Latest / Made of Stars / There's Gold In This Here Episode

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There's Gold In This Here Episode · Made of Stars

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Warning.
• 0:00
  Speaker 2: The following podcast contains an entertaining look at astronomy, physics,
• 0:04
  Speaker 2: and space news throughout the known universe. Listeners have been
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: known to learn about astronomical phenomenon, the scientific method, and
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: expanded vocabulary to include terms like quasar asterism and uranus. Listen,
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: that's your own risk.
• 0:16
  Speaker 3: Go ahead.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: When made of stars, made them stars.
• 0:26
  Speaker 4: Made sizes. When made of stars, you could be from
• 0:34
  Speaker 4: high they would New Mexicomus.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Where are stars? When we are made of stars?
• 0:56
  Speaker 5: I'm Wes Carol, joined by my good friend doctor Sean
• 0:59
  Speaker 5: Cruising from Columbus State Universities, Coca Cola Space Science Center.
• 1:03
  Speaker 6: Morning Sean, Morning West.
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: Great to be here.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Let's start with this story.
• 1:09
  Speaker 5: It's a planet discovered overting, a star is feeding out
• 1:13
  Speaker 5: of the galaxy.
• 1:14
  Speaker 6: How does this work? Exactly?
• 1:15
  Speaker 4: Yes, this is just a whole podcast this week of
• 1:19
  Speaker 4: just some weird space stories, right, and this is one
• 1:22
  Speaker 4: of them.
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:23
  Speaker 4: So, it's not an uncommon thing for scientists to detect
• 1:29
  Speaker 4: a star that's kind of not behaving normally in its
• 1:35
  Speaker 4: motions around its parent galaxy. So typically all the stars
• 1:38
  Speaker 4: kind of move in a really stately uniform circular motion
• 1:42
  Speaker 4: as they orbit around the center of a spiral galaxy,
• 1:46
  Speaker 4: but once in a while they'll see just a kind
• 1:48
  Speaker 4: of a rogue star just streaking through with some other vector. Now,
• 1:53
  Speaker 4: what happens is these stars have close gravitational encounters, and
• 2:00
  Speaker 4: much the same way that a spacecraft from Earth will
• 2:03
  Speaker 4: pick up a gravity assist from one of the large
• 2:06
  Speaker 4: planets like Jupiter Saturn to fling it out to the
• 2:08
  Speaker 4: outer part of our Solar system and use a whole
• 2:11
  Speaker 4: lot less fuel that way. These things can happen kind
• 2:14
  Speaker 4: of accidentally in nature, and you can have one star
• 2:18
  Speaker 4: that just flings one of its bodies through the galaxy
• 2:23
  Speaker 4: and kind of a different path or even out of
• 2:26
  Speaker 4: its parent galaxy. And so they have a name for
• 2:29
  Speaker 4: these stars, and they're called hypervelocity stars. So somehow the
• 2:35
  Speaker 4: star has picked up a really giant gravitational boost. It's
• 2:39
  Speaker 4: being slung through its galaxy, and it's gonna probably be
• 2:44
  Speaker 4: fast enough, moving fast enough that it's gonna leave the galaxy.
• 2:47
  Speaker 4: It's gonna escape the gravitational field of its parent galaxy. Okay,
• 2:51
  Speaker 4: so that's a setup, a little weird, a little different,
• 2:54
  Speaker 4: but again not entirely uncommon.
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: We've seen these kinds of things before.
• 2:58
  Speaker 5: What adds the weirdness to here is that it's got
• 3:01
  Speaker 5: a planet it's taking with it, right, yes, yeah, so.
• 3:04
  Speaker 4: That's the weird part. The weird part is around this
• 3:08
  Speaker 4: same star that's streaking through its parent galaxy at some hypervelocity,
• 3:14
  Speaker 4: it's also got a planet roughly the size of Neptune,
• 3:19
  Speaker 4: or even bigger than Neptune. We call it a super Neptune.
• 3:22
  Speaker 4: It's dragging an exoplanet. Now, it's traveling relative to the
• 3:27
  Speaker 4: rest of the galaxy at one point two million miles
• 3:31
  Speaker 4: per hour. So it's not like it's just drifting to
• 3:35
  Speaker 4: the exit ramp. No, No, it's like it's hurling itself
• 3:40
  Speaker 4: through traffic at a horrendous speed. And you would think
• 3:45
  Speaker 4: it would be doing that alone. You would think that
• 3:48
  Speaker 4: any planets that it might have been orbiting that star
• 3:51
  Speaker 4: before whatever gravitational interaction it had would have been just
• 3:56
  Speaker 4: completely ripped off or separated from its gravitational influence.
• 4:01
  Speaker 7: But no, no, it has a planet in tow and
• 4:06
  Speaker 7: it's dragging its super Neptune on this ridiculous one point
• 4:10
  Speaker 7: two million mile per hour trajectory on the way out
• 4:13
  Speaker 7: of the galaxy.
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: Now, how do we know this, Well.
• 4:16
  Speaker 4: There's a group of astronomers led by a scientist named
• 4:20
  Speaker 4: Sean Terry at the University of Maryland, and they did this.
• 4:23
  Speaker 4: They compared data from the star from twenty eleven to
• 4:29
  Speaker 4: when this star got reobserved again in a different survey
• 4:33
  Speaker 4: in twenty twenty one, so just ten years of data.
• 4:36
  Speaker 4: But between those ten years they noticed a drastic difference
• 4:42
  Speaker 4: in the location of this particular star relative to all
• 4:45
  Speaker 4: the other stars in its parent galaxy and realized that
• 4:49
  Speaker 4: they had a hypervelocity star on its hands. But then
• 4:52
  Speaker 4: they correlated with that with the fact that this was
• 4:55
  Speaker 4: also a star where they had discovered an exoplanet around it,
• 4:58
  Speaker 4: and the exoplanet it is still in orbit, so it's
• 5:02
  Speaker 4: dragging the super neptune along with it. So anyway, the
• 5:04
  Speaker 4: first time that we've ever discovered a hypervelocity star with
• 5:08
  Speaker 4: a super neptune in to and so that makes it
• 5:10
  Speaker 4: a hypervelocity planet as well.
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  Speaker 3: There you go. Interesting store.
• 5:14
  Speaker 4: Check it out on site Sciencetechdaily dot com.
• 5:17
  Speaker 5: I got a theory, and I mean I'm certainly not
• 5:19
  Speaker 5: an expert in this. I just I have a theory
• 5:22
  Speaker 5: because I'm I'm very aware of the fact there were
• 5:26
  Speaker 5: a number of times, especially when my kids were really small,
• 5:29
  Speaker 5: that you know, and you've seen this before if you
• 5:32
  Speaker 5: haven't experienced it anyway, where there's the parent that has
• 5:36
  Speaker 5: the misbehaving child that's making a scene, and you grab
• 5:40
  Speaker 5: the kid and you head for the exit, or you
• 5:42
  Speaker 5: head for a nice quiet place to have a conversation together.
• 5:46
  Speaker 6: So maybe that's kind of what's going on, you.
• 5:48
  Speaker 4: Know, I mean usually that kid. In my experience, that
• 5:51
  Speaker 4: kid was me. You know, I was the one I
• 5:54
  Speaker 4: remember leaving a variety of public locations like a hypervelocity
• 5:59
  Speaker 4: star being ejected from a galaxy with my right arm
• 6:03
  Speaker 4: being stretched by my mother.
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: Yes, I remember those times.
• 6:07
  Speaker 5: I've been on both sides of that. I've been the
• 6:10
  Speaker 5: parent and the child. Because they say that eventually you
• 6:12
  Speaker 5: get paid back for all that, or your parents will
• 6:15
  Speaker 5: make sure that you get paid back for all that.
• 6:19
  Speaker 5: All right, let's go to another story. Another source of
• 6:23
  Speaker 5: gold in the cosmos.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: What is this?
• 6:27
  Speaker 4: Well, so so you know, digging in the ground is
• 6:30
  Speaker 4: one source. Yeah, onegine, But imagine if there was just
• 6:33
  Speaker 4: stuff out there that just made gold, like it's just
• 6:37
  Speaker 4: created gold.
• 6:38
  Speaker 6: Uh huh. I'm listening.
• 6:41
  Speaker 5: Find mentions as if the alchemists of old, which are
• 6:46
  Speaker 5: trying to make gold out of leads, suddenly found a
• 6:48
  Speaker 5: way to do so.
• 6:50
  Speaker 4: Yes, what they have to do is they have to
• 6:51
  Speaker 4: do some kind of you know, nuclear fusion process that
• 6:54
  Speaker 4: you can create heavier elements from lighter elements. That's what
• 6:58
  Speaker 4: has to take place. Have long postulated that, yes, there
• 7:03
  Speaker 4: are certain things that have enough energy to create heavier
• 7:06
  Speaker 4: elements than lead, other than supernove explosions, but they have
• 7:10
  Speaker 4: to be really rare, like two neutron stars colliding. So
• 7:15
  Speaker 4: when you look down, if you have a gold band
• 7:18
  Speaker 4: or a gold necklace that you wear around, and you
• 7:20
  Speaker 4: look down at the gold band on your hand and
• 7:23
  Speaker 4: you think this, well, processes that form the elements that
• 7:28
  Speaker 4: I'm wearing in a ring on my hand had to
• 7:31
  Speaker 4: be something like two neutron stars colliding in the ancient
• 7:36
  Speaker 4: universe to generate the kind of nuclear fusion responsible for
• 7:42
  Speaker 4: creating elements heavier than lead like gold. All right, that's
• 7:47
  Speaker 4: the beginning of the story. The next part of the
• 7:51
  Speaker 4: story says, well, it turns out that you had to
• 7:54
  Speaker 4: create neutron stars first before you could collide them and
• 7:58
  Speaker 4: make gold. So if that's main source of generating gold
• 8:02
  Speaker 4: in the universe. It happened a little bit too late
• 8:06
  Speaker 4: in the evolutionary process of the stars and galaxies to
• 8:10
  Speaker 4: have widespread gold distri which would ended up putting veins
• 8:16
  Speaker 4: of gold below the Rocky Mountains or you know, the
• 8:18
  Speaker 4: North Georgia Mountains up there in Delanaga. And so so
• 8:21
  Speaker 4: it's just not an efficient enough or an early enough process.
• 8:26
  Speaker 4: So this has baffled those people who think about what
• 8:28
  Speaker 4: we call interstellar chemistry. And after all, this show is
• 8:31
  Speaker 4: called made of stars, which you know, we are made
• 8:34
  Speaker 4: of stars, but our planet is made of stars too,
• 8:36
  Speaker 4: all right, and the gold therein.
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: Well all right.
• 8:38
  Speaker 4: So then scientists have been speculating and looking for another
• 8:43
  Speaker 4: possible solution for why gold was widespread enough. Then it
• 8:48
  Speaker 4: ended up in a lonely outpost like planet Earth, in
• 8:52
  Speaker 4: a fair abundance, so that we.
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: Can wear gold jewelry around. Okay.
• 8:56
  Speaker 4: So from Columbia University and A Root Patel is the
• 9:00
  Speaker 4: lead study on the lead scientist on a study that's
• 9:04
  Speaker 4: published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, and says it's a
• 9:08
  Speaker 4: pretty fundamental question in terms of the origin of complex
• 9:11
  Speaker 4: matter in the universe. It's a fun puzzle that actually
• 9:15
  Speaker 4: hasn't been solved yet. Okay, so that's kind of where
• 9:18
  Speaker 4: we're at all, right, But that team proposed a brand
• 9:21
  Speaker 4: new method for generation of gold much earlier in the
• 9:28
  Speaker 4: history of the universe than colliding neutron stars, and that
• 9:31
  Speaker 4: is a weird thing called a magnetar. Now, a magnetar
• 9:36
  Speaker 4: is a neutron star, but not It's a neutron star
• 9:40
  Speaker 4: that doesn't have to be around in enough density that
• 9:42
  Speaker 4: it can collide with another neutron star. It's a neutron
• 9:45
  Speaker 4: star that could form pretty lonely by itself, much earlier
• 9:49
  Speaker 4: in the history of the universe. But then something happens
• 9:53
  Speaker 4: that magnetar that neutron star with a very powerful magnetic field.
• 9:58
  Speaker 4: The magnetic field is created because a crust of solid
• 10:02
  Speaker 4: material begins to form on kind of the super fluid
• 10:06
  Speaker 4: inner core of that neutron star. And like all crusty
• 10:11
  Speaker 4: material that forms on top of liquid material, think about
• 10:13
  Speaker 4: like ice on a flowing river, right, So that once
• 10:17
  Speaker 4: that crusty material forms on the fluid material underneath, it
• 10:21
  Speaker 4: can crack and break open. But if that happens on
• 10:24
  Speaker 4: a magnetar, you have something called a flare. And now
• 10:29
  Speaker 4: this is not like a solar flare. This is a
• 10:31
  Speaker 4: magnetar flare, and a magnetar flare can generate something called
• 10:36
  Speaker 4: a star quake, which just rattles the whole interior of
• 10:41
  Speaker 4: that magnetar and for the lack of a better term,
• 10:44
  Speaker 4: belches a massive amount of material from the crust of
• 10:48
  Speaker 4: that magnetar out into space. And yes, friends, that event
• 10:53
  Speaker 4: has enough energy that collisions within the event can be
• 10:57
  Speaker 4: violent enough to cause nuclear fusion to take place and
• 11:02
  Speaker 4: nucleogenesis to take place, which is creating heavier elements out
• 11:07
  Speaker 4: of lighter elements, including gold and silver, a mechanism that
• 11:11
  Speaker 4: could have happened much earlier in the thirteen point eight
• 11:14
  Speaker 4: billion year history of the universe that we live in.
• 11:19
  Speaker 5: We've covered two of the ways for gold to happen.
• 11:22
  Speaker 5: You forgot to mention. I think Gargomel once turned three
• 11:25
  Speaker 5: smurfs into gold, if I remember correctly gold coins specifically,
• 11:29
  Speaker 5: so actual wizardry was responsible for that. So I just
• 11:35
  Speaker 5: want to be fair to our wizard community, to the
• 11:38
  Speaker 5: people that maybe are thinking, hey, wait a minute, there's
• 11:41
  Speaker 5: another way to do it. I just want them to
• 11:42
  Speaker 5: get their representation, that's all I mean.
• 11:44
  Speaker 4: And for those people who really loved the science about
• 11:46
  Speaker 4: this show. I will just say I have no data
• 11:49
  Speaker 4: to counteract that particular hypoths there you.
• 11:52
  Speaker 6: Go, you know, but I remember seeing it. I was
• 11:54
  Speaker 6: a kid.
• 11:54
  Speaker 5: I think I'm pretty sure Papa Smurf turned them back.
• 11:56
  Speaker 5: But you know, spoiler alert. Sorry if you're just now
• 12:00
  Speaker 5: uh binging all of the episodes of the Smurfs. But
• 12:04
  Speaker 5: if I remember correctly, it was three of them that
• 12:06
  Speaker 5: were that were turned to the gold and he was
• 12:09
  Speaker 5: able to turn them back. I'm not saying that I
• 12:11
  Speaker 5: just recently watched it or anything. I'm just pointing it out.
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: Was it kind of a blue gold? Did it have
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: a blue sheen to it? Because I mean, you.
• 12:17
  Speaker 5: Smurfs, And I remember correctly it was they were just
• 12:20
  Speaker 5: turned He turned them into coins like gold coins, but
• 12:24
  Speaker 5: didn't complete the process. But now I want to look
• 12:27
  Speaker 5: it up. I want to make sure I got there.
• 12:28
  Speaker 5: It was three. See if I can remember that. The
• 12:31
  Speaker 5: weird things that we remember from childhood coming up after
• 12:35
  Speaker 5: a quick break, listen.
• 12:38
  Speaker 6: Talk about more space gold.
• 12:40
  Speaker 5: We'll do that next. All right, we've been talking gold.
• 13:01
  Speaker 5: I mean, we even covered the Smurfs and gold. Let's
• 13:05
  Speaker 5: talk about some more gold because I like when we
• 13:10
  Speaker 5: get some stories out of Australia. This is always fun too.
• 13:13
  Speaker 4: And I like when we use words like Fusarium oxysporum.
• 13:17
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I was just saying that earlier.
• 13:22
  Speaker 4: If I if I had a nickel for every time
• 13:24
  Speaker 4: I have spoken in the phrase Fusarium oxysporum.
• 13:27
  Speaker 6: You've now said it twice more than I have.
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: And if my.
• 13:30
  Speaker 4: Nickels could just be made of gold, then this story
• 13:32
  Speaker 4: would be complete.
• 13:33
  Speaker 6: Oh boy, it would be great. So this is a story.
• 13:36
  Speaker 6: This goes back pre COVID to Australian research that started
• 13:43
  Speaker 6: all this, right.
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right.
• 13:45
  Speaker 4: So back in twenty nineteen, in a world that we
• 13:47
  Speaker 4: can barely even imagine now, the world that existed in
• 13:50
  Speaker 4: twenty nineteen, there was an Australian research group that identified
• 13:56
  Speaker 4: a weird fungus with a very interesting name Fusarium oxysporum,
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: and Fusarium oxysporm had this really particularly interesting diet. It
• 14:08
  Speaker 4: turns out that Fusium oxysporum can actually eat gold ore
• 14:15
  Speaker 4: and in the process it can metabolize gold, which basically
• 14:21
  Speaker 4: means it poops out gold. I mean, I'm not a
• 14:27
  Speaker 4: scientist that studies Fusarium oxysporum.
• 14:31
  Speaker 6: But you've gotten really good at saying it.
• 14:34
  Speaker 4: I'm saying it so many times because I really practiced
• 14:37
  Speaker 4: right before we went live with the story, because I said,
• 14:40
  Speaker 4: old man, I realize I'm about to blowium oxy sporum.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: I realize I'm about to blow this.
• 14:45
  Speaker 5: But I just think it's it's a unique time that
• 14:47
  Speaker 5: for at least a few moments you've said poop.
• 14:50
  Speaker 6: On the show since I have. But now I've blown
• 14:53
  Speaker 6: the whole thing.
• 14:53
  Speaker 5: So anyway, it's not it's not a common period of time.
• 14:58
  Speaker 6: It was short lived, but it's had its moment.
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: I mean I tried to it's fecal matter.
• 15:04
  Speaker 4: I tried to present it a scientific context and not
• 15:08
  Speaker 4: just gratuitous you know, brown material from the planet Uranus.
• 15:13
  Speaker 4: So anyway, so in twenty nineteen, the Australian research team
• 15:17
  Speaker 4: figured out that this particular fungus could metabolize gold. And
• 15:21
  Speaker 4: that's a very interesting thing in itself because the reason
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: gold is special is because it's very very inert. It
• 15:28
  Speaker 4: does not react with other materials. So they're not even
• 15:32
  Speaker 4: exactly sure how this fungus carries out the metabolization of gold,
• 15:37
  Speaker 4: but somehow it does that and So the ability of
• 15:40
  Speaker 4: this strange fungus to do this, to metabolize gold out
• 15:46
  Speaker 4: of other materials, it actually has a really intriguing application
• 15:52
  Speaker 4: for mining ventures, both on Earth and in space. And
• 15:58
  Speaker 4: for those of you who really love the Earth and
• 16:00
  Speaker 4: think I hate mining ventures. We're destroying our planet with
• 16:04
  Speaker 4: all the invasive mining strategies that we use. Well, here's
• 16:07
  Speaker 4: the good side. This little fungus might help us be
• 16:11
  Speaker 4: able to extract gold from gold or in other materials
• 16:16
  Speaker 4: and be very very sustainable in the sense that it
• 16:19
  Speaker 4: does not terribly alter the surroundings. We don't have to
• 16:24
  Speaker 4: tear apart the ground. We just allow this fungus to
• 16:28
  Speaker 4: metabolize the materials, including the gold, and then put the
• 16:33
  Speaker 4: gold out as basically fecal material, and then we can
• 16:38
  Speaker 4: pick the gold up after the fungus is done. Isn't
• 16:41
  Speaker 4: that interesting?
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: All right?
• 16:43
  Speaker 4: So that's already a pretty that's a pretty interesting consequence.
• 16:47
  Speaker 4: But friends, what if we could make that happen on
• 16:51
  Speaker 4: asteroids in space. Now you may have your views on mining.
• 16:57
  Speaker 4: It's a destructive process here on the Earth, but you know,
• 17:00
  Speaker 4: we do it anyway, right because we need some of
• 17:02
  Speaker 4: these materials. But in space, our typical mining strategies don't
• 17:07
  Speaker 4: even really work very well, right, I mean, despite that movie,
• 17:11
  Speaker 4: you know, Armageddon, it's really hard to just drill into
• 17:15
  Speaker 4: the surface of an asteroid, even if it's only eight
• 17:17
  Speaker 4: hundred feet down. It's really difficult to be able to
• 17:20
  Speaker 4: do that because well, there were a lot of physical,
• 17:24
  Speaker 4: shall we say, incorrect suppositions in the movie Armageddon, and so.
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: Not everything they did would actually work.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: What this is breaking news?
• 17:34
  Speaker 4: What I mean, you know, there was actually a really
• 17:40
  Speaker 4: famous astronomer who came to town and talked about the
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: movie Armageddon recently when my friend Phil Plate did a
• 17:47
  Speaker 4: you know, a review about that show, maybe what thirty
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: years ago, I don't know, anyway, something like that.
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: It's amazing how you can make a living.
• 17:55
  Speaker 4: So anyway, so the idea is simply this that a
• 17:58
  Speaker 4: process called metabolic mineral urgy can take place where we
• 18:03
  Speaker 4: actually use a fungus to metabolize heavy elements that we
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: really need and it's a non destructive, non invasive way
• 18:15
  Speaker 4: to mine the surface of asteroids in our solar system
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: without the need for heavy machinery or complex equipment. And
• 18:24
  Speaker 4: so that is something that's new. So the study done
• 18:27
  Speaker 4: back in twenty nineteen revealed the case about the fungus.
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: But now space companies who want to they want to
• 18:37
  Speaker 4: take advantage of the mineralogical capabilities of asteroids out there.
• 18:42
  Speaker 4: They're thinking about this fungus in terms of a strategy
• 18:45
  Speaker 4: to employ it to be able to extract those minerals
• 18:49
  Speaker 4: on the surface of those asteroids where standard mining equipment
• 18:53
  Speaker 4: simply won't work.
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: So there you go. Cool story.
• 18:55
  Speaker 4: By the way, the story I'm referring to you today
• 18:59
  Speaker 4: featured on Daily Galaxy dot com Daily Galaxy dot Com.
• 19:03
  Speaker 5: This whole process of these things pooping out gold makes
• 19:06
  Speaker 5: me think about those those cats and the coffee. You know,
• 19:09
  Speaker 5: it's kind of similar to that, isn't It's not exactly
• 19:11
  Speaker 5: the same thing, but you know, there's a there's a
• 19:14
  Speaker 5: definite parallel there, maybe just a little bit.
• 19:16
  Speaker 4: I don't know, if you're seeking civit coffee, you know,
• 19:20
  Speaker 4: if you're looking. If you're out there looking for the
• 19:21
  Speaker 4: civit coffee, you know who you are. You might also
• 19:25
  Speaker 4: want your gold wedding ring to be extracted from the
• 19:29
  Speaker 4: ground by fungus. Yeah, fue Sterium oxysporum.
• 19:34
  Speaker 6: Yeah, gold feces.
• 19:39
  Speaker 5: The last week we talked about the a lot of
• 19:41
  Speaker 5: solar activity, and we talked about Aurora, so let's let's
• 19:46
  Speaker 5: talk again about Aurora this week.
• 19:47
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so there's a really interesting aspect to the Aurora
• 19:50
  Speaker 4: Borealis phenomenon here on Earth. And again a story from
• 19:54
  Speaker 4: space dot Com. But NASA has launched a set of
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: very small set satellites cube SATs. They're roughly the size
• 20:02
  Speaker 4: of a suitcase, so they're just a little bit bigger
• 20:05
  Speaker 4: than your average CubeSat But anyway, so these three satellites
• 20:10
  Speaker 4: have been launched to do one thing, study a phenomenon
• 20:14
  Speaker 4: called auroral electrojets. And auroral electrojets are intense currents that
• 20:20
  Speaker 4: are created by massive energy transferred by the solar wind
• 20:26
  Speaker 4: two Earth's upper atmosphere through interactions with the magnetic field
• 20:29
  Speaker 4: of the Earth. So very interesting phenomenon. We don't completely
• 20:33
  Speaker 4: understand it, and when we as human beings don't understand something,
• 20:37
  Speaker 4: we build toys to go try to figure it out.
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: And that's basically what these satellites are. So the satellites
• 20:43
  Speaker 4: are called the Electrojet Zeman Imaging Explorer Mission.
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: It's a mouthful, right.
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: And it's an Electrojet Zeeman Imaging Explorer. By the way,
• 20:54
  Speaker 4: the Zeeman effect in physics is a spectroscopic effect where
• 20:59
  Speaker 4: emission lines from certain elements get split, and so we
• 21:02
  Speaker 4: can tell a lot about the magnetic field intensity based
• 21:05
  Speaker 4: on how how much the Zeman effect is causing these
• 21:08
  Speaker 4: lines to split. So it's the electrojets that are responsible
• 21:12
  Speaker 4: for producing a Zeman effect, which we can image with
• 21:15
  Speaker 4: these Explorer satellites, which is why we call it Electrojets
• 21:19
  Speaker 4: Zeman Imaging Explorer. Now, if the last twenty seconds of
• 21:22
  Speaker 4: the things I was saying just annoy you from all
• 21:24
  Speaker 4: those technical terms, which I completely understand, it's why I
• 21:27
  Speaker 4: stand alone at many cocktail parties. NASA just calls it EZE.
• 21:32
  Speaker 4: So it's the EZE Mission, EAZIE, and the EZE mission
• 21:37
  Speaker 4: aims to solve the mysteries surrounding these auroral electrojet phenomenon
• 21:42
  Speaker 4: in the upper atmosphere. So that's pretty cool. According to
• 21:46
  Speaker 4: a NASA statement about the EZI satellites, they are quote
• 21:50
  Speaker 4: poised to reveal crucial details about Earth's a rural electrojets
• 21:56
  Speaker 4: and they were launched back on March fourteenth from California's
• 21:59
  Speaker 4: Vandom Space Force Base. You know, by a SpaceX vehicle
• 22:05
  Speaker 4: by the way, But anyway, so they were a ride share.
• 22:07
  Speaker 4: They were kind of thumbing a ride like an uber
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: on a SpaceX rocket. But here's the interesting thing. The
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: interesting thing is they've just returned their first data, so
• 22:15
  Speaker 4: we've really gotten some new data. We know that the
• 22:18
  Speaker 4: EZI satellites are actually up there and working, and so
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: now there's a bright promise for returning new information from
• 22:24
  Speaker 4: these cube SATs that are going to be able to
• 22:27
  Speaker 4: tell us about some intricate details of the interaction between
• 22:32
  Speaker 4: the Sun's solar wind and the atmosphere of our own planet,
• 22:36
  Speaker 4: the auroral electrojet phenomena.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: More made of stars.
• 22:40
  Speaker 5: Right after this, okay, let's talk about what's going on
• 23:04
  Speaker 5: at the Coca Cola Space Science Center.
• 23:05
  Speaker 6: It's practically summer. I mean, we've already.
• 23:08
  Speaker 5: Got schools that are out, some starting to drop, like
• 23:11
  Speaker 5: getting the kids out of there, and it's just the
• 23:15
  Speaker 5: field trips slow down for you guys. But you guys
• 23:17
  Speaker 5: are still open for the summer. And you know, as
• 23:20
  Speaker 5: we like to point out, as things are warming up.
• 23:23
  Speaker 5: You know, air conditioning is included in the price of
• 23:25
  Speaker 5: admission when you come into the see all the artifacts This.
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: Is absolutely true.
• 23:31
  Speaker 4: And friends, we've got an even cooler deal for you
• 23:34
  Speaker 4: this summer. See cooler like air conditioning. An even cooler
• 23:38
  Speaker 4: deal for you this summer, which is this. We have
• 23:42
  Speaker 4: a really great exhibit that's opening up at the Bow
• 23:45
  Speaker 4: Bartlett Center, which is an art gallery also part of
• 23:49
  Speaker 4: Columbus State University.
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: As we are here at Coca Cola Space Signce Center, but.
• 23:53
  Speaker 4: This is about three blocks down the street, roughly the
• 23:56
  Speaker 4: same street front avenue that the Coke Cola Space Science
• 23:58
  Speaker 4: Center is located on. Here's the thing, it's an exhibit
• 24:02
  Speaker 4: at an art gallery, but it's featuring all of the
• 24:06
  Speaker 4: materials that we have from a very famous astronaut, General
• 24:11
  Speaker 4: David R. Scott, commander of Apollo fifteen, also flew to
• 24:17
  Speaker 4: space on Gemini eight and Apollo nine. The Scott family,
• 24:22
  Speaker 4: through Dave's brother Tom, has very generously donated many items
• 24:28
  Speaker 4: of memorabilia and beautiful photographs from Dave's adventures in space
• 24:33
  Speaker 4: that were once part of Dave's personal collection. We have
• 24:37
  Speaker 4: archivally framed those up and preserve them and we would
• 24:40
  Speaker 4: love to show the public, but we just don't have
• 24:42
  Speaker 4: enough room in our own exhibit gallery. So the bo
• 24:45
  Speaker 4: Bartlett Center, again part of Colombus State University, has generously
• 24:50
  Speaker 4: offered to collaborate with us to put these pieces on display,
• 24:54
  Speaker 4: and they will be on display this summer from June
• 24:57
  Speaker 4: third through August the second at the oh Bartlett Center
• 25:01
  Speaker 4: here at Columbus State University, about three blocks down the
• 25:04
  Speaker 4: street from the Coca Cola Space Science Center. Now, friends,
• 25:07
  Speaker 4: here's what we'd like to encourage you to do. Go
• 25:10
  Speaker 4: see that first, Go buy and visit the bow Bartlet Center.
• 25:16
  Speaker 4: Check out all of these amazing pieces once again starting
• 25:19
  Speaker 4: June third. Check out all of these amazing pieces from
• 25:23
  Speaker 4: the David Scott collection, including images of David Scott on
• 25:29
  Speaker 4: the surface of the Moon driving around the car that
• 25:33
  Speaker 4: he was the first person ever drive a car on
• 25:34
  Speaker 4: the Moon. By the way, and while you're there, you
• 25:38
  Speaker 4: will be able to get a QR code, And when
• 25:41
  Speaker 4: you hit the QR code, you'll be able to get
• 25:44
  Speaker 4: discounted in mission tickets to the Coca Cola Space Science Center.
• 25:48
  Speaker 4: See you go to the free art exhibition, hit the
• 25:52
  Speaker 4: QR code, then get discounted tickets and come see us
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: at Space Science Center.
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: Make a day of it.
• 25:59
  Speaker 4: Take the kid, go see these great pieces of memorabilia
• 26:04
  Speaker 4: from one of only twelve people to ever walk on
• 26:07
  Speaker 4: the surface of the Moon. Hit the QR code, get
• 26:10
  Speaker 4: the discounted tickets, and then walk down the street. Visit
• 26:13
  Speaker 4: us here and enjoy our air conditioning, but also our
• 26:16
  Speaker 4: Ominosphere Theater, our Cyberfighters, our exhibit gallery containing the largest
• 26:21
  Speaker 4: collection of Space Shuttle artifacts in the state of Georgia,
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: and just generally hang out and have a good old
• 26:26
  Speaker 4: spacey time, including a flight to space on our Space
• 26:29
  Speaker 4: Shuttle Odyssey. That's what you need to do. Plan a
• 26:32
  Speaker 4: summer day, come down and check out the exhibit from
• 26:35
  Speaker 4: David Scott at the BA Bartlett Center. Get discounted admission
• 26:38
  Speaker 4: to the Coca Cola Space Science Center just down the street.
• 26:41
  Speaker 6: Sean and I thank you for listening, and we will
• 26:43
  Speaker 6: do this again next week.