Things You Thought You Knew – Sonic BOOM!

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Start off begins right now.

I've come to shed some more light on that which is mysterious and this one.

Yes, yes, the stuff you thought you knew,

but you didn't know.

That's what you thought you did.

So I just thought I'd talk about sonic booms.

Okay, I love that.

Nobody doesn't love a sonic boom.

Yeah, that's one of the best most popular video games.

That's sonic.

That's sonic.

That's sonic.

I tell you that head talk.

He is something else.

So here you go, ready?

So let's take a airplane.

That's a good choice here.

Generally airplanes make noise and so you'll hear the noise

and you'll look up and you see the plane coming.

Right.

And then receding.

All right.

The fact that you heard the plane and looked up

and then you see it approaching.

Means the sound got to you ahead of the plane.

Okay, yes.

Right?

The plane is not where you are yet.

It's down the road a bit.

Right.

So you hear it.

So the sound is going at the speed of sound.

And in regular air, we call it 700 miles an hour.

So it's around there.

It's about 700 miles an hour.

And the plane is still in like what,

for something.

Yeah, five, we've been trained to 500 miles an hour.

So the sound is emanating in front of the plane

relative to the plane at 200 miles an hour.

Nice.

Okay.

All right.

Not a problem.

No, this is very easy.

This is not hard to understand.

All right.

So let's ask the question.

Because by the way, the 700 miles an hour is the speed of sound

in air.

Right.

Typical.

So to sea level type air.

All right.

That's the speed of sound.

Now suppose the plane flew a little faster.

Let's admit, let it goes 600 miles an hour.

Okay.

All right.

Well, the sound going in front of it is now moving

in front at only 100 miles an hour faster.

Right.

Because it's, it's not going to increase

because it's the speed of sound.

Sound in air.

In air.

Okay.

So what that means is the plane will be a little closer to you

before you notice it is there.

Right.

Because it didn't get it, it didn't have a chance to get too far ahead.

All right.

Because the plane is like right, right coming up behind it.

But it's still moving away from it at 100 miles an hour.

That's still pretty fast.

Okay.

That's, that's fast.

How about 650 miles an hour?

So now.

So wait a minute.

Now it's only, okay, how about 680 miles an hour?

690.

Wait a minute.

What happens if you go 700 miles an hour?

What happens to the sound you're trying to admit

in front of you?

Well, you can't admit it.

It's right with you.

It's right with you.

It is right with you.

So here's the sound you're trying to push forward

and it's moving forward.

It's 700 miles an hour.

But so are you.

So that plane approaches you.

You don't even know it's there.

You don't even know to turn around and notice it.

Right.

Until it is directly overhead.

And then the sound from the sound hits you

and the light from the plane hits you.

And there you are.

You say, oh, it's a plane overhead.

Right.

Well, it's right there above you.

All right, let's keep going.

Let's let's not stop there.

Now have a go 750 miles an hour.

800 miles an hour.

Oh, by the way, we have words for this.

If you go to speed of sound, Mach 1.

Nice.

So now you have punched through

this, quote, sound barrier.

It's not really a barrier.

But we used to think it was one.

You punched through

and now the sound lags behind.

Right.

All right.

So now the faster you go beyond Mach 1,

Mach 2 would be how fast?

Twice the speed of sound.

Twice the speed of sound.

So 1400, 1500.

If you go twice as fast,

then you are leaving the sound behind you.

Right.

And all the sound that you are making

is now snow-plowed

into this cone that comes out away from your vessel.

So it's like your plane made a wake of nothing

that is being filled with the sound

that you left behind.

Correct.

And on the edge of that

is all the sound that would have spread out

through space ahead of you.

And now it's all compressed

behind you.

And so now that plane flies overhead,

you don't know it's there.

Right.

As a matter of fact,

you won't know it's there because

it didn't make a sound.

It didn't make a sound.

It didn't make a sound.

Brilliant.

Chuck, you're a fast study there.

So there it is directly overhead.

You don't even know to look up.

Right.

And it goes because it's well ahead

of the sound it's making.

So where's the sound it's making?

Well, it's way behind.

And it's all been snow-plowed

into this wall of sound

moving forward at the speed of sound.

So the plane is now downstream from you.

And you say,

that's odd.

That didn't make a sound.

The sonic boom hits you.

It's, oh, it's all the, it's like the like the big ball of sound.

It's a wall of sound.

It's a wall of sound.

It's compressed

because the plane left it behind.

And all the sound that it would have made,

that you would have heard,

ahead of it,

is now all behind it in a wall.

And it all got plowed into it.

So that, as it passes over you,

is a sonic boom.

Oh, man.

And the higher up the plane is,

the more delayed that is the sonic boom.

You'll come up here, sonic boom.

Look up, where's the plane?

It was way down.

Way downstream.

Now, so turns out,

anything that goes faster than sound

will make a sonic boom.

Okay.

So it turns out a whip.

The crack of a whip.

Okay.

Is the tip of the whip moving faster than the speed of sound?

Oh, sweet.

It's a mini sonic boom.

We used to do in the locker room,

you get a like a rat tail with the,

a rat tail with a towel.

So the sonic boom comes about,

so the material,

this would be true with the whip as well.

As it flings forward and you,

you start retracting it

before it fully flings forward.

And the rapid change of direction there

is the thing moving just faster than the speed of sound

and you hear a crack.

It's very small.

It's a sonic crack.

Not a sonic boom.

So, so that's what a sonic boom is.

And I love me some sonic boons,

but we, you know, we had the,

no, we didn't.

We've never had a commercial,

a commercial supersonic plane in the United States.

But Europe did.

And you know what that was?

That French plane.

Your French plane.

Yeah.

The Concours SSD.

The Concours, yes.

Liga, good.

And that was a collaboration,

I think, with England.

And so it would fly to London

and to Paris to New York.

But we didn't have one of those planes.

Right.

We didn't have,

so how are we going to compete with that?

Here's what we do.

We say, we don't like sonic boons over our residences.

So if you want to fly your plane over continental United States,

you have to fly subsonic.

Well, what's the point?

What's the point of that?

Okay.

So you didn't have these planes going to LA.

They all went to New York, basically.

Right.

And, uh, and I would have been great

if we can all fly super sonically.

So the concern was you're having a nice peaceful afternoon,

a picnic and then sonic boons

are just coming across.

I think the novelty would probably wear off quickly.

It's my sense of this.

Now, a quick little story before we end,

there's the Salisbury Cathedral.

This, I think this is a true story.

I read about it a long ago,

but I haven't seen more written about it.

So I don't know, maybe it's apocryphal.

The Salisbury Cathedral,

one of the oldest cathedrals in the world

has one of the oldest clocks in the world.

And I visited that when I visited Stonehenge when I was a kid

because the Stonehenge is in the Salisbury Plains,

Southwest England.

So anyhow, the Royal Air Force is a very underpopulated area.

So the Royal Air Force was doing maneuvers there

and there were sonic boons that they were making all the time.

Conservatives were worried,

conservators were worried that the sonic boon would jiggle the cathedral

and, and damage it.

Okay.

So we got some acoustic engineers that did some measurements

and sure enough,

there's serious sonic boom energy coming into the cathedral

and then someone said,

gee, I wonder how much vibration comes from

lower C on their organ from their pipe organ.

So they tested the low notes on the pipe organ

and it was more energetic than the sonic boons coming across.

So that was the end of that conversation right there.

Okay.

Now, it could be apocryphal,

but it's a fun story.

What it means is just in general,

if you think something is causing something,

look for anything else that could swamp that effect

and if you find something that does,

then formulate another question.

So now, when a sonic boom of a meteor coming into our atmosphere.

That's why you'll never know.

The people say,

oh, look here it comes.

No, you don't, you don't know until it's too late,

until it already hits.

So is it the boom that is breaking windows

or is it the movement of air itself?

Because it just-

It's the same thing.

It's the same thing.

It's just a shockwave.

It's still a shockwave.

It's a shockwave.

That's crap.

And you know something else?

It was.

This is really cool.

Okay.

Okay.

You know, the speed of light drops

when it goes into transparent solid materials.

So, speed of light is lower in glass.

It's even lower in diamond.

Right.

Okay.

Now, suppose you have a particle

that you send through that material

that goes faster than the speed of light.

Because you can do that.

There's no rule against it.

Right?

Right.

It's not my fault the light is slow.

It's not my fault.

I'm obeying Einstein.

I don't care that we're in glass

or in diamond or in water.

Okay.

So, it turns out when particles do that,

they make a kind of sonic boom of their own

but it's not sonic.

It's light.

A light boom.

Yeah.

It's a light boom.

Oh.

It's a light boom.

Well, that sounds delightful.

And so, it's a similar phenomenon

but it's happening sort of electromagnetically.

And it mits its own kind of radiation

for having done so.

So, it's a more general phenomenon

and a principal shock waves.

It's all part of the same discussion

of going faster than the medium wants you to go.

And you have it.

That's very cool.

Well, you know, a light boom,

you know, and production is a stand

that you hang a light on.

Oh.

I guess so.

That's a really boring version

of the definition of a word.

As I said, like, your light booms are way better.

I'm way cooler than the sound guy's booms.

Right.

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Start-up radio is supported by Claude from Anthropic.

Science isn't about rushing to conclusions.

It's about sitting with the uncertainty

until it starts to make sense.

Claude is the AI built for that kind of thinking

and Anthropic committed to not running ads in Claude.

So when you're chasing down an idea,

there's nothing pulling you towards someone else's agenda.

Try Claude for free at Claude.ai-slash-start-up

and see why problem solvers choose Claude

as their thinking partner.

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Hi, I'm Ernie Carducci from Columbus, Ohio.

I'm here with my son Ernie because we listen to star talk every night

and support star talk on Patreon.

This is star talk with Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

Chuck, yes.

What time of day is the sun the highest in the sky?

Oh, I don't know.

I knew.

I knew.

Yeah, I knew.

And unless it's day like savings time

and then it's like one o'clock.

Okay.

What's the hottest time of day?

Normally around three o'clock.

Why isn't it when the sun is at its highest?

Why are you doing this to me?

Just trying to put what is this?

Why are you pulling me?

No, let me think here.

When the sun is at its highest point in the sky,

it is right.

Maximally heating the earth.

In that way.

Well, that makes sense because if it's at that point that

it starts to maximally heat the earth,

then it would take a little longer for the earth to actually.

No, that don't make no sense.

I'll take it back.

I'm trying to think here.

Why would it be?

Because every moment after that,

it's heating the earth less.

That's what I'm saying.

That's what I'm saying.

Until sunset when it's not heating the earth at all.

Not your side of the earth at least.

Right.

So, okay.

So I want to explain.

Well, so my explanation was correct.

Okay.

But not for why, not for why.

Yes, but no.

Yes, but no.

I got you.

All right.

Here it goes.

It was a value of effort.

Okay.

So the sun emits a lot of bands of light.

But primarily emits light in the visible part of the spectrum.

And we all know that those are the colors of the rainbow.

Yes.

One of my favorite stories and it's not a story.

One of my favorite recountings that you have done.

And I believe you did it on the first season of Cosmos.

Was the scientist who was measuring the light

and then outside of the spectrum

that he was recording, there was a temperature change.

And he knew then because of that,

that there had to be a light that we don't know or see

that is making this change.

I love that.

I just love that recounting.

And he said it in his very sort of 18th century flare.

He called it light unfit for vision.

Light unfit for this.

Is that cool?

Yes.

He discovered infrared light and it was William Herschel.

William Herschel.

Yes.

All right.

So here's the thing.

So the sun emits infrared, which we can't see.

It emits ultraviolet, which we can't see.

And both of those are bands of light outside of the bands we do see.

So it's red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet.

All right.

Right.

And the subway G bib.

And the sun peaks right there in the middle between yellow and green.

All right.

So more energy comes from the sun right there in yellow and green

than in any other part of the spectrum.

All right.

The fact that you can see the sun

through the atmosphere means the air

is not absorbing any of that energy.

Well, if the air is not because you can see the sun,

it got through the atmosphere to the bottom,

to the base of the atmosphere where your eyeballs are to know why.

So the light comes all the way through.

It's not getting absorbed by the atmosphere.

It hits the ground.

And the ground absorbs the sunlight.

Not the air.

Okay.

So now the ground absorbs the yellow light and the green light

and the blue light and the red light absorbs it all.

That heats the molecules on Earth's surface.

Then the molecules re-radiate that same energy,

but in a different part of the spectrum.

Interesting.

It re-radiates it as infrared.

And the infrared gets absorbed by the atmosphere.

So there's a time delay right between when the sun is slamming us

with a visible light and when Earth's surface responds

back with infrared heating the air.

Now you put the thermometer in the air and say,

oh, the temperature is going up.

Did it go up at high noon?

No.

Took a couple of hours for that to build.

That.

So I had to see kids.

This is why you got to go to school.

This is why you got to go to school so as you can actually learn things

the proper way to learn them.

I'm not done yet.

Okay.

So if that's the case, that means the farther away you are

from Earth's surface.

Right.

The cooler it's going to be.

Right.

You ever go from sea level to a mountaintop?

Oh, God, yes.

It's lovely.

Okay.

The temperature is wrong.

What a refreshing climb.

Okay.

You say, no, I'm doing a hike.

I'm not taking a tram, but I'm not hiking it.

It's like hell.

So generally it's cooler on mountaintops because it's farther away

from the general Earth's surface that's there.

Not only that if you go up in an airplane,

well, forget it.

If you ever look at the temperature gauge that sometimes they show

in the front of the, you know, at the bulkhead,

you'll see the temperature drop may be 40 below zero.

Yeah, exactly.

Just a few miles up.

Why is it so cold up there?

Is it because you're closer to space?

No.

No, it's because you're farther away from where the sunlight is actually

doing the heating and that's right above the Earth's surface.

In fact, in meteorology, there's a rule about how high above Earth's surface

you have to put the thermometer so that everybody can get a consistent reading.

Interesting.

It's not directly above the ground.

You got to pull it up a little so it's a mixing of the air

so that everybody can get a nice consistent sensible reading of the temperature.

I love that.

I'm not done yet.

I'll get out.

Okay, so now watch.

Infrared.

Do you know what traps infrared?

Greenhouse gases.

Do you know what the predominant number one

greenhouse molecule in the atmosphere is?

Water vapor.

Water vapor.

Yeah.

The water molecule.

Okay, so let's do an experiment.

Let's take away the water molecules from where you are.

There's a word for such places.

What are they called?

Desert.

Deserts.

Thank you.

So the temperature rises in mid afternoon in the desert.

Then the sun sets.

What happens to that heat that the ground had accumulated from the sun?

It gets re-radied as infrared.

Does it get trapped?

No.

No.

It escapes.

And the nighttime temperature in the desert plummets.

Yes.

And that is the weirdest thing about the desert is you will die of a sunstroke during the day

and you will die of overexposure at night.

hypothermia at night.

hypothermia at night.

You got to be ready for a 40 degree range of temperature

maximum heating in the afternoon, maximum warming of the air,

to when everything just radiates away.

And by the way, when there's no sun, you just lose in heat.

So therefore the coldest time of the day is when?

I'm going to say in the, well, the coldest time of the day of the 24 hour day.

When is it 12 midnight or nine o'clock in the morning, three o'clock in the morning?

No, no, just before sunrise.

Oh yeah, because there's been no sun all that time.

There's been no sun.

It's been crumbling off the whole time.

Take a look at temperature plots.

Right.

Exactly.

Okay.

It'll peak in the mid afternoon and it'll, no matter where you are, it'll do that.

And then it'll go to its lowest point just before sunrise.

And then the sun starts giving you the energy again.

See, that's, I got to stop overthinking things because I'm talking to you.

And I'll, I'll start overthinking.

I get basic questions.

I'm not trying to, these are my trick questions.

I know.

Okay.

But it's still, yeah, but you're right.

Yeah, that the sun has not been present all that time.

It makes sense that just before the reappearance of the sun,

that would be the coldest time.

Correct.

And I got to correct something that people have gotten wrong.

Okay.

They'll say, when is the darkest time of night?

Just before the dawn.

No, see, that's bullshit.

That's bullshit.

Okay, it's sorry.

All right, anytime it is not twilight,

you are basically equally as dark the entire night.

No matter what.

So, you're, so you want, pick midnight if you want.

Fine.

Right.

But that whole time, you are good to go.

None of this, the darkest is just before dawn.

That's pitiful of the dawn.

Yeah, it's just bullshit.

Right, right, right.

Exactly.

That's what I say is the darkest in the room,

just before I turn on the light.

Well, it was dark that whole time before you turn on the light.

Right, exactly.

Yeah, that's a minute.

All right.

So, but wait, I'm not done.

There are certain places like Hawaii.

And Iceland, where the range from the high to the low

temperature in any 24 hour period is very narrow.

Check out the climate data for those places.

No, I know this for a fact, but go ahead.

And so, so why?

Oh, I don't know.

I just used to stay in Hawaii for a bit.

I spent a few months living there.

Yeah, be like 76 in the daytime and maybe 68 at night.

Yeah, you know.

And so that's because they're in the middle of the oceans.

And the ocean is very high humidity that stabilizes

the flow of the heating between day and night.

Oh, I got to.

It slows it down.

So, so, so, so the, I've done this even as a New York City resident.

Okay.

The way you want to minimize the temperature drop is you have a perfectly

a sunny day.

Then it's sunset, moist clouds come in.

Then they'll trap the heat you have the heat, they'll hold the heat overnight.

That's hot.

I mean, that's cool.

That's great.

So, this is why you get huge temperature swings in the deserts.

Why you don't in humid climates, the tropics and of course in island nations.

It's also why it's hotter a couple hours after the middle of the day

than right at the middle of the day and one other thing.

The day of the year where the arc of the sun is longest and highest in the sky

is the first day of summer, June 21st.

That's right.

Chuck, what is the hottest month of the year, at least in the northern hemisphere?

August.

Yes, it's not June.

It's not even really July, it's August.

For the same reason, climatically, what goes on in a daytime cycle actually goes on in a seasonal

cycle.

You have maximum ground heating in June, but there's a lag between the ground heating and the ground

responding to this and seasonally that takes a couple of months to build.

Not to mention the ocean temperatures in those areas too.

It's also delayed.

Right.

Also delayed.

Super cold, man.

Do you have it?

I thought this was going to be a boring one.

This is cool.

I don't want to let you down here and I didn't title this one.

This is like the temperature during the day.

Okay, we need a better.

We need a better title than the temperature going the day.

Right.

And so and why it's cold.

How about fun with Fahrenheit?

Like that.

Fun with it.

Fun with Fahrenheit.

Fun with Fahrenheit.

And so and like I said, when you're in an airplane, you are so far away from the ground,

the ground had no chance of heating the air you're flying in.

Right.

And so it could be 40 below up at, you know, five miles up where you're flying at 30,000 feet.

And one final thought.

Go ahead.

Okay.

Do you know the temperature, the Fahrenheit and Celsius temperature scales?

Correct.

You know, they're different, right?

But do you know they actually cross on a graph?

I did not know that.

Okay.

So because I thought they were running parallel.

Yeah, they're not parallel.

No, it's but Celsius is parallel to Kelvin.

But right.

Celsius is not parallel to Fahrenheit Fahrenheit.

So so so for example, what is it?

Boiling water is what Fahrenheit?

212 and it's 100 Celsius.

What's the temperature difference between those?

112 degrees.

On Celsius, what temperature does water freeze?

Zero.

What on Fahrenheit?

What temperature does it freeze?

Oh, 32.

So what's the temperature difference there?

That's only 32 degrees.

So so the difference between Celsius and Fahrenheit

is shrinking as you get colder.

Closer to, okay.

There is a temperature where if you plotted this, those two graphs cross.

Cross what that makes sense.

Which means at that temperature, they're equally each other numerically.

And that temperature is exactly 40 below.

Nice.

So when I say, oh, it's 40 below and you say,

oh, it's a Fahrenheit or temperature?

I might just mess with your head and say it's done matter.

It's so called done matter.

This got a matter.

And when I say do the math and there's a little formula

to convert Fahrenheit to Celsius.

And if you put in one temperature, you get the other.

If you put in 40 for one of them, but minus 40,

minus 40 comes out the other side.

So it's an equation at that point

that gives you the same answer going in as coming out.

It's very cool.

Yeah, man.

I'm getting a t-shirt that says,

I'm 40 below because I'm cool anywhere, baby.

I'm so cool.

Celsius or Fahrenheit?

I'm ice cold anywhere.

All right.

T-Mobile 5G home internet has some big news you should know about.

They now have the fastest 5G home internet

according to the experts at Google Speed Test.

All right.

So let's unpack that.

It means photo backups happen faster.

Streaming a documentary does install halfway through.

What's really notable is that the jump in speed

doesn't come with added complexity.

Setup is simple.

Plug it in and your online in less than 15 minutes

and the value side of the equation holds too.

With a plan price that's back by a five year price guarantee.

So if you want the fastest 5G home internet

with a simple setup and savings that stick,

get T-Mobile 5G home internet.

And if you don't want that,

wait a minute.

Why wouldn't you want that?

Just visit t-mobile.com-home-internet

to check availability today.

Price guarantee exclusions like taxes and fees apply.

Fastest based on Google Speed Test Intelligence data

second half 2025.

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Ask me where wind comes from.

Oh, I know. It's it's my uncle and

I do think it's funny. He's kind of rude.

Doesn't make a difference if we're at the table or not.

It's terrible.

Then apologize and apologize and nothing.

Sometimes he's proud of it.

Not cool.

Not cool.

Not cool.

Okay, asking about meteorological wear.

Okay, where does meteor, but meteorological wind come from?

I will quote Ogdenash.

Ogdenash.

Yes, yes, the playful poet.

Ogdenash wind is caused by trees waving their branches.

That guy was stupid.

Let me tell you right now.

I do not know where wind comes from.

I'm going to be honest.

I don't know where wind comes from.

But I know this much.

It don't come from trees waving.

Hey, how y'all doing?

How would you know?

Because.

And I'll tell you this is important.

This is a bit of science here.

Okay, how do you when it's windy out?

Trees are swaying, right?

So how would you test what the cause and effect is of that?

Because two things.

One.

Wind could be caused by fast spinning animometers.

Okay, the weather range.

It could be, you know, it could also be caused by a butterfly

flapping its wings in Japan.

A big butterfly.

Mothra.

Mothra.

The Mothself, just Tokyo.

No, the reason is because

I hear the wind and then I see the tree move.

So that means the wind was there pain about what sequence you obtained data.

The wind didn't hit your ear first and the tree is waning

for it to get through your head.

And then it sometimes it does.

Sometimes I hear the wind and then I see the tree move.

I'm like, that's something.

It's written by me.

Something came by me and moved that tree.

Those are the trees of quarter mile away.

Copy.

All right, so no, this is very, it's actually very simple.

Okay, you have wind, which is a re-adjustment of air pressure.

It's really what's going on.

Okay, so I don't see you say it like that.

You say it like that just explained it to me.

Sorry, okay, no, no, what you have is basically

re-adjustment of air pressure.

That's all.

That's what it is.

That's all.

We're down here.

All right, no.

Thanks.

So it's the unequal heating of earth surface.

Oh, now that makes that.

That's what it is.

Okay, that's cool.

So if it's warmer in one place than another

and plus earth is rotating, so these factors conspire

so that if air ever rises,

well, that wouldn't cause wind as we know it

because wind goes horizontally to the surface.

But if you have rising air

because it just got heated, what happens?

What has to happen next?

You don't create a vacuum below what you do,

but then what happens?

You have falling air.

Sorry, yes.

If air rises, you'll also have falling air.

That's true, in total.

But the pocket of the pocket of atmosphere

directly below where the air had gone up.

Okay.

What happens there?

Oh, it has to be filled.

It's got to be filled.

So you get an up track.

It gets filled from the sides.

Right.

Oh, you can fill from the sides.

Wheat.

Yes.

Oh my god.

That's how it works.

Yes, that's so good.

Oh, yes, okay.

I'm sorry.

Earth is tricky.

Earth's got some tricks.

So you have rising air.

It creates a partial vacuum,

which is a pressure difference.

And then other air says,

we have to fill that gap.

Let's go there.

And so there it goes.

Okay.

So if you look at hurricanes, for example,

very, very low pressure in the middle.

You have heated

warm,

moist, what we call unstable air.

It's unstable.

It rises.

Okay.

In that low pressure system,

all the clouds in the neighborhood

want to go there.

Sweet.

Ever.

Everything wants to go to the center of the hurricane.

It's the cloud night club.

Yo, man, you going to the eye tonight?

You going to the eye?

No.

Yo, man, I heard the eyes are going to be hot tonight.

Yeah.

So all the clouds try to come in,

but then Earth's rotation sort of veers them to the right.

No matter which way they're trying to head

into the front entrance of the eye club,

they veer to the right.

And so you have this circulation

while the clouds are trying to get to the middle.

And this gives you that spiraling storm,

that spiral effect that everybody

trying to get into the middle.

And so, so hurricanes have famously fast winds

because of this, like hundreds of miles an hour

in the fastest of them, fastest of them.

Now, if you have air that is descending,

okay, air that descends,

first it won't make a cloud,

okay?

So descending air is like generally clear skies.

Deserts have descending air.

Oh, okay.

Now, there's certain parts of the world where

the descending air is so sort of total,

it is sort of gently descending.

And it can go out the sides,

but if the area of the descending air is large enough,

then there's no sideways wind.

Wow.

These areas of Earth's surface,

especially over the ocean,

are called the doldrums.

That's the club that nobody wants to go to.

You got the hurricane on you.

And you got the doldrums.

Exactly.

It's like, man, I couldn't get into the eye

last night.

Now I gotta go to the doldrums.

The doldrums.

So the doldrums are regions of Earth's surface

where all the wind has ceased.

And if you happen to be a sailing ship

that wanders into the doldrums.

Wow.

Oh my gosh.

That's bad stuff.

That's it.

That's it.

Many a ship have just given up the ghost

in the doldrums.

Because you can't move.

And if they don't have oars,

there's no wind, nothing.

Nothing.

And they eat up the food supply,

they eat each other, whatever.

And that's it.

Wow.

It's like the great wind garbage patch of the ocean.

No.

Like the plastic patch.

Plastic patch.

Accumulate.

It goes nowhere.

It's the wind burst out of it that way.

Yeah, that's terrible.

It's a fascinating,

just fascinating,

disturbed analogy.

It is.

Oh, that's terrible, though.

Now a couple of things,

a couple other things.

So Mars has famously large wind storms.

And we call them dust storms,

because the wind picks up the dust,

you know, the Martian,

the surface dust.

Yeah, yeah.

And so you can see this.

In fact, when it happens,

it cloaks the Martian surface.

And so our telescopes and space probes

we can't see what's at the bottom.

It's basically one of these

like sandstorms you've read about in the desert.

But it's like a dust storm on Mars.

Or it's a very clever cloaking device

that the Martians use to stop us from looking at them

when they're doing stuff on the surface of Mars.

Yeah, exactly.

Druck, that's it.

But do you remember the face on Mars?

Listen, do you remember the face on Mars?

So it was back in the 70s.

There was like the famous face on Mars.

It was like some kind of a like a structure

that had eye sockets and nose and a mouth.

And it looked like a huge,

it was huge, huge.

And we got a couple of photos

over during the Viking missions and everyone said,

we got to go back.

Clearly there's life there.

Okay, by the way, if there's life

and that represented it,

it would have to be life that had sort of a semi-in-face.

Like most life on Earth doesn't have a face.

So that would be weird if life on a whole other planet

had a humanoid face.

That would just be weird, okay?

Just say it.

But because lobsters don't have what

did we notice the lobster monument that was there?

No, because we're only looking for stuff that looks like us.

All right, so we went back and you saw

and we had better higher resonance.

And you saw a hint of like where the eyebrows were in the mouth,

but it was mostly sort of okay.

And people said the Martians knew we were looking at them.

Yeah, we covered it up.

They covered it up.

But their Mars dust.

Here's my point.

The Martian atmosphere is one-one-hundredth

the thickness of Earth's atmosphere.

Oh, that's terrible.

That's barely an atmosphere.

It is.

It's barely an atmosphere.

So if you move that air a hundred miles an hour,

yeah, it's like a, it's like an infant

trying to blow out a birthday candle.

You know, it's like, I'm giving that.

And that's why the whole scene

in the movie The Martian where they can't lead

that they're trying to leave the planet.

Oh, don't tell me the wind storm.

Come on, dust storm is coming.

Come on, man.

And the rock is rocking.

Come on.

It's rocking back and forth.

And they take off and they get

and they don't leave Martia on the surface

because they're afraid they'll topple over from the wind.

And another movie ruined.

Thank you, Neil.

No.

Yeah, that can't happen then, right?

That just can't even happen.

Yeah, yeah, it's not.

Yeah, it's not happening.

It might be not interesting.

Dusty and you can't see.

Yeah, but you're not blowing over any spaceships.

So it's also not going to,

it's also not going to pick up a rod,

a metal rod,

and spear you with it because it's not going to do that either.

Yeah, it's not tornado speed.

Right.

So point is Mars is also an unevenly heated planet.

And that's why you get this.

Correct, correct.

All right, wait a minute.

Wait, wait, wait.

What?

I got to ask you this now.

All right.

And this is off the explainer chart,

but I got to do it, okay?

I know that you know him.

So did you ask him about that when he wrote this?

Like you're talking about Andy Weir.

Andy, yeah.

Did you actually ask him?

I got all up in his situation,

but then I, what I said was, what I said was,

okay, Andy, so much else in that novel,

later the movie was so well calculated and thought through.

I'm going to give you a hall pass on this one.

Oh, okay.

Because he's got no story.

Yeah, he's got, he had to do it.

It was, it was poetic license for a Mars hurricane

so he could get to the rest of the story.

Yeah, so I gave it to him because he did the rest of his homework.

See, I'm not totally evil commentator.

I will cut you some slack.

If you're an artist, as Mark Twain said,

first get your facts straight,

then distort them at your leisure.

Okay, that's Mark Twain's edict.

So I'm all in on that.

By the way, Venus is very evenly heated over its surface

and we think it has hardly any winds there at all.

Nice.

Yes, oh, yeah, it's, it's, it's a refreshing 900 degrees.

You would vaporize, but ignoring that complication,

it's no wind needed, no wind needed.

It's so even, it's so even, it's not a dry heat.

It's an even heat.

You're good.

That's the joke I heard about hell.

They say, you know, you asked some evil person about how's hell?

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's hot, but it's, it's low humidity.

So we're fine.

That's funny actually.

Chuck, we got to end it there.

This is, this is a windy starting off with your uncle.

Yes, we had a windy, a windy explainer for start.

So, yeah, you check.

I'll always surprise you.

Neil the Grass Tyson here.

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