Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / What will the Lucy mission teach us?

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What will the Lucy mission teach us? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Hey, Kelly, are your kids into mystery novels? My oldest
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: is really into reading, but right now she's mostly into
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: comic books with like cats and dogs that have big
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: sweetler lies and you know, things with with really cute
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: little animals. Well, have you tried to hook them on
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: like the Grandest Mystery of all time? Now? I am
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: onto you. This is probably about planet killing asteroids or
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: the death of the sun. You are definitely going to
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: be finding some way to frighten my kids, right, Oh
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: my gosh, Kelly, I would never Oh man, oh yeah,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: why don't I believe? You know? The Grandest Mystery is
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: not at all about death and destruction. It's about the
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: birth and the creation of planets. Well, that sounds more
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: like a romance than a mystery. It's a bit of
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: the astronomical birds and bees. Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: particle physicist and a professor if you see Irvine, and
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: I love seeing new planets get born. And um, Kelly Waynersmith,
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: I'm a parasitologist with Rice University, and I love hearing
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: about new planets being born. Do you love getting those
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: announcements like come check out our new cute little planet
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: it's got little googly eyes. Yeah, that's the best. No,
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: I guess baby planets actually aren't that attractive. They're like,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: you know, covered in lava and pretty nasty looking. Actually, well,
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm gonna go ahead and blow your mind
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: here and say that, you know, human babies are kind
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: of kind of gross. Oh, I'm so glad you admitted that.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: I totally agree with you. Like, there's the rare cute baby,
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: but most of them look like, you know, Richard Nixon
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: or like Winston Churchill or something. On a bad day,
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: that's the one that looks like Dandy DeVito. And I
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: was like, man, and you know, it's a good thing
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: that parents live their babies. It is a good thing.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: And I'm sure for you, dear listener, your baby is
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: the one cute baby out there. Really gorgeous. Great job
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: with that kid, amazing, amazing, a plus. But the joy
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: of life and the joy of seeing your friends have
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: kids is not because their baby is necessarily cute. It's
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: because it's an incredible process. Because what you're witnessing is
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: the creation of new life and the continuation of this
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: incredible journey. And in the astronomical context, the same is true.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: We're excited to see the birth of new planets, not
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: just because that planet is cute and lava colored, but
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: because it tells us something about our context, where we
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: came from, how our planet was born. But I bet
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: it's a lot more complicated than just watching human babies.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Do you have to feed planets? You
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: have to change their diaper? I mean they never wake
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: up screaming, do they? Those are all excellent points. Yes,
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: if all you have to do is look through a telescope,
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: you should consider yourself lucky. And looking through telescopes is
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: mostly what we do because we're interested in solving this
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: detective mystery, in unraveling the story of the creation of
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: our own Solar system, in understanding how Earth got to
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: be where it is, and is that unusual? Are there
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: other Earths out there in other solar systems? All of
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: these questions can be answered, but first we have to
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: dig up clues, clues that lie in wait for us
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: all over the Solar system, and we need to get
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: money to do that. Now. Some of those clues, of course,
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: are right here on Earth. You know. We can dig
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: into the crust of the Earth and understand things about
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: the formation of the Earth, things that have shocked previous
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: generations of scientists. Imagine living in a time when we
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: thought the Earth might be like thousands of years old.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: We had no idea of the geological time scale. Like
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: reading those stories about people who study glaciers or geology
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: and come up with these calculations, are like, hold on
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: a second, this suggests the Earth is billions of years old.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: That's crazy. It must be wild to come up with
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: a finding like that and think, my goodness, how am
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: I going to convince everybody that we've been off by
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: by so many orders of magnitude. It's one of those
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: like open your third eye sort of moments, like you've
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: been smoking banana peals around the campfire and you suddenly
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: have this new vision right of the way the universe works.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: Jokes aside that for me is like my scientific fantasy
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: to make a discovery that just like pulls the rug
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: out of our entire understanding of how everything works, Like
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: what this is super crazy old, that's amazing. But so
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: I assume that those kinds of discoveries happen less frequently
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: the longer science goes on. What do you think your
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: chances are of having one of those moments. Oh, I
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: think that there are lots of opportunities left. I think actually,
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: as time goes on in the last hundred years, our
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: estimate of the fraction of knowledge we have about the
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: universe just keeps dropping and dropping and dropping, like we
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: keep making discoveries like, oh, turns out of the matter
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: out there in the university is something else nobody's ever
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: studied before. Oh, it turns out two thirds of the
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: energy in the universe is something weird and new and bonkers,
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: like dark energy. So as time goes on, we certainly
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: learn more, but we realized that we have a smaller
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: and smaller fraction of the total knowledge than we thought.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: So I think there's lots of discoveries ahead. What do
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: you think. I think you need to pass the banana
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: peal because you just blew my mind. Well. One of
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: the ways that we find these things is by looking
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: for sort of like time capsules. We try to figure
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: out what has been undisturbed since the early times of
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: the Solar system, to find like a scoop of the
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: early Solar system and study it before everything has gotten
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: like messed up in the intermediate ages. And one way
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: we can do that, of course is look into the Earth.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: But the Earth is sort of dynamic, you know, like
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: the Earth is four and a half billion years old,
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: but also a lot of stuff has happened on Earth,
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: and so one thing we can do is like look
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: on Earth for really really old rocks that might tell
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: us like what was Earth put together from? What were
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: the basic building blocks of the Earth. What was going
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: on in the Solar system four and a half billion
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: years ago that led to the formation of the Earth.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: But you know, there's something puzzling there. I don't know
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: if you have the same sense, Kelly, when we talk
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: about like the age of rocks. I remember hearing about
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: this when I was a kid and being like, what
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: do you mean the age of rocks? Like that rock
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: is made out of like iron and silicon and carbon.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: That stuff is super duper old. What are you talking
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: about the age of rocks? Did that confuse you when
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: you were a kid? Yeah, no, absolutely, And even sometimes
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: I still find it a little confusing now to think
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: about rocks having different ages. Yeah, And I think the
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: way to think about it is not in terms of
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: like the building blocks of the rocks, Like pick up
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: a rock in front of you, it's got in it elements,
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: and those elements were formed the hearts of stars or
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: in supernovas or neutron star collisions that may be much
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: much older than our solar system, right, because our solar
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: systems like four and a half billion years old, but
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: the universe is almost fourteen billion years old, and there's
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: been many cycles of this process where stars pulled together
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: with helium and fuse heavier and heavier elements and then
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: blow that out into the universe to make the raw
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: materials for new solar systems. So, like the iron that's
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: in your body, maybe much much older than our solar system.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: But when we talk about the age of rocks, we're
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: not talking about the age of the stuff inside of it.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: We're talking about the age of this arrangement. So it's
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: sort of like if you have a pile of lego pieces,
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: you know, and somebody puts something together and then it
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: sits on your shelf for a few years. How old
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: is that, like lego dinosaur that your kid built, Well,
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: it's five years old, right, because that's when you put
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: it together, not twenty five years old. The age of
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: lego pieces. So it's more like the age of the
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: arrangements of the things that make it this current rock
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: that sort of defines the age of the rock. Does
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: that make sense? That does make sense, But it sounds
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: like a lot of looking down for an astronomer to
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: be doing, don't you guys usually look up? Well, we
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: like to look up, right, We like to see how
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: things are going outside in the universe. But that's a
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: lot harder to look at, right, And so typically people
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: do dig around and try to find asteroids that have
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: hit the Earth recently, because asteroids are these incredible time
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: capsules while the Earth has gone through all sorts of
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: cycle of like melting and reforming, and the rocks here
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: can be fairly young, right. We have like rocks that
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: were formed yesterday. You go to Hawaii and you'd like
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: pick up a piece of lava that's, you know, still
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: a little warm. That rock is like, you know, a
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: week old rock. Cute little baby rock. Right. But there
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: are some rocks in the Solar System that were formed
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: four and a half billion years ago in those early
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: moments when people were putting those lego pieces together and
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: haven't really been doing much since. Right, They didn't get
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: pulled into a planet. There's just sort of like the
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: leftover bits, like when you're making bread and your countertop
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: and there's all that flour leftover that didn't like make
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: it into the bread, right, that's sort of the leftover
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: ingredients and stuff that didn't make it into the solar system.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: You know, it still blows my mind that we can
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: pick up a rock and be like, you're not from
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: around here, and and figure out what rocks came from
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: the solar or you know, from outside Earth, and which ones, uh,
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: we're born here. It is really incredible and it's a
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: testament to all of this careful work by geologist understanding
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: how rocks can form, what are the conditions to make
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: this kind of rock. Amazing thing to me is that
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: these rocks are sort of stable. Like some kind of
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: rocks you can only form under crazy conditions super high pressure.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: But then you can take them and put them on
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: the surface of the Earth and they stay that way, right.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: They don't like automatically revert and melt back to their
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: basic ingredients. It's not like ice where you can make
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: it in the freezer, but then when you take it
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: out it turns back into water. These rocks, you make
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: them in crazy conditions and then they just sort of
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: like freeze that way forever, even if you bring them
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: to new conditions. That's sort of amazing, Like that's the
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: only reason why a lot of geology is possible. It's
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: very helpful of them. It's very helpful of them, exactly.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: And just like when we talked about in the episode
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: about where is most of the water on Earth? You know,
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: there's some of these rocks that are formed like in
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: the presence of water and trop water inside of them
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: and then come up to the surface and you can
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: like get a little core sample of what's going on
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: deep unto the Earth. It's really amazing. That is really amazing.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: So we've done a lot of work here on Earth
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: to try to understand like how Earth was formed, and
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: we've picked up rocks we think came from space. But
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: scientists are invasion to learn more and want to understand
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: how the Solar System was formed, and so of course
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: we want to look at asteroids like in sit you,
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: we want to go to the asteroids and visit them
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: ourselves and study them and see like what are these
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: basic building blocks of the universe. Why are there these
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: legos left over that nobody put together into planets. And
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: that sounds really hard. It does, i'd really hard. But
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: fortunately we have really clever people with really fun beards
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: who are working on this project. Did you say with
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: really fun beards, with really fun beards exactly? That's really important.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: It's not important that people have beards while working on
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: these projects. Beards are not necessary. But the project we're
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: talking about today is led by somebody with a really
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: awesome Santa Claus style beard. Nice. That always makes me
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: feel very comforted to see somebody with the Santa Claus
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: style beard. I feel like they're going to give me
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: something nice and I want to sit next to them.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: And so on today's episode, we'll be asking the question
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: what will the Lucy Mission teach us? And in fact,
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: the Lucy Mission is headed by Harold Levison, which if
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: you google him, he's got an awesome smile and a
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: huge beard and he looks like he's about to give
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: us all science presents. Oh do you know him? Is
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: he Santa esque in personality as well? I don't know him,
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: but I did actually watch a video with him, and
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: he's like bubbling over with excitement and enthusiasm. He's like
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: a kid on Christmas morning. About to unwrap secrets of
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: the universe. Oh, I just looked up a picture and
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: I like him already. He does look like he's a
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: happy looking guy. I know. It's a lot of fun.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: And So the reason that Harold is so excited about
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: these asteroids, and the reason I'm and so excited about
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: these asteroids is that they might contain secrets about the
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: formation of our Solar System. They might even have hints
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: about the formation of life on Earth. You know, during
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: the early Solar System. We think that some of the
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: carbon based molecules and the other volatile materials that serve
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: as the building blocks of life, some of those may
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: have actually been brought to Earth via asteroid and calm
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: the terry impacts. So if we can go out and understand,
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: like what's in these asteroids, are there organic molecules out there,
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: we might get a better clue to understand how life
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: on Earth form, not just the planet, but like the
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: critters on top of it. Well, so there's nobody who's
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: proposing that life started on asteroids and got deposited here,
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: But the idea is that the building blocks of life
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: were on the asteroids and got deposited here and then
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: life could come about? Is that right? I don't think
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: it's fair to say nobody is proposing that. Somebody out
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: there is definitely thinking that. I'm not sure if it's
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: just the person who currently has the banana pe Like,
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: you've probably heard the idea that life may have started
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: elsewhere and then landed on Earth. You know, we are
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: all martians. Sort of an idea, you know that's not
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: necessarily well found, that it's just speculation, But it is
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: a question, like what do we find out there in
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: the asteroids? Is it just the basic building blocks of life?
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: Are there complex organic molecules out there formed in the
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: collisions of objects in the early Solar System? We just
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: don't know. It's a big question mark because we haven't
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: gone to look. And what we do know is that
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: the universe holds lots of surprises for us. Every time
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: we dig into something, we find things that are shocking
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: that up end our understanding of the universe. So it's
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: always worth looking, and there's always good job security you'll
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: always find the next question exactly way to make a
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: cynical I mean, I'm just waxing poetic here about knowledge
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: for knowledge's sake, And you're like, Daniel, you're just worried
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: about your four oh one k that's the role I
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: play in this diet. I'm okay with that. I'm the
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: dream killer in my relationship with Zach too. All right, Well,
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: unless this turns into a marriage therapy podcast, let's move
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: on and talk about what we can learn about the
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: early Solar system. And so, as usual, I was curious
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: if this was a mission that people had heard about,
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: if people knew what the Lucy Mission might teach us,
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: what makes it unusual, what its special abilities are, and specifically,
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: what questions it might answer for us about the nature
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: of our own solar system. So I went out there
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: as usual and ask folks to comment on these questions.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: If you'd like to participate in this fun game for
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: a future episode, please don't be I write to us
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: two questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com. So think
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: about it for a minute before you hear these answers.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: What do you think the Lucy Mission might teach us?
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: Usually people had to say, I have not heard of
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: this mission, but I do know that physicists and uh
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: astronomers like to name things with acronyms. So whatever the
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: mission will teach us I am sure it is within
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: the name somewhere an acronym form so UM. From what
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: I understand, I mean, I guess it's it's going to
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: teach us more about the makeup of those asteroids and
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: UM and in turn the makeup of our Solar System. Okay,
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: I think I just saw news about the Lucy mission,
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: something about the Solar panels. Maybe not deploying correctly, but
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: hopefully if all goes well. UM. I'm pretty sure the
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: Lucy mission is looking at asteroids and how they helped
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: form primordial planets when the Sol System was forming, or
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: at least I think that's the goal of the mission.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: I think it's going for the Trojan asteroids that they
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: go in front and back of Jupiter. Everybody thinks that
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: these asteroids they are from the beginning of the formation
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: of the Solar System, and it will teach us a
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: lot about how and when and a lot of things
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: about Solar system. I actually have no idea what the
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: Lucy mission is, but I hope it results in less
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: click bait about asteroids coming very close to Earth. If
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: I remember correctly, the Lucy Mission UM is going to
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: bring information about the composition of asteroids like what is
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: inside an asteroid? So I really liked the first answer
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: because it was the first thing that I thought of.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: And so NASA does love some acronyms. Is Lucy an acronym? Unfortunately, no,
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: Lucy is actually not an acronym. But there is a
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: funny story there. The Lucy Mission is named after the
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: Lucy fossil, which is this famous ancient fossil dug up
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: in Africa that's sort of a missing link that shows
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: like an important step in human evolution. And that fossil,
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: of course, is famously named after the Beatles song Lucy
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: and the Sky with Diamonds, which of course was written
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: after the Beatles themselves had been smoking bananappeals. So there
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: is a connection there. Oh good good, Yeah, we're all connected,
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: to say. But the concept is, the reason they named
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: it after a fossil is that they think of asteroids
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: as fossils. They're like, these are captured bits from earlier times.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: This is like a snapshot of what was going on
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: four and a half billion years ago. If we dig
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: into this, we can understand something about the Solar system
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: at a time when we don't otherwise have access to it.
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: Right and same way like biologists would love to go
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: walking around Africa two million years ago and see, like
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: who's climbing in the trees? Right, but we can't. Instead
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: of we have to just look at the fossils as
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: a way to get a sense for what was going
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: on back then. And have we thought of asteroids as
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: the fossils of the solar system for a long time
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: or is that sort of a new idea. That's a
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: really good question. I think in the last few decades
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: it's definitely been understood that asteroids played this vital role
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: in understanding our solar system. As we've developed this idea
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: for how the solar system formed, you know, I think
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: for a long time we imagine that maybe everything just
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: sort of like came together harmoniously, that you start with
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: this big cloud of gas and dust and just sort
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: of collapsed gravitationally. Now we know that the solar system
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: probably had a lot more drama in it than we
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: previously imagined. There's this model of how the solar system
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: formed called the Nice model, named after the city in
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: France where it was developed, and actually Harold Levinson played
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: a big role in the development of this model, and
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: it suggests that some of the big planets, Urinous, Neptune,
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: Saturn were formed closer to the Sun than they are now. Right,
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: that these big planets are more likely to form closer
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: to the Sun, and that later they got sort of
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: kicked out, that the gravitational interactions between these things were unstable,
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: and some of them got kicked out further into the
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: Solar System. And actually we may have even lost a
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: giant planet in the process. And you and I did
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: an episode about like where is Jupiter now and where
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: the Jupiter been? And we think that Jupiter may have
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: started on the outside and then migrated in and then
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: then pulled back out by Saturn, and in the process
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: we think that these leftover ingredients, these asteroids probably got
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: scattered all over the Solar System. And so I think
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: like this recent understanding of this process to form Solar
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: System has given asteroids special importance. Interesting. So, so I
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: know that you can find asteroids in the main asteroid belt,
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: which is out past Mars, but before you get to Jupiter,
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: and then there's also near Earth asteroids which are a
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: little closer. Are they all fossils of the Solar System
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: or did some of those come about at different times
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: or did they just sort of like end up in
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: different places but all sort of started at the same time.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: We don't really know. So, as you say, there's this
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: like main belt of asteroids extends between Mars and Jupiter
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: from like two point one to three point three a U.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: One of the interesting things about the main belt is
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: that there seemed to be several populations of asteroids. There
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: are these carbonaceous asteroids with the lots of carbon in them,
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: called C types. There are these stony S type asteroids.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: Then there's some really rare M type asteroids that have
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: a lot of heavy metals in them. And they're also
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: seemed to be some that are like rubble piles and
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: other ones that are really compact. And one of the
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: questions we have is like, do these in fact all
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: come from the same original place in the Solar System
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: where they gathered together in some of these crazy events,
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: you know, where Jupiter's throwing stuff in and out of
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: the Solar System? Is this just like the remnants of
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: the mess? Like you come home after you're leaving your
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: kids for an hour and the floor is covered in
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: cheerios and also in toys, and you're like, huh, where
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: the eating toys materials together where those different crazy moments
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: in the hour I left them, right, It's it's a
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: fun detective mystery quote unquote fun Exactly who made a
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: mess of my solar system? That's really the question we're
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: asking today. So like I'm picturing now that room that
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: you talked about, and I'm also picturing you know, sci
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: fi movies that I've watched where they've had to move
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: through the asteroid belt and the asteroids are really packed
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: in their super close together. Is that like would you
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: be like dipping and dodging as you go through or
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: they actually more spaced out and like just for you know,
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: dramatic effect in the sci fi movies, they're really close together.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: They're really spaced out, And so those pictures you have
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: of like the Millennium Falcon like dodging and dipping whatever.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: You can't go evading stormtroopers in the asteroid belt because
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: they're really spaced out. I mean, there are a lot
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: of asteroids and the mass adds up to a non
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: trivial amount. But also space is really really big, especially
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: as you get further and further from the Sun, Like
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: the amount of volume grows as the radius cube, right,
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: so like the space between Mars and Jupiter, there's plenty
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: of room there for lots of asteroids, and you can
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: probably stand on one and not see any others from
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: the surface of it. Oh, I kind of feel like
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: a dream of mine has died. You are ruining sci
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: fi movies for making you too, are a dream killer, Daniel.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: But I'm making asteroid mining more realistic, right, because it's
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: easier to get in and through the asteroid belt if
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: indeed you can stop, right. Isn't this something people imagine
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: that we could like stop on asteroids and dig up
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: a huge chunk of plutonium or platinum or something, these
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: incredible minerals that exist on the asteroids. Yeah, but it's
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: complicated by things like how do you land on a
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: rubble pile or how do you wrangle a giant, you know,
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: C type asteroid. These things are complicated, But yes, you're right.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: It will facilitate things that you don't have to worry
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: about one asteroid slamming into another while you're trying to
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: get your work done. And you know, I've heard people
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: criticize asteroid mining is ridiculous, like how would you bring
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: a huge chunk of platinum back to Earth and that
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: would be super expensive and crash the market, etcetera. But
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: have you done any research into like asteroid pit stops,
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: Like say you're on a ship and you need extra fuel.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: You're going through the asteroid belt and you stop on
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: a frozen blob and extract some ice from it and
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: get some hydrogen. Is that more realistic because you don't
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: need to bring it back to Earth and sell it.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: You can actually like use it for your own local purpose.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: Well but so, I mean, so in your example, you
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: are at the asteroid belt on your way somewhere else,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: and where where else would you be on your way
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: to in the next couple of hundred years? You know,
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: like I don't imagine us having you know, homes on
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: Enceladus for quite a long time. Well, I was gonna say,
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: I can imagine if you live on Mars, maybe you'd
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: want to go out to the asteroid belt for some
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: building materials, like you go to lows or home depot.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: But you know, I think for a while the Martians
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: will be trying to use stuff on Mars. So I
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: maybe at some point the asteroid belt will be helpful
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: as a waypoint or a supply point. But I think
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: it's a little bit far off, all right, But I'm
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: hearing it's not impossible, folks, not impossible. We could be
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: making pit stops in the asteroid belt. I think it
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: might happen one day. Well. One of the most interesting
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: things about the asteroid belt to me is that the
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: asteroids are not just confined to the asteroid belt, like
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: we're all familiar with that. But it turns out that
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: there are more asteroids in the Solar System than just
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: the ones in the main belt. There are two clumps
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: that are super fascinating that are called the Trojans. These
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: are two blobs of asteroids that are not in the
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: main belt. They're actually in Jupiter's orbit, like one orbits
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: the Sun ahead of Jupiter and one orbits the Sun
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: behind Jupiter. Are they trying to sneak into Jupiter. Well,
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: one of them is called the Greek Camp and the
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: other one it's called the Trojan camp. So I'm sure
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: they've got billion year long nefarious plots that they are hatching.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: They're very patient, they're very patient. But now these guys
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: are hanging out in sort of lagrange points. Lagrange points
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: became famous sort of when James Webb Space Telescope launched,
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: and people learned about how it's living at L to
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: this stable orbit. If you have two massive bodies in
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: the Solar System, there are only a few places you
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: can hang out where you can be stable, where like
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: the gravitational tug is not going to change where you're orbiting.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: One of those is L ones, for example, and the
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: Earth and the Sun. L one is a point between
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: the Earth and the Sun. You can hang out right
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: there and you're gravitationally stable. Nobody's tugging you out of
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: that spot. L two is the same, but on the
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: other side of the Earth, like in the shadow of
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: the Earth, and that's where James Webb is. L three
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: is like on the other side of the Sun than
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: the Earth. But there's also these other two points L
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: four and L five which are stable where you're like
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: sixty degrees behind the Earth or Jupiter sixty degrees ahead
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: of the Earth or Jupiter, and you can orbit stable there.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: So they think that back when the crazy days, when
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: Jupiter was scattering cheerios and asteroids all over the Solar
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: System because the parents weren't around, that some of them
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: landed in L four and L five and have been
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: hanging out there ever since the interesting I thought some
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: of those were only like mostly stable, but you still
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: still kind of drifted. But like, are all of those
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: stable stable? Like those asteroids are not going anywhere for
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: as long as we uh, you know, were to be
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: able to go one check, well, none of these points
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: are like totally stable, even L two, right, it's not
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: a hundred percent stable. You can get boosted out of it.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: And L four and L five are less stable than
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: L one, two and three. But they've been there for
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: a long time, right, those guys have been floating there,
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: we think, for billions of years, and so they found
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: a little sweet spot. Also, the other thing that makes
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: these unstable is that there's more than one thing, so
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: there's complicated dynamics. All this goes out the window if
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: you get bumped by your neighbor and now you have
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: like a new velocity vector that takes you in another direction.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: But you know, it's been billions of years and lots
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: of the bumps have happened, and so these things are
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: mostly flying around pretty happy, and we expect that they
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: will stay there, most of them, for billions of years.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: Of course, occasionally you get collisions and things fall into
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: the Solar System and wipe out dinosaurs, etcetera. Yeah, the
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: little thing like that. So is there any reason to
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: be interested in these relative to what's happening in the
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: main asteroid belt? Would they be easier for us to
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: send something to to go study for example? No, these
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: are not easier to get to. But we think that
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: they might have a different collection of stuff than the
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: other asteroid belts. Everything the Solar System seems to like
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: a different composition of the stony type and the metal
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: type and the carbon type, and so people haven't studied
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: these nearly as much, and so it's sort of like
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: an untapped pocket. It's places people haven't explored yet. Well,
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: so it seems like there's lots of places that would
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: be fun for Lucy to visit. Where is Lucy going? Right? So,
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: Lucy is a really fun and very exciting mission that's
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: going to explore a lot of these things. I want
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: to get into more about it and exactly what Lucy
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: is going to tell us about the nature of the
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: Solar System. But first let's take a quick break. All right,
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: welcome back. So, Dan, you were just about to tell
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: us where Lucy is going, So Lucy is actually going
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: to visit eight different asteroids on this one trip. It's
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: kind of crazy. They're gonna stop by one main Belt
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: asteroid and it's gonna go visit seven Trojans. It's going
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: to go both to the Trojan camp and to the
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: Greek camp. The whole thing is this crazy zigzag around
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: the Solar System. So how did they pick their one
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: main asteroid Belt one to visit? That must have been
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: a hard choice. Actually, it's funny. They're visiting one called
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: Donald Johansson, which is named after the discoverer of the
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: Lucy fossil itself. Right, So the Lucy mission is going
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: to go visit the Donald Johansson asteroid. So there's a
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: part of me that thinks it would be sort of
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: beautiful to have that connection and that that's a fine
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: reason to pick it. But there's another part of me
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: that feels like there must be a better criteria for
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: picking which out of all the Main Belt asteroids you're
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: going to visit, and so why did this one get picked? Well,
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: part of it is just what is possible. You know,
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: in the Solar System, things move slowly, and so if
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: you want to visit stuff you have to visit stuff
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: that happens to be fairly close to each other at
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: the time that you are there. For example, that one
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: of the reasons that like Voyager and Pioneer could visit
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: so many planets back in the seventies is that there
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: was this window when you could fly out from the
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: inner Solar System and visit those planets as they came
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: around the Sun. Some of these things have a super
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: duper long orbits and so this is dictated mostly just
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: by what's going on in the Solar System. And actually
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: there's a hilarious story about how they designed this mission.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: The original plan was like, Okay, here's two asteroids we're
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: gonna plan to visit, and they planned the whole trajectory.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: And then in two thousand and fourteen, before NASA selected
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: this as a mission, Brian Sutter, a long time mission
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: trajectory designer, was walking Harold Levinson through a computer simulation
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: of the proposed route and Levison was like, hold on
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: a second, We're gonna come kind of close to this
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: other one, Patroclus, which is this pair of Trojan asteroids
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: that orbit each other, and this is like one of
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: his favorite Trojan it's this weird binary pair where Patroclus
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: and Monoecius are like rotating around each other. It's super fascinating.
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: And as he saw like the projected trajectory of Lucy,
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: He's like, wait a second, can we stop there at
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: the time? And so Sutter is like, you know what,
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: I think we could. And so then they went and
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: they like dug through the orbit. SE's like, what else
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: are we going by? And he fed like seven and
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: fifty thou known asteroid orbits into this crazy Excel spreadsheet.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: What Yeah, I spent months running calculations on it. And
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: so they used Excel to design the trajectory of this
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: thing and found all these other opportunities, and they ended
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: up adding, you know, six different stops. So this thing
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: went from visiting two asteroids to visiting eight asteroids because basically,
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: you know, science Santa Claus enthusiasm and Excel spreadsheets. That's awesome.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: On the one hand, I can imagine the guy who
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: thinks his job is done and then someone's like, well
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: what about this, and being like, oh, like, I've had
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: so many moments in science where I've been like, oh
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: I thought I was done. But that's awesome. So we
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: have to find out. I know, it's like when you're
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: driving between two errands and you're like, oh, there's a
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: donut shop. I don't really want to stop, but I
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: do want a donut, right, That's right? And because exactly,
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: and so this mission is going to visit more different
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: destinations and independent orbits than any other space mission in history.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: And I totally encourage you to google the Lucy trajectory
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: because it's kind of bonkers. So it launched already, They
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: launched it in October one, and it's starting out. It's
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: going to take like two different gravity assists around the
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: Earth over the next few years to try to get
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: up a little bit of speed before launching out into
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: the outer Solar System. That's incredible to me. The fact
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: that we ever figured out gravity assists is also incredible. So, Okay,
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: we're gonna spend a little time hanging out with our
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: buddy the Earth for a while and then what's next. Yeah,
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: And remember, the idea of a gravity assist is just
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: to limit how much fuel you need. You need fuel
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: later on in the mission to help you like change
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: course and go from one asteroid to the other. Do
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: you want to minimize how much fuel you spend on
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: like getting out there to the asteroid belt, and you know,
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: the more fuel you carry, the more fuel you need.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: It's a very thin budget, and so we use gravity
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: assists because it takes longer, but it means you don't
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: need a much fuel. And the way a gravity asists
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: works is that you like swing close by a planet,
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: you come out going another direction. You can actually also
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: pick up a little bit of speed, which is kind
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: of crazy, not just like a totally symmetric operation. You're
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: actually stealing a little bit of energy from the planet
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: that your gravity assisting around, like an you know, imperceptibly
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: small amount of energy. This thing is gonna make two
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: swoops around the Earth and then it's gonna go visit
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: this asteroid Donald Johansson, which is in the main belt.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: That's like four years from starts to initial visits. So
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: like out of the eight places, four years later, it's
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: just reached the first one. When a grant gets funded,
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: what happens to those people for the four years in between,
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: Like I do they have a lot of work to
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: do or is the like trajectory sort of programmed in?
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: They have to monitor it right and they have to
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: keep on track of it in case it goes off
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: of course, etcetera. But there isn't a lot of work
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: in between these stops to planning these projects. It's a
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: little tricky, right You have to have people who have
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: different expertise at different times. And this project is going
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: to last for fifteen years, like some of the data
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: they're going to get in the mid twenty thirties, and
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: you know, science Santa Claus is not that young. So actually,
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: what they've done for the major parts of the mission
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: where the lead is kind of old, is that they've
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: designated a successor, like a younger person in their career
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: who can take over in case they need a replacement.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: You know, this is like a game of Throne style planning.
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: You know, that's a little morbid, but but probably smart.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: And so I guess no grad students, I mean maybe
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: you if you're a grand student working on this project.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: It's because your advisors on the project and you get
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: some of the data. You have to be careful with
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: students and post docs who have sort of short time
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: horizons working on this stuff. You can do a pH
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: d thesis on a project like this where it's like
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: development of it, or you know, stabilization of it, or
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: guidance systems or navigation, and then somebody else can come
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: along into a pH D thesis. It's like analysis of
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: the data. Those are all, you know, totally valid contributions.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: I think these days we recognize that some of these
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: projects I have such long time cycles that we need
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: people to work on the initial bits, for example and
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: particle accelerators. People have been writing pH DDCs on the
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: Atlas detector before it was even built, you know, stimulated
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: studies for how we should build this kind of thing.
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: It's an important contribution to the field, you know, Yeah, yeah, okay,
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: fair enough. Alright, So it takes us four years to
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: get to Donald Johannsson and tell me a little bit
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: more about what Donald Johansson is. Like, we don't really
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: know that much about it, but it's really fascinating. It's
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: actually quite small, it's like only four kilometers wide. But
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: they suspect that it's a fragment of a collision from
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: like a hundred and thirty million years ago. They think
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: there was a meta asteroid they got smashed into and
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: created like all of this shrapnel, and that Donald Johansen
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: is like a piece of that and so by studying
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: that they hope to understand like what happened and what
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: was that big one made out of and sort of
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: like get a sense by the inside of that mega asteroid,
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: because you know, some of these things are rubble piles,
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: but some of them have layers. You know, some of
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: these things were like pro to planets has sort of
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: started to form and then got arrested because no more
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: material came by. Like there are actually dwarf planets living
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: inside the asteroid belt or like Vesta and Series. These
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: are layered with like dense material at their cores. They
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: were on their way to becoming planets. They had just
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: gotten bigger helpings of the raw materials. Okay, And so
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: so we started Donald Johansson and then where are we
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: going next? We visit the L four cloud, which is
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: the Greek Camp. This is the one orbiting like sixty
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: degrees ahead of Jupiter. And there it's going to visit
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: a bunch of asteroids and hang out for a little bit.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: It's gonna sort of like swoop through and stop by
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: and check out a couple of them, and then it's
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: going to swing back around and it's going to visit
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: Earth again. In twenty thirty one, this time to change
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: directions so and can go out to the other Trojan camp.
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: This is why physics makes no sense. How does it
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: make sense to go back to Earth to go back
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: out to Jupiter. You guys are tricking us. I think
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: we'll remember that these things are on opposite sides of
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: the solo sits them, right, The Greek camp and the
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: Trojan camp are each sixty degrees separated from Jupiter, which
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: means they're a hundred twenty degrees separated from each other,
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: and a hundred eighty is the opposite side of the
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: Solar system. So these Greeks and Trojans are really distant
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: from each other. So if you're at one and you
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: want to head to the other, stopping by Earth on
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: the way, it's not really like out of the way.
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: We really are the donut shop between two errands. Alright, Alright,
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: that checks out. So then they go to the Trojan camp,
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: and then there's somewhere to go after that. So then
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: they go to the Trojan camp. There they get to
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: visit a couple of those really interesting asteroids we talked about,
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: Patroclus and Venetius. These are really fascinating because they're orbiting
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: each other, they're like in a very tight binary orbit,
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: sort of like weights like a dumbbell, spinning around each other,
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: but without any connection in between them. And people don't know,
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: is this like part of the process of forming larger
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: objects that you get this like binary inspiral which gradually
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: comes together to form a larger object, or is this stable?
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: Could they last like this forever? And one of the
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: fascinating things about this pair is that they don't actually
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: orbit in the ecliptic right Most of the stuff in
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: the Solar System or based in sort of like a
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: flat plane, like Venus and Earth and Jupiter and all
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: the way after like Neptune and Uranus, are mostly in
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: the same disc because they have the same angler momentum
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: as most of the stuff in the Solar System. But
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: a few things are a little crazy in the orbit
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: like above or below the ecliptic. Means that they're not
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: often in the ecliptic right there, like at an angle,
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: And these guys are orbiting above typically the ecliptic and
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: then dip down below, and so they're actually gonna pass
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: right through just when Lucy gets there, so will be
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: a really rare opportunity to see these guys up close. Man,
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: it seems like this team looked out in a lot
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: of ways. Yeah, it's a really happy coincidence that they're
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: going to get to visit all of this stuff, and
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: then after they visit this trojan camp, they're going to
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: go into a stable six year orbit back and forth
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: between these L four and L five clouds just to
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: get like as much data as possible. There's no point
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: in like bringing this thing back to Earth, so they figured, like,
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: let's just let it hang out out there and gather
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: as much data as we can until it runs out
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: of fuel. Oh so the six years is when it
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: runs out of fuel. I think six years is how
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: long it's going to take to go between L four
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: and L five after its last visit. So every six
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: years after that it's going to pass between L four
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: and L five and it will continue sending data back.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: I guess. So is this powered by like, uh, you know,
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: radioactive material the decay slowly, is it going to keep
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: sending information or is it gonna you know, peter out
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: pretty quick. We think it might last for a long time.
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: It actually has solar panels. The way this thing looks
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: as kind of cool as like a central blob with
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: two like circular solar panels. It looks a little bit
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: like a tie fighter if you took those wings and
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: flatten them out instead of having them be like parallel
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: to the main ship. And so this thing is capable
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: of gathering energy and sort of living for a long time.
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: It's not going to take a whole lot of energy
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: at that time, you know, just to send messages back
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: to Earth. And so a lot of these missions, you know,
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: they have an official life cycle which is pretty short
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: ten years, fifteen years, but sometimes they can go for
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: a very very long time if the electronics is hardy
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: enough and for things. So this doesn't have like a
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: radioactive heat or unit keeping like it's core at a
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: normal temperature. It's all solar power. Yeah, this one is
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: just solar power. It doesn't have a blob of plutonium
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: or something else like thermoelectrically heating it. It show it's
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: relying on photons from the Sun, and you know out
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: there by Jupiter's orbit, this is of course a lot
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: less Sun than there is out here, but it doesn't
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: take that much energy to operate this thing. Once he's
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: out there in this orbit. Unfortunately, when they launched this thing,
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: one of the solar arrays open perfectly and the other
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: one didn't. It opened only like somewhere between eighty and
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: they're not sure, and it didn't like latch open. This
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: thing is supposed to like unfold and then like click
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: into place, so they're not exactly sure how much it
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: didn't open and why it didn't open. They're also like
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: not sure what to do about it. You know, on
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: one hand, it's in okay shape, it's getting a lot
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: of energy. The other hand, you know, maybe they could
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: crack it open a little bit, and they're sort of
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: limited in what they could do. They could like press
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: the button again and try it again, but you know,
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: something else might ki. You never know. Oh, that must
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: have been such a devastating moment at the moment. Do
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: they have any projections for how many years that might
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: cut off the experiment or they're just not thinking about
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: it because maybe they can fix it and they're just
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: going to move on for now. They're just gonna move
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: on for now because things are working and there's always
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: a bit of a buffer. Right when they engineer these things,
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: they always provide more power than they need just in
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: case something like this happens, and so they think it's
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: not going to cut into the operating of the mission.
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: Of course, it is better to have more power and
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: to not have this like weird mechanical failure that always
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: makes you worried. Right, It's like if you get a
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: new car and something breaks the first week, you're like,
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: hold on a second, what's next exactly? Maybe the whole
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: things that disaster, But usually it's fine, Okay, Well, so
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: now we've talked about where it's going to go and
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: what's powering this thing. So let's take a break and
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: then we'll find out what kind of data that's going
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: to collect. All right, and we're back. Okay, So we
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: know that we've got these solar arrays, and those solar
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: arrays are going to get used to power equipment. What
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: kind of equipment is Lucy carrying with her? So Lucy
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: has a few different scientific instruments on board. There's a
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: high resolution camera produced like sort of looking at these
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: things and trying to understand the shape of them, and
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: just like the surface, one big question scientists have is
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: like exactly what is the shape of these things that
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: will help them in their models for how these things
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: are formed. Another is a spectrometer. That's something that very
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: carefully measures the energy of all the photons that you're getting.
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: It tells you like are you getting green photons or
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: red photons. That's very important for understanding like what's inside
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: these things, how much light are they reflecting? What kinds
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: of light? And then they have a disc of lab
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: grown diamonds or a special infrared spectrometer that's able to
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: measure the energy of photons sort of on the longer wavelength.
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: And why would you want to know about that because
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: it doesn't just give you more information about what the
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: asteroid is made out of. Yeah, because as asteroids are cold, right,
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: they're not hot. They don't glow from their own light.
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: The only time you get light from an asteroid is
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: when the sun shines on it, and so it's always
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: reflected light. Another way you can study these objects is
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: from their own very small amount of heat. Remember that
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: everything in the universe does actually give off light, just
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: maybe at temperatures that you can't see with the naked eye.
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: So like the Sun glows at a certain wavelength in
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: the visible because it's super duper hot. The Earth also glows.
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: If you look to the Earth in the infrared, you
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: would see it emitting photons just like you glow, which
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: is why when the predator comes to Earth to hunt humans,
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: it can use its infrared vision to see you, right
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: because of your body heat, and so asteroids also glow,
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: but they tend to glow in the infrared. This is why,
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: like the James Web Telescope is gonna be really cool
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: at discovering exoplanets and planetary disks that are forming in
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: the same way. Using infrared helps you look at these
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: asteroids in their own native light that they are giving off. Okay,
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: and so then you mentioned earlier that asteroids there's what
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: C type, D type and P type asteroids. So the
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: way that they glow can tell you how to can
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: help you differentiate between them, Is that right? That's right.
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: And most of the asteroids that we've had a chance
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: to study in depth are the C type, the ones
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: that are rich in carbon, and most of the meteorites
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: that have landed on Earth are these C type. But
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: there are other types of asteroids, and these other ones
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: tend to have different colors. Some of these the D
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: type and the P type, these are much redder, which
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: means that maybe they have like organic and volatile elements
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: in them. And nobody's ever visited a D type or
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: P type asteroid or gone up close. So by looking
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: at the sort of light that's reflected from it, we
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: can tell, oh, look, it has more carbon, or has
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: less carbon, or it has more of this crazy element
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: in it. Because remember the things absorbed light and reflect
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: light based on their internal chemical composition. The reason the
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: plant is green is because it has chemicals inside of
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: it which tend to reflect green light, and that tells
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: you about something that's going on inside. It tells you
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: about the energy levels of the electrons in those chemicals.
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: So by looking at the different energy of the light
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: that comes off of these things, you can get a
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: sense for what's inside without even digging into it, right,
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: without like taking a sample and analyzing it in the lab.
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: And so like when we say that an asteroid is
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: C type or D type or P type, is it
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: actually like, you know, C type but also twenty five
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: percent D type is in there? Or are they really
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: like pretty homogeneous? They're definitely homogeneous. And in typical astronomy fashion,
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: we have these categories which are blurry right, And really
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: these are about what we see. So we call it
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: C type because it looks a certain way, and we
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: call it D type because it looks a different way,
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: and we suspect that probably means something else is going
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: on underneath, and there are something are the fuzzy like, hm,
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: it's kind of red, what's this one? And so this
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: is just like our categorization just from studying these things
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: through telescopes. And what we need to do is go
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: up there and visit them and get a much more
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: detailed understanding and probably try to overthrow this whole hierarchy
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: of C type and D n P type and get
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: a better understanding for where these guys came from and
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: what's been going on with them. And it is Lucy
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: going to be visiting at least one of each type.
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: Because Lucy is going to be visiting so many asteroids,
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: she will get to observe some D types and some
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: T types and some M types. Yeah. One of the
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: really fun things I think is that Lucy is going
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: to be taking these really close up pictures of the
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: surface of these asteroids to try to count the number
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: of craters. They have this high resolution but black and
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: white camera that's gonna like try to count the number
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: of craters on the surface of these things to get
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: a sense for like how much impacts have there been,
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: what's going on out here? You know, are these things
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: mostly just frozen from the early Solar system or has
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: it a bit a lot of activity? Interesting that should
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: be I can't wait to see the photos. Sometimes I wonder,
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: like our photos mostly just for like the general public,
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: so that you can convince them the money was spent well,
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: because we really like pictures. But it seems like no,
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: these will be helpful photos. They certainly will. And we
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: think also that what's going on in the surface of
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: these things and like how much they've been cracked, how
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: much you can see inside of them from collisions, and
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: how much is going on on them will help answer
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: some of these questions about what happened in the early
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: Solar system, Like was there some big event five million
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: years after the Solar system was formed when Jupiter got
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: its new location and scattered everything and thinks has been
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: mostly frozen since then? Or have there been lots of
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: period of activity things we might not even be aware
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: of that scrambled all of these things and bang them
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: into each other. Fairly recently. So it's sort of like
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: if you dig up fossils and you discover something fairly
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: modern that tells you like the layers have been mixed
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: or something. So just digging in up there, we'll tell
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: us something about the history of the Solar System. It's
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: amazing to me that you can get so much information
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: just from photos and photons. Yeah, like this Patrick Clus pair,
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: they're super excited to understand, like are these surfaces very smooth?
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: Are they totally beat up? You know. Answers to these
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: questions will give scientists insight into like the relative age
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: of the Trojan asteroids and the conditions of the early
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: Solar System. It's going to be really fascinating. And right
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: now it's just a lot of questions. People of all
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: these different theories about how the Solar System might have formed,
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: and they make very different predictions or like what the
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: asteroids should look like. But because we just don't know,
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: we can't tell your theory is crazy, it doesn't match
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: the data because we don't have the data. And we're
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: always in this cycle in physics when the theorists are
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: going crazy with their ideas because we just haven't made
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: the measurements to tell them yes or know about something.
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: And then we finally go out there and we see something.
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: We get to roll out of their ideas and they're like,
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: oh wait, but you didn't measure this, did you. Okay,
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: so now we can go crazy being creative about things
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: you haven't measured. It's like always this game with the gaps.
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: You go through these bottlenecks. Then the idea is proliferate
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: again exactly, and we hope that there will be surprises
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: out there. Lucy's gonna look for like rings and satellites
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: of these asteroids, Like the asteroids themselves might have their
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: own like a little many moons or many rings around
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: them that would be so cute. Today, there's one that
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: might be pronounced Euributes that they think has a satellite
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: around it. This just one kilometer in size, and so
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: when they go visit it, they might get to see
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: its own little baby. Oh, that would be wonderful. It
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: would be a lot of fun. And you know, though,
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: we're gonna learn a lot about these asteroids. We're gonna
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: map the surfaces, we're gonna take these color pictures. We're
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: going to determine the masses and the densities. We're going
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: to study all the craters. Another thing we might do
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: is teach future humans something about us. You mentioned Voyager
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: and they went out into interstellar space. How are we
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: going to teach anyone stuff about us if it's staying here. Well,
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: it's just gonna hang out in the Solar System, right,
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: It's not going to like leave the Solar System or
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: get like crashed into some planetary body. It's just gonna
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: keep orbiting L four and L five basically forever. And
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: so they put on it a golden plaque. The golden
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: plaque contains its launch day, at the positions of the
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: planets at the launch time, what the continents on Earth
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: look like when we launched, and then a bunch of
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: like crazy cultural snippets from you know, what's going on
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: on Earth right now. There's like Beach by Martin Luther
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: King Jr. Some We're from Carl Sagan, songs from the Beatles,
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: of course. And the idea is, you know, maybe in
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: a thousand years some humans will find this and they'll
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: be like, oh, look at this crazy relic from the
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: early days, and it might be our own time capsule
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: of what's going on right now. To inform future archaeologists
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: about our civilization. Okay, so Voyager, we put stuff on
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: there so that non humans could learn about us, But
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: this is so that humans of the future can learn
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: about us. What an awesome responsibility to be one of
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: the people deciding what goes on that golden plaque. I know,
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: and it might be humans. It might be trans humans
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: because humans have transformed by so much. It might be
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: our own ai that have you wiped us out and
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: then find this monument to ourselves. Oh hey, it might
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: be aliens coming to the solar system long after we
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: have eradicated ourselves and finding this monument we built it
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: to ourselves. You had to end it on like humans dying,
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: didn't you? Of course, to get back to that another
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: episode my kids can't listen to. But you know, let's
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: end on a positive note. There's so much to learn
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: about the history of our solar system. As you were
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: asking earlier, you know what discoveries have left to be made. Well,
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: this just highlights how little we have explored even our
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: own solar system. We've done our best by using telescopes
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: and looking through them to try to understand what's going on.
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: But there's a real limit to what you can do
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: without actually going there. So I'm really excited about this
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: Lucy mission going out there and taking these pictures and
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: really examining these solar system fossils to give us a
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: clue about the history and the story of our own
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: solar system. And how exciting to have something to look
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: forward to you for the next decade plus as the
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: data come in. That's right, but it's going to be
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: about as slow as like a James Cameron project. You know,
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: the data is just going to drip in like every
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: five years or so. But you know whom I discovered
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: something new, something revolutionary. Maybe we'll find a relic from
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: some other alien civilization that left us an easter egg
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: in Trojan Camp. We can hope, we can hope. All right. Well,
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: thank you everybody for joining us on this mission to
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: understand the early Solar system and what the Lucy Mission
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: will teach us about it. And thank you very much
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: Kelly for doing us on today's episode. Thanks for having me.
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: I had a lot of fun as always, all right,
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: and enjoy your time with your real live children. I
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: will you do the same, all right. Thanks everybody for listening.
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: Tune in next time, Thanks for listening, and remember that
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: I heart Radio. For more podcast for my heart Radio,
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows. Yeah.