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The Space Race Is In Full Swing · Made of Stars

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Speaker 1: Warning.
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Speaker 2: The following podcast contains an entertaining look at astronomy, physics,
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Speaker 2: and space news throughout the known universe. Listeners have been
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Speaker 2: known to learn about astronomical phenomenon, the scientific method, and
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Speaker 2: expanded vocabulary to include terms like quasar asterism and uranus. Listen,
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Speaker 2: that's your own risk.
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Speaker 1: Go ahead.
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Speaker 3: We're made of stars.
0:24
Speaker 4: Made them stars, madies. When made of stars, you could
0:33
Speaker 4: be from high they would New Mexicomus. Where are stars?
0:43
Speaker 3: Whoenen?
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Speaker 1: We are made of stars. I'm Wes Carrol, joined by
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Speaker 1: my good friend doctor Sean Cruisin, executive director at Columbus
1:01
Speaker 1: State University's Coca Cola Space Science Center.
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Speaker 3: Hay Sean, Hey, Wes, good to be here today.
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Speaker 1: We got some big news today for SpaceX. A little
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Speaker 1: later today as we're recording this SpaceX getting ready for
1:15
Speaker 1: we got a flight thirteen test mission and then the
1:20
Speaker 1: first V three Starlink satellites going up.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's an interesting day. You know, the whole thing
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Speaker 3: about thirteen that you know didn't always work out well
1:32
Speaker 3: for NASA, and so the fact that they're calling this flight,
1:35
Speaker 3: I mean it is their thirteenth flight of starship. So
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Speaker 3: I guess you don't. You just don't buy off on
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Speaker 3: the trisca deecophobia or whatever that is. So jump in
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Speaker 3: with flight thirteen.
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Speaker 1: You know, some people, some people superstitious, some people a
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Speaker 1: little stitious, some people not at all stitious. So I
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Speaker 1: guess if you're going at it, you're not at all stitious. So,
2:01
Speaker 1: you know, I've always been a big fan of hotels
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Speaker 1: that just embrace the thirteenth floor versus the ones that don't.
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Speaker 1: So maybe that's what they're doing. They're the kind of
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Speaker 1: place that just embraces it and says, go Dan Marino
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Speaker 1: or whatever. I don't know.
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Speaker 3: I think Elon has a shirt that says go Dan Marino.
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Speaker 1: If he doesn't, he should.
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Speaker 3: Send him one anyway. So all right, So SpaceX their
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Speaker 3: thirteenth flight. It's called Flight thirteen, but it is the
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Speaker 3: second flight of their V three starship. This is the
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Speaker 3: newest version of starship. This is the version of starship
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Speaker 3: that they're hoping gets qualified during the Artemis three mission
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Speaker 3: to actually be the official transport vehicle for Artemis astronauts
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Speaker 3: to the surface of the Moon. So so anytime they
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Speaker 3: can fly these vehicles and have them work successfully pass
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Speaker 3: more of the tests necessary to check the boxes for
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Speaker 3: them to be the official vehicle that NASA adopts for
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Speaker 3: taking astaurants to the Moon. The better it is for Starship,
3:08
Speaker 3: and the better it is for shareholders in Starship who
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Speaker 3: you know, we might actually know someone who owns stock
3:15
Speaker 3: and start in SpaceX. So you know, this is something
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Speaker 3: we're you know, we're hoping to see successful just because
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Speaker 3: on this show we just like space and so we
3:25
Speaker 3: want to see them be successful. But you know, there
3:27
Speaker 3: are there could be people we know that who actually
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Speaker 3: own stock in the company.
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Speaker 1: You know, starting with the man in the mirror sometimes,
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Speaker 1: you know, and it's important not just for the shareholders,
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Speaker 1: but as you point out, we want success stateside because
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Speaker 1: as we have pointed out, the the objective for NASA,
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Speaker 1: the objective for these private companies that are working with
3:53
Speaker 1: NASA is again this is about, yes, successes for our
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Speaker 1: space program and all these companies to have success. But
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Speaker 1: it's also the fact that you know, we're looking at
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Speaker 1: all of this from a and I say we kind
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Speaker 1: of collectively as we're doing this for the world versus
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Speaker 1: being in a space race with somebody who doesn't necessarily
4:15
Speaker 1: have that outlook. And we have a story about them
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Speaker 1: coming up, and one of the reasons why it is
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Speaker 1: important that we have success with these kind of launches.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, we do have that story coming up, you know.
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Speaker 3: And you say for the world, it's not just for
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Speaker 3: this world. Because SpaceX has already sold at least one
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Speaker 3: ticket on starship to Mars, there's already an early adopter.
4:40
Speaker 3: Talk about early adopters. There's already an early adopter who
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Speaker 3: has booked a passenger flight to the planet Mars on
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Speaker 3: starship and is waiting to see the successful results of
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Speaker 3: this particular rocket test to know whether their ticket will
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Speaker 3: remain valid to fly to the red planet.
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Speaker 1: I was going to say, do we know who this is?
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Speaker 1: Is this a pubblblic as someone who's gone public or
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Speaker 1: is this now still private?
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Speaker 3: I will just say that I don't know who it is,
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Speaker 3: all right. That doesn't mean that the public doesn't know
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Speaker 3: who it is. It just means I don't know. I
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Speaker 3: don't know who this person is the butt their flight
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Speaker 3: to Mars. But there is one. So it is a
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Speaker 3: matter of record that SpaceX has sold a starship ticket
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Speaker 3: to the planet Mars, where they will be greeted by
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Speaker 3: absolutely no one, and there are zero five star hotels
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Speaker 3: and equal number of restaurants.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, in place, Matt, Matt Damon could be there. Do
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Speaker 1: we know, like what the baggage rules are? Are they
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Speaker 1: charging per bag? Is there a carry on policy? How's
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Speaker 1: do we know any of this? I mean, I'm curious
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Speaker 1: about the Can I can I get a discount ticket
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Speaker 1: on Hopper? What can we do here so that we
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Speaker 1: can get a trip to Mars?
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Speaker 3: I think that, you know, given the heavy the heavy
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Speaker 3: lift capabilities of the starship rocket that begs should fly
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Speaker 3: for free. That's just my opinion.
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Speaker 1: It would make sense. And there are we is there
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Speaker 1: going to be a weight requirement because that could be
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Speaker 1: part of the thing, depending on how many passengers there are.
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Speaker 1: I don't know. There's a lot of questions I got.
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Speaker 3: Because you want to take your own house, because you know,
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Speaker 3: what are you gonna do up there on Mars?
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Speaker 1: You know really, I mean it does seem like it
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Speaker 1: could get complicated. We've gotten way off topic, but that's okay.
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Speaker 3: Is the last name of the one passenger Musk that
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Speaker 3: I wonder that?
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Speaker 1: Well, that was my first thought. And you know, I mean,
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Speaker 1: but I don't know that heat does he have to
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Speaker 1: buy a ticket or does he just loan himself the
6:36
Speaker 1: money for the take. I don't know how that works,
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Speaker 1: but I.
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Speaker 3: Know the question for the financial model of you know,
6:42
Speaker 3: shareholders of SpaceX, they might want to know, ye has
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Speaker 3: that ticket been purchased or what it's up?
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Speaker 1: Is his name Bezos? Is there a possibility that he
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Speaker 1: would want to tag along or has he got his
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Speaker 1: own plans? So this is getting ready to go up
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Speaker 1: later today. And uh and I saw about Starlink satellites
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Speaker 1: in there as well.
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Speaker 3: Let's see. Yeah, I mean so so there are they're
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Speaker 3: testing various payloads on any of these missions, and that
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Speaker 3: is one of them. Yes, it is. The cryptocurrency billionaire
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Speaker 3: Chun Wong is the first individual to secure a private
7:24
Speaker 3: ticket and lead a crude mission to Mars. Thus, according
7:27
Speaker 3: to USA Today, I did a quick you know, just
7:30
Speaker 3: a little quick Google while we're on the air live here,
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Speaker 3: So there you go, there you go.
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Speaker 1: All right, Well, speaking of you know, the space race
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Speaker 1: that we're in, and the place that we have this
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Speaker 1: race with is is China, of course. And China is
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Speaker 1: now officially on the board with sustainability with their rockets,
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Speaker 1: and they have a different way of catching those boosters
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Speaker 1: out of the sky.
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Speaker 3: Well, so, yeah, an unproven way until very recently. So
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Speaker 3: on July tenth, China launched a version of its Long
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Speaker 3: March ten B rocket and they were able to catch
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Speaker 3: the first stage of that rocket after a mostly propulsive descent,
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Speaker 3: which means on engines right, then this thing drops down
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Speaker 3: into what amounts to a cage that has what amounts
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Speaker 3: to a net of cables on the inside, and they
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Speaker 3: catch that main stage of the Long March ten B.
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Speaker 3: That was the plan until Friday, July tenth, where it
8:41
Speaker 3: went from being the plan to the reality. So China
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Speaker 3: has now entered into the lofty group of rocket producing
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Speaker 3: organizations that can now reuse their main stage of their rocket.
8:56
Speaker 3: In this case again the Long March ten B, which
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Speaker 3: is kind of a meat sized rocket. They can catch
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Speaker 3: that first stage and be and be able to reuse it.
9:05
Speaker 3: It's it's similar to the to the Blue Origins New
9:08
Speaker 3: Glen it's you know, a partially reusable system. In other words,
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Speaker 3: their second stage or the upper parts of the rocket
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Speaker 3: are not yet reusable, but that main stage is reusable.
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Speaker 1: Uh.
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Speaker 3: This was developed by the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology,
9:25
Speaker 3: the c A l VT so anyway as part of
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Speaker 3: the Chinese Space Agency, so they were able to design, build,
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Speaker 3: and actually now test and successfully test this system. So
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Speaker 3: it delivered a satellite to orbit. Then the main stage
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Speaker 3: came back down and was secured in the cable recovery
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Speaker 3: system inside this basically again what amounts to a cage
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Speaker 3: off the coast of China on the island of Hainan,
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Speaker 3: which is where their launch facilities are, and so they
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Speaker 3: were able to enter the group of reusable rockets. So
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Speaker 3: this is this makes the fifth orbital class rocket system
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Speaker 3: to be successfully recovered after making a propulsive landing. Now
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Speaker 3: there's one that's on the outside of this group that
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Speaker 3: is similar. That's that's an Electron rocket, So that's that's
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Speaker 3: from a company from New Zealand, but they come down
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Speaker 3: on parachutes. All of these other rockets make propulsive landings.
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Speaker 3: That is the Falcon nine, the Falcon Heavy Starship, and
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Speaker 3: New Glens. So in other words, three SpaceX rockets Jeff
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Speaker 3: Bezos Blue Origin, the New Glen and now the Long
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Speaker 3: March eighth the only systems that make propulsive landings for
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Speaker 3: partial reusability. But again that's that's like not having to
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Speaker 3: throw your airplane away. After you fly to a distant city,
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Speaker 3: you can get back on the same airplane after you
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Speaker 3: refuel it and come back home. This is kind of
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Speaker 3: that same idea in the world of rocket transportation, where
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Speaker 3: they are able to reuse these main stages and not
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Speaker 3: have to discard them, making space travel a whole lot cheaper.
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Speaker 1: I wonder if this will get them in the spirit
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Speaker 1: of sustainability and maybe get them to cut some of
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Speaker 1: their carbon emissions in China. I'm just wondering if you know,
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Speaker 1: they don't get with the full program when it comes
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Speaker 1: to sustainability, too much to hope for.
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Speaker 3: Interesting question, you know the uh just about reusing rocket
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Speaker 3: The rocket industry isn't known for their carbon friendly footprints anyway. Yeah, yeah, typically,
11:34
Speaker 3: but yeah true.
11:36
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Speaker 1: the dragon Con Pregame Show podcast wherever you get your
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Speaker 1: podcasts more made of stars. Right after this, all right,
13:42
Speaker 1: let's talk about these neptune sized worlds that have been
13:47
Speaker 1: just kind of zipping around, flying around. And then it
13:52
Speaker 1: led the astronomy community to say, well, wait a minute,
13:56
Speaker 1: these things are just kind of escaped from some star
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Speaker 1: and they're just kind of roaming around. Well, apparently not
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Speaker 1: so fast. There may be more to this.
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Speaker 3: How do we find exo planets? Anyway? What is an exoplanet?
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Speaker 3: Let's start there. Exoplanets are planets that are orbiting around
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Speaker 3: other stars not named the Sun. So there are planets
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Speaker 3: that we have discovered orbiting other stars within our Milky
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Speaker 3: Way galaxy. We find them by a variety of different techniques.
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Speaker 3: The first technique is we look at the star itself wobbling,
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Speaker 3: and from that wobble of the star, we can infer
14:39
Speaker 3: the presence of planets around that star gravitationally tugging it
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Speaker 3: back and forth and almost like you know, it looks
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Speaker 3: like a kid writing a seesaw with an invisible child
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Speaker 3: on the other side, and you just see the motion
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Speaker 3: of the star and infer that there are planets there.
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Speaker 3: So we do that with a Doppler effect, that's a
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Speaker 3: redshift kind of effect. The second way is that these
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Speaker 3: planets actually pass in front of their parent star and
15:06
Speaker 3: make the star go a bit dim. Now, everything has
15:09
Speaker 3: to be lined up just right for that to occur,
15:13
Speaker 3: and so when we see these planets passing in front
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Speaker 3: of their parent star, the parents star dims down a
15:18
Speaker 3: little bit. And when it dims down, then we say, oh,
15:22
Speaker 3: look there's a planet passing in front of the star. Therefore,
15:25
Speaker 3: we can figure out the properties of that planet to
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Speaker 3: some degree just by the way the light dims down,
15:30
Speaker 3: and we know that there are planets around that star.
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Speaker 3: This third way is a little bit similar to the
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Speaker 3: second way, but it's notably different. It's in a process
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Speaker 3: called micro lensing, and micro lensing events have to do
15:45
Speaker 3: with general relativity and they have to do with the
15:48
Speaker 3: fact that these little planets can also pass in front
15:51
Speaker 3: of more distant stars as they orbit around their parent star.
15:56
Speaker 3: And when they do pass in front of more distant stars,
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Speaker 3: the gravitational influence of those planets causes the light to
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Speaker 3: bend and warp, and that's called a micro lensing event,
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Speaker 3: and we can find out that there are these exoplanets.
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Speaker 3: For micro lensing events, this works well when the planets
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Speaker 3: are far away from their parents star. Both of the
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Speaker 3: other techniques work well when those planets are close to
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Speaker 3: their parents star. So this is a micro lensing event
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Speaker 3: is a good way to find planets that are not
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Speaker 3: so nearby to their parents star. They're more far out. Okay, Well,
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Speaker 3: when we started employing micro lensing events, it started turning
16:36
Speaker 3: up these neptune size roughly planets. So you think of
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Speaker 3: it as kind of a gas giant planet that is
16:43
Speaker 3: far away from its parents star. But some of these
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Speaker 3: micro lensing events actually appeared to show that the neptunes
16:52
Speaker 3: that we found were really maybe not associated with the
16:57
Speaker 3: parent star at all, that they happened to just kind
17:00
Speaker 3: of be passing by. And so we started talking about
17:04
Speaker 3: a group of objects called rogue planets. A rogue planet
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Speaker 3: is a planet that was somehow kicked out of its
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Speaker 3: native parent solar system and it's just traveling through space
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Speaker 3: on its own. And so the more we study these
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Speaker 3: micro lensing events, the more of these rogue planets we
17:22
Speaker 3: started to find free floating neptune size or larger planets
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Speaker 3: out there just passing through the galaxy. You just happened
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Speaker 3: to be moving in front of, you know, a star
17:33
Speaker 3: and causing a micro lensing event. And so when we
17:37
Speaker 3: really started to study this more, in just the last
17:41
Speaker 3: couple of decades is all we've been looking for this stuff.
17:43
Speaker 3: Right when we really started to study this more, there
17:46
Speaker 3: appeared to be a lot of these things, like maybe
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Speaker 3: almost too many of them. And this is one of
17:53
Speaker 3: the things that astronomers started going, wait a minute, for
17:57
Speaker 3: the density of stars and for the d density of
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Speaker 3: these rogue kind of free floating neptunes or solo neptunes
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Speaker 3: were flying finding out there. That would mean that there
18:07
Speaker 3: are you know, maybe one, two or possibly even more
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Speaker 3: of these rogue neptunes for every star in the Milky Way.
18:16
Speaker 3: And that says, yeah, that's just a little bit of
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Speaker 3: a high ratio, Like does every solar system ever formed
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Speaker 3: kick out a neptune sized planet and have it just
18:28
Speaker 3: free roaming through the through the Milky Way galaxy and
18:31
Speaker 3: we're picking up samples of these things. That seems statistically unlikely.
18:38
Speaker 3: So then astronomers started saying, well, wait a minute, what
18:41
Speaker 3: if what if these objects were finding maybe just got
18:48
Speaker 3: moved from the inner part of their solar system out
18:51
Speaker 3: to an extreme distance in their own solar system? But
18:55
Speaker 3: they are in fact still gravitationally bound to their parents star.
19:00
Speaker 3: And so a couple of brilliant astrophysicists from the Great
19:05
Speaker 3: Nation of Canada, Sam Hayden from the Canadian Institute for
19:08
Speaker 3: Theoretical Astrophysics and Young Keen Wu from the University of Toronto,
19:14
Speaker 3: ran a series of gravitational interaction models in which they
19:20
Speaker 3: started to try to decide whether these observed free floating
19:25
Speaker 3: rogue Neptune like planets are really free, or could they
19:30
Speaker 3: possibly be far out from their parents star but still
19:35
Speaker 3: gravitationally held in place by their parents star in other words,
19:38
Speaker 3: a weekly associated far distant orbit from the parent star,
19:44
Speaker 3: and they participate in these micro lensing events, but they're
19:47
Speaker 3: really not entirely free gravitationally, they really are still weakly
19:53
Speaker 3: connected to their parent star. And so then after running
19:57
Speaker 3: several of these simulations and enough to be able to
20:01
Speaker 3: pass scientific rigor, they found out that it's probably more
20:05
Speaker 3: likely that these are planets that were bullied out of
20:10
Speaker 3: the inner part of their solar system. They had gravitational
20:12
Speaker 3: interactions in the forming stages of the solar system, and
20:16
Speaker 3: they were ejected to a far reaching neighborhood within their
20:20
Speaker 3: own solar system, which almost made them look like they
20:24
Speaker 3: were not associated with their parents star, but they really
20:27
Speaker 3: still are tied, and so that looks like the more
20:30
Speaker 3: likely explanation for these extremely distant orbits. For every one
20:37
Speaker 3: or two of these extremely distant Neptunes that are still
20:39
Speaker 3: bound to the star, it looks like there was probably
20:42
Speaker 3: another planet that was thrown into a very close orbit
20:47
Speaker 3: around their parents star, which is something we also find
20:50
Speaker 3: in the data sets. And so this looks like data
20:54
Speaker 3: that's giving us a better understanding of the kinds of
20:58
Speaker 3: interactions that take place within a solar system as it forms.
21:02
Speaker 3: And friends, let's not forget that there is a postulated
21:07
Speaker 3: planet nine in our own solar system. There's some evidence
21:12
Speaker 3: in our own solar system of one of these kinds
21:15
Speaker 3: of large but far flung planets that we have yet
21:20
Speaker 3: to locate and identify for certain, but we see some
21:23
Speaker 3: of the dynamic evidence within our own solar system that
21:26
Speaker 3: we may have one of these planets in our in
21:28
Speaker 3: our very own solar system as well. So interesting study,
21:32
Speaker 3: fun stuff, but it's not one of.
21:34
Speaker 1: Those deals where we have these Neptune sized planets. And
21:37
Speaker 1: then ours was named Neptune because that would be weird.
21:42
Speaker 3: So I think that's the reason. No, it's not that.
21:44
Speaker 3: It's really not that reason.
21:47
Speaker 1: It's not one of those deals where you know, we
21:49
Speaker 1: happen to have to take on our own personal el
21:52
Speaker 1: Guapa that also happens to be the actual el Guapa
21:55
Speaker 1: in one of those situations.
21:57
Speaker 3: Why why do why do all these other solar systems
21:59
Speaker 3: get to have Neptune like planet. We need a Neptune,
22:01
Speaker 3: you want to, let's just nave our planet Neptune as well.
22:05
Speaker 1: Let me let me ask you this because something that
22:07
Speaker 1: you said at the beginning, you defined exoplanet as these
22:13
Speaker 1: worlds that are, you know, not orbiting our star, but
22:17
Speaker 1: orbiting a star with an orbit to a star. Does
22:20
Speaker 1: that mean that when they thought these planets were just
22:23
Speaker 1: kind of free range, were they not considered exoplanets? And
22:28
Speaker 1: then when they go, oh no, they are still connected
22:31
Speaker 1: to a star, Okay, they're exoplanets again.
22:34
Speaker 3: Yeah. So so remember when we expand exoplanet, it actually
22:37
Speaker 3: stands for extrasolar planet, which means outside of our Solar system.
22:43
Speaker 1: Okay, so they don't have to be orbiting a planet,
22:45
Speaker 1: they just have.
22:46
Speaker 3: The official definition would just say they are planet like
22:49
Speaker 3: objects that are not part of our solar system, all right.
22:53
Speaker 1: I wasn't sure if there was a clarification thing in that.
22:55
Speaker 1: I know it's semantics, but I was just curious if
22:58
Speaker 1: if that was, you know, trying to be a good
23:00
Speaker 1: student over here, is what I'm.
23:02
Speaker 3: That's an excellent question, and it's these very kinds of
23:05
Speaker 3: definitions and words that astronomers spend all their time at
23:08
Speaker 3: scientific meetings fighting about. So so, no, we really do
23:11
Speaker 3: want to nail down that definition. But again, the term
23:14
Speaker 3: exo planet is a shortened term from the much longer
23:18
Speaker 3: and harder to say extra solar planet requires extra syllables,
23:22
Speaker 3: extra syllable planet, No extra solar planet meaning outside of
23:25
Speaker 3: our solar system.
23:26
Speaker 1: More made of stars. Right after this, all right? In
23:49
Speaker 1: our disclaimer at the beginning of the show, we got
23:51
Speaker 1: a few things that we warn you that you may
23:53
Speaker 1: learn about. One of those things is quasars. And this
23:57
Speaker 1: week we got quasars in our not just not just quasars,
24:01
Speaker 1: but the oldest of quasars in this in this story
24:05
Speaker 1: from astronomy dot Com.
24:07
Speaker 3: And sometime we need to do a whole story on
24:09
Speaker 3: asterisms too.
24:10
Speaker 1: By the way, Yeah, I'm down for that.
24:12
Speaker 3: But not today. We probably won't do that to this
24:15
Speaker 3: for another time. We'll get back to asterisms for those
24:18
Speaker 3: of you who you know like the precursor to the show. Anyway,
24:21
Speaker 3: So all right, what is a quasar, Well, it's a quasar,
24:25
Speaker 3: is a quasi stellar object, or it's actually a qso,
24:29
Speaker 3: but we found those in the radio and then we
24:32
Speaker 3: expanded that definition to quasars, which are quasi stellar like
24:36
Speaker 3: objects in the optical part of the spectrum that we
24:38
Speaker 3: quite frankly had no freaking idea what they were. We
24:42
Speaker 3: just didn't know. We were studying them. They didn't make sense.
24:45
Speaker 3: They seemed to be bright like a point mass of
24:49
Speaker 3: a star, but they didn't have a spectrum that was
24:52
Speaker 3: anything like a star. In fact, the emission lines or
24:55
Speaker 3: absorption lines identified in the spectrum of quasars didn't look
24:59
Speaker 3: like any chemicals known on the periodic table, no elements definable,
25:05
Speaker 3: and so these were truly mysterious objects when they were
25:09
Speaker 3: first discovered and then when they were being investigated in
25:13
Speaker 3: the nineteen sixties. And it turns out that it was
25:16
Speaker 3: a gentleman by the name of Martin Schmidt at Caltech
25:20
Speaker 3: who came up with the final explanation of what these
25:22
Speaker 3: objects really are, and what he said was, hey, we're
25:25
Speaker 3: not looking at stars at all. These are the active
25:30
Speaker 3: centers of extremely distant galaxies whose spectra had been red
25:35
Speaker 3: shifted so drastically by the cosmological expansion of the universe
25:40
Speaker 3: that we're not even looking for the spectral lines in
25:44
Speaker 3: the right part of the spectrum anymore. And really, if
25:47
Speaker 3: you extrapolate these these spectral lines in the spectrum of
25:52
Speaker 3: these quasars back to the a red shift that is
25:57
Speaker 3: more like what it would be in the laboratory, then
25:59
Speaker 3: we can actually identify these elements, but we're just seeing
26:02
Speaker 3: them in a completely different part of the light spectrum,
26:05
Speaker 3: which was confusing at the time because you had to
26:08
Speaker 3: understand cosmological redshifts and the expansion of the universe and
26:11
Speaker 3: and and all right, so but now to stand with
26:14
Speaker 3: they are, that's a whole lot of and there's a
26:16
Speaker 3: lot of ands there. And if you want to come
26:18
Speaker 3: take Astronomy eleven oh six at Columbus State University, I
26:21
Speaker 3: will be happy to explain all of those ads to
26:24
Speaker 3: you in a greater amount of detail than I would
26:26
Speaker 3: on a podcast.
26:27
Speaker 1: So and then give you a test on it.
26:31
Speaker 3: Which is the less enjoyable part. Yeah, but you you listeners,
26:35
Speaker 3: you're just hanging out with me in a podcast, and
26:37
Speaker 3: so you might have to imagine what the ands are.
26:39
Speaker 3: But I'm gonna tell you the rest of the story,
26:41
Speaker 3: all right. So Martin Schmidt's quasars are super massive black
26:47
Speaker 3: holes in galaxies so distant that they're kind of coming
26:51
Speaker 3: toward the edge of the observable universe. And in other words,
26:56
Speaker 3: the light has had to travel for on the order
26:59
Speaker 3: of about thirteen billion years to arrive at the Earth.
27:04
Speaker 3: And so when we see these supermassive black holes in
27:07
Speaker 3: these very early galaxies, they're in these violent stages of feeding,
27:12
Speaker 3: which makes those objects extremely bright. Those gases before they
27:16
Speaker 3: fall into the black hole, amit all kinds of energy
27:20
Speaker 3: and radiation. So that's what we're really seeing when we
27:23
Speaker 3: see Equasar. Okay, so there's the setup. Here comes the pitch.
27:29
Speaker 3: There is a somewhat newly launched telescope from the European
27:34
Speaker 3: Space Agency that is named EUCLID, and the EUCLID Space
27:38
Speaker 3: Telescope is similar in a way to our own James
27:42
Speaker 3: Web Space Telescope. In fact, they're both infrared telescopes they're
27:47
Speaker 3: both orbiting at the L two lagrange point. They're out
27:50
Speaker 3: there hanging around together in they're weird kind of orbit
27:53
Speaker 3: around the Sun. That's the same as Earth's orbit around
27:55
Speaker 3: the Sun anyway. So they're both taking pictures of the
27:59
Speaker 3: universe in the near infrared spectrum. But the difference is
28:05
Speaker 3: James web takes really highly magnified close up images, where
28:09
Speaker 3: EUCLID is more like a wide pan it's a zoomed
28:14
Speaker 3: out image to get large swaths of the sky in
28:18
Speaker 3: a similar electromagnetic part of the spectrum as the James
28:22
Speaker 3: Webspace telescope. Okay, so as EUCLID is taking these wide shots,
28:28
Speaker 3: it's discovering thousands upon thousands upon actually millions of very
28:34
Speaker 3: distant galaxies. And one of the things that discovered while
28:38
Speaker 3: looking at all those distant galaxies is thirty one of
28:43
Speaker 3: these quasar type objects that we just described, so distant
28:47
Speaker 3: galaxy with a feeding supermassive black hole on the inside.
28:51
Speaker 3: Thirty one of those that date back to the first
28:55
Speaker 3: billion years of the universe. In other words, the universe
29:00
Speaker 3: is about thirteen now, it was about one or less
29:06
Speaker 3: billion years old when these quasars actually started emitting their light.
29:10
Speaker 3: So already it's giving us a look at some really distant,
29:14
Speaker 3: really ancient objects that give us a better understanding of
29:18
Speaker 3: how galaxies themselves formed. Okay, now, in that data set,
29:24
Speaker 3: there are two two of these quasars which seem to
29:29
Speaker 3: be particularly strange because they came to life and they
29:35
Speaker 3: started emitting light when the universe was only six hundred
29:38
Speaker 3: and seventy million years old, a really really early time
29:45
Speaker 3: where astronomers don't fully understand why there are either fully
29:51
Speaker 3: grown galaxies or fully grown super massive black holes that
29:56
Speaker 3: have had enough time to form. You see, the universe
29:59
Speaker 3: was just too young at that time to have those
30:02
Speaker 3: kinds of mature structures on the inside, and so that
30:06
Speaker 3: makes these objects weird. And in this story from astronomy
30:10
Speaker 3: dot com, by the way, it's a great place to go,
30:12
Speaker 3: look at look at look at the story and look
30:14
Speaker 3: it up. There are some interesting quotes, but one of
30:17
Speaker 3: the quotes came from Antonio Lamarca, who's one of the
30:21
Speaker 3: participating European scientists on this project from the Netherlands Institute
30:25
Speaker 3: for Space Research, and Antonio says this quote, the EUCLID
30:29
Speaker 3: team has taken a true sensus of quasars at the
30:34
Speaker 3: dawn of the universe for the very first time. It's
30:37
Speaker 3: a big step toward understanding these fascinating objects on a
30:42
Speaker 3: more fundamental level. Unquote, so says Antonio Lamarca from Netherlands
30:49
Speaker 3: Institute for Space Research. So so again, just kind of
30:52
Speaker 3: echoing what I just said. We try to study these
30:55
Speaker 3: distant objects to understand better how fast things formed in
31:01
Speaker 3: the early universe. And there's at least a couple of
31:04
Speaker 3: these objects that seem to have formed way too fast
31:08
Speaker 3: according to our current models of how we think things formed.
31:13
Speaker 3: They're just too mature at too young of a time
31:17
Speaker 3: of the age of the universe. And astronomers absolutely love
31:22
Speaker 3: new kinds of mysteries. This is certainly one of those.
31:26
Speaker 3: And so the Euclid Space Telescope has answered some questions,
31:29
Speaker 3: but it's also found some new questions for astronomers to
31:33
Speaker 3: go off and study, including how to quaz our form
31:37
Speaker 3: so amazingly fast in the early part of the universe.
31:42
Speaker 1: Let's talk about what's going on at Columbus State University's
31:44
Speaker 1: co Cola Space Science Center. It's weird to think that
31:47
Speaker 1: we're like midway through July, so it's already time to
31:50
Speaker 1: start thinking about back to school and school kids coming
31:54
Speaker 1: back in there. But in the meantime, you guys have
31:56
Speaker 1: still a few more weeks of a little bit enter
32:00
Speaker 1: hallways and things there inside the building.
32:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're doing a few projects in the building, So
32:05
Speaker 3: if you come in in the next couple of weeks
32:06
Speaker 3: before school starts, you could possibly see some projects taking place.
32:12
Speaker 3: One of those projects is we're upgrading our observatory, and
32:15
Speaker 3: so we are putting new mounts and new cameras on
32:18
Speaker 3: our big telescope in the observatory. That's happening over the
32:21
Speaker 3: course of the next couple of weeks. And actually we're
32:23
Speaker 3: sitting around talking about weird stuff like super massive black
32:27
Speaker 3: holes at the centers of galaxies, because that is one
32:30
Speaker 3: of the research projects that we will be supporting through
32:34
Speaker 3: our NASA funded upgrade of our observatory. We're going to
32:37
Speaker 3: be doing some research with one of our former students,
32:40
Speaker 3: doctor John Hood, as he's bringing that research program back
32:43
Speaker 3: to Columbus State to work with our current students. So
32:45
Speaker 3: if you come down and visit us in the weeks
32:47
Speaker 3: before school, you might see some telescope parts moving in
32:51
Speaker 3: and out of the exhibit gallery and through the exhibit
32:54
Speaker 3: gallery on their way to the observatory for a new install.
32:57
Speaker 3: In addition to that, we have a Moon simulation. We
33:01
Speaker 3: have our Moon Simulation room, and we are doing a
33:04
Speaker 3: massive upgrade on the Moon Simulation room and we're getting
33:07
Speaker 3: ready for that facility to be ready to fly missions
33:11
Speaker 3: with virtual missions to the Moon with school students starting
33:15
Speaker 3: in the new semester coming up, and so you might
33:17
Speaker 3: see some fixing up and some rejuvenation going on with
33:22
Speaker 3: that facility as well. And it's just a nice time
33:25
Speaker 3: to come down because, as Wes mentioned, we don't have
33:26
Speaker 3: quite as many visiting school groups because it's summertime, so
33:30
Speaker 3: you get the place a little bit more to yourself
33:32
Speaker 3: and your family. Bring them down, jump on our newly
33:35
Speaker 3: upgraded flight simulators. You can check out our newly upgraded
33:38
Speaker 3: Mars rovers. We have a couple of newly installed consoles
33:43
Speaker 3: that are simulation consoles for both flying rockets and driving
33:47
Speaker 3: a car in helicopter on Mars. All of our old
33:51
Speaker 3: artifacts are Ominosphere Theater, including our new show called Dinosaur
33:55
Speaker 3: Survival Story. All of these things happening at the Space
33:58
Speaker 3: Science Center of the summer. Come to out and check
34:00
Speaker 3: out all the action.
34:01
Speaker 1: Friends, Sean and I thank you for listening, and we
34:04
Speaker 1: will do this again next week.
34:06
Speaker 4: Plan Nuys.
34:13
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