S27E16: Our Shrinking Moon

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This is Spacetime Series twenty seven,
episode sixteen, or broadcast on the fifth

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of February twenty twenty four. Coming
up on Space Time, the Earth's Moon

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is shrinking and that means moonquakes for
astronauts. NASA's analysis confirms World Meteorological Organization

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figures showing that twenty twenty three was
the war misteir on record, and a

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new study indicates that stars travel more
slowly around the edge of the Milky Way.

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All that and more coming up on
space Time Welcome to Space Time with

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Stuart Gary. A new study has
confirmed earlier research showing that the Earth's Moon

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is shrinking and that it's causing landslides, instability, and moonquakes around the lunar

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South Pole. Scientists say the findings
will have consequences for the astronauts destined to

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explore and ultimately colonize this part of
the lunar's surface. The study, reported

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in the Planetary Science Journal As shown
that the Moon shrank more than forty six

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meters in circumference as it's called gradually
cooled over the last few hundred million years,

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in much the same way as a
grape will wrinkle as it shrinks down

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to become a raisin. The Moon
also develops creases as it shrinks, but

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unlike the flexible skin on a grape, the moon surface is brittle, causing

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falseter form where sections of crust pushed
past one another. Importantly, scientists of

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Nardis covered evidence that this shrinking of
the Moon's surface has led to notable surface

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warping near the lunar South Pole.
That's the region where NASA plans on landing

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its manned Artemis three mission in two
years time. In fact, because of

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the South Pole's easy access to water, although in a frozen state deep on

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the floors of permanently shaded craters,
the South Pole will become the likely main

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colonization point for future lunar missions to
the lunar surface. The problem is fault

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formation caused by the moon shrinkage is
often accompanied by searsmic activity like moonquakes,

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and locations within or in these such
fault zones could post dangers for future human

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exploration efforts. The authors have already
linked one group of forts located near the

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moon south Pole region to one of
the most powerful moonquakes ever recorded by the

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Apollo seismometers more than fifty years ago. Using models to simulate the stability of

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surface slopes within that region. Site
has found that some areas were especially vulnerable

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to landslides from seismic shaking. The
studies lead author Thomas Waters from the National

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Air and Space Museum set for Earthen
Planetary Studies, says the modeling suggests that

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shallow moonquakes capable of bridge using strong
ground checking in the South Pole region are

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possible from slip events on existing faults
or the formation of new thrust faults.

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He warns that the lunar global distribution
of young thrust faults, their potential to

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be active, and the potential to
form new thrust faults from ongoing global contraction

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should be considered when planning the location
and stability of permanent outposts on the Moon.

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The study suggest that shallow moonquakes occur
near the surface of the Moon,

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just one hundred of circular meters deep
into the crust. Similar to earthquakes,

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shallow moonquakes are caused by faults in
the lunar interior, and they can be

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strong enough to damage buildings, equipment, and other human made structures. But

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importantly, unlike earthquakes, which tend
to only last a few seconds or minutes,

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shallow moonquakes can last for hours,
even a whole afternoon. It means

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if we're not careful, shallow moonquakes
could devastate any future human settlements on the

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Moon. These new findings will help
prepare humans for it awaits them when they

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do move to the Moon, and
that needs to include engineering structures so they

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can better withstand Luna seismic activity,
thereby protecting people in the danger zones this

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space time still to come. A
new NASA analysis confirms the World Meteorological Organization's

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figures that show twenty twenty three was
the warmest Yuron record, and a new

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study shows that stars tend to travel
more slowly along the outer edge of the

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Milky Way Galaxy. All that and
more still to come on space time.

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A new NASA analysis has confirmed data
by the World Meteorological Organization that planetarth average

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surface temperature in twenty twenty three was
the stone record. Their data shows global

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temperatures last year were around one point
two degrees celsius above the average for NASA's

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baseline period, which is between nineteen
fifty one and nineteen eighty. NASA Administrator

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Bill Nilson says the studies by both
NASA and NOAH. The National Oceanographic and

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Atmospheric Administration clearly confirms that planet Earth
is facing a climate crisis. In twenty

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twenty three, hundreds of millions of
people around the world experienced extreme heat,

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and each month from June through to
December last year set a new global record

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for that respective month, and July
ended up being the hottest month ever recorded.

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Overall, planet Earth was about one
point four degrees celsius warmer in twenty

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twenty three than it was during the
late nineteenth century average that's when modern record

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keeping began. Meanwhile, the director
of NASA's god At Institute for Space Studies,

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Gavin Schmidt, says the exceptional warming
isn't something that we've seen before in

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human history. He says it is
being driven primarily by fossil fuel emissions,

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and we're seeing the impacts of this
in heat waves, intense rainfall, and

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coastal flooding. Those scientists have conclusive
evidence that the planet's long term warming trend

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is driven by human activity. They're
still examining other phenomena that could be affecting

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yearly or multi yearly changes in climate, such as el Nina aerosols and pollution,

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and volcanic eruptions. Now typically,
the largest source of yety of variability

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on Earth is the Al Nino Southern
Oscillation Index. It's a climate pattern based

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around the Pacific Ocean. The pattern
has two phases, El Nino and Lininia.

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During these phases, see surface temperatures
in the Pacific along the equator tend

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to switch between warmer average and cool
at temperatures. Now, what's been unusual

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of late is that between twenty twenty
and twenty twenty two, the Pacific Ocean

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saw three consecutive Linina events, which
tend to cool global temperatures. Then,

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in May twenty twenty three, the
ocean transition from La Nina to El Nino,

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which often coincides with the hottest Jees
on record. However, the record

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temperatures in the second half of twenty
twenty three occurred before the peg of the

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current El Nino event, and scientists
say they now expect to see the biggest

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impacts of El Nina over the next
three months. But it's not just El

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Nino. Scientists have also been investigating
the possible impacts of the January twenty twenty

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two eruption of the Hunger tonguahunga Ape
under sea volcano, which blasted water,

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vapor, and fine particles and aerosols
high into the stratosphere. A recent study

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found that the volcanic aerosols, by
reflecting sunlight away from the Earth's surface,

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actually led to an overall slight cooling
of the planet by about zero point one

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degree celsius that was mainly restricted to
the southern hemisphere. Immediately following the eruption,

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Nasaus symbols at surface temperature records using
air temperature data colling did from tens

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of thousands of meteorological stations. There's
also sea surface temperature data acquired either by

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ship or booy based instruments. All
this data is then analyzed using methods that

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account for varied spacing of temperature stations
around the globe and for things like the

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urban heat effect, they could be
skewing calculations. Independent analyzes by NOAH and

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by the Hadley Center, which is
part of the United Kingdom's Met Office,

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have also concluded that global surface temperatures
for twenty twenty three were the highest since

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modern record keeping began. Now,
while these scientists are all using the same

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temperature data in their analysis. They're
using different methodologies, yet they're arriving at

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the same conclusions. Although rankings can
be slightly different between the records, they're

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still all in broad agreement and they
clearly show that some ongoing, long term

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warming is taking place and has been
doing so over recent decades. This report

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from NASTV twenty twenty three was the
hottest year on record by a large margin.

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But why does NASA, a space
agency, even look at Earth's temperature

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record. Let's start from the beginning. NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies or

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GIS, creates the global temperature record
using land and ocean surface data collected from

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thousands of instruments and boobies around the
world. But this critical data set of

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Earth's temperature has an origin story that
starts one hundred million miles away on planet

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Venus. It's nine hundred degrees hot
of the surface, has powerful high altitude

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winds, and is blanketed by a
dense carbon dioxide. The GARDIS Suit for

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Space Study here in New York was
set up in the early nineteen sixties to

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provide a connection between NASA and the
academic community, and so it was very

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much an ideas shop, and so
we spent a lot of time with the

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formation of galaxies and black holes and
panetary program and Voyager, and we were

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involved very early on in some of
the missions to Venus and Jupiter. Back

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then, when GIFs researchers were studying
the weather on Venus, scientists noticed something

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fascinating. A thick atmosphere made up
of clouds and carbon dioxide was trapping heat,

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so much heat that Venus had a
surface hot enough to melt lead.

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This trapping of heat is known as
the greenhouse gas effect. One of the

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lead Venus researchers, I guess doctor
James Hansen, realized that greenhouse gases were

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also building up an Earth's atmosphere,
so he switched his sights to his home

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planet and pledged to model the changing
atmosphere of Earth and to verify our ground

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truth. As model, he needed
real world measurements over time, so he

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began keeping track of Earth's global temperature
record dating back to eighteen eighty When there

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was a sufficient amount of data to
pull from, we used our expertise in

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understanding literally the clouds of Venus and
the clouds and dynamics of Jupiter, and

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then we took that and we started
to think about how you would do the

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same thing for the Earth. Since
then, Guests has kept at sights on

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the global temperature record, and that
was the birth of Gifts as a climate

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modeling institution, and scientists have seen
a clear trend in that record rising temperatures,

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and they know why. The key
difference between say, this decade and

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the decade before and the decade before
that, is that the temperatures have been

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rising because of our activities, because
of principally the burning of fossil fuels.

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Without the presence of humans, Earth's
temperature would rise and fall due to a

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complex array of natural drivers. With
human presence, however, the temperature just

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continues to rise. We know that
by observing temperature anomalies. Measuring temperature anomalies

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means that we look at the change
over time rather than absolute temperatures. The

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data map isn't showing that the Arctic
style warmer temperatures than the tropics. It's

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saying the Arctic was that much warmer
than the Arctic has been in previous years,

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which is an anomaly in Arctic temperatures. But how do we get those

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anomaly measurements Let's say you want to
track if apples these days are generally larger,

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smaller, or the same size as
they were twenty years ago. In

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other words, you want to track
the change over time. Imagine each person

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on your apple measuring team has their
own food scale. Person A measures apple

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one and their food scale rates six
ounces. Person B measures the same apple,

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but their scale reads seven ounces.
Since these scales are calibrated differently,

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your team ended up with two different
recorded weights for the same exact apple.

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There's some imprecision in the measurements,
and to account for that when you compare

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this apple's measurement to the apples growing
next year, you'll need to look at

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their difference rather than absolute weights,
focusing on the anomaly, or how much

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heavier or lighter than next apple is
from year to year. So for temperatures,

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while it would be great to have
the same exact scale or thermometer all

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over the world measuring the temperature in
the same exact way, we don't.

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Instead we focus on how much warmer
or colder the temperatures are in each place,

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based on their own instruments. Another
factor to consider is, since you're

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tracking apples from all over the globe, there are differences in baseline weights.

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Let's say apples grown in Florida are
generally larger than apples grown in Alaska.

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Like in real life, how Floridian
temperatures are generally much higher than Alaskan temperatures.

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So how do you track the change
in apple size is from apples grown

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all over the world while still accounting
for their different baseline weights by focusing on

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the difference within each area rather than
the absolute weights. So when it comes

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to the temperature record, scientists aren't
comparing temperatures in Bermuda to temperatures in Greenland

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and averaging them together for net warming. Instead, they're comparing the change in

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temperatures in Bermuda to the change in
temperatures in Greenland. Again, we look

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at the anomaly measurements to track the
change over time. Now let's scale this

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example up. If you have a
weather station that's say here in New York

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City, and you compare it to
a weather station in Washington, d C.

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Or Montreal, they tell very different
stories about the absolute temperature. Right,

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So Montreal is colder and the Washington
d C Is often warmer. But

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when they move up and down,
when there's a month that is warmer or

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colder, it's basically the same in
all three locations. And so by looking

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at the anomalies how much warmer it
is than normal for that particular point,

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and then you look at those anomalies
at all those different points and you can

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average those. It turns out that
you can fill out the gaps much more

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effectively. This big picture global temperature
is comprised of much smaller concentrated data points

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from all over the world. So
while globally temperatures average out to be record

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hot, it wasn't record hot in
every single location around the world. But

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why did twenty twenty three see record
heat? Well, to put it simply,

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a combination of high greenhouse gas emissions
and the transition out of three consecutive

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years of Lannina conditions and into al
Nino conditions led to record breaking heat,

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But the year was in some respects
still surprisingly hot, and NASA is continuing

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its research on why. Typically the
largest cause of short term year to year

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differences in temperature is usually La Nina
and al Nina weather patterns. Laninia generally

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cools things down while warms them up. The largest cause of long term decade

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by decade differences in temperature is greenhouse
gas emissions and the subsequent trapped heat by

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greenhouse gases. So while we don't
expect every year to be a new record

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like twenty twenty three, we do
expect new records as long as we continue

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to increase greenhouse gas emissions. The
key thing to take away from all of

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this is that the long term trends
are pretty much relentlessly up. We're going

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to continue to have records be broken
because that baseline is moving all the time,

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and then the weather is sitting on
top of that, and so when

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the weather is warmer than normal,
then we're going to get these records.

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But even when it's cooled in the
normal, we don't go back to what

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it was. And in that report
from That's a TV, we heard from

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Gavin Schmidt, the director of NASA's
got Out Institute for Space Studies, this

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space Time Still to Come a you
study show stars travel more slowly around the

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edge of the Milky Way galaxy,
and later in the science report, your

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research shows that people who sit for
long periods of time at work have a

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sixty percent higher risk of death.
All that are more still to come on

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space time By clocking the speed of
stars throughout the Milky Way Galaxy, physicists

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have discovered that stars further out on
the galactic disc are traveling more slowly than

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expected compaired to stars that are closer
to the galaxy center. The findings,

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reported in the Monthly Notices of the
Royal Astronomical Society's Journal, erasing the possible

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ability that the Milky Wate gravitational core
may be lighter in mass and contain less

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dark matter than previously thought. The
new results are based on an analysis of

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data taken by both the GYA and
APERGE instruments. GIA is an orbiting space

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telescope run by the European Space Agency. It's tracking the precise location, distance

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and motion of more than a billion
stars throughout the Milky Way Galaxy. Meanwhile,

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APERGY is a ground based survey telescope. The physicist analyzed GUIAS measurements of

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more than thirty three thousand stars,
including some of the furthest stars in the

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galaxy, and they determined eight stars
circular velocity. Now, circular velocity is

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how fast the star is circling the
galactic disc given the stars distance from the

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galactic center. The authors then plotted
each star's velocity against its distance to generate

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a rotational curve. It's a standard
graphic astronomy representing how fast matters rotating at

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at given distance from the center of
a galaxy. The shape of this curve

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and gives scientists an idea of how
much visible and dark matter is distributed throughout

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the galaxy. One of the studies
authors, Lena A. KiB from the

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Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT, says
what really surprised the authors was that this

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curve remained flat, and it continued
to stay flat all the way out to

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a certain distance, and then it
suddenly started tanking away. This means the

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outer stars of the galaxy are rotating
a little slower than expected, which is

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a very surprising result. The authors
then translated this new rotational curve to a

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distribution of dark matter that could explain
the outer stars slow down. They found

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the resulting map ended up producing a
lighter galactic core than what was expected.

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In other words, the center of
the Milky Way galaxy might be less dense

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with less dark matter than what astronomers
had always thought. The new results,

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therefore, are in clear tension with
other measurements. The authors say there's something

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fishy going on somewhere. Like most
galaxies in the universe, our milky Way

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spins, I guess sort of like
water at a whirlpool, and its rotation

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00:20:08.039 --> 00:20:12.400
is driven in part by all the
matter that's swirling within the disk. It

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was back in the nineteen seventies when
astronomer Verra Ruben became the first to observe

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00:20:18.960 --> 00:20:22.279
that galaxies rotate in a way that
cannot be purely driven by their visible matter.

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Ruben and colleagues measured the circular velocity
of stars and found that the resulting

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00:20:27.359 --> 00:20:33.079
rotational curves were surprisingly flat. That
is, the velocity of the stars going

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00:20:33.079 --> 00:20:37.200
around the center remained the same throughout
the galaxy, whether or not they were

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00:20:37.200 --> 00:20:41.240
close to the center or out near
the edge. Their rotational curves weren't dropping

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off with distance. Rubon and colleagues
concluded that some other type of invisible matter,

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stuff we now call dark matter,
must be acting on distant stars to

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give them an additional push. In
this regard, Ruben's work in rotation curves

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00:20:56.519 --> 00:21:00.799
was one of the first strong pieces
of evidence for them in the existence of

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dark matter, an invisible, unknown
entity which we know exists and must make

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up more than three quarters of all
the matter in the universe. Since then,

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astronomers have observed similar flat curves in
other far off galaxies, further supporting

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00:21:15.680 --> 00:21:19.839
dark matters presence. But only recently
of astronomers attempted to chart the rotation curve

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in our own galaxy with stars,
and it turns out it's a lot harder

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00:21:25.200 --> 00:21:29.680
to measure the rotational curve when you're
actually sitting deep inside the galaxy. Back

242
00:21:29.720 --> 00:21:33.920
in twenty nineteen, Anachristina Elliots from
MIT worked to chart the Milky Way's rotation

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00:21:34.079 --> 00:21:38.640
curve using an earlier batch of data
release by Geyer. Now that data release

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00:21:38.680 --> 00:21:42.920
included stars as farret as twenty five
Killer Parssex, which is about eighty one

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00:21:44.039 --> 00:21:48.440
thousand light years from the galaxy center. Now, based on these data,

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00:21:48.559 --> 00:21:52.759
Elliots observed that the Milky Way's rotation
curve appeared to be flat, although with

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a mild decline, similar to other
far off galaxies, and by inference,

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our galaxy likely bore a high day
density of dark matter at its core.

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But this view is now shifted as
guys released a new batch of data,

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00:22:06.160 --> 00:22:10.160
this time including stars as far at
as thirty kilo Parssex. That's almost one

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00:22:10.200 --> 00:22:15.480
hundred thousand light years from the galaxy's
core. Now these distances, astronomers are

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00:22:15.480 --> 00:22:18.119
looking right at the edge of our
galaxy, the place where stars are starting

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00:22:18.119 --> 00:22:22.559
to peter out. No one's ever
explored how much matter moves around in this

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00:22:22.680 --> 00:22:29.319
outer galaxy region. It's where we're
really starting to touch the nothingness of intergalactic

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space. So as you can imagine, the studies authors jumped on Guys' latest

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00:22:33.559 --> 00:22:37.480
data at least late last year,
looking to expand on at least initial rotation

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curve. To refine their analysis.
They complemented the gay A telescope data with

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00:22:41.839 --> 00:22:48.119
measurements by APERGEY, the Apergey Point
Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment. It's measuring extremely

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00:22:48.200 --> 00:22:52.240
detailed properties of more than seven hundred
thousand stars in the Milky Way, such

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00:22:52.240 --> 00:22:57.000
as their brightness, their temperature,
and their elemental composition. The data is

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00:22:57.039 --> 00:23:02.880
then fit into an algorithm try and
learn connections that can give scientists a better

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00:23:03.000 --> 00:23:07.720
estimate of a star's distance. The
authors use this data to establish a precise

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00:23:07.799 --> 00:23:11.119
distance system more than thirty three thousand
stars, and use these measurements to generate

264
00:23:11.160 --> 00:23:15.279
a three dimensional map of the stars
scattered across the Milky Way out to around

265
00:23:15.359 --> 00:23:21.680
thirty kilo Parssex. They then incorporated
this vast map into a model of circular

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00:23:21.759 --> 00:23:26.119
velocity in order to simulate how fast
any one star must be traveling given the

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distribution of all the other stars in
the galaxy. They then plotted each star's

268
00:23:30.519 --> 00:23:34.079
velocity and distance on a chart in
order to produce an updated rotation curve of

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the whole Milky Way itself, and
that is where the weirdnesses come in.

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00:23:40.480 --> 00:23:44.960
Instead of seeing a mild decline like
previous rotation curves, the authors observed that

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00:23:45.039 --> 00:23:48.759
this new curve get far more strongly
than expected at the utter end. Now,

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00:23:48.759 --> 00:23:53.319
this unexpected downturn suggest that while stars
may be traveling just as fast out

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00:23:53.359 --> 00:23:59.319
to a certain distance, they then
suddenly slow down beyond this distance. When

274
00:23:59.319 --> 00:24:03.440
the team transition this rotation curve to
the amount of dark matter that must exist

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00:24:03.440 --> 00:24:07.920
throughout the galaxy, they found that
the Milky Waiste core must contain far less

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00:24:07.000 --> 00:24:11.920
dark matter than what they had previously
estimated. The result is clearly intension,

277
00:24:12.000 --> 00:24:18.920
with other measurements. Really understanding the
meaning of this result will undoubtedly have debrief

278
00:24:18.920 --> 00:24:22.440
percussions. This could simply be leading
to more hidden masses just beyond the edge

279
00:24:22.480 --> 00:24:26.599
of the galactic disk, or could
mean a total reconsideration of the state of

280
00:24:26.680 --> 00:24:32.200
the equilibrium of our galaxy. You
can be sure of one thing, whatever

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00:24:32.319 --> 00:24:52.240
unfolds will be fascinating. This is
space time. Time out to take a

282
00:24:52.240 --> 00:24:56.440
brief look at some of the other
stories making use in science this week with

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00:24:56.519 --> 00:25:00.079
a science report. A new study
has shown that people who sit for prolonged

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00:25:00.079 --> 00:25:04.359
periods of time at work wind up
having a sixteen percent higher risk of death

285
00:25:04.359 --> 00:25:08.960
from any cause and a thirty four
percent higher risk of heart disease. The

286
00:25:10.039 --> 00:25:14.640
findings were reported in the Journal of
the American Medical Association, based on research

287
00:25:14.680 --> 00:25:18.839
which followed almost five hundred thousand people
over thirteen years. The study looked at

288
00:25:18.839 --> 00:25:23.039
how much the participants sat at work, how much they exercised in their free

289
00:25:23.079 --> 00:25:27.000
time, as well as their health
outcomes and any deaths over the thirteen year

290
00:25:27.079 --> 00:25:33.039
period. The researchers say those who
sat all day at work but exercise for

291
00:25:33.119 --> 00:25:37.079
fifteen to thirty minutes a day outside
work had a similar risk of death to

292
00:25:37.119 --> 00:25:41.400
people who weren't sitting at work remained
inactive during their free time. The researchers

293
00:25:41.440 --> 00:25:45.759
say their study supports the evidence that
their jobs can be harmful to health.

294
00:25:47.440 --> 00:25:52.319
Reducing the amount of time you sit
at work and exercising more outside working hours

295
00:25:52.480 --> 00:25:59.799
can help reduce the risks. A
new Australian led study claims average global temperatures

296
00:26:00.000 --> 00:26:04.079
they already have risen by one point
five degrees celsius above pre industrial levels.

297
00:26:04.720 --> 00:26:10.599
Aiming to limit temperature rises to one
point five degrees celsius or below was the

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00:26:10.640 --> 00:26:15.920
goal of the Paris Climate Agreement struck
in twenty fifteen. While previous estimates of

299
00:26:15.039 --> 00:26:19.720
warnings based on sea surface temperature records, these only date back to the mid

300
00:26:19.839 --> 00:26:25.680
nineteen hundreds, these new findings,
reported in the journal Nature Climate Change,

301
00:26:25.680 --> 00:26:30.039
are very different. They're based on
data from species of long lived sea sponges.

302
00:26:30.680 --> 00:26:36.880
These primitive animals contain hundreds of years
of data and chemical changes within their

303
00:26:36.920 --> 00:26:41.440
skeletons, and this can be used
by scientists to estimate temperatures from March earlier.

304
00:26:42.079 --> 00:26:47.440
So the researchers used samples of these
sponges from species from the Eastern Caribbean

305
00:26:47.519 --> 00:26:52.079
in order to explore temperatures over the
last three hundred years, and they say

306
00:26:52.079 --> 00:26:56.000
their estimates show that one point five
degrees celsius of warming relative to pre industrial

307
00:26:56.119 --> 00:27:03.759
levels has already been reached. A
new study warns that outdoor artificial lighting at

308
00:27:03.880 --> 00:27:07.680
night could be linked to an increased
risk of macular degeneration, a leading cause

309
00:27:07.720 --> 00:27:14.039
of irreversible blindness. A report in
the Journal of the American Medical Association looked

310
00:27:14.039 --> 00:27:19.119
at some four thousand and seventy eight
patients newly diagnosed with age related macular degeneration,

311
00:27:19.519 --> 00:27:23.039
as well as one hundred and twenty
two three hundred and forty people without

312
00:27:23.039 --> 00:27:27.799
the disease, all over the age
of fifty. After estimating people's exposure to

313
00:27:27.920 --> 00:27:33.720
artificial outdoor light at night using satellite
data from around their addresses, the authors

314
00:27:33.720 --> 00:27:37.240
found higher levels of outdoor artificial lighting
at night was linked to a higher risk

315
00:27:37.279 --> 00:27:44.880
of developing age related macular degeneration.
While this kind of research can't confirm whether

316
00:27:45.000 --> 00:27:48.279
lighting at night courses blindness, the
researcher say the findings do add to a

317
00:27:48.319 --> 00:27:53.200
body of research showing how much artificial
light at night could be impacting your health.

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00:27:55.920 --> 00:28:00.279
It's been revealed that the sleepy eastern
English county of Bedfordshire, often described

319
00:28:00.319 --> 00:28:06.880
as the country's most boring place is
actually a hotbed of pagan satanic activity.

320
00:28:07.559 --> 00:28:11.480
The title is England's most boring county
is based on the twenty eighteen Yugov poll

321
00:28:11.559 --> 00:28:15.640
of forty two thousand people. But
what's not so well known is that the

322
00:28:15.799 --> 00:28:22.359
same area is regarded as the nexus
of sorts. There are deconsecrated churches,

323
00:28:22.720 --> 00:28:27.839
strange ancient rock monuments, modible claims
of demonic visitations, and a long history

324
00:28:27.880 --> 00:28:33.160
of witch trials and Wickerman festivals.
Even today, it's claimed many villages in

325
00:28:33.200 --> 00:28:38.079
the area still have regular black masses
and at least two or three practicing witches.

326
00:28:38.880 --> 00:28:42.759
Thousand year old May festivals still take
place in the region, and one

327
00:28:42.839 --> 00:28:48.880
village even has a bizarre pancake day
witch listening. Tales of the devil stealing

328
00:28:48.000 --> 00:28:53.599
children and the souls of the wicket
abound. Timendum from Australian skeptics who actually

329
00:28:53.640 --> 00:28:56.799
lived in this county for some time, since the area was part of the

330
00:28:56.880 --> 00:29:02.559
Viking ruled Dane Law and as a
longer pagan history than Anglo Saxon Wessex,

331
00:29:02.720 --> 00:29:07.440
with Celts practicing the Druid religion once
common throughout the county. In fact,

332
00:29:07.480 --> 00:29:11.680
lived in Bedfordshire for about a year, yes, so, which proves what

333
00:29:11.720 --> 00:29:15.440
a hot beta is actually of everything. Bedford Shire is in the middle of

334
00:29:15.480 --> 00:29:18.680
England, sort of lower middle.
The biggest town is Luton, famous for

335
00:29:18.720 --> 00:29:22.400
the Luton Girls Choir, which doesn't
exist anymore. It's not the most exciting,

336
00:29:22.480 --> 00:29:25.200
I'm told, the most boring county
in England. Yeah, aparently there

337
00:29:25.240 --> 00:29:27.880
was a survey people, so I
don't know how many people in Bedfordshire decided

338
00:29:27.960 --> 00:29:30.880
that. But there's a lot of
hidden secrets in Bedfordshire. It is an

339
00:29:30.880 --> 00:29:33.599
old county and there's a lot of
old buildings in it. I think that

340
00:29:33.680 --> 00:29:36.960
was one of the ones I lived
in. Was pretty old and certainly elite.

341
00:29:37.000 --> 00:29:40.279
But what they have tanners? One
person described as sort of that.

342
00:29:40.359 --> 00:29:44.799
Bedfordshire is known for two things,
hack making and Satanism. Right, interesting

343
00:29:44.799 --> 00:29:48.960
combinations you'd normally put together, are
they? Well? I don't know what

344
00:29:48.000 --> 00:29:52.160
Satans wear on their head. Maybe
they have particular hats that you only get

345
00:29:52.160 --> 00:29:57.039
in bed Also the horns, wouldn't
you that's right. I'm sure every county

346
00:29:57.200 --> 00:30:00.680
in England, Scotland, Whale wherever, and a lot of other places as

347
00:30:00.720 --> 00:30:06.880
well have their fair share of ghosts
and haunted houses and halted castles and churches,

348
00:30:07.000 --> 00:30:11.480
run down churches, and strange occurrences. So what they stand out.

349
00:30:11.559 --> 00:30:14.480
There's a whole range of sort of
strange people who have lived there in the

350
00:30:14.519 --> 00:30:18.160
past, well more than other places, I don't know. There's characters who

351
00:30:18.200 --> 00:30:22.920
are involved in witchcraft and witch hunters
and witches and people who supposedly had evil

352
00:30:22.000 --> 00:30:26.039
powers over other people, and strange
occurrences, people coughing up needles and pins

353
00:30:26.079 --> 00:30:29.440
and all sorts of stuff. It
was actually home, I don't know if

354
00:30:29.440 --> 00:30:32.759
it's in Bedfordshire or in neighboring county, which was the hell Fire Club,

355
00:30:32.799 --> 00:30:36.720
which was the famous other sort of
gentle members of the late seventeen hundreds early

356
00:30:36.720 --> 00:30:41.240
eighteen hundreds who used to do all
sorts of stranger They used to do it

357
00:30:41.279 --> 00:30:45.079
for the hell of it, and
they were notorious for being the baut they're

358
00:30:45.079 --> 00:30:48.720
seen to be. There's a lot
of watch pitlets of time anyway in that

359
00:30:48.960 --> 00:30:52.200
ere pit, with more money than
there and plenty of time to do stuff.

360
00:30:52.240 --> 00:30:55.920
One of the interesting things is that
they actually refer to that one of

361
00:30:55.960 --> 00:30:57.640
the small towns that I lived in
there was a town called Layton Buzz.

362
00:30:57.680 --> 00:31:00.400
It's the one little name for Tanning
and the people think it actually comes from

363
00:31:00.480 --> 00:31:03.960
Latin voters are and that was quite
sure. But Layton Bosa sounds good,

364
00:31:03.960 --> 00:31:07.799
which has a church called Old Saints
Church which is in the middle of the

365
00:31:07.880 --> 00:31:12.559
market town actually and it's got ancient
graffiti of a basilisk cover and a demon

366
00:31:12.640 --> 00:31:17.599
cart into the stoneworks. Now there
was another church in the in vetrity which

367
00:31:17.599 --> 00:31:21.559
actually has the devil's footprints in the
front step. Trouble is they renovated the

368
00:31:21.640 --> 00:31:23.480
church and they were really fact I
thought there was strange That would have been

369
00:31:23.480 --> 00:31:27.200
a great tourist thing. But anyway, Bedfordshire, regarded by the survey as

370
00:31:27.200 --> 00:31:32.319
the most boring county in England,
does have its fair share of strange occurrences

371
00:31:32.319 --> 00:31:34.920
and things, and I think that
should be celebrated. That's Timendum from Austria

372
00:31:36.039 --> 00:31:56.319
in Skeptics and that's the show for
now. The Space Time is available every

373
00:31:56.319 --> 00:32:00.640
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