Milky Way

We can’t even begin to really grasp our great galaxy, never mind the ones that lie way beyond what we even know. This intricate interwoven interstellar constellation of planets spins around the scorching sun in a way that seems completely seamless. Get ready to gaze up at the sparkling stars and puzzling planets spiralling endlessly in the sky above. We’ll make sense of The Milky Way on this week’s episode of FYI!

Transcript

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[Music] satellite scan we can't even begin to really grasp our great Galaxy never mind the ones that lie Way Beyond what we even know this intricate interwoven Interstellar constellation of planets spins around the scorching sun in a way that seems completely seamless get ready to gaze up at the sparkling stars and puzzling planets spiraling endlessly in the sky above foreign we'll make sense of the Milky Way on this week's episode of f why I welcome to for your info English you got it[Applause][Music][Applause] hello hello hello Amigos welcome one welcome all to another exciting edition of FYI for your English and what do you want to learn about this week you can learn about baseball Walt Disney the Titanic Steve Jobs and so much more and if you scroll through the topics and you can't find a topic you like let me know as you guys know I always accept suggestions I'm all ears as we say and I think you say the same thing in Spanish also I'd like to remind you guys is that I've got a new book that's out now it's a brand spanking new book and it's called this book is the [ __ ] and it's a way to learn English with pop culture movies music and even Comics let's listen to this little radio ad and see if you were familiar with these onomatopoeic words in English of course man we love making it easy sure to chop as mascara your chomperses to click well to click is what you do on a computer you click binchan Perfecto to gulp well before I was gulping my soda[Music][Music] this book is the [ __ ] is and you know it did you know those words are they new to you well get ready to learn a lot more with the book this book is the [ __ ] and also in today's episode let's kick off with our intro I started by saying we can't even begin to really grasp and to grasp is to understand to comprehend our great Galaxy never mind the ones that lie Way Beyond what we know and the word great can be henyal excellent and it can also be big I meant it in both senses of the words and then I said never mind the ones that lie this is a very poetic way of saying that live or that are the ones that lie Way Beyond what we even know you might know it from Buzz Light year to infinity and beyond and in the bonus part of today's show we'll be taking a look at some movies and music that have to do with space then I said this intricate which is very elaborate very specific very detailed interwoven Interstellar constellation say that five times fast when we have a tongue twister in English or something that doesn't necessarily roll off your tongue we say say that five times fast and the word interwoven is Entre tejido threaded together linked or connected and these planets spin around the scorching sun and scorching means extremely hot I think the word in Spanish is abrasador in a way that seems completely seamless and when something is seamless if we're talking about sewing we're talking about nothing but if we talk about it in the figurative sense we're saying without interruption smooth constant and then I wrapped up the intro saying get ready to gaze up at the sparkling stars and to gaze is to look at with admiration to gaze up at the sparkling stars and puzzling planets and it's true when you think about all there is to know about the Milky Way and other galaxies you realize how little we really know and these puzzling planets are spiraling endlessly in the sky above and make sure you're one of those students who doesn't say above it's not above it's uh above the sky above will make sense of the Milky Way on this week's episode and I used to mispronounce that word in Spanish I used to say La Villa but now I know it's La Via lactia and then I realized wait a second you use the same word to talk about dairy products so you have milk cheese yogurt those are dairy products but when something is creamy we would say milky right that would be the usage of Milky and we'll find out why it's called the Milky Way in case you didn't know plus we're going to learn a lot of fun facts in the bonus episode today and in the first episode we're gonna learn fun facts period let's start with a little textbook definition here the Milky Way is the Galaxy that includes the solar system with the name describing the Galaxy's appearance from Earth a hazy band of light seen in the night sky and hazy is like foggy formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye and that's just another way of saying the human eye and anybody who's ever seen a depiction of the Milky Way will say that it looks like this Milky Circle or this Milky spiral and Galileo Galilei first check this out with his telescope way back in 1610. it wasn't until the early 1920s that most astronomers thought that the Milky Way was the center of the universe that all the stars in the universe could be found in the Milky Way that sparked the great debate the great debate between astronomers Harlow shapley and Heber doused Curtis and this is where we realized that the Galaxy was one of many many galaxies sees and we owe that to the observations of Edwin Hubble does that name ring a bell the Hubble telescope and now we know the Milky Way is just one of many galaxies in space remember in English we don't say in the space we say space and if you had to guess how fast the Milky Way as a whole as a cohesive hole is moving how fast would you say would you say 600 kilometers per hour remember we're talking about light years and stuff here we're on a different scale here well no it's not 600 kilometers per hour it's 600 kilometers per second mind blown and it's not even that windy over here is it another fact here is that the oldest stars in the Milky Way are nearly as old as the universe itself there are stars in the sky right now that are supposedly from The Big Bang and how big is the Milky Way good question I thought you'd never ask well this disc measures about 120 000 light years across you heard correctly a hundred and twenty thousand light years from end to end and then there's a bulge in the center a bulges like a big bump and that bulge has a diameter of 12 000 light years the disc is not perfectly flat it's got a warped shape and I looked up the word warped it's like retortido tortido in Spanish and that's because other galaxies are just tugging at it to tug is another way to say to pull so those gravitational forces up there here's a fact that absolutely blew my mind our galaxy is made up of all right let me ask you guys how much dark matter is there in our galaxy and I'm looking for a percentage here so we've got dark matter and luminous matter and obviously luminous matter is what we can see with the naked eye as I said before so what did you say 60 40 50 50 no 90 percent dark matter and only 10 percent luminous matter so we can only perceive around 10 of our Milky Way and that dark matter has a purpose there that dark matter is there to make sure that those Stars keep spinning at a slow lower Pace if not they would spin a lot faster so I guess you could say that dark matter puts the brakes on the Galaxy and I know those Dimensions I I mentioned before seemed pretty crazy but the Milky Way is only a medium-sized Galaxy the largest galaxy we know of is called ic-1101 and that has over 100 trillion Stars we're looking at some astronomical numbers today hey there's another word that comes from space astronomical in comparison the Milky Way has an estimated 200 billion stars according to scientists about seven new stars are born in our galaxy every single year and speaking of stars I'd like to send a shout out to all my patrons especially my super duper students Javier Paco Roberto David Jose Maria Mila and Alex and don't forget about my Interstellar students Garmin Lina Issa Bako and Edgar as you can see this fascination with stars has even gotten into my Curious community and if you guys would like to join my Curious Community you can go over to patreon.com Alberto Alonso and for as little as three Euros a month you can be a part of this curious Community you can get a bonus episode every week you get early access to all the posts plus you can get PDF documents with all the vocabulary if you're in our Superstar level if you're in our super duper level you'll have weekly review classes with me where we have tons of fun and we go over the key vocabulary in each episode and if you're in our Interstellar level aside from all that stuff you'll also get a monthly private class with me all that is very affordable take a look and see what option is best for you it's patreon.com Alberto Alonso what are you waiting for come explore with us we are not English Learners we are English explorers going where no man has gone before hey wait isn't that Star Trek well we're going to talk about that but I don't want to get ahead of myself we'll look at that in the bonus episode right now I'd like to take a look at the planets and if you remember we have an episode in the first season of FYI we have an episode on NASA and now I'm gonna put you to the test and I'm gonna see if you know the order of the planets I gave you a really easy way to remember it in English do you remember if not we'll go over it right now all right remember this sentence my very educated mother just swam under nine planets what that's absurd Alberto yeah but if you remember that sentence you'll always remember the order of the planets from the Sun my very educated mother just swam under nine planets and I gotta send a special shout out to Mr Tennant who taught me that in second grade and I will never forget it as long as I live let's go through the planets in English my Mercury very Venus educated Earth come on you got to know that one at least you live there well some of you mother Mercury just Jupiter swam Saturn you under you is Uranus yes nine Neptune and the last one Pluto which is is not a planet anymore Poor Pluto but hey it still helps to remember the order and it's as easy as my very educated mother just swam under nine planets hey maybe she was in the movie Interstellar with George Clooney was that Interstellar or was that gravity oh now I'm mixing up my space movies and before we look at the planets I want to talk about Poor Pluto the term planet has been debated for years decades centuries light years okay maybe I'm exaggerating a little bit at the end there but they say that a planet is an object that is in orbit around the Sun the second condition is it has to have sufficient Mass to assume hydrostatic equilibrium so that is a nearly round shape and it has to have cleared the neighborhood around its orbit hey that's what they say they call it the neighbor Hood I imagine it means its surroundings and according to that criteria over there Pluto is not a planet it's a dwarf planet the planets in the Milky Way fall into two categories based on physical characteristics the terrestrial planets and the gas giants so the inner planets are the four terrestrial planets Mercury Venus Earth Mars my very educated mother the outer planets there are four of them and they are called the gas giant planets obviously they're made up more of gas than land and that's just swam under nine Jupiter Saturn Uranus and Neptune let's take a look at each planet individually we'll start with Mercury you say Mercurio we say Mercury and this one has been known for a long time because it is one that is is visible to the naked eye in the 17th century Galileo Galilei first observed this planet and it was named after the Roman God of Commerce I can't help it but every time I hear his name I think of Galileo Galileo Galileo Figaro magnifico as we've already mentioned Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun and close how close is close 58 million kilometers yeah just a hop skip and a jump a ladito but seriously since it's close to the Sun the temperature on Mercury is Extreme at night it can be as cold as a 180 degrees below zero that's celsius in fahrenheit it's 290 degrees below zero that is frigid and during the daytime the temperature can go up to 800 degrees fahrenheit in celsius that's 430 degrees but if you're able to put up with that intense heat or that intense cold and you're able to stand on Mercury the sun would look three times as large as we see it from Earth and it would be seven times brighter to boot in FEMA the next one is Venus I know you say benos we say Venus Venus is only the second closest planet to the Sun but it is the hottest it's even hotter than Mercury it has a very thick atmosphere which traps the heat from the Sun and obviously that causes the temperatures to rise it's like the greenhouse effect it also got its name from a goddess the Roman goddess of love and beauty gods and goddesses were big when they were naming the planets and the days of the week and the months if you haven't heard all about that that we've got an episode with my friend Damian Moya on mythology it's fascinating he's even written a book on it it's called oh my God very interesting here's a trick question or a trivia question Venus is the only one of the planets that is named after a female God and it's a volcanic Planet as well next up we have Earth some of you might be familiar with it some of you don't see me like you live here well it reminds me of that expression Earth to Tommy Earth to Tommy La Tierra atami and remember we'll look at some space idioms in the bonus episode and here's another fun fact about Earth of the eight planets it is the only one that is not named after a god or goddess then you've got the red planet as we know Mars you say Marte we say Mars and you know what makes it red let's see if you guys know it's the iron on the surface it's located about 228 million kilometers away from the sun and it is a dry desert that is also very cold it doesn't sound very attractive to me also it has volcanoes Canyons well that sounds a little bit cooler and if you remember when we talked about mountains we said that the largest mountain in our solar system is on Mars do you remember the name Olympus Mons then we've got Jupiter this is the largest of all the solar system planets and it was named after the king of the Gods in Roman mythology it is an enormous planet made up of gas those gases are mostly hydrogen and helium and it also has extreme temperatures and pressures and if you've seen photos of Jupiter you'll see that there are these swirling bands I guess they're like little Stripes well those are clouds of water and ammonia and giant storms are very common on Jupiter and they last a long time too and we couldn't talk about Jupiter without talking about the Great Red Spot which is a storm that is Raging on Jupiter and you could fit two to three Earths just in that spot it was observed for the first time in 1665 drive by astronomer Giovanni Cassini then we've got the ringed planet which is Saturn it has rings around it it is the second largest planet and like Jupiter it's a gas giant it does not have a solid surface and another thing that makes Saturn more interesting it has the most moons in the solar system there are 82 known moons that range in different sizes and compositions and what about Uranus all right we've got to deal with this sooner or later Uranus estuano tambien if you don't write it you just say the word out of context it's Uranus tuano now the British have found a way around this the British said well we'll change it from Uranus to Uranus well does anybody see the irony there urine orina Uranus Uranus there's no nice way to say this planet maybe you can just call it by its nickname the sideways Planet this planet is tilted on its axis by about 98 Degrees it was discovered by William Herschel in 1781 and notice I didn't say Uranus was discovered by William Herschel in 1781. see now you can laugh okay bad joke you can find this joke in E.T hey talking about space movies and then we've got Neptune Neptune is about four times as large as our planet Earth it is an ice Giant and is mostly composed of water methane and ammonia it's a little bit smaller than Uranus okay see see you can't say it without the chuckle but Uranus is much denser hey I'm serious I'm talking about the planets now and Neptune is tilted on its axis of rotation which is around 28 degrees that one's very similar to us because that's about the axis of rotation of our Earth and due to this Neptune has changes in Seasons like us the only difference is a year on Neptune is the equivalent of 165 Earth years so if you do the math it will take about 40 years for the seasons to change right now we have got to board our spaceship because we're going to go to the bonus episode I hope you guys enjoyed this and you found it out of this world which is another way of saying extraordinary I hope you found this interesting and out of this world and I hope you'll join us in the bonus episode of today's f why I transfer time is x minus ten nine eight seven six five four three two one zero[Applause] 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