Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Fire and Ice With Volcanologist Rosaly Lopes

Episode Date: July 16, 2012

JPL volcanologist Rosaly Lopes has discovered more volcanos than anyone else, including 71 on Jupiter’s moon Io. She is fascinated by these fiery (and sometimes frigid) features of our dynamic solar system, and shared her love at the recent SETIcon.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Music Fire and Ice with Volcanologist Rosalie Lopez, this week on Planetary Radio. Music Welcome to the travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society. She has discovered more volcanoes than any other human. Rosalie will tell us about her current research and much more. My weekly conversation with Bill Nye runs from climates on other worlds to the landing of Curiosity on Mars.

And Bruce Batts will help me welcome another space celebrity who arrives with his own random space fact. First in today's lineup is the editor of the Planetary Society's blogs, Emily Lakdawalla. Emily, welcome back from vacation. People may have noticed that there haven't been as many blog entries as usual because you've been enjoying yourself a well-earned vacation. I guess that's going to change beginning, you told me, with a story that may be up by the time people hear this

about the discovery of yet another moon way out there at Pluto. Yeah, I have to say this is the biggest news that seems to have happened on the two weeks that I was away on vacation, although I actually heard about this quite a while ago at a New Horizons team meeting about the science of Pluto and other icy worlds out there in the distant solar system. So yes, Pluto has a fifth moon. It has one large moon, Charon,

and then at least four smaller moons. They're named Hydra and Nix, and then there's P4 and P5. We do not have names yet. has some kind of ring system, almost like Uranus, where they could be discontinuous rings or continuous rings, and there may be large-ish clumps or bodies out there that could be even more moons for Pluto. So it's really quite a large and dynamic system. What does this mean for the upcoming visit to that former planet by New Horizons? Well, it means two things. First of all, the science team is going to have to look at their plans and see if there's any reasonable location to insert any observations of this newly discovered moon. Although, probably they will not do very much in the way of detailed observations of this one. They're going to be focusing on the larger bodies in the system and will probably do a thorough characterization of one of the small moons.

But they're going to focus their efforts on the larger things. And just getting one of the small moons will get them pretty good information on what all of them probably look like. But there's another implication that doesn't have to do with science, and that's about safety. New Horizons is planning to get through the Pluto system at a point opposite that of Charon. And with the discovery of more and more moons and possible ringlets even out there, they haven't discovered any ringlets, but they're looking for them. You have to be concerned about New Horizons going through a region that has fairly large particles in orbit around Pluto. And just one of those hitting the spacecraft could mean the end of the whole shebang. So they're going to have to look very closely and reconsider

whether they want to pass through the Pluto system at the point that they've chosen. A little more excitement for an already very exciting mission. Emily, thanks so much and welcome back once again. We'll talk to you next week. See you then, Matt. She is the Science and Technology Coordinator for the Planetary Society and a contributing editor to Sky and Telescope magazine. Up next is the CEO of the Planetary Society, Bill Nye.

Bill, I thought maybe we could start this week with a little talk about climate change or really climatology. Yes, we went to the Comparative Climatology Conference in Boulder. We had presentations from remarkable scientists who showed us that you don't want to be Venus. Mars is exceptionally dry and blasted with intense ultraviolet radiation that would kill living things as we know them. We here on Earth have it just right, right now, but our world is getting warmer and more acidic. It was a compelling comparison of climates. And people can check this out because we have the whole thing, two hours and 42 minutes. It's actually fascinating. In our YouTube channel and on the website at planetary.org. Then there are some cosmonaut astronauts who've just reached the International Space Station.

Yes, the Soyuz is flying again. So that's great. Meanwhile, NASA is giving money to these commercial ventures to develop commercial access to space. And that's going along very, very well. And we're going to have some of those corporations at PlanetFest, Matt, represent with their displays. Like, for example, XCOR's Lynx rocket plane will be there. For those of you who went to Comic-Con in San Diego that the big bang theory the show gave away a ride on this future rocket plane it's crazy thing and i want to know why did why aren't they doing that at planet fest and making me eligible well let's uh we'll give them a call we could what we can do

matt at the planetary side we'll fire you. You make the drawing, and then if you don't win, we'll rehire you. I'll give it some thought. If it means getting into space, it might just be worth it. Speaking of PlanetFest, people probably know this is August 4 and 5 in Pasadena, but there are other options for people who aren't going to be able to join us in Pasadena. We're going to be webcasting. Casting the whole thing. Yeah, for two days. It's two days. We'll have a bunch of experts, people, scientists and engineers who worked on the Curiosity mission. We'll have

speakers from other Mars interest organizations. We'll have Jim Green from NASA will be the lead lecturer. Charles Elachi, the head of the Jet Propulsion Lab, will talk on Sunday. I'll be there. Big fun. And if you can't be there in Pasadena, I encourage everybody to check out the webcast or look for what we call a landing party near you. And that would be also found on the Planetary website.

Just to give it the shameless plug right here. Planetfest.org. That's the place that will have all the information about all of this stuff. And, of course, we will have there in the Pasadena Center and in the webcast the very best all of the live webcasts from JPL as we all grit our teeth and ball our fists and hope that Curiosity makes it safely down to that other world. Bill, I think we're out of time. Thanks a lot. Thank you, Matt.

He is the CEO of the Planetary Society, the science guy himself, Bill Nye. Up next, Rosalie Lopez at SETICON. We're heading back to Northern California for a fascinating conversation with Rosalie Lopez. The Jet Propulsion Lab's Deputy Manager for Planetary Science was my guest for a live interview at the SETI Institute's recent SETICON. The audio quality of the recording is poor, but I think you'll still enjoy our June 23rd conversation. You can hear much more of it at planetary.org slash radio. Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining us here in the fireside chat room at SETICON 2. My guest, honored guest, as she has been several times in the past, is Rosalie Lopez, Dr. Rosalie Lopez.

She is a senior research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and I did not know that you're now the deputy manager for planetary science at that esteemed facility. She is one of the world's foremost authorities on volcanoes. She made it into the Guinness Book of World Records because she, at that point, and I'm guessing probably still, still holds the record for the individual who has discovered more volcanoes than any other human being. We won't speak for other species. And she found 71 of them, active volcanoes on Io. And since she doesn't have the ability yet to wander around those fumaroles,

she spends a lot of time doing exactly that on Earth. In fact, she has literally written the guide to anybody who loves volcanoes or for anyone who wants to trek around our planet as she has and learn about them and wonder at them. And this is quite a beautiful book. I recommend it very highly. The book is The Volcano Adventure Guide. We have a copy of that.

I have a copy of this one at home, Alien Volcanoes, which he did with Michael Carroll, a recent past guest on the radio program, one of the greatest space artists alive today, but a writer as well. What else did I want to say about you? Another thing that I didn't know, Rosalie now chairs the Outer Planets Task Group of the International Astronomical Union,

the international group that decides a lot of things in astronomy, including what things are going to be called, which is part of your job now, right? That's right. Well, I do it as a volunteer. In fact, I seem to do a lot of volunteer work. And this group is an international group of scientists that decides on the naming of features on the outer planets. And I'm

also part of the nomenclature group for the whole solar system. You're the chair, aren't you? Well, I'm chair for the outer planets task group. So we do names and designations of rings and geologic features on satellites and so on and so forth. And it's not only about deciding on names. It's also deciding about the type of feature and making it consistent across bodies, which is not always easy. Just a couple of other accomplishments of hers to mention

because they really are very impressive. The NASA Exceptional Service Medal, which you were awarded in 2007. And then, of course, the one that's near and dear to our hearts at the Planetary Society, the Carl Sagan Medal from the American Astronomical Society. I want to add as well that you actually are the girl from Ipanema. That's right. I can't get away from that one. You were born very close to there?

Yes, I was born very close to Ipanema and I spent all my childhood and teenage years in Ipanema, actually pretty close to the beach. And I used to go to the beach once every, well, once or twice every weekend and sometimes during the week if I didn't have too much work. Well, lucky for us, you started becoming more interested in other things farther inland, the volcanoes. That's right. Well, not always inland, but in the middle of the ocean, too. And funnily enough, Brazil doesn't have any volcanoes. Is that right? Yes. Well, not active ones. It has some very old ones. I was always interested in geology, but I really wanted to

study astronomy. I wanted to be involved in space exploration. That was my thing. And I did a degree in astronomy, in fact, at University College London in England. And I took this class in planetary geology in my final year. And one day the professor didn't show up. And he sent a substitute, a young guy who said, well, you know, the professor is a volcanologist and Mount Etna erupted and he just had to pack his bags and go. And I thought, that sounds really exciting. By

that time I was kind of tired of, you know, freezing, you know, in the cold at observatories and I thought volcanoes sounded really great. Yeah, I wanted to call you the geologist from Ipanema, not the girl from Ipanema. Right, yeah. So I sort of went from astronomy to geology, and caught somewhere in between. My colleagues, when I was doing my PhD,

they joked that because I came with an astronomy and physics background, that I didn't actually recognize what various rocks were. Do you have any idea how many active volcanoes on this planet you've visited? Oh, I used to count, and I think I have lost count now, but probably between 50 and 60. All over the world. And I'm sure some of them more than once. Oh, yes, yes. Hawaii, I don't even know how many times I have been to Kilauea. But that's an easy trip from Los Angeles.

But when you started, when you became interested in volcanoes, at that point we hadn't found anywhere else, had we? At least active volcanoes. No, but when I was doing my PhD, Voyager spacecraft flew by Io. And I remember when the volcanoes were discovered on Io. And we were really puzzled because Io is a small moon, about the same size as the Earth's moon. And how come this moon was still active and still had active volcanoes? And in fact, the answer was already there. But in those days, the issues of Science Magazine came through the mail, and I don't think we had even received that issue yet at our library. But in fact, some theoreticians,

Stan Peel and colleagues, had figured out that Io is in this peculiar orbit around Jupiter, and the combination of the gravitational forces, Jupiter kind of pulling Io on one side and the other Galilean satellites pulling the crust the other side had created friction that kept the interior molten. And they actually said in this paper that volcanism might be taking place on Io. And that was about two weeks before the Voyager flyby. Wow. Good timing. Absolutely great timing. I think it's the best time paper ever.

Well, since then, this has become a very active part of the study in planetary geology that you're one of the leaders of, obviously. Right. And when I was doing my PhD, I was doing it on volcanoes on Mars and comparing them with volcanoes on Earth and how lava flows actually moved. And then these volcanoes on Iowa were discovered. And I thought, wow, I wish this could be part of my PhD. In fact, when I came to JPL, that's when I had the opportunity to work on Io.

Have we found active volcanoes of the kind, the sort that we know on Earth, anywhere else in our solar system? Well, we know that volcanoes on Venus have been active in quote geologic recent times, and this could be several hundred thousands of years. That's recent for a geologist. It's recent for a geology, yes. It's a good thing being a geologist because you never worry about getting old. So there are some indications that volcanoes on Venus may still have some activity, but not at the same level or as frequent as Io.

In fact, nothing has been detected that we can absolutely pinpoint. And then we have activity, but of a different type, on icy moons, like Enceladus. So Enceladus has these plumes that are volcanic, but that's a case of cryovolcanism, which is different, different beast. Which you've been studying. Yes, I've been studying mostly the volcanic, well, the features on Titan, another of Saturn's moons, that we think are cryovolcanic. And there is some debate whether these features are indeed volcanic or not.

And that's one of the research studies I'm pursuing, is trying to figure out if they are volcanic or not. But you mentioned Enceladus, and I think there may be one or two other places where we do see these cryovolcanoes. How are they different from the kinds of volcanoes that we see on Io or here on our planet, other than being cold?

Right. On Earth and Io and what happened in the past, Venus, Mercury, Mars, these volcanoes spew out hot rock, essentially molten rock, magma. Magma is molten rock when it's under the crust, and when it comes to the surface, it becomes lava. That's just a nomenclature term. The magma on the terrestrial planets is molten rock. When you go to the icy satellites of Jupiter, Saturn, a place like Enceladus, what's happening is that you have an

icy crust and you have a liquid water under this icy crust. And if this water comes out on the surface, that's volcanism. It's what we call cryovolcanism. But it's just again, as a matter of definition, the process is very similar. You have material from the interior coming out on the surface. But instead of being molten rock, the magma on those bodies is actually water and water mixtures. But the principle is basically the same. Yeah, and in fact, they can produce pretty similar features in terms of shape and morphology

as the volcanoes on Earth produce. I just saw an animation, actually a film. There was a volcano called Tvashtar. Do I have that right? Oh, Tvashtar. That's on Io, yes. And this was shooting up 50 kilometers? Yes. In fact, several spacecraft observed this plume, Tvashtar. Not Voyager. It wasn't active when Voyager flew by. But with Galileo, that's when we first saw an eruption on Trivasta in 1999, and it was a very powerful eruption. There was this huge plume, and when the New Horizons spacecraft got there, the plume was still erupting, and that was in 2007, if I remember correctly.

I think you're right. This plume, which started erupting in 1999, although we're sure that it actually had been active, that region had been active before, but it actually formed this huge new red ring, red because of sulfur deposits from the plume on Io. So it kind of changed the face of Io. And I say that Io is a volcanologist's paradise,

but a cartographer's nightmare, because it's always changing. You make a map and, hey, sorry. Well, I guess an Io cartographer never loses his job. That's right. Because it's got to be revised all the time. To come back, though, to the cryovolcanoes, like on Enceladus, which we're still learning about. And we've seen these coming out of these features called tiger stripes. Yes, the tiger stripes are fractures.

And at various points within these fractures, this material is coming out, mostly water vapor, but also with organics and other constituents. And we're still understanding why it's only in the South Pole of Enceladus that this material is coming out. in the South Pole of Enceladus that this material is coming out. And Cassini is still observing the plumes and also detecting areas of high temperatures within and around the tiger stripes. And there is still a lot more to be done.

And with luck, our mission is going to keep going until 2017. Yes, it's the Cassini-Solstice mission now. That's right, yes. Because it has been at Saturn now long enough to actually, well, it will have gone through an entire cycle of Saturn circling the sun. We went through equinox in 2009, and now we are coming up a few years from now to the solstice. And that's very interesting because the seasonal changes that we can observe, not only on Saturn but also on Titan, which is the moon I've been studying the most recently. We have lakes on Titan

of liquid methane, and we want to see if these lakes change if the methane evaporates in the summer, if the lakes were larger in the winter, then they would be in the summer, and so on. It's a lot that we can learn about Titan's, shall we say, meteorology and the cycle of methane on Titan, which is similar to the water cycle on Earth. In fact, that's exactly what I was going to ask you about. Doesn't all of this activity make Titan more like Earth in many ways

than any other body in the solar system? I think so. Some of my colleagues say, no, Mars is the most Earth-like, but I think Titan is. It's very cold on Titan, so cold that methane can exist in a liquid form. Methane on Titan is at what we call the triple point. Water on Earth is at the triple point. It can exist as liquid, gas, or solid. And on Titan, methane is at the triple point. So you have methane rain and lakes of methane

and absolutely fascinating things. But you have atmosphere, you have wind, you have dunes, wind, you have dunes, like you have in the Sahara on Earth. We have these big dunes on Titan. We think, or some of us think, that you have volcanoes. So all the major geologic processes that you actually see on Earth, erosion, volcanism, tectonism, impact cratering, you have them all on Titan. More from volcano scientist and author Rosalie Lopez in a minute. This is Planetary Radio. Bill Nye the Science Guy here. The next Mars rover, Curiosity, is about to land on Mars.

You can join the celebration. PlanetFest 2012 is Saturday and Sunday, August 4th and 5th at the Pasadena Center in California. I'll be there with dozens of special guests, spacecraft displays, a space art show, great activities for kids, Planetary Radio Live, and the landing on Sunday night. Kids 8 and under are free. You can learn more at planetfest.org.

It's a planet fest. I'll see you there. Hi, this is Emily Lakdawalla of the Planetary Society. We've spent the last year creating an informative, exciting, and beautiful new website. Your place in space is now open for business. You'll find a whole new look with lots of images, great stories, my popular blog, and new blogs from my colleagues and expert guests. And as the world becomes more social, we are too, giving you the opportunity to join in through Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and much more. It's all at planetary.org. I hope you'll check it out. giving you the opportunity to join in through Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and much more.

It's all at planetary.org. I hope you'll check it out. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. I'm grateful to the SETI Institute for inviting me to talk with an old friend at SETIcon. Rosalie Lopez is a senior research scientist and the deputy manager for planetary science at JPL. Her books for laypeople about volcanoes on Earth and elsewhere in the solar system are terrific. She joined me in a SETICON fireside chat that you can hear more of at planetary.org slash radio.

I have a question about the red planet Mars. Is there any chance that there is still active volcanism on that planet, or have they all been dead for a very long time? We have not seen any surface changes, so I doubt that there is any volcanism sort of going on at large-scale volcanism. It's probably been dead for quite some time, but what I'm hoping is that we might still find some fumaroles somewhere or some places where degassing may still be happening.

And that would be really interesting. Also, I'm very wary of saying that a volcano is dead, totally dead, because on Earth you can certainly have volcanoes that have been dead a long time, longer than living history, and they can come to life again. Did we get anybody who would like to throw a question out to Rosalie? Hi, right here. I've heard that state tectonics and volcanoes

are required for life form, or it's one of the thoughts that that's why we have right here. I've heard that state tectonics and volcanoes are required for life form, or it's one of the thoughts that that's why we have life here. Is it possible that there's life on these other planets with volcanoes? Yes, in fact, one of the places where we want to look for life is Europa. And the reason is Europa is one of these icy satellites that has an icy crust and then an ocean of liquid water underneath. And Europa suffers from the same tidal forces that Io does. And we think that there are volcanoes on Europa,

but under that icy crust or in the ocean. And this place is where there is heat from volcanism and water are primary places to look for life. So that's why we are so interested in going to Europa. So yes, volcanoes provide the heat that we need for life as we know it. And if you have heat and you have water, those are two of the key ingredients that you need. Great question. Have you been involved at all with the research into the so-called black smokers here on Earth

where these incredible biological communities have been found? Unfortunately not. I can't do everything. No, you've come close. I actually would love to go on a dive to see one of these black smokers and one of these places where really are so teeming with life is incredible. The discovery of the underwater hot water vents, I think, has been one of the most phenomenal in recent decades. And it really changed what we knew about life and where life could exist.

I think before that, people didn't think that life could exist so deep in the ocean and with no light. And possibly where it originated. Right. Maybe that's the place of the origin of life. I know Carl Sagan said so on occasion. So that's an absolutely fascinating area of study. Other questions? Hi. What sort of user candidates were really met at the time?

I think that, well, the key places, Mars, Europa, and Enceladus, and no one can really say what the order might be. I think that Mars is certainly easier to explore, is closer to us. We've gone there before, landed, and so on. I think that, you know, Europa is really a place that we should explore because there is this combination of liquid water and volcanic heat is quite key in a possible origin for life. So I think the exploration of Europa is really important. And Enceladus, well, the plumes on Enceladus were only discovered fairly recently with Cassini.

So we're still thinking about how to go back there and how to sample. But that's, again, another key place. So I'll pick these three, and if I I could I'd go to all of them. Send spacecraft to all of them. That's a great lead into a question I was going to finish with but I'll ask it now. If the NASA administrator came to you and said, Rosalie, I got two or three spare billions in dollars hanging around. Where should we send a mission?

billions in dollars hanging around. Where should we send a mission? Well, that depends who you ask. I'm asking you. Yeah, okay. My personal opinion, we should send a mission to Europa. And in fact, we have done some studies. Well, I wasn't personally involved in them, but I know that there have been some studies for a cheaper Europa mission that, in fact, would fulfill a lot of the science objectives of the mission that was originally studied, the Europa orbiter, but with a cheaper price tag, so about a couple billion. So that's where I would send a mission. An orbiter or a lander? Well, actually, with a couple billion, you can't

really do those options. It's more a Jupiter orbiter that has multiple flybys. But, you know, an Europa lander would be just absolutely fantastic. So, you know, if we had a few more spare billion, maybe a couple more, that's the one I would choose. Right to Congress, people. Yeah, and if we really had the money and the technology, I think Europa, some kind of spacecraft that could melt its way through the icy crust and actually go into the ocean, that's new at the moment.

A little science fiction, but it's going to happen. It's a great dream. Yeah, and that would be fantastic to actually be able to explore that ocean or these pockets of liquid that may exist at much shallower levels in the crust. My colleague, Brittany Smith, has actually published a paper recently on the possible existence of the shallower reservoirs. possible existence of the shallower reservoirs. So, you know, it may not be so difficult to get at the liquid on Europa as we first thought.

We might not have to go all the way down to the ocean. There may be a pocket, a liquid pocket. Yes. I'm still trying to get a handle on these cryovolcanoes. We have, you know, frozen liquid over, we have no ice over water here on Earth. And when we get fractured in the frozen part, the liquid doesn't create the kind of plumes that Matt was talking about.

So what's different on Enceladus? Is it pressure? Is it temperature? The density of the community of the creative pressure? Yes, there are a lot of things that are different. And, you know, fluid pressure? Yes, there are a lot of things that are different, and, you know, pressure, temperature. I mean, we don't have an atmosphere on Enceladus, so it's a vacuum, so the splooms can just expand,

in fact, at high velocities. But you actually put your finger on a very important question on cryovolcanism. We all know ice cubes float. So what is it that actually enables this liquid water to go through an icy crust? And what is changing that density difference. And people have evoked several methods and I think we're inching towards the answer,

but if you have something like ammonia dissolved in the water that can lower the density, if you have some high pressure underneath, you know, some crevasses that allow the liquid to come up at higher pressures, then that can come out. But it's still one of the, let's say, challenging areas. And, again, if we hadn't seen plumes like on Enceladus, we might think, hey, that's really hard to make. So sometimes, just like the volcanism on Io, no one would have really thought it was possible until Stumpill and colleagues came up with this physical mechanism. But for those of us who haven't read the paper yet, Io has active volcanoes, but that's not possible.

It's nice that the solar system can still surprise us. Yeah, and that's the great thing about studying other bodies is that you're constantly learning because things that you didn't think were possible actually you realize are possible. It's just the circumstances are different and there are factors that you hadn't thought about before. I've let us go a little bit long since we got a late start, but we probably should wrap up. Is there another question from the audience before I throw one last one at Rosalie? Okay, the last one

would be, you've been in this field for a good long while now. You still seem to be as excited, as passionate about this work, this study, as you must have been when you were first exposed to it by that experience in college? Yeah, I think I'm actually more excited now because I have seen so much more. I've been there when we were observing Jupiter

and the Galilean satellites with Galileo, with the Galileo spacecraft. I saw these new volcanoes, Zonaio, and had the opportunity to work with spacecraft data and now with Cassini for several years. And now I'm looking towards the next mission, perhaps the JUICE mission, that is so-called JUICE at the moment. It's the European-led mission back to Jupiter and Ganymede and Europa.

And just working with spacecraft missions, it's just so fascinating. And I see more and more new things that come up. So it's really been a fantastic career so far and I'm not thinking of retiring any time. As long as I have money to keep going I'll keep going. Well again, write your congress people. Basic research. There is one other book I want to hold up because this one is also a lot of fun. This is the one. I think I told you wrong. I have the adventure guide at home.

You have the adventure guide, yes. Which is great fun. But here is, you know, you want to be a tourist and explore volcanoes on Earth, here is Rosalie Lopez's Volcanoes, The Beginner's Guide. All are still available as far as I know. Yes, yes. And in fact, Alien Volcanoes, I'm donating to the auction because that's a book I wrote with an artist, Michael Carroll. And Arthur C. Clarke wrote our foreword. We're very proud of that. And in fact, that might have been his last published work.

Are you willing to say anything about the book you're working on now, which you just told me about? Oh, yes. I'm working on another book with Michael Carroll. We are editing a book called Alien Seas. And this is going to be about quote, seas on other planets. And several colleagues of ours

are writing chapters. So seas of sand, that is the seas of sand dunes, like on Titan. Seas of sand, that is the seas of sand dunes like on Titan, seas of lava, these seas of liquid water under icy crusts. So a lot of different, quote, seas in the other planets. So we're having great fun as well, and Michael does absolutely spectacular

paintings and illustrations. In fact, he just won an award also for his writing from the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society. So we really have had a great partnership, which I'm going to talk more about in the panel this afternoon. Great. So you can catch her in one of the main rooms later today, after lunch, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Rosalie, it has been a pleasure. It always is.

And I do have to apologize. We were doing a live version of our show at a radio station down in Southern California, and we always end that with a space trivia contest. And we had a question about volcanoes on, I think it was about volcanoes on Io. Rosalie was in the audience. And she started going, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh. We said, no, no, really, we really, you're disqualified. I'm sorry. So I apologize. That's all right. It was a joke. Anyway, thank you very much for joining us today with Dr. Rosalie Lopez. Thank you.

Thank you very much for joining us today with Dr. Rosalie Lopez. Thank you. We're at Planetary Society headquarters with Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society. And we're ready for What's Up. Good reaction to our contest. We're going to give away that Fisher Space Pen. Here it is. And there it is, right there. It's so shiny.

And it is engraved, Planetary Radio, the Planetary Society. But we'll get to that. First, let's talk about the night sky, shall we? In a sense of tradition. So in the evening sky, still got Mars over to the right of Saturn, Saturn hanging out with Spica. In the pre-dawn sky, super bright Jupiter above even brighter Venus, which is still near Taurus's bright star, Aldebaran. Also, good thing to check out the sometimes loosely called Summer Triangle in the evening sky. Three very bright stars form a very loose triangle over in the east in the early evening or high overhead by the mid-evening. And that's Vega, Altair, and Deneb. It was a slow week in space history. We had the Apollo 11 landing of humans on the moon.

That's a slow week? Well, it was sarcasm. It was a little joke. I do that. It wasn't a very funny joke. In 1975, that was 69, of course. 75, also this week, Apollo-Soyuz docking in orbit. And much, much more, because truly it was not a slow week in space history.

But we will move on, and you've got something special for what's coming next, don't you? I sure do. It's another Celebrity Space Fact, and this guy provides his own fact. Hey guys, it's Andre Bormanis. Here is your random Celebrity Space Fact. If the Earth were to be shrunk down to the size of a golf ball, it would be a black hole. The surface gravity would be so high that the escape velocity would exceed the speed of light. Wow. That's cool. That's a heavy golf ball. For anybody who's wondering, that's our friend Andre Bermanis, friend of the Society,

the science advisor to Star Trek, later writer and producer for Star Trek. And he's been part of many other really fun TV shows. He has. And Andre and I go way back to previous incarnations of our work lives. I didn't know that. A story for another time, perhaps. Yes, please. We move on to the trivia contest.

And did you want to share the, when would you like to share? Oh, I was going to get to that last, but I know exactly what you're talking about. A little information about a previous contest. I'd asked for help from the world of our listeners, and we got it. Yeah, you did. We got a response from Nicola Masbar, who is a native Arabic speaker. Everyone remember what we pronounced as Alioth? Well, according to Nicola, it's really either Al-Ilyato or Al-Ilya, which indeed means

the fat tail of a sheep. So it really does. That's what we'd asked for was confirmation. Yeah. Nicola points out that, you know, sheep are such a valuable resource for desert dwelling people that there's like a word for every tiny part of a sheep. And this refers to that little fatty part of the tail that's right at the rump of the sheep. I don't think rump is an Arabic word. No, but you just said it on air. Rump. I said rump. Stop.

Rump. I said rump. Hey, stop. But Nicola says that it probably, because bears probably have the same kind of little thick, you know, fatty base of the tail. Not that I would say that to a bear. So it's a part of all sheep's tails as opposed to sheep's. Sheep's that have, sheep that have particularly fat tails. Apparently so.

I see. So thank you very much. It makes so much more sense. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. We move on. And we asked you, approximately how many times has the sun gone around the galactic center

since it began nuclear fusion? How old is it in galactic years? How'd we do, Matt? It's good that you said approximate because we did get many. We got a lot of approximations. And some people even said, God, it's somewhere between 18 and 25. But they seem to center around the number that we got from Corey Chapman of Ogden, Utah. He's a former winner, I believe.

And we're going to be sending him. He will be the first recipient of our Fisher Space Pen. Here it is. I'll click it again. Here we go. Click it again. Planetary Radio, the Planetary Society. Corey, we're going to send it out to you because he said the Sun has completed about 20 orbits around the galactic center since its birth, since the birth of the Sun, as you had specified, since the beginning of thermonuclear fusion. It is approximate because

there's a fair amount of slop in the galactic year, the time it takes to go around the center. It's between 225 and 250 million years for one loop around the sun. As we so commonly do, we've got to mention a couple of other responses. I'm sorry, I misspoke. One loop around the galactic center. The one loop around the sun. One loop of the sun around the galactic center.

Just got that. Ben Owens, he said that really the sun could have completed twice as many laps by now if it had opted to swim in the fast lane. But here's my favorite of the ones that we got from Jamie Cox, who said that he figured out that the dinosaurs basically were around. They were ruling the Earth when our solar system was on the other side of the galaxy. And so he was amazed to realize from that dinosaurs are from the Delta Quadrant. Can't get enough Star Trek references, can you? Never, never, never. Andre would be so proud. All right, we move on to our next trivia contest.

And periodically, I like people to just think about who's up in space, because it's almost, almost, or at least feels routine, even though it's not, for these people on the International Space Station. As of the time we're recording this, there are three people on the International Space Station and three people headed there. Give me the names of all of them, and I can make that a little crisper.

Who comprises International Space Station Expedition 32? Go to planetary.org slash radio. Find out how to enter. You have until the 23rd, July 23 at 2pm Pacific time to get us that answer and we're done. Alright everybody, go out there, look up at the night sky and yes, that's right, think about

the fat tail of a sheep. Thank you and good night. I can't stop thinking about it. Now by the way the winner of this new contest will also get the Fisher Space Pen from me and Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects at the also get the Fisher Space Pen from me and Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects at the Planetary Society, here on What's Up. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and made possible by a grant from the Kenneth T.

and Eileen L. Norris Foundation, and by the members of the Planetary Society. Clear skies.