Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / What is the great attractor?

Transcript

What is the great attractor? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: In, Daniel, I have a great idea for house physicists
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: should name things in science. Oh, I can feel my
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: skepticism rising up inside, like indigestion something like that. Yeah. Well,
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: here's the idea. So the next time you guys invent
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: something or discover something amazing, just put the word great
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: in front of it, you know, and just to make
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: it seem more expressive, because I feel like you guys
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: don't sell things enough. You mean, like the great Daniel
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: and Jorge explain the universe? Is that what you mean?
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure that makes grammatical sense, but I mean,
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: you know, like you do you have do you have
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: a model of the universe and you call it the
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: standard model? You know, Yeah, it could be a little
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: bit better, you know, the great model of particles. Oh man,
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: that is a great idea. I am more handmade cartoonists
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: and the creator of PhD comics. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: a particle physicist, and I only study stuff that's great.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Great or grape flavor. Grape is not one of the
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: great flavors. I have to say. It's like low on
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: the list who doesn't like grape juice. It's like the
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: filler of juice. Right, It's like the banana in a smoothie. Right,
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: Nobody drinks and juice for the grape. The banana is
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: a highlight for me in the smoothies. Bananas like the
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: canvas of smoothie on which everything else sits. You know,
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: it's just there support everything else. We are totally different.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: Wait legs here, Daniel. You go into the smoothie store.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: You notice this banana in almost every single smoothie. But
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: it's not named banana. It's like the orange smoothie, the
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: raspberry smoothie. Banana just plays like the supporting role there.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: No bananas are the foundation upon which smoothies are built.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: You're saying they're the underground, sort of concrete basement. That
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: they're like the standard model of physics, but for smoothies.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: But anyways, welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge explained
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: of fruit, smoothies apparently, and the universe. Welcome to our
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: great podcast in which we try to show you how
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: amazing and bonkers and frankly great the universe is. And
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: it's great not just because crazy stuff happens, but because
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: we can't understand it. The human mind is amazingly capable
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: of penetrating the cosmos and unraveling it. And that's our
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: job today is to give you a tour of the
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: cosmos in a way that you can understand and impress
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: your friends with your knowledge. Yeah, and we're also the
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: authors of the book We Have No Idea, a Guide
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: to the Unknown Universe, which apparently a lot of our
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: listeners don't know that we wrote. That's true. I get
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: a lot of questions from listeners that ask us about
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: things that are really nicely explained in our book. And
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: I'll say, oh, you should check out our book, and
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: they right back to say, what you guys have a book,
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: what you guys know how to write? I didn't say that.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: I just said we have a book. I see. It's
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: a book, and it's not just an audiobook. There are
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: actual words, right, and and letters in it and cartoons. Yes,
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: it's a really fun book. It's all about the things
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: you don't know about the universe and what scientists think
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: they might be. And it's fun for those of you
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: out there who are curious about the world and want
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: to know not just what do scientists know, but what
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: are scientists wondering about? And it features a bunch of
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: words but also dozens and dozens are really hilarious and
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: clear diagrams about what's going on, drawn by a hilarious cartoonist.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: I know. Oh really, who is it? Oh? I don't
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: remember what his name is. It doesn't really matter, you know.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: It just stole his ours from the internet. Some great
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: guy probably know. So it's a great book. You guys
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: should check it out. Yeah, it's about all the things
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: we don't know about the universe. And there's a lot
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: we don't know about the universe, right, Daniel. I mean,
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: there's we know some things here on Earth, and some
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: things in our solar system, and some things out there
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: in the galaxy in the cosmos, but there is a
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: lot we don't know, even kind of where we are
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: and where we sit in this big giant space. Yeah.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: In the book, we make this analogy a lot that
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: we are sort of at the beginning of an age
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: of exploration of the universe. Because I think it's easy
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: for people to imagine back a hundred or five hundred
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: or thousand years ago, before we even knew like the
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: shape of the Earth and all the land on it,
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: it was exciting to go out and exploring to learn
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: about our our sort of neighborhood and the larger place
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: we were on the Earth. Well, we're in that place
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: sort of scientifically, we're still just learning how the universe works,
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: but also very specifically, it's not like just a metaphor.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: We are now exploring beyond the Earth and getting maps
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: of sort of where we are in our cosmic neighborhood,
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: and we're really just beginning. And so every year, every decade,
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: we look further and further out into the universe and
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: just learn like the shape of things, how things are arranged,
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: how the stars and the galaxies and those the clusters
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: of galaxies, how how it all sort of sits in
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: the inner and where we sit on it, right like
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: in a kind of a they called the our address
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: in the universe. Yeah, and just like explorers who are
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: venturing around weird places on Earth and finding strange stuff,
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: weird animals and grand canyons and new fruits and all
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: sorts of stuff, as we look at into space, we
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: find some weird, weird stuff out there that forces us
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: to sort of revise our understanding of what's in the
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: universe and how it's put together. But anyway, so, yeah,
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: there are weird things out there that people are still discovering,
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: and in fact, there is a really weird thing out
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: there in space that is affecting how the galaxies and
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: the clusters are all moving about that we really have
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: no idea about. Right, Yeah, we are building sort of
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: a map of the universe. We look out and we
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: see our Solar system, and we know where it sits
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: in the galaxy. We know how the galaxy clusters together
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: with other galaxies to make this thing we call the
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: local group, which is a cluster of galaxies. And then
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: we've seen further out to see how that cluster forms
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: into superclusters. And we talked on the program once about
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: how those superclusters line up into these really weird sheets
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: and bubbles and stuff. But the cool thing is that
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: that stuff is not static. It's not just like sitting there, right,
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: This is a dynamic system. If you sped up the
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: universe on like, you know, really fast time lapse, you
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: would see stuff smashing into each other and whipping around
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: each other. This is like a frothing, bubbling foam of stuff,
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: but in super slow motion. Right that the universe is
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: not retired. It's still pretty active and moving around and
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: and restless. Yeah, and you know, the our galaxy is
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: like heading towards another galaxy. And so one thing that
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: that's really fascinating to study is not just where stuff is,
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: but where it's going. Right, what is it going to
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: look like? And are things going to smash together or
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: are they gonna fly further apart or are they gonna
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: stay kind of the same. Yeah, so this is a
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: fascinating question. And several listeners here I'm counting one, two, three, four, five,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: six listeners independently wrote in to ask us to talk
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: about this particular weird thing that scientists found. Yeah, it's
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: a very big mystery. And so here's the audio from
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: Stephen Gonda asking us what this mystery is. Hello, Daniel
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: and Jorge, this is Stephen from Calgary, Canada. I've read
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: about the phenomena called the Great Attractor, and I'd like
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: to learn more. What do we know about it? What
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: don't we know, and what are some theories regarding what
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: it could be? Thank you? All right, that's a great
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: question from Stephen, and he is asking us about this
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: interesting mystery, which is this idea of the Great Attractor. Yeah,
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: it's this amazing mystery, this huge cosmic galactic question mark
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: nearby in our cosmic neighborhood. And not just Stephen, but
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: also Mike Miller, Neil McLean, Peter McKeever, and Chris Adiquez
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: all wrote in to asked us to talk about this.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: So thanks to those people who wrote to us with
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: their burning curiosity about the universe. And if you're out
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: there and want us to talk about something, please don't
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: be shy. Send us your questions to Questions at Daniel
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: and Jorge dot com. So I guess they all wrote
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: the same question similar the same question, which means it's
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: a very active question or it's a great question. It's
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: a great question. And I'm also assuming they're not asking
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: about Brad Pitt, who's also pretty attractive. He has a
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: sort of gravitational pull on everything in Hollywood, a lot
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: of gravitized But it's not a mystery, right, Everybody understands
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: like there's a strong pull there and if everything, all
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: the projects are sort of sucked towards him, then we
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: know that he's around. Yeah, So to be on the podcast,
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: we'll be tackling this big mystery. We'll be asking the question,
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: what is the great attractor? Is it a what is
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: or who is this? Another alien episode? Daniel saying it's alien.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: I'm not saying it's not not aliens. But you know,
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: anything weird out there in space could be the beginning
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: of that science fiction movie where they find aliens, you know.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: And so he's some guy in a control room going, huh,
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: that's weird dot dot dot aliens. Good thing you're not
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: that person, because it would be aliens every time. It
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: seems if they put a big red aliens button next
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: to my desk, I'd be hitting it every single day. Aliens.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: But what I have for dinner aliens? I don't have
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: aliens for dinner. We can't digest aliens. Man, oh, I
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: want to have aliens over for dinner. We can hang
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: out with them and ask them, right. So, yeah, so
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: we don't know who or what this Great Attractor is,
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: and in fact, it just has a really pretty mysterious name.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: It's not even the best named attractor out there. There's
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: another one out there, even bigger, more mysterious, with a
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: better name. Is there a greatest attractor? The other one
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: is called the Shapely Attractor. Really really, that's Angelina Jolie
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: right in a very not safe cosmic mysteries right here
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: on the podcast Double Mobile Prize for your heavenly gods.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: Just waiting for them to get back together. I mean,
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: why shouldn't they be? Well, I walked around campus, I
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: use the irvine, and I asked folks if they knew
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: what the great attractor was. To think about it for
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: a second. If someone asked you what or who the
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: great attractor is, what would you say? Here's what people
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: had to say, has something to do with magnets. Our
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: friend who's a physics major. If you mentioned you mentioned
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: that at some point. If it's a great quantum attractor,
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: I would think it would have something to do with
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: sort of a black hole, something attracting everything around it.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: Is it the center of galaxies? Probably has to do
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: with by gravity attracting something I think I may have
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: in physics in high schooling. I'm not too sure to
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: be honest, right, Uh, probably not the one you're thinking here?
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: What are you thinking of? Uh? Something gravitational? Alright, No,
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: nobody want with Brad Pitt. I guess it's just me
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: who much pessed with Brad Pitt. Or he's just in
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: the news so much. You're either a singular genius or
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: you're just wrong? Well, how do you how do we
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: know it's not Brad Pitt, Daniel, I have a Brad
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: Pitt button right here in mind. You hit the Brad
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: Pitt button. I hit the alien button. The logical conclusion
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: is Brad Pitt is an alien. We're just banging out
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: the mystery city. So after all the mysteries of the universe,
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: if you can make that connection, you've done it. Is
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: that why they adopted so many children? Actually human? Right?
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: Who can survive being having so many children? You need
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: specially well and still and still look as good as
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: he does. Well, I can tell you that the Great
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: Attractor is not Brad Pitt because the Great Attractor is
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: something like two hundred million light years away, and last
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: I checked, Brad Pitt was on Earth, which is considerably
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: closer than that. All right, we'll get to talking about
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: this Great attractor. So it's something that's out there in space, right,
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: affecting how the galaxies are moving around in space. Yeah,
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: it seems to be this really misdu source of gravity.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: It's out there in space, it's really far away, and
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: it's pulling on everything, but nobody knows what's there, Like
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: what is creating all of this attraction? Right, A lot
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: of people said gravity in their answers, is that do
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: you think? You know? Do you say great at attractor
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: and people automatically think gravity, I guess, so, yeah, there's
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: some connection in their minds between attraction and gravity, which
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: makes sense. Right, If you're thinking space stuff, then it's
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: mostly gravity that's doing the attracting. All right, we'll get
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: into what this great mystery, this great attractor is, and
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: what it could be or who it could be, and
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: ask whether it's going to suck us in it. It's
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: gonna if we're gonna get pulled into its attractiveness once
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: and for all. But first let's take a quick break,
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: all right, Daniel. So there's a big mystery out there
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: in space called the great Attractor. So break it down
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: for us. What is the great Attractor? Well, as we
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: said earlier, we're interested in where we are in space,
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: but also what the stuff around us is doing, where
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: it's going, how it's moving. We know that the universe
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: is expanding, right, more space is being made everywhere, which
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: means that everything is moving away from each other. Right,
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: Everything we look at is moving away from us, So
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: it's red shifted. It's red shifted, meaning that the light
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: from it is shifted to longer wavelengths because it's moving
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: away from us at some speed. Right, there's sort of
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: a general motion of the of everything in the universe
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: being pulled apart. Yeah, I mean pulled apart. But that's
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: sort of the overall picture, that's the average picture. Then
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: there's sort of local variations, right, Like, for example, the
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: Earth is not moving away from the Sun. Why because
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: the Earth is held by the gravity of the Sun.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: And so you can look at at how fast things
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: are moving relative to each other, they get a sense
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: for sort of where the gravity is. Like the Sun
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: is not moving away from the Milky Way for the
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: same reason. Gravity is holding the Sun as part of
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: the Milky Way. And then we could ask about like
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: what's the relative velocity between our galaxy and another galaxy
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: or other galaxies, right, because we're moving towards the Andromeda
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: galaxy right, not away from it. That's right, the Andromeda
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: galaxies moving towards us. And so this is a variation
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: relative to this expansion. If you imagine like all that
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: expansion is sort of the baseline, then we can ask
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: like the stuff around us, How is it moving relative
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: to what you would expect from that expansion? And some
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: of the stuff is actually moving towards us, like Andrameda,
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: because of gravity. And so what they did is they
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: did this red shift survey. They looked around at all
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: the galaxies and they asked where are they going relative
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: to the sort of baseline expansion. So an average, the
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: universe is expanding and everything is waning away from each other.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: But you're saying, sort of locally, what what what are
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: the galaxies actually doing? Or all galaxies or just the
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: ones around us? Just the ones around us is where
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: we begin, and those the easiest to understand and to
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: see because they're closer. It gives us a pi here
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: for where the stuff is because we measure what the
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: gravity is. It's just like the discovery of dark matter.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: You look at the rotation of a galaxy and you
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: understand how much gravity should be there to hold it together,
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: and then you count up all the stars and you ask,
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: can all that gravity be explained? The answer was no,
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: so we assumed, oh, there's some extra matter inside the
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: galaxy to explain it. This is sort of that same strategy,
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: but on the galactic scale, where we look at the
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: motion of the galaxies, and then we ask can we
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: explain the motion of those galaxies based on all the
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: stuff we know is there. It's kind of like you
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: were telling me earlier that if the Sun was invisible
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: for some reason, we could probably still know that it's there.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: It's just from seeing how the planets moving a circle
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: around something that's right, you can deduce that stuff is
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: there by its gravitational effects. Just like the Earth moving
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: around the Sun. You don't need to see the Sun
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: to know that there's something heavy there that's keeping the
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: Earth in orbit. And the same way we discovered the
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: black hole at the center of our galaxy. Initially I
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: seeing these stars orbited making these patterns that they just
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: wouldn't make if there wasn't some really heavy, massive, invisible
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: thing there. Okay, So then you're saying that we have
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: been doing this kind of we we have done this
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: kind of analysis with the galaxies all around us, just
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: to see if everything's moving kind of in a coaster way. Yeah,
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: we were curious, like where is everything going? And we
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: did this calculation. We looked at everything, we measured its
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: red shift, and that gives us a picture for sort
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: of like where everything is going. You can like take
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: every galaxy and put an arrow on it and say,
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: this one's going over there, this one's going over here.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: And what we discovered is it. First of all, we
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: have a velocity. We have a velocity relative to sort
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: of like the cosmic microwave background that's sort of filling space.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: We are getting pulled somewhere. We are not the center
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: of the universe, is what you're saying. Well, you and
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: I are, but the whole galaxy it turns out to
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: just be dragging us down. Oh, we're mosing on somewhere
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: as a galaxy. As a galaxy, we're moving actually quite
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: fast relative to this cosmic microwave background. Oh man, you
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: just gave me whiplash. And I feel felt so stable there,
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: But now I think that our whole galaxy is moving
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: and probably millions of miles per hour. It sort of
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: threw me off a bit. Yeah, and all of the
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: galaxies together seem to be not just our galaxy, but
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: all the galaxies together seemed to be sort of sucked
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: in the same direction. All the nearby ones are getting
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: pulled in the same direction. I mean, like that there's
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: a galaxy to our right, and it's also going in
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: the same direction we are. And there's a galaxy to
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: our left and it's also going the same way. Now,
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: individual ones can have variations, like Andromeda, the closest one
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: happens to becoming right at us. But if you look
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: at the average sort of flow of the galaxies nearby,
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: they're all pointing in the same direction, sort of like
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: there's some huge amount of mass they're creating gravity sucking
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: everything in wait, and so we're going towards it, or
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: we're sort of orbiting it. We're going towards it. And
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: this is the goal, right is to figure out how
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: fast everything is moving, and to use that to figure
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: out make sort of a map of where the mass
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: has to be, and then compare that and say, well,
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: do we see all that mass? Right, just like we
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: did when we discovered dark matter, we make a map
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: of where we think the gravity is, and then we
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: ask can we explain all that gravity using the mass
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: from the visible stuff from what we see and also
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: the dark matter? Did you take that into account as well?
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: Oh crap, we forgot to account for the dark matter. Yeah, man, no,
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: we we do. We know, we know that we see
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: a galaxy that we're not seeing all the mass from it.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: We have pretty good ways to measure the or to
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: estimate the amount of dark matter in a galaxy based
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: on its type and its age and all this sort
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: of stuff. There's a little insulting Daniel Well, who was
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: being insulted because you were like, did you remember the
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: dark matter? Yes? Thank you? Did you did you carry
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: the two? Did you carry the ones? Daniel? Because this
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: is all very suspicious. Are you're gonna come up here
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: help me with my arithmetic? Did you please? I forgot
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: it's long division. I haven't done that forever. I need somehow.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: I guess what I mean is, how do you know
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: that you've accounted for all the dark matter? I mean,
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: you can't see the dark matter. You only have sort
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: of like mottels of it. That's right. We don't and
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: that's a possible explanation. But we know something is there,
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: and we don't think that there are these blobs of
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: invisible dark matter that are not hanging out with visible galaxies.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: And so what we do know is that there's some
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: region out there that is sucking us all in, that's
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: pulling us towards it, and we didn't expect that because
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: we don't see anything there that can explain it. And
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: and this is like everything. All the galaxies that we
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: see are just the ones around us, because you know, we,
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: like you said, we are part of these clusters and
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: superclusters and gigant and genormous walls and sheets of galaxies.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: You know, is everything moving towards something or just sort
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: of locally local in this context means sort of part
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: of our supercluster. So all the sort of clusters of
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: galaxies and those clusters of clusters seem to be moving
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: in this neighborhood to awards this thing called the great attractor.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: So it's like a feature of our super cluster. Yeah,
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: but if you go even further beyond that, everything else
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: is getting including that great attractor, is getting sucked towards
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: something else. It's a bigger attractor called the shapely attractor.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: Why didn't you call it the greatest? Well, it's named
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: after a guy named Shapely. Honestly, literally, his last name
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: is Shapeley. You aren't you gonna ask me if he
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: was pretty shapely or he or she? That would be inappropriate, Daniel,
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: I have I have the broadcast standards. Oh I should
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: read those somewhere. I'm curious. I thought he would be
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: surprised that I have standards. But one really mysterious thing
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: about this great attractor is that it happens to be
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: in a spot that's very difficult for us to look at. Mmmm, suspiciously, Suspiciously,
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: it's a coincidence, But why is it hard to look
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: at it? Well, if you look up in the night sky,
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: the places that are easiest to see are the places
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: where you look away from our galaxy. You look sort
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: of out into deep space. If there's something out in
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: the sky and it's hiding behind the Milky Way, it's
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: much harder to see, just because there are a lot
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: of stars and dust and gas between us and it,
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: So we sort of have a bit of a cosmic
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: blind spot. There's a big mass of something, possibly within
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: our supercluster cluster, and there's an even bigger mass of
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: something you're saying, out and out in between the superclusters,
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: or it might be at the like the center of
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: a bunch of superclusters. The shapely attractors even less well understood.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: But the frustrating things that both of them sits sort
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: of behind the plane of the galaxy, like there if
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: you look in that direction, if you look up in
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: the night sky when you're camping and you see the
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: Milky Way, it's beautiful, it's wonderful, but it means you
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: can't see what's behind it very well because the Milky
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: Way is so bright. This episode is filled with great
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: names because astronomers refer to that whole region of the
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: sky as the zone of avoidance as then don't even
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: try to do any signs there. It's just all lit
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: up and it's a it's a mess. Oh. So it's
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: a an avoidance not because you shouldn't go there. It's
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: it's more like, don't don't take your academic career on
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: that area of the universe. Yeah, it's sort of like
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: the harder region to observe anything. And so if you're
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: looking for something clear and beautiful, look somewhere else, because
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: this is the messy spot. You know, if you want
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: to record a beautiful symphony, you don't do it, you know,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. That's a zone of avoidance
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: for careful recordings. All right, So, um, these things that
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: might be really important to the universe and to how
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: how the universe is moving and changing are pretty much.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: It's sort of occluded from us. You're saying, yeah, we
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: can't really see in that direction, and there's something really
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: fascinating and interesting out there that seems to be pulling
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: all these galaxies towards it. All right, let's get into
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: what it could be or who it could be, and
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: whether or not we are going to all end up
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: being fatally attracted. I think you've already attracted a Brad
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: Pitt that I've already played our fatal attraction with that kid.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: He's gonna listen to this episode and now he's never
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: going to come on the podcast. Or maybe it'll be
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: attracted coming on the podcast. But yeah, let's get into
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: whether or not we'll we'll be sucked into it as well.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: But first let's take a quick break. All right, Daniel,
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: the great attractor out there in space is moving galaxies
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: in a mysterious way. So what what could it be?
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: If we don't know what it is? Well, as usually,
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: we'll have an escalating series of possible explanations from like
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: super boring to mind blowingly crazy and insane? Does it
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: end with aliens? As usual, it's gonna end with a
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: movie pitch of course? Is your hand over the alien
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: button right now, are you itching to press it? I am,
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: But first we got to go through like the other
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: possible explanations that could be like much more boring physics. Alright, alright,
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: so there's something causing all the galaxies to move towards
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: a sort of an area or a point, and so
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: what could it be. Is it a big blob of
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: dark matter or is it um you know, like it's
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: just a giant rock. Yeah, well it couldn't just be
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: a giant rock because remember this thing has the mass
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: of like ten quadrillion sons. It's really big. How many,
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: like equivalently, how many galaxies is that? Yeah, that would
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: be like ten thousand Milky Way galaxies. So whatever this is,
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: it's not small. You know. We went out to sort
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: of map the universe and see where stuff is and
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: see its direction. We expected everything to have some relative velocity,
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: to be some sort of jiggle, you know, think about
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: like the galaxies is like, you know, some sort of
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: cosmic gas. You expect them to be bouncing around a
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: little bit. But we were pretty surprised to discover this
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: is in the eighties, that everything was really strongly getting
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: pulled in this one direction. So it's a big deal.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: And so it's the equivalent whatever it's pulling us out
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: there is the equivalent of ten thousand galaxies. It's hard
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: to imagine, right, And each galaxy of course has billions
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: and billions and billions of stars and planets. So it's
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: a lot of stuff. Well, it's not a small mystery.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: It's not a small mystery. It's a great attractive it's
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: a great mystery. Maybe maybe great doesn't sell it enough,
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: you know, amazing attractor, the unbelievably fantastic and amazing attractor.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: But this sort of the simplest explanation is that it
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: just could be a lot of stuff. It could just
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: be that there's a lot of galaxies over there and
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: it's hard for us to see them because they're blocked
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: by the Milky Way, right, Or they could be dark,
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: like it could just be you know, matter but it's
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: not shiny. Yeah, it could be. I mean, it could
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: be just like normal matter, just like galaxies and that
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: are bright in the same way, but you just can't
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: see them very well. And so people, you know, they're
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: doing this or pointing our telescopes at this at this
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: location and trying to discover is there anything back there.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: We've mostly been avoiding that part of this guy because
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: it's hard to look at. But now because of this
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: weird gravitational anomally, there are folks pointing their infrared telescopes
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: at this thing. Okay, so um, it could it be
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: like dark matter. It could be a giant blob of
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: dark matter that we that is just floating out there
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: by itself. It could be because what we see out
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: there using infrared telescopes is not enough to explain it. Like,
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: we definitely see that there are clusters of galaxies out there.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of them, in fact, but not enough
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: to explain this. There are galaxies out there where we're
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: aware of the greater attractor would be, but there there
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: aren't ten thousand galaxies. Yeah, and you know this is
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: hard to measure, and so there's a lot of uncertainty. Still.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: It's not like we have a very clear picture. We
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: have to use infrared light to penetrate the gas and
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: the dust of the Milky Way. It's easier to get
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: through the Milky Way if your infrared light because you
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: get through the gas in the dust, which seems small
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: relative to your long wavelength right, and you get to
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: where those cool infrared goggles too. That's basically why people
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: doing exactly do they wear while they're doing astronomy? I
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: wonder they do. Yeah, that and the snacks also are
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: also good, the bananas and these smoothies. But you know,
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: as we said before, one of the goals is to
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: sort of make a map of the mass of the galaxy.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: And we just can't see enough stuff to explain all
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: of this mass, all of this gravity. It's not even
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: dark matter, well not even dark matter, because we expect
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: dark matter to sort of follow the pattern of visible
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: matter everywhere else in the universe. Galaxies form and stars
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: form because there's dark matter there. It makes sort of
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: these gravitational wells that pull in gas and dust and
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: form galaxies, and you expect visible matters sort of give
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: you a map for where the dark matter is. So
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: it would be really weird to have like a huge
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: amount of extra dark matter, like a ginormous amount, without
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: as much visible matter with it. It would be weird,
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: but not impossible. Maybe like you could thankily maybe have
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: some dark matter floating by itself. Could Yeah, you could,
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: and you need some sort of weird event to explain
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: like why that dark matter hasn't already attracted a bunch
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: of gas and dust to make galaxies, to sort of
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: give it away, right, it's like stealth dark community pressing.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: I'm pressing the button, all right, and you know you
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: gotta press that aliens button. But to me, the aliens
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: button represents something larger, you know, like the things we
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: don't understand, the reasons we're doing science, the reasons we
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: are interested in exploring the universe is to find the
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: new weird stuff to sort of add to our list
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: of things we have in our great model of the universe.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: It's like it's almost like a mental exercise just to
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: keep your mind open to crazy possibilities. Yeah, exactly, you
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: want to know what else is out there and you
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: want to discover something new, and so first you have
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: to like cross off the list other possible explanations before
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: you're forced to confront the fact that maybe there's something
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: new out there that that explains to something you haven't
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: ever seen before super dark matter, yeah, or stealthy dark matter,
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: and yeah, we don't know, and so it could, you know,
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: potentially be aliens. But it's sort of hard to imagine
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: because this is a really really big lump of stuff. Well,
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: let's let's take off the other one in your list.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: You said it could be maybe dark energy, not just
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: dark matter. Yeah, remember that dark energy is just our
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: observation of what's happening in the universe. We see that
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: the universe is expanding, that space between galaxies is increasing
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: as new space is made. But that's sort of like
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: an average thing. We've sort of measured that overall for
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: the universe. But what we don't know is is that uniform.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: Is it the same everywhere? Is the expansion constant and
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: every point in space or are there like little variations?
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: Oh you mean we've been assuming that that the dark
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: energy the expansion of the universe is like even and
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: smooth everywhere. But you're saying, maybe it's not. Maybe it's
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: it's like a lumpy, lumpy growth. Yeah. As we first
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: measure it, we sort of measure the overall expansion and
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: we were surprised to discover, you know, wow, it's expanding
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: and accelerating. And then as we get better and better measurements,
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: we can start to resolve it in more detail and
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: understand like, is it different in this direction than in
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: that other direction? Right, the expansion of the universe. Dark
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: energy is not this kind of smooth even thing. But
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: maybe it's like it's growing a little bit more over here,
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: a little bit growing more over there, or maybe it's
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: even like it's it's like folding the universe in weird ways. Yeah,
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: this this whole concept of dark flows that maybe dark
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: energy is not constant, And we've seen other ideas that
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: relate to that, like this idea of cosmic strings that
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: in the first moments of the universe when it expanded
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: really rapidly and cooled, that that cooling didn't happen uniformly
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: and made these sort of discontinuities in space. So it's
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: not the first time we've imagined that maybe space is
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: not uniform and homogeneous, and so it's possible that this
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: is some weird place where there's less dark energy and
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: so it's not expanding as much. Interesting pocket of not
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: dark energy of you know, where the good side of
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: the force is winning of light energy. That's where that's
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: where all the jedis are. That planet yeah, yeah, which
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: full of baby yo. It is where it's so cute
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: and uh, we're gonna end up attracting everyone anyways, Yeah,
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: their cuteness is what's defeating. Yeah, that's right. Never underestimate
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: the power of cute. All right, So it could be
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: dark matter. It could be just a fault in our
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: assumption about dark energy. But you're saying it could be
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: something else. So let's let's go ahead, Daniel, let's press
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: the aliens present bund. I know you're itching to present
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: in which in what possible way could aliens be casting
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: this giant attractor in the in the in the galaxy?
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: All right? So I have this crazy idea, right and
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: you know, you know that star we talked about before
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: Tabby Star where people were speculating that maybe because the
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: light was dimming and unusual regular ways, that aliens were
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: building a shield around the sort of gather up all
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: of its energy at Dyson sphere. That was pretty exciting.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: But I have an idea that's sort of like ten
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: quadrillion times bigger than that. What yeah, what if aliens
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: are building something and it's just like but it's huge.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: It's not just like a spear a star, but it's
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: like something the mass of ten quadrillion sons. You're saying
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: the aliens have built like a city or a spaceship
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: the size of ten tho galaxies. Yeah, who knows what
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: it is they're building, Like, we have no idea what
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: aliens would build, but if they were, you know, they
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: wouldn't build something that's glowing with like giving off light
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: and shining. It would be dark, right they be they
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: painted black to try to for some the fairious reason,
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: you know. Or maybe they're just gonna throw us a
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: surprise party and they just want to sneak up on us,
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: and so they just a giant billboard for us, saying
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: with a huge cuban for Freeman in a smooth Yeah,
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: there you go for life, for a turn life. But
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: it's hard to imagine what you could build that would
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: be that big. But hey, you know, the universe has
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: filled with crazy stuff and it's been around for billions
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: of years before our solar system was even formed. So
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: maybe this is a very old construction project and the
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: Aliens are out there building something so big that it
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: sucks in whole galaxies. It's it's bending galaxies to their
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: whim kind of. Yeah, maybe it's just a big art
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: project for them. They're like, yeah, we don't like the
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: way these clusters look. They need a little bit more
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: shapeliness to them. It's a huge black space banana. Is
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: that what you're thinking? You have the space banana button
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: on your desk. Yeah, there you go. I have a
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: Brad Pitt bun here and a banana button, one on
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: each side of mine. Don't press them at the same
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: time across the streams or let's just press all three
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: at the same time. All right. Um, so, maybe aliens
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: have build something the size of ten thousand galaxies and
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: that's what it's um training, but is that even possible?
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: Could you build something that big and not how it
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: just collapse into a black hole or or who knows? Well,
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm sure those alien engineers can solve that problem.
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: But this is where the movie pitch begins. You know.
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: I want to see the movie where aliens make something
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: the size of ten quadrillion sons the city of ten
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: thousand galaxies. That's the title Star Star Wars, Episode fifteen
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: of ten thousand Galaxies. Somebody out there, contact our agent.
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: We are ready to write that movie. We're right, We're
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: ready to write any screenplay. Really, that's true too. We
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: just want that option money, alright. So those are all
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: possibly for what it could be, and it sounds like
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: we don't really know, But I guess the question is
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: what's going to happen? Are we all going to end up?
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: Is the whole universe or the whole cluster of galaxies
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: gonna end up getting sucked into it? Or we are?
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: Is this this is going to spell the the end
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: of of our existence? Or or is there a sunny
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: side to all of this? Well, it's a fair question
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: because one reason we're interested in sort of mapping where
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: stuff is and where it's going is that we'd like
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: to know what the future of our galaxy is. You know,
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: we know that we're going to hit Andromeda in a
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: few billion years, but it's sort of the larger context
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: of what's going to happen to our local group and
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: are we all getting sucked into this massive alien vacuum
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: cleaner or whatever it is they're building. And so the
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: way to think about it is that there's a sort
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: of cosmic battle going on. On one side, you have
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: dark energy that's trying to pull everything apart, that's creating
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: new space between stuff and making everything further and further apart.
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: And on the other hand, you have gravity that's doing
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: its best to keep stuff together. You know, it's keeping
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: the Earth going around the Sun's keeping our Sun in
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: the Milky Way, and it's trying to keep our group
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: of galaxies together. So it's just cosmic tug of war
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: between the two man it's like the ultimate cosmic struggle,
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: you know, order it's just us, you know, nothings versus something. Yeah,
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: it totally is, and we're watching it play out on
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: this cosmic scale, those sort of super slow motion And
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: the answer, unfortunately or unfortunately, I'm not sure, is that
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: dark energy is much more powerful. What is that? Your favorite?
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: Is that where your money is? Are you? Are you
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: on the dark side, Daniel? Are you officially stepping into
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: the dark side? Well, you know, the dark side forever
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: will dominate our destiny. I mean, we live in a
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: dark side universe because dark energy is seventy of the
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: energy budget of the universe and it just can't be
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: beat by this little piddally gravity. W Well, I do
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: like the lightning bolts coming out of your hands, my
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: hands here, So there's a plus to joining the dark side.
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: You've got lumpy banana smoothies and lightning bolts. Yeah, and
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: maybe at the same time, yeah, maybe at the same time.
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: So dark energy is definitely gonna win. It's going to
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: pull things apart. But you're telling me that maybe we
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: don't know what dark energy is going to do, right,
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: Like it could just maybe give up one day and
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: then gravity will win. You think dark energy has been
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: like conquering the universe for five billion years and then
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: it just gets bored of winning. I think it peaked already.
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: Know so much winning, you're gonna get tired of it.
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: It's gotta it's gotta to retire at some point, you know. Well,
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: you know gravity is very patient. It waits around forever
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: and gathering stuff together. So maybe it's just waiting. It's
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: biding its time until the dark force gives up. Because
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: as far as we know, gravity hasn't changed like dark energy.
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: We know gravity dark energy has changed right since the
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: beginning of time. But that's true. Gravity has remained rock steady,
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: that's true. Dark energy, we think is maybe connected to
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: inflation the first few moments of the universe and cosmic expansion,
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: and then it's sort of bided its time for ten
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: billion years while things spread out, and then all the
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: matter was so dilute that dark energy had a chance
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: to take over and and drive the expansion of the
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: universe again. But you're right, we don't know the mechanism
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: and so we don't know the future of it. But
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: it seems to me the most likely thing is that
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: dark energy wins and the universe spreads out and we
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: end up as the is like tiny little crystalline points
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: of light, super far away from everything else, and the
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: night sky just gets darker and darker. Well, I'm trying
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: to look at the bright side. Maybe you know, if
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: you were born, or if a civilization starting in one
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: of those planets where they can only see they don't
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: see any stars out there, then they would think that
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: they are the only living beings in the entire universe,
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: or that their whole universe was just them. Yeah, a
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: hundred years ago, we thought that our galaxy was the
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: whole universe. We didn't even know there were other galaxies
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: out there. It was mind blowing sort of paradigm shift
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: learning about our context to discover that there were other
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: galaxies and lots of them. But you're right, if we
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: came along late enough, we would learn that we would
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: think that our galaxy was special. Okay, so it doesn't
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: sound like you're too worried about the great attractor or
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: the shape lea attractor or the super duper shapelier attractor,
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: which I just made. All this stuff is going to
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: happen in billions of years anyway, and so you know
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: our sun is going to explode in billions of years.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: So before that happens, we got other problems to solve. Oh,
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: I see, I guess maybe, Um, I'm just worried for
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: the galaxy in general. You're a galaxy stand you're a
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: Milky Way supporter. Yeah, you know, I'm a fan of it.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: It's done good for you. I've grown I've grown fond
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: of this galaxy. But you're saying it's not it's probably
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: it's probably not going to get crunched into this great attractor.
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: You know, it's going to shape the how things move
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: and how things look, but maybe it's not going to
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: crunch it all together. Yeah. In the cosmic scale, all
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: these vectors we're talking about, these velocities or everything is
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: getting pulled towards a great attractor. These are small corrections
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: to what dark energy is already doing. It's helpful in
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: the sense of like using gravity to give us a
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: map for where the mass and the gravity is in
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: the universe. But in the end, it's not the most
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: powerful thing. And you know, our supercluster just doesn't have
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: enough gravity to it to hold itself together. Dark energy
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: is going to tear it apart. All right, I'm gonna
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: press a bunce again, Daniel. I think it's aliens building
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: something to fight dark energy. Maybe, Yeah, they're like dark energy,
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: it's spreading everything apart. Let's bring it all back together. Yeah,
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: it could be. And you know, it could be that
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: human physicists figure out a way somehow to like tap
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: into dark energy and use it to build wormholes between
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: galaxies and so that even if the universe gets really
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: spread out, we could still somehow travel to other stars.
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: Who knows. All right, well, we hope that that answers
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: the question for Stephen and for Mike and Neal and
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: Peter and everyone who asked this question. Pretty interesting. It
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: sounds like there are still giant, big, attractive mysteries out
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: there in space. Yeah, we are only beginning to explore
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: the universe and discover the weird stuff that's out there
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: and trying to fit our models for everything we understand
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: to it and then you know, add to it, add
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: new stuff to it. New baby Yoda's, new aliens, building
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: cosmic cities, new banana smoothie flavors, and baby bread pits
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: are probably also pretty cute. Um. And so it's an
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: exciting time I'm to be looking out into the universe
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: and learning about what's out there, because every year, every decade,
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: there are tremendous mind blowing discoveries to just change the
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: way we think about what's out there. So stay tuned.
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: I guess it is the message, because who knows what
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: the universe will do. Keep funding astronomy is giving us
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: clues as to where we are and where we're going.
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: That's right. Donate to the NSFW for to support this
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: kind of banana projects. It wouldn't be bananas to do.
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: So see you next time. Before you still have a
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: question after listening to all these explanations, please drop us
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: a line. We'd love to hear from you. You can
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel and
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: Jorge that's one word, or email us at Feedback at
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge dot com. Thanks for listening, and remember
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: that Daniel and Jorge explained the universe is a production
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: of I heart Radio. From more podcast from my heart Radio,
• 42:04
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• 42:08
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