Fun Fact & Trivia Extravaganza! 😱
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Description
It's a Ten News Trivia Extravaganza! 🔭 Can you answer this Trivia Question: This month the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn will align in a way that brings them so close, they’ll look like a double planet! What is this rare event called? 🌒What’s up with the Winter Solstice? Find out why the days are shorter in the Winter time! (with correspondents Jacob & Olivia Rozencwaig from the Curious Kid Podcast) 😱 Hear THREE of our favorite fun facts of the year! 🐧 Learn even more about the strange way a penguin colony was discovered in Antarctica. Plus, in a previous episode of The Ten News, we told you which animal your sneeze could beat in a race. Do you know what that episode was called?
Links
🔭 Learn all there is to know about the miraculous Great Conjunction!
🌒 Discover what really happens during Winter Solstice!
🐧 Unlock the strange truth about the way Penguins were discovered in Antarctica!
😱 Reveal which The Ten News Episode is the answer to our trivia question!
🎇 Join us on Instagram: The Ten News on Instagram
Transcript
Bethany Van Delft: [00:00:00] What's up with the winter solstice? Do planets hang out with each other? How many fun facts can we fit into a single episode? I'm Bethany Van Delft. And we're about to find out on today's The Ten News, a special episode, devoted to the wild, the weird and the wow. It's 10 minutes of fascinating facts, sure to make you the most interesting person at your next virtual play date. Okay, let's get into The Ten News Trivia Special.
[00:00:32] Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. Here's your first trivia question of the day . This month the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn will align in a way that brings them so close, they'll look like a double planet.
[00:00:49] What is this rare event called? A) A Great Alliance, B) A Great Coincidence, C) A Great Conjunction. We'll find out the [00:01:00] answer in a few minutes. So stick around.
[00:01:06] Well, you think about what Jupiter and Saturn are up to, let's hear from another out of this world duo our favorite father-daughter podcast is Jacob and Olivia from Curious Kid. They've got some cool facts about the Winter Solstice.
Jacob Rozencwaig: [00:01:21] Hey everybody. Did you enjoy the sunshine on Monday? If you did, you were able to get the most out of the shortest day of the year.
Olivia: [00:01:30] Aren't all days 24 hours?
Jacob Rozencwaig: [00:01:33] Yes, but I'm talking about the amount of time between sunrise and sunset.
[00:01:41] Monday, December 21st was the Winter Solstice for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere. It was the darkest day of the year with only about nine hours and 15 minutes between sunrise and sunset. That means almost 15 hours of darkness. Let's throw in some fun [00:02:00] facts about the Winter Solstice.
Olivia: [00:02:02] The Winter Solstice makes the official start of winter.
Jacob Rozencwaig: [00:02:06] That's right, winter started on Monday.
Olivia: [00:02:09] Going forward. There will be more and more daylight every single day until we get to summer.
Jacob Rozencwaig: [00:02:15] That's so exciting. I can't wait for the nice warm summer months.
Olivia: [00:02:21] Hang in there because it will get colder before it gets warmer.
Jacob Rozencwaig: [00:02:26] So don't put away your warm coats. Yet in most areas, the coldest days are in January, which is just weeks away.
[00:02:33] So a little more daylight is not going to give us warmer weather right away.
Olivia: [00:02:37] Warm weather is being enjoyed by people in the Southern Hemisphere right now.
Jacob Rozencwaig: [00:02:42] And that's because of the Winter Solstice inthe Northern hemispher takes place at the same moment as the Summer Solstice in the Southern Hemisphere right now, South of the Equator, people are enjoying long days and warm weather for the start of summer.
Olivia: [00:02:58] And here's a fun [00:03:00] fact that will blow your mind. The Winter Solstice has nothing to do with how far away the sun is.
Jacob Rozencwaig: [00:03:07] The sun is actually pretty close to Earth right now compared to other points throughout the year. The reason that our days are short and nights are long. Is because the earth is tilted.
[00:03:18] This time of year, the Northern Hemisphere is tilted away from the sun, which means less sunlight and colder weather.
Olivia: [00:03:26] Okay. Dad, let's bundle up and go outside before the sun goes down. Happy holidays, everybody!
Jacob Rozencwaig: [00:03:33] Happy holidays.
Bethany Van Delft: [00:03:36] To learn more from Jacob and Olivia, check out their Curious Kid podcast.
[00:03:46] Okay. Back to our trivia question. This month, the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn will align in a way that brings them so close they'll look like a double planet. What is this very event called? [00:04:00] Is it A) Great Alliance, b) Great coincidence or C) A Great Conjunction. Did you guess it? The answer is C! Conjunction is a word astronomers use to describe the meeting of objects in the night sky.
[00:04:20] A Great Conjunction happens when the two largest planets in our solar system, Jupiter and Saturn align. Fascinating. Although from Earth, they may look like they're snuggling up together, there's still hundreds of millions of miles apart. A Great Conjunction like this one hasn't happened in 800 years and it will be visible in the night sky throughout the month of December.
[00:04:42] You've got to check it out.
[00:04:45] What's better than hearing The Ten News fun facts of the day? Hearing three of our favorite fun facts of the year. That's three times the fun. And three times the facts. Okay. Let's count them down.
[00:04:59] Number [00:05:00] three - Anatidaephobia is the very real fear that somewhere in the world, a duck maybe watching you. I just love that one.
[00:05:09] Number two - in Switzerland, it's technically illegal to own just one Guinea pig because they get lonely.
[00:05:18] And the Ten Team's Number One, favorite fun fact of the year - in Major League Baseball games, the umpires are required to wear black underwear just in case they split their pants. I mean, yeah, I'm feeling like this is a sensible tip for like anyone. Match your undies to your pants? Duly noted, MLB. Do you have a fun fact to share email us@helloatthetennews.com
[00:05:57] A few episodes ago, our fearless [00:06:00] Nature Nerd Laine Farber presented a trivia question, so fascinating, so intriguing and disgusting, we just had to bring it back. And this time Laine has even more to say about it. Let's revisit Laine and the infamous Emperor Penguins.
Laine Farber: [00:06:20] It's the holiday season. So, you know what that means.
[00:06:24] Time to pay homage to everyone's favorite flightless bird, the penguin. Sewn onto tacky, Christmas sweaters and plastered onto giant tins of flavored popcorn, you just can't avoid seeing these cute little feathered friends. And why would you want to miss these fabulously feathered fowl? They're eighteen species of penguin most of which live in places where it's cold, like really cold. One of such penguins is the Emperor Penguin, which lives in Antarctica. [00:07:00] Emperor penguins are the biggest species. They can weigh up to almost a hundred pounds and stand around four and a half feet tall. That's roughly the size of a fifth grader.
[00:07:12] Even though they're quite large, many colonies of emperor penguin went undiscovered, until now, that is. So how did scientists find these well hidden penguin colonies? Was it a) satellites track trails of black feathers left on the white snow? B) satellites tracked poop stains left on the white snow, or C) satellites tracked a penguin tap dancing on a mountain.
[00:07:45] If you guessed B you're correct. Scientists use satellite images to track and locate these poopy penguins. Strange, but true. This discovery is important [00:08:00] because emperor penguins are a near threatened species. This means that their population is stable now, but could become threatened in the near future by our changing climate. That's bad. Discovering new colonies of penguins is great because it means that there are more breeding adults helping raise the number of penguins living happy lives in the wild. These pictures of poop prove that the emperor penguin population is five to 10% larger than we previously thought it to be.
[00:08:32] Now that might not sound like a big number, but in science, a 5% increase can be significant. So this is good news. There are more penguin! More penguins means more flightless friends who call Arctica their home and an even greater reason that we should do our best to think of how our actions affect our planet and the critters we share it with.
Bethany Van Delft: [00:08:59] You can hear more [00:09:00] from Laine on her Nature Nerds podcast.
Tracy Leeds Kaplan: [00:09:08] Hey parents and awesome guardians. I'm Tracy Leeds Kaplan, Executive Producer of The Ten News.
Owen: [00:09:13] I'm Owen. And I'm eight and a half.
Tracy Leeds Kaplan: [00:09:15] And who are you?
Owen: [00:09:16] Your son. How would you like to know the future... Follow us at the Ten News on Instagram, Twitter, and Tik Tok. There we drop a few clues on upcoming episode in emoji.
Tracy Leeds Kaplan: [00:09:33] What's your favorite emoji?
Owen: [00:09:35] Maybe the scream of emoji.
Tracy Leeds Kaplan: [00:09:36] The scream emoji? That's fitting.
Bethany Van Delft: [00:09:40] It's time for your second trivia question of the day in a previous episode of The Ten News, we told you which animal your sneeze could beat in a race. What I know, do you remember what that episode was called? Was it [00:10:00] A) Trade In Your Swimsuit for a Spacesuit B) A Mandarin Hip-Hop Masterpiece, or C) Keep That Pumpkin Pie to Yourself. Okay. Okay. That one's really hard.
[00:10:12] So here's a big hint. You can find the answer by visiting the Episodes Page at thetennews.com. Go check it out and tune into our next episode to find out if you're right.
[00:10:26] That's it. Time's up. That's the end of the Ten for today, but you can catch new episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The Ten News is a co-production of Small, But Mighty Media in collaboration with Next Chapter Podcasts and distributed by iHeartRadio.
[00:10:42] The writing team is led by Editorial Director, Tracey Crooks, with contributions from Stephen Tompkins, Jacob Rosenzweig and Laine Farber. The Creative Producer is Jenner Pascua. Marketing is led by Jacob Bronstein with social media and web support by Steven Tompkins and Adam Pharr. Editing and [00:11:00] sound design by Pete Musto under the production direction of Jeremiah Tittle.
[00:11:04] Executive Producer Donald Albright and show creator Tracy Leeds Kaplan round out the team. If you have questions about the show, a story idea, or just a fun fact you want to share email us at hello@thetennews.com. And don't forget to subscribe, rate and review The Ten News on Apple podcasts, iHeartRadio, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
[00:11:27] It really makes a difference. I'm Bethany Van Delft. And thanks for listening to The Ten News. Now go dazzle someone with, all the fun facts you just learned dazzled, dazzle, baby. I don't know what that was. Oh, dazzle somebody, you dazzling creature. Yeah.
