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SpaceX Successfully Launches Starship Before Blowing It Up · Made of Stars

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Warning. The following podcast contains an entertaining look at astronomy, physics, and
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space news throughout the known universe. Listeners have been known to learn about astronomical
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phenomenon the scientific method, and expand the vocabulary to include terms like quasar,
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asterism and uranus. Listen, that's your own risk. Go ahead. Where
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made of Stars? Made of Stars? Starts? You could be from High
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Hollywood, New Mexico, Mars. Where are stars? When we are made
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of stars? Joined by my good friend doctor Sean Kruzen from Columbus State University's
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Coca Cola Space Center. I'm Wes Carol Sean. This morning, folks gathered
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in Texas to watch the greatest firework show in the history of fireworks. Yeah,
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that's one way to describe it. It's the largest Roman candle ever.
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I mean normally, when you get a bunch of people together to watch,
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you know, like the biggest rocket ever go up in the sky, and
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they see it go up and it launches successfully. That's great, and then
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it gets in the air and then they have to blow the thing up,
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you know, on self destruct or whatever they had to do manually blow the
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thing up so it blows up and then everybody cheers and goes crazy. That
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to me makes it a fireworks show. But they're celebrating this liftoff of this
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big honking rocket. I mean, that's really what they're cheering about. I
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mean, and they did cheer. I love the you know, I love
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the SpaceX Engineers soundtrack behind the Narra on the space It's just fun, like,
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I don't know, they're having a good time, and you would never
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hear you would never hear NASA people doing this during an actual liftoff, you
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might, you know. I mean, we've heard NASA people behave this way
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at JPL after some kind of a Martian probe landed or something, and then
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there's no more risk of anything happening. They'll cheer and they'll have a good
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time then, But while the thing's actually in flight, cheering and hysteria and
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nonsense are pretty much I think not allowed it NASA. And I'm pretty sure
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I saw a guy take his shirt off. One guy was doing the robot
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in the background. I mean, it was kind of crazy. It got
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nuts. Not really those things didn't happen, well maybe they did, we
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didn't see them. But still liftoff for this thing, this is a huge
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accomplishment and a big step moving forward. So I think this puts it in
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perspective. And ladies and gentlemen, if you, if you somehow missed this
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story, Space SpaceX launched Starship and it blew up four minutes after launch.
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Okay, so let's just get that out there. We'll come we'll circle back
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and talk more about that a moment. Saying it that way makes it sound
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like, oh, well, that didn't go quite as planned, but which
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it didn't. I mean, they would have loved for this thing to have
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had a completely fully successful launch. But reality here is and I'm gonna let
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you describe the differences between this and SLS. But this thing got off the
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ground, and that alone is reason to take your shirt off and do the
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robot. As we're recording the podcast, this just happened this morning, right,
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So this is we're on a very notable day, which is April twentieth.
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Then if you don't know about that, just look it up google it.
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Anyway. So so here on April twentieth, which is the day they
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decided to go with this thing, we're looking back one day at a tweet
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from Elon Musk which is already funny. It kind of sounds like a punchline
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in itself anyway. So a tweet from Elon Musk which said, Hey,
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as long as we don't blow up the launch pad, that was like his
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minimum criteria for success, right, And how did that go for him?
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What's your criteria for success? Don't blow up the launchpad? How's that launchpad
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looking today? I mean, I think they blew the launchpad of bits,
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but not because the rocket blew up on the launchpad. So so yeah,
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I don't know. I don't know how Elon's gonna judge his own minimum criteria
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for success, Because ladies and gentlemen, SpaceX starship had almost twice the lifting
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power of SLS, which is NASA's Moon rocket that launches Artemis spaceships into orbit,
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more than twice the thrust of a Saturn five rocket. Saturn five is
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just under eight million pounds of thrust. The starship Super Heavy, which launched
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this morning, had sixteen point seven million pounds of thrust, at least theoretically
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from its engines, and most of them appeared to have fired. Maybe not
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all of them, but most of them appeared to have fired. At this
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point, we're still kind of waiting to hear from SpaceX about that. There
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was one particular shot during the launch video that looked maybe like all the engines
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weren't firing, but haven't heard that yet from SpaceX. So we're basically recording
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this podcast right after the launch. Anyway, sixteen point seven million pounds of
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thrust, and they had no flame trench on their launch pad. So when
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all of that thrust was generated by the Starship Super Heavy, well it turns
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out it did some damage. It did some fairly significant damage to their launch
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pad structure, even though the launch off the launchpad, you know, and
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four minutes into flight was all successful. So even with a successful liftoff,
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their launch pad was heavily damaged. So I don't know if Elon Musk's minimum
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criteria of quote unquote don't blow up the launch pad that he put out yesterday
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on a tweet, I don't know if they if they satisfied that, well,
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we'll wait and see from Elon what he said there that that was a
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lie, that was a lie. Then. I think what this maybe does
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tell us, though, is because i've there have I've had my suspicions about
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him for a while now, and I wasn't quite certain. Maybe he's been
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living life in reverse, you know, like Merlin or whatever, like he's
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going in the other direction. So at the very least, now, I
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would think that if that were the case, unless this is just a big
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red herring to throw us off, that maybe he's in fact not living in
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reverse order, and that he's like a normal human in most regards. Again,
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still very smart, very gifted. We covered that last week. But
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you know, we would think if he was living in reverse, he would
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say, we're probably going to blow up the launchpad, you know, just
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as a prediction. He's just using this tweet to taunt us. That could
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mean it's all right. So here's what we do know, though, ladies
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and gentlemen. What we do know is the most powerful rocket in human history
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successfully launched off a launchpad today. It flew to near space before suffering some
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kind of a failure that they lost control or they decided not to separate the
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starship, which is the vehicle from the booster from the super heavy booster,
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and so they simply left them attached. And then the autonomous self destruct mechanisms
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aboard, which prevented from becoming an uncontrolled rocket that can possibly threaten any kind
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of you know, human habitations engaged and just blew that rocket to bits,
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which was, as West stated earlier, a very fun firework show. And
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all of the engineers at SpaceX just cheered mightily when this happened. I don't
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know if they were just cheering the autonomous self destruct mechanism or they'd just like
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to see rockets blow up. Anyway. They know this, ladies and gentlemen.
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They know this. At SpaceX. They succeeded in launching the most powerful
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rocket ever, and they believe in a process of engineering that is referred to
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as agile development. Agile development means instead of trying to figure out every possible
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scenario that could go wrong on CAD and in simulation programs on computers, and
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then putting all of that knowledge into a vehicle and crossing your fingers that you
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didn't miss anything. Instead of what Instead of doing that, what they do
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is they do rapid development. They get it to a prototype stage, they
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execute the prototype as an actual vehicle. If it explodes, they figure out
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why. They fix that problem. They do it again. If that fails
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or explodes, they fix that problem. They figure out why I fixed that
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problem again, and they do this rapidly. And I made the case to
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West's off air that if you ever watched Star Trek the Next Generation, this
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is kind of how the Borg handled things. The Borg Collective didn't care if
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it lost a few members of the collective. What it did is every time
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they sent those Borg drones into enemy territory and the folks from the Federation of
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Planets were able to get through their defenses and neutralize them. The Borg Collective
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instantly learned the lesson fixed the problem, and then they weren't able to attack
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in that way again. And I know this is just me nerding out with
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Star Trek stuff and SpaceX, but SpaceX does things that way. That's their
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plan. So the fact that they got this thing off the ground was their
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success point. The fact that it didn't make it to orbit is okay.
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Now they're going to learn lessons. They've collected data, they'll learn the lessons,
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they'll fix the problem, and they'll be back very quickly. They're hoping
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to launch that thing again this year, right, So there's gonna be a
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lot of busy construction workers, which, by the way, is creating jobs
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in Vocachika, Texas. I might just add there's gonna be a lot of
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very busy construction workers putting that launch pad back together as fast as they can,
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because there are already other prototypes for both the booster and Starship, and
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modifications will be gun, will be executed as quickly as they can figure out
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from the data why these errors occurred, and you'll see another Starship on top
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of another booster, probably before the end of twenty twenty three. If this
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had happened to a NASA rocket, it might be half a decade before we
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would see that rocket again. So I'm just saying there's something to this style
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of engineering, and that is why we have seen SpaceX come to some very
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amazing conclusions with their engineering development style, this agile development and pull off some
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incredible feats of engineering. So that's kind of where we're at with the starship
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explosion. And I think it's interesting, like you point out that they're able
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to do that because they are an independent company. They're they're separate to you
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know, NASA that has to be held accountable to each dollar that's spent.
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So I'm guessing that right now on the launch pad, there's a crew already
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there with I don't know, like oven mits that are picking up tiles and
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things and moving them around, because I would assume it's going to take a
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little while for those things to cool down. Just a couple of observations just
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from what you said. First of all, maybe before they rebuild this launch
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pad, maybe they should, you know, go to Kennedy have a look
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at the way that they do their launch pads. Just I know this this
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thing could have probably destroyed even one of their launch pads because of how big
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it was. But maybe they should check into that before rebuilding to the self
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destruct mechanism. Maybe China should look into that with their rockets so that they're
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not dropping rockets I don't know on villages and things nearby. And three,
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and this may be the most important thing. I'm pretty sure you just said
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Elon Musk was an alien or at least part of the board. I think
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you said he was part of the board. So I mean, if that's
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how he's running things, and you know, all three of those things can
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all be true. I suppose should we call him Locutus. We can call
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him to get him out on a laser beam next to his eye. That's
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the name, that's the name of one of his kids, isn't it?
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I know, I'm trying to could be I can't even pronounce those names.
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I have no idea. It could be that. I don't know. We
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have a couple of months to wait before the next chapter in this but obviously
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more information will come out. And this is part of the process we've talked
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before about when they do launches any and even with NASA, you do launches,
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sometimes the failures are part of the process and you have to learn from
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it. And and like you said, perfectly, SpaceX is one of those
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companies that do things that way, and they make great strides because they're able
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to do it. And that's why you got a bunch of people celebrating this
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particular launch. Speaking of aliens, I guess we can jump right into this.
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In spite of this great revelation about the borg and Elon Musk, it
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is we're getting no confirmation, I guess is the best, no credible evidence
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coming from the Pentagon about aliens or UFOs or things like. They have no
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credible evidence to go with. It's always fun when we're actually getting people in
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high level government positions talking about aliens and UFOs. There was a time when
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they couldn't do this. I mean, in the fact that they wouldn't do
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this made people more suspicious. Now we're in an era of the Internet,
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We're in the era of all sorts of conspiracy theories, and I think now
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that they're talking about it, it's making people go, ah, that's your
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proof. Now they're talking about it because they got to try to cover it
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up. So I don't think there's any way to win the pr war on
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this. You know, the this has this particular story has spanned you and
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I working both in radio broadcast and then now into the podcast because some of
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the early videos that came out from fighter aircraft from the United States Military that
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appeared to show objects behaving in ways that simply weren't physically explainable. And again
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I say appeared, right, I want to make that clear. I'm saying
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that appeared on the video to have some very hard to explain behaviors. You
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know, I think I think we first started talking about that way back when
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we were on the radio broadcast together, and now moving into the podcast.
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There was a plethora of these videos that were released by the United States Navy
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and the Pentagon obviously, and so we all saw these things, and we
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hear the actual fighter pilots commenting on these things, saying words I can't even
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repeat, not even here on our podcast, and then explaining that they didn't
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understand what they were seeing. You know, that's a rough paraphrase. But
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the idea is that that launched an investigation because senators and congressmen looked into this
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and said, what is going on? Right? Members of Congress, members
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of the US Senate looking into this and saying, hey, US military,
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we need a little bit better explanation. So, all in all, the
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Pentagon decided to establish a new office. It's called the All Domain Anomaly Resolution
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Office. And at first, if you just read that in isolation, you
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might think that that's some kind of cybersecurity office. I don't know, the
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All Domain Anomaly Resolution or maybe it's something with the US Post Office. I
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don't know, the All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office. Anyway, so it's the
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AA r O. Apparently D got kicked out of this acronym a r O.
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All domain considered just one word, all domain. It's unfortunately a R
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Yeah. I mean, I guess they wanted it to be ro O or
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arrow, But is it a darrow has a little bit better ring to it,
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I think, But I mean, we could say a darrow. It's
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hard to pronounce. It's not that there's too many vowels. It's like an
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arrow can't Yeah, I mean there's some acronym style points that you have to
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come up with, right, right, it could have been a darrow.
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Why don't we just call it a darrow you. I don't think anybody's gonna
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stop us. Yeah, who's gonna stop Maybe if I get a call from
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the Pentagonal. Otherwise I'm calling it the ADARO Office, the All Domain Anomally
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Resolution Office a DARO. Sean M. Kurtpatrick was chosen as the first director
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for the ADARO Office, and he testified before members of the United States Committee
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on Armed Services just yesterday as we're recording the podcast, but that would be
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Wednesday, April nineteen, twenty twenty three. And apparently the hearing was in
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two parts that had a close to the public section, which we don't have
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any idea what was said there. I would love to know what was in
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that, and then it was the open to the public part. But anyway,
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some of the Kirkpatrick comments have come out, and by the way,
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I'm I'm quoting a story on space dot com. I'm sure there are other
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stories out there, but go check this out on space dot com. You
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can find out this story in their archive if you're listening in the future,
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future or future anyway. So, mister Kirkpatrick had some statements that he made,
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and he sort of definitively stated that out of the hundreds of UAP reports,
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which are the unidentified aerial phenomenon, those UAP cases his office has reviewed,
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here's the quote, a A r O or as we call it,
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a DARO a ro O has found no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity,
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off world technology or objects that defy the known laws of physics. And
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that's fine, I can say that. Now. Now here's where he gets
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a tad snarky to everybody out there who's been speculating about alien technology and UFOs.
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The a R or Adero director acknowledged that this conclusion might be unsatisfying quote
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unquote unsatisfying to those who believe they have witnessed incontrovertible evidence of physics defying craft
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or objects. Listen, ladies and gentlemen, he's talking about pilots in the
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United States Navy. It's not some blogger dude in his twenties living in his
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parents' basement. He's talking about guys that can land vehicles on aircraft carriers.
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He's not talking about Randy Quaid from He's not talking about He's not talking about
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Randy Quaid. This is up yours. He's not talking about that guy.
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Right, Yes, mister President from Independence Day, That's not what he's talking
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about. He's talking about actual navy fight. We's talking more Tom Cruise and
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top Gun than Randy Quaid an Independence Day. I've been saying it for years.
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Okay, anyway, right, so so just you know, when he
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when we read just a little bit of snarkiness in here, we've got to
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remember who he's snarking at, the same kinds of people that end up being
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astronauts, right, I mean, I'm just saying, right, the Kelly
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brothers, for instance. Okay, all right, So he goes on to
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say, mister Kirkpatrick, I want to underscore today that only a very small
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percentage of UAP reports display signatures that could reasonably be described as anomalous. And
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I'm saying to that, so you're saying there's a chance I want to underscore
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today that only a very small percentage. Well, what the heck about that
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very small percentage? And ladies and gentlemen, I'm a trained astrophysicist and a
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member of a university faculty. So it's not like I'm not skeptical. I
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get it. I get the skepticism. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. But
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this also sounds like there's some holes in this quasi denial, right, Okay,
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So that was one of his statements. He came back and then it
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said, also, this is again mister Kirkpatrick saying, quote, the majority
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of unidentified objects reported to the aa RO demonstrate mundane characteristics of balloons, uncrewed
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aerial systems, clutter, natural phenomenon, or other readily explainable sources. Sounds
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like it's very dismissive. It's like, look, it's just a bunch of
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normal, everyday stuff. But then I draw your attention back to the second
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word, which was majority, the majority of unidentified objects. Okay, all
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right, but what about the minority? All right? One last thing,
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one last quote from mister Kirkpatrick. A RO is working very hard to do
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the same, which is to verify the effect. Okay, and he says,
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that is how science works, not by blog or social media, oh
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out as a member of you know, the blog social media community, by
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virtue of doing this podcast. I think he's talking about us, West.
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Perhaps I don't specifically say podcasting. He didn't mention our show by name,
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and he didn't mention any award winning podcasts. So you know that's another mister
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Kirkpatrick, have you won any Georgia Association Abroad rewards? I think not,
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sir, I think not. No Gabby's for you, mister Kirkpatrick. I'm
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just saying zero. We've already got a big head start on him in that,
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and if he started trying to win them, we would have a pretty
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good head start on him, that's all. And I'm not sure he shot
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a shell across our bow. But I did feel the afterwin go by there,
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all right, So I felt a little breeze from that. But but
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West, I don't care if he takes shots at us. He's taken shots
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at fighter pilots in the United States Navy. Well, let's just keep remembering
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that, right. That's where I was about to go with this. I
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mean, it's easy to say that, and he's not wrong. I mean,
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science isn't decided in blogs and social media, but you know, you
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kind of have to give a little bit of acknowledgement to the training and skills
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behind I don't know, fighter pilots. I mean they have been trained to
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basically perform and maneuver against the most flexible and versatile aerial vehicles on planet Earth,
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and they're coming back and telling you, Hey, this thing is behaving
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in a way that I just don't think vehicles can even do. So you
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have that kind of testimony, shall we say, eyewitness testimony, not lessen
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Sean doing a podcast. It's those guys, all right. So now one
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last thing, one last point. Later in this article in space dot Com,
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he also said, well, there's just not enough evidence in those fighter
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pilot videos, those those videos from the aircraft. There's just not enough evidence
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there to say that this thing is some kind of anomalous object. Well,
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so I'm gonna say back to mister Kirkpatrick. So what you're saying is not
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that you can rule out in those cases that these are some kind of anomalous
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vehicles. It's simply that you don't have enough evidence from the video. That's
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a far cry from lecturing us about how science works. And it's not by
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blog and social media, sir. I'm just saying, you're just saying you
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don't have enough evidence to do the science in the first place on those videos.
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So I don't know, wes if this gets us any closer to an
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answer. Certainly all the headlines are trying to pooh pooh the idea of anomalous
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technologies. But yet me, as a trained scientist, I'm looking at this
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saying, hmmm, yes, sir, but your arguments aren't scientifically laden either
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with data and measurements. Every time we hear from them about this, and
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that's, like you pointed out, it's been going on for a little while
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now, radio to podcasts for us. It makes me realize why they didn't
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try to do this in press conferences back in the day, you know,
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because it's really it's almost a no win situation because there is an element of
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unexplainable there. Even if it's just in a very few minority cases, as
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he points out, it's still there's there's going to be someone who's gonna say,
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oh, so you're saying there's a chance, as you pointed out,
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so and listeners please understand, this is doctor Cruizing your old buddy here on
25:10
Made of Stars podcasts. I'm not saying I'm a UFO equals Aliens believer.
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I am not. I am not that I'll say that. I'm just kidding,
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and that's fine if you rs. I don't. We've never had that
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in depth of a conversation, but I will kill you that. I will
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tell you that despite the fact that I'm not a true believer with the whole
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UFOs equals Aliens, there are some really interesting videos that came out from fighter
25:40
pilots in the US Navy, and those made me just at least raise my
25:45
left eyebrows slightly to say, well, okay, that's a little weird.
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That's a little different than the average UFO claim, and mister Kirkpatrick has not
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eliminated those in my view. That's what I'm saying on this podcast. All
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right, if you want to blow up West's social media about how you know,
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Cruising's a nut and all that stuff, that's fine, but just understand
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what it is that I'm actually saying. My eyebrow went full like Dwayne the
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Rock Johnson when I saw them, so I was like way up there with
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the eyebrow. So we've talked. I'm pretty sure we've talked officially on the
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record on one of the shows, this one, maybe that you know,
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I'm a firm believer that if the aliens do show up, they're gonna be
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a version of AI. They're gonna be some kind of cybernetic thing, and
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we're going to be in a whole lot of trouble. So that's any sort
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of self replicating machine that shows up at our door, you know, that's
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when it's time to make, you know, final preparations for things, because
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that's basically the beginning of the end. And I feel like that's eventually what
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make and that's why I get so paranoid about the whole AI thing here.
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But that's a whole nother conversation to your point, we are already in the
26:59
Earth early stages of sending those vehicles out to other planets ourselves exactly exactly exact
27:04
Mars rovers. They can't self replicate these Mars rovers, but they have AI
27:10
on board. They can make decisions about what actions to take without phoning home.
27:15
Like ET, they don't have to talk to controllers at JPL. They
27:21
can make decisions about what rocks to pick up, about which path to travel
27:25
along the Martian surface. So we are already in the early stages of sending
27:30
out AI technology to other worlds. So that's a reasonably you know, logical
27:37
thought process that you've got right there. So so anyway, there you go.
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Yeah, well, speaking of Mars, let's let's get to this story
27:45
because the Mars Ingenuity Helicopter has had another milestone. We we've talked and we
27:52
haven't talked about it in a while, but it's had a several you know,
27:56
being the first craft of its kind on another world, as the first
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craft of its kind obviously on Mars, and then now fifty flights. They
28:07
weren't expecting fifty. They didn't think they'd get close to fifty, did they.
28:11
No, Actually, if they had one successful flight, they were going
28:14
to consider that as a as a complete success. Shirts coming off doing the
28:18
robot, you know that was for just one flight, that would have been
28:22
a win. That would have been a win. Fifty that they better have
28:26
a lot of shirts off, lots of robots. Somebody might even be doing
28:30
the kickworm. I don't know's it's a big reason, to big reasons to
28:33
celebrate it. Fifty somebody better be on the ground full on. I think
28:40
by fifty that are already passed out in the corner. I think that they're
28:44
just in the corner passed out. Yeah, you know, sleeping it off
28:47
in their car. That's right, they were there at twenty five. So,
28:55
ladies and gentlemen to reel this in a tad. NASA's Ingenuity Mars helicopter
28:59
has pleaded it's fiftieth flight on the surface of Mars. Again, an astounding
29:04
achievement for a micro vehicle that we thought would be successful if it had one
29:11
flight in that very thin Martian air, if it could even lift itself via
29:15
its propellers off the ground one time, that would have been a major milestone,
29:22
a proof of concept. It has now flown its fiftieth flight. It
29:25
did it about a week ago April thirteenth, twenty twenty three. That's Earth
29:29
time, by the way, twenty twenty three. The helicopter's first flight on
29:33
Mars was two years ago April nineteenth, twenty twenty one, two years ago
29:42
yesterday. So this helicopter has had extreme success compared to their minimum milestones that
29:52
they were hoping to achieve. That you can read a great story about it
29:55
on NASA dot Gov. But congratulations to the Mars Helicopter Ingenuity, part of
30:02
the Perseverance program up there on the surface of Mars, knocking it out of
30:06
the park in terms of flying around in the atmosphere of an alien world and
30:11
proving that that's possible fifty different times. I just want to point out that
30:15
I have solar powered lights at my home outside that haven't lasted two years.
30:22
I mean, this is a solar powered little mini airplane that flies around on
30:27
Mars and it's lasted two years. All the job of my solar powered lights
30:34
that all they're required to do is sit there collect sunlight and then you know,
30:41
beam out some sort of light from the light bulb inside, which is
30:45
usually some really low powered thing, and they don't last two years. So
30:52
this is a pretty significant accomplishment for something on another world with lots of Martian
30:57
dust in the air, right, Because that's always one of the concerns when
31:02
you've got some sort of solar powered vehicle is that you're gonna get this dust,
31:07
this thick layer of dust from these storms that's gonna get on the solar
31:11
panels. None of that dust outside my house. I'm not gonna have any
31:15
Martian dust on any of my lights. They haven't lasted. To you,
31:18
I'm lucky if they make it through a season, right when they disappear from
31:22
store shelves and I can't replace them, and I don't know why I would,
31:26
because they're gonna last another five months. So it's a pretty big deal
31:32
if I think about the total summation of household project products that I've had that
31:36
did not make it two years. Yes, I mean there's a lot of
31:41
there's a lot of pieces of technology that, as you say, in use
31:45
in my home that don't have a two year lifetime. Congratulations, Ingenuity,
31:49
you lasted a lot longer than my last food process. And I will not
31:56
reveal the brand name, whose initials or MB, but I will just say
32:01
that they failed to last through I don't know avocados and bananas and the kinds
32:08
of things you put in a food processor for even five months, let alone
32:14
two years on an alien planet with dust storms. All right, So you're
32:17
right, West Carroll, Ingenuity compared to your average household product, far far
32:23
superior. We got a handheld vacuum. I don't think that lasted more than
32:28
four months, So that was a big old flop coming up after a quick
32:32
break. There is a special, rare type of eclipse going on down Under.
32:39
Actually I've got relatives that could probably be looking at it right now as
32:44
we speak. We'll talk about that right after this. Folks on the western
33:10
part of the continent, the country continent, if you will, of Australia,
33:15
Western Australians having an opportunity like right now as we're recording this, to
33:22
check out a hybrid solar eclipse that's going on right now. So it's weird
33:30
that it's a hybrid solar eclipse, first of all, because then you have
33:34
to say, well, what's in a hybrid between ladies and gentlemen. There
33:37
are two kinds of total solar eclipses that can occur. I guess arguably one
33:45
is not total, but it's when the Moon passes directly in front of the
33:49
Sun. How about that? And so one can happen when the Moon is
33:53
closest to it's to the Earth in its orbit, and that is just the
33:58
standard total solar eclipse, where we see the Moon blocking out all the light
34:02
from the Sun except from the layer that we know as the corona, which
34:07
gives you that beautiful white halo. Around the Moon, and that is what
34:12
we would think of as our traditional total solar eclipse. But another kind of
34:16
eclipse can happen when the Sun and Earth and Moon are in that same alignment
34:22
configuration, but the Moon is in its point of its orbit where where it's
34:25
farthest from the Earth, and because of that little difference in distance, the
34:31
Moon suddenly becomes too small to cover up the entire disc of the Sun,
34:37
and that's known as an annular eclipse. The reason they call it annular is
34:43
because it looks like the annual rings of a tree or an annulus, which
34:47
is just a a circle within a circle kind of shape. And so this
34:52
kind of an eclipse is known as a ring of fire eclipse and kind of
34:55
common terminology. And so these common I'm sorry, these kinds of eclipse where
35:01
you get this really interesting look are called annular eclipses, and there's one of
35:07
those taking place right now, as West just said for the folks down in
35:12
Western Australia. However, if you happen to be in a certain zone of
35:16
the path of totality, you won't see that annular eclipse because right at a
35:22
certain time mid eclipse, suddenly the Moon is close enough to the Earth and
35:29
it does cover up the entire Sun, so then you get a little bit
35:34
of what we would consider more traditional total solar eclipse. But then during again
35:39
the eclipse itself, the moon moves back to a point where it does not
35:44
cover up the entire Sun again, so it's just right on the ragged edge
35:49
of transition between the proper distance for a total solar eclipse and the necessary distance
35:55
for an annular eclipse, and it goes through a cycle of being both of
36:01
those things during the same eclipse that is amazing. Starts out as annular,
36:07
moves to total, then back to annular for the end of the eclipse,
36:12
and depending on where you are along that path of totality, you will see
36:15
a different kind of eclipse for your location. That's what we call a hybrid
36:22
eclipse. And it is underway right now, ladies and gentlemen. This is
36:25
so rare that the last time that was viewed on Earth was November the third,
36:30
two thirteen, ten years ago, so it's been ten years since all
36:37
of the alignments happened just right to bring us this kind of a hybrid eclipse
36:42
again. So a really interesting event taking place off the western coast of Australia
36:46
and right there of Western Australia. It's a very fun time for people to
36:52
be eclipse observing down under. Let's talk about furbies, because anytime we get
36:57
an opportunity to talk about furbies we try to do that. And fast radio
37:00
burst and they've basically punched through a nearby galaxy, so let's talk about what
37:08
this means. Yeah, so this is a weird story. So let me
37:14
just say about ferbies and West and I love ferbies because first of all,
37:17
we get to say the word ferbie, which is a lot better acronym than
37:22
the Government's Office for Explaining Unidentified Ro the RO Office, because you know,
37:30
then we get to say a fun word like ferbie. But Ferbie. The
37:36
letters that make up the Ferbi acronym r f RB, they stand for fast
37:39
radio burst. A fast radio burst is an ultra transient phenomenon, only lasting
37:45
a few milliseconds, however, also putting off more energy than any other process
37:52
that we know about in the universe for single object events. So this is
37:57
an incredible phenomenon. It's very very mysterious because it's ridiculously hard to study because
38:04
it is so short lived. But there's a radio telescope in the Netherlands that
38:10
is designed to find and gather data on these kinds of phenomenon. It's called
38:16
the Westerbork telescope, and the Western Bort telescope was looking up in the direction
38:22
of the Triangulum galaxy. Now, if you're a backyard astronomer, this is
38:28
actually one that you can see with backyard telescopes, and it's part of the
38:30
Messier catalog of objects, which again, if you're an amateur astronomer, you
38:35
know the Messier catalog. Well, this guy is M thirty three in the
38:38
Messier catalogue. So M thirty three a nearby, reasonably nearby a galaxy called
38:44
the Triangulum galaxy. It's not because the galaxies shaped like a triangle. By
38:47
the way, there's actually a constellation called Triangulum, and this galaxy just happens
38:52
to be in that direction. So the Western Bort telescope in the Netherlands was
38:59
studying the triang Angulum galaxy and it's able to detect fast radio bursts and low
39:04
and behold, three furbies went off in the direction of that galaxy. Now
39:10
here's the weird part. They were later found to be at a much greater
39:16
distance than the galaxy itself, which means those radio bursts were so powerful that
39:25
they were able to penetrate and travel through all of the dust and gas and
39:31
collections of materials that you find inside of a galaxy. Galaxies are like little
39:37
islands of material out there in a largely empty universe. Well, that island
39:43
of material in the Triangulum galaxy was not sufficient to stop the intense radio bursts
39:49
that simply penetrated through M thirty three and showed up at the Western Bork Telescope
39:54
in the Netherlands. So once again another testament for just how powerful these furbies,
40:01
the processes taking place that create these fast radio versts, how powerful those
40:06
are, and so what kind of things do astronomers think they could be.
40:09
Well, it could be neutron stars and black holes doing some really extreme physics
40:16
creating them, and that's certainly one of the leading ideas about how they're formed.
40:22
However, other observations of furbies didn't fit that classification, so new theories
40:29
of other things range from pulsars to magnetars, even to extraterrestrial communications. Because
40:35
let's face it, when you can't explain something you always invoke aliens. Ask
40:39
the folks at a narrow they'll tell you anyway. So anyway, the notion
40:46
behind this story, which makes it really cool is that this is the first
40:51
time that this has ever been observed. So the first time that furbies fast
40:55
radio versts have ever been observed penetrating a nearby galaxy has been done now with
41:02
the Western Board telescope in the Netherlands, and hat tip to them and this
41:06
story. Read about it on space dot com or Universe Today dot com both
41:10
have stories on this phenomenon. At the Coca Cola Space Science Center this weekend
41:15
on Saturday, you guys have a home game for Astronomy Night. When we
41:20
have home games for Astronomy Night, ladies and gentlemen, that means that we're
41:22
setting up the telescopes at our own venue, which also implies that sometimes we
41:29
don't set up the telescopes at our venue. We set it up at other
41:31
people's venues. And those kinds of places are state parks and local recreation areas,
41:37
and we have a whole calendar of events that we take our telescopes out
41:40
into those remote sites and we set them up and look at the nighttime sky.
41:45
But as West just pointed out, this weekend, we'll be at our
41:47
own facility, which means we will add something fun to that, a tour
41:52
of the nighttime sky in our own planetarium. So we'll give you a virtual
41:55
tour of the nighttime sky in the planetarium and then take you out into the
42:00
real sky with our fleet of portable telescopes, our Earth and Space science students
42:06
who are mostly majoring in astrophysics and have some level of understanding of what they're
42:10
looking at. And then of course our staff astronomer, doctor Rosa Williams,
42:15
Professor of Astronomy here at Columba State University, and she absolutely knows what she's
42:19
talking about and looking at. So we can answer your questions, show you
42:22
things in the nighttime sky, explain where the bright stars and constellations can be
42:25
found, and all of this, ladies and gentlemen, for the low low
42:30
price of free. This is a non charged event. Bring down the family
42:37
and you can come attend an event that we offer for free for our public
42:42
guests. So once again Saturday night here at Coca Cola Space Science Center.
42:45
If you want to know more about this, about our summer Academy and robotics
42:51
about our standard summer camps or any of our summer programs. You're just a
42:55
few clicks away on the good old Internet. Simply type in these letters c
43:00
c s SC dot org Charlie, Charlie, Sam, Sam Charlie dot org.
43:07
That stands for Coca Cola Space Science Center and we are a nonprofit,
43:13
so we get the dot org at the end. Now when I say people
43:15
and just use our initials for Coca Cola Space Science Center, they always look
43:19
at me with that look like deer in the headlights, like what season s's
43:22
And yeah, okay, Charlie, Charlie, Sam, Sam, Charlie CCSSC
43:27
dot org. That will get you to the website that'll get you all the
43:30
information for this and all of our fantastic programs taking place here at Columbus State
43:36
University's Coca Cola Space Science Center. Another great show. We'll do it again
43:40
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