Club Shay Shay - Neil deGrasse Tyson Part 2

**Neil deGrasse Tyson** (0:00)
Thank you for coming back, part two is underway. Did people ever live in Antarctica? No. So, there were animals there before the Ice Age. So the Mammoth? I don't think so.
I don't know, I can't answer that. But there are fossils of prehistoric animals in Antarctica before it was iced over.
So, this is climate change from continental drift. Right. And that's the kind of thing that will bring one species in, take ten species out. Yeah. So, to the best of your estimate, no person has ever- No, people, no. Definitely not humans. No. Wow. And Antarctica has a lake that's submerged beneath the ice, liquid lake. It's called Lake Vostok. I think it was discovered by the Russians. I forgot how long it has not been in contact with our air or our biosphere for some huge length of time. Forgive me, I don't remember how long, but significant amount of time relative to recent evolution. Right. It's being held up as a test bed for alien evolution in water repositories on other planets. So we don't want to contaminate it with any life form that thrives today. Right. Because it's life forms, it's a record of life forms that existed back when the thing got sealed over. Do you believe the bottom of the ocean is as fascinating as space? Yeah, it's just much harder to get to. Really? Oh yeah. What makes going down there so much more difficult than going up there? Because.
Do you know the atmospheric pressure around us right now? Yes. Okay, let's just call it one atmosphere. Yes. Numerically, it's 14.7 pounds per square inch. Okay. One atmosphere. Yes. Okay? When you go into space, do you know the air pressure? No, I do not. Zero. So what's the difference between sea level and space? Right. Is one atmosphere. You go in the ocean. Yes.
Every several meters, I forgot the number, is a whole extra atmosphere's worth of water pressure on top of you. Okay. That's why that submersible imploded, and everybody died on it a few months ago. I forgot what the expedition was. I know. It was in the news. Yes. Right? The deeper down you go, the more pressure, the more pressure you feel, and the more stress your vessel is under. Yes. It's much harder to build something where you stay alive under those pressures than it is to stay alive in space. So we know more about the surface of the moon than we know about the surface of the ocean. Somehow, the animals find it just fine to be able to go down there and chill out.
That's right. But we didn't evolve there, so we're not capable of... And by the way, back there, it's literally where the sun don't shine, so they have pretty useless eyeballs. Right. They have vestigial eyes. Eyes that they may have had at another time, but then they didn't use them, they didn't need them, and so the sockets are still there, but they're just not getting used to it. Do you think we are as interested in what's down there as we are with what's up there? No.
Anything in space, I'm surely biased right now, but maybe not. Right. Everything in space is more interesting than everything on earth. Right. I'll give an example, not everything, but let's say there's an eighth grade class of kids, okay? Okay. And you study volcanoes, so you're a geologist, and you come and say, I like volcanoes. Right. And here's like Vesuvius, and that blew up in ancient Rome, and here's that, and you just go on, and everyone will say, wow, wow, wow. And I wait till you're done, and then I come in. They say, this volcano on Mars is the single largest mountain in the entire solar system.
On Jupiter's moon Io is the most volcanically active place in all of our sector of the galaxy. And I'll show pictures of it, plumes coming up. Volcanoes on planets. Wow. Not volcano. And then I win. Because it's a volcano in space. I got another one. You ready? On Europa and on Enceladus, it is so cold, but it's warm underneath. It gurgles up, punches through the ice, and you have ice volcanoes on these moons. Wow. Ice volcanoes. I got the whole class.
You're out of a job.
The size of Africa on the map. Don't get me started. Africa is bigger than what they portray on the map, or the smaller than what they portray on the map.
On flat maps, there are distortions in the north and in the south. Okay. And Africa straddles the equator. Yes. Okay. So on those maps, the most accurate size things are along the equator. As you move away, things get artificially bigger because of the projection. Okay. And North America looks huge.