From Public Radio International This is living on Earth. I'm Steve Perry would dirty air cannot only damage hearts and lungs it can also affect our happiness we found that the loss in life sucks in this something about 83 percent of correction over $100000.00 of widowhood and just over 50 percent of unemployment so kind of 3 big things that really do affect action your happiness also space exploration isn't just fun it might save us from planetary disaster Mars once had liquid running water and it's bone dry today something bad happened on Mars we don't know what yet Venus is 900 degrees Fahrenheit it has a runaway greenhouse effect so something bad happen on those planets I want to know what because I don't want that to happen to Earth Grasse Tyson and more this week on living on Earth stick around. Live from n.p.r. News in Washington I'm Janine Herbst president trouble urged leaders from majority Muslim nations today to confront the crisis of his law missed extremism calling it a battle between good and evil rather than a clash between the West and Islam this is not a battle between different. Different sex or different civilizations This is a battle between barbaric criminals who seek to obliterate human alive and decent people all in the name of religion. Draw me the speech in Saudi Arabia asking the leaders of Iran a dozen countries to take their own destiny in hand and stop the killing of innocent people in the name of religion it's the 1st stop on his 9 day 5 nation tour he heads to Israel tomorrow and will also visit the Vatican meanwhile several members of Trump's delegation went on the Sunday talk show circuit in the u.s. Today addressing the cascade of controversies surrounding this month's closed door discussion between the president and Russian leaders N.P.R.'s Melissa Romo reports one White House official sought to clarify the intent of the meeting national security advisor h.r. McMaster was in the Oval Office when Trump met with Russian officials in an appearance from Saudi Arabia McMasters said on A.B.C.'s This Week that trump raised the issue of firing the f.b.i. Director in the context of explaining that he feels as if he's been unable to find there is a cooperation with Russia even as he confronts them in key areas where they're being disruptive like Syria for example and the other survivors of activities across Europe but when asked if Trump confronted the Russians about meddling in the presidential election McMasters demurred but NASA Romo n.p.r. News Washington earth Korea has launched another missile into the Sea of Japan according to South Korean and Japanese officials from Tokyo John Matthews reports the projectile appears to have been a medium range ballistic missile South Korean officials say the missile was fired from a base near the peninsula as West Coast in the early evening local time they say it flew through Didn't 10 miles to the east over the course of half an hour according to the Japanese Defense Ministry it landed in open waters in the Sea of Japan White House officials have said they're aware of the new launch and that the missile used has a shorter range than those observed in more recent tests North Korea has now attempted 11 missile launches so far this year and earlier this month it celebrated the successful test of a missile it says could carry a large nuclear warhead over long distances leaders of the group. 7 nations are to officially call for tighter sanctions on North Korea later this month according to a newly published statement for n.p.r. News I'm John Matthews in Tokyo the u.s. Pacific Command says the launch didn't pose a threat to North America and that the United States stands behind its commitment to the security of its allies in South Korea and Japan you're listening to n.p.r. News from Washington in Brazil today opponents of President Michelle Tam are protesting in cities across the country calling for him to step down or face impeachment over allegations of corruption last week a newspaper reported he was recorded endorsing hush money for a former lawmaker who's been jailed for graft Dummer says the recording was doctored and he denies any wrongdoing but Brazil's highest court has opened an investigation and the Bar Association has added its voice to those calls this weekend voting to file a request in Congress for timers impeachments it's the last show for the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus after nearly a century and a half Davis Donovan of member station ws 8 you reports circus goes out tonight with a show at the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island the circus started in $1871.00 it's entertain generations with acrobats clowns and wild animals Dana Barnum she's a relative of p.t. Barnum by marriage is attending the last show she says she fell in love with the circus as a girl it inspired her to become a professional clown you are taken away from everything else in the world at the time it's just nothing but positive and that's what p.t. Barnum created that's what the greatest show on earth is it's an experience the circus says it's found homes for the lions tigers and other animals used in its performances it stopped using elephants last year after criticism from animal rights advocates for n.p.r. News I'm David Donovan. And that final show will be streamed live on its website I'm Herbst n.p.r. News in Washington support for n.p.r. Comes from n.p.r. Stations other contributors include the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the estate of Joan Kroc whose bequest serves as an enduring investment in the future of public radio and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation at r w j f dork. From p.r.i. In the Jennifer and Ted Stanley studios at the University of Massachusetts Boston this is living on earth I'm Steve care would bad air is not only bad for your physical health it's also bad for your mental health and sense of wellbeing that according to researchers at York University in the u.k. Who recently reported that as nitrogen dioxide pollution increases satisfaction and happiness decline their findings add to a body of literature that shows air pollution promotes health problems including cardiovascular and Respiratory Diseases nitrogen dioxide is a byproduct of burning gasoline diesel and other fossil fuels and gets into the air through smokestacks and tailpipes the lead author of the study is ph d. Candidate Sarah night and she joins me now from New York welcome to living on Earth Hi there thanks for having me so your research looked at whether or not there is a link between nitrogen dioxide and life satisfaction what did you find yes so we took a big Thank to set off a 50000 adults an England. Fistfights that is really nice because it tracks the same people through time and space so it's the same people doing a fine questions every a feeler able to bring that together wave how exploration changes through time and spices while and when there were changes in life extraction and subjective obeying what proportion of that change is down to the changes in action dockside. I can't wait to find out what did you find in terms of a connection here glad you're so excited. The main results were in increase in 10 micrograms meat is cubed of glycogen dockside reduces your life satisfaction on a scale of one to 7 by not point not 3 so I don't I don't have any of those numbers mean anything when you say it like that so we try to find other ways to communicate how meaningful that is for people not point north 3 on a scale of 17 sounds quite small like us so we want to compare it to other things that we know reduce your happiness or your wellbeing things like your employment status in your relationship status we found that if people are raised to a pollution level of the legal limit of 40 micrograms meters cubed the loss in life satisfaction is comparable to about 83 percent of marital separation over 100 percent of widowhood and just over 50 percent of unemployment so kind of 3 big things that really do affect your life satisfaction your happiness much more substantive than we've than we were expecting the other a lot of other factors that make people dissatisfied of course so what other explanations did you consider absolutely yes if we try and account for as many of these kinds of things we can say we've brought in all kinds of data into it there are 3 important things around income lots of lots of information out there about how incomes related to our well being we also brought in up the geographical factors as well as the other things about the neighborhood that you live in this vile things like population density crime education income deprivation isolation as well as how close you are to said season and your g.p. And health services and things like that and we also look to try to come up talk to environmental factors as well like green space and blue space so we try to hold all those things constant and then trying to isolate that effect that pollution will have on our life suspection So what are the pollution levels. Of nitrogen dioxide in the u.k. So air pollution is in there in the news a lot at the moment it's different here in the u.k. And much and I like specifically and we looked at where the highest and lowest values where within England and we thought that the average value somewhere down in Cornwall in Devon was something like 3 Mike Rams and me to cubed in London the average was something like $5860.00 so you get this huge geographic difference in average values so 10 microgram for me to keep quite big jump the legal limits set by a you based on World Health Organization guidelines is 40 micrograms to me to skewed so that gives you some kind of measure of what's high and what's left and actually what they're most parts of the u.k. Or below that there are kind of hotspots where you get this much written about that point so there's 2 limits there's the annual exceeded and there's also these daily limits as well that affect And but in London it was exceeded within the 1st 5 days of the year this year it's pretty much the same every year it's exceeded within the 1st week for much and Darkseid within London and the u.k. Government has been taken to court over it now what do you think is the mechanism that operates here when nitrogen impacts life satisfaction what's going on yeah so really good question then it's it's way out of the scope of our study that we thought we could do through speaking to lots of people about this now this and read into the literature we kind of come up with 4 different mechanisms that will influence this relationship so I think firstly and probably by far the most important is through health so the way that nice and dark side influences people with existing health conditions and exacerbate and brings a new condition so it's being related to cardiovascular and dispirit 3 issues the 2nd wire would be how pollution influences your mental in cognitive health and that kind of development so there's been links to things like dementia the 2 very strong . Any kind of health points the pharaoh's we would say definitely through Thetic so they look mal the taste of your city in your neighborhood what it looks like if you think it just kind of walking down the street and you see that you know it really will impact you and the day that you're having And then lastly we've been speaking to lots of people just out about a different public events about this and many people talk about the concern that they have for their family their children their own health and more broadly for the environment as well so you know they see this pollution they smell this place and I think gosh what is this doing to to myself and my children when you speak to people about this sometimes informally What is the one or 2 things that people really want to know there's the spray 2 main things that people are concerned about and where we've started having conversations with people out about the 1st one is people are concerned about it will feel they should be using as consumers what citizenship baby making and they feel that they've been getting mixed information over the past few years and the other one is about where the hot spots are and how they can avoid it so what do you tell people about the hot spots where should people avoid if they're concerned about this certainly central London as you would expect some other large cities around the u.k. And hey through airports file so be these kind of main centers of traffic in transports but certainly you know you're definitely less exposed even if you're just one road off the main road as it were in these areas so if you can find kind of quieter routes to way you want to go and fight a long walk those are all really reducing your exposure to traffic Epley shin significantly so related ph d. Candidate the University of York or she so is the impact of the environment on us humans thank you so much there for taking the time with us today thank you for having me well the world is awash in polluted air these days is over 90 percent of us breathe it in every day and as we have just heard at least one of those pollutants rubs. Some happiness but with this bad news comes good news from the world of technology as a team of Belgian researchers has developed a way to clean the air of some pollutants and convert them into simple hydrogen using sunlight special membranes and nano particles hydrogen is a clean industrial chemical and when burned simply makes water Sammy for Bergen is a researcher from the University of and who are been part of the team that achieved this breakthrough so we called him up to ask him how it works Sammy for Bergen welcome to living on Earth thanks leaf So tell me how was this project conceived and who were the primary players in developing the study Well actually it's in 2 parts so for the one part our group in Antwerp has been working a lot on trying to do air purification using light so we're developing a special type of nanomaterials called Photo catalysts so nanometer activated by light and that way you can convert air pollution in less stocks a compounds now on the other hand there's the group that live in university where Professor your muscles is working a lot on these photo electro chemical cells so he's actually working on these membranes and devices to try to convert the water into hydrogen gas and now in this step we actually combine both processes together and try to use not water what actually polluted air to convert is to explain for us just how those air purifying process works now well at 1st instance you have the Nano material it's activated by light so you get charges inside of the semiconductors. Well the next step is that these chargers they will attack some of the molecules that are on the surface of the material and that where you get very active oxygen species they actually do an oxidation So you oxidise organic molecules until and when they're completely mineralized you end up with c o 2 the hydrogen is something very specific during these degree Additionally actions you also get some protons coming out of the molecules and these protons they go through a membrane to the other side of the device where another catalyst this presence and it will reduce the protons to hydrogen gas so we're going to pollutants can you filter with this device and how clean is the air once it's done purifying it well at 1st instance we have been looking at quite simple small organic molecules so our study primarily focuses on methanol also in part to acetic acid and some ethanol so fairly small organic molecules but still some of these molecules can be quite hazardous to your health as well now for instance formaldehyde is a very known indoor air pollutants which can cause you headaches has it all to hide it's the stuff in your brain that gives you a hangover so obviously they're not very healthy and to you so we're at tacking these small molecules it's quite useful as well ideally everything that passes through the light side of the device get oxidized the c o 2 should give you a very straightforward example let's say we start from meeting so it's one carbon atom and 4 hydrogen atoms in the most ideal case it will end up as one c o 2 molecule at one site and 2 hydrogen gas molecules of the other side so that's the committedly a very clean reaction obviously efficiencies are and 100 percent of the devices proposed right now but that's something we are working on so Sammy We all hear about oh this could be a great technology how optimistic are you about the possible implementation of what you have put together I mean how difficult is it going to be to increase this to a scale that will be useful it will certainly be challenging there's no denying that I think we're. Using 2 major issues that have to be resolved right now to get it through a break through Level One thing is to increase the efficiency these materials that we are using they're actually activated by u.v. Light right now so if you have a look at the solar spectrum the contribution of u.v. Light is at most 5 percent of the total spectrum. Now what we are trying on one hand is to modify these materials so that they can also use visible light so in that way we could extend their activity arranged to say 40 even 50 percent of the solar spectrum Another thing would be trying to upscale this design because in the 1st test that we have been doing now we are working on a membrane with an active area of about one square centimeter which is obviously not much and if you compare this to other solar driven technologies like solar panels you can put up on your roof of your house we're looking at square meters of active area so the upscaling towards larger membrane scientists will be the other challenge so talk to me about the amount of sunlight required to facilitate the process you say it has to be violent it has to be in the ultraviolet spectrum right now how useful would this be do you think we're well it can be cloudy or Absolutely and there's also the the geographic position of the country you would like to use it in I live in Belgium it's very optimistic to think you can drive everything on solar energy because it's indeed quite cloudy here most of the time whereas if you look at real pilot scales of all to get a little prophecies that are mostly centered around the Mediterranean here in Europe or even in Japan there's also some implications of that so that's indeed a very good point that's why we're also working on modifying these materials towards visible light because that's always wrong so how big a deal does this have to become Sami to really make a significant dent on urban air quality I mean how possible would it be for your devices to clean up the smog where say Paris or Beijing or by a lot of places a lot of dirty air Yeah that's true but I think it's a little utopia to think we can clean up an entire city that's maybe a little farfetched but I think it might come in handy in conjunction with a very specific industrial process for instance I can imagine if you're in the paint in the street or something in textiles that there are some processes involving a lot of organic solvent. So I can imagine they have 30 loaded waste streams loaded with organic molecules and they will have to meet some environmental quota they count just put it in the air I hope they don't just put it in the air so if they could use the technology like this one they can hit 2 flies at once and they could purify the air on one hand but on the other hand they can recover part of the energy that is stored in this photo that era's hydrogen gas for instance see anything approved in the yes professor in post-doctoral fellow said he thought of the talents as for environmental and energy applications at the University of Antwerp in Belgium thanks so much Sami for taking the time with us today their work and. Coming up why tiny dust particles can be a big help for mountains stay tuned to living on Earth support for living on Earth comes from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and from a friend of sailors for the sea working with boaters to restore ocean health. It's living on earth I'm Steve her would in a minute a handy guide to the mysteries of the universe but 1st this note on emerging science from Noble Indra. If you're looking to do some spring cleaning it can be a big nuisance but ask any gardener and you may be surprised to hear that dust is good for more than just collecting in odd corners a research team from several Western and Midwestern universities has shown that rock dust plays a critical role in feeding the soil of the Sierra Nevada Mountains older mountain ranges like the Sierra Nevada as experience heavy rainfall and intense erosion costing them significant soil nutrients and runoff in California dust rich in plant boosting elements like phosphorus offers the perfect refreshment to these weathered environments air currents collect the nutrient dense cargo from deserts and dry valleys and carry a vast distances researchers found that between 18 and 45 percent of deposits in the Sierra Nevada us came from Asia crossing the Pacific Ocean some dust was even detected from the Gobi desert on the border of China and Mongolia more than 6000 miles away despite its beneficial effects this mineral mobility leave some scientists worried about he's of imported nutrients may help a forest thrive but they can wreak havoc on surrounding rivers and lakes just fed algae blooms suck up oxygen and threaten to suffocate fish in crustaceans with drought spreading as climate change advances geologists suspect dustier forecasts are ahead and cleaning up the potential ecological upsets in their wake will require more than a feather duster that's this week's note on emerging science noble Ingram. Across America the numbers of coal miners are declining the ranks of renewable energy workers continue to swell but aggregate numbers don't tell the local stories so the Alleghany friends read Frazier set out to check the impact of solar jobs in the heart of Pennsylvania's coal country Here's his report. A console and Harvey mine about an hour south of Pittsburgh Craig Williams takes a midday break above ground in a big room at the mine's entrance he's in a hard hat and he's wearing a dusty yellow striped mining jacket though times have been tough in the coal industry Williams and other miners here have managed to keep their jobs he hopes to hang on to his job as a foreman you know Pittsburgh used to be a big big on steel that's mostly gone now. We're we're one of the last you know industries around and hope to keep it that way a father of 2 he says like generations before him coal is the best way he's able to support his family Williams wouldn't say how much he's making but nationwide coal miners make around $80000.00 a year so if you had to take another job. In this area especially year you're going to take anywhere from a 50 to a 70 percent pay cut. To what the next best thing is it's out there but 40 percent of coal mining jobs have disappeared since 2011 and now only $50000.00 of these jobs remain experts say automation lower demand for electricity and above all competition from cheaper fuels are what's killing the industry those fuels include natural gas from fracking and increasingly renewable energy solar power now accounts for just under one and a half percent of electricity in the u.s. But according to the Department of Energy solar jobs now at number of those in coal by more than 2 to one so can laid off coal miners find jobs in solar Well certainly it's a possibility but there are there are a couple of major challenges Rob Godby is an energy economist at the University of Wyoming he says one of those challenges is simple location when you are thinking about coal mining in Appalachia I mean oftentimes there are generations. Of families in those regions and it's just very difficult to pick up and move and then there's pay coal miners make on average around $35.00 an hour God he says in part because the job can be so dangerous in renewables the pay is more like $20.00 or $25.00 an hour that doesn't mean you couldn't raise a family on that but you're a lot closer to the average income in a lot of states in the solar industry than you are in mining industries. On a rooftop at a community center in Millvale just outside of Pittsburgh a gang of 7 workers in neon green t. Shirts bolt down solar panels the crew includes 23 year old Wiley Coons who worked at a coal mine though as a lower paid contractor when he got laid off last year he saw a job opening with energy independence solutions a local solar company I didn't like just magically be like I'm just not completely switch just as a cause hadn't I just found the job and it was about the same pay rate that I was making before so I just went for ended up really liking it one thing that did not weigh on his decision climate change are really believe in whole climate change thing or not I kind of. I mean it's good it does it takes the carbon. For sure it's a lot less and it's a lot cleaner energy but a steady paycheck and not necessarily the environment is what attracted him to the job says he likes the problem solving he gets to do in solar and he could see themselves staying in the industry Brian Krenzel AK was a roofer before joining the company 7 and a half years ago. He runs a lack install solar and trains others and he believes in the mission of green energy his wife also works and the couple have 3 kids wanting college with another about to enter they even have a 2nd home in Florida you know I do well with this company very well. You know. It covers what we need to calderón will not become a millionaire overnight but steadily have been building the nest egg for sure experts say Solar's boom is being helped by incentives that are scheduled to run out in a few years and they don't know how long the surge in business will last some companies are reporting lower installations nationwide but solar jobs in Pennsylvania grew last year by almost a quarter and Krenzel x. Company energy independent solutions is busy it's looking to basically double its workforce of $22.00 over the next year and a half we had to slow the salesman Don of a certain point we were selling so much solar we had actually slowed him down a little bit to we caught up Prince Aleck likes the idea that is industry is up and coming he says when his crew went on a big installation recently other contractors were curious about what they do so there was iron workers are carpenters union laborers everyone is coming up to us he says it feels like solar is an industry of the future and when he looks into the future he likes what he sees a Marine Frazier. Read Frazier reports for the Pennsylvania public radio program The Allegheny front. Of all the sounds of early summer that make us think of long sun filled days ahead the corps of birds singing even before dawn are among the most joyful and as Michael Stein points out in today's bird note there's one show a standout. These rich care old phrases are among the best loved and most widely heard in North America this soup Arab song belongs to perhaps our most familiar bird the American robin as singers go the robin is acceptable they're often the 1st birds to sing in the morning starting well before dawn. And the last you'll hear in the evening holding forth into deep twilight Robins also begin singing earlier in the year than most birds often in midwinter and Robins can be remarkably long winded while their average song strings fewer than a dozen short phrases together and last a few seconds. Robin sometimes sing 4 minutes without a pause. But the most extraordinary measure of Robin song is its variety in each song a rod and sings a varied selection from a repertoire of $10.00 to $20.00 different caroling phrases then his evening comes on the same interleave as these phrases with exquisite whisper like notes from its personal treasury of 75 to 100 different whispered notes a potential song variety is amazing the musical results in chanting. Michael Stein. And for photos sore and over to our website l o e o r g. If you ask Neil de Grasse Tyson astrophysics is a lot of fun even funny at times but not all of us love physics maybe it's because it uses daunting mathematical formula or things we know are dangerous but can't see such as x. Rays and nuclear radiation still most of us do enjoy hearing about the latest NASA probe to fly by a distant planet or seeing the latest pictures from the Hubble telescope or the Mars rover so Neo who is the most popular populist of all things celestial as well as director of New York's Hayden Planetarium has written a book that's perfect for those of us with a shaky understanding of the mysteries and marvels of the universe it's called astrophysics for people in a hurry we haven't talked recently since he's been busy with everything from the cosmos t.v. Series to pod casting so with his new book we thought we could call him up to get the lowdown on things way high up the other Grasse Tyson welcome back to living on Earth pants been a while you don't call you don't write you know. I know well we'll have to have you back in a more regular fashion here so I got to start by asking you what compelled you to write a book that explains Astrophysics in this way astrophysics for people in a hurry Well I noticed that there were people who were assembling fragmented bits of the universe that they get from the evening news or from a newspaper headline or from some chatter at the water cooler and there was no mechanism to render these fragments of information coherent. What I did was create this book astrophysics for people in a hurry on the premise that not everyone has the time to go read a textbook or 2 to look at a long video series on television but you still want to be fluent you still want to be able to have that conversation about the multiverse or about the Big Bang or about Pluto as no longer a planet or you know colliding black holes or wormholes you want to be able to still have that conversation and so this book was written with you in mind and I have to say that if you are in a hurry it doesn't take that long to get through took me maybe a little less than 2 hours actually vocal It took me about 3 hours I think I'm a slower reader than you well you have to look to see if there are any things that need editing I just have to look and say Oh yeah and laugh sometimes a lot of laughter in this book you know well I think the universe is fundamentally hilarious place and I would be disingenuous if I described the universe without that hilarity. Oh really what's the funniest part of the universe just. If Well I think the funniest part is well it's morbidly funny and I described it in a separate book a whole other book called Death by black hole I just think it's kind of hilarious how you would die if you fell into a black hole because you wouldn't just get so just squashed by the gravity upon landing on route you get stretched is the tidal forces of gravity. Pull your feet faster than your head this is in a feet 1st dive in so you know stretching but not only that you're getting funneled through the fabric of space and time so that you end up getting extruded literally extruded through space like toothpaste through a tube and you end up diving into the center of the black hole in a long stream of atoms like a piece of spaghetti and that's the way you get the word this is this is the process of spaghettification. So your book begins with the very basics of astrophysics you March just through from the Big Bang that got our universe going and then you get to the point that is not explainable that is these forces of gravity that we really have no explanation for except that they're obviously there you use the title Dark Matter and then you talk about dark energy but there's more of that than there is of what we know so tell me what we know about what we don't know no it's one thing to not know what you're talking about another thing to know that you don't know what you're talking about these are 2 separate things so in that it's kind of fun to learn how we came to realize and quantify what it is we don't know in astrophysics for people in a hurry to of the dozen chapters or just what you described one dark matter and one in dark energy we have no idea what either of those things are but we can measure their existence so we know there's something out there. That yields to our measurements but has yet to healed to our creative explanations of what the hell this stuff is and when you add them together they comprise 95 percent of all that drives the universe so in other words everything we know and love and all the forces we've measured and understand in the physics the chemistry the biology the geology everything is contained within the 5 percent of the universe that we understand we can predict we built courses around it and the rest is unknown Now your book discusses the periodic table oh yeah I had to put it in there because I love me some periodic table of the elements and I know you gave some people the shakes because they remember it from high school chemistry but I just thought it was time to have fun with it and there's a lot of fun you can have on that table what does it have to do with the evolution of the universe well yeah so in this table of $92.00 elements plus some extra that we invented everything in the universe that has material substance is found on this table every atom in the universe is there. So what is Earth made of was made of 3 of these and for those and 5 of those and then stir shake not stirred whatever you can reconstruct the universe and then you can ask where these elements come from I want to ask that of my high school chemistry teacher and he only come from the earth I said Well where do they come from you know Ok but where do they come from before they were there he couldn't answer that question well he could but the answer doesn't come from chemistry it comes from astrophysics because we learned at mid century mid 20th century where these elements came from their forge in the crucibles of high mass high temperature stars where the light elements like hydrogen and helium and carbon combine to become heavier elements and then that's not good enough because then they just be stuck inside the star where the star then does explode scattering its enrich guts across the galaxy enabling interesting things to form like planets and petunias and people write so that periodic table of elements is an excuse to talk about the formation of the elements in the context of actual physics and have a little bit of fun along the way. That's Neil de Grasse Tyson of his new book astrophysics to people in a hurry we'll be back after a break this is living on our state. Funding for living on Earth comes from you our listeners and United Technologies combining passion for science with engineering to create solutions designed for sustainability in the aerospace food refrigeration and building industries e.t.c. Companies such as Otis carrier president Whitney and u.t.c. Aerospace Systems are helping to move the world forward this is p r Public Radio International. It's living on earth I'm Steve Carlip and we're back now with Neil de Grasse Tyson talking about his new book astrophysics for people in a hurry so Neal there's another interesting observation you make why are spheres so prevalent in the universe also fears and loves fears there's a chapter on being round and which celebrates the laws of physics as they manifest in the universe where they give preference to things being around it's that simple and you know soap bubbles around planets around stars around stars or practically perfect spheres and here's what happens if you spin fast you flatten a little bit you get a little wider in your belly then pole to pole so by looking at how flattened something is from a sphere you can then calculate how fast the thing must be rotating Ok so here's my question the Milky Way circular and very flat what happens yes cut its. It really really flat is flat is a crepe it was a flat as a flapjack but it's even flatter than that so here's the Milky Way wanting to be a sphere but what happens is the gas and time of the early history the gas collapses it sticks to itself like 2 hot marshmallows at the equitorial plane of its rotation and so what you get is this gas just disk but we have stars scattered above and below the disk that formed before any of that happen we call that the galactic bulge and so yes you learn about what was left behind in the spherical shape so you get flack galaxies and we have some puffy galaxies too because they had less gas when they formed all the stars before the gas collapsed and they stayed in the Seroquel shapes so if you look at the inventory of galaxies in the universe you know there's a whole population of them that are Seroquel and so are galaxies about 12000000000 years old something like that formed shortly after the beginning of the universe our solar system formed much later our solar system formed late enough for the cloud out of which we collapsed to have contained the enrichment from these high mass stars that made silicon and nitrogen and oxygen and all the think the good things that comprise life had Earth formed very early in the solar system it's likely we would not have had enough ingredients to make life as we know it so speaking of the formation of Earth we're always excited when there's any news of any other place that could be like Earth an exoplanet an x. So so planet you guys sometimes call them talk to me about the recent ones that we've seen in which ones are most exciting which ones if you could explore where would you go yeah our catalogs report 30 rising through 3000 exoplanets planets orbiting stars not our sun. And what's kind of cool about that is this whole thing began in 1995 so recently there's a set of 7 planets discovered around a star system called Trappists 2 I think it is and there are 7 stars each of them earth like 3 of them orbiting the famous Goldilocks zone you want to orbit too close to your host star because if you have liquid water there it would evaporate into far away it would freeze life as we know it on Earth thrives in liquid water so if you're looking for Life As We Know It You know to look for a planet in the Goldilocks zone so this is 3 planets out of those 7 orbiting in the Goldilocks zone so this made headlines justifiably but I want to caution that while they're Earth sized planets I wouldn't call them earth like planets because you know how long does it take Earth to orbit our Sun tell me it takes roughly a year that's what we call a year thank you Ok 365 in a little bit of days Ok you know how many days it takes these planets orbit 6 days 8 days to go around their host are it's a very different dynamic of system where in the universe does look like Earth we've got a few so of the 3000 exoplanets I forgot the number a couple 100 maybe are Earth like planets around a Goldilocks Zone orbiting a sun like star that's the difference the Trappists star system is not a sun like star it's a much much cooler star much much cooler that's why the planets have to orbit close in to get the Goldilocks Zone happening for them speaking of earth like places where in the hood where nearby in our solar system our There's a moons that might be attractive for earth type activities we're pretty sure there's no other sign of intelligent life in our solar system and some would argue there's no sign of intelligent life on Earth but in our solar system there are half a dozen places that are tantalizing for the possible through. Having of microbial life possibly deep under the soils of Mars where it was we know there's water down there is there a place that keeps it warm radioactive decay is a source of heat we know some elements stay radioactive for long times could be awkward for liquid underground puddles of water where microbes are just thriving there's Jupiter's moon Europa well out of the Goldilocks zone but it's kept warm through these stress forces induced by Jupiter and other surrounding moons so this place is on its surface solid ice but the heat from Jupiter is getting pumped in deep within the center and we're nearly certain that this ice is a float a top of an ocean of liquid water this been liquid for billions of years so I joke about this I want to go ice fishing on your open go cut a hole through the ice put down a submersible see if anything swims up to the camera lens and licks it then you know that you're good so in writing as this is it's for people in a hurry you demonstrate your ability to explain things in terms that average people can grasp and even enjoy have fun so what's your process for doing that with a complex target yet thanks for that question if I come to the table. The equipped with a utility belt of pop culture references and you come to the table with your pop culture references of course you have the same references I do that's why it's called pop culture Ok now you might be a different subset of pop culture but that's my duty didn't learn what that is Ok so you come for the pop culture and you stay for the science and this is not dumbing it down I don't think I've ever been accused of dumbing down science it's simply finding other interesting ways to think about science and I'll give an example I'm watching a football game was channel surfing at 15 minutes until a movie I wanted to watch and I came upon a football game that in that moment went into overtime and sure enough one team got possession of the ball and then they kicked a 50 some odd yard field goal and I'm looking at it and the ball tumbles and then it goes in it hits the left upright and then careens through for the win. And I said well wait a minute and I check the orientation of the stadium I look at how far the ball was kicked and then I tweeted I said the winning kick that I think was the Cincinnati Bengals was aided by a 3rd of an inch shift to the right due to the rotation of the earth. Oh my God people. People's minds and I'm thinking and it was like oh my God is the earth helped you know then people got all God help. Angles win the game and I didn't have to explain to you what a field goal was or what football is or what a left upright is that's the common language of pop culture and that why add something to it you know you're going to be interested in that you know it because it's kind of weird and it's fun to know even if you're on the losing end of the of that 3 point goal so that's an example and what I found that when you do that people want more so by the way it what ways if any has the current political climate impacted have you communicate science these days yeah you know stuff just got real right in the last several months and. So it's one thing to say whatever you want as a politician running for office but if you then attain office and then and act it then you know it is possible say anything to get elected by and large so you can pander but then reality has to set and when you want to pass an actual law and it's important that laws to the extent that science matters to them that they're based on actual science I don't know when you will air this but we are in the time of the science March on Washington schedule to coincide with Earth Day and many scientists are coming out for this just to show support for the important role in value of science in light and governance by the way for him Lincoln in 1963 but he clearly had more important things on his plate in that year signed into law the National Academy of Sciences which then and now is charged with it's an independent body of research scientists who are charged with advising the Government on always science matters to policy Abraham Lincoln was Republican by the way in case people forgot so you go through the years of presidents and you find these major moments where agencies were established to exploit the role that science can and should play in our health our wealth and our security if you turn around a satellite like the science therefore I'm going to ignore it oh my God I don't know what country that is or what is that. But what I do know is the country that comes out of that will be sliding backwards not walking or running forwards we pretty much stopped space exploration in a big way we're doing stuff at the margins but you know your book astrophysics or people in a hurry really looks at creation of the universe and the basic physics there and raises lots of questions that would really demand that we look further away from our planet and it's been a while since we devoted resources to that a lot of resources Yeah well yes so we are sending space probes and never at the rate that we always want because we're sort of greedy astrophysicists But you know we have a probe around Saturn right now there it is last year there's a probe as you may remember that past Pluto has found another target in the outer solar system so it's not like we're not out there what our dreams were for so many of us was that we would have colonies on Mars and to be a human presence and what has happened over the years is with the miniaturization of electronics and the development of robotics the a lot of the scientific discoveries you might make by sending a human are done better by sending a robot so I get that fine but this flipside of that is nobody's ever held a ticker tape parade for. Nobody has ever asked a robot to write their life story about what it was for being in space there's something cultural something very human about what it is to touch someone who has been on the frontier of exploration and discovery so you're right we're not quite there and I'm disappointed so something else needs to happen to infuse this kind of dream state in the public and by the way because you have very well read smart listeners to your show surely subset of them are saying we've got problems on Earth why are we spending money in space surely there's a subset we're thinking that I feel I think you're out there I know I know you're out there so here's the point consider that Mars once had liquid running water and it's bone dry today on a surface something bad happened on Mars we don't know what yet Venus that marches to our right Venus to our left is $900.00 degrees Fahrenheit it has a runaway greenhouse effect Venus is almost exactly the same size and gravity as Earth is that we called it our sister planet so we got really close and said oh you're $900.00 degrees the nothing sister about you so something bad happen on those planets I want to know what because I don't want that to happen to Earth and if you're going to say which only study Earth and solve our problem then look outside That's like saying we're all huddled in a cave and I say you know gee I want I want to what's on the other side of that mountain no we can't look on there's a we have to solve the cave problems 1st don't leave the cave you realize that's what it looks like to anyone who is in the business of exploring when you say do not explore there might be one way I can summarize your book astrophysics for people in a hurry that remark you made a while back that in many respects it's kind of all the same Yeah one of the most profound discoveries of science is that the laws of nature that we measure here on Earth. Uh the same that exists on the moon in the sun across the galaxy across the universe itself and that is a remarkable fact when you think about it because here we are on this earth the spec called Earth this is not is it written in the sky that says earth must be the same as everywhere else if it were not then science would be a very local affair it would be we've developed all our science just to apply to earth and if you go to another planet you'd have to reinvent other kinds of science and other kinds of laws of physics and chemistry and biology just to account for what's there that would be really inefficient but we do it if we had to the fact that what we discover here on Earth applies everywhere means we don't have to I look at the signature of atoms and molecules on earth and I find using spectra and I find those very same signatures in stars halfway across the universe there's not going to be some other planet where Newton's Laws somehow don't work we've measured them to work everywhere so that sameness not only in the laws of physics but in the ingredients of the universe the very atoms that comprise your body came from a star that gave its life billions of years ago we are connected in a fundamental way and that connectivity for me makes the universe bearable in its infinitude so many people say I feel small in the scale of the universe fine we are small Get over it but because we're the same as the universe it gives us a deep sense of belonging and participation in this great unfolding cosmic story. And that's how I and any of my astrophysics colleagues think about this universe Neil directs the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York Neal thanks so much for taking the time to Yes Thanks for having me always good to be on the show you know maybe one day you can change the name of your show to be living on Mars a. Little. We leave you this week listening to the outer reaches of the solar system. Erin this is the 7th planet out from the sun and NASA has transformed its a letter o. Magnetic vibrations into frequencies we can hear. Surrounding Uranus are the 13 rings of dust and debris and they resonate like singing. Heading further out you come to Neptune name for the Roman god of the sea and fittingly its vibrations of Folkways washing ashore. Nasa's Voyager spacecraft captured these signals as a travel from Earth on its epic journey to interstellar space and there's more analysis symphonies of the planets cd. Living on Earth is produced by the World Media Foundation our crew includes Naomi Ehrenberg Abi baskets of beneficent Jenny door and Noble Ingram Jamie Kaiser and Iman That's next in the calmer Adelaide Jan and going on Omari Tom Tiger engineered our show just wave Drake Riva and it's interesting composer I think you can hear us anytime it everywhere dot org And let us please on our Facebook page as living on Earth and we tweet from Act living on earth I'm Steve Irwin thanks for listening. 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