Home » Episodes » 081 Hard-Dee-Har Trivia

081 Hard-Dee-Har Trivia

What is the average life span of an NHL hockey puck? And which planet has the most gravity in our solar system? Hear the answers on The Off Ramp with Bob & Marcia Smith.

Bob and Marcia discussed various fascinating topics, including the lifespan of NHL hockey pucks, the temperature of the moon and Jupiter, and the size of the Great Barrier Reef. They also delved into the origins and meanings behind common phrases, such as ‘break a leg’ and ‘trivia.’ Bob shared interesting facts and trivia, while Marcia provided insights into the Voyager spacecraft and their incredible journey through space. Both speakers emphasized the significance of exploring and understanding the wonders of the universe.

Outline

Hockey puck lifespan, planet gravity, and musician trivia.

  • Bob and Marcia Smith discuss the average lifespan of an NHL hockey puck (7 minutes) and its temperature maintenance during games.
  • Bob Smith and Marcia Smith discuss the solar system, with Bob incorrectly stating that Jupiter has the most gravity and Marcia correcting him.
  • Art Garfunkel, John Lennon, Paul Simon, and Ringo Starr all have a species of trilobite named after them, a recently discovered prehistoric ocean dwelling arthropod.

 

Acting superstitions and Bond trivia.

  • Marcia and Bob discuss the origins of the phrase “break a leg” before a performance, and it’s supposed superstitious connotations.
  • Marcia and Bob discuss the origin of the phrase “salad days” and its meaning.
  • Sean Connery wore a toupee at 30 to hide receding hair, and Liz Sheridan was briefly engaged to James Dean.

 

Geography, history, and golf.

  • Marcia and Bob discuss the world’s largest item on a menu, a roasted camel stuffed with various animal parts, and later, the world’s largest island, Greenland.
  • Bob and Marcia Smith discuss the Great Barrier Reef, including its size and location, as well as the process of how it was formed.
  • The word “links” in golf refers to the coastal strips of land in Scotland where the first golf courses were built, and how these areas were once considered worthless but became valuable as golf courses.

 

Historical events, golf, art, and trivia.

  • Bob Smith reveals surprising weapons used by Native Americans at Little Bighorn Battle.
  • Marcia and Bob discuss the odds of hitting a hole-in-one on a regular golf course, and the art dealer’s advice to Andy Warhol on how to become famous.
  • Marcia and Bob discuss the origins of the term “trivia” and its connection to ancient Roman road intersections.

 

Electronic messages, Three Stooges, and space exploration.

  • Bob Smith and Marcia Smith discuss a woman’s 306-pound tumor removed at Stanford Medical University, with Bob expressing disbelief and Marcia providing details.
  • Bob Smith asks Marcia Smith questions about the first electronic message sent around the world in 1911, with Marcia providing the answers and Bob expressing amazement at the speed.
  • Marcia and Bob discuss the Three Stooges, with Bob mentioning they made 22 feature films between 1930 and 1965.
  • Bob explains that Voyager 1 and 2, launched in 1977, are still communicating back to Earth after 45 years, with a round-trip message taking 35 hours.
  • Marcia and Bob discuss romantic quotes from Catherine Zeta Jones, Dr. Ruth West, and Julia Roberts, with Marcia sharing her own thoughts on love and relationships.

 

Bob Smith 0:00
And today’s burning question, what is the average lifespan of a hockey puck?

Marcia Smith 0:05
Well, you know, I was just wondering that this morning. And which planet has the most gravity in our solar system?

Bob Smith 0:14
The answers to those and other questions coming up in this episode of the off ramp with Bob and Marsha Smith

Welcome to the offering a chance to slow down, steer clear of crazy take a side road to Saturday and get some perspective on life. Well, Marcia, what could give you more perspective than thinking about the lifespan of an NFL hockey puck? Right. I mean, it’s winter. You know, I

Marcia Smith 0:55
was here. I was just wondering that this morning. Oh, wonder about Well, an NHL hockey pop. Yeah.

Bob Smith 1:03
What’s the average lifespan? Professional Hockey took two hours, two hours? No, it’s not. Not measured in hours not measured in periods. It’s not measured in games. The average lifespan of an NHL hockey puck is just seven minutes. Oh, no, that’s all the longer they last less than a fourth of a period in a hockey game. hockey pucks that don’t fly up into the stands are removed from the game because they warm up from friction and bounce on the ice. So how cold should hockey pucks be?

Marcia Smith 1:37
There is that temperature? Yeah, there’s an average temperature and the average temperature? I’ll say 26 degrees. No,

Bob Smith 1:44
the National Hockey League game pucks are chilled to minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit for maximum performance. Oh, and during games, they’re kept in a freezer in the penalty box.

Marcia Smith 1:55
No kidding. I’m just learning so much. It’s fascinating,

Bob Smith 1:58
isn’t it, Marcia? And that’s what the joy of the show. But things you and I learned doing the research? I hope it’s been for other people to

Marcia Smith 2:07
some of it is I’m sure. Okay, Bob, we know the moon has how much gravity? I don’t know how much gravity it has zero. Yeah, I think it’s zero because they’re bouncing around.

Bob Smith 2:18
It has to have some or they would they float all over the place? Okay. It has less

Marcia Smith 2:22
than us. Okay, so what planet in our solar system has the most? What

Bob Smith 2:28
planet has the most gravity and I assume it’s not the Earth? Correct? Okay, so would it be a small planet large planet would be close to the sun? The largest

Marcia Smith 2:37
planet? Oh, really? You know the answer to that, like

Bob Smith 2:40
Saturn or Uranus. Neptune don’t like you say?

Marcia Smith 2:46
No, I’ll tell you, Jupiter. It’s the largest planet in the system. And if you were up there, you would wait two and a half times more on Jupiter than you would on Earth. Oh my so I’m not going that’s just depressing. I would be taking jumbo sizes and everything.

Bob Smith 3:03
This weight loss stuff is hard enough. I can’t imagine.

Marcia Smith 3:07
Try to stand up. Try to do your exercise would have times

Bob Smith 3:11
what you normally weigh. Why? There’s absolutely no reason to go there. And

Marcia Smith 3:16
today’s exercise, lift my leg.

Bob Smith 3:20
lift a finger. Okay, I got a question about musicians here. We’re just going to be all over the map today. What do musicians Art Garfunkel, John Lennon, Paul, Simon and Ringo Starr have in common? Art Garfunkel, John Lennon, Paul Simon and Ringo Starr. Oh, what? It has nothing to do with music.

Marcia Smith 3:40
Okay, get a little more specific. Just give me something.

Bob Smith 3:44
They all have something named after them. Okay,

Marcia Smith 3:46
thank you. They all have something named after them. And guitar?

Bob Smith 3:51
No, you’d think it would be something although Ringo is a drummer, but

Marcia Smith 3:58
Hello. Now

Bob Smith 3:59
each of these people they each have a species of Trilobite named after them. Now trilobites are prehistoric ocean dwelling anthropods and these are recently discovered and they were named after the rock guide. So I’ve Alon tourists. Garfunkel Ellis is named after who? Gar funk and Garfunkel a Lennon i is named after John Lennon. It’s not a Simon I is named after Paul Simon and a story I is named after Ringo Starr. So John Lennon wasn’t the walrus. He was actually a trilobite. Wow. Fascinating. I thought it was fascinating and that comes from that’s a fact check one of my favorite books,

Marcia Smith 4:38
is it okay lately? It’s well, can you figure out why we say break a leg to an actor before they go on stage. Did you ever wonder why

Bob Smith 4:47
is it have something to do with a performance somebody had does have something to do with John Wilkes Booth breaking his leg.

Marcia Smith 4:52
That was a myth, but this phrase came about before Okay, Lincoln’s assassination. So if you say A to an actor Good luck before going on stage, it’s perceived as anything but good luck because actors are allegedly very superstitious, okay? And through the years they have thought saying good luck is a brazen act of tempting fate. You know, like, Whatever you do so by saying something totally opposite, you are not tempting the acting gods to ruin your performance.

Bob Smith 5:28
Blake though, what did that have to do with it?

Marcia Smith 5:31
I don’t know. But the Germans they ever compassionate Germans have their own thing, which I can’t pronounce in German, but in English, it means may you break your neck and your leg? Before they go on. They always got to one up us. Yes,

Bob Smith 5:47
they do. Those kind and soft, compassionate Germans. Always find that interesting that you and I both have Germanic backgrounds, and we’re not the kind of people

Marcia Smith 5:56
well, we don’t know. We know a lot of nice, sweet Germans. Okay, speaking

Bob Smith 6:00
of luck, Marcia, what are the odds of winning a Mega Millions jackpot?

Marcia Smith 6:05
I got one of those kinds of questions today.

Bob Smith 6:08
What are the odds of winning a Mega Millions jackpot?

Marcia Smith 6:11
Is this like one? Yes. Okay, one in one in six and a half million?

Bob Smith 6:17
No, it’s just one in 176 million. That’s the odds of winning. Now, how slim are those odds, you’re more likely to be crushed by a vending machine, you’re more likely to give birth to identical quadruplets. eidetic you’re more likely to become President of the United States or die in an asteroid Apocalypse than winning a Mega Millions lottery. Keep that in mind when you’re about to buy that ticket at the gas station. Well, I just

Marcia Smith 6:47
I was hearing a story on the radio the other day about a guy he and his wife always play the same numbers, same set of numbers, right? And all but one of his numbers came in right? A couple of $100. So we went to cash in his ticket. And he said, you won in these What’d he tell you about? He didn’t have his glasses on when he did the numbers. And he didn’t see he put in the wrong digit. And the wrong digit was the winning. Oh, that’s hilarious. So there you go. There’s

Bob Smith 7:17
the best laid plan. So you’re good, too. You didn’t do the right thing. That’s

Marcia Smith 7:20
right. Okay, Bob. Do you remember your salad days? Yes.

Bob Smith 7:26
Yes, your salad days, which are your days when you’re young, right? Yes, I say in your 20s Probably.

Marcia Smith 7:31
Well, it’s a goofy expression.

Bob Smith 7:34
I assumed it’s like looking at life as a meal and your salad days and your main course No,

Marcia Smith 7:39
but that’s good. You know who came up with it? No. First uttered by Billy Shakespeare. Oh, William Shakespeare. Okay, let me enlighten you. He coined the expression and even explained it in Act One, scene five of Antony and Cleopatra. It says my salad days when I was green in judgment, cold and blood. So it’s before your your hot blooded days? Well, I think

Bob Smith 8:06
it’s before you you’re seasoned in your understanding of green and judgment means you you’re left behind the years ya know everything

Marcia Smith 8:13
so that’s why he came up with salad days it was he that first PennDOT

Bob Smith 8:17
All right, I’ve got another show business question for you here. All right, what was unusual about Sean Connery his first performance as James Bond.

Marcia Smith 8:26
What was unusual unusual give me a little something

Bob Smith 8:29
unusual about his appearance.

Marcia Smith 8:33
Ha Ha he had I don’t know he was wearing contacts.

Bob Smith 8:37
He was wearing something. He was

Marcia Smith 8:40
Sean Connery. Jail. Oh, he was wearing a toupee. Oh, was he really

Bob Smith 8:46
he was only 30 years old, but he had to wear a toupee to hide a receding hair. No kidding. I didn’t know that that movie was Doctor No. And that was the first of four Bond films for him. He went on to 60 more years of filmmaking and died at the age of 90 with 63 films to his credit, but when he was 30, he already had to wear a toupee. Wow. handsome young guy. All right. Here’s another show business questions. All right, Jerry Seinfeld remember Seinfeld the series. Actress Liz Sheridan played Jerry Seinfeld’s Mother, what was an unusual fact about her background. Liz Sheridan played Jerry Seinfeld’s mother on Seinfeld. Yeah,

Marcia Smith 9:27
I’m trying to picture her and what unusual, again,

Bob Smith 9:31
someone she was romantically involved with.

Marcia Smith 9:33
Oh, was it like Ben Stiller’s dad or something?

Bob Smith 9:37
No, this is when she was younger. She was once engaged to James Dean. Oh, okay. Yeah, her name was Liz Sheridan. And she was once briefly engaged to James

Marcia Smith 9:47
and I said Ben Stiller’s dad because Jerry Stiller was in Seinfeld, so I thought maybe they had been engagements. Well, James Dean, I never knew he was engaged. Yeah. Well, here’s a question you probably know Ever pondered bar? Okay. What is considered probably the largest item on any menu in the world?

Bob Smith 10:09
What’s the largest item on any menu in the world? Are you talking about cost? No. sighs

Marcia Smith 10:14
sighs sighs it comes to the table. This is something that

Bob Smith 10:18
octopus, you know of octopus. No. Okay, I had octopus but yeah, was it large? Big, big? No, they

Marcia Smith 10:26
had it cut up cut up. This is this is the whole ball of wax here.

Bob Smith 10:30
I don’t know Marsh. What would it be? It’s a roasted camel.

Marcia Smith 10:33
What? Which is sometimes served at a Bedouin wedding feast. The camo is stuffed with a sheep carcass, good lord, which in turn is stuffed with chickens. And the chickens are stuffed with fish. And those fish are stuffed with eggs.

Bob Smith 10:51
I always wonder Why Does something have to be stuffed with something? Isn’t it good enough as it is? The answer’s no. And free camp. Can

Marcia Smith 10:59
you imagine a whole roasted camo coming to your table?

Bob Smith 11:02
I have a it seems odd that bedouins who depend on camels would kill camels and eat them. Well, I mean, you know, people did not eat horses very often. They did if they weren’t, well if they were hungry, but horses were like a beast of burden but a friend so to speak, you know? I mean, if people didn’t think of that, this kind of odd. And then the stuff it with all those things. Wow.

Marcia Smith 11:22
gotta fill it up. Think about the hush. You gotta put

Bob Smith 11:26
some stuff. There. That’s interesting. Okay, I

Marcia Smith 11:29
found that particularly weird. Okay, Marsha

Bob Smith 11:32
to geography questions for you. You love geography? Like, you know you don’t? What is the world’s largest island?

Marcia Smith 11:40
World’s Largest? Well? Is it the

Bob Smith 11:43
world’s largest island? New Zealand? No.

Marcia Smith 11:46
What’s the answer? Greenland. Oh, yeah. Greenland

Bob Smith 11:49
is 840,000 square miles in size, which makes it the world’s largest island and for comparison, it’s three times the size of Texas. Okay, it’s how big Greenland is. Speaking of Texas, this object is visible from space and is half the size of Texas. But it was built by micro organisms in the ocean. What is

Marcia Smith 12:11
it? Say again?

Bob Smith 12:14
This object is visible from space. It’s only half the size of Texas, but it was built by micro organisms in the ocean. It’s a coral reef. That’s exactly what it is the Great Barrier Reef of Queensland, Australia, it’s 132,974 square miles Score one for Mrs. Smith. They build slowly and underwater home and this one is so big. You can see it from space after 1000s of years. The Great Barrier Reef includes more than 2900 individual reefs and 900 islands. It’s formed when colonies of coral polyps secrete hard exoskeletons made of calcium carbonate. This light just goes on beneath your eyes. You don’t pay attention to these things. All of a sudden, you got something that’s 132,000 square miles under the ocean, and you

Marcia Smith 13:06
can see it and you can see it from space. It’s fascinating. That makes sense. I’d love to see it from space

Bob Smith 13:11
half the size of Texas. Okay, okay, we’re done with Texas. What’s your question?

Marcia Smith 13:15
I got a golf question, Bob. Okay, not your core strength unless we tied to a president of course or something. Why do we refer to golf courses as links? Oh,

Bob Smith 13:28
that’s a good links. Why would they? I don’t know what is what’s the what’s the link there Marcia.

Marcia Smith 13:35
The word links is a Scottish reference to the coastal strips of semi barren land between the ocean beach and inland farming areas. This link land was to Sandy for crops. So that’s where the Scots put their first golf courses. Otherwise worthless. Those narrow links of land became valuable as golf course. And those were the links between those two areas. Okay,

Bob Smith 14:01
I think it’s time we took a break Marsh. You’re listening to the off ramp with Bob and Marsha Smith. We’ll be back in just a moment. Okay, we’re back. I’m Bob. I’m Marcia. And we’re here with the off ramp. Okay, Marsha. I have a history question. We talked about George Custer a short ago was General Custer, outgunned or outmanned. At the Battle of Little Bighorn,

Marcia Smith 14:25
I thought he was outmanned.

Bob Smith 14:27
That’s what I thought too, but it’s a little bit of both. Estimates are there were as many as 3000 Indians who fought the seventh cavalry’s, 197 men teeth, you are really outnumbered there. But while 80% of the Indians had traditional weapons, which are clubs and Lance’s and bows and arrows, there were far more firearms brought to the battle by Native Americans. I didn’t know this. Did you know they did field studies shortly after the battle. Now the Seventh Cavalry soldiers of Custer were armed with the Springfield trap To our car been model 1873 And the Colt Single Action Army revolver model 1873 So those are the two guns the soldiers had. But physical evidence indicates the Indians used sharps Smith and Wesson Evans Henry’s Winchesters Remingtons Ballard’s major stuff stars ventured and fields and forehand and Wadsworth, as well as Colton Springfields of other calibers. Their weapons, even accused repeaters while Custers weapons were single shot. You couldn’t just fire more than one. Well, where did they get them all over the place? They had them, you know, they traded with Apple store, they traded with people. There were 2361 cartridges cases and bullets recovered from the battlefield, which came from 45 different types of firearms, but at least 371 guns. And apparently Custer had been suggested that he used machine guns and bring them Gatling guns there, but they decided not to take them because they were too big and they thought they would be difficult, but they may have helped in the battle,

Marcia Smith 16:03
I would think is fascinating

Bob Smith 16:05
thing there. All

Marcia Smith 16:06
right, Bob, quickly back to golf. What are the chances the odds of you not a pro of you hitting a hole in one on a regular golf course? Like

Bob Smith 16:17
one in a million or something like that? No, I’d say one in 200,000.

Marcia Smith 16:21
It’s one in 12,500. On a regular golf course, it’s one to 2% chance that you would hit a golf ball that far. The longest holding one on a tour in Scottsdale was a power for it was by Andrew McGee in 2001. He hit it 332 yards. Hold on one.

Bob Smith 16:41
That’s amazing. And and even if it’s only What did you say? What? 12,000 1500 That’s still mighty strong. Difficult, big,

Marcia Smith 16:50
bad odds. Yeah. Okay. People often

Bob Smith 16:53
ask for advice and often just ignore it right? But this advice was given to a famous artist and he took it literally right down to the point of what the words the man said, We’re, so I’m going to ask you this. What advice did an art dealer give Andy Warhol for being famous? Paint

Marcia Smith 17:14
the obvious? No. Andy

Bob Smith 17:17
Warhol, he’d become a well known artist in New York and advertising. I was gonna say his work was very Conde Nast. He’d produced covers for LPs and books. And as magazines were turning from illustrators to photography, his income was declining. His name was Andrew Warhola at the time, and he really, I didn’t know that at one point, he told an art dealer. I want to be as famous as the Queen of England. What was the art dealers advice? Okay, tell me. You’ve got to find something recognizable to almost anybody. Something like a can of Campbell’s Soup?

Marcia Smith 17:49
Well, he did. Literally only come home. Isn’t that interesting? Yeah. Like I

Bob Smith 17:53
said, usually people, they take advice, but they don’t take it that specific. Yeah.

Marcia Smith 17:57
And he did. And I hope he gave that dealer a cut.

Bob Smith 18:00
I hope he did do when he sold that sucker. Well, that was a 1961. So here’s

Marcia Smith 18:04
something you’ll find interesting. Why do we call gossip or unimportant information? Trivia? Hmm?

Bob Smith 18:14
Why do we call gossip and kind of ephemeral stuff? Trivia? I don’t know. What’s the answer to that?

Marcia Smith 18:18
It goes back to the Romans. They were big road builders, right. And they called the area where three roads came together a Trivium TR, I ve Ium Okay, meaning three roadways. At this three Road intersection traffic would always slow down considerably and congest. And it gave the people time to exchange like gossip and meaningless conversation, and thus the birth of trivia. So they would stop and get congested and start blowing the breeze. Yeah, just start talking

Bob Smith 18:51
to each other. Yeah. Trivium. So the discussions became known as Trivium. Er, yeah, that is good.

Marcia Smith 19:00
And went on from there, right down to our show in 2021. Think about it. And here we are

Bob Smith 19:06
in February. And we’re still thinking a little bit about the inauguration. I am and I have. I’m thinking about that. And inoculation. All right. Now we know that the Star Spangled Banner is the nation’s official anthem. But what’s unusual about hail Columbia. That’s the official song of the vice president hail Columbia.

Marcia Smith 19:30
Vice President has his own song.

Bob Smith 19:32
Yes. Her own song.

Marcia Smith 19:33
I’m sorry. Oh, yes, Laura. There’s

Bob Smith 19:35
so little bias. How interesting. Yes, the Vice President has her own song and it’s called heal Colombia. What’s unusual about that? Okay, what

Marcia Smith 19:44
is it? Originally that

Bob Smith 19:45
was the American National Anthem. He’ll pull up Libya. It served as the unofficial national anthem before the Star Spangled Banner was formally adopted now. When was the Star Spangled Banner made the official national anthem, how long have we been singing that as the official national anthem.

Marcia Smith 20:02
I bet it was later

Bob Smith 20:04
than you think it was later than you think I’m 62? No, that was 30 years earlier. 1931 Okay. And then that’s when he’ll Columbia began being played to honor the vice president. Music trivia.

Marcia Smith 20:18
From the Guinness Book of World Records in 1991, the biggest tumor

Bob Smith 20:27
Oh, no. was removed

Marcia Smith 20:28
from an unnamed woman at the Stanford Medical University. How big was oh, this

Bob Smith 20:34
is just a watermelon or something’s in

Marcia Smith 20:38
terms of weight. How heavy was 10

Bob Smith 20:40
pounds?

Marcia Smith 20:41
No.

Bob Smith 20:42
More? Yeah. Oh, no.

Marcia Smith 20:46
306 pounds? What? Yes. Three feet wide.

Speaker 1 20:50
How could a woman have a tumor? That’s 300 pounds? Well, that’s the question. And how could you not know how could you hide that?

Marcia Smith 20:58
If that was I know. It was gross. But if address what you

Bob Smith 21:01
have to wear? Oh, my baby. Oh, man. Oh,

Marcia Smith 21:04
yeah, I know. It was gross, but it was interested is gross.

Bob Smith 21:07
All right, this isn’t gross. This is kind of fun. Here are three questions I’m going to ask you about the first electronic message sent around the world. Okay. The three questions are when was it sent? Who says it? And how long did it take to travel the globe? Was

Marcia Smith 21:23
it somebody like gates or? Wozniak? Was it Oh, I

Bob Smith 21:28
see from Apple Computer? Yes. No. Who sent it? Was it a president? No. When was it sent? And how long did it take? Alright,

Marcia Smith 21:37
gets enough. Tell me the answers to all three. Okay,

Bob Smith 21:41
this message sent around the world. That was the message. It was sent by telegram in 1911. Oh, who said it? The New York Times.

Marcia Smith 21:50
Oh, it’s really to see how long it would take. Yeah, it took 16 minutes.

Bob Smith 21:54
It was sent by a dispatcher for the New York Times. They wanted to know how fast a commercial message Yeah, could be sent around the world via telegraph cable. That’s pretty amazing. Yeah. And it was all done via cable. So it was cable around the world message left the 17th floor of the New York Times at 7pm August 20 1911. It headed west. It was relayed by operators in San Francisco, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Saigon, Singapore, Bombay, Malta, Lisbon and other locations and was received by the same operator in the New York Times offices 16 and a half minutes late

Marcia Smith 22:28
boy was I on the wrong track with that when I was going digital, I should have thought of the telegraph. It didn’t even occur to me. Yeah, I was

Bob Smith 22:34
love using that term because you say electronic message and nobody thinks of the telegraph. No, I mean, like Lincoln was the first president who sent an electronic message. 16 minutes, it still seems pretty fast, doesn’t it?

Marcia Smith 22:45
I think that is amazingly fast. Okay, now here’s something I’m going to finish up with. And we’re getting back into your wheelhouse The Three Stooges? Wait a minute.

Bob Smith 22:55
Now the Three Stooges person

Marcia Smith 22:59
between 1930 and 1965. The three jolly pranksters were in how many feature films from

Bob Smith 23:06
1930 to 1965. Yeah, I bet they did. 30 Films

Marcia Smith 23:12
22. Wow. Can you name any of them? Yes, the Three Stooges

Bob Smith 23:15
on Mars. That’s the one I saw as an eight year old boy. There you go. I had my Dad, take me to that.

Marcia Smith 23:21
And later on, I’ll let you recite all 22 Because I know you know.

Bob Smith 23:27
Now, we talked about that first message electronic message in 1911. NASA launched the Voyager two satellite, which took off with a phonograph record that had messages for extra terrestrial would encompass that. That thing is still speeding out there in space at 34,000 miles per hour. What

Marcia Smith 23:47
was the form good disk

Bob Smith 23:49
I did on that same day, 66 years later, that is pertinent because just Friday, February 12, NASA reestablished contact with Voyager after a year in which COVID cause difficulties communicating. Voyager one and two are still out there in deep space, and they’re still communicating back. There’s actually a team of people who are all in near retirement who’ve worked on that program. They’re in their 70s and 80s. Now and they’re still working for JPL. In Altadena, California. On this, this mission, these missions, they’re able to actually communicate and operate the equipment. So how long does the message take to deep space 12 million miles away from Earth? When they send a message to Voyager two, how long does it take?

Marcia Smith 24:36
17 minutes?

Bob Smith 24:37
No 35 hours. It takes 17 hours and 35 minutes each way. So when a message goes out there and comes back. It’s 35 hours total round trip. Yeah.

Marcia Smith 24:51
So bring me a glass of water isn’t gonna cut No, no, no.

Bob Smith 24:55
Wow, no, both of those spacecraft hold the record for the farthest to a spacecraft has ever traveled, the computer on board is got the power of a 16 gigabyte cell phone today. That’s all the more power it has. They both were powered by plutonium. So they’ve got plutonium onboard. But they have to keep switching things on and off to keep the power from going down too far. They because they want these things, they may last for 50 years. These things have gone past all the planets. They’re all past Pluto now and they had pictures of eight active volcanoes. They set back from Jupiter. So they are discovering things about our solar system and beyond.

Marcia Smith 25:35
Yeah, very, very interesting. I’m going to wrap it up in honor of Valentine’s Day with three romantic quotes. Okay, first is from Catherine Zeta Jones. For marriage to be a success. every woman and every man should have her and his own bathroom. The end?

Bob Smith 25:55
That’s probably true. I think so

Marcia Smith 25:57
I go along with that. Dr. Ruth West I met. She said you will never forget your first lover. So try to make it someone you won’t regret thinking about the rest of your life. Here’s Julia Roberts. You know, it’s love when all you want is that person to be happy, even if you’re not part of that happiness. And I believe that

Bob Smith 26:20
that is true. It is true. Is there anybody like that in your life that you’re glad that they’re not with you but they’re happy or you’re glad? You’re happy that they’re not with you? I don’t know when you’re

Marcia Smith 26:31
going down the rabbit hole. Okay. Sorry. And if you have a question you’d like one of us to give to the other person a Question and Answers submitted to our

Bob Smith 26:41
website, the off ramp dot show and go to contact us and you can leave a message several people have done that lately. Yes. I have to say hello to Susie Miller. Who’s out there who I used to work with. It’s Studleys Rexall drugstore in Lawrenceville, Illinois. And Susie Miriam Miller. She sent us a message last week you never did answer my questions. There’s somebody out there that you are glad they’re happy but they’re not with you

Marcia Smith 27:05
know, I’m with the person I want to be well that’s nice thing to say. Oh, it’s true. Okay,

Bob Smith 27:09
and now that’s what

Marcia Smith 27:15
the show Oh, that’s on a good trajectory here scared

Bob Smith 27:19
there for a minute. Okay. Well, that’s it for today. We hope you’ve enjoyed this and hope you had a good Valentine’s Day.

Marcia Smith 27:25
Yes. And may all your tumors be small. Oh.

Bob Smith 27:31
Hi, Bob Smith. I’m Marcia spirit and this has been the off ramp. Oh dear.

The off ramp is produced in association with CPL radio online and the Cedarburg Public Library Cedarburg, Wisconsin.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai