We would find it so weird if we saw fire and lava shooting out of a mountain on Mars.

It was like, yeah, that's the comet. I can see this huge tale.

Is it a series of geological cosmic coincidences that we have the Earth the way that it is?

You know, you're saying, oh, it's just molten rock clumping together.

And in my head, I'm like, yeah, that's geophysics.

I haven't seen anything like this in my life.

Hello, welcome to the supermassive podcast from the Royal Astronomical Society with me,

astrophysicist, Dr. Becky Setheretherst and science journalist Izzy Clark.

Izzy, all I want to know this month is how is your new telescope?

I love it. I've taken it to the local park a few times because I live in quite a built-off area.

But I think I need to apologise to all stargazers because I bought it at the end of June.

And then for two weeks after,

it was just solid cloud every single night. So I think I probably mess things up of it there.

It was your fault. Yeah, it was me, Sos. But no, it's been amazing because obviously Comet Neo-Wise has been around. And we're going to talk about that a bit more later, but it's been

so great. But this month, we're coming down to Earth to explore our own planet and how that was formed and the physical processes that have driven it.

Yep, it's all things geophysics. And it might sound obvious, but it's all about treating Earth as a planet rather than our home in the same way we would Mars.

It's so familiar to us.

You know, we would find it so weird if we saw fire and lava shooting out of a mountain on Mars.

But, you know, that's a process that happens here on Earth.

So here with us is Robert Massey, the deputy director of the Royal Astronomical Society,

not the Royal Astrological Society as a certain newspaper reported recently.

Sadly, several newspapers just took that report and reiterated it.

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