Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / Can we see the surface of exoplanets?

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Can we see the surface of exoplanets? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, you know those awesome and amazing pictures of
0:11
Speaker 1: Earth that you see from space. I love those Earth
0:13
Speaker 1: as the Blue Marble pictures. They are gorgeous. Yeah, but
0:17
Speaker 1: I think they're also a little bit creepy. Creepy because
0:19
Speaker 1: it gives you a sense for like how tiny we are,
0:22
Speaker 1: how insignificant we are in this vast ocean of space. No,
0:25
Speaker 1: because it sort of makes me feel like, what if
0:28
Speaker 1: there's something out there taking a picture of us, you know,
0:30
Speaker 1: like if I step outside in my on camera. Yeah,
0:33
Speaker 1: what if they're like aliens on other planets watching us
0:37
Speaker 1: on the surface of the Earth. Well, I guess I
0:39
Speaker 1: would really worry me. Except today, I don't think I'm
0:41
Speaker 1: that interesting. I don't know. I bet everything that we
0:44
Speaker 1: do would be hilarious to aliens live from Earth. It's
0:48
Speaker 1: Every Night Earth, the live action comedy show. Hi. I'm
1:09
Speaker 1: or hand Ma cartoonists and the creator of PhD Comics.
1:12
Speaker 1: Hi I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I'm always
1:16
Speaker 1: wondering if the aliens are watching or hearing or listening
1:19
Speaker 1: right they could be or or feeling us I don't know,
1:23
Speaker 1: or sending emails to our podcast. That's right, any one
1:28
Speaker 1: of those emails you get every week every day could
1:31
Speaker 1: be from an alien. That's right. I have no idea
1:34
Speaker 1: who's actually behind those emails. It could be a person,
1:36
Speaker 1: it could be a clever dog, It could be our
1:38
Speaker 1: interstellar listeners. Bob from China could actually be Bob from
1:43
Speaker 1: Alpha Centri. You never know. It could just be their handle.
1:48
Speaker 1: If he's from Alpha Centauri and he's managed to email us,
1:50
Speaker 1: I wish he would send us some answers and not
1:52
Speaker 1: just some questions. Would would that mean? To the pointing,
1:55
Speaker 1: if you finally meet aliens and all they have is
1:58
Speaker 1: just more questions, Well, that really just depends on who
2:02
Speaker 1: meets too. I mean, if they make it here, they
2:04
Speaker 1: got to know more about physics than we. Well. Anyways,
2:07
Speaker 1: Welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe,
2:10
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio in which we talk
2:13
Speaker 1: about all the incredible, beautiful, amazing, weird, bonkers phenomena that
2:18
Speaker 1: make up the universe around us and share with you
2:21
Speaker 1: our wonder and trying to touch on the wonder that's
2:24
Speaker 1: inside you, the curiosity to understand the universe and try
2:28
Speaker 1: we talk about all the amazing things to see from
2:30
Speaker 1: this little rock that we're sitting on called planet Earth.
2:33
Speaker 1: And we also like to talk about all the things
2:35
Speaker 1: we can quite see just yet, but that we may
2:38
Speaker 1: one day. That's right. The journey of humanity and science
2:41
Speaker 1: has been one of ever reaching ability to see further
2:45
Speaker 1: and further into the universe. First we just looked up
2:47
Speaker 1: with our eyeballs. Then we build telescopes to reveal the
2:51
Speaker 1: moons of Jupiter and the farthest planets. Then we saw
2:54
Speaker 1: even further to discover that there were other galaxies out
2:57
Speaker 1: there in the universe. And now we have an incredible
2:59
Speaker 1: three D vision of a huge, vast reach of space.
3:04
Speaker 1: But there are questions that remain, what's out there? Who's
3:06
Speaker 1: out there? What are they doing? Are they listening to
3:09
Speaker 1: this podcast? Sorry? Who? Or what is out there? Because
3:13
Speaker 1: who knows if aliens even go by? Who? Right? What's
3:15
Speaker 1: their pronoun? Is that your first question? My first question
3:19
Speaker 1: is about physics. Your first question is what's your pronoun? Well, yeah,
3:22
Speaker 1: that's kind of the standard these days. That's diplomacy will
3:26
Speaker 1: be important if we don't want to get eaten before
3:28
Speaker 1: we even get to ask physics questions I see, or
3:31
Speaker 1: if we want to choose how we get eaten. You know,
3:33
Speaker 1: you never know. But we do talk about aliens sometimes
3:37
Speaker 1: in this podcast, and it's something that you know, we
3:40
Speaker 1: talked about having skepticism about, and we've talked about whether
3:43
Speaker 1: it's possible that there are aliens out there. But I
3:46
Speaker 1: guess one thing we've never really touched on is the
3:48
Speaker 1: fact that if there are aliens out there, they probably
3:50
Speaker 1: come from a planet. Yes, a planet, or a moon
3:54
Speaker 1: or some rocky body. But you know, again, it depends
3:57
Speaker 1: on sort of how you define aliens. If you define
4:00
Speaker 1: it to be some kind of life that's similar at
4:03
Speaker 1: all two hours, then yeah, you'll need some kind of
4:05
Speaker 1: environment that's similar hours. But you know, you could imagine
4:08
Speaker 1: aliens living in energy streams inside suns or intergalactic media
4:13
Speaker 1: on very long time scales. The more science fiction you read,
4:17
Speaker 1: the more crazy ideas you need to think about. Oh
4:20
Speaker 1: I see, huh, Well, I guess yeah, I guess I'm
4:23
Speaker 1: thinking more of like aliens who live on planets. And
4:27
Speaker 1: so the question is, could we ever take a picture
4:29
Speaker 1: of these aliens and their planets and what's possible to
4:33
Speaker 1: see from other planets that are not in our Solar system.
4:36
Speaker 1: And it's crazy that we even think about this kind
4:39
Speaker 1: of question, because remember it's only like years ago that
4:42
Speaker 1: we figured out that there are other planets out there
4:45
Speaker 1: and that we could detect them, we could like measure
4:48
Speaker 1: them and prove that they exist. That's like a very
4:51
Speaker 1: recent discovery. You know, in the nineteen eighties we had
4:54
Speaker 1: ideas we were pretty sure there were planets in other
4:57
Speaker 1: solar systems, but we've never actually seen one, and so
5:00
Speaker 1: it's pretty recent that this is like something we can
5:03
Speaker 1: grapple with at all. And so now of course we're
5:05
Speaker 1: getting greedy and we're wondering, like, well, you know, how
5:08
Speaker 1: well can we see them? Can we zoom in on
5:10
Speaker 1: these planets? So to the on the podcast, we'll be
5:13
Speaker 1: asking the question can we see the surface of exo planets?
5:23
Speaker 1: And run off the bat. I want to clarify something
5:25
Speaker 1: because I feel like a lot of the coverage of exoplanets,
5:28
Speaker 1: when they discover a new one, it usually says, you know,
5:31
Speaker 1: new earthlike planet discovered, and then in the article there's
5:34
Speaker 1: a picture of a nice ocean world with continents whatever,
5:39
Speaker 1: and I think people get the impression that that that's
5:41
Speaker 1: a picture of that planet. But for some reason, space
5:44
Speaker 1: journalism usually features artists Bologna renditions instead of real data.
5:49
Speaker 1: So I want you to impact their Daniel and your statement.
5:52
Speaker 1: First of all, space journalism, man, and what a fun
5:54
Speaker 1: title to have in your business card from a space journalist. Yeah, exactly,
6:00
Speaker 1: space reporter. Kudos to those people, But why do they
6:03
Speaker 1: keep featuring you know, artist's imagination over data. Have nothing
6:07
Speaker 1: against artists imagination, but it's not a stand in for
6:10
Speaker 1: actual knowledge. I'll just put in my business card intrepid
6:14
Speaker 1: space reporter. Why not? But maybe this might not be
6:18
Speaker 1: a word that everyone who's listening has heard of before.
6:21
Speaker 1: Exo planets. Does that mean that it's like an X
6:23
Speaker 1: planet or you know, like a kitchen utensile type of planet.
6:28
Speaker 1: It just means a planet outside of our Solar system,
6:31
Speaker 1: that right, That's why we put the word exo in
6:33
Speaker 1: front of it. It's like outside planets. Yeah, exo just
6:36
Speaker 1: means in another solar system, and so exo planet just
6:39
Speaker 1: means a planet around another star. You know, we've seen
6:43
Speaker 1: in our solar system there are eight or nine planets,
6:46
Speaker 1: depending on which side of that ridiculous argument you fall.
6:49
Speaker 1: But other solar systems are really far away three four,
6:53
Speaker 1: ten thousand light years away, and so the planets around
6:57
Speaker 1: those stars. Remember, planets are really small all compared to stars,
7:01
Speaker 1: as the planets around those stars are very difficult to
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Speaker 1: even detect, not to mention, actually image or like zoom
7:08
Speaker 1: in on to see what's going on in that neighborhood. Yeah,
7:12
Speaker 1: and like you said, we up until about twenty thirty
7:15
Speaker 1: years ago, we only had an idea that there could
7:17
Speaker 1: be other planets out there, but we didn't really confirm
7:21
Speaker 1: or really have physical evidence that there exist at other planets.
7:25
Speaker 1: Like it could have been that every star we've seen
7:27
Speaker 1: the night sky doesn't have any planets, and we are
7:30
Speaker 1: the only planets in the universe. That's right. Just like
7:32
Speaker 1: we don't know whether we're alone in the universe, we
7:34
Speaker 1: didn't until recently, know whether we were the only planets
7:37
Speaker 1: in the universe, which is kind of crazy, but you know,
7:40
Speaker 1: the universe is crazy sometimes, and you don't know if
7:43
Speaker 1: you're one of a kind, and the reason you're asking
7:45
Speaker 1: this question is because you're the only one around to
7:47
Speaker 1: ask it, or if you're one in a trillion. So far,
7:51
Speaker 1: the trend seems to be the one in a trillion direction.
7:54
Speaker 1: There are lots of galaxies, there are lots of stars,
7:56
Speaker 1: and now we know there are lots of planets. But
7:59
Speaker 1: you can't make as something you can't just you know,
8:01
Speaker 1: artists imagination your way to answers. You have to actually
8:04
Speaker 1: figure them out. Yeah, and so now we know that
8:06
Speaker 1: there are a ton of planets out there, you know,
8:08
Speaker 1: not just like a few planets out there, but it's
8:11
Speaker 1: like almost every we know for sure, almost every star
8:14
Speaker 1: out there has probably a handful of planets, right. Yeah,
8:16
Speaker 1: And every time we discover one of these planets, I wonder, like, wow,
8:20
Speaker 1: what does it look like it's going on over there?
8:23
Speaker 1: And it's a fascinating question. And you know, we only
8:26
Speaker 1: recently saw close ups of the planets in our solar systems.
8:30
Speaker 1: We sent these missions just in the last twenty thirty
8:33
Speaker 1: years to take close up images of Jupiter and Saturn.
8:36
Speaker 1: And then in the last few years of Pluto, you
8:38
Speaker 1: know Pluto, until we sent New Horizons image, it was
8:42
Speaker 1: just like a little fuzzy dot and even the most
8:44
Speaker 1: powerful telescopes now we know it has that cool heart
8:47
Speaker 1: shape on it. But this is like a human need
8:50
Speaker 1: to visualize things, to see them close up. Yeah, And
8:53
Speaker 1: so the question is if we are ever going to
8:57
Speaker 1: I don't know study other exoplanets out there in the
9:00
Speaker 1: galaxy or in the universe, or you know, sort of
9:03
Speaker 1: get confirmation of what they look like. What will we
9:06
Speaker 1: need to do, like do we need to send the
9:08
Speaker 1: satellite to take a picture or could we take a
9:10
Speaker 1: picture from here? Yeah, it's a fascinating question. I would
9:13
Speaker 1: love to see these pictures of planets around other stars.
9:16
Speaker 1: And maybe we'll see like aliens spelling out messages for
9:19
Speaker 1: us or something s os like with rocks on the beach,
9:25
Speaker 1: send send more pizza. Maybe that's what the hard in
9:28
Speaker 1: Pluto is a message from plutoniums right now that we're
9:36
Speaker 1: totally like, Oh that's cute. It's hard and they're in distress.
9:40
Speaker 1: Oh man, and here we are making jokes about it. Men,
9:44
Speaker 1: we are heartless. But anyways, as usual, we were curious
9:47
Speaker 1: to see how many people you know, sort of about
9:49
Speaker 1: extra planets and also whether or not we can see
9:51
Speaker 1: the surface of extra planets, and so Daniel went out
9:55
Speaker 1: there into the wilds of the internet to ask this question. Yes,
9:59
Speaker 1: so thank you to everybody do you who volunteered your
10:01
Speaker 1: time to answer speculative questions online and to hear your
10:05
Speaker 1: wild speculations on the podcast. If you'd like to participate
10:09
Speaker 1: in future listener questions, please just shoot us a message
10:12
Speaker 1: to questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com. So think
10:15
Speaker 1: about it for a second. Do you think we can
10:17
Speaker 1: see the surface of other planets in the galaxy. Here's
10:21
Speaker 1: what people had to say. I don't think we have
10:23
Speaker 1: any technology right now or to see planets exhort planets
10:28
Speaker 1: from space. That might depend what you mean by c.
10:31
Speaker 1: I don't think we can see the surface of exoplants,
10:34
Speaker 1: and imagine you need to get a spacecraft out there.
10:38
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I think they might be too far away,
10:42
Speaker 1: but I don't think we can actually physically see any
10:46
Speaker 1: services of exoplanets as I don't think we've got a
10:49
Speaker 1: telescope that um is anyone near them. Yes, definitely, I
10:55
Speaker 1: would say no, I don't think we can as far
10:58
Speaker 1: as I understand, and we can't. We can't really see
11:01
Speaker 1: extra planets at all. We can just detect them, all right.
11:04
Speaker 1: Not a lot of optimism here for taking a picture.
11:07
Speaker 1: Everyone's like, no, only a couple of yeses. Yeah, pretty
11:12
Speaker 1: much universally shot down because it seems ridiculous, right, Like,
11:17
Speaker 1: like we said, the planets in our own Solar system
11:20
Speaker 1: are so far away that it's hard to image. So
11:22
Speaker 1: how could you possibly imagine taking a picture of the
11:25
Speaker 1: surface of planets super far away around other stars? It
11:29
Speaker 1: sounds like ridiculous science picture. Yeah, it's like trying to,
11:31
Speaker 1: I guess, take a picture of a marble that's across
11:34
Speaker 1: the world. Maybe I don't know if the scale works out,
11:37
Speaker 1: but it sounds like that. It's not hard. Yeah, a
11:40
Speaker 1: marble across the world that's next to a really bright light,
11:44
Speaker 1: next next to a lighthouse. I've heard that, Yeah, exactly,
11:47
Speaker 1: And now you want to see, like, yeah, but is
11:49
Speaker 1: it a blue marble? Is it a green marble? Are
11:51
Speaker 1: there tiny little bugs walking on the surface of that marble?
11:54
Speaker 1: People want to know what's the pattern of air molly
11:56
Speaker 1: kills around that little marble. We want to predict the
11:59
Speaker 1: weather on other planets, even though we can't even predict
12:01
Speaker 1: the weather here on Earth. All right, we'll step us
12:03
Speaker 1: through this, I guess, um, Maybe let's start with the basics,
12:06
Speaker 1: like how do we know where there are other planets
12:10
Speaker 1: out there? And how many they are? Like? What do
12:12
Speaker 1: we know how do we find other planets outside of
12:15
Speaker 1: our sources? Right? Well, the first thing to understand is
12:18
Speaker 1: that seeing those other planets directly is really really hard,
12:21
Speaker 1: which is why this whole like topic is so ambitious
12:24
Speaker 1: and and maybe ridiculous. And the way that we know
12:27
Speaker 1: that those planets exist is not by seeing them, right.
12:31
Speaker 1: Those pictures you see in the science articles are not
12:33
Speaker 1: pictures of those planets. They're totally made up. Instead, all
12:37
Speaker 1: we can do is see the effect of those planets
12:39
Speaker 1: on the stars that they are orbiting. Like, we don't
12:42
Speaker 1: see anything really directly about the planet. We see how
12:45
Speaker 1: it impacts the star and sort of in two different ways. Yeah,
12:49
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of like that listener who said it
12:51
Speaker 1: kind of depends on what you mean by seeing another planet, right,
12:55
Speaker 1: Like if we will only see its effects on other things,
12:59
Speaker 1: is that really count as seeing or not. Yeah, And
13:00
Speaker 1: we got into that whole rabbit hole when we talked
13:02
Speaker 1: about the black hole, like are we seeing the black hole?
13:05
Speaker 1: Are we seeing the gas around the black hole? Etcetera. Well,
13:08
Speaker 1: in this case, what we're seeing these two different effects
13:11
Speaker 1: on the star. One is the wobble of the star.
13:15
Speaker 1: So when a planet orbits a star, it's orbiting because
13:18
Speaker 1: the star is pulling on it with its gravity. But
13:21
Speaker 1: there's a reverse effect. Also, the planet is pulling on
13:24
Speaker 1: the star with its gravity, so the two are sort
13:27
Speaker 1: of tugging on each other. And of course the planet
13:30
Speaker 1: is much smaller, so it moves a lot more, but
13:32
Speaker 1: the star also moves. And if you take really careful
13:35
Speaker 1: pictures of the star, you can detect this wobble because
13:38
Speaker 1: it's periodic. Right as the planet goes around, it wobbles steadily.
13:42
Speaker 1: It's not like a random jiggle. So if you watch
13:45
Speaker 1: it over a period of time, you can see the
13:47
Speaker 1: star moving and that tells you how massive the planet is,
13:50
Speaker 1: whether there's a planet there, and how massive it is. Right,
13:53
Speaker 1: you measure the wiggle in the star, and you do
13:57
Speaker 1: it through like the Doppler effect. Right when it wiggles
13:59
Speaker 1: to words us, then the light shifts a certain color,
14:03
Speaker 1: and when it's wiggling away from us, it's just another color.
14:06
Speaker 1: And so it's a physicist astronomers can actually detect that
14:10
Speaker 1: a little bit of light that comes from that star.
14:12
Speaker 1: You can actually detect that wiggle, which is amazing, Which
14:16
Speaker 1: is amazing, right, Like everything that the astronomers are doing
14:19
Speaker 1: here is sort of aspirational, Like twenty years beforehand, people
14:22
Speaker 1: would have scoffed like, that's impossible, but now we're doing it.
14:26
Speaker 1: And that's the kind of thing that motivates you to think, like, well,
14:28
Speaker 1: what do we think now might be impossible that in
14:31
Speaker 1: twenty years we'll have figured out and then we'll be
14:32
Speaker 1: thinking about the next thing. Right, Science and technology moves exponentially,
14:36
Speaker 1: so it's good to think anyway. So that's the first method.
14:40
Speaker 1: The second one is the brightness method, and that's if
14:44
Speaker 1: the planet happens to pass between us and the star,
14:47
Speaker 1: then it partially blocks the light from that star. It's
14:50
Speaker 1: like a fly, you know, flying in the front of
14:52
Speaker 1: a lighthouse. You can detect a very small dip and
14:55
Speaker 1: the amount of light that comes from the lighthouse. And
14:58
Speaker 1: again it's periodic. You can see it regularly, so you
15:00
Speaker 1: build this up over many, many orbits and you can
15:03
Speaker 1: get evidence that it's there, right, and it's it's kind
15:06
Speaker 1: of a very specific dip in the light. Right, like
15:09
Speaker 1: a little fly flying in front of a lighthouse. You
15:12
Speaker 1: would see the light from the lighthouse sort of like
15:15
Speaker 1: a fly eclipse almost but only a little bit. You
15:19
Speaker 1: can see the light sort of dip stay even as
15:22
Speaker 1: the fly makes it across the lighthouse surface and then
15:25
Speaker 1: pop back up when the fly leaves the kind of
15:28
Speaker 1: the brightness of the lighthouse, and so you're looking for
15:31
Speaker 1: these very specific kind of dips in the light. Right,
15:34
Speaker 1: that's right. Not every variation in a star's brightness is
15:38
Speaker 1: due to a planet. You're exactly right. It has to
15:40
Speaker 1: be very consistent with the orbit of an object around
15:43
Speaker 1: the star, and it would make that pattern. In fact,
15:45
Speaker 1: there was that star recently we saw where there was
15:47
Speaker 1: a very inconsistent dip in the light around the star
15:51
Speaker 1: and people thought, oh, maybe that's aliens building some huge
15:54
Speaker 1: mega structure and it's only half finished and they haven't
15:56
Speaker 1: finished the parking lot on that interstellar mall, and that's
15:58
Speaker 1: why the light is in this weird way. They just
16:01
Speaker 1: went straight for the aliens. They're like, there's an unusual variation. Yeah,
16:08
Speaker 1: and so we've seen this on lots and lots of
16:10
Speaker 1: planets now. But you know, it requires the planet to
16:14
Speaker 1: be in the right plane, like the plane of these
16:16
Speaker 1: solar systems, the plane around which the planets are orbiting
16:19
Speaker 1: the star is randomly organized in the galaxy, and so
16:24
Speaker 1: it has to be aligned just right so the planet
16:26
Speaker 1: actually goes in front of its star. So not every
16:29
Speaker 1: big planet out there, can we even see with this
16:31
Speaker 1: brightness method? Right? And and this sort of historical right,
16:34
Speaker 1: because I think they started detecting planets with the wobble method,
16:38
Speaker 1: I think, and then they sort of switched to the
16:41
Speaker 1: brightness method of looking at the dips in the light,
16:44
Speaker 1: and that with the explosion of EXCE planets really or
16:48
Speaker 1: the discovery of EXCE planets happened because then we were
16:50
Speaker 1: able with the Hubble telescope to just like survey a
16:54
Speaker 1: bunch of stores at the same time and look for
16:55
Speaker 1: these dips and brightness. Yeah, and now we have dedicated
16:58
Speaker 1: telescopes just to do this, just to find planets through
17:02
Speaker 1: the brightness method. So it's much more powerful now that
17:04
Speaker 1: we have the technology. And now we've seen thousands and
17:07
Speaker 1: thousands of planets, like we haven't seen them in the
17:10
Speaker 1: sense we don't have an image of them to resort
17:13
Speaker 1: to artists if we want to poof up our science
17:15
Speaker 1: journalism a little bit. But we have evidence that they exist.
17:18
Speaker 1: We know their mass, and we know they're radius, and
17:21
Speaker 1: so we know something about them, but we don't have
17:24
Speaker 1: images of them. We don't know necessarily what they look like.
17:26
Speaker 1: We sort of I feel like we know that we've
17:28
Speaker 1: seen their shadow kind of right, We've seen their how
17:33
Speaker 1: they block the light, and that tells us a lot
17:35
Speaker 1: about like the mass and the the orbit. We don't
17:40
Speaker 1: have a picture of a surface yet. Yeah, that's a
17:42
Speaker 1: great analogy because we know from the shadow that it exists.
17:45
Speaker 1: It must be there because it's blocking the light. It's
17:47
Speaker 1: having this impact on the light source. But it's not
17:50
Speaker 1: the same thing as seeing the object itself. All right, Well,
17:53
Speaker 1: let's get into the problem of taking a picture of
17:55
Speaker 1: the surface and whether or not it's even possible. But
17:58
Speaker 1: first let's take a quick break. All right, we're talking
18:14
Speaker 1: about taking pictures of exo planets, planets outside of our
18:18
Speaker 1: solar system, and whether or not those pictures you see
18:21
Speaker 1: in uh in science fiction or in some news reports
18:25
Speaker 1: is to be believed. So this is really hard prompt
18:29
Speaker 1: to actually see the surface. But actually I was just
18:32
Speaker 1: kind of thinking back, isn't there do we have a
18:35
Speaker 1: picture sort of of some exo planets orbiting around a
18:39
Speaker 1: star like I have a memory of some of like
18:42
Speaker 1: an image of some blobs around a bigger blob, which
18:46
Speaker 1: is the Sun. Well, the thing that's important to remember though,
18:49
Speaker 1: is that it's theoretically possible. Like what happens to a
18:52
Speaker 1: photon which comes off of some exo planet, some planet
18:56
Speaker 1: really far away. The light from its stars hit it,
19:00
Speaker 1: and then it's come out into space. And we know
19:02
Speaker 1: obviously that happens. You can see the Earth from space, right,
19:05
Speaker 1: it doesn't glow on its own, it's reflecting life from
19:07
Speaker 1: its son. But think about what happens to a photon
19:09
Speaker 1: that hits that exoplanet. It flies off into space. There's
19:13
Speaker 1: nothing that prevents it from getting to Earth. Right, it
19:15
Speaker 1: can fly from the surface of that planet, carrying information
19:18
Speaker 1: about the aliens lunch or whatever, and come all the
19:21
Speaker 1: way to Earth and hit your eyebland. No theoretical problem
19:25
Speaker 1: to that, Just like to see a marvel halfway across
19:29
Speaker 1: the world if you you somehow had a good enough
19:33
Speaker 1: eye exactly. The problem is that you don't get very
19:37
Speaker 1: many of those photons, right, You get one photon from
19:41
Speaker 1: that aliens lunch, But because the planet is so far away,
19:44
Speaker 1: most of the photons go in other directions, and those
19:47
Speaker 1: photons spread out, and as you get further and further away,
19:50
Speaker 1: the density of those photons drops like one over the
19:53
Speaker 1: distance square. I think about the surface of a sphere
19:56
Speaker 1: that surrounds that. The area of that surface of the
19:59
Speaker 1: sphere rose like the radius squared, and so by the
20:02
Speaker 1: time he gets here, you just have very few photons.
20:04
Speaker 1: So really it's a questions like gathering enough light. The
20:08
Speaker 1: light is getting here, you just need to gather enough
20:10
Speaker 1: of it and separate it out from any other light
20:13
Speaker 1: that might be overpowering it or confusing you. And as
20:16
Speaker 1: you were saying earlier, there are a very small handful
20:19
Speaker 1: of these things where we have seen the planet directly.
20:23
Speaker 1: I mean, we have a few pictures where the planet
20:26
Speaker 1: is far enough from the star and big enough to
20:29
Speaker 1: reflect enough light that we can see that it's there.
20:33
Speaker 1: But that only works for a very few exoplanets when
20:36
Speaker 1: we've seen thousands of them the other ways, And for
20:39
Speaker 1: the ones where we can directly image them, it's not
20:42
Speaker 1: very satisfying. It's not seeing the surface of the exoplanet.
20:45
Speaker 1: It's just like one pixel. It doesn't tell us if
20:48
Speaker 1: it's an ocean world or if there are forests or
20:50
Speaker 1: just dust. We really need a lot more magnification to
20:54
Speaker 1: see the features, to see the surface of the planet, right,
20:57
Speaker 1: Because I guess you know, it's kind of like the
20:59
Speaker 1: picture of Earth from the from the moon. You know,
21:01
Speaker 1: we can take a picture of the Earth from the moon,
21:03
Speaker 1: but then you could even go further and technically you
21:06
Speaker 1: you could still take a picture if you had to
21:08
Speaker 1: kind of a beg enough zoom lens. Yeah, exactly. And
21:11
Speaker 1: you can imagine like taking a picture of the Earth
21:13
Speaker 1: from Pluto right, Like you've seen those pictures of satellites
21:17
Speaker 1: that are flying out in the outer reach of the
21:18
Speaker 1: Solar System, the Earth looks like a tiny dot. All
21:21
Speaker 1: the information is still there when you went outside and
21:24
Speaker 1: you waved up at the sky. The information from those
21:26
Speaker 1: photons is still out there in space, but it's spread
21:29
Speaker 1: out really far, and so the photons density is very low.
21:33
Speaker 1: So you would need to either gather information for a
21:36
Speaker 1: long time or a really big lens, like somebody did
21:40
Speaker 1: the calculation and discovered if you wanted to take the
21:42
Speaker 1: picture of another planet around another star, you'd need a
21:46
Speaker 1: telescope that's like a hundred kilometers wide, and you'd need
21:50
Speaker 1: to gather light for like ten thousand years. Wow. That
21:54
Speaker 1: would not fit in my iPhone for sure, or my lifespan.
21:59
Speaker 1: You know that, paul Us When you press that take
22:01
Speaker 1: the picture button and it actually collects the light and
22:03
Speaker 1: takes the picture and then you hear that click sound.
22:05
Speaker 1: Imagine if that pause is ten thousand years, like, all right,
22:08
Speaker 1: take the picture, smile and hold it. So that's how
22:14
Speaker 1: much it would take. But you know, I feel like
22:16
Speaker 1: we have telescopes that like gather one photon at a time.
22:20
Speaker 1: You know, couldn't we make use of every photon that
22:23
Speaker 1: comes in and kind of reconstruct a hazy picture. Yeah,
22:26
Speaker 1: but you know, you could imagine building a telescope that's
22:29
Speaker 1: a hundred kilometers wide, even if it's not actually physically
22:32
Speaker 1: a hundred kilometers wide, by assembling different telescopes that are
22:35
Speaker 1: like around the Earth, etcetera, etcetera. But you still have
22:38
Speaker 1: to gather light for a very very long time because
22:42
Speaker 1: there just aren't that many photons. I mean, we're talking
22:44
Speaker 1: about a very small object that's not even that bright,
22:47
Speaker 1: and it's really really far away, so the numbers are
22:50
Speaker 1: really working against you. But in principle, those photons are there.
22:54
Speaker 1: So if you develop a big enough telescope or run
22:57
Speaker 1: it for long enough, then hey, maybe it's post So
23:00
Speaker 1: that's the nexus of the idea. That's the technical challenge
23:03
Speaker 1: that this problem is facing, right, it's just that it's
23:06
Speaker 1: really small, and so it's really faint. Yeah, and it's
23:10
Speaker 1: super far away exactly. All right, Well, then how could
23:14
Speaker 1: we possibly ever see the surface of these other planets?
23:17
Speaker 1: You Well, the idea is literally build as big a
23:20
Speaker 1: telescope as possible, and because that's the only way you
23:23
Speaker 1: can overcome these tiny numbers is to have a massive telescope.
23:27
Speaker 1: And you know, we can't build something that's like the
23:30
Speaker 1: size of the Earth. So the idea is to use
23:32
Speaker 1: things that are already there. To use the Earth or
23:36
Speaker 1: the Sun, especially as a lens, because remember, the Sun
23:40
Speaker 1: is a big ball of stuff, and stuff has gravity,
23:43
Speaker 1: and gravity bends light, and so a big ball of
23:47
Speaker 1: stuff can act as a huge lens. And we've seen
23:50
Speaker 1: this in the sky already. If you google gravitational lensing,
23:54
Speaker 1: you can see these amazing pictures where we have some
23:56
Speaker 1: blob of dark matter and in the background. Way mind,
24:00
Speaker 1: it is a galaxy and the life from that galaxy
24:02
Speaker 1: is distorted by the dark matter acting as a gravitational lens. Right, Yeah,
24:08
Speaker 1: we could use the Sun as our zoom lens. Yeah,
24:11
Speaker 1: is that kind of the except that it's on fire.
24:14
Speaker 1: Except that it's on fire which you know causes some problems.
24:17
Speaker 1: Usually that's not what you want in your telescope, but
24:19
Speaker 1: in this case, usually you don't want it to be
24:21
Speaker 1: too hot to handle. Yeah. Yeah, And so we're thinking,
24:25
Speaker 1: if you're gonna build a telescope using some big massive object,
24:28
Speaker 1: use the biggest thing nearby, and the Sun, by far
24:31
Speaker 1: is the biggest blob of mass. But you were saying
24:34
Speaker 1: you need about I guess you need a hundred kilometer
24:37
Speaker 1: wide lens, but over ten thousand years. I was just wondering, like,
24:40
Speaker 1: if you can you use you could use the moon
24:43
Speaker 1: or something. Yeah, the Moon just wouldn't be big enough.
24:45
Speaker 1: To The idea is to use the Sun because it
24:47
Speaker 1: gathers a lot of light, Like it's so strong gravitationally
24:51
Speaker 1: that it's pulling photons nearby and focusing them. And so
24:55
Speaker 1: you get a factor of a hundred billion magnification if
24:59
Speaker 1: you use the on is a lens, which is a
25:01
Speaker 1: pretty big number, right, what was a number again? A
25:04
Speaker 1: hundred billion, hundred billion, ten to the eleven. Wow, that's
25:09
Speaker 1: a lot of zeros. It's a lot of zeros for
25:11
Speaker 1: the X Yeah, and your telescope. And so the idea
25:14
Speaker 1: is you have your planet which you're on image, which
25:17
Speaker 1: is really really far away. And then between the planet
25:19
Speaker 1: and you you put the Sun. So then the Sun
25:22
Speaker 1: bends a bunch of the photons which are flying towards
25:25
Speaker 1: our Solar system but which otherwise would not have hit Earth.
25:28
Speaker 1: Now get all bent together to some focal point, some
25:32
Speaker 1: focal point on the other side of the Sun where
25:34
Speaker 1: you can gather all these photons together. So it's like
25:37
Speaker 1: you're capturing a huge number of photons which otherwise would
25:41
Speaker 1: have just keep flying apart, and you're bending them together
25:44
Speaker 1: into one place that you can gather them together. That's
25:47
Speaker 1: essentially how the magnification works. So you need to put
25:50
Speaker 1: your camera, your sensor pretty far away from the Sun.
25:54
Speaker 1: You're saying, way past Pluto, way past Pluto. Yeah, this
25:57
Speaker 1: thing would be sixty billion else from the Sun. Yeah,
26:02
Speaker 1: you have the exo planet, which is like light years away,
26:04
Speaker 1: and then you have the Sun, and then you have
26:06
Speaker 1: the focal point which is on the other side of
26:08
Speaker 1: the Sun from the exo planet. But yeah, sixteen times
26:11
Speaker 1: as far away from the Sun as Pluto. Have we
26:14
Speaker 1: ever gone out that far? We have? Not? All right, No,
26:19
Speaker 1: Voyager one is the thing that's gone the furthest the
26:22
Speaker 1: man made object that's deepest in space, and it's only
26:25
Speaker 1: gone thirteen billion miles and so this thing would need
26:28
Speaker 1: to be out there sixty billion miles. And you know,
26:31
Speaker 1: Voyager one has been going for forty years, so there
26:35
Speaker 1: are a lot of technical hurdles to making this work.
26:37
Speaker 1: Just take a picture. Yeah, the artists do it, Daniel,
26:42
Speaker 1: use your imagination. Sounds cheaper, and they should draw more aliens.
26:46
Speaker 1: Then if you're gonna let an artist do it, then
26:47
Speaker 1: let him run wild. But I just love the you know,
26:50
Speaker 1: the scale of this idea. The Huber is so like,
26:52
Speaker 1: you know, let's use the sun to take a picture.
26:55
Speaker 1: I just love it. But how would you I guess
26:57
Speaker 1: block them. You need to block the light from the
26:59
Speaker 1: Sun and then gathered the other you like, coming from
27:03
Speaker 1: around the sun. Yeah, because you can't see the photons
27:05
Speaker 1: that actually hit the sun, right, the sun is not transparent,
27:08
Speaker 1: but you're seeing all the photons that sort of skim
27:10
Speaker 1: the sun. They go near the Sun and then get
27:13
Speaker 1: bent towards your camera, and your camera is some satellites.
27:17
Speaker 1: It's like super deep in space, right, But if you
27:21
Speaker 1: do this, there's a lot of information there in principle,
27:24
Speaker 1: they've crunched the numbers. You can take a picture of
27:27
Speaker 1: that planet that's like megapixels for real, for real, every
27:31
Speaker 1: pixel that you capture in your satellite would be equivalent
27:35
Speaker 1: to like twenty five square kilometers on the surface of
27:38
Speaker 1: that planet, which is not a small which is nothing.
27:41
Speaker 1: It's pretty small. You could see, you know, oceans, you
27:43
Speaker 1: could see continents. You probably couldn't see aliens spelling out
27:47
Speaker 1: s os on the beach, and then they're big aliens,
27:49
Speaker 1: they're really really they've had a lot of pizza. But yeah,
27:52
Speaker 1: you could see the shape. You can see like, you know,
27:54
Speaker 1: even maybe meta structures, right, you could see stuff on
27:57
Speaker 1: the surface easily. Maybe if they have like a massive
28:02
Speaker 1: space infrastructure, you might even be able to see that.
28:04
Speaker 1: So that would be incredible. I mean, imagine seeing that picture.
28:07
Speaker 1: Imagine being those scientists building this technology, pressing the button
28:11
Speaker 1: and then you know, a few years later you get
28:14
Speaker 1: the result and you get to actually see this, Like, Wow,
28:16
Speaker 1: what a moment that would be for humanity. Wow, So
28:19
Speaker 1: let's do it? Why don't we do? We do it?
28:21
Speaker 1: Sounds like it doesn't it sounds like you just have
28:24
Speaker 1: to build build a satellite What's what's the technical or
28:27
Speaker 1: financial hurdle here? Well, number one is that it will
28:30
Speaker 1: take a long time to get there, right, So we
28:33
Speaker 1: spent forty years getting Voyager one out thirteen billion miles,
28:36
Speaker 1: So we don't want this to happen in a hundred
28:38
Speaker 1: and sixty years, right. We need to somehow get there faster. Right.
28:42
Speaker 1: But but Voyager doesn't have like booster rockets or anything,
28:45
Speaker 1: does it cann't. Don't we have technology now to get
28:48
Speaker 1: there faster? Yeah, exactly. Voyager is not a race car, right,
28:51
Speaker 1: We have ways and ideas to make things go faster.
28:54
Speaker 1: And the idea is, instead of sending one big satellite,
28:58
Speaker 1: which is sort of hard to power, ending a bunch
29:00
Speaker 1: of micro satellites, like streams of pearls of satellites, and
29:04
Speaker 1: each one powered by a solar sail. Solar sail is
29:08
Speaker 1: not actually like a jet engine of any kind. It
29:11
Speaker 1: just captures the energy of the Sun's own light and
29:15
Speaker 1: sales on it. It captures those photons and it uses
29:18
Speaker 1: that to pull itself along. All right, Well, it sounds
29:21
Speaker 1: pretty cool, and I say, let's do it, Daniel. Let's
29:24
Speaker 1: just let me hop on the phone here with NASA
29:27
Speaker 1: and I'll let him know I approved this plan. That's
29:31
Speaker 1: what they've been waiting for. Absolutely. But let's talk about
29:34
Speaker 1: maybe when we would actually see in these other planets
29:37
Speaker 1: if we ever took a picture of him. But first
29:39
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break, all right, Daniel, So you
29:56
Speaker 1: have a plan for taking pictures of planets outside of
29:59
Speaker 1: the galaxy, and people have crunched the numbers and it
30:02
Speaker 1: is kind of possible if you put a satellite out
30:04
Speaker 1: past way past Pluto, you could use our son as
30:07
Speaker 1: the lens and actually take like high resolution pictures of
30:12
Speaker 1: planets in other stars. Yeah, yeah, exactly. What's the hurdle here.
30:16
Speaker 1: The hurdle is really just making it work and getting
30:18
Speaker 1: the money. We think we know how to do it.
30:21
Speaker 1: There's just a lot of technical issues to overcome. And
30:24
Speaker 1: this is something that NASA is actually supportive of. This
30:26
Speaker 1: is not just like crazy bonkers idea out there on
30:29
Speaker 1: the internet, you know, in some Reddit thread. This is
30:31
Speaker 1: a proposal that's into NASA, that's moving along the stages
30:34
Speaker 1: that could actually be approved, and they're taking these challenges seriously.
30:39
Speaker 1: And the challenges are basically like how to get out
30:42
Speaker 1: there quickly, how to point this thing accurately enough. How
30:45
Speaker 1: to build a big enough satellite because the image is
30:48
Speaker 1: going to be still really huge and you want to
30:50
Speaker 1: sample at night. How to control this thing when it's
30:52
Speaker 1: really far away. Also, how to pick which planet to
30:55
Speaker 1: look at, because one issue is you build this thing,
30:59
Speaker 1: you send it to one place in space. You can
31:01
Speaker 1: only look at one planet. You can't like, turn this
31:03
Speaker 1: thing to look at a totally new planet. We can't
31:06
Speaker 1: turn it. We can't turn it because the location of
31:09
Speaker 1: an image for an extra planet is in a specific
31:11
Speaker 1: spot in space. And then if you want to image
31:14
Speaker 1: another extra planet, you have to go to where that
31:17
Speaker 1: image is. Right, the image is always on the other
31:19
Speaker 1: side of the sun. You can't move the sun, so
31:22
Speaker 1: you have to move where your camera is, and those
31:26
Speaker 1: locations are really really far apart, and so basically you
31:29
Speaker 1: have to pick before you go. You just send your
31:32
Speaker 1: camera out there and you have a telescope dedicated to
31:35
Speaker 1: one planet. Really, I would think that there are so
31:37
Speaker 1: many stars out there that we would have our thousands
31:40
Speaker 1: of exo planets that we know about and could focus on.
31:44
Speaker 1: Wouldn't the days be littered with images of these planets? Yeah,
31:47
Speaker 1: but you have to be really precise about where you're imaging,
31:50
Speaker 1: and so in order to change the target that you're
31:53
Speaker 1: looking at, you need to be able to move laterally.
31:56
Speaker 1: And most of these spacecraft that we're sending are only
31:57
Speaker 1: gonna be able to move radially, like we're sending them
32:00
Speaker 1: out there, and they're actually gonna be traveling outwards as
32:03
Speaker 1: they take an image. They're not going to stop. It's
32:05
Speaker 1: not like they get out there to the focal point
32:07
Speaker 1: and then they just stop. They get out there, they
32:10
Speaker 1: start taking images when they get to the focal point,
32:12
Speaker 1: but it's more actually a focal line, and as you
32:15
Speaker 1: move along that line you get further from the sun,
32:18
Speaker 1: you take pictures of different parts of the planet. So
32:21
Speaker 1: you have to integrate over many years as you move
32:24
Speaker 1: further and further away. So it's it's like a one
32:26
Speaker 1: shot deal. What can we build a spacecraft that you know,
32:29
Speaker 1: stands still and takes the picture. Yeah, that would be
32:32
Speaker 1: much more complicated. You'd have to be able to stop.
32:34
Speaker 1: These things are gonna be moving really really fast by
32:37
Speaker 1: the time they get out there. To get out there
32:39
Speaker 1: at a reasonable amount of time, you need to accelerate
32:41
Speaker 1: to a very high speed, and then to stop requires
32:44
Speaker 1: as much energy, but you no longer have access to,
32:48
Speaker 1: you know, the solar energy in order to slow down,
32:50
Speaker 1: and we only know how to build solar sales to
32:52
Speaker 1: sort of speed up slowing down as a whole different problem.
32:56
Speaker 1: You need a solar parachute or something solar break Yeah,
33:01
Speaker 1: all right, Yeah, you were telling me that these things
33:03
Speaker 1: would need to be would take twenty five years to
33:06
Speaker 1: get there, and they would need to be three times
33:08
Speaker 1: more accurate than Hubble, which is pretty kind of our
33:13
Speaker 1: state of the art kind of Yeah, exactly, because you
33:15
Speaker 1: have to point very precisely, like the light is going
33:17
Speaker 1: to be coming from that planet bending around the Sun,
33:21
Speaker 1: making this Einstein ring. It gets distributed all the way
33:24
Speaker 1: around the Sun, and then you have to point it
33:26
Speaker 1: exactly the right spot in the Einstein Ring. And even still,
33:29
Speaker 1: even though you have all this magnification from the Sun,
33:32
Speaker 1: you still have to spend a lot of time building
33:34
Speaker 1: up the image. You want to keep your camera pointed
33:37
Speaker 1: exactly essentially the same target pixel for weeks and weeks
33:41
Speaker 1: and weeks or months in order to gather in a
33:43
Speaker 1: photon to actually see what's there. Does it sounding less
33:46
Speaker 1: appealing by the by the minute, here Daniel I'm like,
33:50
Speaker 1: how much do I want to see a picture of
33:51
Speaker 1: another planet? What do you mean it's just engineering trouble.
33:56
Speaker 1: You want to? You want to? I mean I want
33:57
Speaker 1: to enough for both of us, trust me. But if
33:59
Speaker 1: we pick one planet and we send a satellite and
34:02
Speaker 1: it's it's a boring planet, that's a real concern. You know.
34:05
Speaker 1: If we have four thousand plants to pick from, it
34:07
Speaker 1: could be like a hundred of them have amazing superstructures
34:11
Speaker 1: an alien life on them, and we just pick one
34:13
Speaker 1: that's like dust and rubble and it's like yawn, And
34:16
Speaker 1: that was a hundred billion dollars and thirty years of work.
34:19
Speaker 1: Let's send four thousand satellites. Then that's obviously the solution.
34:24
Speaker 1: That is a great idea. I'm loving the ideas. Can
34:27
Speaker 1: I cot People take pictures these days with their phone?
34:29
Speaker 1: You know, they don't just take one picture. They go
34:31
Speaker 1: like and then later and you pick the one where
34:34
Speaker 1: nobody's blinking. Yeah, I'm pretty sure they do that because
34:37
Speaker 1: those pictures are free, and if each one costs a
34:39
Speaker 1: hundred billion dollars, people might press that button with a
34:42
Speaker 1: little more thought. Yeah, they might think about it a
34:45
Speaker 1: little bit more, for sure. Yeah, and you know, we
34:48
Speaker 1: think we know how to solve this problem, but there
34:50
Speaker 1: are still a lot of technical issues, like we are
34:52
Speaker 1: seeing faint photons coming through the corona of the Sun essentially,
34:57
Speaker 1: and you have to pick out these photons for that corona.
35:00
Speaker 1: It's not an easy job to increase the signal to
35:03
Speaker 1: noise ratio to the point and this is actually gonna
35:05
Speaker 1: be doable. You need a pretty good set of sunglasses
35:08
Speaker 1: or pretty solid thumb to put in front of the sun. Yeah, absolutely,
35:12
Speaker 1: you do. In addition, this thing has to basically control itself.
35:15
Speaker 1: It's gonna be so far away from the Earth that
35:19
Speaker 1: we can't like send messages. You can't drive this thing
35:21
Speaker 1: with a joystick. It's it's gonna take four days for
35:25
Speaker 1: messages from Earth to get to our camera that's out
35:28
Speaker 1: there in the solar focal point. And so basically has
35:31
Speaker 1: to organize itself. Has to be basically AI power. My goodness,
35:35
Speaker 1: the first AI photographer, that's right. How do we know
35:38
Speaker 1: it's not just doing deep fakes and sending us images.
35:41
Speaker 1: It's made up on the Internet. That's why the alien
35:44
Speaker 1: could gain a sentience, and then it'd be like this
35:47
Speaker 1: is too much work. If I send them a born planet.
35:50
Speaker 1: They're gonna fire me. I'll just deep take a fun,
35:52
Speaker 1: cool planet with aliens in it, yep, and then we'll
35:57
Speaker 1: get all excited. We'll send an interstellar ship towards the
36:00
Speaker 1: direction of that planet, and then only in a thousand
36:03
Speaker 1: years what we discovered that we were lied to. That
36:05
Speaker 1: sounds like an awesome plot for a science or canel
36:08
Speaker 1: a little bit of a letdown at the end, but
36:11
Speaker 1: it sounds interesting. But you're right. We could take a
36:13
Speaker 1: picture of this planet and we could discover nothing, or
36:16
Speaker 1: it could be fascinating, or it could be like confusing
36:19
Speaker 1: and fuzzy. Right, we're going to see a picture of
36:22
Speaker 1: this planet. We're not going to necessarily be able to
36:24
Speaker 1: tell what we want. We're not going to see literal
36:26
Speaker 1: aliens walking around on the surface at square kilometers per pixel.
36:31
Speaker 1: We might just be able to make out fuzzy details.
36:34
Speaker 1: I mean, remember what it was like when we first
36:35
Speaker 1: got pictures of the surface of Mars from Earth. People
36:39
Speaker 1: thought they saw faces and canals, and there's lots of excitement,
36:42
Speaker 1: of course, all of which was bubb kiss Like they
36:44
Speaker 1: did see a face, didn't they Yeah, they saw a face,
36:47
Speaker 1: but it was just a mountain shape where they happened
36:49
Speaker 1: to have a shadow that looked like a face right now,
36:53
Speaker 1: I mean, isn't there a big smiley face on the
36:54
Speaker 1: surface of Mars or I'm not sure if that was
36:59
Speaker 1: an artist in a shion our actual data? All right, Well, um,
37:02
Speaker 1: it sounds like it's going to be pretty difficult to
37:04
Speaker 1: get a picture. Can we send a satellite to another planet,
37:07
Speaker 1: Daniel and take a picture closer? We certainly could, and
37:10
Speaker 1: that would be awesome, but it would take a zillion
37:13
Speaker 1: years to get this. I guess what's the closest exo
37:16
Speaker 1: planet that we know about. Yeah, the closest exo planets are,
37:19
Speaker 1: you know, in the five to ten light year distance,
37:23
Speaker 1: And and that's pretty far away. You know, if you
37:26
Speaker 1: built Hubble, for example, and send it that far away,
37:30
Speaker 1: you couldn't send it really high speeds very easily. You
37:32
Speaker 1: can't tolerate a lot of acceleration, so it would take
37:34
Speaker 1: a long time to get there and then take those
37:37
Speaker 1: pictures and send them back. I mean, Andy, that also
37:39
Speaker 1: sounds like a good idea. Let's do both, Let's do
37:41
Speaker 1: it all, Let's do it all. I mean, we're spending
37:43
Speaker 1: trillions on everything these days, so why not a hundred
37:45
Speaker 1: billion to see pictures of ailure. Yeah, well, it would
37:48
Speaker 1: take maybe like a couple of dozen years, you think,
37:51
Speaker 1: or hundreds of years to go and take a picture
37:53
Speaker 1: of another planet. How long it takes to get out
37:54
Speaker 1: there depends a lot on the propulsion you use, and
37:57
Speaker 1: for your very expensive import and telescope, you probably want
38:01
Speaker 1: gentle acceleration, but you also wanted to get going pretty fast.
38:05
Speaker 1: So I think the best option is to build like
38:07
Speaker 1: a solar sale the size of Texas, and that might
38:11
Speaker 1: be able to get your telescope up to like ten
38:14
Speaker 1: of the speed of light, and it would still take like,
38:16
Speaker 1: you know, fifty two hundred years to get there. But hey, yeah,
38:20
Speaker 1: that sounds like a great You're like, this one is
38:22
Speaker 1: Daniel approved. Let me start a ready tread here too,
38:27
Speaker 1: to tell me, I only have enthusiasm. I have no responsibility,
38:31
Speaker 1: and that's why I have no authority also to make
38:34
Speaker 1: these decisions. Somehow the two are linked. I'm not quite
38:38
Speaker 1: sure why exactly exactly, No, but I think it's a
38:42
Speaker 1: fascinating question. I think it's sort of the next generation,
38:45
Speaker 1: you know, the next frontier and understanding what's out there
38:47
Speaker 1: in the universe is to get these close up pictures
38:50
Speaker 1: of what's going on. And so I'm looking forward to it.
38:53
Speaker 1: I'm hoping that this kind of thing happens and that
38:55
Speaker 1: we press the button and we see the picture, and
38:58
Speaker 1: that I get to see the picture a literal sure,
39:00
Speaker 1: not an artist impression what's happening on these planers, right,
39:03
Speaker 1: because you know, it feels like a basic human curiosity,
39:06
Speaker 1: you know, to see pictures, to see like actual photographs
39:09
Speaker 1: of something, not just like the blip in the light
39:12
Speaker 1: or you know, the gravitational effects or something. You know,
39:16
Speaker 1: we there's something about our human brain that we just
39:19
Speaker 1: we need to see it. Yeah, And you know, it
39:21
Speaker 1: makes you wonder if there are alien civilizations out there
39:24
Speaker 1: that already have this technology. If we're on the verge
39:27
Speaker 1: of it and we've only been around for a few
39:29
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of years as a civilization, certainly somebody
39:32
Speaker 1: else has figured this out. And somebody else may have
39:34
Speaker 1: even put a picture of Earth up on their walls
39:37
Speaker 1: someway out there in the unit, and then tragically those
39:39
Speaker 1: wipe left. They're like, look at this blue planet. It
39:44
Speaker 1: looks kind of boring. Or let's keep going, yeah, or
39:47
Speaker 1: maybe that's good, right, Like this blue planet doesn't look delicious.
39:52
Speaker 1: Let's keep on, Let's keep on. What do you want
39:54
Speaker 1: for lunch today? You guys feeling like Earth or you know,
39:57
Speaker 1: some other planet? That's right. Everybody look as unappealing as possible.
40:03
Speaker 1: I think we're we're on our way there day. That's right.
40:06
Speaker 1: I do my best not to look delicious every day.
40:08
Speaker 1: All right, Well, we hope you enjoyed that, and then
40:10
Speaker 1: hope you look at the night sky or look at
40:13
Speaker 1: the sky out there and wonder what do other planets
40:16
Speaker 1: look like? Do they look like Earth or Mars, or
40:19
Speaker 1: Venus or Jupiter or maybe something completely different? That's right.
40:22
Speaker 1: And remember that the technologies the capabilities that we are
40:26
Speaker 1: scoffing at today are things that scientists and engineers are
40:29
Speaker 1: imagining and working on to make possible for tomorrow and
40:33
Speaker 1: humanity's ability to see what's out there in the universe,
40:36
Speaker 1: to understand what's in this crazy, bonkers cosmos, and to
40:41
Speaker 1: peel back layers of reality to penetrate what's really happening
40:44
Speaker 1: seems unlimitable, and so hopefully our children and our children's
40:49
Speaker 1: children will know so much more about the way the
40:51
Speaker 1: universe actually looks yeah, and they won't have to use
40:55
Speaker 1: their imagination. That's right, and maybe it'll even be cheap
40:59
Speaker 1: by then. Will be an app for that in five years, right,
41:03
Speaker 1: that's right. You can swipe left, right, up and down
41:05
Speaker 1: see any planet you like. Well, thanks for joining us,
41:09
Speaker 1: see you next time. Thanks for listening, and remember that
41:19
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of
41:22
Speaker 1: I heart Radio. For more podcast from my heart Radio,
41:26
Speaker 1: visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
41:29
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.