Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / Can stars eat other stars?

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Can stars eat other stars? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, do physicists ever run out of crazy ideas? Well?
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: We all have our slow days. I mean I get
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: science blocks sometimes. Yeah. So what do you do then
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: to get fresh ideas? Well? Probably very similar to what
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: creative people do. You know, you just let ideas bounce
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: around in your head a little bit and see what happens.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: I should try that. I usually just take an end.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: All right, So what happens, Well, let's see, let's say,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: let me try, let me see. Um, I'll just let
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: an idea bounce in my head. I'm thinking chocolate chip particles.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: That a good physics idea. I don't know. We have
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: to go see if we can find those out there
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: in the universe. They could exist, They could exist chocolate chippos. Yeah,
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: I mean, if I just let ideas bounce around in
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: my head, I think of alien black holes. Is that
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: a black hole that's an alien or a black hole
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: made by alien? It's a bifurcated ideas that allows for
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: both possibilities. Well, does this ever work? This process? Does
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: it ever actually give you a good ideas? Yeah? You know,
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: the universe is pretty crazy, and so sometimes the crazy
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: idea that comes out of the head of a physicist
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: is something that's really out there. Okay, I got a
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: good one for you. Chocolate chip black Holes, where each
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: chocolate chip is actually an alien. Hi. I'm or Hammad,
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: cartoonists and the creator of PhD Comics. Hi. I'm Daniel.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: I'm a particle of physicist and I'm the co author
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: of the book We Have No Idea together with Jorge,
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: a book all about the things we do know and
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: mostly the things we don't know about the universe. And
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: it's also a huge coincidence because we don't really have
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: an idea of what we're doing here. But welcome to
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: our podcast, Daniel and Horr Explain the Universe, a production
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Danie and Jorge make it up
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: as they go along. When it comes to podcastings, right
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: it does it called science improv No, But we try
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: to be honest about what we know and about what
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: science doesn't know, because it's on that edge of knowledge
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: that all the interesting questions lie. That's where the wonder is,
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: that's where the curiosity is, that's where the mental exploration is.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: That's where people go when they want to get new
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: answers to questions about the universe. Things everybody wants to
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: know the answer to how our stars formed, how do
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: they die? Can they eat each other and start taste?
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: But yeah, it turns out there's a lot we don't
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: know about the universe. There's more that we don't know
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: than what we do know, kind of in a way,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: And so it's interesting to sort of talk about that
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: because you know, I feel like people have the sense
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: that the scientists know everything that's going on in the
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: universe until they meet a scientist and then they realize, boy,
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: that guy is clueless. This one doesn't know anything that's right.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: How can she call aselvel scientist if she doesn't understand
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: what most of the univer versus about. But actually, that's
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: a key step to being a scientist is understanding what
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: you don't know and then confronting that ignorance, because confronting
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: your ignorance is the first step in discovery. Is being
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: open to new ideas and asking questions about the things
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: you don't know. That's the best part of science, and
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: so that's why on our podcast we try to take
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: you to that forefront of knowledge, bring you up to
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: speed on the questions that scientists themselves are asking. Yeah,
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: because who knows what could be out there, what kinds
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: of crazy phenomenon that we've never seen before or even
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: thought about. It could be out there right now, happening
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: in the universe. And so to be on the podcast,
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: we'll be talking about one such kind of crazy idea
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: that has been proposed by a couple of famous scientists.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: That's right and maybe even discovered, Because there are several
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: ways to find weird new things in the universe. One
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: is to sort of stumble across them when you weren't looking, like, oh,
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: what's this thing, We've never seen it before. And the
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: other is to think of it first and say, I
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: wonder if you could make a black hole all out
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: of chocolate chips or whatever, you know, could you have
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: a planet the shape of a squirrel or something like that,
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: and then send experimentalists and astronomers out there to look
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: forward to see could this actually work? The planet in
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: the shape of a squirrel. That's just nuts, Daniel. But
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: today we'll be tackling one such crazy idea, And so
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: today on the episode we'll be asking the question, can
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: you have a star inside of another star? Sorry, I'm
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: still having your squirrel nuts joke. Let that play out. Yeah,
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: but This is a kind of a crazy question. I
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: don't even think I even understand it. How can you
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: have a star inside of another star? Well, you know,
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: some stars are really big and some stars are really small,
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: and you're used to thinking of stars is really far apart. Right,
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: our star is really far from other stars. But they
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: can get closer together, and you can imagine what might
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: happen if they get really close together, with one go
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: inside the other one. It would be a star on
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: star battle, they merged into one megastar. Yeah. So who
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: came up with this crazy idea star inside of another star?
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: Well it was from two scientists, Kip Thorne and Anna Zikkov,
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: and they had this idea that maybe you could have
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: one tiny, really dense little star called the neutron star
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: inside of a really big, puffy star called a red
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: super giant. And they were just wondering, hey, is it possible?
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: And they did some calculations and they thought, it doesn't
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: seem impossible. I wonder if it's also really I think
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: there were signs blocked when they came up with that
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: and just sat around drinking whiskey or eating chocolate chips,
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: and they're like, oh, what if you could have a
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: star inside of another star. Yeah. I bet they just
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: wrote a bunch of random things on the wall and
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: then threw darts at them, and they were like, all right,
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: neutron star, okay, red super giant. Hey, what if you
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: got one inside the there? You know, maybe they had
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: a hundred terrible ideas that day and this is the
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: best one. They're like, what if they're best friends? No,
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: not that. What if they're mortal enemies? Now? Not that?
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: What what if one is the evil twin of the other.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: We need to that's been done. We need a better
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: plot twist. You see. There is something, though, there's a
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: deep connection between being creative in physics or in science
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: in general, and being creative when you're doing writing or whatever.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: You just sort of let the ideas flow and and
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: think about what's been done before and then try to
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: find something new, Like has anybody thought about whether you
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: know these could actually be black holes reflected into this
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: dimension by some alien supercomputer whatever? Dot dot dot. You know,
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: you need to let your mind wander a little bit
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: when you're being scientifically creative. Sounds like there's a fine
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: line between science fiction and science for real. And I
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: tried to straddle that line. All right, Well, these things,
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: these stars inside of other stars, they have a name,
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: and they're called the thorn Jitkov objects. And so we
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: were wondering, as usual, how many people had heard of
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: these weird and crazy objects out there in the universe.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: And so, as usual, Daniel went out there and pulled
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: the Internet for people to ask him this question. Yes,
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: so thanks to everybody who volunteered. If you'd like to
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: volunteer to answer random physics questions for a future episode,
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: please write to us at questions at Daniel and Jorge
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: dot com. All right, well here's what people had to say.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: I think it is some type of a hybrid star
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: or something. I have no idea, Man, I have no idea.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: I've never heard of that. Well, absolutely no idea. I
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: have no idea. Um, I have not heard of a
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: thorn site cow psit Co object. So I have no
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: idea what that is. No idea, I never heard of it.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: The name looks like it might be something to do
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: with Kip Thorne, who is an astrophysicist, So I'm going
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: to guess it's something astrophysical. Al Right, not a lot
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: of name recognition. I feel like a lot of these
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: people maybe read our book We have no idea. We
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: stole our idea that we have no idea. That was
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: our idea being clueless. It was our idea not to
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: have an idea. I think that's that's an old human
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: kind idea. Yes, I think that's true, but also not
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: really much of an idea for how to pronounce this name?
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: And you know, I gave it to them in writing,
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: and it's sort of a strangely written name because it's
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: got a Z with a dot on top of it.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: Why t k o W. But it's pronounced jitkov to
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: my best understanding, right right, And I guess if you're
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: googlly and you would have to type in z y
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: t k o W. Yeah. But Kip thorne Is is
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: sort of well known and he has kind of a
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: brand name in physics, he certainly does. He's also got
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: a Nobel Prize and he's worked on Interstellar the movie,
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: so he's sort of a celebrity and lots of different
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: arenas these days. And you know him, don't you. Yeah,
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: I do. I've met him a few times before. Super
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: nice guy and very cool. So so he came up
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: with this idea with Anna Zitkov. So let's dive into it, Daniel,
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: How can you have a star inside I don't even
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: know what that is or what that looks like. How
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: can you have a star inside of another star? Yeah? Well,
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: I think it's only possible for a couple of different
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: categories of stars, because what you need is one star
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: to be really really big and the other star to
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: be really really small, so it can sort of like
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: slip inside the other star. And so we've got to
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: like extreme categories of stars involved here. One is the
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: red super giant star, and the other is the neutron star,
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: and that's the really small one. And each of these
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: are like already fascinating just on their own, so you know,
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: you could write a whole science fiction movie about just
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: one of these. So combining the two of them together
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: it is like, hey, man, that's a bit too much,
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: but you know, hey, they're not limited in their scientific creativity. Okay,
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: so when you see a star instead of another star,
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: then you're talking kind of about specifically two kinds of
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: star that kind of come together, and then one of
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: them kind of eats the other one. Yeah, I mean,
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure which one you would describe as being active,
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: Like is the bigger one eating the other one? Or
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: is the smaller one sort of like boring into the
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: larger one? Or is it a poetic dance of two stars?
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure, but I guess that can happen, right,
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: because why not? Why can't a star fall into into
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: another star? Or why can't two stars kind of merge together?
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: That thing happens, right, Yeah, that kind of thing does happen.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: And if the very different kinds of stars, like a
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: red super giant is very low density compared to a
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: neutron star, then the neutron star can enter the red
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: super giant without being disrupted, without blowing up, without you know,
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: being dispersed, and just merging into part of the red
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: super giant. But aren't sons like stars. Aren't they sort
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: of like giant explosions? You know, isn't there a lot
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: going on? How can something hold together inside of a star?
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: These are some of the largest stars in the universe. Like,
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: the largest red supergiant we've ever found has a radius
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: that's fourteen hundred times the radius of the Sun. Fourteen hunt,
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: you mean, if you take fourteen hundred of our sons,
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: you would get a super giant exactly. These things are ginormous,
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: like they make our Sun, which is already huge compared
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: to Jupiter, which is huge compared to the Earth, which
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: is huge compared to you write, this thing dwarfs our Sun.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: If you put it in our solar system, it will
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: go all the way out to the orbit of Jupiter.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: It's incredible. It's it's almost as big as our entire
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: solar system. Yeah, but it's not that much more massive, right,
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: So it's thousand times bigger and radius, which makes it,
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: you know, like a billion times bigger in volume, but
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: it's only about ten to forty times the mass of
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: the Sun. Oh. I see, it's like a thousand times
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: less dense than our Sun. More like ten over a
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: billion times less dense than the Sun. So it's millions
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: of times less dense than our Sun. Now it's still hot, right,
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: it's like thousands of degrees kelvin. It's not a place
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: you'd want to be. But compared to our Sun, it's
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: more like a cloud, right, It's more like a burning,
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: diffuse cloud. And so while it's a huge, burning ball
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: of gas and not a pleasant place to hang out
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: or have a picnic, it's not a hot, dense environment
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: like the center of our Sun. I see, it's just
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: kind of a hot cloud of stuff, but it's still
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: kind of igniting and burning, definitely burning, right. You have
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: a lot of pressure and temperature and a huge amount
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: of fusion is going on, and you've got light being admitted.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: These things are big and they're glowing their ten thousand
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: or a hundred thousand times the luminosity of our Sun.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: And they're pretty hot. You know, there's like four thousand
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: degrees kelvin on the surface. And there's one that you
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: can even see in the night sky. Wow, where yeh
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: Betel Juice. Betel Juice is a red supergiant in the
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: Orion constellation. You mean one of the one of the
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: points in the Orion Baiel Juice. And these stars have
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: fascinating histories because they started as a blue supergiant, like
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: the same size, but much hotter and more intense when
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: they were burning hydrogen. And then remember they burn that
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: hydrogen and they sort of start run out of hydrogen,
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: and as the temperature increases in the center, they start
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: to burn helium instead, and then near the end of
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: their life they turn into these red supergiants. They're cooled
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: off a little bit. It flipped red the sun. Yeah,
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: you know, yeah, it got more conservative in its older age.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: I think that tends to happen. It's very brief period
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: of moderation in the middle, and then boom all the
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: way to the Fox News side, a Republican. Yeah. So
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: that's the red supergiant. That's like what is going into
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: And so you can imagine it's much easier to fall
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: inside a red super giant than it is like our
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: kind of sun, because it's so big, right, Yeah. And
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: so then the second kind of star for this to
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: sort of happen and stay happening, is that you need
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: a neutron star, which is almost like the opposite of
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: a red super giant. Yeah, exactly. It's super duper dense.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: It's like the mass of our sun or the mass
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: of the Sun, but it's collapsed to like the size
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: of the city of den what like an object like
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: just like twenty kilometers. Why so the whole Sun the
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: size of Denver. Yeah, take the whole Sun, which is
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: already a hot, dense mess, and collapse it to something
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: that's you know, much much smaller than Earth. It's incredibly dense.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: And this is what happens when a star collapses, like
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: at the very end of its life. It can go
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: black hole, or can go neutron star, or various other outcomes.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: This is like the core remnant, the hard little nugget
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: that's left over after the collapse of a star. And
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: it's kind of almost almost at the point of a
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: black hole, right, Like it's so dense it could kind
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: of maybe easily tip into a black hole. Yeah. And
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: one way that you can get a supernova, at least
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: to a black holes, you start with something like a
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: neutron star and then you add a little bit more
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: gas and then it turns into a black hole. But
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: these things don't yet have enough gravitation of power to
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: overcome the neutron pressure. It's like a bunch of neutrons
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: all packed in together, really really really tightly. It's like
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: a bunch of people squeezed onto you know, the metro
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: in Mexico City at rush hour. Have you ever ever
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: done that? But it's a pretty intimate experience. It's a
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: big negative, as they would call it. And neutron stars
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: are fascinating because we only discovered them because we found
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: a particular type called a pulsar. This is the kind
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: that shoots a huge beam of light and rotates really quickly,
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: and so it appears on Earth like a flashing light.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: And they discovered this in the night sky, you know,
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: several decades ago. And that's how we even know that
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: neutron stars exist. Because neutron stars don't have fusion inside them.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: They're not fusing. They are emitting light in the same way.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: They're not exploding. They just glow from all of the
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: compact stuff being squished together. Yeah, they glow because they're hot.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: They're like six hundred thousand degrees kelvin. They're much hotter
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: than a hundred thousand degrees kelvin. It's pretty it's pretty hot.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: They're smoking hot. It's much hotter than the inside of
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: a red super child. All right, So they're small but
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: super hot and supercompact, and so while the other one
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: is kind of big and fluffy. And so I'm starting
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: to get kind of the picture here what's going on,
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: And so let's get into how these things would happen
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: and what would happen and are they even real? But
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: first let's take a quick break, all right, Daniel, we're
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: talking about neutron stars being eaten up or invading the
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: space of red super giants, and so I think I'm
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: getting the picture here. Another, in order for this to
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: sort of happen, you need one big, fluffy star that's
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: kind of it's hot and it's a star, but it's
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: in a big and a kind of diffuse and then
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: you have one another one that's really compact and you know,
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: super duper hot, and then that can go inside of
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: the first one and exist there or an orbit there,
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: or what does it do once it gets eaten up. Yeah,
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: it's sort of like a bullet into a pillow. Right,
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: one can go into the other one. And there's a
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: few ways that this can happen. Like one way this
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: can happen is that they just bump into each other,
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: like you got a bunch of stars flying around and
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: these two things just sort of happened to hit each other.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: That's not very likely because stars are typically very very
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: far apart. In some certain configurations, these things called globular clusters,
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: you have higher density of stars, it might happen, but
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: scientists think it's much more likely that these things already
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: started out near each other, like a binary star system,
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: a system where you have two stars like regular stars,
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: two regular stars, and you know, stars evolve, and so say,
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: for example, you have two stars and one of them
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: already is a red super giant, the other one is
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: a normal star. But then it goes supernova and at
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: the core it leaves a little neutron star. Well, that
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: little neutron star might not just stick around at the
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: center of the supernova. It might get a sideways kick
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: because these supernova aren't like totally symmetric, and so it
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: might get sort of shot into the red supergiant. Oh,
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: I see. Wow, it's like the relationship of alls. Yeah,
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: or that means that the supernova is like a neutron
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: star gun. It's like shoots out one huge crazy bullet
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: from the center of it, which goes right into the
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: red supergiant. Oh, it goes supernova and the jacksit center
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: which is a neutron star, which is a neutron star. Yeah,
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: what a way to go, And it goes into the
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: red giant super red giant. Remember, the red supergiant is enormous,
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: so it would be pretty hard to miss. It would
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: take up, you know, most of the sky from this
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: neutron star. So it just flies off roughly in that direction.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: It's going to get captured by this red super giant.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: It's a giant pillow the size of the sky. It's
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: kind of hard to miss exactly. And the other options,
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: the other order is that you have a neutron star
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: and it's got some partner star which becomes a red
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: supergiant because these stars can grow and you know, like
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: our sun is going to grow near the end of
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: its age. It's going to grow and grow and grow
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: and can do a large your radius. So the other
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: star can just sort of like grow and gradually engulf
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: drown star. You can just sort of like creep on
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: over and take over its space. But the one, the
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: other one needed to be a neutron star, right, yeah, okay,
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: And and these things just happen out there in the universe, right, Like,
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: you know, we're kind of used to this idea that
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: stars are really far apart because there aren't any stars
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: around us really close by, But there are places in
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: the universe where it's like a mess of stars. Yeah,
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: And it's actually much more common for stars to form
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: together because remember stars are formed sort of in bunches
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: when a big gas cloud collapses and so a lot
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: of stars are formed sort of near each other, and
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: it's more likely for stars to have a binary partner
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: than to be solo stars. Our son is unusual. In
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: the Milky way, binary stars are more common than solo really.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: Uh yeah. Out there in the stellar dating field, almost
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: everybody's already married as somebody. Somebody needs to get our
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: Sun dating app or something. I'm sorry you want another star, like,
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: I just feel bad for our our son. I don't know.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: Then we'd have like a step star and be a
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: weird relationship because it wasn't around when we were formed,
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: and it's trying to like boss us around gravitationally. I
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: think it'd be a big mess. They won't let us
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: go to the ball. But yeah, more family, that always
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: is always better. Yeah, I guess more family, more drama,
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: But I guess if that's what you're in for. But
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: I think this is what Kip Thorne and and a
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: Jikov we're thinking about, Like could you have these two
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: things end up inside each other. It's not that unlikely
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: because you have pairs of stars already, So if one
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: of them turns red super giant, or one of them
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: turns into a neutron star. Could they then fall into
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: each other, could they collapse into a single object and
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: could that work? What would it look like? Right, Yeah,
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: let's get into what happens. So we have one really
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: compact neutron star, super hot. It goes into the big
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: fluffy red supergiant and then what does it just keep
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: going because it come out the other end kind of
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: like a bullet, or does it you know, disintegrate that's
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: just going through or does it just kind of inside
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: kind of like a like eating a rock. Yeah, it
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: mostly stays inside. I mean, it depends a little bit
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: on its initial velocity. But you know, a red super
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: giant is still a lot of mass. These things are
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: ten or forty masses of the Sun, and so it's
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: a big gravitational Well, so most likely the neutron star
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: is just gonna spiral to the center of this red supergiant.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: Oh what do you means spiral? Like? Um, it can't
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: just keep kind of orbiting around inside of the star
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: or does it eventually you're saying it eventually kind of
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: collapses into the middle. Yeah, you could orbit stably at
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: a fixed radius if you're not losing energy, and like,
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: you know, if you are a spaceship orbiting the Earth,
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: you can stay at the same altitude if there's no drag,
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: But if you're touching even a little bit of atmosphere,
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: then you're gonna be slowing down and spiraling back intowards
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: the Earth. If you're inside a red supergiant, then you're
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: definitely going to be dragging against the hot, burning plasma.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: It's gonna be stealing your energy, so you're gonna be
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: spiraling in towards the center. And I guess why doesn't
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: it dissolve? Like why doesn't a neutron star just kind
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: of like under those conditions just kind of like break
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: apart or evaporate because it's super duper crazy dense, Like
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: a neutron star is pretty hard to break up. I mean,
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: what you have is a basically a wind of burning
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: plasma that's incident on the surface of this neutron star,
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: and so at that surface you get a lot of reaction,
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: but not enough to like break up a neutron star.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: And the neutron star is a very tightly bound gravitational object.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: You know, it's like putting a rock in a sandstorm
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: or something. And eventually what happens is you know, the
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: neutron star is also gravitationally very dense. It's just going
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: to gather more stuff around it. And so what starts
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: to happen is this really crazy reactions right at the
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: surface there where the neutron Star is super duper hot,
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: it starts burning the inside of the red super jump
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: because it's so much hotter. It's six hundred thousand degrees
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: versus four thousand degrees. Yeah, and and so you get
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: crazy stuff happening right there in the interior. And it's
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: also super heavy. So does it start to like kind
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: of suck out some of the red super Giant and
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: kind of build up in size as it's going in. Yeah,
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: and so what can happen is that it accumulates enough
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: stuff to trigger it to become eventually a black hole. Oh,
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: that would be some serious indigestion. Like if you like,
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: if you eat something and it turns into a black hole,
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: that's not good. Yeah, that's even more than Montezuma's revenge. Right,
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: it's like Nutron stars revenge it or your negative you see,
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: things never go well when you have to star parents, right,
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: they always end up fighting, Alright, So then one thing
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: that can happen is that it goes inside and it
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: becomes a black hole, and then it's kind of game
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: over for everybody, right, because then the black hole is
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: gonna suck in the Red super giant. Yeah, it can
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: suck in a lot of the mass of the Red supergiant,
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: but also a lot of it won't collapse. Remember, black
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: holes don't automatically suck in everything that's nearby. They're just
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: a powerful gravitational force. If you have enough rotational energy,
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: you can end up just in the accretion disk like
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: around the black hole. So basically the red supergiant just
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: because material for the accretion disc that's surrounding the black hole.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: The black hole just kind of sucks up all of
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: the Red supergiant, yes, the center of it at least,
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: and then the outside becomes this like big swirling disk.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: But you know, that's one possibility. Another possibility is that
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: you get crazy intense fusion and reactions at the surface
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: of the neutron star where it's embedded inside this other star,
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: and it creates a lot of energy flying out and
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: it basically disperses the Red supergiants like a new solar wind.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: That's pushing out on the red supergiant and disperses it
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: back into basically a cloud of stuff. It's kind of
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: like dipping a hot poker into a bath of water,
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: Like it touches the water and then it just steams,
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: just explodes out and it just disrupts everything. And then
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: that stuff can do interesting things like form planets, and
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: so you might end up with like a crazy, big
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: spinning pulsar in the center surrounded by planets formed from
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: the depth of that red supergiant. Wow, crazy drama fusion
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: because you're making like a heavier element as it goes in. Yeah, yeah,
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: because that the surface of the neutron star, it's super hot.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: And then you have all the materials you need for
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: fusion because there was fusion already happening inside the red Supergiant.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: You just like supercharged it by bringing in all this
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: extra energy, all this extra heat. So then now suddenly
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: instead of a red giant and a neutron star, what
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: do you have? Then you have like a new solar system. Yeah,
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: you have a new solar system where the red supergiants
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: bones have been used to like supercharge the neutron star
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: and to form a bunch of planets, and so what
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: happens to the Red Supergiant just just activates, like it
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: just peters out and or does it just turns off. Well,
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: it's become diffused, and so it's no longer enough energy
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: and the conditions for fusion. But you know, this is
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: the fate of almost every star, right, especially these really
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: big ones. They will burn and then eventually their cores
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: will collapse and they will disperse. And so that's that's
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: just what happens anyway, that's the Red super Giant is
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: expecting that. It's not a surprise if it's one of
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: these thorn jit cob objects. It's and just sort of
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: gets accelerated by having a neutron star there in the middle. Well,
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: it's pretty amazing to think that you start out with
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: a star whose size it is the size of the
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: orbit of Jupiter, so it's huge, and then you have
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: this tiny little, you know, twenty kilometer wide bullet basically,
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: this little, tiny, superdense thing, and then it just it
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: just totally disrupts this whole ginormous star. I know, imagine
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: if Denver right was the downfall of the whole system.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: That's pretty impressive, right, I mean, I like Denver. Denver's
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: got a lot of sway, but like that's pretty outsize
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: impact for a tiny little region. Yeah, yeah, well it
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: is a swing state, I think, so you know who knows, right,
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: it can totally tip the fate of the entire world. Yeah,
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: you could become a black hole or whatever. It's all
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: in the hands of those voters. It's all in the
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: hands of Denver's. All right, Well, let's get into how
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: you could tell if these things exist and if they
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: even are real out there in the universe. But first,
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. All right, Daniel red super
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: giant eating a neutron star. Sounds like they've worked it
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: out and it's totally possible and a lot of amazing
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: things would happen. So are they real and how could
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: we tell if we where they are? Well, that's sort
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: of the disappointing part about this thing is they had
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: this crazy idea. They were like, Wow, a neutron star
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: inside a red super giant. That would be awesome physics
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: deep inside the core. And then they asked, well, what
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: would it look like from the outside, right, Because we
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: don't get to like go inside red super giants and
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: take a box to see if there's a neutron star
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: or not. We only can observe these things, thankfully from
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: the outside. And you know, a red super giant again
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: is huge, and so seeing this neutron star inside of it,
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: like directly seeing it totally impossible, and mostly from the outside,
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: a thorn Chikov object looks just like a normal red
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: super giant. The differences are pretty subtle, really, But doesn't
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: it the little neutron star disrupted? Wouldn't we see it
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: kind of peter out suddenly or turn into a black
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: hole or turn into a solar system. Well, if you
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: could watch it over, you know, ten thousand or a
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: hundred thousand or a million years, then you you might
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: see these effects. We only get to see these things
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: in a snapshot, right You could ask like, does this
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: particular star have a neutron star inside of it? Right now?
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: So we don't get to see the time series evolution. Man,
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: I would love to look to take an object in
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: the sky and just like fast forward it for a
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: million years and back and forth and see what's gonna happen.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: That to be amazing. I see It's like if you
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: see a dead red supergiant, it could be like, oh,
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: it could die from natural classes or maybe a shot
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: with a neutron star. It would be hard to tell. Yeah,
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: And and really the game is look at all the
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: red super giants out there right now, and ask do
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: we think any of them have a neutron star in
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: them right now? How would they look different if they did?
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: And can we make the measurements to tell if one
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: of them does? So, how can we tell if they
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: did have a neutron star for a snack? Well, you know,
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: they have a really different interior, right they have this
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: crazy neutron star which is triggering this really intense reaction,
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: is burning at the core, and so that does have
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: some impact on what it looks like from the outside
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: in two important ways. One is that they are a
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: little brighter, get more effusion, and so you're producing more light.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: And red supergiants are not famously bright. I mean, they're
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: ten thousand times or a hundred thousand times brighter than
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: the sun, But for that mass in that volume, it's
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: not a very intense source of light. So if you
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: see one that's like extra bright, unusually bright, then that's
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: a clue that maybe it's got a neutron star in
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: its core, because an intron star kind of creates new
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: kinds of reactions which would make it brighter. And then
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: there's a very specific kind of reaction that we think
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: could only happen inside one of these objects. That you
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: have to have a neutron star inside a red supergiant
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: for this even to work, and so you can look
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: for the very characteristic signs of that particular reaction. Interesting
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: involves elements cycling around from the surface of the red
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: supergiant down to the core where they get added protons
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: onto them, and then it's so hot they get shot
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: back up and they get to the surface. They come
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: back down and they get more protons, and they shot
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: back up and get to the surface. And remember, for
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: one of these objects, the core is much much hotter,
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: so it pushes these things out to the surface more.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: See if it's something like this would make a particular
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: kind of element which we might be able to recognize
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: in the surface of these stars, that's right. And so
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: if it's a T c oh then you'd see much
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: more lithium and molybdenum and rubidium then you would see
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: a normal red supergiants. And so if we look at
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: these stars and we can tell that they have more
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: of this stuff on their surface and they're extra bright,
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: then it's a good sign that it might have a
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: neutron star hiding inside. It. Wouldn't a lot of lithium
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: make it more chill and more um more more calm.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: You know, you can't take studies in humans and extrapolate
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: those two behaviors stars for a giant. We did this
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: study in mice, and so we're going to extrapolate, you know,
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: what would be the dose like for a lithium for
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: a red super using the mouse model to study this
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: giant supernova red supergiant totally works exactly, all right. So
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: there might be like if we see a red supergiant
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: and we see that it glows kind of in the
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: lithium range, then we're like, oh, maybe it has a
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: neutron star inside. Yeah, Actually it would be the that
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: doesn't glow in the lithium range because the opposite, because
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: if there's lithium on the surface, then the light is
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: going to be absorbed at certain characterists of frequencies that
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: lithium likes to eat, and so if there are dips
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: at certain characteristic frequencies that would indicate extra amounts of
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: those elements, So I see it means that that stuff
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: is there, which means that maybe there's a neutron star
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: in there exactly. So that's that's would be the signature
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: we're looking for. And so have we found any what's
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: kind of the likelihood of this this thing happening. Well,
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: there's a really fun story here because there's an awesome
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: scientist named Emily Lefek and she became an expert in
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: red supergiants because her research she was fascinated by how
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: they were made, how how they worked, and understanding this
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: whole process inside them. And then she got an email
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: from Anna Jikov saying, how would you be interested in
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: trying to figure out if any of these red supergiants
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: might be one of these weird objects that Kip Thorn
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: and I thought about years ago? And so that sounded
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: fun to Dr Levek, and so she surveyed all the
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: red supergiants she knew of and she found one. She
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: found this star which looked really weird with the dip
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: in lithium, like with the lithium signature on. Yeah, it
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: was weirdly bright and it had the dip at lithium
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: and libdenum and rubidium exactly the places you would expect
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: by one of these objects, unlike the other red supergiants
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: which didn't have these signatures exactly. And that's what she did.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: She compared this red supergiant to like the broader population
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: of red supergiants, to find one that's unusual. And this
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: is the star that we've known about from more than
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: a hundred years, was discovered in nineteen o eight. It's
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: called HV two one two. It's from the Harvard Star Catalog.
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: It's in the small Magellanic cloud. And so this is
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: the paper that came out in two thousand fourteen saying,
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: oh my gosh, maybe we actually found one of these things.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: That must have been a fun day. I bet she
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: was science blocked. And she said, what should I work
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: on next? I have no idea thing? Email from and Azikov?
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: Would you like to prove my concept? Right? She's like,
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: I'm on it. Sometimes when you don't know what to do,
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: you should just check your email, right, because sometimes people
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: literally email you good ideas. Wow. So she went out
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: and she found one of these and and for real
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: or what do they think? Well, you know, she was
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: very careful because she's a good scientist, and she called
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: it a candidate because it's really hard to know for sure, right,
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: And these calculations are hard to do. You have to
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: measure the brightness of the star, which means you have
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: to know how far away it is, and you have
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: to measure the spectra, which means you have to know
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: like how much the light is absorbed between here and there.
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: It's a candidate. It's a candidate. So then do the
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: people of Denver and now vote on it or did
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: they decide, Well, we're deciding whether or not to eject
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: Denver into the heart of that and that depends on
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: how they vote. Denver into a star, depending on how
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: they vote in the next election. Denver is a star.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: Da It's always a star in my heart. But then
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: a other group of folks reanalyzed this in two thousand
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: eighteen with more data from this one candidate, and their
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: numbers disagree. They said, well, you know what, we don't
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: think it's as bright as you thought it was, and
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: we don't find these dips at those element lines as
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: convincing interesting using the same data well as updated data
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: and different analysis techniques. Yeah, so they actually used older data.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: They went back into catalogs and found old data from
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: previous telecopes. They've been looking for something else and they
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: had this old data and they're like, oh, let's use
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: this to try to understand the behavior of this star
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: more deeply interesting. So that was sort of disappointing. But
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: it's one of these bad news good news situations. But
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: but also, I mean, either of them could be wrong
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: kind of you know, oh, yeah, either of them could
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: be wrong. Sounds like you need more studies. That's right. Well,
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: a third study that disagrees with both of them, and
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: they will be even more confused. But this two thousand
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: eighteen papers said that loves candidate maybe wasn't a t
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: c O, but they found a better candidate. They were like, well,
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: when we reanalyzed all the red supergiants, we found this
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: other one that has a very strong rubidium line and
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: it's very very bright. And so it's a question of like,
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: how well do we understand the population of red supergiants.
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: Maybe there's just weird behavior without having a neutron star
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: in the court. Maybe they just have latium on them
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: or rubidium, yeah, or maybe there are a lot of
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: these things. You know. They did some backup the envelope calculation.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: They said, these things last like ten thousand or a
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: hundred thousand or a million years, and you can calculate
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: like the rate of which they are formed. Then you
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: can put together an estimate for like how many there
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: should be in the Milky Way right now? Wait, do
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: you mean how long do you expect once the neutron
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: star goes into the red Giant? How long do you
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: expect it to to live or to just act in
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: an unusual way? How long you expected to continue looking
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: like a red super giant before it like turns into
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: a black hole or blows the red super giant out
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: into just all are remnant. I see, there's no scenario
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: in which it just stays a red super giant like
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: once they once you shoot a neutron star and it's
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: it's game over for it. Yeah, well, game over meaning
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: like you know, ten thousand, a hundred thousand, maybe a
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: million years right game for star lifetimes, that's pretty short.
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: And you know, they did some estimates for how often
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: these things should happen, and they figured that, like, you know,
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: this happens at one every ten thousand years ish or so.
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: And if you do the calculations that tells you that
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: there should be something like twenty to two hundred of
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: these things at any given moment in the Milky Way. Wow,
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: it sounds like a lot, but the Milky Way is huge. Yeah,
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: there's like, you know, hundreds of billions of stars, and
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: so a twenty or two hundred of those would be
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: these weird category. That's not that many, but it's possible,
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: and it's kind of possible to spot them. Yeah, it's
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: totally possible. Theoretically, there's nothing preventing it from happening, and
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: so we think it might happen, and it's just a
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: question of finding one, and then you get to play
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: the fun game of like, well, it doesn't look like
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: we expected, which means maybe there's something different going on
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: inside red supergiants. You know, we're desperately curious about what's
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: going on in the inside of stars because that's where
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: all the critical stuff happens. That's where heavy metals are
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: man Currently, we don't have a great understanding, for example,
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: how lithium is made in the universe, and it might
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: be that this is an important component of the just
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: the manufacturing of lithium in the universe, and if so
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: it would change how we understand like lithium being made
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: in the Big Bang or the early universe, and so
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: this is really important stuff to try to get a
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: handle on. All Right, Well, it sounds like almost unbelievable scenario,
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: but it sounds like it's happening all the time right now,
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: Like right now, there's two hundred of these possibly red
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: supergiants being killed by a neutroun car right now. That's right,
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: And I hope it inspires a future generation of scientists
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: to think, like, hey, let's put three objects like these
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: guys had a stack of two rejects, have like a
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: neutron star inside a bigger star, and put that whole
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: thing inside a red super giant, and that whole thing
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: wrap it all up in a you know, tortilla, and
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: taco bell will sell it. Gordita and red super giant crunch,
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: putting on the toppings there. That's right, wrapping more cheese,
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: wrapping another layer of tortilla called something else. I think
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: Kip Thorns should maybe pitched his to Hollywood again as
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: a new movie called Interstellar Colon Star Snacks. It would
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: be great because it already has spinoffs in terms of merchandizing, right, yeah,
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: all right, Well I think it's just this again, just
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: how about how much we don't know about the universe.
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: You know, we think that we know these red super
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: giants out there, and we think we know what's going
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: on and how often they happen, um, but who knows.
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: You know, there's a lot we don't know going on
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: inside of him, and there's a lot going on that
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: can happen to them in the universe. Yeah, And a
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: big part of the exploration, big part of answering these
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: questions is internal, is starting with mental creativity, is just
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: thinking what could be out there. And a lot of
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: the progress we've made is because we've come up with
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: the right question, because we've had the right crazy idea.
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: And so if you're a person who likes science but
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: you're also creative, remember there's a lot of creativity necessary
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: to do good science. And don't forget to put it
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: in an email. That needs to be a critical step
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: in any good idea. Did anybody do science before there
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: was email? I don't even I don't think they did.
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: There's definitely a correlation with the amount of science papers
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: produced and then email scent so really negative or positive correlation,
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: some kind of correlation, that's all I'll say. Who knows
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: what the classation is a relationship exactly? All right, Well,
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: we hope you enjoyed that and think about you know,
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: next time you look up at this guy, think of
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: red giant stars, the size of this orbit of Jupiter
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: being killed by tiny little stars, the size of them.
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: You hope you ender a dad. See you next time.
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and remember that. Daniel and Jorge Explain
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: the Universe is a production of I Heart Radio. For
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: more podcast For my heart Radio, visit the I Heart
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: Radio Apple Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: favorite shows.