Explanation of their success is that from 1939 onward British pilots had access to a technology called onboard airborne interception radar to help them spot enemy planes were a great distance but the u.k. Ministry of Food launched a propaganda campaign claiming that its fighter pilots could pick out and me aircraft in the dark because they honed their eyes with carrots some sources have speculated that the story was designed to hide the existence of the Royal Air Force is on board radar system from the enemy another explanation might be simple economics German set up blockades to use starvation and discomfort as weapons which meant that many goods like sugar had to be rationed the u.k. Government encouraged its citizens to turn to sugar substitutes for example carrots which were plentiful even during the war could be used as a sweetener in foods like carrot putting and carrot fudge or as a substitute for meat in the infamous. The technology credit union our mobile app is specifically made to keep up with the modern family. I lost my credit card. Good thing you only allow me to work. With all how just one up or sell Can we afford it. Maybe it Rolodex e.u. Cities reward promotion and earn up to $1000.00 go to Texas dot com slash save more . Plus if you have a problem our agents are at work to find sense and produce no one to prevent all identity theft or some other car monitor all transactions and all businesses start with my flock we can help alert you. To danger act now and for a limited time get 30 percent off your 1st year of Life Lock dot com and enter promo code news that's promo code news for 30 percent off offer expires October 6th Sedona wait Life Lock with Norton more detection more protection 5 K.C.'s j. Lo and I are introduced to on line by case yesterday dot com and on your phone with i Heart Radio what I'm saying Metzler Fox News I think it's ridiculous to say that the president did something wrong based on the phone call Senator Lindsey Graham on Sunday morning futures another whistleblower to differ lawyer Mark Zaid who represents both whistleblowers says the new account is 1st hand knowledge supporting the 1st complaint House Democrat Val Demings who serves on the Intelligence Committee says she believes the 2nd may be as credible as the 1st someone who thinks wrongdoing here is wrongdoing and wants to do something about it Republican Chris Stewart who also serves on the committee says he believes the new account will only confirm what's known Yup the president had this phone call and yep that's the transcript both appeared on Fox News Sunday the president continues to say there was nothing wrong with his called the Ukraine boxes granola Scott Turkish troops massed at the Syrian border planning an attack on a u.s. Ally the entire situation is difficult because the Kurdish forces that turkey plans to target are backed by the United States so you'll see a situation where Turkey is fighting the Kurds with American weapons as the United States continues to work with Turkey to develop a safe zone for civilians clean violence in the region. Says training staff President Trump and Turkish president ever to want to speak via phone today from what we know about this call the 2 leaders did agree to meet in Washington next month to discuss the 30 security situation currently unfolding in the Middle East thousands of u.s. Troops still in this country. Iraq's interior ministry says 104 people are confirmed dead more than 6000 injured in 6 days of anti-government demonstrations in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities Iraq's president wants to know who opened fire with live ammunition on civilians America is listening to find. Fox News pug just network download and listen to the one with Craig Gutfeld the co-host of The 5 like you've never heard him before you know him you love him you want to be like him the 70s to me will always be Paul and get all this weird kind of adult humor that I didn't understand like why was Pauline so funny I have no idea why but he was a man who act like your mother there's a sec it doesn't really exist anymore subscribe to listen now by going to fox news podcast America is listening to Fox News there was don't watch the news they want someone they can trust our job is to cut through the talking points and Martha MacCallum we're going to ask the tough questions because there's a lot of conventional wisdom out there that needs to be challenged and brick what I'm doing is making sure that whatever is developed through the day people are fully informed from coast to coast for 24 seventh's news that really down to the minute we're going to be fearless we're going to be fair whether it's Korea midnight for their talks news channel real news real honest opinion the g.m. Strike now in its 3rd week and apparently contract talks are not going well General Motors rejecting the latest offer from the United Auto Workers Union the top negotiator for the u.a.w. Accuses the automaker of refusing to negotiate in good faith to fairly compensated workers' wages and pensions said to be the sticking points 9 people shot 4 are dead it happened early this morning at a bar in Kansas City a spokesperson for the Kansas City Kansas police department tells me that cactus are reviewing surveillance video there trying to confirm whether more than one shooter was involved and figure out what the motive possibly could be that's Fox's Christina Coleman though the bar is popular with Hispanics the shootings not considered racially motivated 5 people hurt in a series of electrical explosions in Huntington Beach California last night it happened during an act. Superfast celebration power knocked out to about $7500.00 customers the cause under investigation legendary rock drummer Ginger Baker has died. Along with Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce he was a member of green considered the world's 1st super group Baker pioneered the use of the double bass drum and is a hero to drummers who came after him not that he was easy to work with he once threw a drumstick at Jack Bruce his head clapped and cried over that Steve Winwood in the band blind faith with Baker said beneath that somewhat abrasive exterior there was a very sensitive human being with a heart of gold Ginger Baker was 80 and no surprise this film finishing 1st at the box office Marine One small thin Joker Oh fender with all of 93500000 and take the time to spot just use. That technology credit union our mobile app is available everywhere your family needs us jobs did you tell Topsy you will be telling I just notified a magazine. Did you make your car payment I'm honoring our mom Casey. 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They stop unlike Janice who just hits I guess all the time she never gets the breaks Janice that's true isn't it yes yes it is anyway get a new car that you love save yourself some heartache when you do go to car credit Jiah dot com They'll get you a better vehicle with a lower payment plus they understand the real relationship between the owner in the car they know how special it can be car credit giant dot com the place to find your next true relationship with the car in the Army National Guard family means everything our parents they're really supportive that all 5 of us were enjoying I got my education because of the guard I got to travel a little bit and experience a whole different culture and help me get my job only paid for my house serving part time in the Army National Guard instills pride that you and your family will share this at National Guard dot com to learn more about part time service sponsored by the Colorado Army National Guard aired by the Colorado Broadcasters Association and this station since 1984 hustler turf equipment has been designing into nearing it assembling 0 turn lawnmowers with the u.s. 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Disgrace a true crime podcast about musicians getting away with murder and behaving very badly it's back to new episodes on and the way stories on Madonna Iggy Pop Eminem Whitney Houston and more will be released in a mostly by Wi Fi beasts hosted by Jake Brennan disgracing contains adult content in explicit language i Heart Radio is number one from podcasts and it's easy to see listen to disgrace and on the i Heart Radio app where ever you get your pocket Yes . Welcome to you have to play my part how that works out com. Ok Welcome to stuff to blow your mind My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormack in today we've got a very special episode for you all out there we're doing a partnership with National Geographic Yeah so they've got a new show coming out called one strange rock and it is produced by Darren Aronofsky it's all about the science of planet Earth in the sort of intricate interconnected processes both geological and biological that keep the earth stable as a sanctuary for life as we know it and so because of our partnership with National Geographic for this episode we got an opportunity to talk to one of the astronauts on the show Dr Jeff Hoffman who flew 5 space shuttle missions including a Hubble Space Telescope repair mission and this is a great interview we're just delighted to share with everybody yeah Dr often is very knowledgeable from multiple vantage points about the thing that we're going to be focusing on today which is the radiation risk from space and how Earth protects us and he's knowledgeable in a couple of different domains because he's done higher energy astrophysics and knows all about the radiation environment of our solar system and the universe at large but he also has a direct experience of what it's like to be an astronaut out in space. Yes to sort of go beyond our protective barriers and that kind of perspective is kind of hard to come by because I would say one thing it's really easy to lose sight of in your day to day life when you're reading about politics or playing with your dog or making some dinner is that your body is made of molecules and in order for molecules in your body to do what they do they have to remain what they are and most of the time the internal chemistry of our bodies is pretty stable right but we have to recognize that the chemical stability of our bodies is an enormous and unique privilege provided to us by virtue of the fact that we live on planet Earth yeah and this we get into a truth that we touch on a quite a bit on the show and that is that Earth is just the right planet yeah for life as we know it kind of unsurprising of course being creatures that evolved on planet Earth that Planet Earth is just the right planet for us but despite realising the kind of anthropic obviousness of that fact it is still a kind of strange and comforting feeling well wait a minute is it comforting or is it discomforting the fact that most of the universe is going to be so hostile to us so unbelievably hostile so incredibly violent that it's just impossible to even consider and I'm not even talking about the vaporizing heat of stars of the cold airless void of deep space I'm talking about the fact that the universe is an acid bath of killer radiation including ionizing radiation which often takes the form of these high energy charged particles that blast through animal bodies damaging and changing the molecules within them as they go along and even changing the d.n.a. Of our cells altering the blueprints for cell replication and bringing about tissue damage sterility and cancer and so that body integrity in chemical stability we so take for granted to keep living is only possible because of the planet we inhabit which shields us from being blasted by the sun nearby and by the galaxy at large. Yeah it's interesting to think about this that we we are creatures of the shallows Yeah so life as we know it essentially thrives in a tide pool protected from the full onslaught of wind and wave you know if you've ever been to a to a number of beach environments you see in those areas right where where that the waves are crashing but then but there's this pool this this area of calm water that is protected from all of that yeah and that's where a lot of life can thrive that otherwise would not be able to bear the hostilities Beyond the Rocks Exactly and it actually reminds me of this quote by John Steinbeck and he's not directly talking about what we're talking about here but the comparison is is just beautiful he he wrote the knowledge that all things are one thing and that one thing is all things plankton a shimmering phosphorescence on the sea and the spinning planets and an expanding universe all bound together by the elastic string of time it is advisable to look from the Tide who to the stars and then back to the tide pool again yeah our earth is protected not from wind and waves but from the full blast of solar and cosmic radiation instead of rocky seawalls we're protected by a robust atmosphere and most importantly the magnetic fear Yeah the interesting other side to the fact we've got this kind of connected consciousness that we're aware of like there is no real division between the Earth and the heavens there are just different places the only real division is distance and so all the universe really is connected and does have a common origin in the Big Bang but at the same time that connectedness. We use the word connected in such a happy way it's like nice to be connected to things but you can also think about that is extreme vulnerability like you are right next door to everything in the universe that would crush in the Nile and you and what we've got standing in the way of those those crushing annihilating forces beyond our power to control. Essentially a big magnetic field and a thin layer of gas around the rocky surface of the planet that's right so basically what we have going on here is your Earth solid inner core and liquid outer core they play a crucial role in protecting life as we know it from Deadliest deadly radiation differences in temperature and composition in the 2 core regions drive a powerful dynamo emitting Earth project protective electromagnetic field Yeah and remember this is one of the key factors we have to consider in proposed interplanetary space travel and establishing stations on other worlds the only planets in our solar system with some form of magnetosphere in place or Mercury Earth Jupiter Saturn Uranus and Neptune right so then of course you've also on the surface of the earth got the atmosphere to count on because that means that there's more stuff that radiation has to get through to get to you and so the atmosphere will block some kinds of incoming radiation but the other big protector is the magnetosphere that keeps these particles directed away from the earth some of course still get through right and also the magnetic fear serves to protect the atmosphere as well yes because if you don't have a magnet a sphere your atmosphere over time can be stripped away which is one of the things that they think probably happened to Mars long ago right so it's our protective barrier against the elements it's our battlements and the only humans to have walked of these battlements our astronauts such as Dr Jeff Hoffman now most astronauts never even go beyond the shield that protects us right we know that astronauts in space are exposed to extra levels of radiation and that's one reason you want to limit your time in space you like you can't go live in the I s s forever they want to bring you back eventually because the more time you spend up there the more you're exposed to the stagers radiation that could harm you in the long run but even up in the I assess you're still you're still benefiting from a large part of the Earth's protective shield right yes it gets a lot worse if you want to go to the moon right to Mars or colonize another planet you have because then you are going beyond. It's protection so I guess we want to go now to our conversation with Dr Jeff Hoffman to talk about the radiation risks posed by the universe and what astronauts have done and can do to protect themselves but 1st I guess we should give you just a little bit of background on Dr Hoffman Yeah so his original research interest were in high energy astrophysics specifically cosmic gamma radiation x. Ray astronomy and his doctoral work at Harvard entailed balloon borne low energy gamma ray telescopes and the design and then the testing of this technology from 172-2175 during post-doctoral work at Leicester University he worked on several x. Ray astronomy rocket payloads and he worked in the center for space research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1905 to $178.00 as project scientist in charge of the orbiting h.e.l.o. One a for a hard x. Ray and gamma ray experiment which launched in August 1907 but then in $78.00 he was selected to become an astronaut and he went on a total of 5 different shuttle flights so in 85 he went on on and discovery 990 on Columbia 92 on it Lantus 93 on Endeavor and then in 1906 on Columbia all told 1211 hours in space 21500000 miles that's a lot of miles frequent flyer Yes So he is a not only a pedigreed scientist a pedigreed astronaut 5 shuttle flights that's impressive That's 5 more. The vast majority of human beings are we're going to take a quick break and come back we will be heading straight into our interview with Dr Jeff Hoffman. The technology credit union our mobile app is specifically made to keep up with the modern family. I lost my credit card to be a good thing. That's all how I just want Purcell can we afford it. In Rolodex cities reward promotion and earn up to $1000.00 go to Texas com slash save more into the foundation of university athletic so do you support it and hope it spreads to more states and schools just under 30 percent of Zip pull or say yes this is long overdue but 71 percent say no college focus should be education and scholarships on the topic of minimum wage many support the idea of boosting the federal minimum wage is currently at $7.25 What are your thoughts on the maximum wage would you be fine with a ceiling on how much money you can make 65 percent of those polled say no the sky should be the limit on earnings but still 35 percent think a maximum wage is a good idea and one more from the zip path 100 Biden got paid a $600000.00 salary when he joined the board of directors of natural gas producer small holdings do you think under Biden did actually work to get that paycheck or is this corruption just under 90 percent most on the poll believe it's corruption and should be investigated deeper Thanks Christina downloads a poll USA your favorite app store today share your opinions and make sure your voice is heard will have poll results every day on the trending topics taken directly from this effect paid for by USA I tend to guess that's 2900 senior Life Expo on Saturday October 19th from 8 30 am to 4 pm at the hotel accounting listen to experts speakers covering topics from estate planning to gardening admission and parking are free learn more and see New Life Expo c.s. The 1st annual Scout extravaganza October 19th at the Scout service center on south probably Boulevard it's for scouts and boys and girls between 11 and 18 who want to be Scouts. A doctor often welcome to the show we're really glad to have you well nice to be here looking forward to it I was wondering if you could start off by telling us a little bit about your research from before you became an astronaut what made you interested in high energy astrophysics and what were your pursuits in that field. Well I grew up with an interest in space I lived in or near New York City my dad used to take me to the planetarium to see the new show every month. I saw the birth of the space age when I was alive when Sputnik was 1st launched when you're a governor and then John Glenn flew and and. I thought I was also interested in human spaceflight although it was apparent to me that all the early astronauts were military test pilots and that was not a career for me but space in general I was fascinated with and went on to become an astronomer I got a a doctorate and Astrophysics at Harvard. And I was attracted by. What we call high energy astrophysics it was a totally new field at the time. The discovery of x. Rays from celestial objects and gamma rays and it was a new 1st branch of astronomy opening up just like radio astronomy opened up back in the 1930 s. And. That struck me as being. An area where we were almost bound to make new discoveries because we had never looked at this type of radiation before so my. Professional career as an astronomer consisted in designing x. Ray telescopes and then putting them into space 1st with I was using high altitude balloons when I did my Ph d. Thesis and then. I spent 3 and a half years at Leicester University in England and we had both sounding rocket experiments where we would put our telescopes up above the atmosphere you have to go above the atmosphere because x. Rays and gamma rays are absorbed in the atmosphere which you could think for. Here on the ground but it makes life difficult for astronomers because you have to go above the atmosphere to to see this radiation then and that was kind of cool as well because I was always interested in space and rockets and so. I was combining the technological interest with what I thought was a very exciting scientific field and then I came back to mit and we we had actually our own x. Ray satellite and the most exciting research that I was doing we discovered these things called x. Ray bursts you're looking at extraneous objects giving out relatively low level of radiation fairly consul in and then all of a sudden you know bam it increases by hundreds and hundreds of times and then gradually fades away over the course of anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes and we discovered lots of theories and this is a completely new phenomenon and it was probably the most exciting thing that I did scientifically was finally figure out what was what was causing these it was actually neutron stars. Orbiting around regular stars and the gravitation of the neutron star was such that it would suck hydrogen off the regular star in the hydrogen would accumulate in a layer on the surface of the neutron star and then eventually the whole thing would detonate and in a huge thermal nuclear explosions all we were looking at were hydrogen bombs you know 10 miles in diameter you know it's pretty spectacular stuff so that was really exciting and I was all set for a. You know career as an astronomer and but that was now in the mid to late seventy's when NASA was getting ready to fly what was then the brand new space shuttle and the neat thing about the space shuttle from a. Point of view was that it had a crew of 7 but they only needed 2 pilots the pilots were still going to be military test pilots but it really opened things up for engineers scientists and medical doctors and when NASA put out a call for for astronauts for the space shuttle and indicated that yes they really did want scientists and engineers and doctors. And I thought well I'll apply and I was lucky enough to get selected the 1st time around so that they sickly was the end of my career and astronomy research and I had a. You know I'd say it was quite successful and had I not been selected I hope I would have had a good career as a research as a physicist but. Getting selected by NASA as an astronaut certainly changed my life interesting before we ask you about a little bit of your spaceflight experience I just wondered does research into high energy astrophysics like you if you're looking at neutron stars and bursts of x. Rays and gamma rays and stuff in the universe does that change the way you feel about the sky when you look up at it and most people look up and see twinkling sky stars and if eels kind of nice and cool and calm do you do you envision the universe emotionally as one full of radiation and danger and high energy. Oh absolutely I mean you know when you look up just a simple look up at the stars everything looks pretty constant and unvarying and when you realize that there's things exploding and going off all over the place the tremendous areas of high gravitation high magnetic fields charged particles Yeah the universe is a pretty violent place and you don't see it with your naked eye but modern astronomy has as opened this up to us. Dr Hoffman Can you tell us about some of your spaceflight experience what was the Hubble service mission like well let me let me start a little bit further back with my 1st spaceflight because. That of course for any astronaut is an exciting moment when you get the call from management and they say Oh you've been if you've got an assignment your 1st spaceflight. We were supposed to take up 2 satellites and put them into orbit another is popping out of the cargo bay of the Shuttle which was what the shuttle was doing in the early days and then come home it was going to be a short relatively short mission 4 days or so. And. As it turned out the 2nd of the 2 satellites that we popped out of the shuttle didn't turn on and you know had nothing to do with us all we were supposed to do was was get it out of the shuttle into orbit but when when we reported that it did not seem to have activated NASA went into a big study mode and they figured out the there was only one single point failure that we could possibly do something about there's a little switch on the outside of the satellite that maybe had gotten stuck and so they scheduled for the 1st time in NASA history an unplanned spacewalk where my partner and I went out see I had been trained to use spacesuits but we weren't planning to do a space walk on my 1st flight but they sent us out to fix it and. So that was a. Totally unexpected incredible experience you know getting to go out and do a spacewalk which you know all astronauts would like to to go out it's the most intimate experience that you can have of being in space is actually putting on a space suit and going out of the airlock and it's you know kind of you. Face to face with the rest of the universe it's an incredible experience and we did a good job and so. I got identified as as somebody who was good at space walking and I worked on a lot of advanced spacesuit development and various things and then when it came time to. Select a crew to go up and try to repair the Hubble telescope and of course nowadays people who weren't alive at the time when Hubble was put in orbit don't don't really appreciate what a disaster it was for NASA I mean this 1000000000 and a half dollar telescope which had been launched with great expectations about how was going to revolutionize our view of the universe and then to find out that it couldn't focus properly I mean how could NASA make our huge mistake like that was what everybody was was asking and it was absolutely critical I mean and as I say people don't remember what it disaster it was but NASA and Hubble were the joke of late night comedians Hubble was denounced in the halls of the u.s. Congress as a techno Turkey NASA was trying to get Congress to approve funding for the International Space Station at the time and as you can imagine NASA wasn't very popular with Congress so. Basically they were told you know go do something about Hubble and then come back and talk to us about the space station in any case NASA wanted to do everything possible to reduce the risk of failure in this rescue mission and one of the things that they decided was that only people who had previously done space walks would be eligible to do the spacewalks for the Hubble rescue and because of this one planned spacewalk that I did way back on my 1st flight. And I had 2 subsequent flights in stand So Hubble for me was my 4th flight and I had my space walkers union card so I guess I was fortunate enough to be on the crew and that was certainly of all the things I did as an astronaut the one. What the most lasting impact was obviously rescuing Hubble and turning it from basically Nasa's worst disaster. Scientifically to its most successful and productive scientific mission ever so it was a and and of course as a former astronomer as well as being an astronaut being able to put my 2 hands on the Hubble telescope up in orbit was I mean it was the thrill of a lifetime and we fixed it and the great thing you did well I know that many of my past former astronomy colleagues after the mission they would come I can't tell you how many people would come up to me is out Jeff thank you so much because you know my my professional career was depending on this and all I could say was Well it was a pleasure you know thank you it was a pleasure it really was so you mentioned that when you were out on space walks in Evie a that you had this kind of intimate experience with the universe it was like putting you face to face with the outer universe and I wonder about something so there was a sigh fine until I read a couple years ago where a character is born and lives their whole life in simulated environments inside a generation's starship and she finally one point comes back to Earth late in life and she's outside and discussing the idea of getting sunburned and she's so unfamiliar with the concept of earth in the sun that she calls this she's horrified and she calls this getting burned by radiation from a star I wonder is there a moment in space where you know outside vehicle activity where you begin to think of the sun not as the sun but as a star and other kinds of a alienation f.x. No absolutely I mean this is something I when I give public talks I often show a picture of the sun in space and then I asked the audience there's something very strange. That this picture can you figure out what it is and most people don't quite get it but what you're seeing is the sun in a black sky and think about it you've never seen the sun in a black sky because every time the weather is clear you go out and of course our atmosphere scatters the blue light preferentially And so the sky is blue and so every human being throughout human history until the Space Age has only seen the sun in a blue sky we see the stars in a black sky because there's not enough light really from the stars to be scattered and make the sky look blue but not the sun but in space you really see the sun as a star in a black sky course it's it's bigger and brighter than any other stars because it's close to us but yeah you really do appreciate the sun as a star and that that that was something I didn't have to go out and just looking out the window of the shuttle you you get that appreciation but it's a totally different perspective as are so many other things that you see I mean that's one of the things about being off the surface of the earth is that you look with a totally new perspective just like most people don't remember the 1st time never flew an airplane but if you if you pay attention and look out the window you also get a totally new perspective on the on the earth although most people don't bother to look out the window these days but from space we spent a lot of time looking out the windows and I never got tired of it it was a completely. Different perspective not only on the earth but on on the Heavens it was great flying during the nighttime you know we'd start we didn't or darkness in the northern hemisphere and you could look up and see all the familiar northern constellations the Cygnus the Swan Which is the Northern Cross and then 15 minutes later you'd be in the southern have. Fear and sea Alpha Centauri and the Southern Cross and that's something else that you never do when you're on the surface of the earth is to see the northern and the southern skies that the you know within a half hour of one another would you describe this as being a candid the overview effect where the overview effect maybe some of the listeners don't who aren't familiar with that but it was coined by Frank White he's an author who thought a lot about I guess he had disguised of inspiration during an air airplane flight when he was looking at the ground and feeling a little bit removed from the earth but he then he started thinking about how what what must it be like for the astronauts really came down to Houston and. I was one of the 1st astronauts that he interviewed and you know the idea is that it really does change your perception of planet Earth 2 to look at it and actually see the Earth as a planet. To see from an airplane you can look out the window and see entire cities spread out below you but from an orbiting spacecraft you can see entire countries are continents really the earth is very beautiful and so you use to get this relationship that develops between you and the planet at the same time you can see examples of environmental degradation caused by humanity which is you know now visible from a cosmic perspective and that's pretty scary you know the deforestation of the Amazon the silting up of harbors and rivers and. Just all sorts of things and then you realize that. He definitely got a feeling of the the finiteness of planet Earth and this sense of what it is to be removed. Moved from the earth and how that changes your feelings for Planet Earth is what Frank called the overview effect and many astronauts have have reported this there's now actually a a movie that that you can find on You Tube of him you know that though about the overview effect it may buy a. Sense Suma tog refer and in the u.k. Interviews of a lot of different astronauts myself included So yeah it's. It's a totally different perspective you get when you're hundreds of miles above the surface of the earth so going back to the idea of radiation risk beyond the surface of the earth the missions you flew in the eighty's and ninety's were what did you in the other crewmembers understand about radiation risk in space and what kind of measures were in place to protect you other than just limiting the duration of missions the shuttle flies do like the International Space Station in what we call low Earth orbit so we are basically below the Van Allen vent radiation belts we're inside the Earth's magnetic fields which shields us from most cosmic radiation so. It's a much more benign environment than when you actually left the earth to head out to the moon and you're outside the Earth's magnetic shield and then you're exposed to the direct. Impact of collect the cosmic rays and. Charged particles coming from the sun. Even new ultraviolet light of course is not deflected by the magnetic field and we have to have protection against ultraviolet light otherwise it would destroy our eyes which is why the space helmet spacesuit helmets have those those gold visors which protect you and there's also Violet protection on all of the windows of the space shuttle and the international space station windows so. You know electromagnetic radiation cosmic. The ultraviolet rays we have to protect yourself against and then of course there's the infrared radiation from the sun the heat and when you're in need. And direct sunlight temperatures of things exposed to direct sunlight in space can go up above the boiling point of water and so when you're at your spacesuit you need good cooling and we do that by stubble mating ice and that cools off the water which we then circulate in liquid cooling garment with lots of 2 ways were where you can run the cold water right over your body and take away heat and you can adjust add because when you go into the dark side it gets very very cold and there you don't want this extra cooling so from the electromagnetic point of view have got to protect ourselves against ultraviolet radiation and we've got to have good thermal control for heat for the charged particle radiation as I say we're in a relatively benign place when we did our hunter mission Hubble was put as high up as the shuttle could go the 400 miles 600 kilometers and we were kind of scraping the bottom of the Van Allen inner Van Allen radiation belt so it was calculated that we were going to get about 10 times the normal exposure for a shuttle flight which which still was nothing to be concerned about from a you know cancer point of view but. But they had us where radiation monitors the whole time and particularly when we went outside and they tried to schedule the space walk so that we would not be outside when we went through what what is known as the south atlantic anomaly which is a part of the orbit where the radiation is much higher and then the rest of it that's about. All you can do obviously if there were ever a huge solar eruption we always had the option of coming home and you know getting underneath the atmosphere for the extra protection but we never had to do that what about the extended future missions how did the risks change and what sort of solutions are being developed to protect future astronauts in the radiation risk is recognized as being one of the most serious if you're going to be outside the Earth's magnetic field for a long time either on the surface of the moon or on an extended trip to Mars on the surface of the moon actually getting to the moon is not such a big deal because you can get there in 3 days and so your exposure time is limited but if you're going to spend any significant amount of time on the surface of the moon. Obviously the moon blocks about half of the galactic cosmic rays but but you're still exposed to all the rest of them and it may be that you know we'll they're talking about possibly having underground habitats in while the tubes which we know exist on the moon you have to do something to shield yourself from the radiation because the exposed to it for a long time is going to be dangerous that's something that's very difficult to do if you're on a trip to Mars because you can't carry that much mass with you to protect yourself and so NASA is interested in other ways there are some really I think very interesting research going on about. Pharmacological protection against radiation if there were some way that we could enhance the body's ability to repair d.n.a. . That would make the impact of radiation much less serious We know that there's bacteria which can with. Sand hundreds of times the amount of radiation that a human can and they've developed the ability to repair much more significant damage to d.n.a. Than we're able to do. There may be genetic. Clues about how to protect against radiation so the point being that we've got to look for other ways besides just shielding and of course developing better more powerful propulsion systems so that we could get to Mars quicker would be a big help as well not just from radiation point of view but logistically you know you've got to carry everything you need you can't get resupplied once you're on your way to Mars so all the food the medical equipment the spare parts and everything the quicker you can get there the better so there's a lot of ways that that we're looking at that will make longer ation spaceflight outside the Earth's magnetic field safer but most of these things are still works in progress right now we don't have those solutions available now and correct me if I'm wrong but once you get to Mars on a Mars mission on the surface you're not a whole lot better off than you are in space right as far as radiation was going because 1st of all Mars just like when you're on the surface of the moon Mars is blocking half of the radiation just by its mass and then Mars does have a bit of an atmosphere which gives you a little bit of protection but you're right there's still the radiation environment on the surface of them are of Mars is. More severe than being in low earth orbit and so radiation protection on the surface of Mars will continue to be an issue just like it will be on the moon. You will have to have a certain amount of protection in your habitats but again. And the others the other thing you know there's 2 aspects of the dangers of radiation and one of them is that in the long term it will lead to an increased incidence of cancers like leukemia Well one of the things that we're realizing is that our ability for early detection and treatment in cancers is continually improving and so maybe you know 2030 years from now that's just not going to be as much of a problem the other potential problem from radiation are acute impacts there are there have been some experiments that have shown a potential loss of cognitive capability for rats when they're exposed to radiation. You certainly would not like to get to Mars and find out that your i.q. Is decreased by 20 points and there are potential effects of acute effects of radiation on the circulatory system on the nervous system and that's an area of very active research now it's relatively new traditionally we were just concerned with the long term impact of radiation that is that ultimately causing cancer unless of course you had a huge solar flare are you know if you get enough radiation all at one time you're going to die or have serious illnesses and that. You know we would like not to be in space when they have a huge solar flare but you know statistically those don't happen very often and so far we've been lucky so we've discussed the ambient radiation risks in space obviously within our solar system you've got solar radiation to worry about and you've got charged particles from the from the galaxy the universe to worry about but also apart from these ambient radiation risks. Does it make sense to also for space fares to worry about anomalous radiation risks I know for example like x. Ray bursting in reverse or extremely rare in the universe or are they so rare that that we just don't have to think about that or will the future of space exploration is a really think about it I mean if if. If there were a huge black hole merger like was observed with the gravitational radiation you know billions of light years away if something like that happened right near as in the galaxy it would be bad news but there's absolutely nothing we can do about it and so it's just not something that we even bother to think about and what about solar anomalies and now you mention like a solar avail sir I mean Center flags are recognized I mean there was a big solar flare in 1972 in August which just happened to occur between a policy 16 and Apollo 17 had it occurred when astronauts were on the lunar surface there's been a lot of discussion of whether with would have been fatal or whether it would have just been very bad for them but it would have been a very serious effect but that solar flare in 1972 was not nearly the strongest solar flare that's ever existed I mean there was the Carrington event back in the mid 19th century which was so powerful course that was that we didn't have satellites we didn't have electronics going there but they did have telegraph lines and that solar flare collapse the Earth's magnetic field to the extent that the moving magnetic field induced voltages in the telegraph lines which caused fires in telegraph offices I mean if if a flare like that hit us today it would cost Lloyd's of London did an estimate of that I mean it would be like a trillion dollars worth of damage to all of our satellites would be destroyed electronic system. All over the world electrical power grids would go down and when there's nothing we can do about it except that statistically something like that happens maybe once every 500 years or so so far we've been lucky. And not too much more you can say about it. We are people are still doing research to try to be able to predict solar flares so far without many positive results but. I just read recently some new research is indicating that you know maybe they've made a breakthrough. Being able to predict solar flares in advance would be a big help so that at least you could get ready for it and if you had astronauts on the moon at least they could try to get inside their shielding but other than that . It's statistics and so far we've been lucky Well thank you so much it's been such a privilege to talk to you Dr Osman We really appreciate you sharing your time with us been a pleasure and I hope it's given maybe a new perspective to some of the listeners who haven't heard some of this stuff so . Thanks for your interest and. It's been fun Yes thank you so much Jake you have a great day there all right well thanks once more to Dr Jeff Hoffman and a National Geographic for enabling us to have this wonderful chat We're going take a quick break and we come back Joe and I will discuss the interview a little bit before we close out the exit. The technology credit union our mobile app is specifically made to keep up with the modern family. I want. That will be a good thing. That's all how we're still can we afford it. 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All right we're back so Robert Dr have been mentioned a few things in that interview that I thought were really interesting and we might want to follow up and talk about a little bit one of the things he mentioned when we were talking about solar anomalies was the idea of the Carrington event or the solar storm of 859 and this just stuck in my mind because this is one of the most fascinating and I think maybe lesser known craziest or astronomical events in history yeah and indeed it may have been the largest solar energy audit particle event in the past several 100 years so why do we call it the Carrington event well it's a name for amateur astronomer Richard Carrington who observed quote 2 patches of intensely bright and white light erupting from a cluster of dark sunspots they vanish within 5 minutes but then within a matter of hours the effects of this event were felt on earth so one of those effects look like well as a Dr Hoffman alluded to telegraph communication around the world began to fail sparks were flying from telegraph machines telegraph operators were in some cases shocked and also colorful auroras in the sky were causing the birds to chirp at night wow yeah. So the solar flare in question had the power of an estimated 10000000000 atomic bombs and ice core samples reveal that the Carrington event was twice as big as any other solar storm within the last 500 years this is the kind of thing where if it were to hit today the estimates are just in trillions of dollars worth of damage it would just be a massive blow and Dr Hoffman alluded to this is well the idea that it would have it would impact our satellites would in fact technology on a scale that to simply did not exist in $859.00 but of course it would also greatly affect any exposed astronauts or space fairs that you know we're colonists or wherever outside of the protection of our shielded didn't even fully protect us from this event yeah yeah you know I actually interviewed a helio physicist Dr c. Alex young several years ago about solar storms and he pointed out that in our modern electrical grid in particular is just highly vulnerable to this sort of thing he told me quote the power grids that we have in the u.s. And actually all over the world are interconnected in very fragile if the currents large enough it can short out the largest of the transformers which can knock out the power grid over the scale of a country of a continent or even across the whole globe scary and for just a minor example of the sort of thing it Canada's Hydro Quebec power grid experienced a similar shock in 1909 from a particularly powerful sun storm and this caused the grid to go down for over 9 hours resulting in revenue losses estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars and that was just that small potatoes compared to something like the Carrington event yeah with our earth bound mines it's impossible for us to grasp the real power in magnitude of solar events like if you've never seen one of those pictures of the earth superimposed to scale against a solar prominence it's amazing solar prominences are these events where this monstrous loop of plasma erupts out of the photos fear which is the apparent so. Office of the sun and then it curves through the sun's corona guided by solar magnetic fields and this is not even really the core of the Sun itself is just in a vent it's like whether it's an event on the surface of the sun but this event itself is tens of times bigger than the entire planet Earth and you see one of these pictures when you look at the vulnerability and tininess of human scale projects becomes absurdly apparent the comparison that comes to my mind is if you ever been out in nature as as I know you like to venture out into nature on hikes and so forth you ever observe a bird's nest for a wasp nest some sort of animal structure or a nest and you think you might yourself that's a horrible place to put that don't you know a tiny bird that eventually the wind is going to blow Don't you know that when it rains that's that's just not a very protected place don't you know that's my front porch and I'm probably going to knock you down eventually just because you're inconvenient to me and then when you think about everything that the that that is life on Earth and then everything that humans have built and you think of the vulnerability that introns that can all of that we're really no different from from any wasp The decides to build its nest on the bottom of a porch swing on a geological cosmic timescale our projects are so hilariously short sighted but then again the just how we're built right I mean it's very difficult for us to seriously focus on a project that we think will take place over say 100000 years or even a 1000000 years yet totally We're just we're we're short sighted as a species that's what we've evolved to be now on the subject of long time scales and cosmic scale of events I asked Dr Hoffman about whether spacefaring species should really worry about things like gamma ray bursts or x. Ray bursts which I think is kind of a weird question because. On one hand it's something that. Would pose a very serious threat but these things are also incredibly rare in the universe and they're incredibly rare in the galaxy so it's hard to factor into one's idea about something like space exploration how much you should worry about something that is almost never going to happen anywhere near you yeah but if it did it would be catastrophic it's going to get kind of reminds one of of course the seafaring explorers of old and to say well if you go out in that boat you might very well drown you might run into a hurricane at cetera and the hurricanes are pretty common Yeah those are pretty common and like if it was you would have to say oh yeah well I may very well drown we may very well diode die on some distant island but in the chances here are are less but it's also the same scenario like it's of course it's safer to not go out and explore it certainly in the short term but are we the type of species that is going to do that of course then again if there were a nearby game or a burst as unlikely as that is that would be bad even if we were on Earth all right so there you have it don't be shy to get in touch with us and let us know what you would like us to pick up on from that conversation in the future right and you can do that or at our various social media accounts We're on Facebook Twitter Instagram and check out stuff to blow your mind dot com That's the mothership that's where you'll find links out to our social media accounts that's where you'll find links out to our social media accounts as well as all the podcast episode some blog post it's cetera and hey check out one strange it's a really beautiful show you definitely like h.d. 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