November 28, 2023 • 48 mins
It’s time to get jazzed about Earth science again. It’s only been 60 or so years since we’ve known the continents move around and we’re still figuring out exactly how they do. But one thing is for sure, that super-slow movement is super important.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Q Josh Trumpet. But you know what that means, everybody.
We are going back on tour again. We are hitting
the road next year in January for our annual Pacific
Northwest and Northern California Swing, and we will be at
the Paramount Theater in Seattle on January twenty fourth, Revolution
Hall and Portland on the twenty fifth, and our home
(00:22):
away from home at San Francisco's Sketch Fest on January
twenty six.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Yeah, we'll be at the Sydney Goldstein Theater again. Everybody
a great place, that's right. If you want tickets and information,
you can go to linktree slash sysk and it's got
all that jam. You can go to our website stuff
youshould do dot com. It's got all that jam. And
we will see all of you guys in January with
bells on.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and fucking
Jerry's here too, and we're just moving slowly against one another,
starting static in the slowest possible way.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Yeah. Perhaps one day will be a mountain.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Range yeah, or a deep deep drench hmm.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
All right, you get down there. I'll be up in
the mountains, all right.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
When I'm down there, I'll be like, Hello, how's the
weather up there?
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Jerry'll be uh, you know her nickname will sea level
Roland sea level.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Yeah, but we need to spell it with just the
letter C. Right, that's more nickname me.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Oh no, that sounds mean all of a sudden seed level.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Oh I didn't mean it like that.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Yeah, like Jerry's the sea level producer.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Right, Wow, that was just subconscious, Sorry, Jerry. So since
Jerry said that was okay, I say we just go
ahead and move on because we're making all these plate
tectonic jokes for a good reason. Chuck. We're going to
talk today in part about plate tectonics, that's.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Right, But first we're going to go back before that.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Yeah, so I included this. I coupled this together from
a bunch of different stuff, including our old Vulnerable House
Stuff work site, net Geo, Live Science, I go wrong there,
Heritage Daily, Good Stuff, Great You of Calgary. Yeah, the
U stands for Upwardly Mobile Mob of Calgary. Uh huh.
(02:30):
And then Wonderum Daily, which I hadn't heard of before,
but it's a cool little site.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Is it a wondrium on the daily, on the daily.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
So yeah, I coupled this together and I wanted to
put this in there about the idea of what people
used to think of I guess I'm fascinated with that
lately because I just did a whole episode on on
what people used to think before the scientific method. I
feel like we talked about something similar in another episode,
and then now we've got this. But this, to me
(03:00):
is like we're right on the precipice of essentially folklore
and then scientific understanding. This is essentially like the dividing
line what we're looking at right here in this first
little anecdote. And then the other reason I thought it
was really significant is because I think Madam Blovotsky, who
(03:20):
kind of comes up in a second, she would play
really well today, everybody'd be like, what kind of bs
are you selling? I want to give you some of
my money, Like she would be a featured like Goop contributor.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Basically, yeah, yes, you're talking about Helena Blavatsky aka Madam Blovotsky,
the Russian occultist from the eighteen hundreds who was a
member and co founder in fact of the Theosophical society
that sounds like it would play these days for sure,
for sure. And something that keep wanting sleep Blatovsky. Blavatsky
(03:58):
was going on about back then was something called Lemuria.
And we'll get to how that came about in a
second as well. But this is the idea that a
lot of theosophists, huh thought that, Hey listen, Religion has tried,
science has tried, but nobody still here in the nineteenth
(04:19):
century has fully explained how we got here and what's
going on on planet Earth. But I am able to
because I am the great Blavatsky, and I have talent
and insight into the times that came before.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Yeah, through psychic gifts, right, So just drop.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Your rubles in a bucket and I'll tell you exactly.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
So. She had I think, multiple books, but in one
in particular that came out in nineteen eighty eight, called
The Secret Doctrine, she talked about how there were seven
root races. This is another thing people were very preoccupied with. Oh, yeah,
where we came from? Yeah, And the reason why is
because just a couple decades before, Darwin had published on
(05:03):
the origin of the species. And it's really difficult to
get across like the revolution and understanding that book brought right,
and that made people fascinated like, wait, okay, well where
did we come from? If God just didn't go boop
seven thousand years ago, where did we come from? Let's
figure that out. And again, this was at a time
when science was very much mishmashed with the superstition, I guess,
(05:26):
so you could really get some play with the superstitious stuff.
And that's exactly what Blovotski was doing. She was saying,
check this out, this place called Lemuria. It's a lost continent.
Everybody loves those, and it's where one of the three
of seven root races came from.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Yeah, the third root race, in which giant hermaphroditic egg
laying humans pre sex organ humans lived along with the dinosaurs.
And everyone was like, hey, sounds pretty good to me.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Sounds good. Take my money.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Yeah. So it made me wonder too if some of
this obsession with where we came from too, because you know,
we'll learn later. Other people talked about, you know, some
of the original races, like with some of that rooted
in things like you know, horrors to come like, we're
the original people, so we're the ones who count.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Yeah, I think it definitely was finds its roots in
that era, that whole fascination at this time.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Yes, okay, I thought so.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
And also there's something that comes up in another episode.
We're going to talk about scientific romanticism, which I guess
this is probably kind of an example of. But that's like, yeah,
not only are we uncovering like this history in the
deep past, we're uncovering my ethnicity's history in the deep past.
And all we're gonna find is the most splendorous, spectacular
(06:50):
examples of how we're actually the survivors of a lost
civilization that was even grander than anything we can understand. Now,
that's another thing that people were at the same time.
So it's pop culture, but again it's kind of dressed
up like it's following the same lines as science, but
it's not really science. Fortunately, at the same time, there
were like legitimate scientists working. It's just they were still
(07:13):
following blind alleys to some way, which I just I
want to press the pause button right here. I am
in no way suggesting that science is done, like we've reached.
Science is exactly perfect the way it is now. Yeah,
there's still plenty of problems with it, There's still lots
left to discover, and so by casting dispersions or shade
(07:36):
at this kind of situation back in the mid to
late nineteenth century, I'm not insinuating that our current reality
is vastly superior and perfect. I'm just saying at this
time there were big problems with science and pop culture meshing.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Yeah, and I'm glad you said that, But you've been
clear where you are on that through the years.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
I think, hey, we get new listeners every episode.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Now, that's a good point, and that's a lot easier
to say that than to say, go back and listen
to sixteen years worth of.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Stuff, right, or feel a bunch of angry emails?
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Yeah, we will never get those. After you said that
so Lemiria was not something that Blovotsky created, Lomia has
a well this will all tie into tectonic plates, believe
it or not. Yeah, just wait, just wait. It really
does in a very neat way spectacular. I love how
you did this. But there was a British zoologist named Philip.
(08:31):
I'm sorry, Philip. Philip is not a name that I
know of.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Phallic is in there, but who would name their kid Fallic.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Not Phyllis or Gary Goldman, the Great Comedian has a
great bit on Phyllis and that name being retired in
nineteen thirty three by the government.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Gary Goldman The Rock and Roll Part two, Guy.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Gary Golman g U. L. M. A. N. The Great
stand up Comedian, I got you anyway. Philip not Phyllis
or Philic Sclatter or Sclater wrote an essay in eighteen
sixty four called the Mammals of Madagascar. And this one
is sort of kind of funny when you think about
how Madagascar so clearly fits off of where it broke
(09:16):
off from Africa. But Slater didn't see that at the time.
He really wondered, like, hey, I'm looking at Madagascar. It's
right off the just right off the coast of Africa there,
and they have all these dozens of species of lemurs.
Yet Africa and India don't only have a few species
of lemur. He was wrong about that, even which isn't
the point. They didn't have any true lemurs. But he
(09:37):
was like, why is Madagascar just loaded with all these
lemurs and Africa so close has none. And he says,
here's what happened. There was a land bridge there and
it was once, you know, all connected, and I'm going
to call that big, you know, great continent lee Muria
after the lemur.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Yeah, he really liked leamers a lot. So this is
a lost continent. It includes a land bridge. And what
Sclater's doing here is what was kind of all the
scientific rage. It was like, okay, again, like we came
from apes, animals evolved from other animals. Let's take that
new worldview and figure out how that works. And he
(10:17):
couldn't figure out like how like similar species got it
out there eventually mm hmm could be separated by hundreds
of miles of water. The best explanation that he thought
was a land bridge that's just currently inundated with water.
And so, like you said, he came up with Lemuria
and that got very quickly deposited into the pop culture,
(10:39):
and people like Blovatsky and others were like, yep, Lamuria,
and then let's add to it so we can get
that goop money.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Yeah, And land bridges were just land bridges were the thing,
and here's the thing, and we'll, you know, we'll get
to some more of this in a minute. But like
they weren't totally off and all of this stuff. Like
they were on the right track for some of it,
some a little bit more than others. There was I
think a German biologist that you track down named Ernst
Heckel or Heckel, and he was like, hey, listen, Lemyria
(11:12):
was not only a thing, but that's where we all
came from. That was a cradle of humanity. There were
twelve varieties of men. Here we go with that stuff again. Yeah,
and we evolved from these ancient primates right there at
this place that is now you know, partially underwater.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Right. What's nuts about the whole thing, though, is that
that actually has happened before. There actually is at least
one and I'm sure there's plenty. It's not a lost continent,
but a lost pretty decent sized bit of land, yeah,
that is now covered by water that once held people
(11:51):
who lived there, and it's called Doggerland. And it's just
so nuts that, like these guys were off in their
interpretation of what they were seeing to explain species divergence.
And as we'll see, like fossil beds separated by an ocean,
but they still kind of match up on one coast
(12:11):
of Africa and one coast of South America, all these
things are trying to put together. They were on the
right track trying to explain it, but they were just
awful little bit and yet at the same time they
were explaining stuff that they didn't actually know really existed.
But did Does that make sense in a really roundabout way?
Speaker 1 (12:28):
Yeah, for sure. And when something like Doggerland happens where
you know, this was the land that was around basically
what we now know is the UK and it connected
to Europe. In nineteen thirty one, a fisherman pulled up
a barbed antler point, part of a weapon, basically part
of a harpoon that they were using twelve thousand years ago,
(12:49):
buried in Pete. They're like, well, wait a minute, Pete
isn't in the ocean. Pete's in the forest. Why would
it be twenty five miles out into the ocean. And
then they started poking around more and more in the
decades and they're like, oh, well this used to all
be land, and beneath the North Sea are canoes and
burial sites and all kinds of other things that we
(13:09):
can point to. Is like pretty good proof that, yeah,
this happens. There is land that used to be here
that is now beneath the sea at different places on
planet Earth.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
And I mean like a lot of land. This land
stretched out from all points that surrounded the UK and
stretched toward Europe, from southern Scandinavia to Brittany and France.
It was just connected and there were river beds and
all sorts of animals to hunt. It was just really cool.
And then over time, as the sea levels rose, it
became inundated, and then there was a landslide and under
(13:40):
sea landslide that really inundated it, and it was just
lost to history because the people running around there were
running around there, you know, no less than five thousand
years ago, maybe seven, so everyone forgot about it. But
one of the noteworthy things that I found just completely
fascinating is HG. Wells show off that he was set
(14:01):
an eighteen ninety seven book called The Story of the
Stone Age in exactly that place. He didn't call it
daughter Land, but he set his story in this land
that was now covered by water between the UK and Europe.
And it turned out about three or so decades later
that he was confirmed H. G.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Wells was a special human.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Yeah, pretty cool. So he actually managed to combine the
science and the speculation speculativeness of the age. But he
was never trying to say like, this is real, this
is a real book. He was like, this is fiction.
It's awesome.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
I like him for that.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
Didn't he write Didn't he write the original Invisible Man book?
Speaker 2 (14:46):
I think so?
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Yeah. I watched the I've been trying to watch some
scary movies in October and now in a November a bit,
and I watched that Invisible Man update from a few
years ago with Elizabeth Moss that I had never seen before.
You No, it's good, okay, and it's you know, it's
not the same story h. G. Wells put forward, but
it's it's you know, it's based sort of adapted from
(15:10):
that story. And it's actually really good and quite scary
and has a great ending.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Okay, good to know.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
So I recommend it.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Did you ever get around to watching the Juwan origins miniseries?
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Now you gotta email me this stuff. I don't remember
anything after I leave the studio. Scary.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
So you know the Grudge that Sarah Michelle Geller was
in in the nineties.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Sure it was based on Well I know the movie
and I know it was based on an original Japanese
film right.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Right called Juwan, and so somebody went back and made
a prequel to the Japanese version. Oh okay, that explains
how everything got that way. Yes, it is so scary that, like,
I will leave the light on from you know, the
family room to the bedroom as I'm going to bed
(15:58):
and then turn it off remotely. I just won't turn
it off and walk through the dark. It is that scary.
It's awesome.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Yeah, I didn't watch as many this year because the
movie crushesn't around. I used to like really heavily watch
a lot of horror movies in October, but only caught
a few this year. And uh, I still I enjoy
being scared like that and being in another part of
your house and having to navigate your way back in
the dark, Even in my fifties, it's always scary and
kind of funny. Like, of course, I know that the
(16:24):
supernatural being from the movie I just watched isn't in
this all way, but but do I.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Really could be exactly? I know?
Speaker 1 (16:31):
All right, Uh, off topic, let's take a break a sure,
let's and we'll be right back.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
Definitely should large holds.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Of chucking r y s k.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
I want to learn about a terror's hortan college, horrid actyle,
how to take a berg, all about fractal think is gone,
that's a little hunt, the Lizzie Border murders, and all right, everything,
and jo should.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Now word up Jerry. All right. So when we broke
actually we were talking about horror movies. But a little
bit before that, I was talking some about how it's
a little frust not frustrating, but maybe kind of funny
that they didn't put together that Madagascar so clearly broke
off from Africa and fits very nicely if you just
(17:23):
shove it back together right there in its spot. And
as I was studying today, I have my light up
globe on my desk, and you know, when you look
at that thing, my my medium smart eight year old
daughter can say, hey, Daddy, you know, it looks like
Africa could fit into South America, and it looks like
(17:43):
all of these things sort of could be puzzled together
to form a larger super continents. A medium smart but
she knows the word super continent.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
That's pretty smart.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
But it's pretty it seems pretty obvious to us now.
But it was all about land bridges back then and
sort of this idea of super continent came about a
little slower.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Yeah, because if you stand on any continent and just
stand around and wait, you will not perceive that you're
moving even though you are moving. So they were not
aware of the fact that the continents moved, and so
of course that wasn't what they went with. They went
with land bridges. Again, it's a very sensible explanation. How
(18:27):
did one thing get to another when it's covered by oceans. Well,
that there was land that used to be above the
ocean and they just migrated across. It's happened before. There's
dogger land, there's the bearing land bridge, all that stuff.
But the idea that the continents moved, that just was
not around until another guy came along, who will talk
about in a second. But there was like little inklings
(18:48):
of this idea that that just weren't There was like
a light bulb that was just about to come on,
but it just burns out right before, right before it
fully comes on. That's kind of what was happening with
the idea that the continent's moved. And again, just to
reiterate the whole reason people are thinking about this stuff
is because fossil beds suddenly take on new meaning. If
(19:11):
evolution and natural selection exists, climatological evidence suddenly takes on
new meaning. Why species are similar but separated from one
continent to another, it takes on significance. And so they're
looking around their world with brand new fresh eyes and
trying to answer these questions. And they were coming up
with all these different meta narratives and on the way
(19:34):
to the idea that we have now that the continents
actually move and they actually formed one large super continent
in the past. Like I was saying, there were a
few people who came along and almost had it.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
Yeah, the idea of continental contraction was one pretty good
idea and an alternate theory, you know, pre tectonic plate shifts,
and that is that the Earth was a huge magma ball,
which is true, and that as that thing cooled down
over time, the land that it formed trunk basically as
(20:08):
things might do when they cool, and the continents broke apart.
So that was that was really headed toward the right
idea until the end, basically for sure. Another thing that
they had trouble kind of explaining were things like mountains,
Like I kind of hitt it around the beginning. One
of us will be a mountain range. They did have
theories that parts of the Earth were, you know, breaking
(20:31):
off from one another and could go underneath other parts,
but they just hadn't quite arrived there until Alfred Wegner
came along in nineteen twelve and published a book called
The Origin of Continents and Oceans where he was kind
of like, hey, wait a minute, everyone, this looks like
a giant puzzle if you stand back and look at
a map and you're just not standing back far enough, like,
(20:53):
get get over on the other side of the room.
And then everyone did, and they go, oh wow, and
this helps explain things like you were talking about why
the coast of Africa and the coast of Brazil might
share fossils even though they're separated by such a vast ocean.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Yeah, or share species are all sorts of different explanations.
It would go on to become considered a theory of
everything for geology, for earth science, in much the same
way that our understanding of the atom is like explains
you know, quantum mechanics or vice versa. It was a
really big deal that he came up with this, but
(21:28):
it was not well received at first, as we'll see,
like he was not considered a genius in his time.
People ridicule them essentially, and his whole idea was very
quickly forgotten for several decades until he was pretty much
proven right. But in that book, The Origin of the
Continents and Oceans, he's saying, not only did the continents
(21:51):
move apart, because they used to form this super continent
called Pangaea, all the land they're still moving around today.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
All the Victorians and I'm sorry these would be Edwardians.
Maybe we're like, nah, I've stood still for like an
hour at a stretch and I could not tell we
were moving, So we're not moving. And he's like, no, really,
trust me. The continents are still moving. It explains everything.
How about earthquakes. They're like, well, it's God putting his
finger on Antarctica. He's like, no, it's actually these plates
(22:23):
sliding against one another. He's wrong. And they just kind
of went back and forth like this until Wegner died
in nineteen thirty in a blizzard.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Wow. Really really shot right to the ending there. So
the other thing that was pretty brilliant was he was like, well,
not only you know, maybe we can't stand back. There's
no room big enough to where we can stand back
and see how exactly that puzzle might fit. But what
we can do because you know, under this theory of
(22:54):
continental drift, we can look at the fossil record and
look at different speciological phenomenon and that is part of
the puzzle as well, Like if we match up this
place with that place, maybe in our mind's eye we
can envision how they used to fit together. Even though
it's not as tidy as Madagascar off the coast of Africa.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
It's so cool. He was so he was a climate
or a meteorologist and a geophysicist, right. He was a
sharp dude. He took paleoclimatological data. I think there was
like a fern species that he was tracking. There was
glacier glacier coverage I guess, like evidence of old glacier coverage,
(23:35):
and then species and fossils. And he would take all
this and basically say, okay, well this fits here, and
then this range now connects from you know, India to
North Africa. That explains that that would fit. And he
figured out not only did the continents fit together exactly
how they would fit together, and not by geography, but
(23:56):
by all of this evidence, all this data he had
and pair it up. And so, I mean, he really
did some amazing work. And again like people were just like,
we don't believe what you're saying. And then in the
fifties and sixties, apparently, as nat Geo puts it, as
we got more technologically advanced in warfare, we started to
(24:18):
confirm Wegner's theories inadvertently, like when they were trying to
detect submarines using magnetometers, or when they used seismographs to
detect nuclear testing elsewhere in the world. These things actually
inadvertently turned up evidence that, oh, my gosh, the continents
actually are moving, and they're moving today, and Wagner was right,
(24:41):
let's go dig them up and shake his hand.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Yeah. And not only that, but now we know that
Pangaea wasn't even Pangea is just the most recent super continent, right,
there were super continents before that, because before Pangaea, there
were obviously separate continents that came together to form Pangaea,
and those continents had broken off from the previous super
continent that we call Panotia that was about six hundred
(25:05):
million years ago, and there was one before that called Rodinia,
who was that like a billion years ago? And Earth
has had lamb ass for about three billion years. So
if you're looking at this on that timeline, this is
pretty quick movement. It's not to us today. It was
it like a half an inch a year or something, or.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Roughly one and a half centimeter or something like that.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Yeah, it's you know, that's cooking if you look at
it on that kind of timeline exactly.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
So what we've arrived to today, Chuck, is called plate tectonics,
and it's essentially so Wagner's theory was continental drift, that
the continent's drift, and they were like, well, how Wagner,
He's like, huh yeah, well, finally with plate tectonics, we've
arrived at how we still don't know exactly what the
mechanism is, but what we figured out is that below
the Earth's crust, below the what's called the Lyssa sphere.
(25:56):
It's the crust in the uppermost mantle, the really thick
hard stuff. Yeah, that's about sixty miles or one hundred
kilometers thick, take your choice. There's something called the isthenosphere,
and it's like molten it's viscous, it's liquidish, and it's
separated from the lithosphere so that the lithosphere can move
(26:18):
about on it.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Yeah. Right, it's like the oil yes, sort of, hm.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
Exactly, oil all bearings WD forty all mixed together. That's
what the lithosphere is moving around on. So now we
know how it could happen. We still don't know exactly
what creates the motion in the ocean, but we do
know that this is what it's based on. One way
or another. This is what it's based on. And it's
(26:45):
possibly because of the convective currents coming from the center
of Earth towards the outer crust and mantle.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Yeah. And Johns Hopkins University a few years ago in
twenty nineteen said this has been going on for about
two and a half billion years. Yeah, which tracks with
the other you know super continents we were talking about.
And I guess this was h This is a professor
from the University of Florida named Ray Russo, an associate
(27:14):
professor that talked about the Earth being what you call
it a quote, large scale heat engine and you know,
like we talked about that just big hot ball of
magma and so you know, all this heat coming from
all these different things throughout these you know, you know,
hundreds of thousands and millions of years, is gonna try.
Heat's going to try to go from warm to cold.
(27:36):
It's going to flow from a warm area to a
cold area, right, And if the heat is on the
interior of the Earth, it's going to try to move outward,
and in fact does towards the cold surface of the Earth.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Yeah, what's neat is the Earth still hasn't cooled off
from when it was formed almost five billion years ago.
It may have by now, I don't know if it
would have or not. But the thing that keeps it going,
that keeps it hot is well left over heat radioactive
decay of all of these amazing atoms and elements that
are in the core. They are under such intense pressure
(28:10):
that they just create more heat, and that creates more
pressure and so on and so forth, and you've got
more and more radioactive decay. And then also just the compression,
the gravitational compression is so great it actually produces temperatures.
That's some pressure right there, right, And so all this
heat is emanating, like you said, outward toward the colder surface,
(28:30):
and as it does, it carries the heat energy with it.
As it gets toward the top, it starts to cool off,
and he goes, oh, here, I go back down because
the cooler stuff sinks, it's less dense, it's less buoyant
than heat. Then the warm stuff that's coming up from
the core, and then that stuff gets heated up and
comes back up. And what I've just described as a
convective current, it's the same thing that you get when
(28:51):
you look at one of those awesome see through glass
cookware pots from the early eighties. When the water's bubbling.
That's a convective current. It's the same thing. Yes, the water,
the bubbles of water trying to get away from the
heat source. They're rising. As they get toward the top,
they cool and they come back down. And that's exactly
what they're saying is happening, they being today's scientists, is
(29:15):
coming from the core moving like that moves like all
the molten junk that's in that four hundred miles of
a cenosphere. And as that's moving, they think that that
is acting like some sort of maybe conveyor belt or
something that moves the plates around. So we know they
move on the athenosphere, and they think the convective currents
(29:36):
are possibly the mechanism that actually moves them.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
Yeah, and there's this other theory called slab pool. You
were talking about those oceanic plates sinking of the to
the less dense plates below them, and you know, just
think about when you're pulling a tablecloth off of a table.
It's basically saying, hey, the tablecloth's coming, but so is
that dinner plate that's sitting on the table cloth. You're
(30:00):
coming with me, right, And that's what slab poll is
basically at point I think now I said point five
point six inches per year is the average speed. Although
science isn't fully in agreement on if things are going
faster now if they're going slower, but they have figured
out that things are still moving and as these plates
(30:22):
are close to each other, there's going to be three
different ways which they're going to interact, and that's going
to help cause planet Earth. Basically, divergent boundaries obviously are
when they are diverging, when they're moving away from each other,
and you're going to find earthquakes a lot along these areas.
(30:43):
We talked about this in earthquakes and volcanoes and super volcanoes.
So it's a bit of a refresher, sure, but that's
a divergent boundary. The other two are convergent. That's obviously
when things are going toward one another, and that's where
you're going to get those mountain range. Mountain ranges when
when two continents are gonna hit one another, they're gonna
buckle up and either go up or down, so they
(31:04):
you're either going to get a mountain range or something
like the Mariana trench on the ocean floor. Right, And
then you have transform plate boundaries, and that's when things
are not moving away or toward each other. They're just
sort of generally happily side by side, going by one
another very slowly, saying, hey, how you doing. We might
(31:26):
be cracking apart here and there as we touch one another,
but we're not smashing against one another very slowly. And
you're also going to find earthquakes here along these fault lines.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Yeah, I say we take a break because I mean
you mentioned like volcanoes and earthquakes and all that happening.
There's a lot of action that happens thanks to plate tectonics,
and in fact, it turns out that life actually may
not be able to exist on Earth were it not
for plate tectonics. They're that important.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Let's do it, definitely.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
I'm not.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
I want to learn about a terror sort and college verdactyl.
How to take a perfect.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
Is gone?
Speaker 1 (32:11):
That's another hunt. The Lizzie.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
Everything word up, Jerry, Okay, Chuck. So one thing I
wanted to mention is tectonic is a strange word, and
it sounds super futuristic and technological. It is actually a
very old medieval word that was used uh as what
(32:36):
you would call a builder or a carpenter. So plate
tectonics is the actual process of building Earth, and that's
a really apt name for it, because that's what's going
on with plate tectonics, because when all that magma starts
to come up, it doesn't just move the plates. At
places where there's a gap between the plates. That magma
comes up and comes out, and as it does and cools,
(32:58):
it forms new rock, essentially Earth, and over the course
of millions and millions and millions of years, that moves
up and out and over and does all sorts of
other cool things until it's eventually recycled back into magma
where it will be heated and eventually brought back up
as new magma to form new continental crust. So tectonic
(33:19):
is a really great word for this whole process.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Yeah, totally. And you were talking about and or I
guess I was talking about the fact that we spoke
about volcanoes and how they form in volcanoes and super volcanoes, right,
But as a refresher, these plates are causing you know,
they're moving around, and when there's a break in the crust,
that's basically like an event for all that hotness underneath
(33:46):
and that lava to come out or to erupt. This
is what I'm going to recommend my second movie of
the day. May have talked about it before, but the
documentary Fire of Love is amazing. It's about volcanoes. It's
about this couple, these volcano hunters. Okay, and it is
one of the most amazing some of the most amazing
(34:07):
footage I've ever seen in my life. Is this sixteen
millimeter film footage that this couple shot years and years ago,
that this current documentarian has put together in the form
of Fire of Love. Okay, you even would love it.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
All right, I'll check it out. Yeah, is it even
better footage than Joe getting spit out of the volcano
that he just jumped in, and Joe versus the volcano,
because that was a pretty amazing site.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
It's pretty amazing that Noah pony Woo in this one.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
Okay, So I haven't seen that movie in a while.
I hope it holds up.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
It does.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
Okay. So, as I was saying, there's a lot of
stuff that the plate tectonics do in addition to volcanoes,
you're like volcanoes, big woop again, this is how new
crust is formed. Like all that magma comes up out
of these vents or even on land and forms new
land or new undersea crust. Right, Yeah, that also does
(35:02):
all sorts of other things too, Like when that magma
comes up, it's bringing all sorts of minerals and elements
and all sorts of crazy superheated stuff that's really reactive
and ready to just party essentially when it comes at
shooting out of these magma vents. And it actually I
did not realize this. One of the things that under
sea volcanoes are responsible for is the balancing the ocean's salinity.
(35:26):
I never thought, like, where did the salt come from?
It comes from the magma that's spitting out at the
bottom of the ocean.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
Yeah, and we came from there, and so it's no
coincidence that our blood has about the same salinity as seawater.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
Yeah. Pretty cool. And then on land, those same openings
down to the magma chambers below what we typically think
of as volcanoes, when they erupt, they create new land too.
They replenish land, they replenish soil over time. They so, yes,
there was a there's a direct connection between the volcanoes
(36:04):
that are formed by plate boundaries and life on Earth.
But it gets even more arcane than that.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
Yeah, for sure. You know we mentioned earthquakes. It's also
no coincidence that we're gonna find you know, earthquakes don't
happen everywhere. They are clustered around these tectonic plate boundaries
and when they press together, when those plates move, and
for them, it's a sudden movement. That energy's got to
go somewhere, and that is what an earthquake is. We
(36:32):
should do one on the fault lines, like the San
Andreas fault, maybe the most famous fault line.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
I feel like the rock did that. It's done.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
That's funny. What else, what about those What about the rocks,
the undersea rocks.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
So remember when I said that they used to and
probably still do have magnetometers like undersea to detect submarines. Well,
this is actually one reason they figured out that that
is right, and that it's plate tectonics doing it. They
inadvertently detected that if you go along the seafloor on
either side of a ridge, you're going to find that
(37:10):
your compass goes haywire. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
And the reason why is because as that magma comes
up from the vent in the middle of the undersea
ridge and spills out over there's some minerals in there
that actually kind of clock the north pole right, like
the minerals are magnet episode is really really interesting. I
(37:34):
went back and listened to it again and it's even
more difficult than I remember trying to explain it, but
just suffice to say that there's minerals that align themselves
with the north pole, and in effect, when they become rock,
they record where the north pole was. Wow, Earth's magnetic
north pole sometimes switches with the South pole. It can
(37:57):
wander throughout Earth and end up at the opposite se
and depending on when those rocks were formed, from the
undersea vent, it will record where that north pole was,
and so over the course of millions and millions of years,
I think the poles flip every one to three hundred
thousand years something like that. Those new ridges that are
created are going to get pushed further and further out
(38:19):
from the vent, so that if you went over them
with a compass, you will see that they just keep
flipping back and forth, marking each time that the north
pole changed direction.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
Amazing, I think so too.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
And they're like, well, the only the only thing that
explains this is that the the the continents are actually
pushing apart. They're forming new continents that's coming out of
the vent, and as it cools, it's getting pushed apart
by new stuff. Hence the plate tectonics theory seems pretty accurate.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
Yeah, and you know, it has an effect on the
overall climate too, because we tend to think when we
think about plate tectonics, we think about the land masses
that are moving, But that's also going to affect the
shape of the ocean, and very much did inform the
shape of the ocean, you know, two and a half
billion years ago whenever all this stuff started because it,
you know, used to be what did they call it,
(39:12):
not a super ocean, a.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
Panhosia, I can't remember, but basically super ocean, like all
the ocean, yeah, all the ocean.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
But the current shape, Like what I'm about to say
might sound silly, like the current shape of the ocean
prevents the equator and the poles from having like wildly
different temperatures. They have pretty widely different temperatures according to us,
like humans walking around on the planet. But if it
wasn't for the fact that it was that the oceans
(39:42):
ended up shaped in such a way where they are supplying,
like always supplying this warm equatorial water toward those polar regions,
the difference in temperature between the poles and the equator
would be I don't even know, it would be. It
would be crazy how big that disparity would be.
Speaker 2 (40:02):
It'd be a mess.
Speaker 1 (40:03):
Yeah. It wouldn't be like, oh, it's like hot at
the equator and boy it's super cold there. It would
be you know, I wish somebody knew what hundreds of degrees.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
I don't know, but I do know that really weird
stuff happens along temperature gradient. So you would not want
something like that it would not be hospitable for us.
Speaker 1 (40:19):
Yeah, but all of the ocean currents, and because of
the way the oceans are shape, because of the way
the continents broke apart, influences climate all over the place.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
Yeah, it carries water from here to there, and yeah,
it's pretty interesting. And again you can trace it all
the way back to the movement of the plates. There's
also carbon dioxide. The amount of CO two that's in
the atmosphere at any given point in time also serves
as a global thermostat, right, and that if there's a
(40:50):
lot of CO two in the atmosphere, it warms up
kind of like what's going on right now. And when
there's a lot of CO two in the atmosphere, the
water sea levels rise, and as the sea levels rise,
rocks are weathered and a lot of the CO two
in the atmosphere gets sucked out of it into water
to form limestone and essentially gets locked away from the atmosphere.
(41:11):
And as this happens enough over enough time, the atmosphere cools.
As the atmosphere cools, sea levels lower again, and the
opposite process starts to happen. Those rocks that are exposed
now get weathered and that CO two enters the atmosphere again.
And then another way that the plate tectonics influence. This
is the stuff that gets formed into limestone, settles to
(41:33):
the bottom of the ocean and it's just trapped. It's
trapped CO two, but as it forms part of a
plate that ends up back down into the core, into
the stenosphere and gets heated up and turned into magma again.
When it comes out of the volcano, it brings all
that CO two with it, releasing it in an atmosphere.
It's a really long it's the carbon cycle, and over
(41:53):
really long geological time scales, it keeps the Earth from
getting too warm or too cold. It's a thermostat. And again,
without plate tectonics, this would not be possible, and we
probably would not be here today talking about this.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
Yeah. Absolutely. If you're wondering where, you know, if things
are moving even that slowly, where might we be in
a million years from now or something like that. That's
a good question. And there are people that are studying
exactly that their computer simulations. Obviously that scientists can run
to see which way we're going and how fast we're going,
(42:29):
and what might bump into what at what point, And
they have estimated some things they you know, they're they're
good enough now to know and say out loud like, hey, listen,
this is a guest. Still we have no idea what's
going to happen really in a million years or one
hundred million years, but they're saying what we think might
(42:50):
happen is one day, just as there were previous super
continents before Pangaea, we will all be reunited again. And
maybe that's when humanity really comes together as one super
continent in about two hundred and fifty million years. And
they've already pre named it Pangaea proxima, which I guess
(43:10):
is just you know, what they're approximating. It will be
like there'll be new mountain ranges. And in fact, they
think once Africa eventually finishes going north and hits Europe,
then that may be like if you think the Himalayas
or something, way, do you get a load of like
the mountain range that's coming in one hundred million years.
Speaker 2 (43:27):
Yeah, The Rock needs to do a movie about that.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
I mean, that's probably in development already, probably waiting on
the Sack strike to finish Pangaea proxima. But the Rock's
going to get in in the middle and.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
Yeah, yeah, you just sold the movie. Yep, so you
got anything else?
Speaker 1 (43:50):
I got nothing else. This is really fascinating. I mean,
point six inches a year doesn't sound like a lot,
but when you're talking about plate tectonics, it's it's moving.
Speaker 2 (43:59):
Yeah, a lot happens. Well, if you were jazzed by this,
you can go search plate tectonics on the website HowStuffWorks
dot Com or anywhere on the Internet and it will
bring up all sorts of neat little earth science lessons.
And since I said that, it's time for listener mail,
all right.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
I'm gonna call this don't listen to us because we're
not vets. Because on the White Dog Poop Short Stuff,
we talked about cooking your own dog food, which a
lot of vets rowed in said, don't do that unless
you're really have it dialed in with a pet nutritionist.
And we talked about grain free. I mentioned grain free
because one of our dogs required it because of an
(44:40):
autoimmune issue, Sweet Buckley, and I was under the misinterpretation
or the misunderstanding rather that that was just sort of
good for all dogs. And they were like, no, grain
free can lead to cardiac abnormalities. Du So, we heard
from lots of vets. This is from a very frustrated
(45:01):
VET and stuff you should know. Fam. Jeez all, it says, Hey, guys,
your white dog poop episode Dropy Bonker's pet. Nutrition is
a hot topic. Unfortunately. Not only should people not be
getting advice from you, but there are a lot of
people on the internet, a lot of quacks even that
(45:21):
within their own industry, they're saying that you shouldn't listen to.
Sure home cooked diets are difficult to do. We see
all sorts of medical abnormalities from unbalanced diets. It should
be only done under the guidance of the veterinary nutritionists.
Please do not even look for random recipes online, even
if they're written by a VET, because of the quacks
in our industry.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
I want to just stick up for my wife here
and be like, yes, she's got that covered. She's not
some dummy who just looks up random recipes on the internet.
Speaker 1 (45:49):
Oh are you guys making your own food?
Speaker 2 (45:51):
Yeah, she cooks for momo quite a bit. Okay, I
think that's what they're responding to as I mentioned that.
Speaker 1 (45:57):
Yeah, I think you mentioned it. But one of my
friends is doing it, and I texted right away and
I was like, hey, dude, stop cooking for your dog
until you get it down.
Speaker 2 (46:04):
Yeah, I mean, and that's right. You should talk to
you a nutritionists. There's also like nutrition info sites, like
legitimate sites that kind of help you balance what you're
cooking for your dog. But yes, random recipes on the
internet are not a good idea unless you're cooking like
chicken Diane or something.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
I think he was under the impression like, hey, give
him some fruits and veggies and protein and like you're
done right, And that's just not the case. And in fact,
we're not one to buzzmarket too much. But this vet
said balance dot it is a great option if you're
looking for legitimate recipes and formulations and supplements.
Speaker 2 (46:40):
I think that's the one that you me went and
found initially.
Speaker 1 (46:44):
Oh sure, it is right. Grain free is also dangerous,
has been linked to dilated cardiomyopathy, still a developing area
of research, but grain sensitivity is super rare in dogs.
Grain is fine for the vast majority of dogs. So
(47:05):
when you recommend a food, look for a food that
is compliant with w SAVA guidelines. I think we can
all agree These are pretty reasonable things to want in
a pet food company. Most of the food on the
shelf does not meet these standards, though, so people should
talk to their vets. I'm thankful you didn't touch on
raw food, which is trash, or the idea that vets
(47:26):
are paid by big pet food because we're not. That
is from a frustrated vet. I'm not even gonna say
stuff you should know fan anymore.
Speaker 2 (47:35):
I have to say, yeah, you me went online and
got her WSVA certification over the course of many years.
Heck yeah, so yeah, she got it all covered everybody.
Speaker 1 (47:45):
Of course you do in your house?
Speaker 2 (47:47):
Do I sign defense? Who was that for? They didn't
even sign their name, and then they didn't sign their name.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
They signed it as a frustrated vet, So I took
that to mean that's how they wanted to addressed.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
I see, well, what was their email.
Speaker 1 (48:02):
Address, doctor quack at dot com.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
Okay, thank you doctor quack, I mean frustrated vet. We
appreciate that we know that you are looking out for
all the animal babies out there. Hats off to you
for that, and we would never accuse you of being
owned by big PetFood. No, that's just crazy talk. If
you want to get in touch with us, anonymously or
otherwise and say, you, guys, stink is stink to high Heaven.
(48:29):
We'd love to hear that kind of thing. You can
wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send
it off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (48:40):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (48:42):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Q Josh Trumpet. But you know what that means, everybody.
We are going back on tour again. We are hitting
the road next year in January for our annual Pacific
Northwest and Northern California Swing, and we will be at
the Paramount Theater in Seattle on January twenty fourth, Revolution
Hall and Portland on the twenty fifth, and our home
(00:22):
away from home at San Francisco's Sketch Fest on January
twenty six.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Yeah, we'll be at the Sydney Goldstein Theater again. Everybody
a great place, that's right. If you want tickets and information,
you can go to linktree slash sysk and it's got
all that jam. You can go to our website stuff
youshould do dot com. It's got all that jam. And
we will see all of you guys in January with
bells on.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and fucking
Jerry's here too, and we're just moving slowly against one another,
starting static in the slowest possible way.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Yeah. Perhaps one day will be a mountain.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Range yeah, or a deep deep drench hmm.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
All right, you get down there. I'll be up in
the mountains, all right.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
When I'm down there, I'll be like, Hello, how's the
weather up there?
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Jerry'll be uh, you know her nickname will sea level
Roland sea level.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Yeah, but we need to spell it with just the
letter C. Right, that's more nickname me.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Oh no, that sounds mean all of a sudden seed level.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Oh I didn't mean it like that.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Yeah, like Jerry's the sea level producer.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Right, Wow, that was just subconscious, Sorry, Jerry. So since
Jerry said that was okay, I say we just go
ahead and move on because we're making all these plate
tectonic jokes for a good reason. Chuck. We're going to
talk today in part about plate tectonics, that's.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Right, But first we're going to go back before that.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Yeah, so I included this. I coupled this together from
a bunch of different stuff, including our old Vulnerable House
Stuff work site, net Geo, Live Science, I go wrong there,
Heritage Daily, Good Stuff, Great You of Calgary. Yeah, the
U stands for Upwardly Mobile Mob of Calgary. Uh huh.
(02:30):
And then Wonderum Daily, which I hadn't heard of before,
but it's a cool little site.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Is it a wondrium on the daily, on the daily.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
So yeah, I coupled this together and I wanted to
put this in there about the idea of what people
used to think of I guess I'm fascinated with that
lately because I just did a whole episode on on
what people used to think before the scientific method. I
feel like we talked about something similar in another episode,
and then now we've got this. But this, to me
(03:00):
is like we're right on the precipice of essentially folklore
and then scientific understanding. This is essentially like the dividing
line what we're looking at right here in this first
little anecdote. And then the other reason I thought it
was really significant is because I think Madam Blovotsky, who
(03:20):
kind of comes up in a second, she would play
really well today, everybody'd be like, what kind of bs
are you selling? I want to give you some of
my money, Like she would be a featured like Goop contributor.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Basically, yeah, yes, you're talking about Helena Blavatsky aka Madam Blovotsky,
the Russian occultist from the eighteen hundreds who was a
member and co founder in fact of the Theosophical society
that sounds like it would play these days for sure,
for sure. And something that keep wanting sleep Blatovsky. Blavatsky
(03:58):
was going on about back then was something called Lemuria.
And we'll get to how that came about in a
second as well. But this is the idea that a
lot of theosophists, huh thought that, Hey listen, Religion has tried,
science has tried, but nobody still here in the nineteenth
(04:19):
century has fully explained how we got here and what's
going on on planet Earth. But I am able to
because I am the great Blavatsky, and I have talent
and insight into the times that came before.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Yeah, through psychic gifts, right, So just drop.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Your rubles in a bucket and I'll tell you exactly.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
So. She had I think, multiple books, but in one
in particular that came out in nineteen eighty eight, called
The Secret Doctrine, she talked about how there were seven
root races. This is another thing people were very preoccupied with. Oh, yeah,
where we came from? Yeah, And the reason why is
because just a couple decades before, Darwin had published on
(05:03):
the origin of the species. And it's really difficult to
get across like the revolution and understanding that book brought right,
and that made people fascinated like, wait, okay, well where
did we come from? If God just didn't go boop
seven thousand years ago, where did we come from? Let's
figure that out. And again, this was at a time
when science was very much mishmashed with the superstition, I guess,
(05:26):
so you could really get some play with the superstitious stuff.
And that's exactly what Blovotski was doing. She was saying,
check this out, this place called Lemuria. It's a lost continent.
Everybody loves those, and it's where one of the three
of seven root races came from.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Yeah, the third root race, in which giant hermaphroditic egg
laying humans pre sex organ humans lived along with the dinosaurs.
And everyone was like, hey, sounds pretty good to me.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Sounds good. Take my money.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Yeah. So it made me wonder too if some of
this obsession with where we came from too, because you know,
we'll learn later. Other people talked about, you know, some
of the original races, like with some of that rooted
in things like you know, horrors to come like, we're
the original people, so we're the ones who count.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Yeah, I think it definitely was finds its roots in
that era, that whole fascination at this time.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Yes, okay, I thought so.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
And also there's something that comes up in another episode.
We're going to talk about scientific romanticism, which I guess
this is probably kind of an example of. But that's like, yeah,
not only are we uncovering like this history in the
deep past, we're uncovering my ethnicity's history in the deep past.
And all we're gonna find is the most splendorous, spectacular
(06:50):
examples of how we're actually the survivors of a lost
civilization that was even grander than anything we can understand. Now,
that's another thing that people were at the same time.
So it's pop culture, but again it's kind of dressed
up like it's following the same lines as science, but
it's not really science. Fortunately, at the same time, there
were like legitimate scientists working. It's just they were still
(07:13):
following blind alleys to some way, which I just I
want to press the pause button right here. I am
in no way suggesting that science is done, like we've reached.
Science is exactly perfect the way it is now. Yeah,
there's still plenty of problems with it, There's still lots
left to discover, and so by casting dispersions or shade
(07:36):
at this kind of situation back in the mid to
late nineteenth century, I'm not insinuating that our current reality
is vastly superior and perfect. I'm just saying at this
time there were big problems with science and pop culture meshing.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Yeah, and I'm glad you said that, But you've been
clear where you are on that through the years.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
I think, hey, we get new listeners every episode.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Now, that's a good point, and that's a lot easier
to say that than to say, go back and listen
to sixteen years worth of.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Stuff, right, or feel a bunch of angry emails?
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Yeah, we will never get those. After you said that
so Lemiria was not something that Blovotsky created, Lomia has
a well this will all tie into tectonic plates, believe
it or not. Yeah, just wait, just wait. It really
does in a very neat way spectacular. I love how
you did this. But there was a British zoologist named Philip.
(08:31):
I'm sorry, Philip. Philip is not a name that I
know of.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Phallic is in there, but who would name their kid Fallic.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Not Phyllis or Gary Goldman, the Great Comedian has a
great bit on Phyllis and that name being retired in
nineteen thirty three by the government.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Gary Goldman The Rock and Roll Part two, Guy.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Gary Golman g U. L. M. A. N. The Great
stand up Comedian, I got you anyway. Philip not Phyllis
or Philic Sclatter or Sclater wrote an essay in eighteen
sixty four called the Mammals of Madagascar. And this one
is sort of kind of funny when you think about
how Madagascar so clearly fits off of where it broke
(09:16):
off from Africa. But Slater didn't see that at the time.
He really wondered, like, hey, I'm looking at Madagascar. It's
right off the just right off the coast of Africa there,
and they have all these dozens of species of lemurs.
Yet Africa and India don't only have a few species
of lemur. He was wrong about that, even which isn't
the point. They didn't have any true lemurs. But he
(09:37):
was like, why is Madagascar just loaded with all these
lemurs and Africa so close has none. And he says,
here's what happened. There was a land bridge there and
it was once, you know, all connected, and I'm going
to call that big, you know, great continent lee Muria
after the lemur.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Yeah, he really liked leamers a lot. So this is
a lost continent. It includes a land bridge. And what
Sclater's doing here is what was kind of all the
scientific rage. It was like, okay, again, like we came
from apes, animals evolved from other animals. Let's take that
new worldview and figure out how that works. And he
(10:17):
couldn't figure out like how like similar species got it
out there eventually mm hmm could be separated by hundreds
of miles of water. The best explanation that he thought
was a land bridge that's just currently inundated with water.
And so, like you said, he came up with Lemuria
and that got very quickly deposited into the pop culture,
(10:39):
and people like Blovatsky and others were like, yep, Lamuria,
and then let's add to it so we can get
that goop money.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Yeah, And land bridges were just land bridges were the thing,
and here's the thing, and we'll, you know, we'll get
to some more of this in a minute. But like
they weren't totally off and all of this stuff. Like
they were on the right track for some of it,
some a little bit more than others. There was I
think a German biologist that you track down named Ernst
Heckel or Heckel, and he was like, hey, listen, Lemyria
(11:12):
was not only a thing, but that's where we all
came from. That was a cradle of humanity. There were
twelve varieties of men. Here we go with that stuff again. Yeah,
and we evolved from these ancient primates right there at
this place that is now you know, partially underwater.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Right. What's nuts about the whole thing, though, is that
that actually has happened before. There actually is at least
one and I'm sure there's plenty. It's not a lost continent,
but a lost pretty decent sized bit of land, yeah,
that is now covered by water that once held people
(11:51):
who lived there, and it's called Doggerland. And it's just
so nuts that, like these guys were off in their
interpretation of what they were seeing to explain species divergence.
And as we'll see, like fossil beds separated by an ocean,
but they still kind of match up on one coast
(12:11):
of Africa and one coast of South America, all these
things are trying to put together. They were on the
right track trying to explain it, but they were just
awful little bit and yet at the same time they
were explaining stuff that they didn't actually know really existed.
But did Does that make sense in a really roundabout way?
Speaker 1 (12:28):
Yeah, for sure. And when something like Doggerland happens where
you know, this was the land that was around basically
what we now know is the UK and it connected
to Europe. In nineteen thirty one, a fisherman pulled up
a barbed antler point, part of a weapon, basically part
of a harpoon that they were using twelve thousand years ago,
(12:49):
buried in Pete. They're like, well, wait a minute, Pete
isn't in the ocean. Pete's in the forest. Why would
it be twenty five miles out into the ocean. And
then they started poking around more and more in the
decades and they're like, oh, well this used to all
be land, and beneath the North Sea are canoes and
burial sites and all kinds of other things that we
(13:09):
can point to. Is like pretty good proof that, yeah,
this happens. There is land that used to be here
that is now beneath the sea at different places on
planet Earth.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
And I mean like a lot of land. This land
stretched out from all points that surrounded the UK and
stretched toward Europe, from southern Scandinavia to Brittany and France.
It was just connected and there were river beds and
all sorts of animals to hunt. It was just really cool.
And then over time, as the sea levels rose, it
became inundated, and then there was a landslide and under
(13:40):
sea landslide that really inundated it, and it was just
lost to history because the people running around there were
running around there, you know, no less than five thousand
years ago, maybe seven, so everyone forgot about it. But
one of the noteworthy things that I found just completely
fascinating is HG. Wells show off that he was set
(14:01):
an eighteen ninety seven book called The Story of the
Stone Age in exactly that place. He didn't call it
daughter Land, but he set his story in this land
that was now covered by water between the UK and Europe.
And it turned out about three or so decades later
that he was confirmed H. G.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Wells was a special human.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Yeah, pretty cool. So he actually managed to combine the
science and the speculation speculativeness of the age. But he
was never trying to say like, this is real, this
is a real book. He was like, this is fiction.
It's awesome.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
I like him for that.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
Didn't he write Didn't he write the original Invisible Man book?
Speaker 2 (14:46):
I think so?
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Yeah. I watched the I've been trying to watch some
scary movies in October and now in a November a bit,
and I watched that Invisible Man update from a few
years ago with Elizabeth Moss that I had never seen before.
You No, it's good, okay, and it's you know, it's
not the same story h. G. Wells put forward, but
it's it's you know, it's based sort of adapted from
(15:10):
that story. And it's actually really good and quite scary
and has a great ending.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Okay, good to know.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
So I recommend it.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Did you ever get around to watching the Juwan origins miniseries?
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Now you gotta email me this stuff. I don't remember
anything after I leave the studio. Scary.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
So you know the Grudge that Sarah Michelle Geller was
in in the nineties.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Sure it was based on Well I know the movie
and I know it was based on an original Japanese
film right.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Right called Juwan, and so somebody went back and made
a prequel to the Japanese version. Oh okay, that explains
how everything got that way. Yes, it is so scary that, like,
I will leave the light on from you know, the
family room to the bedroom as I'm going to bed
(15:58):
and then turn it off remotely. I just won't turn
it off and walk through the dark. It is that scary.
It's awesome.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Yeah, I didn't watch as many this year because the
movie crushesn't around. I used to like really heavily watch
a lot of horror movies in October, but only caught
a few this year. And uh, I still I enjoy
being scared like that and being in another part of
your house and having to navigate your way back in
the dark, Even in my fifties, it's always scary and
kind of funny. Like, of course, I know that the
(16:24):
supernatural being from the movie I just watched isn't in
this all way, but but do I.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Really could be exactly? I know?
Speaker 1 (16:31):
All right, Uh, off topic, let's take a break a sure,
let's and we'll be right back.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
Definitely should large holds.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Of chucking r y s k.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
I want to learn about a terror's hortan college, horrid actyle,
how to take a berg, all about fractal think is gone,
that's a little hunt, the Lizzie Border murders, and all right, everything,
and jo should.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Now word up Jerry. All right. So when we broke
actually we were talking about horror movies. But a little
bit before that, I was talking some about how it's
a little frust not frustrating, but maybe kind of funny
that they didn't put together that Madagascar so clearly broke
off from Africa and fits very nicely if you just
(17:23):
shove it back together right there in its spot. And
as I was studying today, I have my light up
globe on my desk, and you know, when you look
at that thing, my my medium smart eight year old
daughter can say, hey, Daddy, you know, it looks like
Africa could fit into South America, and it looks like
(17:43):
all of these things sort of could be puzzled together
to form a larger super continents. A medium smart but
she knows the word super continent.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
That's pretty smart.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
But it's pretty it seems pretty obvious to us now.
But it was all about land bridges back then and
sort of this idea of super continent came about a
little slower.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Yeah, because if you stand on any continent and just
stand around and wait, you will not perceive that you're
moving even though you are moving. So they were not
aware of the fact that the continents moved, and so
of course that wasn't what they went with. They went
with land bridges. Again, it's a very sensible explanation. How
(18:27):
did one thing get to another when it's covered by oceans. Well,
that there was land that used to be above the
ocean and they just migrated across. It's happened before. There's
dogger land, there's the bearing land bridge, all that stuff.
But the idea that the continents moved, that just was
not around until another guy came along, who will talk
about in a second. But there was like little inklings
(18:48):
of this idea that that just weren't There was like
a light bulb that was just about to come on,
but it just burns out right before, right before it
fully comes on. That's kind of what was happening with
the idea that the continent's moved. And again, just to
reiterate the whole reason people are thinking about this stuff
is because fossil beds suddenly take on new meaning. If
(19:11):
evolution and natural selection exists, climatological evidence suddenly takes on
new meaning. Why species are similar but separated from one
continent to another, it takes on significance. And so they're
looking around their world with brand new fresh eyes and
trying to answer these questions. And they were coming up
with all these different meta narratives and on the way
(19:34):
to the idea that we have now that the continents
actually move and they actually formed one large super continent
in the past. Like I was saying, there were a
few people who came along and almost had it.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
Yeah, the idea of continental contraction was one pretty good
idea and an alternate theory, you know, pre tectonic plate shifts,
and that is that the Earth was a huge magma ball,
which is true, and that as that thing cooled down
over time, the land that it formed trunk basically as
(20:08):
things might do when they cool, and the continents broke apart.
So that was that was really headed toward the right
idea until the end, basically for sure. Another thing that
they had trouble kind of explaining were things like mountains,
Like I kind of hitt it around the beginning. One
of us will be a mountain range. They did have
theories that parts of the Earth were, you know, breaking
(20:31):
off from one another and could go underneath other parts,
but they just hadn't quite arrived there until Alfred Wegner
came along in nineteen twelve and published a book called
The Origin of Continents and Oceans where he was kind
of like, hey, wait a minute, everyone, this looks like
a giant puzzle if you stand back and look at
a map and you're just not standing back far enough, like,
(20:53):
get get over on the other side of the room.
And then everyone did, and they go, oh wow, and
this helps explain things like you were talking about why
the coast of Africa and the coast of Brazil might
share fossils even though they're separated by such a vast ocean.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Yeah, or share species are all sorts of different explanations.
It would go on to become considered a theory of
everything for geology, for earth science, in much the same
way that our understanding of the atom is like explains
you know, quantum mechanics or vice versa. It was a
really big deal that he came up with this, but
(21:28):
it was not well received at first, as we'll see,
like he was not considered a genius in his time.
People ridicule them essentially, and his whole idea was very
quickly forgotten for several decades until he was pretty much
proven right. But in that book, The Origin of the
Continents and Oceans, he's saying, not only did the continents
(21:51):
move apart, because they used to form this super continent
called Pangaea, all the land they're still moving around today.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
All the Victorians and I'm sorry these would be Edwardians.
Maybe we're like, nah, I've stood still for like an
hour at a stretch and I could not tell we
were moving, So we're not moving. And he's like, no, really,
trust me. The continents are still moving. It explains everything.
How about earthquakes. They're like, well, it's God putting his
finger on Antarctica. He's like, no, it's actually these plates
(22:23):
sliding against one another. He's wrong. And they just kind
of went back and forth like this until Wegner died
in nineteen thirty in a blizzard.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Wow. Really really shot right to the ending there. So
the other thing that was pretty brilliant was he was like, well,
not only you know, maybe we can't stand back. There's
no room big enough to where we can stand back
and see how exactly that puzzle might fit. But what
we can do because you know, under this theory of
(22:54):
continental drift, we can look at the fossil record and
look at different speciological phenomenon and that is part of
the puzzle as well, Like if we match up this
place with that place, maybe in our mind's eye we
can envision how they used to fit together. Even though
it's not as tidy as Madagascar off the coast of Africa.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
It's so cool. He was so he was a climate
or a meteorologist and a geophysicist, right. He was a
sharp dude. He took paleoclimatological data. I think there was
like a fern species that he was tracking. There was
glacier glacier coverage I guess, like evidence of old glacier coverage,
(23:35):
and then species and fossils. And he would take all
this and basically say, okay, well this fits here, and
then this range now connects from you know, India to
North Africa. That explains that that would fit. And he
figured out not only did the continents fit together exactly
how they would fit together, and not by geography, but
(23:56):
by all of this evidence, all this data he had
and pair it up. And so, I mean, he really
did some amazing work. And again like people were just like,
we don't believe what you're saying. And then in the
fifties and sixties, apparently, as nat Geo puts it, as
we got more technologically advanced in warfare, we started to
(24:18):
confirm Wegner's theories inadvertently, like when they were trying to
detect submarines using magnetometers, or when they used seismographs to
detect nuclear testing elsewhere in the world. These things actually
inadvertently turned up evidence that, oh, my gosh, the continents
actually are moving, and they're moving today, and Wagner was right,
(24:41):
let's go dig them up and shake his hand.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Yeah. And not only that, but now we know that
Pangaea wasn't even Pangea is just the most recent super continent, right,
there were super continents before that, because before Pangaea, there
were obviously separate continents that came together to form Pangaea,
and those continents had broken off from the previous super
continent that we call Panotia that was about six hundred
(25:05):
million years ago, and there was one before that called Rodinia,
who was that like a billion years ago? And Earth
has had lamb ass for about three billion years. So
if you're looking at this on that timeline, this is
pretty quick movement. It's not to us today. It was
it like a half an inch a year or something, or.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Roughly one and a half centimeter or something like that.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Yeah, it's you know, that's cooking if you look at
it on that kind of timeline exactly.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
So what we've arrived to today, Chuck, is called plate tectonics,
and it's essentially so Wagner's theory was continental drift, that
the continent's drift, and they were like, well, how Wagner,
He's like, huh yeah, well, finally with plate tectonics, we've
arrived at how we still don't know exactly what the
mechanism is, but what we figured out is that below
the Earth's crust, below the what's called the Lyssa sphere.
(25:56):
It's the crust in the uppermost mantle, the really thick
hard stuff. Yeah, that's about sixty miles or one hundred
kilometers thick, take your choice. There's something called the isthenosphere,
and it's like molten it's viscous, it's liquidish, and it's
separated from the lithosphere so that the lithosphere can move
(26:18):
about on it.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Yeah. Right, it's like the oil yes, sort of, hm.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
Exactly, oil all bearings WD forty all mixed together. That's
what the lithosphere is moving around on. So now we
know how it could happen. We still don't know exactly
what creates the motion in the ocean, but we do
know that this is what it's based on. One way
or another. This is what it's based on. And it's
(26:45):
possibly because of the convective currents coming from the center
of Earth towards the outer crust and mantle.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Yeah. And Johns Hopkins University a few years ago in
twenty nineteen said this has been going on for about
two and a half billion years. Yeah, which tracks with
the other you know super continents we were talking about.
And I guess this was h This is a professor
from the University of Florida named Ray Russo, an associate
(27:14):
professor that talked about the Earth being what you call
it a quote, large scale heat engine and you know,
like we talked about that just big hot ball of
magma and so you know, all this heat coming from
all these different things throughout these you know, you know,
hundreds of thousands and millions of years, is gonna try.
Heat's going to try to go from warm to cold.
(27:36):
It's going to flow from a warm area to a
cold area, right, And if the heat is on the
interior of the Earth, it's going to try to move outward,
and in fact does towards the cold surface of the Earth.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Yeah, what's neat is the Earth still hasn't cooled off
from when it was formed almost five billion years ago.
It may have by now, I don't know if it
would have or not. But the thing that keeps it going,
that keeps it hot is well left over heat radioactive
decay of all of these amazing atoms and elements that
are in the core. They are under such intense pressure
(28:10):
that they just create more heat, and that creates more
pressure and so on and so forth, and you've got
more and more radioactive decay. And then also just the compression,
the gravitational compression is so great it actually produces temperatures.
That's some pressure right there, right, And so all this
heat is emanating, like you said, outward toward the colder surface,
(28:30):
and as it does, it carries the heat energy with it.
As it gets toward the top, it starts to cool off,
and he goes, oh, here, I go back down because
the cooler stuff sinks, it's less dense, it's less buoyant
than heat. Then the warm stuff that's coming up from
the core, and then that stuff gets heated up and
comes back up. And what I've just described as a
convective current, it's the same thing that you get when
(28:51):
you look at one of those awesome see through glass
cookware pots from the early eighties. When the water's bubbling.
That's a convective current. It's the same thing. Yes, the water,
the bubbles of water trying to get away from the
heat source. They're rising. As they get toward the top,
they cool and they come back down. And that's exactly
what they're saying is happening, they being today's scientists, is
(29:15):
coming from the core moving like that moves like all
the molten junk that's in that four hundred miles of
a cenosphere. And as that's moving, they think that that
is acting like some sort of maybe conveyor belt or
something that moves the plates around. So we know they
move on the athenosphere, and they think the convective currents
(29:36):
are possibly the mechanism that actually moves them.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
Yeah, and there's this other theory called slab pool. You
were talking about those oceanic plates sinking of the to
the less dense plates below them, and you know, just
think about when you're pulling a tablecloth off of a table.
It's basically saying, hey, the tablecloth's coming, but so is
that dinner plate that's sitting on the table cloth. You're
(30:00):
coming with me, right, And that's what slab poll is
basically at point I think now I said point five
point six inches per year is the average speed. Although
science isn't fully in agreement on if things are going
faster now if they're going slower, but they have figured
out that things are still moving and as these plates
(30:22):
are close to each other, there's going to be three
different ways which they're going to interact, and that's going
to help cause planet Earth. Basically, divergent boundaries obviously are
when they are diverging, when they're moving away from each other,
and you're going to find earthquakes a lot along these areas.
(30:43):
We talked about this in earthquakes and volcanoes and super volcanoes.
So it's a bit of a refresher, sure, but that's
a divergent boundary. The other two are convergent. That's obviously
when things are going toward one another, and that's where
you're going to get those mountain range. Mountain ranges when
when two continents are gonna hit one another, they're gonna
buckle up and either go up or down, so they
(31:04):
you're either going to get a mountain range or something
like the Mariana trench on the ocean floor. Right, And
then you have transform plate boundaries, and that's when things
are not moving away or toward each other. They're just
sort of generally happily side by side, going by one
another very slowly, saying, hey, how you doing. We might
(31:26):
be cracking apart here and there as we touch one another,
but we're not smashing against one another very slowly. And
you're also going to find earthquakes here along these fault lines.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Yeah, I say we take a break because I mean
you mentioned like volcanoes and earthquakes and all that happening.
There's a lot of action that happens thanks to plate tectonics,
and in fact, it turns out that life actually may
not be able to exist on Earth were it not
for plate tectonics. They're that important.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Let's do it, definitely.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
I'm not.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
I want to learn about a terror sort and college verdactyl.
How to take a perfect.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
Is gone?
Speaker 1 (32:11):
That's another hunt. The Lizzie.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
Everything word up, Jerry, Okay, Chuck. So one thing I
wanted to mention is tectonic is a strange word, and
it sounds super futuristic and technological. It is actually a
very old medieval word that was used uh as what
(32:36):
you would call a builder or a carpenter. So plate
tectonics is the actual process of building Earth, and that's
a really apt name for it, because that's what's going
on with plate tectonics, because when all that magma starts
to come up, it doesn't just move the plates. At
places where there's a gap between the plates. That magma
comes up and comes out, and as it does and cools,
(32:58):
it forms new rock, essentially Earth, and over the course
of millions and millions and millions of years, that moves
up and out and over and does all sorts of
other cool things until it's eventually recycled back into magma
where it will be heated and eventually brought back up
as new magma to form new continental crust. So tectonic
(33:19):
is a really great word for this whole process.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Yeah, totally. And you were talking about and or I
guess I was talking about the fact that we spoke
about volcanoes and how they form in volcanoes and super volcanoes, right,
But as a refresher, these plates are causing you know,
they're moving around, and when there's a break in the crust,
that's basically like an event for all that hotness underneath
(33:46):
and that lava to come out or to erupt. This
is what I'm going to recommend my second movie of
the day. May have talked about it before, but the
documentary Fire of Love is amazing. It's about volcanoes. It's
about this couple, these volcano hunters. Okay, and it is
one of the most amazing some of the most amazing
(34:07):
footage I've ever seen in my life. Is this sixteen
millimeter film footage that this couple shot years and years ago,
that this current documentarian has put together in the form
of Fire of Love. Okay, you even would love it.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
All right, I'll check it out. Yeah, is it even
better footage than Joe getting spit out of the volcano
that he just jumped in, and Joe versus the volcano,
because that was a pretty amazing site.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
It's pretty amazing that Noah pony Woo in this one.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
Okay, So I haven't seen that movie in a while.
I hope it holds up.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
It does.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
Okay. So, as I was saying, there's a lot of
stuff that the plate tectonics do in addition to volcanoes,
you're like volcanoes, big woop again, this is how new
crust is formed. Like all that magma comes up out
of these vents or even on land and forms new
land or new undersea crust. Right, Yeah, that also does
(35:02):
all sorts of other things too, Like when that magma
comes up, it's bringing all sorts of minerals and elements
and all sorts of crazy superheated stuff that's really reactive
and ready to just party essentially when it comes at
shooting out of these magma vents. And it actually I
did not realize this. One of the things that under
sea volcanoes are responsible for is the balancing the ocean's salinity.
(35:26):
I never thought, like, where did the salt come from?
It comes from the magma that's spitting out at the
bottom of the ocean.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
Yeah, and we came from there, and so it's no
coincidence that our blood has about the same salinity as seawater.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
Yeah. Pretty cool. And then on land, those same openings
down to the magma chambers below what we typically think
of as volcanoes, when they erupt, they create new land too.
They replenish land, they replenish soil over time. They so, yes,
there was a there's a direct connection between the volcanoes
(36:04):
that are formed by plate boundaries and life on Earth.
But it gets even more arcane than that.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
Yeah, for sure. You know we mentioned earthquakes. It's also
no coincidence that we're gonna find you know, earthquakes don't
happen everywhere. They are clustered around these tectonic plate boundaries
and when they press together, when those plates move, and
for them, it's a sudden movement. That energy's got to
go somewhere, and that is what an earthquake is. We
(36:32):
should do one on the fault lines, like the San
Andreas fault, maybe the most famous fault line.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
I feel like the rock did that. It's done.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
That's funny. What else, what about those What about the rocks,
the undersea rocks.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
So remember when I said that they used to and
probably still do have magnetometers like undersea to detect submarines. Well,
this is actually one reason they figured out that that
is right, and that it's plate tectonics doing it. They
inadvertently detected that if you go along the seafloor on
either side of a ridge, you're going to find that
(37:10):
your compass goes haywire. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
And the reason why is because as that magma comes
up from the vent in the middle of the undersea
ridge and spills out over there's some minerals in there
that actually kind of clock the north pole right, like
the minerals are magnet episode is really really interesting. I
(37:34):
went back and listened to it again and it's even
more difficult than I remember trying to explain it, but
just suffice to say that there's minerals that align themselves
with the north pole, and in effect, when they become rock,
they record where the north pole was. Wow, Earth's magnetic
north pole sometimes switches with the South pole. It can
(37:57):
wander throughout Earth and end up at the opposite se
and depending on when those rocks were formed, from the
undersea vent, it will record where that north pole was,
and so over the course of millions and millions of years,
I think the poles flip every one to three hundred
thousand years something like that. Those new ridges that are
created are going to get pushed further and further out
(38:19):
from the vent, so that if you went over them
with a compass, you will see that they just keep
flipping back and forth, marking each time that the north
pole changed direction.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
Amazing, I think so too.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
And they're like, well, the only the only thing that
explains this is that the the the continents are actually
pushing apart. They're forming new continents that's coming out of
the vent, and as it cools, it's getting pushed apart
by new stuff. Hence the plate tectonics theory seems pretty accurate.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
Yeah, and you know, it has an effect on the
overall climate too, because we tend to think when we
think about plate tectonics, we think about the land masses
that are moving, But that's also going to affect the
shape of the ocean, and very much did inform the
shape of the ocean, you know, two and a half
billion years ago whenever all this stuff started because it,
you know, used to be what did they call it,
(39:12):
not a super ocean, a.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
Panhosia, I can't remember, but basically super ocean, like all
the ocean, yeah, all the ocean.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
But the current shape, Like what I'm about to say
might sound silly, like the current shape of the ocean
prevents the equator and the poles from having like wildly
different temperatures. They have pretty widely different temperatures according to us,
like humans walking around on the planet. But if it
wasn't for the fact that it was that the oceans
(39:42):
ended up shaped in such a way where they are supplying,
like always supplying this warm equatorial water toward those polar regions,
the difference in temperature between the poles and the equator
would be I don't even know, it would be. It
would be crazy how big that disparity would be.
Speaker 2 (40:02):
It'd be a mess.
Speaker 1 (40:03):
Yeah. It wouldn't be like, oh, it's like hot at
the equator and boy it's super cold there. It would
be you know, I wish somebody knew what hundreds of degrees.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
I don't know, but I do know that really weird
stuff happens along temperature gradient. So you would not want
something like that it would not be hospitable for us.
Speaker 1 (40:19):
Yeah, but all of the ocean currents, and because of
the way the oceans are shape, because of the way
the continents broke apart, influences climate all over the place.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
Yeah, it carries water from here to there, and yeah,
it's pretty interesting. And again you can trace it all
the way back to the movement of the plates. There's
also carbon dioxide. The amount of CO two that's in
the atmosphere at any given point in time also serves
as a global thermostat, right, and that if there's a
(40:50):
lot of CO two in the atmosphere, it warms up
kind of like what's going on right now. And when
there's a lot of CO two in the atmosphere, the
water sea levels rise, and as the sea levels rise,
rocks are weathered and a lot of the CO two
in the atmosphere gets sucked out of it into water
to form limestone and essentially gets locked away from the atmosphere.
(41:11):
And as this happens enough over enough time, the atmosphere cools.
As the atmosphere cools, sea levels lower again, and the
opposite process starts to happen. Those rocks that are exposed
now get weathered and that CO two enters the atmosphere again.
And then another way that the plate tectonics influence. This
is the stuff that gets formed into limestone, settles to
(41:33):
the bottom of the ocean and it's just trapped. It's
trapped CO two, but as it forms part of a
plate that ends up back down into the core, into
the stenosphere and gets heated up and turned into magma again.
When it comes out of the volcano, it brings all
that CO two with it, releasing it in an atmosphere.
It's a really long it's the carbon cycle, and over
(41:53):
really long geological time scales, it keeps the Earth from
getting too warm or too cold. It's a thermostat. And again,
without plate tectonics, this would not be possible, and we
probably would not be here today talking about this.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
Yeah. Absolutely. If you're wondering where, you know, if things
are moving even that slowly, where might we be in
a million years from now or something like that. That's
a good question. And there are people that are studying
exactly that their computer simulations. Obviously that scientists can run
to see which way we're going and how fast we're going,
(42:29):
and what might bump into what at what point, And
they have estimated some things they you know, they're they're
good enough now to know and say out loud like, hey, listen,
this is a guest. Still we have no idea what's
going to happen really in a million years or one
hundred million years, but they're saying what we think might
(42:50):
happen is one day, just as there were previous super
continents before Pangaea, we will all be reunited again. And
maybe that's when humanity really comes together as one super
continent in about two hundred and fifty million years. And
they've already pre named it Pangaea proxima, which I guess
(43:10):
is just you know, what they're approximating. It will be
like there'll be new mountain ranges. And in fact, they
think once Africa eventually finishes going north and hits Europe,
then that may be like if you think the Himalayas
or something, way, do you get a load of like
the mountain range that's coming in one hundred million years.
Speaker 2 (43:27):
Yeah, The Rock needs to do a movie about that.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
I mean, that's probably in development already, probably waiting on
the Sack strike to finish Pangaea proxima. But the Rock's
going to get in in the middle and.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
Yeah, yeah, you just sold the movie. Yep, so you
got anything else?
Speaker 1 (43:50):
I got nothing else. This is really fascinating. I mean,
point six inches a year doesn't sound like a lot,
but when you're talking about plate tectonics, it's it's moving.
Speaker 2 (43:59):
Yeah, a lot happens. Well, if you were jazzed by this,
you can go search plate tectonics on the website HowStuffWorks
dot Com or anywhere on the Internet and it will
bring up all sorts of neat little earth science lessons.
And since I said that, it's time for listener mail,
all right.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
I'm gonna call this don't listen to us because we're
not vets. Because on the White Dog Poop Short Stuff,
we talked about cooking your own dog food, which a
lot of vets rowed in said, don't do that unless
you're really have it dialed in with a pet nutritionist.
And we talked about grain free. I mentioned grain free
because one of our dogs required it because of an
(44:40):
autoimmune issue, Sweet Buckley, and I was under the misinterpretation
or the misunderstanding rather that that was just sort of
good for all dogs. And they were like, no, grain
free can lead to cardiac abnormalities. Du So, we heard
from lots of vets. This is from a very frustrated
(45:01):
VET and stuff you should know. Fam. Jeez all, it says, Hey, guys,
your white dog poop episode Dropy Bonker's pet. Nutrition is
a hot topic. Unfortunately. Not only should people not be
getting advice from you, but there are a lot of
people on the internet, a lot of quacks even that
(45:21):
within their own industry, they're saying that you shouldn't listen to.
Sure home cooked diets are difficult to do. We see
all sorts of medical abnormalities from unbalanced diets. It should
be only done under the guidance of the veterinary nutritionists.
Please do not even look for random recipes online, even
if they're written by a VET, because of the quacks
in our industry.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
I want to just stick up for my wife here
and be like, yes, she's got that covered. She's not
some dummy who just looks up random recipes on the internet.
Speaker 1 (45:49):
Oh are you guys making your own food?
Speaker 2 (45:51):
Yeah, she cooks for momo quite a bit. Okay, I
think that's what they're responding to as I mentioned that.
Speaker 1 (45:57):
Yeah, I think you mentioned it. But one of my
friends is doing it, and I texted right away and
I was like, hey, dude, stop cooking for your dog
until you get it down.
Speaker 2 (46:04):
Yeah, I mean, and that's right. You should talk to
you a nutritionists. There's also like nutrition info sites, like
legitimate sites that kind of help you balance what you're
cooking for your dog. But yes, random recipes on the
internet are not a good idea unless you're cooking like
chicken Diane or something.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
I think he was under the impression like, hey, give
him some fruits and veggies and protein and like you're
done right, And that's just not the case. And in fact,
we're not one to buzzmarket too much. But this vet
said balance dot it is a great option if you're
looking for legitimate recipes and formulations and supplements.
Speaker 2 (46:40):
I think that's the one that you me went and
found initially.
Speaker 1 (46:44):
Oh sure, it is right. Grain free is also dangerous,
has been linked to dilated cardiomyopathy, still a developing area
of research, but grain sensitivity is super rare in dogs.
Grain is fine for the vast majority of dogs. So
(47:05):
when you recommend a food, look for a food that
is compliant with w SAVA guidelines. I think we can
all agree These are pretty reasonable things to want in
a pet food company. Most of the food on the
shelf does not meet these standards, though, so people should
talk to their vets. I'm thankful you didn't touch on
raw food, which is trash, or the idea that vets
(47:26):
are paid by big pet food because we're not. That
is from a frustrated vet. I'm not even gonna say
stuff you should know fan anymore.
Speaker 2 (47:35):
I have to say, yeah, you me went online and
got her WSVA certification over the course of many years.
Heck yeah, so yeah, she got it all covered everybody.
Speaker 1 (47:45):
Of course you do in your house?
Speaker 2 (47:47):
Do I sign defense? Who was that for? They didn't
even sign their name, and then they didn't sign their name.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
They signed it as a frustrated vet, So I took
that to mean that's how they wanted to addressed.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
I see, well, what was their email.
Speaker 1 (48:02):
Address, doctor quack at dot com.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
Okay, thank you doctor quack, I mean frustrated vet. We
appreciate that we know that you are looking out for
all the animal babies out there. Hats off to you
for that, and we would never accuse you of being
owned by big PetFood. No, that's just crazy talk. If
you want to get in touch with us, anonymously or
otherwise and say, you, guys, stink is stink to high Heaven.
(48:29):
We'd love to hear that kind of thing. You can
wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send
it off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (48:40):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (48:42):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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