September 27, 2016 • 46 mins
Believe it or not, we live in an ice age. The polar glaciers give it away. Those glaciers used to come clear down to New York. We now know the traces they left are everywhere if you know what to look for; it just took some Swiss peasants to figure it out.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This episode of Stuff you Should Know is brought to
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website apart. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House
Stuff Works dot com. Hey, I'm welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and
uh guests. Who's over there being quiet as a church mouse.
(00:44):
The producer who may or may not exist, Jerry. People
still think that. I think a few people do. Yeah,
she's real, says you. She's real because I can always
smell her me. So from here? Oh man? I um,
so I like avocado a lot, right, So I like
(01:06):
avocado a lot. Basically an avocado a day. Um, And
normally I make guacamole. As you know, I make probably
the best guacamole on the planet. Sometimes, okay, we'll have
a guac off one day. Well, yeah, but it's personal taste,
you know, you know that whole thing. Remember, no taste
(01:27):
is absolute. Um. So it's sometimes it's just too much
to make guac sure, right, that's where avocado toast comes in. Yeah,
it's so easy, but and it's totally different too. So
if you start to get sick of guacamole, you like,
I'll have some avocado toast. Anyway. The upshot is is
(01:49):
I recently took antibiotics, which are disgusting poison, but just
had to have them this time because my body would
not get rid of whatever had um. And so I've
been like repopulating my gut flora with fermented stuff like
mis Took some miso, put it in some avocado, whipped
it up, spread it on some toasts. It was great.
(02:10):
And avocado, being a fibrous vegetable, should be a prebiotic.
It will probably provide the conditions for that miso to
ripen into some really top notch gut flora. Well I'm
grossed out now, are you really? Yeah? I found that
stuff fascinating. All that your gut flora. It's a matter
(02:32):
of personal taste. I guess. It's like people like the
smell of their own poop. That's not two different things.
Do you like the smelling your own poop? Great? Really? Yeah?
I like all my smells. I got you. Do you
like ice? Ay? Just I do? We're in one yeah,
(02:56):
well can we be in a noisy age? It's hottest wherever, right,
but the climb is not changing. Why this summer has
been awful? Yeah, supposedly every year we just keep getting
hotter and hotter. Yeah, And I'm like, I have a
feeling here and Georgia, it's going to be hot into October.
I noticed the change take place to day Oh really?
(03:19):
Uh not me. I was out there this morning, but
momo out well yeah, and I was like, oh, it's
not muggy night. Nights are getting cooler. That's where it
starts to change. Yeah, but it's still like up in
the nineties during the day. During the day is still
kind of nasty. But it feels different to me, like
the air feels different. Yeah, not me yet. Yeah, that
(03:41):
that first fall blasts I haven't experienced. Maybe it's seeing
like cinnamon brooms and Kroger that's put me in the
fall mood already. I'm just noticing it where it's not
the Christmas decorations, right, yeah, Halloween stuff's been out since August. Man,
just ridiculous. So back to ice ages. Um, like you said,
we are actually in an ice age. To be specific,
(04:03):
we are in the Holocene epoch right, yes, which features
the Quaternary ice age, and specifically we're in the flandry
and interglacial period. But still, even though it's interglacial, it's
still an ice age that we're in. It's a mouthful,
(04:24):
it is. Who wrote this? Was this? Molly? Molly Edmonds,
our dear old friend. Yes, she she put out quality
she did. Um. Yeah, Molly points out quite astutely that, uh,
you know, if you look at Antarctica in Greenland, you
still see ice sheets and um ice ages. Though are
it's not you know, we don't have to have the
(04:44):
entire or a third of the earth covered in ice
to be in an ice age, because within an ice
age there's periods of cooler weather and warmer weather, and
right now that you know, glacials and interglacials respectively, and
right now we're in an interglacial. That's all it is.
But like I said, when people look around, they don't
think of as being in an ice age, because we're
(05:04):
just during one of those warmer periods, right. But I
think so. I was reading this New Scientist article about
I think it's called the History of Ice on Earth,
and they said that there are basically three settings that
the Earth has. UM greenhouse, which is basically there's no
ice anywhere on Earth. UH. Ice house which is like
(05:26):
an ice age glacial period where there is ice even
like today there's ice on the Arctic and Antarctic caps
right um. And then there's a snowball um setting the
most fun of all, which is like the entire planet
is frozen over the least fun of all. There have
been periods of Earth's history where the whole thing was
(05:46):
just a giant ball of ice. Yeah, if we want
to talk about the you know, the I don't know
if you want to call it the Big Ice Age.
But when we think of the term ice age, we
most people are probably talking about the one that began
about seventy thousand years ago, uh during the Pleistocene era
lasted about sixty thousand years UH. And if you're talking
(06:08):
about the United States, uh, and the four major glaciations
they hit the Midwest, the Nebraska and the Kanson the
Illinois and the famous Wisconsin glaciation. Yeah, that's the one
that just ended that. We just came out of the
Wisconsin one, that's right. And they call him this because
that's where they were geographically. Well that's where I think
(06:29):
the greatest evidence of them has been discovered. Right. So, um,
and in all this it's kind of confusing, actually, but
just just the the current ice age that we're in
started two point five eight million years ago, right, and
again it's still going two point five eight million years
to present, the quaternary ice age. Um. And so those
(06:49):
little other subdivisions have to do with when the ice
has been relatively scarce or when it's been all over
the place. And then to make it even more slightly,
can using during periods of glaciation. There's even periods where
the glaciers retreat and advance. That's stadial and interstadial periods,
(07:10):
and those tend to be a little more local. Uh,
And and happened a lot a lot more quickly, and
glacial or in an interglacial period, happened on the scale
of tens of thousands of years. Yes, that's right. And uh,
this is nothing new, Like you said, this has been
going on since there was a planet Earth. But um,
actually recognizing and and what is an ice age just
(07:34):
sort of on the newer front, because in the old days,
you know, they would see a big rock and they
would say, boy, the thing looks like it slid down
that mountain there, because you can see that mountains all
carved up and this rock shouldn't be here, and that's weird.
So that was the Great Flood of Biblical Times. We
treated an episode on Yeah, that was a good one,
(07:56):
and um, so that was kind of how things were explained,
how these things ended up places where they probably did
not start out. Yeah, people noticed that there was just
weird stuff going on in the geography around them, right, Um,
but they didn't they didn't place it correctly. Until it
turns out the Swiss peasantry and some German peasants as well,
(08:16):
started to notice that their glaciers were receding. And as
their glaciers receded up there and say the Alps, it
left some markings that they noticed also the same kind
of markings further down the mountain. So the Swiss peasants
put two and two together and said, you know what,
I think the glaciers used to be way, way bigger
(08:39):
than they are today, and that maybe that is what
explains these boulders that shouldn't be here being here in
the middle of this field. And I guess from what
I can gather, it was kind of like common folk
wisdom in some areas of like the Swiss Alps, long
before science understood it. And it was actually a Swiss
(09:00):
geologist who was the first one to advance a genuine
bona fide hypothesis for ice ages. Yeah, Lewis Uh, I
guess sees is how I'm gonna pronounce that. And um
he in seven presented um his ideas about this glacial
activity at a conference, the science conference, and everyone was like, yeah,
(09:22):
m I don't know. I don't know about you. I
don't know about that. Well, they didn't know about him.
He was he was a smart guy, right, he was established.
But they're like, you're just go back to your opium
pretty much. And apparently his his first theory was that
there there have been an ice age. It happened like
very quickly. Yeah, he was off basically like night and day. Uh,
(09:45):
and and that um it had followed a catastrophe, right, Yeah.
I wonder if he would have that seems like the
one thing that might have put them off. It was
how unlikely that sounded right? Because he was wrong? Like
I won. If you would have said it happened slowly
over time, let's say, yeah, they may have said like,
oh well, I'm not buy that he's presenting his finding.
(10:08):
He's like, what do you guys want to hear? But
I'll massage it in that way. Yeah, it happened overnight
and they all just cross their arms. He goes or
overnight over a very long period of time. Uh so
before him though, um, quite a few years before him,
there was a scotsman. Oh yeah, born in Edinburgh, Edinburgh,
(10:31):
buried at Greyfriars Kirkyard. Wow, which did you ever go there?
I walked past it. I never made it in Okay,
well my hotel was right there, so I walked through it. Amazing,
amazing cemetery. I went to Marry King's close instead, which
is pretty awesome too. Oh you had to go to
one or the other. They're close to each other. Um,
there's only so much time in the day. Off not
(10:53):
close enough? Uhive a man named James Hutton, uh man,
this guy was He was a stud the father of geology.
He had this idea that he he was one of
the first people to look around and say, you know what,
the Earth is always changing, Like if you look around
and pay attention, look at it, that birds just died.
(11:14):
Like he might sit for days and look and wait
for something to move. But he said, the Earth is
constantly changing, and I have an idea that it's probably
always been this way. So if we look at what's
going on now and we apply that to the past,
we might come up with some pretty interesting stuff here, right. Yeah,
he said that there's basically clues to the past in
(11:37):
the present. Yeah, just like, look what's going on around you.
This might have happened ten thousand years ago as well,
and that might explain something like that boulder being someplace
different exactly. And we keep going to the boulders. But
the boulders are actually some really really high quality evidence
for ice ages in general. Um, there's there. There's actually
a term for it among people who study ice ages.
(11:59):
They're called erratics. And an erratic is a very very
heavy boulder, way too heavy to have been moved by humans.
Um that is also too far from its point of
origin to just say rolled downhill it doesn't make any
sense that it's there, which is why it's called n erratic.
There's some very famous ones. Um, there's one in the
(12:20):
Swiss Alps. Uh, well, I'm sure there's many, but there's
one in particular. This article mentions that's in the Swiss
Alps that is, um, about fifty miles from its point
of origin. There's one in Central Park that is many
miles away from its point of origin. In New Jersey,
it moved, tried to make it in the big city.
It was a bridge and tunnel boulder, right. So, and
that's actually one of the one of the ways the
(12:42):
Germans figured out that there was such a thing as
ice age because they said, see that bowler there in
that field, I'm pretty sure that skinnin Avian rock, and uh,
sure enough they were correct. And so you start to
put all this stuff together, huge bowlders being moved, Um,
valleys between mountains, carved out in a U shape rather
than that telltale V shape that a river carves out. Um.
(13:05):
These are clues. They're not well they are erratics, but
their clues into the past. Yeah that when you start
to put all of them together. The only thing that
that really explains them, is huge, massive movements of glaciers.
Glacial movement. Yeah. And and when you study that stuff
and you look at these grooves and you study the boulders,
(13:27):
you can actually make calculations. And it's amazing that way
back then they were able to make these calculations. Uh.
Agazz in particular and some other guys got together and
they said that the present ice age at its peak,
I guess, um, was about a mile thick of glacier
A mile of ice. Yes, it's amazing yeah. Um. And
(13:52):
further studies have concluded that in the last ice age, um,
I guess there was Wisconsin glaciation. Um. The the about
a third of the earth was covered in glaciers. Have
we said that glacier as yet? I mean, it almost
goes without saying, but just in case. Yeah, it's just
really densely packed snow it is, and it snow that
(14:13):
that isn't allowed to melt. It's it's cold enough so
that it never fully melts. At the base, it forms
to ice, and on top you've got more and more snow,
and as more and more snow doesn't melt, the ice
builds up thicker and thicker and just from the sheer
force of these things mass encountering gravity, they can actually move.
They're like very slow most of the time, very slow
(14:36):
moving rivers of ice on a massive scale. Yeah, and
and well we'll get to that later. I was gonna
tease something out. Uh, should we take a quick break?
All right, we'll take a break and we'll get back
to a little more amazing glaciers. All right. So we've
(15:19):
talked about the sheer size a mile a mile thick
of ice. Yeah, and I said, like a third of
the Earth. I think it covered seventeen million square miles
of the planet during the last glaciation cubic miles, my friend,
cubic miles, right, So junk is deep. Yeah, a mile deep. Man,
That is nuts. Uh. So Antarctica had about ten percent
(15:39):
more ice than it does now. And the big change
with the big difference, Uh, what sets that ice age
apart was the amount of activity in the northern hemisphere.
It was very unusual to have the amount of ice
in North America and Europe extending down like through the
midwest of the United States. It was it was a
(16:00):
new scene, a new chili scene. Ye, a whole new
jam basically, and Chuck. I mean like it was largely
in North America, but this also, um really covered a
lot of Europe too. I mean like Ireland was covered,
Germany was covered, Scandinavia was covered by ice, and basically
everything that wasn't covered by ice, and Europe was a tundra,
(16:22):
very much like Siberia is today. I actually I saw
a documentary on I think it was a History Channel
show about the Last Ice Age, and um, somebody figured
out how much all of that ice weight are you
ready for this? Basilion pounds? This might be more than
a bazillion sixty eight thousand trillion tons was the total
(16:45):
weight of the ice of the Earth on the Earth
during the Last Ice Age, during the last place. How
many maxes that have no idea? It's like more than
a hundred uh well a North America loan about thirteen, Um,
I'm sorry, about ten million square miles of ice. And
you know this all came from the ocean, which means
(17:06):
the ocean level was hundreds and hundreds of feet lower
during this ice age. Yeah, like Canada is used to
having large parts of it being covered by glacier, the
United States is not used to this, but it came
all the way down into the plains in some cases,
and basically from New York over to Washington State totally
(17:26):
covered by again a mile thick sheet of ice. Like
you can ice skate on that without worry. You're not
gonna fall through, it's still gonna crack. Did you ever
do that growing up? Did Ohio? Like like you'd skate
on lakes? Yeah, And we were never allowed to do
that until my dad went out and stomped on it,
(17:47):
like jumped up and down, and if he didn't go through,
then we were allowed to skate. He's like, kids, if
I die right. It wasn't. It wasn't the most fool
proof technique, but it was nice and dad to do
that for us. I don't know, think I'm not much
of a worry word, but I'm that still would have
like creeped me out. I've seen enough movies, you know,
left under ice. So the Mammi River would freeze over,
(18:08):
but we weren't allowed to skate on the river. Some
people did, we weren't allowed to. Instead, there was a
golf course with ponds that would freeze pretty good, pretty good.
There was your You weren't going to fall through these
small ponds pretty rough though, right, like skating on it's
not it depends it depends on and I don't remember
what it depends on. Yeah, it's it's never like an
ice drink. But certain type of weather, maybe non windy weather,
(18:32):
I think is what it was, because then like if
there was kind of like a choppiness to it from
the wind, it could freeze like that freeze choppy, Whereas
if it wasn't windy, I would guess it would it
would be smoother. So sometimes it was pretty smooth. Other
times you're like, I can't even skate on, but your
dad would drive a zambonie out there and fix it
all up. It over and if the zamboni didn't fall through,
(18:54):
then we were allowed to skate, right. I just picture
of the zamboni falling through. But it's a little pond,
so you're a'd still like just a bove. I feel
like I missed out, though, I mean not that life
is over. You can still skate on ponds. I don't
picture myself going to Minnesota in the in the winter.
Give it a try. The trade off it wasn't It
(19:17):
wasn't a very good trade off because the winners are
pretty brutal. Yeah, like if you have local ponds that
freeze over, you're cold too. I still feel like I
missed out. Yeah, I mean you're fine. It wasn't that
big of it was just teasing when I said, you
did miss that. Uh all right, So people are skating
all over the world. A third of the world people
(19:37):
are ice skating on during during the ice age UM
and like we mentioned these things, UM they've been described
as bulldozers just plowing through uh the earth basically um
leaving large swaths they call it glacial till. This debris
that they leave behind, and these are you know, once
you figure out how it works, the evidence is every
(20:00):
where of exactly what happened. Yeah, Because as these glaciers
move and that ice that has formed the basis of
the glacier is in contact with the earth below it,
it's picking up all sorts of crud that all that
to breathe that glacial till you said, erratic boulders. And
as it's doing this, it's actually creating a um a
(20:21):
scrubbing mechanism. Right. So, like you said, if you look
around at mountains and and and valleys with exposed rock
that were um rubbed by glaciers. There's gonna be crazy
grooves worked into them. Some look like roads almost, yes, um,
some are kind of polished and rounded, And it's all
(20:42):
from this glacial activity rubbing stuff over the tops of
these mountains. It's pretty interesting stuff. And then other things
like you'll know, you know, you'll see like a movie
where um, this incredibly beautiful uh like river Valley has
just gravel everywhere, like just scattered all all throughout, like
the valley floor. That's not supposed to be there. The
(21:04):
glacier deposited that. That's right, it's more evidence of the
ice age. Yeah, that's interesting to think of it. It's
not supposed to be there. No, and you think of
that like that's what that's what that looks like. You know,
of course that's what it's. That's that's that's supposed to
be there. But no, it's technically not. Had we not
had um these glaciation events, that stuff wouldn't be there.
(21:25):
And that fascinating earth science. Uh is that your favorite science?
I think it's become it. Yeah, yeah, it really does
get me jazzed, all right. So it wasn't just um,
the direct path of these glaciers that was affected out
on the edges of these massive moving sheets of ice. Um,
(21:50):
you had things like arctic deserts, and you had these
big areas of dusty wind. Uh. And there's actually a
few ways to pronounce this l O E s s
heard everything from lowest to lows to less I like lowest, Yeah,
like lowest too. Um covering all over the earth basically,
and this is created by those glaciers just like grinding
(22:12):
into the earth. Yeah, um, stirn everything up right, and
then the wind just comes and picks it up, the
finest of the particles and just deposits them. So in
some places you had so if if your area wasn't
covered by glacier, that didn't mean you weren't affected by
the glaciation, because you would have these lowest deserts are
(22:33):
glacier glacial deserts that formed. And in some places the
lowest was like twenty ft thick, and apparently it's still there.
In much of the Midwest, the sub straight below the
soil is lowest, deposited from these lowest deserts UM. And
so you would think when you hear about this kind
(22:53):
of activity that it had to be like hundred degrees chillier, right,
or fifty or forty even, but it was only about
ten degrees fahrenheit about five point six celsius lower uh
than temperatures now, which it's it wouldn't think that that
would be enough, right, But it's not all just about
(23:15):
the temperature. That's kind of the point. No, The point
that Molly makes is that it's not like, oh, it's
just so much colder than it was before all the time.
The key to an ice age um forming glaciers a
glacial period is that this the time when it's supposed
to actually melt, is colder than usual, so that there's
(23:37):
less melt than than before. And the less melt you have,
the more chance you have for snow to fall and
make up for whatever melted and actually add to it,
which means that the glaciers growing. As long as more
snow is added to the glacier than it loses during
say the summer months, your glaciers growing. Yeah, and if
it's not losing much, it doesn't take much snow. And
(23:59):
this this cycles arts. There's something called albedo or albedo
albedo and it's uh, it's the real reflectivity of ice.
And you know once this ice gets going, it's reflecting
away the sun. So it's while you're hotter in the
summer wearing a black T shirt than a white T shirt. Yeah,
and it's just it creates that cycle basically where it's
(24:19):
all just compounding, all these different elements coming together absolutely
to make ice super thick. So you have if you
have a glacier form on planet Earth and it reflects
a bunch of sunlight and makes it colder, well that's
gonna create the conditions for other glaciers to form too,
So it has a compounding effect as well that albedo does.
(24:39):
All right, well let's take a break and we're gonna
come back and talk about a very famous Serbian mathematician.
(25:10):
All right, so I said, famous Serbian mathematician. Had you
already heard of this guy? Yeah? Really, i'd heard. I
had heard about the Milankovich cycles. Um. So his name
was Milutin Milankovic. And it's amazing to me that in
the nineteen twenties, people like well, i'll just say him,
(25:30):
was able to figure out with a lot of accuracy, um,
the Milankovich cycles. Basically, he said, you know what, I
have a theory on why these these summers are cooler,
and why this ice age happened, And it's not just
the temperatures, but it's because of the Sun's relationship to
(25:51):
the Earth and how much sun the Earth is getting
UH during the summer months. So he came up with
three different factors, the tilt UH in the Earth's axis,
the way the Earth wobbles on that axis, and then
how close we are to that heat, how close we
are the sun. He plugged those into a mathematical formula
(26:12):
and he came up with every one hundred thousand years,
he's predicting that we're going to get these ice ages.
Pretty amazing math for back then, it is, especially if
you go back. So he figured this out, and then
they went back and looked at the fossil record, the
geological record, because when he was working, they didn't have
(26:35):
this understanding. He wasn't like proving that like yes, predicting right.
So then um about that time and like the well
after that time, but in like the forties and fifties,
the US was building army bases all over the world
in some really crazy places, including the Arctic, and um
some scientists went along and started taking core samples from
(26:58):
those places. And they found air bubbles trapped in there
that were from like a million years ago, Like the
air was a million years old and it was untouched
virgin air. And um. They found that they could do
all sorts of stuff and learn all sorts of things
from this air. And one of the things they found
was the basically the time stamp for the ice ages
(27:21):
during the Quaternary period. And they found out that in
the first two million years, the first two thirds of
the Quaternary um ice age, the ice ages, glaciation occurred
every forty one years. And yeah, yeah, that's what I said.
He's like, but wait for it, and they said, okay,
in this this most recent million years, it switched to
(27:44):
a hundred thousand years. And he just said his arms crossed,
very smugly. Yeah. Um. And everybody said, that's amazing, that's fantastic. Scientists,
you guys in the lab coats what causes an ice age,
And there's just crickets coming back from the scientists, and
there still is today. Actually, actually, no, that's the opposite,
(28:05):
is true. Not crickets, but a ton of different answers
and a ton of different theories. Yeah, lots of crickets,
but not quite either. What would be the animal that
would talking crickets, Jimmy crickets everywhere? Man, that I was annoying,
putting forth, putting forth theories and and as with most things,
(28:27):
we usually kind of center on. I bet it was
like most of these things put together, which most scientists
do well, dude, I was thinking about this, and I
was like, yes, chaos theory, Like, we have such a
propensity as humans to be like there's one true explanation,
there's one factor that explains everything, and that is just
not the case. This is a perfect example of that.
(28:48):
I wonder if that's a tendency for humans to want
to be right. Like the people actually doing the research
say like, no, this is my ideas. Yeah, I think
that's part of it, But I think it's more are
just like our brains are wired to find like the
least common denominator to find, um, the easiest route. Yeah,
maybe you know, just for efficiency's sake, that makes sense.
(29:12):
I kind of like the idea of like, I'm hands
across America. Did you participate in Hands across America? Not
hated it back then, but oh man, I get it now.
I'm just kidding. I think I did actually, yeah, there
was huge, huge gaps, but it was still pretty great.
We should do a show on that. I didn't know
there were gaps, of course there were oh yeah, pretty
pretty big ones. Yeah, there was at no point complete.
(29:35):
I think our school did it. Wasn't that the deal?
Like probably did this church, church, hippie church. I don't
know if my church might have been like, no, we're
not holding hands. You could be holding hands with an atheist.
Probably you wouldn't even know it. That probably would have
been the case. All right. So another theory is, um,
we've talked a lot about plate tectonics and our geez
(29:57):
and the volcano episodes and what else the plate tectonics episode.
Did we do one on that specifically among the close
to episodes? Man, I don't remember where it first popped up,
but it's definitely come up. Clapped up another one of
your non pun puns. Yes, I hope. I'm like creating
(30:19):
a pretty a pretty extensive case for the fact that
all of my puns are accidental. I don't think like
that accidental puns a good banding too. Ironically, it's okay.
Uh So plate tectonics is another theory. Basically, you know,
everyone knows when you get to a higher altitude, it's
going to be colder, and the conditions are more likely
(30:39):
to for glaciers to form. And so when these these
plates on the Earth are smashing together, everyone also knows
from listening to our show, that's how we get these
lovely mountain ranges and why there are higher altitudes. So
that's another theory that that had a lot to do
with it. Yeahs sense. Some scientists lay um the Quaternary
(31:01):
ice Age, the whole shebang. That's two point five eight
million year old ice age that we're in in still
um basically at the feet of the creation of the Himalayas,
where Asia and India collide, creating the Himalayas, and most
importantly the Tibetan Plateau and this rising of land changing
(31:22):
um the way that air moves across this huge portion
of land Eurasia UM, and that it had an impact
on climate, which has an impact on historical climate, which
can change things, make things cold enough so that glaciers
can form and really get a foothold. Right. More interesting, Chuck,
(31:45):
is that it's apparently that's they're like, that's probably kind
of a factor, but there's an even bigger factor that
they think that came out of that upwelling of of earth.
Bear with me. So, when earth meets earth and there's
an upwelling and they form mountains or something like that, right,
(32:06):
you know, the process of weathering, it's like breaking in
genes or a strato various, Right, you break in mountains too. Well,
that's actually a chemical reaction between like the air and
the earth. And when rock is exposed, it becomes weathered
because c O two reacts with the rock to basically
(32:26):
form some sort of um uh equilibrium that's been interrupted
or disrupted by the exposure of unweathered rock. Right. Well,
to carry that out, c O two has to be
drawn from the atmosphere, which means you're basically removing c
O two from the atmosphere. When you create a new
(32:46):
mountain mountain chain, and if you're talking about a mountain
chain as extensive as the Himalayas, a lot of CEO
two is going to be removed from the atmosphere. When
you remove c O two from the atmosphere, you reduce
the greenhouse effect. And when you deduced the greenhouse effect,
the earth becomes cooler, possibly enough for an ice age.
The timings right as well. The Himalayans formed right before
(33:08):
the Quaternary Ice Age began. Ye aren't that amazing? It
is or science? Uh. The other thing is dust atmospheric changes. Um,
A lot of dust in the air is gonna keep
the sun from shining down its warmth onto the Earth
and keep temperatures cooler. And since I mentioned volcanoes, Um,
(33:30):
there were a lot of volcanoes, a lot of activity
that preceded the glacial ages. Um. But you know, launching
a lot of dust in the air. I don't think
it's coincidence. It's probably all tied in together. Yeah, I
would guess that. Um, it's not just volcanic ash. I mean,
there was just dust period, but the volcanic ash added
(33:51):
to it, you know, right. And I think even after um,
after the volcanoes stopped erupting gases that affect the atmosphere directly,
they still interact with the water vapor in the atmosphere
to mess with it in a continued way. UM. Sun
spots are also another one too, right. Yeah, that's one
(34:12):
of the main reasons for the little ice age, right. Yeah,
but we talked about in the strata areas, so the
little ice age. Um, so did you did you see
that article I sent you? Yeah, it was pretty pretty interesting. Um,
but there's a our understanding of the little ice age,
which is not the best name for it, but there's
(34:33):
a period should be little ice age. There's the from
d to eighteen fifty. Europe in particular, well the northern hemisphere,
but Europe got it pretty bad. Um. It was basically
what amounts to an ice age for for this area. Um,
Greenland and Iceland were cut off by ice for months
(34:54):
at a time. They used to grow wine in England,
not anymore. Scotland they grew wine, Yeah, like bottles would
just pop up out of the grounds. The Highlands of
Scotland would be locked into ice at like and up
the Baltic Sea froze over. Yeah, the canals and the
Netherlands routinely froze. It was it was a really rough time. Well,
(35:17):
it wasn't. It wasn't. It's pretty interesting because this article
you sent, you know, points out a lot of the
history that you know, it affected everything from shipping to
crops to you know, people turning on one another in
some areas then other areas things flourished, right, So apparently
areas and groups that had access to extensive trade networks,
(35:40):
especially with the South or the tropics. Um, they they flourished.
But if you were in like a marginal area, say
like the Alps, you were toast like you suffered from famine.
Apparently glaciers were advancing enough that they were just overrunning
towns and it sounds it sounds absolutely nuts, but actually
glaciers can move surprisingly fast. Right. There was a glacier
(36:03):
in Alaska in that was clocked advancing at ten a day. Yeah,
I mean that's thirty ft a day. That's you can
watch that happen. Yeah, or the very least you could
set up your your inner volometer camera and watch it later.
Or if you're just super patient, Yeah, I bet what's
(36:25):
his name? Yeah, the scotsman. I bet James Hutton would
have sat there and until he's yeah, you know, yeah,
patient man. Uh what else do we cover the sun spots?
Well not Yeah, I mentioned that that might have been
why the little ice age happened. And by the way,
we on the Strata Areas podcast heard from a lot
(36:45):
of people about this double blind study that um or
where they had musicians play um the stratas and uh,
then against modern violins, and um, they preferred I think
generally preferred the modern violin or so people are like, oh,
you're just getting the brand name. That's kind of a
reductive way to say it. Um. And and then afterwards
(37:08):
to the violinists they serge them cough, they're like, it's folgers. Well,
the other thing we heard from other people that said,
these violinists know what they're testing. They're testing clearly testing
and strata varius against a modern instrument. They don't just say, like,
put on this blindfold and you're two violins, which one
smells neater. So we probably should have included that, But
(37:29):
I don't think that like settles it in any like
scientific way or any Yeah, I saw in our research
that that was not necessarily the case. It's on a
number of different sources that that they can tell a
difference that it is actually the best violins, and these
are people that have, you know, opinions. It's not like
(37:49):
you can't scientifically prove that because every person you pick
out is going to have a different take on the matter.
And we weren't poopooing modern instruments because clearly they're only
a handful of strads out there being played, and there's
many many orchestras and they're not playing like pawnshop violins,
you know. Anyway, I just want to mention that, So
(38:10):
these sun spots, right, there's actually a cycle that was
recognized by a British astronomer named E. W. Maunder. It's
pretty British name, and he was living during the Little
Ice Age UM and he noticed. Yeah, he was like, well,
like how it's cold you can ice skate on a pond. Um.
(38:32):
He noticed that the so the Little Ice Age should
actually be called the little period where it was pretty
cold and then really really cold and two different points,
and those points were between twelve ninety and undred and
then sixty five and seventeen fifteen. It was really cold,
like kind of ice ages conditions for real UM. And E. W.
(38:56):
Maunder noticed that, especially the time when he was alive
during between the sixteen and seventeen fifty period seventeen fifteen period, UM,
sun spots were not nearly as active. And he was like,
I wonder if this correlates to little ice ages, and
it would make sense, even though it makes sense in
a really weird way, a roundabout way. Actually, Yeah, sun
(39:17):
spot I guess we should just say what that is.
It's a dark spot, a cooler spot on the Sun.
But the key there is it contains magnetic energy. So
you would think that sun spots are cooler than the
rest of the Sun. So how would that well wait,
now I've got it backwards, No, you got it? Yeah? Yeah,
so how would that keep it warmer on Earth? But
(39:38):
it's about that magnetic field cutting through cloud cover or
cutting the cloud cover, right, So less cloud cover means
that the heat from the Sun isn't trapped, it just
escapes into space. Counterintuitive, but it makes sense. Yeah, because
these sun spots are big enough that when it's facing Earth,
(39:58):
it's putting out less heat energy. So you would think
it would it would directly cool it. It indirectly cools it. Right. Weird,
It is weird, but amazing earth science. Uh So, whether
or not we're headed for another one is a lot
There's a lot of debate on that because some people say, well,
(40:20):
there's no strict definition even what an ice age is,
so who's to say. Other people say, now you know what,
humans have cause uh such an impact here that there
probably won't be another ice age. It's extremely possible that
we have altered the climate enough that we're not going
to see like we may have ended on our own
(40:41):
the Quaternary ice age. It may be over now or
on the way to being over, in which case we
have a whole other set of problems to deal with,
but not an ice age, not glaciers. Um. There was
actually a study that made the rounds, I think this
year or last year, that really drummed up a lot
of media engine because these researchers said that they predicted
(41:03):
a period of very low sun spot activity in thirty
years because we're due for one technically, right were a
year point, Yes, yeah, we're due for another glaciation event.
And these people said, well, there's gonna be sun spots
in thirty years, and the media took it and said
there's gonna be another ice age in thirty years. Um,
And that's not necessarily the case. It's a pretty big
(41:26):
leap from saying, yes, there's low sun spot activity, so
we're gonna have an ice age. But if we hadn't
burned all those fossil fuels, maybe that would be the case.
Maybe we would start to see glaciation beginning again in
about thirty years. Again we're probably not going to because
we've raised the temperature of the planet by it a
(41:47):
full degree celsius since night UM, so it's possible we
won't ever see an ice age again, which is sad
because some people say that it was this last um,
this ice age, not just the last glaciation event, but
the Quaternary ice Age as a whole that pushed humans
to evolve to the wonderful, amazing specimens we are today. UM.
(42:11):
A lot of advancements happened because of it. Adaptations and
animals and early humans there were there was movement among
around Earth because the sea levels were a lot lower,
so you could make your way around bigger parts of
the Earth. They weren't cut off like before like they
are now. UM. Apparently, our brains grew tremendously in size
(42:31):
during the Quaternary Ice Age at a in a time
period that correlates with it, and one hypothesis is that
the cooler temperatures allowed us to dissipate heat more naturally
and to save our energy or use more energy, which
would allow our brains to grow. Interesting and then other
people say, well, you know what, the chro magnets also
(42:53):
invented the sewing needle during this time because of the
ice age, so that they could start sewing and close.
Is the technology that allowed us to truly spread out
over the earth. Yeah, because you could go live where
it was cold, because you could make a big park
out of a musk ox exactly. The muskox would say
thank you for using me human. I don't know about that,
(43:15):
But you got anything else? Nope, I think that's it. Man,
This is good one, Chuck Uh. If you want to
know more about ice ages, you can type those words
into the search bar at how stuff works dot com.
And since I said search parts, time for a listener. Mayo.
(43:37):
Remember in the animal testing episode when I wondered aloud
about the names of pork and beef and swine and
all that stuff. I'm glad you're covering this. Apparently I'm
the only person on the planet who did not know this.
I didn't know it either, because we had a bunch
of people right in Uh. And it's super interesting. So
I picked one that was a good explanation from a
(43:57):
gentleman in Bristol, United Kingdom. He said this before ten
sixty six, in England, most people spoke a form of
Germanic English Uh, and he says, by the way, I'm
glossing over several centuries of linguistic history with that. However,
after the invasion by William the Conqueror and his eventual coronation,
Norman became the dominant language. UH. Norman is based on
(44:18):
Northern French dialects, so would have used words such as
mutton and booth for sheep and cows. These words were
used by people who would have been able to afford
to eat such food, namely the gentry. However, peasants who
would have raised raise the animals still use the Germanic
words like sheep and cow, and these words stuck. English
(44:38):
is full of high and low words gentry or peasantry
for similar meanings, with the high words being French based
therefore Latin based. Really interesting. Um. Having stopped myself from
going on, as is the subject I've always been obsessed with,
and I hope that I have piqued your interest as well.
Be warned the subject as a rabbit hole, I will
also add I was gutted to miss your UK tour,
(45:02):
and I hope you enjoyed it enough to come back
one day. UM. I also cheekily plug Bristol as an
amazing place to live and visit. Yeah, congratulations on your
new sky pier. I don't heard of that. It's like
a it's like a huge observation UFO that goes up
on their coast. You can just see for miles and miles. Interesting.
(45:24):
Much love to you both and thanks for doing what
you do. Cheers. That is from Matt Gallaford of Bristol.
Thanks Matt, We'll definitely be back. And thanks to everyone
who wrote in with that good information. I wish I
could have read them all. Uh. If you want to
get in touch of us to let us know something
we missed, or to tell us how grey we're doing,
(45:44):
or well yeah, you can tweet to us at s
Y s K podcast. You can also hang out with
me at Josh Underscore, um Underscore Clark at on Twitter two.
You can hang out with Chuck at Charles W. Chuck
Brian on Facebook or our Stuff you Should Know page
at Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. You
can hang out with us on Instagram. You can send
(46:06):
us an email to Stuff podcast at how Stuff Works
dot com and has always joined us at our home
on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot com For
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(00:21):
website apart. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House
Stuff Works dot com. Hey, I'm welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and
uh guests. Who's over there being quiet as a church mouse.
(00:44):
The producer who may or may not exist, Jerry. People
still think that. I think a few people do. Yeah,
she's real, says you. She's real because I can always
smell her me. So from here? Oh man? I um,
so I like avocado a lot, right, So I like
(01:06):
avocado a lot. Basically an avocado a day. Um, And
normally I make guacamole. As you know, I make probably
the best guacamole on the planet. Sometimes, okay, we'll have
a guac off one day. Well, yeah, but it's personal taste,
you know, you know that whole thing. Remember, no taste
(01:27):
is absolute. Um. So it's sometimes it's just too much
to make guac sure, right, that's where avocado toast comes in. Yeah,
it's so easy, but and it's totally different too. So
if you start to get sick of guacamole, you like,
I'll have some avocado toast. Anyway. The upshot is is
(01:49):
I recently took antibiotics, which are disgusting poison, but just
had to have them this time because my body would
not get rid of whatever had um. And so I've
been like repopulating my gut flora with fermented stuff like
mis Took some miso, put it in some avocado, whipped
it up, spread it on some toasts. It was great.
(02:10):
And avocado, being a fibrous vegetable, should be a prebiotic.
It will probably provide the conditions for that miso to
ripen into some really top notch gut flora. Well I'm
grossed out now, are you really? Yeah? I found that
stuff fascinating. All that your gut flora. It's a matter
(02:32):
of personal taste. I guess. It's like people like the
smell of their own poop. That's not two different things.
Do you like the smelling your own poop? Great? Really? Yeah?
I like all my smells. I got you. Do you
like ice? Ay? Just I do? We're in one yeah,
(02:56):
well can we be in a noisy age? It's hottest wherever, right,
but the climb is not changing. Why this summer has
been awful? Yeah, supposedly every year we just keep getting
hotter and hotter. Yeah, And I'm like, I have a
feeling here and Georgia, it's going to be hot into October.
I noticed the change take place to day Oh really?
(03:19):
Uh not me. I was out there this morning, but
momo out well yeah, and I was like, oh, it's
not muggy night. Nights are getting cooler. That's where it
starts to change. Yeah, but it's still like up in
the nineties during the day. During the day is still
kind of nasty. But it feels different to me, like
the air feels different. Yeah, not me yet. Yeah, that
(03:41):
that first fall blasts I haven't experienced. Maybe it's seeing
like cinnamon brooms and Kroger that's put me in the
fall mood already. I'm just noticing it where it's not
the Christmas decorations, right, yeah, Halloween stuff's been out since August. Man,
just ridiculous. So back to ice ages. Um, like you said,
we are actually in an ice age. To be specific,
(04:03):
we are in the Holocene epoch right, yes, which features
the Quaternary ice age, and specifically we're in the flandry
and interglacial period. But still, even though it's interglacial, it's
still an ice age that we're in. It's a mouthful,
(04:24):
it is. Who wrote this? Was this? Molly? Molly Edmonds,
our dear old friend. Yes, she she put out quality
she did. Um. Yeah, Molly points out quite astutely that, uh,
you know, if you look at Antarctica in Greenland, you
still see ice sheets and um ice ages. Though are
it's not you know, we don't have to have the
(04:44):
entire or a third of the earth covered in ice
to be in an ice age, because within an ice
age there's periods of cooler weather and warmer weather, and
right now that you know, glacials and interglacials respectively, and
right now we're in an interglacial. That's all it is.
But like I said, when people look around, they don't
think of as being in an ice age, because we're
(05:04):
just during one of those warmer periods, right. But I
think so. I was reading this New Scientist article about
I think it's called the History of Ice on Earth,
and they said that there are basically three settings that
the Earth has. UM greenhouse, which is basically there's no
ice anywhere on Earth. UH. Ice house which is like
(05:26):
an ice age glacial period where there is ice even
like today there's ice on the Arctic and Antarctic caps
right um. And then there's a snowball um setting the
most fun of all, which is like the entire planet
is frozen over the least fun of all. There have
been periods of Earth's history where the whole thing was
(05:46):
just a giant ball of ice. Yeah, if we want
to talk about the you know, the I don't know
if you want to call it the Big Ice Age.
But when we think of the term ice age, we
most people are probably talking about the one that began
about seventy thousand years ago, uh during the Pleistocene era
lasted about sixty thousand years UH. And if you're talking
(06:08):
about the United States, uh, and the four major glaciations
they hit the Midwest, the Nebraska and the Kanson the
Illinois and the famous Wisconsin glaciation. Yeah, that's the one
that just ended that. We just came out of the
Wisconsin one, that's right. And they call him this because
that's where they were geographically. Well that's where I think
(06:29):
the greatest evidence of them has been discovered. Right. So, um,
and in all this it's kind of confusing, actually, but
just just the the current ice age that we're in
started two point five eight million years ago, right, and
again it's still going two point five eight million years
to present, the quaternary ice age. Um. And so those
(06:49):
little other subdivisions have to do with when the ice
has been relatively scarce or when it's been all over
the place. And then to make it even more slightly,
can using during periods of glaciation. There's even periods where
the glaciers retreat and advance. That's stadial and interstadial periods,
(07:10):
and those tend to be a little more local. Uh,
And and happened a lot a lot more quickly, and
glacial or in an interglacial period, happened on the scale
of tens of thousands of years. Yes, that's right. And uh,
this is nothing new, Like you said, this has been
going on since there was a planet Earth. But um,
actually recognizing and and what is an ice age just
(07:34):
sort of on the newer front, because in the old days,
you know, they would see a big rock and they
would say, boy, the thing looks like it slid down
that mountain there, because you can see that mountains all
carved up and this rock shouldn't be here, and that's weird.
So that was the Great Flood of Biblical Times. We
treated an episode on Yeah, that was a good one,
(07:56):
and um, so that was kind of how things were explained,
how these things ended up places where they probably did
not start out. Yeah, people noticed that there was just
weird stuff going on in the geography around them, right, Um,
but they didn't they didn't place it correctly. Until it
turns out the Swiss peasantry and some German peasants as well,
(08:16):
started to notice that their glaciers were receding. And as
their glaciers receded up there and say the Alps, it
left some markings that they noticed also the same kind
of markings further down the mountain. So the Swiss peasants
put two and two together and said, you know what,
I think the glaciers used to be way, way bigger
(08:39):
than they are today, and that maybe that is what
explains these boulders that shouldn't be here being here in
the middle of this field. And I guess from what
I can gather, it was kind of like common folk
wisdom in some areas of like the Swiss Alps, long
before science understood it. And it was actually a Swiss
(09:00):
geologist who was the first one to advance a genuine
bona fide hypothesis for ice ages. Yeah, Lewis Uh, I
guess sees is how I'm gonna pronounce that. And um
he in seven presented um his ideas about this glacial
activity at a conference, the science conference, and everyone was like, yeah,
(09:22):
m I don't know. I don't know about you. I
don't know about that. Well, they didn't know about him.
He was he was a smart guy, right, he was established.
But they're like, you're just go back to your opium
pretty much. And apparently his his first theory was that
there there have been an ice age. It happened like
very quickly. Yeah, he was off basically like night and day. Uh,
(09:45):
and and that um it had followed a catastrophe, right, Yeah.
I wonder if he would have that seems like the
one thing that might have put them off. It was
how unlikely that sounded right? Because he was wrong? Like
I won. If you would have said it happened slowly
over time, let's say, yeah, they may have said like,
oh well, I'm not buy that he's presenting his finding.
(10:08):
He's like, what do you guys want to hear? But
I'll massage it in that way. Yeah, it happened overnight
and they all just cross their arms. He goes or
overnight over a very long period of time. Uh so
before him though, um, quite a few years before him,
there was a scotsman. Oh yeah, born in Edinburgh, Edinburgh,
(10:31):
buried at Greyfriars Kirkyard. Wow, which did you ever go there?
I walked past it. I never made it in Okay,
well my hotel was right there, so I walked through it. Amazing,
amazing cemetery. I went to Marry King's close instead, which
is pretty awesome too. Oh you had to go to
one or the other. They're close to each other. Um,
there's only so much time in the day. Off not
(10:53):
close enough? Uhive a man named James Hutton, uh man,
this guy was He was a stud the father of geology.
He had this idea that he he was one of
the first people to look around and say, you know what,
the Earth is always changing, Like if you look around
and pay attention, look at it, that birds just died.
(11:14):
Like he might sit for days and look and wait
for something to move. But he said, the Earth is
constantly changing, and I have an idea that it's probably
always been this way. So if we look at what's
going on now and we apply that to the past,
we might come up with some pretty interesting stuff here, right. Yeah,
he said that there's basically clues to the past in
(11:37):
the present. Yeah, just like, look what's going on around you.
This might have happened ten thousand years ago as well,
and that might explain something like that boulder being someplace
different exactly. And we keep going to the boulders. But
the boulders are actually some really really high quality evidence
for ice ages in general. Um, there's there. There's actually
a term for it among people who study ice ages.
(11:59):
They're called erratics. And an erratic is a very very
heavy boulder, way too heavy to have been moved by humans.
Um that is also too far from its point of
origin to just say rolled downhill it doesn't make any
sense that it's there, which is why it's called n erratic.
There's some very famous ones. Um, there's one in the
(12:20):
Swiss Alps. Uh, well, I'm sure there's many, but there's
one in particular. This article mentions that's in the Swiss
Alps that is, um, about fifty miles from its point
of origin. There's one in Central Park that is many
miles away from its point of origin. In New Jersey,
it moved, tried to make it in the big city.
It was a bridge and tunnel boulder, right. So, and
that's actually one of the one of the ways the
(12:42):
Germans figured out that there was such a thing as
ice age because they said, see that bowler there in
that field, I'm pretty sure that skinnin Avian rock, and uh,
sure enough they were correct. And so you start to
put all this stuff together, huge bowlders being moved, Um,
valleys between mountains, carved out in a U shape rather
than that telltale V shape that a river carves out. Um.
(13:05):
These are clues. They're not well they are erratics, but
their clues into the past. Yeah that when you start
to put all of them together. The only thing that
that really explains them, is huge, massive movements of glaciers.
Glacial movement. Yeah. And and when you study that stuff
and you look at these grooves and you study the boulders,
(13:27):
you can actually make calculations. And it's amazing that way
back then they were able to make these calculations. Uh.
Agazz in particular and some other guys got together and
they said that the present ice age at its peak,
I guess, um, was about a mile thick of glacier
A mile of ice. Yes, it's amazing yeah. Um. And
(13:52):
further studies have concluded that in the last ice age, um,
I guess there was Wisconsin glaciation. Um. The the about
a third of the earth was covered in glaciers. Have
we said that glacier as yet? I mean, it almost
goes without saying, but just in case. Yeah, it's just
really densely packed snow it is, and it snow that
(14:13):
that isn't allowed to melt. It's it's cold enough so
that it never fully melts. At the base, it forms
to ice, and on top you've got more and more snow,
and as more and more snow doesn't melt, the ice
builds up thicker and thicker and just from the sheer
force of these things mass encountering gravity, they can actually move.
They're like very slow most of the time, very slow
(14:36):
moving rivers of ice on a massive scale. Yeah, and
and well we'll get to that later. I was gonna
tease something out. Uh, should we take a quick break?
All right, we'll take a break and we'll get back
to a little more amazing glaciers. All right. So we've
(15:19):
talked about the sheer size a mile a mile thick
of ice. Yeah, and I said, like a third of
the Earth. I think it covered seventeen million square miles
of the planet during the last glaciation cubic miles, my friend,
cubic miles, right, So junk is deep. Yeah, a mile deep. Man,
That is nuts. Uh. So Antarctica had about ten percent
(15:39):
more ice than it does now. And the big change
with the big difference, Uh, what sets that ice age
apart was the amount of activity in the northern hemisphere.
It was very unusual to have the amount of ice
in North America and Europe extending down like through the
midwest of the United States. It was it was a
(16:00):
new scene, a new chili scene. Ye, a whole new
jam basically, and Chuck. I mean like it was largely
in North America, but this also, um really covered a
lot of Europe too. I mean like Ireland was covered,
Germany was covered, Scandinavia was covered by ice, and basically
everything that wasn't covered by ice, and Europe was a tundra,
(16:22):
very much like Siberia is today. I actually I saw
a documentary on I think it was a History Channel
show about the Last Ice Age, and um, somebody figured
out how much all of that ice weight are you
ready for this? Basilion pounds? This might be more than
a bazillion sixty eight thousand trillion tons was the total
(16:45):
weight of the ice of the Earth on the Earth
during the Last Ice Age, during the last place. How
many maxes that have no idea? It's like more than
a hundred uh well a North America loan about thirteen, Um,
I'm sorry, about ten million square miles of ice. And
you know this all came from the ocean, which means
(17:06):
the ocean level was hundreds and hundreds of feet lower
during this ice age. Yeah, like Canada is used to
having large parts of it being covered by glacier, the
United States is not used to this, but it came
all the way down into the plains in some cases,
and basically from New York over to Washington State totally
(17:26):
covered by again a mile thick sheet of ice. Like
you can ice skate on that without worry. You're not
gonna fall through, it's still gonna crack. Did you ever
do that growing up? Did Ohio? Like like you'd skate
on lakes? Yeah, And we were never allowed to do
that until my dad went out and stomped on it,
(17:47):
like jumped up and down, and if he didn't go through,
then we were allowed to skate. He's like, kids, if
I die right. It wasn't. It wasn't the most fool
proof technique, but it was nice and dad to do
that for us. I don't know, think I'm not much
of a worry word, but I'm that still would have
like creeped me out. I've seen enough movies, you know,
left under ice. So the Mammi River would freeze over,
(18:08):
but we weren't allowed to skate on the river. Some
people did, we weren't allowed to. Instead, there was a
golf course with ponds that would freeze pretty good, pretty good.
There was your You weren't going to fall through these
small ponds pretty rough though, right, like skating on it's
not it depends it depends on and I don't remember
what it depends on. Yeah, it's it's never like an
ice drink. But certain type of weather, maybe non windy weather,
(18:32):
I think is what it was, because then like if
there was kind of like a choppiness to it from
the wind, it could freeze like that freeze choppy, Whereas
if it wasn't windy, I would guess it would it
would be smoother. So sometimes it was pretty smooth. Other
times you're like, I can't even skate on, but your
dad would drive a zambonie out there and fix it
all up. It over and if the zamboni didn't fall through,
(18:54):
then we were allowed to skate, right. I just picture
of the zamboni falling through. But it's a little pond,
so you're a'd still like just a bove. I feel
like I missed out, though, I mean not that life
is over. You can still skate on ponds. I don't
picture myself going to Minnesota in the in the winter.
Give it a try. The trade off it wasn't It
(19:17):
wasn't a very good trade off because the winners are
pretty brutal. Yeah, like if you have local ponds that
freeze over, you're cold too. I still feel like I
missed out. Yeah, I mean you're fine. It wasn't that
big of it was just teasing when I said, you
did miss that. Uh all right, So people are skating
all over the world. A third of the world people
(19:37):
are ice skating on during during the ice age UM
and like we mentioned these things, UM they've been described
as bulldozers just plowing through uh the earth basically um
leaving large swaths they call it glacial till. This debris
that they leave behind, and these are you know, once
you figure out how it works, the evidence is every
(20:00):
where of exactly what happened. Yeah, Because as these glaciers
move and that ice that has formed the basis of
the glacier is in contact with the earth below it,
it's picking up all sorts of crud that all that
to breathe that glacial till you said, erratic boulders. And
as it's doing this, it's actually creating a um a
(20:21):
scrubbing mechanism. Right. So, like you said, if you look
around at mountains and and and valleys with exposed rock
that were um rubbed by glaciers. There's gonna be crazy
grooves worked into them. Some look like roads almost, yes, um,
some are kind of polished and rounded, And it's all
(20:42):
from this glacial activity rubbing stuff over the tops of
these mountains. It's pretty interesting stuff. And then other things
like you'll know, you know, you'll see like a movie
where um, this incredibly beautiful uh like river Valley has
just gravel everywhere, like just scattered all all throughout, like
the valley floor. That's not supposed to be there. The
(21:04):
glacier deposited that. That's right, it's more evidence of the
ice age. Yeah, that's interesting to think of it. It's
not supposed to be there. No, and you think of
that like that's what that's what that looks like. You know,
of course that's what it's. That's that's that's supposed to
be there. But no, it's technically not. Had we not
had um these glaciation events, that stuff wouldn't be there.
(21:25):
And that fascinating earth science. Uh is that your favorite science?
I think it's become it. Yeah, yeah, it really does
get me jazzed, all right. So it wasn't just um,
the direct path of these glaciers that was affected out
on the edges of these massive moving sheets of ice. Um,
(21:50):
you had things like arctic deserts, and you had these
big areas of dusty wind. Uh. And there's actually a
few ways to pronounce this l O E s s
heard everything from lowest to lows to less I like lowest, Yeah,
like lowest too. Um covering all over the earth basically,
and this is created by those glaciers just like grinding
(22:12):
into the earth. Yeah, um, stirn everything up right, and
then the wind just comes and picks it up, the
finest of the particles and just deposits them. So in
some places you had so if if your area wasn't
covered by glacier, that didn't mean you weren't affected by
the glaciation, because you would have these lowest deserts are
(22:33):
glacier glacial deserts that formed. And in some places the
lowest was like twenty ft thick, and apparently it's still there.
In much of the Midwest, the sub straight below the
soil is lowest, deposited from these lowest deserts UM. And
so you would think when you hear about this kind
(22:53):
of activity that it had to be like hundred degrees chillier, right,
or fifty or forty even, but it was only about
ten degrees fahrenheit about five point six celsius lower uh
than temperatures now, which it's it wouldn't think that that
would be enough, right, But it's not all just about
(23:15):
the temperature. That's kind of the point. No, The point
that Molly makes is that it's not like, oh, it's
just so much colder than it was before all the time.
The key to an ice age um forming glaciers a
glacial period is that this the time when it's supposed
to actually melt, is colder than usual, so that there's
(23:37):
less melt than than before. And the less melt you have,
the more chance you have for snow to fall and
make up for whatever melted and actually add to it,
which means that the glaciers growing. As long as more
snow is added to the glacier than it loses during
say the summer months, your glaciers growing. Yeah, and if
it's not losing much, it doesn't take much snow. And
(23:59):
this this cycles arts. There's something called albedo or albedo
albedo and it's uh, it's the real reflectivity of ice.
And you know once this ice gets going, it's reflecting
away the sun. So it's while you're hotter in the
summer wearing a black T shirt than a white T shirt. Yeah,
and it's just it creates that cycle basically where it's
(24:19):
all just compounding, all these different elements coming together absolutely
to make ice super thick. So you have if you
have a glacier form on planet Earth and it reflects
a bunch of sunlight and makes it colder, well that's
gonna create the conditions for other glaciers to form too,
So it has a compounding effect as well that albedo does.
(24:39):
All right, well let's take a break and we're gonna
come back and talk about a very famous Serbian mathematician.
(25:10):
All right, so I said, famous Serbian mathematician. Had you
already heard of this guy? Yeah? Really, i'd heard. I
had heard about the Milankovich cycles. Um. So his name
was Milutin Milankovic. And it's amazing to me that in
the nineteen twenties, people like well, i'll just say him,
(25:30):
was able to figure out with a lot of accuracy, um,
the Milankovich cycles. Basically, he said, you know what, I
have a theory on why these these summers are cooler,
and why this ice age happened, And it's not just
the temperatures, but it's because of the Sun's relationship to
(25:51):
the Earth and how much sun the Earth is getting
UH during the summer months. So he came up with
three different factors, the tilt UH in the Earth's axis,
the way the Earth wobbles on that axis, and then
how close we are to that heat, how close we
are the sun. He plugged those into a mathematical formula
(26:12):
and he came up with every one hundred thousand years,
he's predicting that we're going to get these ice ages.
Pretty amazing math for back then, it is, especially if
you go back. So he figured this out, and then
they went back and looked at the fossil record, the
geological record, because when he was working, they didn't have
(26:35):
this understanding. He wasn't like proving that like yes, predicting right.
So then um about that time and like the well
after that time, but in like the forties and fifties,
the US was building army bases all over the world
in some really crazy places, including the Arctic, and um
some scientists went along and started taking core samples from
(26:58):
those places. And they found air bubbles trapped in there
that were from like a million years ago, Like the
air was a million years old and it was untouched
virgin air. And um. They found that they could do
all sorts of stuff and learn all sorts of things
from this air. And one of the things they found
was the basically the time stamp for the ice ages
(27:21):
during the Quaternary period. And they found out that in
the first two million years, the first two thirds of
the Quaternary um ice age, the ice ages, glaciation occurred
every forty one years. And yeah, yeah, that's what I said.
He's like, but wait for it, and they said, okay,
in this this most recent million years, it switched to
(27:44):
a hundred thousand years. And he just said his arms crossed,
very smugly. Yeah. Um. And everybody said, that's amazing, that's fantastic. Scientists,
you guys in the lab coats what causes an ice age,
And there's just crickets coming back from the scientists, and
there still is today. Actually, actually, no, that's the opposite,
(28:05):
is true. Not crickets, but a ton of different answers
and a ton of different theories. Yeah, lots of crickets,
but not quite either. What would be the animal that
would talking crickets, Jimmy crickets everywhere? Man, that I was annoying,
putting forth, putting forth theories and and as with most things,
(28:27):
we usually kind of center on. I bet it was
like most of these things put together, which most scientists
do well, dude, I was thinking about this, and I
was like, yes, chaos theory, Like, we have such a
propensity as humans to be like there's one true explanation,
there's one factor that explains everything, and that is just
not the case. This is a perfect example of that.
(28:48):
I wonder if that's a tendency for humans to want
to be right. Like the people actually doing the research
say like, no, this is my ideas. Yeah, I think
that's part of it, But I think it's more are
just like our brains are wired to find like the
least common denominator to find, um, the easiest route. Yeah,
maybe you know, just for efficiency's sake, that makes sense.
(29:12):
I kind of like the idea of like, I'm hands
across America. Did you participate in Hands across America? Not
hated it back then, but oh man, I get it now.
I'm just kidding. I think I did actually, yeah, there
was huge, huge gaps, but it was still pretty great.
We should do a show on that. I didn't know
there were gaps, of course there were oh yeah, pretty
pretty big ones. Yeah, there was at no point complete.
(29:35):
I think our school did it. Wasn't that the deal?
Like probably did this church, church, hippie church. I don't
know if my church might have been like, no, we're
not holding hands. You could be holding hands with an atheist.
Probably you wouldn't even know it. That probably would have
been the case. All right. So another theory is, um,
we've talked a lot about plate tectonics and our geez
(29:57):
and the volcano episodes and what else the plate tectonics episode.
Did we do one on that specifically among the close
to episodes? Man, I don't remember where it first popped up,
but it's definitely come up. Clapped up another one of
your non pun puns. Yes, I hope. I'm like creating
(30:19):
a pretty a pretty extensive case for the fact that
all of my puns are accidental. I don't think like
that accidental puns a good banding too. Ironically, it's okay.
Uh So plate tectonics is another theory. Basically, you know,
everyone knows when you get to a higher altitude, it's
going to be colder, and the conditions are more likely
(30:39):
to for glaciers to form. And so when these these
plates on the Earth are smashing together, everyone also knows
from listening to our show, that's how we get these
lovely mountain ranges and why there are higher altitudes. So
that's another theory that that had a lot to do
with it. Yeahs sense. Some scientists lay um the Quaternary
(31:01):
ice Age, the whole shebang. That's two point five eight
million year old ice age that we're in in still
um basically at the feet of the creation of the Himalayas,
where Asia and India collide, creating the Himalayas, and most
importantly the Tibetan Plateau and this rising of land changing
(31:22):
um the way that air moves across this huge portion
of land Eurasia UM, and that it had an impact
on climate, which has an impact on historical climate, which
can change things, make things cold enough so that glaciers
can form and really get a foothold. Right. More interesting, Chuck,
(31:45):
is that it's apparently that's they're like, that's probably kind
of a factor, but there's an even bigger factor that
they think that came out of that upwelling of of earth.
Bear with me. So, when earth meets earth and there's
an upwelling and they form mountains or something like that, right,
(32:06):
you know, the process of weathering, it's like breaking in
genes or a strato various, Right, you break in mountains too. Well,
that's actually a chemical reaction between like the air and
the earth. And when rock is exposed, it becomes weathered
because c O two reacts with the rock to basically
(32:26):
form some sort of um uh equilibrium that's been interrupted
or disrupted by the exposure of unweathered rock. Right. Well,
to carry that out, c O two has to be
drawn from the atmosphere, which means you're basically removing c
O two from the atmosphere. When you create a new
(32:46):
mountain mountain chain, and if you're talking about a mountain
chain as extensive as the Himalayas, a lot of CEO
two is going to be removed from the atmosphere. When
you remove c O two from the atmosphere, you reduce
the greenhouse effect. And when you deduced the greenhouse effect,
the earth becomes cooler, possibly enough for an ice age.
The timings right as well. The Himalayans formed right before
(33:08):
the Quaternary Ice Age began. Ye aren't that amazing? It
is or science? Uh. The other thing is dust atmospheric changes. Um,
A lot of dust in the air is gonna keep
the sun from shining down its warmth onto the Earth
and keep temperatures cooler. And since I mentioned volcanoes, Um,
(33:30):
there were a lot of volcanoes, a lot of activity
that preceded the glacial ages. Um. But you know, launching
a lot of dust in the air. I don't think
it's coincidence. It's probably all tied in together. Yeah, I
would guess that. Um, it's not just volcanic ash. I mean,
there was just dust period, but the volcanic ash added
(33:51):
to it, you know, right. And I think even after um,
after the volcanoes stopped erupting gases that affect the atmosphere directly,
they still interact with the water vapor in the atmosphere
to mess with it in a continued way. UM. Sun
spots are also another one too, right. Yeah, that's one
(34:12):
of the main reasons for the little ice age, right. Yeah,
but we talked about in the strata areas, so the
little ice age. Um, so did you did you see
that article I sent you? Yeah, it was pretty pretty interesting. Um,
but there's a our understanding of the little ice age,
which is not the best name for it, but there's
(34:33):
a period should be little ice age. There's the from
d to eighteen fifty. Europe in particular, well the northern hemisphere,
but Europe got it pretty bad. Um. It was basically
what amounts to an ice age for for this area. Um,
Greenland and Iceland were cut off by ice for months
(34:54):
at a time. They used to grow wine in England,
not anymore. Scotland they grew wine, Yeah, like bottles would
just pop up out of the grounds. The Highlands of
Scotland would be locked into ice at like and up
the Baltic Sea froze over. Yeah, the canals and the
Netherlands routinely froze. It was it was a really rough time. Well,
(35:17):
it wasn't. It wasn't. It's pretty interesting because this article
you sent, you know, points out a lot of the
history that you know, it affected everything from shipping to
crops to you know, people turning on one another in
some areas then other areas things flourished, right, So apparently
areas and groups that had access to extensive trade networks,
(35:40):
especially with the South or the tropics. Um, they they flourished.
But if you were in like a marginal area, say
like the Alps, you were toast like you suffered from famine.
Apparently glaciers were advancing enough that they were just overrunning
towns and it sounds it sounds absolutely nuts, but actually
glaciers can move surprisingly fast. Right. There was a glacier
(36:03):
in Alaska in that was clocked advancing at ten a day. Yeah,
I mean that's thirty ft a day. That's you can
watch that happen. Yeah, or the very least you could
set up your your inner volometer camera and watch it later.
Or if you're just super patient, Yeah, I bet what's
(36:25):
his name? Yeah, the scotsman. I bet James Hutton would
have sat there and until he's yeah, you know, yeah,
patient man. Uh what else do we cover the sun spots?
Well not Yeah, I mentioned that that might have been
why the little ice age happened. And by the way,
we on the Strata Areas podcast heard from a lot
(36:45):
of people about this double blind study that um or
where they had musicians play um the stratas and uh,
then against modern violins, and um, they preferred I think
generally preferred the modern violin or so people are like, oh,
you're just getting the brand name. That's kind of a
reductive way to say it. Um. And and then afterwards
(37:08):
to the violinists they serge them cough, they're like, it's folgers. Well,
the other thing we heard from other people that said,
these violinists know what they're testing. They're testing clearly testing
and strata varius against a modern instrument. They don't just say, like,
put on this blindfold and you're two violins, which one
smells neater. So we probably should have included that, But
(37:29):
I don't think that like settles it in any like
scientific way or any Yeah, I saw in our research
that that was not necessarily the case. It's on a
number of different sources that that they can tell a
difference that it is actually the best violins, and these
are people that have, you know, opinions. It's not like
(37:49):
you can't scientifically prove that because every person you pick
out is going to have a different take on the matter.
And we weren't poopooing modern instruments because clearly they're only
a handful of strads out there being played, and there's
many many orchestras and they're not playing like pawnshop violins,
you know. Anyway, I just want to mention that, So
(38:10):
these sun spots, right, there's actually a cycle that was
recognized by a British astronomer named E. W. Maunder. It's
pretty British name, and he was living during the Little
Ice Age UM and he noticed. Yeah, he was like, well,
like how it's cold you can ice skate on a pond. Um.
(38:32):
He noticed that the so the Little Ice Age should
actually be called the little period where it was pretty
cold and then really really cold and two different points,
and those points were between twelve ninety and undred and
then sixty five and seventeen fifteen. It was really cold,
like kind of ice ages conditions for real UM. And E. W.
(38:56):
Maunder noticed that, especially the time when he was alive
during between the sixteen and seventeen fifty period seventeen fifteen period, UM,
sun spots were not nearly as active. And he was like,
I wonder if this correlates to little ice ages, and
it would make sense, even though it makes sense in
a really weird way, a roundabout way. Actually, Yeah, sun
(39:17):
spot I guess we should just say what that is.
It's a dark spot, a cooler spot on the Sun.
But the key there is it contains magnetic energy. So
you would think that sun spots are cooler than the
rest of the Sun. So how would that well wait,
now I've got it backwards, No, you got it? Yeah? Yeah,
so how would that keep it warmer on Earth? But
(39:38):
it's about that magnetic field cutting through cloud cover or
cutting the cloud cover, right, So less cloud cover means
that the heat from the Sun isn't trapped, it just
escapes into space. Counterintuitive, but it makes sense. Yeah, because
these sun spots are big enough that when it's facing Earth,
(39:58):
it's putting out less heat energy. So you would think
it would it would directly cool it. It indirectly cools it. Right. Weird,
It is weird, but amazing earth science. Uh So, whether
or not we're headed for another one is a lot
There's a lot of debate on that because some people say, well,
(40:20):
there's no strict definition even what an ice age is,
so who's to say. Other people say, now you know what,
humans have cause uh such an impact here that there
probably won't be another ice age. It's extremely possible that
we have altered the climate enough that we're not going
to see like we may have ended on our own
(40:41):
the Quaternary ice age. It may be over now or
on the way to being over, in which case we
have a whole other set of problems to deal with,
but not an ice age, not glaciers. Um. There was
actually a study that made the rounds, I think this
year or last year, that really drummed up a lot
of media engine because these researchers said that they predicted
(41:03):
a period of very low sun spot activity in thirty
years because we're due for one technically, right were a
year point, Yes, yeah, we're due for another glaciation event.
And these people said, well, there's gonna be sun spots
in thirty years, and the media took it and said
there's gonna be another ice age in thirty years. Um,
And that's not necessarily the case. It's a pretty big
(41:26):
leap from saying, yes, there's low sun spot activity, so
we're gonna have an ice age. But if we hadn't
burned all those fossil fuels, maybe that would be the case.
Maybe we would start to see glaciation beginning again in
about thirty years. Again we're probably not going to because
we've raised the temperature of the planet by it a
(41:47):
full degree celsius since night UM, so it's possible we
won't ever see an ice age again, which is sad
because some people say that it was this last um,
this ice age, not just the last glaciation event, but
the Quaternary ice Age as a whole that pushed humans
to evolve to the wonderful, amazing specimens we are today. UM.
(42:11):
A lot of advancements happened because of it. Adaptations and
animals and early humans there were there was movement among
around Earth because the sea levels were a lot lower,
so you could make your way around bigger parts of
the Earth. They weren't cut off like before like they
are now. UM. Apparently, our brains grew tremendously in size
(42:31):
during the Quaternary Ice Age at a in a time
period that correlates with it, and one hypothesis is that
the cooler temperatures allowed us to dissipate heat more naturally
and to save our energy or use more energy, which
would allow our brains to grow. Interesting and then other
people say, well, you know what, the chro magnets also
(42:53):
invented the sewing needle during this time because of the
ice age, so that they could start sewing and close.
Is the technology that allowed us to truly spread out
over the earth. Yeah, because you could go live where
it was cold, because you could make a big park
out of a musk ox exactly. The muskox would say
thank you for using me human. I don't know about that,
(43:15):
But you got anything else? Nope, I think that's it. Man,
This is good one, Chuck Uh. If you want to
know more about ice ages, you can type those words
into the search bar at how stuff works dot com.
And since I said search parts, time for a listener. Mayo.
(43:37):
Remember in the animal testing episode when I wondered aloud
about the names of pork and beef and swine and
all that stuff. I'm glad you're covering this. Apparently I'm
the only person on the planet who did not know this.
I didn't know it either, because we had a bunch
of people right in Uh. And it's super interesting. So
I picked one that was a good explanation from a
(43:57):
gentleman in Bristol, United Kingdom. He said this before ten
sixty six, in England, most people spoke a form of
Germanic English Uh, and he says, by the way, I'm
glossing over several centuries of linguistic history with that. However,
after the invasion by William the Conqueror and his eventual coronation,
Norman became the dominant language. UH. Norman is based on
(44:18):
Northern French dialects, so would have used words such as
mutton and booth for sheep and cows. These words were
used by people who would have been able to afford
to eat such food, namely the gentry. However, peasants who
would have raised raise the animals still use the Germanic
words like sheep and cow, and these words stuck. English
(44:38):
is full of high and low words gentry or peasantry
for similar meanings, with the high words being French based
therefore Latin based. Really interesting. Um. Having stopped myself from
going on, as is the subject I've always been obsessed with,
and I hope that I have piqued your interest as well.
Be warned the subject as a rabbit hole, I will
also add I was gutted to miss your UK tour,
(45:02):
and I hope you enjoyed it enough to come back
one day. UM. I also cheekily plug Bristol as an
amazing place to live and visit. Yeah, congratulations on your
new sky pier. I don't heard of that. It's like
a it's like a huge observation UFO that goes up
on their coast. You can just see for miles and miles. Interesting.
(45:24):
Much love to you both and thanks for doing what
you do. Cheers. That is from Matt Gallaford of Bristol.
Thanks Matt, We'll definitely be back. And thanks to everyone
who wrote in with that good information. I wish I
could have read them all. Uh. If you want to
get in touch of us to let us know something
we missed, or to tell us how grey we're doing,
(45:44):
or well yeah, you can tweet to us at s
Y s K podcast. You can also hang out with
me at Josh Underscore, um Underscore Clark at on Twitter two.
You can hang out with Chuck at Charles W. Chuck
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