The Earth
In this episode:
Dr. Rob Carter and Joseph Darnell
In honor of the 50th Earth Day, Joe and Rob talk about…the earth! That is, the rock we call planet earth. They discuss some amazing experiments, done in the 1700s, that told us the mass of the earth and that calculated the gravitational constant. This is a big deal for us today, because there would be no space travel without these foundational experiments.
Highlights and Show Notes
Kenyan top-bar hives, Warre beehives, Layens beehives (Rob’s choice)
What’s inside the earth? Solid rock. Not lava. 80% melt temperature. The core might be solid
The Oklo ‘natural reactor’, deep under Gabon, Africa
Mass of the earth: 5.972 × 10^24 kg
Newton’s Second Law of Motion, F = ma
The history of the Cavendish Laboratory
Seismic tomography and deep crustal rocks