Latest / Nonsense with cj little and Jeff Parker / This Space Rock May Be Faster Than Our Understanding

Transcript

This Space Rock May Be Faster Than Our Understanding · Nonsense with cj little and Jeff Parker

0:00
Welcome to Nonsense Season 3, Episode 61, our big story on our
0:02
second show of the week. I'm Jeff.
0:04
Parker, I am See. Little this time we're looking
0:05
at Cosmic close Call, the story of Three Eye Atlas's daring fly
0:09
by this December. Up next.
0:11
Listen, I cannot wait to discuss this.
0:13
Yeah, in the 150 plus episodes that you have suffered through
0:17
on this show with me. Yes, I think this might be the
0:19
most excite I've ever been about a topic.
0:21
And it's not just because of the subject matter, but the time
0:23
component of this like this is all new.
0:26
It's happening. It's coming up.
0:27
It's coming right up. Just we've only had a couple
0:29
December. 19th is the big thing and we're gonna be visited by
0:32
aliens. I've read about this.
0:33
OK, maybe we should do the whole show.
0:35
Maybe we should save your commentary for the end of the
0:38
whole show. This is gonna be like our
0:40
version of War of the Worlds. Yeah, by the end of it, everyone
0:42
is just driving off the road. Absolutely.
0:44
But everybody, we're all learning at the same time, sort
0:46
of in real time, because we just discovered this thing in July.
0:49
We don't have a lot of interstellar objects this.
0:51
Is cool. We don't, which is one of things
0:52
I want to talk about. But yeah, I I do feel like AI
0:55
was the best examples that we had most recently because it's
0:57
relatively new. It's only been in the public's
0:59
eye, I and the masses I for the past couple of years.
1:02
Yeah. But I feel like in our lifetime,
1:03
AI was probably the closest we got to this sort of time
1:06
compression of something that was really potentially or or I
1:09
think ultimately will be civilization changing.
1:11
Sure. And this three eye Alice could
1:13
be that. And and it's not gonna take us
1:15
years to figure it out. It's gonna take months.
1:16
December 19th. Yeah, it's pretty nuts.
1:18
I. Have it on my calendar.
1:18
So I'm excited to talk to you about.
1:20
This. I gotta be honest with the
1:21
audience and say there was a plumbing leak in the ceiling of
1:23
my son's room. Yeah.
1:24
And he's coming home for Thanksgiving.
1:26
So I did not get to go to the production meeting.
1:28
I had to get the plumber working on in the house so I from UCJI
1:32
can still need TLDRS here and there because I because I just
1:35
don't know. It's a comet.
1:36
It's flying by Earth on December 19th and it's full of aliens.
1:39
That's it. Is that it?
1:40
That's. All we need to know it's tail
1:41
bop Part 2. Drink your kool-aid, put on your
1:43
Nikes. I'll put your Nikes on 1st then
1:45
drink the kool-aid. By the way, ward of operations
1:47
is important. Can I just mention something to
1:49
my kid? The leak is repaired.
1:50
We're I'm working on getting your carpets dried.
1:52
And why did you order 4 slipping slots today?
1:54
Leak is repaired. That's my own kink.
1:56
OK, look, a comet, it's kind of flying by Earth on December 19,
2:00
18th, although it's not sure, sort of.
2:01
True. I need to know from you.
2:02
I need to know when I need to look up at the night sky so I
2:05
can see this thing fly by, 'cause I know it's flying by
2:07
fast and I wanna it'll be just like the whole night sky will go
2:09
dark. It'll be like an eclipse when
2:11
this good thing goes by. No, no.
2:13
It's gonna just tell me when. It's not AB2 fly over.
2:15
This isn't the start of like AUSC University of Texas
2:18
football game. Oh, you know what?
2:19
Else I actually have something on that day.
2:21
Is there any possibility we can reschedule this?
2:22
No. Can we do it the 18th or can we
2:24
do it the 20th? That is not how any of this
2:26
works. To my knowledge, there's we have
2:29
no control over this thing. This is a rock bigger than
2:31
Manhattan probably, and it's hurling toward us, and it's
2:33
coming from not our solar system, some other solar system
2:37
somewhere. It's hurling towards us as if it
2:39
was a ping pong ball bouncing around the Earth's orbit.
2:41
Yeah, it's not going to be anywhere really near us.
2:44
Yeah, yeah, it's coming near Earth on the on the the
2:47
galactical scale, but not really on the like asteroids.
2:50
Armageddon, Yes. No, you can't just redirect the
2:53
three eye Atlas. It's not an option.
2:55
So tell me what the options are. I obviously I'm having to
2:58
reschedule my life for this. Yeah.
2:59
So what? What are the options?
3:01
And, and by the way, I'm sorry for that.
3:02
Yeah. I'd like to apologize to you on
3:03
behalf of Three Eye Atlas. I yeah, I apologize that you're
3:06
going to have to have to, you know, not go to the thing.
3:08
I'm so frustrated. Tell your story.
3:10
OK? Look, you tell the story because
3:12
I don't know the story. I'm just being goofy because I
3:14
have no sense of any of this. Usually my job.
3:16
Thank you for doing that this time.
3:17
It's really fascinating. Here's the way I think of this.
3:20
Philosophically, we have no certainty.
3:22
Yes, the sun will rise tomorrow in the eastern sky.
3:25
The point is, we've got some understanding of physics.
3:27
It's been all observational and we've said, oh, we're pretty
3:29
sure that tomorrow the Earth's going to continue to spin and
3:31
we're going to see the sunrise. And that's what's probably yeah,
3:33
but that's sort of the same way I think about this, this three
3:36
eye Alice. Because while it's most likely
3:38
that it's not an alien spacecraft, right?
3:40
And it's most likely that it's not going to unleash little tiny
3:42
probes to inspect our planet and it's most likely not going to
3:45
land on our planet like Dean Devlin predicted 30 years ago in
3:48
Independence Day. It will most likely be a great
3:51
thought experiment where we get to explore self-imposed
3:54
limitations on our own thoughts and and mental openness.
3:57
That's that's to me is the the opportunity.
3:59
You're trying to tell me I have to be mentally open to this
4:01
thing being full of aliens? Yes.
4:02
Is it like an Easter egg when you crack it open?
4:04
Is just a zillion of them like ants just pour out?
4:06
Is that how many or is there just one?
4:08
The hell kind of Easter eggs are you?
4:09
Open. I just want to know what
4:10
happens. Is there going to be a lot of
4:12
aliens or it's going to be a small nightmare fuel?
4:15
Is there just like one guy who's like buying the whole thing?
4:18
There's one Irvin. There's just one.
4:20
Yeah. Look, I think the opportunity
4:21
here is not that we're going to witness aliens coming out of
4:24
this thing, right, That are going to come to to Earth and
4:26
and explain all all of our great riddles to us.
4:28
Yeah, what I think is more likely is it's just going to be
4:30
a giant comet. It's a bunch of ice and dust,
4:33
but we get to explore it. And I think that's really fun.
4:35
And I think it's going to drag a bunch of people along for the
4:38
ride to sort of go through this thought experiment.
4:39
That's what I'm excited. OK, so now we're getting
4:41
somewhere, so we're probably not going to have Will Smith and
4:44
Jeff Goldblum working on the sequel of their films.
4:46
I would assume this is the setup for the sequel.
4:48
I'm assuming when this thing lands, you're going to have
4:50
Will. They'd be like I told you.
4:52
I told you. Dean's typing right now is.
4:53
Dean is typed. He is totally.
4:56
He is furiously typing away of just being like, Oh yeah.
4:59
Here we go. Let's.
5:00
Go. We'll make it a comet that it's
5:01
more. Believable.
5:02
OK, stargazers, hold their breath.
5:04
This comet Atlas approaches. Let's go.
5:06
Come to think, I really loved Randy Quaid in that film.
5:08
He's better in vacation. Oh yeah, of course.
5:20
It's the ultimate cosmic lottery.
5:22
The third confirmed visitor from another star system, Comet Three
5:25
I Atlas, has completed its close pass of our Sun.
5:28
But this Manhattan size object is defying the rulebook,
5:31
prompting a scientific debate that echoes OMA Oma's enigma.
5:34
Why the controversy? NASA data confirms an
5:37
unexplained non gravitational acceleration, a tiny persistent
5:40
kick that can't be fully accounted for by simple
5:43
outgassing. Add to that it's reported blue
5:45
glow, unusual composition in the subsequent disappearance of a
5:48
visible commentary tale perihelion and the natural
5:52
explanation strain credibility. Could this be the work of an
5:55
internal engine? Like AV 8.
5:57
Harvard's Avi Loeb suggests the anomalies point to a
5:59
technological artifact, a probe deliberately traversing our
6:02
system, whether it's a dominant relic or an active scout.
6:05
Three I Atlas is open to tantalizing high stakes
6:07
question. Is this an inert space rock or
6:10
the output of something intelligent, maybe something
6:12
even guiding it? The data arriving now may be the
6:14
final clue. OK, let's step back now and look
6:17
at Three I Atlas from the beginning, please.
6:19
OK, well, the beginning was a long time ago.
6:22
This is only supposed to be a 40 minute show. 22.
6:24
Oh, look at that. I never got that memo.
6:26
Yeah, talk faster. Now, Look, before we dig into
6:28
this, I want to remind everyone of where I am at on the the
6:31
Dunning Kruger curve, Right? You know that cognitive bias for
6:34
people with less. Yes.
6:35
Low ability and a particular area overestimate their skill,
6:37
while highly skilled individuals tend to nurse make their
6:39
abilities. Yeah.
6:40
Yeah. I'm deep in what we call the
6:41
valley of despair. Yeah, certainly on this topic,
6:44
but also the world at large. Right.
6:45
What does that mean? It means what I know best and
6:47
most absolute is what I have no knowledge of.
6:49
And in theory. OK, I should know what I know
6:51
well, but I don't even know what I know.
6:53
I constantly find myself thinking I'm at the beginning of
6:56
the curiosity and learning curve on virtually every topic in
6:58
life. So I'm just looking for other
7:00
giants shoulders to stand on, which is my whole approach to
7:03
this, the show and certainly this topic.
7:05
I bring this up because while I'm fascinated by space and
7:07
certainly science at large, I am no expert.
7:10
So just presume somewhere between 5 and 30% of what I say
7:13
here about interstellar objects is actually true, and the rest
7:16
is just meat wire brain slop. I suspect everyone here is
7:19
already doing that, so you're in good company.
7:20
Oh really? I thought, I thought 5.
7:21
Percent was sort of a high bar. So that's that's great.
7:23
Did you all right, Jeff, take me to Chile?
7:25
The NASA funded Asteroid Terrestrial Impact Last Alert
7:28
System Survey Little Telescope, AKA Atlas.
7:31
Much better name. In Rio Hurtado, Chile first
7:34
reported observations to the minor planet center of the Comet
7:36
Three I Atlas on July 1st, 2025. So we have just discovered this
7:41
thing a couple of months. Ago.
7:42
I mean, it's really recent and since the first report was made
7:45
in July, observations made before the discovery were
7:48
gathered from the archives of 3D different Atlas telescopes
7:51
around the world, including Caltex Wiki Transit facility at
7:54
the Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California.
7:57
So these pre discovery observations extend back to June
7:59
14th. So it's sort of one of those
8:01
things where like we found it in July, then it went, oh, let's go
8:04
look at the security surveillance video and went back
8:06
and looked at it was like, oh, there we see it.
8:08
It's oh, that's so cool. It's really.
8:09
Cool it folks. It pays to archive your data.
8:11
I see this is being called Three Letter I Atlas.
8:14
Does the three I designation in the name Yeah signify something
8:17
important? It does, and it's it's kind of
8:20
fascinating what it signifies. Comets are generally named for
8:22
their discoverers, right? And in this case, the Atlas
8:25
survey team that you mentioned earlier, they were the ones that
8:27
found it. So that's where the Atlas comes
8:29
from. The I is for Interstellar.
8:31
So in the three I, the I is for interstellar indicating that
8:33
this object came from outside of our solar system.
8:35
The three means it's the third known interstellar object that
8:39
we've ever observed. That's it.
8:41
Not this year, not this month. So we're bad at this.
8:43
We are not good at this, right? The last time we saw one of
8:46
these, the dinosaurs went away. So not something we see often.
8:49
So there were two before this that math in my head.
8:51
Very good. Yes, the first confirmed object
8:53
from another star was what you mentioned earlier.
8:56
One eye. Oh yeah, I am not good with
8:58
Hawaiian words. Those are hard.
9:00
It was first observed in in 2017.
9:01
And it's an asteroid, not a comet with a rocky sort of cigar
9:04
shaped object. The somewhat reddish hue the
9:07
name means in Hawaiian a messenger from afar arriving
9:11
first. That's the sort of origin of the
9:12
name. It doesn't have just taken so
9:13
many words. It means first scout.
9:15
OK. This guy was up to about 1/4
9:17
mile long, and it was very sort of elongated, right?
9:20
10 times as long as it was wide. So the aspect ratio is greater
9:24
than any other asteroid or comet that we've ever observed on a
9:27
solar system to date, which sort of gave us a little bit of a
9:29
hint. Tell me about the second one.
9:30
Who The second one Two I Borisov.
9:33
This was the first observed in 2019.
9:34
The comet was discovered by a chromium amateur astronomer and
9:38
telescope maker Janati Borisov. So that's where the the name
9:41
comes. From He makes telescopes he
9:43
makes so he's Hawking his wares by discovering cool stuff in the
9:45
space. I mean it's pretty cool they
9:47
discovered the the second ever observed interstellar object.
9:50
For sure, for sure. So you're saying in the time
9:52
that mankind has been looking at the stars, studying all the
9:56
stars going pouring over them, Copernicus, all the guys, we've
10:00
only seen three of these. At Al you know, there's so many
10:05
to list. Let me just throw Copernicus out
10:07
there. The one that the church wouldn't
10:09
allow out of his house. That one.
10:11
Let's start with him. Yeah, this is nuts.
10:13
I mean, we've been staring at the, at the sky for, for
10:16
hundreds, certainly even if not thousands of years observing it.
10:19
And we've only found and this is the third and the third one was
10:22
found in July. Explain why that is to me.
10:25
Why are we so bad at? This, that is a great question.
10:27
So they're tiny. These these objects, relatively
10:29
speaking, are tiny. This thing's the size of
10:31
Manhattan. It's bigger than Manhattan.
10:33
It's not that tiny. Well, well, this is all objects
10:36
of reference, right? I mean, this is how big you
10:37
think you're looking at like relative to the Earth, it's
10:40
tiny. Relative to the sun, it's it's
10:42
minuscule typically. And, and three eyeless is a
10:45
little bit bigger, but typically they're 10s to hundreds of
10:47
meters across. They're not that big.
10:48
They're smaller than most comets.
10:50
We we can track across the solar system, they're typically moving
10:52
hyperbolically, which means they're somewhere in the
10:54
neighborhood of 20 to 70 kilometers per second relative
10:58
to the sun. Is that fast or slow?
10:59
That is fast. That is insanely fast.
11:01
And by the time a telescope even notices one, it's already gone.
11:04
It's already moved out of the solar system.
11:07
That's one sort of point. Generally, they're smaller.
11:09
Fast. Space is also ridiculously big
11:11
and empty. And if you imagine a ping pong
11:13
ball drifting through a sphere, the size of the Earth's orbit
11:16
around the sun, not the size of the Earth, the size of the
11:17
Earth's orbit around the sun. Now make that ping pong ball
11:20
dark, cold, and sort of tumbling around.
11:22
Sure. That's the search problem
11:23
astronomers are trying to face. You're trying to find a ping
11:25
pong ball inside the Earth's orbit, which is insane.
11:28
I. Have trouble finding him under
11:29
my couch. Even if a few dozen of these
11:31
interstellar objects enter the solar system each year, the odds
11:34
that one happens to cross near Earth so that we can see it
11:36
sure. Reflect enough sunlight so that
11:38
we can see it and get imaged by a wide field survey telescope
11:41
are still pretty tiny. Wait.
11:42
Back back up. Is web optically observing this
11:45
thing or is this radio telescope or is this ultraviolet?
11:49
Is there what? What is web sense Seeing from
11:50
the sky I. Believe the sense of the web
11:52
used to see it was infrared. OK.
11:53
I think it was seeing. Infrared, so it's not sunlight
11:55
as much as its heat. All those all those things are
11:57
related. So web has some interesting
11:58
properties. You cannot point to the web at
12:00
the sun. You will kill it right So.
12:02
Because you need the. Shield yeah, so so web always
12:04
has to be pointed away from the sun to keep it cool.
12:06
We only recently got the right sort of eyes for the job, if you
12:09
will, Right the that first one in 2017, one eye Uma.
12:13
Uma was found by Pan stars 1, which is one of the first wide
12:16
field automated sky surveys designed for near Earth object
12:19
detection. We haven't and had these
12:21
detection systems for long before 2010.
12:23
We just didn't have the technology to catch something
12:25
that faint and moving that fast. Sure, sure.
12:27
But now we've got some things that are changing that, right?
12:29
I mentioned the ZTF, the Zwicki Transit facility, and then soon
12:32
we've got the Vera Rubin Observatory, their LSST are
12:35
changing the game, right? But that's, that's very recent
12:37
progress. So we haven't really had the
12:39
ability to detect them, which is probably why we haven't.
12:41
Seen them plus they were invisibility close.
12:44
Plus the the aliens turned on the the invisibility shield.
12:46
You're right. Sure, that's exactly what it is.
12:48
They are very crafty. They're not funny, but they're
12:50
crafty. So dumb question, how many of
12:52
these interstellar objects could there be?
12:54
Not a dumb question at all. I think that's a real.
12:56
It is a dumb question because obviously we have no way of
12:58
knowing there could be billions of these.
12:59
No. Yeah.
13:00
And the size of space is so big and so vast.
13:03
There's so many galaxies. There could be trillions of
13:05
these things. Even more a number I don't have.
13:07
There could be go gillions of these things.
13:09
And that's not even a number, Gillions.
13:10
Is the next step up for you? Yeah, pretty sure the
13:12
interstellar traffic rate is quite low to the best of our
13:16
knowledge. That's the problem right there.
13:18
To to our knowledge, yeah, of. Course, it's very.
13:19
Limited modeling suggests that while there are probably
13:22
billions of interstellar objects drifting through the Milky Way,
13:25
that's sort of the good news. But they're spread over billions
13:28
of cubic kilometers of space. That's the bad news, yeah.
13:31
Or I guess maybe that's the good news 'cause we're not slamming
13:33
into this stuff constantly. Current estimates suggest we
13:35
might only expect one detectable interstellar visitor every few
13:39
years. With today's survey sensitivity,
13:41
you're seeing one every couple years of some size.
13:43
The Rubin Observatory, once operational, should bump that up
13:46
to a few per year. Sure.
13:48
That's sort of like the world that we're expecting to be in.
13:50
So it's not a lot. Once they find out we have a
13:52
sharkies, they'll come a lot more.
13:53
You think so? You think the rocks will be will
13:55
be swinging by? They like Mexican food, who
13:57
doesn't? So back to Three Eye Atlas.
13:59
What else have we used to survey it?
14:01
That's another good question. Well, July 1st when we found it,
14:04
that was the Atlas telescope in Rio Hurtado in Chile.
14:07
The initial image just showed a very faint point source with a
14:09
barely detectable coma, right the the trail behind it.
14:12
But it was enough to allow us to classify it as a so you sort of
14:15
knew what to look for and where it was going.
14:16
The coma is blue. Believe on that.
14:18
And that one was blue. Yeah, I think so.
14:19
It's so interesting. The follow up to this was within
14:21
really a couple days, major observatories all over the
14:25
planet confirm the diffuse coma and the short dust tail.
14:28
So they said, hey, we think we think we got a thing.
14:30
We want to make sure it's not just us seeing it.
14:32
So a bunch of observatories went and looked at it.
14:34
Those optical images give us the first reliable orbit in the big
14:37
sort of aha moment that it's eccentricity was a two point. 6
14:40
and I don't know what any of that means.
14:42
It's the. Shape of the orbit.
14:43
It sort of confirms it's a hyperbolic orbit and then it's
14:45
not in our solar system, it's not captured by our sun, OK.
14:48
And in our. Solar system, hence we call it
14:50
an interstellar object and ISO as the kids say.
14:52
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, right, the one that that just
14:56
keeps on ticking. It captured an image on July
14:58
21st when the comet was about 277 million miles from Earth.
15:02
So we got a picture from the Hubble, OK.
15:04
And the Hubble revealed a teardrop shaped cocoon of dust
15:07
coming off of the comet's solid icy nucleus.
15:10
So that gave us, you know, certainly more detail because
15:12
Hubble was tracking the comet moving along this hyperbolic
15:14
trajectory. The stationary background stars
15:16
are actually streaked in the exposure, which is.
15:18
Really. Oh, that's so cool.
15:19
Right. It's like you're basically doing
15:21
like a like a slow shutter speed as you're tracking the target
15:24
and getting this nice blur behind it.
15:25
Yeah. Then as you mentioned earlier,
15:27
the James Webb Space Telescope observed 3 eye Atlas in August
15:31
and September before the solar conjunction made it unobservable
15:34
from Earth. So this is right before we lost
15:36
sight of it on Earth. Stop.
15:38
Back up. What's a solar conjunction?
15:39
It's basically when something gets too close to the sun or
15:43
goes behind the sun and then we can't see it.
15:45
OK, So the JWST James Space Telescope, their NIR spec and
15:49
Miri instrumentations picked up a couple things.
15:52
A strong CO2 emission spectrum. So that was the volatile rich
15:55
coma that that we're looking at, the faint extended dust Halo, so
15:58
resolving out to around several 1000 kilometers, so not small.
16:02
The data that it gave us was sort of the sharpest Spectra we
16:06
have of any interstellar comet so far from the web, which is
16:08
pretty. Cool.
16:09
And then it went behind the sun and we couldn't see it at all.
16:11
So what happened? There, so it goes behind the
16:12
sun. Now you can't see it from Earth
16:14
earth, but you can see it from other non earth observation
16:17
points, specifically Mars when it passed the perihelion right?
16:21
This is about 1.3 astronomical units.
16:24
So it's about 1.3 times the distance from from the earth to
16:27
the sun, away from the sun. It was behind the sun relative
16:31
to earth from the earth right? So you couldn't see it.
16:34
Mars was on the opposite side of the Sun, so we could see it from
16:38
the Mars. We have an observatory on Mars
16:40
because I'm not I'm not aware of.
16:41
That the European Space Agency's Exomars trace gas orbit of the
16:45
TGO. It captured a wide angle color
16:47
image of the comet's coma from around 30 million kilometers
16:51
away. So it confirmed the continued
16:53
activity at the perihelion. So we knew that it was still
16:55
moving perihelion and about a month ago NASA's high rise
16:58
camera. Tell me what a perihelion is.
17:00
The word is a combination of the Greek words peri meaning around
17:03
or near, and helios, meaning sun.
17:05
So this goes back to about the 17th century to describe the
17:07
point in an orbit where a celestial body is the closest to
17:10
the sun. Closest to the sun.
17:11
Yeah, the nearest point that it that that 3 Atlas got to the
17:15
sun. So then about a month ago, Nasas
17:17
high rise camera, which is on board the Mars Reconnaissance
17:20
Orbiter, was able to capture the highest resolution images of
17:23
three Atlas that we have to date.
17:25
But but NASA has yet to release the images, citing the
17:27
government shutdown. And hopefully now that the
17:29
government shutdown is about to end, NASA will release the data
17:32
that was basically held hostage by politics for 40 days.
17:35
And the general consensus is scientific knowledge deserves to
17:38
be free, of course, and should not be second in priority to
17:41
bureaucracy. This is outrageous.
17:43
Sadly, it's probably pretty far on the list of all the
17:45
outrageous things that happened when when the government shuts
17:48
down. But this is one of them.
17:49
Yeah, it's totally amazing to me that we're even able to get
17:51
photos of this thing from Earth, let alone from the Webb
17:53
telescope. Yeah, 'cause it's moving.
17:55
Super quickly, right? It's Holland, right?
17:57
Relative to the sun, the three eye Atlas entered the solar
18:00
system at an insane rate of speed.
18:02
At discovery it was doing about 61 kilometers per second, which
18:07
is roughly speaking 137,000 mph relative to the sun.
18:12
For perspective, the ISS, which is in low Earth orbit about 250
18:15
miles above the surface of the Earth.
18:16
It moves at about 7.8 kilometers per second, or around 17,000
18:20
miles per. Hour super slow, yeah.
18:22
Super slow, relatively speaking. The first interstellar object,
18:24
the one Omui Mui Mui. Yeah, that one, Omuamua, it came
18:29
into our solar system at around 26 kilometers per second, about
18:33
58,000 miles per. Hour.
18:34
Well, yeah, it's Hawaiian. It was it.
18:35
Was not in a hurry. The second one, the the two I
18:38
Borisov, it was faster. It was about 32 kilometers per
18:41
second between the two of them. You're looking at roughly 2X the
18:43
speed of the 1st 2, so. These things are speeding up as
18:46
we go. Well, yeah, they're all
18:48
independent. Before I CJ is going to be just
18:50
Holland. I I can promise you I'm not
18:52
finding one of these things. If somebody pointed A telescope
18:54
at it said just look through the.
18:55
The eyepiece you'll see. It there's no chance I would
18:57
see. It I think you're just not
18:58
trying. I have.
18:59
A very bad astigmatism. So three Eye Atlas at 61
19:02
kilometers per second is roughly 2X the previous interstellar
19:05
objects that that we've. Observed, and that is what
19:07
effectively proves that it's interstellar.
19:09
Right. Yeah, absolutely.
19:10
The the hyperbolic excess. So that's the speed that it
19:13
still has after you subtract off the sun's pole is way too high
19:16
for something that formed in the outer solar system and just got
19:19
sort of yielded in to the solar system by by planets, right.
19:22
There's no way you would have that kind of speed.
19:24
We're certain it's coming on its own and we're pretty certain
19:27
that it's not planning on sticking around.
19:28
Assuming there's no propulsion on it, it ain't sticking around.
19:31
It'll blow right through our solar.
19:32
System, Yeah, or it breaks up or breaks, but it's still moving.
19:34
No, I'm not saying it breaks up. I'm saying if it has breaks then
19:36
it could stop and just hover above us.
19:38
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then land.
19:39
I've seen independence. Day.
19:40
Yeah, it's not good. You don't want to be in a
19:41
populated area. This is where Ohio wins.
19:43
But this is not the only way that we know that it's
19:45
interstellar. Its trajectory leaves us little
19:48
doubt. This thing is just passing
19:50
through. Yes, that is correct.
19:51
It's because it's going so fast. We're certain that it that it
19:54
has a hyper symbolic orbit, it's not going to be bound to the sun
19:57
because it's moving too quick. There's no way the sun's
20:00
gravitational pull. It's going to slow it down.
20:01
Slow it down enough to pull it back into an orbit around the
20:04
sun, what we call it's orbital eccentricity.
20:06
So this is sort of a measurement of sort of a thing like how
20:08
round it is. It's 2.6.
20:11
Now for comparison, solar system objects, things that are
20:14
captured by our sun have eccentricities that are less
20:17
than or equal to 1. So if you're in a circular
20:19
orbit, you're about 0, right? It means you're, you're a
20:21
circle. You're not, you're not leaving.
20:23
Got you. Typical comets are somewhere
20:25
between 0.9 and 0.99, so they're moving around in some big sort
20:29
of ellipses. If you have 1.0, you are a
20:32
perfect parabolic escape trajectory, barely unbound, so
20:36
you are just staying in ever so perfectly in in orbit.
20:39
If you're greater than one, like 3 Atlas is 2.6, then it means
20:42
the object is moving too fast for the sun's gravity to to keep
20:45
it in the solar system and it will ultimately escape.
20:48
Just passing through. Just passing through for a brief
20:50
moment on the cosmic scale. You mentioned the sun.
20:52
How close did it ultimately get to our?
20:54
Sun, Well this is what we earlier the perihelion.
20:56
So a three eye Atlas reached its perihelion or its closest point
20:59
to our Sun on October 30th and that was a distance of about 1.4
21:03
astronomical units where you'll see it abbreviated as AU.
21:06
That's about 130,000,000 miles, or 210 million kilometers.
21:09
That's a great primer, and most of this completely makes sense
21:12
so far, I think. I hope no one from JPL is
21:15
listening. Oh, no.
21:16
And not too long. Everything we're getting wrong.
21:18
Yeah, because again, I missed the meeting.
21:20
So why is there controversy around Three Eye Atlas?
21:23
Because we don't really have a good enough reason and to know
21:25
most any of this is for certain, which is, which is sort of the
21:28
view that I. Take, but we can observe how
21:29
fast it's moving. We can observe its size there.
21:32
Whether. What part of this are we not
21:34
able to observe? What are we not knowing?
21:35
Well, as mentioned at the top of the show, we're trying to learn
21:37
and understand a lot about this interstellar object in a very
21:40
short period of time, right? Remember, we've only seen three
21:42
of these things to date, and while some of the things we know
21:45
to be relatively certain, there are some things that we're not
21:48
entirely certain of. This is where Avi Loeb comes in.
21:51
Yes, he's causing a ruckus there has.
21:54
To be no, but there has to be be a non 0 number of homes where
21:57
half the household is like it's a comet and the other half the
22:00
household is like it's not a comet it's just a giant Trojan
22:02
horse Yeah, so. Avi, that's one of the things
22:04
Avi Loeb says, though. Yeah.
22:06
Is this. It's full of aliens.
22:07
And we don't know it's full of aliens because it's like a
22:09
Trojan horse. It looks like it's friendly.
22:10
And then, of course, it gets here.
22:11
Yeah. And then the people crawl out of
22:13
the horse and kill us. Well, we were.
22:14
Talking about Independence Day earlier, remember on the same
22:16
time we got that great movie Mars Attacks where we're like,
22:18
oh, they come in peace, let's go visit them.
22:21
Then it annihilates all three branches of government.
22:22
Explain to me who Avi Loeb and why we care about him.
22:25
He is a Harvard astrophysicist. He's the former chair of the
22:28
astronomy department. You may have heard his name
22:30
before when he suggested that the first interstellar object,
22:33
Omaha Omaha might have been artificial.
22:35
Wait, wait. Might have been artificial.
22:37
Might not have been a giant tumbleweed blowing through
22:39
space. It might.
22:39
Have been a light sail or a fragment of alien technology.
22:42
So you can sort of put Avi in your brain, as I do, sort of
22:45
like a brilliant theoretical physicist meets the History
22:49
Channel's Ancient Aliens episode.
22:50
He kind of blends both of them, which I think there's good
22:53
reason for. He's literally got a book he's
22:55
Hawking called Extraterrestrial, The first sign of intelligent
22:58
life beyond Earth. Yeah.
22:59
So he wants to sell some books. Sure, because if you don't sell
23:01
books, you can't stay a professor at Harvard.
23:02
Nope. Tell me what Avi is saying about
23:04
Three Eye Out. He's already published several
23:06
papers and he's got six or seven papers he's already published on
23:08
this and he's been blogging virtually daily arguing that
23:11
three eye Atlas shows a non gravitational acceleration that
23:15
cannot be fully explained by commentary out gas.
23:17
He is prolific. Something is causing this thing
23:20
to move in ways that don't look like natural causes.
23:24
Yes. It appears there's to be moving
23:26
in ways that are that. Are not easily.
23:27
Explained, not easily explained. He claims that there's this
23:30
observed kick, right? A small but persistent deviation
23:33
from a purely gravitational path that would require too much mass
23:37
loss. If it were just sublimating
23:39
ices, something like 10% or so of the object's total mass would
23:43
have to be sucked out of this thing in days.
23:45
And he's going, yeah, I'm not sure that checks out.
23:47
The Spectra and brightness data doesn't show enough visible
23:50
debris or dust to support that level of outgassing.
23:53
So he's basically saying like the data here, doesn't it makes
23:55
sense if it's doing what we say that it's doing, Sure.
23:58
So his belief is that something else could be causing the push.
24:00
Aliens. Shouldn't say his belief, he's
24:02
suggesting that something else could be causing the push,
24:05
right? One possibility and he never
24:07
misses, you know, the chance to say this is some sort of
24:09
artificial propulsion mechanism. And this is where sort of the
24:12
ancient aliens come in. And that could be a radiation
24:14
driven reflections or what we classically would call a light
24:17
sail, an engineered thin material responding unusually to
24:20
sunlight that we don't understand.
24:21
Or it could be a structure behaving differently from
24:23
natural rock or ice. So in short, he's just saying
24:26
the math doesn't add up, so maybe it's some sort of tech
24:29
that we don't understand this. Is like a massive jump, pretty
24:32
big jump. The math doesn't add up.
24:33
So maybe it's tech, You know, it's interstellar object that's
24:36
coming from a completely different time in the universe.
24:39
Yeah, it's totally ancient, for by comparison to everything in
24:42
our solar system, it has to. Be right.
24:44
I mean, if you look at the big picture math, and this is not, I
24:47
would not call this conspiratorial.
24:48
It's it's sort of just the math. There are billions of galaxies
24:52
with billions of stars in each one.
24:54
And we are on the lighter side of age in the universe.
24:58
So you've got places that are a lot older than us.
25:01
It does seem feasible. And my personal belief is that
25:04
it is certain that you have had other intelligent life out there
25:08
in the universe. Maybe not the same time as us.
25:10
Maybe it is. Yeah, who knows.
25:12
But it doesn't seem like we would evolve and be the only
25:14
ones that are smart enough to have podcasts.
25:16
It seems probable that there would be aliens.
25:18
Yes, that's what you're saying. Maybe not the same time this
25:21
rock could have been hurled out of some other Galaxy billions of
25:24
years ago. I don't know.
25:25
It's going to take Voyager a billion years to get outside of
25:28
our Galaxy, but it's going to till it hit.
25:30
Something I want to. Believe you should.
25:32
I also miss art. Bell I miss Feynman too, but
25:34
here we are. I don't want to believe, I want
25:36
to know. Yeah, I agree with that.
25:37
I do. I do agree with that.
25:38
OK, So what are the other scientists, the ones who don't
25:40
have a book to hawk, have to say about this?
25:42
Ones who don't have aspirations for a TV show, Sure.
25:44
Well, Avi's never coming on our show.
25:45
Is he just just doing the Joe Rogan Show?
25:48
And then moving on? The broader astronomical
25:51
community has, let's just say, responded with the same tone
25:54
that you would use when a friend insists that the moon landing
25:57
was filmed on a soundstage. The mainstream view is that
26:00
these non gravitational acceleration is real but
26:03
explained by normal commentary processes, right?
26:06
CO2 outgassing, asymmetric jets, roof and fragmentation.
26:09
We just don't have the scale of observation of the data to be
26:13
able to make all the math make sense.
26:14
That's sort of the mainstream view for sure.
26:16
The consensus is that 3 Atlas is a natural interstellar comet,
26:19
not alien tech, just a weird one with an unusual volatile mix in
26:23
geometry. Look, many researchers consider
26:25
speculative clickbait that confuses the public about the
26:27
scientific process, and I can see that view right.
26:30
Others defend him, saying he's simply asking uncomfortable
26:32
questions about anomalies. Give me your view.
26:34
As a subscriber to Occam's Razor, right, the problem
26:37
solving principle that states the simplest explanations,
26:39
usually the best one when presented with competing
26:41
theories. I think 3 Atlas is a big old
26:43
ball of ice and dust that is just passing through.
26:45
That seems to fit. But I think Loeb is right to
26:48
question it with such rigor. In his writings he said the main
26:51
threat to new knowledge is the arrogance of expertise.
26:54
And I I I can't imagine many things more true than that.
26:57
Not being too certain and just exploring it is the scientific
27:00
process. The argument against will be,
27:02
well, we've already gotten to the answer because the data all
27:04
checks out. But I think the more important
27:06
point is getting missed, which is that he's getting so many
27:09
people scientifically minded or just scientifically curious and
27:12
especially kids engaged about science.
27:15
And that's what really attracted me to this story, is that
27:18
there's some people that are interested in this.
27:19
Now it's. So what you're saying is the
27:21
globe is the Carl Sagan of astronomy?
27:23
I'm have to dig myself out of this hole, aren't I?
27:26
You've seen the the tabloid, the Globe.
27:28
It's all about, yeah, it's all about aliens and Martians and
27:31
crazy. Isn't that, though?
27:33
Oh, sure it is. It is a little bit, but it's got
27:36
people engaged in the science. Just saying.
27:39
These guys landed in Roswell, NM, and here's their cornbread
27:44
recipe. If it gets people interested in
27:47
this, even if the premise is like, hey, we're just exploring
27:49
this thing, it's probably not true.
27:51
We're going to explore it anyway.
27:52
I think that's great. And to me, it's magical and it's
27:54
really probably the reason he's doing this is to get more people
27:57
engaged and why he puts that spin on it.
27:59
That's my view. I am pro gathering data
28:01
constantly, always gather data, always gather data.
28:04
Nothing is more important than gathering new data, new
28:07
information. I think it's super interesting.
28:08
I love that he's getting kids engaged in this.
28:10
And if this is the thing that a bunch of kids remember or, you
28:13
know, gets them interested in science, I am.
28:15
I am all for it. I have mixed.
28:17
Feelings. I totally have mixed feelings
28:18
about this. To me, this is God of the gaps,
28:20
which is when you get to something you you don't
28:22
understand and you immediately say, oh, it's aliens, it's space
28:24
aliens. We should say it was gods.
28:26
Oh, well, it's beside throwing up the waves and making the
28:29
ocean. He's angry now.
28:30
When we don't understand things, we go, Oh yeah, aliens.
28:32
Well, but the difference to me, and I think this is a very
28:35
substantial difference, if we just said it's aliens full stop,
28:38
I would agree with you. I would agree with you.
28:40
Gods of the Gap would apply, but it's not that.
28:42
It could be aliens. It could be aliens.
28:44
That's going to be so low on my list.
28:46
That's going to be one of the last things I sure.
28:48
Again, I from the top, I don't think that's likely true, but I
28:51
think it is worth exploring. It's worth taking these
28:53
anomalies and being like, oh, what could this be?
28:54
Let's have the brain exercise, let's do the philosophy work and
28:58
say, well, it could be these things.
28:59
These things could describe it, but I do think it's easy to
29:01
explore. I hear your point.
29:02
I do, but I think if it makes it more interesting and gets more
29:04
people understanding science, the net effect is you're going
29:07
to get more science and more data, I think.
29:08
What you're going to get is more pseudoscience, really.
29:11
I think you're going to get more people thinking.
29:12
Yeah, I think you can get more people thinking, oh, that's
29:14
probably aliens. We understand.
29:15
It's gotta be aliens that jump. And oh, the former chair of
29:18
Harvard's astronomy department believes this or thinks this or
29:21
is leading us to believe this, so it must be true.
29:24
He's saying this is a big possibility and we should not
29:26
discard it. Nobody's discarding it.
29:27
We're just saying it's really unlikely.
29:29
Yeah, it is unlikely, but I think it's worth exploring.
29:31
Well, these things here don't line up.
29:32
How do we get them to line up? But saying it's aliens is
29:34
virtually like assigning it to a God.
29:36
Like saying there's some. It is unknown force, it must be
29:39
a God. Yeah, is an unknown thing.
29:40
It must be an alien. If you believe that there is an
29:42
extraterrestrial intelligent life form, you've got to ascribe
29:45
something into it at some point that exists.
29:47
I don't have to do that. I need some sort of proof that
29:49
it's actually some sort of that's.
29:50
What we're trying to. Figure out some sort of alien
29:51
who's flying to us. Carl Second had this great line.
29:53
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
29:56
Yep, we don't have extraordinary evidence.
29:58
We have what looks like a very natural physical.
30:00
Phenomenon. Yeah.
30:00
I don't know. I don't know the science well
30:02
enough to know for sure. It does seem like there are some
30:04
reasonable size holes in this thing.
30:06
Not giant holes, but some reasonable size holes.
30:08
My hunch is they're explained in uncertainty, and that's probably
30:10
right. And you go, well, this is just
30:11
stuff that's uncertain. We don't really.
30:12
Know there is nothing more important than being able to say
30:15
the phrase I I don't know. Of course I'm not going to
30:17
describe this to the gods. I'm not going to describe this
30:19
to aliens. I don't know.
30:20
Yeah, that's OK. That's how we get science.
30:23
That's how we progress in science.
30:24
But when we start with things and we say and we're willing to
30:26
say, I don't know. That is exactly what Loeb is
30:29
saying. Loeb is saying, I don't know,
30:31
here are things that could fit and and that to me is, is what
30:35
he's saying. He's not saying it must be or.
30:36
It has to be or. This is the only explanation.
30:38
It could be God's hand modifying its trajectory, yes.
30:41
Sure it could be. Alien technology modifying its
30:44
trajectory. Those things are really simple.
30:46
Well, the physics is pretty straightforward.
30:49
There's no friction out there. You're going around a heavier
30:51
body. We sort of know the weight of
30:53
that body. So if you see gravitational pull
30:56
and you go, well, something's happening, that's not that we
30:58
have to explain it from something.
31:00
And if our observation of the gas jets doesn't fulfill it,
31:04
which it looks like it's not a perfect fit, there's some air in
31:07
there, what else is it? We'll know more in the next.
31:09
Couple weeks but it flies by. Yeah, it gets closer.
31:11
We don't actually know that we'll know more.
31:13
What we know is it'll be the best that we're going to be able
31:15
to see. Yeah, Because after that, it's
31:16
only get farther away. You'll get a little more imaging
31:18
from from web, I think, as it gets farther out.
31:20
But then that's it. What time am I supposed to look
31:22
up? Seven O 2.
31:23
OK, I'll be ready. Wait, did it Savings time 8 O
31:25
2:00 PM. All right, we have to get out of
31:27
here, but quickly before we do, have you seen or read anything
31:30
good this last week? Yes, of course, Operation Space
31:33
Station, the high risk build dropped on Nova this week.
31:37
Yeah, so couldn't be more timely or apartment for the story.
31:40
The International Space Station, as you all know, is the size of
31:42
a football field, right? Yes, hurtling around Earth at
31:45
around 17, 1000 mph, shielding its astronauts from the most
31:48
hostile environment humans have ever endured.
31:50
Yeah. And after 25 years of continuous
31:53
human presence in space, astronauts and Mission Control
31:56
insiders reveal the most terrifying moments aboard this
31:58
remarkable orbiting laboratory. There had to be a lot.
32:01
Of ammo, Man, wait till you see it.
32:02
Where a single mistake could prove fatal.
32:04
From ammonia leaks, meteor strikes and docking disasters to
32:07
spacewalk horrors, potentially lethal showers of space junk,
32:10
and the moment the entire ISS backflipped out of control, it
32:14
follows life or death dramas unfold 250 miles above our
32:17
planet at 17,000 mph. Wow, the human ingenuity and
32:20
teamwork to save the day. It's really it's, it's well
32:22
done. It's really great.
32:23
Episode 1 of A2 part series premiered on November 5th, so
32:26
just earlier this week. You can watch it on PBS or on
32:29
YouTube TV like I did. Part 2 is due out next week on
32:32
November 12th. It's a really great watch be.
32:35
On psych that's totally my kind of thing.
32:36
I would love. That I watch it with my kids.
32:38
My oldest son could not take his eyes off the screen.
32:41
He was so, so fixated. On it.
32:43
It's fascinating. It's really a great show.
32:44
How about you? What have you seen you?
32:45
Would think with this topic. I'd recommend the 1998 movie
32:48
Armageddon, of course, but there was actually another film that
32:50
year about a big comet asteroid flying by Earth, a more
32:54
thoughtful scientifically grounded 1 called Deep Impact.
32:58
Not the adult one, no. A massive, recently discovered
33:00
comet is hurling toward Earth, threatening an extinction level
33:03
event. The government races to build a
33:05
secret arc of survivors. A desperate space mission,
33:08
Messiah launches with a veteran crew to plant nuclear bombs on
33:11
the comet score. The world watches, waiting for
33:14
either salvation or in annihilation.
33:16
The mission fails to destroy the comets, splitting it into two
33:19
fragments. As the first, smaller chunk
33:21
strikes the Atlantic, triggering A colossal tsunami that
33:24
devastates the East Coast, the crew of the Messiah must make a
33:26
final heroic sacrifice to save humanity from the larger
33:30
fragment. The film is a poignant study of
33:32
family, duty and facing the end of the world.
33:35
Of course, it completely misses the fact that you wouldn't need
33:36
the force to break the comet in half.
33:39
You'd only need to like nudge it slightly to the left or the
33:41
right to change its trajectory a degree or two.
33:43
What a great film that would have been.
33:45
And it'll it's completely missed the earth, but it's still a fun.
33:47
Movie we have to deviate by 1°. We have to deviate by 1°.
33:51
We have to nudge this thing just slightly.
33:53
It's in space too. It's not really that hard to
33:55
nudge. Most anti climatic film ever.
33:57
You come on, you'd be like, well, that was scientifically
33:58
accurate. But Morgan Freeman's in it, so
34:00
you totally buy it. You go with it.
34:01
It's great. It's a It's a very good.
34:03
Film. I mean, how many times do you
34:04
look at another man's shoes? Exactly.
34:06
Deep Impact on Netflix and Paramount Plus now.
34:08
And I probably haven't seen that film in 25 years.
34:11
It's great fun. That is the.
34:12
Episode Thank you for joining us for all of Jeff's nonsense a
34:15
true terrible podcast from our awful company this is on the web
34:18
but nonsense on productions I'm. Philip, I'm Jeff Parker.
34:21
If you like this program, please follow Donald, subscribe and
34:23
like at Apple Podcast, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Antenna
34:25
Pod, iHeartRadio, Spotify, My Favorite Overcast, The X-Files,
34:29
or wherever you may get your podcasts from.
34:30
Nonsense Studios use A7 Zip, a high compression file archiver,
34:34
open source and completely free for personal and commercial use
34:36
with no hidden fees or expiring trials.
34:39
A simple interface lets you get things done fast and secure your
34:41
data with its strong AES 256 encryption available on every
34:45
modern and not so modern platform. 7 zip.
34:48
Check it out. Oh, I get it.
34:49
Zipping like a like a comet. That's the connection, yes,
34:52
we'll be here every. Tuesday and Thursday mornings
34:53
for more nonsense, please join us.
35:07
Here's the thing, if the aliens come here and they're not
35:10
friendly. Yes.
35:12
We'll just, we'll just put them on.
35:16
We'll just put them on the ice. Go ahead.
35:19
I'm so sorry. Oh.
35:23
Why didn't I go while you were laughing at usually start
35:25
laughing at the. Beginning of your You're back
35:27
with the aliens and I'm just dying.