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Hello there. Hello. Hello, it's me, Josh, and this week's X y České Select. There's a little episode from 2012 called Geyser's Colen Nature's Innuendo. I thought of that title myself and I still love it to this day, so I hope you enjoy it. It's one of those really cool earth sciences, biogeochemical ones that really get me jazzed. And I hope it gets you jazzed, too.

Let's all get jazzed.

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of NPR Radio's HowStuffWorks. Welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh Clark, there's Charles W. Chuck Bright, and this is stuff you should know.

Yeah, just a couple of regular guys are sitting around chat. Oh, good. I know. I genuinely didn't think you were going to say guys are really a little slow today. Um, this was, uh, pretty cool article. I thought I knew a lot about Geyser's, but I did not know exactly what was going on there.

Yeah. In fact, I was wrong on a couple of key points. Oh really? Yes. Which I will not point out. Oh, come on.

Well, I thought they spit out lemonade, first of all.

Yeah.

And I thought that was a little guy down there doing it. Oh. Got leprechauns. Yeah. Yeah. That's what everybody thinks. I was wrong on both of those points. Do we have a geezer myth sound effect.

I don't think so. Does this count as weather. No.

This is earth science ursu biogeochemical processes. Okay. I just know you're trying to beef up our weather. This is not whether it's not weather, although it does begin with weather.

Yeah. I mean, sure. When something precipitates that's weather. Sure. And precipitation precipitates the explosion of a geiser. That's right. Mm hmm. Uh, Chuck. Yes, I have no geezer introduction, man. You can't blame me, though, like I looked. Yeah, and there is really not a lot going on on Kaisers.

I thought you might tell the story about the people in 1993. He was going to, but I didn't want to just usurp it.

OK, let's do that, though, since you brought it up, because, I mean, I thought about that. I was like, whoa, hang back. Just hang back. Well, apparently geezers can kill you.

And, you know, when you see something like Old Faithful go off, that's why you're 300 feet away watching it. Yeah. You know, you're going to be on top of the thing. Right.

But apparently in 1983 in New Zealand, which is lousy with Kaisers, some tourists visiting there got caught in a jet at why Mangou?

Why Mangu Valley, nice kid. And it killed all four people and carried them more than a mile away.

I guess that is sad. And after after we explain how geezers work, I think that what we should mention that again, because once I understood how guys are working and I read that I was like those people met a terrible, terrible demise. Sure. Like they that those terrible way to go.

Yeah. I mean, it's tantamount to getting thrown into a volcano or caught in dropping into the cracks of an earthquake.

And they're all kind of related, as it turns out. Yeah. Or being bludgeoned to death, which is not related. No, but it's pretty bad way to go to the geothermal properties.

So Chuck Geyser's, as I learned from reading this article on HowStuffWorks dot com, our beloved site, um, are actually kind of fragile.

And there's not that many this this article there's a thousand guys there's roughly in the world.

And I read elsewhere that there's only about 50 guys or fields on the planet and about two thirds of those have five or fewer geysers.

Wow.

Which makes Yellowstone a pretty substantial repository of geyser and guys or related activity. Yeah, totally. When you're talking geyser, you you don't ever just talk guys. You're also talking fumaroles, you're talking hot springs, your mud pots, steam vents and all of them are based around the same thing, which is there's some sort of geothermal activity that's relatively close to the earth's surface.

Right. Right. Yeah. Um, and there's three components to a geyser. Um, and they are water supply, plumbing system and heat source. Yeah. And I'm going to argue a fourth later on.

OK, later though, I have to wait.

Uh, I'm going to call it, uh, we'll just go and say what it is, which is remoteness. And then we'll we'll circle back because detached from its family, that's right, becomes very remote. So a water supply, let's start there, because if you ain't got water, you ain't got no GEISER.

Yeah, and I saw in this article that Rivers can often form the water supply. I didn't I didn't see that elsewhere, for the most part.

From what I from what I can gather is that the water supply is precipitation. Yeah. Rain and snowmelt percolating through the Earth's crust over 500 or a thousand or so years. Yeah. And then it trickles down to the point where it comes in contact with, like we said, relatively shallow geothermal activity, usually very, very young volcanic volcano or volcanic activity or very, very old like in the throes of death, volcanic activity. Oh, is that right?

Yeah. And it can be anything from magma to cool magma, but it's very hot rock and it's close enough to the surface that this water doesn't evaporate. It starts to trickle back up.

Yeah. And when you say close three miles down, seems like a long way down. But if you're talking to the planet Earth, it's nothing.

It's pretty close. Yeah. If you're talking magma, it's pretty close. You're talking tectonic plates. It's pretty close.

It's closer than you want it to be, pal.

Yeah, go ahead. No, you go ahead.

OK, number two, the plumbing system, right? Very important. The plumbing system is a series of fissures that run miles beneath the surface in. One important aspect of these fissures is they are basically sealed shut with silica from real light.

It's volcanic rock and the like. These minerals have sealed this rock shut. Right. So really important part of it. That water is percolating down. Yeah. It heats up and starts to travel back up. It takes that silica that Razorlight with it. Yeah. And then it just kind of acts as a sealant along these pipes over 500000 years, however long it takes for it to go back up, its its sealing it and it's making it watertight.

Well yeah.

And I imagine I didn't read this, but I imagine that this kind of activity happens elsewhere on the planet, but it's not sealed up, so it just disperses. Right.

Right. Yeah. Because one of the key ingredients of a geyser is pressure. High pressure. That's right. And to get that pressure in these pipes, you have to have real light coated, sealed pipes. That's right.

OK, so there's the plumbing system and the plumbing system varies. Organisms are different. Sometimes it's just like a huge long vertical shaft. Sometimes it bends and turns and winds around.

OK, so this is this is something that actually differentiates geysers from a hot spring. So a hot spring is just like a like a long vertical shaft coming from hot water up to the top. But there's no obstruction. What makes it guys are a geyser is the fact that there's an obstruction in the plumbing.

Right. It's like a hot spring. Water can just move freely up and down. There's there's just free exchange. Yeah. And you soak around in it like a big lazy walrus.

Yeah. But there's no pressure with the geyser. There's some sort of obstruction where either say the water on its way back up and it's this wide pool that bottlenecks at the top. So no pressure. There's a bunch of different pipes feeding into one pipe and they all connect to the same place.

Another bottleneck or this this pipe of water is so wide and so deep. Yeah.

That the pressure, the water above, the water at the bottom. Yeah. So tremendous that for all intents and purposes it creates a bottleneck just strictly out of pressure without an actual obstruction.

Yeah. Just the weight of the water itself is so great. So we have a water supply and a plumbing system that is sealed with real light, which makes it watertight and pressurized. That's when some sort of means for pressure to build. Yeah.

And I guess we can go ahead and liken it to a pressure cooker now. So you understand we're talking about if you've ever cooked with a pressure cooker at home or if you've ever eaten at Chick fil A and eaten their delicious pressure fried chicken, is that how they do it?

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Under pressure, Fred. So that's why they're so juicy.

Man So water is standard. Water is just going to boil it like one hundred degrees Celsius in the French Quarter.

Um, if you're if you're cooking with a pressure cooker, which means, you know, the lid is sealed shut, it lets out some steam or else it would explode. Obviously, it will actually take a lot more energy to boil and bubble up, which means more heat. And so you can actually cook in a pressure cooker like one hundred and twenty five degrees. Right.

Because it's just substantial for under that pressure, it takes a lot more for what it was boiling water, but it's like air bubbles forming and rising to the top. Yeah. When the pressure is too great, it can't boil.

So the boiling point rises, right. Well it boils but it won't. That can't evaporate. Well, no it can't. It can't form the. Will that carry to the top, right, so it can actually boil, so it's just sitting there in this high pressure environment, high, higher than boiling point temperatures in the same things going on in the geyser, right?

That's right. You've got the obstruction.

You've got this heated water and you have a tremendous amount of pressure because, again, we're talking about miles deep and that's quite a bit of pressure at the bottom. The water at the bottom.

Yeah, and this is getting hotter and hotter and hotter. Of course, a lot of time. Yeah, like.

I mean, I guess it depends, but four guys are to form and start, they think the oldest one is between five thousand and forty thousand years old. Really? So, yeah. So it takes a little while because, you know, the plumbing has to has to seal up and everything.

But as that pressure builds and the heat increases, you can reach temperatures of like four or five hundred degrees Fahrenheit of this water. And it's still not boiling, right? That's right.

And then eventually it does boil overcomes that pressure threshold.

Well, it finds its way through to to the escape route, which is the top of the surface. And it'll just and that's not the eruption.

And just squirt a little bit of water out.

It'll go glug and think, wow, that was a big relief in such a big relief that the steam all of a sudden expands to 1500 times the volume of the water.

It's like if you're ever boiling, you ever steamed vegetables in your house.

The best way to steam vegetables is you don't just set it on a massive boil and cover it up. You get it to that massive boil and then you turn that heat down low and all of a sudden that pressure drop creates like massive amounts of steam. Right. And the reason why is because when you increase pressure, you increase the temperature. That's the boiling point of water. If suddenly you have that temperature still, but the pressure decreases. Yeah.

That that water in the skies are just flash vaporizes. And because there's a lot more volume, do an equal amount of water and steam. That steam, like you said, expands to, what, 1500 times the volume? Yeah. And there's your guys are pal. Yeah.

It's that all of a sudden all the steam in the water just gets shot out, depending on what kind of geyser it is. It's going to take different formations and be different heights and last different amounts of time. But it'll keep going until it either runs out of water or it cools down enough for it to start all over again.

Yeah.

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It's stuff you should know dotcom or wherever books are sold.

And then it just starts all over again, which is how you get something like Old Faithful, right? That's right. Once it once it releases that that pressure and it shoots out, it's the whole process just begins again. And you have guys there's like Old Faithful that are up like on a pretty regular schedule. I think it's between like 60 and 80, five minutes or something like that.

Well, I've got the new schedule schedule because it's been it's been happening with greater with less frequency and greater power in recent years.

I think it's said since 2000.

OK, and it's bimodal. They call it bimodal.

And if you're going old people in Wyoming, there are generally two irruption durations now, either a long one, which is over four minutes or a short one, which is about two and a half minutes. And if you have just missed the short one, they'll be about an hour before your next eruption, OK? If you've just missed the long one, then there's going to be about an hour and a half until the next one.

But either way, it's worth sticking around for, right?

Yeah. And it's funny if you go to the page and there's obviously a webcam up where you can see it and stuff, but that's not as fun.

But if you go to the Web page and they ask for tips on, you know, seeing it, they say, well, if there's a lot of people sitting around on the benches, that means there's one upcoming. If there's a bunch of people getting up and leaving, that means it just happened. It's like, wow, really? Yeah. That's the best you can do.

That sounds like like hippie park ranger. Yeah. Logic.

Exactly. OK, so. Well I guess we're kind of like famous geezers, right? Yeah.

Actually quickly I mentioned I teased about the fourth thing being remoteness.

Apparently in the last 50 years, uh, producing energy with geothermal energy production has increased so much that it's affecting geysers.

And so being remote is now believed to be one of the requirements to be a geyser because geysers are vanishing because of man because.

So I was trying to figure this out. Maybe you can help me. That's because we dig down to these these these these geysers of this geothermal activity. And in doing so, are we creating like a release valve so the pressure can't build as much? I think so. I mean, they're using it to spin turbines to create energy. But I know you can also have like a geothermal system in your backyard. Right. Which I don't think uses I don't think it creates steam.

So I feel like what we're doing then is creating artificial geysers, like creating an artificial pipe to let steam out, which would impact any natural gas activity.

I might be what's going on, because like we said, they're very fragile.

Earthquakes frequently cut them off. Right. They also bring them back to life, too. Yeah, that's true. Like there was one called the Stroker Geiser.

That would be a stroke. You are, yeah, and I'd stroke her like stroke a race. Right, right. So Stroker Geiser is after the Icelandic well, Stroker is after the Icelandic verb to churn. And actually, Geyser's after the Icelandic verb to gush. Yeah. So this is all very Icelandic in origin, but that would be Gwisai.

Ah yes. Gaiser pronounce it in Icelandic.

You're OK now Bjork pronounces guys or have you seen Kristen WIG's impression of her.

Now it's really great. OK, so the Stroker Geiser was actually it was enacted in 1789, um because of an earthquake and then another earthquake hit in 1896 and it became inactive.

It went dormant and the locals said, we kind of get our guys are back, man, it's all blocked up.

So they cleared it off and now it's running again. I bet that's probably dangerous work.

Very dangerous work. Yeah.

Um, another way to that humans are impacting is mineral extraction, apparently in 2003.

They were extracting minerals in Chile, the second largest geyser field in South America, and it killed it basically from extracting gold and stuff.

Yeah, because basically they mess with the plumbing. Yeah. And then you're finished because it's like you said, like in a pressure cooker has that little steam valve. So it doesn't explode. Right. I the guys who aren't supposed to have that right, if they have that, they just don't go off. They're like, well, fine, I'll just let some steam off some steam.

And that does happen naturally. There are steam vents located near geysers. Oh, really? I'm like Yellowstone. Like we have 10000 geothermal. Um, what is the word they use?

Uh, basically different things. We have 10000 geothermal, different things. Right. But the vast majority of those are like steam vents man made. No, they're natural like oh they're like little steam releases that that come up through fissures in the earth.

I thought you meant we put those in to make old people, like, safer.

No, they happen naturally. Yeah, that's good. But I think it's the same thing is drilling a hole down to a geothermal, um, different thing and and tapping it to run a turbine. Oh OK. Catch it. At least you didn't say. Interesting. Interesting. Yeah.

This stuff is very interesting. Old people a geiser. I'm not sure I understand the difference.

Is it, is it the. It's a good difference is that the outlet like the shape of the thing above the earth.

Yeah. So with a kongos are the real light bubbles up enough over time. OK, that it builds up and it forms a little cone and that's what the guys are shooting out of it.

Normally with the cone guys are you have a big stream, go a jet, go right into the air like hundreds of feet.

That one in, in New Zealand. The Y you guys are um that one streambed.

Fourteen hundred and seventy five feet in the air. And for those of you in New Zealand, that's four hundred and fifty metres.

That's a world record right. Yeah. Nineteen or two. Yeah. Nineteen No. Two. Yeah. A year before it killed people. Right. And then it went dormant in nineteen 04 because of a landslide.

Which makes me think like this thing's coming back, this is going to bubble back up calculable and then shut down right afterward. Yeah. Yeah. It's really had a really chaotic two year career.

It's like a rock star that overdosed on heroin or something. But anyway as I was saying, um the, the cone shoots a jet into the er the fountain shoots in a much more light, chaotic stream, whatever. But it doesn't come up from cone, it comes up from a pool. OK, so at the surface the geyser goes into a pool of water and then that will erupt out of the water and that would be the grand geyser.

The top that's the tallest regularly erupting guys are on the planet and that is also in Yellowstone.

Yeah. Tolleson that it shoots up in the air. Yeah. Two hundred feet in crazy fountain. The hard to predict fashion. Yeah.

Which is pretty surprising too because a cone guys are shoots a jet straight up in the air in this fountain geyser is still beating the average one.

Yeah. Could you imagine if it was a cone guys.

It'd be mind blowing to the moon. Yeah.

Uh, you mentioned the stroker Ace Geiser. The Steamboat Geyser. I like this guy. Yeah.

Apparently can shoot water up to three hundred feet, but, uh, don't bother stopping by because it hasn't happened for fifty years or it can go fifty years but yeah. It's finicky. Yeah.

There's also the Geiser which is the OG Geiser because that's where the word came from. It's the guys are in Iceland, it was discovered in twelve ninety four. So it's the oldest known guys are on the planet but they took some samples of the silica that forms the cone of the castle. Guys are in Yellowstone. That's the one they think is 5000 to 40000 years old, apparently silica dating can use some work.

I did see one interesting little and it wasn't a joke.

It was almost like. You get your science guys laughing about it, though, you guys are always called geezers, even if they quit erupting. Oh, gotcha. But that seems to make seems to be a geyser at that point. But once you have erupted, you're always called a Geiser the cone formerly known as GEISER.

Yeah, that's what I would call it. Shameful.

Uh, do you know the whole story about Prince doing that, about changing his name? Yeah, no, I never knew the story behind it.

So he was locked in a contract with Sony that he didn't like.

And Sony basically said, you can't release an album as Prince. Yes.

And but also that had something to do with him acting basically crazy, like he acted crazy on purpose to get out of his contract because there was some sort of clause where, like, if he was if he went nuts or whatever, it would void his contract. So he did that and he had that form released.

And I remember he released it to the media like his little symbol. Yes, it is like a font and on. So you could just print the symbol when you were writing about him. Oh, really? And his contract with Sony was either voided or they gave it up or whatever. But he was basically like, I'll show you crazy if I need to get out of this contract.

Boy, one of the best concerts I've ever seen. Oh, yeah, Bessey. And I don't even think I put it my top five when we had that listener mail that time. But I probably forgot. It's probably in the my top five.

I would like to see Prince and he brings it he he bought you me a bottle of water at a Miles Davis show at the Cotton Club.

Really. Wow. Our friends came up to see the Lemonheads and she's like, yeah, I'll go with you. And then found out that Miles Davis is playing like, I'm going to go over here by yourself. Great.

Great of bottled water. Evan Dando, Miles Davis.

Let me think about that. Sorry, Eddie. Um, so that's, uh, that's Prince.

Oh, yeah, and geezer's yeah, you guys are, too, if you want to learn more about Gazza's, you can type that word GISS that's the English spelling. We didn't do it Icelandic, but you type that in the search bar, HowStuffWorks dot com and it will bring up this fine, fine article. And I said search bar, howstuffworks dotcom, which means it's time for listener mail.

All right, Josh, I'm going to call this given a local Brooklynite a plug for his election, but that's not how it started. Oh, OK. That's kind of a complicated title. Yeah.

Guys, you just listen to your podcast, how labor unions work. And I want to thank you for trying to give a very balanced story to what is a very complicated and contentious subject. As a former New York City union organizer said, this guy was the real deal. I am very familiar with the arguments against unions, but I truly believe American workers and the American economy are better off with unions and without when unions are strong, powerful, union organized, when unions are strong.

There is some counterpoint to this total acceptance of rampant greed that was essentially the cause of the financial meltdown of 2008. At this point, with unions at their weakest and a half century, we average Americans are being held hostage by corporations. This is what he says, right? I have to say, in my line of work, violence was not the norm, but intimidation by the employer is constant. They did everything from threatening workers with being fired, lying to them and telling them they did not have a collective bargaining rights to telling them the union would only steal their dues and not get them a good contract.

That is the deceptive H.R. person right there.

Yeah, or they would tell workers they would work out individual deals with them if they would vote against the union. Like trying to. Yeah, that's pretty, pretty hairy. Even once when we were organizing at a Catholic hospital, they told the workers they were going against God if they tried to organize.

Yeah. Can you see, like, those priests, like you breaking the cracking heads with metal batons? The only problem I had with your podcast was the lack of coverage you gave to the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. We mentioned that he said it could have been more. He said it could deserve its own podcast. Well, that's true. We mentioned it. He said it was one of the deadliest industrial accidents in the United States history. Last year, hundreds of people came out to commemorate the 100 year anniversary.

I remember the lives lost due to lock stairwells and exits. That fire was a major turning point in labor conditions in New York City and around the world, as well as bringing light to women's terrible working conditions. And I wrote him back and it turns out a day Eddie is his name. Fox is running for Brooklyn City Council. I said, you know what, dude? We'll plug your campaign. Yeah, uh, w w w e d e f o X.com, AJ, Fox, Dotcom.

And good luck in your bid for city council in Brooklyn. Yeah.

If you wear sunglasses with neon arms on them and to like you're pro union, I would say go for this. I think we can help garner you a little bit of the hipster vote maybe, uh, since we are both aging hipsters. I am not a hipster dude. I am not a hipster. And I may be aging, but I'm not a hipster. Well, you look a lot more like a hipster than you used to. Well, if you, uh, I guess if you have a political campaign, you're running.

We want to hear about it. We heard from another guy in, uh, was it in Maryland, a state legislator. He's a he's a legislator for mayor. Oh, yeah. Who is writing about human trafficking. That's right. Shout out to that guy as well. Yeah. But if you are a politician that listens to stuff, you should know we want to hear your viewpoints.

Let us know what you got to say, how we're helping you, how we can help more, that kind of thing. You know, you can tweet to us. Just please don't send us a picture of your junk like other politicians to ask why. České podcast, you can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff. You should know and you can send us an email to Stuff podcast at HowStuffWorks dot com. Stuff you should know is a production of radios HowStuffWorks for more podcasts, my radio is the radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.