Latest / Made of Stars / Check Out the Size of These Numbers

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Check Out the Size of These Numbers · Made of Stars

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Speaker 1: Warning. The following podcast contains an entertaining look at astronomy, physics,
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Speaker 1: and space news throughout the known universe. Listeners have been
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Speaker 1: known to learn about astronomical phenomenon the scientific method, and
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Speaker 1: expanded vocabulary to include terms like quasar asterism and uranus. Listen,
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Speaker 1: that's your own risk. Go ahead.
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Speaker 2: When made of stars, made them stars, made sizes. When
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Speaker 2: made us stars, you could be from high they would
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Speaker 2: New Mexicomus where all stars?
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Speaker 3: When we are made of stars. I'm Wes Carol, joined
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Speaker 3: by my good friend doctor Sean As, an executive director
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Speaker 3: at Columbus State University's Coca Cola Space Science Center.
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Speaker 4: Hey Sean, Hey, we's good to be here today.
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Speaker 3: We have a variety of stories today. Right. Sometimes we
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Speaker 3: try to look for like a recurring theme for the
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Speaker 3: show the show, but occasionally we just kind of have
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Speaker 3: like a hodgepodge of things. This seems to be sort
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Speaker 3: of a hodgepodge, but still all pretty interesting stories. Nonetheless,
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Speaker 3: first and foremost, let's talk about new horizons. Anytime you
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Speaker 3: got a ship that is in I would say deep space,
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Speaker 3: but deep space relative when you're talking about something that's
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Speaker 3: borderline leaving our Solar system. And then they have a
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Speaker 3: situation where they say, we're gonna shut any spacecraft. I
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Speaker 3: guess we're gonna shut this thing down, hibernate it from
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Speaker 3: a computer standpoint, and then turn it back on later.
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Speaker 3: It's got to be like, okay, let's hold our breath
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Speaker 3: as we hit the on button and see what happens.
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Speaker 3: And I guess they did that, and they can all
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Speaker 3: breathe again because it woke up.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, it woke up, and I'm sorry, you know my personality.
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Speaker 4: I've been sitting here thinking what's the common theme. And
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Speaker 4: the common theme is there are really big numbers in
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Speaker 4: every one of these stories. Ah okay, there's some very
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Speaker 4: large numbers, and we're going to talk about them all.
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Speaker 4: All of these big numbers, so new horizons. This was
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Speaker 4: a billion miles away.
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Speaker 3: Say this is the biggest number. I think.
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Speaker 4: I don't think we have any bigger, do we. I'm
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Speaker 4: gonna have to check. I don't know. I'll have to
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Speaker 4: refresh my memory. Six billion miles away. And it's powered
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Speaker 4: down now. On any gate on any given day here
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Speaker 4: at the Space Science Center, you know, we come in
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Speaker 4: and we power up our building, and they're a variety
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Speaker 4: of computers that run a variety of exhibits and theaters
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Speaker 4: and all kinds of situations here in the building, and
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Speaker 4: we're just happy any day where everything just boots up.
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Speaker 4: It's like, hey, everything booted. We didn't have to replace
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Speaker 4: a power support. We don't have a monitor that went
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Speaker 4: down some mysterious unknown problem, some weird update you know
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Speaker 4: that caused all them anyway. So yeah, So so imagine
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Speaker 4: you're six billion miles away from your computer that you
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Speaker 4: really need to have it come back on, and it's
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Speaker 4: been off for a year. Okay, now you know what
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Speaker 4: it feels like to be a controller of the New
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Speaker 4: Horizons spacecraft. Now, for those of you who might not
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Speaker 4: remember what the New Horizons spacecraft is, it's the one
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Speaker 4: that made the very close pass of the planet former
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Speaker 4: planet Pluto. Pluto, formerly known as a planet, now known
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Speaker 4: as a dwarf planet. I don't even know if that
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Speaker 4: terms in the in the political correct vernacular these days,
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Speaker 4: but that's that's what astronomers decided to call it, So
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Speaker 4: there you go.
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Speaker 3: Pluto himself would just say, is it still a planet?
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Speaker 3: I think that's all he would say. This is the one,
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Speaker 3: And they gave us like the really cool photos of Pluto.
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Speaker 4: It did, it did. Indeed, so it did the one
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Speaker 4: and only fly by that has ever been done with
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Speaker 4: a spacecraft of the former planet and now dwarf planet
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Speaker 4: Pluto back in twenty fifteen. All right, so now it's
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Speaker 4: out well beyond the orbit of Pluto, and you know
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Speaker 4: it's been studying what's past Pluto? Well, what is past Pluto?
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Speaker 4: So if you were to jump on a spacecraft and
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Speaker 4: fly out past Pluto, you would enter a region of
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Speaker 4: the Solar System that we referred to as the Kuiper Belt.
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Speaker 4: Now what is the Kuiper Belt. Well, it's a belt.
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Speaker 4: So imagine like a donut shaped structure. Suddenly I'm hungry.
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Speaker 4: I don't know what happened there, but okay, so imagine
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Speaker 4: it's it's in a toroid, is what we referred to
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Speaker 4: it in science.
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Speaker 3: And if you ever had one of those touroids, oh,
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Speaker 3: you got to sit on that little pillow and oh
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Speaker 3: my goodness, it's not removed once anyway.
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Speaker 4: So the the shape of it is kind of like
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Speaker 4: a doughnut. Imagine the empty donut hole. The entire Solar
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Speaker 4: system sits inside the rest of the Solar system sits
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Speaker 4: inside there, right, Okay, So that means it's a belt
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Speaker 4: of objects that orbit the Sun, many of which are
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Speaker 4: what we refer to as planetesimals, leftover chunks of debris
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Speaker 4: from the formation of the Solar System. A lot of
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Speaker 4: those tend to be melty when they get in close
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Speaker 4: to the Sun. So if one of these objects were
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Speaker 4: to get bumped out of the Kuiper Belt and travel
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Speaker 4: in toward the interior part of the Solar System near
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Speaker 4: the Sun, it would begin to melt and grow a tail.
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Speaker 4: We would call that a comet. So the Kuiper Belt
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Speaker 4: is the source of what we refer to as the
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Speaker 4: short period comets, which tend to be in the plane
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Speaker 4: of the Solar System in the ecliptic where all the
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Speaker 4: planets go around. Okay, that's good enough anyway. So that's
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Speaker 4: what New Horizons is traveling through now. So what they
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Speaker 4: did is they kind of power the system down, the
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Speaker 4: batteries and save the charge and all that kind of stuff,
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Speaker 4: let it get out there drifting among those objects in
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Speaker 4: the Kuiper Belt a little bit longer, and then fired up. Well,
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Speaker 4: they've been doing that for the last three hundred and
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Speaker 4: twenty one days and so you just never know when
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Speaker 4: you've let it sit that long in the harsh environment
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Speaker 4: of space far from the Sun where things are very cold,
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Speaker 4: if when you send the radio signal for all of
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Speaker 4: the computers and communication systems to boot back up again
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Speaker 4: and operate, whether it's really going to happen. So on
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Speaker 4: June twenty third, controllers for this mission did send the signal,
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Speaker 4: and it has now been verified that New Horizons has
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Speaker 4: woken from its sleep. It is in good health, it
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Speaker 4: is communicating back with the Earth in a stable manner,
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Speaker 4: and it's letting the ground controllers know that all the
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Speaker 4: systems are doing well and is now traveling through a
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Speaker 4: very interesting and unexplored portion of our solar system, the
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Speaker 4: Kuiper Belt, and it will be sending new pictures, images
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Speaker 4: and data back soon. It's actually kind of been taking
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Speaker 4: some data during the last two hunter and twenty one days,
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Speaker 4: so it will begin transmitting that data back and we
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Speaker 4: will learn more about the physical nature of the outer
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Speaker 4: part of our solar system now because New Horizons has
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Speaker 4: come back to life. Congratulations to NASA, JPO and all
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Speaker 4: of the controllers. I believe that JOHNS. Hopkins is where
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Speaker 4: they're controlling this vehicle now, and we'd just like to
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Speaker 4: say good job to everybody working on this mission and
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Speaker 4: another success for NASA as a spacecraft has come back
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Speaker 4: to life and it is providing new data.
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Speaker 3: So, and you talking about the Kuiper Belt. I just
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Speaker 3: was looking up images of it. So, and it's interesting
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Speaker 3: because I think back to my childhood study being the
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Speaker 3: Solar System, and I think for a lot of kids
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Speaker 3: maybe they just think, okay, well, once you get past
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Speaker 3: Pluto then and in some cases obviously Neptunes further away,
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Speaker 3: but you're just out of the Solar System. But this
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Speaker 3: is a pretty significant distance beyond that that the New
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Speaker 3: Horizons is going to have to go before it's officially
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Speaker 3: out of the Solar System.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, so it's think of it this way. Pluto compared
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Speaker 4: to the distance where New Horizons is now is only
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Speaker 4: about halfway. So New Horizons is almost double the distance
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Speaker 4: that Pluto is from the Earth. First of all, so
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Speaker 4: it's way out there. Second of all, Pluto was downgraded
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Speaker 4: from a planet to a dwarf planet in part because
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Speaker 4: we started finding a bunch of objects out beyond Pluto
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Speaker 4: that were a lot more physically similar to Pluto and
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Speaker 4: Pluto became a lot more physically similar to those objects
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Speaker 4: that were newly discovered, less similar to the other what
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Speaker 4: we would call traditional eight planets. And so that's one
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Speaker 4: of the reasons for the reclassification of Pluto is that
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Speaker 4: it looked like it was simply the first known member
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Speaker 4: of a new group of objects which then became reclassified
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Speaker 4: as dwarf planets. So you're in an area where there's
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Speaker 4: a lot more dwarf planets in that far reach beyond Pluto,
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Speaker 4: and now even smaller objects. Again, one of the objects
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Speaker 4: studied by the New Horizon spacecraft was a snowman shaped
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Speaker 4: planet testimal called Era Coth and that was about a
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Speaker 4: billion miles past Pluto, and so that's one of the objects.
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Speaker 4: Before it went into hibernation mode, it was sending images
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Speaker 4: back it. But a planet tesimal smaller than a dwarf planet.
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Speaker 4: You know, if that little planet Testimal were to get
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Speaker 4: close to the Sun, it would melt and become a comet.
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Speaker 4: It would have a tail behind it. So you're just
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Speaker 4: in a different environment of the Solar System. All these
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Speaker 4: objects are in orbit around the Sun. That's why we
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Speaker 4: still say, yeah, they're still part of the gravitational influence
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Speaker 4: of the Sun. Out beyond the Kuiper Belt is a
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Speaker 4: structure known as the Ort Cloud, and that's another source
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Speaker 4: of commets. Also out at a great distance is something
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Speaker 4: called the heliopause. That's kind of like the official boundary
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Speaker 4: of the Solar System in many regards or many people's consideration.
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Speaker 4: That's where the magnetic field of the Sun stops influencing
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Speaker 4: the general environment. In other words, it's where the solar
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Speaker 4: wind kind of quits as it runs into what we
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Speaker 4: refer to as the interstellar medium. So all of these
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Speaker 4: boundaries have physical definitions, and so what you really call
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Speaker 4: the edge of the Solar system kind of depends on
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Speaker 4: what you're talking about. So, but remember, there's more to
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Speaker 4: the Solar System than just planets. I guess that's maybe
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Speaker 4: the big lesson here.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think that's sort of takeaway there. And
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Speaker 3: now when we talk about something interstell or something that's
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Speaker 3: come into our Solar system, has it passed through this
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Speaker 3: and had to navigate through all of these things and
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Speaker 3: possibly other things that aren't quite making it in because
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Speaker 3: of the things that are there, or is something coming
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Speaker 3: in from a different angle where it's not having to
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Speaker 3: pass through it because this isn't spherical.
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Speaker 4: It's a donut, right, yeah, all of the above. So,
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Speaker 4: for sure, it had to fly through the Ort Cloud,
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Speaker 4: which is spherical. For sure, it had to pass through
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Speaker 4: the heliopause, which means it went from an area in
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Speaker 4: which the Sun was not influencing by its magnetic field
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Speaker 4: into an area where the Sun was influencing by its
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Speaker 4: magnetic field. And then it would only pass through the
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Speaker 4: Kuiper Belt if it came in on that one very
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Speaker 4: narrow trajectory that was in the plane of the Solar System,
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Speaker 4: and then it might it might encounter Kuiper Belt objects.
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Speaker 4: But from time to time, objects will get knocked out
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Speaker 4: of that much larger, much more dis instructure called the
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Speaker 4: Ort Cloud and come in at some weird angle. And
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Speaker 4: that's one of the reasons why we know the Ort
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Speaker 4: Cloud exists, because some comets come in at strange angles,
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Speaker 4: and we don't know if that was because some interstellar
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Speaker 4: object like three I Atlas, for instance, bumped into that
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Speaker 4: particle out there in the Art cloud and caused it
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Speaker 4: to come to the inner part of the Solar System.
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Speaker 4: I will tell you one of those objects was that
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Speaker 4: is very famous for a lot of people know about.
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Speaker 4: It was Comet Hailbop. Comet Hailbop, which we talked about
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Speaker 4: one of the discoverers of that comment just a couple
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Speaker 4: of weeks ago here on the show. But that was
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Speaker 4: a famous comment of nineteen ninety six, and that giant
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Speaker 4: comet was knocked out of the orbit in the Ort cloud,
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Speaker 4: that very large spherical structure at some time in history.
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Speaker 4: Was it knocked out because it ran into another Ort
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Speaker 4: Cloud object or did some interstellar object come in and
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Speaker 4: nudge it out of the way. We don't know the
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Speaker 4: answer to that. Something happened, some kind of influence happened
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Speaker 4: which caused it to move from a stable orbit in
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Speaker 4: the Oort Cloud to a non stable orbit which brought
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Speaker 4: it into the inner part of the Solar System. And
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Speaker 4: let us who are around at the time see an
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Speaker 4: amazing comment of the century.
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Speaker 3: We don't spend a lot of time in this part
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Speaker 3: of the Solar System, so it's fun to talk about it,
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Speaker 3: and for folks that haven't really thought about what's beyond
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Speaker 3: out there. I haven't spent a lot of time thinking
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Speaker 3: about it. Some of these things I knew because I
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Speaker 3: remember when we were talking about that Snowman, you know,
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Speaker 3: back in like twenty nineteen. So anyway, any of.
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Speaker 4: These spacecraft are traveling, boldly, going shall we say, that's right,
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Speaker 4: places where no spacecraft have gone before, at least not
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Speaker 4: in our spacecraft.
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Speaker 3: More made of stars. Right after this, let's talk about
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Speaker 3: SpaceX the thirty sixth flight of a single Falcon nine rocket.
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Speaker 3: These kinds of records you just continue to happen. It
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Speaker 3: continues to be like, oh my gosh, they've done this again.
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Speaker 3: They've accomplished this with a number of launches. And when
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Speaker 3: you start talking about sustainability and you start talking about
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Speaker 3: a private company that's trying to make sure all of
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Speaker 3: us stockholders happy, they got to keep reusing those rockets.
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Speaker 3: And when I say us, I mean me, And they
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Speaker 3: got to keep reusing those rockets. So this is one
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Speaker 3: of the things that they've been doing at SpaceX for
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Speaker 3: a very long time.
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Speaker 4: I think if I was among the elite group of
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Speaker 4: shareholders in the company SpaceX, I would be very happy
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Speaker 4: to hear this story, which is on spaceflightnow dot com
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Speaker 4: by the way, so so you can check it out
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Speaker 4: on spaceflight now. Incidentally, just so we don't get too
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Speaker 4: far afield, the New Horizon story is on space dot Com.
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Speaker 4: It's on other outlets as well, including NASA dot Go.
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Speaker 4: But I like to hat tip to our to our
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Speaker 4: sources for our aggregation of these space stories. All right,
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Speaker 4: So spaceflightnow dot com you can read about SpaceX having
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Speaker 4: their thirty sixth flight of a single Falcon nine rocket booster.
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Speaker 4: And that single Falcon nine rocket booster has a serial number.
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Speaker 4: It's B one zero sixty seven. And the important part
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Speaker 4: of the story is that SpaceX has launched that same
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Speaker 4: rocket booster thirty six times. Now that's a big number.
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Speaker 4: I mean it's not six billion, but it's thirty six,
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Speaker 4: which for this kind of story is actually a gigantic number.
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Speaker 4: And it is now the most launched single rocket in
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Speaker 4: the history of humanity. Thirty six rocket launches record breaking mission.
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Speaker 4: It launched just this morning as we're recording the show.
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Speaker 4: Launched this morning here on July the ninth. It launched
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Speaker 4: a bunch of Starling satellites up there, and that's a
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Speaker 4: whole another story. But it launched from Cape Carnaverl Space
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Speaker 4: Force Station Pad forty about five to twenty five am
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Speaker 4: this morning that we're recording this show. All right, Now,
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Speaker 4: here's some fun stuff. The same booster began flying back
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Speaker 4: in twenty twenty one, so that's five years of service
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Speaker 4: in the SpaceX fleet. It started with the twenty second
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Speaker 4: overall flight of the Dragon Capsule, which at the time
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Speaker 4: was a commercial resupply mission under a NASA contract. This
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Speaker 4: same booster also flew NASA astronauts to the International Space
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Speaker 4: Station on two different occasions. So humans flew to space
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Speaker 4: on this same rocket booster Crew three and Crew four missions,
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Speaker 4: as well as twenty four batches of Starlink satellites. Today,
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Speaker 4: as the liftoff occurred, the B one zero six seven
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Speaker 4: came back to and landed successfully in the Atlantic Ocean
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Speaker 4: on a drone ship. What's the name of the drone ship.
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Speaker 4: We like to talk about these because you know, SpaceX
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Speaker 4: makes it fun. The drone ship was called a short
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Speaker 4: fall of Gravitas. It's one that we'd mentioned on the
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Speaker 4: show here before. So the drone ship, a short fall
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Speaker 4: of Gravatas was able to successfully recapture Falcon nine booster
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Speaker 4: B one zero sixty seven, meaning it could have a
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Speaker 4: six thirty seventh flight or you know, a thirty eighth
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Speaker 4: flight potentially or whatever. So so for SpaceX vehicles landing
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Speaker 4: on vessels in the ocean. This was the one hundred
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Speaker 4: and sixtieth landing. So that's another big number. Do you remember, friends,
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Speaker 4: the first time you ever saw video of a rocket
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Speaker 4: landing on a floating platform in the ocean, and it
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Speaker 4: seemed like a James Bond movie. It seemed like utter fantasy. Well,
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Speaker 4: now SpaceX has done that one hundred and sixty times.
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Speaker 4: Not only that, if you count all the boosters that
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Speaker 4: landed back on land or some other venue, SpaceX has
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Speaker 4: landed six hundred and thirty five boosters with the landing
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Speaker 4: of B one zero sixty seven this morning. Six hundred
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Speaker 4: and thirty five times SpaceX has landed boosters. Now, let
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Speaker 4: me go off on just a quick soliloquy about reusability.
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Speaker 4: When the Space Shuttle program was the main workhorse for
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Speaker 4: the American space program to take payloads to space and
18:41
Speaker 4: many commercial companies bought rides to Space for their satellites
18:45
Speaker 4: to go up into low Earth orbit aboard Space Shuttle,
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Speaker 4: the cost per pound for launching those vehicles was something
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Speaker 4: on the order of average of about twenty four thousand
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Speaker 4: dollars per pound. So think about a can of soup
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Speaker 4: twenty four thousand dollars to launch a can of soup
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Speaker 4: to space, or if your payload was, you know, several
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Speaker 4: times the size of a can of soup, you had
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Speaker 4: to take that multiplicative factor and multiply it by twenty
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Speaker 4: four thousand dollars. Right, Okay, So that gives you an
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Speaker 4: idea space is expensive. Right. Air travel would be expensive too.
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Speaker 4: If we had to throw the plane away after you
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Speaker 4: arrived and build you a new plane to fly back home,
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Speaker 4: that would make air travel very expensive. But reusability is
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Speaker 4: designed to fix all that. Okay. Just a few days ago,
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Speaker 4: on July the second, the Mighty Atlas five rocket from
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Speaker 4: the United Launch Alliance made its last flight to space.
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Speaker 4: Now United Launch Alliance made trips to space cheaper, not
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Speaker 4: by being reusable, but just by using a different system
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Speaker 4: than Space Shuttle. Even that was costing about eight thousand
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Speaker 4: dollars per pound for payload flights something on that order.
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Speaker 4: SpaceX and the Falcon nine rockets have brought payload costs
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Speaker 4: because of reuse, because of this reusability that we're just
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Speaker 4: discussing in the story, because they can use the same
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Speaker 4: rocket thirty six times or more, down to about twelve
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Speaker 4: hundred bucks per pound.
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Speaker 3: That's a lot of Kansas soup.
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Speaker 4: Twenty four thousand dollars during Shuttle eight thousand dollars three
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Speaker 4: United Launch Alliance, which is not reusable, twelve hundred bucks,
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Speaker 4: and you're right, it can buy you a lot of
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Speaker 4: soup with that Campbell's name on the front of the
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Speaker 4: sew inch more soup. If you think about if you
20:45
Speaker 4: think about the Falcon Heavy rocket, which has flown from
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Speaker 4: payloads to space, its cost is about half of that.
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Speaker 4: It's about six hundred and seventy five dollars per pound.
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Speaker 4: Because Falcon Heavy is also reusable, we're not throwing the
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Speaker 4: rockets away Starship, my friends, which hasn't yet to prove itself.
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Speaker 4: But Starship is projected by SpaceX. Let's be fair, it's
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Speaker 4: kind of an internal projection, but it's projected to have
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Speaker 4: a payload cost of about one hundred and seventy five
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Speaker 4: dollars per pound eventually when it's flying reusably on a
21:24
Speaker 4: regular basis. So in so since twenty eleven, when the
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Speaker 4: last Shuttle flight happened, we've gone from twenty four thousand
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Speaker 4: dollars a pound to the first time that Starship flies
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Speaker 4: down to as little as maybe one hundred and seventy
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Speaker 4: five bucks per pound. That's why reusability is important. That's
21:46
Speaker 4: why the SpaceX IPO brought in trillions of dollars. That's
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Speaker 4: why the space industry worldwide is a growing economy. It's
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Speaker 4: growing in large part because companies have finally figured out reusability.
22:03
Speaker 4: And it is hard to say that that would have
22:06
Speaker 4: occurred in the recent times without the driving force of
22:10
Speaker 4: SpaceX and their engineering team. So again, we don't like
22:14
Speaker 4: to just necessarily be SpaceX fanboys on this program, but
22:18
Speaker 4: it's hard to not acknowledge actual accomplishments like that.
22:23
Speaker 3: More made of Stars. Right after this, let's talk about
22:47
Speaker 3: this hot summer that we've had and how surely, surely,
22:52
Speaker 3: because of how hot things have been, we must be
22:54
Speaker 3: practically touching the sun right now.
22:57
Speaker 4: Yeah. I spent a little time in Houston, Texas in
22:59
Speaker 4: the last month, and it feels like you're about twelve
23:02
Speaker 4: inches from the sun you go outside, you know, here
23:06
Speaker 4: in Georgia, you know, maybe you know, six feet from
23:09
Speaker 4: the sun. Kind of feels like that.
23:11
Speaker 3: With the extra humidity, it feels like we're, you know,
23:13
Speaker 3: maybe at the very least we've we've kind of moved
23:17
Speaker 3: into close proximity to Venus.
23:20
Speaker 4: Or maybe even mercury. I don't know why. Being so
23:23
Speaker 4: close to the sun, we're not just burning all that
23:25
Speaker 4: humidity right off. But apparently we're not. Well, apparently we're
23:29
Speaker 4: not even closer. Here's the truth. Friends. It's weird to
23:32
Speaker 4: think about this in the Northern Hemisphere, but on July
23:35
Speaker 4: the sixth, so just a few days ago, as recording
23:38
Speaker 4: the show, we are further from the Sun than we
23:42
Speaker 4: are at any other time during the course of the year.
23:45
Speaker 4: What how can we be further from the Sun and
23:49
Speaker 4: have it so hot. Well, it's because that slight change
23:55
Speaker 4: in our distance from the Sun doesn't actually make it cool,
24:01
Speaker 4: because the driving force for the changing temperatures that we
24:06
Speaker 4: associate with the seasons is not our distance from the Sun,
24:10
Speaker 4: but rather our angle with the sunlight, which is caused
24:14
Speaker 4: by the tilt of the Earth's axis. During this time
24:19
Speaker 4: of year, the June July August period of time, our
24:22
Speaker 4: planet in the Northern Hemisphere is tilted toward the Sun,
24:26
Speaker 4: which means we receive more hours of daylight and also
24:30
Speaker 4: more direct radiation from the Sun to the surface of
24:33
Speaker 4: the Earth. While down there in Jill's country. Down there
24:38
Speaker 4: down below down Under, they have shorter days and they
24:42
Speaker 4: have less direct sunlight, so it kind of cools off
24:45
Speaker 4: down there in the June, July August periods of time. Now,
24:50
Speaker 4: the weird thing is most people have a perception, though,
24:55
Speaker 4: of the fact that if it's hot, we must be
24:57
Speaker 4: closer to the sun. If it's cool, we must be
25:00
Speaker 4: further from the Sun. That is not the case, as
25:02
Speaker 4: this whole demonstration would suggest. So on July the sixth,
25:07
Speaker 4: we reached eight times in our orbit around the Sun
25:10
Speaker 4: that we refer to in science as af helion, and
25:13
Speaker 4: af helion literally means further from the Sun or the
25:17
Speaker 4: farthest point from the Sun. So at af helion this year,
25:21
Speaker 4: the Earth was about ninety four point five million miles
25:24
Speaker 4: from the Sun. In January, it's going to swing to
25:30
Speaker 4: a point called perihelium, which means the closest point. It's
25:33
Speaker 4: gonna be about ninety one point four million miles. So
25:37
Speaker 4: I know it's a radio show and you don't really
25:39
Speaker 4: see those numbers, but they both begin with nine and
25:43
Speaker 4: have a tee after them, you know, ninety something, So
25:47
Speaker 4: it's ninety four million miles compared to ninety one million miles.
25:50
Speaker 4: In other words, it's about a three percent change, just
25:52
Speaker 4: a little bit more than three percent. We're three percent
25:55
Speaker 4: further in our summer in the northern hemisphere, three percent
25:59
Speaker 4: closer in our enter in the northern hemisphere, obviously opposite
26:03
Speaker 4: sequence of the temperature changes, therefore verifying that that small
26:08
Speaker 4: change in distance is not really the reason for the seasons.
26:12
Speaker 4: Has more to do with the tilt of the Earth's axis. Friends,
26:14
Speaker 4: that's just a fact.
26:17
Speaker 3: Let's talk about the mini moon that has occasionally makes
26:22
Speaker 3: its way into our orbit. And China got a pretty
26:27
Speaker 3: good look at this thing, and thanks to photographic pictures,
26:31
Speaker 3: we got a pretty good look at it too.
26:33
Speaker 4: I'm gonna go ahead and just say the name now
26:35
Speaker 4: and just get it over with.
26:36
Speaker 3: All right, let's do this here, we go all away,
26:39
Speaker 3: an nicely don.
26:42
Speaker 4: I told Wes before we went on air here that
26:45
Speaker 4: I had to type out a phonetic just to make
26:47
Speaker 4: sure I didn't hack this name, because.
26:49
Speaker 3: I like your phonetic too, because that's kind of the
26:52
Speaker 3: way I do it when I do names it. Columbus
26:55
Speaker 3: State graduation. It's not so much about all the little
26:58
Speaker 3: symbols above the letters. No no, no, no, no, you just
27:01
Speaker 3: write it the way you're gonna say it.
27:03
Speaker 4: I recently visited Hawaii, but that does not mean that
27:06
Speaker 4: I got the pronunciation scheme down.
27:08
Speaker 2: I do not.
27:09
Speaker 4: You probably need. I like to talk definitively about things
27:12
Speaker 4: I know, and I will freely admit things I don't know.
27:14
Speaker 4: And how to pronounce things correctly in Hawaiian maybe not
27:18
Speaker 4: my strongest area.
27:18
Speaker 3: You probably ate some pineapple and some spam while you
27:21
Speaker 3: were there, but maybe don't have all the exact pronunciations down.
27:24
Speaker 3: But you did well on that one.
27:26
Speaker 4: Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Yeah, and clearly, yes,
27:28
Speaker 4: I enjoyed some things and enjoyed certain other things less,
27:32
Speaker 4: including Hawaiian pronunciations of names. Km oh Ahlaweya so km
27:36
Speaker 4: oh Ahaweyah is a tiny asteroid that's in a weird orbit.
27:40
Speaker 4: It orbits the Sun, but every time it gets near
27:44
Speaker 4: the Earth it does a quick little zip around the
27:46
Speaker 4: Earth as well, kind of a corkscrew kind of orbit.
27:50
Speaker 4: It's not does it really make it a moon, but
27:54
Speaker 4: it's a quasi moon. It's what we referred to as
27:57
Speaker 4: a quasi satellite of the Earth. It really is primarily
28:02
Speaker 4: orbiting the Sun, but also orbits the Earth once in
28:04
Speaker 4: a while. Okay, so recently it was doing that very
28:08
Speaker 4: thing where it was orbiting around the Earth. And this
28:11
Speaker 4: week in fact, and a spacecraft from China also pulled
28:15
Speaker 4: up alongside that asteroid as it made its little dipsy
28:18
Speaker 4: do corkscrew maneuver around the Earth. The Chinese spacecraft is
28:24
Speaker 4: called tian Wind two. It's the t WIN two probe
28:27
Speaker 4: from the Chinese, from the China National Space Administration or
28:31
Speaker 4: the CNSA. It's a vehicle that they send out there
28:34
Speaker 4: specifically to go check out this particular asteroid. They wanted
28:36
Speaker 4: to know more about it, the quasi moon of Earth
28:40
Speaker 4: known as come oh al away. See I'm saying it
28:42
Speaker 4: many times so I can remember how to say it,
28:44
Speaker 4: all right. So so that happened on July six. Now
28:47
Speaker 4: Wes and I are looking at a great picture. But
28:51
Speaker 4: this is an audio podcast. So go visit spaceweather dot
28:55
Speaker 4: com and you might say, well, what if I'm way
28:58
Speaker 4: way in the future listening to this, That's okay. Spaceweather
29:01
Speaker 4: dot com has what's called the wayback Machine. They have
29:03
Speaker 4: an archive. Go back and look at July ninth for
29:06
Speaker 4: spaceweather dot com in their archive and you can pull
29:09
Speaker 4: up an image to see what this little weird quasimoon
29:13
Speaker 4: looks like. They didn't know whether this was an actual
29:16
Speaker 4: solid object or just a rubble pile. They did know
29:20
Speaker 4: that it's spinning around rapidly. It tumbles once every twenty
29:24
Speaker 4: eight minutes. That's a pretty rapid rotation. If it was
29:27
Speaker 4: a rubble pile, it might actually start throwing itself apart.
29:30
Speaker 4: It appears from the image to be more of a
29:33
Speaker 4: solid object, which is consistent with it holding itself together.
29:37
Speaker 4: Something interesting. It's not the only one. It's not the
29:40
Speaker 4: only mini moon out there. There are about seven others
29:43
Speaker 4: in some kind of associated orbit with the Earth. Again
29:49
Speaker 4: not classified as moons because they don't strictly orbit the Earth.
29:55
Speaker 4: But this is the largest and most stable of these
29:58
Speaker 4: quasi satellites the Earth in the Earth environment. So all right.
30:02
Speaker 4: So there it is Asteroid number four six nine to
30:06
Speaker 4: one nine, known as Keemoo Alaweya, photographed by the Chinese
30:11
Speaker 4: for the very first time. This would be its first
30:14
Speaker 4: contact photo. It's about the size of a house, by
30:16
Speaker 4: the way, so think about your house spinning around every
30:18
Speaker 4: twenty eight minutes. I guess, I guess you really wouldn't
30:21
Speaker 4: get a headache from the dizziness, but you'd wonder why
30:24
Speaker 4: the view out of the windows keep changing.
30:26
Speaker 3: Speak for yourself, I think i'd get dizzy from that.
30:31
Speaker 3: Let's talk about the south Pole telescope that has a
30:33
Speaker 3: personal connection for us, especially for you having a really
30:38
Speaker 3: big discovery.
30:40
Speaker 4: So a story from Universe today dot com. South Pole
30:44
Speaker 4: Telescope has passed a great milestone. It has now identified
30:48
Speaker 4: seven thousand new galaxies, no galaxy clusters, friends, seven thousand
30:56
Speaker 4: new galaxy in other words, not just a single galaxy,
31:00
Speaker 4: giant groups of galaxies. And this is really important for
31:04
Speaker 4: those who study cosmology trying to figure out the structure
31:08
Speaker 4: of the universe, but also how the universe was evolving
31:12
Speaker 4: in the early periods of time. It's an interesting kind
31:15
Speaker 4: of telescope because it's a microwave telescope. It observes in
31:20
Speaker 4: roughly the wavelengths that we use for our cell phones,
31:24
Speaker 4: which is why you can't put it in Kansas, because
31:27
Speaker 4: there's way too all those people in Kansas just using
31:29
Speaker 4: their phones all the time out there. Now it's actually
31:32
Speaker 4: all of us, friends, it's all of us that pollute
31:34
Speaker 4: the sky with with our cell phone signals in the
31:36
Speaker 4: microwave bands, which is why they have to go to
31:39
Speaker 4: great lengths. And I say they it's scientists and the
31:42
Speaker 4: National Science Foundation. To put a telescope that is sensitive
31:46
Speaker 4: to the same wavelengths that we use roughly with our phones.
31:49
Speaker 4: They have to put it at the bottom of the
31:51
Speaker 4: world where there aren't cell phone signals. That's why it's
31:54
Speaker 4: down there. It's literally at the South Pole. It's at
31:58
Speaker 4: the Almundsen Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica, and that
32:03
Speaker 4: South Pole telescope is designed to study the cosmic microwave
32:08
Speaker 4: background after the early well after it's an afterglow of
32:14
Speaker 4: the Big Bang. It's studying the early part of the universe. Well,
32:18
Speaker 4: why why do we find galaxy clusters then in an
32:22
Speaker 4: echo of light from the from the Big Bang. Here's
32:24
Speaker 4: why those microwaves left over from the Big Bang travel
32:29
Speaker 4: through those galaxy clusters. And there's some physics that goes
32:34
Speaker 4: on which maybe beyond the scope of this particular podcast,
32:37
Speaker 4: but it's called the Snyaya Zeldovich effect if you want
32:41
Speaker 4: to look that up. The Sunyaya of Zeldovich effect causes
32:45
Speaker 4: a change in that radiation when it travels through galaxy clusters.
32:50
Speaker 4: So all of a sudden, you see these little ripples
32:53
Speaker 4: in that overall cosmic microwave background. You go, wait, what
32:56
Speaker 4: caused that ripple? What caused this ripple over here? And
33:00
Speaker 4: in you hang around with enough astrophysicists that they say, oh,
33:04
Speaker 4: let's the soun Yai of Zeldovich effect. And you know
33:06
Speaker 4: that that had to occur because there was a galaxy
33:09
Speaker 4: cluster in that direction. So then a team from the
33:14
Speaker 4: Argon National Laboratory begins searching through the database from the
33:19
Speaker 4: South Pole Telescope's microwave signatures, and they find these ripples
33:24
Speaker 4: in that background all over the place, and they identify
33:29
Speaker 4: eighty eight hundred galaxy cluster candidates. They were able to
33:33
Speaker 4: kind of narrow that down to for sure ninety new
33:38
Speaker 4: galaxy clusters identified, looking at only a small portion of
33:44
Speaker 4: the sky. And so it's a very interesting thing because
33:48
Speaker 4: the majority of these galaxy clusters are seven point eight
33:52
Speaker 4: billion years old or more, which means they're galaxy clusters
33:57
Speaker 4: that formed in the earliest part of our universe. The
34:01
Speaker 4: universe itself is only about thirteen and a half billion
34:03
Speaker 4: years old, so these are galaxy clusters that date back
34:06
Speaker 4: to the very earliest epoch in our history of the universe,
34:12
Speaker 4: and therefore they tell us what was going on in
34:15
Speaker 4: a physical sense. So now that we know where they're at,
34:19
Speaker 4: now we can send out all the other telescopes and
34:21
Speaker 4: have them begin examining these brand new identified galaxy clusters
34:25
Speaker 4: and find out more about the universe. Now, Wes mentioned
34:28
Speaker 4: a local tie in one of our very favorite students
34:31
Speaker 4: and someone who's come back and actually spoken here at
34:34
Speaker 4: Columbus State University as an acting professional now working with
34:38
Speaker 4: our current students here at Columbus State University. That would
34:40
Speaker 4: be doctor John Hood. Doctor John Hood is part of
34:44
Speaker 4: the South Pole Telescope research team. He's actually visited the
34:48
Speaker 4: cell Pole telescope himself. He's helped to do some maintenance
34:52
Speaker 4: and repairs and upgrades on that telescope, and he has
34:54
Speaker 4: taken data from that telescope and done all kinds of
34:57
Speaker 4: analysis working on give galactic nuclei, these weird things called blazars.
35:03
Speaker 4: So that's John's area of research. But yes, one of
35:06
Speaker 4: our Columba State University students graduated here in the Department
35:09
Speaker 4: of Earth and Space Sciences, has actually worked on this
35:12
Speaker 4: same telescope and with these same data sets. So hat
35:15
Speaker 4: tip to John. John. If you're listening to the show,
35:18
Speaker 4: which we know you're an occasional listener, we wish you
35:22
Speaker 4: well and thank you for all of the great work
35:25
Speaker 4: you're doing with our current Columbus State University students.
35:28
Speaker 3: More Made of Stars right after this, this is where
35:52
Speaker 3: we talk about what's going on at Columbus State University's
35:55
Speaker 3: co Cola Space Science Center. And I know this is
35:57
Speaker 3: probably a good opportunity to talk about, you know, former
36:01
Speaker 3: students and things, opportunities and careers that can come just
36:06
Speaker 3: from being a part and it's so cool. The other
36:10
Speaker 3: day I was standing there talking to you and someone
36:12
Speaker 3: walked up to you and it's like, I used to
36:14
Speaker 3: be one of your students, one of Jill's very good friends.
36:18
Speaker 3: And it was not the conversation I was expecting. When
36:21
Speaker 3: she walked up, I didn't know where it was going.
36:22
Speaker 3: And then all of a sudden, she's like, are you
36:24
Speaker 3: doctor Cruzin. So yeah, I just figure. I mean, you
36:27
Speaker 3: can certainly talk about the Cocola Space Science Center if
36:31
Speaker 3: you want, but I just know, sometimes it's just kind
36:34
Speaker 3: of fun to talk about getting into a new school
36:36
Speaker 3: year and where things are going with that department.
36:39
Speaker 4: You know we have. The fun thing is I have
36:42
Speaker 4: a lot of very talented, smart student assistants working with
36:46
Speaker 4: us right now at the Space Science Center. And because
36:50
Speaker 4: I've done this for a long time and I earned
36:54
Speaker 4: these great hairs Wes, and you know, the young lady
36:58
Speaker 4: that you mentioned is an example of, you know, maybe
37:01
Speaker 4: just how long I've been doing this. Anyway, I've gotten
37:04
Speaker 4: to see a lot of students go off and have
37:06
Speaker 4: really great careers in their post Space Science Center days
37:10
Speaker 4: and using those degrees in either the Department of Earth
37:14
Speaker 4: and Space Sciences or from the College of Education Health Professions.
37:17
Speaker 4: In the teaching world. A lot of my former students
37:20
Speaker 4: out there having great careers making huge impacts on the world.
37:24
Speaker 4: And I always love when students come up and tell
37:26
Speaker 4: me their stories of their time here at Space Science Center.
37:29
Speaker 4: But John Hood one of those students. I love to
37:33
Speaker 4: tell the stories of those things going on. I look
37:35
Speaker 4: at these students now and know that someday they are
37:38
Speaker 4: going to be the ones out having these new adventures
37:40
Speaker 4: out there. And I try to inspire the students who
37:44
Speaker 4: are here now by telling stories about the students who've
37:47
Speaker 4: been here before. I will tell you right now the
37:50
Speaker 4: students working here the summer. There is a cagory of
37:52
Speaker 4: them who are upgrading our observatory as we speak, with
37:57
Speaker 4: federal funding from the National Aeronumics and Space We are
38:01
Speaker 4: working on a grant to both upgrade the equipment and
38:03
Speaker 4: then to support those same students in research working with
38:07
Speaker 4: that same professor, doctor John Hood, at the University of
38:09
Speaker 4: Chicago on blazars identified from the South Pole telescope data.
38:13
Speaker 4: All of that happening in real time. If you come
38:16
Speaker 4: down and visit the Space Science Center friends this summer,
38:20
Speaker 4: just ask for a tour of the building and just
38:25
Speaker 4: ask for me to come out and tell you all
38:27
Speaker 4: about our telescope upgrades and our work with NASA. I'll
38:29
Speaker 4: be happy to do that for anybody who comes down
38:31
Speaker 4: this summer, and I'll give you a little bit of
38:33
Speaker 4: a behind the scenes tour of all the great things
38:36
Speaker 4: happening at Columbus State University's Coca Cola Space Science Center.
38:40
Speaker 4: Visited us on the web by the way, A wow,
38:42
Speaker 4: I didn't say that very well. I didn't say that
38:44
Speaker 4: like a radio professional who might win a Gaby award.
38:48
Speaker 4: Visit us on the Internet, is what I was trying
38:50
Speaker 4: to say at www dot cc SSC dot org. Charlie
38:56
Speaker 4: Charlie SamSam Charlie dot org.
38:58
Speaker 3: You've already won a Gaby Award. You might one another one.
39:01
Speaker 3: That's the important thing, Seanna. I thank you for listening,
39:04
Speaker 3: and we will do this again next week. Overhead Door
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