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Lunar Landers and a Battle of ISS Semantics · Made of Stars

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Speaker 1: Warning. The following podcast contains an entertaining look at astronomy, physics,
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Speaker 1: and space news throughout the known universe. Listeners have been
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Speaker 1: known to learn about astronomical phenomenon, the scientific method, and
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Speaker 1: expanded vocabulary to include terms like quasar asterism and uranus. Listen,
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Speaker 1: that's your own risk.
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Speaker 2: Go ahead.
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Speaker 3: When made of stars, made them stars made sizes. When
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Speaker 3: made of stars, you could be from high they would
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Speaker 3: New Mexicomus. Where are stars?
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Speaker 4: When we are made of stars? I'm West Carol, joined
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Speaker 4: by my good friend doctor Sean Cruisin from the State
1:00
Speaker 4: Universities Coca Cola Space Science Center.
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Speaker 3: Hey Sean, Hey Wes. It's good to be here today.
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Speaker 4: So normally we do a little chit chat before we
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Speaker 4: start recording, and we talk about some of the things
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Speaker 4: that we're going to talk about and we run through
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Speaker 4: some stuff. In the case of today, we went a
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Speaker 4: little bit longer with that than we normally would because
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Speaker 4: we we've just been watching the Intuitive Machines lunar Lander.
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Speaker 4: Because we were hoping we'd get some sort of like hey,
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Speaker 4: here's here's what happened, and we're going to do that.
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Speaker 4: We just weren't able to get as much information as
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Speaker 4: what we were hoping to be able to reveal, and
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Speaker 4: maybe over the course of us recording information may change.
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Speaker 4: We'll update all of that by next week, so we'll
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Speaker 4: have some other stuff to talk about, including those stranded, stuck, abandoned,
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Speaker 4: whatever they are astronauts, So may it may by this
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Speaker 4: point next week be home. They're scheduled to come back
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Speaker 4: on the twelfth, So we already kind of know a
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Speaker 4: few of the things we'll be talking about next week.
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Speaker 4: But as of right now, what we know about Intuitive
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Speaker 4: Machines as that it is on the surface of the Moon.
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Speaker 3: Yes, that's all really new mission. As Wes just mentioned,
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Speaker 3: the IM two mission from Intuitive Machines, which is their
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Speaker 3: their lander called Athena, going down to the surface. We
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Speaker 3: know that the lander is on the Moon that we
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Speaker 3: can confirm. We delayed recording of the show probably a
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Speaker 3: full forty five minutes, just to see if we could
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Speaker 3: figure out the status of that lander. What we can
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Speaker 3: tell you right now is that the lander was responding
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Speaker 3: to controls being sent from the mission control at Intuitive
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Speaker 3: Machines headquarters in Houston, Texas, and it was doing various things,
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Speaker 3: acknowledging reception of commands, it was shutting down the engines.
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Speaker 3: It was doing some normal things, but unfortunately it wasn't
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Speaker 3: doing all the normal things that it was supposed to
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Speaker 3: be doing. So right now, Intuitive Machines the company is
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Speaker 3: working to ascertain the full status of the IM two
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Speaker 3: lander called Athena, and at this point we simply don't
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Speaker 3: know now if they if they find out that it's
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Speaker 3: okay and that it's you know, it's it's in a
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Speaker 3: healthy state.
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Speaker 5: Shall we say?
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Speaker 3: That would make a double play two successful moonlanders in
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Speaker 3: the same week, the other one being blue Ghost from Firefly.
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Speaker 3: We're going to talk more about that in a moment.
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Speaker 3: IM two today would have been the second of those
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Speaker 3: to perform a successful soft landing. It looks like that's
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Speaker 3: probably true, at least as far as it goes. It
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Speaker 3: looks like I AM two didn't simply augur into the
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Speaker 3: surface of the Moon and make a smudge. I believe
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Speaker 3: that it is actually on the Moon, and again it's
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Speaker 3: responding to commands, so so therefore it wasn't a high
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Speaker 3: velocity collision with the service of the moon.
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Speaker 5: We can therefore estimate that it's probably.
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Speaker 3: Somewhat save soft touchdown for the second time now Let's
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Speaker 3: remember that I am one Intuitive Machines. First mission did
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Speaker 3: the same thing. It came in and landed softly, but
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Speaker 3: it tipped over on its side, and so it was
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Speaker 3: not a long lived mission. At this point, we don't
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Speaker 3: know the orientation or configuration of the Athena lander on
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Speaker 3: the surface of the Moon, so we're just gonna have
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Speaker 3: to wait until next time, next podcast to come up
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Speaker 3: with those details. But it was pretty exciting to watch
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Speaker 3: the ground crew in mission control at Intuitive Machines and
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Speaker 3: watch them go through the process of taking data as
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Speaker 3: this vehicle came into the surface of the Moon.
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Speaker 4: So no complications with the Blue Ghost lander. You sent
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Speaker 4: me a link to that about the landing on it
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Speaker 4: and seeing it down on the ground. Cool cool photo
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Speaker 4: of that, but no complications with that. Were you watching
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Speaker 4: that or were you getting a better real time idea
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Speaker 4: of its landing compared to what we were just watching
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Speaker 4: with Intuitive Machines.
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Speaker 3: Unfortunately, and fortunately I was not watching the real time
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Speaker 3: input coming in, and in fact, even the folks from
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Speaker 3: Firefly weren't issuing real time stuff. They did issue photos
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Speaker 3: pretty quickly, just a couple hours after landing, though, they
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Speaker 3: issued a video and it's the video of that shadow
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Speaker 3: profile with the Earth off in the distance. You get
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Speaker 3: to see the dust kicked up off the lunar surface
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Speaker 3: from the retro rockets of that lander slowing it down
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Speaker 3: for the landing on the surface of the Moon, and
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Speaker 3: it is a spectacular video, so that one for sure
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Speaker 3: a success. Fireflies Blue Ghost touching down in the southern
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Speaker 3: region of the Moon near Mari Christium March second, twenty
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Speaker 3: twenty five. The Firefly captured this sort of sunrise, a
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Speaker 3: lunar sunrise as it was coming in, which is pretty
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Speaker 3: darn cool. There's all kinds of other photos and video
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Speaker 3: from the descent and landing phases from Blue Ghost, so
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Speaker 3: all of that's now out there on the internet.
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Speaker 5: Very very cool stuff.
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Speaker 3: And in addition to that, we know now that Firefly
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Speaker 3: Aerospace and NASA have already taken data with the instruments
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Speaker 3: aboard Blue Ghost, so they are currently in science operation
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Speaker 3: on the surface.
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Speaker 5: Of the Moon.
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Speaker 3: They are gathering data, their technology is working, and so
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Speaker 3: they have begun.
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Speaker 5: They're fourteen days of service operation.
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Speaker 3: With those NASA payloads on board, collecting science data from
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Speaker 3: the service of the Moon. This is all part remember,
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Speaker 3: this is all part of the Artemis campaign. They're up
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Speaker 3: there collecting data that will be used for missions where
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Speaker 3: we send people to the Moon and to understand better
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Speaker 3: the surface in that area and service chemistry and a
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Speaker 3: variety of important facts about that portion of the Moon
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Speaker 3: as we consider sending human beings to that same region
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Speaker 3: of the Moon in the art of Us program.
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Speaker 4: We sort of touched on this, mentioned it just a
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Speaker 4: minute ago. I was just brought it up. As far
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Speaker 4: as the two astronauts, Well, it's a crew.
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Speaker 3: It's a crew of four.
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Speaker 5: That will be coming home next week.
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Speaker 4: And this is ties back to something that we've been
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Speaker 4: covering now for quite some time as far as the
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Speaker 4: two astronauts that have been reportedly and we have resisted
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Speaker 4: against this term from the very beginning that they were
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Speaker 4: just stranded and stuck aboard the International Space Station. Now
7:40
Speaker 4: we talked about this, actually heard from one of our
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Speaker 4: listeners just a couple of days ago, just kind of
7:47
Speaker 4: following up on some of the comments that were made
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Speaker 4: by Elon Musk about it, and just you know, we
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Speaker 4: don't do politics here. This isn't something that we use
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Speaker 4: the show for. We talk about politics only when it
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Speaker 4: relates to maybe like a change of power and someone
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Speaker 4: new in charge at NASA or how it may tie into,
8:06
Speaker 4: you know, the landscape of things that's going on. But
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Speaker 4: there has been this question about the terminology, and we
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Speaker 4: addressed it on the show. The fact that Elon Musk
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Speaker 4: and Donald Trump as president both were saying that the
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Speaker 4: Biden administration just stranded them there and that they've been
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Speaker 4: stuck and that they refused to actually go up and
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Speaker 4: get them and bring him home. And Trump was saying
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Speaker 4: that he was prepared to send send Elon up as
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Speaker 4: soon as possible to bring him home and those sorts
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Speaker 4: of things. Okay, and we talked about that on the show.
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Speaker 4: But what's what's happened, I guess since we last talked
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Speaker 4: about it, is that Elon Musk has basically accused the
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Speaker 4: prior administration of not letting him go up sooner to
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Speaker 4: bring him home for political reasons. Now, this is one
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Speaker 4: of those things where it starts to become a he said,
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Speaker 4: she said, kind of or whatever. In this case, that's
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Speaker 4: his side of the story. That's what he's explained. He
9:06
Speaker 4: says that for political reasons, they did not want to
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Speaker 4: give I guess someone who was associated with a Trump
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Speaker 4: campaign a win by being the hero and going up.
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Speaker 5: And bringing them home.
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Speaker 4: We have assumed, and I think probably rightly so, that
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Speaker 4: the main reason for the decision was it just made
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Speaker 4: the most sense to send up a crew of two
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Speaker 4: with two empty seats and let them be astronauts. Let
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Speaker 4: the astronauts astronaut and be part of that next crew.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, in particular because that crew was going to go
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Speaker 3: up anyway. Right, so let's make sure we understand the
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Speaker 3: crew of two was going to be a crew of four.
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Speaker 3: But that mission was going to go up any way.
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Speaker 3: It was already scheduled to go.
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Speaker 4: And while it seems we have SpaceX just launching, you know,
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Speaker 4: every couple days, some times twice a day, sometimes I
10:01
Speaker 4: don't know, simultaneous. I don't know what all they're doing.
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Speaker 4: They're just launching like crazy. It is still an expensive
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Speaker 4: process to launch, period. It's always expensive. There's an expense
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Speaker 4: to it. Sending up something just to bring them right
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Speaker 4: back home doesn't make financial sense. So we have two
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Speaker 4: versions of this story where Musk says they wouldn't let
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Speaker 4: him go up and get them because of politics, and
10:27
Speaker 4: that's turned a little ugly on social media. But I
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Speaker 4: just I've came across this quote. I found it in
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Speaker 4: a story that was on IFL Science, not something that
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Speaker 4: we often quote from, but you know, this is where
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Speaker 4: I saw it. And this is from an interview done
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Speaker 4: with the astronauts who have said that while they were asked,
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Speaker 4: are you stranded? Do you feel stuck? Do you feel stranded?
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Speaker 4: And Butch Wilmore said no, I don't feel stranded. I
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Speaker 4: don't feel abandoned. I don't feel stuck. But this is
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Speaker 4: the quote that I think becomes a little bit relevant
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Speaker 4: to what we're talking about. He says, I can only
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Speaker 4: say that, mister Musk, what he says is absolutely factual.
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Speaker 4: We have no information on that though, whatsoever, what was offered,
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Speaker 4: what was not offered, who it was offered to, how
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Speaker 4: that process went, that's information that we simply don't have.
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Speaker 4: So I believe him. I don't know all those details,
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Speaker 4: and I don't think any of us really can give
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Speaker 4: you the answer that maybe you would be hoping for.
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Speaker 2: So there you go.
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Speaker 4: And again he's saying, I believe him and that it's
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Speaker 4: absolutely factual. So this is coming from one of the
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Speaker 4: two quote unquote stranded, abandoned, stuck astronauts. Take it for
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Speaker 4: what it's worth. I think we're certainly in a time
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Speaker 4: where people are going to believe whatever version of this
11:52
Speaker 4: fits into their politics. But that's the latest that we
11:57
Speaker 4: know about that, and it's kind of in one of
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Speaker 4: those stories that's been hanging for a little while. So
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Speaker 4: I just felt like, as they're getting ready to come home,
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Speaker 4: it was worth at least addressing that since they were
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Speaker 4: interviewed about their trip where they're getting ready to come home.
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Speaker 4: So that's sort of the latest. I guess on that
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Speaker 4: as much as we can we can ascertain from what
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Speaker 4: was just said by one of the two stranded astronauts.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, and look on this podcast, friends, I refuse to
12:29
Speaker 3: be a mouthpiece for either political party. That's not why
12:33
Speaker 3: we come on and do this podcast.
12:35
Speaker 5: What we like to share with you.
12:37
Speaker 3: We do a little opinion, but it's not opinion slanted
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Speaker 3: toward one party or another. It's just things that Wes
12:44
Speaker 3: and I think are funny, right, Because we're trying to
12:46
Speaker 3: do two things. We're trying to entertain you. Hopefully we're
12:49
Speaker 3: an entertaining podcast, but we're also trying to keep you
12:52
Speaker 3: informed of the facts as we can see them. The
12:56
Speaker 3: facts as I can see in this instance, I am
12:58
Speaker 3: pretty sure that that is exactly.
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Speaker 5: The account.
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Speaker 3: Butch Wilmore gave insinuates that Elon Musk offered to go
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Speaker 3: up and get them. I'm sure that's correct. I'm also
13:12
Speaker 3: sure that the Director of NASA, Bill Nelson, had to
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Speaker 3: make a call about, well, is it more expeditious to
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Speaker 3: send up a brand new mission and all the costs
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Speaker 3: with the brand new mission, or should we just reassign
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Speaker 3: them to a vehicle that's going to go up and
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Speaker 3: come back down anyway and let them carry out some
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Speaker 3: of the astronaut experiments that two other astronauts were going
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Speaker 3: to carry out. But we already have these two on board,
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Speaker 3: why not just stick with the mission plan? So that's
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Speaker 3: just so much of an easier scenario for me to
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Speaker 3: believe than the actual reason was a political one. But
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Speaker 3: that's just me, right, So that's my opinion. Clearly, the
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Speaker 3: truth to the matter was again verified by butch Wilmore
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Speaker 3: that Elon offered to go get them.
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Speaker 5: There you go.
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Speaker 3: So that's about as far as we can take it, right.
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Speaker 3: And the other thing is, even before they went up, friends,
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Speaker 3: it's not like this took everyone by surprise. NASA plans
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Speaker 3: for many, many contingencies. They were doing a test flight
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Speaker 3: of a test vehicle, the Boeing CST one hundred star Liner,
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Speaker 3: and so they knew that it was a test flight,
14:22
Speaker 3: and if it got up there and had a problem,
14:25
Speaker 3: they were going to have to find a different alternative
14:27
Speaker 3: solution to bring the astronauts back. The one they decided
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Speaker 3: on was simply to bump them to a later crew.
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Speaker 3: So everybody just calmed down. Just calmed down, everybody.
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Speaker 4: And I can't speak on behalf of any of these people.
14:46
Speaker 4: I'll I'll just make this observation, and I think this
14:49
Speaker 4: ties into what you and I have discussed with this
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Speaker 4: about what made the most sense. If I were running
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Speaker 4: a Department of Government Efficiency and it was about saving money,
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Speaker 4: the mission that was going to go up with two
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Speaker 4: empty seats makes the most financial sense. I can't speak
15:07
Speaker 4: for the current DOGE department. I can just say that
15:10
Speaker 4: if I were the person in charge of government efficiency,
15:14
Speaker 4: that seems to be the most efficient way to do it.
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Speaker 3: Is that fair? Is that a fair? I think that's
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Speaker 3: I think that's enormously fair. Yeah.
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Speaker 4: So that's that's the extent of my you know, I
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Speaker 4: don't know who said what I don't know who they
15:26
Speaker 4: said it to.
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Speaker 3: I don't know who they didn't say it to.
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Speaker 4: I just know that stranger things have happened other than
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Speaker 4: someone not doing something in the name of politics. And
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Speaker 4: I would say that it would be strange to just
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Speaker 4: send a ship up just to bring two people home
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Speaker 4: when there was already one going in that direction.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, and let me just let me just add one
15:44
Speaker 3: more piece of opinion that's sure to make people on
15:48
Speaker 3: both sides of the Aisle mad. I just want to
15:49
Speaker 3: make you both mad, right, So this is what I'm
15:51
Speaker 3: going to say. Elon Musk said some really dumb things
15:55
Speaker 3: on Twitter X on X.
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Speaker 5: I think this is opinion. This is my opinion.
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Speaker 3: I don't think those things were necessary that he went
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Speaker 3: on X and said to a former ISS commander from
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Speaker 3: the European Space Agency. But let me also say that
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Speaker 3: without Elon Musk, friends, America wouldn't even have a space program,
16:15
Speaker 3: not a human space flight program going to the International
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Speaker 3: Space Station because NASSA paid twice as much money to
16:21
Speaker 3: Boeing and they still don't have a vehicle that works.
16:24
Speaker 3: So without Elon Musk and SpaceX, we wouldn't have rights
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Speaker 3: to space at all. So I hope that made everyone
16:32
Speaker 3: on both sides of this political argument upset with me. Probably.
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Speaker 4: I mean, I think people are kind of looking for
16:39
Speaker 4: a reason right now to be upset about things. Sadly,
16:43
Speaker 4: and may.
16:44
Speaker 3: I just say I love you all and thank you
16:45
Speaker 3: for listening to Made of Star's podcast.
16:47
Speaker 4: It's important to stress that I've had a couple of
16:50
Speaker 4: those conversations earlier today that had to end with I
16:53
Speaker 4: still love you, right. You know, you gotta tell that
16:56
Speaker 4: sometimes to your friends, and it's one hundred percent true.
16:59
Speaker 3: So there you go.
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Speaker 4: Coming up after a quick break, we're going to talk
17:03
Speaker 4: about shutting down some power to instruments on both voyagers.
17:10
Speaker 2: We'll talk about that next.
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Speaker 4: Now, there's been issues. I know they're shutting down certain
17:32
Speaker 4: things with the voyagers, but we've had issues with they
17:36
Speaker 4: lose contact with voyager and then they get contact back,
17:40
Speaker 4: and then maybe they lose power and then they get
17:42
Speaker 4: power back. Is shutting anything down really a smart move
17:45
Speaker 4: when it comes to the Voyager. I'm just wondering how
17:47
Speaker 4: your thoughts on that.
17:49
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, it's a smart move.
17:52
Speaker 5: All right, let me tell you why.
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Speaker 3: So, Yeah, you're right, I mean they so, first of all,
17:56
Speaker 3: they have done absolutely amazing things in terms of engineering
18:01
Speaker 3: and technical shall we say, hurdle jumping to keep in
18:06
Speaker 3: contact with both of these now somewhat ancient spacecraft. Right,
18:12
Speaker 3: so they're very very old for spacecraft, right, these are
18:16
Speaker 3: old spacecraft. And so they both launched in nineteen seventy
18:21
Speaker 3: seven before Miami.
18:24
Speaker 5: Vice, Is that before my advice? I think it's before mine.
18:28
Speaker 3: That would be before.
18:29
Speaker 5: That was almost before me.
18:31
Speaker 2: I was two.
18:31
Speaker 3: So there you go. Yeah, Crockett and Tubs weren't driving around.
18:37
Speaker 5: I do not.
18:37
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's seventy seven. Yeah, that launched
18:40
Speaker 4: in the eighties. I think that's safe.
18:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, before Ronald Reagan was president. Friends, there you go
18:46
Speaker 3: that one.
18:47
Speaker 5: I'm pretty sure. All right. So here's the thing.
18:49
Speaker 3: These spacecraft, by spacecraft terms, are very very old, and
18:53
Speaker 3: they have largely been well, they have been among the
18:57
Speaker 3: most successful space missions ever by any space agency, including NASA.
19:03
Speaker 5: All Right, So.
19:05
Speaker 3: Both of these vehicles reached interstellar space. In other words,
19:10
Speaker 3: they left the confines of how we the boundaries that
19:13
Speaker 3: we define our solar system. Voyager one in twenty twelve,
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Speaker 3: Voyager two in twenty eighteen. They're not even in our
19:20
Speaker 3: Solar system.
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Speaker 5: Anymore.
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Speaker 3: Friends, they're out drifting among the Milky Way out there
19:27
Speaker 3: past the helio pause, which is the boundary of the heliosphere,
19:32
Speaker 3: which is the sphere of the Sun's magnetic field influence. Okay, anyway,
19:36
Speaker 3: so they're far from the Sun. Well, they're solar powered
19:40
Speaker 3: vehicles in part, and so they're now getting, you know,
19:44
Speaker 3: a long ways from the Sun and did have some
19:47
Speaker 3: other kinds of power generation mechanisms on board. All that
19:50
Speaker 3: stuff starting to die down. So unless they unless they
19:55
Speaker 3: shut down some of the instruments, they're going to run
19:58
Speaker 3: out of power too soon. Well, they each had an
20:02
Speaker 3: instrument on board that was responsible for measuring cosmic rays,
20:08
Speaker 3: and on Voyager two it wasn't just a cosmic ray detector,
20:11
Speaker 3: it was also a low energy charged particle detector. So
20:16
Speaker 3: what they've decided to do since they've entered interstellar space
20:20
Speaker 3: is shut down these experiments that measured cosmic rays in
20:25
Speaker 3: the Solar System inside the heliosphere. So we have a
20:30
Speaker 3: pretty good idea what those cosmic rays inside the heliosphere
20:33
Speaker 3: have done, because these spacecraft took data for decades, right,
20:38
Speaker 3: but now that they're out in interstellar space, what those
20:41
Speaker 3: instruments were designed to measure is not even that relevant anymore,
20:45
Speaker 3: and they have to choose something to shut down so
20:48
Speaker 3: that it doesn't kill the power on the missions too soon.
20:51
Speaker 3: So they have decided to shut down the cosmic ray
20:55
Speaker 3: detector on Voyager one and the cosmic ray detector and
20:59
Speaker 3: low energy particle detector on Voyager two and so, so
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Speaker 3: they're making this energy saving decision to extend the life
21:10
Speaker 3: of the missions as the power dwells. The article there's
21:15
Speaker 3: lots of articles out there about this, but the one I.
21:16
Speaker 5: Read was from ap News.
21:18
Speaker 3: So ap News specifically made the point that these two
21:21
Speaker 3: spacecraft have traveled a combined twenty nine billion miles, so
21:28
Speaker 3: at this point, pretty much anything they do they've already
21:32
Speaker 3: had a successful lifetime.
21:34
Speaker 5: Yeah, we're in gravy.
21:35
Speaker 3: It's kind of like Tom Brady after he won the
21:37
Speaker 3: Super Bowl with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Pretty Much anything
21:40
Speaker 3: Tom did after that, it's gonna be hard to say
21:43
Speaker 3: he did not have a successful career.
21:44
Speaker 4: Yeah, we're in gravy mode. I mean, basically, you know,
21:48
Speaker 4: everything else this is all gravy, you know.
21:51
Speaker 3: Indeed, so remember that Voyager one. The intent of Voyager
21:55
Speaker 3: one was to study Jupiter and Saturn. Well it did
21:59
Speaker 3: that in the eighties, and it gave us all kinds
22:01
Speaker 3: of information about the Jupiter and Saturn systems, about their moons,
22:07
Speaker 3: the fact that Jupiter had a set of rings around it, all.
22:11
Speaker 5: These kinds of things we found out from Voyager one.
22:13
Speaker 3: Voyager two was the first ever spacecraft to visit Uranus
22:16
Speaker 3: and Neptune or Uranus either one, and so it told
22:21
Speaker 3: us all that was for us anyway, So told us,
22:23
Speaker 3: you read my mind, all kinds of things about the
22:27
Speaker 3: Uranian and Neptuneian systems out there. And so so we
22:31
Speaker 3: know a lot about the outer planets in our Solar system,
22:35
Speaker 3: specifically because of Voyager one and two. So they were
22:38
Speaker 3: successful at that point. Now on top of that, they
22:41
Speaker 3: did another, you know, thirty five years of data taking,
22:46
Speaker 3: and now they've actually left the Solar system and they're
22:48
Speaker 3: taking data of the interstellar medium. So, yes, shutting down
22:53
Speaker 3: you know, some of the some of the less important,
22:56
Speaker 3: shall we say, maybe or the less in contact experiments
23:01
Speaker 3: on board, to save power for the rest of the
23:03
Speaker 3: instruments on board.
23:04
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a good idea.
23:07
Speaker 4: So Voyager one and two so much in gravy mode
23:10
Speaker 4: that if either one of them decided they wanted to
23:12
Speaker 4: be the color commentator on the NFL on Fox's A Team.
23:17
Speaker 4: Greg Olsen, be damned right if that's what they wanted
23:20
Speaker 4: to do, poor guy.
23:23
Speaker 3: It's hard to tell Tom Brady and Greg Olsen apart
23:26
Speaker 3: just by voice.
23:26
Speaker 5: I have to just tell you.
23:29
Speaker 3: I mean, just listen to those guys. They're not all
23:31
Speaker 3: that dissent really honestly.
23:34
Speaker 4: So, uh, poor guy Greg Olsen, he just wants this
23:38
Speaker 4: job back, and there's no other place it's gonna give
23:40
Speaker 4: him an a slot.
23:41
Speaker 3: So he's trying to figure out what to do. But anyway,
23:44
Speaker 3: I mean, I would invite Greg on this show anytime
23:47
Speaker 3: he wants to come, anytime.
23:49
Speaker 5: I'm Native Stars, We'll be happy to have you.
23:51
Speaker 4: He I remember just once my one criticism of him
23:54
Speaker 4: as a football broadcasters. I remember him once referring to
23:57
Speaker 4: all of Aaron Rodgers's championship and I remember.
24:00
Speaker 3: Going, it's one right, like it's it's junior high and
24:07
Speaker 3: then you know there was a high school.
24:09
Speaker 2: He's got.
24:09
Speaker 4: He's got one more super Bowl than I do. And
24:12
Speaker 4: I mean that's an accomplishment. I give you that. I'm
24:15
Speaker 4: just pointing out. I mean, I only got to win
24:18
Speaker 4: one to tie him. So I don't know how it's
24:20
Speaker 4: all those But anyway, Greg, don't listen.
24:22
Speaker 3: To West right now?
24:23
Speaker 5: Still, come on Native Stars.
24:24
Speaker 4: We will, Yes, we definitely want to know your opinion
24:29
Speaker 4: about space. And if we booked you on this show,
24:32
Speaker 4: we would not bump you for Tom Brady, absolutely would not.
24:35
Speaker 4: We wouldn't do that. He'd have to do his own
24:37
Speaker 4: episode separate from Greg, which we'd love to have him
24:40
Speaker 4: on as well. But I don't I don't want to
24:42
Speaker 4: mention that in the same context of talking about Olsen.
24:46
Speaker 4: I know that's still a sore spot. All right, this
24:49
Speaker 4: is a cool story. This is like, we're getting into
24:52
Speaker 4: some some heavy stuff here. But let's talk about uh,
24:55
Speaker 4: population three stars and the fact that they could have
24:58
Speaker 4: been supplying water throughout the universe.
25:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, so obviously, if there's a population three, that must
25:07
Speaker 3: mean there's a population two, and if there's a population
25:11
Speaker 3: two and three, there's probably a population one, right, Yeah, Okay,
25:16
Speaker 3: so let's this is getting into a little bit of
25:18
Speaker 3: astronomer's lingo here. Let's talk about populations of stars, pop
25:23
Speaker 3: one stars or population one stars. They're the ones that
25:27
Speaker 3: are now right now when we look at the most
25:31
Speaker 3: contemporary stars out there in the galaxy or in the
25:37
Speaker 3: region of galaxies around the Milky Way. The stars that
25:40
Speaker 3: are born kind of in this epoch, our sun would
25:43
Speaker 3: be one of those. Those are what we would call
25:45
Speaker 3: population one stars. They're the current population. Well, so population
25:51
Speaker 3: two stars are like the parents of the current population
25:56
Speaker 3: one stars. Right, So there was a generation of stars
26:00
Speaker 3: that live their lives, and some of them a erupted
26:03
Speaker 3: in supernova explosions. And when that generation of population two
26:08
Speaker 3: stars erupted in supernova explosions, the material from those stars
26:14
Speaker 3: enriched what we call the interstellar medium or the space
26:16
Speaker 3: in between stars with heavier elements because you only form
26:21
Speaker 3: those heavier elements in supernova explosions. So things like iron
26:27
Speaker 3: and even heavier elements than iron, but also just a
26:30
Speaker 3: lot of things that are sort of what we consider
26:33
Speaker 3: lighter weight materials on the periodic table. Astronomers call these
26:38
Speaker 3: all metals, and those metals include things like carbon and
26:42
Speaker 3: nitrogen and even oxygen. We don't think of oxygen as
26:45
Speaker 3: a metal, but that's in the lingo astronomers that they
26:49
Speaker 3: refer to these elements as metals. Okay, so what we
26:53
Speaker 3: call metals in the Sun came from a previous generation
26:58
Speaker 3: of stars, and that's why we get that population two
27:01
Speaker 3: all right. Well, those population two stars then didn't have
27:04
Speaker 3: as many metals in them because they were the generation
27:07
Speaker 3: of stars that made the metals for the current generation
27:10
Speaker 3: of stars, So they were metal poor stars. Well, then
27:13
Speaker 3: that leads to a definition of stars without any metals
27:18
Speaker 3: at all. You see, when the universe first formed, the
27:23
Speaker 3: only elements created in that vast cosmic conflagration that we
27:29
Speaker 3: referred to sometimes as the Big Bang were hydrogen, helium,
27:35
Speaker 3: and a little bit of lithium. Nothing else existed, no oxygen,
27:41
Speaker 3: no carbon, no calcium, no iron. So the stars that
27:47
Speaker 3: formed out of that very first primordial batch of gases,
27:52
Speaker 3: those were the population three stars. And because they were
27:56
Speaker 3: low in metals, they often, according to our models that
27:59
Speaker 3: lead formed very large stars, stars that were vast in
28:05
Speaker 3: size compared to the Sun. So those early population three stars,
28:12
Speaker 3: that first generation of stars, formed rather quickly and exploded
28:19
Speaker 3: in massive supernova explosions. Okay, Well, a group of astronomers
28:24
Speaker 3: from the United Kingdom out of Portsmouth University, they have
28:28
Speaker 3: led a study where they simulated the explosions of those
28:32
Speaker 3: very massive stars in the earliest part of the universe,
28:35
Speaker 3: those population three stars, and what they have found is
28:38
Speaker 3: that while they are busy generating some of the very
28:41
Speaker 3: first heavier elements ever in the whole universe, they also
28:46
Speaker 3: generated enough oxygen to combine with hydrogen into water molecules,
28:53
Speaker 3: and they did it in vast amounts. So the new
28:56
Speaker 3: study says that the kinds of supernovae that took place
29:01
Speaker 3: among these very early population three stars would have generated
29:05
Speaker 3: vast amounts of water. So why is that important? Here's why,
29:11
Speaker 3: because then you have whole generations of planets that could
29:15
Speaker 3: be forming even before the first galaxies pulled themselves together
29:22
Speaker 3: around some of these very early population three stars that
29:26
Speaker 3: had enough water in their environment that they could be
29:29
Speaker 3: forming water worlds or planets with significant amounts of water
29:34
Speaker 3: in them even before the formation of the galaxies. Very
29:41
Speaker 3: very interesting just in the very first two hundred million
29:45
Speaker 3: years of the Earth of the universe's lifetime, not Earth
29:48
Speaker 3: the Universe's lifetime, that is super fast, in the age
29:52
Speaker 3: of the entire universe, that is in the very infancy
29:56
Speaker 3: of our universe. And so this is a really interesting study.
30:00
Speaker 3: It kind of sets on the ear you know, other
30:02
Speaker 3: ideas about how planets formed, how water came to be,
30:06
Speaker 3: you know, and and just what the pace of planet
30:09
Speaker 3: formation might have been in the early part of the universe.
30:12
Speaker 4: Coming up after another quick break, ferbies are back. We'll
30:16
Speaker 4: talk about them next plan. So we've had a lot
30:38
Speaker 4: of fun over long time talking about ferbies. It's always
30:42
Speaker 4: kind of like we learned something new we didn't really know.
30:45
Speaker 4: We didn't know that was this, Oh my gosh, what
30:47
Speaker 4: is it? What's going on with ferbies? And now we've
30:49
Speaker 4: got this story from science alert dot com. Ferbies fast
30:53
Speaker 4: radio verse traced back to a place we the last
30:57
Speaker 4: place that we expected. But if we didn't know a
30:58
Speaker 4: whole lot about them, how do we know where to
31:00
Speaker 4: expect them to be coming from?
31:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. So furbies are fun just because it's fun
31:05
Speaker 3: to say Ferby and you know, this is you know,
31:08
Speaker 3: at Heart and entertainment show, so we.
31:10
Speaker 5: Like to do that kind of stuff.
31:12
Speaker 3: So, so the other thing I want to say is
31:14
Speaker 3: this is from an article on science alert dot com.
31:17
Speaker 3: And there's gonna be a lot of quotes and they
31:20
Speaker 3: were all from the article on science alert dot com.
31:22
Speaker 3: I do want to say, also, the story we just
31:23
Speaker 3: talked about with population three stars. I want to give
31:26
Speaker 3: a proper attribution. The data I pulled from that was
31:29
Speaker 3: from an article on astronomy dot com. So go read
31:32
Speaker 3: about those population three stars on astronomy dot com. All right, So, Ferbies,
31:37
Speaker 3: fast radio bursts one of the things that we like
31:40
Speaker 3: on this show, and just in astronomy classes or just
31:44
Speaker 3: on starry nights when we're out looking at the sky
31:45
Speaker 3: talking about the stars.
31:47
Speaker 5: We like mysteries. We as people just.
31:50
Speaker 3: Enjoy thinking about things that are so cosmically vast, or
31:56
Speaker 3: they're so far away, or they're so mysterious in terms
31:59
Speaker 3: of the laws of phis that we just can't even
32:01
Speaker 3: understand everything about them. Certainly, fast radio bursts are among those.
32:06
Speaker 3: So what a fast radio burst is. It's a huge
32:09
Speaker 3: spike of radio waves that appeared in radio telescope observations.
32:15
Speaker 3: They release as much energy as five hundred million suns
32:20
Speaker 3: on some occasions, but they only do it for just
32:23
Speaker 3: a few milliseconds. So imagine like a flash bulb going
32:27
Speaker 3: off in the radio part of the electromagnetic spectrum that
32:32
Speaker 3: only lasted a few milliseconds less than a second, but
32:35
Speaker 3: released five hundred million.
32:37
Speaker 5: Suns worth of energy.
32:39
Speaker 3: That's a lot So that's a weird thing, right, it's
32:45
Speaker 3: and it's got a cute name, a Ferbie. Yeah, it's
32:48
Speaker 3: a fast radio burst. But anyway, so but it's mysterious,
32:51
Speaker 3: it's weird, right, Okay, So that's what this article is about.
32:55
Speaker 3: In the past, we have been we as astronomers, the
32:59
Speaker 3: astronom community, have been investigating what process out there in
33:04
Speaker 3: the universe could be responsible for generating such a massive
33:09
Speaker 3: burst of radio waves, which is the lowest energy electromagnetic radiation.
33:14
Speaker 3: By the way, it's not gamma, it's down the radio.
33:17
Speaker 3: So what could do that in just milliseconds and then
33:21
Speaker 3: just be done and gone. Well, one of the things
33:24
Speaker 3: that's been speculated, and this just adds to the you know,
33:27
Speaker 3: the silliness of this mystery is maybe it's warp drive engines.
33:30
Speaker 3: You know, maybe somebody figured out the warp drive and
33:32
Speaker 3: when these starships kick it into warp drive, you know,
33:35
Speaker 3: you get this burst of radio. Okay, I'm not saying
33:38
Speaker 3: that that's what it is. I'm just saying one of
33:40
Speaker 3: many conjectures. So when you're throwing in aliens with warp drive,
33:45
Speaker 3: it means you really don't have a good.
33:47
Speaker 5: Handle on what's going on.
33:48
Speaker 3: Out there. All right, Well, I'd like to just quote
33:50
Speaker 3: an astronomer from the University of Amsterdam named Dante Hewitt,
33:54
Speaker 3: and Dante Hewitt giving quotes to science alert dot com
33:58
Speaker 3: talking about this phenomena on it kind of is putting
34:03
Speaker 3: it into context. And so here comes the quote from
34:04
Speaker 3: Dante hewittt quote the majority of fast radio burst host
34:08
Speaker 3: galaxies seem to be massive star forming galaxies, perhaps implying
34:14
Speaker 3: that most FRBs or ferbies are produced by magnetars formed
34:20
Speaker 3: from core collapse supernovae.
34:22
Speaker 5: Unquote.
34:23
Speaker 3: All right, so now I'm gonna go back and just
34:25
Speaker 3: kind of unravel Dante's quote right there a little bit. So,
34:28
Speaker 3: first of all, star forming galaxies. All galaxies form stars,
34:33
Speaker 3: but some galaxies form them at a very rapid rate.
34:37
Speaker 3: In other words, something is happening within that galaxy where
34:40
Speaker 3: stars are being created in that galaxy at a much
34:44
Speaker 3: much much faster rate than average across the spectrum of galaxies.
34:49
Speaker 3: So this will be the high producing galaxies forming stars
34:53
Speaker 3: an incredibly rapid rate. Okay, so most ferbies have been
34:58
Speaker 3: tied to star forming galaxies and they are speculated to
35:03
Speaker 3: be reduced by magnetars. Well, what are magnetars magnetars are
35:08
Speaker 3: some phenomenon out there that are tied to extraordinarily strong
35:13
Speaker 3: magnetic fields that are.
35:15
Speaker 5: Point sources, like a single star.
35:18
Speaker 3: So the speculation on magnetars is that these phenomenon are
35:22
Speaker 3: often tied to neutron stars, black holes, or some leftover
35:27
Speaker 3: corpse from a rapidly forming and then rapidly dying star.
35:32
Speaker 3: This is suggesting a phenomenon called core collapse, which is
35:36
Speaker 3: the core of the star collapses. We know that core
35:40
Speaker 3: collapse happens in what we call a supernova explosion, and
35:44
Speaker 3: that's why we get such a giant blast from these
35:47
Speaker 3: incredible stars is because the engine that drives the power
35:50
Speaker 3: of that star, the core has collapsed. Okay, so that
35:53
Speaker 3: was a lot to unravel in that quote, so maybe
35:54
Speaker 3: I'll read it one more time. The majority of fast
35:57
Speaker 3: radio burst host galaxies seem to be massive star forming galaxies,
36:01
Speaker 3: perhaps implying that most FRBs are produced by magnetars formed
36:05
Speaker 3: from core collapse supernova. Thus, says Dante Hewitt from the
36:09
Speaker 3: University of Amsterdam. He goes on to say this the
36:13
Speaker 3: faintness of this particular ferby that we just observed FRB
36:19
Speaker 3: two zero one nine zero two zero eight a has
36:24
Speaker 3: come from a host galaxy that implies that it is
36:27
Speaker 3: one of the least massive FRB host galaxies we've ever seen.
36:32
Speaker 3: So that was definitely surprising, says Hewitt. Well, the reason
36:36
Speaker 3: that doctor Hewett is so surprised is because it appears
36:41
Speaker 3: that the latest FERBI FRB two zero one nine zero
36:45
Speaker 3: two zero eight a came from a tiny dwarf galaxy
36:49
Speaker 3: that was actually ejected by a more massive galaxy and
36:54
Speaker 3: is free floating through space being thrown out of a
36:57
Speaker 3: galaxy system. That's weird because you shouldn't have the kinds
37:03
Speaker 3: of processes taking place in this dwarf galaxy that would
37:07
Speaker 3: produce the kinds of objects these magnetars or core collapse
37:11
Speaker 3: stars in nearly as much volume as as a rapid
37:16
Speaker 3: star forming galaxy would do. Right, You just wouldn't get
37:19
Speaker 3: as many black holes, neutron stars, supernovas in a tiny
37:24
Speaker 3: galaxy that doesn't form stars very fast, So that's why
37:27
Speaker 3: it's weird. But yet this particular fast radio burst has
37:32
Speaker 3: now been tied to a tiny dwarf galaxy which is
37:35
Speaker 3: not forming stars very fast. Going on to quote doctor
37:39
Speaker 3: Hewitt one more time on this mystery quote, this host
37:43
Speaker 3: galaxy is most likely ten to one hundred times fainter
37:47
Speaker 3: than the vast majority of other FRB host galaxies, perhaps
37:51
Speaker 3: on par with the Magellanic clouds, says doctor Hewitt unquote.
37:56
Speaker 3: So Magellanic clouds, those are the tiny companion galaxies to
37:59
Speaker 3: our own milky where we don't expect stars to be
38:02
Speaker 3: formed very fast. So this is all weird, friends, and
38:05
Speaker 3: it is taking our understanding of fast radio bursts and
38:10
Speaker 3: the objects that might be forming them in a new direction.
38:13
Speaker 3: It's at least giving us another data point that does
38:16
Speaker 3: not fit neatly into models of fast radio bursts that
38:19
Speaker 3: we already have. So there you go, another mystery another
38:24
Speaker 3: You know, astronomers love mysteries, right, We're not befuddled or confounded.
38:29
Speaker 3: I like those headlines like the object befuddles astronomers or
38:33
Speaker 3: confounds astronomers. We're not befuddled or confounded. We're excited, right,
38:36
Speaker 3: We're like, hey, oh cool, mystery. Let's go see if
38:40
Speaker 3: we can figure this one out. So that's where this
38:42
Speaker 3: current turn in the Ferby world seems to be taking us.
38:46
Speaker 4: More made of stars. Right after this, two quick updates
39:11
Speaker 4: latest on intuitive machines. Still no the status is still unclear.
39:17
Speaker 4: All right, we figure that's where we'd be at this point,
39:19
Speaker 4: So delaying any longer wouldn't have helped us in having
39:22
Speaker 4: an answer to this question. And then the other quick note,
39:25
Speaker 4: I wanted to go back and hit it. September sixteenth,
39:28
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty four is when Miami Vice debuted on TV.
39:32
Speaker 3: So the Voyager Missions launched well before Crockett and Tubs.
39:36
Speaker 3: That's right, seven years before.
39:38
Speaker 4: There was probably a year of you know, the idea
39:40
Speaker 4: and all that stuff. Maybe it was technically berthed before that,
39:43
Speaker 4: but I mean, Jan Hamer was probably already.
39:45
Speaker 5: Making music, I would guess at that time, that's right.
39:47
Speaker 3: And I mean he did the whole Charots of Fire thing. Yeah,
39:51
Speaker 3: all right, let's talk.
39:52
Speaker 5: About Van gel No, that was Van Gelis. Let me
39:55
Speaker 5: just clear that up.
39:56
Speaker 3: That was Van Gelis.
39:56
Speaker 5: Don't write wes.
39:57
Speaker 3: I know well, I got my I got my eighties
40:01
Speaker 3: synth artists mixed up there. Sorry, it's a Gallis sharedz
40:04
Speaker 3: ifire Jon Hamer.
40:05
Speaker 4: I didn't even catch it when you said it. In
40:07
Speaker 4: my brain, I think it was catching up, but I
40:09
Speaker 4: was busy trying to move on to other music, because
40:12
Speaker 4: you guys just had the March Music under the Dome.
40:16
Speaker 4: I hear nothing but great things from our good friend
40:19
Speaker 4: Paul Hostetter.
40:21
Speaker 5: Music out of the Dome was very very cool this month.
40:25
Speaker 3: If you didn't make it, that's okay because we have
40:28
Speaker 3: two more this semester. We have one on the first
40:31
Speaker 3: Tuesday of April and another one on the first Tuesday
40:34
Speaker 3: of May. Music under the Dome events are concerts in
40:37
Speaker 3: our planetarium where the professionals from the schwob School of
40:41
Speaker 3: Music come in and play their instruments, both students and
40:44
Speaker 3: faculty playing their student playing their instruments in our Omosphere theater,
40:48
Speaker 3: and we're providing original graphics on the dome that are
40:51
Speaker 3: choreographed to that music. Very very cool event. Check out
40:54
Speaker 3: those two concerts and the information on those on our website. Also,
40:58
Speaker 3: there is another very important event that I want to announce,
41:01
Speaker 3: which is this Saturday. If you're listening in anything near
41:06
Speaker 3: to real time and you're in our general vicinity, we
41:09
Speaker 3: are having Georgia stem Day, sponsored by the Georgia Department
41:13
Speaker 3: of Education here in the great State of Georgia. We
41:16
Speaker 3: are having it at the Coca Cola Space Science Center
41:18
Speaker 3: this Saturday from nine am to three point thirty PM
41:21
Speaker 3: at the Space Science Center. This is the time friends
41:24
Speaker 3: that if you have any students who are in the
41:26
Speaker 3: middle grades or high school grades, they can come down
41:30
Speaker 3: and explore STEM careers with a variety of professionals both
41:34
Speaker 3: from academia and area industries. Everything from you, we have
41:40
Speaker 3: actually professionals coming in from Lego and from Sonvas and
41:43
Speaker 3: from a variety of other professional vendors. In addition to
41:48
Speaker 3: many of our academic departments that train students to enter
41:52
Speaker 3: STEM careers that includes nursing and science education as well
41:55
Speaker 3: as environmental science, geology of course, space exploration, robotics, engineering,
42:01
Speaker 3: and more. We are particularly proud that we're going to
42:04
Speaker 3: have a specific table that helps high school students know
42:07
Speaker 3: how to go to college at all, whether they come
42:11
Speaker 3: to Columbus State University or not. We will tell you
42:14
Speaker 3: all of the necessary steps to go to college. So
42:17
Speaker 3: if you are in the area and you have interested
42:19
Speaker 3: in this, or if you have students who would benefit
42:22
Speaker 3: from this, please bring them down.
42:23
Speaker 5: It's free of charge.
42:24
Speaker 3: This Saturday, March the eight, twenty twenty five Georgia Stem
42:28
Speaker 3: Day happening at Columbus State University's Coca Cola Space Science
42:31
Speaker 3: Center Sean and I.
42:32
Speaker 4: Thank you for listening, and we'll do this again next weeks.
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43:02
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43:05
Speaker 4: forty five hundred O Dccolumbus dot com