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CMEs Generating Excitement and Complications · Made of Stars

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Speaker 1: Warning. The following podcast contains an entertaining look at astronomy, physics,
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Speaker 1: and space news throughout the known universe. Listeners have been
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Speaker 1: known to learn about astronomical phenomenon, the scientific method, and
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Speaker 1: expanded vocabulary to include terms like quasar, asterism and uranus. Listen,
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Speaker 1: that's your own risk. Go ahead.
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Speaker 2: When made of stars, made them stars, made sizes. When
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Speaker 2: made of stars, you could be from high they would
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Speaker 2: New Mexicomus, where all stars?
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Speaker 3: When we are made of stars.
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Speaker 4: I'm West Carol, joined by my good friend doctor Sean
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Speaker 4: Crusen from Lama State Universities, Coca Cola Space Science Center.
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Speaker 5: Hay Sean, good morning, Wes. How are you doing today?
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Speaker 4: A little disappointed after being really surprised and excited two
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Speaker 4: nights ago, and then last night some disappointment, but there's
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Speaker 4: some hope for tonight as we record the show on Thursday,
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Speaker 4: which is typically what we do. I mean, it's so
1:25
Speaker 4: strange that in a span of what like nineteen months,
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Speaker 4: we've had now Aurora borealis visible from my front yard
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Speaker 4: three times. The only thing I can equate this to
1:40
Speaker 4: when I was trying to kind of say this, it
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Speaker 4: started with a conversation with Luke, my thirteen year old,
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Speaker 4: who's gotten really into this. He's a weather nut to
1:48
Speaker 4: begin with, doesn't surprise me, and both of my kids
1:51
Speaker 4: are math nuts. Doesn't surprise me at all that they
1:56
Speaker 4: would that he specifically would get very excited about space
2:00
Speaker 4: weather and he has really been.
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Speaker 3: There was a point with all of this.
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Speaker 4: You taught me the things to look for for the
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Speaker 4: possibility of seeing Aurora in our area the first time
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Speaker 4: that this happened, and I kind of explained some of
2:15
Speaker 4: that to him, and then last night he was breaking
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Speaker 4: down some of that. He's like, well, the density's off,
2:19
Speaker 4: we need the density to be and I was like, Okay,
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Speaker 4: he now knows more about this than I do. He's
2:25
Speaker 4: got a better understanding of what's going on. But I
2:28
Speaker 4: was just kind of saying to him, this is a
2:30
Speaker 4: pretty neat thing in that in the summer we were
2:35
Speaker 4: snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef and then now we've seen
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Speaker 4: Aurora from our home this year. So it's twice in
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Speaker 4: one year that we've been able to observe, you know,
2:45
Speaker 4: two of the natural wonders of the world. That's pretty neat.
2:48
Speaker 4: I mean, we got to see it last calendar year.
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Speaker 4: But now we've seen both of these things in the
2:52
Speaker 4: same calendar year, which is kind of cool. But anyway,
2:56
Speaker 4: it's kind of the equivalent of you just walk outside
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Speaker 4: and the Grand Canyon just shows up in your front yard.
3:01
Speaker 3: I mean, when you're not.
3:02
Speaker 4: Used to seeing this, it's like, wait a minute, what
3:05
Speaker 4: is it doing there. It's not supposed to be the
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Speaker 4: harbor in Rio is not supposed to be in my
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Speaker 4: front yard.
3:11
Speaker 3: How did this happen? So here we go again.
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Speaker 4: We had this cool moment where you know, the sun
3:19
Speaker 4: starts doing weird things. The conditions were just right, and
3:23
Speaker 4: I walked outside. You had sent me a text saying
3:25
Speaker 4: that it was possible, and it's been possible several times.
3:29
Speaker 4: But anyway, I went outside the other night and I said,
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Speaker 4: wait a minute, the sky's pink.
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Speaker 3: What's going on?
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Speaker 4: Here we go and I sent you some photos that
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Speaker 4: I had taken and what I didn't and it was
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Speaker 4: kind of late. When I didn't hear back from you.
3:44
Speaker 4: I assumed maybe you were asleep, and I thought, well,
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Speaker 4: we're not heading to Shawn's house tonight. As I was
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Speaker 4: thinking it, Luke said, are we going to Shawn's house again?
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Speaker 4: So that's where we were. But anyway, it was kind
3:54
Speaker 4: of cool, and it was great to see the photos
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Speaker 4: and nice to see that it was another cool moment
3:59
Speaker 4: for a really almost nationwide.
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Speaker 5: Let me tell you the most exciting thing about the story,
4:05
Speaker 5: and then the most disappointing thing about the story. Here's
4:08
Speaker 5: the most exciting thing about the story that you, my
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Speaker 5: friend and your awesome family, and so many other of
4:18
Speaker 5: my friends and some of my relatives in Colorado and
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Speaker 5: people all across the United States got to see this phenomenon.
4:26
Speaker 5: And when you text me, you text me something to
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Speaker 5: the effect of it's like having one of the natural
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Speaker 5: wonders of the world just wander into your front yard.
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Speaker 5: It's just made me laugh, right because it's it's but
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Speaker 5: it's actually true. There's a very good friend of ours
4:40
Speaker 5: who I can tell y'all, you know off air that
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Speaker 5: I've been talking too lately about actually trying to plan
4:45
Speaker 5: and schedule a trip to go somewhere to see the
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Speaker 5: northern lights. And then you know, within something less than
4:52
Speaker 5: a week, they show up in our own town in
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Speaker 5: a pretty good display, like I mean, a non marginal
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Speaker 5: display northern lights here in the southwest west central part
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Speaker 5: of Georgia. I mean, it's just unbelievable, all right. So
5:09
Speaker 5: that's the most exciting thing for me. Now, the most
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Speaker 5: disappointing thing is that I was hard out.
5:16
Speaker 4: I was disappointed for you, and when you sent me
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Speaker 4: a text the next morning, I, oh, no, you missed
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Speaker 4: it completely. However, why saw that KP index around seven,
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Speaker 4: which should have told me there was gonna be northern lights?
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Speaker 4: I saw that indicator, the KP index.
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Speaker 5: Go to spaceweatherlive dot com, folks if you want to
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Speaker 5: know more about that KP index was at seven, and
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Speaker 5: I still fell asleep on the couch and then just
5:40
Speaker 5: woke up enough to get myself into bed. It had
5:43
Speaker 5: just been one of those days, one of those weeks,
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Speaker 5: and so yeah, I woke up to everyone else's pictures
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Speaker 5: of the aurora phenomenon the next day. So slacker me,
5:53
Speaker 5: I missed it. Good on y'all, y'all saw it. That
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Speaker 5: was great.
5:57
Speaker 4: Well, I was disappointed for you. I suspected that was
6:01
Speaker 4: what was going I thought one of two things. When
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Speaker 4: you didn't respond, you were either actively out observing or
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Speaker 4: you were asleep. And I figured at some point, if
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Speaker 4: you were actively out observing, you would be taking photos,
6:15
Speaker 4: probably with your phone. That's the best way to see
6:17
Speaker 4: them and really appreciate them. And then I had friends
6:21
Speaker 4: who were trying to see them and they're like, I
6:23
Speaker 4: don't know, this guy's a little bit.
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Speaker 3: Pink, and I'm like, that's it.
6:25
Speaker 4: Take a photo of it and see exactly how pink
6:28
Speaker 4: or purple it is, because there's a lot going on
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Speaker 4: up there that you're not seeing with your eyes. So
6:34
Speaker 4: what's happened is we've had these CMEs, We've had this
6:39
Speaker 4: activity on the sun that has showered us with radiation.
6:44
Speaker 3: We were soaking up out there.
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Speaker 5: Which we were just ecstatic about it. I know, it's
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Speaker 5: real bathed some solar radiation. You know, that's all good.
6:52
Speaker 5: It's good for the skin. I think it's like.
6:54
Speaker 4: Going to the dentist and they say, here, let's put
6:57
Speaker 4: this vest on you so we can take some pictures
6:59
Speaker 4: of your tea, some X rays of your teeth, and
7:01
Speaker 4: you go just hang on to the vest.
7:03
Speaker 5: I'm good.
7:04
Speaker 3: Just let me soak it all in. I want to
7:06
Speaker 3: really breathe it in. I mean, it's a little different
7:10
Speaker 3: than that, but I mean we're.
7:11
Speaker 5: Gonna cover your vital organs and shoot radiation at your head.
7:14
Speaker 4: If you don't mind, that's fine, blast it directly into
7:17
Speaker 4: your mouth. So this happened, and it was there were
7:22
Speaker 4: conditions that looked favorable yesterday had people excited again. And
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Speaker 4: I mean this tends to be the way I think
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Speaker 4: with most space events. It's like it happens, people go
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Speaker 4: oh my gosh, that happened. I missed it, and then
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Speaker 4: they go, well, it might happen today, and then it doesn't,
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Speaker 4: and then you go, oh, man, well this stinks.
7:38
Speaker 5: I'm gonna go kick a rock.
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Speaker 4: And I think that happens often with you know, with
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Speaker 4: rocket launches or an eclipse when it's really cloudy, and
7:45
Speaker 4: it's just like warrant, warrant, warrant, which, by the way,
7:48
Speaker 4: when you sent me that text, that's exactly the way
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Speaker 4: I read it. So there's a chance tonight if you're
7:54
Speaker 4: listening on Thursday as we record, as the show drops,
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Speaker 4: it still happen again tonight.
8:01
Speaker 3: So be ready charge.
8:03
Speaker 5: Let's talk about this like a news story first of all,
8:05
Speaker 5: and just say this. There's something very important to share
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Speaker 5: about the event of November eleventh. It's the geomagnetic event.
8:13
Speaker 5: Auroras were visible in all fifty of the US states,
8:18
Speaker 5: that means Hawaii saw northern lights, so you could see
8:25
Speaker 5: the southern cross from Hawaii. Just to put things in perspective,
8:29
Speaker 5: I guess you can from Key West, Florida too, but
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Speaker 5: just barely so. All right. Auroras were reported on that
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Speaker 5: same evening to spaceweather dot com in Newport Richie, Florida,
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Speaker 5: latitude twenty eight, Tucson, Arizona, latitude thirty two. We would
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Speaker 5: consider both of those south Our latitude is almost the
8:51
Speaker 5: same as Tucson here in Columbus, Georgia. And then but
8:56
Speaker 5: also USU Latin El Salvador with the latitude of thirteen
9:01
Speaker 5: degrees a mire thirteen degrees off the equator of the Earth,
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Speaker 5: and they were photographing the aurora that occurred on the
9:11
Speaker 5: night of November eleventh. Now, why did such a thing happen, Well,
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Speaker 5: it's because there was something called a cannibal CMEME. We've
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Speaker 5: talked about these before, something akin to that two CMEs.
9:26
Speaker 5: Back at what's a cmeme, a coronal mass ejection. So
9:30
Speaker 5: it goes like this, a giant eruption happens on the Sun.
9:34
Speaker 5: We call that a solar flare. And with the large
9:38
Speaker 5: majority of those events, they can kick out bursts of
9:41
Speaker 5: radiation off the Sun's surface out into the Solar system.
9:46
Speaker 5: We call that a coronal mass ejection. The masses radioactive particles,
9:51
Speaker 5: they can be generally the size of Mount Everest in
9:55
Speaker 5: terms of the amount of mass that's blasted out from
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Speaker 5: the Sun. Then that radiation goes raying out through the
10:00
Speaker 5: Solar system. Well, these very two close together CMEs were
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Speaker 5: shot directly at the Earth by an angry sun spot
10:10
Speaker 5: on the Sun a few days ago. And and so
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Speaker 5: then one was traveling a little faster than the other,
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Speaker 5: and that was the second one. So the second one
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Speaker 5: kind of caught up to the first one, and they
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Speaker 5: arrived almost in tandem here at the Earth on the
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Speaker 5: night of November eleventh, which is what triggered this intense,
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Speaker 5: nearly global observation of northern lights, which is really really cool.
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Speaker 5: So you know, strong internal magnetic fields and shock waves
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Speaker 5: capable of sparking intense geomagnet magnetic activity. That's that's what
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Speaker 5: these cms were, or the cannibal cmmes, the stacked up CMEs.
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Speaker 5: All right, So as Wes just alluded to, we all
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Speaker 5: went out the next night because the the shall we
10:56
Speaker 5: call in the reporting authorities spaceweather dot com, Space Weather,
11:00
Speaker 5: and other popular space whether monitoring websites. We're telling us, hey,
11:05
Speaker 5: it could really happen again tonight because there's a third
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Speaker 5: CMME on its way in. So we all went out
11:10
Speaker 5: again last night, which was the twelfth, and we didn't
11:13
Speaker 5: see anything. And that included me, by the way, Wes,
11:15
Speaker 5: I was not asleep on the couch last night. I
11:17
Speaker 5: did go out and look a couple of different times
11:20
Speaker 5: you and I were texting KP indices back and forth
11:23
Speaker 5: to each other. It just wasn't quite the same, right, Okay.
11:26
Speaker 5: But the headline from spaceweather dot com again today again
11:30
Speaker 5: this morning, more geomagnetic storms are likely today today being
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Speaker 5: the day we're recording the show, November thirteenth, twenty twenty five.
11:40
Speaker 5: Earth magnetic field is still reverberating from those three potent
11:45
Speaker 5: coronal mass ejection strikes in the past forty eight hours.
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Speaker 5: According to spaceweather dot com, this is causing geomagnetic storms
11:52
Speaker 5: and widespread aurars right now as we speak. But it's
11:55
Speaker 5: daytime here in the US as we're recording. Currently, the
11:58
Speaker 5: storm levels are bouncing betwe between category G one, which
12:02
Speaker 5: is a minor storm all the way up to G three,
12:05
Speaker 5: which is a strong storm. As the solar wind blows Earth,
12:08
Speaker 5: blows around Earth faster than nine hundred kilometers per second.
12:11
Speaker 5: You don't have a reference for that, but that's about
12:13
Speaker 5: three times faster than normal. Okay. So NOAA forecasters are
12:19
Speaker 5: saying that there is a lingering chance of a severe
12:24
Speaker 5: G four class geomagnetic storm on November thirteenth, that's today.
12:31
Speaker 5: This according to spaceweather dot com. That's the magnitude of
12:34
Speaker 5: storm that occurred two days ago on the eleventh that
12:37
Speaker 5: caused that nearly global set of Aurora phenomenon. So you're
12:42
Speaker 5: saying there's a chance, lies, damn lies, and statistics, there's
12:48
Speaker 5: some statistical possibility of a G four class geomagnetic storm
12:53
Speaker 5: lingering into the evening hours here in the continental United States,
12:56
Speaker 5: where we could potentially see northern lights. Where a third night.
13:00
Speaker 5: By the way, even though we didn't see them here
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Speaker 5: last night, my niece back out in Colorado, she did
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Speaker 5: send me more pictures, so they did see them at
13:09
Speaker 5: a little bit more northern latitudes than us last night
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Speaker 5: as well. This could be a third night in a
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Speaker 5: row of Aurora phenomenon taking place.
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Speaker 4: I have a friend in Montana and he absolutely saw
13:20
Speaker 4: them up there as well, So that just shows it's
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Speaker 4: all about you got to be at the right place
13:26
Speaker 4: at the right time. And you know, one of the
13:30
Speaker 4: differences this time and the you know, the last two instances,
13:34
Speaker 4: one was in October, one was in May, and like
13:38
Speaker 4: five months apart or.
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Speaker 3: Whatever, it was exactly to the day.
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Speaker 4: And this time, because it's in you know, November, we've
13:47
Speaker 4: had the time change.
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Speaker 3: It's darker sooner.
13:49
Speaker 4: So the opportunity to get out and check them out
13:52
Speaker 4: a little bit earlier in the night is also an
13:54
Speaker 4: advantage to it. So keep that in mind if you're
13:57
Speaker 4: thinking about checking out the sky tonight.
13:59
Speaker 5: That's a really good point west. And I think that
14:01
Speaker 5: kind of gets forgotten by those of us living in
14:04
Speaker 5: southerly latitudes trying to see northern lights, because it's not
14:09
Speaker 5: just the latitude, it's also the longitude that you live
14:12
Speaker 5: on right your part of Earth has to be faced
14:16
Speaker 5: toward the dark part of the sky when the particle
14:19
Speaker 5: wave arrives. So even though you might be quote unquote
14:24
Speaker 5: far enough south, I'm sorry, far enough north to see it.
14:28
Speaker 5: Even if you're in southerly latitudes. You could still be
14:30
Speaker 5: far enough north to see it, like we all were
14:32
Speaker 5: on the eleventh, but we just weren't on the right
14:35
Speaker 5: line of longitude when the wave arrived. The wave arrived
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Speaker 5: a little bit later than what was convenient for us
14:42
Speaker 5: to observe here in Georgia, and a lot of longitude
14:45
Speaker 5: was a little bit more westerly. People in the western
14:47
Speaker 5: United States had a little bit better shot at it.
14:49
Speaker 5: So that's kind of what we're in the midst of
14:51
Speaker 5: right now. We know that there is a potential for
14:54
Speaker 5: enhanced geomagnetic activity today on the thirteenth, we just don't
14:59
Speaker 5: know if we're at the right place longitude line where
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Speaker 5: we'll actually be dark when that wave arrives and causes
15:05
Speaker 5: the geomagnetic disruption. So keep an eye on the sky, friends,
15:09
Speaker 5: but also keep an eye on spaceweather dot com. Another
15:12
Speaker 5: great site is spaceweather live dot com. Space weatherlive dot
15:16
Speaker 5: com is a data site. You have to take a
15:18
Speaker 5: little bit of time getting used to the data. The
15:21
Speaker 5: first thing to look at is that kind of speedometer
15:23
Speaker 5: like plot right at the top of space weather Live.
15:25
Speaker 5: That is the KP index. If it's green, you're not seen.
15:30
Speaker 5: If it's orange, maybe there's a shot. If it's red,
15:34
Speaker 5: go outside right then and just swim in that solar
15:38
Speaker 5: radiation coming into the earth.
15:39
Speaker 4: And I just quickly, just one last thing. And this
15:42
Speaker 4: may seem obvious to people who took part in this
15:44
Speaker 4: the last three times. Now you know, if you are
15:49
Speaker 4: near a bunch of light, you may not get an
15:51
Speaker 4: opportunity to see it. You want to kind of be
15:52
Speaker 4: away from any of that light pollution so you got
15:55
Speaker 4: a better chance of seeing things. You and I have
15:58
Speaker 4: a mutual friend who I sent him a text the
16:00
Speaker 4: other night and I said, now go outside, look to
16:03
Speaker 4: the north, and you.
16:04
Speaker 3: Know, take a picture.
16:05
Speaker 4: And he basically took a picture of a street light
16:08
Speaker 4: and he's like, I don't see anything.
16:09
Speaker 3: And I was like, never mind, never mind.
16:11
Speaker 4: I was trying to tell him, no, you don't want
16:13
Speaker 4: to be near the street light, and you want to
16:15
Speaker 4: be where it's as dark as the sky that you
16:17
Speaker 4: can see even if you're just not facing the street light.
16:20
Speaker 4: But I give him credit, he knew the street light
16:22
Speaker 4: was to the north.
16:23
Speaker 3: I guess.
16:23
Speaker 5: I mean, that's a little bit different kind of electromagnetic
16:26
Speaker 5: fluorescence was observing there. But yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, probably listen. Friends.
16:32
Speaker 5: If you're a city dweller, you automatically have a disadvantage
16:35
Speaker 5: to seeing cool things in the sky. It's one of
16:37
Speaker 5: the reasons I personally live rural. I live out of town.
16:42
Speaker 5: I bought this house intentionally with not many lights around
16:46
Speaker 5: it so that I can see sky phenomenon. So there
16:48
Speaker 5: you go, get out of town once in a while.
16:50
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18:19
Speaker 4: after this, Well, on the subject of disadvantages, Blue Origin
18:46
Speaker 4: wants to launch, but I don't know. There's a CME
18:49
Speaker 4: that's spraying radiation on the planet right about when they
18:53
Speaker 4: want to do this potentially, So what's the status on
18:57
Speaker 4: this Blue Origin escapade? They're launching an escapade into space?
19:01
Speaker 4: What does this this?
19:02
Speaker 5: It's an escapade in space, that's exactly what it is.
19:05
Speaker 5: So some Blue Origins had been having a bit of
19:08
Speaker 5: an escapade. They've been trying to launch this rocket for
19:10
Speaker 5: several days, and due to that weird cold snap that
19:15
Speaker 5: came through the southeastern United States there in the last
19:17
Speaker 5: few days, cast some strange weather down in Florida, and
19:20
Speaker 5: it cost them the ability to launch their launch vehicle,
19:23
Speaker 5: which is called the New Glen Rocket. Why is Blue
19:26
Speaker 5: Origin launching a New Glen Rocket. Well, you see, there's
19:29
Speaker 5: a bit of an escapade on and that's the NASA
19:32
Speaker 5: Escapade mission. Escapade being yet again a fantastic acronym stands
19:37
Speaker 5: for escape and plasma acceleration dynamics. Explorers plural, not explorer
19:44
Speaker 5: one singular, Explorers two plural. There are two of these
19:50
Speaker 5: Mars bound space probes ready to go to space aboard
19:55
Speaker 5: that New Glen rocket in that giant firing that's twenty
20:00
Speaker 5: three feet across the New Glenn fairing holding both of
20:04
Speaker 5: these spacecraft, plus a demonstration flight from a company called Viasat,
20:08
Speaker 5: which is headquartered in Atlanta, actually provides telecommunication services from
20:13
Speaker 5: space as well. So that giant New Glen rocket, which
20:17
Speaker 5: is nearly the size of a Saturn five rocket that
20:20
Speaker 5: took human beings to the Moon back of the nineteen sixties.
20:23
Speaker 5: It's a really big heavy lift rocket is waiting to
20:27
Speaker 5: go potentially today as we're recording the show November thirteenth,
20:31
Speaker 5: it'll be in the afternoon. We're recording here in the morning,
20:33
Speaker 5: but they have a watch on because of solar activity. Yes,
20:39
Speaker 5: the very same solar activity we were just discussing in
20:42
Speaker 5: the previous two stories. It could be causing a problem
20:46
Speaker 5: for the launch of the new Glen rocket because the
20:48
Speaker 5: potential exists for severe geomagnetic storms and in geomagnetic storm levels.
20:54
Speaker 5: Once again, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issuing an
20:58
Speaker 5: extended warning for ready proton ten mega electron volt integral
21:04
Speaker 5: flux above the ten particle flux units, or as they
21:12
Speaker 5: say it, proton ten MeV integral flux above TENPFU. I
21:18
Speaker 5: try to not say PFU whenever I can. It can
21:21
Speaker 5: be misinterpreted. So this type of so called solar proton
21:27
Speaker 5: event or SPE for short, can be harmful to spacecraft electronics,
21:31
Speaker 5: so says spaceflightnow dot Com, quoting the National Oceanic and
21:35
Speaker 5: Atmospheric Administration, which is watching the situation closely as they
21:42
Speaker 5: go through their launch protocols about deciding whether or not
21:45
Speaker 5: to launch a couple of Mars explorers. If the Escapade
21:49
Speaker 5: mission actually gets off the ground today, it will be
21:51
Speaker 5: heading to Mars to do its mission around there, which
21:54
Speaker 5: is studying the magnet and magnetosphere of Mars to learn
21:57
Speaker 5: more about how it's been influenced by space weather as
22:00
Speaker 5: it turns out, over time, about these very kinds of
22:03
Speaker 5: events that the rocket might get held up for. These
22:06
Speaker 5: two vehicles are called the Escapade probes are going to
22:10
Speaker 5: go study the geomagnetic field of Mars. I guess it's
22:13
Speaker 5: not geomagnet it's Marso magnetic field, the Marso magnetic field
22:18
Speaker 5: of the planet Mars, to see how it may have
22:20
Speaker 5: been affected over time by the very kinds of violent
22:23
Speaker 5: solar storms that we've been discussing on the show today.
22:25
Speaker 5: Pretty cool stuff, all tied up neatly together in a
22:28
Speaker 5: big bow.
22:30
Speaker 4: All right, So CMEs, obviously for us big part of
22:35
Speaker 4: what we've been talking about so far. Today, Let's talk
22:38
Speaker 4: about a different CME, a first of its kind, a
22:44
Speaker 4: CME from another star that's not ours. First time that
22:48
Speaker 4: this has been observed.
22:48
Speaker 5: Ever, every time we've discussed a CME on this show,
22:53
Speaker 5: probably probably to my recollection at least, we've been talking
22:57
Speaker 5: about chronal mass injection events off our own star, the Sun.
23:03
Speaker 5: It's it's it's actually named the Sun. It's like we
23:08
Speaker 5: looked up and said Moon. Now we call it the moon.
23:12
Speaker 5: We call other moons. We have names for other moons,
23:14
Speaker 5: like Callisto is just called moon.
23:17
Speaker 4: Why didn't we just call it the star? And then
23:20
Speaker 4: the others are stars, Like I don't I didn't understand
23:23
Speaker 4: that one. But anyway, I like Sun.
23:24
Speaker 5: It's not have we had this subtle, you know, like
23:26
Speaker 5: distinction between those things. It's all about It's all about
23:30
Speaker 5: nuance anyway. So all right, so let me get off
23:33
Speaker 5: that topic. So the for the first time, a coronal
23:38
Speaker 5: mass ejection, a verified coronal mass ejection, has been observed
23:42
Speaker 5: taking place on another star that not named the Sun,
23:49
Speaker 5: name something else anyway. So there's a a red dwarf star.
23:53
Speaker 5: It was being studied by the European Space Agency a
23:56
Speaker 5: space craft called the x MM Newton, and this is
24:00
Speaker 5: a spacecraft designed to study strong X ray events as
24:06
Speaker 5: they occur in other parts of the visible universe from Earth.
24:10
Speaker 5: So astronomers using the x MM Newton's spacecraft have seen
24:14
Speaker 5: a powerful explosion of plasma erupting from a distant star
24:18
Speaker 5: for the first time, so says space dot com, where
24:22
Speaker 5: we took this article from. Now, the interesting thing is
24:25
Speaker 5: this that this the flux we were talking about. You
24:30
Speaker 5: know how your son is getting more and more into
24:33
Speaker 5: space weather and how he knows things like, hey, we
24:36
Speaker 5: need to look at the particle density because that's you know,
24:39
Speaker 5: that's going to be a thing we have to monitor
24:41
Speaker 5: to make sure we know. I think this is an
24:43
Speaker 5: off air conversation that Wes and I were having, but
24:46
Speaker 5: that's exactly what these astronomers were looking at. As they
24:49
Speaker 5: looked at this CME around another star, it had a
24:52
Speaker 5: incredibly high particle density, so it was also moving quite fast.
24:59
Speaker 5: The ejectivem material was traveling at five point four million
25:03
Speaker 5: miles per hour, which is considerably faster THANMES, the CMEs
25:11
Speaker 5: that we were talking about earlier in this show coming
25:13
Speaker 5: off the Sun. It's also around thirty five hundred times
25:16
Speaker 5: faster than a an F sixteen fighter jet according to
25:20
Speaker 5: the story from space dot com as well, and that's
25:23
Speaker 5: only observed about once in every two thousand coronal mass
25:27
Speaker 5: ejections from our Sun, so it is not your average
25:30
Speaker 5: coronal mass ejection, at least compared to those happening around
25:35
Speaker 5: our parent star. Now see here's the bad thing. The
25:38
Speaker 5: bad thing is for any planets that might be in
25:41
Speaker 5: the Goldilock zone around that star, that exostar we would
25:45
Speaker 5: call those exoplanets or extrasolar planets. If there had been
25:50
Speaker 5: a planet in the Goldilock zone that had the potential
25:53
Speaker 5: to have an atmosphere that could be supporting life, that
25:56
Speaker 5: kind of a CME would strip that atmosphere right off
26:01
Speaker 5: that orbiting planet, or a significant portion thereof, and therefore
26:05
Speaker 5: it would make it very difficult for any Earth like
26:09
Speaker 5: planets around that exo star or extrasolar star. It would
26:15
Speaker 5: be very difficult for any of those planets to support
26:18
Speaker 5: life because they couldn't support an atmosphere because they're nearby
26:22
Speaker 5: to a star that's doing some really violent and aggressive
26:24
Speaker 5: things and making it very unhospitable in that particular part
26:29
Speaker 5: of that alien solar system.
26:31
Speaker 4: So the age of the star is having an effect
26:35
Speaker 4: on the speed I mean, is that a possibility of
26:37
Speaker 4: why it was moving so fast. We don't have to
26:40
Speaker 4: worry about it here, or should we be worried that,
26:43
Speaker 4: oh my gosh, this thing we could have one of
26:45
Speaker 4: these tear off of our sun right at us.
26:48
Speaker 5: Certainly, the red dwarf star could has the potential being
26:52
Speaker 5: significantly older than our Sun. That's just because red dwarf
26:55
Speaker 5: stars live a lot longer than stars like our set
27:00
Speaker 5: un tends to live a pretty long time anyway. But
27:02
Speaker 5: the other thing is that these red dwarf stars can
27:04
Speaker 5: often have larger interactions between their own magnetic field and
27:10
Speaker 5: their own surface, which they call the photosphere. They can
27:14
Speaker 5: have bigger sunspot groups, meaning bigger flares our Sun. One
27:19
Speaker 5: of the many things that makes it nice for life
27:22
Speaker 5: here on Earth is that we have a star that
27:25
Speaker 5: tends to act a little bit more stably. It does
27:29
Speaker 5: not tend to have these mega sunspot groups that are
27:34
Speaker 5: capable of super powerful solar flares. Now, we have had
27:40
Speaker 5: a few mass extinction events in the history of our planet.
27:44
Speaker 5: We don't know what the cause of all of those
27:46
Speaker 5: events were. It's not entirely out of the question that
27:50
Speaker 5: our Sun could have produced a few megaflares in its
27:54
Speaker 5: past that had a significant impact on life. It's one
27:57
Speaker 5: of the things we like to try to study in
27:59
Speaker 5: the kind of fornsic record of the Earth, the Earth's
28:03
Speaker 5: atmosphere and the Earth's fossils, right, So those are things
28:06
Speaker 5: that people do look at trying to decide if the
28:10
Speaker 5: Sun was the culprit behind any of the mass extinction
28:13
Speaker 5: events that have happened on Earth in the past, But
28:16
Speaker 5: certainly our Sun is a much more stable star than
28:19
Speaker 5: what we're seeing from this little red dwarf star in
28:23
Speaker 5: the nearby part of our galaxy, which just made a
28:25
Speaker 5: mess of things for its inner part of the Solar system.
28:29
Speaker 5: So yes, first chural mass ejection from an alien star. No,
28:33
Speaker 5: not good for life around that particular star. Let's move
28:36
Speaker 5: on and look somewhere else for signals from aliens.
28:39
Speaker 4: Well, the holidays are fast approaching, and we all have
28:42
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Speaker 4: for fifteen percent off. More made of Stars right after this. Okay,
30:48
Speaker 4: so we've been tracking the three Iye Atlas comet and
30:53
Speaker 4: we know the story the legend now of three i
30:57
Speaker 4: Atlas as it was it was an interstellar comment that
31:01
Speaker 4: had come into our solar system, and then suddenly it
31:05
Speaker 4: was is it a comet? And that's just sort of
31:09
Speaker 4: the way that the legend of this thing started to grow,
31:12
Speaker 4: and it became, well, let's keep an eye on it
31:14
Speaker 4: and see if it starts doing any strange things. And
31:17
Speaker 4: it did sort of do some strange things. We address
31:21
Speaker 4: this on Made of Stars Live when we did our
31:23
Speaker 4: show at Columbus State University's Coca Cola Space Science Center
31:27
Speaker 4: back on November first, we talked a little bit about it.
31:30
Speaker 4: We don't talk about aliens lightly. Whenever we have alien discussions.
31:36
Speaker 4: We try to keep it in the realm of science,
31:39
Speaker 4: at least you do. You're the scientist. You know that's
31:42
Speaker 4: I get to make jokes if I want to. I mean,
31:45
Speaker 4: you get to make jokes too, but you know, you're
31:47
Speaker 4: trying to keep it serious as much as you can.
31:49
Speaker 5: And I do too.
31:50
Speaker 4: And then we had you know, Avi Lobe, who is
31:53
Speaker 4: someone who has really sort of become the face of
31:57
Speaker 4: the maybe it's an alien story and he is still
32:04
Speaker 4: kind of trying to keep the possibility of it there
32:07
Speaker 4: even though the comic is is it starting to.
32:10
Speaker 5: Act more like a comet. Now, yeah, so well, maybe
32:14
Speaker 5: a thing to say is it never really quit acting
32:17
Speaker 5: like a comet, but.
32:19
Speaker 3: It was doing some things that were not typical of comments.
32:22
Speaker 5: It really was and so so again Wes said the
32:26
Speaker 5: right thing. Go back and listen to last week's show,
32:28
Speaker 5: and now listen. You know, I don't like to go
32:31
Speaker 5: too deeply into the realm of shameless self promotion, but
32:35
Speaker 5: I will just say last show's Last week's show was great.
32:39
Speaker 5: It was really good. We had a fun time. We
32:42
Speaker 5: had a studio audience. They a live group actually listening
32:46
Speaker 5: to Wes and I do what we do here, and
32:48
Speaker 5: they had a good time. So if you missed it,
32:50
Speaker 5: I'm really sorry you missed it, because it was pretty fun.
32:52
Speaker 5: We had a great night together, and the content of
32:55
Speaker 5: the show. I went back and listened to it. It's
32:58
Speaker 5: pretty good. It's okay. You know again, I'm not trying
33:02
Speaker 5: to I'm trying to break my arm patting myself on
33:04
Speaker 5: the back. But we had a fun time West And
33:07
Speaker 5: one of the things we did is we talked a
33:08
Speaker 5: lot about this commet.
33:10
Speaker 4: And some of the things that it was doing then
33:13
Speaker 4: or potentially doing the things that science wanted to keep
33:17
Speaker 4: an eye out for. What I didn't understand is I
33:20
Speaker 4: saw some of the images of it and it looks
33:23
Speaker 4: like a comet.
33:24
Speaker 5: I didn't understand.
33:26
Speaker 4: I mean, it would be one thing if it you know,
33:28
Speaker 4: if there was you know, like a windscreen on it
33:31
Speaker 4: or you know something where you go, oh, wall, there's
33:33
Speaker 4: there might be people or things in there. And it
33:37
Speaker 4: just looked like a rock the images that we got
33:40
Speaker 4: back from it to begin with. So that was my
33:42
Speaker 4: first suspicion that that would be an odd shape and
33:45
Speaker 4: design for any sort of an alien craft, unless it
33:49
Speaker 4: was you know, camouflage and they were trying to hide
33:52
Speaker 4: inside that thing. Anyways, in the dark paths you can
33:55
Speaker 4: go down, I know, you can go this.
33:57
Speaker 5: Well, they designed it to look like so if of
34:00
Speaker 5: course it's going to actress like a commet, it's going
34:02
Speaker 5: to quack like a dock, and it's going to walk
34:04
Speaker 5: like a duck. But it might not be a duck.
34:06
Speaker 5: It could be an alien spacecraft. I mean, yes, you
34:08
Speaker 5: could make this point.
34:10
Speaker 3: So is it quacking like a duck or what's it
34:12
Speaker 3: doing now?
34:13
Speaker 5: It's quacking like it is quacking like a duck from
34:16
Speaker 5: someone else's farm. That's what it's doing so again, we
34:21
Speaker 5: chronicled the differences between this comment and what we think
34:24
Speaker 5: of as typical comments. But remember this is an actual
34:28
Speaker 5: known comment from another solar system, so we don't have
34:32
Speaker 5: a full database of comets from other solar systems to
34:36
Speaker 5: know what they would act like. And so, yes, there's
34:39
Speaker 5: a lot more CO two content. Yes, it started forming
34:42
Speaker 5: a tail far out there, way before our you know,
34:47
Speaker 5: children of the Sun comets form tails. It has an
34:52
Speaker 5: odd nickel to iron ratio. And yes, it's been non
34:58
Speaker 5: gravitationally accelerating, but all comets do that as they outgas.
35:02
Speaker 5: This comment's been out gassing more than normal, but that's
35:05
Speaker 5: because it has more CO two than normal comets. So
35:08
Speaker 5: so it acts like a comet of different characteristics, not
35:13
Speaker 5: a non comet, right, So that's that's probably the best
35:17
Speaker 5: way to say it. The story we're going to talk
35:19
Speaker 5: about now today and offer you comes from space dot com.
35:24
Speaker 5: It is yet another story about how this commet is
35:27
Speaker 5: behaving a bit like a comet. It has now been
35:30
Speaker 5: photographed by Earth based telescopes in a very very kind
35:35
Speaker 5: of twilight look through the sky at only a mere
35:39
Speaker 5: fourteen degrees off the eastern horizon at sunrise. So this
35:44
Speaker 5: is this is a difficult thing to do, but it
35:47
Speaker 5: was done by what's called the Virtual Telescope Project that's
35:51
Speaker 5: headquartered out of Italy, and it's a bunch of telescopes
35:55
Speaker 5: that are robotically driven that can all photograph different object
36:00
Speaker 5: in the sky simultaneously, and then you can take the
36:02
Speaker 5: multiple photographs from multiple observatories combine them into a single image.
36:06
Speaker 5: That's what they've done. The Virtual Telescope Project has now
36:10
Speaker 5: released the latest image of Comet three I Atlas from
36:16
Speaker 5: now ground based telescopes on Earth. Because it's just far
36:21
Speaker 5: enough away from the sun now it's coming around it's
36:23
Speaker 5: perihelium just now far away enough from the Sun that
36:26
Speaker 5: we can begin to see it and guess what. It
36:29
Speaker 5: looks a lot like a comet. Now. What it does
36:33
Speaker 5: have is it has a sharply defined eye on tail
36:37
Speaker 5: that is consistent with it having a higher gas content
36:41
Speaker 5: than most comets that we would typically see from our
36:43
Speaker 5: own solar system, which we already know about. So it's
36:46
Speaker 5: behaving still. Similarly, it did experience some non gravitational accelerations
36:52
Speaker 5: in fact, consistent with the comet losing about thirteen percent
36:56
Speaker 5: of its mass. That's been reported by AVI Lobe and others. However,
37:01
Speaker 5: as many common experts will point out, that's not unusual
37:04
Speaker 5: for a comet that is going by perihelion, particularly if
37:08
Speaker 5: it has a high content of frozen volatile gases like
37:11
Speaker 5: CO two, they're gonna melt off and come off. So yeah,
37:15
Speaker 5: it got boosted a little bit by its own escaping gases,
37:18
Speaker 5: but not anything that's out of the realm of what
37:20
Speaker 5: comets do. Now here's the last thing that's interesting. This
37:24
Speaker 5: is now coming out of South Africa. It is coming
37:27
Speaker 5: from a report in Wired dot com, but it's been
37:31
Speaker 5: that's just the kind of the popularized story about this.
37:35
Speaker 5: It's been released by a group of scientists from the
37:38
Speaker 5: South African Radio Astronomy Observatory. They have an instrument called Meerkat,
37:43
Speaker 5: which is a radio telescope kind of conglomeration sixty four
37:48
Speaker 5: different antennas and Meerkat was able to take data from
37:52
Speaker 5: three I atlas as well. And guess what it's emitting
37:56
Speaker 5: radio signatures, So therefore it has to be alien spacecraft. No, yes,
38:04
Speaker 5: and no. Yes, it's we're detecting the first radio signals
38:07
Speaker 5: from three IE atlas. No it's not artificially generated radio
38:12
Speaker 5: signals phoning home by et. It is simply the absorption
38:18
Speaker 5: features from the oh they call the hydroxyl ion, the
38:23
Speaker 5: ohion that was detected at sixteen sixty five megaherts and
38:27
Speaker 5: sixteen sixty seven megahertz. It's a pair of lines from
38:31
Speaker 5: that hydroxyl ion that is characteristic of comets. There you go.
38:38
Speaker 5: One more thing where three I Atlas is cleverly disguised
38:42
Speaker 5: as a naturally made comet when we all know it's
38:45
Speaker 5: an alien spacecraft. There you go. You heard it here first.
38:49
Speaker 4: Friends, you mentioned last week's show. Not only did we
38:53
Speaker 4: do Music under the Dome there at the Coca Cola
38:55
Speaker 4: Space sign Center, we did it while Astronomy Night was
38:57
Speaker 4: getting ready to kick off. If you want to learn
39:00
Speaker 4: more about Astronomy Night and what goes on at Astronomy Night,
39:03
Speaker 4: listened to last week's show. The next one is this
39:05
Speaker 4: weekend for Astronomy Night that is on November fifteenth, and
39:10
Speaker 4: then coming up in March the next Music under the Dome.
39:13
Speaker 4: It's done for this calendar year, but in March you'll
39:16
Speaker 4: get another chance to check out the students and staff
39:21
Speaker 4: at the Schwob School of music performing there inside the
39:25
Speaker 4: Omnosphere Theater, with a dazzling show taking place on the
39:29
Speaker 4: dome up above you. Check out the schedule of all
39:32
Speaker 4: the events CCSSC dot org. Shawan and I thank you
39:35
Speaker 4: for listening, and we will do this again next week.
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