The Moon With Trevor Kjorlien of Plateau Astro

🎙️ Listen on other apps: https://linktr.ee/geographyiseverything
📝 Support us on Substack: https://geographyiseverything.substack.com/
📽️ YouTube: @GeographyByGeoff
📷 Socials: https://linktr.ee/geographybygeoff
📖 Check out Hunter's atlas' here: https://www.indiebound.org/search/book?keys=hunter+shobe

Enjoy this special guest episode where we talk in even MORE detail about how the Moon impacts the geography of our planet! Special thanks to Trevor Kjorlien of  @PlateauAstro  for joining us! Find his socials right here ⬇️

http://instagram.com/plateau_astro/
http://facebook.com/plateauastro/
http://threads.net/plateau_astro
http://facebook.com/plateauastro/

Episode Transcript

(00:04):
Can you explain to us, likewe are both five years old, Trevor,
what is the moon? And I'mtalking specifically, what is what is
it made of? It's I thinkand you can correct me if I'm wrong
here, but I think it's madeof cheese. I've heard this like line
all my life of people like laughingat cheese, and I'm like, I'm

(00:24):
wondering if I like missed like acultural reference or something like that, and
like I bring my telescope it's fromsomething. Yeah, yeah, But like
I'll bring my telescope into the streetssometimes and have the moon on there and
I'll have my phone attached to itand be like, oh, look,
it's made of cheese, and everybodylaughs. Everybody laughs, And like I
feel like I'm missing out on something, just a little something. I don't

(00:46):
know why the cheese thing is thething it is, but yeah, what
is it really? I mean toexplain to a five year old, It's
basically kind of just a rock upin space. It's a solid rock.
It's just dirt. Yeah, youcould, you could. You could say
that if you go further less you'retrying to do a five and a half

(01:06):
year old, you could maybe bringout the example of like Everlasting Gobstopper.
Yeah, do you remember those likethe big like sugar bowls and they take
like a week to like lick open. Oh yeah, great, we're a
minute and I'm already talking about lickingthings. All right. You look at
hard enough and you start to seesort of like all these layers around it.
And you've probably seen diagrams of likewhen they cut a planet in half,

(01:30):
and like you see what the differentlayers are. Basically, at the
middle, you have this very solidiron iron comes up a lot iron is
in the middle. It's this verysolid, compact center of the moon.
Really. Yeah. Outside of that, you have this liquid area that's also
made of iron. Okay, Soyou have this liquid thing around the solid
thing, and then beyond that it'sgets a little bit, a little bit

(01:52):
you know, sludgier. Okay,it's sort of a molten layer. And
afterwards, the majority of it isthis mantle, which I think is all
so it made up a lot ofiron and solid rock type of type of
stuff, and then you have thecrust at the at the end was sort
of like the onion skin of theof the Everlasting Gobstopper. Which just sounds
like terrible tasting imagery. But yeah, when I do bring my telescope into

(02:16):
the streets, you'll see these cratersand that's cool. But then you see
these dark spot on the surface ofthe Moon. And I explained to people
that the Moon used to be usedto be long, long, long time
ago volcanically active, and so lavawould come and bubble up to the surface
and sort of spread out, andit makes these dark areas on the Moon

(02:38):
and you can see it like withthe naked eye. When you look at
it, you like, oh,there's like these dark spots on there.
And before we had, you know, the invention of telescopes or even like
a good glasses, we used tothink they were seas, like the water
seas, and we call them maria, which I mayor which sounds horse like,
I think, but it means seas. I think in Latin. We

(03:00):
used to think there was like waterseas on it. What we found eventually
is is actually just old lava sortof spread onto the surface of it.
So yeah, short answer, it'sa rock, but it does have an
interesting gooey gooey inside and old lavadeposits on the top. So as I

(03:23):
was sort of preparing this, thisthis answer. I was seeing to myself,
like when I look at the moonnow, it's like you can imagine
just sort of this dead rock.But then when I think inside, there's
like this molten hot layer of stuffgoing in, And I'm like, huh,
Like I'm the next time I lookat the Moon, I might look
at a little bit different. There'sstuff going on inside of it. So
I'm already gonna look at the moondifferently, trying not to think of it

(03:46):
as a giant gob stopper. Butthat's yeah, super interesting. I mean
I expected, you know, youto say some variation it's just dirt or
something like that, it's it's abunch of sand. I don't think I
expected that it was that it wasbasically just an iron ball up there,
just to yeah, yeah, Imean there's some limitations of my knowledge here,

(04:08):
Like when I hear the word iron, like I think of like a
like a metal beam, like aneye beam sort of thing, like with
yeh, that old like nineteen twentiesconstruction photo, whether it's stage or on
the thing lunch, you know,a thousand feet in the air or whatever.
And like I'm trying to imagine likewhat or in a non like human

(04:29):
shaped thing, what it actually lookslike. I'm not sure if I've ever
really held iron, Like yeah,maybe I have, and I just I
just I don't know I was holdingit, you know, I have no
idea either. Yeah. Yeah,so I think it just looks like rock,
to be honest, Yeah, yeah, there is. You know,
obviously I'm simplifying. You know,at the center the molten movel, the

(04:50):
surface of it does get kind ofinteresting, especially with like I want to
say, new knowledge but new meaning, like in the last fifty sixty years
since we've we've gone there. Whenyou get to the surface of it,
it is quite powdery, so it'snot just a solid thing, but some
sort of powdery on it. Andwe call this lunar regolith. And when

(05:13):
astronauts went there, they found thatit really was like very destructive to the
stuff that they brought up. Soit's very abrasive, you know, microscopically,
I guess, it's very just destructiveof the material. So like cloth
that would get up there would getdestroyed quite quite quickly. The metal things
they brought that would you know,work together, that gets destroyed very very

(05:36):
quickly. It's very, very destructivethe lunar regulars. So that's like one
of the big challenges of like whenwe're going to be going back to them,
in which might talk about a littlebit later, is like when we
went up there in the sixties andseventies, we were only up there for
like you know, at start,maybe a dozen hours, and then two
days and then three days, andeven just that short amount of time,

(05:58):
just how much damage was done toour equipment. And now that we want
to plan to stay there for youknow, weeks or months on end,
we have to really think about likethe engineering of our stuff up there,
just because the stuff that the surfacedust, the regulith is so destructive.
So how many times, well howmany how many times can I say destructive

(06:18):
in two minutes? I don't knowseven rate. Yeah, well, hold
on to that thought, because youalready you already mentioned this that we're going
to We're going to talk a littlebit about this a little bit later in
today's episode. Listeners, welcome toanother extra special episode of Geography Is Everything
That Is. Our friend Trevor Cherline, who is also better known, maybe

(06:39):
perhaps as a plateau astro over onThreads Instagram, YouTube, anywhere. It
kind of feels like anywhere you know, you find that name, it's probably
going to be your handle. AndI believe Plateau is spelled p l A
t e a U. Right,is that correct? I think I'm on
a geography podcast because plateau flat.Yeah, you probably you know a spell

(07:01):
it, Yeah, exactly, latoastro spelled just like the geographic feature.
Go check him out. Today weare going to talk all about the moon
once again. So a couple ofdays ago you listen to me and Hunter
prattle on about the moon and sortof the geography of it, sort of
the higher level, more basic versionof sort of what we're going to talk
about today, because now we're goingto be able to dive deep into all

(07:24):
of the things that we simply didn'thave the expertise to talk about on Tuesday,
and Trevor is here to help usdo that. So that's well,
I'm not an expert on astronomy orthe moon, Hunter, are you.
I'm not an expert in these things. I remember taking a few astronomy classes
back in the day, but youknow, some of that stuck. But
I'm here to learn. Yeah.Absolutely. I also took an astronomy class,

(07:47):
because at one point I did wantto major in astronomy, and then
I realized that with astronomy, withan astronomy degree came classes in astrophysics,
which then meant a lot of mathand calculus and everything like that. And
it was at that point I decided, maybe it's not for me. I
think you both, just to befair, have done more astronomy university classes

(08:09):
than I have. I think Idid. I think I did too.
I think I did too, Somaybe we're tied, or maybe we're a
little bit by Yeah, I didnot graduate. I did not I did
not finish university. So this isall just knowledge out of general interest and
a hobby that has sort of goneout of control. So I mean,
you certainly know your stuff based oneverything that I follow on social media,

(08:33):
which is why we have you ontoday, Trevor. So let's go ahead
and launch into our next question foryou. Let's get to the tides,
right. Everybody knows the moon hasan impact on the tide, So can
you explain the role of the moonin regulating Earth's tides and how this kind
of influences coastal geography and perhaps humansettlements. Although I don't know if if

(08:56):
if we can actually get to that, but I feel like that's something that
you know, has an impact therefor sure. Yeah, yeah, I
guess we can sort of start withsome styrofoam balls as as you normally normally
do. So, Yeah, thetides, like the tides, you know,
the water goes up and down,and through the course of a month
you'll get bigger variations of it.So the tithes or the ocean's big,

(09:18):
big, big bodies of water areinfluenced by gravity, by things in space.
So, you know, we havethe moon here and the moon this
is a great start answering this question. We're the Earth right here. There
we go and the Moon goes aroundthe Earth. Okay, and this takes
about one month for it to completelydo this. Now, off to the

(09:41):
side here, you just gotta maybepretend the Sun is way way way over
over over on this side over andover here far over. Yeah. So
you imagine the water that we haveon the Earth right here, and the
Moon's gravity is tugging on the waterover here, and if the Sun is
over there, you're sort of gettingalso like another effect of the Sun pulling

(10:05):
on on on the Earth's water,so you're getting this sort of double effect
of the moon and the Sun.About a week after this, the moon
has moved about like this. Okay, So the moon is still tugging on
the oceans. Okay, So thewater is being pulled this way, okay,
but it's also being pulled this wayfrom from the Sun. So what

(10:28):
we call this is called a neaptide neeap neat tides, so it's it's
you're not getting really much variation intide at all. It's getting pulled here
and here it sort of kind oflike almost cancels each other, cancel each
other out. Yeah. About aweek later after that we get the full
moon, okay, and so themoon is pulling it the Earth's oceans this

(10:52):
way, and the Sun is pullingit this way, and we get a
little bit more tugging of it.It's not being canceled out like it was
the week before, okay. Andthen a week after okay, we're third
quarter moon here getting pulled this wayand this way, so it sort of
cancels each other again. And hereit's a new moon okay, so we're
getting pulled from the moon and fromthe Sun. So here is where the

(11:16):
oceans are being pulled the most ata new moon. Okay, here at
a full moon a little bit less. But these two points here at neap
tides, when it's getting pulled hereand here, that's where you don't get
really the high tides at all.So that's sort of like like a little
bit of a background or on,like what is actually going on with that?

(11:37):
I remember, sorry if I'm ramblinghere. I remember being in Australia
and I was staying in hostels.I was in my mid early twenties and
somebody told me, and this isbefore I was really super into astronomy,
saying that the phase of the moonaffects the tides. And I was like,
how could that make a difference,Like, how does it? How
could the difference of it looking morelit up whatever make a difference on the

(11:58):
tide. I didn't believe it whenI was in my early twenties, and
it wasn't until I did my firstastronomy class after I went to university that
like, oh, okay, thatmakes sense. Where the position of the
moon is that actually makes a difference. So I mean the tides like along
the coasts and stuff like that,you're gonna get different variations of how high
the ocean water comes up, andthat is going to affect, you know,

(12:22):
how what animals, how far youget up onto the shoreline. That's
going to affect how close we actuallywant to build to the oceans as humans,
so how we want to settle there. And so, yeah, that's
sort of how the moon affects thetides and ours here on Earth. And
you're you're so you're located not tooso, You're you're located up in Canada.

(12:46):
Yeah, you're located not too faraway from someplace called the Bay of
Fundy, correct, I mean that'sit's not you're not super close, if
I'm remembering correctly, but it's it'ssort of over in that was that Nova
Scotia area. Yeah, that's stillpretty far. I've never been. I
can't, you know, I can'tdrive this afternoon basically, well, I
know what you're referring to. Yeah, yeah, And at the point I'm

(13:07):
trying to make you see those videosof the of the tides and it has
I think it it's considered to beone of those places that has one of
the most dramatic tidle shifts. Forsome reason, I have no idea why,
but you can. You can seevideos of this where there's an area
that is completely full, there's abunch of boats on it, and then
all of a sudden, the tidesgo out and now there's no more water
at all, Like you can justwalk straight across all the boats are on

(13:30):
the now muddy ground, I'm assuming, and it's kind of wild to see
how much of a tidal influence thereis and how they It's almost like,
why did you put why did youbuild boats and docks here? Because I'm
assuming boats on land is not ait's not good for a boat. I
don't know, right right, right, right right, it's it's it's so
I grew up in Western Canada,Alberta. Well, I'm on a phiography

(13:52):
podcast you might know, yeah,Province of Alberta. Basically it's very inland,
like it's it's it's prairies and stufflike that, and so like my
connection to tides is extremely theoretical,Like I guess, I guess I you
know, I traveled in Australia forbut a year, so maybe that's my
connection. But even then I wasearly twenties hostels and just generally being kind

(14:16):
of silly in my early twenties,so I wasn't really noticing it too too
much. But like, yeah,so like I still have like a very
not farm brain, but like avery land based brain. Whereas other people
you meet who live on the coastsor like live you know, near the
oceans, they're like they're very muchthey have a lived experience. Yeah,

(14:39):
and like I, I do nothave that type of brain. That's just
not where I've grown up. Butyeah, I will say I have been
to the Bay fun day when Iwas a kid and saw the title bore
I think they call it. Andyou know, usually when you see a
tide coming in you it takes youa minute or two to realize if it's
coming out or come in in.But this is just water like almost rushing

(15:03):
in and the change in it's it'sit's a super dramatic change in depth.
Yeah, it was very very interesting, kind of a strange phenomenon, but
it was fun to check out,certainly as a kid. Yeah. Man,
you can't spell fundy without fun,so putting the fun and funded Trevor

(15:24):
ev Another question about how the moonaffects the Earth, and so the question
is how does the Moon's gravitational pullaffect Earth's rotation and axial tilt, and
what implications does this have for ourclimate and weather patterns? Yeah, I'll
break that down in a few different, few different sections. So, yeah,
so we have the Earth, ofcourse, okay, and it rotates

(15:46):
once on stealth about every twenty fourhours or so. But the Moon does
affect the rotation rate. So theMoon is slowing down. Why am I
mixing this up with the Earth isslowing down? It's rotation very very very
very small amounts. It's about onepoint seven milliseconds per year, no,

(16:06):
per one hundred years, Yeah,every one hundred years. It's it's very
little. It's extremely extremely extremely little. Okay, it's not that that that
that much. So on a humantimescale, like we can basically say that
like a day on Earth will beabout twenty four hours. But from what
I've read and seen is that likeif you take that time far enough back

(16:32):
in advance, like around the timesof the dinosaurs, you know, two
hundred and fifty million years ago,that one point seven milliseconds per one hundred
years builds up, and it wouldthe Earth's rotation probably would have been a
little bit faster probably about twenty threehours per day for it to do to
do one to do one rotation.So the Moon affects that by going around

(16:55):
it and sort of slowing the rotationof the Earth a little bit down.
The Moon is getting a little bitfurther away as well. Again, it's
like an inch a year. Youknow, that's not too too much,
but you sort of build that upover hundreds of millions or perhaps a billion
years here or there geological time scales, and you can notice notice the difference.

(17:17):
So right now the Earth is issort of slowing down a little bit
because of the moon. The questionwas about axial tilt. This I love
bringing this up, so I can'tprepared, of course, and I have
not just flat map. I don'tknow what projection. This is probably mercader,
I don't know. But we havea globe right here. And the

(17:37):
thing that I really love showing peoplewhen I bring out a globe is showing
that the Earth is tilted. Ithought for the longest time that like every
globe was like broken in some way. It's like, why why is it?
Why is it tilted this way?Like is that just a design flaw?
It's like no, no, no, The Earth is not like this.
It actually is like that. Soit is tilted by about twenty three

(18:03):
point point five degrees, and thattilt is what actually causes the seasons here
on Earth. Without that tilt,we wouldn't have that variation in summer,
winter, and spring. Without themoon, we I'll rephrase, the moon
helps to stabilize this tilt. Okay, So the tilt is constant basically in

(18:27):
our lifetimes and for millions of years, it'll always sort of be about twenty
three point five degrees. If wedidn't have the moon, this tilt would
actually wobble quite a bit. Itwould actually be quite quite unstable. So
instead of it being twenty three pointfive degrees consistently, it would be quite
wobbly. And the Earth does wobblea little bit, but it's very very

(18:51):
very very little. So over thecourse of you know, hundreds of thousands
of years, it'll wobble a littlebit. But because the Moon is there,
it helps to stabilize the tilt ofit. To get sort of a
counter example of it, I wasjust researching beforehand. I was thinking about
Mars, and Mars also has atilt. It's about twenty five degrees it's
like kind of really close to Earth's. But Mars has two moons that are

(19:18):
both very very small, and ifI've read it all correctly, it does
wobble about like ten degrees every onehundred thousand years or so. So that's
actually quite a bit of wobble fora planet like that. And so if
you take one hundred thousand years andyou think humans have been around for about
two hundred thousand years something around somethingaround there. Yeah, I got two

(19:41):
academics here, they should be ableto answer this. I don't know.
I think we'll just say that's probablyright. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
you know that that amount of time, like in a human lifetime, would
you really notice a difference. Probablynot, but on the lifetime of like
a species, and that tilt ofyour planets and you know, ice ages

(20:02):
and you know other different variations intemperature and climate that would probably make a
make make an impact. So I'msorry I give really long answers. So
so, so the moon basically stabilizesthe tilts of the Earth. Trevor,

(20:29):
So, I think you're leading usright into sort of what our next question
is, because're gon we're gonna keeptalking about a little bit about the climate
and the Moon's impact on it.But you're sort of always getting hinting at
this. But so the moon,it seems like it contributes a fair amount
to the seasonal stability, let's say, of the planet, right because without
that, you were talking about thewobbleness, and I don't know exactly what

(20:51):
that would do. Maybe we're gonnaanswer that right now. But let's say
we take the moon out and it'sdoing this wobble thing. Would that significantly?
Would that significantly alter seasons? Andlike, I mean, it has
to write, I can't imagine it, not like it would have to It
would be everything seems to be runningso finely tuned to that twenty three and
a half axial tilt degree angle thatif you were to remove that aspect,

(21:14):
things would just go wacky. Yeah. Yeah, I'll start by answering.
There's a great app it's not free. It's called Universe Sandbox, and basically
it's like a simulator of different thingsyou can do in space. So an
example, I give a presentation theother day to some kids in my planetarium,

(21:37):
and a kid asked, what wouldhappen if the sun disappeared? And
so I, like, I didn'tuse this app specifically, but I like,
I hid the Sun and I describewhat would happen and stuff like that.
But in universe sandbox, you canactually like simulate what would what would
happen, So, like, whatwould happen if the moon? What would
happen immediately the second after the moondisappeared, you just like delete it and

(22:00):
you can see how the orbital trajectoryof the Earth would change. Then you
can speed up time and see howweather systems would change on there, and
you can change things like the axialtilt manually if you want, and you
can see over time the variation inlike the north and South pole. You
know, how does more ice format the poles or how does it lessen

(22:25):
and stuff like that. So yeah, so let's say the moon just like
you know, here we go,got the Earth right here, and we
have the moon right here. TheEarth is tilted this way, and I'll
just pretend this is the Sun.Okay. The Earth goes around the Sun
like this, And crucially, thisis the part that always confused me for

(22:45):
a long time. It has thistilt, but it's always sort of tilted
in the same direction as it goesaround the sun, so I'll demonstrate that
here. So it's going around thesun like this, and it's always pointed
sort of in this way. Okay, you see that there. Okay.
For the longest time when I wasa kid, I was I never quite

(23:07):
understood the tilt thing. I thoughtmaybe, okay, maybe it like goes
around like this, or you know, like like the tilt of it,
that's what caused it. No,no, no, sun Earth always sort
of tilted in the same same direction. So you can imagine here, and
I do do this better like ina dark room with a light bulb and
stuff like that. If you're here, okay, and you are on the

(23:30):
north pole okay, and you're rotatinglike this, you're gonna get sunlight.
Basically, no matter how much yourotate, you're always gonna have sunlight right
right here. Okay, So thisis summertime on this side. No matter
how much you rotate, sorry,now, how to rotate here, it's
always gonna be dark. So it'sjust gonna be cold all the time.

(23:52):
Six months later when you come overhere, you're on the north pole,
okay, you're not getting any lightright here, okay, okay, so
it's gonna be very very cold.Okay, but on the bottom here in
Antarctica, you're gonna be in likeperpetual twenty four hour sunlight for for for
for several months. So that tiltis very very very important. And you

(24:12):
could imagine this and you can playwith this in the universe sandbox. What
if the Earth had no tilt?And what would it be be be kind
of be kind of like and shortanswer, it's basically like the equinox all
the time, and you can youcan simulate that. So let's just say
like that the Earth was really wobblylike this, there would just be like

(24:33):
no real like consistency. It's kindof insane how how consistent the seasons actually
are. You'll get variations of course, like okay, but you can generally
say, like, okay, bye, end of September, what's the temperature
going to be like? And youcan get within you know, a couple
of degrees of guessing and be prettypretty good asterisk climate change. But anyways,

(24:56):
you can get you can get prettypretty pretty close with a wall going
around like this, you know,who knows what it could be absolute pandemonium.
No we I mean, I'm assumingour local weathermen would probably be out
of a job because how would theyever predict the weather in that situation.
Yeah, they would just be weathernews reporters and just what wacky stuff is

(25:17):
going to happen to that, rightand just happening today? Yeah, yeah,
it is. It's fascinating because likeyou said, I mean, I
can tell you, you know,right now, it's it's July fifth here
here in Portland. I can tellyou, you know, sometime around you
know, October fifteenth, it'll probablybe an average temperature of around sixty five
degrees in Portland. Like that isthat is pretty well established. Maybe there'll

(25:38):
be a you know, a weirdheat wave or a weird cold snap something
like that, but generally, right, the averages don't fluctuate that much.
Again, asterisk climate change, becausethat's something. But you're right, like
we it's I've never really thought aboutit and just how consistent seasons are.
But you don't even have to lookthat far away from Earth to find out

(25:59):
that, you know, the seasonalityof planets can be Like doesn't Venus have
like wildly erratic weather patterns or whateveryou might call it. Over there where
it's just like complete chaos because it'sjust completely different area, and they don't
have the stability, or it doesn'thave the stability that the Earth does.
It's really kind of fun to playwith Universe sandwaks, to play those auts.

(26:21):
So I, you know, Iwon't say the client's name, but
I do some contract work for somecreative companies where they want to like make
a story somewhere and they want itto be kind of rooted in as much
reality as they can, and soI would give them. Okay, imagine
a planet that is like tidally lockedto the Sun. I can't get super

(26:44):
into it, but basically one sideof the planet is always facing the Sun,
Okay, so as it goes around, it's sort of like one side
is always at so one side isperpetually in darkness while the other side is
perpetually in light. So you'd haveone part that's completely frozen, another part
that is completely hot. But aroundthe poles, the poles here, you

(27:07):
know, it could be habitable there. So in Universe, I'm not plugging
in for Sonda. They're not payingme. Yeah, it's fun that we'd
love to be, love to be. Yeah, it's great. It's great
and and and you can sort ofsimulate those things, and it's a fun
tool to bring into the classroom forkids because then their imaginations just go really

(27:29):
wild up, like what if theEarth rotated the other way? Suddenly you
know what would happen? Okay,what if it was tilted more like this?
And it sort of simulates it.Kids really like destroying planets, but
they also like seeing the effects ofwhat happens when you change some of those
variables and speed up time. Idon't think that would probably be a surprise
to anybody who has kids, hunters. That would that be a surprise to

(27:52):
you. It would be unshocking.Yeah, not not shocking at all.
Trevor. You mentioned a little bitearlier that the tides has some impact on,
you know, how animals can accesswater for various reasons, and I'm
just wondering also in what other waysthe moon might affect the behavior and migration
patterns of animals, and then howin turn does this impact human activities and

(28:15):
ecosystems. Yeah, you could probablyramble on for quite a while, but
some of the different things behavior.Okay, so the moon goes through a
cycle, but a monthly, monthlycycle, and you've probably all see a
full moon, so if it's anight of a full moon and it's clear
out, you have this very kindof bright light in the in the sky.

(28:37):
And then two weeks later it's anew moon and the moon isn't visible
at night during the sky, soyou have this great variation in between,
like it being very bright or verydark on different different nights over the course
of two weeks. So I don'tknow much about nocturnal animals, but I
will say that nocturnal animals are awakeat night, and I have to imagine

(29:02):
that like the hunting patterns of animalswould be different depending whether it's a full
moon or if it's a new moon. For some it might be a complete
advantage that the moon is out,but for some I don't know, bats
where they don't really see where it'sall sound. Maybe having it just be
combat, yeah, something like that, where it's it's completely dark out and

(29:25):
that is like an advantage for them. So yeah, just sort of bring
it back to that universe sandbox thing. Just just imagine what if Earth had
two moons instead of no moon atall. Because there's no moon at all,
Okay, there'll be a lot ofchaos and stuff like that. But
if you had two moons, youknow, and there was some consistency around
the timing of there. What thatwould how that would change like nocturnal life,

(29:52):
you know, would it be doublebright you know, have darkness again
or what would the you know,would it weakly, would it be different?
You know, oh, one moonhere, one moon there, stuff
like that. Anyways, you cansort of do some what if scenarios like
that. So that's sort of somebehavior stuff for migration. You know,
we talked about the tides, andI could imagine. Again, I'm not

(30:12):
a biology person really at all,So when it's high tide, does that
change the migration pattern of some Idon't know, crabs or fish? I
mean probably, I guess I don'treally know. Another one I thought of
is direction for migration. So ifyou're in the northern hemisphere, the moon

(30:36):
is always in the southern sky.So let's say you're a I never thought
about that, Yeah, And ifyou're in the southern hemisphere's always gonna appear
in the in the in the inthe northern part of the sky. So
lets just imagine in the northern hemisphereyou're a bird and you're in Florida,
Okay, and it's springtime and it'stime to migrate north again. I haven't

(30:56):
read anything about this. This isjust a little Trevor thought experiment. Is
like, Okay, I'm a bird, I have to go north. Uh
if it's a full moon out,do I know instinctively as a bird that
like I should be flying in theopposite direction of the moon because I know
that the moon is is south?Like should I be avoiding that thing in

(31:17):
springtime when I have to know whereI'm going? Again? This is just
right, Trevor Trevor thought experiment here. And then conversely, in you know,
October September, October autumn, whenit's time to go back south,
do birds recognize that? Like,oh, yeah, the moon is always
in the southern part of the sky. So when I'm flying, do I
like fly towards that thing? Justa guess, just a guess on on

(31:41):
on my part, Like I couldbasically see that being the case, Yeah,
I will. I mean there,I would imagine. There's a lot
of reasons. I mean, asas with everything we talked about this all
the time, there's there's so manydifferent reasons for why something happens and why
animals or people or whatever sort ofsettle where they do move in a different
direction, and it's like, yeah, the moon has been there throughout this

(32:04):
entire species life, right, let'stake the let's take Canada geese for example,
has been for as long as Canadageese have been around, that moon
has been in the sky, andso I have to imagine, yeah,
there's got to be some impact ofseeing that moon and sort of helping with
the directionality. It's probably not theonly thing, but I would I would
not be surprised at all if yourTrevor thought experiment had a little bit of

(32:27):
truth to it, because how couldit not. It's it's such a constant,
and I think that's what you findin nature, is like the constants
are what guide so much of howand where. You know, people and
animals move to right. Yeah,asterisks, this is not a fact.
This is just Trevor thinking out loud. And perhaps there's some research done on
direction of moon and bird migration.But I think it's if you're starting to

(32:50):
think about, oh okay, likeposition of the moon, and yeah,
hopefully that sort of gets you sortof thinking about, well, Trevor,
let's let's leave byology behind. Noneof us are biologists. I appreciate you
helping to explain the moon aspect ofthis, and we can sort of riff
on that, but let's move thatbehind, leave the biology behind. Let's
get to another question. What arethe potential impacts of future lunar exploration and

(33:16):
potentially colonization and how does that changesort of the geopolitical landscape on What I
guess is, what's the big deal? Why are we doing this? Why?
Why do countries want to do this? Why is China and the United
States and maybe Russia to want toput a moon base up on the Moon?

(33:37):
Why do we want to do that? Yeah, that's a good question.
Yeah, I mean why do weexplore? I won't get philosophical there,
So we'll take a step back,take a step back to so so
in the late sixties early seventies,America went to the Moon. We were
only on there for a couple ofdays, like I think the longest mission
was two and a half three daysApollo seventeen. And the question I get

(33:59):
all the time is like, howit's been fifty five years since we've gone
back, do we like not havethe technology anymore? Et cetera, et
cetera. The priorities kind of shiftedto learning how to live long term in
space. So during the eighties,nineties, early twenty twenty tens, we've
basically been trying to learn how tolive like three months, six months a

(34:22):
year at a time in space.And the way we've been able to do
that is with the International Space Station, which you might've heard. It's like
an or orbiting laboratory. It's beenup there for twenty six years at this
point something like that, and there'shumans there right now. I think there's
nine humans on top of it,inside of it right now, and they
do six months missions like that's routinenow that people people live there, going

(34:45):
back to the Moon. Lots ofreasons to do it, using it as
sort of a launch pad to goto Mars, which then begs the question,
I'm not sure if I'm using thatphrase right. It demands us to
ask why go to Mars? Whichis now the philosophical why go to a
hellhole like Mars? You know?I mean it spurs development of you know,

(35:07):
industries here on Earth. Its spursan economy. There's a lot of
national pride, international pride within it. So yeah, the plan right now
is we have people going around EarthInternational Space Station. The ultimate plan is
to probably have a base there.I'm going to bring this to geography just
for a moment, and I'm sorryif this question that I'm answering feels like

(35:30):
I'm answering in a bunch of differentways, so I apologize. But if
you look at the landing spots onthe Moon where humans are, you have
the Moon, all of the landingspots are sort of on the equator of
the Moon, you know, Pauleleven, Paul twelve fourteen, all around
there. Where we want to goultimately is to the south pole right here,

(35:55):
okay, And this is where wewant to build bases where all the
countries and Artemis Accords and China,Russia, that's where they want to go.
We couldn't go there in the seventies, sixties and seventies just because it
was just orbital Mechanically, it wasjust too difficult to get there. But
now we have were building better systemsso we can actually get there. And
the reason we want to go thereis there is supposedly ice lunar ice there

(36:21):
in the lunar regolith. There arecraters there that never get any sunlight at
all. So we think there's waterdeposits in there that been frozen and just
just frozen ice there. And ifyou have ice there, you can turn
ice into water. You can separatethat H two O into hydrogen and oxygen
and use it for fuel, whichsounds a little bit okay. Can we

(36:44):
actually do that? I don't reallyknow, but ultimately that's where we do
want to go. You want togo in the lunar South Pole and set
up a base. I think I'veanswered or not answered your question there,
so maybe you want to pipe inhere with either a follow up or a
question so you and see, yeah, let me let me let me shift
this a little bit. So Hunterand I constantly talk about sort of you

(37:07):
know, at some point or anotherwe talked about the colonization of various parts
of our planet from from European powers, and in that, you know,
we talked let's take for example,our our episode on Easter Island, just
from a few weeks ago, wetalked about how so many of the early
European colonizers came by would claim itrealized that there's not really anything for them

(37:28):
to exploit, and therefore they wouldmove on without doing too much to the
actual people who are there, theRapa Nui. So I guess, like
where I'm trying to get at iswhat is what's on the moon? Why?
Why does it like in the historyof colonization, the history of humans
trying to go out and do something, it's always been with the aim of

(37:49):
exploitation. Let's let's go up there, let's get all the resources, because
that's going to make us a lotof money back home where we're from.
And is that is that up thereon them? Is there like some thing
up there on the moon that theycan exploit and potentially mine? And I
have no idea. It sounds likemaybe iron. I mean, we've got
lots of iron here, so Ithink we're good. Honestly, it is

(38:13):
that yeah, yeah, we shouldbe all right? Yeah, it is
that that that ice, That iceis probably gotcha the big part because if
you can have your own what theycall it in sit to resource utilization.
So basically, it's very expensive tobring stuff with you into space, hugely
expensive, it's very heavy and allthat. So if you don't have to

(38:35):
bring it with you and it's justthere, that's good. That makes it
a lot cheaper to build your basethere. If it's just sitting there and
you just melt it, clean itup, use it, drink it,
turn it into fuel or whatever.So that that's probably the biggest thing you
might have seen the movie yeah Moonwith Yes, I forget the premise of
that movie. There we go,There we go, Yeah, Sam Rockwall

(38:59):
Yeah, and he's there and he'sthey're basically like mining. I think helium
three. I think that it's it'sgood, it's a great movie. I
think in the real world helium threeis like exploitation there. That's not really
a viable, viable use case.It's just a very expensive way to get
helium three. But that that frozenice there is the big draw. Gotcha.

(39:22):
Gotcha. Trevor questioned about lunar eclipses. So can you tell us a
little bit about how lunar eclipses occurand what studying them will tell us about

(39:43):
Earth Moon Sun relationships and maybe someof the Earth's own characteristics. Yeah.
So there's a few different types ofeclipses. There is a solar eclipse,
which we just had here in Montreal. I'm not sure you can see.
I can shift this a little bit. I've worked with an illustrator to make
a poster and postcards. It wasa huge event. It nearly killed me,

(40:05):
but we got it done. Soit was good and it was clear.
So a lunar eclipse, lunar eclipsis we have and I'll do this.
I know, I have limited spacehere. So we have the Sun
here, and then we have themoon and nope, the sun. We
have the Earth and we have themoon here. So the Sun's light is

(40:25):
coming this way, okay. Andall three of them are perfectly lined up,
perfectly lined up, And so theshadow of the Earth is blocking out
the moon. So this happens ona night of a full moon. The
shadow of the Earth is blocking outthe moon. Now, if you have

(40:45):
ever seen a lunar eclipse, themoon turns a certain color. It's like
reddish brown or something like that.Yeah, yeah, why is that?
And why is that? Yeah?So the cause of that is we have
Earth and the Sun's light is comingthrough here, okay. And the Sun's
light is going through the atmosphere ofthe Earth. And when light goes through

(41:09):
a medium or air or atmosphere,it gets scattered. Okay. So light
is made up of ROYGBIV colors ofthe rainbow. Okay, the blues and
the greens, they get scattered.Okay, the yellows they get scattered,
the oranges, they get scattered.But the red is able to pass through

(41:30):
the atmosphere and actually go through andgo through the atmosphere, continue going through
space and hits the surface of theMoon. That's kind of the basics of
what a lunar eclipse is going on. So it's passing through the shadow of
the Earth and turning a red colorbecause the Sun's light is passing through Earth's
atmosphere and making it cause to appearlike a red color. That's a little

(41:53):
more common than a solar eclipse,right, I feel like it's not that
rare. They both happen at aboutthe same rate about every It goes through
cycles, like say every six monthsor so. But with a solar eclipse,
they happen in a very narrow partof the Earth. So maybe some

(42:16):
of your viewers in the States orCanada, they might have been in what
we call the path of totality.And if you're within that path of totality,
it's very kind of thin, onlylike a one hundred kilometers or so
wide or so you'll see it.So not everybody sees it. With a
lunar eclipse, it happens over amuch larger region, more people can can

(42:37):
see it, So we sort ofget this effect of like we think it's
more common because more people are seeingbecause it's happening over a larger swath,
or it's more visible from a largerswath of the Earth. But solar clips
is, yeah, you need tobe in a certain area to do it.
You said you're from Portant, fromor living in Portland. Now,
yeah, were you there? Wereyou there in twenty seventeen. I was

(43:00):
just it's funny we're talking about solarclips is now because we actually just we
did an episode for the solar eclipseas it happened. We're talking about the
geography of it. So we talkeda lot about sort of the twenty seventeen
solar clips because that's where Hunter andI are most geolocated, closely geolocated too.
So it was twenty seventeen. Iwas fresh out of grad school,
had my very first big boy job, and I unfortunately had to work that

(43:24):
day, and so here in Portlandwe were like ninety nine point nine percent
of the way to totality, whichapparently is not close enough, Trevor.
Everybody tells me that I did notexperience so close, but no cigar for
me. I guess what I'm tryingto say, Yeah, the same experience.
And then the people who experienced totality, they're sort of operating on a

(43:47):
different level. Now. It seemslike they're like they almost feel sorry for
you. It's like I have beenyou know, the secrets of the universe
has been revealed to me, andI'm sorry you missed it kind of thing.
Yep, yeah, yeah, yeah. We could talk at length about
seeing a solar eclips I'm not gonnaI'm not gonna I'm not gonna do that.
The second part of your question therewas what does this tele about Earth's

(44:10):
own characteristics? Yes, like,the one thing interesting I could sort of
do that is using a lunar eclipse. Back to lunar eclipses now, and
I mentioned that during lunar eclipse,the Earth's shadow is blocking the Moon.
So when you see a lunar eclipse, you know you see the Moon.
I think sort of see like sortof this like bite being taken out of

(44:34):
it by the shadow of the ofthe Earth. I can't get into the
math or the history of it all. But we could have used that shadow
to figure out the size of theEarth and the size of the moon.
If you can measure the size ofthe Earth, and actually, actually we
could have done this. Sorry,I'm as I'm speaking a lot. I'm

(44:55):
answering the question here using the ifyou know the era tossed them experiment.
Does that ring a bell? Okay, not for me. Now, basically
it's being able to figure out howbig the Earth is. So we have
the Earth here and on the let'ssay you're at the equator. Okay,

(45:16):
you're at the equator and you havea stick like this, and the sun
is directly directly overhead, and there'sno shadow being made by that. Okay,
there's no shadow. But if youhave somebody, if you hire somebody
to walk, you know, acouple hundred kilometers north of the equator,

(45:37):
and have a stick the same length, and at the same time you both
measure the length of the stick,and they're a bit more north, so
they're actually going to have a shadowfor theirs, you can actually measure the
size of the Earth. There's agreat Carl Sagan Cosmos clip where he explains
this much better than I do.But basically you can use some primitive tools

(46:00):
and walking distances to figure out howbig the Earth actually is. And I
think this experiment was first done earlyAD or just before BC two under BC
something like that, So we knewhow we knew how big the Earth was
for quite quite a while. Imean, they had a pretty good estimate
of how big it was. Soif you know how big the Earth is,

(46:22):
you can during a lunar eclipse issee the shadow going across the surface
of the Moon, and you canthen use the size of the Earth that
you recorded to see how fast theshadow is going across and get a sense
of how big the Moon actually is. Again, I could probably ramble for
a long time, but I don'tknow the history too too much about it.

(46:44):
But using one measurement in space,you can find out the measurement of
another thing, and then from thereyou can measure it. Okay, how
far away is the sun. It'sinteresting how you can sort of build off
of these pieces of knowledge because youknow how long the length of a shadow
the stick is. Yeah, that'sincredible, that's incredible. Yeah. Yeah,

(47:05):
I encourage you to please google lunareclipse measure Moon Earth. I may
have gotten some of the little factsthere wrong, but you know there's interesting
essays on there about how that canbe done. Well, let's shift gears
a little bit. Let's talk aboutsort of the magnetosphere of the Earth.
So, I mean, I feellike this has been in recent news.
You know, there's always like asolar storm and it's like, I feel

(47:28):
like every couple of years it's thebiggest solar storm to hit Earth ever in
the last you know, two millionyears or something like that. YadA YadA.
So the Earth has a magnetosphere.How does this interaction and the Moon
protect our planet from or does theMoon have any sort of impact on this
this interplay between the magnetosphere the sunsolar radiation, and does it provide any

(47:51):
sort of protection or does it evenhave its own magnetosphere? I guess I
have a lot of questions around howthe Moon factors into this sort of equation
here. Yeah, so I'll shotgunanswer a few of these cays. So
you mentioned the cycle of like solarradiation stuff like that. So yeah,
So back in May about two monthsago or so here, we had a

(48:13):
big northern lights aurora borealish display herein Montreal, maybe. Yeah, we
had friends. Yeah, we hadfriends over in or I had some friends
over off on the coast where therewas less light pollution and just amazing pictures
that they had basically, I meanthe I mean, I used to live
up in Alaska growing up, soI've seen the Northern lights and I would

(48:36):
say the pictures that I saw wereit reminded me of just how bright it
can be, you know sometimes upin Alaska. The fact that it was
this far south was really incredible.Yeah. Importantly, we couldn't quite see
them with the naked eye, butif you took a picture, it would
capture some of the Northern lights,which was which was pretty dramatic. Yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah. Sothat was a pretty rare event.

(48:57):
So the last time that we hadsort of a solar storm like this was
but two thousand and three and twolike that. So a little background on
this. We have the sun,and the Sun goes through but an eleven
year cycle of being more more activebasically, so we are pretty much at
the peak of that cycle right now. So if you look at the Sun

(49:19):
through a telescope that has a filteron it, you can actually see more
sun spots on it and so it'sjust it's just more you know, magnetically
active, and so it's it's burpingout this sort of solar solar flares sort
of stuff burping out. Yeah,yeah, any time I canna introduce vomit
into my outreach. Yeah, Sobasically we're getting more solo activity, more

(49:40):
boreals right now. So you know, eleven years ago that would have been
twenty twenty thirteen, and then twentytwo thousand and two and stuff like that.
So there is a cycle. Thereis a cycle cycle too, and
this one is particularly particularly particularly strong. The reason why we see Aurora borealis
is as mentioned, the Earth's magneticfield. So yeah, we have these

(50:01):
basically these polarity going around around theEarth right there, and when the particles
from the Sun interact with the magneticfield there, like I said, excites
the particles again sort of limino myknowledge here we get that wonderful This displays
like that. The magneto sphere issort of this big sort of invisible sort

(50:22):
of protection layer around the Earth causedby Earth's magnetic field, and it's quite
quite quite large. I forget theexact distance, but it's quite large.
The Moon doesn't seem to really affectit. It's if it does, it
is extremely, extremely subtle. Theone way that the Moon might sort of

(50:45):
interact in this way is if wehave the Sun. Okay, how am
I gonnames? We have the Sunand it's burping towards us. Okay,
here, see if I can dothat. So sun is burping towards us
right here, it's about to hitus, and the Moon just happens to
sort of be in the right sortof orientation that it's sort of blocking some

(51:07):
of of that. I'm gonna sayit vomit coming from the Sun. Yeah,
to my knowledge, that's sort ofthe the sort of the biggest effect.
I think they call it the lunarwake, where it's just kind of
kind of kind of in the wayof it. As far as the Moon
actually affecting Earth's magnetosphere, I don'tthink it has that much of an effect.

(51:34):
From my mind, I always Ialways love it when I when I
come with this, like, it'sa really good question, we're going to
talk about the magnetic And I loveit when when I asked this to somebody
who knows what they're talking that they'relike, yeah, it doesn't really do
anything. Again asterisk somebody who knowswhat they're talking about. So I encourage,
I encourage a little bit more researchon everybody's everybody's part there. So,
yeah, Trevor, can you elaborateYou've mentioned a few things, but

(52:00):
on any observable effects of the Moonon the Earth's atmosphere conditions such as weather
patterns, atmospheric tides, and howthese might affect human life. Yeah,
so we talked at the top ofthe show how the moon affects the tides,
the ocean tides apparently, Yeah,the moon does also affect the atmospheric

(52:21):
tides. I'm not sure if that'sactually a term, but the I guess
like the jet stream that maybe Idon't know that specifically, but I think
it does sort of affect that aswell. So you can get variations in
certain levels of the atmosphere based onthe phase of the Moon. I'm sure

(52:43):
it's a complex interaction between different layersof different things. The ion a sphere,
which is another layer in Earth's makeupof different layers around the Earth,
also does get affected by the moon. So maybe like a practical real world
example is if you're into ham radio, let's say, and you're trying to

(53:05):
like bounce signals off of the iona sphere that would be affected by the
phase of the moon and where themoon is in relation in relation to it.
So I think it's not as assort of direct as it is with
the tides the ocean ocean tides,where that is very extremely extremely measurable,

(53:25):
like even noticeable from like a humanpoint of view. We talked about the
Bay of Fundi. It's like you'rethere in the morning and the tide is,
the water's really low. Then youget there six hours later and it's
really really high. That is supersuper noticeable, Whereas I think that more
of the atmosphere stuff that is abit more subtle. If everybody had a
weather balloon, you know, maybethey could all measure it themselves and stuff

(53:47):
like that. But I think thereis a measurable, a measurable effect.
Yeah, yeah, well, Trevor, one final surprise question, but it's
probably gonna be a really quick one. Maybe you don't even know what this
is. Are we ever going tohave a space elevator? Is this a
thing that's actually real? I've heardabout this. I've heard about this being
a thing. So last year therewas a conference here in Montreal, and

(54:13):
I had to host a panel,and I'm I have the tope bag somewhere
here. It was like a interstellarsymposium, Interstellar interstellar space Symposium, and
basically it's it's I think every twoor three years, a bunch of a
bunch of big space eggheads get togetherand talk about, like, hey,
what would interstellar travel like look like? You know? And these are like

(54:37):
like legit people that they do saythat they've had to sort of really filter
out over the last couple of decadesthe wackos and the people who are actually
legitimate, because you will get thosein the early years, but like I
think they've actually filtered out, soyou get real people who are actually talking
about this sort of stuff. Andso there's proposed missions about, you know,
if we put a bunch of laserson the Earth, then we put

(54:58):
it at a sale, how fastyou could that thing? How much percentage
of the speed of light. There'slegit research being done on this, not
by many people, but enough tofill a an academic room full of five
hundred people and bring them to apanel. Okay, so it is happening.
As far as space elevator, therewere some people talking legitimately about it,

(55:22):
there are a lot of logistical hurdlesfor it. Obviously, the expense
for it would be very, veryvery huge, astronomical I purposely did not
say that, but yes, indeed, but I mean the theoretically it's it's
it's all, it's all in therethat it could actually work. I read

(55:45):
a Arthur C. Clerk if youknow, Arthur C. Clerk novel about
it, called it Fountains of Paradise. I think, and it goes through
you know, uh, you know, the process of how would you build
it? Where on Earth would youbuild it? You know, who be
funding this thing? Just to givea brief brief, you know, we
talked about political geopolitical stuff there.If you were going to build it,

(56:08):
you would probably need to build itaround the equator. And how many countries
are on the equator. You gotyou know, Ecuador, you got some
in South America, some in Africa, maybe around Indonesia. Okay, there
those places would become you know,huge, huge, huge places where you'd
be shipping stuff there and getting itup there. It would just it would

(56:30):
it would change the geopolitical scene quitea quite a bit. If you could
get stuff into space very very cheaply, So it's just a fun thought experiment
at this point. Though, Imean, the physics of it is sound,
but I think realistically it's like,yeah, probably not in our lifetimes
or lifetimes. So I don't knowif you've ever been caught in an elevator
before. Stuck in an elevator,It's happened to me a couple of times,

(56:52):
and I get kind of claustrophobic,and at one time the police,
the fire department had to come andyou know, use the jaws of life
to get us out or something.So I'm just imagining how traumatic it would
be to stuck in a space elevator, you know, I think that would
be really that would be really trying. I think I don't think fire departments
can save you in that situation.Elevators can be extremely fearsome. Likely you

(57:16):
get it and you're like, youknow, where am I right now?
And you're seeing that the numbers addup as socially in a tall building,
like okay, thirty seconds ago,I was on floor four and now I'm
on seventy six, and like it'sit's almost like being in a plane,
and if you think too hard aboutit, you can really give yourself a
panic attack. Yeah, and howmany buttons would there be? I mean,

(57:37):
you know, the entire State buildinghas one hundred or something like that.
I'm just not sure. You know. Yes, some kid comes in
and pushes all the buttons and onthe space elevator, that would be.
That would be really annoying. Ithink, Yeah, you only have two
buttons ground in space basically. Yeah, that's true, unless there are stops
along the way. Yeah, yeah, I think yeah, I'd have to
just be up and down. That'sbasically it. So well, yeah,

(58:00):
Trevor, this has been so funexploring the Moon building off sort of our
episode earlier this week. You providea lot of really helpful context to really
just ground a lot of what weare already talking about earlier this week.
Where can people find you if theywant to find you elsewhere on the internets
out there? Yeah, I wouldprobably just Google search plateau as in flat

(58:22):
okay, and then astro as inthere's no other way to really spell astro
so plateau astro so. I'm probablythe most active on Instagram scenes where I
put a lot of most of mycontent, but I'm also on threads and
Facebook, and I do have aYouTube channel that I make some videos here
and there, but I some arealready there. But we're having a baby
in September, so that might goa little bit quiet on pretty much everything

(58:45):
for a while. But I doencourage you to still congratulations, thank you,
thank you, congratulations on that