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How many stars can a solar system have? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Hey, or hey, I have a question about stars, and
0:11
Speaker 1: you're asking me. Is it about cartoon stars? Close? Actually
0:14
Speaker 1: it's about Hollywood stars, all right? Yeah, I live next
0:18
Speaker 1: to Hollywood, so I might be able to answer it.
0:19
Speaker 1: What's the question, all right? How many stars can you
0:22
Speaker 1: have in a single family, like media stars. Let's see,
0:26
Speaker 1: there's the two athlete brothers. I think there are three
0:30
Speaker 1: hemps Worth brothers, and there are four Baldwin brothers. What
0:34
Speaker 1: about the Jackson five? That just might be the peak
0:38
Speaker 1: of stardom in a family. Any denser with stars and
0:41
Speaker 1: it might collapse into what a Paparassi black hole? That
0:47
Speaker 1: sounds dense and dangerous. Hi am or him and cartoonists
1:05
Speaker 1: and the creator of PhD comics. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm
1:08
Speaker 1: a particle physicist, and I was really disappointed the first
1:11
Speaker 1: time I saw the walk of stars in Hollywood. Really
1:15
Speaker 1: why it wasn't shiny enough for there were to those
1:19
Speaker 1: chewing gum and cigarettes all over the place. Yeah, it
1:21
Speaker 1: wasn't nearly as glamorous as I expected. And also I
1:25
Speaker 1: didn't recognize the names of anybody I saw, So I
1:28
Speaker 1: who are all these people? You mean? You're physicists and
1:30
Speaker 1: you didn't know police making the movies or radio stars. Yeah,
1:34
Speaker 1: it's always it's kind of weird to have your star
1:36
Speaker 1: because it just makes people walk all over it all
1:38
Speaker 1: the time. Put out their cigarette on your star on
1:41
Speaker 1: the Walk of Fame. Think if they give you a
1:43
Speaker 1: Nobel Prize and then they put the metal on the
1:45
Speaker 1: floor in a busy intersection. Exactly. They don't pave the
1:49
Speaker 1: streets with busts and Nobel Prize winners, right, but maybe
1:53
Speaker 1: they should. They should. They need some more humility, for sure.
1:55
Speaker 1: Would you take a Hollywood start they offered you one
1:58
Speaker 1: for what? Maybe for a podcast? Sky's the limit for
2:01
Speaker 1: this podcast. I would do anything for this podcast, even
2:03
Speaker 1: except a Hollywood Walk of Fame star, But welcome to
2:08
Speaker 1: that podcast. Daniel and Jorge explain the Universe aprilucent of
2:12
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio, in which the universe is the star
2:15
Speaker 1: and it's full of stars and we don't understand those stars,
2:18
Speaker 1: but we'd like to, and so we apply our curiosity
2:22
Speaker 1: and we serve on the waves of your curiosity to
2:25
Speaker 1: ask the biggest, deepest questions about the universe, not just
2:28
Speaker 1: about stars, about about where they come from and where
2:31
Speaker 1: they end up, how they all work, and what it
2:33
Speaker 1: all means. We don't shy away from anything in this podcast.
2:37
Speaker 1: We ask all of it and we break it all
2:39
Speaker 1: down to you in a way we hope makes sense
2:41
Speaker 1: and maybe even makes you laugh. Yeah, because it is
2:43
Speaker 1: a pretty famous universe. Although Daniel I thought we were
2:46
Speaker 1: the stars of the podcast. Where are we the supporting
2:49
Speaker 1: actors or the extras or are we like the catering service? Yes,
2:53
Speaker 1: we are the service staff, the stars of the podcast.
2:56
Speaker 1: Are you the listeners? Oh? Could save there? Yeah, we
3:00
Speaker 1: like to talk about the amazing universe out there and
3:03
Speaker 1: all of the famous stuff in it, especially the stars,
3:06
Speaker 1: because I feel like the stars are the stars of
3:08
Speaker 1: the universe. I'm just grateful that stars exist, that matter
3:11
Speaker 1: forms these incredible clumbs that glow so brightly. Imagine if
3:15
Speaker 1: most of the universe was dark, it wasn't glowing, it
3:18
Speaker 1: would be so much harder to figure out what was
3:20
Speaker 1: going on. So I'm grateful to these like lighthouses in
3:23
Speaker 1: the universe that tell us what's going on and illuminated
3:26
Speaker 1: for us. Like literally, Yeah, that's why. I mean, they're
3:29
Speaker 1: like the stars of the universe, Like you know, they're
3:31
Speaker 1: the main attraction. That's why people go to the universe.
3:34
Speaker 1: That's why they stream it, that's why they down the
3:36
Speaker 1: bootleg versions of it. That's right, And that's why people
3:39
Speaker 1: like summer more than winter, right, because the Sun is
3:41
Speaker 1: the star over closer to the star of our solar system. Yeah, exactly,
3:46
Speaker 1: we feel closer to it, and we literally feel it's warmth.
3:48
Speaker 1: I mean, it's incredible that this star, which is a
3:51
Speaker 1: burning ball of plasma nine three million miles away, you
3:54
Speaker 1: can still feel the heat of that with your bare hands.
3:58
Speaker 1: You know, Like, have you ever been near a bond
4:00
Speaker 1: fire that's so hot you can stand near it, take
4:02
Speaker 1: a few steps back and it just dissipates. Right, Well, now,
4:05
Speaker 1: imagine a bonfire so hot you can still feel its
4:08
Speaker 1: heat ninety three million miles away. That's our star. It's
4:12
Speaker 1: just it's mind boggling. Yeah, our star is it pretty
4:14
Speaker 1: hot here. It's blowing up all the time. It should
4:17
Speaker 1: get a star on the Walk of Fame. It's pretty famous.
4:21
Speaker 1: It's the biggest star out there. We I like it,
4:23
Speaker 1: you know, I mean I can't look at it directly,
4:26
Speaker 1: but till its pressence half a half of the time.
4:28
Speaker 1: It's been in a lot of movies, right, It's IMDb
4:31
Speaker 1: page is amazing as a long list of credits. Yes,
4:36
Speaker 1: every living human being, an animal, and plant and insect
4:40
Speaker 1: is credited to our son exactly. It should at least
4:42
Speaker 1: get acknowledgements in like every paper. Scientists should be acknowledging
4:45
Speaker 1: it and thank you to the Sun for providing all
4:48
Speaker 1: the energy we use. I'm gonna do that next time. Seriously,
4:50
Speaker 1: it should get a Hollywood star on the Walk of Fame.
4:54
Speaker 1: But it is pretty unique in our solar system. It
4:57
Speaker 1: is basically the main thing in our solar system us right,
5:00
Speaker 1: and our solar system, for the longest time, was the
5:02
Speaker 1: only way we had to learn about this basic unit
5:06
Speaker 1: of the universe, how solar systems and planetary systems work.
5:10
Speaker 1: So for a long time we thought this was it,
5:11
Speaker 1: that this was the way it happened, and we imagine
5:14
Speaker 1: that maybe every other solar system looked like this. But
5:17
Speaker 1: the more we look out in the universe, the more
5:19
Speaker 1: we discover that things out there are weird, or that
5:23
Speaker 1: we are weird, that we are unusual compared to what's
5:26
Speaker 1: out there in the universe. So you gotta ask basic,
5:29
Speaker 1: simple questions about how the universe works, because you might
5:32
Speaker 1: be surprised by the answers. Yeah, well, I think we're
5:35
Speaker 1: definitely weird that regardless of our son. What we do
5:39
Speaker 1: you mean that you mean me? And you do you
5:40
Speaker 1: mean the whole human race? You mean podcast listeners? I
5:43
Speaker 1: mean like the royal We like the royal family, especially us,
5:47
Speaker 1: the kings of this podcast. Do we have a dual
5:50
Speaker 1: king monarchy in this podcast or is one of those
5:53
Speaker 1: we're cokings. I think we're cokings. That's why we do
5:58
Speaker 1: in this podcast. We coke up on the universe. We
6:02
Speaker 1: sniff up the deliciousness of the universe. Oh man, I
6:04
Speaker 1: was thinking coca cola, but dark the universe is my drug. Man,
6:09
Speaker 1: the universe. It does get you high. But anyways, it
6:12
Speaker 1: is a pretty special star. And I wonder, Daniel, when
6:15
Speaker 1: you mentioned like other stars in other parts of the universe.
6:18
Speaker 1: I wonder when in human history we realized that our
6:20
Speaker 1: sun was a star, just like those little pin points
6:23
Speaker 1: you see in the night sky. Like, was that a
6:25
Speaker 1: big revelation for people? It was a big revelation, absolutely,
6:28
Speaker 1: And you know that kind of revelation is a few
6:30
Speaker 1: hundred years old. But there was this moment, like a
6:33
Speaker 1: few hundred years ago when Newton and others realized that
6:37
Speaker 1: there was probably one set of laws of physics, and
6:40
Speaker 1: those laws applied equally to like things here on Earth
6:43
Speaker 1: and motion of things in the sky, including the Sun,
6:47
Speaker 1: and including all those stars, and so understanding that the
6:51
Speaker 1: Sun was a star suggested that all those other pin
6:54
Speaker 1: pricks in the sky were also probably solar systems that
6:57
Speaker 1: might have planets on them. And you write that realization
7:00
Speaker 1: is just a few hundred years old. But what a
7:02
Speaker 1: mind blowing idea to realize, you know, that we are
7:06
Speaker 1: one of billions and billions and billions. That really must
7:09
Speaker 1: shake the whole foundation of what you think it means
7:12
Speaker 1: to be human. Makes it a little less unique, like
7:14
Speaker 1: less of a star of the universe, to think that,
7:16
Speaker 1: you know, there's zillions of suns out there. Yeah, but
7:19
Speaker 1: it immediately begs lots of other questions, like what are
7:22
Speaker 1: those stars? Like? What are those solar systems? Like? Are
7:25
Speaker 1: their planets in life around those solar systems? While it
7:28
Speaker 1: suggests that there might be, because we know that our
7:30
Speaker 1: sun is not rare or weird or interesting, that it's
7:34
Speaker 1: just one of billions, we don't actually know and until
7:36
Speaker 1: recently we hadn't seen planets around any other star. Until
7:40
Speaker 1: like twenty thirty years ago, we'd never observed a planet
7:44
Speaker 1: around a star other than our own. It could have
7:46
Speaker 1: been that our Solar system was the only one with planets, right,
7:50
Speaker 1: How weird would that have been, right? Yeah, although you
7:53
Speaker 1: have to assume that their movies are in a different language.
7:56
Speaker 1: So maybe you know there's like a local star. Maybe
8:00
Speaker 1: everyone's famous in that in Poland? Isn't that the same throughout?
8:04
Speaker 1: I'm world famous in Poland? That's a classic mel Brooks joke. Yeah,
8:07
Speaker 1: but we didn't know, like maybe the planetary formation was
8:10
Speaker 1: really unusual, and most stars just form as stars, right,
8:13
Speaker 1: They gather up all the stuff and that's it. You
8:15
Speaker 1: just have stars, and having planets is weird and results
8:18
Speaker 1: of some strange fluctuation. Now, of course we know the
8:21
Speaker 1: opposite is true, that planets are totally normal, and that
8:24
Speaker 1: most solar systems have planets, that their planets everywhere. There's
8:27
Speaker 1: billions and trillions of planets out there, right, And I
8:29
Speaker 1: think something interesting is that I think by now maybe
8:32
Speaker 1: most people know that all stars out there are suns,
8:35
Speaker 1: but I think most people assume them. When you look
8:37
Speaker 1: at a star in the night sky, it's like one star,
8:40
Speaker 1: like one sun that you're looking at, like each pinpoint
8:42
Speaker 1: is this this one specific sun that's shining. But that's
8:46
Speaker 1: not necessarily true, right, that's right, it's not necessarily true.
8:50
Speaker 1: It turns out that sometimes stars formed together, and then
8:54
Speaker 1: you can have more than one star in a solar system.
8:58
Speaker 1: And if they're really far away, basically every other star is,
9:01
Speaker 1: it's not always easy to make them out by I. So,
9:05
Speaker 1: so some things that you see in the sky might
9:07
Speaker 1: be binary or triinary or even crazier star systems. Yeah,
9:11
Speaker 1: but they're so far away they they look like one
9:13
Speaker 1: pin point, right, Yeah, unless you have a really powerful
9:15
Speaker 1: telescope or use some cool techniques we're gonna talk about today,
9:19
Speaker 1: it's pretty hard to tell if it's one star or several.
9:23
Speaker 1: And so today on the podcast, we'll be asking the
9:25
Speaker 1: question how many stars can a solar system have? Now, Daniel,
9:35
Speaker 1: are these like still our stars? Are these like YELP
9:38
Speaker 1: review stars? There's no limit on how many stars you
9:42
Speaker 1: can give on YELL. I think you can be like,
9:44
Speaker 1: I think five is the most? Can you give ten stars?
9:47
Speaker 1: And yell? Isn't there some premium subscription version we can
9:50
Speaker 1: give as many stars that you want and if not, yelp,
9:52
Speaker 1: I totally suggest you offer that to people. Yeah, let
9:56
Speaker 1: people be effusive, right, because I would give our solar
9:58
Speaker 1: system totally t out of five stars only ten, Daniel,
10:02
Speaker 1: Come on, I mean that's double the maximum and being
10:05
Speaker 1: generous here, like, like, are you looking at other solar
10:09
Speaker 1: systems thinking maybe they have better boba ti or pizza.
10:13
Speaker 1: I don't need to have options. I can go to
10:14
Speaker 1: a restaurant and I can rate it just on its food.
10:17
Speaker 1: I don't need to compare it to the other restaurants
10:19
Speaker 1: in town. I can say five out of five would
10:21
Speaker 1: have that falafel again, and in the same way, I
10:23
Speaker 1: can say ten out of five. I would totally evolve here. Again,
10:27
Speaker 1: it seems really unscientific of you, Daniel. I would have
10:29
Speaker 1: expected something more systematic, you know, like, are you assuming
10:33
Speaker 1: you've tasted every pizza in the universe? Sometimes my belly
10:37
Speaker 1: feels like I have. But no, I it's purely subjective.
10:40
Speaker 1: I totally agree. I have no scientific system for rating
10:43
Speaker 1: solar systems. Well, I would give our solars some I
10:45
Speaker 1: guess infinity stars because you know I'm here because of it,
10:49
Speaker 1: and that's worth an infinite amount of a value to me. Well,
10:53
Speaker 1: I'm glad that you don't forget the little stars that
10:55
Speaker 1: helped you along the way. Our star is a little underdog,
10:58
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's it's kind of an interesting question. How
11:00
Speaker 1: many stars can a solar system have? Like we know
11:03
Speaker 1: our solar system has one, and we know that their
11:06
Speaker 1: binary star systems out there, but like how many can
11:08
Speaker 1: you fit into one place? Like ten twenty? And these
11:11
Speaker 1: are my favorite kinds of questions, the one that are
11:14
Speaker 1: very simple and just sort of like blow up basic
11:16
Speaker 1: assumptions you maybe never thought to ask about. Like people
11:20
Speaker 1: are now cool with wondering how many planets could there
11:22
Speaker 1: be in imagining solar systems with like twenty planets or
11:25
Speaker 1: just two planets or like really big weird planets or
11:28
Speaker 1: fluffy planets or something. People are like sort of stretch
11:31
Speaker 1: their mind that way. But I think a lot of
11:32
Speaker 1: people haven't really bent their minds in the other direction.
11:35
Speaker 1: I think most people think of a solar system is
11:37
Speaker 1: like a star with stuff around it, And so I
11:40
Speaker 1: think it's really good to like remind ourselves that the
11:43
Speaker 1: example we see, what we sort of define our existence around,
11:47
Speaker 1: isn't necessarily representative. That we've got to keep our minds
11:50
Speaker 1: open to other kinds of stellar families. Yeah, and it
11:53
Speaker 1: made me think of Star Wars, you know, and that
11:55
Speaker 1: famous scene in that first movie where Luke Skywalker is
11:58
Speaker 1: looking out into the horizon and he see there are
12:00
Speaker 1: two stars in the sky. I know that's crazy and
12:03
Speaker 1: it would make for a crazy like pattern of day
12:05
Speaker 1: and night. I don't know how you could be a
12:06
Speaker 1: farmer on a planet with two sons. You'd have two ships.
12:09
Speaker 1: Maybe you have some crazy almanac. You're like, Okay, it's summer, now,
12:14
Speaker 1: it's double summer. Now, it's half summer. Now it's sort
12:17
Speaker 1: of winter. You know, like if the seasons it would
12:19
Speaker 1: just be nuts, right right, Well, let's get into it, Daniel,
12:22
Speaker 1: how many stars can a solar system have? And so,
12:24
Speaker 1: as usually, we were wondering how many people out there
12:26
Speaker 1: have thought about this question or even knew that you
12:28
Speaker 1: could have more than one or two stars in a
12:31
Speaker 1: solar system. So Daniel went out there into the wild
12:34
Speaker 1: for the internet to ask people how many stars can
12:36
Speaker 1: a solar system have? So thank you very much to
12:39
Speaker 1: everybody who participated. If you are out there and been
12:42
Speaker 1: listening to the podcast and never have lent your voice
12:44
Speaker 1: to these questions. Please write to us two questions at
12:47
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge dot com. No pressure, but I think
12:50
Speaker 1: you'll love it. Here's what people had to say. I
12:53
Speaker 1: hadn't really considered that, but I know that, Um, a
12:57
Speaker 1: large number of solar systems. Do you have at least
13:03
Speaker 1: two stars? There might be somewhere three, but I'm not
13:07
Speaker 1: actually sure the maximum. So yeah, I think a solar
13:13
Speaker 1: system can have more than one star. I remember seeing
13:16
Speaker 1: something on the television about a binary star system, so
13:21
Speaker 1: I think it can have more than one star. I
13:24
Speaker 1: think a solar system can have one or two stars. Um,
13:28
Speaker 1: we have one star that is our sun, and then
13:32
Speaker 1: there are binary systems, which consists of two stars orbiting
13:37
Speaker 1: around each other, and I think it is possible for
13:42
Speaker 1: there to be like planetary objects orbiting them. You have
13:47
Speaker 1: binary stars and triple star systems. Whether there's any limit
13:51
Speaker 1: onto it, I doubt it. As long as it's contentionally locked.
13:56
Speaker 1: I don't think they se limit. But at some point
13:59
Speaker 1: it will stop being a solar system become a galaxy. Well,
14:04
Speaker 1: I know that there are binary systems, which would mean
14:07
Speaker 1: two stars. I don't see why they couldn't be three stars.
14:13
Speaker 1: I in a solar system, and I think I saw
14:17
Speaker 1: a science fiction program where they mentioned as seven star
14:22
Speaker 1: solar system, but that was science fiction, probably not based
14:26
Speaker 1: in fact. But I really don't know what the upper
14:31
Speaker 1: limit would be, probably something between three and seven. I'm
14:37
Speaker 1: not sure of a physical limit. A solar system can
14:42
Speaker 1: certainly have multiple stars. I know binary stars are very common.
14:48
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if there's anything to say that you
14:50
Speaker 1: couldn't have ten stars or in some amazing orbit around
14:55
Speaker 1: each other. I suspect in nurse stellar nursery, whether they're
14:59
Speaker 1: all quite compact. You have a lot of stars in
15:02
Speaker 1: close proximity that have a gravitational impact on each other. Well,
15:07
Speaker 1: a solar system, you can probably have a bunch of
15:10
Speaker 1: stars I know are obviously our solar system has one,
15:13
Speaker 1: and I know that many of the stars solar systems
15:17
Speaker 1: out there have two stars. And I'm sure you can
15:20
Speaker 1: have like a trinary system. I feel like I've seen
15:23
Speaker 1: a couple of movies with that. I don't know if
15:25
Speaker 1: there's a fundamental limit, but I know it gets a
15:27
Speaker 1: little harder to get all the equations to balance out
15:30
Speaker 1: if you have more and more stars. Things get a
15:32
Speaker 1: little chaotic when you have a bunch of things orbiting
15:35
Speaker 1: each other. So I'm gonna go with maybe three might
15:39
Speaker 1: be sort of like the practical limit, but maybe there's
15:42
Speaker 1: some more, all right, A lot of guessing. Most people
15:45
Speaker 1: start to like one or two. I guess you don't
15:47
Speaker 1: hear about like a three or more than two star system, right, Like,
15:51
Speaker 1: I feel like binary star is a common phrase. Yeah,
15:54
Speaker 1: people are being conservative here. They're not, like, you know,
15:56
Speaker 1: reaching out and imagining solar systems with like fifties stars
15:59
Speaker 1: and of and stuff like that. I think it just
16:01
Speaker 1: goes to show you that people think of solar systems
16:04
Speaker 1: as dominated by a star or maybe two and then
16:06
Speaker 1: planets around it. Right. I guess it's hard to wrap
16:09
Speaker 1: your head a right, it might just be like chaos,
16:10
Speaker 1: like who would win or who would be the dominant star?
16:13
Speaker 1: Or why wouldn't they just crash into each other? Yeah,
16:15
Speaker 1: you feel like a solar system has to have somebody
16:17
Speaker 1: in charge. Well, it could be like a committee run
16:19
Speaker 1: solar system, you know, majority rules or you know, I'm
16:22
Speaker 1: sure they use the Robert's rule to make decisions about
16:25
Speaker 1: orbits and things like that. So you're in favor of
16:27
Speaker 1: socialism when it comes to organisms, sellar Sylar semi favorite
16:31
Speaker 1: solar socialism. Yes, the s S s S cosmic social
16:37
Speaker 1: Society of Socialist Solar Systems and communistic cosmologists. Nice. Nice,
16:43
Speaker 1: but then it gets all eaten up by a democratic
16:46
Speaker 1: dark matter. Unfortunately, dark matter will totally win the vote,
16:50
Speaker 1: actually because it totally would out vote us. Right, we
16:53
Speaker 1: do not want there, you go, it's more autocratic, I think,
16:57
Speaker 1: astronomically autocratic. Yeah, it's just like an some countries they
17:00
Speaker 1: have more animals than people, like Denmark has more pigs
17:03
Speaker 1: than people, and so if they give pigs the vote,
17:05
Speaker 1: the people will probably get voted out of office. Well,
17:08
Speaker 1: let's not make any politician jokes here with pigs. You
17:11
Speaker 1: just did, No, I didn't. But I like this person
17:16
Speaker 1: who said that they've seen a star system with seven
17:18
Speaker 1: stars in science fiction. Yeah. Yeah, that means that authors
17:22
Speaker 1: out there have been creative in imagining the in stellar systems.
17:25
Speaker 1: So again, kudos to science fiction authors, right, or like
17:29
Speaker 1: Avengers movies. I feel like those Avengers movies have like,
17:31
Speaker 1: you know, twenty stars in them, and did you give
17:34
Speaker 1: them all five stars? On yell IMDb? Daniel? Are you
17:39
Speaker 1: reviewing movies on yelled? But Anyways, let's get into Daniel.
17:43
Speaker 1: I guess most people seem to know about binary stars,
17:45
Speaker 1: and I'm sure that just means that has two stars.
17:48
Speaker 1: So let's talk about for binary star system how common
17:51
Speaker 1: are they and how can they come to be? Like
17:53
Speaker 1: how do you get a star system with two stars
17:55
Speaker 1: in it? Yeah, most of them are binary star systems,
17:58
Speaker 1: but we'll talk later about solar systems with even more stars.
18:01
Speaker 1: But it's not rare at all. So it's a third
18:04
Speaker 1: of the stars in the solar system are in a
18:06
Speaker 1: binary star system. So like when I look at the
18:08
Speaker 1: night sky, a third of the stars that I'm looking
18:11
Speaker 1: at are actually two stars. Yeah, exactly. Wow, So if
18:14
Speaker 1: I look out and I'm seeing double it's I'm about
18:16
Speaker 1: a third, right, Like it's not in my eyesight necessarily, yeah,
18:19
Speaker 1: or you know, stop having drinks or whatever, but yeah, exactly.
18:22
Speaker 1: There are lots and lots and lots of double star
18:25
Speaker 1: systems out there, something we really didn't imagine until recently.
18:28
Speaker 1: It turns out to be really pretty common. So I
18:30
Speaker 1: guess maybe a question is how do they form? Like
18:33
Speaker 1: why didn't they just form as one star? How did
18:35
Speaker 1: they come to have two stars? Right? Well, you have
18:37
Speaker 1: to imagine how solar systems form. Right, you have this
18:40
Speaker 1: big cloud of gas and dust initial building blocks of
18:44
Speaker 1: the solar system. What makes that collapse? Right? What makes
18:47
Speaker 1: that collapse into a star? Sometimes you get like a
18:50
Speaker 1: shock wave that comes through from like a supernova or
18:53
Speaker 1: something that triggers this collapse. But often you have a
18:55
Speaker 1: really big cloud that's too big for just one star
18:59
Speaker 1: to form. So we call these like stellar nurseries. You
19:01
Speaker 1: get like bunches and bunches of stars all forming at
19:04
Speaker 1: the same time. And so sometimes those stars formed close
19:08
Speaker 1: enough that they start to tug on each other, and
19:10
Speaker 1: they pull on each other, and then they become a
19:12
Speaker 1: binary star system. So like you could have formed a
19:16
Speaker 1: larger star right in the middle, But where the stars
19:19
Speaker 1: actually form depends a little bit on like what happens
19:21
Speaker 1: to be a little bit denser, because remember this is
19:24
Speaker 1: a gravitational process, and so the dense spot pulls on
19:27
Speaker 1: other stuff and accumulates. It's a runaway process, and so
19:30
Speaker 1: you just happen to have like two spots that are
19:33
Speaker 1: a little denser, a little closer to each other. You
19:35
Speaker 1: can get stars forming close enough to form a binary
19:37
Speaker 1: star system. I guess they each are sort of dominant
19:40
Speaker 1: in their little region. But it just so happens that
19:43
Speaker 1: the two reunions are sort of close enough together that
19:45
Speaker 1: they form a system together. Yeah, and you can imagine
19:48
Speaker 1: it's not that different from our Sun and Jupiter. If
19:52
Speaker 1: Jupiter was a little bit bigger. You know, it has
19:54
Speaker 1: like only one percent of the mass of the Solar system.
19:57
Speaker 1: If it had like a little bit more, you could
20:00
Speaker 1: call that thing a star. So why didn't Jupiter get
20:03
Speaker 1: more mass? Well, you know, if it's been a little
20:04
Speaker 1: bit further away, or the dynamics of how things have
20:07
Speaker 1: been distributed had been different, you might have had a
20:10
Speaker 1: more balanced distribution between the Sun and Jupiter. Interesting, like
20:13
Speaker 1: we could have had a binary system. Like if Jupiter
20:16
Speaker 1: had turned on or eating more of that infinite pizza,
20:19
Speaker 1: we would have like a second star in our sky. Yeah.
20:22
Speaker 1: So it's just an example of how out of basically
20:24
Speaker 1: a single cloud of stuff, you can have two foulside, right,
20:27
Speaker 1: you can have two places where things start to accumulate
20:30
Speaker 1: and doesn't always just collapse down to one. So that's
20:33
Speaker 1: a good example, and you know a little bit different,
20:36
Speaker 1: and yeah, we could have had a binary star system.
20:38
Speaker 1: We could have been tattooeding basically right, although it wouldn't
20:41
Speaker 1: They wouldn't look that big, right, Like the Sun would
20:43
Speaker 1: look really big in our sky, but Jupiter would just
20:45
Speaker 1: look like a pinpoint, wouldn't it. Well, Jupiter is much
20:47
Speaker 1: further away than the Sun, and so it does look
20:51
Speaker 1: a lot less bright for that reason. But it depends,
20:53
Speaker 1: you know, on how things work. If Jupiter had been bigger,
20:55
Speaker 1: it probably would have ended up in a different spot
20:57
Speaker 1: in the Solar system. We had this whole fun podcast
20:59
Speaker 1: episode how Jupiter ended up where it is, and it
21:02
Speaker 1: sort of drifted towards the center of the Solar system
21:04
Speaker 1: and then Saturn wrangled it and pulled it back out.
21:07
Speaker 1: But if Jupiter had been bigger, it might have just
21:09
Speaker 1: drifted towards the inner part of the Solar system and
21:11
Speaker 1: formed a very tight binary spiral with our son, or
21:14
Speaker 1: they might have even merged. I guess the question for
21:16
Speaker 1: me is that if you have these two big things
21:18
Speaker 1: in the Solar system, why don't they just crash into
21:21
Speaker 1: each other? I think that's one question, And the other
21:24
Speaker 1: question is what is it like to have two stars
21:27
Speaker 1: in your Solar system? And so let's get into that
21:29
Speaker 1: and maybe more star systems, but more stars in them
21:34
Speaker 1: than two. But first, let's take a quick break. We're
21:49
Speaker 1: talking about two star systems, systems with multiple stars in them,
21:53
Speaker 1: and we started with two. Daniel, what is it like
21:55
Speaker 1: to have a two stars in your system? Like, well,
21:58
Speaker 1: wouldn't the two stars just crash into each other or
22:00
Speaker 1: suck each other up? Well, things can be in stable orbits. Right,
22:04
Speaker 1: It's like asking the question why doesn't the Earth get
22:06
Speaker 1: sucked into the Sun For the same reason, it has
22:08
Speaker 1: the right velocity and the right direction to be in
22:11
Speaker 1: a stable orbit. As two objects approach each other, it's
22:14
Speaker 1: possible for them to crash and do each other and
22:17
Speaker 1: you know, suck each other up. It's also possible for
22:19
Speaker 1: them to be in a stable orbit. So if you
22:21
Speaker 1: had two stars in a system, you would have the
22:23
Speaker 1: two stars circling each other forever kind of right, Yeah,
22:26
Speaker 1: they could be stably circling their common center of mass.
22:30
Speaker 1: And so instead of thinking about it like as a
22:32
Speaker 1: solar system with a star at the center and everything
22:34
Speaker 1: moving around it, think about it like two stars at
22:37
Speaker 1: the center orbiting some point in between them, and then
22:40
Speaker 1: probably there are other things in the solar system and
22:43
Speaker 1: they're orbiting that also that common center of mass, the
22:46
Speaker 1: point between the two stars. Like if you're a planet,
22:49
Speaker 1: you would orbit the center that like the middle point
22:52
Speaker 1: between them. Yeah, if your planet, it doesn't matter to
22:54
Speaker 1: you if you have two stars orbiting each other, or
22:57
Speaker 1: if you replace those two stars with a big star
23:00
Speaker 1: right at the center of mass, it looks the same
23:02
Speaker 1: to you from a Newtonian dynamics, and so yeah, you
23:05
Speaker 1: could just orbit the center of mass of those two stars.
23:07
Speaker 1: So if you were far enough away from these two stars,
23:10
Speaker 1: like life wouldn't be that different from what we have now, right, Like,
23:13
Speaker 1: it's not like we would you know, sometimes see one
23:16
Speaker 1: star to the right and another one to the left,
23:18
Speaker 1: or sometimes you know, you would only see one star,
23:21
Speaker 1: like usually you would probably only see you would see
23:23
Speaker 1: the two stars at the same time in the sky.
23:25
Speaker 1: That's right. Probably the two stars would be closest to
23:27
Speaker 1: each other at the center of the system, and then
23:29
Speaker 1: you'll be orbiting both of them. And so like having
23:32
Speaker 1: a crazy system like we were talking about before, where
23:35
Speaker 1: you like passed between the stars is less likely, And
23:39
Speaker 1: if you had a system like that, it wouldn't be
23:40
Speaker 1: very stable, Like that's a three body system. Those systems
23:44
Speaker 1: are very very chaotic, and so a system like that
23:47
Speaker 1: would likely just eject or lose its planets. And so
23:49
Speaker 1: it's be very unlikely to have a planet in a
23:51
Speaker 1: system where like the planet is passing between the two stars,
23:54
Speaker 1: most likely to be doing an orbit around the two
23:57
Speaker 1: star system. I see, So instead of seeing like one
24:00
Speaker 1: bright circle in the sky, you would just see two
24:02
Speaker 1: of them. Yeah, but they mostly be moving together, right,
24:05
Speaker 1: but they might change in size relatively chick to each other, right,
24:07
Speaker 1: Like as I'm going around, sometimes I'm closer to one
24:10
Speaker 1: and sometimes I'm closer to the other one. So maybe
24:13
Speaker 1: the weather would be really weird, right, Yeah, And they
24:15
Speaker 1: can eclipse each other, right, one can pass in front
24:18
Speaker 1: of the other, so you could have a son's sun eclipse, right,
24:22
Speaker 1: because they could be different brightnesses and different colors. You
24:24
Speaker 1: have like a red star and a yellow star, and
24:26
Speaker 1: so like the color in the sky could change as
24:29
Speaker 1: they pass in front of each other. That'd be pretty cool.
24:31
Speaker 1: Would they change, like with the sky change color? Probably right,
24:34
Speaker 1: like the light would get mixed up. Yeah, I'd be
24:36
Speaker 1: awesome for artists. You know that golden hour the photographers
24:39
Speaker 1: like to use at the beach trying to be like
24:41
Speaker 1: lots of different kinds of colored hours cool. Alright, So
24:45
Speaker 1: then and and these systems are stable. You say these
24:47
Speaker 1: systems are stable. The two body system can be stable.
24:50
Speaker 1: Three body system is very complicated, and we're gonna have
24:53
Speaker 1: a old podcast episode about that very soon. The three
24:55
Speaker 1: body problem is famously difficult to solve. But a two
24:59
Speaker 1: star system can be stable, and then you can have
25:00
Speaker 1: a planet orbiting around that two star system. That's the
25:04
Speaker 1: key to stability is to really take a three body
25:07
Speaker 1: system and make it into effectively two body by putting
25:09
Speaker 1: two of them close to each other, so you can
25:11
Speaker 1: sort of treat them as one. Right, And you're saying
25:14
Speaker 1: those are more stable, which means that they're you know,
25:17
Speaker 1: more likely like the ones that are chaotic probably crash
25:20
Speaker 1: into each other or something else happened. Yeah, exactly. And
25:22
Speaker 1: there may have been a lot of triinary star systems formed.
25:25
Speaker 1: We have three stars all forming together, but that's a
25:29
Speaker 1: very unstable situation. And so that's why we have a
25:31
Speaker 1: lot more binary star systems than triinary star systems because
25:35
Speaker 1: probably when there were three, two of them got together
25:38
Speaker 1: and ejected the third. Kind of like human relationships a
25:41
Speaker 1: little bit kind of like the Hemsworth Brothers. You know,
25:46
Speaker 1: I don't think they've injected anyway. Well, I guess the
25:49
Speaker 1: third one is not as famous. Yeah, exactly. But you
25:51
Speaker 1: kind of blew my mind when you said about a
25:53
Speaker 1: third of stars out there are binary systems. And I
25:56
Speaker 1: guess maybe a question is like, how do we know,
25:58
Speaker 1: Like in the nice sky, they just look like pinpoints.
26:00
Speaker 1: How do we know that there are two in each
26:03
Speaker 1: of those pinpoints? So we can study these things and
26:05
Speaker 1: we can tell sometimes when they're binary star systems. There's
26:08
Speaker 1: two ways to do it. One is just visually, like
26:11
Speaker 1: you get a really powerful telescope. You can actually see
26:15
Speaker 1: that a star is not spherical in your telescope. You
26:17
Speaker 1: don't even have to be able to see like the
26:19
Speaker 1: gap between them. You can just tell that it looks
26:21
Speaker 1: more like a peanut, or it's all along, or that
26:24
Speaker 1: its shape seems to be changing in a way that's
26:26
Speaker 1: consistent with two stars near each other. Oh, I see
26:29
Speaker 1: like as they rotate it maybe it looks like a
26:31
Speaker 1: blob kind of changing shape. It looks like a blob.
26:34
Speaker 1: So that's number one. That's the easiest way. That was
26:37
Speaker 1: the first way we've ever done it. The second is
26:39
Speaker 1: that we can use Doppler effects. So you have two
26:42
Speaker 1: stars orbiting each other. Now, so now they have a
26:45
Speaker 1: velocity relative to each other. And so the same way
26:47
Speaker 1: that we measure the velocity of a star relative to
26:50
Speaker 1: the Earth by looking at how it shifts the wavelength
26:53
Speaker 1: of the light that's getting to us, because if it's
26:55
Speaker 1: moving away from us, it stretches out the wavelength. That
26:59
Speaker 1: makes the wavelengths longer and redder. That's called red shift.
27:02
Speaker 1: But if two stars are orbiting each other, then their
27:04
Speaker 1: velocity relative to the Earth is constantly changing. They're like
27:07
Speaker 1: faster slow or faster slower, faster, slower, And so we
27:10
Speaker 1: can measure this changing red shift, and we can deduce
27:14
Speaker 1: that a star that looks just like one actually has
27:17
Speaker 1: this pattern of two stars moving back and forth. We
27:19
Speaker 1: can tell which light is coming from which star based
27:22
Speaker 1: on the red shift pattern I see, because I guess
27:24
Speaker 1: if if it's only one star in that system, that
27:27
Speaker 1: star is not really jiggling, right, it's probably just sitting
27:31
Speaker 1: pretty solidly in the center of its system, not wriggling
27:34
Speaker 1: around or moving around something close by. That's right, unless
27:38
Speaker 1: there's a big planet there. And so now we have
27:40
Speaker 1: like really really sensitive techniques to measure the lights from
27:43
Speaker 1: these stars to see if there are planets tugging on
27:46
Speaker 1: those stars. And so in the same way we detect
27:49
Speaker 1: exo planets by seeing that they're tugging on the stars
27:52
Speaker 1: and causing these weird Doppler patterns in the stars, you
27:55
Speaker 1: can see exo stars, right. You can see that this
27:59
Speaker 1: star is not just one, but it's actually two based
28:01
Speaker 1: on the light that comes from It's exactly the same technique. Wow,
28:05
Speaker 1: So I guess we've been able to see them now
28:07
Speaker 1: for a while, and we actually know a lot about
28:09
Speaker 1: these binary systems, right, That's right. And there's a third
28:11
Speaker 1: way that we see these binary systems, and that's also
28:15
Speaker 1: borrowed from exoplanets, and that's this eclipse technique that we
28:18
Speaker 1: were talking about. Having two stars line up in front
28:21
Speaker 1: of each other in the same way that we see
28:22
Speaker 1: exo planets by seeing like how they eclipse their star.
28:26
Speaker 1: In that case, the planet is passing in front of
28:28
Speaker 1: the stars, so it dims the light just a little bit.
28:30
Speaker 1: But we are really precise telescopes to measure that if
28:33
Speaker 1: one of the stars is brighter than the other, then
28:35
Speaker 1: as it passes in front of the other star, it
28:37
Speaker 1: can eclipse it, it will change how much light we
28:40
Speaker 1: are seeing. You get a regular pattern of that, you
28:42
Speaker 1: can deduce it. It's a binary star system. So a
28:45
Speaker 1: lot of these techniques really come from sort of extrapolating
28:48
Speaker 1: from exoplanet techniques, and I imagine if they're very different stars,
28:52
Speaker 1: then you could even tell it to apart, right, because
28:54
Speaker 1: stars have kind of like a fingerprint depending on their material,
28:58
Speaker 1: and so you can be have like a very unique nature. Exactly.
29:00
Speaker 1: They have a fingerprint just as you said, based on
29:03
Speaker 1: what they're burning, because different elements have different quantum levels
29:06
Speaker 1: and so they give off photons at different energies. And
29:10
Speaker 1: that's also we rely on that for the Doppler pattern. Right.
29:12
Speaker 1: You might ask, like, how do you know if the
29:14
Speaker 1: light from a star is red shifted or not. You
29:16
Speaker 1: can't tell what it's like over there. What you can
29:19
Speaker 1: because you know exactly what energy level hydrogen gives off
29:22
Speaker 1: when it's hot, and we know that energy level, so
29:25
Speaker 1: we can compare what we measure to what we see.
29:28
Speaker 1: And so you're right, if one star is heavier, has
29:30
Speaker 1: more metals than it, it's going to glow with a
29:32
Speaker 1: different set of spikes in the spectrum, and as one
29:35
Speaker 1: passes in front of the other, you'll see like the
29:37
Speaker 1: color that light literally change as they eclipse each other.
29:40
Speaker 1: It's pretty cool. Yeah, it's pretty cool because I guess
29:42
Speaker 1: when you look at the sky, I mean, everything just
29:44
Speaker 1: looks like white pinpoints, but there's a ton of information,
29:48
Speaker 1: like if you look at the different frequencies. Right. Yeah,
29:49
Speaker 1: it's another great example of how much information about incredible
29:53
Speaker 1: mind blowing stuff is out there, like literally washing over
29:56
Speaker 1: us every day, that we're mostly ignoring. I wouldn't say mostly,
29:59
Speaker 1: I largely. Except for a few scientists paying attention to
30:05
Speaker 1: a few corners in the universe, most of what the
30:07
Speaker 1: universe is telling us and gets ignored. Yeah, it's not.
30:11
Speaker 1: But we have done this with lots and lots of stars,
30:13
Speaker 1: Like we have looked out there and we have identified
30:16
Speaker 1: more than a hundred thousand binary stars just looking here
30:20
Speaker 1: from Earth. Right. Yeah, but you're saying that even though
30:23
Speaker 1: they're more stable binary system, that they're still not super stable,
30:27
Speaker 1: meaning that they are less likely to have planets. Yeah,
30:30
Speaker 1: because you had a third body now becomes chaotic, right,
30:33
Speaker 1: A two body system very stable, happy to orbit around
30:36
Speaker 1: each other for the rest of time at a third body,
30:39
Speaker 1: like a planet, and it gets complicated because as those
30:43
Speaker 1: two stars orbit each other, sometimes one gets a little
30:45
Speaker 1: closer to the planet and one gets a little further away,
30:48
Speaker 1: and that adjust the orbit of the planet. It can
30:50
Speaker 1: knock it off. Its orbit and orbits are a little
30:53
Speaker 1: bit fragile. You get a push in the wrong moment
30:56
Speaker 1: in the wrong direction and boom you're rocketing out into
30:59
Speaker 1: space or your arashing into the Sun. And so these
31:02
Speaker 1: systems are not as likely to have planets as single
31:05
Speaker 1: star systems like ours. But our Solar system is pretty stable.
31:09
Speaker 1: But we have like a ton of objects in it.
31:11
Speaker 1: Why isn't it chaotic? We do have a ton of objects,
31:13
Speaker 1: but mostly they're very small and very far from each other,
31:16
Speaker 1: like the two biggest objects in the Solar System, the
31:18
Speaker 1: Sun and Jupiter. The Sun dominates the gravity by huge amount.
31:23
Speaker 1: It's like twenty five thousand times more powerful gravitationally than Jupiter.
31:27
Speaker 1: So it's almost like we have a two body system.
31:30
Speaker 1: We can mostly ignore Jupiter, and the other planets are
31:32
Speaker 1: so small that they don't really affect us. If they
31:35
Speaker 1: were closer, like they were in the early part of
31:37
Speaker 1: the Solar System, you would have a lot more chaos,
31:39
Speaker 1: and we had a lot more chaos. Well we're looking
31:41
Speaker 1: at is sort of like the stable remnant of four
31:44
Speaker 1: billion years of craziness. Well, I think it's also interesting
31:47
Speaker 1: you were telling me that you can also have like
31:49
Speaker 1: a star and a black hole system, Like you could
31:53
Speaker 1: have a solar system with a star and a black
31:55
Speaker 1: hole in it, exactly because sometimes stars become black holes.
31:58
Speaker 1: So what happens if you have two stars and one
32:01
Speaker 1: of them is big enough to collapse eventually into a
32:03
Speaker 1: black hole and the other one isn't, then you get
32:05
Speaker 1: a star orbiting a black hole. And that's super cool.
32:08
Speaker 1: And that's actually the first way that we discovered black holes.
32:12
Speaker 1: We saw this star orbiting something nothing, nothing that we
32:16
Speaker 1: could see at least, and that was great evidence of
32:19
Speaker 1: the existence of a black hole. So we did a
32:21
Speaker 1: whole fun podcast episode about Sickness X one this discovery
32:25
Speaker 1: of a black hole. It's pretty nice because the star
32:27
Speaker 1: that you can see tells you a lot about how
32:29
Speaker 1: much mass is there. From its orbital radius and its velocity,
32:33
Speaker 1: you can deduce its mass and the mass of the
32:35
Speaker 1: black hole. So it's pretty cool, right, And you can
32:37
Speaker 1: even have like planets orbiting this binary star black hole system.
32:42
Speaker 1: Like you could maybe be on a planet and look
32:44
Speaker 1: up at the sky and there be a sun and
32:46
Speaker 1: a black circle right and a black hole and you're
32:49
Speaker 1: in the night sky, Like you could have an anti
32:50
Speaker 1: sunset where the black hole, you know, it's below the horizon. Yeah,
32:55
Speaker 1: what would that be like? That would be an awesome eclipse,
32:57
Speaker 1: a black hole passing in front of the star. That
33:00
Speaker 1: would be pretty super cool to see. It would also
33:02
Speaker 1: make me feel a little nervous, you know, to be
33:04
Speaker 1: that close to a black hole. It's a nerve wrecking
33:07
Speaker 1: enough to be close to it a giant exploding star,
33:10
Speaker 1: but now now you're orbiting also a black hole. Yeah, exactly.
33:14
Speaker 1: That would be pretty crazy. And sometimes a binary star
33:17
Speaker 1: system is a little fuzzy, like sometimes the two stars
33:20
Speaker 1: can help each other out, or like they can steal
33:22
Speaker 1: material from each other. For example, of this famous kind
33:25
Speaker 1: of supernova type one, a supernova comes from a binary
33:29
Speaker 1: star system. It only happens under very special conditions. When
33:33
Speaker 1: you have one star that becomes a white dwarf, which
33:35
Speaker 1: means that it's blown out most of its fuel and
33:38
Speaker 1: what's left is just like a hot mass of stuff.
33:40
Speaker 1: It's not fusing anymore. It's just like glowing because it's
33:43
Speaker 1: hot like hot metal does. And it's not massive enough
33:46
Speaker 1: to collapse into a black hole or go supernova, So
33:49
Speaker 1: otherwise it would just sit there forever, cooling for trillions
33:52
Speaker 1: of years. But if it's got a partner near it,
33:54
Speaker 1: like a really big star orbiting right around it, it's
33:58
Speaker 1: gravity can suck in some of the mater curial from
34:00
Speaker 1: that other star and that can trigger a supernova. Now
34:04
Speaker 1: it has enough gravity to collapse, and Type one A
34:07
Speaker 1: supernova is the one that tell us about dark energy
34:09
Speaker 1: and expansion of the universe. Those are the conditions needed
34:12
Speaker 1: for a type one A supernova. Every single one is
34:15
Speaker 1: exactly that scenario. Really, all of the type one and
34:18
Speaker 1: those are the ones we used to like map out
34:20
Speaker 1: the universe, right, those are really important for us. Yeah, exactly,
34:23
Speaker 1: a star that goes supernova by itself, that's called a
34:25
Speaker 1: type two supernova. So Type one A are these very
34:28
Speaker 1: special conditions from a binary star system with a white
34:31
Speaker 1: dwarf that gobbles energy and mass from its partner to
34:34
Speaker 1: trigger the supernova. So we wouldn't have those without binary
34:37
Speaker 1: star systems, so we wouldn't have learned so much about
34:40
Speaker 1: the universe. Interesting. So that's a binary system that's not stable, right,
34:43
Speaker 1: because one of them is getting sucked into the other. Yeah, exactly.
34:46
Speaker 1: And then when it goes supernova, you can like blow
34:48
Speaker 1: up the other star like that goes totally crazy. You
34:51
Speaker 1: wouldn't want to be a planet on that system. You
34:54
Speaker 1: wouldn't want to be a star in that family. Like
34:56
Speaker 1: when one of the hands with brothers blows up, sorry
34:59
Speaker 1: giving a ra in public and people ful filled it
35:01
Speaker 1: with the cell phone, then it's all over for the
35:03
Speaker 1: whole family. I just meant their career blows up, you know,
35:06
Speaker 1: like one of them becomes Thor and the other ones,
35:07
Speaker 1: you know, whatever they're doing, they're not Thor, they're not Thor.
35:11
Speaker 1: I think that's how their parents now call them. This
35:14
Speaker 1: is my son Thor, which is my other son, not Thor.
35:17
Speaker 1: And this is my other son Awsome, not Thor. Hey,
35:20
Speaker 1: if one of my siblings was a god on screen,
35:22
Speaker 1: and then yes, I would define myself. Is not that one?
35:26
Speaker 1: If one of your siblings, I see, well, I'm sure
35:31
Speaker 1: they're happy not to be you as well. Everybody in
35:34
Speaker 1: the universe except for me is happy to not be me,
35:36
Speaker 1: all right, Well, let's get into more than just two
35:38
Speaker 1: stars in a solar sism. You can you have three
35:41
Speaker 1: or four or five or maybe even more than that.
35:45
Speaker 1: But first, let's take another quick break. All right, we're
36:00
Speaker 1: talking about multi star systems, solar systems with more than
36:04
Speaker 1: one or two stars, Daniel, Are those common in the universe? Also?
36:07
Speaker 1: Can you have a solar system with three stars or
36:10
Speaker 1: four stars? Yeah, it turns out it's not that rare.
36:13
Speaker 1: Like the most common systems are single and double systems
36:17
Speaker 1: for the reasons we talked about. But you can actually
36:19
Speaker 1: build a stable system out of more than two stars.
36:23
Speaker 1: You can have a third star, and the trick is
36:26
Speaker 1: to have two of them be like really close to
36:28
Speaker 1: each other and the other one be a little further away.
36:30
Speaker 1: So like a triple star system, you have two stars
36:33
Speaker 1: like the center, and then instead of a planet, you
36:35
Speaker 1: have like another star out there and it's sort of
36:37
Speaker 1: a wide orbit around the two stars. But hey, you've
36:41
Speaker 1: got three stars in orbit around their common center of mass.
36:44
Speaker 1: So that's a triple system. And why not, right, I mean,
36:46
Speaker 1: they're consensing cosmological objects, you know, to each their own
36:51
Speaker 1: that's right. I believe in polly star systems or whatever
36:53
Speaker 1: you thought it, Polly physics. There you go. We're open
36:57
Speaker 1: minded here on the podcast. I think what you mean
36:59
Speaker 1: is like haveing a system kind of like ours, where
37:01
Speaker 1: there's a big there's something in the middle that's big
37:04
Speaker 1: and happening, and then there's maybe like a third one
37:06
Speaker 1: like Jupiter way out there where it's not really disrupting
37:10
Speaker 1: as much the two star system in the middle. Yeah, exactly,
37:13
Speaker 1: take our star and split it into two tightly orbiting
37:16
Speaker 1: each other, and then graduate Jupiter into a star. And
37:20
Speaker 1: that's a good mental picture for what a trinary star
37:22
Speaker 1: system might look like. It's not like three stars are
37:25
Speaker 1: like all whizzing around each other in close quarters in
37:28
Speaker 1: some crazy like dance. Yeah, it's really more like a
37:31
Speaker 1: binary system with an orbiting third partner. It's like a couple,
37:34
Speaker 1: but then there's someone in the preference checking them out.
37:38
Speaker 1: There's a close friend, a camry couple, a close friends
37:42
Speaker 1: Uncle George, we'll just call him uncle George, exactly. And
37:45
Speaker 1: that's the recipe for building these more complex star systems
37:48
Speaker 1: and having them be stable. For example, if you want
37:51
Speaker 1: a quadruple star system, and there is one, it's called
37:55
Speaker 1: Alpha Jeminorum. This is basically two binary star systems orbiting
38:00
Speaker 1: each other. So you have like a tight pair and
38:03
Speaker 1: another tight pair and they're orbiting each other. Like how
38:06
Speaker 1: far away are we talking about? Like are they really
38:08
Speaker 1: far away or are they like you know, spinning around
38:11
Speaker 1: pretty fast around each other. Yes, So the two closer
38:13
Speaker 1: ones have periods that are really small. So like the
38:16
Speaker 1: pairs orbit each other in like days, right, so they're
38:19
Speaker 1: really whizzing around each other. But then there's a much
38:22
Speaker 1: bigger separation between the pairs, and that's typical. That's how
38:26
Speaker 1: you become stable. And so the pairs of pairs orbit
38:29
Speaker 1: each other, you know, more like in a period of years,
38:32
Speaker 1: and in other star systems it can be hundreds or
38:34
Speaker 1: thousands of years for the larger set. I mean, it's
38:37
Speaker 1: it's not like our solar system. It's more like you know,
38:40
Speaker 1: like a Meani galaxy almost, yes, sort of. But they
38:43
Speaker 1: are definitely orbiting each other. They are gravitationally bound to
38:46
Speaker 1: each other, you know, the way like the Orc cloud
38:49
Speaker 1: is really really far out there, but it's still gravitationally
38:52
Speaker 1: bound to our Sun, and so it's part of our
38:54
Speaker 1: solar system. I see. So that's a system we actually
38:57
Speaker 1: know about what we can see it. It's two couples
38:59
Speaker 1: swinging around. Yeah, and it's really awesome because we originally
39:02
Speaker 1: thought it was a binary system because you can see
39:05
Speaker 1: the two stars visually, right, So you can see the
39:08
Speaker 1: two stars, and then when you look at each one,
39:09
Speaker 1: you can tell, oh my gosh, each one turns out
39:11
Speaker 1: to also be a binary. But you can only tell
39:14
Speaker 1: based on these spectroscopic measurements, the measuring of light and
39:17
Speaker 1: seeing the Doppler shift. Well, that must have been a
39:20
Speaker 1: weird revelation, right, yeah, and one at a time, right,
39:23
Speaker 1: you're like, oh my gosh, this binary star system turns
39:25
Speaker 1: out to be triinary. Let's check out the other one
39:27
Speaker 1: that's binary. And then it turns into an eight solar
39:31
Speaker 1: sun system. And yeah, you never know, you never know. Well,
39:35
Speaker 1: what about more than four stars? So that's a pretty
39:37
Speaker 1: high number. Can you have more than four stars? You can.
39:40
Speaker 1: There's a system of five stars. This is the Glease system.
39:44
Speaker 1: This is organized in sort of a crazy way, like
39:46
Speaker 1: a set of hangars where one hangar hangs off the
39:49
Speaker 1: edge of the other one hangs out the edge of
39:50
Speaker 1: the other one. You have like a binary star system.
39:54
Speaker 1: But then it turns out that one of them looks
39:57
Speaker 1: like a binary star, right, so you have instead of
40:00
Speaker 1: a binary star system, now you have a trinary. Then
40:02
Speaker 1: you zoom in on one of those in the binary,
40:04
Speaker 1: and turns out that's a binary. And then you zoom
40:07
Speaker 1: in on one of those in that binary, and that
40:09
Speaker 1: turns out to be a binary. Yes, like a nested yeah.
40:14
Speaker 1: And really that's the only way to be stable is
40:16
Speaker 1: to have these things be separated into like effectively two
40:19
Speaker 1: body systems, but where one of the bodies turns out
40:22
Speaker 1: to have complicated like inner motion. So this one is
40:24
Speaker 1: like a four level hierarchy, and this is called the
40:26
Speaker 1: Glease system g L I E S E. You need
40:30
Speaker 1: like a hierarchy, But is that hierarchy due to the
40:32
Speaker 1: size like each as you go down a level, the
40:35
Speaker 1: sun's get smaller. Are they all the same size? It
40:38
Speaker 1: just happened to like be trapped in this hierarchical orbits.
40:42
Speaker 1: They don't have to be smaller. They can be large,
40:44
Speaker 1: and they can even be larger, but then you just
40:46
Speaker 1: need the orbits to be a little bit bigger so
40:47
Speaker 1: that effectively it looks like a single star system from
40:50
Speaker 1: the distance of the other star. Right, you just need
40:53
Speaker 1: to be to be small enough then to be close enough,
40:56
Speaker 1: or for you to be far enough away that you
40:58
Speaker 1: can mostly treat a binary system like a single star
41:01
Speaker 1: for it to be stable. I wonder what it's like
41:03
Speaker 1: to be a planet in that system. Is it just
41:04
Speaker 1: like a constant disco ball, you know, it's experienced day
41:09
Speaker 1: and night like light flashing in and out. Well, some
41:13
Speaker 1: of the stars are going to be so distant that
41:14
Speaker 1: they're just gonna look like moons, right, or they're gonna
41:17
Speaker 1: look like other things. Well, I give this one a
41:19
Speaker 1: five star rating for sure for having five stars. But wait,
41:23
Speaker 1: there's more. Yeah, is it possible to have more? Yeah,
41:26
Speaker 1: we have found star systems with more than five stars.
41:29
Speaker 1: There's one we saw recently which is a crazy six
41:32
Speaker 1: star system. This one has like three pairs of binaries,
41:36
Speaker 1: So you have like three of these little guys and
41:38
Speaker 1: that's organized into a triinary system. Whoa, So it's three
41:43
Speaker 1: binary stars. But is it hierarchical? Like is do you
41:46
Speaker 1: have like a binary star and then the binary system
41:49
Speaker 1: orbiting that one, and then you have a binary system
41:50
Speaker 1: orbiting the other one? You have two binary systems where
41:53
Speaker 1: they have like a larger one and a smaller one
41:55
Speaker 1: and then those two are organized into a binary and
41:57
Speaker 1: then that quad star system is in a binary relationship
42:01
Speaker 1: with another binary star system. So it's definitely hierarchical. It's
42:05
Speaker 1: like a Sementi swinging party in space. Yeah, and I
42:09
Speaker 1: don't know if they have any planets. We haven't seen any,
42:11
Speaker 1: but it's pretty crazy. Why wouldn't they have planets? Well,
42:14
Speaker 1: it's just so chaotic, right, there's so much gravity all
42:17
Speaker 1: the time that would be pretty hard to find a
42:18
Speaker 1: stable orbit. Like, it's amazing that even these found a
42:21
Speaker 1: stable orbit, right, I guess how did they find that orbit?
42:24
Speaker 1: Did they? Do you think they were born, you know,
42:27
Speaker 1: near each other and that's just what they settled into.
42:29
Speaker 1: Or do you think they you know, one of them
42:31
Speaker 1: was cruising by and God pulled in. It's actually really
42:34
Speaker 1: hard to capture another object like Gravitationally, it's actually impossible
42:39
Speaker 1: to capture an object that's passing by because of conservation
42:42
Speaker 1: of energy. If it's coming by and it's not in orbit,
42:46
Speaker 1: that means it's not a hyperbolic trajectory. And if it
42:48
Speaker 1: unless it loses energy somehow, it's just gonna whizz around
42:51
Speaker 1: you and shoot out into space. So to capture an
42:54
Speaker 1: object you need like something else to give away energy
42:57
Speaker 1: or collide with it or something. So much more likely
43:00
Speaker 1: is that this formed this way, that it came together
43:02
Speaker 1: this way gravitationally from the initial collapse in cloud. It
43:06
Speaker 1: just happened to form six points there that gobble up
43:09
Speaker 1: a lot of the mass and then coalesced into this
43:11
Speaker 1: stable system. And then these are pretty rare, right, Like
43:14
Speaker 1: we only know of one. Yeah, this is really rare.
43:17
Speaker 1: There's very few systems like this, and this particular one
43:20
Speaker 1: is super weird because not only does it have like
43:23
Speaker 1: six stars in it, but they are eclipsing. So these
43:26
Speaker 1: stars are all eclipsing binaries, which means that all of
43:30
Speaker 1: them orbit each other in just the right plane so
43:34
Speaker 1: that they block the light from each other on its
43:36
Speaker 1: way to Earth. So it's like, not only is it weird,
43:39
Speaker 1: but they all happen to be arranged exactly the right
43:42
Speaker 1: way to eclipse each other's light from the point of
43:44
Speaker 1: view of Earth, like they're on the same level and
43:46
Speaker 1: this level just happens to be like in our eyeline. Yeah,
43:49
Speaker 1: And so this was discovered by a test, which is
43:51
Speaker 1: this awesome telescope that looks for exoplanets via this transit
43:55
Speaker 1: method of dimming of the light of a star to
43:58
Speaker 1: see something passing in front of it. And so we
44:00
Speaker 1: detected all of these crazy activities in this one solar system. Wow,
44:04
Speaker 1: it was like blinking like crazy, like randomly. Yeah. And
44:08
Speaker 1: just like in the other hierarchies, like the closer the
44:11
Speaker 1: little binaries orbit each other sometimes days or years, but
44:15
Speaker 1: the furthest pair, like the quad system that's orbiting around
44:18
Speaker 1: the other binary system, they orbit every two thousand years.
44:22
Speaker 1: This was really like a quad couple that's much closer
44:25
Speaker 1: and then a binary system that's a little further away,
44:27
Speaker 1: but they are tied together. Wow. Well that's kind of romantic.
44:30
Speaker 1: They've been together for two thousand years. That's something to
44:32
Speaker 1: aspire to. But now I'm afraid to ask, Daniel, can
44:34
Speaker 1: you have a solar system with more than six stars?
44:37
Speaker 1: You know you can? And we have found one. The
44:40
Speaker 1: craziest star system we've ever seen has seven stars in it.
44:44
Speaker 1: And this is a star system called New Scorpii, which
44:48
Speaker 1: is pretty awesome name. It's five light years away and
44:51
Speaker 1: it has seven stars. It's like, geez, get greedy much?
44:54
Speaker 1: They just like the party. I guess we're just jealous, right,
44:59
Speaker 1: I'm like, man, they're having a lot more fun over
45:00
Speaker 1: there than we are. I think with each start there's
45:04
Speaker 1: just more drama. You know, that's soap operated in your life.
45:07
Speaker 1: Some people can't live without it. But this seven star
45:10
Speaker 1: system is sort of organized into two systems. One of
45:13
Speaker 1: them has four stars and the other one has three,
45:16
Speaker 1: and those two systems orbit each other. But it's really cool,
45:19
Speaker 1: hierarchic goal. It's hard to describe over the radio, so
45:21
Speaker 1: I suggest you google it. But it's pretty cool system
45:24
Speaker 1: like two clusters that are kind of far away enough
45:27
Speaker 1: from each other that they don't destabilize each other, but
45:30
Speaker 1: they're orbiting around each other, and each one of those
45:32
Speaker 1: clusters has another two separate clusters within them. Yeah, exactly.
45:36
Speaker 1: It's pretty crazy. And so you know, life on that
45:39
Speaker 1: planet with like seven sunrises and seven sunsets every day,
45:43
Speaker 1: that sounds pretty exciting. Imagine having seven parents, that's gonna
45:46
Speaker 1: be pretty confusing. Like how do you make decisions. I
45:49
Speaker 1: guess you pull all your parents and the majority wins. Well,
45:53
Speaker 1: mommy said I could have dessert, which mommy mom said
45:57
Speaker 1: that I can have a treat. The majority of my
45:59
Speaker 1: mom said I never treat, all right, well, I give
46:03
Speaker 1: the universe, you're right, a lot of stars for being
46:06
Speaker 1: so awesome and unpredictable. I mean, who would have thought
46:08
Speaker 1: you could have seven stars in one system. It's pretty cool,
46:11
Speaker 1: and it's just an example of how the universe does
46:14
Speaker 1: stuff that you didn't expect. It does exactly what you
46:17
Speaker 1: didn't anticipate, and that everything we thought we've learned about
46:20
Speaker 1: the universe from last thousand years, assumptions that were at
46:23
Speaker 1: the bedrock of our understanding, should be questioned because they
46:27
Speaker 1: could be wrong and things could be very different out
46:29
Speaker 1: there in other corners of the universe. I'm starting to
46:31
Speaker 1: question YELP reviews. Maybe they should go up to seven
46:33
Speaker 1: stars because the universe has said in the bar, the
46:37
Speaker 1: stars bar. All right, well, we hope you enjoyed that,
46:40
Speaker 1: And speaking of stars, give us a good rating on
46:42
Speaker 1: iTunes or Spotify or or wherever you're listening to this podcast,
46:46
Speaker 1: and tell your friends thanks for joining us. See you
46:49
Speaker 1: next time. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and
46:59
Speaker 1: joor Hicks Blame the Universe is a production of I
47:02
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