Latest / Made of Stars / Recapping Space News of 2023 Part 1

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Recapping Space News of 2023 Part 1 · Made of Stars

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Warning. The following podcast contains an entertaining look at astronomy, physics, and
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space news throughout the known universe. Listeners have been known to learn about astronomical
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phenomenon, the scientific method, and expanded vocabulary to include terms like quasar asterism
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and uranus. Listen, that's your own risk. Go ahead. We're made
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of stars, made of stars. Made when made of stars, you could
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be from high they would New Mexicomas. We're on the stars when we are
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made of stars. I'm Wes Carrol, joined by my good friend, doctor
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Sean Cruisin from Klambas State University's Coca Cola Space Science Center. Hey Sean,
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Hey Wes, it's great to be here with you today. We've got a
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fun show today, my friend, we have This is what the time of
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the year, as we get into the holiday spirit the holiday season, a
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lot of things start to happen, winding down at twenty twenty three and making
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their way into the new year, and this is typically where we like to
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take a look back at some of the biggest stories of the year. We
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have a list of the ten biggest space news stories of twenty twenty three,
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and we have them in order. I would argue that maybe some of these
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could certainly even be at the top of the list. But we'll do five
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today. We'll do half of it today, and then we'll do the other
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half next week as we count down the biggest Space Stories of twenty twenty three.
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And I will say, just as an editorial comment before we jump in,
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that these are ranked by us, right, right, So when we
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say the biggest space stories, these are just our favorites, right These are
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the things that we thought were pretty darn cool this year. We're not out
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there like looking at number of hits on news sites or any of those kinds
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of metrics. We're metric free. We're just saying, I forget it.
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We like these stories. So we're gonna talk about these. We talked about
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them earlier this year, We're gonna talk about them again, and I think
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they really do though, give us kind of a a collective summary of some
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of the really cool things that happened this year that we've been following this year.
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I will tell you there's probably a couple of honorable mentions that didn't make
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this list, and one of those is certainly gonna be There was a solar
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eclipse in October it was an annular eclipse. It was pretty darn neat,
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But I don't know, it's a great story, but it just didn't make
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our list. So there's that one. The other the other one we talk
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about a lot is there is a lot of solar activity this year. We're
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ramping up the solar max and collectively that's kind of a cool story. But
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we'll we'll be talking about solar max into twenty twenty four, so I know
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that there's gonna be more of that coming. So there's just a couple of
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honorable mentions. Didn't make the list of ten. Still very interesting, still
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very fun. This year helped give the this year it's flavor, but yet
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did not make our list of ten. And I think that you could make
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a case, I mean a couple of these stories, you can make a
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case to be at at the number one spot. And this is as much
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of a tease as I'll do for today's show. The one that will be
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the final shoot, the final one on this show, which is a number
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six as we do five today and five next week. The one that's number
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six could easily have been number one. I mean, it's a pretty it's
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a pretty like you want to talk about web hits and all those sorts of
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things factored into it, all of that combined, and it's one of those
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pop culture things that's really kind of gotten out of control about what the message
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really was of the story. But we'll get to that. Hang tight,
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we're gonna get We're working our way. We're gonna start at the beginning of
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our list at number ten, and this is one of those things I feel
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like now for a very very long time, we'll be talking about the James
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Webspace Telescope on all of these lists that we do every year. So starting
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there seems like an appropriate place as the one year anniversarach for James Web and
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then of course a very significant discovery concerning dark stars that happened this year.
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Yeah, so any list of space news activities things like that and the exploration
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of space for twenty twenty three, you certainly cannot leave out James Web.
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I kind of debated about where to put it on the list, but there's
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so many JWST stories I just thought, well, let's just kick things off.
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So at number ten one year anniversary, James Webspace Telescope been up there
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taking pictures for a year that happened back in July, by the way,
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so we're really closer to eighteen months now. But they celebrated a one year
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gnis of James web on July the twelfth, and so fantastic image that they
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put out as the twelfth on July twelfth as the one year anniversary, which
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was this thing called row O Fiucai, which is a place where brand new
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baby stars are being born. They put out an absolutely spectacular image from that.
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Bill Nelson, the administrator of NASA, had a great statement. He
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said, every new image is a new discovery, empowering scientists around the globe
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to ask and answer questions they once could never dream of. And it's really
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true. It really gives you kind of a feel that you're just seeing things
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with this new instrument. The humankind would have never had any idea could even
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exist, because we just simply didn't have the resolution power and it's very difficult
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to imagine things that you haven't seen yet. Science does that sometimes and then
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investigators go out and find examples of that. But certainly Jada has given all
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kinds of new physical configurations for us to go out and investigate more. With
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a theoretical response and so sometimes sometimes you predict things to exist and then you
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go find them. Sometimes you just find new things and go, what the
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heck is that we have no idea, Let's see if we can figure it
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out theoretically. So JWST definitely in that second category. One of the things,
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though, that had been predicted theoretically to exist, that James Webb may
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have given some observational evidence, was the thing you teased just a minute ago,
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which is dark stars. And listen, we could have had all kinds
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of JWST stories be in this list. It's just that this one is particularly
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weird. So a dark star is not like a normal star in the sense
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that normal stars generate their energy through a process called thermonuclear fusion, where you're
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basically sticking hydrogen atoms together forming helium, releasing energy, and that generates heat.
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That's not what dark stars do. The theoretically proposed dark stars are powered
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by dark matter particle annihilation. Which, man, does that ever sound like
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a line from Star Trek right there? Or are your other favorite sci fi
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shows? Dark matter particle annihilation generating energy, driving a new kind of star
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or a different kind of stars. A better way to say it it's new
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to us, and so these things were first proposed back in two thousand and
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seven by somebody named Catherine Freeze at the University of Texas and Austin and our
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colleagues. But now JWST actually turned up some evidence that these things might exist,
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and they're weirder, ten times wider than Earth's orbit and millions of times
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more massive than the Sun. They shine billions of times brighter than the Sun.
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And JWST actually identified the first ever dark star candidates. So more science
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is going to have to be done as a follow up, but we think
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these things might actually exist, and that evidence first came to light in twenty
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twenty three. So there you go on the list of ten. Number ten
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is basically just James website Space Telescope celebrating a year, but also those weird
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dark star discoveries. Moving our way through the list. At number nine,
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back at the beginning of June, we had twenty people in space at the
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same time. It's just hard to imagine, right, It was a record
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breaking number. So there were all kinds of people up in orbit, all
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at the same time, and Peggy Whitson was one of those. She was
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part of Axiom's AX two crew, which we know is a commercial crew of
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astronauts, but yet they're visiting the International Space Station. So they had a
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various shall we call them commercial astronauts on that light with her, and Peggy
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was kind of the even though she's a decorated NASA astronaut, she's retired from
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NASA and working for axioms, so she was got the lead astronaut on that
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mission AX two up the International Space Station. But so we had six members
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of a Virgin Galactic crew, so Virgin Galactic's spaceship two was also up in
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space at the same time as Axiom two. There were three Chinese taikonauts aboard
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their space station, and then there were eleven astronauts, cosmonauts and what we
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call space flight participants, that's the commercial commercial astronauts all aboard the International Space
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Station at the same time. So six Chinese, eleven on the ISS,
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plus those people who were up for a very short time aboard Spaceship two.
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In grand total, twenty people in space simultaneous, a new record right there
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at the at the end of May twenty twenty three. So interesting that we're
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leaning towards this future where large numbers of people are going to be inhabiting lower
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orbit eventually, all at the same time with a variety of proposed commercial space
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stations and probably other governmental space stations, certainly the Chinese space station. Russia
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wants to work on their own commercial space station at some point as well.
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So it's an interesting It points to an interesting future where we have just unexpectedly
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large numbers of people in orbit around our planet. It's interesting to think that
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right now that sounds like a big number and that one day it will not.
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And that's what's interesting about it, because with more and more commercial crews
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going up and then eventually, you know, there's talk of you know,
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an actual destination there for folks vacationing in space and those sorts of things.
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If that ever comes to fruition then which I assume one day that it will,
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Yes, twenty won't be nothing at some point, which is, you
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know, well not nothing, but it won't be very much, I guess.
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I mean, you could have twenty people on one vehicle exactly as we
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watch these first you know, first commercial the plans for commercial space stations.
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Yep, you know, you could have you could have maybe twenty forty people
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staying at a space hotel. While then you have other governmental organizations in their
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research labs, and then you have other kinds of military or other governmental entities
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flying a variety of spacecraft. So the next decade is going to be something
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that's really interesting to watch. Let's work our way into number eight. As
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the folks at NASA made their announcement about the Artemis two mission and who those
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astronauts were gonna be. Yeah, folks going to the Moon. Not actually
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walking on the Moon, but going to the Moon. They're gonna take a
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little They're gonna take a little spin around the back side of the Moon,
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much like the Apollo eight mission did so many years ago. But so this
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is part of the Artimist program. This is our eventual return to the service
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of the Moon, the United States working with other agencies by the way,
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most notably the Canadian Space Agency. So NASA and the CSA have announced back
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on April third, what we are now calling the Artemis two crew leading that
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off as Christina Cook. Christina Cook, forty four year old engineer, has
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done a variety of space endeavors, including the first three all females spacewalks,
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and so she's a veteran NASA astronaut. She's now been chosen to be one
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of the team to go around the Moon, take a trip to the Moon,
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and make history, being the first female to do so. She'll be
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joined by Victor Glover, who's a US Navy aviator, also a veteran of
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for spacewalks for NASA, and he will be the first African American astronaut to
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travel to the Moon. This is interesting. Two more crew members, Jeremy
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Hansen from the Royal Canadian Air Force. He's a colonel in Canada's Air Force.
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He'll be the first Canadian to ever make a flight to the Moon.
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And then Reid Wiseman, who's another US Navy fighter pilot. He was named
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as commander of the mission. And so this is going to be the team
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that's going to make America's next flight to the Moon, the first of the
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Artemis program with people on board, and that crew was selected back in April
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of twenty twenty three. Number seven on our list involves a mission to the
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Moon by India, as their spacecraft touched down on the Moon back in August.
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Yeah, so it's important to mention maybe another one of these kind of
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runner up stories that didn't quite make the cut. There's a couple of them
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actually. Number one, Japan attempted a landing on the Moon and smashed that
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one into the surface. Number two, the Russians attempted at landing on the
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Moon and they also smashed theirs on the surface. Now, no one was
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on board. These were robotic exploration vehicles, but neither of those missions were
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successful. That's joining an ever larger growing number of missions that have failed to
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reach the lunar surface, including by the way past mission from India and also
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a mission from Israel. It's just not easy, right, it is,
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actually rocket science. It's a difficult task to make a soft landing on the
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lunar surface. And you know, soft landing means everything survived. It means
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it didn't come in at you know, tens of thousands of miles an hour
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and make a new crater in the surface. So that's what we mean by
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soft landing. Okay, India, the chandra Yaion three spacecraft touched down August
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twenty third, not only making a very historic landing for India, becoming their
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first vehicle to ever land safely, but it's the first vehicle for anybody anywhere,
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and I say vehicle. Remember it's a robotic craft. Nobody's on board
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this thing. But it's the first vehicle of any country anywhere to land on
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the Moon's south pole. So this was the very first south pole landing.
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Why is it interesting to land on the south pole. Well, for one
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thing, that's a portion of the terrain of the Moon that was never explored
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by the Apollo program. So it's kind of terra nova in the sense that
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it's newly explored territory. But number two, it's the polar regions are also
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very interesting because that's where these kinds of volatile or hydrocarbon kind of compounds can
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build up in the craters on the Moon. And so if there really are
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any kinds of water resources or other ices that have hydrocarbons in them, we
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might expect those to be packed into the craters near the poles of both the
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North pole and south pole of the Moon because the sun can't shine into those
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craters and melt those volatiles out of there. So these are really areas where
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time capsules from the early part of the Solar System might be stored for scientific
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exploration and also resources for engineering purposes like water which can be made into hydrogen
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and oxygen, like methane, like other kinds of compounds could be stored.
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So it's a really interesting area of the Moon. And the Chandriyayon three vehicle
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actually did touch down successfully and so it had a little lander also called the
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Vikram, which is a little solar power rover, and it was actually one
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that could could go out onto the surface and it did do that for a
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short period of time before it eventually just failed. But anyway, so successful
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landing for India on the south pole of the Moon, and it makes it
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very interesting because they only joined China, the former Soviet Union, and the
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United States as countries that have ever landed anything successfully in soft landing on the
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lunar surface. And like you pointed out significant that it's a soft landing and
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not the you know, several feet deep into the lunar surface. And you
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got to think too that it's a it's a great accomplishment for all the reasons
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that you said, because of well, one, because they did it and
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it's not easy to do, but also the fact that you are getting to
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explore an area that hasn't been explored before. And that's got to be incredibly
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exciting for them. Yeah, and there's already been scientific data that's being returned
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from the Indian lander up there, and it's really finding out some new and
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interesting things about that region of the Moon. And so over the next year
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coming we'll have more on that research taking place from the lunar South Pole.
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But it's a really interesting, an interesting set of investigations. It could be
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that if we build lunar bases, we might actually build those lunar bases near
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the poles so we have access to some of those high carbon resources that are
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stored in those craters. So it really is an important piece of research for
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all of humanity as they begin the exploration of the Solar System. Coming up,
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after a quick break, we'll talk about our sixth biggest story of twenty
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twenty three. And this is the best I can give you as a tease.
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Is it does in fact involve UFOs, A K A u APS.
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We'll talk about that next. Okay, So we're counting down the ten biggest
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stories in Space News for twenty twenty three, and this is our final entry
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in the first half. We'll do the top five next. We made it
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very clear at the beginning that these stories could have been in a different order.
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This could have been our top story for the whole year, largely because
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it's just so bizarre, and this is the one that probably got the most
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web hits. It's the story it's definitely the most clickbait of all the stories.
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Is that a better way to put it. It's a very, very
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very clickbait kind of story because it doesn't just involve and the term for UFOs
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now is UAPs. It doesn't just involve UAPs. It involves our government talking
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about and respected witnesses speaking about UAPs and saying that there are non human biologics
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found at crash sites, and that our government is in possession of UAPs,
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and that there's a need for a safe and transparent reporting. All these things
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coming out over the course of the year, and it's got a lot of
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people going, well, there's aliens now, we know it. Uh So
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you got to back that up just a little bit. We're not quite at
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that point. But still this is a pretty significant story for twenty twenty three.
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I mean it is. And as you say, if we had rated
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these stories on the number of hits or the number of press releases or publications
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on a certain subject in space. This one might have very well been number
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one, but we didn't do that. We did our own random order,
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and we put it at number six. I like they say that we did
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our own random order. We did. It feels kind of random to me.
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I don't know, But mostly I just didn't want this one in the
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top five. There's a part of my soul that hurts when we talk about
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this. But Okay, something is happening. Navy aviators are apparently picking up
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video of things they can't explain, and this makes not only the general public
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very nervous, not only those of the Pentagon very nervous, but members of
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the United States Senate and Congress are also very nervous. So so they called
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hearings on Capitol Hill on July twenty six, which is a Wednesday, the
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US House of Representative Subcommittee on the National Security at the Border and Foreign Affairs
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at the Border at the Border of Space. Okay, anyway, yes,
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all right, So they wanted to look into this, you know, is
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this something that is a threat. And so there are various witnesses that were
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called, and as you mentioned, these witnesses seem to be of kind of
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an unimpunable character. Ryan Graves and David Fraver, who are two former US
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Navy aviators who are in their aircraft when some of these videos were recorded,
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so they were actually up there flying around when they were encountering vehicles that they
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simply themselves could not explain the behavior of through any kind of physics or aviation
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that they understood. They also caught those vehicles on their cameras, so there's
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evidence of what they were saying, physical evidence of strange vehicle behavior beyond the
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ability for us to explain it based on physics and aviation that we know of.
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That's why they were called the Capitol Hill to testify. In addition to
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that, a decorated US military combat veteran and former Pentagon intelligence officer David Gruch
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was called as a witness. Ryan Graves, David fraverer to naval aviators David
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Gruoche, former Pentagon intelligence officer, all testified to their knowledge of UAPs unidentified
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aerial phenomenon. So it was very interesting when David Gruse came out and said
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he was giving testimony based on his forty interviews with witnesses over a four year
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period, and he is absolutely certain that the federal government is in possession of
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unidentified aerial phenomenon, not that they just know of them, not that they
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have physical evidence that they're flying about in our atmosphere. His testimony is that
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the federal government actually has one like the movie Independence Day with Brent Spiner,
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down in the basement of some facility in Nevada or something. I don't know.
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And since you referenced that movie, it's important to note that when we're
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talking about these highly decorated DID naval aviators, none of them are on caliber
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with Randy Quaid's character. I mean, I've never met them personally. I've
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never gone to strange diners out in the middle of the desert with him.
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I don't really know, you know, I can't. I can't compare beyond
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what I just see on you know, in the media, just like y'all
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out there, just like you folks. Let's just say, they don't seem
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to be the Randy Quaid. Let's just say, and I'm talking about his
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character. I'm not talking about Randy Quaid, who kind of I was gonna
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say, because he kind of became a character in real life. I think
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maybe he's gotten things straightened out, I hope. So I asked. I
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met his nephew once and asked him how he was doing, and I got
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good reports from him, but not necessarily behaving the way his character did in
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there, and that he's there. These guys aren't running a I'm saying that
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they got probed or is what I'm trying to say. These aren't those people.
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These are respected, decorated naval aviators. Yeah, particularly the two Navy
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pilots. They're just saying, hey, we saw something when we were flying
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and it's not something we can explain. And our cameras and sensory equipment absolutely
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picked up these signatures, and they did crazy things that are not possible by
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any aviation standards that we understand, including going from air to water and back
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to air again, like a dip down through the ocean and then back up
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into the air again. I mean that's straight out of Star Wars, right,
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I Mean, that's wild. It absolutely is. If you know,
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if an F twenty two were to do something like that, it would explode
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and shatter the instant and hit the water surface at the high rate of speed
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that it's traveling. Apparently, these tile and all shaped vehicles that are really
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of an unknown nature didn't do that, and they caught video of them not
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doing that. They were able to enter the water surface, be underneath the
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water for a period of time, come back up, fly around. That's
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why the Congress was calling hearings, all right, So so you know,
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I'm not here to speculate on whether I think that there's aliens visiting our planet.
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I'm just telling you what happened back here in twenty twenty three in the
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summer. And you know, on this program, my friend Wes and I
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we began a series, and it was a series of stories that we started
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calling they keep seeing, they keep saying weird things in DC, Right,
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they keep saying weird stuff in DC about UAPs was technically the name of our
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segment, But we had to have a segment because it was just week after
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week after week of stories that all seemed from reasonably credible sources and all very
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high profile talking about evidence or very close encounters with very rep reputable people of
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UAPs, so much so that NASA had to run their own investigation. So
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they ran their own investigation and released information about that. So all of these
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things came to light. And here's the thing I told Wes at the time
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when we recorded our segment earlier this year that struck me as the most significant
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is that at the end of their investigation, NASA didn't come out and say
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we don't think any of this has any merit, which is what I was
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hoping they would say. How somebody they would just say, yeah, after
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further review, none of these reports have any kind of merit whatsoever. Know
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what they came out and said instead was these are not all interesting reports,
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but some of the reports are compelling enough that they should they should really require
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further investigation. So we recommend better data taking. And here's several suggestions for
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how we could get better data on these phenomenon. Which means there's smoke,
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not saying there's fire, but there's at least smoke in the NASA reporting.
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So that's weird, right. I mean again, Wes and I we grew
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up children of the just shortly after the Cold War and all the crazy,
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you know, UFL related phenomenon that took place from nineteen fifty to you know,
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nineteen ninety. Let's say that had to do with just we were playing
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dogs and cats with the Russians. Well, this is kind of post all
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of that this is a new era and it's better data, and it's more
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open and out front with the public about the fact that we actually may have
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phenomenon taking place in our skies that we simply can't explain and it's real and
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we don't know what it is, and they just keep saying it, at
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least they did in twenty twenty three. And this is a good stopping point
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as we wind down part one of the two part finale show for twenty twenty
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three. Next week we will run through the top five Space news stories of
29:11
twenty twenty three. We thank you for listening, and we'll see you then
29:15
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