Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / What did we learn from the Arecibo Radio Telescope?

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What did we learn from the Arecibo Radio Telescope? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, do you like seeing big science experiments appear
0:12
Speaker 1: in movies? You know? I love it because it's true
0:14
Speaker 1: to life and accurate. No, actually, it's the opposite. Usually
0:18
Speaker 1: it's all like slick and fancy. They got retinal scanners
0:21
Speaker 1: and heads up displays. It's nothing like the messy desks
0:25
Speaker 1: and dirty coffee cups of reality. So it's not realistic.
0:28
Speaker 1: Doesn't that bother? You know? It inspires me. It shows
0:31
Speaker 1: me how cool my workplace could be. You know, A
0:33
Speaker 1: fancy version of the control room at CERN was in
0:37
Speaker 1: Dan Brown's Angels and Demons, and when I saw that,
0:39
Speaker 1: I thought, oh, let's make that real. It sounds like
0:42
Speaker 1: physicists need Hollywood to come in and inspire you to
0:45
Speaker 1: clean up your dirty cups. Somebody's got to do it.
1:03
Speaker 1: I am orhandmade cartoonists and the creator of PhD comics. Hi,
1:07
Speaker 1: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I actually am
1:10
Speaker 1: able to watch science in movies without criticizing it too much.
1:16
Speaker 1: Do you have to actively force yourself not to be
1:18
Speaker 1: a grumpy physicist when you watch movies? No? Not usually,
1:21
Speaker 1: although if they mentioned the Higgs boson, then I'll admit
1:24
Speaker 1: my ears are perked up and my critical brain is
1:27
Speaker 1: turned on. That must be Whye, movies never mentioned the
1:31
Speaker 1: Higgs boson. Actually, I feel like movies throw the Higgs
1:34
Speaker 1: boson in all the time when they just totally don't
1:36
Speaker 1: need it. I want to see what's on your Netflix
1:38
Speaker 1: cue then talks about the Higgs boson all the time.
1:41
Speaker 1: Probably I'm more sensitive to the Higgs boson than most viewers.
1:45
Speaker 1: Welcome to our podcast. Daniel and Jorge Explained the Universe,
1:48
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio, in which we mostly
1:50
Speaker 1: talk about the real universe, the one that's out there
1:53
Speaker 1: that we all want to understand, the one that has
1:56
Speaker 1: neutrawn stars and black holes and active galactic nuclear and
2:00
Speaker 1: all sorts of other crazy stuff that we are desperate
2:03
Speaker 1: to wrap our minds around. We desperately want to understand,
2:06
Speaker 1: we want to take them apart, and mostly we want
2:08
Speaker 1: to explain them to you. Yeah, because there is a
2:11
Speaker 1: lot in the universe for us to wrap our heads around,
2:14
Speaker 1: in our civilizational reach. Because it's a big universe, and
2:17
Speaker 1: there's a lot that we still have to discover and
2:20
Speaker 1: to learn about and to make movies about, and we
2:23
Speaker 1: are doing our best to figure it out. We have
2:25
Speaker 1: all sorts of different kinds of devices that we use
2:28
Speaker 1: to listen to the sky. We can hear X rays,
2:31
Speaker 1: we can hear gravitational waves, we can hear new trinos,
2:34
Speaker 1: we can hear radio waves. We do everything we can
2:36
Speaker 1: to get it's much information from the skuys we can
2:38
Speaker 1: to reveal those secrets of the universe. Yeah, because our
2:42
Speaker 1: search for the truth and the inner workings of the
2:44
Speaker 1: universe is sort of like a movie. It's a drama,
2:47
Speaker 1: you know, with the first and second act and maybe
2:49
Speaker 1: a big twist at the end. Which act are we
2:51
Speaker 1: in right now? According to you, we're in the first act,
2:53
Speaker 1: still trying to figure out what the characters want. I
2:56
Speaker 1: feel like we might be in the trailer. You know.
2:58
Speaker 1: This is like in a world where scientists have no
3:00
Speaker 1: idea what's going on. Physicists have trailers. Do you have
3:04
Speaker 1: to make one for each experiment. I recently did see
3:07
Speaker 1: somebody put out a paper and they used I movie
3:09
Speaker 1: to make a very dramatic trailer for it, and I thought,
3:11
Speaker 1: that's a pretty good idea. It really did make me
3:13
Speaker 1: want to read the paper. Really did it have the voice?
3:16
Speaker 1: He did? It had the voice? Paper published to be
3:19
Speaker 1: published in a journal coming soon to a library near you. No,
3:26
Speaker 1: I do feel like it is a story. We are
3:28
Speaker 1: unraveling the biggest mystery in the universe, which is the
3:32
Speaker 1: whole universe. The amazing thing is that the universe seems
3:35
Speaker 1: to have a story, one that we can understand. As
3:38
Speaker 1: we chip away at it and reveal a little bits
3:40
Speaker 1: of it, it seems to sort of click together into
3:43
Speaker 1: an understanding that works for our minds, which is, to me,
3:46
Speaker 1: one of the biggest questions in philosophy, like why is
3:48
Speaker 1: the universe even understandable? Why is it possible for the
3:51
Speaker 1: human mind to wrap itself around this incredible, potentially infinite
3:56
Speaker 1: variety of stuff in the universe. Yeah, And so physicists
3:59
Speaker 1: are heard at work and scientists are hard at work
4:01
Speaker 1: and figuring out all those answers. And at the same time,
4:04
Speaker 1: there are artists and filmmakers and writers creating movies and
4:08
Speaker 1: fiction and stories that portrayed that universe, maybe sometimes in
4:13
Speaker 1: interesting and fantastical ways. Yeah, and sometimes you see real
4:17
Speaker 1: science experiments making a cameo in the movies, which is
4:20
Speaker 1: always fun, but maybe even more fun is seeing the future,
4:23
Speaker 1: is seeing like what artists and creative people imagine science
4:27
Speaker 1: could be doing for us deep deep in the future.
4:29
Speaker 1: We're just the role of science in life in a
4:32
Speaker 1: thousand years or in two thousand years, what it could
4:35
Speaker 1: be doing for us and to us potentially usually to
4:38
Speaker 1: us or you know, what we taste like sometimes So
4:42
Speaker 1: on the podcast, I've sometimes gently criticized a few movies
4:45
Speaker 1: that I like to kick around because the science in
4:47
Speaker 1: them was a little wonky Interesstdellar, for example. But we
4:50
Speaker 1: had a listener who wrote it and asked us which
4:52
Speaker 1: films and TV shows we actually do like. So Grant
4:55
Speaker 1: and Gender from Scotland wanted to know what we'd like
4:58
Speaker 1: to read and enjoy and are we able to switch
5:01
Speaker 1: off the academic part of our brain to just enjoy things. So, Jorge,
5:05
Speaker 1: what do you like to watch? And are you able
5:07
Speaker 1: to turn off the engineer inside you and just enjoy it?
5:10
Speaker 1: Oh that's a tough one. Um No, I'm not able
5:13
Speaker 1: to turn off my engineer inside of me. Anytime I
5:17
Speaker 1: see a movie, I'm like, wait a minute, how did
5:19
Speaker 1: they make that work? Or where did they get the
5:21
Speaker 1: you know, power to wait ratio to accomplish that kind
5:24
Speaker 1: of flying. But generally, in terms of science, I guess
5:28
Speaker 1: I can't turn my head off. You know, sometimes it's
5:30
Speaker 1: so ridiculous that you kind of have to. Like I
5:32
Speaker 1: just watched that movie con Versus Godzilla. Totally realistic science
5:38
Speaker 1: in every aspect of each character and special effect, especially
5:42
Speaker 1: the gravity in version, very realistic, totally center of the
5:45
Speaker 1: Earth right. Put some sort of sun in there. I
5:48
Speaker 1: don't know, it wasn't quite clear, but you know, flying
5:51
Speaker 1: King Kong, who doesn't want to see that with an
5:54
Speaker 1: axe that glows. That was a lot of fun. I
5:56
Speaker 1: also enjoyed that movie, and I was able to turn
5:58
Speaker 1: off my science brain and just sit back and say,
6:01
Speaker 1: show me the monsters fighting for me. I really enjoy
6:04
Speaker 1: a movie or a TV show where I don't have
6:06
Speaker 1: to turn off my science brain, but where the science
6:08
Speaker 1: is part of the plot, like where they have a
6:10
Speaker 1: scientific mystery and they are trying to unravel it, or
6:14
Speaker 1: they're like limited by science in the way that they
6:16
Speaker 1: can solve a problem. To me, a great example is
6:19
Speaker 1: The Expanse. The Expanses, this TV show that takes place
6:22
Speaker 1: in the future, and it's all over the inner and
6:24
Speaker 1: outer Solar System, and they have lots of real physical constraints,
6:27
Speaker 1: like you can't just get from here to there really quickly,
6:30
Speaker 1: or you can't send a message from Earth to Jupiter instantaneously,
6:34
Speaker 1: and that really plays a role in their lives and
6:36
Speaker 1: influences the choices they make in a cool strategic way.
6:39
Speaker 1: So I really enjoy seeing the science play a role
6:42
Speaker 1: in that show. I hear it's really scientifically acrian when
6:44
Speaker 1: they throw people off of the airlocks, which apparently happens
6:48
Speaker 1: more often than they kill characters in Game of Thrones.
6:51
Speaker 1: That's right, it's basically the space Game of Thrones. Well,
6:54
Speaker 1: there are there space dragons, there are aliens, there are monsters,
6:58
Speaker 1: but there aren't actually space dragons. No, you should write
7:01
Speaker 1: that one though. There you go. I'll sit in my
7:03
Speaker 1: CV and promise that you'll get the wait to strength
7:06
Speaker 1: ratio correct for your space dragons. You bet, I will
7:08
Speaker 1: accurately engineered space dragons. So those are the kinds of
7:12
Speaker 1: movies that you like, the ones that are kind of
7:14
Speaker 1: make scigens realistic or they make it part of the plot.
7:16
Speaker 1: Is that kind of what you mean? Yeah, And you know,
7:18
Speaker 1: I don't have to only watch something that has science,
7:20
Speaker 1: and I like movies also with science doesn't play a
7:22
Speaker 1: big rule in the show etcetera. I saw Wolf Walker's
7:25
Speaker 1: Last Week with my family, which is beautifully illustrated animated
7:28
Speaker 1: movie where they draw each frame by hand. Really is
7:31
Speaker 1: no science in it at all, but you know, gorgeous
7:34
Speaker 1: and well told and wonderful characters. So yeah, my family
7:37
Speaker 1: likes a lot of stuff cool. Well. One of my
7:38
Speaker 1: favorite science movies is Contact, or maybe my only science
7:43
Speaker 1: movie is Contact with Jodie Foster. That's a great one. Yeah. Yeah,
7:47
Speaker 1: it's based on a book written by Carl Sagan and
7:49
Speaker 1: directed by Robert Szabeikis. It's a good movie overall, and
7:52
Speaker 1: it's got aliens and maybe even realistic engineering problems. Super
7:56
Speaker 1: realistic I think in terms of kind of like what
8:00
Speaker 1: it takes to build something and with an international collaboration,
8:04
Speaker 1: and uh, I thought that was all pretty well done.
8:07
Speaker 1: And what it's like to read specs written by aliens
8:09
Speaker 1: right and solve puzzles like embedded by aliens? Right? Are
8:13
Speaker 1: these in meters? Are these in inches? What even units?
8:16
Speaker 1: Are these? Do we make this thing a thousand times
8:18
Speaker 1: too big? I always thought that was an interesting question
8:20
Speaker 1: about those specs. Yeah, it's kind of interesting that Carl
8:22
Speaker 1: Sagan wrote that. I mean, it's fiction. So he was
8:25
Speaker 1: an astronomer, but he wrote that piece of fiction, and
8:29
Speaker 1: and he's sort of tried to put in as much
8:30
Speaker 1: science as possible, but does sort of get a little
8:33
Speaker 1: bit fantastical at the end, Right, yeah, it totally does.
8:35
Speaker 1: It starts out very well rooted in the science, how
8:38
Speaker 1: you would hear a message from aliens, how you might decodeed,
8:41
Speaker 1: how you might decide it was from aliens. But then
8:43
Speaker 1: of course he felt free to imagine what those aliens
8:46
Speaker 1: might be like and their intergalactic transport system and all
8:49
Speaker 1: that stuff. It's a great movie. I really encourage everybody
8:52
Speaker 1: to go ahead and see it. And so one of
8:53
Speaker 1: the stars of that movie is Matthew McConaughey, who was
8:57
Speaker 1: also an Interstellar. By the way, Daniel, he and I
8:59
Speaker 1: are friends. Good, alright, you have him come on the podcast. Alright, alright, alright,
9:04
Speaker 1: you can wax poetically with random strings of words. But
9:08
Speaker 1: another one of the stars of that movie is a
9:10
Speaker 1: science experiment. So at one point in the movie, Jodie
9:13
Speaker 1: Foster is in Puerto Rico and she basically hangs out
9:17
Speaker 1: near the Arecibo Observatory. That's right, this is a huge
9:20
Speaker 1: radio telescope in Puerto Rico that in the movie they
9:24
Speaker 1: used to hear the message from aliens and in real
9:27
Speaker 1: life is a real thing that does real science and
9:30
Speaker 1: has four decades. Yeah, it's a very big dish and
9:33
Speaker 1: it has been around for a long time, but it
9:36
Speaker 1: is no longer around. Something happened to it, unfortunately, and
9:40
Speaker 1: it is no longer doing science. That's right. The era
9:43
Speaker 1: of Arecibo is now over, unfortunately. So we thought it'd
9:46
Speaker 1: be cool to dig into this amazing instrument and a
9:49
Speaker 1: little bit into the history and also what happened to it,
9:53
Speaker 1: So to be on the podcast, we'll be asking the
9:54
Speaker 1: question what do we learn from the Arecibo telescope. Yeah,
10:03
Speaker 1: this dish really played a huge role in radio telescopes
10:07
Speaker 1: and also just sort of like the cultural understanding of astronomy.
10:10
Speaker 1: It was like, it's such a big thing. I feel
10:12
Speaker 1: like it must have played a role in lots of
10:14
Speaker 1: people's lives, and since it recently was destroyer, fell apart,
10:17
Speaker 1: it felt like the right time to do sort of
10:19
Speaker 1: like a tribute episode to talk about everything we've learned.
10:21
Speaker 1: And it's a pretty but maybe one of the most
10:23
Speaker 1: famous astronomical instruments or radio telescopes in the world. It
10:28
Speaker 1: was in that movie Contact. I've seen it in other
10:30
Speaker 1: movies and it had a big role in the movie
10:32
Speaker 1: Golden Eye, one of the James Bond movie. Yeah, except
10:35
Speaker 1: they weren't really doing science with it. They were just
10:37
Speaker 1: sort of like running around and chasing each other and
10:39
Speaker 1: shooting each other kapin kaping pretty goofy actually, But yes,
10:42
Speaker 1: it was in there, sort of like a backdrop. It
10:44
Speaker 1: was like a part of the set because it is
10:46
Speaker 1: a pretty spectacular thing until we'll get into some of
10:49
Speaker 1: the specs of it and where it is and how
10:52
Speaker 1: they builded. But first we were wondering how many people
10:54
Speaker 1: out there had heard of this radio telescope and what
10:58
Speaker 1: they thought of it, and specifically what they thought it
11:01
Speaker 1: has taught us about the universe and aliens. So, as usual,
11:05
Speaker 1: Daniel went out there into the wilds of the Internet
11:07
Speaker 1: and ask people what do we learn from the RCIBO telescope?
11:12
Speaker 1: Thanks to everybody who volunteered, And if you would like
11:14
Speaker 1: to participate and speculate on a topic you don't know
11:17
Speaker 1: anything about, or maybe you do, please write to me
11:20
Speaker 1: two questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com. Here's what
11:23
Speaker 1: they had to say, I've not actually heard of that,
11:25
Speaker 1: so as a complete guest, was it the c If
11:29
Speaker 1: the ABO radio telescope is in Spain, then we have
11:32
Speaker 1: learned to lisp. Otherwise I have no clue. I don't know.
11:37
Speaker 1: I know where telescope it is. I now it's the
11:38
Speaker 1: one in Porto Rico, that's that's broken, but I have
11:44
Speaker 1: no idea what it is famous for. Actually, m I
11:47
Speaker 1: haven't really heard about it. But since it's a radio telescope,
11:52
Speaker 1: maybe some signals from Pulitzer's or something like that is
11:59
Speaker 1: what they assume. I'm not really sure about it. I'm
12:03
Speaker 1: not sure. I think I think at some point we
12:06
Speaker 1: detected a fake response to the Arecibo message that was
12:10
Speaker 1: broadcasted into space, but ring guards to what actual scientific
12:17
Speaker 1: scientific discoveries we made, I have no idea. I don't
12:21
Speaker 1: know any one thing we we learned using the Arecibo
12:24
Speaker 1: radio telescope. But I mean radio telescopes look at things
12:27
Speaker 1: really really far away, so I guess we learned something
12:30
Speaker 1: about something that's really really far away. I think the
12:34
Speaker 1: Arecibo radio telescope was used initially to investigate the cosmic
12:39
Speaker 1: microwave background, but eventually was used for the set investigations.
12:45
Speaker 1: I haven't heard about any major breakthrough downe with a recibo,
12:49
Speaker 1: but I know it was used a little in monitor
12:51
Speaker 1: near a small objects like space debates and small miteos
12:55
Speaker 1: and commets, and so I'm not even really sure what, Like,
12:59
Speaker 1: I've never heard of that telescope, but you know, it
13:01
Speaker 1: says radio and it's telescope, so I'm assuming it's probably
13:05
Speaker 1: something to do with astronomy. Maybe someone was like taking
13:11
Speaker 1: a look at like radiation from stars or something, and
13:14
Speaker 1: then we found something cool to do with stars. Quite possibly,
13:21
Speaker 1: I don't know. All right, it sounds like people knew
13:24
Speaker 1: about it, but they didn't know exactly what it had
13:27
Speaker 1: done for us. Yeah, exactly. So out there it's famous.
13:31
Speaker 1: The name means something to people, but not already really
13:34
Speaker 1: knows like what we've learned and what the actual science
13:36
Speaker 1: that arisbo can do. Yeah, and so let's get into that.
13:39
Speaker 1: But first let's talk about the dish itself. So it's
13:42
Speaker 1: it's a big dish, Like that's why they put it
13:44
Speaker 1: in movies because it's so impressive. It's like, how how
13:47
Speaker 1: wide is this dish? It's a thousand feet wide, So
13:50
Speaker 1: it's a really big thing. And remember that this is
13:53
Speaker 1: the kind of telescope that collects a huge amount of
13:56
Speaker 1: light and then focuses it on a receiver. So it's
14:00
Speaker 1: sort of like a satellite dishue might have in your
14:02
Speaker 1: backyard or on your roof, except it's much much bigger,
14:06
Speaker 1: so they can collect much much more energy and focus
14:09
Speaker 1: at all on a central place and gather that information
14:11
Speaker 1: into a signal for the astronomers. It's just a little
14:14
Speaker 1: bit bigger than the one people have in the roofs,
14:16
Speaker 1: you know, just a thousand feet that's like three soccer fields, right, Yeah,
14:22
Speaker 1: it's a thousand feet wide, and the whole thing weighed
14:24
Speaker 1: nine hundred tons, so it's really this massive piece of equipment.
14:29
Speaker 1: And it's in the middle of Puerto Rica, right, And
14:31
Speaker 1: they had to put it out in the middle of nowhere,
14:32
Speaker 1: right to avoid noise, So it's like out there in
14:34
Speaker 1: the middle of the jungle basically. Yeah, it's out there
14:38
Speaker 1: in Puerto Rico. And they had to find the spot,
14:40
Speaker 1: as you say, that was sort of quiet, right, It
14:43
Speaker 1: wasn't surrounded by microwaves and WiFi and cell phones. But
14:46
Speaker 1: they had to find a spot that was sort of
14:48
Speaker 1: near a town and in Puerto Rico. They have these
14:51
Speaker 1: funny rock formations that are almost sort of like natural dishes.
14:55
Speaker 1: And so they picked like a bunch of different holes
14:57
Speaker 1: in the ground, and they found one that was sort
14:58
Speaker 1: of close to a city and and sort of far
15:00
Speaker 1: away from everything else, and they just like picked one
15:02
Speaker 1: and built it there. Yeah, and so they basically just
15:05
Speaker 1: kind of corrent the ground with a giant dish, right,
15:09
Speaker 1: And so I always wonder, like, how does that move? Like,
15:12
Speaker 1: if you want to point your telescope somewhere in particular,
15:15
Speaker 1: how do you move such a giant dish. You don't
15:17
Speaker 1: move the dish at all. The dish is fixed right
15:19
Speaker 1: as you say, it's huge. It can't move, it's attached
15:22
Speaker 1: to the ground. But what you can move is a
15:25
Speaker 1: little receiver. So to have this platform that actually is
15:28
Speaker 1: that's the thing that weighs nine tons and suspended by
15:31
Speaker 1: cables above the dish. And so if the platform moves,
15:35
Speaker 1: then you're sampling a different focus point. So the dish
15:38
Speaker 1: itself is not a parabola. Parabola has like a single
15:40
Speaker 1: focus point. It's a sphere, and a sphere has lots
15:44
Speaker 1: of focus points. So if you move where you're gathering
15:47
Speaker 1: the light from then you're basically focusing on a different direction.
15:51
Speaker 1: So you move this thing around and you can look
15:53
Speaker 1: in this part in the sky or that part in
15:54
Speaker 1: the sky. Yeah, because I guess the way these dish
15:57
Speaker 1: antenna work is that you have this giant sort of
15:59
Speaker 1: circule or you know, sort of spherical dish, and that
16:03
Speaker 1: gets light from space and then that reflects it back
16:05
Speaker 1: to a single point where you sort of gather it
16:07
Speaker 1: and collect it. And if it's a parabolog shape, then
16:10
Speaker 1: all parallel light comes in and focuses at the same point,
16:13
Speaker 1: and that's how a lot of telescopes work. But then
16:15
Speaker 1: to point it in different directions, you have to turn
16:17
Speaker 1: the parabola. But this one is a sphere, so it
16:19
Speaker 1: doesn't focus all the light at the same point. It
16:22
Speaker 1: focuses all the light from one direction at one point
16:24
Speaker 1: and all the life from another direction at a different point.
16:27
Speaker 1: And then you can move the platform, the thing that
16:29
Speaker 1: actually gathers that light, to decide which light you want
16:32
Speaker 1: to gather today. So you don't move the dish underneath,
16:34
Speaker 1: you just move this platform above it that's collecting the light. Yeah,
16:38
Speaker 1: it's like in a crane, and then it moves around,
16:40
Speaker 1: but I guess it still has sort of a limited range, right,
16:42
Speaker 1: Like you can't point it sideways or you know, do
16:45
Speaker 1: a full three sixty. You sort of have a limited range.
16:48
Speaker 1: You have a limited range, and you can't look for example,
16:50
Speaker 1: through the Earth or you know, backwards. But the Earth
16:53
Speaker 1: sweeps around, right, and the Earth moves around the Sun
16:55
Speaker 1: and it rotates, and so using that you can get
16:58
Speaker 1: a pretty good sample of the sky because the Earth
17:01
Speaker 1: itself is turning. It's sort of like the eye in
17:03
Speaker 1: the Death Start. You know, you have to wait for
17:05
Speaker 1: the Death Start to turn around before they can fire
17:07
Speaker 1: on the rebel base. Yeah, and you know, like the
17:09
Speaker 1: Eye and the Deaths are. It actually was also motivated
17:12
Speaker 1: by military contract. Really, it wasn't science. Originally, it was
17:18
Speaker 1: not science. No, it was sold to the U. S.
17:20
Speaker 1: Government in order to detect I C b ms in
17:23
Speaker 1: the upper atmosphere in the height of the Cold War.
17:26
Speaker 1: They built this thing in the sixties, back when everybody
17:28
Speaker 1: was worried about the Soviets nuking US, and we're trying
17:31
Speaker 1: to figure out like I would get early warnings of
17:34
Speaker 1: missiles coming in. So they pitched this to the government
17:37
Speaker 1: as like this would be a great way to get
17:39
Speaker 1: early warning signals from intercontinental ballistic missiles coming at US.
17:44
Speaker 1: No way, Really, it has its origins in war wow,
17:48
Speaker 1: or I guess prevention of war or you know, early
17:50
Speaker 1: warning of war. Yeah. Well, you know, a lot of
17:52
Speaker 1: physics is motivated by defense technology. You know, I grew
17:56
Speaker 1: up in Los Almos, New Mexico, so I'm steeped in
17:58
Speaker 1: this sort of like moral quagmire myself. But a lot
18:01
Speaker 1: of times to get something fun and you have to
18:02
Speaker 1: convince the government that it's important. And sometimes the government
18:05
Speaker 1: thinks that defense and military is more important than like
18:08
Speaker 1: radio astronomy and unraveling the secrets of the universe. And
18:11
Speaker 1: did it also have sort of like construction delays, And
18:14
Speaker 1: did Dark Vader have to come in and shape people
18:16
Speaker 1: up to get him going? Those grad students disappointed him
18:19
Speaker 1: for the last time. No, it was built pretty well
18:21
Speaker 1: and pretty efficiently, and it's become sort of a point
18:23
Speaker 1: of pride for Puerto Rico. And at the time it
18:26
Speaker 1: was the largest single aperture telescope in the entire world.
18:31
Speaker 1: The biggest one that existed before that one was only
18:33
Speaker 1: two fifty ft wide in Manchester. So this thing just
18:36
Speaker 1: like dwarfed everything else when they built it. All right, Well,
18:39
Speaker 1: let's get into a little bit more of how they
18:41
Speaker 1: builded and why they built it in Puerto Rico, and
18:44
Speaker 1: then let's get into the science of it and what
18:46
Speaker 1: actually happened to the Risibo telescope. But first let's take
18:50
Speaker 1: a quick break alight. We're talking about the r Cebo
19:06
Speaker 1: telescope in Puerto Rico at the time, the largest astronomy
19:11
Speaker 1: telescope in the world, the largest single aperture telescope. You
19:14
Speaker 1: can make a sort of a larger effective telescope by
19:17
Speaker 1: stitching together a bunch of small telescopes and then using
19:20
Speaker 1: them together to make like an effectively larger telescope, but
19:23
Speaker 1: a single aperture telescope, but it's collecting a coherent source
19:26
Speaker 1: of light. This is the largest one in the world
19:28
Speaker 1: at the time I see. Is it still or at
19:32
Speaker 1: the time that it was still up, was it's still
19:34
Speaker 1: the biggest one? Are there bigger ones now elsewhere? There
19:36
Speaker 1: actually is now a larger telescope. The current number one
19:40
Speaker 1: in the world is a five hundred meter telescope, so
19:43
Speaker 1: that's about fifteen hundred feet. That's in China. And so
19:46
Speaker 1: this was built during the Cold War and to detect
19:49
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons in the atmosphere. And I guess why did
19:52
Speaker 1: they build it in Puerto Rico. Well, they wanted it
19:54
Speaker 1: to be in the tropics so they could see like
19:56
Speaker 1: a larger portion of the sky because, as you say,
19:59
Speaker 1: you can't hear it, and so you want this thing
20:01
Speaker 1: to be sort of like swinging around and see more
20:03
Speaker 1: of the sky if you're like at the North Pole
20:05
Speaker 1: always pointing up and you're basically not taking advantage of
20:08
Speaker 1: the Earth turning. And they also wanted to study the
20:10
Speaker 1: solar system, and so if you're in the tropics and
20:12
Speaker 1: you're sweeping around, you can basically get a view of
20:14
Speaker 1: the whole solar system at some point. And you know,
20:17
Speaker 1: Hawaii and the Philippines were a little too far away.
20:20
Speaker 1: And there was also one enterprising Puerto Rican grat student
20:23
Speaker 1: at Cornell who advocated to put it in Puerto Rico
20:27
Speaker 1: because he thought that would be good for Puerto Rico
20:29
Speaker 1: and Puerto Ricans and science, and so he basically made
20:32
Speaker 1: that happen. Wait what really a grad student? Yeah, there
20:35
Speaker 1: was an engineer at Cornell, William Gordon, who headed up
20:38
Speaker 1: the project. But there was a Puerto Rico grad student
20:40
Speaker 1: at Cornell who talked to him and influenced him and
20:43
Speaker 1: told him all about Puerto Rico and why it would
20:45
Speaker 1: be a great place to build this thing and made
20:46
Speaker 1: it happen. He's like, think of all that you can
20:48
Speaker 1: eat when you're there, and all this the sucks of
20:52
Speaker 1: dancing you can do at night. It'll be awesome, it'll
20:54
Speaker 1: be a good party. Yeah. Well, you know, the United
20:56
Speaker 1: States doesn't control that much territory in the Tropics, and
20:59
Speaker 1: Hawaii in Philippines, again, we're too far away, and so
21:01
Speaker 1: it sort of seemed like a good choice. Cool. So
21:03
Speaker 1: they sort of found like at the right valley, like
21:06
Speaker 1: they had to find like a valley with the right
21:07
Speaker 1: curvature kind of on it or didn't matter. Yeah, they did.
21:11
Speaker 1: And they looked at aerial photographs of Puerto Rico and
21:13
Speaker 1: they found like a dozen possibilities of holes in the
21:15
Speaker 1: ground that roughly had the dimensions they needed so they
21:18
Speaker 1: wouldn't have to construct a free standing dish. And they
21:21
Speaker 1: just found one that was close enough to a town
21:23
Speaker 1: or a city and reduced it to a few And
21:25
Speaker 1: then this guy, William Gordon, he just went down there
21:27
Speaker 1: and looked at them and said, all right, we're building
21:29
Speaker 1: it here. He planted his engineering flag there. Yeah, it
21:31
Speaker 1: was back in the day when there was sort of
21:33
Speaker 1: like less red tape. You know, during the Cold War,
21:35
Speaker 1: the government just wanted to get things done. It wasn't
21:38
Speaker 1: so much about like bidding and contracts and review. They
21:41
Speaker 1: were just like, here's a pile of money, go and
21:42
Speaker 1: build a thing. And it didn't mean the decisions were
21:44
Speaker 1: always the best, but you know, they were made more
21:46
Speaker 1: quickly sometimes. All right, So they found this valley and
21:48
Speaker 1: then they built the telescope, and I guess what is
21:51
Speaker 1: the telescope made out of? Like, how do you make
21:54
Speaker 1: a telescope, Like you build the structure, and what is
21:56
Speaker 1: the structure made out of? A great question, because what
21:58
Speaker 1: it's looking for is light, but not visible light. If
22:01
Speaker 1: you build a telescope and visible light, then you need
22:04
Speaker 1: like mirrors and lenses, things that can manipulate visible light.
22:07
Speaker 1: But here we're looking for radio waves, which is just
22:10
Speaker 1: another kind of light. But you need to build your telescope,
22:13
Speaker 1: your lenses, and your mirrors out of things that can
22:15
Speaker 1: manipulate radio waves. Well, in this case, we just needed
22:18
Speaker 1: to be reflecting because it just has to hit the
22:19
Speaker 1: dish and bounce off and go to the central platform.
22:23
Speaker 1: And so for that you just need some kind of metal.
22:25
Speaker 1: And so they started out when they first built it,
22:27
Speaker 1: it's just like a big wire mesh. But then later
22:29
Speaker 1: they replaced it with these perforated aluminum panels. So there's
22:33
Speaker 1: thirty nine thousand of these panels, each of which is
22:36
Speaker 1: like two by one meters that cover this dish. And
22:39
Speaker 1: they don't have to be complete, right, you can have
22:41
Speaker 1: holes in it. As long as those holes are smaller
22:44
Speaker 1: than the wavelength of the light that you're trying to reflect,
22:47
Speaker 1: it still works. So the radio waves come in and
22:49
Speaker 1: then they hit the metal, the aluminum, and then they
22:52
Speaker 1: bounce back. And then they bounce back because any kind
22:54
Speaker 1: of conductor does not like to have electromagnetic waves go
22:58
Speaker 1: through it. The electrons inside the conductor respond to electromagnetic
23:02
Speaker 1: waves and basically repel it. They create the opposite electromagnetic
23:06
Speaker 1: field inside themselves to basically reverse it. And so that's why,
23:10
Speaker 1: for example, silver is a good reflector of visible light also,
23:14
Speaker 1: but all sorts of metals and conductors are good reflectors
23:18
Speaker 1: of radio waves. That's why, for example, you can't get
23:20
Speaker 1: a cell phone signal in an elevator because it's a
23:23
Speaker 1: box made out of metal that repels and reflects all
23:26
Speaker 1: electromagnetic waves. It's a Faraday cage. Just gave me some
23:29
Speaker 1: claustrophobia there, although I don't think I've been in an
23:33
Speaker 1: elevator for over a year to be honest. Well, if
23:35
Speaker 1: you're one of those people who puts your cell phone
23:37
Speaker 1: in a little wire bag so that the government can't
23:40
Speaker 1: snoop on you, or your wife or your husband can't
23:42
Speaker 1: tell where you are, it's the same principle, right, Any
23:45
Speaker 1: sort of metal surface or conducting service will not let
23:48
Speaker 1: electromagnetic radiation through it, will reflect it. And so here
23:51
Speaker 1: we're using that same principle to focus those radio waves
23:55
Speaker 1: into a single point where we can coather them together. Right,
23:57
Speaker 1: if you're one of those people, not you, not at all.
24:01
Speaker 1: I will neither confirm nor deny. I think they actually
24:03
Speaker 1: tracked me through my molars. You have bionic molars or something?
24:08
Speaker 1: Five G? I got five G through my molars. Oh nice,
24:11
Speaker 1: You know that was an option? You think you have
24:13
Speaker 1: to check that box? I know, and now I pay
24:15
Speaker 1: every single month every time you chew your fitbit tracks.
24:18
Speaker 1: You're you're chewing too. That's an email thing. I'm eating
24:21
Speaker 1: too much, or at least chewing too much. She tries smoothies.
24:24
Speaker 1: But anyways, so they're perforated panels, and I guess that's
24:27
Speaker 1: good because it's a giant bowl in the tropics, so
24:29
Speaker 1: when it rains, it doesn't get filled up with water.
24:31
Speaker 1: It's basically a huge astronomy calendar, right, like if you
24:35
Speaker 1: have a massive bowl of noodles, you could use air
24:37
Speaker 1: c boat is sort of like stream that will be
24:39
Speaker 1: the next King Kong versus going to the movie. But
24:42
Speaker 1: we gotta feed King Kong noodles? What do we do?
24:45
Speaker 1: Let's good to Puerto Rico. Maybe King Kong makes lunch
24:47
Speaker 1: for Godzilla and he's looking for a calendar, and that's
24:50
Speaker 1: the only one you can find. It's not cong versus Godzilla.
24:54
Speaker 1: Is Cang cooks for Godzilla? Or Godzilla is a conspiracy
24:57
Speaker 1: theorist and doesn't want the government to listen to his thoughts,
25:01
Speaker 1: so he uses the dish to sort of protect his brain,
25:04
Speaker 1: like a calander. He picks it up and puts it
25:06
Speaker 1: on his head. Yeah, like a tinfoil hat sort of. Well,
25:08
Speaker 1: he is being tracked by the government, so I can
25:10
Speaker 1: totally see that it's good advice. Godzilla, listen to me.
25:13
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's talk about some of the signs
25:16
Speaker 1: now that the telescope has done over the years. And
25:19
Speaker 1: it does radio astronomy, he said, that's like a wavelength
25:21
Speaker 1: of light. Is it like a higher wavelength or a
25:24
Speaker 1: lower wavelength. It's very very long wavelength, so low frequency
25:28
Speaker 1: light radio waves are below the frequency that we can
25:31
Speaker 1: see with our eyes. They're very very long frequencies, and
25:34
Speaker 1: it's sort of a niche field in astronomy. Most of
25:36
Speaker 1: astronomy is like visible light or maybe infrared or X ray,
25:41
Speaker 1: and radio astronomy has for a long time been like
25:43
Speaker 1: a bit of a backwater, you know. It was invented
25:45
Speaker 1: sort of accidentally in the thirties by somebody listening for
25:49
Speaker 1: radio interference because they were trying to pass telephone calls
25:52
Speaker 1: across the Atlantic. And then for a while, like the
25:55
Speaker 1: only radio telescope in the world was one built by
25:57
Speaker 1: a random guy, a volunteer who's is excited about it
26:00
Speaker 1: and built a huge radio edition his backyard, and so
26:04
Speaker 1: as of nineteen sixty, like radio astronomy was really a
26:07
Speaker 1: fringe field, which is why I probably couldn't get millions
26:10
Speaker 1: of dollars from the government to build a huge radio telescope,
26:13
Speaker 1: but they did. And radio astronomy is fascinating and it
26:16
Speaker 1: can tell us different things about what's out there in
26:18
Speaker 1: the universe than visible lights, because different things emit in
26:21
Speaker 1: the radio than they do in the visible light. Yeah,
26:24
Speaker 1: I guess you know. When like a star explodes or
26:26
Speaker 1: a star shines, or something happens in space, it happens
26:29
Speaker 1: in all frequencies of light, not just the kind that
26:31
Speaker 1: we can see exactly. But the temperature of those things
26:34
Speaker 1: also determines what frequency they emit at. Hotter things tend
26:38
Speaker 1: to emit at higher frequencies and lower wavelengths, so like
26:41
Speaker 1: X rays, for example, come from accretion disks near black holes,
26:45
Speaker 1: whereas infrared light comes from like planets and clouds of
26:48
Speaker 1: dust that are cold and don't actually glow in the
26:51
Speaker 1: visible light. And so radio waves are even longer, so
26:54
Speaker 1: they tell us about like cold or more distant things.
26:56
Speaker 1: They also weirdly tell us about black holes, because black
26:59
Speaker 1: holes emit like all over the place, and that's actually
27:02
Speaker 1: how we discover that there was a black hole the
27:04
Speaker 1: center of our galaxy. Is that the first radio astronomy.
27:06
Speaker 1: We ever did was we heard a huge radio signal
27:09
Speaker 1: from the sky that turned out to be from the
27:10
Speaker 1: center of the galaxy. And now we know that's coming
27:13
Speaker 1: from a black hole. So the sky in the radio
27:15
Speaker 1: looks different from the sky in the visible And I
27:18
Speaker 1: think radio waves also travel further, right, because they're longer,
27:21
Speaker 1: they don't get sort of deviated by little tiny bits
27:24
Speaker 1: in space. Yes, because their wave things are so long,
27:26
Speaker 1: they're not as deflected by huge clouds of gas and dust. So,
27:30
Speaker 1: as you say, we can use them to sort of
27:31
Speaker 1: like see deeper into the center of the galaxy for
27:34
Speaker 1: that reason, and we can also sort of look at
27:36
Speaker 1: our own planet and study things like climate and the atmosphere. Right. Yeah,
27:41
Speaker 1: we can tell like the composition of the upper atmosphere
27:43
Speaker 1: by bouncing signals off of it and all sorts of stuff.
27:46
Speaker 1: We used it to also like study like the Van
27:48
Speaker 1: Allen radiation belts, remember we talked about that once. Just
27:51
Speaker 1: by sending signals up into those belts and seeing like
27:53
Speaker 1: how they bounce back, we can tell what's there. Yeah,
27:56
Speaker 1: And it can tell you about the atmosphere and other
27:58
Speaker 1: planets too. Yeah. Absolutely, we've used it to like map
28:01
Speaker 1: Venus and Mercury because air CBO was super awesome and
28:04
Speaker 1: unique in another way because it's not only able to
28:07
Speaker 1: receive messages, but he can send messages. So we can
28:10
Speaker 1: like shoot radio waves out at Mercury and see how
28:14
Speaker 1: they bounce back, or shoot them at Venus and see
28:16
Speaker 1: how they bounce back, and I can tell us something
28:19
Speaker 1: about like the surface of those planets and the atmosphere
28:21
Speaker 1: of those planets. Wait, what we've been shooting radiation at
28:28
Speaker 1: other planets? We have using the rctelscope. Yes, we have,
28:32
Speaker 1: well you know, it's just radio waves. So like we
28:33
Speaker 1: broadcast a lot of stuff in the radio. Our civilization
28:36
Speaker 1: is very very noisy in radio, but using rac but
28:40
Speaker 1: we have specifically sent messages out into space, sometimes to
28:43
Speaker 1: probe other planets. Also sometimes just to say hello to
28:46
Speaker 1: the aliens, like who they're or you up new phone?
28:52
Speaker 1: Who did? We send a message in four to M
28:56
Speaker 1: thirty one, which a cluster about twenty five thousand light
28:59
Speaker 1: years away, and it describes sort of life on Earth
29:01
Speaker 1: and how it works and what we look like and
29:03
Speaker 1: where we are. And that was the message and we
29:06
Speaker 1: just hope maybe somebody got it and doesn't come and
29:08
Speaker 1: kill it. Yeah, here's hoping. But thirty one, what was there? Well,
29:13
Speaker 1: we don't know if anything is there, but we got
29:15
Speaker 1: a signal from that direction in the sky a few
29:18
Speaker 1: years before. It's called the Wow signal. It was this
29:21
Speaker 1: weird blip of energy that came in and nobody understood
29:25
Speaker 1: what it was about or what it meant, and it
29:26
Speaker 1: was never repeated, so it's a sort of weird event
29:29
Speaker 1: that we've never really understood. It's a powerful signal that
29:32
Speaker 1: sort of looks exactly like what you might expect to
29:35
Speaker 1: see if aliens send us a message, but we don't
29:37
Speaker 1: know if there's any information in there. It was very
29:39
Speaker 1: short and it was never repeated, so we never really understood.
29:43
Speaker 1: So we just thought, hey, let's just shoot a message
29:45
Speaker 1: back in the space in the direction that that message
29:47
Speaker 1: came from and see what happens. We used the OURCIBL
29:50
Speaker 1: telescope to send that message. We did. We used air
29:52
Speaker 1: CBO exactly, so it's sort of like our interplanetary telephone.
29:57
Speaker 1: And we've also used the telescope to look for other planets,
30:00
Speaker 1: right exo planets. Yes. In fact, one of the very
30:03
Speaker 1: first discoveries of an exo planet was made by Aricibo.
30:08
Speaker 1: Now these days, we're discovering extra planets all the time
30:10
Speaker 1: using this method called the transit method, where basically a
30:14
Speaker 1: planet like eclipses the star of the other Solar system
30:17
Speaker 1: and dips its light a tiny amount, and we can
30:20
Speaker 1: use that to detect that that planet is there. For
30:22
Speaker 1: the first discovery of an extra planet comes from Aricibo
30:26
Speaker 1: because it was listening to a pulsar. A pulsar, remember,
30:29
Speaker 1: is a neutron star, so like after a star has burned,
30:32
Speaker 1: it collapses down to a really dense little object. And
30:34
Speaker 1: if it's also spinning really fast and shooting beams out
30:37
Speaker 1: of its poles, then they call that a pulsar because
30:40
Speaker 1: as it spins, it sweeps out a message across the
30:42
Speaker 1: sky and we see these pulses. So it's a really
30:45
Speaker 1: dense planet emitting these pulses sometimes in the radio and
30:49
Speaker 1: so ari Sebo can listen to these pulses. And there
30:51
Speaker 1: was this one pulse that had a planet around it,
30:54
Speaker 1: and as that planet went around, it tugged on the
30:56
Speaker 1: pulsar and change the frequency of the signals it was
30:59
Speaker 1: sending those pulses, and air Sebo could pick that up.
31:02
Speaker 1: And this is the first clue we had that there
31:04
Speaker 1: actually were planets around other stars. This is wow, that's huge, right, Yeah,
31:10
Speaker 1: that was a big deal. This telescope detected the first
31:13
Speaker 1: ever planet outside of our Solar system. That's a luge,
31:16
Speaker 1: you know, accomplishment in milestone for humanity. Absolutely, it was
31:20
Speaker 1: really exciting. And now because we have better telescopes and
31:23
Speaker 1: we studied that same system in gory detail, we now
31:25
Speaker 1: know that there are actually three planets around that pulsar,
31:29
Speaker 1: and they're all really closely packed into this crazy pulsar.
31:32
Speaker 1: One of them is really tiny, it's like two percent
31:34
Speaker 1: of the mass of the Earth. But two other planets
31:36
Speaker 1: around this pulsar are four times the mass of the Earth.
31:39
Speaker 1: But they're all like within half the radius of the
31:42
Speaker 1: Earth's orbit. So it's a pretty crazy system. And yeah,
31:44
Speaker 1: aero Sebol gets the gold medal for being the first
31:47
Speaker 1: discovery of an exoplanet. Wow, it's pretty cool. Were they
31:50
Speaker 1: looking for that on purpose or they just happened to
31:52
Speaker 1: notice this weird pulsar kind of wiggling strangely, that's a
31:56
Speaker 1: great question. I'm not sure, but you know, I'm sure
31:58
Speaker 1: that they saw this pulsar they saw doing weird things
32:01
Speaker 1: and somebody had a broad idea thinking, whatever, we could
32:04
Speaker 1: use this to detect a planet around that pulsar, And
32:07
Speaker 1: that's the method we use all the time now because
32:10
Speaker 1: it's very powerful. We can see sometimes planets around pulsars
32:13
Speaker 1: in other galaxies using this message. Because pulsars are so
32:18
Speaker 1: regular and so precise that we can see very small
32:20
Speaker 1: deviations in their pulses when a planet moves around them. Well,
32:24
Speaker 1: it's amazing. All right, let's get into a little bit
32:26
Speaker 1: more of what cool science a Recibo has done, and
32:29
Speaker 1: also what happened to it and why it went down
32:32
Speaker 1: some years ago. But first let's take another quick break.
32:47
Speaker 1: All right, we're talking about the RCIBO telescope in Puerto Rico.
32:51
Speaker 1: To shout out to Puerto Ricans. Have you been to
32:54
Speaker 1: Puerto Rico? I have not, no, but I've known a
32:56
Speaker 1: lot of Puerto Ricans. But yeah, it's a pretty cool
32:58
Speaker 1: dish in Puerto Rico, and it's huge, and it's been
33:01
Speaker 1: doing signs for a long time, and right before it
33:03
Speaker 1: went down, it was helping us study big threats to
33:06
Speaker 1: the Earth too, Right, yes, absolutely. Air Sebo is sort
33:08
Speaker 1: of like a giant radar dish, so it can tell
33:11
Speaker 1: us about asteroids or meteors or comets that are coming
33:14
Speaker 1: near the Earth. And so it got its funding in
33:16
Speaker 1: its last days by looking for near Earth objects and
33:20
Speaker 1: trying to understand are they going to hit the Earth?
33:22
Speaker 1: How big are they, how shiny are they? This kind
33:25
Speaker 1: of stuff. Yeah, that's a big deal because if we
33:28
Speaker 1: don't see an asteroid coming, it could be coming right
33:30
Speaker 1: out of us. Yeah, we think we know where most
33:32
Speaker 1: of those are, but there could always be surprises and
33:34
Speaker 1: nonlinear effects when like two asteroids getting near each other
33:37
Speaker 1: and perturb each other. So it's very important. They were
33:39
Speaker 1: constantly scanning the skies and we don't have that many
33:42
Speaker 1: devices that can do this, and air Sebo was very helpful,
33:45
Speaker 1: and so we could like bounce radio waves off an
33:48
Speaker 1: asteroid and tell you, like exactly how fast it's spinning
33:51
Speaker 1: or exactly how big it was, And so this is
33:54
Speaker 1: really powerful and this is one of my favorite parts
33:56
Speaker 1: that actually helped us study biology and plants to Yeah,
34:00
Speaker 1: you know, biologists are very creative folks. And they discovered
34:04
Speaker 1: that this created sort of an accidental experiment because they
34:07
Speaker 1: were interested in weather. Plans could grow in the shade
34:10
Speaker 1: in Puerto Rico and here's a huge dish under which
34:14
Speaker 1: they could actually crawl and study. Like the dish itself
34:17
Speaker 1: isn't just laying flat on the ground. There are supports
34:19
Speaker 1: so you can get underneath there and ask questions about
34:22
Speaker 1: like you know, canned plants grow under a dish where
34:25
Speaker 1: water can drip through but not a lot of light
34:27
Speaker 1: gets it. It's pretty cool. Yeah, so sort of like
34:29
Speaker 1: change the micro ecology of that one little hole in
34:32
Speaker 1: the ground. And also nobody could tell what those plants
34:35
Speaker 1: were thinking because they were shielded by from radio waves,
34:40
Speaker 1: that's right. But most importantly, air Cebo was really important
34:43
Speaker 1: in data that was used to make a discovery that
34:45
Speaker 1: won a Nobel Prize. Oh no, kidding, what was it discovered? Well, again,
34:50
Speaker 1: it was a study of pulsars because air Cibo was
34:52
Speaker 1: really good at seeing these things. And there was a
34:54
Speaker 1: grad student there who was studying these pulsars and he
34:57
Speaker 1: accidentally found a system that had two pulse s are
35:00
Speaker 1: so two of them orbiting around each other. And actually
35:03
Speaker 1: saw him presented his research ones and he talked about
35:05
Speaker 1: the day that he found this thing and he almost
35:07
Speaker 1: very nearly through this thing in the trash because it
35:10
Speaker 1: looked weird. To him, But then he decided to dig
35:12
Speaker 1: into a little bit, and it turns out it was
35:14
Speaker 1: in fact two pulsars, which is really interesting and important
35:18
Speaker 1: because it lets you measure something about general relativity. If
35:21
Speaker 1: two pulsars are orbiting each other, then they're slowly falling
35:25
Speaker 1: in towards each other, the way like two black holes
35:27
Speaker 1: stirred each other in or two neutron stars. And these
35:30
Speaker 1: days we know that those things emit gravitational waves because
35:33
Speaker 1: we've seen the gravitational waves. But back then in the seventies,
35:36
Speaker 1: we couldn't see gravitational waves. But to see binary pulsars
35:40
Speaker 1: slowly moving towards each other was suggestive of the fact
35:44
Speaker 1: that they were emitting gravitational waves. So they made a
35:46
Speaker 1: really precise measurement of these binary pulsars showing that they
35:50
Speaker 1: were moving towards each other exactly as general relativity predicted,
35:54
Speaker 1: and that one the Nobel Prize. No kidding, like, back
35:58
Speaker 1: before we could even possibly even detect gravitational ways, we
36:01
Speaker 1: could prove that they existed. This was sort of indirect
36:04
Speaker 1: evidence that they existed because the energy had to be
36:06
Speaker 1: going somewhere. This showed that these two things were falling
36:08
Speaker 1: in towards each other and were likely emitting energy. They
36:11
Speaker 1: didn't detect the gravitational ways themselves, but it had to
36:14
Speaker 1: be going somewhere. So this was like really nice, solid
36:17
Speaker 1: but indirect proof of gravitational waves. And I saw actually
36:21
Speaker 1: talked by this guy. He was a grad student. He
36:23
Speaker 1: made this discovery and sort of nobody paid attention for
36:25
Speaker 1: a while, and he actually didn't get a faculty position anywhere.
36:28
Speaker 1: He was working like in computing in the physics department,
36:31
Speaker 1: and then boom, out of the blue, Nobel Prize and
36:34
Speaker 1: Princeton calls him up and they were like, so would
36:36
Speaker 1: you like one office or two offices? So you know,
36:39
Speaker 1: it sort of like a big change in fate for
36:41
Speaker 1: this one grad student to win the Nobel Prize based
36:44
Speaker 1: on his pH d thesis years later, Right, yeah, big change.
36:47
Speaker 1: He could have been a rich telecom executive by now,
36:49
Speaker 1: but now he's stuck in some office. Yeah. I don't
36:54
Speaker 1: think we need to feel any sympathy for it, all right, Well,
36:56
Speaker 1: it sounds like the receival telescope in Puerto Rico. It
36:59
Speaker 1: has had a pretty illustrious scientific career. It's like that
37:02
Speaker 1: the firs binary pulse are discovered ice poles and mercury
37:07
Speaker 1: and other planets, and detected the first ever planet outside
37:10
Speaker 1: of our Solar System. And it's done all these amazing things,
37:13
Speaker 1: but it's no longer in service right in fact, it
37:16
Speaker 1: is not. And one problem is that it's sort of
37:19
Speaker 1: old and it's been around for a long long time,
37:22
Speaker 1: and NSF has this sort of strategy to like make
37:25
Speaker 1: room for new, big projects. What they do often is
37:28
Speaker 1: sort of cut old projects, even if those old projects
37:31
Speaker 1: are still producing good science and everybody loves them and
37:33
Speaker 1: they're doing good things and they're even like promoting diversity
37:36
Speaker 1: and science. Still they're sort of like not as exciting
37:39
Speaker 1: as a new shining project. And so in the two thousands,
37:42
Speaker 1: NSF started to make budget cuts for Puerto Rico, delaying
37:45
Speaker 1: maintenance and support and this kind of stuff to make
37:48
Speaker 1: room for all their exciting new projects. So that started
37:51
Speaker 1: kind of in the two thousands, right in the two thousands,
37:53
Speaker 1: and then they really have to like stitch the money
37:55
Speaker 1: together that keeps the place running. And that's when they
37:57
Speaker 1: started to do these asteroid studies, which Congress said was
38:00
Speaker 1: really important. So now to give him a few million
38:02
Speaker 1: bucks a year to keep ARISI, we're running if they
38:04
Speaker 1: could like monitor for asteroids, but it was always sort
38:07
Speaker 1: of like you know, on a shoe string. And at
38:09
Speaker 1: the end there they were like relying on a lot
38:11
Speaker 1: of clever engineers because they didn't have a lot of money,
38:13
Speaker 1: and so every time something broke they had to like
38:15
Speaker 1: sort of rig something up mcgever style. They couldn't just
38:18
Speaker 1: like go buy something little duct tape, yeah, little superglue yeah.
38:23
Speaker 1: And when you get to that phase of an experiment,
38:25
Speaker 1: you sort of know that, like any big blow, it
38:27
Speaker 1: might be the death of your experiment because you just
38:29
Speaker 1: can't recover from it. And so it started to lose
38:32
Speaker 1: funding and started to not get maintained as well, which
38:35
Speaker 1: I guess needed not as useful. Then at the same time, right, yeah,
38:38
Speaker 1: people were still doing great science with it. They were
38:40
Speaker 1: able to keep this thing going and it was still
38:42
Speaker 1: collecting data. Like the dish itself was still in great shape. Really,
38:45
Speaker 1: the issue is this platform, right, this platform is a
38:48
Speaker 1: huge nine ton steerable thing hovering over the dish supported
38:53
Speaker 1: by cables, and that's a little precarious, and the instruments
38:57
Speaker 1: on it also need to be kept up and running.
38:59
Speaker 1: You need to be able to position it precisely and
39:01
Speaker 1: move it back and forth. And so that was really
39:03
Speaker 1: sort of the weakness the Achilles heel of aritebo. Yeah,
39:07
Speaker 1: and then something happened, unfortunately, and then something happened. You know,
39:10
Speaker 1: everybody was really worried during Hurricane Maria, of course for
39:14
Speaker 1: all the Puerto Ricans, but also for this dish, because
39:17
Speaker 1: like a huge hurricane seems like bad news when you've
39:20
Speaker 1: suspended a nine hundred ton object on cables above your dish,
39:24
Speaker 1: but it actually survived, like it passed through herricame Aria
39:27
Speaker 1: no problem. So that was like a huge sort of
39:29
Speaker 1: astronomical global sigh of relief. But a couple of years
39:33
Speaker 1: later and there was this long series of earthquakes in
39:35
Speaker 1: Puerto Rico, and those really damaged the supporting structures that
39:39
Speaker 1: held up those cables, and then one day things just
39:42
Speaker 1: kind of snapped. Things just kind of snapped. Exactly in
39:45
Speaker 1: August of twenty twenty, one of those cables failed because
39:49
Speaker 1: you know, the cables are getting old, and as the
39:51
Speaker 1: tower sort of leaning the wrong direction, the stresses get
39:53
Speaker 1: greater and greater, and so the first cable snapped and
39:56
Speaker 1: it left this like hundred foot gash in the dish
39:59
Speaker 1: and could still work. You know, the dish works by
40:02
Speaker 1: reflecting the light to the center. Doesn't really matter if
40:05
Speaker 1: you have like one scratch and it. It's sort of
40:06
Speaker 1: like if you're looking through a telescope. Somebody can put
40:09
Speaker 1: their hands sort of in front of the telescope and
40:10
Speaker 1: you might not even notice because you're gathering light from
40:13
Speaker 1: lots of different directions. So even though this one cable
40:16
Speaker 1: failed in in August, they thought, well, this isn't the
40:19
Speaker 1: death knell. And the NFF actually said all right, you
40:22
Speaker 1: guys can fix it. Here's some money to fix it.
40:24
Speaker 1: So people thought, oh, yeah, areco was gonna survive. Yeah,
40:27
Speaker 1: and so they fixed it. But then what happened, Well,
40:29
Speaker 1: they were planning to fix it and they were working
40:31
Speaker 1: on like organizing those repairs, and then in November of
40:34
Speaker 1: that year, a second cable broke and they thought, all right, well,
40:38
Speaker 1: this is it. We can't repair two cables. And so
40:41
Speaker 1: then it was November the NFF decided Air Cbo, thank
40:46
Speaker 1: you for all your contributions to science. We're done. They
40:49
Speaker 1: didn't think it was worth repairing anymore. Yeah, that was
40:52
Speaker 1: sort of goodbye to air ce Bo. And then just
40:54
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks later, these two remaining cables that
40:57
Speaker 1: were holding up this whole platform by themselves, they snapped
41:00
Speaker 1: and the whole platform fell into the dish, just like
41:04
Speaker 1: in Golden Eye, Just like in Golden Eye, and it
41:06
Speaker 1: shadowed the dish. And there's video of this, like because
41:09
Speaker 1: they have obviously cameras monitoring it, and so you can
41:12
Speaker 1: go online you can see this video. But I know
41:15
Speaker 1: that a lot of air Cebo scientists feel very emotional
41:17
Speaker 1: about that dish. You know, it's like generations span, Like
41:20
Speaker 1: you could have done your pH d there and then
41:22
Speaker 1: have your PhD students get their degrees on that dish.
41:25
Speaker 1: And people love that place, and so I know that
41:27
Speaker 1: a lot of folks who worked there refused to watch
41:29
Speaker 1: that video. It's like triggering for them. It's like a
41:32
Speaker 1: giant platform that just fell on the dish and through
41:35
Speaker 1: the dish kind of right, It's pretty catastrophic. Yeah, you'd
41:37
Speaker 1: have to rebuild the whole thing from scratch. The dishes destroyed,
41:40
Speaker 1: the platform is destroyed, cables are destroyed, like everything is
41:43
Speaker 1: just toast. It's it's just a huge mess. Just add
41:46
Speaker 1: that to the long list of terrible things that happened
41:48
Speaker 1: in exactly We're glad you're behind us, all right, but
41:52
Speaker 1: it has an amazing legacy behind it, and you know,
41:54
Speaker 1: thousands of papers and Masters thesis and PhD thesis and
41:58
Speaker 1: amazing discovery and so we are hats off to you.
42:01
Speaker 1: I receive what telescope. Absolutely thank you for all your
42:03
Speaker 1: contributions and for teaching us so much about the universe.
42:07
Speaker 1: And it's not the end for radio astronomy, maybe not
42:10
Speaker 1: even the end for radio astronomy in the United States.
42:12
Speaker 1: People are out there proposing sort of like the next
42:15
Speaker 1: generation ARISBO, a bigger, better telescope that would be even
42:19
Speaker 1: larger dish and could teach us even more because it
42:21
Speaker 1: could capture signals that come from even further away and
42:24
Speaker 1: so they're even fainter when they get here. Yeah, they're
42:27
Speaker 1: proposing a bigger dishes, right, like half a billion dollar dishes, Yes,
42:31
Speaker 1: half a billion dollar dishes. And who knows, you know,
42:33
Speaker 1: if we can spend billions of dollars on this, and
42:35
Speaker 1: maybe we can also spend billions of dollars looking at
42:38
Speaker 1: the sky and listening for messages. Just film the next
42:40
Speaker 1: Avengers movie on your experiment, and that will pay for itself.
42:44
Speaker 1: Probably that's true. What would you rather have one more
42:46
Speaker 1: Avengers movie or a huge radio telescope? Don't answer, that
42:53
Speaker 1: depends what if you can get like King Kong in
42:55
Speaker 1: there too versus the Adventures. Yeah, if that would fund it,
43:00
Speaker 1: that's what they should do. They should write a script
43:02
Speaker 1: that requires the construction of a huge scientific device just
43:06
Speaker 1: as a prop for the movie, and then afterwards they
43:09
Speaker 1: could actually use it. Yeah, get Dan Brown to write
43:11
Speaker 1: dad feature the Avengers, King Kong and Godzilla, and make
43:16
Speaker 1: sure it has Matthew McConaughey on it, and you're all set.
43:20
Speaker 1: This is our new plan for funding science, for saving science.
43:23
Speaker 1: All right, Well, thank you to all the scientists I
43:26
Speaker 1: worked on Arasibo and who made that happen. We really
43:28
Speaker 1: appreciate it and we hope you enjoyed this episode. Thanks
43:31
Speaker 1: for joining us, See you next time. Thanks for listening,
43:42
Speaker 1: and remember that Daniel and Jorge explained. The Universe is
43:45
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcast for
43:49
Speaker 1: my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
43:52
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. No