Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / Is Betelgeuse about to explode?

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Is Betelgeuse about to explode? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Ay, Daniel, what do you think would happen if something
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: in the night sky suddenly did something totally new, like
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: wiggling and shaking or dancing around something doing the flaws
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: the star flaws. I mean, like, what happens if a
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: star suddenly started doing something it had never done before? Oh?
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: You know what, I would think that this would be
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: an amazing opportunity to learn something new about the universe. Nope,
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: this is an amazing opportunity for a major discovery. Only
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: we're talking about discovering aliens. Hi'm JR. I a cartoonists
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: and the creator of PhD Tomics. Hi. I'm Daniel Whitson.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: I'm a particle physicist, and I really really want to
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: believe in aliens. You're an alien enthusiast or an alien
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: or a professional alien believer. I'm a believer enthusiast. I'm
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: enthusiastic about people who believe in aliens who do it professionally.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Is somebody out there paying people to believe in aliens?
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: Because I want to sign up for that or maybe
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: that's this job right here? Well, welcome to your weekly
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: career conspiracy advice podcast. Daniel and Jorge explain the Universe
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio, in which we talk
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: about all of the amazing and crazy things about the universe.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: We explain to you how the universe really works, on
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: the stuff that's happening out there in the center of
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: stars and here on Earth and inside the tiny little
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: particles in your fingertip. That's right. All the things that
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: we can explain about the universe, and all the things
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: that we cannot currently explain about this weird and mysterious universe,
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: only some of which we chalk up to aliens only
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: some Do you have a giant column in your physics organization.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: I'm only allowed to declare aliens two times a day,
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: So if I would already used that explanation twice in
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: one day, then I'm going to come up with actual
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: physics theory to explain what I'm seeing. Oh no, you
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: actually have to work. Yeah, you know, like, oh, that
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: program didn't work. Must be the aliens. That's right, My
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: my Latti is too cold. Aliens latte's who drinks lattees anymore? Man?
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: That's so a pre alien bam milk. When the aliens come,
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: I wonder what kind of coffee beverage they will like.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Hopefully not human coffee. Are you saying like human milk?
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: Like they don't want cow milk or almond milk, they
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: want like human milk. We don't want to hopefully theyn't
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: want to brew us, is what I'm saying. I see, Well,
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: I think I'd rather be a you know, on a
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: human dairy farm than on a human coffee human coffee.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: But anyway, yeah, like, let's not go into let's not
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: go into free podcast. That's right, human lactose free podcast. Please.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: I think most people would vote for that, that's right.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: But you know, if we're talking about discovering aliens, then
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: that's mostly about looking out into the universe and seeing
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: some crazy stuff. And you know, we haven't yet, of course,
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: discovered aliens, but we have learned a lot of amazing
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: stuff just by looking out into the night sky. Yeah,
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: and I think the way we would discover something like
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: that is by looking at the sky and then seeing
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: if weird things happen, like if you know, suddenly things
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: change or things things happen that don't seem natural. Yeah.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: We talked once on the podcast about a really strange
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: star that seemed to be obscured. It was almost like
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: somebody was building a huge superstructure that was blocking the
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: light between that star and us, like a Dyson sphere.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: And that's the kind of thing that you might see
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: if you keep looking into the universe and watching stars
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: and looking for sort of unnatural phenomena, right, and sometimes
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: those phenomenon can lead to pretty interesting scientific discoveries, even
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: if they're not about aliens. Or that's right. In nineteen
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: eighty seven, we saw a supernova go and that was
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: the first time and sort of modern astronomy thing, we
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: got to watch a supernova happen. Not in real time,
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: of course, it happened, you know, thousands and thousands of
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: years ago, but the light from it arrived here on
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: Earth in seven and we learned a tremendous amount about
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: supernovas and how they work and what happens by getting
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: to watch that one. Really, it was only seven that
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: we saw our first supernova or I guess maybe with
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: a telescope. Yeah, that was the first one that that
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: came in the era of our modern awesome telescopes. So
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: astronomers saw a few supernova earlier this century. We have
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: records of supernova's sort of like in the Antarctic ice
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: where they deposited all sorts of crazy radiation um going
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: back hundreds of years. But it's sort of modern supernova
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: watching when was the first really sort of big science
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: supernova And we should do a whole podcast episode about
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: what we learned about science from that one supernova. Oh,
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: I see. So that's the kind of thing that astronomers
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: do is they look at this guy and they kind of,
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: you know, to check all the marks there and on
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: their list of how how things should act. But then
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: if they see something new, then that's something worth exploring more, right, Yeah,
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: And that's something sort of fundamentally different about astronomy and
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: astrophysics than the rest of physics. Like a lot of
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: us in physics, we make experiments happen. I want to
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: know what happens when a proton smashes another proton, Well,
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: I go and I do it. I smashed two protons together.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: But if an astronomer wants to know what happens when
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: you crash one galaxy against another one, you can't build
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: a galaxy collider, right, that's sort of even practical. Instead,
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: they just watch it happen in the universe. They look
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: out into the universe to see their experiment happening. Wow,
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: did you just call a whole field of physics tush potatoes?
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: Is that basically what you're saying. And like those guys
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: who sit around in their couches in Hawaii looking up
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: at the sky and wait for things to happen, Yeah,
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: the equivalent is like, if you had some other physicists,
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: you're like, I really wish this experiment would happened. Maybe
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: I'll just sit in my living room and wait and
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: see if it happens in front of me. That's basically
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: the plan, as opposed to particle physicists who in danger
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: of the whole human race by building things that mike
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: create black holes, And don't you rather study a nice
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: little black hole close to home than one super far
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: away you can barely see. I think I would rather
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: stay away from black holes as much as possible. All right, Well,
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: that's good to know. It's a very powerful couch that
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: they're sitting on. They get to see the entire universe
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: and the amazing things that basically anything you want to
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: watch happen is happening out there somewhere in the universe.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: Neutron stars are crashing into each other and all sorts
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: of strange galaxies exist. They can't make things happen, but
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: you know, they have a view to one of the
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: greatest test of experiments in the history of the universe.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: It's quite a drama going on out there in the universe.
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: And so today we are going to be talking about
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: one such discovery or one such phenomenon that we're seeing
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: out into the next guy that is kind of weird, inexplicable,
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: almost and totally we're and might be who knows, of
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: some weird alien origin. It might be. I think almost
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: anything can be categorized as potentially of alien origin, which
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: is one reason why I love that explanation. But this
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: is something that's been capturing the minds of astronomers and
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: even popping up in the news media recently. There's something
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: weird happening with one of our favorite stars in the sky.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: That's right. So today on the program we'll be tackling
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: the question, is beetle jews blowing up? That's right, And
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: we don't mean blowing up on social media. It's not
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: going viral um. But you know, just like anything that's
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: blown up on social media, you do have to wonder
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: is it about to die? And so we're gonna be
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: talking about the star beetle Juice, right, not the Broadway
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: play musical, not the movie with Michael Keaton, the the
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: original beetle Juice, that's right, And not some weird new
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: beverage that Gwyneth Paltrow is pushing on people. When you
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: squeeze beetles um as to stimulate your alkaline intake in
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: the morning. I think her beetles are sustainably and humanely squeeze.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: They're gently massaged to get a little bit of one
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: drop of juice out of each beetle every day. But
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: it's not it's not actually beetle juice. It it's actually
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: a different spelling. It's or is it Uh? It's kind
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: of an old word, right, it's I think it's Isn't
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: it originally like the name of a demon or something. Yeah,
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: it comes from Arabic, I think. And so it has
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: nothing to do with beetles or juices. Um. It looks
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: like you might pronounce it like beatel goose or something,
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: but it's pronounced beetle juice. Yes, it's just just go
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: with that. Beetle goose. That sounds like the name of
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: my character. And d and D or something. It's like,
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: it sounds like a different Qwyneth Paltrop product. I'm gonna
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: roll my forty seven sided diet. He cast a spell
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: from my wizard beatel Goose while you're playing with Gwinne Paltrow.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: I don't think Paltrow plays D and D. But you know,
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know. I shouldn't say. You
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: never know. Maybe she listens to the podcast No. But
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: there are a lot of people have been watching this
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: star and noticing something really strange happening with it recently.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: And that strange thing is that it's actually dimming, right.
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  Speaker 1: It's like somebody is slowly turning it down. You imagining
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: some sort of cosmic dimming switch, and somebody on the
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: wall of the universe there's a giant mob who's playing
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: with the dimming switch. Alien dat out there or may
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: it's connected to the universal Alexa. You know what I mean.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: Nobody's like Alexa dim No. Bill Juice is a huge star.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: It's an enormous, super giant red star and it's very
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: bright in the sky. It's one of the used to
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: be one of the ten brightest stars in the sky,
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: and now it's been dropping. It started in October. It's
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: been dimming, dimming, dimming, and nobody knows why. Okay, So
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: we were wondering, and it sounds pretty recent October. That's
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: it's it's a pretty recent Oh yeah, we are topical
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: on this show. Yeah, I mean months. I mean to
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: a physicist that's like on the dot. I don't know
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: how to respond to that. Maybe a few months you
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: will come up with a response. Give me till October.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: I'll come back with a really clever comeback. Yeah, there
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: you go. There's something involving how cartoonists are always on deadline.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: That's right, we are. Yeah, And so it's a recent development.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: And so we were wondering how many people out there
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: knew that one of the stars in our sky, a
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: famous one, even beele Juice, is actually dimming. So I
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: walked around campus and I asked students at UC Irvine,
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: fresh back from their holiday break, if they knew what
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: beetle Juice was the star, if they had heard it
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: was dimming, and if they were worried about a potential
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: supernova that could fry their eyebrows off. And so here's
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: what people had to say. I think I've heard of
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: it before, but I don't know I remember much about it.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: Did you know that the star appears to be dimming
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: in the night sky? No, I didn't know that I
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: have yet. Did you know that it's dimming dramatically? I
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: did not. Are you worried about it? Not really? No? No? Yes?
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: Did you know that it's dimming in the sky dramatically? No?
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: Does that make you worried? Should I be a red star? Yeah,
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: it's a bright red star? Yeah. Um, I guess I'm
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: a little bit worried. I think I've heard of it,
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: but like, I have no idea anything about it. Did
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: you know that it's dimming in the sky, like right
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: now it seems to be fading. Does that make you worried?
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: Not too much, because I know like stars die and
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: stuff all the time, but it's still a little concerning
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: star view juice. No. Sorry though, No, so you didn't
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: know it was dimming in the sky. Does that make
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: you worried? I mean, it doesn't sound like something that's
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: worrying for me. It's just found something very interesting now
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: that you brought it up, So I would want to
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: know a little bit more about it and what it is,
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: and maybe then I could decide if it's worrying when
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: they're dimming, doesn't just mean their light is going away.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: So that started that galaxy is or universe or whatever
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: it represents. Been that for a while. So I don't
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: really think it affects us much unless there's something I'm
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: listening al right, not a lot of concerned or even
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: a lot of people who had heard of this star. Yeah.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: I thought there was going to be sort of more
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: penetration in the sort of general student population about this
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: incredible astronomic event that's happening above our heads every single night.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: And we had a bunch of listeners to the podcast
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: right in and ask us, hey, can you talk about
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: what's going on with Beetlejuice explaining to us. So I
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: was expecting the students that have maybe heard about it,
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: but maybe they were too focused on the start of
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: classes and all their new homework assignments, right or I
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: imagine most college students now weren't even born when the
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: movie Beetle Juice came out. That might be an issue also,
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: But even when I told them about it, they seem
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: to feel like, you know, hey, this is a supernova.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: It's going to happen somewhere super far away, so I'm
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: not too worried about it. There's maybe a supernova involved here.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: But the main mystery is that Beetle Juice you're saying
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: recently in October started dimming like it was one of
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: the brightest stars in the universe, and then suddenly it
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: wasn't as bright. Yeah. People just watch these stars, you know,
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: And some stars burned constantly. They're just pretty stable. There's
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: just like a huge fire and going off in the
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: sky and burning at the same brightness. But other stars
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: are sort of variable stars, and they wiggle, they go up,
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: they go down, they go brighter, they get dimmer. It's
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: like not a not a stable process, like it's it's
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: going through some motions. Yeah, And you know when you're
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: looking at a fire, sometimes the fire burns brighter as
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: it gets to a good bit of fuel, and then
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: it dims out a little bit. We can talk a
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: little bit more about the physics of that in a
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: little bit, But people have been watching Beetle Juice for
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: like more than a century and taking some pretty detailed
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: measurements of its brightness, and starting in October nineteen, it
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: started to dim and people thought, oh, it's just going
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: into one of its dimming phases. But then it just
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: kept dimming and dimming and dimming, and now it's dimmer
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: than it has ever been seen before and more than
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: a hundred years. Okay, so it has dimmed before, but
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: now it's dimming more than ever. Yeah, used to sort
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: of wiggle up and down a little bit here and there,
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: but now it's much dimmer than it ever has been. Wow.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: And how do we notice this? Like, are there people
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: looking at every star in the sky all the time
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: or is there a dedicated Beetle juice grad student and telescope.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: We assigned one student per star, and that's just your job.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: And you've got to hope that you know something interesting sky,
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: that's right, otherwise you'll never graduate. Um, that's sort of
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: my problem with astronomy. I mean, I was always interested
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: that I do a personal one, which is when I
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: was a kid, the thing that attracted me to science
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: and the physics was astronomy. I was like, wow, look
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: at the night sky is amazing. And I got a
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: telescope and I looked at a star. But then after
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: a few minutes, you're just sort of like looking at
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: a dot in the sky. It's not that exciting. Uh,
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: it's not that often that anything interesting happens. And so
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: as opposed to when you smash point particles, you're looking
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: at things that are not points. Exciting stuff happens every
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: twenty five nanoseconds. So yeah, you have stuff blowing up.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: It's pretty dramatic in comparison. But you know, I don't
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: mean to impugne any astronomers. I love astronomy and astronomers,
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: and I'm glad that there's lots of different fields of
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: science and different personalities to go into each different fields
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: just not my personal choice. But there are people who
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: do watch the sky and they look for things like supernova.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: We're always watching to see more supernova coming because they
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: help us measure the size of the universe and its expansion.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: So yeah, we have surveys that are constantly watching. This
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: guy just scanning out there looking for things that changed,
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: Like it takes a picture and then takes another picture
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: and compares the two pictures to see if anything is changed. Yeah,
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: there are these very general surveys, and that's how you
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: discover things like a new planet or you know, Omuamua
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: is something that's coming towards the Earth. But in this case,
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: I think Beetle Juice is a star of interest because
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: it's so big. It's so huge, it's coming near the
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: end of its life, and it has a really interesting
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: pattern of variability. M hmmm. Alright, let's get into more
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: details about our friend Beetle Juice and what could maybe
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: be happening to make it dimmer. But first let's take
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: a quick break, all right, Daniel, So, Beetle Juice, one
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: of the brightest stars, or what used to be one
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: of the brightest stars in the sky, has been dimming recently,
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: getting less and less bright, and nobody knows why that's happening. Yeah,
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: And there's lots of different kinds of stars out there
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: in the sky, and some of them burn for billions
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: of years and some just for millions of years. And
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: what we're doing is looking at all of them and
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: trying to understand, like, how many different ways is there
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: to be a star? And you know, there are a
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: lot like the star that is our sun, it's not
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: even one of the most typical stars in the galaxy.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: And some of them are crazy, and Beetlejuice is one
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: of the most extreme stars out there. Really all right,
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: tell me about beetle juice. Let's get into that a
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: little bit. What do we know about beetle juice and
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: how is it different than our son? Well, first of all,
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: beetle juice is huge, Like, it's about twenty times the
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: mass of our Sun. Twenty times. Yeah, it's an enormous
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: amount of stuff, So we should call it beetle huge.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: I don't think it likes when you call it that,
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: you know, big old, huge beetle, huge beetle juice. It's
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: been trying to cut back recently on the amount of
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: amount it's on the keto astronomical diet. Yeah, and it's
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: not just huge in terms of mass, like twenty suns
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: is a lot of stuff. It's actually physically just the
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: volume is enormous. It has a diameter of close to
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: a billion miles. Wow, and that's much bigger than our sun. Right, Like,
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: if if if something that big was in our solar system,
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: it would probably take up most of the space. Yeah, exactly.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: If you put beetle juice in place of our Sun,
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: then Mercury, Venus, Earth, mars Um, even up to Jupiter
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: would be inside the radius of the Sun. Right, So
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: that would like a little juice. Beetles not good. So
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: it's huge. It's huge, and and why is it that big?
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: It's just that that's how it happened to be put together. Yeah,
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: the size of a star just depends on you know,
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: the sort of the clumps of stuff that are around
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: to form it, and the dynamics of it, whether it
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: breaks off to form its own little cloud and stuff.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: That's something that people are still really trying to understand
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: is how stars form and what makes stars form. And
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: we have parts of the galaxy where stars are still
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: forming and parts where they're not forming anymore. And that's
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: not something we understand very well. But what we do
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: know is sort of the connection between the size of
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: the star and how long it's going to live. Interesting,
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: you mean how bright it is or how big it is. Yeah,
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: the larger the star, the sort of bigger it is
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: than the brighter it burns, and the shorter it's life.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: Like our sun is billions of years old and we
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: expected to keep burning for another few billion, but beetlejuice
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: is only eight and a half million years old. It's
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: like a baby. Really, what but you can have a
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: star that young and wait and you're you're tip telling
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: me it's near the end of the end of its life. Yeah,
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: stars this size only burn for like eight point six
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: or eight point seven million years, people think. And this
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: one it's at eight point five million. Wow. So these
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: things burn bright and they burn hot and they're huge,
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: but they just don't last as long in the universe.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: Like the Sun is sort of the the turtle of stars.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: It's gonna keep burning for a long time after Beetle
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: Juice blows. Interesting, it's kind of like a career in
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: Hollywood for a Hollywood star. I think, Actually, in Hollywood
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: it's better to be small, isn't it isn't the thin
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: still in Well? I mean you burn bright and then
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: and then nobody cares about you. Yeah, yeah, I think
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: that's probably a good analogy. All right. So that's beetle juice.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: It's different, it's bigger. It's beetle huge. And where can
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: I find beetle juice? Is it on constellation that I know? Where?
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: Where could I find it if I wanted to see
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: it from Earth? Yeah, it's sort of a Hollywood star
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: because not only is it one of the brightest stars
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: in the sky, it's in one of the most famous constellations.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: It's in the Orion constellation, so it's a big one. Yeah,
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: and it's um, it's not that close to the Earth.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: It's like six hundred and twenty five light years away.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: But I think that's kind of close, isn't it. Isn't
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: it close fair and relatively astronomical distances? That depends. Yeah,
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: I mean the galaxy is, you know, a hundred thousand
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: light years across, so yet in our neighborhood. But there
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: are other stars that are, you know, four or five
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: ten light years away, So there's definitely a lot of
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: stars that are closer. And it's not just in the
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: Orion constellation. I think, isn't it like the central one? Like,
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: if you look at the three stars that make up
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: the belt, isn't Beetle Juice one of them? The middle one?
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: I think the managers of the careers of the other
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: stars argue about which is sort of the most important
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: star in a come on, Beetle Juice is of the
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: Arian constellation, Let's be honest. I mean, I think that
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: without beatle Juice wouldn't really be Ariyan, you know, wouldn't
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: have that same magic to it. Um. But people differ,
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: but it is. It is one of the ones in
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: the belt, right like, and that's pretty recognizable in the
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: night sky. If you see three stars pretty evenly space,
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: that's that's the Orion constellation. Yes, so Beetle Juice doesn't
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: provide part of the belt, but it's critical. You know,
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: it's the top left shoulder of Ride, and that's his
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: throwing shoulder, I think, and you know he's a hunter,
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: and so I think people just can make a pretty
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: good argument to being sort of a foundational star. And
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: that's why I'm not in a strong war with any reason.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: Number I love musum number. You don't even need to
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: count them. Really, I would just cartoonists. I would just
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: draw it wherever. Yeah, exactly. We'll fact check that later.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: All right. So then you guys noticed that it started dimming,
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: and so that's kind of weird, right like, starts on
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: just suddenly Dim't like that so much. Yeah, well it's
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: sort of weird, but it's also sort of not weird.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: And so to understand how weird it is, we have
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: to know what the context is. It turns out there's
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: a huge population of stars out there, like a good
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: fraction them are variable, Some of them do dim and
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: brighten and dim and brighten. And these are stars we
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: call them variable stars. Yeah, you mean there's a lot
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: of stars out there twinkling. Well, twinkling is actually because
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: the light is being mitigated by dust and atmospheric effects
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: and stuff like that. So that's what causes twinkling. But
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: there are stars that if you were like in a
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: spaceship near them, you would notice them brighten and then
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: dim and brighten and dim. And some of those stars
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: played in a really important role in our understanding of
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: the universe. And I guess that would be weird of
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: our sun did that as well. Yeah, that would be
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: really weird because every years we're like, yeah, like solar seasons. Yeah,
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: there are some solar seasons, like the sun has eleven
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: year magnetic cyclum cycle, I think, whereas magnetic field flips
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: every eleven years, and there are seasons when there's more
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: solar wind and less solar wind. But these effects are
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: very small compared to what we're talking about. You know,
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: the Sun doesn't significantly brighten and dim compared to what's
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: happening in these other variable stars. It's really noticeable effect.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: And so we talked about these stars, these sephids recently,
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: these are the stars that pulsate. All right, let's get
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: into that, and like, what could be happening with beetle jews,
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: because you guys know is it's dimming and that's kind
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: of unusual and it could mean some pretty um dramatic things.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: So what are some possibilities for what could be happening
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: to beetle juice? All right? Well, I have sort of
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: three categories of explanation for what might be happening to
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: beetle juice? Okay, and there you're gonna tell tell us
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: in order of how alarmed we should be. Yeah, so
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: the most boring possibilities, right, and then we got them
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: maybe more exciting crazy ideas, and then we got the
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: alarming everybody builds a bunker and starts to live underground
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: for the next time of years situation. Everybody start eating
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: beetle juice and praying to the greeneth paltry demons out there,
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: that's right, or invest in lentil futures. All right, So
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: what are the three possibilities that could be causing beetle
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: juice to go dimmer? Right? Well, the first thing to understand,
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: as we've mentioned, is that some stars just do this.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: They are variable stars. Now some of them when this happens,
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: usually it's very regular. So the stars we talked about before,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: their stars called set fids. They pulsate and it's very regular.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: In fact, the key thing about sefids is that how
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: fast they pulsate tells you how bright they are at
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: the source. And that's a key thing to knowing like
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: how far away the star is, because you have to
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: know how far bright it is at the source compared
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: to how bright it is here. That's how you how
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: far away it is. So you make a bunch of measurements.
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: You measure how often it gets dimmer and brighter and
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: dimmer and brighter. It does it sort of like a clock,
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: and that tells you something about how bright it is
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: over there near the star. So it's it's really key
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: for those stars that they are very regular, right, they're
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: variable and something happening inside them to make them pulsate.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: And these are not stars that are rotating. It's not
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: like a flashlight swinging through the universe that's just flashing
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: over us. It's really like a like a pulsating reaction
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: kind of. Yeah, it's a radial pulsation, so no matter
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: where you are around the star, you would see going
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: brighter and dimmer. Beetle Juice is not one of these
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: very regular stars. It's not a sefid. It has some
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: variation and it it goes up and it goes down,
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: but it's not like a talk Okay, so I see.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: So it's normal for a star to change to like
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: get brighter and dimmer. But you say, most stars sort
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: of do it on a clock like regularly, but Beetle
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: Juice maybe is different. Yeah, Beetle Juice has sort of
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: two different cycles that people have been noticing over the
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: last few decades. It's got like a long cycle that
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: takes about six years to go up and down, and
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: it also has sort of a shorter cycle that's less
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: than a year. And so we don't know what's going on.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: We don't have an explanation for how Beetle Juice has
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: these two weird cycles in it. You're saying that it
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: might be two kinds of aliens interfering with the star,
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: fighting inside the star star. It's a star war, right
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: the beet Juice. And for those of you who are
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: interested in, like how can that happen? How can a
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: star burn more brightly and dimly? Remember that it's not
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: just that the star itself is like burning hotter or colder.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: It's about the light we're seeing from the star. And
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: so sometimes what's happening inside the star can make like
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: the outer shell of the star more opaque because it
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: changes it from like helium too to helium three. Or
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: it can make a contract which makes it heat up,
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: or can make it expand which makes it cool down.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: So all this stuff can happen to a star. It's
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: not just about how hot and bright it is. It's
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: about like the shells and the layers and the folks
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: who study this have these amazing models of these enormous
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: cosmic fusion explosions that they can Frankly, it's blows my
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: mind that they can understand them at all. So it's
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: like if you're standing next to the Sun, you wouldn't
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: see it get bigger or smaller, you just see it
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: get brighter and dimmer. Well, if you're standing next to
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: one of these stars that is variable, then they know
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: they do expand and contract. Certainly they do. They do,
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: and the outer shell of the star can become more
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: opaque or less opaque, and so what you see from
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: far away is just of course it's brighter or dimmer,
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: but it's a lot of really complex stuff going on.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: It's not just that the star gets bigger and hotter
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: and smaller and colder, but it's all about sort of
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: the mechanics of the reaction inside the star, like the
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: reacting sort of lean one way but then leaned the
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: other way, and you know, things sort of are constantly influx, yeah,
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: sort of slashing back and forth, not in a stable situation.
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: But Beetlejuice has these two cycles, sort of the shorter
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: one and the longer one, and so you know, the
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: most boring explanation for what's happening Beetle Juice is that
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: it might just be sort of the combination of these
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: two different cycles happening at the same time that both
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: are sort of in their dimming mode. I see, it's
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: just like a low point in its career as a star. Yeah, precisely,
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: But it doesn't really explain it because Beetle Juice has
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: these two cycles that are like on a year and
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: a six year timeline, so you would expect to see
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: those things sort of line up more often than every
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: hundred years. Oh, I see, so there's something else going
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: on here. I think there's probably something else going on.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: There's something else to learn. Um, there could be another
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: longer time scale variation that's happening. It could be these
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: two things when they do line up in some way,
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: they sort of like accentuate each other, you know, but
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: we don't understand them mechanism, the physics behind either one,
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: and so it's hard to just to know specifically what
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: might make this happen. All right, So that's possibly a
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: is that it's just a normal cycle of a you know,
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: hormonal cycle of a teenage star with crazy moods. Um.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: But then there are other possibilities, some of which we
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: might want to be concerned about. So that's sort of
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: like taking the normal, boring stuff and saying, maybe it's
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: a little weird, but there's other really weird stuff that
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: does happen to stars that could be explaining this. And
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: you know, sometimes stars don't just burn happily. They have
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: like you know, indigestion and you get like an enormous
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: eruption and it's stuff into space a starbourb yeah, or
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: you could have like a star quake or like cracks
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: on the surface of the star and internal stuff shoots
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: out and you could get an enormous eruption of plasma.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: So you know, it could be that that's what happened.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: It happened on the other side of the star, and
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: it's dimming as a result. This is really just really speculative.
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: Stars are not um these constant balls of fire there.
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: They can have big events. They can have big events,
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: especially big stars that tend to be more dynamic and
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: more violent and started near the end of their life.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: They get to be a little bit less predictable as
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: the fires is sputtering out, kind of like that older
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: uncle you have, that's just the one who's no longer
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: invited to Thanksgiving. That's a lot of weird starburbs. At
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: least now he puts on pants every time he comes
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: to dinner, Right, that's an improvement. At least when it
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: adjects star material, it has pants on. Yeah. Or it
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: could just be some really weird thing happening with the
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: magnetic field of the star. You remember, what we're seeing
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: is dimming. That doesn't mean that the star is dimmer.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: You could also mean that there's some like it's ejected
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: some matter, which then cool, and it's now blocking our
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: view of the star. It could just be winking at us.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: It could be winking at us. Yeah, or of course,
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: you know, my favorite explanation is that there's you know,
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: some awesome civilization out there that's like building some structure
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: between us and beetlejuice. Or really they've just now closed
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: the blinds since since October. You know, it's a long
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: construction project, and maybe they've just now started to know
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: ramp this thing up and uh and turn on their
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: dicen sphere or whatever. Maybe it's aliens burping too or
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: and or flirting with us. Maybe that maybe maybe it's
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: alien uncles, you know, and they're grumpy they didn't get
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: invited to Thanksgiving dinner. I don't know. But anytime something
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: happens in the night sky that's sort of rapid, that's
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: unusual and changes quickly, then you've got to wonder, you know,
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: is that a sign of sort of intelligent life, of
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: somebody's being like activist and constructing something, actively changing the
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: way the universe is organized, not just sort of watching
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: it happen. Okay, so I'm getting that idea a for
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: what might be happening to beetle juice is just a
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: normal phase in its cycle. Idea number two is that
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: maybe it's some kind of event that's happening like a quay,
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: or a starbourb or um an ejection, or or an
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: aliens and or all of those things at the same time.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: Aliens causing a star quake because of their burping, that's right,
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: while flirting with you. All right, let's get into the
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: third idea for what might be happening to to beetle juice,
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: which might be an explosive idea, a cataclysmic finish to
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: beetle juices run on the Hall of Fame, that's right,
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: not just a burb but a big boom perhaps, don't
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: you all don't we all want to end our career
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: so like mel Gibson exploding in a firing disaster with
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: a big racist grant. Yeah, sounds like a great way
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: to go, beetlejuice to your astronomical racist uncle. All right,
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: let's take a quick break first, All right, So beetlejuice
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: is dimming. It used to be like the number one
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: to start in the universe, but now it's stock has
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: gone down, Daniel, Yeah, and it's not the number one
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: bright star in the universe, right, so I see, and
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: if to us to my universe, yeah, to our to
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: the Jorge universe. It was one of the times we
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: all live. We're all just big players on your stage, sir.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: That's right, that's right. But yeah, and we're trying to
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: figure out what could explain that, and we talked about
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: the sort of boring ideas, but there is one more
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: sort of explosive possibility. All right, sounds exciting. What else
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: could be happening to beetle Juice. Well, remember that Beetle
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: Juice is a massive star and it's near the end
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: of its life. And what happens to really big stars
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: when they go out is you often get a supernova.
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: So some stars, when they get old, they go into supernova.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: And you're saying this dimming could be like a sign
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: of that. Yeah, if Beetle Juice is about to go,
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: then you know, the last few hundreds or thousands of
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: years before it goes supernova could be a little more volatile.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: It could be hard to predict. And you know, Beetle
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: Juice is expected to last, you know, up to maybe
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: another hundred thousand, two hundred thousand, years. But there's a
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: lot of uncertainty in these predictions for when it will
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: go supernova, right, I mean it's it's like it's eight
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: and a half million years old, what's plus or mine
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: is a hundred thousand years? Yeah, it's basically months. Yeah,
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: it's you know, it's seventy five in star years, right,
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: it's been retired for a while, and it's sort of,
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: you know, ready to go. Yeah. I mean that's kind
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: of why I'm always late with my deadlines, to be honest, Daniel,
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: because you're waiting for what's a hundred thousand years in
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: the grand scheme of the universe? Nothing three months to
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: a physicist, years to a cartoonist. Yeah, there you go.
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: Just wait for me to go supernova. Yeah, and um,
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: but there's not too much to worry about here for
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: a couple of reasons. One is, when we've seen supernova,
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: the stars don't usually dim just beforehand. Usually they get brilliant,
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: they like ramp up to the explosion. Yeah, they ramp
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: up to the explosion, and so dimming is not usually
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: a precursor of a supernova. So you don't really have
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: to worry. Now we don't know because we haven't seen
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: a lot of stars like this this close ghost supernova.
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: We don't have a huge amount of data. Um, we
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: just have one, right then, do you say? Or we've
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: seen many over the years. We've seen a few supernova
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: over the years, and we've seen a lot of the
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: type one A supernova recently and so and since then,
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: we've gotten much better capturing supernova and seeing more of them.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: So we don't but we still you know, we're talking
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: about hundreds of of examples, maybe thousands, so this could
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: be a weird one. You're not sure it's none of
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: them have dim right before exploding. Yeah, it's not a
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: typical thing for a start to do just before it explodes.
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: It's not gathering its energy, kind of like a do
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: kidding in Street Fighter, too finish him. We know that
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: was the wrong that was the wrong thing. That's the
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: wrong fighting again, but good try, good try. I always
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: wondering why we can't have Street Fighter versus Mortal Kombat,
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: you know, like sort of the epic balance, the epic challenge.
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: I would buy the video that vidego. But the other
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: reason not to worry is that Beetle Juice is sort
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: of far enough away that even if it were about
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: to go supernova, we'd be pretty safe. Okay, it wouldn't.
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: We wouldn't again roasted by this explosion. No, it's six
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: hundred and fifty light years away, so if there were
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: a supernova then we'd be good for six two years.
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: That's what you're saying. No, it's not about that. It's
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: not about the time difference. It's just about the fact
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: that the further you are away from the explosion, the
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: less you feel it. It's why in the movies everyone's
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: always running away from the explosion, right, because the further
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: you are away, the more the energy, the temperature, the heat,
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: all the radiation has had had chanced to dilute, to
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: diffuse over a larger volume. We but what would we
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: see when we see it go bright? Or will we
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: see like a big fun explosion? What will we see? Well,
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: it's really fascinating. The first thing you would see from
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: a supernova is not the light. You would actually first
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: see the new trinos. Interesting if you can see nedrinos, Yeah,
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: and we can see neutrinos because we have neutrino detectors,
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: And fascinatingly, you might wonder, like, how can neutrinos get
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: to Earth before photons. Right, Photons travel at the speed
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: of light, being because they travel backwards in time. That article.
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: Neutrinos do not travel fast in the speed of light.
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: They do not travel backwards in time. They travel almost
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: at the speed of light. But they are emitted first
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: from the supernova. And the reason is that is that
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: the supernova sort of happens from the beginning out and
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: the neutrinos can penetrate the star. They can. Neutrinos made
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: in the middle of the star can make it out
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: of the star, whereas light made in the middle middle
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: of the star gets absorbed by the star. So the
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: supernova sort of makes neutrinos first, and then you don't
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: see light from the star until the shock wave of
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: the supernova has hit the surface of the star and
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: then it starts to glow. Oh, I see, like the
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: explosion has to make it through the star before it
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: actually makes it out. Yes, so we see newtrinos here
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: on Earth from the supernova before we see the light
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: from it, which is kind of awesome. It's like a
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: pre warning system. Are you trying to argue for more
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: funding for a neutrino detectors? You get about two or
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: three hours notice, So it's not that much, you know,
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: And what do you do in two hours to organize
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: your life? I'm gonna order more Palter products, all the
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: ones I've always wanted to order, or and or play
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: um Sweet Fighter. But so first, we've see an enormous
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: amount of neutrinos. And also things people probably don't understand
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: is that most of the energy of supernova is not
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: emitted in the form of light. Most of it comes
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: out in the form of neutrinos and then in ejecting
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: the mass of the star. So while we would see
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: a really bright light here on Earth, like the star
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: could be as bright as the full moon in the
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: sky when it eventually does do supernova, that's just a
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: tiny fraction of the energy it's released. Oh I see,
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: But isn't that the stuff that can actually kill you? Though?
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: It can kill you because the light that's emitted from
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: the star comes along and it's an X rays and
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: X rays are pretty deadly, but beetle juice is far
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: enough away that by this time the X rays get here,
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: they'll be dilute enough that our atmosphere can mostly absorb them,
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: so you don't really have to worry, I see, But
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: then it doesn't shoot other things too. Yeah, most of
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: the mass of the star is actually blown out also,
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: and so Beetle Juice, which is hugely massive star. Remember
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: it's twenty times the mass of the Sun. It will
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: blow out something like ten to the sixty protons. Ten
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: to the sixty protons. Yeah, it was actually disintegrate, and
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: I mean some of it will be left behind to
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: form a neutron star or black hole, but somebody like
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: half the mass of the star will get blown out
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: into space. And so if you're two year that thing,
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: you're just gonna get riddled with tiny little proton bullets, right,
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: which are super dangerous, right, they are dangerous. Yeah, and
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: you know we are constantly being hit by proton bullets
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: from our own star, not because it's coming supernova. It's
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: just a normal thing for a start to do. But
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: these will be come at a much higher velocity the
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: solar wind the protons just from our sun coming about
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: four fifty kilometers per second, which seems pretty fast, but
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: from a supernova, these things would come at like ten
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: thousand kilometers per second. But again, we don't have anything
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: to really to worry about because Beele Juice is far
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: enough away that the flux will not be very high,
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: and our magnetic fields should be strong enough to protect us. Remember,
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: charge particles get bent by magnetic fields, and so we
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: have this force field that prevents charged particles from sort
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: of raining down on us, so we don't have to
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: worry about it. But it is. It would be sort
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: of interesting, right because I think you're telling me that
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: Beetle Juice, if it goes supernova, which you don't now
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: tomorrow sixty years, when it goes supernova, it would be
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: kind of like the closest supernova to Earth ever. Yeah,
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: it would be the closest one ever to Earth. Um
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: And you know, there have been supernova in the past,
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: and there may have been one closer Earth in the past,
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: but if so, they could have like sterilized all life
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: on Earth, and so we're on the watch out for
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: nearby supernova's. This one would be the closest one to Earth,
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: which would be sort of spectacular from the point of
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: view of astrophysics, but not close enough to fry us.
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: Will we would we see it in the nice sky?
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: We're like, would it look cool? What did you see
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: an explosion? Or would you just see the star get brighter.
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: From our point of view. You might see what the
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: telescope from interesting features because Beetle Juice is not only
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: one of the brightest stars in the sky, it's one
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: of the biggest, and so it sort of takes it
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: the largest area in the sky of any star in
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: the night sky. When a star goes supernova, it makes
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: this ring and explodes out. It's like not just like
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: a Michael Bay movie. It's beautiful, and so you might
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: be able to see that with the telescope in your backyard.
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: Plus it would be really bright. It would be as
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: bright as the full moon. So that should be pretty cool.
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: And it could happen at any moment, or maybe we
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: would see it. We could see it at any moment.
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: But technically if it happened, it would already have happened,
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: right because it's so far away. Yeah, this thing is
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: six hundred and fifty light years away, and so anything
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: we're seeing today happened six hundred and fifty years ago. Um,
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: so we can blame it on whoever was live on
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: that back then, from whatever they did to trigger it.
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: And um, so we're looking into the past for sure. Um,
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: but it could happen anytime, right, we don't really understand
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: how these stars work. I think most astronomers think it's
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: more likely to happen in a hundred thousand years than tomorrow.
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: But you know, astronomers also weren't expecting Beetle Juice to
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: dim this much, so it's not like they really understand
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: the insides of the star that well. Alright, so it
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: sounds like our mystery why Beetlejuice is going dimmer is
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: tbd to be determined. I mean, we don't really have
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: a good explanation for it. But it's happening, and it's
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: happening right now. It's going dimmer. Yeah, it's probably not
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: a signal that aliens are coming. It's unlikely that it's
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: going to go supernova tomorrow or next week or next year.
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: But it's very likely that we're going to learn some
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: interesting astrophysics. We're gonna learn about how these enormous cosmic
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: furnaces blow and how they burn and how they change.
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: And so astronomers will keep watching and see is it
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: going to keep getting dimmer? Is it gonna go brighter again?
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: It's like everybody wants to know the answer to this.
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: This question that the end of this story, and every day,
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: every week they keep watching it just to see, like,
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: what's it gonna do today. It's exciting. It's really amazing
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: to me. That's something like a son a star. I mean,
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: it's so bright, but we we don't really know what's
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: going on inside of it or uh, you know, all
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: the mechanisms inside and what makes it burn or or
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: dim like this. Yeah, well, it's amazing to me that
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: you would think we could understand it. I mean, it's
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: like ten to the fifty eight protons. I can hardly
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: understand what happens when two protons interact with each other.
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: It's incredible to me that plasma physicists and astrophysicists can
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: do the magneto hydrodynamics to understand a system like that.
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: It's crazy to me. It's impressive. I'm in all of
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: those folks. Yeah, pretty good for some cone potatoes, Pretty
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: good for some conj preatos. Turns out, sit on your
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: couch and think about the universe. You can learn some things, yeah,
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: and be very comfortable at the same time. And they
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: probably have the best snacks astronomers, really good snacks. The
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: best day of late all the time drink lattes made
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: out of coffee beans and alien milk. You mean, like
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: the green milk in that Star Wars movie. I don't
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: know what you're talking about, but every milk that's not
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: cow milk tastes like alien milk to me. My wife
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: likes this macadaemia nut milk. I can't even all right, well,
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: um lactic products discussions aside um galactic galactic and galactic
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: discussion side. It's it's all coming together, the milk away,
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: the milk in your coffee. It's all part of the
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: part of the same crazy universe and the same crazy podcast.
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: So keep watching the skies and we'll keep learning about
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: the universe. Thanks for joining us, See you next time. Yeah,
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: before you still have a question after listening to all
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: these explanations, please drop us a line. We'd love to
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: hear from you. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter,
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge That's one word, or
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: email us at Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com.
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: the Universe is a production of I Heart Radio from
• 45:29
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• 45:32
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• 45:35
  Speaker 1: favorite shows.