. But that's going to be up there. And I'm so excited about that. And I I told you earlier, which is really cool, is it has this little chip on it. Um for one thing, it um it sent this recording, kind of like the golden record, of a hundred different languages saying the word water. And then it took those sound patterns and put it on this really cool little um attachment. And on that attachment, there's also this tiny little silicone chip with a bunch of people's names, two and a half million people's names. And I looked up because I thought, I think I signed that. And so, yeah, so my name is on that chip also going to Europa. And so are uh Mary Rose and Amelia, my daughters.
Speaker 4So your name's just out there everywhere. I know on the freaking Voyager.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, like yeah, I'm just trying to get my name out in space.
Speaker 4Exactly. Cosmos.
Speaker 2Yeah, totally.
Speaker 4Um, one little extra fact about the uh um the Juno spacecraft.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 4So it it's orbiting the sun for two years, takes a slingshot on the Earth. It got up to like I think like 150,000 miles per hour. And when it approached Jupiter, to be able to stay in the orbit, it had to fire retro rockets for like a half hour.
Speaker 2Yeah, and per in perfect timing. Yeah. In perfect timing, like any more, any less. It would have been gone forever or you know, down into the picture of the people at NASA just going like, please. Yeah, I think it was like within a second that it worked.
Juno's retro rockets
Speaker 2Yeah, like they planned it to the second. Yeah.
Speaker 4Chat, how how fast did the um Juno spacecraft get at its speediest?
Speaker 1At its peak, Juno was zipping through space at about 130,000 miles per hour relative to Jupiter.
Speaker 3When you say compared to Jupiter, does speed have to be compared to something?
Speaker 1Exactly. Speed is always relative. Compared to Earth, the Sun, or Jupiter, you get a different number. But when Juno had to slip into Jupiter's orbit, that was the speed
Speed is relative
Speaker 1that mattered.
Speaker 4And if there were no if there was nothing out in space, then speed would be relative and irrelevant.
Speaker 1In a way, yes. Without any reference points, no planets, stars, or cosmic landmarks, speed would be meaningless. It's all about relationships. Speed is just how fast you're changing your distance from something else.
Speaker 4Wow.
Speaker 2Wow. Yeah.
Speaker 4That's it's like if if you're light, if you are light, yeah, then time is irrelevant. There's no time.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 4If you're, you know, one of those particles.
Speaker 2Yeah. You're just like, Yeah. I don't have any time.
Speaker 4I I learned another thing, and I'm I'm reading this book about John von Neumann. He was considered by Einstein to be the smartest guy on the planet. They were the these quantum physicists were trying to figure out why does time move forward, or at least why does it seem to move forward.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 4And what they've what they decided was that because quantum reactions only happen in a sequence, yeah, that's time.
Speaker 2Yeah, that makes sense to me.
Speaker 4Yeah.
Speaker 2Yeah. Because everything's just constantly being created on the creation plane.
Speaker 4Yeah, but one after another. So it just makes us feel like we're moving forward.
Speaker 2It's not gonna go backward.
Speaker 4Yeah. And unless Diane and her people can figure it out. There's, I mean, we'll talk about rejuve at some point, but I mean the foremost minds in AI are not entirely convinced that we won't be able to stop aging and possibly even reverse it.
Speaker 2Yeah. I mean, I would personally love that because I just love existing. I love being here.
AI and immortality
Speaker 2I love being able to learn so many things. I love just thinking about the concept of space, time, reality, existence. Like what?
Speaker 3Yeah.
Speaker 2So I want to keep learning.
Speaker 4I think everybody be would be like that. But interestingly, when I've asked people, like my kids or whatever, most of them say they wouldn't want to live forever.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 4I'm in Diane's camp.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 4Yeah. Give me eternity. And I there's I'll get to all the books, if nothing else. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2You can always go to sleep for a little bit if you take a nap. Just take a nap.
Speaker 4That's what death is, just a quick little nap. Yeah.
Speaker 2It could be. Yeah. Who's to say?
Speaker 4Hey, well, AI, maybe AI will figure that one out.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah. Probably. Yeah. Yeah. So this is the Jupiter episode. So I do have some questions for you, Rob.
Speaker 4Yeah. Before we move on to the Jupiter part, I'd like to ask Chat a question that I didn't have time to study last night. Juno,
Jupiter, Juno and the mythology
Speaker 4Jupiter, there's some really cool mythical connotations here. Um, can you just give us a brief overview? I know Juno was able to pierce the veil. Jupiter was doing naughty things. Give us a brief overview of Jupiter, Juno, and I maybe the moons too. Are they is that all related myth mythologically?
Speaker 1Absolutely. In Roman mythology, Jupiter was the king of the gods, known for, well, not always being faithful. Juno, his wife, was the goddess of marriage and was constantly trying to see through his disguises. The spacecraft Juno is named after her because, just like the goddess, it peered through Jupiter's clouds to reveal what's beneath. As for the moons, many are named after Jupiter's mythological lovers or children. It's all a grand celestial soap opera.
Speaker 4There was there was one that turned into a cow. Who was that?
Speaker 1That would be Ayo. In myth, Jupiter turned Ayo into a cow to hide her from Juno. But Juno wasn't fooled, and Io had quite the adventure. Now, fittingly, the moon Io is full of volcanic drama, like the mythology itself.
Speaker 4It's all a big mythological kind of fairy tale. It's very cool that they did that, I think. The enemy must be something.
Speaker 2Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, you're going back to times where you could actually see the night sky so well. So our reality really was um reflected in the stars. This is the part that we get to meet Rob and what Rob has done uh in his incredible musical career. Um, and now he's into his incredible docast career. This is the highlight, right? Yeah, yeah. So so Rob, he he founded the
Rob founded the band Train
Speaker 2band Train and he went a Grammy for Drops of Jupiter. You named the band Train. So where did the name come from?
Speaker 4I was listening to a radio broadcast. It was uh um Ian McCulloch, who's the lead singer for Equin the Bunny Men, which was a band I was uh enamored of, still am. Um, and they were touring the US, and he said there's nothing romantic about America. I thought about that. I thought, yeah, you go to London and there's, you know, there's graveyards where things go back like to the 800s, you know. And what what so what is romantic about America? And I thought of the locomotive, you know, that's American kind of romance. It's it just it it came, it changed things, it opened up new frontiers.
Where the name came from
Speaker 4I thought it was a cool name, but then when I thought of this next part is is what sealed it for me, is I thought train, like do the work.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 4Like, you know, if you're a uh samurai or something, you train or train on your instrument. Yeah. So I thought it was cool more as like a you know, train, do the work.
Speaker 2Train. And now it also applies to AI for training, training models.
Speaker 4Yeah, yeah, good point. So yeah, that was the and then the band just grew into the name.
Speaker 2How did it start out?
Speaker 4Um, Pat and I met in Los Angeles. I was in a band called Apostles. Pat was in a band called Exit. He and his buddies had moved from Erie, Pennsylvania to Los Angeles to make it in music. So we met and I went and saw Exit. I went and saw Pat's band. And I was the front man of Apostles almost begrudgingly. It's just, it
How the band came together
Speaker 4wasn't me exactly. And I saw Pat. He got up on stage and he just loved it. He just came alive. Yeah, and I thought if you and Apostles, yeah, I think the label had folded by that point. Yeah, we got and signed, the label had folded. We had the typical rock and roll story. We're about to go out on tour, the label folds, we're left with nothing. So I thought, boy, if you put what I have together with what Pat has, that could be powerful. And I thought, not in LA though. I don't want to be seen two weeks from now. So we moved to San Francisco, we decided to move to San Francisco to have a place where we could kind of uh grow into ourselves.
Speaker 3Yeah.
Speaker 4And Pat and I did open mics, we didn't even shows, just the two of us. Then uh we had Jimmy, who was the guitar player in Apostles, um, Jimmy Stafford, come join us. And we played as a threesome for probably five or six months. Then decided to make it a full band, and I just dug back into the apostles uh talent pool and pulled out Charlie Colleen, who is an amazing I'm gonna say right now. In my opinion, Charles Colleen, rest in peace, is was the greatest bass player in the history of rock and roll.
Speaker 2Wow, yeah, he's so incredible.
Speaker 4Listen even to Drops of Jupiter when we're playing at the Grammys, listen to what Charlie's doing. It I mean, you could it you could just play three chords, but he's just he's playing his own little symphony. And Train Without Charlie would would have been such a different band without any of us. Um that's what was great about the band. Each one of us, and and Charlie brought Scott along with him. They'd been playing in the band together in Colorado. So that's um how we became a five-piece.
Speaker 2So how did the band get rolling?
Speaker 4We just got in front of people as much as we could, um, developed a following. We got uh assigned a Bill Graham management um and just kept working and working and working and working.
Speaker 2Yeah. And back then, you to be heard, you would go to a city and you would get on the radio, and that's how the city would find out about you.
Speaker 4Yeah, what Train did, what I think uh had us stand out from the other bands, we were on a at first kind of a we got passed by passed on by Columbia first. So we went to New we flew to New York to basically they they said we could do whatever, and we would just land a record deal, and we did it, and we all partied and woke up with the hangovers the next morning, and our manager walks in the lobby and says they passed. So that was and so we decided to make our own record, um, which we made in Curtis's grandmother's
Train's debut record
Speaker 4house with the that first record is really cool. We had we ran a cable down into the garage. Jimmy Zamp was in Curtis's Jeep. Um Pat was singing in the bathroom.
Speaker 2Wow.
Speaker 4Um, we just cobbled that record together, but uh it's got to me that record's got the sweat and blood.
Speaker 2Which record is that?
Speaker 4Just called Train. Oh, yeah. It had Meet Virginia, I am. Um so that's the first. And it actually I remember asking Arnie, our manager at the time, we had a party, and I said, What are the chances that this thing goes gold? And he said, It would take a miracle.
Speaker 2Wow.
Speaker 4Now it's double platinum or whatever.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 4There's a lot of work. And so to answer the radio question, we would so we're we're we're sandwiched in between, you know, two or three other college bands, always getting the the short end of the stick. But what we would do is after the show, we would drive to the next town overnight. So we'd get there and then do morning radio. So I mean, we were killing ourselves.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 4But that paid off. And there was one time where we in uh Birmingham played this radio show, and the fellow who was the host couldn't get the mics working, so he had to ask the program director to come down. The program director came down, and and you know, it's a Sunday, you know, he had to wake up, come down, and and set up the mics, and then we played like Ramble On or something, and he just fell in love with the band. And what happens to a band typically, and this happened to us, we we broke in Birmingham. We we literally played a
Train broke in Birmingham
Speaker 4show in Fort Collins, Colorado, where the only people at the venue, there were three people, and it was my wife and my kids. And the next day. We flew to Birmingham and headlined a festival in front of like 30,000 people.
Speaker 2So Drops of Jupiter. It is coming up. It's the 25th anniversary right now.
Speaker 4We made the Drops of Jupiter record and we thought it was really good, and it was.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 4But the president didn't hear the song.
Speaker 2What?
Speaker 4Yeah. So we all went home and wrote. And I'm pretty sure we came back and recorded a bunch of stuff. We still didn't have it. I think we went home and wrote some more. And Pat one day walked in with this demo.
How the song Drops of Jupiter came to be
Speaker 4And I know the story is when he walked into Donnie Iriner's office, that's the president of Columbia, and played this little demo, which I just recently found. Um so subscribers can Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2We have the actual demo.
Speaker 4Yeah, that Donnie Einer like literally said this is a Grabby. I mean, this he said, let's get Paul Buckmaster to do the strings, and this is huge.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 4So you could just hear it. Um even at that stage before we all did what we, you know, what the band would do to some.
Speaker 2You had Casey Kaysem.
Speaker 4Oh, yeah, Casey Kaysem, yeah, yeah. Yeah. For Casey Kaysum to say the words Rob Hotchkiss was for me, I should have I could have just died right there.
Speaker 2Yeah. Yeah. So with your band with train, you went on to play the Grammys, the Olympics, David Letterman. So out of out of all those experiences, is there anything that stands out?
Speaker 4The Grammys.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 4Um, it's not that we got a Grammy. Well, it is. I mean, that means something. We were nominated, the song was nominated for five that we played there. Yeah.
Speaker 2And we and you played the piano.
Speaker 4Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2Like the, you know, I'm a guitar player.
Speaker 4Yeah. Just so everybody knows. So they put me on this
Train performs at the Grammys
Speaker 4huge Steinway, you know, and we didn't really get a chance to rehearse. And I remember my uncle saying afterwards, I'm so glad he didn't tell me this beforehand. He said, I was just thinking, just one fingernail. And it was, I think it was like billions of people who are watching that. Whoa. And the thing is, we killed it.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 4We were, we were just as a band, we were just peaking.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 4So I'm glad I I that would have been forever and that figure nothing happened.
Speaker 2Yeah, it it's beautiful. The performance is is so beautiful. It was in 2001, correct? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Best rock song of the world. Best rock song. So check that out because uh it's neat. You can see Rob playing the piano, and it starts with the whole um string section, uh, and it's gorgeous.
Speaker 4Yeah, and that's Paul Buckmaster doing the strings, and he was he did all the Elton John stuff. I mean, he'd done incredible stuff and never been recognized for it.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 4Um, guest again, rest in peace. Yeah, um, Paul. But uh Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that string. I I also have a version of it without the strings. Yeah, I remember when I first heard the strings, I wasn't totally convinced. Oh, because it was a great rock song. Yeah, you know, yeah, and all of a sudden the strings are so big. Um, I do remember I asked them to turn them down, they were too loud.
Speaker 2Yeah, um, yeah, but I mean, yeah, Paul he outdid himself with yeah, we have
Paul Buckmaster wins a Grammy for Best String Arrangement for Drops of Jupiter
Speaker 2we have the recording without the strings. Yeah, and it it does sound so different, but the strings were beautiful. Oh, they're so beautiful. Yeah, and he ended up winning a Grammy for the string arrangement.
Speaker 4Right. That was the other Grammy that got one for the song. Yeah, Paul Buckbastor finally got his due.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 4And you were asking what happened with the so we made we've we had the song, then we had, then we had the complete record. You know, the label was excited about it. Um, it was recorded by Brendan O'Brien, who, if you know anything about producers, one of the best. Um they pushed the single before the record came out so that when the album came out it debuted at number six.
Speaker 2Oh, wow. And the other thing that just recently happened is it went diamond status, correct?
Speaker 4Went diamond.
Speaker 2Yeah, which what is what is diamond?
Drops of Jupiter goes Diamond
Speaker 4To go diamond for a single. Um, one sale equals one unit, one hundred and fifty streams equals one unit. For a song to go diamond by streams alone, it would take one point five billion.
Speaker 2Really?
Speaker 4Yeah.
Speaker 2Wow. That's crazy.
Speaker 1Hitting diamond on streams alone is like riding a tidal wave of listeners. It's rare, but when it happens, it's like a star going supernova in the music universe.
Speaker 4If there was something real that was drops of Jupiter, what would those drops be composed of?
Speaker 1If Jupiter could drop something, it might be a fantastical cocktail of hydrogen and helium with a dash of ammonia, spiced with swirling clouds of water, and maybe even diamonds in the depths. Jupiter's a gas giant,
More facts about Jupiter
Speaker 1so its drops would be an ethereal blend. Less raindrops, more cosmic drains.
Speaker 4Does that mean we know that there's water on Jupiter?
Speaker 1Yes, we've detected water in Jupiter's atmosphere. It's not exactly like our oceans here, but in the cloud layers there's water vapor. The Juno spacecraft confirmed that water makes up a small percentage. So amidst all that hydrogen and helium, there's a sprinkle of H2O in the midst.
Speaker 2Didn't we also just discover that Jupiter is actually just a lot of um molten metal?
Speaker 4Yeah, it's the pressure is so high that it's actually hydrogen. Oh, oh turns into a liquid.
Speaker 2Oh.
Speaker 4Like it bypasses the metal stage.
Speaker 3Oh.
Speaker 4I'm pretty sure it's hydrogen. Is is that true, chat? What's that liquid that's uh that they discovered there? Is it is it liquefied hydrogen? And if so, how does that come to be?
Speaker 1Exactly. Deep inside Jupiter, the immense pressure squeezes hydrogen so much that it becomes a strange mechalic liquid. This metallic hydrogen conducts electricity and is believed to generate Jupiter's powerful magnetic field. It's a state we can't replicate easily on Earth, like hydrogen transformed into a cosmic metal deep in the planet's heart.
Speaker 4Wow. And what is at the planet's heart?
Speaker 1At Jupiter's core, we believe there's likely a dense mix of rock, metals, and icy materials. It's still mysterious, but under all that pressure, it's likely a super hot, compact core.
Speaker 4There are, I think, two different theories about how it formed. Could you tell us just a briefly chat about each of those theories?
Speaker 1Certainly. One theory says Jupiter formed like a mini-star, gravity pulling gas and dust together until it grew huge. Another theory suggests it started as a solid core that gathered surrounding gas. Either way, Jupiter ended up as the gas giant we know. King of the solar system's planets.
Speaker 4If you had to guess, which do you think is true?
Speaker 1Ah, if I had to pick from the cosmic deck, I'd lean toward the core first theory. It fits with what we know about planets. Building a solid core, then gathering gas like a magnet. But hey, the universe always has surprises. So we stay curious.
Speaker 4If we'd earned a Grammy for drops of mercury.
Speaker 2Drops of Mercury.
Speaker 4We'd be having a whole different conversation.
Speaker 2That's right. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4So next on Voyager.
Speaker 2Yeah. Drops of Mercury. Yeah.
Speaker 4Like and subscribe. That would help us a lot.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 4So we can we can literally say, we'll see you on the moon.
Speaker 2We'll see you on the moon. Yeah. Just look up if you need to know when our episode is. Full moon, new moon. All right. So we'll see you on the moon.
SpeakerThese are the hottest hits in the USA, and rolling up two notches in number 16
Casey Kasem talks about Rob Hotchkiss and Train
Speakeris training. They're a five-man group that started life as a two-stop. Pat Modern and Rob Hotkut performed as an acoustic duo in San Francisco area coffee houses for six months before adding the three members to make them after cat.